The Avengers Tower was unusually quiet that afternoon.
After the armor test with Tony, he had expected to spend the rest of the day doing something considerably more relaxing.
Instead, he had discovered that being the leader of the Avengers apparently came with lot of responsibilities.
He was sitting in his office when Natasha approached him. She was carrying two cups of coffee.
Kakashi glanced at the cups and then at her.
Natasha held one toward him. "I brought you coffee because I figured you were either going to fall asleep on your paperwork or start stabbing the paperwork with a kunai, and I decided neither would be particularly productive."
Kakashi accepted the cup. "I appreciate the concern."
Natasha sat across from him and took a sip of her own coffee. For a few moments, neither of them said anything.
Kakashi was used to silence. Natasha was too. That was probably one of the reasons they could sit together without feeling the need to fill every second with conversation.
Natasha eventually looked at him. "Do you ever get tired of doing the job?"
Kakashi raised his eyes from the coffee. "The job?"
"You know exactly what I mean."
She gestured vaguely toward the tower. "You are always going somewhere. A mission comes up and you volunteer. Someone needs help and you are already halfway out the door. SHIELD asks for assistance and somehow you are the first person they call. Then you come back, deal with reports, train someone, and somehow find time to disappear into another universe when the multiverse decides to have a problem."
Kakashi took a slow sip of his coffee.
Natasha continued before he could answer. "You are always doing things that you do not even have to do."
Kakashi looked at her for several seconds.
"The rest of you have your own lives," he finally said. "The mutants talk with each other. Tony has his own life going on, even if he occasionally forgets that the rest of us do not want to hear about it. Clint has his family. Even Steve has people he visits, Peggy and his niece."
Kakashi leaned back slightly in his chair. "In simple words, I do not have anything else to do."
He continued speaking before she could respond. "I suppose it is easier for me to stay busy. There is always something that needs doing. Someone needs training. Someone needs protecting. Someone needs investigating. There is always another mission."
He looked down at the coffee in his hand. "It gives me something to focus on."
Natasha watched him carefully.b"And if there were no missions?"
Kakashi was quiet for a moment. "I would probably find one."
Natasha gave him a small, knowing smile.
"That is exactly what I was afraid you were going to say."
Kakashi's eye curved slightly. "You asked."
"I did." She took another sip of coffee before looking toward the large windows. The city stretched beneath them.
Thousands of people were moving through New York. Cars moved through the streets. People entered buildings. Someone was probably arguing with a taxi driver somewhere. Life continued.
Natasha stared at it for a while. "Sometimes I wonder if we actually know how to live when there isn't a mission."
Kakashi looked at her. Natasha continued,"I joined SHIELD because I wanted to become something different from what I had been before. Then I became an Avenger because it gave me another way to use what I was good at."
She smiled faintly. "I know it is a cliché thing to say, but I wanted to atone for the things I did before."
Kakashi remained silent.
Natasha looked down at her coffee. "I used to think that if I saved enough people, maybe it would balance things out."
"Does it?"
She looked at him.
"No. But I still keep doing it."
Kakashi nodded. The corner of Natasha's mouth lifted.
Then Natasha's expression grew serious again. "You know what the problem with constantly keeping yourself busy is?"
Kakashi waited. "You never have to think about what happens when the work stops."
Natasha touched her stomach absentmindedly. "Sometimes I think about what my life could have looked like if I had been someone else. Someone normal."
She paused. "Maybe a family. Maybe children. Maybe a house somewhere that nobody knows about. Something boring."
Kakashi said nothing.
Natasha looked at him. "But that was never really meant for me, was it?"
"And knowing that you can never have a normal family life hurts, doesn't it?"
Kakashi looked down at his coffee.
"Maybe we were never meant to have a family."
She looked at Kakashi, trying to determine whether he truly believed what he had said or whether he was simply trying to make the idea easier to accept.
His expression gave her nothing.
"That is a depressing way of looking at it," she finally said.
"Probably."
"You could at least pretend to be optimistic."
"I am not very good at pretending."
Natasha gave a quiet laugh.
"That is definitely not true."
Kakashi looked at her. "Now can you stop determining how my emotions work? You are really a bad spy if you think that your sad words would make me give away about my past."
Natasha smiled, "What have jt away?"
"The fact that you tried to tell your depressing story and was looking at me as if you were a helpless woman who needed comfort." Kakashi said.
Natasha smiled. There was something she wanted to say. She did not know exactly what. Perhaps she wanted to tell him that he was wrong.
Perhaps she wanted to tell him that people like them were not necessarily doomed to live only for their work.
Perhaps she simply wanted to tell him that he did not have to spend the rest of his life filling every empty moment with another mission.
But the words refused to come.
Kakashi's phone suddenly began ringing.
Kakashi reached into his pocket and pulled it out. He glanced at the screen.
Natasha watched his expression change slightly. "Who is it?"
"Agent Coulson."
Natasha sighed. "Of course it is."
Kakashi answered the call. "Coulson."
-----Author Notes---------
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