As the hot shower water cascaded down her body, the part of Natasha's mind that had never shaken off the Red Room scolded her. Clint Barton was a grown man, a highly trained soldier and assassin. If he wanted to wallow in misery and depression, she didn't have to stay and watch, it insisted. Leave him; leave behind the weak and helpless. No, Natasha shook her head as if it would dislodge the instinct that bubbled up from her Red Room past: don't leave him. Kill him.

Clad in her robe, she padded back into the bedroom. Clint had fallen back to sleep, his breathing steady but his brow still furrowed in pain and anxiety. She sat down on the bed, and her partner stirred, whimpering in his sleep. Clint tossed again in his sleep until his head lay cradled in her lap. He stilled as her porcelain hand gently stroked his hair. She gazed down through her lashes at Clint. All her Red Room training be damned, she knew she wouldn't abandon him, and she sure as hell wouldn't kill him. And she knew why.

Several years earlier in Kiev…

The Black Widow crawled out the ground level window, her head swiveling back and forth to verify that her escape had not been discovered yet. Ignoring the agony in her shoulder, she pushed herself up until she was able to stagger into a stand. She had to put some distance between herself and her captors, and she forced herself to run down the alley. She added slices on her nylon-clad feet to the tally of injuries. Two blocks later, she stumbled and fell, the road grit scraping skin from her knees. She put her good hand on the ground to leverage herself back up and…

"It's over, Widow," a voice said in Russian. The Black Widow raised her green eyes to find herself staring down the shaft of an arrow. She followed the length of the outdated weapon up to the bowman. Well-built, his eyes hidden behind mirrored sunglasses – American, she surmised. Not who she had been running from. Just her dumb fucking luck. She gets double-crossed and nearly crossed off, gets away, and runs into someone else who has her number. She steadfastly stared at him as she accepted her fate. Considering her training and line of work, it wasn't like she had expected to live long. She had resigned herself to this death and was starting to wonder why she was still breathing when the bowman spoke again. He cocked his head to the side, inspecting her. "You look like you've had a pretty bad day."

The Black Widow blinked. What the hell kind of assassination was this? "You could say that," she retorted dryly.

"From what I saw, your Russian masters rented you out to a couple of Ukrainian mobsters who decided it was cheaper to kill you then pay you after you eliminated all of the competition. That about right?" She blinked again. What was the point of all this chatter? He stared at her expectantly, and she finally bobbed her head in a tiny nod.

"Tell you the truth, I'm not even sure it was a double cross. I think you were set up by your bosses."

"You lie," she hissed, but the words felt false as soon as she uttered them. The puzzle pieces snapped together, and she knew that his observation had to be true. She'd gone from prize pupil to problem over the past year. Her dangerously clever mind had started applying the Red Room's principles against her training, and though the Black Widow tried desperately to conceal her traitorous thoughts, she feared she was unsuccessful. She was a tool who had outlived her usefulness, and today's mission was an attempt to discard her.

He shook his head. "No reason for me to lie. So you're just a rat in a trap, aren't you?" He didn't wait for her answer. "You want to get out of that trap?"

It was pure survival instinct that made her nod.

"Okay." He lowered his bow and put it over his shoulder. With one hand on a knife on his belt, he extended the other one to help her up. "Name's Clint. You try to kill me or escape and the deal is off." As the bowman pulled her to her feet, they heard pounding footsteps and angry voices shouting in Ukrainian. The Black Widow allowed her new ally to pull her between two dumpsters. He had his bow back in his hands in a flash, an arrow nocked on the string. He took out the first two men into the alley, but as ten more poured in, the archer was outnumbered. The men fanned out, pinning them down, and the bowman spent as much time dodging bullets as he did firing.

"Give me your sidearm," Natasha hissed behind him, transitioning into English. "I have an idea." Without hesitation, her rescuer/captor tossed it to her. He took out another one of their attackers with an arrow to the throat. "Keep them distracted," she instructed.

Natasha's shoulder screamed as she slithered between the brick wall and the back of the dumpster, but she gritted her teeth and pressed on. She emerged low to the ground and on the goons' flank, taking three down in her first barrage of fire. When she and the archer were the only ones left standing, she sagged against the dumpster.

"Okay, that's going to attract some attention. We gotta go." she vaguely heard the bowman say, and the next thing she knew she was being pulled up behind him on a motorbike. She clung to her new ally as he navigated the bike down alleys. She closed her eyes against the pain she was feeling.

The Black Widow opened her eyes again when the motorbike throttled down. Clint parked next to old stone church. He stepped off the bike and waited for her. She stood gingerly, and he looked her over. "You look rough," he whistled. Her eyes met his, and she was surprised to find them almost…concerned.

"I dislocated my shoulder," she admitted.

"You know what we need to do then." She leaned heavily on him as they entered the candle-lit church. They found a stone bench, and she lay on it. He laced his calloused fingers through hers and pulled steadily until she finally felt a wash of relief. He helped her sit and gave her a crooked smile. "So, looks like we're going to be spending the some together. What should I call you?"

The Black Widow blinked. "Call me?" No one called her anything but the Black Widow or her cover since she was a child.

"Yeah. Your file says your name is Natalya Romanova, but what do you like to be called?"

She stopped herself before she confessed she didn't know. She discarded her given name, alternately spat and cooed at her by her masters over the years, as well as the diminutives she vaguely remembered her parents using. "Call me Natasha," she instructed, settling on a name that she had never before used.

"Okay," he nodded, and flashed that crooked little grin again. "Nice to meet you, Natasha. Come on, there's a car behind the church." He indicated a side door with a tip of his head.

The Black Widow surveyed this Clint one more time, and then plunged ahead. There was no going back from this decision. "There's a tracker in my shoulder. I can't get to it myself. We have to get it out or they'll find us." She wasn't supposed to know about the tracker, but even the Red Room itself sometimes underestimated its students. When he didn't spring to action, she hissed, "I need you to cut it out." She brushed her hair out of the way and offered her back to him.

"Okay," he whispered with a nod. He held the tip of his pocket knife in one of the candle flames.

"It's on the right side, between my shoulder blade and my spine."

"I think I see the scar. Here, right?" She felt his finger press lightly, and she nodded. Then she felt the knife slice her flesh. The blade tip probed, and then she heard something drop to the bench. "I got it." She listened as he fished a bandage out of his vest and applied it to the cut. "It's done," he breathed. When she was standing, he dropped a tiny receiver onto the stone floor. "I'm assuming you'll want to do the honors," he commented.

She gazed at him quizzically.

"I mean you'll want to smash it." The Black Widow raised her foot and brought her heel down hard on the device and then looked up at Clint. He nodded approvingly, and she felt the corners of her lips lift a tiny bit. "Welcome to your new life, Natasha."

That wasn't it, of course, she smiled ruefully to herself as she came back to the present. When Clint offered her an escape, her motivation was survival. She didn't trust Clint or SHIELD or the U.S. government, but she reasoned they couldn't be worse than the Red Room. And the Red Room was trying to kill her. There was still a long road before she saw Clint and SHIELD as anything other than the lesser of two evils.