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Memories (Bitter, Tainted, Blood-Soaked Memories)
When the final battle was over and Thanos, his armies, and everyone who had wished harm to Earth and her allies was nothing but dust (including Wanda Maximoff, but nobody would know that until much later), Tony Stark caught Spiderman in a hug so fierce and so desperate, even the most battle-hardened warriors turned away to give them their privacy. When Pepper Potts finally couldn’t stand it another second and shed the Rescue armor so she could join the ecstatic embrace, hugging the young vigilante for all he was worth before kissing Tony so passionately that the grass beneath their feet caught fire (it was a small one, okay? And they’d definitely earned the privilege), those same battle-hardened warriors cleared their throats, pulled at necklines that were suddenly too tight, and began firmly herding people away from the tender, if not totally safe for all audiences, reunion.
And that was where the trouble began.
Clint Barton, having gone more than a little insane when his entire family was Dusted, had been forced to watch his partner and best friend throw herself off a cliff so they could get the Soul Stone and finally stop Thanos and fix everything he had destroyed.
That was enough to make anyone bitter, and people would have understood.
However.
Barton wasn’t just drowning in grief. He was also burning with a dark, acidic rage — and it found its target in Tony Stark, who not only had the audacity to reunite with his family on the blood-soaked battlefield, but was the reason the war had happened to begin with. If he hadn’t been so egotistical and so petty and so childish and so determined to be the center of everyone’s attention, then maybe people would have listened when he warned this exact invasion was coming more than a decade ago.
It was his fault that Clint had lost his entire family, that Steve had lost Barnes and T’Challa’s death had left Shuri devastated. And Stark, of course, had lost nothing. Hell, he’d actually had a kid! While everyone else was suffering and grieving and wandering the planet, trying to figure out what they were going to do next, drowning in desolation and loss and grief, he’d gotten married, moved to the middle of nowhere to hide from the planet he’d fucked over, and had a kid, like nothing was wrong.
Like he hadn’t caused the worst catastrophe the universe would ever see.
Like he wasn’t the reason Nat was dead.
Before Barton was able to get to Stark, an orange portal suddenly sparked to life between him and his target, stopping him dead, and someone began lining people up and escorting them off the battlefield and into the Wakandan palace. Fuming and almost choking on his fury and his heartbreak, Barton didn’t notice when Steve took his arm and, along with the rest of the team, stepped from filthy chaos to sterile order. The change was so jarring, it knocked Barton out of his dreams of killing Stark with his bare hands, using his explosive arrows, but losing his rage meant he had no defense against the tidal wave of grief.
When Wilson escorted — well, ‘dragged’ was more accurate — him to a shower and pushed him into the water, fully clothed, the shock of cool water hitting his face was enough and Barton finally came back to the present. He stripped, throwing his bloody, torn, soaked clothes on the floor and scrubbing himself until his skin was red and raw and stinging. But he finally felt human, and his thoughts were mostly clear.
The first thought he had was how to find Laura and his kids. The second was how to get to them. The third was making sure that Nat came with him, because she was his best friend, his sister and their aunt, and they loved her. The fourth was remembering with brutal clarity that she was dead. He didn't remember the fifth. His sixth thought was remembering why she was dead.
His seventh thought was that he was going to kill Stark, it was going to be slow and agonizing, and he wouldn’t let the arrogant bastard finally die until he’d groveled for forgiveness for every wrong he’d done, and not just to Barton and Nat. He was going to acknowledge every way he’d fucked up with the Avengers and the Accords and the world.
Everything was his fault, and he was finally going to pay.
He didn’t know it, but his eyes were wild even though his face was grim, and the sight made Wilson swallow hard. He didn’t say anything, though; he just handed Clint fresh clothes that almost fit and a hunk of the bread they’d all learned to hate after eating it every single day for nearly three years. Right now, though, it was food, and Barton was lost in his haze of grief and rage, so he swallowed it in two huge bites, chugged the entire pitcher of water like he was a frat boy at a kegger, then stalked to the door, with Wilson scrambling to follow him.
