Ok, I know I skipped last week's update, but I'm trying! Thanks for always being patient with me and for holding out =)

Mad shoutout as always to Camille for betaing for me! Camille's also been getting some weird messages about her betaing this, so I'd like to ask whoever's doing that to please stop. If you have any questions about the fic, why I'm using a beta etc., you can always ask me! (I'm much better about replying on Tumblr, though, so I would highly suggest asking me there instead of here. I have a bunch of messages to answer here, and I'm so behind on them.)

Song for this chapter: "Relator" - Pete Yorn & Scarlett Johansson.

As always, let me know your thoughts!

Enjoy! =)

Chapter 2

Clint noticed right away that something was up as soon as Natasha swept back into the room, her arms full of extra forms. The second he looked at the mass stack of papers she carried against her chest, he realized she'd made far, far too many copies, and just as he was about to say something, he noticed her face. Natasha always got this expression whenever she switched into mission mode—it wasn't something many other people noticed, but Clint with his sharp eyes and knowing mind caught it every single time.

"Nat?" he asked curiously.

"I made too many copies," she answered as she set them down on the desk she'd spent the past few days occupying. "Wasn't paying attention when I put the number in."

"What's going on? You've got your game face on." He ignored her statement about the papers and nodded in her direction, his eyes still glued to her face.

"Going out into the field," she replied. "Steve got a lead on Barnes and asked Sam and me to go with him."

Clint nodded. "Sounds good. Think this'll be successful?"

Natasha's mouth quirked up into a smirk, and she paused from rummaging through her duffel bag underneath the desk to shoot him an amused glance. "Who knows? With Barnes and these leads we've been getting…we could either find him, or we could be barking at our own asses again."

"Speaking of barking at our own asses, Noelle seems to be enjoying the new apartment," Clint pointed out, referring to the cat they'd had the past few years. Natasha smiled briefly but went back to digging in her duffel bag as she looked for something that was probably at the very bottom of the bag.

"She's so used to being picked up and moved all over the place. Not that big of a deal for her anymore."

"I read a study that said cats are more attached to places than people."

"You think Noelle would prefer to stay in the original apartment we brought her home to rather than stay with us?"

"Yes."

"Then you don't know cats at all, Barton." Natasha held up the extra pair of gloves she'd been searching for, a look of triumph on her face, and she stood back up. "I don't know how long I'll be gone. Think you'll be able to hold down the fort here?"

Clint snorted and rolled his eyes as he leaned back in his chair. He linked his fingers back behind his head, and he surveyed her with lazy blue eyes. "Please. Ye of such little faith. I'll be able to run this place just fine."

"Rhodey will be here, the Vision is…I don't know what he's doing or what he's up to, honestly, and Wanda will be here, too. Play nice, ok?" Natasha's eyes flicked down to his mouth and then back up the way they always did whenever she wanted to kiss him but didn't want to cross the lines at work.

"Scout's honor."

And as Natasha stood up to leave, she found it no harder to leave him than she usually did. That was their life. Their lives were made up of leaving each other with vague hints and muddy details, most of their hints and details being lies, anyway. She was used to the classified nature of their relationship together, and she knew Clint was, too. But after SHIELD had fallen, after SHIELD had collapsed, and every single classified file had become more public than a celebrity wedding, classified had lost every sense of the word for the both of them.

"Try not to miss me too much," Clint quipped, his eyes lingering a little bit longer than usual.

"I'll try." She nodded back towards him. "Don't mess with the junior agents."

"I'll try."

She smiled. "I know you do."

In the allotted amount of time, Natasha was able to take care of everything she needed to in order to be ready for the mission. "Mission" didn't feel the right word to call it. It wasn't a mission per se—no one was giving Steve orders, and no one sure as hell was giving her orders. Steve was doing this because he felt he needed to, and Natasha was doing it because Steve asked her, too, and he was her friend.

"Romanoff in the house," Sam remarked when she crossed into the hangar where the quinjet was. "Team's back together again, huh?"

"Something like it." She gave him a dry smile and glanced around the rest of the large hangar. "Where's Rogers? Keeping us waiting?"

"Guess so. Clearly doesn't know about being punctual. Which is funny since he's probably the fastest man on Earth." Sam folded his arms over his chest and squinted as he looked around, too, though Natasha got the feeling that he was doing it just so she didn't feel quite so alone in the gesture. She didn't know why, but she liked that part about Sam. He always seemed to be standing right beside her, never a step ahead or pretending to fall a few back so she felt like she was an equal. He stood beside her, so they really and truly were equals.

"Probably want to take that back," she replied, her smirk still present. "I have a few members on the former index of SHIELD who could probably outrace Steve without even breaking a sweat."

Impressed, Sam lifted his eyebrows and looked directly at her. "Really? That's what the index is?"

