James now had his own box at the Bolshoi that Natalia had procured for him. So he could come in and out of the ballet without disturbing the audience. Whenever Natasha performed her eyes would wander over to that box to see the happy look on James' face that was so rare. He never missed one of her performances, even when he was in the middle of a mission.

Something was wrong tonight though. James seemed restless, shifting in his seat and scanning the theater sporadically. Natalia found herself mimicking him, but she didn't see any threats. It looked like the regular audience, but she trusted James' instincts. She had her understudy go in for her at intermission and then went outside. James was already leaning against the side of the building, waiting for her. They fell into step and didn't talk til the Bolshoi was out of sight.

"What is it?" she asked him, slipping her arm through his.

His eyes checked every alley they passed. His behavior was grating at her nerves. "There's chatter going around. A S.H.I.E.L.D. team is in town, led by one of their top agents."

She didn't understand why he was so worried about that. S.H.I.E.L.D. didn't know of HYDRA's continued existence, nor of his. And teams came by from time to time, did their job, and left. It wasn't a big deal. Something loosened in her chest.

"Okay. So we'll be careful until they leave," she suggested, mostly to placate him.

He shook his head. "They won't leave until they complete their mission."

"Which is…?"

"To kill the Black Widow."

His words settled like stones in her stomach. Yes, she had made a name for herself, but she had never even imagined S.H.I.E.L.D. would come after her. It took quite a bit to warrant their attention. She'd been sure never to target any of their agents either. For once, she might honestly be in danger. But she was also confident in her abilities. She was a deadly assassin and spy. She was the best of the best that had ever emerged from the Red Room. It would take more than a S.H.I.E.L.D. team to bring her down. She would just exercise a little more caution in the meantime.

He suddenly stopped walking and turned her roughly to face him. "Natasha, you should leave the city. Get out of here before S.H.I.E.L.D. finds you. Start over somewhere else."

She shook her head. "No. Not a chance. Not unless you come with me."

He looked pained. "I can't," he whispered brokenly. She nodded, because she knew that at the end of the day, James was not his own person. She had to ask, but she had known the answer. He couldn't do what he wanted, not with HYDRA's hold on his mind. It was a miracle he hadn't been put back in cryofreeze yet. "I want to, but I can't."

"I know," she told him. "I'm staying with you."

"No. You need to go," he tried to convince her. "Any day now they'll put me back in the ice. Maybe for years this time, maybe even longer. You need to live your life, Natasha. There is no future with me."

"I don't care. I'm staying here. With you," she added, kissing him gently. "Right where I'm supposed to be."

"Natasha," he groaned.

"You're stuck with me, James. You might as well accept it."

"Fine. Let's go get a hotel room. Our house isn't safe anymore." She smiled and allowed him to lead her away.

One week later, S.H.I.E.L.D. caught up to her.

She and James were walking back to their hotel room from the Bolshoi when they struck. A red dot appeared on James' chest. A gun sight. He moved fast enough so that the bullet glanced off his metal arm instead of striking flesh. She had a gun in her hand instantly and shot at the area the bullet had come from. She turned and saw four men in S.H.I.E.L.D. uniforms coming at her. She started shooting, but only brought one down before ducking behind a car for cover. She didn't have her usual arsenal on her because she had just returned from the Bolshoi.

"Get down!" James yelled at her, shoving her into an alleyway. Bullets peppered the spot they had just been standing in.

"We can't stay here!" she yelled over the gunfire.

"Well, we can't move, they'll tear us to bits! Do you have any of your toys on you?" he asked.

"Not today! All I have is this pistol and my Widow Stings," she said, raising her wrist to show him her preferred weapons.

"I'll get you an opening," James told her, pulling out a gun from the waistband of his pants. In sync, James stepped out and provided cover fire while she made a mad dash towards the agents hiding out behind some cars.

She had one down with her Stings in seconds. His partner turned to fire at her, but she used the limp body as a shield. Then she jumped and caught the agent in the chest with her heeled shoe. The agent was knocked out from the cover of the car and James' bullets tore through him. Two down, two more to go.

"Duck!" James yelled. She flung herself behind a car just in time to avoid the third agent putting bullets in her. James shot back at him, and she used the opening to bolt over to the third man.

