Natasha was shaking by the time she got back home. Tony's home, yes, but hers, too, now. The door was open and Tony was waiting for her before she even made it down the driveway. A sharp intake of breath, wide eyes, as he lingered in the doorway studying her. She walked towards the open door warily, fearing the unreadable expression on his face, dreading the judgement that experience told her would come even when she knew, or rather hoped, that it wouldn't.

When she got to the top of the stairs Tony crushed her against him in a hug. It was fierce, and protective, and hurt just a little but that was good. It meant that she was alive, that she was feeling. Even if she couldn't bring her arms up to hug him because they were numb and wouldn't move when she told them to.

He pulled back and looked at her with liquid brown eyes she felt she could drown in the depths of. With deliberate tenderness, he cradled her face like she was a precious, breakable thing that he couldn't believe was his. "I trust you," he murmured. "I still do." She let out a shaky breath. There was blood on his hands from where he touched her cheek, held her hand. It must have come from her skin; she hadn't been aware that Hammer's blood had splattered onto her. She touched her own cheek and her fingers came away stained scarlet. But that might have been because her hands were bloody already.

"Come on," Tony said, his voice husky with uncharacteristic gentleness. "Let's get you cleaned up." Natasha let him lead her to the bathroom, where he sat her on the edge of the tub and he knelt before her with a wet towel. He started with her hands, drawing the cloth over her blood-speckled hands. They were still shaking minutely as he held them in one hand and the towel in the other. When they were clean he held the towel under running water and she watched the downpour run red when it met the towel. But before long the water returned to a clear rush, the blood nothing but a memory, and Tony lifted the towel again, squeezed it so that it wasn't dripping.

This time he lifted it to her face and pressed a corner against her cheek. It was cold and it she flinched instinctively from it, but he kept going, wiping the blood from her skin. The damp cloth was refreshingly cool after the initial shock, and she let him clean her up for her. It was the first time anyone was there to take care of her after a kill. She's always had to wash the blood off on her own, stitch up her own wounds, drown her guilt and angst in vodka.

His touch was so gentle, the kind of gentleness that only came with treachery in her experience, but she knew that he wouldn't betray her. She didn't know whether this was the logical conclusion, only that she knew it in her heart. With the towel he traced the edges of her nose, the lines of her lips. His touch seemed to thaw her, release her from her dazed state and inch by inch, draw her back towards the present.

"It's like deja vu," he said, breaking the silence. "I remember you doing this for me."

The memory flooded into her mind involuntarily – the Iraqi desert, the noise of the chopper in her eardrums and the smell of sweat in her nostrils. Tony sitting in front of her, his appearance haggard and a haunted look in his eyes. Only now it was her with the haunted look, she knew with sudden, detached clarity. Instead of the blistering desert through her boots it was cool bathroom tiles under her bare feet in Tony's Malibu mansion; instead of the deafening roar of the helicopter it was the soothing, ever-present rush of the ocean. She took a deep breath and breathed in the clean air of safety. Of home. "Yeah," she said, her eyes focusing on Tony's face before her. "I do too."

His face relaxed into a smile of relief. It warmed her heart, and the corners of her lips lifted effortlessly. "There, you're clean," he said, putting the towel under the running water once more. Again, the water ran red but the blood was washed away in moments.

"Do you think it works like that?" she blurted out. At his puzzled look she said, "That this makes me clean? That blood can be washed away that easily?"

He looked at her gravely, his eyes a battlefield of emotions. "I don't know," he said, "I wish it could." He gave a heavy sigh and she was reminded that his hands were as bloody as hers, maybe even worse because the things they made had claimed thousands of lives even he could not know about. He seemed to shake himself back to the present as he stood up and said, "Do you need a moment?" He gestured to the bathroom and she nodded. "I'll be outside." He turned to go.

"Wait!" She grabbed his hand and stood so she could look him straight in the eye when he turned back around to face her. She took a deep breath and let it out shakily. With it, she felt the last remnants of numbness leave her. She looked up at Tony with unguarded emotion. "Thank you." She didn't have any other words to tell him what she felt, and she hoped that he would understand with those simple words, how his trust and his love were the most precious things she had ever possessed, and that she would never betray him or make him regret giving those to her.

He answered with a "yup" so soft that he all but mouthed it, and she knew that he understood the feeling behind her words.

"Wait for me in the bedroom," she said. "I'll be a moment."

"Okay." There was a warm spark in his eye. He squeezed her hand and left, shutting the door behind him.

Once she was alone Natasha looked at her face in the mirror. Physically it hadn't changed – the same green eyes, full lips, straight nose. But in her face she saw something that hadn't been there before, or something she hadn't allowed herself to see before – an openness, almost like a vacancy, waiting for an opportunity. A space to write the future.

The future that those who made her into a weapon had never intended her to have, but she had gotten all the same. The future she had bargained, fought, killed for. She reached out and her fingers met that in the silvery surface. With resolution she declared to herself, "There are no strings on me." Even with her hushed tone the words echoed back at her in the bathroom, and she knew that her battle was over. For the first time, her future and her freedom belonged to her.

Notes:

This was supposed to be the last one, but it got so long that I decided to split it into two.