Bedtime stories with Natasha! This chapter goes out to ym4yum1, who heard I was doing this chapter and drew a lovely little illustration of it over on Tumblr.

"Have you heard anything about them yet?"

Natasha looked up from her report to see Steve standing in the door of the kitchen, one of Bucky's hoodies wrapped up around his dinosaur pajamas and clutching his teddy bear to his chest. Bucky, Sam and Wanda had left for a mission that morning. The mission itself had gone well, but they were currently stuck in Philly because the jet broke down. Steve had been getting increasingly worried the longer they were gone, even though Natasha kept assuring him that none of them were hurt. He'd been like her shadow most of the day—he always got kind of clingy when Bucky was gone.

"Tony called while you were taking a bath," she said. Tony had flown out in one of his Iron Man suits to see what he could do about the jet. "He'd just landed, but he didn't think it would take too long to fix." She smiled reassuringly. "They should be back in a couple hours."

Steve nodded, chewing on his bottom lip thoughtfully and hugging his bear a little tighter.

"They really are okay," she assured him, though she knew words could only do so much. What he needed was something to distract him. "You want to play a game or something? Or we could watch a movie."

"No, thank you," Steve said politely.

"Well, we have to do something," she cajoled with a smile. "I can't let you just mope around all worried until they get back."

He gave her an embarrassed little smile at that.

"What would you like to do?" she asked.

Steve considered for a moment, then looked up at her hopefully. "Could you tell me a story?"

Natasha blinked in surprise at the request. "A story?" She was tempted to go and see if she could find Thor—she knew Steve liked his stories, and she didn't really know any. They didn't exactly go in for fairy tales and bedtime stories in the Red Room. "Um, sure," she found herself saying. She didn't have any ideas, but he just looked so hopeful and kind of sad that she couldn't say no.

"Tell you what, before we start, though, you want me to make some hot chocolate?" she asked. That got a smile out of him, and he nodded eagerly. Okay, that was good. Gave her a little time to think.

She pondered to herself as he waited patiently by the counter while she got down mugs and boiled water. Stories for kids, stories for kids… It wasn't strictly true that she didn't know any—she spent enough time with Clint and his family that she knew all the basics: Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk… Those were fairly standard though, and not new. Odds were, Steve had heard them, and it wasn't as though they were overly interesting. If she was going to distract him enough to stop worrying, she was going to need something more engaging.

She was still thinking about it as she filled two cups and loaded them with marshmallows. She handed Steve his, and he carried it carefully to the couch, pulling the coffee table over close enough so that he could reach it and setting the cup down on a coaster. He positioned his bear in his lap and looked up at her expectantly.

Her mind had kept blanking spectacularly, until she remembered a book she'd been reading with Lila last time she'd been out at the Barton farm. Maybe it was cheating a little bit, since someone else had made the story up, but it was a good one. And Steve hadn't asked for an original Natasha Romanoff story. That would have had to end up being one from her life, and none of those were really appropriate bedtime fare.

"Okay," she began. "Once upon a time, there was a princess."

Steve raised an eyebrow skeptically. "A princess?"

"Yes, a princess," Natasha said. She raised an eyebrow right back at him. "You have a problem with princess stories?"

He considered for a moment. "No," he said. "But you don't really seem like a princess-y kind of lady."

She chuckled. "Well, you got me there. But this is still a good story."

"Alright," he said, still sounding a tad skeptical.

"So, this princess," she began again. "She wasn't very good at being a princess. In princess school, they were supposed to learn things like fancy embroidery, how to curtsy, how to bat their eyes at a prince to make him feel important when he talked, and how loud they were allowed to scream if they got kidnapped by a giant."

Steve huffed a soft laugh at the last one.

"And this princess didn't like any of that," Natasha said. "She wanted to learn how to do things like cook yummy food, or do magic, or sword fight. So she made the castle cooks and magicians and soldiers teach her how to do all that stuff, and she argued with the princes instead of batting her eyes, because she thought they were silly."

Steve giggled. "She sounds like you."

"Which makes her an awesome princess, I feel," Natasha said with a smile.

Steve nodded and smiled in agreement.

"So, the king and the queen, they kept asking her why she couldn't just be a normal princess like all her sisters, and they tried to make her stop learning how to do the stuff she wasn't supposed to do. But she kept doing it, so they decided to find her a prince to marry her, and thought maybe she would settle down."

"Did they ask her if she wanted to marry him?" Steve asked.

"They did not."

Steve frowned. "Well, that's not very nice. What if she didn't love him?"

