After finishing her morning workout Natasha walked through her bright kitchen, halting briefly to fill her coffee mug on her way by. She continued her trek out the back door to stand on her porch. It was one of those bitter mornings where everything was shiny, brittle, and hard, like crystal. The trees, dressed in frost. She tilted her head back, breathing deeply. To many the view would seem unfriendly and cold, but Natasha found it beautiful.

"It feels good to be this kind of cold." She murmured, almost smiling.

After the mission she'd just come back from, she needed this time to herself. Just to breathe, to refuel, to quiet the voices inside her head. She could be herself, by herself. That was what she felt the need for, to think; not even to think. To be silent; to be alone. She took a long pull from the spicy, bittersweet brew then paused to listen to the silence, watching her breath crystalize has she exhaled. Connecting to the silence within her, to make sense of the turmoil going on around her life.

After taking another sip she turned and went back into the house, lingering in the warm kitchen only long enough to refill her mug. Her solitude wouldn't last; Nick Fury would be there soon. The bullets had stopped flying and the mission was over. Now she had to deal with the least glamorous part of her work: the debriefing. Fury would want a lengthy discussion to analyze mission strategy and operational facts.

"Not the most exciting way to spend a Thursday morning" Natasha thought ruefully. But it couldn't be avoided, nothing about the mission had gone as expected.

She stopped on her way to the bedroom and looked around the comfortably furnished living room. It wasn't home exactly, but right now it was all she needed. The furniture upholstered in a moss green, was well lived in and equally cared for. One wall contained recessed bookcases filled with books devoted to a wide variety of subjects. Russian novels, Latin Classics, a few recent whodunits; biographies and the history of computing. The large bulletproof windows gave her an uninhibited view of the lake. All the security features that had been built into the house made her feel safe.

"Not everyone can launch a missile strike on their home in the event of an enemy attack." She smirked.

Nick Fury had definitely pulled out all the stops to provide her with a place where she'd be protected. The fact that it was warm and inviting, yet isolated in the woods near a lake, had ensured she would stay put for more than a week or two. She plopped down on the comfortable couch to finish drinking her coffee and contemplated how sideways her life had become over the last several months. She'd known she was making her life complicated by letting Steve and Barnes escape Germany. But she hadn't known how complicated until six weeks later in Glasgow.

She'd just checked out of the tiny bed & breakfast she'd been laying low in when Nick Fury had pulled up in front of it in a black SUV and told her "Get in, you've…we've got a problem. I need you to be a ghost until we figure it out." Natasha hadn't needed to be told twice. Fury thought she should make herself scarce, so that's exactly what she did. No contact with anyone except Nick.

She'd spent the first two months relishing in the fact that she didn't have to fight any aliens, robots, or her friends. All she'd had to worry about was HYDRA. HYDRA she could handle, at least that's what she'd thought. Now she wasn't sure what the hell she was in the middle of. All she knew was they appeared to have a target and that target was her.

Why they had singled her out and not any of the other former Avengers she didn't have a clue. And she didn't care. As long as their focus was on her, everyone else was safe. Natasha pushed herself off the couch and stretched trying to relieve the tension she could feeling building. This always happened whenever she let her mind wander to her friends.

Especially Clint and his family. She knew Clint was looking for her. Hell, he'd been looking for the last several months. Leaving coded messages using their private way of communicating with each other. Messages she'd steadfastly ignored. Messages that were going from reaching out, to annoyed, to increasingly pissed off.

But she didn't need or want Clint in the middle of her private war with HYDRA. Doing her job had become difficult enough now that she was wanted in damn near every country on the planet. And sometimes distance was easier than acting or explaining. Sometimes you had to drown out the noise from the crowd. And Clint would make a lot of noise if he knew what was going on.

"I let myself forget who and what I really am." She said out loud, trying to quiet the voices in her head, the guilt mixed with resentment.

She'd made connections, friends. Even worse she'd thought of them as her family. But she was a spy and spies didn't have connections, they were meant to be alone. Unknown and unknowable. Natasha had let herself forget that and now she was paying the price.Of all the changes she'd made over the last several months, the biggest wasn't that she was drifting away from her friends by not seeing them. It was complete mental detachment from them and the life she'd left behind.

She rolled her neck around trying again to ease the tension, remembering a quote she'd once read. "Now they tell their friends you are an enemy, tomorrow they will turn their friends into their own enemies." Looking back at what had happened during the fight over the Accords it seemed fitting. No matter how much distance—physically, mentally, emotionally—she put between her and her friends, they still managed to affect her life.

