hey guys! sorry this was such a late chapter, but it's that time of the year and life is HECTIC!
i really hope you enjoy this chapter, let me know what you think! and thanks so much for your support! x
Clint looked up as the door opened, blinking in surprise when a man in a suit entered the room. He didn't know what he had been expecting, but seeing someone so well dressed somehow made his stomach coil with anxiety.
He didn't really know how long he had been unconscious for, or where exactly he was in the world. He had woken up in the room he was in now, with only a hard steel bed and a table and chairs for company. There were security cameras, and Clint had walked around enough times to know that there were exactly thirty-seven tiles on the roof, but so far there had been no other human contact.
Clint was worried about Natasha. The last thing he remembered was hearing her voice over the phone, panicked even though he could tell she was trying to hide it. He only assumed that he had been taken by S.H.I.E.L.D because she had warned him, and because it was all too clean and efficient to be anything like what he imagined crime rings to be like.
Clint was already sitting in one of the chairs. He wanted to be prepared, even though every instinct in his body warned him to run away. He didn't know if they would torture him and if they did, he didn't know how well he would cope. He had survived his father for years, though. That had to count for something.
The man sat across from Clint, placing a manila folder and a McDonald's bag on the table between them. The smell of the burger inside had Clint's stomach rumbling in seconds; he couldn't remember the last thing he had eaten, but it could have been days ago for all he knew.
"Hello, Mr Barton," the man said. He was older than Clint, and had the kind of face that Clint would spill his guts to without realising. "We've been looking for you for quite some time now."
Clint leant back in his chair, arms folded across his chest. "You coulda just knocked."
The man blinked calmly. Clint couldn't get a read on him. He wasn't sure how he should act; if he came across as too easy going they might not take him seriously, but he also didn't want to be too closed off in case they did decide to hurt him.
"We weren't sure where to find you," the man admitted.
"Oh," Clint said, confused. They had found him in a foreign country but not in his own home? "That's weird."
"Is it?" The man asked, and held out his hand. "I'm Phil Coulson."
Clint shook his hand warily. "You seem to know who I am."
"Yes, we do," Coulson said, opening the manila envelope. "Clint Barton, aged eighteen, from Waverly, Iowa. Both parents deceased and your brother is –"
"As good as dead," Clint said bitterly. "How do you know all this stuff?"
"Your school counsellor thought you were being abused but you stubbornly refuted every claim she made," Coulson continued. "You were being abused, if the broken ribs and hearing loss are anything to go by. Not typical childhood injuries, Clint."
"How do you know this?" Clint grit out. His anxiety quickly turned to anger, because whilst the things Coulson knew were pretty basic, he didn't like the idea that a complete stranger had so much information on him.
"Hospital records, school records," Coulson listed. "In the case of your parents, a write up in the local paper and death certificates."
Clint refolded his arms over his chest and looked away, clenching his jaw in frustration. He didn't like to think much about his past and especially didn't like to have it thrown back in his face. He wanted to peek at the paper in the folder but didn't want to give Coulson the satisfaction of knowing he was curious.
"What we don't know is how an average boy from Iowa got mixed up with a Russian assassin."
Clint paused, momentarily forgetting to draw a breath as his brain tumbled through a variety of scenarios that all ended the same way. It was suddenly clear why he was here, why he hadn't just been killed and dumped back in Kathmandu. S.H.I.E.L.D didn't really want him. They wanted Natasha.
"The two of you cropped up on our radar in Italy last year," Coulson continued. If he noticed Clint's sudden change in behaviour he ignored it. "We had been trying to infiltrate the weapons ring for six months. Imagine our surprise when two children swooped in and shut it down in less than a day."
Clint returned his gaze to Coulson but didn't say anything. He tried to stay calm, and figured if he just listened to what the man had to say then he could probably work out where to go from there. If Natasha were here, she would more than likely have Coulson spilling secrets in a heartbeat. He drew in a sharp breath to stop himself from spiralling.
Coulson pushed the McDonald's bag across the table towards him. "Have a burger."
A small part of Clint wondered if it would be poisoned, but a larger part was too hungry to care that much. Besides, if he did die then at least he hadn't said anything incriminating against Natasha. She would still have a chance without him.
