A/N:
This story is going to get a little rough in places, so I'm putting a content warning at the beginning. If you are sensitive to the topics of: child abuse, sexual abuse, thoughts of suicide, or to depictions of PTSD, please read with caution. I will not describe anything in graphic detail, but such topics will be implied, referenced, or discussed in a number of places. I'll do my best to be more specific at the top of each chapter, but I might miss something that upsets someone. In that event, I apologize in advance.
There will be no Clintasha pairing. Nothing against it, it just doesn't work for this narrative.
Going slightly AU, mostly in that I'm having Clint and Natasha meet much earlier than they did in MCU canon. Events from the first Avengers movie and after will not be changing, if I ever take it that far.
I do not own any of these characters. They are the property of Marvel Studios.
Chapter 1: The Hawk and the Widow Pt. 1
"Hawkeye, do you have eyes on the target?" Coulson's voice came through on the comms. Clint could barely hear it, he had to remove the hearing aid in his left ear to put the earpiece into place. Fortunately the left side was his good ear, with only 60% of the hearing gone.
"Affirmative." he responded, "Target has set up a roost on the roof of a building 75 yards to my east. Her target hasn't appeared yet. I have a clean shot when we confirm the identity of her target."
The intel on his current target was spotty at best. They had no name, only an alias. She was known as the Black Widow to the people who tracked active assassins. Nationality was unconfirmed, but suspected to be Russian. Physically all that was known about her was that she was a young woman, under 30 years old, white, with a petite build and red hair that was often concealed by wigs or hats. Her preferred method, comprising over 80% of her kills, was infiltrating and using knives or suppressed pistols at close range. She had been caught on camera exactly twice, but the footage was grainy and provided no more detail on her appearance. What it did provide was evidence that she was also a skilled martial artist, capable of taking down men much larger than herself in a matter of seconds.
Agent Barton was chosen for this mission because it had proven frustratingly difficult to get close to the Black Widow. She was hyper-aware of her surroundings and had quickly disappeared any time she was sighted. His vision was sharp enough he didn't need binoculars at this range, eliminating the risk of a reflection giving him away. He wasn't called Hawkeye for nothing. The other advantage his eyesight provided was that 75 yards was well within his range for an accurate kill shot. His preferred recurve bow was effective out to 300 yards, and he had made shots longer than that. He had also developed several types of unconventional arrowheads with the help of SHIELD's R&D department to add versatility, as well as a specialized quiver that could swap them out as needed. He was loaded mostly with conventional arrowheads today, with 3 explosive ones just in case.
Clint had been tracking his target for the last several weeks. He had caught up with her the day before in Prague and watched as she scouted her location. He'd been brought here by an anonymous tip that had turned out to be accurate. He couldn't shake the feeling that something was off about that. This woman was a ghost and they had conveniently gotten a tip that led them right to her? It was a little too convenient in his opinion, but he followed up on it anyway because he hadn't turned up anything else yet.
In the time that Clint had been watching the Widow he had developed a sneaking suspicion that she knew he was there. Every so often he would see her briefly side-eye in his general direction, like she was aware of his presence but didn't know exactly where he was yet. She was wearing black tactical pants and a dark gray jacket, with a hat covering her vibrant red hair. He could see a few locks of it sticking out. The buildings of the neighborhood they were in were largely the same height and close together. Clint had chosen one that was slightly taller to set up in so he'd have an unobstructed view of the spot his target had selected for herself.
"Something's happening." Clint reported as he watched the Widow settle herself into firing position with her rifle. Suppressed, he noted. It reduced the effective range a bit, but made it virtually inaudible outside 50 yards or so. Clint waited until she sighted through the scope and closed the eye closer to him before he shifted into his own firing position. The only reason she hadn't spotted him was because he was standing farther back in the room he had broken into where the shadows were deeper. He had been standing completely still for a little more than an hour and it felt good to stretch his muscles again.
"You have your orders, Barton." Coulson confirmed, "Eliminate the target only after positive ID of her target."
"Roger that," he replied, "Shouldn't be long now."
As Clint kept his target in sight his attention was drawn to a flash on a building behind her about 200 yards off. He flicked his gaze in that direction and spotted the source. There was a second shooter preparing and the setting sun had reflected off his scope as he swung his rifle into position. Clint watched the second shooter for a moment, keeping his target in sight in his peripheral. When he was in position Clint was slightly surprised to see that the second shooter was also sighting the Widow.
