Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Where am I? Why am I lying on a metal table? Why can't I move?!

My eyes are open but the lights are too bright and I can't see. I tilt my head up to look at myself and see a white gown with a square cut out of the front. My wrists and ankles are secured with thick nylon straps. I try to lift my head and I'm stopped by the strap on my neck. Trying to free myself is futile and I know it, but I struggle against the restraints in an animalistic panic anyway. Rational thought is the only part of me that manages to escape. It's gone now.

I see a flash of light reflecting off metal and realization sets in. I know what this is. It happened when I was 16.

I hear a familiar voice, but I can't place it. It's too quiet to make out any words.

Suddenly Bruce's face comes into my field of view. He has a disgusted expression on his face. He doesn't have to say a word for me to know the disgust is because of me.

"Didn't you hear me?" he says in a nasty tone I've never heard before, "I said we're just going to take out some things you won't be needing."

I feel the sharp, cold sting of the scalpel slicing down my abdomen. He pulls everything out with his bare hands. It's excruciating, but I can't make a sound. Something's stopping me. He didn't secure my torso, so I instinctively recoil away from the pain. It makes it worse when it tears my abdomen open farther.

Bruce's face comes back.

"You thought I'd be interested in YOU?" he scoffs, "You're too used up and worn out. Damaged goods. A science experiment gone horribly wrong. I never cared about you or any of your delusions. Love? You don't DESERVE it, and you never will."

Bruce paces next to the table for a few moments before launching back into his tirade.

"Which version of you is even real? Bruce asks snidely, "Because I've seen at least a dozen now. Do you even know? You and everything about you are nothing but a web of lies. Smoke and mirrors, no substance. You couldn't be a real person if you wanted to be."

Bruce starts laughing at something he finds amusing. The cruelty in the sound makes it so much worse. I didn't think he was capable of it.

"You're just a dime store mannequin that thinks it's people." he hisses at me, "Russian knockoff Geppetto made you and now you want to be a real girl. You think you made something of yourself? You think you're free? Nothing's changed but the hands on your strings. You're just a marionette dancing to someone else's tune. That's all you'll EVER be."

Bruce leans closer. His eyes are glowing a sickly shade of green now.

I feel his hand reaching up into my ribcage through the bloody mess that used to be my abdomen. It's agonizing, but the scream catches in my throat as I strain against the neck restraint.

"What do you have to say for yourself, Widow?" Bruce sneers.

"Bruce, I'm sorry!" I gasp out as I feel his fingers close around my heart, "I'm sorry!"

I see the green start to flood Bruce's features as he begins to pull.

I feel every tear and pop as my heart rips free from the tissue surrounding it.

"Now you're truly heartless." Bruce spits at me while holding my dripping heart up in front of my face. My own blood steadily drips onto my chin.

"Instead of just acting like it." he follows up before dropping my heart on the table next to my head and walking away.

The lights go out and the door slams shut. He leaves me to bleed out in the dark. 

Natasha jolted awake at the sound of someone screaming and sat up. It took her far too long to realize that the person screaming was her. She was drenched in sweat and shaking in terror, still feeling the absolute horror of having her insides pulled out by Bruce and the heartache of knowing that every word he said was true.

She let herself fall back onto the mattress and laid there staring at the ceiling for a few minutes. She tried desperately to ignore the sting of the tears pooled in her eyes, but quickly gave up fighting it and rolled over to cry silently into her pillow. Natasha cried herself back to sleep, only to be woken up by a variation of the same nightmare a half hour later. That cycle had been repeating all night, every night for the last six months. She couldn't remember the last time she'd slept for more than two hours without a nightmare waking her up and she was physically and mentally exhausted.

Usually her nightmares were more varied. There was certainly enough in her past to draw fuel from. But Natasha knew why the graduation ceremony had taken center stage tonight, with the addition of Bruce being a new, unwelcome variation. Tomorrow would be the fifteenth anniversary of it happening. It was her least favorite day of the year and she fervently hoped no one would try to make a big deal out of it.

Natasha glanced at the clock. It was just after three in the morning.

Just 21 hours to go and this day is over.

Clint had arrived at the tower the day before and gave her excuse after ridiculous excuse as to why he was there. She wasn't buying any of it, and if the smirk he wore every time he gave her another outlandish excuse was anything to go by, Clint knew she wasn't. He was her favorite person by a wide margin, but sometimes he really annoyed her. On purpose most of the time.

He was already sitting in her kitchen at 5:30 when she finally gave up on trying to sleep and got out of bed. Clint was the only person who had access to her floor of the tower without an explicit invitation, and he took full advantage of it. At least this time he brought coffee. She picked up the cup on the counter and took a small sip. Wrong order...again, but she could live with it. The archer was sitting backwards in one of her kitchen chairs with his chin resting on the arms he had crossed over the back of it, watching her intently.

"Happy birthday, Nat." Clint said softly.

Of course that's the first thing he says. He knows I hate what day it is and the first thing he does is make me acknowledge it.

She really wanted to glare at him, and started to before letting it go with a sigh. Birthdays meant something very different to him than they did her. To him, they meant you had survived another year and that was worth celebrating. For the first half of her life a birthday was something to be dreaded, because it meant her training would intensify. Most kids spent their birthday eating cake and ice cream and being excited about their gifts. She spent hers wondering what fresh hell was coming next, and she had never been able to rid herself of the feeling of impending doom when it was approaching.

"Thanks." she muttered.

"The kids made you a card." Clint told her, nodding at what looked like a repurposed red folder sitting on the counter, "It was Lila's idea. She decided Auntie Nat needed an extra big birthday card this year."

Natasha sat down and flipped the 'card' open while she waited for her coffee to cool slightly. The first thing she saw was the giant heart formed out of infant-sized handprints in what looked to be yellow finger paint. She couldn't help the smile that crept across her lips and glanced at her partner.

"Lila decided Nate needed to be involved too." he told her with a grin, "He's only five months old so he had no idea what was going on, but he seemed to have fun finger-painting with his big sister."

She looked at the other side to read the messages from the two Barton children that were capable of communicating and had to blink rapidly to prevent the tears that were trying to form from gaining any traction. Cooper's message was a simple 'Happy Birthday, Aunt Nat.' written across the top of the folder-turned-birthday-card in careful letters that got squished together at the end when he realized he made them too big. She pictured him sitting at the table writing it with his tongue stuck out of the side of his mouth in concentration and chuckled softly at the mental image. The rest of the right side was taken up by Lila's rambling birthday wishes. It was hard to follow because she had written it in a circle from the outside in, and her handwriting was sloppy and all over the place since she was only 7 and just starting to learn how. Natasha spun the oversized card around to read it while Clint watched with a soft smile on his face. She hated when people made a big deal out of her birthday, but the Barton kids always got a pass. They didn't know why she hated it, and she'd be damned if they ever found out. They didn't need to know that kind of thing happened to people, happened to her, and she was determined to preserve their innocence as long as possible.

The way no one did for me.

"They love you, Nat." Clint told her, "I'm pretty sure you're their favorite person in the world. Over me and Laura even. Lila took the music box you gave her to show and tell a few weeks ago, and I caught Cooper showing off some of the moves you taught him to his friends a while back. They talk about you to their friends and teachers all the time. And Cooper may have name-dropped you when some kid tried pulling the 'my dad can beat up your dad' schtick. Kid didn't believe him until Cooper showed him a picture. Apparently his aunt being the Black Widow is scarier than Hawkeye being his dad, because the kid shut up right away. They miss you and wanted to know if you're coming for Christmas this year."

"Of course I am!" Natasha exclaimed, "As long as there isn't an emergency I'll be there. Is it okay if I bring Steve? I know Sam invited him to spend it with his family, but I want to give him another option so he doesn't feel obligated to go."

"Sure." Clint agreed easily with a nod.

Natasha knew that Clint secretly liked Steve the best out of the rest of the team. Steve had been the first person after her to trust him without hesitation after he had shaken off Loki's mind control, and that meant a lot to him. It's pretty hard to argue with Captain America when he says he trusts someone, so the fact that he did smoothed a lot of ruffled feathers at SHIELD afterward.

"In fact," he added, "The whole team is invited if they want to come, Laura insisted. Now that they know about her she wants to get to know the people she's heard all our stories about. The team was barely there for a whole day before, not really much time to get to know them. I told Wanda last week when she called. She'll be there. Kids are really excited to meet her, and will probably pester her to show off her powers. Which I'm okay with as long as she's okay with it."

"Bringing home strays again, huh?" Natasha teased.

"Worked out pretty good last time." Clint shot back with a shrug and a sly grin, "What about the rest of the guys, you know what their plans are?"

"Well, Rhodey and Sam have family, so they'll probably spend it with them." Natasha said, "Tony is probably going to spend it with Pepper, and Thor...well, who knows? And Br..."

Fuck! No, no, no! Not now. Please not now.

She stopped talking instantly when she caught herself starting to mention their missing teammate and schooled her face into a neutral expression. Which Clint was not fooled by in the least. He stood up, walked over to her side, and pulled her up out of her chair into a tight hug. He was the only person who could get away with that. He'd always been able to tell when she was upset no matter how hard she tried to hide it, and made a point of making sure she got the comfort that she'd never admit she needed. And didn't know she did half the time. Clint completely ignored her attempts to keep herself closed off and treated her like a person with Feelings, whether she liked it or not. It was a big part of why he was her best friend. Everyone else was content to let her keep them at arms length, but not Clint. He was more in tune with her emotional state than she was herself most of the time, and usually knew what she needed better than she did.

"I'm sorry, Tasha." he whispered into her hair, and then raised his voice to a normal level, "FRIDAY, secure the floor please."

"Of course, Legolas." the disembodied female voice said from the ceiling. Natasha was still getting used to JARVIS being gone, and hearing FRIDAY instead of his snarky British voice was jarring.

"Tasha, you've been bottling it up and trying to ignore it for six months now." Clint said gently, "Let it out, I know it hurts."

Shut up. I don't want to talk about it.

Natasha knew he'd drag it out of her eventually, but she'd been trying to put it off as long as possible. She had deliberately concealed their budding relationship from him because she didn't know if it was going to lead anywhere yet and didn't want her best friend giving Bruce the shovel talk prematurely. Which Clint absolutely would have done, and which Bruce wouldn't have handled well. The whole team knew she was upset that the Hulk had chosen to leave before he could change back, but aside from a few sympathetic glances now and then they didn't bring it up. Clint could read her well enough to know that she was a lot more bothered by it than she was letting on, and had apparently gotten tired of her pretending she wasn't and decided to do something about it.

"I know what you're doing, Clint." she said, her voice muffled by his shirt, "Please don't. I don't want to do this. Not today."

Natasha inwardly cringed at how whiny she sounded. And then sighed when she realized that saying it in that tone would pretty much guarantee that Clint wouldn't let it go like she wanted.

Way to go, Natasha.

"You're allowed to have feelings, Tasha." Clint said gently while rocking her from side to side, "You're allowed to be upset. It's okay, no one is going to punish you for it. It's been thirteen years since you got away from them. They don't get to control you anymore."

Stop it. I don't want to do this, jackass. Maybe another time. Like...never? Never sounds good, I'll put it on my calendar.

Natasha tried to keep fighting it, but Clint's repeated use of the nickname he only used when she was upset was starting to erode her stubbornness. She hated that he knew her this well sometimes, but it was a small victory for her that someone did. In order for someone to really know her, the real her, she had to be a person first. And the Red Room had spent 17 years trying to take that away from her. She would never not be angry at them for fucking her up like this.

"I miss him, Clint." she said into his chest in a shaky whisper.

