Notes: Yes, as many of you correctly predicted... This ruse ain't gonna work on our girl Nat. ;)

Mission Twelve: You're Not Clint

When Natasha had lost contact with Clint, she had to admit to being worried.

It was a new sensation. The only time before when she had been this attached to a partner, it had been James, and she had always known that he would come out the other side. Though, she supposed, that was a neat little lie she'd told herself—she still didn't know what had happened to him, and her memories of the missions she'd run with him were clouded from her time in the Red Room, even after SHIELD had asked that telepath to step in and help her. He had offered to spend more time with her, of course, but she didn't want to spend her days wallowing in the past when she needed to keep moving.

She didn't know where that urge came from, the need to move. Maybe it came from so many years of wanting to run and not being able to. Whatever it was, if she was grateful for one thing that SHIELD had done for her, over and above bringing that telepath in to help, it was that she had something to do with SHIELD. She had a mission.

She needed a mission.

Another thing she supposed she was grateful to SHIELD for giving her was Clint, though she was sure he would have too much of an overinflated ego if she ever told him anything like that. She knew he was interested, and she didn't want to give him false hope when she had always pledged not to put herself in any relationship where she felt indebted. She didn't trust any situation like that.

But Clint was the partner she needed—at least at this point in her life. He didn't push her, and he didn't make her feel like she had to make up for the years spent on the other side. He just accepted that she was on his side and trusted her in a way that was almost naïve.

It was honestly endearing.

Not that she would tell him that.

So, yes, she was worried when Clint didn't respond, especially when she knew he was in the heart of an enemy ship. And even when she did manage to find a way into the ship, she knew she would have to search the unfamiliar layout for the brig. Most facilities on Earth were predictable, psychologically speaking, in their layout, but an alien species would think differently. Would the brig be on display instead of hidden away? Would "hidden away" be in a lower or upper deck? Would it be in the middle? On the outer sections?

Natasha shook her head to herself. The only thing she could do was search in a pattern—and keep herself out of sight. If she got captured, she wasn't going to be of any use to Clint.

The search was agonizingly slow because the alien ship was different enough that Natasha had to think through every move. Every detail from the material of the floor and how well it muffled her footsteps to the pattern of the lighting overhead—all of that had to be taken into account to keep out of sight. And even when she had familiarized herself with that much, there were green-skinned aliens patrolling every hallway, it seemed, talking to each other about everything from their personal lives to…

"…don't expect him to last long, really," one of the guards said as he and his companion walked together. The tone was snide, and his companion snickered—but Natasha had heard exactly that kind of thing from overconfident men enough times to know what it meant.

She slipped out of her hiding place seamlessly and rushed toward the two aliens, taking a head shot on one of them to keep him out of the way but focusing her ire on the one who had obviously been sneering about Clint.

In one motion, she wrapped an arm around the alien's neck and used the back of her heel to knock his knees out as well. When he wobbled, she used her own body weight to bring him down the rest of the way, swinging herself around him as he fell so that once he was down, she was already on top of him, her gun jammed into his throat and her eyes narrowed.

"Where is he?" she demanded.

The alien smirked. "Where is who?"

"Don't play games," she said. "I don't have time to make you regret it as much as you normally would, but trust me: you will regret it if you try to be cute with me."

But that just had the alien laughing as if it was the best joke he'd heard all day. "You have no idea who you're dealing with, Terran! When we—"

She didn't give him time to get started on his monologue—and she could see that he was gearing up to talk about how superior he was. That was depressingly predictable with these types. So, instead of letting him fill up the air with the sound of his own voice, she pressed harder into his throat with her gun… and with her other hand, she grabbed the knife she kept in her boot and jammed it into him, nice and low and a little bit above where she hoped alien men kept their precious parts in the same place as human men.

"Now," she said, baring her teeth in a terrifying smile as the alien paused, holding his breath at the implied threat. "Tell me where my partner is."

"You won't—" When Natasha pulled her knife a little further down, he froze again and then shook his head. "Brig," he said, barely breathing out that one word.

"How do I get there?"

"The lower levels," the alien said, still sounding almost breathless. "Level 14."

"How do I get down there?"

But at that, he narrowed his eyes and then smirked. "Figure it out, Terran."

Well, that was at least something she could work with. Natasha gave him her sweetest smile as she pulled her knife out. "See, was that so hard?" she asked in a tone that matched her smile before she pistol-whipped him and left him lying next to his partner.

