I don't own The Avengers.

Promise

Clint stamped his feet and blew into his jacket. God, he hated Russia. It was freezing cold (seriously, who the hell sends someone to Russia in the middle of fucking December?) and the beer tasted like shit. He wasn't a fan of vodka, or any hard liquor for that matter, and apparently that was the only good drink the Russians could make. Even their coffee sucked.

He'd been searching for the Black Widow for a week now. Finally today he'd found her. He'd followed her for four hours before she'd gone back to her safe house. Now he was standing on the sidewalk trying to keep warm.

He sat down and wrapped his jacket tightly around him. Might as well try to get some sleep.

He was woken in the middle of the night by a door opening. It was her. He felt her eyes on him for a few seconds before he heard her footsteps going down the street. Even without looking at her, he knew she knew he was awake. And he knew she knew he was going to follow her.

He followed her down the street, around corners and up and down more streets, until she stopped in an alley. It was dark, and Clint could barely see her.

Now was the time. The perfect time to kill the Black Widow and get out of this frozen hell-hole excuse for a country. He pulled out a gun and pointed it at her head. She didn't flinch when he cocked it.

"Are you going to kill me?" she asked in a calm, soft voice.

"Yes," he replied after a moment of silence.

She turned around. He hadn't noticed before, when she had gone into the safe house, or when he'd been following her, but her face was black and blue with bruises and there was a cut above her eye. Now that he thought about it, she'd been limping, too. And he could see silver tear tracks running down her face.

"Promise?"

It's a trick, his mind told him. She's playing with you. But at the same time, he couldn't believe that it was. She looked too...broken.

He put the safety back on the gun, put the gun back in the secret pocket in his jacket, and held out his hand to her. "Come on."

She stared at his hand for a moment, then looked back up at his face.

"I won't hurt you."

She stared at him for a few seconds, then wrapped her arms around her middle and shook her head.

"Just come with me. I swear I'm not going to hurt you. I want to help."

She kept staring at him.

He sighed. "Fine." He dropped his hand to his side, turned, and began walking away. A few seconds later he felt her next to him. A small smile graced his lips.

They didn't talk on the way back to the safe house. When they got there he opened the door and gestures for her to go first. Then he closed the door behind her.

It wasn't much, just a small stove to cook food, a mini refrigerator, a table and two chairs, and a mattress and pile of blankets that he supposed could be called a bed.

"Sit down," he ordered softly. She obeyed, and sat in one of the rickety wooden chairs. He went to one of the two wooden cupboards and found a first aid kit. He pulled the other chair in front of her and sat in it.

"What's your name?" he asked softly as he began wiping blood away from her face.

"Natasha Romanoff," she responded. Her voice was small.

"We'll, Natasha Romanoff, the cut isn't deep, but head wounds always bleed a lot."

She chuckled softly. "I've been in firefights since I was 9. I know about head wounds."

He dropped his hand to his knees and leaned forward on his elbows. "Then why didn't you take care of it?" he asked.

She looked down at her hands. Her knuckles were bloody. "It didn't matter." Her voice was quiet.

"You were bleeding. You've obviously been in a fight. How could that not matter?"

Her eyes were full of tears when she looked back up at him. "I liked it."

He decided he hadn't heard her correctly, but inside he knew exactly what she meant. "You what?"

"I liked it," she said, a bit louder this time. "The pain. The blood. I liked it."

"Why?" he asked, but he knew the answer.

She looked back at her hands. "It doesn't let me forget," she whispered. "It doesn't let me forget them."

Forget them. He knew who she meant, he'd felt the same way. He'd lain awake at night thinking of the people he'd killed, hearing their voices, their screams. And he suddenly knew he could never kill this girl. No matter what the Council said.

"I know." She looked up at him. "I know what that's like. Not being able to forget. Feeling like you deserve the pain because it's what they felt. But the people you kill aren't innocent. They've killed people, too. They deserve to die."

She gave a harsh laugh that end up sounding more like a sob. "And that makes me a better person somehow? Because I hand out justice? By ripping apart families? By forcing children to grow up without parents?" In her hysteria her native accent covered her words.

He was silent for a minute or more, trying to find the words he needed. "No," he said finally. "It doesn't. But if the people are so horrible that they deserve to die, won't the children be better off without them?"

She was quiet, an occasional tear running down her face.

She was so broken, he could see it.

And then he knew. SHIELD needed her for her skills, and it would be a waste to kill her. But more than that, he needed her. He needed her to be okay. And she needed him, too.

"Join SHIELD," he blurted. "Be my partner." She whipped her head up to look at him. He continued. "They won't hurt you." He paused. "I won't let them."

She looked at him. "Promise?" she whispered.

He gave a small smile and held out his hand. "Promise."

She looked down at his hand. For a moment he thought she wouldn't take it. But then she lay her small hand in his and smiled back at him.

"Okay."

I think Natasha is a little OOC, sorry.

For anyone who reads The Sadness of Mistakes, I finally got over my writer's block (it took five months, but I'm over it) and I'm about halfway done with the next chapter.

If anyone's interested, I've started a multi-chapter Clint/Natasha story. Because of the issues with my first multi-chapter story, specifically the five-month break between chapters, I'm going to finish writing it first. So it might be a while before I start uploading, but I've already written the prologue and the first three chapters, and there are only going to be twelve chapters total.

Reviews are good, as usual.