'Nat, c'mon.'

She'd rather be anywhere than where she is right now, sitting in the meagre inches of space on the quinjet bench that are not taken up by Clint; she's so mad that she moves away every time his leg brushes her – she can't even stand to touch him. The fact that he's left her so little room is an indication of how weak he is right now. He's lying with his head on Cap's rolled up jacket, and there's a medic kneeling next to him trying to dress the wound on his chest but he's not making it easy: he keeps trying to sit up, because Natasha is ignoring him.

She doesn't remember the last time she was this angry.

'Nat!'

He knows she can hear him perfectly well, but he just keeps saying her name louder – like she's going to start speaking to him again just to shut him up. It's worked in the past, but not this time. She is speechless. Her chest feels hollow. It feels like a vase that's been broken and glued back together: trying to make words would crack it; even the controlled breaths she's taking seem to swell in her and strain the edges. It's like her body is a machine someone has put the wrong kind of fuel in; she was not made to feel things like this and her heart is aching with the wrongness of it all. Sitting here, still and silent, is her effort to keep herself together until she can get off the jet because she will not let him see her scared. She doesn't want him to know she's scared – she only wants him to see her anger.

She feels a hand on her shoulder and whips her head around.

He's managed to sit up, despite the best efforts of the harried looking young medic, and the hand on her shoulder is half supplicating and half a necessary measure to hold himself upright; she has a mad urge to hug him but shoves it down. He's pale from blood loss, and visibly shaky; her stomach clenches because he's the most stable person she knows and the shaking is awful and she doesn't want to look at it. But despite the fact that his eyes are glassy, he's focussed on her.

'I'm not going to say I'm sorry,' he says hoarsely.

'I don't care what you say,' she snaps, though she does want a sorry – it would mean he's not planning on doing this again in the future and at least that would be something. Her voice is tight with fury. As she shrugs his hand off she glares at the medic. 'Can't you control your patient?'

'No-one can control me,' Clint says, eyes boring into hers, and she knows he's not just talking about here and now.

'Great! You're a fucking mess but at least nobody can control you - ' she says, and to her horror her voice cracks; she explodes off the bench and strides off towards the cockpit, unable to stand another minute of him trying to get her to think this is okay – that it's perfectly reasonable for him to throw himself in front of a bullet for her.

No one can control me? Fuck him.

Steve and Bruce are piloting the quinjet; Steve only needed a couple of lessons to bring him up to date on the technology and it turns out Bruce knew everything there is to know about flying from books and manuals. At the sound of her footsteps, Bruce turns his head and raises his eyebrows. 'How's he doing?'

'He's alright enough to piss me off, so I'd say he's fine,' she says shortly.

'You know he just wanted to –'

'Protect me?' she asks. 'I don't need his protection. He's not my bodyguard, it's not his job to do this shit.'

'He's your friend, Romanoff,' Steve says. 'And friends don't protect each other because it's their job…'

'Just fly, Rogers.'

It's not fair.

She will never stop owing him. It's like he doesn't want her to stop – he keeps doing things like this, this is the third time in their lives that he has intercepted some kind of attack meant for her but it's not even just that – it's that since they've been staying in Stark Tower he brings her a cup of coffee every morning – and every year on her birthday (the day he picked as her birthday anyway, which is November 1st), he buys her a drink and if she's not in the same country then it's waiting for her when she returns, and like an idiot she's stopped caring what day she was born and always feels older when she drinks a vodka martini.

He has always wanted to spend time with her, even when they don't have any work to do; he made her be his friend. He forces her to laugh and to enjoy herself and to be human, and she's tired of feeling like she owes him so much that she will never, ever be able to pay him back for everything he's done for her – her debt is too big now, it's millions of dollars and years of labour and first born children and anything, really, he deserves anything he wants – but she knows what it is that he does want and that's something she can never give him, even if he does deserve it (and more).

And then he goes and jumps in front of a bullet for her and she will never be able to make it up to him, ever – she doesn't know how.

