Chapter 3: I Liked You Better Unconscious
"Natalia?"
A hand rested heavily on her shoulder and she flinched, instinctively bracing for a hit that never came. Anxiety coiled in her stomach. Fingers on her throat, but they didn't squeeze and restrict her breathing, only lingered firmly for a moment. The hand moved to stroke her hair.
"Natalia."
The hands and the voice were gentle, a novelty. She felt warm and at the same time felt nothing at all. Nothing hurt, no injuries to catalog. Tentatively, experimentally, she relaxed and leaned into the soft touch. A little contented sigh slipped out before she could stop it. She didn't feel threatened. She could sleep again.
"Uh-uh, not going there."
The hand pulled away, taking some measure of warmth with it. Her head throbbed dully.
"Wake up, right now."
An order, more familiar. Consequences usually followed if she ignored an order.
It was a monumental effort, but she pulled back from the allure of more sleep and forced her eyes open. When her vision cleared she found herself on a sofa, covered with a fleece blanket, her left ankle propped up high and wrapped in an Ace bandage.
Odd. When was the last time anyone had taken care of her injuries, much less thought to throw a blanket over her?
"Hey."
She turned toward the source of the voice and caught a quick glimpse of the man who had spoken. The room started spinning and bile rose in her throat; she swallowed hard and breathed deep, pressing her eyes closed until the sensation passed. When she felt steady enough, she tried opening her eyes again.
The room was mostly blurred, faint outlines of furniture in the shadows and a dim glow from a lamp in the corner. The man was sat on a low table directly in front of her, dried blood in his hair and a bruise shadowing his left eye, his nose swollen and apparently broken. He waited patiently while she searched his face and struggled to remember; she watched his eyebrows draw together and his forehead wrinkle as he stared back.
She noticed little aches now, the bandaged ankle and her leg and forearm, and her body began to feel heavy. Her head pounded harder. What hell had they been through?
He reached out a hand, slowly, and she recoiled without quite knowing why. His hand dropped and rested on his knee instead.
"Do you know where we are?"
It was beginning to concern her, the not knowing.
Apartment? Hotel? He probably wanted her to say a city or country, but she couldn't seem to think of any. She could hear guns and see fire and feel snow, but none of it coalesced into anything meaningful.
"Barcelona," she said at last, as the man's voice echoed the same in her mind, although the context escaped her. Her tongue felt thick, her words oddly slurred and heavily accented.
"Oh, God," he groaned, and raked a hand through his hair. He stood and began walking the strip of carpet between the table and sofa. "That shit fried her brain. Nice fucking job, Barton."
Watching him pace made her feel sick and dizzy again. She closed her eyes and buried her face in the pillows.
"Nonono, come on, try again."
He gave her shoulder an insistent little shake.
"Moscow," she mumbled into the pillow. Familiar, but something told her it wasn't right.
"Close. One more time. Mmmm...?"
The humming grated on her nerves, even though she realized he was trying to be nice and give her a hint. Her mind wanted to remember, but she was too slow to catch the little shimmers of memory. She settled for running through every M city in Europe, in alphabetical order, because maybe the exercise would jump start her brain.
Madrid, Manchester, Marseille.
She'd missed some.
Milan, Minsk, Monaco.
Not Moscow, Moscow was wrong.
"Munich," she said aloud, lifting her head as a tiny piece of the puzzle slid into place.
She had a quick glimpse of guns and passports and a thick file stamped with Cyrillic script. A mission.
"Bingo!" the man exclaimed happily. He dropped down to sit on the table again. "Give the lady a prize."
"Bozhe moi, shut up," she growled. That annoying feeling, the sensation that everything waited just out of reach, intensified.
They didn't give her partners. She hadn't been trained to work with a partner. Slowly, carefully, she rolled over to stare at him again. The room didn't spin this time.
She could clearly see the man in her mind's eye, firing arrows and covering her. Why arrows?
Think you missed, sweetheart.
The way he delivered the term of endearment, not as a term of endearment at all, but sarcastic and with a slight mocking edge to his tone...
I don't miss, sweetheart.
