Finding herself of course starts with her spending three weeks at Barton's farm. Auntie Nat is just another persona sure, but it's closer to the real thing than anything else she supposes. In small doses Natasha actually enjoys the slowness of the farm, the domesticity of it all. No ones more shocked than her.

Laura is of course thrilled, for more than the usual reason. Clint has been M.I.A since this whole debacle started, deep cover mission, and outside Natasha, Laura has no real way to find him now that the world believes Nick Fury is dead.

Nat finds an encrypted message from Clint in a matter of hours. One of their 'backdoors' so to speak that Laura hadn't thought to check. She has a Master's in Art with a minor in History. She's not a spymaster, which is just one of the many things Clint loves about his wife, and Natasha admits she does too.

The message is short and to the point, which means Clint will save all his snark and sass until they're face to face.

Hotspot. Safe and in one piece. Coming home.

The in one piece part is a bit of a stretch.

"Who the hell did these stitches?" Natasha asks as Laura peels him out of his dirty shirt.

After a quick reunion and hug from their father, the blood on his shirt hidden by his jacket, Laura sends Cooper and Lila upstairs. Nat hears creaking so she knows at least one of them is listening at the top of the stairs. Probably Lila. Cooper knows better.

Laura sighs.

"Please tell me you did not try to do them yourself again?"

"I'm not that stupid," Clint says. He chooses to ignore the look that passes between his wife and best friend. "Some sleep deprived veterinarian in Auckland."

"New Zealand? Cooper's gonna be mad you didn't take any pictures of where they filmed Lord of the Rings," Nat says.

"I was there two weeks," Clint says and points her toward the disposable camera in his rucksack.

He has a tendency to lose or damage anything more expensive. Laura just rolls her eyes at the two dorks as she goes to get the industrial stocked first aid kit from the guest bathroom. She shoos Lila back to her room on the way.

Clint's the only person Natasha knows that still buys film to be developed. Even Steve has a digital camera now. Laura's the only person she knows that actually develops it herself.

It was how she first learned about Laura and little Cooper. Lila is still been 'baking' as Clint put it. They are on their fifth long-range op together, not Budapest, when she finally brought up him buying the disposable cameras.

Natasha doesn't really care but when he takes a picture of her one day she feels compelled to ask. Up until then Natasha is damn sure he isn't interested in her that way and is actually relieved she won't have to shoot him down. She likes him alright, maybe would even screw him a couple of times if she needed to blow off steam.

But Clint would be the first person she'd actually slept with beyond the intel they could give her or how fast they could get her off. Plus she's never had a friend and that's how Barton presents himself. Not like the rest of SHIELD who were still wary of her and with every right to be.

"Laura's heard so much about you she wants to know what you look like," Clint tells her about the picture. He tries to be nonchalant about it but they both knew what a big deal him sharing his family is.

"Good," he says at her surprise at finding out he's a family man. "If I can fool you that means I'm better at this spy stuff then I thought."

Hell, Clint's better at it than even Nat thought he could be. That first year of their acquaintance she thinks the whole messy frat boy goofball routine is an act. Then she thinks it's not. She's right both times she supposes. No one is the sum of their parts.

Clint is definitely a goofball and a big bit of a mess and most people who don't really know him see only that. Once Natasha learns about his family though a big piece of the puzzle that is Clinton Francis Barton slips into place.

Clint gives fatherly pep talks to some of the greener recruits and never turns anyone away if they ask him to help with target practice. The way he has her back and always clocks her position. At first it bugs her because she thinks it's because he doesn't trust her. When proof to the contrary presents itself she thinks it's because she's a girl, though there's evidence against that already as well. Then they go on some group ops with a few other agents and she realizes he does that for everybody. Then there's the homemade Christmas cookies Clint brings in around the holidays. Anyone who knows Barton knows that he should be kept out of a kitchen unless washing dishes.

With Laura out of the room Nat quickly asks Clint what she wanted to since he'd showed up. He'd probably tell his wife later anyways but Nat doesn't need to see the intimacy between them. She's not jealous, not in that way. Hell Clint had more to worry about with the number of times Laura joked about running off with Nat every time she came around.

Seeing how Clint worked to have these two sides of his life made Natasha that much more certain she would never be able to have it. She didn't need a husband or even a more than one time lover, and children were definitely off the table, but she could admit to herself that she was lonely. That was her one constant in any form, besides her need for survival. Wallowing in it isn't part of the old her and definitely is not going to be a part of the new her so she ignores it, like a muscle cramping during an op.

