Thanks for all the FRIKIN AWESOME reviews!

I love it when someone shows up and says they stayed up late to read all of it. It gives me warm tingly feelings :D

Anyway, without further ado…enjoy your reading…

There was a girl in her ballet class. Her name was Nadezhda, but everyone called just her Naddie. She was two years older than Natasha, a year younger than Yuri

She had beautiful dark hair and a pale complexion, and she was the sweetest girl you would ever meet. She had been the first to welcome little Natalia and to befriend her. She coaxed the quiet and paranoid little girl into opening up, into laughing and smiling without fear. She diligently dealt with every little set back, sitting in the closet with her for hours on end as she shook and screamed and threw things.

She had been the best dancer in the class and hadn't been jealous, or at least didn't let on if she was, when Natasha surpassed her after only a year of lessons.

They'd been inseparable. Had sleep overs and stayed up late giggling. Natalia had never done anything like it before. Naddie would just smile patiently and coach her though her new experiences, like make-up and flirting with boys.

Naddie liked Yuri, and sometime they'd sneak off together to steal kisses. Natalia would cover for them, and Naddie would hug her and thank her profusely. Papa would smile knowingly and then tease her about finding a cute boy of her own.

It had been like living a happy dream. Slowly she learned to let her worries go, and stopped checking under the bed for the proverbial boogieman, come to drag her back to her old life. She trusted them completely.

And then one day she woke up, scared and alone, right back where she started. She got a new handler, and was punished if she dared address him as papa. Her brother and Naddie were suddenly her rivals, in the same program she had been in all her life.

Everything she thought she knew came into question. None of it was real, but she could remember every detail, every smell, every smile, and every dance move. What's more, her body remembered. Her feet still had callouses and she could easily do every dance piece she had ever learned.

She'd never been able to decide if it had actually happened. If they set it all up and she actually lived it; or if they had merely implanted the memories. Her head would start to pound if she thought about it too long, so after a while she gave up trying to figure it out. In the end it didn't matter wether the memories were real or fake, the betrayal was still the same and the lesson was learned: trust no one. Hold nothing dear and nothing can be used against you and taken away.

Now, sitting in the hall of a hospital waiting while Clint was in surgery she couldn't help feeling like she was waking up to cold hard reality for a second time.

It was dangerous and stupid to let people get close.

Clint woke up to an empty room, sterile and white. Great. He loved hospitals. Shitty food and nosey doctors who liked to poke and prod. Well, at least they had some really great drugs.

He tried to sit up and groaned in pain. Oh yeah, he'd been shot…

A nurse came in to check on him and jumped when she found him awake.

"Morning sunshine!" she said cheerily. She was cute, so he tried to give her a charming smile and ended up wincing in pain as he instinctively tried to sit up again.

She giggled, "Easy there hot stuff."

She gave him a lovely shot of morphine and then gently helped him sit up while she cleaned and redressed his wounds. By the time she was finished he was feeling really nice and a bit light headed. He gave her a lazy smile as she propped him up with an extra pillow, "so, no sponge bath?" he croaked, his throat dry from disuse. Definitely not the sexy tone her had been aiming for.

She laughed and poured him a cup of water, "I don't think your girlfriend would like that too much."

"Girlfriend?"

"Pretty red head."

"oh yeah." Tasha would kill him if she knew he didn't correct the nurse on her assumption. But she was a girl…and she was his friend. Plus, in his defense, he was floating in a warm and fuzzy cloud of morphine. He couldn't be held responsible for what he said while under the influence "Speaking of which, where is she?"

Last time he'd been injured, he woke up to find her asleep in the chair next to him. In fact, Any time he had been in the infirmary in the near seven months they had been working together on missions, she was never far away. By unspoken agreement, they stuck around to keep other entertained whenever one of them was benched for an injury.

She shrugged, "Don't know." She wrote a few notes on the chart and hung it on the end of his bed. "I'll let your CO know you're awake." She gave him another cheery smile and headed to the door.

"Oh shit!" the nurse started at his exclamation.

"What? What is it?" she looked at him in alarm.

"Tell me I didn't miss Christmas again."

Rolling her eyes, she walked out laughing at him and cruelly didn't answer him.

Coulson was there when he next woke up, sitting in the chair next to the bed, filling out paperwork. He probably should have asked an important question that pertained to his health and status as a field operative, or maybe the something concerning the full out assault on a SHIELD base; instead the first words that came tumbling out of his mouth were: "Where's Tasha?"

She's on a mission." he informed matter-of-factly without looking up.

"She's what?" Clint sat up abruptly in outrage, keen on telling Coulson exactly what he thought of Natasha being sent out on a mission without him. Unfortunately his body betrayed him and his wounds made themselves known, causing him to sink back, gasping in pain.

Coulson finished whatever it was he was writing before acknowledging him. "She's a big girl Clint, she can take care of herself. She's been doing this work much longer than you."

"I know that." he huffed. "I just-" he stopped, realizing how much he sounded like a bratty child who'd had his favorite toy taken away. He sighed. She and Coulson were the closest things he had to best friends. He didn't have a hard time being friendly with people, but it was hard to let people get close and get to know him. The real him, not the mask he wore for the world.

Coulson looked at him with raised eyebrows and a knowing glint in his eyes. Early on, Clint had been really bad at keeping his distance. He let things get close and personal, and it almost destroyed him. He'd learned to keep at arm's length and check his emotions the hard way.

There was a little kid, couldn't have been more than ten. Clint had been on a job in Spain, and got caught up in a game of soccer (or football rather, as the kid was constantly reminding him) while he was supposed to be doing surveillance. Later, when the job had gone south and he was running for his life, the kid got caught in the crossfire. He'd seen Clint out his window, and ran out to try and help, stupid and brave as only a young boy with a big heart and a misguided sense of adventure could be.

"It was never a permanent arrangement. When you brought her in, you were the only one she was comfortable around and no one else trusted her. While there she's still got some detractors, Fury thinks she's more than proved herself." Coulson's voice was carefully neutral. While he'd warmed to Natasha a bit after working with her, often lamenting that Clint wasn't half as professional as her, he still did not entirely approve of the amount of faith and trust that both Clint and Fury put in her.

"Besides" he added, "As soon as you were stable and moved here to Germany, she asked for an assignment." Clint looked up sharply. "Fury was all too happy to give it to her."

She hadn't wanted to hang around while he was potentially benched for a couple of months. It stung. He couldn't help feeling like she'd abandoned him.

"Who's she working with?" Who would she actually agree to work with? Spies, as a general rule, had trust issues, but Natasha took the cake.

"No one. It's a solo mission." Coulson supplied. "Only Fury knows where."

Now, Clint knew that Natasha could more than handle herself. He knew how strong she was, how resourceful and clever she could be. But that knowledge didn't help the knot of worry that settled in his gut at the idea of her alone with no one to watch her back.

You'll get some Clint and Natasha interaction in the next chapter. I promise…BUT only if you review! *insert maniacal laughter*