She woke up once on the way to the Eureka base; Coulson had apparently been lecturing her the entire time despite her less than conscious state. It was nice to know that he cared so much, and she dropped off again.

Clint was beside her when she woke up again, his hand slowly smoothing its way up and down her right arm, being careful of the IV in the back of her hand. "Keep your eyes closed," he warned her under his breath. "Carter's been waiting outside for you to wake up and she's gonna eat you alive."

"Course she is," Natasha murmured back, keeping her eyes shut as instructed and moving her lips as little as possible. "How bad?"

"Well, you haven't been eating or sleeping, according to Carter's exam. Your blood sugar's gone to shit and you had an anxiety attack after a fight that should have been Amateur Hour," Clint reported. "I'd say it's pretty bad."

"Mm," she agreed.

She heard him shift beside her, his hand's steady stroking momentarily jarred. "You missed a good show in New Mexico. Y'know Thor, the thunder god?"

"Mhm." When had he gone to New Mexico? When did the job end in Vancouver?

"Well, he's real. I almost shot him."

"You drunk, Barton?"

He breathed a laugh. "Okay, how about this? Coulson's met him too."

"Well." That was sort of damning.

"The past few weeks have been weird as hell, Tash." His hand didn't stop at her forearm, creeping all the way up to the junction of her neck and shoulder to brush the long hair from her cheek. "I still owe you a talk, y'know."

Her heart started to gallop with adrenaline at the thought and she shivered. A monitor at her side beeped a warning. "Not now," she replied. "Please, not now."

There was an insistent rapping on the door's glass panel. "Is she awake?!" Carter barked, voice muffled.

"Nah, just kinda muttering," Clint called back over his shoulder. There was a small thump as Carter apparently flung herself at the wall to lean against it and wait petulantly. "Tash, I know this isn't a good time, but we really gotta talk about this soon. I'm going back to New Mexico in a few days. Keeping watch on some space thing, I dunno, Fury hasn't briefed me on it yet. Either way. We should talk before I go."

"Mm," she hummed noncommittally, then opened her eyes to lure Carter in and end the conversation.

The door burst open and the Agent-Doctor stormed in. "Out," she snapped at Clint, her face white with suppressed rage.

He smoothed her hair back one last time. "Okay. I'll be back soon. Feel better, take care, all that stuff."

"Thanks." He grinned at her deadpan tone over Carter's shoulder before ducking out. Her anger at being abandoned was an act, though, her relief at evading the talk too strong. She knew what would come out if they went into her episode of hysteria, and she wasn't prepared for that kind of exposure yet.

As soon as the door was shut Carter was rounding on her with ruthless care, yanking pillows into place and checking Natasha's temperature with a snarl on her lips. After about fourteen seconds (not that Natasha was counting) she finally exploded. "I just can't believe how stupid you are sometimes!" she railed, hands flying with anger. "I explicitly told you that you weren't to be on active duty for three and a half weeks, you promised to stick to it, and what do you do? You storm a military facility single-handed! Are you really that thick?!"

"I wasn't single-handed."

"Oh, that's right, you had that assclown limo driver. Well, it's a good thing he was there, because you clearly benefited in the long run!" A note of hysteria crept into Carter's voice, her hair slowly frazzling out of its neat bun.

Natasha sat up and instantly regretted the decision when the world swam around her. "It's not like I had a lot of choice in the matter; it was take it easy or save Stark's life," she argued.

Carter gripped the foot of her bed with white knuckles. "Except you're forgetting the tiny detail that I specifically told you not to go on field work until I cleared you," she shouted. "That means desk duty. No recon. No analysis. Nothing. Do you want to get an infection? Do you want to develop scar tissue in your uterus? I give you instructions for a reason. Yes, I know you heal quickly and yes, I know your limitations, but you are still human, Agent Romanov."

"Am I?" Natasha shot back. "Because sometimes it really doesn't feel that way to me! I'm a puppet, a body used to seduce and extract, a weapon to fire, and when my job is done I'm shoved back into my box like a toy! How does that make me human?"

"You're only as human as you want to be."

"Why do you even care?"

Lab coat flapping behind her like lopsided wings, Carter threw up her hands. "Because I'd like to think that we're friends, Natasha! I tell you stories about my kid, you pretend to listen-"

"I do listen."

"Well, fantastic, I'm glad that's cleared up," she snarked. "You let me poke at you and sew you up and put drugs in you, so I thought maybe you would trust my judgment."

"I do trust your judgment," Natasha ground out. Every word Carter said felt like they had physical weight, stacking one after the other on top of her chest until she actually wished Clint would come back and try to talk to her.

'Phwump!'

