Life was good, Natalie mused as she reclined in her lover's arms. He was wearing nothing but a tank top, and she was wearing his shirt. They were in bed, sheets mused and sweaty from sex, watching a movie on the widescreen TV. They had somehow ended up having sex in the middle of it. Now, clothes discarded around the room and their legs tangled together, they continued watching the movie.

Tony's tank top was a little damp from sweat. He never took his shirt off during sex, never undressed facing Natalie, never got in the shower with her. She was no fool, she knew that it was deliberate. But she didn't ask him about it, and he didn't ask her about the scars she had on her body. That was good; they respected that the other had a past, and that was allowed to stay private. Natalie certainly couldn't have explained those scars that she got in another lifetime, one where she was meant to kill her lover.

That felt like years ago, even though it had only been two months. Another life, just as before that there was yet another life, one where she was not a person but a weapon. It had been so long since she thought of that lifetime, that it felt like someone else's life. It was someone else's life, a life that belonged to a girl named Natalia Romanova.

"You're miles away." Tony's voice and his caress along her side brought her back to the present, to Natalie Rushman.

"Yeah, kinda got lost in my thoughts." She smiled up at him.

He chuckled. "Yeah, I could tell."

"Did I ignore you?"

He fake-pouted. "Totally."

She grinned. "Aww, poor baby." She tousled his hair. "What did I miss?"

He shrugged. "I don't know, wasn't really paying attention either," he said, and she laughed, the sound deep and husky and genuine. He kissed the tip of her nose ."I adore you, you know that, right?" Despite the casual tone, there was an emotional vulnerability in his eyes, the way they wavered, unsteady, studying her face and trying to gauge her reaction, like he was waiting for her to reject him.

She smiled up at him. "Of course I do."

Relief flooded his eyes and he kissed her. She deepened the kiss and he reciprocated, angling his head for better access and cradling her jaw. "Ready for round two so soon?" she drawled, her lips barely leaving his.

"If you are," he replied, pushing the shirt from her shoulders. Natalie grinned and crushed her lips against his again. His hands pushed at her shoulders and her shirt – his shirt – slipped off easily. she untangled her arms from around his neck to shrug the shirt off. Her upper body bare, she fisted her hands at the bottom of his shirt and started pulling it up – but he pushed her away and turned aside. Her lips were still tingling from his, but her lust had disappeared. Tony was looking down at the sheets, his face dark with embarrassment and self-loathing. Natalie felt the sharp sting of guilt. She had acted on impulse, forgotten that Tony never took off his shirt. She had intruded on that secrecy that shielded their pasts from one other.

"I'm sorry," she said, her voice low. "That was my – "

"No." His voice was hoarse. "No, it was – I couldn't –"

"It's okay," she said, her attempt to sound lighthearted making her heart sink even lower. "Let's just forget about that, 'kay?" She scooted closer. Tony looked up and met her gaze with a faint glimmer of hope in his brown eyes, and gave a tiny nod. She leaned in and gave him a chaste kiss on the lips, before settling down next to him again. She put on the shirt he had taken off, without caring to button it, and resumed her earlier position with her head against his chest.

Tony's arms came around her naturally and she linked one of her hands with his. "You're an amazing woman, Nat," he said softly and she smiled, though whether it was for herself or him she didn't know.

"Ms Rushman," Jarvis broke in, sounding embarrassed. "Terribly sorry to interrupt, but your phone is ringing in your room."

"Oh. Thanks, Jarvis." Natasha made to get up. Tony fastened the arm around her waist with a protesting sound. "Sorry, baby," she apologized, giving him a quick peck on the lips. She pushed his arm off and he complied without further protest, saying, "Just be sure to get back here as soon as you're done."

Natalie went down the hallway to her unused room. Sure enough, her phone was ringing – but it was her work phone, the one she hadn't touched for weeks, and had checked only sporadically to make sure there were no messages.

Caller ID: Unknown.

Her heart was pounding as she put it to her ear and hit answer. "Yes?" Her throat was too dry.

"Ms Romanova." The oily voice in her ear was all too familiar to her, and it confirmed her worst fear. "I was ensured that you're the best at what you do. And I trusted you to finish your assignment."

Her heart thudded in her chest. Her lungs were too tight, constricted. It became difficult to draw in oxygen.

