Natasha was glad their coffee ritual wasn't broken the next morning. She had gone back to her own room to shower and change, and then met Tony at the kitchen downstairs. The sight of him caused a curious fluttering lightness in her heart. He had the coffee machine going and was digging between half-empty cereal boxes. Natasha chuckled at how ridiculous he looked, a grown man, and a genius at that, with his head stuck in his cupboard struggling to find his choice of sugary breakfast. But at least he was eating; that was an improvement.
"Aha!" Tony drew out a box of pop tarts, triumphant. Natasha shook her head and laughed; an actual, genuine, free laugh. She hadn't been able to do that for years. "Last box," he said to her. He opened it, peered in and wrinkled his nose. "And only half full." He held the box out to her. "Want one?"
"No, I'm good, don't want to take your precious pop tarts if half a box is all we have left," she said.
He waved his hand dismissively. "Nah, it's cool. I can get Happy to pick some up later."
Natasha shook her head and declined again, going to find some cereal. "You use that man way too much," she told him. Tony shrugged, unapologetic as he stuck his pop tarts in the toaster.
"You sleep okay last night?" she asked him. "I mean, um, after you woke." The coffee machine came to a stop and Natasha poured the rich brown liquid into a mug. She filled Tony's Batman mug, too, while he mixed a touch of milk and sugar into hers – just the way she liked it.
"Yeah," Tony said as the toaster dinged. He reached for his pop tarts. It burned his hand and he gave a little yelp, waving it around to alleviate the pain. "It's like I had an epiphany. I know what I need to do now."
"Good," Natasha smiled. She took a sip of her coffee. Perfect. Her smile widened.
"I'm gonna turn Stark Industries around. We're not going to be doing weapons anymore. I had a sort of eureka moment down in that cave," They kept him in a cave, Natasha thought; it was one more thing that she knew about him than she did before. Tony continued through a mouthful of strawberry flavored pop tart, "that I can take what I have with Stark Industries, and use it for good."
"Oh?" Natasha's eyebrows rose.
"First we're going to stop manufacturing weapons," he said matter-of-factly, but Natasha didn't miss the almost maniacal gleam in his eyes. "Then we're going to invest in tech. We can incorporate technology and stuff people actually need – not like bigger phones or flatter TVs or whatever, but stuff that would actually make a difference. Say like, I dunno, energy efficient cars or, like, clothes and shoes that grow with kids so children living in poverty don't have to keep buying new ones, or ways to make water clean. Stuff that can actually help people instead of destroying things. And –" he paused and looked at Natasha, like he was considering saying something important. "I had a breakthrough, with arc reactor technology."
"Wasn't it supposed to be a dead end?" Howard Stark had made the arc reactor that powered the company decades ago, but it had been for the press more than anything else. The thing cost more to run than it saved.
"Yeah – but I found some of my dad's old stuff in the basement," Tony said. "I've been reading his notes about the arc reactor, and I think I know how to make it better. It could even be the solution to clean energy."
"Wow." Natasha raised her eyebrows. "You sure that you want to take the company down this path?"
Tony's brow furrowed. "You don't think it's the right direction?"
"What I think isn't important," she said. "What you think is. You have to be sure about this. It's not like you can back up and go, haha, just kidding, we're back to weapons now."
"Well, technically I could," Tony grimaced. "But I'm not going to. I know that it's the right thing to do and for once in my life I'd just like to do that. Wipe out the red."
Natasha nodded. "So would I." LIke him, she's never been good; her life of murder had been decided for her since before she could think for herself. She might have stopped being a puppet for her Soviet masters, but that didn't mean that she had stopped killing, only she was doing it for money instead of out of mindless obedience. She had painted blood all over herself and never stopped to think that she could be any different, not when killing was all she ever knew – killing and fighting and seducing. But she wanted to be different. She wanted to live without blood and guilt clogging her senses and pulling her to lie in a bloody grave with her victims. She wanted to be able to sleep without nightmares. She wanted to lie next to a soft, breathing body, not for sex but for love.
Tony took a deep breath, raked his hands through his hair, and looked up at him with surprising sincerity in his eyes. "And I want you to do it with me."
"What?" Her heart almost stopped in her chest.
"You and me, Nat. I –" he looked so vulnerable and uncertain "– I need you to be on my side, by my side, even if no one else will be."
Her voice was so small she wondered whether he could hear it. "Why me?"
"You get it. I don't know why, or how, but you do." He stepped closer to her, and took her hand. "Nat, I don't think I could do it, stick through with this, without you to back me up. And I want to be – not good, I'm too far gone for that, but at least better."
"So do I," she admitted, against her better judgement. Her heart ached to say yes to his proposal; to say yes and buy her ticket out of the shadowy existence, the non-life, of the last twenty two years.
But it wasn't fair to him, when their relationship had started as a lie, even though that was the farthest thing from what it was now. When the threat of Hammer was hanging over her head like a puppeteer. "But we can't."
He looked so crushed, all the light going out of his eyes like the moment he first got back from Afghanistan, that she felt like she was stabbed in the heart. "Why not?" His voice cracked.
She blinked. "Because you snore when you sleep." She hated herself, absolutely despised how much of a coward she was, for lying to him. But he smiled, a fragmented and tentative one, yet a smile nonetheless. "Is that a yes, Rushman?" he said.
As she crashed her lips against his resolutely, she became Natalie Rushman. Her past was gone, all her ties to it severed. A single thought rose in her mind, clear and triumphant.
There are no strings on me.
Notes:
Apologies again for updating so late. Work is a bitch, and so is writer's block. But the best part of the story is coming soon, I promise!
And happy birthday to my best friend! She's supported me no matter what and never judged me, when that was (and still is) something I really needed in my life.