Disclaimer: I don't own Avengers, obviously.

Summary: Clint knew Natasha's fears, but his greatest fear was using them against her

IN EVERY WAY HE KNOWS WE FEAR

Oh God.

How could I have come so close to what I almost did?

I have never been so glad that Natasha has never held back in a fight.

Before Loki possessed me, I never thought of a situation where I would welcome a concussion, but I was proven wrong.

Even from afar, Loki could give me orders of what to do. I don't know what set him off, but Natasha made him angry, and angry gods did not deal with things calmly. I knew what he wanted me to do to my partner and best friend, and under Loki's command, I would have done it without even a moment's hesitation.

Natasha and I had trusted each other with our lives and our sanity and more… and I would have killed her without question. Loki would have made me enjoy doing it.

Loki commanded me to kill the woman I had promised myself I would never deliberately hurt, in every intimate way that I knew she feared.

I would have raped her, tortured her, taken every single thing that I knew she mourned or regretted and twisted it to hurt her as much as possible.

And the worst thing for either of us would be that I was the one doing it to her.

All of this flashed through my mind as I looked up from clutching the rail that had just impacted with my head. By the way, OW. "Natasha?"

The Black Widow's face was wary – with perfectly good reason, certainly – yet hopeful, desperate to believe that it was really me, that I was free of Loki's spell. I tried to think of anything that could really convince her that it was totally me when the Black Widow's eyes hardened, and the last thing I saw was her fist coming toward me.

Mind Control detox is a very strange thing.

It was like I was underwater, with everything around me somehow muffled. I was unable to move, and everything was blurred, difficult to see.

One thing rang through clearly; Natasha's voice. "Clint, you're going to be all right."

Somehow, despite everything, I almost smiled. It wasn't reassurance, so much as the fact that she refused to accept any alternative outcome, something that I think she picked up from Fury.

I could feel that the Mind Control was broken. "Why am I back? How did you get him out?"

She attempted a joke. "Cognitive Recalibration."

Also known as a fancy term for someone being hit really hard in the head. It had been coined on behalf of a few rookies who thought that beauty and fighting skills were mutually exclusive, and had been forcefully corrected by the beauty in question. "Thanks."

I shouldn't have been surprised when she refused to tell me how many agents were lost through my actions, even though she knew that I would just hack into the databases later. It was the fact that she was advocating charging head-first into a fight that startled me. Natasha was a spy, not a soldier. "What did Loki do to you?

I could see the mask of the Black Widow closing over Natasha. "I've been compromised. I've got red in my ledger; I'd like to wipe it out."

Ah.

Spy, Assassin or anything else, Natasha had a good heart. Contained and unable to touch her physically, Loki would have fallen back onto words, where Natasha had no defence. I knew the deaths that tortured her, and through me, Loki discovered them, too.

The hospital that caught fire because our target didn't want to be killed by us and decided to go out on his own terms, via a bomb.

Natalia Romanova's parents, Drakov and Anastasia, killed when she was barely five years old.

San Paulo, where bad Intel caused the loss of more lives than we saved.

Loki knew every button to push, and I hated him for it. "Well, if I could put an arrow through Loki's eye socket, I'd sleep better, I suppose."

There was no need to say that I would also do it for the pain he had caused the woman beside me. I would never say that I loved her, because 'love' didn't come close to describing our relationship.

It was deeper than that, far more profound.

We trusted each other with our lives, knew each other's deepest secrets that even SHIELD intelligence would never find out. We had held each other when it seemed like the world was crumbling, and we feared going mad from what we had just done. There were no words to describe our commitment, the way we felt for each other.

Loki tried to destroy that. He tried to make me kill Natasha in every way that he, that I, knew she feared. I would cheerfully destroy him in every way that he feared.

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A/N: This has been wandering around in my head for weeks, and I finally had the chance to write it down. Way shorter than I expected, but otherwise all right, I think.

I'd love to hear opinions, even if it's just to tell me that I'm totally unrealistic and should never write again. Remember, Constructive Criticism is a writer's greatest reward. Flames only make people view you as childish.

Thanks,

Nat