I don't want her to breakdown. She is more than the Black widow. She is more than the trained assassin/ mercenary they made her into in the red room.

She is a human with emotions just like every other person… just like me.

Even when the red room crushed her, mended her, and crushed her again to learn to control her emotions doesn't mean she doesn't feel her own emotions.

She was trained and brainwashed to be loyal. Her trust was forced to be put on only one name… 'Russia'.

The trust she placed on Clint was not on a small level when she decided to betray her home country in order to join Shield. And trust was something very hard to earn from someone like her who was taught to not trust anyone since childhood other than her country.

That trust was what caused Clint to reveal the existence of his family to her willingly. An existence that was only known to Clint and Fury at that time and not even the Shield.

Over the time she met Bruce and me, she slowly started giving us that trust, as we all bonded together.

Sure, her trust wasn't enough to tell us who she was, but it was enough to show me that she had feelings for me.

I knew and accepted her feelings for me wasn't enough to ignore the trust barrier, and tell me about her job. Hell, she wouldn't have probably told me anything about her job for a long time if I hadn't revealed to her that I figured out her job. In fact, I myself won't reveal everything fully about myself either to her as well.

This was not only because we didn't trust each other but because of 3 things. One as I already stated our feelings weren't grown to the point we could step over the boundaries of trust and just tell each other anything… love.

We had feelings for each other and longed for each other, but it wasn't the pure love that caused us to step over our trust.

There are many types of love. What Bruce, Nat and I felt towards each other was Philia the love of friendship.

However, over time both Nat's and my human survival instinct on both our minds caused us to be attracted and longed for each other. This was called the Ludus, the love of infatuation we felt for each other, over our time of slowly being with each other after Bruce left us to talk alone every night as he went to sleep early. Needless to be said I didn't notice this at that time due to my complicated state of mind.

This then quickly one day changed into Eros, the fiery, hot, and passionate love we felt when we first came to be in union that night. This caused me to break out of my shell and notice the Ludus love I have been having for her and the love she felt for me.

The only problem was Eros and Ludus always needed to be in constant balance lest it turned into Mania, a very dangerous form of love most commonly known as obsessive love. If our balance of love between Eros and Ludus was not kept in balance it would lead us to develop madness, possessiveness, and jealousy.

A clear example of this was seen in me on the first night we were together in her bed. At that time due to my complex state of mind, I couldn't feel the Ludus love I felt for her and slightly became possessive of her.

Luckily, my mind sorted its feeling out in time lest it had turned into a maniac love.

What I wanted to develop in our relationship was to the next level of expressing pragma love. This is an evolved form of Ludo and Eros. It was a form of enduring and mature love that takes time and great effort on both our parts to develop.

This was one of the reasons why I didn't want to cure her condition with Extremis even though I could. If I did that she would forever feel immense gratitude to me for giving her back what she always longed for. But that was it!

She would constantly have feelings for me, developing from that gratitude not out of Love. Her love for me would never move from Ludus or Eros and will become stagnant there for a long time due to the massive amount of debt and gratitude she would feel for me.

I didn't want that. I wanted her to love me not because I healed her, and she is subconsciously forced to, but because she wants to.

A relationship built on feelings of debt won't last long. I wanted to spend the rest of my life or possibly even immortal life with her. So, I wanted to make sure the foundation of our relationship is stronger than even the Uru metal.

I will heal her after our love develops into the greatest form of love… Agape the selfless love.

Unfortunately, that form of love can only develop between us after the drama that ensues after she realises who I am, and she starts to love me again. Till then I will become her guardian angel, not that she needs one.

The second reason why we didn't want to tell each other everything about ourselves was to protect each other.

She had plenty of enemies and I was targeted by many organisations. Anyone would love to exploit any of our weakness. The less we knew about each other the less our enemies could use us, as a means to learn about each other's weakness.

The third and final reason was both our own fear.

