Everything is new, everything is foreign, everything is different, and the first time it truly sinks in for Natasha Romanoff is when she finds that her safe place has been invaded. A stuffed elephant is the last things she expects to find on the roof, yet there it is, grey and fluffy against the gravel. She knows before she picks it up that it belongs to Charlie. And Charlie's elephant being on the roof means only one thing- Charlie has been here too.

At first, a sort of confused numbness over takes her as her brain attempts to work around the truth. But there are no other options, and the anger comes. The Nest was their place. It was where they sat and held each other together. Even the rest of the team didn't dare come up unless in case of emergency, because it was their space, an unspoken code.

A code he knew, and a code he broke.

She leaves the roof immediately, ignoring her previous plans to clear her head, the elephant suffocating in her hand.

Charlie has taken away the joy of watching Clint try to out drink her, but he was being responsible.

Charlie has taken away their usual training sessions she looked forward to, since Clint was always busy.

Charlie has taken away the midnight walks in the city, as Clint was constantly tired.

And it was because of Charlie that she had been in Argentina alone, a disaster in itself.

Natasha has dealt with this. She loves the girl and helps as best she can. But this isn't something she can pass off. The Nest was her sanctuary, where her secrets were hidden from the rest of the world, and now curiosity and prying questions from a five year old have taken that away too. She pounds down the metal stairs, trying to think of any excuse, just one, as to why Clint would have done it, but not a single thing comes to her mind.

You don't break the code.

The living room is in complete chaos when she exits the stairwell. Couch cushions flipped, blankets on the floor, pillows across the rom. Kitchen cabinets remain open and there are voices everywhere.

"Did you check in that drawer?"

"Behind the TV?"

"YES! I did!"

Clint's voice is the loudest, panic stricken. Natasha stands in the doorway, watching the entropy unfold.

"Have you seen the elephant?" He asks when he sees her. "Small, grey, fluffy I guess…Charlie refuses to go to bed without it and I can't find it anywhere!"

He sounds so flustered that she almost feels bad for him, until she remembers why the elephant is in her hands in the first place. In response, she throws at him and it catches him in the side of the head. A look of relief crosses his face. "Got it!" he yells in the direction of the kitchen, and cheering follows.

"You, Cupid, owe me a clean living room," Tony says, motioning to the mess from the other room.

"Thanks Nat," Clint says, turning to Natasha and smiling. "Where'd you find it?"

Natasha stares blankly at him for a second before answering. "The roof," she says coldly, and walks off without another word.

"Someone's pissed," Tony remarks as he exits the kitchen, a pillow in one hand and blanket over his shoulder. "What did you do this time, Robin Hood?"

Clint looks between the elephant in his hands and the place Natasha had been standing not moments before. There had been a look in her eyes he isn't used to. "I…I don't know," he admits, just as confused as Tony. But all thoughts of Natasha are erased from his mind upon remembering that he has a five year old waiting upstairs for him to be her hero.

She's gone for two days before anyone realizes it, and Tony surprises everyone by being the first to notice. The team has grown accustomed to each other's irregular habits, of which Natasha has a lot, so it's only after she's skipped out on joining them for dinner twice in a row that Tony recalls he hasn't seen her around. He finds it very interesting that Steve and Pepper and Bruce are the ones who pay attention to the announcement, while a certain someone continues talking to his daughter about her day at school. Clint looks up when Tony clears his throat to find four pairs of eyes staring curiously at him.

"What?" he says defensively, looking at each of them in turn. Steve glances down at his plate. Bruce looks pointedly at the wall. Pepper shifts in her seat before standing and beginning to clear the table. The billionaire continues staring.

"I said," repeats Tony, his voice hinting anger. "That I haven't seen agent Romanoff around for a while. I suspect alien kidnapping."

Clint looks around the room as if expecting the missing assassin to just be sitting on the couch. "She'll turn up," he says, shrugging, and stands to take his and Charlie's dishes to the kitchen.

The five year old looks at Tony with wide eyes from across the table. "Where's Aunt Tasha?" she asks, confused. "Is she coming back?"

No one answers because no one knows.

It's in his lab latter that night that Tony realizes he actually cares. He may not know Natasha well, but, besides Clint, he's known her longer than the others, even if she was infiltrating his company under SHIELD orders at the time, and he knows there's a reason she left, especially without telling anyone; and watching how unconcerned Clint had been over and over in his mind, he thinks he knows what that might be.

Natasha returns as mysteriously as she disappeared and Bruce Banner is the first to know, simply because the shower in the room above his lab turns on, and the room above his lab just so happens to belong to her. He keeps it to himself as long as possible, knowing that Natasha doesn't like unnecessary attention, but the shower is still running when he is joined by Tony, and it takes Tony all of two seconds to figure out what it means. He's gone before Bruce even opens his mouth.

