May 2014, Manhattan

Rather than going straight to Clint's apartment, Natasha decided to see if Lucky was still taking up residence in hers first. He was, so she coaxed him down from the couch and took him through the connecting door.

Kate was closing down her laptop, dark hair tied up in a messy top-knot. "Welcome back! Sorry about the dog; he got away from me."

Natasha gave her a smile. "He's fine. JARVIS explained."

Kate smiled back a little nervously. "I was distracted by math."

"Perfectly reasonable," Natasha said. "Clint's just finishing his set; he gets twitchy otherwise."

"Well, he's very twitchy at the moment anyway," Kate muttered, sliding her laptop into a drawer and closing it with some feeling.

"Starting to get irritating?" Natasha asked sympathetically.

Somewhat to her surprise, Kate shook her head. "No, I understand why. And I promised him another three weeks before I became a brat about it. I just … I wish I could at least take Lucky for a walk or something. I did martial arts as a kid briefly, but that's apparently not good enough, and I've asked him to teach me self-defence, but he says that's not a good idea."

"To be fair, he's not wrong," Natasha said. "Men like him defend themselves differently. You're more likely to be dealing with someone physically bigger and stronger than you are, and that's a different skill set. Plus it's difficult to teach self-defence without your student getting banged up a bit, and he'd never forgive himself if he hurt you."

He still pulled his punches with her, for goodness sake. He was never going to manage with Kate.

"I'll teach you, if you like."

Kate's eyes lit up. "You don't mind?"

"Of course not," Natasha said. "I'd be very surprised if Clint wasn't going to ask me or Peggy to do it."

"About Dad," Kate said, "how is this going to work?"

Natasha could have coaxed the girl into asking exactly what she meant, but she was still exuding nerves, so she took pity on her. "Well, I suppose most people would say I'm your stepmother. But I'm really not qualified to be a parent, and Clint absolutely adores you, Kate; it's more important to me that we get along than we fit whatever boxes society thinks we should."

Either Clint had taught her, or Kate had always had an excellent poker face, but it was only because Natasha was watching her closely that she noticed her relax a little.

"How about we start with friends," she continued. "If something else comes of it, it does; if not, it doesn't. Obviously if you need anything, or you want to talk, my door's always open."

Kate nodded. "Thanks. That's … I've only seen you and Dad together briefly, but you seem to just … fit. I don't want to get in the way of that."

Natasha patted her hand. "We've dealt with far worse than a teenager, Kate. We'll be fine. Now, I need to ask, how good is Lucky at opening doors?"

"As long as it's a push door, he's figured out he can open it," Kate said. "So he can get into your apartment from ours, but if you close the door behind it, he can't get back again. He also understands the concept of the bathroom, so he won't come in, unless you're having a bath. Somehow he knows and he wants to join in." She paused. "Weirdly, he hates being bathed himself."

Natasha chuckled. "Fair enough; I'll make sure I lock the bathroom door."

Kate pulled a face at that moment - the same face Clint pulled whenever he had to talk to her about something he didn't want to talk about. "There's this thing … I mean, I need to talk to one of you, and it's way weirder to talk to him, so … um … I really don't want to … hear you two … you know."

Natasha did know. "Well, I would imagine that Tony's sound-proofing is better than that."

"I mean, Dad always knows when I've had a nightmare," Kate said.

"Then he either has JARVIS waking him or he has a gut feeling," Natasha said gently. "He takes the hearing aids out at night."

Kate made a little noise. "Oh, of course he does."

Natasha smiled. "Kate, I can promise you that we don't want you hearing anything just as much as you don't want to hear anything, so if you do, bang on the wall, but I really don't think you will. In fact, let's test it now. Which one's Clint's room?"

Kate pointed to it, then went into her bedroom and shut the door. Natasha followed suit, automatically stooping to pick up a pair of boxers as she did.

"Kate? Can you hear me?"

No answer.

Natasha raised her voice. "Kate?"

Nothing.

Well, at least that was one thing she didn't need to worry about.

Natasha left the bedroom and knocked on Kate's door. "I'm guessing you couldn't hear me?" She asked, when it opened.