"More or less," Natasha answered with a nod. "Generally people with unexplained powers get put on the index. People SHIELD needed to watch out for. But I guess since there isn't much SHIELD left, there probably isn't much of an index left."

"Would the Maximoff girl be considered index-worthy?" Sam asked curiously.

Natasha nodded again, her eyes still scanning for Steve. "She and her brother were both already flagged as interesting. Now that she's here and one of us, she would have continued to be one of us but still would have been logged into the index. Just for someone to look out for."

"Speaking of someone to look out for." Sam nodded in the direction Steve was coming from, and Natasha looked over her shoulder to find Steve in his tactical suit walking towards them. He had his shield strapped to his back and something that looked like a flash drive in his hand, signifying that he was ready for their mission, assignment, whatever the hell it was they were doing. "Nice of you to show up."

"I was a little busy." Steve held the flash drive up for Sam to see. "Gathering intel so we don't go in blind."

"We've done that a little too much lately, so thank God for preparation," Natasha spoke up. Her eyes followed Steve, studying him as he nodded towards the quinjet as their signal to board it, and she boarded it beside both him and Sam. "So. You going to debrief us, Captain?"

"You and I have already been there," Steve commented, crossing towards the controls.

"Uhn uhn," Sam spoke up when he saw that Steve was preparing to take the spot of pilot. He shook his head and followed after the tall super soldier. "That's my area of expertise. Out of all three of us, I think I'm the most experienced pilot here."

Natasha lifted her red eyebrows and glanced over at Steve as he glanced back at her. "I'll fight you for that title, Wilson."

"Oh, yeah, Black Widow?" Sam grinned and leaned against the back of the pilot's seat. "You want to be my co-pilot, and we'll see who the better flier is?"

"Oh, boy," Steve sighed while Natasha tilted her head to the side. She never really liked co-piloting for people unless it was for Clint, Maria, Bobbi Morse, or a few other select agents, but she looked at Sam and saw the challenge in his face.

"Ok," she said. "You're on." She crossed towards the co-pilot seat and switched on her controls while Sam settled into his own seat to set up, too. Steve stood between the both of them and watched.

"This is going to be a nightmare," he remarked.

"Make sure you video me being a better pilot," Sam said, and Natasha rolled her eyes.

"Just debrief us, Cap," she said. Behind her, she heard Steve uncap the flash drive, and then he plugged it into the USB up by the front. A hologram across the windshield of the quinjet immediately lit up along with the username and password requirements that came with all SHIELD-classified files.

"Rogers, Steven G.," Steve said in his Captain voice. Natasha grabbed the co-pilot headset and slipped it around her neck. She knew she'd have to adjust it whenever she put them on over her ears, but right now, she wanted to hear what their mission was about.

"Access granted," the smooth voice of the AI replied. Suddenly, Natasha saw all kinds of pictures and documents flash across the glass and then settle into a messy hologram pile.

"This is so organized," she deadpanned.

He shrugged, half-hearted. "I was in a hurry." Leaning forward, he pressed a picture and used both hands to blow it up. "This was taken early this morning outside Camp Lehigh. Motion-detector camera."

Natasha leaned back in her seat and stared up at the picture with wide eyes. Steve hadn't been kidding—she knew this place. She'd gone there before with him back during the events of the HYDRA takeover. She'd been present when Steve had discovered that Arnim Zola had been preserved in the form of computers in the basement of his old Army camp, and she'd been present when SHIELD—disguised by HYDRA—had tried to bomb the hell out of the both of them. As she looked at the picture, she remembered everything she'd gone through, everything that had happened not so long ago.

She remembered how nervous she'd been about Clint that whole time. She'd known that he'd been out of the country on a mission, but that hadn't meant anything. HYDRA had infiltrated SHIELD so deeply that had they genuinely wanted to harm him, they could have easily found him. God, HYDRA had had agents in all of SHIELD's locations. It was a wonder Clint hadn't been harmed on his mission, but she didn't spend a lot of time asking why. She knew better than to look gift horses in the mouth, so she didn't dare peek into this one's throat.

"Recognize it?" Steve asked. She smirked a little and shrugged.

"How could I forget it?"

"What is this place?" Sam frowned, his brown eyes skimming over the screen. He caught a small note off to the side. "Camp Lehigh. That's…that's where you were trained, Cap?"

"Yes." Steve made the picture smaller and brought up another file. Bucky's file. "This was the last place Bucky saw in the States. Before he shipped off to Europe."

"Back when he was still Barnes," Natasha said. Steve nodded in agreement.

"Back before HYDRA got their hands on him. If he went there…there's a chance he remembers that place."

"What if he doesn't?" Sam asked. "You said that that camp was where they were keeping the brain of that one dead guy, right? Zola?"

