Disclaimer: I do not own the Avengers or any of the characters affiliated with them. If I did, there would totally be a Hawkeye/Black Widow movie in the works.

Author's Note: While I embrace constructive criticism, remember this old saying if you choose to leave a review "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all"

So I hope everybody doesn't hate me after last chapter. Please bear with me! It wasn't without reason. Our future Avengers are going to do some serious avenging this story. This story is more than a tragedy, I promise :)

Thanks to all who reviewed!

Last Time:

"They're all dead." Clint stated bluntly. He felt emotion well in him again and he stopped walking. Needing to collect himself. Natasha stopped next to him, her eyes concerned.

"Who's all dead?"

"The ki-"

They were blown off their feet and slammed into the ground hard as the small shack they would have been standing in if they hadn't stopped walking, exploded.

The more I know you, the more I want to know you more. –Roy Lessin

Natasha forced her eyes open, pushing her arms beneath her so she could push herself up to a seated position. Her hand went to her aching head and came away bloody. She looked at what used to be their secondary location. All that was left was burning fractions of the walls. She'd only been out for a few seconds judging by the fact that whoever had tried to blow them up hadn't come out and killed them. She pulled her side arm, eyes scanning the tree line. Then she remembered.

Barton.

She looked around frantically, seeing him laid out on his side a few feet away. She scrambled across the short expanse between them and rolled him onto his back.

"Barton!" She snapped.

His eyes twitched open immediately and he came up swinging. She dodged the flying fist and pinned it to the ground.

"Barton!" She repeated, putting her other hand on his jaw and forcing him to meet her eyes. "It's me!"

He blinked and the cobwebs cleared.

"What happened?" He rasped, his hand going to the back of his head as she helped him sit up. She couldn't tell if it was bleeding when he drew his hand back because he already had so much blood on his hands. She pulled him forward not too gently and tilted his head forward, her fingers combing through his sandy blonde hair. She felt the cut at the same moment he hissed in pain.

"They must have gotten around us somehow and tracked us back here." She explained.

"Must have been a timer." He deduced, pushing her hands away and climbing to his feet. She followed. "Whoever set it must have seen us coming, set the charge to explode about the time we'd get inside."

"Think they stuck around to confirm it?" She wondered.

"Any good operative would." He sighed, his hand going to the back of his head again. "We need to assume whoever it is will go back for reinforcements. After the gun fight back there, they're not going to confront us unless they have the manpower to do it."

"What do we do?" She asked.

He shook his head and stared at what used to be their hut. All of their supplies. Gone.

"I don't know."

They stood silently for a moment, staring at the dying flames.

"We should get out of the open." Natasha announced with a sigh, nudging his elbow and pulling him towards the forest.

Clint leaned against the trunk of a tree, watching Natasha check her weapons. He clenched his hands into fists to stop them from shaking. Something needed to change. He wasn't exactly the picture of emotional stability when things got personal. And kids getting killed on his watch was very personal. He'd been through so much as a child with no one to protect him.

He'd thought he could protect these kids. That he could protect Malik and the too thin little boy that had died wearing his Kevlar vest. He'd failed. And if he was going to make it through this, he needed something to change between them. He needed what he had with Phil.

And if the shaking of her hands and the clenching of her jaw was anything to go by. She needed it too.

"If we're gonna make it through this. We're going to need to trust each other." He announced suddenly, drawing her emerald gaze.

"We've made it out of worse situations alive." She pointed out.

Clint stared intensely at her.

"That's not what I meant. What we just saw, what just happened out there," he clenched his fists, "That kind of thing isn't supposed to happen. And I know you're as destroyed over it as I am. So if we're going to make it through this," He cocked his head meaningfully, "We need to trust each other."

"We do trust each other." She replied seriously.

"We trust each other not to kill the other in their sleep or let anyone else do it. That's trust, but it's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about that bone deep trust that tells you the other person will never let you down, that they'll always be there and that they don't judge you."

"Is that what you have with Coulson?" She asked.

"Yes." He nodded. "He's the one that taught me what it was."

"I believe trust is earned." She insisted, crossing her arms defensively.

"It is." He agreed with a slight inclination of his head, "at first. But there comes a point where trust becomes a choice. A point where you have to decide if it's worth it. Where you have to be all in, no matter what."

"Was it worth it? With Coulson?" She wished her voice wasn't so vulnerable.

"For every second of my life since, it's been worth it." He stated firmly.

She looked away, refusing to let him see the emotion in her eyes.

"I don't know how to trust like that." She admitted.

"I didn't either, but six years ago I had someone teach me how. I can show you what that kind of trust looks like." He offered. "If you want me to."

She turned her head, meeting his eyes squarely and searching his gaze. For the first time since they'd known each other, Clint let her see it all. The pain he carried at every moment because of Barney. The insecurity that plagued him. The fear that one day he'd miss and no longer be indispensable to SHIELD. The anger he still felt over what he'd done as a contract assassin.

