DISCLAIMER: This characters do not belong to me, except the shitty one. He's actually mine.
A/N: I started writing this one excitedly. It's not even close to my headcanon, but I wanted a fun Clint and Natasha fic on how they met; mission fic and non agsty. Anyway, half of this came out alright but then the other half was like meh I hate it but whatever, let's just give it an end because if not it'd be stuck on a fic folder forever.
I half like it, half hate it, so you've been warned. Long one-shot.
'Я с удовольствием' the redheaded woman turned around and smiled at the dead body in the room. She secured the flashdrive in between her breasts, grabbed her handbag, put her high heels back on and walked out of the building.
Outside, it was really windy. She closed her eyes for one second to feel the breeze as she walked in the opposite direction of her house, just in case she was being followed.
She heard it first, the sound of an object moving too fast in the air. She opened her eyes and moved her head against the wind just enough to avoid the arrow's path. She looked where it had come from and saw the figure of a man, now pointing a second arrow at her.
She ran.
'The Black Widow' Bell said. He opened the file and passed it to Clint Barton. 'She's armed and dangerous, Barton, that's why I'm sending you. She needs to be put out from a distance.'
The man was 53, fat, and had white hair and a moustache. He was wearing a black suit and was sweating more than usual. Which was a lot. And he smelled. Clint Barton didn't like him.
'Do NOT, I repeat, do not engage in combat. She might look harmless, but she will not hesitate to kill you'. Barton looked pass Bell to his handler, Phil Coulson. He was standing in the corner, studying another file.
'Coulson?' Barton asked. Bell might be deputy director of SHIELD, but Clint Barton only took orders from one man. The only man he trusted in there, and that was Phil Coulson.
Coulson looked up from his file and moved closer to Clint's table. He handled him what he had been reading. 'Deputy director Bell is right, Clint. Don't underestimate her. She plays people for a living; she's a spy'.
Barton nodded. 'KGB?'
'Rumor has it; she's moved on and is freelancing. Which is worse.' Coulson said.
'Where is she now?' Barton inquired, reading the file.
'Russia. That's where you're heading.'
'What's her mission there, do we know?'
'It doesn't matter what it is, you're going there to put an end to it, Agent Barton. The Black Widow must die.' Deputy Director John Bell clenched his fist and hit the table. 'She cannot live any longer'. He walked out of the room.
Natasha Romanoff was wearing a long black dress, slightly torn up from her right knee, all the way down, high heels, black purse and red curls down when she walked into her room.
It wasn't a home. She didn't have a home, not really. She had a country where she'd been born; she had a house she was living in. She paid a monthly rent, all cash. She covered her tracks and was always ready to leave if the situation demanded it. In her line of work, you couldn't afford to get attached to things.
She had run until she reached a taxi, got in and drove off, as the silhouette of the archer stood in the middle of the street behind her. She made the cabbie drive for about 15 minutes when she got out, nowhere near her address and took a bus. Then, she walked another 5 blocks, checking her back constantly. She was alone. Yet, the minute she unlocked the door, she sensed something was off. Her heart beat was rising as she got her shoes off and walked in. She turned the light on to find the house empty. Weird. She wasn't usually wrong.
She looked in the mirror to her left and she saw the arrow coming at her in time to search for cover and reached the gun strapped to her leg.
The arrow broke the mirror in hundreds of pieces and she saw the archer's face for the first time as he broke the window with his body to come into her house; dirty blond hair and blue eyes, amazing arms and a body to die for. She shot him from behind the counter but he dodged it.
He shot another arrow from the far end of her place and she barely eluded it, losing an inch of hair in the process. She shot back, hitting his shoulder and he lost his bow. She used that moment to get close to him, kicking him in the chest and pinning him down to the floor.
кто ты, черт возьми?' she whispered, applying enough pressure to his injured shoulder to make him moan in pain.
'I don't speak Russian, darling' he whispered back, breathing heavily.
