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Chapter Text

"Look, Miss Romanov, I don't know what you think that you're doing, but—" Clint stopped in his tracks, "This isn't much of a game."

Clint hunted for her as he stalked up the dingy staircase of the Adria Palace apartment complex, his hands grazing against the wet walls whilst he followed Natasha's fresh trail of dark red which was leaking from her upper-arm. The carpet of the building was old, but it was pure white, and he could tell that she was badly injured from the arrow earlier for it to be bleeding so much still fifteen minutes after impact. Clint thought of nothing as he walked up those stairs. He never really did, when he was commissioned for these sorts of things. It felt like he was on autopilot. Sometimes he thought about dumb stuff, like what Laura would be making for supper for Lila and Cooper at home, or if maybe he'd only imagined turning in his mission report, and in reality he'd forgotten. But right now, even without much to think of, Clint felt inexplicably aware of what he was doing today, partly because he couldn't understand what she herself was doing. She must have known her path wasn't concealed with her lashings of blood, so why was she luring him towards her on purpose? Clint breathed in, taking a glance at his arm-band, which was sending constant alerts to the armed soldiers waiting outside, two blocks away from the premise. He sent back in Morse code: She'll go down easy. And continued the walk up the stairs.

The door to Natasha's listed apartment was open when he arrived at it, and her trail of blood, low-and-behold, revealed that she'd gone inside for certain. Perhaps, Clint thought, approaching slowly as he raised his handgun, though his bow and arrows were tight against his back, she had gone inside to die. Perhaps she was waiting around for him to kill her right at this very moment. It was this kind of morbid thought that made him snap out of any trance-like autopilot state from earlier. It was he who would put an end to someone's life today, after all. He centered himself with conscious effort, and then walked into the room.

No sign of the assassin. There was not much time to take in the apartment, but it was spilling with natural light. There were tall, European fixtures and minimal furniture in the huge living room, aside from a long grey couch with a cardboard box of emptied bottles beside it. Natasha's bleeding seemed to have stopped in the kitchen. She was likely holding something to her leg right now. Clint was dead silent as he brought his gun up to eye-level and put his finger to the trigger.

"Na-tasha," he spoke, with threatening intonation in his voice. "Come on, kid. I know that you're in here. Have some dignity, won't you?" He didn't want to seek her out. He imagined finding her bleeding out in the bath-tub, and having to shoot her there.

As Clint edged towards the bedroom from the hallway, with a suspicion he'd find her there beneath a bed, as he often did in other assignments, Natasha lurched from behind the kitchen counter and jumped against his back. She threw herself onto his gun so that it fired once, took it right from his surprised hand, and, after forward rolling once, shot at him whilst against the wall, but Clint was already darting towards her. Clint liked a dance, but he had a feeling he didn't want to find out what a game of hand-to-hand combat looked like with an esteemed Soviet-bred assassin. Natasha, still holding the gun in her left hand, shoved Clint's stomach with her right foot, and then kicked him backward on his chest. But Clint was steady, grabbed her ankle, and turned her chest to floor-side. Natasha kicked his shin in with her other leg, giving her enough time to stand back up. He grabbed her again, slamming her hard against the hollow wall so that it broke in slightly. A dry piece of white paint fell onto her forehead, then skid off. He realized only now that he was looking at her that she definitely had not been expecting an attack today, or maybe at all. Her long hair was down, dark red and parted in the middle, her eyes were big, green, and sunken, and she was wearing a short pleated skirt and a big jumper suited for the winter, the right sleeve stained deep purply-red with blood. She looked so suddenly to thirty-one-year-old Clint like a child. Clint recalled her file said she was only twenty-two—it was partly what made her kill count so impressive—but right now she looked younger. He had never been sent out on an assignment to kill anybody this young.

No. He dismissed it. This young girl had a kill count of over two-thousand men and women. He was doing a favor. He was doing his job. 

Natasha used the momentary distraction to squeeze out from his pressured hold, and as she shot into the kitchen, she opened the drawer of knives. Clint fired an arrow at her, but she ducked and it hit the wall. He continued, each of them just barely missing her, but missing her regardless as she swerved down, clutching Clint's handgun, waiting for him to enter the kitchen. She shot at his shin as he stormed in, but only surprised him. He grabbed a knife from the drawer Natasha had only managed to open and threatened it on her as she stood. He backed her against the kitchen counter, but Natasha propelled herself with her hands pushing against the counter, feet pointed forward to strike his neck. He grabbed her calves and Natasha held onto his head, now fully holding onto him by the neck as she drove him backwards, slamming his head against a cupboard. He dropped her, pulled an arrow out from the drywall, and shot at her again, but she turned the bend from the kitchen into the hallway and was headed for the bedroom.

He raced after Natasha at full-speed, who he found perched at an open window with white, see-through curtains, which led to a balcony twenty-five meters below. Clint reached her before she could think about making any sort of escape, pulled her back by her head and slammed her down onto the floor. She groaned, feeling it in her cranium. He pulled her up by her jumper and slammed her down again, and then once more. He then lowered himself with his knees on either sides of her upper-arms, compressing her. She let out a moan as his knee pushed into her upper right arm, the bleeding persisting. Clint grabbed the handgun which Natasha had let go of when he'd slammed her onto the floor the first time, and held it to her forehead.

Clint looked at her again. It was the strangest thing. She wasn't crying, even though she was afraid. She wasn't resisting, even though she wanted to — He could see the desperation in her cheeks, making her breath with a hesitation that shook her. She didn't try to move, even though she could've just as easily cleverly escaped his grip as she had before. She was giving into him.

And as for Natasha, this was it. She was laying the kill out for him, neat and nice, might as well have been a bow on top. As she lay on the ground waiting to die at the hands of an American, it occurred to her that it had to be over at some point anyway, so wasn't now a fitting time as ever? Of course, Nat shouldn't have surrendered; she had made a choice at some point. When? She didn't know. Somewhere between being backed clumsily into the counter and the smashing of her cranium, she'd decided this was all probably okay. But the survivor, the fighter, the person in her told her that she should've kept against his shoulder, pressing his head away from hers, taken advantage of his weak left-side and impaired vision, then she might've nailed him down, bit his neck for kicks, forced his beady eyes to look at her until he knew who and what exactly she was—because then he might have been able to tell her—and then he'd know. They'd both know, then. Know that he should have really been the one scared. But Natasha hadn't done that. Now Natasha was the one staving off her fear with a fucking daydream. She'd given into a feeling so hopeless that it breached all of her confidence, and that years ago she'd believed was emptied completely from her system. She'd thought Dreykov had drilled it out of her. But clearly, Natasha was lying to herself. She hadn't grown up at all. She was still trying to find something to pray to. Did it console her or terrify her now? Did she have enough time to remember believing in something?

There she was still, gun to her head, back flat on the floor, arm aching like it had been sawn off, panting like a wet dog in the heat as she noticed that he looked down at her with something far worse than vengeance—pity. She breathed in, and the unsettled feeling slowed down into her. Why was he taking so long?