"I think I've given you more than sufficient time – and I'm not very patient, you'll find out." Hammer paused and Natalie could almost see his smirk. "I wonder how Tony dearest would feel if the media caught wind of his new girlfriend's past?"

"Don't," she blurted out. Stupid, stupid, stupid, she thought angrily to herself. So careless. Thinking that running away meant that she would forget, and that her forgetting meant that the world would forget. She should have taken care of Hammer as soon as she decided not to kill Tony. Instead she spun a messy web and got tangled in its threads.

"Don't?" the smooth voice all but purred in her ear and she wanted to strangle him. "But you see, Ms Romanova, I'm so tempted to… let slip something. And what can you do to stop me?"

"I'll kill Stark," she promised, her heart heavy as lead. "You have my word."

"No offense, Natalia, but your word means shit to me." His voice took on a growl. "I trusted you and you left me waiting. And I am not a man you want to keep waiting."

"I know, I know." She was grasping at straws. She was a fool, she thought she was safe, thought she had everything under control when she had just been lucky. And now that was coming to bite her in the ass. Her strings were tightening, and the illusion of control slipped from her. "A week," she said. "I'll finish the job in a week."

"Given your track record so far, I wouldn't believe you anymore," he said. "But since I do have this juicy little file in one hand and the phone numbers of every major newspaper in my other… I'll trust you one last time. Finish it by tomorrow. Don't let me down, Ms Romanova." He was smiling and her hand curled into a fist. "You see, things are so much easier when you cooperate. You'll be hearing from me soon." And the line clicked dead.

A voice growled from behind her. "Guess I should've seen this coming."

She whirled around to see Tony glaring at her from the doorway, arms crossed in front of his chest. Her heart fell. Shit.

"Let me explain –"

"I think I've heard enough," he snarled. She could see the coiled muscles beneath his skin. "Let me explain, and tell me if I get anything wrong. Justin Hammer hired you to kill me. You come into my company as a bodyguard, pretend to understand me, sweet-talk your way into my mind and my heart – and then you'll kill me when you've earned my trust."

"Not quite," she managed to get out, but he ignored her. He stayed at the door, facing her with his arms crossed. His coldness cut her like a knife; she would have preferred it if he shoved at her, hit her, slammed her against the walls with his hands around her neck. She could fight fire with fire, but she was powerless against this chilling anger.

"Nothing about you is real. I bet your real name isn't Natalie Rushman, either. I don't know what that is yet, but I will in about ten minutes. Jarvis is running your face over the Internet – remember those upgrades I told you about? –and he's looking for your real name now. Not that it matters. All that does is that you're the Black Widow, the elite assassin behind a dozen of the cleanest murders in this country, and possibly a handful overseas, too. You're good; you're the best and that's why Hammer contacted you."

"Yes." There was no denying that.

His next words hurt her like a hand crushing her trachea. "Jarvis has a gun trained on you right now, and I'm really tempted to let him fire it. So give me one good reason not."

Did these two months mean nothing to you? Do you care so little that you could end me so easily? She wanted to scream. But she also knew that this was her one chance at life – not only to keep her lungs breathing and her heart beating, but also her one chance to truly live rather than simply survive. She had to think her answer through carefully. She could tell him more lies, deny all he had said, make up excuses, even tell him that she was a double agent protecting him from his kidnappers in Afghanistan. But she couldn't do that. Not if she wanted to put her past behind her and truly live. Not if she loved him.

Natasha Romanov took a deep breath and kept her expression neutral. "I've had half a dozen chances to kill you that first night we had dinner, and at least a hundred since I moved into your house. So let me tell you why I haven't."

"Please do," he said, courtesy dripping mockingly from his words like venom.

"Okay," Natasha said. Slowly, so as not to make Jarvis shoot her, she sat down on her bed, the bed she hadn't slept in in weeks, not since she moved into Tony's. "This is going to take a while. So take a seat." Tony moved towards her bed gingerly, like he didn't trust her not to pull a gun on him. Or maybe it was himself that he didn't trust, not when he was in such close proximity to her. She smiled, but it came out as more of a bitter grimace. "I promise I won't kill you."

"You promised Hammer you would less than five minutes ago. I really don't trust you right now."

Her eyebrow cocked up. "I don't blame you," she acknowledged with a tilt of her head. "But like I said, if I wanted to I'd have done it already."

The answer seemed to be enough to pique his curiosity and keep her alive, at least for the time being. He sat on the opposite end of the bed, as far away from her as he could be.