"No," Kate said, looking as relieved as Natasha felt. "Thanks."

"No problem," Natasha said. "This is your home, Kate; I don't want you to feel uncomfortable here."

"It's your home too," Kate said. "I know it's two apartments, but Lucky has decided that he owns both, so I think it might just become one big one."

"That might be true," Natasha conceded; the idea was a little overwhelming right now, but Kate didn't need to deal with any of that. "I need to clean up, because Congress makes me feel dirty."

"Yeah, but I saw the news," Kate said. "It was awesome."

Natasha's smile grew. "Thank you."

"Don't worry about the door," Kate said. "I've been shadowing Pepper after school and I'm taking Lucky down with me. She likes her daily puppy cuddles."

"I don't blame her," Natasha said. "Have fun."

Once Kate had left, Natasha took the opportunity to take a closer look at the collection of framed photographs on the living room wall.

All of them seemed to have been professionally taken, with the exception of one right in the middle that showed Clint with a little girl sitting on his lap.

That was Kate, she realised - in fact, they were all Kate.

Clint had mentioned that the Bishops had left behind photos, but seeing them was something else.

Her school photos tracked her through the years until recently, her smile becoming steadily more false - presumably as she realised that her parents couldn't care less - until the most recent one, where she finally looked happy again.

That one must have happened after last April.

Something clenched in her chest that she could name (and wasn't ready to deal with), and she returned to her apartment to shower. While she washed out the slime of Congress, she thought about everything Clint had said, about how they kept quiet rather than risk starting an argument.

She had agreed, partly to humour him, but the more she thought about it, the more she thought that maybe he was right; that it was better to talk about them rationally now, rather than wait until they were worked up again.

When she emerged, Clint was lounging on her couch. He was out of his tac gear and his hair looked damp, so she assumed he had taken a quick shower as well.

"Kate's gone to Pepper's office."

"Figured as much," Clint said. "So …"

"So …" Natasha agreed, coming to sit beside him.

"Ladies first?" Clint suggested.

Natasha sighed. "So, what, you just want me to sit here and tell you everything you do that pisses me off?"

Clint gave her a sheepish smile. "Please and thank you."

"Okay, well first of all, please stop leaving your underwear on the floor," Natasha said.

Clint raised an eyebrow. "You know, I really didn't think that's what you were going to lead with."

"What did you think I was going to lead with?" Natasha asked.

"I don't know," Clint admitted. "Not that."

"Well, I wasn't going to lead with that," Natasha said. "Then Kate and I did a little experiment, and I had to pick your boxers up again, so it's at the forefront."

"Sorry," Clint said. "What experiment?"

"Kate was concerned that if I was staying the night she might … hear certain things that she wouldn't want to," Natasha answered. "And I was concerned as well. We tested the sound-proofing. It's very good."

"Good, because I hadn't thought about that," Clint admitted. "I hadn't realised that annoyed you, although that does make sense, so I promise I will try and remember not to do that."

"Thank you," Natasha said. "The only other thing I think I've really bitten my tongue about over the years … You know when you jump off of buildings?"

"I don't do that often," Clint said. "Only when I need to."

"Oh, I know that," Natasha said. "I know sometimes it's your only way out, but …"

This was the hard part.

Even with Clint, Natasha had been guarded when it came to how she felt.

Life had changed though. It was time to change with it.

"It scares me," she admitted softly. "It always does. And I need you to not just tell me 'I never miss', because I know you never miss; it doesn't make it any easier watching you leap off a twenty-storey building."

Clint was quiet for a moment. "I know you're scared and not mad when you bite my head off. I'm not sure why you don't just tell me that, but I've always known. I'm not trying to bush you off - I'm trying to reassure you. How would you rather I react in those situations?"

Natasha faltered, having not thought that far ahead. "I think I just need you to let me yell a bit. Or fuss."

"Okay," Clint said with a nod. "That's fair; I can do that."

"That was easier than I thought it would be," Natasha admitted.

Clint smiled. "I can be reasonable, Nat."

"You are always reasonable," she murmured, leaning in to kiss him. "Also, the reason I cover fear with anger is because I was always afraid of making us more than I thought we needed to be, because then you might fall in love with me and I'd hurt you."

