Prologue: Russian Roulette
Her voice crinkles like firewood on the floor of some deserted inn. The floorboards are shrouded by a carpet, holier than any devout priest. "Play with me" she murmurs in English, her accent that strange serum of royalty and rough Russian. There's something childlike in her tone that hints at a tantrum if she does not get her way. "Play with me, or I play with you".
"Now, darlin', who is to say that we can't do both?" Clint Barton mutters, eyes shadowed away from her's. He sits cross legged, resting his back against the metallic base of the bed.
"Don't push your luck" she answers, for a moment letting her face contort into a streak of distrust. "Or I will break your nose this time".
Her threat allows Clint to pull himself out of the situation for a moment and recollect the contents of the last few hours. The two windows in the room are shattered, he recalls shoving her up against one and then her doing the same in a mocking imitation later. There was a chair in the room earlier, but it is no more than splinters after she broke it over the back of his knee caps. In response, he'd left heavy bruises across her forearms; giant purple finger prints staining across her skin cells. Some memories were hazier than others. He can't recall how he got into this room at the moment or whose boot left that satisfying imprint on the walls. Clint recalls her hands grasping at his throat and the micro expression of uncertainty that flickered across her face when she felt his Adam's apple bob.
They'd marked each other up fairly well, both looking like they'd been mugged or experienced a volatile bout of rough sex. Clint looks at the red streaks of blood his short nails had drawn out of her shoulders and feels tender bruise she left on his collarbone; he certainly wouldn't mind the latter. He can imagine pressing her hips tight to dusty bricks, grinding himself between the ridges of her ass, letting his teeth dig into the scrap of flesh behind her ear- but he won't because he didn't become a highly feared assassin by getting hard on the job.
Clint brushes aside any bursts of imagination that his subconscious has concocted and lets himself sink into the environment once more.
"If it's just a fight…neither of us will ever win. We're both evenly matched, I'll concede to that. I'm faster but you're stronger, and for some peculiar reason, I think I'd feel a bit of guilt at having you die slowly."
He snorted a little bit, flexing the tendons in his arm before crossing them over his chest. "What's your game, Romanova?" he asks her.
Agent Barton didn't come to SHIELD nor take on this mission with the thought that he was invincible. He's well aware of his mortality and the odds that he won't return every time he takes on a new assignment. It's something he's come to accept. When he was thirteen and still in the circus, the lion tamer's infant son got sick. Really sick. He coughed his way to death over the period of a few nights and Clint had to listen to it as he fell asleep because all the children shared a room. He'd gotten over the concept of a cold corpse. Even if it was his death, he was ready for it. All his life had done was prepare him for that moment.
She reaches under the mattress of the bed, and his body instinctively shifts. There's a look of amusement for a brief moment in her eyes but it passes as she focuses on the black revolver she's retrieved. There's a little spike of adrenaline that he feels jolt up from the base of his spine. Despite his lifestyle, he's always been childish when it comes to competition.
"Russian Roulette" she answers the question that he didn't ask. Her finger strokes the trigger like it's a pussy cat. Romanova has a soft spot for weapons, Clint recalls from her file. The woman was bred to be a WMD. It's quite easy to imagine how she might feel kinship with other things whose purpose was to bloody and decimate.
"That's a bit of a cliché" He grins at her, channeling his spirit-bastard. "Thought you were a bit more creative than that, sweetheart"
"So are pet names" she sharply responds, placing the chamber against her temple. She spins the cylinder before squeezing the trigger. It's a blank but Clint expected as much. What's the fun of any game if it ends in the first attempt?
"Call it visualizing a goal" he retorted as she tosses the revolver towards him. Clint catches it easily as a look of perhaps, intrigue, crosses her face. He's a cocky little flirt if there ever was one and he really can't help himself as his mouth continues to move. Clint's head rests back against the homely sheets and he's practically pouting at her as he places the gun underneath his chin. "This one's for you, babe" he smirks, akin to a rock star doing what he does best. His fingers twitch subtly. "Aw," he rubs his knuckles over his stubble, "Looks like you won't be getting your show just yet."
There's a look of amusement on her face that's quickly suffocated by frost. The titan-haired woman is silent for a moment, musing before a Cheshire grin curls across her face. (This is the point where he realizes he might bear a bit of affection for his fellow assassin). "Clearly your file on me isn't as well researched as it could be. It's a quite obvious fact that I prefer a self performance; the sort where I remove your testicles with a nail file and make you eat them". Her voice is practically a purr and Clint gulps-he can't tell you whether it's out of fear or desire-.
She removes the gun from his grasp easily and lets it trail up the fabric of her thin black dress. One of the meager straps has crumpled down the side but she's uncaring. She seems to be almost oblivious to the way she subtly lets it graze the valley between her breasts but Clint knows better, she's called the Black Widow for good reason. She doesn't do a damn thing without purpose. She lifts the gun up to her lips; let the sharp redness envelope the metal. Her eyes meet his with an elfish glimmer before she pulls the trigger with one of her French manicured figures.
"Seems like you're a bit eager to put on a show" Clint mumbles before retrieving the weapon from between her lips. He swears she's mocking him and he gets his turn over with quickly, a nervous anxiety though not from the potentially fatal situation, swelling in the base of his stomach.
"Used to be a ballerina in older days" she murmurs and he grasps at a moment of humanity from her. "That's long gone though…" She takes the gun from him and prepares for the next shot to be delivered. As she lifts it to the center of her skull, something clenches in Clint's chest. Somehow he knows that when the trigger gets pulled, it will release a bullet not a blank. And for the first time in nearly ten years, he didn't want someone to die. She's got the barrel pressing into her flesh and he doesn't even realize he's tackled her until the both of them are horizontal.
He stumbles over his words feverishly, thoughts tripping over one another, "Natalia" he says her name for the first time. Despite her position, the barrel is still flat against her forehead. "Don't".
Clint Barton is no fool. He may be an impulsive jack-ass but he's more than that. He wouldn't have been recruited for just that. So he knows what he's asking her to do when those words escape him. He's asking her to feel self pity and he knows that neither of them deserves an ounce of sympathy. She knows she's not a good person and he won't disagree with her but there's a look in his eyes, one that he feels is hiding in the pores of her skin, that's suggesting that perhaps that doesn't matter.
"Game over" she whispers, her accent grittier than he's heard it all night. He doesn't want to watch this and his eyes instinctively squeeze shut.
Nothing's more honest than a gunshot, Clint thinks.
When he opens his eyes, there is a hole in the wall and a human being beneath them. There's a childish bit of giddiness in his voice as he rumbles "Looks like I won. Does this mean I get a prize?"
"You can call me Natasha."