When she first stepped foot into the property that was Clint's farm, she intended to immerse herself in the innocence of the kids' laughter, to listen to their spirited stories about school and their friends. She intended to share a pot of tea with Laura in the kitchen, to quietly talk to Nathaniel and sing him sweet Russian lullabies. She thought that it was what she needed after days of no contact from Bruce and constant training with Steve. And of all the things she intended to do, calling Melinda was one that never really occurred to her.

A week had already gone since she tried to reach out to Bruce, since he ended contact with all of them. Natasha knew where he was though. She had known exactly where he was going to go as soon as he shut down communications between them. He didn't exactly make it difficult to trace him. But he didn't want to be found, and it didn't matter just how much she wanted to go and see him, and make sure that he was okay. It didn't matter at all. So she was going to respect him and do what he didn't ask of her.

She stayed where she was needed, helping Steve train the new Avengers and keeping an eye on Tony.

But this was her downtime, and she decided to use it by going to Clint's place.

Seeing Laura smiling at her, holding out the mug that Cooper made Clint buy for her (it was a blindingly orange mug that read 'World's #1 Aunt' in bold, chunky letters); seeing Lila race towards her, excitedly calling out her name and jumping into her arms. It all eased something that held tight in her chest. Something she never really knew and never realized she had longed or wanted for herself.

"You're sitting in my spot, you know?"

Melinda didn't look up from the book she was reading but it wasn't difficult to miss the slight quirk of her lips. "I remember. I'm still not getting up though."

Her eyes rolled at Melinda's smirk and she sighed while walking over, grumbling quietly as she took the seat across from Melinda. Dark brown eyes stared back into her blue ones. She crossed her arms and let her gaze roam over the older woman. Melinda looked good.

She had just spent the majority of the day sorting out the mess that Tony had left in the barn after he fixed the tractor. Her sweat-soaked clothes clung to her body, and she was pretty sure that she had trekked dirt into the house. Laura was going to be so mad.

"Who called you?"

"Laura. And then Steve."

Natasha nearly scoffed at the idea that Steve could have called her but then she thought of the way he had looked at her the other day. Nothing had been out of the ordinary. He asked her how she was, like he did every day they worked together, but she remembered the way he was looking at her, like he was searching and waiting for something more than just I'm fine.

"I'm surprised Clint didn't try too."

She felt a little bitterness seep into her bones at the thought that her colleagues, her friends had been conspiring, talking about her and not actually confronting her about what was on her mind.

Though knowing that he and Laura were in on this together, she didn't feel so bad about the track of dirt she brought into the house anymore.

"Oh he was the one who actually tracked me down."

Natasha wanted to ask where. Where had Melinda been this whole time? How did Clint know where to look?

After S.H.I.E.L.D. fell, she found out from Maria that Melinda was at an undisclosed S.H.I.E.L.D base, working with Phil Coulson. Maria didn't tell her any more than this. In her shared phone calls with Melinda, there was an unspoken agreement to not disclose where they were. It was a precaution that they both took seriously.

But there was still no denying how good it felt to see Melinda again, sitting at the kitchen table. And it eased a whole separate tightness in her chest, one that she thought she had managed to bury a long time ago.

"I tried reminding them that you didn't like surprises."

There were a lot of things that Melinda had said to the people that called her. And the one thing she stressed to all of them was to just talk to Natasha themselves. They hadn't seen each other in a really long time, not since New York maybe. And since then, there had only been short phone calls between them. What could she do from where she was? It was not like she could perform miracles.

But Clint gave her his stupid puppy dog look. A look that she had somehow never been able to say no to before. It was a look that never failed to get her into trouble and inevitably made her regret ever knowing Clint Barton.

She had been hesitant to leave the base, to leave Phil and Robert to their own devices when they unfortunately butt heads far too often, to leave with so many questions that Phil stubbornly refused to answer, to leave her team. She worried about how Skye was doing, how she was handling her powers though she did seem less afraid that she was going to explode at any given second. Melinda had been hesitant to leave in such fragile times.

"How long are you here?"

But what it came down to was this: Natasha was one of her own, somebody she counted as close as a friend, and as important as family could ever be. There was no decision to really make. She just had to hope that nothing went mind-numbingly wrong in her absence.

Two days, she told Clint. She was going to stay for two days and then he was going to send her right back.

"Going back the day after tomorrow."

Looking at Natasha now, she knew she made the right choice.

"So we don't have a lot of time then."

The owners of the farm were inconspicuously absent and Natasha rolled her eyes at how seriously not subtle they were. They had even taken the kids with them. But Laura had apparently left lasagna in the fridge waiting for her, complete with a post-it that had a smiley face and an 'I'm sorry' attached to it. So she decided to go take a shower and left Melinda with explicit instructions to just watch over the oven and to not do or touch anything else in the kitchen.

The shower gave her a moment of reprieve, to think about why Melinda was here and why she was the one that they called. She thought about the last time she had been in this shower, after she decided to just 'run with it'. And now here she was.

A missed window.

She listened to the sounds of old pipes rattling in the walls as she waited for Skye to answer her video call. Once she appeared on the screen, it didn't take long for the younger woman to blurt out what had apparently been burning in her brain wince Melinda left.

"Is it true? Are you with Hawkeye? Don't lie, Melinda. I totally saw the surveillance."

"Then why did you even ask?"

Skye shrugged at the question. "Couldn't wait to hear you try and come up with an answer. Where are you? Where did he take you? And more importantly, how do you know Hawkeye?"

"Skye..." she sighed, shaking her head and trying to resist a grin at the starstruck look on her face. Melinda might never admit it out loud but it warmed her heart to know that Skye remained relatively unchanged. If only she knew that Captain America himself had called Melinda just a few days ago.

"I know, I know. I'll know when I need to know blah blah blah. But I just have to know one thing- are his arms as yummy as they look in the pictures?"

She ignored the question. "Skye, you call me about anything that goes on at the base, okay?"

The younger agent looked confused at the serious request for a short minute. "Like, with Coulson or with Gonzales?"

"Both, and also everything else. Be my eyes and keep your ear to the ground, Skye. I'll be back in a couple of days."

"It's just- I feel this is a really weird and bad time to go for a vacation, even if it is with Clint freaking Barton."

"I'm not with Clint and this isn't a vacation."

"But-"

"Keep the team safe, Skye, and be careful."

"Okay, whatever you say, May. You stay safe too. Use protection!"

Melinda sighed once again and rolled her eyes at Skye's parting words. For a second she thought about how she should have asked Skye how she was doing. She knew that the younger woman felt uneasy being around the very same people who only just recently had been hunting her down. Melinda thought once again about cutting her stay short.

It wasn't that Natasha was unhappy to see her. She knew that she was. The tension between them came from an incredible lengthy amount of time without being in each other's presence. Once that tension fell away, she knew just how easy it would be to fall back to exactly how they used to be before.

She could see it in the way that Natasha's blue eyes darkened the longer they kept talking and catching up. Just like the way her fingers subtly shook and trembled at the sight of those red curls, itching to be tangled in them once again.

And she knew that Natasha could see it too.

It would be so easy.