The one upshot of this development was that it had gotten her brain working again, a jolt of adrenaline spiking her out of her frozen, silent panic. She could think, properly, without images of all the ways she could die, all the ways she would have to watch the people she cared about die flooding her thoughts to the point of incapacitating her. There was room to breathe again, not a lot of it but just enough that it made the difference, and Natasha had always been good under pressure. Quick to think on her feet and push a plan forward, the same way she'd done at Clint's anniversary party and countless times before that.
Good under pressure, quick thinking, and a very casual relationship with the truth meant that she tended to get things done with efficiency. And occasionally a certain amount of ruthlessness, but ends, means, etcetera, a thousand other cliches that tended to not bother her if it meant they'd keep her alive.
She met Tony's eyes in the mirror for a moment. "You're right," she said, slowly, assessing it. "You're right. All he needs is a reason."
And it would have to be a good reason. It would have to be the sort of reason that meant not only would he fight back, he would actively try to keep himself alive. The kind that meant he would stick close to her side. If he thought someone was depending on him, if he thought he owed - and maybe that was even too complicated, for someone like Steve Rogers. Maybe all Steve needed was the notion that it was the right thing to do.
She turned around to face Tony directly, and her face was still, but the gears in her mind were churning on full speed. "Suppose we tell him that I'm pregnant," she said. "We find a way to do it that's - convincing, either you leak it to him or I go in groveling for help. And if we tell him it's Clint's or it's Bucky's, I think - I think that might be enough." Steve would buy her not wanting to tell Clint, if she thought Clint would die in the arena, it would make sense to omit the information, and if he thought it was Bucky's and that she simply hadn't told him, he would do whatever it took to send her back to him. If she told him that she needed someone to be at her side for the moments it got rough, if she told him that he owed her, if she made it desperate enough...