Her memory resolved in a rush that immediately eased her headache. The archer blowing her mission and matching her skill for skill, his stupid banter and cocky idiot smile, and the altogether less pleasant side of his personality, the man who had watched as she dragged herself through the snow and fired desperate rounds from her gun. The realization must have showed in her expression, because his eyes went wide.
"Easy," he whispered, cautiously raising his hands in the universal gesture for surrender. "You're okay."
She flexed her wrists and felt the length of bowstring cut into her skin, a faint uncomfortable pressure, the pain dulled by the drugs still working through her bloodstream. He was close, too close to pass up the opportunity.
She laced her fingers and clenched her hands together, threw off the blanket, and swung for his broken nose. He blocked with his arm and caught her under the elbow with his free hand to save her falling off the couch.
Her equilibrium was off, everything tilted weirdly to the right. Attacking him now was impulsive and sloppy, she realized that, but he was right there and she should still be able to take him out.
"Feel better now?" he asked, one eyebrow arched and an amused grin playing across his lips. "Got it out of your system?"
Fuck him.
She lunged and went for a bite, missed, and settled instead for throwing herself off the couch to tackle him. The table flipped and they slid off backwards to land in a heap on the floor.
She felt like vomiting again, her vision blurring and an odd ringing in her ears, but she squeezed her eyes shut to ward off the feeling and hooked her arm around his neck. She'd choke him out. Once she had him unconscious - not unconscious, kill him, he should be dead - she could get the hell out and regroup, find somewhere safe to sleep off the rest of the drugs.
Her efforts seemed to be working in reverse. The sensation of his fingers scrabbling against her arm grew fainter until she felt numb again. She woke shivering with her cheek pressed into the musty carpet.
Only a moment of confusion this time before she recalled the who and where and why of her situation. Well, the why was still lost on her. She should be dead. She shouldn't have woken up at all, much less wrapped in a blanket with her ankle taken care of.
She pushed up on her elbows and searched the room for the archer; he stood a safe distance away, lingering in the shadows behind her, rubbing his throat with one hand and breathing a bit harder than normal. She hadn't been out that long, then.
Almost had him, she chastised herself. It wouldn't be so easy to surprise him next time. He had underestimated her because of the drugs, but his guard was up now. She'd have to fight dirty again.
"Hey, you need to take it easy," he warned.
She ignored him, moving slowly to avoid making the room spin. She drew her knees up and pressed her palms flat against the carpet, intending to stand and attack, but even that small effort left her lightheaded and panting.
"I fixed your arm earlier. I need to look and see if we pulled the stitches. Is that okay?"
Why should she have stitches?
She stared blankly down at her arms, surprised to find that her dress had vanished, replaced instead with a grey pullover and, when she looked back to investigate further, a pair of too-large plaid sleeping pants. Her forearm did sting, and after a moment she recalled the archer shooting the window out in the hotel room, pulling a piece of glass from her arm, although she hadn't bothered to give the injury a second thought.
Anger flared sharp and hot in her chest, not because he'd taken the liberty of undressing her, but because he had the audacity to take care of her at all. His mission was to kill, not capture and interrogate. Besides, it didn't make sense to sew up your mark's wounds and wrap sprains. Open cuts and inflamed joints were an advantage in an interrogation, easy points to inflict pain without causing excessive damage. The archer should know better.
"Okay," she agreed quietly. She watched him over her shoulder, avoided tensing her muscles while he drew closer so she wouldn't give herself away. She threw him the wide-eyed, pouty expression she usually saved for missions.
"It's okay," he intoned, well within range now. He offered a soft, reassuring smile.
She lashed out, thrusting her right leg up and out with all the force she could manage, aiming for his crotch.
Her kick fell low, reflexes slower than she'd anticipated; her foot only skimmed the inside of his thigh and he caught her ankle firmly with both hands, jerking her leg up at an awkward angle and forcing her onto her back. A little trace of anger flashed behind his eyes as he glared down at her.
"Swear to God, one more nut shot and I'll break your leg," he threatened.
She seriously doubted it.
She twisted to the right and kicked with her left this time. As expected, he dropped her ankle and jumped out of range with a scowl.
"Liar," she taunted.
"You're just mean," he shot back disbelievingly. "Could you maybe not be a terrible person for five minutes?"
