So yeah, I watched the Avengers on Blu Ray and it gave me a strong urge for some Clintasha love. So I look up the tags on tumblr and I found, posted literally every day, Clintasha Week! You can look it up for yourself but the gist of it is that everyday you make some fan piece dedicated to a certain prompt. Considering that I found this literally the day before it started, I called it fate and wrote outlines for each day right on the spot. Hope you all enjoy :)

Clintasha Week Prompt #1

"Agent Barton was sent to kill me; he made a different call."

Tracking one Natalia Romanova had been no small task.

Small is taking down a Cuban drug ring using 12 arrows, a lighter, and some conveniently placed oil rigs. Fury gave him hell for that one.

But no, tracking down one of the Red Room's finest 'emphasis on the fine' proved to be a challenge rather infamously got passed around the S.H.I.E.L.D. HQ. It was some kind of morbid joke, to give the assignment to agents who showed up late to a meeting, stolen someone's sandwich from the communal cafeteria, or had accidentally gotten a third of their team killed in the last op because of arrogance. It was basically an excuse to keep irritating or cocky agents away for months at a time only to come back with a bruised ego and virtually no lead.

Odd how there never seemed to be any fatalities on this particular mission.

So, when after years of searching the file finally been given to Agent Clinton "Hawkeye" Barton, the man only looked at his newest handler in confusion,

"What did I do this time, Coleman?" He grumbled as he flipped through the rather thick manila folder labeled 'The Black Widow'.

"It's Coulson, Agent Barton," The man easily responded; almost as if they had had this conversation multiple times in the past, "And this is not punishment, this is an assignment just like any other."

Clint raised an eyebrow and the handler continued, "And this may or may not have anything to do your rejection of three team ops. And this may or may not be Director Fury's way of getting you, hypothetically speaking, to 'Grow the fuck up and learn to play nice with other fucking children for once."

"That would do it. Hypothetically speaking of course." The agent said as he rifled through the woman's impressive kill count. "Natalia Romanova. Girl has style; virtually no paper trail to follow, and identity hidden under countless aliases. 50 confirmed kills, possibly hundreds more off record, only consistent method of assassination seems to be either intravenously administered poison or strong electrical shock, more commonly found around the spine or neck region of the target." He flipped through assassination after assassination. He reached the personal information and was not surprised to see the page mostly blank.

"She's quick, clean, and practically a ghost on S.H.I.E.L.D's radars. And you expect me to find her?" He closed the file, already knowing that he would not learn anything he hadn't already heard about.

"Well you have some leeway this time," Coulson explained as he slid a series of photos in the other man's direction,

"The Widow was last seen at a train station in Burma two days ago. Agent Morris was on her trail before he was intercepted by Red Room operatives. Right before Morris's death, he placed a tracer on one of his attackers. You are expected to maintain radio silence until either the mission is compromised or the target had been being said, assuming that they are either following her or hunting her down as well, we have a destination for you. Hope you brushed up on your Thai."

Coulson had been correct in assuming that the woman was now on the top of the hit list from her former organization and the S.H.I.E.L.D. operatives on her trail had been the least of her worries. He had managed to trail the Widow upon arriving in Bangkok for about three days now, which was odd since according to her file she never stayed in one place for very long, especially the major cities. By the third day Clint realized that she was dodging through the city trying to lose the flunkies of her former organization. He wondered if she even knew that he was tailing her.

Eventually, the woman caught a snag in whatever she was planning; it would seem that the Widow had finally decided to move but had been stopped by customs, no doubt the Red Room had tampered with her passports. For the time being she was being held in a local Bangkok PD facility to be transferred to the russian embassy in the morning.

Barton had prepped his equipment on the top of a dingy apartment complex two streets away from the Police Department. True to S.H.I.E.L.D protocol, the sharpshooter scoured the area within a 100 yard radius to find the most advantageous spot to roost, claiming to be working on anything ranging from plumbing, electrical, or even pest control. A flimsy excuse but it was Bangkok; they only half heard his excuse anyways and did not seem to care as long as he was not a cop.

Snapping his rifle into place, the man eased down onto the grimy cement until he was laying flat on the ground. The neon sign that was once visible atop the complex had long since burned out and while the street below him was filled with lights and activity, he remained unseen.

Even with his time in the Special Forces, the familiarity of a gun never quite felt like his bow, and his hand itched to pull out his preferred weapon from the case slung over his shoulder. But he couldn't risk discovery; his bow was a bit too attached to his "Hawkeye" persona and he'd rather not be a target of the Red Room any time soon. He adjusted the stand keeping his rifle upright and looked into the scope. By his guess it was around 2:25 and any minute now the guards will be switching their rotations. If she was half as good as he was, and he pretty much thought that he was the shit, then she'd be hopping out of the left side of the building, closer to the alleyways and much more concealed from the main street, any minute-

'There.' Sure enough, a small blur seemed to materialize off the side of the building and slink away in the blink of an eye.

