Hey everyone! Sorry for the delay. I wanted to write a really awesome second vignette and this is the outcome. And I'm pretty pleased with it. Hope you guys like it. No (physical) appearance from Natasha but you shall see. Enjoy!

He watches his prey from ten feet above the ground. He has been out here since dawn but quite frankly, he's not sure of the time. Two hours could've passed, or six. All he knows is he's been out here with no action. Until now…

Clint watches as the buck gracefully strides across the snowy landscape, unaware that it is about to meet its untimely demise. In a careful and swift movement, Clint pulls an arrow from his pack and loads it into his bow. As he balances on the thick tree branch, he pulls his bowstring back, his arrow aimed at the buck.

Ten pointer, nice amount of meat on its bones, Clint thinks. This will last me the next couple of weeks.

Breathing out, he releases the bowstring. The arrow cuts through the air with a whoosh before plunging into the buck's neck. It yelps before falling to the ground with a thump. He struggles for a moment before growing still.

"Dinner is served," he mutters to himself.

Now if only he could've done that three weeks ago…

As Clint straps the ten-pointer buck onto the back of his four-wheeler, he finds himself contemplating his life choices that brought him here. Not here, hauling a huge ass buck onto the back of his four-wheeler as he slowly but surely loses the feeling in his fingers from the frigid December temperatures. But here, back at the farm on a ten-week suspension.

It's not that he minded the peace and tranquility of the farm. He could use that every once in a while. It's the circumstances that brought him here.

You're suspended, Barton, Fury's deep and booming voice still rang in his ears. Ten-week suspension, starting now. Go off the grid while we clean up the mess you've made.

A mess he made indeed. Not only in the fluffy white snow, which is now stained crimson red from his prey, but the mess in Saint Petersburg as well.

You had one job, Clint! He could still hear Coulson yelling at him. He'd never seen that man so angry. Eliminate the target! What was so hard about that?

He pulled the strings tightly around his prey's neck as thick red blood spilled out. Red like the flag of Saint Petersburg. Red like the blood cascading down his arm from the knife wound. Red like her hair.

Stop, he demands in his head. You did the right thing.

Or maybe he didn't. The reaction he'd received when he brought her in wasn't very welcoming. Several SHIELD agents had neutralized her. They'd hit her with some very powerful horse tranquilizers; she was out cold within seconds. Clint had received a very powerful blow to the head and a lovely kick to the groin by a senior agent. That agent was now, currently, on Clint's shit list.

You've put the entire organization at risk! Fury screamed.

This wasn't your choice to make! Coulson added.

It hadn't been his choice to make. Of course it hadn't. He valued his job at SHIELD enough to respect that. But in that moment, he felt he had to make that choice. Of course lives had been at stake. But if he had to do it all over again, he wouldn't change a thing. He saved countless lives, including his own and an unexpected one.

Pulling the last string as tight as possible, Clint's prey bucked underneath its restraints. Jumping back, the archer's breath hitched in his throat as his heart raced a mile a minute.

It was just a muscle spasm, Clint reassured himself. That's all it was.

He took another step forward to finish strapping his prey to the four-wheeler when he caught sight of the buck's glassy eyes. Out of the corner of his eye, Clint could've sworn the buck blinked.

Fuck fuck fuck, Clint thought spastically. He's not dead.

He took a deep breath. He knew it was just his imagination. He'd been out at the farm for three weeks with little to no communication with the outside world. Coulson phoned at least twice a week so far. But it seemed like his main purpose was to scold Clint, not catch up on each other's daily lives.

Complete isolation was sure to make him go a little crazy.

One more breath, in the nostrils and out the mouth. Closing his eyes, he tried to clear his mind of all the stress from the past few weeks. It was just a deer and it was definitely dead. He'd done what he was supposed to do. Now he was going to head back to the farmhouse, strip it clean, and process the meat. It was all part of the plan.

Hesitantly, he opened his eyes but yelped. Staring back at him was a pair of jade green eyes where the buck's glassy black eyes had once been. He wanted to run, leave his four-wheeler and his dinner in the middle of the woods and run. However, he was so paralyzed with, spellbound by those green eyes, that he couldn't quite seem to muster up the energy to move.