Carter dropped onto the edge of the bed, the anger slowly draining from her now that the initial screaming match was over with. "If you trust my judgment, then I desperately wish you would actually heed it once in a while," she sighed. "I know your weak points, you strengths, and I know your body. But I'd like to think I know you, too. What happened to you, it affected you more than you tried to give off. You really aren't as mysterious as you'd like to think, once people learn your tells.

"I wanted to give you the time off work to work through it, not ignore it and lead to this. Anxiety and depression are common, especially for spontaneous miscarriages, and I was trying to look out for you. Because I care, dumbshit." She shot Natasha a long-suffering look and pinched the sensitive flesh on her thigh.

"Bitch!" gasped Natasha, kicking Carter in the side, and they both laughed stiffly. There was still tension hanging thick and wide in the air, but it was vastly alleviated. "How much longer am I stuck here?"

"Until your blood sugar's back to normal, probably just a few hours," replied Carter, rubbing the spot where Natasha kicked her. "You been taking lessons from my kid? That was a dirty kick."

Natasha smiled vaguely at the thought. "You've never actually told me his name, you know," she said.

"Well, you never exactly showed interest," said Carter pointedly. "Jameson. His name's Jameson, or Jamie for short, he's four and completely ridiculous, and you, Agent Romanov, are his idol."

Something hot and uncomfortable flooded Natasha's chest cavity, and she shifted into a different position. "He does?" she asked, keeping her tone carefully light and casual.

Knowingly smiling, Carter nodded and leaned back against Natasha's leg. "Oh, yeah. He loves hearing about all the people who give Mommy headaches, you being chief among them," she grinned. "I think you'll be invited to Christmas dinner at this rate."

"Does that worry you?" Natasha asked after a moment's thought. "Knowing what I am?"

"Not in the least." She reached out to feel Natasha's temperature and gave her head a little shove. "I'll come back later to-"

The door swung open and Agent Sitwell dove in. "Agent Carter, we need a consult. Quickly, please." He barely spared Natasha a glance, but Carter rolled her eyes conspiratorially.

"Duty calls."

The door closed and Natasha was left alone again. Instead of being at rest, her mind was even more crowded than before. Thoughts of little blonde boys heaped in pollen-heavy bouquets of roses chased one another through her head as she stared at the wall. Sharon never mentioned having a boyfriend or husband, only ever her mother and grandmother, who helped raise her son so she could keep up with SHIELD's unpredictable hours.

She'd been fairly new to SHIELD when Clint brought Natasha in, the only Agent-Doctor on call at the time, and Natasha hadn't needed to hear the whispers to know that she'd been helped along in the agency by family connections. Carter had looked just as uncomfortable and displaced as Natasha had felt. And because Natasha had an arrow-hole in her arm and a serious case of pneumonia, Carter had had to care for her and know her full physiology. They'd spent days cooped up in the infirmary, doing every test known to man to get a full understanding of how Natasha worked, and by the end Natasha had had no other choice but to trust the viciously kind and careful woman. It was before she'd even fully trusted Clint.

What must it have been like, to hear her son's first cries and know she was on her own? That Jamie would never know his father? Or maybe Sharon had been too preoccupied with the thought that her son cried at all. What was it like to bear a child who breathed and grew and played? The thought twisted in her gut like snakes wrapped around one another in a battling embrace.

Natasha pretended to sleep so Clint wouldn't try to talk to her. They knew each other well enough by then to know when the other was faking, but they never faked without a good reason, and respected that boundary. Clint sat in the same chair as before and resumed his careful smoothing strokes up and down her arm, waiting for her to be ready to talk. But she wasn't sure she would ever, ever be ready to face that darkest part of herself.

That night, in clean white pajamas issued by SHIELD, Natasha looked into the bathroom mirror and had another panic attack. Red, red hair fell over her shoulders like blood on snow, like so much blood, and suddenly she wasn't in the SHIELD base, or even California, anymore. She was on a battlefield in Slovakia, lifetimes ago. It was winter, it was always winter, and Winter, and the blood of men and monsters flowed from between her legs into the snow and she screamed-

"Natasha! Natasha, look at me!"

The stench of roses was back, choking her mouth and nose until she couldn't breathe. Natasha was gripping the edges of the sink basin in white-knuckled shaking hands. Clint didn't come into the bathroom, didn't even consider touching her like this, but just yelled until her focus came back to reality. When she finally took a breath, when her seized muscles finally relaxed, when her knees buckled beneath her, then he rushed in and wrapped both arms around her, holding her up because she couldn't.

"Hey," he said, holding her head against his chest. "Hey, hey, Tasha, I've got you. I've got you. It's okay. I've got you."

