A/N: Okay, so, when I originally started this story FOREVER ago, I only ever intended for it to tell the story of Clint and Nat leading up to the first Avengers movie. But after the Horrible Movie That Shall Not Be Named came out, it became clear that this had to be a different story, and so this isn't the last chapter, even though that was the original plan. There will be a few more chapters after this covering what *this* universe's timeline would look like, though obviously, the focus is still on Clint and Nat and not the others. We'll see how this goes. It's not totally fix-it fic, but it is definitely "let's ignore the stupid" fic :P

Also, on a personal note, one of my best friends in the world (and my frequent co-writer) Canucklehead Cowgirl and I finally decided to try our hand at writing original fiction, under the shared pseudonym C. C. Robbie because we are dorks. We just published our first ever story together, "The Last Blaze," and I'm SO PSYCHED about it.

Alright, carry on. ;)

Mission Fourteen: Budapest

"I have so much to catch you up on."

Clint was grinning as he sat down on the couch with Natasha. This wasn't a date, of course. It never was. But he'd asked her if she would like to come over, order some pizza, and spend some time with him. After all, she was no longer undercover at Stark Industries, and he'd missed her.

Natasha smiled as she popped open one of the boxes of pizza. "Oh, you have so much to tell me about? I've been spending that last several days with Nick Fury untangling the mess Stark made of his life."

"Yeah, but I met a god," Clint said, grinning crookedly and knowing that his news trumped hers—as evidenced by the single raised eyebrow she gave him.

One of these days, he was going to get a full dropped jaw reaction. He didn't know what he would have to do to get it, but he was determined.

"Alright," Natasha said, tipping her head to the side as she watched him. "I'll bite."

"You know the Norse legends about Odin and Thor and all that?"

"I'm vaguely familiar," Natasha replied. "I didn't study mythology. I learned how to take down targets."

Clint shook his head. "Yeah, every time you say things like that, I'm glad we got you out of that place, and I want to go with you to destroy them again."

"Fury has a few leads…"

"Perfect," Clint said with a sharp nod. "We've got the band back together—might as well jump back in with both feet and a bang."

Natasha smiled quietly and then leaned over to steal a soft kiss. "I've missed you too."

"Seriously?"

Natasha nodded wordlessly, her eyes sparkling in a way that left Clint speechless until she prompted him again. "You were telling me about Odin and the Viking lore."

"Right." Clint cleared his throat. He really had a hard time when Natasha did things like that. "Right, well, I met Thor."

"And who is he in mythology?" Natasha asked, laying her head on the back of the couch as she turned to face him, her knees tucked up underneath her so she could get comfortable.

"The god of thunder."

"Ah."

Clint smirked and shook his head. "You know, this would be a lot cooler if you'd had to do all the research Coulson made me do after we found out who the guy was."

Natasha made a sympathetic noise. "He made you do research?"

"Probably because we didn't shoot the guy. I got my bow out and everything, but you should have seen the way he tore through all of Coulson's guys. Like they were made of paper, Nat."

"Alright, I'm starting to be more impressed. And all I had to do was babysit Stark and keep him from trying to die."

"Stark's too self-absorbed for that."

"That was my first thought too," Natasha said, shaking her head with a sigh. "But watching him spend all that time trying to make sure his friends were set for life once he was gone…"

Clint raised an eyebrow. "Should I be jealous?"

"Of what, Barton?" Natasha replied, matching his expression exactly. "I didn't sleep with him, if that's what you're worried about."

"Which is kind of impressive on its own, given the guy's reputation," Clint pointed out, though he couldn't hide the fact that he was, in fact, happy to hear that Stark hadn't gotten that far with her. He knew it wasn't fair of him to feel like that when they had agreed that they'd keep their relationship casual, but here he was, all the same.

"Not that he didn't try," Natasha clarified, a slight smirk at the corner of her mouth.

Clint leaned forward. "Would you have gone for it if you weren't on the job?"

"Barton, what makes you think being on the job has any bearing on my tastes?" Natasha asked, one eyebrow raised. "If I'd been interested, I would have acted on it. Why do you think I keep kissing you?"

"Because I'm a good kisser?"

Natasha smirked. "That too."

Clint grinned and then leaned forward to steal a kiss that he pushed to make last a little longer, one hand on her cheek as he pulled himself closer. "You know I missed you, right?" he breathed out when the kiss finally did break—not because either of them were done kissing but because they did, in fact, need air.

