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"Are you gonna get up or do I have to drag you to your feet, Barton?" Natasha asked, extending a hand her partner gratefully took.
"Very funny. One more time?"
"That's what you said last time and the time before that," she pointed out.
In lieu of replying, Clint threw a punch towards her stomach. Natasha blocked it easily, sending a matching blow towards him on the opposite side. She swung her leg low to knock him off his feet. The moment she did, however, she realized he knew the move and it wouldn't work.
His momentum broken, Natasha pushed faster and brought her legs around his chest, shoving him and falling together until they hit the ground hard. He struggled before finally going voluntarily limp.
"You're gonna have to teach me that swing-around thing you do, Nat," Clint said.
Natasha smirked. "Your thighs are too fat."
"Wouldn't that make it more effective?"
She dropped back into a fighting stance, watching him mirror her.
"At least we have plenty of time while waiting for your Americanization." Clint lunged forward. "Though I do have that report to do, which is actually yours, by the way."
Natasha sidestepped. She held up a T for timeout. "My report? I'm not an agent yet."
"Well, the boss wants one on Dreykov and that whole mess in Budapest. Fury assigned me to do it—but you had the pleasure of killing the bastard. Your kill, your report."
She froze, ice trickling through her veins like molten lava and blood gushing from her nostrils as she failed to block Clint's next hit. He might have apologized, but everything was muffled to the images her head conjured.
The radio-filtered voice of Agent Barton buzzed in her earpiece. "We need confirmation Dreykov’s in the building."
"His car is pulling up now," Natasha told him, a slight Russian lilt on her tongue.
She knew from Clint's vantage point that he couldn't see the black vehicle stopping at the curb. He wouldn't see the little girl step out, skirt and backpack and pigtails flying as she entered the front door. Her own view was now blocked, but Natasha could imagine Antonia climbing up the steps to see her father.
Natasha remembered a different little girl. One who wore the same pigtails yet never felt sweet as candy. One who hesitated on the threshold of every front door she risked standing on. One who knew every telltale creaky floorboard in a flight of stairs and how to avoid them.
And then there was a ghost attached to her waist, Natasha with the cold metal of a gun in her hand and the humid Cuban air sticking to their skin.
"Natasha, we clear?"
But what mattered was the mission. The mission was killing Dreyvok.
"All clear."
Clint knew something was wrong the moment his fist struck Natasha's nose. A sharp crack echoed through the empty gym, blood spilling onto his wrapped knuckles. She never let him touch her.
He blinked and his body had slammed into the ground. The mat did nothing to cushion his fall.
Groaning, Clint stood and threw a fast left hook. She flipped around, using her smaller frame and agility to avoid his spars. He took a hesitant step away. He would've held up a T, but the glazed look in her feral green eyes told him she was blind to her surroundings, and he didn't know where she was.
Natasha wrapped her legs around him again, this time around the waist, swinging around and nearly knocking him off his feet. Clint kept his balance. He shoved her off, ducking down to avoid another hit. Defense. He had to play defense.
He knew he could barely defeat Natasha in a fight under normal circumstances, if the past few weeks since Budapest had taught him anything, but a dissociated Black Widow was even more deadly than her namesake.
Natasha ran towards his arm and pushed it towards his chest, straining the muscle but thankfully not breaking it. He grabbed her shoulder and pulled her head into a lock.
Before another hit could be thrown from either one of the fragile duo, a S.H.I.E.L.D. team came into the room, their firearms drawn.
Natasha had froze again, and Clint suspected the adrenaline had worn out and had sunk bone deep exhaustion into her limbs. There was nothing for him to do to calm her down from panic and dissociation before an agent had snuck up behind them, inserting a needle into her neck.
Clint watched the clear substance disappear from the vial and into a limp Natasha.