"Morning." When Natasha walked into the kitchen the next morning she found Stark leaning against the counter with a mug of coffee in his hand. He looked like he hadn't slept at all last night; he was dressed in the same t-shirt and jeans from last night and his hair was mussed in a way that didn't look like the work of a pillow. Not that Natasha got much sleep either; she spent most of the night turning in bed, trying to get comfortable in her too-big, too-soft bed. It almost made her miss her Red Room days, when they slept on thin mattresses on creaky beds, one wrist hand-cuffed to the bed frame – not that she didn't still do that.

"Morning," she returned, blinking away her surprise.

"Coffee?" He gestured at the pot, which was still half-full of the dark liquid.

"Please."

He grabbed a Grumpy Cat mug from the cupboard and poured it full. "Milk and sugar?"

"Just a little."

He added both and handed the mug to her. She took sip. Too much sugar. She leaned against the table, bracing herself against it with a hand at its hard edge.

"How'd you sleep?" Stark asked. She noticed that he hadn't eaten; the sink was empty for one thing; for another he was definitely a coffee-before-food guy, and he had just made coffee when she walked in.

"Pretty good," she lied. "And you?" His lips quirked up in an empty smile that confirmed what she knew. She returned a half-hearted one of her own. She was unable to continue the conversation; something about putting on Natalie Rushman's sugary, flirtatious smile made her sick and reminded of her first freelance job a year ago in Texas.

The silence was quickly turning awkward. She hadn't felt this struggle before. At least never before the kill. She remembered a young man in Texas, the first man she killed after she left Russia, how she killed him with another man's taste still on his tongue, how she felt nothing until she slit his throat. How she heaved into the toilet back at her hotel room, reduced to a sobbing mess, and even as she drowned his memory in vodka his eyes still burned her more than the alcohol down her throat. She couldn't take the silence. Couldn't take the eyes of that young man whose name she had long forgotten and his memory buried. Couldn't look at this Stark who was somehow not Stark anymore.

She stood abruptly.

"Why were you there?" he said.

"What?" She furrowed her brow.

"On that chopper. Why were you looking for me?" He wasn't hitting on her, that was clear. There was something genuine in his face, desperate even. Like he needed to know why someone would give a shit about him.

"I –" I had to make sure you got back alive so I can kill you. But was that really the truth? She had been sure of it, but now? "I don't know," she said, and she could hear her own voice raw with truth, in a way it never had been before.

The flash of panic across his eyes was unmistakable. Then it was gone, faded into despair, and he looked away. "Do you think that I –" His voice broke. His eyes were shimmering. "that I'm good? After everything I've –" He gripped the counter top as though it were the only thing keeping him up.

"Tony… nothing good comes of asking yourself that."

A flicker of anger gave a spark of life to the blackholes of his eyes. "And what would Natalie Rushman know about that?"

"More than you know." She turned and left the kitchen with a bitter aftertaste in her throat that reminded her of tears and vodka and the eyes of some dead Texan boy.

What am I doing?

Natasha had no answer for herself. She was in the living room downstairs, standing by the window and watching the Pacific Ocean smash against the cliffs in explosions of spray and sound. It had been two weeks since she moved into Stark's house, two weeks since she was faced with the quandary of her current mission. Two weeks since everything she had been sure of was dashed to froth like waves against rock. She had been so sure of what she wanted, ever since she left the Red Room. Freedom, that was all that mattered. That and doing whatever she needed to stay alive and stay on top of the game. She was independent and self-assured and didn't need anyone telling her what to do or who to kiss or kill.

Two years since she left the Soviet, two years spent establishing a reputation and making sure the world forgot about her blood Red roots. Then Hammer broke all that down with one phone call and a file in his hand. She almost laughed at the unfairness of it all. She had been too naive to think that the past could be buried like that, but she had entertained the notion anyway, believed in it like a child playing hide and seek, you can't see me if I can't see you. The only way she could keep everything she'd worked for together, was by killing Tony Stark.

Even that had been fairly straightforward. A bullet between his eyes, or a blade across his throat, and the problem would have been solved, at least for the time being. It would have bought her the time she needed to get rid of Hammer and the threat he posed. She had a plan perfectly laid out, the time set to execute it, and then he had to go and get himself kidnapped. And she had to do everything she could to rescue him.

Rescue him, and kill him herself. Get the money, and her file, from Hammer. Keep her past buried, her future secure in money and reputation for being the one to take down an unkillable man. But then the man had to have an existential crisis now, had to remind her of a long-dead boy whose blood was on the first bills passed into her hands, whose memory she thought she'd left in the bottom of a vodka bottle.

No, she had to kill Stark. There was no other way; Hammer had her file and as long as he did he held her strings. For herself, Stark had to die, no matter what he was going through, no matter how much he reminded her of that boy who did not deserve to die. She had to kill him; to cut his throat was to cut her strings.

Which begged the question – why hadn't she made a move, or even formulated a plan, while she was under his roof? It was straightforward – a bullet between his eyes, a blade across his throat, a drop of poison in his food. Then Hammer's hold on her would loosen.

But would it really? Hammer would still have strings on her, he wouldn't give up the file so easily. He could expose her or, more likely, continue using it for blackmail and turning her, the Black Widow, into his personal hitman. She could laugh at how ridiculous it was – the Black Widow, reduced to a puppet with a gun for some former boy genius, now slimy CEO. All because of a past she thought she'd severed from herself.

The sense of dread in Natasha's gut ebbed and crashed like the sea that smashed into solid rock, again and again, a storm in the making.

Notes: This is a bit of a filler chapter, and I'm sorry if it's a little repetitive, but I feel it was important for me to go into Natasha's mind and explore how she's feeling through all of this. Next chapter's going to have some more action.