CW: Sexual situation involving a minor (non-graphic), implied past sexual abuse, violence.
Chapter 4: Nat Makes Things Weird
The next morning, Clint silently thanked his habit of sleeping in trees for letting him wake up without moving. Because there was a deeply asleep redhead half draped across him with a tangle of hair in his face. It almost would have been intimate if it weren't for the wet spot on his shirt where she had been drooling on him. He couldn't suppress a soft smile at how innocent she looked in her sleep with all the tension drained out of her. Clint guessed this was probably the most restful night of sleep Nat had gotten in a long while, based on how she was sprawled out and the fact that she was still out cold.
Clint glanced at the clock and groaned when he realized that Nat's next deprogramming session was due to start in less than an hour. He didn't begrudge her sleeping in, though. She needed the rest.
"Hey. Wake up, sleepyhead." he said quietly while jostling her a little.
Nat woke with a start and glanced around in a panic for a handful of seconds before she got her bearings. Clint waited patiently for her to fully wake up before he said anything else.
"You sleep good?" Clint asked her with a grin, which widened when she jumped and turned to stare at him. She'd forgotten he was there. Nat was normally a light sleeper, which his stab wound was ample evidence of, but she had just spent six hours dead to the world and it took a few seconds for her brain to kick into gear.
"I didn't think you'd stay all night." she mumbled, "I didn't hurt you again, did I?"
Clint couldn't resist the urge to mess with her a little and shook his head at her with a grin, "No. You snuggled. And drooled on me. And you snore."
A mortified expression appeared on her face and she blurted out, "Oh my God, just kill me now."
Clint couldn't help but laugh at her predicament, "You were adorable."
"Stop laughing." Nat protested with her hands over her face, "It's embarrassing."
Somehow Clint just knew he was seeing the real Nat right now, and he was determined to hold onto it as long as possible. She desperately needed times like this where she could just be a regular teenager and forget about the hell she was dealing with. This was the most normal he'd ever seen her act, and he strongly suspected that the fact that she was still half asleep had a lot to do with it. Then again, she had broken down a major wall the night before so maybe she was just more comfortable being herself around him.
"Hey." he said with a half-serious, half-teasing tone, "Any time you can't sleep, you can ask me, okay? I promise I won't tell anyone you're a secret snuggler."
"I hate you." Nat griped, shooting him a sour look.
That just made Clint laugh again. It was pure teenage contrariness, and he loved seeing it from her. He shook his head and chuckled at her, "No you don't."
"I don't." she admitted with something that was almost a smile.
"C'mon, get up." Clint said while nudging her shoulder, "Your next session is supposed to be soon. I'm going to call Hill and see if we can push it back until this afternoon. We can go grab a bite to eat in the meantime."
Nat just shrugged back, not feeling the need for a response.
"If you want to shower you have a little time." he told her with a raised eyebrow as he got up, "Let's not take our clothes off in the middle of the common room this time, okay?"
Nat caught the unspoken message that he knew what she had been doing and gave him a rather more serious nod than the situation strictly called for. Clint wasn't going to tell her that Hill had explained most of it to him. If she believed he was that good he wasn't going to break the illusion just yet.
While Nat was showering Clint called Maria to reschedule her deprogramming session. He waited until she answered and got right to the point.
"Mornin', Hill." he said, "Think we could move Nat's session until this afternoon?"
"I suppose." Maria replied, "May I ask why?"
"She had a rough night." Clint told her, "Pretty bad nightmare and she broke down a wall afterward."
He kept his word and didn't say anything about Nat snuggling with him after sobbing on his shoulder. That was between them and he knew she'd be embarrassed if people knew. Maria took the hint and didn't ask him about the nature of the wall she broke.
"Okay, we can reschedule it." Hill allowed, "One o'clock work for you?"
"That'll work fine." he said.
"Keep me updated on her, okay?" Maria requested, "I know you'll probably see more progress than anyone else."
"You seem strangely invested, Hill." Clint observed. He hadn't forgotten that she didn't answer his question during their impromptu meeting, "Is there something I should be aware of?"
"I'm just sympathetic and concerned for her welfare." came the generic non-answer.
So she was hiding something, Clint concluded. He didn't think it was a bad something, but he was starting to get a little irritated that he wasn't being told about it. He hung up after confirming the new timeslot for Nat's session and went to go clean himself up and change clothes.