He let her see everything, and to Natasha, that said more than any words ever could.

"Okay." She agreed quietly, and then stronger, "I'm all in."

Clint smiled genuinely.

"That's the first step."

"What's the second step?"

"You'll know it when it comes."

She rolled her eyes at the cryptic response. Clint pushed off the tree and looked around.

"We need to get back to the safe house and regroup. Phil is probably going crazy right now." He announced. She nodded. He set off in the direction of the town Coulson was in. Natasha watched him, taking a moment to consider the gravity of the conversation that had just happened.

If there was anyone she could ever trust with that kind of complete abandon, she thought it might be him.

"Clint?" Coulson yelled into the comms, leaning over his computer frantically. He'd heard the sound of an explosion for barely a breath before the comms went out. He'd tried, unsuccessfully, to get them back up for the past five minutes.

"Get it together, Phil." He coached himself, sitting down and pulling up SHIELD's access page for their satellites. He quickly logged in and typed in the coordinates of the secondary location. He had to force himself to wait patiently as the satellites repositioned themselves. Finally, a live image appeared on his screen. The small clearing and what remained of the shack his agents had been using. He zoomed in, squinting at two small figures standing a distance away from the burning house.

He'd recognize that fiery red hair anywhere. They were alive. Clint was alive.

He felt weak with relief and waited as the image automatically refreshed.

They were gone, disappeared from the clearing, probably into the trees. He stood and paced away. His mind raced replaying the short conversation he'd had with his agent before the explosion. Something had gone terribly wrong, that much had been clear with the tone of Clint's voice. And judging by the lack of children in footage, he didn't need to think too long before the horrifying truth came to him.

Clint had said they were all dead. He could only have meant the kids.

He had to call it in. He could lose his job if he didn't. His agents were his responsibility and he'd as much as given Clint the green light to do whatever he needed to do in order to save those kids. Whatever had happened was on him, not Clint. His agent was infamous for following his heart at the moments when it would cost the most if he failed. First it was Romanoff. Coulson had thought his agent was crazy when he'd contacted him and told him his plan to try and flip the assassin. When Clint had actually done it, he'd just waited for the Russian to betray them all. Then Clint had told him, on the rooftop one night that if he, an eighteen year old assassin and United States Fugitive, had deserved a second chance then so did Romanoff. Until that moment, only Clint had been willing to give her that chance. Coulson had gotten in her corner after that conversation.

Now here Clint was, doing it again. Following his heart. The same heart that had nearly self destructed under the guilt of what he'd done as a hit man. The heart that had taken a bullet for him in Croatia and almost lost his ability to shoot his bow because of it. The heart that had looked at a deadly assassin, aptly named the Black Widow for her ability to lure men to their deaths with her beauty, and seen something worth saving when no one else did. The heart that saw a group of children locked in a cage had refused to allow them to become collateral damage.

So even if he had to call it in. He couldn't.

If he did, Clint and Natasha would not only lose their jobs, they'd be put on the SHIELD's threat list. Their skills were too deadly to be let roam free. He had no doubt that the Council would take pleasure in adding their names to that list. They'd had a sore spot for Clint ever since he'd come to SHIELD and it was only Fury that had managed to convince them Natasha could be an asset. They'd been looking for a reason to get rid of her ever since.

He could head out to try and find them, but in the large forest, never having been to the shack, they could pass fifty feet from each other and never know it. He had to trust them to get back to him safely on their own.

So he paced.

"Do you see that?" Clint asked, narrowing his eyes at a dark mass he saw through the trees, shadowed by the rising sun.

"What is it?" Natasha wondered.

"Looks like a shack, maybe for hunting." Clint replied, moving closer. "We need to rest. This will give us some cover." He decided.

Natasha just nodded wearily and followed him. They cleared the small shack quickly and then Natasha pulled the door closed while Clint pulled off his quiver and set it on the ground.

"I'll take first watch." He volunteered quietly.

Again, she could only nod, curling up in the corner and watching him sink down against the door. She fell asleep listening to him rubbing at the blood on his hands.

Clint sighed in relief as Natasha drifted off. He rubbed a hand over his eyes, feeling the ache of a concussion. The reason they'd stumbled upon this shack that he hadn't seen any sign of the last three times he'd made this trek through the woods. They were going in the right direction, he knew, but without his map and compass, it would be hard to get his bearings after getting his bell rung like that.

They were both exhausted, emotionally and physically. They needed to recharge or they'd be useless if they ran into more mercenaries. So they would sleep, if only for a little while and hope that they weren't found in the mean time.

