A/N: OK. Here we go. This is kind of another filler chapter, with a terrible cliffie, so please don't hate me too much. Also, the next chapter I am planning to be shorter and as a flashback chapter, so that won't really answer your questions... I will be making this into a series, but I still can't think of a name for it. Also, this chapter contains mild Clintasha. That's about it, so please review!

(Natasha P.O.V.)

It was him, lightly thumping his hand against her stomach, that woke her up.

She sat up immediately, an irritable What? already on her lips, but, glancing over, she noticed three things. First was that he was still asleep. Second, sweat shone on his brow, and third, he kept spamming, as though he was in pain. She guessed he was having a nightmare. She wondered what it was about, but deduced that it was probably about a seven on the Barton scale (a scale they had created to explain how bad his nightmares were - one being not terrible, perhaps Vietnam, and ten being as bad as they could get. Mostly these were about his brother and life before SHIELD, though Natasha knew very little about this. It was her personal belief that everyone was entitled to secrets, even if they made them wake up screaming in the middle of the night). She thought back to their worse missions. Perhaps he dreamt of Beijing; that had been a hard one.

Taking action - almost without consideraction of what he would do to her when he woke - she settled into the familiar routine of straddling herself atop his thighs to prevent him from jumping up and pinning down his arms (she had learned to do this the hard way, resulting in a minor black eye). She did it without thinking. It was only natural to her.

She slapped him and he flinched awake, gasping in air and blinking several times to clear his vision. "Natasha," he whispered, trembling, "Natasha. Natasha."

"I'm here," she said quietly. Why the sudden change in attitude?

His gaze rested on where she was sat and slowly, slowly traveled up to look her in the eye. "What," he hissed, "the hell."

"You were having a nightmare," she informed him, by way of explanation, and flopped back onto her side of the bed. "You hit me."

"I-" He seemed to be having trouble spitting the words out.

"It's three in the morning," she said tiredly. "Let me sleep."

"We should get goi-"

"No. I'm going to sleep," she snapped, and that, Natasha thought, was the end of that.


(Clint P.O.V.)

Beijing had been a bad one.

It had all been going smoothly - too smoothly. They had gathered all the intelligence required, and some more besides. Everyone they wanted to be dead was dead, without a hitch, and everyone who was useful and allied with them was alive. They'd arrested a bunch of illegal weapons dealers and uncovered a brutal human trafficking organisation in the middle of it. He should have known there would be a complication.

They had both had temporary molar implants; these could easily be removed with a mirror and a pair of tweezers. They allowed the two to converse with Morse Code - if he simply bit down he could creat a click without any implication to the outside world that he had done anything. The sound was then transmitted to Natasha's chip, which pulsed briefly with an accompanying click to inform her of what he was saying. He recieved her transmission while on a rooftop as she seduced one last man into telling her the one last piece of intelligence.

...-...

...-...

SOS.

"Natasha?" he muttered. "You OK?" Nothing. "Nat? Do you copy?"

Still, his earpiece was silent.

He called Coulson. "Black Widow's offline," he said. "Are you getting a signal?"

"No," Coulson replied. "Go find her. It's important that we get this intel."

He hung up. "Jeez, Tash, say something."

He heard a grunt crackle through his earpiece. Where was she?

He broke into a sprint, firing an arrow at a random thug without even looking. What the hell was Natasha playing at? Was she...? Clint swallowed thickly, which was hard when running. He felt oddly possessive over the young red-haired assassin - it was not love, nor lust, but something inexplicable; he had recruited her, and he felt responsible for her welfare.

Besides, he reasoned, nobody would want their partner to be sleeping with the enemy. It would just be wrong, and he would be damned if he was going to let her do it. They had only been working together for five months. What if she tried to betray him?

He burst into the office, fully expecting them to be doing...whatever she did when she went into people's offices and came out with everything she needed. But the room was empty. "Natasha?" he called softly. "Where are you?"

A security guard, tall and gangly and no more than twenty-four, kicked the still swinging door open. There was a tremor in his hand, and it showed in the gun he was pointing at Clint's neck. "M-move, and I'll shoot," he stuttered, clearly terrified.

"You're not going to shoot me," he said calmly, moving forwards and twisting the gun out of the poor guy's hand. He couldn't help but feel a twinge of regret. He could only be caught up on this by chance. "Where did Cheng take her?"

