About four years after she's recruited, Natasha and Clint are ordered to represent SHIELD at the funeral of a deceased agent, Charles Prescott, by Fury; it turns out there's a rotating roster for this kind of thing because policy dictates that the friends of the agent don't actually count as representation.

They didn't know the guy. Natasha gets the feeling that Fury thinks he's doing them a favour by setting this up – they haven't seen each other in five months, off doing solo missions in different parts of the country, and maybe he feels like he owes them with all the success they've been having, or that they need some kind of incentive to keep performing so well. She doesn't know what to think about that – she's not a child, and she doesn't need to be rewarded with Fury's twisted version of playtime, but she has to admit that the idea of seeing Clint again makes her really, really happy. Even if the idea of Fury predicting that makes her really, really uncomfortable.

She flies into LA from Sydney, Australia, and he comes from Washington. They're supposed to meet at the airport and she finds him first, craning his neck to see over the crowds. She pretends she doesn't care that he looks nervous and kind of excited, in that barely detectable way that only someone who knows him well can see – and if she feels the same way, it's only because – well, who's she kidding, it's because she missed him (it doesn't mean anything).

She makes her way towards him and for once in his life, he doesn't see her until she's way up close, because every now and then she still manages to surprise him – she has a knack for knowing where he'll look and staying out of those spaces, but most of the time he knows her too well for that to work. She gets a kick out of watching him search though; it isn't often the great Hawkeye gets caught without his crosshairs. Eventually their eyes meet and his face breaks into a smile; she can't resist smiling back.

'Tasha!' he greets her, eyes warm, and they stand in front of each other in the pause where normal people would probably hug, doing a good job of acting like they don't know that, just looking at each other in mutual unspoken pleasure (she never hugs anyone, but for the first time she wishes she was the kind of person who did – just for a second). Instead, he reaches out and tugs on a lock of her wig, a strawberry blonde one with bangs that made her a 23 year old receptionist in a research facility that was hiding their work on a new kind of atomic bomb.

'Suits you,' he comments, and grins.

'Thanks,' she grins back. 'Long time no see, Agent.'

'Too long,' he says. 'I've been hearing great things about your work, though.'

'I'm glad.'

'You know me – your biggest fan.'

They know all about what the other has been doing – she keeps tabs on him because she owes it to him to know if he's ever in trouble, and she knows from things he's said before that he keeps tabs on her, though he didn't actually say why. She thinks he might still feel responsible for her – she doesn't bring it up because they'd just end up arguing, and yet they never manage to change each other's minds.

They start walking towards the restrooms – they have to get changed and go straight to the funeral, and then they have a couple of hours to themselves before they ship out to different destinations again, for God knows how long. She can't stop sneaking glances at him – aside from his hair being longer, even curling around his ears, he looks exactly the same and she finds that she's glad and a bit relieved, the same way she always is when they see each other. He's the one thing she counts on not to change.

'I've got a suit,' he says as they walk, holding up a shopping bag with a look of male pattern revulsion, and then he holds up a different one. 'And I bought you a dress.'

'You did?' she asks, astonished, and then balks. 'Please tell me you used company money.'

'Company funeral, company outfit,' he agrees, but glances at her sideways. 'Most of it anyway. Consider it a gift.'

'Clint…' They don't do gifts – never have, not even for birthdays. She knows he believes in them but she just thinks they're a way to rack up more debt, and she wants to keep the lines between them as solid and unconfused as possible. Especially because whenever she's not looking at him, he's looking at her, and it feels somehow different to the way he always has before. But it's been five months – maybe she's forgotten.

'Just this once, take it,' he says firmly, and for some reason she knows she should and she nods awkwardly. Then laughs.

'God, I'm going to look like Betty Boop.'

'Give me some credit,' he says, pretending to look insulted. 'We're going to a funeral, Agent Romanoff, not a sock hop.' They're both aware that they're acting far too cheerful for two people about to attend a funeral.

'Alright, lay it on me,' she sighs, holding out her hands, and he actually looks a bit hesitant as he fishes the dress out of the bag and gives it to her, neatly folded.

