The first time Colonel James Rhodes came face-to-face with Bruce Banner, the doctor turned on his heel and slammed the door behind him, escaping down the hall-and Rhodey couldn't even begin to think to blame him.
He was haunting the living quarters of the Avengers Tower, and he knew it. He was useless here; he'd done too much damage for the inhabitants to forgive him, and he wasn't brave enough to try to talk to the echo of Tony that Steve had loaded into the machine. Pepper wouldn't even take his calls, but he had the feeling it wasn't because of what he did so much as what she had done to break the proverbial camel's back. She didn't want to face him anymore than he wanted to face any of them; and she wasn't enough of a masochist to force it.
Natasha had started walking around the Tower with a pair of black and red headphones on her ears, only seen without them present when she was in the field. Rhodey took to flying with the team, Iron Man's suit and War Machine's working together well even though Tony didn't speak during any of the fighting, and Rhodey might not have let him.
More and more, Steve was a mirroring ghost; his hair getting long and unkempt, the circles under his eyes pronounced, and Rhodey had been privy to the specs of just how much sleep a supersoldier required. It didn't take long before Maria Hill had arrived with a missive for Steve to sort himself out or be prepared for Nick Fury to do it for him, harbouring papers for Rhodey's permanent transferral onto the Avengers.
That night, with the papers, unsigned, staring at him from his place at the kitchen table, a bottle of whiskey and two tumblers were unceremoniously deposited on the table beside them, Natasha's features a storm in a stone as she dropped herself into a seat next to him, unscrewing the lid of the bottle with a vicious flick of her wrists and pouring freely into the glass before she clinked one into the other hard enough to send it into Rhodey's hand.
"Drink." She ordered acerbically. "I have a story to tell you, apparently, and I'd rather be drinking with someone than alone to tell you this."
Rhodey picked up the whiskey with only the slightest bit of trepidation, knowing that she was a Russian assassin trained in the most classical sense of Russian assassins.
"Are you experimenting with the old KGB poisons again, Tash?" Clint asked on his way by as Rhodey forced himself to take a tentative sip.
Natasha's eyes flashed amusement as she sat back against the chair, flicking her hair out of her eyes, "I only paralyzed you for a week, Clint. Get over it."
Rhodey forced himself to swallow, not taking his eyes off of Natasha and her unwavering green gaze.
"Colonel, you are the last surviving person who knew Tony Stark before he became Tony Stark, have you ever considered that?"
Rhodey swallowed dry this time, trying to lick his lips with his suddenly barren mouth. "I...I didn't, no."
"It could be argued that you were supposed to be the one who knew him best." Natasha led, "And yet, when I dragged you in here, you knew next to nothing about the man you claimed was your best friend for the better part of your lives. How does that happen, Rhodes? I'm curious."
"Ma'am, I've known Tony for years. But you only know whatever side of him he's willing to show you."
Natasha's eyes flashed, but it was not amusement this time around. She sat forwards, linking her hands together as she rested her elbows on her legs, "And yet," she whispered, "it was not so difficult to know him...when you took the time to listen."
There was a noise behind them, and Natasha's eyes fell to the perpetrator as Steve stopped dead seeing her sitting there.
"When we met during the Venko incident, Tony was already a dead man walking," Natasha murmured calmly, her gaze unshifting from the supersoldier lurking just out of the room, "and while I'll give you the fact that Tony let strangers read him sooner than he would you or Pepper, he wasn't that hard to figure out, was he?"
"There are...suicidal people do things." Rhodey agreed, voice a pained groan and his eyes far away with his memories, "They give away their most precious things...and Tony gave me the suit, he just made it look like I'd taken it."
Natasha's face was inscrutable, her eyes darker than Steve had ever seen them as she finally turned her gaze back to Rhodey, "He broke my cover. He asked me what I would do were I about to celebrate my last birthday. Do you know what I told him?" Rhodey shook his head, sitting forward and putting his head in his hands, "I told him, I would do whatever I wanted to with whomever I wanted to do it with. And he let you take the suit. Why the hell would he do that?"
"Natasha..." Tony's voice sounded from the in-built speakers.
"Shut up, Stark." Natasha ordered, her green eyes still utterly steady on Steve's face. "You don't get to tell me off for this."
"I think I'm entitled, Nat." Tony replied smoothly, "It's not his fault-"
"Really?" Natasha cut him off, eyebrow cocked, "Not his fault that the neglect and abuse you've been subjected to for years wasn't ever stopped?"
"Not his fault any more than it was anyone else's." Tony's voice was dark, and Steve flinched in the shadows, his head ducking in response to the way her eyebrow dropped, her gaze even as she turned it back to Rhodey. "Rhodey, come downstairs."
"You asked me to tell him the truth, Stark." Natasha argued. "The truth is that he abandoned you when you needed him."
"No, the truth is that he was there, and I wasn't strong enough to keep fighting, even with him at my back. Truth is that I gave up on myself long before I even met him, and I was beyond hope before I turned sixteen." Tony snapped, "I never had a chance, Nat, and you know that."
"I knew that...Steve didn't." Natasha replied coolly, taking a hearty swig of the whiskey and smirking. Steve stepped into the kitchen proper, his features a mask. "Go downstairs, Rhodes: Tony wants to talk to you face-to-face, I'm sure."