She didn't miss the glance Clint shared with her teammates as they emerged for dinner. It seemed the whole team had figured out how to communicate with other another about her without speaking.
"What's for dinner?" She tried to sound excited as she asked, shaking with anticipation. There was an IV pole next to her typical seat at the table, which Bruce ushered her toward and hooked her up through the port they now left in her elbow crook.
"We're having salad with grilled chicken - I thought it might be easier to start with something like that," Clint tells her quietly. She leans against his shoulder and nods a small amount of appreciation.
"I take it I'm also getting nutrition through this thing?" She shook the tube.
"Minimally, yes," Bruce responded, glancing up from his iPad. "It's mostly for hydration and vitamins. You'll be expected to eat full meals and will not be given access to a restroom unmonitored for at least 1 hour after each meal. You'll be connected to the IV through dinner and team time, to ensure you're restoring vital nutrients quickly."
While the others passed around a serving bowl of the chicken Caesar, a full plate was set in front of her, drenched in dressing and covered with croutons, accompanied by a 4 inch piece of yellowish garlic bread. She nearly gagged at the smell of the bread and reluctantly picked up a fork, searching under the top layer to find the drier pieces of lettuce and chopped vegetables to eat. The salad wasn't soaked throughout, but there wasn't more than a few pieces free of the wretched stuff. She briefly wondered how much weight she had gained in the hospital and decided to ask Bruce while poking at her plate.
"We won't be providing you with that information anymore."
"Why not?" She felt the rage rising in her stomach. "Am I not entitled to know my own stats?"
"Your therapist thinks it could be harmful to your progress if you're able to track your statistics. It's for your own good." She made pleading eye contact with each member, but Tony and Steve refused to meet her gaze, Bruce kept a steeled doctor's facade, and her partner gave her a sympathetic glance, but refused to do more.
None of this is for my own good, she thought bitterly. She continued to poke at her salad, chewing each bite 17 times before swallowing and grimacing her way through the meal.
After nearly an hour, all of the Avengers had finished multiple helpings of their salad and Natasha had managed about 3/4 of her serving. Bruce made detailed notes about her intake while the rest of the team ushered her to the living room.
"So what's this lovely team activity tonight?" She sighed, curling her legs under her and sitting on the couch, picking at a small white blanket she had picked up from the pile in a bin next to her.
"Well, that's up to you, really," Peter said, coming out of seemingly nowhere. "They don't really tell me what's going on, but they did say that we could watch a movie tonight or you would be talking about your stuff. I told them it would be a great idea to show you the Star Wars movies, but mr. Stark said that if you decide to talk, that would get you back on the team faster and, it might be selfish of me, but I miss you being on the team. Why did they take you off anyw-"
"Enough, Peter," Tony sighed.
"Talking didn't exactly go well last time," she grimaced.
"You don't have to talk with us, but it will speed up how quickly you get to go back to living your life."
"I don't know…"
"Would you like your therapist here for these discussions? She can kind of lead the conversations and it would be a bit like a session, but all of us would be here to help."
"All of you?" She eyed Peter warily.
"He's safe, Nat, and he's been through a lot, too." Tony said defensively.
"I know he's safe. But he's a kid… I don't know if appropriate for him to hear these things? And would Nicole even be able to come at night?"
"We have her on call this week and we can schedule her each night. We pay her enough to do sessions at the times we need her, but after this week they will need to be scheduled in advance - she deserves to have a life, too." Bruce replies.
"Okay, how soon can we get her here?"
"She's on her way, Miss Romanoff. She'll be here in three minutes," JARVIS responds.
"Uh," she shifts uncomfortably. "Thanks J."
"Hi Natasha!" Nicole says cheerfully when she comes into the room about five minutes later. "How are you doing tonight?"
"Fine," she fidgets with the blanket nervously.
"It's okay. The team knows that you aren't exactly used to this yet, and that we are still just doing surface-level stuff."
"O-okay."
"Why don't you start by telling me who all is here, and how you know them." Nicole makes herself comfortable on the chair opposite Natasha.
"Um, alright," she sighs heavily. "Right here next to me is Clint Barton. He's… my partner." She hesitates with the words, that somehow feel wrong in her mouth after everything that has happened. "Clint is my partner. He tried to kill me a few years ago."
