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Chapter Text

The moment Natasha's shoes once again stepped on the soil of Earth in the 616 universe, the seasons were grandly transitioning to the autumn of 2024.

For her, she had drifted between life and death in a parallel universe for a decade. For her relatives and old friends, however, her return was a huge surprise. They had gradually started to accept the fact that Natasha Romanoff was gone and never expected a miracle to bring her back to life.

Steve wasn't among them, and no one mentioned him the way they'd mentioned Tony, who had sacrificed himself. Natasha privately wondered if he had gotten himself into some trouble again and was on the run. She planned to ask Sam or Bucky privately after the friends who had come to welcome her left - both of them looked solemn.

Half an hour later, Nick Fury, the director of S.W.O.R.D., arrived at Stark Tower in a hurry. The former boss, who always presented an unruly and tough image, couldn't help but have red eyes at this moment. He patted Natasha's back a few times heavily.

However, it seemed that Natasha was not the original purpose of his visit. He was silent for a few seconds, and his deep voice carried a rare hesitation. "Romanoff, Rogers... He might not make it through tonight. Do you want to go and see him for the last time?"

The redhead woman's smile slowly froze on her face. She held her breath. It was a long time before two short, dry gasps squeezed out from the depths of her throat. She had to tense all the muscles in her body to keep herself from falling. Rhodey and Pepper both looked concerned and wanted to support her, but she waved her hand and slowly sat down by the coffee table.

"Steve..." she murmured. "Was it a mission? Or was there a problem with the serum? Is there any way we can try to save him?"

Director Fury slowly shook his head and looked at Sam, gesturing for him to speak. Sam twitched the corner of his mouth, gave a bitter smile, and gently took Natasha's arm, leading her to a quiet corner of the room.

"Our public statement is that the serum has failed, but actually, Captain is aging naturally."

Natasha propped her forehead with her palm, her mind in chaos.

Why were the glances Sam cast at her interwoven with pity and regret? Why was he looking at her like that?

"After you and Tony left, we won. Captain was responsible for returning the Infinity Stones to each timeline. And I think... he made a choice, to stay in that era that belonged to him and be with the person he had always missed until the end. Now, it's time for him to leave."

Sam's Adam's apple bobbed. He looked at Natasha's face and it was a long time before he managed to speak with difficulty. "Nat, when we were in exile, I could sense that there was something between you and Steve. When I came back from the Blip, I found that you were gone. As for Captain, he seemed depressed. Sometimes he would wake up suddenly at night and just sit straight on the couch, not moving until almost dawn. I asked him if it was because of you, but he didn't want to say anything."

"So," Sam's voice carried a sense of relief but also bitterness. "Knowing that he stayed in the past and found happiness with the love he had missed, I'm happy for him. Really. Who would have thought that you'd come back one day."

Natasha forced a smile, trying hard to control the tremble in her voice. "He, Steve, he's given so much for everyone and this world. He deserves to have his own era." She straightened her shoulders and turned her head away, avoiding the heavy understanding in Sam's eyes. "There has always been just friendship between Steve and me. You don't have to explain anything to me for him."

Sam and Bucky took turns coming forward and gave her a second tight hug today. They were both about to lose the same friend. In the communication projection, Yelena was excitedly shouting for Natasha to wait for her in New York. She was already on her way to the airport.

Natasha turned the corner of her mouth in the direction of the screen, giving her sister a dazed smile.

Before getting in the car to go to the hospital, she turned her head and took one last look at the towering Stark Tower. Pepper had just told her that this magnificent and flamboyant building had been sold to a mysterious buyer and would be handed over next month. Fury, who was driving, stuck his head out of the car window and urged her to get in.

She looked back in the car, thinking of the times she had spent in this building, with a large number of guests, toasting and laughing. At that time, all of them were there - her comrades, her friends, and also her family. She had been the Black Widow, her ledger stained with blood, accustomed to walking alone in the shadows. Her script was filled with partings and endings. She was always ready to welcome a meaningful or meaningless death, just like on Vormir.

But she never expected that fate would arrange for her to return to the world in the end, only to be the one to see them off.

Fury's black SUV drove towards the hospital. She sat in the passenger seat, stiffly looking out of the window. Her pale, tilted face was reflected in the rear-view mirror. She didn't know how to piece together her expression, nor what kind of mood she should have to face the old Steve who was about to leave on the hospital bed. Should she cry? But he had lived a very happy and fulfilling life. He had caught up with that dance with Peggy, experienced an ordinary and precious companionship, and lived to be over 180 years old. Even if the 70 years he spent sleeping at the bottom of the ocean were subtracted, it could still be considered a long life. As one of Steve's close friends, she should be relieved for him and even feel at ease that he could finally get eternal rest.

No matter what the intense heartbreak in her heart was for at this moment, she definitely shouldn't show more pain than was reasonable, causing misunderstandings for him who was about to leave forever and others.

Parking in New York City was always a hassle. Natasha hadn't existed in a human body for a long time. The way Director Fury muttered and cursed at the car in front of them made her a little nostalgic. She tried to twitch the corner of her mouth, her voice carrying a hint of tired banter. "Not used to it without a VIP pass now, are you?"

Nick Fury glanced at her and honked the horn fiercely at the car that had been struggling to squeeze into a parking space for a long time. "Of course, Romanoff. But I'm an old man who's accustomed to loss. There will always be new jobs and new colleagues waiting for me ahead. What do you think of what I just said?"

Natasha gave a weak smile. "I know what you mean, Nick. I just... I was alone on that planet for too long and got sentimental."

She didn't wait for the SUV to park in the space. She quickly jumped out of the passenger seat and walked quickly into the hospice ward in the inpatient area. She was terrified from the bottom of her heart. Would Steve have already left completely during the few minutes she had delayed?

The life-support device was still slowly updating the faint fluctuations of the heart rate. At first glance, she almost didn't recognize him. The last time they met, she was trapped in the planet's core on Vormir, watching him desperately climb down the altar cliff, futilely rummaging through the rock crevices, wandering around looking for her body until a few days later, he finally returned in vain, staggering back to the spaceship.

The gaunt old man on the hospital bed looked much smaller than the prime - aged Steve, huddled under the bedding, as if he was at the end of his rope. His eyes were tightly closed, and it was unclear whether he was unconscious or asleep. But even though the misplaced time had weathered her friend Steve into what he was now, Natasha still recognized him from the outline under his withered wrinkles.

She hesitated by the hospital bed for a moment, and finally reached out and gently placed her hand on the back of Steve's emaciated hand. She remembered that this hand had once forcefully dug through the collapsing building above their heads, carried her unconscious body to find a way out to life, and after that, it had reached out to her many times, giving her great strength and warmth. However, at this moment, this hand was like a withered branch in late autumn, with distinct joints and skin as thin as a layer of fragile paper. But even so, on the ring finger, there was still a wedding ring. The size of the ring had obviously been adjusted to fit his gradually shriveled finger.

What a loyal love.

She seemed to have been burned and quickly withdrew her hand. Someone brought a chair and placed it behind her, patted her on the shoulder, and motioned for her to sit down.

It was Bucky. His eyes held both sadness and understanding, for Natasha and also for Steve.

Natasha sat by the bed for several hours until the sun set and the slanting sunlight flowed over her and slowly dimmed on Steve's face. People in the ward came and went. They hugged Natasha, who had come back from the dead, and then said goodbye to Steve, who would pass away naturally-now she looked very much like a granddaughter sitting by her grandfather's hospital bed.

Wanda came and sat down next to her, hugging her for a long time. "I'm so glad you're back," Wanda said with tears in her eyes. "So many, many things have happened, Natasha."

Natasha stroked her hair and said softly, "I know."

Wanda held Natasha's hand, closed her eyes, and tears silently slid down her face. "I can feel it. There is a strong grief burning in the void in your heart, just like in mine."

She stood up, bent down, and touched Natasha's cheek, then turned around and held the old man's hand on the hospital bed.

"After Captain's... funeral is over, let's talk again. Take care, Natasha."

Sam and Bucky left for a while. They had urgent matters to attend to. Now only Natasha, who had just returned to Earth, was left in the hospice ward. She thought Steve wouldn't wake up again. But before the orange-red sunset completely sank below the horizon, his hand resting on the white sheet twitched very slightly. Then, his eyelids slowly and laboriously opened.

His cloudy blue eyes slowly turned, looking around the ward until they met her gaze. For a few seconds, his eyes were unfocused, and then a smile full of joy bloomed on his face.

"Nat."

His voice was blurred and old, but full of relief. "I just... had a very long... very long nightmare. I dreamed... that you died. Fortunately..."

Natasha threw herself in front of his hospital bed, tremblingly pressing his hand against her face. Hot tears finally overflowed from her eyes and were wiped away by her fingertips. She said to him in the gentlest and calmest tone possible, "It was just a nightmare, Steve... Go back to sleep. You must be very tired."

The old man closed his eyes and mumbled incoherently, "Mmm, stop crying... When I get better... I'll cook for you again. Peanut butter sandwiches... Not nutritious..."

His breathing gradually calmed down, and he finally fell asleep again.

Half an hour later, when Sam and Bucky rushed back to the hospice ward, they only saw Natasha standing woodenly in front of the hospital bed. Her braid, a mix of gold and red, hung lifelessly on her shoulders, and her hands were wrapped around the old man's hand on the hospital bed.

The line representing the heartbeat on the monitoring instrument now returned to a flat line. Only the monotonous "beep -" sound of the electronic device echoed in the ward.

Chapter Text

The funeral and memorial service were held three days later. At the insistent request of Clint's daughter Lila, Natasha had been staying at Clint's house these past few days, and Yelena had also rushed over.​

Yelena tried her best to persuade her sister not to attend the funeral of the former Captain America, Steve Rogers, fearing that she would once again find Natasha in a daze, repeatedly wiping the plates at Clint's house for half an hour until the glaze on them peeled off.​

Clint agreed with Yelena's opinion, even though he had just been punched by her not long ago.​

But in the end, she and Clint still appeared at the memorial service on time. It was a grand ceremony held in the museum's memorial hall. Under the smooth and high glass walls, various electronic display boards were switching back and forth, showing the great life of Steve Rogers.​

Natasha stood in the crowd with her arms crossed. On the stage, Sam had just finished his eulogy for Steve and handed over the shield to the representative of the U.S. government.​

She shook her head almost imperceptibly; this was not the wisest choice. But she had come back too late, and many things had already happened. She didn't want Sam to feel that she was interfering too much in the affairs left by Steve. Besides, she was still in the process of physical and mental recovery and hadn't figured out her next plan.​

Pepper had invited her to join Stark Industries, responsible for handling government and public relations. This was certainly part of what Natasha was good at, but she couldn't imagine herself formally stepping out of the background completely, dealing with the media and reports every day.​

She would wait. Having been trapped inside a desolate tidally locked planet for nearly ten years, with nothing to do but talk to herself, her body and spirit had not yet recovered to their best state.​

She would wait until time restored her to the capable and calm Agent Romanoff, until time faded the remaining regrets in her chest, and she could look calmly at Steve's departure.​

But she soon found that her plan to rest would not be so easy to implement. The first person to appear beside her was Wanda, who clearly had something to say.​

She took Natasha's arm and walked towards the mourning hall where Steve's body lay.​

Wanda didn't speak directly, but first glanced at the electronic display boards around them and commented softly to Natasha, "In my impression, it seems that you are the one who fought alongside Captain the longest, but there isn't a single photo of you on these display boards. I really don't understand what the people who made these were thinking."​

As soon as Wanda finished speaking, as if to confirm her words, Bucky's headshot on the largest display board at the entrance of the memorial hall gradually faded, and then Peggy Carter's beautiful face emerged. In the image, she smiled reservedly, the same one Natasha had seen in the compass Steve sometimes carried.​

Natasha blinked hard. If she understood correctly, Wanda seemed to want to make her feel some jealousy and dissatisfaction-she couldn't deny the messy feeling in her heart, but she was more eager to figure out the intention behind Wanda's words.​

"Have you seen the stack of memorial books at the entrance? In the chapter called 'Friends and Followers', there are three whole paragraphs about me." she smiled, though there was still a tinge of sadness, "...There's a paragraph about you too. They're all well-written, full of poetry."​

In front of the mourning hall, Wanda stopped, suddenly turned around, and stared intently into Natasha's eyes:​

"Is it really possible not to hate, Natasha?"​

"I..." Natasha felt her tongue was tied. Wanda, the sister she regarded as family. She didn't want to lie in front of her family.​

She lowered her head, "As I once said, love and hate are for children. All I can do is pay off the debts on the ledger one by one, and then protect the remaining family, including you, Wanda. Whatever you want, tell me."​

Wanda grabbed Natasha's arm, her pupils filled with grief and fanaticism, "When you jumped down, you had already paid back ten thousand times what you owed the world. Now it's the world that owes you, and me too. Natasha, if I tell you that I have a way to make both of us happy, I just need you to give me the coordinates of that parallel universe -"​

Her words came to an abrupt end because the memorial service had officially ended, and many people were walking towards them. Wanda lowered her voice and quickly said-"Think about my proposal, I'll come to you again." Then she let go of Natasha's arm and turned to leave naturally.​

Wanda's words caused a huge wave in Natasha's heart. She hadn't had time to go into detail with anyone about how she returned; she had only said that she had escaped from the core of Vormir.​

How did Wanda know? How did she know that the 2014 timeline hadn't closed, creating a new parallel universe? And how did she know that in that universe, there were things that both she and Natasha desired?​

After she, Tony, and Steve had left, the Avengers had also scattered. In less than a year, how far had Wanda gone in that direction?​

In the past, she would have definitely discussed Wanda's mental health issues with Steve. But the person with whom she could exchange glances and opinions was now lying in the center of the mourning hall, covered with the Stars and Stripes, surrounded by white flowers, looking peaceful, as if he was full of gratitude for his long life.​

Natasha looked down at Steve's face. Beside the old man's neck, a silver heart-shaped pendant lay quietly on the satin, its edges darkened, obviously often touched.​

Probably another sacred relic of love.​

Tony was gone, Thor was wandering in some star field, Bruce was a good man but not good at making decisions... She had to talk to Clint. Wanda had always respected and been close to him, second only to Steve and Natasha.​

Her fingertips hovered above the coffin. She wanted to gently touch Steve's forehead with her fingers, and also wanted to grab his hair, pull him up from the coffin, and question him fiercely.​

Hey, Captain Rogers, congratulations on living a happy life with your lover for more than sixty years. What about me? How should I stitch up this new world you left behind?​

Wanda's mental state made her superpowers too dangerous, Natasha thought. She and Clint were just two agents with slightly enhanced genes. If a friend's hug and listening didn't work for Wanda, who should she turn to for help?

