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"Wait for me," Natasha growled.
"Why the hell would I do that? I'm done here. Not technically a SHIELD employee, remember? Consultant." The visor of Tony's helmet slid closed and he turned toward the door. "After that job, I might not even 'consult' anymore."
"You're my ride back to the Tower," Natasha said. "Don't make me cause any more explosions today trying to steal a jet or something from this place."
Tony, already with his hand on the door handle, paused and then turned around and crossed his arms with a soft clank. "Fine." He managed to sound like a pouty five-year-old despite the intimidating timbre the helmet lent his voice. "I'm leaving if you take long. Or come out crying or something."
Natasha didn't dignify that with an answer. She hated being even marginally dependent on Tony Stark for anything, but that emergency call had come in and he'd grabbed her—literally. Having Ironman carry her to the job was a unique experience that Natasha didn't exactly prefer. Technically she could get some other ride home, but that would take time, and after that job, hell if she was standing around here going through the proper channels to get a ride home when she had Ironman and his flying tuxedo going back to the same place.
She carefully did not slam the office door behind her. The office looked like a thousand other shrinks' offices – the walls some muted colour that was supposed to be soothing, a big box of tissues, the desk covered in various files and pictures and toys, like the woman was a babysitter, not a psychiatrist.
"Hiiii." The woman dragged that damn word out like she was talking to a sad toddler. Maybe she really was a babysitter. "Have a seat."
A perfectly-manicured hand waved at a leather sofa. Damn Natasha hated shrinks.
"I want it on the record that I'm here under duress," she said, dropping onto the sofa and crossing her arms. More like "on threat of dead-end jobs in Antarctica for the next six months" than duress, but she wasn't going there. Damn Fury.
"Of course," the lady said. Dr. Nestor, her nameplate on the desk read. Natasha hadn't met this one yet. She didn't meet any of them that she could avoid. "We just need to talk for a little bit. Nothing serious. I understand you have a difficult job sometimes. We're here to make it a little easier."
Natasha snorted. "You have no idea what we really do out there. Fury tell you to check for uncontrollable rage or destructive tendencies? He's just pissed we blew that bridge instead of disarming five hundred bombs."
The psychiatrist seemed a little bit uncertain what to say next.
"Trust me," Natasha said, leaning forward a little and narrowing her eyes at the shrink, "I have a lot of rage and destructive tendencies. But I have better self control than about anyone in this damn base, including and not limited to you, Fury, and the damn coffee pot." Actually, the coffee pot had been Tony's fault. Fury just hadn't noticed the beams Tony was aiming at it during that debriefing—some kind of new particle-agitator things that were difficult to detect and made things, apparently, blow up. But the shrink didn't know that.
"I understand this can be a difficult time of year," the shrink said.
Natasha blinked. "The hell?"
The shrink picked up a stress-ball and began twirling it between two baby-blue-lacquered fingernails. "The loss of a parent is something nobody ever really recovers from. Even the most well-adjusted individuals can suffer periodic emotional distress, especially at times like this."
Natasha blinked again. "The hell?" she repeated. This time of year? Loss of a— "Maybe you got the wrong file," she suggested. "In which case I'm wasting your time." She stood.
"Agent Romanoff," the lady said, dropping the stress ball to flip open a file on her desk. "Trust issues, rage issues, emotional growth stunted at an early age…"
Dammit. Yep. That was her file. Not much was actually cleared for the shrinks to read, thankfully. But what was cleared was more than Natasha wanted them to know—enough for them to mess with her. She sat again—on the arm of the couch this time, one leg over the other, arms still crossed, eyes narrowed at the too-perky woman behind the desk.
"I understand," Dr. Nestor said softly, closing the file and looking like she might start crying in sympathy. "It's not easy having issues like this, and I know this difficult job doesn't make it any easier. Especially at times like this."
"Save the pity for someone who needs it. The hell kind of time are you talking about?"
Dr. Nestor raised one eyebrow in a silent "don't play innocent" expression and then rolled her chair back far enough to tap a finger against the calendar. "Fathers' Day, Natasha."
"That's 'agent' to you," Natasha growled. "And I don't give a damn about Fathers' Day. Talk to someone with a father."
The shrink seemed entirely unconcerned about Natasha's growing irritation—had nobody told the woman that the Black Widow tended to kill people who annoyed her?—and instead of backing off, she rolled back up to her desk, leaned forward on her elbows, and said, "I know losing a parent is difficult. The grief never really goes away. But endangering other people's lives is not a healthy way to handle it. Now let's talk about that bridge."
Natasha stared. "That's what this is? You think I blew the bridge up because I don't have a father? Hell, woman, I couldn't care less."
"I know it can be difficult," the shrink repeated.
"Damn straight it can—you ever have to shoot a ten-year-old?"
