Everything hurt. She had taken a hit, sure. Her muscles were sore and overused, yes. But it was far for the reason why everything hurt the way it did.

It all happened so fast.

He wasn't here but five minutes before everyone was down. But besides that, they had won even quicker. The last stone had been destroyed.

Then the bastard cheated. How were they to know he could rewind time. And even after he cheated, Thor killed him. He drove his axe deep into his chest and killed him.

But that didn't stop it from happening.

You should have gone for the head.

The single sentence repeated in everyone's head like a mental disease.

You should have gone for the head.

They had lost. They failed and payed for it.

The room was horribly silent. Natasha looked around at the survivors.

Steve leaned against a wall, staring off into nothingness. Bruce was tinkering with some of Tony's gear. Rhodey joined him. Thor sat silently on one of the seats close to T'Challa's empty throne that not even the the crowned queen, Shuri would sit in. The talking raccoon that had accompanied Thor stayed close to him, too shy to mingle.

The general of the Dora Milaje, which Natasha learn her name was Okoye stood a still as statue behind her king's throne.

No words were exchanged. No eye contact was made. Everyone here had lost their other halves. Most of them again.

Natasha had lost James twice already. Steve lost him twice already. The raccoon considered the tree his son. He had already been down once. And Loki. God, what happened to Loki. Thor has already lost him twice before.

But bedsides all that: there was a time where Tony flew into space and they thought he may never come out. Thanos has turned that nightmare into a reality. She looked around at everybody and realized: they were all old.

All their bodies aged about thirty-five, even though that wasn't quite the case. Steve was a hundred. Natasha was nearly ninety, and Thor was who knows how old. And for Bruce and Rhodey, they were nearly fifty. How were they gonna could back and defeat this?

This was an all out affair. And they lost.

Were they going to come back and defeat this? Was it even an option? They had lost. But was it really for good?

Tears began to well in Natasha's eyes. They were earth's mightiest heroes. They were supposed to protect.

Everyone had came together. Rocket's group, the Guardians of the Galaxy. They couldn't even do that. Tony and the kid, Spider-Man went into space and never came back. Rocket's whole family was gone.

All the horrible emotions washed over her. This world had never done anything for her. But she was obliged to protect it, no matter how difficult the threat. No matter how hard the world made it. She was a fugitive now. They had made her a fugitive.

They only things that had treated her right in this world were Steve and James and.... Clint. She didn't even know it Clint was okay, what if he had turned to ash? What if his family had turned to ash.

Soon enough, she couldn't hold any tears. But she wasn't going to cry in front of the team.

She stood up and left the room and waited until she was out of the way before she started crying. She started to wonder how no one else was in this state, but she had seen Thor cry earlier. Steve will never cry. Rocket's too shy. Rhodey and Bruce hadn't really lost as much personally.

But shouldn't the lost kill them like it was killing her. She was crying so hard that her chest hurt. Her whole body hurt already. A quiet ache.

She looked down to what she had been carrying around since the Dusting.

Her MK 49-91. Her name was engraved in the side. She had never used it. Not once. But someone had. James had. It still had a few rounds in it. She let the tears fall and spread out onto the dark metal.

They had lost. They had really lost. And they paid everything. How could they go on with this information.

"Nat?" Steve asked. Natasha turned to look away and silenced her crying the best she could.

"I left the room for a reason," she told him.

"I know," he said. Nat sniffled.

"Then why did you come?" she asked.

He sighed, heavy with sadness. "I don't want you to be alone," he confided, repeated what she had told him when he lost Peggy. God knows that was a hard day for him. "Is that Bucky's gun?" he asked.

Natasha shook her head. "It's mine. He's just been using it."

Steve nodded, not understanding the whole situation. But she still couldn't face him. But she thought that maybe... maybe she should tell him. James wasn't here anymore. What would it hurt?

Nat took a deep breath. "I—" the words hung in her throat. "Steve, I loved him."

Steve didn't know how to take it. They were just talking about Bucky, but she didn't give him enough information. How could he guessed she was talking about James.

"Bruce?" he guessed.

She shook her head, tears threatening to fall again. And they did. But she could say his name. It was too much. It was an elephant on her chest and she couldn't get it off. She wasn't strong enough. "You loved Tony?" he asked surprised.

"James," she choked out. It hurts so badly.

