Archive of Our Own

“Please?”

“No,” says Natasha flatly, taking a sip from her water bottle.

“It’s only going to be like, three hours, max. Come on , Nat, I hate these things. Lex Luthor and Bruce Wayne are going to be there and Pepper’s not here. Please ,” begs Tony, clasping his hands dramatically in front of him. 

Natasha ignores him and delicately wipes her face with a towel. “You should’ve thought twice before making Stark Industries a tech company. Next time you plan to start a business, turn to fashion, or pasteurized milk.”

Tony lists sideways and falls face-first onto the couch with a large whumpf , making the tablet next to him bounce slightly. “Na-aaaat,” he says, voice muffled by the leather seat, “it’s going to be so boring .”

She sends an unimpressed look his way, raising one eyebrow. “It’s a party,” she says, “where all the attendees are almost equal to you in terms of IQ and net worth. How are you going to be bored, again?” He glares at her. “And why are Wayne and Luthor in the same category anyway? One is evil, and the other is...Wayne.”

“Lex keeps trying to get me to partner with him to make Kryptonite weapons,” says Tony, getting up from the sofa. “And I ask him every time, ‘why are you hellbent on killing Superman?’ and he always says in that voice... ”  Tony reaches up to flatten his nose, making him sound nasally “...‘I am just looking out for the interests of the people. ’ Listening to his voice makes me want to get drunk just so I don’t have to pay attention, and you remember what happened last time I got drunk at a party,” says Tony meaningfully.

Natasha stops adjusting the wrapping on her left hand as she considers this. “I remember, yes,” she replies slowly, thinking about that fateful birthday bash, the showdown with Rhodey and the millions in property damage after. She still has the cheetah-print dress from that night at the back of her closet. 

“And Wayne ,” he carries on, “the guy acts like a total goofball, but he has the eyes of a snake , Natasha. Dead eyes. Absolute faker, laughing all the time, but I swear on my entire family fortune he’s planning how to take down every person in that room as he has his seventeenth drink. And did I mention he’s an insufferable prick? And that time he...”

Natasha tunes him out as she goes back to fixing the wrappings on her hands, and reaches up to her ear to press play on her wireless earbuds. Nothing happens. She tries again, to no avail. She taps it a couple more times, until she spins around in annoyance to face a smiling Tony Stark waving her phone. “Uh-uh-uh,” he says with a grin, “if I don’t get someone completely not-awful to talk to tonight, you can’t play your workout mix.”

She suppresses a groan. “Why can’t you take Clint instead? You know he loves poking fun at those rich assholes,” she asks, trying her best to get out of it. “Or what about Steve? Or Thor? He’s royalty, he should fit in just fine with them.” Tony claps a hand over his mouth, sniggering as he imagines Thor talking Midgardian tech with some of America’s wealthiest douchebags. Natasha sighs. “What about Bruce? He’s a genius, if you remember.”

Now it’s Tony’s turn to sigh. “Nat. I love Bruce, I do. But for all the PhDs he holds, he never learnt the most important life-skill-” he snaps his head to face Natasha, holding up an imaginary champagne glass “-bullshit small-talk. Please, Nat. Be my date to the ball tonight?”

“Fine,” she concedes, shutting her eyes in annoyance. “But you owe me, Stark. What time do we leave?”

“The invitation says eight, but I was thinking we leave eight-thirty,” he says and she sighs. 

“Whatever. Now stop messing with my phone.” 

“All yours, Red,” he says, tossing it to her and sauntering out of the room. She rolls her eyes and hits play, and soon every hit she’s placing on the punching bag is to the beat of Billy Joel’s Uptown Girl. 

Note to self , she thinks, next time Peter wants to give you music recommendations, don’t let him mess with your playlists.

She manages to while away a little more than an hour in the Tower’s gym, listening to Peter’s hit-or-miss playlist. It’s not actually that bad; there’s some songs that are quite good, but then he’s added a couple of pop hits that will probably be on repeat in her head until the end of time. When her alarm for six p.m. goes off, she heads back to her room and stares at her closet, deciding what to wear. It’s not like she keeps a vast selection of colors - most of hers are black or black-and-white, with the exception of a grey or pink here or there, and the hideous magenta she’d been forced to wear for a mission once. 

She pulls out a minimalistic black number (surprise surprise) with a red lining - spaghetti straps and a classy v-neckline and a slim yet sweeping skirt with a knee-length slit on the left that made her look slightly taller. She’ll pair it with the Louboutins and those dainty gold earrings she bought a couple of years ago during a mission, and oh- that triple-layer necklace Clint got her for her birthday. She drops the stuff onto her bed and then stares at her hair in the mirror. Does it need a wash? Can she get away with an updo? She pushes a handful of greasy strands behind her ears and grimaces. Definitely needs a wash.

It’s a relatively quick shower, and when she comes out wrapped in a fluffy grey bathrobe, the steam trailing out behind her smells like the entrance to a perfumery. She puts on the dress, does her makeup, straightens her hair and puts on the jewelery. She checks her clock before stepping into her shoes - it’s eight twenty-five, which is the perfect time to slip on one red-bottomed heel and then the other, because Tony comes a-knocking about a minute after. Natasha looks at her reflection, takes a deep breath and opens the door.