"Exactly. So, the princess thought to herself, 'I've had enough of this,' and she ran away. She walked for a while, and when she got tired, she found a little hut to go inside and rest. But! The hut was magic, and when she stepped inside, she was inside a cave instead of a house."

Steve was watching her with wide eyes. "Was there a monster in the cave?" he asked quietly.

Natasha smiled. "There were dragons in the cave. Five of them."

"Uh oh."

"They wanted to know what she was doing there, so she told them she was a princess who had run away so she didn't have to marry the prince. Some of them thought that was silly, and one of them said they should just eat her. Before any more of them could decide they wanted to eat her, she offered to work for one of them. Because she remembered from her princess school that not just giants liked to kidnap princesses, but dragons did too. And she thought working for a dragon would be better than getting eaten by one."

"That's smart," Steve said.

"Well, the dragons thought that was weird, because princesses didn't usually volunteer, but then she said she knew how to cook, and one dragon decided she liked that, so she would take her."

"So, it was good that she learned some other stuff besides princess screaming," Steve said.

"Right?" Natasha agreed. "That's a good life lesson, right there. Having lots of skills is always going to be helpful. Remember that."

"Yes, ma'am," Steve said with an emphatic nod, the motion making his bear jostle in agreement. "What sorts of things do dragons like to eat?" he wondered. "If I got caught by a dragon, I could make them spaghetti, or pancakes, or guacamole. Would that be enough to keep me from getting eaten?"

Natasha laughed. "Well, you do make pretty good pancakes."

Steve smiled.

"So, let's see, where was I? Oh, right! So, she goes to work for the dragon," she continued. "And she learned pretty quick that it was an interesting job. She got to explore the caves, and the dragon had a really big library, and there was a whole treasure hoard for her to sort through."

"Wow! Like gold and jewels and stuff?"

"Yep. Dragons like to collect shiny things. So there was a lot to keep her busy, and she got to learn about how dragons worked, and her and the dragon she worked for became good friends."

"That's nice."

"Then one day, the princess went out to get some stuff. While she was outside the cave, she met a wizard," Natasha said. "She got suspicious of the wizard almost right away—he was really nosy, asking all kinds of questions about who she was and what she was doing. And then, he got really interested when he found out she lived with the dragons."

"Was he a bad wizard? Did the dragons have something he wanted?" Steve guessed.

Natasha grinned, impressed. "Yes. But you're getting ahead of the story."

"Oh. Sorry," he said, though he was smiling as he ducked his head down against his bear.

"So, she talked with the wizard a little, and figured he was up to something, but she told him he could come visit her in the dragon's cave sometime. She thought maybe the dragon would know more about him, and maybe she could figure out what he wanted. She went home and told the dragon about it, and the dragon said that was a good idea, but that she should make sure not to let him in the treasure room when he came."

"If the wizard was cunning, he would appear when the dragon was away," boomed a voice from the other end of the couch, making them both jump. Thor was crouched down at the far end of the couch, his arms folded across the armrest and listening interestedly.

"How long have you been sitting there?" Natasha wondered. Very few people could sneak up on her, and Thor had never been one of them.

"Since the princess arrived in the cave," he said. "Do go on; it is an interesting tale."

"Um, okay," she said, feeling a little self-conscious in front of the enlarged audience.

"Mr. Thor, do you want to sit on the couch?" Steve offered, scooting closer to Natasha to make room.

"It would indeed be more comfortable," Thor agreed. He got up and moved to the couch. "My apologies for interrupting."

Steve picked up his cup of cocoa and clutched it in both hands in front of his bear, turning back to Natasha and looking up at her eagerly.

"Okay, uh, well, Thor was right. The wizard did come back on a day the dragon was gone," Natasha said.

"Good guess," Steve whispered to Thor.

"And, he brought another wizard with him," Natasha added. "They wanted to see around the cave, and they were asking the princess all kinds of questions and talking down to her, and the princess could tell they thought she was just a silly girl."

"I am certain she dispelled them of that notion swiftly," Thor said.

"No, no," Natasha said. "She went along with it. She batted her eyes and giggled and blushed and said things like, 'Oh, gee, I don't know,'" she said, drawing out the last statement in a ridiculously high-pitched valley girl voice. She bit her lip to keep from laughing at the identical looks of confusion on Steve and Thor's faces.

"Why?" Steve asked.

"Because she was actually really smart," Natasha explained. "And she realized that since they already thought she was stupid, if she acted like it, then they wouldn't worry about her, and they would say more in front of her because they didn't think she'd understand."

"Oh," Steve said, comprehension dawning in his eyes. "That is smart. What did she learn?"

