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Surprise? Again?

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Chapter 9

"So it looks like you guys are still together." Coulson broke the silence, and for a moment, all Clint could do was stare at him in disbelief.

"That's all you have to say?" he asked, incredulous. "After all this time, that's it?"

Coulson shook his head and leaned back against his desk again, adjusting the jacket of his suit as he did so. "No. That's not all I have to say. I just thought that would be an easy opener."

"Just like how you planned all our missions," Clint murmured. "An easy opener, then as we went along, the difficult stuff came into play."

"I guess I have a pattern." Coulson smiled at Clint, but when the archer didn't return the smile, he dropped it and suppressed a sigh. "You're angry. I understand."

"I'm a lot of things." Clint stretched his legs out in front of him, eyeing Coulson with suspicion. "I can acknowledge that you did the right thing following orders and still be angry."

"You think I did the right thing?"

"Probably," Clint begrudgingly admitted. "But I can still be angry."

"I know. You keep saying it." Coulson waited for Clint to speak, but his former agent remained silent, the both of them surveying each other. "If it makes any kind of difference, I'm sorry this secret hurt you. And Natasha. I'm sorry it hurt the both of you."

Clint started to protest that neither of them was hurt, but the childishness of it stopped him. He was too damn old, and Coulson knew him too damn well for him to act like Coulson's absence hadn't hurt. Instead, he nodded and cleared his throat. "Thanks."

"I mean it."

"I know." Clint ran a hand over his face, rubbing his eyes as he started to feel just how much sleep he hadn't gotten. The past 24 hours had been emotionally tumultuous, and he hadn't let them catch up to him until just then. "To tell you the truth, I'm just glad you're not dead."

Coulson smiled, genuine and bright. "Thank you. I'm glad I'm not, either. I'm also glad you're not dead."

Clint grunted and let out a short, self-deprecating laugh. "There've been some close calls."

"So I've heard."

"You've been keeping up with us?" Clint didn't bother keeping the curiosity out of his voice. He hadn't expected Coulson to have tracked their movements, but he also wasn't really surprised as he thought about it.

"It's impossible not to when you're all over the news constantly. But even if you weren't, I still would've kept asking my contacts."

Clint raised an eyebrow. "Your contacts? Maria Hill?"

"I have my people," Coulson lightly replied, giving the confirmation that Clint needed.

"She's going to need a raise for all the intel she gives everyone about each other."

"Either that, or we'll need to fire her for knowing too much."

For the first time since Clint had faced Coulson, he let out a real laugh. "She'd take all of us down with her."

"I guess she can stick around then."

"She's been a good handler. She's kind of doing the handling for the Avengers right now, but I'm guessing you knew that."

"A little."

"I figured."

A surprisingly comfortable silence passed between the two, and if Clint pretended hard enough, he could almost convince himself that he was 25 again, receiving his latest mission and listening to what he was supposed to do. "Remember the first mission you sent me on?"

"How could I forget?" Coulson groaned, an amused grimace on his face. "You were so cocky and wouldn't shut the hell up over the comms the entire time."

"The mission was successful, though. I passed with flying colors," Clint pointed out.

"You went completely off script and did your own thing," Coulson corrected.

Clint laughed and shrugged, holding his hands up in surrender. "But I got it done. Was definitely worth it to see how pissed you were when I got back."

"Yeah, I was pissed. Do you know how many people I would've had yelling at me if things hadn't turned out the way they were supposed to?"

"I can only imagine."

"Exactly. You can only imagine." Coulson's eyes drifted to the doorway of his office through which Natasha had passed on her way to the bathroom. "And I remember the first mission you two were sent on."

"Ah. Yes. And I stupidly got shot with a tranquilizer like some untrained rookie, and Nat had to haul my sorry ass down." Even though it wasn't Clint's proudest moment, he smiled at the memory. He and Natasha had pain and trauma in their past lives, a lot of it they had shared together, but they also had memories that warmed him in a way that no physical heat ever could. They had been so young on their first mission together, so young and inexperienced in ways they couldn't have understood then. "She had long hair then. The beginning of STRIKE Team: Delta."

"The beginning of the Avengers," Coulson countered.

Clint wrinkled his nose and scoffed, giving his former handler a disdainful wave of the hand. "You know we're the least valuable members on that team. With all the superpowers we don't have and everything."

"Don't sell yourselves short. There's a reason Fury put you all together."

"Just like there was a reason behind letting us think you were dead for so long?" Clint resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

"See, you're getting the hang of it."

"I'm too old and have been here too long to not get it by now."

Uncharacteristically, Coulson snorted. "Oh, please. Don't talk to me about being old. I've been here much longer than you, and I'm also older than you, too."