'Who are you?' she spoke in perfect English.
He chuckled. 'Hawkeye. Pleasure to meet you'.
She frowned and then she smirked.
'SHIELD sent you.' It was a statement, not a question.
He sensed something in her demeanor change; sort of like she was starting a game and he remember what Coulson had warned him. He took the opportunity to turn their roles as he got on top of her and she was now pinned to the floor. She never stopped smirking and that didn't feel right to Clint. He didn't let it show.
'You can have your intel for a price' she purred, trying to distract his senses enough to free her left hand from his tight grip.
His brow furrowed. 'What intel?'
Her smirk grew wider.
She freed her hand but rested it next to her body. For now.
'Talk. You're in no position to bargain.' His eyesight went from her eyes to her lips and she didn't miss it. 'Literally'.
Her free hand reached a lamp that had dropped to the floor during the struggle. She smiled at him.
'Are you sure, Hawkeye? Because I'm always on top' She teased him.
Before he had time to process what had happened, the lamp broke in the back of his skull and he fell on top of her, unconscious.
By the time he woke up with a killer headache, she was gone and the place was empty.
Natasha was in a seedy motel trying to hack into SHIELD's data base. She plucked the flashdrive into the USB port and typed a few keys before she got full access to the information.
It wasn't part of her job. She had been hired by an anonymous third party, as per usual, to retrieve a flash drive from a fancy old man who wasn't supposed to survive. Easy enough.
But when she was in the middle of it, something had caught her attention. While 'no questions asked' was her policy (sort of), the old man she had seduced to get him alone in his own house had shared some interesting secrets. Secrets she was now trying to confirm.
The old man had been working on a conspiracy theory within an intelligence agency. 'Who isn't?' Natasha had thought and left it alone, but as she was walking out of the room passing the now dead man and stuffing the flashback in between her breasts, a room slightly lightened had caught her eye. Reckless as it was, she gave herself a second to look. The wall was wrapped in newspaper articles and printed intel, connected with a red string, from one article to another in a messy way. Some words and dates had been highlighted and several photographs of people's faces where pinned above it all. Conspiracy indeed. She had been there too long. She got out of the building and into a windy night.
Maria Hill was relatively new to SHIELD. She worked hard and had already caught Director Fury's eye. She was good and excelled at creative solutions, which the agency clearly needed. She thought outside the box.
She was quietly typing in field reports when her computer froze. Next to her, Agent Coulson exclaimed 'What the hell?'
She looked at him, then at his computer. It was also frozen. Suddenly, a program began to run on every monitor in the room and they got it quickly, they were being hacked.
Coulson reacted first. He got on the phone with IT. 'Morales, shut it down and run a trace, NOW!'
Hill heard a screaming Fury walk in and press and alarm. He got them on lockdown. 'NOBODY LEAVES UNTIL WE SORT THIS OUT'
Coulson nodded from the phone and looked at Fury. 'Closing in an address, but Morales says he can't shut it down until he's pinpointed a location'
The sound of the alarm rang on Hill's ears.
'Got it' Coulson yelled and hung up the phone. He dialed another number.
'Who are you calling?' Hill asked Coulson as Fury approached them. The screens de-froze and they looked at the computers. It was back to normal for the machinery. Somebody stopped the alarm, and Hill secretly thanked them. 'Barton. Hacker's in Russia; he's already there'.
Fury's face went blank. He looked at Coulson as the man looked at him, understanding what they were up against. Hill's phone rang. She picked it up but didn't say a word. A few seconds later, she hung up.
'Morales. It wasn't him. Hacker went off line as soon as he got an address' she explained to Fury. Next to him, Coulson hung up as well. 'Barton's on his way, sir'.
When Clint Barton kicked the door opened, the place was empty and he wasn't even surprised. He had underestimated her and now she was officially a pain in his ass. He clenched a fist as he looked around the room. On top of the bed there was note, written in red lipstick. It had no recipient, but he knew he was it was meant for him. It read 'I'm ALWAYS on top, Clint Barton'.