"You drugged me, tied me up, and now you're holding me hostage," she countered. What did he expect?
"Okay, first, it was supposed to be a tranquilizer dart," he began, a slight defensive edge to his tone. "R&D didn't tell me what was in the damn thing, and it was for my next mission so I hadn't read the dossier yet. I had it on me and it seemed like a good idea. I didn't know it was some kind of neuro-hallucinogenic-toxin-shit, so...sorry. Second, I tied you up because you never stop fighting. I didn't want my ass kicked again."
"I still kicked your ass," she pointed out.
"That's open for debate, since all you accomplished was passing out on the floor. And you're not a hostage."
"This is what I do to my hostages." She held up her bound hands to demonstrate. "I feel like a hostage."
"Well, you're not. I just want to talk."
What could they possibly have to talk about? His motivation was lost on her. He hadn't fought back, hadn't even restrained her thoroughly. He didn't seem to want intel, or names, or locations of KGB bases. His lack of interest puzzled her and made her head throb.
He approached again, slowly and cautiously, and this time she couldn't find the energy to lash out. What was the point, with her reflexes too dulled to be effective? She slid back to lean against the overturned table instead, and watched relief flit across his features once he made the connection that he'd finally worn her down.
"Clint Barton," he said. He crouched down in front of her and stuck out a hand. She turned away and fixed her gaze stubbornly on the lamp in the corner. He had her at a temporary disadvantage, but that didn't mean she was required to make friends.
"Mean," he repeated emphatically, but he smiled as he said it and she felt sure he didn't take offense at her refusing his introduction. "Can I check your arm?"
She chewed her lip and considered him. His hands had been both surprisingly gentle and violent enough to leave bruises. She had no reason to trust him, but aside from drugging her and running her down in the street, she didn't have a reason not to trust him, either. God, she was tired.
"Fine," she agreed, and held out her arms. He hesitated, clearly still suspicious, but when she didn't immediately wallop him he scooted closer and sat beside her.
"If you'd calm down, I'd untie you," he said. One hand closed firmly over her wrists, over the bowstring, while the other pushed up the sleeve of her sweatshirt. She didn't believe him. He could bargain and bribe all he wanted, but she recognized skill when she saw it, and skilled assassins didn't untie their marks.
"You took my dress," she accused, watching with wary eyes as he pulled the bandage back. A surprisingly neat row of sutures held together the cut from the broken glass.
"You were about two minutes away from hypothermic," he replied. "Had to do something."
"Why?"
His hands stilled, confusion clouding his features.
"Why didn't I leave you to freeze to death in the street?"
"You were supposed to kill me," she reminded him. "You don't seem to want to get your hands dirty, so that's as good a way as any other."
"That's not how you take out a mark," he replied shortly. Apparently satisfied with the state of the stitches, he taped the bandage back down and pushed himself to his feet. "Not how I take out marks, anyway."
Oh, well, Mr. Moral Compass.
She rolled her eyes.
"So dragging them home to your shitty hotel room is somehow more efficient?"
"It's an apartment. We're in a S.H.I.E.L.D. safe house."
Seriously? She didn't bother to mask her incredulous expression. Clint Barton: unmitigated idiot. Who brought their mark straight into their safe house? He might have been serious about untying her, after all.
"Someone's going to be pissed at you," she guessed. Barton shrugged, seemingly unconcerned.
"Someone at S.H.I.E.L.D.'s always pissed at me. Come on, back on the couch."
He reached down to help her up, and there was no point pretending she couldn't use the extra support. She let him pull her to her feet, surprised when he took most of her weight and brought her up slowly. He gave her a moment to steady herself, then braced one arm around her shoulders.
She ran through a series of possible escape attempts as they covered the stretch of carpet to the sofa - sweep his legs, break his arm, smash his nose again - but nothing struck her as very promising. The glimpse of the city through the gap in the curtains told her they were five, maybe six, stories up. She'd probably kill herself trying to make it down the stairs, and Barton would just catch her anyway.
He didn't dump her unceremoniously back on the sofa as she expected, but carefully lowered her down to lean against the stack of pillows at one end. Bed pillows, she realized, and they smelled like him, leather and sweat and spicy aftershave. How long had he been camped out in the safe house?
