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Chapter Text

Eastern Carpathian Mountains, northwest of Odessa, Ukraine, August 2009

The plan had been for a quick in-and-out extraction, nothing else. Go in, pick up the asset from Tehran, get out, put him on a SHIELD plane to Paris. She had done missions like this before, so many that she felt confident in manning this one all by herself. What could possibly go wrong?

“I don’t see anything,” the asset beside her gasped, eyes wide and white behind his horned-rimmed glasses, his head pivoting every which way, scanning the cliffs and drops around them, searching. It didn’t mean there was nothing there, only that their pursuer was more difficult to spot…perhaps even smarter.

The idea that whatever was chasing them through the mountains was smarter than her left the blood in Natasha Romanoff’s veins flowing cold, ice crawling up her spine, even as she gripped the wheel of their vehicle tighter. “He’s out there.”

“Are you sure?”

She wasn’t and that not knowing was what was frightening her, what had left them on their back feet this entire mission. She had known, since Tehran at the very least. That sixth sense she had pricked at her, the knowledge that they were being watched, that a predator was nearby, waiting to strike, had followed her nearly from the moment she had connected with the asset. He was a nuclear engineer, Abdullah Pasdar, highly respected, a well-educated, decent sort of man. Unfortunately for him, good men with high ideals didn’t make it long in authoritarian regimes, especially not when their morals and sense of right and righteousness conflicted with their job managing the nuclear programs for a country that repeatedly denied they were weaponizing it.

“Get down,” she barked, reaching up to press the engineer down in his seat by the top of his balding head. He complied, sliding down the upholstery, his knees cramping under the dash. She could feel the terror humming under his olive skin, turned ashen under her palm. For several long moments he stayed this way, his breathing short and labored, scared. Natasha knew how he felt.

“Do you think it is the government,” he finally whispered above the hum of the car’s engine.

“At least it is someone they contracted,” she hedged. “You knew this was a possibility. This was why you wanted out.”

He gulped, nodding shakily. Still, it was one thing to be cognizant that the government you served was out to get you, and another to actually have to flee in terror. “Azadeh and the children…”

“Are safe in Paris,” she reminded him, tone sharp, needing him to focus. “SHIELD has them under protection. Now we just need to get you to them, okay?”

He’d had enough forethought to send his family out of the country, before they could be used against him. It had been wise in the long run, as their presence in this would have only made this all exponentially worse. Natasha had her orders, and if it had been a choice between the asset or his family…

“They’ll be fine,” she reiterated, her eyes glued to the winding road through the mountains. “We will get you out of here, you’ll see them again, get to watch your kids grow up.”

Natasha wanted to believe that, wanted to believe that something she did could prove to be heroic, could save a life rather than take it.

Perhaps Pasdar was more realistic than she was. With trembling fingers, he pulled at his jacket, and a leather journal tucked away inside his breast pocket. “If I don’t make it out of this…”

She ruthlessly cut him off. “You will!”

“But if I don’t,” he insisted, his voice shaking despite the fortitude he tried to put behind it, “will you get this safe to Azadeh? I want it for her, for my children.”

She tore her gaze away from the road long enough to meet his wide, dark eyes, fervid and pleading. “Yes,” she returned, simply.

A ghost of a smile trembled to life on his lips. “Thank you!”

One small good deed, one small bit of grace, before all hell broke loose.

The back passenger’s side tire blew first, jerking the wheel in Natasha’s hand, causing the back end of the car to fishtail wildly as they closed in on a hairpin turn. It was by sheer force of will and luck that they didn’t go careening backwards over a cliff, but she righted the car, as Pasdar screamed in fear. Without stopping, she jerked the car back onto the road, but no sooner than she had, the back driver’s side went as well. Without anything behind them to propel them, she had nothing to help them make the next turn in the winding road.

“Hang on,” she yelled, as the car tipped, nose first, over the side of a gently sloping grade, overlooking the rolling foothills beyond. It would be almost pretty, she thought in terror, if it still wasn’t just as dangerous as any other cliff edge in these mountains. The car skidded down the side, the heavy engine dragging it down towards a stand of old, evergreen trees, tough and rugged, a thicket that caught their downward trajectory like a net, crunching the front end and sending glass flying towards their faces as metal crunched and screamed and the airbags deployed, blinding Natasha briefly as they cushioned their impact.

In the passenger’s seat next to her, Pasdar yelped and coughed, pushing his way out of his quickly deflating airbag, as Natasha did the same. Her breath had been knocked out of her in the impact, but she was alive, safe for the most part, ignoring the bruising she knew was going to form on her chest and face. Groaning, she gasped for air, undoing her seatbelt quickly, reaching for her handgun strapped to her thigh. “Are you all right?”

Pasdar gasped, shoving his glasses back on his face before nodding, shakily. “Yeah, I am all right.”

If she had breath to spare, she’d sigh in relief. “Can you get out?”

He glanced at his side of the car, open against the slope of the mountain, blocked only partially by the thicket of trees. “I think so.”

“Good!” Natasha looked out of her own side. Beyond the shattered glass, it was much the same, sloping hill and rock, the grove the only thing keeping them from rolling down the side further. “What I want you to do is carefully climb out. Stay down, out of sight. Wait for me to come to you. Do exactly as I say here, all right?”

Pasdar panted, nodding, fear and adrenaline making him tremble.

Natasha gritted her teeth, wrapping her left hand around the door handle. “All right, let’s go.”

The sedan itself wasn’t old, but the doors still groaned as they opened them, metal shrieking and protesting. Natasha pushed herself free, despite the crushing ache in her chest, as she tumbled out, landing on her knees, weapon at the ready. Slowly, she scrabbled upwards along the sandy, rocky soil, around the back end of the car, pausing to study the back tires briefly. Judging from what remained of the mangled, aluminum rims, a precise shot, taken at both. From where? How? Heart in throat and pissed as hell, she made her way to the other side, where Pasdar crouched, holding her free hand out to him. “Come on! Stay behind me.”

Pasdar’s expression was grim as he took her hand, waiting for her to dig her booted feet into the unsteady soil before pulling himself up. He did as she asked, staying behind her as best as he could, as they both slowly made their way back up the side of the hill. There were few places to hide here where cover was sparse. Rocks were many, but trees fewer, and none of them led to any path to safety, save for the road above, and whoever was hunting them down could be waiting there. They didn’t have much of a choice but to climb back up to the road above them. Slowly, with slipping steps and scrabbling hands, they made it near the top, where the black asphalt lay on top of the path cut along the side of the mountain. For a moment, Natasha allowed herself a brief feeling of triumph, huffing a small hint of relieved laughter as they neared the top, daring to hope…

But a shadow fell across them, as above her a figure stood impassively, blocking their way to the top. On instinct, Natasha put herself in front of Pasdar’s crouch form, still scrambling behind her. He stilled, however, as she stopped, gasping in the stillness on the side of the mountain. Natasha raised her weapon in front of her, jaw set, aim firm. “Khto ty? Shcho ty khochesh?”

Whether or not they understood Ukrainian, the figure, a man, didn’t answer. He was tall, big enough that Natasha knew he would tower over her side-by-side, broad shouldered and lethal, his stance at once elegant, like a dancer, and as menacing as a monster. He was dressed in dark clothes, a leather utility jacket and trousers, and she could see knives tucked neatly in pockets and at the top of his boots. In his hands rested a sniper rifle, Russian make, likely the one that had taken out their tires. His right arm cradled the butt of the weapon comfortably, an extension of himself. His left hand, however, held the muzzle gently, ready to swing it up fluidly, without a moment’s hesitation. Curled fingers led up to an arm covered in gleaming metal, glittering like a knife blade under the sun. The segmented joints of it whirled unnaturally as he shifted, and emblazoned on the shoulder was a scarlet star, the color of fresh blood.

Natasha was far too practical for superstition and had never believed in ghosts, but at this moment she certainly believed in this one. Fear left a sour tang in her mouth as she gripped her weapon tighter. She stared up into his face, covered by a mask and goggles, impenetrable and expressionless, unfathomable, terrifying in its emptiness. Only his long, dark hair moved in the breeze.

As natural as breathing, her finger pulled, her weapon kicking back in her palm, her feet digging into the shifting soil. The sound rang in the stillness as the figure turned, slightly, twisting his torso to allow his metal arm to take the brunt of her precise shots. She could hear the pinging of bullets on metal, which flashed and sparked with the impact, but did not break.

The hell was this?

She couldn’t pause to contemplate this any further, as in a movement so fluid and graceful that it rivaled even her, the figure stood again, rifle against his right shoulder, muzzle balanced delicately in his metal left hand.

“Get down,” she managed to shout at the petrified man behind her before the shot rang out, hoping against hope Pasdar would do as she said and hit the ground, foil his aim as she stood guard over him, the only protection between the engineer and the assassin who had dogged their steps since Tehran. For a moment, a half-of-a breath, she thought she had succeeded. It was only as her lower left abdomen exploded in white, hot pain, piercing her through, that she realized how utterly ridiculous she had been to believe she could prove to be any sort of shield against what was coming. What air was in her lungs was stolen as her knees buckled of their own volition, sending her crashing to the sandy soil, almost against her will. She blinked, stunned, as her weapon fell numbly out of her fingers. Uncomprehending, she clutched the neat hole near her hip bone, red blood smearing her fingertips. Behind her she could feel more than see Pasdar slump, soundlessly, to the ground with the sort of heavy finality that told her that her mission had failed.

Above her the figure stood tall again, letting his weapon fall to his side. He neither spoke nor made a move towards them. He simply watched as Natasha felt herself crumple to her side, unable to hold herself sitting up any further as her core muscles seized and collapsed. Blinding, tearing pain left her without speech, as tears seeped out of eyes, scalding her cheeks with agony. She could do nothing but lay there, cheek pressing into the sun-warmed soil, watching the figure turn on his heels and walk away, without a single look back at either of his victims lying away from the road on the side of the mountain.

Natasha lay there, under the blue expanse of Ukrainian sky , knowing she was bleeding out, knowing she was all alone in the middle of nowhere, and no one knew where she was. This was going to be how she was going to die, she realized, with the sort of clarity that comes when you finally accept the harsh truth of your situation. She was going to die alone up here having failed her mission.

Clint was going to kill her for this.

Chapter Text

Triskelion, Washington D.C., August 2006

The first lessons Natasha learned in her training as a child was that people saw what they wanted to see, and that would always give you the advantage. If you could play into that confidence, that certainty, then you could stack the deck in your favor. If they expected to see a helpless little girl, unable to protect herself, lean into that. If they thought you were alone and scared, encourage that perception. And if they thought they had you cornered, always let them think they have you right where they want you.

She paused at one of the blank, harshly lit walls, face forward, shoulders hunched, scanning the wall for an exit. There wasn’t one, of course, and she knew that, but she did it anyway. Behind her, boots scuffed on tile, the squeaking sound of rubber on the shiny, smooth floor. Someone needed to teach Rumlow’s men how to actually walk with shoes on. They weren’t at all hard to hear, really. In all their tactical gear, they sounded like a herd of elephants. Three…no, four of them, armed with their dummy rifles, designed to tase, but not to harm. They closed in around the end of the narrow, cramped space, she guessed in a semi-circle formation. She cocked her head to listen as they arranged themselves. The big fellow was on the left hand side, the commander of the STRIKE team on her right, the two newer recruits were on the far edge, allowing them to cover the more experienced pair. Not a horrible idea, really, but they would be less likely to know what to do once she had taken out the other two.

“We have you surrounded, Romanoff,” the leader, Rollins, called down the hall, his voice echoing off the tile. “You’ve got no way out.”

She made a show of staring up the wall to the smooth ceiling above, throwing up her hands. “Not even a vent in this place?”

“We got you fair and square,” Rollins drawled, a thread of satisfaction in his otherwise humorless tone. “You going to come out easy for us?”

She sighed, turning on her heels, crossing her arms as she threw him the most charming smile in her arsenal. “What would be the fun in that?”

“I don’t want to have to tase a woman,” the big guy, Murray, muttered with a frustrated sense of unease.

“And I don’t like being electrocuted,” she returned, sweetly, eyeing both walls and judging the trajectory from one wall to the next.

“Then come on out and no one has to do anything they don’t like,” Rollins cautioned, weapon up. He was the one with the twitchy gun finger, who had the propensity to shoot things in his way and worry about the consequences later.

“I think you underestimate how very much I don’t like having those things fired at me,” she said, uncrossing her arms, loosening her stance. “But, if you insist I come to you.”

She moved on instinct born out of years of training and fighting at close quarters. With all the grace of her years of ballet and tumbling she pushed off of the tile floor and onto the wall, bouncing from one to the next, as Rollins and his team blinked, too stunned to know how to react. By the time they had guns pointed at her, she had her thighs over Rollins’ shoulders, using her body weight and momentum to tip him over towards Murray, grabbing the latter around the neck and dragging him down. They hadn’t hit the floor, yet, before she hit Murray with one of her electric disks, what they had called “widow’s bites” in the Red Room. He jolted as he hit the floor, twitching violently as Natasha scrambled up and hit Rollins with another before he could even think of getting up.

The two other STRIKE members stared at her, too shocked to react quickly. Not good reaction times from the pair of them, Natasha doubted Rumlow would be pleased. Smoothly, she raised both arms up, flexing her vambraces as two more projectiles caught them, one on the neck, the other on the forehead. They predictably went down hard, yelping and twitching as electricity shot through them, enough to cause them to lose momentary function, not enough to cause permanent damage. With a huff, she rose, leaving the four to twitch and moan on the floor. It would stop in a moment. No harm, no foul. Besides, this was a training and testing exercise. If they couldn’t keep up, well…

Neatly, Natasha stepped over them, stopping only to take pity on poor Murray by prying his disk off before she went. He at least hadn’t wanted to hurt her. He gasped with relief as the metal was dislodged from his skin, laying limply on the cool tile.

Natasha smiled down at him, patting his granite-like cheek. “See, that’s why I don’t like being electrocuted.”

Murray stared at her as if she were crazy and whimpered.

“You’ll be okay,” she assured him, pushing herself up from where she crouched beside him. “I’ll buy you a beer later to make up for it!”

With that, she moved on, through the maze of rooms and passages. It was supposed to simulate an office space, with rooms and corridors where anyone or anything could hide. It was one of the standard training modules they used for SHIELD agents there, and while Natasha could appreciate the effort made to provide as much opportunity for agents of SHIELD to be prepared for anything, it did make her beg the question of how many offices did they ever have to fight hand-to-hand in? Was this a common occurrence in places like America? Did SHIELD often have to take on bands of bandits in offices, like in Die Hard?

“Rollins, come in? Do you have her? Over!”

Natasha stopped in her tracks, the distant sound of Rumlow’s hissing voice carrying across tile, down empty hallways with nothing to absorb the sound. He sounded as if he were down the hallway to her left, near an intersection between two passages. If he stepped out into it, he would see her. Silent as a shadow, she slipped into an alcove, stilling her breathing, as she listened and waited for him to continue to move.

“Rollins? Do you copy?”

Another voice, also male, smoother and less rough than Rumlow’s, spoke up softly. “Maybe she took him out?”

“Impossible,” Rumlow returned with more than a hint of asperity. “There were four of them! They said they had her covered.”

There was a beat, then the other voice, the other new guy, Ward, spoke up again. “I’m just saying she is a Black Widow.”

Faintly, she thought she could hear Rumlow snort. “Listen, kid, I know you are still kind of new at this, but in my experience, I don’t care how much special, unique, ninja training you have, you get enough numbers on any person eventually you will get them pinned down.”

Another beat. “I am just saying that four guys was not enough.”

“Rollins is my best guy, and Murray is big enough to count for two. If on the odd chance she was able to get one down, she wouldn't be able to get the other three.”

Natasha could decide if she was insulted by his presumption or not. She didn’t know Brock Rumlow well, nor Grant Ward for that matter, but they both struck her as the a-typical alpha males one ran into in this business. SHIELD was no different than the FSB or the CIA in that regard, there were always the guys who thought they were the bad asses, the next action hero or James Bond, and seemed to find the involvement of women of any sort vaguely amusing, a trick to keep in the arsenal, but not a serious threat. Which was just as well as far as Natasha was concerned, the less they knew about her and her capabilities, the better. She often succeeded because she was underestimated, and when they dismissed her as being small, insignificant, and easily brushed aside, she struck. After all, it was what Black Widows were best at. Ironic that it was Anton Dreykov of all people who made them that way.

“We have to draw her out,” Ward said, clearly the strategy and tactics of the pair. “Get her to come to us.”

“It’s a simulation, not life or death!”

“No, but she will want to get out, same as us. That’s the point of all of this, she tries to take us out, we try to take her out, last man standing wins.”

“You’d think Fury would make this more fair if he wanted us to take it seriously,” Rumlow grumbled, again with that condescension. “One of her, all of us!”

Honestly, Natasha had thought that Fury had made it ridiculously easy for her. After all, she had survived being on the run for a year, hiding from Dreykov and all of her Black Widow sisters, before she had fallen in with Clint Barton and SHIELD. They made this bit of a farce into a cakewalk.

“Yeah, well if you want to keep your pride, come on. We’ll wait for her at the exit.”

