Shoutouts to so-lovely-and-i, AlexShah, Sara, Jo, Rosay Khann, Hummus and Peeta, Fandomonium473, MillyWidow, Anonymous, toinfinitymylove, JRastelliAuthor, lovlylobster, PiperPaigeP3, Archer2198 for reviewing!

First: So the elephant in the room is the fact that it's been two years since I last updated. First of all, if anyone is still reading this, thank you for sticking around! It's wild to think that I was 19 years old when I started this series, and I'm about to turn 28? Whether you've been reading since Girl, Compromised was a baby WIP or you've just now started the series, thank you for continuing to read, especially since it takes me literally years to update.

Second: A lot of MCU things have come out since I last wrote this, namely the Black Widow solo and the first few episodes of Hawkeye. My plan when I started writing this fic was to have Natasha go back and destroy the Red Room once and for all, but alas, the BW solo stole my completely unoriginal idea, so I've had to rework some things as to where I want this to go. Our fave assassins are still going to Russia to deal with her past, but I think what I now have planned is different enough to not be piggybacking off of the solo. As a reminder, this series is unfortunately no longer canon-compliant.

Third: Let me know what you think! Honestly, it's the continual comments y'all leave asking me for updates that keep me coming back to update...even if it, again, takes literally years for said update to happen. But I guess that's the end of the general housekeeping, so if you're still here, as always, enjoy! =)

Chapter 7

Clint scanned the list of restricted, classified documents Natasha had requested and then glanced up at her. "None of this makes sense."

"It's not supposed to," she replied. On the surface, she appeared nonchalant, but anxiety churned beneath the facade in a way that Clint picked up on instantly. "It doesn't need to make sense right now. You trust me, right?"

He gave her a look that made her hold her hands up in mock defense. In a way, the question was one they asked as a way to say, "I love you." It was an odd way to say the three small words they'd said numerous times throughout the years, but it was a part of their dynamic, as strange as it was. "You know better than to ask me that. I'm with you no matter what, even if this plan you've got seems sketchy."

"It doesn't seem sketchy. It is sketchy," she corrected. "If we're caught, it's automatically a dismissal, a trial, and probably imprisonment."

He let out a low whistle, eyes darting back down to the page peppered with Natasha's light handwriting. "Well, it's not like we haven't faced that before."

"Exactly. This is child's play."

Dates, places, and record numbers littered the smooth white stretch of paper in his hands, and he shook his head, trying to piece them all together. Just from what he could see, no easily noticeable pattern appeared. Locations, years, seasons, and more erratically crossed over each other and back again. "Right. Child's play."

"Want some tea?" Natasha asked, starting to stand. "I don't think I'll be able to sleep tonight."

"Yeah, sure," Clint absentmindedly replied. Suddenly, Natasha stumbled, and he was on his feet in an instant. "Nat? Nat? Are you ok?"

She closed her eyes and pressed the heel of her palm against her forehead, wincing. When he put his arm around her, she didn't even bother to struggle with him and insist she was fine. Instead, she simply let him guide her back down into her chair, his paralyzing gaze on her the entire time.

"Nat?"

Pain pulsed behind her eyelids and spread out over the top of her skull and through her brain. Red clouded her vision, and her heart clenched in fear and panic. She wanted to scream, to cling to Clint and beg him to put a bullet between her eyes if that's what would make the pain stop, but she couldn't open her mouth, couldn't breathe. If she made any sounds at all, she was clueless to them.

"Nat?" Panic filled Clint's voice. "Nat, talk to me."

And then without warning, the pain went away. Ruby images lingered like smoke between the surface of her eye and the inside of her eyelid, but the pain released her as quickly as it had gripped her, and a strangled sound choked its way out of her throat.

"Fuck," she gasped.

"Nat?"

"I'm ok, I'm ok, I'm ok." The words slid out so quickly they slurred, making her sound drunk. "Fucking hell."

"What happened?"

Natasha opened her eyes and met Clint's gaze. Worry and fear had been permanently implanted in the pores of his skin ever since they'd fought Ultron, and her heart broke to see how deeply he was scared in regards to her wellbeing. As much as she knew he loved her and would never stop worrying about her, she hated to see him in pain, especially when it had to do with something at which she was the center.