She studied him intently, trying to determine his motivation. Safe houses were supposed to be in-and-out locations, not long term operation bases. She added it to Barton's list of presumably broken protocols. It didn't make what he was attempting to accomplish any clearer.
He threw the blanket across her lap, then hooked his arm under her knees and swung her legs up.
"You're a really terrible assassin," she told him. "S.H.I.E.L.D. should fire you."
"Yeah? Look where you landed yourself, sweetheart." He grinned and shoved a throw pillow under her ankle. "What's the KGB penalty for blowing an op?"
He was joking, but the idea made her feel nauseous again. The consequences of screwing up a mission were endurable if unpleasant, but once they found out she'd been taken in and held by an organization like S.H.I.E.L.D...
She shuddered and drew her knees up, clenched her hands into fists to stop them shaking. She was usually left to her own devices on missions, but there were eyes everywhere. Her handlers would hear about the archer and her weakness in not killing him, and most importantly they would know that she spent time alone with him, presumably being interrogated but possibly playing double agent.
They'd tear her apart trying to learn if she passed him information. Automatic wipe and reprogramming. She wouldn't get lucky enough to resist and make it out again. Last time had only been a fluke.
She let the thin sliver of hope she'd been childish enough to harbor for the past eighteen months slip away. Barton undoubtedly had her flash drive - that dress kept her tits pressed so tightly together there was no way she'd lost it fighting or rolling around in the snow - but there wasn't much point stealing it back from him. Best to resign herself to the inevitable now. Escaping the Red Room's influence had been an impossible idea.
"Hey, I'm sorry, I didn't mean-"
"What is this?" she asked bluntly.
The tiny glimmer of another impossible idea came to her. S.H.I.E.L.D had whole teams of scientists and doctors. S.H.I.E.L.D. had secret locations and bunkers and security protocols the KGB had never been able to pin down or crack. If they couldn't find her, they couldn't wipe her.
Clint Barton wanted something from her, and once she found out what it was, she'd bargain her way into a S.H.I.E.L.D. holding facility. It wouldn't be difficult to convince him to take her in, especially since he seemed so averse to putting an arrow through her.
"Mission's over, okay?" He flipped the coffee table upright and sat again. "I've read your file, I've been shadowing you for two weeks, and I don't think you deserve the kill order."
She deserved that kill order a hundred times over. They both knew it. The fact that he'd been following her for a fortnight didn't surprise her as much as it should have.
"Look, I just want to talk. Why don't we have a truce? No fighting, no super-spy manipulation, we'll just be honest with each other. I might not tell you everything, but what I tell you will be the truth. Deal?"
Sure, that made him sound completely trustworthy.
"So you'll lie by omission," she guessed.
"No. Shit, Coulson made this look easy." He rubbed the heels of his hands into his eyes and made an exasperated growling sound.
"Made what look easy?" she asked, half amused.
"Recruitment," he replied. "I want you to join S.H.I.E.L.D."
She openly gaped at him, sure that this was usually done with a little more finesse than just tossing an offer on the table. If he wanted her to come back with him so badly, maybe she didn't want to use S.H.I.E.L.D. as a sanctuary after all.
"S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn't want me to join S.H.I.E.L.D.," she reminded him. "S.H.I.E.L.D. wants me dead, remember?"
"S.H.I.E.L.D. felt that way about me once, too. Just talk to me, please?"
Maybe if her head was clearer, if she wasn't so bone-weary and exhausted, he'd be dead. She couldn't pinpoint exactly why, but goddammit, she trusted him. Partially, at least. She was so desperate for a way out, anything looked better than the alternative.
Still, she couldn't afford to be reckless. She averted her eyes and struggled to organize her thoughts, formulate a line of questioning to ascertain his motives. It was an elementary exercise that should have taken her all of fifteen seconds, but working through a possible line of questioning, imagining his answers, and thinking of ways to manipulate him seemed to be beyond her. She felt slow and stupid, her focus sharp one moment and drifting the next.
"What did you mean when you said you wouldn't tell me everything?" she asked at last. Straightforward wasn't the tactical way to go, but it made the situation less frustrating.