"Ms. Romanoff."​

A long-faced man walked up to her, accompanied by Bruce Banner.​

Natasha actually knew him-or rather, the version of him from the 2014 parallel universe, but he probably didn't know that Natasha knew him.​

"Hello, Dr. Strange. Hello, Bruce." Natasha smiled.​

Bruce stared at her, his eyes filled with deep concern and the joy of regaining what was lost. Although Natasha no longer missed that short-lived relationship, she was full of gratitude to Bruce.​

"Let's talk outside, Ms. Romanoff. There's a mission that I'm afraid we need to ask you to carry out." Strange said politely and solemnly.​

They walked around the coffin one by one. Natasha knew that this was a forever goodbye. She took a deep breath and finally leaned down to press her cheek against the old man's cold forehead.​

No matter who he owed or who owed him, at least Captain Rogers had no promises to Agent Romanoff, only the unhurried friendship and gratitude between each other. When the resentment in her chest faded away in the future, she would definitely regret not saying a proper goodbye today.​

Death had finally erased all debts.​

She decided not to be angry with Steve anymore.​

*
Natasha and the other two stood on the wide lawn outside the memorial hall. It was a good place for a secret conversation. The temperature and humidity were comfortable, and there was absolutely no place for eavesdroppers to hide.​

They exchanged a few brief greetings. Stephen Strange expressed his deep respect to Natasha, praising her heroic sacrifice on the cliff of Vormir.​

Natasha smiled calmly, "Thank you. But both of you are far more powerful than me. What urgent mission must be carried out by me?"​

"It's a bit... complicated." Strange said, "I think, after the Avengers' 'Time Heist' last year, you should be familiar to parallel universes."​

Of course, she was not. Even after escaping from Vormir, she was forced to live in seclusion in the 2014 parallel universe-which she heard had been named the 616-03 universe-for three months. It wasn't until the Doctor Strange of 616-03 found her and helped her return to the 616 main universe.​

Seeing her nod, Strange continued, "This mission is related to the former Captain America, Steve Rogers," he slightly bowed towards the direction of the mourning hall to show respect, "Therefore, we believe you are the most suitable person."​

Natasha let out a short laugh, "Why, has he left a mess somewhere in the world that I need to clean up?"​

She knew her words sounded a bit sour. Steve had always been someone who could clean up his own mess.​

A look of confusion flashed in Strange's eyes, and then he also smiled, "It can indeed be considered a mess, Ms. Romanoff. I think you should know that Captain Rogers chose to travel back to the forties to live."​

Natasha lowered her eyes with a bitter smile, "Of course, that's why he's lying in that wooden box today."​

"Generally speaking, such a low-key personal time travel has limited impact." Strange explained, "The development of the universe has its fault tolerant resilience and can absorb certain differences. But unfortunately, Captain Rogers' time travel has exceeded this limit. We must summon him back to the current time node." His voice became serious, "Otherwise, the probability of the universe we live in being destroyed in the next twenty years will increase by about 7%. For this reason, the Time Variance Authority (TVA) may lock onto him at any time and completely erase him and the timeline branch caused by him."​

"Wait," Natasha was a little confused and interrupted him, "If the differences can't be absorbed, shouldn't a new parallel universe split off? But Steve lived to an old age in our timeline, and the timeline... isn't it already closed?" She looked at Banner for support in confusion.​

Banner took over the conversation gently, "Not exactly, Nat. Generating a new parallel universe branch requires extremely huge energy differences. The differences caused by Captain's time travel were... subtle at that time, and there was no immediate sign of splitting, so the timeline seemed to be closed." He pushed his glasses, "But according to Dr. Strange's recent observations, it is inferred that this deep-seated difference will gradually accumulate and manifest in the next twenty years or so." He glanced at Strange and continued, "The problem is that time itself is not linear. This unresolved difference increases the risk of a quantum collision between our main timeline and... potential abnormal timelines. Once a collision occurs, it may lead to the annihilation of both. Although the probability is only 7% at present."​

Natasha held her head in her hands in pain, "Okay, okay, enough. I only have degrees in information engineering and art, and I know almost nothing about modern physics. Tell me the final conclusion, what should I do."​

The phone rang, and Nick Fury's image lit up on Natasha's phone screen.​

"You have eight hours to pack, Agent Romanoff," Fury said without looking up, staring at the document in his hand, "Everything you might need in the forties. At eight o'clock tonight, in Dr. Banner's laboratory, you will be sent back to May 1st, 1948." He looked up at the screen, "This time point is a rough range inferred based on Mr. Barnes' testimony and space time fluctuations-you must bring Rogers back before they register their marriage."​

"And before the Time Variance Authority finds Captain Rogers." Strange added.​

"Okay, I can go. But," Natasha replied simply, but couldn't help but ask, "Why must it be me? Bucky Barnes seems more suitable. He is better at fighting than me, and he is from that era."​

Fury shook his head on the phone screen. "Time travel requires a strong soul, Romanoff. Every time you travel, the risk of your soul being eroded by darkness increases. Barnes hasn't completed his mandatory psychological treatment and his community service hours. And you? You are one of the top agents in the world, master of disguise and reconnaissance, and your experience is enough to prove your conscience and will."​

He paused, sighed, and his voice rarely took on a hint of tenderness - "Go, Natasha, bring Steve back. He probably won't refuse you."

Chapter Text

In the morning, Natasha and Clint took an Uber into the city. Now, she called Clint, and they hurried out of the museum. A Quinjet was already parked on the lawn, waiting for them.

"I thought we were both retired," Clint shook his head with a sigh.

Natasha stepped into the hatch, glancing around the familiar cabin. "Unfortunately, I have a troublesome family that won't let me rest easy."

Her main assets had long since turned to rubble along with the Avengers Compound, which was destroyed by Thanos. But a seasoned agent’s instinct meant never putting all their eggs in one basket. Over these three days, while she’d spent most of her time grieving Steve, she’d also found time to reactivate dormant bank accounts, contact a few old friends, and retrieve some stored belongings.

"What are you writing?" Clint asked, fiddling with the dashboard without looking back.

Natasha’s pen moved quickly across the paper. "A will. Last time I left in a hurry and forgot to sign it. You guys aren’t legal beneficiaries—almost let the bank get their hands on everything."

Clint let out a dry laugh. "Hey, you’re just going back to the forties to drag Steve back. It’s not like you’re storming Hydra’s lair."

"Maybe the Time Variance Authority will erase me before I even find him," Natasha shrugged, her tone casual. "Strange said they’re probably slow, but… better safe than sorry." As she spoke, she quickly listed names that came to mind.

She entrusted Wanda’s care to Clint. "In theory, I’ll be back in one minute. But if I don’t, Clint—keep an eye on Wanda. Okay?"

The jet flew steadily toward Clint’s house, switching to autopilot. Clint walked over and sat beside Natasha. "I will. But please, stop talking about that damn minute." He stared out the window at the distance. "It was hard enough returning alone back then… The look on Captain’s face? It made me so ashamed, I almost wanted to seppuku like a samurai."

He could finally joke about that day.

"Great sense of humor," she said, not looking up, forcing a smile as she stared at her will.

Clint fell silent beside her for a moment, but as an older brother figure, he felt obligated to have a serious talk.

"If you bring Captain back, what then?"

Natasha let out a helpless groan. "What’s with you all? Do you really think there’s something between me and Rogers?"

"Don’t play dumb, Tasha," Clint said, meeting her gaze. "I’m slow about these things, but Laura’s mentioned it enough before bed. I get it now. Captain’s eyes, Laura’s glazed dishes."

Natasha jabbed her forehead with the pen irritably. "No plans. He loves Peggy, Peggy loves him. They didn’t forget each other after all those years apart. And there I am, have to intrude on his quiet life, rudely drag him back, and completely break up a loving engaged couple. Thinking of that is embarrassing enough." She looked at her old friend firmly. "And Clint, I’m not lying. Sure, maybe Steve and I did have some…special moments. But we both let them slip by. That says it all, doesn’t it?"

She had said this much, Clint patted her shoulder, dropped the subject, and returned to the pilot’s seat.

The jet landed with a roar on the lawn outside Clint’s suburban home. Before Natasha stood up, Clint looked at her seriously.

"Nat, you know I’m not a relationship expert. I trust your judgment, but…sometimes, try acting for your own happiness. Not just for all people around you."

"I’ll browse my ex-boyfriends list," Natasha joked lightly, hopping off the jet.

*
She carried a vintage-style suitcase, changed into a red-white-and-black quantum suit, and stepped onto the time machine platform again.

Her only change from last time was that she had cut off the blonde tips of her braid. That way, even if she had to remove her wig occasionally, her red-and-gold hair wouldn’t stand out too much in the forties.

"Assessments say the risk is low," Fury said, crossing his arms, adding a reminder. "No major disasters hit New York those years. Rogers won’t lay a hand on you—unless he’s lost his mind. But just in case: if you’re not back in three minutes, Strange will jump to that timeline. So, don't be too surprised if you find Strange there when you arrive."

Natasha gave a reassuring smile, though her stomach felt heavy as lead. Time travel itself was risky, but facing Steve again—especially with another woman by his side—nervous her more.

"The quantum channel has stabilized, Nat," Bruce’s gentle voice came from the console. "You can step in now. Good luck."

Natasha waved casually, gave an OK sign, and stepped into the light.

This time, she said nothing.

*
As the quantum tunnel opened, briefly bridging two eras, Steve was dreaming.

He knew he was in a dream.

Looking around, he found himself back in his old room at the Avengers Compound. Rain pattered outside, and his gaze locked onto something on the desk:

A dried, broken claw.

Pitch-black, with a few singed, curly tufts of fur clinging to it, trembling in a nonexistent breeze, as if it was still connected to the body of a creature twitching in pain.

The strangest thing is that this claw actually has six toes, and the tip of each toe is inlaid with a miniature infinity stone, and the colorful gem fire flows at the tip of the claw.

This form was obviously different from the terrifying monkey's paw that granted wishes in the story. But this was his dream, so he knew clearly that it was a monkey's paw.

He grabbed it, a cold shiver running down his spine from his forehead. He paced back and forth in the room anxiously, and finally, trembling, he made his first wish.

A full quarter of an hour passed.

A knock came. He wrenched the door open. There she was, just as he’d wished: Natasha.

She was very pale and soaked to the skin, her red hair stuck to her cheeks, and the rain dripped down her golden hair and landed on the waxed floor.

Blood. Dripping onto the floor—blood seeping from the back of her head, mixed with rain.

In his dream, he felt no fear, only a numb focus. He squatted down, grabbed a towel, and diligently wiped at the bloodstains, trying to wipe away the endless dripping blood. But eventually, he gave up, his trembling fingers clutching her cold wrist, pulling her to the bed, and hugging her soaking, frigid body tight.

Dark red blood slowly soaked the pillow. In his arms, Natasha seemed not to care. She stayed silent, her green eyes, glasslike, staring at him, her cold fingers brushing his face gently, inch by inch.

He wasabout to wake up.

The dream shattered into fragments. He saw his friends’ faces: Sam, Bucky, Tony—was he dead?—Thor, Clint, Wanda…Their lips moved. They were going to send Natasha back. He pulled her with him, running; blood from her head spattered the dust… crashing through doors, one after another… nowhere to escape. The monkey’s paw… the Hydra symbol… covered the silver star, dancing on his chest…

But Natasha wouldn’t leave—

Steve Rogers jolted up in bed, his heart still beating wildly in his chest.

Birds were chirping. It was an early summer morning, bright and cool. The mowed lawn exuded a dry fragrance, which, along with the lush scent of various flowers and trees, quietly penetrated into his nostrils.

He remembered that it was the day before the wedding registration was scheduled. He was the lucky groom.

Peggy had already left, and he woke up later than usual today. Steve walked over to the table by the window, sat down, and opened a drawer.

A Tiffany-blue velvet box. He knew it held the wedding rings they’d picked.

A sense of regret welled up in her heart. she’d used her savings for them. He’d returned from 2023 with almost nothing.

An old compass with a picture of Peggy framed under the glass.

He had opened it and read it many times during those difficult and breathless moments. The smile from the past always brought him confidence and comfort.

A thin silver chain hung with a silver heart pendant. On the back of the pendant, there was a line of small Russian characters engraved.

Ты моё солнце.

He didn’t know Russian, but the vendor had told him what it meant.

The pendant could be opened, and now it lay quietly in his palm. Subconsciously, his thumb gently stroked the uneven silver surface until he remembered that he had to go downstairs to deal with the beef for dinner.

In the end, he didn’t open it.

He busied himself in the kitchen for a moment, smearing beef ribs with coarse salt, liquor, and a spice mix, setting them on the countertop to marinate—a technique he'd learned a few days earlier from a housewife magazine—before he went through the screen door onto the freshly mowed lawn in front of the house and began to loosen and prune the newly transplanted apple tree.

In 1948, automated drip irrigation hadn't been invented yet, and there were no professional gardening services offering turnkey garden care services for the average middle-class suburbs of New York City. He had to care for all the plants in his garden himself. For now, Steve wasn't tired of it; he hadn't been back long.

For the past three weeks, he'd been staying at Peggy's house, tending to chores. Lacking identification, he hadn't yet been able to register his marriage. But the matter had been resolved. Many soldiers were listed as missing in action, their bodies never found. Peggy had a friend named Souza who had helped her find the missing person file for a soldier around Steve's age whose family tree had been lost. The file was now on the kitchen table.

Days as a househusband passed quickly. Between peeling potatoes, he would sometimes wonder if he had never been to the 21st century, hadn't fought the Chitauri ships that descended upon New York from a high-altitude portal, hadn't stood up to Thanos with his bare hands in the jungles of Wakanda, with six Infinity Stones gleaming between his fingers, and hadn't said goodbye to the red-haired woman with the French braid in the time machine (he'd just thought her braids were pretty then, but now he finally knew what they were called; he'd seen a tutorial in a housewife magazine). Those were all fantasies that bored househusband Steve Rogers—soon to be Ted Fisher—had spun to while away his afternoons.

This is the greatest significance of his return to 1948: to be a completely ordinary person and not allow himself the opportunity to use any extraordinary powers... isn't it?

The red dirt beneath the apple tree rustled through his fingers. Being able to spend the remaining decades of ordinary life with Peggy Carter was his last remaining blessing after the catastrophe.

Chapter Text

As evening drew near, the sky turned a blue-purple hue, with rain clouds piling up in the west, indicating that heavy rain would come later.

Natasha Romanoff sat on a corner bench in the Jackson Heights neighborhood, gazing across the street at a house. A two-story building with beige walls and a reddish-brown roof, it stood quietly under the dense shade of oak and maple trees. She had just seen the blonde beauty from the photos, Peggy Carter, park her car in the driveway.

If all her guesses were correct, then the former Captain America, Steve Rogers—once Natasha’s close friend—had recently been living with his lover in this neatly maintained middle-class house.

At the moment, she was in disguise. A brown-gray wig and a static mask on her face made her look like a fifty-something woman with indistinct features, unrecognizable to any friend or relative—unless they possessed magical abilities. Yet, she felt a vague mix of anticipation and fear that Steve might suddenly step out of that off-white door, recognize the ordinary middle-aged woman sitting tens of meters away, playing with cat, as his long-lost friend Natasha, risen from the dead.

So far, her operation had gone almost without a hitch. The S.S.R., where Peggy worked, was the predecessor of S.H.I.E.L.D., and Natasha’s hard drive contained nearly complete historical archives. She’d prepared a fake driver’s license, rented a car from a dealership, chatted briefly in the parking lot to get Peggy’s license plate number, then used a signal tracker attached to the undercarriage to follow her all the way here.

The only unexpected twist came after Peggy left work. She didn’t head home immediately but parked under the Brooklyn Bridge for half an hour. After that, a man with a slight limp got out of the car and leaned down to say goodbye to the people inside.

Then Peggy’s car started again, finally stopping at their shared destination.

Natasha wasn’t sure what she was waiting for. What she should do was to walk straight down the stone path through the lawn, step onto the porch, ring the doorbell, enter the house, and declare her purpose. Steve Rogers, just say goodbye to your 1948 lover. You must put on the quantum suit I’ve brought and come back with me to the new century filled with gunpowder. Otherwise, either your peaceful life and the lover in this beige house will be erased in the near future, or the entire main universe—along with Natasha—will vanish into pure silence.

She knew how Steve would choose, because there was no real choice at all.

Raindrops began to fall. As she stepped onto the stone-paved path, the melody of "Unchained Melody" drifted from an open window, reaching her ears. It was a slow song, perfect for a slow, embracing dance. Almost instinctively, she stopped and did not continue forward, but circled and climbed up the forked branches of the oak tree beside the driveway.

The sound of rain and music masked the faint noises she made. She knew that this action could be called peeping, but Black Widow had done the same thing in her earlier life.

Through the white wooden window, a couple danced slowly in each other’s arms, both wearing happy expressions—a scene worthy of the ending of a blockbuster epic. She’d seen Peggy from a distance earlier, and the man was exactly the Steve in her memory. She wasn’t sure how to calculate the time they’d been apart: three months? A year? From her perspective, it was almost a decade.

It sounds like Steve has done something wrong. Natasha shook her rain-soaked hair, trying to shake off the chaotic thoughts. When they finish this dance, she said to herself, I will jump down from the tree, knock on the door naturally, and fulfill my duty here.

She didn’t want to interrupt their melody.

As the dance neared its end, the two inside drew close. Peggy tilted her face slightly, eyes closed, waiting for the inevitable kiss.

The wind wrapped in the rain gradually became stronger, and the oak branches rustled as they swayed. Their love was so open and bright.

Steve leaned in to her—Peggy—and their lips met naturally, tenderly, staying together for ten seconds without parting—

A loud crack echoed. Natasha felt her feet give way instantly. The sturdy-looking oak branch she stood on, weakened by her weight and the howling wind, proved surprisingly fragile. Luckily, the branch was only about ten feet high. She adjusted her posture during the rapid fall and landed almost unscathed, though her ankle ached and her arm was scratched by a sharp twig as she hit the ground. Blood mixed with rain, snaking down her arm. Such injuries were nothing to the Black Widow.

But the loud noise of the branch falling to the ground obviously startled the intoxicated lovers in the house. Steve walked down the porch quickly, opened a black umbrella, and ran towards the direction where the broken branch fell.

Natasha lowered her head suddenly, gripped by anger at herself—chagrin mixed with shame. Hiding in a tree to watch Steve and Peggy kissing was childish and ridiculous, not cool at all. Worse, she’d fallen and exposed herself in front of him.

