AN: Finally felt like this one was finished. I think there may be another after this too, not sure. I own nothing. I sort of wish I owned a dancing baby Groot though.
"Hawkeye, report!" Coulson's voice was annoyed on the other end of the line. Clint had gone silent for longer than he liked. "Is the mission complete? Are you ready for extraction?"
"I'm here sir," Clint replied calmly. "There were complications with the mission. The family is safe though, in no further danger from our mark." He wasn't ready yet to present everything to Coulson, much less Fury. He needed some time to be able to talk to Natalia and figure out the next steps.
"Complications?" Coulson repeated his words, waiting for an explanation.
"I'm sorry sir, I can't go into it at this time. I'm afraid this line isn't clear. I'm going to take care of business and go off-grid. I will re-connect per protocol. No more than 2 weeks." He disconnected the comm and grinned sheepishly over to Natalia who was sitting and watching him curiously.
"You did not have the authorization from your higher-ups to bring me in." A statement, not a question. The question was in her eyes though: they were screaming 'why'.
Clint shrugged, "No, but when I was brought in, my handler didn't have authorization either. I'm following his lead. He will likely have figured out what I've done from that conversation."
Right now they were in a small safe house that Clint maintained himself, in Poland. He was still shocked that she had come with him. But so far, she hadn't tried to kill him, and that was a win.
"So, what are we going to do now?" Natalia looked at him expectantly. She was shocked herself, not believing that she had put so much faith in a single person, a man even. Part of her mind questioned whether any of this was actually happening. It was a fight within herself as well to not bolt at every sudden movement, or when she had too long to think about what she was doing.
The man who changed everything sat down on the bed. "We lay low. Learn to trust each other. I'll get some intel from you. I'll tell you about my organization, you make a decision whether to join."
"And if I don't join?" An eyebrow of hers arched dubiously at the thought.
Clint seemed confident though, "If you don't, I have a feeling you won't go back to doing exactly what you did before. And if you don't, I'll never have to come after you." He could see the potential in her and he knew that with the right direction, she could overcome her history and be a better person.
Natalia scoffed. "Your call name should be 'Tinkerbell'." He gave her a confused look, and she explained with a roll of her eyes, "'Think happy thoughts'."
He gave a genuine laugh, "Maybe it should be. But I usually have good instincts, and I've got a good feeling about you." He kept a smile on his face when he said it.
Natalia's expression didn't change from her vaguely cynical disdain, deciding to resume the original topic. "So we're stuck here?"
Clint nodded. "Yeah. I have a kid that will deliver groceries and food as we need it. But I don't want you out on the streets."
"And you don't want to leave me here alone while you go out," she finished what he was planning on leaving unsaid.
To his credit, he didn't try and deny it. "Right. So, here we'll stay."
The Black Widow surveyed the small flat. It was an efficiency-style with a kitchenette in one corner, one corner walled off with what she presumed was a bathroom and no other doors except the door they had entered through. There was one double bed, no TV, a bookcase with books in several languages and dresser next to that. It was very sparse. She presumed there was a safe or hidden cache somewhere, but she couldn't immediately identify where.
"One bed," she said, her voice unreadable at first.
Now it was Clint's turn to roll his eyes, "We've shared a sleeping space before. I won't touch you, and I'll send the kid out to get a mattress for you to sleep on."
A hesitation by Natalia, then she stood up and moved so she could sit next to him on the bed, her voice going lower, "What if I want you to touch me?" She slid a hand up his bicep. This was familiar territory for her at least.
Gently, Clint removed her hand from his arm. "No. That's not why I did this."
"You think I'm beautiful." Her hand now moved up to trace his jaw, which tensed and then he stood up to move away from her.
"It doesn't matter, Natalia. Please don't do this." He had a disappointed expression on his face.
Fully in her seductress mode, a little smirk on her face, "I doubt all of you agrees." She stood up and quickly reached her hand down the front of his pants.
He jumped away like she was on fire, "Jesus! Don't do that." He closed his eyes for a moment, looking pained, looking back at her. "You don't have to do that."
Natalia was irritated; not only was he rebuffing her verbally - he wasn't hard and ready to take her the moment she convinced him it would be alright. She didn't interact with men without some form of sex or violence being involved, except for the previous interaction with him. She didn't say anything, feeling like a scolded child as he came back over to sit down on the bed again, his posture still tight.