"Tasha …" Clint sighed heavily. "I fell in love with you before Budapest. Bit late for that."

Natasha smiled weakly. "Well, the other thing I need to talk to you about isn't as easy to fix."

"Is it what you said on the phone?" Clint asked gently. "Because I understand, Nat."

"Okay, there are two other things," Natasha said. "Before we talk about that, I need to talk to you about Kate."

Clint tensed, as she knew he would. "What about her?"

"She's your daughter," Natasha said, tracing circles on the back of his wrist in an attempt to soothe ruffled feathers. "I understand that. This is absolutely not a case of 'you have a kid and I can't handle that', alright?"

Clint did relax at that, turning his hand over to grasp hers. "Okay. So what's up?"

"It still hurts that you didn't tell me about her," Natasha admitted. "I know you were worried about jinxing it, and I know that I was keeping you at arm's length, but I'm still your partner. And your best friend. And you've had a daughter the entire time I've known you, and you never told me. And, yes, you talked about her and maybe I should have put things together, but you had to know I hadn't, Clint; you know what the Red Room was like. I never had parents; I don't understand my own feelings half the time; why the hell would I be able to figure out yours?"

"I know," Clint said softly. "And I know I should have told you."

"What if something had happened?" Natasha asked, as though he hadn't spoken. "If you'd died, God forbid, I wouldn't have known to find her. She would have just been waiting for you to come home with no one to tell her …" she trailed off, watching him avert his eyes. "Except Phil and Peggy knew, didn't they?"

It wasn't a question.

"I didn't tell them," Clint said. "They … put two and two together. Phil used to tell me I should just adopt her." He must have seen the hurt in her eyes, because he squeezed her hands and pulled her a little closer. "I am sorry, Nat. And I'm so sorry that we didn't have this conversation two years ago."

"You were hurting," Natasha murmured. "Dealing with Loki and …"

"I don't care," Clint said. "You were obviously upset and I just blew you off. And you just let me, and carried on helping me patch myself up, because you're an angel …"

Natasha snorted. "I am not an angel."

Clint pressed his forehead to hers. "Sometimes you are, Nat. I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner. I just … I can't undo that."

"I know," Natasha said with a sigh. "I just figured I should bring this up now rather than let it blow up later, even if this isn't something you can fix. I guess I'm … scared."

"Of Kate?" Clint asked.

Natasha cracked a reluctant smile. "Not exactly. She essentially grew up without a relationship with her parents. I don't think she ever missed that with him, because she always had you. She always had a dad, but she never had a mom. And I really don't know how to do that without being another adult that lets her down."

Clint's eyes had softened. "You won't. The fact that you care enough to worry about letting her down already puts you above Joanna."

Natasha rolled her eyes. "That's not exactly a compliment, Clint; I'd need to dig a hole to miss that particular bar."

Clint sniggered. "You're not wrong. You talked to Kate?"

"I told her that we should start by being friends and see what happens," Natasha said.

Clint nodded. "Thanks. That's exactly what I would have suggested."

That made Natasha feel better. "Promise me that there are no more secrets."

"None," Clint said immediately. "I wasn't …"

Natasha kissed him again. "I know. And I know you feel bad about it, and that helps."

Clint smiled. "My turn?"

He was going to give her a way out.

Of course he was.

"I didn't mean to say it," she said.

"I know," Clint said simply. "We don't need to talk about it."

"No," Natasha said. "We do. I just … I still don't know exactly how to explain it. I didn't mean to say it, and I didn't even realise I had until after I'd destroyed the phone. And then I had to put it to the back of my mind until after everything had been dealt with, and then I just … I didn't understand. How can you accidentally blurt out something that can't be true?"

"You can't," Clint answered softly, and there was such an understanding in his eyes that she wondered if perhaps he had known long before she had.

"I was raised to believe there were good and bad people," Natasha said softly. "Good people could love, and could be loved, and had families. Bad people didn't. We were bad people because we were born that way. After the KGB fell and I destroyed the Red Room, I realised that … What?" She asked, because he had flinched violently at that.

