The blood-orange sun broke through the sky, outlining the silhouette of a committed couple determined to protect each other in their own way through a cold and uncaring world. The dark-haired male gently stroked the red-haired female's face, trying to assure her that everything would be okay, but spoke to her in urgent whispers. He warned her that their captors had learned of their secret dream to leave their life behind and start anew as two regular people, and that punishment was imminent. As he had promised to her a long time ago at the young careless age of eighteen, he would take all of her pain from her. If he could not remain at her side and pursue these dreams with her, then he would rather she do it alone than see his torture, shattering her dreams of a bright future. The female understood what this meant for them, but she still fought her lover on this, insisting that they remain together. If they were meant to die, then they would die together.

And that was when he told her he loved her, but pushed her off, tears flowing softly down his eyes like cascading diamonds.

Push.

As the woman's grip on her lover's hand loosened and she fell into the darkness below, she cried to him that she loved him, and ordered him to wait for her, promising in return that she would always find him.

And so, even though Natalia Romanova, later known as Natasha Romanoff, struggled mightily to move on with her life, the one thing she still kept locked inside her heart was her promise to the Winter Soldier, that she would one day come back for him.

But of her tale of sacrifice and heartbreak, there was a memory she never accurately recounted, and this is where Clint Barton's story of falling in love with a Black Widow begins.

Clint Barton stood along the edge of an secluded coastline, observing the other S.H.I.E.L.D. agents crumpled on the sand. They were on a simple routine mission: retrieve an item, fight some villains, and escape without a scratch. Nothing too dramatic. But this particular mission was hindered by something, or someone. He kneeled down to speak to one of his comrades, who was conscious but groaning in pain.

"What the hell happened here? This was supposed to be easy."

"You don't understand, sir—"

That's when an unarmed but wild redhead, her sharp teeth clenched together and her forehead pouring with blood, leapt from behind the wounded agent and furiously clawed at Clint, screaming mouthfuls of bitter-sounding Russian. She was clearly scared and disoriented. This was a rabid animal, wet and covered in dirt and raging at the air. Clint immediately unsheathed his knife and slashed at her to defend himself, but the woman managed to get a punch in before he could knock her backward. When she fell, Clint hoped for his own safety that she would stay there, but instead she immediately jumped right back up and pounced forward. She didn't seem to notice that she was bleeding profusely and particularly didn't care that she was unarmed. His knife pierced her in the arm, but she ignored this. He slammed her again, but she didn't care about the pain and resumed her barrage of attacks. The redhead kicked him and stole one of his pistols, shooting to kill. She critically wounded him before he could knock the pistol off of her hand. As he bit through the pain, he continued to fight her for the better part of the day, wondering what had happened to create her.

It wasn't until he managed to grab hold of both of her wrists that her angry flailing stopped.

She finally muttered something else in Russian, and Clint Barton watched as the redhead collapsed, completely and utterly exhausted.

The woman was brought to the medical wing screaming and fighting everyone and everything that got in her way. Even when the medical staff strapped her down to the bed, to make sure that she would not hurt anyone or herself, she would still struggle and yell obscenities in Russian and other languages. From outside of the medical room, Clint Barton observed the frightened woman mumbling in Russian and English. "You don't understand," she repeated to no one. After hours of this, the woman eventually fell asleep, and for the first time in the medical wing, there was silence.

"What happened to her?" Clint asked his boss, Nick Fury, curiously.
"What we know so far," Fury explained, "is that her name is Natalia Romanova. She was an agent trained in Soviet Russia."
"How did she get all the way from Soviet Russia to…?"
"I'm not sure yet."

When Natalia Romanova recovered, she simply informed S.H.I.E.L.D. that she had defected from Russia, but Clint sensed that there was more to this story. When she picked an alias for herself, she chose Natasha Romanoff, even though it would make it easy for the Russians to track her, because it was close enough to her original name. Clint Barton wondered curiously if there was something from her past that she wanted to remember forever.

As Natasha accepted her fate and worked with Clint Barton on missions as a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, she gradually opened up to him, and he found himself falling in love with her for no logical reason. She was efficient, but she was also human, and he liked how she would try to keep a calm and professional demeanor despite whatever it was that she had been through. To him, this was a tough woman who would not let her past define her, who still allowed herself a small measure of optimism for the future. Even though she would retain an unspoken hurt that would resonate throughout their time together, even though he knew what he was getting himself into, Clint eventually decided to take a chance and professed his love for her. He didn't care that she didn't have an answer to this; he was hopelessly devoted to her. Even though he could never help her wash away her pain completely, he patiently loved the woman with all his heart, without expecting anything in return. All he knew was that he would always protect her from the rest of the world. He would fight for her, and help her make her own choices, the ones that would make her truly happy.

But she never discussed, and perhaps never remembered, what she had deliriously repeated inside that medical wing, and Clint kept this knowledge locked inside his heart, wondering if he would ever need to tell her.