The Backup

Natasha stood behind the bar, pouring the vibrant red drink she had made into a martini glass. Bruce slowly approached her, glancing at her as if to ask if it was okay for him to. She looked away, playing indifferent. He removed his glasses as he said, his attempt at joking around, "How did a nice girl like you wind up working in a dump like this?"

"Fella done me wrong," she played along with the game, pouring the remains of her drink into a separate glass. Once it was full, she pushed it toward him.

Bruce was always sweet to her. He was stuck in this odd grey area in her life. She could easily live without him. He could be an everyday occurrence, and she wouldn't have an issue with it. She considered him trustworthy, a friend.

He said, mournfully, "You got a lousy taste in men, kid."

He's really calling me 'kid'? Natasha pushed past the nickname, leaning forward and saying, "He's not so bad. Well, he has a temper. Deep down he's all fluff...Fact is, he's not like anybody I've ever known. All my friends are fighters. Then here comes this guy, spends his life trying to avoid the fight because he knows he'll win." But he never could get away from it. He was always thrown into it. She hoped that he had finally succeeded, wherever he was.

She wasn't giving her hopes up on finding James. If he wanted to be found, he would have shown his face by then. He doesn't want to be found, so he would do what he does best and disappear. She fell in love with the remnants of a ghost, and he was taking his time coming back to life. She had to accept that.

He replied softly, "Sounds amazing."

She added, "He's also a huge dork." He looked bashful and embarrassed. "Chicks dig that." Natasha tried to figure out what exactly she was laying down the groundwork for. Was she going to do this or not? Was he going to be her distraction from the nightmares, from the blizzard that whipped her emotions out of their iron-tight prisons? Or was he going to remain her sweet friend, that didn't ask why she had pointe shoes and wasn't afraid to speak to her. "So what do you think; should I fight this, or run with it?"

He suddenly looked like he was grasping for straws, not sure how to answer. Natasha enjoyed watching him squirm under her thumb. "Run with it, right? Or, did he...was he...? What did he do that was so wrong to you?"

"Not a damn thing. But never say never." She pushed herself away from the bar, turning her back to him as she walked away, her hips swaying side to side. Hopefully he would take the bait.

||||||||||

Steve clapped his hands against his thighs as he stood up from the couch, moving around the table to Mjolnir.

Tony jeered, "Let's go, Steve! No pressure."

"Come on, Cap," Rhodey urged him on.

Natasha watched the hammer closely as Steve wrapped his hands around the handle and pulled. She fought to keep her expression blank when it moved ever so slightly, only noticeable if you were looking directly at it. Out of the corner of her gaze, she watched Thor frown worryingly. Steve pulled again, feigning frustration, before respectfully backing off.

Thor gave a breathy, relieved laugh. "Nothing."

Natasha caught Steve's eyes as he retreated, pretending to lick his wounds. She quirked an eyebrow, and he shook his head slightly.

Next she knew, Bruce was asking if she wanted to have a go.

She leaned away, laying down on her hip and propping herself up on her elbow. "Oh, no, no. That's not a question I need answered." How could she be worthy? All she would do was stain the leather handle red.

"All deference to the man who wouldn't be king," Tony expressed with a flat voice, "but it's rigged."

"You bet your ass," Clint agreed, stepping out of the square of couches.

Maria pointed at him, looking at Steve. "Steve, he said a bad language word!"

He whirled on Tony. "Did you tell everyone about that?"

The billionaire ignored him. "The handle's imprinted, right? Like a security code. 'Whosoever is carrying Thor's fingerprints' is, I think, the literal translation?"

Thor stood up, taking slow, heavy steps around the table. "Yes, well that's, uh, that's a very, very interesting theory. I have a simpler one." He fit the handle in his palm, gave the hammer a little flip, and pointed the metal head at them. "You're all not worthy."

Natasha laughed when everyone groaned and exclaimed in disagreement, Tony and Clint going on and on about how it was rigged. Thor just grinned at their immaturity.

Suddenly the air ripped - a sound pierced through the room, making Natasha's temples buzz and her skull vibrate. It faded momentarily, and a skeletal rattle took its place.

Took its place behind her.

"Worthy..." Natasha stood up and turned, not very surprised to see a buggy, broken member of the Iron Legion. Their voice was a metallic vibration, snagging it's way through the air around them, taking up as much space as it could. "No...How could you be worthy? You're all killers."

"Stark," Steve barked, softly.

He was already on it, tapping at his wrist. "JARVIS."

The robot stumbled. "I'm sorry, I was asleep. Or...I was a--" it twisted at the waist, "--dream?

Tony spoke clearly into his wristband, "Reboot, Legionnaire OS. We got a buggy suit."

"There was a terrible noise...and I was tangled in...in...strings." It fell slightly, waving its arms before letting them go limp. "I had to kill the other guy. He was a good guy."

