Sometimes Natasha hates her body. Its strong, sure. Capable, to a certain extent. Dangerous. Fast. Beautiful, when the scars are covered.
But not perfect, never perfect. Never quite good enough to do what she wants it, needs it to do. And she hates it for that.
She sees the gunman's finger tightening on the trigger. She sees the young man in the pastel blue shirt, coming out of the elevator at just the wrong moment. But she's just rolled from underneath an unconscious man the size of a small house and pain is shooting up from her ankle. She throws herself at the young man's legs, but she's too slow and the bullet to fast and blood spatters on pastel blue.
He dies.
So does the gunman, but it does not change the fact that Natasha was right there and it did no damn good.
She kneels next to the young man in the pastel blue shirt. Deliberately not moving her weight of her protesting ankle.
"Black Widow? You good?" Clint must have heard the gunshots from where he's clearing the top floors of the building with Cap. She's still looking at the light blonde fuzz on the kid's face. Not touching.
"Black Widow, come in. Anybody got eyes on Nat?"
"I'm good," Natasha says. "This floor is cleared. Suspects down. Civilian casualty."
"Do you need medevac?" Coulson asks.
"Wouldn't do much good," Natasha says, surprised that her voice doesn't shake.
Debriefing goes as usual. Her ankle, laced tightly into her boot, throbs slowly underneath the table. Nobody's noticed, which isn't all that surprising. Natasha has long since mastered the art of hiding much more pain than a little twisted ankle. Not limping keeps unwanted attention off her, and it keeps the pain and the memory of her failure fresh in her mind.
The kid had a girlfriend, just running out to the cafeteria across from the bank to get them lunch. She'd seen her at the police tape, begging to know if anybody had seen a man in a light blue shirt come out. Maybe a sister or a co-worker, not a girlfriend. She can't know.
She doesn't say that when it's her turn to report, of course. She just keeps to the facts, clean and simple.
"And the civilian?" Coulson asks.
"Came out of the elevator at the wrong time. Took a bullet meant for me."
"It happens," Rogers says, giving her a compassionate look.
"Yeah," Natasha says coolly. "Nothing I could have done."
She's aware of the fact that Coulson gives her a mildly interested look, which is never a particularly good sign.
When they've finished up Natasha tries her best to slip out the door unnoticed, keeping Thor between her and Coulson. But Coulson still somehow manages to catch her eye and beckon her towards him with a nod.
He's staking papers, sorting them into two separate files in front of him, and he stops when Natasha reaches him.
"Get that foot checked out?"
Natasha shrugs. "I'm fine."
"Maybe. Swing by medical and have it checked out anyway."
"Alright," Natasha says reluctantly, not planning for one moment to do so.
In the elevator at the Tower Clint gives her a look that's somewhere between suspicious and sympathetic.
"You okay?"
"Dirty and mildly bruised." She keeps her tone light. "Nothing a shower won't fix."
"Mm. You want to talk?"
Natasha steps out onto her floor, one below Clint's, and gives him a predatory grin.
"I want to shower. So unless you want to come talk to me while I'm doing that..."
He shakes his head and leans back against the elevator wall.
"If you're going to be like that, no. I hear Cap's making lasagne, I'll bring you some later."
She watches the light above the elevator flickering through the floors.
"Jarvis."
"Ms Romanov?"
"Is anybody in the gym?"
"Not at present, Ms Romanov. Captain Rogers is taking a shower, Mr Stark is in his lab with Mr Banner. Mr Odinson is...I believe he is in the kitchen hunting for Pop-Tarts."
There is nobody on the gym floor. It's bathed with gold, from the sun setting over the city.
Natasha takes no pleasure in the breath-taking view.
She just shrugs out of her jacket and steps across the padded mats to where a boxing bag is hanging. She lifts her fists, widens her stance and goes to work, trying to lose herself in the mindless rhythm of kicks and punches.
By the time that the ding of the elevator bell alerts her to the fact that she's not alone, she's sweaty and breathing heavily.