Clint hesitated. "I need to tell you something," he said slowly, "but when I do, we're not going to finish this conversation."

Given the context, Natasha did not like the implications, but he was right. It would be so easy to get sidetracked - to allow herself to be sidetracked - and this was something she needed to say.

And, more importantly, that he deserved to hear.

"Alright, tell me afterwards then. Anyway, I realised that they were lying about people being born good or bad, but I did think they'd broken me so much that I couldn't love. I learned what love was through watching movies or reading books and … the love portrayed in those seemed so … vulnerable and open and innocent that I just couldn't imagine ever feeling it. But then I was sitting in Steve's hospital room, watching Peggy hold his hand and do her job, and I realised that … If that love was the only love, she would have collapsed in 1945 when that plane went down and never gotten back up again." She made herself meet his eyes. "I still don't know what it means to love someone, but I don't have any other words for what I feel for you. I guess my heart knew that before I did."

Clint touched her cheek, the callouses on his fingers brushing against her skin in a way that sent a soft shiver through her. "I love you."

"I love you too," she whispered, the words breaking something open inside her; that part of her chest that sometimes ached when she was with him seemed to slide into place, and … how had she ever thought she couldn't love him when it was suddenly as easy as breathing? "I love you so much I … I don't know how I didn't realise it before."

He tugged her closer, his hand sliding back to tangle in her hair, tilting her head just so, so his mouth fitted perfectly against hers.

Kissing for them was almost always foreplay, at least this kind of extended making out was, but today neither of them seemed in any rush to move on.

Not yet, at least.

She had no idea how long they had been sitting there when she finally drew back.

"Your turn?"

"I suppose I should," Clint said, pressing one last kiss to her lips. "It was my idea. So … catch and release."

Natasha grimaced. "Should have seen that coming."

It was a tactic she used often, letting her target believe they had the better of her in order to get intel, and it was very successful, but it had also been a bone of contention between her and Clint from day one.

"I know you were trained to withstand torture," he continued. "I don't think you and I will ever agree on whether or not it's okay for you to do it, but I'm willing to trust your judgement on that. I do trust your judgement."

"Okay," Natasha said slowly. "So what's the problem?"

"I need you to trust mine," Clint said. "If I fire early, it's not because I don't trust you. It's because I have made a call - either that the intel we could get is not worth it, or because I can see something you can't. So if I fire early, can you please stop biting my head off? And when I fuss over you afterwards, can you please stop acting like it's because I don't have any faith in you?" Wry humour bled into his voice. "Telling me that you've had worse don't make watching you get the crap kicked out of you any easier."

Her own words flung back in her face caught her a little by surprise, and sufficiently derailed her response.

"Okay, that's fair," she conceded. "I hadn't thought about it from your position. I can't promise that I'll stop using it as a tactic, because it works. But I promise that I will trust your judgement and that I won't complain when you fuss afterwards."

Clint squeezed her fingers. "Thank you."

"There must be other things I do," Natasha said lightly, when he said nothing more.

Clint hesitated. "It's … It's not so much something that annoys me, more something that confuses me and I've never asked."

Natasha thought for a moment, but couldn't figure it out. "Oh?"

"After honeytrap ops," Clint said slowly, "it sometimes feels like you're trying to pick a fight."

Natasha wrinkled her nose. "I wasn't trying to pick fights. I was frustrated, because after Budapest, you just got really grouchy after them, and … We'd talked about work not counting and …"

"It wasn't after Budapest," Clint interrupted, staring at the floor. "You probably noticed it then because you were looking for it, but I always hated honeytrap ops. Whether it's you or any other agent, I have always hated them."

"Oh," she said quietly, feeling a little guilty.

"There is a tiny part of me that feels a bit possessive," Clint added. "I won't lie about that; I'm only human. But they always feel … We never expect our male agents to do things like that."

Natasha raised an eyebrow. "That's because the majority of our targets are male and straight. I don't think you'd have the same impact."

"Fair," Clint conceded. "Also I'm willing to bet that any female crime bosses out there are too smart to be swayed by a pretty face."