She shakes it out and holds it up. It's beautiful – ink black, a fine type of silk that she recognizes as French, with a low but elegant neckline, sheer fluttery sleeves and a tight bodice that tapers out into a knee length skirt. It's pretty, and pretty is not the quality most people think of when picking her clothes – handlers, for example, always seem to go for sexy, voluptuous, va-va-voom. She realizes she's smiling at it – she's smiling at the dress, and she coughs and looks up, nodding in approval. 'It's great, Clint. Very funeral appropriate attire.' Thank you.

'Told you,' he says. Clearly trying not to look too happy that she likes it.

They separate briefly to go and change in the restrooms, but the ladies has a line of about thirty people snaking away from it and when she goes back out to the hallway, she sees him doing the same thing.

'Massive line,' he explains.

'Same.'

'The funeral's in half an hour, we've got to find somewhere to change...' he looks around and she sees what he's going to say before he says it – his eyes land on the janitor's closet. 'Got it.'

She rolls her eyes and follows him in, ignoring the scandalized look of an older couple who walk by and see him tug her in by the wrist in a way that could easily be mistaken for urgency born out of lust rather than time sensitivity.

They've changed in front of each other before; it's no big deal. They're adults and they're friends and their jobs sometimes rely on being attractive and on discussing the best ways for that attractiveness to be utilized for the good of a mission over comm devices, so they don't need to pretend that they find each other physically revolting for the sake of the friendship or anything. When he peels off his khaki cotton shirt, she watches and her eyes linger on the broad, defined muscles of his chest; the swell of his biceps, and when he smirks at her she just raises her eyebrows. When she unbuttons her blouse, throws it to the ground, steps out of her jeans and takes off her wig, shaking her own hair free and standing in front of him in nothing more than her underwear, she likes very much the fact that he stares even as he rummages in his bag for his clothes. They appreciate that they find each other attractive and she refuses to think that she wants more than just to look; that it might be more than just a body she finds attractive about him. She pretends she can't see hunger in his eyes.

No, what makes her more nervous is when they put clothes on.

She's been an adult for a long time now, and she's been comfortable with sex longer than that. Boys irritate her; she only likes men. She's never gone in for 'cute'. But she finds herself obsessed with the way he loops his belt, adjusts his pants on his hips; he puts on a black button down and she finds it far sexier to watch him do up his buttons, clumsy as a kid with his collar up around his ears, than he was bare chested. She pretends she can't hear his breath hitch when she hikes her dress up from her ankles, over her hips and past her chest, folding her arms through the sleeves and arching her back to zip herself in.

Five months since they've seen each other and mostly it feels the same, but she's never heard that hitch in his breath before.

When she's got her shoes on, hair untucked from her dress and neatly swept over one shoulder, she stands opposite him in his suit and they look at each other critically. He grins and gives her a thumbs up – she rolls her eyes, because his tie looks like it was done by a monkey, and steps forward to fix it.

'I told you. I have great taste in womens wear,' he says, plucking a loose thread off her shoulder. 'You look fantastic.'

'Stop sounding so proud of yourself or I'll start to question why you're so good at picking out my clothes,' she quips, arching an eyebrow.

They exit the closet dressed in their funeral finery and run to catch a taxi. He holds the door open for her until she gives him a flabbergasted look and he gets in before her, muttering something about 'the age of chivalry really is dead.' They sit in the back of the cab and spend the twenty minute drive adding fuel to a long running argument over Fury's sexual orientation – she swears she's caught him surreptitiously eying Clint's ass during training sessions, but he tells her about a rumour that was going around in the year before she arrived, about a young recruit arriving at his office ten minutes early for a performance review, only to see a red faced Maria Hill un-handcuffing herself from his desk and making like a bat out of hell.

