A/N: Short, drabble-ish Clintasha oneshot. Takes place right before they head off to New York.
She's terrified.
Clint was right when he said she was a spy, not a soldier, and she knows it better than anyone else. But this is what has to be done.
"Are you ready?"
And Natasha wants more than anything to just say no, she'll never be ready for this, that she'd rather fight Loki himself with all his demigod power than be standing in a place where she's responsible for saving all these people, she doesn't. She can't. That's sentiment. Emotion. That's what that she always swore would never have a place in her. I was raised to fight and to win. I was raised to never know fear. I can't be anything but fine, especially not now.
"Have you ever known me not to be?"
He smiles, and she looks away before she can see the smile drop to a concerned glance. He's never known her to back down from a fight, a job, anything - but that doesn't mean she's ready. The Black Widow taught herself a long long time ago that emotions are useless, that they get in the way of what needed to be done, that it was best to keep them far away, locked in some deep corner of her mind, and Natasha Romanov isn't about to change that. Clint just can't help but wish he knew how to get past it all.
I am a spy. I am not a weak little girl who hides and backs off in the face of conflict. I don't know fear.
Guns strapped into holsters, watching Clint screwing arrowheads onto the shafts, seeing it all and not registering a moment of it. I have never been this scared in my life,she thinks. But this isn't a time for being scared. Natasha needs to be calm and cool and collected and nothing else.
Of course it has to be Clint, of all people, who's sitting down next to her and putting a hand on her shoulder because he knows that's about all he can get away with without losing a finger. The only one who's ever known her as something other than The Black Widow. Ironic, considering it was her spy self that brought them into the same sphere of life. The only one who could ever see through all of the lies she tells and the facade she puts up every day.
"Tasha?"
"Yeah?"
"We're going to get out of this. We'll have each others backs. We've got something Loki and his army never will."
Natasha has to stop herself from throwing her arms around Clint for this. She can't. He can't know anything that's going on underneath her cool demeanor, and she can't let herself feel things like that. It's sentiment. It's weakness. And to be honest, emotions like that scare the hell out of her, but she's the Black Widow, and she can't be scared.
"I'm ready."
It's one of the biggest lies she's ever told, and he has no idea. But that's not what surprises her - it's that she can't help but wish, for the first time in her life, that someone could tell that she was lying.
A/N: I was having Clintasha feels. I should be sorry for doing this instead of updating Rest but I'm not.