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More than a murderer.
More than a marksman, a fighter, a computer hacker, a double agent, a Russian, an American, a….ballet dancer.
More than any of those individual things.
Natasha Romanov was competent.
She was more than any one of those things because she was the sum of those things, she was the net product of how good she was at those things. She didn’t leave things halfway, she didn’t start things she didn’t finish, she didn’t complete her tasks with anything less than optimal effort and maximum proficiency. She shot targets on the human body that bled more and spattered less, she fought weightlessly, transported from punch to kick to strangle like it was the language of her body, the way it naturally expressed itself. She’d never be creative enough to devise computer code but she could scan through lines and pull walls of it down within heartbeats. She could profess truth and loyalty and everlasting faith through her eyes and gouge yours out the second you blinked- she was Russian. She could lie to others and lie to herself and assign it all up to a greater mission- she was American. And sometimes, when it didn’t make her too nauseous to stand straight- she could stand on her toes and feel all the pain concentrate to one glorious point at the end of her feet, raise one above her head and point, dance like there were stars burning underneath her heels.
The Black Widow had a ledger. And she’d never be able to balance it all out- but even when she was butchering, she was doing it well. She was competent at being competent and she didn’t very often make a mistake.
Mr. Stark displays compulsive behavior. Prone to self-destructive tendencies. Textbook narcissism.
Iron Man yes, Tony Stark not recommended.
That changed.
~
For some people it was a sharp jerk- that transition from calm everyday life to realising there was something unexpected and possibly dangerous in the environment: the sharp jolts of adrenaline, the goose-pimpling of skin, the rapidly escalating heartbeat. For Natasha it was as easy as awaking from sleep; her heart barely crossed seventy three beats per minute. One minute she was walking through the doorway of the common room of the Avengers facility, the next she had a man pinned against the fridge- hand twisted behind his back, knee against his throat.
“That how they say hello in the Motherland?” Tony croaked, then spluttered off into a series of coughs when she eased off the hold, rubbing his throat vigorously.
“You startled me.” Natasha said, then startled herself by the involuntary curving up of her lips. Who’d have known, really, that the douche-y van dyke and the whippersnapper style of speech would grow on her so.
“Next time I’ll send a two day notice beforehand.” Hand falling away from his throat, Tony took the three steps to the couch and slumped down, spine flattened against the leather back.
“Well, it’s only your fault I’ve come to expect flashy entrances and three point landings every time you drop by.” She parried back, tone almost light. Yes, this was…..nice. Steve had infected her with all of his pleasantness; it was nice to let words form themselves into taunts and jibes, knowing that even sharper ones were flying back your way.
“I have spoilt you all.” Tony mumbled, almost by rote- and Natasha paused, because if there was one thing that Stark humour wasn’t- it was rote. She took a second to parse through her own words- flashy entrances- and her eyes returned to the man resting his head on the back of the couch like it was paining him; categorising all the ways this was different from a normal Stark appearance.
Nobody knew that he was coming, for one, and although sometimes Tony used the surprise to his advantage to create an even bigger splash, this wasn’t one of those times. No Imperial March or AC/DC to herald his coming, no drum rolls, no flying in with the suit- hell, he hadn’t even told Rhodey, because Natasha would have known of that. After that little fiasco with Falcon and the man in the shrinking suit, she knew of everything and everyone scheduled to arrive and depart from the Facility. By contrast….if she hadn’t stumbled upon him peeking into the fridge in the common room, he could have been long gone and she’d never even have known of his visit until she reviewed the camera footage.
…..had he disabled the camera footage?
“What’re you doing here?” Blunt and direct. It wasn’t her preferred style, but of all the Avengers, Tony had the greatest respect for her prevarications, and the least tolerance.
A flash of something, in those eyes. There, and gone. “Is this because of the lapsed Avenger status? You do know who owns this place, right?”
She took two steps to join him on the couch; less interrogative, that way. Made her voice easier, more pliable. “Just never thought you were one for sneaking around, that’s all.”