She always misses him, but whenever they see each other she misses him so bad it literally frightens her, even though he's right in front of her. She's been on back-to-back missions for the past five months, and though she occasionally met with intel officers or spoke with Coulson over the phone, she's really been alone. She can't remember the last time she had a personal conversation with someone that wasn't completely scripted or fake, let alone one as easy and natural and fun as this. She can feel five months' worth of tension – of keeping herself under control and pretending to be someone else, of analysing every facial expression and movement around her, of meetings in the dead of the night and gunfights in places no normal person will ever know exist - melting off her bones; she hears someone laughing, an honest-to-god belly laugh and realizes a second later that it's her.

She pretends this – the clothes, the cab, the way they can't stop laughing and she can't stop looking at him – doesn't feel exactly, intensely, horribly like a date.

~(*A*)~

The high of the reunion doesn't last long. The funeral is, to put it lightly, awful. The man's wife is so distraught that she spends the first ten minutes of the service sobbing into her mother's shoulder and then faints from the stress, putting a halt on the ceremony while her family – including her traumatized teenage daughter – try to revive her. She then attempts to give a speech but chokes on her words from crying so hard, and has to be helped back to her seat. Natasha feels sorry for her, but she feels worse for the daughter, who doesn't shed a tear for the whole thing and stands stonily at her mother's side when people file past at the end to give condolences, casting resentful glances at her whenever she wasn't looking. Natasha knows that expression; she understands what the girl is feeling. Displays of emotion like that… they make her uncomfortable, and when they come from someone whose tragedy you share it feels like your sadness means nothing because you don't cry.

But that woman will cry herself out and her daughter, she'll be angry about this day for much longer than that.

Clint and Natasha stand at the back of the church during the service; she sees a few familiar faces, SHIELD members who knew the deceased agent personally and are there as friends. Their job is just to give the family condolences on behalf of SHIELD, offer their help with anything that might come up and express gratitude that this man gave his life in service to them.

They're the last to go up, and Clint does the talking, because he's better at these things. Which isn't to say they don't make him pretty damn uncomfortable, but he at least manages to inject some genuine sympathy into his voice – Natasha has a tendency to come off kind of unfeeling, even though she doesn't mean to.

'Ma'am,' he says gravely, when they reach the head of the line, 'I'm Agent Clint Barton and this is Agent Natasha Romanoff – we're so very sorry for your loss.'

The wife, Elizabeth, takes one look at them and bursts into tears again. One of the men who has repeatedly been propping her up and looks very much like her brother appears at her side and hustles her away, sending them a filthy look. Clint looks at Natasha helplessly – she shrugs, at a loss.

The daughter watches them coolly.

'So you guys are from SHIELD?' she asks, in a tone with which someone might ask 'So, you guys are from Nazi Germany?'

'Yes,' Natasha answers. 'We're both really sorry about your father.'

'Did you know him?'

'I worked with him once,' says Clint, knowing immediately this isn't what she wanted to hear. 'So… no, not really. We're here to make sure that you and your mother… that if you need anything, you know how to contact us. And to make sure that you know how much SHIELD appreciates everything your father did.'

The girl looks amused. 'Yeah, that sounds about right. My father spends eleven months out of the year running around the country doing SHIELD's bidding like some pathetic lapdog and when he gets killed, the people they send to comfort his bereaved family don't even know him. I always knew he was a loser.'

She finishes with relish in her voice and flounces off, leaving them standing at the front of the church. Clint looks stunned.

Natasha's not. The girl's angry; she feels like her father gave everything, including time he owed his family, to an organization that not only got him killed but didn't even know who he was. Never mind that he had friends from work there – Clint and Natasha were the ones who represented SHIELD and it was SHIELD that she wanted to know would remember her father. And they would, but only in the same way they remembered every agent who died – in a general, respectful but impersonal way; as a concept, really, not a person. And that wasn't what this girl wanted.

'Wow,' Clint breathes.

'Yeah,' Natasha says dully. She looks around – the church is empty. 'C'mon – let's go.'

They start the long walk back to the road, an entire cemetery standing between them and the taxi that's waiting for them on SHIELD money. It's a beautiful day; blue sky, clouds hazing the sun so muted light streams through like butter, and the cemetery is beautiful – one of those old fashioned ones that's nearly full to the brim with ancient statues and carefully designed headstones, enormous oak trees marking quadrants and giving the whole place a serene aura.