He sat a little straighter and visibly brightened, apparently encouraged by her interest.
"I can't tell you the really classified stuff, and I know you'll ask the pain-in-the-ass questions I'm not cleared to answer. Then you'll get all suspicious and kick my butt again."
"I'm already suspicious," she assured him.
"Then it's my job to make you not-suspicious."
He stood and crossed to a chair by the window, retrieving a black duffel bag. It hit the table with a surprisingly solid thunk. She watched him rummage for a moment before he pulled out a manilla file embossed with the S.H.I.E.L.D. logo and 'Level 4'.
"Here," he said, and thrust a sheet of thick white paper under her nose. "This is what I injected you with."
It was filled with chemical formulas, the names of several different compounds stretching across the page in a jumble of letters that made her head ache. She recognized a couple, most were foreign to her, and there were a few she felt sure S.H.I.E.L.D. had concocted in their lab specifically for Barton's next mission. She'd been trained extensively in the use and recognition of poisons and sedatives, and could usually figure out a compound's function by its chemical makeup, but her mind was largely blank as she skimmed the muddle of letters and numbers.
"This doesn't make sense right now," she admitted, and passed the paper back. If he was attempting to build rapport, she grudgingly conceded, he was off to a good start.
"The point is, there was a lot of nasty shit in that arrowhead. Sit there and rest until it works through your system," he ordered gently. "I want to do this right. I don't want you to agree to anything if you're still out of it."
There was a catch somewhere, and he definitely wanted something. Nobody was that nice. If their roles were reversed, she'd use the opportunity to badger ever piece of S.H.I.E.L.D. intel she could from him while his defenses were down.
"If I go to the kitchen, will you stay?" Barton asked. She watched intently as he slid the paper back into the file, but didn't manage to glimpse anything interesting. "I'll still be able to see you."
"Fine," she agreed. He stuck the file back in the bag and pulled out a second identical one.
"You can read this while I'm gone. It's Level 6, but you probably know all the stuff in there, anyway."
She could guess what was in the file, but took it and flipped it open just to be sure. Several grainy black-and-white photos fell into her lap, the shots off center and some blurred. If she tilted her head, they sort of looked like her.
"This is the best S.H.I.E.L.D. could do?" she asked, lifting an eyebrow.
"You're hard to pin down," he shrugged. "I'm the first one who's been able to stay on you for more than ten minutes at a time."
She took it as a compliment, and also a testament to the shoddy training S.H.I.E.L.D. apparently found acceptable.
Barton kept one eye on her as he went to the kitchen. He flipped the light and she saw that the kitchen was only separated from the rest of the apartment by a bar.
"Stay," he warned one final time, before turning his back and opening a pair of cabinets.
She considered making a break for it just to piss him off, but the allure of the S.H.I.E.L.D. file won out in the end. If they knew something important and she missed her opportunity because she was playing stupid games with Clint Barton... Well, she'd been trained better than that.
The first page was a surprisingly accurate set of statistics. They knew her birthday and height and weight, give or take a few inches and pounds, they had an incomplete list of languages she spoke, another list of combat and martial arts styles she was proficient in, and a short column detailing her preferred weapons. She flipped to the second page and skimmed a chronological list of assassinations, infiltrations, and undercover jobs S.H.I.E.L.D. seemed to think she had committed. There were more than a few gaps in their intel there, and one incorrectly attributed bombing in Kiev. The kill order Barton had referenced was an actual signed piece of paper - Nicholas J Fury, Director - and endorsed with the World Security Council seal. That was the meat of the file, she supposed, but she found what she was looking for in the very back.
Three pages, stapled in one corner and printed front-and-back, detailing the Red Room's training program. It wasn't as thorough as she'd been stupid enough to hope. There was only one brief sentence under the heading Mind Control: Operatives possibly subjected to methods of reprogramming to ensure compliance.
Well, they weren't wrong.
She leered down at the file, fighting back the impulse to fling it across the room for its uselessness.
"Find anything interesting?"
She startled and glanced sharply up to find Barton standing at the foot of the sofa, a steaming ceramic mug in each hand. The fact that he'd managed to sneak up on her unnerved her, but she blamed it on the drugs dulling her reflexes.
