The Year of Ghosts

by Rambling Ghost (GhostMeetsWorld)

Summary:

Bob was doing okay. He was sober, had a roof over his head, and had people he could call friends. What more could a guy like him ask for?

Not to be stuck surrounded by living ghosts in a tower that was not quite his own while just trying to drink his coffee would be nice. Too much to ask for? Sure, of course... Why is this his life now...

Notes:

I'm a sucker for time travel tropes and just rewatched Thunderbolts, so you know how it is :)

I am in love with Bob and Yelena's dynamic. This can probably be read as either platonic or romantic, but in my heart, they are in a QPR <3

Enjoy!

Bob was doing okay, or at least as well as someone like him could manage. The world wasn’t always kind, his mind even less so, but for once, he’d managed to stitch together something resembling stability. He was sober. He slept more nights than he didn’t. The gnawing edge of loneliness had dulled now that he had a roof over his head and people he could call friends.

The Watchtower wasn’t home in the traditional sense, but it was more than four walls and a bed. It was laughter echoing down hallways, the scent of burnt coffee in the kitchen, and the soft reassurance that if he faltered, if the darkness pressed too hard, he wouldn’t be left to drown alone. The Thunderbolts—still clinging to the name in private even after Valentina proclaimed them the New Avengerz—were rough around the edges, but they’d taken him in without demanding perfection. For Bob, that was enough, more than enough. With the Thunderbolts around, Bob finally felt like maybe “family” wasn’t just a word other people got to have, maybe it was something he could keep too.

And then there was Yelena.

She cut through the noise of his thoughts like sunlight forcing its way into a shuttered room. She was sharp, stubborn, and infuriating at times, but she carried a steadiness Bob found himself leaning on before he even realized he was doing it. Yelena didn’t flinch when the darker parts of him surfaced and didn’t treat him like glass or like a bomb waiting to go off. She was just there—real, unshakable, and grounding.

Her presence slipped into his life like air—something he didn’t notice at first, but realized he couldn’t live without. With Yelena around, the bad days didn’t feel so endless. The nightmares still came, but they didn’t leave him stranded. And the thought of losing her—it wrapped around his chest like barbed wire, sharp and suffocating, terrifying in a way that eclipsed anything the Void could ever whisper to him.

It was part of the reason Bob often found himself outside her door in the middle of the night. He’d stand there, hovering, his shoulders hunched like he was trying to disappear in on himself. His hands would shake, his shaggy hair falling forward to hide his face as he debated whether to knock. Sometimes he’d build up the courage, rapping softly against the wood like a child afraid of waking the house. Other times, before he could even move, the door would creak open and Yelena would be standing there—barefoot, bleary-eyed, sighing in mock annoyance. She never scolded him. She never asked why. She just opened the door wider and jerked her head toward the bed.

Her room wasn’t particularly warm or inviting—bare walls, practical furniture—but once he was inside, it became the safest place Bob knew. They would climb under the blankets without ceremony, their bodies finding each other in small, almost clumsy ways. Shoulders brushing. Fingertips grazing. Just enough to remind themselves that the other was real, present, alive.

They rarely spoke during those nights. Words weren’t necessary. Instead, Yelena’s hand would find its way into his curls, combing gently until his breathing slowed and the tremors in his chest quieted. Sometimes he would fall asleep with his head tucked against her shoulder, sometimes facing the other way but still close enough to feel the steady rise and fall of her chest. And when the fear was too much—when the panic pushed past silence—he would inch closer, pressing himself against her as though he could bury himself in her skin and never be alone again.

In those moments, there was always something desperate in the way he clung to her. His hands would grip too tightly, his body curling around hers like she might shatter if he let go, though it was almost always him who was breaking. And every time, Yelena held firm, solid and unshakable, like she’d been built to bear the weight of someone else’s storms.