Clint was breathing fast. He was waiting for something but he didn't know what. God, maybe? His wife's voice on the phone, maybe. A chance. Maybe he was waiting for Natasha to look at him and ask him what he was doing, so that he could tell her that he didn't know. That he knew nothing about this, and he was only pretending. Clint wasn't a bad person because he hurt other people. That was all it was. He was helping the majority from people just like Natasha. Shouldn't that have been what counted? Except they hadn't been. All like Natasha. They'd been old, rotted businessmen with smug, powerful families, indulgent cowards, owners of nightclubs and strip-clubs, with hush money and booze oozing out of their pores. Now while he looked at her, waiting for something, he saw a young girl with nothing, with not a sense of herself at the least.

Suddenly, without strategy or any serious thought, he pulled off of her and put the gun into his pocket, cursing softly beneath his breath. He stood, and she lay down, slumped beneath him, grabbing her right arm as she groaned.

"Do you have a shirt on?" he asked, bluntly. "Beneath your jumper?"

Natasha looked at him, completely puzzled. Her face was blank, and she felt odd, like she'd been offended by him or was supposed to be. The truth was that neither of them could have anticipated this. No more than twenty minutes ago when they'd met in the square and Natasha had thrown her groceries at him, she'd thought Dreykov had sent somebody. When he had spoken to her, and she'd heard his accent, she understood it was something else. Somebody getting back at her for something, no doubt. Perhaps she'd killed their son, their mother, their cousin twice-removed. Natasha had a lot of enemies. But she'd never run into trouble like this before. She knew Clint had people waiting outside. Planned attacks like this often did. He must have had information about her, too. It made her nervous. And then for him to drop his weapon, speak to her calmly. He was playing a game that Natasha didn't have the rule-book for.

"Yes," she said, her voice hoarse, her accent deceivingly thick. She sat up, eyeing the gun in Clint's pocket.

He was eyeing her closely. He knew she didn't have anything else on her. He took the gun from his pocket and threw it across the floor, hearing it clatter against the wall where the window blew a breeze in. Natasha's hair fell in front of her face and she looked at him, stunned. She didn't know what she thought of him. She wasn't naïve enough to believe it was kindness, or anything resembling mercy. Perhaps he had thought it better to take her alive, to whomever he needed to bring her to. Maybe the Killer was just an act. But it had felt murderous. Natasha knew when people were lying, she'd been trained to understand every queue, circumstance, and signal that indicated something's falsehood, and this was no performance. So, what was it?

He didn't move towards her yet, but out from the satchel on his back attached to his archery bag he took out a box of medical supplies. He opened it, showed it to Natasha without looking back up at her, and took out a bandage and a tiny flask.

"You're going to bleed out if you don't get that treated. Take off your jumper."

If it had been a trick, Clint would have shot her by now. Natasha knew that. She had no fight left, and she knew he was right. She would bleed out if she didn't do something quickly. It wasn't something she'd ever allow herself to do on a normal occasion, not even with nurses and workers at the Red Room would she let them treat her wounds; she'd always ask to fix it herself first. But this was no ordinary situation, and for whatever reason, Natasha trusted that he'd do what he was letting on. She bit down on the neck of her knitted jumper and with her left arm, pulled it over her head, letting the jumper sink down to her wrists, Clint kneeled down and moved towards her right side to treat her upper-arm.

Clint assessed the wound. It had stopped bleeding now for the most part. He grabbed a wipe from his bag and tipped the flask against it, then without a word, put it against Natasha's arm, which Natasha herself didn't dare look at yet. She knew it was bad. She didn't need to be reassured with a glance. Clint wiped against it, each touch stinging more than the last, until the burning sensation became a dull thump in her shoulder. Clint used a dry wipe to clean the wound.

"Why are you doing this?" asked Natasha, her voice faint.

She was looking at the floorboards. Her eyes were dry and the sounds from the city outside were normal; it made her feel crazy. And so what if she had died those two minutes ago? The city would have still lived, breathed, moved. To think about it all made her feel just awful, insignificant. She pondered on her mark on the world often, but it didn't get to her like other things. A whole picture never made Natasha cry. It was individuals. Figures, not calculations. Thinking about the young girl whose family she'd stolen because of intel they'd taken which made them dangerous to Dreykov's institution made her nauseous and uneasy. Thinking about her kill count made her feel average, dull, apathetic. It was lives that stung, not existence. For Natasha herself had never truly existed either, not by that measure.

Clint didn't know how to answer her, which he could tell made her feel anxious. He'd have been anxious too, in her situation. Here comes in the man threatening to kill you, who frightens and fights you for your life, and whilst he has you at your weakest, most vulnerable point of being, he refuses to follow through with it, leaving you uncertain, suspenseful, and afraid.

"I don't know," he replied, honestly. He was wrapping her arm.

The answer weirdly satisfied Natasha. She knew it was genuine.

Clint finished dressing her arm by biting down on the bandage and tucking it into the top of the wrapping. He shuffled to put the things back into his bag, including the bloody tissues and alcohol-soaked wipes. He bit his lip, sniffled, and then sighed, pushing back from his spot beside Natasha and instead walking to sit down against the wall opposite her, so that they were both facing each other. He hesitated, then put his face in his hands, muttering, "Jesus," to himself.

Natasha couldn't make sense of it. She looked down at her arm. He had dressed it well. She moved it. It hurt some, but it was better. As far as she was concerned, he'd fixed her for now, and that was what mattered. Nothing else. She could move her arm. If he fought her again, she'd be able to fight back. But now, what did he want from her? He didn't seem desperate for another fight, nor did he seem desperate to move, to force her to follow him somewhere. What were they waiting for her? No. What was Natasha waiting for? She could have bolted out of there. She wasn't a prisoner.

"You were going to kill me," said Natasha, darkly, and he met her eyes. They were silver-blue, quiet eyes. "Why didn't you?"

Clint was restless, and he shrugged his shoulder blades back to relax, breathing in deeply. He licked his lips, filling the space between them. "I'll ask the questions around here," he said, sharply, looking at her. He wasn't cruel; it was hard for Clint to be cruel. But his discomfort was audible. He wasn't pleased with himself or with Natasha or with the atmosphere. I'll be fired for this, he thought, but questioned himself. Fury had sent Clint out to find and destroy Natasha, because according to Fury she was "active". It didn't seem like she was very active now. Fury had made it seem like Natasha was with an organization. Right now, she seemed entirely alone. Could it have been that he was misguided?

Clint continued, "Tell me your name."

"You know my name," replied Natasha, quickly.

He furrowed his brows. A car horn went off somewhere in the city and the sound of skidding wheels could be heard. "Humor me."

"Natasha. Well, Natalia," tutted Natasha, her eyes lowering to his shoes. They were falling apart. Lace-ups that were half-undone on one foot. "Alianovna Romanova," she added, and then looked back up to him. She noticed new things every time she looked at her attacker's face. She noticed that he had stubble, and his ears were a bit small for his head. He had soft lines by his eyes; a father's eyes. He'd seen too much sun. Natasha did not have a wrinkle on her face. She didn't have a freckle, either. She had porcelain skin.