She needed to come up with a plausible lie to fool Steve right now—something she’d done successfully many times before.

“Ma’am,” she heard Steve’s voice cut through the rain, “did you get hit? I’m so sorry. I should’ve checked if these old branches were hollowed out by bugs.” His gaze fell on her arm. “The wound needs to be treated. It’s pouring—please come inside so we can bandage it. Ma’am, are you… are you crying? Does it hurt that much?”

Natasha waved her hand, not looking up. She knew her disguise was flawless. Rain had smudged her mascara, but she wasn’t crying. She used her hands to support herself on the ground and said quickly, “I wasn’t hit. Just scared and fell.”

She limped quickly down the driveway, eager to escape this awkward situation. But Steve followed, stepping through the rain to hold the umbrella over her head, asking gently, “It's raining too hard, ma'am. If you don't want to rest, at least let me take you home?”

Natasha shook her head, not looking back. She couldn’t remove her mask or wig to tell him who she was now, at this moment, so she pretended to be horrified and said: “No, no, thank you. Let me go alone.”

Steve pressed the umbrella handle into her hand. “All right, Ma'am. Then take it. Just leave it on the porch next time you’re passing by.” With that, he stepped back two paces.

Natasha breathed a sigh of relief and did not drop the umbrella in her hand. She was completely soaked, and the rain flowed down her wig, mixed with the blood still flowing from her arm, dripping onto the ground. She could feel Steve's eyes behind her still staring at her, heavy.

She thought that Steve was indeed a good man. a twinge of sadness in her chest.

Then, A questioning call came through the rain, like thunder and lightning, striking her ears.

“Natasha?”

Had her disguise failed? Agent Romanoff rigidly controlled her body’s urge to tremble, not stopping, not looking back, not even flinching her eyelashes. She pretended to be just a passing stranger, unrelated to the name he’d tentatively called.

*
Steve ran back to the porch, dabbing rain from his hair with a dry towel.

He chuckled, laughing at himself for being so delirious as to shout Natasha's name at the back of a strange woman, who only had a similar body shape and walking posture.

He’d never found Natasha’s body at the base of Vormir’s cliff, but Clint had told him he’d watched her jump, blood from the back of her head staining the ground red.

Natasha was dead, and he had finally accepted that.

He changed out of his wet clothes, returned to the dining room, and sat across from Peggy, cutting into beef ribs, cheese, and an omelet with his knife and fork. It was his last night as a bachelor, so he’d made a feast.

“Did you look over the files, Steve? Any mistakes?” Peggy set down her utensils, took a sip of white wine.

He shook his head. “Thank your friend Sousa for me. He must have spent a lot of effort to find such a file.”

When she mentioned Sousa's name, Peggy's eyes misted up involuntarily - although she tried her best to control it. After hesitating for a while, she finally said, "He will be transferred to Los Angeles next week."

Steve observed her keenly and then asked, "Is this why your eyes are red when you come home from get off work?"

The obvious truth hung in the air. They fell silent for half a minute. Steve realized he wasn’t angry. He’d been gone so long—of course Peggy might have had other relationship. But she’d pushed those possibilities aside, welcoming him without hesitation.

Peggy pressed her lips together, speaking first: “I’m sorry, Steve, for not being honest right away. Sousa and I… but after you came back, I talked to him, and he understands.”

Steve relaxed his brow, giving her a soft smile. “It’s all right, Peggy. We were apart too long. I’ve had my past, too.” He thought of Sharon—Peggy’s niece, whom he’d kissed in Berlin, though Peggy doesn't know her yet.

Peggy sighed. Then, as if remembering something:

“What about that pendant in your drawer? It’s Natasha’s, isn’t it? You called her name a few times in your nightmares. I’ve been waiting for you to mention her. Was she Russian? The letters on the back look like Russian.”

They’d promised honesty.

“Something like that. Never got chance to give it to her,” Steve said. “She…died.”

He hadn’t expected Peggy to bring up Natasha. But even though he deliberately stated the fact that Natasha was dead in such a detached tone and tried not to think about anything, his heart still felt like it was hit hard by Thor's hammer.

“It wasn’t a love token or anything. She was…one of my best friends. She sacrificed herself to save half the universe. I keep the pendant to remember her.”

“Was she beautiful?” Peggy asked curiously. “Tell me about her.”

Steve fell silent, staring at the rain outside, lost in memory. Beautiful? After knowing her so long, he’d often forgotten Natasha was a very beautiful woman—she was just Natasha… the Natasha who often propped her feet on desks, eating nutritionally empty peanut butter sandwiches for meals. Even in the last year of the Snap, though he’d moved out of the Avengers Compound for commuting and other reasons, he’d still crossed New York north to south three times a week, just to cook her a proper meal.

But he could also recall her slender waist, her green eyes—mischievous when she teased him, like a cat, or the marbles he’d played with as a boy. Her lips… full and soft. The first time she kissed him on the escalator, her hands cupping his face, he remembered blushing. There had been hundreds of people chasing them at that time, so it was just a professional kiss, but he didn't hate moments like that—

No, this was terrible. He shouldn’t let himself think this way.

It was disrespectful to Peggy, and to Natasha. She’d died alone on Vormir, and he had searched every cracks under that cliff, but couldn't even find her body...At that time, his heart was full of frustration and anger. He was just a little bit away from reaching into the suitcase containing the Infinity Stones...

“Steve, are you okay?” Peggy gently touched his hand, which was tightly gripping the edge of the windowsill.

He blinked slowly, shaking his head in confusion. “Nothing. I’m fine.”

“She was a very beautiful, very smart, very attractive woman. Lots of people liked her.” He said.

Peggy nodded, pressing further. “And you? Did you like her? Have you—have you slept with her?”

Steve was stunned. Of course he and Natasha had never slept together. As for the first question… he realized he hadn’t thought about it in a long time. Natasha didn't appear in his life as a date who needed to be constantly confirmed about the progress of the relationship. Most of the time they were together, they were either bleeding, running, or there were 3.5 billion people in the world waiting for them to find a way to save them.

Occasionally, they would have some extravagant time, where they could sit on the sofa and watch a movie, chatting about the progress of their missions and the movements of their friends. But even at such moments, they were not used to talking about those things.

Their own feelings, their own desires.

They’d simply grown used to baring their vulnerabilities to each other, trusting each other with their backs, and considering that was great fortune enough.

But had he truly never felt anything else for her? And she for him?

She’d liked Bruce. What had he said to encourage Bruce back then? Was there some unspoken emotion that driven those words?

Thoughts swirled in the former Captain America’s mind. He heard his own voice, flat and dry: “No. We never slept together.”

“So you didn’t like her?” Peggy pressed, although her expression had lost its initial calmness and turned into a self-abuse curiosity, “She sounds like your closest female comrade. You cared about her very much, and you said she was very attractive.”

Steve sighed. “Natasha wasn’t that kind of woman I thought I’d ask out. When we first met, she always seemed overwhelming to me. At the time, she probably just thought I was a stuffy old fossil.”

“And later? Did she come to like you?”

“Later, she died.” Steve turned to the window, closing his eyes as his lids grew warm. “I’ll never get to know what she thought.”

Peggy’s voice trembled as a thought struck her. “If—if there was any way to bring her back, but it meant leaving me forever… would you do it?”

Steve bowed his head again, his tone heavy.

“I’m sorry, Peggy. I’ve dreamed of bringing her back, but the truth is, she’s gone. And I’ve already accepted that.”

Chapter Text

That night, for the first time since Steve had returned to 1948, he and Peggy did not sleep in the same room. Peggy had excused herself to organize work documents and stayed in the study all night.

Steve leaned against the head of the bed, holding the silver pendant in his hand, replaying Peggy’s final words from an hour earlier. She’d looked at him quietly, speaking only three words, as if delivering a sentence:

“You love her.”

Then she’d grabbed a blanket and retreated to the study.

Steve let out a bitter laugh. He seemed to have ruined this relationship, or at least this supposedly perfect night.

He stared down at the pendant—a birthday gift he’d prepared for Natasha, hoping it might at least make her smile. In the final year of the Snap, half the world had given up hope, including the remaining Avengers. Natasha was not. But she had grown visibly paler by the day, withdrawn and nearly silent. Pain had overflowed from her wine glass, pooling in a wet shadow on the floor.

He tried to move closer to her, so that they could absorb some warmth, but she pushed him away with a calm smile. Told him to move forward.

At that time, he thought he understood the emotions hidden in those words.

It was also one reason he’d moved out of the Avengers Compound.

Now Peggy said he loves Natasha.

He buried his face and thick sideburns in his palm, exhaling deeply, finally admitting it: yes, maybe he does.

He still wasn’t entirely sure. He knew he’d loved Peggy, at least, and that love still lingered. When he met her, he’d seen qualities he admired in this woman, imagining a life together in a white house surrounded by flowers. Though they had barely spent days together, the guilty of missing that dance had kept her in his thoughts.

And Natasha?

Closing his eyes, what he saw was not all the symbols of romantic love—no flowers, no diamonds, no church weddings, or white house with 4 Bedrooms—only countless pasts between them, over a decade of mutual support, flowing like water.

In Washington, she taught him to use a phone, set him up on dates, finally pressed a soft kiss to his cheek and handed over files on Bucky…

In Sokovia, she said beside him, that there is no better place in the world to bury bones...

In London, she changed planes on her way to Vienna, ran for several hours just to give him a hug...

In Berlin, she raised her hand, and the Widow‘s Bite aiming at T'Challa...

In Wakanda, as he called her, she flew a Quinjet across two continents to find him…

They were on the run, all over the world, she said in the cockpit of the Quinjet plane, that she would follow him to the ends of the earth...

He’d never thought of her with that specific word “love”. "Love", this vague and ambiguous empty signifier, could not significate the ten years he and Natasha had spent side by side in blood and fire.

So was all these love, too? These gratitude, guilt, companionship, these debts and favors too tangled to count. He had stuffed these complicated, unnameable feelings into a balloon in his chest, waiting for it to burst—or for Natasha’s glance to pop it…

But she’d chosen to step back, urging him forward.

The balloon had finally exploded, unexpectedly, on this quiet autumn night in 1948. Years of accumulated emotions dammed his chest until they broke free, surging through him with each heartbeat, leaving Steve the pain of hindsight and the comfort of self-honesty at the same time.

Yes, he loves Natasha. More than the word "love" itself—heavier, hotter, deeper.

He lifted the chain over his neck, letting the cool metal press against his skin. Lying on his side in the dark, he pressed his thumb to the engraved letters on the pendant's back.

Ты моё солнце.

He knew what these three words meant, not "I love you" but "You are my sun".

*
Yet the next morning, he still walked into the church at the Town Hall.

Admitting that he loved Natasha did not eliminate all the reasons why he needed to put himself in this position. Moreover, he didn’t want to let Peggy down—he came to 1948 determined to make her happy, too.

After a night of careful consideration, Peggy had decided to go through with the registration. She wore a white satin dress falling to her ankles, a short pearl-trimmed veil in her hair, and subtle makeup, elegant and beautiful—shining as brightly as the first time he’d seen her in the army, back when he was still a Brooklyn tiny thin boy.

They arrived at city hall at 8:30, with half an hour to check in and prepare to be the first couple of the day. There was a small church next to it, which provided convenient ceremonies for those couples who did not plan to hold a separate wedding. Each couple had a ten-minute marriage registration and a pastor's blessing - but this service did not provide clergy and venues other than Christianity. After all, this was 1948.

To keep his identity secret, no friends or family attended. Only them and three rows of empty, faded wooden pews filled the chapel. Sunlight filtered through stained glass, casting colorful patterns on the altar. They stood side by side, waiting for the morning pastor, while a phonograph in the corner played Over the Rainbow, the theme from The Wizard of Oz.

Peggy had a stern face all day, speaking only when necessary. In this atmosphere, her expression softened, and she raised her hand to carefully adjust his bow tie.

“If I break up with you, you can’t go back to the future, and you’ll have nowhere to go in this era,” she sighed gently. “I’m sorry the other woman you love is gone forever—just as I’ve pushed others away. So, let’s start over.”

Steve wordlessly took her bouquet-holding hand, gazing at his fiancée with gratitude. They listened to the melody drift through the colored sunlight, waiting for the pastor to push the door open.

“What time is it?” Peggy suddenly asked.

Steve glanced at the wall clock. “9:02. What's going on?”

It seemed that the pastor was late. However, after the war, the economy of New York was booming, and traffic was getting more and more congested. If you drove through the busy areas, it was common to get stuck in traffic.

After a few minutes, the black lacquered wooden door of the chapel was finally pushed open, and then slowly closed. The shadow of the visitor was stretched and quickly shortened by this movement.

The man who came in was not tall, wearing a priest's robe and holding a Bible in his hand. He walked towards them step by step across the red carpet laid in the middle of the benches on both sides.

Peggy breathed a sigh of relief. “You’re late, Pastor.” She stepped back, adjusting her veil, but Steve's brows frowned in confusion, his lips slowly opened until he froze in place.

The ordinary-looking middle-aged priest pursed his lips and shook his head apologetically. As he drew closer, “he” raised a hand, lifting gently at the hairline—the brown wig slid back, and copper red curly hair cascaded down like a waterfall.

“I’m sorry, but this wedding can’t be held.”

There was an odd calmness on the face, but the voice, woman's voice, was filled with strong emotions, like pain and apology. The texture was like velvet, a little hoarse, and it hit Steve's ears.

This was a voice he was extremely familiar with. In the headphones, on the Quinjet, in the training rooms, on battlefields where they’d charged into crowds together, and in movie nights on shared couches.

The static mask peeled away, collapsing the ordinary contours of a middle-aged man to reveal the thin, but still breathtakingly beautiful face under the mask, exactly the face that he would never escape from in his dreams.

Natasha Romanoff.

She was still alive, standing in front of the altar of Steve and Peggy's wedding, her red hair scattered on her shoulders, like solidified blood in a nightmare, fire surging under the molten lava.

*
“Natasha!”

She didn't know how to describe this voice—not from his vocal cords, but a raw cry from the depths of his lungs.

Have you ever seen fish out of water, pursing their lips in vain, just to suck in the last bit of moisture from the wind? If one of them is lucky enough to be thrown back into the river, the first breath they make into the cool water would sound like this.

He rushed down the stairs and stood in front of Natasha, his ecstatic face tinged with a hint of doubt. Barely three strides, yet his breath came in ragged bursts.

“Nat? You… you’re not dead? How are you here? Peggy and my…”

He pulled her into a fierce hug, then froze, releasing her quickly as he remembered the wedding scene.

Although Natasha was quite embarrassed by the absurd scene before her - the groom rushed in front of her, and the bride was standing a few meters away, her wedding dress was dazzling white satin, and her face was not good-looking - her throat was still tightened.

“It’s me. The main timeline me. I guess…I didn’t die? Or I came back.” She met his eyes, fighting tears, forcing a flat, businesslike tone. “Long time, Captain. Fury sent me to bring you back to 2024. So, sorry about the wedding. You can't get married.”

She paused, blinking, trying to explain parallel universes and quantum annihilation theories, though she herself didn't fully understand them.

Maybe she should have brought Bruce to explain. He would definitely have stopped her from climbing that tree yesterday. But more people meant more secrets to hide, and he really wasn't cut out to be a temporary agent.

“Must we go?” he asked.

Natasha nodded, struggling to recall Strange and Bruce’s long lectures. “It’s about timeline stability. Because—”

She had barely started, but Steve seemed to have heard enough. He glanced at Peggy, apologetic, then said, “All right. I’ll go with you.”

“—the energy variance from your travel back to 1948 jump isn’t enough to create a new universe—wait, you agree? BUt I just started.”

“I trust you,” Steve said firmly. “If you say it’s necessary, I’ll go. As long as you’re really Natasha… it's really you, right?”

Natasha crossed her arms and looked at him, unwilling, or perhaps ashamed, to make contact with Peggy's eyes, her lips pursed into a straight line.

“You can ask something only we’d know. Like the last movie we watched. I remember it was the new remake of Death on the Nile,” she said. “Let’s talk somewhere else. I worried there might be others in the church, so I knocked the pastor unconscious. He’ll wake soon. You need to explain to Peggy—sorry—properly. I’ll wait by the parking lot… for both of you.”

She slipped the mask and wig back on, hurrying out. As she pushed open the chapel door, her eyes flickered to a man sitting on the hall steps nearby, hat pulled low, watching her. Natasha recognized him as the man who’d gotten out of Peggy’s car yesterday.

She suddenly felt that she was in a similar situation to this man—though not quite the same.

Chapter Text

Twenty minutes later, Steve appeared alone at the entrance of the parking lot.

