The air smelled like rich earth and new grass when Natasha pulled to a stop in front of the farmhouse. It was early on a Wednesday morning, with the sun still low and pale in the sky. Nat had a lot to do that day, but nobody had argued when she'd asked to take a couple of hours to do this – especially not Director Fury, who was just as happy that he wouldn't have to be the bearer of bad news. Although she ought to have been in a hurry, she shut off the engine of her rented Camaro and sat quietly for a moment with her hands on the steering wheel. There hadn't been much tranquility in her life, ever – she needed to savor it when she found it, and this was one of the few places she ever had.

It was fresh and chilly out, with dew still glittering on the lawn, but the front door of the house was propped open with a full suitcase, and the family van was waiting by the steps with luggage already in the back. Nat could hear the ducks on the pond out back, and when she listened intently there was the sound of running water inside. People here were awake and active, and had been for at least half an hour. They would be in a hurry, too.

With a sigh, Natasha undid her seat belt and went to knock on the door.

The woman who answered it a few seconds later was a stranger, a bit taller than Nat with straight dark hair to her shoulders. She looked enough like Laura, however, that Natasha quickly figured out who she was, and greeted her with a smile.

"You must be Audrey," Nat said. "Is your sister still here? I'm Natasha – I'm Clint's friend from work."

Audrey Langlands would have no reason to find this suspicious. She, like most of the people he knew outside of SHIELD, thought Clint Barton worked for the FAA. "Oh, yes, she's in the kitchen," she said, opening the screen door to let Natasha in. "Laura!" she called. "It's for you!"

A moment later, Laura Barton entered the foyer, drying her hands on a garter-stitch towel. Seven-year-old Cooper was close behind her, and when he saw Natasha, he dropped his backpack and ran to give her a hug.

"Hi, Auntie Nat!" he said eagerly. "Is Dad gonna come with us after all?"

"I'm afraid not, kiddo," Natasha replied, ruffling the boy's blond hair. "I just need to talk to your Mom for a minute. Is that okay?"

"Sure," said Cooper, although he looked puzzled. He must be wondering why Auntie Nat would come all this way, without Dad, to talk to Mom when she could have phoned. Young as he was, he would probably already suspect it was bad news.

If Cooper suspected, his mother knew. Laura looked at her sister. "Can you give us a minute, Audrey?" she asked.

"Sure." Audrey reached for Cooper's hand. "Come on, Coop, let's go make sure your sister's up – I have a feeling she went back to sleep."

As soon as they'd vanished up the stairs, Laura's warm smile dropped and she looked at Nat with fear in her eyes. Cooper might not be able to guess why Natasha would come here alone instead of calling, but Laura definitely could. "Where's Clint?" she asked.

"We don't know," Natasha admitted. "We're looking for him."

"What happened?" Laura hesitated. "Or are you not allowed to tell me?"

"Technically I'm not, but I'm going to anyway," said Nat. Fury had a problem with that, but Natasha didn't care. Letting people suspect that something was terribly wrong without actually telling them was just cruel. People who knew what was wrong would know what kind of worst they should be preparing for. People who didn't were in limbo.

Laura nodded, then glanced up at the sound of children's voices upstairs. "Come and have a cup of coffee," she said. From the kitchen they'd be able to hear Audrey and the kids coming in time to not be overheard.

It was colder in the kitchen than in the rest of the house. Part of the south wall was missing, where Clint had removed it so he could install a bay window to match the one in the bedroom above. It would let more light in, he'd said, and give Laura a place to put her plants in the winter. They'd covered the hole with a sheet of thick plastic, but the warmth still escaped. Laura filled two mugs – cream and sugar for herself, and sugar only for her guest – and sat down opposite from Nat.

"Tell me," she said.

Natasha took a deep breath. "Has he mentioned the tesseract at all?" she wanted to know. Laura shook her head – she didn't pry into Clint's work because she knew that doing so would be dangerous for herself and him. "It's something SHIELD's been using to try to create... let's call it a wormhole," Nat decided. "It's a kind of tunnel between one point in our universe and another, or even between different universes."

"Like on Stargate," Laura said. She twisted her wedding ring on her finger distractedly. "Did Clint fall in?" she asked, her voice tight. Natasha knew exactly what she was imagining in that moment – she was picturing Clint stranded on some other planet, with no way home and no hope of rescue.

"No," Natasha assured her quickly. "He's still on Earth. But they did open a wormhole, and something came through. It had..." she tried to think of a way to say this tactfully, without scaring her, but quickly realized there wasn't one. "It had mind control powers of some sort. Clint was one of the first people it took over."

