Prologue Part 2

Coulson likes to say that being his handler is like lobbing a grenade from the trenches – you know it's going to take out the enemy, but there's always the risk that it'll blow while you're still close enough to catch some of the damage (Coulson's the kind of person who gets a nerdy little thrill from constructing metaphors like that). And Clint would feel bad about it – the ton of paperwork that lands on Coulson's desk when he takes out a mark a week early because they got on his nerves, or the verbal ass kickings from Fury when he kills someone with an explosive tipped arrow instead of a regular one because he was bored and the whole building collapses – except he's pretty sure he's the only one of Coulson's charges that doesn't bore him to tears. Whenever he sees him post said paperwork sessions and ass kickings, he usually gets a speech about how 'protocol is there for a reason, Barton,' and 'one more incident like this and Fury's going to stick you behind a desk' and 'if I die of a heart attack before someone makes an honest man out of me, I'll kill you, Barton' – but he says it with a smile on his face.

When Clint calls for an extraction for him and the Black Widow – unconscious but still very much alive – he swears he can hear the smile slipping away.

'Are you telling me you failed to eliminate the target, Agent Barton?' Coulson's voice crackles through the comm device. He can't pull off angry or threatening, but he can do apprehensive and please-God-tell-me-I'm-wrong.

'Yeah, that'd be about right,' Clint answers. He's waiting on the roof of the warehouse with Natalia Romanova lying at his feet – hands and feet tied, just as a precaution – after using one of his nifty new high-wire arrows to lift them up there. 'How far away is the helicarrier? Because she's out but I doubt she'll be out for long.'

'Five minutes. She's supposed to be out permanently, Agent.'

'I had a better idea.'

'Nowhere in your job description does it say 'have ideas,' Agent.'

'Come on, I'm taking some initiative, using my instincts; all those good things.'

'Barton.' Coulson's voice is serious now. 'Cut the crap. What are you doing.'

To be honest, he doesn't really know.

He may have done some bureaucratically unadvisable and destructive things on missions before, but this is something completely different. This is disobeying orders; this is way beyond his authority, this might cost him his job – and despite his habit of toying with the perimeters of that job, he loves it. He needs it. He doesn't know where or what he'd be without it, because God knows there's not anything else on earth he's good at besides this job.

But even as he thinks of all that, he looks at the girl on the ground. Nine days of watching her and he never saw her sleep; her face is always beautiful, but for the first time he sees it unmarred by anger and focus and pretence, and softened by sleep – even forced as it is – with a curl drifting over her cheek and her eyelashes black against that white skin, she looks almost innocent. And that's not normal for an assassin, he knows – some lines are not meant to disappear in unconsciousness; not all the danger is meant to evaporate. But she looks innocent. Like she did in those peaceful moments on the balcony and when her mask broke as she presented herself to him, ready for death. Not innocent in the traditional sense of the word – she's done too much, seen too much – but in the way he defines it, which is that she hasn't yet become her job. She's a person, not just a mercenary. She wanted to die rather than remain one. There's good left in her.

He's never killed someone like that before, and he never wants to.

So he's hoping that SHIELD will listen to him, and look at her, and give her a second chance – and him a ten thousandth.

'I'm being a discriminate killer,' he tells Coulson. 'You know I trust SHIELD. I kill for you guys. I choose not to do that, you gotta trust I have a good reason. Besides, we're meant to be the good guys – if we see a reason not to shoot, we shouldn't shoot.'

'It better not be that she's pretty.'

He snorts. 'Of course not. I mean, she is, but that's not why.'

There's a pause. He knows Coulson has two choices here. He can give a direct order to kill – though that's never going to work, and would only end up making Clint guilty of more disobedience and definitely get him dismissed, and despite all his complaining, Clint knows Coulson doesn't want that.

His second option is to trust him.

The silence grows and he's just about to say something when Coulson says, 'We see you. Helicarrier's overhead, I've got a door open for you. Do you need help getting up here?'

