All the mistakes on here are mine, I tried taking them of before posting but the only time that I have to post is right now while my eyes are dilated... So please bear with me if you see errors.

Clintasha interaction in this chapter!

Update: I went back and fixed the errors I could find and made this chapter a little longer! I didn't realize how short it was until today.

Chapter 2

Clint watched their surroundings through the scope of his M-4 on an old building in the middle of Hong Kong. They had just finished their mission: in, kill the bastard who was trafficking children, out.

Their mission objectives called for three days, but it lasted for about a week and a half because Natasha couldn't gather enough intel from the streets in order to get the time that imports and exports were happening. Something that usually was a piece of cake to her.

Throughout the whole mission, Natasha seemed distracted. He had never seen her like that in the almost ten years that they have been working together. She was detached and sometimes she would wake up not knowing what was going on around her. It was almost like the Natalia Romanova that he rescued from drowning in the blood of her ledger. Except it was different this time, this time Clint didn't know who she was running from and why she was reverting back to her old coping mechanisms.

Well he had an inkling, and he hoped to God he was wrong.

Clint turned back to Natasha who was packing up their belongings around the room while clearing the room of fingerprints and any evidence that they were there at all.

Just some standard post-op procedures that they usually did in comfortable silence after the mission was completed. Except this time, at least to Clint, he could cut the silence with a spork, never mind a knife.

"You ok, Nat?" Clint asked her sitting on the bed. He grabbed her fidgeting hands and pulled her down on the space next to him. "You've seemed kind off lately."

"I'm fine, Clint," Natasha dismissed him making a motion to stand up. Clint pulled her back down to him.

"Seriously, Natasha. What's going on? You've been distracted this op, you're never distracted."

"I can have one bad op, Barton," Natasha replied curtly. "Give it up."

Clint shook his head. "I won't. I care about you, you almost got yourself killed out there. What would I do then? I just broke you in."

"Funny, Barton."

"Does this have anything to do with Cap's old friend coming back from Russia? The Winter Solider or whatever the hell he's named?"

Natasha looked up at him nodding her head. There was no purpose in lying to Clint. For almost a decade he had been her partner and was there when she went through the phases of her defection to the United States. He knew her well enough to know when she was lying, sad or happy without her outwardly showing it. It was one of the reasons why they worked so well together.

At the moment though, it was one of the reasons why she had withdrawn to herself.

She was just barely figuring out emotions. Figuring out what happiness, sadness and fear meant to her and how she could control it and channel it to strengthen her. After all, that was what she did as the Black Widow, even her weaknesses were strengths. James "Bucky" Barnes coming back threw her emotions into a tailspin. The longer she would spend time with him, the more she would remember and feel what it was like to be fourteen, learning and killing for the first time on her own. This was right before she was assigned the code name of Black Widow.

At times, she would think that Alexei wasn't the reason for her name, but the man who she had loved with her all, and didn't love her back.

"You knew him in the Room?" Clint asked breaking her train of thought.

Natasha nodded her head once again in reply.

"He trained me."

"It was more than that though, wasn't it," Clint stated more than asked.

"He... I was only fourteen at that time," Natasha started. "I... I pursued him. He was bigger than life to me. He was in the war, he fought Hydra. He was my teacher and I was... I was infatuated."

"You were in love with him."

"I used the skills that they taught me. To seduce. To get him to want me too. I just... I fell in love and he didn't and..."

Clint placed a hand on her knee. "You don't have to continue, Nat."

"I told him that I fell in love with him. He told me that love is for children."

"Love isn't..."

"I know that, I just..." Natasha cut him off, looking down at her hands on her lap. "Thing is Clint, it's like I'm fourteen again. I'm a child, for him."

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