Six weeks later

Fury shook his head and sighed. He swiped his finger over his desk, flipping again through the digital file. "You're sure?"

"Yes sir," a pixelated agent replied through the video feed. "This photo was taken off of a security camera feed last week, and tech's got an 83 percent match on the features. Coupled with the recent chatter coming in, it's undeniable."

"Agreed. Thank you Agent Bradshaw. Dismissed." The video line faded away, leaving only the blue-tinted file spread out on the desk. With two fingers, Fury expanded the imaged before him. "I'm going to regret this." He tapped on the corner of the desk, opening up a radio line. "Get me Barton and Romanoff."

Clint walked into the conference room to find familiar red curls already seated at the table. He approached the table slowly and put his hand on the back of the chair next to hers. He stood there for a moment before taking a step to the side and reaching for the next chair over. As he went to sit down, the chair beside Natasha swiveled toward him. Her boot guided the bottom of the chair but her eyes remained glued to the table. Clint sat down on the spongey cushion and spun to face the table, coming to a stop beside her.

"Hey," said Natasha.

"Hey. I, you know, haven't seen you much lately."

"I've been around. How've you been?"

"Me? Good. Busy. Same old, same old. You?"

"Yeah, no. Ok."

Clint laughed a broken, uneasy laugh.

"Something funny?" Natasha asked, trying to chuckle some of the tension away as well.

"We sound ridiculous."

"I don't know. It could have gone worse considering . . ."

"Yeah. Considering."

They paused. Natasha took long, mediative breaths; Clint fidgeted back and forth in the conference chair.

"Clint, where are we?"

"I don't know if now's the best time . . ."

"No. Please," said Fury as he strode through a smaller side door. "You took the words right out of my mouth."

They stayed quiet.

"And I'm sure I don't need to remind you that lying will only put yourselves and others in danger. I need an honest update, otherwise you're dismissed until you come up with one."

Clint and Natasha turned to face each other. Their eyes met and they exchanged glances, then nodded.

"We're alright," said Clint. "Rocky but alright."

"Good. Because I think you'll want to hear this." Fury placed a hand on the table and flung two digital blue boxes across the table with a quick flick of his wrist. The boxes expanded into full-sized file folders, which Clint and Natasha opened in sync. Natasha's hand went still over the table's glassy surface. Clint's balled into a fist.

"Varga," Clint spat. "Where is he?"

"This was caught on a pawn shop's security feed last week, less than a mile outside of Budapest."

"So the city's still his target," said Natasha.

"My sources haven't heard a peep about anyone moving that much nuclear material anywhere in the region, so it would appear so. Whether he shares the Szabo brothers' goals or he simply can't move the material, I don't know. But chatter indicates he's gearing up for something. We've been watching him gather men and materials for three years now."

"All this time, I thought you'd lost him."

"This is S.H.I.E.L.D. We don't lose people."

Clint slammed his fists on the table. "Then go after him! You know where his is, we can all guess at what he's doing. Stop him!"

"Patience Barton. We have to wait until we have all the intel, until we know exactly what he's doing so we can stop it. All of it."

"That worked real well last time. Not striking until the gears were already in motion nearly cost us our lives!"

Natasha looked away so she didn't have to watch Clint and Fury avoiding her eyes.

Fury straightened. "You're really going to try to pin Budapest on me?"

"Shouldn't I? You could have gone in with a strike team and taken them down."

"Without proof? Without a clue as to what they were up too or how they planned to pull it off. Not to mention all the loose ends that would leave."

"Who cares?"

"Zoltán Varga is a loose end. He has the TPE's plans and their nuclear material and if he's not stopped, your time in Budapest will have been for nothing."

Clint stood up out of his chair, bracing his arms on the table. The pages beneath his palms rippled on the table as the force of Clint's hands pressed on the screen.

"Settle down Barton."

"How dare you -"

"Now."

Natasha reached a hand out to his bulging arm and ushered him back into his seat.

"That weasel is mine."

"That weasel is none of your business. Not officially."

"Then why did you call us here?"

"Consider it a courtesy call. I thought you had a right to know."

"How are you going after Varga?" Natasha asked.

