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Natasha sat down across from Fury, keeping her hands flat on the table between them. There were tiny electrodes on her skin that were connected by thin wires to a recording device that was transmitting physiological information to a computer that would analyze whether or not she was lying.

She'd removed her weapons and had to be further patted down by Sarah, who had murmured an apology. Ordinarily, Tony would have made a joke about her being groped by a hot blonde but he remained tensely silent.

He sat beside her now. Fury had wanted him to go onto the other side of the two-way mirror, but he had refused. It was typical of Stark to be so pigheaded and stubborn, Fury thought. It would have been his preference to not have him here at all. Not to protect him, but to protect Natasha. She would, as an interrogator, know the sorts of questions that he was going to ask and it might have been less painful and embarrassing if Tony were not present to hear her answers.

But Natasha had not objected to Tony's presence.

"This interview is being recorded, so let's go ahead and get started. What is your full name?" Fury asked.

Tony rolled his eyes at the stupid question, but Natasha's expression didn't so much as flicker with irritation.

"Natalia Alianovna Romanova."

"What other names have you gone by?"

"Natasha Romanova, Natasha Romanoff, Nadine Roman, Laura Matthers, Natalie Rushman, Nancy Rushman, Natalia Shostakova… there are others but those have been the most notable ones."

"Where you born?"

"St. Petersburg, Russia on October 31."

"Any living family?"

"No. I was an only child and my parents were murdered when I was young. As far as I know, I had no other relatives since my parents were only children as well."

"Fury, come on," Tony burst out. "You already know this shit, so why are you asking?"

Fury didn't bother to look at him. "As I told you before, we have procedures to follow. If you have a problem with that, the door is right behind you."

"Tony, please," Natasha said quietly. "Just let him do his job."

He narrowed his eyes as if he wanted to argue, but then looked at his fiancée and nodded. "All right."

"What agency trained you?"

Natasha's gaze slid down to her hands on the table, as dark memories she preferred to keep suppressed rose to the surface of her mind. "Red Room, a special training program in Russia that recruited girls in childhood and used extensive resources to educate them in academics, seduction, espionage, and assassination."

"Have you worked for anyone else?"

"When I left Red Room, I was a mercenary for a short period of time. In that time, I accepted whatever jobs paid the most amount of money. After being a mercenary, I was able to join S.H.I.E.L.D. on a work visa and I have been here ever since."

Fury nodded. It was as Tony had said, all of this he knew because it was he that had interviewed Natasha – then, a mere teenager – after Barton had brought her back from Europe alive instead of in a body bag.

"Have you ever betrayed anyone?"

Natasha paused and then looked up, gazing at him with solemn green eyes. "Yes. Many times. It was the nature of the job, to gain trust and retrieve information or kill someone."

"What about employers?"

"Yes," she said again. "My last assignment for Red Room was to go in and kill a family. The father had been involved in the mafia and had crossed the wrong people. I was supposed to kill the mother and father and bring back the child to recruit her for Red Room. I killed her parents first."

Tony was silent, listening to her. Not for the first time he felt a strong surge of anger against the heartless people who had murdered her parents, destroyed her childhood, and taken her innocence. His parents may have been distant but in their own way had cared, and he had never lacked for any material things. It hadn't been the best childhood, but it was at least a childhood.

Beside her, she heard Tony shifting but she couldn't bring herself to look at him. She kept her gaze focused squarely on Fury as she continued speaking.

"I went to look for her and she had hidden from me underneath her bed. Just like… just like I had hid when men came into my house and killed my parents. I had… I had had my memory tampered with several times and had forgotten what they had done to me but in that moment, the familiarity of the scenario was stronger than the memory suppressors and I remembered everything."

Natasha fell silent, remembering the horror and disgust she felt when she realized that she was about to do to an innocent child exactly what had been done to her. She felt a hand settle on her thigh and when she looked over at Tony, his expression was gentle without a hit of condemnation or repulsion.

She took in a deep breath and offered him a faint smile. "I failed to complete my assignment. I took the child and I ran."

"That's my girl," he murmured and she felt a tiny flare of warmth spread through her body.

