Notes: Oh yeah, Natasha really needs to learn how to accept her own feelings, huh? Let's see what we can do about fixing that...

Mission Fifteen: Avengers Assemble

It was taking every ounce of self-control Natasha had not to keep checking on Clint.

There was still too much work to be done to indulge in that kind of thing, and besides, she had already personally vouched for Clint to the rest of the team. And he'd proven himself in the fight, blown Loki out of the sky, been more than willing to put an arrow through his eye socket like he'd suggested.

But none of that was going to assuage the tight feeling in Natasha's chest.

She knew only too well what it felt like to lose control, to let someone else crawl into her mind and take her for a joyride. She could still hear Clint's description, the words he used, ringing in her ears. And she had seen, just for a moment, that same expression in his eyes that he told her he'd seen in hers when they met—that desperate look that said death would be better than servitude.

She couldn't get that look out of her head. She couldn't stop thinking about what he'd said.

It was irrational, really. Considering the job that she and Clint had, she knew that she couldn't protect him from everything. And yet sitting there and talking to the man who held Clint's mind in his grasp had been the single most difficult thing she'd had to do since leaving the Red Room. Clint wasn't built for the kind of abuse she had endured. And for some reason, she had assumed that, if they faced anything like the Room, she would be there first, ready to put herself on the line so he never had to feel what she'd felt.

She'd already survived it once; what was one more time?

Now, as SHIELD agents swarmed the scene to take stock of the damage, the prisoner, and the hastily-assembled Avengers, Natasha made her way over to where Clint was still sitting at the bar in Stark's place. She'd seen him do this a thousand times: keeping himself separate from the others. Watching from a distance. Eyeing the exits in case he was in trouble.

She didn't have to ask him what he was thinking, either. As soon as she sat down on one of the bar stools next to Clint, he turned her way with a tired, resigned expression.

"Yeah, I know," he said quietly enough that only she would hear it. "You let me out to play, but—"

"But nothing," Natasha interrupted him before he could follow that train of thought. "You were compromised. I told you: it's just like Budapest. You didn't lock me up after that; I'm not going to let them lock you up this time."

"That's not what I remember from that mission," Clint said, raising an eyebrow her way.

"It's what I remember," she said without leaving him any room in her tone for doubt.

Clint shook his head, still looking completely unconvinced. "It was different."

"It was not."

"Hey, we had to go find that telepath—"

"And we'll go find him again if you think you're not fully rid of Loki's influence," Natasha said. Her voice never wavered, and she had managed to find a calm, professional demeanor that didn't feel like it belonged to the dry feeling in her throat or the way her heart tasted like adrenaline in her mouth. All that time knowing Clint was out there being used, with no way to help him but to deal with a bunch of dysfunctional would-be heroes, and it only left her tired enough to hide behind training. Otherwise, she knew, she'd be compromised too.

"Probably a good idea," Clint said. He wasn't offering any snide remark or commentary, and he hadn't picked up on Natasha's veneer of professionalism—and that, more than anything else, more than the look on his face or the tired slope of his shoulders—told her that she needed to get him home. Now.

Unfortunately, there was still too much to do. SHIELD was still picking up the pieces, there would be debriefs, the Avengers themselves would need looking after, not to mention the medical attention that every single one of them desperately needed….

Natasha was starting to get annoyed with the obstacles between her and Clint's comfort—even if Clint himself seemed resigned to it.

She watched Clint as they quietly shared a drink, and she watched him as he observed the cleanup. Half the things Tony Stark said seemed ripe for him to say something, but still, there was nothing. Natasha didn't prompt him. She had never seen him like this before, and she didn't want to make it worse.

Is this love, Agent Romanoff?

The question might have come from Loki himself as he tried to twist her to his schemes and keep her off of his scent, but it kept lingering in the back of her mind. That was the problem with her method of interrogation: she let herself seem weak so that men like Loki thought they had the advantage. But occasionally, they found actual weakness.

Clint kept insisting that love was not a weakness, that it in fact made the world stronger. She supposed she understood that view, especially knowing what she did about the way he had grown up. A man who had faced the world without the love he craved would see it as a victory, not a weakness.

But how could it be anything but weakness when it left Natasha feeling so exposed?