~(*A*)~

He's been shot before, but this is the first time he did it on purpose.

It was supposed to be a simple mission – just a quick trip for him and Nat to DC, to check out a guy named Julian Tine who was suspected of bioterrorist plotting and by some strange coincidence had recently decided to move in with a doctor working at a research lab for the Centre for Disease Control. As far as sneaky-ways-to-get-information went, it was pretty conspicuous, which was exactly what made Fury think it may have all been a false alarm – it was too obvious a ploy.

Clint didn't care that it was a relatively boring mission, supposedly just surveillance – they'd been staying at Stark Tower for a month now and as nice as it was to have some time off, both of them were getting restless. When Fury called and asked him if he wanted to stretch his legs a bit and watch Tine at the CDC staff party to make sure he didn't sneak away to look at any restricted files or attempt to break into one of the labs, he jumped on it. He invited Natasha even though he didn't really think he'd need her, because he always has more fun with her, it always feels less like work with her, and the level of enthusiasm was kind of sad – they really needed to get back to work.

They spent three hours watching Tine from an air conditioning vent which was big enough for both of them to sit in, drinking coffee from a thermos and making fun of all the researchers' terrible dancing – he's a middle aged, moderately handsome guy with a shock of cornstalk yellow hair who admittedly seemed like an odd match for Dr Frieda Rasgotra, a beautiful Indian woman in her late twenties who looked more like a supermodel than a doctor. And he was boring. He spent the whole party sitting alone at a table while his girlfriend danced with her friends, fiddling with his phone and eating vol-au-vents.

It was nice, for once, to have a mission with her where they weren't constantly tense, worrying over their next move or keeping up some elaborate cover story. Even if things had been weird between them lately.

It was when the party finished that everything went to hell. A man in a lab coat met Tine as he left the building, discreetly slipping a thick envelope into his jacket pocket. They didn't know what it was, but their orders were clear – don't let Tine take off with any restricted information, and so they followed him and Rasgotra out to the parking lot. He'd honestly thought Tine would be scared shitless of his bow, and if not that, Natasha's guns and their respective somewhat intimidating presences – he'd honestly thought violence wouldn't be necessary. They followed him in shadows, keeping out of sight until he reached his car, and then they emerged.

He hadn't expected Tine to have backup.

Natasha said 'Mr Tine, you have something on your person which –'

And Rasgotra pulled out a gun. Pointed it at her head.

He didn't think, just felt terror grow like something black and bubbling, making it hard to breathe – his heart seemed to fall and hit the ground. It felt like a thousand years passed as he watched that gun pointed at Natasha; he could practically see a line from where the barrel ended to where the bullet would hit her, right in the middle of her forehead.

It's truly amazing how much you can feel in the split second that the person you love most is about to be taken out of the world. He knows he's going to have nightmares about it. It was mostly just blind terror, but a lot of it was rage. At Rasgotra for pointing the gun, at Tine for just fucking being there, at Fury for not knowing what the hell he was sending them into, at himself for inviting Natasha, at Natasha for accepting. At time, for not being up to the moment where everything between them is said yet. This is unforgiveable.

He did the only thing he could have done, and that's what she doesn't understand. It's the only thing he could have done.

He ran, and he jumped in front of her.

It's like it was meant to happen that way, because Rasgotra shot as he jumped and the bullet hit him in the chest but it was near his shoulder and really, not too bad. He hit the ground fucking hard, he's going to have the mother of all bruises, and okay, so gunshot wounds sting like a bitch and he's feeling pretty woozy, but it's no worse than being drunk and getting his ass kicked. Well… maybe slightly worse. Like getting his ass kicked by ten guys after a three day bender. If one of the ten guys then proceeded to ram a piece of metal through his chest and slam him into the ground.

He doesn't feel bad about taking the shot; he feels pretty fucking great about it actually. He has never been happier about a single other decision he's made in his life. He doesn't care that Rasgotra and Tine got away; apparently they were more skilled than Fury knew, disappearing into the night on foot.