"That's quite the name," quipped Clint.

Natasha shrugged. It was a Russian name. She'd never questioned it. She was surrounded by girls in the Red Room with all sorts of names, from all around the globe. "What's yours, then?" she asked, earnestly, remembering what he had said before but choosing to ignore it. I'll ask the questions around here. Natasha smiled at him, shortly, then looked at the floor again. She realized they were both looking at the same floor-board.

"I'm Clint," he told her, and his breath drew quiet.

He was thinking about Laura, or maybe he was just thinking about the sounds that reminded him of her. It was nice to sit down, and to imagine that this didn't matter. "Clint Barton." He looked up, and as a reminder of how much it truly did matter, he saw that Natasha was grateful. Somewhere. Perhaps he was only trying to make himself feel better. Maybe he was going out of his way to search for proof that he had done the right thing, the redeeming thing. Or maybe he was right. Maybe he had seen it; the flicker of a light in her dark eyes. How long had it been since she'd spoken with somebody like this? he wondered. It was all new to him. When Clint was just starting out, he used to imagine having conversations with the killers whose lives he'd ended, but now, with this great opportunity in his hands to reveal himself and understand Natasha, he had nothing to give. He felt fine, if maybe a bit worried.

"What are you doing here?" he asked her after a pause, looking around the apartment indicatively. He wanted to know if she was alone, to know if she had back-up, but also to know if maybe his instincts were right, and she had nobody by all meanings of the phrase.

Natasha felt that he was trying something on her, but she was willing to play his game, however timidly. "How do I know I can trust you, Clint Barton?" she asked.

He wasn't sure how to answer her. "You're right; I was meant to kill you, but I didn't. Isn't that a reason enough to trust me?"

No, Natasha thought. But she started to think of an answer anyway.

In all reality, Natasha didn't know where to start. She didn't want to say anything, anyway. Business. Pleasure. Both? No. This was neither. Desperation—Could she give that as her answer? Luck? Dumb sheer whit? Her arm stung now that it had been sitting untouched, un-fussed-with, for a couple of minutes. She needed to adjust to the pain. She sat upright, trying not to struggle. Natasha had arrived at the apartment four days ago. She'd escaped whilst on an assignment in Bulgaria with two other Black Widows who she'd killed on the train-ride, where an attack on a group of agents was planned. Natasha had dumped her tracker and killed those agents, but she'd dragged two male bodies away and buried them nearby. It made it all the more likely that instead of her running away, two agents had taken Natasha, and it would buy her some less suspicious time while she constructed a more linear plan to get Yelena out of the Red Room. She planned to contact sources in war-torn Sokovia, somehow infiltrate a Hydra base and find help to finish off what was left of Dreykov's empire. None of that mattered now. She and Yelena would work it out when she got to her in two days time. 

She answered with honesty, but shyness, "I'm just here for my sister." But as Clint looked meekly, dark-eyed at her, Natasha continued, "She's with the Red Room, and she's commissioned here. I'm waiting until she arrives." She looked at his eyes, then narrowed them.

"The Red Room. You're with an organization?"

Natasha looked at him, concerned. How was she meant to discern between what she could say and couldn't say? She took another breath in, "It's complicated. I've left, I think. I'm..." Natasha couldn't imagine a world where Dreykov wouldn't suspend her or do much worse upon any form of return. "I'm on the run."

"The Red Room, it commissions you. To do what?"

Natasha met his eyes. "What do you think, Barton?"

Clint was caught off-guard by her calling him by his last name. He continued regardless, "You said that your sister—" Natasha's eyes shot up onto him. He hesitated, "Your sister's with them. There are others?"

"Hundreds," replied Natasha, not sure what she was thinking. She was at a loss for what else she could do. She'd reasoned with herself for the past couple of days, but had never imagined there was any other way to infiltrate the institution other than by herself. From the outside in. "Thousands, maybe. That depends. All girls. The trainees." She couldn't stop herself from continuing. She went on, "Young, too. There's a center for infants. We're trained since birth, most of us. Others are taken, homes raided, trafficked. Mostly trafficked." Natasha glanced away. "Active Black Widows range all the way from ten to fifty-five. There's no escape. Nobody leaves." She looked at him again, as though he hadn't heard her quite right. "Nobody leaves, Clint."

"How did you?"

Natasha shrugged. "The General got lenient with me. I got sent on a mission in Bulgaria four days ago with some older Black Widows. It was an in-and-out thing. Meant to be quick. I..." She looked away, out the window, longingly. "I slit the girls' throats. Then I killed the targets—all men, finished the job. Staged it like I'd been taken, not escaped. Then I got out of there. No doubt, there are dozens of Widows, agents, out scouring for me now."

Clint paused. "What's your sister's name?"

Natasha scoffed, "Funny."

"What's funny?"

"No, I just," she began, then looked up to meet Clint's gaze. They looked at each other, seeing something, then away again. She started over, "What do you want from me? You nearly kill me, you don't kill me, now you sit with me and ask me about my sister, it's all—" She licked her lips, scratched her temple.

"It's absurd," he finished.

"Hm."

"Well," he said, wiping his upper-lip. He hadn't shaken the strange feeling, the feeling that perhaps he'd done something awfully wrong, but at the same time he'd risen above his conscience in a plainly unextraordinary way which he'd never been able to before. Here was this young woman, a born and bred killer, right in front of his eyes, wounded and fearful and untrusting, but she'd chosen to trust him anyway, chosen to give into the fear, chosen to let him help her. It was like he'd stumbled into a trap and she was the mouth, but only the teeth chattered; they did not bite. He softened and wanted to touch her, not in a way that was romantic, but in a way that would allow him to make sense of her. She was a figment now. He couldn't understand still quite what this meant for him, but he had a feeling that it wouldn't be long before he did. "I'm sorry, Natasha. For trying to kill you."

"It's okay. You only tried," she said, then smiled at him. "And it was a good effort. You got close."

He thought her comments were charming. She was facetious for a second-language. He thought hard for a moment, glanced at his arm-band, quivered as he looked at her cheek, and then to her arm; bandaged with his own supplies. He felt inexplicably responsible for her.

Clint replied, "I'll help you, Natasha."

She shrunk into the corner, clutching her arm, her face pale but striking. "What do you mean, help?" she asked. "Why would you do that?"

"My boss sent me here to kill you," declared Clint with boldness, watching her face morph into one of her earlier suspicions again. He shook his head, then looked down at his knees. He'd had problems with them for a long time, all that bending and bowing and being thrown against things. He was surprised they'd not deteriorated earlier. He looked up. "I'll speak with him. The thing is that," he continued, "I sense that you're not here to be the villain, Nat." He paused, watched her  eyes fill with surprise; a sense of guilty astonishment. Could she even allow herself this relief? This nickname? He went on, "You're young. I want to help you."

