A/N: I could no longer wait for Marvel to come out with a Black Widow movie so that's why this fic came about, to sate my obsession with the perfection that is Clintasha. It'll start out canon and then go slightly AU towards the end. Consider it, "What Marvel should have done with the Clintasha story line." Hope you enjoy! (Also, free hot fresh fudgy yummy brownies for anyone who reviews *winkwink* )

NATASHA

Natasha could practically smell his fear.

She stood just on the outskirts of the dim circle of light provided by the solitary lamp on the table in Sergei Nobokov's study. She'd made him wait for hours, watching his panic grow, steadily rising to the boiling point until his white linen shirt was soaked with sweat and his pulse jumped at the side of his neck so fast that she wondered if he'd have a full on heart attack before she got the chance to interrogate him.

Of course the spider venom she had injected into a good portion of the wine in the cellar of his massive multi-million dollar mansion probably contributed to his blind fear as well. He had been rendered completely immobile by now, the offending wine glass long since fallen from his fingers and shattered on the floor. He was paralyzed from the neck down and by the time he realized he'd been poisoned…well…she'd already cut the power lines and scrambled his cell phone and any other electronics, leaving him sprawled in a pitiful, helpless heap in his study.

"I know someone's there!" Nobokov shrieked for the hundredth time in the past hour. "Show yourself, you bastard!"

Natasha chuckled, the first noise that she had made to alert him to her presence. Nobokov sucked in a startled breath but he couldn't move to see her as she stepped out of the shadows and into the pale, thin yellow light.

Softly, she started to chant in a sing-song voice as she stood behind him, right in his blind spot so he still couldn't see her. Not yet.

"The itsy bitsy spider climbed up the water spout."

Nobokov started to hyperventilate, mumbling prayers under his breath in Russian so rapidly that the words tumbled over each other and came out mostly unintelligible.

"Down came the rain and washed the spider out."

"Oh god," he sobbed. "Oh god, oh god, no."

"Out came the sun and dried up all the rain."

"Whatever you want, you can have it!" he yelled. "Money, weapons, information, anything, just please, don't hurt me. I know they sent you, I know they want me dead, just…please…don't do it."

Natasha took her time circling around to face him, trailing her fingers along the back of his chair, tapping her fingernails along the wood like spider feet. When she slid her fingers along his shoulder, he hiccupped in surprise and his breathing sped up even more. She marveled he hadn't passed out yet…

"Out came the sun," she said, looking him straight in the eye. "And dried up all the rain."

He squeezed his eyes shut as the song drew to a close, certain his life would end when the lyrics faded.

Natasha reached into the waistband of her jeans and pulled out a pistol, slowly screwing the silencer into place in front of Nobokov. His eyes flew open and he watched her every movement, his pupils blown wide as saucers. She set the muzzle of the gun against his kneecap and he whimpered.

"And the itsy bitsy spider crawled up the spout again."

"What do you want?" he said between gasping breaths. "Just tell me what you want. I don't even know what you want. Please…I…"

"Stop talking."

Nobokov snapped his mouth shut and his lips trembled as he struggled to regain some of his composure.

"Who else do you work with?" she asked, pressing the gun against his kneecap just a little bit more.

"I don't…I don't know who you're talking about."

"Don't play stupid, Nobokov," she chided, tilting her head to the side. She waved the gun around the room. "You bought this place by betraying your partner to HYDRA. It took coordination and contacts to pull that off. You're not an idiot. Well…to a point anyway."

"There's no one else," he said in a shaky voice. "It's just me. I sold the information to a man…"

"What did he look like?"

"I never saw his face. He sent instructions through text messages, I never met him."

"So you had no accomplices? You did all of this on your own?"

"Yes, that's exactly right."

Natasha brought the gun back to his kneecap with a jerk that made him wince in pain. "Wrong answer, Nobokov."

She pulled the trigger.

Nobokov screamed, firing off obscenities that Natasha hadn't ever heard before. His creativity was almost admirable.

"Tell me who you worked with," she said, placing the muzzle of the gun on his other kneecap.

"Alright! Alright, I'll tell you, please, just…don't shoot me again, please."

