Title from "Jupiter," by Sleeping At Last.

Natasha has three families; they never meet. She intends to keep it that way.

She imagines it, though, sometimes when she's falling asleep and sometimes when she's waking up: Clint throwing his head back with the force of his laugh as Yelena tells yet another embarrassing story, Matt and Clint sharing ridiculous jokes and puns, Alexei and Steve having an arm wrestling match, Yelena swinging Lila and Nate around and around as they giggle shamelessly, Tony squinting at Yelena and Melina to try to figure out if they're being serious or not, Sam and Bucky throwing their arms around Matt's shoulders and casually telling him what they'd do to him if he hurt her, and Nat herself, in the middle of it all, soaking in all of the warmth.

But she can't let that happen, and so she keeps them apart, the cold seeping into her bones. She wraps her blankets and her arms around herself as if they come even close to all of these people she holds dear.

It has to be this way. It's safer this way. (She doesn't know if it's to protect them or to protect her.)

She is Natashka: a big sister, a daughter.

She is on a mission, and the mission is to be someone she is not. She can do that, she has been trained to do that her whole life.

Her so-called parents give her this little nickname, adding a little inconsequential letter to 'Natasha' as a tiny act of rebellion against the Red Room, as much of a rebellion as her dyed hair is. It is a way to signify that she is more than what the Red Room has made her into, or so she'd like to think.

Maybe she's reading too much into it.

Because a little blonde girl with blue eyes looks up to her and calls her 'Nat', which is all she can manage of the three-syllable name at first. She calls her that with all the surety and trust of someone who has not had her life taken away from her, or at least someone who does not know her life has been taken away from her, not yet.

"Naaat," she says, "can we go out and play?"

"Naaat," she says, "Mama said you had to share that with me!"

"Naaat," she says, "I'm gonna tell Papa on you."

And Natasha answers to her, to this shortened version of her name, every single time. Yelena doesn't know it yet, but the world is not as it seems, and Nat plays a part in it as much as Mama and Papa do.

Still, Yelena holds out her hand. "Please?" she asks, face already in a pout. After a second of hesitation as Natasha pushes down the guilt, she gently takes her little sister's hand. It is smaller than her's, less calloused, unused to training and fighting and killing.

Natasha looks down at her and vows to protect her for as long as she can.

Natasha has three families; they never meet. She hadn't intended for it to be this way, not at first.

It happens as almost an accident—emphasis on the 'almost'—because there is always some purpose to everything she does, even if there is very little purpose and the action was done very subconsciously.

Of course, it starts with the Red Room. Everything she is started with the Red Room, and she hopes, valiantly, that it is not everything she will be. They don't own her, they can't own her.

And yet, the habits they instilled in her remain, particularly compartmentalization.

It's useful, to be able to function when everything else is falling apart, when everyone else is falling apart. She was made to be the best; she will be the best. Locking everything up in neat boxes helps her do her job, and act as support for her friends and family who need it more than her. She does not break down when others die around her, when the people close to her get hurt, or mind-controlled, or betrayed, or lied to. She cannot, and so she does not.

When they said the only thing that could possibly compromise a Black Widow's mission was a child, they were wrong. Natasha knows that other bonds exist; she holds onto them and makes them strong at the expense of her formerly unbreakable masks. She was the best operative, she was, and now—

Now she is worried for so many different people who could get hurt, who break through her masks and walls and shields like paper, who see through her as if she is made of glass, who see through her but know she is not as breakable as glass.

Maybe, if Yelena or Clint or Matt, if one of them dies, then it would hurt less. Their lives are not intertwined; she would not be reminded of one of their deaths when she talks with the others. She could act as if nothing is wrong when one of her families is breaking apart because her other families are still relatively whole.

She lies to herself, and tells herself that she doesn't need (love) all of them, and it works, for a while. It does.

But even she knows it can't last forever.

She is the Black Widow: an assassin, and a prisoner. A survivor, too.

A man is chasing her through the rain, across rooftops and amidst the shadows. She should lose him—he isn't her target—but she can't seem to make herself do so.

He's from SHIELD, one of their snipers, the one with the bow and arrow. She has questions about that particular choice in weaponry. Hell, the whole Red Room has questions about this mysterious archer, but nobody cares enough to look for answers.

