The long-awaited wedding is here! Nat and her family definitely deserve all the happiness they can get, but this is far too much fluff for my comfort. I've already started writing Whumptober to make up for it lol.

Anyways, I feel like I should tell you all that this is the last fic in the series. This doesn't mean I will never write Nat with her family ever again. I just think it's nice to have a happy ending. If you are like me, you can just continue imagining Nat fixing the MCU one project at a time.

Thank you for all of your support and your lovely comments throughout this series, and I hope you enjoy this one last chapter!

Things go mostly smoothly the days leading up to the wedding, though there is an incident with the Defenders, who ask them for help one afternoon regarding a more Avenger-level and less vigilante-level issue. "Believe me," Jessica says with a scowl, arms crossed in front of her chest, "we wouldn't be talking to you if we could help it."

"We're going to the same wedding soon," Tony points out.

"Semantics," Luke says, waving his hand dismissively.

"...I'm not going," Matt says as Daredevil. Danny opens his mouth to presumably question why exactly he can't come to his own wedding, but Matt covers his mouth with a gloved hand to prevent him from saying anything.

"That's not suspicious or anything," Steve mutters.

"Y'know, Double D," Peter pipes up, valiantly trying to change the subject, "you don't look very intimidating in broad daylight."

Matt lets out a long, drawn-out sigh. "Thanks, Spidey."

Ultimately, things turn out fine.

They don't have the traditional bachelor and bachelorette parties. Their friends and families are so intertwined by now that it would be difficult for something like that to happen. And anyways, Matt and Nat are both perfectly fine with less fanfare and hassle.

Two nights before the wedding and one night before they're set to ship out to Clint's place, they're both in Nat's room at the compound. She's definitely supposed to be asleep, and everyone else in the compound thinks she's sleeping, but she can't. She rolls over for the millionth time, and blinks up at the dark ceiling, and sometimes it gets a bit hard to breathe but she calms herself down quickly enough because she's used to this by now, this anxiety for no apparent reason that has plagued her since before she can remember. There must have been a time when she was very young, when she hadn't been this hurt or damaged, but it doesn't matter much now, does it?

This would be less embarrassing if it were the night before the wedding. Then, she'd have an excuse. Now, she doesn't know what she's doing.

But Matt's here, so she supposes it's alright.

Matt shifts, too—probably woken up by her restlessness. He grumbles a bit, rolls over to gently throw an arm around her, and kisses the back of her neck. "Can't sleep?" he murmurs into her skin.

"No," she whispers. "Sorry for waking you."

She feels Matt shrug behind her. "S'fine."

"Do you ever wonder about where you would be right now if you had just made that one different decision, or gone down that one slightly different path?" she starts, because otherwise she'll never get this out, and this isn't the kind of thing she wants to be burdened with in two days. Matt starts drawing random circles into her arm with his thumb, and she continues. "We both could've died a hundred times over. None of this could've happened."

"Well, unlike you," Matt says, "all of these possibilities seem miraculous to me. Positive connotations."

A smile creeps onto Nat's face, because this is totally Matt, looking at the best of things, the best of people, the best of her. "I guess I'm still kind of scared," she says, "of making this real on paper. It's a nice feeling, to be surrounded by family, but a part of me is still thinking of before, when it would be safer to be apart."

"At the risk of sounding cliché, there is safety in numbers," Matt says. "I used to think the same way, and that didn't go quite so well for me. And I know it suited you for years, but we would all prefer if you didn't lock parts of yourself away again."

It's the way he says it, so simply, so sleepily, like it's obvious, like he knows her, that really reaches her. He's half-awake and still manages to see through her walls.

She sighs. "Why do you always know what to say?"

"Mind reader," Matt says immediately.

"Right."

"Anyways," Matt says, getting up and pulling the blankets away, "since we're already awake..."

"It's cold," Nat grumbles fondly, trying to reach for the blankets but giving up after a few seconds.

"Sparring will help you warm up. And sleep," Matt declares. He tilts his head, the moonlight from the window lighting half of his body. "No one will see the blind guy beat you in a fight because they're all sleeping...I think." He frowns. "Heart and breathing rhythms are affected by certain superpowers."

