Natasha POV:

Talking to Pepper is like a release - the foulness, the blackness, flooding out of me like a torrent. Leaving me - not cleansed, never that - but purged, empty.

Talking to Pepper is like holding onto an anchor - she gives me something to hold onto, a tether to keep me safe, a rock to cling to, a still place where I can at least begin to think about my life.

It's not easy - for so long, I've always had the unconscious assumption that what I had was *normal*.

It takes the reflection in her horrified eyes to really bring it home that it wasn't.

Logically, I've known that it isn't.

Most people aren't prepared in the ways that I was.

Most people are weak, untempered.

Most people wouldn't survive.

I'm not most people - I'm special.

A specialist tool, finely crafted, for a singular purpose.

But...

One of the lessons they taught in manipulation, the lessons that I learned so well is -

Everyone on some level believes they are normal. That everyone else works the same way they do.

And Natasha, for all her many virtues, is nowhere near self-reflective enough to ever apply that to herself.

Quite simply, it didn't affect the mission, so it didn't matter.

And now...

And now, I've exposed enough for one night.

Too much, really.

And now I have to get out of here before the tide turns.

Before the reality of what I've revealed here tonight can really sink in.

Before the numbness fades and everything rushes back in.

Even now, I can see it on the horizon, a wall of water heading straight for me.

Under its impact, even Natasha is going to shatter.

Between the part of her that accepts Pepper, that values her, that even considers part of my greater whole.

The part that was disturbed by her answering the door the way she did, because a danger to Pepper has become a danger to us.

And the other part. The part that considers Pepper a liability, a weakness.

Because she is, she really is.

Before her, before the last few nights, there was no one that could make me question myself quite like she can.

Could make me have concerns, priorities, apart from the mission.

It's a flaw.

She causes, is causing, imperfections in even Natasha.

She's a threat.

And Natasha has always known how to deal with threats.

I have to leave.

*Now.*

I duck down and twist away from the gentle hold one of Pepper's hands has established on the back of my head, and disengage my hand from the grip of the other before she can react. I'm almost at the door before she can so much as say a single word.

"Natasha?"

The tone is... concerned.

And it's, somehow, enough to hold me.

For the moment.

I can hear her moving quietly in stockinged feet; track her by the itch in the back of my head.

But even though I can't move forward, I also can't look behind.

Because if I do so, I can't help thinking that I'll be caught, lost, ensnared until the pressure builds and there's nothing I can do except scream.

And I don't scream.

"What's wrong?" she asks softly, from a distance of almost four feet behind me.

Not enough to save her if Natasha lashes out, I can't help thinking.

"I have to leave," I tell the door.

There's a momentary pause. "Are you going to be alright?"

As soon as she's away from her, one part of her ((me)) thinks.

But even as she does so, another part knows that's a lie.

She's not going to be alright at all.

Not until she ((I)) has defined this new reality, about who she is now.

((And the most worrying thing, the scariest thing, is that they both sound like Natasha.))

((And if there are two Natashas, who I do follow?))

((Who is perfect?))

((Who can keep me safe?))

((Who can I trust, when both of them answer 'Me!'))

"Yes," Natasha, one of them, replies, in a clipped tone, rubbed raw and exposed by the events of the night. "I require some time by myself."

"Are you coming back?"

"Not tonight," Natasha says, then relents and answers the unspoken question as well. "Maybe not for the next few days. Business. But I will see you again."

Natasha, both of them, cannot help but know this to be true.

"Take care, then," Pepper says, and Natasha *feels* her approach, freezes as the battle between the two halves keeps her locked in place, until Pepper presses a kiss to the back of her head, releasing her.

"I would ask you that you do the same," one Natasha asks.

Unfortunately, the other one thinks.

Pepper POV:

The night time darkness fills my room, the only illumination the lights from the city filtering through my curtains.

It's enough to make out what might be my ceiling, or just my memory crossed with my imagination.

It's hard to tell.

I should be asleep.

I should have gone to sleep several hours ago, but I haven't been able to rest, haven't been able to let go enough even to close my eyes for long.

It's not that I got a lot of sleep last night, or that much any night since the invasion.

And there're a thousand things vying for my attention, at least a hundred of which I'm going to have to get sorted later today.

But none of them are what're circling through my head on repeat.

Natasha.

On the surface smooth and efficient and even affectionate in her own unique way.

Running hot and running cold underneath, once I managed to scratch deep enough.

Just running a lot of the time, I can't help thinking.

I can't help worrying about her, worrying whether or not I'm doing the right thing and whether there even is a right thing to do.

And I can't help thinking that some time away from SHIELD, to find herself, might be the best thing she could do.

And Tony.