"What, all those pictures of me in lingerie weren't enough to get you through?" Natasha asked dryly, her expression showing exactly how much she didn't like that particular part of establishing her cover identity.

"Pales in comparison to the real deal," he said, still whispering softly against her skin as they kept their faces close enough that they could pick the kiss right back up where they left it anytime they wanted.

"You say that to all the spies," she teased, speaking just as softly as she traced the collar of his shirt with just the tips of her fingers.

"Only the ones I'm kissing," he shot right back.

Natasha grinned, her lips upturned against his. "Should I be jealous?"

"Oh, definitely. I'm in high demand, Nat. Don't you know this about me?"

"I do now," she said, smiling wider before she pulled him into a longer kiss and pushed him flat, getting a laugh out of Clint before they got tangled up and reacquainted.

…..

"Look what I found."

Clint was grinning as he slid the file folder to Natasha. He didn't usually like doing research, but in this particular case, he was more than happy to look into the rumors and leads that Fury had. Especially because it seemed like Fury was getting ready to split up the Dream Team again.

Not that Clint would tell Natasha that. Not yet, anyway.

Natasha had been enjoying a slow morning with some tea, so she probably hadn't been expecting the folder. But when she opened it up and skimmed its contents, Clint could see her eyebrows shoot up and watched as she pressed her lips together in a thoughtful frown.

"Are you sure about this?" she asked.

Clint nodded and sat down next to her. "I checked and double-checked it," he promised. "I nicked it from Fury himself after the most recent debrief. But I have to say: he wasn't trying too hard to keep my hands off of it, so I wouldn't be surprised if this is another one of those quiet plans of his where he lets us do things and then pretends that was his plan all along."

Natasha smirked. "You have him all figured out, don't you?"

"I know you wouldn't trust this intel unless it came from someone like him."

Natasha glanced up at him again. "Fury and I worked closely during that long undercover mission. You, Coulson, and Fury are the only ones I'd believe this intel from."

"Well, you've got two out of three…"

Natasha smiled at that and then leaned over to kiss his cheek. "What were you doing in Fury's office anyway? Another mission involving the gods of old?"

"Sort of," Clint admitted. "Big blue magic cube that supposedly came from Odin himself—"

"How is that not a mission involving the gods of old?" she teased.

"Well, they fished it out of the ocean after Hydra tried to use it to destroy the world, and now, Thor's scientist friend is studying it. So… I'm babysitting scientists while they study magic." Clint twirled his finger in the air. "I'm supposed to report in three days, but I figured before we split again…"

Natasha's smile softened, and she leaned over to steal a more involved kiss before she got to her feet. "If I know the Room—and I do—they're not going to stay in one place for long. If this intel is right and they're establishing a base in Budapest, it could just be a temporary training center for girls there. They're too smart not to know that Fury is watching them."

"Then someone either slipped up or this is a trap," Clint said.

Natasha gave him a tight smile. "Oh, it's definitely a trap."

"We're going to spring it anyway, though, right?"

"Do you really have to ask?"

Clint laughed, shook his head, and leaned over to kiss her.

….

The compound where the Red Room was allegedly training small girls to become weapons looked, well, exactly like Clint imagined a compound where small girls were being kidnapped and trained up would look like. There were no outer trappings to indicate that anything was wrong, but there were definitely plenty of signs if you knew where to look. Like the person on the main floor walking the perimeter. Or the glimpses of furtive movement behind the shaded windows, the shadows that weren't quite the height of an adult.

If Clint was honest with himself, he felt a little sick knowing what was going on behind those closed doors. The tangible signs of the Red Room were tiny, only noticeable if you were looking for them, but the feeling that Clint had the closer they got, that oppressive something that left him nauseous… that was a whole new experience too.

But that was nothing next to what Natasha was clearly experiencing.

When he looked over at her, he could see that she had her lips pressed tightly together, the way they always were when she knew she was getting emotional and wanted to keep her expression as neutral as possible. She often did it when she wanted to keep from smiling, but apparently, she also defaulted to the same defense mechanism when she was upset.

He reached over to squeeze her hand, but it took a full second before she blinked out of her thoughts long enough to return the gesture. "Hey, I've got your back," he said quietly.

She spared him a glance. "Oh, I'm not scared," she said, her voice ringing with confidence. "They're going to die."

Clint smirked. "Sure are." He should have known better than to try to do anything like that for Natasha. Even if she had been understandably nervous facing the organization that had screwed her over since she was a kid, she wasn't going to admit as much. That just wasn't how she rolled. "I'll follow your lead."