Natasha let out a breath of relief in the car. If he hadn’t shown up, she might have suspected he’d run off with Peggy, and then she would have had to activate the tracker—she’d stuck it to his shoe with her toe when Steve had rushed over to hug her earlier.

She’d need to find a chance to remove the tracker later. It couldn’t be left in 1948, and he mustn’t find it.

He walked quickly toward her, opened the car door, and sat in the passenger seat. There was a faint but clear slap mark on his left cheek.

Natasha raised an eyebrow. “You’re alone?”

“Sousa stopped us at the door. He’s Peggy’s colleague—they had a relationship not long ago. So I said a proper goodbye to Peggy there and left them some time.” When he said “proper,” Steve touched his face.

He spoke calmly, though he looked emotionally conflicted. “We need to go back to… Peggy’s house. I buried the shield under the apple tree.”

He turned to her, a smile spreading across his lips, lighting up his whole face. “Natasha… I still can’t believe it. We’re not in my dream, right?”

“Can’t believe what? That it’s me?” Natasha turned the key, barely lifting the corner of her mouth instead of smiling back, and started the car.

“Can’t believe you’re really back,” he said, lifting his hand, palm reaching toward her face. “And even less that I’d see you here, now.”

Natasha could feel his rough, warm fingers brush her temple. She gently leaned her shoulder to the side, avoiding the touch, even as her nose was sore.

She had once missed the feel of their skin touching deeply, especially during the long loneliness in Vormir’s core. If she’d never realized anything else, if she still saw Steve only as a friend…

She focused her gaze ahead. “That’s because you’re here, now. The mission required me to bring you back to the 21st century before you married Peggy,” she shook her head. “Otherwise, the risk of our universe being destroyed increases by 7%. More likely, the Time Variance Authority would erase you before that. You can check with Bruce or Strange about that when we get back to 2024.”

Steve must have sensed the slight distance in her words. He slowly pulled his hand back and said softly, “Thank you for coming for me, Nat. You don’t have to say that. You know I’ll always trust you.”

Even though I’ve lied to you, and just did it again yesterday?

Natasha’s voice came out hoarse, with a hint of a nasal tone. “I should’ve come sooner, but I didn’t know the exact date you came to 1948. I didn’t think you’d register for marriage so quickly. I’m really sorry for putting Peggy in this awkward position. I should apologize to her in person.”

Steve looked at her, his face still bright with the joy of reunion, but his brows furrowed with guilt and a touch of frustration. “No, this is my fault. I ran to this corner to avoid… avoid things, and caused all these problems. You had nothing to do with it. I already apologized to Peggy. You have a clear conscience—no need to apologize to anyone.”

A clear conscience—that made Natasha smile bitterly. Could the version of her who’d fallen from the tree yesterday, twisting her ankle, say she had a clear conscience? If she hadn't had the resentment and jealousy deep in her heart, she could have handled the matter more appropriately, instead of dragging this extremely dramatic scene to their wedding.

“I don’t have a clear conscience,” she said quietly, turning the steering wheel.

Her heart trembled softly in her chest, and silence fell briefly in the car. Steve stared at her, not blinking, as if trying to unpack the hidden meaning in her words.

But Natasha didn’t give him time to overthink. She changed the subject. “Next, we’ll dig up your shield, return the car to the rental place, then activate the quantum suit. Anything else you need, Cap?”

“Nothing else,” Steve said, pressing a hand gently to his shirt pocket, where something hard outlined against the fabric. “I don’t think slipping an apology note or anything under Peggy’s door is a good idea now. Let the timeline go back to how it should be. Oh, and historically, is Sousa the one who becomes Peggy’s husband?”

Natasha nodded. “That’s what I remember. I checked a few years back. But when I opened the file yesterday, that part was blank. I wish I could figure out the logic of these time jumps like Bruce and the others do.”

This seemed to be a point they agreed on. and he curled his lips in self-mockery. "Yes, Nat, I hope this is our last time jump. After all, we are just enhanced super soldiers and agents."

The old car stopped where she’d parked it last night. Steve got out, grabbed the garden shovel from the back porch, and waved for Natasha to drive closer.

“What?” she asked, stepping on the gas, leaning out the driver’s window.

Steve looked embarrassed. “I buried the shield at midnight. It’s ten in the morning now. The neighbor lady might come out to watch.”

She gave her first genuine smile of the day, grabbed a T-shirt from her suitcase, and went to help him dig up the shield. They wrapped it up, snuck it back to the car like thieves, then replanted the apple tree.

She leaned against the driver’s seat, watching Steve. He stood with hands on hips, taking one last look at the neat, pretty two-story white house, sighed, then walked back to the passenger seat and slammed the door shut.

On the way to return the car, Steve suddenly remembered something. “When we get back to 2024, will there be another me there? And another shield?”

Natasha fell silent for a few seconds, visions of him lying under the Stars and Stripes and flowers flashing in her mind. “I got this mission at your funeral.”

As for Captain America’s shield, it was now in the control of the U.S. government.

“If the other shield still exists, maybe we can ask T’Challa to melt this one down,” he mused after thinking. “Vibranium could make new gear for the Avengers. What do you think of a new widow’s noose for you? And Sam and Bucky…”

Natasha pressed her lips tight, not sure how to tell him.

T’Challa had died recently, and the Avengers had fallen apart. With her, Tony, and Steve gone, and no more universal threats like Thanos, the Avengers had lost all their anchors—funding, outside threats, leadership, and daily maintenance. It wasn’t an unexpected end.

“Bucky and Sam aren’t doing great,” she said softly. “But they’ll get better, especially when you’re back. The one we need to watch most is Wanda.”

Steve looked up. “What’s wrong with Wanda?”

It was a long story, and even with Natasha keeping it short, it filled the time until they returned the car. She was now afraid of silence between them lasting more than thirty seconds.

But to explain Wanda’s story, she had to tell him hers too—except for the other her, or the other them, she’d seen in the 2014 parallel universe (or 616-03, as it was called).

“So you were trapped as a spirit in Vormir’s core, seeing everything on the planet through the same eyes. Then someone else came to the altar, sacrificed his love, and that freed you. You stole his ship while he was unconscious and flew back to Earth…” Steve tried to process her story, his voice full of sympathy and relief. Finally, he smiled faintly. “Oh, Nat, good job stopping—or at least slowing down—another would-be tyrant.”

As soon as he spoke, a wave of regret hit him. “I never thought of that. If I’d asked Sam or Bucky to throw me off, you wouldn’t have spent ten years in the dark. That must have been so—”

Natasha cut him off. “Then what? I would have Clint throw me off to get you back? Steve, stop making such assumptions anymore. One goodbye was enough. Blood debts on the ledger have to be paid. I’ve been ready for that since the day I joined S.H.I.E.L.D.”

But during those hours sitting with Clint on the cliff, my biggest regret was breaking the one minute promise. I thought that would be the last lie I ever told you.

She kept that to herself.

*
Steve was still thinking about the universe Natasha had mentioned as he put on the quantum suit.

The 616-03 parallel universe, branching off from the 2014 timeline. It lacked Thanos, the biggest universal villain of the past decade—a difference big enough to create a parallel reality.

Without Thanos pushing things along, many things did not happen. Natasha hadn’t jumped, Tony and Vision were alive, and Wanda and Vision even had twin boys.

He and Tony still fell out over the Accords and Bucky’s historical legacy, but after he, Natasha, and Sam had been on the run for years, Namor McKenzie’s ocean crisis led to their warrants being dropped, and they’d made up with Tony and his side.

Basically, in that parallel universe, despite ongoing crises, their friends were doing okay. Steve smiled bitterly. Compared to the brokenness of the main universe, it was no wonder Wanda yearned for it.

She was a kind and sensitive person, with great power, but her heart was never truly that of a tempered warrior.

“Oh, and in that universe… we were both single?” Steve suddenly remembered to ask, right before activating the quantum suit.

Natasha glanced at him, deadpan. “I don’t know. The papers didn’t say. Maybe Sharon—you did kiss her, after all.”

He strapped the shield to his back, activated the suit half-convinced, and followed Natasha into the quantum tunnel. The side effects were milder than when he’d returned the stones before. He only felt dizzy, but Natasha looked pale, bending over with her hand on her knee, cold sweat dripping from her forehead.

He stepped forward, holding her arm, his other hand naturally resting on her back. “Rogers,” Fury’s lazy voice drawled from the side. “Nice to see you alive and kicking again at eight o'clock in the evening after attending your funeral this morning.”

Steve shot the old director a teasing smile. “Like the time Natasha saw you in the morgue, then a few days later saw you yelling in the secret base.”

Natasha finally recovered. She straightened up, stepped away from Steve, and nodded at Fury. “I brought Captain back. I should go now—Yelena’s waiting.”

Bruce and Strange stepped forward, shaking Steve’s hand one after the other. Fury gave a rare almost fatherly smile. “Romanoff, you always complete the mission perfectly.”

Natasha smirked. “I’m not with S.H.I.E.L.D. anymore, or S.W.O.R.D. So remember, Nick—you owe me one.”

Fury looked at her disapprovingly, his gaze flicking between her and Steve, then gave in. “Fine. It was a tough mission. Do me one more favor, Natasha, and let's settle it together in the end.”

Before Steve could say anything, Fury leaned against the lab table and gave his order.

“When Steve woke up last time, you helped him adjust to modern life. He doesn’t need that again, but until he gets his ID and apartment sorted, keep an eye on him, will you?”

Natasha glanced back at Steve, forcing a smile. “You want me, who’s been back three days, to look after this 100-plus-year-old adult man?”

Steve wasn’t slow. He could feel Natasha keeping a deliberate distance all the way. But because of their past closeness, that distance was often broken, by a word she hadn’t thought through.

But she didn't reject Fury's request in the end. Although Bruce mentioned twice that Steve could live with him for a while, it was clear that Steve was more used to bothering Natasha.

An hour later, they were in a nearby hotel room. Natasha looked a little tired as she tossed him a pre-paid phone. “You can ask the front desk for clothes, or call Sam and the others. I haven’t settled either—I’m staying at Clint’s. Call me if you need anything.”

But Steve reached out and stopped her, his tone firm. “Don’t go, Nat. We need to talk.”

Chapter Text

Natasha sat down on the edge of the bed, her gaze falling on him as he sat on the couch. Only a bedside lamp was on in the room, casting a warm yellow glow over that corner.

The moon had risen, its pale light seeping through the gap in the curtains onto the floor. "What do you want to talk about? I didn’t sleep well last night, and I’m a little tired," she asked, furrowing her brows.

This is a question that is asked knowingly.

But Steve’s voice showed no sign of backing down. "About us. Our relationship."

"Us?" Natasha repeated the word, her expression as if amused by him. "I thought we have always been friends."

He stared at her, his heart pounding. In the mix of lamplight and moonlight, those familiar green eyes looked a little weary, and her lowered lashes seemed to be coated in a faint glow. He almost looked away, afraid he might foeget the words he’d prepared.

"Maybe today isn’t the best time to say this, Nat. After all, it’s only been four or five hours since my wedding that never took place." He paused, his eyes dropping to his knees. "But I have a feeling that if we don’t talk about this today, you’ll never give me another chance to."

"I didn't expect that I gave you such a tough impression," she said, shaking her head, her tone softening a little. "Say whatever you want to say. I’m listening."

"We..." He started, then faltered. He was the better speaker of the two, but right now, Natasha looked so calm, with no extra expectations of him, and the words on his lips felt too obscure and hard to say, leaving him unsure where to begin.

The sorrow of the farewell that day? The joy of their reunion today? He’d already said those things several times.

"You’re angry with me," he finally said, the words he’d been holding back for hours.

Natasha pulled at the corner of her mouth. "Am I? I didn’t even realize it myself."

"We used to be close, even shared a sleeping bag, Nat. I know what you look like when you’re angry but don’t want to say it. You’re angry because I went back to 1948, aren’t you?"

"As a friend, I accept your decision and wish you and Peggy happiness. That’s why I attended your—or should I say the old Steve’s—farewell ceremony," Natasha said calmly. "You’ve given so much to this world; you deserve to have your own time, your own peace. In the end, this is all I can say."

A moment of silence hung in the hotel room.

"As friends—of course, our deep and noble friendship. But to call everything between us friendship, it would never explain the huge hole that appeared in my heart when you died," he looked up at Natasha, his voice trembling slightly, a rare occurrence.

Natasha’s eyes widened, perhaps at his first such direct statement. "I’m not sure, maybe. But even if those things existed between us, they didn’t start right now. In the past... we never did anything, did we?"

Steve felt his eyes grow warm. Natasha hadn’t done nothing; she had done far more for him than he could ever repay. He could have realized it earlier, before the Snap turned her into a fading shadow. Then maybe they could have stolen some time that truly belonged to each other, and there might have been stronger threads in the world to hold her back from falling. He silently apologized to Clint in his heart.

But even with that guilt, he couldn’t let her go now.

"Do you remember our conversation about the Hudson River?" he recalled. "Maybe for once, I wasn’t doing nothing. Before you rejected me about getting a life, and Scott Lang interrupted us, the next thing in my head was to ask you to go out with me, pick a sunny weekend. I wanted to bring a bouquet, use hair gel, shine my shoes, and drive to the Avengers Compound to pick you up. After seeing the whales, we could have dinner at a restaurant with a view of the Statue of Liberty." A faint smile tugged at his lips. "Back then, it was indeed a bit strange to imagine the scene of dating you, but I really wanted to try—try everything to make you happy. Though I suppose only news of victory could truly make you happy."

His words softened Natasha’s expression a little. She remembered the tangled thoughts she’d had that evening. Part of her wanted to let down all her defenses and cry on his shoulder all night. But the more mature part of her knew she had to take on the heaviest responsibilities and debts herself, so the people she cherished could move forward more easily.

"I remember, Steve. Thank you for that unspoken invitation. Maybe there was... something close to love hidden in it," she said, pressing her lips together to hold back a sob. "But the Snap has been over for a year, and people have gone back to their lives. So the whales will never come back again."

*
Her refusal was clear enough. Steve had never been good with women, and he still had old-fashioned shyness in him. In the past, a refusal like this would have been enough to make him back off from the temptation.

But tonight, he reached out and gently took her hand, which was resting on the bedspread. When his fingertips touched her wrist, he felt a tiny tremble.

"Listen to me, Natasha. When I was getting ready to return the Stones to their timelines, Bruce told me his Snap couldn’t bring you back. I think he was hinting that I shouldn’t try anymore."

"The first timeline I went to was 2014, Vormir. I’m not as smart as Tony or Bruce in science, but I had a plan. If I could find your body, maybe I could use the Time Stone, like Thanos did with Vision. Or I could beat up Red Skull and see what he could tell me."

Natasha smiled faintly. "Well, I saw that part."

"But I couldn’t find your body. The nonsense Red Skull said was no help, too. I flew back to Earth, returned all the Stones, and had one tube of Pym particles left."

"I’m sorry, Nat. I hope you can understand," he said, bowing his head in frustration. "I just couldn’t stay in 2023 without you. Back then, I thought going back to the 40s, to the love I’d missed, would bring peace to my heart. But once I did it, I realized I was wrong. I couldn’t find peace. My nightmares were always about you."

"Thank fate, if there is such a thing. You coming to 1948 to get me back, giving me a second chance. Nat—be kind to me, and be honest with me. Tell me: is your refusal because you truly don’t feel anything for me anymore, or...are you still angry that I went to be with Peggy?"

For the first time that night, she stared at him, her green eyes startlingly bright, like a emerald fire burning in their depths.

"Do you really want me to be honest, Steve Rogers?" she said.

She stood up, bent down to remove a tiny metal disc, just a few millimeters across, from his shoe, and dropped it into his palm. "Recognize this? It’s a tracker. I stuck it on you when you rushed down from the altar to hug me."

Steve was stunned for a moment, then he sighed and said softly. "You were afraid I’d lie to you, that I’d run off with Peggy, weren’t you? It’s okay, Natasha. This was your mission, which concerns the safety of the universe or us. Of course, you should keep a hand and make sure that nothing goes wrong."

Natasha’s smile was bitter and cold. "But it means I don’t trust you like I used to."

Steve’s voice held a hint of urgency, and more certainty. "I can accept that. I’ll work to earn your trust back."

"It’s not just about trusting you. I saw..." She pressed her lips together, shook her head stubbornly, and tears finally spilled from her eyes. "I can’t trust myself anymore, either."

She walked over to her suitcase, pulled out the static mask, and put it on with slightly trembling fingers. She pressed the button twice, then turned to face him.

"Recognize me now, Cap?"