She held her position till their footsteps rang down the hallway before moving out of the alcove, smirking as they took off to set up their ambush. It was rather cute. Had no one taught them how to communicate silently with one another? At least learn a language she didn’t speak if they were going to let their voices carry like that. Nothing against SHIELD, she was sure there were fine agents here, very capable ones as a matter-of-fact, but honestly, it was the basics of spycraft. She had no doubt that Ward was a fairly decent operative on his own, but Rumlow was little more than a tactical bullyboy, someone you sent in on a secret operative mission to do the shooting and dirty work, keeping the main forces occupied, while someone like herself slipped in the back to get to the secretive data. In Rumlow’s defense he was no spy and didn’t claim to be. He was a soldier repurposed for special ops, and that was well and good. But Ward had higher aspirations, and could be very good with the right sort of training. Rumlow was not going to give him that.

Of course, here Natasha was, the new girl, making observations on how to train others. The whole point of this exercise was to show off her chops to the top brass and check off one of the last boxes needed to allow her to gain her full status as a SHIELD agent. With this exercise, her year of probation with SHIELD would be done. She would have her freedom, ostensibly, or at least in the legal sense through SHIELD. Her actual freedom, however, that would only come one way…through Anton Dreykov. For the first time in her life she would be free, able to live her life as she chose, no longer trapped in a circle of conditioning and fear. She could finally begin to make up for all of the crimes of her past, all the people she hurt, all the lives she ruined under Dreykov’s control. She could become someone else new, different, better.

But first…she had to get through this gauntlet.

With a sigh, she pushed off the wall, vaguely in the direction Ward and Rumlow ran off in, the one she knew led to the exit of this simulation room. How they would set up their diversion, she didn’t know. There was only the two of them left now, Natasha having neatly handled the others. Once down, they were eliminated. She could only think of a few ways this could go. Rumlow was not subtle, he would prefer to take her on directly. Ward was subtle, though, and smart. If she were him, she’d let Rumlow attack first, let him preoccupy her enough to get the drop on her behind, allowing the two of them to attempt to bring her down together. They may even have a chance if they follow that plan.

The smarter tactic would be to take Ward out first, then clean up on Rumlow, but Ward was difficult and would take time, leaving Rumlow an opening to get in there as well. At the very least, Ward could pose enough of a challenge that he would tire her too much to manage Rumlow on her own, bruiser that he was. She would need him out of the way quickly before handling the more difficult Ward. What is more she would need to do it in a way they didn’t see coming. They were expecting her to sneak up on them, or at the very least to divide and conquer. The idea of taking them together clearly wasn’t what either of them expected, and neither was directly confronting them. She could play into that, allow herself to be “caught” in her attempt, only to flip the tables on them. It was as basic a plan as could be, but it worked on the last group, and Rumlow clearly wasn’t expecting it, judging from his back-and-forth with Ward.

Plan in place, she moved through the white halls, lit with fluorescent lights above, making the entire place unbearably bright and soul draining. Her feet were soundless on the shining floors, listening for the sounds of the other men as she moved towards the exit, hands resting on the two plastic batons at her sides. They weren’t hard enough to crack bone, but they were hard enough to leave a bruise one would remember for a long time. Her breaths were slow and measured, soft as she peeked around corners and waited, trying to pinpoint the pair.

They didn’t make it easy, perhaps catching on that their movements were loud enough for the dead to hear. The closer she made it to the exit - a nondescript office door at the end of the maze that formed this simulation - the more difficult they were to track. She may not have managed, save for the bright lights and a long shadow that edged along the wall and out into the cross space at an intersection just to the left of the exit door. Someone was watching around its corner, waiting for her to attempt to use it.

Well, she was a woman who hated to keep anyone waiting…

She decided to come towards the door at a sprint, giving the impression she was rushing for the door before they could catch her. It certainly gave her location away, enough so that Rumlow at least jumped at the bait, swinging around the wall with his electrified weapon and firing without hesitation. Natasha expected that, and easily dove underneath, falling to her knees and spinning around on the polished floor, vambraces at the ready. She let two charges fly. Rumlow easily evaded the first, but not the second, which hit his right arm, causing him to drop the taser rifle as the muscles began to twitch and seize beyond his control.

By the time Ward made his way around, she was already bouncing up, batons at the ready. Ward at least resorted in more hand-to-hand combat, and as tall as he was, he had a size advantage over her. Still, she met his initial blows, ducking them easily as she gracefully slid around his defenses, flicking a baton to the back of his left knee, sending that one down as he grunted. He wasn’t completely out, however, as he chose to simply spin backwards with his right leg and sweep her feet out from underneath her. Natasha was slightly faster, moving out of the way of his arcing leg, but not his elbow. It clocked her, hard, in her middle, as she gasped. It was a momentary setback, however, as she used his elbow as the pivot point to spin around enough to face him again. With Ward now down on his knees, all it took was to grab his head and bring it down hard on her own knee. She knew Ward knew it too, could see it in his eyes as she grabbed both sides of his head. His face met her hard kneecap with a crunch, as he dropped to the floor, sprawling. If she didn’t break his nose, she certainly was giving him both a headache and two black eyes for his efforts.

Behind her, Rumlow’s loud growl and grunt indicated that somehow he had managed to pry the widow’s bite from his skin, the charge falling to the floor with a small “chink”. She turned, watching Rumlow rub at the welt on his muscular forearm where the charge had bitten deep, glowering at her as he did. “Those really fucking hurt!”

“That’s the point,” she returned, already crouching in her fighting stance, unable to hide the smirk at Rumlow’s mild whining.

Rumlow pulled a feral grin, lips pulling back on all of his perfectly straight teeth, as he dropped into his own stance. “You know, your cute little tricks won’t work on everyone.”

“No,” she conceded, lifting a shoulder lightly, as if she hadn’t a care in the world. “I just need them to work on the person right in front of me.”

It was the goad he needed to act, which is what Natasha wanted. Rumlow charged with a growl, fists swinging. Natasha ducked out of the way, moving neatly out of his tight and powerful jabs. He was very good at it, and she knew it would hurt if he connected. She also knew he wasn’t foolish enough to allow one of her feints to stop him, as he changed directions, moving to try and get past her own defenses.

“You can’t dance forever,” he growled, neatly blocking one of her baton blows with a powerful forearm.

Natasha simply grinned as she tiptoed back, out of the zone of his defense, putting space between them again in the narrow hallway. Rumlow stood between her and the exit door now. He was not patient in his attacks, not like her. She could wait, let him come to her. He had a tendency to tuck his chin under when he went on the attack, likely from his years of boxing. She could leverage that, literally. All she needed was for him to make that first move. For several moments they stood there, Rumlow feinting as she twitched, making to outmaneuver his attack, until finally his eagerness to capture her got the better of him. He dove for her as she ran at him, using her own forward momentum to propel her up and over, as she hooked one of her batons under his chin. As neatly as she could manage, given the awkward angle, she turned herself to grab the other end with her free hand, pressing it against his larynx and throat, choking him as she yanked his head back, tightly, before heaving herself downwards to take him with her. While she wasn’t heavy, she was strong, and despite Rumlow’s sturdiness, his sheer surprise in her maneuver allowed her to throw him down, hard, to the tiled floor, as he smacked his head with a resounding crack that left him wincing and dazed under the bright fluorescent lights. His pained groan was all the confirmation Natasha needed on her success.

Releasing her baton, she whipped it out from under his chin and rose, making for the door. No sooner than her fingers had wrapped around the handle, it opened with a buzz, into an office that held an observation area. Clint Barton stood inside, a giddy grin so wide on his rugged face that there was no disguising his pride in her at the moment. Beside him stood a woman, dark haired and standing ramrod straight, with an expression hovering somewhere between disbelief and annoyance, watching Natasha as one might a particularly dangerous predator.

“Are you serious right now,” the other woman, Assistant Director Maria Hill asked, ice blue eyes sliding over towards Clint, whose nonchalant shrug silently said “I told you so.” Hill glared at him before turning her attention back to Natasha. “You do realize what you just did?”

That seemed like both a ridiculous and loaded question. “Just passed your test?”

Hill arched one perfect, dark eyebrow. “Against one of the best STRIKE units and one of the top young operatives, all single-handedly, without breaking a sweat.”

“That’s not true,” Natasha returned, allowing one corner of her mouth to curl upwards as she ran the back of her hand across her brow. “I did break a sweat. Not much of one, but…”

“Shut up,” Hill returned, shaking her head. “I suppose that was you going easy on them?”

“I mean, I assumed you didn’t want them hurt too badly. After all, you do want them to still work for you, right?”

Clint, who had not said a word this entire time, only snorted as he tried, and failed, to smother a snicker. Hill turned her annoyed gaze on him, but simply threw up her hands. “I say that you trapped me in that bet, Barton.”

He quickly turned from amused to defensive in the blink of an eye. “Hey, I laid the wager, you were the one who accepted it. Not my fault you didn’t have the insider line on how fast she would take them all down.”

“You suckered me into that!”

“You took it and now you got to pay up!”

It clicked with Natasha where Hill’s annoyance truly lay. “You two were betting on how I would do in there?”

“Bet her that you could clear the room in less than fifteen without a stratch. She thought they would give you a bit more trouble and that it would take 30, and you’d end up banged up somewhat.”

Hill cut in, justifying herself. “I thought Rollins and Murray would put up more of a fight than they did. That was embarrassing.”

“Rollins and Murray are bully boys, no finesse!”

Natasha frowned from one to the other, before finally cutting into their banter. “Wait, you laid a wager on the line and didn’t include me?”

Clint only looked slightly ashamed at that. “Didn’t want to affect your raw performance.”

She supposed that was fair. “I’m just saying with more on the line I would have tried harder.”

“Jesus Christ,” Hill snorted, throwing up her hands in amused disgust.

Natasha ignored her. “So how much we win?”

“We?” Clint’s skepticism was honestly cute, given how blatantly he hustled Hill.

“Oh, I won that for you, you better believe it is ‘we.’”

“You won $200, by the way,” Hill cut in, glaring at Clint. “And if I’m coughing it up, you better split it. As it is I will have to explain to Coulson why Ward has a busted nose.”

“It was the most effective way of neutralizing him in the moment,” Natasha returned, only a little sorry for poor Ward’s broken face. “He’ll still look pretty, I am sure.”

“Well, Rumlow won’t forgive you for the headache he’s going to have.” Hill only sounded mildly put out by that. “Anyway, I suppose I need to get you both upstairs to Fury before you scam me out of any more cash.”

Out of the opposite side of the observation area was a door out, into the main building itself. Natasha could hear the main techs on duty calling for medical aid as she followed Hill’s quickstep out towards the elevators, trying very hard not to grin at Clint and knowing she was failing. “So, how long did it take?”

“A bit over ten, but I figured you were pulling your punches.”

“I mean, I didn’t want to hurt them,” she admitted, as the elevator opened to allow them in. “I’ll apologize to Ward later.”

“I thought he’d give you more trouble than that,” Clint admitted, as the doors closed, and they rose up the side of the Triskelion, the spectacular view of Washington DC laid out all around them. “I hear he’s quite good, one of Garrett’s proteges.”

“Lucky shot,” Natasha shrugged, patting the batons resting on her hips. “Exploited a weak spot in his defenses, took out a knee. He nearly got me, though.”

“I’m sure it’s a lesson he will learn,” Clint returned, knowingly. He had already been on the receiving end of more than a few of Natasha’s nimble attacks and knew well how she exploited even the tiniest small spot of hesitation or lack of attention.

“I’d have her train with everyone if I could,” Hill returned, eyeing Natasha speculatively. “But I suppose we do need to use you out in the field.”

That was the point of this entire exercise after all. Natasha glanced out at the bright summer sunlight outside, to the sprawl of the metropolitan area around her. This was her new home. The week before she’d taken over Clint’s old apartment he kept there, cleaning it up and making it fit for human habitation. As much as she would have loved to stay permanently out at the farm with Clint and his family, and as tempting as the prospect was, in the end the decision had been simple. She needed to create her own life…wanted to in fact. For the first time ever she had the choice and freedom to live where she wanted, to make her own decisions on simple things - clothes, food, what sort of throw pillows to have on the couch, what kind of toothpaste she could use. Silly things, really, the sort of normal, everyday things that everyone else in the world was used to having, that they took for granted. She wanted that chance at making those decisions, at figuring out who and what Natasha Romanoff was.

This moment, too, was another step in that bid for freedom. If one chose to view it cynically, one could simply say she was falling in with SHIELD because killing, spying, and covert ops were all that she knew, and it wouldn’t be a totally incorrect or unfair assessment. Natasha was all too aware that she was a weapon, trained and aimed with pinpoint precision by those who held her. Until now, those hands had been Dreykov, who had employed her however he saw fit, against whoever he saw fit, without care to the lives he was compromising and destroying, including Natasha’s own. For too long now he had pulled the strings on the Red Room and the large web that tied all the Black Widows to his own machinations and purpose, trapping them all into it. Natasha had been the only one of them to ever break free. Now, she would have the chance to destroy that web all together, and in doing so, prove herself to SHIELD, prove that she wanted to be out, to be given this chance, to have freedom.

The doors opened onto the highest floor of this wing of the Triskelion, the one that Fury inhabited anyway. Clint broke her reverie with a small touch to her elbow and a speculative look. She stood tall, nodding once before following Hill outside. The floor that made up the senior executive floor of the SHIELD directorate was, for the most part, quiet, a sparse place - white walls and gray carpets. Considering the simulation she just left, you would think that SHIELD would at least consider some color for its space, something more inviting and less brutalist USSR circa 1984. The black-and-white with shades of gray motif felt a bit on the nose, if she did say so herself.

Fury’s office was the biggest, as she supposed the director’s would be. An assistant sat outside, but only nodded and smiled as Hill marched past her and through the double doors that led inside the vast space, with windows overlooking the Potomac River and the city beyond. Fury sat behind his desk, lounging casually in his chair, his long legs stretched before him. It was all a guise, of course, because Natasha doubted Fury ever did a casual thing in his life. He was a legend in the game, known, respected, and feared in many corners of the dark world she wandered in. It didn’t help that his last name literally was Fury, which, as far as bad ass last names went, it was up there. The forbidding and mysterious eye patch added to the mystique, the story behind which no one she knew had the full story on.

On the other side of the desk, looking just as much at his ease, was a man that Natasha had never met before, but of whom she had heard a great deal about. Alexander Pierce was well known in most political and espionage circles, though the messaging was mixed, depending on who you spoke to. Most in the West considered him to be a diplomat and statesman, someone genuinely working to try and make the world a safer place. Those in areas not tied to America or Western Europe had more mixed things to say. Most acknowledged he was wanted what was best for the greatest majority of people, but the cost left many people unsettled. He was, Natasha decided, a complicated figure at best, like most politicians were, a man who stood in the gray and tried to make it black and white. Outside of that knowledge, she had no personal investment in Pierce, though it was clear as he watched her enter with a look of quiet curiosity that he certainly had opinions about her.

“How did the test go,” Fury asked, though Natasha suspected that was more as a formality. He clearly had little doubt on its outcome.

“Well, everyone will need a stint in medical, I am out $200, and Romanoff is standing here before you.” Hill smirked, but her earlier teasing annoyance now was replaced with genuine respect. “Also, Barton is a hustler and can’t be trusted.”

“It’s what makes him a good operative,” Fury returned without missing a beat. “And that was a sucker’s bet, you know.”

Fury cast his single working eye on Natasha, who stood meeting it, unflinching. His expression was mostly inscrutable, but she sensed there was a hint of respect and pride there. She shouldn’t be pleased by that, but found that she was, despite herself.

“Have a seat,” Fury waved to two chairs sat near Pierce, waving herself and Clint in them. “That will be all, Hill.”

“Thank you, sir,” she returned, nodding first to Natasha, then to Clint, before making her way out. Natasha did as she was ordered, slipping into the chair in the middle, while Clint took the one at the end, uncomfortably glancing at the far wall, then the door, before sitting back.

If Fury noticed, he ignored it. “Miss Romanoff, let me introduce you to Alexander Pierce.”

It was a formality, but she appreciated Fury’s manners. She held out a slim hand for the Secretary of the World Security Council to take. “Nice to meet you.”

“The same,” the other man returned, his smooth voice only somewhat craggy with his age. He had to be in his seventies, if he was a day. He’d been a handsome man when he was younger, and had aged with a grace that surprised her, considering the lines around his eyes and mouth that indicated a great deal of time in the sun. He had the bearing of a man who had spent a lifetime confident and assured in his role, charming and friendly. But there was a sharp cunning in those blue eyes, a calculation that said that whatever his exterior smile might say, inside his own mind he was always watching, considering, and thinking. He was a man who was perfect for a role managing the World Security Council and all of its many voices and interests.

“Secretary Pierce wanted to meet you personally,” Fury supplied as Natasha settled herself into the white leather chair. “Considering the hesitation of many members of the council, I felt it best, so he could allay any fears.”

“Fears that I am still Dreykov’s creature,” Natasha threw out, cooly, deciding to tackle that bull by the horns.

A muscle in Fury’s scarred cheek twitched as he swallowed what she assumed was a smile. “No offense, Romanoff, but can you blame them?”