"Wanda," she murmured. "The effects are still here."

"Did you see anything?"

"No. Not this time."

Clint stared at her, watching her as she rubbed her eyes with the backs of her hands. "Whatever you want to do has to do with your past."

She stopped, lowered her hands, and sighed. "I guess I should've known you would figure it out."

"It wouldn't take a SHIELD agent to make the connection between seeing the Red Room in Wanda's vision and your sudden plan to take on some kind of personal task that could get us thrown in federal prison." He smiled slightly at her, a small offering in hopes of seeing her smile back. "Sometimes you think you're a lot harder to read than you really are."

Finally, Natasha's mouth twitched into something resembling a smile. "I guess dealing with my baggage isn't as surprising as I think it is."

"You're not the only one with baggage," Clint reminded her, eyes earnest as he reached out to take her hands in his. "I might not have Russian brainwashing in my back pocket the way you do, but I know a little bit about what it's like to deal with shit that's too heavy to carry alone."

"I don't like asking others to carry it with me," she said softly.

"I know. No one does. But that's why I'm here. You'd do it for me, right?"

"No."

"...what?"

"I'm kidding. Sorry. Trying to lighten the mood."

Clint sighed and squeezed her hands. "I appreciate your attempt to make things lighter, but sometimes your sense of humor needs some work."

Natasha waited a beat, and for a second, Clint thought she was about to lash out at him, but then she burst into genuine laughter. The sound rose up through her body, her head tilting backward and her hair brushing past her shoulders as she rode her laughter through its entirety. "Ok. Fine. You got me there. But if you ever let on to anyone else that I'm anything less than hilarious at all hours of the day, I'm requesting a new partner."

"In your dreams."

For a moment, everything felt normal. Bantering with Clint and talking shop made her feel like they were STRIKE Team: Delta again. They were young and carried fewer scars, eager to show off their skills as agents and weapons, prepared for any assignment, every challenge. If she pretended hard enough, she might be able to feel like they were the innocent agents they once were, but that time was gone and would never return. And had they ever been innocent? With blood drenching both of their past lives, it had been lifetimes since they had truly been innocent, but they had been so naive as to what lay ahead for them. Natasha wondered what the new Agent Romanoff would have said if she'd known that this was to be her future. Would she have been proud? Scared? Ready to take on the world? She had no idea, and honestly, she wasn't sure she wanted to know.

Even once Clint was done with gathering everything Natasha had asked for, he still had no idea what kind of plan she'd come up with. Nothing made any more sense than it had when he'd originally looked over the extensive list. He did, however, know that it was only a matter of time before someone at HQ received the alert that their system had been hacked. With each security system upgrade, someone always and eventually found a way to breach it, and this time, Clint was the culprit.

And Natasha had been right. If- when -he was caught taking these files, the repercussions would be brutal. He faced a lifetime in prison, stripped of all of his titles and protections, confined to a tiny room with no windows. No air, no space, no freedom. No Natasha. Getting these files for Natasha meant risking everything, but he hadn't thought twice about it. For Natasha, he would do everything, risk anything, even if it meant he would never see her again. The thought made him sick, creating a low, churning feeling in his stomach that threatened to expel itself, but he fought it back. Natasha had a reason for asking him to get these files, and if these files would help her deal with the effects of Wanda's powers, then that was all he needed to know.

"Boom." He dropped the flash drive in front of Natasha with a flourish. The device looked so small lying on top of the flat expanse of their dining room table, a tiny blip amongst a sea of domesticated, tamed wood. He'd built the table himself, something he'd been proud of and continued to brag about to everyone who came over. Dinners, mission strategies, game nights...so much had taken place on this table, and now it was a witness to yet another secret. "Done."

"Took you that long?" He opened his mouth to protest, but she flashed a small half-smile in his direction. "I'm kidding. Thank you."

"Everything ready to go?" His eyes darted over to the packed bags by the front door. Even though he liked to pack his own bags, Natasha knew him well enough to know the gear he needed and the clothes he wanted whenever they travelled.