"Rhodey?" Steve asked, surprised. "That's um..." he trailed off. He knew her better than that. Nat was glad to see him confused. She should have known the he wouldn't know James as James. He knows him as Bucky. Natasha knew better than that.

"Bucky, Steve," Natasha cried out. "I loved Bucky! James Barnes."

She didn't have to look at him to see the gears turning in his head. There was no way for him to know. He didn't know James like she did. And she never wanted him to know that. But maybe he needed to. And she needed someone else to know.

"How?" he said quietly, his focus completely on Natasha.

She took a deep breath and wiped the ears away. "Steve, you didn't know him for 72 year of his life," she told him, the tears coming back up. She hadnt even talked to Clint about want she'd been through. "You weren't there."

Steve was catching on. "Zola said you were born in '83," he said uneasily.

She shook her head. "Try the thirties," she revealed lowly. "S.H.E.I.L.D. let me start over."

"How did you know Bucky?"

She sniffed with a smile. The sweet memories of his life filled her senses. "I never did know Bucky," she told him. He couldn't grasp the truth. He never could. "I know you don't understand, but Bucky died in Siberia. You knew Bucky. I knew Winter Soldier. They never let us know his name."

"Us?" he asked.

"He was a trainer in the Red Room. Where I was trained. I was fifteen and he was a mystery. But he singled me out. Trained me harder than anybody else. He made me the woman I am today. In all the good ways and plenty of bad ones."

Tears were now rimming in Steve's eyes. "Why didn't you ever tell me?"

She sighed shakily, trying not to lose herself. "I didn't want you to be jealous me knowing your best friend. You've been through just as much as me. You lost everyone. Just like I did. James was back for you... It's just something I didn't with to spoil. And besides: It's nothing to be jealous of. Our story..." it was hard for her to continue. "It isn't exactly a bedtime story. And his time was so much worse than mine. I didn't want to hurt you with the information they your friend was alive, even though he wasn't... I didn't want you to know you you friend was still around and you'd never be able to get him back."

"But I did," he counted. "And he was okay."

The pain got too hard to handle. She was crying and she couldn't help it. "I know," she said, another cry triggering. "I couldn't save him the first or the second or even the third time. I didn't even try when I got the chance again. You got him out the fist time. You saved him the second time. You saved him, so you deserve him. And now that he's gone, Steve, I know it hurts but I want you to know that for so many years, he'd rather be dead. He believed in Christ, so he'll be fine, right? You have that forgive and forget thing. And I know he's in a better place, because—even after all he's done—he's the best man I've ever known."

"I... Nat," he trailed off. "What was he like? Did you love an evil man.. or was Bucky somewhere in there?"

Natasha sighed leaning against the wall.

"I didn't care about killing. Who I killed. How I did it. Until I met James—we guessed names until one sounded right. They didn't perfectly have down the memory wiping in the 40's. He was tortured every night. He never slept. So many nightmares and hallucinations and such—side effects from all the mind torture. Yet he was still always there for me. He never told me about what plagued him no matter how much I asked, but he always made sure nothing was hurting me. He gave me a moral compass. I started to care. I started to feel. I started to love. We escaped in the fifties. Lived in London," she stopped, taking a deep breath. "Steve he was such a good man." She pulled out the opal necklace from her pocket. "He was going to marry me and we were going to move out to South America. For a few months—we were on the run, you know. We were free for only months. Then they used his trigger words that we didn't even know about against us. And I lost him for years," she told him.

"Then I escaped. James helped Hank Pym get me out. James saved me all the way from the cryotank that they kept him in. He trained me the way I am to save me, Steve."

A few tears had been shed from Steve, but his beard was sure to hide them. "You never saw him again until 2014?"

"I did," she revealed. But she wasn't going to talk about Howard. She wouldn't talk in detail about 1991. Not after what happened with Tony. If he knew she had been there. . . "A vigilante mission. Someone hired me to protect them from the Winter Soldier. I followed him back to Russia. We were leaving. Then we were compromised. We tried to escape by force. I hid while he shielded me from fire with his arm, but there were too many of him. I thought he died. It rocked me to the core. He took a damn bullet to heart. An entire firing squad got him once. But I swear his hear stopped beating right in front of me. He thought he had died too, I'm sure. Do you know what his dying words were?"