“No,” she admitted, evenly. “I’d be more suspicious if they weren’t worried.”

Alexander Pierce shifted beside her. “You are not the only former KGB or FSB agent we’ve had defect into SHIELD, but you are certainly the most…decorated.”

A diplomatic way of putting it, Natasha conceded, expecting nothing less from someone like Pierce on that score. “I know my past, Mr. Secretary.”

His expression was pleasant, but that gaze of his was sharp. “You are formidable, Miss Romanoff, no one denies that, and I know that your experience, what you’ve been trained to do was not at your choosing. The council isn’t unempathetic to that, or to the fact that you are the victim here in so many ways. But your…skill set, shall we say, makes them afraid. Someone like you, doing what you can do, having the knowledge you will gain working for SHIELD…well, it doesn’t make many of them sleep well at night.”

In fairness, Natasha couldn’t imagine it would. She could also imagine there were more than a few of those same council members up in arms because Clint didn’t take the shot he could have in Rome and didn’t remove her from the field. It would be safer on their minds if he had. But Clint didn’t think the way they did. He saw something more in her, so did Fury. She would have to hold onto that.

“With all due respect, Secretary Pierce, I’m the least of the World Security Council’s worries. The Black Widows are all deadly, but we are only weapons held in the hand of a man that you all have ignored and allowed to gain a level of power and sway, both in Russia and outside of it, that should frighten you. Do you know how close Dreykov is to the world leaders of the West? He has the personal numbers of the American president and vice-president on speed dial, and that is not including the number of senators, generals, and businessmen he likes to invite out to have dinner or visit him when he’s in town. That is just in America. Your government has made friends with him because he has offered you an inside look into the FSB and Russian politics after the fall of the Soviet state, because he offers you an in. In doing so, you’ve given him the keys to your castles and allowed him unprecedented access, one which he exploits as he wishes. SHIELD may be the global intelligence agency for the West, but Dreykov knows your every move. He can and does maneuver around you, because no one has bothered to pay attention to just one, lone former Russian intelligence officer and respectable businessman.”

If any of this was unique or shocking news to either Pierce or Fury, neither of them showed it. The shared look between the pair was cryptic enough that not even Natasha could read it, an impressive enough feet, but as Pierce regarded her again, his expression had returned to the pointedly serious tone he had taken with her earlier. “I think you have come to the heart of the matter, then, Miss Romanoff. I agree with you, and frankly so does the World Security Council, Anton Dreykov is a threat, one that SHIELD is prepared now to address. With that in mind, the World Security Council is willing to allow you to defect and join SHIELD, however, they want certain assurances of your loyalty.”

They both knew what he was getting at, Natasha had known for months, but she could still feel herself go numb with the thought, as her heart clenched painfully in her chest. Memories of Dreykov rose, ones she had tried desperately to push under the surface of her memories; his blunt, thick fingers running across the crown of her head, petting her hair as if she were a particularly favorite pet, the crack and blinding shock of the back of his hand across her jaw as she sat in front of him, punishment for some imagined slight, the smirking approval as he watched her train, the delight in knowing what a beautiful killing machine he had created, the speculative way he watched her on that runway in Cuba, long ago, as she held off Russian soldiers with a handgun, a girl of ten, scared and desperate not to go back to the only life she had known.

Pierce’s question broke through all that with cold practicality. “Are you prepared to kill him if you have to?”

On the other side of her, she could sense more than see Clint tense. They had discussed this for months, had known this was a possibility. Still, it was different when it was theoretical than when it was put before you as a directive.

“Is that the condition, then? Kill him?” Her question was more of confirmation than of outrage or hesitation. How many times had she imagined herself doing it, of taking whatever weapon was at hand in those moments and striking him down with all the anger and despair of her young heart. How many of her fellow Widows had the same thoughts over the years? Had Melina? Did Yelena?

Rather than answer directly, Pierce reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a thumb drive, sliding it across the glass-topped desk. “With the World Security Council’s approval, there has been a kill order given to Director Fury on Dreykov.”

Natasha glanced at Fury, who watched her, tall and implacable in his black leather seat. He wanted her here at SHIELD, he had given the file to Clint, had thought she could be brought in, given a second chance, could do something good, something better. This was her chance to prove herself.

“I’ll do it,” she returned to Fury’s unspoken question. “Besides, I’m the only one who could hope to have a chance to do it.”

Fury’s stern expression twitched, his mouth pulling, but he nodded, sliding the thumb drive the rest of the way towards Natasha. “Since I’ve been told in no uncertain terms that you aren’t going anywhere without him, Barton has been assigned to work with you on this. He’s got the highest level clearance on this.”

Natasha was less certain what that meant, but Clint seemed to know. “Thank you, sir.”

“It goes without saying this is a dark op,” Fury clarified, glancing between the two. “No one in SHIELD will know the particulars save your contact, Agent Zovak. I’ve had her and Coulson running surveillance on Dreykov’s holding in Budapest, and she will have all the most current information. You’ll meet up with her in Berlin, and she’s been told to help if she can while you are there, but she can’t break her cover, so you two are on your own. No one else will know what you are doing, where you are, or why you are there. If this goes south, SHIELD will deny all knowledge of it and of what you are doing there, and if you are alive, you’ll be left in the cold. We can’t risk the ramifications if Dreykov lives and decides to counter. You understand?”

Natasha did. Beyond the threat Dreykov himself posed, there was the outrage and scandal that could be stirred up if it came out that SHIELD openly assassinated a man as powerful as Dreykov. Ignoring the fact that she was certain that SHIELD did that all of the time, the general public was blissfully unaware of it, and to know that their individual countries supported a group who could take out private citizens for just appearing like threats would cause uncomfortable questions regarding SHIELD, its power, and the oversight over the agency. She got it, and knew that if she failed at killing him, she would be the scapegoat here, no one else. Their support would only go so far.

She supposed she had to prove herself in this, to show them she deserved to be there and have SHIELD’s protection.

“I got it,” she coolly snapped, reaching for the thumb drive, plucking it up between her fingers. “Anything else?”

Fury glanced over to Clint. “You okay with this?”

There was a wealth of unspoken questions contained in the singular one. Only Fury knew the full extent of Clint’s backstory and life, of where Laura and the kids were, of the happy home he and his ex-SHIELD agent wife had built for themselves outside of a small town in Missouri. Since this mission was dark, should anything happen to him, they may never know for sure what was going on or why he hadn’t come home. Laura knew the game, know how it was played, but it was still asking a lot of Clint, to potentially leave those he loved the most in the uncertainty of not knowing what his ultimate fate might be.

Still, Clint met Fury’s question without flinching, nodding once. “I told Natasha I was all in on this with her. I meant that.”

That seemed to satisfy Fury, whose single eye searched Clint’s expression before sighing. “Then you are given the okay on this mission.”

“Thank you, sir,” Clint returned. Natasha said nothing, simply passing the USB drive over to Clint, who took it without further comment.

Fury watched them, briefly, before jerking his chin by way of dismissal. “You can go now. Use the usual channels to keep me informed.”

“Yes, sir,” Clint replied, standing as he turned for the door to Fury’s office. Natasha made to follow, back straight, head up, knowing that both of the other men were watching her as she went and unwilling to allow them to see the fear and uncertainty that stirred under the surface at the very idea of what she had just agreed to do. Neither of them really knew or understood that Dreykov was a monster, a creature out of nightmares, who plagued her dreams and hung over her entire life in ways she knew she would never be able to fully escape. Neither of them understood what she had just agreed to, promising to slay the dragon for them, of what that might entail. She wouldn’t let them see how much it frightened her, or the cost of it. She would not be weak.

As the door to Fury’s office closed behind her, Clint turned over his shoulder, his breath rushing out in a long exhale. “You ready for this?”

No, she wanted to say. She was not ready for this. She would never be ready for this.

“Let’s just do it,” she muttered, marching beside him, her hands clenched at her sides. She had come this far, and she would see this through, one way or the other, even if it was the last thing she did. No more would that monster overshadow her life. Whatever it took, whatever she had to do, she would be free.

Chapter Text

“Seriously, why does one person need so many throw pillows?”

One of the offending objects flew past Natasha’s nose as she scanned documents on her laptop, landing with a soft “thump” on the floor beyond. She barely gave it a glance before cutting her eyes towards Clint, hunched as he was at the coffee table, a flat silicon mat spread out with tools, chemicals, and arrowheads all spread out before him.

“You know, your wife is the one who helped me purchase those pillows,” she pointed out mildly, returning to reviewing SHIELD’s data on Dreykov’s organizational movements over the last six months.

“I ask her the exact same thing when I’m at home.”

“And where does that get you?”

His sigh was long-suffering. “Not a lot of anywhere. She ignores me and puts something else fluffy in the house.”

“And you thought this argument would somehow compel me?”

He shrugged, fiddling with one of his trick arrowheads, an operation that seemed impossibly delicate and somewhat dangerous considering some of the things he was putting into those arrowheads. A man who created trick arrows with enough gunpowder to take down a building, and he was lecturing her on throw pillows?

“Besides,” Natasha continued, glancing around the living room area, with the plush couch she had purchased to replace Clint’s ratty old one and the artwork prints she and Laura had framed to put on the walls, “when you lived here, it was a dump.”

“It wasn’t a dump,” he returned, only mildly defensively, which meant that he knew it was a dump but didn’t want to admit it.

“Sally Morlan would have been mortified to see this place,” she returned, smirking. Clint’s neighbor, a Midwestern farm wife, kept her Depression era house as tidy as a Norman Rockwell painting, much to Natasha’s awe and amazement.

Her teasing did nettle him somewhat. “Hey, it’s not like I lived here for real. It was just where I crashed when I was in town. It was a step above a flophouse.”

“Only just,” she snarked. The fridge had made her gag, and she had asked no questions about the sticky nature of the bathroom floor. If she were honest, Natasha had been in worse, much worse, and it didn’t bother her much at all, if she were honest, but it was much more fun getting under Clint’s skin.

“Yeah, well, now the place is all yours to make look pretty and glue throw pillows on every surface,” he muttered, truculent as he fiddled with a wire to one of his arrowheads.

“I mean, that’s not a horrible idea. It would let me practice at home, give me something soft to land on.”

Clint looked askance at that. “I will pretend you did not just say that.”

Natasha laughed, setting her laptop aside. After all, SHIELD wasn’t giving her anything she didn't already know about Dreykov. She knew where he was, where he moved, what his security looked like, who he kept around him. She’d spent months watching him, planning her first attack on him, one she had planned to carry out in Rome the year before. It would have been dangerous. Given Dreykov’s sway and the influence he could call upon, she likely would have died in the attempt. But a year ago she had been prepared to do it, willing to die in order to rid the world of Dreykov and his influence, to free not only herself, but Yelena and all the others. She had been willing to burn the world down if it meant Dreykov was dead. Now…

Clint Barton was the reason she hadn’t. He had tracked her down, had stood on that rooftop, eyeing her down the site of one of his arrows, fully prepared to kill her to keep her from hurting anyone else, but he hadn’t. He had held his shot, had given her a second chance, one that would allow her a new life and an opportunity to make right all that she had done wrong. He gave her a chance to live, to be Natasha Romanova. She didn’t think in a million years she would ever find words enough to thank him for not giving up on her, for taking her in, giving her a home, allowing her to be a part of his life and family.

So instead, she shifted to the topic at hand. “This is a dark op, I am guessing we go in with whatever we can carry that doesn’t tie to SHIELD.”

“That’s the idea,” he confirmed, squinting as he screwed the top of an arrowhead onto what looked like a modified shell casing. “We won’t be able to call on SHIELD resources once we are inside, not easily at least. We take what we can or find those who can get us what we want.”

“I still have resources there,” she murmured, earning a sharply dubious expression from Clint. “What?”

“Are they ones you trust?”

She knew what he meant. After all, Dreykov had put a bounty on her head, a fact they had to face first hand when she’d been nearly captured and sent back for the price Dreykov had offered. Before that she had still been able to move with relative ease and anonymity among those few she felt she could trust. Now the stakes were different, even those who had perhaps been somewhat sympathetic could just as easily be swayed by money.

“I have a few I trust,” she assured him, hoping she was right. Not everyone in this murky world they wandered in was so amoral that their loyalty could be purchased. More than a few had principles, and those she prayed would be her most reliable allies in all of this. “What about your person on the inside, Zovak? What’s up with her?”

“Coulson had her get working in there as soon as we brought you in,” Clint replied without looking up, his fingers meticulously turning the arrowhead. “Had her get in with one of Dreykov’s security team members.”

Not the worst plan in the world, but also not the best. “Dreykov’s security is shit. They are the first liners, warm bodies meant to stand there and be menacing, but they don’t do much.”

“So I gathered, reading her reports. Dreykov doesn’t strike me as the sort to have a group of bully boys and thugs as his main line of defense, but it got her access enough to get inside. She said he keeps the more dangerous stuff closer to the chest.”

Natasha nodded. “He has a team of personal bodyguards working for him. Their loyalty is only to him. Most all are Russian nationals, from an elite squad that he formed in the Soviet days and just kept personally. I can’t swear they are conditioned in the same way we were, but I can’t not swear to it either. The difference is they are given more freedoms, which gives them a sense of pride, which makes them more loyal. He also employs members of the Hungarian security forces to keep an eye on the buildings - his office, his home in the city, his one in the country. All his Russian properties have Russian security, but I doubt they will be there.”

Clint listened, absorbing in silence. After a long moment he asked the question she had been expecting and was surprised it took this long for him to ask. “Any Widows?”

“No,” she returned with the only assurance she had in any of this. “He is too visible. If he had a bevy of deadly women around him all the time, people would ask uncomfortable questions and begin to put things together. He keeps us at arms length from him for his public image. We are the secret weapon he uses sparingly and effectively, and only a few people in the world know about us.”

That was what made Dreykov so very dangerous. More than his friendships with powerful world leaders, more than the wealth of secret information at his fingertips, and more than his influence with the FSB and other intelligence networks, it was his Black Widows. They could move in shadow, infiltrate wherever he wished, gain access to whatever he wanted, and kill anyone who he disliked, all at his request. And not a one of them would think twice about doing it, because Dreykov had conditioned it out of every last one of them.

Save Natasha…she had somehow broken it. Why, she didn’t know. She had given it a great deal of thought in the time since she had fled from Sao Paolo, what it was about that situation, about that family that had shaken the grip that Dreykov had upon her. It had been a long mission, longer than most, but no longer than some she had been on. It had been a mission with a family, children who were nurtured and loved. But she had been on missions with children before, and it had never made her waiver. Her target had been a complicated figure, a man who waded in the mire of Brazilian politics, but who had at his heart desired to help those poor and destitute in whatever way he could in a broken system. She’d killed him because Dreykov had ordered it, not because he was a threat or a nuisance, but because a friend of his wanted the man removed, no more, no less. Natasha had killed people for far more petty reasons on Dreykov’s part, certainly, and this assignment under normal circumstances would not give her pause. But it was that moment, that convergence of all of those qualities - the long mission embedded in a loving family to assassinate a complex, but idealistic man - that cracked something within her, that snapped Dreykov’s grip on her, the one he’d built and reinforced since she was a small child.

Well…he’d not controlled her during all of her childhood. Certainly there had been those golden three years when she’d lived in Ohio with Alexei, Melina, and Yelena, when she’d been cared for like a real child, allowed to live the life of a normal, American girl. That part of her Dreykov never could touch, could never get his cold hands back onto. And perhaps that was the part of her that had finally broken through the mindless conditioning, the inability to think for herself, or to separate her reason from Dreykov’s will. It was that stubborn, single-minded, determined part of her that refused to let go or bow down to anyone. Not even Dreykov had been able to beat it out of her, and that part of herself had finally sent her fleeing into the night, away from the Red Room, from Dreykov, from her past, and the long, bloody trail she had left behind. And now it was the part of her that would finally remove Dreykov and his influence. She would not ever be controlled by him ever again.

The harsh sound of Clint’s cell phone broke her swirl of thoughts, causing her to snap her eyes to where it sat on the coffee table, next to where Clint had spread his things. With ridiculous reflexes, he snatched it up, first frowning, then grinning down at it, as he read who the caller was on the screen. Without hesitation he flipped it open, clicking on the speaker as he did. “Hey, babe, how is it going?”

That alone clued Natasha in that it was Laura on the other end. It sounded as if her world was chaos, with children screaming in delight somewhere in the distance. “So far, so good. It’s a birthday party, and Cooper is running with a pack of kids, Lila is being cuddled by someone else, and Mama has a free ten minutes to call you before I have to get back to this party.”

Natasha smiled, imagining the organized chaos swirling around Laura. Already she missed Clint’s kids, particularly Cooper’s charming smile and insistence that “Tasha” was the only one who could read the stories right, as well as Lila’s bright smile and bubbling baby laugh. It was alarming how deeply she had fallen in love with Clint’s kids in the few months she had spent at the Bartons’ farmstead, and just how fiercely protective she was of them.

“We are doing all right,” Clint reassured his wife, glancing at Natasha as if to confirm. “Natasha passed the last assessment with flying colors.”

“We knew she would. Rumlow is all talk, you know.”

Natasha snorted, but didn’t comment further. While Clint got on reasonably well with Rumlow, Laura didn’t care for him, and Natasha suspected there was tension that stretched back to Laura’s own days at SHIELD.