"How bad was it?" Natasha asks.

"Shouldn't I be asking you that?"

"Most of what I went through can be seen on the 5 o'clock news," she points out.

"This," he points to his side "is mostly my own stupidity. The slight concussion and the stitches on my arm are courteously of Agent Wexler."

"I always knew there was something wrong with him," Nat says. So far most of the agents who turned out to be HYDRA had always given her a raised hair on the back of her neck feel.

"You mean besides the fact that he was a misogynistic douche-bag? Not such a surprise… Sitwell though."

Nat nods. She didn't know Sitwell as well as Clint or even Coulson did but there was a reason he did so well at SHIELD. The man was no slouch in the espionage department.

Laura comes back in with the first aid kit and they bench the conversation. Nat turns on the kitchen sink to get some hot water going for her. Laura peels off the dirty bandages on her husband's side. She pauses.

"Is that buck shot?" Laura asks.

Nat looks over and can tell it definitely is.

"I am 97% certain that all of the bullets are out of me," Clint says as both women roll their eyes and go to work.

Nat rigs up a mini metal detector just to make sure and once Laura restitches some of his wounds and shoots him up with antibiotics Clint crashes for three days.

Those three days are rather uneventful. She gets a text from Steve that Sam and him have arrived safely to wherever they were going. A day before that text she gets a twenty second video message from Wilson taping Steve sleeping on a commercial air flight with Sam narrating as if it were a wildlife show. She doesn't take any of Sam's not-so-subtle texts about getting the band back together seriously.

You just want to flirt with me

I don't need u here 4 that. There's this thing called sexting Romanoff

After a rather pregnant pause when she thinks he had just gone on to something else:

I'm worried about him

Natasha doesn't hesitate to text back:

Don't b

Natasha's attempt to warn Steve off his hunt for the Winter Soldier was only half-hearted; she can't think of him as James Barnes. Not yet anyway.

She gets it, if she doesn't exactly agree with it. Steve is looking for his place too. For him that might mean looking backward, something he's been trying not to do since he came out of the ice.

It's his journey and she doesn't feel like tagging along this time around. She also doesn't need to do a similar journey of her past.

First starting out at SHIELD she thinks about using the new resources available to her to hunt down anyone who even knows the words the Red Room. But she wouldn't be doing it because those people deserve to pay for their crimes (which they do) or because the world would be a better place without them in it (it would). No, Natasha would be doing it because she enjoys it. If she starts tugging on that thread it would just start another ledger full of damp.

She sleeps, as good as someone like her can at night knowing that the intel she gave SHIELD when she came in helped catch some of the bastards. It has never helped her sleep better knowing Madame B died at the turn of the century as a result of stomach cancer. A painful death but the Russian raised French-Canadian still haunts the worst of her nightmares.

So Nat will be like a shark in one of those nature shows Lila likes to watch, moving forward. Maybe not as blood thirsty from this point on. Like that one shark that turned vegetarian in the UK.

Laura keeps the kids home for school for a few days but makes them keep up with their homework. Nat binge watches The Simpsons with Cooper and lets him win a few rounds at Mario Cart. She helps Lila with her spelling words and takes the little girls side when she wants Laura to let her keep a toad inside the house.

"Kids need pets don't they?" she says.

"Cats or dogs. Not frogs."

"Toads…" Lila calls from the next room.

"Whatever," Laura says. "Last week we were watching a nature documentary and now she wants a gila monster. If one of those things bites you, you die."

The Bartons had a cat for awhile but it left for greener pastures. Nat suspects it got hit by a car somewhere and Laura just makes up stories about seeing it around for Clint and the kids.

Cooper's allergic to dogs and Clint still jokes about not being able to fulfill his life long dream of being a dog owner. He transfers the dream over to Natasha quick enough though. In fact it's one of the first things he says upon coming out of his hibernation, right after mumbling for coffee and finishing the whole pot before anyone else gets any.

"Cooper would go into anaphylactic shock," she points out.

"What? No not here. I meant for your place. I could come visit. Lots of free time now."

They're spread out on the couch in the TV room. Laura won't let him near his tool box for at least another week so he's stuck on the couch watching a cooking show at 2 in the afternoon. Nat is making good headway through Laura's beat up copy of Watership Down.

Her first week here she finally read the last Harry Potter book and caught up with all George R.R. Martin's A Song of Fire and Ice novels. Though she's only seen the first season she agrees with Cooper that the books are better than the TV show. This leads to a conversation with the boy's mother about how he's even seen an episode of the TV show and he looses TV and internet privileges for a week. Natasha hasn't been able to read like this in a long time and she's going a bit overboard, but with no burnout in site.