It's wasted on a cemetery, really, this place. She's never understood why the most beautiful places are given to the dead, for the living to mourn in – this could be a park, an outdoor concert hall, something great that people could actually enjoy.

Dead is dead, and they don't need beauty.

'I hate funerals,' Clint says suddenly. His voice breaks the peaceful silence and she looks up at him sideways.

'You didn't seem to be dreading it too much at the airport.'

He barks with laughter. 'It's not the funeral I was happy about, Natasha.'

And she looks away before their eyes can meet, because she just knows he's about to look at her and she doesn't want to see what's in his eyes; she hears him sigh. And because she can't make herself look up again, can't make herself ready for what she's getting the feeling he wants her to be ready for, she does what she can and links her arm through his, a gesture that doesn't quite do – but it's all she has, and they walk arm in arm though her instincts tell her to free herself in case of an attack – always the spy. For him, she can ignore them – for a while.

'So… why don't you like funerals?' she asks, a weird attempt at normal conversation which gets a deservedly incredulous look.

'You mean aside from the usual reasons? I don't know, I… it's always sad seeing someone be forgotten, you know.'

'I thought the whole point of funerals is that they're not forgotten.'

'It's meant to be, yeah, but it never turns out that way. People get turned into saints or martyrs or demons – they're never remembered for what they really are. And afterwards it's like people have done what they've supposed to – they went to the funeral, they can say they remembered, and then they go and forget as fast as they can.'

'I won't forget you,' she blurts out, and then she can't believe she said it; she almost claps her hand over her mouth. She feels as surprised as he looks, eyes wide, and she's so embarrassed – this is the most sentimental thing she's ever said, probably, and to the most dangerous person. But the expression on his face, disbelief and happiness and that oh-so-dangerous hope –

'I – I'm touched, Nat,' he says softly, and she's staring at the ground as though she wants to drill holes through it with her eyes.

'Yeah, well.'

'I won't forget you either, you know.'

'Oh, sorry Barton, but you're dying first so we don't need to worry about that,' she says, glad for the segue into the more light-hearted, and he complies, mock offended.

'Are you implying something about my skills, Romanoff? I mean, I am the best archer in the world.'

'In the world?' she scoffs. 'I'm sorry, did I miss the world archery competition you won?'

'I'm assuming,' he says cockily.

'Assume your way straight to your grave, my friend.'

'Hey, hey,' he says, and his tone turns serious again; he stops in his tracks and she feels dread settle into the pit of her stomach as she's forced to stop and face him. 'In all seriousness –'

'Oh God, I never should have said anything –' she groans, attempting to pull her arm away from his, but he doesn't let her.

'I want you to promise me something.'

She doesn't understand why he has to do this. They haven't seen each other for five months and something's different – she thought it was, but it's not as easy as it used to be. He may look the same, but the way he looks at her is different; where once she had met all his expectations, his best partner and resource, it's like suddenly that isn't enough for him – with every gaze and once-just-friendly gesture, he's looking for more. She'd kill for him and she'd die for him, but she doesn't dare think too closely about what that 'more' might be.

'It depends what you're asking,' she says, and her voice sounds colder than she wants it to. His eyes harden.

'You always say you owe me a debt, Natasha, if it comes to it then this is how you can repay me, alright?' It comes out harshly and she realizes she's made a mistake; this is about more than what has changed between them. And it's important to him.

'Yeah… okay.'

'If I die –'he begins -

'Clint!'

'Come on, look.' He narrows his eyes, calls her out on her refusal to take the possibility seriously, because they have dangerous jobs and they both know they're not going to die of old age. 'If I die, I just want you to promise me that you'll – you know –' he clears his throat, and she sees a flush creep onto his cheeks – Jesus, Barton, you never blush! – 'you said you wouldn't forget me but I really don't want you to, okay? So I want you to come out and visit me sometimes.'

She wants to brush this off. For one thing, despite her joke, she has no intention of letting him die before her – she can't protect him forever but she'll be damned if she can't protect him for as long as she's alive.