“He’s got some wounded pride, but that’s about it.” Clint chuckled, still as pleased as if Natasha was one of his own kids. “Anyway, so that’s done, and then there is the last piece.”

That one sobered all of them. Laura knew, of course, she and Clint hid relatively little from one another, all things considered. She was well aware of what they were being asked to do. “When do you leave?”

“Tomorrow, Berlin first before we head off the grid. You know the protocols.”

“Yeah,” she replied, succinctly, given where she was at, but carrying a wealth of understanding in the single syllable.

“I’ll check when I can, but it may not be as often as you like.”

“It never is,” Laura chuckled softly. “You’ll have Nat there. She can keep you out of trouble.”

“I’ll try,” Natasha called out, suspecting that of the pair of them Clint would not be the problem. “Give Cooper and Lila a hug from me.”

“They miss their Aunt Nat already,” Laura returned, with just enough guilt to make Natasha's heart twinge.

“I’ll come back out to see them soon.” She assured, meeting Clint’s pointedly amused expression. “I promise.”

“Good,” Laura interjected, as in the background someone screeched. She sighed, the long suffering exhalation of a mother knowing drama is breaking out with their children. “I better go see who is upset now. I love you, Clint. Do your best to come home safe.”

“I will,” he returned, ignoring the uncertainty of that promise. “Hold down the fort while I am gone.”

“I will.”

“Love you, too.” He didn’t say goodbye as he hung up. But then, Natasha realized, he didn’t need to. He stared at his phone, thoughtfully, for long moments, before sighing and returning to his work. Natasha watched him, something sad and unsettled churning in her gut as she worked out how she even wanted to vocalize it. What came out was “I’m sorry!”

He paused in surprise after she blurted out the words. “For what?”

She flushed, twisting fingers into the tassels of one of the throw pillows he disliked so much. “For getting you into all of this.”

A complicated series of expressions flickered before he spoke again. “You didn’t get me into anything, Natasha. If anything, that was Fury the minute he drove out to the farm with your file. He gave me a choice to do it, and I said yes. I got myself into this, Nat, and I did it willingly.”

“Even so, you didn’t know how deep this would get, not with Dreykov.”

“No,” he admitted. “But then again, that’s sort of par for the course. Not the first time I’ve had a mission go deeper than I expected, come up more complicated than plan. It’s sort of how the spy game goes.”

He said it so cavalierly, and he wasn’t wrong, it was indeed the name of the game in espionage. Whatever you thought it was on the surface, often it was more complicated than that once you dug under the first layer to find the murky gray beneath. “Still, you are taking on a lot. You have a wife, kids, a life outside of all of this, and doing this, taking on Dreykov, that puts a lot of things in jeopardy.”

And that was not sitting well with her at the moment, the idea of what it could mean if everything went pear shaped on them. This mission could go badly in so many ways beyond the standard worries of them being injured or killed.. Even if they succeeded in their end goal - the removal of Dreykov - his ties to the infrastructure of Budapest and Hungarian security meant that they could end up on the wrong side of the Hungarian government, trapped in the city without a way out. They could end up burned, denied by SHIELD, agents on the run without an ability to even come home, and that was if they weren’t declared criminals for assassinating a private citizen of a foreign nation. Even then, this was all contingent on success, it would be even more dire if they failed at it, and Dreykov sent the full might of the resources at his disposal on them. There would be no hiding from him then, no place either of them would be safe. Certainly, Clint wouldn’t be able to return home, no matter how off the grid the farmhouse was, leaving Laura a veritable widow with two young children to raise. One way or the other, by taking on Natasha’s quest, Clint was risking leaving his family bereft. Knowing that it was all on her account gave Natasha a great deal of pause.

“If you are thinking about getting me off this for my own good, you know it won’t work.” Clint obviously couldn’t read her thoughts, but it was rather rude he had cut so quick to the very tenor of where her mind was taking her.

“This is a bad idea," she muttered.

“I’m coming whether you like it or not, least of all because SHIELD demands it. If I don’t go they will stick you with Garrett or Ward, who are fine, you just won’t like as much, and they won’t let you slide on anything.”

Not that Clint let her slide on much, but she got his point. Clint was a known quantity, a friend, and someone she had slowly grown to trust, anyone else in SHIELD was not. He was correct in the fact SHIELD would never just let her go alone. He was her handler as much as her partner in this, and that meant that she had to work with him. If she wished to mitigate any exposure he had to danger and threats, she would have to work carefully to keep him out of it and make sure he got home to his family.

“Why do you keep doing it?” The question surprised her, slipping out before she could even stop it.

If it caught him off guard, he didn’t show it. “SHIELD? Because it pays the bills.”

“Come on, we both know that SHIELD pays you enough to make you, Laura, and the kids comfortable for the rest of your life, and that’s just your salary.” She may or may not have peeked into the Barton family finances while staying with them, more to assuage her overwhelming desire not to be a burden than anything else. “Between you and Laura, you got your kids covered. So what is it, really?”

She’d caught Clint off foot, a rare occurrence for him, but one she found she could do with the right sort of push. It was a talent, she admitted it, but she didn’t use it on Clint as often as some others might. He reached for a free arrowhead, twitching it between his rough fingers, a nervous tick hinting at just how uncomfortable he was.

“I suppose I have the same problem you do,” he finally rumbled, his voice soft and gravelly as he stared in the middle distance, clearly choosing his words. “I was trained to do this. Maybe not in the same way you were, but still, from the time I left high school I have been formed and shaped into a weapon, and it’s the only thing I know how to do now. I don’t know what I would do but this. It’s not like I’ve ever been just a normal working guy, putting in my eight hours and going home for beers. And I don’t know if I could walk away from this to just take up a boring job back home.”

It was the same sort of existential crisis that Natasha herself had been going through from the moment she ran from Dreykov’s influence. She had been created to be one thing alone. Without that, what else could she do? Who else could she be? Who was she if she didn’t have this? It had never occurred to her that Clint, who seemed so centered and grounded to her, might have those same questions and misgivings himself.

“I don’t know what I want to do after this,” she admitted, softly, picking at the pillow at her lap, running tassels through her fingers absently. “If we succeed at this, what then? I only know this world, this life.”

She thought of her time the year before, living at the Bartons, going to college at the local university, making connections with the other students there. Despite being of an age with each other, her life experiences alone made her feel decades older and miles apart from all of them. They had all been local kids who had gone no further than perhaps Kansas City or Chicago in their lives, to whom the world was a wide open vista. She had seen the world, from its glittering heights to its most seedy corners, and had left nothing but death and destruction in her wake. She could never live the life of a normal, average American, safe and content in a simple life, with mundane choices to make everyday. Her past had too many ghosts in it for her to ever live that easily.

“I suppose,” she finally drawled, leaning back into the couch, hugging the pillow to herself, “I could simply just stay with SHIELD, like you. I mean it is more of the same, but it’s what I know, and at least this time I am choosing to do this, choosing who I work for and how I work. I can choose to make the world a safer place, rather than work for somebody’s agenda. I mean…I guess I like the idea of doing that, saving the world rather than destroying it. I want to do that for once in my life, do something good, something that makes a difference.”

“You will,” Clint assured her, with perhaps more confidence in her than she felt. “You’ve come this far, making it out of the Red Room, away from Dreykov. After that, the sky is the limit. You can do anything.”

Anything? The idea sounded both thrilling and terrifying all at once, the idea that her life could be all her own, her choices all her own, how she chose to live it could be all her own. That said, the knowledge that Dreykov was out there, looming, threatening to take it all away if given the chance, tempered any true optimism in this. Clint may see this as being easy after all that she had come through, but Natasha could believe in nothing and trust nothing until she was certain that he was gone and that she was free.

“Come on,” Clint heaved himself up, tossing the arrowhead onto the work mat on the coffee table. “If this is our last night in town, let’s get pizza and beer.”

She suspected it was more an excuse to have his favorite local pizza in DC than it was about not having any in Europe. She knew for a fact there was really good beer and pizza in Budapest if you knew where to look, but nothing would be his beloved Tony’s. “If there is any leftover, you’re responsible for finishing it.”

“Oh, I got that covered,” he replied, cheerfully. “Cold pizza for breakfast in the morning.”

Natasha wrinkled her nose. “Americans are disgusting.”

“Well, you are one of us now, so get used to it. Besides, it’s best when it’s cold!”

“Eating habits like that, it’s a wonder that Laura ever married you,” she muttered, but tossed her pillow aside to follow him out for one last night before their mission. She just hoped they would both be able to come back home to do this again together when it was all said and done.

Chapter Text

It was strange walking into the SHIELD offices in Berlin not as a prisoner, but someone who at least in theory nominally belonged. The curious stares from the various agents they passed didn’t bother her nearly as much as the knowledge that she was on some level in the enemy camp, or at least a group that a little more than a year ago would have been considered the enemy. Still, she held her head up high, all the while letting her eyes flicker across the space, aware of her surroundings and who was watching. Honestly, she wasn’t sure if she should feel like the hunter or the hunted in this scenario.

Clint did most of the talking, as he knew most everyone there. He’d been in the office for some time earlier in his career, as had Laura, bringing the two of them together. Natasha tried to remind herself that if the Bartons had both been here, the people who worked here couldn’t be so bad. Still, she felt like a million eyes were watching her, and she hated it. They all had to know who she was and what she had done, and what she could do. Unlike her time in the FSB in Russia, when her name and identity had been hidden by Dreykov to allow her freedom of movement within the organization, SHIELD knew everything. She suddenly regretted allowing that much exposure to a group of people she didn’t know, with the sort of power SHIELD wielded, and the ability to control so much of her life.

It was only as Clint gently tapped her shoulder that she realized he’d been trying to get her attention for several moments. “Hey! Earth to Natasha!”

She blinked at him, an unspoken question on his hesitant face, as Clint jerked his head towards the woman he had come there to meet. “This is Hanna Zovak, she’s the agent on the ground in Budapest. Zovak, this is Natasha Romanoff.”

“Pleasure,” Natasha murmured, doing the formal thing of holding out her hand for the other woman to take, all the while running her own visual assessment. She was taller than Natasha, sturdier in an athletic sort of way that spoke to sports and SHIELD training without drawing too much attention to herself. Her look was a study in contrasts at the moment. While she wore the standard suit of a SHIELD agent in the office, her tidily pinned up hair was a riot of color, streaks of bright, candy-apple red and washed out blonde in what was normally warm brown, and various piercings in her ear and bottom lip. Part of her cover, Natasha guessed, maintained to keep her cover in the field, easily removed later when she returned more fully to the Berlin office.

“Zovak has been running surveillance on Dreykov from the inside,” Clint explained, though Natasha was well aware what the agent had been up to. “She will be our one point of contact with SHIELD while we are in Budapest.”

“And that only in emergencies,” Zovak confirmed, waving generally at her hair and face, her English accented, Natasha guessed by Hungarian. “I need to maintain my cover as well.”

“You're with Dreykov’s security team?” Natasha cut to the chase, her nerves already on edge just by being in the SHIELD offices at all.

If Zovak was bothered by her brusqueness, she didn’t show it. “My cover is that I’m dating one of the members of his main building security, or at least that’s what I’ve led him to believe. He’s a kid, only twenty-five, does the overnight shift with a team of four, all young guys save the manager. He’s middle aged, but doesn’t bother forcing anyone to work hard. As they are doing overnights, they are more lax than the day shift. He’s made mild complaints about me showing up, but hasn’t stopped it.”

What went unspoken was why he hadn’t stopped it, which niggled at Natasha, a loose thread that seemed uncharacteristic for Dreykov. “They just let you have free range over the office?”

“So far,” she confirmed, though it was clear she too had misgivings on that. “I am not sure if that is simply because Dreykov is so confident in the rest of his security that he doesn’t care or if this group is particularly negligent and are not worried enough about Dreykov’s reaction if he were to find out.”

Or Dreykov knew exactly what was going on and was allowing SHIELD access for reasons of his own. Natasha filed it away for now. It could prove a useful distraction later if Dreykov suspected SHIELD was up to something, directing attention away from her. “Has he been in town of late?”

“Hasn’t really left Budapest since your attempt on him in Rome,” Zovak returned, her expression neither approving or disapproving. “He’s become more paranoid and cautious, and seems to be aware you are after him. Even so, he’s not called any additional Black Widows to his aid.”

“He wouldn’t, not unless he thought I was right there.” If Dreykov suspected she was in Budapest, she could believe he’d call up others to find her. “He thinks I’m somewhere out there in the world plotting my revenge. He’s likely got them out looking for me.”

Who better to take her out than one of her fellows, after all. No one else would have a chance of doing it, really.

“I suppose that’s the idea, then, make sure he thinks you are somewhere else out there in the world, anywhere but Budapest.” Clint was leaning against a desk in the office they stood in, Natasha presumed it was Zovak’s when she was in Berlin. “Any idea what he’s been up to of late?”

“Rumor on the street is that he’s working on the bulk of the funding for the Hungarian economic infrastructure. Since they joined the EU a couple of years ago, they are focusing on bringing the country out of the Cold War and making it an economic powerhouse the same as all the other EU countries. While no one is saying it out loud, Dreykov is the one who's been pulling in the funding for a lot of that, both above the board and below it. That alone has created a safety bubble for him, he’s too valuable to too many people in that government, and knows too much for anyone to risk crossing him. That coupled with his ties through his late wife’s family mean that taking him on means also having to deal with the Hungarian government, and while I am sure SHIELD could make a case, it won’t be easy.”

“Oh, I’ve got the lecture from Pierce,” Clint returned, thoughtfully. “How close is he to his in-laws?”

“Not close enough to leverage, if that is the angle you are thinking,” Zovak replied, a sentiment Natasha concurred with. “His wife died some years ago. He’s closest with his father-in-law, Bartalan Takács, who is involved in the government, though to be honest I think it’s more of a relationship of patron and client than true family. The only known blood relation he has is his daughter, Antonia.”

That the monster had a daughter was beyond comprehension. Who would create a child with the likes of Dreykov, let alone allow him to raise a child at all. She knew what being raised by him was like, knew the unexpected sting of his anger, quick as a snake, coming out of nowhere to bring retribution, knew the fear of his displeasure for even the most minor infraction, and worse, the terror of his disappointment and desperation of his indifference. Her entire life had hinged on not only doing well, but proving herself, of showing her worth and value, because if she had none, she was disposable, easily tossed aside for the next young girl who came along. And somehow, the man who inspired that much horrible dread in Natasha was allowed to raise his own child, it felt horrible and unjust, a cruel irony that left something hard and angry sitting in her middle.

“How old is she,” Clint pressed, unaware of Natasha’s inner conflict.

“Ten, she lives with him. There is an aunt who lives with them on the property who serves as a sort of caretaker, but for the most part she is with him or at the Catholic school he has her enrolled in.”

Clint’s expression was dark and thoughtful, but he shook his head. “As much as possible, leave the kid out of it. She’s innocent in all of this, whatever her father does. I’m not in the business of hurting innocent people, and I’m not about to start now.”

Zovak nodded. “Anything you do want me on for you?”

“What you’ve been doing is fine. We won’t be able to utilize you much while there, not if we want to keep this quiet. Your cover is more valuable than that.”

“I know, but it’s not invaluable. If things get tight in there, I can break it to do what I can for you both.”

“Duly noted.” Clint’s gaze slid to Natasha’s, asking silent questions. “Anything you have to add to all of this.”

“No,” she returned, with more confidence than she actually felt. “If we are going in there, though, I’d feel better being equipped for it. If we don’t want to be tied to SHIELD, we have to go elsewhere for gear.”

“No shortage of that in Berlin,” Zovak concurred, chuckling knowingly. “The Cold War may be over, but the spy game isn’t here. Of course, officially, I don’t know those sorts of things.”

“Officially, none of us do,” Clint muttered, bemused, nodding at Natasha. “You have someone in mind?”

“You know her, or at least I think you do, since you tracked me down to Rome.”

It took him a moment longer than she would have expected to hit on whom she meant. “If she is awake this time of day, sure.”

If Zovak knew who they were referring to, she kept to herself. “Right, well, if I see you next it will be in Budapest. Same signal system as before.”

Clint knew what she meant, clearly. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

It was only when they finally made it outside of the glass and concrete structure that Natasha began to breathe fully again, and only then did she realize just how tense the entire place made her. Even Clint had noticed, watching her out of the corner of his eye. “If you are going to work for SHIELD, you need to stop looking at people as if you plan to plant your fist through their face.”

“Are you sure I’m not,” she returned, lightly. She didn’t fool him.

“Not the best way to make friends and influence people. And before you shoot back that you aren’t here to make friends, you are here to start a new life, and you can’t do that by making enemies, either.”

He wasn’t wrong, and she shook herself. The first rule of espionage was adaptability, and as a Black Widow she could become anyone that anybody wanted. It was as if a hint of freedom had caused her to forget every lesson she had ever learned about hiding and survival.

“Fair point,” she conceded, shoving her hands in the pockets of her tight-fitting, dark jeans, just presentable enough to be in an office, just casual enough to show she was still her own person outside of SHIELD. “So, we're off to find Zobel, then?”

