Natasha had an office now. It had large bullet-resistant windows, something which passed for a view, a desk, a couch, and... Tony Stark, walking in the door without knocking.

"Stark, who let you in here?" she asked, sighing.

He actually looked a little hurt. "I let myself in." His gaze roamed the room and she resisted the urge to slap his hands away when he poked at the monitors on the wall. "Your team is looking good. Of course, they are outfitted with Stark tech, so it's only natural."

She smiled sweetly. "Was there something you wanted?"

Stark sidled up to her desk and planted himself on it. "You know, I probably knew Banner better than anyone – except that scientist he never talks about, you ever notice that? It can't be healthy."

On the list of unhealthy personality traits belonging to Bruce Banner, Natasha considered his inability to talk about his ex relatively minor. She just raised her eyebrows.

"I just want to say that you made the right decision." He could tell he'd taken her by surprise, the smug bastard. "It's no wonder he wanted to run. He was always too afraid of what might go wrong to see what good he could do."

"He had a reason to be," Natasha pointed out. Believing the Hulk wasn't dangerous was suicide.

Stark waved a dismissive hand in her direction. "Yes, but we needed him in that fight. He needed someone to point him back in the right direction."

"And all I had to do was betray all that trust I spent months building," she said blandly.

"That's what heroes do, isn't it? Make sacrifices for the greater good. Lay down on that wire—" Stark cut himself off and snapped his mouth shut.

Natasha was still trying to process how she came to be getting a pep talk from Tony Stark.

Stark seemed to be having the same difficulty. He pushed himself off the desk. "He'll realise it someday," he said. "See you, Charlotte." He wiggled his fingers at her and walked out the door.

"Bye, Wilbur," she called after him. He flipped her off without looking back.

She glanced back at the progress report she had open. She finished a sentence, closed the file and headed down to the firing range.

Maria caught her on the way out. "What did Stark want?" she asked, lips pursed into a thin line. Maria found Tony Stark tiresome. It was one of the things Natasha liked about her.

"He just wanted to tell me something I already knew," she said. Maria rolled her eyes, and Natasha smiled. "Sometimes external validation is helpful," she ventured.

"Sometimes", said Maria. She looked her up and down. "You going to the range?" At Natasha's nod, she continued, "You want company?"

As they were suiting up, Maria spoke again. "I was listening to what Stark told you."

"You worked with Fury for too long," said Natasha.

"He had a point. Being a hero isn't always easy."

She sighed. "I know. I don't regret what I did. I just... I hate failing." There. She'd said it.

"Life isn't a mission. It doesn't have a success/failure rating. It goes on." She shrugged. "Life has second chances."

Natasha snapped on her gloves. "Let's go shoot some targets."