"Banner was right" she thought bitterly "We were never a team. We were a ticking time bomb, and we finally exploded." She gave herself a mental shake. Her mind had wandered down a path that she should have steered clear of, but found impossible to resist. She just needed to accept that things change. And friends leave. Life didn't stop for anybody.

Natasha made her way into her bedroom to take a shower and get dressed. She looked like crap and she didn't need Nick Fury seeing her that way. He'd either try to sideline her or force Barton onto her. Especially after what she'd found on this last mission. She estimated she had maybe forty-five minutes before he arrived. She would need a hot shower and more coffee if she was going to make it through the morning unscathed.

Fury was not going to be happy with her.

Twenty minutes laterNatasha came back out of her bedroom showered and dressed in faded jeans and a comfortable dark-gray hoodie. Her long red hair pulled back into a ponytail. She went in search of more coffee only to find Nick Fury already standing in her living room. Hands clenched behind his back, looking down on the small table that held the chess game the two of them were playing.

"So much for more caffeine first." She sighed to herself, but kept the look on her face neutral.

Nick didn't bother to turn around. He could smell the mixture of grapefruit, amber, and vanilla from Nat's shampoo. Making him aware that she had entered the room. "I made fresh coffee while you were getting dressed."

"Thanks. You're early." At least she'd get that coffee before they really got into it.

"Am I?"

"Yes."

And there it was, he'd been hoping to catch her off guard. Fortunately, she'd anticipated that and gotten up earlier than she would have liked. "Do you want a cup?" she asked politely, before making her way into the kitchen to refill hers.

Nick turned from the window and found Natasha looking at him with a flawless poker face. "Why not. I have a feeling it's going to be a long day."

When she returned, Nick took the mug Natasha was holding out to him. Natasha took a careful sip from her cup and pulled back with a look of horrified disgust. "Did the coffeepot break? What the hell is this?" She should have known better than to trust Nick Fury's ability to make actual coffee fit for human consumption.

Nick gave her a mutinous look in return "What? Are you the coffee police or something?"

"If I were, you'd have already been arrested and convicted. This is Not coffee, its brown water." She complained.

Nick shook his head and quickly went back to being all business. Getting into an argument with Natasha over what constituted good coffee could take all day. Something he had painfully learned from previous experiences with her and her unhealthy love of the dark liquid.

He studied her intently before speaking, his tone anything but pleased. "Was there something you forgot to mention on the phone when you called for a forensics crew down in Columbia?"

Natasha switching gears just as easily as Nick, looked at the ceiling and pursed her lips. Pretending to contemplate her answer. "Hmmm, a pit full of burnt to hell dead bodies. Every HYDRA soldier willing to die rather than let me anywhere near the place. It looked like a medical or holding facility. Nope, I think that about covered everything important."

This was their language: half-truths, obvious lies, never give all the information. A form of communication every bit as complicated as Morse code. Don't ask, don't tell, stay civil. She looked back at him over the rim of her coffee cup. Her green eyes steady, giving nothing away.

Nick advanced across the room to get into Natasha's personal space. He pressed his lips together, as if hesitating to voice to what was fairly bursting to come out. The next moment the hesitation was over, just as Natasha knew it would be. "You don't think the fan letter written in blood and three-foot-high letters was Important? What did it say again? Oh yes. You're going to die the same way they did Romanoff."

"So much for civil" Natasha muttered under her breath.

Sometimes Natasha thought anger and Nick Fury were best friends. But she simply shrugged and took another sip of her barely drinkable coffee, looking unaffected. "People tell me they're going to kill me all the time. HYDRA's just going to have to take a number and sit in the waiting room with the rest of them." She told Nick calmly. This wasn't the first time they had done this dance and it was very unlikely to be the last.

He tilted his head and looked at her as if he were watching the IQ points drip out of her ears. "I'd really like to see things from your point of view Romanoff" Nick bit out, leaning in closer "But I can't seem to get my head that Fucking far up your ass." His voice raising as he finished.

Natasha reached out and grabbed Nick's coffee cup just as his arms flailed upward and he spun.

"What the hell do you think this house is for?! To protect you! Someone in HYDRA wants to play games and they want to play with you. You need to take this seriously!" He thundered at her, a vein in his forehead throbbing. He snatched his coffee cup back from her. The woman could royally piss him off when she put a little effort into it.

Natasha's eyes flared as her free hand clenched into a fist. "All those dead bodies guaranteed I'm going to take it seriously. I don't care if someone wants to play some twisted game, because I'm NOT playing around. That burn pit wasn't for trash."

