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Earlier update today because I'm off to a six hour teacher training session! Yay! :D

Thanks to all who reviewed! :D

Last Time:

"People keep trying to kill me. I think the more fascinating part is that I'm still alive."

"I think the fascinating part is that no one has tried harder." She teased, tilting her head to look at him.

He huffed a laugh.

"Romanoff from left field."

I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you. I love you not only for what you have made of yourself, but for what you are making of me. I love you for the part of me that you bring out.- Roy Croft

She took watch first. It was by default really. Clint drifted off without meaning to while listening to her softly tell the story of her favorite trip to Italy. It may or may not have been her intent when she started the story.

She'd gotten dressed and quietly sat back against the wall, watching the steady rise and fall of his chest. And she waited. Waited for the sounds outside to indicate they'd been found. By some mercy those sounds hadn't come, not yet.

So she sat and she watched Clint sleep and she reflected.

Everything had changed. Maybe if she hadn't seen the want for something more in her Hawk's eyes, if she hadn't wanted it herself, it would be different. But she had seen it and she had wanted it. They weren't just Barton and Romanoff anymore. They weren't Hawkeye and Black Widow. They were Clint and Natasha. They'd stepped over whatever invisible line separated them from partners and something more. Hell, they hadn't stepped, they'd jumped.

And she found herself not wanting to go back.

She didn't know if she'd be able to anyway, after what had happened between them. It was more than sex. He was hers now in heart and soul and she was his. Forever. She'd seen the same truth in his eyes as they'd talked together afterwards.

She didn't believe in love. Love was a childish fantasy that people fell into and out of too often.

But she believed that sometimes, if the universe decided you were worthy, you would find that one person. That one person whose imperfections were as numerous as your own. But whose imperfections somehow fit with yours perfectly.

She had never held hope that anyone would ever be able to understand her. She was a killer by trade, a manipulator, and a liar. Who could ever truly know her and not look at her in fear. She didn't believe such a person could exist. No one would ever understand and forgive her blackened soul.

And then Clint Barton had held an arrow pointed at her heart and seen something. He'd seen straight through all her bullshit, her attempts to seduce and manipulate him. He'd seen right down to her soul and inexplicably decided that she was somehow worthy of a second chance.

He knew what she was capable of. He knew she was dangerous and deadly. But he had never looked at her in fear. He never condemned her for the sins of her past. Perhaps because he too was just as dangerous and deadly in his own way. He was also a killer, a manipulator, and a liar. And she now knew that he, too, had sins in his past and black marks on his soul.

He was the only one that had ever looked at her and seen something more than the Black Widow. Somehow he had convinced Coulson to see it too. She'd kept walls between them, afraid that if he saw her for who she truly was, he would realize what a mistake he'd made in saving her.

She knew now that he'd always seen past the walls. And he understood. He accepted. He forgave. And he waited, patiently, for her to realize it. For her to let the walls come down and not only choose to let him in, but choose to see him as clearly as he'd always seen her.

They were both broken and damaged. He had found a way to put himself back together six years ago when he came to SHIELD and found a brother in Coulson. But his edges were jagged and rough. Together but not perfect.

It was there, sitting next to her sleeping partner, that Natasha realized something. That his jagged edges, combined with her own, somehow made her whole for the first time since she was nine years old.

She'd curled up like a cat next to him, her head pillowed on his thigh. It took everything Clint had in him not to reach and run his hand through her hair. He knew she'd wake if he did and she needed rest.

She'd let him sleep for longer than she should have, dawn was nearly breaking when she'd called his name and gently squeezed his shoulder to rouse him. He'd opened his eyes to find her sitting next to him, uniform back in place. She'd held out his pants with a smirk.

He'd taken that for what it was. Assurance.

Assurance that she didn't regret what they'd done, that she didn't want to go backwards. Something akin to joy had bubbled in him, making him smile up at her before pushing himself up and accepting her offering. She'd helped him dress without comment, both silently acknowledging that while he wasn't actively bleeding anymore, he'd still been shot and had nothing but a swig of Vodka for the pain. Breathing hurt. So bending to pull his pants on would have been agonizing without her help.

Not that he'd ever have admitted it.

Now he sat in her vacated post, picking idly at the crusted blood on his t-shirt. His ears tuned to the outside even as he contemplated the implications of what had just occurred.

He would be lying if he didn't admit to himself that he'd been attracted to her from the beginning. She was the Black Widow after all. Her beauty was known for its deadliness. He'd acknowledged the pull she had on him from day one and written it off as nothing but physical attraction.

Then, a year after she'd come to SHIELD, Fury had partnered them.