Thank God.

'Nope,' he says. 'See you in a few.' He selects another high wire arrow and notches it into his bow, then crouches down and carefully slides an arm under Romanova's waist. He settles her against his side and once he's sure he has her, he anchors her there and shoots. The Helicarrier, invisible to all who don't know what to look for but for a tiny square where Coulson has made an entrance for him – which glows with light and a very familiar silhouette - is straight overhead. The arrow leaves a thick black cord like a comet tail, and when he hears the thud of the arrow tip latching onto steel, he loops the cord twice around his foot, steels himself and then tugs on his bow, activating the retrieval function – and he and the Black Widow zoom into the sky, reaching the belly of the Helicarrier in less than ten seconds.

Coulson is waiting for him, his expression harried, and when he sees Clint carrying the Black Widow in his arms he groans.

'I was hoping this was all your idea of a joke,' he sighs, and then waves behind him. Maria Hill emerges, followed by two agents pushing a gurney. Clint gets the idea and lays Romanova down carefully; immediately the agents rip off the bonds he made around her wrists and ankles with rope from his pack and replace them with handcuffs and restraints. He understands why, but the sight of it makes him feel almost guilty, despite this being the price of having saved her life.

They start wheeling her away.

'Whoa, whoa!' he says quickly. 'Where are you taking her, what are you going to –'

'We're going to sedate her,' Hill says angrily, and he's treated to her most wrathful glare, and knows that she at least thinks Coulson's a fool for trusting him. 'She's arguably the most dangerous person on this ship, Barton, and she just happens to be an enemy. What were you expecting?'

'She's already out!'

'But she'll be waking up any second and we need to figure out what we're going to do with her first,' says Coulson sternly. 'Hill, take her.'

If she was any less tightly wound, she'd poke her tongue out at him, but instead she sticks her nose in the air and marches off with the two agents pushing the gurney with Romanova on it behind her. Clint feels a pang as they go; he feels responsible for her, and if she does wake up he'd like to be the one to explain to her why she's not only not dead, but on board the SHIELD helicarrier. He doesn't think she'll react well to captivity.

And then there are the bones of a plan, forming in his head; the new life he talked about for her. He has a feeling there's only one way SHIELD is going to let her live in the long term, and if it's going to work, he's going to have to talk her into trusting him without Fury getting there first and undoubtedly provoking her with his heavy handed, All-American macho act into proving Clint wrong.

'Come with me,' Coulson says, looking at Clint with the most sombre expression he's ever had. Clint attempts a smile, but Coulson doesn't even twitch, just leads him into a room off the side of the entry bay and closes the door behind them.

'Alright, Barton,' he says. 'Tell me now, has she got something on you? This room scrambles all electronic signals, no bugs work in here. Did you bring her here of your own volition?'

'Yes, of course,' he says, kind of stunned. 'What – did you think I'd bring her here if I thought that was part of some plan of hers? What the hell do you think she could ever do to make me do that?'

He can't help it; he's hurt. He stares at Coulson, searching his face for some kind of explanation, but Coulson just looks weary.

'I don't know,' he admits. 'I didn't think – I'm sorry. But then, explain to me why you've brought her back, why you didn't kill her! And what do you think we're going to do with her?'

'I don't kill good people,' he says simply.

'And you think she's a good person?' Coulson asks, incredulous. The way he's looking at Clint, it's like he thinks he's lost his mind – and maybe he has, but with every second he finds he's growing more and more resolute. Even as the part of his brain that is pure SHIELD agent screams at him for being so irrational. It's like once he let himself believe he could save her, that was it – there's no going back. He can't bear to fail now – for the first time in a long time he's responsible for something other than stopping a heartbeat, and he won't let it be for nothing.

And it's her – he's watched her for nine days, and for some reason he doesn't entirely understand, those nine days were enough to make him utterly, irrevocably… invested.