“Where’s Stark?” Clint demanded, searching the hallway for any sign of his prey and finding none.
“Uhh . . . Maria said something about a debrief when everyone was cleaned up and had eaten. They’re waiting in the main conference room,” Wilson replied carefully. He was familiar with Clint’s rage, after all, having been forced to listen to him for three years, but this . . . this was different.
And Sam Wilson was afraid.
He just didn’t know why.
Then they got to the meeting, only to discover they were the last ones, and Steve gave them a warm smile of welcome as he shifted his chair over so his teammates could sit beside him. Blowing out a soft sigh of relief, Sam settled in at his left shoulder, since Barnes was on the other side, and gave both men a somewhat wan smile, which tightened when Clint huffed angrily and dropped into his chair so loudly, it stopped every conversation in the room.
And he ignored everyone in favor of glaring at Stark with such intense hatred that it sizzled and Sam half-expected to see the other man drop dead from a smoking hole in his chest.
Instead, Stark just lifted an eyebrow, waiting patiently for Barton to speak. When he didn’t, Stark gave a careless shrug and turned his attention back to Maria Hill, who picked up their conversation about casualties as though nothing had happened.
When she told Stark that Natasha had died so they could get the Soul Stone, he went very still. His face was so blank, Wilson winced; he didn’t know it was possible to submerge your emotions so quickly and so thoroughly, but trust Tony Stark to show off, even in the middle of an impromptu wake.
When he sighed and slumped back in his chair, suddenly looking exhausted, his former team felt a smidge of sympathy, unwilling as it was. After all, this entire mess was his fault.
But Natasha had been a friend and her death was a raw, aching wound for all of them.
Then he glanced at Pepper, who was sitting on his left, and said, “Thank God for that. Now I don’t have to deal with trying to keep her contained long enough to actually get through a trial.”
The room went so quiet, the soft burbling of a water fountain two corridors down sounded like it was screaming.
Nobody knew how long that awful, choked silence lasted before Steve finally gasped, “What?!”
Unruffled, Stark glanced up and said, “’What’ what?”
After another minute of disbelieving silence, Steve blurted, “Nat’s dead, Tony! How can you be — you — how can you be happy about that?!”
Those expressive brown eyes went cold and Wilson shivered, though he didn’t know why.
“Really?” Stark drawled, leaning back in a pose that was deliberately arrogant and designed to provoke tempers. Judging by both Clint and Steve's faces, it was working. “Do you hon—oh. You do.” A bitter laugh made everyone shift uncomfortably before he pinned Steve with eyes so full of hate that even Barton was startled.
Steve was just stunned.
Then Stark started talking.
“Let me explain a few things to you, Rogers. I’ll use words with as few syllables as possible, but I’m still gonna need you to keep up. I despise Natasha Romanova. From the literal second I met her, she has done nothing but lie to me, steal from me, cheat me, threaten my company and the few people I really care about, manipulate me, use me, and stab me in the neck, back, stomach, and anywhere else she could put a knife, before she finally openly betrayed me and then had the sheer gall to tell me it was my fault because of my ego. She’s a despicable person and she was never my teammate, much less my friend, and I stopped being stupid enough to think that a long time ago,” he sneered, so furious the room was subtly shaking.
Everyone else gave the walls a wary glance.
Stark didn't notice. He was oblivious to his own power in a way that was downright terrifying.
“If she wasn’t dead, I’d be hauling her off in handcuffs, same as I’m going to do to you when we’re done here, because she was just as much of a war criminal and terrorist as you,” he spit, jaw rigid with his effort to stay in control. “And on a personal level, I’m so relieved I could cry. Because now I don’t have to worry about her lying to me and manipulating me so she can get her special Pirozhki and Syrniki, because God forbid she treat me like a person and just fucking ask. I don’t have to brace myself against another snide comment about my ego and how childish I am but still useful if I can get my need for attention under control — every single time she wanted something. And heaven forbid I say something that wasn’t, ‘Yes, Parasitical Team Member, of course I’ll do whatever you want right this second’, or offer unsolicited help or an opinion. That was a surefire way to be accused of being egotistical, because the world only revolves around me when I can do something for her.”
