WHILE THE TOWER WAS MASSIVE, SHE COULDN'T HELP BUT FIND IT RATHER SMALL. There were only so many places she was able to go—where she wanted to go, rather, as Tony refused to restrict her to certain floors, though he did explain that she couldn't leave and she couldn't be seen by his employees—and it had gotten rather mundane as time went on.

Of course, she was appreciative, but she was quickly growing bored, especially with all the others being allowed to come and go as they pleased, though they hardly left for long, Clint explaining that he and Natasha were supposed to leave, but with her now in the Tower, it was best they stayed.

"Hey, sweetheart, how's it going?" Tony asked, looking out from where he had his head shoved into the fridge, searching for food.

She was surprised to see him out of the lab, what with how hard he worked, as well as JARVIS explaining to her that Tony often forgot to eat and it was up to him and many others to drag him out and shove him either into the kitchen or into bed. Nevertheless, she took it in stride, happy for some change of pace.

"I'm bored," she said, hopping up to sit on the counter, because that was her usual spot at this point.

Tony smiled from where he was still looking around for food, standing and glancing over his shoulder with an excitable grin. "Hi, bored, I'm Tony."

She furrowed her brow, looking wholly offended at his statement. "That wasn't funny."

Tony laughed, pulling out a variety of snacks from the fridge, making his way towards the pantry. "I thought it was, you have no idea how long I've been waiting to do that. But what do you want to do, I didn't expect you to get bored so easily."

"I don't know what else to do," she admitted, groaning as she shifted, her back hurting.

He hummed, turning around to look at her, tilting his head. "You tried bothering Steve, that's always fun. Or you can try talking to Arabella, I know she's a kid, but I think you two can have some fun."

She huffed, her legs dangling. "Steve doesn't really want to spend time with people, he just wants to stay in his room. Arabella says he might be depressed, and she's sick right now, and she doesn't want me to get sick."

"What about the assassin twins?" Tony asked, before wincing, "Uh, Barton and Romanoff, I mean."

She nodded, not taking offense at his mention of assassins; she was one, there was no getting around it, and they might as well acknowledge it at every available moment, as she had hurt many people. "I haven't tried yet, they're always together."

"What's the problem with that?" he asked, moving to stand in front of her, a bag of chips held between his teeth. 

She glanced away, rubbing at her arms. "I don't want to talk to Natasha. She doesn't trust me."

Tony shrugged, glancing away for a moment as he said, "Yeah, she doesn't really trust anyone, don't let it get to you, it's not you, it's her. Because, unlike you, she has been fully aware of everything she's done and was forced to trust no one her entire life."

"That's exactly how I was raised, Tony," she pointed out, and he faltered, shaking his head earnestly.

"You said the compliance—" he began, but she cut him off.

"It made me more compliant, more susceptible, that doesn't mean I wasn't aware," she explained, and it was a shock to Tony that her vocabulary had expanded so much in the short time she had gotten there, though she seemed to be quickly mentally making her way to the age that she was biologically, "I just wasn't in control, but I could see everything. I remember more than I'd like."

Tony sighed, handing her a bag of chips. "You can't blame yourself, it wasn't like you had any other choice."

She glanced away, hitting the back of her foot against the side of the counter as he walked past her, heading down to the lab. "Yeah. Sure."

Now sitting alone, she contemplated whether or not she wanted to seek out Clint and Natasha who, if they followed the pattern they always seemed to follow, were in the training room. She didn't like that room, it was a little too close to home in a way that she couldn't completely explain, save for the simple explanation that a lot had happened in that room to aid her in her ability to kill people.

Nevertheless, after a good few minutes of eating her chips and staring down at the floor, she decided to head down there, hopping off the counter and making her way down, hoping that there wouldn't be too much of a fuss for her to show her face.

As she went, she pulled her book out of her pocket, flipping through to see if there were any points she still didn't have answers on, happy to see that most of them were crossed out. While it had been suggested to her to ask Bruce and other real people to clarify things for her, she had quickly found that asking JARVIS was much easier and more comfortable.

Leave it to her to speak the most to an AI rather than a real person. Then again, Tony spoke to JARVIS like he was a real person, as did everyone else, so she wasn't any different than they were.

Her musings were interrupted by her walking into the training room, the sound of Natasha and Clint sparring filling the room. While they weren't exerting too much effort, it was still clear that Natasha took everything she did seriously, a determined look on her face, her entire body on the defensive.

