Nothing triggers her.

It just starts without warning.

Natasha felt panic starting, crawling up her spine. An icy coldness stretched over her hands, and in the shadows she caught little girls struggling amongst her hands.

Blinking hard, she tried to root herself. Holding tight to the arm rests, she kept still. Forcing her breathing normal, she slumped over. "Natasha?" She can hear Tony, voice faint behind her. Steve's talking is blurred, fading from in front of her and appearing beside her almost violently.

"Can you hear me?" Clint demands, fingertips light on her shoulder.

She hears his words sharply, but cringes away. Eyes widening, desperate to see something that's alive, not dead.

("What are you doing in here, 'Tasha? It's so late. Are we trading secrets again?")

She flings an arm out, scars stretched across her wrist. She cries out, tears spiking.

Someone tries to grab her, hands rough and calloused that startled Natasha. She screamed words in Russian, tangling up in the crowded space. She escapes through the cracks, tucking herself between two shadowed figures that stoop to grab her. A booming voice shouts, and her hands fling towards the knife tucked away in the small of her back. A memory seeps in through her veins, with blunt echoes that follow.

("Is Uncle Ivan touching you again?")

"Don't make me," She mangles her words. Splitting them in English and Russian.

Someone is trying to translate her madness, and another is coaxing her out of the corner and to give him the damn knife.

Turning her head, the blade catches at her wrist. Something emerges softly, crimson leaking amidst the darkness. "I don't want this fate!"

English pulls now, strong at her words. She wills them to understand, but the figures before her cannot. They do not know her past. She started young, and she paves her future and past in the price of flesh.

They just do not understand how young.

("Please, sir. Don't make me. I cannot prove myself to you," Natasha chokes, hands clenching. "Not like this.)

Someone grabs her, voice savaged. She tries to drag the blade across her wrist again, but he snatches it away. "Enough, 'Tasha. Do you know where you are?"

Black fades to red. Red soaking the walls, and her hands. She whispers, her accent strong against her English, "The Red Room, Sir."

A hand cups her cheek, and another one takes her bloodied wrist. She flinches, howling as she attempts to throw herself by but into a wall of strength.

"You're not in the Red Room. You're here in Stark Tower. Do you know who you are with?" Another voice calls to her, floating in rough Russian.

Hands creep over her skin, and the red room spins with havoc around her. "Uncle Ivan, sir. I've been good, please! Don't touch me tonight, not to tonight. Don't make me do this!"

"Do what?" Words drop like lead. Like explosives. They bring back a flood of memories that leak venom. "Natasha, look at me. What did he make you do?"

("Just slit their throats and your body will be your own tomorrow. Do you understand, my Natasha?")

"He made me his own. Forced me to kill them. I didn't want to. And then he forced me on my back, in their blood. They wouldn't stop staring at me!" Her whispers are frantic, forcing her to clutch onto the figure that won't let her go. Her hands are violent, grasping onto a fragment of reality. "Told me to kill them. They were my friends!"

Someone engulfs her from behind, wrestling her into his arms. She's struggling, and they're screaming at her to breath. Someone rushes to her side, and tries to ease her into calmness with words that don't even connect. Another one stands heavy in the distance, panic and unease strung tight between them.

"'Tasha. Listen to me. You're here. Home. I've got you. It's me, Tony. Clint's got you to. Are you listening to me?"

("Please, 'Tasha. Don't do this!")

"Tony?" She calls, feeling distant still. The red is fading, but lurking in the shadows. A little girl with blond curls and bright green eyes and the nasty slit across her throat is watching Natasha.

A little scream parts the air,

Suddenly she falls head first into reality.

Their faces remind her of a warzone. Clint has blood smeared across his cheek bone, and Thor weeps livid tears. Tony's clinging to her behind, and Steve catching her hands firmly. "'Tasha. Where are you?"

She struggles at first to pull free, but Tony clamps down tighter.

"Where are you?" Steve demands, his hands forcing her face to look at his. "Natasha. Answer me, goddamn it!"

She sounds choked. "Stark Tower."

("This is your future, Natasha.)

Tony is defiant, words pressed to her ear. "Home."

"I'm fine now. Fine." She tries, but Clint cuts her off firmly.

"Bullshit, 'Tash. Fucking bullshit and you know that." His hands are wet with her blood, and he's wrapping her wrist in a towel, Bruce muttering about first aid kit and stitches. "I thought you stopped having panic attacks."

"Thought so to," she allowed herself to slump against the bodies holding her. Some picks her up carefully, and she thinks it might be Steve or even Clint-not Tony. Tony's holding her like she's going to break into a million pieces and she wants to laugh.

She already broke a long time ago.

Steve looks at her, eyes burning. "Who is Uncle Ivan?"

"My rapist."

…

They don't dare pressure her. The coax her.

Coax her back to her bedroom, and fold the covers back. Promise her they'll be near, listening for trouble. Thor takes the knife abandoned on the floor and places it amongst his own weapons until a better time.

Bruce practically throws Clint out of the room, determination is his stride. Tony's scowling, muttering something about decorating the place up once he can get his hands on it. Bruce tells him to get, and Steve and Thor manage to wrestle him out.

"I need to stitch that," Bruce warns her, taking a damp cloth to her wrist. The pain throbs sharply, and she tries to pull away. Bruce holds tight though, soft hands desperate.

The cut's a deep slash, vibrant against the silvery scars that line her veins. "It'll be fine."

"I'll see to that," he promises.