She was as cold as ice at first. The adjustment had been difficult. He was a solo operative and the only constant factor in his little world had been Phil. He'd had to learn how to operate in the field with someone by his side instead of just in his ear. It had been the same adjustment for her, he knew. They'd had no choice but to trust each other. Otherwise they'd have been killed the first mission out.

Eventually, he'd gotten used to it. The awkwardness of their initial partnership had faded into familiarity and things got easier. Then he really started to see her for the amazing creature she was. She could carry out the most fantastic of lies without skipping a beat. She could become the most regal cover in an instant, and then fade back to the tough, no-nonsense partner he was used to just as quickly. Her beauty was her weapon and she used it with deadly effectiveness.

It was the small things, though, that had endeared her to him. The way she would wrinkle her nose at food that she had deemed inedible. The way she hid her concern for him under snappy retorts and heated glares, but was always by his side with Coulson when Clint woke up in the infirmary. The way she would narrow her eyes slightly and insult him in Russian when she thought he was being an idiot.

It was the little things that had snuck up on him some time ago and slapped him in the face. He'd been denying it ever since. He knew it could never be. What he felt wouldn't ever amount to anything because in what world would a beautiful creature like Natasha Romanoff ever feel something for an archer with too many scars, both on his body and his soul.

He didn't know how wrong he'd been until last night. He'd always known she was just as scarred as he was. He'd known of the darkness inside her. But she'd looked at him like he was her last hope for redemption. Like only he could fill the gaping hole her past had left insider her.

He knew, because he'd always been able to see her. Even when she didn't want him to.

Now there was no going back. He was hers in every way and she was his.

Natasha was burning the blanket and the rags when Clint was suddenly next to her and pushing her weapons into her hands. His head was cocked and he pressed a finger to his lips. She stepped away from the smoldering pile and raised her eyebrows in question.

Then she heard it.

Engines.

He motioned her quickly towards the trees behind the little house and they moved.

"Sounds like dirt bikes." He murmured as they concealed themselves in the foliage and waited.

"That would sure make the trip to the compound quicker." She smirked once again awed by his superior senses.

"We'll see what the numbers look like and go from there." He decided. "There." He nodded towards the trees to the left of their little house.

She didn't see anything at first. But the sound of the dirt bikes was getting louder and suddenly they tore out of the trees and into the clearing. It looked like a team of twelve. Six bikes, two men to a bike.

"We can take them." Natasha announced quietly.

"We'll move around behind them while they're checking out the house." He agreed.

They circled the clearing silently, picking their way through the trees until they were behind the team of mercenaries. Clint had exactly three arrows left and he made a mental note to retrieve these before they set off towards the compound. Natasha didn't have that luxury. She had her knife, all her ammunition spent in the fire fight.

God was it only two days ago?

He made another note to make sure she got a gun off one of these guys.

He drew one of his last precious arrows and pulled the string back to his cheek. Pain flared in his side and spread across his body, but he didn't lower the bow. He'd fired with worse.

"Ready?" She whispered, her eyes asking the question she wouldn't ask out loud. Was he okay?

"Let's kill some bad guys."

She smirked at his confidence and together they moved. Clint's first arrow whistled ahead of them ripping through the vertebrae at the base of one man's neck. The next, and last, two arrows flew with the same result, felling two more men before any of them knew they were under attack.

By the time the bodies hit the ground Natasha and Clint were on them.

Clint ripped his knife from the sheath at his back with his left hand and wielded his bow like a staff in his right. The first mercenary he came to was raising his gun and Clint knocked it away with his bow and spun towards the man, stabbing his knife into his throat. He pressed his back to the man's chest, using him and the Kevlar vest he was wearing as a shield when the rest of the group turned and opened fire. A glance at Natasha showed her in a similar stance.

Natasha had watched Clint's last three arrows lower the enemy's numbers from twelve to nine. She sprinted at the nearest man, leaping up onto his shoulders. She trapped his head between her thighs and threw her body around his. His neck snapped as she spun, but she kept her momentum, lowering her torso and spinning all the way around until her back was on the ground and the body was suspended above her by her legs, protecting her from the gunfire that erupted a moment later.

The guns clicked empty and they moved.

Clint shrugged off the body and surged forward. Sending his knife flying into one man's throat and swinging his bow into another's head.

Natasha kicked the body away, sending it falling into one of the other men. She raised her legs, rotating them and her body in a sharp movement that gave her the momentum to twist up and to her feet. She spun, bringing her left leg up high and hooking it around the nearest man's neck. The position served as an anchor for her to launch herself up and over the man's shoulder, bringing her right leg around to snap her foot into the next man's jaw. She let gravity bring her to the ground, landing firmly on her right leg and using her left leg, still hooked around the other man's neck, to slam him onto his back. She kicked her boot into his face before he had a chance to rise and spun into a windmill kick to finish of the man she'd already kicked once. She turned to face the man that was pushing the body of the dead mercenary off him.