Laura didn't immediately react. She just sat there a moment, her eyes flicking over Natasha's face in which Nat recognized as a search for any evidence that she were joking, or that Laura had misunderstood. It was a perfectly natural reaction to being told something like that.

"Whatever he does under that influence, he won't be held responsible for it," Natasha said. "SHIELD doesn't work that way."

"I know," Laura said quickly. She shut her eyes and swallowed hard. "That's why they're sending us away, then."

Natasha nodded. "We have to assume it knows everything Clint knows," she said. "We don't think it's going to come for you..."

"But we're better safe than sorry," Laura finished for her. "I understand, I really do, but... god, what's happening to the world, Natasha?" she asked, looking earnestly into Nat's eyes. "Clint's work has always been sensitive, but in the past couple of years it's just gotten so weird. Giants and gods, and now whatever this is. What is going on?"

Was she blaming Nat? Certainly the timing would suggest that it was Natasha who'd led Clint into this bizarre new reality. When Natasha met her friend's gaze, however, she didn't see anger or reproach. There was only fear, and Laura Barton of all people had every right to be afraid. With creatures like Thor and the Hulk popping up, and humans like Tony Stark and Natasha herself trying to rise to the challenge, everybody was afraid. For most people, however, it was something that was happening far away. For Laura, it was right there in her family.

Nat reached forward and put a hand on Laura's arm. "I'm going to get him back for you," she said. That was what she'd come here to say. It was the sort of assurance that had to be delivered in promise.

"Thank you," said Laura, but because it was polite, not because she believed it.

"I mean it." Natasha squeezed her shoulder. "I will get him back. I promise. Okay?"

Laura nodded, and reached up to wipe tears out of the corners of her eyes as footsteps on the stairs announced that the children were coming. By the time Lila, aged three and a half, came charging into the kitchen, Laura was on her feet and cleaning up the breakfast dishes, facing the sink while she composed herself.

"Auntie Nat!" Lila climbed into Nat's lap. "Are you coming to Australia, too?"

"Sorry, no, I'm not," said Natasha. She checked her watch. "Actually, I really shouldn't stay much longer. I've got to catch a plane, too."

"Where are you going?" asked Cooper, leading Audrey back into the room.

"I'm going to India, to meet a very important doctor." Natasha set Lila on the floor and stood up. "Thanks for the coffee, Laura."

"Anytime, Nat," Laura replied.

"Let me finish that up." Audrey came to take the dishcloth from her sister. "You can see your friend out."

Laura and the children followed Natasha back to her car outside. The sun was a little higher now, shining over the trees to make the dewy grass glitter. One of the ducks was now on the front porch, apparently basking in the warmth.

"Are you going to ride an elephant in India?" asked Lila, as Natasha got back in her car.

"I don't think I'll have time," Natasha told her. "It's a business trip. I'll try to bring you back something with an elephant on it, okay?" She loved bringing the children souvenirs.

"Okay," said Lila brightly. "And we'll bring you back something from Australia! Deal?"

"It's a deal," Natasha said. "High five." She held up her hand, and Lila and Cooper each slapped it in turn. "I'll see you in a couple of weeks," she added to Laura, closing the door. "A promise is a promise."

The family waved as Natasha drove away, and Nat hoped she'd managed to instill some confidence. The Black Widow didn't make promises very often – her life was too dangerous and complicated for that – but the ones she made, she intended to keep. She was going to keep this one.

Ten days later, she was finally able to say she had done so.

The SHIELD agents who'd come barging into the Shawarma restaurant had whisked Clint away to a secure hospital facility. There they'd spent the days since going over every muscle and nerve in his body to make sure Loki's scepter hadn't had any lasting effect on him. They'd found some nasty bruises and burns that nobody had noticed during the battle itself, and two cracked ribs he'd somehow managed to downplay, and were insisting on treating those before they would let him go home.

Natasha had a good idea what Clint was going to think of that. Sure enough, when she knocked on the door of his hospital room she found him sitting up in bed, firing bits of folded paper across the room with an elastic band. The room and everything in it had the nasty antiseptic smell characteristic of hospitals, which brought unpleasant childhood memories bubbling up in Nat's brain – but they sank away again quickly when Clint smiled at her.

"Nat!" he said, and let the elastic go – it went flying across the room and pinged off the window before vanishing. "Please let me you've come to smuggle me out of here!"

She snorted. "Sure, I'll just stuff you under my shirt and walk out." Nat pulled up a chair and sat down next to the bed. "I threatened a few key staff members and got them to agree that you're recovering quickly. You should be out of here in a couple of days, just in time to see Fury release the Cube. He's handing it and Loki over to Thor, to take them back where they belong."