"Coulson," he said quietly, "Do we have any other agents on this op you didn't tell me about?"
"Not that I'm aware of." was Coulson's response, "New development?"
"Yeah," Clint confirmed, "We have a second shooter, and he's drawing a bead on our target."
"Interesting," Coulson replied, "Keep an eye out. If she has an enemy that doesn't necessarily mean we have an ally."
"This feels off, Phil." Clint felt the need to say, "It came together awfully easy. How often does that happen when it's not a setup?"
"If your gut is telling you that, don't dismiss it." his handler said after a few beats of silence, "Your instincts have been right more often than not. That's why you're on this op instead of Rumlow."
Several things happened in rapid succession. A figure came into sight at the end of the street the Widow was sighting down and she shifted minutely to aim at it. An almost imperceptible twitch of her left hand as she squeezed the trigger. Thwip. Her target dove for cover when the bullet passed through the coffee cup he was lifting to his lips. A single beat of silence followed by the crack of a rifle shot. The Widow spasmed as a bullet impacted her right thigh. Clint didn't know why he did it, but when he heard the report of the second shot he switched targets abruptly and fired. The arrow sped in the direction of the second shooter and ended its journey in his left eye socket.
"Barton, report!" Coulson's voice barked over the comms, "What just happened?"
Clint's mind raced as he tried to think of a way to explain it. First he had to figure out why he had switched targets and eliminated the other person trying to kill his original target. He had made the decision subconsciously and was now trying to piece together what his instincts had noticed before he did. He pondered it and realized that he had made his choice when he saw the Widow's left hand twitch when she took her shot. He was pretty sure she had missed intentionally. That shot was too perfectly placed to be an accident, but could easily be explained away as one. His choice was confirmed, he realized, when the second shooter had opted for a disabling shot rather than a lethal one.
"Went with my gut, Coulson." Clint explained, "I'm like 90% sure she missed on purpose. The second shooter went for a disabling shot. I shot him instead but I'm not entirely sure why. I didn't even think about it, I just did it."
"Roger that." Coulson's voice came back a little tersely, "What are you thinking, Clint?"
"Not sure yet." he answered, "But I got the feeling that the second guy was in place to kill her if she failed. But if that was the case he wouldn't have gone for a disabling shot. Something tells me our Widow isn't a free agent. I think she's being coerced somehow. A leg shot will slow her down if she tries to run, making her easier to reel back in. If the guy I shot was her handler it tracks."
"It does make sense," Coulson agreed, "Make the call. I trust your judgment."
"I'm not going to terminate her yet." Clint decided, "I want more information first. This changes things. If she's just a puppet we need to find out who's pulling her strings."
While they were talking the Widow had abandoned her rifle and was making her way towards the fire escape at a pretty good clip despite her pronounced limp. It looked like her right leg could barely support her weight. He finally got a good look at her face, and was faintly disturbed by what he saw. She was pretty, but there was zero emotion of any kind in her expression. If it wasn't for the faintest hint of panic he could detect in her eyes, a ceramic doll would have more life. She glanced over at the now-deceased man who had shot her and her lips twisted ever so briefly in an unreadable expression. Then she turned her head to stare directly at Clint and turned to more fully face him, seemingly waiting for something.
While he had been relaying information to Coulson, Clint had pulled another arrow from his quiver and nocked it. Now he drew it back and locked eyes with the red-haired assassin he had been assigned to kill. Her face was still blank, but her eyes flickered through several emotions before landing on...acceptance and relief. The girl, because Clint saw she was a girl now, tilted her head back slightly and brought her chest forward before meeting his gaze as if she were challenging him. Clint was a little taken aback by that. It was almost like she was asking to be killed. He considered the situation for a moment with his arrow still drawn.
"Coulson," he said without relaxing his stance, "Amend my previous statement. I don't think she's just being coerced, I think she's being outright controlled. I'm looking her in the eye right now, and I've seen statues more animated. There's life in her eyes, barely, but nowhere else. She looks brainwashed, and she's young. Way younger than the intel led us to believe. She's just a kid, Phil, 15 or 16 at most. She's not doing this by choice, and I don't think she deserves to die. Authorize a mission parameter change?"
"What do you want to change it to?" Coulson questioned, "Only a few options here."
Clint breathed out a sigh and ran through his choices in his head quickly.
