Ode to Mortality: Lessons Well Learned

Natasha learned the nuances of mortality early in life. Her parents were gone before she was old enough to appreciate them, and after...well, after came and went.

S.H.I.E.L.D. taught her something more though. It taught her the importance of trust, of service, and it taught her about friendships. First, it was Clint Barton, and Natasha wasn't sure what he saw in her that made him stay his fingers on the string. He'd had the chance, and instead, he gave her own. At first, she'd just owed him her life, but they'd gone back and forth with that so many times that even she couldn't blame her attachment on debt.

Then, she'd met her handlers. They came and went, all too incompetent or unwilling to deal with her. In the end it was just Phil Coulson. Calm. Dangerous. Well informed. Phil was someone that Natasha respected, and she'd thought that was as deep as the emotion ran. The first time Phil went down in a firefight, Natasha had snapped the gunman's neck between her knees. Not even she could make herself believe that she'd only felt respect as Phil peeled a bullet proof vest from a bruised chest.

After Clint and Phil, she forced herself to limit her attachments, but there was Fury. Even more serious than Phil with a sharp tongue and shared experiences. No matter what happened at the end of a mission, the man was there with his frown and his snappish request for a mission report. At first, it was that he didn't punish her for a compromised mission. Later, it was because he didn't praise her for the successful ones.

Fury would be who lead her down the dangerous path of caring for others. It was his fault, really, for stationing her in Stark Industries while she watched a man slowly die without a whisper. Where she watched a strong woman not buckle beneath the weight of a multi-billion dollar company, a tyrannical tantrum from a man with more personality than the rest of Manhattan combined, and the love she carried for him. Tony Stark, not recommended. That had been the truth, but it had also been wrong. She'd seen that man fight off death with as little and as much grace as possible. She'd seen Pepper stand through the worst moments of her life, unwilling to bow or bend. S.H.I.E.L.D would add to the weight of both of them, and Natasha lied.

Except they were drawn in, and it was too late to try and fight the growing sense of family in the pit of her stomach as she sat at a tattered restaurant booth, eating shaved meats and watching as Captain Rogers and Bruce Banner re-familiarized themselves with what it meant to have people again. It was a nice feeling, really, that warmth in her stomach, but it was a dangerous feeling. A danger that had lashed out to remind her of a lesson well learned.

Phil Coulson would be cold and laying on a metal table in the morgue. She hadn't had the time since his death and that restaurant to really feel much but the sharp, fleeting pang of pain replaced by need to do. With the adrenaline gone from her system, she let the Black Widow mask keep her face together.

That mask would save her, she was sure. Because they were all going to die. Clint would probably be the first to go. He was compromised, and the scars from that ran more deeply than he was willing to let anyone know. The men and women that he could rely on before would not have his back, not when it really counted, and Natasha could only be there so often and do so much. Clint Barton would die first, and she wasn't sure if it mattered who came next because she would go after him.

The lesson was a bitter one, but it kept her realistic. Captain America and Banner would be last, though both would be dead perhaps before Stark and herself. There was more than one way to die, and if anyone knew that, it was she. Rogers would lose himself to the ghosts of his past, becoming a soldier for S.H.I.E.L.D. and little else. Banner would disappear inside the Hulk one day, and when he reappeared, it would be less and less himself until finally, there was only the Hulk left.

Stark would go somewhere between. Either from injuries in battle or from the result of emotional injuries, she wasn't sure. His liver would hold out only as long as his control. His body only as long as his suit. He was already not a young man. She scoffed at that. She wasn't a young woman, either.

The only one among them, as they ate, that might see them all into their graves was Thor, and he spoke so fleetingly about comrades gone to their battle grave or the All-Sleep that she wondered if he truly knew what death meant for mortals.

She'd have to tell him, if he didn't learn soon. It would be kinder than letting it surprise him. It was a hard lesson to learn, after all, but the earlier the easier.