The Third Black Widow

New Friends

I'm walking around New York alone to clear my head. Yelena and I decided to get an apartment here and stay a while.

I decide to walk into a cafe and order something. I get a lemonade and a chocolate croissant and sit at an empty table.

A girl wearing a jean jacket with designs sits alone at another table, and I offer for her to sit with me. She thanked me, and we started talking. She's friendly, and her name is America Chavez.

Another girl comes to our table and says, "Oh my God! You're Lizzie! You're Natasha Romanoff's little sister! I'm such a huge fan! I'm Kamala Khan, by the way."

America is looking at me like Kamala is insane. "H-Hi, nice to meet you," I say. I'm more than surprised that I have a fan. Not many people know I exist. Or so I thought.

"Can I get a picture with you?" asks Kamala. I nod, and she whips her phone out and takes two. We smile for one and make funny faces and poses for the other.

America is looking back and forth from me to Kamala as she stands next to me, talking to me all about my combat enhancements, about how she has crazy powers, how cool it was that I got to fight with the Avengers, particularly Carol Danvers, aka Captain Marvel, things about Nat, and a whole lot of other stuff.

Whenever she mentions Nat, I start to fiddle with my fingers a little. Nat is a complicated subject for me nowadays.

I mention Yelena as an attempt to get Kamala to veer off the Nat path of questions which, in my case, led to long answers and old memories.

Kamala talks to me all about Yelena, from our relationship with each other to Fanny, our dog, to what it's like being free from the Red Room, to our little Hawkeye holiday adventure, which made the news, to what it was like for me during the snap.

America looks so lost right now, and I feel bad, so I direct a question toward her. "What are some of your interests, America?"

"Well... I'm not exactly from around here. My powers allow me to make portals and travel through the multiverse. But um... I love pizza, and I'm visiting Dr. Strange here in New York," says America. "Wow," says Kamala. "That sounds like a cool power to have. And I love pizza too," I say. "Me three," says Kamala.

We all smile at each other and I offer for Kamala to take the empty seat next to me. She happily does so, and the three of us talk for at least an hour about everything going on in our similar yet very different lives.

We end up ordering a few rounds of things like cake pops and lemonade.

The conversation changes to exchanging our best superhero adventures. I think America wins since she and Dr. Strange traveled across the multiverse, running away from Wanda and meeting a handful of different varients of Dr. Strange in the process.

Although Kamala's story has lots of twists and turns, for starters, rather than being born with her powers or being experimented on, she wore a bangle, and that's how she got her powers. Then she saved a girl at Avenger Con and became a superhero known as Nightlight. And then she had to keep her powers a secret, and she ended up being needed to open this portal called the Nor to get her crush's family back home to their world. And that ended badly, and then she had this massive battle at her school, and everyone finally knew who she was.

As for my story, I hit the "highlights" of the Red Room, such as my unique program, and I told them about a few missions.

The girls were sympathetic towards parts of it and in awe during others. Sympathy isn't something that I'm used to and it feels kinda weird.

I cover all of the drinks and food with my untraceable credit card. The girls thank me profusely and insist that one of them will cover the refreshments next time. In all honesty, I didn't mind paying for it. It's just nice for me to have friends for once in my life.

Friends who weren't helping you blow up buildings or kill people undetected or sneak into parties to get intell on a government official.

Just normal friends who happen to have superpowers.

We walk as a trio to the Sanctum Sanctorial to drop America off to Dr. Strange. Outside of the building, we exchange phone numbers and create a group chat. We title it;

Bubbles 🫧 , Chaos 💥, and Stars ⭐️

Kamala is bubbles. I'm chaos. America is stars.

The nicknames suit our personalities, our powers, and enhancements.

We take a few group pics and pick the funniest one for the group chat photo. We each pic an half decent one of ourself for our contact photo.

Once we've worked all of that out, we send Hi with our respective emojis so the group chat is started.

Kamala and I say our goodbyes to America as she says hers to us. We watch her walk in and we leave once we know she's safe.

We're a few blocks away from the Sanctum Sanctorial and Kamala offers to walk me back to my apartment via her powers which can make stepping stones in the air. That sounds like fun, so naturally, I agree and off we go.

We run hopping from mini island to mini island. Her powers are like gems and the stepping stones are cotton candy colored. Not the light ones. I mean the color of the ice cream flavor at Baskin Robbins.

I direct Kamala on what streets to take and eventually, my apartment building comes into view. Yelena and I live on the fourth floor out of five so I show Kamala which one it is. I have her take us to Yelena's window and I knock on it.

Yelena drops her mission files that she was reading and I can hear her scream. It's faint, from outside, but I can also see her mouth move.

She opens the window and says "Lizzie what the heck?!" "I made two new best friends! This is Kamala! America is with Dr. Strange right now," I say smiling. Kamala waves and Yelena smiles at her and I climb into her room through the window.

"Thanks for taking me home! See you soon Kamala!" I say. "See you soon, Lizzie! It was nice to meet you! I'll send you Game Pigeon later!" says Kamala. "I'm looking forward to it," I say.

We wave goodbye and after the window is closed, and Kamala had ran off into the distance, Yelena lectures me about scaring the life out of her like I just did.

I'm restraining myself from laughing the whole time. Listening to someone as funny as Yelena lecture me is definitely not something I can take seriously. I only do when she raises her voice, and right now, she's speaking with an even tone.

I'm released and I go into my room and flop on my bed thinking about the crazy stuff that happened to me today. I made two best friends and I walked on magic stepping stones across town. Today was one of the coolest days ever.