Disclaimer: I do nut (not) own the characters.

Her entire fucking body hurt like hell.

Natasha clenched her teeth and grunted when she pulled out a shard of glass with a pair of tweezers from her left thigh, dropping it on the small tray of medical supplies, precariously balancing on the edge of the tub, with other pieces of glass. She grabbed the once white and pristine washcloth, now a bloodied rag, and placed it against the reopened wound and closed her eyes, allowing her head to rest against the bathroom wall. She applied more pressure to the wound, feeling the blood run between her fingers, and wincing when a quick shot of pain went through her leg.

It was two in the hellish morning and she had just barely returned home from her mission in Italy. Natasha was sore, she was tired, she was bleeding inside her and Steve's bathtub in their shared apartment and trying very hard not to spew profanities in risk of waking the man. The beginning of her mission had gone off without a hitch and she thought the rest of it would've gone smoothly. Her eyes snapped open at the thought and an angry growl escaped her throat. She thought the entire thing was going to go smoothly.

Until the new god damn radio boy SHIELD sent along with her on the quinjet blew her entire fucking cover and god damn she was so close to retrieving the needed information to complete her mission. Oh, but no, the scrawny boy back on the quinjet had opened his mouth to ask for status report when she had strictly asked for radio silence over her comm before venturing off on her own.

She knew where her mark would be and had made a bee line straight towards the almost empty bar located in the outskirts of the small town. She casually walked in and sat at the bar, ordering a Birra Moretti and listened carefully to the conversation happening a few tables away from her. The illegal drugs dealer was close to giving away the location of one of his distribution points to one of his clients when the radio comm disguised as a bracelet had started to crackle. She glared at it quickly, hoping that would silence it, until the loud and oblivious boy on the other end asked repeatedly for a status report. Using her code name Black Widow.

All hell broke loose in the bar after that.

The dealer had quickly managed to knock his table over, using it as a shield from the pelting of bullets Natasha gave at it once she pulled out her Glocks from under her shirt. She jumped behind the bar for cover, narrowly missing their own barrage of bullets, before standing back up and tossing one of her taser disks at one of the gunners, successfully knocking him down and out. Another one of the dealer's lackeys had managed to lodge a bullet in her left bicep, causing her to recoil, giving the dealer and his client time to run out of the bar.

Oh no you're not, god damn it, she thought angrily as she tried to make her way out from behind the bar, however, more lackeys came in shooting at her, and she had failed too see two of them dragging out the unconscious one. When there was a slight pause in gunfire, she peeked her head over the bar and managed to see the lackeys filing out in a hurry. Ignoring the pain in her left arm, she pushed herself over the bar in time to see the last lackey, a coy smile on his face as he pulled out a small grenade from his blazer and threw it in a trashcan by the door. Natasha drew her gun quickly enough to shoot him in the shoulder, but his colleagues had managed to collect him in just enough time. She called in for back up over her comm and noted that the target was on the run.

Realizing a bomb was about to go off, Natasha tucked her gun back into it's respective holster, and made a break to the door. However, the first step she took happened to be when the small grenade went off. It was a small nonlethal explosion, but it had just enough force to blow out the windows and knock the spy off her feet and crashing into the display of beers and wines lining the wall behind the bar. The wind was knocked out of her, but she had managed to stay conscious the entire time. Her ears were ringing from the blast and she could feel every inch of her body screaming in pain and could feel the shards of glass embedded into different parts of her.

She had been collected a moment later by STRIKE team members who had managed to subdue the dealer, his lackeys, and his client, who were now all back at the new location and re-operating SHIELD HQ. When Natasha had collected herself enough to walk, and made it back onto the quinjet, she made another bee line to the radio boy sitting behind the pilot. When the boy had looked up in time from his transmitter to see the fury written across thee Black Widow's face, he knew he was dead.

She had grabbed him by the front of his shirt, lifted him up and out of his seat and up against the wall, agitating the bullet wound and causing it to bleed profusely, while having her forearm pressed against the windpipe of the new SHIELD member. She watched with a cold smile as he squirmed, trying to release himself from her grasp while she muttered under her breath, loud enough for him to hear, the one hundred and twenty five different ways she'd be able to kill him and how she could make each way slow and torturing.

Killing people was easy, making them suffer was an art; she had told him before dropping him and watching him cower. After that she was swarmed by a STRIKE member with a medical kit. She allowed him to get the bullet out and close the wound with stitches, but she had directed him away for any further medical treatment. She'd take care of the rest when she got home, thanks to the knock off super solider serum the Red Room had given her.

After the eight hour flight back from Italy, the moment the quinjet touched down back at HQ, she headed straight to the garage to her car. Mission briefing would be the following morning, so there would be no Fury waiting for her on the hellipad and she dismissed her team quickly. After a quick and uncomfortable drive back to her DC apartment, she managed to sneak in quietly, albeit painfully, and into the bedroom where her super soldier was quietly snoring away on his stomach in their bed.

She had been gone for roughly three days and noticed Steve had been laying diagonally across the bed, his upper body on her side. He had missed her.

A smile tugged at her lips and she couldn't help but let it show; she had missed Steve too.

She made her way over to him and leaned over to kiss him on his forehead. Her smile getting bigger when he attempted to swat away whatever had fluttered on his head. Making her way back over to the dresser, she shimmied out of her blood crusted catsuit and dropped it to the floor, leaving her in her undergarments, and grabbed a pair of sleeping shorts, another set of underwear, snagged one of Steve's t-shirts and padded her way into the bathroom.