"We believe we've pinned down the location of Varga's headquarters, in an old warehouse in the factory district northwest of the city limits. The Covert-Ops team will infiltrate and shut down his operation as quietly as possible, with Strike Team Sierra stationed at a half-mile perimeter for backup. The bomb squad will also be on hand in case Varga's already assembled any devices. But you don't need me to tell you any of that. It's all in the file."

"Let us come," said Natasha.

Fury chuckled.

"We're fine," Clint shouted.

"Like hell you are. You're clouded by emotion, and you're out for Varga's blood, not his bombs. You couldn't be objective if you tried. And we all know how that almost ended last time."

Now Natasha's fingers curled into a fist beside Clint's.

"Like I said, this was a courtesy, nothing more. You're both under lockdown until the transport leaves for Hungary."

"You can't do this!"

"You're dismissed."

"Director -"

"Dismissed. Stay out of the way." He turned with a snap and strode out of the room, his black trench coat flapping behind him.

"This is bull," Clint muttered as he stormed out the other door.

Natasha remained at the table. Opening the file again, she flipped through, scanned the pages and seared the information into her memory. When she reached the grainy but unmistakable photo of Zoltán Varga, she paused. Her fingers tensed and dragged along the surface until they were a tight ball. The computer followed her instructions, crumpling and creasing the digital image until it resembled a ball of paper. Natasha swiped the file away and left the room.

"I though I might find you here," she said as she wove through swinging punching bags and humming treadmills to the far corner of the gym. Agents buzzed around, adding footfalls and sharp breathing to the clink of equipment; two sparred in the boxing ring.

Clint stood alone in the far corner. He had dragged a training dummy shaped like a human head and torso onto the square of blue mats and was punching and kicking it mercilessly, threatening to knock its sand-filled base to the ground. "Brilliant. It's not like I'm here very often."

Natasha threw in a hand and deflected Clint's next punch so his hand sailed past its rubbery target. He twisted his wrist, wrapped his fingers over Natasha's arm and pulled to toward him, the reversed the momentum and sent her scooting backward.

"Thanks for your help back there. I appreciate it."

"You wanted us both to go toe to toe with Fury? What exactly would that accomplish?"

Clint through another strike. "Hard to know since you just sat there."

"Did you even listen to what Fury was saying? 'It's not your business officially.' 'Stay out of the way.' He wants us to go."

Clint scooped up a water bottle from the side of the mat and squirted a stream into his mouth. "It crossed my mind," he gurgled. "But if you're wrong?"

"We still get Varga. Beyond that, do you care?"

Clint lowered the water bottle and wiped a bead of sweat off his brow. "Maybe Fury's right."

"Exactly so -"

"No, I mean even if his is giving us permission to go after Varga - and I'm not convinced he is - maybe we shouldn't. Maybe we are too emotionally compromised to handle this one."

"I thought we didn't get compromised."

"We don't get each other compromised. There's a third party involved this time and you know you can't keep a level head."

"I'll worry about my head when Varga's dead. I thought you wanted this anyway. Twenty minutes ago you were begging Fury to let you go."

"Yes but -"

"But what? You somehow made you peace with Budapest in the past five minutes? Please do share the secret."

"I'm not going to let you get hurt over this. Last time we went after this guy at less than one hundred percent, I came a few pints of blood away from a hole in the ground. Now we're more compromised and more emotional, so what do you think is going to happen? I want Varga as badly as you do, but I'm not willing to risk your life over it."

"Then I guess you don't want him as badly as I do."

Natasha turned to walk away and Clint clenched his hand hard around her arm. "Don't play that game with me."

She gritted her teeth and tried to walk way, but Clint adjusted his grip. He placed his hands gently on her shoulders. "They'll get him. Whether or not we're there, S.H.I.E.L.D. will take him down."

"I hope that helps you sleep tonight," Natasha said over her shoulder as she wove her way out of the gym.

Natasha laid in her darkened quarters, nearly identical the way S.H.I.E.L.D. had issued them. She tossed between her misty green sheets, the only change she had made to the decor. Natasha's eyes stayed shut as she tossed in a fitful sleep.