He isn't her mission, but he is an enemy, she thinks as she trips, falling to her knees on yet another desolate rooftop. She shouldn't have tripped; she's supposed to be perfect, infallible, a model for Mother Russia to base its next group of Red Room initiates on.

But she's so tired.

The man lands next to her, tensed and ready for a fight that should happen but won't. The rain soaks into their clothes, and makes it hard for her to distinguish between it and her own tears. Maybe that's for the best, because her only visible sign of weakness would be the shudders flowing through her, and even those are barely noticeable, could be explained away by the cold of the night.

But the man is their best sharpshooter for a reason: he sees all. He hesitates, at the sight of her. He lowers his guard, next to one with bloodied hands. Nat will wonder still, years later, why Clint did it that night, will wonder at his kindness and willingness to see that of others, will wonder what exactly he saw in—

"Hey," he says. He shifts a little, grimacing. "Nice weather, huh?"

"Something tells me you aren't here to talk about the weather," she says softly, loathe to interrupt the sound of raindrops hitting the pavement. Her voice lilts with just the slightest tinge of a Russian accent, her way of letting him know she's hiding no longer.

"Well this is awkward," he says, shifting again. There are weapons there, clinking under and on his clothes, but he doesn't pull out any of them. "I rather like getting rained on and being soaking wet on an op, figured you could relate."

A burst of light laughter; it takes her a bit to register the sound from herself. She realises that this is the most genuine she has been with anyone in years. "Yes, it's rather discouraging," she says with a tilt of her lips. She looks up at him once she notices that she's stopped shaking. "Why are you here?" she asks. He could have taken her out already, should have if he was smart.

But he hadn't.

"My boss might kill me for this later, but something tells me you're not who everyone thinks you are." He sighs. Water drips down his face, from his hair and his clothes. "Something tells me you need a way out, so I'm giving you one. What do you say, Widow?" he asks, holding out a hand.

The rain alone cannot wash the blood from her ledger. She takes it.

Natasha has three families; they never meet. She's struggling to keep it that way.

Thor is regaling Lila and Cooper with stories of his adventures in Asgard and the Nine Realms while Bruce wrinkles his nose and tries to figure out if the tales are true or not. Laura and Clint are spending some well-earned time together on the porch outside, and Nat can hear the faint sound of their laughter every so often. Steve is reading a book; he reads often, trying to catch up on what he's missed, but the sight of Captain America sitting on Clint's worn-out armchair will take some getting used to. Nick Fury is...cooking dinner? In the kitchen? And Tony looks like he's going to have an aneurysm any second now.

Nat doesn't blame him.

It hadn't been an easy decision for Clint to make, revealing this other side of him to the rest of the team. Nat can tell that Laura is slightly uneasy about the whole situation, but she hides it well, and she trusts Clint. Cooper and Lila are starstruck, and Natasha wonders what harm it would do to let these different parts of her collide, to let her walls fall down.

She can see it: Yelena, on the couch beside the kids, mocking Thor's stories; Matt, sitting on the stairs beside her, an arm around her shoulders. Alexei would be trying to help Fury in the kitchen, all the while criticizing his cooking skills, causing Fury to scowl. Foggy would be casually trying to get Steve's signature, all the while making not-so-subtle references to Daredevil and not-so-subtle jabs at Matt, who pretends he has no idea what his friend is talking about. Melina would take one look at Bruce and immediately try to trap him in a conversation without him knowing.

It would be perfect. It might not be true, but it would be perfect.

Natasha hasn't seen one of her families in a long time. She hopes they're well. She hopes they're still who she imagines them to be.

"Something on your mind, Nat?" Bruce asks with a raised eyebrow.

"Just...thinking 'bout how nice this is," she says. Does Yelena still like eating mint chocolate chip ice cream in the summer heat?

Bruce nods, knowing nothing of her inner turmoil. "It's almost domestic." He frowns. "That's not a word I would normally use for us."

"Yeah," she agrees with a small nod and a smirk. She wants it, though, this feeling of peace, of contentment despite the dangers lurking outside. She'll miss it when it's gone.

She is Natalie Rushman: Tony Stark's secretary, nothing more and nothing less, and nothing to call her own.

