AN: This is my first fanfiction. I really hope it goes well and all that jazz. So, I recently had a bit of a change in my life that had a lot to do with honesty and truth and the power behind those things. A lie is an illusion just covering up the truth, no matter how good the lie it is only an illusion. That's something I think everyone should know. Anyways, this change in my life affected all parts of my life including the part of me that writes. I recently received the Avengers movie as a gift and once I saw it this idea came to my mind. Sometimes the truth hurts.

DISCLAIMER: I don't own them. I wish I did. I don't though.

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"The truth is rarely pure and never simple." –Oscar Wilde

AVENGERSAVENGERSAVENGERS

There is nothing wrong with an uneventful life and perhaps of all people, Clint Barton should have known that. In the year after the battle against Loki Clint had gone on only two missions – both with Natasha. However, anyone accustomed to daily action and adventure didn't rest easily. That's probably why the infamous Hawkeye was walking down the hall to Director Fury's office with a little too much bounce in his step for someone about to receive an assassination assignment.

He wore a smile on his face and he greeted all in the hallway with a curt nod or a short wave. When he finally reached the door to Director Fury's office he knocked twice, entered without waiting for a response, and took a seat in the chair across from Fury. The Director watched all this with his one good eye and then said sarcastically, "Come on in. Make yourself at home."

"Don't mind if I do," Clint replied. "What have you got for me? Terrorist? Arms dealer? Drug kingpin?"

Fury handed over the manila file to Clint wordlessly. His eye never left Clint's face. Clint flipped through the file and as he did so the smile faltered. "A corrupt politician? That's it?"

"Is that not good enough for you?" Fury asked. Clint had worked for SHIELD for many years but unlike Coulson he'd never really gotten the hang of knowing when Fury was trying to be funny.

"No." Clint frowned at the picture of his target. He was a fairly average man with a thousand watt smile that politicians had, dressed smartly, and with unusually dark blue eyes. "Well, I mean just about any of your little junior agents could pull this off. If it was a group of corrupt politicians you might need me but this is kind of small potatoes."

"So it's not good enough for you?" Fury repeated.

Clint looked up at Fury and then back down at the target. He sighed. Sure, he'd been hoping for something with a little more action but he'd take what he could get. "No, it's fine."

"Good," Fury said. "Because the Council asked for you in particular to be put on this assignment and I am not going to argue with them because you think you're too good for this one."

"No, don't worry about that. I got it," Clint replied quickly.

"Well, now that I've got your permission I'll rest easier," Fury said drolly.

"Am I at least doing this one on my own?" Clint asked. He didn't think his pride could handle another mission with Natasha there to make sure he didn't break down, especially a mission this easy.

"Do you have a problem working with Agent Romanoff?" The Director asked without looking up from his paperwork.

"Of course not. We work great together and all but, I can tie my shoes without tactical support," Clint replied.

Fury nodded like he understood. Maybe he did. "Agent Romanoff will be flying you to Paris for the mission but that's the only role she'll be supplying on this mission. Give us a call when you've completed the assignment and she'll return for the extraction. The pickup point is in the file."

"Sounds great," Clint said as he stood.

"One last thing," Fury said. He put down his work and focused his attention on Clint. "After what happened with Loki in New York, everyone including me just wants to make sure you're ready."

"It's been a year, Director, I'm more than ready," Clint said confidently.

"Make sure everything goes well on this mission and I'll find you something to get the adrenaline pumping," Fury said. His lips curled up, Fury's version of a smile.

Clint chuckled. "You're not going to find anything to get my adrenaline pumping. There isn't anything out there that gets me like that since New York."

"Ten bucks says you're wrong," Fury said. "Jet leaves 0600 tomorrow."

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Clint woke the next morning to a soft knocking on his bedroom door. Whoever was on the other side of the door shouldn't have worried about being quiet. Clint hadn't had a roommate for nearly seven months after every person he shared a room with had requested they be moved. The bed on the other side of the room just acted as a place for his to put his dirty clothes until he got tired of looking at them and went to the laundry room. It wasn't death threats but it still stung. Clint wiped the sleep from his eyes and pulled himself up into a sitting position. The person knocked slightly louder. Clint rolled his eyes and padded over to the door. He opened it and realized, too late of course, that he wasn't wearing a shirt.

Natasha realized it too and gave him a quick smile. "Did I wake you?"

