(A/N): As you know, I suck at updating this story regularly, but I still write it, I promise! Thank you so much for the reviews and the continued support. I love Clint to itty bitty pieces!

Mission Eight: "Black Widow" Takes Too Long to Say

Clint was starting to think this was some kind of punishment.

This, he was convinced, was what happened when he stepped out of line and brought home a mark instead of just killing her like a good little solder. So now, he wasn't getting mission assignments. Instead, he was relegated to babysitting the Russian assassin he brought home like a stray cat.

Clint just didn't see what it was that SHIELD thought he could do for this girl, other than not shoot her. It wasn't like he had meant to bring her home and recruit her, though it was clear SHIELD would have loved if that was the case. He just saw a scared kid and reacted, and now he was stuck in a room with her for hours at a time while he tried to figure out if she had a sense of humor or if she was just reflecting back at him what she thought he wanted from her.

He'd noticed that, the more he spent time with her. He still didn't know what her name was or anything personal about her, and he was sure it was because of some kind of interrogation training, though he was also sure there was some kind of acting coaching going on. If he hadn't been watching as closely as he could, he'd have thought that she was laughing at his jokes—but that clearly wasn't the case.

The little upturned corners of her mouth, like she was trying to control a reaction that she just couldn't stop—that was when he knew he'd gotten her, though it was hard to find a pattern in that. She found the strangest things funny, like his obnoxious and overdramatic complaining about being relegated to guard duty as a punishment. If it'd been him, he would have said something to the effect of "if it bothers you, I can just leave."

Maybe she was just thinking lines like that and they didn't make it past whatever filter had been drilled into her head. He knew that she was measured about every single word that she let slip, so there probably wasn't any room in those conversational calculations for joking around.

Which was a shame. He had a feeling she would be hilarious if she tried.

Still, it was wearing on Clint's nerves that he had basically been grounded for this new duty of talking to the mysterious redhead—and for what? They didn't really talk about anything substantial. Half the time they talked about Clint, which he knew couldn't be that interesting for her. She likely didn't care in the least how many Robin Hood movies he'd critiqued on the archery movie hand-waving, and yet when he brought up even the most inane rambling thought, she pressed him on it.

Seriously, what was the point of sending him in there?

He shook his head to himself as he popped another sunflower seed into his mouth. He was never going to understand Coulson or Hill, let alone Fury, and he knew he wasn't smart enough to try in the first place, so instead, he shouldered open the door, sunflower seed bag in hand, completely ready for yet another day of lazy conversation in which this girl gave nothing away and in return learned exactly what his favorite shade of purple was.

But when he got into the room, he stopped, honestly surprised to see that not only was the girl on the other side of the glass than usual but she was chatting—chatting—with Coulson, looking as if they had been friends for years.

Coulson looked up when Clint entered the room and gave him a small, enigmatic sort of smile. "Hawkeye. Have a seat, won't you?"

Clint eyed the two of them, incredibly sure that he didn't want to know what those two could possibly be friendly about, as he took a seat across from both of them. "So, you've met Coulson then," he said, addressing the redhead with a tentative nod.

She smirked. "You promised me a marshmallow."

"I didn't promise anything. I was just… talking," Clint said defensively, trying hard to ignore the fact that Coulson was wearing a smirk that looked exactly like the one the redhead had on.

"Gossiping, more like," Coulson said with more obvious affection in his tone than Clint thought was strictly necessary with a semi-enemy agent in the room with them.

"Like you two weren't just talking about me," Clint shot back.

"Not in the way you'd like to think," the redhead said, something like a smile playing with her expression. She looked far more relaxed than Clint had ever seen her, and he just didn't trust it. At all.

"Well, Phil doesn't need to speculate on—"

"Hawkeye." Coulson didn't raise his voice, but he did raise an eyebrow, and with that guy, it was practically the same thing.

Clint leaned back, grinning easily. "What? You worried our resident Russian spy is gonna think any less of you knowing you've seen me in short shorts?"

"Why on earth were you wearing short shorts?" the redhead asked.

"Long, long story," Clint said, waving his hand. "Let's just say there may or may not be a town in Nebraska that I am absolutely not allowed to go anywhere near any bars in…"

"May or may not be," she repeated, the corners of her lips moving up into an actual smile, the first one he had seen from her since they met that wasn't fake.

Coulson looked between the two of them, and Clint almost lost some of his smile when he saw that the guy looked, well, pleased that the two of them had a back-and-forth going on. "The Black Widow and I were just discussing what she would need to do to be let out of this room," he explained to Clint.