When they got to the cafeteria it was mostly deserted except for a pair of junior agents working on a vending machine in the corner. Fortunately, agents came in at all times of day and night so there was always fresh food available. When Nat saw no one of import in the room she relaxed a little and made a beeline for the serving area. They loaded up their trays and found a spot to sit, where they idly chatted while they ate. While Clint was taking his time with his toast and eggs Nat got up to refill her coffee.
When she didn't come back after a few minutes Clint sat up and looked around for her. His temper flared when he saw her cornered by the two agents near the coffee machine, pressed against the wall and looking fearful. Clint jumped up and hurried over to deal with the situation. He relaxed somewhat when he got closer and picked up on what the two men were too stupid and distracted to realize; Nat's fear was an act. She was too perfectly balanced and appeared to be disguising a fighting stance within a fearful posture. Clever.
When he got within ten feet of her Nat flicked her eyes over to meet his and he saw the suppressed fury in them. She was doing her act because she knew her position was precarious and she didn't want to endanger it by attacking them, which she clearly wanted to do.
The two bullies hadn't noticed his approach, and he shook his head that they were dumb enough to pull this when he was sitting in the same room. He'd be talking to Coulson after this, he usually handled disciplinary actions. Oblivious to his presence, the more aggressive guy continued what he had been saying.
"Barton finally let his tame Russian whore off her leash, huh?" the more heavyset 'agent' sneered, "He only wanted to room with you because he wanted to keep you all to himself."
"You know, guys." Clint interrupted, feeling a petty satisfaction when they both jumped, "Usually joining SHIELD is the move you make after the poor life choices, not before."
"We were just talking." the thinner guy defended without much conviction. He turned to Nat and added, "Right?"
The corner of Nat's mouth twitched into a snarl for a second as she glared at him, "Nyet."
"Still haven't housebroken her yet, huh, Barton?" the heavyset guy said, kicking the hornet's nest even harder.
"I am just in awe of the level of idiocy you're displaying right now." Clint said incredulously, "I mean, I thought I did some stupid shit, but this is something else. Did you forget who I am? Do you not know who she is?"
"You're nothing special, Hawkeye." Idiot #1 shot back, oblivious to the fact he was digging his own grave, "You aren't shit without your bow and I ain't afraid of this little bitch!"
"Wow. Just...wow." Clint said before looking straight at Nat with an 'I tried to warn them' expression and a wry shrug, "Just don't kill 'em."
He had to admit, the vicious grin she shot him was a little intimidating.
He had barely gotten the words out before Natalia exploded into motion. It was over before either of her tormentors knew anything was happening. The skinny guy received her right foot to the side of his knee, which reduced him to a crumpled, hollering pile. He was out of the fight before he even realized he was in one. The heavier guy found his arm trapped in a complicated joint lock with Natalia applying pressure that had him up on his toes.
"You will treat me with respect." she growled directly in his face, deliberately exaggerating her Russian accent. Clint tried not to laugh, it would ruin the effect.
Her former tormentor opened his mouth to say something and Clint watched in amazement as he made the stupidest decision possible and spat, "Fuck you, commie whore!"
Natalia's eyes blazed in rage and she slowly applied more pressure while giving him a stare that promised a slow death.
*CRACK*
The man whose elbow she had just broken instantly went from arrogant to shrieking and Clint had to wince. That looked painful.
"They are not dead." Natalia stated flatly and very Russian as she shoved the likely former agent aside. He proceeded to trip over a trash can and land on his injured arm, making him shriek even louder.
"Yeah, that was...a little excessive, maybe. Okay, then." Clint said, a little stunned, "Remind me not to piss you off."
"You need a reminder?" Nat asked him with a smirk, glancing down at his bandaged hand.
Clint shook his head in bemusement and wondered what had happened between her breakdown last night and this morning. It was like a switch had gotten flipped. She was more with it and coherent than he had seen her yet. He liked this Nat and he hoped it would stick.
As they walked down the hallway Clint pulled out his phone and called Coulson. He listened to Coulson get calmer and calmer as they spoke, and his eyebrows lifted when he realized the depth of the shit those guys were about to find themselves in. Coulson didn't do angry like most people, he got frighteningly calm and destroyed whatever had pissed him off in creative ways. Always subtle and always by the book.
Coulson hung up and called him back barely four minutes later.
"The 'agents' in question have been reassigned, effective immediately." Coulson informed him, "Thanks to their enthusiasm in identifying and detaining Russians, their vigilance is being rewarded with the opportunity to monitor the Siberian coast for the next six months. From an outpost in the northwestern corner of Alaska."
