The White Phoenix 10: An Avengers: Endgame Fanfiction

Chapter 13: 'We'll Make It Count'

I had squeezed my eyes shut the whole time, and was welcomed by the sound of the engines of the quantum tunnel whirring and greeting us with the present day. We all shape-shifted out of our suits and the clothing that each of us was wearing on our final trip.

'Did we get them all?' Bruce asked.

'You telling me this'll actually work?' Rhodey asked, holding the Power Stone. All of us were looking around at the recovered Stones from the past. Rocket with the Aether from Asgard, Tony with the Tesseract from 1970, Scott with Loki's scepter from 2012, Bruce with the Time Stone from 2012, Rhodey with the orb that housed the Power Stone from 2014 and Clint with the Soul Stone from 2014. But as I looked around the circle, something was terribly wrong. A feeling that I had felt many years ago and never wanted to feel again. The feeling that something had happened to someone I loved dearly. I looked at all the faces around me, trying to see a smiling, red-haired woman named Natasha Romanoff. But I couldn't see her. Just then, I turned to see a defeated-looking Clint Barton. I ran to him and grabbed his arm. Bruce stepped out of the circle from where he was next to Steve.

'Clint, where's Nat?' he asked worriedly. I stared into his eyes. He hadn't looked that way since I joined him on our rampage kill missions and we were being Ronin and the Blood Phoenix.

'Please tell me, Clint. Tell me it's not true.' He slowly, imperceptibly nodded at me. At this, I fell on the floor of the quantum platform and cried, with Clint holding me in his arms. Just out of the corner of my eye, I saw Bruce also sink down to the floor and punch the ground in anger. She was gone.

On the lakeside of the Avengers compound headquarters, we sat with sorrow in our hearts and on our minds. I sat next to Steve, leaning into his comforting embrace, with tears in my eyes and in his. Shannon sat on my lap.

'Is Auntie Nat coming back?' she asked, innocently looking up at me with her wide, baby-blue eyes.

'No, liebling. Auntie Nat's not coming back.'

'Is Daddy coming back?'

'I don't know, Shannon. Now go on, my sweet. The adults have to talk.' I kissed her hair, and she hopped off my lap and ran off to go play with her dolls near the lake. I smiled sadly.

'Do we know if she had family?' Tony asked.

'Yeah,' Steve replied bitterly. 'Us.'

'What?' Thor asked, confused.

'He just asked a question, goddammit, Thor!' I yelled out in anger. I cried some more, tears running in merciless waves down my face at the grief this was causing.

'Yeah, 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?' He was growling now, his voice a lower register than it had been before. 'So stop this shit, we're the Avengers, get it together.'

'We can't get her back,' Clint said, saying the one thing that all of our minds were screaming, even though we hoped beyond hope that she could somehow come back from the dead.

'Wha-what?'

'It can't be undone. It can't.' Thor gave a sharp laugh that had zero emotion attached to it.

'I'm sorry. No offence, but you're a very earthly being. Okay, we're talking about space magic. And 'can't' seems very definitive, don't you think?'

'Yeah, look,' Clint snapped. 'I know I'm way outside of my pay-grade here. But she still isn't here, is she?'

'No, that's my point!'