The room was dim, and the mask showed an ordinary middle-aged face, but Steve slowly widened his eyes—it was the lady who’d fallen in Peggy’s garden the evening before.

Natasha took off the mask, tears streaming down her face, and explained as calmly as she could. "I fell from the oak tree because I was hiding there, watching you two dance. Do you understand now?"

In the dim room, only a thin line of pale moonlight came through the curtain gap. He sank back into the couch, his strong arms wrapping tightly around her thin waist, pulling her toward him.

"Steve, I should go." she said softly.

He buried his face in the crook of her shoulder, his usually steady voice trembling. "Don’t go, Nat, please. After that one minute, I can’t say goodbye to you a second time."

Natasha propped herself up on her knees, looking down at him, her green eyes burning bright in the darkness. "Steve Rogers, don’t you understand yet?"

"I only figured it out a little earlier than you. When my feet touched this earth again, the first thing I heard from Fury was that I should go see you one last time. When my nails scraped marks into your coffin. When I went to 1948, hiding in that oak tree, watching you dance with her, kiss her like you could never let go. Before I broke that branch, I couldn’t watch anymore. I was afraid what came next would make me even more jealous, turn me into something I would fear."

She put her arms around his neck and kissed him slowly, fiercely, her nails digging into the skin of his nape until both tasted pain, their breath coming in ragged gasps, as if trying to exhaust the last of their strength in this suffocating embrace.

"Let me go, Steve," her voice was hoarse. "Let the great friendship between Black Widow and Captain America stay in those three poetic paragraphs in the memorial book—selfless, noble, loyal. Don’t add Natasha’s messy feelings, her selfishness, her ugliness, her jealousy in the revised notes."

She tried to break free from his tight hold, but he wouldn’t let go, his grip on her waist still firm. He didn’t know why he was doing this; it clearly went against his morals, but he knew he didn’t want to say goodbye to Natasha. There was no room for "we’ll talk tomorrow" between them. Letting go now might mean forever distant friends—

So he kissed her wildly, from her cheek to her lips, then lower, to her chest. He wanted to hold her with his kisses, melt the determination in her eyes with the heat of his breath. He could feel her tears falling on his face, bitter and cold. She didn’t kiss back, but she didn’t push him away either. But when he finally stopped in panic and looked up to see her reaction, Natasha slapped him.

It was the second slap he’d gotten in six hours.

He let go at last. She said nothing, straightened her clothes, grabbed her suitcase, and left. The door opened and slammed shut, even her shadow under the hallway light cut off by the sound. The room was empty. Steve slumped back on the couch, feeling her tears still on his lips, mixing with his own, seeping into his tongue, spreading through his chest.

He laughed bitterly into the empty air. You see, Steve? You love Natasha, and Natasha loves you. You could have gritted your teeth and returned to 2023. If you could have survived another year of pain, she would have crawled back from the ashes of Vormir. Didn't you say "I can do this all day"? But you only searched under that cliff for three days.

When Natasha said she lied to you, you were hiding something from her too. The real reason you couldn’t go back to 2023 after returning the Stones wasn’t the pain. It was fear, deep in your heart.

You were scared, Steve. Scared that after losing Natasha and Tony, you would finally lose all hope of bringing Natasha back. Scared you would become one of those madmen in superhero stories who lose their loved ones, falling from hero to unrecognizable villain. Scared of the six Infinity Stones in your suitcase—they were like a monkey’s paw. In their tempting glow, you would reach in, try every way to bring her back a thousand times, and finally do something that hurt the world, something against your moral principles—those things that made you Captain America, the flag of justice. The few things you had left.

The dark fable of Hydra Captain had been there all along, lurking in the shadows.

So you ran to a safe time, into the arms of an old love, into the smell of morning papers, coffee, and trimmed lawns. You cut yourself off from all chance of touching great power, let the calm of daily life wrap around you like amber. You thought that way you could keep your heart pure, but you never realized that running away was already a betrayal of courage.

You still can’t bring yourself to tell Natasha any of this. Because you’re even scared that the remaining love in her eyes might turn to disdain.

He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out the heart-shaped pendant with the Russian engraving. Tomorrow, they would have to deal with Wanda. And then Natasha's birthday was coming soon. This time, at least he could give this to her. He just needed to take out the little thing inside first.

Chapter Text

Natasha thought she’d sleep soundly that night—sleep until the next morning’s sun hit her heels before getting up to work. But she actually woke up at 5 in the morning, feeling sore all over. It was probably the aftereffect of running on fumes for two days with only six hours of sleep total.

She buried her face deeper into the pillow, trying to sink her mind into the darkness too, but all kinds of thoughts flooded in at once: Steve, Wanda, Yelena, Sam, Bucky, Alexei… and finally, Steve again.

Thank goodness everyone had a long list of problems, including herself.

For her own part, now that the Avengers were gone, the biggest question was what to do with the rest of her life. Fury would definitely welcome her back, of course. Or she could try to stay away from the fighting and get a PhD. As long as the new heroes didn’t knock on her door when they couldn’t handle something, she was confident she could finish her doctoral thesis.

She rolled over, and her thoughts drifted to Wanda. It was clear Wanda wanted to get into the 2014 parallel universe—and she needed Natasha to give her the coordinates. But Natasha herself had been sent back by the Strange from that universe; no one had ever told her what “coordinates” even meant.

She’d need to talk to Steve about it—if they could even speak normally to each other after the heart-wrenching night they’d had.

The bed creaked. Yelena, sleeping on the other side, mumbled sleepily, “Nat? You awake?”

“I am. It’s only 5. Go back to sleep,” Natasha said.

Yelena rubbed her eyes. “Worried about something? That old friend of yours?”

“Which one? I’ve got a whole bunch of old friends to worry about,” Natasha replied.

Yelena let out a soft huff. “The one you care about most.”

Natasha laughed and patted her sister’s arm.

“It’s a special situation… it won’t be like this anymore. Actually, I was thinking about Wanda. She’s an old friend too.”

Yelena leaned over to turn on the bedside lamp, warm yellow light filled the space by the bed. “You mean Wanda Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch? I read about Westview in Valentina’s files. Her power’s way beyond ours…”

“I know that. When she first joined the Avengers, Steve and I were the ones who trained her,” Natasha said.

Yelena rolled her eyes on the pillow. “You used to be way too tied to Captain America, always Steve this, Steve that.”

Natasha propped one hand under her ear, turning to face her sister, and joked, “Maybe that’s because we didn’t have anything else to do besides run around for the Avengers. Anyway, someone told me that actively traveling to a parallel universe is extremely dangerous. It’s not just the traveler who’s at risk, it could also trigger a chain reaction, messing up the universe or even making it collapse. I have to stop Wanda.”

Yelena shook her head. “Magic’s not exactly a Black Widow’s specialty. You should ask an expert, like… Doctor Strange?”

But Natasha quickly shot down the idea. “Strange is more like… an enforcer of time and space order. I don’t want him and Wanda facing off right away. Let Steve and me try first—and Clint. Maybe our history with her can calm her down.”

“Just keep yourself safe, okay?” Yelena inched closer to her, dropping the subject. “I don’t want to lose you again.”

Natasha smiled and nodded. “Of course. Wanda wouldn’t do anything to me.” Though she didn’t sound entirely sure when she said it. People always had sides no one else could fully understand—especially after going through huge trauma.

Like how she’d never imagined Clint would become Ronin, Thor would grow a beer belly, or Steve would go back to his old life to get married.

*
Natasha was hesitating over what to type in her text when messages from Steve and Wanda popped up one after another. She couldn’t say which one made her more restless, but she opened them one by one.

Steve said he had left the hotel room and was staying at Sam’s place for now. He told Natasha not to worry. he could handle the paperwork to get settled in the present on his own. He asked her to call him once she’d rested enough to talk about how to deal with Wanda.

As for Wanda, she had sent a location with a message: Come to where I’m staying. We can talk quietly.

“Talk quietly” clearly meant Natasha should come alone. She checked the location—it was in Blairstown, a small town in New Jersey, an hour and a half’s drive from Clint’s house in New York. And the spot Wanda sent was by a lake on the edge of town. from the satellite map, it looked pretty isolated.

She still decided to go. Clint wanted to come with her, but Natasha stopped him. “Let’s hear what Wanda has planned first,” she said. “Don’t make her nervous. At least for now, she won’t hurt me.”

Natasha drove alone to the meeting. Autumn was in full swing on both sides of the highway. Wanda was waiting by the driveway, beyond her was a sparse apple orchard, with a few wrinkled apples still hanging on the branches, obviously not well-tended.

Wanda carried a wicker basket, snipping the last remaining fruit from the branches as she walked. “Just keeping myself busy. No kids to take care of now,” she said.

Natasha walked silently beside her, fingers laced in front of her. Kids—this was something she knew she could never have when she was eighteen. She didn’t know how to comfort Wanda. You can’t tell someone something doesn’t matter when you’ve never had the chance to have it yourself.

“I’m sorry, Wanda,” she said softly.

Wanda smiled at her—a smile that brought back memories of their days at the Avengers Compound. On mornings when everyone happened to be there for breakfast, Steve would carry a carton of milk, lecturing them about the benefits of drinking milk every day, before handing out the day’s training plans. Back then, Wanda would smile at Natasha like this, as if to say, “I knew it.”

Wanda handed her an apple, its skin scarred. “I don’t get why you’re apologizing. It’s like you always think you’re responsible for the Avengers, especially us. But no, Natasha. This isn’t your fault. We’re just two people who’ve lost our homes in this world. I used to think the Avengers would be my forever home—you and Cap held it together, and I just needed to live under your protection, learning to use my powers better. But when I came back from the Blip, you were dead, Vision was torn apart into parts… and Captain? He easily abandoned this so-called family like it was nothing.”

Seeing Natasha’s tight lips, pain flickered in Wanda’s smile. “I know you want to defend him. You always do. You’re used to understanding everyone, even though I saw all those unspoken things between you two a long time ago. But Captain in this universe isn’t like the one from the universe you came back from. You know, there, everyone’s okay. And everyone knows Captain America and Black Widow are a couple, deeply in love. Just like me and Vision there. I have Vision, Billy, Tommy. They—they’re my family, completely mine.”

Wanda took a step closer, her voice soft with sincere temptation. “Come with me, Nat. You saved half the universe. You deserve that. It should be yours.”

Natasha’s throat felt tight. For a moment, she didn’t know what to say first. Wanda's eyes seemed to be caught in some kind of self-woven frenzy. She took a deep breath, deciding to test the waters first.

“How do you know Wanda has kids in the 2014 parallel universe? And about the relationship between the other Steve and Natasha? I only stayed in that universe for over a month, picking up bits and pieces from news and social media. And I haven’t told anyone about it since I came back.”

Wanda held up a finger, staring at it for a moment, then grabbed Natasha’s wrist. A sad smile played on her face. “Maybe you read about Westview, but in the year you were gone, you still don’t know what I lost… or what I gained.”

Before Natasha could respond, the clear autumn sky was gradually dyed scarlet, like a red curtain slowly falling on a stage. Wanda’s white T-shirt and jeans suddenly transformed into a scarlet witch’s robe and hood—beautiful, and a little dramatically silly. On a normal day, Natasha might have teased her about it, but right now, a cold chill mixed with sadness crept up her arms, raising goosebumps.

“Come, Natasha,” Wanda sighed softly. “Let me show you the love you and Captain could have had. After you see it, tell me your decision.”

Before Natasha could react, Wanda pressed her palm to Natasha’s temple. Then she closed her eyes, and scarlet light poured out of her, wrapping around both of them.

*
There was thick, impenetrable darkness. Natasha breathed heavily in the blackness, wondering where Wanda had taken her.

But she wasn’t alone in the dark, another person’s breathing was right beside her, and it sounded familiar.

A hand gently rested on her stomach. Natasha instinctively tried to pull away. She wasn’t used to such unguarded closeness.

“What’s wrong, Nat? Still got an upset stomach?”

It was Steve’s voice.

At his words, like a reflex, Natasha suddenly felt acid rise in her stomach. Nausea climbed from her belly up to her throat. She tried to sit up, but dizziness hit her, like she’d just gotten off a pirate ship at an amusement park.

“Cap… Ste… Steve,” she stammered.

The man beside her turned on the lamp. In the warm glow, that familiar, handsome face looked at her, his eyes full of concern. “Your morning sickness seems worse again,” he said, shaking his head apologetically. “Is there anything you want to eat? Should I cook, or go out to buy something? There’s still that grape juice you drank yesterday in the fridge.”

The phrase “morning sickness” hit Natasha like a heavy fist, making her dizzy. Even though she knew this body wasn’t hers—not the main universe’s Natasha—she still felt a surge of shock, followed by unexpected joy.

She suddenly understood Wanda’s power and her plan. Wanda could possess her other self in the parallel universe, and her power could even bring Natasha along with her. No wonder she knew so much about the 616-03 universe, even though she was still looking for a way to travel between parallel worlds.

During that month Natasha had spent there, she’d only hidden in motels and internet cafes, piecing together information from street photos of Steve and Natasha holding hands and walking around New York. But Wanda? She could see this parallel world clearly at any time, through the eyes of her “other self.”

Wanda’s goal… she just needed Natasha to desire this parallel universe’s life too, just like she did.

Natasha didn’t know how long Wanda’s power would last. She let out a soft sigh. “No, I’m better now. Let’s sleep.”

This Steve reached out to touch her face, tilting his head. “You sure? You were breathing hard just now.”

“It’s fine,” she said, lying back on the pillow. “I just had a bad dream. I dreamed you—”

“Dreamed of me for what?” He looked at her with a gentle smile. “Like last time, dreamed I was being chased and beaten by Tony?”

Natasha shook her head. She wasn’t sure if she should say it, but she couldn’t help but test this Steve, from the parallel universe that had split off in 2014. “I dreamed you decided to go back to 1948 to find Peggy.”

Steve laughed, amused. “So that’s the bad dream, huh.”

He turned off the lamp, tucking the covers around her. In the dark, his lips gently brushed her hair. “Guess pregnancy hormones make even the Black Widow overthink. Don’t worry, I’ll never leave you, if you let me stay.”

Natasha listened to Steve’s steady breathing in the dark, letting out a long breath as she waited for Wanda to pull her back. She started counting sheep in the dark. By the time she got to over 2,000, her eyes felt heavy, but her consciousness suddenly dropped. When she opened her eyes again, she was back in the autumn light of the apple orchard.

“I could’ve let you stay with Captain a little longer,” Wanda said. “But you two were on vacation in the Eastern Hemisphere. It’s still the middle of the night there. So, Nat… did you like what you saw?”

Natasha frowned, folding her arms across her chest. “I’m curious. Why is the Natasha in that universe pregnant? The me who split off in 2014 should have no uterus either.”

Wanda giggled, reaching out to pat her shoulder. “If you can come back to life in this universe, why can’t you get pregnant in that one? Superhero stuff never makes much sense anyway.” She leaned in, her voice playful. “Maybe you two were just too caught up in the moment to remember condom. Oh, and I forgot to tell you—your wedding’s set for December 6th.”

Chapter Text

If they take over and replace Wanda and Natasha from another universe, where should the original two go?

Natasha looked at Wanda, and a cold answer faintly took shape in her mind—Natasha had jumped off a cliff to save the world, so she deserved happiness; Wanda had crushed her lover’s heart with her own hands to save the world, so she deserved happiness too.

If strangers stood in the way of that happiness, Wanda might hesitate for a moment. But she always called the parallel universe’s Wanda “me” and that world’s Natasha “you.” That alone showed she’d long seen the other Wanda as an extension of her own will.

Natasha lowered her head in thought. When she looked up again, she put away most of the shock and discomfort in her tone and revealed a little bit of just the right amount of excitement. “Even if I take that Natasha’s place, I’m not pregnant, and I don’t have memories of living with him in that world. Wouldn’t it be found out easily?”

Wanda wasn’t surprised to see her waver. She stared at her fingers, circling her wrist—a gesture she usually used to show her power.

“Have you forgotten my abilities, Nat?” she said.

“I could easily create a scene. For example, we’re sitting under a Starbucks umbrella while shopping, then, boom, a huge octopus monster bursts into the mall. Of course, the pregnant Black Widow would rush out to save people without hesitation. One of the octopus’s tentacles grabs you and throws you from the third floor. You’re unharmed, but you lose the baby. I can make it all perfect, no need for you to actually fall from the third floor. You’ll grieve the loss for a month, and after that, with your skills as an agent, you’ll have figured out all the past details anyway.”

“That sounds perfect,” Natasha nodded thoughtfully. “Too perfect. The only thing I don’t understand now is why you have to take me with you. I’m afraid you’re just using me. Once you don’t need me anymore, I’ll become a corpse that can’t leak secrets.”