"You're not gonna like it, Coulson." he finally said, "I'm thinking extraction. My gut is telling me she's trying to die, but what she really wants is to get out. She just doesn't think she can."
"You're right, I don't like it." was the response he got, "Level with me, Barton. Do you think she's worth saving?"
"Yeah, Phil." Clint confirmed, "I do. I don't think she was ever given a chance to be anything but what she is. The state she's in? That didn't happen overnight. That's years of conditioning at work. The way she's acting it's like she's afraid to make a choice for herself. She needs help, and I think we should give it to her if we can."
Coulson was silent for a long moment. Then he uttered the word Clint was hoping to hear, "Authorized."
"Thanks, boss." he said with a smirk, " I was going to do it either way, but at least now I won't get chewed out for it."
"Not by me, anyway." Coulson reminded him, "But Fury is a different story. His instructions were explicit."
Several miles away Agent Phil Coulson sat back in his seat and allowed himself a satisfied smile. That was the real reason Fury had insisted Barton be assigned to this op. They had suspected for a while the Black Widow was under someone else's control, but needed it verified. Clint was uncannily good at reading people and situations, and could be relied on to make accurate assessments. If he was convinced that she wasn't acting of her own free will, he had no doubt that was the case.
As soon as Clint heard Coulson give him authorization he relaxed his bowstring and waited to see how the redhead would react. To his surprise, her face actually showed a subtle emotion. Her eyes narrowed and her mouth compressed into a thin line in a look of suppressed indignation and fury, as though she had been denied something promised to her. Apparently realizing Clint wasn't going to end her life, the girl continued on her way to the fire escape leading down the side of the building.
She's running, Clint realized, But not from me.
He quickly grabbed the rope he had secured to a radiator earlier and dropped it out the window. He rappelled down to the level of the roof of the next building and kicked out from the wall before letting himself drop. He knew the girl would be slowed in her descent down the fire escape by her wounded leg, so he took his time parkouring across the rooftops while keeping his eyes peeled for any threats. When he got to the roof of the next building over from hers he spotted four men wearing black rushing down the street toward the alley the assassin was climbing down to. He looked down and saw that she had just reached the bottom and was starting towards the end of the alley away from the approaching men. It was only four stories down, so Clint had a clear view of what was happening. He turned up the hearing aid in his right ear to max so he could hopefully hear some of what was going on as well.
Blood loss was clearly taking its toll on the petite assassin, she was unsteady on her feet and had a hand against the wall for support. Her head whipped around at the sound of footsteps behind her and Clint saw her eyes widen slightly. She made a valiant effort to work her way down the alley faster before stopping and letting her head drop and shoulders slump. The girl turned around to face her pursuers with a show of defiance that was belied by the tremble in her shoulders. Her face was still blank, but everything else about her told Clint that whoever these men were, she was afraid of them.
"Natalia!" the guy in the lead barked out, followed by a series of syllables in a language Clint didn't understand. The girl flinched at the sound of what he guessed was her name before going utterly still. She appeared to be frozen in place, even the trembling had stopped. Clint glanced at her face and was surprised to see that her strangely expressive eyes had gone vacant to match the doll-like expression on her face. One of the other black-clad men raised a rifle and fired at her. The dart hitting the side of her neck snapped her out of her trance and a hand shot up to grab at it.
The apparent leader of the squad addressed the girl again in Russian, which Clint didn't speak very well but understood just fine.
"You missed your target, killed your handler, and attempted to run." he said with disdain, "I believe you failed your mission deliberately. What do you have to say for yourself, traitor?"
"It was a mistake." the redhead insisted frantically, "I will correct. I will correct!"
"It is too late for that." the man replied coldly, "The target has been reassigned to Zimniy Soldat. I have been informed you are too valuable to execute, so you will be sent back for retraining."
The blood drained from the girl's face and she started to stammer a protest. However, before she could get the words out whatever they had dosed her with started to take effect. She swayed a little on her feet, then stumbled backwards and lost her balance, falling flat on her back looking upwards. She spotted Clint on the roof and her eyes widened.
"Kill me!" she screamed up to him in perfect English, "Don't let them take me! Kill me! Please kill me!"
She clearly felt that whatever they planned to do with her was worse than death. Her mask had crumbled when she fell and the fear was now plain on her face. She was terrified of whatever awaited her.
"You hearing this, Coulson?" Clint asked the still open comms channel.