“Natasha!” says Tony, looking her up and down, “you look gorgeous . Went for the signature look, eh?” Natasha smiles and agrees with a quick lift of her eyebrows. They’re matching, she notices - Tony’s wearing an Iron-Man-red silk shirt and what appears to be a very expensive black suit. His cufflinks are a subtle shade of gold, much like her earrings, and the gold Rolex on his wrist winks in the light when he shakes his cuffs out, sticking his hands in his pockets. “Shouldn’t we get going?” she asks, “It’s almost time for you to be tortured by meeting other billionaires.”

Tony pouts comically, and she smirks. Then his face clears and he hands her a small black velvet bag. She frowns, confused, and he grins. “Open it!”

It’s a golden cuff bracelet about an inch and a half thick, a dainty symmetrical design that can only be described as Arabic or Eastern or something , but it’s gorgeous. Tony studies her reaction, head tilted sideways like a bird with his hands in his pockets as he overanalyzes her face for the slightest change. “Do you like it?”

Natasha smiles, a genuine actual smile, and slips it on. “It’s beautiful,” she says, tilting her wrist to admire the way the metal catches the soft light from above. 

“I saw it and it reminded me of a spiderweb,” says Tony. “I would’ve given it to Peter, but I don’t think he has any outfits to go with a bracelet like that,” he jokes, and Natasha snorts. 

“Shall we get going, Ms. Romanoff?” He offers her his arm exaggeratedly, and she takes it, making a show of looking flattered. “Lead the way, Mr. Stark.”

As they step into the elevator, he whispers, “You have your knives on you, right?”

Natasha rolls her eyes and hikes up the skirt to reveal a small dagger strapped to her lower thigh, and snaps open her clutch to show him a bottle of knock-out spray disguised as perfume, her favourite paralytic lipstick, and a deadly little knife hidden as a nail file. 

“Your purse,” says Tony as they exit the elevator, “is filthy. Is that a Red Robin receipt? And this one-” he fishes out a crumpled piece of purple foil “- is a Quality Street whole-hazelnut chocolate wrapper.” He sniffs it. “It barely even smells like chocolate. Nat, how long has this been in here?”

Natasha declines to answer and instead hands him her purse to keep digging through as she strides ahead through the private exit of the Tower, waving to Happy. “There is a CVS receipt in here for an extraordinary amount of cheap lipgloss,” he hollers, waving the receipt in the air, trailing behind her. “I always thought you were more of a matte-red kinda girl, Nat!”

Natasha rolls her eyes and takes a deep breath, arriving to stand next to the driver’s window. She and Happy watch Tony stumble down the stairs, spilling a veritable trail of old ketchup packets, McDonald's tissues and assorted receipts behind him, nose still in her purse. 

“Tony losing it without Pep around?” asks Happy casually, as Tony pauses to scratch at something on the inside of the purse - probably from that time that drunk mark spilled milkshake all over her as she tried to get information on terrorist activity out of him. 

“I think he’s nervous about making small talk,” replies Natasha thoughtfully. 

Happy gives her a strange look. “Tony? Our Tony? Scared of talking non-stop?” he asks incredulously, as Tony almost trips over a step because he’s too engrossed in reading what she thinks is her grocery list from two years ago.

“Pepper’s not around to keep his passive-aggressive comments from making the news,” says Natasha, as Tony finally manages to make it down the steps and into the car. He shoves her purse at her and gets in. 

“You, ma’am, have a hoarding problem,” he says judgmentally, and Natasha rolls her eyes and slides in next to him. 

“I just realised that you’re taller than me because you’re wearing heels,” says Tony, his expression a curious mixture of pouting-and-thoughtful. “We accidentally matched clothes, and I should’ve worn my platforms because now I look like a little old man hunched over next to you, Red.”

Natasha snorts loudly, and Happy almost swerves the car off the road in shock. “ Tony ,” she says, raising an eyebrow, “You’re barely even forty.”

Tony looks at her, a signature ‘I’ve-figured-out-what-you’re-saying-but-I’ll-badger-you-about-it-anyway’ Tony Stark look. ”You say that like you’re older than me,” he says, his gaze unwavering.

Happy pulls up outside the hotel, and Natasha opens the door. She steps out and tosses her hair over her shoulder, looking back at him with her signature coy smile. “Come on, Gramps,” she says sweetly, helping him out of the car, “the paparazzi awaits.”

They’re greeted with the flashes from what seem to be several billion cameras surrounding them, quite dizzying in their intensity. Natasha tucks her arm into Tony’s and adopts the usual interested-but-not-really expression she’s going to keep on her face all night because it’s basically how she feels about any formal event. As they near the entrance, she feels Tony look off to the side where a preppy blonde in a pink blazer and matching pencil skirt is standing with a little recorder in her hand and an evil grin on her face. 

“Mr. Stark! Mr. Stark, over here, Vicki Vale, Gotham Gazette,” says Evil Elle Woods, “Why have you chosen to attend this year’s gala with Ms. Romanoff? Have you and Ms. Potts had a falling out? Is Ms. Romanoff possibly your new girlfriend?”

Natasha bristles at her name. She’d expected this to happen - they were Avengers together and now Tony was attending galas with her instead of Pepper - logically, she had known that the tabloids would be desperate to put two and two together even if it added up to five, but she finds herself annoyed anyway.

