Chapter Text
Natasha was falling.
As she tumbled down the chasm of Vormir, she thought of Clint. How he had begged her not to do this. How he had fought her to save her life. Yet although this would be her last moment, she had regrets only for him. That the agony of losing a loved one had been demanded as a price to retrieve the Soul Stone and set right what once went (or, rather, would go) wrong. But it was better that only one person suffer than five. If she had let Clint go, she would have been condemning Laura, Cooper, Lila and Nathaniel Pietro to the loss of their husband and father. And that would not do. She, on the other hand, had no family. She had red in her ledger to wipe out. She knew who needed to lay down on the wire and make the sacrifice play. She and Tony had often shaken their heads at Steve’s trying to solve every single problem by getting himself killed, but sometimes there really was no way to cut the wire.
Natasha kept falling.
Just how deep was this chasm? Surely she should have been crushed at the bottom by now. Not that she was exactly looking forward to being crushed, but it was a suitable end for an assassin who kept doing evil even after she’d tried to go straight. She didn’t need the question of her worth answered. She knew it, and ever since she and Steve had been forced to burn SHIELD, the whole world knew it too. What she didn’t know was what awaited her after she landed. As a Red Room girl she’d been taught not to believe in God, but she’d seen more than one. She even knew how they dressed. But she didn’t know what, if anything, all the powers of the universe had prepared for her. Thor had told her of Valhalla, home of the heroic dead, and Helheim, home of the dishonorable dead. But with Hela’s power broken, Helheim may not exist anymore. At this point, she wouldn’t rule out anything. All she could do was hope that if anything awaited her, the powers of the universe would show mercy. That, if Steve was right and purgatory existed, she could finally wipe out the red in her ledger once and for all.
She was falling through all that red now. The fog was so thick she couldn’t see, but she could feel the air around her swirling. An orange light began to glow. Was this it? Was she falling into the inferno after death? As the orange light reached her suit, lightning began to arc from the quantum regulator, and the whole suit began to emit orange sparks. And then--black.
When Natasha came to, there was no fire to be seen. Instead, there was water to her left, trees and grass to her right, and a wooden dock underneath her sprawled body. However, she did have a blinding headache, and when she checked her head she could feel a bump, so she figured she needed to rest for a moment and figure things out. Was she in the afterlife? None of the ones ever described to her were supposed to look like this . And they all included judgment, which hadn’t happened to her; her memories hadn’t even flashed before her eyes. Maybe she was just waiting in line. She did see people all around her when she looked up, but they were spread around, not appearing to be waiting for anything. They were eating at picnic tables, walking their dogs, and throwing frisbees under the partial cloud cover.
Wait a minute! This place...looked familiar. Was the afterlife playing tricks on her? After being a professional handler-of-weird-and-dangerous-stuff for years, she knew she needed to be prepared to respond to anything. Relax. Remember your training , she told herself. When in doubt, blend in . She looked down; she was still wearing her red and white quantum-travel suit. So much for blending in visually. But she could still act the part. She hopped up, shook her hair out of her suit, and began to walk around. She looked at the lake and the paths and the patterns of trees and stonework, taking it all in. Then, it dawned on her: this was Central Park! She was in New York (or at least an illusion of it). But the illusion was so good that she decided to keep exploring. What could she find? Where did she need to go? What was waiting for her? As she walked, she kept observing. The people seemed happy, not at all in mourning of all of their loved ones lost to the Snap. Maybe they were the ones lost , she realized. They died by the Infinity Stones, and I died for an Infinity Stone. So it’s appropriate that I’m in the same place as them, probably some sort of limbo built by the Stones. But she couldn’t be certain. This might look like New York, but there was only one way to find out whether it really was. She had to ask for help.
She had done this many times during her years as a spy. Pretending to be a hapless civilian to get information out of people was one of her bread-and-butter techniques, at least until the Avengers made the news and everyone knew her face. But this time, she didn’t have to act. She walked up to a businessman sitting on a bench reading a newspaper and tapped him on the shoulder. “Sir, I’m sorry to interrupt, but where am I?”
“Why, this is Central Park, New York, of course. How could you not know it?” Then he turned around and winced. “You must have hit your head pretty hard to not know where you are. Let’s get you to a doctor. What’s your name? Can you remember it?”
“Natalie Rushman,” she blurted out. Then she wanted to kick herself. How stupid am I? I’m always the one reminding people to never use the same alias twice! But it was too late now; giving a new one would make her look even more suspicious. Sure enough, the man was looking at her funnily. “Natalie Rushman, huh? I think I might have heard that one before, but I’m not sure where. You certainly look familiar.” The man closely studied her face. “Never mind that. We need to get you some help. How many fingers am I holding up?”
“Three.”
“Good. How old are you?”
“Thirty-nine.”
“Well, I don’t know you, so I can’t evaluate that for certain. Do you have a wallet on you with an ID, maybe?”
“I don’t think so, sorry. I was on a trip, and…” She stopped. It was probably best to avoid describing the Avengers’ quest to save the universe with some random stranger, even though he seemed friendly and helpful. She of all people knew that enemies could be everywhere.
“So no insurance card either, then. Well, that’s not good. Do you have any family you can call for help?”
“Sure, let me try a few people.” Natasha checked her pocket to find her StarkPhone still there. If this was an Infinity Stone-created limbo, everyone who’d been Snapped away might be here. And if she had her phone here, they probably would too. She pulled up Peter Parker’s number first, since he’d lived in New York. “Hi Peter, this is Nat. I just got here, and I...I need some help.”
“Excuse me? We don’t have a ‘Peter’ at this address.” The man set the phone down.
Natasha looked back at the businessman. “Wrong number. Let me try again.”
But it hadn’t been a wrong number. She’d dialed this number a thousand times before. If this was a limbo designed to resemble life on Earth, it would make sense for people to keep their numbers, if phone service worked here. The man had recommended that she call people for help, which suggested it did. She decided to test that by texting herself. If it went through, then phone service must be the same as before.
Sure enough, it did. Then why wasn’t Peter Parker’s number working? The man watched as she tried more friends: Sam, Wanda, Scott, even Bucky. All were wrong numbers. She tried T’Challa and Shuri, which wouldn’t even go through due to an “invalid country code.” She grew increasingly nervous. Was this an Infinity Stone-created limbo at all? Yet it couldn’t be the world of the living, either; this New York was vibrant with people, not the quasi-ghost town she had visited in the years since Thanos. Could she have traveled back in time when she fell into the chasm? She was wearing a quantum-drive suit which was designed to travel through time. She decided to ask the man: “What day is it?”
“April twenty-eighth.”
“Of what year?”
“Why, 2018, of course.”
So she hadn’t traveled far enough back to precede the Snap. In fact, if this man was correct, she’d gotten here the first day following it, when things had been at their most chaotic. What was going on? This was that one time in a blue moon when the (in)famous Black Widow had no idea what to do. As Steve Rogers might say, she wasn’t in Kansas anymore.
“Ummm…..”