For another, she doesn't know if she can do what he's asking. Even if the impossible happens and she fails, and he dies before her – and he better not – she'd be able to go on. She'd do her job, she'd serve her new country, she'd do what she promised to do when he spared her life. But she doesn't know if she'd be able to bring herself to visit his grave. To look down at a rock in the ground with his name on it and know that she should have been able to prevent it – or to even set aside time to think about him. He may hate funerals because they let people get away with forgetting, but that's why she likes them. You spend a morning listening to people rattle off a few key qualities and phrases about the deceased, and then you leave. You move on. You remember them when someone says their name or you go someplace that reminds you of them – you don't seek out memories of a person you can't bring back, because there's nothing you can do and thinking about them only slows you down.

She's not the grieving kind. She just doesn't see the point.

But he's obviously waiting for a response – eyes intense and piercing in that way she knows means something is really, really important to him – and she knows none of that will go down well with him, so she stalls, because she doesn't want to hurt his feelings.

'You – the dead you, you mean. The you in the ground?' she asks slowly.

'Yeah.'

'I – why?' She can't keep the frustration, the edge of apprehension out of her voice, though she wishes she had, because he looks sad at the fact that she can't just say yes, Clint. Of course I will visit your goddamn grave if you die first.

'Listen, I didn't mean to have this conversation today,' he says. 'I haven't seen you in ages, I don't want to ruin the one day we have together in – who knows, maybe years, right? But that's why I want you to promise. Since we are talking about it. I don't know what happens after we die, Nat. I know you think there's nothing – but I think there's something, who knows what and maybe I'm wrong, but just in case I'd really like you to come out and visit me sometimes. So if I can see you I'll know you didn't forget about me.'

And he waits – with his fucking patient face, trying for her not to look like it isn't killing him that he's practically having to beg, and she knows she has to say yes. Because he is patient, never-ending-ly so when it comes to her, and he's never let her down.

And she mentions that debt whenever someone asks about their relationship – why is the Black Widow different with Clint Barton? Why does she refuse to go out with the countless agents who ask her out, but never turns down an invitation from him? Why is she his friend, in the somewhat fucked-up capacity that she's capable of, when she tells anybody else who asks that she doesn't believe in friendship?

'I owe him a debt.'

Because she would die for him, and she would kill for him, but that's not what he wants. If she owes him a debt, he wants her to fulfil it by having a drink with him on his birthday and letting him use her nun chucks and putting up with the occasional gesture or moment of closeness that makes her uncomfortable. He wants her to stop being so goddamn afraid and just – let go and be what he wants her to be. He'd never say that, but she can tell – and that's what's changed today, because for some reason he's stopped trying to hide it. She can't do it, though. She'll never be brave enough to do it.

So she'll do what she can, and she'll promise him this.

'I promise.'

And like he always has, he takes what she can give, for a little while longer.

'Thanks.'

Besides – he's Clint Barton. He's the most resilient person she's ever met, and she's met a lot of them. He's survived gunshot wounds, stabbings, torture, countless injuries and maladies and insanely risky situations – he's called Hawkeye because he can see danger coming a mile away, and never once lets it get close.

She doesn't really believe he can die.

It's the last time she sees him, until ten months later she gets a phone call from Phil Coulson and everything changes.

A/N: Hi! Thank you so much to everyone who favourited, followed and alerted – it's the best thing a writer can ask for, and to those who reviewed, you have no idea how much I love you. They keep me motivated and it's the best feeling when someone takes the time to comment on your stuff, whether it's praise, criticism, whatever – it means people are reading and it makes a huge difference, so thank you!

This chapter was a flashback and obviously doesn't progress the narrative, but I hope it gives you some insight into the characters, especially considering where the plot is going – and a present time chapter will be up within a few days, because I want to get it moving.

I have quite a few flashbacks written, and some ideas I haven't developed yet – but I would love to know if there's anything hinted at in the story so far which you would particularly like to see, or even a certain aspect of their relationship – please let me know!