“If she’s still going by that. When I met her years ago she was Jacqueline, a kid trying to make a go of it in Berlin.”

That wasn’t particularly uncommon in their world. The landscape of the spy game was littered with the bodies of broken and forgotten children, people who had learned how to survive the best way they knew how, and who had picked up skills that made them valuable to people like SHIELD, the CIA, MI6, and others. Some stuck around and went straight. Others, like Zobel, or whatever her name was this week, went into business for themselves, running arms, information, goods, whatever got them money. Few questions were asked and they didn’t bother too much in anyone’s affairs, and that was how they liked it. They kept the grease of the espionage game going, living by their own code of honor in a world where things like honor and honesty were as ephemeral as morning mist before the rise of the noonday sun. Natasha had a few of these types in her own back pocket, and she knew Clint did as well.

“Do you know where she came from?” In the few times Natasha had crossed Zobel’s path, she had been curious. The woman was understandably cagey, as one would have to be in her line of work. Not even her name was originally her own.

“Not clear, though she says France. I don’t think that is where she is originally from, though.”

“I wondered Africa,” Natasha mused, lightly. “Someone who got out and built up contacts of her own.”

“It’s possible,” Clint conceded, gamely. “I always wondered how she got the things she did, and perhaps she’s built chains of connections from people she knows back home. But frankly, none of it is my business. She does what she needs to do to survive and has never crossed me. Whatever reason she has, she does her job and keeps her word, and she seems to like me. I’d rather keep it that way.”

Fair enough, Natasha thought, not pressing the topic further.

Berlin had a few different “red light” districts, but few of them were that active in the middle of a respectable Berlin working day. Zobel’s nightclub was shuttered, the doors locked, the space quiet. At midnight, the space would be pounding with the sound of electronic goth music, as people swayed and writhed to the beat, caught up in an exstacy of sound, alcohol, and drugs. At three in the afternoon, however, it looked like every other shitty building there, faded and shabby, the windows shuttered up, the sidewalk stained with dark patches of what had been some sort of fluid coming out of someone’s body at some point.

They wandered down an alley and towards the back of the building, littered with trash cans and bags filled with the previous day's refuse, the brick walls around them plastered with the remains of posters for other clubs and various concerts, faded and peeling. There was a back entrance to the place, a sturdy steel door that one would have to cut through with a blow torch to get in. Above it, an anonymous looking black box hung, the camera most likely, attached to a very expensive looking security system, as Natasha remembered.

“So what are we going to do, go to the door and knock?”

“Sure,” Clint returned, off-handedly, raising his fist to pound on the heavy door. He seriously was going to do just that?

The sound thumped, dully, on the thick metal, but Natasha doubted that anyone heard inside.

“I don’t think that walking right up will just…”

“The door is made of an inch of steel, and the system is one of the more advanced I’ve seen, not to mention she usually has security there of a day keeping an eye on the place so no one gets into the illegal cash of high-end weapons she keeps in her concrete bunker downstairs. Do you have any other better suggestions as to how to get through?

“No, I don’t,” Natasha admitted, grumbling, thinking they both looked like idiots pounding on a door that would go unnoticed. “You know what they say about insanity and walls, right?”

Clint ignored her, steadily thumping the door like a drum. For a full minute this continued, Clint sticking to his idea with the defiant determination of his Midwestern American heritage, while Natasha held back, arms crossed, waiting to see if anyone bothered. Unsurprisingly, no one did.

“Well, I tried playing nice,” he sighed, wringing his probably aching hand briefly.

“I am just saying, let me loose on a window and the security system,” Natasha began, but no sooner than the words left her lips than Clint had pulled his sidearm from his left hip, aiming it with deadly accuracy right at the box above the door. The shot went off even before Natasha had time to process what he had just done.

“Oh my God, what are you doing?” The box sparked and crunched, as the camera within it likely exploded into bits, the red light that had indicated it was on now blinking off, darkly.

“Getting their attention,” Clint returned, smirking, returning his gun to his side, watching the door expectantly. Sure enough, within seconds, a wiry man with a shaved head and nondescript clothing poked his head out, glaring at Clint.

“The hell, mate?” His London accent cut aggressively as he scowled at the completely nonplussed Clint. “It ain’t business hours!”

“When has that stopped anyone from stopping by here? Is Zobel in?”

“What’s it to you?”

Natasha cut in, arching an eyebrow pointedly as she shrugged, as cool as Clint in the moment. “Two high paying customers, here to see your boss, and you don’t think she wouldn’t want to be woken in the middle of her beauty rest for the likes of us?”

That gave the fellow pause. “She didn’t tell me anyone was expected.”

“We weren’t,” Clint replied, waving towards the door. “Now, can we come in, or are we going to air her business for everyone in Berlin to hear?”

Deciding the best course of action would be to let them in before Clint shot up anything else, the man stood aside, but not happily. Clint’s eyes slid to Natasha’s before he waved a gentlemanly hand to allow ladies to go first. Natasha wasn’t fooled. He was giving her point, knowing her reaction times would be best in a semi-dark, enclosed space should anything decide to attack out of nowhere while he covered her back. Clever, and she went with it. Nothing surprising met them, however, though Natasha did notice even more cameras in the corners. They were being watched at least.

“This way,” the man grumbled, moving around them and leading them down the hallway filled with back boxes of alcohol and supplies to the stairs that led to Zobel’s private rooms. Few got into those places, as Zobel was known for her discernment. Natasha supposed she and Clint rated some level of respect from her, though it was likely more for Clint than herself. She’d only crossed the arms dealer a few times, mostly for very specific things - information, primarily, but she always had neat and interesting weapons that caught Natasha’s eye. She’d never introduced herself by her real name. She supposed this would be a first, then, connecting with a contact as herself. The idea left her surprisingly nervous. One didn’t survive in this world by making oneself vulnerable. Equally, one didn’t survive unless you built some sort of relationship of respect with people you connected with, a level of trust, however thin or finite that trust might be. In the Red Room she’d at least had the resources Dreykov built for them to fall back on. In the world outside of that, she had to learn, as Clint had, how to build up her ties and networks with give and take. She would be perhaps a bit more open, but never too trusting.

Zobel’s apartments were surprisingly spacious, cool and inviting in shades of green, turquoise, and cream. It caught Natasha at a bit of a surprise. The woman she knew was many things - a nightclub owner who reveled in the neo-Gothic/Punk scene that never fully went away in Berlin, a flirtatious collector of rumors and innuendo she would sell or trade on the open market with all manner of spies, a businesswoman who dealt in black market weapons that few others could get their hands on. What Natasha had never expected was a woman who liked comfortable things such as soft rugs and paintings of waterfalls and winding streams. Everything about her private space spoke of a home of sorts, but not one that Natasha would have expected for the likes of Zobel. A grim space with a bed, a pile of clothes, a go bag for a quick exit, sure, but not a collection of small figurines that looked to be central African in origin.

“Look,” she whispered to Clint, tugging at his sleeve to get his attention turned towards the couch. “She has throw pillows!”

It was worth it to get a snort out of Clint.

If their guide heard her, he ignored it. “She’ll be out in a second. Try not to break anything.”

With that he left in a huff, most likely off to fix the camera Clint had broken. The minute he was gone, Natasha wandered to snag the closest throw pillow, made of some sort of soft wool, with a hand-stitched design in silver threading on the front. “These are nice.”

She didn’t need to see Clint’s eye-roll to know he did it. “Want to ask her for home decorating tips?”

“Maybe, I don’t know much about it.” She’d never had a home to decorate or the urge to do it. Not for herself at least. Depending on what sort of persona she had on at any given moment, some were more into that sort of thing than others, with definite likes and dislikes. But what she, Natasha Romanoff, liked was much harder to say. She was still figuring that part out.

“I got it from a place I know in Paris,” came the response, a melodious, smooth alto, with a mixture of a French accent and something undefinable. Natasha turned to Zobel, standing in comfortable cotton trousers and a matching top in solid creams, rather than the leather dominatrix gear she usually sported for evenings running the club. Even in off hours in what was clearly her lounging clothes, without the makeup and styled hair she normally wore when Natasha had seen her, she was striking. Tall and with the sort of facial structure she’d only seen on runways and magazine covers, Zobel turned heads, something she used to her advantage when dealing with clients. Few were the women who made Natasha feel small and young, but this woman managed to do it.

“You owe me a new camera, Barton,” she continued, dark eyes cutting to Clint.

“I’ll send you a nice one,” he returned, lazily, clearly not intimidated by her ire.

His lazy charm didn’t assuage her annoyance. Given the hours she kept, Natasha could guess she’d likely been sleeping. “What sort of madman goes around shooting up places anyway?”

“In this day and age, lots of them apparently.”

Her nose wrinkled in disdain as she wandered to throw herself in one of the armchairs, still looking as graceful as Natasha on her best day. “Perhaps in America where you all think everyone needs a gun for reasons. In civilized places, we knock.”

“I did knock and no one answered.”

“Then that should have told you we are closed for business, which we are.” Her scowl was one of annoyance, but not true anger. Clearly, Clint was one of those precious few Zobel liked enough to let into this space and whose antics she would tolerate.

“I got good money and I’m here to spend it with you!” He cheerfully settled in one of the other arm chairs, leaving the couch for Natasha. “I’d rather help out a friend than give it to someone I barely know.”

She could see Zobel calculating that. “Going off the grid, then?”

Clint’s grin only got wider when she figured that out. “You know me well.”

She hummed in response before casting a curious glance Natasha’s way. “So who are we going by this week? Are you still American?”

“No,” Natasha returned, recognizing how complicated even this answer was to give. “No, I’m myself today. My name is Natasha Romanova. Technically, I’m Russian.”

She could tell the other woman recognized the name, her eyes widening just a fraction in her dark face. “Technically, you are in a great deal of trouble.”

That was the understatement of the year. “Tell me about it.”

Zobel shook head, black curls waving as she stared at Clint. “Seriously, you brought a renegade Black Widow here?”

Clint waved a negligent hand. “I thought you liked her!”

“I do,” she returned, turning back to stare at Natasha. “Girl, there is a lot of word out on the street on you. I heard you were in Madripoor, getting in good with the power players there.”

“No,” Natasha chuffed, having heard most of the rumors about her whereabouts, few of which were anywhere close to accurate. “Though I’m personally fond of the one that I’m working with the Ten Rings.”

“I knew that one wasn’t true,” Zobel waved it off, dismissively. “They’ve not been the same the last few years, and I’ve heard rumors of destabilization in the chains of command. I just didn’t think that the scrawny kid who came in here looking to take on world leaders was a Black Widow.”

Natasha cocked her head, curious. “What did you think Black Widows looked like?”

“Judging by the stories, either innocent little girls or femme fatales out of old spy movies, hard to say.”

“I could be either of those, if you want.”

Something indecipherable flashed across the other woman’s face, quickly hidden again. Instead she chose to grace them both with a wide smile. “You’re right, Barton, I do like her. So you are heading off the grid. What do you want out of me?”

“Ammo, weapons, the untraceable kind, maybe something I can use for my arrows.”

“I may have some things,” she returned, airily, eyeing Clint with all of the shrewdness of the information barterer she was. “But I suspect you want something else, besides.”

Clint’s eyes flickered towards her, a world of silent questions in them. She could say no, play this close to the vest and suggest they get by on their own. But he was the one preaching that she had to start learning how to trust people. With the barest hint of a nod, she acquiesced.

“What do you have on Anton Dreykov?” All charm melted into a quiet seriousness that Clint had forgone thus far in chatting with Zobel. The other woman sensed this, straightening in her seat.

“You do get yourself in the worst sort of fixes, Barton.” Her full mouth thinned, primly. “He’s not one I’d want to tangle with.”

“I agree, but I don’t think we have a choice.”

Of course he had a choice, Natasha thought, her common sense warring with the growing warmth and affection rising within her. Clint had a choice, she didn’t. That he was there despite everything he was putting at risk by doing would never not equally baffle, aggravate, and relieve her. She would much rather he chose to stay with Laura and the kids, far away from this madness, and yet here he was, helping her fight this. If they managed this, the two of them, it would be a debt that she would never be able to completely pay back.

Zobel sighed, seeming to sense their grave determination. “I’m sure you know all the basic stuff, then, no?”

This question was directed at Natasha. “We know he’s in Budapest, we know where he’s at, and we know about his operations and who is close to him.” She tried to once again not dwell on the idea that he had a daughter.

“You know he hasn’t left the country in a year,” Zobel returned. “Not since your little incident in Rome, by the way. How was the rifle?”

“I didn’t get to use it,” she replied. “That’s all right, I’ll use it for something else, I am sure. We know he’s not left?”

“He’s been doing all of his business remotely. Even his connections in Russia have had to come to him. You know the FSB is split against him?”

“They have been for a while.” She was all too aware of that. She herself had been in the FSB, one of Dreykov’s plants, said to be old enough to be an agent, in actuality barely more than a child. Still, she heard and saw the lines being drawn in the Russian intelligence agency in regards to Dreykov, who many considered to be using his influence to turn the agency into an extension of his own personal interests, which of course he was. She’d fled before any major action could be taken against him, however, and had deliberately cut herself off from the agency she had been raised in.

“The tide is turning against him there. People feel he’s too busy with his own affairs and not the agency’s. Word is the Russian President is going to quietly order him to be removed from his position there. Anyone tied to him will likely either be asked to quietly resign or be forced out.”

That was a surprise. “They are cleaning house?”

“So they say.” Zobel lifted her elegant shoulders, qualifying her story. “He’s doubling down on his entrenchment in Budapest. He’s moving many of his assets, shifting some of his personal guard there, and is looking to sell some of his Russian properties. He’s tied to someone in the Hungarian government through marriage, and they are offering him property and tax breaks there in exchange for him serving in an advisory capacity to their own security forces.”

“And what about the Red Room,” Natasha found herself blurting, the memory of Yelena’s tear-stained and grubby face as she was being pulled away from her flashing in her mind. “What is to become of it?”

Here Zobel had no ready answer, only a grim look of uncertainty. If anything underscored her need to do this, the urgency in removing Dreykov, it was that sad, pained expression on the other woman’s face. Dreykov in a NATO country, with ties to the West and the wealth, power, and influence there, he could expand in ways no one would have dreamed, and collaborate to hide every one of his crimes. The idea of her fellow Widows, conditioned and controlled by Dreykov, in places like the CIA or even the US government among others left her horrified. Not only could he personally topple governments and control governments, every one of the women like her would be trapped there, unable to do anything to thwart him, and with his allies, they would be unable to get help to do it.

Perhaps sensing the gravity of what this all meant, Zobel rose, slowly. “Come on, let’s see what I have in my stash you both can find useful. I have a feeling if you mean to do what I think you mean to do, you will need all the firepower you can get, and stuff that won’t get linked by the Hungarian security forces to SHIELD. No?”

With a jerk of her head, she led them out, waving Clint ahead to the door. He did as he was bid, Clint didn’t look as if he was about to cross Zobel in her own home, stepping out even as Zobel lingered, laying a staying, elegant hand on Natasha’s shoulder. She glanced towards the door before speaking, her voice soft, her French near perfect. “Barton is treating you well, then? You feel safe?”

Natasha stopped, surprised by the intense concern and warmth out of so regal a woman. “Yes, I’m safe. Safer than I have ever been.”

She hadn’t known she could ever feel that way in her life, not really.

For Zobel, this seemed to be enough. Her mouth turned upwards, not in charm or calculation, in honest understanding. “He’s one of the good ones, Barton. You don’t find that often in our business.”

Natasha said nothing, only jerking her head in understanding. She thought of the various people she saw Clint help - the man there in Berlin who had his own garage thanks in part to Clint’s patronage, Zobel who he’d tried to help out even though she was clearly capable, even the concern he showed for Agent Zovak in her undercover mission. It was rare to find someone in this dark world who had heart.

Zobel’s austere beauty melted, somewhat, into something kind, even understanding.

“Bast ukukhusele kumzamo wakho, dade omncinci,” she murmured, gently, in a musical, clicking tongue that Natasha didn’t understand, but could guess was perhaps a piece of her homeland she carried with her. It felt like a prayer of benediction, and unexpectedly brought tears to Natasha’s eyes.

“Thank you,” she whispered back, finding she had to look away as Zobel patted her cheek, gently.

“Right,” she breathed, straightening once again, the persona of Zobel the dealer slipping back on like a second skin as she stepped into the hall and Clint’s expectant expression. “Why is it, Clint Barton, you insist on using a weapon that they invented in the stone age?”

If Clint was worried about their delay lingering at the door, he hid it, sparing only a brief glance to check on Natasha. “Why mess with the classics? If it worked for them then, it works now.”

“You know the Tony Starks and Justin Hammers of this world would disagree with you,” she retorted, leading the way past boxes and milk crates. As she did so, Clint fell in step behind her, casually, ready to watch her six.

Natasha ignored the glow that rose within her, knowing she had someone watching her back.

Chapter Text

The plan was to split up and each head into Budapest alone. They would meet there again, in a space Laura had contracted for them through connections she had from her Berlin days. Natasha headed out first, early in the morning, before the sun was up, as Clint still snored lightly on the couch of the safe house they had crashed at. She had insisted he take the bed, but he had refused just as stubbornly, and when the unstoppable force of Natasha met the moveable object of Clint’s determination, she had given in rather than fight it. He’d wanted her to wake him up before she left, but she left him to sleep, twisted on the tiny sofa like a pretzel, leaving a note for him on the coffee table before she went. She’d have her burner phone on her if he needed to reach her.