"Then say it already."

"A woman, she was my contact, but the only one I ever met, I swear to god, please you have to believe me."

Natasha raised an eyebrow. "I don't have to believe a damn word you say, not until you prove it. Names, Nobokov, now, or you'll be walking crooked for the rest of your sorry life."

"Galina," he spat out in a rush. "Galina Nemirovsky."

She squinted at him in suspicion. "The ballet dancer?"

"I don't know," he gulped. "I don't…maybe….I don't even know if that's her real name but it's the name she told me."

"Damn it," she muttered to herself. As soon as Chairman Tarasova heard about Nemirovsky, she knew where this would be headed and she didn't like it. She shook her head and returned her attention to Nobokov. Deal with one thing at a time.

"Was there any indication that she had any other connections? Did she mention anyone else to you?"

"I don't think…wait…she had a boyfriend."

Natasha waved impatiently. "Go on."

"I overheard her talking on the phone with him once, I never got his name."

She sighed. "Of course you didn't."

"Please…will you let me go now?"

She flicked her gaze back up to his face and squatted down in front of him. She propped her elbow on her knee, making sure the pistol was still in his line of sight which seemed to be doing a good job of making him terrified of her with very little effort on her part.

"Your partner is dead because of you," she said. "Was it worth it?"

"I thought it would be," he said in a whisper. "But it wasn't."

"Now that," she said, "is the right answer. If only you'd come to realize it earlier, before you ruined your life and turned your partner's children into orphans."

Natasha reached into her coat pocket and produced a small syringe of spider venom, the last one. Nobokov's heart was dangerously close to seizing up, especially with all the stress she'd put on him so far. It wouldn't take much more to push him over the edge.

He begged of course, the usual tearful pleas but Natasha had seen so many men face death at her hands that their words no longer had any effect on her. They were simply words pouring from the mouths of scared men who regretted the decisions that brought them to their tragic end and they thought that maybe she – a woman – would be an angel and have mercy on them if only they said the right thing and touched her heart.

But she was no angel of mercy and she certainly didn't feel like one as she pressed the needle into Nobokov's neck and emptied the syringe into his bloodstream. She didn't wait to watch him die. She'd seen that plenty of times too.

Natasha headed out of the room, leaving Nobokov gasping for air.

She returned everything to its rightful place, turned off the scrambler and fixed the phone lines again. The bright noonday sun streamed in through the floor to ceiling French windows lining one wall facing the ocean. She had to admit, despite the disgust she felt over Nobokov turning his partner in to HYDRA agents for a few million rubles, the man had taste. The house had to have at least twelve bedrooms, four stories, just off the ocean which, in the middle of Tunisia, must have cost a pretty penny since the beaches were always full to bursting. A black, white and gold Prussian rug graced the foyer floor. A glass chandelier, three tiers tall, hung from the arched cathedral style ceiling. There was even a Monet in the living room, placed in the most prominent spot in the house above the fireplace. Too bad it was a fake. She should know since it had taken the better part of a month scouting sweatshops to find the perfect replica that would satisfy Nobokov's casual art critic observations. He'd taken the bait, hook, line and sinker when she sold him the painting a few weeks ago, hoping that would be her ticket inside except he hadn't trusted her and refused to let her in. He decided to do things the hard way and she was all too obliging on that score.

It took all of thirty seconds to find the main security panel hidden behind the fake Monet – she couldn't help but think how disappointingly unoriginal Nobokov was - that controlled the hidden cameras she knew he had throughout the house. They were both KGB officers after all; she knew all the tricks he had up his sleeve. Natasha fried the panel with a well-placed bullet, effectively wiping out any record of their earlier encounter.

With business finished, Natasha began to leave then paused and backtracked a few steps. On the silky smooth mahogany table in the main entry hall sat a picture – Nobokov, a smiling woman and two little girls. Natasha stared at the picture as her heartbeat roared in her ears, her thoughts focused on the dead man in the study.

She slammed the picture face down on the table and hurried out of the house.