"I spent some time as a mercenary to make quick money and Clint eventually caught up with me." She did not admit that by that point she was so tired of her horrible, tainted existence that she welcomed the thought of being put down. That is how she viewed herself – as an animal that should have been put down for the safety of others.

Her gaze lifted and she stared hard at Fury. "Clint saw something in me worth saving. I don't know what it was or why he did, but I would never and have never betrayed that trust. He thought I could be better than what I was and I have spent nearly every moment of my life since then trying to prove it to everyone." Including herself.

Fury and Tony both heard the ring of truth in her words, but it was not enough. Fury sighed and opened up the file that Steve had quickly compiled for him.

"What do you know about the situation with Sarah in Serbia?"

"Not much. I helped Steve to go there so he could have some closure. I hadn't thought there was a great chance that someone had wanted us to think she was dead. Then again, I also would not have thought a man could survive frozen for 70 years or that aliens would attack Earth so… let's just say I've since then prepared myself for suspension of belief."

"The voice on the cell phone call presents a problem, Natasha. It is indisputably your voice. The chances of it being a computer error are slim to nothing. Stark may be a blowhard but his tech is almost the best in the world."

"Okay, first of all – I am not a blowhard, I'm just almost always right and I know it. Second, my tech is not almost, it is the best."

Fury gave him a droll stare. "And thank you for proving my point. Moving on… As I said, it is a problem. To clear you, it has to be proven that it was not your voice on the phone. We have the time that the call was made." He turned the file around to show Natasha the inside.

She looked down at the time. "I was in the shower."

"We were in the shower," Tony corrected. "I was with her the entire evening and night, Fury. If she'd made a call, Jarvis would have heard." He took out his handheld computer and had Jarvis look through the logs. "The only call she made was to James Barnes, and that was about the wedding."

"Why doesn't it surprise me there's no privacy in your house, Stark? Although in this case, that's a good thing."

Natasha's brow furrowed. "It is a good thing. It means that I truly didn't do it – I worried that since I've been brainwashed in the past…" she trailed off. "So if I didn't do it, and it's not a computer glitch, what other options are there?"

"Clone… shapeshifter… a being with the ability to mimic voices… unfortunately, there's more than one possibility. And unfortunately, you're going to have to sit this one out while the rest of the team works to clear your name and find out why you're being framed."

She looked at him. "Do you think I had anything to do with what happened?"

"No," he admitted. "But I can't go by gut instinct alone. All we've established is that you didn't make the call. We still don't know who was involved, or why."

"We've got to work backward, then," Tony said. "I can use Jarvis to cross references names that have been associated with Natasha, Steve, and Sarah and all the possible permutations."

"Do it, then." Fury nodded. "Make use of the lab and have Bruce help you."

"Never would have figured that one out on my own," Tony said, rolling his eyes. He looked over at Natasha and reached out to cradle her cheek in his hand. "I'm going to put my occasional bouts of insomnia and workaholicism to good use and figure this out."

Natasha nodded and leaned up to kiss him, relieved when he responded immediately, thankful that he hadn't changed toward her. She watched him leave and then turned back to Fury.

"You can remove the electrodes. Stay here while I figure out where to put you," he told her, and once more she nodded. Then he too walked out and she was left alone with her thoughts, and whoever was on the other side of the two-way mirror.

She sighed softly, trying not to feel suffocated or irritated by the loud ticking of the clock on the wall. Peeling out the electrodes only took a minute and then she had nothing to do. It seemed like hours but was only 30 minutes later that Tony came back into the room, with a strange expression.

"Did you find some names?"

"I did. One of them is… interesting. Your ex, James?"

Natasha nodded.

"This him?" Tony pulled out a photograph from a file, old and yellowed with age.

She looked at it and recognized Steve, and standing beside him was James. "Yes, that's him. How did…?"

"James Buchanan Barnes, born in Brooklyn in 1918, called Bucky by his best friend… Steve Rogers. Tash, I knew you liked older men, but…"

Natasha didn't respond. She was too busy staring down at the picture, at the handsome face of the man she had not seen in a few years but who most certainly was not almost 100 years old.

"He wasn't involved in this," she finally said, head aching with trying to figure how exactly she'd managed to have a relationship with someone born in 1918.

"You sure about that?"

She bit her lip and slowly shook her head.

At this point, she wasn't sure of anything.