Wanda knew what had happened seconds before Bailey fell, she could just tell with every bone in her body. She could feel the last heartbeat, and inhaled with Bailey's last breath.
Vision had known when Wanda held the shared breath.
It was all very sudden, and she couldn't think straight about it at first. The lingering thought of how it had just... happened. It rested on her shoulder like a guilty devil.
At first she tried to prevent Natasha from going over to the boys, even if she wasn't close to the Red-Head. Yet, she understood the oncoming pain because Bailey was the older sister she never had the chance to have. Family, a rough concept to her as each one eventually left her on the Earth alone, and this was no difference.
When her parents died, she felt like she would have no one left to love her. Parents were supposed to be something you could never live without. They fed you, clothed you, taught you. Very quickly that concept became foreign to her.
Then she learnt that parents weren't the most important aspect of a child's life. Pietro helped her understand that 'as long as you have one person standing by your side, the world fades away, and you can be just as happy as you were before.'
And when Bailey taught her that it was in her right to mourn, be sad, gloom... it only helped her shoot back up twice as strong.
Now who did she have? Now who did Natasha have?
She tried to keep Nat back, away from whatever was happening at the feet of the boys. She vowed to hold the Red-Head at her side, even if they were never as close as they were to the Blonde, and bashed heads multiple times. Even if they were on opposite sides of reasoning for a day.
But her psionic hold would never be able to keep a broken heart from getting to the one they loved when in a crisis. It took one shout sounded from Sam's lungs to give Natasha the only push she needed to break free. The assassin slipped away from Wanda's hold very quickly, and there wasn't much the younger woman could do to prevent the next chain of events that had happen.
Ambulances pulled up, one by one, and people rushed out across the grass. She watched with tired eyes and sore arms, completely drained from the day she had had, and now emotionally drained. For some reason, she didn't feel tears, she didn't feel anything. The loss of her mentor had just brought a shut down on her emotions. She didn't want to open her mouth, move her arms, or even look away from the spot on the wall that she had been staring at for too long.
Her entire state of being became somewhat non-existent, and it was a scary feeling, but at the time she just felt like that was... her.
It might've been the lack of sleep, or the over-use of her powers. She caught a building that afternoon, there was no telling how that could've affected her state, but then her soul crashed into nothingness.
For Clint, it went much worse. He hadn't heard what had happened until the police arrived, and he was carrying Scott Lang across the parking lot to at least attempt an escape- that didn't go as planned.
They were both thrown to the floor, policemen climbing on top of their backs and pulling their arms in an unnatural way to try and cuff them.
His face was pushed against the broken tar, and eyes drawn shut from pure exhaustion from the events of the day. The entire time he just let it happen. With his family on the line, he couldn't afford to get more of a track record today. Clint only prayed her could get let off after negotiations, maybe house arrest.
Celebrities would undergo with house arrests all the time whilst on probation.
So when his head was roughly being pushed to the ground, he didn't really mind, at least until Sam was brought down next to Scott, and then Wanda's legs were kicked as she fell to her knees next to Clint.
His head craned to the side, looking at the Woman who refused to get arrested without checking on her friend, but when the taser came out and the electricity bit harshly at her, not even her willpower could deny it.
Clint winced as she hit the tar, and his puffy eyes barely sent a glare in the officer's direction.
When the simple sentence was exchanged between the American Governmental Officers, his heart fell further towards the Earth's core.
"That them all?"
"Captain and his sidekick got away. Two casualties. Dude with leg paralysis, and the girl didn't make it."
Clint closed his eyes tight, his legs kicked out as he struggled with a cry escaping his lips, and prayers running around his mind. His face pressed into the ground, eyes shutting tightly as the image burned into his head. His kids' favourite aunt, his little sister, someone his entire family cared for including his work family.
His Best Friend's true love.
Bailey... he thought. Please, not Bails.
"You get the Red off her body?" The deeper voice asked.
Clint's eyes stung further, and he could hear the awkward shuffles of his teammates on the ground next to him. Natasha was dealing with this whole death by herself, nowhere near him, not allowing him to comfort her.
He felt the sting in his chest next as it tightened because he placed himself in Tash's shoes, picturing the death of a member of his family, never mind the only family left to love.
"Nah, she's still mourning. Throws a good couple punches too."
And once more, the four hearts on the ground before the officers shattered as they thought about the greatest loss experienced yet, no one feeling as much guilt since Pietro, and no one feeling as honoured since then as well.
You let her go...
No, she flew at her own will. She phased.