He stopped and took several deep, calming breaths. It was extremely disquieting to see how badly he needed them.
Then he looked up. And his rage cracked the solid marble table in half.
“I can sleep tonight knowing she hasn’t tried to hack FRIDAY again so she can break into my penthouse — my home — just to make sure I understand she has zero respect for me and could kill me if she wanted to and she decided I was worth her time.”
He paused again, eyes still ice cold and glittering with violent rage, and gave the stunned, horrified group of Avengers a bitter smile that made them flinch.
“Before you squawk about how her ‘noble sacrifice’ erases everything she did, every crime she ever committed, allow me to save us all from your bullshit,” he hissed, waving his hand sharply in the air and grinning like a madman when a holographic display appeared from nowhere.
“I—how?” Shuri gasped, shocked, and got a look so condescending, she cringed back.
“You’re bright, Princess,” he told her, voice ringing with sincerity that almost overshadowed his disdain for her arrogance. “But not that bright. You don’t have my experience. You don’t have my sheer genius. You don’t have my raw skills with technology. And . . . well, you cheat. If you didn’t have vibranium and access to the outside world, so you can steal technology and reverse-engineer it, you’d still be stuck in the ‘90s.” He effortlessly ignored her outraged yowl and T’Challa stiffening in insult, and added, “Also, I’m Tony Fucking Stark. Isn’t that right, JARVIS?”
“Indeed you are, Sir,” came a warm male voice, his British accent sounding hilariously incongruous in the middle of Wakanda and startling almost everyone in the room.
“Damn right,” Stark agreed with a sharp nod before turning his attention back to Steve. Watching the icy mask descend over his features was one of the most frightening things Sam had ever seen and it took way too much effort to keep from shoving his chair back so he could avoid any attention from Stark, accidental or not, while the display flickered again and then a picture of Nat popped up.
She was wearing lingerie and posing provocatively.
. . . huh?
“This was my literal first introduction to Natasha,” Stark told the room, though his eyes never left Steve’s. “She included this in her CV when she applied to SI under Fury’s orders, because my type is a curvy redhead with a brain. He wanted to steal as much of my technology and designs as he could, and money if it was possible. But he also wanted — well, okay, he said he wanted an evaluation done on me, you see, and thought the honeypot spy assassin with no actual psychological training or experience was the best choice for that. Now, understand, Fury and Romanova both knew going in that I was dying of Palladium poisoning. They knew,” he spat, eyes blazing with cold flames that made the room feel downright comfortable in the middle of Wakanda's natural heat. It was even more terrifying than watching the table split in half just from the force of his rage.
“That’s why Fury sent her: because he honestly thought so little of me that he assumed I’d hire her based solely on her naked picture,” he jeered, giving Barton a contemptuous look that made him stiffen with outrage that was, again, effortlessly ignored. “The problem is that I knew something was wrong, but I had severe heavy metal poisoning. I couldn’t think clearly enough to drill it down, much less make sense of it. Plus, my attention was focused on trying to find or create a cure because I didn't want to die. Only, instead of telling me that SHIELD had some of Howard’s stuff and suspected there was a solution there, or a cure, Fury sent in a honeypot assassin to ‘evaluate’ me and also shadow Pepper and threaten her in case I failed to cooperate and needed to be reined in. I had to be controlled, you see. And Fury was the only person who was qualified, because he's just so trustworthy.”
This appalled silence was broken by Pepper’s sharp breath at the old, unpleasant memory — and the dawning realization of several things she should have realized more than a decade ago.
“And because Romanova was so stupid and so arrogant and so lazy that she didn’t even bother to research heavy metal poisoning,” Stark continued, voice dripping with acidic contempt, “not to mention she’d decided who I was before she ever stepped foot in my building, she wrote that bullshit report that Fury showed Barton, and Rogers when he first woke up, and maybe Banner. Fury knew it was crap, of course, but it suited him perfectly to have his figurehead hate me right off the bat, along with his other pet spy. He couldn’t control me any other way and God forbid he actually treat me like a real person and talk to me, explain things. No, he had to play his games and enact his little schemes and fuck everyone over in the process.”
