A/N: Updates may begin to slow down because my personal and work life are picking up again, but I plan to see this story through! Reviews & ideas are always welcome, I can try to incorporate small ideas if there's anything specific you want to see (unless it's Bruce/Nat because I honestly have never hated a pairing as much as I hate that one).
The first time she comes to them is only an hour or so later and it's not what they expected. She is not emotional or even panicked, but rather her usual sarcastic self when she tells JARVIS to have the men meet her in the living room. She's sitting on the floor in front of the couch, looking at her hands in her lap and lightly scratching at a scab on her arm.
"What's going on, Natasha?"
"Nothing," she says in a biting tone.
"Well, we all know why we are here, right?" Tony asks. "I'm glad you are trying this, Nat."
"Uh-huh, whatever, just give me a blade."
"That's not quite how this deal works. The deal you agreed to was that we would talk about what's going on and if we couldn't talk it out, then we would give it to you and provide medical treatment."
"Well you aren't going to be able to fix it, so I don't see what the point is."
"Let's talk about it anyway and, if we can't, then what does it hurt you?"
"It hurts me, Steve," she spits. "Because I have to wait even longer."
"Well, you're just going to have to deal with that."
"I'm not going to talk about it," she fumes.
"Then you're not going to get this," he says, holding up one of the blades he grabbed from his cabinet. The metal taunted her and the aching under her skin as she reached for it only for Steve to pull it away from her view. Her eyes restlessly wandered near him, trying to find the object, like a small child trying to find the adult hiding behind their hands.
"This is ridiculous, I'm not a child. I can do what I want to my body."
"If we took you to a hospital and you said that, knowing what we know, they would lock you to your bed for 72 hours as a danger to yourself and others." Bruce's words were neither taunting nor caring, just a clinical recitation of facts.
"Is this a hospital now?"
"We'll take you to one if we have to, but you could just talk to us," Tony says coolly.
"I'm not talking about this," she says again.
"Then I guess you didn't need it that bad anyway, did you? I mean if it's not worth even just talking to us, it's probably not worth harming yourself…"
"Clint and I almost had sex earlier," she blurts out at Stark's taunts. He turns red, eyes widened slightly.
"Well we didn't think he took your pants off for no reason," Tony rolled his eyes. "What's the problem?"
"I'm not…" she hesitates.
"It's okay, Nat. You're safe here," Clint reassures her, still a bit red from the revelations about his sex life.
"I'm not supposed to do that. He's not a target, so I can't choose to have sex with him. He has no valuable information to divulge, so it's inappropriate to let him fuck me. I need to punish myself for almost allowing him to make me dirtier for men who are allowed to have me."
There is a moment of silence as she squirms under the glances of the men in the room.
"See? I told you that you wouldn't want me to talk about this. I've waited as long as I can, I need to do it or train, ideally both."
"No," Tony finally stutters. "We're going to talk about this, as awkward as it might be."
"You are allowed to want to have sex with me, Nat. You do not have to follow their rules anymore, they cannot hurt you."
"I'm not supposed to want to have sex with anyone."
"It's a normal thing," Bruce says. "It is caused by chemicals in the body, it's not something that you get to choose when it happens or who it happens with. You don't think that I need to be punished for wanting to have sex with men, right?"
"Of course not," she says without hesitation.
"There are a lot of people who think I should be punished for it. But I can't control and you can't control being attracted to and wanting to have sex with Clint."
"But…" she starts, but quickly realized that she does not have a logical response. It is somewhat similar, she reasons, but there are still some important differences that make their desires different. "But they don't get to have a say in your life because they never did anything for you. The Red Room... They did raise me and keep me alive."
"I would argue they barely did that, Tasha," Clint says.
"But they did."
"Um," Bruce shifts awkwardly from bearing his weight on one foot to the other. "My parents… They kicked me out when I was 16 because I came out to them. They didn't accept who I was and even though they raised me: fed me, clothed me, and treated me much better than the Red Room treated you, they don't get to make rules like that for me anymore. I don't owe them anything."