"Phil, it's October." Clint just had to say. He loved it when Coulson did things like this. He had a vindictive streak when it came to people coming after those he took a liking to, and he always expressed it in the most vicious, yet unassailably logical ways.
"I am aware." Coulson answered, and Clint could almost hear the smug look he knew Coulson had on his face, "And I was just notified that the heater in said outpost is outdated by nearly twenty years and has an unfortunate tendency to malfunction. They will be advised to pack plenty of cold weather gear."
"You are a mean, mean man, Coulson." Clint laughed, "I'm sure they'll have plenty of time to reflect on their choices while they're freezing their balls off."
"I was simply solving the issue in the most direct and efficient way possible." Coulson maintained. He would never admit that he had deliberately thought of the biggest dick move he could make, and then went out of his way to do it. But Clint had known him long enough to know that this was his way of getting back at the people who had irritated him, while leaving them no room to cry foul. He dropped the act briefly before he hung up to say, "No one screws with my people on my watch."
"You're awesome, Phil." Clint told him sincerely, "Thanks, I owe you one."
"No problem, Clint." Coulson replied, "Can't allow agents to take it upon themselves to criticize our foreign exchange program. That's a bad optic for SHIELD."
After they hung up Clint turned to Nat and relayed Coulson's side of the conversation verbatim. He watched an incredulous look form on her face and could have sworn she almost laughed. As it was the corner of her mouth kept twitching into a smirk as she listened.
"Coulson likes you." he finished, "He doesn't go out of his way like that for just anybody, and he pulled a lot of strings very quickly to make that happen. It would have been easier to just fire them, but he wanted to make sure they had plenty of time to regret their actions. He considers you one of 'his' people already."
The dumbstruck look on Nat's face was priceless. Coulson had stuck up for her and made it clear he did so because he liked her. Clint could see her re-evaluating him in her head.
"Oh, and you're not going to be punished for injuring them." he continued with a smirk, "It's being recorded as an unfortunate workplace accident. That joint lock was nice, you'll have to show me how to do it sometime."
"You aren't trained in hand to hand?" Nat asked curiously.
"Oh, I am." Clint corrected, "I'm not bad, but I'm pretty sure you're better. Which is impressive since you're like a decade younger than me. I'm better at a distance. Tell you what, you show me some new moves and I'll show you how to shoot a bow."
"Deal." she said with a nod, "When do we start?"
"As soon as you're cleared to have a weapon in your hands."
The second session wasn't as intense as the first. The doctors had refined the process after the first time so they knew how to make it easier on her while still making good progress. She didn't hesitate to take his hand this time, shooting him a thankful glance as she did. No screams this time, but Nat did spend enough time whimpering and hyperventilating that it hurt to watch.
When it was over Nat complained of a wicked headache and decided to lie down for a while. Clint busied himself assembling arrows while she napped, keeping his ears open for any sign that she was having another nightmare. Fortunately, it stayed quiet and he managed to get several dozen arrows done before she reappeared.
Clint's hackles went up when Nat emerged from her room. She was wearing just a long T shirt that exposed her bare legs and her hips were swaying a lot more than normal when she walked. She flopped onto the couch next to him and fixed him with a look that immediately made him very uncomfortable. She bit her lower lip, and instead of being seductive it very much felt like he was being stared at by a predator.
"I was thinking..." Nat said while leaning toward him, her voice husky and pitched lower, "Those men seemed to be convinced that we were sleeping together. I wouldn't mind if they were right."
"Nat?" Clint asked cautiously. There was something really off about her that had him on high alert, "What's going on?"
"Isn't it obvious?" she almost purred and ran fingertip along his forearm, "I'm offering you an opportunity."
"That is really not a good idea." he told her firmly, "It's wrong on so many levels it isn't funny."
Despite knowing exactly how fast she was, Clint still couldn't stop her when she abruptly turned over and straddled his lap. If he was uncomfortable before, now he felt like he wanted to crawl out of his skin. His thoughts flashed back to what Hill had warned him about when Nat pressed herself against him and laid her head on his shoulder. There will be more tests.
"Are you sure?" she breathed into his ear, "You can have me if you want. No one has to know."
Clint was frozen in shock. He had no desire to encourage her in the slightest, but he also had no idea how she'd react if he turned her down flat. His stomach turned when it occurred to him that Nat was only seventeenand she was way too good at this for it to be her first time doing it. He thought about an assassination the previous year in which the mark was found naked in his hotel room with his throat slashed. With dawning horror he found himself wondering if that had been her.