"My place…"

All her covers are blown. Which means most of her safe houses are too. All of them actually, except one. A small condo in Tucson, Arizona that is basically just a stash house. It's rented under a name she's never used for either SHIELD or the KGB. She has a couple hundred dollars stored under the floorboards in the bathroom, which thanks to the security camera and motion sensors she installed, it's a safe bet it's still there. If it were ever compromised it wouldn't be the biggest loss she's ever had. That happened last week and she's still standing.

"As much as I love having you here…" Clint's still not over how Laura and her were teasing him at breakfast, "…Wasn't this supposed to be you time? You know… finding yourself. Not that you can't do that with other people. That whole not being able to love somebody till you love yourself spiel is bullshit."

"Watch it…" Laura calls from somewhere else in the house.

"How does she do that," Clint mumbles. "The kids aren't even here…"

"If you want me to leave…"

He kicks her softly in the thigh because they both know that's not what he's saying.

"Shut up. Though I will throw you out if you don't stop flirting so shamelessly with my wife."

"She starts it."

"…And you are not to talk about teaching Cooper how to use ninja stars," Clint says very seriously. "I'm his father. That's my job. Ninja stars, swords, arrows obviously. Any type of explosive. Basically anything that could lead to bodily harm, I have dibs on since his birth."

"I can hear you," Laura calls out again.

"I'm joking honey…" he lowers his voice to a whisper. "…I'm not joking."

"I thought she was okay with him doing archery," Nat says.

"She was…is. She just doesn't want me taking him hunting. Killing an animal is different than hitting a target. Not that I was gonna…Hey! Don't change the subject, Romanoff."

That wasn't exactly what she was doing.

"What was the subject again?"

"Roses? No, wait. You. It was definitely about you and your new life."

She smiles.

"I'm pretty sure this is my second time at a new life," she points out.

"Joining SHIELD doesn't count now."

"Should I start paying rent?"

"Do you even have money?" Clint asks.

"The Swiss bank account and I have $250,000 dollars stashed in the tool shed out back."

"Thank God you told me. I was gonna tear that thing down and build a new one."

Laura would've stopped him. She knows about the money but she never touches it.

"You still got those gold bars under the barbeque pit?" Nat asks.

He nods.

Even the brief nonmention of HYDRA sours any conversation for them for awhile. He goes back to channel surfing and she returns to her book. They haven't hashed it out yet, but then neither of them is big on sharing their mistakes. Well at least Natasha isn't. Clint is ready to be the butt of any joke.

They don't stay that way for long though. Two nights later Natasha wakes from the deepest sleep she's had in a long while which of course means a nightmare. It starts off normal enough, the worst ones always do.

Natasha doesn't remember the exact specifics. She's at the farm watching Lila and Laura doing…something. There's a clock ticking. Then music. The Dance of the Knights from Prokofiev's Romeo & Juliet. Then Madame B. Blood, hers or others. Little girls standing en pointe until their toes bleed and they fall down from bodies piled as high as a mountain. Ledgers of blood. A white sterile room.

She gets out of the bed and immediately drops into doing a set of one armed pushups. Experience has taught her that she won't be going back to sleep tonight. The clock reads 4AM so there's no point anyways. They rise early on the Barton farm.

It's only after about two minutes when Natasha's covered in a new layer of sweat and can finally hear past her own heartbeat that she knows she's not the only one up. She's surprised anyone else is actually asleep since Clint is apparently ripping the bathroom the kids share apart.

She knows he hears her enter.

"Laura's going to kill you."

He's prying off the tiles from the shower wall. Nat is pretty sure this is not about a nightmare. In fact she's sure Clint hasn't slept at all. He might've gotten into bed and cuddled up with his wife, but she doubts he even closed his eyes to pretend.

"You would never let her do that," he says without stopping his work.

Natasha leans against the door jamb.

"Well," she stretches out the word. "It would be easier. Less paperwork with a murder than a divorce. I could adopt the kids right away."

He does lower the crowbar at that and stares at her.

"Less paperwork with a murder. Sure, nothing but the body."

"Which I would obviously help her get rid of. I can't let my future wife go to jail."

Clint rolls his eyes and goes back to what he was doing. They both know better than to ask the other if they're alright or want to talk. Natasha never wants to talk whereas Clint will talk about everything under the sun including last night's episode of the The Voice before he starts in on any tough stuff.

After a few more tiles come loose he starts.