Coulson steps out. Her stomach clenches just slightly at the sight of him.
"Got that foot checked out?"
"Yes," Natasha says, dismissively. "They said its fine, but to ice it tonight."
Coulson picks up her discarded jacket. He crosses quietly over the mats, holding the jacket out to her.
"You do not lie to me," he says then, softly. "Come on, you're done here."
Natasha meets his eyes. Light blue, unwavering. He's not particularly angry or worried, like not lying and not hiding wasn't the first thing they ever agreed upon all those years ago when Clint dragged her in from the cold like a particularly deadly puppy.
She takes the jacket and follows him to the elevator.
On her floor Coulson tells her to take a shower and put on something comfortable. The shower doesn't do much, but at least there's a few minutes under the freezing cold deluge that her body is so involved with the shock of it that she doesn't have to think much. Her ankle is swollen, she notices when she gets out, dripping and shivering on the bare tiles. Not particularly badly, but still.
Coulson is in the living room when she limps out, dressed in a pair of old sweats and a washed-out tank. He gestures for her to sit down which she does, very upright in the chair farthest from him.
It doesn't do much good, because he simply walks around the coffee table and perches on the end of it. He puts down a bandage and a pot of liniment next to him.
"My foot is fine," Natasha says.
"Keep on lying and I'll get a paddle."
It's the matter of fact tone he knows she responds to. No threatening, no bluster, just firmness. Safe, like solid ground under her feet.
Natasha feels the tenseness in her shoulders relaxing slightly, despite everything.
Coulson doesn't lean down and try to touch her or lift her foot, he merely holds out his hand and waits, until she lifts her leg herself. His hands are warm on her slightly frozen skin, and he frowns as he gently feels around the swollen joint.
"Cold shower?"
Natasha shrugs.
Coulson reaches behind him, scooping up a fingerful of liniment. He rubs it carefully around her ankle and then wraps it with the bandage. The pain subsides to a tolerable level almost immediately.
Natasha lowers her foot, looking away and out of the large windows into the darkness. Coulson doesn't budge.
"It's the kid in the bank, isn't it?"
She can't answer, even if she wants to, and it doesn't seem like Coulson expects her to.
"Do you want to tell me what happened?"
"Not particularly, no."
Coulson gives her a crooked smile. "Fine, I'll make it an order then. Tell me what happened."
If she could have just stood up and left she would have, but Coulson is too close for her to get up without touching him. "Like I said. I was clearing the floor, I engaged two targets. One fired a shot at me, which hit a random kid getting out of the elevator at the wrong time. Wrong place, wrong time, wrong... everything."
"Were you close to him?"
"Fairly close. I dove for him, but I couldn't...I could not reach him in time."
"But you feel like you should have?"
Once again, she can't answer. A terrible pressure is building in her throat, and it takes everything she has, every hard-earned iota of self-control to keep her face expressionless.
"Nat," Coulson says. "Nat, look at me, kid."
"It's just," Natasha says to the emptiness beyond the window. "It's just...I've never failed at killing anyone. Why do I have to fail at saving them so many times?"
Something warm grips her hand.
"Look at me, kid."
She does this time, finding quiet understanding in his gaze.
"Taking a life is easy," Coulson says slowly. "Maybe not objectively, but compared with saving a life it is. By a long shot. You stopped those guys before they could steal the bio-weapon. That's not insignificant. Neither was the life of that young man. But you are only responsible for one of those things. What happened to the kid was in accident. It's not on you."
The mask cracks, and Natasha feels her lips twitch. She tries to cover her mouth with the one cold hand Coulson isn't holding, but it's no use because her shoulders start shaking as well and soon she's heaving dry, painful sobs into her hand.
Coulson draws her up out of the chair. She doesn't protest when he turns her towards the couch and draws her down next to him. His side is warm, warmer than she deserves, and under the heavy weight of his arm across her shoulders she feels the spasms in her chest starting to abate.
When she's calm, or at least calmer, again Coulson presses her shoulder for a moment and then moves away a bit, so that he can turn to face her.