“Nah, just…I know you guys were busy training and I didn’t want to disturb you much.” Tony half-winced reflexively as that sentence tripped out, as if realising too late how bullshit it sounded. And it wasn’t the only thing that set off the alarm klaxons: sure she could swallow the lack of the customary sunglasses, but the grey shirt and black pants were less ‘multibillionaire paying visit to property’ and more ‘trying desperately to blend with the walls’. It was in his very body language, the absence of the ridiculously puffed up chest and pulled back shoulders- the lines around his eyes and the grey at his temples. He looked…subdued.
“If not to catch up, then any particular reason for the visit?” Slow and easy. Slow and easy does it.
The response was studied in its casualness. “Just walking around, looking at the facilities, equipment and weapons, security.” A glint in the eye. “Checking up on my stuff, you know how it is.”
Natasha didn’t break eye contact. But she didn’t rise to the bait either-you don’t own the Avengers- because confrontations were his forte and she needed to keep the ball in her court. “It’s your stuff. You designed this place and half the things that go in it- why the inspection?”
“Because I need to report to my superiors so that they don’t shut the place down.” Tony returned smoothly, as if playing along with the joke. And then didn’t continue further.
Natasha didn’t press, she had more finesse than that. An irregularity had presented itself- she would have more than enough time to investigate later rather than plough through now with all the grace of Clint Barton in a china shop. Besides, she’d gotten the opportunity to catch up with a…..friend, after a hiatus. She was in fact capable of ‘turning the spy brain off’ for more than a couple of minutes at a time, thank you very much aforementioned Clint Barton.
“Staying for dinner? Wanda promises Vision’s cooking is actually not going to burn off any tongues, this time.” The memory made returning her smile to its natural state much simpler- Wanda had made that promise several times. Sixth time the charm? Unlikely.
“….no. I actually-“ Tony began-
“-am sorry.” Natasha cut in, and soaked in the feeling of meaning what she said. It never stopped being refreshing. “I should have realised- Vision-“
“Yes, he has the voice of my dead A.I., boo hoo for me.” Tony’s voice interrupted, hard and unrelenting. She never really could predict it, these rapid shifts. “It isn’t that.”
“You busy, then?”
“No, the head of one of the biggest industry conglomerates in the world has nothing but truckloads of free time, for the purpose of twiddling his thumbs.” Tony smiled. The hardness had yet to subside. “I have a meeting.”
…..and her mind was working again. Well, at least she’d tried. “When did you start attending those?”
“Ever since I turned over a new leaf Agent Romanov, why, haven’t you heard?” The smile turned coy, teasing. Or maybe it was more jeering now, it was too quick to tell. “Philandering war monger Tony Stark learns responsibility; turns into hero Iron Man. Old news, really.”
(No matter how ridiculously it was reported, Tony had always taken pride in that story. Now, the words just sounded……empty. Mocking.)
“Yes, but meetings never seemed to fall within Iron Man’s responsibilities before. In fact, I was under the impression that their boring nature wasn’t quite to his taste.” A flash of emotion in his eyes again; Natasha crossed a leg over the other and leaned forward, a perfect mimicry of natural motion. “Pepper?”
“….government official, actually.” She caught the pause of hesitation, even as she was getting a little miffed at those quicksilver smiles.
She smiled in response. “Ditching friends to meet with an ‘assclown’? Tad out of character, that.”
Tony looked straight at her, smile broader and sharper. “And you’d know all about people’s characters, wouldn’t you.”
She blinked.
He rose to his feet. She raised her chin to glance upwards, but by that time he’d already turned his back to walk out of the room.
“Have a good day, Natasha.”
~
Gasping for breath after felling a hundred Chitauri, feeling the blood trickling down her temple, Loki’s staff loosely grasped in her hand- there were many things she could have thought of, in that moment. The moment her eyes caught on a red-and-gold comet taking to the air, flying through an electric blue hole in the sky.
She could have thought of how he used truth to mask more important truths, much like she did (love is for children). Tony Stark was compulsive, self-destructive and narcissistic. This was all true. But it wasn’t the entirety of the truth.