Wanda hesitated. Natasha looked at her, trying her best to seem eager, not exhausted from the emotional turmoil of the past two nights.

“You’re the soul coordinate connecting the main universe and the 2014 universe,” Wanda finally gave in and told her. “I don’t know why, maybe it’s related to the Soul Stone. But I can feel it clearly when I touch your skin.” Her voice filled with longing. “You can trust me. Once we get there, I have no reason to hurt you. You’ll still be my accomplice, and my best friend. We can look out for each other.”

Natasha nodded, almost understanding everything. But she still had one last thing to confirm.

“Thank you, Wanda,” she said in a soft voice. “You could have threatened me in so many ways, but you chose to show me an illusion of happiness instead.”

Wanda looked at Natasha seriously, then suddenly smiled.

“I don’t want to draw your powers unless I have to—you might die. You’ve always been like my… both a teacher and a sister.”

They had reached the final point of their conversation. Autumn wind swirled a few yellow leaves at their feet, but neither moved.

Natasha raced through the information in her mind. She wasn’t sure if Wanda could really drain powers, but it seemed that without Natasha’s consent, Wanda couldn’t use the soul coordinate to travel, at least not directly.

This was her biggest leverage right now: buy time and find a solution.

Wanda stared at her, lifting a finger slightly. A faint scarlet glow lit up at its tip.

Then came the sound of steady, firm footsteps, accompanied by the rustle of crushed leaves, racing toward them. Natasha and Wanda turned at the same time. Steve Rogers, holding his vibranium shield, had already rushed over. He positioned the shield in front of Natasha, the other side facing Wanda, in an unmistakeable defensive stance.

Back when they fought side by side, Steve’s shield would always appear precisely over her head when she needed it most, as if the corner of his eye was always on her. It was an unspoken tacit understanding between them—one that had made her feel safe countless times amid the chaos of battle.

This time, though, she let out a silent sigh.

“Steve?” Wanda lowered her hand, her gaze flicking between the two, sharp with suspicion. “Which Steve are you? I thought I attended a certain Steve’s funeral just yesterday.”

The scarlet in the sky faded like receding tide, leaving behind a clear, wide autumn sky, as if it had always been that way. Steve nodded at Wanda, his voice calm and clear. “It’s me. Last night, Natasha brought me back from 1948.”

Wanda looked at Natasha, a pained shadow passing over her eyes.

“I was just admiring your willpower, Natasha. Even in the pain of losing your love forever, you could resist the temptation of another life. Turns out I’m the only one being played for a fool.”

Natasha pressed her lips tight, shaking her head firmly.

“I’m not playing you for a fool, Wanda. Steve and I aren’t together, and we never will be. We’re both here only because we care about you.”

“I don’t see what’s stopping you now,” Wanda scoffed. “Spare me the ‘we’re better as friends’ nonsense.”

Natasha shook her head. She decided to explain a little more. Her voice tired, she said, “The timeline Steve created by going back is unstable. It can’t close, but it’s not strong enough to form a parallel universe. So, to keep the main universe stable, he chose to come back with me. He had to leave behind… the love of his life again. So, he still loves Peggy, and I want to respect their love.”

Steve looked at her, wanting to speak, but Wanda just laughed bitterly, clapping her hands lightly.

“You must think his sacrifice is so noble, Nat. He goes back, everyone congratulates him, now he comes back, and he’s still a hero. But what about me? I sacrificed no less than anyone else for this world. Now I’m just trying to do the same thing he did, but everyone thinks I’m a fallen villain, a crazy woman who’s lost her mind over her kids.”

Tears finally welled up in Wanda’s eyes, but she didn’t let them fall, she just let her eyeliner smudge.

Steve opened his mouth to say something, but in the end, he said nothing. He moved closer to Natasha, the edge of his shield lifting slightly, ready to stop Wanda if she suddenly tried to grab Natasha.

“I still can’t bring myself to hurt you, especially you, Natasha. But I won’t give up on being with my kids.” With that, Wanda turned to leave. Natasha reached out instinctively to stop her, but she violently shook her off. A scarlet energy wall suddenly appeared behind her, separating the three of them. When the light faded, the lonely house at the edge of the orchard, along with Wanda's figure, were gone, as if they’d never been there. Natasha and Steve searched around, but found nothing.

“Why are you here?” Natasha glared at Steve. She knew she was taking her frustration out on him. Before Steve arrived, she’d already gotten the information she needed. Besides delaying Wanda, she hadn’t figured out any way to stop her emotionally. Whether Steve came or not didn’t matter.

“You didn’t answer your phone. Clint said you had come to find Wanda,” Steve said, his eyes earnest and innocent as he glanced at the empty orchard. “He sent me the location. I took Sam’s car. He’s probably still stuck in traffic. I was worried Wanda might hurt you… or herself.”

“Great. Now we don’t even know where Wanda is or what she’ll do,” Natasha said with a bitter smile. “But thanks anyway, Steve.”

She walked toward her car without stopping. “Meet at Clint’s later. The three of us need to talk.”

“Nat, wait.” Steve hurried after her, grabbing her arm. “There’s something I need to explain clearly.”

Natasha’s red hair brushed his arm as she turned around, raising an eyebrow in question.

“What you said earlier, about me leaving the love of my life again for the universe’s stability…”

“What about it?” she asked.

Steve looked at her, his Adam’s apple bobbing. His tone was firm. “That’s not it. Even if there was no reason at all, I would have come back with you—just because you were there.”

“Then I would be the terrible third party who ruined someone’s wedding. Of course, that’s probably just another day’s training for a Black Widow,” Natasha took a deep breath. “But I don’t think you would. Your conscience couldn’t handle being a fiancé who breaks his promise. And if I hadn’t gone to 1948 to get you, you would’ve lived a happy life with Peggy. The tokens of your love would have been with you until you were in that coffin, until the earth turned your bones and blood into nutrients for the grass.”

Steve fell silent. Unlike Natasha, he knew nothing about the version of himself who had lived to an old age. Could decades of being together really make him love another woman? Even now, he couldn’t imagine himself not loving the red-haired woman in front of him.

“Get in the car,” Natasha said, trying to keep her voice steady, though there was a slight tremor at the end.

*
As the conclusion of their talk that day, they finally decided to tell Strange about Wanda, asking him to keep an eye out for any sign of her. He was the only superhero they knew who was suited to handle parallel universe matters.

But two months of searching for Wanda yielded nothing. She seemed to have vanished from the universe. Sometimes Natasha couldn’t help but wonder if Wanda had found another way to get to the 616-03 universe, living a happy life with her husband and kids. And as payment, the other Wanda was either locked up forever… or dead.

Life went on. She rented a two-bedroom apartment in Sunset Park, living with Yelena. She didn’t take a job at S.W.O.R.D. or Stark Industries, but she did work for both—testing and upgrading their firewalls. The pay was decent. Compared to her days as an Avenger, when she never had to worry about rent or groceries but was always fighting, she couldn’t say which life made her feel more grounded.

As for Steve, he had become Captain America again (John Walker, who was supposed to take over, was reportedly devastated). He mostly helped S.W.O.R.D. with missions now. Sam continues to follow him with peace of mind, but Bucky seemed to have other plans—maybe because he hadn’t finished his mandatory therapy yet.

At first, Steve had tentatively asked if she wanted to join the team, but Natasha refused immediately. She didn’t think she could look at his face every day without feeling sad or giving in to weakness. When she caught the hurt look in his eyes, she would have to turn away quickly.

Maybe she shouldn’t even be friends with Steve anymore. As long as they were friends, they’d keep running into each other for work. Every time they met, Steve’s gaze would follow her instinctively. Those sincere, sad blue eyes made her chest ache.

At a small gathering with Clint’s family once, Laura had casually asked about her love life while holding a coffee cup. Natasha could only joke that she’d been too busy lately to be charming, and hadn’t even gotten a single date invitation.

But what she didn’t expect was that a few days later, someone did ask her out. And it was the last person she’d ever guess—Bucky Barnes.

Chapter Text

“Hi.”

Bucky was waiting for her outside the door. One vibranium hand was stuffed in his pocket, the other holding a bouquet of daisies and hyacinths. He leaned casually against the wall.

Natasha was stunned for a moment, then smiled back, "You're fifteen minutes early."

“Is this gentlemanly habit outdated now?” The man full-named James Buchanan Barnes gave a faint, charming smile. “C’mon. The restaurant I booked is super popular on Instagram. they only hold tables for thirty minutes.”

They walked into a Japanese restaurant decorated with walls of old books and vintage tables and chairs. Warm lights styled like those from the early 1900s were tucked between the yellowed books. Bucky sat across from her, flipping through the menu with a relaxed look. But Natasha found the whole thing a little odd. The last time they were alone face-to-face was twenty years ago. She wasn’t sure if she could call him her first love. Their past was so hasty. They’d only had time for a quick kiss in a stairwell before they were torn apart. The next time they met, it was a fight with bullets and widow’s bites. By the time Bucky finally broke free from the brainwashing, Thanos came, and she never got a chance to catch up with him.

“How’ve you been, Natalia?” He put down the menu, leaned back in his chair, and his eyes locked onto hers. “Your new life after coming back.”

This was the first time he had called her Natalia since they had reunited, setting a nostalgic tone for the dinner. Natasha smiled. “It’s a little weird. Sleeping in a bed every night. Also, I thought you either forgot… or never planned to bring up the old days again.”

Bucky shrugged. “If I can still remember Steve, I can definitely remember you.”

“Sounds like a compliment,” Natasha turned her head to watch pedestrians hurrying to avoid the rain outside the glass wall. “We never even got to go on a real date. I didn’t think you would remember that.”

The man across from her let out a short laugh. “In these seventy years, there are so few things I can hold onto. The memories of you are some of the only happy ones. So… the second I got out of that cryo pod in Wakanda, I remembered everything. But back then, I thought you were Steve’s girl. I figured it was better not to say anything. And later… there was no time left to talk about it.”

He rubbed his temple with his gloveless hand. “Remember how we said we’d sneak out for a date? We never got the chance. So… tonight we finally fullfil that promise.”

“Thanks for remembering,” Natasha whispered, a note of awe in her voice. “That’s one of the few moments from the Red Room I was willing to hold onto.” She looked up at Bucky. “So, tell me about now. What are your plans next? Isn’t your mandatory therapy almost over?”

“Yep—next month,” Bucky leaned back in his chair, arms resting on the armrests, and smiled at her. “I’ve got an idea, but I’m not sure about it. If I tell you, you’ll probably laugh.” He paused. “But I kinda wanna make you laugh, Natalia. You haven’t smiled enough these years.”

“What idea?” Natasha skillfully picked up a piece of crab meat with her chopsticks. The chopsticks stopped in mid-air, her eyebrows slightly raised.

He suddenly leaned forward, lowered his voice, and said seriously: “I’m gonna run for Congress—representative of the 7th District. You know, Brooklyn and Queens.”

It was definitely a shocking thought. People rarely linked superheroes who spent their days fighting and smashing things to loud-talking politicians. The only person Natasha had ever imagined running for office was Tony. These days, she could think about Tony calmly, sometimes she even smiled when she remembered the nicknames he’d given everyone.

“Yeah, I can’t picture you as a congressman,” Natasha’s lips curved into a smile. “So you’re gonna leave Steve and Sam behind… and hang out with campaign managers and volunteers instead?”

“What about you?” Bucky tossed the question back, a hint of teasing in his tone. “Gonna leave Steve and Sam behind and live with an ergonomic chair from now on?”

Natasha shrugged. “Saving up for my pension and health insurance. Don’t wanna be unable to afford a heart stent when I'm ninety.”

Bucky bowed his head and took a sip of green tea, trying not to laugh. “Sorry—I didn’t know you were planning to live past ninety. But Natasha… you can’t keep avoiding Steve forever.”

He’d switched from “Natalia” back to “Natasha”—a sign the nostalgia was over. The redhead was no longer the girl he had kissed in a stairwell, but a veteran Avenger who’d stood with his best friend Steve through thick and thin. If her history and bond with Steve wasn’t deeper than his, it was certainly just as deep.

She didn’t know how to answer, so she stayed quiet, pushing the wasabi around her plate with her chopsticks and letting him keep talking.

“I don’t really know what happened between you two. I was in a trance for a few seconds, then five years passed. I came back… and you were gone. Clint and Bruce said we should put up a tombstone for you. I helped Steve pack up the stuff you left at his apartment—a comb, half a box of hair ties, a sports water bottle… little things like that.”

Natasha’s ears warmed up. She looked away. “Oh, I stayed at his place twice when I was working down south.”

Bucky smiled and shook his head. “He gave that stuff to Clint, then said he was gonna go to Vormir to find you, or at least find your body. He told Clint to wait for him to come back first.” He paused for a few seconds. “You probably know the rest. The one who came back was old Steve… wearing a wedding ring. At first, I wasn’t even sure who he had married.”

“They wanted to put your tombstone at the Avengers Compound ruins, but that land got sold soon after. Then Clint mentioned you lived in Ohio as a kid—with that fake family you had. So we flew to Ohio and put a tombstone up there for you. Not long after we got back to New York, Steve—the old one—got hospitalized with heart failure. That was until the day you came back.”

Natasha let out a deep breath, a mix of complicated warmth in her eyes. “It’s a long story. Thanks for telling me all this.”

“I’m not here to be a messenger,” Bucky held up his hands, speaking honestly. “But if you two keep dragging this out—either you forgive him, or Steve lets you go—us guys are gonna be stuck running back and forth between you forever. I guess that’s the downside of best friends becoming lovers… when it falls apart, everyone gets hurt.”

Natasha raised an eyebrow. “Okay, I get it. But we’re not lovers, and we never broke up. We even sat down and talked just last week.”

Bucky looked amused. “You think I can’t tell how awkward you two sound when you talk? Steve’s that old guy who has no clue how to deal with women—but I’m not. Back in the forties, I never had trouble getting dates.”

Natasha looked at the spark in his eyes, her gaze softening. “I’m really glad you got part of your life back. When you start your campaign, I’ll definitely go support you in person.”

*
They walked back to Natasha’s apartment building two blocks away, sharing an umbrella. Natasha had her arm linked through Bucky’s. Rain tapped softly on the umbrella, making a rustling sound. It was a nice date night, though Natasha didn’t feel much romantic attraction left between her and Bucky.

Too much time and too many stories had passed between them. They had both become people different from their past selves, especially Natasha. Her thoughts at eighteen were nothing like she was at forty.

The serum and genetic modifications made them look like a couple in their early thirties, looking for a stable relationship. But they both knew the truth: all those experiences had left their hearts feeling like centenarians’, filled with countless wrinkles and sorrows.

They hugged goodbye outside the apartment building. Natasha thought that was the end of the night. But again, she was surprised. Bucky turned his head and pressed a gentle kiss to her cheek.

“You looked beautiful tonight, Natalia,” he whispered. “The friend part of me really hopes you and Steve work things out. But the Winter Soldier part… you were almost the only good thing in those seventy years.”

He said nothing more, just opened his umbrella and walked into the rain.

Natasha’s heart was a mix of emotions. She was about to push open the building’s door when it became clear the universe wasn’t done with her night yet.

A tall figure stepped slowly out of the shadow of the trees. He was soaked through, rain dripped from his wet blonde hair, down his sharp cheekbones, and into his shirt, which clung tight to his skin. It made Captain America—Steve Rogers—look like a golden retriever caught in the rain.

“What are you doing? You’ll get sick!” Natasha blurted out, then realized how silly that sounded. How could a mere rain give Captain America a cold?

Steve didn’t answer, and he didn’t lift a hand to wipe the water off his face. He first glanced in the direction Bucky had left, his Adam’s apple bobbing, before turning back to her. “Were you… on a date with Bucky?”

Natasha sighed in resignation. She stepped forward, half-dragging, half-pulling him into the building’s entryway.

“What are you even doing here?” she asked, not hiding her annoyance as she tugged him toward the stairs. Lucky Yelena was out of town these days, otherwise, she’d have to waste time explaining everything.

When they got to her apartment, she walked straight to the bathroom, grabbed two big towels, and tossed them over his head. Steve looked distracted. He grabbed the towels with his big hands and wiped his face mechanically, over and over, more than a dozen times. Natasha finally had enough. She snatched the towels from him and dried his hair with firm but gentle movements.

Steve’s eyes followed her, filled with gratitude and a hint of unexplainable longing. He looked even more like a lost dog in the rain. Natasha shook her head, trying to shake off the strange thought.

“So what was that? standing in the rain outside my building?” Natasha dropped the towels, pressed a hand to her forehead, and pulled up a chair to sit in front of Steve.