The mornings after were always a strange balance of comfort and chaos. They would shuffle out of her room with wrinkled shirts and tangled hair, shoulders brushing as though reluctant to put space between them. John was always waiting with some smug, half-baked comment. It didn’t matter if they emerged at six in the morning or noon—he’d raise his brows, lean against the doorway, and drawl out something crass enough to make Bob’s ears burn.

Ava never said much—just hid a smirk behind her cup of tea, eyes glinting knowingly over the rim like she’d seen it all before. Bucky didn’t even look up from his plate most days, grunting that he didn’t care and repeating it for emphasis whenever John tried to drag him into the conversation.

Yelena never missed a beat. She had a retort ready every time—sharp, fast, and scathing enough to leave John muttering under his breath. Sometimes she’d toss a pillow at his head. Sometimes she’d simply wave him off with a withering glare that shut him up faster than any words could. She handled it with the same iron steadiness she handled everything else.

Bob, though—Bob was a mess. His face would flush crimson as soon as John opened his mouth, hands fluttering uselessly as if he could wave away the implication. He’d sputter out denials, stammer about how it wasn’t like that, all while refusing to meet anyone’s eyes. The harder Yelena leaned into her sarcasm, the more he fumbled, and the louder Ava’s hidden laughter became.

Yet despite the teasing and his embarrassment, Bob never stopped showing up at her door on the nights when the dark pressed in too close. And Yelena never stopped opening it. 

It was one of those mornings, the kind that blurred together in comforting familiarity, when it happened. Bob and Yelena shuffled out of her room together, ignoring John’s raised brows and Ava’s faint smirk. By now, it was routine.

Bob settled onto the couch, a heavy blanket draped over his shoulders like armor. He wrapped both hands around a steaming mug of coffee, inhaling the sharp bitterness before taking a slow sip. The smell grounded him, warm and real. From the kitchen came the familiar clash of voices: Yelena firing sharp, deadpan quips while John threw back louder, more obnoxious comebacks, spatulas clattering as he tried not to burn breakfast.

The rest of the tower moved at its usual pace. Bucky was a few levels down, the dull thud of punches carrying faintly up through the floors. Alexei was still dead to the world, snoring like a chainsaw. Ava sat curled in an armchair, flipping absently through channels, the flicker of the TV washing pale light across her face. It was ordinary. Predictable. Comforting in its mundanity.

Until it wasn’t.

Bob blinked. Once, slow, tired. And then again. The second time, the world shifted. The hum of voices vanished mid-sentence. The television screen went dark. The smell of burnt toast that hung in the air disappeared like smoke in the wind. In an instant, everyone was gone.

The sensation wasn’t the same as slipping into the Void—there was no crushing shadow, no whisper gnawing at the back of his skull—but it was close enough to set his nerves on fire. His first thought was panic, the automatic certainty that somehow, someway, it had gotten loose. What else could explain blinking and finding the tower empty around him?

Bob’s knuckles whitened against the mug, the dull ceramic warming his palms, but he didn’t let go. His chest tightened as if the air had thinned, heart racing in erratic, frantic stutters. He blinked again, harder this time, trying to force the world back into place. But the silence only deepened. No shadows. No voices. Nothing.

Just him.

“Sir,” a posh British voice rang out, sharp enough to cut through the stillness. Bob whipped his head around so fast his neck twinged, eyes darting wildly, but there was no one. Just the empty common room and the half-drained coffee cooling in his hands.

“You are not permitted to be here,” the disembodied voice continued with mechanical calm. “Please state your name and business.”

Bob’s brain stalled, the words tangling up before they could form. His tongue felt too heavy, his throat too dry.  “I’m… I’m Bob,” he managed finally, voice cracking like he’d forgotten how to speak. “I live here?”

The words hung hollow in the air, as though even the room itself didn’t believe him. The gears in his head spun too fast, overdrive making everything worse—logic slipping through his fingers like sand. He couldn’t understand what was happening. He couldn’t even breathe right.