"Last time I was home we took the kids to the planetarium. I fell asleep during the planet light show thing." Of course he did. "But they seemed to really like it. I thought maybe I could paint the walls in here dark blue. Paint constellations or get some of those glow in the dark plastic stars. Orion. Isn't there a bear or crab or something."

"I think both," she says.

"This shower needed to be regrouted. But then I figured why not just replace the tile? Maybe I could even find some that matches the paint. A blue-black tiled shower wouldn't creep Lila out would it?"

He could go on for at least another half hour and Nat would usually let him but the nightmare has set her on edge and she wants to get everything out and over before Laura or the kids wake up.

"It's not your fault, Clint."

He hesitates for a second but continues destroying the shower.

"Yeah… It's not my fault. Not yours' either. Or Fury's. Hill. Definitely not Coulson's since last time I checked he's still six feet under." He's sweating bullets now and not from the prying. "It's nobodies fault except HYDRA. That bastard Red Skull. Nazi-Germany too I guess for that matter."

Clint's not as big a history buff as his wife except where the Howling Commandos are concerned. He made Nat watch that six hour Ken Burns documentary on them in one sitting.

"A super secret spy organization hidden inside another super secret spy organization. Who knew right?" He's not loosening tiles anymore, just hitting the end of the crowbar into the wall. "You know what I can be blamed for though? I brought you in. I told you SHIELD was different. We're the good guys." He swings the crowbar around. "We were supposed to be the good guys."

She wants to hug him, wrap her arms so tight around him he almost won't be able to breathe. But sometimes that makes it worse and Natasha's pretty sure this is one of those times. Especially with the way he's brandishing that crowbar. So she goes with her ace in the hole as a distraction.

"I forgot to tell you something about what happened."

He stops swinging but keeps a tight grasp on the crowbar.

"You forgot to tell me everything about what happened."

Well she'll get to the rest.

"Yeah but this is important. At least to your nerd brain." When he finally looks her in the eye she continues. "The Winter Soldier…"

"Yeah I saw the news footage."

Of course Clint believes her about the Winter Soldier. He was there two days after she reported the loss and her gunshot to SHIELD. He saw how shaken she was. One of the few who knew what shaken looked like on her.

"…It's Bucky Barnes."

Clint drops the crowbar. Apparently on his bare foot because he hops around cursing.

"Ow, ow, ow… Jesus. You're bullshiting me."

"Almost constantly but I'm on the level with this."

He looks at her hard for a second then around the destruction he's started in on. He steps out of the shower and grabs her by the arm.

"Coffee. Now. I can't be sure I didn't fall asleep or this isn't a hallucination."

She calls him a nerd and laughs at him all the way to the kitchen. Clint drinks three cups of coffee by the time she's finished. The sun isn't up yet but they hear water in the pipes so they know someone's up.

"Bucky Freakin' Barnes." Of course his favorite commando was the group sharpshooter and Cap's right hand man.

"And Armin Zola?!" He shakes his head in disbelief. "I'm kind of glad I missed some of this shit."

"Watch the language, mister," Laura says coming into the kitchen. She squeezes his shoulder in affection before making her way over to get her own cup of coffee.

"The kids aren't even—."

The rest of the sentence dies in his mouth because they hear Lila padding down the stairs and a moment later she's in the kitchen. She's wearing a blue Cinderella nightdress, clutching a Captain America bear in one fist. Nat knows better than to respond to the bear with even a smile because that'll just start Clint off on a rant about how there's no good Hawkeye or Black Widow merchandise and how Tony Stark should seriously buy a toy company to rectify that.

Lila gets a stool and starts to gather everything to make her own bowl of cereal. Laura actually welcomes her daughter's independent streak, whereas Clint probably still wishes she was in diapers.

"What's all this…?" Laura motions at Clint's everything.

"Bucky Barnes is the Winter Soldier!" Clint crows.

"Okay…So this is a happy thing? You're not dying or…" She lets the sentence drop.

"Totally happy, sweetheart. Oh! That's where Cap is isn't it? Looking for him, cause he's not gonna leave a man behind and Bucky was his best friend. Him and that Wilson guy are looking for the Winter Soldier aren't they? Do they need help? Cause the guy is a ghost. I bet they need help. I could so help."

Clint's too excited to answer Lila's question about what a Winter Soldier is. Laura moves back over to him and squeezes his shoulder again, this time in a less lovey-dovey way.

"You're needed plenty right here. Speaking of which…What is going on in the kids' bathroom?"

Clint winces in mock fright.