'I do,' he answers.

'Barton – you read her file! She is the antithesis of everything SHIELD stands for, she has done terrible things and not all of them to terrible people – she –'

'She,' Clint interrupts, 'is a good person.' He can see the disbelief in Coulson's eyes and struggles not to growl in frustration, he has to make him understand –' I can see it, she is, behind all the training and the indoctrination and what those people have made her into – I can see it, man, you've got to just trust me, okay?' He puts a hand on Coulson's shoulder, desperate to make him see. 'She wanted to die because she doesn't want to kill innocents anymore – you know how many people I've killed like that? None! It doesn't happen – because SHIELD kills bad people, and bad people always care more about staying alive than what they do to accomplish that - she doesn't. I'm not killing her and I'm not letting anyone else do it, either. Just… trust me.'

Because it's Coulson's opinion that matters, really – more than anyone's, more even than Fury's, who is really too far up above them, too isolated, to really understand what makes an agent and what makes an enemy – he's great at the big picture, but he relies on Coulson to know his men. It's Coulson who brought in Clint when he was just a kid with a bow and arrows and a chip on his shoulder; Coulson who has the final say on performance reviews and gives the stamp of approval to agents returning after medical or psychiatric leave; Coulson who Fury will listen to, who Fury trusts; Coulson who can change Fury's mind.

The question is whether Coulson can trust Clint enough to do it.

For a while he just looks at him, in that narrow-eyed way he does when he's trying to understand something, and Clint tries to put everything on his face because he's so sure he's right – he's so, so sure.

Natalia Romanova can be one of them. He can help her.

After a while, Coulson sighs. 'You really believe in this? In her?'

'Yeah.' He can't believe it – he's coming around. He can tell by the smile returning to his face, the old Barton-you-drive-me-crazy expression replacing the Barton-you-actually-are-crazy one.

~(*A*)~

Agent Barton really needs to be more careful.

She's sure he knows that pressure point incapacitation doesn't actually last that long, but in all his white knight excitement it seems to have slipped his mind, and so when she wakes up – zooming through the air on what she thinks is a zip line into an invisible flying ship (she can't help but be impressed he manages to hold her with one arm) – it's really easy to pretend she's still unconscious, because he doesn't even check. And when he lays her down, she manages to get one of her remote listening devices pinned to his shirt without breaking her cover. When she's wheeled away and some woman with a really bitchy voice who keeps muttering things like 'stupid, reckless moron' and 'get us all killed' injects her with a sedative, she pretends she hasn't spent years working up physical and mental immunities to drugs like that, and stays still, letting the dizziness and fatigue wash over her, but remaining aware.

She can't believe she let him knock her out like that – but she really, really can't believe where she is. She knows all about the helicarrier, from her days back in the KGB when she was privy to all kinds of intelligence – this is the roving SHIELD headquarters. And he brought her – an assassin, a spy, and Russian, no less – on board willingly.

She's disappointed because she thought she had come to know him, a little, in the nine days he watched her and she pretended not to know. She came to like his eyes on the back of her neck. She thought he was smart – because though she spotted him, he was extraordinary – his gaze so often came from places she couldn't imagine getting to, and he was so determined, watching even in the middle of the night when she went out to smoke on the balcony. She didn't really like smoking, but she did it the first night she noticed him and found that it was kind of peaceful, the two of them awake when everyone else was asleep, and she was secure in the knowledge that he wasn't going to make her suffer. He wasn't going to drag it out. When he shot her, it would be fast, and it would be final, and in a weird way that made her feel safe with him. She was so sure she understood him, because he worked so much like she did – he watched, and waited.

She doesn't like being wrong about people, and she's not accustomed to it. And she finds that for the first time in years, because she had expectations of someone for the first time in years, she feels betrayed.