"Good riddance," said Clint, and then licked his lips. Natasha sat and waited. Sure enough, it didn't take long. There were games Clint Barton could win, but contests of patience were not among them. "Okay," he said. "What's the bad news?"

"No bad news," Natasha assured him. "They're safe. Fury got them out of the country, as soon as he heard you'd been compromised."

Clint slumped with relief. "You just enjoy torturing me," he said.

"You could have asked earlier," she pointed out.

"Yeah, well, I wasn't sure I believed Loki wasn't still listening in," said Clint. "I didn't want to know where they were, because if I knew, he'd know."

Nat nodded slowly. "Did he threaten them?" she asked. It wouldn't have surprised her.

But Clint said, "no. He knew about them," he added, voice heavy, "but it didn't matter. He wasn't going to make threats or promises, because he didn't need to. I was already in his power, and if he won, they would probably die anyway. They were less than nothing to him" He fiddled with the hem of his pajama shirt. "I didn't want to give him a reason to think otherwise."

"They're fine," Natasha repeated, and pulled a cell phone out of her pocket. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Clint's expression change from distracted relief back to worry. He was always very careful about contacting his family while on SHIELD property – there was always the chance something could be traced. "Calm down," said Nat, "it's pre-paid under a fake name, and I put an old KGB code in it that makes it ping off multiple towers, so its location can never be pinned down. Nobody will follow the signal back here. I'd better warn you, however," she added, dialing the number, "it's four in the morning where they are."

"What?" Clint had been in the act of reaching for the phone, but now he paused. "Where are they?"

"Sydney, Australia," Nat told him.

He blinked in surprise, then smiled. "Laura's always wanted to go to Australia."

"That's why I told Fury to send them there," Natasha agreed. "The cover is that she won a radio phone-in contest. Since her husband was away in Europe working on a helicopter accident in the Pyrenees, she took her sister along instead."

"That's great." Clint grinned. "Audrey and the kids will have a blast. Laura will be too busy worrying, but I'm sure she'll do her best." He held out a hand, and Nat put the phone in it – all he had to do now was press 'talk'. While he put it to his ear, she began to get up.

"Oh, you can stay," Clint protested.

"Nah, I don't think my stomach could handle listening to you two murmur sweet nothings," Natasha replied with a smile. "I'll just be in the hall if you need me." She patted Clint's arm, and slipped out into the hallway.

So far, the past forty-eight hours had been blissfully free of surprises. It was a nice change of pace, but Natasha didn't expect it to last very long. Sure enough, in the hospital hall she got a got a nasty shock indeed. Across from the door of Clint's room was an uncomfortable metal bench, under a supposedly arty black and white photograph of the Manhattan skyline. Sitting on the bench, as surprised to see Natasha as she was to see him, was Bruce Banner.

"Hello, um, Agent Romanov." Banner got to his feet. For a half a second all Natasha could see was insane green eyes and tearing clothing. Her ears filled with the cry of stop lying to me! and her nose with the stink of sweat and adrenaline... but then she forced herself to stop, and look instead at the man with the sheepish smile and curly dark hair. He'd greeted her politely, and smelled of laundry soap and green tea. Banner was not the Hulk, she reminded herself. He'd changed on the helicarrier only because Loki had forced him to. Right here, right now, she was in no danger.

Was she?

"Hello, Dr. Banner," she replied politely. "What are you doing here?" She doubted he was here to see Clint.

"I'm just here to see a man about a mutant abomination," he replied, in a voice meant to sound like sarcasm but not actually containing any. Natasha wondered if he were talking about himself, Blonsky, or the material the army had seized from Sterns' lab at Empire State. "How about you?"

"I had to deliver a message," said Nat, honest but vague. Could she leave? No, Clint would expect her to return when he'd finished his phone call. Could she leave and come back after Banner left? But Banner might be here all day. He looked perfectly in control of himself now, but this same man had transformed into a monster twice while she watched. Her fear could not be reasoned with, any more than the Hulk himself.

"Well, uh..." Banner sucked on his lips for a moment. "I didn't expect to see you again after the explosion on the carrier," he said, "and then when I did there was kind of a lot going on. So since we're both here now, I want to apologize."

"There's nothing to apologize for, Dr. Banner," Natasha made herself say. "Loki was manipulating all of us. If you hadn't changed after the explosion, he would have found some other way to make you do it."

"Which is why I should never have agreed to come with you in the first place," he said, head down. "Would you believe I'm tired of being told it's not my fault? Because it is my fault. The other guy exists because I was arrogant and irresponsible, and whether anybody likes to admit it or not, everything he does is my fault. Will you let me apologize because it'll make me feel better?"