His wide brown eyes flicked around the room in withdrawn disbelief. It was still the Watchtower, but it wasn’t. Everything was wrong. The clutter was gone, replaced with a sterile neatness that felt alien. The mountain of blankets he and Yelena always kept on the couch had vanished, and the couch itself wasn’t the same—sleeker, darker, with sharp lines instead of sagging cushions. The little details were all off. The mug tree by the sink. The dent in the coffee table where Alexei had once slammed his fist down while watching “American football”. The pile of books Ava and Bucky swore they were going to get through. All of it—erased.

Bob’s breathing turned shallow. The silence pressed in on him like a physical weight, the kind of silence that hummed in his ears until it felt like his head might split open. Then—

Click.

The sound of a gun cocking cracked through the air, sharp and merciless. Bob flinched so hard it jolted through his whole body, a visceral, instinctive reaction that made him fold in on himself. His grip faltered. The mug slipped from his hands, shattering against the floor. Hot coffee splashed across his bare feet, but the sensation barely registered over the thundering panic in his chest.

“Don’t move.”

The command was flat, deadly, and so familiar it rooted him in place more effectively than any weapon could have.

Bob’s eyes darted up, heart crawling into his throat as a figure stepped into view—red hair tied back, pistol leveled at his chest, gaze colder than ice.

Natasha Romanoff.

Bob had heard stories about Natasha. Everyone had. The world painted her as a legend, a shadow in red who left broken empires in her wake and saved the world. But it was the smaller stories, the personal ones, that lingered with him the most. The ones where the famous Black Widow was talked about with love and called Natalia.

Alexei told them the loudest. He would throw his head back, laughter booming as he reenacted some half-exaggerated adventure from his daughters’ youth. His arms would flail for emphasis, his voice filling the room until it felt too small to contain him. But Bob noticed the cracks. The way Alexei’s gaze would glaze over for a beat too long, and the way his grin would wobble before he steadied it with another joke. Beneath the bluster was grief, heavy and undeniable, softened only by his need to keep Natalia alive in memory.

Yelena’s stories were different. They weren’t grand or embellished; they came in fragments. A remark made in the middle of cooking dinner. A quiet confession after nightmares left them wrapped in each other’s arms. A smile that looked more like a wound when she mentioned how Natalia used to braid her hair. Her stories were tender and raw, spoken as if saying them too loudly might break something fragile between them.

Bob always listened. He didn’t interrupt, didn’t press. He simply gave her space to spill pieces of her sister into the air, like sacred offerings that had to be handled gently. Over time, he began to piece together a mosaic of a woman he had never met—a woman fierce and protective, who carried the weight of impossible choices but still managed to love her family fiercely.

But staring at Natalia from across the room, alive and well in all her glory with a guarded look in her eye and a gun pointed at his chest, Bob realized that none of that could have ever prepared him for this. 

She was supposed to be gone. She was gone. He had watched Yelena bleed grief into the cracks of her life, had sat through Alexei’s thunderous laughter that barely disguised his sorrow, and had felt the shape of Natalia’s absence in every quiet moment Yelena didn’t want to admit she was missing her sister. Yet, here she stood, breathing, sharp-eyed, very much alive—looking at him as though he were the ghost.

“...Natalia?” The name slipped from his lips before he could catch it. Yelena’s voice had carved it into him in countless repetitions, each syllable spoken with reverence, with longing, with a grief too raw to fade. He said it the way she always had, in perfect Russian pronunciation, his tongue wrapping around the syllables with a care he hadn’t even realized he’d practiced.

The effect was immediate. Natalia’s posture shifted like a trap snapping shut. What had been guarded a moment ago became something lethal, her body tensing as if every instinct screamed at her to strike. Her eyes narrowed to slits, hard and unyielding, and her grip on the gun tightened by a fraction. “How do you know that name?” Her voice was low, dangerous, like the scrape of steel drawn from a sheath.

Bob swallowed thickly, the motion loud in the suffocating silence. His mouth was dry, words sticking like glue to the back of his throat.

“Sorry,” he eventually croaked out, voice teetering on the edge of hysteria. “Is…is this real?”