Natasha knew that she hadn't been at her best with this particular fight. How could she be? She had come in because Coulson told her that Clint had been compromised, and she had been assigned instead to talk to Banner, to babysit men trying to posture while Clint was out there being controlled by a madman. She had come in because Clint was in danger, and she had instead forced herself to interrogate the man who did it to him rather than tracking down her partner and getting him out from under the boot of a feckless god.

She didn't like this feeling, this knowledge underneath her skin that told her she had priorities other than the mission to save the world. Loki himself had pointed it out. The world was at stake while she bargained for Clint.

She could still hear Loki's promises ringing in her ears, and they hurt like nothing had hurt her before. She hadn't even been afraid for herself. No, she had been threatened with worse. She had been afraid for Clint, afraid to see him turn into the monster she had been forced to become, afraid to see him as he was now, broken and weighed down by guilt that wasn't his.

This was love. It was weakness and fear and something their enemies could exploit. This was why she had told Clint over and over again that she wouldn't—couldn't—fall for him.

Yes, ultimately, she'd been able to use her moment of weakness and turn it against Loki. That was what she'd been trained to do, and she had always been able to fall back on her training, on the prejudices that men in particular had about women with tears in their eyes. But that didn't make the threat any less palpable.

"You alright, Nat?" Clint asked, catching her attention by reaching over and lightly touching her elbow.

Natasha almost smiled. Of course the first sign of life that she saw from Clint was when he was concerned about someone else. "I'm fine."

"You don't look it."

Natasha raised an eyebrow, but rather than explaining herself, she simply gestured around the place. There was rubble everywhere, even blood and skin from the Hulk smashing Loki into the floor and from the Avengers themselves sitting down and letting their wounds weep wherever they were seated. "Yes," she said dryly, "everything looks perfectly fine."

Clint cracked a smirk. "You know what I mean."

She shook her head, though she was starting to smirk as well. She could see more of Clint shining through the haze he'd been in before, and it was, frankly, a relief. "I'm just tired, Clint."

"Yeah, me too," Clint said in a tone that told Natasha that he knew they weren't really talking about exhaustion—and they both knew it.

The two of them fell into a companionable silence once more, though this one was much more comfortable than the last. Natasha was watching Clint trace his fingers over his bow, and occasionally, Clint would look up to watch Natasha absently brushing some of the dirt, debris, and dried blood out of her hair.

The silence was broken, however, when Steve Rogers made his way over to the two of them, finally done with whatever debriefings and arguments he'd been through with SHIELD—though it looked like Thor was still having some kind of lively discussion about where Loki would ultimately face justice. "Stark is talking about grabbing some food," he told them both. "He seems pretty stuck on this shawarma place."

"He likes to get laser focused on something that doesn't matter," Natasha said, smirking quietly when she could hear Clint huff out a laugh.

"Well, I think we could all use a break after that fight," Steve said.

"And you don't know how to say no to Stark," Natasha surmised, getting another quiet laugh out of Clint.

Steve rubbed the back of his neck. "He's pretty insistent."

"Then go ahead," Clint said. "If you can't say no to the guy, grab shawarma. No one here's stopping you." Steve's lips pressed into a thin frown, and Natasha could see Clint instinctively sitting farther back in his seat. She recognized the body language; he was trying to remove himself from the situation because he thought he'd crossed a line.

"I didn't come here just to tell you Stark had plans," Steve said, looking between them. "You're both invited too."

"Pass on the pity invitation," Clint said, waving a hand. "But it's nice to know Captain America is all for inclusion and whatnot. The real American way…"

Steve looked like he wasn't entirely sure what to do with Clint—and Natasha could relate, since she was barely biting back her own smile. "It's not a pity invitation," he said, sounding like he couldn't believe his ears. "You fought alongside us, and that matters."

"Look, Rogers," Clint started to say, but Natasha silenced him with a hand on his wrist, and he looked over at her to see her frown and then let his shoulders drop before he hopped down off of the stool he was sitting on. "Yeah. I know the place you're talking about."

Steve looked between the two of them, obviously picking up on the subtle body language cues that they were both putting off as they communicated with one another, but he must have decided not to wade into that—to Natasha's relief—and instead simply rolled his shoulders and nodded.