Tony, meanwhile, is taking all of this in stride. His face betrays just a hint of amusement, an unsubtle roll of his eyes behind his red-tinted sunglasses. “Ms. Romanoff is here as a friend, and while you may not have a personal understanding of the concept of friendship, I’m sure you could find a dictionary to tell you what that means,” he snarks coldly. 

To her credit, middle-aged Regina George doesn’t back down. Instead, she shoves the recorder in Nat’s face. “Girl-to-girl,” she says with a sickly-sweet smile on her face, “are the two of you an item? Come on, spill, Ms. Romanoff, the public wants to know!”

Well, how could she say no to something like that, she thinks sardonically. She breaks out into a dazzling grin, and Vicki Vale’s gaze grows just a tad sharper. She really thinks she’s got me to talk, hm? “Don’t be silly , Tony! Of course I’m not just here as a friend,” she giggles, running one blood-red nail down Tony’s arm that’s interlocked with hers, exaggerating her American accent to make her sound as Valley Girl as possible. Tony side-eyes her curiously, but doesn’t interject.

Vicki’s basically salivating at this little ‘truth-bomb’. “Really?” she asks interestedly, moving the recorder ever-closer to Natasha’s mouth, “is that so?”

“Oh yeah!” she laughs brightly, and then she drops the act altogether. Shoulders back, mouth a straight line, eyes half-lidded and frozen over like a Siberian winter. Vicki backs away involuntarily, caught off guard. “I’m here as his personal bodyguard too,” she says, all traces of emotion gone, “on request of Ms. Potts, to save him from any-” she raises an eyebrow as she looks Vicki up and down disdainfully “- pests , as she put it. Move along, Victoria.” And with that, she ushers Tony away back towards the entrance. Vicki sputters in shock behind them, and when they’re finally out of range, entering the ballroom, both of them crack up. 

“Nat- that was fucking brilliant,” wheezes Tony, putting his hand to his mouth to stifle the giggles. Natasha’s shoulders shake with the effort to keep from laughing out loud. 

“Thank you, thank you,” she says, dropping into a little mock-bow, “I’ll be here all night.”

They are fashionably late, and the party’s already in full swing inside. She feels Tony shift closer to her instinctively and she tightens her grip around his arm. God. If she was to choose between a room full of Marines armed with assault rifles and a room full of socialites smiling their shark-smiles, well, at least you could disarm the Marines. There was nothing you could do to stop a socialite from trapping you in a conversation with a grin and a flutter of her eyelashes, like a cat playing with a mouse. All that vapid talk about designers and affairs and their most recent yacht purchases... Natasha realises she’s not being fair, considering the number of times she herself has stolen secrets using the socialite disguise, but she was always playing a part. These women were... made to be nothing more than soulless dollotrons with armed with acrylic nails to clink against champagne glasses as they rip you to shreds with metaphorical claws, perfect princesses destroying anything that stands in their way for the fun of it, not a single drop of wine or blood spilled, not that it would matter-

“Hey,” whispers Tony, leaning closer to her, “is it too early to go stand by the bar and pretend to get drunk?”

“If you get even pretend-drunk, that Umbridge look-alike outside will have a field day,” Natasha hisses back, eyes fixed on the crowd around them. 

“But then we can go home early ,” whines Tony, and Natasha fixes him with a glare. 

“You love parties,” she says as they stride arm-in-arm over to a buffet table, “what’s gotten you so antsy this evening?”

Tony puts a hand on the arm she has linked around his, grinning at a ditzy blonde in a salmon dress as she walks past them, fluttering her lashes. He turns to her and sighs. “It’s just been ages since I’ve done all...this,” he says, vaguely gesturing at the ballroom. 

Natasha is not impressed. “You threw the annual Avengers summer party not two weeks ago,” she comments dryly, leaning forward to squint at a cupcake tower suspiciously. She picks up one with vanilla frosting and uses her pinky finger to delicately scoop some off and lick it. It’s startlingly white against the deep red of her nail.

Tony watches her amusedly. “I actually like the Avengers,” he says, unlinking their arms to lean against the table. Natasha says nothing, just continues to methodically remove the icing from her dessert. “Cap, Carol, Rhodey, Bruce, Clint, Thor, Jess - and the kids, y’know, Riri, Kamala, Peter, Miles, Kate - all of them,” he lists off, counting on his fingers. “They’re my friends , and/or impressionable kids that I still have a shot at convincing of that I’m the coolest Avenger. I actually like spending time with them. And they’re not rich pretentious assholes who like to think they know who I am, because I trust them enough to actually let them know.”

Natasha presses her red-painted lips into a thin line and tilts her head knowingly. “It’s not all bad, Tony. They’re just people. How bad could they be?”

Tony scowls at her and he looks like a five-year-old, so when Natasha turns her mouth into a line this time it’s an attempt to hold back laughter. “Oh no,” he says, pointing at her accusingly, “you do not get to say that. I could hear your murderous thoughts the minute we walked in here, Nat. Nu-uh. Not happening.”

“You know I’m all about that hypocrisy, Tony,” she says with a sharp smirk.