"Technically, it was his mind uploaded onto a shit ton of computers, but dead guy brain works," Natasha answered, shrugging. "But yeah, Camp Lehigh was where all of that was located."

"So what if Barnes is going back there for a reason? Not because he remembers it but because…you know…I'm guessing that since HYDRA kept a high tech scientist locked away there, that was a pretty important HYDRA spot. And he's been hijacked by HYDRA for all these years," Sam said. He glanced cautiously towards Steve, clearly trying to word his suggestion in a careful way that wouldn't put Steve on the defense.

"What if he's still HYDRA and is acting on HYDRA orders?" Steve asked, his voice dull.

Sam shrugged but didn't say anything while Natasha stared hard at the captain's face.

Slowly, Steve shook his head. "It's a thought. But I don't think so. I think there's a chance he remembers. I know he knew me. Back on the helicarrier…I know he did."

"Memories don't come racing back immediately," Natasha murmured.

She felt Steve's eyes on her, but she didn't look at him. He only knew the bare minimum of her past. Even though she'd leaked her own damn files to the Internet, he hadn't read them. She didn't know how she knew, but she did. Maybe it was in the way that he looked at her, so steady and unwavering, the farthest possible thing from blaming her. Maybe it was how he didn't treat her like a gentle, damaged bird. Maybe it wasn't anything differently he did at all. But Natasha knew he hadn't looked, and for that, she gave him silent thanks.

But she was right. From personal experience, she knew that memories didn't come back all at once; they trickled in. They flashed. They exploded. They leaked. They didn't just come back because one familiar line triggered something in someone's head. They came back whenever they did, and sometimes they didn't come back at all.

Natasha was never under any false illusions about her past. She'd always been honest with herself, as had everyone else she'd ever worked with. Out of everyone else she knew, she was the most honest about what had happened to her as a part of the Red Room, as a part of the KGB. Even so, her memories weren't completely there. She'd been able to shake most of them free, but she knew there were memories she didn't have and would most likely never have again. Or at least she'd thought that. Until Wanda.

She had known about her graduation ceremony. Even after she'd graduated, she'd remembered it and known that it'd happened. But she hadn't been able to remember it. She remembered the before, and she remembered the after, and years later, she'd learned that that was what happened to protect minds from cracking after traumatic events. Bits and pieces lingered in her mind, but the actual event had consistently remained buried beneath a fog she'd been happy to let lie over her view line to the past.

Then she'd run into Wanda, and Wanda had sent red tendrils into her head, and Natasha had remembered everything. She remembered the pain, the fear, the smell of blood. She remembered it all. Swallowing, she tried to force the memory from her head as she sat there in the quinjet thinking about all of this. Why she'd chosen now to deal with issues she'd been pushing out of her head as forcefully as she pushed her memories out she had no idea, but she was thinking dangerous things, and she couldn't afford to.

"That's true," she realized Sam was saying.

"I know it's true," Steve agreed. "I just don't think Buck's there for HYDRA business. If he were, he wouldn't have disappeared."

"No one has any idea where he is," Natasha said. "Not even our inside sources within HYDRA."

"So you have inside sources inside HYDRA and haven't told me?" Sam asked, looking mildly surprised. He looked back and forth between their faces and shook his head. "I don't even know why I'm surprised anymore. I should be used to this, shouldn't I? Yeah. I should be used to this."

"It's been close to a year since the fall of SHIELD," Steve said. He looked over at Natasha. "Things have changed."

"Yes," she replied without looking away, her thoughts everywhere but laser-focused all at once. "They have."

"Agent Barton?"

Clint looked up from his bow that he'd just started cleaning, and he saw Wanda Maximoff standing in the doorway. She looked nervous and unsure of herself, but she didn't look completely out of place, either. Once she saw she had his attention, she took a few steps forward.

"Hey," he greeted. "Clint, by the way. You can call me Clint."

"Natasha said that that was your name," Wanda replied, her voice soft and still a little hesitant. Her eyes darted to the bow, and she pointed towards it with a loose hand that was more like a gesture than an actual point. "Your bow. It is important to you?"

"Yes." Clint glanced back at his bow and found himself smiling a little as he looked at it. "It's very important to me. It's my weapon of choice and my most trusted friend."

"You can use other weapons, though?" She crossed a little closer.

"Yeah, in order to be a SHIELD agent, you have to be well-versed in all kinds of weapons. I know how to use more than I could list off the top of my head, honestly." He shrugged a little and looked back at her, curious as to what she was getting at.

"Your arrows." She pointed towards his quiver now. "Do you make them?"

"I'm pretty much the person in charge of designing all of them, but Stark or someone else makes them." He narrowed his eyes just a little bit out of deepened curiosity. "Why?"

