She knew that resistance would get her nowhere and opted to walk as slowly as possible, with Clint at her side the entire time. She sat next to him on the couch and he fingerspelled quiet reassurances into her hand. It was a habit they picked up a few years earlier, when they were on missions with others and wanted to communicate privately. Clint knew some Russian, she knew some sign, and they had some signals they had made up in a language of their own. It was quicker to use their arms than to explain that Tony and Bruce had created yet another experiment gone wrong.
"Natasha?" Bruce says clinically, pulling out a small clipboard and relaxing against Tony on the loveseat. Natasha had some suspicions about their relationship early on but quickly learned that it was platonic and Tony's playboy, seemingly bisexual persona was a front to cover a quiet life with Pepper. Their relationship was the sweetest part about living in the tower, though neither lost their sass or ability to be sarcastic with the other. She often found herself hoping that one day she could have the same idealistic peacefulness with Clint before her brain reminded her that it would simply never be possible for someone like her. "I know we already know some things about your time in the Red Room, but I would really like these discussions to be largely led by you. Where would you like to start?"
She bit back the urge to shut down and reiterate that she had no desire to start at all.
"I don't know what you want to know, why don't we start there?"
"No," Clint calmly replied. "You are using that to find a way around telling us everything. If we tell her what we want to know, she'll avoid telling us anything we don't specifically ask about and we don't know enough to ask about everything we should know."
"There's just a lot!" She exclaimed. "I don't know where to start because I don't know what's important."
"It's all important, Red."
"What's most important for you to know? We can start there." The team gave brief glances across the room to Clint, who nodded slightly that they could proceed.
"Are there any other means than your eating disorder and cutting that you use to hurt yourself?"
"I don't have an eating disorder, Bruce," she growled, snapping the rubber band against her unmarked wrist. "I am not some teenage girl skipping meals because daddy didn't buy her the newest iPhone. It's part of my training."
"Actually," Dr. Banner's medical background took a front seat to the conversation at this time. "While eating disorders are most prevalent in teenage girls, they do affect both men and pre- and post-adolescent women. They are almost most commonly caused by some form of trauma with an underlying goal of control, not attention-seeking."
"Whatever," she spat angrily. "I don't have one of those. I haven't been traumatized."
"Okay," he sighs. "Are there any other means you've used to hurt yourself other than cutting and your… training?"
"Currently? No."
"And previously?"
"I've burned myself," Clint shifts uncomfortably next to her. "Taken hits I probably could have avoided. Gotten a little too drunk and gone out to do reckless things. Gotten high for the same reasons. That one was rare, only when I could find out when SHIELD's random drug tests would make their way to Clint and I. Or right after we had just had one. Or when I tried to get myself kicked out. I've also-"
"Hold on," Steve pipes in. "We aren't gonna move past that like you didn't just say that. What do you mean, you tried to get yourself kicked out?"
"You know, of SHIELD," she says nonchalantly.
"Why did you try to get kicked out of SHIELD?"
"Simple. I didn't deserve to be there."
"Of course you deserve to be there, Tash. You have more than proven that since I brought you in."
"What did they say, when you brought me in?" Clint hesitated at her question. "I'll tell you what my file says. 'Flight risk. Natasha poses a serious threat to the members of this organization and should not be trusted on her own. She will need constant monitoring and must not be given full privileges or access until proven she can be trusted.'" The recitation was so perfect no one dared to question the validity of her statements.
"That was years ago," Clint says.
"I bet that no one in this room except you fully trusts me today. Hell, I bet you don't even trust me."
"That is not true."
"Okay, then let me have five minutes in my room without JARVIS enabled."
"Absolutely not," Tony interjected quickly.
"Exactly."
"That is not the same thing and you know it is not fair to compare them."
"Sure it is. It's simple, black and white, really. Either you trust me or you don't, and you don't. Nothing has changed and why should it? I don't belong here, I don't deserve to be here. I'm no hero."
"And we are?"
"Of course yo-"
"No, let me finish, Red," Tony says impatiently. "Do you know the atrocities that Stark Industries is responsible for? Do you know how many people I have hurt and killed? How many people we have failed to save? We. Not you. All of us."
"People died before I went into the ice, too. And people have died trying to recreate the solution that made me into the 'hero' you think I am."
"Hulk has killed more people thank I can keep track of in my lifetime."
"You know I'm not innocent."
"So it would seem," Tony paces around the room. "We aren't all innocent and heroic. We have all done things that have killed people, hurt people, and we will never get past that. So that's not good enough for me, Red. That's not a good enough reason for me to believe you think you don't belong here because you're not an idiot. If you were, I wouldn't have hired Natalie to work for me. So, what's the real reason here? Why do you think you don't deserve everything the rest of us do?"
Natasha had visibly shrunk back into the couch, putting as much physical distance between herself and Tony as possible. Before all of this began to spiral out of control, she had once thought he was an arrogant asshole who just didn't know when to quit. But now, as she wracked her brain for any plausible reason they would believe now that her first decoy had failed, she realized that he was incredibly observant and had likely done a lot of research on both her and people similar to her, if any were left in the world.
"Uh," she stuttered as they stared at her expectantly.
"Still looking for some excuse?" He grinned lightly at her, causing her breath to quicken ever so slightly in fear. "I'll tell you what I think. I believe that part of it is that you think you deserve every bad thing you do to yourself. But I think that would have been enough and you would have felt okay about being here and just punishing yourself if that was it. But it isn't, is it? I think that part of why you got so scared when I said what I did last night because you know what happened wasn't normal. Maybe not consciously, you probably think you deserve it so it isn't the same, right?"
"Stop," she says quietly, aggressively snapping the band and hoping to break the skin on her other wrist.
"Barton, hold her arms."
"I think," Natasha looks up at him, scared, as Clint holds her hands apart gently. "That they've got it programmed into you that you don't deserve all of this because you are dirty and damaged because of what they did."
She sobs loudly and goes limp on the couch, her whole body shaking as she falls onto Clint's chest.
"I don't," she cries. "I'm too damaged to be here. You are all," she stutters. "Normal, you aren't damaged goods. You deserve to be the heroes."