Natasha nodded wordlessly, slipping forward as she tested the boundaries of the facility. Clint waited five minutes before he followed her, bow in hand, ready for trouble.

And his timing was, as always perfect. Or terrible. It depended on the point of view.

Clint let himself in the window that Natasha had unlocked and disarmed, shaking his head at the hallway strewn with the bodies of men and women alike. He hadn't even been that far behind her, but when Natasha was on a mission like this… Well, Clint was suddenly reminded of the fact that Natasha was one of the best assassins in the business.

It was easy to forget that, even if everyone around him seemed to keep it at the forefront of their minds. But they didn't see the same Natasha that Clint saw every day, the one who liked the steal the covers, the one who liked to curl up with a fluffy blanket and her tea, the one who liked to steal his clothes not just because she liked the oversized tee shirts but because she knew that meant he had to go looking for something to wear with the blankets pulled over his shoulders while she sat in her cocoon of warmth.

And then she would do things like this, leaving bodies in her wake and blood on the floor, and Clint remembered that he'd been asked to kill her when he first met her.

He just couldn't think about her like that anymore. He hadn't been able to do that since he saw that acceptance of her death in her gaze. No matter how often she showed her past training.

Clint followed the path of destruction until he caught sight of Natasha just as she had planted her fist—and her Widow's Bites—in the center of a man's chest, dropping him where he stood. When she heard him coming, she spun to face him, ready to shoot—but then she saw that it was Clint, and she smirked and lowered her weapons slightly.

"Took you long enough."

"Seems to me like you had everything under control. Let off some steam?"

She smirked at him and then turned her back to him. "Come on. If there were operatives here, they've already moved them. The only people I've seen so far are soldiers."

"So it was a trap."

"The Red Room doesn't like to lose assets, and they definitely don't like to lose them to the other side," Natasha pointed out.

"Too bad for them we're not letting you go now that we know how awesome you are," he teased.

She shot him a look over her shoulder. "You've got it backwards, Barton," she said. "I'm not letting go of SHIELD now that I know how to make up for everything the Room made me do."

Clint nodded, knowing that she wouldn't listen to any of his arguments if he tried to point out that she wasn't responsible for anything she was forced to do. And not just because he'd already tried to make those arguments and failed at it. He still felt responsible for half the crap he did when he was a kid, even though he'd been ordered around, pushed around, and stuck in a crummy situation there too.

And he'd had a lot more say in his choices. If anyone should have been ashamed of their past out of the two of them, it was Clint. He'd picked the circus, he'd stuck with them so he could learn archery, and he had let them run roughshod over him.

Not that Natasha would listen to it when Clint tried to tell her things like that. They really were too similar.

They turned the corner, and Natasha skidded slightly when a door opened seemingly out of the wall. Clint nocked an arrow, and Natasha raised her gun—but the tall old man simply raised an eyebrow at Natasha and then smiled in a way that made Clint's skin crawl.

"Natalia," he said, stepping slightly toward her as her eyes widened and her chest heaved—though she didn't shoot him. He started to speak to her in low, soothing Russian, but Clint didn't understand the words. He even knew a little Russian—but this was more poetic and definitely not the basics that Natasha had taught him in a few snatched moments together.

With every word the guy spoke, Natasha relaxed, her shoulders dropping and her breathing evening out, but it was when she closed her eyes that Clint decided he didn't want to find out what was going on. He let the arrow fly—just as the Russian guy muttered a few words that had Natasha's eyes flying open once more before she spun on her heel to face Clint.

The man was dead with an arrow in his forehead, but that didn't seem to make a difference to Natasha as she pounced toward Clint, taking him to the ground before she put the Widow's Bite in his side.

And it hurt.

Clint screamed and then twisted, knocking Natasha off-balance before he slammed his bow into the side of her head, leaving her dizzy and reeling as he scrambled away from her, trying to catch his breath. The scream had attracted attention, and he needed to get Natasha back, because he didn't think he could fight her and soldiers from the Red Room.

"C'mon, Nat," he said, though he couldn't speak as loudly as he wanted to. "Tash. Widow. Snap out of it."

Natasha narrowed her eyes, still dropped in a crouch as a few men rounded the corner. Clint saw their guns and had to switch his attention to shoot them, but no sooner had he let the arrows fly than Natasha was rushing toward him again. She hit him from the side and managed to knock his bow out of his hands, and the next thing he knew, they were in an intense wrestling match.

