Who: Nat and Tony What: Tony catches Natasha up on the goings on over dim sum When: last week Rating: Green
By the time Iron Man landed at the corner of 4th Avenue and 10th Street, there was a wait to get into the dim sum place. True to form, Tony gave everyone a big smile and began the routine of handshakes and autographs as he looked for Natasha. A task that was made more difficult since he wasn't sure what color her hair was now, or if she cooked up a prosthetic face.
Spies. They tended to blend in a little too well. And with Nat, she was as sneaky as her codename. Like most spiders, you didn't jump out of your skin until it was nearly crawling on you hand or falling off the ceiling onto your face.
Worst way to wake up, ever.
Natasha had been pleasantly surprised when she’d glanced in the mirror and saw red hair instead of the short blond cut she’d been sporting at the end of the events dealing with Thanos. She did what she had to when needed but she did enjoy seeing her natural hair. A quick trawl through the internet had revealed she wasn’t on anyone’s most wanted list so she’d also forgone the use of a high tech chimera face. She was going to enjoy being out as herself. Because right now there was intel to be gathered and resources to be reallocated and everything to keep herself occupied.
She glanced at the door when a big commotion started up because of course, who else would it be but Tony? She waved to get his attention from her position at the corner table with a sweeping view of the majority of the restaurant, unsure if it’d get lost among the rest of the adoring crowd swarming him.
Tony caught sight of her after getting a very awkward hug from an eighty year old granny who tried to play grab ass.
"Ok, yeah, ha ha, thanks. I gotta lunch meeting...so...everyonestoptouchingmenow," he blurted out in one rushed breath. It figured that he wouldn't have to pull strings to get a table, since Nat was capable of talking the undies off a nun. If she was into that sort of thing. Tony only wanted to think about that scenario if it was a hot nun, which he was pretty much convinced didn't convince. Much like organized religion, which he wasn't into, anyway. So that worked out.
Just like getting a table! He wasted no time at all walking over and sitting down. He even smiled at her like no time had passed - it really hadn't, which was weird - and told himself not to go all hyperverbal or flip his bitch switch into full sarcasm.
"Oh god," he groaned, patting both hands on the table before grabbing a napkin and wiping at his fingers. "It's great at first, and then I have to go breathe in a paper bag while dousing myself in Purell. My ass feels violated. You don't look violated by anything, which is typical. I mean, hi. How're you? You look...red headed."
Nevermind. The mouth vomit is in progress.
Natasha returned Tony’s smile with genuine one of her own. It was good to see him and feel like something in the world was normal. But now she had to figure out the damage her previous selves had caused and how to move on from that. She slid a bottle of Purell toward him in response. “I don’t know how you do it. Usually, people know better than to even attempt that with me.”
She shrugged and cast a quick glance over the restaurant before looking back to Tony. “I was surprised at the red myself. I figured I’d be having to grow out blonde.” She shook her head and ran her finger through the condensation on the side of her water glass. “As for how I am, I’m...processing.” Which for her was as close to admitting she wasn’t fine as she was going to get it.
She cast a sideways look at Tony. “How are you? Can’t be fun dealing with the slew of mes and Clints and everyone else that wanders through.”
"Oh, thank you. You remembered"
Tony snatched the bottle and began squirting sanitizer on his hands, rubbing it in a manner that reeked of obsessive compulsive tendencies. One of the selfie-takers coughed by him and he didn't want to drag germs back to Pepper right before their wedding. He patted his fingers over his face before they were fully dry, and gave a full bodied shiver as though shaking off everything else. It was a safe bet that he was going to be sucking down a lot of green algae drinks after this.
After that display, Tony stared at Natasha with all the air of an inquisitive bird trying to figure which angle to start pecking from.
"Well? Processing's one way of putting it," he conceded a little too quickly.
He quickly told a waitress who was placing water in front of him, "Yay! Water. Uh, I'd like an order of everything that's wrapped in bean curd. Unless it's gelatinous. No jiggly. Thanks."
He took a quick sip to avoid admitting that he couldn't deal with a lot of things, honestly. At least Pep was here to help keep him grounded, but some days were more erratic than others. Like today.
After the waitress walked off, he said, "I'm keeping myself busy. It helps keeping busy. Because who even knew how many differences there could be between everyone. It's subtle but it's there. Which is weird when another you drops in. You're the team mom. You give me hand sanitizer."