Clint didn't reply, just held her a little tighter when he felt her start trembling. He'd been trying to get her to acknowledge and accept her feelings instead of ignoring them for almost thirteen years now, ever since he realized how fucked up she really was. She was better about it than she used to be, but it was still hard. She'd spent her entire childhood and most of her teens having it beaten into her that Feelings were an unacceptable weakness, so it was difficult for her to deal with having them even all these years later. She had managed to move past most of what the Red Room had done to her, but her inability to process emotions in any kind of healthy way was a lasting legacy that she was probably stuck with.

Natasha didn't break down often, she could count the number of times it had happened in her life on one hand. The first time was on the Quinjet after Clint had made the baffling decision not to kill her. The second was when she realized how deep what the Red Room did to her really ran. The third time was when it sank in that Clint and Laura were offering her a home and not just a place to crash for a while. She had broken down and insisted through her tears that she didn't deserve it and didn't belong there. Those were all within the first year after she defected. The fourth and last time was comparitively recent, and was the worst one to date. That was the day after New York when it had suddenly hit her that Coulson was gone. He had been her and Clint's handler for almost a decade and had slowly become one of her closest friends. Losing him had been almost unbearable, mostly because she'd never had anyone she cared about die before and didn't know how to handle it.

She'd only ever allowed Clint and Laura to witness those incidents because she trusted them to keep her secrets. They were better than any therapist she had ever tried talking to because they knew when to push and when to back off, and security clearance wasn't an issue. Natasha silently resigned herself to the fact that it was going to happen again, whether she liked it or not. She could feel it coming on and kept fighting it, but then Clint started rubbing her back and she knew she was done for. He knew exactly what to do to get her to let go. It felt a little manipulative, but she was never angry about it because she knew he was just trying to help and it always did. The guilt she'd been carrying around for the last six months suddenly reached its boiling point and the confession spilled out of her mouth before she realized what she was saying.

"He left because of me!" Natasha wailed quietly before collapsing into harsh, shuddering sobs and clinging to her best friend like a lifeline.

Fuck you, Clint.

Please buckle your seat belts, the ride is now leaving the station. Keep all extremities inside the car at all times.

"What do you mean, Tasha?" Clint asked her softly, but she couldn't answer him just yet. She was crying too hard to say anything even remotely intelligible and couldn't breathe, sucking in desperate gasps of air every time her lungs would let her. She hated herself for acting like such a pathetic child over it, but once she started she couldn't make herself stop. She'd heard people talking about 'ugly' crying before but hadn't ever really understood the need to have a separate category of crying. She understood it now. She couldn't stop sobbing uncontrollably and was a little scared by how broken she felt. If this was what having normal human emotions felt like, she wanted no part of it.

Zero out of ten, would not recommend.

Clint was saying things to her in a soothing voice, but she wasn't registering his words. They didn't really matter anyway, it was the tone of his voice that was important. It took a few minutes, but she finally managed to pull herself together at least enough to talk through the occasional sob.

"In Sokovia, after he came to get me out of the cell I was in." Natasha began with a catch in her voice, "He asked if I still wanted to run away with him, but I couldn't. We had to stop Ultron and we needed the Hulk for it. So I told him I adored him, kissed him, and shoved him off a ledge to force him to change."

Fuck my life. Stop it already, Natasha! You're embarrassing yourself!

That brought on another round of sobs and Natasha didn't resist when Clint sat back down and pulled her into his lap like a little kid. It was the same thing he did to console Lila and Cooper. It felt vaguely insulting to be treated like one of his children, and normally she'd never allow it no matter how upset she was, but right now she couldn't bring herself to care.

"I told him I adored him, Clint!" she moaned miserably, leaning into his chest, "I couldn't even say I loved him because I didn't know if I did and I didn't want to lie to him! Not about that."

"You know he'll forgive you." Clint said quietly, "If he hasn't already."

No he won't. I wouldn't.

"That's not the point, Clint!" she nearly shouted, "I spent months trying to convince Bruce that I cared about him, and not just what the Hulk could do for the team. And then when I had the chance to prove it, I turned around and treated him like a weapon just like everyone else. He's gone and he's not coming back, and it's all my fault! I'm a shitty person and I can't say I blame him for not wanting anything to do with me."

"Shut up, Nat." Clint said, "You're not a shitty person. It was a shitty choice you had to make, and making the decision you thought was best doesn't make you a shitty person."

"I had a chance at something normal." Natasha said in a broken voice, "Something real. I didn't even know I wanted it until it was right there in front of me. And I completely fucked it up before I really even had it. It would be easier if he'd died. Him not wanting to be around me anymore and leaving feels so much worse, because he chose to do that."

He hates me. He left because he hates me.

Natasha knew Clint was saddened by her apparent inability to form connections with people, and she had wondered herself if she was even capable of it for a long time. She hadn't realized how important the potential relationship with Bruce was to her until the moment the Hulk shut off the video feed on the Quinjet and it had all come crashing down on her. It was only her discipline that prevented her from cracking right then and there. Steve had noticed and gave her a brief hug when no one else was looking, but hadn't pressed her to talk about it. She'd been pushing that feeling down ever since that day and tried not to think about the fact that she might have pissed away her only chance to have something she never thought she'd actually want. It had taken her far too long to identify what she was feeling, and by the time she decided to act on it it was too late. Maybe if they had established something sooner she would have been able to handle that differently and he wouldn't have left.

He was always going to leave and you know it. Everyone leaves you in the end.

Shut up, you're not helping.

She hated it when that voice had something to say. She knew it was just her own self doubts manifesting, she wasn't crazy. But it sounded far too much like Madame B. for her liking. 

Natasha had calmed down considerably, but made no move to get off Clint's lap yet. She was rarely in a position this intimate with anyone, at least not as herself, and decided that since she was already here she'd soak up the comfort of it for as long as Clint would let her. Which she knew would be as long as she wanted it for. He never denied her comfort when she was upset, and she appreciated that more than she had the words to express. Not for the first time, she wondered if there could have been anything between them if he hadn't already been married when they met. She didn't feel that way about him and never had, but the thought still crossed her mind on occasion. She knew the rest of the guys joked about it and called her his 'work wife', but the jokes had more truth to them than she was comfortable admitting. Even to herself.

Yeah, there's a lot to unpack there. Nope, not doing it. Moving right along.

She felt something cold and slimy on her upper lip and reached a hand up to feel it, and was utterly disgusted when her fingers came away covered in snot. She'd seen people cry hard enough for their nose to start running, but it had never happened to her before. She shot Clint a guilty look after she glanced down at his shirt and saw that she had smeared snot and tears all over the front of it. He just gave her a 'don't worry about it' head shake and brushed aside the lock of hair that had gotten stuck to her cheek.

Clint let her continue sitting curled up on his lap for another few minutes before he started shifting uncomfortably in the chair. Most of her weight was sitting on a pressure point in his right thigh and it was probably starting to put his leg to sleep. After another couple minutes he patted the spot where her lower back met her butt a couple times in a 'move your ass' gesture and shifted even more.

"Sorry, I know you're comfortable." he said sheepishly, "But can you get up now? My leg is asleep."

Thank you for riding our newest attraction, the What The Actual Fuck Was That. Please wait until the ride comes to a complete stop before exiting the car.

"Right." she said and scrambled off of his lap, "Sorry."

Natasha stood in front of her partner sniffling a little and wondered if she looked as miserable as she felt. Judging by the sympathetic look Clint was giving her, she probably did. Normally she'd be mortified, but she knew Clint would never judge her or think less of her for it. More to the point, she just didn't have the energy to care. Sobbing like a stupid little girl had taken a lot out of her.

"You should get cleaned up." Clint told her, "You look like shit. Your face is all blotchy and a little gross right now, if I'm being honest. I was going to do breakfast here, but I doubt you want the guys seeing you like this so we're going out instead."

Dickhead. Thanks, though.

Natasha huffed out a quiet laugh. It wasn't particularly funny, but Clint was the only person who had the balls to tell her she looked like shit and it always amused her.

"Thanks for making me face it." she told her partner, "And for letting me fall apart on you."

Thanks for caring about my stupid boy problems. God, I'm pathetic.

"Anytime." Clint replied with a smile, "Knew you weren't going to ask for help, you never do. Feel better now?"

She just stood there for another minute feeling embarrassed that she'd completely lost her shit, before nodding slightly, "Yeah, a little."

"Go take a shower." Clint prompted, nodding his head towards the bathroom, "You have snot in your hair. It looks gross."

Asshole.

Clint saw the look that crossed her face and sighed quietly through his nose. She was going to shove this incident into the back of her mind and pretend it never happened, and he clearly knew she was and wasn't happy about it. Natasha couldn't take his blatant scrutiny anymore and fled to the bathroom to get rid of the evidence and try to process whatever the hell had just happened.

They were on the elevator heading back up to Natasha's floor after breakfast when Clint turned to her casually with his hands in his pockets.

"So, just as a heads up," he began tentatively, "Wanda's throwing a party for you tonight."

"She's what." Natasha replied flatly.

He did not just say that.

"Throwing a birthday party for you."

"That's what I thought you said." she told him, "Absolutely fucking not. How'd she even know when it was?"

"Well, you did kinda dump all that information on the internet last year." Clint said wryly, "Also, Steve let it slip. She overheard him asking Tony what to get you since he's known you longer."

"What the hell possessed her to want to throw me a party?" Natasha asked as the elevator doors opened. She stepped out of it and opened the door to her apartment.

She barely knows me.

"She wants to do something nice for you." Clint explained while following her inside, "She still feels guilty about what she did to you in Africa. She found out it was worse for you than the rest of them somehow and feels really shitty about it. With the way you don't talk to her much outside of training she thinks you hate her, and I guess she doesn't want you to. She's a good kid, Nat."

Shit. She probably really does think I hate her.

"And you're trying to convince me to let her because why?" she inquired. He was taking his time getting to the point, so she got to the point for him. Clint was a firm believer in the philosophy of 'if you can't blind them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit', and it showed. If you let him talk long enough he had a way of making even the most ridiculous request seem like a totally reasonable thing to ask.

That's a carnie for you. Con artists to the core, the lot of them.

"Because this is the first thing she's been at all enthusiastic about since her brother died." Clint said with a sigh, flopping down on her couch as he did, "She's still pretty listless, but she started showing a little life when she had the idea. And no one had the heart to tell her you hate your birthday and never celebrate it."

Low blow, Barton. You suck.

"So you want me to plaster on a fake smile and pretend to be having a great time?"

Fuck that.

"Pretty much, yeah." Clint confirmed, "C'mon Nat, I don't even know how many times I've seen you annoyed as hell and no one but me could tell. Don't ruin this for Wanda. She needs something to be happy about."

"Fine." Natasha conceded begrudgingly and stuck her index finger in his face in a mock threat, "But there better be alcohol."

There's no way I'm doing this sober.

"Yeah, Tony's got that covered." he replied, "He's totally onboard with the party idea, so it might get a little crazy."

Fleeting images of Tony getting hammered at his own birthday party, pissing himself in his suit, and getting his ass kicked by Rhodey ran through her head.

Wonderful. I can't wait.

"Why do I feel like I'm the last person to find out about this?"

"Because you are." Clint said with a smirk, "Even Thor knows about it. Asked if he could bring his friend Lady Sif. I guess he's told a lot of stories about our 'great deeds' and she wants to meet the people she's heard about. She also wants to hear directly from us about how we kicked Loki's ass. She's hated him for centuries."

Natasha could only stare at him, dumbfounded. Her teammates had been planning a party for her for at least a week, in the building she lived in, and she'd had no idea.