He paused again, enjoying the shock on several faces — and the guilt on several others — before nodding at thin air. The picture changed to a video and nearly forty people got to witness Tony Stark showing genuine vulnerability as his fear of dying overcame his mask just for a second . . . and they all watched Natasha Romanova smile at him, so sweetly and so maliciously, and then encourage him, in horrifyingly plain English, to self-destruct if that’s what he wanted to do.
Flames shot from Pepper’s mouth as she gave a wordless cry of rage, smothered instantly by Spiderman’s web, and he wrapped an arm around her shoulders to comfort her while Stark turned to his wife but because of his own anger, he couldn’t risk touching her, and murmured, “Stop. That wasn’t your fault. No matter who did what, she and Fury were dead set on screwing me over. They wanted me broken and pitiful and so desperate for their attention and approval and an invitation to their little boyband that I'd willingly submit to their control. She would have done literally whatever it took. Do not blame yourself.”
Drawing a shaky breath, Pepper nodded and allowed herself to rest against the young man nobody knew she’d already mentally and emotionally adopted, while Tony watched her, eyes full of concern, until he was satisfied she was okay and stable enough for him to continue enthralling the room.
Which he did.
“Then, of course, we have the coup de grâce, where Fury bragged about knowing I was dying and withholding both the cure and a stopgap measure until the last possible second, to make sure I understood that he and SHIELD were in control of my life, not me, but he would give me the stopgap out of the sheer graciousness of his heart,” he snarled, demeanor going icy again, while a different video started to play.
And an appalling number of people who had done nothing but disparage Tony Stark from the second they met him or heard about him watched as their teammate, someone they had lauded as a hero, smugly taunted him with her betrayal before literally stabbing him in the neck with a syringe.
Wilson was horrified. Steve was shocked. Barton was indifferent.
Maybe that should have been the first clue.
“So don’t tell me that I’m being mean to Nat, or disrespecting her memory. She literally did nothing but stab me in the back the entire time I knew her — and that includes not telling me that Barnes there murdered my parents on HYDRA’s orders, or that you knew. Don’t even,” he snapped, slashing a hand and cutting off Steve’s protest, while the rest of the room was trying to make sense of what he’d just said.
Barnes had killed the Starks? But — but they’d died in a car wreck, caused because Howard was drunk.
Hadn’t they?
In an effort to assimilate that, most of them turned to Steve in a silent demand for answers he wouldn’t give but his mulish facial expression said anyway, while Stark continued to destroy both Rogers' and Romanova’s names and reputations with the first group of people who could actually do something about it.
“You are too stupid and too ignorant about technology to have a clue what you were doing when you dumped SHIELD’s files online,” he informed the erstwhile Captain America, vindictive satisfaction filling his voice now. “That means Romanova did it. Logically, that also means she knew the truth about the Winter Soldier and my parents. She had to. And just like you, she kept her mouth shut while stealing from me, lying to me, using me, putting me down at every opportunity she could create, and finally openly betraying me. So yeah, Rogers, I’m fucking thrilled she’s dead. If I weren’t so exhausted, I’d dance on her grave.”
That was finally too much for Barton, who exploded out of his chair and threw himself around the table. He was heading straight for Stark, with a knife in each hand and death in his eyes, when the man in question simply lifted his arm. The repulsor blast landed exactly two inches ahead of where the archer skidded to a dead stop and he stood there, shaking with impotent rage, and gave Stark a murderous glare when the other man — without lowering his arm — simply raked him with another contemptuous glance and taunted, “Oh, come on, Barton. You know her so well, so you have to know why she threw herself off that cliff.”
Barton snarled, hands twitching, but Stark’s aim didn’t waver and that pale blue light was a lot more threatening than it should be.
But for some reason, he said nothing, not even to defend Nat, and the engineer finally sighed.