"How did you get that one arrow to do that thing?" She tapped her forehead, and Clint suddenly realized that she was talking about the mind-warping arrow he'd used on her the first time she'd attacked the team. He wasn't sure if he should feel embarrassed or matter of fact about it, but he cleared his throat and shifted his quiver a little.

"It's kind of an electric shock more than anything," he said. "I got the idea after I went through my own little bout of mind control."

"You didn't want it to happen again," Wanda replied, finishing sentence for him. Clint stared at her with cool eyes, and after a few silent moments, he nodded.

"You could say that," he admitted.

Wanda sat down on the end of the bench on the opposite side of him, and she frowned a little. "Where is Natasha?"

"She was called on a mission. She should back soon, though." Clint lowered his bow without taking his eyes off of her. He didn't distrust her, but he wasn't entirely sure he trusted her, either. If anything, she reminded him of a kid sister he'd never had, and he wasn't sure how to handle a kid sister.

"You are important to Natasha," Wanda said suddenly. Clint noticed that she hadn't asked him—she'd stated it—and when he paused, he found that she was looking at him straight on without that same nervousness and apprehension she'd had in her eyes earlier. "I saw it in her head. When I showed her her fears. I saw you there."

Clint paused for another few moments. Natasha hadn't told him that. Why hadn't she told him? That seemed like the kind of thing she wouldn't forget to share with him, and he knew Natasha—she didn't forget to share things. Frowning, he tilted his head to the side just a bit. "You saw me?"

"Flashback. A memory. To the Battle of New York." She pointed towards his quiver again. "She was the one who saved you from the ice god."

"Technically, he's a Frost Giant," Clint blithely corrected. When Wanda showed no reaction, he nodded a little. "Yeah. She was the one who got him out of my head. Nat and I have been partners for years."

"Your feelings…her feelings. They extend beyond partners," Wanda said, again her words being the farthest thing from a question. "You and Natasha are not just partners, Agent Barton."

"Clint," he corrected. "And…no. She's my best friend in the whole world."

At that, Wanda's face grew a little distant, and she looked out the massive window in front of her to where the rest of the world lay outside. Clint didn't think she was going to answer, and honestly, he was ok with that. He never felt the need for idle talk whenever he was with someone, and he was comfortable with sitting in silence with Wanda Maximoff, as much of a stranger as she was to him, but after a few moments, she spoke again. "You are lucky. She loves you deeply."

"I am," Clint quietly agreed.

"She's a good teacher."

Now he smiled a little. "She's that, too."

"She's been teaching me basic self-defense. Things on how to defend myself if anyone attacks me," Wanda said, her face a little funny now. "In case anyone gets around what I can do."

"How's that going?"

"Not my best work."

Finally, she smiled. It wasn't a huge smile, but it was still a smile. God, in a way, looking at her was a little like looking at Natasha when Natasha had first come into SHIELD. She hadn't been very big on smiling, and she'd been full of hesitant questions, too. The difference was that Natasha had wound up becoming such a key part of who Clint was that he couldn't imagine breathing in a world where Natasha didn't exist, and Wanda would wind up becoming a team member whom he trusted and would trust to have his back. Hell, she already was a team member—she'd helped take down Ultron. She was a full-fledged Avenger as far as he was concerned. "But I'm learning."

"Well, that's what's important," Clint offered up, which got a shrug from her. Her eyes went back to the bow.

"So Natasha isn't here," she said. "But I want to learn more. Teach me how to shoot a bow and arrow."

Clint followed her gaze to the bow and then back at her. "You sure about that?"

"No. But I want to learn." She paused for half a second. "I need something to do. I need something to keep my mind busy."

And then Clint knew. He suddenly understood why she was there, why she was asking him questions and talking to him. And he didn't blame her. God, he couldn't.

"Ok," he said. "Well…bows aren't really easy."

"For you they are," she countered.

"No. Not really. Not always."

She looked back at his face, her dark brown eyes curious and serious all at the same time. "Nothing ever is."

Understanding passed between them, and Clint handed her his bow. "Alright, you're going to want to get into a comfortable stance. A lot of your power comes from your stance."

He kept his voice calm and patient, speaking to Wanda the same way he'd speak to any other agent learning how to handle a bow and arrow. And as he helped teach her how to use a weapon they both knew she'd most likely never use or feel the need to pick up after this lesson, he thought back to what she'd said earlier about him showing up in the vision she'd given Natasha. Natasha hadn't told him about that part, just the bit about the Red Room. But the more he thought about it, the more he didn't blame her. Before she'd left, he'd told her that she knew what his darkest fear was, and he still believed it. She knew. However, he thought he'd known what hers was—he thought he'd known with the Red Room and everything that had happened to her, but after his talk with Wanda, after listening to her tell him about how he related to Natasha instead of ask, he realized he'd been wrong about Natasha's darkest fear.

But now he knew. God, he knew.