She nodded, her hair falling briefly into her eyes before she tucked it back. "Should be. The sooner we get out of here, the better."

"Don't have to tell me twice."

"Neighbors will feed Noelle."

"Good." Clint glanced around the apartment to find the tiny grey cat they both loved so much, but he didn't find her. "She hiding?"

"Yeah, she never likes when we pack," she replied. She reached out and picked up the flash drive, holding it as if it were as breakable and delicate as a hummingbird skull. "She'll be ok."

"Ready to go?"

"Ready as I'll ever be." She met his eyes, and he paused for a moment, just looking at her. "What?"

"Don't kill me for asking, but are you sure you want to do this?" he asked. He nodded his head toward the flash drive. "Whatever you've got planned, I'm with you all the way-you know that. But I've gotta ask before we do this."

He expected a smart, biting response, but what he got instead surprised him. Her eyes warmed, and she took a step toward him, reaching out to brush a thumb against his cheek. "I'm sure. Thank you. For being with me and for asking."

Tilting his head into her touch, he nodded. "Of course. You know I'll help however I can."

She smiled, looking more like the Natasha she'd been before Ultron had entered their lives. "I know."

"So." He leaned forward and gave her a brief kiss on her forehead. "How are we making our escape? When do I get to know the plan?"

Natasha crossed to the front door where their bags lay in wait for their departure. "Soon. I promise. But until we get to a good point, we're going to do some driving."

His eyebrows went up, a silent question about whether the trackers were turned off on their cars and phones, and she nodded. Years of working together, knowing each other, and being in tune with the other's habits and thought processes fell into place in moments like this. A quirk of the eyebrow, a turn of the lips-they knew each other. Sometimes Natasha marveled at how she'd ever been able to let someone in, especially someone like Clint, but whenever she let herself really think about it, she wasn't all that surprised. Clint had been the first person to give her a second chance, and no matter how many years went by, she would never forget it. She couldn't. And as she thought about her past and what was about to come, what she was about to do, she hoped he'd give her another chance again. With everything tumbling in her mind, she knew she was going to need it.

By the time they were 50 miles out from Washington, Clint felt wired instead of exhausted, and Natasha teemed with energy beside him. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught her every now and then wincing and putting a hand to her temple as if a headache threatened her, as if it were taunting her with the very idea of an attack, but she never seemed to be hit by a full one. She'd had her feet on the dash for the last four miles, simply leaning back in the passenger seat and staring out of the window, when she spoke.

"I need to go back to where I came from."

Natasha's words plowed straight into Clint's brain with the force of a thousand trucks.

"What?" He considered pulling over, but the look on her face was so determined, borderline urgent, that he didn't dare. "To Russia? The Red Room?"

"Russia, yes. The Red Room, no. It doesn't exist anymore. We're going to where I grew up."

Clint processed what she was saying, glancing over at her every few seconds as his mind churned with this sudden shock. "Am I missing something? I thought you grew up in the Red Room."

Her face thoughtful, she shook her head but then paused. "Yes and no. Black Widow grew up in the Red Room, but Natalia Alianovna Romanova grew up somewhere else. Or at least she started to before she was taken."

"Ok," Clint said slowly. "You're talking about yourself in third person, which is always concerning."

"Natalia and Natasha are two different people," she replied, her voice giving nothing away. "You took me in when I was Black Widow, born from Natalia. I went by Natalia when I wasn't being a weapon, but I wasn't her anymore."

"Pardon me if this isn't the time to make a joke, but your cryptic Russianness is really coming out right now."

Natasha's eyes flashed over to him, annoyance and humor mixed in them, and she lightly shoved his elbow. "I'm trying to open up to you about my past."

"I know, I know. I'm sorry. I'm just...honestly, I'm floored. I've always known that I didn't know everything about you, which was in part to your memory of that time being wiped and files deleted, but I'm just trying to catch up. Sorry. Defense mechanism."

"Trust me, I understand. Everything that's come back…" Her voice trailed off as her eyes drifted out the window again, her gaze unfocused. "It's been a lot."

"Well, I want to help."