"I'm counting three lies," he says. "Not a bad record, compared to some days we've had. But I'm adding wilful disobedience to that, for not getting your foot checked out like I asked you to. Also, trying to punish yourself for something you do not deserve punishment for. On that note, withholding medical care and freezing cold showers is never an appropriate punishment, deserved or no. Understand?"
"I understand," Natasha says.
Coulson pats his leg.
"Over you go, then."
From what she's heard from Clint, and lately confirmed by Thor, Coulson usually makes them bend over the table, or the couch. He's never done that with her, and for that Natasha is grateful. There's no way to forget that it's him then, that she's always been safe in this position with this man.
He peels away her sweats to just above her knees and then, without preamble, starts with his usual circuit of quick warm-up swats. He covers her entire butt in a warm glow before he gradually starts increasing the strength of the swats. They burn the worst on the undercurve of her butt and her thighs, where even the measly bit of protection her underwear offers, is absent.
When her rear is well and truly burning, Coulson stops a moment, gently rubbing the tense muscles in her shoulders. They've learned long ago that Natasha trying to speak in the middle of a spanking just...doesn't work.
"You don't lie to me. Ever. You don't play fast and loose with obeying orders. And you treat your body with respect. Understand?"
Natasha nods, grabbing the upholstery and bracing herself for what she knows is coming.
Coulson holds nothing back, burning smack after burning smack raining down on her rear.
Natasha has never known what sound you're supposed to make when you cry, too used to having to be silent at all costs. So, she cries silently, going limp across Coulson's lap as he finishes the spanking with a couple of hard swats to her thighs.
He doesn't try to move her, just lets her lie there, rubbing circles on her shaking back and murmuring gentle nonsense that Natasha would have laughed at, at any other time. Tiredness is creeping up on her, almost too fast for her to notice, and the last things she's aware of his Coulson gently extracting himself from under her and something warm and soft being drawn up around her shoulders.
She wakes up to Clint perched on the coffee table, eating lasagne from a soup bowl, a red, oily ring already starting to appear on around his mouth.
"I knew it!" he says triumphantly. "Nothing like the smell of lasagne in the morning."
"I told you not to wake her," Coulson says sternly from the kitchen.
"I didn't do a thing, it's merely the magical powers of Captain America's lasagne."
"Who gave you permission to invade my flat?" Natasha asks grumpily, half tempted to just go back to sleep but also not exactly opposed to the idea of lasagne.
"Coulson," Clint slurps a last bit of pasta into his mouth, then clinks his spoon back into his empty bowl with regret. "The whole lot of us are here, actually. Thor is trying to make a fire in your fireplace, although we've told him that you actually only use it to store extra ammunition."
Natasha sits up with a jerk, her mind full of visions of Thor blowing himself and all of them to kingdom come.
"Clint, seriously," Coulson comes towards them, carrying two steaming bowls of lasagne. "Relax, Nat. Thor isn't here."
He cuffs Clint on the back of the head in passing, which Clint takes with a good-natured scowl and a completely disproportionate round of rubbing.
The bowl of lasagne that Coulson hands her is steaming hot and cheesy. She fairly inhales the first few bites and then slows down, giving Coulson a calculating look.
"So I get whacked within in inch of my life if I lie, but he just gets a little tap on the head? I always knew you were easier on him than on me."
Clint is standing on the other side of the farthest chair so quickly that it's bare visible to the naked eye.
"What I meant," he says hastily. "Is that we're all here in the sense that we're all in the tower, and also that all of the others would like to come up but Coulson said to give you some space."
Coulson observes him with a critical eye.
"Seriously," Clint says. "It was only a joke, you know that, right?"
Natasha sits back with a grin, watching as Coulson stalks Clint around the chair once or twice, and then sends him squealing across the floor with a sudden burst of speed. He tackles him near the elevator, digging his fingers mercilessly into his ribs.
The lasagne, it turns out, is especially delicious to the background music of Clint's hysterical laughter.
Thank you very much for reading!
Next up is Tony!
Tremulous xx