They glared at each other, at a standstill. The only sound in the room coming from the low hum of the central heater. Nick was the first to break eye contact, looking down at his coffee mug. He softened his tone, knowing they weren't going to get anywhere if they argued all morning. "Mine's cold. You want a refill?" He asked, forcing a note of calm he wasn't feeling into his voice.

Natasha gave him a smirk, handing her cup to him. "Sure, four cups in one morning who am I going to go out and kill. It's not as if I know where to go next. Unless the lab geeks found something."

Nick shook his head negatively before stalking off to the kitchen. Calling out to her as he went "Knight to E5, Check."

He needed some breathing space before he strangled her himself. Natasha Romanoff could compartmentalize and hide information every bit as well as he could. It helped make her the most skilled operative he'd ever known. It was also frustrating as hell. If there was something she wasn't telling him, Nick would never know the truth unless she wanted him too.

Between the two of them she was the better liar. Hell, SHIELD had the most sophisticated and accurate lie detector equipment on the planet because of Nat. The stuff worked great as long as you weren't trying to use it on her, then it was nothing more than a multi-million-dollar paperweight.

Natasha studied the chess pieces on the board before making a move of her own, then sat down on the couch and waited for Nick. She didn't have any idea what their next step should be. She'd been all over the globe the last several months and every location she'd hit had left more questions than answers. And at each one, someone had left something personal for her behind. A piece of the patchwork quilt that was her past. Showing her there were still too many things she didn't remember.

Clint and Nick had both tried to help her fill in the missing parts of her memory, using every resource available to SHIELD. But still there were large gaping pieces missing. Something she had thought she had come to terms with long ago. But these past few months had left her with questions she still wasn't sure weren't better left unanswered. Maybe she should adhere the same warning she'd once given to Steve

"You might not want to pull on that thread, Natasha." She whispered quietly to herself.

Natasha knew there came a time in your life when you had to choose to turn the page, write another book or simply close it. It didn't look as if HYDRA was going to allow her to make that choice. She was growing increasingly tired of not knowing what HYDRA wanted with her. And she was definitely taking it personally that she couldn't get enough intel to figure it out. She blew out a frustrated breath. "I'm the God Damn Black Widow for Christ's sake."

Before this last mission, everything HYDRA had left for her had been small. Something easily concealed from Nick until, or rather if, she decided she wanted to share. This time whoever was running the show had wanted a Picasso—big, bold, and unmistakable. Well HYDRA had certainly delivered. But that didn't mean she was ready to share with Nick Fury. No, Natasha decided, it was better for her if he thought this was the only incident. If there came a point later, when she no longer had a choice but to tell him everything, well she'd deal with it then.

Nick sauntered back into the living room and handed Natasha one of the fresh cups of coffee. Again, he studied her intently, his good brown eye scanning every inch of her face and body language. She looked tired. The last mission had gotten to her a lot more than she was willing to letting on. Seeing her like this had him concerned. Their fight against HYDRA was far from over. In fact, Nick suspected this was only the beginning. The opening volley in a long and bloody battle.

But he also knew, no matter how effortless she made it seem, Nat had one of the most stressful jobs on the planet. Spies needed to schedule extended periods of down time for decompression. He knew all too well the toll that their business could inflict on a person, and not just the physical injuries. Those could either be mended or not. The assaults on the mind and soul were an entirely different matter.

Nick sat in the armchair across from her and gave her a wry smile. "You look like shit Nat. Maybe you need a break, take some R&R."

Natasha's head snapped up and she returned his look with a dangerous smile of her own. Deliberately choosing to ignore the first part of his comment. "I'm a spy. My idea of R&R is the same as yours. Recon and rendition. Who exactly would you like me to recon and rendition? I thought you said the lab geeks came up empty handed."

"They did. They can't even tell me what the cause of death was. All they can say for sure is that were thirty-four bodies and most of them showed signs of torture before they died. Electro shock, starvation. But the torture wasn't what killed them and there's no one left for us to ask what happened."

Natasha stood up, telling Nick as she walked past him "Well, HYDRA is pretty thorough about covering their tracks. They don't leave anybody around to tell tales, they're a public health hazard!"

She leaned against the window staring out at the landscape not focusing on anything in particular. Her coffee mug cradle in her hands as if she were trying to draw warmth from it. Her mind spinning around multiple scenarios of what HYDRA could have wanted from their victims. Adding the new information Fury had just given her. Only two options made any sense and even than one of those didn't seem to fit properly with what they knew.

