Over the panicked hammering of their chests, the footsteps outside turned and crunched away. Clint and Natasha waited, frozen the way they had fallen against the wall. They waited but nothing came. A car door thudded shut and the light drained away from the alley. They sat frozen for several minutes more, but nothing came.

Finally Natasha let out a long audible exhale of the breath she felt like she's been holding for fifteen minutes. She opened her eyes and let them adjust to the dark basement as she waited for Clint to break the silence.

He leaned his head back against the musty concrete wall. "I'm getting too old for this."

Natasha managed a half-hearted chuckle. "Too old for this? You're not even forty."

"Yeah but I'm like 100 in Agent Years."

"Then I'm dead in Agent Years."

"You're younger than I am."

"Not in Agent Years." Natasha stood up. "Come on. Let's get away from the windows." They hauled the cases to a large empty space in the middle of the floor and sat down with their backs against shelf of junk. Several more mismatching shelves stood randomly around the floor. A few metal filing cabinets were tucked by the door leading upstairs and a furnace sat cold and empty in the far corner.

Natasha pulled the medical kit up beside her and flipped the latches. "You're bleeding."

"Story of my life," Clint replied as he pulled the sleeve of his sweatshirt toward him to get a better look. The concrete window frame had torn through the gray fabric and now warm blood trickled down his arm. Natasha gestured for him to slip out of the sweatshirt but he shook his head. "I'm fine."

Natasha paused a moment. She grabbed his forearm and gently pulled his arm out of his sleeve. "You've got some gravel imbedded in the cut, nothing serious."

Clint pulled the sweatshirt off and clumped it loosely into a ball, which he tucked behind his head. He leaned against the shelves as Natasha took a flashlight and tweezers to his arm. When she's removed as much gravel as she could, she rinsed it in antiseptic liquid and began to wind a length of cloth bandage around his arm.

"Do you really think we can stay hidden until the S.H.I.E.L.D. team arrives?" she said.

Clint looked up at her. "No."

"Me neither. In that case, you're probably going to need this." She taped the bandage off and gave his arm a pat.

"That gash on your forehead is next."

Natasha sat still as Clint sat up and gently took hold of her chin. He squirted the antiseptic solution onto a cloth and dabbed at her forehead, first on the splotch of blood dried around the would and then at the gash itself.

"Listen, Tasha. . ."

"I don't want to talk about it."

"You don't know what I was going to say."

"But I know I don't want to talk about it."

"How is that worse that just thinking about it, leaving it trapped to tumble around your brain?" He held the cloth against her head. "This is fairly deep. Do you want me to stitch it up?"

"No, just tape it."

Clint turned and rummaged through the drawers of the medical kit.

Natasha didn't move. "I got too attached. I got distracted."

Clint turned back with a tiny white butterfly bandage pinched between his fingers. "Hold still," he said, and held her chin again. Clint wiped her skin dry and went to position the bandage. "I wasn't any better. You were right. You said we would falter. You predicted exactly -"

"No I didn't!" Natasha wrenched her jaw out of Clint's gentle grip. "Stop saying that. Just because I said some words, made some half-assed prediction, doesn't mean I knew anything about what was going to happen here. So if you -"

Clint put his hand on her shoulder. "Tasha."

She met his eyes, then let her head hang. "Sorry."

Clint hilted her head up and peeled the backing off of a fresh bandage. He tucked her hair behind her ear and stuck on one side of the bandage.

"And I'm sorry I snapped at you back in the elevator shaft, it's just . . . We came so close. So close to being something more than code names and mission numbers and bullets."

Clint pulled the bandage taught, drawing the thin center strip over the gash and pulling it closed. He untucked her hair, letting the bright waves fall back over the side of her face. "Who says we have to let go?"

"Grow up."

"Excuse me?"

"Clint, even if we live through this morning, we cannot take many more missions like this. We can't risk being this distracted ever again."

"Why not? Why can't we learn to work together this way, just like we had to learn to be partners in the first place?"

"Because it will just hurt that much more for whichever one of us goes second." Natasha grabbed his hands and turned the palms up to the ceiling. "You've got pretty nasty cable burns." She reached into the kit and slathered his raw red hands with an ointment that smelled vaguely minty.

"And it's not worth it?" said Clint. "I'm not worth it?"

Natasha bound a thin breathable cloth around his hand, looping it around his fingers like a boxing wrap. She pulled it a little too tight. "I never said that."

"You might as well have." Clint snatched the white cloth from her grip, and continued winding it around his own palm. Natasha followed suit, tending to the cable burns on her own hands and wrapping them in a similar fashion with the lengths of bandage. When they were almost through, Clint leaned back against the shelf and broke the silence with a snort.

"Something funny?"

"We're right back where we started. I want to take a leap of faith and you're too afraid of what you might lose to follow me."

"This isn't how we started."

"Oh really? How's that?"

Natasha grabbed his chin with one of her freshly bandaged hand and pulled him in for a kiss. "Do I look like I'm running?"

Their lips parted again and they leaned their foreheads together as they knelt on the clammy cellar floor. Clint smiled. "Not on the outside."