"Your intel's shit," she replied, and tossed the file on the table.
"Correction, S.H.I.E.L.D.'s intel is shit. My intel is flawless." He held out one of the mugs, inviting her to take it. He gave her that infuriatingly cocky smile again, all smug and self-assured. "Breakfast tea, milk and three teaspoons of sugar. I think you've underestimated my surveillance skills."
Anxiety constricted her chest, but she forced the feeling down. Barton excelled at his job, he was dangerous, and it was an easy thing to forget when his attitude and mannerisms were so relaxed. Of course he'd been observing closely enough to learn how she liked her tea. What worried her was that she hadn't once realized he was watching.
"Close enough," she returned coolly, even though he was completely right. She reached forward to take the mug but he pulled it back and set both drinks on the table instead. He drew a knife from the black bag, and when she tensed, he huffed an exasperated sigh.
"I'm untying you," he informed her, and sat beside her on the sofa, one hand held out for her wrists. "And I'm probably going to regret it."
She held still while he slid the knife between her hands and under the bowstring. It would take approximately three seconds to disarm him and drive the knife into his chest, but that wasn't the way to go anymore. There was a miniscule possibility she might accept his offer and tag along back to S.H.I.E.L.D., and she'd have to play nice. Killing him would get her into a holding facility, but freedom to come and go as she pleased was more appealing. It would be easier to leave once she got the help she wanted from them.
He worked the knife back and forth until the bowstring snapped, then gently peeled the cord away. The skin underneath was rubbed raw, but not broken or bleeding. She jerked her hands away and shoved them in the front pocket of his pullover.
"You're welcome," he said, not unkindly, but obviously expecting a little gratitude. Being friendly with him still seemed like a stretch, so she kept her mouth shut.
When she remained stubbornly silent he tossed the knife back in the bag and lifted his mug from the coffee table.
"So. You know my mission. What were you trying to accomplish tonight?"
"Classified," she shrugged, and retrieved her tea. Heat radiated from the mug, just shy of burning her fingers. She ignored the nagging voice in the back of her mind telling her it was probably poisoned and took a cautious sip. It scorched her tongue, but was otherwise perfect.
"What's on this?" Barton asked, and held up her flash drive.
"Nothing that concerns you," she replied in a tone of forced calm. She curled into the corner of the sofa, legs folded to one side as she sipped her tea again and pretended not to watch him. He frowned and slid the flash drive into the front pocket of his jeans.
"Look, I'm trying to make conversation here. You've got to give me something. You agreed to talk."
"No, you said that you wanted to talk. So talk. My part of the deal was to stop actively trying to murder you."
He made a frustrated, disgusted noise and slid away to the opposite end of the sofa, where he quietly seethed and drank his coffee. The silence stretched until he put his empty mug back on the table with a soft clunk. When he spoke, his voice was calm, no hint of the earlier irritation seeping into the words.
"Why didn't you kill Drechsler three nights ago?" She watched him from the corner of her eye, but her mug was empty too and she couldn't use tea as an excuse to ignore him. "The street was clear, no witnesses besides his wife and kid. You could've taken out all three in an instant."
"Why didn't you kill me three nights ago?" she countered. She felt more alert now, her mind sharper and focused, less foggy. Almost confident enough to work through the S.H.I.E.L.D. recruitment conversation. "The timing was off," she added grudgingly, because he had been nice where he didn't have to be. "Tonight was better."
"Bullshit. Tell me why, Natalia."
She had a decision to make. If she wanted in with S.H.I.E.L.D., the truth would probably win him over. The truth would also make her seem weak and vulnerable. Barton wasn't scared of her, anyway.
"His daughter," she said, and couldn't help the little trace of venom that slipped into her tone. She was still irritated that the girl had prevented her making the kill. "She didn't need to see her father shot."
Barton smiled, and she immediately regretted answering his stupid questions.
"That's why I didn't take you out tonight. It wasn't the Black Widow who spared Drechsler's family, it was Natalia, and I think she deserves a second chance."
"What if I don't want a second chance?" she asked coolly, and watched his expression go sour. He must have thought this was going to be easy.