Electricity is energy, she would have frozen.
Widows bite. Why didn't you send out a widow's bite?
Guilt ran over and over in Natasha Romanoff's head as she sat at the edge of the bed in the early hours of the next morning.
Her eyes looked swollen, red, and very sunken. She didn't sleep, in fact she couldn't even sit in the same room she once shared with Bailey Baxter.
The large sitting pillows, her drawer, the simple blue toothbrush, the left curtain drawn open but not the right... it all screamed her name, and they screamed either all at once or in the most unexpected moments.
Just when she thought her mind could rest, she would roll over and her hands would touch the coldest sheets, having not been warmed by body heat in so long. The compound was empty; it felt broken, almost as broken as Natasha's heart.
When the sun finally rose, Nat was sitting up already. She had a t-shirt drawn over her body, one that didn't even smell like Bailey because it had just been washed, but it felt exactly like her.
She went for a shower in the common gym showers, she couldn't stand in her own bathroom. Her hair dripped water, splashing onto the puffed up duvet that hasn't been used for the past week or so.
The fact that she would never see her favourite smile walk through the doors once more, never taste the sweet coffee that had way too many sugar packets but kept her awake, and never get shouted at again for her habit of talking with a mouthful of toothpaste, the facts brought unmistakable pain to her.
Memories flickered, and they flickered painfully.
Nat could only scrunch up Bax's favourite jacket in her hands (which was actually Natasha's jacket first), crunching the crisp edges of the burnt out hole right in the shoulder piece. The inside pockets were barely touched, and the crumbled pictures had already been reopened by Natasha when she had first gotten hold of the jacket.
In fact, it was the main reason she sent out searching for the leather piece in the first place.
She wanted to touch the roses for a final time, try to remember Bailey's voice as she explained why their niece would constantly draw them over and over, and why the simple red would bring the biggest smile to the white teeth.
Natasha realised she hadn't spoken much to the outside world, regarding it had only been one evening since the biggest heartbreak of her life. Nat still hadn't rung up Bay's best friend.
The cracked phone now laid on the bedside table, the last few notifications from a contact saved as Emma.
The woman had obviously seen the news and tried to get in contact with Bailey when they landed in Germany... She didn't get the chance to warn her to stay safe, or shout at her for the last time, maybe even the small mention of how Bly was coping in the world.
How was she supposed to break the news to a best friend who never had a last conversation?
How was she supposed to accept the news of someone who had been in her life almost every hour was suddenly, well, just not there anymore?
It was a large concept to understand, it was something major to get used to.
Two years ago, Natasha had no one. Then she met a pretty, tall blonde that bounced around everywhere, smiled and made jokes, and pretended she was good at hand-to-hand combat when in reality she sucked more than the average agent. But, Bax continued to wake up every morning and try to improve. She tried to make each joke greater than the last, bring a bigger smile to Natasha's face, train to carry a larger weight... and never enough time spent with that who she loves.
Did Natasha take her sweet time for granted? Somehow, she felt even if she had concentrated more time on Bailey, it would always feel like it had never been enough.
Unfortunately, the death was something she never expected even if their career status practically means that death was always peering around the corner. She just never imagined it would be the cause to lose a bright soul, considering there had been only near-death experiences.
Maybe the luck of the team had finally caught up with them, after all that had happened it was about time they realised the worse consequences than a broken bone or a failed escape plan. Now, it was more than certain that superheroes have lives and they are just as easy to lose and miss as the normal ones around them.
And through it all, Natasha only got sadder and sadder. She hated being like everyone else, and feeling the pain of loss.
And with the shaking chest, she breathed one of her hardest breaths. Because breathing is hard when you cry so much, as you realise you can't just scream out loud forever and need to take in the air to continue living the pain. Breathing is hard, and it stings the chest as it racks over and over. Breathing is hard, when the one you love isn't breathing next to you.
Tony passed by Vision who was watching a window, to a spot by the glass where he could see his best-friend more clearly.
James Rhodes was being sent into an MRI scan. His soft breath being picked up with each scan as he tried his hardest not to move the parts of his body which weren't needed to be scanned.
"How did this happen?" Tony asked Vision, voice soft and vulnerable and near a crack due to the tears in his eyes.
"I became distracted," The Vision whispered back, shamefully.
Tony spluttered, shaking his head, "I didn't think that was possible."
Vision looked into his torn apart eyes, and saw the true disappointment that reflected. Tony didn't care about how Vision could feel for a crush, he didn't care if the robot could feel at all. When Tony looked at him, all Vision could see from the blue eyes was the very same cold stare that was caused from him.