He chuckles in a dead sort of way and leans forward to inspect the various flavours of cupcakes on display. “Mm,” he says, picking up one with deep brown-almost black icing topped with a strawberry half, “chocolate.”

They wander around the ballroom looking every bit the unbothered socialite and genius billionaire, making sure their smiles are poisonous and disdain is extremely obvious. Together, the two of them work to always maintain a distance of fifty feet from every heir and CEO making the rounds (see: Wayne and Luthor). Tony strikes up a conversation with Ted Kord, a nervous-looking man who reminded Natasha oddly of Bruce, and the two start talking faster and faster about new engineering techniques and prototype modelers. Natasha rolls her eyes fondly and steps back because while she’s casually acquainted with most of this jargon, it still bores the shit out of her. Besides, Tony seems happy to have finally met someone who’s not a complete asshole, so she finds the bar and orders a drink. 

From her spot leaning against the bar, she sees Tony smack Kord’s shoulder and laugh uproariously, holding his stomach and wiping tears as he doubles over. Kord adjusts his glasses nervously and grins and Natasha can tell that Tony’s going overboard to make Kord feel better which is...nice of him. Then Tony says something that makes Kord’s eyes fly open and he chokes on his drink, so Tony thumps him on the back. 

“Here’s your drink,” says a bored voice behind her, accompanied by a clink of the crystalline glass on the bar counter, and Natasha turns around to pick it up. The marble is cool under her bare elbows, and she taps her drink twice with her index nail before taking a sip. 

A solid wall of muscle appears almost out of nowhere and comes to slouch about two feet away from her. She watches him surreptitiously out of the corner of her eye - white male about six-foot-two, broad-shouldered and compressed strength in his beefy arms, all of which is hidden under a well-tailored suit designed to only give an outsider a half-impression of what this man is made of. Natasha puts him at an eight as a threat level - if it were to come down to it, she could probably beat him, but she’d be at a disadvantage because she doesn’t know how he fights -  but so would he. 

“Hi,” says the man, turning to face her with a dazzling smile.

“Hello,” says Natasha with a faint smirk. So this is Bruce Wayne, billionaire playboy philanthropist with a penchant for adopting blue-eyed black-haired orphans. Beefcake extraordinaire, Prince of Gotham, etc. etc. 

(There is something so familiar about the way he stands, hiding it as he pretends to be at ease, but she can’t quite place it.)

Tony was right. His eyes are so dead - deep-set, not quite blue, not quite grey, more like a lighter shade of a hue that falls right in-between the two. The smile on his face is fake and the drink he ordered is water masquerading as vodka, so she puts on a cute pouty expression and flutters her lashes at him.

“You know,” she hums, making sure her voice has almost no accent, “you look really familiar. Have we met before?”

Wayne narrows his eyes flirtatiously and holds out a manicured hand to shake.”I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure of making your acquaintance before,” he says and there’s a slight British accent on his words, like how Tony sometimes changed voices when he talked to JARVIS, “I’m Bruce Wayne, Wayne Enterprises? I would hope that I hadn’t forgotten meeting someone as gorgeous as yourself.” Oho, so that deep charming voice is definitely why his main characteristic is ‘playboy’, she thinks.

Natasha laughs, a bright airy thing, and says “Oh, please , Mr. Wayne. Everyone in this room is gorgeous. It’s what the rich were put on this earth to do - look pretty and be useless.” 

He takes offense to that a little - she can see the whitening of his knuckles around the glass and the tension building in the lines of his Roman-emperor face. He’s not pretty so much as he is handsome - defined jawline and slightly crooked nose, high cheekbones and a strong chin. Wayne looks more powerful than alluring. He’s attractive, but in a way that promises power and really good sex.

The smile that lights up his face is almost-blinding, but ten times more fake than the one before. She supposes it’s his version of a defence. He’s expecting a reaction, so she smiles her most open-I’m-not-hiding-anything smile. He straightens up instead of leaning forward at her, apparently satisfied with whatever conclusion he’s made, and she almost laughs because God, this is too easy. Because Wayne’s reputation is that of a perfect gentleman (and because she saw him awkwardly trapped in a conversation with a woman much older than him not ten minutes ago, reading his lips as he said sorry, I’m seeing someone over and over) she has to believe she must’ve appeared threatening enough for him to try and gauge if she was some kind of trouble. Someone’s trained this man to not discount a woman in a party dress as a substantial force. Interesting.

“So is that what you believe you were born for? Nothing more than partying and pleasure?” He’s leaning his hip against the counter, mimicking Natasha as she surveils the party.

“You make the mistake of assuming I was born rich,” she replies, swirling the liquid in her glass and watching it slosh up against the crystal.

“What’s your name?” he asks, and he looks genuinely curious. 

She smirks. “You won’t find it plastered on the side of any buildings, so I wouldn’t bother.”

Her remark genuinely stops him in his tracks, and when he laughs, it’s for real this time. “No, seriously. What’s your name? You seem like someone worth talking to. Unlike everyone else here,” he says with a quirk of his mouth. 

“How touching,” she comments dryly. “Maybe that wouldn’t be such an issue if you stopped trying so hard to use social functions as spontaneous improv classes, you know?” She feels her mouth twitch in amusement as a light blush dusts his pale skin. She turns to face the crowds again, the small of her back against the ridge of the counter when she sees one Alexander Luthor clap a heavy hand on Tony’s shoulder from across the room. She slams her glass down. 