She shares a short greeting and an equally short handshake with one Matthew Murdock. He is an intern at Landman and Zack (those motherfuckers Mr. Stark is not fond of). He is here to finish up some paperwork with the legal department of Stark Industries on the behalf of an overly privileged client, nothing more and nothing less.

He asks her, in a self-deprecating manner, if she could show him the way. His smile, when he says this, is almost as fake as her own. She's impressed.

"Do you want to hold onto my arm?" she asks, turning around so that her left arm is by his right one.

"If it wouldn't be too much trouble," he says, hesitantly lifting a hand to land on the crook of her elbow. It's warm, reassuring.

"We're going to the elevator, Mr. Murdock," she murmurs. "About 15 steps to your right."

"Thank you," he says, ducking his head a little. His cane clicks on the floor at constant intervals. His smile becomes a little more genuine.

"I haven't even gotten you there yet. How do you know I won't get you lost?" she asks, amused. At least this is more interesting than babysittng Tony Stark all day.

He smirks. There is a cut peeking out from behind his red-tinted glasses. His knuckles are bruised. "Something tells me we'll get there...eventually."

And they do.

She should forget about him. He has nothing to do with her mission. But there's something about him, something Natasha wants to unravel.

So she finds him, in a Hell's Kitchen alleyway, dressed in black and smelling of blood. She raises her eyebrows: a blind man fighting crime. You don't see that every day.

"You're not Natalie Rushman," he says, a bit breathless from his skirmish. He has bruised ribs, at the very least, and his knuckles aren't much better. There is something in him that she recognizes.

He looks lost. He looks tired.

"No," she agrees with a shake of her head. She wonders if he can somehow sense it.

"Then who are you?" he asks, fists clenched, ready for a fight. His voice is lower, rougher in a futile attempt to separate himself from Matt Murdock.

"Black Widow," she says. He tilts his head.

"Try again," he says. Interesting.

"Natasha Romanoff," she admits. It is not a name known to many.

"Why are you after me?"

She shrugs. "I was curious." She steps closer to him, and although he looks like he's gearing up to run he does not take a step back. "Tell me how you do what you do and I'll give you tips on keeping a secret identity?"

He snorts, then pauses. Another one of those head tilts. "Oh God, you're being serious."

"I am."

"Oh God," he repeats, then shakes his head. "No thanks. Stay out of Hell's Kitchen." And then he parkours up the building in only the way a Hell's Kitchen native would be able to do.

"Huh," she says, looking up at his retreating form. She's already planning on meeting him again.

Natasha has three families; they haven't met. She wonders if it should be this way.

Her life is full of danger, what with the assassins and terrorist cells threatening her on a daily basis, but she wouldn't have it any other way. Even so, she imagines her gravestone morbidly often. Sister, Friend, Lover, it would say. She wouldn't want Avenger on it: her name is enough to tell that story, and a killer for a hero is not a story she would want to be told.

Her funeral would probably be a public affair, but her families would mourn in private. Everyone would look at her gravestone and question it, scrutinize it. And the only person who would know the whole story would be six feet under, having carried her secrets to the grave.

These dark thoughts plague her, and she must not have them as under control as she'd thought, because Wanda sometimes has this half-concerned and half-scared look on her face when they're in the same room. But Wanda says nothing because she and the team are at this point where they want to get to know one another better but don't know how to start.

Natasha thought she'd be ready for new team members, but she doesn't know how much of her heart she has left to give, already stretched between three different groups of people.

She is a sister to Yelena, and a sister-in-arms to the team. That means she must be a daughter to someone, to Alexei and Melina, who care. She is a friend to her teammates, to anyone who cares to listen, to Clint and Laura and maybe Foggy and Karen (they're getting there). And she is a lover to Matt, who is always there and waiting for her, even when she's gone for months at a time.

She has enemies, and then she has them.

They're her people. She should group them together, let them get to know each other. But she is also theirs, and that is what scares her.

Yelena is staring at her with some amount of hostility, and Nat wonders if it was a mistake, to come back. Do they know how to work with each other? Do they even know one another anymore? Had they ever?