"She learned that the wizards were after a book. A book about dragon magic. 'Cause see, the dragons had this cave where there was all kinds of special magic stuff, and the wizards wanted to steal it for themselves. But they could never get in, because the dragons guarded it."

"Like what kind of stuff?" Steve wondered.

"Uh…" She didn't remember that detail from the book. "Magic jewels that you made crystal balls from, or water that made sick people better, and lots of diamonds and other jewels."

"Cool."

"So, the wizards wanted in there. And they found the book they were after, but no matter how stupid they thought the princess was, they couldn't just steal it in front of her. So they left, and the princess and the dragon talked about what they should do about it. The dragon decided to talk it over with the other dragons."

She paused to take a drink of her hot chocolate, trying to remember what came next. She knew she and Lila had finished the story, but right around this point, Cooper had come in and thrown a ball at Lila's head, and there had been some general chaos and rough-housing that pulled them off track. She might have to fudge it a little bit.

"I believe you have something on your face, Steve," Thor said. Steve had just taken a drink of his hot chocolate, and Natasha looked up and grinned at the sight of Steve with a blob of melted marshmallow on his nose.

Thor reached out a finger and swiped the marshmallow off his nose, held it up just long enough for Steve to see what it was, then licked the sticky treat off his finger.

"Hey!" Steve protested. "That's my marshmallow!"

"Not anymore," Thor chuckled, making a show of swallowing it down.

Steve tried to glare, but was unable to keep himself from smiling. He scooted closer to Natasha and cupped his mug a little more protectively. "I think Miss Natasha is waiting to go on with the story," he said with an awful lot of dignity for someone with a hot chocolate mustache and marshmallow residue on his nose.

Natasha smiled, shook her sleeve over her hand to wipe Steve's face, and continued. "So, while the dragons were talking to each other, they discovered that one of the other dragons had a book kind of like that first one, but it was missing. More wizards had come into the dragons' caves and taken it. The dragons got all upset and started arguing about what to do."

"The dragons argue a lot," Steve pointed out.

"Well, yeah," Natasha agreed. "But they're fire-breathing animals—they've got hot tempers."

Steve inclined his head, conceding the point.

"Now, the dragons and the wizards didn't get along, since stuff like this happened a lot, and several of the dragons decided they should go to war with the wizards."

"Ah ha!" Thor declared happily. "A thrilling tale of battle and magic!"

"Slow your roll, there, big guy," Natasha said with a smile. "The dragons had to get the dragon king to declare war. So they had to go find him first and tell him what all the wizards had done."

"Mm," Thor nodded. "Indeed. The king should always be the one to lead his people in battle or in peace."

"But, it took them a while to get a meeting set up with the king."

"Why?" Steve wondered.

"Court politics," Thor sighed, shaking his head. "It is truly the bane of any ruler."

Steve didn't look entirely sure what that meant, and Natasha smiled. "Well, being the king, he was awfully busy. So they had to wait until they could get a meeting with him."

"Oh. Okay." He took another drink of hot chocolate, getting marshmallow on his nose again, but swiping it off quickly and eating it himself before Thor could.

"So, the princess is back in the cave, right?" Natasha said, returning to their heroine. "The dragon is still off at the meeting, and it's late, and she's mopping and cleaning up after dinner when she hears something. So, she goes to investigate, taking her mop bucket with her—she didn't have any weapons or anything, but thought maybe she could whack someone with the bucket." She looked down at Steve. "That's another good lesson. You should always be ready to use what you have and improvise."

Steve nodded earnestly.

"So, she followed the noise into the library," Natasha went on. "And there was one of the wizards from that morning! He'd snuck back in and was trying to steal the book!"

Steve gasped at the rudeness and audacity of the villain.

"The princess told him to stop, and he turned around and grabbed his magic staff to cast a spell on her," Natasha said. Steve's eyes were wide, his hands clutched tightly against his bear, and even Thor was leaning in in anticipation. She smiled. "She didn't have anything to hide behind," she went on. "So she threw the bucket at the wizard, thinking she could hit his arm and at least make him miss with the spell."

"Did it work?" Steve asked when she paused for dramatic effect.

Natasha grinned. "It did. It worked even better than she thought it would. The bucket hit the wizard in the shoulder, and knocked his spell away from her. And the water from the bucket splashed all over him, and he was all mad and wet, and then…he started to melt!"

Steve gasped.

Thor laughed. "Of course! Like the Wicked Witch of the West!" He nodded satisfactorily.

"Huh?" Steve asked, looking up at Thor, confused. For a moment, Natasha was confused too, remembering Steve getting Fury's Wizard of Oz reference on the helicarrier when they first met. But this was 1927 Steve, and that movie hadn't come out by then.