Clint did a double-take for a few reasons. One because he hadn't thought that they were anywhere near close to letting her go when he'd been grilled up and down like a cheese sandwich over not killing her—and two because he had no idea how Coulson had even found out her name.

"Black Widow?" he repeated, and she nodded once. "What, have you got a thing for spiders?"

"Maybe I just like the way they deal with their men," Widow replied with a little smile that was still weird to see. What had Coulson said to get her so relaxed?

He shook his head at her, though he'd be lying if he said that the jab hadn't set him back a step. Or nine. "Nah, I think it's because you've got a thing for spiders."

Coulson stepped in before she could argue the point with him, putting a hand between the two of them to draw their attention back to him, and both of them turned almost in unison his way. He looked distinctly unamused as he folded his arms. "First and foremost, Widow, you will be undergoing several psychiatric tests to determine the extent to which your mind has been compromised."

The Black Widow nodded as if this was a perfectly normal thing for him to say to her, but Clint could feel his eyes widening as his head swiveled between her and Coulson, and a few pieces clicked into place. He had figured, when he met her, that someone was using her for as relieved as she'd looked for the whole thing to be over, but it was one thing to have someone like Jacques Duquesne breathing threats down your neck and another thing entirely to have your mind compromised…

He cleared his throat to get Coulson's attention, trying not to look too hard at the Black Widow. "Uh, boss, you're gonna have to elaborate on that."

But instead of answering outright, Coulson looked toward the Black Widow, and Clint realized that he was allowing her to tell her own story as she wanted to. Good old Coulson.

The Black Widow looked between the two men for a moment, weighing out her response before she nodded once, more to Coulson than to Clint, and fixed her gaze on Clint. "You haven't been my only visitor,' she told him simply. "And it seems the people who cut your paychecks have been comparing and contrasting my responses … and think not every response is my own."

"And what do you think?" Clint asked without even sparing Coulson a glance. Considering everything he'd seen since he joined up with SHIELD, he wouldn't be surprised in the least if there was some group out there giving girls ridiculous names like "Black Widow" and taking their minds away from them. But he wanted to make sure she was on board. After all, he wouldn't like it if someone went traipsing through his mind uninvited, and he didn't have nearly the same level of trust issues that she had.

Not that he didn't have issues. He had plenty of those.

But that wasn't the point.

"I think," the Black Widow said, every word measured, "that it's worth exploring." She let out a light breath. "I've suspected for a long time that not every reaction is just the result of 'training.'"

Clint watched her for a long time, trying to gauge whether she was being entirely honest. She was hard to read, sure, but spending days and days watching microexpressions while cooped up in the same room as the Black Widow told him that she wasn't doing that thing—the thing where she held back the slightest, smug, self-satisfied look when she knew she'd won, whether that was getting Clint to tell her more than he meant to or just getting him to shut up.

So she was telling the truth. Which meant that someone had gone and messed with her head, and Clint suddenly realized he wasn't about to let that stand. "They do this to anyone else?" he asked in a harsher tone than he'd ever used talking to her.

She looked surprised by his tone for only an instant before a sort of understanding crossed her expression, and she nodded the slightest bit. "Yes," was her only answer before Clint was on his feet, his hands already reaching for his bow even though he didn't have it on him.

"Coulson—"

"Barton, you're not going anywhere until we're through here."

"Phil—"

"Sit down." Coulson's tone was completely unyielding, but his gaze held just enough sympathy that Clint paused and sat down. Sympathy, not pity—Coulson was never about pity, which was why Clint could work with the guy. But sympathy? Well, it was nice to see that SHIELD hadn't stamped the humanity out of him, especially considering, in Clint's experience, that tended to be the case with most suits he came across.

Clint crossed his arms as he sat across from Coulson and the Black Widow, and he noticed that her gaze lingered on him for a long moment, as if she was waiting for him to get up and move again. Which, now that he thought about it, was actually a solid mark in his favor. It meant she didn't think that he was going to blindly obey SHIELD. It meant that she finally believed him about making his decisions.

So that was something at least.

Coulson cleared his throat to get their attention and then turned toward the Black Widow. "I'd like to call in a psychological expert to go through your mind and see what kind of damage we're looking at."

"We?" she repeated with almost a breath of a laugh. "I am the one with the problem here, Agent Coulson."

"I think you'll find that we don't simply abandon people when they come to us needing a little work," Coulson said, his eyes twinkling the slightest bit.