Nat slowly pulls herself up and out of bed. "Y'know, Tony designed these walls to be soundproof."

Matt smirks. "Obviously, he didn't have me in mind when he did."

"He didn't know you existed."

They stretch a little together and jog to the gym to warm up, passing the kitchen on the way to grab water bottles.

"No lasting or visible injuries," Nat says, stepping onto the mat.

"For the wedding pictures I'll never see," Matt agrees. That could be either a sad statement or a funny one, but he's smiling, so Nat smiles back.

"You're going to regret this," she says teasingly. And they start.

Years ago, she couldn't have ever imagined how soothing it would be to spar. It was a life-or-death situation, back in the Red Room. You had to be good enough or you were dead. They—the survivors, that is—often found ways to distract one another from the deaths they had caused. But here and now, sparring is the distraction. It takes her breath away, pushes back all her anxieties. While it would be nice to win, she's not afraid of losing. Sometimes, there really is no winning or losing with sparring. You're just practicing your skills, getting better every day.

At some point, Nat charges at Matt to try to get him off-balance (though that is unfairly hard to do with the guy who parkours around Hell's Kitchen on a nightly basis). Matt tilts his head and furrows his brows, and Nat processes that he's distracted by something else too late to stop her momentum. She all but tackles him to the ground. For a few seconds, Matt blinks up at the ceiling with the air knocked out of him and Nat sprawled on top of him.

"Ow," he says after catching his breath.

A small shuffling sound comes from a few feet away. Nat slowly turns her head to the side to see Morgan sitting on the ground beside the mat. "Ah!" she says, waving upon noticing that she has Nat's attention.

Nat can't fight her smile. "Oh my god," she says, and she hopes that Matt can hear her delight. "You got distracted by a baby."

"Shut up," Matt says, but he's grinning, too.

Nat snickers. "How did you not hear her before she got in the room?"

"I was distracted!"

She finally bursts into full-on laughter, leaning down to try to muffle the sound in Matt's chest. Matt huffs out a laugh, too, reaching up to pull out Nat's hair tie and undo her ponytail. He runs a hand through her hair soothingly, and she trusts him not to lose the hair tie like she has done far too many times over the years.

"Okay," she says after a few moments. She presses a kiss to Matt's chest and sits up, turning to look at Morgan, whose eyes are drooping. "How'd you even get here?"

"She's a little ninja-in-training," Matt declares as Nat gets up, walks over to Morgan, and scoops her into her arms. Morgan is a perfectly adorable baby when she's with Nat. Tony's tales of horror should not be believed.

Matt holds up a hand for Nat to take and pull him up. He groans as he stretches, which reminds Nat that she needs to stretch, too. Matt, who maybe is a mind reader, takes Morgan from her arms after he's done so that Nat is free to cool down. They are attempting to practice healthy habits here.

Morgan slaps her hand against Matt's chest and babbles nonsense up at him. "Yeah," he says. "I completely understand. Auntie Nat did take advantage of her blind and vulnerable soon-to-be husband. Yep."

Nat snorts. "Lies. Propaganda."

They shut down the lights in the gym and walk towards Tony's room together. Tony, already out in the hallway and looking not at all panicked, glares tiredly at Morgan. "Dada!" Morgan says, waving her arms around and reaching for him. His glare melts.

"Hey, Momo," he says, taking Morgan from Matt's arms. "Having a little 3 a.m. adventure, huh? You're gonna give me a million heart attacks by the time you're 18."

The next day, it's all hands on deck at Clint's place. The chaos is controlled, though, and filled with happiness and love and family and friends, so Nat just lets herself get swept away by the whirlwind that is preparing for a wedding.

"Isn't it bad luck for the groom to see the bride before the wedding ceremony?" Tony asks. "At least, that's what me and Pep did for our wedding, and things didn't go too bad."

Matt, who had been discussing something with Foggy to the side, turns to Tony with an unimpressed expression on his face. "I don't think it would make a difference for us," he says dryly.

Foggy coughs out a laugh. Peter turns red on behalf of his mentor. Tony, after a few seconds, says, "Oh shit. Sorry." Matt rolls his eyes.

"Some wedding traditions are just plain stupid," Nat declares.

Tony clears his throat awkwardly. "I'm guessing you guys won't have an after-wedding getaway car?"