She could’ve thought how she’d committed the same mistake which imbeciles around her made, every day. They saw what they expected to see- wide eyes, long legs, a big pair of boobs. She expected to see a millionaire who'd made his bed out of blood money, who didn't give a fuck about people's feelings, who murmured sweet nothings to his own shadow. So she missed the hero.
(Not entirely- she’d looked at his face in the quiet moments before that disastrous birthday party. She just thought the hero would never win over the jackass.)
She could’ve thought futile thoughts……weaved futile wishes. Wished that Tony Stark didn’t have to die to prove Natasha Romanov wrong.
But even as the red-and-gold blur faded, even as the orders came through to shut the portal and she didn’t hesitate, not even for a second. The thought repeated itself, over and over.
He was right; always had been.
Iron Man yes, Tony Stark not recommended.
He was Iron Man.
~
He was standing before the ceiling-to-floor windows, surveying New York City from the topmost floor of his skyscraper like every lonely, successful person cliché she’d ever seen.
She, was standing twenty metres behind and to the side, watching for at least fifteen minutes and wondering how a person with such shoddy environmental awareness ever became an Avenger.
“Injunction.”
“Irascible,” He returned, without startling and barely moving his head to the side. In the pause that followed, she wondered if he was faking not noticing her in the beginning, or faking his lack of surprise now. But he’d already begun talking again, “…wait, are you out of words already? Because I can go on and on- incompetent, irredeemable, infiltrate, Isengard, there are loads of multi syllabled words starting with ‘I’- you are terrible at this game.”
“They issued an injunction against you.”
“Of course they did.” Tony continued, amiably, as if this was what they’d been discussing right from the start. “Injunctions, plural. There had also been a sub-poena somewhere. It’s all part of the strange treatment you start getting once you’ve blown up one and half cities. Also the creation of a psychopathic A.I., did I mention the psychopathic A.I?”
Natasha brought her hands to rest behind her back, one wrist cupped in the other’s palm. It steadied her. “So you did have to meet a government official that day.”
“Secretary of Defense.” Tony replied, a faint sense of tiredness threading into the amiability.
She wasn’t steady. “And the inspection?”
“I convinced them to let me do it instead of sending special agents.” His hand came up to rub at the bridge of his nose- she’d never seen a more uncharacteristic Stark gesture. “Knew all of it off the top of my head already of course, but they needed an official date and timestamp. Filed a report later about the specs of the Facility, security measures, the kinds of weapons and assets being stored.”
Her mouth was drying. “Are we listed under that last category?”
Tony smiled at her through the reflection. This wasn’t empty and quicksilver like those past smiles- this one was too telling. Do you really need me to answer that question?
Natasha drew a cleansing breath in. It hissed through her teeth, travelled coldly past her tongue, flowed through her trachea and inflated her lungs. She felt her chest rise.
Exhale.
When she spoke next, there was nothing in her voice to indicate she could have felt any sort of emotion at all. “You’ve never played ball with the government before. Even when they threatened to take the suit away from you.”
“Well, I’m not the only one being threatened this time.” He spoke on an exhale too, eyes falling shut for a second. They opened again, and their reflexion fixated right back on her. “Not the only one they have a problem with.”
Blown up one and a half cities.
“The Hulk is gone.” Her voice didn’t break.
“I know.” Tony said, and Natasha didn’t look at her own reflection, just in case she looked as pained as he did.
Silence brimmed up for a few seconds; Tony cleared his throat.
“They think I’m symptomatic of….a larger problem.”
The idea was to bring together a group of remarkable people, see if they could become something more.
“The institution of superheroes.”
See if they could work together when we needed them to, to fight the battles that we never could.
“They take issue with…..the way we function. The amount of power we have at our disposal.”
Phil Coulson died still believing in that idea, in heroes.
“And I don’t know if they’re completely wrong.”
Natasha breathed. “You need to tell Steve.”