Still, that left her with an entire level to search—not to mention the problem of finding which level was which… all of the writing on the consoles and doors was in a language she didn't speak, so she could only guess at where she was going.

She knew she'd found the brig, however, when she found the smell of the brig.

There was nothing else that smelled quite like it—misery and blood and fear. And add to that a few occasional moans, and she knew she was on track.

Now, all she had to do was listen for the sound of frustrated aliens dealing with Clint's particular brand of humor, and they'd be out of there in no time.

That was the advantage of having such a unique partner.

Well, that and the fact that it was actually nice to be able to joke around on the job. She couldn't remember the last time she had this much fun putting her skills to use, not since the Room had stopped letting her pair up with James.

She wandered down the halls, peering into the different cells with a steadily growing frown. There were a few different prisoners, and several of them were a blue-skinned race… There was definitely something going on here, some broader war, and it frustrated Natasha that she didn't have all of the information to make sense of that larger picture.

She had just found another battered, blue alien when she heard a sharp scream coming from down the hallway, and she froze, her breath in her throat.

That was Clint.

She had never heard him sound like that before, all hurt and fear and…

"Hawkeye!" she called out, surprising herself when she abandoned her usual stealth in favor of trying to make sure he knew she was coming for him.

She took off running toward the sound of his voice and simply shot the door controls outside the room where she could hear Clint screaming, rushing inside to find that he'd been strung up in the middle of the room, and a tall green alien was holding some kind of device that sparked electricity at its end.

Natasha didn't need to see any more than that before she rushed the alien standing in front of Clint with a quick move that caught him off guard. She slid her shoulder into the crook of his arm, dislocating the joint there, and she caught the device when he dropped it as his hand lost its ability to grip. By the time she'd finished spinning, she had the device pressed into the alien.

Turnabout, after all, was fair play.

After the alien had taken his own turn screaming and gasping in pain, Natasha finally pulled back—slightly—and then turned to Clint, frowning at how worn down he looked. The first thing she did was get him down so that he wasn't swinging around, and then she looked over the high-tech manacles, biting her lip to keep from showing her frustration when she wasn't sure how to get around them.

"You found me," Clint said, sounding a little hoarse, which just had Natasha that much more frustrated on his behalf.

She didn't know when she'd decided to try to protect him. She didn't know if it was because he had taken her in instead of taking her out or if he had kept other agents from pushing her when she said she wasn't interested or if it was just that it was nice to have a partner who could joke around. But whatever the reason, she couldn't stand the hoarse tone that meant he had been screaming.

She just… didn't know what to do about that protective urge other than to save his life.

"Come on," she said, frowning at the restraints. "We'll figure out a way to cut those off once we get out of here."

"Alright."

Natasha frowned at that. "Are you sure you're alright?" she asked, wondering if something was seriously wrong with him—not that she would be surprised if there was. He had been screaming and being tortured just moments before, after all. But still, she was even more worried now, hearing how quiet he was.

"Yeah, I'm just…" Clint took a deep breath. "Yeah."

She frowned and very nearly reached up to put her hand on his cheek, though she resisted the urge—she didn't even know where it had come from. Instead, she let her hand drop to where the restraints were connected to one another. "It's going to be alright," she told him, one hand at his shoulder as she picked up the pace—shooting anyone in their path with extreme prejudice.

She expected some kind of quip from Clint, at the very least some kind of "Gee, didn't know you cared." So when he didn't say anything, she frowned his way.

Something was wrong.

Clint stopped with her and then frowned at her. "Something wrong?"

"I was just going to ask you the same thing," she said, her eyes narrowed.

Clint blinked in surprise and then let out a slow breath. "You mean besides being captured and pumped for information?"

Natasha smirked slightly. "Yes, besides that."

"I'm just tired," he said softly. "That's all."

Natasha's smirk fell a bit, though she turned her face forward, not about to give her thoughts away. She'd seen Clint tired on several missions before, and she'd seen him hurt, but she hadn't ever seen him quiet at either of those times. In fact, it seemed like the more he was hurting, the more he ran his mouth, as if that would distract anyone nearby from knowing how hurt he was.

So either he was hurt worse than she'd ever seen him—and that wasn't out of the realm of possibility—or this… this wasn't Clint.

And there was a surefire way for her to find out.