Wayne’s opened his mouth to say something, but Natasha’s got more important things to do than make some rich boy uncomfortable. “See you ‘round, Brucie ,” she says and stalks away without waiting for an answer. 

Her heels go smack-tap - smack-tap against the glossy floor as she power-walks her way over to Luthor. He’s not a threat, but it’s the reason she’s here and she is not going to let Tony be thrown to the wolves, no matter how annoying he is. Tony shoves off Luthor’s hand, but Natasha can see the way his hands curl into fists and the set of his jaw becomes harsher, like he’s staving off the urge to rip Lex’s throat out with his teeth.

A name catches at the edges of her consciousness as she crosses the last few meters between her and them. Something she’d read in the briefing SHIELD had provided before she’d come to work as his PA, a scene etched into her brain like a half-eroded cave painting on the walls of her psyche. A bald man, dead-set on making weapons, towering over a younger, more trusting Tony Stark, holding the arc reactor in his palm as Tony’s frozen in place, a bald man, a bad man -

Obadiah Stane. 

She reaches this conclusion as she reaches the unhappy couple, slipping her arm around Tony’s as he crosses his arms defensively against his chest and looks up disinterestedly at a smirking Lex Luthor. She can feel his arm shaking with every beat of his heart beneath his unbothered exterior. Natasha suddenly feels a little bad for kicking up such a fuss about coming to this stupid thing, and she wishes she’d found a way to convince him to stay home tonight.

“Who’s this?” asks Lex in that awful nasally voice of his. It’s worse than nails on a chalkboard. 

“I’m his bodyguard,” replies Natasha icily, “and I need to speak to him. Excuse us.” She turns around, taking Tony with her. She leads them a few meters away, far enough that they’re out of earshot.

“I’m sorry,” she says, untangling herself to stand in front of him, “I shouldn’t have left.”

“It’s fine,” he says, and he won’t look her in the eyes. His arms are still crossed, and he’s chewing on his lower lip as his eyes flick from Luthor standing far behind them to the ground to Luthor again. His foot is tap-tap-tapping on the shiny floor, and Natasha can still see the slight shake in his shoulders as he stands silently.

“Hey,” she says quietly, and his eyes snap to her. “Hey. He’s not Obadiah. I’m sorry for leaving. I know I shouldn’t have, and that’s on me. But he’s not Obadiah, Tony. You’re okay.”

He closes his eyes and he tips his head back. Takes a deep breath, then another. Opens his eyes. Natasha feels some of the panic building in her chest dissolve. 

“It’s no big deal, Nat. I’m fine. Trust me,” he says and the smile he gives her is genuine now. Small, and a little shaky, but he’s telling the truth. She puts a hand on either shoulder and straightens his jacket, dusts off dirt that’s not there. He smiles a little wider. 

“Remember,” she says, still adjusting his pocket square as she speaks, then bringing her gaze up to his eyes, “he’s not Obadiah. He’s dead, Tony. Remember. Obadiah’s not here. And I am sorry,” she reiterates. 

“It’s oka-” Tony starts, but there’s a crash as a woman knocks her over, spilling a veritable fountain of burgundy liquid all over Natasha as she lays there, sprawled on her back. A collective gasp echoes around the hall as every head turns to look at the spectacle. The wine glass lies in smithereens next to her.

Natasha hears the crunch of glass under heels as the woman gets up, feels the wine soak through the front of her dress and starts drying on her face and arms and chest. 

“I’m so sorry, darling!” she says, reaching her hand out to try and help her up. Her blond hair falls charmingly around her doll-face, her hazel eyes blink innocently. Natasha ignores it and instead plants her hands firmly on the ground, using it as support to pick herself up. She hisses in pain when a shard of glass pierces the soft skin of her palm, and Tony grabs her by the forearm to help her up. The blonde woman steps back, not a single drop of red on her white dress, lips curved up in a faint smile. 

“Natasha, your hand,” says Tony, taking her left hand in his. There’s a bright slash weeping red in the center of her palm, and smaller shards of glass stuck in the flesh around it. She’s had worse than a couple of nicks from a broken wineglass, she thinks, she’ll be fine. She tells Tony as much, and he frowns at her. 

“Oh, that doesn’t look too good,” says a nasally voice behind them, and Natasha has to swallow her anger to stop from clenching her injured hand. When she looks up to face the direction of the voice, Lex Luthor is standing there with an arm around the blonde woman, and there is not a single doubt in her mind that this wasn’t orchestrated by that complete bastard. “Mercy, dear, did you do this?”

What is she, his date?

“Oh, how rude of me,” drawls Lex, “this is my date-bodyguard combo, Mercy Graves. Mercy, meet Tony Stark and the lovely Ms. Romanoff. She’s his version of you.”

Standing there with crimson soaking through her bra and bright vermillion dripping from her hand, Natasha doesn’t feel very lovely. 

“Mercy,” says that slimeball, “why don’t you help Ms. Romanoff clean up, while Mr. Stark- Tony and I-,” Tony cuts in with a “Mr. Stark’s fine, thanks,” “-discuss business.”