“Cap..he won’t-“ Tony grimaced, hand flying up to his face again, this time to scrub at the hollows under his eyes. “Look, I’m handling this, okay? I just need to run around for a bit, appease the egos of some senators that got offended the last time I appeared before congress. Maybe release a weapon design or two that I’ve kept away from the military so far. They’ll all be back to making action figures of us soon enough.” His gaze went back to the sheer glass wall separating them from the panorama of New York City- and Natasha followed it, eyes scoping over the buildings they’d saved and the buildings they’d torn down, questioning if the crowds of people milling about in the streets fifty stories down loved or loathed them.
“Everything is under control.”
~
She hadn’t spoken much, the night of Ultron’s creation, after his half-formed bots had been destroyed and they learned of Tony’s instrumental hand in said creation. Accusations flew rampantly, Thor pinned Tony up against the wall, Steve and Tony devolved to some ideological, moralistic debate again. She’d merely continued to stare at Tony, impassively, while a not entirely disconnected part of her mind repeated knewitknewitknewit over and over inside her head.
It was almost petty. If she chose to psychoanalyse it, she knew what it was- a desire to explain away the one discrepancy in a perfect set of data points, the one error in her entire history of perfect evaluations. If she chose to delve deeper, she’d know why she could never fully trust Tony Stark despite reams of evidence to the contrary.
Captain America was a man of his word, past history had irrevocably illustrated that anything other than the right thing to do wasn’t even a viable option- and Steve was a proven to be dependable friend. All the damage Bruce caused was involuntary, she’d never met a man with higher, more erudite thoughts. Thor’s nobility came exemplified in physical form, in the hammer he called to his hand so easily- and the vow of protection of an alien species. Clint Barton was the best man she’d ever known.
And even after their ranks swelled- Sam’s history in pararescue and his present calling as a counsellor were only further proof of his demonstrably nurturing nature. Colonel Rhodes was a decorated military officer worth every patch and medal they’d ever pinned on his shoulder. Vision’s pure-hearted intentions could only be matched by Wanda’s- and hers were only marred by mistakes born of grief and naiveté.
The only ones left- her and Tony.
They were the ones with the bloodiest hands, the ones with most to make amends for. The ones whose trustworthiness was questioned before they could be adopted into the fold. No logic dictating their reliability (who cared if she’d lived and died for SHIELD, she’d served the Red Room just as long and turned on them just as easy- and hadn’t she been the one to bring down SHIELD in the end?) No demonstrable reasons to trust in their dependability (Tony’s flight of self-sacrifice in New York had almost been cancelled out by his invention of a homicidal robot). To work with double agent Natasha Romanov and reckless headstrong Tony Stark was an act of faith. An act that the people around them seemed to have no trouble committing, day after day.
Natasha never much dealt in the currency of faith.
~
“You look rattled.”
Natasha broke out of her thoughts and raised her eyes above the rim of her mug; through the steam gently rising from her own tea, to the gaunt face of one Tony Stark. He was nursing a glass filled with two fingers of a golden liquid, said gaunt face reflecting bizarrely off the golden-hued surface.
“That’s apple cider.”
“It is.” Tony acknowledged, and exaggeratedly swirled the liquid about the glass, sniffing the air above it. “Mmm, fruity. You look rattled.”
Natasha dipped her head to take a sip of her own tea, steam kissing her nose as she raised it out of the deep mug again. “I thought you liked alcohol.”
“I did.” Tony acknowledged just as easily. “That’s when I realised it was bad for my impulse control when I’m Iron Man, terrible for my dependency issues and absolutely shit for my skin. You look rattled.”
Five years since she’d come to know him- and still a part of her wanted to throw her hands up in the air and go oh my god Tony Stark why. “Wanda came to me for advice today.”
“Considering the last person she went to advice for was Ultron, I think she’s doing rather smashingly.” Tony nodded, the ridiculous prick. “So. What is it? Is it the mind whammy thing? The crazy-eyes? Are we terrified of little baby superheroes?”
It was at times like these, Natasha reflected- that she understood Clint’s urge to point at random people and declaim die die die.
Tony put on a concerned, affable expression. “Cat got your tongue?”
Her jaw twitched. Tony leaned back in smug satisfaction, probably wrongly concluding that she’d been resisting the urge to laugh.
….five years since he’d come to know her. He should know by now that her urges generally tended to the more violent side.