"Because I'm young?"

"Because you're good."

"You don't know me. I'm good at killing."

"I know you. There's something else there. I see it."

Natasha shied away at him. It was difficult. He was deliberate in a way that Natasha couldn't understand. In the minutes she'd known him, he acted on feeling. Natasha acted on logic; reasoning, intentionality. Clint Barton found reasons that had nothing to do with reality, but with the heart. He'd felt it was wrong to kill her, so he'd not. He'd felt it was right to help her, so he had. Realistically, he should've killed her and he never should have second-guessed himself. This was his task, and he hadn't completed it. That was what Natasha was taught, anyway. She had no idea how to differentiate between right and wrong, it was all feeling and thinking, action and in-action, attention and withdrawal. She couldn't explain her impulses beyond what she'd been taught, which was solely to do with her reflexes; her physical being, her decisions. Clint was emotional. Sensitive. Vulnerable. Everything that Natasha was made to look down on. But for whatever reason, she looked only to him, like some a God. He had spared her life, after all. He had harmed her but repaired her. He'd showed her something was possible beyond the confines of her existence: promise and then destroy.

"Your boss won't be happy," said Natasha, deeply, coolly, easing up.

He shrugged and sat up, pulling his satchel closer toward him. "My boss is never happy," he mumbled, breathing. "What you've described is illegal, and it's exactly the kind of thing that Shield is designed to shut down. How about we don't just get your sister out? We get everyone out." He said it like a saint, like some sort of angel. "I want to call a truce. We're partners now, all right? I help you, you help me. Otherwise, I've got a dozen men out there waiting for me to say shoot so they'll shoot, you hear me?"

"You call that a truce?" Natasha smirked, but put her hand out anyway, almost flimsily. She'd let herself relax. He wasn't anything to be afraid of, and she had at least half-confidence in that now, which was about more confidence than she'd had in anyone before, besides Alexei and Melina, and they'd broken that faith pretty damn fast. "Sounds more like a threat to me," she added, though she still smiled. It was light-hearted, girlish even.

He shook her hand, his grip firm. "Don't let me down."

Don't let me down, Natasha thought, remembering her seventeen-year-old sister's face the last time she'd seen it, right before she'd left, about a week prior to this. What was Natasha going to do if she couldn't fix this? And now that she'd enlisted the help of an American Shield agent, she was supposedly set? She didn't know any of this would work, but for whatever incredibly fucked-up, desperate reasoning, she trusted Clint Barton completely.

Chapter Text

"We need confirmation that Dreykov's in the building," Clint told Natasha over the intercom. He was waiting not far away, on the rooftop of a nearby building. Upon Natasha's request, he was to launch the bomb implanted inside Dreykov's home office, finishing his life and in turn, the organization he had control over.

When Clint had called Fury to tell him just what he'd done, with Clint making sure to stress that Natasha was without weapons, and that her story of escape was completely aided with evidence, there was a long silence on the other end of the phone. Finally, Nick had told him, "Agent Barton, do you understand that your job is not to be a hero?" But it wasn't a question, and Clint hadn't answered it like one. He'd replied on instinct, as he always did, revealing to his boss the true nature of Natasha's assassinations; that they were ordered and controlled by a man named General Dreykov, an esteemed member Soviet Armed Forces, and the overseer of a training facility named the Red Room. He and Fury had come to an agreement—that if what Natasha had told him was true, then she would defect from the Red Room immediately and be signed on to Clint's team at Shield. She was his responsibility, stressed Fury, before launching into strategy.

"His car is pulling up now," replied Natasha, her Russian accent still thick under the weight of her words. She sat dead-still in the car, a couple of Shield agents planted around in various positions to make sure that Natasha did her job, and did it with deliberation.

The truth was that Natasha knew very little of what was going to happen to her. Things seemed to change for her every moment when she least expected it, so she began to believe that maybe it was no use thinking anything at all. She'd never even thought she'd leave the Red Room, she hadn't thought of it—the girls were taught not to—let alone to take it down, and then to join forces with an American espionage and security organization was beyond imaginable for her. But she wasn't thinking about that. She couldn't. Not when she had the other Black Widows to worry about.

Natasha watched a black Mercedes Benz pull into the curb, and Dreykov's eight-year-old Antonia, still in school uniform, emerge from the backseat, with her orange leather bag loose on her back as she regarded the driver almost warmly and entered the building. She waited to see flashes of the little girl as she walked up the grand staircase, which Natasha herself had walked up so many times on account of meetings, ceremonies, and lavish events of which Dreykov exhibited her at. Natasha had been one of the lucky ones. She had been strong enough to accept horror as reality, and in turn she had survived hers by understanding it as the truth, and so she'd been rewarded. Other girls, so many of them, had fallen behind. Natasha was a hand-chosen Black Widow; she was a trophy.

Natasha slid her tongue between her chapped lips as she thought to herself with something short of regret, Not anymore.

She watched Antonia reach the top of the staircase, supposedly speaking with her father from the moving of her mouth whilst putting down the orange leather bag by the windowsill, where there was a ledge. Natasha looked in at the brunette, continuing to watch the girl fiddle with her backpack, making sure it was closed, and it felt suddenly wrong. Natasha had had this feeling before, but to a different standard. Wasn't this exactly the kind of thing she was meant to be getting away from? No matter what it meant in the long run, here she was. She was a murderer. Was this her last kill? Did it have to be this little child? Shuffling on the intercom as Clint's end turned back on. Yes, she thought to herself.

"Natasha, we clear?" asked Clint, hopefully, clearly getting a reading on the situation from a nearby agent.

Natasha brought the intercom up to her mouth, as she said softly, "All clear."

Not two seconds later, the building had erupted into flames. Natasha watched it from the corner of her view and blinked a few times before driving the car away to Clint's coordinates. Natasha didn't speed. She didn't want to make it look like she had anything to do with the building. As far as all of the other paranoid citizens were, Nat was just trying to drive her car out of the street. She pulled up out the front of a warehouse, where Clint entered the passenger's seat, and Natasha continued driving West. Clint threw his bow and arrow into the backseat and turned off his intercom, before putting the window down. They could still hear the sound of the fire burning and people screaming in the street. Natasha breathed, focusing only on the rise and fall of her chest and belly.

"Romanoff, are you good?" Clint asked her, eventually.

Natasha knew where they were going. They were headed for the central underground metro station. All Natasha needed to do was drive. But she didn't want to talk. She didn't want to find something to say right now. Not when she was so clearly holding it together with the skin on her knuckles and by bearing her teeth. Her braids flicked against her cheeks as she looked over at him. She couldn't believe what she'd done, or what this meant for the entire establishment. She knew that what happened now was not in her hands, but it was no use trying to soothe her fears. Natasha didn't do well without control over circumstances she was responsible for. That was why she preferred working alone. Natasha would have much rather completed a job start-to-finish all by herself. No impulsivity, no surprises. She knew what she was capable of, but she couldn't know that of others. The ball was no longer in her court.