“No, you don’t know, do you? You really are that naïve . . . or just that good at lying to yourself. Okay, then, Legolas, let me explain,” he said curtly, finally dropping his arm. There was no sympathy in his voice even though he’d obviously just come to some kind of understanding, and despite themselves, the rest of the room was curious.
“It was just you and her, and the price for the stone is a willing sacrifice. A soul for a soul. And of course, you two fought over it, because even when you’re alone, you can’t let the masks drop, so you both had to pretend to be noble so the other person wouldn’t feel guilty about committing suicide. But the thing is, she’d made her decision the second she accepted the inevitable. Like everything she did, it was a power play. Straight truth, Barton,” Stark said, his voice suddenly going gentle and scaring them all witless. “She wasn’t stupid. She knew that if she came back with the Soul Stone, people would vilify her for letting you, the man with a wife and kids, die. Even though you abandoned them to become a terrorist war criminal, they were still your family,” he added, the pointed jab making Steve and Sam wince. Barton went pale, but he still didn’t speak. Sam didn’t think he could, because what Stark was saying made an awful, horrible kind of sense, and the ring of truth could not be ignored.
Then it somehow got worse.
“She also knew how unbalanced people’s emotions were going to be once everything was over — and she understood how precarious your situation really is. If she came back and you didn’t, she’d be the villain for letting a family man sacrifice himself. Worse, and more importantly to her, she’d be arrested, charged, and convicted of war crimes, terrorism, and probably treason. She would go from being a hero to being the moron who made more mistakes than anyone could count and was the main reason all this happened, proving to the world that she wasn’t perfect. And if there’s one thing Natasha Romanova could not stand, it was having to live with the truth of her own failures. Because for all her constant harping about my ego, it was hers — well, and Rogers', but he didn't have a clue how to stop me or effectively work against me; no, that was all Nat, and of course, Fury," he jeered, rage flaring again in his eyes.
"But without her egging him on, I really think he would have listened to me. She is the one that started us all on this path, just because my 'ego had to be kept under control', and since nobody saw the invading fleet but me, it didn't count. And neither did my evidence. She was so fucking arrogant, she honestly believed that she ran the world from the behind the scenes. She was s—when it came down to the wire, she would rather be known as the bride of Satan than be considered unimportant. But that’s exactly what would have happened if she’d come back: first disgrace and infamy, before fading quickly to total insignificance.”
That description had more than a few people snickering, while Steve spluttered an objection that was ignored, to his immense irritation, while Stark leaned in closer to Barton and dropped his voice, making the rest of his explanation feel and sound uncomfortably intimate and meant for Clint’s ears alone.
But they listened anyway.
“By sacrificing herself, she gets to keep being a hero — and a self-sacrificial one at that. While you . . . well, you get to face the consequences of your actions. All of them," Stark explained with a cold, satisfied smile. "But you also get to pay for hers. She isn’t here to lie for you, or to you, much less try to manipulate things behind the scenes. And she doesn’t risk being executed for treason, war crimes, or international terrorism. In this instance, choosing a ‘noble death’ was win-win for her. It saves her reputation and keeps her from ever facing the truth or paying the price for anything she did. She’ll never have to suffer for the crimes she committed, the betrayals she handed out like candy . . . and she’ll never have to watch the faces of the people who trusted her when they’re finally forced to see her for what she really is: a selfish, self-centered, narcissistic, egotistical turncoat who cared for nothing and no one but herself.”
He leaned back, watching with dark satisfaction as the archer floundered, caught in the trap of a truth he couldn’t deny or refute. And in all honesty, it was a truth he’d already known, even though he’d pushed it deep down inside and ignored it as much as he could — which was a lot. Like Rogers, Barton had an uncanny ability to lie to himself. And like Rogers, he did it so well, he believed it even knowing it was a lie. When tears spilled down Clint’s gaunt cheeks, Stark gave him a hateful smile that screamed his issues with Barton hadn’t been forgotten either, before he demolished the last safe place the archer had left to stand.