We both had an instinctive fear of what each other would do if we found out about our true identities.

This was mainly seen when she wanted to kick Clint out of the house so badly when he intruded inside. Along with how she was willing to make me assume that he was her ex-boyfriend rather than her colleague.

It was not as simple as 'everything is forgiven sweetheart' like I told Natasha after I revealed to her I knew about her job. She was lucky in the aspect I already knew everything there was to know about her. Otherwise, who knew what would have happened if I was a completely ordinary and normal person like who she thought I was.

No other person can kindly take to the fact that their girlfriend is a spy who completes mission using appeal and body allure amongst her other skillset. Not to mention how hurt people would usually feel when they realise their partner wasn't completely honest with them.

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Lucky for her she somehow 'always' got enough information she came for, in a mission to never have to resort to much seduction, after she came into a relationship with me.

Sure, I was knowledgeable in psychology and in many fields. However, emotions especially love wasn't something containable, definable and calculable fully by science. Sure, one could manipulate emotions and love, but it can never be controlled and taken forever.

This was why I was reluctant to openly revealing to her. Who knew how she would react? She would most likely burst out and lash out against me when she found the only person that cared for her and the only person she deeply trusted other than Clint has been lying to her.

If it were at the beginning of our relationship when I told her this she would have most likely broken off our relationship with a simple feeling of loss and simply would have tried to capture me for Shield.

Why would she do that when I wasn't a criminal? Sure, I hadn't committed much crime, but I was a potential unchecked threat to the whole world.

A person who could make weapons that can rival Starks in a matter of days when it took others months or even years. Along with that person being capable of setting up impenetrable online defences in a world that was starting to rely upon the internet.

Everyone feared the unknown and I wasn't an exception to this rule. Right now, I was a mystery. No identity, no face, not even my true name was known to them other than the fact I was a rotten genius in weapon making, cybersecurity and programming.

Not to mention I was a contractor for hire for anyone in the world as long as they had money. Now that was a person you had to keep in a leash and in your grasp. Even the small-time gangs knew that let alone the world governments and organisation such as Shield.

This is why she would not have hesitated to capture me for shield if I told her at the beginning of our relationship.

However, it was different right now. Our love was growing for each other. If I outright tell her she would breakdown at having feeling betrayed. She wasn't understanding as me, as I had entered this relationship knowing everything there is to her while it was the opposite for her.

Not to mention she was a 23 year old right now. She is a young woman who just understood the joy of falling for someone, something she has been trained and forced not to do by the red room(by taking away her ability to have kids). She is not the mature agent and woman I saw in the film 5 years from now.

There are 2 possible states of mind she would enter into if I told her right now. One after a short moment of anger she might feel glad and happy that I told her, but it comes at the cost of her never being able to fully trust me. Everything I tell her from that moment on will be taken in by her with a grain of salt.

The second state of mind would be she would feel the unmeasurable amount of anger towards me as she might be inclined to believe I was there to just use her even if said no to it and gave her evidence of it. This might even cause her to make a rash decision like informing Fury about me in her state of mind.

If Fury comes to know then Hydra will know. Then Hydra who is controlling Shield right now would certainly force Fury to limit my freedom and work for them through Natasha. I don't want her to love me under the orders of her supervisors. And I don't know about others, but I love my freedom.

Along with that, she would begin to experience the pain of emotional betrayal and the hatred she would feel for herself for wanting to be selfish in order to live like a normal person.

She would be too crushed at that point thinking she doesn't deserve a normal life. God forbid she did something crazy later on in her desperation when she realises she can't ever be the person she longed to be. I want to avoid breaking her like this, so I did everything in my power, to take time to reveal things slowly with her.

This way when she figured out who I was at least she won't break down into hopelessness. She would realise that I was never using her and how I have always been telling her, but she never noticed it. It would take her some time to come to that realisation but after that, we can hope to come back.

Love took time and effort to cultivate. It wasn't something that could be achieved instantly.

