Another one that was loosely alluded to in the Nick chapter in my other story, Moments...

Enjoy!

Nick checked his phone as it chimed yet again with another update from Hill on the investigation into the absolute shit show that had unfolded over the past few days. To say he was pissed off was a serious understatement. They'd had a team on this investigation for months, gathering information and intelligence from various sources on some individuals who had gotten their hands on some very dangerous weapons that had been heavily modified with a distinctly scientific flair.

All the data they'd collected had pointed to a minimal crew on the premises, so they had devised a plan to send Agent Romanoff in alone to infiltrate and sabotage their operation. But things had not gone to plan and she had ended up being completely outmanned and outgunned, with no option but to let them take her prisoner.

But that wasn't the problem. It certainly wasn't the first time that Natasha had let herself be captured to gather information or access. It wasn't even the first time that it had been as a result of a sudden change in plan. No, the problem was that no one at SHIELD, not even Coulson, had had any inkling that anything was wrong. The area was remote enough that their aerial coverage was spotty on a good day, and the cell reception, even with their SHIELD issued phones, was basically non-existent. They had known this going in, but by the time 48 hours had passed and they hadn't seen or heard anything from her, Coulson's gut had told him something was wrong. Nick had authorized some more resources to be allocated to the op, having learned years before to trust the man's gut. Seven and a half hours later, she finally called in to request an emergency evacuation. Another few hours after that, Coulson called him with an update on her, alerting him that she was nursing some serious injuries and would require medical attention upon their arrival back at base, but was able to make the trip back to the Triskelion with no immediate danger to her health.

That she required medical attention was not in and of itself alarming. She and Barton both seemed to have little regard for their own safety on their missions - a fact which he was certain was aging Phil Coulson by years at a time. But what was alarming was that things had gone so badly on an op that, by all accounts, should have been an easy in and out job. Natasha was probably the best agent SHIELD had, so he'd had a very hard time imagining things had gone wrong as a result of her actions. It wasn't impossible, but certainly improbable. When the details had begun to trickle in and organizational failure started to present itself as the culprit for the shit show, his anger had started leaking out and he'd informed Coulson and Hill that he'd be handling Romanoff's debrief himself.

Nick's phone chimed again with another update from Hill that made Nick's lips press into a thin line as he watched the quinjet touch down on the landing pad in front of him. He watched as the ramp lowered almost immediately and Coulson led an obviously injured Romanoff down the ramp and toward him. When they reached him, they both paused briefly to look at him. "Let medical check you out, and when they clear you, meet me in my office for your debriefing," he instructed gruffly, holding Natasha's gaze meaningfully.

Her gaze was piercing and he knew she was trying to get a read on him. She had never been one to cower in the face of his wrath, and lord knows she and Barton had faced it on more than one occasion thanks to their creative solutions to missions. No, she had always faced his displeasure with a steely gaze and often a subtle arch of a brow in a silent challenge. Even Barton, shit disturber extraordinaire that he was, had the decency to know when to shut up and just listen. But Natasha...even when she said nothing, she said a whole damn lot, and it infuriated him most of the time. The only times he could recall her looking anything but completely mission-ready had been in the aftermath of her deprogramming sessions. They'd been borderline barbaric in what they'd needed to do to remove the triggers and conditioning, but she'd faced it all with that same steely determination. Even in the aftermath of this op that had ended up seriously FUBAR, she looked beyond exhausted and like she'd gone more than a few rounds with some assholes, but still held his gaze with a determination he couldn't help but admire a little.

"Coulson, make sure medical clears her before she leaves, and then find Hill. She's got a few things you'll want to see," he added.

The AI alerted him to someone requesting entrance to his office and he glanced at the security camera feed, finding Natasha looking at the camera with a bored expression on her face. He shook his head in amusement at her expression and got up to let her in.

