Conversation 3: Speculation

Clint Barton, Natasha Romanov

Clint was sitting cross-legged in front of the couch with a wireless controller in his hands. His tongue was sticking out of the corner of his mouth as he twisted and turned a bit while playing his game; sitting like this made him look much younger than his forty-seven years. Not that he needed the practice but his excuse was always that video games helped with his hand-eye coordination, so he played them for fun and training. Never mind that the excuse was always followed with a cheeky grin. The truth was his mind was always racing this way and that but he found having something like a game to focus on for a bit gave him some rest. It was far more restful than trying to sleep at night. The problem with the games allowing his mind to relax was that sometimes he let his guard down, especially in the tower with the other Avengers around him. It was for that reason that he startled and almost dropped the controller when Natasha dropped down on to the couch behind him.

"Goddamnit, Natasha!" He watched as his character went careening off of a cliff before dying since no amount of smashing buttons helped. He couldn't even catch the cliff as he fell. "Seriously don't sneak up on me like that!"

There was vague amusement in the woman's eyes as she reclined on the couch behind him with a mug of either coffee or cocoa held in both hands. "I wasn't sneaking; I even called your name twice." One brow arched a moment before it settled and she watched him set the game back up. "Maybe," she drew the word out, "you should pay better attention when assassins might be lurking about."

"Ex-assassins." He grunted, guiding his character back from its spawn point toward his corpse somewhere in the desert. "We're all ex-assassins since, y'know, no more Shield. S'an important distinction, Nat."

Her head shook sending red hair bouncing about her face a moment. "No such thing; you never stop being what you are." Her mug pressed to her lips as she watched the screen, seeing Clint's character make an impressive set of jumps before sliding down a cliff face. "What's the point of this game again?"

"Well, maybe not ex-. I bet we could talk Stark or Steve in to letting us do a few missions…okay, maybe not assassin stuff, not sure they'd like that, but recon." His voice was hopeful. Clint was growing bored as evidenced by the amount of time he'd spent playing video games lately. "Survival…you're supposed to survive." He died again by releasing too early from the cliff face and tumbling. "Damn."

"Corporate espionage isn't really my cup of tea. And if Steve had anything, we'd already be on it."

He wrinkled his nose, glancing back and up at her before turning back to the screen and starting to guide his character back to his corpse. They had done corporate espionage a few times over the years but mostly it had been more tactical military work. There had been times when there were governments using corporations to shield their activities and those had been taken down, but it wasn't quite the corporate espionage that Natasha was thinking about. Clint remained silent for a moment while he tried to find his corpse, then shrugged lightly.

"I heard Cap and Stark talking…" The glare he could see reflected in the television derailed his train of thought for a few moments. "What? It's not like I crawl through the air ducts of this place and sneak around in order to spy on people. Stark probably has all kinds of defenses lurking in them and half of them because he actually thinks I do that. No, I was headed for the bar to get a drink; his bar has better alcohol than the one down here." It wasn't true, they both knew it wasn't true, but whatever cleared his conscience. "Anyway, I heard Cap and Stark talking and Stark said something about making a super-secret spy agency and I thought, hey, why not?"

There was a deep breath taken followed by a long sigh. Whether it was in reaction to his eavesdropping or the term super-secret spy agency, Clint wasn't sure. Natasha shook her head, the mug pressed to her lips in an effort to silence whatever thought was trying to come out. No, she needed to re-think whatever it was before her eyes rolled or she let something else out. Super-secret spy agency; that was the second dumbest thing she'd heard today. The first had been Steve giving Bucky a pep talk before sending him down to talk to Tony. The whole thing had sounded like a pep rally she'd seen in a movie about high school; ra, ra, go get'em Buck, Tony's not so bad, you can be friends just like us! Her eyes did roll at that. She missed the days when Steve thought, or knew, that Tony was trying to kill Bucky. This whole one-eighty was making her head spin in unpleasant ways.

"And where are we going to get the funds for that, Clint? My bank account isn't bad but it looks a little thin for what you're suggesting."

The archer shrugged as he continued playing his game, head tilting lightly and tongue back at the corner of his mouth while he moved. "We could ask Stark to help. It was his idea."

Natasha actually face palmed at that; no, scratch that, she pressed her mug to her lips in an effort to stop the face palm from happening because damned if she would do it in front of Clint. He might know some of her darkest secrets and be her best friend, but she was not face palming in front of him. The man couldn't seriously believe that they would ask Tony for the money to start a spy organization or to keep bank rolling it, for that matter. As public a figure as he was, it just wasn't feasible. Sure, he had a team of lawyers that could hide a vast number of infractions, but Pepper would never allow Stark Industries to get caught up in that.

"You're joking, right? Tony already has FRIDAY spying on any system that he can get her in to, you know that, right?" Sure, that left a lot of systems out and countries that didn't have advanced systems, of which there were plenty, but it still covered a lot of ground. "And there's no way he's going to bankroll another SHIELD. Just, face it, Barton, we're Avengers and that's our job now. Sometimes we get cool gadgets and sometimes we get to be spies. It's enough."