Tony threw up his hands as though he was at a loss.
"Who else here gives me hand sanitizer, besides Pep?" he asked no one in particular. Then Tony answered his own question, putting his hands down on the table and leaning forward and speaking under his breath. "No one. This place is basted in crazy. It's normal but not. I'm one breath away from a badly dressed weirdo on a street corner holding a cardboard sign. Don't tell Pep? Wedding pressure and baby bump. Bad combo if she goes full Bridezilla. Do not want."
Natasha added a few orders of dumplings and some hot and sour soup for herself before the waitress left. She reached out and squeezed his shoulder. “Breathe, Tony. Just breathe. It’s just me and I have no plans on going anywhere.” She watched him for a moment and the frenetic energy was as always just hidden under the surface if you knew what to look for. This time around there was a lot less rein over it than she’d ever encountered. This timeline and people wandering in and out must’ve done a number on him.
He finally seemed to settle and she pulled her hand back. “Thought crazy was our stock and trade back when,” she waved a hand, “Not sure we could do well without some sort of crisis to keep us from living normal lives. Speaking of normal, how are you and Steve doing?”
Normal made her think of Steve and then Peggy. Steve was getting to live the kind of normal life he’d never had with the woman he’d never had more than a moment with. This timeline was going to do her own head in if she wasn’t careful.
As usual, the shoulder squeeze grounded him instantly. There was a holy trinity of people that were able to do that, and it consisted of Pepper, Steve, and Natasha.
Tony took a deep breath and let it out with a soft whistle, like everything was a doozy and he was trying not to derail the good things while coping with the universe being broken things. Something that he couldn't even begin to fix.
"Yeah, well, normal is relative, I guess," he said, looking and sounding a bit more calm as he glanced at all of the people in the restaurant. He honed back in on her just as quickly. "Actually, we buried the hatchet. So we're good. One less thing to worry about. I think he's considering having us operating under one roof again."
In case of emergency, it wasn't a bad idea. Tony was certain that Ross would hate the idea on contact, but that was just a whole other reason to irritate Ross. He'd take whatever he could get in that regard.
“Good. The last thing we need is you two causing trouble again.” Natasha took a sip of her water. She tilted her head side to side at the idea. “I gathered that from Clint. He wasn’t all too happy about it. I’m not going to say no because it’s me.” She grinned at Tony. “It’s probably not a bad idea. Especially with everything that’s going on in this timeline and the lack of a proper SHIELD floating around.”
She arched an eyebrow at Tony. “Aside from making it your life’s goal to give Fury an aneurysm, what is that man doing on the day to day? There’s no way he’s just sitting around.” If he’d managed to rebuild SHIELD in some shape or form or still had whatever extracurricular SHIELD contacts he hadn’t told anyone about, they’d be in good shape. Oh hell. She needed to check in on her networks, covers, and backstops. They should be relatively intact but who knows what the previous hers had done.
"Clint's my fault," Tony blurted out so suddenly, that it almost sounded like one word rather than three. But there was a lot of guilt for mouthing off while Clint was going through however many stages of grief there were. "Ends up his bow arm isn't up to snuff from lack of use. So after I dropped a sarcasm bomb, which we know I'm prone to do, he got pissed off and rage quit. I made things worse. Not the first time. Probably not the last."
Tony was glad when the food arrived, so at least he could ease his guilt with bean curd covered dumplings. As he picked up some chopsticks with practiced ease, he tackled the SHIELD subject. If anyone should be in on that too, it was Nat. Fury could fill her in on what they were working on.
"Well, SHIELD is only Fury right now," Tony told her, poking around on the plates. "Pep and I are funding it under the table, and any intel we get is shared between the Secret Avengers and Secret SHIELD. Since everything's secret. Ross is still breathing fire after he and I locked horns last year. My lawyers convinced the a federal judge that the Accords were unconstitutional, and the Supreme Court didn't find fault with that. Nothing's public yet? Fury's running but he's using volunteers, since agents come and go."
“Clint is Clint’s own fault,” Natasha said without hesitation. “He knows you and he’s dealt with worse. There was a lot more going on than he let on and you being you didn’t do anything but further cement whatever decision he’d already made.” She shrugged then inhaled some of the dumplings that’d made their way to the table, savoring the pork rib ones the most.
