I apologize if it's a little OOC. But yeah, these are the events that lead up to 2017, Chicago. Enjoy and Review please.

Venice, Italy; 2008 (Three and a half years before the Mission)

She already knew he was there the moment she walked into her safe house. Well, one of her safe houses. She had several set up in this particular city as it was the one place where she knew they were never going to find her.

She laughed bitterly. Just two days ago, she was HYDRA's pride and joy: the finest product of Project Red Room. But two days ago, she decided to spare the life of the man who she was asked to kill.

She still remembers listening to his daughter's whimpering and to the man's pleas, begging for her to understand why he defected and how the government had lied to him as they had to her. She remembers that moment she wavers between human and soldier, that fraction of time when indecision overtakes her programming. Then she lowers her gun and takes out the keys to one of her safe houses hidden in Prague. She tells them to run, run as fast and as far as they can.

The gratitude in his eyes as he scoops us his little girl is enough to send a surge of warmth coursing through her and for the first time in the last fifteen years, the twenty-year old assassin remembers what it was like to be a person, capable of emotions and of compassion. And she's hooked. She savors the warmth, the joy and the pride that comes with knowing that she did the right thing. And she's ruined right then and there. She can never kill mindlessly again.

They give the kill order forty minutes later when the clean up crew comes in to find the small apartment empty with her gun and most of the weapons HYDRA had issued to her on the floor. By then, she was already halfway through to Venice with some of her personal weapons and a carry on that she had stashed in a nearby safe house.

She has nothing left, no home, no friends and no family. They had gotten too close in France and she was able to identify two of the men pursuing her as her mentor, Ivan and her best friend, Alexi. Seeing them had felt like having her heart ripped out and shred to pieces. She shouldn't have been surprised though that they would choose the job over her. HYDRA had taught them that love was for children and discouraged attachment.

Still, their betrayal had shaken her and she had mindlessly run from them and slipped under the radar before heading towards Venice. But she knows that it won't take them long to find her. After all, nobody knows her better than Alexi and with Ivan along, she would be dead within minutes.

Her reverie is interrupted by the sound of an arrow being nocked into place. And she makes a split second decision not to fight this man but to allow him to kill her. She would rather die at the hands of a man she doesn't know than see the face of the man she has come to consider as her father as he painfully lets her life seep from her.

Her face betrays none of these thoughts as she smirks at the silhouette of the man that is hiding by his nest in the rafters.

"Well, well, well. If it isn't Hawkeye, S.H.I.E.L.D.'s golden boy, here to kill me himself. Should I be impressed?" She sounds as if she has not a care in the world and she realizes that she really doesn't. She is going to die after all.

"Of course, only the best for the best." His voice is a rich baritone, cocky and sarcastic. She scoffs at him.

"You? The best? Don't make me laugh. Just because you're Fury's golden boy doesn't mean that you can be considered 'the best'. I can take you out with my eyes blind folded." He steps out behind the shadows of the rafter before nimbly jumping down to face her. She's startled and she betrays this by slightly backing away from him.

"Is that so? Well, Miss Romanoff, why am I still here? Why are you not fighting me?"

"Because I don't want to." Her voice is soft, defeated as she says this. Her honesty surprises both of them. "Do it now, before they come."

He cocks his head to one side and doesn't make a move to grab raise his bow, with the arrow still in position. He stays this way for a minute. Two minutes. Three. And she gets frustrated.

"I said. Do it now. Why am I not dead yet? Shoot me!" She is screaming at him by then. She goes to him and reaches for the bow. "Look, I'll even show you how to do it. All you have to do is raise the bow and-"

A hand grabs hers and twists it behind her back. She sucks in a breath in shock.

"Don't. Ever. Touch. My. Bow. Understand?" She nods wordlessly. He doesn't let go of her hand but instead, he uses it to tug her towards the kitchen area, He motions for her to take a seat, his movements surprisingly gentle despite his gruff demeanor. She sits and so does he. He puts his bow on the table but makes sure that she sees the knife he now has in his left hand. Then he opens his mouth.

"Now, Miss Romanoff. Would you care to explain to me why the Black Widow, Russia's famed assassin, is asking a 'filthy American' to kill her? Because obviously, I'm missing something here seeing as just two weeks ago, you were mercilessly butchering the whole Spanish envoy."

"Maybe because she thinks that the afterlife is gonna be so much more fun and that it would be her greatest challenge yet to attempt to kill the devil." His mouth twitches upward before he suddenly leans towards her and stares her down with his grey eyes.

"Cute. But, really, why are you so willing to die? If I'm going to kill you, I, at least, deserve an honest answer." His gaze was unnerving and it felt as if he was boring into my very core itself and peeling away all the layers that were wrapped around my heart, protecting it from just this.

"Are all assassins in America this attached and human? Fine, two days ago I was officially declared an enemy of the state. Now, I'm on the run. I no longer have a home because my Motherland does not welcome me anymore. The closest thing I have to a father is now planning twenty different ways to torture me and kill me as he, and my best friend/fiancé are closing in on me. Did I mention that they were my only family left and that they had betrayed me? And to add to that, the man I spared, the man who started all this has completely ruined me. I am now compromised by emotions and an unwillingness to kill mindlessly. So tell me, why would an ex-Russian assassin want to die if she has no home, no family and no job anymore?" Tears had begun rolling down my cheek and I angrily wiped them away. How had this man managed to make me confess all that, much less cry in front of him? I had just lost whatever scrap of dignity I had left and in front of my would-be executioner too. Speaking of Hawkeye, he looked as if he was contemplating something, his eyes betraying the emotions warring within him. Finally, he looked as if he had reached a consensus.

"What if-" And he hesitated here before his eyes hardened in resolve and he continued. "What if I could give you that? You'd still have a job but you'd only kill those deserving of death this time. You'd also get a home and a family. Granted, it will take awhile before you consider America home and me, your friend but what if I can guarantee you that? Will you stop this ridiculous 'I want to die' thing and join us?" Was this guy nuts? Just fifteen minutes ago, he was about to pierce my heart with an arrow and now he's asking me to join S.H.I.E.L.D.?

"Are you crazy? I thought you were sent to kill me?"

"I was but I change my mind. You're obviously skilled and your reputation precedes you. And you no longer have any ties with Russia. So why not? S.H.I.E.L.D. could use someone like you and it's getting lonely in the Hawknest seeing as my handler isn't exactly the chatty type? So what do you say, Miss Romanoff?" He offered me his hand and I took it.

"Call me Natasha, Hawkeye."

"It's Clint. Clint Barton."