Actions

Work Header

Thawing the Widow

Chapter 21: Cake Making and Blackjack

Summary:

Steve, wanda, and cat really suck at baking

Chapter Text

The Third (and hopefully last) Attempt

The oven was cleaned, the smoke was gone, the broken smoke detector had been stashed in the drawer along with the two halves of Natasha's knife, and the kitchen was halfway back to its original state.

The only thing left to do was to make, bake, ice, and decorate a cake before Nat got back from her conference.

Easy peasy.

The sky had gotten darker, and evening was beginning to approach. They didn't have much time. With two burnt cakes under their belt, it had been clear that they'd been getting nowhere with their current plan. Steve had been the one to suggest a different course of action. The premise was that they would each take on separate tasks of assembling parts of the cake.

It sounded good on paper, but as they quickly found out, they were all a little too competitive. It wasn't long before the plan had dissolved into a bloodthirsty battle of who could get their part done the fastest.

"Oh, c'mon! That's not even fair!"

Cat's complaint was directed at Wanda, who in her opinion was totally taking unfair advantage of her powers. One finger was pointing towards an egg encased in a cloud of red mist, in the process of being cracked into a bowl. At the same time, the other hand was directing a beam of energy to whisk the dry ingredients together.

"No one said anything about fair," Wanda retorted, her concentration unbreakable as she cracked another egg into the bowl.

Steve was scanning the recipe furiously while he poured powdered sugar into a bowl of frosting. Some of it had gotten onto his chin, but Cat wasn't about to tell him.

Cat had already memorized the recipe, but Steve and Wanda were snatching the battered piece of paper from the other's hands every few seconds to glance down at the instructions. However, this only granted Cat a minor advantage. Her photographic memory was flimsy compared to Steve's superhuman speed and Wanda's freaky powers.

To add to the chaos, the fire alarm had woken up Taco from her afternoon nap, a feat usually only manageable by a large commotion or the smell of bacon. The beagle had made her grand entrance into the kitchen, scampering around and getting under everyone's feet. They were careful not to let any chocolate drop to the ground in case Taco got any ideas.

"This isn't a competition," Steve kept saying, a statement that was contradicted by his obnoxious leap over the island counter as he ripped the recipe from Wanda's hands while she was distracted with her multiple tasks.

His leg brushed against a bowl in the process, knocking it off the surface. Taco barked in alarm, darting away from the bowl. It would've crashed into a dozen pieces if Wanda hadn't paused in her mixing and thrust her hand out, a red flash of light catching it in the air.

"Sorry," Steve called, not looking very sorry as he raced back to his station with the recipe.

"Hey!" Wanda snapped. With a flick of her wrist, the bowl flew back to its original place. "You're trying to sabotage me."

"You're sabotaging yourself," Cat said. She took advantage of Wanda's distraction to sneak some of Wanda's chopped chocolate off her station. It had nearly made its way into her mouth before Wanda caught her arm.

"Give that back," she said in a threatening voice.

"But you have tons," Cat protested.

Wanda snatched the chocolate out of her hand. "Eat your own."

Cat huffed. "I only have a bar left!"

"How is that possible? We had the same amount."

A guilty smile slowly spread over Cat's face.

Wanda's gaze sharpened, correctly interpreting her expression. Her lips pressed together. "Have you been eating the rest of the chocolate?"

"I would never do such a thing."

"I saw her eating a bar earlier," Steve chimed in, even though no one asked him.

"Stay out of this, Steve!"

"No more eating," Wanda ordered, turning back to the counter. "We only have enough ingredients left for one more try."

"First one done!" Steve called, brandishing his bowl of frosting at them victoriously.

"Frosting's so much easier than batter," Cat dismissed.

"Don't be a sore loser."

"I thought you said this wasn't a competition!"

"It's not."

"Then there are no winners or losers."

"Second!" Wanda said. While Steve and Cat had been arguing, she'd combined her wet and dry ingredients, finishing the batter. She gave Cat a fake sympathetic look. "Looks like you're in last place."

"This is so not fair."


The batter was neither rock solid nor too thin, and looked as good as it was going to get. Steve poured it into a newly washed cake pan and slid it into the oven. They placed the frosting into the fridge so that it wouldn't melt while the cake was baking.

They'd re-made the mess in the kitchen; the dishes in the sink had piled up to a catastrophic amount, but they were too tired to do any more cleaning up. While Steve set a timer on the oven, Wanda and Cat collapsed on the couch.

Cat sighed as she sprawled out on the couch, her head sinking into a cushion. Taco followed at her heels obediently, then decided to leap onto the couch with her, landing on Cat's abdomen.

All the breath went out of Cat's lungs. "Ow— jeez, Taco."

Taco circled around clumsily on Cat's stomach, then laid down on her chest, chin resting on her paws. She gave Taco's ears a scratch. She loved this damn dog.

"Natasha has impeccable taste in living room sofas," Wanda muttered, settled in a similar position next to Cat.

Her stomach rumbled. She hadn't eaten much that day. She'd been deprived of T.J.'s PB&J sandwich at lunch, before Chelsea had taken her to the janitor's closet. That seemed like so long ago. The only thing she'd had since then were a few pieces of burnt cake.

"I'm starving," Cat groaned.

Wanda fished out her phone. "What do you want to eat?"

They ended up ordering two large pizzas (Steve had weighed in and was deemed responsible for 75 percent of that) and some Chinese takeout. While they waited for the delivery guy, Wanda brought out the deck of cards and they started a few rounds of Egyptian War, sitting on the floor.

Steve kept winning, but only because he was faster than both of them and kept sneaking his hand under theirs to slap the deck, his pile growing larger and larger each time.

"It's too easy," he said as he claimed the last of the cards. "I almost feel bad."

"Stop gloating," Wanda said.

"Let's play something else," Cat said, "before Steve's inflated ego explodes."

Steve handed his full deck of cards to Wanda, who had become the designated shuffler. "Fine, I'll spare your wounded pride."

Wanda handled the cards with a practiced ease, bending and shuffling them together. "Want to learn how to gamble?"

"Wanda, she's ten."

"So? I learned when I was eight."

"Yeah, so?" Cat grinned at Wanda, excited by the prospect of learning something that she wasn't supposed to. "Teach me."

They first assembled a sizable stash of coins, toothpicks, and other small trinkets in place for chips. Wanda started explaining the rules of Blackjack to Cat. She was good at it; patient as she fielded Cat's increasing list of questions, her instructions clear and concise. Steve first looked on disapprovingly, but it didn't take him long to join in. He kept disagreeing with Wanda over the nitpicky little details because his version of Blackjack was from the forties and the rules had changed since then.

The delivery arrived as they were starting a real game. They wolfed down pizza and chow mein as they played the first round, their fingers greasy as they passed the cards around.

"Hit," Cat said. Wanda dealt her a card.

Steve got a bust.

Wanda won that round, and Steve won the second.

In the next few rounds, Cat began to figure things out. She'd begun to realize that she held an unfair advantage. With her perfect recall, she could memorize the cards that had been dealt, allowing her to predict the order of the upcoming cards and adjust her bet accordingly. She managed to snag the victory away from Wanda that round.

She was getting the hang of things. A wicked smile crept onto her face. "Let's make this more interesting."

Wanda turned a calculating gaze on her. "And how do you suppose we do that?"

"A bet," Cat decided, "with stakes. Losers have to get pied in the face by the winner."

Wanda frowned. "What do you mean, pied in the face?"

"Pie." Cat mimicked holding one in her hand, her palm facing up. "Face." She pointed at Steve's face, then mimed smashing the imaginary pie in it, smearing it all over his nose and mouth.

Steve jerked away as she accidentally smacked him in the face with her hand.

"Oh! Sorry."

Wanda laughed softly at Steve's expression. "Isn't that a waste of pie?"

"Not if it's whipped cream and burnt cake instead," Cat said. "Which we have a lot of."

"So whoever wins gets to cake the others," Wanda mused, a small smile on her features. She seemed to like the idea.

"Yeah, and clean up the kitchen," Cat added, the new idea striking her at that moment.

"There's a mountain of dishes in the sink," Steve reminded her. "Your arms are going to be tired from all that scrubbing."

"Then it's a good thing I came to win."

"Someone's cocky," Wanda said with a lift of her eyebrows.

"Only cocky if I lose," Cat countered.

Steve rubbed his hands together. "You're on."

It wasn't long before the takeout boxes were empty and all three of them were completely fixated on the game. True to her word, Cat won the next few rounds, much to Steve and Wanda's bemusement.

Steve eyed her suspiciously. "You're sure you've never played this before?"

Cat tried for innocence. "Beginner's luck."

"There's no such thing," Wanda grumbled, studying her cards with a frustrated set to her jaw. She kept an extra careful eye on Cat that round.

They played so many rounds that Cat lost track of which one they were on.

"This is impossible," Wanda finally said when they ran out of coins to add to Cat's pile. Her eyes narrowed. "How are you doing this?"

"I'm not doing anything. Maybe your skills just need a little brushing up."

"You do realize I can read your mind?"

Cat froze. "Wait, what?" She scooted back from Wanda, eyeing her warily now. "Isn't that an intrusion of privacy?"

"She won't do it without your permission," Steve reassured her.

Wanda smirked. "But I'll be able to tell if you're lying. Tell us how you're winning."

Cat took a moment to reflect how inconvenient her life had become now that most of the people that she associated with were human lie detectors. "I'm not cheating or anything," she said. "I just keep track of the cards."

"Keep track?" asked Wanda. "You mean you memorize them?"

"Basically."

Realization dawned on Steve's face. "She has a photographic memory," he told Wanda.

"That's a real thing?" Wanda regarded Cat like she was seeing her in a new light. "That explains some things. What's it like?"

"I have a really good memory," Cat explained. "For a long time I thought it was normal. I can remember everything I've seen, heard, smelled— all the senses— since when I was young. If you give me a book, I could flip through and know every single line, as well as the page it's on. I'm good with maps. And Blackjack, apparently."

"So you've been counting cards," Wanda said. "That's cheating."

"I didn't know!" Cat protested. "I can't help remembering them."

Steve shook his head, putting down his cards. "Well, that settles it. No more Blackjack for you."

Cat scowled. "Does this mean I still have to clean the kitchen?"


"Happy… birthday, Natash," Wanda read haltingly, her eyes squinted as she tried to decipher the jumble of letters on the cake. "Where's the a after Natash?"

They were gathered around the coffee table because every other surface in the kitchen was occupied with Mess. The cake wasn't going to win any awards. The batter hadn't been burnt, thank god, but it was slightly slanted to one side. Luckily, they'd covered that up with a shit ton of frosting and sprinkles. And if Cat's handwriting on paper was bad, the lines she'd squeezed out of a bottle of icing were nearly illegible.

"Under the h. See?" Cat pointed at the a, which was nearly hanging off the side of the cake. "There wasn't enough room."

"I can barely read this."

Cat shrugged. "I'll tell her what it says."

"It's also not her birthday," Steve pointed out.

"It's not?" Wanda asked. "When is it?"

"No idea. She doesn't like celebrating it."

"It'll be her birthday one day," Cat said, which she thought was an excellent point, "and I didn't know what else to write."

Cat didn't want to write I'm sorry on it, even though that's what the cake was: an apology cake. Was there anything more sad than a lopsided cake with a halfhearted apology written in wobbly icing?

Cat looked at the finished cake. "Do you think we should try some of it? Just to make sure it doesn't taste awful?"

"You want to gift Natasha with a half-eaten cake?" Wanda asked.

"It won't be half-eaten," Cat protested. "We'll just take some from the edge. She'll never notice."

Cat cut a sliver of cake from the edge. She separated it into three pieces and they all took one. She placed her portion into her mouth—

And immediately turned to the trash can to spit it out. The spongy part of the cake was raw, unpleasantly squishy, and saltier than the ocean. The frosting was tooth-rottingly sweet. The combination was revolting.

Wanda leaned over the trash can as well. Steve was still chewing it, trying to hide his disgust. He swallowed painfully.

"Yeah, that's pretty awful."

"Revolting."

"An insult to all cakes."

"I can't believe you swallowed it," Wanda told him. "You're probably getting food poisoning."

Steve grimaced. "It's not that—"

"It is that bad," Cat said in revulsion. "I've never tasted anything so horrible. Why is it salty?"

"And so undercooked?" Wanda said.

"It was the mayo." Steve shook his head. "Not a good move."

"No, it was Kathy. That lady is a fraud," Cat said. "All those five-star reviews were a lie!"

Steve's phone rang from the living room. He picked it up from the couch and answered it. He listened for a few moments, then mouthed, it's Nat. He exchanged a couple words with her and hung up.

"She just got off the jet." Steve glanced at the kitchen. "There's no chance we'll finish cleaning by the time she gets back, is there?"


The press conference had run long, which was expected but unappreciated.

By the time Natasha was leaving D.C., the sun had gone down. She snagged a few hours of sleep on Tony's jet, but it wasn't so much a sleep as a light doze. By the time Natasha's Corvette pulled up to its parking space in her apartment, she was jet-lagged and in a pissy mood. She hoped Steve and Cat had ordered something good.

Knowing Steve, there wouldn't be any leftovers, but Natasha could hope.

The elevator ride up was quiet. Few people were up that late. She fiddled with the keys at the door she hadn't gotten around to fixing. The doorjamb was still slightly dented from where Steve had smashed through it. Before she could unlock the door, it opened for her.

Steve's frame filled the doorway.

"Hey," Natasha said, molding her tone into a casual lightness while masking her alarm. It was late. She hadn't been expecting him to be awake. She tried not to jump to conclusions, but her heartbeat picked up just a little.

Could it be— no, he would've texted her if it was important. But what if…

"How was the conference?" he asked casually, alleviating Natasha's worries. He wouldn't be asking about the conference if something was wrong.

"Fine," she said with a shrug. "Mind-numbingly boring. I didn't expect you to wait up."

"Couldn't sleep."

Steve looked… strange. He was slightly breathless— unnoticeably so by the average Joe, but Natasha was trained to pick up on these things. His blond hair was askew, and his shirt was covered in—

"Is that frosting?" Natasha asked. A smell from her apartment distracted her from his answer. "And do I smell smoke?"

She arched her neck to look past his broad shoulders, but Steve quickly shifted so that her view was obscured. A blinking red light at the back of her head went off, the spark of suspicion bursting into flame. It occurred to her that he might've been distracting her. Her guard slammed up.

"Rogers," she said, "tell me you didn't start a fire in my apartment."

"Okay," he said with a straight face. "We didn't."

She gave him a shriveling look.

"Just a small one."

Natasha tried to push past him, but once again he moved in her way. He was like a brick wall. She stepped back and raised an eyebrow. She was tired, but that didn't mean there wasn't a fight or two left in her. "What's going on?"

Steve glanced behind his shoulder. With nothing to distract her, Natasha could hear it now— the creak of the floorboards (she'd made sure they made as much noise as possible so no intruder's entrance could escape her), the light pattering of steps behind Steve's body.

Steve still remained an obstacle in her path. He'd turned back to face her, but hadn't answered her question. An idea was taking place in Natasha's mind as she pieced the clues together. Before it fully formed, Steve suddenly stepped to the side.

Of all the scenarios that had run through Natasha's head, the sight that greeted her definitely hadn't been in the top ten.

"Surprise!" Cat yelled.

Was that a cake?

Cat was lifting— yes, that was definitely a cake— up at Natasha, the words Happy birthday! emblazoned on the smooth chocolate ganache in slanted white icing. Red and white flowers bloomed from the edges. Cat's clothes were in an even worse state than Steve's— covered with icing and flour. Chocolate stained the corners of her mouth in a way that suggested she'd been indulging herself. Natasha admitted to herself that it was slightly adorable.

The sight of Wanda standing next to Cat surprised Natasha. The witch had a confetti popper in hand, and at Cat's nudge, she yanked back on the string, pointing the end directly at Natasha. Before Natasha could react, confetti exploded over her, covering her in a layer of thin, multicolored paper.

Taco, who had been waiting by Cat's feet, was startled by the noise. The beagle leapt up to her feet and started barking, running in circles before realizing that the source of danger had passed.

"Surprise," the witch echoed, more restrained than Cat but the same enthusiasm lighting up her eyes.

"Do you like it?" Cat asked. "We made it for you!"

Natasha could only stare at them, at Steve who looked all too pleased with himself, at the beautifully decorated cake in front of her, at the confetti now in her hair and shoulders. These three idiots had baked a fucking cake for her. A warmth was traveling through her, filling her chest with a glow that wasn't immediately extinguished.

She brushed a handful of confetti off of her shoulder. "It's not my birthday."

Cat lowered the cake a little, a flash of disappointment clouding her features.

Natasha immediately felt like an awful person, hearing how her words could've come out colder than she'd meant them to. She shook her head, quickly aiming to rectify the situation. "It doesn't matter. Thank you. I mean it."

"You're welcome," Cat said brightly. She set the cake on top of the coffee table.

Natasha tried to pick some confetti off of her suit with no avail. "Was the popper really necessary?"

Wanda looked apologetic. "Sorry."

Natasha was about to ask her how she got roped into this mess before her gaze traveled across her apartment and landed on her kitchen.

Her beautiful, clean, immaculately-kept kitchen, which looked like a tornado had ripped through it. There were spills and baking ingredients haphazardly strewn over her once-spotless counters. The tower of pans, bowls, dishes, and spoons in the sink resembled a mountain in danger of toppling over. There wasn't a clean surface in sight. It looked like someone— or three someones— had tried to hurriedly dispose of the mess with no success.

Natasha heard Cat's strangled whisper to Steve, which was decidedly less subtle than the girl was trying to be. "She's looking at the kitchen. What do we do?"

Steve muttered something back, but he was far better at keeping his voice low.

"I see you've also demolished my kitchen," Natasha said mildly.

"Um," Cat said, eyeing the look in her eyes with a nervous smile, "yeah. We'll clean that up. Definitely."

With increasing horror, Natasha took in the state of the rest of her apartment. Thankfully, the living room was unscathed save for the empty takeout boxes and playing cards scattered over the floor. There was, however, a mess of wires hanging down from the ceiling.

She pointed to it. "There used to be a smoke detector up there."

Wanda coughed. "That was my fault."

"It wouldn't stop beeping," Cat said.

"Anything else I should know about?"

Cat's face told her that there was, but the girl said nothing.

Oh, well. Natasha would find out sooner or later.

Natasha let the silence stew, just to let the three of them fidget. She gave her apartment a final look and sighed. "All right."

"All right?" Cat repeated, looking like she'd been expecting something else.

"All right, I won't murder you all for ruining my apartment today," Natasha said, and with some amusement watched Cat's face soften with relief. "However, this kitchen better be spotless by tomorrow."

"Aye-aye, Captain. Now try the cake," Cat said, waving them all to the coffee table.

They all took seats around the couch and Cat raced to the kitchen to get a fork, moving like a madman. She narrowly missed slipping in a spill, dodged an unclosed cabinet, and bounded back to the living room with excitement lighting up her eyes. She handed Natasha the fork triumphantly and took a seat at the couch next to her.

Natasha's fork hovered over the cake, hesitant to damage it. It looked shockingly perfect and untainted. Not bothering to slice it, Natasha forked a bite and lifted it to her mouth.

It was… delicious. Sweeter than she preferred, but it had a perfect balance of chocolate and creaminess. The sponge was delightfully moist and seemed to melt in her mouth. The filling was light and had a tang of acidity, bringing a lightness to the cake. The taste was strikingly familiar. In fact, she was quite certain she'd had it before, but that was impossible.

Unless…

She studied the cake again. It was almost too perfect. The icing was spread evenly, the words Happy birthday! were piped with an elegant calligraphy, and the flowers on top had definitely been done by a professional hand.

She glanced back up at her audience. All three of them were leaning towards her expectantly, waiting for her judgement. The look on Cat's face gave it away. Natasha could read her like a book.

"It's great."

They all broke into grins.

"Not bad for a store-bought cake," Natasha continued without a flicker in her expression, and it was almost funny how fast their smiles fell. She took another bite. Chewed. Swallowed. It really was a damn good cake. "But it doesn't explain why my kitchen is in the state it's in."

After a long silence, Cat spoke up, having the decency to look ashamed. "We bought it from Gracie's."

"We didn't want you to get food poisoning," Wanda said. "It was a show of kindness."

"I'll be the judge of that," Natasha said. "Show it to me."

Steve went to the kitchen to retrieve the cake that they'd made. The difference between theirs and the cake from Gracie's was so vast that it was comical. It looked like one of those cakes Natasha had seen on those food blogs that showed images of failed attempts. There were heaps of frosting slathered unevenly on top, failing to hide how lopsided the cake was.

Natasha tried to make out the words written in blood-red icing. From one look, she knew that it was undoubtedly Cat's work. She recognized the clumsy way Cat formed her R's and how her Y's swooped at the tails. The words on the cake were in all caps, aggressively displaying letters resembling HAPPY BIRTHDAY, NATASHA. Cat had obviously misjudged how small she had to write in order to fit in the entire phrase. The word HAPPY took up half of the cake, with BIRTHDAY squeezed in tightly under, letters wobbly and leaning into each other. NATASHA was barely legible, a jumble of letters at the very bottom of the cake, the last A nearly impossible to see.

"Wow," she said.

"Don't laugh," Cat said with a little frown, "I tried my hardest."

"I'm sure you did."

Although it wouldn't be winning decorating awards anytime soon, Natasha was charmed by it. She'd never say it out loud, but she would take this disastrous, possibly inedible, attempt at a cake over a professionally-made one from Gracie's any day.

Natasha dug her fork into the side, which spurred a flurry of alarm from Steve, Wanda, and Cat.

"You might not want to—"

"Wait, you really shouldn't—"

"It might not be edible—"

Natasha popped the bite into her mouth. It was only thanks to years of training herself to suppress her reactions that she was able to keep a straight face. It was almost impressive, how badly they'd screwed it up, was simultaneously the saltiest thing she'd ever eaten and the sweetest. Not to mention chalky and hard in some parts.

"You don't have to lie," Wanda said. "Is it the most horrible thing you've ever eaten?"

Natasha thought about it. "Let's just say that I appreciate the gesture, but you're all banned from my kitchen indefinitely."

Steve nodded. "That's fair."


"It's an apology cake," Cat told her quietly, after Steve and Wanda had left. She looked uncharacteristically contrite.

Natasha was on her second slice of the cake from Gracie's. "Hmm?"

"The cake. I wanted to apologize," Cat said. Her words were stilted and uncomfortable, her face twisting like it pained her to say them. Natasha knew apologies didn't come naturally to her. "For the principal's office thing."

Natasha set her fork down. "Steve told me what happened."

"What did he say?"

"You stole the janitor's keys, skipped class to talk with your friend, and initiated an emergency search across campus."

"Chelesa's not my friend."

"That's the detail you choose to focus on?"

Cat flinched, even though Natasha hadn't intended her words to be cutting. "I'm sorry. I keep screwing up. The parent-teacher conference, the stupid janitor's closet, not to mention Oscar's been—" She cut herself short, freezing like a deer in headlights.

"Who's Oscar?"

Oscar. The name struck Natasha as familiar. She was sure that Cat had mentioned him before.

A panicked look flashed over Cat's face. "Oscar?" Her voice had gotten higher. "He's just— he's just a boy I know. From school."