She watched as the two continued to spar, moving to sit down on one of the benches, unsure of where to look, finally deciding to just watch them, though it made her stomach twist and turn in discomfort to do so, wincing at every strike and blow, whether it was landed or blocked, and she found herself growing sick as the two struggled to pin the other down, Natasha finally able to overpower Clint who, in the spur of the moment, had become much more defensive than his stance originally suggested.

"Can we take a break now, I'm tired," Clint asked, and she watched as Natasha's demeanor shifted, the woman smiling down at him as she helped him to his feet, the taller man using it as an excuse to give her a hug, which the woman took in stride.

She wondered if they had yet to realize she was there, and while that might have been the case for Clint, it was not for Natasha whose gaze immediately landed on her, with the understanding that she had known she had been there the entire time, her expression shifting into an unreadable one.

Clint caught Natasha's shift and glanced over his shoulder, finding her sitting there, smiling, albeit tightly, though that was due to Natasha's behavior. Still, he made his way towards her, Natasha opting to continue standing there, her arms crossed over her chest.

"How's it going?" Clint asked, moving to sit down on the floor by her feet, crossing his legs and smiling up at her.

"I'm bored," she admitted, shrugging, and she still had yet to get used to smiling, though she did practice, smiling down at him.

"I have some boardgames in my room that I ordered off Amazon, go with Tasha and get them so we can play down here," Clint said immediately, practically pouncing on the opportunity, and both women weren't wholly on board with his plan.

"Why don't you get it?" Natasha asked, crossing her arms and raising an eyebrow.

Clint immediately fell onto his back, sprawling out against the matted floor. "I'm too tired and weak, you're still standing you should go, and she'll be fine, so take her with you."

Natasha stared him down for some time, but Clint held it with ease, and it was clear the two had staring matches like this on a semi-regular basis. To her surprise, Clint was victorious and Natasha sighed, motioning for her to follow, the younger woman making her way out of the room.

She glanced towards Clint who gave her an encouraging smile, motioning for her to hurry, and she nodded, racing after Natasha who was clearly not going to slow down for her, and it did nothing to raise her spirits.

The two made their way to Clint's room in relative silence, she unsure of what to do, and Natasha comfortably ignoring her. 

Still, she couldn't help but think of Arabella's words, of how, out of everyone in the Tower, Natasha was the one who would understand her the most. Maybe that was why Natasha didn't like her, because the woman understood completely; or, at least, assumed she did.

If she was her, she wouldn't trust herself either.

Yet, despite all that, she felt as though she had to reach out. The woman was partly responsible for her being allowed to stay within the Tower, she had to make sure she was on good terms with all of them. While she had lost most of her fear at the thought of someone in the Tower hurting her if she made one false move, she was still wary of the idea that they weren't going to hurt her. 

Considering all that Natasha was capable of, it would be smarter to have her on her side, if only to make sure that she didn't hurt her.

"Why don't you like me?" she asked, and she found that she hadn't even thought before she spoke which, until this very moment, had been something she had never experienced before, only heard in concept from Arabella who had a habit of doing exactly that.

Natasha seemed surprised at the outburst, but took it in stride, schooling her features once again. "It isn't that I don't like you, it's that I don't trust you."

"Why?" she asked, as if she didn't already know.

Natasha didn't seem like she was all that willing to divulge that information, but she must have heard Clint in her head, as she finally relented. "You infiltrated Stark's Tower with the story that you don't know where you're from, who you are, the people who apparently experimented on you, and you're suddenly averse to any and all conflict."

She furrowed her brow; out of all the things, she wasn't expecting any of that. She expected Natasha to not trust her because she had hurt people, not because she didn't believe her. That upset her.

"You're upsetting me," she said, because there was no other way to say it, "I thought you didn't trust me because I hurt people. You think I still can hurt people."

"Can't you?" Natasha asked shortly.

"No!" she cried, finding that she was shouting, and Natasha tensed, but no one attacked, because Natasha was careful, and she didn't want to hurt people.

She was just upset.

"People don't just change as soon as things go bad, unless they didn't change at all," Natasha said simply, and she didn't understand why it upset her, only knowing that it did.

"What I said is true," she said, a sharp heat in her chest, beginning to consume her.

"I don't believe that," Natasha said simply, and maybe it was her dismissive tone that was the problem; her masters spoke down to her constantly, this woman had no right to.

"How does that concern me?" she demanded.