"Yeah," she murmured. Good. She looked back at the road, feeling slightly childish. "Yeah. Fine."

When they reached the metro station in under five minutes, Natasha parked the car and they climbed out together, each grabbing their things from the boot before throwing the keys. They marched inside, feeling underwhelmed. Natasha's heart-rate was high as she imagined Dreykov's body, burnt on the ground of his home office. She walked forward and down the stairs, realizing she had ash on her shirt. She let Clint lead the way.

They were halfway through customs when they realized that security was checking for ID. It must have been because of the building. They were recording authorized persons for any future identifications that needed to be made. Clint threw a glance at Natasha, who shook her head. Clint furrowed his brows. Not even a fake? Natasha blinked. No. Behind them, two agents stormed into the building, locking eyes with Clint. They both shouted at each other in Hungarian before grabbing AR-15's from their backs. Clint grabbed Natasha's collar and they began to race through the metro.

"Who are those guys?" yelled Natasha, after Clint had let go of her. They bolted down a staircase. Shouting followed behind them. Natasha knew eight languages, but Hungarian sure as shit wasn't one of them.

"They saw me leave the building. They must suspect me," replied Clint, looking around for an escape plan mid-run.

Shots fired from behind, and the crowd of people waiting in line for their train seemed to get in the way of the armed men. Clint pulled Natasha by her injured arm into the ground floor, where a voice message began to play overhead in several different languages. Natasha understood the German message, which translated to: Alert. Alert. Alert. Please, cooperate with the police and staff on-site. Two dangerous criminals infiltrate our premises. One female, red hair. One male, blonde hair. Please, share any information with us. Alert. Alert. Alert. Natasha gulped as they headed down another staircase, where there was no train running. Clint looked up at the board. One set for Vienna in three hours. Beside the screen, an air vent.

"Natasha!" called Clint.

She climbed Clint to reach the air vent, and pulled down the entrance, propelling herself up with Clint's help to get inside. Clint followed after her, and they both placed the vent grille back on. They both stayed dead quiet. Five seconds later, the two men, this time accompanied by the police, rushed downstairs, clamoring loudly as they searched for any sign of them. Whilst they were sitting there, Natasha looked to her left. The tunnel was dark and smelled like piss. She breathed in, making sure to be quiet.

Not long after, they listened to the noise die out, and the final footsteps echo up the staircase. Clint relaxed into the metal vent, his back stretching as he put his head into his hands as he so often seemed to. He let out a deep, incredible sigh, and Natasha wondered if he was going to cry. Of course, he didn't. He just looked up at her, smiled vaguely, and scoffed one single time. He found it amusing, how they'd cheated their capture with the skin of their teeth. But maybe he also just needed something to laugh about. Clint could have been at home, with his kids, with Laura by now. But instead he was in a vent with the assassin he'd been sent to take out not three days ago, protecting one another.

And it wasn't that Natasha wasn't thrilled, or surprised, or amazed. She felt a rush of adrenaline, a rush of relief at having ended the life of the man who'd held her and so many other girls in captivity since birth. But she was also alone. It was no different than before. It was only more final now. And what was she going to do? All she knew was what Clint had told her.

"I've got supplies for two days," said Clint, with immediacy. He groaned, clearly having pulled something while running down the stairs. He touched his back and then looked down into the empty metro station below.

Natasha frowned. Two days. Here. She wasn't sure what to say, but spoke anyway what came to her mind, "What about my sister? I told you I'd meet her here, in the city. She's probably being stationed now. I know about the location, where Dreykov's commissioned them; it's a large mon—"

"—There's no guarantee, Natasha. We don't have her coordinates. It's too dangerous right now." He threw the bag of supplies at her, which he'd already rummaged through. Protein bars, nuts, fruits, beef jerky, water.

Natasha didn't disagree; they couldn't have predicted this, but in the hot agitation of the moment, she felt compelled to disagree with him.

"You promised I'd get my sister out," said Natasha.

"I told you we'd get everybody out. That's what we did, Nat."

"It's different. She's probably out there right now, Clint—She's waiting for a status request from Dreykov that won't ever come. I could go to her."

"That's reckless," he spat at her. "Natasha." He tried to calm himself down, "She and the other girls will get the dispatch being sent out by our staff right now on all active stations and she'll lay low. She will. I can promise you that. You'll be risking both of your lives if you leave now. Who's to say the police aren't waiting to arrest you right outside the station?"

Natasha slumped over, her knees steadily pulling into her chest as she breathed out. Natasha didn't cry. She just felt angry. Furious. She felt betrayed by Clint. Had she chosen a different place, a different city, a different time, this wouldn't have happened—She could have just taken Yelena with her had she waited patiently enough, and then gotten help. Now she was stuck feeling sorry for herself and for the rest of the Widows with nowhere to go. What would they do? Was Clint right? Laying low. Some of them would surely give up, with no concept of a normal life or sense of self. And what about the children? Who would look after them? Natasha thought about asking Clint these questions, but she knew what he'd say. I'll send agents. I'll make sure everybody gets out of the bases all right. Natasha's right arm was beginning to hurt, and she held onto it as she looked out of the vent at the people rushing below. She breathed in with exhaustion before turning away.

"You will see her, all right?" Clint said as he sat up. He reached beside him, and slid over to Natasha the box of medical supplies. He watched her pull off the old dressing instinctively. He groaned softly and put his head against the wall of the vent. It made a noise as his skull banged against the metal. "I don't know if you understand this, but you're kind of my responsibility right now, and if I don't get you back to headquarters in one piece, I'm completely screwed." He looked at Natasha's revealed wound. It wasn't infected, which came as a surprise; his arrow-heads hadn't been cleaned in a while and the one which he'd struck Natasha with was the one he'd pulled out from a previous kill. "Your sister's going to be fine. If she's like you, she's smart. She'll know what to do, kid."

Natasha looked at him sharply. She shrugged, then nodded as she dabbed her wound again with an alcohol wipe, sucking in air through her nostrils thickly as she shut her eyes. She couldn't be angry with him. They had to trust each other. She whined softly and then turned towards Clint. "It's okay, I—" She looked up at him, fondly, "I don't even know if she'd want to see me," said Natasha, plainly.

Clint didn't say anything.

"We haven't spoken in, like, twelve years," said Natasha, who then awkwardly smiled at him. She stopped instantly when she caught herself, then paid attention again to her wound. She put the wipe down. "We went on an assignment together when we were young. It was an undercover thing. We were taking intel," she explained. "But, uh, the Red Room split us up quickly. And I didn't even know she'd survived the selection and training processes, and the fucking—" She paused. She wouldn't. She breathed in again, "Anyway. I saw her for the first time a year ago. She'd moved out of Prospect, and so pretty soon they started sending her on missions. I always had my fingers crossed they'd pair us up at some point, or at least put us on the same damn team," she said, breathing out, "but they never did. So." She shrugged her shoulders again. "So, I don't know."

