Title: As You Wish/ Will do.
Author: Shaneequa
Disclaimer: I don't own, or am I in any way affiliated with Marvel or the characters that appear in this fanfiction. Also, I don't own any rights to the Princess Bridge. I actually don't own much of anything, this is fanfiction.
Rating: T - Language
Summary: "That day, she was amazed to discover that when he was saying 'As You Wish", what he meant was "I love you." And even more amazing was the day she realized she truly loved him back. – Clintasha spin.
Author's Note: A friend of mine recently made me watch the Princess Bride insisting that I would love it… he was right… Anyway this is what came out of it. I was going to split it into three different parts but, nah.
I hope you guys enjoy reading it. Reviews are the best!
1.
She schooled her features to stare straight ahead. Not minding at all what was happening around her as she and the strange assassin waited for his team to transport them to the base. She had no idea what was going on, just that for the second time in her life she was making a choice to live, to clear out the ledger that at sixteen was longer than "In Search of Lost Time" by Marcel Proust. She has killed men, women, and children. The guilty and the innocent. Whatever her superiors had told her to do. But at that moment, none of it really mattered anymore. She was getting her second chance.
The redhead observed the man next to her. He was fiddling with his bow, both of them still on guard as they were perched high up on a tree as to not be seen. She had never met anyone like him. An assassin who was willing to think about his kills ; an assassin daring enough to disobey his orders and give someone a second chance. Give someone like her a second chance.
As the helicopter touched down, the archer - Hawkeye, he said his name was - started moving down from where they were hiding in the tree. She followed him tentatively, afraid that she would be hurt. That this, whatever it was, was just a big set up to finally take down the Black Widow. Publicly. Humiliatingly.
What surprised her was that he took her hand and covered his body with hers as they approached the helicopter. Agents all dressed in black (How stereotypical, she thought) began to swarm out of the small helicopter. Their mouths were moving, but at her smaller height gave her a disadvantage of reading their mouths. The sound of the helicopter's propellers filling her ears. She felt, rather than heard Hawkeye speak, her body close enough to his that she could feel the vibration of his voice.
The next thing she knew, she was being hand cuffed, but so was he. He was thrown into a seat in the helicopter next to her.
"Barton, what the fuck were you thinking?" A man in a black suit demanded. Obviously angry from his facial features but once again, the sound of the helicopter overpowered his voice.
She liked it, the sound. It drowned out even her thoughts. To the point where the next thing she knew, she was waking up in a panic.
She had never let herself lower her guard like that.
And that was when she had a panic attack.
"Widow," a man in a white coat - one she could only presume to be a doctor started to shake her from her anxiety attack with no avail.
"Hawk - Hawkeye!" she screamed from the top of her lungs. She kept repeating his name. She had no idea why. She had barely met the man, and even then, since she agreed to come back with him, he hadn't said a word to her. But still she continued to scream for him, the world around her slowing down into a blur. She could see lips moving but she couldn't understand what was going on.
It felt like forever until she felt someone touch her lightly at her wrist. She whipped her head, he grimaced. She must still be screaming.
But her eyes met stormy blue ones and she took a deep breath. His lips weren't moving. HE wasn't saying anything, but he didn't have to.
"Please," she said, her English coming out broken. "No leave me."
Her voice came out raspy from her screaming. She saw his eyebrows crunch in confusion.
"Please," she repeated. "No leave me alone. Stay here."
He nodded his head. "Will do."
2.
In her opinion, the whole sitting in a classroom learning the concepts of spying and interrogation, and martial arts was pretty fucking pointless. She glanced beside her, to the man who hasn't said more than a sentence to her. She wanted to ask him why he was always there. As soon as she opened the door, he would be standing outside waiting for her. They did everything together. Ate breakfast, lunch, dinner. He attended her training sessions no matter how stupid they were - for their skill levels, it was a waste of time. She figured it was because his boss (her boss now too) wanted him to keep watch of the "dangerous assassin" he brought back with him. That she was his responsibility.
While she hated the thought of that, she didn't want to ask him to realize the truth. He was the closest thing to a friend she had. A friend who she didn't have to worry about poisoning her food because they were going to be competing in the ring that afternoon. A friend who was there because it wasn't an assignment, she wasn't pretending to be someone she wasn't. She made him smile, and he made her... feel good. Her days weren't covered in darkness anymore and she just wished that she could tell him what he did for her.