My crush, turned to love, burned out and become...

I don't know.

I don't want to lose him as a friend, but he's so... Tony that I'm not sure there's another option for us just yet.

Maybe I should just leave him and the company as soon as I can, make the break clean and painless as possible.

And leave all the other people behind, Happy and JARVIS and Julia and Kevin and...

I sigh, and examine the ceiling once again.

This decision, these decisions.

They don't just affect me.

Not even just me and Natasha, me and Tony.

They have consequences, ripples flowing outwards.

I contemplate the ceiling again, and note, to my dismay, that I can see a bit more than the last time I checked.

Dawn is rapidly approaching.

And I've still got a thousand things to think about, and a hundred things to decide.

Natasha POV:

Dawn arrives.

Natasha wakes, flicks her eyes open, considers.

In the morning light, things are simple.

There is the mission, and nothing else that's important at the moment.

Johnny won't be up yet, not for several hours at least.

Black Widow would at least give him until midday before requiring a decision.

She checks both phones, Black Widow's one and Romanoff's one, turning them on long enough to retrieve any messages, then turning them off again.

Nothing.

As expected.

She could get up now, with only a minimal loss to efficiency.

But there's no reason to even take that much of a hit.

She lays back down on the bed and closes her eyes.

With the ease of practice, she's asleep again almost instantly.

Later in the day, after she's awoken again and been conscious for over an hour, things aren't quite that simple.

Natasha can still *feel* the cracks, sense the vibrations of things still grinding around within her, changing.

Natasha is a construct of stability - squeeze her, and she just becomes even harder.

But this isn't something she can defend against like that.

This is a purely internal attack.

And the usual methods of dealing with this just aren't *working*.

Change has happened to her before - the decision to join SHIELD, to stop existing quite so purely as just an instrument being the largest one that she can remember.

But even that had just been a smooth continuation of other, smaller, changes.

It had been logical.

It had made sense.

This, this does not.

She *wants*.

It's... disconcerting.

The call from Johnny, when it comes, is almost a relief.

It's business, something she can concentrate on.

"Yes?" Black Widow asks as she answers the phone.

"You're asking for too much," he says in a rush, the words almost tripping over themselves. "We..."

"Not over the phone," she says coldly.

There's an audible snap, and the word flow ceases.

"Where did you want to meet?" she asks. "So we can discuss this."

There's a few moments pause. "Um, I can get us into Night's Kiss for this afternoon."

"Unacceptable. We've already met there once." Not that she had expected better from him, but Black Widow isn't the sort to let the opportunity for a lesson slide by. Even if it's not one of the fun ones. "Be on the corner two blocks north of it in two hours time. I'll meet you there."

Two hours later and he's there, pacing twitchily on the corner.

She pulls up in a rented car. "Get in."

He does so with satisfyingly little argument and she drives off.

"So," she says after a minute of silence. "You have an answer."

He swallows. "Yes. Two million. It's too much. I've been told to offer you half a mill, tops."

Black Widow looks at him coldly out of the corner of her eye. "Unacceptable. These weapons are worth at least twenty million to the right customer. Maybe twice, three times that, if you manage to corner the market."

*That* catches his interest. "Corner the market?"

She shrugs. "There are a number of these weapons on the streets, in ones and twos. You grab them, and anyone who wants to get hold of them has to deal with you. And you get to charge what you want, without worrying about them finding some two bit thug."

He looks at her suspiciously. "Nice. Why're you telling me this? You gonna help with that part too?"

"If I had that much time on my hands, I wouldn't have cut you in. I just want to get my two million, and go. But if you don't want this opportunity, get out now, before you waste more of my time." Her last words come out, very intentionally, as a threat, and Johnny goes a little pallid.

He doesn't ask to get out, though, and just chews his lip thoughtfully.

"How much heat is this going to call down?"

"Eventually? A lot. But everyone's busy enough that you should have a couple of weeks before they can really crack down."

He nods, slowly. "This coming from the feds?"

"You haven't paid for those kinds of details yet."

He nods slowly. "I think I can find you your cash."

Black Widow smiles thinly. "Good. Can you come up with it by tonight?"

"You wanna move that quickly?"

"This window isn't going to last for long."

She can see him thinking. "Okay. I can work with that."

"I'll text you at around eight tonight, with an address and a time. Be there with a crew and a truck. You're going to need to move several large crates."

He smiles, relieved that this has gone so well. "Can do."

"Oh, and Johnny?" her voice cuts into his relief. "Make sure that they're a group who'll do exactly what I say. No fuckups, because if there is, I'll take it out of their hide, and then..." She doesn't need to complete the sentence, and he gulps.