She rearranged her expression into one that she'd worn on many missions before and then turned Clint's way. When he turned her way, she stole a gentle kiss that surprised him for a moment before he ran with it, leaning into her until she broke the kiss.

That in and of itself was suspicious. She was sure if she kissed Clint, he would be a lot more dramatic about it. He'd made it abundantly clear that he would jump at the chance to go out with her if she decided to change her mind. She was expecting some kind of celebration, not the smile he was giving her now.

But then, the clincher:

"I guess we'll have to cancel that reservation until you get fixed up," she said, sliding her hands around his waist, getting more familiar than Clint would have let her, she was sure, without at least an explanation of why she was changing her mind on her policy of dating.

But instead of questioning it, instead of stopping her, this… person simply grinned and pulled her a little tighter to him. "I'll make it up to you later."

Natasha smiled at him and stepped in closer—only to then press her Widow's Bite into his side until he was as tense as a board and shaking as the electricity moved him. When she did finally pull back, he was gasping, and she narrowed her eyes at him as she kept a defensive stance. "Where is Hawkeye?"

"What are you talking about?" he asked, panting and shaking. "I'm right here. What was that for?"

"You're not him," she said sharply, then pressed her Widow's Bites into his side again until he collapsed. She had to admit that it was hard, because he still looked like Clint and something about watching her partner in agony, his face twisted and his hands clenched on the ground… something about that was harder than any other time she'd had to fight a would-be infiltrator.

Not that she would put a name to that hesitation. Not until she knew where Clint was, anyway.

"Now, you have one more chance before I get more creative," she said, her tone smooth and icy at the same time. She'd run hundreds of interrogations in her time, and she knew how to play dumb to get what she wanted as well as how to put her foot down. And she didn't have the patience to play games, not when she knew these aliens had been willing to torment a false Clint just to get her to run to him. The real Clint was probably in even worse trouble.

For a moment, the false Clint looked like he might try to keep up the charade, but then his expression shifted into something more like a smug smile, and he started to laugh as he shook his head. And before her eyes, he changed, his chin broadening, his skin turning green, until she was looking at a pointy-eared, green-skinned, laughing alien wearing Clint's clothes. "He's dead."

Natasha didn't let her expression change, even if she felt like she'd been hit. After all, it wasn't an unbelievable claim. The imposter had been tortured for his cover, and if they thought he was good enough to send in to replace Clint, there was no reason to keep the original alive—unless they thought they could get more intel out of him.

But she wasn't going to give this alien the satisfaction of thinking he'd gotten under her skin. Instead, she tipped her chin up and gave him her most imperious glare. "For your sake," she said in a dangerous whisper, "you had better hope you're wrong."

"I'm not," the alien replied, grinning more maliciously when he saw Natasha's mouth tighten. "What was it that gave it away? I'm the better kisser?"

Natasha wasn't going to dignify that comment with a response, so she simply shot the alien and spun on her heel. She could look for Clint herself; she didn't need to drag a mouthy imposter around.

She was still seething as she walked back toward the brig, this time looking more closely at the cell doors. She didn't rely on her ears, instead relying on the slower but truer method of checking every single one of them. It was more tedious, and it certainly wasted time that she knew she didn't have, but it would also be a waste of time if this shapeshifting species sent her any other duplicates.

What's more, she reasoned, there was every possibility that Clint wasn't capable of calling out to her. These aliens had made their duplicate scream just to get her attention. That suggested to Natasha that the real Clint was either gagged or unconscious so she couldn't be drawn the wrong direction. So, yes, she was taking a risk, but it was merited.

If she had been with the Red Room, she wouldn't be taking risks like that. There was no reason for her to go back for her partner, especially one presumed dead, if it meant there was a risk both of them would be compromised. And there was every chance she would never find him. She doubted they would give him much dignity in death if they had killed him, so what was to say that he wasn't incinerated already?

But she had to be sure.

She kept going in circles in her mind, worrying about Clint, thinking about how much easier this would have been if she stuck with her Room training, then reminding herself that she hated what the Room had done to her….

Somehow, that constant circle only seemed to push Natasha forward as she went from one door to the next. She was actively choosing to go after Clint, to believe he was alive, and if that went against the person she used to be, well, that was just so much better.