Clint was a problem she’d have to sort out at some point though. Him walking around being a ball of rage because he wasn’t dealing with his grief was going to end up with someone dead or deader. Being dead seemed to be a thing that was less permanent in this timeline than others.
She expected nothing less from Tony and Fury. They both were hell bent on making sure the world and everyone they cared for in it stayed safe and if that meant doing it themselves until the rest of the world finally caught up then they would. The news about the Accords made her pause briefly, but made sense if Steve was thinking about bringing back the Avengers even with Peggy back in the picture. “Par for the course. It’s good the public doesn’t hate us anymore and can’t turn us in for money.”
Tony was chewing but he looked thoughtful, and the pause to eat gave him time to mull over what Nat was saying.
Where Clint was concerned, didn't he once tell the guy about personal responsibility? And got a broken back joke about Rhodey afterward? Yeah, Clint was going to be stewing in his own rage for a while, but Tony knew he wasn't the person to bust him out of that. It was better left to the professionals, like Steve and Nat. They were their own human resources department, and Tony was very firmly over in research and development. Finding ways to make a better mousetrap.
"Yeah, you're right," he finally conceded, once he could speak without a meat and vegetable dumpling getting in the way. "Still, I didn't really help the situation? But don't get smug about being right or I'll take it back."
He watched her with pinpoint focus while prodding some food around with the chopsticks.
"So. Looks like you got some options, since you're not on the run anymore. You gonna go back to being an agent for Fury, or sign up with Cap when he gets the Beatles back together again?"
Natasha grabbed the bowl of hot and sour soup and enjoyed the smell before taking a big sip. Delicious and would ensure that she would be coming back for any future cravings. She had no doubt that her account would be able to handle the prices considering it was subsidized by Tony. She arched an eyebrow. “Why would I ever do that?” She took a deliberate sip of her soup.
She prepared herself for what he was going to ask next. This talk had been half shop talk and half figuring out on what ground their relationship was on. Pretty solid from the looks of it and for that she was beyond grateful. At least one person who she could feel like herself with.
She made a noncommittal sound then followed Tony’s lead and moved some food around with chopsticks. “Well...you know me, I’m not going to say no. It’s better to be aware and involved in everything than to get thrown into the middle of something you have no idea about.” She meet his gaze with a bit of flint in her own. “There’s also no saying I can’t do both. I have a feeling Fury’s a lot more flexible about things now than he used to be.”
In Tony's book, they were on good footing. Their disagreement after what happened at the Leipzig-Halle airport was brief, and he wasn't the one who tipped Ross off on what happened. That was T'Challa, and it was all because they fell into a trap and were chasing someone who was framed. Someone who assassinated his parents, but didn't have both hands on his own steering wheel. And Natasha was insightful enough to see it, where he wasn't.
They got burned, and not only by Zemo but by Ross too. In the wake of everything, Tony was still having some trouble digesting what Barnes did. He was in a weird place now where he blamed him but couldn't blame him at the same time, where hindsight was a bitch. He knew he lost his shit and went barreling in with repulsors blasting. It was a lesson learned to cool his jets sometimes. He hoped. Not everyone could be a cool Russian cucumber like Nat was.
"Oh, I don't know," he replied, arching an eyebrow back at her and smiling a little to let her in on the joke. "There's usually a moment where we kinda want to take it back when we agree on stuff. It's so rare."
That smile quickly faded as the weight of everything he tried so hard to protect settled back down on his shoulders. Sure, it wasn't as though he didn't know there were good things in this universe? There were. It was a chance to make amends that they didn't have on the flip side. And there was lots of work to do on all fronts.
"You should do both," he blurted out. "I hashed it out with Fury anyway. There's a free exchange of information between us. It'd make the most sense if you were the bridge between the two."
She finished off her soup with a satisfied gulp. If she could get away with ordering a gallon of this to take back to the apartment with her she might. It was always so difficult to find a place that served good hot and sour soup. This one had earned itself repeat visits especially with it being so close by.
The slight worry Natasha had about any lingering missteps in their friendship eased at Tony’s words. “It’s only rare in that we usually come from it at different approaches. Our end goal is usually the same one.”