And in the blink of an eye, the green eyes were gone, replaced by the buck's glassy black eyes.

"You're fucking losing it, Clint," he muttered to himself, a cloud of air ghosting from his lips. "It's just a fucking deer."

Though he knew he had imagined it, it took a few more minutes for Clint to muster up the courage to finish his dirty work. He stepped forward and finished strapping the buck to the back of his four-wheeler, carefully so as to avoid the buck's vacant gaze. Once he was finished, he mounted his four-wheeler, revved it up, and sped through the forest to return to the safety of the farmhouse.

The steam from the scalding hot water encircled Clint as he scrubbed every inch of his body raw. Red elbows. Red knees. Red fingertips. Red, red, red.

He couldn't get her out of his head. She'd compromised him at the worst possible moment and now he couldn't flush her out. No matter how hard he scrubbed, no matter how hot the water was, no matter what he did, she was still there. So he scrubbed until he tired himself out.

Less than satisfied, he slammed the shower handle down and watched as the Russian spy washed down the drain, far from his thoughts. He ripped the shower curtain aside and wrapped a towel around his waist before padding across the bathroom. He wiped the condensation away from the mirror to reveal his tired and haggard face.

She had been his target. It had been his job to eliminate her.

Natalia Romanova had left a trail of bodies all across Russia. Acting on behalf of the Red Room, a Russian organization that SHIELD had been determined to eradicate for years, she'd been cautious. But one minor slip up in Moscow had cost her immensely and put her smack dab in the center on SHIELD's radar.

Clint had been assigned to eliminate her in Saint Petersburg. It was a simple mission. The procedure was something he'd executed countless times before. This time, however, had been different.

He'd cornered her in an alley. He'd been too late to save her latest victim; she'd already seduced him and slit his throat. He caught her in the act, but she'd slipped out via a pipe alongside the balcony. But not before whipping a knife in Clint's direction and slicing through the muscle in his upper right arm.

Never one to fail a mission, he'd followed her. The muscles in his injured arm twitched as he slid down the same pipe Natalia Romanova had used in her escape. But in her haste, she had taken the wrong turn and was headed straight for a dead end.

Once she'd noticed her mistake, she panicked and turned around to run but it was too late. Clint had already loaded an arrow in his bow and had it aimed at her jugular. What kept him from releasing his ammo was not something he expected.

Standing in front of him was a scared little girl who was trying to hold her ground, trying to be strong and fearless. Instead, she was lost, and scared, and…remorseful. Her mind was filled with deadly secrets and lies, but her eyes were filled with pain, sadness, and remorse.

"Do it," she had croaked. Her beautiful green eyes had welled up with tears but the redness in her porcelain cheeks let Clint know that she was forcing herself to hold them back.

All of Clint's past victims had never looked the way Natalia Romanova had. They looked like they wanted to die. They knew their time had come and they died with glory. But not Natalia Romonova. Though she claimed she wanted Clint to kill her, her eyes told a different story. Those sad, youthful eyes had been Clint's downfall.

Hesitantly, Clint lowered his bow. "No," he had said, shaking his head.

"Do it!" she had growled. "Come on! I said do it!"

Clint shook his head. "I'm not gonna give you what you want." He stared into her eyes. They were cold, but deep inside he knew she was grateful. "Even though I know it's not what you really want," he added.

"пошел на хуй!" she spat. (Fuck you!)

He knew from the moment he brought her in, she would be a handful. Her presence the moment she stepped onto the SHIELD base had caused an uproar that Clint was sure he'd only seen happen in totalitarian countries overthrowing their loathsome leader. That moment in the alley, he knew he was in hot water. When he'd called Coulson that he'd made a different call, he was sure he was deaf in his left ear due to Coulson's high pitched screaming. When he'd received a kick to the groin, he was pretty sure he wasn't going to be able to have biological children.

But nothing compared to that piercing green glare. The mental and emotional effects would never wash away. SHIELD agents would cool down. Coulson would forgive him. His man parts would surely heal. But those green eyes, they'd forever haunt him, sucking the life from him. No matter what.

It was in the middle of a snowstorm at dusk during his fifth week of isolation when Coulson called him.