"What?" he choked up, his voice just as thick with sadness now as Natasha's.

Another wave of tears began. "He asked me, 'Who is Steve?'" she told him. She could see him tense up. He was trying not to cry himself. "I didn't know you personally at that time. But I had spent a lot of time away from Hydra. I had seen history books. The museum. The Howling Commandos. Their leader, Captain America and his best friend and right hand man: Bucky Barnes. So I told him. 'Steve was your best friend. Captain America. You went to war and died for him. You followed him to'. He interrupted me because he knew, goddammit, he remembered. He continued and said, 'the end of the line.' He smiled, as weak as I've ever seen him and said, 'Steve. That punk.' Then he was gone. Or so I thought."

Steve breathed in and smiled, blinking away the thick tears. "Jerk," he said more to himself than to Natasha. "You told me about Odessa."

Natasha nodded, the memories of the event flooding back to her. "That was such a hard day for me," she cried. "Steve, he was alive and I couldn't have saved him nearly 15 years prior."

Steve frowned. "You don't need to blame yourself."

Natasha shook her head. "I do blame myself," she cried. "But that's not the worst of it. Steve, I blamed you for all that ever happened. All those years that I knew who he was, I blamed you. It was always you. He got drafted sure. But he was free to leave or persue an office or anything. But he went with you on your suicide missions. He went with you to your war against Hydra. He didn't even want to fight the Nazis. He hated his life as a soldier. And he felt obligated to protect you."

Steve just watched her in understanding. "And when I met you, Steve, I learned to love you like a brother. And when I got to know you," she should her head. "Your just so headstrong. Unchanging. Planted in your opinions. You don't run away from a fight. You love the fight. I can imagine loyal, protective James running all over Brooklyn protecting your provoking ass. And when you big and don't need protecting, he followed you anyway, because he can't get that image of little Steve getting hurt after all that time he invested protecting you. He loved you and he was still gonna protect you, whether he had the strength or not," Natasha told him, anger rising up in her a bit. "The thing I hate the most about it is that I still blame you for Bucky becoming the Winter Soldier. I don't really care if I had met him. His life was worse than anyone's I've ever known."

Steve sniffled, wiping away a falling tear. "You know," he tried. "1943. I liberated that camp. I was looking for Bucky because he went MIA. We got back to a tavern a few days later. The whole group. Dugan, Gabe Jones—"

"The Howling Commandos," summed up Natasha.

"Yeah. They wanted me to put together a team of the best men. But those guys were all I wanted. If I had anything to do with it, yet were the best men. Bucky and Dum Dum Dugan were advanced troops anyway. They would have been suggested. And when I asked, none of them hesitated. Everyone was getting plastered we were all having a good time. Except Bucky. He wasn't sitting with us. He was at the bar with a  few scotches. Looked as bad as I'd ever seen him. But I tried not to focus on that. And I don't even thing a had a second thought that maybe Bucky didn't want to fight. He never told him, but looking back, God it was obvious. I walked in and she smiled at me because he knew that had agreed. 'Told you. They're all idiots' he said to me. Then I asked him. 'What about you?' I asked him. I said, 'Are you ready to follow Captain America into the jaws of death?'

"I didn't even ask him if he wanted to. I asked him if he was ready. 'Hell no' he told him. 'That little kid from Brooklyn that was too dumb not to run away from a fight. I'm following him.'" Steve blinked away the moisture in his eyes. "I've always blamed myself from the moment he fell from that train. And on the bridge. The Lord knows I'll never forget that feeling," he revealed, shaking his head.

"There are just some faults that we have to life with," Natasha said solemnly. "We lost."

A panic washed across Steve. "We lost."

"Steve, what are we going to do?" Natasha asked him, her voice full of dread and regret.

He covered his face with his hands and took a big breath, trying to push away his tears. "I don't know, Nat," he cried. "We failed. There's must be some way to fix it.

Natasha leaned off the wall and wrapped her arms around the super soldier. "I don't know Steve."

"I don't know."

"We could have won," Steve said regretfully.

Natasha nodded. "I know."

"All we needed was Tony."

And it was true. So true and so hard to face that Natasha finally broke down and wrapped her arms into the super soldier, melting into him and letting all her sorrows out. She needed it. And so did he.

A/N: Sorry for all the sad thoughts. Expect the one this weekend!!!