Chapter Six

The Soldier and the Spy

Damn it, Natasha thought. She jumped and pulled herself up onto a long metal rack. Wasting no time, she scrambled to her feet and peeked through the crates on top. She couldn't see much of the equipment terminal, which was dimly lit and filled with rows of similar storage racks.

The enemy was lurking out there, hellbent on exacting revenge. They would've found her already, had most of the ceiling lights in the area not been blown out during their fighting.

Natasha backed up against a crate, trying as hard as she could to suppress her fearful gasps. There's no time for this. Reaching for her belt with shaking hands, she hoped to find just one remaining weapon. She had to keep fighting, even though she was already dead.

How the hell did this happen? Less than twenty-four hours ago, she and Steve had been sharing a beautiful hotel room in Rome. That was before they had flown out to South Korea with only the vaguest clue to guide their way. Through a ridiculous turn of events, the two of them found themselves on the wrong side of the Korean Demilitarized Zone.

They didn't just cross the border into North Korea though. They fought Chen Lu's men in the border city of Kaesong, before tracking them to an underground military base. There, they discovered that Chen had used his expertise to finish two long-range nuclear missiles for the North Koreans. It was bad enough that those nukes even existed. But then Chen and a group of hard-line soldiers seized control of the base with intentions of actually using them.

Natasha didn't know what that had to do with Chen's earlier plot with the portal generator, but she knew that she and Steve had no choice but to stop him. Knowing that, they broke into the base's control room and initiated the self-destruct sequence.

Chen and his men responded by rushing out to the two missile silos, where they manually set the missiles to launch just minutes before the base would implode. If they were going down, they were going to take a few million Americans with them.

Racing after them, Natasha had made the decision to split up. She had sent Steve to the silo at the end of the left tunnel, while she had gone down the longer tunnel on the right to face Dr. Chen herself.

Her decision had left her with a much lower chance of survival. It was something that Natasha was willing to accept though. The world needed Captain America far more than it did the Black Widow.

Natasha's fingers dug into empty pouch after empty pouch, as the footsteps of several North Koreans drew nearer. There wasn't much time at all. If those soldiers didn't get her, the base's numerous self-destruct bombs would. And even that was preferable compared to facing Chen Lu. She had arrived with no idea of what he had done to himself...

At least we stopped those nukes, she thought, trying to find some solace in the situation. With a pack of C4 plastic explosives, she had knocked out her missile's rocket engines before Chen had chased her back out to the silo's adjoined equipment terminal. She hadn't heard or felt the launching of Steve's missile either, which by now meant that it wasn't going to fly.

Steve was probably sprinting back through the tunnels with superhuman speed toward the mountainside exit. She had told him not to wait for her, if they didn't meet on the way out.

Opening the last pouch on her belt, she found a garrote just as two North Koreans turned into her aisle. Natasha pulled its handles apart to extend a thin but sturdy cord. She angled her feet and held her breath, waiting for them to come close enough for her to strike.

The lead soldier looked up, but he didn't see her. He continued on, moving right below her.

Natasha jumped down, kicking the second soldier in the face as she wrapped her garrote around the first one's neck. She landed on her feet and crisscrossed her hands to pull the cord tight. Turning around, she threw the soldier over her shoulder. His neck snapped before he even hit the floor.

Two down. That's a start.

The storage rack suddenly tipped over and began to fall. Move! Natasha thought. She didn't have time to grab the dead soldier's AK-47. Jumping for the second man's pistol instead, she rolled out of the aisle just as it disappeared under a heap of crates.

Dr. Chen laughed as he climbed on top of the pile. "Feisty little one, aren't you?"

He was an imposing sight, even with most of his features hidden beneath a gas mask and a dull orange radiation suit. Unknown to the outside world, Chen had been bathing himself in gamma radiation while working at the base. The gamma rays had transformed him into something that was somewhat similar to, but vastly different from the Hulk.