Clint checked his watch to make sure he hadn't slept through his alarm. "I wasn't even going to get up until five thirty."

"God you're lazy," she said. She pushed past him into his room and flicked on the light switch.

Clint blinked to adjust to the change in light and closed the door. "It's three in the morning, Nat. What are you doing here?"

"Can't I visit a friend?" Natasha asked.

"Not at three in the morning you can't," Clint said. He dug through his dresser drawer and pulled on a shirt. It was a Harvard t-shirt which was absolutely ridiculous since he'd never even seen the campus. "Is something wrong?"

"No," she said. "I was up, preparing for the mission, and I thought I'd drop by and say hello. I figured you'd be up preparing too."

"I did my preparing last night. I always do my preparing at night. You know that," Clint said. He frowned, "Come to think of it. You do all your mission preparation at night too."

"Alright, you got me. I wanted to talk," Natasha said.

"Typical woman," Clint gave her a warm smile. "So something is wrong?"

"Not really. I just, don't get angry with me, but I just wanted to know if you're sure you're ready," she said.

He rolled his eyes. "Natasha, please don't start this."

"I told you not to get angry with me," she said.

Clint crossed his arms over his chest. "I'm not getting angry with you. I'm tired of people asking if I'm okay or looking at me like I'm next to jump on the crazy train. It was a year ago. Yes, bad things happened but it's not the first time and it won't be the last. I didn't freak out like this over Budapest."

"You freaked out exactly like this over Budapest," Natasha said pointedly.

Clint laughed. "Alright I'll give you that, but I'm a guy. We're supposed to be overprotective."

"Don't pull your sexist bullshit on me," Natasha glared at him.

Clint sighed and dropped his arms to his side. "Nat, I am so ready for this – if I wait any longer I'm going to go crazy for real. Don't think I haven't noticed you trying to keep me here. We train constantly. I'm in the best shape of my life and I don't use it for anything."

"I'm worried about you," she said.

Clint picked up the file and pulled out the picture. "You're worried I'll have trouble with this guy? I'm almost insulted. This mission will be like shooting fish in a barrel."

She laughed as he mimicked doing that very thing but once she sobered she said simply, "Clint, I couldn't go through that again."

"How many times do you think I'm going to be mind controlled?" Clint asked. "Do you trust me?"

"Of course," Natasha replied instantly. "It's the rest of the world I don't trust."

Clint put his hand on Natasha's shoulder and leaned closer but after a moment pulled back. "You knew I'd be asleep."

Natasha grinned. "How could I resist pulling you out of bed shirtless?"

Clint shook his head. "I'm going back to bed. Join me?"

Natasha hesitated and then nodded. "Just sleeping."

Clint snorted. "I have a mission in three hours."

Natasha grinned again and crawled in next to him. When Clint woke up two and a half hours later she was already gone and the door was locked behind her. Clint rolled out of bed for a second time that morning and got dressed.

He met Natasha in the hangar. She was in the midst of a preflight check of her plane. He glanced around to see who else was there. He spotted one guy doing a preflight check across the hangar and a woman too exhausted to notice that half of her up-do had fallen out. He'd never managed to sneak up on Natasha so he wasn't particularly surprised to hear her say, "Good morning, Sleeping Beauty."

"One day it would be nice to wake up to you still there," Clint said. The words came out like they always did.

"If you woke up before me I'd still be there," Natasha replied. It was the same words she told him every time they had this discussion. Once upon a time Clint had made it a point to argue the subject. Now he chose to pick his battles. "Sleep well?"

"Best sleep I've had in a long time," Clint replied. "You?"

"You hog the bed," she replied. That was the end of the conversation. "I'm just about done here. We should be able to leave shortly."

"Guess that means I won't be able to squeeze in a bowl of Mini Wheats," Clint said.

Natasha gave him a look over her shoulder. "I told you to get up earlier."

Clint showed her the apple in his hand. "It's okay. I've got it covered."

"You're eating an apple? I thought you sustained yourself on Cheetos and beer," Natasha replied.

"Please," Clint said, rolling his eyes. "The diet SHIELD makes their agents maintain includes neither of those items."

"So your sock drawer does not contain a hidden compartment filled with those items as well as a scary assortment of candy bars?" Natasha asked.

Clint grinned. "I didn't say that."