"Oh, come on!" He launched himself off the sofa and began pacing, frustration evident behind his tone. "I was never happy doing this shit, dodging INTERPOL and the FBI and S.H.I.E.L.D., wondering if I'd get a bullet between the eyes before my next birthday or end up on death row."
"That's the difference between you and I. I don't need a second chance. The Black Widow doesn't get caught."
"Well wake up, sweetheart, because I caught you. You lose, point for Hawkeye."
She opened her mouth to retaliate, but couldn't settle on a counter-argument. She had, in fact, lost this round.
"Hawkeye?" she asked instead.
"My code name." A little of the heat left his tone at her show of interest. "Like Black Widow, only way cooler. You've heard of Hawkeye," he added confidently.
"No, sorry."
He narrowed his eyes in annoyance and she stretched languidly across the sofa, biting her lip to hide a smile.
"I liked you better unconscious," he mumbled, and disappeared into the kitchen again. He returned with an entire pot of coffee and two bottles of water. He dumped the bottles in her lap and sat on the edge of the table, shoulders sagging.
He was still being nice, damn him. Why was he so nice?
For a moment she thought he intended to drink his coffee straight from the pot, but he shot her a glance and reasonably poured it into his mug instead. She rolled one of the bottles between her hands and considered him. It sounded as if S.H.I.E.L.D. had recruited him the same way he was trying to recruit her. Unlike Barton, she was perfectly happy evading enemy agencies and taking out whoever the KGB chose as her next mark, but she wasn't too fond of the whole Red Room reprogramming aspect of the job.
"What made S.H.I.E.L.D. want to recruit you?" she asked. He perked up and sat a little straighter, and okay, it wouldn't kill her to talk to him. Anyone else would have lost patience and put a bullet through her by now.
"Nothing," he answered with a wry little smile. "Coulson just felt sorry for me. I was this dumb kid, in way over my head. I mean, I had skills, but I wasn't really worth the risk."
She didn't quite believe that. Agencies like S.H.I.E.L.D. didn't waste resources taking in operatives if they didn't have potential to be assets.
"You want to tell the story," she guessed, and although it was supposed to be more a statement of fact than an invitation, he took it as the latter.
"If you're asking," he shrugged, and set his coffee aside. "I'd just turned nineteen, so dumb kid, like I said. I thought I knew who I worked for. They told me who needed an arrow through the heart, I made it happen. In return I got food and a place to sleep and something that sort of reminded me of a family. There was a mission one night, new shipment of munitions for a military base. Some warehouse in the middle of nowhere. The boss wanted it, we went in and took it.
"I was always up in the rafters on jobs like that, keeping watch and taking out guards. We tripped a silent alarm that night. Didn't realize it until we heard the helicopters and sirens. My team took an every-man-for-himself approach, so I had about thirty seconds to haul ass outside to the van. I fell out of the rafters instead, ended up with a broken leg. They didn't come back for me."
He paused, for effect, she supposed. His story probably drew the appropriate reaction from junior agents and new recruits, made them realize they should be grateful to work for an organization with fail-safes and protocols and superiors who would keep the team together on a mission.
"Dumb kid," she agreed. "That's why I don't work with partners."
He heaved a sigh and shook his head.
"S.H.I.E.L.D. tossed me in a containment cell for a couple weeks after that. One morning instead of breakfast, I got Coulson. He dragged a chair into my cell and listened. He's an easy guy to like, and I didn't have anything to lose, so when he asked I told him everything, from the beginning. He thought I deserved a second chance. He said sometimes good people do bad things, but that doesn't make you a bad person. Well, he made it sound more eloquent than that, but you get the idea.
"Later, when I asked how I could repay him, he said I should give someone else the same opportunity."
He gave her a pointed look and an encouraging smile. She had a brief moment of indignity over being Barton's charity case, but the situation seemed more complex than that. She'd been trained to know when she was being lied to, when she was being manipulated, and Clint Barton wasn't doing either. Underneath the combat skills, alarmingly accurate marksmanship, and an uncanny ability to stalk her every move, he was sincere and genuine. He didn't want anything from her, she realized now. He was helping because he was kind, because it was as much a part of his personality as the dogged determination he'd used to track her down.