"It is common in Earth legends for evil magicians to be melted by water," Thor explained.

"Oh, okay," Steve said. He turned back to Natasha. "So, what happened after she melted him?"

"Um, well, the dragon came back," she said, thrown off a little by the way Thor put pop culture together. She supposed she should stop being surprised at this point. "They were going to go see the king the next morning, but when they got there, they found out the king dragon was dead!"

"Did the wizards kill him?" Steve asked suspiciously.

"They didn't know. It made sense that they would try, but the king had guards, and they said no wizards had come in; that he'd just been having breakfast and died."

"Most suspicious," Thor said. "It sounds to me as though some sort of poison was in play."

"Hmm," Steve pondered, scratching his chin thoughtfully.

"So then the war with the wizards had to be put on hold," Natasha said. "The dragons had to get a new king first."

"Was there no heir to take his father's place?" Thor wondered.

Natasha shook her head. "Dragons don't work like that. They don't have royal family lines or anything. When one king dies, they have a contest to see who becomes the next king."

"Ah," Thor said. He nodded. "The strongest then becomes the ruler. I have seen some realms where it is thus."

"The way the dragon contest worked was, there was this big magic rock in the dragon caves. It was called the King's Stone, and it shook whenever you tried to pick it up. It would keep shaking and shaking until you couldn't hold it anymore. Except, for the dragon who was supposed to be the next king, it wouldn't shake at all. So, all the dragons would have to try to carry the stone, and the one who could carry it without dropping it would become the king."

"So, all the dragons went out to the place where the contest was happening," Natasha continued. "The princess was annoyed at having to stay at home, but her dragon friend left her a crystal ball so she could watch. She got kind of bored of watching dragons picking up and dropping the stone, though, so she got the crystal ball to start looking around, seeing what else she could see." She paused dramatically again.

"What did she see?" Steve demanded, when the silence had gone on too long.

Natasha fought down the urge to laugh at his enthusiasm. "She saw…the wizards!"

Steve and Thor both gasped.

"A whole bunch of them!" she continued. This story-telling thing was actually pretty fun, especially with eager listeners like these. "They had the books about the dragon cave, and they were casting spells over the contest."

"But why did they care about the dragon contest?" Steve wondered. His eyebrows furrowed thoughtfully. "Unless…" he said slowly. "They wanted a certain dragon to win." He turned to look at Thor, their eyes widening as they met.

"It was a dragon that poisoned the king!" they said in unison, and Natasha snorted into her hot chocolate and had to get up to get a towel.

"The dragons have a traitor among them," Thor growled.

Natasha cleaned up her spilled hot chocolate and sat back down. Steve scooched back over next to her and wriggled his way under her arm. "What happened next?" he asked, blinking eager blue eyes up at her.

"Well, like you guys guessed, they were trying to rig the contest," Natasha said. "So the princess got all the buckets from the kitchen she could carry, filled them up with water, and did some of the magic she'd made her father's court magicians teach her to transport herself to where the wizards were. She started splashing her buckets around, getting as many wizards as she could and melting them. There were too many of them, though, and soon she was out of water, and there were still wizards around her, ready to throw spells at her."

"Oh no," Steve whispered.

"Fortunately, she and the wizards had made a lot of noise, so some of the dragon soldiers came over to investigate. They stopped the wizards before they could hurt the princess, and they arrested them all, and the princess, and took them to where the contest was."

"Why'd they arrest her?" Steve asked indignantly. "She stopped the wizards!"

"Yeah, but the dragon soldiers didn't know her, and they didn't know what was going on, so they just arrested everybody and decided to hang on to them until the new king got picked, and let the king figure it out," Natasha explained.

"Hm," Steve said, not pleased with this turn of events.

"By the time they got to the contest, though, everyone was cheering," Natasha continued. "One of the dragons had just been picked by the stone to be king, and so the soldiers marched the princess and the wizards up to the new king. And the new king turned out to be the dragon the princess lived with!"

"Yay!" Steve said, clapping his hands excitedly. "Wait," he said. "I thought that was a girl dragon. Wouldn't she be the queen instead?"

"Not for dragons," Natasha said remembering having the same thought when she and Lila reached that part of the book. "They just call the job 'king', whether it's a boy or a girl."

"Huh."

"Interesting," Thor said, stroking his beard thoughtfully.

"So, since that dragon was the princess's friend, she listened to her, right?" Steve asked.