Her walk through the pearly gray of dawn was uneventful, as was her ridiculously long train ride from Germany to Hungary, winding through the mountains, cutting through Slovakia and Sokovia, coming out in Hungary. It gave her time to think and dwell on what she was planning on doing, or at least trying to do. Kill Dreykov…she might as well say she was planning on killing a dragon or going to another planet, so ridiculous did that notion even sound. Dreykov had long been the looming presence in her life, even when he wasn’t there she could feel his heavy hand on her shoulder, pushing her, directing her, forcing her to move and act in every way he wanted. It didn’t matter if she really wanted to kill that person, or sleep with this one, or take the data that could endanger the lives of so many, or start a conflict that could topple an entire government and plunge an entire country into bloodshot and war. What she wanted had never mattered. She only understood that, really, that horrific morning on the tarmac in Cuba, Melina’s blood staining her fingers, the Russian-made gun trembling in her tiny hand. Dreykov had watched, torn between annoyance and delight. She knew then, as Alexei kneeled in front of her and tried to sooth away the fact that they were being entrapped again, that her life would never be her own again, that Dreykov would own her completely.

She arrived as the late summer sun was lowering towards the horizon in the west, painting the gilded city of Budapest in gold. She stepped off the train into the bustle of rush hour pedestrians, moving to and fro onto trains, headed home from a day of work somewhere in the city. She’d chosen her outfit for the journey carefully. The movie trope of wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses that somehow made one inconspicuous was laughably silly. One dressed in such a way as to appear to be that which people expected or wanted to see, so they didn’t dwell on you. With that in mind, she decided to lean into being one of the crowd, a college age student, perhaps coming into town for the university. She wore the standard young person uniform for that demographic; comfortable jeans, a soft t-shirt, and a hoodie, light enough to wear in the cool of the evening and not draw suspicion. Her bright red hair, highly recognizable to anyone that Dreykov had looking, she covered in a wig of warm brown hair a shade or two lighter than Clint’s, which she pulled messily into a bun, the sort of casually scattered look of the average university student. Had her friends at Truman State back in Missouri had seen her they’d have not been able to pick her out from any of the other sleepy-eyed students in the student union. She completed the look with a pair of headphones on her ears, the sort that young people seemed to wear ubiquitously. While it appeared to be plugged into a music device, in reality it listened in on the conversations around her, allowing her to hear what was being said, relevant to her or not. It gave her some sense of comfort as she walked through the streets, backpack slung over her shoulders, duffle in hand, making her way through the city, eyes scanning from building to building as she attempted to look as bored and unconcerned as possible. Despite her unaffected manner as she traipsed from the train station to the apartment, she felt every nerve in her body tingle with the feeling of hundreds of eyes and the warning of thousands of threats. This was Dreykov’s city, where he lived, at the center of his wicked web of intrigue and power, threatening to close in on her if she didn’t dance through this carefully. It left her nervous and unsettled under her own skin as she outwardly projected not having a care in the world or a thought in her head. Thankfully, no one bothered her or even looked twice her way, which was the point. She was not anyone that she wanted people remembering.

It was only when she made it inside the door of the modest space that she finally let her guard down, exhaling on a loud sigh as she set her bags down before triple checking the locks on the door. Secure in the knowledge that no one would be busting in before she could have her weapons on them, she moved across the tiny living room to flop on the sofa, the relief of being “safe” tingling in her muscles as she felt herself finally sag into the cushions. She sat, staring at nothing for long moments, listening to the strange place with all of its noises - the people downstairs, the neighbors across the way, the traffic on the street - before pulling out her phone to check on Clint. He’d left Berlin two hours behind her, staggering their movements. He’d texted when he left, perfunctory and business like. Her best guess, he would be in later in the evening, which gave her time to sweep the place for threats in security.

She combed every inch of the space, placing scramblers and other devices they’d picked up in Berlin to help protect their movements, before taking a shower, peeling off the wig and scrubbing her scalp. She’d just finished and was sitting on the couch in comfortable clothes, combing her hair, when scuffing noises sounded at the door. Without thought, she reached for the gun sitting on the cushion beside her, until the tap of fingers in a specific rhythm told her who it was trying to get in.

Clint made it through, a pack on his back as big as her, and a bag of food that made her stomach gurgle with the scent, as she realized she’d not eaten really all day. He looked as if he’d spend the weekend hiking the nearby mountains, which, she supposed, was the whole point. Even his quiver and arrows were wrapped up to look like a sleeping bag and mat, and she could guarantee there were more than energy bars and granola tucked into the side pockets of his hiking pants.

He eyed her, the gun on the sofa beside her, and paused. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah,” she tossed off, hoping it sounded casual, despite the fact she felt anything but. “What did you bring for dinner?”

“Paprikash!” He held up the bag filled with take away boxes. “A few other things, too, there’s a place I found last time I like.”

Natasha knew the spot, had watched him pick up food before when they were in their own cat and mouse game. “Smells good. How was the trip?”

“Uneventful,” he called back, happily, dropping his bag in one of the two bedrooms, before wandering back with the foot to deposit it in the kitchen. “Yours?”

“Same,” she assured him, despite the twitchiness she felt in her limbs, the itch of being in the same city as Dreykov. “At least no one popped out from an alley to try and surprise me.”

His snort and laughter from the other room lightened the mood. “Did you really think someone would?”

“No, but you see that in movies, so I always wondered if that was a thing.”

“Not in my experience,” he assured her, washing his hands before pulling out boxes of food and plates from the cupboard. It was moments like these she remembered Clint was a grown up, a real one who could feed himself and children, even as he planned assassinations and managed dark ops missions. The idea of food hadn’t really even crossed her mind. She rose as fluidly as she could manage, wandering in to watch him dish up the creamy, bright red paprikash alongside buttered noodles, nothing fancy and certainly no frills. She accepted her plate gratefully, grabbing a bottle of water as she waited on him to follow into the living area, settling into her spot as he situated himself in the only other area of the room with good sight lines to the doors and windows.

“I left a message for Zovak on my way here, using our usual method of contact. That way she knows we arrived.”

Natasha nodded, chewing on stewed chicken and rich sauce before speaking. “Did you let Laura know?”

He nodded, pulling from his water. “She sends her love. She says be careful.”

They were in Budapest, Dreykov’s lair. How could they be anything but?

“Laura always loved Budapest,” Clint continued to mused around a mouthful of sauce and noodles. “We visited here once on a mission and a couple of times on get aways.”

“I always liked it,” she admitted, relaxing with food and the security of Clint’s presence in the place. “I didn’t come here much when I was an active Black Widow, but the few times I did I thought it would be a nice place to settle. It’s got that nineteenth century charm, all the pretty old buildings and little markets. Nicer than Soviet brutalism.”

Clint was not a fan of architecture or art, clearly, as he seemed indifferent to her musings. “It’s all right, think I’m too much of a small town boy to ever like living in a major city for very long. It’s an occupational necessity, not a lifestyle choice.”

Having spent the last year out at the Bartons’ farm in Missouri, Natasha had a hard time seeing him anywhere else but there, even though she knew he had spent large swaths of time in places like Berlin, New York, and Washington DC. Somehow he just seemed more himself in the farmhouse he had practically rebuilt himself, in his worn and rusting barn where he puttered with his tools, driving his pickup truck on the back country roads that wound like a ribbon of asphalt through the North Missouri farmland. It was hard to remember, sometimes, given his every man, regular guy persona, that Clint was a worldly operative, who’d been in this game nearly twice as long as Natasha.

They ate for several moments in silence, each lost in thought. It was Clint who broke it with idle speculation. “So, why Budapest?”

It caught Natasha off guard, unclear what he was asking. “Why I wanted to live in Budapest?”

“I mean, sure,” he admitted, waving his fork as if using it to draw a direct line from that question to his line of unspoken thought. “But why did Dreykov chose Budapest? He had a good thing in Moscow. Why leave?”

She could answer the latter more easily than the former. “Moscow was getting too hot, too complicated. You heard Zobel, he’s getting pushed out of the FSB. It was one thing when the Soviets were in charge and he had cronyism to fall back on. He’s less close with the current leadership, and that’s by design. He’s interested in broadening his scope beyond the Kremlin, especially with the West. Budapest is the perfect spot for that. It sits halfway between geographically and politically. He can still keep an eye on his interests in Russia and a finger in the politics there without having to establish intermediaries, while at the same time Hungary’s involvement with the EU and NATO links them to the West, which gives him the perfect excuse. His ties here allow him to get access to others he didn’t have when he was an ex-Soviet general tied to the FSB.”

“Convenient that he found a wife here, then, to keep him tied down.”

That had rather boggled her mind as well, though considering how Dreykov treated women and spoke of them in private, she didn’t think romance had anything to do with it. “I was shocked when I found out about it. I never met her, only heard about her. She was dead by the time I came out of the Red Room. I heard cancer and it took her fast. If he was sad about it or mourned her, I wouldn’t know.”

“I somehow doubt it,” Clint returned, grimly, perhaps comparing what he knew of Dreykov to the relationship he had with his own beloved wife. “You said they married to seal the deal between him and her family.”

“I’m guessing, but I don’t know. Perhaps under it all, Dreykov is secretly a romantic.”

Even Clint didn’t believe that one. “I think there was more dynasty than passion involved in that marriage.”

Natasha couldn’t disagree. “I think they thought it was a clever way to keep him beholden to the political powers here. Jokes on them, though, because Dreykov doesn’t like to be beholden to anyone. I’m surprised he’s stuck around them this long.”

“Likely because of his daughter,” Clint returned, finishing off his last bite of food as he continued. “No one to take care of her, they are at least family, it’s convenient.”

Somehow the notion of Dreykov caring enough about the girl to want to keep her near family seemed foreign. “I suppose.”

Clint studied her for a long moment, setting his now empty plate aside. “Does it bother you that he has a daughter?”

She wasn’t sure how to answer that.

“I don’t know. I think I was more shocked when I heard it, a monster having a child.” She stared down at her plate, finding her appetite for paprikash and noodles quickly waning. “I suppose I feel more sorry for her than anything.”

“Because she is Dreykov’s daughter?”

“Yes,” she shrugged, setting aside her plate. “Because of who her father is, the monster he is. Even if he treats her differently, sees her differently, she’s still there, caught up in his web, having to deal with his intrigues. She isn’t a Black Widow, so she won’t ever quite be a tool and weapon like us, but she will still be a pawn in any schemes of her father’s. My guess is she will be spoiled and groomed, then be sold off to someone Dreykov wants to ensnare in his sphere, just like her mother probably was, like some medieval lord selling of his daughter to bribe his neighboring warlord. She won’t get a choice, no more than any of the rest of us did.”

In the end that was always the way with Dreykov. The girls and women he controlled were never people in his mind, not in any real sense. They represented potentiality, as weapons, as tools, as the means by which he could control governments, blackmail enemies, woo powerful governments, and make the world spin how he wanted. Antonia would simply be another strand in his web, another means by which he could further his own goals, nothing more or less.

Clint whistled, slouching into the chair, staring thoughtfully up at the ceiling. “Can’t be easy being his kid. Beyond having to put up with his attempts at world domination, she has to walk around with a bevy of security guards and a target on her head. For a ten-year-old to carry that has to be a nightmare.”

Natasha knew he was thinking of Cooper and Lila back home, barely more than babies still. Clint would never put his children in that sort of danger, Natasha knew that, but he wasn’t Dreykov. She had no idea how he treated his only daughter, but she knew one thing, his kin she may be, but if she was little use to him, he’d write her off as easily as he did anything that didn’t serve him. Anyone who thought he cared for her as his daughter and blood was fooling themselves. He may dote on her now, but she highly doubted that when push came to shove he would shed many tears over her death.

“If anything happened to her, he may use that as a pretext to destroy someone else, I suppose.” She would grant Dreykov that much, he rarely allowed an opportunity for revenge to go unsatisfied. “At the end of the day Dreykov doesn’t care about anyone or anything except himself. Not even his own daughter merits that sort of devotion out of him.”

It was a horrifying and foreign concept to Clint, she knew, who would lay down his own life for his kids without blinking, without hesitation. She wished she could say the same about all fathers. She didn’t even know her own father to know if he would have ever done the same for her. Natasha doubted it. What little she knew of her birth parents, which was practically next to nothing, she knew that whoever gave birth to her didn’t care enough to bother keeping her. She’d always assumed her mother was little more than a young mother, maybe a teenager, maybe older, but certainly someone who didn’t want to care for an infant and was more than happy to give her away to someone who would take care of the problem for her. Chances were high that her biological father, whoever he was, was likely no better, perhaps a deadbeat boyfriend or worse. Whatever the case, neither were ever there to stand up for Natasha. The closest she had was Alexei, and even he had sold her out, handing her back to Dreykov without a second thought, even as she cried and begged on that balmy Cuban tarmac.

No…not every father was as good of a father as Clint Barton, and considering who his own father had been, it was a miracle he was as good as he was.

“You know,” she pointed out, dryly. “When Cooper and Lila get to be teenagers, you can maybe use this as an example of how you really are the perfect father in comparison to some others.”

Clint chuffed, scrubbing his face. “Honestly, that’s like comparing me to Hitler and telling Laura I’m a great husband in comparison to that guy.”

“Well, it’s not an untrue statement.”

“No,” he admitted, softly. “I wish you had a better family.”

God, but Natasha did too.

“I don’t know, I stumbled onto you guys. You aren’t so bad.”

“You say that now, but wait till I redo some other part of the house and Laura is about to kill me because we are still missing a wall.”

“I look forward to that!”

Which was more than she could say for this mission, she mused, curling into her seat, contemplating what lay ahead and all that she needed to do in order to get out, to be free once and for all.

Chapter Text

The problem with the spy game was that you could never be too sure what the other side knew about you and what they were even aware of. For days they laid low in their borrowed apartment, watching out windows, creeping out for food, and generally annoying each other by being cramped in a small space together without leaving it, all to assure that no one, least of all Dreykov, was aware of their presence.

“I sent a message through channels to Zovak,” Clint said a week later, when Natasha had snapped in frustration that they’d been there for days without progress."Just to get a feel for what Dreykov may or may not be aware of.”

As before when she had hidden in the city, watching Dreykov’s movements, it felt as if his eyes were everywhere. They weren’t, and as far as Natasha knew he hadn’t been any more aware of her there then than he was now, but her skin itched with it. It was a double-edged sword, however, the longer they waited to make sure, the more she simply wanted to move and be done with it.

Another day later Zovak had returned a message through whatever means she and Barton had set up. As far she could tell, Dreykov didn’t appear to be aware of Natasha’s presence in the city. His security detail, while considerable, hadn’t changed or been modified, and there were no calls for a search of a woman meeting Natasha’s description. For the moment, at least, they seemed relatively safe.

“This is good news,” Clint reminded her as she took the information with the same sort of grim acceptance she would a bullet to her leg. “It means we have some time to work and plan without looking over our shoulder.”

He was right, but it did little to reassure her. “I wonder if he knows SHIELD has taken an interest in him.”

“Maybe,” Clint shrugged, supremely unconcerned as reviewed whatever it was that Zovak sent him. “Though in fairness he should be thanking us.”

That gave her pause. “Thanking you?”

“Sure,” he returned, half-distracted. “As far as he knows we were the ones that scared you off in Rome. He likely assumes we are looking for you, too, and not that we’ve recruited you. Even if he suspects SHIELD is looking at him, he probably thinks it is in regards to you. It’s in his interests to ignore us and let us run in circles trying to catch you. We are doing his job for him.”

The wheels within wheels in missions like these, she mused. Dreykov likely was arrogant enough to assume that SHIELD wouldn’t dare touch him, preferring her as a target instead. He wouldn’t be precisely wrong, SHIELD had wanted her first, but not for the reasons anyone would expect. The idea that SHIELD would actually want her for herself because she was good and they recognized that would never cross Dreykov’s mind. It would require him to see her as someone worthwhile rather than disposable.

She cut off this line of thinking and the old familiar rabbit hole, turning away from her watch at the windows towards Clint. “So does your Zovak have anything to say on how we can get close to him?”

His frustrated grimace broadcast that there didn’t look like much. “She confirmed what we already know. His entire house is swept everyday, same with the office, even the buildings across the street. She is mildly surprised that his daughter is even let out of the house to go to school.”

Natasha was less surprised by that. “Keeping up appearances. If he keeps her home, then that shows he’s afraid, a sign of weakness. Having her go shows he’s not afraid of anyone coming at him, me or anyone else.”

Clint's expression turned hard, his mouth pulled into a firm line of disgust and disagreement. “Using his kid as a shield?”

“I wish I could say that was the worst thing about him, but no.” Natasha knew that better than most.

“Well, we have a conundrum. How are we supposed to get close to him?”

That was the question Natasha had been asking for two years. “I don’t know. I tried in Rome. That was the best shot I had, and likely the best shot anyone ever will have. Dreykov isn’t going to allow himself to be that open again.”