Not daring to hope, hardly daring to even think, Natasha began, "The name I was given is Natalia Romanova, though I have gone by Natasha Romanov for many years. I was raised in the Red Room in Soviet Russia, trained in murder, espionage, and seduction. I was to be a spy and assassin. A weapon…"

It took the better part of an hour, but she told him everything. Her Red Room training, her career in the KGB, her defection from Russia, the years as a mercenary. Last of all, she told him about Hammer, and the file he had on her past that he controlled her with. As she told her tale, she watched Tony's expression, angry and betrayed, turn into wariness that was softened by – was that care she saw, or did she imagine it?

"I thought that if I became Natalie, not only wear her name and her life but actually become her, then Hammer would forget about me, and I could have a fresh start with you," she finished. "It was wishful thinking on my part, but for these past months I really believed that I could have that. A clean slate, a normal life. Happiness." A corner of her mouth quirked up in a sardonic half smile. "I let my guard down, and now he's got me again."

Tony wore a stony expression like a visor. "Even if I believe this – this absurd, impossible, fantastic story of yours," – he let out a hollow laugh – "and I do. I shouldn't because you're probably lying to me again, but I believe you."

Those words drove straight her fear-numbed heart and she let out a shaky sob of relief. She felt like putty; she was so limp with relief that he could have fashioned her into any shape and she would have bent. He believed her, and that made all the difference in the world. She was not alone, not fighting enemies and suspicions on all sides but fighting back-to-back with a hard-won ally. She had never cared much about anyone's trust before. She was used to working alone, neither giving her trust nor asking for others' in return. But she wanted, needed Tony to trust her. Because his mistrust, his hate, hurt more than anything in the world.

"You're probably going to use me and throw me over the first chance you get," he was saying, "but God help me, I can't not believe you."

"I'm not going to," she reassured him quickly, reaching out to put her hand on top of his – but stopped at the last minute and laid her hand on the bed. With stiff movements, he slowly turned and faced her.

"Why not?" he murmured, so softly his lips barely moved. The brown irises were almost quivering in his eyes, as they met hers for the first time since she told her tale. She could see the wall he put up breaking, hope shining through like a sunrise behind dark clouds.

"Because not everything was a lie," she replied. Her heart was written over her face, she knew, for the first time in her memory she wore no masks to protect herself, let another look into her heart and see her secrets.

"How do I know that?" he questioned, his voice so soft that she could barely hear it even in the hushed room.

She didn't have an answer for that, at least not one that would convince him. So she brought her hand up to cup his cheek and kissed him chastely but firmly. It wasn't a passionate kiss, but one that was a reassurance and a vow. Tony was unresponsive under her touch, but after a few second he melted and his lips moved against hers, giving her his trust and a promise of his own.

When they pulled back, Tony's eyes were shining and Natasha was aware that hers were pricking with unshed tears. She blinked them away; the last time she had cried had been after her first freelance job, when she was haunted by the memory of a Texan boy. This moment with Tony, however, was as far from that as possible. Then, she had felt that she was tied to an anchor and was sinking, sinking, into the depths of her own guilt and self-loathing. Now, she was floating, free, relieved of the burden of her secrets by sharing them with Tony.

But she wasn't really free, not yet. She may have confessed everything to Tony, and he might have accepted her. But there were still loose ends, strings that would come back if she didn't end this properly.

"I can fix this," she promised vehemently. "This… deal I have with Hammer. I'll fix things so that we can – so that I'll never have to kill anyone I don't want to again."

His brown eyes were molten chocolate as he said softly, "Do what you have to. I trust you."

I trust you. Those words echoed in Natasha's head. When was the last time someone had said those words to her? A long time ago; and the last time they had meant it? Even longer, maybe never. Trust, given freely from a man she'd lied to and seduced. Remorse griped her stomach like a cramp. Trust was what she could offer him in return – trust and love. But she had never given either without being burned, and then when she learned her lesson she stopped trusting or loving, bearing the scars of her naiveté. Was she too screwed up to give either?

Maybe she was, but she at least could try. This was her chance to be free, and the only chance she had ever gotten of being happy. There was one more thing she had to do – she had to cut the strings on her.

Notes:

The end is coming... three more chapters! (hopefully)

I'm sorry for the long wait but I'll try to finish in a month.