Mercy makes to grab her hand and drag her off, and Natasha steps back, staring her down. “Don’t touch me,” she hisses, and Mercy rolls her eyes and steps away. “I’m staying right here, Luthor,” she spits with as much vitriol as she can muster. Luthor’s expression grows faintly amused.

“Nat,” Tony mutters, “go clean up. It’s fine. I'll be okay.”

She casts a hateful glance at the two of them, and Tony grabs her forearm. “Natasha, trust me. I’ll be fine. Come back once you’re okay, okay? Then we’ll head out. I think that’s enough partying for tonight.”

Natasha bites her lip, and then nods once in agreement. “Good,” he says, and turns to stride towards Lex Luthor and his bitch of a date, straightening his jacket as he does. “Come on, old sport , let’s grab a drink and talk shop,” he hollers at Lex, walking towards the bar.

She brings her (non-injured) hand to her mouth and looks away, fighting a smile. The Jay Gatsby persona always means trouble. 

There’s a bathroom in the hall outside the ballroom. A row of black-with-gold-inlays marble sinks and mirrors with soft yellow backlight behind each one. The far wall has a floor-to-ceiling mirror, and next to it a small girl in a pretty grey dress sits on the edge of the last sink, slotted in around the paper towel dispenser, legs hanging off the counter. She’s seemingly focused on her phone, but as Natasha pulls out and drops each piece of glass from her hand on the counter, she can feel the girl studying her out of the corner of her eye. 

The shards make little clinks as they collect on the gleaming counter, and the girl swings her legs to the pattern of the sounds. The motion is economical, manufactured. There is no excess flourish or any kind of passion behind it; almost identical to the swinging of a pendulum in a grandfather clock. 

Natasha turns on the faucet and washes off the bloodstains on her hand, fully aware of the girl sitting absolutely still except for the rhythmic swing of her legs. The motion unsettles her to a certain degree - her legs never hit the counter by accident, or waver in their rhythm, and the movement doesn’t match the rest of the vibes that Natasha is reading off her. Her whole body is poised to attack, but the swinging is supposed to be casual. She turns the faucet off and looks directly at the girl.

The girl lifts her eyes from her phone to match her gaze, the blue light of the device highlighting the smooth blankness of her expression revealing much more than she wants. It couldn’t be...could it? All the girls she’d found at the Red Room under Anya’s care had been shipped off to good homes. She’d made sure of that. And she doesn’t remember a single girl looking like she could even partially be East Asian - most of them had been Russian orphans, with only a few foreigners mixed in. She would’ve remembered a girl who moved like this one did. 

“мастерица, портной?”

The girl tilts her head sideways, and her silky black hair falls to frame her confused face. If she was a Widow, she’d respond immediately with “солдат, шпион,” in Russian, but she stays silent. But Natasha can read confusion in every line of her body, the girl’s apprehension growing. Her legs come to a halt mid-swing, and she curls her body inwards a little bit, shoulders braced to throw off an attack as Natasha takes a half-step closer. 

“I’m not going to hurt you,” she murmurs, holding her hands up in surrender. Another step, but nothing more changes in the girl’s demeanor other than a slight increase in the narrowing of her eyes. So she can read Natasha like Natasha’s reading her. Maybe even better. 

A dark thought crosses the back of her mind, and she shakes it off. The first and last time she’d heard of that man outside the Red Room was when she’d heard he’d died. The ideas he’d had...she has to make sure. 

“Do you...speak?” she asks, her voice low and hesitant.

The girl nods very slightly, just a gentle dip of her chin, her gaze unblinking. Natasha relaxes by a fraction.

“English?” she tries, and the girl nods again. “What’s your name?” she asks because she can’t just keep calling her ‘the girl’ in her head.

“Cassandra. Wayne.” The reply is stilted, like it’s been practiced in front of a mirror, but rarely been used on a real person. The last name sets her on high alert, however. She’s Wayne’s kid?

“Bruce Wayne trained you to be an assassin?” and as soon as the question leaves her mouth she knows she’s asked the wrong one because the kid-Cassandra-frowns almost imperceptibly, the movement of her eyebrows so minute you’d blink and miss it. Apparently, this is a touchy subject. She knows Wayne is capable of violence, but judging by his daughter’s disapproval, apparently he wasn’t responsible for this cruelty.

Cassandra purses her lips, and then her hands start moving, confirming Natasha’s initial suspicions. C-A-I-N, not W-A-Y-N-E, she signs. He made me like this. You are like me - you move like me. Who trained you?

Natasha bites the inside of her cheek. That bastard . She remembers him visiting the Red Room when she had been organically fourteen, before the serum and the ceremony. She remembers twenty-eight pairs of eyes moving in unison to examine the strange man standing next to Madame, observing them.

Natasha, sneakiest and most silent of the entire cohort, had snuck out of bed that night to overhear a conversation inside the main office between Madame and David Cain.

I’m looking to create a living weapon, he had said. I heard that yours are as close to perfection as has been achieved so far?

Madame had nodded and smiled, the same smile that she had worn when one of them executed a perfectly clean kill. Ours are skilled in every form of combat known, she said, steepling her fingers on the desk. They can speak almost every language, and each of them already has the mind of a genius - and once they graduate, they will be an unstoppable force devoted to working purely for us. They will have no place in the world - we will make sure of that. Natasha hadn’t known what she had meant at the time - she’d just kept listening. I’m sure we could offer you one of our best and brightest - for a price , and she remembers how her blood had gone cold at the word price . 

