Both Natalia and Clint squinted into the bright mid-day sun when they stepped outside, Natalia holding a hand up to her eyes while Clint locked up the safe house door. He adjusted the bag, bow and quiver on his back and turned to her.

"The extraction point's a little way north of here, it won't take us long to walk out there. It's pretty standard for a safe house, not having the point too close by." He said, as he started walking, tugging a compass and map out of the side pocket of the bag. Clint barely gave them a cursory glance before returning them to the pocket.

"Do you actually know where you're going?" Natalia asked, in mild sort of way. Clint smiled at her,

and explained;

"I've been here a few times before, mainly when I was first recruited. They were training missions, but Coulson makes me supervise the new agents if I screw up on a mission. It works as punishment, I guess. The newbies are pretty fucking annoying. You'd hate them, half the idiots can't even use the comms systems properly."

"You seem to know a lot about them, how many missions have you screwed up, exactly?" Natalia asked, hiding a grin as Clint scowled.

"Another one, apparently."

"Ah, well. I'm sure the new agents will put up with you somehow."

"Don't laugh now, sweetheart, they might make you go through basic training as well." Clint retorted. Natalia didn't respond, merely sent another glare in his direction. She'd given up trying to be nicer. He was far too annoying, and, to be honest, it wasn't worth the effort. They continued to walk in a silence that wasn't awkward or especially friendly, only occasionally punctuated by Clint taking a look at his map and informing her where they were.

"I think it should be another few minutes..." He began, but was cut off by the sound of a jet of a sort Natalia didn't think she had ever seen before. Clint turned to her.

"This is it. Please be nice, Nat. I'm in enough trouble already." He pleaded with her, as they both watched several agents in dark uniforms like Clint's emerge from the plane.

"I make no promises, Barton." She replied. Clint sighed. A man in a black suit stepped out of the jet and began to make his way over to them.

"Barton, you'd better have a damn good explanation for this mess."

Natalia hadn't decided yet what she thought of Barton's handler, but she kind of felt sorry for the guy, who seemed to be questioning why the hell he ever let Clint into SHIELD. He was followed by

two people in dark uniforms like Clint's, one man and one woman. For now, they posed a larger threat to Natalia than Coulson. Each had a hand gun pointed at her. Coulson had no visable weapon, but she didn't doubt that he had one hidden somewhere. While Barton made some rather weak attempts at explaining to Coulson why she was still alive ("She hasn't killed me yet, Phil!"), Natalia ran through possible outcomes of the situation.

Number one, this had all been an elaborate plan to get her to trust Clint and now they were going to kill her. Somehow, she doubted this. Natalia had been trained to detect lies, and Clint's promises had

seemed real.

Number two, they were going to kill her no matter what Barton said. This seemed much more likely. Natalia began to evaluate her chances of taking on the SHIELD agents before her. She'd be able to shoot Coulson before he could attempt to draw a weapon from inside his jacket or the waistband of his trousers, which were the most likely places for one to be stored. The problem was that the other agents, the blonde woman and dark-haired man, would certainly fire at her as soon as she attacked Barton's handler. Unless they were both fantastically dreadful shots, she was too close to them to manage to avoid getting shot. On top of this, there was no way of knowing how many more agents there were in the jet, and gunshots would surely draw them out, giving her no choice but to try and take them all out and flee.

Number three, by some fucking miracle, Barton managed to convince Coulson to take her back to SHIELD. Judging by his current methods of persuasion ("She's really good at killing people! She'd be an awesome SHIELD agent!"), Natalia was beginning to wonder why the fuck she'd taken Barton up on his offer in the first place.