"Remember when SHIELD fell? How we went to the farm and stayed there to regroup and figure out what our next plan was?"

"Of course."

"Remember how you faced a lot of your demons there?"

Clint's hands gripped the wheel, and he steadied his breathing, wondering where the hell she was going with this line of questioning. "I wouldn't call them demons."

"They were demons."

Images of Barney flashed back across his mind. The last time he'd seen his brother, he'd threatened him. He'd been forced to confront many things about his childhood, his family, and well, himself. Even if he hadn't considered them demons, Natasha wasn't wrong to label them as such. Still, he hesitated to concede that fact to her, wanting to maintain a hold of something that belonged to him, that he felt was right.

"Tomato, potato." He tapped his thumb against the steering to force himself to loosen the tension that had crept into his shoulders. His childhood had that effect on him, much like Natasha's had on her-or what she'd known of her childhood. But now, he had the feeling that her childhood was much different from what she'd always thought she'd known.

"Well, that's what I want to do in Russia."

"Face your demons?"

"And keep them from coming back."

Clint didn't speak, again taking in everything she was saying. Her childhood. Her demons. Extermination. He was all too familiar with the desire that currently pulsed through her veins wanting to be let out. Of all people, he understood wanting to destroy the past so he could move forward, but he couldn't understand Natasha's past and would never be able to. Their individual traumas and ghosts were two exponentially different types of hauntings, and he had to resign himself to knowing that what he'd needed to do to move on from his wouldn't be the same that Natasha needed to deal with hers.

"Jesus," she sighed. She squeezed her eyes shut and rubbed them with the heels of her palms, feeling the itchiness of her recent insomnia irritating the backs of her eyelids. "How many times are we going to have to kill who we were?"

He frowned. "What do you mean?"

"Do you ever get tired of reinventing yourself? Or of dealing with all the fucked up things that have happened to you? How many times are we going to have to kill different versions of ourselves?" Natasha's eyes found his face in the darkness of the car and watched as the headlights of the cars passing them occasionally lit his features with a ghostly glow. She still couldn't believe she had never tired of looking at him. In fact, she'd learned as the years had passed that she constantly learned new things about his face. Each wrinkle, each scar, and each line was an epilogue of a story he'd gone through and left behind. As well as she knew his face, she would never know it in its permanent entirety.

"We're spies, Nat," he replied with a deep sigh. "It's part of the job."

"But that doesn't mean we have to like it. Besides, were we ever really prepared for it?"

Clint squinted as he thought about it. Had he? Had SHIELD fully prepared him for the life he'd been about to embark on when he'd agreed to join them? He couldn't remember, something that surprised him since he usually remembered those days with distinct clarity. Sure, Coulson had told him that his life would be completely different, that nothing would ever be the same. Clint had received the usual song and dance that organizations gave when they were wooing a new party, but he hadn't truly known what his life would become.

"I don't know," he admitted after a few moments. "I think we weren't given many options. Join SHIELD or go to prison. I don't think anything could have prepared us for either of those fates."

"Do you ever wonder what it would have been like if you hadn't joined SHIELD?" Natasha asked. She adjusted in her seat so that she could face him square on, placing him under her full, intense gaze.

"Christ, Nat, where's this coming from?" Clint asked. His brow furrowed as he shot her a concerned glance.

"I'm being serious."

"I know you are, and that's what worries me."

"Just for a second," she said impatiently. "Have you ever for a single second thought about what would have happened if you'd refused to join?"

"I mean, yeah, to some degree. But I'll be honest, I don't like thinking about it. Stuck in prison? Probably escaping and then being on the run, caught, rinse and repeat? Maybe I'm a party pooper, but that doesn't sound like a great time to me."

"But we wouldn't be in this situation," Natasha countered. "You never would've been controlled by Loki, and I never would've been forced to remember everything from my life."

"And I never would've met you," he countered back. "I don't know what you're trying to get at here. Would you prefer sitting in prison over this?"

"No," Natasha murmured, letting her head rest against the back of her seat. "I'm just...curious. It would be a different life."

"And water is wet."

Frustrated, she sighed again. "Never mind."

