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Unmade/Remade (Or, a late night in Minsk)
Natasha knows her scars are countless and they are littered over her body – some are clearly bullet holes, some are just badly healed scratches from an ill-placed nail in sparring. Training. Some are from surgery, some are from that one injection she never looks at, not for the memories of men standing over her, cackling as the needle had delved in.
But when he finds her for the first time in Minsk (but it's not the first, she knows later, and learns to stop minding), he leaves one that runs down her thigh. It's a deep wound, splitting the flesh of her leg open with the head of an arrow. Immediately, she knows from the aim that whoever-it-is is not trying to kill her, the wound only meant to incapacitate – alarmingly different from anyone else pursuing her across Europe, not after her life. But why is he there, and why hasn't he killed her, and why can't she run anymore and why–
As she feels her leg buckle under her and she falls, the assailant manages to catch up. Looking up and fully intending to intimidate her way out of it, her heart sinks. "Clint?"
"Natasha," he says by way of greeting, and her eyes narrow at him. Of course she knows him, the grey-blue gaze she is already accustomed to, the same trained eyes that'd watched her. Her 'friend', the spy in Belgium. The spy she'd trusted against better instincts, the one she'd let unmake her with memories and nightmares cried out into a dark room – the traitor, now, pacing in front of her with a bow and arrow.
Of course she should've trusted her instincts.
Clint walks around her and she cocks her gun, ready to lash out as soon as he makes contact with her skin. Her shoulders are tense and she remains still while he circles her, mechanical quiver on his back, bow held in his right hand. So he'd been lying about being right-handed. (Of course he had).
The silence absolutely chokes her, and she finally speaks. "You lied to me."
He pauses in his step, and he nods slowly after a moment. "So I did."
She tries to pick herself up, her leg searing with pain, but ignores that in favour of attempting escape. "I can't believe–"
"No, I rather think you did believe me, Nat."
She bristles and silences for another short repose from looking at him, the urge to woundstranglekill him coursing through her in her blood. Instincts all on alert, trying to remove the threat without bothering to listen to him. He's right, of course, and she doesn't like nor want to admit it. He'd saved her life in Athens, and suddenly the scar just at the curve of her waist makes sense. (An arrow. God, it'd been a fucking arrow and she had trusted him to heal her.)
He seems to know she understands, and he comes to stand in front of her for a moment. He meets her eyes and she knows that she's been defeated. Instinctively, she crushes her teeth together, as if she still keeps the cyanide in her mouth. The honour of suicide over murder by a traitor was preferable, surely? An amateur fighter, she knew, from countless sessions where she'd taught him– setting herself up for a grave, training a man who was no amateur after all.
His voice cuts through her stream of consciousness. "Natasha–"
Her head snaps up.
"Natasha," he says slowly, repeating it with a bit of interest. "I've been sent to kill you."
She snorts with laughter, and she matches his gaze. Evenly, calmly, not at all afraid – on the surface, at least, and she knows it's not something she can betray. "You don't say," she returns, training her eyes on the crest of an eagle on his chest. "Do you state the obvious even on the job, Barton?"
He cracks a smile, then, an audacious grin that has no place in an assassination. "Yes."
"Oh, I'm impressed," she snaps, and it's more honest than she wants to be. She is, that he's managed to conceal a backstory from her, and that he's caught her in the middle of an alleyway she can't call for help from.
"Good. One of my many aims in life," he returns, nocking another arrow.
"Play with your food some more, Barton, it might do tricks for you," she rolls her eyes, but swallows.
"Incentive to keep you alive, isn't it?" His eyes light up.
"I won't be giving you one. By all means," she spreads her arms, smiling. Saccharine. Keeping herself comfortable, even in front of the point if need be.
He smiles wider still and he tucked his hands behind his back to watch her closer. "No."
She stiffens, but the smile doesn't fade in the slightest on her face. The question, however, is why he is still smiling, when she knows that he smooths his face out to take a hit, alongside her. He'd been her friend. Comrade. She knows him but she obviously doesn't, standing on one leg at his absolute mercy. Why?
It doesn't occur to her that she had spoken that last word aloud until he responds, his voice smooth. "I'm not going to kill you."
She stares.
"Because I started to root for you," he says immediately, in a kind of vague explanation, but she isn't about to point that out. "Because I've been close enough to you to make a different call."
She snarls on instinct, however, and she doesn't think to stop even if he kills her for it. "Oh, joy. Contrary to whatever belief you've got, I don't want your pity, Barton. If you'd kindly fuck off."
"You don't want to die, Nat, I'd say this is a pretty damn good alternative," he hums, and she lunges for him because how dare he use that against her? She pulls on his tie and holds him down, knee to his back and ignoring the pain in the wound that's being strained. How dare he use that late-night conversation with him, stitching up the gash on her shoulder? The two lines parallel, white and healed on her back, reminder that she had trusted a killer that didn't deserve it.