But he does feel bad about scaring Natasha. The moments after he hit the ground are kind of confusing to him now and there's a blank period between closing his eyes in the parking lot and waking up on a quinjet, but he remembers her scream around the time the bullet hit him in mid-air. He has a hazy maybe-memory of her kneeling over him, eyes wide –

No, Clint – stay awake – open your eyes, hey!

And this is a woman who has had boiling oil poured on her feet without making a sound, who has fought aliens and monsters and the very worst that humanity has to offer and never backed down for a minute. He's not an idiot; he knows she's afraid sometimes. He's probably the only person who knows. This is the thing – people think Natasha's cold, that she doesn't care. And it's not like he doesn't ache for more from her; it's not like he doesn't wish, more and more these days, that she loved him the way he loves her. But she does love him – he knows that, even if it's hard to feel it sometimes. Even if it's only as a friend. And she was terrified today. He hates that.

He can hear her, Bruce and Steve talking up the front of the quinjet but he can't make out what they're saying; it sounds like they're underwater or something. The dumbass medic they brought keeps poking him.

'Do you even know what you're doing?' he croaks irritably, and the guy huffs.

'I'm a fully qualified medical professional, Agent, but it's hard to treat you when you won't stay still,' he says pointedly.

He would really, really like to sit up, or at least prop himself up on his elbows, because he wants to see her. But the dumbass medic has a point and also, his muscles feel like concrete and every effort makes him shake like crazy so he gives up and lets the guy work on him for a while before going off to make a phone call on the quinjet line. Maybe if he plays nice he'll get to avoid a stay in the hospital.

After a while, he hears heavy footsteps clunking towards him and recognizes that Steve is coming over – even after all this time, he still walks a bit like a guy who thinks he's three feet shorter and sixty pounds lighter than he actually is. His face appears hovering over Clint and he attempts to raise his arm to give him a thumbs up, but finds that he can't even summon the strength and the effort sends a shooting pain through his arm that makes stars explode in his head – he winces.

'How's it going?' Steve asks, face filled with concern.

'Alright,' he manages to get out; even talking is sapping his energy. He closes his eyes. 'On a scale of one to ten, how mad is she?'

'On a scale of one to ten…? Sixteen.'

He exhales. It's moments like this when he wishes things were different between them. He wants to tell her it's okay that she's scared for him, but she would never admit that she is – he doesn't know if she even admits it to herself or if she just pretends she's mad about that stupid fucking debt she thinks she owes him. He wants to tell her why he's glad that he took that bullet for her, why he'd do it again, but he knows he wouldn't see her again for months afterwards. He wants there to be something he can say that will make her feel less guilty, but he won't lie to her. He can't say he won't do it again.

And fuck, he just got shot. No matter how it happened, he wishes she would just come over and sit with him because he feels like shit and having her there would make it a lot better, and so would having her not be mad at him.

'She'll get over it,' Steve says, but his intonation makes it sound like a question. He gets it – sometimes it's pretty hard to imagine the wrath of the Romanoff ending, ever.

'Yeah, she'll get over it,' Clint says. 'But she'll never let me forget about it, believe me.'

'I don't understand why she's so angry. She'd do the same for you.'

He knows she would, and he's got a 'yes' waiting to be said but he gets a wave of nausea that completely prohibits opening his mouth, so he closes his eyes and tries to breathe normally. Steve seems to get the hint and he feels a hand pat his knee, then hears the same slightly off-beat footsteps fading away as he returns to the cockpit.

He doesn't remember feeling quite this bad the last time he was shot, which was in New Delhi, eight years ago – before he even met Natasha. That time he performed meatball surgery on himself in an alley behind an old restaurant with whiskey as an antiseptic and blue stitches because he had to steal the thread from a guest's handbag and her sewing kit didn't have standard black. It doesn't make sense that this is worse – or not worse, exactly, but different, because the wound itself doesn't hurt quite as much – a dull pain as opposed to unbelievable agony – but he feels like he's been run over by a truck. He's so tired he can't even move… the mere act of breathing is getting painful, he's so dizzy and he can feel his heartbeat pulsing throughout his entire body like someone is hitting him with a hammer.

