Red Room

RR1 Blueprints

The day started like any other in The Avengers Tower. The Avengers were getting ready to start the day and as always, Tony was bugging Natasha about her past.

"C'mon red, you know I could decode those case files in five minutes flat right? So why don't you just tell me? What's so bad about your past that you don't want anyone to know about?" Tony kept pestering her while the other Avengers nervously finished their breakfast. Clint shuffled uncomfortably.

"Leave her alone Tony. Her past is her past, and we are in the present now. Anything that happened then is over, and she's with us now. I trust her completely. So leave her alone before you piss her off." Natasha smiled sweetly at Clint, who let out a breath of relief. Crisis averted, he thought. Every time Tony brings this subject up, he threatens her with cracking her case file, which he has never done yet. Whether it is out of fear or respect, he didn't know. But Natasha always got her revenge on him. She hated talking about anything from her past but Tony wouldn't give up till he knew.

Natasha stood up and walked around Thor and Bruce, to the other side of the table and leaned over to Tony's ear. Everyone in the room heard him gulp in fear. He knew she always got revenge on him, yet he kept pushing her. Crisis not averted, Clint thought.

"Tony," she said sweetly, along with an edge in her voice, "what have I told you about asking me that, hmmm?"

"To not... ask you that?" he answered fearfully.

She smiled. "Correct. Now, could you hand me the sugar?"

Knowing that he was about to be punished, he solemnly reached for the sugar to hand to her. He closed his eyes and waited for whatever she was going to do to him, but nothing happened. She instead walked back over to her seat on the other side of the table and poured the sugar into her coffee.

"Thank you Tony," she said. She finished her coffee and then left the room.

Thor was left beaming. "That went splendidly! She didn't do anything to you Man of Iron! Maybe she has forgiven you?" They were ecstatic with how the encounter went. Every morning, Tony asked the same questions and he usually got yelled at. He got off scott free today.

Tony smiled in triumph and then took a bite of his eggs. The others watched as his face suddenly fell moments after that regretful bite.

"Who made these eggs?" he asked.

Bruce answered with "Natasha did, why?"

"WATERRRRRRR!" Tony yelled as he ran to the sink. He turned the nozzle on and nothing came out. He then ran to the fridge looking for relief and gulped down an entire container of orange juice.

"Tony! What's wrong?" Bruce asked in concern.

After catching his breath, Tony answered with "The eggs, she put hot sauce in my eggs. She knew I was going to ask her so she did it before I even came down stairs! Then she did something to the goddamn sink!"

Everyone was laughing at him and Thor almost broke the table in his glee.

"That was the best one yet!" Clint said as he was still laughing.

"Don't you guys get it?" Tony said angrily. "Everyone in this tower knows everything about each other, everyone but Natasha! It's not fair. How do we even know we can really trust her? She could be spying on us for all we know!"

Clint stood up angrily. "What the hell Tony! She has saved your ass countless times and this is how you repay her?"

"Why won't she talk about her past with us then? What is she hiding!?"

"Perhaps she isn't hiding anything." Tony glared at Thor's remark.

"Then what, she's just playing with us?" he asked angrily.

"No, perhaps she won't tell us is because it's too painful to talk about." Everyone stared at Thor. No one had ever thought of that and it took a god to bring it to light. Tony looked stunned for a moment. His face then turned back to anger and he stormed out of the kitchen.

Tony turned the corner and stopped suddenly when he saw Natasha standing there. She had heard everything.

"Natasha I-..."

"Forget it Tony." She turned and walked off, leaving Tony feeling bad about what he had said about her. The pain in her expression made him want to take back what he said, but she was already gone.

He then took the elevator down to his lab to sulk. "I'm so stupid! Why did I have to go and open my big mouth? Of course I trust her. But what has her staying so quiet. I'm going to get to the bottom of this."

Tony powered up his computer and pulled up her case file. He got busy with taking down the firewalls and cracking the codes that kept is so secret. After a while, he was one code away to finally getting some answers. Before he put in the code though, he stopped; he couldn't do it. He didn't know why but he couldn't bring himself to read her file. He clicked delete and sat back.

He was lost in his thoughts until a paper caught his eye. He pulled it out of his desk and smiled. It was his blueprints to his time machine. Well, not really a time machine but a machine that would theoretically bring a person or persons mind back in time. He had started this before Loki and his alien invaders appeared, and after the attack on New York he finished the plans when he acquired the perfect thing to get it working. To be honest he actually forgot about it. Maybe it was fate giving him an answer... but too bad he didn't believe in fate... or did he?

Tony grabbed the blueprints and walked to the back of his lab where he got to work on building the machine. He would go back and find Natasha. He would finally understand her and why she was the way she was.

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Sorry it's so short! I just got the idea and had to get it down. I hope you like the concept! Let me know what you think and what you would like to see as the story progresses! Red Room here we come!