Clint looked at her, darkly. He knew he had to say something. "Family's complicated. It doesn't matter how much you hate each other, if you do, but it always hurts when you're not together. She feels that, too," he said, deeply. "You're a good sister, Nat. If that's what you're worried about. Hell, you just blew up Dreykov's entire fucked-up empire to show for it."

It should have pissed Natasha off a little, but it didn't. It consoled her. She looked at him with brooding understanding. There was something bigger than just the two of them in all of this. There were lives on the line. They were part of an assignment which wasn't just about getting in-and-out alive, it was about making sure that hundreds—maybe thousands—of others also made it out. And right now, Natasha knew it was high time that they lay low and let the steam blow over. All Natasha could do was hope that the girls were safe, or getting safe, and that her sister was one of them.

Natasha picked up a new roll of bandage and began to wrap it around her arm, sniffling from the cold. She knew her nose was red. They both looked a little worse for wear, and she knew it was probably their best chance to sleep away these next two days. Clint, of course, had other plans. Natasha bit down on the end of the bandage and then tucked it into the top of her sleeve, pulling down her jumper. She sat down again, resting her head against a pipe.

"And do you have a family, Clint?" asked Natasha, watching his wedding ring wistfully.

She hadn't asked him this before. They hadn't had the time to get to know each other. When they'd left Nat's apartment, he'd taken her straight in to the base they'd set up not far from a little town called Kistarcsa. Natasha had responded to Fury's questions over a hologram conversation, and been briefed in a meeting with an agent named Maria Hill, and then finally Natasha had been given a bed to sleep in and a change of clothes. Yesterday, Natasha had unloaded onto Clint and his team all of the information she'd received over the years of working at the Red Room, including the nature of the killings and it's supposed reason for having been created. She even provided names of the girls she'd worked with. Today was spent in preparation for the job on Dreykov's building. In all of this, she'd had very little time to say more than two or three private words to Clint.

Clint's family was private information. He'd managed to keep it off of all security files at Shield with Fury's consent, mostly out of a driving fear that the wrong people would get their hands on who they were and where they lived, and they would become targets.

"I've got a wife," said Clint, without question. He knew he could tell Natasha. She'd find out soon enough anyway, if all went to plan and they arrived in Maine before reaching New York. He'd promised to be there after this assignment was completed. As usual with Clint, these things always became extended work trips. Something always came up, much to Laura's dismay. "Laura," said Clint, meeting Nat's eyes. "We met in high school, married young. We waited, though." He watched Natasha's eyes sharpened. "Waited to have kids." Natasha's English was so good that he almost forgot it wasn't her first language.

Nat's ears pricked up at the mention of children. It always fascinated her. Their mention of babies and parenting and kids was always something of an illusive curiosity to Natasha, who knew she would never have any of that. "How many?" she asked, softly.

"Two," he replied, carefully. He saw the curiosity in her. It made him all the more delighted to tell her about them. He always knew when people weren't interested. When they were just asking to ask. Natasha seemed to have genuine interest in his life. He remembered that she had never had one of her own, and it softened his insides. "I've got a boy, Cooper, and my wife just had a little girl. We're gonna call her Lila."

Natasha scoffed, "Cooper and Clint. Lila and Laura."

She was astute. Clint hadn't even noticed the name alignment himself. He furrowed his brows at her and then looked down at his pants, which were covered in dust and dirt. Clint thought about his house; their big wrap-around porch with a white fence for Cooper to climb. How Laura sat in the rocking chair and watched him whilst simultaneously nursing Lila. It was cold at home right now, early November, and up in the North they had it bad. It was probably already snowing. When Clint left, the snow had just started. Nothing to worry about, he'd said, I'll be back next week to clear it. But with another two weeks gone before he was home, he bet it was causing trouble for the animals and the produce. They liked to make their own food; they took advantage of the big property and ran their own small farm. He prayed to God that if it had gotten worse, that Laura had called somebody to come round and help.

Clint couldn't believe what Laura would do for him to continue working. In lots of ways, they'd given up just as much to have their family and to have their life. But Clint couldn't help but feel responsible for lots of the pain Laura was subjected to at home, and to be asked constantly where their dad was. All Clint wanted was to have both, but as Laura so often told him, it was a dream. He'd have to make the choice eventually.

Natasha spoke again, "They're lucky. To have you as their dad, I mean."

Clint shook his head. "Don't flatter me," he murmured, then looked back at her seriously. "My kids don't understand why I can't be with them. Cooper's been asking for me since he could talk, and I know I'm letting them down, but..." He looked up at Natasha. He wanted to complain. He wanted to be awful, and admit to his selfishness, to say that this was what made it worth it, to be here in the worst place on Earth with a twenty-two-year-old fresh out of killing, but he couldn't do that. He was better than his arrogance. "Well, this is my life. I do it because it's what I know. And at the end of the day, I always get to come home. It's harder for Laura. She gets the short end of the stick. Always." It somehow made him feel better to say this out loud. It wasn't just something he knew himself, it was something he could admit.

Natasha nodded, and then lulled her head back, tired. "Still. They have you regardless of your physicality. Your situations. It's you that counts. Your person. Character. Children can't ever know what's there until it's not. It's all imagination, otherwise. They think, You're there, and you're good to them. Parents who aren't there, and who pretend to be good, well—" She smiled, sadly, "It's a different story from yours."

They both met each other's eyes and connected. Their hands fiddled with nothing and they both went still. They had nothing to say and yet everything to feel. Clint felt a small beam of warmth grow from his chest into his head, and it's energy relaxed him. Natasha's coldness dissipated as she felt he understood, and that she had said what she'd needed to for a very long time. She'd not mistakenly said something; it was all coming into balance. She was restoring something right now, in this very moment. It didn't matter if it changed in the next second, minute, hour, or lifetime. Right now, she'd affected something other than herself. She'd shown something real and seen it's power manifest in a way that wasn't evil.

"A story for another time, maybe," he said, with a small glint in his voice.

Natasha's soul yearned. She was out, she remembered. Nothing felt like it. To know she was gone for good. Never again would she find herself at that place doing something she'd willed herself never to do, under the control of a childhood she'd been violated in. Despite it all, she'd morphed into somebody who was capable of something other than killing. She knew that now. She was getting to know it, anyway.

After a moment's silence, Clint picked up a small wire which had broken off from the generator's cage beside them. He poked his finger with it, testing it's sharpness, then he looked at Natasha, hopeful and bored; equally as deadly. "Hey, Nat. You know how to play noughts and crosses?"

Chapter Text

As they arrived at the house in the middle of nowhere Maine, Natasha took a drag from Clint's cigarette as he pulled into the driveway. Clint was jittery and nauseous from three days of straight travel. Natasha was used to it; she was only tired and contemplative. Not even sheer exhaustion could put her mind at ease. Her thoughts were constant and impounding; an Earthly hell she would never escape from. Her instructors had drilled her for it. Her mind was too easily absent, they had told her, with what they decided was distraction, but Natasha knew it as something else—a preoccupation with anything that did not resemble her reality—an imagination that she had kept secret from everyone in order for it to not be lost. So she had spent the last two weeks with Clint in safehouses, supply stores, aircrafts, but she had not been there truly. She'd been elsewhere, thinking of what was found or what was arriving for her: freedom.

