I've been in love with Clintasha for forever and a day, so I dug my little fangirl fingers into my keyboard and typed this out. Hope its okay!
Disclaimer: If I owned Avengers, I'd know what happened in Budapest.
Trust
Five letters that mean 'firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone of something'.
Or to agents Natalie Romanoff and Clint Barton, 'Partner'.
Making that kind of a bond did not come easily to the Russian assassin. For most of her life, Clint Barton had become synonymous with S.H.I.E.L.D, which in turn became synonymous with enemy, and eliminate. When she met him, she's been expecting the normal signs of animosity; you know, cold gaze, nervous finger tapping, vulgar remarks about her sex, disbelief lacing the words that told her that they couldn't believe that she really was who she said she was.
To her quietly hidden surprise-she was wrong.
"Ms. Rushton."
Lifting her finger from the rim of the wine goblet, Natalie stood up, green eyes cold and calculating. She had decided to go the 'stunned' approach; her hourglass figure was encased in form fitting clothes, a white fluttering halter top to disguise the stunners permanently sewn into the rim of her blue skinny jeans. Her blonde hair, touching her shoulders in ripples as it had been done back then, blazed with all the hidden intensity of her gaze. Natalie's black booted heels clicked on the way down to the cell, and when the guard gave her a curt nod for her to be allowed in, the thump of the Level 10 security card on her chest was even louder than the pulse of her ever calm, ever quiet trust.
He'd put up a fight.
Natalie could've ignored all the outward signs-the purpling black eye, the roughly bandaged red mark on the back of his shoulder blade, the way he favored his right leg, the wet, burgundy marks on the table from his cut hands-but something in those passionate blue eyes gave it away.
Hawkeye's right cheek pulled up and he favored her with a one-sided grin that, many years later, she would come to love. "Widow," He greeted formally, and stood up, wincing slightly, to pull out the chair on the other side of the stainless steel table, the only other furnishing in the bare grey room being two metal chairs.
"Thank you," she returned courteously, and seated herself primly, delicate digits not betraying the finger guns she was testing out. "Clinton Amadeus Barton, you are being detained for breaking into Herfundst Headquarters." She leaned back in her chair. "You are aware of that."
He gave a husky, dry, rattling chuckle that she assumed to be a byproduct of his painful journey to the room, but would soon find out was just one of his quirks. "I am," he supplied.
"We could kill you now."
"Of course you could. And you would've done it sooner if you hadn't needed me for something. Seeing as you have not told me what said thing is, we will be at a standstill. I advise you get to the point because," he examined bloody cuticles. "I have places to be."
One delicate, auburn eyebrow raised at this. "You're in a jail cell, Mr. Barton."
He shrugged.
"Who do you want inside this building, Mr. Barton?" Natalie decided to cut to the chase, because buried underneath years of war and murder and seeing things no twenty year old should see, her heart was enjoying the exchange. Her mind was delighted that this wasn't some stupid, trembling hostage, and her body was positively itching at trying this man out in combat to see if he was as skilled with his limbs as he was with his tongue.
"Out of all these buildings, which holds so much priceless information, you chose the bunkers, the place where only agents sleep. Who does S.H.I.E.L.D. want here, Mr. Barton? I assure you the faster you answer the faster you'll be released."
He let out a husky, raw, dry chuckle that she originally assumed to be a byproduct of his unscrupulous journey here, but would discover was just one of his quirks. As with everything else about him…it intrigued her. "Do you want to know who S.H.I.E.L.D. wants, Ms. Widow? Or who I have decided to retrieve." His eyes sparked, then reverted back the creamy, natural blue, a color that increasingly fascinated and annoyed her. Having seen in him a companion agent who'd seen just about the same amount of disturbing images and experiences as she had (it had to do with the way one carried himself), too much of her wanted to continue to engage him in conversation.
After all, above else, Natalie refused to be compromised.
"Clinton Amadeus Barton, only son of Marianna and James, birthplace Parkton, Michigan, I would like to know both," she answer red smoothly, and if it had been anyone else, she would've gotten a reaction, albeit a subtle one. An eye twitch. The sudden, slight movement of a finger, the uncomfortable foot slide, the sudden dryness of mouth that can be trained to distinguish, but this was Hawkeye. This was battle-weary Clint Barton, and Natalie got nothing.
