There is a lot of Iron Man 2 spoilers in this chapter. I admit I counted on the readers to be familiar with Iron Man 2, so I didn't explain things like who is Justin Hammer or Tony's blood poisoning.

Anyway, thanks for all the fantastic reviews, I'm glad that people who enjoyed Liars and Killers came back for another part of the story. I hope I can live up to your expectations. :-)


Chapter 1: Is this love, agent Romanoff?

"Do you have to go?" Natasha asked.

It wasn't pleading, she was just making sure that this was really the only way.

"Fury very specifically promises to kick certain parts of my body if I refuse," said Clint and tossed a clean T-shirt in his duffel bag.

"I'm going to go crazy here," she warned him. Tony Stark had been driving her up the wall ever since she first met him. When he escaped Coulson's supervision earlier that day and went to talk to Pepper Potts, she was furious. She had yelled at Coulson for almost five minutes before he had managed to tell her that Stark was no longer his responsibility because he and Clint were being reassigned.

"C'mon Nat, you have handled worse," he tried to cheer her up.

"I can handle murderers, mafia bosses, weapon dealers, terrorist, I can even handle politicians, but I have a serious problem with annoying overgrown teenagers. Fury's risking his precious genius here, because one more smartass comment and I swear, if the blood poisoning doesn't kill him, I will."

"If it makes you feel any better, I have been assigned to protect a team working on a yet unexplained meteorological anomaly. Meaning I am going to babysit a bunch of nerds," he said bitterly.

"Hey, maybe you will see E.T.," she teased him. "Me, I'll see only paperwork and Justin Hammer embarrassing himself in front of the whole Stark Expo."

"That should be funny."

"I can think of a thousand more useful ways to spend my time. It's going to get boring here," she said, looking around.

He knew she loved the small flat Coulson had rented for her undercover. They both lived there, posing as Natalie Rushman and her brother Lucas, and Clint acted as the middle man, bringing Natasha's messages to Fury. Occasionally he was called off to a short mission, but in the meantime it felt like holiday. When she came home and sat at the kitchen table with a glass of wine and her laptop to write her daily report, it almost felt like a family evening. He always made her breakfast and woke her up. He tried to be creative with his wake up calls, but he learned the hard way that things like dousing her with cold water or playing Barbie Girl on full volume were not good ideas. His nose still hurt when he remembered the last one. Once, on Sunday, they tried to cook dinner, but they found out that they were both a disaster in kitchen. They ended up in an Italian restaurant nearby and when they got back, Fury had been waiting for them, furious because they didn't answer their phone. Once they sat on the roof all night, drank wine and she showed him the constellations and told him the legends about them.

It's like sharing an apartment with an actual sister, Clint thought and he too was sad that it's over.

Of course, it wasn't all fun. She invited him to the Stark Expo opening but they weren't in the crowd, they climbed on the construction high above the main stage. That's where they saw Stark's medical scanner and alerted Fury that there's something wrong with his favorite genius. Clint hadn't been in Monaco with her, when Stark was almost killed by a madman and there was nothing Natasha could do about it and not get fried in the process. They both knew that Stark was dying and even though his name alone could make her angry, they both felt sorry for him. It was Clint's idea to call Fury to talk some sense into Stark and he was part of the team that secured the perimeter while Fury managed to get Stark out of the giant plastic donut and Natasha injected him with lithium dioxide to make the symptoms of his blood poisoning go away.

And now, just one day later, he was being reassigned to New Mexico.

"You think that things around Stark can ever get boring?" he smiled.

She looked down and the small smile faded from her face. "I don't think I will be around Stark much longer. He has to find the cure in time or... Well, either way, he won't need me then."

There was nothing Clint could say. He finished packing in silence and zipped the duffel bag. Natasha walked him to the door of the apartment.

"Good luck with the babysitting," she said.

"Good luck with Stark. See ya," he smiled.

She returned the smile, stepped back and closed the door, as he walked away.

XXX

Natasha closed the door behind him and leaned her forehead against it. Why does it get harder every time? She knew he would be fine, but she still hated to see him go. And the last two months... she got used to this normal life too much. She hadn't fired a single bullet since the beginning of this mission. Two months without a fight. This had to be some kind of her personal record. She hadn't stayed out of trouble for this long since she was eight.

She went back to his room and stretched on his bed. His presence still lingered, traces of his scent in the air, opened wardrobe door, cookies he had bought her. She ran her fingers across the sheets, half wishing that he would come back and find her here...

She sat up so quickly that the bed creaked. No. No. No, no, no!