Natasha turned around and put her hands on her hips. "All done."

Clint pulled another apple out of his bag. "I brought one for you too."

Natasha grinned wickedly. "No thanks, I had a bowl of Mini Wheats this morning."

It didn't take them long to get onto the jet and situate themselves. The jets themselves were made for quick takeoffs. Clint took a seat in the back and buckled himself in while Natasha pulled on the headset and got into the pilot's seat. Clint pulled out the assignment file. Natasha asked, "Why did you bring that?"

"I may not have prepared for this mission as thoroughly as I let on this morning," he replied.

Clint could almost hear Natasha rolling her eyes as she sent the jet down the runway and took off. They barely spoke in the air and after only a few hours Natasha touched down just outside of Paris.

Finding criminals was difficult, depending on the criminal. The more of a big wig they were the harder they were to find. When you make most if not all of your money the illegal way you tend to spend the rest of your time trying to go unnoticed. Criminals didn't typically have itineraries to follow or websites to give their location. Politicians, on the other hand, made it very easy to find them. Politicians lived to be in the spotlight. Finding a politician was as easy as pulling the name of the hotel he was speaking at and then playing nice to the right people. After that it was just the matter of finding a perch to shoot from and waiting for the target to move near a window. One shot, one kill, and then you could go. Back when Clint had started taking hits to make ends meet he'd loved jobs like this. They were easy money. Window shots were how most politicians got killed, anyways. This guy was going to be more work than he was worth.

"Who asks for a hotel room with no windows?" Clint asked. And more importantly, why did he ask for a room that way this time? After talking to the girl working the counter of the hotel Clint had learned several very interesting things about his target, Francois Gautier. First, Mr. Gautier stayed at this hotel every time he was in Paris and second, he'd never requested a room without a window before. "Someone who's afraid of a sniper, that's who."

Clint was a marksman first and an assassin second but that didn't mean he couldn't kill up close. SHIELD had taken one look at his shooting skills and dropped him in close combat classes. Natasha had taught him everything that SHIELD hadn't and now he was probably the best assassin in the world. He packed up the sniper rifle and put it in a locker at the train station. Clint swiped one of the keys off of a maid's cart and used it to sneak into the politician's hotel room. For a politician, Francois Gautier wasn't quite as cleanly as Clint might have guessed. The suit he'd worn yesterday was still lying crumpled on the floor next to the bed and his bags were on the bed instead of in the closet. He checked the bathroom where the toothbrush had been left on the counter and the shampoo container remained uncapped. "Looks like my room."

Unfortunately, there aren't a whole lot of places to hide in a hotel room. Hide in the bathroom and you might get spotted when someone walks in to do their business. Hide in the closet and you're a sitting duck when they hang up their coat. No, about the only place Clint was going to remain safe was under Gautier's bed. Good thing Clint was on the leaner side. He holstered his gun and dropped to the floor. With a small amount of wiggling Clint wrestled himself under the bed. Facing up was ridiculously uncomfortable so Clint attempted to roll over. In doing this his leg smacked into one of the bed legs. To top it off, not only did his foot now ache like nobody's business but a paper from on the bed slid off. "Fuck me."

He slid over to the side of the bed and grabbed the paper, ready to throw it back up and hope he could get Gautier before he noticed anything wrong. His well-trained eyes, however, spotted something that made him pause. The paper had a SHIELD stamp. Clint picked up his head and nearly cracked his skull on the bed frame. With more cursing than an army man Clint wrestled himself back out from under the bed. He listened at the door for a moment but didn't hear anything. Returning to the bed and the bag on top of it Clint looked at a stack of papers. The paper in his hand was just one of many. "What were you into, Gautier?"

He was into a lot.

Clint dug through papers and came up with balance sheets, emails, mission reports –some of which were Clint's own missions- and more. Reading the emails was like something out of a bad spy movie, "Dear Francois Gautier, Your request for more information on our American Intelligence friends has been met with serious disapproval. When we dealt originally we made it clear that any exchange would be done at our discretion. The blackmail threat we received in our last communication will not be tolerated. If the records are not destroyed the Council will be forced to take measures against you."

"Nothing like giving a man the heads up he's got an assassin after him," A voice said.

