"… And here are the things he'll have to sign when he emerges from the lab," Pepper was saying and Natasha nodded absently. She may be the greatest spy and assassin in the world, but that didn't make her impervious to boredom. And Pepper droning on infinitely was boredom in its more intense form. Natasha found herself noticing the shadow Pepper's gold brooch cast on her jacket, the manicured nails, and the growing mountain of papers she kept producing on the glass coffee table. "Make sure he gets this, it's what happened in the last board meeting, not that he's going to read it…"
Natasha didn't dislike Pepper, per say. She knew that Tony would never have lasted this long as a human being, let alone Stark Industries' CEO, without Pepper. She just didn't particularly like Pepper either. She was so put together, so organized, so matter of fact. And then there was how she acted like she ran Tony's life – though Natasha had to admit – grudgingly – that that wasn't far from the truth.
After Natasha promised about a thousand times to get all those important files to Tony – when did she become a secretary anyway? – Pepper finally left, to run Tony's company while he was in his post-kidnapping and pre-returning-to-work void. Natasha grabbed the huge pile of documents and went down to the workshop where Tony had been holed up since last night.
It had been two weeks since Tony returned from Afghanistan. And in those two weeks he had completely unmade the man he was reputed to be, the man Natasha knew him to be both from reputation and from her time working for him. He no longer looked at her with ravenous desire; instead he was treating her like, for lack of a better word, a person. Like he wanted – needed– her approval and reassurance. Of what, she didn't know. He seemed lost, like his persona of asshole-billionaire-womanizer had been burnt away in Afghanistan and he wasn't sure what was left beneath that shell. And she could see that there was something underneath, like how a scab peeled off to reveal the baby-raw skin underneath. Something that was, if not innocent, then at least fragile and vulnerable, and it touched something in her, made her hesitate every time she got close to killing him.
The thought of killing Tony made her sick, like she had to kill that Texan boy all over again, even though there was nothing similar between the two. If she was honest with herself – which she was not, insisted a firm voice in her head – she would admit that she couldn't kill Tony even if she wanted to.
Natasha reached the end of the staircase and arrived at the workshop. She knocked at the glass door, a quick rap of her knuckles. He still hadn't given her the code yet. That hurt, a deep, ringing blow that echoed in her chest because it meant that he didn't trust her. She didn't know why it mattered; she's never wanted or needed anyone's trust. Trust shouldn't – didn't – matter to people like her. But still, it hurt.
A soft whirring noise, a click, and Tony called from inside, "it's open." Natasha stepped into the lab. It smelled of chemicals and something burned – the combination of explosives that rung alarm bells in her head. Tony was sitting on the floor, bits and pieces including chemicals labelled "FLAMMABLE" and "CAUTION" spread out in front of him. Natasha said, "Have you been messing around with bombs?"
"Coffee?" he said by way of answer, getting up and sauntering over to the coffee machine in a relatively clean corner of the workshop. He grabbed two mugs and started the machine.
"Uh, sure," Natasha said. Caffeine was one of the substances she still felt the effects of; she'd been desensitized to the most common drugs as part of her training in the Widow program, but caffeine wasn't one of them.
"Pepper came by," she said, waving the stack of papers in her hand.
Tony rolled his eyes. "Thank God I missed her. I mean, she just yammers. On and on."
Natasha allowed herself a small smile. "She left these for you to sign." She placed the documents on the counter.
Tony groaned as he poured the coffee into the two mugs. Natasha went to stand next to him, adding sugar into the Grumpy Cat mug he now reserved for her, while Tony poured milk into his. They swapped; she added a touch of milk to her coffee and he was spooning enough sugar into his mug to kill a diabetic. Wordlessly, they took a sip of their coffee. Natasha enjoyed the quiet moment when it was just her and a perfect cup of coffee – and the genius next to her suffering from an existential crisis. She surprised herself with the spark of fondness she felt towards him.
Tony broke the silence. "Probably gonna regret asking this, but what did Pepper want?"
Natasha shrugged. "The usual – you know, company stuff you need to sign, legal stuff, press statements, how you're doing… speaking of which, how are you doing?" She regarded him with her head tilted to one side, red hair falling just past her shoulder as she did so.
There was a brief flash of panic across his eyes that she would have missed if she hadn't been trained to look out for it. "I don't know," he said, his voice even – too even. "You've been living with me for – how long's it been, three weeks? You tell me."
Her lips twisted to the side. How did she answer that – you're trying so hard to keep up appearances and pretend that you're okay but I see that you're not from that sad, broken, defeated way you look when you think I don't notice? Or – whatever happened to you in Afghanistan seriously fucked you up and you're doing all you can to forget it but you get nightmares and that's why you're becoming an insomniac who's living off caffeine and alcohol?