"W-what? I don't...I don't know what you mean..." Clint twisted his arm, hard, but not enough to break it. He didn't want that on his conscience, not today. "P-please!"

"Tell me," he said.

"He-he took her downstairs. She wasn't moving; uncon- unconscious I think. Said he was going to try and get..." The youth turned white. "He's going to kill me."

"Get what?" Clint persisted, as he fainted. "Crap."

Downstairs. The basement? Didn't all torture happen in dark basements? He started to run. Romanoff was pretty strong - he guessed she would hold out for a while. There was a muffled curse down the line. "Romanoff! Do you copy?"

"Not exactly," she said. "I'm in a bit of a tight spot. Help me ou- crap!"

"Natasha?"

He swore violently in every language he could think of, and then set off down the stairs.

To cut a long story short, he found her. Cheng was beating her with some sort of whip; it looked inhumane to him. She appeared to have lost consciousness (it had been a long trek down the stairs to the basement, a dim room used to supply all sorts of obscurities, and back up again), and yet Cheng continued to hurt her. He let out a shout. "What the hell are you doing?"

He had forgotten to speak in Chinese, but Cheng understood him anyway, and gave him a vicious smile. "I was hoping you would come," he said, and the door clanged shut.


In the end, he killed Cheng, picked the lock, and half carried, half dragged her to safety. She wasn't seriously harmed, and the wounds didn't even scar. It had been the sedative that had knocked her out. Cheng was beating her to get to Clint, because, it seemed, he had an ancient grudge against him.

But none of that mattered.

No, what mattered to him was the image that haunted him.

Bloody tears in her clothing. A figure standing over her, relentlessly whipping her, laughing, and it was his fault.

Later on she told him that she had close to Cheng and he had stuck a needle into her neck. An amateur's mistake, she had laughed. In fact, she didn't even seem remotely fazed.

He woke up to find her face staring into his, genuine concern evident in her eyes. And then he remembered, and snapped at her, and she rolled off him, unconcerned. He wondered if he had cried out.

"Natasha," he murmured.

"Mm."

"Beijing," he said, much to his own surprise. He shouldn't be sharing this with her, but it somehow felt...right. Like she could help.

He looked at her. Her chest rose and fell evenly as she breathed. Her short red hair framed her face.

Clint got up.


After showering, he felt a little better. He jogged out to the van to get the food he had bought the night before, and started to prepare it so they could eat quickly. She woke up as he was doing this.

"What are you doing?" she groaned.

He tossed her the sandwich. "Breakfast."

Natasha groaned again. "Not hungry." Her stomach rumbled loudly. "Fine," she admitted. "Hungry. But I haven't slept this well in ages."

He felt a little bad. She had been in the back of a van for...how long? Which, he thought grimly, only proves my point. But even he had felt worryingly comfortable in that bed - he should have been more alert. Clint searched his archive for a comeback, and in the end selected, "Eat."

She ate, and reluctantly dragged herself out of the bed. "It's freezing," she said miserably, plonking herself back down and curling up again beneath the covers. Clint immediately moved over to check her temperature, but she was fine, so he put his arms round her middle and pulled.

She flopped onto the floor with all the grace of a beached whale and then, furious, she launched herself on top of him with a flurry of harmless punches. Later on, he would tell himself that he let himself fall backwards onto the bed.

And yet suddenly, both of them laughing, they found themselves face-to-face, centimetres between them. Electricity crackled through the air.

He wanted to kiss her.

No, he didn't.

But he did.

She stopped, staring at him. A strand of hair fell across her face but she didn't bother to brush it away.

She was beautiful, he found himself thinking, and then she leapt away from him as though she had been electrocuted, and all was normal again, and he shook himself for being such an idiot.


(Natasha P.O.V.)

"I'm going to get some air," she told him, because apparently he trusted her now - enough even to let her sit in the front next to him. He nodded his permission.

She jumped out and leant against the van. Hearing a movement, her head snapped around, but her eyes only met darkness. Stars shone overhead.

She was being watched.

The thought popped into her head quite suddenly. Natasha had always had an uncanny ability to be able to tell when she was being watched, and she was. She drew the gun she had hidden in her waistband (you could never be too careful, and Clint needed not know) and flicked the safety catch. She turned again.

"Hello, Yelena," she said calmly.

"Hello, Natalia," said Yelena, stepping out of the shadows.