She knew she didn't have much time, not with the red glowing lights going off on the ship, not with the fact that she could hear the aliens shouting back and forth to each other as they tried to find her, even though she was largely sticking to the shadows and out of sight. She even ducked into one of the cells as the guards passed and kept the door almost-shut, though she knew that had been risky, too. If they'd been in less of a hurry, they would only have had to force the door closed to lock her in and contain the threat she posed to them.

It was a dangerous game, but she'd decided to play it until she found Clint.

Thankfully, her luck—or Clint's—finally took a turn for the better when she let herself into one of the cells that seemed almost hidden, deeper into the brig and farther away from the other prisoners. And there, to her relief, was her partner, tied up, gagged, unconscious, and several shades of his favorite color that told Natasha he was going to need medical attention sooner rather than later.

She shot a glance down the hall—the one good thing about the way they'd hidden Clint away was that this cell wasn't on the beaten path, so it wasn't as well-patrolled—and then stepped further into the cell to crouch down beside him and gently shake him awake, temporarily leaving him gagged, but only because she didn't want him to cry out and alert the guards.

And sure enough, when he did open his eyes, he let out an almost unconscious noise and pulled back from her instinctively, though she kept her hand on his shoulder and held his gaze until he saw who she was. "It's me. You're fine," she said evenly.

He narrowed his eyes at that, though he didn't move, and she took that as a good enough reason to reach around his jaw and free him up to speak—not only for his sake so he could breathe a little better but because she needed to make sure he was Clint and not another decoy.

So he surprised her when he beat her to the punch with the first words out of his mouth: "Prove it."

"What?"

"Prove to me you're the Widow."

Despite herself, Natasha couldn't help but nod her approval. If this was Clint, he was being careful not to use her name. "You almost never use my codename," she said.

Clint smirked quietly. "I think you're names too pretty not to use."

Natasha raised an eyebrow at him, then leaned forward and kissed him gently. "Flirt."

For just a moment, she could feel him tense up, though his hands were still tied, so all he could do was pull his head back slightly and blink at her a few times. "Okay, either you're not my partner, or you have some really weird turn-ons."

Natasha couldn't help but laugh as she got to work trying to at least get his ankles free so he could walk with her—or stumble. She wasn't too optimistic about how much running he could do when she saw how tight the restraints were. "I had to be sure you were actually you," she explained.

"By kissing me?"

"It worked, didn't it?"

"Worked to give me a heart attack!" Clint shook his head. "I thought you might be one of them!'

"Why, because I kissed you?"

"Like some kind of really messed up bad-cop-good-cop routine," Clint said, shaking his head at her and still looking shocked.

"The other one kissed me back," Natasha explained, unable to hide her smirk when Clint's eyes widened.

"And that's why you shot him?"

"Among other reasons."

Clint let out a low whistle and shook his head. "Remind me not to make you mad, Nat."

"Do you really need the reminder?" she couldn't help but tease him.

Clint grinned crookedly up at her, though the look was married by the fact that there was blood in his mouth still. "Hey, give me a break. I think I have a concussion."

"And then some," she agreed, the rush of relief of finding him—not another fake—finally starting to fade as she looked him over a little better. She wasn't optimistic about how much help he could give her, but if she could just get them out… "Do you think you can walk?"

"Yeah, sure," he said, without missing a beat—and not at all convincing her.

She shook her head as she finally got at least the connecting bolt around his ankles off, but these restraints weren't anything she'd seen before. So, with a frustrated sigh, she decided that was as good as it was going to get—for the moment—and pulled Clint to his feet, letting him lean heavily on her. He was unbalanced, hurt, and in no shape for a bold escape.

"You call for backup?" Clint asked.

"I wanted to find you first."

Clint paused at that and tipped his head to look at her better. "That doesn't sound like you, Tash. Running in here without a plan?"

"I had a plan."

"Sure you did."

Natasha dipped her head slightly to catch his gaze when he was still so heavily leaning on her for support. "Do you want me to leave you behind?"

"No ma'am."

"Then shut up, Barton," she said, ignoring the fact that she could see the laughter dancing in his eyes. She didn't have time to deal with him being like this when it was up to her to get them both out of there.

It took a few minutes for Clint to really get his feet underneath him—minutes that had Natasha holding her breath, because she didn't know how many of those they had—but once she was sure he wasn't going to go crashing over as soon as she tried to take him out of the cell, they headed out.