The woman was entirely unfasable. She kept that look on her face—like she's talking to a damn puppy—and brushed a few errant locks of blonde hair out of her face, patting them back into her perfect updo. "We're talking about this job right now," she said gently. "Would you rather talk about a different job? Is there something that's been bothering you?"
To hell with it. Natasha shoved off the sofa, crouched to catch the underside of the desk, and managed to tip the entire thing on its front. That the shrink barely managed to shove herself backward in time to escape being crushed didn't concern Natasha. The desk chair flew backwards, flipped over, and landed the woman on her back, the chair's wheels still spinning in the air. It was vaguely satisfying to note that the perfect hairdo had come entirely apart.
Natasha leapt over the downed desk and crouched beside Dr. Nestor, one forearm braced against the woman's throat. "Still wanna talk about my father?" she asked softly, and then reached for a gun.
Dr. Nestor's eyes darted about wildly and she tried to swallow. The gun against her head stilled her.
"Let's talk about him," Natasha continued. "He's dead. And that's good. I'd have killed him myself if someone else hadn't gotten there first." She straightened and slid the gun back into its holster. "Tell Fury whatever you want about the damn bridge." She opened the door and glanced back. "Remind him we saved a whole town. And don't bring up my father again."
Tony was waiting outside the door still. He looked like he might have been napping in his suit, but he straightened when she slammed the door. "Let's go."
Tony walked out silently with her, picked her up, and took off.
The job had been hell. She'd almost died. It wasn't like blowing up a bridge had been in the original plan, but it had been the easiest way to get out of there and get rid of Bronson without letting the fight reach the apartment complexes on the other side.
"Were you serious?"
Dammit. She should've turned her receiver off.
"This thing's a clean line," he added. "Nobody back there's hearing us."
That wasn't the point.
"Really – were you serious? Would you have killed your dad?"
"You heard that?"
"Well yeah. I was listening at the door."
He was lucky she couldn't just shoot him right now. "Dammit, Stark, you can't just listen in on someone's shrink session."
"Apparently I can. You didn't say anything interesting anyway. I mean, besides that. What'd you break? I heard the crash."
It wasn't like her opinion of the people who'd raised her was some big secret anyway. "Flipped her damn desk over. Yeah. I was serious."
Granted, she'd been a bit upset about his death at the time. He had, after all, called himself her father. But he'd also been an abusive, manipulative bastard, and it hadn't taken long to figure out he hadn't been her father. She'd killed everyone else. Probably would've killed him, too. Eventually.
"That's pretty extreme. I mean, my dad sucked, but I wouldn't have actually killed him."
What, he wanted to have some kind of heart-to-heart now? But hell, it wasn't a secret. Not this much, anyway. And he had waited for her. And caught her when she'd gone off the bridge. "Yours probably didn't teach you to kill in the first place."
"That's a point."
"Damn straight it is," she muttered. Damn that woman, now she was stuck thinking about her childhood. That was not the sort of thing Natasha liked to think about, but with the woman bringing it up and Tony wanting to talk about it, it was hard to completely ignore it at the moment. It had sucked. She hadn't really known so at the time, of course; she hadn't known there was anything different out there. Her trainers—including the ones who'd called themselves her father or uncle or any other sort of relative—had all been abusive, manipulative bastards, but hell, they'd kept her alive. All that training, all that punishment—it had taught her to survive. She figured she probably owed them for that much, at least.
"He hit you?"
Natasha actually laughed at that. "Hell, who didn't? Not bad enough to keep me from working. I've taken worse injuries in training than I did from that guy." She managed to shrug. "Couldn't beat me up too bad; I had a job to do."
Tony snorted. "Yeah. I get that."
Natasha didn't answer. The wind whipped her hair into a tangle that would probably take an hour to comb out, roared in her ears, dried her face out despite the way she kept it tucked toward Tony and away from the onrush.
"Once did a whole press conference with him with a broken arm. Nobody ever knew." Tony sounded like he might not even be talking to her.
"Yeah? Pulled an entire job including the kill with three broken ribs and a cracked kneecap when I was fifteen."
That had been hell. She didn't know why she really remembered this stuff anyway. It had been a helluva long time. It shouldn't bother her anymore, but it did.
"Did you know it's Fathers' Day?" she asked after a moment.
"Nope. Hate the damn day. Always did. Try to not notice it these days."
"Damn shrinks," Natasha mumbled.
Tony didn't answer.
Good. We're done then.
"Wanna drink it off?" he said as he set her down on the roof of the Tower.
"Drink what off?"
"Everything. The job. The shrink. Shitty dads."
Natasha stared at him. It was a stupid idea. It took a lot to get her really drunk, but she'd pay for it with a hangover the next morning, and she'd probably do something embarrassing, and hell, she didn't even like Tony Stark.
"Yeah," she said. "Yeah, let's."