Standing well over six feet tall with the girth of a weightlifter, Chen looked nothing like the scientist in the files that Natasha had studied during the flight from Rome. He now possessed incredible strength, but that was only the tip of his newly acquired powers. Chen had become a living nuclear reactor, as evidenced by the neon green light that emanated from the eye windows of his gas mask. Or by the deadly energy blasts, like the one coming out from his hand...

Natasha jumped away as a stream of energy scorched the floor where she had stood. She was up and running before she knew it. Over the years, she had taken down her share of mercenaries, criminals, and terrorists. Just yesterday, she had tangled with a freaking troll. But nothing could have prepared her for this.

"Where is your courage now, Widow?" Chen asked.

Bullets flew by from the guns of the two remaining North Koreans. Natasha headed for a stack of crates, which was the only cover she could reach. She jumped over and pressed herself against the boxes. Her chest heaved as she dealt with another onrush of panic.

The crates are holding, she thought, calming herself as she heard the bullets smash against the other side of the barrier. She focused herself, concentrating on the feel of the pistol in her hands. The gun was a Russian Makarov, just like the one that she had trained with as a child. It's okay, she thought to herself. It's okay.

A bright green energy blast blew through the crates, shattering them along with her illusions.

She pushed herself up from the burning rubble. The soldiers were closing in. Natasha raised her pistol and fired on pure reflex, taking them down. Turning like a machine, she swung her weapon toward Dr. Chen.

Self-doubt stopped her once again, and she wasn't sure if she should listen to it. Chen wore that radiation suit for the safety of his North Korean allies. She thought about whether it would really help to open a few bullet holes in it. How was she supposed to fight a radioactive man?

He fired again, sweeping a prolonged blast of energy through the air. Natasha tripped as she ran, falling underneath the beam just as it was about to incinerate her. Screw it, she thought as she took aim again. I'm dead anyway.

Natasha fired all three of her remaining bullets at him. Chen raised his hand, generating a brilliant orb of energy from it as he stood his ground. The bullets flew into his radiation field and vaporized before they could make impact.

He's playing with me. Chen kept his burning hand up, laughing as he walked in to finish her. Though fear kept her immobilized on the floor, Natasha resolved to put on a brave face and die with dignity.

"It's over, Dr. Chen. This whole place is about to come down."

"I'm sure I will be strong enough to survive that. You, on the other hand, will not even live to see it come."

She stared at him as his hand burned even brighter. Captain America and millions of innocent lives had been saved. All for the low cost of one assassin, who, by all rights, should have died many years ago. It was a good deal.

"No!" someone yelled. A familiar metal disk sailed through the air and knocked Chen's hand astray as he fired.

It can't be, Natasha thought. She turned around and saw the shield fly back into Steve's hand.

He charged forward, slipping it back on just as Dr. Chen fired again. Pushing on through a stream of radiation, Steve closed the distance until he was able to ram his shield into Chen's chest. He kept attacking as Chen fell back, pummeling the mad doctor with several big swings. Chen may have been stronger, but Steve fought with an intensity that couldn't be matched.

Spinning around, he built momentum for a shield smash that knocked Chen's gas mask clean off his face. Chen fell to the floor, clutching his head in pain as radiation poured out from it.

"Time to go," Steve said as he ran back to Natasha. He took her by the hand and helped her up.

Natasha looked at him, barely comprehending what had just happened. "What are you doing, Steve?" she asked as the two of them began to run. "I told you not to wait!" She found herself angry that he had risked himself to come back for her.

"I'm not leaving without you."

"Yeah, well now we might not leave at all!" There wasn't nearly enough time for them to run to the exits on the other side of the base.

"Don't worry," Steve said as they ran around some crates to the edge of the equipment terminal. There, he led her to a light, open-top utility vehicle. "I found us a ride." He tossed his shield into the truck and jumped into the driver's seat.

"I still can't believe you're here," Natasha said. She really wanted to stay angry with him, but she couldn't. Once again, Steve had done the stupid, heroic thing. And once again, she had been impressed and inspired.

"Sorry. I thought you were worth saving."