Where she was now. Currently sitting in the tub bleeding, plucking out any leftover glass from her arms and legs and seething over the stupidity of the new SHIELD agent that had caused her this trouble. Nick would definitely get an earful about this at the briefing later on.

Natasha sighed and looked back down at her thigh, slowly peeling away the rag from her wound to see it had stopped bleeding. Grabbing a needle and stitching thread, she began the tedious process again of closing one more of her many wounds.

"Nat?"

It was deep and husky with sleep, but she could here the relief in his voice. She turned her head to the bathroom door, where Steve stood rubbing his eyes with a boyish charm. It pulled at her emotions and she wanted nothing more than to get out from the tub and walk over to him and kiss him so he knew she was here with him. But she couldn't just yet, she still had a couple more cuts to clean up. So she opted for a quiet, "Hey sleepy head, I'm back."

He didn't seem to hear her, and that was fine, but once Steve had finished rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he looked over her, frowning at the gauze wrapped over her bicep and the medical kit sitting on the edge of the tub. "Why are you bleeding in the bathroom?" Apparently he was still in the haze of sleep, because the answer couldn't have been easier enough. But, when the words left his mouth, his eyes widened and he quickly dashed to the side of the tub and knelt next to her.

"Nat, you're bleeding in the bathroom." He sounded more awake and frantic as skimmed over her appearance, more attentive to the details this time as he realized she had been wounded on her mission.

She sat in the tub in her undergarments, most of their white washcloths stained with her blood, and he frowned knowing they'd have to go out and buy new ones. He watched as she finished sewing up a gash on her thigh and looked at the medical tray. Bloody medical instruments, clean and bloodied gauze, cotton balls, cleaning solution, and numerous shards of glass littered it. He picked up a particularly large piece of glass and noticed it had paper on it and began his insistent observation at the glass shard.

Natasha could only roll her tired eyes at him. "I'm fine Steve, really. Y'know, cheaper Soviet version of your super soldier serum? It comes in handy. I'll be fine by morning." She shook her head and went back to finishing stitching her last larger wound when she noticed Steve had taken priority in inspecting the glass instead.

He picked and wiped at the blood covering the writing and furrowed his brows together in confusion. He looked up at Natasha, who had finished her stitching and was expectantly staring at him. "Natasha," he started, his voice hard as he continued staring at her, "what happened to you? Why does this say birra?" He set the glass back down on the tray and reached out to grab his girlfriend's free hand.

She closed her eyes, wrapped her fingers with Steve's, and grounded out a heavy sigh layered with tiredness. Setting the needle and thread back on the tray, she ran her other hand through her hair, frowning when she pulled a shard of glass out and threw it on the tray with the others. "A stupid new radio boy they sent along with me blew my entire god damn cover. The target's lackeys threw a grenade in the bar and it sent me flying back into a wall of liquor." She gestured to herself, "That's why I'm all cut up. I'm surprised I don't have hearing damage. My ears were ringing for hours."

Natasha grabbed the bottle of cleaning solution from the tray and poured it over her last two untreated cuts, hissing in pain when the liquid ran over them. She gripped Steve's hand tighter, his tightening in response as comfort, and put the cleaning solution down. "Birra," she continued as if nothing happened, and grabbed a cotton ball and began dabbing at her wounds, cleaning away the dried and crusted blood, "is a type of Italian beer. I had Birra Moretti, but there are two other types of Birra. I'll have to buy some for you." When she finished cleaning her cuts, she tossed the bloody cotton ball back onto the tray and turned to Steve.

He smiled slightly at that, knowing she was fully aware that he couldn't get drunk, but still enjoyed the taste from time to time. "I like the sound of that. I've never had Italian beer." His smile grew bigger as he watched her eyes light up with the chance to share something new with him, and she tried sitting up a little straighter then, but his smile quickly went away as he saw a wince of pain on her facial features.

"If you're cut up this badly," he began, his eyes becoming stern and his voice soft, but commanding, "then why aren't you down at the HQ infirmary?" He pulled his hand holding Natasha's away and gently placed it against her cheek, bring up his other hand to mirror the action. He made her look at him, and he saw something flash across her eyes that disappeared just as quickly as it came. "You know how I get when you're banged up like this, and I know how stubborn you are when it comes to seeing medical professionals, but why are you always so against it?"

Natasha could only sigh for what felt like the have hundreth time that night as she pulled away from Steve's hands and grabbed the front of his shirt. She quickly cut off any sort of comment from him as she sealed his lips with hers roughly. Telling how much she cared for some wasn't easy, and if she ever did, it was told indirectly, left encased in one of her obscene riddles. So, kissing Steve was the only easy and most direct way she could tell him how she felt. The kiss itself was gentle, needing, and pleading.

I'm okay, please don't worry. I don't want you to worry. I love you, you know that?

Steve's own kiss was just as soft and understanding as he kissed her back. Knowing it wasn't easy for Natasha to share personal things unless she was ready. Clint had told him that, and he had fully understood it when a ghost from her past showed up on one of her missions. She had killed him, no questions asked, and she had been completely different for a week after that. Then she finally told him that the man, Vasily, had been one her companions in the Red Room, her husband's friend. That was another thing he was surprised to hear. That she had already been married at such a young age.

I'm sorry I worry, I love you to much to lose you. I know, I love you too.

I hope my writing steadily improves as I get back into writing fanfics. Especially since it's been a hell of a long time since I've written anything.