They argue for ten minutes down the hallway from her room, he and Pepper, but no matter what Pepper says, Tony is adamant about talking to her first. Pepper walks off in defeat, throwing a warning of being careful over her shoulder. He knocks but receives no answer, as he expected. The door is locked and Tony smirks at the thought that he could be kept out, pulling the master key from his pocket. Slowly, he opens the door and walks in.

The room falls back into complete darkness once the door clicks shut behind him. "Go away, Stark," comes a quiet voice from the far corner. Tony blinks and shapes begin to unfold.

"Damn," he says. "I was counting on the element of surprise."

"You glow, idiot."

"Right, I do," he says, looking down at the blue circle of light that is clearly visible through his shirt. He follows her voice until he finds her, sitting on the floor with her knees pulled to her chest and her head down. He runs into her on purpose and she punches his leg.

"How rude," he says with an exaggerated gasp of offense.

"Go away, Tony," she whispers, but the viciousness that is usually in her words is gone. He doesn't leave but slides down the wall next to her.

"Wow. Um, this is weird," he coughs uncomfortably. "I don't usually get this close to people." When she remains silent, he continues. "I know how you feel."

"No, you don't," she snaps.

"Actually, contrary to popular belief, I don't know everything. But I know this. I lived this," he says, ignoring her. "Neglected. Like he doesn't care anymore." She shifts her position and Tony can feel her eyes on his face, like it's burning his skin. "I get it. Clint is busy with his kid, trying to be a good parent. The two of you haven't talked normally in weeks."

"He took her to the roof."

"What does that –"

"You don't understand, Tony. The roof was our place and now it's not, because she's been there. Secrets are what we have up hidden up there, Clint and I. Years and years of secrets that she can get to, and that's not okay." She takes a deep breath and Tony can't help but notice that for once she doesn't sound angry. She sounds scared and helpless and alone, and like she's trying not to cry. "We have a code, Tony, and I'm not sure if you get that, Mr. Genius. But you don't break the code, and he did."

An uneasy silence falls and Tony contemplates giving her a hug. He's not a touchy-feely person, but she sounds like Pepper does when she's upset, like she needs someone there. Upon deciding that he likes his face the way it is, however, he squeezes her shoulder instead. He's not the one she needs anyway. Natasha doesn't pull away or shrug him off, and he takes it as an invitation to continue. "Are you going to give me any hints as to why you're hiding out in the dark?"

She shakes her head and a shiver is sent down his spin and a tangle of wet curls hit his face. When she stops moving, she sighs. "There was a boy, eight or nine years old. The man we were after, he grabbed him off the street because he saw the shadow. And the shadow was an idiot. His mom was screaming, and…I've heard that sound so many times."

Even though it's dark, he's never seen her look so…broken, and he can't help but wonder what it would be like to be Clint, to have this access pass all the time to the real Natasha Romanoff.

She doesn't talk for a second, and when she speaks he can tell she's fighting off…tears, he guesses. He didn't even think Natasha had the ability to cry. She takes a deep breath and Tony isn't sure if she's going to continue. "They had me on the roof as a mark. I had a shot. I had a clear shot right to him, and I hesitated. I hesitated and the kid died. Bullet through his head."

"Natasha –"

"I don't hurt children, Tony. Children are innocent, but they always end up dying because of me."

Tony closes his eyes for a second and tries to imagine what that might be like, to have her life. And he can't. He can't even comprehend how hard it would be to get up in the morning after living through something like that, especially for that many years. And it's with that thought that he stands and leaves her in the dark. Natasha sighs once the door closes and wipes her eyes, untangling herself from the ground and sliding between the cold sheets of her bed. Sleep will not be present tonight, but at least the mattress is more comfortable than the floor.

He finds Clint in the lounge, sitting on the couch with his daughter draped across his lap. He looks half asleep, but Tony doesn't care. "You have five seconds," he says. "Five seconds to get downstairs."

"And do what?" Clint replies, yawning.

"She needs you, Barton," is all he says before walking off.

Clint Barton looks down at his sleeping daughter, twisting a piece of her hair around his finger as he listens to Tony and Pepper whisper in the kitchen. It's urgent and worried whispering, and he hears Steve's voice every now and then too. But there's one thing he's sure about, and it is that the subject of their conversation is Natasha. Tony's words repeat in his head, and the fear comes. Because if she talked to Tony about it, something is definitely wrong. Clint gently shakes Charlie awake and she grunts and rolls a little on her side.

