A/N: Only mild spoilers this time for Iron Man 2 & (goes without saying) Avengers.
Natasha Romanoff did the rounds that every girl does on a Saturday morning. She took her huge stash of shampoo, conditioner, lotion, and just about every other concoction applicable to the surface of the human body up to the counter of her local drug store. As the pile of products got smaller and the sum due got bigger, she had her mind on other things when the young girl behind the counter eyed her with a positively glowing expression on her face.
"Are you an actress?" She asked Natasha.
"Excuse me?" The Black Widow was taken by surprise.
"No? Then you must be a singer or something. Maybe a model?" The girl kept guessing.
"I don't know what you're talking about." Natasha replied, wondering if the girl was in her right mind to be working.
"It's just that, I'm sure that I've seen your face somewhere before." The girl explained.
"Oh, I get that a lot. Don't worry. It must be someone else that you're thinking of." Natasha smiled, trying to get the girl to stop talking about her.
"She's one of them super-folk that defended our city from them alien-things." An older woman said as she came up behind her college and glanced at Natasha.
The Black Widow tried not to laugh at the "super-folk" comment.
"No, I'm pretty sure that you must be thinking about someone else." She tried to deny it.
"I was in the bus that the guy with the arrows was helping." The older staff member explained. "When we came out we were herded underground by police but anyone who had even a tiny bit of reception on their cell, had it tuned in to the news and we were all watching what happened. I can remember seeing your face very clearly on one of the reports. You were there on that day."
The Black Widow found herself being taken aback. The woman didn't ask. She just stated with complete certainty who Natasha was. Natasha was so used to being under cover that she hadn't thought about what life might be like without a cover.
She didn't know what to say or how to respond so she settled on giving a quick "thanks" as she paid for her purchase and leaving the store as quickly as possible without seeming rude.
"Ms Romanoff, are you quite alright there?" Asks a male British voice.
"Huh?" Natasha looked up, still engaged in her own train of thought. Even though they had all been residing in Stark Tower for some time now, she still hadn't yet gotten used to having the occasional conversations with JARVIS.
"You have been in an alpha state for some time now." JARVIS remarked as though it was perfectly normal for humans to talk about their brainwaves.
"I'm thinking." She replied.
"I can see that. It's just that Sir does not believe that you normally engage in contemplation on your days off." Said the AI.
This was actually a fairly accurate observation. The Black Widow had never been one to dwell on anything. When there was a job to be done, she did it and then she moved on. In her down time, she would engage in hobbies and activities that had as little to do with her spy work as possible so that she could take a complete break.
"What? So I need Stark's permission to think now?" She glared at the ceiling. Though she knew that JARVIS was everywhere (basically, he was the entire building), she still found herself talking to the ceiling whenever she tried to interact with him.
"Permission granted. What were you thinking about?" Said Tony.
She glanced around her but he was nowhere in sight. She smiled as she came to realize that Tony had hijacked JARVIS and was speaking to her through the AI.
"Stark, I don't want to talk to you right now." She sighed.
"Okay, I'll just send for Barton, shall I?" He replied, nonchalant.
"This is none of your business, Stark." She said, her voice tired.
"You live in my tower." He told her. "Of course your wellbeing is my business."
"Well, you're not exactly the poster boy for mental togetherness." She reminded him.
"Yes, but I've never denied it." He told her. "Admitting that you have a problem is the first step to dealing with it."
"Yeah. So you didn't spend the better part of a year dying and not telling your closest friends about it." Natasha muttered.
"That's different." Tony replied. "I had a physical problem. Yours is an emotional one. They're two completely different things. If you were unwell of body, I'd call for Banner. But since you're unwell of mind, I'm not really sure who to call for because, as you said, none of us here are exactly qualified to be psychologists."
"I would point out that I'm qualified to be one." JARVIS replied in his normal voice. He had somehow split off a part of himself to broadcast Tony and relay him the Black Widow's conversation while another part was perfectly capable of continuing a normal JARVIS presence.