Steve demanded, offensively, "You killed someone?"

"Wouldn't have been my first call. But, down in the real world we're faced with ugly choices."

"Who sent you?" Thor asked in a voice that left no room for stalling.

The voice that came from the robot was not the one that they had previously heard - it was familiar, though clearly a recording; "I see a suit of armor around the world!"

Bruce turned to Tony, his eyes going wide. "Ultron!"

"In the flesh. Or, no, not yet. Not this...chrysalis. But I'm ready. I'm on a mission.

Natasha asked in a level tone, "What mission?"

"Peace in our time." The glass wall behind the robot shattered as bugged members of the Iron Legion tore through it.

||||||||||

Natasha's fingers caught against the wooden banister, catching her fall. Her stomach swung with heavy nausea, her chest tight, finding it hard to breathe. This setting was too familiar. She hadn't been back there in so long, yet she knew it better than she knew herself.

Why wouldn't she remember the place she lost her humanity in?

She reached the bottom of the large staircase and tread softly across the floor, toward the dancing ballerinas. They were beautiful, graceful - their arms made wide, effortless arches, their shoes weren't too broken-in or not broken in enough, but they were clearly shaky on their feet and ready to be done for the day. They had been overworked, as they always were.

Dmitri demanded, "Again."

On the verge of tears, she protested, "You'll break them."

"Only the breakable ones." She knew that voice all too well. It haunted her nightmares and daydreams. "You are made of marble. We'll celebrate after the graduation ceremony."

"What if I fail?" She was shooting a target, three times before tossing the gun back and forth between her hands. Suddenly, the target turned into a boy with a sack over his head, struggling behind their gag.

"You never fail."

James stood in front of her, blood smeared over his jaw. His fingers, flesh and metal and bone, dug into her waist as he pulled her flush to his chest, capturing her mouth with his own.

"We can break out," he whispered into the kiss. "We can give our baby a life."

Snow stuck to the strands of her hair, the sky a looming darkness - James was pushing her away, telling her to go without him. To run, to live, to raise their child on her own. She was scared, she didn't want to go back there, she didn't want to leave him - but, despite leaving a trail of broken heart, she ran.

She made the mistake of looking back, love ever being the weakness she knew it to be.

A very specific word met her ears, her head whipping back to look over her shoulder. The soldier looked to be dead, but she knew much better than to assume. Agents were running over him to get to her. She fought, protected her growing baby, but when she was thrown to the ground and a gun was pressed to her stomach, she knew the deed was done.

"Children are weakness," Madame B reminded her, tearing the limp baby out of her arms. Natalia remembered wailing in response, her body too exhausted to do anything more than scream. Now she just stared at the body she thought was her child's. "The baby knew not to burden you. Why would a killer like you deserve a precious child?"

"A killer like me can't nurture innocence."

Natalia was slinging herself over James's shoulders, around his biceps, but he caught his arm around her throat and forced her to drop her feet to the floor, pinning her against him. He squeezed his thick arm around her throat, and Natalia struggled while she could, but had to smack his arm to get him to let go.

"Sloppy. Pretending to fail." The Madame came closer. "The ceremony is necessary for you to take your place in the world." Natalia saw the stretched-thin ballerinas, the boy with the sack over his head, a looming door with dirty glass. She saw her baby - her dead, replaced baby, and was swallowed by grief.

It was all her fault.

She should have known.

"I have no place in the world."

"Exactly." A hand covered her face, pushing her down against the all too familiar leather-covered gurney. Moving, blinding fluorescents glaring down at her; spinning, little girls without mouths, without the permission to speak for themselves for they no longer owned themselves.

She was not her own self. She was not his. She was not an Avenger. She was the academy's. Their precious Black Widow. Made of marble, not glass, an example set for the little girls to come. But yet, she was shattering into millions of minuscule pieces, surrendering to the tide of her emotions; her grief, her heartache, her longing.

She was a Black Widow with emotions, and that was the worst kind -

"Nat, look at me. Focus." She was being shaken. "It's not real."

Her head lolled to the side, but a strong, familiar hand caught her. Clint repeated, "It's not real. Just look at me."

She felt her bottom lip trembling. Her voice rasped, "Clint -"

"Sh, sh, sh. It's okay."

Tony's voice broke through their comms. "Natasha. I could really use a lullaby."

Natasha. That wasn't her name.

"That's not gonna happen," Clint snapped back. "Not for a while. The whole team is down."

She wasn't the only one? Everyone else had been torn apart from the inside?

||||||||||

Natasha held her arms protectively around her stomach while she sat in the quiet guest room, waiting for Bruce to get out of the bathroom. Though she was no longer under the spell, her mind still played tricks on her. She was wearing her leotard made from skin and blood, dancing along to a deadly melody, learning to be a shadow so she could be with another.