As it turned out, the shawarma place was pretty decent, but the best part was that none of the other Avengers seemed particularly inclined to start a conversation, either. Even Stark, who was usually chatty, kept his mouth shut and simply dug in to eat. They were all worn out, and every one of them was coming to terms with what they'd just been through.

Natasha could pick them all apart right there without even trying. Bruce was visibly nervous in addition to being exhausted, and she noted that he kept a constant count with his gaze of the staff. He didn't, Natasha noted, keep an eye on Tony, and that was good. He needed a way to relax, because none of them wanted to fight the Hulk again. That had been terrifying.

Steve had his gaze on his food, doing what Natasha had seen other tired agents do: focusing on the task at hand. He had taken a beating in the fight, but he had also taken on a leadership role. He was propping himself up with one hand so that he looked more alert than he was, but Natasha could see all the signs that he was ready to go straight to sleep. This, for him, was about being there with the team that he'd been thrown into.

Tony had dropped all pretense of being talkative, and that, Natasha knew, was more a sign of trust than anything he could have said to any of them. When he had been dying, he had tried to hide his weakness and to push others away to protect them. Now, after nearly dying once more, he wasn't putting up a wall.

She wondered if she should be concerned about that and logged that observation away for later. Fury had, after all, asked her to keep an eye on him. Even if she was no longer assigned to work at Stark Industries, she had spent long enough enmeshed in Tony's mess that she knew Fury would listen to her if she said Tony wasn't acting like himself.

Even Thor looked relatively thoughtful. While he seemed to be the most enthusiastic about trying the new food, he was also less boisterous than she had ever seen him. She knew he had to be thinking about the trouble that lay ahead when it came to dealing with his brother and whatever fallout there would be in Asgard.

But Clint was another story entirely. His body language was as relaxed as he could make it, and she knew he was doing his utmost to look like he was comfortable around the other Avengers, but the fact that she could feel his foot beside her said otherwise. He liked to keep his distance, but when he needed comfort, he always reached out—in little ways. It wasn't always a hug or a kiss. Sometimes, it was a touch on her shoulder or an elbow in Coulson's side.

She was acutely aware of the fact that he was using her as an anchor, and while she was more than willing to be that for him if that's what he needed, she found herself wondering, again, if this was love.

It was for him. That much she knew. Maybe it was for her. She was still trying to figure that out.

The silence stretched between the Avengers until Steve was the one to break it, standing up to clear his plate. And just like that, the spell was broken, and the others started to follow his lead. They all had places to go and duties to fulfil, after all.

Natasha stayed seated until Clint got up, and she stuck close to him until they were out on the street again. She hadn't said anything to him, but when he started to frown, she backed off slightly.

"You really don't have to do that, Nat."

"I'm not doing anything but walking with you," she said evenly. Clint turned to give her a dry look, but she didn't budge. "I'm really not."

"You really are," Clint corrected her. "I know what you're doing, and you don't have to. I'm fine. I don't need a babysitter."

"No one would be fine after that," Natasha pointed out.

Clint narrowed his eyes, and she saw that his fingers were drumming a pattern against his side where his quiver was. "You don't trust me either," he said.

Of all the things he could have said… Natasha stared at him and then grabbed him by the hand, pulling him around a corner and away from the eyeline of any of the Avengers—and hopefully out of their hearing range, too. "What are you talking about?" she demanded in a whisper.

"You know what I did," Clint said. "I didn't fight when I should have—"

"That's it." Natasha let out a sound of pure frustration before she pushed Clint back and kissed him hard. She had his back against the wall of the nearest building, and she stepped into him in a way that meant he couldn't get any forward motion against her unless he wanted to lean into the kiss. And she didn't let up until he started to participate, his nervously twitching fingers finally resting on either side of her waist. Then, and only then, did she break the kiss and look up at him. "This is an ugly look on you, Barton."

Clint was grinning—and looking much more like himself—as he shook his head. "We're going to have to work on the massively mixed signals you like to send, Nat, because if you think I'm wearing an ugly look, why the heck are you kissing me like that?"

"Because you won't listen to anything else."

Clint blinked at her, long and slow, his smile lazy as he reached up with one hand to push her hair behind her ear. "Love you too, Nat."

She huffed but didn't correct him on it. Not today. "Let's get you home. You look terrible."

"You really know how to build a guy up, you know that?" Clint teased. "I'm ugly, I look terrible…"

"Clinton Francis—"

"Hey now." Clint quickly held up both hands. "There is no reason to get mean."

