For his credit, Tony's concern for Natasha is genuine.
"You okay?" he asks. His eyes show a rare gentleness; Natasha knows that the fact that they just lost Steve and Bucky in one day must be biting at him. Of course, he'd never show it.
"Why wouldn't I be okay?" she fired back. Her neck still stings from nearly being crushed by the black gloved hand of the Winter Soldier.
"That Winter Soldier guy really looked like he was gonna kill you", said Tony. He shakes his head, and said "Damnit, Steve. Why do you have to be so damn stubborn?"
"He wouldn't be the captain if he wasn't", said Natasha. By now, Steve is far off, almost certainly at one of his safehouses. In fact, Natasha already knows which one he's gone to, but she's not sure if she's going to tell Tony yet.
"I know. Also, don't try to change the subject. I'm being thoughtful. Limited offer," he said.
Natasha finds it cute that he thinks that this is the first time she's been choked to near death. Or that such a thing would be enough to shake her. She's lived through worse, and she's done worse.
Natasha remembers the first time she met the Winter Soldier. Her employers thought she was dead in the forests of Russia, and had decided to send someone else to finish her job. She still remembers the image of a man with a metal arm, silently shooting a diplomat. Snow clung to his face mask, and his eyes seemed lost, almost like he was disassociating. (One of the few things to scare the shit out of her would be when she later looked at herself in the mirror, and saw the same dead look.)
Their eyes met briefly. He raised his eyebrows at her. After some thought, Natasha decided to wave at him. He waved back, and then shot her.
To be honest, it wasn't bad for a first meeting.
Natasha saw him again in Korea. She was "Mary Beddingfield", trying to gather intelligence on a new supersoldier program. Her mission went bad, and she soon found herself needing to leave. As she hid within the shadows, she saw him getting thrashed by men in uniform. She weighed her options, and decided that she couldn't resist helping a damsel in distress. Within a few minutes, Natasha and the Winter Soldier were fugitives in a foreign country.
At first, it was hard to talk with him. Seriously, Natasha could punch the guy in the face and he wouldn't react. (She knew, because one time his dreams got really bad, and it turned into an all out brawl. When he left his daze, he was so ashamed that he didn't talk to her for a week.) Fortunately, he began to open up once she got some beer into him. He was a non-nonsene guy, surprisingly gentle for a professional killer.
His hair was soft, and felt good flowing through her fingers. For a second, she even entertained leaving her life, and living a normal life with him. Then her employers found her, and that was the end of all those thoughts.
She saw him one more time, before she joined the Avengers.
"Is you name Mary?" he asked.
"Nope", she said.
She visited Bucky, after Tony had captured him. She asked him how he was doing.
"Stay away from me," he said. "I have nothing to say to you."
She looked into his steely eyes, and saw there was no memory of their nights together in Korea.
"At least you could have remembered me," she said, angrier than she intended.
"Sure, I remember you," he said.
Her heart suddenly pounded in her chest.
"Really?" she said.
"Yeah," he said. "You're Steve's friend."
She closed her eyes, breathed slowly, and said "Yeah, exactly. Just Steve's friend."
Bucky frowned, and said "Did I do something to you, lady?"
"Nope", she said. And then she walked away.
"You sure everything's okay?" asked Tony, breaking her from her remembrance.
Natasha thought about how Bucky looked when the soldiers took away Bucky, and how she could have stopped them if she had just tried harder. How maybe she could have avoided all this.
"Yeah, I'm fine," Natasha said. It wasn't that big a lie, really.