Disclaimer: The Avengers, its characters and The Marvel Cinematic Universe belong to Marvel Studios and The Walt Disney Company, among many others. I'm only a fan, writing this for love of this film franchise and personal pleasure.
A.N.: Set during Avengers: Endgame, somewhere around year three of the Five Year gap.
To Build a Home
24. Moving On
Feeling the reassuring weight of the handgun in her hand almost as if it were an extension of her own body, Natasha squared her shoulders and straightened her back, feeling a familiar creak in her neck before she inhaled a deep breath then opened her eyes and exhaled slowly as she pulled the trigger, again and again. She never blinked despite the recoil and ricochet of shell casings as they fell at her feet, the bullets unerringly finding their target across the room ─ some inbedding themselves into the center of the man shaped figure, a few others hitting her own mental bullseye at the center of the head.
She remembered how SHIELD and even her own Avengers companions refrained from going for the kill hit straight away, opting instead for more wounding shots to the torso area or the limbs to incapacitate first. After all these years, she still forced herself to remember this, but kept her first instincts sharp nonetheless. Though definitely more drastic and final, a head shot sometimes was the only way out, something a Black Widow never forgot even after becoming an Avenger.
(Whenever she watched action movies or series in her down time, she'd frustratingly wonder why the hell did no one take the head shot already instead of wasting round after round trying to down an enemy by shooting at their chest when clearly it wasn't working out. If she were ever faced with a zombie apocalypse ─ something not entirely too out of the realm of what was possible, all things considered ─ she knew she'd be able to clear a path straight through with head shots alone, even without a shotgun.)
As she emptied the first round, she quickly released the magazine and put in a new one with barely a pause in her swift actions. She started moving her feet at a steady pace as she walked towards the target on the other side of the room, the action done almost entirely on muscle memory as her mind wandered through other matters quite disconnected with the task at hand.
Target practicing was something that strangely calmed her down, even now. She could lose herself in the action, feeling the vibration that started from her fingertips in her hands then travelled all the way up through her arms and the rest of her body, the sensation so familiar to her going as if there had never been a moment when she didn't know what it felt like. She would use it to keep her focus, to ground herself to this moment, almost as a form of therapy. Today, the tears that started prickling in her eyes were blurring her sight a little and deviating from her usual activity.
Having too much downtime was not something she was used to, and she'd hit a patch of no missions for a month now. She was still consulted regularly by other agencies for her expert input and kept the weekly calls with several contacts and monthly meetings with the team that were in place, but there had been nothing needing her personal involvement for a while, which left her alone with her own thoughts and inner demons.
She'd been used to being alone for most of her life ─ even when she'd lived in the Red Room she felt alone despite being surrounded on all sides by fellow candidates, trainers and handlers. The company of others was that of mere bodies nearby and not people she could really count on, so the effect was the same as if she'd been alone in those rooms. When she'd worked at SHIELD she lived by herself and went on a lot of solo missions; at least until she'd started working with Steve. But it wasn't really until the Avengers had decided to all live together that she found herself growing used to the presence of others and found companionship as something meaningful and worthwhile.
Now she was about the only one that resided full-time at the Avengers compound. Tony and Pepper had left early on and Thor was still in Norway with his people, then Steve went after the first year after the Decimation. He wasn't out of her life though. Steve still visited the compound rather constantly, truth be told. At least once a month he'd come by with some excuse to spend time with Natasha or offer to run back-end to some mission when she needed to go out into the field, and he was still excellent with the tactical side of things whenever she needed a second pair of eyes. But he spent most of his time in the city, either with his support group, working on his projects or teaching art classes at the community center. She was glad he was doing better and seemed to be really invested in living his life now, in the present. But all the same, for all of his bravado and talk about leaving the past behind and moving on, in some ways she felt he was just as stuck as she was, never truly able to move past everything that had happened.
As for the rest of the team, at first Bruce stuck around for a while, but nowadays he'd spend most of his time at Betty's place near Culver University or occasionally stay at Stark Tower where he still worked in R&D for Tony and Pepper's company. Rhodey would stay at the compound on occasion, but he was either constantly out on missions and when he had downtime he'd stay at his home in California or with Tony and Pepper. Carol came to most of their monthly meetings (either in person or holographically) and she also made sure to stop by at SWORD when she was around these parts, but she was like a nomad, moving around the galaxies to aid those who couldn't fend for themselves, just like Rocket and Nebula. Which left Natasha with too much time in her hands and living by herself in this too big compound which had been designed to accommodate several team members to live there all year-round, not to mention several departments with multiple staff of daily commuters.
