This is a little late, but I got kinda stick while writing it. Anyway, I'm on break now so I should have some more updates for you soon. Please review!

"How's our friend in the CIA?" Fury asked as Natasha took a seat in his office.

"On a one way trip to a supermax facility." Both Fury and Natasha disguised their satisfaction. Fury had been thinking about their deal for weeks, sending Natasha out on missions to test whether this arrangement was going to be as beneficial as she had thought. Natasha had completed every unsupported mission flawlessly, earning both of them exactly what they wanted. Fury dug through a drawer in his desk and pulled something out, setting it down on the desk in front of Natasha.

"What's this?" Natasha asked as Fury slid a thick packet of papers across his desk at her.

"A contract."

"A contract?" She thumbed through the pages, this would be a bitch to read. She was painfully tired, having just run three jobs back to back to back; two for Fury and one she'd picked up between the two. She'd forgotten when she'd last slept or ate and she was fairly positive she's broken at least two ribs on her left side. The last thing she wanted to do was be sitting in Fury's office.

"I thought we agreed that my lack of employee status was better for both of us." She pushed the papers back.

"It's not an employee contract, it's a consultant contract. The very first of its kind. You won't even be a SHIELD consultant, but a personal consultant to myself. You will get full agent status and support on our missions, you get your freedom on yours. You'll be considered a 'director's asset.'" Natasha raised an eyebrow at him.

"I appreciate the sentiment, but I still think it's a bad idea. I sign this and I'm your responsibility on every SHIELD job I get paid for. You would forever align yourself with me; to declare yourself my ally would make all my enemies yours. Couldn't you just contract me to SHIELD?"

"All SHIELD consultants have a clause in their contracts, it's a code of conduct outside SHIELD designated work. That won't really work in your case."

"You don't have to take responsibility for me, Fury. The whole point of being a deniable asset is that you don't have to."

"I refuse to treat you as a deniable asset."

"Why? It's the best solution for both of us."

"Because, you are not disposable, Natasha." Fury's words hung heavily in the air and stunned Natasha, not that she'd let it show. She'd always been too controversial, too tainted for anybody to acknowledge working with her. Even in the criminal world, her name was toxic, and only the desperate or ignorant would hire her. Nobody, not even the people who raised her had ever dared to acknowledge her, to take responsibility for her. No one ever cared if she failed, or died.

"I'll give it no my lawyer, see what he says." Natasha responded, not displaying a trace of emotion.

"You have a lawyer?" Fury didn't think it'd be like Natasha to trust anybody with anything.

"Girl like me ought to have one. Don't you think?" She shrugged, standing and taking the contract as she left.

She tucked the contract under her arm on her good side and walked stiffly to her car, eager to get into a hot shower, clean clothes, and her own bed. The walk up to her apartment was painful and she knew she'd have to do something about her aching chest soon, but she could wait on it for a little bit longer. When she got inside she made herself a cup of hot tea and dialed her phone just as there was a knock on the door. Clint.

"It's open." She called as the other line picked up. "Hey, just got a contract; I need you to look over it for me." There was a sigh on the other end of the line. I bet I look like shit, Natasha thought as Clint looked over her apprehensively.

"I'm not getting involved in any of your SHIELD business. You can read your own damn contract." Her lawyer told her, trying to sound firm in his resolve.

"I could, but that's what I pay you to do, Isaiah." She pointed out, motioning for Clint to hold on for a minute.

"With what money? I've got a job and you've been ignoring my calls for the past week."

"Yeah, well, I've got other jobs too. I've been a little busy." Natasha's lack of sleep was catching up to her quickly, she kept pacing to keep from getting too frustrated; Clint leaned against her counter patiently.

"You do know how much this little enterprise of yours is going to cost?"

"How could I forget? I'll do it, just give me a day for R and R, okay? I'll drop off the contract tomorrow morning and you can give me details then."

"Natasha -" She hung up on Isaiah, knowing that if this kept going on she'd probably kill him, and that wouldn't help anything.

"Your friend again?" Clint spoke up, and she was trying very hard not to read anything into his tone. He knew that something was up with her, she was always gone and would never say where she was going or why and it was driving him crazy.

"Yeah." She said with a sigh, wincing slightly as the heavy breath left her. Clint eyed her suspiciously but she waved him off, or tried at least.

"I'm fine, just a little sore." She knew that even trying to pass off the stiffness in her walk and how restricted her arm movements were as mere soreness was futile, Clint saw everything and while Fury might have let her injuries slide, Clint would not.

"Just sore? Really?" He'd had enough broken bones to know that she was lying.

"Really, I'm fine." She insisted, wanting nothing more than to sleep. She knew she'd been working too hard when Clint got the better of her; his arm lashed out, hitting her harder than she would have liked in the ribs, his knuckles sliding the already broken bones. Natasha gasped reflexively, doubling over as a she let the pain wash through her.