He wants to save her, but he doesn't understand – there's no going back for her, there's no undoing all the innocent blood she's spilt, all the precious secrets she's stolen, lives she's ruined. Even if she doesn't end up in prison, it's not like she can just go off and turn into a normal girl; get a job, have friends, whatever that entails exactly (she doesn't know). She's not capable.

'… bring her here of your own volition?'

A voice – the voice of the man who met her and Barton in the ship – sounds in her ear, transmitted through the listening device she planted on Barton. There's a loud buzzing noise that she knows means they're in a room with electronic scramblers, but this is Stark technology, stolen from Howard Stark back in the 70s by the Russians – it'll take more than that to shut it down.

'Yes, of course,' Barton says. 'What – did you think I'd bring her here if I thought that was part of some plan of hers? What the hell do you think she could ever do to make me do that?'

He's obviously hurt by the implications, which Natasha understands, if she can't exactly relate. She's never had a boss whose opinion she particularly cared for or respected, but it's obvious Barton cares what this man thinks. And it's also obvious that the man respects Barton, because he apologizes and actually asks him to explain himself – God, if she'd done what Barton did back when she was working for the KGB, she'd already be dead, not having a heart to heart with her employer.

'I don't kill good people.'

'And you think she's a good person?'

'I do.'

She's so shocked she almost laughs.

He was sent to kill her – surely he knows what she's done. She's killed, without question – men, women, and on one awful occasion, a six year old girl, though she hadn't meant to. She's broken up marriages, whole families, to get answers to questions she wants. She's left people broke, homeless, heartbroken, destroyed – and that's if they're lucky. She's tortured. Taunted. She's a cog in the machine that brings misery to humanity. And he had the chance to take her out – save the world and her both a lot of trouble – and he didn't because he thinks she's a good person.

She can't believe how wrong she was about him. He's a moron.

'… behind all the training and the indoctrination and what those people have made her into – I can see it, man, you've got to just trust me, okay?'

But the training is who she is. Her skillset is her lifeblood. There's no virtuous little girl locked behind the ability to kill a man with her teeth. She isn't absolved because someone made her into what she is.

She can tell he thinks so, though, and his voice is so earnest it makes her stomach ache. He really wants to help her.

She listens to him talk about the bad people that SHIELD kill, and she realizes he really believes in what he does – he thinks SHIELD are a force for good, a protecting entity. She envies his certainty, his purpose. All she's ever had is the search for another way to survive, another paycheque.

'I'm not killing her and I'm not letting anyone else do it either. Just… trust me.'

It's this that undoes her. Refusing to kill her is one thing – some men are too moral to take a life if they think it's wrong, but oh, there are so few who will actually defend it if others try, and he's offering to stand up for her against an organization he believes in; people he respects. It makes no sense. She's never had anyone take a single risk for her before, and her chest feels tight; despite the nonsense of it all, that this will never work, she feels a smile try to tug at her lips and hopes that no one is watching her. If she was a normal person she'd laugh, she'd cry; it's joy swelling in her chest, the childish feeling that someone is looking out for her and that makes everything better. She has no defences against this feeling; she's never experienced it before and has no practice holding it back, even as her brain tells her she's being ridiculous and it doesn't matter – because it does matter, it matters a lot, no matter what it comes to in the end.

'You really believe in this? In her?'

'Yeah.'

Oh my God.

'You want her to join SHIELD, don't you?'

Her eyes snap open.

'I – yes.'

Holy shit.

'Come on, let's go talk to Fury.'

'If it's alright, can you do that? I want to go talk to her, convince her before Fury gets there.'

'Alright.' The man's voice is hesitant. 'But Barton. Make sure it's what she really wants. We can fight for her, but there's no point if she doesn't even want this.'

She can hear their footsteps as they separate; the clatter of the metal door closing behind him. Her heart thumps in anticipation; he obviously knows where they must have taken her because in less than two minutes, she hears him enter. She considers pretending to still be unconscious, but she wants to have this conversation; she doesn't want to pretend. So she opens her eyes, and sees that she's in an empty room – literally empty, no attachments on the walls or light fixtures but for a single fluorescent tube built into the ceiling – and Agent Barton is standing with his arms crossed against the door, watching her.

