Blackmail - 13

Author Notes / AHHH. So I posted the wrong chapter last night...oops...but this is the chapter that meant to go out. Anyways, short chapter but as you all know the next one is pretty boom! I have to go so I will edit this later.

~ Last time ~

"Actually I'm pretty tired, I'm going to go to bed. See you later"

"Oh Uhm yeah, see you later" Pepper stopped her hunt for a show to look at the younger woman, worry evident on her face, "You alright,"

"Hmm? Yep, just dandy" and she vanished into the elevator.

Pepper threw a questioning look over to Maria, who just shrugged as if she didn't know what it wasn't about.

"I am not afraid to die; I am only afraid of saying goodbye to you forever." ― Shannon L. Alder

Natasha didn't head straight to bed like she said she would, she headed into Bruce's private lab.

She could feel her breath coming in short bursts and her mind started to dissociate from her body.

Her mind was racing at a hundred miles an hour —

They knew

This is the end

The end of her life with the Avengers.

— Whereas her body was running. Running like she had on thousands of missions. With desperateness.

Eventually, she made it into Bruce's lab, already flustered, barely managing to get enough air.

"Nat, I need to talk to you-" The scientist started before he noticed Natasha's agitated figure, "What's wrong? Did he call again? Nata-"

"They know, Bruce."

"Wha-. Who?"

"Bruce. They know"

The realisation hit Bruce like a ton of bricks.

"What are you going to do,"

"I don't have a choice, Bruce,"

"What? You're going to let them think you're a traitor. NO"

"I have to-"

"They're going to kick you out of SHIELD. SHIELD is your safety net," Bruce sat down on the bench and placed his head in his hands. "This can go so very wrong so very easily,"

"I know,"

"This isn't just an innocent little thing anymore,"

"It was never innocent," she whispered, reminding him of the injuries he had to treat almost a month ago.

"Natasha, you can't do this,"

"I have to,"

"Tasha, please tell them the truth."

"They'll kill him," she said as her voice broke at the last word, "I can't - can not lose him"

"What and you think he can lose you,"

"He's a good person,"

"So are you"

"Bruce," she gave him a small sad smile.

"You have to at least give him a choice"

"I know what he will choose, he won't want me to be in harm's way. He's an idiot."

"You think he's an idiot because he cares,"

She just rolled her eyes at him and sat opposite the scientist.

"Then I'm an idiot too. The rest of the Avengers are idiots. Even Tony." The scientist said

"I already knew that" she joked but it did little to lift the mood.

Bruce shook his head in disbelief. This situation was giving him a headache, so he couldn't even guess how much stress Natasha was under at the moment, let alone him.

"Bruce, I want you to promise me something,"

"Anything,"

"If I… If I die… I want you to tell Clint, Fury and whoever else I've hurt. I want, no need, you to tell them why. Why I did all of this, and make sure Clint doesn't blame himself,"

"Nat…" he sighed.

"No Bruce I need them to know, Clint and Coulson especially that I didn't betray everything they taught me"

"Coulson?"

"What? Oh…yeah," she said shyly, not meaning to give away such a big secret.

"He's…alive?"

"It's a really long story, I don't really want to get into it right now. Clint and I found out six months after New York,"

"Right… Well, I will definitely need to revisit that later but for now we need to focus on SHIELD,"

"Yeah,"

"So… How the fuck does someone convince SHIELD that they aren't a traitor?"

"Have either of you got any information out of her yet," Fury asked his two agents, who were sitting infant of him?

"I tried to ply but she closed up the second I asked about her wellbeing,"

"Clint?"

"I didn't manage to get any alone time with her so I couldn't really talk to her,"

"You couldn't or you wouldn't?" He gave Clint a questioning stare but returned to his papers a moment later. "I'm giving you two a mission. Just milk run, but I thought it would help us get some bloody information. I mean, we have nothing. Just a location and associates. Nothing. You're dismissed"

Clint nodded to his boss numbly and flipped open the manila folder.

Fury was right - the mission was just a milk run. The completion of the mission wasn't the problem, the problem was that Clint didn't believe he could still have the chemistry with Natasha that made them the most successful two-person strike team in SHIELD history.

He didn't know if he was going to able to bottle up everything for the duration of this mission.

When he arrived at Natasha floor to alert her on the upcoming mission, he found himself unable to enter. Not because she had set up a protocol with Jarvis to not let anyone in, but he just couldn't bear even looking at her right now.

He couldn't even wrap his head around it.

Years spent, helping and nurturing her - were just hoax.

He had trusted her, God, he trusted her more than anything in the world.

Obviously, that meant nothing to her.

He pushed aside his anxieties and entered her room.

The archer couldn't help but look around at her apartment. He had spent time there before but they mostly spent their time on his level.

That's another thing he would have to get used to - sleeping in an empty bed.

Dealing with his nightmares by himself.

He found her by the windowsill, sitting in an armchair, curled up in a mountain of blankets.

"What are you doing in here," She asked calmly. It was direct, but with a tinge of hope.

"Got a mission. Get ready. I'll meet you in the lobby," that's all he blurted out before he ran out of the room.

It was all just too much.

She looked so 'normal', just like the Natasha he had grown to love.

But at the same time, she looked so different.

Her eyes looked to be hiding a lifetime of lies.