"I am not going to have sex with you. Take it off the table. You are going to have to deal with me without being able to use that tool." His voice and expression was firm. His voice became more gentle finally, "You have been sexually abused since you were a young girl." He held up his hand to stop her protest before it started, "Let me finish. I've seen enough about what the Red Room did to you to know that you have no idea what it like for people who didn't grow up like that. And part of being able to bring you in, is this: learning how to work in an environment that isn't dependent on fear, subjugation, or abuse."
The Black Widow hated the pity in his words and tone. "So you just decided I'm going to be your project, to fix the broken russian doll?" She nearly spat the words as she stood and walked to the opposite side of the space. "I am not broken, I don't need your pity." She glared at him.
Clint's tone didn't change, he was expecting this sort of reaction from her. "We're all broken, Natalia. There's not an intact person who can do the job we do. But you will have my pity, whether you want it or not. You got handed a shitty deck. I wish you hadn't. I wish you had a happy childhood where you weren't expected to seduce and fuck men when you should have been still playing with dolls. Where you learned to ride a bike before you learned to kill. But you didn't. So now you need to figure out how to glue your pieces into something that is functional in the outside world."
He paused, running a hand through his cropped hair. "Do you know what happened to any of the other Red Room agents we managed to capture?" She didn't respond, so he continued, "They all committed murder-suicide. That's why there wasn't an option given to bring you in."
Natalia's expressions and emotions were completely turned off at this point, she was an impassive statue as she spoke. "Because they were loyal."
"No. Because they couldn't figure out how to live outside of that environment. They couldn't adjust to the possibility of having to deal with a life totally unlike what had been offered to them up to that point."
A scoff, "It's not that hard."
"Yes it is." Clint thought about his options and decided he had already crossed the point of no return and went all-in. "My parents died when I was little too. I lived in an orphanage until my brother and I ran away to join the circus, no fucking joke." A shake of his head at the cliche of it all. "I learned to use blades and to shoot and I had nothing else in my life beyond that. And I was abused. Differently than you, but still abuse. My mentors were not any more altruistic than any of yours, though mine were more motivated by money. Eventually, during one of the heists I was used for, I killed my brother, not realizing he was part of the group manipulating me. I was in a bad place after that." He didn't bother trying to hide the pain that came with the story. "I gave up, becoming like you."
Natalia had listened in stony silence but now broke in, "And how is that?"
"I became a contract killer, and I didn't care about the ethics behind any of the hits I took," he said with a shrug.
Now she laughed bitterly, "Ethics? For a contract killer? That's rich."
"Yes, ethics. Of course ethics. They might not be the same as Mother Theresa's, but they allow me to sleep at night. I don't kill innocents now, at least not on purpose. I wish I could say I never made mistakes or had collateral damage, but I can't. I only kill people who are actively going to make the world a worse place by their continued survival."
"And that makes you better person than me?" Natalia rolled her eyes. "You still do what you're told, kill who you need to and do whatever it takes to get the job done."
Now he smirked, "Really, I do what I'm told? I have a long list of supervisors who will disagree with that statement." Thinking of one in particular, he continued, "A man was sent to kill me, and he saw something in me. Something beyond the pain and anger that was fueling my kills. He brought me in instead."
"And now it's your turn? How touching." She clasped her hands and batted her eyelashes in an exaggerated movement, then made a spitting gesture.
"It is my turn. It may be stupid, but I think I know what Phil saw in me back then because I saw it in you. I don't think you're beyond redemption. It may take a while to balance the books, but it is possible to come back from the darkness, and I think you have the strength to do it." Clint didn't look at her at first, but by the end of his speech, he held her gaze until finally she looked away.
Finally, she went over and sat in a chair, looking at him expectantly to continue. He smiled in response, "I'm going to debrief you here," He rolled his eyes in exasperation at her leer at the phrasing. "Afterwards, you will have a decision to make: Join us, or walk away." She looked at him with clear disbelief that he would allow her to leave. "If by the end, you don't want to join our operation, I'll let you go, free and clear, the only string attached will be to stay out of the Red Room."
"And if I don't?" she challenged him.
"Then I finish the job." His expression was calm, resigned. It would be the same as putting a rabid dog out of their misery.
Silence settled over the room as she considered his words and the truth of them. He found her once, could have killed her once; he could do it again she knew. And more, when he spoke, she felt something she hadn't felt since she was a very small girl: hope.
"When I was four, my parents were killed in a car accident," she began.