"Hey, boss," she greeted him with a tired smile that he supposed was meant to get under his skin. He'd fired agents for a lot less insubordination than she was showing him, but he'd come to know her well enough to know she was masking her pain with her flippant remark.

"Secure office," he ordered the AI, ignoring her silent question in the form of an arched eyebrow. "Sit," he ordered. Belatedly, he realized his tone was probably a bit gruffer than he had intended given it was obvious she was in a lot of pain, and that everything that had happened hadn't been her fault according to the facts coming in from Hill. He softened his expression a little and gestured to the more comfortable chairs in his office, far from his desk.

For a moment it looked like she was going to reply with something witty - I'm not a dog came to mind - but eventually she opted to sit in one of the chairs. Her movements were slow and measured, even if she was working hard to keep the pain off her face. He could see the beginnings of some nasty bruising on her neck and covering one side of her face, not to mention the cuts. He knew from the preliminary reports from Coulson and Hill that there was also fairly significant damage to her left side by her ribs, and on both her legs. All told, she'd been thrown around and beaten enough on this op that he was surprised she was able to stand, let alone walk. That she'd been able to complete as much of her objective as she had was, quite frankly, a goddamn miracle and a testament to just how good she was. Or maybe how stubborn, he mused.

"Am I getting detention?" she asked drily, her one eyebrow arched ever so slightly in a patently Natasha Romanoff fashion. Yeah, there was that goddamn sass again.

He sat down in the other chair and held her gaze. People often called him an asshole and many accused him of not caring about people. He would agree with the former, and argue vehemently with the latter. He cared, including caring quite a bit for the woman in front of him who'd been through hell and then some. He'd taken a risk on trusting her and it had paid off in spades. Now she was a very capable agent, and someone he trusted to get the shit done that no one else could. But more than that...she was important to him. "Are you okay?" he asked in a tone that this time was far less gruff and far more concerned.

She blinked as she processed his question and all the micro expressions she no doubt had spotted on his face. It stung just a little that even after all these years she was still a bit surprised when he asked about her welfare. "I've had worse," she answered finally.

"See, that's an answer, but not to the question I asked," he replied while pointedly glaring at her to actually answer his question.

"I'll be fine," she amended with a roll of her eyes.

He scrutinized her for a moment, taking in the significance of her choice of words in her response. She usually went with 'I'm fine' not 'I'll be fine.' Clearly, she was in worse shape than everyone thought. He probably shouldn't have been surprised at that, given the relative lack of shit she gave the medical staff this time around. She wasn't stupid enough to turn down medical care altogether, but she watched them like a hawk and made them explain everything they did. This time around she hadn't asked many questions - which Coulson had noticed and informed him about.

"You take any of the drugs medical gave you?" he asked, guessing the answer would be a resounding no but wanting to make sure all the same.

"I don't need them."

He held in his scoff as he easily translated that response: I don't want to give up any semblance of control of myself.

He got up and headed over to the wall behind his desk and accessed a hidden compartment, revealing a small fridge/freezer. He grabbed the bottle of vodka, two glasses, and then closed the door before heading back over to Natasha.

"I look that bad, huh?" she remarked as she eyed the bottle of vodka.

"You want the drink or not?" he asked, tilting his head in a challenge.

"Yeah, alright."

He opened the bottle and poured them each some vodka before he slid a glass over to her. He tended to prefer a good scotch or whiskey, but this wasn't about him. She looked like she could use a drink. Or twelve. And vodka tended to be her drink of choice. Perhaps the only thing about her that was predictable.

"What are we drinking to?" she asked.

"Who says we have to drink to anything? This op was FUBAR. That's reason enough."

She nodded once succinctly and then took a drink. He followed suit, taking a sip from his own glass.

"You want to tell me what went wrong?"

She blew out a heavy sigh. "What didn't?"

"Well, you got back here in one piece," he offered, arching an eyebrow before taking another sip.