This isn't normal… he wants to make a noise where's the goddamn medic but he can't remember how to form words. He needs Natasha to come back in here and kick the guy's ass for leaving him alone. He can make her laugh if she just comes back in. He can make her forgive him.

He just needs her to be here full stop… just come back…

~(*A*)~

She offers to take Steve's spot as pilot for a while because she needs something to distract herself with, and he goes out to check on Clint. They're still half an hour away from the SHIELD infirmary in New York – because their contracts ask them to 'avoid civilian hospitals at your own discretion in order to minimize detection and interference with covert operations' and in one of his brief moments of consciousness on the parking lot floor, Clint had mumbled 'quinjet' where a normal person would say 'ambulance' and as furious as she was, she trusted him.

She's always liked flying. It was basically the only thing that SHIELD basic training taught her that she didn't already know, and she didn't have to do it with a gang of other agents watching her, distrusting her, waiting for her to fail – for as long as the flight lasted, she only had to worry about what she could see, and that was the sky.

For the first time, the dark of the horizon at night doesn't calm her.

Steve comes back much sooner than she expected and she tightens her grip on the steerage wheel, reluctant to give it up.

He doesn't ask for it back, but says; 'I think you should go back there, Romanoff.'

'I'm fine where I am, thanks,' she says shortly.

She can practically hear the disappointment in his voice, and fuck, she likes Steve but when he gets all preachy and old fashioned like this she just wants to punch him really hard in the face.

'Your best friend just got shot for you,' he says severely. 'Whether you wanted him to or not, he's hurt and you should… you should go be with him.'

She knows he's right. She shouldn't be angry, but she doesn't know how to let it go. She knows she should be back there, holding his hand and fucking thanking him… and just thanking God that he's okay, he's not dead… he's still here. But the sight of him makes her want to cry. She wants to be back there just as much as she doesn't want to.

There's silence as Steve's words hang in the air and both he and Bruce keep quiet because she's sure they can sense she's barely holding it together.

God, she's got to be better than this.

She tries to imagine how he'd be acting if the situation were reversed and she'd jumped in front of a bullet meant for him. She can see it so clearly – he'd be furious, he'd be pacing in the back of the jet, raving about how stupid she was, how he didn't ask her to do it (and of course that means she shouldn't have). He'd be badmouthing her to the medic, telling him how much trouble she causes him and how many times she's almost died ('and you say I have a saviour complex?'). He would, essentially, be driving her completely insane and she'd probably beg him to go sit in the cockpit and leave her in peace.

But she has no doubt he'd stay with her anyway.

'Rogers, take my spot,' she says finally, and he squeezes her shoulder as she gives him the headphones and slips out of the pilot seat; Bruce gives her an approving nod.

She's barely got the door open when she hears a loud thump coming from the back and apprehension rises in her; a second later she sees Clint sitting hunched over on the ground, clearly having tried to get up off the bench and fallen, and her heart spikes with fear. She runs over and crashes to her knees next to him – he looks awful, God how did he get so bad so fast – he is covered in sweat and he doesn't even seem completely awake, breathing harshly and listing to the side with confused eyes.

She presses her hand against his forehead, which is damp with sweat; he rests his head against it, exhausted. He's burning up. She feels sick.

'He's um… he's really hot,' she says shakily; she's not sure who to (where's the fucking medic?) When she moves her hand away he leans forward and rests his forehead against her collarbone, and she gets the feeling that if she wasn't there he would have just kept pitching forward onto the floor. He is radiating heat, it is not okay for a human being to be this hot, and yet when she rubs his shoulder – it's the best she can bring herself to do to comfort him – she can feel him shivering and in the moments when the engine goes quiet she can tell that his breathing is funny, something is wrong; it's too slow. She's not used to this – he's always a pain in the ass when he's injured or sick, he never shuts up, he can't be this quiet – something is seriously wrong.