"I know," she choked through the stinking haze into his shirt. Her fingers were digging into his side like bony knives but he didn't comment on it. They sat on the tiny bathroom floor for what felt like an age, until her legs stopped shaking and her vision no longer swam. "You've always had me."

Without facing any resistance, Clint jostled her up into his arms and carried her the four steps to her bed. He stretched out beside her, draping an arm over her middle and pressing the hard line of his mouth to her shoulder. "Natasha, we need to talk about this," he reminded her. "I'm leaving day after tomorrow for God knows how long, and I don't wanna leave it sitting between us until I get back."

She burrowed her head more firmly into the pillows, curling around herself. "I don't want...I can't talk about it right now," she murmured, hating the way her voice shook. "Please. Come back tomorrow. I'll be better then."

"I don't wanna leave you like this."

"Well, I want to be alone, Clint," she snapped.

Clint stilled and was silent for several long moments. "Fine. Suit yourself." Within seconds he was gone. Natasha hugged a pillow against her stomach, a gun in her hand beneath it like a security blanket. Her other hand slowly smoothed itself over the pillow's surface in the same repetitive motion as Clint's hand over her arm earlier.

Morning dawned, bright and too hot, and Natasha dressed without opening her eyes. She pulled a pair of shears from the bathroom drawers and cut off her hair until it was only long enough to brush her earlobes, jutting from her head in uneven clumps and randomly curling in places. It was the first time she'd ever truly been ugly in her life. She was glad. She crept out of the base without leaving a note for Clint or Coulson to find, and used Natalie Rushman's credit card to get back to Malibu. There were a few things in Natalie's apartment that she wanted, and one of SHIELD's tracking devices had been left behind.

"What are you doing back here?"

Natasha turned to face Potts, her expression carefully schooled as she closed the trace in her bag. "Just cleaning up," she replied.

Stark Industries' CEO had an equally stoic look on her face, but there was a grimness to the corners of her mouth that betrayed how she really felt. "So. Your name isn't really Natalie?" Natasha shook her head. "And you're a spy. You were spying on Tony."

"It wasn't for malicious purposes," Natasha replied, and instantly regretted it for the scoff that came out of Potts' mouth. "Think of it as a very thorough background check."

"Wow," nodded Potts, her arms tightly crossed. "You really know what you're doing, don't you, Natalie? Do you mind if I still call you Natalie? Since you haven't offered your real name."

"My name is-"

"I don't want to know." Nodding, Natasha looked down at the bag in her hands rather than at Pepper. If she really wanted to she could have been out of the building in two minutes, but she resisted the urge to flee. "No, what I want to know is if you at all regret what you did to us.

"Do you have any idea how difficult it is for Tony to trust people?" Pepper asked, her voice cold and hard. "He's one of the most singularly paranoid men I've ever met, even before the kidnapping. It took years before he would actually discuss work with me and over six months before he'd let Happy drive him anywhere, which rather defeats the purpose of having a personal driver, don't you think?"

She knew that Pepper Potts never said anything without a reason. Her gut was churning as she waited for the blow to fall, but she didn't allow her apprehension to show.

"Tony was dying. He was in a very vulnerable place, and we were fighting, so he trusted the first person to open themselves for it. That was you, Natalie. He trusted you from the first moment you batted your eyelashes and told him how to celebrate his birthday. Then you showed who you really are and I haven't seen him so shaken in a long time."

"I was-"

"Doing your job, I know," nodded Pepper calmly. "But that doesn't change anything. You manipulated Tony, and you manipulated me - by the way, was that true? Confiding in me about your miscarriage?"

Against her will, Natasha took an unbalanced step back. Her heart thudded loudly in her ears. "Yes. It was true," she said in a voice that felt too small.

Pepper nodded again, shifting her weight onto one foot. She laughed. "I honestly have no idea if that redeems you or makes you even worse. The fact that you used the death of your unborn child to manipulate me? I..." She shook her head and shifted to the other foot, her voice inexplicably softening into something distant and heavy with meaning. "You saved Tony's life. For that, I will always be grateful. But I think I would like you to leave now, and don't bother coming back. For his sake."

Instead of storming out Pepper watched her, eyes positively burning through her skin, and waited.

Taking what she would weakly try to convince herself was her own time, Natasha edged carefully past Pepper and out of the building. The smell of rotting flowers filled her senses, sickeningly sweet enough to make her gag. She stashed the tracker in a SHIELD-designated spot for safe retrieval, then used Natalie's credit card to buy a one-way ticket to Russia. There was an infiltration job there for her, breaking into a weapons trafficking ring.

She and Clint didn't get their talk.