Natasha liked the way he said that, even if she didn't quite agree with his decision. Knowing that they were in a rush, she buried those thoughts and focused herself on the situation at hand. Her eyes fell on an AK-47 on the backseat, and she jumped in to pick it up. "Go ahead. I'll cover the rear."

She braced herself as Steve floored the gas pedal. The truck sped through the tunnels, barely making one of the turns. It skidded into the side, scraping against the rocky wall for several seconds.

"Ugh!" Natasha yelled. "You didn't train in combat driving either, did you?"

"I rode a Harley during the war. I know, it's not the same." Steve accelerated again, blowing past a truck full of soldiers also trying to escape. "Hey, when's this place gonna blow?"

"Give me a sec," Natasha said as she ducked under the soldiers' gunfire. She raised her assault rifle and fired a burst that took out the driver. As the enemy truck careened into the wall, she lay back in her seat and checked her watch.

"How much time we got left?"

"None."

The ceiling exploded above them. "Whoa!" Steve yelled. He swerved hard and narrowly avoided the falling boulders.

"Faster!" Natasha yelled as she saw another truck turn into the tunnel behind them. She fired again but missed as another explosion shook her off her feet. It didn't matter though, because the enemy truck quickly disappeared under an avalanche of rocks.

"Having fun yet?" Steve asked.

"Rome was fun. Kaesong was fun. This is crazy!"

She dropped her rifle and braced herself to keep from falling out of the truck.

"Hang on," Steve said as he glanced back at her.

Light from the tunnel exit appeared before them. Explosions kept going off though, chasing them all the way to the end. Natasha leaned back and stared, waiting for whatever fate would bring.

The truck zoomed out from the tunnel a split second before the exit collapsed.

"Whoa," Steve said. He gasped as he turned to look at her again. "Told you we'd make it."

Natasha gave him a nod, before a smile formed on her face. She felt an urge to express her gratitude, despite all of the stupid risks that he had taken. However, she knew that they weren't out of the woods yet.

"There's a million troops between us and the border. We can't just drive out of here."

"Good thing we're in an airfield." Steve turned and pointed at a cargo plane taxiing to the runway. "Over there. That's our way out."

"You know how to fly?"

"Yeah, I did. Once."

Natasha exhaled with apprehension. "That's once more than I have."

Clint Barton stood on a raised walkway on the edge of the Helicarrier's bridge, anxiously gripping the railing as he waited. I should be out there, he thought.

He might have been, if Agent Hill hadn't sidelined him and Dr. Selvig for psychological evaluation. All he did was freeze up during one training exercise, and suddenly he was "unfit for service." It was stupid, and the SHIELD psychologist had agreed. Clint had been cleared for action again, but not soon enough to join Natasha when she had gone into North Korea of all places.

The ship had received just one brief message from her twenty minutes ago. Calling from a damaged plane that was leaking fuel, she had requested that the carrier move to a position close to the shore. Her message had ended with the sound of an explosion, after which she had gone silent.

Though there was no guarantee that she and Captain Rogers were still alive, Director Fury had moved the ship anyway. His decision was a testament to their value as SHIELD assets. But had the Helicarrier and its fighter jet escorts not been protected with radar-evading stealth, he wouldn't have even entertained the thought.

Aircraft carriers were big priority targets, and standard procedure was to keep them as far from the enemy as possible. The atmosphere on the bridge was tense, with everyone fearing a North Korean attack.

"We've got a bogey, sir," the radar operator said. "Fifty miles out."

Clint ran from the platform on the edge of the Helicarrier's bridge, down a short flight of stairs into the pit where the technicians worked. He could have heard the man just fine from where he had been, but he wanted to be as close as possible to see for himself.

Staring at the radar monitor, he saw a lonely blip closing in on the ship. It had risen out from a mountain range, as if it had been trying to avoid radar.

"Escorts three, four," a communications tech said. "Proceed east to intercept." A pair of F-35B fighter jets broke off and headed toward the bogey.

"Hail them," Clint said. He turned to Fury, knowing that he had spoken out of turn. "That could be them, sir."