Blinding sunlight and waves of burning heat washed over her. She pulled a rolled up baseball cap from her back pocket, tucked her curls up as she tugged the cap low over her eyes and melted into the throng of humanity that swelled in the street. People, bleating animals, vehicles, bicycles and carts churned together, jostling and shoving. Despite the suffocating heat, Tunisia was the perfect place to disappear with its constant buzz of energy which, she supposed, was why Nobokov had chosen it. Turn traitor on his mother country of Russia, vanish into the Middle East and never be heard from again. It was a tad arid for her tastes though. She could manage the crowds just fine – some parts of Russia were even busier than this – but she didn't appreciate the sensation of her skin cracking like dry plaster.

As Natasha headed to the rendezvous point – a small side café a few blocks away – she called Chairman Tarasova.

"The snake has been skinned," she said.

"Excellent work as always, Romanoff," Tarasova said. "And your report?"

"An unidentified male employed him, no name, no face, nothing on that end."

"But….?"

She hesitated only a moment. There wasn't much point in delaying the inevitable. "He worked with Galina Nemirovsky."

"Is it really her or an alias?"

"No idea. He also mentioned a boyfriend but again, no name."

Tarasova sighed in annoyance. "I could have sworn Nobokov was a better agent than this. Alright, well, we'll put you on Nemirovsky for the time being until we can find out more."

"I thought I was laying low after this one."

"You're the best candidate to get close to Nemirovsky with your background."

Natasha gritted her teeth. She did not want this mission but she was quickly losing ground and she didn't like it. "Like hell I'm the only agent that fits the bill. I don't do these gigs, Tarasova, you know that."

"And you know you'd be the quickest and most natural fit that wouldn't raise any sort of suspicion. If Nemirovsky really did work with Nobokov, we can't take the risk of running her off. You're right, I do have another agent but he's out of commission. He took a shotgun blow to the shoulder last week and it'll take months to recover. We don't have that kind of time."

Natasha sighed and held the phone to her chest. It took every ounce of her willpower not to chuck the phone into the street and walk away, disappear for a few years until the whole thing blew over. Saying no to the KGB wasn't exactly an option though since it would earn her the black list – a place she definitely didn't want to be. Pretty soon, she would be faced with the grim reality of checkmate in about one or two moves here which did not make her happy in the slightest.

"I can't do the Bolshoi Theatre again," she said quietly. "I can't."

"Look, Natasha," Tarasova said, her usually brusque all-business voice lowered to a softer level. "I know it reminds you of…"

"Don't," she cut in. "I don't want to talk about it."

"You loved him, I get that, but refusing this assignment is not professional and…"

"Fine, I'll do the damn job. I said I don't want to talk about it and we're not going to. Now, is Turnegov still coming to pick me up or do I have to find a goat herder to get me out of here?"

She could practically hear the triumph in Tarasova's voice. "Yes, he's still coming. There will also be a change of clothes on the plane and I'll make arrangements for when you arrive in Russia. I'll get a handler on your case within the week. And Romanoff?"

"What?"

"Good luck," she said. "If I'd had any other options, I wouldn't put you through this again."

Natasha didn't answer and hung up instead, letting out a puff of air. The Bolshoi wouldn't be easy. She liked a challenge but that was the last place on earth she wanted to be. Depending on how long she had to stay in Moscow, the whole assignment could turn out to be a bust anyway. Keeping up wasn't an issue since she had to stay physically fit for her job anyway, but it had been a good long while since she had donned her ballet slippers. Performing in front of a crowd, on the stage…it brought back too many memories, memories that she would prefer had stayed buried where they belonged.

As promised, Turnegov was waiting at the rendezvous point, a little hole in the wall café with mismatched and chipped china cups and the bleating of goats drifting from somewhere behind the restaurant. He sat at an outdoor table, legs propped up on a chair, smoking a cigarette and clad from head to toe in black leather despite the glaring sun. When he spotted her, he dropped his cigarette into the dust, ground it in with his heel and came to join her. Without a word, they exchanged a firm, brief handshake. Turnegov inclined his head to the side in a silent indication to follow him and they walked, shoulder to shoulder, through the streets until the city began to thin. Turnegov's private jet was already on the tarmac, the black pavement shimmering in wave after wave of unrelenting heat.