She had seen enough of this behavior to recognize the symptoms. She was proud of the accuracy with which she could tell whether someone had a crush. For example she had known about the mutual feelings between Tony Stark and Pepper Potts from the minute she had seen them together. She was probably more aware of them than they were. She knew that agent Hill was in love with Fury but she had never told him. But these were all other people, not her.

She walked to the bathroom and washed her face with cold water. Too late she realized that she was wearing makeup, so she spent next ten minutes repairing the damage. When she was done, she looked in the mirror.

"You are not falling for Clint," she said.

But she was good at reading body language and could tell that the woman in the mirror was lying through her teeth.

XXX

Clint waved at Coulson, who was talking to someone over the phone, and went to sit in the Quinjet. There were three other agents inside, two men and a woman. The woman barely noticed him, but both men looked at him with interest. One of them was in his forties and his hair was more gray than black. The other one was a rookie, barely twenty one, which was the minimum age for entering the SHIELD, small and thin, with pale skin, almost white hair, and blue eyes behind glasses - an albino.

There were two categories of people in SHIELD - those who admired and feared Clint and those who feared and hated him. It took him just one look to place the men. The young albino watched him like he was some kind of a celebrity, the older man was doing his best to conceal his disgust. He was doing quite a good job, but Clint had learned a couple of tricks from Natasha. He looked at the older man again. It was an ordinary face, but Clint remembered him.

"Agent Warner?" he asked.

"Agent Barton," said Warner, nodding slightly to confirm his name.

"You two know each other?" the boy asked excitedly.

"We met in Sao Paulo," Warner told him, his eyes not leaving Clint's face. Clint now understood the hatred in them. Warner had been in the backup team and Natasha, under the influence of a drug, killed one of his colleagues. Maybe it was even a friend. Warner had to hate her for that and everyone knew that no one can hate the Black Widow and be friends with Hawkeye at the same time.

"Warner was in the team that saved my life," said Clint, trying to offer peace. It was true - their distraction was the only thing that had stopped the brainwashed Natasha.

"Really?" Apparently Warner just became a hero in the boy's eyes.

"Agent Barton, this is agent Terence Holzmann, technical expert," Warner introduced them.

"Nice to meet you, agent Holzmann," Clint said and the boy nearly swooned.

"It's an honor, sir," Holzmann almost stuttered. "I keep hearing stories about you and agent Romanoff ever since agent Warner brought me to SHIELD."

His choice of words caught Clint's interest. "Brought you here? You didn't apply?"

"No, sir, I have been recruited. I..."

"He's a technical genius," Warner interrupted him. "We need more hardware experts, so the director allowed me to bring agent Holzmann in as a special case."

Clint bit his lip. He had been a special case too, many years ago. Natasha had been one too. It meant only one thing and it was not a very nice thing.

"How old are you?" he asked the boy.

"Eighteen, sir."

Well, at least he's legally adult, Clint thought. Once he had seen a newly recruited special case linguist. She was thirteen when she joined SHIELD.

"You have to be really good," Clint commented and for a moment it looked like Holzmann was going to faint. "And stop calling me sir. It's Hawkeye for nearly everybody."

"Thank you, s... Hawkeye. I'm Terence."

"As I said, nice to meet you, Terence."

XXX

When Natasha walked in Pepper Potts' office, she saw the other woman sitting behind her desk, head down, looking exhausted. Natasha liked her. Stark's right hand woman looked quiet and fragile, but she was level-headed, highly capable, and very observant. Something about her reminded Natasha of Janet Kirk. Like her, Pepper Potts was much more than she seemed to be.

"I've talked to Phil," she said. It took Natasha a second to realize that she was talking about Coulson. She had never heard anyone call him by his first name. "He told me who you are."

"Are you going to fire me?" she asked. At least that had been Stark's first reaction.

"Can I? I don't think so," Potts looked up. "But I have a punishment ready for you. I have two invitations for Hammer's show tonight. I don't want to go there alone and as you've locked Tony up somewhere, you are going to suffer it with me."

Natasha smiled. The long days when they fought together to maintain Stark's and the company's public image made them allies and this shared secret made them co-conspirators.

"Fair enough," she said. "Will that be all?"

"Hammer is planning something. I don't know what and hopefully he'll just make an idiot of himself like usual, but stupid ideas can easily get out of hand. Just in case - are you armed?"

"I'm ready for anything that can be handled single-handed."

"There are metal detectors, you know." Natasha just smiled and Pepper Potts sighed. "I should have known you have a way around those."

Liars and Killers references:

The Sao Paulo events were explained in the text. Brainwashed Natasha attacking SHIELD agents pretty much sums it up.

"Something about her reminded Natasha of Janet Kirk." - Janet Kirk was Natasha's very good friend in SHIELD who taught her about computers and hacking. Janet and her husband Abe were killed as a revenge for one of the villains.