How the hell did they get that past me?

Lacking anything better to say, she decided to say that out loud.

"You should be proud of yourself." Clint said with another of his patented sly grins, "You're a good teacher."

Guess so. Damn, go me.

"And they wanted you to tell me about it because they thought you had the best chance of talking me into it." Natasha deduced.

"Bingo." Clint replied over the finger guns he was pointing at her.

He's a child.

"I'm assuming you're on board with this too?"

"Yep." he said, "Because I remember something you've probably forgotten."

"What's that?" she asked curiously.

No, seriously. I have no idea what you're talking about.

"Couple years after we met, when you first told me you hate your birthday." Clint explained, "You also said that if you lived past 30 I was allowed to celebrate it. You turn 31 today, which means you've officially made it past 30. I would have done it last year, but you'd have claimed a technicality because you weren't past 30 yet."

"True." Natasha replied drily, "And I would have been right."

Fuck! I DID say that. Why the hell did I say that? And why does he remember that but can't remember my coffee order?!

"And hey, who knows?" Clint said impishly, "If you pretend to have fun convincingly enough you might have some actual fun by accident."

Natasha sat lost in thought for a few minutes, until Clint extended his leg and nudged her knee with his foot.

"Whatcha thinkin' about?" he asked casually.

She drew her legs up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, looking at him with her chin resting on her knees. She just gazed at him for a few moments. It had been on her mind for a while but she hadn't verbalized it yet.

You're leaving me too.

"I'm gonna miss having you around." Natasha said quietly, with a little melancholy seeping into her voice, "Missions won't be the same without your stupid dad jokes on the comms all the time."

"It's not like you're never gonna see me again." Clint reassured her, "I'm retired, not dead."

"I know." she replied, "I feel kinda selfish about it. I should be happy that you survived twenty plus years at SHIELD so you could get to retire. And I am. But all I can think about is that it's the end of Strike Team Delta."

You're LEAVING ME! Do you even care how that makes me feel?

"Yeah, we've been through some shit together, haven't we?" her partner...ex-partner...said with a chuckle, "Still, I'm getting old, Nat. I can barely keep up with you guys now. I don't want to let it get to the point where I'm a liability. That hit I took going after the scepter? I wouldn't have taken it even a few years ago, and you know it. I'm in good shape for my age, but I'm slowing down. I'm sure Tony's feeling it too, he's older than I am. But he's got a suit of armor protecting him. Other than that issue with his left arm he hasn't had very many serious injuries. My hearing's starting to go. Has been for a while now. I'll need hearing aids in another couple years."

"You didn't tell me that."

"You're the first person to know after Laura. I've been keeping it quiet." Clint said, and then grinned when he caught his unintentional pun.

Yep. Definitely a child. Ten, maybe eleven. At most.

"I really am happy for you, Clint." she told him sincerely, "You've earned it and then some."

Don't go! Please? I NEED you!

Codependent much?

Fuck off, I didn't ask you.

"You know you guys can call me if you need help, right?" her best friend said. He might not be her partner anymore, but he would always be that, "I can still shoot as good as ever. It's just the falling off buildings and getting blown up I'd rather avoid now."

Yeah, don't do that. I don't know when I started getting scared for you, but I don't like it.

"I hope we never have to." Natasha said emphatically, "If we ever do, it means we're in deep shit."

"I wouldn't have walked away if there weren't replacements waiting in the wings." Clint confided in her, "Pretty sure Wanda, Vision, Rhodey, and Sam can make up for the lack of me and Tony. Hell, Rhodey fills the same air support role Tony did. And I guess Wanda, Sam, and Vision almost make up for one less archer. And you know Thor will be back if you need him, he just has other responsibilities."

Natasha couldn't help smiling at Clint's tongue-in-cheek cockiness. She noticed that he didn't even hint at Bruce in his assessment, which she was silently grateful for. It still hurt to hear his name, and probably would for a while. What the hell was wrong with her? She didn't get sentimental over people like that, but yet here she was, acting like a jilted, lovesick teenager.

Get your shit together, Romanoff.

"You ever consider it?" Clint asked her.

"Consider what?"

"Retiring someday."

Fuck no.

"Not really." Natasha admitted, "I don't even know what I'd do with myself if I did. I've already lived longer than I was supposed to and never really put much thought into what comes next. Always kind of assumed I'd die on a mission someday so I wouldn't need to worry about it. I just hope it doesn't happen in a stupid way, like falling off a cliff or something."

That would be about my luck.

"You know," Clint said, "You never did tell me why you hate your birthday so much. Feel like sharing yet?"

Natasha sighed. She'd told herself a few years back on a particularly shitty birthday that she'd tell him. But every year since then she chickened out at the last minute. She didn't like thinking about it, and liked talking about it even less.

Tell him without telling him. Let him come to the wrong conclusion without lying to him. He doesn't need to know the truth. Then distract him with the worst part so he doesn't think about it too hard.

"From 12 to 15, every birthday was spent learning how to do things no girl that age should know anything about." she told him in a soft voice, "Normal girls get a Sweet 16 party. I got a hysterectomy. While I was awake."

"They did that on your fucking birthday?!" Clint said with some anger coloring his words, "I knew about it, obviously. But on your birthday? That's just fucked up."

No shit. Try living through it.

"Yep." Natasha said with bitter sarcasm, "Happy birthday, Natasha! We got you a traumatic experience you'll have nightmares about forever with a bonus lifetime supply of hormone problems because we took out your ovaries too! Wasn't that a thoughtful gift? Say thank you to the nice doctor!"

"Jesus Christ, Nat." Clint said, still reeling from her revelation, "I completely get why you hate your birthday now. I would too if I were you. If those bastards were still alive I'd kill them myself."

Good thing we already did. And good thing you don't know the half of it. And you never will.

"That goes both ways, you know." she replied, "If your dad was still alive I'd strangle him with his own intestines."

To start with.

"I'm sorry you had to go through that." Clint told her sincerely, "Did you ever have a good one?"

"Just one." Natasha said with a bittersweet smile, "Alexei got me a bike and taught me how to ride it. Melina was furious, but he completely ignored her and did it anyway. It took me a long time to figure out what he was doing back then. He was trying to make sure that I had some good memories to hold onto, because he knew how bad it was going to be when I got sent back. I felt like he betrayed me when I was, but I can't completely hate him. He was a good man, he just couldn't bring himself to disobey Dreykov."

I miss Alexei. He was kinder to me than he really had to be. Not a very high bar to clear, but still.

A memory surfaced unbidden while she was talking. It was the night before her birthday and she had eavesdropped on her 'parents' when she was supposed to be sleeping.

"You aren't doing her any favors, Alexei." Melina's voice filtered up the stairs, "You know any weakness is going to be beaten out of her when she goes back. Don't make it harder on her. You know she can't have this life, as much as you want to give it to her."

"Let her be a child while she can." Alexei rumbled in response, "Let her have a little joy before we send her back to hell. She's going to be a Widow, we have no say in that. But that doesn't mean we have to be cruel to her while she's with us. You know she doesn't deserve that. None of them do."

"No, they don't." Melina said after a long pause, "But that is the way it is."

"I feel worse for Yelena." Alexei said quietly, "Natasha knows what to expect and can steel herself for it, but Yelena has no idea what her future is going to be like. She's going to hate us when she finds out we knew and never told her. She's such a sweet little girl. I feel like a monster for sending her there. Natasha too."

"I hope they don't order me to train her." Melina said, and Natasha was shocked to hear an unexpected vulnerability in her voice, "I don't want to do that to her. But if they order it I won't have a choice. I don't want to go from kissing her booboos to beating her when she makes a mistake. That would break my heart."

"Didn't know you had one of those." Alexei retorted sarcastically.

"I never let them take it." she replied fiercely, then her voice softened, "I just buried it for a long time. But then those girls dug it up and I didn't even notice. I don't want to do this to them, but I don't have a choice. I can't disobey any more than they'll be able to. Part of me wants to take them and run, but I know that would just get us all killed. At least if they're alive they have a chance to make it out the other side in one piece."

In her surprise at that admission Natasha lost her balance and slipped down from the top step with a soft thump. She quickly got up and ran back to her room before she was caught spying. Alexei and Melina hated what they were going to do to her and her sister, but they were going to do it anyway. And she wasn't sure how she was supposed to feel about that.

In her reverie Natasha didn't notice that Clint was talking to her.

"What was that?" she asked. Clint arched an eyebrow at her. He was used to her getting lost in memories like that and was already anticipating repeating himself.

"I feel like a complete ass now for trying to get you to celebrate it for all these years."

You were.

"There's a lot of things you should feel like an ass about." Natasha said with a playful smirk, "But that isn't one of them. It's fine, you didn't know. What time is the party?"

"Seven, I think." he answered, "I think Tony is more excited about it than Wanda. He called a few days ago. Sounded like he was sleep deprived and over-caffeinated, so he was rambling a lot. But the gist I got is that he's been looking for an excuse to throw one last party here before the new owners take possession on the 1st."

"Yeah, most of the building is empty now." Natasha told him, "It's just the residential floors and the labs left. Most of my stuff is at the Compound already. Everyone else's is too. We just kept the stuff here that we had an immediate need for. You going to help with the move, or am I schlepping your crap up there too?"

Please ask me to do that. Please?

"Actually, I'm taking my crap with me back to the farm when I leave in a few days." Clint said with a wince, "I'm not going to have my own room at the Compound. Already talked to Tony about it. You're getting a two bedroom suite with extra space. I'll probably just stay with you when I come to visit."

That's what I was afraid of. You really are leaving me.

"Right, that makes sense." she said quickly, "If you're not a full time team member you don't need your own space. Of course you can stay with me. That won't be a problem at all. It's fine. Totally fine. I'll make sure to paint one of the rooms purple so you feel at home."

"Nat, you're babbling." Clint pointed out. Of course he'd pick up on that. Hawkeye didn't get his name for nothing, "You sure you're okay with me retiring? Because you only babble when you're trying to distract yourself from your feelings."

Dammit, I am. What the hell is wrong with me today?

"I'm good with it, Clint." she replied, "I kinda have to be. What are you going to do, stick around and be my emotional support archer?"

"Sure, if you want." he said with a sly grin, "I can get one of those little vests that says 'Service Animal, Do Not Pet'. You'll have to walk me a few times a day though. According to Laura I'm still not quite housebroken."

"Hawkeye is a terrible name for a dog." Natasha quipped, "But a good one for a Clint Barton."

"Or an Army surgeon." she added after a pondering it for a moment, "Or a college football mascot. Now that I think about it there's kind of a lot of Hawkeyes. More than you'd expect."

"I didn't choose it."

"Really?" she replied curiously, "I didn't know that."

Why didn't I know that?

"Duquesne gave it to me in the circus." he told her, "I needed a name to put on the flyers and The Amazing Hawkeye, World's Greatest Marksman sounds a lot better than Some Orphan Kid With a Bow."

"I dunno, I'd pay money to see some orphan kid." Natasha said with a shrug, "Especially if he's any good."

"Why do that when you get to see it all the time for free?"

"True." she conceded, "In that case, I demand a refund."

"Hope you're okay with store credit."

"Hey, you said the party's at seven, right?" Natasha asked.

"Yeah." Clint replied, "Probably won't really get going until around 8 though."

"Cool." she said, "I'm going to take a nap. I slept like shit last night."

"Nightmares?"

You have no idea.

"Yeah." Natasha confirmed, "Fucked-Up Memory Theater was working overtime last night. Always does the night before my birthday. Had the graduation ceremony playing on repeat all night with some of the greatest hits sprinkled in for good measure."