Natasha swung a soft punch at his shoulder, then rose and wove through the cases to find the cylindrical container. "Ready to gear up?"

"What happens if I say no?"

Natasha pulled her uniform from the container and threw the tube at Clint. "You gear up anyway."

"First thing's first," he said. Clint kicked off the sneakers he'd thrown on back at the apartment, then spread burn cream over the soles of his blistered feet and wrapped them in bandages. "I'm starting to feel like a mummy."

Natasha ignored him. She held her suit up in her hands, feeling the soft, lightweight material glide over her fingertips. "I haven't seen you in a while." Limb by limb she slipped into the black fabric, letting it coat every muscle like a second skin. She drew the zipper up and took a breath. Already she felt safer, stronger. She no longer had to worry about adjusting her movements to accommodate a flowing dress or the constricting sleeves of a sweatshirt. Encased in the inky black fabric, she felt like she could simply vanish into the night.

Normally, that rare feeling of safety and freedom was all that accompanied the suit. Tonight, however, she found that lightness weighed down by something else. Natasha twisted to glimpse the S.H.I.E.L.D. emblem adorning both her shoulders. Right. That. Because S.H.I.E.L.D. owns me. Because I'm Madame X. She picked up the cold hourglass belt buckle hanging from her waist and ran her fingers over the crimson lacquer. Because I am the Black Widow. Natasha clipped the belt into place. "Welcome back."

Clint pulled on his black cargo pants and cinched the belt tight. Metal buckles clinked against his thighs, and the spongy material of the built-in knee pads pressed against his knees. He stuck his arms through the sleeveless jacket and zipped it up to his neck. Stretching his arms up to toward the ceiling, he rotated his torso back and forth, feeling the plastic ribs on his sides bend with his movement. Now for the most important part. Clint flipped open one of the larger cases and pulled out his combat boots. "I love you guys," he whispered. He sunk his sore feet into the perfectly moulded rubber and leather. With the sharp clicks of metal latches, he strapped them on. Clint straightened his short collar and smiled. "Hawkeye's back baby!"

"Forgetting something?" Natasha shook the tube and let his purple-tinted glasses tumble into her hand.

"Watch the shades!"

"Pass me the .20 cals, would you?" Natasha said, and she snugged the two small guns into the dueling holsters now strapped to her thighs. From another case she pulled out her tool belt and slung it on so it hung along her hips.

Clint popped the largest case, revealing his fully stocked quiver. He pulled his finger and wrist guards from the compartments beside it and slid them onto his hands. Reaching behind him he clipped the quiver to its place on the back of his uniform.

Natasha strapped on her fingerless gloves and slid the two black gauntlets over her wrists.

Clint took the handle of his folded bow and snapped it to life.

"What's left?" Natasha asked.

"Just these." Clint opened the last case to reveal two assault rifled resting neatly in their slots.

"Those'll do."

"Here." Clint stripped the foam padding from the case holding his quiver and placed the yellow case they'd stolen inside. It and the rifles they placed at their feet; the rest they stacked neatly beside them.

"We should try to get some sleep," said Natasha.

"After those shots you gave me? I'll be up for days."

"Still, you don't want to burn through them. Four and a half hours until the S.H.I.E.L.D. team arrives. I'll take first watch." They settled themselves back against the shelves. Natasha let Clint lean against her shoulder. The bluish shadows of the basement sat perfectly still on the cement. All sound had died away except for the rhythmic hush of their breathing. After a few more minutes of stillness, Natasha broke the silence. "God this whole thing feels like a dream."

"I though I was supposed to be sleeping."

"Were you?"

"No. The good kind of dream or the bad kind?"

"A little bit of both."

"Want me to pinch you? You're right. It's probably safer if we both wake up."

"No."

"No?"

"I was right," said Natasha.

"Yes, by this point we've established that."

"I was right, that doesn't mean you were wrong."

Clint put on his best cocky schoolboy grin. "Tell me more."

"You know what I mean. You said we would fall even farther in sync; you said we would work. Well, mission aside . . . don't we?"

Clint sat up and stared back at her with his mouth hanging open.

"What, is that so crazy?"

"No, no of course not, it's just . . . 'mission aside?' Did the Black Widow really just admit to a world beyond the missions? I have never, ever heard you talk like that before, Natasha."

"And?"

"What changed? And don't say me, because that's a blatant lie."

"How do you know?"

"I've been trying to get you to see that for years."

"I guess I can be pretty stubborn, huh?"

"For my own safety, I'm not going to answer that." Clint took her bandaged hand in his. "Seriously though."

"It's. . ." What would happen if she told him? Would it really be so bad? She opened her mouth to let the words fall out, but they caught in her throat. Maybe it was for the best. Natasha shook her head. "You talk a lot, you know that? You've tried to explain it to me a hundred times, but it never really meant anything. I guess I'm finally learning it for myself. And if we make it out of here today, I'll tell you how."

"I'd like that."

Natasha didn't even bother trying to hide her smile. "Yeah. You will."