Tony believed he was the cause of it as well.
"Neither did I," Vision confessed, admitting to his disappointment and confusion as well.
Tony just gasped for a quick breath, locked his hands in a fist as his eyes shut tight. With a swift turn around, he left the room and the atmosphere of guilt behind.
His left arms was strapped up in a blue sling, so he could only ruffle around his hair with the other hand. His eyes blurred and refocused a number of times as he blew out air, not paying attention to the world around him, and taking a while before noticing the dainty figure that stood a little way down the hallway.
His eyes drew upwards to meet the reddened-green, and dishevelled red-hair that came to visit the Colonel before his scan, but unfortunately was too late to give him a couple of encouraging words.
Tony's eyes showed sympathy and his own loss, but Nat's held her betrayal and fear as she stared at him.
Tony gave a flick of his tongue on his lips, and a quick glance to the floor, before nodding his head to the side balcony of the compound for them to chat. Nat followed in suit, insecurely wrapping her arms around her body as she trailed own the white hallway to the glass railing. She gently leaned her elbows on top of it, hands tightly squeezing her forearms as she braved her voice to speak.
"He's gonna be okay," she assured mainly for herself, rather than the man she couldn't bear to look in the eyes.
"The doctors say he shattered L4 through S1," Tony rambled in a foreign language to the woman who could speak several. "Extreme laceration to the spinal cord. Probably looking at some form of paralysis."
A mourning silence fell between the two of them, both trying to ignore the elephant in the room and rather tip-toe around the topic.
"Steve's not gonna stop," Nat croaked out, justifying her actions she previously endured.
"If you don't either..." her voice cracked, and eyes tightened from the choice of her next words as she hesitated with a shaken breath, "Rhodey's gonna be the best case scenario."
Tony didn't join her gaze, and rather focused down on the ground below as the words sunk in, "You let them go, Nat..." he whispered, reasoning that without the escape, no one would've had to gone after the quinjet.
Bailey wouldn't have had to go after him and Rhodes.
"How is this my fault?" Nat broke a small amount more, "We played this wrong."
She didn't have the energy to shout at him, and she knew deep down she felt as guilty about the death and was pinning it on her fault as Tony was trying to do.
"'We'? Boy it must be hard to shake the whole double agent thing, huh? It sticks in the DNA," Tony scoffed and shook his head, biting at his lip.
Nat was utterly surprised and taken back by his statement, left completely disadvantaged and the feeling of a stab in her back lingering.
"How..." her lips stuttered, head furiously shaking and eyes brimming with the tears that never seemed to leave her eyes, "How dare you. Are you incapable of letting go of your ego for one goddamn second?"
Tony's jaw locked. "T'Challa told Ross what you did, so..." he swallowed and nodded softly, "They're coming for you."
"I'm not the one who needs to watch their back," she shot back, complete and utter disbelief for how quickly he had changed his moods and turned the table right around.
"I feel the threat; is that because everyone you grow attached to ends up either leaving you or dead?" he asked back, letting the fire fuel up higher.
"Don't," she whispered.
"'Don't' what, Nat? It's just the reality if this hell of situation. She's gone." His hands clenched, anger building up in the pit of his stomach. His own form of mourning.
"I may give myself some blame, but I give you too," she glared at him.
"Call me the murderer? Rich, coming from the assassin who took all the wrong turns before she ended up where she's at now."
"What does my pst have to do with any of this?"
"That you know damn well how it feels to carry guilt, or do you even feel that anymore?"
"Next time... before you lose the only people that care about you, let the dying girl be saved before you shoot the one willing to catch her," she blurted out, pushing away from the glass railing and storming without a second glance back, She didn't care if her words made any effect on Tony Stark, only wanting to run away before she's seen so vulnerable again.
Tony watched her go, regret immediately filling his eyes as he saw her shoulders drop and the hands pull at her hair as she tried to hold in the wail wanting to pour out. He took a step forward to follow after, her name just about to fall out of his lips before his wrist watch beeped to life with a notification.
"What am I looking at, FRIDAY?" he asked, looking down to the blue hologram that emitted from the screen.
"Priority upload from Berlin Police."
He stared down at the image of the dead man in a hotel tub, his entire life description flashing on the side; Including was his name, occupation, and exactly where last he was supposed to appear.
His head raised, and eyes focused on the distance as the regret fell further down onto his shoulders. He wanted to swear, shout, and more than ever to call Natasha back.
"Fire up the chopper."