Coulson raised an eyebrow as Clint hungrily ripped open the wrapper of the burger. He couldn't help the groan that escaped his mouth as he chewed, and had to remind himself to slow down and enjoy it. Maybe this would be the last thing they ever fed him and he would starve to death slowly over the next few weeks.
"To be fair, we didn't really know what was going on," Clint said around his mouth full. "Sometimes you just gotta start shooting."
"You didn't answer my question," Coulson said.
"You didn't ask one," Clint retaliated, then added boldly, "sir."
"Okay," Coulson conceded. He pushed a large, glossy photograph across the table to Clint. "How did you, an average American boy, get roped into killing alongside a Russian assassin?"
Clint surveyed the photo, rubbing his greasy hands down the front of his shirt. It was a picture from an airport; if he had to guess, he would say it was Smolensk, on the way back from their failed mission to destroy the Red Room in Belarus. His face was clear in the picture, legs slightly blurred as he walked, but when he looked at Natasha beside him he realised he couldn't see her face at all.
He squinted, trying to make out her features, but it was like someone had wiped her face clean and left just smudged fingerprints. Coulson pushed another photo over and that one was the same, Natasha's head angled just so that there were no discernible features, only her red and blonde hair braided down her back.
"Not just any Russian assassin," Clint said calmly, leaning away from the photos. He hadn't realised that Natasha had been hiding even in public, hadn't even thought once about whether he should cover his face or not. She had given him caps or glasses to wear sometimes but this was something else.
"No," Coulson agreed. "A Black Widow. The only successful Black Widow, if rumour is to be believed."
"Don't know if they would call that successful," Clint muttered. He reached into the bag and pulled out a handful of fries, making a mental note to remember to thank Coulson for not poisoning his food.
"There were twenty-eight students and only one survived. This picture is the single piece of evidence we have that she exists," Coulson explained. "That, and over fifty kills spanning the last six years."
Clint frowned. He didn't know exactly how much S.H.I.E.L.D knew, or how much they could find out, but he wasn't about to tell them that Yelena had survived, too. It felt a bit like betraying Natasha to bring up the younger girl, as much as he would love to get her back for running away on them.
"Wait," he said suddenly, sitting up straight in his chair. "The last six years? That can't be –"
"It could be more," Coulson admitted, shrugging. "Confirmed, yes, at least six years. She has been their most active operative."
Natasha would have been twelve. The realisation slammed into Clint like a truck, and before he could stop it he felt pressure building in his chest. He stood abruptly, letting the chair topple behind him. He could remember her at eleven, scared on his kitchen floor, panicking over the sound of a spoon. At twelve she had kissed him, had cried in the night and taught him to fight during the day, and according to the man sitting across from him, had been killing people.
"This shocks you," Coulson stated calmly. "Why?"
Clint ran a hand over his face, sinking his teeth into his bottom lip to try and regain control over his body. He needed to gain the upper hand. He couldn't let Coulson know how deeply connected they were, because it was clear that S.H.I.E.L.D knew nothing about Natasha. Ivan had probably wiped her school records the minute he took her back to Russia for good, if she had even had school records to begin with.
"You don't know her name," Clint finally managed to say. He sat on the bed, trying to make it seem like he had been meaning to go there anyway. His throat was dry and he almost felt like he wanted to throw up. "What do you know about her?"
Coulson grinned tightly. "Not as much as you inexplicably do. Would you like to tell me how you met?"
Clint didn't want to tell him anything, but he figured he could at least try and make something up. "She's a Black Widow, sir. It's not hard to get tangled in her web."
Coulson considered Clint for a moment. Clint didn't know what to make of the man. On the one hand he seemed harmless, just another pencil pusher in a suit trying to make things easier for himself. On the other hand, Clint could tell that he was a very dangerous man, and wouldn't hesitate to just end it all if he didn't get what he wanted.
"There's only one other photo we have managed to take of this woman," Coulson said eventually, and Clint was surprised to hear the term woman instead of girl. Even though Natasha was nearly eighteen, it almost seemed like Coulson thought she was much older than Clint.
Clint had to walk back to the table to see the photograph that Coulson laid out. It was a picture of him and Natasha in Germany, before the hit on the Vice Chancellor. Natasha's face was hidden by her hair and a scarf but Clint was smiling at her as he held the door to a café open. They had stopped for breakfast that morning, just enjoying Germany before it became another country tainted by a hit.