He was curled up in his favorite armchair by the fire with a mug of coffee and a cup of soup, reading Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, when the muffled scream of his SHIELD cellphone echoed from between the couch cushions. He'd hidden the phone in anger after his last phone call with Coulson; the exchange had left him in a less than decent mood.

He threw the fuzzy blanket off of himself and rushed to the couch, reaching between the crevices to extract the cellular device. When he saw it was Coulson, he contemplated not answering it. He was still cooling off from their last phone call. But not answering would put him in even deeper water. He might as well just dig his own grave at this point and bury himself alive.

Reluctantly, he accepted the call.

"Barton," he greeted.

"You might just be the luckiest man alive, Barton."

Great, they killed her, Clint thought. "Why?"

"I'm not saying you're off the hook, so don't exactly celebrate yet, but you at least still have a job at SHIELD."

"Get to the point, Coulson," Clint urged.

A few seconds of silence. "She's cooperating."

It wasn't exactly news to him that Natalia Romanova was cooperating. She didn't put up a fight when he brought her onto the base. She wasn't even hostile when the flock of SHIELD agents aimed and fired horse tranquilizers at her. She took it like a champ. But Clint wasn't sure how she would act once she was detained, questioned, and possibly tortured.

So to hear that she was cooperating was a relief. "That's good to hear."

"She's chock full of information," Coulson continued. "She's not very talkative but she's still helpful. We asked her to point out some Red Room bases on a map and she did it without incident."

"Are we going after them?" The question slipped out before he even had a chance to think. Suspension meant he had no entitlement to current SHIELD affairs and information.

Coulson sighed. "We're working on it. We need as much information possible before we do anything drastic."

"Oh," was all Clint managed to say.

Several seconds of silence passed between the two formerly close SHIELD agents. Clint had always thought of Phil Coulson as his confidant, the one person at SHIELD he could go to if he was struggling with anything, personally or professionally. Now this entire situation had put a strain on their relationship.

"I will admit that she exhibits some, um, desirable assets," Coulson said, breaking the awkward silence.

"She is an assassin," Clint added. "Assassins are highly-skilled and very disciplined."

"It might take a while, but I think she'll fit in. And she seems like she wants to atone for her sins."

"Wait," Clint straightened up. "You're serious? They're thinking about taking her in? Making her an agent?"

"Once Fury feels that we can trust her, yes, we will make her a SHIELD agent," Coulson said.

"Wow," Clint said.

"Which is why I said you might be the luckiest man alive," Coulson added. "You're not out of the deep end yet, but you've certainly dodged a bullet."

A smile spread across Clint's face. Victory.

"It's not exactly the best news, but it's news and I'm glad to hear it," Clint said, grinning from ear to ear.

"Yes, well, I thought I'd just let you know," Coulson said awkwardly. "I have to get back to work. You've produced a lot of paperwork for me and it's pretty tedious."

"Well, I try," Clint said cheekily.

"Smartass," Clint heard Coulson mutter just loud enough for him to hear. "Oh, and keep your eyes open for a package. You may be exiled to Bumblefuck, U.S.A. but everyone deserves at least one Christmas present under the tree."

Clint chuckled. "Sure, I'll watch for it."

"Take care of yourself, Clint," Coulson said, and then the line went dead.

Still grinning, Clint tossed the phone onto the couch before curling back onto his armchair. Before returning to his book, he glanced over at his pathetically decorated Christmas tree. He'd cut it down the first week of December, during his second week of exile.

It wasn't the best tree. He'd been in a rush and he'd cut down the first tree he saw. This wimpy pine tree had caught his eye. No normal human being, should they ever have come across it, would have bypassed the little tree. But Clint was all about second chances, and he took a chance on this measly little tree when no one else probably would've.

Smirking to himself, he return to his book and read until the early morning hours, turning in at the peak of the snowstorm brewing outside. When he awoke the next morning, the storm had subsided and, as expected, a generously large package was waiting for Clint on his front porch.

Filled with snacks and goodies, enough to last Clint for the rest of his exile, the real present was the brand new bow and arrow prototype Clint and Coulson had been working on before his suspension. Christmas had come early.

Now if only his suspension could be revoked.

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