She pursed her lips and glared at him half-heartedly. "Bad intel," she summarized. "Everything we thought we knew was seriously outdated."

Nick took a long drink from his glass. "How outdated?" he asked. It wasn't unusual for intelligence to be a little stale on some ops, but given the fallout on this one, clearly it was a problem.

"Months."

That got his attention. He'd had people working on this for almost 10 months. How could they have screwed it up so badly? "Did we not vet it?"

She took a sip of her drink before answering. "Of course we did," she answered with an irritated glare at the suggestion of her incompetence, "but it was sketchy to begin with. By the time I had pieced together some more meaningful data from the ground, they were already moving forward with the next phase. I had to act fast or we were gonna lose them."

"Did you call it in?"

She nodded. "The signal was spotty at best, but when I did connect, I didn't get an answer."

His gaze narrowed. Those lines were monitored 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And he'd personally emphasized to the agents on duty before the op that it was important they keep an eye on her line. "And then?"

"I tried to call Coulson, but by then the signal had dropped entirely. And then I was rudely interrupted," she said drily.

He smirked at her tone and leaned back in his chair. "And things went downhill from there?" She nodded and he sighed. "How bad?"

He saw her jaw clench before she answered. "They had them in cages, Nick."

He took a long drink, finishing off the last of the vodka in his glass. Weapons, they had expected. Adults and kids in cages, they had not. "You get them out?"

"Some," she answered with a haunted look in her eyes, "they caught wind of me escaping from my cell and executed some of them before I could get to them."

He leaned over and refilled his own glass and then hers as well when she held it out. "That's not on you, Natasha."

"I should have been faster."

"You did the best you could with what you had," he interrupted.

"My best should have been better," she countered with a hard expression that he knew well. She had always held herself to a high standard, and was always her own harshest critic.

"We should have been better. We sent you in with shit intel and no backup. That you managed to do anything at all is remarkable. I won't call it a win, because we both know it wasn't, but it was still damn good considering everything."

She was quiet for a long moment before she spoke again. "Sometimes I wonder if what we do is worth anything at all."

He considered her words. It wasn't like her to be so dramatic. The mission must have rattled her...at least as much as she could be rattled. "Not like you to be so existential," he commented with an arched eyebrow.

"Yeah, well my last few missions have been pretty shitty," she bit back, and if he didn't know any better, he'd have thought he heard some bitterness in her tone.

"I didn't bring out the good stuff for a pity party," he said as he gestured to the bottle on the table between them.

"I'm not asking for your pity," she replied brusquely, narrowing her gaze at him.

"Good, 'cause I'm not giving you any," he replied swiftly, fixing her with a look of his own. When she didn't respond he continued. "So... what, you want me to give you babysitting duty instead?"

She rolled her eyes. "You know I'd just break the rookies," she joked. Yeah, he remembered the last time he'd assigned her to train the incoming class. That hadn't ended well. Still, the spark of amusement in her eyes was a welcomed sight given how drained and haunted she had looked when she'd entered his office.

He eyed her carefully. "Maybe you should take some time off. Been a bit since you visited the farm. Last I heard Barton had added a new member of the family. Suppose he wants you to meet them at some point."

She rubbed a finger back and forth across the side of the glass idly. "I'm okay, Nick."

"Didn't say you weren't. I said it's been a long time since you actually took some vacation."

"You need someone running the missions, and I'm not about to get you to recall Clint."

"We have other agents, Romanoff," he replied drily.

"Ones you trust with the kind of stuff Clint and I handle?" she challenged.

She had a point. They really were in a class all their own. Still, they weren't the only talented agents SHIELD employed. "We can manage for a couple of weeks without you." She arched an eyebrow doubtfully. "SHIELD doesn't run just because you're here," he countered, holding her gaze in a challenge of his own.

She rolled her eyes again. "Don't be dramatic. You know that isn't what I meant. There's been a bunch of high clearance level ops lately, and unless you've given out some promotions I didn't hear about, you don't have that many agents with the necessary clearance levels."

