A/N: THE FINAL CHAPTER. Thank you so, so much for all of your support! It's been a blast!

New York City, New York, 2014

Clint left the room, unable to watch any longer. Yet another girl, who seemed utterly confused when someone told her that she didn't have to be punished for speaking or doing something that she wanted to do. It was worse than the way Natasha was when he was ordered to hunt her down by S.H.I.E.L.D. At least then, she'd been angry. She'd been her own person (mostly). She hadn't been these girls, who barely seemed to grasp the concept of caring for one's self, much less having compassion for others.

None of them had names. Just numbers.

Stark had been extremely careful about the therapists he'd hired to help decondition the girls. They were sworn to the utmost secrecy, and they had a random rotation so that they weren't able to predict which day they would be called into Stark Tower to work with them. Each one of them had, however, warned that the process would take time, and that each of the girls would probably carry scars from their upbringing for the rest of their lives, even if they did ever achieve some semblance of normalcy.

Clint did what he normally did when he felt distressed— he went to see Natasha.

She was sleeping again when he entered her room in medical. Her breathing was steady and strong, but there was still a lump on her chest where bandages were. Bruce had explained to him that, in addition to the near-fatal shot from Belova (none of them knew how in the hell she'd survived that one), she'd also suffered another shot from one of the men present in the Red Room.

Speaking of Bruce, he was in the room again, going over Natasha's readings.

"Her variant of the serum should speed up the healing process," he'd explained, "But it's still going to be a while before she's up and about again. She didn't get proper treatment for the first wound, so that caused some damage. Frankly, she wouldn't be alive if it wasn't for the serum."

A groan snapped him out of his memories.

"Oh look, it's the broody face," muttered Natasha. "My favorite."

Clint laughed. "Shut up, I do not have a broody face." Bruce snorted, which meant he was listening in. "Look I know you hate sleeping, but maybe you could at least stay unconscious long enough to heal faster?"

Natasha half-heartedly flipped him off, but she was smiling. She folded her arms across her chest, a pained look briefly flashing across her features before she let out a long breath. The first time she'd woken up, she been assaulted by a flashback strong enough that she'd had to be sedated again almost immediately, and she wasn't taking… whatever had happened in the Red Room very well. Only Natasha and Belova knew the full story, and Belova had yet to talk.

"You couldn't have brought a crossword or something?" she said. "I'm bored."

"Boredom is good for you once in a while."

"Lies."

Natasha turned her head to look over at where Bruce was, studiously avoiding looking at the both of them. "Not going to join in the conversation, Bruce? I know you're listening."

"Nah," he answered. At least he wasn't trying to hide it. "I'll let you two carry on."

"That's all we can do, I guess," Natasha murmured, more to herself than anything else. Clint winced. Shit— she really was beating herself up. He didn't grab her hand (she wouldn't thank him for that), but he didn't get up and leave, either. After a few moments of tense silence, he was able to sense something like gratitude from her.

"How are the girls?" she asked.

Clint paused. "…adjusting," he answered after a moment. "I think Stark's taking his anger out on his lab— he's blow at least seven things up in the last twenty four hours. Pretty sure Doc over there helped with at least five. I told them it was a bad idea to ask the therapists about the girls."

"Maybe," Bruce mutters.

Natasha looked away from him for a moment. "Clint, I'm sorry," she murmured. "But… I think…"

"Yeah. Got it." He stood, giving her a smile that he knew looked pathetic. "Sleep tight, okay?"

He left the room, thought about everything that had happened, and was barely able to hold himself back from crying.

New York City, New York, 2014

Being cleared from medical lightened Natasha's mood— slightly. She gave Bruce a grateful smile when she left that he didn't return, promising to take it easy so as not to aggravate her wounds further. Honestly, the smoke inhalation had been worse— eating and drinking had been painful for a few days. But it was still better to be able to actually walk around Stark Tower.

The first thing she did was check on all of the girls. They didn't do much, according to Stark— sat in their rooms, staring at nothing. A couple had started to practice fighting (those were the ones that were apparently doing better, according to the therapists) in their spare time. But Natasha barely had the stomach to sit in on their sessions, reminded of her own experiences being deconditioned after Clint had brought her into S.H.I.E.L.D. The one girl— the one who had come back for Yelena, who seemed to care about her— was doing about the same as the others, although there was a defiance in her expression that Natasha felt was familiar.

She asked after Sharon, but apparently Sharon wasn't taking visitors. Natasha decided that giving her some space was her best option.

The third thing on her list was visiting Yelena.

"You're alive," the other Black Widow stated flatly. "I wondered, but they told me nothing of you. Merely asked me questions."