"You never told us about them, Bruce," Tony says from next to him.
"I don't talk about it very often. I've told some people that they died. They haven't talked to me since then and god knows they wouldn't accept the Other Guy."
"That's okay," Natasha says from the floor. "You've got a new family now."
"So do you, Nat. That's the point. I don't have to do anything my parents say, even though they raised me and treated me well."
"It's different," she sighs.
"It's not. You don't owe them anything, in fact, you owe them less than that because I owe my parents nothing and they never hurt me. You owe them the exact opposite of following their rules because of how they treated you."
"What do you gain by following their rules, Nat?" Steve asks, arms creating a triangle on his spread legs, sitting on the couch.
"I don't know…"
"Then what are you afraid of?" Tony asks thoughtfully. She avoids his eyes and fiddles with the ends of her sleeves, thinking about how much she wanted to cut instead of answering the question.
"You can tell us," Clint says gently, taking a seat next to her on the floor and putting his arm around her shoulder.
"I…" she hesitated. If she told them, she would get to cut sooner, she reasoned. "If I keep up the punishments… It won't be as bad when they take me back."
"They are not getting you back," Clint says firmly, turning to face her. "Ever."
"But if they do…"
"No, Nat," Steve begins. "There's not an if. I can't speak for everyone in this room, but they will have to kill me first. I won't let you go back there. Ever." The men around him nodded in agreement.
"You guys can't protect me all the time."
"Au contrair," Tony says. "There's a chip implanted in your head, designed by me, of course. The second you enter Russia, a team is sent to your location unless I authorize otherwise."
"Stark!" She slaps her neck in anger. "I didn't authorize you to do that."
"Frankly, I don't care. The second you started telling us about that place, I knew I would never let you go back."
"Is that such a bad thing, Tasha? They could never stand a chance against Stark technology and teams."
"It's an invasion of privacy."
"And hacking JARVIS wasn't?" He refutes.
"I'd just rather be on the safe side if it happens. They wouldn't wait until we get to Russia to start punishing me. It's happened before when I thought I escaped and I barely made it that time, I can't imagine what will happen after this."
"Nothing is going to happen because we aren't going to let them take you."
"But if they do, I need to be ready."
"You're more than ready, Nat. You don't need this, you've taken out way more than a team of them."
"You don't understand, I can't fight them. And I won't let you either."
"Why not? Why are you still defending them after everything they've done."
"I don't…" she hesitates again. "I don't know. I just… I can't believe it was all for nothing, they taught me everything that's made me who I am."
"No," Clint argues. "They didn't. They don't own a single piece of your success. Everything you are, everything you were meant to be, it was always in you. It would have come out without them."
"Do you really believe that?" When she looks up at him, the edges of her eyes are rimmed with tears.
"Yes." Steve, Tony, and Bruce affirm at the same time.
"That," she laughs, wiping the tears away. "Was freaky."
"So," Bruce says calmly, but letting out a shaky breath. "Do you still feel like you need to cut?"
She squirms in her spot.
"It's okay, Nat," Clint places a small kiss on top of her head and nods lightly at Steve, who hands her the blade. Her hands shake slightly as she tries to stand, but is held in place by Clint. "Stay," he whispers.
"I can't do it here, with all of you watching."
"You don't need to do this," his voice is thick with emotion.
"I do," she cries at the sound of his voice, filled with pain. He looks her in the eyes, searching them for anything he could grasp on to.
Her hand finds its way to exposed skin on the back of her forearm as she rolls up her sleeve. The men watch her uneasily as the blade slowly moves through her skin. It's deeper than she intends and she hisses at the motion as soon as the metal breaks contact with her skin. Clint takes it from her within a matter of milliseconds and she feels the crushing guilt as he leaves the room crying, but she also feels a sense of relief at what she's done. Bruce opens his med kit next to her and puts pressure on the cut as Steve sighs heavily and Tony brews himself a cup of coffee.