As he sews her up carefully, he tells her a secret. A story about a father who wanted a little more from his Son was possible. She catches sight of phantom bruises and non-existent scrapes.

She whispers her best friend's name.

It's there, engraved on her left wrist.

("My name is Alice!")

He gives her a pill that knocks her out for seven hours.

She drifts listening to the soft sounds of the living. A pencil scratching against paper, and pages being flipped.

…

Clint hands her a book one day.

'How To Kill a Mockingbird" is written in loopy writing, and the first few pages reveal a child lurking within ink a little too grown up-yet a little too young to understand.

When she finishes it within hours, another book appears on her pillow. This time 'Great Gatsby' lures her into by the lie of dreams and reality, and she greets the brutal ending without daring to blink.

"I used to think the Mockingbird one was about heroes." Clint tells her after dropping free from an air vent. (at one point he'd have to dodge a knife or bullet, but since the panic attack she's been forbidden from carrying.)

"Used to?" The side of her mouth quirks up, and he slips an arm around her firmly. The hallway stretches on endlessly, and she feels almost swallowed in the expanse. "What changed?"

"I realized it was about fathers."

She can relate. Uncles and heroes, and everything in between.

("Please, Uncle. Don't hurt me,")

"I think I get it," She says, words fumbled.

Clint looks down at her, eyes suddenly old. "I know you get it."

…

Thor finds her one night, aggravated.

She's standing on the roof top, wind fierce. He's the one that lures her back inside (and away from the ledge). "Lady Natasha, make I offer you a favour?"

She's rigid, half desiring to be back toeing the line and leaning downwards into the abyss.

"You don't have to call me so formal, Thor." She shies away from his large form, but his eyes crinkle as he laughs heavily.

"I forget easily," He starts but then turns to her. "I wish to ask you to allow me to do something. It is a tradition amongst my people. You might think it is silly."

Natasha tilts her head upwards, and attempts to smile. "Try me."

"Where I am from, there is a deep action between one another that connects each other deeply. It displays trust." He's scuffling his feet against the shiny floor of the hall. "It, as I say my Lady. It may be silly to you."

"Just tell me."

He holds out a hairbrush.

She bites back a laugh.

They end up sitting on the stairs, Natasha directly below him. He pulls the brush through her hair silently.

"How is does this display of trust, Thor?" She questions, her voice soft.

(She sits down next to her, holding her hand tightly. "You can trust me, 'Tasha. Honest!")

"I could snap your neck. Break your spine. Crush you skull. You trust me not to."

She feels trust stretching out, and she takes her hand and grabs his own. Small against his own, firm against his softness. "I trust you, Thor. Honest."

…

("I'll track you down if you ever escape me again. Break your spine.")

She finds Steve burrowed into papers about the Red Room. There's an image crumpled almost violently, with the blurred figure of a man wavering in smoke. Her breath hitches, and she tumbles backwards. He catches her before she can smash herself against the ground.

"You with me?" He sounds alarmed, panic rising steady between them.

It takes her a bit to find herself, and force her into the open. To pull away from Steve.

"I'm here," she swore three times before he allowed her to escape his grasp.

He swallows. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you like that. I shouldn't have been leaving things lying around like that."

"He's dead, you know. When I turned sixteen, I killed him."

She can't find it in herself to escape his hold. Pressed into his chest as he holds her. "You had every right to kill him. If he were still alive, I'd break him open."

She laughs bitterly. "You wouldn't do that."

"For you, 'Tasha?" He pauses. Arms tightening. "I'd do anything. I'd kill that man again if I could. Never had a right to do any of that to you."

"I think I might believe you." She smiles a bit, hidden away against his shoulder.

"You better believe. Your part of my family now."

At one point, she would have cringed. She remembers a little girl who looked like doll. How they used to claim each other as sisters.

Now she feels safe.

…

She finds her room in disarray.

Tony's in the middle, fingers gliding over a tablet as he mumbles to himself.

Her combat boots are strewn in a corner, because where they used to sit is a large bookshelf that looks like its gleaming. New copies of Gatsby and Mockingbird are already at home amongst the shelf, and she can barely keep up with the new titles.

Her bed is now wedged beneath the window, with curtains wide open.

"Morning," Tony calls over his shoulder as he flips with haste through something, his screen blinking rapidly. "What do you think about the color blue? I like blue. Do you like blue?"

She doesn't understand.

She pinches the bridge of her nose. "It's five o'clock, Tony. Not morning anymore. Can you explain what the hell you are doing?" An empty espresso cup in on her bed table that no longer right beside her bed.

He looks up from his screen, confused. "I'm trying to figure out paint here. Maybe you like green? What color do you prefer?"

"No, I mean-all of this. Why is my room not like it was this morning?"

"I'm making it home. And you're not answering my question. Honestly. I'll just go blue. Want light or dark?"

She gives him a smile. He kisses her.

She allows it, and returns it.

("I understand," Alice whispered. Her hands were soft, holding Natasha's. "No hard feelings. I trust you, 'Tash. Honest!")

…

She doesn't just stop having panic attacks. S.H.I.E.L.D puts her on suicide watch. After one bad moment, she nearly succeeds in killing herself.

Her family helps her.

Natasha relents to their intervention. Allows it.

Tony doesn't force the little doll like girl away from Natasha's future. Just puts her somewhere she can't fall. Allows her to stay, but forces to agony away the best he can.

The rest catch her when she stumbles.

(she never gets a chance to fall.)

…

"If I told you I loved you, how mad would you be?"

"I'd be worse if you didn't."

…