"No, but if we did, Nat would drive," Matt says.

"Obviously."

"No, no, I believe in your driving skills," Peter tells Matt brightly. Matt's face contorts in horror, probably remembering that one time Daredevil had to drive Team Red somewhere because Spiderman and Deadpool were otherwise incapacitated.

"Absolutely not," Matt says. "I have trauma." Or maybe he's remembering that time he almost drowned in a taxi? Hard to tell, sometimes.

"Y'know," Matt tells her that night, "this marriage stuff isn't all that bad."

Nat raises an eyebrow. "Compared to fighting off bad guys? I would hope so."

"It'll be the second easiest thing I've ever done."

"...What's the first easiest thing?"

"Loving you, obviously."

"Obviously."

It's an hour before the ceremony and it looks like Matt wants to take back what he said, seeing as he's a bit green in the face. Nat, on the other hand, is doing completely fine. More than fine, actually. Hair and makeup have done her wonders. Matt did have a coughing fit earlier from all of the chemicals, though, so they (as in, Nat, Yelena, Wanda, and Pepper) had to tone it down a bit.

Father Lantom arrives, pats both of them on the shoulder, turns to Matt, and says, "Don't throw up and you will be perfectly fine, Matthew."

Matt swallows. "I'm offended that you think it's a possibility, Father."

"Yes, well, you can't see yourself right now."

45 minutes before the wedding, Yelena walks over to Nat with her veil and a lot of bobby pins. "Better to have it done right now than rushed later," she says reasonably, but it sounds less than reasonable because she's trying to speak around the bobby pins in her mouth.

"Maybe you should've been my wedding planner," Nat grumbles, standing still for Yelena to work. "You seem to have everything in hand."

"Wedding planning is nicer from afar," Yelena declares. She steps back, frowns, and then steps forward to fix whatever she's done. Nat doesn't have a mirror, so she doesn't know what she looks like right now, but she trusts that Yelena won't let her look foolish.

Matt walks up to them. "Everything good?" he asks.

Yelena turns to him after she's done with Nat and just says, "Your collar's crooked."

Thor arrives 30 minutes before the ceremony in dramatic fashion with Valkyrie in tow as well as...Loki?

Nat is not having this. "We did not invite you," she tells him.

"Oh!" Thor says boisterously, patting Loki on the back with such force that Loki stumbles forward a few steps, grimacing. "He's from another universe. He means you no harm."

Nat does not react to seeing Clint creep up behind them and nock an arrow, pointing it straight at Loki.

"Well," Loki says, "I did still attack New York in my own—" Valkyrie elbows him in the ribs and he doubles over.

Matt raises his eyebrows and says, flatly, "What the hell."

"He's the Loki from 2012, the one who stole the Tesseract," Thor is saying. "But he returned it, so he has been reformed!"

"I don't think that's how reformation works," Clint says acidly, and the three Asgardians swivel around.

"Hello, Clint!" Thor says happily.

"Agent Barton," Loki says, actually sounding a bit nervous.

"I told you this was a bad idea," Valkyrie tells them.

Loki, as some sort of defense mechanism, disappears in a cloud of green. Several illusions of himself reappear, surrounding Clint on all sides so that Clint doesn't know which one to shoot. However, despite this being the perfect cover to attack, Loki does nothing.

Nat is surprised that no one else has seen the commotion. She knows Tony and Steve would be running right in and prepared to fight if they had noticed.

"These illusions again?" Clint says tiredly.

"Fuck you, Loki," Nat says loudly. "This is my wedding day and I am fully prepared to fight you one-on-one and win in heels and a dress. I am not letting anything ruin this day and so help me god—"

A small rock comes flying at one of the illusions, except it turns out to be the real Loki because it hits him in the forehead and all the other Loki's dispel in waves of green. "Ow," Loki says. Nat turns her head to raise an eyebrow at Matt, who shrugs and has another rock in his hand.

"That's impressive," Thor says.

"Right, okay," Clint says, still pointing an arrow at Loki. "This is my best friend's wedding day and you are at my house, so—and I mean this with full offense—begone from here."

"That's reasonable," Loki says. He turns back to Nat. "Congratulations. You do look beautiful by the way."