"Affirmative." came the frosty response that Clint knew meant Coulson was angry, "Terminate with extreme prejudice."
"Way ahead of ya, Phil." he muttered as he released his first arrow into the throat of the man with the rifle. Two more swiftly followed, ending the lives of two more men.
"My condolences for your loss." Clint called down to the leader of the now dead squad, "I'll be sure to send flowers. Any last words?"
The man opened his mouth to respond and Clint shot an arrow into it.
The girl was rapidly slipping into unconsciousness, but was still lucid enough to fix Clint with a bewildered look before she passed out.
Clint shot an arrow into the roof at his feet and grabbed ahold of the line attached to it. He rapidly rappelled down to the ground and walked past the corpses he had created over to the unconscious assassin. The man he had shot in the mouth was still alive and making horrible gurgling sounds. Clint pulled an arrow from his quiver, nocked it and fired it into his right eye without slowing his pace. He reached the girl and knelt down to check her pulse. It was thin and reedy, but steady.
"Coulson," he called, "I'm going to need pickup at my position. She's lost a lot of blood and they tranqed her. Does the safehouse have medical supplies?"
Clint quickly looked her leg wound over and was relieved to see that it seemed to have gone straight through and didn't hit any major arteries. It wasn't life-threatening if she got medical attention soon, but she'd probably be limping for a while. He put pressure on the bleeding and the girl moaned and tried to pull her leg away. She wasn't completely out, then.
"En route," Coulson answered, "ETA five minutes. And yes it does."
Clint looked down at the girl he had saved from whatever was in store for her. She looked even younger without the tension that he hadn't even registered until it wasn't there. She was very pretty, and would certainly grow into a beautiful woman. Her frame was lean and it was hard to tell if it was from malnutrition or just her natural build. He spotted a faint scar around her right wrist and his jaw clenched when he realized that it was probably from having a handcuff on that wrist for a long period of time. The more he learned, the more glad he was that his instincts had caused him to switch targets at the last instant. This girl had been through hell, and he resolved to do for her what Coulson had done for him eight years earlier. If he could take out the assholes that had done this to her too, all the better. Clint paused for a moment when it occurred to him that he had become strangely protective of this girl he'd been ready to kill not even ten minutes ago. He shook his head in bemusement and looked down at the mostly unconscious assassin.
"What the hell did they do to you?" he asked the redhead's prone form, "You are way too damn young to be a seasoned killer."
His only response was a low moan as the red-haired girl instinctively curled in on herself. Clint took the opportunity to retrieve his arrows from the nearby bodies. He didn't like leaving evidence behind, and he sighed when it occurred to him there was nothing he could do about the arrow in the eye of the man on the roof. He knew they were untraceable because he made them himself, but he had a bit of a reputation of his own and the arrow was a dead giveaway that Hawkeye was responsible. To the best of his knowledge he was the only person out there in this field whose preferred weapon was a bow.
Coulson arrived with the extraction vehicle a minute or so later. Clint gently picked the girl up bridal-style and carried her over to the car where Coulson had the back door open.
"I'm going to ride in the back with her, Phil." he told the older agent, "She's way too dangerous to have behind both of us if she wakes up. I don't know how potent that tranquilizer is, but she's not completely out."
"Understood, and good call." Coulson answered him, "The safehouse is nearby. Do you think she needs a hospital?"
"The leg wound is a through and out." Clint explained, "If we clean it and stitch it she should be okay. No other serious injuries I've seen. She's lost a lot of blood, but I don't think it's enough to be life-threatening. She was still conscious and lucid before they shot her with that dart."
"Got it." Coulson said from the drivers seat, "We should be there before too long."
"Coulson," Clint said in a serious tone, "The Black Widow has been active for two years, and has 64 confirmed kills credited to her and who knows how many more we don't know about. If it's the same girl, based on her age now she started when she was maybe 14 years old. Who the fuck brainwashes a 14 year old girl to kill people? The guy in the alley said something to her that put her in a stupor, so she has trigger words planted in her head. What the actual fuck, Phil?"
"I don't know who's responsible, Clint." Coulson replied calmly, "But I intend to find out."