"You don't get to get away that easily." He mumbled as he took aim. Even through the sound and movement that was Bangkok, someone would be bound to recognize the sound of a .50 cal sniper rifle going off. And being so close to the local authorities, that could cause some potential complications. No, in a vein similar to his target, his ammunition consisted of darts laced with deadly neurotoxins. If injected through the bloodstream death would occur in under a minute.

He lined his shot to the deadly blur of red and held his breath.

'Hmph. Too-' His train of thought was cut off by the Widow's movements. What was once smooth strides suddenly became jerky. Clint flicked the custom fitted night vision on his scope to life and quickly saw the cause of the confusion; the Red Room had read her movements better than he had.

"Spoke too soon." The man muttered to himself as he watched the impending conflict. From what he could see the ex-spy had been outnumbered 6-to-1. But that did not seem to deter the assassin. From behind the scope of Clint's rifle, he watched in awe as the woman almost danced around her enemies; taking advantages of blind spots, propelling herself over trashcans and emergency ladders to gain the height advantage, and an almost encyclopedic knowledge of pressure points and other vulnerable points in the body.

To put it simply, poor bastards did not even have the chance to fire a single shot.

'Girl doesn't even look like she's out of breath.' Agent Barton almost regretted that he had to kill such a capable fighter. Almost. As soon as the last body hit the ground he took aim. Easily lining the redhead up with his cross-hairs he held his breath, angled the rifle up to compensate for the downward arc, and pulled the trigger. What happened next , would shape their relationship for years to come.

In the few seconds it took for the dart to reach it's destination just below the point of her ear, what he had believed would barely nick the jugular vein, the Widow stumbled. Over the body of one of her fallen comrades no less.

This would be Clint Barton's first career miss.

He tracked the dart to just barely flying past her ear, and in the blink of an eye, before he could reload the empty chamber, he saw the Widow grab a gun from the dead operative and face him down. From two streets away, three stories up, she aimed her gun right at him. Not around his general vicinity, but right at his scope, dead in the eye.

'She can't see me, there's no way.' He'd like to lie to himself but he knew better, read her file. The modified Super-Soldier serum flowed through her veins, improved her reflexes and senses just enough to be considered inhuman. The Widow backed away slowly, both slowly cocking their guns, contemplating their next move.

'She has penetrating power and speed, but I have range.' He thought as he just watched her movements, caught in a standoff he did not expect to be a part of. He also realized that if she could see him from up here, what's to say that she would not catch the movement of the much slower poison dart and fire off accordingly. He sighed, 'God dammit.'

In a move that surprised himself, he backed away from the edge of the building and collapsed his rifle. His squad leader back in the Special Forces always told him to pick his shots, and no result seemed to fall in his favor. He would want to see the woman's surprise for himself but he was not stupid, knew she would take the opportunity to run now and ask questions later. The walk out of the building and into his motel almost felt like the walk of shame after a disappointing one night stand. As he laid in bed, bottle of cheap bourbon clenched in one hand and a prototype arrowhead in the other, he contemplated the thoughts in the deepest corners of his mind.

Any vein would have done the trick. Her exposed arms and shoulders, the base of her neck, a plethora of available skin to pierce and his job would have been done and he'd be heading back to HQ with the infamous Black Widow's head on his kill count. But he chose the riskiest place, almost as if he had wanted to miss.

'Please.' He scoffed at his internal musings as he took another swig of the rat piss bourbon, 'It's the largest vein in the body, she would've gone into a seizure right in that alleyway. That way I could see the death and not just wait for it to show up on some late night news show.' Satisfied, with his internal reasoning, he rolled onto his side and prepared to rest for an hour before he called in Coulson and briefed him on his next location.

Little did he know that the hunt for the elusive Black Widow would be one of his longest manhunts to date. He was now under her radar and more often than not she would lead him to ambushes after ambushes that were originally meant for her. He honestly did not know if he wanted to kill her or give the damn mission to someone else. But 5 months later, after destroying what was left of the Red Room, when she was finally tired of running and fully prepared to make one last stand, he offered her a place in S.H.I.E.L.D. Her response? "Just hope you don't miss as often with your toy bow as you do with a gun."

So yeah, that happened. After a good three years on hiatus, I write this. *headdesk* sorry bout that folks. As usual, this is unedited, mostly because I think you're supposed to write this out the day of each prompt right? I was going to write each individual encounter up until the eventual recruitment, but then I realized that it would either be really repetitive or not fit for a quick week long prompt and should be it's own story. It was the first "meeting" that is the most important despite the length of the encounter; in my head the entire exchange after the confrontation between the Red Room agents only lasted a few seconds, half a minute tops. Hopefully I'll be able to improve my writing just a tiny bit after this week. See you all tomorrow!

P.S: If anyone was surprised by Natasha being injected with the super-serum, I based it off the DC wiki so I'm not totally sure how accurate that is. If I'm wrong about that, feel free to tell meh!

~G-R