For all that she gained from Clint staying her hand that day in Rome, the sad truth was that she lost that chance as well. She could have pulled the trigger, likely should have, but she may not have made it out of Rome alive. Still, it might have been worth it, knowing he was going to go to hell with her.

Evidently, Clint was thinking of that day as well as he frowned at her. “Your life isn’t worth his.”

She could likely make an argument, but chose not to, shrugging lazily. “I could have taken him in Rome. It was the only chance I had, really, getting him from a distance like that. He’s too careful with anything up close to him. He has his family checked out before they see him. His food is even tested before he eats it. Anyone standing guard around him is conditioned not to harm him.”

Clint’s frown deepened, mildly horrified. “Conditioned?”

She knew he was aware of it, it wasn’t as if she made a big secret of it, but it was a far different situation confronting the truth of how Dreykov kept his forces docile and himself protected. “His own personal guards won’t turn on him. He conditions their loyalty and protection. They may not love him, but they won’t turn on him.”

“He treats them like the Black Widows?”

“No,” she shot back. His personal guard, for all they were employees, were still people in Dreykov’s mind. “But it is the same idea. They won’t attack him.”

Clint knew, of course, what she had been through, what Dreykov’s team had done to all of them. Years of psychological training, coupled with drug therapy and both positive and negative reinforcement had been a defining part of their training. The first thing they were taught was to never bite the hand that fed them.

“Our best bet is to do a range attack,” she finally offered, after several long moments. “Something we can execute from far away, but which will get the job done. A sniper won’t be able to cut it, I don’t think. That’s what he expects and prepares for. I had my one shot in Rome. I don’t believe we will get that here.”

Clint winced but wasn’t sorry. Somehow she didn’t think he ever would be, and that warmed her heart, somewhat, knowing what he did to get her out of the spiral she was determined to fall down. He merely held up his hands in concession. “Fine, no arrow through the throat or bullet to the back of his head from another building. What do we got?”

Natasha considered. “Poisons are an option. He does check his food, but if we administered something hard to trace, we could maybe get away with it.” She had done it before on other targets, but she’d had more access to them to manage it.

Clint mulled that one over for a few minutes. “Possible, but hard to figure out how to get it to him. Does he have known medical conditions?”

“A Russian man his age and weight, living his lifestyle and diet, of course he does,” Natasha snorted. “Any one of them could be exploited. I doubt his heart giving out would cause anyone to think twice about it.”

“And how would you do that without getting close and ensuring the job was done? I don’t think the classic ‘stabbing him with a poisoned umbrella’ trick will work in this instance, nor will lacing objects he handles. He’s too careful for that.”

Therein lay the question, she recognized, and it wasn’t an easy answer.

“Short of paying off or bribing someone, I don’t know.” While there was likely no shortage of people who would happily take on the job if they could be assured it worked and that they could walk away from it alive, without that certainty Natasha knew no one would risk agreeing to it, and they couldn’t risk bringing another into the circle who could risk exposing them or their plans. It was a powerful reminder just how alone they were in this mission.

“So poisons are out,” she sighed, slipping from the window of their safehouse to flop on a chair opposite of where Clint sat, throwing her legs over one of the arms and hanging her head over the other one, turning her mind over for ideas. “SHIELD doesn’t have a super secret death ray in some global space station somewhere, does it?”

It at least earned a laugh out of Clint. “Someone’s been watching too much James Bond lately.”

“I’m a fan of fantasy,” she mused, snickering, unapologetic in her love of bad Cold War spy movies. “I never got anything as fun as an evil mastermind wanting to wipe out humanity to create a master race or trying to break into Fort Knox and steal the gold reserves.”

“What do you mean, that happens to me every six months or so,” Clint snickered as he ran a hand down his face, scrubbing it tiredly. “No, if we had something we could use, we’d have done it already and spared the hassle of sending you and me in. We are the special space laser, I guess.”

“Pity,” she huffed, dramatically. “Alexei always said the West was cool and plotting all sorts of secret and horrible things that Russia would never do. Considering what I know Russia would do, I imagined it had to be particularly awful.”

“I can’t say we don’t have something shameful and horrific in some bunker somewhere, but not that I am aware of. Definitely nothing that would secretly take out a highly ranked ex-Russian operative tied deeply into the Hungarian government, at least.”

Natasha swung her legs, disconsolately, considering. “Nothing range, nothing up close, how about something remote?”

Up went one of Clint’s eyebrows, curiously. “Such as?”

It hit her with the sort of firm clarity that made her consider why she hadn’t thought of it before. “A bomb.”

A myriad of emotions flickered over Clint’s expression as he considered, from careful deliberation to cautious worry. “How big are we talking here?”

“As localized as possible,’ she offered, the idea spinning out as she played it in her mind. “Pick a time of day without a huge civilian presence to cut down the collateral damage. Keep it limited to one area - his house, his office, whatever - and try to make it so that it’s not so powerful that it destroys the entire city block in order to keep non-targeted casualties to a minimum. Tie it to any number of realistic terrorist threats so that the public will assume it is one of them and not come looking at SHIELD.”

It was risky, frankly, because to do something like that would require perfect timing and the ability to get something explosive under Dreykov’s nose, but it would work. If she could get it close enough to him, there would be no walking away from that, not for him at least. Chances were high that some of his closest protection would likely go with him, but she could live with that at night if it meant that she was free from him, if Yelena was free from him. Perhaps Natasha could finally rest knowing she was had managed to break that chain that bound off of them to the horrors of the Red Room and freed them of their cycle of death and destruction.

Clint clearly wasn’t as convinced, and not without reason. “I don’t like the idea of something that dangerous. We blow up buildings, people get hurt beyond Dreykov, and the Hungarian government will be justifiably pissed, not to mention the families of anyone we hurt through this.”

“I know!” She wasn’t so cold hearted not to be aware of this…at least not anymore. Now she was painfully aware of the collateral damage she left behind, like broken toys strewn in her wake. Before, she wouldn’t have cared. Now…

She shifted, sitting up to regard Clint head on. “Look, call in Zovak if you can, see if we can get at least one meeting with her. She’s the inside man at the moment and has insight on how we could make this work.”

He didn’t like it, she knew he didn’t, for a number of reasons, especially because they weren’t supposed to be calling Zovak but sparingly. Still, he nodded, with a heaving sigh. “Fine, I’ll see when we can get her in. It may take a bit to keep her cover.”

That wasn’t anything unusual in their game. “I’ve been waiting this long, haven’t I?”

It felt like she had been waiting forever.

Clint’s only response was a grim-faced smile.

Chapter Text

Three days later they met Zovak at an apartment on the Pest side of the city, a block away from a strip of restaurants, bars, and nightclubs. Natasha kept her hood up, despite the wig covering her red hair and the glasses covering half her face. She had no idea whose eyes were watching as she and Clint wended through the crowds of tourists wandering through trendy eateries and watering holes, to the address Zovak had given them. She felt every eye on her, whether they were or not, but kept her chin down and her senses on alert as she brushed past giggling, drunken women and boasting, intoxicated men, gliding past those stumbling along smelling of beer, sweat, and cigarette smoke. No sooner had she moved past them then she slipped into the shadows, checking who followed them. No one even so much as looked interested.

“Come on,” Clint hissed, softly, into the darkness. Natasha fell silently into step behind him. Zovak’s directions had them meeting in a back unit, and up the back steps of a building that housed some sort of restaurant. They clambered up the wooden staircase as quietly as one could with older buildings, Clint tapping the door at the top with a particular rhythm that must have been some signal to Zovak. For several seconds no one answered.

The door opened a crack, and in Hungarian she asked “Can I help you?”

Clint’s Hungarian was rudimentary at best, but he soldiered as best he could. “I come about a problem with spiders?”

Natasha wrinkled her nose, both at the code and his butchering of Hungarian. She decided to mock him in kind in her fairly good Hungarian. “That was seriously the best you could come up with?”

His helpless glare at least earned Zovak’s pity, who let them both in without another word. They shuffled into the small space, which seemed to contain only room enough for a daybed, a small refrigerator, a hotplate, and a kitchen sink, with a toilet tucked away beyond a closet. Natasha had seen shoeboxes bigger than this space.

Zovak locked her door before setting a security system, and only then did she speak, turning on Clint in mild annoyance. “You said we weren’t to have much contact here for a reason, and so far you have not been keeping up your end of the bargain.”

“I know.” Clint held up his hands in placation. “And I know the danger that puts you in.”

“Three weeks, Barton, and you’ve reached out three times.” She glowered, ignoring Natasha for the moment as she turned in the space to the daybed, throwing herself on it. “And once in person. This isn’t protocol!”

Natasha couldn’t blame the other agent for her reticence. She was in the thick of it, hiding in Dreykov’s organization, and she had said she couldn’t meet with them, nor could she break her cover for them. The fact SHIELD was even daring to go far enough to have her inside said a lot. “We wouldn’t ask if it weren’t important.”

Zovak’s gaze flickered to her, perturbed, but assessing. Her look in the field was very different from that in the office in Berlin. There she had tried to look more clean cut, despite the wild streaks in her hair. Here she looked like many of the other more bohemian types living in this neighborhood, with facial piercings and thick, heavy eye make-up, the style of every want to be emo kid she ran across around the world. Even a quick perusal around the tiny space showed she kept up the front even there, with a poster for My Chemical Romance on the wall, and a collection of CDs on a table that leaned into the cover. A guitar stood on a stand near the closet, perhaps another layer of the cover, a local girl in the music scene, defiant, but relatively harmless. All-in-all not a horrible cover for someone romantically involved with a low-level security member of Dreykov’s team.

“I got your message,” she replied in response to Natasha before waving to two chairs at a tiny table in what could loosely be called a kitchen in the room. “I suppose you considered every other way of handling this situation?”

“Yeah,” they both replied in unison, Clint grimly, Natasha bemused. She could see Clint was focused on the keypad by the door, the one Zovak had fiddled with when they stepped in, and the other woman saw it too.

“Coulson had me set it up here. It gives us a clean space to talk.”

“He didn’t offer that to us,” he muttered, lowkey in his petulance, not irritated so much as envious.

“Because you two aren’t supposed to be here and SHIELD isn’t supposed to be aware of it,” Zovak reminded him, primly, scooting to the edge of her bed as she reached below her mattress and pulled out a laptop device. “Which is why you aren’t supposed to be here, but now that you are, let’s cut to the chase so you can get out of here. I have company this evening.”

“Fun company?”

Zovak glowered. “Work company, if you must know, which is why you can’t be here. So let’s get to it. You seriously want to bomb Dreykov”

“It’s the one way we can guarantee getting to him without him finding out about it first,” Natasha finally jumped in, cutting to the chase. “He’s prepared for nearly everything else, but the idea of someone getting a device into his home turf and attacking him there, he wouldn’t dream of it, not with the level of security or redundancies he has going for him.”

Zovak considered this as she clicked on the keyboard, bobbing her head in vague agreement. “Not untrue, he is arrogant like that. He’s spent so much on his other security measures that it wouldn’t occur to him that someone would be able to get past those to get at him. Which begs the question, how do you plan to do that?”

“It’s why we needed the floor plans for his places,” Clint pointed out, arms crossed as he slouched in the creaking wooden chair.

Zovak clearly understood that part. “You know, a device in a car or helicopter would do nicely, something in transit.”

“Too dangerous,” Natasha shot back, having already considered this now a few times with Clint. “His security regularly checks everything he rides in, and the chances of them finding a device before we set it off are high, which will only put him on high alert. Besides, it would make him a mobile bomb, with a high probability of hurting others in the process.”

“And a bomb in a building in the middle of Budapest won’t?” Zovak was merely giving voice to the obvious. There was no ideal way of doing this without hurting and possibly killing someone who didn’t deserve it.

“It can be explained away as terrorists.” Clint waved it off, though Natasha knew he felt anything but lackadaisical about this. The idea of people being seriously injured in this weighed heavily on him as well. “We’ve thought this through, Zovak, really, we have. If I had my way I’d be hiding in an air duct somewhere with a sniper rifle and a direct shot at Dreykov’s head and be done with it.”

“Except the minute his head exploded or he dropped to the ground with a bullet between his eyes, they would know it was a sniper and check every air duct in the building,” Natasha followed up with the obvious. “You wouldn’t be able to get away fast enough.” While they had been over this, she knew a part of Clint would have much rather gone with that plan, a part of him itching to take a shot at Dreykov himself. If she were honest, it was perhaps a bit gratifying, if extremely foolish, and while she knew Clint wouldn’t put himself at risk in the end, it still warmed her to know he’d consider it for the likes of her.

“She’s got a point,” Zovak agreed with a hint of reluctance. “The problem is you are going against a man who is a spymaster, he’s thought of every contingency. I admit, someone walking into his office and bombing the place isn’t one he’s likely thought of because it’s so crazy as to be ludicrous, but I can see where it would work. He wouldn’t be looking for it, I suppose.”

She was finally coming around to their way of thinking. Clint’s smirk was grim. “Which is why we wanted the floor plans for his home and offices. What do you got?”

“Two plans, one for his home outside of the city, the other for his offices.” She turned the device to them, the screen outlining two very different places. “His house is on an estate in the suburbs that once belonged to some noble in the imperial period. He bought it on the cheap and has renovated it since. He lives there with his daughter and sister-in-law, who serves as the girl’s primary caretaker. It’s well guarded and fortified, but fairly remote if you want to slip something in.”
She tapped the screen to highlight the other. “This is his office building. He owns the building, so everything inside is tied to something in his operations. There are more people there, and it is heavily guarded, harder to get access to than the house, but you are guaranteed to find him there. He’s usually there most hours of the day, well into evening at least.”

They both scrutinized it, briefly, Natasha unsurprised by what she saw. It was really no more or less than what she had guessed in her months staking out the place before Barton had stumbled into her life, when she had attempted to take out Dreykov on her own. “Any ideas on how we can get anything in there?”

“Not off hand,” Zovak admitted, leaning back on the cushions on the bed, staring at the ceiling thoughtfully. “Maintenance or janitorial would be the best, but Dreykov even tightly controls that for obvious reasons. A deviation would be noticed.”

“But it could be managed,” Clint pushed back, looking thoughtful. “We don’t have to make this overly complicated, stick to the old fashioned methods. Hijack someone going on shift, knock them out, shove them in a closet, steal their uniform and credentials. No muss, no fuss, plant what we have to.”

“If only Dreykov worked with magnetized plastic ID cards.” Zovak nixed that idea quickly. “He uses biometrics, has for some time now for this very reason.”

“How do you get in the place, then,” Clint shot back.

Zovak’s glared at him. “I fuck the guy watching the security tape.”

That brought on an uncomfortable reminder of just what was at stake, the two of them sitting in Zovak’s apartment. The other woman had been sent in by SHIELD to spy on Dreykov because of Natasha’s turn to SHIELD, asked to seduce and trick some random employee to get access, and it was her life she was putting on the line for this. It hit uncomfortably home for Natasha. Should they be linked together, she could be killed for it. “We’ll have to figure that part out on our own. For now, I think the office is our best bet.”

Clint had the grace to at least look sheepish, reminded at just what Zovak was up to in order to make this mission work, and perhaps embarrassed he’d pushed her buttons that far. “Agreed, I think it’s the safest bet.”

Zovak nodded, closing down her laptop, eyeing them both pointedly. “This has to be it, at least until you are done and out of town and SHIELD and extract me. I’m here in case of emergencies, not to help you figure out how to do this mission. If I get caught…”

“I know,” Clint cut her off, assurances already at the ready. “We’ll at least let you know when things are going down so you can have a heads up not to be there.”

“Thanks.” She rose just as they did, not that it took much effort to step to the door. “I wish I could be more help, but I have orders too, and this is too sensitive.”

“I know.” Clint did, clearly, and he didn’t seem the type to hold a grudge, not on this. As for Natasha, if there was anyone in the room who understood, it was her. She nodded as she passed Zovak, a brief look of understanding passing between them as she ushered them out.

They didn’t speak again till they were in the main thoroughfare once more, among the bustle of the people. As Clint’s Hungarian was shit, Natasha shifted to German, less of an obvious sore thumb than English. “She’s right, you know. We will have to figure this out on our own.”

“I know,” he grumbled, hands shoved in the pockets of his light windbreaker. “I’ve run dark missions before, tons of them.”

She imagined Clint probably had. She hadn’t seen his files or his records, but Laura’s cryptic stories indicated some of the things Clint had been asked to do, and Natasha gathered that many of them he’d had to do on his own, without even Laura as backup. “You kind of got pushy a bit with Zovak.”

“I know,” he sighed, realizing he’d crossed a line without really meaning to. “I didn’t think getting Dreykov would be easy, but I didn’t think it would be this hard either.”

“You see now why I spent so long just watching him. Dreykov has built an empire by being careful and smart. He may be arrogant and a bully, but he’s not a stupid one. His paranoia makes Fury look reasonable.”

“You clearly haven’t spent enough time around Fury,” Clint snorted. “And you’re right. We just have to think of something a bit more creative, a way to get at him that isn’t obvious.”

As he spoke, a buzz from his pocket sounded, his burner phone vibrating in the night air. He slipped it out, looking for a quiet corner to slip down, finding one in a turn in between to darkened shops, closed for the night. He flipped open his phone as Natasha stood watch, eyeing the bored and uninterested passers-by in the distance.