As soon as his bow made contact with the man's head, Clint twisted into a one handed cartwheel, scissoring his legs around the man's torso and twisting them both the ground. He kicked the man away, having felt his spine snap under the pressure of his legs combined with the force of hitting the ground. He gasped, his whole body throbbing in pain. Maybe that move hadn't been the best idea, given the twisting and crashing to the ground involved. He heard Natasha shout a warning and rolled, barely avoiding the boot headed towards his torso.

Natasha ran at the man as he rose and the dead body fell to the ground. She planted one foot on the man's thigh, the next on his chest and then brought the toe of her boot cracking into the underside of his jaw. The man's head snapped backwards at an angle too sharp to be natural and she kicked away as he fell and cartwheeled to the ground. She came up in time to see a boot headed to her partner's exposed side.

"On your left!" She shouted, before spinning to hook her elbow behind her final target's head. She forced him to double while brining her knee up into his stomach. Then she allowed him to draw back only to hit him with a closed fist back hand, knee him in the groin, and drop him with a side snap kick to the temple.

Clint rolled only once and then caught the man's boot when he tried to kick him again, pushing it away sharply. He snapped his right leg up and across his body, nailing the man in the back of the thigh. The whole appendage collapsed and Clint brought the same leg farther up and hooked it on the man's neck. He reached to take hold of his arm and then forced him backwards with his leg. The mercenary's shoulder dislocated and Clint rolled forward, slamming his open palm hard and up against the man's nose, shattering it and sending the bone fragments into his brain.

Clint rolled away and to his hands and knees. Natasha was suddenly at his side, helping him stand. He blew out a breath, willing away the pain that seemed to be encompassing him.

"That was fun." She smirked.

Clint couldn't help but chuckle.

"Shall we?" He motioned to the dirt bikes. Natasha smiled, reaching to collect two guns from the ground, formerly the possessions of the dead mercenaries. She looped the straps for the automatic weapons over her head.

"After you." She smirked.

Clint collected his arrows and his knife, wiping the blood off on his pants before sheathing it at his back again. Then he stripped two of them of their Kevlar vests, handing one to Natasha and pulling the other over his torso. He threw his leg over one of the dirt bikes and kick started it to life. Natasha climbed on behind him without a word. Two bikes in the tricky landscape that was the forest was a recipe for getting separated or crashing. He was also better at handling motorcycles than she was. It was information they both knew and so any conversation on the matter hadn't been necessary.

"Ready?" He asked over the rumble of the engine.

"Let's go kill some bad guys." She parroted his words from before, smiling when he did.

"Yes ma'am."

He revved the engine and kicked up dirt as they shot across the clearing. Natasha kept her arms carefully wrapped around his waist, cautious of his injury.

He drove faster than was probably safe, jumping the bike over fallen logs and making hair pin turns to avoid trees. His injury, if it bothered him, didn't seem to impair his driving ability. She remembered seeing him take off during down time on a black Ducati that was kept locked up in a corner of the SHIELD garage. He'd come back hours later, windblown and smiling. Coulson would scold him for not wearing a helmet and Clint would argue that if he crashed at the speeds he drove a helmet wouldn't help. Coulson usually didn't appreciate that reasoning.

They stopped what Clint said was two miles from the compound. Natasha was skeptical, given the concussion he'd suffered from the explosion, but she'd never known him to get lost ever. So she didn't say anything while they stashed the bike and started walking.

She was glad she'd kept her mouth shut when he crouched behind a tree and nodded towards the compound in a way that said "See, told you". As if he'd read the doubt in her mind.

He gave her a leg up into a tree she thought he took a ridiculous amount of time choosing and then followed her up with a little less ease than he normally would. Natasha settled against the trunk while Clint crawled easily out onto her branch until he could see the compound through the branches. He remained crouched on the branch, peering out through the trees, for an inordinately long amount of time.

"We're gonna need a hell of an entry plan." He commented as he made his way back.

"What's changed?" She asked as he settled next to her, his legs dangling.

"Doubled the guards at the gate. Our continuous ability to kill them must have them spooked." He sounded inappropriately proud of that fact, considering it had made their job harder.

"So we have three arrows, two guns, a handful of knives and two agents that haven't eaten in two days, have been on the run and in numerous fights, shot and concussed…" Natasha outlined doubtfully.

"Should be fun." Clint smirked arrogantly.

Natasha responded with a smirk of her own.

It was time to make it right.

End of Chapter 8

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"Looks like you boys are waiting for something." Natasha announced suddenly.

The men spun and just stared at them for half a second. In that second, both assassins smirked.

Then it was chaos for the next three minutes and 37 seconds.