Natasha pulled out a chair across from her— Yelena was staying in a relatively comfortable cell, but it was a cell all the same. Its security was fortified enough that even Loki couldn't escape from it. As such, it was furnished by a table that was clearly made for interrogation. She sagged briefly, unable to hide the fact that she was more tired than usual, and would be for a while.

"I almost wasn't," she admitted. "I owe a large part of my life to you."

"I don't want you in my debt," Yelena said. She sounded bitter. "Now get out of my cell."

"Soon. I promise." Natasha paused. "But first, there are a couple of things you should know."

Yelena looked at her, but she said nothing to deter her from continuing. Natasha noticed that her hair was streaked with grease, which meant that she hadn't showered for a while.

"First of all," Natasha began. "About why you didn't kill me."

"You are a demon."

"Jury's still out on that one," Natasha joked. "No, that was no accident. Your shot wasn't fatal."

"You think I wouldn't—"

"I know you meant to kill me," Natasha said. "If I had been any normal person, you would have. And you should have known that. At first I thought it was sheer dumb luck; I meant to die in that room, and have Sharon be the one to track you to the Red Room, and then bring the Avengers down on your head. But you shot me, and lo and behold, I wasn't dead. Then maybe later I thought that you missed on purpose. But now I have a different theory."

"Please." Yelena sneered. "Enlighten me."

"The way I spoke to you. I tried to be gentle, like someone who cared." Natasha did care, in a way. But Yelena would never believe that. "And I think you reacted to it subconsciously. Can you tell me who that woman was? The one who remembered me, even though I don't remember her?"

Yelena remained silent for so long that Natasha was convinced she was just going to ignore her, like she'd ignored everyone else who tried to question her. Then: "We knew her as Madame B. She sat in our rooms with us every night, and gave us advice and listened to our fears. She has always been the one in charge of the Red Room. Beyond that, I don't know much."

Ah. Simply teaching people to obey orders wasn't worth much without implanting some kind of emotional tie to manipulate. Natasha understood Yelena's loyalty to the Red Room now, the unwillingness to part from it. She wondered if Madame B. had been that way with her; if not, then perhaps that was why she escaped, and Yelena didn't.

"I unwittingly invoked your connection to her," Natasha explained. Yelena scowled. "Some part of you associated me with her, and you could never bear to hurt her, could you? Not the closest thing you had to a maternal presence in your life. Or at least, you couldn't without making a conscious choice to defy her. And you hadn't made that choice yet when you tried to kill me."

"How could you possibly—?"

"I empathized with you."

Yelena looked away.

"That was all she had to do, wasn't it? Sometimes, loyalty through fear isn't enough. Sometimes there has to be some kind of love involved. Not that that makes it forgivable." In some ways, it was worse. Natasha sighed. This was more exhausting than she'd thought it would be. "Anyway, the point is that I manipulated you. I did it again when I spoke to you in the Red Room's hideout. I wanted to apologize for that."

"Why? It's done. You saved the lives you meant to save."

"That leads me to the second thing," Natasha said. "We're going to be holding a funeral service for the girls who didn't make it through the training program. They deserve a proper sendoff, as opposed to getting dumped into an incinerator and having their existence wiped off from the face of the earth. We'd be keeping an eye on you, but you're allowed to attend, if you'd like."

Yelena stilled. "I will consider this," she admitted. "And the third? There are always three."

"Just a warning," Natasha said. "I would think about what you're going to do next. The U.S. government is pretty eager to prosecute you, and the rest of the Avengers aren't very reluctant to hand you over. Neither is Sharon. Personally, I don't care either way; you might remember me from before, but I don't remember you. But think long and hard about what you want to use your abilities for, or I might not be so merciful the next time we meet."

With that, she left Yelena alone with her thoughts.

New York City, New York, 2014

The lab was mostly dark, with only a few desk lamps on. It was also utterly silent, apart from the occasional shuffle of papers. Bruce sighed and mumbled equations to himself as he pored over his work. He needed to occupy himself with something after the heaviness of the funeral service from earlier.

Natasha, Steve, and Sharon had all spoken a few words for the nameless girls who had lived through hell, only to die too soon. There had been bitter tears shed from almost all who attended. Belova's eyes had been dry the entire time, but he'd heard screams coming from her cell when he passed it earlier.

It was like a black cloud hung over the tower, and none of them knew what to do with it.

He heard the door to the lab open, and footsteps approaching his workbench, but he couldn't bring himself to look up at who he knew had to be there. It was only when a mug of hot cocoa was set next to him that he looked up, just in time to see Natasha settle onto a stool next to him. He glanced at one of the monitors he was using where… he'd left results from her blood tests up. Right, they were supposed to discuss this today.

