Natasha quickly made her way to her desk, noticing that the paperwork for her last mission was already there. Haphazardly tossing the newest sheets of paper away from her until she found a memo dated two days ago. It read:

Agent Romanoff, your partnership, code name Strike Team Delta, has been terminated. Report to Phil Coulson for your reassignment.

"COULSON!" Natasha roared as she burst through the doors to a training room where she'd knew she'd find him. He was addressing new recruits today, all of whom jumped when Natasha entered. She marched right up to him until she was right up in his face. "A word." It wasn't request.

"Agent Romanoff, we will speak of you reassignment when I'm finished with the new recruits." His attempt at dismissing Natasha wasn't going to work, he knew that too, but he at least had to try.

"Now. Or we can have this discussion right here." Phil had been against this reassignment from the jump, knowing it would be poorly received on both ends. He especially hated that Fury had decided that the time to do it was while they were mid-mission. He'd spoken against the whole thing, but once Fury had made up his mind, there was no changing it.

Now he was left to deal with an angry Black Widow and, sooner or later, and angry Hawkeye too.

"My office." He told her, keeping his voice low. He then turned to address the recruits. "We will meet back here in one hour." Then he followed Natasha out the door. When the reached the office and the door had been shut, she turned on him again, shoving a crumpled piece of paper at him.

"What the hell is this?" Phil resisted the urge to reply with some sarcastic remark, knowing that it would only make matters worse.

"Listen, Natasha, we felt that it would be better for everybody involved if you both got new partners." He attempted to sound convincing, but suspected it didn't quite come off the way he wanted it to.

"For who? Us or you? We are the best team SHIELD has running right now, and you know it Coulson. Why break us up?" Phil did know they were the best, their track record spoke for itself. They were better than any other team he'd handled in his entire career at SHIELD by far.

"Better for the agents who will be now training under SHIELD's two best agents." Their new partners had already been selected, hand-picked by Fury himself. They were the top male and female recruits of the latest batch to complete their training. Once again, Coulson thought it was a terrible idea.

"You've got to be fucking kidding me? So I go from top field agent to glorified babysitter?" Natasha looked like she was about to rip Phil's head off, but he retained his calm, cool, demeanor as always.

"I'm sorry, Natasha, but the decision is final. You will both get your new partners as soon as Clint is out of medical." He opened to door, a gesture for her to leave. To his surprise, she did. Now all he had left to deal with was Clint, and that wouldn't be fun either.

As Natasha stalked back to her desk to angrily do her paperwork, Coulson returned to his recruits hating this entire arrangement, and Clint remained positively miserable in medical.

Clint hated hospitals, hated them. Everything was too white and too clean and it always smelled like antiseptic. They always had him hooked up to wires and tubes and a hundred different people asked him the same question over and over and over. Hospitals made him feel caged.

Though since Natasha learned of his distaste for the medical division of SHIELD, she'd always managed to spring him early. He didn't really know how she managed it, but he didn't bother to ask, hey, you don't look a gift horse in the mouth. However, this time he was left to languish in medical for over a week without so much as a glimpse of his partner. That made him even more uneasy. When they finally released him, he was ready to crawl out of his own skin.

Clint immediately went on the hunt to find Natasha, a little angry she never came to see him. He eventually found in training room 1. She was running, keeping a good pace too. That was never a good sign. Natasha only ran when she had a problem on her mind or she was stressed out, neither of which he wanted to deal with at the moment.

"You have some explaining to do." He pretend-scolded her, glancing at the numbers on the treadmill. Solid 6 minute mile, and she'd been on for over an hour and a half. There was something seriously bothering her.

"About?" Even though she was clearly working hard, sweat coating her whole body, she didn't seem out of breath at all. Maybe her super healing powers came with super endurance too, he wouldn't be at all surprised at this point.

"You know what, Nat." She simply rolled her eyes.

"You're so freaking needy, Barton." She kept her eyes locked straight ahead, refusing to look at him.