I knew this greatly hence the reason I was going to great lengths for her.

I just hope she wouldn't stay angry with me for too long when she finds out.

"Okay, I am ready!" I shouted to Natasha who came into the living room after I had set everything up.

"Behold!" I said in excitement as I showed her my laptop.

"Uhhh… it looks too chunky and massive for a laptop." She said as she looked at the 18-inch laptop that was almost 15cm thick and 10 kg heavy.

"Hahaha, but I am proud to say it's the best laptop in the world," I said proudly as I turned the laptop on.

"I hope it is. We both had to rip apart the house and every wiring in this house before putting it all back together for whatever plan you had with this laptop." She complained as she remembered how her house was a battleground for dust, wood and electrical wires for the past few months.

Instead of the usual and much popular Window's Vista loading screen, what appeared was a different loading screen.

'ND OS Loading' A small, pixelated shuriken spun trying to cut into a potato which kept evading, on the screen under the words.

"Why does it have a different loading screen?" She asked me to which I just smiled.

"Because I created my own operating system. ND OS- Natasha and David's operating system." I told her proudly which earned a look of surprise from her.

"I don't know if I like having my name appear on thousands of peoples screens," Natasha said to me.

"Hahaha! This laptop and its operating system are just for us to use. I won't sell it to anyone no matter how much they give me." I said just as the lock screen appeared which had just a black colour on the background with not even the box to type in a password.

"Ok say 'open sesame'," I told her which earned a look of confusion from her.

"Open sesame." She said with apprehension.

"Voice confirmed. Welcome, Nat!" A voice answered back as the page was replaced by a white background.

"Huh? How did you do that?" Nat asked me.

"Did I forget to say I was a genius?" I told her smugly.

The start menu of the windows icon was replaced by a shuriken which had a potato sitting on top of it.

"Is that an A.I?" She asked me seeing as how the laptop was controlled by voice and responded equally as such.

"No. I just programmed a software that recognises speech and follows that command. It is not an A.I but something that is as close to it as possible." I told her to which she just looked at me in shock.

"This took you only 4 months to finish?" She asked me.

"I keep telling you I am a genius." 'More like an artificial genius but still a genius.'

"I am a very smart and knowledgeable person but just don't use my skills most of the time." I boasted.

I showed her all the features of the laptop to see that everything could be control by voice, gestures etc. She was deeply gobsmacked by the reveal.

I could see that she was thinking about something. "Dave, why don't you work in Shield? With your skills, my director will definitely want someone like you with us."

I stood there in shock. 'Work for Hydra? Sorry, Nat.'

I smiled as I shook my head. "Nat I am a very lazy and casual person. I don't think I will be able to work responsibly especially for such a serious job." I could see she was slightly sad to see my rejection.

"However, if you need any help just ask me and I will help you. Not just software I am a tech wizard to. I like to think I rival Tony Stark in building things." I said unable to see her sad face and trying to drop another hint.

This earned a smile from her. "I like that as well. You are my tech wizard." She said as she kissed me on my cheek before she went to explore our laptop.

Suddenly I froze as the knowledge to reverse Bruce's condition entered my mind.

However, I went back to acting normal since Natasha was around.

'Find a way to reverse the perfect Hulk serum.' I ordered my ability.

Bruce's condition and the condition inflicted by the perfect hulk serum were 2 different things.

However, reversing that didn't take long. As I already knew how to reverse Bruce's condition so using that knowledge, I found a way to perfectly reverse the hulk serum within 2 weeks.

After getting the formula to reverse Bruce's condition and the hulk serum I assigned my ability to keep comprehending the massive amount of book I had memorised from the oxford library till I could find a free time away from Nat.

Due to there being 2 Rooted potato I could now have about 1000 books comprehended a month.

A few days later as Natasha went away for a mission for a few days I made my way towards my lab and to create the perfect and a modified hulk serum.