Nat glares at him. "The greatest wedding gift I could receive would be you leaving right now."

"Of course," Loki says with a nod of his head. He glances at Thor. "I'll see you back in New Asgard. I assume I am in charge for the time being?"

"Unfortunately," Thor says. Loki teleports away.

Clint collapses his bow and holds his arrow casually in a hand. "Right, so, you guys ready to get married?"

It's a testament to how much they are used to the unexpected that they immediately return to the pre-wedding festivities without another word.

Overall, things go well.

Alexei is more teary than Nat is as they walk up the aisle, but even Yelena is teary, already up by the altar, so Nat doesn't point it out. Nobody trips. Nat can see Foggy murmuring, seemingly to himself, but it's Matt he's describing the sights to. At one point, Morgan wiggles to be let down from Tony's arms and toddles across the aisle to be picked up by Peter. Tony's utter look of betrayal is captured by Bucky and his nice camera. (He's been experimenting with photography.)

Father Lantom skips a few lines in his very traditional script to make it less traditional, and Nat appreciates him all the more for it.

Nate does not lose the rings, so they do exchange rings, even though Nat will likely take hers off by the time they get back to New York. Matt has always had a sweet smile, and she resists the urge to brush away that one stubborn lock of hair from his face. Nat does not glance to the side at all during the ceremony because all that she needs right now is right in front of her. (If she did glance to the side, she would see a group of unusually emotional Black Widows. Russia and the Red Room feel so far away now.)

Nat stumbles in her vows, but only once. Matt is, of course, utterly perfect and eloquent. Nat is maybe a bit embarrassed, but the warmth in her chest makes everything worth it. She doesn't know how she survived without this happiness before, without everyone she loves all around her in full support.

The moment they officially become husband and wife, they press their lips together and kiss as if they haven't done it a hundred, a thousand times before. It feels timeless, this moment, and—dare she say it—magical. In a world full of superheroes and supernatural powers, she's pretty sure she knows what she's talking about.

She closes her eyes and feels Matt's smile against her lips, and she hopes that he can do the same.

(Matt and Nat do not hold hands as they recess down the aisle after the ceremony, though they are no less happy and overjoyed. They walk with Matt's hand in the crook of Nat's elbow, and perhaps it's sweeter this way, Nat thinks, because they are walking as they have walked since the moment they had met.)

"Hey, we're married," Matt whispers to her a bit later. They're inside her room at Clint's house, trying to take off her veil. Matt is, fortunately, very good at finding the multitude of bobby pins that have found their way into her hair.

She rolls her eyes. "I know that," she says with a little smile. There was a time, she remembers, when she didn't think she'd get to this point, when she didn't think this would ever happen. But here they are, and she won't think of it as anything other than miraculous.

"I'm so happy," Matt says after they finally get the veil off. He places it on the bed and the bobby pins on the bedside table, and his smile is wide.

Nat turns to him and throws her arms around his neck. "I'm glad you're happy," she says softly. "I'm happy, too."

After a few moments, Matt reaches up to brush against her hair again. "Shit," he says. "I missed one. How many bobby pins does one need?"

"I only need you," Nat tells him in an exaggerated manner.

Matt laughs, which had been the whole point. "That's so cheesy."

Besides, she has the rest of her family right outside.

"When I first found out these two were dating, I yelled at Matt, stole his phone, and wrote down Nat's number," Foggy says during his speech. Nat is enjoying it a lot because Matt is already red in the face from various embarrassing anecdotes and trying to slowly sink under the table. "Not my greatest moment, but how else was I supposed to react to the news that my best friend was dating an Avenger?" Foggy smiles at them. "Anyways, I gave Nat the most pathetic shovel talk in the history of shovel talks." Everyone laughs. "I'm not kidding. She can tell you all about it. She was not impressed at all."

"Remember that one suspicious call I got on the plane with you guys?" Nat mutters, leaning over to Steve.

Steve furrows his brows for a few moments before a light flickers on in his brain. "Wait, that long ago?" he whispers back.

"I don't remember what exactly I told Nat," Foggy is saying. "She probably remembers for blackmail purposes. But what I do remember is that I threatened to hurt her if she hurt Matt in any way." He points at Nat. "That was before I learned that there isn't anything or anyone in the world that would cause even the smallest rift between these two." He smirks. "They're just too stubborn. And in love."