She hooked her legs around the the agent's head and used her momentum to slam him into the ground. She spared one bullet to shot him through the head before running towards the last agent, who was trading gunfire with James. Natalia tackled him from the side and they went sprawling on the pavement. She was back on her feet in seconds, years of training keeping her from losing her balance, even with one of the heels snapped off her stilettos. She knew she shouldn't have worn those today. James had even lifted a skeptical eyebrow at her choice in footwear, but it was too late now. Her brief distraction allowed the man to get back on his feet.

The agent got up just in time to dodge her first kick, but she was quite simply better. She used his size against him to send him slamming back into the street with a well placed punch. She straddled him and despite his struggling, her Stings killed him quickly. Breathing heavily, she rolled off of him and turned back to look at James.

He was smiling at her, an awed look on his face. He always told her she was beautiful when she fought. But suddenly his smile turned into a grimace. He fell over silently, an arrow protruding out of his back. She screamed his name in pure terror and ran to his body.

Her panic receded slightly as she realized the wound was non-fatal and that it was only a sedative on the tip that had caused him to pass out. In her preoccupation, she didn't think to look for the man who had shot the arrow. That was why she missed it when a man with a quiver on his back slipped away into the busy city of Moscow.

"You're telling me that not only did you not complete your mission, but five of my top agents are also dead?" Nick Fury asked, staring at the man before him with his one remaining eye.

"Yes, sir," Clint Barton said with no hesitation.

"You told me you could do this." There was an unpleasant undertone to the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s voice.

"And you told me that the Black Widow was too dangerous to leave alive."

Fury leaned back and surveyed his agent over his steepled fingers. Barton was a newer agent, with only a few years of service under his belt, but no one could compare to his skill with projectiles. Guns, bows, darts, it didn't seem to matter to the agent. He couldn't miss. However, Fury was starting to think that all the skill wasn't enough to make up for Barton's insolence.

"You saw her extensive record," Fury said. "You've seen her in action. Five agents dead in a matter of minutes. And you believe that we can just let her go? Let her keep killing in the name of Mother Russia?"

Barton fell silent.

"I asked you a question, Agent."

"She's a kid," he whispered.

"Excuse me?" Fury asked, raising his eyebrow.

"She can't be more than twenty."

Everyone knew of the Black Widow, but no one could tell you what she looked like. She was a master of disguise, and rarely did anyone survive an encounter with her. It made reliable information about her hard to come by. But Barton had survived, and seen her true face, not a disguise or a mask.

"Your point?" Fury said coldly, in a tone that brokered no negotiations.

"What if we take her into custody instead? She's so young, she should be able to have a chance to redeem herself—" Clint argued.

"Redeem herself?" the Director repeated in disbelief. "Barton, she was raised to be a weapon, she kills without discrimination between good and bad as long as the cash is plentiful. She has lost the opportunity for redemption. Unless there's something you left out of your report?"

Silence stretched out between the two men. Fury waited patiently. Clint looked like he was struggling to come up with the right words. Clint knew that even if he told Fury what he had seen, the Director wouldn't change his mind. He decided it was better to keep that information to himself for now.

"No, sir," Clint said finally.

"Good. Then I want her dead by the end of the week," Fury said with a note of finality. "Or else I'm pulling you from this assignment and putting someone who can produce results on it. Am I understood?"

"Yes, sir. I'll find her."

The video line went dead. Clint fell backwards onto his bed and stayed there, rubbing his face in exhaustion. The young Widow's scream echoed in his ears. There had been too much heartbreak in that sound for it to have been faked. He'd been told she was a mindless killer who only obeyed the hand that raised her, but she had cared for that man with her. She'd screamed his name in pain. James. She wasn't invulnerable. And she was so young. There had to be a way to spare her without more people dying.

James, if that was really his name, wasn't supposed to be there. S.H.I.E.L.D. had no files on him. There was nothing in the Black Widow's admittedly thin file about having a partner or any associates. That's why Clint had chosen to sedate him. The man had been too dangerous to leave in the fight, but the girl's reaction had complicated things for Clint. He couldn't kill her while she was crying over that man's body. It wasn't right. It also proved she wasn't heartless, which complicated things for Clint. He believed in second chances, and that this girl, who had been brainwashed her entire life, definitely deserved one.