Nat misses when she had full and complete trust in her, misses the little blonde girl with blue eyes who often begged her for more ice cream, but she cannot fault Yelena's mistrust in her now, not when she'd failed to protect her all those years ago, not when she'd broken her trust with an utter and complete lie.

Alexei's apparently been living his best life without them, Melina's alive, and everything is a mess. This is no exaggeration: one of her families has broken in two, one of her families has come back together after years apart, only to clash, and one of her families is dealing with undead ninjas? In New York? She's not even going to ask. (You're the one dealing with aliens and magic, Matt would grumble.)

Also, Nat is on the run. She can't seem to help anybody, even herself.

"I'm not the killer that little girls call their hero," Yelena tells her, and Nat doesn't say that she never planned for that, never meant for that to happen, never thought little girls would look up to her like that, not until a mission in Ohio and a small hand was held out to her despite the blood staining her own. You used to be one of those little girls, Natasha thinks. How did I let you down?

Maybe she should have asked, What did the Red Room do to you?

Natasha has been trying to run away from her past, but there is no doubt in her head that it was real, all of it, the sad parts and the happier parts.

She fights. She remembers vanilla ice cream melting down her pale wrist, remembers riding a bike down the street with the breeze blowing through her blue hair, remembers the sweet taste of candy melting on her tongue. She falls, and she remembers Yelena running around in the backyard catching fireflies, remembers her giggling on the playground swings, remembers her climbing the tallest tree in the neighborhood with only Nat on the ground to catch her if she fell. She fights, and remembers Alexei swinging his daughters around and around in his arms, remembers Melina learning how to bake a cake just for them, remembers all of them dancing and laughing in the living room to the music playing on the radio.

"It was real to me, too," she says, pressing her forehead against Yelena's just to make sure she knows it.

They stay in contact after that, through burners and discreet meetings. All of them are still needed by other people, but there is no harm in getting to know the young woman her little sister has grown up to be.

"Heard you broke your little superhero team out of prison," Yelena says with a pinched smile that means she's trying not to smile but failing.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Nat says, taking a bite out of her ice cream.

Yelena frowns. "Don't do that. You're supposed to lick it." She demonstrates with her own ice cream—mint chocolate chip, two scoops on a cone—as if to prove a point.

Nat smiles. This is an old argument. "Why would I wait for it to melt?" she asks. There is the sound of laughter behind them, the pattered steps of children running around in no fear of the two killers (heroes) sitting on this very bench.

"You're disgusting," Yelena says.

"You're disgusting," Nat says back. A drop of vanilla ice cream flows down her wrist.

Natasha has three families who haven't met. She is preparing for when they do.

People die around her, they always have, ever since the Red Room took her away from her birth parents. (Or had they given her up? She's still not sure.)

She's putting people in danger by simply being and existing in their circles, in their families.

So how much more danger would they be in if they met?

And even if she doesn't let them meet, she has no control over them. She has had no control over her own life, let alone other people, unless you're talking about Nate Barton, who will listen to everything she says with rapt attention until he becomes a pesky teenager.

If she knows anything about her people, about Yelena and Clint and Matt, it is that they are all equally stubborn.

Matt knows the most, how could he not? Neither Clint nor Yelena know of his existence, the Avengers are public figures, and her ties to the Red Room and other Black Widow's are common knowledge, even if Matt does not know how deep those ties go.

He knows the most, but he doesn't press like he sometimes wants to, when she comes back from a mission not only hurt on the outside, when his lips purse and his hands shake, pressing against her bruises.

He doesn't ask, and Clint doesn't ask, when she seems more distracted than usual with no possible explanation, and Yelena doesn't ask, when she bites her lip as a news report of the Avengers or the Defenders plays, and she can do nothing because she is on the other side of the world, never mind that their are freaking aliens now, that Earth is just a measly planet in the universe they live in, that the world is not as small as it once was when she met the three of them.

It was easier, then.

Eventually, they will find out, their lives will collide, and Natasha will be ready for when that happens. She has to be; there is no other choice. The world has forced her hand, her families will force her hand.

She wouldn't have it any other way.

Clint will have three kids, one named 'Nathaniel' instead of 'Natasha', all three of whom will call her 'Auntie Nat' and see her as someone to look up to, with bright eyes and beaming smiles. They will trust her, and Clint does, but right now he looks as if Nat will punch him. He looks as if he'll let her.