"People aren't that complex, no matter what they say," Natasha said, and now she was getting upset, "And a killer is always a killer, no matter how many people tell you that you're not and that it wasn't your fault and you had no choice, you know how to kill and you did."

While Natasha's words applied to her, as they were directed towards her, it was clear that the woman was speaking to herself as well. 

"But people still trust you," she pointed out.

"Well, that's their mistake, and it's not as if that's reciprocated," Natasha snapped.

The two descended into silence at that. The rest of their trek to Clint's room was taken in complete silence, and neither woman had anything left to say, though there was much unresolved.

Natasha pushed the door open, trying to find the board games through the organized chaos of Clint's room; with all the safe houses they had, there was no singular room that was his room, every room he occupied was his true room, which meant that it was always easy for Natasha to get acquainted with the chaos rather quickly.

Without the understanding the other woman possessed, she could only wander around the room, picking up random objects before setting them down, trying to get an understanding of Clint through the things in his room, though she wound up simply laying on the bed, staring up at the ceiling and waiting for Natasha to tell her that it was time to go.

While she searched for Clint's board games, Natasha couldn't help but think about the woman who was in the same room as her. It was true to herself that she never truly trusted anyone. There was always the need to lie, the need to be on guard and make sure no one was lying to her, the idea of being so reserved and secretive that she couldn't even truly admit to herself that the idea of Clint being compromised during the Battle of New York had been the most terrifying thing to her.

She had to compartmentalize to the point where all those close to her could die and she could only take a deep breath and continue on with her mission.

That was what she was made to be, that was who she was. And it was no exception that she didn't fully trust everyone in the Tower, Arabella and Clint being exceptions to the rule, but it wasn't to say she was ready to jump ship at any minute. She could get used to spending time with them. She just couldn't trust them.

She didn't know how. She didn't understand Clint who could separate a mission from life, when most of life was a mission. She didn't understand.

But that was her. She didn't trust anyone, and she especially didn't trust this woman who had someone wormed her way into the hearts of everyone else in the Tower. She couldn't trust someone so much like herself.

But when she truly thought of it, this woman wasn't anything like her. Of course, they were both assassins, they both were apart of a larger group, they both escaped, in a sense. But the thing about Natasha was that she chose to go through with it. Not only that, she still goes through with it, she still chose to be an agent.

This woman didn't want anything to do with it from the very beginning. She was broken down, just like Natasha, but it only made her tired, not scarred. This woman escaped and now couldn't fight. She hardly knew anything, and it was a surprise to all that her mental age was developing so rapidly. 

They weren't anything alike at the core of it. Just, on the surface, they were fairly similar. 

She spoke up from where she was staring at the cardboard cover of the board game, the words 'SORRY' screaming up at her. "You're honestly telling the truth? You didn't have anything to do with the killings?"

The woman sighed. "I wouldn't have done them if I had a choice."

Natasha nodded to herself. "I believe you."

That was surprising. She turned to look over at the redhead who was still staring down at the board game, and she was unsure of whether or not the other woman had even spoken at all. "What?"

"You heard me," Natasha said simply, standing, the board games in hand, "Let's go." 

She climbed off the bed and followed the smaller woman out the door, still trying to grasp exactly what she meant by that, but she didn't know what to say; explaining herself in words was still a work in progress.

Natasha wasn't jumping at the opportunity to explain herself, but that was to be expected, and the two simply made their way back to the training room, Natasha carrying all the things, and she carrying nothing.

Finally, the two made it back, Natasha dropping the boxes right onto Clint who groaned softly, waking up from his nap, though he immediately got into the swing of things, grabbing the nearest box and setting it up.

"Over here," Natasha said, motioning to the spot next to her, and it wasn't necessarily warm and inviting like how Clint would say it, but it wasn't cold, not even for her.

She didn't move right away, watching them for a moment, trying to understand why Natasha decided she finally trusted her. Then she decided that she didn't really care; so long as she meant it, there was nothing to worry about.

Because that was what separated the women from each other. Despite how similar they were, there was so much different, which was more than fine for them.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

This wasn't as dialogue heavy as I initially thought it was, so I'm actually quite proud of that, and I had some trouble getting into the groove of this chapter, and I no longer plot them out, which has been kinda difficult, so I should get back into that, since I'm gonna get this shit done this month, I swear to God.

Now, Natasha isn't the bad guy by any means, in fact, everything she says is valid and she's pulling from her own experience and knowledge and she's been raised to trust literally no one, so you can't blame her for being sus about the random gal who killed so many people but is now so soft uwu you know?

Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed!