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When Agent Barton received the mission order, he felt something odd. He didn’t know what it was. Perhaps destiny, perhaps the fact that he was sleep deprived and jet lagged.
Name: Natasha Romanoff.
Alias: Black Widow.
Mission: take her down.
Info: Red Room Graduate; master assassin; mercenary; sell her capacities to anyone with money;
CAUTION: is very good at martial arts, guns, and
The picture attached was the one of a young woman, looking about his age, good looking, red hair, in a black tight dress.
He had a day to pack and learn his cover. He was good, he could do that. He could take her down. He never missed, did he?
Yet when stood in front of the girl, he couldn’t bring himself to shoot. She was hurt, and so was he. Their fight had been rough, but then he realized she wasn’t fighting as hard as she could. She didn’t seem to want to win. She knew why he was here. She knew his mission was to kill her and she wanted him to. Which is exactly why he didn’t. There was a reason as to why she’d give up on life. And he wanted to give her the taste of life back. So he took her to S.H.I.E.L.D., begged for his superiors to take her in. After many weeks of begging, demanding and God know how many assurances that she wouldn’t turn on S.H.I.E.L.D., she is accepted as a first-clearance agent, and he grins at her like a fool. She does smile back, but only a little, as if she was afraid. And she is, she wonders why this man decided that she was worth trusting, that she could live and work like a regular person, while she is an assassin, a weapon made by the Red Room.
Agents Barton and Romanoff were paired for most of their missions because they worked well together. It’s during one of their nights on watch that he talks about Laura for the first time. The target shouldn’t appear before another hour, Natasha is on watch and he can’t bring himself to sleep. So he tells her about Laura, about the way she laughed at his silly jokes, about the color of her hair in the sunlight, about how much he loves her, how much he misses her. And about why he can’t be with her. She tells him it’s a stupid-ass decision; that he could perfectly be with her if he wanted to, the way other agents have girlfriends or boyfriends; heck, some of them are even married! Later that night, after the target is taken down, they sleep for the first time together. Because she knows how he feels, or she thinks she does. The next day, they go back to S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters, and she tells him he should check up on Laura, at least once. And because she knows him so well, she knows he won’t, so she does it for him.
It doesn’t take too long for Natasha to find Laura. She is, after all, a trained spy and finding people is what she does best. Little Cooper is two years old and already looks like Clint. Laura is just as beautiful as Clint described her, but she is single. Natasha thinks she knows why. She's still in love with him. And she’ll probably always be, even with another man. After further research, Natasha found out that Laura did date other men, after Clint, and they shared some of the same features: they looked like him. Sometimes it was the eyes or the hair color. She still wasn’t over him. The same way he wasn’t over her.
She tells him the next day. Not directly, though. She wrote down the day nursery Cooper is in and she took Barton there. When he sees Laura, and he sees her before Natasha, his face cracks. Then he notices Cooper, and Natasha can see tears in his eyes. That’s his boy, his child. And he missed his birth, missed his first steps. He didn’t even know about him until now. But he can’t go meet him. It would put the boy in danger, and he doesn’t want that for his child.
He doesn’t tell Natasha, even though he’s pretty sure she knows, but he comes back the next day, and the day after that to see his boy.
It takes him a week to gather the courage to talk to Laura, but when he does he decides that he's never letting her down any more.