She'd tried reaching out to Bobbi to join her in her ongoing and seemingly never ending hunt for Clint, but the former SHIELD agent had gone dark the past couple of weeks and they were out of fresh leads. Privately, Natasha wondered if that was true or if Bobbi had managed to contact Clint somehow and was trying her own hand at bringing him in ─ she remembered how they'd had a brief affair while Bobbi had been at the Academy and before Clint had met Laura. Either way, there was nothing she could do at the moment, which added to her frustration.
Some days hit her harder than others, and she'd tried her own brand of torturing herself while simultaneously letting off steam by putting in some ballet practice earlier. Whenever she felt particularly vicious or self-punishing, Natasha would take out her pointe shoes and spend hours in the training room going through the steps and forms and the routine that had been incessantly drilled into her brain while they had broken her down and built her up again as an assassin/ballerina in the Red Room. It was rather perverse, mentally (which, granted, was the point whenever she chose to do it), but the physical activity and exertion were able to bring her to a bittersweet exhaustion that regular gym training never quite managed to achieve.
Still, the mental exhaustion of her ballet session had left her in a somewhat frazzled state and she'd then turned to target practice to get herself grounded again. But something was off today and it wasn't working out as usual, as her frustration still simmered just under the surface of her skin that felt too tightly stretched around her flesh and bones.
She'd been contemplating this as she moved steadily closer to the target and wondering if she might give Dr. Fine a call after all, when a movement in the corner of her eye grabbed her attention and she pivoted swiftly on her feet, the handgun pointed straight out as she found herself no longer alone.
"Jesus, Nat!" Tony exclaimed as she stopped shooting and the sound of her last bullet reverberated in the room around them. His eyes were open wide as he stared back at her, his hand pressed against his chest and he seemed unconcerned or unaware that she had been a split second from shooting him out, as he carried on in his usual rambling manner. "Is this what you've been doing at the compound all this time? Am I just funding you to buy boxes and boxes of ammo to get in some target practice that you clearly don't need? Or maybe this is your idea of therapy, I don't know."
She smirked to herself, as he'd actually not been that off the mark ─ pun intended. "What do you want, Tony?" She said unconcernedly, mostly ignoring his questions and remarks, removing the noise-cancelling headphones and clicking the magazine release, checking that it was nearly empty before putting it back in place and reupholstering her gun.
"I came to see you." He replied with an easy shrug.
"Why?" She countered with a sardonically raised eyebrow as she leisurely crossed the room back towards him, putting the headphones back in its proper place. "Worried I'm gonna crack because I'm the only one living here anymore?"
"Honestly? Yeah, a little." He said then, taking her a little by surprise with the honesty in his voice as he frowned back at her. "Look, I want to help you, I do. But I can't ─"
"We don't need to go over this again, Tony. You hung up your suit, I get it." She interrupted him with a raised hand as she walked past him and started out of the shooting range, unconcerned if he was following her or not as she walked through the familiar halls of the compound. "You're still helping me do this by funding the Avengers, and no, I'm not just spending your money on target practice, as you should know. Or am I just filling out those monthly expense reports as your idea of fun?" She said, looking at him over her shoulder with a slightly raised eyebrow.
"Don't worry, someone's reading them." He reassured with an easy smirk as he followed a step behind her. "Not just me, though. That's why I have people working for me."
"Of course." She replied, looking forward again. "You don't need to babysit me. I'm fine."
"Clearly." He said, sarcasm evident in his voice. "Where's Rhodey? I thought he would be here."
"He's borrowed to SHIELD on a mission in Southeast Asia."
"The blue meanie and the talking build-a-bear?"
"Patrolling the galaxy quadrant."
"Danvers?"
"Settling Xandarian refugees, last I heard."
Tony hesitated for a beat before following it up. "...Rogers?"
"Not sure. Probably with his support group in Brooklyn." She said, no beat of hesitation in her voice, then she turned around to face him as they reached the common kitchen. "How are Pepper and Morgan?" She asked, partly as it was a real point of interest, but mostly because she wanted to stop this string of questions and knew that would do the trick.
"They're good." He said, a smile lighting up his face and seeming to take years off of him as he thought of his wife and daughter. "Pepper just got back to work at the Stark Foundation this week. She says it feels good to be doing something to help again, after the two years she took off to take care of our baby girl."
"So now you're thinking if you could do something to help again as well." Natasha nodded slightly to herself as she pointed it out before she opened up the fridge and got herself a bottle of water.
"No. I'm good being the trophy husband, stay-at-home dad." Tony countered at once as he shook his head. "Honestly. Every day with them it's… a blessing. Cliché, I know." He added with a shrug and a soft smile. "But that's how I feel."