"I did try the nice way. Remember that kiss?"

"Yeah, I remember it." He paused, then smirked and raised an eyebrow her way. "But if I say I don't, will you do it again so I can know what it felt like?"

"Nice try," she said, shaking her head before she took his hand. "Let's get cleaned up. We've got some time before we need to be anywhere." She didn't give him a chance to argue, simply leading the way to one of the waiting cars.

After all, even if she'd seen a little of the Clint she knew, the one she might have even loved, coming out in his smiles and jokes, she knew the real hard work was still to come—and she knew it from experience.

She might as well get started now.

…..

Clint was all arms and legs when he woke up screaming, and when he felt someone with their hands closed around his wrists, he reacted instinctively to try to dislodge that somebody, all elbows and knees when his hands were pinned.

Of course, when he realized a few moments later that Natasha was the one doing the pinning, he stopped quickly, even if his chest was still heaving and his eyes were still wide and his cheeks were still burning with embarrassment as he realized what he'd just done.

"Nat—"

"It's fine," she promised before he could even get started on his apology. "You think I didn't have a few nightmares in my time in SHIELD custody?"

"You didn't have someone sleeping with you that you could hurt if you woke up swinging."

"Yes, but I knew the risks when I got in bed with you," she said, smirking lightly.

For that one, Clint couldn't help but turn and give her the driest look he could manage. "Seriously?"

"You walked right into it, Barton. It's not my fault you didn't see it coming until it was too late."

Clint couldn't stop his smile—especially because Natasha was smirking the way she was. She didn't tell jokes often, and this particular mood was so rare that he automatically found himself calming down just so he could enjoy the rare mood. He loved when she played with him; she felt less like the Black Widow and more like Natasha when she did that.

As Clint started to relax, he felt Natasha shift beside him, and she settled in with her arm around his waist, pulling the covers back up over their shoulders. "Your form is terrible when you're still asleep," she told him, her eyes dancing with hidden laughter that made Clint snort out a laugh of his own—he seriously couldn't help it.

"Oh, yeah, okay, I'll get my subconscious working on it right away," he joked.

Natasha's smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. "You should," she agreed. "I once had a mark try to double cross me—took him down with nothing but the alarm clock by the bed."

"Trying to decide if I should be worried or not."

"That depends," Natasha said. "Are you planning on double-crossing me?"

"Not planning on it, no," Clint said, though he lost much of his good mood with the admission and unconsciously shifted so he had the covers tighter over his shoulders. Maybe he should just go back to sleep so he couldn't screw things up.

Natasha narrowed her eyes and then put the flat of her palm in his shoulder, forcing him flat so that she could look at him squarely. "What's that supposed to mean?" she asked, one eyebrow raised.

"Come on, Nat," Clint said tiredly, though with the way she was pressing down on his shoulder and shifting so that she was almost on top of him, he couldn't exactly move away from her. "You of all people should know it's not as simple as flicking the switch off."

"Is that what you know?" Natasha asked. Her words didn't have any trace of accusation in them, but they were such an obvious echo of what he'd said to her before that she stopped Clint in his tracks. "You're an expert on these things now?"

"Nat—"

"Can you still hear him in your head?" Natasha looked deadly serious, refusing to drop his gaze, and Clint found that he couldn't look away from her when she looked like that. "Do you feel pulled in a direction you don't want to go? Are your thoughts still your own?"

"Tasha…"

"I'm being completely serious, Clint," she told him, leaving no room in her tone for misunderstanding. "If you honestly don't think you're yourself, we need to get that addressed. I will personally track down Xavier if Fury doesn't call him in himself."

"You don't have to do that," Clint said, letting the words out all at once in a breath.

"No?" Natasha had one eyebrow perfectly arched, and she looked imperiously down her nose at him, daring him to prove her right by admitting he wasn't hearing voices or feeling compelled to follow Loki or any of the other telltale signs.

But that wasn't a fair benchmark. Just because he didn't feel that way now didn't mean he wasn't going to. Hadn't he just seen Natasha get upended by a former Red Room trainer long after Xavier had been through her mind? This kind of stuff didn't just go away.

"Natasha, that's not fair," he said at last.