"Hey-" he protests from next to her.
"It's okay! Why did he try to kill you?"
"Well… When I was in the Red Room, I was one of SHIELD's worst enemies. Clint's job was to eliminate me."
"I made a different choice."
"Obviously," Nicole rolled her eyes at him, playfully.
"He made a different choice and brought me back here. I guess SHIELD had done that before, but…" She closed her mouth suddenly.
"But what, Natasha?"
"But she died."
"Did you know her? That must have been difficult to hear."
"I-" She stuttered. "I don't want to talk about that."
"Okay." Nicole jotted something down in her notes and crossed her legs in her chair. "Who's next?"
"I know you know Bruce."
"Nice to see you again, Dr. Banner," Nicole acknowledges.
"Hi Nicole," he says awkwardly.
"Then there's Tony and Steve. They run the team - Tony is rich and Steve thinks he's Mr. Morality."
"Do you think he is?"
"What?"
"Do you think that Steve has a good moral compass?"
"I think that good is relative," she said hesitantly, glancing at Steve who was eyeing her as he heard the question. He wasn't trying to look incredulous, but he did hold firm to the idea that his morals were correct and he knew Natasha's simply were not. "I believe that he believes his morals are correct."
"I think we all believe that our perception of morality is correct," Nicole muses. "But it's all up to our perception and it can be very circumstantial. For example, I might think stealing is wrong no matter what - it's a black and white issue where stealing is wrong and not stealing is good. But, what if a mother stole medicine for her dying child and the only consequence was that a drug company lost $13, but a boy kept his life? That challenges my perception."
"That's still not right-" Steve begins.
"But don't the ends justify the means?" Natasha interjects.
"It's an interesting question. If the ends justify the means, how far are we willing to take those means?"
"If a bomb is used as a weapon of war, but the billionaire behind it ends up becoming an Earth-saving hero, is he redeemed?" Tony adds, smirking.
"Precisely. Those kinds of questions don't have answers that are so black and white."
"So does the avoidance of suffering justify murder?" Natasha says quietly.
"Torture brings in another aspect." Nicole adds quickly. "Human beings have certain inalienable rights and torture takes away the idea of free will. You see, murder is rarely justified when a person acts with free will, but once free will is removed, the crime no longer belongs to the person who committed it."
"I understand what you're trying to get at - that I didn't do anything wrong because I was being controlled. But that also means that the men who did things to me did nothing wrong."
"Were they acting under threat of torture?"
"No, not usually, but it wasn't like they had free will, either."
"Explain that to me," she sets her notebook aside to focus on Natasha.
"Some of them had a choice. They were… free except for the fact that it was their job. I guess… I guess they could have found other work, but other men were tortured and controlled. I don't think all of them knew what was happening or were even really aware while they did it."
"Did what?"
"You've read my file."
"I'd like to hear what happened to you, from you."
"I'd like to avoid that as long as possible," Natasha replied cheekily.
"I know you would. And I want to honor how difficult this conversation is and will be for you, but I think it's important to voice it."
"I already have before."
"Not with me."
She rolled her eyes and curled further in on herself, cuddling into Clint's side as he wrapped an arm around her to encourage her to feel safe and comfortable.
"So, Natasha, what I would like to do from here is to walk you through a bit of a group process. We're going to let you talk through as much as you're willing and I'll take some notes. The others can react in whatever way is natural to them - they may have questions or comments or things they need clarified and we're going to let them react. My understanding is that this is a tight-knit group and we have learned over the last few weeks how to react appropriately without causing issues because we have caused some issues in the past. The first thing we're going to do is build a macro-timeline: you'll talk us through the major events that happened before you came to SHIELD and after. Then, in the coming weeks, we'll dive into each event. Okay?"
"I don't have a great idea of dates and times or even the order."
"That's okay. Just share as many of the big events as you can."
Within the space of an hour or so, Natasha had listed several events that the team knew about and even more that they hadn't considered, as evidenced by the occasional gasp from Steve or "What the fuck, Red?" From Tony. Nicole made a brief list on her clipboard and then scanned it with JARVIS, so they had a clear roadmap for future group sessions. It was longer than Natasha wished to admit, but if it got her back on the team, she would have to suck it up. Until then, she was exhausted and needed to find a way to cut without alerting JARVIS.