Second Sphere

Natasha

Banner and I make it back without a hitch and look around.

"Did we get them all?" Banner asks.

"Are you telling me this actually worked?" Rhodey asks shocked.

Clint steps down and we all turn to him.

"Clint, where's Nat?" Banner asks.

He doesn't say anything but we all know and it goes quiet.

Out over the lake we sit together.

"Do we know if she had family?" Tony asks.

"Yeah. Us." Steve responds softly.

"What?" Thor asks walking closer. "What are you doing?"

"I asked him a question." Tony responds.

"Yeah, no, you're acting like she's dead. Why are we acting like she's dead? We have the stones, right? As long as we have the stones Cap, we can bring her back. Isn't that right" Thor sounds desperate and he gets angrier from grief. "So stop this shit. We're the avengers. Get it together."

"Can't get her back." Clint calls out from where he's sitting.

"What? What's he-" Thor stammers.

"It can't be undone. It can't." Clint continues.

Thor laughs. "Look, I'm sorry, no offenses but you're being a very earthly being, okay? And we're talking about space magic. And "can't" seems very definitive. Don't you think?"

"Yeah, look, I know that I'm way outside my pay grade here. But she still isn't here, is she?" Clint retorts.

"No, that's my point." Thor responds.

Clint reiterates. "It can't be undone" his voice gets more and more emotional, "Or at least that's what the red, floating guy had to say. Maybe you wanna go talk to him, okay?" He starts to yell, "Go grab your hammer and you go fly and you talk to him." He stops and we are all quiet before he continues, not yelling but close to tears. "It was supposed to be me. She sacrificed her life for that goddamn stone. She bet her life on it."

Bruce throws a bench over the lake. "She's not coming back. We have to make it worth it. We have to."

"We will." Steve says simply.

After a time almost everyone goes back inside. Clint remains seated where he is and I go and sit next to him, neither of us talking for a while. Just watching the quiet of the lake.

"I tried, but she wouldn't let me do it. She was just so goddamn stubborn. And I couldn't hold on." Clint says to me his voice cracking.

I think carefully on my words, "Natasha believed in this, in all of us, more than anything. Even before I left, she stayed at the compound, talking with everyone and running meetings to try and keep things in order. We can't bring her back, but we can live for what she gave us."

Clint smiles even though there are tears running down his face. "She hated you at first you know that?"

I laugh, "I don't blame her. Bucky and I almost killed her at one point. But she came around, that is she came around after she attempted to kill me in training a couple of times. She wasn't keen to talk it out."

Clint laughs too, "No she wasn't."

We stay like that for a while. He tells me some of their stories and after the sun had gone down and the night became chilly we went to go inside.

"Thanks kid." Clint tells me.

"Any time." I smile softly and lead the way back in with the others.