- Just a warning, there's some gore in this chapter -

After the meal, Clint and Thomas had traversed around the village a little longer. The archer was planning on talking in private with his partner, but he had not seen her for the last 20 minutes.

Natasha had wandered back to the road to drive the car further out. Now she sat on a lone fence post watching the sky change colours and the sun inch down towards the horizon.

A faint rustling caught her ear.

It was far away enough, so she only took a moment before scanning her surroundings - to see an old well beyond the farmland that lay beside the road. And silhouetted behind that, was the figure of a man.
Carefully, and making sure to make as little sound as possible, she crossed the farmland to where the man was. Her eyes were searching him and the motorbike that was hidden by the well. Then she saw something. Something that she had avoided for years, something she had almost forgotten.
Almost.
At least through the daytime.

Natasha placed her hand on the edge of the well and shifted her weight. The stone felt cold under her, which was nice. The well did not appear to be frequently used. When she realised that the man, who bore predominantly Soviet features, had not noticed her presence, she coughed twice before speaking.

"Hey sweet-cheeks, you been following me?"

The man spun round with fear in his eyes. He looked almost child-like with his bearded jaw hanging open slightly. It was obvious that he had heard of the Black Widow.

"I have a message." he tried to keep his nerve as he spoke, his voice heavy in accent but his words English as courtesy. She did not bother to try and belittle him, or even pretend to be below him. She didn't need to bother. The tattoo on his shoulder told her that.

The man looked at her as if she had not even the courtesy to feign interest. He spoke up to clarify.

"From the Red Room."

The Red Room.
There were very few things that would reach deep enough inside Natasha Romanoff to make her question who she was and what she was doing. Some of these grabbed her when she was with Steve not long ago, some she had almost collided with in New York, and some she had not come across for 10 years or more.
But one of these things visited her every night. If she was lucky, it would not be a significant nightmare, and she'd just open her eyes at 2 in the morning, sigh, roll over and go back to sleep.
But she was not usually lucky.
And that's why sleeping next to Clint helped. Because when she found herself screaming and ripping the bedsheets at night in an apartment she'd rented for all but a week, she'd find herself sat at a desk reading case files for fear of waking from her slumber again. But if she felt someone by her side, someone who didn't want to know why she was screaming, she felt safer. It was a strange feeling, one that she could not describe fully. Sort of like coming home.
Home.
At first thought, that word actually took her back to the Red Room. But she knew better than to stick to her first thought, because those initial ideas, those very first connections that she made, were corrupted. Something broke her inside that complex, in more than one way, and on top of everything, all the things they did to her there, something warped her definition of home. In all the ways they changed her, they focussed on the one thing that kept her standing still.

Home. Where she belonged.

Her real home - her second thought. Somewhere with a fire place and no steel walls, and the sound of birds instead of machinery, and her mother's touch instead of -

Natasha tried not to think too much into her past. For the time being, it was best left for the nights.

"So how did you find me?" Natasha asked, her voice steady. But, although you couldn't see it in her eyes unless you looked very closely, she felt distracted.

The man in front of her let out a small laugh.

"The Red Room never loses its subjects."

"That so?" her scepticism, which she would normally manipulate to her advantage, was now betraying her usual calm identity. Coming up behind the well, a little off to the right, Natasha saw Clint advancing toward her. Although she was hoping he would not come out to find her, she would be lying to say that she wasn't expecting him to. He was quiet enough so as not to be noticed by the messenger.

The man relaxed. His body language changed completely, fear no longer in his heart. He had reeled her in. Now he only needed her to bite, and then maybe, just maybe, he would get out of it all without a bullet in his head.

"The agents we raise," he began, in shaky English. He put out his left arm, his hand palm side up, to show Natasha. "We give them tracker, deep under skin, right here."

He traced a circle on one side of his left wrist. Natasha watched him eagerly.

His information was very specific. Far too much so for a nobody who carries messages. But this was not the first Red Room messenger she had met. It would not surprise her to find that these people knew more about the business than they were worth. But she had never been made aware of any trackers on her person. He could as easily be lying.
Then again...

Clint was making up the distance between them slowly. He was within earshot now, inching closer so as not to alert the man.

"Now, the message." the messenger continued with an equally confident tone.

Natasha cocked her gun, aimed, and shot him between the eyes.

Clint stumbled forward fast enough to be at the scene as the Red Room representative fell.

"Hey! What ever happened to 'don't shoot the messenger?"

Natasha lowered her gun and glared at him.

"I've had a lot of messages from that direction. Mostly party invites. Now's not the time to buy gift wrap or put on a hat."

The archer sighed, crouching down by the body. Natasha kicked the handlebars of the motorbike sulkily.

"He might have had a family." Clint said.

She replied without delay.

"I had a family once too."

"You know what I could murder right now? A cigarette."

The pair were sat on the floor next to each other by the fence post, a golden light washing over them as the sun began to drop below the horizon. Clint was fidgeting a little, obviously keen to smoke.
Coffee might have done him a better deal.