When they'd first met, Natasha would have had the upper hand easily. She knew hand-to-hand better than he did, and she'd had all sorts of training that Clint had never even heard of. But the two of them had been trading tips and tricks for a while now, and Clint could counter some of her moves, even anticipate them.

Not that she was at a disadvantage. He was still heavily outclassed in close quarters. But he wasn't dead, and that was the most important part.

Clint spotted a blue spark out of the corner of his gaze and just barely managed to get his hand on her lower arm to redirect her before she would have pressed the Widow's Bite into his side again. There was a part of him, in the back of his mind, that knew she was fighting whatever command the guy had given her because she wasn't putting the Widow's Bite straight to his chest to stop his heart or anything. But "not dead" wasn't that much of a relief, especially when he knew "captured" was worse.

He grabbed his knife and slashed at her arm, and she pulled back instinctively—but that's what he'd been counting on. He grinned at the clatter of the now-cut Widow's Bites falling to the ground. "C'mon, Nat. You know me. The pain in your side?"

He could see the recognition cross her expression, and he saw her hesitate—and he felt terrible taking advantage of that hesitation. He really did. But hitting him slightly slower than normal wasn't going to help him get out of there.

He swept her feet out from underneath her while she was still distracted and then grabbed one of the arrows from his quiver that Beth from R&D had done up for him. This one had a sharp needle at the end of it, and when he jammed it into Natasha's side, she started to go limp almost immediately as the tranquilizer flowed through her veins.

By that time, several more soldiers had arrived, so Clint didn't have the time to check and make sure she was alright or that she fell gently to the ground instead of just slumping over hard. He was pretty sure she wouldn't hold it against him, though—especially since neither of them wanted the Red Room to get their hands on them.

Clint was just starting to run out of arrows when he heard Natasha let out a groan not far from his position, and he spared her only a glance over his shoulder before he went back to firing at the men headed their way. If she attacked him, he'd eat the consequences, but he was hoping she'd take a second to look around first…

He shot his last arrow in one of the men and rushed forward along with the arrow, knocking another one off his feet with a move that had the guy falling slightly sideways, so Clint was able to pickpocket him for his spare gun and use it to shoot him.

He heard the click of a gun just behind him—but then someone came flying toward the guy holding the gun and knocked him off his feet, and Clint turned to see that Natasha was laying into him hard.

"Nice to have you back, Tash," he said, grinning widely before he turned back to the fight.

With both of them back on their feet, even considering Natasha probably had to be feeling the effects of the tranquilizer, they were able to cut themselves a path, and Clint grinned as he tossed Natasha a controller. "Please tell me you managed to plant the explosives before all that went down."

"I am a professional," Natasha sniffed in a tone that said she was perfectly insulted, though Clint could see that she was still struggling, so he felt like it was both a legitimate question to ask but also a way for him to gauge where she was with getting the drugs out of her system.

"So am I. That's why I had to ask."

Natasha spared him a smirk before she made it a point to pick up the pace. Clint was sure she'd done it so that he was too out of breath running as fast as she was to ask her anymore questions.

They'd had two plans in place for this facility. The plan if there were young girls being brainwashed was to stage a jail break as much as possible or at least get rid of the handlers, trainers, and guards and then call in a SHIELD team to deal with the brainwashed girls. The second plan, which had always been the more likely of the two, was to blow the place along with everyone in it that thought they could get their hands on the Black Widow again.

So as soon as Natasha and Clint were far enough away from the building that they wouldn't get caught up in the blast, Natasha hit the detonator, and the whole place went up in one big fireball.

Natasha turned to watch the place burn, and Clint didn't say anything until his ears stopped ringing and he had his breath back. Even then, he simply said her name, softly, without making it sound like a request or an order: "Nat."

She blinked a few times, and he saw her clench and unclench her hands in fists before, finally, she nodded to herself and spun on her heel, stalking past him and leading the way back to their transport.

Clint would have left it there. He really would have. He knew better than most people that this kind of thing… finding resolution to something that had defined so much of your life… this wasn't the kind of thing that you sat down and talked about it once you were done. This was the kind of thing that you went home and drank about and then tried to forget it now that it was in the rearview mirror.

Except this wasn't totally over. This wasn't like taking down the Circus of Crime and sending them all to jail on his intel. This was a huge organization that still had plenty of other operations out there, and this wouldn't be the last time they ran into a place like this.