"Tell that to how old my body feels," Clint groaned, stretching out a leg in front of him to get it to wake back up. "Feels like I've been through a meat grinder and back." He waited for some of the feeling to come back into his muscles when he looked at the door to Coulson's office. "It's been a while since Nat left."

"It has," Coulson slowly replied. "Is everything ok?"

"That's the million dollar question." Clint frowned and stood up. "She's...been a little off. That run-in with Wanda Maximoff has thrown her off track, so I'm going to go check on her just to make sure she's ok."

Without waiting for Coulson's response, he started down the hall and to the door that Coulson had described as the bathroom's location. He lifted a hand and knocked on the door, quiet and light. "Nat?"

He listened as hard as he could, but he couldn't hear a response from within. "Natasha? I can't hear you if you're replying. Are you ok?" Silence continued, and Clint's heart jolted with fear. "Nat, I'm opening the door. Ok? I'm coming in."

It's just my hearing aids, he told himself.

I didn't hear her reply, he thought.

She's ok, he needed to believe.

The knob felt foreign in his hand as he twisted it and pushed the door open. He was so focused on what he was going to find inside that his physical movements and the things he touched didn't register in his brain.

He saw her hair before he saw her. Natasha's red hair spread out across the tile floor caught his attention first, her body lying prostrate away from the door, and before he could tell if she was even conscious, he ran to her. His voice exploded out from him as he called out to her, unable to hear the pure panic that colored her name. "Nat!"

Her eyes were closed, locking her away from him, and Clint couldn't tell if she was unconscious or if she were forcing her eyes to stay shut. His hands brushed over her face, her hair, her shoulders as he looked for any physical signs that indicated what was happening. He knew he wouldn't find them, but he had to look, anyway. He knew that whatever Natasha was going through, it was mental and because of Wanda's powers.

"Nat, look at me. Open your eyes." His fingers found her pulse, and he caught the rise and fall of her breathing, an indication that she was alive. Panic rooted itself deep inside Clint's chest, and for the briefest moment, he couldn't speak. His mind flashed back to every time he'd come across her lying on the ground-stunned from a blow to the head, losing blood from a bullet wound, knocked back by an explosion-he remembered every flash of fear he'd felt seeing her like this.

"Clint?" Coulson's voice came from behind him. "Oh, shit."

"Come on, Natasha." Clint patted her cheek, not a slap but not a gentle tap, in an effort to rouse her. "Open your eyes. Wake up."

Behind him, Coulson was calling for medical backup, and Clint heard himself tell Coulson to call them off, but later, he wouldn't remember doing so. He wouldn't remember anything except for Natasha and how focused he was on bringing her back. He would remember how pale and still she was. How utterly drained and empty. Her face was devoid of color, and he was struck by the sharp contrast of her bright hair against the pure pale white of her skin. The healthy pink flush of her cheeks was gone, and Clint's chest tightened as he thought that frankly, she looked as though she were dead.

Suddenly, Natasha's eyelids fluttered, and she put a hand over her eyes to shield the fluorescent light from her eyes. She made a strangled sort of sound and winced, her heart rate picking up.

"Nat? Are you with me? Are you ok?" Instinctively, Clint moved so that his body blocked the light from blinding her as much, and he took her face in his hands. "Look at me. Hey, hey, hey. Slow."

"Shit," she murmured, her features still contorted in a wince.

"Natasha?" Coulson knelt by her side, and she blinked in confusion.

"Coulson?" she asked.

"Natasha." Clint drew her gaze back to him. "Do you know where you are?"

"Finding a plane. Bathroom. Got a headache. Went down." She started to sit up, and Clint moved to help support her. Shakily, she waved him off. "I'm fine. Really."

"This a common occurrence?" Coulson asked with a worried glance in Clint's direction.

"Just fighting some ghosts." She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her palms. "Shit."

Coulson looked back and forth between the two agents, his expression difficult to read as he took the both of them in. "What's going on?"

"Let us use your plane, and I'll tell you when I come back." Natasha attempted a smile. Shaky and pale, she looked anything but fine. "I've got it handled."

Coulson's mouth twisted to the side in an unconvinced frown. "That's not much of a comfort."

"I'm handling it," she replied. She caught sight of Clint's face and took a breath. "We're both handling it."

Beneath the two men's gazes, she pulled herself to her feet, steady and careful where she placed her hands and how she got her balance back. Both Clint and Coulson were staring at her as if waiting for her to collapse back down to the floor, and she tried to swallow down the irritation she felt building up inside her. "I'm serious. I'm fine. See? I'm standing."

Coulson crossed his arms over his chest and narrowed his eyes at her, studying her. "You can take my plane."

Relief passed over Natasha's face, and she offered him an unsteady, shaky smile. "Thank you."