Clint rubbed at his hands, scraping at the dried blood. He wished he could wash it away. Maybe if he could, he could stop imagining Malik's trusting, brave eyes as he took his last breath. He didn't know how long he'd been sitting there, ears trained on the sounds of the forest around them, rubbing at his hands. He looked up when Natasha flinched awake, sitting up and pressing her back against the corner.

"Romanoff?"

Her green eyes flew to him.

"Past or present?" He asked quietly.

She blinked in confusion, her expression hardening by the moment.

"Past." She revealed simply. She didn't want to talk about her past sins, especially not with someone like Clint Barton. He was a man who fought for something. He would never understand the things she'd done.

"Talking about it helps." He advised softly, his eyes not leaving hers. "It makes it easier."

"And what do you know about it?" She snapped, acknowledging immediately that he didn't deserve her anger. He was just the easiest target. She was confused when he chuckled sadly, his eyes going back to his hands.

"Enough." He replied quietly. "You aren't the only one with blood on their hands, Romanoff."

"Working for SHIELD isn't the same as what I did. I was a contract assassin, Barton. You have no idea what that's like, what that does to you."

"You think the guys at SHIELD are the only ones to ever write me a check?" He challenged softly.

"What do you mean?" She asked in confusion.

"I worked as a contract assassin for a year when I was seventeen." He revealed bluntly.

She blinked in shock, ready to call him out on the lie, but then she paused. Her mind drawing up memories of rumors of a distance assassin that favored a bow and arrow and called himself Hawkeye.

"Hawkeye." She breathed, looking at him as if for the first time, "I thought it was a coincidence."

"You thought that two people in the world could have the same nickname, same skill set, and same deadly accuracy?" His eyebrows rose in surprise.

"Maybe I just didn't think you had it in you." She admitted quietly.

"I didn't." He replied. "It was destroying me from the inside out, but I couldn't see another way." His lips quirked, "Then a man in a suit cornered me in an alley in Vienna and gave me a chance at a new beginning."

"Coulson."

He nodded.

"He taught me how to be a good guy again. How to believe in something. And he helped me deal with my anger about what I'd done."

"Anger?" She asked. All she felt was guilt. Guilt she had never acknowledged, never felt the need to acknowledge, until she met Clint.

"At myself." He explained, "For not finding another way."

Natasha stared at him, seeing him in a new light, and somehow he seemed even stronger than he had before his confession.

"I kept track of my contracts in a little book, so that I'd never forget the lives I'd ended. And six months after coming to SHIELD I gave it to Phil and asked him to let me know when I'd made it right. He still has it and maybe one day he'll give it back to me and tell me it's been wiped clean. But I'll probably still feel like I've got something to make up for, maybe I always will."

She regarded him carefully, hearing the sincerity in his words.

"So I get it, Romanoff, maybe better than anyone."

Natasha stared into his eyes, seeing for the first time the true measure of his strength. She realized that he was right; he would understand better than anybody how she felt. How much she yearned to wipe the blood from her own ledger.

It hit her that maybe this was the second step he'd mentioned. Trusting him with the truth as he'd just trusted her.

"I never wrote down the names." She stated quietly. "But I haven't forgotten any of them, I remember them, here." She pointed at her temple. "My ledger drips with a lifetime's worth of taking lives. I've been doing it since I was fourteen." She revealed.

"Fourteen?" He looked like the knowledge gutted him.

"A little longer than a year." She sighed. "It would take lifetimes to wipe all the blood away."

Clint nodded silently.

"You'll do it one day." He assured softly.

"How can you be sure?"

"Because it means enough to you that you'll make it happen." He stated confidently. "For what it's worth, I think you're already off to a really good start."

Natasha smiled at the encouraging words and shifted so she was more comfortable against the wall.

"Thank you, Barton."

"Anytime." He smiled warmly. Her heart fluttered. That was the smile. The warm, endearing smile he usually reserved for Coulson. It wasn't exactly the same, altered somehow so that it was unique, but it was there, and it was for her.

"My turn to take watch." She whispered.

He nodded and rested his head gingerly back against the door. He closed his eyes and she watched his breathing even seconds later.

There was blood everywhere.

It was all over his hands, his clothes. It covered Malik's chest where the boy rested against the tree in front of him. Clint pressed his hands against the exit wounds from the bullets, his fingers slipping over the thin fabric of the boy's shirt.

"Malik!" He called frantically.

The boy weakly grasped at his arms, pushing him away.

"Why, Hawkeye?" He begged.

"I'm sorry." Clint tried to keep his hands against the wounds, trying to stop the blood, trying to save this brave boy.

"You brought us out here to die."

"No." Clint shook his head in denial.

"Why?"

"NO!"

Natasha batted his flailing arms down, straddled his lap and pinned his arms against his sides with her legs. She took his face between her hands, forcing his unfocused eyes to point in her direction.