"Hey, hey, I'm sorry. I didn't...ok, here's how I see it. You're right that we've had to kill numerous versions of ourselves. Each past...it's like a different person, a separate state of being. And no, we weren't prepared or briefed that this was going to be our new life when we agreed to become SHIELD agents. How could anyone have foreseen what would happen? For so long, we were in a comfortable state. We had a routine. Listen to our handler, complete the mission, go home. No one ever could've known that HYDRA was brewing deep below the surface, metahumans existed, and space gods could be a part of a 'superhero' team that takes out sentient robots." He paused, looking over his shoulder and then changing lanes. "And to top it off, no one ever could've foreseen that two agents with fucked up pasts would be a part of that team with the Super Soldier, the man in a tin can, the space god, and the green bean man."

Natasha's mouth twisted as she held back a laugh. "The green bean man?"

"Yeah. Banner."

"I knew who you meant, I just...Jesus, Clint."

"Sorry. Humor remains the best defense mechanism for me."

"I know." She reached out and rested a hand on his leg, her touch warming him inside out better than any medication or hot toddy ever could. "God. Green bean man."

"Or whatever his name is."

"Pretty sure he's the Jolly Giant."

"Anyway, my point stands. No one could've predicted any of this."

"I know," she says again. "Even so, I wouldn't change my choices."

"No?"

"No." She took her hand back as she slipped a hair band off her other wrist in an attempt to put her hair in a ponytail. Her hair was still too short for it to be a real ponytail rather than a small stub at the base of her skull, but it did a relatively decent job of keeping the hair out of her face. "Like you said, I never would've met you. And without you, I don't like thinking about who I would've become."

"Nat?"

"Yeah?"

"I love you."

She smiled, her gaze gentle as she took a mental image of him that would stay with her forever. "I love you always."

Clint took a breath and straightened up in his seat. His spine popped as he stretched as best as he could, and he grunted. "I think I'm getting old, Nat."

"Calm down, old man. We still have a lot to do." She leaned down to where her bag was placed on the floor of the passenger side and unzipped it, digging around for a moment before pulling her laptop out. "You can't tap out on me just yet."

"I'm not! I'm just saying, I think I'm getting old."

Natasha reached into her pocket and produced the flash drive. As her laptop warmed up, she pushed the small piece into the USB part on the side and waited. "Well, are you young enough to listen to what the plan is?"

"I guess I can muster some youth up. Just for you."

"Then get ready. You're not going to like where we're going to need to go next."

"If you say Texas…"

"Oh my God, stop," she groaned. "Do you want to know the plan, or are you just going to keep riffing?"

"Sorry, I'm back. I'm listening. Hawkeye present."

"We need access to a plane since we can't use ours. I already tried overriding SHIELD's tracker, but I didn't have enough time to fully disable it. That being said, not a big issue because I know where we can get a plane that won't draw attention to us or be tracked back to either of us. At least, not immediately." Natasha began typing code into her laptop, and she paused for a moment to get past everything she needed to.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. But like I said, you're not going to like it."

"Why?"

"We're going to be seeing someone we haven't seen for a while. Someone who owes me a favor and knows it, even if certain circumstances might have made that impossible for a while. But seeing how said circumstances are not true, the favor is back on the table."

Frowning, Clint took his gaze off the road to look over at her. "I don't like where this is going."

"Yeah, you won't. I'm not a big fan of it, either, but we need the help."

"So, who is it? Who's got a plane?"

"How do you feel about saying hi to old friends?"

Possibilities as to whom Natasha was referring sparked through his brain, and his frown deepened with confusion. "It depends?"

"Friends we haven't seen in a very long time?"

"Still depends."

"Friends who were formerly co-workers."

"Vague."

"Friends whom we thought were dead."

Suddenly, it clicked, and a hot mixture of disbelief and anger flared up within him at the realization. "Natasha. No."

"It's time to face it, anyway."

"Nat."

"Clint."

"Just say it. Who are we going to see?"

Natasha smiled the brightest she had in a long time, especially since Ultron and Wanda Maximoff had crashed into their lives.

"We're going to see Coulson."