Fury glared down at him from his spot in the center of the bridge, before he turned back to the technician. "Do it."

"Unidentified aircraft, state your intentions or we may have to use deadly force."

Clint lowered his head and waited several minutes for a response that didn't come. Come on, Tasha. That better be you...

"Our fighters have visual yet?" Director Fury asked.

"Yes sir," the tech said. He looked down as he held one side of his headphones, trying to concentrate. "The plane's an old twin-engine turboprop."

"Not the type you send against a carrier," Fury said.

"Escort three sees the pilot...It's Captain America. He's saluting!"

Personnel throughout the bridge raised their arms and cheered. Clint breathed a sigh of relief and smiled himself.

"Excuse me, sir," a young man said from the other side of the bridge. "How are they gonna land?"

The smile instantly faded from Clint's face as he realized how difficult it would be to get them aboard. Carriers were huge ships but tiny airfields. Special equipment was required to even land on them. Aircraft needed tailhooks to catch the cables stretched out on deck that could pull them to a halt. Otherwise, they would need the ability to land vertically like an F-35 or Quinjet could. Clint doubted that this North Korean piece of crap had either.

Overtaken by worry, he turned and ran straight for the exit.

"Where are you going?!" Fury asked.

Clint dodged several people in the halls as he headed outside. Stepping out onto the flight deck, he felt a rush of cold wind against his face. It was unpleasant to be out there, thousands of feet above ground level. His thoughts weren't on himself though.

Raising his head, he saw the plane arrive. The trail of fuel spewing from its fuselage suddenly ceased, as if it had been waiting for him to look. The plane was all out of gas. Cap and Natasha wouldn't get a second chance if they missed the ship on this approach.

Fortunately, Cap was bringing the plane in slow and on target. Despite that, Clint could tell by the angle of his descent that he didn't know what he was doing. Or maybe he did..."Oh God," Clint said. Cap was trying to crash the plane so that it wouldn't roll straight off the deck.

The plane crushed its own landing gear as it came down. It wobbled as it skidded forward and snapped both wings off against the deck, before it began to spin around.

Clint ducked in time to avoid being decapitated by a stray propeller. He looked back up in time to see the plane slow to a stop at the very end of the runway.

It was stupid to even call that thing a plane anymore. It was a shattered, smoldering wreck.

"Natasha!" he yelled as he ran down the length of the deck. He heard the crunching of broken glass under his boots as he went to pry open the door. It didn't budge no matter how hard he pulled, until it suddenly popped open. Clint lost his balance and fell on his ass.

"I'm okay, Steve," Natasha said as she climbed out from the plane.

"Sorry about that," Captain Rogers said as he got out from his side and walked over to join them. "That's my second crash in two flights."

"Eh, we're alive," Natasha said with a shrug. "That counts as a landing in my book." She and Rogers broke out into laughter.

"That wasn't funny," Clint said. He walked over to her and gave her a serious look. "It was dangerous."

"Hi...Nice to see you too."

"You guys should've ditched in the water. We could've sent a team to get you."

"That would've taken a lot more time," Rogers said. "We need to get outta here before they detect us."

"Alright," Clint said. "Glad you made it back." Capt stuck out his hand and Clint shook it, even as he turned to look at Natasha. "How long's it been, Tasha?"

"Almost a month."

"I was supposed to teach you how to fly. Remember?"

"Yeah, I remember. Just didn't have the time."

Clint opened his mouth to ask if she'd still like to fly with him. However, a team of SHIELD personnel arrived before he could get a word out.

"Captain Rogers, Agent Romanoff," one of the men said. "We understand you've been exposed to radiation. Please come with us to the decontamination chamber."

Natasha sighed and went with them. "Alright, let's go Steve."

"Hey," Clint said before she could get too far away. He waited for her to turn around and look at him. "We still on for dinner tonight?"

"Oh, yeah. I almost forgot."

This is all that's left, Steve thought. He sat in his room, going through electronic copies of Peggy's old files on his computer. Nothing was new to him by now, on his twelfth read through of the folders since Director Fury had provided them to him.