"Romanova, what do you think?"
She shook her head looking around. The class, all eight of them including Barton (because she learned that was the name he liked to go by), looked at her expectantly.
"Repeat, please?"
"Sun Tzu, Art of War. Which principle do you think is the most important?"
She looked at him confused. This was a joke.
"Lifeline? Barton?"
She looked to her side. He shook his head and shrugged his shoulders.
To their right, a perky blonde, one Bobbi Morse, who eyed Barton like he was her prey raised her hand.
"I'll help them out, sir."
"Like a good wingman, go ahead Morse."
"The most important take away, in Sun Tzu's Art of War, sir, is that deception is always possible."
The blonde looked straight at her partner, winking at him before turning back to the man who continued providing them with lectures. Theories and concepts on deception.
All she wanted to do was get up there and demonstrate exactly what she was capable of.
"This is wasting my time," she muttered to him, letting her accent slip as she always does when she talks to him.
He looked at her, an eyebrow raised.
"I know deception, I know spying. I have been trained to do what they are teaching in words to do since I was five. It is my life. They are wasting my time with these lessons."
He blinked at her, a sign for her to continue her rant.
"You talk to them? I am better off sparing, showing what I can do than this stupid... shit."
He smirked at her. "Will do."
3.
She was sitting in a conference room, for once since she had been in SHIELD, Barton was not beside her. She figured it had something to do with the fact that she was meeting with the dark man with the eye patch, his assistant, and Barton's handler.
The meeting went smoothly. She officially became a member of SHIELD and was told that she had performed excellently in the demonstrative aspects of her course, the conceptual not so much. She wasn't bothered to care though, all she could think about as she sat there was that a) of course she had done an excellent job, they didn't call her the Black Widow for nothing and b) why the hell as Barton not with her?
The latter was something that ate at her as they handed her, the official SHEILD badge and access card. They all shook her hand and congratulated her to which she muttered a quick "thank you" before walking out of the office.
"So did you get it?" the blonde from her class, Morse, asked almost surprising her. Almost.
"Da."
"I mean, no doubt you would've gotten in. Clint has been there with you every step of the way, there was no way you could have failed it."
Clint? Who the - Oh Barton.
All she did in reply was nod her head, and wonder why the blonde called Barton 'Clint.' She's only ever heard him be called Barton. Suddenly, she felt anger towards the other woman. Irrational anger that she was able to push down to analyze later.
"Anyways, congratulations, Natalia," the perky blonde stated with a smile putting out her hand. She thought of eight hundred and six ways to use that hand to inflict pain, main or kill the woman in front of her before taking it to shake it. If she shook it a little too tightly, then so be it. Pass it up to nerves which she had been trained to control since age seven.
"And to you."
"I'm sure I'll see you 'round," the blonde stated leaving with a wink and a smile sauntering to the other direction.
She took a glance down the hallway with a sigh, before trying to figure out where Barton's quarters were. She only just realized that in the year and so that she had been training, Barton was always the one who came to her. She had never been, never even seen his quarters. The infamous nest that she has heard other agents gossip about. She stood there for a second making up a battle plan, east to west. That's how she would work through it. She was just about to start her search when she was stopped by Barton's hander - Coulson, she was told to call him.
"Yes, Agent Coulson?"
The man who was perpetually in his black suits handed her a VHS tape. She looked at him confused. "What is this?"
"Barton's favorite movie," he stated with a smile. "If you ask him he'll tell you it's actually Star Wars or some James Bond to make him sound manly, but it's actually Princess Bride."
She looked at him confused still.
"Tell me, Agent Romanoff," he started, and boy did that sound great Agent Romanoff. She was no longer called "slut" or "whore" or the other multitude of insults that Ivan spat as she trained as worked. She was now, and forever will be, Agent Romanoff. She snapped out of her thoughts to catch the end of Coulson's rant. "... and besides, since he convinced you to come to SHEILD, to change your life, has he actually talked to you?"
She thought about it for a moment. No. They communicated, by touches, by looks. By little facial movements, but no. She can't really recall a time where he talked to her... more than...
"I thought so," the man smirked at her. "Just watch it, even just the first five minutes. You'll see."