"Barton! Wake up!" She snapped. "Wake up!" She shook him firmly.

Clint blinked, his eyes clearing. Natasha's breath caught. The pain she saw in the normally closely guarded gaze nearly brought down her own walls.

"You're okay." She whispered.

"Tell me we made the right call." He pleaded, his eyes suddenly growing moist and his voice catching. She didn't have to ask what he'd been dreaming about or what he was talking about now.

"We did." She assured. "Sometimes things just go wrong."

Clint squeezed his eyes closed, leaning his head back again. Natasha pretended not to see the tear that leaked out of the corner of his eyelid and tracked through the dirt on his face. She was unprepared for him to draw his head up and then slam it back again, a pained yell restrained through clenched teeth. She caught his head before he could do it again, and pulled him to her, wrapping her arms around his back and forcing his head against her shoulder. She released his arms from where they were trapped by her legs and they immediately wrapped around her.

"We'll make it right." She whispered. "I promise we'll make it right."

If a couple tears left watery tracks on her own cheeks, she didn't acknowledge it. They held each other, not sobbing, not even really crying, but grieving. Giving and accepting comfort in a way they'd never dared before.

Natasha hadn't let herself think about it. Hadn't let herself think about the fact that those children had been taken and forced into a life they didn't ask for or want. Hadn't let herself think about the fact that she could relate to that. She thought about it now, as she hugged her partner for the first time, and she grieved. For their lost childhood and for hers. And a small quiet part of her acknowledged that having Clint's arms around her helped.

Eventually Natasha pulled away and climbed off his lap, giving them both space.

"I'm sorry." He whispered, clearing his throat and not meeting her eyes.

"It's okay. We're trusting each other now, remember? I'm glad I was here." She whispered, retreating to her corner. "Was it Malik?"

He nodded.

"There wasn't anything we could have done." She insisted. "You said it yourself, we tried to save them. In the end that's all we could do."

"I know." He acknowledged, but he shook his head in disbelief, "He thanked me. The kid is dying, and he thanks me for saving him."

"He was very brave."

"Yes, he was." Clint nodded. "He had the kind of strength a kid only gets from being forced to learn to survive."

Natasha didn't say what she was thinking. She didn't say that she saw that same strength in him and that she wondered what had happened to Clint Barton to teach him that strength.

"We should get moving." He decided, climbing to his feet.

"Back to Coulson?" She asked.

He hesitated.

"We could go back, burn that place to the ground. They'd never expect it." She came to stand in front of him. Clint met her eyes. "We can make it right." She insisted passionately.

He nodded.

"We can circle back, try to avoid whoever they've sent to look for us."

"We can hit them hard while they expect us to be running away." She added. "I like our odds."

Clint smiled at her confidence.

"After you, Romanoff."

They walked for three hours, circling deeply inland to try and avoid whatever men Carter had sent after them. They sat down to rest next to a large, wide tree. Sitting in silence and chewing on leaves. Then they kept walking until dusk fell and they camped out next to an old tree, taking turns keeping watch through the night. They sat shoulder to shoulder, against their tree, and when Natasha's head dipped onto his shoulder while she slept, Clint didn't move her. And when he curled on his side on the ground when it was his turn to sleep, Natasha wordlessly moved his head to her thigh so he would have a pillow.

End of Chapter 5

Progress! :D Now that you've read the immediate fallout of what happened with the kids, I'll try to explain it a little. As you know Clint and Natasha have been on emotional lock down with each other, never letting anything but what's on the surface show. Their characters needed something HUGE to break down those walls and a situation where they had no one but each other to get through it. Otherwise, they'd never (specifically Natasha) let the other in. Clint knew how much it meant to completely trust someone like that, she didn't. She, specifically needed a reason to need that and to want it.

I hope that explains why the story went the way it did. Now, on a lighter note...

I'm loving writing these two slowly realize how they feel about each other. And also how they are helping each other deal with everything that's happened.

And on a side note: I have been watching Michael Phelps swim in the Olympics religiously (I'm from the US and watched him 'swim into history' last Olympics) and when I went to watch his 200m Fly final and his 4x200 relay final, I realized in HORROR that my DVR had skipped recording it! :O Needless to say I was traumatized and had to read about the results online. I was promptly overjoyed that he'd set the new record for most medals in history, and then traumatized again because I hadn't gotten to see it...AND THEN just to add insult to injury, one of my favorite TV shows 'White Collar' cut out in the last five minutes of the recording and I missed what was probably a PIVITOL episode ending because White Collar episode endings are ALWAYS pivitol...My DVR had it out for me yesterday...anyways...rant over. I just had to get that out. :D

Reviews make me happy!

Here's your preview

"How did you know about Malik's strength? You spoke like it was from personal experience."

For several moments it didn't seem like he was going to answer.

"I know because I was one of those kids that had to learn to survive."