Author's note: Short drabble after seeing a writing prompt on tumblr, the words "Give me one good reason not to kill you." So here you go, the story of when Clint made a different call.
"Give me one good reason not to kill you." Clint demanded again from the redhead. He'd been sent to kill her, but when he was staring down the arrow at her, there was something in her eyes that kept him from doing so.
He didn't know what made him stop. He'd been the best agent at SHIELD since he joined, finishing every mission without batting an eyelash.
So now he was in a dirty motel outside the place he'd found the mark, her watching him like a caged cat, but the look in her eyes, it was still there. He pulled out the file again, skimming through it once again. She could easily have put up a fight, and she had. One of the best he'd ever had. Her skills matched his, he could tell, but she had given up. She had let him win.
And now she just watched him with those green eyes. Clint narrowed his own blue ones as he looked up at her again. "Give me one good reason not to kill you." He said for the third time, not really expecting an answer as he looked down at her chart. "You've killed countless innocent people, were part of the Red Room, as well as part of the KGB, and you're considered a menace, better dead, not even worth converting to our side." He read off, looking up at her once again. "But yet you say nothing. I have to kill you, you do realize this. Give me one good reason not to." He was almost begging her now and he wasn't sure why.
She looked up at him without flinching. "There's not one." was the first thing he'd heard her say in English. Clint took in her image and realized that was the look in her eyes. The same one he'd seen in the mirror before he was taken to SHIELD by Coulson. He was an agent within a year and no longer trapped at the circus.
He had thought the circus was home after years of orphanages and foster homes with his brother. They had convinced him that he was more than just an asset, or a way to get a check, but eventually he'd found out it was a complete lie. And the look in her eyes had been mirrored in his own.
Standing to his feet, he put the file up and walked over, unhandcuffing her from the chair and just keeping it on her wrists. Clint pulled her forward as he remembered just how acutely guilty he'd felt. Desperate to get rid of the lies but unsure how. How he'd just broken and waited to be killed, despatched like the useless whelp he'd been told he was.
That was a good enough reason not to kill her for him.