"Okay." Clint said with a nod, "Want me to stick around?"

Please stay. I sleep better with you around.

"Sure, if you want." she replied with a casual shrug.

"What time do you want me to wake you up?"

Tomorrow. Can we just skip the rest of today, please?

"Don't let me sleep past 4." Natasha told him, "But I'll probably be up before then."

Clint gave her a look that said he knew damn well she had barely slept at all the night before, "You want to try the sleeping pills again?"

Fuck it. Can't hurt. My dreams are just weird on that stuff, instead of terrifying. I can deal with weird.

"Maybe next time I'm at the farm." she answered.

Clint just raised an eyebrow in response, likely putting a lot of things together from the very little information she had given him. That was why he really merited being an Avenger. Everyone thought it was his uncanny accuracy with a bow and the variety of specialized arrowheads he used. But that wasn't it. The speed at which he compiled and analyzed information from what he observed bordered on superhuman, and he very quietly had the keenest tactical mind on the team. Steve had immediately picked up on that in New York and put him in the role that best capitalized on his strengths.

"How long have you been having trouble sleeping for?"

Dammit. Leave it alone, Clint.

"A while." Natasha answered vaguely.

Six months. But you already know that. Some spy I am, I can't hide a damn thing from you.

"Mm-hmm." Clint hummed with both eyebrows raised, "Go to sleep, woman. I'll be out here if you need me."

Thanks, Clint. Really not sure how I'm gonna do this without you around to call me on my shit. No one else has the balls to.

Natasha didn't say anything else, just walked into her bedroom and threw herself on the bed, letting out a muffled scream into her pillow. She rolled over and was out cold in three minutes flat.

Chapter Text

Clint waited until he heard the latch of Nat's bedroom door click before letting his head drop into his hands. The whole morning had gone completely off the rails almost immediately. Steve had mentioned that Nat seemed a little off the last few months during his last check-in call. Nothing he could put his finger on, just a general sense of her not being okay. He'd found her up on the observation deck just standing and staring out over the city on several occasions, and had startled her a couple of those times. Which was unusual to say the least, it was normally almost impossible to sneak up on her.

Steve had sounded worried when he called, and Clint was taking his concerns seriously. Nat had opened up to Cap a bit, so he knew her well enough to know when something was wrong. But not well enough to know what it was, apparently, since he'd sounded frustrated on the phone. He decided to be there for her birthday to see what Steve was talking about for himself. If there was something wrong, the added stress of it being her least favorite day of the year would bring it to the surface.

Within about thirty seconds of setting eyes on Nat, Clint saw exactly what Steve meant. There was a melancholy to her that he wasn't used to seeing and she was completely exhausted. She was acting like herself, but it felt almost...scripted. Like she was just going through the motions and showing people what they expected to see so they wouldn't ask her awkward questions. Clint had seen that from her before. It was a sign that something was really eating at her that she didn't want to talk about. It didn't usually go on for this long though, and that worried him.

He hadn't intended to stage an emotional intervention when he arrived, but when she locked up before she could finish saying Bruce's name Clint knew he had to do something. He'd expected her to maybe shed a few tears and talk it out with him, that's how it usually worked. Her meltdown had caught him completely off guard. Nat had seemed surprised by it too, which made sense now that he thought about it. To the best of his knowledge Natasha had never completely lost her shit like that before and she'd seemed confused as to what was happening.

Sorry, Nat. I'm sure that sucked. Wasn't the plan, honest.

Clint had decided to wait until after Nat pulled herself together and got some food in her before springing the news of the party on her. She agreed to it a lot faster than he'd expected, which was good. She'd also volunteered that she was going to miss having him around after he officially retired, which was less good. It was an indication that she was more upset by that than she'd ever admit to being. First Bruce bailed on the whole team, which Nat was taking personally and blaming herself for. Then he announced that he was basically quitting on her. She was probably feeling pretty abandoned by the people she was closest to right now. Whether or not she recognized and admitted that was another question entirely.

Clint shook off his concerns for the time being, he could address those things when Nat got up from her nap. In the meantime he'd find something on TV to watch. He flipped through channels mindlessly for a few minutes before landing on a This Old House marathon on PBS and it brought back some memories. PBS was the only TV station the headmaster at the orphanage he and Barney were sent to was okay with the kids watching unsupervised. The other kids all lost interest when This Old House came on, but not Clint. When he was a kid he'd pretend that Bob Vila was his dad and was teaching him how to use tools and such. As an adult, that translated into a mild obsession with renovating his house. At first he was just letting the nostalgia wash over him, but then Bob went into a segment on flooring. He still hadn't gotten around to finishing the floor in the sunroom, and what Bob was demonstrating now would help him with that so he started actively paying attention.

Two hours and four episodes later, Clint felt like he had the knowledge he needed to tackle that damn floor finally. There was a soft knock at the door, so he set down the pad of paper he'd started taking notes on and got up to answer it. He pulled the door open and saw Steve standing there with a box in his hand. Clint held a finger up to his lips before Steve started talking and motioned for him to enter.

"Nat's taking a nap." he told the super soldier quietly, "She had a rough night."

Steve glanced down at the front of his shirt and raised an eyebrow when he saw the snot still smeared across it. Right, he probably should have changed his shirt a while ago. He'd actually forgotten about it to the point that he'd gone out in public like that. No wonder the waitress was looking at him funny at breakfast.

"Rough morning too." he added in explanation.

"Guess so." Steve replied, "Wasn't expecting you to answer the door. Nat doesn't have company very often."

"What are you doing here, Cap?"

"Came by to drop off her birthday present." Steve said, holding up the box he was carrying, "Thought maybe she'd want to watch a few with me."

Clint took a closer look at the box and smiled. It was a box set of the complete Three Stooges collection. He remembered one time when he'd returned from a few weeks at the farm and the tower had been empty other than Steve and Nat. His attention had been drawn by a sound he didn't hear very often and he followed it to the common area, where he found his best friend and Steve on the couch laughing their asses off at the TV. Steve remembered the Three Stooges from before he went into the ice, and had apparently introduced Nat to them in a strange role reversal. She had taken it upon herself to get Steve up to speed on pop culture stuff, the way Clint had done for her all those years earlier. It had never occurred to Clint to introduce her to slapstick comedy, thinking it wouldn't be her thing. Given how hard she was laughing at the Stooges' antics on the screen, he had to admit he was wrong on that one.

"I wasn't sure what to get her." Steve admitted a little sheepishly, "Tony was no help whatsoever when I asked him."

"She'll love it. Trust me." Clint assured him. And she would. Material things didn't hold a lot of importance to Nat, and she gave less than half a shit how much money you spent on a gift. But something related to a thing you'd bonded with her over? She'd appreciate that.

"I hope so." Steve replied, "She's a good friend. I wanted to give her something she'd like."

"Well, you succeeded."

"How's she doing, Clint?" Steve asked quietly, "She hasn't been herself lately. I've been worried."

"Not great." Clint answered honestly, "Bruce leaving like he did really fucked her up, and I found out why. And she's not handling my retirement well either."

"You guys were partners for a long time, weren't you?" Steve said. He didn't ask why Bruce leaving the way he did upset her. Which Clint was grateful for. He didn't really want to explain what had happened to Steve, even though Nat would probably be okay with him knowing.

"Fourteen years, give or take." Clint answered, walking back to the couch and gesturing for Steve to follow, "I think a few months is the longest we were ever apart during that span."

"What was she like back then?" Steve asked, settling down on one end of the couch.

That question gave Clint pause, and he wasn't sure how honest he wanted to be with his answer.

Way more fucked up than she is now, that's for sure.

"Scared." was the succinct answer that he went with.

"Scared?" Steve echoed in surprise, "That doesn't sound like the Nat I know."

"That's because back then she wasn't the Nat you know." Clint explained, "She'd just defected from the KGB, but it took a while before anyone figured out she'd been brainwashed before that. She was terrified of making mistakes, because the people that trained her would beat her whenever she screwed up. She damn near had a panic attack the first time Fury raised his voice around her, and he wasn't even yelling at her. She was so used to being punished every time an authority figure got angry that fear was her instinctive response."

"That's awful." Steve said with a grimace, "I'm sorry she had to go through all that."

"Yeah, it was pretty bad." Clint replied, "She also had a really hard time disobeying if you told her something that sounded like an order. One guy took advantage of that in a bad way."

"You don't mean...?"

"Yeah." Clint confirmed Steve's suspicion and didn't miss the soldier's hands involuntarily clenching into fists, "Fury fired the guy on the spot when he found out, then beat the shit out of him. Personally. He didn't delegate that one. Guy's dead now, so he can't ever hurt her again."

Steve gave Clint a long, level look. Clint thought about it for a second and gave him a solemn nod in answer to his unspoken question. He trusted Steve with knowing that.

"You know how she has nightmares all the time?" he asked, trying to divert the conversation away from what he'd done all those years ago.

"Yeah." the soldier said with a nod, "She never talks about it, but she's woken up screaming a few times so we all know about it. Tony soundproofed her floor at her request a while back."

"First time it happened after I brought her in she woke up screaming and crying." told him, "I went in to try to comfort her and she crammed herself into the corner between her bed and the wall with her arms up over her face. She thought I was going to hit her for showing an emotion, Steve. That's what she was used to."

"Bastards." Steve said in a low growl.

"Language, Cap."

Steve just rolled his eyes, "Fuck off, Barton."

Clint recoiled with his eyes wide open and a hand over his heart as though he were scandalized. Steve just raised an eyebrow at him.

"Please tell me the people who did that to her have been taken care of." Steve said in an ominous tone, "Because if not there's going to be a trip to Russia in our future."

"Oh, they've been handled." Clint told him with a not-so-friendly grin, "It was one of her first missions for SHIELD. Far as I know they're all dead now."

"Good."

The satisfaction Steve said that with was a little surprising. Even Clint sometimes forgot that Steve Rogers and Captain America were two different people. Steve wasn't really the Boy Scout everyone seemed to think he was, but you didn't see the evidence of it very often.

"Nat's come a long way since then." Clint said with a fond smile, "I'm really proud of her."

Suddenly Clint's attention was drawn towards something towards the bottom of the TV screen that shouldn't have been there. In the faint reflection of the room behind him, he just barely caught a shifting shadow at the bottom of Nat's door. It was doubtful if even Steve would have spotted it, but his callsign wasn't just because it sounded cool. He pulled his phone out and typed a quick text before flipping it over onto Steve's lap where he could see it without moving his head.

"She's eavesdropping. Say nice things about her. :)"

"So, training the new recruits is going well." Steve said, "Nat's doing a great job putting together the training regimen. She says she's never done anything like that before, but you wouldn't know it. Did you know she was such a natural leader?"

"Yeah." Clint responded with a smile, "She never believed me when I told her, though. She always thought people listened to her because they were afraid of her. Which is true, but anyone who has worked with her for any length of time respects the hell out of her too."

"Wanda's becoming a problem though."

"How so?" Clint inquired.

"She's okay around Sam, Rhodey, and Vision." Steve explained, "But she's still a little skittish around me and Nat. She feels guilty for that whole thing in Africa. We've both told her we don't hold it against her, but I don't think she really believes us. She definitely doesn't believe Nat."

What part of 'say nice things about her' did you not understand, Cap?

In thinking about it for a few seconds Clint realized what the super soldier was doing. He'd worked with Nat long enough to get an idea how her mind works and he was subtly telling her something without having to say it directly to her, which might make her react defensively.

"I was hoping Nat would take Wanda under her wing a little bit." Steve continued, "But it hasn't happened yet. Wanda is way behind Sam and Rhodey in physical fitness, so she's struggling a little. Nat treats them all exactly the same, but since Wanda is struggling more than the guys she feels like the Black Widow is tormenting her to get even."

