A/N: Well, hello strangers! How's your year been? I'm not even kidding. Year. I'm so sorry.

On the bright side, I've just realised that we have two more chapters left after this one. It took me a year, but I got there. Thank you to everyone who's supported me this far, even if you've forgotten about this story completely. I don't blame you.

If anybody's out there, I'd love a review or two to let me know that you're still reading...

Clint POV

"Your grand master plan is to stick me in a building and use me as bait?" Natasha arched an eyebrow.

"Frankly, Agent - if I should even be calling you that - you brought this upon yourself. After killing thirteen of our agents and seriously injuring three others, one of whom is your partner, you're lucky the council hasn't ordered your execution. Use this opportunity to prove yourself, because it's the only thing keeping you alive."

"Make that fourteen dead," Clint said quietly, putting his phone back in his pocket. "Alexson died this morning."

Fury closed his eyes and let out a long breath. "You understand, Ms. Romanoff, how bad this looks. Stark, despite his extensive research, is unable to provide enough evidence of your alleged brainwashing. Your recent catatonic state has, of course, helped matters considerably, but apart from the operation performed on your brain and the multiple reports of apparent split personality, a jury hardly has enough to reach a proper decision. Do you follow?"

She nodded once, eyes never leaving his.

"You will call the Red Room, claim that you were imprisoned within SHIELD but escaped."

"They'll know she's lying," Clint said, frowning.

"That's the point, Barton," Natasha said. "They'll know but they'll come to subdue me anyway, just with more people. They just won't realise that we'll have an army waiting for them."

"How do we know - "

"Because we have the entire place rigged to blow," Fury interrupted.

"I go in, they go in, you go in, we get out, they don't."

"Who's 'we'?"

"You, Steve and a task force thirty strong."

"They'll send that many?"

"They'll send four. If I'm right, those are the only four we need to kill."

"Four?"

"We'll cripple the entire organisation."

"And if you're wrong?"

"I die, Fury loses his job, and the Red Room destroy SHIELD and continue making people like me." She looked him square in the face and he could see every single bruise he'd given her yesterday.

"You're just going to throw your life away. On a whim. Don't think this means I'm going to forgive you."

"Not a whim, Clint."

What the hell was she doing? She was going to die out there. There was no way she could survive this.

"I don't think the world's ready for you to die just yet, Tasha. You've still got to save it a few more times."

"Oh, I think the world's more than ready for me to die, Clint. People have been trying to kill me since I was ten years old."

He thought back to last year, when he had woken to the sound of a gunshot. Running into his partner's bedroom, he had found her knelt over the body of a dead man holding a knife, searching his pockets for some form of identification. Assassin, she said calmly. I don't even know how he managed to get in. When he'd asked how she'd woken up, she said, He was breathing.

Breathing.

It was, in fact, rather alarming her ability to stay alive. She was so ... tough. Never gave up, never caved in ...

"When do we leave?" he asked.

Natasha POV

She stayed quiet for the entire plane journey.

There's nothing to say, she told herself, but even one of the greatest liars in the world couldn't lie to herself.

When they were a mile away from the warehouse, they landed. She changed out of her everyday clothes into SHIELD prison uniform, removed her shoes and then strapped four guns to various undetectable parts of her clothing. "You ready?" Steve asked, handing her a bugged phone.

"Yep." She flashed him a grin (one he didn't return) and then took off running.

It was a steep incline, and she realised that her fitness had dropped drastically in the past few weeks. She calculated that at this rate she would get there in about eight and a half minutes, which was longer than she had told the team she'd be. As soon as she started picking up the pace, however, she found herself struggling to breathe and had to slow to a gentle jog - the sort of pace she did in training while warming up for a ten mile run.

Screw you, Natasha, she thought furiously, frustrated and humiliated at her own failure to run even 1600 metres. Screw you.

When she finally reached the rendezvous point, she could barely breathe and was so angry that she wasn't particularly trying. How the hell could she have lost so much fitness? How did that even happen?

Exhausted, she stumbled into the deserted building. The team before her had done a good job with the bombs; scanning the space, she couldn't see a single sign of them. If she stood in the centre of the room, they wouldn't be close enough to check any walls or crates.

The main problem was getting out. If she was too close to the Red Room operatives when the team burst in, she'd either be shot outright or used as a hostage to prevent a firefight. Presumably, she'd have to lead them out of the warehouse, pressing the signal button concealed in her sleeve as soon as she was in the doorway, so that she got out but the task force forced the Red Room leaders back in. A signal would sound, SHIELD would retreat, the bomb would go off, and the Red Room's two leaders and their successors would be blown into oblivion. Hopefully, after that, the organisation would start to drift apart. There would be Black Widows like Natasha who would run from the KGB given the chance, young girls who would probably follow them in search of a home. Of course, the KGB would fight to keep it running, but with so many Widows gone, and the people in charge, eventually it would have to be shut down.

There were too many flaws in the plan to count, but despite everything she'd been saying, Natasha did not plan on dying today.

Clint POV

"Otets?"

"Natalia?"

"That's our cue!" Steve shouted. "Move!"

There was a flurry of motion and the entire force started running up the hill. Clint and Steve hung back, listening to the conversation, though neither of them spoke Russian.

"You think she'll make it?" Steve asked him quietly.

"She's a tough cookie."

"That's not what I asked."

Clint spun round to look at him. "You really want to know?"

Steve was silent.

"No. No, I don't think she will make it. I think she's going to die and it'll be our fault and she won't get a proper funeral because she doesn't really exist and everyone hates her anyway because she was brainwashed by some organisation that is hell bent on - I don't even know what they're hell bent on doing - and we've been partners for years but of course she's going to die now, when I can't forgive her and she - she - "

He noted with some horror that he was about to start crying. Steve was staring at him like he'd just shouted it in another language.

"Shit," Clint said. "Did I just say that in French?"

"No, I got it."

Unable to think of anything to say, Clint turned and started running after the task force.