"Congrats," she says.

Clint blinks. "Congrats? That's all you have to say? After I told you I'm expecting a second kid, when you didn't even know I was married to begin with?"

It would be hypocritical for her to become upset with him, but she doesn't tell him that. "Exactly, congrats, this is big! I couldn't say it before so I'm saying it now: congratulations!" She's ecstatic, but she's pretty sure she's coming off as annoyed.

Clint gapes at her. "I lied to you, all these years, and I-"

"I know a thing or two about secrets," Nat says with a mysterious smile that has made her targets faint before. "When do I get to meet them?"

"Tomorrow?" Clint asks, shoulders slumping as her acceptance finally infiltrates his thick skull.

"Tomorrow," Nat agrees with a nod.

And as she swings Cooper around in her arms, as she bounces Lila up and down in her arms, as she cradles Nate in her arms, she will see them instead of the red droplets of blood covering her hands and running down her wrist. She will see them and their brightness and wonder, years later, why Clint did it that night.

What he saw in her, how he trusted her enough to share this vulnerable but important part of his life, his family, with her.

She will wonder why it seems that she can't trust anyone enough to share her own.

Natasha has three families who haven't met. She loves them all the same.

Maybe it isn't about trust. Maybe it's about loss, and certain matters of the heart Natasha has never had much time for.

But Nat knows her people, and she knows she can't lose them, not when it took her so much to find them in the first place.

She thinks Tony can relate. He pushed so many people away until there was no one left, and though he may blame certain people for that, there are still others who have stayed, and he's come to care for them, in his own roundabout way. Pepper and Rhodey and Happy and that spider-kid and his aunt; the rest of the Avengers, once upon a time. He clings onto them until he can't. He renovated Avengers Tower and built the Avengers Compound for all of them to stay in, for goodness sake: he gave them all a place to call home. He throws money and quips around in hopes that they'll stay, but they do, they did, because of the heart hiding behind his armor.

He shut down after Steve left, because all he got after all that pain was a phone to contact Steve if Tony needed him, not if Steve needed him. There is a difference.

Now Natasha is not one to take sides very easily, but she is on the side of keeping her families together, even if they're separate. She keeps them together by breaking them out of a torture chamber in all but name, by finding them sanctuary in Wakanda, by keeping them safe. She keeps them together by responding to a call for help in the form of a few pictures, by facing her past, by wearing a jacket with so many pockets for the smile on her sister's face. She keeps them together by compelling them to share their secrets, by offering first aid in the dead of night, by leaving with a promise to come back.

Nat isn't sure if they all need her, but she needs them, and their existence alone should be enough, was enough, for a time.

But, she needs them truly alive. There is a difference.

"Do you ever miss it, the team?" Steve asks. The sun's light is bathing his face as it sets, another day ending on Wakanda, a world away from New York.

Nat knows he does not mean the team they are now, if it can even be called that. "Yes," she says. It was like family, she does not say. "I miss it a lot." I hope we can still be one.

"Do you remember when it was just the six of us?" Steve asks. The smile on his face is bitter, nostalgic. This expression usually appears when he is reminiscing about his life before the ice, not after.

"Of course I do," Nat murmurs, trying not to shatter the memory he is in. "I'm not that old. My memory hasn't started failing me yet." Steve glares at her, and she is suddenly reminded of Tony, whose jokes would usually evoke this sort of reaction from Steve. It had always been playful, though. It had stemmed from a place of love.

"There's this one night," Steve starts, "that I come back to, every now and then. Tony's playing music and laughing about something. I wouldn't have admitted it then, but I liked his taste in music. I should've told him that." He sighs. "Clint's cooking from Tony's cookbook, the one he'd hidden from us for a year because it used to be his mom's, and you're sitting on the counter, making fun of Clint while he keeps complaining that you're in the way."

Natasha remembers. She hadn't laughed like that in a long time.