'Uh – hey,' he says, taking a step forward. 'Didn't think you'd be awake yet.'

'So you were going to watch me sleep? That's creepy,' she bites back.

It's in her nature to be aggressive or passive aggressive as the case may be, but she never shows happiness, never gratitude or relief or wonder; they're weaknesses. So even though she likes this man, she won't ever let him know that.

He laughs, taken aback. She gets the feeling he was expecting something along the lines of spitting rage, suicidal melancholy or total silence as opposed to malicious wit, but she can see he's pleased.

'So I guess you're wondering why you're here,' he continues. Grey eyes on hers.

'You have a saviour complex, clearly.'

He raises his eyebrows. 'It wouldn't be very sensible to go into professional assassination with one of those, would it?'

She smirks. 'I get the feeling sensible isn't really your style.'

There's a moment of quiet when he just looks at her. And because this time she can look back – and she's a little less distracted than she was in the warehouse – she sees that he's not just watching, he's searching for good in her and nobody has ever bothered to do that for her before. He's something new, and she doesn't understand why he's going to so much trouble to save her, but she's starting to think it's not something she should be angry about, but grateful for.

She's not committing to the idea yet, but the very fact that he's gotten her to hope is a fucking miracle and even if it all goes to hell, she'll remember that.

'It's not,' he says finally. 'Obviously I'm not going to kill you, like I was told to. You're too good, Romanova. We don't have anything like you, no one with your skillset or your instincts. And SHIELD is always looking for people who can do things no one else can do. That's why they took me.'

'I can't say I've come across all that many archers in my time, it's true.'

'So this is the deal,' he says, and he takes another step forward, this time resting his hands on the railing of her gurney and leaning forward, eyes intense, and all his will conveyed in them, like he can convince her to trust him with the sheer power of his gaze. 'You join SHIELD; become an agent. It'll mean basic training, because you have to get qualified, but that'll be nothing for you. You'll have a probation period. It'll probably be longer than any other recruit's because at first, no one will trust you. They might make you see a therapist; you'll know what to tell him, I don't think you're the kind of person who'll bother trying to learn anything from that. And you'll be shadowed, probably for a long time – I don't know when they'll let you do a mission on your own. But –' and he smiles now, 'you'll get to have a life. You're good at something, you know, and we can give you a way to do it that won't make you want to kill yourself.' She snorts with laughter at this, and his smile grows.

'And you're not worried that I might spy on you? Sell your secrets, shoot someone in the back during a fight?' she asks curiously.

He shrugs. 'I think you have a reason for everything you do and you'd have no reason to do that.'

He gets her, and that's fucking strange for her because not only does the phrase sound horribly prepubescent and stupid, but it's almost like not being alone.

So she says yes.

And the look on his face makes her stop hoping and start to believe, because he doesn't doubt for a second that she can do it – she can turn good, she can be a SHIELD agent, she can get everyone to trust her one day. She hasn't earned this weird faith he has in her and she'll spend a lot of time in years to come trying to do it retroactively, repaying a debt that she feels every second of every day that she isn't killing for money or wandering the streets of Russia.

He takes off her handcuffs and ankle restraints, and though he never takes his eyes off her, she can tell he doesn't really think she's going to try anything; he's just a good agent, doing what his superiors would tell him to do in the wake of doing a hell of a lot of stuff they are pretty pissed off about. He tells her that Coulson – who she figures out must be the man he was talking to earlier – is on their side and that he's got more common sense than anyone he's ever met so they must not be completely crazy (he keeps saying 'we' like this was partly her idea). He talks a lot. She doesn't say much because she doesn't really have conversations with people that don't involve tricking them or getting information, and he's treating her like a friend, which is something she doesn't believe in, and shouldn't encourage (though if she was going to have a friend, she'd like one like him). She'll pay him back some day for everything he's done for her, but it'll be as a fellow agent, hopefully – nothing more.