When they got to the safehouse the redhead was still out cold. Whatever was on that dart was pretty potent, as she'd been unconscious for over an hour now. But some of that could have been blood loss, too. During the ride Clint had taken his belt off and fashioned it into a makeshift tourniquet to slow the bleeding. They transferred her inside and Clint laid her down on the hospital bed in the back room so they could treat her injury. All SHIELD safehouses had at least basic medical supplies suitable for treating non life threatening injuries, since they were where agents often retreated to when injured. A gunshot wound was the most likely injury they'd need to treat, so they had everything they needed on hand.
Clint hesitated when he realized that he'd have to remove the girl's pants to properly treat her wound. He didn't want to cut them off because they had nothing else for her to wear, so he'd have to pull them at least down to her knees. He felt weird about it because she wasn't awake to give him permission, but it was a necessity because she couldn't afford to wait. His awkwardness gave way to anger when he saw the parallel scars across the front of her thighs.
"Coulson, you seeing this?" Clint ground out through a clenched jaw, "It looks like she's been caned. Hard enough to leave lasting marks, and recently. Please tell me we're going to take down the motherfuckers who did this to her. This is just all kinds of wrong."
"I'm seeing it." the other agent confirmed, "And I'm just as angry about it. I think you made the right call on the extraction. Mind if I ask why you made that choice?"
"You know the answer to that, Phil." Clint replied while cleaning the girl's wound. She moaned quietly and tried to pull away when the antiseptic hit, but didn't otherwise stir, "I wasn't that different from her when you found me. Paying it forward, I guess."
Clint didn't see the genuine smile that crossed Coulson's features. He had brought the teenage archer in himself after tracking him down for a series of assassinations and seeing that he was a good kid in a bad situation, and was just doing what he had to in order to survive. He wasn't a killer at heart. Today was all the evidence he needed that he had been right about Clint. A less compassionate agent wouldn't have hesitated to kill the girl in front of them, since she was a legitimate target. But Clint had a knack for seeing past what was in front of him to what was really going on, and had chosen to spare her. And ultimately save her from a worse fate if the things said in that alley were anything to go by. He'd recruited the former circus performer for exactly that reason, SHIELD needed more agents that wouldn't let orders override their own morals. Clint's history of insubordination had gotten him numerous reprimands, but it often led to times like this where he did the right thing regardless of what his orders said.
Clint finished stitching the teenage assassin's wounds and wrapped her leg with gauze so it could begin to heal. He gave the situation due consideration and turned to Coulson with a question.
"Do you think we should restrain her?"
"It would be safest, I think." was the reply he got, "She's deadly even without weapons. I'd rather not try to explain things to her while she's trying to kill us."
"Yeah, I was afraid you'd say that." Clint responded with a frown, "Look at her wrist, Phil. She's spent a lot of time in restraints already if it's scarred like that, and I don't feel good about doing that to her. Do we have something other than handcuffs to use? I have the feeling that if she wakes up handcuffed to a bed she won't believe that we're not going to hurt her. I saw how afraid of those guys she was, and she was stone cold when I had an arrow pointed at her so she's not afraid of death. She's been brainwashed at some point, and the way that dick was talking about 'retraining' makes me think they were planning on doing that to her again."
"I think we have some ratchet straps in the other room," Coulson told him, "They're wide enough to not dig into her skin even if they're cinched down tight."
Clint and Phil took a few minutes to carefully cinch down the ratchet straps on both of the teenager's arms and her left leg, choosing to leave her right leg free so it didn't put any strain on her injury. Then they sat down to wait for her to wake up so they could hopefully get a few answers.
Another half hour passed before Clint noticed a slight change to the girl's breathing. It had been deep and slow, and shifted to shallower and faster. He had a hunch that she was conscious and pretending she wasn't. He regarded her with a somewhat impressed expression, it took a lot of discipline to hide the fact that you're awake in an uncertain situation. If he hadn't caught the change to her breathing he wouldn't have known.
"I know you're awake," Clint said quietly, "You might as well open your eyes so we can talk. You're restrained because we know how dangerous you are, but we're not going to hurt you. If you can convince us you aren't going to attack us we can see about removing or at least loosening the restraints so you're more comfortable."
The red-haired teenager opened her eyes and looked around the room quickly before settling on Clint. Now that he was closer, Clint noticed that her eyes were a brilliant sea-green. The kind of shade that usually only came from colored contact lenses, but he was pretty sure it was their natural color. He could see confusion and just a hint of fear in them, and he wondered how it was that her eyes were so expressive while her face gave nothing away. The split second of panic on her face before it smoothed out into the familiar emotionless mask confirmed what he had started to suspect in his limited experience with her; she still felt things, she was just extremely disciplined about not showing that she did.