He certainly didn’t think it was. His mind spun, grasping for sense in the chaos. It had to be some Void-concocted hallucination, a trick meant to unravel him. He knew things had been too good recently, too stable. This was the breaking point, the snap. Any second now, the walls would melt, the floor would give way, and the nothingness would swallow him back up. The others would come for him. Yelena would come for him. She always did.

Natalia’s face pinched at his words, but before she could respond, the sharp rhythm of booted footsteps thundered closer. Bob’s stomach dropped as two figures strode into view like they’d walked out of a history book and onto the Watchtower floor.

Steve-god-damn-Rogers. Shield at the ready, shoulders squared, his gaze scanned the room with soldier-sharp precision, quickly locking in on Bob. And next to him was Tony-fucking-Stark, his hands flicking with restless energy, eyes narrowed with razor suspicion. His presence was a spark in the air, too alive, too there.

Bob’s head spun. He stumbled back a step, nearly tripping over his own feet, eyes darting from Natasha’s gun to Steve’s shield to Tony’s smirk curling in place like a blade.

“You…you’re all supposed to be dead,” Bob blurted, his voice climbing high and breathless. His chest heaved, lungs too tight, panic clawing up his throat. “Am I dead? Did…did I die? Is this like Hell or something? No—no, Captain America wouldn’t go to Hell.” His hands flew up, trembling, clutching his hair. “Oh, God—”

“Whoa! Slow your roll, Bambi,” Stark cut in, voice snappy but almost amused, like Bob’s meltdown was just another Tuesday for him. “You’re not dead, we’re not dead, and unless I’ve been very misinformed, this isn’t Hell. Besides, Rogers here could pass for a choir boy, so maybe you’re a tad confused.”

Steve shot Tony a sharp look but didn’t lower the shield. His steady blue eyes locked on Bob like he was one wrong move away from proving himself a threat. Natasha didn’t so much as twitch, her gun still aimed, jaw tight as iron.

Bob’s knees wobbled, his heart thundering out of rhythm. His voice cracked again as he whispered, half to himself, half to the impossible people in front of him: “This isn’t real. This can’t be real…”

“How did you get in here, son?” Steve’s voice cut cleanly through Bob’s spiral, calm but commanding, like a hand yanking him back from the edge.

“I…I live here,” Bob stammered, though it sounded even less convincing the second time. His throat tightened around the words. “Or…a place like this? The tower…the Watchtower.” His eyes flicked around the room, darting from the sleek metal finishes to the glass panels, to the couch that wasn’t their couch. His hands wrung together in front of him, twisting so hard his knuckles ached. “With…with my team.”

Steve’s expression didn’t change, but the weight behind his stare was enough to make Bob’s stomach flip. Beside him, Tony cocked his head, lips pursed, already rifling through possibilities with that razor brain of his. They shared a glance—silent, sharp, the kind of communication forged in too many battles fought side by side.

“My sensors show he appeared out of thin air, Sir,” the British voice rang out again, polished but unyielding. It made Bob’s skin crawl and his pulse jump. He flinched like the AI might physically materialize out of nowhere.

Tony’s eyes narrowed, gaze sweeping Bob up and down like he was a schematic that needed solving. “Yeah, I got that, J,” he muttered, dismissing the voice with an easy familiarity. Then his focus sharpened, pinning Bob in place.

“This is Avengers Tower,” Tony said, voice steady but edged with steel, every syllable deliberate. He gestured broadly to the polished room around them, as though the walls themselves proved his point. “Not the knock-off Hall of Justice, Kid. People don’t just pop up in here uninvited.”

“I…sorry?” Bob offered weakly, his voice thin and wavering. He was still teetering on the edge of a breakdown, every muscle twitching with nervous energy that begged for release. His wide eyes flickered back toward Natalia—Natasha, alive and lethal—taking in the hard set of her jaw, the sharp focus of her gaze, the way her finger hovered just a little too comfortably on the trigger. His stomach sank.