"Yep," Natasha agreed. "The dragon knew all the sneaky stuff the wizards had been doing, and after the princess told them what she'd found out, they realized the wizards had been working with one of the dragons—they would help that dragon become king, and that dragon would let them into the special caves with all the magic stuff."

"Who was the bad dragon?" Steve asked.

"The bad dragon was the one from the beginning of the story who wanted to eat the princess," Natasha said.

"I knew he was no good," Steve said.

She smiled. "Yep. He got turned into a frog, and the wizards were all banished from the dragon mountains forever."

"Good," Steve said, nodding emphatically.

"So then the nice dragon became the king," Natasha said. "And the princess was worried about what she was going to do, because she'd been cooking for the dragon and taking care of her, but now that she was the king, she would have servants and stuff to do that for her. But the dragon said that of course the princess could stay! She'd helped save the kingdom, and she'd been really brave to go out and take on the wizards all on her own. The dragon said someone as brave and smart as that should certainly stay around, but she shouldn't be cooking and cleaning. She made the princess one of her counselors, to help her make smart decisions as king."

"An excellent choice," Thor declared. "Bravery should be rewarded, and it is an intelligent king who surrounds himself—herself, rather—with wise counselors."

"Yep," Natasha agreed. "So the good dragon got to be king, and the princess got an interesting job where she got to use all the stuff she'd learned to help make a good kingdom."

"And they all lived happily ever after!" Steve declared.

"Yes, they did," Natasha said.

"An excellent tale," Thor said, grinning broadly.

"Yeah, it was really good," Steve agreed. He yawned and leaned against Natasha's shoulder. "I liked it."

"I'm glad," she said, ruffling his hair and feeling very proud of herself for managing to distract him from his worry and put that smile on his face. Before she had time to wonder what she should do next, she heard the sound of feet in the hallway.

"Bucky!" Steve exclaimed happily, looking over the back of the couch. Bucky, Sam and Wanda were coming out of the elevator, all uninjured, as promised. Steve dropped his bear on the couch and jumped up and ran to them.

"Hey, Stevie!" Bucky greeted, crouching down to catch Steve in a hug.

"You're back!" Steve said.

"Told you we would be," Bucky said with a smile. He pulled back and looked at him. "What are you still doing up?"

"Waitin' for you," Steve said, like it should have been obvious. "Miss Natasha was tellin' me a story."

"Really?" Bucky said, looking over at Natasha curiously.

"Uh huh! It was about a princess, and had dragons and wizards and everything!" Steve said.

"And, let me guess: she made you hot chocolate too?" Bucky asked.

"How did you know?" Steve wondered.

Bucky grinned. "Because when I left this morning, you didn't have a mustache," he said, swiping at Steve's face with his sleeve. Steve giggled and tried to duck away. "Go brush your teeth and wash that off your face, huh? Time for bed."

"Okay," Steve agreed. He gave Sam and Wanda a quick hug, welcoming them back, then hugged Thor and Natasha. "Thanks for the story, Miss Natasha," Steve said, smiling up from where he had his little arms wrapped around her waist. "It was fun. And it did make me feel better."

"I'm glad," Natasha said with a smile. She ruffled his hair again. "Goodnight, sweetheart."

"G'night." He hugged her again and ran off for his room.

"So, story time with Nat, huh?" Bucky asked with a smile.

"Shut up," Natasha complained good-naturedly. "Couldn't just let him mope around until you came back. And I'm not telling you the story," she added, raising a warning finger as Sam started to open his mouth.

Bucky chuckled. "Thanks for looking out for him."

"No problem," Natasha assured him. "We had fun."

Thor helped her clean up the dishes, and everyone dispersed. Natasha realized Steve had left his bear on the couch, so she picked it up and headed for the room he was sharing with Bucky. The door was open slightly, and the lights were low, and she peeked in to see Steve curled up in his bed, mumbling something sleepily as Bucky sat on the mattress beside him, rubbing a hand gently up and down his back. She smiled at the sweet simplicity of the scene, leaned in just enough to catch Bucky's eye and set the bear on the couch inside the door, then backed out. It had been fun doing the story-telling thing tonight, though she didn't know that she'd make a habit of it. Steve made a pretty great audience, though. She could see herself letting him talk her into it again.

Thor wasn't actually invited to this chapter, but he showed up at the end of the couch, and, well, who's going to kick Thor out? He's a sweetie.

I don't know how many of you recognized it, but the story Nat was telling (and kind of butchering a little) was Dealing With Dragons, by Patricia C. Wrede. It's part one of a YA series about an unconventional princess and was one of my favorites growing up.

Up next, Bucky and Steve get an unexpected visitor, and the mystery of Steve's tinification is solved.