"Killing is still killing, whether I'm doing it for the KGB or S.H.I.E.L.D.," she argued. It was unnerving, the way she felt she could trust him.
"That's what I thought, too. But it makes a difference."
"S.H.I.E.L.D. isn't going to want me," she warned. "Not after I fill in the holes in your intel about the things I've done."
"Why not? You think the worst I ever did was lift a few rocket launchers?" He moved to sit beside her on the couch. The gesture was probably supposed to be comforting. "About a year before I got caught, I bombed three subway cars in Chicago. They didn't know who did it, but I confessed to Coulson before he signed off on my joining. He still took a chance on me, after I killed fourteen people and injured another two hundred. You just do more good to make up for it."
She pitied his naivety. She wished she didn't have a handful of trump cards to throw back at him.
"You can tell me the worst mission you can think of, and I promise I'll still bring you in, if you want to come."
He didn't mean it as a challenge, but a sick impulse burned deep in her chest and she immediately chose the story she wanted to give him in return. She didn't know what to do with Clint Barton, who seemed to believe everyone could be redeemed with the right opportunity. Once he saw her as she really was, what she was capable of, he'd give up on her, and it would serve her right for thinking even for a moment that he could save her.
There was too much Black Widow and not enough Natalia left. Being the Black Widow was safe, comfortable. She wasn't sure she could be as virtuous as Barton, atone for years upon years of unrestrained carnage, and she hated the thought of failing. She didn't need S.H.I.E.L.D.'s help, she could find someone else to undo the Red Room's programming.
"There was a politician," she began, and was suddenly grateful for the too-big sweatshirt and fuzzy blanket. Recalling that particular mission always left her feeling cold and hollow. "The KGB needed him as a pawn, but he wasn't easily bought or corrupted. He needed a demonstration. A lesson."
Barton shuffled to sit sideways on the sofa, facing her and leaning slightly forward, rapt with attention and curious. Naive. She could imagine his thoughts jumping to torture and coercion, unsavory methods but nothing too damning.
"He had a daughter. They hit her with a car, made sure he recognized the driver as the man who had tried to bribe him earlier. She wasn't killed," she added quickly, because Barton opened his mouth to interrupt. "They made contact again, their offer threats this time instead of money under the table. Again he refused."
Barton was leaning so far into her personal space she had a strong urge to shove him back. She was obviously the better storyteller.
"They sent me to the hospital two days later. I brought a gun and a silencer and went in during the nurses' shift change. The children's ward was bigger than I expected and I had to read the charts at the foot of the beds to find her."
Viktor and Dimitri and Tanya and Irina.
She realized her hands were shaking; she jammed them in the front pocket of Barton's pullover to hide the weakness.
"I had a pillow pressed over her face, but my handler stopped me. He insisted I wear a comm unit that night. He said 'She burns.' Then he said 'They all burn.' It was a hospital, chemicals and accelerants everywhere, it wasn't difficult."
"You burned the entire children's ward?" he asked quietly. His fascination seemed to have waned a bit. She didn't care for the hard, judgmental gleam behind his eyes.
"Sometimes a mission's meant to be a test. That one was a test."
"So you passed?" he asked, although his tone gave it the weight of a statement rather than a question.
He probably wanted her to deny it, and for a brief instant she considered lying, although she couldn't understand why his opinion of her suddenly mattered. She could always give him the whole truth, explain how any hesitation on a mission like that would end with a reprimand and an immediate trip back to the compound where she'd spent her childhood for reconditioning. She could tell him that she had hesitated, paused a moment too long before striking the match. She could tell him about that long week in a cold cell, having the idea of immediate compliance beaten back into her, how they tried to bury Natalia under the Black Widow once again but failed.
"What do you think?" she returned, and left him to come to his own conclusion.
"I think my offer's still on the table." His expression was grim, no more easy smiles. "Get some sleep, I'll keep watch. You can give me an answer in the morning."
He didn't speak to her again, just checked the door and flipped the lights and settled in the chair by the window. He twitched the curtain aside, and in the faint glow of city lights she could make out the deep frown still marring his features. She wished she hadn't told him about the fire.
...