Again, he reminded himself that it didn't help to dwell on the past. However, he honestly had nothing better to do. After he had been decontaminated and debriefed, SHIELD had simply told him to sit tight and wait for further orders. He knew that he was just a blunt instrument. Someone to take orders from others who handled the planning.

With a sigh, he turned away from his computer and glanced at his television. He still didn't get how people could spend entire days staring at those things.

Maybe he would've found it easier to do if modern shows and movies were more to his taste. But they often confused him with their complicated plots and references to things that he had never seen. He didn't like the profanity either, and the casual attitude toward sex made him feel uneasy. A bit curious and excited, he had to admit, but still uneasy.

However, the violence was what got to him the most. The bone-crunching, blood-splattering, occasionally gleeful depictions of killing. He had seen enough death and destruction during the war, and it hadn't been any fun at all.

With a click, Steve entered the last of Peggy's files from the European Theater. According to the memo, Dr. Arnim Zola had vanished from captivity shortly after the Allied victory in Europe. Peggy hadn't pursued him though, because she and rest of the Strategic Science Reserve had been reassigned to deal with Imperial Japan.

The rest of the war, as everyone said, was "history." To Steve, it felt like unfinished business. The war may have ended nearly seventy years ago, but to him it had just been a few months.

He wanted to go after Zola. He needed to, knowing that Bucky had died to capture him in the first place. But he couldn't. Zola was long gone, just like everyone else he had fought during the war.

Besides Arnim Zola and the Red Skull, he had clashed with several other colorful enemies. These included Wolfgang von Strucker, Hydra's second-in-command. As the organization's spymaster, he had ruled his underlings with a literal iron fist.

But the most memorable of his other foes was Baron Heinrich Zemo, who had become Hitler's top scientist after Hydra's split from the Nazis. Born into aristocracy, the Baron had always looked down on other men. He was as sadistic as he was smart, and he gained infamy for testing his weapons on prisoners and fellow Germans alike. By the last year of the war, Zemo had become so hated even in Germany that he had taken to hiding his face behind a purple mask.

Those men and more comprised a list of old enemies who had disappeared under mysterious circumstances, never to be heard from again. Most of their names had become meaningless to the general population, and Steve could understand if the average person had never heard of them. Even if his enemies had escaped death during the war, they certainly must have died of old age during the decades since. The world no longer had reason to fear them, even if they still haunted his private thoughts.

Steve hated the lack of closure. He hated his inability to change what had happened. He even hated the electronic format of the files that he was reading. It may have been old fashioned, but he preferred the feeling of paper. He had been upset to hear that most of Peggy's papers had been shredded or burned after they were scanned into computers. He would have liked the thought of touching something that had once been in her hands.

SHIELD hadn't given him much time to get used to things at all. They had given him an apartment and allowed him to walk the streets of New York for only a month before the Chitauri invasion. After that, everything was taken from him all over again. Steve had spent the month since living on the Helicarrier, whenever he hadn't been out on a mission.

He hadn't had much interaction with regular New Yorkers, and even his few conversations with them had been difficult. But at least he had been able to talk to them as a regular, if awkward guy. Almost everyone at SHIELD called him Captain America, or Captain Rogers, or simply Cap instead. He had no refuge from his costume there. To his colleagues, the costume was all that he was.

At least he and Natasha were on a first name basis now. Of all the agents on the ship, he had strangely connected the most with her. Not that he had a problem with that.

A few times, he had overheard other agents talking about her. Some of them had called her untrustworthy, crazy, or undeserving of her position as one of Fury's go-to agents. One time, it pissed Steve off so much that he spoke up to defend her. Though he hadn't tried to intimidate them, the agents had stopped talking right away.

Steve still didn't know very much about Natasha. Their conversations so far had been surface, if not strictly professional. But he definitely thought of her as more than a coworker. He didn't need to dig into her past to know that she was a good person.

A gentle knocking on his door drew him out of his reflection. "Who is it?" Steve asked.

"It's me," he heard Natasha say.

