Thanks to the folks at the Beta Branch for looking this over. Come give us a peek, see if you're interested in joining a writer/beta group - we dabble in all sorts of fandoms. Additional thanks to RedBessRackham for pointing out the typos that resulted from my ohgodihavetenminutestofinishthisori'llbelate writing rush.

In retrospect, there were a lot of things they could have chosen to do differently.

Rather than steal the data, Natasha could have switched assignments and guarded Stark instead. She could have taken control of the situation right away. She could have performed background checks personally. She could have realized that Tony Stark was always the target, would always be the main target and perhaps she could have argued more fiercely to be Tony's shadow for the function.

Instead, Natasha allows herself to be assigned to the actual grab. She doesn't argue nearly enough to take the lead on this mission.

Which is why she isn't the first, nor even the second to know when the mission goes sour.

The first is their mark.

The second is Tony Stark.

It happens as quick as a flash – quite literally between one instance and the next.

One moment, Tony flinches as the overhead light clicks on and the light sears into his eyes.

The next, a searing shock races through his body and he finds himself blinking rather stupidly on the ground, letting out a yell of agony as what feels like a steel-toed boot slams into the side of his knee, dislocating it in a single harsh blow.

He vaguely hears himself swearing, rolling on the ground to try to get away from his attacker. He hisses as his knee slips back into his proper position, gasping.

"Jarvis!" he croaks. Fucking SHIELD and their "it's perfectly safe to pretend to be interested in mass murdering goons and their biotech while Romanov steals the data we need" mantra. Wasn't there supposed to be an agent on him? Fuck SHIELD and their fucking – "Jarvis!"

His suit, he needs his suit. This is bad. Why didn't he carry a goddamn gun? Tony really needs to start carrying a fucking gun.

Panic's bleeding through his thoughts and Tony lashes out as someone kicks him in the side. He feels a fist connect with someone's shins and it's not enough – they're grabbing him by the hair and yanking him up.

"Jarvis," Tony croaks. "SNAFU."

He hears a distinct whirring, hopes that it's the sound of his last, final suit approaching but's enough of a realist to know there's no way for it to be this close.

"How much money do you want?" Tony snarls, his elbows flailing to try to knock his attacker away. His position's all wrong and the grip's too harsh for his scrambling to make any true effect.

But this isn't a ransom, Tony realizes with a sinking feeling.

It's an execution.

His neck's yanked back, painfully exposed and Tony lets out a choking gasp as he feels cold metal bite into his throat.

The hand drops him to the ground and Tony tips forward. The cool air conditioning only exaggerates the feeling of wet blood sliding down his front and he can't help but think, Pepper's going to be mad about the suit as he tries to catch his fall.

He fails, of course, because that's what Tony Stark does – he tries and he fails and ends up lying in his own pool of blood.

Well, maybe not the last one so much but this time? This time he does exactly that.

Tony's fingers grope frantically for his cell phone but he feels deadened and numb. He's still trying to find his phone, unsure of who he'll call, when he feels his suit begin to settle into place around his body.

"Sir?" Jarvis asks faintly. "Sir?"

He can't reply, can't quite muster the energy to choke past the terrible suffocating feeling rising in his lungs.

"Sir?"

Natasha stares at the last document she pulled up purely by accident.

She recoils before looking closer, taking in each detail as closely as she can, committing it to memory.

"Barton," she says quickly into her comms unit. "Barton. Stark."

She doesn't need to say more than that, can't say more than that because her mind's filling in all the pieces she missed, all the pieces they missed.

Clint swears as Natasha snaps a picture of the computer on her phone and sends it to him. "You think Hollen's in on this?"

Natasha looks at the picture of the agent in charge of Tony's security standing side by side with their mark and doesn't reply.

"Find out where Tony is," she orders. "Now."

Natasha's spent a lifetime seeing details in the midst of crisis. She's trained her senses to be aware of dangers, details, and seemingly insignificant clues. Normally, this serves her well both in the field and out of it.

Except finding Tony is one thing Natasha doesn't require honed senses for.

Natasha finds Tony in an out of the way darkened corridor, lying encased in his suit. At first, she doesn't noticed the pool of blood – she steps in it before flinching back and away despite herself.

"Tony," she hisses, lunging forward.

Tony's scarcely been off the radar for two, maybe three minutes, but it appears as though it was enough time.

"Barton, lights on in section D," she orders.

"You find him?" Clint, damn it, sounds unconcerned but the lights flicker on a few seconds later so Natasha doesn't call him on it.

"Yes."

Her grim confirmation renders Clint silent as Natasha gets her first look at Tony in the light.

One of his remaining suits surrounds him – helmet, gauntlets, body armor – and Natasha wastes a precious moment by tapping on the back of his helmet and calling his name. After receiving no response, Natasha rolling him over and taps on the suit once more, "Jarvis," she says quietly, ignoring the stench of blood. "Jarvis… I need you to let me help Tony."