Once she was on the plane, Natasha found a large white paper bag. Warily, she peered inside and pulled out a slim black dress, a pair of three inch heels, a sleek white mink coat and a small black clutch purse that fit in the palm of her hand yet contained at least half a dozen hidden pockets for her pistol, her widow's bite bracelets and whatever else she might need. A velvet jewelry box lay at the bottom with a matching set of diamond necklace and chandelier earrings. By the time this assignment was over, she'd be ready to kill for a pair of sweats and a ratty t-shirt.

Natasha arrived in Moscow in the hazy, blue-gray hours of the morning. She took a deep breath, adjusted her mink coat tighter around her shoulders, tipped her chin up and descended the stairs, fully in character for the mission. It didn't matter that most of Russia was probably still asleep, she had to play her part at all times. She would be in the public eye constantly for however long this mission lasted and a crack in her mask, even for a moment, could cost her dearly.

A dark limo was waiting on the edge of the runway for her. As she started towards it, trying to remain indifferent to the biting cold wind that nipped at her cheeks, a chauffeur in a crisp suit and tall shiny black boots stepped out of the car and opened the door for her. She slid into the backseat and immediately put her hands over the heating vent. Natasha waited until the car was in motion before she spoke.

"Morning, Ivan," she said with a smile.

The chauffeur glanced in the rearview mirror and she could tell he smiled slightly in return by the way his eyes crinkled at the corners.

"Good morning to you too, little one. How was your flight?"

"Exhausting, but uneventful. And you? How was your weekend?"

Ivan shrugged. "As you say, uneventful. However, I did find some sixteenth century books on old Russia at that antique store three blocks away from my apartment."

"You'll have to show me sometime, I'd love to see them."

Ivan laughed softly as he maneuvered onto the congested Russian highway. Secretly, Natasha was glad that she didn't have to drive, that she could rely on Ivan's skilled practice to get her safely anywhere she needed to go. She didn't mind the chaos – she thrived off of it in her job after all – but it was a rare experience to watch the chaos rather than react to it.

"It's going to be a long while before you get time off to visit me, little one," Ivan pointed out.

Natasha closed her eyes and leaned back against the seat. This was the only place she allowed herself to relax. She trusted Ivan like she trusted no one else and he took great pains to ensure that his limo was never bugged, no transmitters of any kind could monitor their conversations so she could speak as freely as she needed to. Natasha had been around the world countless times, knew every nook and dirty cranny of the lowliest, nastiest places but here, tucked into the warm soft seats of Ivan's limo, this was the one place where she ever felt truly safe and at peace. Her job didn't account for much of that anywhere else. Tarasova could bribe, threaten, cajole and order her around but she could never provide a place of safety like Ivan did.

"At least a couple years," she agreed. "Please tell me you'll visit me in that time though."

He nodded. "Of course I will. Any opportunity I get to see my little one is an opportunity I'll take."

Natasha traced one finger in lazy circles on the window. "You'll always call me that, won't you? No matter how old I get?"

"Until the day I die."

She leaned forward and squeezed his shoulder. "I'll hold you to that."

"I don't doubt it. I'm sure you have plenty of ways to ensure that I follow through on my promise. I just hope you keep the torture to a minimum," he teased.

Before she could protest, Ivan came to a stop outside of an elegant apartment building, all steel and white marble. It looked like Tarasova was pulling all the punches this round. She really wanted to get her hands on any traitors in the KGB and sniff them out before they did any more damage. As much as Tarasova rubbed her the wrong way, she certainly knew how to set her up in style. She could just make out the elaborate façade of the Bolshoi a few blocks down the road, a discreet amount of space yet not enough to distance her from the job either.

Ivan opened the car door for her and stood to the side, his back ramrod straight, his gaze focused on a far off distant spot, playing his part of impersonal chauffeur just as well as she played her part of diva ballerina. Natasha headed inside while Ivan retrieved her luggage from the trunk. As soon as she stepped across the threshold, she was nearly blinded by the lavish gold and white décor of the lobby. A chandelier of crystal butterflies hung from the ceiling. White velvet chairs and couches were scattered through the spacious room to allow privacy and still accommodate a healthy number of people. A garden of exotic white orchids stood front and center, an understated yet tasteful compliment to the expensive statement of the rest of the room.