"And Bruce and Thor? God, I don't know exactly what they were doing, but they were there, which is more than wherever they are now." He lets out a painful little laugh. "I remember them laughing, I remember the warmth, and I just...I miss it." He runs a hand through his hair. "I miss waking up to your Mario Kart games and trying to figure out UNO. I miss knowing you guys were just a floor or two away. I miss sketching all of you guys while I sat in that one armchair I think Tony got just for me, because it reminded me of Brooklyn, back then. I miss capturing your smiles."

It's poetic. There's nothing Nat can say that will compare. "Yeah," she says anyways, because Steve needs to know that she's listening.

"Not that I don't like Bucky and Sam and Wanda," Steve continues, "but it was simpler, then."

"That's an understatement," Nat says, but what she is really thinking is that maybe there is hope for them yet.

Matt looks younger like this. In sleep, all of the lines on his face ease and there is only this unbreakable aura of peace that Nat cares not to interrupt.

Usually, he's the one to wake up first, the one to remind them of their responsibilities for the day, responsibilities that don't involve the other. He cooks breakfast, or he curls around her further, or he smiles and presses a kiss to her lips.

Today, he doesn't. Last night must have hurt, then, whatever had happened. She hadn't come back from her mission until an hour before sunrise, and he had already been in bed by then, dead to everyone in the world except Nat, who had fallen asleep to the rhythm of his heartbeat and the sound of his breaths.

She watches him for a while longer before reaching for her phone.

"He's not coming to work today," she says once the call goes through.

Foggy snorts. "Hello to you too, Natasha. And yeah, I figured, it's nearly noon." Huh, had she really slept for that long? It's been a while.

"Hope you didn't have anything special scheduled for today," Nat says, brushing a hand through Matt's hair. He wrinkles his nose in an endearing manner and mumbles something she can't make out.

"Nah, that was yesterday. We had a trial." He hesitates. "Is it bad?" he asks. This is the only reason why Nat approves of Foggy: he cares. He's not at all subtle about Matt's secret identity but he does care, and that's enough for something.

"Just the usual, I think," Nat says. Silence, on Foggy's end of the line; even he knows their definition of 'usual' is questionable. "I think...he's just tired."

"Yeah, he hasn't been sleeping all that well." His voice is slightly lowered, as if that makes any sort of difference to Matt's ears. "I was going to check up on him during lunch, but I'm glad you called."

"Still check on him, though?" Nat asks, glaring at imaginary Nick Fury standing by the bed, ordering her and Clint to yet another mission in Australia, of all places.

"Have places to be?" Foggy asks nonchalantly. They've been through this song and dance before. She can hear him gathering his things.

"Unfortunately."

"Do I want to know?"

"It's classified."

"Right," he says with a laugh. "I'll be there in 30."

With food, probably, and a cheesy movie, because Foggy is just that kind of guy. Matt is resting peacefully but she stays there until Foggy arrives, just in case. Just in case.

Natasha has three families. They will all save the world someday.

Sometimes someday means now. The Avengers are called 'heroes' by the public. They have taken down terrorist cells and held up collapsing buildings as civilians are herded out. They have talked down shooters and scooped up children in need of comfort. They have deactivated bombs and flown straight into danger.

They have given, and the world has taken, over and over and over.

Natasha will never wonder how much more can be taken. She is an unending well of support; she will do what it takes, even if that might not be much in this world of super soldiers and aliens and magic.

But she does what she can, though she is never alone. She stands in the middle of all this chaos, a constant in this whirlwind of danger, and behind her—though nobody can see—is Yelena, is Clint, is Matt, all of the people who have made her who she is, all of the people who have made her be.

Yelena, smiling up at her with one front tooth missing, a bit of blue icing smeared on her cheek, a small hand held out to play—

Clint, after a sparring match, sweat dripping down his bruised face, a smirk and a calloused hand held out to help her up—

Matt, laughing as he pulls the curtains wide open and lets the morning sun come through, a hand with bruised knuckles held out to pull her out of bed—

And there Nat is, her hand reaching out to hold onto them, to steady them, to never let them go, hands intertwined, found and never lost.

(After death sweeps through and dust falls, Natasha stands still. She had three families. Now, they will never meet.)

This fic idea has been swimming in my head for a long time, but it did take quite a while for me to build up the motivation to actually write it hehe. I probably got the timeline wrong somewhere (oops). Still, I'm excited for the direction this series will go in. Hope you guys liked it!