“Even in death, she chose herself and what was best for her,” Stark breathed, refusing to let Barton look away from his blazing eyes. “She didn’t give a damn about you, any of you, and now she doesn’t have to face the aftermath. Because even if she’s posthumously charged and convicted, she’s dead. It won’t affect her in the slightest. She pulled off one of the best ‘fuck you’ moves I’ve ever seen, and I’ve invented quite a few of them.”
The silence that followed was full of denial, but Stark was relentless. Another careless wave of his hand resulted in JARVIS playing video after video after video of Romanova doing everything Tony had said: lying, gaslighting, manipulating, using, cheating, stealing — and not just to him. She did it to her teammates. She did it to SI employees. She did it to baristas, delivery boys, and random people on the street. Sam was appalled to realize how little of it was needed, but he was beyond horrified when he saw just how much she . . . it was sickening to see how much she enjoyed the game. It was clear just from watching that Romanova rarely considered the option of simply asking for what she wanted, or trying to explain the situation or her specific need. Without fail, she went directly to lies and manipulation.
It took a while for him to really absorb that reality and accept the sheer amount of lies she had fed all of them.
Then he had to process the shock of seeing just how much of her actions had been recorded for accidental evidence and posterity, and once he had gotten past the first stages of both denial and acceptance, he wondered somewhat hysterically why Stark hadn’t done anything, or even spoken up about it . . . until he saw the man try to explain to Steve that making Wanda Maximoff an Avenger was not a good idea for several reasons.
Because Sam saw himself nodding as Stark made his argument, and he suddenly remembered thinking that despite his personal opinion of the man, he had several good points and Sam was in total agreement about not adding Wanda to the team.
Then he saw Nat shift her body language to something that could be best described as 'exhausted mother dealing with autistic toddler' and heard her tell Stark, in a voice so gentle and so condescending that Sam's teeth ached, to quit letting his ego hurt everyone else and that he needed to step up and take the blame for his actions instead of pushing them on the girl who didn’t know any better, especially since he was responsible for the deaths of her family, because unlike him, she hadn’t been raised as the Merchant of Death or gloated about every mistake she made because she knew she was untouchable.
And Sam watched himself switch viewpoints like he was a fucking lamp someone had pulled the cord on and harshly agree with her, forgetting his own misgivings without a second thought.
Nausea rose up so hard and fast, he wasn’t able to stop himself and puked his guts up.
Right in Steve’s lap.
Pepper burst out laughing and so did Spiderman. Stark didn’t, but his eyes were dancing with delight. To his shame, Sam found he couldn’t blame a single one of them, and Steve’s disgusted look didn’t even register. Not after everything he’d learned.
So when Stark jovially announced, “Clint Barton, Scott Lang, Sam Wilson, and Steve Rogers, you are under arrest for international terrorism and war crimes,” he didn’t even try to resist. Naturally, Steve did, but Sam calmly ducked the webs that secured his former leader and then tripped Barton when he tried to run, because like hell was he going to let the archer escape — whether it was physically getting away or pulling a Romanova and using death as his method. The red, white, and blue-colored glasses had finally been shattered and Sam had nothing left.
Including loyalty to people who had lied to him for years.
Because in the back of his mind, he’d been thinking over Stark’s shocking declaration that Barnes had killed his parents and Steve and Nat knew about it . . . and that made way too much sense. There was too much it explained, and even if it didn’t, the lack of objection from Barnes was enough. So was Steve’s mulish, defiant face, even though he’d long since learned to tune him out when he started bleating about how ‘it wasn’t Bucky!’ the second anyone hinted at the man doing something wrong, which in retrospect was also a huge red flag.
Still, as he was hauled to his feet and roughly handcuffed before being frog-marched down the corridors of the Wakandan royal palace, corridors jam-packed with people who were recording and posting every step of the former Avengers’ downfall, Sam couldn’t help but fleetingly envy Nat.
The dead felt no pain.
And from the look on Tony Stark’s face, Sam and his team were in for a lifetime of justified, well-deserved agony.
She had played her hand brilliantly and left the rest of them no choice but to take on her debts and her losses and her sins.
Well-played, Black Widow. Well-played.
~~~
fin