“Uhh, can…can you lower the gun?” Bob asked, hands lifting slightly in surrender. His words tumbled out, clumsy and halting. “I don’t want to umm…hurt you guys…”

Steve’s head tilted, blue eyes narrowing, catching the dangerous implication in Bob’s stumble. Tony, predictably, latched onto it like a shark catching the faintest whiff of blood.

“Hurt us?” Stark repeated, brows shooting up. His smirk was thin and humorless. “Big talk from someone sulking around my tower in his pajamas. Newsflash, Bambi: if you think you can take me, you’re about five Iron Man suits and a caffeine drip short of a chance.”

Bob winced, shoulders curling in on themselves as if he could make himself smaller, safer. “No, no, I didn’t—I mean, I wouldn’t. I didn’t mean it like that.” His words came in rushed bursts, tripping over one another in panic. “It’s just—it happens sometimes, when I get scared, or when things…slip. I don’t always control it.”

That pulled the tension in the room even tighter. Natasha didn’t so much as blink, and her gun didn’t lower an inch. Steve shifted subtly, shield angling just a little higher, muscles coiled beneath his shirt. Tony’s gaze sharpened to a razor point, studying Bob as if he might crack open with enough pressure.

“What exactly slips?” Steve asked, tone quiet but carrying the weight of authority that left no room to dodge.

Bob’s lips parted, but his throat closed up, the words catching like thorns. His hands trembled violently now, pressed against his chest as though he could physically hold himself together. He wanted Yelena. He wanted her steady hands and her dry voice that would’ve told him to breathe and that he wasn’t losing it, that she had him.

Instead, all he had were three ghosts staring him down like he was the threat—and maybe he was.

The air hummed, thick with unease. Then the lights above flickered—once, twice—before stabilizing again.

Bob swallowed hard, eyes darting upward, muttering, “Oh, not now…”

That earned him a trio of sharper stares.

Tony crossed his arms, his expression shifting. “Okay, Bambi,” he said slowly, “why do I get the feeling you’re about to make my day a lot more complicated?”

Unfortunately, Stark was right. It was about to get more complicated. 

And for the second time that morning, a person materialized in the Avenger’s common room. The air seemed to fold in on itself, and then there she was: a flash of blonde hair, a sharp figure mid-step, as though she’d been walking through a door and stumbled into another world.

Yelena’s feet hit the floor with a grace that spoke of muscle memory and endless training, but her face betrayed her—a flicker of panic poorly concealed behind grit. Her head whipped around, eyes scanning the foreign room with lightning precision, every nerve screaming that this wasn’t right.

Then her gaze landed on him.

“Bob!” The name burst from her like an anchor thrown overboard—heavy, desperate, and relieved all at once.

Bob’s lungs finally remembered how to work, dragging in air that burned down to the bottom of his chest.

“You just disappeared! Ava said you fwooshed away.” Her Russian accent curled around the words like a thick blanket. It was almost a comfort in itself. “You can’t do that to me.” 

She was moving before anyone could think to stop her, cutting across the expanse of the room in long, purposeful strides. Her hands were on him in an instant, sweeping over shoulders, arms, face, chest—a rapid inspection, practiced and unyielding, as though her touch alone could tell her what he wasn’t saying. She pressed too firmly at his ribs, tugged his chin up to check his pupils, fingertips grazing over his knuckles. Searching for damage, for proof that he hadn’t been torn apart and put back together wrong. “You all right?”

Bob could sob in relief, his body sagging under the sheer weight of her presence. His trembling hand closed over her wrist, clinging as though she were the only solid thing left in the world.

“Yelena…”

The sound of her name was almost broken, a prayer given shape.

The room itself seemed to shift around them in response. Steve tensed, stepping forward with controlled caution, every line of his body screaming readiness. Natasha froze like she’d been struck, her breath hitching sharp enough that Bob almost heard it. Her eyes narrowed into slits as they locked on Yelena, and though her gun dipped slightly, her finger didn’t move from the trigger.