Zemo had effectively done what he wanted to do: tear apart the team and set the world against them. He’d also torn apart everything she’d managed to cobble together after the fall of SHIELD. A part of her had wanted to go after Zemo directly but had been too busy dealing with the aftermath to do so. It didn’t matter in the end since T’Challa had taken care of the problem.
She blinked. Things certainly had changed. Natasha figured she could talk Fury around to the idea when it came to it. She hadn’t expected that it might’ve already been discussed but that was on her. With the sheer number of previous hers that had come through, it probably had been discussed to death and back. “Fury really has loosened up then. If there’s a free exchange between you two, that practically makes me obsolete then,” she teased then grew serious. “I doubt I could do anything but be on both. There’s too much going on and at stake.”
If anyone deserved an ass kicking, it was Zemo. But Tony was still unsettled by the fact that someone working for the state department guilt tripped him, which he still felt guilty over, and then Ross, the Secretary of State, conveniently stepped in with the Accords ultimatum.
Set up? Maybe. It rankled that he was the weakest link in the chain they could pick at, and how he overcompensated trying to protect everyone and everything. Someday he'd get the balance right. He hoped.
"I don't know if Fury's loosened up too much, Nat? I troll him to show I care, though."
Which was the truth. In some weird backassward way, Fury was the one who stepped up and talked to him when he needed it most, to set him straight and get him focused. It was almost fatherly. It was definitely appreciated.
Until, of course, some spy thing turned around and bit him in the ass. He really needed to quadruple check the things he was consulting on. All that did was make him more paranoid about effing up. Especially after Ultron. Infinity Stones. Hammer Industries weapons leaks. The list went on.
"Yeee~aaaah, there's a lot at stake," he agreed, eyes wide and a smile frozen in place for a hot second, until he took a big swig of tea and looked everywhere but at her. "Fury barely tolerates me, but he likes you. And since you're an kick ass over achiever, you'll do both because we want that to reach those end goals."
He pointed at one of the dumplings on her side of the table. "You gonna eat that? I'm jonesing for gluten all of a sudden."
“Maybe I am giving him too much credit, but you have to admit it’s a long way from when we all started on this adventure together.” Loyalties were a hard thing. She had them of course and more to the people than any actual organization she was attached to. The fall of SHIELD had proven that. It’d only been further reinforced with the Accords drama though trauma was the more apt term. There’d been plenty of that to go around.
Now she wondered if her loyalties may be split in too many ways. Because look at what that’d gotten her in the last go around. Who was she to decide who had the best approach to defending the Earth or the universe from all comers? She was a small speck in the grand scheme of things.
“That’s an understatement.” Natasha’s tone said the same thing as Tony’s frozen smile. So much at stake and a wrong move could lead to disaster. She’d never shied away before. Why start now? “Well, you know me. I like a good challenge and someone’s got to look after you boys.”
She handed the dumpling over to Tony. She’d demolished plenty of the ones she’d ordered. Giving one to Tony was no hardship. “This place was a good choice and I’m definitely coming back for more.”
While cheating on his gluten free diet, Tony considered that if anyone was capable of handling all of the big egos and complicated feelings involved, it was going to be Natasha. Tony always believed she'd seen her fair share of too much even before they met, although it was Clint and Fury who knew the actual details.
Despite that, he might get antsy? He might get quippy? But he still trusted Natasha. She tried her hardest to get the job done, no matter what job she was given. And they both knew the risks of failure. Thanks, other universe.
"I'm gonna grab some to go for Pep," he said, thinking he'd fly it over before heading back into the lab to finish some outlines. "We should meet for lunch here sometimes. Maybe if we show up enough, someone will try to get the jump on us. Eh?" He shrugged. "It'd keep us on our toes."
Putting herself directly in the middle of stuff that was likely to go sideways again wasn’t a smart idea. Natasha had the firsthand memories of that, but what else was she going to do? Sit on the sidelines and do nothing? That wasn’t her MO and it would never be as long as she had a choice in matters.
It would suck. It would hurt. But in the end, she’d rather be there working to get things done than anywhere else. She had people she cared about in the mix and she’d never forgive herself otherwise. The world could only end so many times.
Natasha hmmed a moment and glanced around the restaurant again. “Maybe we could work that up in a simulation instead? Not sure the restaurant or the restaurant patrons would appreciate that as much as we would. Also, you’d be depriving us of good sushi. The cleanup would take months.”