Natasha nodded, half to herself. That was what apologies were for, wasn't it? They were like band-aids. They pretended to cure, but in reality they only covered what would have to heal on its own.

"All right," she said. "Apology accepted. If I can apologize also, for insisting that you come when you obviously didn't want to." Maybe that would help him feel like it was all right.

"It all seems to have worked out okay," he offered. "So yeah, don't worry about it."

A couple of awkward moments passed, in which neither said anything but the conversation had not been properly ended. Natasha began to wonder again if she could just make an excuse and leave, but then, thankfully, Banner's phone beeped. He looked relieved, too, as he pulled it out to check – it was brand-new, with the transparent screen of a Stark device. Probably a gift.

"I gotta go," he said.

"Yeah," Natasha agreed. "That sounds important."

"I guess I'll see you again. You know. Next time the world needs saving," Banner offered.

"Right, next time," said Nat. Was there going to be a next time? The Battle of New York would have been high on a list of things she never, ever wanted to do again, and yet... yeah, she was pretty sure there would be a next time. The world had never gotten less strange or dangerous before, and that wasn't likely to change.

A few minutes later, she heard Clint call her name from inside the hospital room. This time, when she opened the door, she found him smiling.

"I'm guessing that went well," she said.

Clint beamed. "She's very proud of me, actually," he said.

"Mind control does give you an easy excuse for doing stupid things," Natasha said with a smirk. "So what's the plan?" She doubted very much whether the Barton family would be taking the rest of their vacation.

"Well, Audrey apparently wants to stay the full two weeks," Clint replied, "but Laura and the kids are gonna come straight home. She said they'll catch the first flight they can get, which means they'll probably be arriving very early tomorrow morning, while I'm still stuck in this place." He pouted a little and raised his brows, making a deliberate pleading face.

She rolled her eyes. "You're lucky I like you. What flight, what airport?"

"They don't know yet. I told her to text you at that phone number," he said, and handed her the phone back. "Don't bring them here. Just take them back to Iowa, and I'll go join them as soon as I'm allowed."

"I will," Nat promised. She tucked the phone into the inside pocket of he jacket. "Anything else? You wouldn't do the sad puppy face for just one favour."

"Yeah," he said. "I am definitely going to die if I have to eat any more hospital food."

Natasha nodded. "I figured," she said. "Baby back ribs, coming right up."

About an hour later, Nat had left Clint with barbecue sauce on her fingers and was on her way up the stairs in the parking garage. She'd just reached her car when the phone buzzed, and pulled it out to find a text from Laura Barton.

AA113 LAX 3:10 AM.

Nat put the phone back in her jacket and got in the car. She'd planned to go back to the Plaza Hotel, where Stark was putting them all up in style while he figured out what he was going to do about the top of his building. Now, she decided, since LaGuardia and JFK were both still closed in the wake of the Chi'Tauri invasion, she would go to Harrison airstrip and fly herself to Los Angeles.

She and Clint had not talked about what would happen after she took Laura and the kids home to the farm, but she knew he wouldn't mind if she stayed a while, and Fury could hardly argue that she – or anybody else on the so-called 'team' – didn't deserve a vacation. It wouldn't be the first time Nat had gone to the Bartons' to escape from the world for a while, and it wasn't going to be the last, either. Their isolated home was the perfect place to stay under the radar for a while. Nobody in the nearby town had ever heard of the Black Widow, and weren't likely to connect Mr. Barton's friend from work to the redhead in the black catsuit who hung out with superheroes. She could help Clint replace that window, and do some work on her own knitting and embroidery, which had lain neglected for weeks.

Nat didn't get a lot of normal in her life. When the opportunity presented itself, she couldn't pass it up.

The letters AA in Laura's text stood for Air Aurora, an Australian airline that specialized in long-haul flights across the Pacific to North and South America. According to the LAX website, flight 113 from Sydney was due to arrive at Terminal B, Gate Twelve, around 3:11 in the morning. That gave Nat some eight hours to kill after landing at Santa Monica. Most people wouldn't have had any trouble finding some way to amuse themselves in California, and Natasha Romanov was no exception. In fact, as she picked up another car at a Go Rentals across the street from the airport, she already knew exactly how she was going to spend her evening. She would head up to Malibu, and drop in at Stark Industries for dinner with Pepper Potts.

