#ironwidow fanfic
Request from @shamelessmarvellove: What about tonynat in age of ultron at the barton farm instead of brucenat?
Sorry this took so long to write! I’ve come to the conclusion that Age of Ultron is a mess beyond fixing lol, but hopefully I made this scene a little less awkward and also addressed Natasha’s trauma a with a little more sensitivity.
Trigger warning for mentions of past child abuse (Natasha talks about her Red Room experience in less detail than in AOU)
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The Barton farm was one of the places Natasha felt the safest. But even now, sitting on the bed in the guest room she always stayed in, with her knees tucked under her chin and her arms around her legs, she couldn’t shake off the chill of the Scarlet Witch’s touch.
With a flick of the fingers and a few red sparks, she was transported back to when she was a little girl, at the mercy of a cruel headmistress and even crueler men. When she ran away from the Red Room, she promised herself that she would never let herself be terrified or out of control again. But now, seeing how easily her precious control could slip out of her mind’s grasp, she knew that the scared little girl would always be a part of her.
A footstep on the floorboard outside and a knock on the door, and Natasha immediately uncurled herself, affecting a more casual position with her legs crossed. “Yes?” she called, expecting Clint.
Instead it was Tony who opened the door. “Hey,” he said quietly. At the sight of her boyfriend she relaxed into her pose, inhabiting it more naturally.
“Hey.”
He stepped in awkwardly in socked feet, making sure to shut the door behind him. None of their teammates knew about their relationship, except for Clint, and Natasha only told him because she knew about Laura and it was only fair.
There was a cut on the bridge of Tony’s nose and a bruise beginning to form on his brow. Marks from his fight with the Hulk.
“How’s Bruce?” Natasha asked.
“In the shower,” Tony said. “It helps him decompress after Hulking out, I think.”
Like a sensory deprivation chamber, Natasha thought. That had been comforting for her, too, in her early days after the Red Room. “Good,” was what she said out loud. “He needs it, probably. How about Steve?”
“Pfft. Golden boy is fine. Totally unshaken by his encounter with the Maximoff girl. Laura has him helping with chopping wood in the front lawn.”
“And you?”
“You know me,” he said with bravado. “What’s a throwdown with the Hulk? Just another day at the office.”
Natasha would have chuckled but all she managed was a watery half-smile.
A shift in Tony’s expression—a slight softening of the features, a relaxing of the brow. He moved closer to the bed and sat on the rug at her feet, close enough to touch but respecting her space. She reached out to him, tracing her hand over the black bruise forming on his forehead, over the ridge of his brow and down his cheekbone.
“How about you?” he said in a low voice. “You okay?”
The answer was reflexive. “Always.”
“You sure about that? Cause you look”—he faltered as she withdrew her hand and fixed him with a cold look that would have cowed someone with weaker nerves or stronger self-preservation instincts—“like you’d seen some shit.”
“It’s fine.” Her lips quirked up bitterly. “I’ve lived through it once.”
“Lived through it—” Tony’s eyebrows shot up in realization. “It was a memory.”
Natasha nodded. “The Red Room.” She confirmed. Her fingers curled into a fist, tight enough to dig into her palms. The sharp pinch grounding her to the present, to the fibers of the bedsheet in the Bartons’ farmhouse. So that she wouldn’t be lost again in the cold, sterile halls she was raised in. Tony slipped his hand into hers and her grip fixed around his hand instead, a different, solid kind of anchor. She forced herself to meet his gaze—one more thing to tie her to the present. “I thought I was done feeling that way. So powerless. Like a victim.” She spat the word out.
“Natasha.” Tony knelt up so that their eyes were level. “Look at me”—he squeezed her knee—“you are not a victim.”
She regarded him with anguish, but he knew enough about self-loathing to see that it was directed at herself. “You’re not a victim,” he repeated. “You got away from it.”
“Yeah, but not before they did… everything they did to me.” Natasha’s grip around his hand tightened even more. “They made me into a killing machine. A monster of their making. And the worst part is, I let them.”