Yeah, no kidding, Clint thought to himself, remembering how much he had yelled at Coulson when he first came to SHIELD. Not every green agent was ready for SHIELD training, but Clint? Clint had been a particular kind of nightmare. He hadn't listened to authority, he fought back against everyone who tried to manhandle him, and he had made it clear from Day One that he didn't trust SHIELD's intentions in the least.

Of course, he'd behave when they would threaten to just let him go back to jail, but getting to this point, where he actually trusted Coulson and knew that Coulson trusted him?

Yeah, that had taken some serious doing.

The Black Widow looked between the two men in the room with her lips pressed into a thin line, even thinner than before. Clint wasn't sure how she was able to manage it, but she did. "And if the damage is irreversible?" she asked.

"We'll cross that bridge when we got to it."

"No." The Black Widow leaned forward with her hands in her lap, her gaze imperious even though she was the one in their custody. "We will cross it now, because I want to know what your plan is for that eventuality. For that likelihood."

Coulson frowned as he watched her, but she held his gaze almost without blinking until Coulson finally let out a breath of a sigh and shook his head. "If that's the case," he said slowly, "then we will make sure at the very least to make you comfortable somewhere that the people pulling your strings can't get to you."

"No," she said again, in that same controlled tone that said she was the one calling the shots.

"No?" Coulson repeated, his eyebrows high.

But Clint had already figured out what she was going to ask, because he had seen the relief touch her expression when he first met her. He'd known then that she was glad to die, glad to get out from underneath whatever it was that was holding the choke chain.

He'd be lying if he said he didn't understand. He'd be lying if he said he hadn't considered that option himself, when it had felt like he couldn't get out. And his mind hadn't been compromised. He'd been trained, yes, even conditioned—but not completely compromised.

"She wants you to promise to kill her," Clint said, surprising himself with how steady his voice was.

Both Coulson and the Black Widow turned his way—Coulson in surprise and the Black Widow in satisfaction as she nodded, her lips pressed back into that same thin line that they usually formed.

"What?" Coulson breathed out.

But Clint ignored him in favor of holding the Black Widow's gaze. "If you were that bad off, I would have shot you," he told her frankly. "But if you can fight it enough to want to leave it that bad, I gotta tell you, that doesn't sound to me like you can't get out from under it."

She held his gaze silently for a nearly uncomfortable length of time before she all but breathed out, "Promise me."

He held both hands up. "I won't shoot anyone who isn't far gone. If you prove to me that you need it, I'll do it, but not before."

She let out a breath that could have been a laugh before she turned back to Coulson. "Then when do we begin?"

It had been months since Clint had last seen the Black Widow.

He was fighting the urge all the time to ask about her, to check up on her, because he didn't want Coulson to think that he was anything like attached when he had finally worked his way away from having to have partners—babysitters—on every mission he ran. That had taken a bit of a downward turn after he brought the Widow in in the first place, so being a solo Hawkeye… He was enjoying it took much to jeopardize it.

And yet at the same time, he couldn't help but think about the redheaded Russian operative. The last conversation he'd had with her had ended with a promise to kill her, and that promise was still swirling in his mind.

He had absolutely been serious. He meant that promise; he meant that he would make sure that she never had to answer to anyone that fully ever again. But he didn't want to, and he had honestly hoped when he said it that SHIELD would be able to fix it so he wouldn't even have to consider it.

Which in itself was kind of crazy, because he had never had that much faith in SHIELD before. Its individual members, like Coulson? Yeah, sure. He could have faith in them. But the organization as a whole? Not so much.

And it had been ages now—so he was starting to wonder if he hadn't just totally screwed the Widow.

He tried to be casual about asking about her, mentioning her to Coulson sometimes—even Hill once, though she had just rewarded him with a raised eyebrow and a quip about him wanting a partner, so he had quickly learned his lesson on that one. But the truth of the matter was that the longer she was off his radar, the more worried he got.

Was it really that bad? Had she really been so far gone that the top SHIELD minds couldn't pull her out of it?

Was he going to have to keep his promise?

It was starting to consume him, because he was sure that if SHIELD had failed, Coulson would at least tell him that she was gone and that they couldn't save her so he would stop asking. But even if it had worked, he didn't have a guarantee that SHIELD would tell him how well it worked or what she was going to do next. He didn't have a right to know, anyway. He was just the agent who happened not to take the shot. It wasn't his business.

He knew that. He really did. It was just that he had promised her that she was safe and that he would make sure she didn't get jerked around, and he'd meant it.