Tony, of course, was the first to speak, eyebrows climbing as he waved vaguely between Bob and Yelena. “Okay, great—now it’s two strays. What, is this like a buy-one-get-one deal?”

Yelena’s head snapped toward him, her eyes narrowing, unimpressed. They flicked to Rogers next, her sharp gaze raking him up and down as if measuring how many seconds it would take to put him on the ground if he made a wrong move. But when her gaze finally found Natasha—her sister, alive, standing just feet away—her bravado cracked.

Color drained from her face. Her lips parted soundlessly, and for a moment, the fearless Black Widow looked like the younger sibling she so rarely let herself be.

“Bob…” Her voice was rough, strangled, almost too small. Her grip on his sleeve tightened. “What is this?”

Bob shook his head, curls falling into his eyes, voice splintering under the weight of it. “I…I don’ know…” He swallowed hard, clutching her arm tighter like she might vanish if he let go. His eyes darted around the room, back to the impossible faces staring at them. “But I think it’s real…”

The words seemed to hang there, heavy and undeniable, making the air feel too thin to breathe.

“Who are you?” Natasha’s voice cut through the thick silence, low and dangerous. Her whole body was coiled like a tightly wound spring, every muscle taut and finger steady on the trigger.

Bob opened and closed his mouth wordlessly, breath stuttering, his voice caught in his throat. He didn’t know how to answer—what truth would even make sense here?

Before he could fumble it, Yelena stepped forward, angling herself between Bob and the gun. The act was almost laughable, with him being the bulletproof one and all, but her body language left no room for argument. Her shoulders squared, chin lifted, and eyes sharpened with defiance.

“It’s me.” The words left her like a challenge, steady but trembling at the edges. “You know who I am, Natalia.” Her voice rasped with something raw she couldn’t quite smother, an ache trying to masquerade as strength.

For the briefest second, Natasha’s mask cracked. A flicker of pain flashed across her face, so fast Bob almost thought he imagined it—but it was there, the shadow of a wound that had never healed.

“You know her, Nat?” Steve’s voice broke in, confusion layering over his usual calm. He glanced between the two women, his shield lowered but still ready, brow furrowed as though trying to untangle a knot that didn’t want to come undone.

Neither sister spared him a glance. They stared at each other with a weight that could have crushed stone, a silent test of wills, a battlefield built from a million unsaid things. The room itself seemed to still around them, even Tony—mouth open with a sarcastic quip locked and loaded—shut it again, sensing he’d stumbled into something bigger than banter.

Bob swallowed thickly, his throat dry as dust. He shifted closer to Yelena, needing her nearness as much as he feared what would come next. His eyes darted nervously around the room, finally landing back on Steve as though he needed to explain, needed someone else to understand.

“Umm…they’re sisters,” he murmured, the words quiet, almost reverent.

The revelation hit the room like a crack of thunder. Steve’s expression sharpened, shock written clear in the furrow of his brow. Tony’s eyes widened before narrowing, suspicion giving way to interest as his mind began to work overtime.

“...Lena?” The name cracked through Natasha’s lips like it had been torn straight from her heart, raw and unwilling.

“Hey, sis…” Yelena’s voice softened, no longer the hardened mask she tried to wear but something unbearably human and trembling at the edges. Her eyes darted briefly to Bob, then back to Natasha. “I think Bob and I are a little far from home, yeah?” The words were meant as levity, a joke to cut through the impossible tension, but the weight of them only made the silence heavier. 

For a moment, Natasha didn’t even breathe. Her gaze swept Yelena’s face, tracing every detail, like she was afraid this was a mirage—some cruel trick spun from smoke. Her lips parted as if to speak, but nothing came out.

Steve’s confusion deepened, his jaw tightening as his eyes flicked between the two women. “Nat, you want to explain how—”

“Not now,” Natasha snapped, sharper than she intended. Her voice carried the crack of a whip, but her eyes never left Yelena’s. The gun she still held wavered further, fully pointed at the ground now.