"I thought we really had a moment there in France. A real breakthrough, now I'm back to getting the cold shoulder. You really are the freaking ice queen." Natasha couldn't quite tell if he was kidding or not, so she just ignored it.

"I'm guessing you didn't get the memo."

"You know I never read those Natasha." She knew, knew all too well actually. Of course she was going to be the one to have to tell him.

"I tried to visit you, I really did. But, SHIELD rules clearly state that you can only receive visits from spouses and partners while in a SHIELD medical facility." It didn't take long for Clint to put two and two together, and a moment later he yanked the cord of the safety stop causing the machine to wind down. He was even angrier when Natasha didn't look the least bit surprised.

"No." Clint didn't want to believe it, Natasha was just messing with him or something, he told himself.

"Yes." She didn't even attempt to hide the bitterness in her voice.

"They can't."

"They already did, Clint." Clint? Natasha had never called him by his first name before, and it through him for a loop. Though he resolved to puzzle out what Natasha meant by pulling out the first name until later. Right now, he was faced with an even bigger dilemma.

"I'm going to find Coulson." Clint's face hardened, his mouth pressed into a hard line, hands turning into fists at his side. He turned to leave but was quickly stopped by a firm and insistent hand of his shoulder.

"I already tried." She told him as gently as she could. "It's done."

"You're going to just give up that easily?" He practically shouted at her, drawing the attention of the entire room to them.

"Could you lower your fucking voice, Barton." She snapped. "And there's nothing more I can do. I tried, I did, but I can't change Fury's mind and your deluding yourself if you think you can." Clint was angry with her, angry at Coulson and Fury too, but he knew she was right.

"Good, you told him." Coulson's timing couldn't have been worse. "Follow me." They both followed, reluctantly, as Coulson lead them to one of the briefing rooms. When they were seated, their handler, well, there old handler, produced two files, tossing one to each of them.

"Natasha, you're new partner is Agent George Konrad. Clint, Agent Lily Moore. They are the two top scoring new agent, both having been cleared for active field duty last week. Konrad is a hand-to-hand combat and close-range weaponry specialist. Moore is chiefly in tech, but she's not ad with a rifle either. You will meet them today. Natasha, you're in training room 1, Clint you're in 2. We all expect your cooperation with your reassignment." The last part of his speech felt more like a threat than anything, but neither of the two agents were bothered. "You two better get going." He insisted as they both tried very very hard not to look at him or each other. However, at his word they both got up, still avoiding the other's gaze as they walked out.

They both knew from the jump that this wasn't going to work. Both had been paired with someone who was too similar to them. There wasn't a point in having Natasha paired with another street fighter, and what was Clint supposed to do with a techie? However, both resolved to just get through the day.

Natasha had gotten to training room one and was wrapping her hands, figuring they'd spar first so she could get a handle on his abilities, when things started to go south.

"Romanoff, really? Lucky boy." She heard one agent say, she thought his name was Max. Turns out he was talking to her new partner, Agent Konrad.

"Not so much." Konrad sounded disappointed, and that made Natasha curious.

"You know what I wouldn't give to have her as a partner, have you seen her in her tactical? Damn." Now Natasha was pissed, but she kept listening.

"She'd not even that good on her own." Okay, now she was really pissed. "She'd be nothing without Hawkeye. I bet the only reason she's still here is because he liked having her around when missions got dull. He practically owns her, what am I supposed to do with her." Konrad was about to say something else when he felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned to find himself staring into the face of a righteously pissed Black Widow and his eyes widened in fear. His friend took a step back.

"Not that good, huh?" She asked, but before he could respond she had wrapped her left hand around his throat and squeezed, hard. His hand came up to grab at her wrist but Natasha quickly got that caught in her iron grip as well, smiling when she heard a faint snap. Now that her right hand was free she delivered a hard punch to his face, then another, then another. Blood was running down his face and her hands by the time she released him, watching him with fall with a satisfied smirk. She knelt down in front of him and yanked his face back up to meet hers by his collar.