Clint snorted at the idea that it was enough. This was all a bit too surreal to Natasha; her cool, calculating friend was seriously suggesting this. No, it had to be a joke or a trap. That's what this was, it was a test; he was testing her to see if she would go for it, where her loyalty lay. Except, well, that didn't sit right with what she knew about Barton; a mental assessment popped through her head and she ticked off the checkboxes of what she knew about the man. Maybe Loki really had knocked something loose a few years ago, that was something to explore. She knew Barton had nightmares about it, even now, though they'd mostly faded with one only occasionally popping up.

"It was just an idea, Nat, that's all I'm saying. I mean, the Avengers are cool and all, but after what happened…" He trailed off, not sure that they should continue on this subject. After all, the 'Civil War' had seen them both on opposite sides. In truth, Clint sometimes wasn't certain where they were after that. "It would just be good to have our own side, maybe."

Her head shook lightly in denial. "That's not having our own side, especially not if we're asking Tony to bankroll it. That's the opposite of having our own side; that's us siding with Tony. Which, what are we siding with Tony about again?"

"Nothing." The answer quick and sharp, Clint glancing back at her which, thankfully, didn't get him killed this time. "We're not siding with him about anything. I just meant..." He trailed off, not completing the thought.

There were still problems. It didn't manifest very often but every once in a while something, a fight or hard feelings, would cause it to bubble to the surface. She hated when that happened because it caused a tension in the tower that was uncomfortable. Her skin always felt like it was crawling and Natasha just knew that certain members of the team were waiting to break in to two sides again. They had worked so hard to get through this; not past it, there was no getting past it. There were feelings indelibly etched in certain members of the team that would never really go away. They could forgive, yes, but all of them were smart enough not to forget. Well, almost all of them; she winced as Steve's face popped up in her mind.

It wasn't that he wasn't smart enough not to forget but he wanted to. He wanted so badly for all of the unpleasantness to be put behind them. Steve recognized that it had been necessary, perhaps less necessary than he'd admit to, but he wanted to call it done now. He knew, from experience, that there was no going back but if they could just move forward. After every fight where the events of last year got brought up, Steve looked more and more worn down. Natasha had tried to talk to him about it, to explain that some things simply could not be fixed, but she wasn't sure he was listening. The important part was that he didn't push and insist. He tried to work more subtly than that.

"Then that settles the question; we don't have money to do it, so we are content being Avengers, making this work." She pressed her mug to her lips only to find out that it was actually empty. "And before you get it in your head, no I will not topple any oligarchs or steal blood money for this." Her gaze pinned him to the spot, or it would have if he'd been looking at her. "Besides, Tony was probably joking."

Clint grumbled at his character dying again. "He was. Still…I miss our SHIELD days, even if I don't remember Budapest the same way you do." He actually stuck his tongue out at her, like a child.

Natasha pushed up off of the couch and headed toward the bar that dominated one section of the common room. "Did you want a drink?" She glanced back long enough to see Clint hold up a bottle of water, before moving around the bar to make another cup of hot chocolate. "We'll have enough excitement soon enough. The world will need our help eventually; they always do."

"Yeah. There seem to be more and more people trying to make a name around. I keep waiting for the next Loki or Doom. It's coming." He frowned at that, leaning back against the couch and letting the controller just rest on one knee.

There would always be another Loki or another Doom, it was just a matter of when they appeared. She added a dollop of whipped cream from the mini fridge to her drink, and then headed back to the couch. To be honest, she was more worried about the interpersonal dynamics in the tower, than the villains that might eventually crop up outside of it.

"I just don't like not having eyes out there, Nat." Clint frowned, reaching up to squeeze her ankle after she'd sat back on the couch, then turning back to his game. "I don't like not knowing."

"Maybe," That word drawn out again, her head tilted downward as she looked in to her mug, "You should consider playing nice with Tony. I bet he's running a few programs looking out for events, things like that to happen. I'd bet my life savings he's watching and not just the news."

Clint's brow furrowed; she could see it reflected in the television, eyes sharp enough to catch it. He didn't want to ask Tony; there were still hard feelings over ending up in the RAFT. Her eyes closed; this was the interpersonal dynamics that she worried so much about. It wasn't about forgiveness; it was okay not to forgive, but they had to be able to work together.

"I know you don't like hearing it, Clint, but you owe him. He looked after your family while we were gone." She reached out to her friend then, touching his shoulder, squeezing it. "He's the reason you had a family to come back to. I'm not saying forgive him for your personal feelings, but at least see that he takes care of the team and by extension those they care about."

There was a soft grunt from the man but he looked up at her; his eyes flickered back and forth over her face, looking for something before a short nod was given. He felt like he would be conceding something if he went but Natasha made good points. That was something that Clint couldn't ignore; good, logical points. He wasn't angry anymore but he hadn't forgotten. That didn't mean that making use of Stark's tech was a concession, it was just a necessity.

"It can't hurt to ask." He finally agreed aloud.

Natasha nodded to that, patting his shoulder before waving at the game. "So tell me about this game you're playing, because you're failing at the survival part." She smiled over the rim of her cup and watched Clint launch in to an explanation. Maybe they would all be alright in the end.

-End-