“It was your birthday last week. I was on a mission in Cuba and couldn’t make it back. So I wanted to drop off your gift,” Steve said.

He pulled a dark green velvet box out of his pants pocket. It was wrapped in a plastic bag—obviously to keep the rain out.

Natasha didn’t take the small box. She looked up, raising an eyebrow. “So you knew it was gonna rain tonight. Why didn’t you bring an umbrella?”

Steve hunched his shoulders and let out a short laugh. “I guess… it was some kind of self-punishment. Especially when I saw Bucky kiss you.”

The air in the room seemed to freeze. Steve’s words were getting more and more direct these days, Natasha thought.

She stared steadily at him. “You know Bucky and I had… history, right?”

“Not until after you died. Bucky told me,” Steve paused, his voice sad. “Talking to him about the parts of you I never knew… it made me feel a little better. But now you’re back. And you and him—you seem like more than just history.”

A strange, bitter satisfaction stirred in Natasha’s chest. But to admit that feeling, she would have to admit she still cared deeply about Steve and Peggy’s story. Before she could stop herself, the words were out.

"You and Paige aren't the only ones with a date you didn't keep, a dance you didn't dance."

Steve lifted his hand. His fingertips almost touched her cheek, but he froze halfway. After a few seconds, he pulled his hand back, looking defeated. “You and Bucky… you’re good together,” he said, his voice bitter. “My two best friends.”

Natasha didn’t speak. She just looked back at him quietly. After a long moment, she shook her head slowly. “I don’t want a romantic relationship right now. I’m not ready to sort out my feelings yet.”

The weight on Steve’s shoulders seemed to lift a little. He whispered, “Your feelings… are they about us?”

Natasha saw no point in lying. She nodded seriously. “Yes.”

Steve’s tone grew more careful—even desperate, a side of him she rarely saw. “I’m sorry, Nat. For what I did… and for what I never got to do. Can’t we… start over?”

“No,” she shook her head slowly.

It was a short, final answer.

Steve’s face crumpled, like he had been punched hard in the nose—filled with pain and despair. He grabbed her hand suddenly, his voice urgent, losing its usual calm. “Natasha, tell me how to make you forgive me. Anything. I can’t stand the thought of you with another man—Bucky, Bruce, anyone. It hurts so bad… I feel like I could reach into my chest, tear out my heart, and hold it out to you, just to beg you to look at it.”

Natasha’s eyes widened. She stared at him. This kind of raw, intense confession was so unlike the restrained, self-controlled Steve Rogers she knew. That heavy pain pressed down on her, leaving her silent. But Steve was waiting for an answer.

“I don’t know, Steve,” she sighed deeply, her voice tired. “Maybe I understand your pain a little. Because that’s how it felt—hiding in that tree, watching you dance with the love of your life. I didn’t even have the right to ask you to look at my heart. I thought that messy, bleeding thing would only bother you.”

“Uncertain love is too dangerous. I don't want to experience that feeling of being out of control again,” Natasha’s voice grew quieter. “I’m sorry, Captain. If we can’t go back to being friends… maybe we shouldn’t see each other anymore.”

Pain and pleading swirled fiercely in his eyes—those beautiful, deep blue eyes. Natasha turned her head, avoiding his gaze. “It’s getting late. You should go, Cap.”

He stood up and held out the dark green velvet box to her. “I’m leaving. Just take the birthday gift, okay?”

Natasha bit her lip and shook her head.

He didn’t insist. He slipped the box back into his pocket and walked toward the door. Just as his hand was about to touch the doorknob, Natasha called out to him.

Steve spun around immediately, hope shining in his eyes.

“It’s still raining,” Natasha said, trying to keep her voice steady. “I’ll get you an umbrella.”

She walked to the balcony door and pulled it open. Someone was standing there.

A slow smile spread across the face of Scarlet Witch—Wanda Maximoff.

Chapter Text

A jumble of memories. Captain America, Black Widow, and Scarlet Witch fought in the apartment building—though none of them could bring themselves to hurt the others for real.

After ten years trapped across parallel universes, Natasha was surprised to find her combat instincts, honed into muscle memory, still sharp. and her cooperation with Steve was still tacit. They used the small space to pin Wanda down briefly, but it was obvious: unless Steve could force himself to squeeze Wanda’s neck until she died, they had no choice but to give in. Because Wanda only needed her mouth, a look, a flick of her fingers to cast a spell.

So the night ended with their defeat. They were stuffed into the trunk of a car, jostled along the way, and finally dumped in a cave far from New York. A three-eyed octopus-like monster guarded the entrance, just like Wanda had described to her.

Now they were tied up with some invisible rope, thrown in a corner of the cave. Luckily, Wanda didn’t seem to see the need to separate them. They could still whisper to each other through a gap of about a foot.

As for Wanda, she sat cross-legged in the middle of the cave, surrounded by dozens of candles arranged in a circle. Her eyes were closed, her blackened fingers resting on her knees. The candlelight cast flickering shadows on her face, making it look half-bright, half-dark. Translucent wax dripped endlessly, pooling and flowing across the cave floor like white, growing living tissue.

A thick black mist hovered in mid-air, throbbing like a living thing. Its edges twisted and stretched, faintly revealing the shape of a book. Between the gold letters on the cover, the black mist tangled with scarlet threads of light, flowing together until they merged into one.

Even with his arms and legs tied, Steve tried to shift his body closer to Natasha. Their arms touched, and she felt a hint of warmth.

“The Darkhold,” he whispered in her ear.

Natasha nodded. She’d heard the name and looked into it a bit during those five years, everything she did was to find a way to end the Blip.

They exchanged a glance. Both knew this book was probably the direct trigger for what was happening now. But losing loved ones again and again, and living in isolation for so long—those were the real poisons, strong enough to corrode even the toughest will.

“I didn’t do my part,” Steve sighed.

“Only a small part,” Natasha shook her head, her voice soft with resignation. “Steve, maybe your ego is too big. Not everything is about you.”

He stared at her, not fully understanding at first. After a moment, his brows slowly relaxed, and he let out a self-deprecating laugh.

“Yeah. Tony said it too. I’ve got my own dark side. He was scared he wasn’t doing enough, so he created Ultron. Me? I was scared I’d do too much, driven by desire… let down Dr. Erskine and everyone else. So I chose to do nothing. Even cut off any chance I had to act on those feelings.”

He turned his head, resting the back of it against the cave wall. His voice was low, gentle, and firm.

“Nat, I’m sorry. I’ve been sorry so many times. In that cemetery when Fury faked his death—when you kissed my cheek, I should’ve kissed you back. Later, when you were flirting with Bruce, I should’ve told you how I felt, asked you out. After the Civil War, in Wakanda, I should’ve just said I missed you on the phone, not beat around the bush about needing you to break us out of jail…”

“I was more scared of what my desire could destroy than the desire itself. I missed every chance. Now… I deserve this.”

His voice was steady, like a river flowing past the shores of their shared time, only trembling a little at the last sentence.

Natasha said nothing. She just leaned against the wall, slowly tilting her head back wordlessly. She felt her face grow wet. She knew her tears had finally spilled over, and she knew Steve wasn’t the only one who had missed chances.

She had her own fears too. Every time he took a step forward, she had taken one back.

*
Their talk didn’t last long. Wanda opened her eyes. There was still warmth in them, like she had just spent a moment with her family.

She jumped lightly out of the circle of candles and knelt down in front of them. Her tone was light, with a smile, as if everyone was no longer in the eerie atmosphere of the cave, but back at the Avengers Compound, sitting in the sun at a lawn picnic. Like none of the bad things that came later had happened. Like everyone was still there.

“Guess where I just was.”

Natasha shook her head. Steve looked at Wanda, his expression a mix of apology and wariness.

“The 616-03 universe. Your wedding,” Wanda said, still glowing with joy. “A lawn wedding, decorated with balloons and fairy lights wrapped around birch trees. Billy and Tommy fought over being ring bearers, pulling each other’s hair, but neither won. Clint’s Nathaniel and Tony’s Morgan took the spot instead. Those two kids in little tuxedos, throwing flower petals everywhere.” She giggled, no trace of her earlier bitterness left.

“Natasha only wanted a small wedding, but over two hundred people showed up anyway. Her dress was Vera Wang. They even redesigned the waist for you, since you’re five months pregnant.”

Wanda described it softly, still caught up in the wedding mood.

“Almost all the Avengers were there. Bridesmaids were Natasha’s sister and Shuri, in light green dresses. Groomsmen were Bucky and Sam. Oh, and Tony stood up to give a toast. He teased Steve, said Morgan was already five, and here the Captain was, having known Nat for over ten years… first to start, last to finish. Your face turned so red, Cap.”

“Almost forgot—the wedding song I picked was Can’t Take My Eyes Off You. I even summoned fireflies to set the mood, like little stars falling on Natasha’s veil. You were about to dance your first dance.” She paused, smiling at Natasha. “Nat, did you ever imagine your wedding? Was it like this? It’s happening right now, in that parallel universe.”

Natasha forced a small smile. “I never let myself have time to think about it.”

Wanda took both their hands, cheerful. “I heard you two arguing in the apartment. And honestly, Cap—if it were me, I would not be able to forget the scene of you dancing with Ms. Carter.”

Natasha turned her head away, feigning more anger than she actually felt.

Wanda’s voice was almost deliberately tempting.

“Let me give you a choice. If Natasha agrees to give me the soul coordinate, I’ll send one of you over there, and bring the other universe’s version back. Like… Natasha, you go there and grow old with that Steve. The other Natasha comes to the main universe, starts over with Cap. And that Wanda? She won’t die—she’ll just stay in our universe, missing Vision and my two boys. Is that so bad? Isn’t that the same pain I’m going through now?”

She waited for Natasha’s answer. Natasha pretended to hesitate. Back in the apartment, during the chaos of the fight, she’d hit the alarm next to the light switch, hoping S.W.O.R.D. and Kamar-Taj would find them soon.

“Can I think about it a little longer?” She lowered her eyes, her voice showing just the right amount of struggle. “In this universe, besides Steve, I also have family that I can't let go of.”

Wanda’s eyes lit up, like she’d finally solved a puzzle. Her tone brightened. “Oh, so that’s what you’re worried about. Don’t be. In that universe, all your family and friends are alive and well. And here? They’ll learn to like the other Natasha. Swap places, and everyone’s happy.”

Steve still tried to stop her. “Wanda, it's everything we've experienced together that makes each other important, not that identity. The 616-03 universe split off in 2014. That Wanda and those kids went through things nothing like your time in Westview—”

“If it’s nothing like it, why do the kids look the same? Even have the same names?” Wanda cut him off sharply, raising her voice. “Fine. You two can see for yourselves. Feel the happiness you could have. Then tell me your choice.”

She turned back to the center of the candle circle, frowning. Her fingers moved in the air. The pages of the Darkhold flipped rapidly in mid-air, black and scarlet mist churning together. Clearly, casting the dreamwalk spell on two people at once wasn’t easy. She had to channel all the book’s power to make the scarlet energy flood the entire cave.

Natasha felt the invisible bonds on her hands and feet loosen, then fall away. But before she could move her wrists, she was swallowed by a burst of scarlet light—then plunged into endless falling, just like last time.

*
A soft melody drifted across the lawn. Natasha blinked hard, realizing she was under a rose-covered pergola. Balloons floated around her, fairy lights weaving a golden net in the dusk. The air smelled like champagne and cake. Steve sat beside her. Laughter and clinking glasses filled the air—friends chatting, some humming along to the band. Tony stood up, holding a wine glass, and started teasing.

“C’mon, bride and groom. Time for your first dance! Cap, hold on to Red. She’s got a little one in there.”

She looked at Steve—it was the main universe’s Steve. There was no complete bliss in his blue eyes, just surprise and thoughtfulness, like he was trying to tell where the illusion ended. Then a small, careful happiness—for the moment—spread across his face.

Next to the bride’s seat, Yelena wore a light green bridesmaid dress, chatting with Wanda. Wanda’s pale pink dress made her glow. A pair of twin boys squirmed on her lap—Billy and Tommy, no doubt. She looked up at Natasha, gave her a thumbs-up, and winked playfully. “Enjoy this, Natasha.”

It was the main universe’s Wanda.

Steve squeezed her wrist. “Let’s dance, Nat.”

He took her hand and led her from their seats. People chatting with wine glasses laughed and stepped back, making space for the bride and groom—Captain America Steve Rogers and Black Widow Natasha Romanoff. Under the eyes of a hundred guests, they walked toward their first dance.

Steve held her, his hand on her back. As they spun, he whispered in her ear.

“I thought Wanda was lying,” he said softly. “Turns out it was you. You knew about this parallel universe all along, knew we are still the ones in love here.”

Natasha raised an eyebrow, smiling through tears. “Sorry I didn’t tell the truth. It’s just one of the many lies I’ve told you.”

He stared at her, his blue eyes gentle and sad. “You know, Nat… from that minute on, I could never blame you again.”

Oh pretty baby, don't let me down, I pray,
Oh pretty baby, now that I have you, stay,
And let me love you baby, let me love you~

The melody of Can’t Take My Eyes Off You filled everyone’s hearts, including Natasha’s. Guests paired up and stepped onto the dance floor. She saw Tony and Pepper, Vision and Wanda, Alexei and Melina, Clint and Laura, T’Challa and Nakia… When they noticed her looking, they turned back, waving and blowing kisses, smiling as they spun past.

“Congratulations, you two,” T’Challa nodded, his voice as calm as always.

“When’s the gender reveal party?” Tony shouted.

“I can actually see the gender, Ms. Natasha. Shall I tell you?” Vision said politely, not realizing how odd it sounded. “Ms. Natasha, why are you crying? Did I say something wrong?”

“Oh, leave it, Vision. She’s just happy, happy tears,” Tony explained arrogantly, earning an eye-roll from his wife Pepper.

The happiness made Natasha dizzy. Even though she knew this moment wasn’t really hers—this was a stolen, gentle second. Everyone smiled at her. No one’s heart was broken. She could sink into Steve’s arms without guilt.

Steve kissed her forehead softly, brushing her red hair with one hand. “When you said we couldn’t start over… was that a lie too?”

“I—” Natasha started to speak, but Steve cut her off gently.

“Don’t tell me, Nat,” he smiled. “At least not until we finish this dance.”

The song was short, but the band seemed to understand. They played it three times in a row before stopping. As the musicians flipped through their sheets, getting ready for the next song, Thor—who was acting as emcee—jumped onto the bandstand, holding a microphone. “Anyone got a song request? No? Then we’re doing My Heart Will Go On!”

Valkyrie rolled her eyes beside Natasha. “So cheesy. Oh, not you, Natasha—Thor’s taste in music. Stuck in the iceberg-sinking era.”

Natasha tried to smile, but her eyes stung again. She couldn’t tell if she wanted to laugh or cry.

During the song change, Steve suddenly let go of her and walked into the crowd. He hugged T’Challa first, then Vision, then clapped Tony on the back and said something. Tony laughed and punched him lightly. On his way back, he seemed to remember something, turning around to hug Thor, Clint, and Bruce—even Stephen Strange, who was standing next to Bruce.

Everyone around thought it was just the groom being emotional, laughing and cheering. No one noticed the quiet nostalgia and goodbye hidden in those first three hugs.

Wanda sat back down, holding her twin boys. She watched Steve and Natasha across the dance floor, tilting her chin as if telling them to keep going.

Steve came back to Natasha, not asking the question again. He pulled her into his arms once more. When he leaned down, his breath brushed her ear. Calm, like he was talking about the weather. “In the main universe… do you still have a dagger hidden in your shoe?”

Natasha looked at him and nodded.

Steve’s muscles tensed under his tuxedo, then relaxed again. Celine Dion’s tender voice wrapped around them like a soft veil, separating them from everyone else. As they spun, he asked again, “Is it the one Tony and Wanda upgraded for you?”

“Yes—” She suddenly realized what Steve was planning, her voice dropping lower as she tried to stay calm. “You want to destroy that book… it’s too dangerous. It’ll fight back. You could die. We can wait for Fury and Strange’s backup.”

He kissed her hair, his gentleness leaving no room for argument. “Wanda might run away again. Next time she shows up, she could be completely crazy, hurt you or destroy herself. Let me try. This is the only way to fix it for good. Strange just told me how to break free from the dreamwalk.”

From the corner of her eye, Natasha saw Tony and Pepper walk over to Wanda, talking to her about something, blocking her view.

“Now,” Steve whispered, kissing her cheek one last time.