Nat had never really gotten the hang of making female friends, and she and Pepper had gotten off to a rocky start – but once they'd realized they had a common enemy in Tony Stark's bottomless capacity for bullshit, they'd bonded quickly. In flights of fancy Natasha had even thought about quitting SHIELD and going to work for Pepper full-time in a job where she was valued, respected, and would never be asked to kill anybody. In the real world, however, she knew that wasn't possible. Nat knew too much, and could do too much, to ever really lead a normal life.

An evening with Pepper would be a nice head start on the pretending she was planning to do, though. She'd already called ahead to let her friend know she was coming, but as Natasha pulled up in front of the building she felt the prepaid phone in her pocket buzz again. Nat parked the car and undid her seat belt, then pulled it out to see who was texting her. Maybe Clint had gotten out of the hospital early, or Laura wanted to give her more details about the flight. Natasha pulled the phone out and swiped the screen.

The text was from Laura's number and contained only one word – but that one word was not early, late, or even canceled. It was hijacked.

Natasha froze. Outwardly she maintained her composure – nobody who looked at her would see anything but a woman casually checking her phone in her car – but inside, she went cold. Should she send a reply? For a moment she was going to, but then decided against it. In the panic of the moment Laura might have forgotten to turn off her ringtone, and a text arriving could attract the hijackers' attention. So, with no acknowledgment whatsoever, she tossed the cheap phone onto the dashboard and pulled out her own cell to call Fury.

Nick Fury would not answer his private line unless the caller were on an approved list. Nat's number was there, and seeing it must have been enough to tell Fury that the call was important. He picked up halfway through the second ring.

"Fury," he said.

"What's happening to flight 113?" Natasha demanded.

"I don't know," said Fury, startled. "What is happening to flight 113?"

"You don't know?" Nat generally assumed that Fury knew everything that was happening in the world at a given time – or at least, everything of any importance. But if Laura had only just texted her, the hijacking had probably occurred only minutes ago, and Fury was probably run ragged dealing with the press and cleanup in New York. No surprise, then, if he hadn't heard yet. "I just got a text from Laura Barton. She and the kids are on Air Aurora 113 to LAX. She says it's been hijacked." What was wrong with the human race, Nat wondered, when mere days after an alien invasion people were already back to pointlessly squabbling among themselves over money, oil, and politics?

"I'll look into it," Fury promised. "Will you have your phone?"

"Yes, but I'm on my way back to the airport." Natasha started the car again. "Have Santa Monica refuel the quinjet I borrowed, and get me a tacsuit and gear – bites, discs, and glocks."

Fury didn't answer right away. Natasha was halfway out of the parking lot, with her phone wedged between her cheek and shoulder as she drove, before he replied. "Natasha," he said, "you're not going to try to board a commercial airliner forty thousand feet above the Pacific ocean."

She recognized his tone – it was the 'stern but loving father figure' voice he used when he was trying to convince her that he was doing something for her own good. Natasha rarely let him do things for her own good. "I won't if I don't have to," she promised. "But have my things there, just in case."

"Natasha," he repeated.

"I'm going," she said. In her mind, there was absolutely no argument possible. Just days earlier, Loki had mocked Natasha for her interest in Clint Barton's welfare. She'd replied, with perfect honesty, love is for children. I owe him a debt. It was not the sort of debt she could ever really repay, but this was an opportunity to try.

And Nick Fury knew that perfectly well. "Quinjet and widow gear," he said. "What else will you need?"

When she arrived back at Santa Monica airport, Natasha found three SHIELD vehicles and a fuel truck parked around her quinjet, with agents waiting to meet her. She parked the car and got out, and the man who was evidently in charge stepped forward to shake her hand. He was in his forties, slightly overweight but with a full head of dark hair that only had a few threads of silver in it yet. In the overpowering airport smell of sun-baked pavement and jet fuel Natasha could not get an idea of his personal scent, but the hairs on his sleeves told her that he owned a fluffy white dog, maybe a Samoyed.

"Agent Romanov? Jim Chiba," he said. "I'm your pilot."

"Thank you, Agent Chiba," she replied, ignoring the attempted handshake and heading straight for the jet. "Who has my gear?"

"I do." Another man offered her a duffle bag with her tacsuit and weapons in it. Another offered a leather portfolio. Natasha leafed through this and found blueprints of the plane, a passenger list, and copies of Air Aurora's files for the crew. She'd review that on the way. "Do you want to request any additional personnel, Agent Romanov?"

Nat had to smile to herself – Fury knew he couldn't talk her out of it, so he was just going to make sure she had all the help he could give her. "I need somebody to take that car back to the rental place," she said. "And call Pepper Potts to tell her I won't make it for dinner after all."

Normal was just going to have to wait. The Black Widow was going back to work.