The subtle emphasis Steve put on Nat's callsign was not lost on Clint. Steve knew that Natasha and the Black Widow were actually two very different people, and was the only one on the team other than Clint to be aware of that distinction. The Black Widow was just another one of her many, many cover identities. It was just more well developed and ingrained in her than the others.

"That's ridiculous, Nat wouldn't do that." Clint retorted after a few seconds, and then thought it over, "Well, she would, but not to Wanda. I know for a fact she doesn't think there's anything to get even for. We were their enemies at the time, making us face our insecurities was a smart move. It definitely rattled us."

"You know that, and so do I." Steve told him, "But Wanda doesn't. Nat doesn't really talk to her and Wanda's too scared of her to initiate a conversation herself."

"Fair point." Clint conceded, "She could stand to let up on the hard-ass attitude once in a while. I would think that out of everyone, her teammates should at least be allowed to know she actually is a human being under there."

Clint glanced over at Steve and spotted the smirk he didn't quite manage to hide. The time he spent paired up with Nat was certainly showing. Clint was pretty sure he wouldn't have been this devious even a couple years ago. And he was also pretty sure Steve was trying to keep that fact quiet.

See what happens when I retire? Nat goes and corrupts Captain America. Hilarious.

"Something I've been meaning to talk to you about." Clint said.

"What's on your mind?" the soldier responded.

"Know how I said Nat isn't taking my retirement well?"

Steve just nodded and waited for him to continue.

"Well, a big part of the reason I'm hanging it up is because I don't trust myself to watch Nat's back anymore." Clint told him, "Out of the whole team, the two of us are the most vulnerable to injury. We get by on pure skill. I'm getting old and slowing down. I missed a shot the other day. It was still really close, and most people would have been happy with it. But most people aren't me. I haven't had an arrow go anywhere but exactly where it was meant to in over 20 years."

"Why is that a problem?" Steve asked, "No one is perfect."

"That's just it, Steve." Clint argued, "I have to be. You've seen how me and Nat work together when it's just the two of us. When she goes into close combat, I back her up with my bow. I know her well enough to predict her movements, so I shoot past her all the time and the arrows pass within inches of her. She trusts me to do that and we've trained for it. If I'm ever not perfect, I could hit her instead of what I'm aiming at. I don't want to screw up and kill my best friend by accident."

"If you're going to ask me to watch her back for you, I was already going to do that." Steve told him seriously, "She's my friend too, I'm not going to let anything happen to her if I can help it."

"There's more to it than just that." Clint elaborated before meeting the soldier's eyes, "She's not aging, Steve."

Steve sat up and gave Clint his full attention when he heard that, "What do you mean?"

"She's turning 31 today and I've known her for fourteen years." the archer said with a sigh, "She looks the same today as she did when I found her at 17. Exactly the same. Literally nothing has changed about her in that whole time."

"And you're sure she just doesn't have a really amazing skin care routine?"

"She never uses any of that stuff." Clint said, "She's never needed to. And I think she knows something is wrong. I caught her staring at her reflection and running her hands over her face a few times. She played it off like she was just making sure the bruises from our last mission were gone, but her excuse was pretty flimsy by her standards. The idea that they did something to her beyond screwing with her head scares the hell out of her, but she won't admit it."

"So where are you going with this?" Steve wondered.

"If I'm right, she's going to outlive me by decades." Clint told him glumly, "I want to make sure she's going to have a friend she doesn't have to watch grow old and die while she stays forever young."

"And you're bringing this up to me because...?"

"Your serum is going to keep you going a lot longer than most people." Clint explained, "I'm sure you'll be slowing down in a hundred years or so, but in a hundred years you'll be the last person in her life that's still around. I just don't want her to be alone. It's her worst fear. Being alone because everyone else is gone."

Suddenly Clint registered movement in his peripheral vision and instinctively turned to defend himself from...the small black cat that had jumped up on the arm of the couch and was staring at him. The cat seemed completely unconcerned by his presence and looked more curious than anything.

"Hi, kitty." he said, "Where did you come from?"

The cat did not reply, which was unsurprising. If it had he would have questioned his sanity. Or assumed that it was an alien of some kind. Aliens were definitely real and it was entirely possible some of them looked like cats.

"Did you know Nat had a cat?" Clint asked Steve while holding his hand out for the feline to sniff.

"I...did not." Steve answered with a flabbergasted look on his face, "I don't think anyone knew. I wonder how long she's had her?"

"How do you know it's a girl cat?"

"Educated guess." the super soldier explained, "She's small and slender, male cats are usually bigger than that. And she seems to be an adult cat based on how calm she is."

"She is." Nat's voice came from behind them, "I'm not sure how old she is though. She was a stray. Found her huddled on the fire escape outside my apartment a couple winters ago and let her in. I think she was someone's pet because she wasn't afraid of me at all."

Neither one of the men on the couch had noticed her coming out of the bedroom. But then again, that wasn't really that surprising. Nat was sneaky as hell when she wanted to be.

"Hey Nat." Steve said, holding the DVD box set up over his shoulder, "Happy birthday."

Nat snatched the box out of his hand and perused the back of it briefly with a smile on her face.

"Oh, awesome!" she said, "There's like sixty in here that I haven't seen yet. Thank you, Steve!"

Clint smiled as he watched his partner being excited about something he never would have thought to give her. It was rare to see her genuinely excited about something, and even more rare for her to actually show that she was.

"Sixty?" Steve questioned, "We only watched like a dozen of them and there's almost two hundred!"

"I may or may not have found a bunch of them on YouTube." Nat replied with an impish smirk, which quickly vanished, "They're good for relaxing with when a nightmare wakes me up. They're so dumb I can just shut my brain off and be entertained without thinking too much."

While Steve and Nat were talking the cat apparently decided Clint was acceptable and hopped down into his lap, where she promptly curled up and went to sleep.

"She likes you." Nat observed, "She's lived here for three months now, but no one but me ever sees her. She hides under the bed in the spare room whenever new people come over. I moved her food, water, and litter box in there so she has a place where she feels safe."

"What's her name?" Clint asked her.

"Liho." Nat replied.

"Really, Nat?" he said with an amused snort, "That's just perpetuating a stereotype."

Steve was looking back and forth between them in confusion. He didn't speak Russian.

"Means 'misfortune' in Russian." Clint explained, "She's totally leaning into the 'black cats are bad luck' cliché."

Suddenly Clint remembered something and started laughing. Nat and Steve looked at him like he was insane until he caught his breath and explained.

"You know Tony is deathly allergic to cats, right?" he said to Nat, still chuckling a little.

"I do." she replied with a mischievous expression, "He has no idea why his eyes get all red and puffy whenever he comes onto my floor. I have him half convinced he's allergic to me. I make sure I snuggle her for a few minutes before I go anywhere I might run into him, just to reinforce that idea."

"That's why he's been avoiding you lately!" Steve exclaimed.

"Yep." Nat replied with a nod and a knowing smirk, "I also asked FRIDAY not to tell Tony about Liho unless he specifically asks if there's a cat in the building. So far it hasn't occurred to him."

"You're awful." Steve told her with a rueful shake of his head, "Remind me not to get on your bad side."

"But I don't have a bad side." Nat said with a blatantly false innocent expression. She even batted her eyelashes at him and opened her eyes comically wide as she said it. Based on the raised eyebrow Steve was giving her he wasn't buying it at all, so she pouted a little and shoved his head sideways playfully, "Just for that, you're next."

"You know what, Romanoff?" Steve said.

"No, what?" she shot back instantly.

Clint was watching their exchange with a sense of relief. Between Steve figuring out he was going to ask him to watch Nat's back and the way they were bantering, it was obvious he'd been worrying for nothing. He might not trust himself to keep Nat safe anymore, but he trusted Steve to.

Steve stayed for another hour or so before he got a text from Wanda asking him for his help in setting up for the party in a few hours. He bid the assassins farewell after dragging a promise out of Nat to watch a few Three Stooges shorts with him in the next few days and left to find Wanda.

Clint followed them to the kitchen and leaned against the island waiting for Nat to turn around after closing the door behind Steve.

"How long were you listening for?" he asked bluntly.

"I woke up when Steve knocked on the door." Nat readily admitted. Clint zeroed in on the lie instantly and sighed.

"Is that really what woke you up?" he asked mildly with a look that dared her to lie to him again.

Nat let out a sigh of her own and let her shoulders droop a bit before shaking her head reluctantly, "No."

"How long did you actually sleep for?"

"Maybe an hour." she replied, looking at the floor.

"You wanna talk about it?" Clint casually asked.

"Not really." Nat said, "Are you going to make me?"

"Do I need to?"

Nat continued looking at the floor, but her eyes would flick up to glance at him every few seconds.

"Probably." she admitted after a very long pause, "But can it wait until later? I know you probably think I'm just stalling, but I really can't talk about it right now."

"Okay, let me know when you're ready." Clint told his partner.

She just nodded silently in response, and then did something that Clint had to hide his surprise over. She stepped over to him and actually initiated a hug.

"How much did you miss the shot by?" Nat asked him quietly with her arms wrapped around him.

"Three inches." Clint told her, "Still a kill shot if I'm aiming for center mass. But far enough off to put an arrow in your eye instead of the throat of someone my height holding you hostage. Which you have to admit happens more than we'd like."

Nat released him and stepped back to look at Clint with a searching expression.

"I still don't want to go out there without you." she told him, "But I get it. I wouldn't want to go out there if I thought I couldn't keep you safe either."

Nat looked at him for a few moments longer and then sighed again.

"I heard what you told Steve." she said, "About me not aging. I was hoping you wouldn't notice, but I should know better than that. You notice everything. What if..."

She trailed off and gazed at the floor. Clint got the impression she was gathering her courage to say something that scared her and waited patiently.

"What if I'm not human anymore?" Nat said in a soft whisper before looking up at him almost fearfully.

Clint shrugged as though it didn't matter in the slightest. Because to him, it didn't. That thought had occurred to him years ago and he'd quickly decided that he didn't care if she was or not.

"Then I think you'd be in the majority on the team."

"Huh?" she blurted out. Clint had to work hard not to laugh at the confused look on her face.

"Even when it was just the original six of us." Clint explained, "Fully half the team could be considered not strictly human. Steve is the world's most successful chemistry experiment. Thor is fifteen hundred years old and the ancient Norse worshipped him as a god."

Clint looked at his partner for a few moments, gauging her emotional state. Finally he decided to just rip the band-aid off and deal with the fallout if it happened.

"And Bruce?" he said, feeling a little bad when Nat flinched, "Sure, he's human. But the Hulk most definitely isn't. So who cares if you aren't OEM anymore? Now you've got Wanda on the team. She's definitely got some aftermarket modifications. And I'm pretty sure nothing like Vision has ever existed before."

"So you won't look at me different if I'm not completely human?"

"Now you're just being stupid." Clint said, rolling his eyes at her, "Why do you think I would even care about something like that? You're Natasha Romanoff, who happens to be the best friend I've ever had. I literally could not give a single levitating fuck about anything else."

"Levitating?" Nat asked him with a half smile.

"I'm getting old." he quipped, "My fucks don't have the energy to fly anymore. Another few years and they'll be completely earthbound."

Nat chuckled softly and punched him in the shoulder lightly.

"You're an idiot."

"Yeah, but I'm your favorite idiot." Clint said back fondly.

They made their way back into the living room, where Clint wasted no time settling back onto the couch cushion that still had his butt imprint in it.

"You know, I'm a little mad at Bruce." he said.