She had hacked into SHIELD and now she was teasing him. He had definitely underestimated her. He chuckled and walked out.
She was still deciding what to do with the information. Once she had read it all, she connected the dots and the path was obvious. But one had to know what to look for to see the pattern. It wasn't her business but she wasn't willing to trade the flashdrive to her sponsor anymore. It's not like she had a moral problem with shady conspiracies. But she had to grant it to SHIELD, they had send the only man who had gotten close enough to actually kill her and had had a real shot at it. She thought about what she had read on Clint Barton's file. Was he a part of it? Why would she care? She got the question out of her brain.
She walked into a different hotel, duffle bag on her hand. She got a room and left the bag on the bed. She was about to crash into it when her phone rang. She stared at the number; her sponsor. She answered but let him speak.
'есть ли у вас это?' do you have it?
'ДА' yes.
'завтра вечером. 8 вечера. Palace Hotel' Tomorrow night at 8. He hung up.
Deputy Director Bell walked into Coulson's office when he was about to head home. 'Call Barton' he stated. 'NOW'
Coulson did as asked. 'Sir? What should I tell him?'
Bell didn't pace around. He yanked the phone from Phil's hand.
'Coulson'. Clint Barton greeted from Russia.
'Why the hell is she still alive, Barton?' Bell was almost yelling.
Clint didn't respond. Bell closed his eyes and let out a deep breath.
'One of my Russian contacts has it on good hand she'll be attending a meeting at the Palace Hotel tomorrow night at 8. Be there and shoot her dead, Agent Barton' before he hung up, he added 'And that's an order'.
He walked out, leaving Coulson's office behind him.
Natasha was playing with the flashdrive between her fingers. She glanced at the clock on the nightstand; 6.30. She stood up from the bed, opened the duffle bag and put out its content. Clean underwear, black pants and t-shirt, boots, black dress, a knife and 2 guns. She chose the dress and the heels she was already wearing, applied some make up, stripped the guns and knife to the holsters on her thighs and walked out the room, intending to return for her things later. She never did.
When she walked into the hotel bar, she sat on the table and assessed her surroundings. One door, an elevator, a staircase. A waiter approached her and she ordered a vodka soda. She waited for the man who had hired her.
The man came in a couple of minutes after the waiter had brought her drink. He ordered a coffee. He was tall and well built, dark hair, mid-50s with bags under his eyes and wrinkles.
'где это?' 'where is it?' the man asked
'безопасный' safe. 'где деньги?' where's the money?
Funny, she'd been in there for about 20 minutes now and not one person had either entered the building nor exited it. Nobody had called for the elevator… That couldn't be a coincidence. She felt trapped and she didn't like it. She looked at both her sides. One waiter, one bartender, 3 costumers. They could all be easily in it. Her jaw clenched. The man in front of her chuckled.
Clint Barton studied the Palace Hotel from across the street. His quiver was full and he had his bow in his right hand. She had walked in not half an hour ago, but something was wrong, he could feel it. No one was walking that street. Not one soul. He looked at the end of the road and saw that someone had closed the damn road. 'Under construction', the sign read.
Bullshit, it was a trap.
He looked over the glass door just in time to see a man and a woman blocking the elevator and the staircase. Two other man (one was dressed as a waiter), strapped Natasha Romanoff to a chair and tied her there, while a different tall, middle aged man who was turned back to Clint was hitting her pretty bad. Why wasn't she fighting back? She had taken him down in a matter of minutes, so what was going on?
One of the men pulled up her dress and took two guns and a knife from the holster. Clint didn't like her chances. Why did he care?, she was his mission. It was shady, that's why. Six to one. Well, fuck his mission. He made a call that would forever change the course of his life right then and there.
He found a good angle by the window. He could see and hear what was happening but he was covered by a plant if those guys were to look. He put his bow and arrow in position to take the shot.