The girl just stared at him and he could almost see the wheels turning in her head as she tried to process the situation she found herself in. The seconds stretched into minutes and Clint just waited, regarding her with a raised eyebrow and a relaxed demeanor.
"Why?" the teen finally said with a light Russian accent, "You were sent to kill me, yes? Why did you not? It was your mission."
The way she emphasized the word 'mission' was significant, Clint realized. It was as though she couldn't comprehend someone being able to choose not to complete one as ordered. The slight twitch of her hand as she fired her rifle made more sense to him now. Something prevented her from making the conscious decision to miss that shot, so she had to allow her subconscious to do it for her. She was fighting her conditioning as much as she could, but was only able to perform tiny acts of rebellion because it was so deeply embedded in her. Her decision to run when she saw that her handler had been killed was probably the first actual choice she'd made for herself in a very long time.
The confusion and uncertainty in her eyes was obvious to Clint, but he was reasonably certain it was only his perceptiveness that allowed him to see it. He wondered suddenly if she was unaware of how much her eyes gave away or if she did it on purpose because it was the only self-expression her conditioning would let her have. He considered how to answer her question carefully, knowing that the next thing he said would have an influence on how this was going to go.
"Because I saw the truth of what was happening." he told her, "You missed that shot deliberately and you knew you were going to be punished in some way for it. I made my choice when you made it clear that you wanted to die. I make a point of not assisting people with suicide. Now it's my turn to ask. Why?"
"It was my only way out." the girl answered with a shrug, "I wasn't able to do it myself, so I had to arrange for someone else to."
Clint was stunned when the pieces suddenly fell into place for him. "The anonymous tip? That was you?"
A single sharp nod was her only response. Interesting. He'd have to learn how she had known to drop that tip where she did to ensure that he'd come after her.
"Are you hungry?" Clint suddenly asked, "We don't have much here, but there's some protein bars and bottled water in the cabinet. You're welcome to a couple if you want."
The assassin tilted her head slightly as she considered both the question and the man asking it. Finally, she gave him a slower, more hesitant nod. Clint walked over to the cabinet and removed three protein bars and a bottle of water before walking back over to the side of the bed.
"Are you left or right handed?" he asked his charge.
She thought about it for a moment before answering, "Neither."
"Okay, ambidextrous then." he said rhetorically, "So it doesn't matter which arm I untie."
Clint wasn't stupid enough to trust her yet. She was being fairly docile at the moment, but he knew that if he was in her shoes he'd be trying to lull his guards into complacency to have a better chance at escaping. With that in mind he stepped around the other side of the bed and unstrapped her left arm before returning to the right side of the bed. He was safer if her free arm was on the other side from him. She picked up on what he was doing and he saw the corner of her mouth twitch into a smirk so briefly he barely registered it before it was gone. He opened all three bars and the bottle of water before setting them on the table where she could reach them. She tried to be casual about it, but the speed at which the protein bars disappeared confirmed what he had suspected earlier; she wasn't fed very well wherever she was kept between missions, and she was ravenous.
"So," the girl said after a long swig of water, "When does the torture and interrogation start?"
"What makes you think we're going to torture you?" Clint shot back in response.
"You are American." she replied with a shrug as if the answer was obvious, "I know what it is Americans do with prisoners."
When Clint didn't respond right away the girl continued, "You can try to break me, but you never will. I cannot be broken. They made sure of it."
The last five words had a different tone than the rest. She mostly spoke in a near monotone, with hardly any inflection to her words at all. That last sentence had bitterness to it.
"We're not going to torture you." Clint assured her, "I don't think there's any point to it. If my guess is right, your handlers consider you more of a weapon than a person. I don't explain to my bow why I'm aiming it at something, so I doubt the people giving you your orders bother to explain anything to you either. I'm more interested in hearing about you, and I'd rather that information be freely given. You will be asked questions at some point, but we don't operate like you've been told we do."
Clint couldn't explain it to himself, but he felt a need to connect to this girl in some way. Get through to the person that he could see was in there underneath everything that had been done to her. She had been abused and taken advantage of, and Clint knew how that felt. He realized that right now she needed the same thing he had needed when he was lost and trying to find his way; she needed a friend. But he also realized that earning her trust would not be easy. She had been through too much to trust anyone without a good reason to do so. The look in her eyes told Clint that she wanted to believe him, but she didn't. She had probably been told similar things that had turned out to be lies far too often for her to take anything he said at face value.
