Spy, Not a Solider
Summary:'You are a spy, not a solider – now you want to wade into a war. Why? What did Loki do to you?'
Disclaimer:I do not own The Avengers, Hawkeye or Black Widow.
A/N:I've done literal interpretations before - where I take a scene from a fandom and write around it. I quite like doing it because it allows a little bit of insight into something we've already seen. I like to know what characters are thinking in a precise moment – why they say what they do, do what they do etc. [I guess that is why my writing always involves so much detail.] So, nothing original here – but I hope you like it anyhow.
'You are a spy, not a solider - now you want to wade into a war,' he turned to look at her, questioning, his eyes burning bright with curiosity. He knew her. He knew her too well to let a comment like that slide. She was trained – trained for combat, for defence. He'd seen the way she fought – her determination, her accuracy, her force. He knew she could fight – fight to save her life, to save her partners life, the people around her. But that was not what she did - not at SHEILD. She wasn't front line. She didn't fight to save the day. No. She was a spy. She infiltrated, she went undercover, she interrogated and tortured until she got the information she was looking for. She fought, yes. But only in defence, only to save herself, only to give herself enough time to get the fuck out of there before all hell broke loose. But actively going into a battle - that wasn't her. And he knew it. He knew there was something wrong, some off, something strange about the whole situation. She had stared down a God, looking him in the eye and asked him to release her friend, her partner, the only family she knew. And he had gotten to her, used it against her. He knew her interrogation techniques. If she didn't pretend let herself be interrogated, she gave everything away to make it seem like she was co-operating. And now, now he wondered if maybe she had given a little too much away. 'Why? What did Loki do to you?'
She didn't move, didn't twitch. Only her eyes shot up, her green ones focusing intensely on his grey ones. Her face gave nothing away yet she still looked lost, confused, unsure. The brightness in her eyes, from when he'd made her smile, dulled as he could see a million and one answers flying through her head and the truth was locked away in one of them, somewhere. The truth he wanted to hear but she would never say.
'He didn't… I just…' she blinked absently at him, eyes flickering form side to side, her mind searching for words that escaped her. In frustration she looked away, stared down at her hands curled up in her lap.
But Clint noticed, he noticed the stuttering, the loss for words. It was the first sign he knew she had lost all sense of composure of herself since she'd faced him, faced Loki. Something had gotten to her. Something she felt she could fight alone but he could see, in her lost and vacant eyes, tense composure, adverted gaze, that inside she wanted him, wanted to tell him, explain, let him in. Desperately, she wanted to share her feelings, her thoughts, her dreams. She had always been open with him, open to a degree that they could call each other friends. Their whole lives, their whole existence, the reason they were not dead yet, was all based on trust, the fact that they trusted each other. Completely. But now, in this moment, he knew there was something she felt only she could trust herself with – and even then, he wasn't sure.
'Natasha…' he spoke softly, calming, friendly, trying to coax some kind of an answer from her. An answer he knew she didn't want to say but that he wanted to hear, needed to hear. She'd saved him. Pulled him out of the depths of his own subconsciousness and brought him back to solid ground. She built him back together, put the piece of his broken mind back together and guided him through the light. She wanted to save him, she needed to save him and he knew it wasn't to do with any debt she thought she owed him. That debt was settled. Settled countless times over in Moscow, London, San Antonio, Budapest. She'd save his life more times that he knew. He'd saved her once, spared her life once, put his life on the line for hers… once. But she pulled him out of buildings, pushed him out of the line of fire, wounded herself so that he could live. And now, pulled him out of the shackles of him own mind that Loki had taken over. This was more than she'd ever owed him. She saved him for a reason.
Finally she spoke, her voice came out stronger, more firm that it should have. She faced forward, eyes focusing hard on the solid grey, metallic walls of the room. He could tell she was trying to convince him, even convince herself, that this was why she'd saved him. 'I've been compromised.' She finally turned back to him and he could see, within her, all the strength she gathered just to say, 'I've got red on my ledger – I'd like to wipe it out.'
The ledger, the record, SHIELD's record - the one thing that could tie either of them to anything. She'd killed before, killed more times that she'd care to remember. But SHIELD, SHIELD knew how many times. SHIELD knew who, where and when it all happened. That was the ledger, that was the book, the file, the record of every kill. A record marked with a clear red stamp of eliminated if that was what she'd done. And she'd done it many times. Not just to targets but to the people around. To the bodyguard, to the girlfriend, to the bystander. Dead, killed, murdered by her hands. And while she tried to forget, oh did he know she tried to forget, SHIELD never did. But that wasn't being compromised. That wasn't what Loki was holding against her. That couldn't be used against her because she knew, she knew of all the damage she had done, all the lives she'd taken and all the worlds she'd destroyed. Yes, she might have tried to forget, but she still knew. There was something else. There had to be something else, something else that she felt threatened by. Something else she felt that could be taken away, used against her.
They sat, momentarily, quite in the dimness of the SHIELD recovery room. They sat next to each other, both feeding off of each other silence. Feeling the closeness, the gap, the space between them. They were close, arms touching, thighs touching, ever so lightly against each other. And their hands, both placed on their knee, methodically, so close yet so far away. He wanted to reach out, reach out grasp her hand and hold it in his. He wanted to turn her towards him and bring her closer - into a hug, a kiss. Something light, something reassuring – anything to reassure her that he was there, sitting next to her, waiting for her to share, waiting for her to bare her soul. But he knew, he knew her better than that. He knew she could never, would never, not here maybe, definitely not here, but maybe, somehow, someday explain to him, tell him exactly what she is holding up inside, what is eating away at her, what tortures her past had to endure for her to become the way she was now.