"I don't think I can remove it," he admitted to her, getting the bad news out of the way. "It's… it's like Steve, it's bonded to your D.N.A. There is no way to separate you from the serum, at least not without killing you. As for your memories… the brain isn't as clear-cut. They might come back on their own, but I have no idea if there's a shortcut."

Natasha shrugged. "I figured as much." At his skeptical look, she sighed. "I'll figure out how to process all of that later, Bruce. That's not what I want to discuss, anyway."

He waited.

Natasha closed her eyes, toying with her own mug. Her hair was just above her ears, and back to its normal shade of red.

"I wanted to thank you," she said, gesturing vaguely at the screen. "For looking into this for me."

He looked down at his lap. "I have a feeling you already knew."

"A hunch," she admitted, with barely a hint of a smile. "But it was nice to get a confirmation. At any rate, I didn't think it would be easy to look through someone else's blood and find something unnatural there, especially when you're a bit preoccupied with your own."

"It's alright," he said, shrugging. "I wanted to make sure you weren't dying or something."

She snorted. "I appreciate the thought."

He stared at her. Natasha wasn't usually one to get like this. She was the one who made terrible jokes, who responded sarcastically whenever Tony said— well, anything—, who relentlessly teased Steve about getting a girlfriend. She was the one who never wanted to be in one place for very long, and yet she hadn't left the tower for the past few weeks. She took a sip of her own drink, prompting him to do the same.

"Are you alright?" he asked her.

She laughed. It sounded shaky. "Not really. I knew there would be no sense of triumph when it was all over— these things rarely end well. But it's especially hard not to feel guilty when you were essentially told that the upbringing of those girls was inspired by you, and everything you've done. It's bad enough that horror and violence inspire anything at all, much less that."

"I know a thing or two about guilt," he told her. "You can't let it eat you up."

"I know. To be honest, I just wish Sharon would talk to me. Or anyone. The whole time, I wondered if bringing her along with me was the right thing to do, and now—"

"She'll talk to you when she's ready," Bruce interrupted. "It's not something you can… there's no easy fix. But, you know… for what it's worth, I think you're a hero. You got those girls out of a hell that they didn't deserve, and I think you should consider that a pretty big part of your ledger wiped out right there. Something you've given back to the world."

She looked at him, the corner of her mouth curling up slightly. "Y'know, I think I might be sticking around a little more."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Avenging and whatnot. No more running off for me."

"That's good to hear. We don't have to watch Steve go all mother hen."

Natasha grinned a bit. "Ah, but then he wouldn't be Steve, now would he?" She stood up, putting her mug down for a moment, and he followed suit, not really sure what was going on. To his surprise, she stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him, sagging into him a bit. He took her weight, unsure if this meant anything… more, or not, but not wanting to push it.

"Thanks for answering my calls," she said. Then she pulled away with something of a sad smile, and grabbed her cocoa and left the lab.

New York City, New York, 2014

Natasha was sitting in the communal kitchen when Sharon came in.

She almost let out a huge breath of relief, but she wasn't out of the woods just yet. Sharon hesitated a bit at the sight of her, too, but after a moment she set about getting a bowl out of the cabinets and filling it with Fruit Loops. Natasha listlessly played around with her bowl of Goldfish, waiting for Sharon to be the first one to speak.

She didn't have to wait long, thankfully.

"Do you think you could've—"

"No."

Sharon shot her an irritated look. "You didn't know what I was going to say."

"No, I didn't," Natasha admitted. "But I know that dwelling on what we could've done is useless, and it doesn't help anyone. We have to look forward, or we'll get stuck in the past."

"Listen to you, being all philosophical," Sharon said. "It's weird."

Natasha laughed a bit, suddenly at ease. She hadn't realized until now just how important it was that Sharon not be angry with her.

"So… has Yelena talked yet?"

Natasha filled her in on what Yelena had told them about the Red Room— that there were originally fifty girls being experimented on, that only nineteen were left (and they both had to take a moment to try not to punch something), and that the girl who had almost died at the last moment was important to Yelena in a way that none of them could probably understand. She also, after a moment, explained what Yelena had told her of the circumstances surrounding the loss of her memories.

"Long story short: I was training Yelena," Natasha said. "I became doubtful of the Red Room. I told her. She tattled— not her fault, she was afraid— and they wiped what was apparently thirty years from my life. I'm not really sure how they managed to pull that one off, but I guess I've always underestimated just how much they've fucked with my mind. So I'm actually sixty, or something. Who the hell knows?"

"She could've been lying," Sharon pointed out.

"According to her, she doesn't have a reason to," Natasha said.

They fell silent again.

