A Place In This World

the magic we give off

A lot of discussion back and forth over the com link. I listen as best as I can, but the air is getting thinner and there's still no way down, not without risking all of our lives. My father and I are still making our way to where Pietro and Wanda have found the others, and I can hear Steve and Natasha talking, voices soft and sad. Natasha's voice.

"Natasha," I say into the com, barely above a whisper. But she hears me. She always does.

"Hi, little archer. You doing alright?" Her voice is like a cat rubbing up against your leg.

I climb up over a wrecked building, its wall broken up against the road, my sights pinpointing her location and the others in the distance. "Never better. It's really good to hear your voice."

"Yours too." The smile is evident in her words.

I smile as well, and I'm scrambling down the other side, sliding to more solid earth, and then I'm running. There's not much debris here since we're rendezvousing near a park, so open space and a few fallen trees and toppled over benches. The ground is flat, and I can see the backs of Steve and Natasha through the open archways that seem to have once led to a fair ground or zoo. Now it's just open air they're staring at.

"Natasha," I call, and she turns, her smile wide.

We crash into each other, and she hugs me tight. Her entire body is rigid, but her face is carefully masked in calm, in ease, like she doesn't want to worry me at all. But I know what's happening, and it's confirmed further when I look at Steve and see he's not hiding his thoughts at all from me. In fact, he nods, answering the question I don't have the courage to ask.

Static fills our ears all of sudden, and Natasha and I step away from each other, thinking its feedback from our com links, but then a familiar voice speaks.

"I hear you're enjoying the view, Agent Romanoff. It's about to get better."

The wind around us picks up, becomes turbulent and wild. I squint against the onslaught and behold an aircraft rise up through the clouds, becoming level with the floating city.

"Nice, right?" Fury says, each word laced with satisfaction. "Pulled her out of some mothballs with a couple of old friends. She's dusty, but she'll do."

Steve, off to my left, chuckles under his breath. "Fury, you son of a bitch."

Some further banter is exchanged with Fury and everyone else, but the hair on my neck rises and I'm suddenly aware of Pietro's presence beside me. He's staring at the aircraft across from us, the Lifeboats for civilian extraction now exiting from the carrier's bay doors. SHIELD had become no more the previous year, for months without any active operatives in the field, everyone forced to find employment elsewhere. Many had been double agents, or so I heard, secretly, as I eavesdropped on my parents' conversation about it one night. Natasha had come to visit us around that time, and I should have known by how drained and down she appeared that something had gone wrong. Everything she had fought so hard to become seemed pointless after learning she had been furthering the agenda of the very people she had once escaped the likeness of before. I had crawled into bed with her that first night she was with us, and in her sleep, she had held me tight.

But Fury still believed it could be rebuilt, and a part of me believes too. Hope shines bright in Pietro's eyes as he turns to look at me.

"This is SHIELD?" he asks.

"This is what SHIELD is supposed to be," I say.

Pietro nods his head, a small smile tugging at his lips. "This is not so bad."

We watch the Lifeboats approach, Tony with the new addition of his longtime friend, Rhodey, in the War Machine suit, ensure the smaller aircrafts arrive safely and none of Ultron's duplicates interfere. Steve directs us where to go next, and I'm teamed up with my dad and Wanda.