She didn't change her expression at all, still keeping one eyebrow raised as she looked down at him. "Life isn't fair, Barton."

Clint narrowed his eyes, already working up an argument in his head, but seeing how serious Natasha looked and knowing her history with this particular kind of thing, he decided at the last second to try to redirect her instead. "Yeah, but your interrogation technique is very unfair," he said, shifting so that he was better positioned. "It's hard to argue with you like this."

Natasha blinked at him and then laughed. "Life isn't fair," she said, though this time, she was smiling.

Clint grinned and then pulled her down into a kiss. He didn't really want to argue with her anyway.

…

Of course, Clint should have known that Natasha wasn't going to let things drop. Even if she let him hide away for a little while longer, she eventually got out of bed and threw his clothes at him, pegging him in the face.

"Got a message from Coulson. Thor won the argument; they're taking Loki back to Asgard."

"Alright," Clint said as he pulled his shirt on—not really seeing why he should care about that. As far as he was concerned, Loki couldn't get gone fast enough, and the farther away the better.

"We need to go."

Clint paused part of the way through putting on his pants. "Why?"

"Because the other Avengers are going to be there. It's a show of force to the Asgardians."

"Oh," Clint said. That made sense, he supposed. Even if Thor had sided with him, he knew from his own experience as well as from SHIELD's files that there was no guarantee that the rest of his people would do so. Thor himself hadn't been easy to deal with the first time he showed up. So maybe bringing Fury's little team together to see Loki off would make an impression.

So, yeah, he could see the logic in it. But he didn't see why he needed to be there. He wasn't actually part of Fury's plans. No powers, no money—he was just an ex-carnie who had brought Natasha to Fury.

Natasha he understood. Even without powers, she was amazing enough to make up for it. And besides, she was the one who had talked to all of Fury's pawns, the one who had interrogated Loki. She could do what the ego-driven superpowered idiots couldn't. Clint knew she was a better Avenger than any of them could ever hope to be.

Sure, he was probably biased in that assessment, but he was also right.

"No uniforms," Natasha said. "SHIELD is still dealing with the public-facing part of the team's debut."

"Yeah, makes sense. Can't help that the world's been scared of the Hulk since the second the guy existed," Clint muttered. "You need a ride there or…?"

"Clint." Natasha shook her head at him. "You're part of the show of force."

Clint breathed out a quiet laugh when he heard it. "Sure, Nat."

Natasha rolled her eyes as she took Clint's arm. "Come on," she said. "If you don't believe me, at the very least, you should be there to throw it in Loki's face that you're free and he's not."

Clint stopped and then slowly smiled Natasha's way. "Well, when you put it like that…"

"I knew you'd see it my way."

Clint was still grinning as he followed Natasha out. This was one of the many reasons he loved her, honestly. She had a way of laying things out that made it impossible to argue with her, but he enjoyed losing those arguments, but he never minded losing, because it always felt like winning anyway. Whether it was getting pinned down until he was too distracted to tell her he didn't feel like an Avenger or getting tempted out of the house with the promise of being petty to Loki's face, she made every concession feel like that's what he'd wanted in the first place.

Of course, he knew that a big part of that came from her training in the Red Room. They'd taught her there how to make marks do whatever she wanted or needed them to do. They'd taught her how to manipulate people. And yet Clint never felt like a mark, even if the techniques were the same. Maybe because he knew that, even if she was playing him, she was doing it because she wanted him out of his head.

Intentions mattered—especially to Clint.

By the time he and Natasha got to where the Avengers had, well, assembled, Clint wasn't surprised to find that Banner and Stark had arrived in the same car and were talking easily with each other. A couple of eggheads bonding over whatever research they had their heads in. That was totally typical.

Seeing Rogers roll in by himself was also typical. From what Clint knew of the guy, he had been keeping mostly to himself—not that Clint blamed him. It had been hard enough making the switch from Iowa hick to high-tech SHIELD agent; he couldn't imagine leaping ahead a few decades.

And then… there was Loki.

Clint was glad for the sunglasses that obscured his expression from the others as he stood there with his feet planted and his arms crossed. To anyone else, his body language would give off the impression that he was calm and collected, but the truth was that being faced with the god who had taken his mind wasn't exactly what he'd expected it to be.