In her speech, Yelena says, "Last Christmas, I knocked Matt out with a cutting board, and he still wasn't scared off." There is some quiet, nervous laughter, as if no one knows whether this is a joke or not. Yelena rolls her eyes. "Yeah yeah, I'm evil, blah blah blah." She gestures at Matt. "He didn't even get a concussion!" She sighs. "Anyways, Natasha Romanoff is a Black Widow, an Avenger, and my big sister, and she can protect herself, but love is something else, something otherworldly. I was worried, and frankly, a bit weirded out. But I soon realized I had no need to be worried or weirded out. Nat and Matt...they're the kind of couple that's meant to be." She turns towards Matt. "Sorry for knocking you out, by the way, but you have to understand where I was coming from."

Matt gives her a thumbs up.

They cut their wedding cake together, and maybe before, Nat would have thought this cheesy, but perspective really does change you.

It's a three-tier cake, because they do have a lot of people here, some with super soldier appetites. There's no fondant, because Matt had been vehemently against that. There is, however, a tiny bride-and-groom statue on top, and some red frosting roses breaking up the white.

Nobody knocks over the cake like in certain movies.

It tastes perfect.

There's some dancing, afterwards. Matt is suspiciously adept at not stepping on anyone's toes, but nobody mentions it.

She's passed to Alexei, who smiles down at her and says, "I still see a little blue-haired girl drawing on sidewalk, but I am proud of you, Natasha, my daughter."

Nat admits that she sniffs a little. "Thanks, Dad," she says quietly, and his smile grows.

She gets to dance with practically everyone she knows that night. Sometimes it is dancing, and sometimes it's just swaying and basking in each other's presences.

"You look beautiful, Natasha," Melina tells her, voice slightly hushed. "You always look beautiful, but tonight you are radiant."

"It's the makeup and the dress," Nat says, blushing a little.

"No, no," Melina protests. "It is your joy and your happiness."

Well, Nat's not going to argue with her own mother.

Nat is swiftly abducted sometime later.

Well, consensually abducted.

Sort of.

Basically, it starts with Clint grabbing her arm and pulling her inside his house, up the stairs, and into his bedroom. "Successful kidnapping," he declares.

She frowns. "What?"

He frowns, too. "You don't know?"

"What don't I know?" she asks, peeking out the window to see a small crowd gathering around a flustered Matt.

Clint pulls her away from the window and pulls down the blinds. "It's a Russian wedding tradition, according to the internet. We get to kidnap you, and Matt gets to find you in order to prove his love for you."

"Well, it's not like the Red Room ever cared enough to teach us about wedding traditions," Nat mutters. She smiles as she hears footsteps going up the stairs. Someone knocks on the bedroom door.

She opens the door to find Matt grinning at her, cane in hand. "I'm to be your rescuer?" he says with a little bow.

"We need to make this harder for him," Yelena mutters from behind him.

Matt finds her crouched behind the kitchen counter, in Nate's bedroom closet, in the closet under the stairs, you name it.

"No Harry Potter in here," she observes as Matt grabs her hand and pulls her out.

"That would be creepy," Laura tells her.

"How the hell is he doing this?" Tony says, miffed. "Nat, you're doing something, you must be doing something."

She winks at him. "I'm not doing anything," she says. "It's all Matt."

Peter snickers from the front door, and Tony whirls around to glare at him. "You know something, don't you, kid?" Peter's eyes widen. He turns around and runs.

"Well, we're not giving up yet," Steve declares.

After a few more tries, they walk up to a huge tree while Matt is distracted (Sam said something controversial and Matt was forced to argue his case or die from lawyery ineptitude). Nat looks up, then down at a smiling Wanda.

"Are you serious?" Nat says flatly.

"I promise I won't drop you," Wanda tells her.

Nat sighs. "Well, let's get it over with."

Matt finds her, of course. He always does. He pauses at the base of the tree when his cane hits the oak. He presses a hand against the trunk and cranes his neck up towards her. "I'm guessing I shouldn't climb this," he says.