'где это?' 'Where is it?' the man repeated as he hit her in the face. Instead of fighting back, her head fell to her chest. He took her by the hair and made her look at him. The picture in front of her was blurry and the words were unclear, but the pain was very much real. How could she have been so stupid? Bartender her ass. He was in on it and he had drugged her. She was going to die there.
'Вы сделали ошибку, черная вдова' you've made a mistake, Black Widow. She smirked. She'd go down with a fight.
'читать ваши файлы?' reading your intel?. Ironic, really. She had read it out of curiosity. She had found it very interesting, a conspiracy within SHIELD, an Agency she had never heard off until a few weeks ago. Now she was being targeted by them and by the people conspiring against them. She was drugged but the adrenaline of the several blows and punches she was receiving on her face and ribs kept her awake. She noticed movement outside, behind a window blocked by a hideous plant. She could only hope that she wasn't hallucinating the arrow pointing to them. She swallowed hard and tried playing her last card.
'What to do gain out of bringing SHIELD down?' she hoped that was enough to get Hawkeye's attention and not enough to make the man beating her suspicious.
He smirked. But he was a man about to gain power, so he spoke. 'Not SHIELD. Just Director Fury.'
She cocked her head to the right. 'You're gonna put a guy to replace him. You control the Director, you control the Agency' she connected the dots. The guy smirked and grabbed her gun. He pointed it at her heart.
Natasha stared at the gun pointing at her chest, waiting for a bullet to pierce her heart. Time went by slowly. She saw an arrow hit the guy's hand a second too late; he had already pulled the trigger. She was expecting the sharp pain on her chest, but it hit the inside of her leg, making the chair she was stripped to fall down as she hit her head and blacked out.
When she came back to, she realized that A) she wasn't dead; B) Her leg hurt like a motherfucker; C) she felt dizzy and D) whatever surface she was on, it was comfortable and unknown.
She was laying down on a bed when she opened her eyes. She was no longer wearing her black dress; she had an old black T-Shirt on that covered all the way to her ass and no pants. On her thigh she had a big chunk of white gauze taped down, and a bright red spot growing wider in the middle of it.
She tried her best to sit on the bed, but she could barely move. She felt dizzy again and was probably about to pass out when someone shook her by the shoulder.
'Hey' Clint Barton was sitting in a chair by the bed, trying to keep her from passing out again.
She looked at him, fully awake and a look between confused and scared and tried moving away from him, grabbing whatever she could as a weapon. As soon as she moved her leg an inch she regretted it, screaming in pain. The sheets were covered with her blood in less than a minute.
'Damn it' he said, moving to the bed next to her to analyze her wound. 'Your stitches opened'
What the hell, stitches? When did he patch her up? She realized she must have been really close to dying if he sewed her flesh and she didn't even notice.
'This is gonna hurt' he said and run out of the room. She pressed both her hands against her leg to stop the bleeding but she was about to pass out again. She didn't think she had that much blood left inside her body. Clint Barton came back holding a spoon and a lighter. She understood what he was about to do. She gave him a slight nod and moved her hands away. She closed her eyes and tried to keep her scream in the back of her throat as he cauterized her wound and she blacked out once more.
It was night when she opened her eyes. To her left, Clint Barton was sleeping on a chair. She stared down at her leg. An ugly scar had been born where her flesh was burnt. She wasn't bleeding to death, not today at least. She thought the adrenaline might kill her, though. The leg hurt almost too much for her to bear, but she tried to suppress it by closing her eyes, resting her head on the headboard and considered leaving. But she couldn't. Something inside her told her he wasn't an enemy, not anymore. He had saved her and made sure she lived. She would forever have a debt to him.
'Good to know you're still alive' he said, yawning and interrupting her thoughts.
'I owe you' there was a sincerity on her look that made Clint choke a little. He shuddered.
''s nothing' .He pretended like it wasn't a big deal.