"What for?" Nat asked him incredulously.

"Breaking your heart." he told her, "He had to know you would blame yourself for him leaving. He didn't have to do that to you. Not without at least saying goodbye and giving you some kind of explanation. It's been tearing you apart for six months now, and I'm not okay with that."

"It was the Hulk who did that, not Bruce." Nat protested. Clint repressed a smile when he realized that she didn't hesitate to say his name this time. He didn't want to call attention to it, though, so he didn't react.

"Eh, there's more of Bruce in there than he wants us to think." Clint said, "When I look at the Hulk I see him looking back at me sometimes."

"I know." she said quietly, "I thought I was the only one who saw that."

"He still feels terrible about the Hulk nearly killing you on the helicarrier." Clint told her, "Me, him and Thor talked about it a while back. He told Thor he owes him a debt he can never repay for stopping him like he did."

"I was afraid of him for a long time." Nat admitted, surprising Clint a little, "Ever since that day at the college when he dropped a Humvee on me. He's almost killed me twice. It didn't go away until I started to get to know him better."

"He'd never hurt you on purpose." Clint said confidently.

"I know." she replied, then looked at him with a neutral expression, "I never knew it was you that killed Collins."

Clint took a deep breath and let it out in a heavy sigh.

"He raped you, Nat." he told her seriously, "No way he was going to do that and live to tell about it. If I had it to do over, I'd make the same choice every time."

"I could have killed him." she said, "I didn't."

"I know." Clint said gently, "But I also know that you were still in your probationary period at the time and were afraid you'd be executed if you did. I asked Fury to tell you he had it arranged if you ever asked. Which was half true. He knew damn well what I was going to do and never said a word. Even buried the casefile so it would go cold."

"But..."

"But nothing." Clint said firmly, "I swear to God, Tasha, if you even try to twist that around into being your fault I'm going to slap the shit out of you until you come to your senses."

"Well, when you put it like that." she said drily, and then looked at him for a long moment. "Thank you."

"Only a few hours until the party." Clint said, knowing she'd appreciate the subject change, "I'm going to go get showered and changed. Want me to come back after I do?"

"Sure." Nat said with a casual shrug.

"You gonna be okay?"

"Like, over the next couple hours or in general?" she asked.

"Pick one."

"Yeah, I think so." she told him, "Thanks for calling me on my shit. It was getting pretty bad and I was just going to keep ignoring it. I think I did that for a little too long already, since I was a blubbering mess after you made me face it."

"Okay." Clint said, "I'll be back in an hour or so."

With that Clint ruffled her hair, which earned him a death glare and a smile she was fighting to not show, and headed back up to his own floor.

Chapter Text

After Clint left, Natasha tried to keep herself busy to avoid thinking about...well, anything. It didn’t work. She cleaned things that didn’t really need to be cleaned, and found herself lost in thought while she did so.

It was hard to believe that it had been thirteen years since Clint had tracked her down with orders to kill her. Even all these years later she still didn’t know what he had seen in her that stayed his hand. Not for the first time, she analyzed her memory of that day hoping for some new understanding.

It was a chilly October night in Belgrade. The rain had stopped a few hours before, leaving puddles on the pavement and a cold dampness clinging to everything. The city was blanketed by an oppressive silence, its residents oblivious to the drama playing out in the streets and back alleys.

Natalia Romanova was running for her life.

Ever since she killed the four SHIELD agents assigned as a protection detail for her target three months ago, Natalia had been expecting them to send someone after her. She wasn’t expecting them to send HIM. She hadn’t thought she rated high enough as a threat for Hawkeye to be assigned the task of terminating her. She’d thought wrong.

Hawkeye was the apex predator of contract killers, SHIELD’s executioner. A killer of killers, he was the closest thing to the boogeyman a professional assassin had. No one knew for sure what he looked like because he took all of his shots from a distance before his targets knew he was there. The only reason he was even known to be male was the brief glimpses of him a particularly observant witness occasionally managed, which only ever happened after he’d taken his shot. The arrows sticking out of his targets left eye became his calling card. They were black with purple fletching, and there was never more than one. He never needed more than that.

Natalia’s first indication of Hawkeye’s presence was the arrow that knocked the gun out of her hand just before she pulled the trigger on her latest assignment. She’d been confused for a moment, but then her stomach dropped when she saw the purple-fletched arrow lodged in the gun’s firing mechanism. She had abandoned her mission without a second thought and fled, the muscles in her back tensed in anticipation of the arrow that would end her life. But the archer held his fire and she didn’t understand why.

Natalia ran for the better part of an hour. Her lungs burned with the exertion and she tripped over irregularities in the pavement a few times because she was keeping her eyes on the surrounding rooftops instead of where she was putting her feet. She’d catch the occasional flash of movement on a roof, and once in a while she’d see a shadow cross the ground as he leaped from one roof to the next, but she hadn’t actually SEEN him yet. Her backup gun was in her hand, but she wasn’t about to start shooting unless she got a good enough look at him to have something to target. It hadn’t happened yet, and Natalia was resigned to the fact that it probably wouldn’t. After all, there was a good reason no one knew what he looked like.

Hawkeye didn’t have to shoot the gun out of her hand. She’d had no idea he was there. He could have just as easily put that arrow through her head instead, and she would have died not even knowing what happened. Natalia was uncomfortably aware of that fact as she ran. Why hadn’t he killed her yet?

Finally, Natalia’s luck ran out. Her panicked flight had taken her into a part of Belgrade she didn’t know well and she’d gotten turned around. She knew the instant she rounded the corner into the rain soaked dead-end alley that this was where she was going to die. She slowed to a walk as she neared the end of the alley and looked around desperately for a way out. There wasn’t one. Not unless she scaled the building. Which she could do, but she’d be asking for an arrow in the back if she did. She turned around and put her back against the wooden wall. The dampness sank into her clothes immediately and she shivered a little at the sensation.

“Let’s get this over with.” she called out in English with her natural Russian accent. She could speak perfect English with an American accent, but it required concentration she just didn’t have right then. Her only response was the sound of water steadily dripping into a puddle from the roof of the building behind her, “I know you’re there.”

There was no sense in dragging out the inevitable. She could only run for so long before exhaustion forced her to stop, and she was nearing that point. Natalia’s chances of getting away from Hawkeye were vanishingly small, and she knew it. No one had escaped him yet to the best of her knowledge, and it was looking pretty doubtful that she’d be the first.

Natalia heard a splash from the end of the alley and turned her attention towards it. There was a floodlight near the middle that was pointed in her direction, so all she could make out was the indistinct silhouette of a man with a bow in his hands. He lifted it and turned it sideways for some reason she couldn’t fathom. She heard the twang of the string being released and could just barely see an arrow...no, two arrows...flashing towards her. Natalia instinctively closed her eyes in anticipation of the pain, only for them to fly back open in astonishment when she felt the arrows hit the wall on either side of her. They were close enough to her that she could feel the shafts putting pressure against the sides of her neck, and when she tried to move her head forward to get out from between them she felt the thin cord attached to them keeping her pinned in place.

Natalia still had her gun in her hand, and she started to lift it before realizing that she just didn’t care anymore and letting it fall back to her side. Hawkeye walked towards her slowly, another arrow nocked and drawn. A nauseating feeling of pure dread came over her when she realized he was aiming directly at her left eye. The sound of her heart hammering in her chest drowned everything else out, and she found herself transfixed by the sight of the arrow aimed unwaveringly at her.

The archer got to within fifteen feet of her and stopped with his bow still drawn, watching her intently. He had her dead to rights, there was no way she could aim and fire before the arrow reached her. But he still hadn’t taken the shot. What the hell was he waiting for?

The standoff that really wasn’t one continued for several more minutes. Natalia’s mind raced, wondering what he could possibly want from her that was keeping her alive this long. She tried to remain stoic in the face of her own death, but her body was betraying her. She hadn’t given her eyes permission to tear up, but they were completely disregarding her preferences and doing so anyway. She blinked to try and clear them away, but it had the opposite effect and she felt the first one break loose and run down her cheek.

“I know you’re here to kill me.” she said in resignation, “Please, just make it quick.”

Natalia had known for years that she wouldn’t have a long life, Red Room graduates seldom did. She had hoped to at least make it to twenty, but that was looking more and more unlikely by the second. Her fate had been decided for her a long time ago, and she had never had a say in any of it. She was exactly what Madame B had molded her into and nothing more: a killer with so much blood on her hands they’d never come clean. She had dreamed of getting away from them on occasion, but she was also painfully aware that death was her only realistic way out. Her biggest regret out of all of it was the fact that her life would amount to nothing more than a body count and a typed out record of her death collecting dust in the back of a filing cabinet somewhere. She wasn’t usually given to contemplating the fairness of things, but now that the end was staring her in the face it felt like a monumental injustice that she’d never been given a real chance to be anything other than what they wanted her to be.

Hawkeye finally spoke.

“You’re a lot younger than my intel led me to believe.” the archer said. His voice had a bit of a drawl to it. Definitely American. Natalia wasn’t that familiar with the regional accents of the United States, but it seemed vaguely...Midwestern maybe?

Natalia didn’t reply. There really wasn’t anything for her to say in response to what sounded like a rhetorical statement.

“How about you drop that gun and we have a nice, civil conversation?” the man who still hadn’t killed her asked, “Based on what I’ve seen over the last week there’s a chance you can get out of this alive. Depending on what you say and whether I believe you.”

Natalia didn’t hesitate. She carefully flicked the safety of her gun into place and let it fall to the ground with a clatter. When she did so the archer relaxed to a half-draw and shifted his aim down and to the side. There was a wild hope starting to surge in her chest that she tried to squash, but it was persistent and refused to be denied.

“What do you want to talk about?” she asked tentatively.

“Well...you, actually.” Hawkeye responded, “As young as you are and as long as you’ve been active, it makes me think doing all this wasn’t your idea. Am I wrong?”

Natalia numbly shook her head. She had no idea where he was going with this, but she wasn’t dead yet. So maybe, just maybe, there was a way out of this that didn’t end with her corpse.

“Who are you working for?”

“The KGB.” she answered honestly.

“But they didn’t train you.” he stated.

“No.”

“Who did?” the archer asked.

“The Red Room.”

“I thought that was shut down in the seventies.” he said with a puzzled frown.

“I wouldn’t know anything about that.” Natalia told him, “But that’s who trained me.”

“How old were you when your training started?” Hawkeye asked shrewdly.

“Five.” she answered in a near-whisper. Natalia had no reason to lie to him. Lies wouldn’t be what saved her life here and she knew it. How did the saying go? The truth will set you free?

“We have intel going back almost four years on you.” the archer said, relaxing the string on his bow completely now, but still keeping the arrow nocked, “How old are you now?”

“I’ll be eighteen in a few weeks.” she told him truthfully.

“Jesus Christ.” Hawkeye breathed in disbelief, “You started when you were fourteen?”

“Younger.” Natalia admitted, “More like twelve. But that was small time stuff, nothing that would have caught SHIELD’s attention.”

Hawkeye abruptly put his arrow back in the quiver and made a snapping motion with the hand that held his bow, causing it to collapse. He stowed it at the small of his back where it was out of the way and stepped forward into the light. Natalia absently noted that the hair that appeared brown when he was in the shadows was actually a dark blonde.

“I’m not going to kill you.” he said, looking her directly in the eye. His were stormy gray with a hint of blue. Natalia found herself unsettled by his gaze. It felt like he was looking right past every mask she’d ever worn straight into her soul.

Natalia wanted to believe him, but years of having hope dangled in front of her only to be ripped away made her wary.