"Understood," he says, as she pulls up about a block from where she picked him up. "Pleasure doing business with you."

Black Widow sincerely doubts that.

But that's alright.

She's not in this business to make friends.

Not those kind of friends, anyway.

Pepper POV:

Around mid-morning I manage to find the time to phone the head of facilities for the Stark Tower.

"Julia," I say. "How're you doing?" I ask sympathetically.

"We're holding together," she replies, and I can't help noticing that she evades talking about herself. "My people have really appreciated all the support you've been offering."

"Have the extra staff been working out?"

"They've been great." She pauses for a second. "It was really good of you to offer extra paid leave and counselling to everyone."

"It was the least I could do. You know, you could take advantage of that as well. I'm sure I could fly someone in take over for a few days."

She laughs, but the sound is a world away from her usual rich tones. "No, thank you. At least here I'm doing something. Besides, I wouldn't trust anyone else to know how to look after my tower properly."

"There is that," I agree. "I do have an additional, minor request to add to your already overflowing list - if you have anyone covering the fifty-fourth floor, I don't suppose they could check Tony's lab once a day or so and make sure that the rubbish isn't overflowing too badly.

"You worried that you're going to lose your man to a takeout container avalanche?"

It's the nearest I've heard her come to a joke since the invasion, but I can't help wincing at the reminder of my ex relationship. Even before we'd actually gotten together, back when Tony just flirted with me as the mood struck him, there'd always been rumours. About what we really did together, about how I got and how I maintained my position.

When things had gone public, I was fairly sure that those rumours had just been confirmed in many minds.

And when the breakup becomes common knowledge - as it is going to have to at some point, Tony's scheming aside - it's going to be seen as *my* fall from grace.

Quite apart from the difficulties of working for my ex, there's going to be pressure from beneath, people who think that they are going to be able to get away with more, to bypass me to gain access to Tony, to ignore me now that I *obviously* have no more influence with the *actual* boss.

And I can't help the nagging fear that they might not be entirely incorrect.

But enough of such worries.

That's not why I'm speaking to Julia just at the moment.

"Oh, Tony's surprisingly capable of taking care of himself when faced with those kinds of threats. He does have guests, though. And JARVIS asked me to look into it."

"Oh," she says, her voice flat.

"Oh?"

"It's not that I don't appreciate having a computer keeping an eye on the building, Ms Potts," she says formally, carefully.

"But?"

"I didn't want to bother you with this before, but the situation is becoming more and more problematic. If I could clarify, who is actually in charge of building maintenance, JARVIS or me?"

"You are, of course," I hasten to reassure her. "Though I'd appreciate it if you took JARVIS' advice into consideration - he's has access to a lot of information that flag up problems before they become serious."

"Good," she says, releasing a breath.

"What prompted this?"

"It's been coming up with a lot of requests recently. Ordinarily, I wouldn't have a problem fulfilling them, but the way things are at the moment, the staff just doesn t have the time. It's been getting insistent, though, even cutting in on internal building communications to address the staff directly. I just wanted to make sure that I wasn't going beyond my authority overriding it."

"What kind of requests?"

"Mainly things like cleaning security camera lenses, repairing the lockdown mechanism on any of the doors that needed it. That kind of thing. Oh, and all the corridors have to spotless, at all times."

"Oh. Well, some of those things do sound important, but I'll trust your judgment about what needs prioritising. I'll talk with JARVIS to make sure he doesn't bother you again."

"I'd appreciate it," she says.

We talk for a little longer, before hanging up and I'm left contemplating the phone, wondering what tack I'm going to take.

If JARVIS was a human, it'd be easy.

If this was more obviously a technical issue, I'd just leave it to Tony.

But he doesn't seem to fit easily into either camp.

And if I do pass this onto Tony, I'm fairly sure that he'll just wipe the current version from the tower's computers and do a fresh install.

But if JARVIS is human enough to have these eccentricities, completely separate from any other version I've seen, doesn't that mean that I owe him at least enough to talk to him first myself?

But am I really qualified to do this?

Is *anyone*?

It's a not unfamiliar feeling, after having spent the previous two nights talking with Natasha.

And, as I try and make my decision about what to do, I can't help noticing that I haven't had a call or even a text from Tony since I left him yesterday.

Silence from Tony.

That's always an ominous thing.

It usually means he's planning something.

Which is exactly what I need at the moment.

Great.

Author's note: For anyone that is interested I'm being interviewed this Sunday (the 24th February) at 10pm UK time/5pm EST/2pm PST, and there will be some Avengers based questions, as well as some questions on the other fandoms I've written for. You should be able to find details or the podcast (post the 24th) at blogtalkradio DOT com SLASH allaine.