She couldn't help the small smile that she gave him back then, before taking a sip of water. If someone had told her that Tony Stark would one day be the picture of domestic bliss, she'd never have believed it when she'd first infiltrated into his company then his life to shadow him for SHIELD all those years ago. The man had been as far away from settling down (or happiness, for that matter) as possible, back then. Despite everything that had happened, she was glad that Tony had found this with Pepper and Morgan.
"Nat." He said, a serious tone bringing her out of her private reverie as he braced his arms and leaned across the counter towards her. "How long are you going to keep doing this?"
"As long as I have to." She answered at once, not needing to clarify what he meant by this. It wasn't the first time they'd had this conversation and she'd had a feeling this was coming after her call earlier that week with Pepper. That woman was becoming too well-versed in reading her for her liking.
"You don't have to." He said promptly with an eyeroll.
"I do." She retorted, the words coming out more forcefully than she'd expected as she slammed the water bottle at the sink counter next to her, Tony backing up and standing up straight with surprised raised eyebrows. She could usually brush him off easily, but maybe it was the stress and her frustration eating away at her and how she hadn't managed to shake it off despite her best efforts. For some reason the words just started coming out and she couldn't stop them now. "There's no moving on, not after what happened. This is what I do. There's no husband or kids or even a moment resembling anything to a peaceful life for me. I need to do this because if I try to do anything else, that's when I'm gonna lose it. And you don't wanna see that, believe me." She finished in a dark tone.
"I'm not telling you to quit and do nothing." Tony said, taking it all in stride as if they were used to making such confidences in each other (which was not really the norm). "I'm saying you could be doing something else. There are plenty of ways to help out. Hell, who would've thought Captain America would've taken a course in mental health counseling and would be leading a support group?" He exemplified, throwing his hands up in an emphatic gesture.
"He's not Captain America. Not anymore." She muttered under her breath, avoiding his eyes.
"Is there something you wanna say?" He blinked his eyes up at her, curiosity piquing at her tone. "Oh please, don't hold back now."
"Fine." She said, looking up at him squarely in the eyes. "You took away his shield."
"You weren't there." He was shaking his head back at her before she'd even finished her sentence. "He almost killed me."
"Please." She rolled her eyes at him nearly with her entire body. "If he wanted you dead, you'd be dead." She added in a dry, matter-of-fact tone.
"Well, good to see you were never really on my side." He huffed out in annoyance. "Guess it's hard not to fall for his charms and good looks."
"I'm not the one who put him up on a pedestal and then knocked him down the moment you realized he's human, just like everyone else."
"He lied to me." He glowered back at her accusation. "Not only that, but his lies compromised us all."
"My point exactly." She said, throwing her hands up. "Like you've never lied about anything in your life or put other people in danger to protect yourself."
"Excuse me?" He bristled, actually taking a step back then.
"Ultron." She answered simply.
"That was different." He insisted with a frown. "I was trying to keep the world safe. He was only lying to protect himself."
"He was trying to keep the team together. He knew how much it would hurt you."
"Of course, it would. I thought we were friends yet he chose him over everything we've been through."
"Oh my God, Tony. You make it sound like it was so simple." Natasha exclaimed, unable to stop herself from rolling her eyes at him. "This wasn't Steve choosing Barnes over you. It was about keeping the team together and making it work because there were more important things at stake."
"I had a right to know." He said, a dark intensity lighting up his eyes before he practically exploded with his next words. "He killed my parents!"
"Yes, he did." She replied at once in a deadly calm tone, as she actually took a few steps closer and stood right in front of him, staring up at his eyes. "Against his will. They tortured him and wiped his mind and used him as a weapon. To kill someone he'd actually known, respected and admired. And he had to live with that every single day of his life. Do you know what that's like?" She asked, watching as his troubled eyes stared back at her as he took in her words. "Trust me, there's no greater punishment than that. I'd know." She dragged her eyes away from him as she said the last words, staring down at the floor instead.
"Okay." Tony relented, taking a step back and a deep breath as he raised his hands in a peaceful gesture. "I didn't come here to fight with you, Nat."
"You know what, Tony? Whatever." Natasha scoffed back as she looked up at him. "You and Steve…" She paused, shaking her head a little. "You both talk about moving on, living in the now and focusing on the future. Yet you're both still living in the past. So don't come over lecturing me about what I need to be doing and moving on. This? What happened?" She made a gesture between the two of them and all around them. "It was all our fault. There's no moving on for any of us." She threw at him, suddenly feeling the need to move and walking out of the kitchen back towards her command center.