'You saved my life. Twice' She was still having a hard time staying awake. She didn't feel dizzy anymore, but she was gonna pass out from the pain. He noticed it. 'Why?' she needed to know.
He didn't answer. Instead, he gave her a look, one she'd become all too familiar with later on in her life, a look that stated you-know-why and don't-make-me-say-it and come-on all in one. Some years later, it would also incorporate the silent meaning of I-love-you. She called it his wet-puppy-eyes. She decided in that moment to trust the man in front of her. She would never regret that choice in her lifetime.
'Where are we?' she looked around the room but didn't recognize it.
'Safe house.' He answered. She raised an eyebrow. 'Hungry?' he added.
'Are you still going to kill me?' she didn't see the point in eating if he was. She was pretty sure he wasn't. He had had every opportunity and yet he had made sure she'd live.
He smiled, reading her mind. 'After saving you? Twice? That'd be pointless.'
'what are you going to do with me?' she was as serious as she could, but he could see the leg was killing her. He moved away from the chair and found his bag. He took a bottle of pills from it and put it on the bedside table. Painkillers. He went to the kitchen and came back with a glass of water.
Fuck recklessness, the pain was going to kill her. She took the pills and swallowed two of them, followed by the water he had given her.
'I don't know yet… ' he looked at the floor and then at her . 'Were you telling the truth, about a conspiracy against SHIELD or were you trying to get my attention?'
'Do they have to be mutually exclusive?' she smiled. 'Both.' She owed him the explanation, so she gave it. 'There's going to be an attempt against your Director Fury'. Her life was in his hands, and now she had placed her trust there. She lifted her shirt (his shirt, she assumed) and took the flashdrive from within her bra. His eyebrows were raised when she placed the device in his hand. 'There's a mole inside SHIELD' she smirked. 'I think I know who it is'
Clint was already in deep shit if he thought about it. He had been sent to kill the Black Widow. Instead, he had saved her. He wasn't sure why. It had something to do with the intel she had mention when they first met, sure, and now knowing there's a mole at SHIELD it kind of justified the whole blowing his mission (at least he hoped it'd look that way to his superiors), he thought as Natasha Romanoff showed him the content of the flashdrive, with several documents and credit reports he understood nothing about. He looked at her and realized that sure, the intel had to do with it, but there was something else, something that he couldn't quite put into words that against his better judgment, prevented him from completing a mission. There was something about her.
She looked back at him, holding his gaze for an entire minute before she spoke. 'See?' she showed him the last document, an encrypted vide file. Clint's mouth dropped.
Half an hour later, he was on the phone with Coulson. He had been for the last 30 minutes actually. Deputy Fucking Director John Bell had been arrested for intent of murder, conspiracy to a lot of shit and some other stuff Clint couldn't even remember. The list was long. Natasha was near him at his safe house, checking her wound again. It still hurt like hell but she could manage thanks to the painkillers.
'Yes, sir; thank you sir.' Clint was saying. 'I know, Coulson, but it was worth it. I know… '
She looked up at him and he made a nothing-to worry-about face. Liar. She could hear another man's voice screaming at him on the phone.
'Can you just stop yelling for a minute and listen to me? No, I know but if you really think about why… yeah, well, she did it all by herself actually. Yeah…' a few seconds went by. Natasha's attention focused on him the second he mentioned a female person. 'I think so, sir.' He was smiling now. 'Of course, I know… Yeah, my responsibility.' He smirked and looked at Natasha, whose brow was furrowed. 'Fury owes me. Her. Come on Phil, you did the same for me. One shot, that's all I'm asking… Yeah, I'm positive about it' The man on the other end sighed and kept talking. Clint Barton hung up.
'How would you like to be an asset for SHIELD?' he asked her, a stupid smile plastered on his face.
'Are you seriously offering me a job, Clint Barton?' she smirked. She liked Hawkeye. She just didn't imagine how much.
Я с удовольствием: my pleasure.
Other russian translation are next to each sentence.