"You probably shouldn't," she agrees with a smile. He probably could do it, but he's already been conspicuous enough tonight.

"I give up," Tony says, throwing his hands up and walking away.

Matt grins. "This doesn't mean I love you any less!" he calls up.

"Oh, I know!" she says. She blows him a kiss. And then, much quieter, she says, "I love you, too."

She doesn't see his face soften from this vantage point, but she can imagine it.

She stands up on the branch she's been sitting on and looks down. "Wanda, you'll catch me, right?" she asks.

"Of course!" Wanda says, red already swirling around her fingers. "Whenever you're ready!"

Nat jumps, and the fall is exhilarating, because she has no reason to be afraid.

"So," Clint says, walking up to her with his hands in his pockets, "you're married now."

"You're at my wedding, Clint," she says, smiling.

They are standing at the edge of the party, observing everyone else together. Tony and Pepper are dancing together with sappy smiles on their faces. Morgan is sitting on Happy's shoulders with Peter anxiously behind them, ready to catch her if she falls. Bucky is walking around and taking photos of everyone. Walters, who is definitively not green right now, is talking to Wanda at one of the tables. Matt has been cornered by Foggy's immediate family (his extended family is way too large and was therefore not invited to the wedding) and is red in the face yet again, looking like he wants an escape. Deadpool had eventually snuck into the wedding, but he's in a nice suit and not in costume, so Nat chooses to forgive him. He's currently hanging around Steve, who looks like he doesn't know what to do with him.

"This is a lot more festive than my wedding was," Clint observes.

Nat snorts. "You had a secret wedding."

Clint shrugs. "Yeah, well, that was years ago. I don't regret a single thing."

Nat smiles. "Me neither."

After a few seconds, Clint asks, "Ever think of how you possibly couldn't have made it to today?"

"I think about it a lot," she answers softly.

"Your mortality gets to you, in this line of work."

"Maybe so," Nat says. "But that just makes you appreciate moments like this even more."

Clint glances at her, grinning. "Congrats, Nat. I'm surprised nothing's gone wrong yet, with our bad luck."

Nat smacks him in the arm. "Don't jinx it!"

"My bad," Clint says, stepping back with hands raised in a gesture of innocence. "Anyways, you've got a visitor." He nods at the barn behind her. She turns around to see a dark figure walking into it.

"That's not an axe murderer waiting to get me, is it?" she says.

"You know I wouldn't do that to you."

She knows.

She steps into the barn and closes the door behind her upon seeing Nick Fury, dimly lit by the barn lights. She raises an eyebrow. "Fury," she greets. "What's with all the secrecy?"

"I'm not Fury," he says. Nat frowns.

Another figure standing in the corner of the barn turns around and walks towards Nat, and now there are two Nick Fury's in front of her. How much has she had to drink? "I'm Fury," the second guy says.

The first guy who had spoken's skin melts into the face of a green...alien? Thing?

"What the fuck," she says flatly.

The real Nick Fury sighs. "If you can't tell the difference between me and a Skrull, there's no hope for anyone else."

Nat gapes at the sight. "You couldn't have tested me after my wedding?" she asks incredulously.

"I told you," the Skrull says. "I told you you should be more polite, and considerate, but no—"

"Right, Talos, stand somewhere over there so I can have a one-on-one with my favorite agent," Fury says, waving at the corner he had just come from.

"Alright, alright," the alien apparently named Talos mutters, doing as told.

Instead of all the other pressing questions running through her head, like What the fuck is a Skrull? or How do you know Talos?, what Nat asks is, "I'm your favorite agent?"

Fury stares at her, arms crossed in front of his chest. "I trust that you'll keep this a secret, Romanoff."

"Yes, sir," she says immediately, even though he's technically no longer her boss, but some things are automatic even years later.

Fury clears his throat awkwardly. Nat blinks, having never seen him doing anything near awkward.

"Anyways," he says, "all of this can be dealt with later."

Nat frowns. "You've never been a later kind of person, you've always been an obsessively preparing for something that might happen kind of person."

Fury points at her. "Stop reading me so well, Romanoff." He puts his arm down. "Anyways, what I really came here to say, even though I actually had no part in your development as a person, is that I'm proud of you."