She chose her words carefully. "You're different. You've changed, whatever happened in the desert, did that to you. Like it's put everything into perspective for you, and you hate what you see. You hate who you used to be, hate what you've done your whole life. But you don't want to know that, and you don't know what to do with that. And that's why you're down here, because machines make sense to you, and that can help you forget what happened to you in Afghanistan."
He froze up at her words, staring at her with the wide eyes of a wild animal frozen in fear. "How did you kn –" he choked, and he pressed a hand hard against his mouth to stop the sob. But it wrenched its way out of his throat anyway, a broken, painful thing. Then came the tears and the graceless, hiccuping sobs.
Natasha laid a hand on his back. At the simple touch he collapsed into her arms, a shaking mess, and she held onto him with his head on her shoulder, his tears soaking her skin. She wove her fingers into his messy curls, holding, cradling him like she could stop him from breaking apart.
She had no experience with comfort other than under a different name, a different persona, one who was supposed to seduce and kill the person she was comforting. In other words, no different from what she, Natalie Rushman, was doing now, she realized like a kick in her gut and she physically felt that the air was knocked out of her lungs, making her tighten her grip on Tony. But this was different, she knew that without a doubt. Tony might know her under a fake identity, but it wasn't Natalie Rushman comforting him now, but Natasha Romanov. This time, the care was genuine.
When he quieted he let go of her, looking embarrassed for his breakdown, and she released him, too. She hated herself; hated that she could so easily be compromised. Hated that she allowed herself to feel.
"I still see it," he confessed, his voice hoarse. "In my nightmares. People burning. dying. People I –" He broke off and let out a breath that shuddered his entire body. "Nat…" His eyes fixed at her and she was pinned to the spot. Maybe this was what her victims felt like when she climbed on top of them. Her heart was racing, and she knew what that meant even if she didn't want to acknowledge it. Nat, he called her. Natalie, or Natasha. Like he was calling to her, Natasha Romanov, inside the shell of Natalie Rushman.
His fingers, still shaking a little, wrapped around her wrist and he lowered his head towards her. With eyes half-closed she watched him, her head angling up of its own accord. Then her lips met his and they kissed – not the heated, passionate kind she had imagined they would share half-naked in a bed, but careful and hesitant and almost innocent, even though that was the last thing either of them were. It was simply a thing of comfort.
Then they parted and her self-hatred returned tenfold. But at the same time, she knew that if she was given another chance, given ten, she would make no other choice than to kiss him. "Tony…" she murmured. What did she want to say? We can't? I don't want to take advantage of you? I'm supposed to kill you but I don't think I can do it anymore? Her brain was working too slowly to formulate the right response. All she could think of was how soft his lips were, how uncertain, like he expected her rejection.
When he looked down at her he was stripped of all his facades, as he so often was post-Afghanistan. Plain to see in his eyes was his vulnerability and uncertainty. Like he was asking, was that okay? The old Tony would never have asked that. He would just have taken what he wanted. The thought caused a pang of something unrecognizable deep in her heart, maybe remorse or pity but flavored with the unfamiliar tang of tenderness. She gave him a small smile, she hoped that it was encouraging. Right now she felt like she had no control of her emotions, both inside and out.
She must have succeeded because his eyes lit up with hope, though it was tempered by his brokenness. He was fragmented into pieces, she knew; whoever he had been before was lost in Afghanistan, and this new Tony wasn't the man she was hired to kill. Before she could decide what she should say or do one of the robots in the workshop gave a sudden pitched series of beeps and whirls. They jumped. "Gosh, Dummy, what did you do now?" Tony fussed over the complaining robot like it was a pet. "Geez, kid, look at this mess, clean it up. Stop trying to set my stuff on fire." Natasha couldn't help but smile. He was finding who he was again in the workshop. This, at least, was a part of him that couldn't be taken away.
She mumbled something about leaving him to his work before moving to the door. "Nat," he called. She halted, turned around to look at him. "You asked me how I'm doing. And I think that – well, you saw how I am, I'm a mess." He gave a self-deprecating laugh. "But I'm getting better, I think. I'm dealing. Jarvis helps, he's coming along really well. He's – I'm upgrading him. That's the project I've been working on, since we got back. Well, one of them, anyway."
"Good," Natasha said. Then she surprised herself by continuing. "I think that – I mean, I want you to get better. Maybe not become exactly who you were before," she allowed with a wry smile, which he mirrored, "but become stronger and better and just... yourself."
"Yeah, well, you help, too," he answered, his expression soft and vulnerable. Natasha wanted to run back to him and throw her arms around his neck and kiss him again, this time tell him what exactly she felt. But she controlled her impulses, painfully aware that her expression betrayed her every thought, and walked out of the lab.
Notes:
I don't know how I feel about this chapter. I am proud of it but at the same time I feel like I could do better. I've been having writer's block lately and your reviews are the best cure for that, so please please please review.