"Daddy's gotta go talk to Aunt Tasha, okay babe?" He whispers in her ear. He looks around the living room, catching eyes with Steve, who has magically appeared in a chair. Steve nods as if to know what the question is going to be. "Steve is going to take you up to bed, alright?"

She nods slightly in reply and holds her elephant tighter. Clint picks her up and passes her off to Steve, whispering his thanks before walking quickly out of the room. Both Tony and Pepper stick their heads out of the kitchen at the sound of his retreating footsteps and watch Steve walk off with the girl.

"I told you he'd go," Pepper whispers to Tony, a triumphant smile on her face.

"So Bird Boy has some brains after all." He rolls his eyes, earning him a jab in the ribs.

He doesn't enter her room right away but instead stands with his forehead resting on the wood, for how long he isn't sure. He doesn't understand her sometimes, her strange moods and actions. Why she would leave without telling him. She never leaves without at least promising she'll come back alive, which was the first hint that something was up.

Or had this started before then? The last time they'd had a normal conversation was before Charlie had come, and since then he'd just been so distracted by trying not to fail as a parent, he hadn't really noticed. He hadn't notice the way she pulled away, back behind her walls. Now that he thinks about it, this could have started way back when she got home from Argentina.

This wasn't just about the roof. That had been his one of many mistakes, and he knew it the moment Charlie had asked and he agreed. The Nest was theirs and no one else's and he realizes now that he needs it to stay that way for himself too, if not just for her. It's their place, where he can be Clint and she can be Natasha and for a brief moment there are no guns or explosions and death threats; just Clint and Natasha, in their simplest forms, lifting the world off their shoulders together. The roof was nothing more than breaking point. He closes his eyes tight and mentally slaps himself. It's his job to take care of her, and he's failing.

He isn't sure what he'll find, but he opens the door quietly and slips in. It's dark though he knows where he's going, and the dark shape doesn't even move as he pulls back the sheets of the bed and slides in next to her. For a while he just stares at the ceiling, attempting to turn his thoughts into words. Her breathing is all he hears. One sliver of New York light has gotten through the tightly drawn shades and it falls across the curve of her back, highlighting one portion of the red curls on the pillow.

"I don't know if you're awake or not, but I just want you to listen for minute," he whispers because it seems like a good place to start. "I really screwed up, and I know that now. Stark had a fun time telling me to. I'm not trying to make excuses, but nothing's been easy. It's actually quite hard. But that's not the point. I'm supposed to take care of you, and I'm not." He stops and lets the silence fall for a minute before continuing. "You never told me what happened in Argentina, but I realize now that I never asked. And I think that's when this started. You were falling apart and I wasn't there to catch you. I am supposed to be there, dammit, and I wasn't."

He stares at her back, running his fingers through loose strands of her hair. "If you are listening, Tasha, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry I left you alone."

She rolls over and stares at him, green eyes wide, and although she doesn't speak, he understands. It's not your fault.

Yes, it is.

"No, Clint. It's not," she whispers. "I didn't want to trouble you with my problems, when I came home from Argentina. You were busy and tired and happy with Charlie and I haven't seen you that happy in a while. You spend so much of your time holding me together that it's not fair to you." He tucks a curl behind her ear. Often, their conversations occur more in words not said, but Natasha knows this is something he needs to hear with his ears, not his eyes. "I thought I could handle it. I thought I was strong enough. But I'm not."

Clint watches as she collapses, almost in slow motion. The tears are silent at first and he pulls her into him, the sobs muffled by his shirt. "Natasha Romanoff, if there's one thing you are, it's strong. You are the strongest person I know," he whispers in her ear. His eyes close as flashes of red hair, shaking hands, and that look of pure fear he will never forget fill his mind, dominant memories from the first time he met her all those years ago. Quiet falls once more as her sobbing subsides. Neither of them moves.

"Do you remember Canada?" He asks.

A small laugh answers him. "Which of the five million times we've been there are you referring to?"

"I don't know…pick one."

"The time with the robot bear. That was one of the better journeys up north."

"Do you remember his hands?"

"They were as big as your ego."

"Giant metal fists. What's more terrifying than giant metal fists?"

"Piranhas. Fire. Tony when you cover his face with whip cream while he's asleep."

"Good point…did we blow that one up?"

"Nah. The robot bear was the one where we dumped that acid shit on him."

He thinks on this a moment. "Didn't he try to eat you?"

"Yeah. You shot an arrow into his eye and he threw me into a wall. Took out half his face and shattered my wrist." She pulls away just enough to be able to see him. He notices that the panic in her eyes has subsided and wipes the last tear from her cheek. Her gaze locks with his. Thanks.

He smiles. Hey. What are partners for?

She rolls so that her back is once again to him but holds his arm around her waist. Don't go.

His hand finds hers. Wouldn't dream of it.