She nodded her head, taking the tape out of his hands before walking away. East to West. She took a step towards the eastern side of the base before Coulson's voice stopped her again.
"Tenth floor, third hallway to your right, fifth door."
She turned around to look at him, her head tilting to the side in confusion.
The man in the suit smirked at her once again. "Barton's place."
For a second time in a minute, she nodded her head turning to the direction that he stated. She had the tape clutched in her left hand as she walked the Senior Agent barracks where she thought Barton would be. Where his handler had told her he would be. If she really wanted to, she could sit there and analyze when she was able to be so readable to others. When her thoughts were that transparent that others felt the need to help her along in her delimit. But she didn't, she clutched the tape in her hands and made a fist, ready to knock on his door.
Before she could knock though, she heard his signature footsteps behind her. He was usually quiet, she knew first-hand how silent he could be, but when he wanted to make his presence known to her, as to not surprise her, he made light noises that she was able to decipher as his.
He greeted her with a confused look on his face, his arms filled with brown bags she could only assume were filled with groceries - or so her American lessons had taught her.
"I... I brought a movie," she said thrusting the tape, it's tattered cover on his face. His eyes widened in surprise. For a moment, neither of them moved. "I can see you are busy, I will watch it in my room."
He seemed to recover then when she was just about to turn and walk away, nudging her shoulder with his as he struggled to unlock his door with his arms full refusing to take the help that she offered him.
The place was, Barton. There were simple car posters hung around the walls - classic cars, the ones she saw when she watched American movies. Not the new ones that were all about their "miles per gallon" or some shit like that. Off to the side she could see his weapons all contained in glass and displayed proudly. She walked around some more as he rummaged around the kitchen putting away his groceries.
In her line of work, she was always taught that a person's quarters said a lot about them. It was why she had always kept her quarters barren. No photos, no color. It often seemed that nobody lived there. But when she decided that she wanted a life for herself she started to purchase her own homes, safe houses all over the world that she filled with art and books, and color and items that she thought - if she lived a normal life in that city - she would enjoy.
Her barracks at SHEILD, although was barren had one snow globe off to the side, and a jewelry box with a dancing ballerina.
Barton had handed her both things on two separate occasions. The snow globe, given on her birthday. The jewelry box on the day that marked the year that she decided to join him at SHEILD.
She walked into his living room, still holding the tape in her hands. She approached the simple set up with a smile on her face. He even had an A-track player.
"Hurry up there, Barton. We don't have all day to start this movie."
"Will do!" he exclaimed from the kitchen, coming up quickly behind her. He snatched the tape from her grasp and popped it in the player.
He then led her to the couch that sat parallel to the giant entertainment set that he had. Black and leather. She nodded approvingly seeing as it matched his personality.
She rolled her eyes as the movie started. Buttercup? All she could think of was an exotic dancer, with the name Buttercup. She glanced over at Barton seeing him engrossed in the movie, but two minutes into it, she realized that he was glancing at her in the corner of his eye.
And then she figured it out.
"'As you Wish' was all he ever said to her...that day, she was amazed to discover that when he was saying 'As you wish,' what he meant was 'I love you.'"
Her head snapped to the direction where Barton was sitting who tried to ignore her staring at him. But she sat there open mouthed.
Nobody has ever loved her before.
Yes there were many a men who professed their honest love to her but they weren't to her. To Natalia Romanova whose ledger dripped red, that she swam in the ocean of red. To the girl who was taken at a young age and turned into a killing machine, a monster who had no idea and control over herself.
Barton was one - if not the only - person alive who knew her for who she was. The monster, the assassin, the woman, the little girl. And yet, he loved her.
"Why did you tell me?"
"I... It doesn't matter," he muttered not taking his eyes off of the television.
"You love me?"
He surged. "It doesn't matter, Natalia."
She cupped his chin in her hands, the same way she had done a million times before to a mark. But this time, it wasn't a mark, she wasn't Natalie, or Anya, or whoever she decided she was going to be. She was just Natalia, Natasha.
"Please... Clint."
His eyes snapped at hers.
"I tried to not - feel this way about you," he protested. "I'll... try harder. I promise, I'm sorry."
She shook her head. "Do you really... love me?"
He tentatively nodded his head.
She smirked at him, "Fetch me a beer, Hawkeye."
His eyes lit up.
"Will do."
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