A/N Hey, everyone. I'm really sorry for the slow update time, I've been away and wifi-less for much of the holiday period, so I haven't been able to get on with this story. Also, if anyone cares, I have figured out the time-period for this fic at it's current point. I'm going by some info from Cap 2, where the computer-brain Arnim Zola mentioned that Natasha was born in 1984. By this logic, the first chapter was set in 1998 and, from chapter two onwards, it's 2004 and Natasha and Clint are twenty and twenty and twenty-three respectively. Clint's birthday wasn't given, but I figured he probably wasn't much older than Natasha. Also, a massive thanks to all you lovely people who have followed, favourited and reviewed. You guys are the best and your feedback for this fic has been so awesome! Happy new year!

She was going to kill him. More than that, she was going to kill him painfully and enjoy it, because he had probably blown any chance she had ever had of getting into SHIELD, or at least of not being

shot by the first agent to step through the door of this stupidly small safe house.

Unfortunately, killing him would mean having to deal with having the whole of SHIELD on her back, which she could live without, to be honest. It had nothing to do with the fact that she was kind of getting used to him, and that killing him would mean killing the boy who had sewn up her knife wound in Germany. The boy who had saved a girl with two guns pointed at his head, a girl he had never met before.

No. It had nothing to do with that.

Clint, entirely oblivious to the death glares he was reviving, had returned to his laptop. It took twenty minutes of silence for him to realise he might not be Natalia's current favourite person. She heard the soft click of his computer lid being shut and, a few moments later, heard him flop down next to her on the sofa.

"What's wrong?" When Natalia didn't answer, Clint was quiet for a moment. "Hey, I realise this is pretty overdue, but how's your shoulder?" Natalia stared at him.

"My shoulder?" Clint nodded.

"Uh-huh."

"The shoulder that got stabbed six years ago?" He shrugged, rubbing the back of his neck.

"Well, it's not like we've had much of a chance to catch up since." Natalia rolled her eyes, forgetting that she was trying not to do that. Why was proving him wrong so hard?

"So," Clint continued, smiling at her, "You didn't answer."

"It's fine." she replied, then grudgingly added, "You did a pretty good job with the stitches." Clint smirked.

"'Course I did." The reply got him another eye-roll, but it made her wonder about something she hadn't actually thought about since the first few weeks after meeting Clint in Berlin.

"Were did you learn to do that, anyway?" Clint looked a little surprised, which wasn't really unexpected. This was the first thing resembling a personal conversation they'd had so far.

"What, the stitches and stuff? I just sort of picked it up, see. I grew up in the kind of places people got injured in a lot."

"Places people got knifed in?" Clint grinned, getting up from the sofa.

"You'd be surprised, Nat." Ugh. Again with the nicknaming. "Anyway, the extraction team is meeting us a few miles from here. We should get going, 'cause I'm always late and you gotta make a good first impression."

"What happens after that? After we meet up with your handler?" Clint shrugged.

"I dunno, really. We go back to SHIELD. I get yelled at and we show them that we're better off with you on our side."

"As opposed to with a bullet in my head."

"Way to look on the bright side, Natasha. But yeah, in simple terms."

"Who's 'them' anyway?" She was stood beside him now, as he started to pack.

"'Them'? Oh, Fury, I guess. Phil first, though. He should be okay, though. He's the guy who recruited me. Then Fury, then the Council. They're the big guys."

"Have you ever met them?"

"No," Clint was gave her a funny look. "How come you're being so chatty all of a sudden?"

"Apparently I'm intimidating. Is this any better?" She replied, drily. He made a face.

"Actually, it's kind of creepy, but that's only because I've seen you being normal. And by normal, I mean scary." He was stuffing clothes into a bag, now, rummaging in cupboards to check he wasn't leaving anything behind.

"Oh, you're gonna want these." Natalia looked up to see Clint holding her hand-guns out to her. "You have to promise not to shoot any of the extraction team people."

"Even if they're annoying?" Clint grinned again.

"Not even then. They'll probably take them off you, anyway." Natalia had expected that, but her guns felt like so much of a part of her that, when they weren't in her hands or holsters, it always felt like there was a weight missing from her person. Another side effect of her training. Maybe Barton was the same way with his bow. He was packing it away now, carefully inspecting each arrow before storing them in his black quiver.

Clint looked up, catching her watching him. He gave her a quick smile, one that allowed herself to return, and headed over to the door.

"You got everything, Natasha?"

Packing had hardly been difficult for her. She was still wearing his clothes, her own ones stored in his bag. Besides her guns, she had nothing but herself to take from the tiny safe house. Even then, there was the question of how much of herself she was leaving behind. Maybe just enough to make her someone the Red Room could not claim to be the creators of.

"Yes." She replied softly, standing up and following him out of the door. "I have everything."