Author's Note: I know that it has been far too long since my last story post, and I am sorry that it has taken so long. This occurs immediately after and is directly related to the events after my story "The Invasion." Please enjoy! -BT
The Counter-Offensive
One month after Budapest…
SHIELD HQ…
When Clint finally located Natasha, he was surprised to find her where he did. He had gotten back to base later than he had expected, two days and two hours later, and instead of being there to greet him as he came in, Natasha, who was still primarily wheelchair-bound, was sitting in an otherwise unoccupied office full of cubicles poring over a stack of files, papers spread around the desk.
When he walked up behind her, she didn't look up, didn't even move. She just commented in a quiet, even tone, "You're late."
No one else on the planet would have been able to identify the disappointment in this simple statement, but he knew her better. He'd seen her bored many times, and, although she was not inclined to it, there had been a couple of times that he had seen her lonely. For her, the first condition would exacerbate the second, and Clint felt a twinge of guilt come with the realization that she had been both. He hadn't had a lot of opportunities to check in with her while he had been on his recon mission, and the truth was he hadn't taken more than a couple of the chance he had found, telling himself that she wouldn't appreciate it if he acted like an over-protective parent.
The truth was that he still found it hard to talk to her after Budapest. It turned out that it was difficult to focus on a conversation when the person you were speaking to made it hard to breath just by standing too close, and for the first week after the returned from Budapest, 'too close' had apparently been defined as 'in the same room.' He'd believed that if he had spoken to her for too long, she'd realize that something had changed, but now he realized that staying away had been a much bigger mistake.
He pulled a chair from another desk and sat down next to her. She did not look up.
"I know," he said apologetically. "I'm really sorry. It couldn't be helped, and, believe me, I tried. This job isn't as fun without you."
He waited to see if she would accept this verbal olive branch, and he was both pleased and relieved to see some of the tension leave her posture as she dropped her pen and rested her head on her hand, regarding
The shadows he saw under her eyes made him wonder if there wasn't something else bothering her that he had yet to diagnose.
Forgetting his own embargo on proximity, he leaned in closer to her. "Hey, are you okay?"
"Yeah, I'm fine," she said.
"How's the leg?"
"Still broken, but healing nicely. It can take a bit of weight now, if only briefly. If it weren't for the ribs, I'd be able to use crutches by now."
"How are the ribs?"
"Also still healing nicely, even if they do ache."
He hesitated for just a second before asking, "And the head?"
She groaned in frustration, and rubbed at the edge of her hairline. "The scar's going to be visible for a while. I'll go through a lot of concealer before it fades."
"You sure you're all right?"
"Of course. How come?"
"You look... weary."
She sighed and leaned back pressing the heels of her palms into her eyes. "It's been a long day," she confessed. "And, God, being cooped up here is awful. Honestly, I could use a fix." She held out an open hand to him, and gave him a look of hopeful anticipation.
He returned it with a look of confusion. "What?"
Her look of anticipation fell into one of incredulity. "Oh, don't give me that. You were on assignment without me, and I know you were in Germany."
His mask of confusion cracked, and he grinned. He slid his hand into his pack, pulled out a box of high-quality extra-dark gourmet chocolates, and placed them into her still-waiting hand.
"I had complete faith in you," she declared, and it was clear that any former tension between them had been forgotten. She held the box to her for a moment as though she had just been handed life-saving medicine before she flipped open a knife from that she seemed to have pulled from thin air and cut open the plastic wrapping. After selecting one, she took a bite. "You are the perfect partner, and I don't deserve you," she announced between savoring her first bite and taking her second. After she finished the entire first chocolate, she continued, "but despite my utter unworthiness, if that blond chick keeps trying to steal you while I'm on light-duty, I swear I will knee-cap the bitch."
"Aw, Nat, that's the nicest 'thank you' I've ever received, but which blonde are you talking about? Tyler?"
