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Alarms wailed through the Avengers Tower in what would ordinarily not bother any of the team. They were used to Tony nearly blowing up his lab, causing irreparable damage to tech and possibly self in his lab, and otherwise being a source of chaos from said lab.
But today, the alarms went off and after a quick check-in with JARVIS that Tony and all other occupants of the lab were still alive, most of the others ignored the situation. Clint had been going for breakfast. By the time Steve had JARVIS affirmation of life, Clint had his bow in hand and was punching the elevator down button.
Natasha had been in the lab, ostensibly as a favor to the absent Pepper to keep Stark alive.
By the time Clint arrived outside Stark's lab, there was smoke seeping out from underneath the door. The hand-drawn sign stuck to the door said 'There Be Dragons.' He turned to Tony, who was wheezing and covered in soot.
"Please tell me that's a joke."
Stark just looked at him, and something in his eyes hit Clint like a punch in the gut.
"Tony?" he said carefully. "Where's Natasha?"
"Uh…" Stark stretched out the hemming and hawing and Clint shoved open the door over Stark's rather vocal and vehement protests. "Hey! Don't go in there!"
It was like a positive oven. Clint dove under a spurt of flame and took cover behind some impressively melted and charcoaled equipment.
Tony had not been joking. It was a dragon, curved talons, red scales, spreading wings, fiery breath, but not taller than a man. The dragon stared into Clint's wide eyes behind the taut bow, narrowing its own as it coughed another ball of flame. Clint ducked to the left as it shot harmlessly over his shoulder.
"You still alive? Hawkeye!"
The dragon backed up, tail lashing like a cat's, dangerous glint in her eye.
Stark had bravely suited up and poked his head into the lab.
The dragon breathed again. Impeccable aim. Good thing Stark's suits were fireproof.
Clint lowered his bow and said in horror, "Tasha?"
She shook her head and sat back on her haunches, a disgusted expression on her dragon features that was so unmistakeably Natasha that he turned on his heel and went after Stark himself.
"What did you do?!"
"New rule," Steve announced. "No ignoring the alarms."
"How about suspending his lab privileges permanently," Clint muttered, but that was infeasible for now at least since Tony and Bruce were both needed to figure out how to undo Stark's damage to Natasha.
Natasha was halfway between miserable and furious, and Clint didn't need her to be able to speak to get that. He could take one look at her body language, still shockingly hers despite the radically different body, and know that Tony would currently be well-advised to steer clear of her.
"Don't worry," Stark said, not at all reassuringly to Clint's ear. "We'll have her back to her normal assassin self in no time. Right, Bruce?"
Bruce gave him a look that had please-leave-me-out-of-this written all over it.
"Perhaps Loki—" Thor began, then hesitated. "I could ask my mother for advice as to any magical means."
"Good idea," Steve agreed. "We all need to do what we can."
Clint just gave the lot of them a look and headed toward the door.
"Hey!" Stark called out. "What are you going to do?"
"Take care of her," Clint retorted. "She's my partner."
He stopped by his suite, her suite, and the media room on his way to the lab, gathering books and all of her favorite blankets and pillows. He forewent his own favorite pillow, knowing she liked to steal it and would never admit it was because it smelled like him.
"Did you want anything to eat?" he asked when he found her venting her anger on some of Stark's toys at the back of the lab.
Clint took just long enough to note that it was nothing Pepper wanted him working on anyway and nothing Stark wouldn't forgive before dropping the blankets for her.
Natasha wheeled on him, clawed foot coming down dangerously close to his, but he didn't flinch, just waited out her snarl. She started to cough and turned away in time to sneeze a ball of fire at the back of the lab.
"You allergic to something in here, you think?" He took a look through the tables and beakers to see if something looked disagreeable to her.
She set her head down miserably on her front legs and her tail lashed once, twice, then stilled.
"Hey." Clint approached as carefully as he ever did when faced with a hurting or vulnerable Natasha and rested his head on hers. "We're going to fix this. I promise."
A low rumble seemed to indicate acceptance, then a slight huff and he watched a streak of charcoal spread across the floor.
"Dinner then. And new digs. You can't stay here."
Her eyes rolled in obvious agreement.
Clint tossed and twisted in the sheets well past midnight. Finally, he lifted his head and looked around his suite, startled at how empty it felt.
He slid out of bed, found a t-shirt, and slowly made his way to the elevator, then to the range Natasha had staked out. She was a small dragon, but she was still very dangerous, especially with her nearly uncontrollable tendency to breathe out more fire than her body weight again. Clint's range had been designed to allow him to test out explosive arrows and had the added advantage of familiarity—for both of them.
He could feel her alertness as he entered on quiet feet. Bright eyes gleamed in the moonlight near a window as she lifted her head. He clambered up the small mountain of blankets she'd set up as a nest and curled up next to her, leaning his head on her shoulder and laying one hand on her long neck.
Her head came around to nose at him until she seemed to find a comfortable position to rest in.
Comfort settled between them, and finally they could drift to sleep.
"I think I can reverse this." Tony stared at Bruce's report and then glanced back at his own lab results. "I think this is feasible. But we need to test it."
