I know it's been forever! I'm so sorry! I have no excuse and I am a bad person! But several of you said you would love me forever if I updated and I am holding you to that!

Everyone noticed the change in Natasha, but no one dared to bring it up.

Of course Steve didn't see her steal a picture he had sketched of the whole team and he definitely didn't see it lying on a table in the library artfully colored in. That would mean that she was attached to the team as a whole.

Of course Thor didn't notice the way that his favorite foods kept being stocked in the pantry even when no one went shopping. No one even went out with enough money to do that except Natasha, but of course he wouldn't assume that. That would mean that Natasha paid attention to his preferences and cared enough about him to cater to them.

Of course Bruce didn't think that Natasha had been the one that draped a blanket over his shoulders when he fell asleep in the lab every now and then. That would mean she saw him as a good friend and not a monster like everyone else.

Of course Tony didn't say anything when she sat next to him as he experimented and idly chatted with him even though he knew she knew he loved company. That would mean she wanted to please him and make him feel less alone.

Of course Loki didn't assume Natasha was the one who went to the public library to get him more Shakespeare and Dickens even though she was the only one who knew those were his favorites. That would mean she wanted him to be able to hide in books that he loved so he didn't have to be uncomfortable.

Of course Clint didn't see her going on so many more walks from his place on the roof. He didn't see her going to the library or the store and her side bag filled with whatever she got that day. He didn't see her smiling because she knew her team would be happier. He didn't see her and grin like an idiot.

Of course not.

But obviously everyone did. Natasha had completely changed after the last battle. One morning she had even gotten up early and made everyone pancakes. She used Clint's old recipe from when he made them breakfast on missions.

It had been three weeks and she was still so darn chipper.

Because Natasha was foolishly holding on to her hallucination of arrows. It wasn't only of arrows, however. Her hallucination branched out to an archer hiding in the shadows like an altruistic Robin Hood, watching her back and keeping her safe.

And then she would start laughing and get caught up in memories of Clint dressing up as famous archers for Halloween side by side with her costumes which always ending up being badass versions of Disney princesses, the characters she wished she got to grow up with. Clint would poke her with his fake arrows and make her guess which arrow out of his entire quiver was the real one. In turn, Natasha would poke him with her fake knives or her real gun. Soon it would be a full on poke war that would escalate into the pair hiding and sneaking up on each other.

Natasha would spend hours in front of a TV next to Steve, neither of them paying attention. Steve would be sketching, Natasha would be reminiscing, and sometimes Loki would be reading on the recliner next to them. Loki completely negated the point of a recliner as he curled into a ball, but it didn't matter. He liked it.

Pepper was still lurking around Natasha whenever she could. The older woman loved keeping the spy occupied.

Natasha had a natural knack for a lot of things. One of them was cooking, another was deadly accuracy with weapons. She did not have a knack for gardening. About six plants died at Natasha's hands over the course of a week. It was a sad week for Pepper's petunias.

Fury had been reporting meaningless things going on in StarkTower to Clint just to keep up his morale. When he told the archer about the incident in which his best friend murdered half a dozen innocent flowers, Clint spent the rest of the morning in a ridiculously good mood.

But when Clint was informed that Natasha kept making his pancakes at least three times a week, he sulked for three hours. Fury stopped pretending that he could understand the idiotic archer he was suddenly given custody of.

Back at StarkTower, exactly a month after Natasha's secret arrow mirage, Bruce found something he wasn't really supposed to.

He had very politely knocked on Natasha's door. She didn't answer, and Bruce had slowly opened the door to see if she was okay. There was no sign of the spy anywhere. With a smile, Bruce figured out where she would be.

He calmly made his way to the roof, prepared to convince her to come back down to her room and sleep. It had happened before.

When he finally got to the roof, Bruce found her perch. Natasha had been stargazing flat on her back when the days stress had gotten to her. She was fast asleep, her fast growing hair splayed out under her. Bruce found himself smiling at her. She looked so tired and so content. He didn't want to move her, but he couldn't leave her there with a clear conscious. Bruce shrugged off his suit jacket and worked it over her bare shoulders to give her more coverage from the cold night air than her tank top.

With a great effort, Bruce lifted her into his arms. He was a regularly aging human most of the time, so his back started to protest as he carried her, but he still got her into the elevator and knocked the right button.

Steve intercepted, on his way to the roof himself to do his own private reminiscing. He took Natasha's light weight from Bruce and effortlessly lifted her back to her room. Steve didn't touch the blazer and just gently arranged the sleeping spy on top of her bed. Bruce took one last look at her and then left for his own room for the night. Steve lingered for just a second longer, taking a moment to brush a curl away from her pale face.

Before going up to the roof, Steve stopped in his room again to get his sketch pad and pencils. A stroke of inspiration had hit him and he just needed to draw.

When he finally reached his destination, Steve took on look at the city around him and started drawing. A picture of the Natasha and the best friend she lost laughing on the street below him slowly started forming. The shadows and expressions made his friends come to life under his hands, happy and alive. Steve smiled and turned to the next page, drawing Tony and Bruce at the lab with Tony's usual playful expression contrasting Bruce's serious one. Loki and Thor took up the next page and then it was just two more pages of Natasha. Just Natasha.

Steve had spent half of the night drawing his friends and he didn't care. He had gone to the roof to sulk and then he found his redemption in drawing good memories. He owed a lot to his friends just for that.

When he packed up his things and turned to leave, Steve was startled by a noise from the building next door. It was a loud thud followed by another one. He looked just in time to see a head of brown hair disappearing from his view by lying down. He could have sworn he saw something hanging off of the person's back in the same way that a quiver would, but that was just ludicrous. "No," Steve said out loud, closing his own argument before it got started.

The next day when Steve picked up his sketch pad he noticed that two pictures had gone missing and fully expected to see them colored later on. However, they never reappeared.

Fury walked into Clint's room the next morning and immediately turned around. He didn't need to know how he had gotten a picture of Natasha grinning in her Black Widow uniform and a picture of he and Natasha in street clothes laughing on Main Street. He also didn't need to know why they clearly looked like they had been drawn by Rogers. He didn't need to know, he didn't want to know.

But when Clint woke up and lazily stretched, the first thing he saw was Natasha smiling back at him.

Is she dealing a little bit better now? I know someone said Natasha would just lose it. So I tried to salvage it a little bit.

I know it wasn't a lot of emotional fluff, but I'm rather pleased with the way it turned out. More and more people are starting to get suspicious.

Again, I'm sorry about the wait and I hope you guys like the way this chapter ended up. Someone started following it yesterday and I had a surge of desire to continue this. So here it is.

Also, I have a weird question. Would anyone be willing to read the first chapter or two of an original piece of fiction that I'm working on? It's different from this but I would love some feedback on it. I know, weird question, I'm sorry.

Review! (If you aren't to angry with me for the wait)

Until next time.