Clint spun around and reached for his gun. He didn't get the chance to pull it as Francois Gautier himself stood with his own gun aimed at Clint's head. Smart man, this Gautier, as a chest shot would have only bruised Clint through his bulletproof vest. Clint looked behind the man but saw no one else. "Are we alone?"

Gautier nodded. "I have two men outside the door but in here, yes we're alone."

"What is this?" Clint asked and motioned at the pile of papers.

"Evidence," Gautier replied. "Let me tell you something. Secrets aren't worth a damn if you can't produce them when you want to produce them."

"And you couldn't produce the secrets fast enough?" Clint asked. Usually, Clint never even spoke to the target. There had been times, of course, but for the most part Clint was far away when the target hit the ground. Natasha, however, did this all the time. Keep them talking, she'd say, because people love to talk.

Gautier replied swiftly. "I was doing fine. I was probably the biggest name in intelligence in the Eastern Hemisphere. Then New York happened and suddenly the information just stops."

"The information from SHIELD," Clint supplied.

"The information from SHIELD," Gautier repeated. "Maybe someone was on to them. Maybe they were just scared that you and that merry band of misfits would take them down just like you did Loki. I don't know and honestly, I don't care. We had a deal and then the Council had to screw that up."

Clint kept a wary eye on the gun as he desperately tried to think of a way out of this. "You knew I'd be coming?"

"Well, I didn't know that you specifically would be coming but I knew they were sending someone to kill me. It is flattering though. Whenever you rate a visit from the infamous Hawkeye, well, at least they figured I'd be a challenge," Gautier said. Clint wasn't sure whether to be flattered as well or disgusted. "I'm sure they just wanted to be absolutely certain I wasn't going to go anywhere with this knowledge."

Clint stopped for a moment. What would Natasha do? Clint observed Gautier. He wasn't the gun wielding type. He'd probably borrowed this piece off of one of his bodyguards at the door or had someone pick him up one. Most people got the basic principle of a gun, point and shoot. Aiming at someone who was two meters away at best was not a particularly hard shot. Only consistent practice with a gun was going to teach you the little things though. One of those little things was that aiming a gun at someone for any length of time made your arms hurt and if you took your eyes off a target you'd best be sure the target is dead. Clint looked over his shoulder again and frowned. "I thought you said we were alone."

Gautier frowned as well and looked over his shoulder. Clint used the opportunity of distraction and slammed down hard on Gautier's wrist to make him drop the gun. He slammed his elbow into the man's chest, aiming for the painful spot where the rib cage met and you lost your breath. Gautier gasped for air and dropped to his knees. Clint pulled a knife out of the sheath on his leg and stabbed Gautier once in the stomach. The man gasped again, this time from pain, and dropped backwards the rest of the way to the floor. "You're good."

"That's what they keep telling me," Clint replied.

Gautier grabbed onto Clint's shirt. "Are you going to tell people?"

Clint looked up at the bed where the pile of papers, incriminating evidence, lay just as he'd left them. "Yeah, I'm going to tell people."

Gautier smiled and then laughed. "Good. I won then."

Clint pulled Gautier's hand off of his shirt. "I don't know if I'd call this winning."

"Hawkeye," Gautier rasped. "There were more."

"More what?" Clint asked.

"More people SHIELD sold secrets to," Gautier said. He laughed again. "I won."

Clint watched the man's eyes lose their spark and then he stopped breathing. He checked Gautier's pulse but found nothing. The door opened and the two bodyguards walked in. "Monsieur Gautier, ca – Tiens! Qui est tu?"

"I don't speak French buddy," Clint replied. Clint slit his throat with the knife and then stabbed him in the heart before doing the same to the second bodyguard. Clint pulled them into the bedroom, closed the door, and then pushed the first bodyguard into the closet. Clint caught his breath, bodyguards are typically very heavy, and while doing so made out a faint beeping noise coming from the top shelf of the closet. Clint frowned and pulled down what appeared to be a shoe box but upon opening it recognized the complicated mechanics of a bomb. "Shit!"

Clint threw the box on top of the bodyguard's body and slammed shut the closet door. He flew out the hotel room and barely made it to the top of the stairs when the explosion roared behind him and the blast knocked him down the first flight of stairs.

AVENGERSAVENGERSAVENGERS

AN: Well, that's that then. I love to hear what you thought. What's good? What's bad? What you'd like to see more of? What you'd never like to see again? Tell me in the review box. Watch out for the second chapter coming next week!