Prologue:

I made my way to Stark Towers. It had taken longer than I would've liked. My body was bruised and bloody. Everything hurt more than it usually did. I wasn't able to take a plane, bus, or taxi to New York from Washington D.C.. Ever cover of mine had been exposed. People recognized me. As soon as they saw my face, they walked away or tensed up. They no longer saw me as one of the heroes of New York, instead they saw me as Natalia Romanova, the Black Widow.

I was exposed. Too exposed for my taste. My entire life was in the spotlight, a life that I had wanted to keep hidden from everyone. SHIELD knowing my past was one thing, but not the whole world knows everything. I would much rather have my nudes leaked.

It wasn't hard to get into Stark Towers. I still remember all of the passwords and security keys. Walking undetected, I slipped through the hallways. The top floor housed the office of Pepper Pots as well as some other high ranking employees. Keeping my hood down, I went past Pepper's office and into the one at the end of the hall.

"Come in," said a deep voice as a reply to my knock.

I walked inside, pushing my hood back as I entered. "Well look at you, Mr. Business."

Clint Barton looks up at me. Rushing over, he looks at my bruised and bloodied body. "Natasha, sit down. I'm going to call a doctor."

"No," I said quickly. I allowed him to help me sit down in a chair. He knew that I didn't trust anyone to look over my wounds. After missions it was usually Clint who had bandaged my wounds, and I his.

"Don't worry. If I didn't trust them, I certainly wouldn't let them look you over." he assures me, giving my hand a squeeze. He pulls his phone out of his pocket quickly dialing a number. "Banner, I need you up in my office. ASAP. No questions asked." With that said he hangs up the phone.

"Banner?" I ask. "Stark has Bruce Banner working here?"

He nods. "Seems those two really hit it off. Banner has a sweet set up here- lab and an apartment all located here." Changing the subject, he brushes a stand of red hair behind my ear. "What happened to you, Nat?"

"You've seen the news. First I had a bullet in me curtesy of the Winter Soldier. My past is leaked out for the entire world to see. After my run in with Congress, I did the best I could to head here. I couldn't even get on a bus without them kicking me off." I sighed.

"How did you get here then?"

"I walked all the way. A few men shot at me. They thought I should die for all the red on my ledger." I shrugged, leaning back in the chair. "One bullet hit me in the thigh. Probably infected by now. I had no way to get medical supplies. When I went in to go by a first aid kit, the cashier chased me out with a shotgun."

"You are not Natalia Romanova." Clint reminds me. "They shouldn't see you as her. You are Natasha Romanoff, hero of New York."

I gave out a sharp laugh. "They are the same person, just as you are Hawkeye. Just so you know, I wiped out almost everything they have on you before everything went online. Changing around the files, it now says that after New York you left SHIELD to work for Stark. As far as anyone outside of SHIELD knows, you've been here ever since."

"I noticed that when I went through everything." he says. "Why didn't you cover up yourself?"

"I only had enough time to change one file. You deserved to have a fresh start more than I did."

He didn't have any time to say anything else. Bruce Banner walked into the office. The doctor began looking over my wounds as best he could. Deciding that I needed a full examination, he hurried me down to his lab. Clint insisted that he carried me, saying that I had walked enough. As I was carried to the lab I could see that we had started drawing attention to ourselves. Pepper Pots came out of her office, following us down three floors to the lab.

"Are you all right?" she asked me.

I shrugged. "I've had worse."

The look she gave me told me that she knew. She'd read my file. That much was obvious. The wary look she was giving me told me that I wasn't going to have the same laid back Pepper any more. Instead she was tense and untrusting, just like everyone else.

"Can you two leave us alone while I do the examination?" Banner asked Clint and Pepper.

Pepper obliged, saying that she would be waiting in the hallway. Clint froze by my side. He looked at me, wanting to know what I wanted.

"Go." I tell him. "I trust him. I'll be fine."

Clint gave me a kiss on the forehead before joining Pepper in the hallway.

I observed Banner as he made his way around the lab gathering supplies. Unlike everyone else, he didn't look at me as if I was some horrible monster. Instead I was still the same Natasha Romanoff that he had met when I went to retrieve him.

"I assume you've read my file," I say.

He nods, moving my shirt over so that he can look at the wound.

"And yet you want to be alone with me?" I question, wondering about his sanity.

Banner takes a step back. "We all have things in our past we aren't too proud of. You aren't a monster, Miss Romanoff. Trust me, I know a monster when I see one. You are just a woman who has done the best that she could with the life she was given. You told Barton that you trust me. Well, trust goes both ways. If someone like you can trust someone like me when you know what I'm capable of, well then I'm obliged to give you that same amount of trust."

"Thank you," I tell him.

He gave me a small smile. That smile faded a bit when he asked if I could remove my clothing. As I did so, he turned his back to me giving me some privacy. He handed me a hospital gown to put on. Once I was redressed, he turned back around to complete some tests. After about five minutes, Clint reentered the room.

"Couldn't take it anymore." he explained. "We've been apart too long for my taste. When you come back to me looking like that, I have to know what's going on."

"Nice necklace," Dr. Banner says, noticing the arrow jewelry that hung around my neck.

I smiled at Clint. "Thanks. It was an anniversary present I guess you could say."

He looked at the two of us. "Anniversary?"

"We're married," Clint informs him. "I'm sure that by now you've heard how I was sent to kill Natasha. I'd made a different call. Problem is SHIELD wouldn't have allowed her to come back. The director at the time wanted her dead. That wasn't an option for me. The safest way to keep her alive was for her to marry me. SHIELD wouldn't kill an agent's wife."

"Around that time, Fury took over. By the time we had been married and back in the States, he was head of SHIELD. After some convincing from Clint's part, he agreed to let me on as a trail-agent. Here we are years later, still married and we're agents up until a couple of weeks ago." I finished explaining.

"I'd assumed you two were together, I just never thought you'd be married." Banner says. "Well, I guess that'll make this next news a tad bit easier."

"News?" Clint looks between the doctor and I. Biting my lip, I could already see where this was going.

"Your wife is pregnant. A little over a month from what I can tell."