Since she couldn’t dismember him (in both senses of the word), or drive him away successfully- only one option remained. She pulled the reluctant words out of her throat. “Steve was there. Available. In the next room.”
Tony responded without missing a beat. “Maybe she bats for the same team.”
“Stark, I swear-“
“I’m serious, it could totally be a gender thing.” And that was it, Tony’s eyes did look serious. “Taking advice from the only other woman on the team, that sort of thing.”
Natasha drew in breath to answer, released it on a useless exhale. Her legs were jittery, her shoulders tight, the tea weak and tasteless at the back of her tongue- though none could tell from the motionless exterior. Tony’s explanation made perfect sense- but even the recollection of that moment when she’d opened her door to find Wanda’s nervous, hopeful features on the other side….knowing Captain America was ten feet away and always ready to help. And choosing to come to Natasha instead.
“Steve leads the team.” The statement of a fact.
Natasha could feel Tony’s gaze pare through her, intense and scrutinising. “You and Steve train them together.”
She didn’t move. Not even a muscle on her face, nothing but the flicker of her lips. “Steve leads the team.” Leaders need to have a sense of direction. Confident in their decisions, immune to doubt. I don’t have a compass. A moral centre. I was never taught to have one.
I’m a cog. A good, competent cog. I don’t give the orders.
“You know the best thing, about not being a follower?” His eyes had turned from scrutinising to sharp- too sharp. “No blaming other people. You get to take responsibility for your own actions.”
Red in my ledger.
Natasha looked at those sharp eyes, and saw something identical staring back. “Maybe.”
Silence reigned, for a few minutes. Then, because all of this would never have happened if all of them hadn’t gone away. Tony, Thor, Clint…. “I miss Bruce.”
Tony blinked at his apple cider. “Me too.”
(and because he’d understand.)
“Came on too strong and scared him away, didn’t you.”
(….though of course, he’d be a jackass while doing it.)
“The last time I cared for a man and doubted my place to tell him,” Natasha lifted her mug and inhaled fragrant liquid. “He got married.”
Silence.
The hot liquid burned the buds of her tongue, slid comfortable down her throat. “Didn’t want to risk it this time, I suppose.”
Tony looked up, wide-eyed and staring, for several seconds. Then, a little weakly. “Nice joke.”
Natasha’s lips curved against the rim of her mug. “Thanks.”
He kept blinking, looking up and away again as if thrown completely off balance. Natasha relished every second of it.
“Just…” Tony cleared his throat. “Just in case it wasn’t though. A nice joke.”
Natasha paused mid-sip. “What makes you think it wasn’t?”
Tony forged forward, determinedly ignoring the question. “Would you mind a kiss?”
A beat.
...well that came out of nowhere.
“For comfort’s sake! Between friends!”
She arched a brow.
This one was more of a mumble. “It would make me feel better.”
She set her mug down with a quiet clink, and inched forward. Her hand came to rest on the wooden back of the armchair he’d been slouching on; he leaned back. Natasha didn’t take the time to draw fingers through his hair, or scrape through the roughness of his stubble, didn’t categorise smell or taste or texture- just an impression of metallic warmth. Just closed eyes, and pressed lips, and five seconds of movement.
She pulled back, Tony’s eyes fluttered open. “You’re extremely good at that.”
“So are you.” Their eyes met in mutual acknowledgement of the fact, in understanding the implications of past experience. They both moved back- Tony’s spine aligning itself with the rigid back of the chair, Natasha withdrawing to the couch she’d been squatting on.
“You loved him?” He asked, eyes affixed at some random spot on the wall behind her. He didn’t clarify which ‘he’.