Irritatingly...again, she had a point. Barton being off had shifted most of the responsibility onto her shoulders. But he wasn't about to deprive the man of time with his new kid and the rest of his family. Still, Natasha deserved some time off too, and he could find a way to make it work. Or rather, he'd have Hill find a way to make it work. "Regardless, you're on mandatory medical leave for at least a week, probably two. May as well get off base."

"Nick-"

"No arguments, Natasha, or I'm instructing Hill and Coulson to change your clearance level and take your phone."

She glared at him for a moment before she surprised him and leaned back in the chair, closed her eyes, and brought the glass to her lips to take a drink. "Cages, Nick. They were in cages."

"I know. I've got people on it. We're gonna take down these sons of bitches."

Her eyes opened and she held up her glass. "Here's to that."

"To success," he replied in Russian.

Her eyes widened slightly in surprise and she smiled genuinely before she echoed his words, albeit with much better pronunciation. "To success."

He refilled their glasses again as he turned over the information in his mind. It was possible they'd screwed up the intelligence gathering, but he'd had good people on it and Coulson had been overseeing it. Hell, Natasha had gone over the specs and data too, and if anyone was going to see the issue it would've been her. No, he'd place money that it wasn't bad intelligence because of SHIELD. He glanced at his agent and found her staring out the window at the night sky with a thoughtful expression on her face.

"Share with the class," he instructed, knowing her well enough to read her expression.

She turned to meet his gaze. "I don't think that op going bad was necessarily a mistake." He held her gaze in a silent request for her to elaborate lieu of replying verbally. "Think about it - that last tip that came in was too good. After nothing but scraps of intelligence for months, what are the chances we hit a pay day that good?"

He tilted his head as he considered her line of thinking. True, both he and Coulson had been surprised by their good fortune in having that tip fall into their laps. They had both chalked it up to good work by the team though - and admittedly a lot of the time when that kind of luck happens, it was a result of good, hard work - but maybe she was right. Maybe they'd been blinded by attributing the win to the team, rather than some entity with an entirely different agenda. "You think someone was drawing us out?"

"Or testing us," she counters. "The Red Room used to do it occasionally. They'd run a sloppy operation either with new faces or through a patsy, leaving enough breadcrumbs for their target to pick up and then come after them. Then they'd observe the way the target would try and infiltrate, and either take them out with some covert forces unrelated to the operation, or shore up their defences as a result."

He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. Her theory might have some merit.

"Or it could just be incompetent criminals," she added with a half-hearted grin before finishing off her glass.

He held up the bottle in a silent offer for a refill and she nodded while pushing her glass forward. He poured some into her glass and then held up his own in another toast. "Here's hoping," he said with a shake of his head, even as he began to mentally piece together the particulars of what he was going to have Hill dig into on this very issue.

She smiled. "To stupidity."

He groaned. "You hang out with Barton too much."

She shrugged. "You're the one who just suggested I go visit him."

He glared at her as she downed the contents of her freshly refilled glass. "File your reports tomorrow, not tonight," he instructed, pointing to the door in a not-so-veiled invitation for her to leave.

She chuckled as she rose to her feet with some effort. "Always the gentleman, Nick," she teased.

"My goodwill is vanishing very quickly," he warned, though he knew she correctly recognized it as half-hearted. "I mean it about the time off," he added firmly after a moment. "Give Mrs. Barton my best."

She nodded and then began making her way to the door. Once she reached it and was about to open it, he called out, "And Natasha?" She looked back at him. "Good work."

Nick was more fun to write than I thought, particularly because he was being kind and letting Natasha have a little fun at his expense.

Did you enjoy the banter? Think it accurately portrayed their relationship? Let me know - I always love seeing what y'all think.

more to come...and hopefully I'll be able to keep up the relatively frequent updates!