“I’m Clint.” the archer offered, “And you are...?”

“Natasha.” she told him after a few seconds thought. It was the more informal version of her name that no one ever used, because no one cared enough about her to bother giving her a nickname. But if she was going to die here, which was still a possibility, she didn’t want to die as Natalia. There were too many unpleasant memories associated with that name.

“Nice to meet you, Natasha.” Clint said with a sudden smile that lit up his face. It was a little disconcerting how quickly he’d gone from threatening to friendly, and it had her completely off balance. Especially since she was still pinned to the wall by her neck. How could he be so deadly and still be so...nice? He did not at all fit with what she’d imagined a man who made his living killing the most dangerous people on the planet would be like.

“Nice to meet you too.” she responded automatically in a bit of a daze. Her day had just gotten very surreal and she was still trying to process it.

“So, I have to call this in.” Clint told her, “I think I can probably get you granted asylum. Maybe a job once you turn eighteen. I’m not going to make any promises, but I can at least get you a chance to plead your case to my superiors. But you gotta give me something to work with. What is it that you want?”

Natasha did not have to think about her answer at all. It was the same thing she had wanted since she was old enough to understand exactly what it was she was being told to do.

“I want out.” she told Clint, “I want to be free. I don’t want to do this anymore and I want to make my own choices.”

That got the archer’s attention and he looked at her sharply.

“What do you mean ‘make your own choices’?”

“I’ve never been allowed to.” Natasha admitted in a soft voice, “They made me into a monster and never gave me a say in it.”

She had no idea why she was being so candid with a man who was prepared to kill her not five minutes ago, but figured there was nothing to lose by doing so. If he changed his mind and decided to kill her anyway she didn’t want the last thing she ever said to be a lie.

Clint gave her a long, speculative look.

“You don’t want to die, but you think you deserve it.” he said, shaking his head in exasperated disbelief.

Natasha was stunned into speechlessness by his perceptiveness, and all she could do was nod silently in response.

Clint reached behind his back and Natasha tensed at the motion. Then she was somewhat confused when she heard a pair of soft clicks from the wall behind her.

“You should be able to pull those out now.” the archer told her, nodding towards the arrows.

Natasha reached up and grabbed the arrows. It took more force than she expected, but they came out of the wall easily enough. When she had the chance to examine them she realized that what she had thought was two arrows was in fact a single arrow that split open down the center, held together by a thin metal cord. It was an ingenious design, but only a preternaturally skilled archer would be able to use it effectively.

“I can definitely get you at least asylum.” Clint said, “If you had no say in whether you committed your misdeeds, you ultimately aren’t responsible for them. Friend of mine is a really good lawyer who does a lot of pro bono work. Matt would jump on your case in a heartbeat.”

“They weren’t ‘misdeeds’.” Natasha felt the irrational need to clarify, “They were murders. A lot of them.”

“I know.” the archer replied with a sharp nod, “Doesn’t change the fact that you aren’t really responsible for them. Would you have killed those people if you weren’t forced to?”

“No.” she answered with a shake of her head, “But if I didn’t do as I was ordered I would have been killed.”

“Exactly.” Clint said, “Can’t fault someone for doing what they have to in order to save their own life.”

“So what happens now?” Natasha asked curiously. She was in uncharted territory now. Instead of being the instrument of her death, Hawkeye had chosen to show her mercy. And she didn’t know what to do with that because no one ever had before.

“Well, you said you want to make your own choices.” Clint reminded her, “Now is a good time to start.”

“What are my options?”

“You can leave this alley and run.” he explained, “And probably keep running for the rest of your life. However long that may be. You might make it a few months before someone catches up to you, but someone will eventually. You know that as well as I do.”

She did.

“That’s your first option.” the archer told her, “I really hope you choose the second option.”

“Which is?” Natasha prompted.

“You can come with me and maybe get what you said you want.” Clint said, “Freedom and a chance at having a real life. And if you like, maybe do some good to make up for what they made you do. It’s up to you, I’ll give you a minute to think about it.”

Natasha didn’t need a minute. She’d made her choice the instant it came out of Clint’s mouth.

“I’ll come with you.”

“Mrowr?”

Natasha was jolted from her reverie by a small feline head insistently nudging her chin. She shook her head and looked around, a little startled to find that she was now sitting on the couch when the last thing she remembered was wiping a particularly stubborn stain on the kitchen counter.

Liho was sitting next to her on the arm of the couch looking at her with bright green eyes almost the same shade as her own. Natasha wasn’t an expert in feline facial expressions or body language, but the cat seemed almost concerned. Now that Liho had her attention she gingerly stepped onto her shoulders and laid down. Natasha sat there for a few more minutes with her cat purring into her ear. It was strangely soothing.

Natasha was glad no one else had been there to see that. She hadn’t completely dissociated like that in a long time and actually needed those few minutes to get her feet under her again.

This day keeps getting worse and worse.

Natasha was no closer to understanding why Clint had spared her than she had been the first thousand times she replayed that day in her head. But something did click that she had never noticed before, and she mentally kicked herself for being so oblivious to it for thirteen years.

Clint, you sneaky son of a bitch.

She hadn’t thought about it in a long time, but Natasha suddenly remembered that when Clint had led her out of the alley his car was parked only a couple blocks away. She had spent almost an hour running over a five or six square mile area, and conveniently ended up that close to his car? In hindsight she saw now what she had been too frantic to notice at the time. Every time she saw a flash of movement or a shadow it had been when she had to choose which direction to turn. In her panic she had instinctively chosen the direction away from them every time. Clint had herded her to exactly where he wanted her to go, and it took her thirteen years to figure it out.

Natasha felt entirely too stupid for not seeing it until now and couldn’t help the wordless, frustrated yell she let out.

And then felt like a complete jerk when Liho scrambled off her shoulders and dashed off into the spare bedroom.

Good going, Natasha. She tries to make you feel better and you scare the shit out of her.

Her mind drifted to one of the things Clint had said to Steve, and she had to admit with the benefit of hindsight that if she had to describe herself back then with one word, ‘scared’ is probably the word she’d use too. Her recollection of the night Clint spoke of was pretty clear.

She’d had a nightmare that she couldn’t even remember at the time, let alone now, and Clint came into the room to try and comfort her. Director Fury had told Clint that since he’d brought her in he was responsible for her. In Natasha’s mind that meant he was to be in charge of her punishments as well. The second the door opened she had been terrified that this was the moment the curtain got torn aside and revealed that SHIELD was exactly the same as the Red Room. She’d rolled off the bed and crammed herself into a corner where she could defend herself better if he tried to get at her. She remembered how loud the sobs she was trying in vain to stifle had sounded in the silent room as she stared fearfully at Clint, waiting for the other shoe to drop. In the Red Room the punishment for such a blatant display of emotion would have been severe, and Natasha remembered pleading with Clint to not hit her in the face so she could hide the bruises and keep at least a little of her dignity intact.

But Clint didn’t try to come anywhere near her. He just sat at the end of the bed farthest from her and talked to her softly in a soothing voice, reassuring her that no one was going to hurt her. Natasha had desperately wanted to believe him, but she had been lied to with those same words too many times to trust them. Clint was incredibly patient with her and spent nearly a half hour just talking to her until she calmed down and it finally sank in that he was telling the truth about no one hurting her. It took him another fifteen minutes to coax her into talking, and then he actually listened to her when she told him about all of her fears that she’d never been allowed to verbalize before. The novelty of having someone actually care what she had to say overwhelmed her and everything came spilling out of her in a rush. He could have easily used that information against her, but for some reason she just trusted that he wouldn’t. So she told him things she’d never said to anyone before, no matter how much her survival instincts kept screaming at her to shut up.

She would never forget how sad he looked when she admitted that she was afraid pretty much all the time and couldn’t remember a time when she wasn’t.

The incident with Collins was another that was eye opening. He had approached her and told her that new recruits were required to sleep with their superiors on demand and she hadn’t questioned it. The Red Room operated that way where the older girls were concerned and they’d taught her that it was a normal expectation. She didn’t realize it wasn’t until she watched Fury live up to his name and beat the living hell out of Collins after firing him. He had then apologized profusely for that happening on his watch and told her that it was on SHIELD. No one had explicitly told her she didn’t have to have sex with someone just because they said so, because no one realized they needed to. It was such an obvious thing that it never occurred to anyone that it wouldn’t be obvious to someone that had never had control over her own life before. Collins had taken advantage of her ignorance and being conditioned to obey without question, and even all these years later she still felt a little stupid and a lot ashamed that she had gone along with it so easily.

Clint had disappeared for three days following that incident, and the little voice that sounded too much like Madame B told her he was avoiding her because he was disgusted by her. Natasha asked Fury about it and he just told her Clint had some personal business to attend to and wouldn’t elaborate. When he returned he didn’t treat her any differently than before, but flatly refused to tell her what he had been doing. She knew now that he had spent those three days tracking down and killing Collins, and that knowledge lifted a weight off her shoulders she hadn’t even realized was there. Clint killed people all the time in the line of duty, but it would be more accurate to call that one a murder. And he had done it for Natasha, simply because someone had hurt her. The thought gave her a warm feeling and she tried not to think too hard about what that said about her.

What kind of monster is happy that someone committed murder for them? Jesus, I’m more fucked up than I thought.

Natasha had agreed to attend the stupid party despite herself. And she was annoyed with Clint for being so good at talking her into things without ever seeming to try that hard. It wasn’t the first time she’d found herself doing something she’d really rather not just because he’d asked her to, and she sighed at the thought that it probably wouldn’t be the last. She had instantly recognized the guilt trip Clint was laying on her for exactly what it was and really hated the fact that it had worked.

She didn’t hate Wanda. That wasn’t why she avoided her. In the privacy of her own mind she could admit the truth that she’d never say out loud.

Wanda scares the shit out of me.

It wasn’t that she was physically intimidating, because she definitely wasn’t. Or even that she could snap Natasha in half with a flick of her wrist. No, it was because Wanda had already proven that she could dig around in her mind and pull out whatever she wanted whenever she felt like it. Wanda could, on a sheer whim, decide to undo the thirteen years of work she had done to be more than the sum of her past. Natasha’s mind was strong, but brittle. She knew the cracks were there, and had done her best to shore them up over the years. But Wanda possessed the power to irreparably shatter her, and that terrified her. She’d rather die a thousand different ways than lose the person she’d fought so hard to become.

There was also the fact that Natasha was absolutely certain Wanda was not okay. Ever since her twin brother died she had been a mere shadow of the girl who had confronted Tony in his own lab. She had noticed then that the twins balanced each other out. Pietro was extroverted and impulsive, while Wanda was more reserved. She kept him grounded and helped him aim his impulsive behavior constructively, and he in turn brought her out of her shell and made her more confident in social settings. Natasha had no doubt that if Pietro had been the one to survive instead he’d be just as lost without his sister. The two of them took codependency to a level she’d never seen before, and Wanda’s behavior after losing her brother was more than a little alarming.

Why yes, pot, the kettle is indeed black. You’ve got precious little room to talk, you little psycho. It’s a miracle your brain is even still functioning. It’s a mess in here.

Go away. I’m not listening to you.

Yes you are. I am you. But you know that already.

Why do you sound like Madame B?

You know why.

Madame B’s voice lapsed into silence, leaving Natasha wondering what the fuck was going on in her own head. It was just her mind giving her doubts and insecurities a voice. She knew that. But it was a little disturbing that she had subconsciously chosen Madame B to be that voice. Especially considering that the voice always spoke in English and she had never once heard the real Madame B speak in that language, though she was aware that it was one of the fourteen languages she spoke. She had never told anyone that the voice was there, but the way Clint would occasionally look at her made her think he knew something. He never said a word about it, to her or anyone else. The psychologists at SHIELD would have had a field day with that information, and it would have given her detractors all the ammunition they needed to declare her insane and have her removed from SHIELD. Even all these years later there were still plenty of people who didn’t think she belonged there.

