A/N: Hello! Welcome to me trying to write my way through COVID-19, but also trying to pass 17 credit hours of now entirely online classes! I finally took a break tonight to a bit of writing for leisure. Thank you to the reviewers - especially the one who is checking every day. I've been there on stories, especially those that contained things I've struggled with.

TW for all the normal things plus attempted suicide (non-graphic)

The next morning was oddly calm in Avengers Tower and it was downright unsettling for a billionaire with more thoughts than he had dollars in his bank account. Steve was the Captain of the team for all intents and purposes, but Tony considered himself to be a sort of leader as well and this was a lot of problems that he did not know how to fix. In his lab and when they saved the world, things were easy: identify a problem, create a solution, and test the solution with moderate changes until it worked. Run it by Bruce for a final check, Pepper too, if it involved Stark Industries. Problem solved. But this was not his lab and it wasn't saving the world.

"Come back to bed, Tony," Pepper called from behind him as he sat at the window and pondered the situation.

"In a minute," he replied.

"You said that two hours ago," she swung her legs out form under the sheets and gently glided across the floor toward him. "I don't think you're going to be able to think your way to a solution on this. Natasha needs real help. And so does Clint. These are serious issues and you cannot deal with them on your own."

"That's not an option and you know it."

"Okay, so you spend a few days talking everything out as team, just like when Peggy died." She took a seat next to him and grabbed his hand into her own, rubbing circles on the tender skin between his thumb and pointer finger. There was a small scar there from one of the early versions of Rhodey's suit, when a sharp piece of metal had caught his hand and marred the flesh there. He had needed six stitches.

"You didn't see her, Pep. The look of betrayal when we took her blades from here. Clint's eyes when he found out what he had done under Loki's control. That…. I'm not sure they can be fixed."

"You never say that again," Pepper said, suddenly seriously. "You cannot let either of them think for even a second that there is not some kind of way to fix this."

"What is left to do? She won't eat, hardly sleeps, and can't go a few days without harming herself. He can't get rid of his guilt because he owes her a debt he can't repay…" he trailed off suddenly.

"What is it?"

"Unless he can. If he could help her, he could repay his debt. He could help here recover if we get them to start talking. She loves him."

"This isn't a fairytale, Tony. True love won't save her."

"No, but a good support system could. I need to do some research." He was suddenly darting around the room getting dressed. "JARVIS, wake Doctor Banner and get him to my lab. We've got work to do."

"What are you going to do?"

"If he can figure out how to control Hulk and I can figure out how to privatize world peace, we can sure as hell learn to create a support system for her. Can you look at options for bringing in a therapist that would be off SHIELD's radar?"

"Sure," she says, wrapping her robe around her body. "Tony?"

"Yeah?" He says, looking over his shoulder as he stands in front of the elevator.

"I love you."

"Of course you do. How could you not?"

On the floors above the lab, Natasha had returned to her floor and propped herself up in bed, knowing better than trying to workout or harm herself with some object in the tower. Her dreams left her restless and her forearms physically ached for a new cut as she stared straight ahead, considering her broken promise and all the other ways in which she had fucked up since joining the team when Clint asked. Clint. She longed for the days before New York, when she could melt in his arms as her head fit perfectly in the hollow of his shoulder and he played with her hair as she read to him in his bed. The days before the whole team knew her every weakness, before he knew what he had done and her weakness made him feel so guilty and broken, before she had been forced to eat, before her release had been taken away. Without her release, how was she meant to deal with these thoughts?

The rational part of her brain understood that she had choices. There were always choices - she could write, but if they found it like her journal which was missing, she would have no hope of staying on the team. She could normally work out, but there was the issue of JARVIS. She couldn't leave the tower for a walk to clear her head or to get some sunshine for the same reason. She couldn't play music loudly or they would think she was covering something up. She knew they had enabled JARVIS to track her vitals in every inch of her room, so there were no options to workout secretly or even just sleep, as the nightmares would spike her heart rate and cause a panic. The rational part of her brain could not come up with any options that wouldn't be thwarted by the team's foolish attempts to help her. They couldn't help her, no one could. Why couldn't they see how fucked up she was? How much she had done that made her undeserving of their friendship and of Clint's love? He probably enjoyed the sex and that was enough for him, she thought bitterly. That was all she was good for anyway: being a slut, a whore, a cum dumpster, a vessel of gaining useful information. That's why they asked her about her memories - not because they cared, but because they needed information about the Winter Soldier.

They weren't her friends. Natalia Romanov had no friends. Her mission was to gain information and be an elite spy. She had failed her mission, so there was no point in continuing her miserable existence.

She didn't know when she had gotten up. Or how the pills got in her hands. She remembered briefly wondering how they had missed the prescription pain killers, but maybe they thought she still needed them. She had never taken a single one, just combined them in one bottle and let them rot on her shelf. Widows are too resilient for pain killers, they don't need such things that help weak people. She counted them carefully and assumed 40 would be enough given her weight, if Bruce had been right about it. She filled a glass with water and moved to her desk, pulling out a single blank sheet of paper and a dark black pen. She took another pill each time she wrote a sentence and felt herself getting dizzy as wetness dripped from her eyes to the page in front of her. It wasn't long, but it was what she needed to say.

Clint,

I'm sorry. This was not your fault. You meant everything to me and I wouldn't have made it this far without you, but I failed my mission by accepting your help that day and I've been paying for it ever since. There's not enough good in me to wipe out all the red in my ledger. Don't think about what you could have done - you couldn't save me. No one can. You deserve all the love in the world.

Please do one last thing for me: find Megan Bryant, that's her WPP name, and tell her that her sister loved her so much and died wanting her to know that. Sasha loved her so much and I loved Sasha.

Nat

She set the pen down and wobbled her way back to her bed, laying her head down and falling into a peaceful blackness. Finally.