He looked happy. Too happy to be able to tell Coulson that he was being held against his will, or that he didn't care for her. It was written on his face, clear as day. He wanted to be there.
"Is this love, Mr Barton?" Coulson asked carefully.
He fought the urge to spit back Natasha's classic line about love being for children, feeling hypocritical for even thinking it when he had constantly argued against her. His love for her burned red hot through his chest and he tried to force the images of her smile and eyes and lips from his mind before he gave himself away.
"What can I say," Clint said softly. "I met her when I was in a tough spot, she charmed me, and here I am now. I have no idea where she is. She only kept me around to help her out, but it's not... It's not that."
The words hurt to say, but he forced himself to say them anyway. He blocked everything out, forgot all about his childhood and the last year and pretended it was true. He could convince this man that he had been used by Natasha if it was what kept them alive.
"She trained you?" Coulson confirmed, and Clint nodded, taking a seat opposite him again.
"Look, my parents had died and my brother had left, and when a pretty girl asked me for help it seemed a hell of a lot better than whatever I was already living with."
Coulson consulted another piece of paper in the manila folder while Clint ate his remaining fries. He felt tired; he had learnt something new about Natasha, and he wasn't even sure if it was something she would know herself. She had never once told him about any of that, and it hadn't come up when they had made the timelines.
"There's a big price on her head," Coulson said. "Quite a few people want the two of you dead, but her especially. The Red Room is hunting for her, too. What doesn't make sense to me is how the two of you can disappear so easily."
Clint hadn't really thought about it before, but he supposed that him and Natasha were pretty good at making themselves invisible. "I dunno what to say, sir. Guess the Widow is just that good."
Coulson sighed, though he didn't appear frustrated. "It's hard to remain 'that good' when the game changes, though."
"You think she's gonna come for me?" Clint asked incredulously. "I'm sorry, sir, but if your plan is to grab her when she rescues me, you might want to think of Option B. She's not coming. She doesn't care. Don't you see? I'm disposable. How many other idiots would fall for the exact same trick?"
"Do you really believe that?" Coulson said softly.
Clint did. He knew Natasha cared, and he knew that the part about her tricking him was all fake anyway, but he truly didn't believe she would come for him. It would be stupid and reckless, two things she was not, and he didn't even know if she would be able to find him. He could be in the middle of Antarctica for all he knew. Marching into an agency like this would be suicide.
"There's a lot I could tell you about her," Clint said carefully. "That should be the number one thing you know, though. She only looks out for herself."
Coulson closed the folder and folded his hands atop the table, leaning in a little closer to Clint. "I could tell you a lot about S.H.I.E.L.D, if you were interested. I think you have some kind of right to know who ordered the hit that landed you here."
Clint actually laughed. "It was you, right? Trying to split us up, for what? To make it easier?"
"As a matter of fact, yes," Coulson said simply. "The two of you together work better than most of the Strike Teams currently employed by S.H.I.E.L.D. Whilst some people in this agency are trying to kill you, there are others who believe you may make us stronger."
Clint blinked. "What do you mean?"
"The Black Widow may have killed five of our agents in the last month, but I believe there may be a chance at redemption here," Coulson explained. "I think you know what I'm implying."
Clint only knew that Natasha had killed two of the S.H.I.E.L.D agents, the ones who had shot him in New Mexico. Hearing Coulson say five made hope soar in his chest, because it most likely meant that Natasha had made it out of Milan in one piece and was currently on the run.
He didn't know where she would go. He didn't know what had happened to Chase, and he didn't want to think about poor Lucky alone in the kennel, because what if he never saw any of them again? If Coulson really was hinting at what Clint thought he was, then he would be stupid not to listen to the man.
This could be their way out. He didn't know about S.H.I.E.L.D, but he knew enough to realise that if they wanted him dead he would be already. The room wasn't that bad, anyway, and the burger had been a nice surprise. Coulson seemed like the kind of man Clint could trust, and he could list the number of men he trusted off on one hand.
"If you have a moment," Coulson said seriously, his face remaining stoic even as his eyes shone with humour. "I'd like to tell you about an employment opportunity."
Clint rolled his eyes around at the room, then tipped his chair back on two legs and grinned broadly. "I've got all the time in the world, sir."