Her smile was curved in a false smiling way

And the bags under her eyes were evidence enough.

He might have only seen the things he wanted to because he didn't notice the wateriness of her eyes or skinniness of her frame.

But he didn't, he left.

The flight over to their assignment point was eerily quiet. It wasn't awkward because Clint was flying and Natasha was as far away from the cockpit as the quinjet allowed.

The real problems started happening when the hit ground.

It started out smoothly.

They got in, retrieved the information, and thankfully they didn't have to work as closely as some missions. Clint was entering one way and she entered the opposite way. So they only had to work 'together' when they were leaving the building.

As they left the building, the sounds of heavy boots alerted them to the approaching soldiers.

They were good soldiers, she would give them that, but not that good seeing as two agents - who were acting like strangers - were able to take them down.

Taking the precaution, she decided they should separate, to confuse the rest of the guards.

"Clint, go left" she ordered.

"Negative,"

"What?! Clint go left."

"No. The right is better"

"Left, Barton. Trust me"

"Trust you. You want me to trust you"

"What?!" She hissed, as she fired a widow bite towards the guard.

"Trust you." He scoffed, "That's the thing Romanoff, isn't it. I'm trying, I really am, but you just keep lying."

The last of the soldiers went down, and the red-haired assassin turned towards the archer.

"I know when you go to 'SHIELD' your not actually there. You know why because I asked Fury. At first, it was fine you were missing for maybe an hour or so, but a week? Didn't you really think we wouldn't notice?"

She flinched surreptitiously and sighed in resignation. They were doing this now.

"I was worried about you, so I followed you, to that warehouse, and I found a dingy looking guy giving you an envelope. A FUCKING ENVELOPE NAT.

Christ, he had seen that? There was no way out of this, no opening to the tunnel.

"Why do we have to do this now"

"BECAUSE YOU'RE NEVER HOME," he yelled, "You're always out doing god knows what, but I know its nothing good."

"Clint you have to, believe me, it's not bad"

"You were in fucking Russia Nat-"

"Wha-"

"-With KGB associates"

"Clint-"

"What were you doing"

"Clint I…" there were tears forming in her eyes now as her voice quivered. She tossed her hands into the air, at a loss for words. It was an endless tunnel with no secret exits, no ways to worm her way out of it.

"Wow…just wow Nat"

"Clint"

"No we're done. Done"

"What?!"

"We aren't partners anymore. And whatever we were, I don't know if it was just a game for you, but I loved you. I ignored your faults and your past and I LOVED YOU. Were done."

And he stormed away.

Leaving Natasha, standing in the middle of the facility surrounded by unconscious guards, quietly sobbing.

By the time she made it back to the quinjet, Clint was in the cockpit, blaring his music so loudly that he didn't notice Natasha enter.

She crept into the small bathroom and shut the door behind her, alerting him to her presence. He must of noticed because she soon felt the tug of the plane ascending into the air.

She tried as hard as she could to hide the evidence of her breakdown. From what she could tell, the team didn't know, she would like to keep it the way.

But it was hard, seeing as the tears kept coming.

Clint had never yelled at her like that. Sure, they had fought, but never like that. Never had she heard his voice with so much venom. So much anger. Sure he had heard him yelling, but it was never directed to just herself. It was about a botched mission or annoying junior agents. Never her.

The rest of the flight passed in a blur. She only moved when she felt the familiar bump of the plane hitting the ground.

Clint didn't wait for her on the tarmac but walked straight into the SHIELD base.

She could tell where he was going by the route he took, he was going to talk to Fury, and then no doubt Fury would want to talk to her.

She swore in resignation and walked to the garage she kept her spare car in.

She made the same trip home that she had taken all those weeks ago, back when her biggest decision had been whether she wanted Chinese, Indian or Thai food.

Everything had changed.

Back at SHEILD, Clint had made his way to Fury's office. He didn't even try to hide where he was going from Natasha.

When he got there, Maria was already in his office. Her face showing signs of the stress to come.

He slid his Agent Barton mask on and waiting for what was going to be an anger fuelled debrief.

"What. The. Fuck" Fury started, bashing his fist against his desk. He had obviously tapped into the comm units and had heard Clint's outburst. Heard Clint blow the entire cover. "I gave you both one rule - don't let her know that we know. And what did you do? You lost your cool and fucking told her."

Clint looked down into his lap in shame.

"We are playing right into her hands. You are my best agents you should not be letting your emotions interfere with your mission"

"Sorry sir, but its kind of hard to do that after we've found out that she has been playing us the whole time," Clint said, kicking a tuff of carpet with his foot.

"Do you think I don't know that? I trusted her too. I defended her at countless council meetings and now I have to tell them that she's working for the FUCKING KGB. Do you think your the only one who's not coping Barton? The only one who risked things for her."

"In all due respect Sir, you didn't love her," Silence. Neither Fury nor Maria knew how to respond with that. They both had their suspicions about the romance between the two agents, but they never had heard one of them confess something so raw.

The air was stagnant and no-one spoke. Just spent the time to reflect. On what they had lost; A friend, A trusted colleague, a lover.

"I don't understand why she would go back there - she hated it there" Maria reasoned, still holding onto some unrealistic hope.

"She could have been lying"

"Clint's right, We have to assume that everything she has ever told us is a lie."