"I've changed my mind," she eventually says, but she is clutching at straws and she knows it. She hates that she's been reduced to this, by someone like him. Underestimated as an amateur and if he isn't going to kill her, is this a capture? Torturing her for information? Every bit as good as her, but with a side. He wasn't a mercenary, not like she was.
"Too bad," he says. Wrenching out of her grasp while she's momentarily distracted, he flips them over and pins her with binds.
"You're not very good at being–" she spits out blood. "Threatening." Her patience is wearing thin, panic beginning to set in – just a shade of terror, just a shade of fear. Of course, she's lying through her teeth, chewing on the scar on the inside of her cheek.
He laughs and nods. "Not one of my strong points, I confess. I work and see better from a distance."
She knows. She remains silent, desperately trying to hold a strong fort if she's about to die. Who'd want to die in any kind of broken dishonour?
"You do good work, up close. Espionage. Hand-to-hand. Guns aren't bad, either, but we have no use for that. They don't call me the World's Greatest Marksman for nothing," he says, as if the silence she regards him with does not bother him in the slightest. "I thought that you would like toknow, however, that your teamwork skills might keep you alive."
She raises an eyebrow and she speaks without meaning to. "I would think you knew I work alone."
"Yeah, and we worked together for half a year, Tasha. Don't give me that shit," he rolls his eyes.
"Don't call me that."
"Tasha–"
"Do not call me that," she snarls again at him. He doesn't deserve that, not that name, not the name a friend would call her.
"I call you what I like," he retorts without missing a beat. "Because I know you." And you can't say the same, he doesn't say.
She laughs, cold and empty. "Congratulations," she says flatly, his weight now leaning heavily on her as she remains bound. She doesn't allow him that satisfaction, to tell him that she does know him, right down to the way he breathes when he sleeps, and because that would only be too easy for her. The proximity of living together would've killed them both. "Give the bird a prize."
He tugs on her bonds and she winces as the rope digs deep into her skin. The wound on her leg is still bleeding, splitting into small rivulets of warmth on her leg, red and sticky. "I'm trying to help you," he says, and it sounds like a last-ditch attempt as irritation finally bleeds into his voice. "Will you stop being a complete arse about it?"
"Help me," her voice today is raspy and incredulous, especially at that announcement. "You've got me pinned down, bleeding out, trying to help me?"
He lets some silence pass as they fight for dominance, and he finally wins as he gets them both kneeling. "I wouldn't have you pinned if you weren't struggling."
"And I wouldn't struggle if you weren't trying to kill me," she spits back, eyes alight even if she can't see him. "But I'm not."
"You're a shitty liar, Barton."
"Painfully honest," Clint seems to shrug, from the movement of his fingers on her neck, and he finally pushes her face down to the floor, hands on her neck to keep her down, his weight straddling her now. She almost smiles, recognising her mark of training on him. "So I'm telling the truth, aren't I?"
"Which part of that was supposed to be truth?" She turns her eyes on the bow, lying off to the side. It's sleek, she'll give him that – graceful, even. So terribly unlike him.
"Helping you. I know you like taking jobs, so–"
"I hate them," she returns, cutting him off. "I need them. There's a difference."
"More or less the same thing, sweetheart," he says dryly. Sadist, isn't he? Watching her take jobs and kill for six months. An agent that did nothing to stop the red gushing in her ledger, nothing to– hadn't he helped? Held them down while she tortured them. No more virtuous than herself.
"You don't have a point," she says by way of challenge. She fights to keep her voice strong. "You're just stalling because you can't put a bullet in my brain–"
"I do."
"So hurry up. I'm actually dying, you realise," she says, nodding to her leg, grating his hand against her neck.
"I'm offering you a job," he says, and Natasha pulls strength from her anger to struggle free, pointing the barrel of her gun at him, staggering in her stance as she tries to stabilise her bad leg to hold her weight.
"Fuck you," she says smoothly, finger on her trigger.
Clint's hands raise in surrender – but he isn't backing down, is he? He keeps his eyes matched to hers, and he seems unafraid. Why is he not threatened by the Glock barely inches from his forehead?
"It's not that kind of job," he replies, almost lazily.
"They're all the same kind," she says, the fury boiling quietly under her skin, steadying her aim and her resolve.
"It's not a kill–"
"So it's information. All the same, Barton–"
"They want you at SHIELD, alright?" He borderline shouts at her, to break her pattern and pull her back. She doesn't realise that she has been panting and wild before he grips her tightly by her shoulders, yanking her steady to look at him. "For the love of God, Natasha, listen to me. They've asked for you to come in to SHIELD."
It barely makes it past her mind before she blinks stiff and tense and confused as hell. "What?" She asks, not releasing her grip on her pistol.
He sighs and closes his eyes. "I said," he finally opens his eyes and lands his gaze on her. "They want you on our side."
"SHIELD?" She repeats after him. "Oh– Christ, you work for SHIELD, Clint?"
