"Nobody is immortal."

Thor looks at Clint with something like pity in his eyes, but something else, too.

"We Asgardians like to think we are. But if that were true, Valhalla would be empty and I would not have to mourn the loss of most of my people."

Clint shakes his head. He's been doing that a lot lately, he knows. It's become almost a tic.

"No, that can't be. She was taken by an infinity stone. Not some parlour trick. Infinity - that's got to mean something. And that red dude? He was older than Cap, minus seven decades in cryo sleep. So, if she went because of the soul stone, another one of those things should be able to bring her back."

His voice peters out. Thor won't listen; he has his own way of dealing with his losses; they involve quantities of mead, not denial or trying to change the unchangeable. He's holding out a pitcher to Clint now. Clint takes it, just to be polite, but only has a sip; that shit is way too sweet for his taste.

"I gotta go home," he announces, because obviously, there's nothing more for him here on Quill's ship. One supernatural being remains to be asked - Wanda having disappeared - and Rocket's grudging research had suggested that the person in question is in New York.

"You think you guys could give me a lift back down to Earth?"

Space is interesting - Clint hadn't been kidding when he'd suggested to Natasha that it was cool. But that had been on the way to Vormir; that attraction is totally gone... Hooking up with Quill's ship had been a necessity, not something he'd enjoyed, and hard enough to do given that it'd been Natasha who'd set up the comms channel.

The skyscrapers of New York, when the shuttle sets down on the platform at Avengers Tower, are as welcome a sight as a world without her can be.

Clint waves goodbye to Nebula and heads for the elevator.

*****

Stephen Strange is not exactly welcoming; he looks at Clint like he's an encyclopedia salesman. He has to be reminded that his unwelcome guest is the guy who'd brought Thanos' glove to the surface, pursued by a hundred Chitauri and a dozen explosions. Even for an arrogant prick that little feat ought to buy some credit.

Surprisingly, it does. Strange opens the door and leads Clint past a staircase that looks like a small airplane crashed into it.

"Tea?" Strange says. "I have a feeling that whatever you want from me, it's going to be a long story and I'll need something to keep me from falling asleep."

Well, he's not wrong - on the length of the story, anyway.

"She can't be dead," Clint insists, when he finally comes to the end of his tale. "I mean, Stark told us that when you were on that moon, you foresaw 14 million plus alternatives for how things were going to go with Thanos. Surely in one of those Natasha survived? I mean, you're a wizard. Can't we go to one of the 14 million places where we fucked up because we didn't go to Vormir and bring her back here, where we did, and didn't?"

That didn't come out quite right, but Clint doesn't care; it seems that his point has registered anyway.

Strange fiddles with the amulet around his neck. It seems to be an unconscious gesture, but Clint hasn't spend a decade-plus being a spy to think that it's meaningless. Plus, he just remembered something.

"That thing," he says, jabbing at it with his finger in a way that causes Strange to recoil a little. "Bruce picked it up from your coven here in New York when we collected those stones, and Cap took it back there after Tony's snap. So far as I know, that's gotta be a live Infinity Stone. Can that help?"

Strange doesn't say anything for a while; Clint isn't sure whether that's because he doesn't have an answer, or doesn't want to give it. The guy is pretty hard to read, apart from his obvious disdain for anyone with less than three PhDs. (He reminds Clint a bit of the BBC Sherlock, scary smart with zero inter-personal skills.)

"Well???" he says, trying hard not to pronounce too many of those question marks.

Strange sighs.

"If I say no, you're just the type to stage a sit-in in front of my building until I change my mind, right?"

Clint had been thinking more about throttling the good doctor until he says yes, but if that's what the guy is worried about, then fine. He lifts his tea cup in salute.

"You know it," he says.

*****

The spinning fire of the portal is a familiar sight - but this time, no heroes step through. Instead, what Clint can see through the opening looks pretty end-of-the-worldish. Explosions galore, and a vile stench that creeps into the Sanctum through the golden ring. An army of ragged zombie-like ghouls shuffle towards a partly destroyed building. Ahead of them, a lone, familiar figure runs for her life, turning around occasionally to lob fiery missiles at her pursuers.

Natasha.

Clint draws his bow.

"You can't shoot through that gate," Strange says, but there's no conviction behind it and so Clint ignores him.

"Tasha," he hollers. "This way. Follow the arrows!"

At the sound of his voice Natasha's head whips around, her eyes widening as she sees the gate. Clint starts firing off one arrow after the other, watching the zombie things flap and fall only to be stepped on by those in the next row.

Natasha changes course towards the gate. The trajectory brings her closer to the rotting army, but Clint's arrows serve to clear the angle. A few seconds later and she bursts through the fiery ring like a trained lioness, landing almost at Strange's feet.

The wizard makes one more circle with his hands and the fiery gate closes with a slight slurping sound; a partly decomposed hand falls out of the air and onto the carpet with a wet thud.

"I expect you two to clean that up," Strange says. "That's the least you can do."

But neither Clint nor Natasha pay any attention to him.

"You're alive!" she says, looking at Clint as if the sun rose in his eyes. "I thought..."

"Yeah," he says. "Me too."

Because, really, what else is there to say? Okay, so there'll have to be some serious explaining later on, about why there aren't any zombies here - yet, anyway - and just what's been going on in his particular corner of the multiverse.

But for now?

Whoever they are in their respective universes, and whatever got them to this point, the other not being dead is all the bridge between worlds that they need. Clint tosses away the bow and waits for her to step into his arms. Natasha smells of cordite and a long time without a hot bath - just like in Budapest.

Her kiss, it turns out, is just as sweet.