Steve got up and opened the door to let her in. "Hey. What's going on?"

"Heard you locked yourself in your room again."

"I was just looking over some old files."

"Yeah, I can see that," she said with a frown. "Everything okay?"

"Uh huh." He didn't know where she was going, but he was already feeling better about things.

"I'm heading to the mess hall for some dinner. You wanna join me?"

"I don't know..." Steve said. Once again, he was a victim of his own shyness.

"They're serving apple pie," Natasha said with a smile.

"Now how do you know I like apple pie?"

"You're not that hard to figure out."

Steve found himself laughing. "Alright, you got me."

Clint hated the meatloaf they served on Sundays. It was always either greasy or bland. But he hadn't come for food that night.

Carrying his dinner tray, he looked around as he made his way through the crowded cafeteria. Where are you? he thought. He suddenly saw Natasha, waving at him from several tables away.

"Over here!"

Clint smiled as he turned and went to her. He walked assertively, making his way through all the people that stood between them. But when he arrived at the table, he saw someone whom he couldn't just go through.

"Captain Rogers...what are you doing here?"

"I invited him," Natasha said.

"What?"

"Please, call me Steve," Rogers said. "We're all friends here, aren't we?"

"I guess." Clint laid his tray down and took a seat across the table from them.

"I can't believe you kept saying that," Natasha said to Rogers.

"Saying what?" Clint asked.

"Put on the suit," Rogers said with a grin.

"Huh? Did I miss something?"

"It's when he tried to fight Stark," Natasha said.

"When was this?" Clint asked.

"When we were all arguing in Banner's lab."

"He wasn't there," Rogers said.

"Oh, that's right," Natasha said as she turned to Clint. "Kind of an in-joke."

"Hey, I'm not the only one who's done something stupid," Rogers said. "Remember when you had me boost you onto one of those fliers? You said it'd be 'fun.'"

"It was."

"I missed that too, didn't I?" Clint said.

"Yeah," Rogers said. "Think it was when –"

"When you had me standing alone on that rooftop."

"Sorry," Rogers said, before he turned back to Natasha. "But anyway, Stark told me you were steering the whole thing through some poor alien's body. Now that's crazy right there."

"Oh please, Steve. You really wanna go there? Let's talk about Kaesong."

"What about Kaesong?" Clint asked.

"Steve chased three guys when I kept screaming it was a trap. Then I see him running back with fifty guys on his butt. And I do mean butt."

"I didn't get shot in the butt," Steve said as he turned red. "They grazed the armor on the back of my thigh."

"I don't know about that," Natasha said as she looked around behind him. "Looked pretty high up to me."

"So they came at you all at once?" Clint asked. He didn't like where the conversation had been going.

"They did," Natasha said. "The two of us just stood behind this car, shooting away."

"Huh, sounds kinda like Budapest."

"No, Clint," Natasha said as she laughed. "Compared to Kaesong, Budapest was nothing."

"Hmm." Clint scooped a large chunk of meatloaf into his mouth and chewed it as he listened to her chatting away with the Captain. He was used to being the outsider. But not with her.

After several minutes, he had finally heard enough. "I'm not very hungry," he said as he got up. Clint went straight to the nearest trash receptacle and dumped his food before he left.

He walked through the hallways with his head down, and his posture didn't improve after he returned to his room. Clint sat on his bed, thinking about his uniquely bizarre problem.

Growing up, he had been a Captain America fan. Everyone loved Cap, even a punk kid like him who had once been on the wrong side of the law. But Cap was a historical figure. No man should ever see his idol come back from the dead to screw him over like that.

Clint knew he was screwed though, because Cap was literally perfect. There was no way he could compete with that.

He cursed as he reached over to his bottom drawer and opened it. Inside was a Captain America action figure. It was a 1962 twentieth anniversary limited edition, still in its original packaging.

Agent Coulson had bought the thing for thousands of dollars, after spotting it in a storefront in the middle of a mission. It had been one of the most valuable items in his collection. Coulson had always told Clint that he could have it, if something were to happen to him.