He says the real challenge is going to be convincing Fury, who she knows from rumours is supposed to be this huge hardass, but when he comes into her room later that night she starts laughing because he has an honest-to-god pirate patch and she's never seen anything less discreet in her life. And this may be a good sight better than what he was expecting, which was probably for her to start cursing in Russian and writhing on her gurney, but it still doesn't make the best first impression.

He doesn't even talk to her directly for the first fifteen minutes. He spends those reaming out Barton. You're an employee of this organization like everyone else, he says. Your job is to follow orders and you only have that job as long as I still believe you're remotely capable of doing that, he says. You're foolish and short-sighted and reckless and disobedient. You can't keep going around ignoring our timelines and blowing up buildings and bringing home Russian assassins (and she stows away that bit about blowing up buildings in the back of her mind, because she needs to know more about that).

But when he tells Barton that he's on probation and Barton's face falls, she interrupts because she owes him a debt and she tells Fury to add Barton's probation time onto hers instead.

And the burning anger on his face fades into something like shock… and then consideration.

'So you want to become a SHIELD agent, do you?'

She doesn't like admitting that she wants things. But with a smart retort on the tip of her tongue, she looks at Barton shaking his head behind Fury's back and answers honestly.

'Yes.'

Fury asks her question after question. How old is she? She doesn't know – she thinks around 20. What are her skills? She knows they know this, but she starts to rattle off a list anyway, proving her honesty – he stops her at around her 37th bullet point. How many people has she killed? 89. Does she have any ties left to Russia? No, not a one. No family, no friends. Nothing.

He tells her that Coulson vouched for Barton, and Barton vouched for her, and that gets her a chance. If she puts a toe out of line, if it even looks like she's got a secret agenda, he'll fillet her with a rusty spoon, but she has a chance. He says she'll have to complete basic training, and for her that will include a test of her abilities to cooperate with a group of agents who don't like her or trust her or respect her, because she'll probably have to deal with that for a long time – maybe always. She agrees. He tells Barton that he's going to be personally responsible for her – at that she opens her mouth to protest, because she is responsible for herself and she doesn't need to owe him anymore than she already does, but he talks over the top of her and says it's fine. Fury says her probation period will be eighteen months, with an additional six months since she's taking on Barton's time, and when Barton starts to protests she kicks him in the shins. Fury tells them both to stop behaving like children and starts to list more conditions: she will undergo a year of bi-weekly psychological evaluation, she will be under surveillance for the first two months, she will do what she is told when she is told to do it and when she's finally cleared to start work, she will be shadowed by Agent Barton – indefinitely.

They answer all the questions with a 'yes, sir', some willingly and some less willingly, but where he hesitates she jumps in and when she glares impudently at Fury for his fucking nerve and looks apt to answer cutely or worse, in Russian, he jumps in. They manage to sound reasonable and vaguely apologetic by default of covering for each other.

Almost like a team.

A/N: So I know this was an absolutely monster-length prologue; but the actual story starts next! I am really excited about this story – and I've actually written a fair bit of it, so for at least the near future you can expect relatively frequent updates, on average perhaps about once a week (give or take a few days). I really hope you like it – I am completely obsessed with the Avengers and a decent percentage of that obsession is directed onto Clint and Natasha, who I adore and whose relationship is vastly underappreciated fic-fodder (I can't believe there isn't more!) The story is going to include both present-time story, which will be the majority, with a few flashbacks where relevant. There will be action, angst and romance, as well as much Avenger-interaction.

I would really love some reviews to let me know whether I'm doing okay. Please let me know if you think I'm doing the characters justice, or what you would like to see more of! Thank you to everyone who reviewed the last chapter – they make me indescribably happy.