"Oh, no, not Tyler. I like her, and besides, she's still got Smith. I'm talking about the one who was partnered with Morales before Morales got pregnant and decided to retire to the ranks of the pencil-pushers. I'll remember her name in a minute, but rumor has it that she's been less-than-subtly suggesting that she be partnered with you while I'm on light-duty with an option to replace me if 'things work out.' I'm not entirely sure what she means by that, but if my body is found next to a vial of cyanide and a note saying 'I can't go on,' I don't care if it looks like my handwriting, I want you to look upon it with deep suspicion."
"Poor Nat. It sounds like you've fallen into the hell that is office politics."
"You know, this is one of the few offices where that means I have to keep an eye on my food and drink during meals."
"You've been eating in the mess?" he asked with mild surprise.
She raised an eyebrow. "Well, seeing as I've gained no cooking skills with my injuries and even I have a hard time reaching my own cereal with a broken leg and a broken rib, I've been driven to extremes. I'd have asked someone to pick-up food for me while they're out, but, of course, this would be the time when practically everyone with whom I am on speaking terms is out on assignment."
Clint winced and then covered the reaction with a look of sympathy. He should have known that she would notice the complete absence of her nearest and dearest amongst the field agents at HQ when he recruited them into the Russian Offensive. When a mole had been discovered in the ranks of SHIELD's agents, placed there to take out Natasha by the very people that had turned her into the highly effective killer, they had been fairly certain that there had been no others, but Clint wasn't willing to take any chances when picking agents for the counter attack. Only the most trusted agents, especially those who had any friendship with Natasha, were brought on board for this assignment, and it was his good luck that she had taken this sudden absence of her own personal connections as her own bad luck. Suspicious Natasha was a relentless Natasha, and Fury had remained adamant about Natasha's complete exclusion from the Russian Offensive. Clint remained unconvinced that she should be left so entirely out of the loop, still not even aware of the fact that she had ever been in any danger from that quarter, but Clint grudgingly obeyed the order.
"Well, it sounds as though you are in desperate need of some real food," he said, steering the conversation away from activities that surrounded forbidden subjects. He stood up and pulled her wheelchair away from the desk. "Come on. We're going out. I'll talk about anything but work, and I'll eat anything but bratwurst. I have had too much of both."
Two months after Budapest...
SHEILD HQ...
When Clint got back to HQ from his latest trip, he found Natasha sitting at her desk with one of the young translators discussing a report in rapid-fire Russian. The young man she was speaking to was dark-haired and bearded, but despite this, he looked little older than 16 or 17 years old. When Clint had first been introduced to Alexi Richards whose mother was Russian and father British, it had not really surprised him to learn that he had just turned nineteen in May. It did surprise him a little to see Natasha give him a warm smile and a friendly pat on the arm, a level of affection that she bestowed on very few.
Alexi returned the smile with a bright one of his own before he gathered up the report into his folder, stood, and said his farewell. On his way out he caught sight of Clint and gave him a friendly nod as he passed the field agent, a gesture that Clint returned.
When he turned back toward his partner he saw her toss down her pen and lean back in her chair with a sigh, stretching her arms above her head.
When Clint walked over and took the recently vacated chair next to her, Natasha's entire demeanor changed.
"You're back! I didn't expect you until tomorrow! Did everything go well?"
"Just fine," he assured her. "You know, you might want to be careful. That boy looks like he's starting to get a crush on you," he teased.
"Oh, I am most definitely not his type," she insisted with an amused smile.
"Oh? What makes you so sure?"
"Because Agent Torres is his type, and I believe he's hoping to find out soon if Agent Torres thinks so too."
"Javier Torres? Ah, you really aren't his type," Clint agreed. "Well, now is his chance to find out. I just got back with Torres."
"Really? I haven't seen Javi since Christmas! How is he doing? You didn't tell me what you were going to do before you left. What have you guys been up to?"