"From school, huh?" Natasha tried to read Cat's expression, wondering if Oscar was just a crush or something more that Cat was keeping from her. "Do you like him?"

"Ew! No," Cat said, looking mortified. A full-body shudder went through her body. "A million times no. Can we move from this topic, please?"

"Fine," Natasha said, filing that piece of information for later. "I still don't see what this has to do with the cake."

"It was Steve's idea," Cat said. "Well, not the cake. I came up with that myself. But he said I should do something nice for you, because I, well… I thought you were, like, mad at me or something." The last part came in a low rush, and the careful way Cat avoided her eyes made all doubt about her sincerity vanish.

Natasha was genuinely perplexed. "Why would you think that?"

"We left things in a weird place after the parent-teacher conference. And you didn't tell me about D.C.," Cat said, faint betrayal creeping into her voice. "You usually tell me before you leave, so I just thought..."

She trailed off, clenching her jaw, an action that Natasha recognized as something Cat did when she was trying to hide how upset she was. All at once, a wave of understanding slammed into her. Sometimes Natasha forgot that as smart as she was, Cat was just a kid. Although she acted like a moody teenager sometimes, she was really a ten-year-old girl who was more vulnerable and broken than she let on. Whose feelings could get hurt. Natasha felt another stab of guilt.

Cat shook her head, her face going pink. "Never mind. It was stupid. You don't need to like, tell me things."

"It's not stupid," Natasha said, feeling a desperate need to correct things. "And I'm not mad at you. I was just in a hurry, and I forgot. I should've given you some notice." She debated whether or not she should say it, eventually deciding to hell with it, and said, "I'm sorry."

Apologies didn't come naturally to her, either. Natasha wasn't an I'm sorry type of person. In her opinion, actions spoke louder than words. An apology didn't bring people back from the dead. They were halfhearted words for people who didn't know how to fix their problems. She made mistakes, she fixed them, and she moved on. But Cat needed to hear her say the words, so she did.

Cat was silent for a moment. Then— "This seems like a good time to tell you that we broke one of your knives."

Sometimes, it was utterly impossible to predict what would come out of this girl's mouth.

"...what."

Cat backed away from her a little. "And you can't be mad at me," she said in a rush, "because you just apologized and we were kind of having a moment. So… call it even?"

"What do you mean, broke?"

"It's kind of… in two pieces now."

"Which knife?"

"The one that was under the coffee table."

"That was my favorite knife."

Cat had scrambled to the other end of the sofa, as far away from Natasha as she could get. "Oh, god. Please don't kill me."

"I'm not going to kill you," Natasha said. "I'm just going to do something much, much worse."

Cat's eyes widened in fear as Natasha reached towards her. "No no no, wait— just wait! Nat! It was an accide— augh!" She shrieked as Natasha lifted the lopsided cake from the coffee table and slammed it into her face.

Cat was frozen in shock when Natasha lowered the cake from her face with a smirk. There was frosting everywhere— caked (pun intended) in her hair, dripping from her face, on her shirt— some had even made it on Natasha's couch.

Cat spat out a mouthful of cake, all thoughts of being terrified forgotten. "You bitch."

"Let's not forget who's holding the cake here."

"You're the absolute worst."

"I got the idea from Steve," Natasha told Cat, who was wiping frosting from her eyes, only succeeding in smearing it in more. "He told me about your bet. By the way, you're never allowed to set foot in a casino."

Cat grabbed a handful of frosting from her shirt and lunged towards Natasha, who smoothly maneuvered out of the way, stepping away from the couch.

"Oh, no," Natasha said with a warning glare. "You come anywhere near me with that mess, and I'm not helping you clean off."

Cat didn't hesitate in flinging a baseball-sized piece of cake and frosting at her, some sort of crazed animalistic noise coming out of her as she rammed into Natasha, getting frosting all over her clothes.

If Natasha wanted, she could've easily destroyed her, but she didn't. Instead, she let a skinny ten-year-old girl ruin her perfectly-tailored Versace suit with overly sweet frosting and she didn't give a damn about it.