"Totally fine, yeah?" Clint asked when Natasha could catch her breath again.

"Well, fine is a relative term. I can handle this myself." She spit back at him, clutching her side as she she stood back up straight. The last thing she needed was Clint on her ass over this. He scoffed.

"How is this any different from you?" She challenged. "You come home covered in cuts and bruises and I never ask a goddamn question. So get off my ass, I can live without you breathing down my neck. I have enough to deal with already."

"What is up with you?" Clint asked. "You're gone for days at a time, you don't tell anybody where you're going or what you're doing, you're in contact with people you used to know before SHIELD. I never see you and when I do, you lie to my face about where you've been. Months Natasha, it's been like this for months and you expect me not to ask a question? Just because you don't care enough to ask, doesn't mean I don't. Why can't you tell me?"

Natasha sighed, rubbing her forehead in frustration.

"If I told you, you'd try and stop me." She told him quietly, trying to put a lid on her anger. She didn't want to be mad at Clint, but he could never let things be, never let things go, and it was grating on her nerves, especially now.

"Maybe you should." He suggested.

"I can't. It's too important."

"More important than your life?"

"Yeah. Now, if that's all you came here for, you can go." Natasha was done talking about this with him, she needed to be alone. Clint, didn't move, he was just as stubborn as she was and her answers were far from satisfactory.

"I said, get out, Clint." She ordered more forcefully, slamming her hand down onto the counter. Her attempts at calming herself having failed miserably; she couldn't even bother to pretend to care anymore.

Clint wasn't even angry, he was just disappointed and hurt and confused and Natasha hated herself for being the one to cause it. Though she didn't hate herself enough to stop and tell him the truth, a truth he wouldn't and couldn't understand.

Natasha sighed, pushing Clint out of her mind as he left without another word and poured herself a double shot of her strongest vodka, downing it in one long drink. She ignored the pain, biting down hard on a kitchen towel as she set and taped the broken bones back into place, pouring herself another drink when she'd finished.

After a long, hot shower she tucked herself gently into bed, forgetting all about Clint as she fell into a death-like sleep. A, thankfully, dreamless sleep.

"Isaiah, what do you want now? I said I'd call you tomorrow." Natasha drawled groggily into the receiver, pulling her comforter up over her shoulders.

"It is tomorrow, Natasha." Shot back a voice she wasn't expecting.

"Bobbi?" She sat up and rubbed her forehead, acutely aware of the pain that followed her movements.

"Yeah, we need to talk." There was an odd sort of urgency in Bobbi's voice; it made Natasha uneasy. "Meet me at Elijah's in an hour." Natasha glanced at the clock on her nightstand, she was supposed to meet Isaiah in an hour.

"Another time, Bobbi. I've got something I've got to do today, I don't have time for coffee." She groaned, throwing the covers off and getting out of bed reluctantly.

"Trust me, this is one cup of coffee you are really not going to regret." Bobbi hung up on that cryptic not, leaving Natasha surprisingly confused and worried. As she showered and dressed and ate she kept going back and forth: was she going to Isaiah or Bobbi? Logically she knew that she needed to meet with Isaiah, if he had a job for her, she needed to take it. But, her curiosity burned with Bobbi, it was rare for her to call Natasha, even rarer for her to insist on meeting with a tense, cryptic message.

Natasha climbed into her car, her mind made up to meet with Isaiah and take the job, but somewhere along the way her curiosity got the better of her and she found herself inexplicably in the parking lot of Bobbi's preferred coffee joint.

"This better be worth my time Bobbi, I had an important meeting that I'm missing for you." Natasha slid into the seat across from the blonde, her tone more aggressive than she'd meant it to be.

"Another mystery meeting?" Bobbi asked as she took a sip of her latte, raising an eyebrow in suspicion at Natasha.

"So Clint's told you. Great, because what I really needed was for my partner become an information leak. Fucking fantastic." She wasn't necessarily surprised that Clint would confide in Bobbi about her, but it was irritating nonetheless.

"He's just concerned." Bobbi defended him.

"That doesn't make him any less a liability." Bobbi shrugged, Natasha did have a fair point, especially in their line of work. "But, that's not why you called me here."

"Smart girl. I called you here because I think Clint's about to do something very very stupid."

"More stupid than usual?" Bobbi chuckled at Natasha's joke, but the temporary comic relief soon gave way to seriousness.

"Yeah. Clint's got a meeting with Fury this afternoon."

"To do what?" Natasha asked, taking a drink of Bobbi's coffee and wrinkling her nose at the sweetness.

"He's terminating your partnership, Natasha." For the second time in 24 hours, Natasha had been taken aback in surprise.

"He's what? Why?" She was suddenly furious at Clint and Bobbi and herself. How had she not seen this coming?

"Do you really have to ask why? Natasha, he's pissed. We got drinks about a week ago and he told me about all this shit you seem to have gotten yourself into. He's sick of being lied to by the person he trusts mosts. It's been over six months now that you've been doing this too. He said he was going to give you one last chance to come clean, I'm guessing that one chance was last night."