No one had said anything for the next few minutes, and she had felt the air grow more frigid. Then that bastard had opened his mouth. Your girls are worthless to me. You’ve given them too much. If they can speak the tongues of the world, if they know the workings of the world - they will make themselves a place in it. It is not good enough to make them everything. You have to give them nothing, so they are nothing. I’ve tried training children before. It doesn’t work. They remain human, and he’d spit that last word like it was poisonous.

Madame had frozen, eyes venomous like a pit viper. Your plan is absurd, she’d hissed. Rendering a child speechless-emotionless-a machine-from birth? What good is a weapon that is missing a piece?

You assume I want a rifle, he’d said, and she remembers the cruel glint in his eyes. 

I want a blade. 

The memory plays on repeat in her head like a record with a scratch in the vinyl.

A blade, she hears, made of obsidian, with a hilt of pure gold - a thing that turns killing into an art . The way even Madame had recoiled at the idea of such inhumanity. The way his teeth looked in the dark when he smiled, talking about his plan - sharp, like a tiger’s. 

She looks at Cassandra, watches her fluid motion and hears her stilted speech. Watches her slide off the counter, dark eyes tracking her every move.

“You know who I am?” she asks Cassandra, and she opens her mouth to say something, but thinks better of it. Yes, she signs. Black Widow. Hero. A-V-E-N-G-E-R, she spells out. 

“I was trained by the KGB,” Natasha says. “Hydra. I was made to be bad. I got better, though,” and Cassandra smiles at that. It’s a very sweet smile. “I met your father in passing, once.” 

Her smile dims at that. “ Not my father,” she hisses.

“He was a bastard. You’re better off without him,” agrees Natasha. “Tell me, just one thing - are you happy, with the life you have now? With your new family?”

Cassandra’s shoulders droop slightly at that, her face betraying her confusion. Her eyes narrow ever so slightly, and she steadies her stance as if getting ready to attack. Natasha doesn’t change her expression - just holds her hands palms-out in surrender again. She must look ridiculous to this girl - covered in wine and blood, asking her if she's happy.

“I ask because you deserve to be, Cassandra. So. Are you?”

Cassandra’s gaze and posture soften. Yes , she signs. I am.

Natasha feels the tension bleed out of her shoulders, and she takes a deep, staggering breath. “Good,’ she says with a nod. “Good.”

Cassandra comes to stand next to her noiselessly as she turns back to the sink to scrub the deep red off her, holding out a stack of paper towels. Natasha smiles gratefully at her, and Cass hops onto the counter again. 

“What...happened?” she asks, pointing to Natasha’s hand.

Natasha huffs. “Sabotage.”

Cassandra scowls. “Who?”

“You know Lex Luthor? His assistant knocked me over so I’d leave my friend behind.” Shit! Tony was still stuck with Luthor outside - shit, shit, shit!

She turns to Cassandra. “How much does your father hate Luthor?”

More than I can say. Why? she signs. 

Natasha smiles coldly. “My friend’s stuck with him. Could you do me a favor and ask your father to distract him somehow? In return for distracting me from my friend in the first place, of course.”

Cassandra picks up her phone and swipes open the screen to a contact labeled ‘Dad :)’ with a little bat emoji next to it. Natasha can appreciate a good emoticon, but why the bat emoji? She hits the little green phone button and hands it to Natasha, who was definitely not prepared for this.

“ Hello? Cassie, kiddo, where are you?”

“Uhh...Hi, Brucie,” replies Natasha, glaring at Cass, who was grinning. Not funny , she signs, tucking the phone between her shoulder and ear. Cass just shrugs, her smile mischievous. 

“ Who is this? What are you doing with Cassandra’s phone? Where is she? ” So Bruce Wayne, Prince of Gotham, Beefcake Extraordinaire, was also a helicopter parent. Fun. Texting? she signs annoyedly at Cass. 

This is more fun , Cass replies, giggling. 

“It’s me. The woman from the bar, before? Cassandra gave me her phone to ask you for a favor. She says hi, by the way,” and Natasha shoves the phone at Cass. 

“Hi, Dad,” she giggles into the phone. 

“ Cassie? You’re okay?”  

“Of course.” Cass hands it back, and Natasha sighs. The things she does for Tony. 

“You believe that you rich people were made for more than just partying and looking pretty, right? Do me a favor and go distract Lex Luthor - he won’t stop bothering Mr. Stark, and he had his assistant spill her drink on me,” she says hurriedly.

She can hear him walking. “You could’ve just asked, you know,” he says, and she can hear the amusement in his deep voice.

“Now where’s the fun in that?” she replies, and hangs up. Getting the last word in always feels good. She hits the power button-force of habit-and then switches it back on apologetically. The screen lights up with a picture of a ballerina frozen mid-pirouette - from the Nutcracker, thinks Natasha. 

“You like ballet?” she asks, handing the phone back.

Cass nods. “Speaking...without words,” she says. Makes more sense to me than talking , she finishes with her hands, and Natasha smiles. 