It was nearly midnight when they finally arrived in a dumped Ford Ranger, and Clint's home was buried in snow. The lights were on inside, and a warm glow grew across their dirtied faces upon approach. Natasha stubbed the cigarette out into the ash tray in the cup-holder.

The house was big. It was more of a farm than a cottage, which was how Clint had tried to describe it to her. It was impure white wood with a green paneled roof, gutters near-collapsing with snowfall, and shutters on every window. It was two stories high with a wrap-around veranda, elevated and sheltered by a second roof which was held up by great towering pillars. A snow-covered log fence enclosed the house, and the whole property seemed to be shaded with huge oak trees. Natasha imagined what it was like in summer. The last time she'd been at a property like this was on a mission two years ago. She was stationed in Texas during the heat, and as she sweated and trudged through the dry, she'd counted how many horses she ran into along the way.

Clint parked, and turned off the car, sighing loudly. He pulled the keys from the ignition and faced his house with novelty. "Home sweet home," he muttered, and opened his door to get out. He turned to Natasha first. "You gonna be all right?"

She nodded, but moved her mouth to speak. "Your wife," said Natasha, vaguely, looking into his eyes, "you said she knows that I'm coming."

Clint had told many stories about Laura in the two weeks they'd spent on the run, in-between time they'd been up late with nothing more to want and nothing to say, but they'd spoken to each other anyway and all sorts of things came out. Natasha had learnt Laura herself was a former Shield agent, and that was where she and Clint had met each other initially before becoming romantically involved. Laura had been too intimidated to ask him out, but had worked up the courage to deliver a bunch of flowers to him anonymously. Clint was oblivious but surreptitiously formed a connection to her when they were partners for an assignment. They'd agreed to go on a date after that, and continued to, and then continued to. Laura, according to Clint, was more perceptive than he was. She had a knack for knowing things before other people did. She was caring, had always had a motherly warmth and charm to her that struck him, and she was followed by a kind of intrinsic calmness.

Natasha didn't know what the worst thing that could happen would be, but she knew it was out there, and the fact that it was out there was enough for her to want to think through every scenario. Maybe she'd not let Natasha come inside. Maybe she'd refuse to even look at her. Natasha lowered her head.

Clint nodded, reassuringly. "Don't sweat it. She's going to love you," he said, then climbed out of his side of the car.

Natasha followed him after a moment, breathing in the lingering cigarette smoke before slamming the car door shut and pulling her jacket tighter, zipping it up to her chin. She found it all a little hard to believe. That Laura could embrace the woman who had withheld her husband from coming home to her for almost three weeks. She had to get on with it, anyway, regardless of how she expected her invitation to be. She didn't know how long she was staying for, but she could tell that this was no place she'd be shunned from. Her nervousness subsided as Clint opened the gate for her and they both walked up to the porch, the cement steps making soft pattering noises underfoot as the snow melted and ran off of them.

Clint approached, Natasha a few meters behind him, and grabbed the cast iron door knocker with his gloved hand. He let it go, and it slammed hard against the door three or four times. Clint exchanged what was almost a hysterical glance with her before turning back, just in time for Laura to open the door.

Laura's face beamed in the stream of light from inside, bathed in warmth as she flung herself onto her husband, grabbing him and gripping the back of his jumper. Natasha watched, awe-struck. She'd been expecting him. They looked like two pieces on a game-board that desperately wanted to fit inside each other. Clint kissed Laura on the forehead and then on the corner of the mouth. She shone beneath her eyes in response. She looked more beautiful than Clint had described her. She was dressed simply, but her figure was clear beneath her cotton clothes. Her face was narrow but whole; it could have swallowed Clint as she kissed him back.

"Shit, Clint," she said, in a small voice that escaped her barely. He held her steadily.

"God, I missed you."

"I missed you," she stressed, and they held each other again. Laura's eyes opened as her chin rested upward on her husband's shoulder, and she took in Natasha for the first intrigued moment of their arrival. She pulled out of the embrace, though keeping an arm still on Clint's waist, waiting for an introduction.

Clint reached out to touch Natasha on the shoulder-blade, urging her to come forward. "Laura," he said, "This is Natasha. Nat, Laura. Laura, Nat."

Natasha stood there, a little bit stunned, smiling to meet hers. She'd known this feeling before. In fact, she'd been knowing it, particularly in the past couple of weeks with Clint. It was the sensation of wanting to please something higher than you in order to satisfy it within. Natasha, in the past, had used it to her advantage to exceed her instructors expectations, including Dreykov's expectations. She'd used it on her missions, to reel people in. Now, she had no control over it. No sense of why it was there other than pure survival instinct. Maybe part of her was scared after all, that she'd be rejected.

Natasha put her hand out to shake Laura's, and her wrist shook slightly from the frost. Laura smiled at her, walked forward, and hugged her. Though it was unexpected, Natasha hugged her back. There was nothing else she could do, or wanted to. She felt like more than a person; Laura. She wasn't damaged. She was a woman who offered something other than field experience, she had life pouring out from within her. Natasha was intimidated.

"I'm sorry," said Natasha, breaking out of the short-lived hold for a moment to explain herself, as she felt it was important. "For inconveniencing you, I mean, this is..." She looked up and around at the house. Your world, she wanted to say. It could not be mine. She held her tongue. "I don't know how much Clint had told you, and I really don't want to intrude on your family. I know that Clint has told me you've approved, but I'd like to make it up to you—"

"It's all right, Nat," said Clint, almost surprised. It was like Natasha was finally breaking apart with another person in addition to their dynamic.

Laura shook her head. "You don't ever have to apologize for having nowhere to go," she said, and smiled again. Natasha had never known anybody to smile as much as she did, except for maybe Clint. Even then, Clint was hard to break despite being an open book. But Laura was sensible and vulnerable. Laura continued, "You're no inconvenience to us, Nat. When Clint explained what he was doing, of course, I was skeptical, but..." She shook her head again, then met Natasha's eyes, "Well, I don't need anything from you to prove yourself. I trust my husband, so I trust you."

Clint held Laura tighter, kissed her cheek. Natasha watched the exchange of affection with quiet astonishment.

Laura breathed in again, "Now, then. You both must be freezing. Come on, then."

The three of them poured inside and Clint closed the door behind him. Natasha folded her arms. The inside of the house was almost nicer than the outside. It was a lived-in home. The staircase was littered in all sorts of trinkets, folded clothes and toys to step on. The couch was large, with eclectic pillows and sunken parts where people had claimed their spots over the years. The house smelled like incense and a slow-cooked meal. All the lighting was warm yellow tones, nothing bright white and overhead. Did Natasha even belong here? There was a clock ticking from the living room.