Bob, caught in the fragile space between them, felt like an intruder on something private, something raw. It was like watching a wire pulled taut, seconds from snapping. His throat ached with the weight of it. He clutched tighter at Yelena’s sleeve, grounding himself before the sheer gravity of the moment swallowed him whole.

“Well,” Tony murmured, arms crossing as his gaze flicked from Yelena to Bob and back again, “not to intrude on the family reunion—which, by the way, is a whole other issue. Silly me for thinking Barton was the only one hiding a secret family. But I would still very much like to know how Blondie and Wonder Boy here just spawned into my tower like it’s amateur hour at Hogwarts.”

His quip hung in the air, sharp and ill-timed. No one seemed particularly pleased with the interruption, but he made a good point. The silence that followed was thick, broken only by Bob’s uneven breathing and the low hum of the tower around them.

Yelena straightened slowly, her jaw tightening as she pulled herself away from the daze of seeing Natasha alive. Her eyes flicked from Stark to Rogers, then back to her sister. She took a breath, steady but thin at the edges. “What year is it?” she asked, her accent wrapping tightly around the words.

Steve frowned, taken aback by the question. His brow furrowed, suspicion digging deeper into his features. “What year…? It’s 2016.” His voice carried the authority of someone who rarely had to second-guess himself, but there was a note of caution beneath it, as if he was suddenly aware that every word mattered.

The fluorescent lights above them stuttered—once, twice—throwing shadows across the walls before steadying again. Bob’s breath hitched audibly at the same time, a sharp, ragged sound that drew every eye to him. His curls stuck damp against his forehead, his wide eyes darting between the heroes like a cornered animal. He pressed closer to Yelena’s side, knuckles whitening around the fabric of her sleeve.

Yelena reacted instantly. Her head snapped toward him, and her body shifted with the fluid instinct of someone who had learned long ago to shield first and question later. She angled herself between him and every possible threat, her posture screaming lethal protectiveness. “Bob?” she breathed, low and urgent, meant to anchor him and hold him steady by sheer force of will.

He shook his head in a jerky motion, curls bouncing into his eyes. His throat bobbed as he tried, and failed, to swallow down the panic. The words scraped out of him like broken glass, brittle and raw. “That’s… wrong,” he rasped, voice cracking under the strain. “That’s not right.”

The weight of his declaration dropped like an anvil, pressing the room into suffocating stillness. Even the hum of the tower’s power seemed quieter, more distant, as though the world itself was straining to hear. Natasha’s eyes narrowed, her brows knitting together, confusion and suspicion warring beneath her carefully constructed exterior. Her gaze darted between Yelena and the trembling man clinging to her sleeve, calculating and dissecting.

Tony, of course, was again the first to break the silence, though his usual levity rang brittle at the edges. “Okay, so… we’re all just ignoring the part where Bambi here looks like he’s about to pass out and Blondie’s auditioning for Doctor Who?” He flicked a hand between the pair, the humor sharp and biting. “Because I’d really love it if someone explained what’s going on before my tower turns into a revolving door for unstable mystery guests.”

His quip didn’t draw a single laugh. Natasha didn’t even glance at him. Instead, she moved—one deliberate step forward, her gun limp at her side but her presence no less commanding. 

Her voice was colder than the steel she carried, though quieter now, like ice spreading beneath the surface. “Yelena,” she said, her eyes fixed on her sister, the name alone holding a thousand unsaid things. “Why would you ask that? What year do you think it is?”

Yelena’s jaw clenched, the muscle in her cheek twitching as if she were grinding back everything she wanted to say. Her hand stayed firm on Bob’s shoulder, steady and protective, grounding them both. Her eyes lifted to Natasha’s, meeting her sister stare for stare, and the silence stretched before she finally spoke. 

“Where we come from,” she said, voice low and deliberate, “it’s 2028…” Her words trailed, her throat working once before she forced the rest out. “And all of you are dead…” 

Notes:

Oop. That's all, folks!

I might make another part eventually if people are interested...