“I was trained to be a ballerina, once,” she says. “A lifetime ago, by the very best.”

Cassandra beams. I am also learning , she signs, but not just ballet. All kinds of dancing. But ballet is important to me. “Special,” she says, tapping two fingers over her heart.  

It’s been a long, long time since she’s found anyone to talk about these things. She still practices, sometimes. She’s not as good as she used to be, but it still holds an unshakeable place in her heart. Clint knows. So does Tony - JARVIS records everything that happens in the common areas of the Tower. So she eases herself up onto the marble counter next to Cass with her non-injured hand and kicks off her heels, confident in the knowledge that Tony has been rescued by Wayne, and she listens to Cassandra alternate between ASL and spoken English as she talks about everything she’s learned so far.

They talk for a while - discussing childhood training regimes, hometowns, favorite ballets, worst injuries, favorite composers, finding real families. 

I don’t know when my birthday is , Cassandra signs casually, swinging her legs, her brown eyes faintly sorrowful, but also amused. Whenever my family wants to eat cake, they say it’s my birthday and get Alfred to make cake. 

Natasha hums. “I forget how old I actually am,” she says lightly. “Between the serum and the several timeline-resets, I can’t remember. On the bright side, I can always say I’m right, because it would be rude to suggest otherwise.” 

Cass looks at her and laughs. She feels a matching giggle bubble up in the back of her throat, what the hell , she giggles too. 

Natasha’s never met anyone else who’d lived like her and survived enough to laugh about it. 

(It strikes her as strangely ironic that this stupid bathroom is full of mirrors yet she can see her herself best in a five-foot-four Chinese teenager.)   

And yet - Cassandra’s so much better than her. Left behind a life of murder at age eight , because she knew it was wrong. It took Natasha years upon years of killing (and all the persuasion power of a certain archer) to finally realise that she needed to do better. And by then she’d done so many terrible things, she’d have to live a thousand lifetimes to make up for all of them. She’s still making up for them. She’ll always be trying to get the red out of her ledger.

What are you thinking about? signs Cassandra.

Cake, she signs back. There were cupcakes at the party. If you want, I’ll sing you a birthday song in Russian while we eat them, Natasha responds, smirking. It hurts a little to sign, but she doesn’t trust her voice to stay level if she talks. The cut on her palm is beginning to heal, however. Flexing her hand still sends a twinge of pain shooting up her arm, but she’s caused worse. Lived through worse. She’ll be fine. 

She looks at Cassandra standing there, smiling, waiting to go get cupcakes. 

Yeah. She’ll be fine.

When the two of them push open the doors to the main ballroom, they’re greeted by a livid Lex Luthor stomping past, covered in chocolate frosting and smelling like expensive champagne. Mercy Graves follows close behind, a disgruntled expression on her face as she makes her way past them. Natasha sees Bruce Wayne standing next to Tony with a stupidly fake-drunk grin on his face, waving his daughter and Natasha over. 

Tony’s got a wry grin on his face as she approaches him, one hand in his pocket, the other holding an empty champagne flute in his hand. 

“I know you said not to get a drink,” says Tony, looping his arm around hers, “but I just couldn’t resist. How’s the hand?”

“It’s better, now. Russian super-spy, remember?” she replies, smirking. “Everything okay with Luthor and Wayne?”

They look over at the man in question, whose drunk-and-disorderly face has slipped into something more sober and fond as he signs back and forth with Cassandra. “Eh. He’s not so bad,” says Tony nonchalantly. “He helped smear a few cupcakes on Luthor’s ugly ensemble, and I added the final touch by spilling -” he adds air quotes around ‘spilling’ “-some of my drink on him. Of course, then we had to help him, but I think we finished all the chocolate ones trying to cheer him up. Shame, really, because now there’s no reason to stick around at this sham of a party.”

Cassandra looks over when she hears him say that. Leaving so soon? she signs at Natasha.

Only have two hands, and I can’t talk to you if L-U-T-H-O-R decides to take revenge , she replies. Cass smiles. 

Cupcakes next time? she signs.

“Sure, kid,” says Natasha, and she ruffles Cass’s hair as she and Tony walk past, heading for the exit. 

“I should’ve gotten Happy to get the car around when we were still inside,” says Tony, reaching for his phone as they stand outside the hotel, waiting to leave. “Who’s your friend?”

“Wayne’s daughter,” says Natasha, craning her neck to look for the car. “Met her in the bathrooms while I was cleaning up. A thank-you wouldn’t be amiss, by the way.”

“What for?” asks Tony, voice incredulous. 

“Who do you think sent Wayne to run interference?”

“Oh,” says Tony. “ Oh. That-that makes a lot more sense.”

Just then, Happy pulls up by the steps and honks. “Hey-o, Boss.”

Tony does a little two-fingered salute, and they descend the staircase. 

 “Oh,” says Natasha dismissively, as she slides towards the other window of the backseat to make room for Tony, “Bruce Wayne is Batman, by the way.”

Tony pauses mid-stride. “Huh. How can you be sure?”

“His daughter - the highly skilled assassin - has him saved as ‘Dad’ with a bat emoji,” says Natasha dryly. 

“That tracks,” says Tony thoughtfully, closing the car door behind him, “that - that tracks.”