The door clicked open, and her head snapped up. Bruce immediately apologized, "I didn't realize you were waiting."

"I would've joined you, but uh, it didn't seem like the right time." She sent him a tight smile, that just couldn't reach her eyes.

He gestured to the shower behind him. "They used up all the hot water."

"I should've joined you," she concluded.

"Missed our window."

"Did we?" She wasn't sure what exactly he was referencing.

He played with the towel in his hands, moving further into the room. She noticed how he avoided coming near her. "The world just saw the Hulk. The real Hulk, for the first time." He stopped beside a wooden chair, and slowly shrugged into his wrinkled dress shirt as he said, "You know I have to leave."

"But you assume that I have to stay?" she exclaimed. She shook her head, forcing herself to calm down. Since what happened in Cape Town with the enhanced, her emotions had been all over the place, just out of her reach, like a bone hanging over a dog's nose. "I had this, um, dream. The kind that seems normal at the time, but when you wake..."

"What did you dream?

"That I was an Avenger. That I was anything more than the assassin they made me."

"I think you're being hard on yourself."

She forced a cheeky smile and a flirty attitude. "Here I was hoping that was your job." She stepped up to him, getting in his personal space. She had to know what he truly wanted.

"What are you doing?

She tilted her head up, as if she was going to try to kiss him. "I'm running with it, with you. If running's the plan, as far as you want."

"Are you out of your mind?" He pushed himself away from her, quickly moving across the room.

"I want you to understand that I'm -"

He turned on her, his voice calm despite the frantic look in his eyes. "Natasha, where can I go? Where in the world am I not a threat?

She insisted, "You're not a threat to me."

"You sure? Even if I didn't just...there's no future with me. I can't ever...I can't have this," he gestured to the room around them. "Kids. Do the math, I physically can't."

She shook her head, crossing her arms back over her stomach. Why the hell does that have to matter? "Neither can I. In the Red Room, where I was trained...where I was raised, um...they have a graduation ceremony. They sterilize you. It's...efficient. One less thing to worry about. The one thing that might matter more than a mission. It makes everything easier. Even killing." She paused, trying to break down the lump in her throat, continuing to blink tears from her eyes. In her sudden bout of weakness, she felt like she wanted to be honest. And she should. Bruce didn't deserve to be lied to. "The baby I did have, before the ceremony, was taken away from me. He was made into a killer...just like his parents." She sniffled. She had been taught that taking life was more important than giving it, than nurturing it. "You still think you're the only monster on the team?

His brows furrowed as he thought. "Steve had been asking me if I could break mental programming, or if I knew someone who could. He spared the details, but...would it be for him?" he asked, gently, taking a few steps toward her.

Her arms tightened around her torso, her fingers digging into her waist. She choked out, "Two people." At seeing his confused expression, she ducked her head. "There's no point. They're both gone. James disappeared, just like he was taught to do."

"Natasha, I should know."

"Steve can tell you more than I can."

"But I'm asking you."

"Bruce -"

"Fella done you wrong. He's the fella."

She scoffed, shaking a lock of hair out of her face. She gave in. "He's the longest surviving POW in the world. Since World War II. He was made into a weapon, physically and mentally. He was a machine. Is."

"Steve's friend Bucky."

She nodded, reaching up to wipe at her eyes. She cleared her throat. "He trained us in the Red Room. I caught his eye..." She tried to think of exactly what to say. "We made each other feel...human. When I learned I was pregnant, we tried to escape. We fought for our baby. We got just past the border of the city, and we were found. He was taken back into torture, I almost went through an abortion. Now I know what happened. They hid him and gave me a fake baby. Made me think he was born still...I saw them both, together, in DC. It all clicked into place. Then my baby broke into the tower, and he didn't believe me when I was telling him I was his mother. Tony let him go when he had a gun to his own head." A tear fell down her cheek, and she wiped it away. "Said that he didn't have anything to live for anymore. Since then, there's been no sight of either of them. Steve and Sam are trying, but they've benched me so I don't give my hopes up."

"And...being with me...that's not giving your hopes up."

"No, Bruce, I didn't -"

"You did, you can't lie your way out of that." He paused, and Natasha set herself and waited for the green to creep through his veins. Instead, he shook his head, his body visibly deflating. "But I see why you did it. If you had told me the whole story, at the very beginning, I would have tried to find a way to help you."

"I'm sorry. For playing you like I did."

Bruce sighed, but cradled the back of her neck and pressed a short kiss to her forehead. "It's okay."

She started to shake her head. "It really isn't. I gave in to my training."

"Just listen to me. I respect why you did it. Know that I'm here whenever you need anything, okay?"

Natasha hadn't expected that. Anything but that. She expected to be faced with the Other Guy. She had played with his heart for her own gain, and here he was, offering more of himself to her.

She didn't deserve it. She never had.