For the third time in as many weeks, Natasha woke to find Clint sitting across from her. Only this time there drug induced hangover or handcuffs and he was not alert and armed waiting for her to awake. Instead, his head was tilted back against the wall and he was lightly dozing. He snapped awake as she sat up; suddenly alert and all traces of sleep gone from his eyes.

He smiled at her unexpectedly. "so…what do you think about working for SHIELD? I mean sure, the pay is shit, like any government job, but the benefits are pretty damn good."

The man just would not give up.

She elected to ignore him for the moment, rolling her neck and stretching out her sore muscles. Her throat was tender and there was something tickling her nose. She pulled the nasal cannula from her face and tossed it away from her in irritation.

She heard a low snigger and leveled a glare at Clint. It only made him laugh harder, so she threw a box of gloves at him. Raised an arm to protect his face, and gave her an amused smile.

"I'll have you know, I missed my ride because of you." He said accusingly, but he wasn't serious. "I managed to make it look like you might have died in that fire, so it'll give you a head start at the very least. And now," he stood up and stretched as he addressed her, "we have a train to catch. I won't force you to come into SHIELD with me, but I am getting you out of this city."

He was determined, she could see in his stance and his expression. He wasn't going to take no for an answer.

She sighed in resignation. What did it matter? Dead here or dead there? Dead was dead.

"fine." She stood up and breezed past him and out door, leaving him there to deal with shock. He had probably been prepared to drag her kicking and screaming. She poked her head back into the examine room, "you coming?"

Dawn was just breaking as they caught a train north out of the Crimea, and stowed away in freight car. They sat across from each other, awkwardly avoiding eye contact. The silence between them was anything but comfortable.

After a time, the cold got the better of her. She fucking hated being cold and it didn't help that her skirt was so short. People say stupid things about Russians and cold. Sure she could deal with it, but that didn't mean she liked to. So she crawled over to him and pressed her freezing body into his side for warmth. He stiffened at her touch, and then shifted away from her.

Getting the message, she moved to put distance between them once again; only to him pull her back to him.

She stared at him, perplexed as he laid his coat over her bare legs and wrapped an arm around her shoulders to pull her close again. He had only pulled away so he could shrug off his coat.

Oh

They settled back into their uncomfortable silence for a while until Clint decided to break it,

"My brother and I used to ride the trains around all the time when we were younger…" apparently the silence was getting to him because he chattered on for a while. He shared a story about him and his brother getting caught jumping trains, and some time when they ran away from a foster home. She simply dropped her head onto his shoulder and pretended to sleep, hoping it would make him shut up. It didn't.

"…then we up and joined the circus."

"Tsirk urod. Why am I not surprised?" the words came out before she could stop them. He chuckled at her and she looked up to find him looking back at her with a self-satisfied smirk like he'd won a prize. She rolled her eyes and settled her head against his shoulder once again.

They switched trains a few times and eventually wound up at the Hungarian border. From there they stole a car to drive over the border and into Budapest. They arrived at the SHIELD field office in the late the next day. Clint paused as he opened the door to gauge whether or not she was actually going to follow him in. She strolled past him and into the building without a word.

She knew his boss was not going to be happy with him for bringing her in, and judging from the muffled bellowing coming from the other room; she was going to end this day with a bullet in her head.

As soon as Clint had explained the situation, she had been handcuffed and bagged, which was never a pleasant experience. Usually these kinds of people weren't too concerned with their prisoner's comfort so the bags were rarely ever washed and SHIELD was no exception. They drove her around for a while in an attempt to confuse her but it really wasn't necessary. She didn't care enough to pay attention where they were going.

They took her to some underground facility outside the city. One of those shiny, state of the art bases with concrete walls, bright lights, and fancy labs. A man, whom she assumed to be Clint's superior, had met them when they arrived. Clint greeted him with familiarity.

"Coulson! She followed me home. Can I keep her?" were the first words out of his mouth; a shit eating grin firmly in place. He smacked the guy on the shoulder as he walked past not waiting for a reply. Coulson's expression or lack thereof, said he was used to Clint's antics. She had to wonder how much the guy got paid to deal with him on a regular basis.

She had expected to be thrown into an interrogation room and left for hours. Instead she found herself waiting in a hallway being babysat by Coulson while Clint got a severe talking to about bring home enemy operatives.

Coulson was hard to read, but she could tell she made him uncomfortable; his hand was twitching like he was resisting the urge to draw his firearm.

The meeting went on late into the night. Finally Clint emerged with a jolly grin plastered across his face, followed by a stern faced officer who didn't look so pleased.

"Miss Romanov, my name is Jason Parke. I am the director of operations for this base. You will be assigned quarters and for the time being, will only be permitted to the mess hall, the training levels, medical, and your personal quarters. There will be an armed guard escorting you or posted outside your quarters until such a time that I am convinced of the sincerity of your defection. Breakfast is at 0730 and you will report to the training level, gym 08 by 0800 so your skills can be assessed. "

"Just like that?"

"yep" Clint responded brightly.

Well, she hadn't seen that one coming.

"I'm sure I don't have to detail for you what will happen if you step out of line. Understood?" Parke added."You're dismissed, both of you."

Clint took that as his que to pull her down the hallway, supposedly toward her quarters. A female agent was waiting outside the door. She gave Clint a warm smile that quickly turned to ice when her eyes fell on Natasha.

"There are clean clothes in the drawers and the showers are at the end of the hall if you want to get cleaned up. Beyond that, you are to stay in your room until breakfast." She addressed Natasha cooly, looking down her nose at her.

Like you could stop me if I wanted to leave. Natasha mused darkly.

Clint gave her a bright smile, "This is going to be great, just you wait and see." She didn't share his enthusiasm. He gave her a thumb-up as she shut the door behind her. Leaning against it, she took in her room. It was small, but clean. She'd had worse, much worse.

The clock read 12:23, January 7th. Christmas day.

So, I didn't actually intend for them to end up in Budapest. It just sorta happened…

I was actually gonna end it here, and tack on an epilogue, but a plot bunny kind jumped out of nowhere and savagely attacked me…

Tsirk urod = circus freak