"I am my own woman, Agent Konrad. First, last, and always. And you would do well to remember it." Natasha's voice was low and cold, and her threat rang around the now silent training room. She shoved Konrad back to the floor as she stood up, not bothering to look back as she walked out. She vaguely registered someone saying "get him to medical" before the doors shut behind her. Since she'd already finished her paperwork for their last mission, Natasha decided to head home, stopping at a bathroom along the way to wash Konrad's blood off her hands.

Clint wasn't really doing any better. Though his partner managed to stay injury free the whole time. They were going over weapon assembly at the end of training, and she was clearly struggling. Though the entire time he kept thinking that he wouldn't be having this problem with Natasha. Clint was already on edge about this new partner thing and now Agent Moore kept screwing up a basic skill and he'd snapped at her. The new girl, even smaller than Natasha, started crying. He felt bad about it as soon as it happened, but made no move to stop her when she left. He simply sighed and decided to head home for the night. Though halfway back to his apartment he'd had a change of mind, and soon found himself on Natasha's doorstep.

"What are you doing here?" Natasha asked suspiciously when she opened the door, Clint was the last person she's ever expect to be here after today. It was more likely to be Coulson or Fury to yell at her, but here he was anyways. Clint simply held up a bottle of Natasha's favorite russian vodka in response and she opened to door further for him to enter.

They both took a seat on the stools that were at the island in her kitchen and Clint cracked the bottle open, handing it to Natasha.

"So, how was your day?" He asked, Natasha didn't answer, only took a long drink straight out of the bottle.

"That bad, huh?" He chuckled.

"Yep." She handed to bottle to him. "How about you?" He rolled his eyes and took the bottle, following her lead by taking a swig off the top.

"Coulson's gonna be so mad." She said with a small smile, taking the bottle back.

"Yeah, I made her cry." Natasha shook her head amusedly.

"I sent mine to medical." Clint narrowed his eyes at her. "What? He was being a dick." She said it as if it were and appropriate reason to violently assault somebody. Clint chuckled, and that soon turned into a full blown laugh.

"Only you, Nat." He managed to wheeze out as he doubled over. At first Natasha was angry with his response, though soon she joined in too and both of them devolved into a laughing mess. When their laughter eventually subsided, Clint realized that he'd never actually heard Natasha laughed before. Like an actual, genuine laugh. He decided that he liked the sound of it though.

"I guess I better watch myself considering you view being a dick as a crime punishable by deadly force." He said, taking another drink.

"I think we both know that if that were true you'd never leave medical." She shot back, and easy smile on her face.

"What'd he say?" Clint's curiosity got the better of him now.

"Nothing, really." She dismissed, hoping to change to topic. Well, that wasn't going to happen. Natasha had been the center of the rumor mill for months after she came here, him too. But, it never seemed to bother her. Until now, that is.

"What's changed, Tash?" He passed the bottle back to her and she took a drink.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, people saying shit about you never bothered you before. Why now? What's changed?" Natasha sighed.

"I don't know. It was just different, what he said." She didn't know quite how to explain to him what happened, she didn't really know why it happened herself.

"Tell me what he said." Clint tended to be a little overprotective of her at times, especially when it came to other agents talking about her, this was no exception. Natasha sighed and took another drink.

"He said I wasn't that good. That I was nothing without you. They all think I belong to you, like I'm a piece of fucking property." She was angry, her voice rising with every word. "I'm not a goddamn chair and I don't belong to you. I don't belong to anybody." She was on her feet now arms crossed, and shouting too and she hadn't even realized it. Clint had gotten to his feet when she did, but she hadn't noticed that either.

"You don't belong to me." He assured her, softly. "I don't see you as my property Tasha, you're my partner and my friend." He walked over to her and placed both hands gently on her upper arms. "You know that, right?"