"Let's start with your name." he ventured, "I heard the jackass in the alley call you something. Natalia? Is that your name?"
Clint was startled when she flinched violently and closed her eyes at the sound of what he was now certain was her name. Okay, hearing her own name was triggering to her for some reason. He filed that away as one more reason to exterminate the scum that had molded this young girl into a killer.
"Hey." he said soothingly, "I don't know what I just did, but I'm sorry. I didn't know you'd react like that. Can you tell me why?"
She looked back at him as if unsure whether she should answer, clearly confused by his sudden change in tone.
Has this poor girl seriously never had anyone care about her before? Clint thought, feeling a little sick, Those people are fucking monsters.
The girl...no, Natalia...stared at Clint intently and he realized that she had been reading him just as much as he'd been reading her. It occurred to him that she was being more cautious now that the answer to a question would give him actual information. She had given him nothing yet and was trying to decide how much she wanted to say. Finally she laid back against her pillow and spoke.
"They only use our names when we are to be punished." she said quietly, "They did something to us so the sound of them makes us submissive."
"So what do they call you the rest of the time?" Clint wondered aloud, "And you said 'us'. Are there more like you?"
Natalia just stared at him like he was an idiot for a second, "They don't call us anything. Like you said, I'm a weapon. Weapons don't need names. And yes, there are more."
She must have seen something in his expression, because she suddenly scoffed at him.
"Is this the part where you offer me sympathy so I will think you are my friend and tell you what you want to know?"
She was perceptive and frighteningly intelligent, Clint realized. He certainly felt sympathy for her, and using it to manipulate her into talking would have been a good play. He had no intention of doing that, but Natalia would likely not believe it for a second. He probably wouldn't either in her position. She also seemed to be shaking off some of her conditioning the more she talked to him and a few small flashes of her personality were starting to show through.
"Not at all," Clint said with a smirk, "I'm still trying to figure out what to call you if I can't use your name."
"You know my name," Natalia pointed out, "But you have not told me yours."
"It's Clint." he told her, "You might have heard of the other name I go by, though. Hawkeye."
Natalia didn't say anything, but Clint saw a flash of recognition cross her face. She knew who he was, or had at least heard of him before. His body count wasn't as high as hers, but it was high enough to have gained him a reputation in the circles that care about those things.
"We have crossed paths before." she surprised him by saying, "In Berlin. You were protecting a diplomat and I couldn't get close, so I had to use a rifle from a distance."
"I remember that one." Clint replied, "It was a difficult shot, but you nailed it."
Clint had to admit to a little grudging respect for her. She'd gotten the better of him before and he hadn't even known it.
"Why do you use a bow?" Natalia asked him, "For long range a rifle would be more efficient. Less affected by wind."
Clint shrugged, "I'm just more comfortable with it. A bow is the first thing I learned to shoot, and it's second nature now. And I have better than average vision, so I don't have long range accuracy issues. It's also quieter, and my bow isn't exactly standard. It's more versatile than usual."
Clint was well aware that she was fishing for information and chose to give her some. It's not information he particularly cared if she knew, and maybe if he told her a few things she'd be more willing to answer his questions. He decided to circle back to a previous topic.
"So, I have to call you something, and you know my name now." he said, "How about I call you Nat? That work for you? It's just a shortened version of your name, like Clint is a shortened version of my full name."
Natalia did another one of those questioning head tilts and shrugged a little before she nodded.
"Okay, Nat." he said, holding out his left hand to her to shake, "I'm Clint. Nice to meet you."
Nat took his hand and shook it with a skeptical expression but stayed quiet. Clint decided to probe a little more with questions that weren't that important but let him learn a little more about her.
"So," he started, "How old are you?"
Her brow furrowed in thought for a second, "I don't know."
That was unsurprising now that Clint considered it, but also a little depressing, "Do you know when you were born?"
"1984?" Nat supplied, almost as a question, "November 22nd, I think.
"Okay, it's 2002 now." he told her, "So that would make you 17."
Her eyes widened slightly when he told her the year, "It is 2002?"
"Yeah, it is." Clint answered, and then decided to give her a little bit more about himself, "I just turned 27 in January."
Nat was so shell-shocked by that revelation that she completely failed to hide it. Clint just barely heard her whisper to herself in disbelief, "Four years..."