"I'm afraid I can't talk about it. It's a work in progress and not to be discussed outside of the unit."
Natasha's eyebrows rose in surprise, but she didn't press the issue.
"I see you've gotten your cast off," he said, changing the subject.
"Yep," she agreed rotating her ankle. "I've got to be careful with it for a while, but it's almost good as new. In fact, I start my next assignment in less than a week!"
Clint sat up sharply. "You're back on active duty already?"
"Well, I'm not sure you could call it that. I'm apparently going to be babysitting an infantile billionaire with some very flashy toys."
"Who?"
"Tony Stark, both him and his flying metal suit. I start in the legal department of Stark Industries next Tuesday."
"You sound so thrilled."
She rolled her eyes. "I anticipate much leering considering his reputation. You should see the wardrobe I've been given. I'll just have to grind my teeth and bear it."
"Grit your teeth," he corrected.
"Whatever."
"Coulson and I don't leave until the Friday after that, so this time I'll be seeing you off."
"Whatever you're doing, I'm sure it'll be more interesting that what I'm doing."
Two months and two weeks after Budapest...
The Middle of Nowhere, Russia…
When the black bag was ripped from his head, Clint squinted in the light. His ribcage felt like it was on fire, and blood dripped from the cut in his lip. Still, nothing about his face betrayed his discomfort.
When his eyes adjusted to the light he looked up to see five men standing over him. When he recognized the man to just in front of him, Clint clinched his fists and strained against the ropes that bound his wrists together. This man he recognized not from his most recent Intel, but from the years-old dossier that had been complied on the Black Widow back when she had been brought into SHIELD's fold. Clint's hatred of this particular individual was not the work of a few months but of several years.
"You know," the man said in Russian, "normally, I would start by interviewing you, asking you who you are and why you are here, but seeing as I already know the answers to those questions, we can skip that step. I suppose we both know that SHIELD is not so tough to infiltrate as it would like to think, and now you've been sent to take care of the problem. What I would like to know is why you arrived alone. Where is my pretty little Natasha? Is she still feeling under the weather after her little mishap in Hungary?"
As far as Clint was concerned, that statement entitled the man to no mercy what so ever. "She's doing much better, thanks for asking," Clint spat back. "She's on vacation at the moment and really couldn't be troubled to deal with you, but your operation here was a mess that I was happy to clean up."
Clint had meant the statement to irritate, and he was a victim of his own success when he was backhanded across the face. He reeled for a moment and then felt the sting of sweat that dripped into the newly opened gash next to his right eye. Hawkeye straightened in his seat, and glared up at the man with loathing.
"Well, it's too bad you didn't do a better job because when I am through with you here, I believe I will pay Natasha Romanoff a visit personally. I look forward to the reunion. I'm sure we can make quite the night of it. In fact, as I don't really have much to ask you, we might as well skip to the last step of our brief acquaintance." The man pulled out his side arm and pressed the barrel of the gun to Clint's forehead. "Goodbye, Agent Barton."
Suddenly, there was the unmistakable sound of a not-so-distant explosion. Less than five seconds later, four gunshots had gone off in rapid succession, and Clint was standing with his interrogator's pistol pointed at the man's head as the bodies of the other men in the room dropped to the floor.
"I don't think I'm ready to leave just yet," Clint said before bringing the butt of the gun down on the man's head. Five minutes later, Clint walked out of the interrogation room with his enemies' weapons and one man hog-tied and left to lie amongst the corpuses of his comrades.
"Don't worry," Clint called back over his shoulder. "I'll be back for you as soon as we wrap up out here. Oh, by the way, I don't suppose you'd tell me which way to the records room?"
In the end, Clint found his own way to the records room. After leaving the interrogation room, he had joined the rest of his team at the gaping hole that used to be the compound's front gate. Coulson handed him his bow and quiver, and within thirty minutes, they had completely cleared the compound.