"Stark's pretty nice," Sharon admitted after a moment. "I sort of lost it, a few days after… you know. I broke a few expensive-looking things. He paid for them all, insisted it was free of charge, and pretty much forced me to talk to one of the therapists he'd hired. I ended up crying all over her, and then went to see my aunt and cried all over her, too… it seemed messed up. They keep telling me it's okay to feel bad, even though we did manage to rescue those girls."

"It is," Natasha murmured. "But there isn't much you can do if you feel like it isn't."

Sharon gave something of an ugly laugh. "Okay, I'm just going to address the elephant in the room— you've noticed that it's mostly you I've been avoiding, right?"

Natasha had noticed. It had hurt once she realized it, but she accepted Sharon's decision and tried not to let herself recede inward as a result. What bothered her, however, was that she didn't know why Sharon was avoiding her. The obvious answer was that she had had time to think and was angry at Natasha for dragging her into the Red Room's mess. Natasha's instincts (which were rarely wrong) told her otherwise.

"Yes," she murmured.

"Did you want to die?" Sharon asked. "I need to know. And I needed to know badly enough that I knew I wouldn't be able to stop myself from asking the next time I saw you. And I wasn't sure I could stand it if you said yes. So… I just didn't see you."

"No." Natasha had a definite answer for that. "I didn't want to die. I don't want to die, Sharon. There were moments, years ago… but I know that it's never that easy. I did, however, accept that I might not be able to get out of this alive. There's a difference."

"I guess." Sharon looked at her. "You scared the ever-loving shit out of me."

"I'm sorry."

"You're forgiven." Was she? Was it really that easy? "Stop over-thinking, Natasha. I consider you a friend. I'm not about to let that go."

Natasha wasn't expecting the sudden rush of warmth at that, but she couldn't quite hide her smile. "Thank you. Seems like an odd way of making a friend, but then I don't usually do things the normal way, either."

"I noticed." Sharon hadn't touched her cereal. "What about you? How have you been taking all of this?"

Natasha, to be honest, didn't think that the implications of everything that had happened had quite hit her yet. In addition to 31 girls being dead because she couldn't reach them in time, there was the fact that she would probably never know exactly what had happened to warrant her losing her memories, or how she was really raised in the Red Room, or who the woman (Madame B.?) really was. It was frustrating, but she had never had too much of a desire to know who she used to be.

"I'll have time to… deal with this," she said. "Eventually."

"Call me when you do, okay?" Sharon offered a sincere, if sad, smile when she looked at her. "I don't think you should be alone when it happens."

Natasha would've been okay with being alone, but… "Yeah," she replied, smiling back. "Okay."

New York City, New York, 2015

The next three months were difficult for everyone.

Yelena escaped a few weeks after the funeral service, and none of them were able to track her down. The C.I.A., predictably, were pissed off, but the Avengers weren't legally obligated to go after her. Natasha kept an eye on the intelligence community in case she went down a darker path, but so far she had heard nothing from her.

They were finally beginning to make progress on the recovery of the girls. Some had even asked about the concept of names, to which they were all told that they were welcome to choose one for themselves. Some seemed eager to get away from their numbers, while others were more reluctant to embrace the chance of freedom. The shroud of the Red Room hung over them all, but now Natasha could look at them and see the dregs of hope beginning to appear in their expressions. Tony insisted that he would find them all good homes once they were deemed safe by the therapists tending to them.

The C.I.A. had dropped all charges against Natasha, and with the backing of the Avengers, the scrutiny on her because of her past began to lessen. They had, however, fired Sharon for drawing a weapon on one of their operatives (it was a miracle that the Avengers managed to avert an arrest). Stark had hired her on the spot, saying that her resume was pretty much complete because it had 'friends with Black Widow' on it. Sharon did field assignments for Stark, and while she didn't really seem inclined to discuss them, she seemed content enough.

Not that Natasha wanted to discuss assignments when they were out at a bar.

"So," she said. "Rogers? Yes? No?"

"This again?" Sharon sighed. "He hasn't asked me out. I haven't asked him out. End of story."

"You're depriving me of my chance to live vicariously through you."

"Uh-huh." Natasha was beginning to recognize that as her you're-bullshit-is-uber-transparent voice. "Why am I not threatening to set you up with any of your coworkers? Oh, right— because I'm not a madwoman."

Natasha lifted her martini at that. "Takes one to know one."

(So she might have wound up at Sharon's apartment after nearly having a panic attack. She might have curled up on Sharon's couch and sobbed after the other woman went to bed, only to find that Sharon wasn't actually sleeping and that she had a tendency to hug crying people very tightly. It had been nice, to open up to someone like that. Maybe— just maybe— she could try doing it with more people. Maybe she could let herself live a little more.)

"What say we go dancing after this?" she suggested.

Sharon clinked her glass against hers. "I'll drink to that."