Clint felt another wave of sympathy for her wash over him. Either she was the best actor he'd ever seen or she was honestly distraught by that news. If what she whispered meant what he thought it did, Nat was just now realizing that she had a large chunk of time she either didn't remember or remembered very little of. That had to be hard for her to process.
Their Q&A session was interrupted by Coulson walking back into the room. He stepped over to the chair against the wall and sat down in it to appear less intimidating. He didn't think the assassin would be intimidated by a man in a suit standing over her, but the psychological effect was worth it. Clint was taking a similar approach, leaning casually against the wall instead of looming. Hopefully if they stayed relaxed it would lower her tension level a little.
"Are you bad cop, then?" Nat shot at him sarcastically, "Hawkeye is trying to sympathize with me, I suppose you're here to threaten me?"
"No. I'm technically his handler." he said, indicating Clint with his head, "But we've worked together long enough we're more like partners now. Agent Phil Coulson. Pleasure to make your acquaintance."
"Agent?" she questioned.
"Yes." Coulson answered, "Clint and I are both agents of SHIELD. Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division. You've made quite a lot of noise in the last two years, and you showed up on our radar."
"So, if you're not here to threaten me," Natalia said flatly, "Why are you here?"
"To offer you a choice." Coulson informed her seriously.
"A choice?" she asked skeptically, "I am at your mercy, I have no choice. It would take me ten seconds to get out of these restraints, but with you in the room you could put a bullet in me before I could get out of this bed."
"Yes. A choice." Coulson repeated, "You can either come with us back to headquarters, voluntarily. Or you can receive the bullet you just mentioned."
"So, a choice between death and captivity?" the red-haired assassin spat, "That is no different from my options before."
"So what is it you want then?" Coulson inquired.
Nat stared at him for an uncomfortably long time, then lifted her left hand to tap her temple, "I want it out."
Clint and Coulson exchanged a look. Clint's was with a raised eyebrow that said 'Can we do that?', while Coulson nodded slightly to confirm they could.
"Okay," Clint addressed the redhead, "If we can offer you a way to get the programming out of your mind, and maybe a chance at doing some good with your life, will you come with us voluntarily?"
"I will not be tortured?"
Coulson gave her a level look, "The deprogramming will probably feel like torture. But otherwise, no, you will not be harmed."
Nat was deep in thought and Clint could see that she'd already made her decision, but was still uncertain about it.
Coulson picked up on it too, "If the deprogramming is successful, with your skillset I'm confident you could find a place for yourself at SHIELD. You wouldn't be the first person with a questionable past we've recruited."
"So, how about it?" Clint interjected after she didn't speak for a while, "You want to get that crap out of your head and start doing some good with your skills for a change? After you turn 18, of course. We're based in America, so we still have to follow American laws. You can't legally join until you're an adult. I don't know what the deprogramming entails, but it's probably going to take a while anyway. That will probably give you a couple months to adjust before you get to work." Clint chuckled softly, "I bet this isn't what you expected to happen when you sent in that tip, is it?"
Nat shook her head distractedly. Clint knew this was a harder choice for her than it seemed to be on the surface. She would be defecting and actually turning traitor. Her conditioning likely had things in place to prevent it that she had to fight past first. He saw now that she was struggling with it and probably couldn't voluntarily agree to betray her superiors, so he offered her a compromise.
"Would it be easier on you if we took you prisoner?" he asked gently, "That way you can choose after some of your conditioning is broken?"
The young assassin met his eyes and hesitantly nodded with what looked like relief.
Coulson was impressed with Clint once again. He'd probably make a great interrogator or hostage negotiator if he had the patience for either of them. He had guessed what was causing her problem right away and offered her a solution that let her get around her conditioning. Where he was getting the patience from now was a mystery to Coulson. He must see a bit of a kindred spirit in the girl that sat in front of them, and genuinely wanted to help her.
"We leave in the morning." Coulson announced, "We'll have to keep you restrained overnight. I'm sorry. I'd rather not do that, but with the amount of programming in your brain I don't want to take any chances. For what it's worth, I hope you take the second chance you're being given and make the most of it. The best way to get revenge on the people who did this to you is to live a good life and show them that you're more than what they turned you into."
Nat looked thoughtful and considered Coulson's words. Clint knew she had a hard road ahead of her. He had made the decision to help her with it, and couldn't quite explain to himself why.