"This wasn't my fault." Tony countered, shaking his head as he followed her out. "You can't say that. How was this my fault?"
"The Accords, Tony." She said, turning on her feet to face him again. "We played it wrong. Steve was right, it wasn't the right move for us. Or when aliens came attacking New York once more did you actually have time to get on the phone to Secretary Ross and ask permission to engage them in battle?" She asked sarcastically, as she crossed her arms.
"Oh get off your high horse." It was his turn to scoff back at her. "We couldn't keep on like that, having no boundaries, with no accountability whatsoever. That way we were no better than the enemies we were fighting, or like all those vigilantes in New York." He said, raising a sardonic eyebrow at her then. "But then I guess you'd fit right in with your old buddy Murdock or his friend Frank Castle."
"Leave Matt out of this." She warned with a pointed finger at him, before she turned around and kept on towards the other room. "You only wanted someone to come in and take the responsibility off your hands, to get the guilt off your shoulders."
"I was only trying to keep the Avengers together!" He exclaimed in anger.
"Two years, Tony!" She shouted back, rounding on him so suddenly that they almost collided. "Two goddamn years we were on the run and not once did you reach out to us. The first thing Steve did, even before going to the Raft to break out everyone, was to send you a message, to apologize and give you a means to contact him if you ever felt so inclined. But you never did! All that time, you could've swallowed up your fucking pride and gotten over yourself and done something to help us."
"I did help you." He retorted, his hands coming up in a frustrated gesture. "I kept Ross off your back. I covered your tracks, I deleted any trails leading to you. I mean, you're good at staying underground and everything, but I helped you out a few times here and there, in case you didn't know."
"I do know that. But you could've done more and don't try to deny that." She said, shaking her head at him as she could feel another objection coming up. "If you wanted to, you could've pressured the UN and the government and done something to clear our names, to get us back on the right side and get us back together. We all made mistakes, I get it." She said, raising a hand in a conceding gesture. "But this was your mistake, too. Stop acting like you're the only one who got hurt there. We all lost something. And if you get to build yourself back up and play happily-ever-after with your family, that's fine. Just don't expect me to do the same."
The silence that followed their explosive exchange kept them grounded, as they stood a few feet apart just staring at each other with tears glistening in their eyes yet refusing to fall down. Tony swallowed thickly a couple of times as he nodded mutely back at her and Natasha opened her mouth then closed it again as she didn't know what exactly she wanted to say and needing a moment to gather herself again. This had not at all gone as she'd expected from the moment she'd first seen him, but maybe they were all words that needed to be said. Probably for a long time now, really.
"Yeah, ok," he said, taking advantage of her silence, shifting his weight as he jerked a thumb over his shoulder and avoided her eyes. "Good deal. I'll leave you to it then and get back to my fairytale ending, alright?"
"Tony, wait," she said, and he actually halted and looked back at hearing the regret in her voice. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that. You know that I'm happy for you and Pepper and I would never want to take that away from you."
"Yeah, I do," he said, his voice quieter than she'd ever remembered him being before. "And I'm sorry, too. I guess we just… we each gotta do what we gotta do, right?" He added with a sort of helpless shrug.
"Right," she nodded back at him with something between a smile and a grimace.
"Look, I get why you need to do this, I do," he sighed, running a hand through his hair then. "I'm not gonna try to change your mind again. Just… don't be too hard on yourself, 'kay? Come by to the house every now and then, Pep misses you and Morgan is already growing up way too fast." He smiled in that way he couldn't quite help whenever he talked about his family and his eyes were softer and there was a lot less tension between them as he looked back at her. "And if you work yourself to the bone, who's gonna keep all these guys in check?" He moved one hand around to gesture vaguely at the room.
"I don't know. I think Nebula would make a pretty easy job of that," she replied easily with a smirk and nearly chuckled at the affected shudder he feigned at her words.
They exchanged one last soft smile then Tony turned back around to get back to his own affairs and leave her be just as Natasha received a call from Okoye. After all of this, she would be glad to hear from the Wakandan General and jump into whatever might need her attention somewhere else.
A.N.: Honestly, this is probably my favorite chapter so far, even if the Romanogers of it all become a secondary point to the plot. This is mostly Natasha, delving into part of what she went through in those 5 years, dealing with Tony and dealing with Steve being gone from her daily life at the Avengers Initiative and just trying to keep herself together while actually being broken down on the inside. I've also wanted to throw all of those things in Tony's face for years now, so it felt good to use her to send the message through to his thick head, as I don't think anyone else (especially not Steve) would have the courage to do that.