"Why?" Nat challenges. She might as well milk the situation for all it's worth. Nick Fury? Proud of someone? What the hell.

Fury looks up at the barn ceiling as if cursing his own life. "When you first came to SHIELD, I thought Barton was fucking insane for trying to recruit you," he starts.

Nat nods. "That's fair," she says.

Fury smirks. "But over the years, you've risen through the ranks and done good things, over and over again. I will never admit this to his face, but Barton was right. Whatever he saw in you that night, he was right."

Despite everything that's happened, Nat will never completely understand Clint's decision that night. Clint has described it as such a simple thing, but she was there, and this is just one of those things she will never fully comprehend.

"I trust you, Romanoff," Fury continues. "I trust you with my life and a lot of my secrets. Not all of them, mind you, but quite a few. You know that trust isn't something I freely give. I don't trust a lot of people, but I trust you. Does that mean something to you?"

"It means something," Nat murmurs. "I'm just not entirely sure what."

"That's fine," Fury says. "Anyways, just because you're married now doesn't mean you'll slack on all the reasons I've come to trust you, right?"

"Of course."

"Great. That's settled." Fury waves at the barn door. "Go celebrate now. You deserve it. I know your special someone is waiting for you."

This is...very odd. "See you whenever, Fury," Nat says, holding out a hand for him to shake.

He takes it and pulls her into a hug. This is...extremely odd. "You're a fucking good person, Romanoff," he whispers into her ear, "and don't you forget it."

Matt meets her right outside the barn door, and Nat has a feeling that Fury knew he was there all along. "Everything good?" Matt asks quietly.

"I'm good," she tells him. They link arms and walk back towards the party. "Just surprised."

"Tell me about it," Yelena says, jogging up to them from the other side of the barn. She links arms with Nat on her other side. "Nick Fury? The former and supposedly dead director of SHIELD? Affectionate?"

Nat rolls her eyes. "You eavesdroppers," she says affectionately.

"Sorry, I can't help it," Matt says with a grin.

"I'm not sorry at all," Yelena says, completely unrepentant.

It's Peter who spots it first. "It looks like a spaceship!" he says, pointing at the darkening sky.

Nat sighs. At this point, she's willing to accept anything that comes their way.

"Is it the Guardians?" Steve asks, craning his neck up at the sight.

"What are they guarding?" Foggy asks curiously.

"I thought they weren't coming," Thor mutters to her.

"I thought the invitation never got to them," Nat mutters back. "Maybe it was their response that never made it back."

Except, instead of landing smoothly on the field, they swoop in and crash unceremoniously into the ground. Peter Quill and Nebula jump out of the ship even before it's completely stopped. "Sorry we're so late!" he says. "We may have made some enemies on the way here and they're following us."

"You what?!" Tony says.

"It was unavoidable," Nebula says, and then all hell breaks loose as another spaceship appears in the sky.

All in all, it is one of the tamer fights Nat has been in. There are aliens, but the vast majority of the people here are perfectly capable of defending themselves and others. Those who can't are perfectly capable of running and hiding.

Nat finds out that she is perfectly capable of holding her own in a dress and heels (take that, Loki). She'd hidden a gun and a dagger under her dress, and her heels act as another form of weaponry.

When the chaos ends, Nat scans her surroundings one final time as she catches her breath. "So sorry," Quill is saying. "We didn't mean it. It just happened. If there's anything we can do..."

Nat looks up at the night sky and its constellations and bursts into laughter.

"Uh, are you okay?" Quill asks.

"Oh my god," she says. She snickers and turns to look at Matt, who's walking slowly towards her amidst overturned tables and chairs. "We were so close"—she gestures at the mess all around them—"so close to having an uneventful wedding night without our bad luck kicking in. We were so close."

"I'm glad you find humor in it," Nebula says in her monotone kind of voice, but she's smiling, so that's something. Quill still looks mortified, Rocket is grinning and looks like he's having the time of his life, Groot is brushing leaves out of his face, and Drax and Mantis are laughing along with Nat.

She turns to Clint, who's standing next to a dinner knife-wielding Laura and surveying the wreckage. "You jinxed it!" she accuses him.

