#119 Ashes

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As Natasha scanned the battlefield, her heart pounded, confusion and fear tightening her chest as Wakandan soldiers around her faded into ash, their forms swept away by an invisible breeze. Her eyes darted around, her pulse racing as she frantically searched for the familiar faces of her team.

"Steve?! Sam? Rhodey?" she called out, her voice edged with rising panic. Only silence responded, an eerie, hollow quiet settling over the field as more and more allies vanished in front of her eyes. She clenched her fists, her heartbeat a wild drum in her ears. What was happening? Where were her friends?

The silence pressed down, and Natasha's instincts flared in sheer desperation. Without another thought, she turned and ran toward the forest's edge, where the fighting had been most intense, hoping—praying—that some of them were still there, still whole.

Her feet pounded over the ground, her breathing ragged as she sprinted across the field, her eyes scanning for any sign of movement.

From a distance, she finally saw them: Bruce in the Hulkbuster armor, standing still as if in shock, and Rhodey, his War Machine suit battered but intact, staring at the empty spaces where others had once stood.

Relief mingled with a gut-wrenching dread as she spotted Thor nearby, his face pale and grief-stricken, his usually indomitable posture slumped. 

 Her heart pounded harder, an icy knot forming in her gut as she looked desperately for one last figure.

No. Not him too. He has to be here.

Then, she saw him—a lone figure kneeling in the dirt, his head bowed, motionless beside the lifeless form of Vision. Her breath caught as she sprinted toward him, her steps faster, louder, propelled by raw fear. She reached him and, almost afraid he might dissolve beneath her touch, placed a trembling hand on his shoulder.

"Steve..." she whispered, the word barely escaping her lips, heavy with the dread she'd been swallowing since the dust started to fall.

Steve didn't look up. His silence was answer enough; he was broken, shattered in a way she hadn't seen even in their darkest days.

Then, a sudden, sickening feeling churned in her stomach—a hollowness that expanded like a void, as if something had been ripped out of her, leaving only an echo.

She gasped, one hand clutching her midsection, the other gripping Steve's shoulder for support as the feeling surged, sharp and cold. Her heart seemed to stutter, and her mind raced, searching, questioning.

No. No, this isn't possible.

She clutched her stomach instinctively, the sickening emptiness gnawing at her. It felt wrong—unbearably, fundamentally wrong—as if a part of her own soul had been torn away, leaving only a desolate ache behind. The bond she'd grown accustomed to, the soft, reassuring presence that had filled her these last few months... it was gone.

It was like waking up from a dream only to find that what she held dear had been nothing more than a fading whisper in the night. She swallowed, hard, a lump forming in her throat that felt like a stone, dense and unmovable, the realization settling over her like a suffocating weight.

He's not here anymore. My son. James is... gone.

As Natasha knelt there, her mind flickered to James—her son from the future, her Jason. And now, as she stood on this desolate battlefield, she realized with heart-wrenching clarity how much she needed him to be safe. Please, she thought, looking up into the sky, as if the heavens might hear her silent plea, please don't take him too.

Her heart raced, torn between the unyielding grief of the loss she had just endured and the desperate fear for her son—her James, who was somewhere out there, alongside Tony and Peter, fighting to survive on a distant, alien world. 

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