His decision was made for him when Nat started nuzzling into his neck and grinding her hips into him. There was something empty and calculated about what she was doing, and he wanted no part of it. Clint realized that she wasn't going to stop unless he made her somehow, so he abruptly stood up and unceremoniously dumped her back onto the couch.
"Nope. Not cool." he said adamantly, "This isn't happening, Nat. I'm not sleeping with you so you can drop the sex kitten act."
He was actually a little startled when she complied immediately. The shift from seductress to the Nat he was familiar with was instantaneous and a little jarring. He was both impressed and a little unsettled by how quickly she could drop one mask and put another on. He gave the redhead a long, level look.
"What, exactly, the fuck was that?" he demanded, "What the hell were you even thinking?"
"I'm sorry, Clint." she apologized with what looked like pure relief on her face, "I had to know."
"Know what?" he prompted. He had a good idea why she looked relieved and he didn't like it.
Nat hung her head a little bit, almost acting ashamed of herself. It was hard to tell, but it seemed like she really did feel bad.
"If the things those men were saying this morning were true." she admitted quietly.
"What things?" Clint pressed. He was trying to be patient, which was difficult because he was still a little rattled. He hadn't heard the entire exchange, so he didn't actually know what they had said.
"That the only reason you wanted me around was because I'm a pretty, young girl and vulnerable enough for you to take advantage of." Nat explained, "I know it's stupid, but I couldn't stop thinking about it and it bothered me. So I had to find out."
Clint didn't really want to ask the next question, but he needed to know the answer, "Would you have gone through with it if I'd responded differently?"
Nat just shrugged in a way that was somewhat less than encouraging, like she wasn't sure of the answer herself, "I don't know. Probably."
"Did it not occur to you to just ask me?" Clint demanded, "You just made shit real weird, you know that, right?"
"I know!" she moaned miserably, "I'm not even sure why I did it. It just felt like the most obvious thing to do."
"Nat." Clint sighed, "I'm sorry if it hurts your feelings, but I do not want to sleep with you."
Nat suddenly looked down at her legs self-consciously and traced one of the scars with her finger, "Am I not attractive?" she asked uncertainly, "Is it the scars?"
"Nat, you are ridiculously attractive." he assured her, "You're a pretty girl and you're going to be a beautiful woman in a few years. It isn't anything to do with that. But right now you're underage and in a very vulnerable position. I also have some influence on what happens to you, and it is not okay to have any kind of romantic or sexual relations with you because of that alone, regardless of your age. Besides, do you have any idea how shitty I would feel if I had taken you up on it, and then found out you didn't actually want to and it was just a test I failed?"
Nat's face went through a rollercoaster of emotions before finally settling on chagrin, "I'm sorry. I didn't really think it through all the way. It's the conditioning I think. Sometimes I just get so focused I do things without really thinking about what the consequences will be. I think it's because if we couldn't think about the consequences it made it easier for us to kill people, even if we didn't want to."
The pieces suddenly clicked into place for Clint and he kicked himself that he didn't realize it sooner, "How long have you been playing us for? Since the very beginning? I want to know exactly how manipulated I've been. And don't lie to me."
Nat's eyes widened at that, she clearly hadn't expected him to reach that conclusion this quickly. Her face took another emotional ride before it settled on sad and resigned, "Since the interrogation. That first block getting broken jarred me out of the deadlock I was in. It felt safer to play dumb and gather more information until I was ready to let you know. How'd you figure it out?"
"I've suspected for a couple days now." Clint told her, "The stunt with taking your clothes off clued me in. You were acting like you had no idea what you were doing, but something told me you were doing it deliberately."
Nat nodded sadly in confirmation, "I really don't care if you see me naked, it doesn't bother me. But you're right, I wanted to see what you'd do. I trusted you to an extent already, and I was second guessing myself on it. I felt bad when you did exactly what I hoped you would."
"So why are you coming clean now?" Clint wanted to know.
She sighed and met his gaze, "Because you've been nothing but kind and honest to me and it feels wrong to keep lying to you."
"Were you being honest with me last night?" he had to ask.
"Completely." Nat replied with a nod. Saying that, Nat hopped up off the couch and stood in front of Clint with her arms open and a vaguely pleading look on her face, silently asking for forgiveness. He studied her for a long moment and her face got more desperate as the seconds passed. Deciding she really was being honest with him Clint stepped forward and wrapped her in the hug she was requesting.
"Hey, it's okay." he said softly, "We're still good. I forgive you."
Clint wasn't sure how to feel when she sagged against him in relief.