Clint kept the thing out of respect to his departed colleague. But unlike Coulson, he wasn't one to put such things on display. That would be awkward, now that Captain America was an actual coworker of his. He certainly wasn't going to take it out after what had just happened.

Natasha made her way to Clint's room with a smile on her face, and a boxed up slice of apple pie in her hands. She hoped he wasn't sick, and that he had regained his appetite since he had left dinner in such a hurry. But if not, she was more than prepared to eat it herself.

She reached his door and knocked. "Open up. It's me."

The door opened, and Clint appeared with a scowl on his face. "What is it?"

"Brought you something," Natasha replied. She walked inside and set it on top of his drawer.

"Said I wasn't hungry."

"You sure about that?"

"Yeah. Now why'd you really come?"

Natasha smiled. Clint knew her well enough to know that she acted with goals in mind, even when dealing with friends. "Steve and I had a talk during our last mission."

"About what?"

"Guns. He's still running around with a 1911. It's all he knows."

"And how do I fit into this?" Clint asked.

"I was hoping you'd spend some time with him. Teach him how to shoot."

"Captain America needs my help?" Clint looked down and sighed. "Couldn't you do that?"

"I'm not just talking about guns. He could really use a friend."

"A friend? Suddenly you're concerned about him having friends?"

"What's wrong with you, Clint?" Natasha asked. She had had enough of the attitude he was giving her.

"Since you came back, it's been all about him. You even care about what I've been going through?"

"And what's that? You've had it easy here, while Steve and I have been busy saving the world."

"Easy?" Clint lowered his head and sighed, before he went to his bed. He sat down and kept looking down at his feet. "They shut me down, Nat. Said I was unfit to work in the field."

Natasha gasped. "I had no idea," she said as she went over and put her hand on his shoulder. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"I wanted to tell you here, in person. Not over the phone. Didn't wanna worry you in the middle of a mission."

"Are you good now?"

Clint nodded without looking up. "Doctor cleared me two days ago."

"What was wrong, exactly?"

"Kept looking into all the people I killed while Loki was in my head. Didn't help."

"God, Clint," Natasha said. "I told you not to do that!" She knew right away that her tone and wording had been all wrong. One of her talents was talking to people, and she had been trained to carefully tailor her words to achieve the desired effect. But Clint had a way of making her drop her guard.

"Well I did, okay?!" Clint shook her hand off of his shoulder and got up. "Maybe I shouldn't have, but I did. They're still people to me. I couldn't just count them as 'red in my ledger' and try to erase them like numbers in a book."

Natasha stood up and pointed at him. "Don't you simplify me like that."

"Why not? Face it, Nat. You've got problems connecting with people. And I know you've gone as far as you wanna get with me, which is why you're latching onto Captain Rogers now. And that pisses me off, because I can't just let go of things the way that you do. I'm sorry, but even right now, I'm not as screwed up in the head as you are."

Natasha's jaw dropped. For years, Clint had been her rock. He had saved her, and he had been her friend when few others in SHIELD could even bear to hide their contempt for her.

But now, his words had just hit her like a punch to the gut. She felt a surge of emotions, as she recalled all of the abuse and betrayals that she had received from too many other men in her life.

She didn't cry though when she was upset. No, she got even. Natasha gathered herself as she narrowed her eyes and stared into his. "Go on, you asshole. Tell me what you really think."

She stood there facing him for the next minute, waiting for him to say something that they would both regret.

Suddenly, she received a message on her phone that interrupted the standoff. She reached into her pocket and saw that it was Director Fury. "Romanoff here. What is it, sir?"

"I want you, Barton, and the Captain on the bridge ASAP. Jane Foster has found something very interesting."

"We'll be right there, sir." Natasha hung up and headed for the door. She opened it halfway, when she realized that Clint was still standing there staring at her. "Come on," she said as she turned around. "Duty calls."

The story continues in Chapter 7: Always Angry

Come back as Tony Stark searches for the Hulk! Little does he know that the enemy is about to strike!