hurt/comfort
There’s an initial panic, as the suit falls apart. Natasha isn’t sure what she’s going to see, if the woman will still be alive.
She sees Clint help Tony up as she moves to shield him from the view.
She doesn’t want him to have nightmares about this.
“I killed her,” she hears him say.
The woman is clearly dead.
She knows Tony has killed before, self defence she’s sure. She feels that this falls under that category, if at all.
“It was me,” she assures him, “I made the call.”
His wild eyes try to look around her as she pulls out her gun.
“You didn’t kill her. See? You just knocked her down.” She puts two clean shots in her head and body.
“I killed her, ok?”
Tony nods, his suit falling back from his head. His body language screams terrified. He starts to say something, she’s sure will be snarky, but cuts him off.
He doesn’t need to be here.
“Let’s go, Shield can handle the clean up and work it out from there.”
He tries again to see her, but the gentle push from Clint is all he needs to step back and walk away.
“Ok?” Clint nods to Natasha.
“Ok.” She replies quietly, ignoring the headache rearing it’s head from being slammed against the wall.
.
Pepper hates this feeling.
The anxiety of not knowing whether her friends and her partner are ok. Jarvis assures her they are, but he doesn’t elaborate.
She takes it to mean that someone’s hurt, or something went went wrong.
They arrive back almost three hours after they’ve left.
Tony looks shell shocked, and Natasha and Clint, look … fine, as they all make their way into the kitchen.
She makes Tony sit down and hands him a drink of water, that he just holds onto.
She sits close, making light contact to make sure he knows she’s close.
Gently she makes him face her, he nods minutely and she knows they’ll talk later.
The traumas of today, yesterday, everything just pile up, and she feels so inadequate to the task of helping.
Clint leaves to make a call and Natasha excuses herself for the bathroom.
He misses her stumble slightly and hold onto the wall for support, but Pepper doesn’t.
.
Natasha feels Pepper behind her as she tries to turn back around. Pretend to make out that she’s finding the back of her dress.
Except.
Pepper isn’t an idiot.
“Let me look,” she says, pointing at her head.
Natasha sighs, caught out, and sits on the seat; slightly thankful that Tony’s bathrooms are always bigger than they need to be.
“I don’t think you need stitches,” she says as she holds her hair away from where it hurts.
“Don’t tell Clint, ok?” She winces when Pepper looks and grabs a hand towel, wetting it and pressing it to her head.
“I think he’s been through enough of my injuries,” she says grimly.
Pepper gets it. Sometimes, protecting others means that you hold something of yourself back.
She feels Natasha has had too much of herself laid bare over the past month.
She rinses the towel.
“How are you feeling, really?” She asks, wondering if she’ll get a true answer.
“Tired mostly,” comes the response. It feels to Pepper like Natasha wants to talk, but hasn’t had the opportunity to do so, to debrief with someone other than Clint about what it’s really been like.
She knows how that feels. After her Extremis, she couldn’t talk to Tony, without the look of guilt on his face.
She’d resorted to therapists who had helped but never really understood.
“Does your skin still feel touchy?” She asks, feeling the roll of a shiver down her back as her body remembers.
Natasha looks at her, shock passing her features and settling as she turns to face her.
“How’d you know?” She asks.
“Must be a similar side effect,” Pepper smiles.
They make brief eye contact, as Natasha turns away.
“Does it…” her voice catches, perhaps not wanting to know the full answer. “Does it go away?”
Pepper takes the hand towel away, wetting it again.
“Mostly. There’s some times when it feels like your skin is crawling, when even clothes feel too much, but it doesn’t stay too long,” she remembers.
Natasha looks at her with a newfound look of information gathering. Pepper wants to be that for her.
“Anything else I should know?”
Pepper thinks. She knows what was the most debilitating, or felt it at the time. She also knows that there’s things she’s forgotten.
“Your chest ever feel heavy? Like you can’t get a breath in?”
Natasha is nodding before Pepper is even finished.
““Yeah, it’s like I have to concentrate to breathe deep.”
Pepper nods knowingly.
“It sucks,” she says, “but it lessens, I swear.”
They both pause in thought, but Natasha is first to speak.