"I'm not letting you use it because I think you've got whatever's going on here under control. I owe you from Dublin, and if this is what you need right now, then you can use it. But Natasha…" His voice trailed off, and he sighed. In that moment, Natasha saw how he'd aged over the years since she'd last seen him. She saw each new wrinkle, every new scar, all the worries and fears he'd felt and weathered. She saw him as he truly was right now, rather than as the handler she'd remembered him being when she'd first started at SHIELD. "Come back. Ok? Come back."

A whirl of emotions passed over Natasha's face, and she surprised everyone, including herself, by stepping forward and wrapping her arms around Coulson in a hug.

"I will."

Natasha wasn't ok. Clint knew it. Coulson knew it. Natasha herself knew it, despite her cool assertions in front of Coulson that she was fine. Every time she blinked, she was bombarded with fresh images, and the dull threat of a headache clung to the backs of her eyes. Nausea rolled in waves within her stomach, but she forced herself to give nothing away. The sooner that she and Clint were out of there, the sooner she could be alone. The sooner they would be on the way to Russia. The sooner she would be to fighting her ghosts.

Armed with a location and the knowledge of a short ride ahead of them, Clint and Natasha left Coulson's temporary homebase. He hadn't said anything about the current mission he had his team working on, and neither of them had asked, knowing that he wouldn't tell them any more about what he was doing than they would tell him about their plans. Natasha knew Clint was worried about her; even though he tried to hide how many times he was glancing over at her to check on her, she caught every one.

"You want to know what happened," she said after a few moments of silence. Clint's shoulders lowered as he slowly exhaled, planning what he was going to say next. She didn't look any better than she had looked on the bathroom floor, and he was wracked with worry. But he knew her well enough to know that he couldn't show it. If he showed it, she would hate him and shut down, and that was the last thing he wanted her to do.

"I do. But I know if I ask you, it'll annoy you, so I'm hoping you'll tell me whenever you're ready."

She caught a quick glimpse of herself in the reflection of the car's window and suppressed a grimace. She didn't need Clint to tell her she looked bad. Ever since she'd woken up on the floor of the bathroom, she had felt off kilter and unbalanced. Her hands shook slightly, and she pressed them between her knees, hoping they'd stop. "Do you ever think you know something, and then you find out that you really don't?"

"All the time," Clint said with a light snort.

"I'm talking about something you thought you knew. Deep down. Would swear on your life with it," she protested. "I've been brainwashed and had fake memories put in my head multiple times throughout my life, and each time I've uncovered the truth or broken out of it, I feel like someone pushed me off a cliff without any kind of safety, and I have to find out how to land without dying."

"Well, sure," he replied, uncertain where she was going with her question. "SHIELD being infiltrated by HYDRA is the first thing that comes to mind. Everyone who I'd ever come in contact with there who wound up being exposed as HYDRA. Is that what you mean?"

"Kind of." She let her gaze drift from the passenger side window to the front view outside the windshield. "That's actually a good example."

"I still can't find it in myself to trust the people I work with. Aside from you."

"Not even the rest of the Avengers?" Natasha asked and turned her curious eyes onto him.

"I...want to," he replied, his voice slow. "I feel like if I could trust anyone, it would be the team. But look at this whole thing with Ultron. Look at how fast that fell apart. And because of Tony thinking he could just fix everything."

"I think they all have good hearts."

Clint's short laugh sounded more like a bark than the self-deprecating laugh it was. "Really? After everything you've lived through, you still believe in that?"

"I want to," she said, repeating his response from just a couple moments before. "And I think you do, too."

He made a noncommittal sound and shrugged. "Maybe SHIELD falling fucked me up more than I thought."

Natasha didn't answer, and he reached a hand out to her, a peace offering. She took it and laced her fingers through with his. She wanted to tell him what had flashed through her head back in the bathroom, but she didn't know how to find the words. How could she tell him about something she couldn't even understand herself? Her hands still shook, but if Clint noticed her tremors, he didn't say anything to her, for which she was grateful.

"I want to believe in heroes." Her voice was quiet as it filled the car. "I want to believe that we're the kind of people the world thinks we are. Well...not sure how fond of us they're feeling right now post-Sokovia, but I want to believe in people being good."

"It's a nice thought," Clint said, diplomatic and careful in his reply. "I want to believe it, too."

"At some point, you believed in heroes when you were little, right?" she asked. She watched him frown in thought, watching as he went back over his memories.

"Yeah, I guess. I enjoyed the escape of it. Always kind of wished Batman or Superman would take Barn and me away from our parents, so then it was disappointing when they didn't."

She squeezed his hand a little and brought it to her lips, kissing the backs of his knuckles. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be." He shook his head as if to shake the memories out of his brain. "But what's this all have to do with what happened, Nat? I'm trying to follow."