It was harder to sneak with Clint hanging on her like a tired, hurt, stupidly smiling weight, so she wasn't at all surprised that she didn't make it to the elevator that went between decks of the ship before they were spotted. But since she didn't need to interrogate any of them to find her partner, that was easy enough to deal with. She just shot anyone that was stupid enough to look their way.

The alarms were blaring, Clint was bleeding, the aliens were swearing in a language Natasha didn't speak—but all of that was just background noise, a distraction from the task at hand. Natasha had moved from that strange sort of panic that had first overtaken her when Clint was taken into something much more comfortable. Killing people, cutting a path to freedom—that was something she knew how to do. That fit her training.

Worrying over her partner? That was relatively new.

The elevator opened onto another floor, and Natasha narrowed her eyes before she helped Clint lean against the wall outside the elevator doors—she wasn't going to take the risk that they would seal him in—and dove into the fight, careful to keep the aliens' attention and trying to direct the shots they were taking so that Clint wouldn't take any collateral damage.

It felt good to take out some of her frustration on the aliens, and she built up a good rhythm as she worked, snatching up fallen weapons to use against their owners so that she didn't have to worry about her own weapons stash drying up.

The first alien who tried to slip around her to go to Clint, though, learned his lesson more harshly than the others when, instead of simply shooting him like she'd been doing with the others, she grabbed him by the front of his uniform, yanked him closer, and jammed her Widow's Bites into the area of his body she approximated to be the same weak point all men had. And judging by the look on his face as he started to whimper, she was right.

By the time the aliens in the hallway were all either unconscious or dead, Clint was sitting on the floor and had somehow managed to get his hands from behind his back to in front of him, though he was wide-eyed as Natasha came over. "You have a mean streak; you know that?"

"I'm aware," she said, looking around at the fallen aliens to grab a gun and hand it to Clint now that his hands were in front of him, at least.

Clint shook his head, though he was giving her a strange sort of look that she decided she would ignore for the time being until they got out. After all, he was concussed.

She was finally starting to wear out by the time the two of them more or less stumbled into an exit, and she slammed Clint to the ground when she heard the aliens shooting behind them. She was sure she'd been hit, but she wasn't done with her mission.

She felt Clint shift underneath her and then heard him shooting back at the aliens and rolled so that she wasn't on top of him anymore, knowing that he was a good enough shot to take care of things while she got her breath back. She just needed to closer her eyes for a second.

"Tash. Hey, Tasha."

Natasha opened her eyes to see Clint kneeling next to her, looking relieved. "Mm."

"Oh, good. You're not dead," Clint said, sounding genuinely exhausted. "I just wanted to wake you up and let you know, hey, not groping you. Just grabbing your comm to call for backup. Please don't electrocute anything important to me, okay?"

Natasha blinked and looked around, taking in her surroundings for the first time. This wasn't where they had been when she closed her eyes. Clint must have moved them; she must have lost consciousness.

"Hey, Nat, you still with me?"

She blinked again and opened her eyes, just now realizing that she'd allowed them to close. "Yeah, I'm with you," she breathed out. "I think I took a hit back there."

"I know you took a hit back there," Clint said, shaking his head lightly. "I called Coulson, told him we needed an extraction."

"Good. I trust Coulson."

Clint smirked at that and nodded. "Yeah, he's good."

Natasha pushed herself onto her elbows to try to assess the situation better, frowning around at what looked to be the basement of a building, though it didn't have anything in the way of distinguishing markers. "What happened after I passed out?"

"I did a lot of shooting, they did a lot of shooting, and then I dragged you over here," Clint said. "They're probably going to try to follow us, but I also shot something that looks important on their ship, so I think their attention is split."

Natasha shook her head at that. "We need to get a better position."

"We need to get you to stop bleeding," Clint countered, followed by a tearing sound that had her glancing over to see that he'd grabbed his shirt with his still-restrained hands and pulled it up to his mouth so that he could tear off pieces of it.

It wasn't sanitary or even close to ideal first aid procedure, but Natasha couldn't help but smile when she saw it. That was one of the reasons she liked having Clint as a partner; he was a lot smarter and faster thinking on his feet than people seemed to give him credit for.

That was why, without thinking about it, when Clint came over to help her assess the damage the aliens had done to her, she reached up, balled her hands in his shirt, and yanked him down to kiss him.

Frustratingly, she managed to black out again before she got to see his expression.