But he couldn't afford to get caught up in that, so he pushed it out of his mind for the time being—at least until he got done with the briefing he was headed to, and the mission after that. One thing at a time.

But he had already resolved that he was going to Fury this time if he hadn't heard anything about the Widow when he got back from this mission, because five months was way too much time for a person to drop off the face of the planet, especially in an intelligence organization.

He was almost to the briefing room when he paused as he passed someone familiar on the way down the hall. It was the professor, the telepathic one—Coulson's friend. And there he was, apparently perfectly at ease as he wheeled himself down SHIELD's halls. He even shot Clint a small smile as they passed and a, "Hello, Mr. Barton."

"Heya. Where're the bodyguards?" Clint asked with a smile to match the older man's, looking around as if he could spot the redhead and the tall teenager that he'd seen with the professor before.

"Not here," the man replied, though his smile had taken on a distinctly more amused tone. Clint made a note of that: at least the guy had a sense of humor. He could work with that.

"Awful risky for you to come all the way out here without the backup," Clint said with a smirk.

"I can handle myself."

"Bet you can," Clint said. "What did Coulson bring you in for, anyway? We pick up another stray for your collection?"

At that, the man in the wheelchair actually chuckled and shook his head lightly. "Nothing like that," he said. "But if you're really so curious, I think you'll find all the answers at the briefing you're heading to."

"How did y—" Clint stopped himself before he could fully form the question and tapped the side of his head. "Right, yeah. Telepath."

"This time, I think you'll find, I had no need for telepathy," he said with his eyes sparkling with ill-hidden laughter—but he outright refused to explain himself on that one as he wheeled away, leaving Clint shaking his head.

"Weird guy," he muttered to himself, then shrugged it off. It wasn't like one telepathic professor who ran a school full of mutants was the weirdest thing that he had seen since joining SHIELD. Sure, it was definitely high up there, but it wasn't on the Top Ten List of What the Actual Heck Did I Sign Up For.

He made his way down the hall and finally got to the briefing room, where he was totally prepared to tell Coulson that if he thought sending his weird telepathic friend down the hall to make vague jokes was his idea of funny, then he was going to buy him a joke book next Christmas…

And then he stopped short.

"Hello, Hawkeye," the Black Widow said, the smirk unmistakable from where she was sitting across the table, beside none other than Nick Fury, who also had a smirk on. Like they had planned this or something.

Clint actually wouldn't put it past Fury to do something like that. The man had a sense of humor; he just buried it deep until it came out in weird moment like this, when he was springing the Black Widow on him in a briefing room like he was supposed to pretend that wasn't—

Oh.

Oh.

Clint turned to Coulson and did his best impression of someone who had figured out what was going on in the hallway instead of just now like an idiot. "It was that bad? Had to call in a telepath to clean it all out?" he asked.

Coulson didn't answer but instead seemed to defer to the Black Widow. Which, Clint realized belatedly, was exactly right. He shouldn't have been asking about something as private as her own mind from anyone else but her, and he turned himself with the most apologetic, sheepish look he could give her.

"You alright now, Widow?"

She gave him an honest smile as she nodded and leaned forward, her hands clasped in front of her as her elbows rested on the table. She was keeping her body language open on purpose, he was sure, trying to show that she could be trusted. And considering who all was seated around the table, he didn't blame her. It was a smart move.

"Natasha," she said.

Clint blinked at her in surprise. It wasn't an answer to his question, and more than that, it meant that she was volunteering personal information about herself without anything in return on his part.

He was sure there was some kind of trick here. Or game. Or test. Or… something.

"Alright," he said, nodding slowly. "Natasha. You alright now?"

She inclined her head, seeming to study him. It was the exact same penetrating gaze that she had given him when she had been on the other side of the room that they'd kept her locked in when she first arrived and he had been babysitting her, and yet it felt different, somehow. A little less like he was being dissected.

Finally, she said, "I'm much better than I was before."

"Fair," he said with a little nod. He knew better to ask for more of an answer than that, because it had been an incredibly personal question, and he knew he didn't exactly have the right to know any of it, promise or no promise.

Fury cleared his throat, and both of them turned their attention his way. "Barton, you're going to take Romanoff here on a training mission," he explained. "You'll be closely monitored—remotely—but no one here is going to step in unless we see a clear and present danger."

Clint raised his eyebrows. "Awful long leash," he said before he could stop himself.

Not that he would have stopped himself if he'd had half a second to think about it. After all, when it had been him and Coulson had brought him home to SHIELD instead of booking him like he was supposed to, it felt like he had been in the doghouse for years before he was given any sort of leeway, let alone any trust. And he still wasn't exactly sure that he was trusted in SHIELD, if he was honest.