“I don’t know what love is.” Natasha responded, very simply. For a word that was bandied about so frequently, in common speech and popular culture, she couldn’t fathom what the feeling was supposed to…..feel like. Was it the utter awareness of Clint’s movements when they fought- side by side, back to back, awareness of every direction his thoughts took through the motion of his eyes, awareness that co-dependence came nowhere close to what they were, that her breaths were numbered by his. Maybe. Was it the awkwardness that crawled over her limbs and speech when she spoke to Bruce, a consummate seductress reduced to a gangly teen, the rattling in her chest when she watched his eyes- dark and green and then dark again- the joy of speaking science and philosophy and poetry with a man as jaded as her. Maybe. Maybe it was even the respect she felt, close and warm in her chest, for Coulson, for Steve. Or, if she had to deal in maybes- maybe it was this moment with Tony Stark right now, kindred spirit, in the way they bore stones on their souls and consciences….if nothing else.
Natasha picked up her mug again.
“Now that all that inanity has been dealt with, can we finally talk about it?”
“About what?” Tony finally deigned to take a sip of his cider, features scrunching up in disgust, eyes still absorbed by a patch of drywall.
“Rumours, flying around. Of organisations, power structures, powerful people, being approached.” Natasha set her mug down, with exquisite slowness. To strip down prevarications and barriers that they’d been so far hiding behind, for one. Also because her hands didn’t shake, but she wouldn’t tempt fate. “Approached on their opinion on a bill, a document, whichever it may be. Dealing with the registration and regulation of superheroes.”
She glanced up to see Tony’s hands absolutely still, still clasped around the glass of cider. His features were absolutely wiped of any disgust they’d been displaying previously- an impassive mask.
If she was a woman easily unnerved, the sight of Tony Stark’s emotionless face would unnerve her.
“I thought you said it was all under control.”
His jaw worked for a second, teeth clearly gritting behind it, and Natasha was relieved to see it. Flat words, parsed out after a couple of seconds of effort. “I’m working on it.”
“We’re lucky Clint has left the intelligence game, or word would have been out a long time ago.” The words were quiet, but inexorable. Natasha wasn’t intending on letting Tony escape the conversation this time. “We need to let Steve know-“
“Steve, would get into a righteous snit the second he heard what the brass were planning.” Once he’d deserted the detached mask, Tony seemed to have no intention of returning to it. His words fell fast and impassioned, almost desperate. “None of them, not Steve, not Sam, definitely not Vision and Wanda, hell not even Rhodey can comprehend how fucking south this situation can go if we come out all guns blazing. If I don’t run interference-“
Natasha was beginning to lose patience with this. “You can’t shield them forever.”
“Watch me.” Tony snarled. His breathing was heavy, chest rising and falling swiftly.
Natasha said nothing.
Minutes trailed by, punctuated only by the harsh sounds of Tony breathing in and out, staring sightlessly at his wall. After what seemed like eons-
“I know. I get it.” Exhausted after his outburst, or maybe after the stress of keeping his friends safe from forces they didn’t even know intended harm. Regardless, Tony’s voice was drained of all fight, quiet and tired, stripped to marrow and sinew and whatever powered the two. Maybe will. “I’m the- I’m the worst person that could have been pushed into doing this. Hell, I was telling these people to go fuck themselves not five years ago, I’ve never followed a regulation in my life, I-“ His voice stuttered. Broke off as if searching for remnants of strength to power through. “Pepper always said I lacked the tact that nature had given a teaspoon and now my friends’ lives and freedom are dependent on my fucking diplomacy skills, I can’t-“
And then he laughed, like he laughed when Ultron had risen into being, except this was far more bitter and threadbare than that could ever hope to be. He laughed till his voice lost sound, and laughed without breath for several seconds after, in contemptuous silence.
“I can’t.” Tony said. His voice was blank again, like he’d already pulled out whatever emotion he had left to give. “I can’t do it, but I can’t stop.”
And suddenly, it was all too easy. To commit herself to the act, to see what she’d been missing all along.
“You will.” Natasha said, and tired, dark eyes turned to look at her, as if waiting for a benediction. “I have faith in you.”
And from there on, it was an even easier step.
“I’ll be here.” Faith in others. Faith in yourself. It was a strange, idiotic way of looking at the world- but Natasha was not fearful. She was good at things- that was just how it worked. She’d get good at this too. “If they come for us…..if the team doesn’t listen. If the situation goes south.”
“I’ll be here. We’ll all be together. And we’ll fix it.”