"S.H.I.E.L.D. wanted Black Panther," he mentioned, folding his arms, an action that must've been quite uncomfortable, not that he let show. "But now…I'm more of a fan of spiders."
Natalie raised one auburn colored brow and pushed herself back from the table, the injured, though still incredible, marksman in front of her following her silently with his irritating, all seeing eyes. "Thank you for your cooperation," she returned with an air of finality, and spun on her heel, exiting the chamber.
Even hours later, clad in her favorite old football jersey pj's, she still felt him watching her. Calculating. Entrancing. And most of all…pitying.
When she woke up, three weeks later, handcuffed to him in the private compartment of a moving train, it took everything in her not to scream and ask him why a pair of her underwear was hung out the window.
His eyes told her everything. "Shit," he cursed, shaking his head. "You weren't supposed to be awake yet."
"I'm only going to say this once," she hissed out from between her teeth, the green plate sheet sliding from her eyes and being replaced with her true grey color. "What the hell."
"Nat," he said tiredly. "Your real name is Natasha Romanoff. You've gone by Natalie Rushton, Nadine Richards, and Nadia Russo. Your real hair color is red, although its been blonde, brown, and black. You've worked for HH, FBI, IRS, and CIA, but only as undercover. You're the Black Widow, and," he met her eyes beseechingly. "You're my partner.
That took a while to explain, but then her brain kicked in and she remembered everything. Hawkeye was right. She's jumped from undercover agency to undercover agency in her teen years as 'fun' after being brought up by that psychopath that made her the master assassin she'd become today, and the last place she'd been had brainwashed her.
Clint had taken her that night.
After she'd fallen asleep in that football jersey, he'd taken her back to S.H.I.E.L.D. and she'd become retrained. And then the other agencies wanted her back. Various drugs had bounced her from alternate personality to alternate personality, and she'd finally come back. After a torture filled year of chasing a dream, Clint had finally gotten his partner back.
That was step one.
Then came Budapest.
We won't rehash that horrible experience, but there was one point when they were forced to hide in an elevator to await their targets, and looking at him she'd realized something.
Both of them were in their suits, purple, black, and red mixing and blending until it was only Clint and Natasha. Half of the stingers on her right wrist had been disabled, crushed, or put out of action, and her ankle ached something fierce from kicking a grenade away from her partner. Her red hair, long she decided to keep it, was rebelling out its tight, up ponytail, strands of the curly redness getting in his face, she was sure. Back to back, she was aware of every strand of corded muscles she pressing into, and her hands trembled on the handle of her favorite gun.
He wasn't in a much better place. Rips laced the side of his right pant leg, and a quarter of his arrows were broken in various places throughout the country, another quarter not responsive. He'd sustained a harsh injury to his wrist shielding his partner from a wayward blade, and he'd gotten an unexpected haircut in the melee. His eyes weren't the constant blue cream she was used to, more of a choppy, day old poisonous frosting texture, and there was a shake in his fingertips.
The creaking of the old metal elevator was the only thing to pierce their harsh heavy breathing, and in the waving sea of their adrenaline, she turned at the same time he did, and their eyes clicked. Blue met grey, and then there were no questions.
There was no fanfare.
No awaiting breath.
No closing of eyes in anticipation.
The one hand not on the bow seized the back of her head and their lips mashed bruising together, spilling feelings and emotions, and a battle high that would've made any but them go mad.
Somewhere in that kiss, Natasha had come to terms with the fact that there was no one in the world that she'd rather be with right now, awaiting their doom broken down and injured, with nothing but shaking hands and handful of arrows to rely on to fight the biggest five to one odds that they'd come up against at this point.
By the time Loki had muscled up the grudge to level a small town, Clint and Natasha had an unbreakable bond forged out of relationship, titanium, and that big five letter word-trust. In every occasion they worked as a cohesive whole, a smooth fighting force that made Nick Fury able to puff his chest out whenever his two prized agents were brought up in conversation.
Clint and Natasha had conquered two five letter words; enemy, and trust.
The last one really cemented everything, if it was even possible.
(COMMENT AND TELL ME IF YOU WANT ME TO PUBLISH ENEMY AND WRITE TRUST, K? :D)