Granted, he hadn't been brainwashed into being a thief and a scoundrel, but still. He hadn't been assassin levels of evil, either.

Fury gave him a dry look before he turned his attention back to the briefing. "This is a basic surveillance and extraction training run. You'll be waiting for a truck that, for the purposes of this mission, will be carrying classified defense technology plans. Get those plans and get out." He looked between the two of them with one eyebrow slightly raised. "The mission parameters themselves shouldn't be anything too difficult for the pair of you, but I want to see how you work as a team."

"So you're stranding us somewhere, and if we don't kill each other, you figure you can use us," Clint surmised, unable to quite stop the smile when the slight smirk at the corner of Fury's expression gave away the fact that he was definitely right in this case.

"We're evaluating the possibility of a partnership," Hill put in.

Clint nodded slowly at that but didn't say anything further as he read the details in the folder in front of him. It was fairly straightforward. They'd be headed into jungle territory, where they would be expected to not only work with each other but watch several possible methods of entry. Fury had said there would be a truck, but Clint wouldn't put it past the one-eyed director to throw in something else to keep them on their toes, so they'd need to watch for anything that didn't belong.

It was exactly the kind of mission that Clint had run a hundred times over in the field. So Fury wasn't wrong when he said it wasn't a training mission for surveillance. This was a mission in Clint's playground, and the Black Widow – Natasha – had to learn to keep up.

He still didn't say anything through the briefing, keeping it professional for a long time and simply thinking through the different vantage points he could already see laid out on the map—and considering what points he might be able to find given the topography of the area.

It wasn't until they were dismissed and headed to the hangar to get on their transport—where their gear would already have been arranged for them, since this was a training mission—that Clint said anything to Natasha.

"So, you're stuck with me, then," he said.

She gave him an appraising sort of look with one eyebrow raised before she smirked and nodded softly. "It seems that way."

"Sorry about your luck."

She shook her head at that. "Better someone I know—and someone they know can take me down if necessary."

He snuck a glance her way to see if she was serious, though he didn't know why he bothered when it was very, very obvious that she was. He shook his head to himself. "Right," he said. "You really think it'll ever come to that?"

"I know that they got my previous handlers out of my head," she said. "But I'm not so naïve to think that there are not others out there who would do the same."

Clint nodded slowly. "So, I'm your last resort."

Natasha looked his way with that same almost-smile that he'd seen so many times already that it almost felt familiar. "Sorry about your luck."

He broke into a huge grin; he couldn't help it. "So you do have a sense of humor!"

"Don't get too excited, Hawkeye," she said, though that same almost-smile was still there.

"Clint," he said, without even thinking about it, though he paused almost as soon as the name was out of his mouth. Fury definitely hadn't used his name, not even his last name, during the briefing, and he wasn't entirely sure that anyone had told her, either. Judging by the look of mild surprise on her face, he'd say that was a no.

It wasn't like his identity was super secret or anything. If she looked him up, she'd find an arrest record and some embarrassing mug shot pictures, but beyond that, it would show that he was nobody from nowhere, and there really wasn't anything she could use against him.

Well, if she managed to track down Barney, maybe, but that was assuming she could put up with Barney for any appreciable amount of time…

He shook his head to himself and pulled his thoughts back to the present as he did his preflight checks on the SHIELD jet. "Hey, if I'm going to call you by your name, you might as well know mine," he said.

"You should call me by my codename in the field," she admonished him.

"We're not in the field," he pointed out.

She shook her head at him, but again, there was that almost-smile. Clint couldn't help but wonder how many of those he could get out of her before he started to get on her nerves. There was always a sort of grace period when it came to his sense of humor. People liked it for a little while… and then they didn't.

Clint always knew when they stopped being entertained, but he kept it up anyway. He was still entertained when he pulled off a solid pun, after all, and the whole point was to keep from going insane in a job full of aliens and assassins.

"You mind if I shorten it?" Clint asked as he finally got the preflight done and signaled to the tower for clearance.

"What?"

"Your code name. 'Black Widow' takes too long to say."

She frowned at him with her lips pursed. "I suppose," she said slowly.

"Great. Thanks, Tasha."

She blinked at him in such open surprise at the switch that he couldn't help chuckling to herself. But he'd timed it just right—the hangar doors opened, and she didn't have time to tell him not to call her that (and it looked like she would) before he taxied out.