"You know JARVIS, for someone with a split personality, you aren't exactly in the right state to be counselling me right now either." Natasha laughed.
"Finally, you admit that you need counselling." Said Tony.
"JARVIS, can you tell your master to SHUT UP?" Natasha murmured to the AI.
"Oh, he does do that." Tony laughed. "Quite often actually. Now, you'll be happy to know that I've finished synthesizing the hair products that you're so fond of buying and I think that I can get JARVIS to manufacture them for you so that you don't have to go out and spend a fortune on them every other week."
"You what?" Natasha looked up, shocked.
"See?"
One of the screens in the room came on and she found herself looking at what appeared to be a plastic water bottle filled with a baige substance that looked suspiciously like her shampoo.
"Since when did you become an expert in cosmetic manufacturing?" She asked him. She couldn't hold back the smile that she was now wearing on her face.
"Since I took up applied chemistry when I was in what? Grade Five?" Tony laughed. "JARVIS can synthesize and manufacture any commonly used product from the supermarket. I just prefer to engage in applied mechanics because I find that more interesting."
"Why are you tinkering with my shampoo?" She asked him, not sure what to make of this new development.
"You come downstairs and see it. Maybe even try it yourself and see if you like it. I've made a slight modification to the formula to better suit your hair." Tony informed her.
Asides from being astounded that Tony had somehow managed to figure out the chemical composition of her hair, Natasha tried to remind herself that she should really be very pissed off with Tony for engaging in such a blatant breach of her privacy.
"Stark, what the hell?" She asked as she entered his workshop.
True to his word, he had made a Stark version of most of the products that she had bought that morning, though she was certain that the samples on which he had modelled his products on were taken much from one of her earlier shopping sprees.
"You know, most people say 'thank you' at this point." Tony laughed.
"This is…" Natasha found herself struggling to get the right words out. "No one has ever given me a gift like this before."
"I'm glad you like it." Said Tony. "Now, would you like to tell me what's really going on in there?"
"I um…" The Black Widow was usually quite economical with her words. She never stammered or stuttered. But she had also never been so embarrassed to talk about anything in her life. "I got recognized."
Natasha held an expression on her face that Tony had never seen before, certainly not in front of him anyway: Fear. This wasn't the reason why he started laughing though. He started laughing at the cause of said fear.
"It's not funny." Natasha replied, peeved.
"You know, I can think of at least fifty other things to be scared of right now, given all the stuff that's been happening recently. Fame is definitely not one of them." He replied, honestly.
"How do you deal with it?" Asked The Black Widow. Since Tony had been the first Avenger to go public with his identity, he would be very experienced with the associated fame now.
"Come here." He smiled as he pulled out a chair for her and she obliged.
"Look around this room." He told her.
As always, his workshop was in a complete mess. His latest project, her cosmetics products were scattered along the table while parts of his Iron Man suit hung from the walls.
"This. They're never going to see." He told her, referring to the general public. "They think they know who we are based on what they see on TV. That's just a persona. You're not Natasha to them. You're the Black Widow. Don't worry about it so much. If someone addresses you as Tasha on the street, then you have something to worry about."
"Did it ever bother you?" Natasha asked him.
"Well, no, I've always been in the tabloids." He shakes his head. "My dad was always in the papers for whatever new discovery he was making and then as I got older, I also ended up in the papers."
"For being a playboy." She smiled as she understood.
"It's probably different for you because you've always been in hiding. You're always keeping secrets and doing things that nobody should be seen doing." He explained. "It'll take you a while to get used to it. But it's never a horrible thing. There are worse things to be famous for than saving New York from demi-Gods and aliens."
Natasha smiled. For once, Tony wasn't trying to impress her with his intellect and he had shown that he could be very patient if called upon. He had done more for her state of mind in the fifteen minutes that he and JARVIS had forced her to engage with them than her own thinking had been capable of doing for the last two hours of contemplation.
AN: This story is modeled on the "face on a train" style fanfiction stories from the Spiderman films that were popular around the time when Spiderman 2 of the original trilogy came out.