He expected to feel more satisfied when he saw Loki standing there in restraints and a muzzle. Hadn't he lorded it over Jacques when Coulson had helped him take down the Circus of Crime on his intel? He liked a good gloat. Or, at least, he had when it was the guy who had beaten his formative years into him.

This was different. This felt hollow. And Clint wasn't entirely sure why until he realized that the blue film that had glazed over his own eyes didn't match Loki's green.

They used to be blue.

It was such a small detail, one that other people might have overlooked, but he made his name on noticing thing like that. Things that other people overlooked. People that other agents overlooked. That was how he'd found Natasha, and that was how he'd survived as long as he had with nothing but a Paleolithic weapon.

Clint didn't have too much time to reflect on what the lack of a blue film in Loki's eyes meant, though, because Natasha leaned over to him with a smirk to whisper, "Rogers looks like he's ready to go for round two."

Clint couldn't help but break into a smile. She was right: Rogers looked like he had only shown up in case Loki started another fight.

Natasha stood by him until Thor had disappeared with Loki, and from there, the others started to disperse—but Clint reached out and took Natasha by the arm.

"Nat," he said softly, and his tone was enough to stop her. "That's not the same—he's not the same as he was before."

Natasha pursed her lips. "What are you talking about?" She didn't sound like she was doubting him—just that she needed more information.

"I'm saying I think there's more going on than just Loki." Clint shook his head. "When he talked with me and Selvig, he talked about that stupid spear like it wasn't just a tool of his. Selvig described it as opening his mind. And that's definitely true. It takes everything about you and multiplies it by a thousand, but you have to use it in service of whoever is wielding it."

Natasha didn't say anything as she listened to him—probably unwilling to interrupt him when this was the most he'd been willing to say about what he'd been through since it happened.

"But the guy that talked about the spear isn't the same guy we just saw." He shook his head. "I don't know what's changed. I don't know why. I just know when he showed up, he was dried up and had blue eyes. Now, he looks … better, I guess. And they're green."

Natasha watched him for a long time, but when he didn't elaborate, she let out a slow breath. "Alright," she said, drumming her fingers on her arm as she thought it over. "So who was influencing the trickster god?"

"I'm not sure it's actually that simple," Clint said. "Because Loki was definitely calling the shots. He wasn't controlled like we were. I can't explain it, but there's a different quality to it." He ran a hand through his hair as words failed him. "I just know what I saw. And what I saw is that something or someone was… I don't know. Talking to him. Working with him. Directing him, maybe, but not fully controlling him. I'm not sure how to describe it. Like having a handler?"

Natasha nodded. "We should tell Fury."

"Actually, Coulson would be bet-" Clint froze, suddenly realizing what he'd said.

Coulson. If he'd ever needed someone who could translate his jumbled thoughts into actionable plans, it was now. Someone who could sit him down and talk him through and—wow, he missed the guy so much, and he hadn't even had time to miss him until that moment.

And now, the absence of one of the first real friends he'd ever had nearly knocked him over, and he barely noticed that Natasha had her arm around his waist until he realized she was steering him to the car.

"I was still a kid when he found me," he told Natasha. He didn't have to tell her who he was talking about, and she didn't try to press him. He did notice, though, that she was driving in the direction of his favorite pizza joint. "I thought I knew it all, and the next thing I knew, I had a SHIELD agent telling me I was better than the life I'd been given, and it was the first time anyone told me that, you know?"

"Yes," Natasha said gently. "I know."

Clint looked her way at last, and when he saw the way her lips were pressed together, the way her knuckles were white on the steering wheel, he remembered that Coulson had been her anchor, too. "Stop the car," he said suddenly. "Pull over."

Natasha didn't hesitate to do that—looking stressed—so she probably thought something was wrong. But as soon as she had the car in park, Clint leaned over and took her face in both hands, rubbing his thumbs over her cheeks.

"Nat, stop taking care of me for five seconds and cry, wouldja?" he said in a whisper. "I know you need to."

"I'm fine," Natasha breathed out, though she didn't try to pull away from him, either.

"Now who's lying?" Clint shot back, one eyebrow raised in a pretty good imitation of Natasha.

For just a second, Clint saw the smallest hint of laughter play with Natasha's expression before she simply crumpled into him—and he wasn't far behind her.

Neither of them would admit it, but that moment, in the car, away from anyone else, was exactly what they had both needed.