"We need to get to Russia," she said aloud, but it was clear by the distant tone of her voice that she was speaking more to herself than to him. Clint knew when she was done talking about something, and so he stopped asking. Asking Natasha questions after she'd made it obvious that she wasn't in the mood to answer was dangerous, and as much as he wanted her to talk to him about what had happened, he loved and respected her too much to force it. So he didn't. Instead, he drove.

It wasn't long until Clint and Natasha arrived at the coordinates Coulson had given them. Natasha's eyes took in the sight of the open field around the small barn that housed the plane, and she was reminded of Clint's farm. Even now, she felt surprised to think about how much she loved being on his farm. If anyone had ever told her that her life would someday include being on a farm and being happy, she would have never believed them. And yet, as she looked around, thoughts of Clint's farm filling her head, she felt an odd sense of peace that she noticed she didn't feel many other places.

"Nat? Hello?" Clint nudged her, pulling her out of her own head. "You ok?"

Concern colored his features so intensely that Natasha reached out to put a reassuring hand on his arm. "Yes. I'm fine. Sorry. Looking at the field out here got me thinking about being back in Iowa."

"My fields look better," Clint said with a grin, hoping to get a smile in return out of her. She rewarded him with a ghost of a smile that was nowhere as bright as her usual smile was, but Clint was happy to see her smile at all. "Sorry. Can't help feeling competitive."

"I see that," she replied, her expression wry. "Hey. Come on, let's get the plane ready to go. We've got a lot of ground to cover."

She started toward the barn, Clint behind her, and they easily bypassed the security measures that Coulson had given them the codes for. Sure enough, once they swung the doors to the barn open, Coulson's super secret plane sat inside. Clint walked around it, inspecting it, and he let out a low whistle. "This is nice."

"If this thing gets damaged, he's never going to let us hear the end of it." Natasha put a hand on the side of the plane. "You know how he gets with Lola."

Clint groaned, and even though he was on the other side of the plane where Natasha couldn't see him, she knew he was rolling his eyes. "God, don't remind me. I never thought I'd miss hearing him go on about that car, but I actually kind of do."

As they prepared the small plane to leave, Natasha felt comfortable in the familiar routine they had together. They rarely needed to speak anymore when working, and that came from the years they'd been together both in and out of the field. Sometimes she even found herself wondering if they could read each other's minds, just unconsciously doing so. But in reality, she knew that the bond they shared was something that went beyond what they did. Natasha knew Clint deep within the cells of her blood, and as she grappled with what had shaken her so severely she still couldn't keep her hands from trembling, she felt like he was the only thing she completely knew to be true.

Natasha stopped working on the plane and stood still, struck by the realization. What she thought she had known about her life before the Red Room had been blown into shattered, windswept pieces that only revealed the lies she had been fed. Clint was the one constant who had stayed throughout everything. She knew that no matter who she was, which version of herself she slid into that day and the next day and the day after that, he would be there.

"Clint?" she said suddenly.

"Yeah?"

"Am I doing the right thing?"

She heard him walk around the tail of the plane to where she was standing, and she turned to face him, unable to keep a pained look off her face. Clint paused, taking in the sight of her, and then he folded her into a quiet hug. "Yeah."

"Ok." Natasha closed her eyes. Wrapped up in Clint's familiar arms, her breathing steadied, but her heart rate picked up with anticipation of what lay ahead for the both of them. When they landed, "I just needed to hear you say it."

"Well, you're doing the right thing. I don't know what your whole plan is, but I know I'll follow you wherever you go. Nat...just give me the orders, and I'm there." He leaned his head against the top of hers and breathed in the scent of her shampoo he loved so much. Over the years, she'd never changed the kind of shampoo she used in her personal life, and he loved this kind of unexpected steadiness from her.

"Thank you." Natasha's heart continued to pound, and she focused on getting herself together. If Clint was going to follow her, she needed to be at her best. She needed to be the strong Avenger and hero that the world believed her to be, and she gripped him to her a little harder.

"Tasha," Clint murmured against her hair, and her heart broke.

"Clint."

Clint's gaze remained soft as Natasha pulled back enough so that she could look him directly in the eye. She pressed her lips into a thin, hard line, and her eyebrows knit together in a concentrated frown that worried Clint even more.

"I remember." Her voice was even and steady, far steadier than she felt inside, and her eyes held a determination that he hadn't seen since before Ultron.

"What?" he asked.

"I remember," she repeated. "Back in the bathroom...when you found me...I remembered more."

Clint returned her frown, confusion and concern mixing across his features as he took in what she was saying. "What do you remember?"

Natasha held his gaze and felt her heart rate pick up yet again over the words that were about to leave her lips. Once she told him, once she spoke these words into existence, she would never be able to take them back. She would never be able to keep these memories just to herself.

"I remember my parents."