The way the voice chimed in regarding her assessment of Wanda’s mental health was also a little unsettling. Mostly because it wasn’t wrong. She did a good job masking it and most people had no clue, but Clint had talked her down from enough episodes over the years to have a very good idea how fucked up her head was. The fact that he still trusted her completely despite that knowledge was another thing she didn’t understand about him. Natasha would be very reluctant to trust someone if she knew their head was that messed up, but it didn’t seem to faze Clint in the slightest. Hell, he had brought her to the farm to live with him and his pregnant wife when she was the most unstable she’d ever been, and hadn’t seemed at all worried that she would do something to hurt them.

Wanda and Clint had stayed in touch after Sokovia with a series of weekly video calls. He had a sort of big brother-slash-mentor relationship with Wanda, much like he had with her in the first couple years after her defection. In a moment of brutal self-honesty Natasha admitted that she was actually a little bit jealous. And she hated herself for it because it wasn’t fair to either of them. Wanda needed support, and she knew Clint couldn’t just sit by and watch her struggle without trying to help. But with Clint retiring and not being a daily presence in her life anymore it left her with the irrational fear that he was replacing her with Wanda.

That was another reason she avoided Wanda. If the witch picked up even a hint that she felt that way she would distance herself from Clint in order to not make waves. Wanda desperately needed the support right now, and Natasha really didn’t want to be the catalyst for the young Sokovian girl getting worse.

Maybe the party was a good thing. Clint obviously thought so, and he had proven time and time again that he saw things other people didn’t. She liked Wanda well enough as a person. She had a wickedly dry sense of humor and a good sense of when to say something to break the tension and when to stay quiet. And she knew Clint well enough to know that at some point during the party he’d make sure that they had a reason to talk to each other. And the little shit wouldn’t even bother to be subtle about it. He knew damn well she’d see right through it, and he wouldn’t insult her by pretending he’d gotten one over on her.

While she was lost in thought Liho wandered back out from the spare room and rubbed against Natasha’s shins before jumping into her lap.

“I’m sorry, little one.” she told the cat while scratching behind her ears, “I didn’t mean to scare you. You were just trying to help.”

“Mew?”

“Look, just because you can see the bottom of the dish doesn’t mean you need more food.” Natasha explained to her furry roommate, “You’re not starving.”

Liho flattened her ears and gave her a look that spoke volumes about how strongly she disagreed with Natasha’s assessment.

When did I become the kind of person that has conversations with cats?

Natasha glanced over at the clock on the wall and let out a quiet groan when she realized how much time she’d just lost to her flashback and subsequent pondering. She had less than an hour and a half to get ready for the party that was being inflicted on her. She gently set Liho on the floor and got up to walk into her bedroom and find something to wear tonight.

Most of Natasha’s clothes had already been moved to the Compound, so she didn’t have a lot to work with. After some internal debate she settled on black jeans, a dark green blouse, and the leather jacket Clint gave her years ago. She glanced in the mirror before she left the room and chuckled softly when she realized it was almost the exact same outfit she was wearing when she met Steve. Only the color of her shirt differed. As a natural redhead, Natasha wore green quite often on her downtime. It looked good on her, despite Tony’s constant quips about her looking like a Christmas decoration.

When she walked back out to the main part of her apartment she wasn’t that surprised to see the front door standing open and Clint leaning against the island in the kitchen.

“Clint, I know it is entirely possible you actually were born in a barn, but would you please close the door when you come in unannounced?”

“I brought you a surprise.” Clint replied with a smile, “Someone heard you were having a rough day and knew exactly what you needed.”

Natasha looked at her partner questioningly. Then she heard a sound from the hallway and started to reach for the gun in the island’s cabinet before she registered what the sound was.

“AUNTIE NAT!” shrieked Lila as she ran into the apartment and launched herself at Natasha, who barely managed to catch the little girl who was secretly her favorite of Clint’s kids. She loved Cooper and Nathaniel just as much, but she had instantly connected with Lila in a way that she didn’t really understand.

“Hey Lilabird.” she said into the 7 year old’s hair, “You were absolutely right. Lila hugs make everything better.”

Laura and Cooper entered the apartment much more sedately. Laura was carrying Nathaniel, who had somehow managed to sleep through his sister shrieking at the top of her lungs. She smiled fondly at her daughter clinging to her favorite aunt.

“Hi Nat.” Laura said, “Happy birthday.”

“What are you guys doing here?” Natasha asked her while getting a better hold on the 7 year old hanging off of her.

“Well, Cooper has been bugging his dad for months about getting to see Avengers Tower before Tony sells it.” she explained, “And since they all know about us now Clint didn’t see any reason why we couldn’t come for your birthday.”

“Is that so?” Natasha asked, and then turned to address Cooper, “So what do you think so far?”

“It’s huge!” the 11 year old exclaimed excitedly, “So far I’ve seen Cap’s place and Mr. Stark’s lab. Have you met DUM-E? He’s so cool! Mr. Stark let me play catch with him. He’s not very good at it, but he seemed pretty excited.”

“Yeah, that’s DUM-E alright.” Natasha chuckled, “He’s got a permanent case of the derp, but Tony loves that little bot. Don’t let him near a fire extinguisher, though.”

“Auntie Nat?” Lila said from where she was still hanging off Natasha like a monkey, “Why don’t you like your birthday?”

Shit.

Clint gave her a concerned look, but apparently decided to let her handle it. Natasha took a deep breath and let it out in a slow sigh.

“Well, Lila.” she started, “When I was growing up the people who raised me always did really mean things to me on my birthday. And ever since then It’s been really hard for me to be happy about it. It’s just a lot of bad memories, but it’s hard for me to forget.”

“The people who raised you?” Lila asked innocently, “Didn’t you have a mommy and daddy?”

“No, sweetie, I didn’t.” Natasha answered her. She glanced over and saw a pained look on Laura’s face. Her other best friend mouthed ‘I’m sorry’ at her, but didn’t interrupt, “I grew up in a place that was kind of like an orphanage and a school at the same time.”

“What’s an orphanage?” Lila asked curiously.

“It’s a place that takes care of kids that don’t have any parents to take care of them.” she explained. Telling a 7 year old about her childhood was very much not on the list of things she wanted to do today.

“If they were being mean to you, why didn’t you tell a grown-up so they could fix it?”

“Oh, honey.” Natasha sighed, “The grown-ups were the ones being mean.”

“Like Cinderella’s wicked stepmother?” Lila asked.

“Yeah, kinda.” she replied, a little surprised that Lila made that actually rather apt comparison.

“But they’re not mean to you anymore, right?”

“No.” Natasha told her, “No they aren’t.”

“Because Daddy found you and took you away from the bad people!” Lila exclaimed.

“Yes.” she told the little girl with a smile, “Yes he did.”

“Daddy’s a hero!” Lila told her emphatically.

Natasha looked over at Clint, saw the look on his face, and caught his eye. He had always had a problem with accepting that title for himself, and hearing his daughter say it was causing him to have some conflicted feelings.

“Well, he’s always been my hero.” she said with a meaningful look, “If it wasn’t for your dad, I wouldn’t have any of the things I have now. I wouldn’t have gotten to be friends with the Avengers, and I wouldn’t have gotten to be an aunt to the three most awesome kids in the world. Every good thing I have now I owe to him.”

“Nat, we’ve talked about this.” Clint said with a long-suffering sigh, “You don’t owe me anything.”

“Yes, I do, Clint.” Natasha insisted, “I owe you everything. Your choice thirteen years ago gave me a life I never could have had otherwise. When I told you that years ago, you told me that if I really felt that way then you wanted me to pay you back by living the best life I could. So that’s what I’m doing.”

“Just give it up, Clint.” Laura interjected, “I’ve seen that look on her face before. She’s not going to budge on that topic and nothing you say is going to make her. If you keep trying to downplay it you’re just going to piss her off.”

“Listen to your wife, Clint.” Natasha said with a smile, “She’s the only adult Barton that has any sense.”

“You know you’re a Barton too, right?” Clint pointed out, “At least in all the ways that matter.”

“What?” Natasha said, a little taken aback, “Really?”

“Of course you are, silly.” Laura told her with an eyeroll, “You think we need to share blood or a last name for you to be family? As far as I’m concerned you’re my sister and have been since the day Clint brought you home.”

Apparently, it’s my day for realizing things that should have been really obvious.

“Right.” Natasha said quickly with her eyes wide, “Of course I knew that! How could I not? It’s the most obvious thing in the world.”

Clint just raised his eyebrows at her and gave her a knowing smirk. He was clearly not fooled by her deflection, and she was silently grateful he didn’t call her on it. Laura, however, had no such restraint.

“Oh my God, the look on your face!” she crowed, “Is it a common spy tactic to look like a deer in headlights when someone says ‘the most obvious thing in the world’? Because if so, you nailed it!”

“I just never thought...” Natasha trailed off helplessly.

“You do realize that, other than Phil, you’re the only one of Clint’s co-workers he ever brought to the farm?” Laura pressed on, “You’ve been there for every major holiday you could get time off for. You have your own freaking room at our house and it’s been your mailing address for over a decade! You’re our children’s godmother and you’re the first person the school will call if they can’t reach me or Clint. How could you not know you’re part of this family?!”

Natasha could feel the tears trying to form and wiped her eyes quickly before the kids could see. She had wondered occasionally over the years what it would be like to have a family of her own. Not once had it ever occurred to her that she already did.

Laura passed the still sleeping Nathaniel over to Clint and walked over to wrap Natasha in a hug, causing Lila to squawk when she was squished between her mother and aunt.

“You’re one of the smartest people I’ve ever met, Nat.” Laura told her, still chuckling, “But sometimes you’re a dumbass.”

Lila squirmed out from between them and spotted Liho peering around the corner at the people in the kitchen.

“Kitty!” she exclaimed, darting towards the small black cat. Who took all of about half a second to decide she wanted no part of this latest development and bolt back to the bedroom.

“You have to take things slow with her, sweetie.” Natasha told her, stepping back from Laura, “She doesn’t like loud noises and sudden movements.”

“When did you get a cat?” Laura asked her.

“About 8 months ago.” she replied, “She’s lived here for about 3 months now. I’m kind of surprised you guys saw her at all.”

“And she doesn’t like loud noises and sudden movements.” Laura mused, “Sounds like someone else I know.”

“Are you saying I’m a cat?” Natasha asked with an impish grin.

“Maybe.”

“If I’m a cat, what kind of animal is Clint?”

Laura thought about it for a few seconds before giving Natasha an impish grin of her own.

“A donkey.”

“What?” Clint sputtered, “A donkey? Really?”

“Yes, dear.” Laura explained in a matter-of-fact tone, “You’re an ass, and everyone knows it.”

Natasha was silently reveling in the calm that came from being with the Bartons. Her thoughts had slowed down to a manageable pace and she settled into the peace that was so elusive to her.

Huh. I have a family. And I’m apparently the only one who didn’t know that.

Lila had managed to coax Liho out of hiding and was playing with her with a piece of string she’d found somewhere. Cooper was excitedly talking to his dad about all the cool things he’d seen in the tower so far. Nathaniel was still sleeping, but the way Laura kept glancing at him told Natasha that he was due to wake up soon.

It was relaxing enough that Natasha managed to forget how much she hated what today was for a little while. It was...nice.