So, after a long silence had passed between them, Clint finally cleared his throat and asked, "Nat, what was that?"

She didn't answer him.

Clint let out his breath. "Look, I thought Xavier—"

"He said there might be some hidden commands," Natasha said, suddenly, in a breath. "Things I wasn't aware I knew and that were hidden underneath mental scars he didn't want to break open if he didn't have to. I told him to do it anyway, but he didn't want to leave more damage than he fixed."

This time, it was Clint's turn to fall silent as he turned the answer over and over in his head. "Tash…"

She shook her head and waved him off. "Well, now we know. I'll just have to talk to him once we get back. Coulson can make the arrangements."

"I can talk to Fury, see if I can get someone else to babysit scientists so you have someone waiting for you on the other side," Clint offered. "If it's going to cause damage, I mean… leaving mental scars and all that… well, you should have someone."

Natasha looked surprised for a moment before she reached out to grab Clint by the shirt and yank him over to kiss him hard—and he absolutely wasn't going to complain about that. Especially when she snaked her hands up his chest and hooked them around his neck, pulling him tighter to her.

By the time the kiss broke, they were both breathless, and Clint had long ago stopped thinking about anything but the way Natasha felt when she was pressed neatly into his arms. And when she pulled back slightly to look at him, he breathed out, "Can you remind me what it was I said? Because I was definitely paying attention to our conversation, but I can't remember any of it right now, and I'd like to do that again if whatever I said is gonna have you doing stuff like that."

Natasha smiled and reached up to brush his hair back from his face. "Nothing special. Just being you."

Clint grinned. "You know what, Nat, love you too."

Natasha laughed and shook her head, though she didn't move and hadn't taken her hand away from his face. "We talked about this."

"Nah, we talked about whether we were gonna date. I think I'm allowed to put names to my own emotions," Clint said. "Doesn't come with any baggage. I'm not asking you to drop everything, tear down your defenses, and move in with me or something. Just saying how it is."

Natasha watched him for a long time, her gaze raking over his face, before she finally stepped back and shook her head. "You and I have very different ideas of love."

"Yeah, I know," Clint said.

Natasha smirked at him, shook her head, and then pulled him into another long kiss. And Clint absolutely wasn't going to complain if she decided that was how she was going to handle the situation every time he said something that she didn't know how to react to.

…

The session with Xavier had been longer than Natasha anticipated, and it had left her feeling more tired and vulnerable than she was entirely comfortable with. But this time, Xavier hadn't stopped until he had combed through everything he could find, so at least she had more peace of mind than she had going into the session.

She would never admit it out loud, but she found herself second-guessing her decision to let Clint take Fury up on his surveillance mission instead of trying to talk him into staying there for her. She was surprised by how much she wanted nothing more than to curl up with him and make him order dinner so she didn't have to do anything.

This wasn't love, of course. She was quite sure of that. But this was trust on a level that she'd never experienced before, a partnership that left her actually looking forward to seeing him and wanting him there when she didn't want anyone else around.

She hadn't been that comfortable around anyone since, well, since she was barely old enough to remember trusting someone.

And even that was something she hadn't remembered for a long time, locked behind her memories of the Red Room. She'd been young, she'd been scared, and her "little uncle," as she'd called him then, had been exactly what she needed. And he hadn't ever turned her down for hugs.

But that had been a childhood need. Now, she had been through too much to let herself fall into such childish traps. She could give her trust, yes, but anything more than that was foolish. It would only be taken away from her in the end.

Natasha straightened up and shook her head before she redirected herself away from her thoughts and toward Fury's office. After all, while she'd been in the session with Xavier, she had uncovered a few memories that she hadn't been aware of before, and she thought that might be enough information to get her on a solid lead in Russia.

She'd tell Clint what she'd found once she ran down the intel, and she would bring him along once he was done watching over the cosmically-inclined scientists. She knew she needed someone to watch her back, just in case there were any remaining latent commands—no matter what assurances Xavier gave her to the contrary.

But in the meantime, since he wasn't around, she'd let off a little steam on a quick intelligence-gathering trip—and maybe by the time she was done, she'd remember what she'd promised herself about falling in love.

A/N: I wanted Budapest to be something that meant different things to them. For Clint, it's when he told her he loved her. For Nat, it's when she was compromised (much like Clint in the movie). Hopefully, that lives up to the hype, but considering Budapest's near-mythic status...