Blood. So much blood. And faces. Contorted faces floated by. Bodies writhed in agony in the ankle-deep blood. Natasha was there, on her knees in the shining crimson goo. The blood had become firm, alive. It wrapped itself around her like the tendrils of an angry vine, its many branches reaching out and holding her in place. Her wrists, her back, her head, she couldn't move. Tiny blood vines snaked across her face, grabbing her eyelids and holding them open, forcing her to witness the horrors before her.

The blood at her knees began to churn and ripple. Another tendril shot out from the pool. Natasha tried to jerk away but the vines only gripped her tighter. The new vine snaked its way up her body, flooding the black leather and metal belt buckle of her uniform with blood. It reached her face and paused to caress her fair cheek, just as so many of her marks had done, then plunged into her throat. The taste of iron overwhelmed her as the stream of blood grew more and more powerful. It swelled until her throat was full. As her mouth filled to the brim, the pressure increased until the bloody tendrils wormed their way into her nose. Her nasal passages screamed as blood dripped down her face. Her heart beat faster; she couldn't breathe! But the blood kept coming, and despite the burning in her lungs she remained alert.

Then she saw it. A fire sparked on the edges of her vision, and soon the entire field of blood crackled with fire. The flames raced closer and dense smoke filled the air.

Then, out of the smoke, that one soft gentle face appeared. She smiled at Natasha with the same delicate jawline. Strands of dark auburn hair hung at the edges of her face. Behind all the screaming bodies arounds her, Natasha could pick out the words to an old Russian lullaby. Whether the voice belonged to her or her mother, she couldn't tell.

The face vanished into the smoke and the flames shot toward her, up all the blood tendrils and to her skin. As soon as the burn hit, the vines disappeared, replaced by circular blood drops hitting her skin. The blood melted away from her throat, but the blood drops stung like acid. Natasha looked down to find the nameless Hungarian girl limp in her arms. Zoltán Varga stood over them, gun pointed at Natasha's face. His mouth twisted into that wicked sneer and he laughed. As he laughed, his form paled and grew until his face filled up her entire field of view. Then suddenly it crumpled, folding on itself like an unwanted piece of paper until he was gone.

The girl vanished but so did the floor. Natasha fell helplessly in a dark, endless pit. The floor only appeared a second before she hit it and then -

Natasha sat bolt upright in bed. Her creamy silk slip stuck to her damp back and her curls clung to her neck. The rumpled green sheets clustered in balls beneath her fists. Her mouth hung open but no sound came out. She had learned not to scream a long time ago. She shut her jaw and tried to draw in deep breaths of the cool, air conditioned air. Natasha found herself wishing, as she often did, that Clint was beside her. She could go find him; his quarters were at the other end of the hall. No, she stopped herself, we're not really at that place right now. We're nowhere near that place. Natasha buried her head in her knees, feeling the sweat cooling on her back. "Screw it."

Natasha swung her legs over the side of her bed and padded down the metal hallway in her bare feet. She rapped her knuckles on Clint's door. No answer. Natasha turned the handle and let the heavy door swing open. Clint's room lit up with a bright column of light, Natasha a silhouette in the center of it. She closed her eyes and said the only word she could think so say. "Please."

When Clint still didn't answer, she stepped over the high threshold and into the room. "Clint?"

He climbed part way down the ladder. "It didn't help me sleep. Every time I shut my eyes I see Varga's slimy face."

"Yeah, I thought not."

"You?"

"Oh I slept. Wish I hadn't."

"You're still in your pajamas?"

"I thought you liked this one. And why do you care?"

Clint climbed a few rungs higher, into the black shadow surrounding the top of the ladder. A worn canvas duffle bag dropped down to the floor below him. He climbed back into the dim light with two flight deck oxygen masks hanging from his fingers. "Cuz I'm just waiting on you."

Fury sat at his desk, his office bathed in dim light. Only the screen of his desk glowed a bright blue. Taping up a side panel, he checked the clock. The teams on their way to take down Varga had left half an hour earlier.

A knock came from the door, but a slightly frazzled agent didn't wait for a response before busting into the room. "Director Fury, sir," he said as he scrambled toward the desk. "There has been an unauthorized heliplane takeoff from deck section seven."

The agent raised his eyebrow as Fury looked up and smiled. "Excellent."

"Sir? Should we execute emergency protocols and take them down?"

"No," the director replied. "Let them go."