Laura turned to her with calmness, and the floorboards beneath her feet creaked. "Do you drink tea?" she asked.

Natasha shook her head, putting her hand up. "No, no. I'm all right." She met Laura's furrowed brows. "Really. Thank you," she replied, earnestly, looking around to avoid Laura's eyes. They were too patient. Too good. Natasha was afraid she'd burn them, have to watch them melt in front of her and see Clint's horrified face. She didn't know what had come over her, but she felt unwell.

"We haven't eaten since this morning," said Clint, leaving his wife briefly to put his bag down on the bench by the coat rack. "I'll find us something hot to eat, maybe some leftovers, if you want to give Natasha a tour——The guest bedroom's right upstairs," he said, glancing between the two women.

Laura led Natasha around the house, making small comments as they went room-to-room, quietly past Cooper's bedroom and the nursery, where the door was half-cracked open. Was Natasha allowed to be in a house with children in it? She shunned herself for thinking such thoughts. Laura showed her the bathrooms, the sitting room, and the three guest rooms she had to choose from. When Laura realized Natasha was too meek right now to give an answer, she chose for Nat and took her in. It was a bedroom with a queen-sized bed and a Persian rug. There were old wooden dresser drawers with a mirror above them, and a door to the right which led to an ensuite. There was a desk with a chair to sit on and many small plants scattered about. There was a window above the bed. It was all plain. There were no photos.

"You can decorate it, if you'd like," said Laura, who was turning out to be quite the entertainer. She always thought of something to say. Natasha had been awfully quiet. She was sure her impression wasn't very strong. Laura continued, walking around the room to draw the curtains, "There's a bathroom there for you. I'll just go and fetch you something to sleep in." Natasha looked curiously at the dresser and Laura caught her. "Those drawers are filled with things that fit me when Clint and I first started going out, but..." She pulled at her stomach. "Babies will do that to you. Careful there," she said, with a smile.

She left the bedroom and Natasha sat down at the end of the bed, with a deep sigh. Her body hurt and she was hungry. She was missing something. She would never be pregnant and stop fitting her clothes. She was finding this all more disconcerting than she'd found the grueling journey here to be. Perhaps it was the permanence of it. Maybe it reminded her too much of what she was supposed to have. She consoled herself; Clint and Laura had almost a decade on her, right? She had time. Clint kept telling her how young she was. But what did that mean? She had a week before she officially began working at Shield, and it felt like a horrible dream where she had nothing to do and nothing to be.

Laura re-entered the room with pyjamas, setting them down on the dresser and glancing in Nat's direction. "I bet this is all a bit strange for you," she said.

Natasha nodded. "I think so," she replied, and pulled her legs up onto the bed so she was sitting cross-legged.

Laura tucked her dark hair behind her ears and hmm-ed softly, before taking a seat down on the desk chair. Natasha didn't look at her, although she knew it was impolite to not acknowledge someone. She wasn't sure what to do, or what to say. She was tired. Sleeping was all she could think of. Maybe she was just 'having a good wallow' as she'd heard an instructor once put being mopey and miserable.

"It's okay," said Laura, suddenly, and Natasha looked at her. Again, this was truly not her world. Natasha was waiting for evil to project itself out from every pore beneath Natasha's skin, but for whatever reason, it didn't. The sheets weren't bloody just because she was sitting on them. Laura wanted to reach out and touch Natasha, but it was all a bit wrong. She continued anyway, "Clint told me you had it rough."

Now Natasha really looked at her. "Yeah," she said, "well, that's no excuse." She turned her head away, her neck holding her head up, just barely, as the room filled again with a silence. "I hurt a lot of people."

Laura didn't say anything at first. The fact that Clint was planning to bring a master assassin into their home hadn't escaped her mind when he'd first told her about this little situation he'd gotten himself into, but it also hadn't plagued her. Now, with meeting Natasha, it didn't even cross her as important. She'd worried about the children. What would they do if something happened? If something went wrong? But again, Laura trusted her husband with more than just her life. He was careful, even more careful than she was. She could be impulsive, but Clint thought things through, and he was right about it. That, he'd been certain of when he called her on the phone for the first time. Now, she was worried about Natasha. Any hurt that came out of her would be an aftermath of something, not her. Laura had seen this before.

"People do things they regret. You were put in a position where you didn't have a choice. That's different."

Natasha shrugged her shoulders. "I still did those things," she said, weakly. Having another woman to speak to was strange. She wasn't sure if she wanted it, or not. Natasha was beginning to see how Clint was only an extension of Laura, and vice-versa.

"Yes," said Laura, her voice straining. "But the past doesn't change for anything, or anyone. You're only able to control what happens now. You got out, and you helped those girls, Nat—they wouldn't have gotten out if it weren't for you. That was a good thing that you did. You're capable of that. And Shield's going to show you more of that. It's not about erasing the damage you've done, but you can move on from it."

Clint walked into the room with a plate of food, steaming. Red meat, mashed potato, pees, and tomato sauce in the corner of the plate. He put the cutlery on the desk beside the plate, it clattering gently on the porcelain in front of Laura. He started backing towards the doorway.

Laura shot him a glance, and he retreated with his hands up. She looked back at Natasha, and grinned. Natasha smiled back.

"I'm not going to keep you," said Laura, standing up. She put the chair back into it's right place and also moved into the doorway, her hand on the doorknob. "You should eat." She looked down at the twenty-two-year-old and felt sappy. "If you need anything, anything at all," she stated, "I'll be down the hall. Just knock on the door and we'll look after it, all right?" she said, more of a statement than anything.

Natasha nodded, uncrossed her arms. The door shut, and she drew a shaky breath.

She walked over to the desk, sat down, and stabbed the meat with her fork. It tasted like nothing. She smiled. It was good. She devoured the food within five minutes and looked over at the bed-side table to a glass of water, already filled, waiting for her. She drunk from it, took the clothes from the top of the dresser, and walked into the bathroom. Natasha stripped off her jacket, and it landed on the tiles. She pulled off her hiking boots and put them in the sink, bending down to clean the muddied tiles with her sleeve. She sniffled and pulled off the long-sleeve, then her pants. She looked at herself in the floor-length mirror as she pulled off her singlet, now only in underwear she was stunned at her nakedness. She'd never taken herself in like this before.

In the three days she'd been at the apartment in Budapest, Natasha hadn't had the time to think about anything, nor was there a mirror in the house outside of the one in the bathroom, which she'd used to wash her face and brush her teeth and drink from in the middle of the night. Natasha had never seen herself from this angle before. She'd only ever looked down at herself. But now here she was, face-to-face with herself, with the realization that she wasn't somebody that she knew, nor had she ever been. She had work to do. She pulled off her underwear and put on Laura's borrowed pyjamas, washed her hands and face, and then walked to the bed that was waiting for her like never before. A bed without handcuffs.

It struck Natasha as she was falling asleep that night, and doing so without struggle, that Laura dressed and looked an awful lot like Melina. She didn't dream of anything that night.