"How do you– Wait, you know them?" He raises an eyebrow.
"They've been after me?" She breathes, looking around, alarmed for a moment, forgetting completely about him as she let herself react to that. "The kill rate, Barton – we drop like flies, the organisation's inhumane with the killings. Guts scattered all over a flat in Paris, bullets so densely distributed the target looked like swiss cheese down in Indonesia."
Clint almost falters, and he seems surprised. He smooths it out, however, and he immediately tells her without word that she's facing a man who has no idea what he's doing – who he's working for. She turns to him again, and fingers the trigger. A bullet's not as clean as cyanide, but–
"I'd rather die."
He reacts instinctively. "Natasha–"
"You know better than I that they're going to destroy me," she says, flat, but her voice is softer and more scared than she's used to. "No fucking mercy in that place. Not for me."
"They've kept me safe," he protests. "You know–"
"Yes, I know," she sighs. "They protect you because you're clean."
"I'm not clean–"
"Because of them you're not. Trained with them, didn't you? But you were clean, Clint," she says. "They'll crush a defecting agent, 'specially from the KGB. No organisation takes them with flowers and a medal, that'd be madness."
"They owe me a favour, and I asked–" He pauses, and then he goes on. "I asked for you."
"Corruption in the agency?" She laughs humourlessly. "If it's as smooth as it pretends to be, it can't be done."
"They've sworn not to hurt you, and I take their word." He is too cocky, and he has already been on the edge of victory for minutes now. She's about to die from blood loss, before he can recruit her.
"Is that so?"
"Yes," he replies tightly. "It's a pretty damn big favour. Director's life."
"Then waste it on someone else," she retorts after a pause, pointing her gun out the window to watch for a team he must've brought as backup. "I'd rather not sell my soul for the pain it'll take to recover."
"No," he steps in front of her, stubborn. "You're sort of the only friend I've got, Tasha."
"Don't call me tha–"
"Please don't," he sighs, irritated. "Let's do it like this. Since I'm obviously not pointing my arrows at you–"
"You have."
He glares, an I-didn't-mean-it in his eyes, and she shrugs indifferently. "I'll heal you, then."
She brings her eyes up. "Don't bother, hero. I can clean my wounds."
"Then let me drag you kicking and screaming," he says, his voice heavy and tired. "Let them take you in, and I'll protect you from the big bad wolves."
"They won't take me."
"Prove me wrong, then," he tries to rest a hand on her shoulder. "All I'm asking for. Come and prove it, and I won't say a thing."
"Yeah, proof. At the expense of my life," she says, pulling out from under his hands to fold her arms.
"At the expensive of mine," he shrugs, pulling the bow onto his shoulder. She raises an eyebrow, looking at him, questioning.
"Let's say I didn't lie in Romania," he smiles, weak and tentative. Natasha swears she feels the scar on her back heat just a bit. "We're a unit now. I trust you."
Her eyes land on a long scar, the inside of his forearm. "And I," she admits slowly, raking her eyes over the keloid, remembering how he'd split it open for her. "You." It's as much as she can give him now. Too much and too little, but she knows he will understand. Her leg hurts – but she wants to trust him, and she maybe, not for the first time, she wants to survive. He reaches out and he finally seems like the person she'd trusted. The same guy who'd wormed his way into her life with persistence, and the one who'd patched her up on occasion. She thinks, maybe, she'd managed to change him just a bit.
So when he offers her his hand, she takes it.
Later, she lets him lie her down to stitch her – there, you'll get a new one, he says as he cuts the thread, his lips quirking up slightly as he does. She pulls her knee up so she can inspect her leg now, but he rests his hand on her knee to catch her attention. You have forty-one now, he tells her, pointing at the end of the wound. She raises an eyebrow, not understanding.
He laughs, even through the tension between them. Scars, Nat. I've counted.
She rests back and ends up breaking into a smile (Pervert, she scolds him, and shoves him gently, like nothing that's been wrong between them and maybe there isn't because they're okay), and she walks to the window as he talks to 'Phil' about bringing her in. Natasha doesn't want to listen to that, untrusting, pretending that she's just going to any new employer for the first time.
Clint offers her congratulations a few minutes later because Phil's said yes, leaning on the sill. She thanks him quietly and he says not to worry about it, that he owes her that much for saving his ass first. She laughs and says that was his fault anyway, and he nudges her. Now you sound like you, he says.
She shrugs it off and before she knows it he's curling up on the little bed with his back to her much, much later. He offers her a 'good night' in reassurance, then, and she pretends to ignore him for the time being. With the pain in her leg as a reminder, however, she gets curious when he falls asleep – because he's counted hers, and remade her with every new one he's cleaned and closed. Leaning over, she wonders how he did so, and traces eyes over raised skin and white lines on the expanse between his shoulder blades and down his arms. In the lights she'd insisted on, she began to tick them off.
(He has thirty-four, she finds. She never tells him.)