Natasha suddenly regretted kicking him out last night; she suddenly regretted a lot, actually.

"Well, if he's made up his mind, that's the decision we're both going to have to deal with." Natasha propped her elbows onto the table and dropped her head into her hands.

"You two are unbelievable." Bobbi scoffed, setting her mug down onto the table angrily making Natasha's head snap up.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Natasha snapped defensively.

"You guys are so close to having it all, or were, I guess. Because Clint is very good at pushing people away, just look at me, and you are so fucking stubborn that you're just going to let him because holding onto this secret that you are so tightly guarding is more important than him and for Clint, spiteing you seems to be more important than being with you. So if you two want to throw away half a decade of trust and friendship, be my fucking guest, but you both better be prepared to deal with the consequences." She pushed back from her seat frustratedly, signaling her finality.

"No offense Bobbi, but I'm not exactly sure why you care about any of this."

"Believe it or not, I care about both you meatheads. And I swear to god, if I divorced my husband so you two could end the same way we did, then I'll be fucking pissed." Natasha couldn't help but laugh at Bobbi's reasoning.

"We must be the weirdest friends ever, Barbara." Natasha said with a sigh, shaking her head slightly.

"Yeah, you've got that right. But seriously, Natasha, is whatever you're hiding worth losing each other for? Honey, don't let your past destroy your future or his." With a few final words, Bobbi left Natasha to think on what they'd talked about, hoping that both of them would come to some sort of sense and stop whatever war they'd started with each other.

Natasha ordered a strong cup of coffee, ignoring the buzzing from her phone in her pocket. She knew exactly who was calling and exactly what he was going to say and Natasha wasn't in the mood to hear it.

Clint really wanted to end their partnership over this? She almost didn't believe it, but she knew that Clint could be just as stubborn as she could and though he didn't often let his temper get the better of him, this whole thing seemed cause enough for it to now. Natasha's lies had been the only thing keeping her alive for years, her whole career, her whole life, had been built on them and now her old habits were coming back to bite her. She'd lied to Clint before, and he knew it too, but not like this, not pathologically like she was now.

She could tell Clint the truth, but at what cost? Everything she'd been lying foundation for these past few months would be for nothing and destroying her lies felt too much like destroying herself too. It was an impossible decision, but one she'd have to make, and soon.

One cup, two cups, three cups, four cups of coffee later, Natasha was no closer to finding a solution than she was before, she was just more fidgety. But no matter how many scenarios she played out in her head, the end results were always the same: she could either lose him or lose everything she'd spent a lifetime building. She was running out of time.

She checked her phone, correction: she was out of time.

Clint's stomach twisted as he glanced at the clock, almost time. He kept going back and forth about this, did he really want to end things with Natasha? He thought of everything they'd been through, her pain and his, how far they'd come since she they'd met on that rooftop. It seemed like a lifetime ago. Then he thought of these past six months, of her absence and her blatant lies. If she didn't trust him now, would she ever?

"So what's this last minute meeting all about, Agent Barton? You rarely want anything to do with me." Fury was a little more than surprised when Hill had told him Clint wanted to talk, the two of them didn't exactly see eye to eye on just about everything.

"It's about Natasha." Clint kept his face and voice even and emotionless. Fury raised an eyebrow, he knew Romanoff would never let slip any information about their deal, even to her partner.

"What about Agent Romanoff?"

"I want to terminate our partnership and I don't want to deal with all the red tape." Clint's voice was hard and steady, but he felt like he was going to throw up.

"What happened to the dream team?" Fury's tone showed no genuine curiosity; he didn't need Clint to tell him what drove a wedge between the two of them, he'd done that himself.

"I'm not going to work with someone who lies to me at every convenience anymore."

"You were the one that brought her in the SHIELD, Barton. You knew exactly who you were bringing in and you convinced me to let her stay despite that."

"You don't need to remind me." Clint replied through his teeth, the reason he came to Fury instead of going to Coulson was to avoid this line of questioning.

"Maybe we should see what Agent Romanoff thinks of this." Fury jerked his head in the direction of the door and Clint turned to see Natasha leaning against the frame. She stepped through and the door slid shut behind her, Clint hadn't even heard her come in.

"What are you doing here, Nat?" Her face was as impassive as his.

"I got coffee with Bobbi this morning." She explained flatly.

"So she told you then."

"Yeah. And, for the record, I don't much appreciate it when people go making decisions about me behind my back."

"Like you have?"

"What I've been doing has nothing to do with you, Clint. But what you're doing has everything to do with me." She snapped, letting venom bleed into her voice.

"Barton, Romanoff." Fury broke into their argument forcefully. "So you know that Barton's here to get your partnership terminated."

"Yes, I know."

"And you came here because?" The director prompted.

"I came here to encourage the termination."