He steps back away from her, even though they're a good 20 feet apart. "I—"

"Are weddings usually this fun?" Yelena asks, still jumping around a bit from the adrenaline. Her hair still looks impeccable, somehow. It's probably the hair spray. "I've never been to any other wedding." The other Widows nod and point at her in agreement.

"Fun?" Kate asks, like she had heard wrong.

"Yeah, fun!"

"Oh my god, some of you are insane," Tony mutters. His suit disappears in a stream of nanobots. Convenient.

Nat turns back to Clint as a thought occurs to her. "I don't really think your house is a secret anymore," she tells him.

Clint and Laura look at each other before looking back at her. "It's fine," Laura says with a smile. "We were thinking of moving, anyways."

"Somewhere closer to New York," Clint says, "closer to family."

And this warms Nat more than she thought it would.

"Uh, Matt, are you okay?" Steve asks, concerned. Nat immediately turns towards Matt, who looks mostly fine. She thinks so, at least.

"I'm fine," Matt says, waving him away.

"Your nose is bleeding profusely."

Nat frowns. Oh, right. That's usually considered abnormal. But she's seen him as Daredevil so many times now that it had completely slipped her mind.

Foggy walks up to Matt and hands him a tissue, which Matt uses to press against his nose. "I'm fine," he repeats, voice muffled.

"If you say so," Sam mutters dubiously. He walks over to Matt's other side, pulls an arm over his shoulder, and helps him over to Nat, even though she knows Matt probably doesn't need the help.

"You should see the other guy," Matt says once they reach her and Sam lets go of him.

"Where is the other guy?" Karen asks with furrowed brows.

Matt turns around in his spot, as if trying to spot the alien that had evidently sucker punched him in the face. "I don't actually know," he says. He reaches into his pocket to pull out two halves of his cane. "I hit him with my cane."

Tony blinks. "Your cane is broken."

"Hitting him is what broke my cane."

Foggy sighs. "Another one, Matt?"

"What?" Matt says defensively. "It's unavoidable sometimes!"

Pepper walks over from wherever she's been with Morgan. She hands Morgan off to Yelena, who holds Morgan at arm's length and stares at her with wide eyes. She immediately gives Morgan to Kate, who also knows nothing about babies, having been an only child. Kate immediately gives Morgan to Wanda, whose powers had been the most help during the fight and who more than happily bounces Morgan up and down in her arms.

Meanwhile, Pepper fusses over Matt, and is soon joined by Foggy's mom. Matt, who doesn't know what to do with all of this motherly energy (even though Pepper isn't that much older than him), says, "I've had worse, guys, really."

"When have you had worse?" Pepper asks incredulously.

Matt pauses conspicuously. "Y'know," he says. "Blind guy. Hell's Kitchen. I get mugged sometimes."

That completely backfires, and just causes them to fuss over him even more.

Nat snorts, but is not saved from her own fussing, because Melina and Alexei and Yelena and all the other Widows come over to hug her and console her over something she's not even that upset about.

She sees Tony smirk over Melina's shoulder and glares at him. Your problem, he mouths at her, and if her parents and some impressionable children weren't here, she'd hold up a certain finger for him to examine.

"Relax, guys," she says, mildly annoyed, "you know I've had much worse."

"That makes me sad to hear," Alexei says.

"That doesn't mean your lesser obstacles are any less serious," Melina says.

God, Nat needs some of that parental wisdom.

"Your dress is ripped," Yelena mourns, "and your hair is messed up, and your knuckles are bruised."

"I'm fine," Nat says.

"You sound like a broken record," Yelena informs her.

"You guys are being so weird about this."

"We're not being weird, you idiot," Yelena says as she uses a tissue to dab at a cut on Nat's cheek. "You brought this on yourself. This is just what having a huge, loving family is like."

Nat looks around, at everyone checking up on one another and helping them up, at Bucky documenting this happy disaster, at Jessica and Luke tiredly fist bumping, at Scott and Hope van Dyne holding hands and smiling, at Valkyrie clinking surprisingly intact alcohol glasses with Thor, at Peter and Shuri whispering jokes to each other, at T'Challa pinching the bridge of his nose with a fond smile, and thinks, Oh.

This is her family.

On second thought, Nat supposes that Yelena's right.

Not that she's ever going to tell her that.