'Clint,' she says. She's pathetic – she doesn't sound confident or reassuring, she sounds terrified. She sounds like a little kid. 'Hey.' She shakes his shoulder a little and he groans. She gets her hands on his shoulders and manages to slowly push him upright using her arms to brace him. It's hard going because he's too weak even to balance and she feels guilty for even making him move, but the idea of him passing out makes her panic.

This is when she sees that the patch of gauze taped over his wound is completely soaked through with blood, which is now dripping down his chest in rivulets.

Her vision goes fuzzy for a second, she's so frightened.

'Bruce, something's wrong!' she shouts, because he is white and he's looking at her with watery, unfocussed eyes that already seem half dead; does he even see her? She gets an arm under his back and one under his neck and manages to lower him not-very-gently onto the floor because gravity is only making him lose blood faster and she hears Bruce running up behind her – she hears him swear and he puts his fingers on Clint's neck, checking his pulse –

'Fast and thready,' he says grimly. 'Barton, hey, stay with us here –'

He's staring at the ceiling with half-lidded eyes in a total daze and he doesn't even look like he's feeling anything anymore which is not good – but he moans slightly when Bruce rubs his knuckles against his sternum to invoke a response to pain, and Natasha screws her protocol for dealing with him and reaches out to hold his face in both hands, he can psychoanalyse this to his heart's content later and she will put up with all his half-serious teasing and those loaded gazes that make her heart skip beats if he just won't die – just oh God please don't die, please don't die –

'Where's the fucking medic?' bellows Bruce

She doesn't realize she's saying please don't die out loud until Clint's fingers close around her wrist, tangling into her sleeve. Even with that stoned glaze on his face and his eyes staring at some point above her head, he's mouthing something and she leans down closer to hear it, her hair brushing his face;

'Don't leave.'

His voice is so hoarse she can barely understand him, but she does, she does… she feels like she's going to throw up because he doesn't look scared even though he's dying and it's because she's there, she knows it is. She doesn't understand how she became this person for him but it breaks her heart because she is not nearly enough. She left him in here alone because she was angry that he saved her life.

'I won't,' she croaks. She sounds like she's spent the last year of her life screaming.

'Steve, look up the nearest hospital and land!' Bruce shouts, rummaging through a first aid kit. He pulls out wads of gauze and shoves them into her hands, and says – ; 'Keep talking to him, try and keep him awake'; - as he checks syringes and looks for other stuff –

She presses the gauze down on his chest as hard as she can, her eyes burning with tears. This should be hurting him but he isn't crying out.

'Clint, stay awake,' she says shakily. 'Do you hear me? Stay awake.'

He's trying, she can tell; his eyes are fluttering shut all the time now but every few seconds it's like a jolt goes through him and he manages to open them again. But he never finds her eyes.

He was supposed to be fine…

'Come on, please. I'll do anything you want… just please stay awake Clint, come on…'

'Nearest hospital's four minutes away! I radioed in, we've got their helipad!'

This doesn't seem real. Just an hour and a half ago they were sitting in an air conditioning vent watching dorky scientists dance and drinking horrible coffee, talking about stupid stuff. She doesn't even remember what they were talking about but it was so hard not to laugh, he had to keep pinching her to make sure she didn't blow their cover. She loved it. She loves being with him. Just twenty minutes ago he was going to be fine and she was angry.

'Please don't die, please don't die, please don't die…'

A/N: Thank you so much to everyone who favourited and followed; and especially thank you to the lovely people who reviewed! Each one makes me happy :)

This is essentially the first chapter, and dives right into the action. Obviously the relationship between Clint and Natasha has changed since the prologue, and through flashbacks I will be exploring that.

The next update should be expected around this time next week! I hope you enjoyed this one and would love to hear from you.