"Daddy made a mess," Lila sing-songs taking a seat at the table.

He starts rambling.

"It's about time to redecorate in there, don't you think? The kids can use the guest bathroom until I'm done. I just replaced the shower head in there. How's the pressure by the way?" he asks Nat.

"Pretty good but the hot water runs out after about five minutes."

"It does that in all of them," Laura says.

"We need a new water heater," Clint says.

"Which you can get and install next week. You need to rest." She looks over at Natasha. "You both do."

And that's apparently the law of the land as Cooper finally shuffles his way downstairs and they all move onto a different topic.

Later Laura is rinsing dishes in the sink and Nat is flipping through a magazine. Usually the kids take a bus to school, the stop being less than a quarter mile down the road from the farm, but today Clint wants to drive them in. That gives the two women about an hour alone together.

Laura loads the breakfast dishes into the dishwasher and leans back against the counter. Nat doesn't really look up from the magazine as her friend talks.

"Bucky Barnes huh?"

"Yep."

"Wasn't it the Winter Soldier who shot you in Odessa?" Laura asks. Nat just nods. Laura turns around and stares out the window. "What that guy must've gone through."

Natasha has a pretty good idea what James Barnes must've gone through. She'd skimmed those files before she handed them over to Steve. The Red Room didn't have that chair apparatus but the rest of it hit a little too close to home for her.

Laura lightens things up.

"Clint is not going to shut up about this anytime soon," she says smiling. "He still has a Bucky Barnes action figure around somewhere. I thought he might give it to Cooper but he's all 'You can't give him that! It's a collector's item'. I think really he just never learned how to share."

Nat cracks a smile.

"You better hide his copy of that Ken Burns documentary."

"They released a blu-ray of it last year. And he has a copy of that dramatization they did on the History Channel back in '99."

"He's still mad that HBO dropped the planned miniseries," Nat says.

Laura gets herself another cup of coffee and takes a seat across from Natasha.

"Did I ever tell you how he made me watch that Ken Burns Howling Commandos documentary on our sixth date?"

Good to know Nat's not the only girl he tortured with that. Laura's a history buff like Clint but her specialty is the Industrial Revolution or earlier. Anything after 1850 bores her. She rolls her eyes whenever anyone mentions the Victorian era.

"It doesn't surprise me."

"I tried to start making out with him during like the second episode and he actually pushed me away."

After they both stop laughing Nat speaks.

"I hate to break it to you Laura, but you married a huge dork."

Laura leans back in her chair and sighs like she actually has a problem with it.

"I know…but he's a cute dork. They're the best kind."

"If you start talking about his ass I'm going to have to put you in a sleeper hold," Nat says.

"What about his arms?"

Nat just rolls her eyes.

"One day Romanoff…Maybe not today or even a year from now…But one day you will let down those reinforced thirty feet thick steel walls for someone else. And I'm not talking about Steve Rogers cause I'm pretty sure even Adolf Hitler went 'I kind of like the guy'."

Nat doesn't even try to stop Laura's little rant.

"I'm talking about real honest to goodness Hallmark channel movie mushy feelings. You're going to want to tell me all about this person's ass and arms and the scrunchy weird faces they make when they're thinking really hard. Oh! And how even when you want to kill them there's still a little piece of you that just wants to curl up on the couch and binge watch something on Netflix with them while you take turns rubbing each others feet."

"Sure," Natasha says giving her a look that says she's crazy.

"It's gonna happen and I'm gonna laugh so hard I'll need an oxygen tank."

Just because Laura likes having a home in the country and babies doesn't mean she thinks it's for everyone and she definitely knows it's not for Nat. The stuff with SHIELD must've taken a big toil because usually after just four days at the farm Natasha starts getting itchy feet. After about six days, which happens less often, Natasha and Clint move the dining room table out of the way and start sparring most mornings. But Laura's seen the way Nat looks at things when she's on the farm.

The worst part is that Natasha does want everything Laura just said. It sounds like the perfect decompression after a day of what she does. She'd nix the foot rub though because she's extremely ticklish there and not even Barton knows that.

From Laura's perspective the worst part isn't that they make a joke of it or that Natasha really is just that lonely. It's not even that Natasha thinks she'll never have it.

The real worst part is how Natasha Romanoff thinks she doesn't deserve it.

Clint doesn't end up getting the new water heater, at least not that Natasha sees. Natasha does finish Watership Down and finishes a Lee Child thriller but doesn't get to start the new Stephan King. Because about a week later Maria Hill calls from New York.