After their final sweep of the place, Clint and Inglehart found Coulson with Javier Torres and Rose Johnson in a room filled with file cabinets and a wall covered in shelves of VHS tapes. Their eyes were arrested by the screen that they were watching, and Rose's face was pale, verging on the green, Javier's eyes were wide with horror, and even Coulson looked uneasy. Clint moved around to see the screen and quickly recognized the face of a very young Natasha Romanoff in the camera's focus. Thirty seconds later, Coulson turned off the television screen, just as Rose Johnson left the room in a great hurry with her hand clamped over her mouth. He ejected the tape and replaced it in its case.
"Now I get why she doesn't like doctors," Inglehart said in a carefully neutral tone. "How old do you think she was there?"
"Eleven years and three months," Javier said in a matter-of-fact tone. When everyone turned to look at him, he pointed to the case in Coulson's hand. "It has her name and age written on the edge."
Suddenly, everyone's eyes were drawn inexorably to the wall of tapes.
"I want you to pack up everything you can find," Coulson commanded. "All the files, videos, computers- everything. When you're done, wipe this place off the face of the earth."
Two months, two weeks, and three days after Budapest...
SHIELD HQ...
Natasha knocked on the door the door to Clint's rooms as she opened it, not waiting for him to answer.
"Hey, I just heard that you were back! Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to..." She had come up short when she walked in and realized her partner was pulling off his shirt. When, much to her consternation, she felt herself flush, she tried to step back out while muttering an apology, but the apology died on her lips when her brain finally registered the details of what she was seeing. Dark, angry bruises stained the skin on his chest, stomach, and back, and even to Natasha who was no stranger to bruises, the amount of damage was extreme. When he turned to look at her, she could see the cut in his lip and the cut along his cheekbone that was being held closed with a butterfly bandage.
Abandoning her attempt to exit, she made her way back into the room and moved in closer to better examine the rainbow of splotches that spread across her partner's torso, and the view took her breath away.
"God, Clint, what the hell happened to you?" Without really thinking about it, Natasha reached out and ran her fingertips over a particularly harsh bruise on his side, but when she heard his intake of breath at the contact, she pulled her hand away quickly.
"Sorry," she said, closing the hand into a fist and pressing it to her side. "Seriously, are you all right?" she demanded, finally tearing her gaze away from his injuries to look him in the face, and the intense expression with which he regarded her took her aback.
"Clint," she said carefully. "What's wrong? Tell me what happened."
The minute before he answered seemed to last far longer than its allotted 60 seconds. She watched as he worked through some kind of internal debate before he sighed and, breaking eye contact, he ran his fingers through his hair.
"I'm not supposed to tell you about the op," he told her.
Recognizing this statement for a prelude rather than a refusal, she stood patiently waiting for him to continue.
"Fury said it was not to leave the assault team," he said moving past her to retrieve his phone from the small kitchen table, "but I think you have the right to know."
He tapped the screen of the phone, flipping through the options before he handed it to her with a grim look on his face.
Hesitantly, she took the device and peered down at the screen to see a picture of a man with an arrow sticking out of his neck. She glanced back up at Clint in confusion. He was clearly waiting for a reaction, and she looked back down at the phone, really focusing on the face of the dead man slumped against a wall his shirt drenched in his own blood. Pixelated though the picture was, it did not take Natasha long to identify the man she was seeing, and when she did, she nearly dropped the phone.
She looked back up at Clint in alarm, unable to form words, much less a sentence, but he saved her the trouble.
"Three days ago, a team infiltrated a concealed compound in Siberia. It was a complete wet job. Within two hours, there was no one left alive. Now, there is nothing left of the structure but rubble."
"You did this?" she asked despite the obvious. She was suddenly finding it difficult to breath. "Why?"