Nick stood and walked over to stand beside her, quietly watching her. Knowing that her mind was shifting through a thousand little details from the mission. Details that to anyone else would seem insignificant. But to Romanoff they were a book to be read, full of knowledge to be absorbed and learned. Details that told Natasha a story that no one else seemed able to read. She was Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, and Columbo all rolled into one neat and deadly package. If you needed intel no one else could get, you sent Romanoff.

Nick shifted his weight toward her a little, nudging her shoulder. "You're being very quiet." He said softly.

"Processing"

"I know that look, you're not processing anymore, you're brooding."

Natasha looked over at Nick, her eyes hard and cold. "I should have gotten there sooner. I should have been able to do something for those people." She hissed, her hands clenching around her mug.

She was furious and she didn't care if Nick Fury saw it. She continued to stand at the window her body ridged, her muscles coiling for a fight, but she had no target to strike out at. Anger, frustration and guilt were stalking her like an ugly shadow.

Nick let out a heavy sigh. He was as angry as she was. But no one could do guilt, deserved or not, like Natasha Romanoff. He needed her to bring it down a few notches. Right now, he needed calm, cool, calculating Romanoff. Not leave a path of death and destruction Romanoff. Later they would annihilate the enemy.

"This is where we blame those responsible for the atrocity, Romanoff, not ourselves."

Natasha disagreed with Nick but kept her mouth shut and her face a mask of neutrality. Her motivation to succeed against HYDRA was much deeper than Fury's. Far more personal. She had a history of taking on the blame for an op gone wrong. It was what she did, and she did it well. Besides in this case, her guilt came from something else, something much, much worse than not getting there on time. It came from knowing this was about her and others had died because of it.

"Just try to remember none of this is personal." Nick continued.

Natasha smiled inwardly. "That's were your wrong," she thought. "it's all personal." When she responded, however, she was compliant. "I know." Natasha said in an easy tone.

Nick tipped his head, his eyes narrowing, like he suspected she was lying, but he wasn't sure about what. "What do you think happened in Columbia?" Nick had a theory but he wanted to hear hers.

Natasha mulled the question over in her mind then after some serious consideration she said, "They may have been taken there for interrogation. But what any of them would know worth that level of interrogation is beyond me." She shook her head. "No. My bet is that they were lab rats for some kind of experiment. That something a lot worse than enhanced interrogation was happening at that facility."

Nick gave her a short nod of agreement and moved away from the window to examine the chess board. "That's my read. But what kind of experiments is the question."

"That's going to be difficult to figure out unless you have some idea of where to look next." She said, turning to lean against the window frame and look at Nick directly.

"About this, no. But there was another incident while you were still in Columbia. I don't like the timing and I sure as hell don't like all the effort being put into keeping it quiet. Coincidences make me itchy."

Natasha said nothing, simply waited for him to continue.

"Someone liberated Zemo from the Raft. Given how he was able to manipulate Stark and Rodgers, I don't like it."

"Someone, not a tac team?" Natasha inquired, folding her arms across her chest now that her coffee mug was empty.

Nick moved a piece on the chessboard before answering. "The intel I can get, and there's very little at this point, is that it was one man. Ross isn't particularly into sharing."

"Smart play. They're well prepared to handle a full-out assault, one person…not so much. Not even after Rodgers did his little prison break stunt."

Nick gave Natasha a smirk. "Planning to break a few people out were you?"

"No. Making damn sure I could get out if I needed to." She replied shortly. "Just like with every other maximum security facility on the planet." She added silently, not willing to confirm that to Fury even is he did suspect it was true.For Natasha, as a spy, loyalty was a strange thing. Her job was to deceive, live among her enemies. The code that most soldiers had, of no man left behind, hadn't even been in her repertoire until she'd joined SHIELD.

"Did you get a description of the person?" She asked.

"Oh yeah, a really useful one," Nick said sarcastically. "Tall, muscular, scary as hell. Might have red hair."

"Well that clearly narrows it down to a large portion of the population. How helpful." Natasha pushed herself away from the window before continuing. "And where would you like me to start this manhunt?"

Nick looked down at his untouched, now cold again drink, and started heading toward the kitchen. "Don't know yet, give me a few days. But you need to be prepared to leave the moment I figure it out."

"I'm always prepared. I'm a boy scouts dream." Natasha called out playfully as she countered Nick's chess move.

Nick snorted and stuck his head out of the kitchen "Breakfast?"

"If you're cooking, sure."

He shot Natasha an amused glance. "Well since I didn't bring anything with me to test for poison, yes I'm cooking."

Natasha let out a burst of laughter, her mood restored now that the debrief appeared to be over and she would soon have a new target to go after. "Smartass." She said following Nick into the kitchen. "Oh, and Queen to D4. Checkmate."