“Thank you,” she says.
“For what?” Pepper says, shocked, “I should be thanking you.”
Natasha turns her head, clearly too fast as she winces again. Pepper clarifies quickly before she’s stopped.
“For saving him, letting him go with you tonight, I don’t know, being here too. I think it makes it better when there are more people around him. I… didn’t think we’d be living here but it turns out… I think I need it too.”
“Clint agreed. I just came along..”
Pepper smirks at the way she downplays her involvement, a tactic most likely from her past, she thinks.
“I know.”
Natasha pulls the towel away. Less blood now.
“He’s braver than I am,” she tells Pepper.
“I’ve seen how plenty brave you both are.”
She gently takes the towel away, rinsing it and inspecting the wound.
“I think you’re going to have a lump,”
She lets the hair fall.
“No pony tails for a while then.”
“I should go.” She thinks of Tony, and the haunted look in his eyes, Clint will look after her; of that she has no doubt.
Heading to the door, Pepper pauses at the sound of her name.
“Pepper? Thank you.”
Natasha stands with her, and for the first time, that she can ever remember Natasha initiates contact and touches her shoulder.
Pepper finishes the action and hugs her, feeling the initial stiffening and then softening as Natasha hugs her back.
.
Clint waits with Tony, making some remark about women going to the bathroom together.
Tony smirks, hiding what Clint thinks is some sort of emotion. He’s too tired to think.
He wants to make sure Natasha is ok, and go to bed. At least they all live here.
Pepper emerges first with Natasha close by, they’re taking about something, braids he thinks, hair?
He doesn’t know.
Natasha is dressed still in her dress, and Tony in his tux although they don’t look as well made up as when they left hours before.
“Good night,” Clint says standing; taking Natasha by the hand and walking her to the elevator, not waiting for a response.
They get one though, spoken simultaneously as Pepper helps Tony up as well.
.
Settled in bed, he feels her curl up close.
Her head on his chest he touches her hair lightly.
“Don’t,” she commands softly.
Looking down at her, his face awash in confusion.
He knows there’s times she doesn’t like her head being touched but this isn’t that.
“I hit my head,” she confesses.
“I’m fine,” she follows up.
He puts his hands around her shoulders.
“Do you want to do anything for it?” He offers, giving her full control over any medical decisions because he knows there’s no other way that either of them would feel comfortable.
The quiet ‘no’ is all he needs to drop it, and let it go.
“Clint?”
He hums in acknowledgement.
“It’s been a long month.”
He nods in agreement.
“I know.”
.
She promised herself.
She teaches him to wrap his knuckles.
“You know how to punch,” she says, “it’s time you learn how to fight.”
Tony bites back the snark, actually interested for once in something other than tech and information.
“You need to be lighter on your feet.”
She pushes him forward from behind and he trips. Turning to her disgruntled, she smirks.
“Iron man suit can’t always save you.”
She pauses.
“Show me your fight stance.”
He puts his hands up, protecting his face and she pokes him in the stomach.
“It’s too high. And your fists; who taught you that?”
She hums in annoyance.
“You mostly have your hands open with Iron Man, use that for fighting without it. Open hands, you can deflect, redirect.”
She produces a knife from seemingly nowhere, turns it and hands it to him.
“Let’s practice. Come at me with this.”
It a basic move, a stabbing motion, as she shows him how to use momentum against his opponent and open hands to disarm.
She makes him repeat it, over and over.
Sweating profusely, Tony makes a time out sign and huffs. She hands him water and the sit on the mat together.
The one Tony feels like he’s hit more than he’s stayed standing.
He feels good though, and tells her as such.
“It wasn’t your first time, was it?” He asks, curiosity getting the better of him.
She looks confused.
“What?”
He tosses up making this moment more intense than it should be and making it light hearted.
“Breaking out of hand cuffs by dislocating your thumb?”
It’s not what he was originally going to say, but he does wonder about it, how this is a skill she knows.
She smiles kindly, stands and helps him up.
“No,” she says, not elaborating.
“Done for the day?”
He nods, knowing she’ll likely do more when he leaves.
“More tomorrow?” He asks.
“Definitely.”
.