Bruce sighed and took the coffee cup from Dummy's hand before it could reach Tony. They had been up all night and both men were disheveled and a little crazed-looking around the edges. And perhaps crazed-feeling as well.
"Just don't try turning me into a dragon then reversing it."
Both of them stopped to imagine a giant green rage dragon and shuddered.
"Agreed." Tony eyed Dummy.
The robot flailed, turned, and fled.
"Right," Tony said. "Next."
"Mother says that Loki—"
"No."
"She promised there would be no—"
"No."
"He would not be in direct—"
"No."
Clint blandly stared down Thor's pleading look. Natasha's tail lashed behind her.
"We'll check in with the scientists," Steve acknowledged with a sigh.
Clint waited a beat, then nodded curtly.
"So the good news is we've figured out how to reverse the dragonization thing that happened," Stark began, "but before we do that, don't you think we could some good out of this situation?"
Heads snapped up at attention, and Clint's eyebrows climbed higher.
"Don't let Natasha hear you say that," he muttered.
Stark went on though, about all the benefits of dragon-fire and wings on the battlefield. "Come on, Thor. Don't you think so?"
"So we haven't figured out how to test it," Bruce interrupted. "And this isn't something you want to get wrong."
Stark shot him a look. "It will work. There are just a few tweaks we want to work out first."
Bruce shook his head.
Steve brought the whole thing to a close with, "Get it tested and perfect before we do anything to Natasha, and no, we're not going to ask her to go into combat as a dragon."
She was feeling pretty restless, and Clint thought that might actually have been the most helpful suggestion he'd heard. He told Natasha so ten minutes later as she scorched and scarfed up all the meat that had been stashed in the freezer.
"What do you think?"
She spread her teeth in a truly disturbing smile.
Natasha didn't wait to be asked and Clint hadn't expected her to. The next time the assemble order went out, Tony had spent the last week still muttering over how short he was on good test subjects (and everyone kept smuggling away any stray cats or properly owned pets he got a gleam in his eye around), so she simply shimmied out the window Clint regularly left open for her (a girl's got to get her flight practice in somehow) and headed out without so much as a by-your-leave.
"Tony," Steve said warningly when he first saw the stream of fire taking out what poor minions the Hulk left behind.
But "I had nothing to do with this," was Stark's only reply as he flew out of the line of fire and started picking off the flanks. "How do we always get the alien armies anyway?"
Clint just grinned and watched Natasha's back, like always.
Thor provided a subject for Tony to test on. "Mother suggested turning a real dragon human and back again."
"I see so many ethical issues with this." Bruce lowered his glasses.
"The dragon agreed," Thor added helpfully.
The dragon, a small scaly ball of growls and chewing on its own tail that implied a much younger age than made Clint comfortable, grumbled out something to Thor.
"She says, 'Anything for the Lady Black Widow," Thor interpreted. He shrugged. "She's a fan."
"Really? A fan." Stark blinked at the dragon again. He looked full up of commentary about that.
"Did her parents agree?" Bruce asked before Stark could start in on any of it.
Thor replied in the affirmative. "Dragons have their own magic. She should be fine even if your process fails."
"Does that mean Natasha has magic? Can we check?" Stark glanced around until he saw Clint perched on a file cabinet. "Do you have any idea what she's capable of because—"
"No, Stark." Clint crossed his arms. "Just test the process."
Changing tacks rapidly enough to make Clint's head spin, Stark asked, "Do dragons have a problem signing waivers of liability because Pepper would insist on that. Especially with a minor. You are a minor, right?"
The dragon looked bored.
Clint decided to clear out before it burned down the lab.
"Thor seems confident," he told Natasha as he scratched a spot just under her neck that he'd learned she liked.
She rolled her eyes and stared out at the sky.
"Going to miss flying?" he asked.
She sighed and they watched the fire on the range floor until it burned out.
"I am a genius!" Stark announced over the intercom.
He probably should have been grateful that nobody answered.
Clint spent the last night curled up next to Natasha on the range, her head in his lap and his arm around her neck. They didn't say anything, just held onto each other and their nearness in the way they always had.
"Beats Budapest," he murmurred once before sleep.
Natasha snapped her jaws.
He took that to mean that was obvious.
"Now, you can't kill me immediately upon recovering your human body," Stark told her, "because you like me despite yourself and I never intended to do this to you and I will beg you on my knees for forgiveness if that's what's required."
"JARVIS, please record this," Pepper told the AI.
Clint figured any man would be willing to beg after ten Iron Man suits enduring literal trial by fire.
Natasha just huffed her agreement and followed Stark's directions on where to stand.
Clint watched anxiously as Tony and Bruce fiddled with knobs and settings and muttered to each other before they flipped a lever and a flash of white light nearly blinded everyone who was watching.
Clint didn't wait to see past the aftershock in his eyes but moved forward with a blanket to wrap around Natasha, having remembered that little important thing called clothes. (He might also have asked Bruce about privacy and been prepared for the brilliant light and hazy smoke effect Bruce threw in for good measure.)
Natasha's glare at Stark was the first thing Clint saw after blinking the spots from his eyes.
He smiled as the tension of the last two weeks fell away. "Good to have you back."