A/N: I'm finally getting around to posting the rest of this! :) I finished high school so all that's left is some summer school before I head off to college in the fall! And you have Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell to thank for me hopping back on the fanfiction bus... I read that book for the first time last week and it really inspired me to come back and keep writing. Hopefully you'll be seeing a little more of me and this fic in the future!

Enjoy! ~w.a.o.n.n.y. Xx

When they arrived back at headquarters, Steve was whisked away on a stretcher by a waiting team of medics to the S.H.I.E.L.D. infirmary to be examined and treated.

Natasha was hungry and exhausted, and the incision in her ribcage was throbbing painfully. She could tell Clint was tired too - his eyes were dull and his eyelids heavy, and his stomach kept growling.

"Food and then sleep?" Natasha suggested as she and Clint left the hangar.

"Food and then sleep," Clint agreed. "I'm thinking pizza. How 'bout you?" Natasha's stomach answered for her, and Clint's eyes crinkled as he grinned.

"Pizza it is, then."

###

First, Fury wanted them to check in and update him on Steve, his mission, and the Red Skull Organization. So Clint and Natasha strode down the familiar halls of the Triskelion to Fury's office in silence, too tired to speak. They normally took the stairs, but this time, they both headed for the elevator bank. Another agent slipped in with them before the doors closed.

"What floor?" Clint asked, his finger hovering over the buttons.

"Two," the agent replied. "Thanks."

Clint pressed the button and the elevator hummed as it began to rise.

The second floor. That was where the containment units were. Natasha vividly remembered staying in one, remembered her first day at the Triskelion, when she'd been escorted by Clint and a whole team of agents to the second floor. She had been incarcerated on the second floor for the following six months in a nine-by-twelve space with nothing to do but think.

The elevator came to a halt, and after the agent got off, it continued to rise. Clint said something behind her, but the low rumbling of the elevator drowned out his voice. When had it gotten so loud? She turned to Clint, a question ready on her lips, then faltered. It hadn't been the elevator rumbling - it was thunder.

She was back in Russia.

Driving rain bit at her skin and drenched her body like blood. There was someone in front of her, but she couldn't make out his face. Dark, angry clouds obscured the stars, and raindrops clung to her lashes and dripped into her eyes. Natalia blinked them away. The man in front of her was an archer; she could see him clearly now. An arrow, aimed straight between her eyes, was nocked and resting against the bow, the bowstring taut like the muscles of the arms that had bent it.

Hawkeye.

The realization sent a jolt of panic through her. She was unarmed, and he was far enough from her that any slight movement she made would send that arrow flying straight into her head before she reached the archer.

Natalia met his eyes. They were sharp and gray, unyielding. He hadn't moved yet, hadn't loosed the arrow. And Natalia realized that she wanted him to.

Maybe she was tired of killing. Maybe she was sick of being the gun that was the cause of so many gruesome deaths, when it should have been the finger pulling the trigger that took the blame. But the reason didn't matter. All she knew for sure was that all the fight had left her. She was ready to die. And Hawkeye was giving her an easy way out of this irredeemable existence. She was grateful.

But he didn't shoot. Natalia waited; waited for the twitch of his fingers, the soft twang of the bowstring releasing. But he didn't shoot and she started to think he might never.

"Go ahead." She spoke in his native language, her voice carrying across the seemingly endless space between them, over the hammering of rain. "Kill me."

But he didn't.

"Shoot, damn you," she whispered, and began to shake there in the rain, waiting.

Hawkeye lowered his weapon, just slightly. "I'm not going to kill you." He sounded farther away than he looked. Natalia closed her eyes. "I don't want to go back." She had never been so honest with a stranger. Maybe she had never been so honest with herself. "Please let me die."

Natalia opened her eyes again, and they met his through the rain. Maybe she said more to him with her eyes than she did with her voice.

He raised his bow again, and the arrow was flying now, straight and true.

"Spesibo." It was barely a whisper that escaped her lips.

"Natasha? Oh god, something's wrong, someone call a medic - Nat, are you ok?"

Hawkeye's tone seemed almost frantic, and didn't match his expression, which was as steady as it had been before. He watched calmly as the arrow penetrated her skin, cracked the bones of her skull, and buried itself deep in her forehead.

Natasha collapsed.

###

Clint paced the lobby of the infirmary, a half-finished cup of coffee cooling in his hand. It was midnight, almost two and a half hours after Natasha had passed out in the elevator, and Clint was waiting for the all-clear from the doctors before going in to see her.

He sipped his coffee absentmindedly. Now matter how hard he tried, he couldn't erase from his mind the image of her in the elevator, how pale her face was, the vacant, trance-like look in her eyes. And she'd told him to kill her. For the second time in her life.

Clint's frown deepened and he picked up his pace.

Go ahead, kill me. I want to die.

He'd never thought he'd have to hear her say those words again. In the moment, his response was the same as it had been so long ago. I'm not going to kill you. It had felt like a horrible, twisted kind of deja vu. Clint wondered if she had thought it was real, that she was living in the past somehow. Only one thing she had said didn't seem to match perfectly with his memory.

Spesibo, she'd said. Thank you.

The implications, combined with the grateful tone of her voice when she'd said the word, send a shudder down Clint's spine. What was it that she thought he had done? Whatever it was, it hadn't happened the first time.

"Agent Barton?" A nurse stepped into the room. Clint turned quickly, his heartbeat picking up.

"How is she?"

"She's awake, but you can't see her yet," the nurse informed him. "Right now, we're testing for a drug or a poison in her bloodstream. We're exploring the possibility that the knife she was stabbed with was coated with some type of poison. There is a biochemist with her now, so I'd ask that you remain here until she's finished."

"Just tell me when I can see her," Clint requested.

"Of course, Agent Barton." The nurse left the room and Clint returned to his pacing, taking another swallow of room-temperature coffee. He got in a couple more circles around the room before the door opened and Fury entered.

"How you holding up, Barton?" he asked, settling into a chair.

Clint set his coffee on a table, dropped into the chair across from Fury, and began jogging his knee listlessly. "I'm ok, thanks, sir. But I'm not sure how Natasha's holding up." He dropped his head into his hands. "It's my fault. Something happened in Siberia. She was stabbed by what might have been a poisoned knife, and I should have taken her to a hospital in Russia as soon as it happened." He was disgusted with himself.

"Agent, did you harm Romanoff yourself?"

Clint sighed heavily and rubbed his face with his hands. "No."

"Well, then, I fail to see how this is your fault, Barton."

"It's just-" Clint stood again, frustrated, and resumed his pacing. "I should have realized. She spaced out once before, back in Siberia, and I should have realized something was off then. I'm her partner. It's my job to keep her safe."

"Agent, you're giving yourself too much credit," Fury said bluntly. "Natasha does a good job keeping her own ass covered. This Russian hospital business?" He waved a hand dismissively. "Sounds complicated. And expensive. Yes, the fact remains that she was injured in the field, but that's a fluke. It could just as easily be you laying in that hospital bed right now."

Clint didn't agree, but it would be no use to say so. "I guess you're right."

"Of course I'm right."

"But I still think I should have made her visit a hospital for that stab wound," Clint said, just for the sake of arguing.

"Like I said: complicated. Expensive."

The door opened, and a nurse stepped in. "You can see her."