He looked at her longingly, like it was the last time they’d see each other. “Natasha Romanoff… there are things I never told you, but I never lied to you. Not once.” He took a deep breath. “And now I have to say this: I fell in love with you a long time ago. Maybe even before that day you kissed me in the cemetery. You’ve always been… my sun.”

Before Natasha could say anything, Steve turned away from Wanda and punched himself hard on the brow bone. For a second, the man in front of her looked dazed. Then his eyes cleared. He touched his brow bone, confused.

Why did his head hurt so much? And why was his beautiful wife crying while hitting her own brow bone? Was this some kind of marital hysteria?

*
It was all over, except Steve and Wanda were both in the hospital’s emergency room.

Wanda’s injuries were lighter, only one arm hurt from the shockwave. But Steve’s whole face was bleeding. There was a deep gash on his head, and every bone in his body might have been broken. Natasha sat on a bench outside the emergency room. Her eyes felt dry and sore, like she’d cried all her tears away. All she had left was emptiness.

At midnight, nurses wheeled Wanda’s bed out. She’d had painkillers but wasn’t asleep yet. The Darkhold’s allure on her was gone, and seeing Steve lying in a pool of blood had probably sobered her up. She turned her head to Natasha, whispering, “I’m sorry.”

Natasha didn’t know what to say, so she said nothing, just gently squeezing Wanda’s uninjured hand.

She sat on that bench for five more hours. When the sky outside the hallway window started to turn pale, she finally looked up. The ER light was still on, but a middle-aged female doctor walked out, carrying a tray with a crushed dark green box on it.

Natasha stood up quickly. Before she could ask, the doctor started explaining Steve’s condition.

“A normal person would be dead. But he’s Captain America. After surviving the first wave of heavy bleeding and organ failure, his cells are starting to repair themselves. He’s still in critical condition… but there’s a good chance he’ll pull through.”

Natasha let out a small breath, but her stomach still twisted with tension. What if things took a turn for the worse? Luck had never been on her side.

The doctor handed her the box from the tray—it was the dark green velvet box, now crushed out of shape.

“We found this in his pants pocket. We need to take him for a brain MRI soon—can’t have metal on him. Could you hold onto this for him?”

Natasha took the box and sat back down on the bench. She opened the crushed lid. Inside was a thin silver chain with a heart-shaped pendant. She’d seen it at old Steve’s funeral, thought it was a token of his love for Peggy.

She slipped her finger through the chain, lifting the pendant. On the back, there were a few Russian words. She whispered them in Russian, then in English.

“Ты моё солнце. You are My sun.”

There was a tiny clasp on the side of the locket. Natasha hesitated, then opened it.

At first, she didn’t know what she was looking at. Then she picked up the small thing inside, then understood.

It was a short piece of a comb’s tooth, with two or three long hairs wrapped around it. One end was slightly faded gold, the other was as red as the sunset.

Chapter Text

On nice days, you can see the ocean from the windows of the new inpatient building at South Brooklyn Health Center. It’s almost gray-blue, and sometimes a gray shape darts quickly across the narrow beach, It's usually a seagull snatching French fries from tourists.

Natasha dragged a comfortable chair between the window and the hospital bed, so she could read while keeping an eye on Steve. She planned to apply for a PhD program in trauma psychology, while writing her dissertation, she could help the next wave of superheroes save the world at the same time.

Steve on the bed wasn’t fully awake yet. Because of his brain injury, the doctor had given him small doses of sedatives for three days, in order to stop him from waking up too soon, which could raise his intracranial pressure and cause brain bleeding. He frowned in his half-asleep state, wanting to open his eyes in the dream, but he had to take it slow.

Natasha had never thought she was the caring type. Back when she’d been on the run with Cap (and Sam, most of the time), he had taken care of her more in daily life. But these past few days, she had learned it all on her own: talking to the medical staff smoothly, turning Steve over and massaging him to stop poor blood flow from causing bedsores—though she wasn’t even sure if a Super Soldier could get bedsores.

Sam and Bucky took turns coming to relieve her for a few hours each day. That way, she could go back to her apartment to shower and sleep on a soft bed instead of the hospital recliner. But most of the time, Natasha stayed by the bed. She wanted to be the first person Steve saw when he woke up. Thinking that way comforted her, and made up for some vague guilt she felt.

On the day Wanda was discharged, her injured arm was still in a sling around her neck. Natasha had called Clint in advance, and Clint and Laura drove over to pick Wanda up. With Natasha chipping in to help, the couple finally convinced Wanda to stay at Clint’s place until her arm healed.

“Once your arm’s better, we can find you a nice house nearby—quiet, but only a 15-minute drive to our get-togethers,” Laura mumbled, planning ahead. “We need to save up to widen the backyard, so everyone can have barbecues there later. New York land prices are way higher than Iowa’s.”

Natasha’s lips curved into a tricky smile. “Oh, I can sponsor you 100 grand. Don’t look at me like that. Who doesn’t know I’m the richest Avenger in the working class, besides the capitalists and lords?”

Clint shrugged. “True, you spend little and earn a lot. But as a guy and a friend, Nat, I still can’t take this money.”

“It’s not just for your family,” Natasha glanced at Wanda and shook her head. “I definitely can’t build a compound for everyone like Tony did. But us who’re left still need our friends’ care. So I want to use this money as a starting fund for a friends’ place—not an Avenger training ground, just a place where friends can gather and relax. If you two agree, I hope Laura can run this fund.”

Laura looked at Natasha, her eyes clearly said “yes.” But she still wanted to confirm. “Will this money affect your life with Cap later?”

Natasha laughed softly. She realized everyone already knew about her and Steve, and she didn’t deny it this time.

“No, it’s just a part of my savings. And I’m also planning to ask Wakanda, Stark Industries, and the federal government for sponsorship once we finish the plan and financial report.”

Laura agreed quickly. Two of her three kids barely needed her care anymore, and Natasha knew Laura had been wanting something to do. Hosting friends had always been something Laura loved.

Wanda didn’t say a word until right before they left the hospital. Then she asked to talk to Natasha alone.

Clint and Laura stepped out. Natasha and Wanda stood by the window together, watching the blonde man on the bed frown in his sleep.

“I’ve saved up a bunch of hellish jokes about Captain America in the ICU. I’ll tell him when he wakes up,” Natasha looked at Steve, her lips lifting. “Soon—they’ll stop the sedatives tomorrow.”

“Tell Steve I owe him an apology.”

Natasha crossed her arms and shook her head. “Tell him yourself when he wakes up. By the way, how was that wedding? No trouble, right?”

Wanda looked at her and smiled. “I don’t know. I haven’t used Dreamwalk since then. Let the Wanda in that universe deal with the problem. But… Nat, I still have a question.”

When Natasha raised her eyebrows to ask, Wanda sighed deeply. “How did you get through those ten years? Through his funeral? And still keep a clear mind?”

Natasha was stunned. She had never labeled herself as such a boaster. Of course, she had been angry with Steve before.

“I just… got used to it. Used to living with pain, waiting for hope with pain.” she said, gently placing her hand over Steve’s. “But this isn’t some life lesson. I’ve never walked in your shoes.”

Wanda nodded. “You and Cap will make up, right?”

“When he wakes up—if he hasn’t changed his mind.”

Wanda’s eyes crinkled. “That’s great. By the way, nice pendant.”

*
Steve was still dreaming.

He dreamed he was old, so old he was just skin and bones. His thin hand rested on his wheelchair armrest. Friends pushed him through a quiet cemetery, one after another, until they stopped at a tombstone under a tree.

In the soft autumn sun, the tombstone was surrounded by flowers and toys. The words on it were clear, he didn’t even need his reading glasses. Her name was carved there. A dead leaf fell on the stone. He reached out, struggling to brush it away.

“Natasha Romanoff.”

“Daughter, sister, Avenger.”

He narrowed his eyes. A tombstone is a place where families remember their deceased loved ones. What right did he have to be here? In what identity could he leave his name on it?

He hadn’t even found her body.

The chisel marks from the engraving were still fresh, but it was clear that she had been away from him for more than seventy years.

Time rushed backward. He watched himself stand up from the wheelchair. Dead leaves flew back to the green branches. Wrinkles faded, white hair turned gold. He went from 2024 back to 1948, then jumped back to 2023.

Natasha sat tiredly behind a command table, her feet propped on it. Her red roots had grown out to cover two-thirds of her hair.

“You here to do the laundry?” she asked him.

He leaned against a bookshelf, staring at her without blinking. She smiled weakly, there were still traces of tears in her green eyes.

“And to see a friend.”

The word “friend” was too plain for what they were. Friends who had watched each other’s backs. Friends who had been through thick and thin. Friends who had had feelings for each other.

Why had he let so many unsaid words hang between them? Why hadn’t he stepped forward, wrapped his arms around her thin shoulders, and let her cry on him?

The Avengers Compound faded away in a morning fog. Suddenly, he found himself driving. In the thick mist, the borrowed car was heading toward New Jersey. Only her face next to him was clear.

He knew he was in a dream. So he hoped this drive in the fog would never end.

“Who do you want me to be?” the red-haired girl next to him turned her head. Her green eyes dim and a bit melancholy.

He knew the right answer to this question.

“How about a friend?”

It was what he had said that year. It was a fitting statement for this scene, a self-fulfilling prophecy that kept them stuck where they were.

But this might be the last time he dreamed of Natasha. He was afraid that his consciousness might fade into eternal sleep.

So he decided to grab his throat to hold back the first word he was about to say.

The fog grew thicker. She was still waiting for his answer. He felt the dream was about to end. What should he say?

He stared at her, his lips moving. He said the words that had crossed his mind a thousand times.

“Nat, I’m... so sorry.”

It was the words he hadn’t said under the cliff on Vormir, or in front of that empty grave.

*
“Sorry for what?”

The thick white fog turned into pale pink walls. Steve blinked in confusion, not knowing where the dream had jumped to.

The face he had missed so much came close. Their noses touching, eyes locked. Finally, a soft kiss landed on the corner of his mouth. Light, like a feather brushing his skin. Then it was gone.

All memories rushed back. He remembered. Natasha wasn’t dead. He wasn’t dead either. She’d kissed him. His heart beat fast. There was still time…

“I’m not in heaven, am I?” he asked, his voice hoarse.

The red-haired woman raised one eyebrow, grinning. “Actually, you’re in South Brooklyn Health Center, which used to be Coney Island Hospital. I have to say, Rogers, your standards for heaven are pretty low. You’re still wrapped in all these bandages.”

“Waking up and seeing the person from my dream right here…I wouldn't ask for more.”

His words made her laugh, but her eyebrows furrowed. Dark circles under her eyes showed she hadn’t slept well.

“You have over 20 broken bones. Who knows how many have healed.”

“I feel great, except for these damn bandages and casts.”

“The doctor will take them off once they confirm all your fractures have healed. Until then, stay in bed and let us take care of you.” She lowered her eyes, skillfully squeezing each of his knuckles. Her expression looked awkward under his gaze. “Are your fingers numb?”

Steve looked at Natasha. For a second, the scene felt unreal.

“My hands are fine. By the way, how’s Wanda?” he asked, clearing his throat.

“She hurt one arm. She’s recovering at Clint’s place,” she answered shortly.

He opened and closed his hand a few times, pretending to test its flexibility. Then he quietly curled his fingers around Natasha’s hand. He noticed her expression stiffen. She looked at him, but didn’t pull away. A smile still lingered on her lips.

That seemed like a good sign.

“Nat,” he called.

“What?”

He held her hand in silence. His tongue felt stuck. He didn’t know how to phrase the next sentence.

“Nat.”

She laughed, helpless. “What is it?”

“About this time last year,” he lowered his eyes. “I had auditory hallucinations. I thought I heard you talking in the room, thought your ghost had come back. So I turned around and called your name… then the sound was gone.”

“—You won’t disappear again, right?” he asked carefully.

She sighed. “I didn’t know I had hurt you this much, Steve.”

“I hope you’re not mocking me,” he laughed at himself. “No matter how I explain it… the Steve Rogers who grew old with another woman is still buried in Washington Memorial Cemetery.”

Natasha said nothing. She pulled the heart pendant out from under her collar. A cold glint from the silver chain reflected in both their eyes. Their gazes met in mid-air.

“I think I’ll never forget those bad memories. But I also can’t forget everything you did for me, Steve Rogers.”

She took off her shoes, stepping barefoot on the floor. Then she climbed onto the bed and lay down next to him—luckily, the hospital bed was wide enough. Her fingers cupped his face. He hadn’t shaved in days, so it must have felt scratchy.

“We’ve never tried, have we? So let’s try. Fill our hearts with more memories… until those painful ones fade.”

He stared at her without blinking, wanting to remember Natasha like this: clear, determined, bright. Even with tiredness on her face, she looked alive—finally believing she was strong enough to love, and that she was deeply loved by him.

He tried not to crush the cast on his leg. Carefully, he turned to his side and put his bandaged arm around her shoulders. He felt her bury her head in his chest, felt his heartbeat mix with her breath.

Maybe there were still people counting on Captain America and Black Widow. Maybe there was still work to do outside. But this moment—this moment belonged only to Natasha and Steve.

They had fought their battle. They had finished their race. They had kept their faith. They had gotten through endless hardship, despair, pain, sorrow and joy. This is the moment they deserved.

“I hate that we’re in a hospital bed right now,” he suddenly said.

He lowered his head and gently nipped her ear. Then he lay back, taking a few deep breaths to calm down.

She rolled her eyes softly.

“Oh, boys.”

*
Three days later, when they were discharged, Steve claimed he was “as strong as a bull”, and he really was. But the doctor insisted the CT scan showed his right fibula was still broken. To avoid re-injury from strenuous activity, he had to use crutches with the cast for one more week.

“Three days—can’t go any shorter, Mr. Rogers. I know you have the serum. But your injuries would have killed a lion twice over. Staying in the hospital for only eight days is already excessive. For your quality of life in old age, please listen to me.”

So Steve had to use crutches and get into Natasha’s four-seater sports car.

First, they went back to Steve’s apartment. With Natasha’s help, he shaved and took a nice shower, though the cast on his leg made both of them sweat. They had to shower again.

“Honestly, I still prefer being in bed,” she said. They lay down for a short rest. Steve’s hand slipped under the blanket, stroking her smooth back on and off.

“You’re so beautiful, Nat,” he said, his voice hoarse. “I’d happily die in bed with you like this.”

She kissed his wet forehead.

“I’m honored. But we have to go support Bucky’s campaign this afternoon, and Laura’s barbecue tonight. Everyone’s celebrating your recovery. So get some sleep.”

That afternoon, Natasha and Steve went to Bucky’s congressional debate together. To be honest, Bucky did pretty badly compared to his opponent. He still hadn’t fully caught up with modern political topics. But he didn’t seem to care. Instead, he waved happily at them in the audience.

“Coming with us? To Clint’s place?” After the debate, Steve leaned on his crutches, holding Natasha’s hand as they walked down from the audience. He patted Bucky’s shoulder.

“No, I still need to knock on voters’ doors—an entire neighborhood. See you at seven.” Bucky smiled, hugged Natasha and Steve, then gestured for them to leave.

It was still early, so they went for a walk on the George Washington Bridge. The Hudson River was back to its unclear state. No whales seemed willing to visit anymore.

They stood on the bridge’s sidewalk, leaning on the rail, feeling the wind from the estuary. December’s sun set early. It was just past five, and the sky was filled with sunset glow.

Natasha got a call from her sister Yelena. She chatted with her for a while in the evening wind.

Steve put his arm around her waist, kissed her, and said regretfully, “So… you don’t want to get married yet, huh?”

Natasha shook her head, leaning on his shoulder.

“Maybe later. Not now.”

He was silent for a few seconds, then asked, “Is there anything I can change for that?”

Her green eyes reflected the sunset. “No, don’t worry, it’s not that you did something wrong. I just went to your funeral and two of your weddings in a row. It feels a little weird considering the third wedding.”

Steve turned to look at her, forcing a laugh. “I'm deeply sorry about this, ma’am.”

“It doesn’t stop us from being together, does it?”

The sun set between the coastline and the city skyline. Natasha squinted at the sunset in his arms.

“Of course not. But I still want to ask one thing.”

She looked at him, raising her eyebrows in curiosity.

“Let me put your name in my will, and let me be in yours,” Steve said, looking into her eyes seriously. “If you go first, let me take care of your family as your widower. If I go first, I want you to handle all my affairs as my partner. Let me grow old with you in this century, and be buried in the same cemetery.”

“That’s sweet, Steve Rogers,” she stood on her tiptoes slightly, kissing his cheek. “I will take it.”

They leaned on each other, walking slowly into New York’s night as the lights turned on one by one.

*
In March 2025, whales were spotted in the Hudson River again.