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Steve, Natasha, Goodbye
Steve looks up from his magazine at the sound of a pistol being cocked. “Hello, Natasha,” he says to the woman holding a Sig Sauer on him from twenty feet away.
He’s returned four of the stones and Mjolnir and this is a probably unwise detour on his trip to 2012, but that doesn’t mean it’s not necessary.
He’s traveled a long way to say goodbye.
This Natasha doesn’t know him at all except for what’s in his file, doesn’t see him as a friend or even as a colleague yet. Which is why she’s still aiming at his forehead as she draws closer on silent feet. “Who are you? You’re not Rogers.”
“I will be,” he tells her, closing the magazine and putting it on the Gristedes bag at his side. “In eleven years.”
It takes some fast talking and faster answers to Natasha’s questions before she’s satisfied and lowers her weapon. She’s surprised that they become friends, suspicious when he tells her that they are never anything more, and maybe a little offended when he laughs at that.
He tells her that he could use her help causing a bit of trouble. He doesn’t tell her anything about the future or his visit to the Ancient One down on Bleeker and their talk about what to do when a timeline’s been blown to hell because of clumsiness. He tells her he needs help with a pair of heists, one to put a fake Mind Gem in Pierce’s briefcase and one to put the real one in an exhibit at the Cloisters.
“I think you don’t understand how heists work,” Natasha tells him in return. “Age is supposed to bring wisdom. Or does Captain America not believe in committing crime?”
He laughs because the alternative is to weep. More than Sam, more than Bucky, Natasha was his partner in actual crime.
“How do you think I became Captain America in the first place?” he asks instead.
Making trouble with Natasha, even if she’s not yet ‘his’ Natasha, is fun and deeply satisfying and a little heartbreaking because this is who she was before the rug got pulled under her by Pierce and HYDRA. Before the universe told her that all she’d done to repent for past sins didn’t count and she would never quite get over that.
When it’s over, she kisses him – really kisses him, not the fake kind from the escalator in the mall with Rumlow’s team after them. He gives a better showing than then, but she laughs when they break apart. “Okay, that was way too awkward for it to have happened before. So why are you here? Because you really didn’t need my help.”
He gives her his best smile, not the Captain America one, but the Steve one that disappeared when Thanos snapped his fingers.
“Goodbye, Natasha,” he tells her. “And thank you. For everything.”
Steve looks up from his magazine at the sound of a pistol being cocked. “Hello, Natasha,” he says to the woman holding a Sig Sauer on him from twenty feet away.
He’s returned four of the stones and Mjolnir and this is a probably unwise detour on his trip to 2012, but that doesn’t mean it’s not necessary.
He’s traveled a long way to say goodbye.
This Natasha doesn’t know him at all except for what’s in his file, doesn’t see him as a friend or even as a colleague yet. Which is why she’s still aiming at his forehead as she draws closer on silent feet. “Who are you? You’re not Rogers.”
“I will be,” he tells her, closing the magazine and putting it on the Gristedes bag at his side. “In eleven years.”
It takes some fast talking and faster answers to Natasha’s questions before she’s satisfied and lowers her weapon. She’s surprised that they become friends, suspicious when he tells her that they are never anything more, and maybe a little offended when he laughs at that.
He tells her that he could use her help causing a bit of trouble. He doesn’t tell her anything about the future or his visit to the Ancient One down on Bleeker and their talk about what to do when a timeline’s been blown to hell because of clumsiness. He tells her he needs help with a pair of heists, one to put a fake Mind Gem in Pierce’s briefcase and one to put the real one in an exhibit at the Cloisters.
“I think you don’t understand how heists work,” Natasha tells him in return. “Age is supposed to bring wisdom. Or does Captain America not believe in committing crime?”
He laughs because the alternative is to weep. More than Sam, more than Bucky, Natasha was his partner in actual crime.
“How do you think I became Captain America in the first place?” he asks instead.
Making trouble with Natasha, even if she’s not yet ‘his’ Natasha, is fun and deeply satisfying and a little heartbreaking because this is who she was before the rug got pulled under her by Pierce and HYDRA. Before the universe told her that all she’d done to repent for past sins didn’t count and she would never quite get over that.
When it’s over, she kisses him – really kisses him, not the fake kind from the escalator in the mall with Rumlow’s team after them. He gives a better showing than then, but she laughs when they break apart. “Okay, that was way too awkward for it to have happened before. So why are you here? Because you really didn’t need my help.”
He gives her his best smile, not the Captain America one, but the Steve one that disappeared when Thanos snapped his fingers.
“Goodbye, Natasha,” he tells her. “And thank you. For everything.”