"What are we going to do, Lucky?" Clint asked, reaching down to scratch his dog's head. Lucky, of course, didn't respond, but he did start licking Clint's face quite a bit. Clint smiled. "Thanks, boy. We have a lot of work to do."

"Natasha," James moaned.

"Shh," she reprimanded, laying him on his stomach on the couch. The room was dark, as she hadn't bothered with the lights and the sun had long since set. "I need to pull this arrow out. Stay still."

"Natasha," he said again, a little more clearly. "We can't stay here. They'll find you."

She faltered for a second. Even with an arrow protruding from his back, he was more concerned about her safety than his own. But she wasn't just going to leave him like this, especially after dragging him all the way here. He'd lost a lot of blood, but they couldn't go to the hospital. Not with his metal arm that would be hard to explain, and his altered physiology. Their house was the only place they could access the medical equipment that they needed to treat his wound.

"We don't have much choice right now," she reminded him sternly.

"You need to go," he argued, cutting off with a hiss when she touched the arrow.

"Be quiet," she snapped. She needed to concentrate to make this as fast and painless as she could. She tore a strip of fabric off the bottom of her dress, already ruined from the fight, then held it out for him to bit on. He did, though he did roll his eyes. She didn't care, because she did not want to have the neighbors coming over to check on why they heard screaming. That would attract attention, and they needed to keep their heads down while S.H.I.E.L.D. was still hunting her.

Natalia didn't warn him before she yanked the arrow out and quickly pressed a bandages down to stem the blood flow. His scream of pain was muffled by the makeshift gag, but it still tore at her heart. To think that they'd been at the ballet only a hour ago. Since S.H.I.E.L.D. seemed to know she worked at the Bolshoi, her cover was blown. She couldn't go back there now. Those agents would be waiting, so she would need to get somewhere else. But she didn't have any contacts in the city that she felt were trustworthy enough to bring James with her and risk associating them with each other. They'd have to do everything themselves to stay out of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s eyes.

She pulled the gag out of his mouth. His breathing was ragged, but she was just glad that he was breathing at all. That agent could have killed him. He'd had a clean shot, and James had been distracted by her. So why hadn't he gone for a killing shot? Why had he only used a sedative? And why had he left without even attempting to take her down? S.H.I.E.L.D. was a lot of things, but sloppy wasn't one of them. Which made that agent's actions even stranger.

"Natasha, they probably tracked us back here," James groaned, trying to tilt his head to look back at her.

She placed a hand on his back and kept him down. "Stop. I still need to stitch you back up." She got up to go get the supplies.

"Nat!" he said louder and she froze in the doorway. "You don't have time for this, you need to go. Even if S.H.I.E.L.D. didn't track us back, my handler is expecting me back tonight. I finished my mission, I didn't want to tell you. I have orders to return."

Suddenly, it all made sense to her. Why James had told her he couldn't stay with her, why he'd insisted on a leisurely walk back from the Bolshoi, why he'd had only one gun on him tonight. He knew he had to leave, he'd been trying to arrange for her to move somewhere else, so she would be safe when he couldn't protect her anymore. He'd wanted the walk to enjoy his last few hours with her. He'd been carrying one gun because that was all he could bring with him to meet his handler. He'd been planning on leaving tonight, probably as soon as she fell asleep.

"I'm stitching you back up," she repeated. He watched her leave the room with an agonized expression. She returned with the first aid kit they kept in the kitchen. She sat next to him and began working, her stitches precise.

"You did this for me the first time we met," she told him as she sewed his wound shut. "It was one of the very few nice things anyone had ever done for me. I always remembered you, even when we didn't see each other for years." He was quiet as he listened to her talk. "So, I'll go. I'll go somewhere far away, where S.H.I.E.L.D. won't be able to find me. But I'm going to ask again. Come with me, please."

She finished his stitches and set the tools down. He sat up slowly and took her bloodstained hands in his. She stared at him steadily, but he had trouble meeting her eyes. She could tell he was conflicted, but she knew it wouldn't matter.

"I can't," he whispered.

Of course not. James was not like her in one very significant way. James was not in control of himself. HYDRA owned him, he was their slave. However much he might honestly want to be with her, in the end, his programming and brainwashing would win out. He would always pick HYDRA over her. And she would pick herself. She was a survivor. People were temporary, they came and went, but she would always have herself. This honeymoon had come to an end.

She kissed his cheek. "I know."