Through, Together (A Romanogers Fanfiction)

Area 14

Stepping back into the Quinjet felt strange. It felt like months had passed since the last time Natasha was on the aircraft, but really it'd only been a little over a week. She told herself it was like riding a bike. You just slid onto the seat, grabbed hold of the handle bars, and started pedaling. In a way, it was. The physical act of getting the bird in the air was as easy as breathing to her at this point. It was nothing. It was what it signified, what it foretold, that made her a bit nervous. They were "getting back out there" in a way. They were standing back up, brushing the dirt off, and going to work. Natasha's face was all calm determination, but on the inside, she felt like it was her first time in the field.

They had no idea what things were like out there. What they were really like. They didn't know what they were walking into. It could be nothing, or it could be chaos. Natasha just had to make sure that, either way, she was ready. She had to remind herself who she was, who they all were, and what they were capable of. Thanos had knocked them all on their backs. Now was the chance to show that he wasn't able to keep them there. They'd been down long enough; spent enough time licking their wounds. It was time to do something, now. No one else was going to do it for them.

"We've reached altitude," Natasha announced. "Should reach our destination within an hour."

She glanced over her shoulder. Steve was standing nearby, looking out one of the windows on the left side of the Quinjet. Carol was standing behind the empty co-pilot seat, arms folded across her chest and eyes out the front window. Natasha sensed a little bit of trepidation from Steve, and some impatience from Carol. She figured she might as well try to break the silence up a bit.

"Probably not as fast as your preferred mode of transportation, huh?" She asked the woman. Carol, apparently, could do things like turn herself into a human propulsor and jet her way around the universe.

The Kree woman turned her gaze to Natasha and gave a small, apologetic smile. "Been awhile since I did this the old-fashioned way."

Natasha chuckled and returned her gaze to the front. "It's slightly more discreet this way," she said. Though, Carol didn't seem the type for discretion. She could light up like the Fourth of July and had a suit that was just as colorful. The Quinjet was quiet, though, and its reflective panels allowed for it to slip through the air, undetected. It was preferable in a situation like this, where they had no idea what kind of security, if any, would still by in place at the old S.H.I.E.L.D. storage site. Natasha was hopeful, but she wasn't naive. This was S.H.I.E.L.D., after all. The organization had a way of not making things easy, even from the grave it had fallen into.

"What do you expect to find?" Carol asked.

"Who knows," Natasha said. "With S.H.I.E.L.D. it's always a crap shoot, but I'm hoping we stumble across some Chitauri tech. Bruce said it'll take some pretty high-powered battery cores to power some of the gear he plans on making. I'm thinking a Chitauri energy source would fit the bill."

"You know, I'm kind of a battery, myself." Carol said. "I could probably power that gear."

"I'd rather rely on you for fighting than transporting." Steve said. He stepped away from the window and joined the two women, taking a stand behind Natasha's seat.

"Right," Natasha grinned. "Having you charter us around space would be a severe waste of your talents." She glanced back at Carol, who was wearing a little smirk of her own. Natasha got the sense that, just because she offered to power the gear didn't mean she wanted to. She got the sense that Carol wanted to be a part of the fight just as badly as Steve needed her to be. That was something Natasha could relate to.

She returned her focus to the flight, but Natasha listened in to some of Steve and Carol's conversation. They traded service stories, mostly. Before her time on Kree, Carol was an Air Force pilot here on Earth. Natasha never thought that a couple of vets exchanging stories of their time travel and world relocation would be normal topics of conversation, yet here she was, not even batting an eye. At this point, she was pretty sure she'd seen it all. Thor was friends with a talking raccoon with a taste for violence, for God sake. The universe was a weird, weird place. Somehow, that made it that much more important to protect.