"After... after what happened in Budapest, we realized that there was a mole in SHIELD. He was sent to eliminate you." Natasha listened in increasing astonishment as her partner told her how her past had finally caught up with her when her former keepers had decided to tie up loose ends and how it was a liability that could not go unaddressed. The whole time, she felt panic rising.
"You did this for me? I don't understand. Why are you telling me this if I don't have the clearance?"
"You deserve to know," he said firmly. "You deserve to know- you need to know- that it's all gone, razed to the ground. You ought to know that it is over. Forever."
"This," she suddenly realized, "this is what you've been keeping from me. You and Coulson, I knew there was something..." To her mortification, she was shaking, and Clint caught up her hands to keep the phone from tumbling to the floor.
"I can't-" she stammered.
"Can't what?" he asked, placing a hand on her arm. She jumped like she had been burned. "Natasha, what's wrong?"
"This is too much! I can't repay this! I will never be able to-" She cut off as her voice cracked, and the rising panic threatened to overwhelm her.
There were so many conflicting emotions fighting for dominance, she couldn't seem to make any sense of them or keep anything in check. She'd known, deep down, that there had been something he'd been keeping back, but she was confused to find that her chief emotion on discovering the truth was disappointment, as though she had been unconsciously expecting something else. This feeling of loss and the accompanying bewilderment ran headlong into the loss of her standing in a partnership she had always known she was unworthy of. Now, she couldn't even bring herself to look at him.
"I will never, never stop owing you for this," she said in a hoarse whisper.
She tried to step back from him, but she was prevented when he held her by the shoulders, firmly rooting her to the spot. She dropped her chin to her chest, trying to disengage enough to regain self-control.
"Tasha," he demanded. "Natasha, listen to me. Are you listening to me?"
When she didn't react, his hands moved to the sides of her face, raising her head up, forcing her to meet his eyes.
"Look at me, Natasha Romanoff. You owe me nothing for this. Do you understand? Nothing. This is my partnership just as much as yours, and I will always take out anyone who threatens it. Anyone. Got that? You owe me nothing."
Natasha felt her heart pounding so hard against her sternum she was almost surprised when it didn't crack another rib. She took a deep breath and, swallowing hard, she nodded.
"Are you all right?" he asked, making it clear he wanted a straight answer.
"Yeah," she whispered after another shaky breath.
"Good." He brushed his thumbs across her cheeks, and she was suddenly aware of the chill left by tears wiped from skin. Until that moment, she hadn't realized that she had been crying. As soon as his hands slid away from her face, she rubbed at her eyes in an attempt to erase any evidence of them.
"I'm sorry," she told him. "It was just a bit of a shock."
"I'm sorry, too," he said gently. "I'm afraid I managed to do that without any tact at all."
"No, it's fine," she insisted. "It's a lot to process, so I think it will be a while before it seems completely real."
She jumped when her phone began to buzz in her back pocket.
"Damn it," she cursed as she cut off the alarm. She looked back at him apologetically. "My flight leaves in ten. I just came over to see you for a moment before I headed out."
"Where are you headed?"
"Some university in Virginia. I'm supposed to keep tabs on some guy called Bruce Banner, and apparently he was seen in the area."
"Wait, are you talking about the guy they call the Hulk?" Clint demanded.
"I think so. I've only glanced at the file. You've heard of him?"
"I should think. Have you not? Are you going with Coulson?"
"No, he left me in California for some godforsaken 084 in the middle of the desert in New Mexico. This is a solo trip."
"Jesus, Nat, be careful, will you? You're dealing with some crazy shit."
She managed an amused smile. "Isn't that what we always do? How bad could it be? I'll see you when I see you, I guess."
"Yeah, have a good trip."
"Thanks," she said, heading to the door, but she paused with her hand on the nob. Suddenly, she turned back and wrapped her arms around his neck in a tight hug. He responded in kind, with an arm around her waist and a hand at the nape of her neck, holding her close despite the bruises.
"Thank you," she murmured before she released him and slipped out of the room.