"Almost certainly," Natasha agreed with a smile. "I didn't look for it before Budapest, you're right. But you did seem more … It seemed more personal than just 'I hate honeytrap ops'."

"I feel guilty when you do them," Clint said in a low voice. "That's what they did to you; we were supposed to be better."

Every now and then, Clint said or did something that made something in her chest tighten a little; only now did she realise that she was falling just a little more in love with him each time. "You saved my life," she said. "You showed me that I could be more than they made me. You helped me believe that. It was never on you, Clint. None of this is on you."

Clint twisted a lock of hair around his finger absently. "If you say so."

"I do say so." Natasha turned her head to brush a kiss against his wrist. "Any other complaints?"

That made him smile. "Never a complaint, Tasha. The only other thing that frustrates me is they way you constantly push me away, but I get the feeling that's going to stop now."

"I hope so," Natasha said honestly. "I might … I might need you to remind me I don't need to do that anymore."

"Okay, I can …" Clint trailed off, his finger brushing against the fine chain around her neck, his eyes travelling down to her neckline. "You're wearing it."

Natasha smiled, touching the golden arrow gently. "I am. When I spoke to Congress, I didn't want to be the Black Widow. And I figured if we're doing this, I should go as myself. Turns out the most real thing about me is you." She didn't want to ask, but his earlier flinch when she'd mentioned the Red Room was still nagging at the back of her mind. "What was it that you needed to tell me?"

Clint heaved a heavy sigh, dragging his eyes back to hers. "You didn't destroy the Red Room. Not all of it. HYDRA is still running it."

Somehow, she hadn't expected that.

Another Widow working within HYDRA, maybe even more than one, possibly, but the whole thing?

"How many?" She asked.

"I don't know," Clint admitted. "Darcy found a couple of files - that's Darcy Lewis, Dr Foster's PA, except she's been a godsend over the last week, so I'm fairly sure Tony and Pepper are fighting over who gets to steal her. She asked me what to do with them, so I told her to put them in a folder for you. I thought about looking, but I …" he sighed. "I couldn't, Nat. I'm sorry."

"Don't apologise," Natasha said automatically. "I'll just need to pick up where I left off and take them out properly this time."

"I've got your back," Clint said needlessly.

Natasha couldn't help smiling. "I know, yastreb. You always do." She didn't say that this might be something she needed to do alone, but then she never needed to.

That was why he had said it.

"We'll get some good out of it."

"How?" Clint asked. "How can anything good come from this? God, Nat, the things they did to you …"

Natasha pressed two fingers to his lips. "I know. But if I had never been in the Red Room, you and I would never have met."

"Seriously?" Clint asked. "You can't … You don't … That doesn't make any of it okay, Natasha!"

She nearly laughed, but he looked so bewildered that it would have been cruel. "No, it doesn't make it okay," she agreed, touching his face. "But this? This makes it better, Clint. You make it better."

His eyes softened, and he smiled, that soft, sweet smile he seemed to reserve just for her that had given her butterflies before she truly understood what they were. "I'm glad. You deserve better."

Natasha leaned in to meet him, unsurprised when he pulled her closer until she was straddling his lap, pressing herself against the hard lines of his body.

She rocked down and he groaned into her mouth. "I love you so much."

Natasha hummed in agreement, nipping his lower lip as she pulled back. "Brief pause."

"I'd rather not," he murmured, licking a line up her throat.

Natasha laughed, tugging on his hair lightly to draw his attention back to her face. "Behave. Will Kate be expecting us both for dinner?"

That caught his attention and he glanced at the clock. "Yes, in about ninety minutes."

Natasha nodded. "Okay, well, let's be fair to her and not show up very obviously post-sex, yeah?"

Clint wrinkled his nose, but nodded as well, nudging her back so they could both stand up. "I mean, that's probably for the best. I can give you a tour of the Avengers facilities."

"We have facilities?" Natasha asked. "Do we have an employee handbook as well?"

"I haven't seen one," Clint said, "but I wouldn't be surprised. That should take us up to dinner, and then tonight … Did you say you tested the sound-proofing?"

"I did," she said with a smile. "It's very good."

He grinned back. "Excellent."