Natasha approached the front desk, working on slipping back into her swaying dancer's walk. It had been a couple years but it felt like trying on a favorite pair of old and familiar gloves as she let her hips swing, her back straighten, her chin tip up. It felt…good. Right. She never realized how much she'd missed it…

The clerk shuffled through some papers, his head bent low, lost in his tasks. He looked a little young for the job, especially for such high end clients, but everyone had to start somewhere, she thought. Natasha tapped her fingers against the white marble countertop in a persistent, steady rhythm. The clerk glanced up briefly then back down to his papers and did a double take. He stared at her, wide-eyed.

"Miss…Madam…I…"

"It's Miss Romanoff," she supplied. "I believe you have my key?"

The clerk fumbled with the papers and they scattered to the floor. He stuttered profuse apologies that came out garbled and backwards in his haste and nervousness. After a minute of that, she gave an exaggerated and impatient sigh then gestured to the wall behind the clerk where the keys all hung on pegs.

"Behind you."

The clerk gave a sharp nod and finally took a breath for the first time since he'd seen her. "Right, of course."

He abandoned his desperate, futile efforts of cleaning up his papers now spread all over the desk and floor, snatched up her key, turned and smiled at her, much more composed this time.

"Welcome to Moscow, Miss. Romanoff. It's a pleasure to have you back. We would be happy to assist you in any way possible."

"I certainly hope so," she said and whisked off, leaving the poor boy gaping after her. The cool, aloof personas she was given on occasion were a bear to maintain but at the same time, they had their perks, especially when she left those poor souls behind, amazed, in awe of her charm and charisma. She didn't even have to do much of anything. The mere idea that she was a world renowned ballerina was enough to set people to staring. If she had to be completely honest with herself…she kind of liked the power just a little bit. It became exhausting after a while but she'd revel in it for as long as the thrill lasted. The novelty would wear off soon enough.

Her apartment – six stories up - didn't disappoint either. Tarasova must have called in some sizeable favors to pull this place off. The room was huge and red, deep, blood red everywhere – carpets, cushions, pillows, curtains. A gold Buddha fountain stood in the center of the room like a mountain amid the sea of red. A handful of monochrome watercolor paintings had been placed sparingly along the walls and, as she passed, she ran her fingers long the edges of each painting, checking for bugs or wires, more out of habit than anything else. One wall of her new apartment was made up entirely of windows that overlooked Moscow, a bird's eye view of her domain for the next couple of years.

Ivan entered the apartment then, pushing a cart loaded with various suitcases and bags. His eyebrows shot up but he maintained his cover and said nothing. Natasha smiled a little to herself. Ivan always liked to check out her new living arrangements whenever he got the chance which wasn't often given that she travelled so much. On those missions where he had to stay behind, for his safety as well as hers, she didn't tell him what her living arrangements were like. He worried more than enough already; there was no need to add to his concerns.

As he unloaded her cart, she caught him stealing quick glances around the apartment, taking it in. She couldn't help but notice the look of satisfaction in his eyes; she was being well taken care of and spoiled for all the risks she was taking. She suspected it was that protective, fatherly nature of his creeping in. He hid it so well for the most part but other times, he let her know how much he was still hoping that she switch to a regular nine-to-five job and settle down with a passel of fat, happy children.

"Are you in need of anything else?" he asked then added with a slight tone of amusement. "Miss Romanoff."

She shot him a haughty look, choosing to stay in character and play along. He would pay for his teasing.

"No, that will be all. I'm staying in for the rest of the evening so there's no need to have the car ready."

Ivan gave a sharp bow at the waist and when he straightened up again, there was a mixture of pride and that creeping worry in his eyes again but he covered for it well and winked then headed out to leave her in her new territory alone. She moved to the window again, taking in the impressive and majestic Bolshoi theatre in the distance, the last place she thought she'd ever see again.