"Miss Romanov," Jarvis speaks slowly, voice filtering from out of Tony's helmet and sounding as though each word is being weighed before he gives it voice. "Mister Stark ordered-"

"Jarvis" Natasha cuts across him quickly. "I am standing in Tony's blood. I think whatever Tony ordered can be set aside."

As she speaks, she lays a hand on Tony's helmet, gripping it in one hand. "Jarvis," she repeats. "Please let me help him."

As Natasha tugs on the helmet one more time, she hears the whir of gears. Slowly it clicks free and Natasha pays scarcely any care to it as she tosses it aside.

Blood's smeared across Tony's face, clumping his hair together and leaving a gruesome track along his chin. Natasha hears the sound of the rest of the armor beginning to fall away from Tony as her eyes fall on the most obvious injury.

The sheer amount of blood gives her pause, but the fact that the wound isn't spurting and Tony's still obviously alive gives her hope. Rage settles in Natasha, curling up in a dark pit deep inside of her and freezing there as she pulls out gauze.

"Paramedics," she snarls. "Now, Hawkeye."

"Is Stark-"

"Down," is all she tells him but there's a dreadful finality in her voice.

"How bad?" comes the natural follow-up question.

She considers all the injuries both Clint and her have taken over the years. Then she takes in Tony, in his pale face and still bleeding injury despite the pressure she's attempting to apply. When he makes a small choking noise, Natasha relieves the pressure somewhat. She's not been trained for this – not been trained to work with a partner, to do more than make snap judgments on the likelihood of survival.

What she's seeing now..

"Bad," is all she says, and for Barton, it's enough.

"ETA's two minutes," Clint reports. "A pair's actually on call in the lobby and-"

She doesn't have time for his inane prattle. "Make it one," she cuts him off. The damage is extensive enough to hover on the edge of lethal and the only thing Natasha lets herself be grateful for is that the artery hasn't been sliced. Whoever went after Tony obviously did it in a rush.

Natasha considers this carefully, weighing up each detail in her mind. She recalls the picture she found earlier, drawing it to the front of her mind as she tries to help Tony the best she can.

When the paramedics arrive, stretcher between them, Natasha takes a step back. She can feel Tony's thick blood between her finger tips and idly wonders how long it'll take for it to dry. As the paramedics brush her out of the way, Natasha feels torn between following them and tracking Hollen.

At the most, he only had a ten minute head start – Natasha discovered Tony fairly quickly and the paramedics arrived rapidly.

"Barton," she orders, striding down the hall. One businessman she passes recoils at the sight of her, pale evening gown coated in blood but she ignored him completely. "Give me Hollen's last known location."

She can hear Clint weighing the wisdom of refusing, and she hears his answer with some satisfaction, "Closing a deal with the mark. SHIELD's moving in now."

"No," Natasha says coolly. "Pull them back – I'll take care of it."

Tony opens his eyes.

It takes him a moment to realize that he's lying on his back, rather than on his side with Pepper close by as he's used to.

It takes him another moment to recognize the sound of instruments beeping, feet shuffling down the hallway, and the gentle sound of someone breathing close by.

"Fuck," he says, or tries to. His vocal cords don't exactly cooperate and what emerges is some strange garbled noise that would have been more at home in a petting zoo than in Tony Stark.

He hears a soft exhale and gingerly tilts his head to one side.

He shouldn't be surprised that Romanov's there, but he is. She meets his gaze, looking more exhausted than he's ever seen her, and Tony Stark isn't sure if he should be flattered or creeped out by the fact that she waited in his hospital room for him to wake up.

She doesn't say anything stupid like you're awake or how do you feel? but instead reports, "Hollen sold you out."

Of course he did. Tony could have easily told her that after how the event had ended.

"Unfortunately for him, he was too stupid to remember that the carotid isn't as adequately exposed when the throat is bared," Natasha doesn't look angry or even concerned, instead she simply looks mildly annoyed before she smiles at him which is perhaps more creepy than any of the other options Tony's mind had come up with. "I made sure he realized the error of his ways."

Yeah. Definitely creepy. Tony isn't sure if he should be flattered or insulted that his attempted murder turned into a lesson on executions.

"Pepper?" he tries to ask.

Natasha raises one shoulder in a shrug, "She's fine. A little shaken up by your near miss, but she's fine."

That seems to be all he needed to hear – Tony feels his body begin to lull back towards sleep despite the uncomfortable hospital bed as Natasha says, "I'm on duty until the morning. Potts should arrive somewhere around nine – rest up, Stark."

In retrospect, there were a lot of things they could have chosen to do differently.

Natasha could have just simply downloaded the files instead of going through them. She could have contacted Clint later or put the pieces together after the mission was concluded. Hollen could have actually been a competent criminal.

Instead, Natasha manages to pull it off. She lets herself smile and settle back against the wall, keeping on her feet until the morning.

Natasha is the first to know how differently things may have turned out.

The second is Tony Stark.