"I've got a lot of things trying to kill me at the moment; I don't need another one." said Natasha, with a small smile.

Clint looked at her. The golden rays on her face made her look even more beautiful than she usually did, and the highlights made her appear almost peaceful. But they illuminated scars too, ones that would usually be hidden by make-up or dark lighting.

"I'm sorry."

She turned her head to meet his gaze.

"For what?" she asked, although she knew how he would answer.

"For accusing you of things, for shouting at you, for almost killing you last night, hell, for a lot of things, okay? For not being there when S.H.I.E.L.D fell. When Fury died."

Natasha looked away again. She couldn't bring herself to share Fury's eventual outcome with Clint. The former director of S.H.I.E.L.D had trusted her not to share that he was, in fact, alive and well.
She had to respect that.
She had to have some code to stick to.

"I didn't want you there. I managed to take most of the fall, but I couldn't have guaranteed your outcome on top of things. I couldn't - I wouldn't - have done that to you Clint. I wouldn't wish it on you."

There was frustration in her voice. No, more than that - distraction. It was unusual. Clint noticed.
She pushed herself up from the floor and started to walk away.

"Going so soon?" Joked the archer, who got up to follow her.

"There's something I need to do."

"Alright, alright. D'you think that guy will be fine in the well?"

"Well it isn't the best solution."

The archer chuckled at her chemistry joke.

"That's poor, in fact, that's worse than poor, that's just plain terrible Nat."

"Hey, I blew all my covers, are you trying to suggest I can't look into comedy for one?"

"Stick to what you're good at Romanoff."

"Yeah, alright."

She didn't slow down as she reached the house that she and (most likely) the others would be staying in. A lot of the house's residents were in the kitchen, so when she slipped upstairs, she was barely noticed. She felt something rising in her heart, and suddenly she was frustrated and impatient. She was not quiet as she rummaged through the duffel bag for the first aid kit and a towel, nor was she quiet as she came downstairs again, hoping to find the bathroom free. When she was in there, she dropped what she was holding and locked the door as fast as she could. She fumbled around at her ankle to dislodge the knife from its strap. Her breathing was quick and heavy. When it was free, she twisted open the tap and placed her left arm on the side.

Her hand was shaking.

Stop it. She told herself. Stop it, god dammit.

Memories and thoughts pulsed through her head. As she began to panic, her hand was shaking more and more, until eventually, she just threw the knife to the floor and gasped in frustration.

Weak. Vulnerable.

She was remembering the nightmares of the night before. Not moving her left arm, she breathed in once, picked up the knife and made a slit in the right side of her wrist.
She scrunched up her face in pain as the flesh oozed with fresh blood.
Natasha knew not to cut any major veins or she'd be in trouble, but she continued to make incisions as her sobs became loud and frequent.
The blood dripping from her wrist was turning the water a crimson red.
Her eyes were stained with tears of desperation and pain as she dropped the knife in the sink and shakily expanded the wounds with the fingers of her right hand.
Nothing, she thought, as she failed to find a tracker or chip anywhere. She kept searching, her efforts not rewarded. How can there be nothing?

"Nat?"

There was a voice at the door - it was Clint's. He knew something was wrong.

"Hey, you okay in there?"

Her wrist throbbed as the water carried the blood down the drain. She clasped it with her right hand to try and slow the flow of blood.

"Yeah," she replied, stifling tears and sobs. "Yeah, I just, uh, cut myself on some glass."

"Uh-huh." he sounded unconvinced. "D'you need a hand, do you want me to get something?"

"No," she responded, almost violently. "No, I took the first aid kit with me."

"Okay, if you're sure."

As he left, Natasha noticed how dirtied the bathroom was. It had been stupid to do it here - it was almost certainly going to get infected. She snatched the towel from the floor and quickly pressed it to her wound, the sound of running water making it hard to concentrate. Her breathing became a little steadier as she carefully turned off the tap and opened the first aid kit. She couldn't control the tears rolling down her cheeks as she placed some gauze over her wrist and started to wrap the remainder of the bandages over it. Every time she pulled it a little tighter, a million tiny needles shot into her arm - it hurt and it hurt like hell.

But it was nice. It was no longer an option for a weak spot; it was one more place that she knew they hadn't gotten into her.

The spy washed her knife off and placed it back into its holder at her ankle. She wiped the blood off the side of the sink and her hands.
She was angry at herself for crying. She didn't cry at stupid things like this, and she certainly didn't panic. At least not since -
Feeling her fingers trace the circle where the messenger told her the tracker would be, her mind cast back to something Loki had said to her in New York.

'You lie and kill in the service of liars and killers.'

She wasn't the only one in the service. Then her thoughts drifted to what Loki had said regarding Barton. How he would -

All my nightmares are happening during the day.

Her heart was beating faster than usual. But she was okay. Everything was... okay.

Thanks for reading!
I'd love to know a few more opinions on this -
Any reviews are much appreciated.

Next chapter will be released on Monday as usual :)