“Hey, what’s up?” His shift to English confirmed it was in fact Laura on the other end, turning Natasha on full alert. He shouldn’t be taking a phone call from her in public like this, not where anyone can hear, which either meant he was worried or it was an emergency. She prayed it wasn’t the latter. At only a few months old, Lila was prone to any number of illnesses that ran through young children, not to mention any number of accidents. Laura was ridiculously capable, but if it were dire, and Clint were halfway across the world with Natasha, trying to help her clean up her own messes, then what would he…

”That’s great,” he voiced, softly, happiness and something else ringing in his voice as he spoke. “You’ll have to send me pictures, Nat will want to see.”

Natasha’s heart rate lowered just a fraction, as it hit her just how worked up she allowed herself to get in no time at all. Being in this city was making her as paranoid as Dreykov. She rubbed her hands over her arms, hugging her elbows tightly to herself, wishing she didn’t feel like every window had eyes on them and every wall was closing in on them.

“I will,” he continued, sounding as if he were finishing up. “Tell Coop I love him. Love you. Bye!”

With that he was off, tucking his phone back into his pocket. “Sorry, I thought it might be serious.”

“I did too,” Natasha admitted, all the more admonishment she would give him. “What was it?”

For a moment he smiled, the sort of soft smile he used at home with his family. “Laura caught Lila trying to scoot and crawl across the living room and she wanted to share.”

It was such a mundane sort of thing, so out of place in this city of paranoia and intrigue, and yet Natasha felt a small part of her uncoil as she thought of the little girl whom she had known practically since she was born. “Pretty soon she will be trying to stand and walk.”

“And then outrunning the rest of us,” Clint lamented, lightly, though Natasha didn’t need to dig too deep to hear the sadness under his words.

“I’m sorry,” she said, almost out of habit now, knowing that he will only brush it off.

“You don’t have to be.”

“I am,” she insisted, somewhat more sharply than she had intended. She paused for a long moment, pulling back her nerves and edginess. “You are here because of me, and because of that you are missing her first moments.”

Clint was quick to pounce on her words, shooting them down with his marksman’s accuracy. “I’m here because it is my job, Nat, and I have orders, too.”

She frowned, but he continued, ignoring her sour look.

“I got into this because Fury asked me to, and I’m here because Fury asked me to. I get paid to do what Fury asks me to do, no more or less.”

It was a gentle reminder that not all of this was just about her. SHIELD had a vested interest as well, particularly in seeing her free and able to work for them. “And you aren’t here because you have a deep seated desire to kick Dreykov’s ass?”

She had him there, and he knew it. “I won’t deny it. For what he’s done to you alone I’d gladly tie him up and pick off bits of him, one by one. But it’s not just as simple as that. This is part of my job, working in the shadows, taking out targets, and hiding for weeks at a time, all in the hopes that at the end of the day I’ll get to go home and see my family. Because of it I miss out on things like this. I was lucky I was home for Cooper’s first steps, but I missed his first words. I’m sure I’ll miss more things in the future - losing teeth, baseball games, recitals - and I knew that when I said I’d keep going at SHIELD.”

It hit her that this was a world of childhood she hadn’t known, really, save for her brief time in Melania and Alexei’s care. The idea of having a father there to experience and celebrate any of that with her as a girl was strange, foreign, and filled her with a longing that took her by surprise. Perhaps that was what made her feel the most sorry for all of this. She knew better than anyone what that lack was, and she didn’t want to see that for Cooper and Lila, a childhood filled with the absence of their father as he hid in some dingy apartment somewhere, trying to fix the messes that others made.

“Who knows,” Clint opined, oblivious to the tenor of Natasha’s thoughts. “Perhaps I will retire eventually. I can get that time to spend with the kids. Maybe when they get into school, I can step away, devote more time to staying with them. I can walk them to the bus, go to their school events. Just be a dad for once.”

As he spoke, Natasha’s brain worked, considering his words and fatherhood, leading her strangely to Dreykov, at the center of their quest there. He was a father, and she highly doubted he ever took the thoughtfulness and care to be present in his daughter’s life that Clint would with his own children. In a million years she could never imagine Dreykov taking that sort of care with his child, not when he had a fleet of hired thugs, security personnel and others to take care of her. If anything like everyone else she would be expected to go to him, a prop to his power, someone to parade around to everyone to show he wasn’t a monster, not when he had such a lovely, beautiful daughter…

The idea flared to life before she could help herself, a cold, bright light of a solution that chilled her with how neat and efficient it was, as well as how cold-blooded and matter-of-fact of an answer it would be. Had this been a year ago, she wouldn’t have blinked twice at it, simply arguing that the ends justifies the means, the way she had been conditioned to think and act as an assassin, but now…she couldn’t give this more thought. She wouldn’t give it more thought.

But it sat there, all the same, an idea she knew would work, and she knew Clint would refuse the moment she said it. But it would solve their problem of access. All it would take would be connecting with the girl. Dreykov wouldn’t see it coming, and no one would get closer to him. It would work…

And she couldn’t do it, couldn’t speak it, couldn’t contemplate this any further. She wouldn’t do it! She had walked away from this, she made the conscious choice to do better, to not be the monster she had been raised to be. They would find another way. Clint was brilliant, he’d think of something. She would swallow this thought and bury it and pretend it didn’t happen, ignore the idea that she had considered using Dreykov’s daughter as a pawn, a means to get a device close enough to him to take him out. She wouldn’t do it.

Except the idea was still there…and it wouldn’t go away.

Chapter Text

Northwest of Odessa, Ukraine, August, 2009

What little logic and reason was left in her brain knew this was a dream, born of blood loss and raging fever, sucking her out of consciousness and rational thought. She knew she was really huddled on a mountain side to the northwest of Odessa, with no one expecting her in Budapest for hours, and yet here she was in Tehran, days ago. The tip off in these fever dreams was always the scenery, the colors were too bright, the noises too muted. It was the coffee shop that they had met at, a small place tucked in a corner, with apartments above it, blinds at the windows, trying very hard to look Parisian. It smelled of fresh roasted beans and sweet, steamed milk. She could taste the burnt, milky flavor as she sipped from the large, frothy mug sitting in front of her, between herself and the man who sat across the wooden table.

“Are you prepared for this?”

The nuclear engineer, Abdullah Pasdar, shrugged under his tweed coat, an eloquent gesture that spoke both to his unease and to the acceptance of his unenviable situation. He was middle-aged and handsome, silver in his thinning dark hair, a wry smile on his full mouth. “Can anyone be prepared for something like this? I’ve only ever left home for the occasional conference for a week, maybe too. I never thought I’d go anywhere else. This…” He drifted, eyes behind his silver-rimmed glasses darting around the mostly empty spot they chose, near the back, where few could hear them chat over the sound of the grinders breaking beans for the customers at the counter.

Natasha understood, more than he would ever know. “My people have made all the arrangements. You’ll be safe once we get there.”

What she hadn’t said was that she couldn’t guarantee they would be safe on the way to getting him out. He realized it all the same, terror briefly flickering before he pulled from his cup, as if it were a strong drink and not warm coffee. When he swallowed, he set it down, his fingers trembling. “So what is the plan?”

“I hope you like road trips,” she returned, her lips tilting up, grimly. “Less high profile so harder to track. From here we will get to Eastern Europe, stop for a few days, then a train to Berlin, then a flight to Paris. It will be around a week and a half.”

It was less than ideal, especially for getting out someone as valuable as he was. Too much time exposed, too many variables, but SHIELD had not wanted public transportation till they were safe on the other side of the Danube, close enough that help could arrive quickly for assistance if necessary. Natasha had assured Coulson she could do it. If anyone could, she had the best chance, certainly, far better than most of SHIELD, save maybe Clint. But even saying it, she knew the chances of this happening completely without a hiccup or threat to his life were slim. After all, they had to drive across Iran first.

Pasdar had committed to this. He met her dark humor with quiet determination. “I’ll be alright. Whatever you say, I will do.”

“Good,” she murmured, wrapping her fingers around her oversized mug. She shifted in her chair, unsure what else they could say in this environment. “For what it is worth, I do understand all of this, what you are going through.”

He studied her, gravely, for several long moments. “You do?”

“Mmmm,” she hummed, tapping her right forefinger against the glazed, white ceramic. “I made a similar choice a few years back.”

If he was surprised, he didn’t show it. “Do you regret it?”

Memories surfaced of fire, smoke, and shards of broken, flying glass exploded in a miasma of destruction as she sat, stone-faced, behind the windows of a borrowed car.

“Sometimes,” she murmured, unable to tear her eyes away from the billows of coffee-colored foam at the top of her cup, “but mostly I don’t. I was dying by degrees inside and I just needed…out.”

That resonated with him, the silent desperation of escape. He relaxed, perhaps finally realizing he could, at least with her.

“I never wanted to go,” he admitted, a world of pained choices and sadness in his words. “Azadeh and I are from here, the city. We grew up here, met here, made a life and family here. Our parents are still here. It’s all we have ever known. This wasn’t ever in the cards.”

Natasha had met many like Pasdar, people content and complacent in their lives, happy just to live it. It wasn’t a way of living she understood, but she knew many, if not most people wandered through life that way. “What made you change?”

“What I found out,” he returned promptly, as if expecting her question. “What I learned, that was what made me change my mind.”

He reached for the silvery spoon on the saucer that his cup sat on, unnecessarily swirling it in his coffee, a nervous tick, a fidget to give him something to do as he continued to speak. “I’ve no love for politics, not really. I’ve never brought myself to care. Even when I was a kid and the revolution happened, I was far more interested in my studies than removing the shah. I always went with whatever was going and never said anything against it, no matter how uncomfortable it made me or how difficult it got. Even when Azadeh and I married and started a family, I just wanted to keep my head down, do my work, and not cause any issues. But then I started this job working for the government, and I thought I was just going to be overseeing boring infrastructure growth and upkeep. That wasn’t what I was being asked to do. You see, I was so complacent in everything they handed me, they thought I’d just go along with what they were doing without question, that I wouldn’t turn on them or be horrified by it. No one thought I could ever be a threat, because I hadn't been. They saw what they wanted to see in me.”

They hadn’t. It was a powerful lesson she had learned as a girl, when you were exactly what people expected, and that was something unimportant, non-threatening, and complacent, no one ever considered you a threat, no matter how much of one you really were. It was the one weakness in the chain of security no one ever thought of, and it was the one who would break every time.

“Do you have anyone you care about?”

Natasha blinked at Pasdar, his innocent question pulling her out of her private thoughts, bringing to mind the Bartons and her most recent visit to the farm, sitting on the front porch chatting with Laura, while Lila and Cooper chased after fireflies in the growing twilight, running to slip them ever so carefully into a jar being manned by Clint. “Ummm…I do, but not in the same way you have.”

She loved the Bartons with all of her heart and knew the feeling was returned, but they were not blood relations, nor did they have the decades-long connections that Pasdar enjoyed with his wife and family. While she would defend Clint, Laura and their children with her life, die for them, even, she still half expected them all to disappear, for Clint and Laura to finally catch on to the monster that she was underneath the cool exterior, and cut her out of their life as if she hadn’t ever once inhabited a place in it. Why they didn’t still baffled her.

Pasdar was unaware of those nuances, however, as he pulled out of his breast pocket a leather-bound journal, dark hazelnut in color, the pages written in lovely, flowing script in what she presumed was Farsi. From just inside the cover he pulled out a picture, a small photograph of three shiny faces, two boys, one girl, clustered together in the shot, with wide grins lighting up the image, laughter bright in their dark eyes.

“This is why I’m doing this,” he said, a blunt fingertip ghosting over their glossy images. “That one is Farzad, my brilliant oldest, then Soroush, who is always all smiles, and Nazanin. She is named for my mother.”

He beamed with pride as he spoke, sharing this piece of himself with her, a perfect stranger. “They are beautiful. You should be proud.”

He chuckled, pleased and sad all at once. “That is Azadeh’s doing more than mine. The government stole more of my life with this program, compromised me more and more, till I forgot why it was I was doing it all for.”

Pasdar was hardly the first government official she had heard this sort of story from, and certainly wouldn’t be the last. “My job here is to get you out so you can see them again, get to make up for lost time.”

“Mmmm,” he hummed, slipping the picture into a thin pocket between the leather cover and the journal itself, closing it softly and tapping the top. “My life is in this book, everything about me, my life, my memories, all of it. Just in case I didn’t get out, I wanted it written down for them, so they will know, maybe understand a bit of why all this happened, and why I did what I did. They are young now, but someday they won’t be and will wonder.”

Natasha wanted to give him platitudes, tell him that she would get him out in one piece, that he wouldn’t need the journal when he could tell them himself. A part of her desperately wanted that to be true, if nothing else for the three children in the photo who now were waiting in Paris for their father to arrive. It was a promise she knew she could not realistically make. She wanted to…but she knew in her heart-of-hearts that she couldn’t keep promises, not when it mattered, never when it was someone’s life in her hands….

Budapest, Hungary, August 2006

Weeks they had been in the city, watching, studying blueprints, keeping track of security movements, studying Dreykov’s patterns, most of which she knew, either from her previous months of studying him for this very same purpose, or just from the years she had spent in his presence, growing up with him as the singular constant in her life, the foreboding shadow in her background. Still, she allowed it, if nothing else, to assuage Clint and his sensibilities as they thought through every possible way and scenario to slip a bomb into his midst, destructive enough to eliminate him, but not so destructive that it caused untold damage around it.

As for the idea of how to slip a device close to Dreykov, Natasha kept that firmly in her own head, behind her own teeth, unwilling to give it voice, not unless she had to. Sadly, Clint didn’t give her a choice.

“I’ll be honest,” he finally muttered, throwing a pen down on yet another scribbled on set of blueprints from Dreykov’s office building. “I am out of ideas.”

Natasha, kicked back on the sofa opposite, at least had the grace to not say “I told you so.” Instead, she chose to come at the same point from a different angle. “Now you know why I chose to attack him from a distance and in another city.”

Clint snorted, but said nothing as he rose and wandered to the tiny apartment kitchen for yet another cup of coffee. Natasha had eyed his consumption with worry, but had not said anything.

“If it were easy, someone would have managed it by now,” she followed up as he poured another mugful, earning yet another nod from him in silent recognition. “Believe me, others have tried.”

“Oh, I believe you,” he assured her, exhaustion dripping from him. It wasn’t that late in the evening, but the heat of the day had worn on them both, not to mention they had been pouring over their data for hours with no workable solutions. “So now what?”

They were back to where they started, really, without a good plan of removing him that wouldn’t draw attention either to themselves or SHIELD’s presence.

Almost before she could stop herself, however, the shape of her idea came spilling out. “I have an idea for what we could do that would get a device close to Dreykov, one we can ensure wouldn’t be detected easily, one we could control to set off at any time.”

He blinked at her over the rim of his coffee mug, not having expected that. When he lowered it, it was with a look of mild irritation. “And you didn’t think to share with the class?”

She shifted on the small sofa and its cushions, pulling her knees closer. “You’re not going to like what it entails.”

“We’ve spent weeks trying to think of something better, you never know, I might just jump on it.”

“No, you won’t,” she assured him, gravely.

“Try me, anyway.”

She held her breath for a long moment before releasing it in one long exhale of a sigh. “The only one he lets close to him unquestioned is his daughter, Antonia.”

She sensed the dark vehemence of his refusal more than she saw it, but it rose, glowering. “No!”

“Hear me out…”

“No!” He shook his head, rounding the small counter between them to return to the living area. “I said we aren’t to harm the kid in any way. That’s not what we do.”

“I am not saying we should harm her,” she quickly cut him off, knowing it was a mistake to even suggest it. “I’m saying we use her to get the bomb in the office to him.”

It was a fine line and she knew it didn’t assuage any of his concerns, not from the way his eyes cut at her, but he jerked his chin in a silent command to continue.

“Look, we’ve tried every variable but this one. Think about it, Dreykov doesn’t see his own kid as a threat. She’s protected everywhere she goes, and it is inconceivable to him that anyone would think to use her to get at him.”

Her words did nothing to improve Clint’s opinion of the idea. “So what, we use the kid as a mule to get an explosive device in there?”

“Why not?” her words were ruthlessly than she actually felt.

“She’s a kid, Nat!”

“So was I,” she returned, hotly, annoyance and anger welling up, unfurling within her as she uncurled herself to glare at him frankly. “Little girls get used for worse things every day, especially by Dreykov. All she will have to do is carry the device in. If it’s remote, we can wait till she’s clear of the area before we detonate. It solves the problem.”

Clint’s glare didn’t dissolve, but it did soften, somewhat, as he pondered what she was suggesting. After several long moments, he nodded, scrubbing at his face. “It would solve the problem, yeah.”

“That is why I am suggesting it,” she tossed back at him, huffing as she threw herself back on the pillows. “And this is why I didn’t bring it up at first. I knew you’d react this way.”

He at least recognized she was right in that. “Can you blame me? Jesus, Nat, she’s a child, a non-combatant, she doesn’t have a place in any of this!”

“I know,” she affirmed, guilt twisting within her despite it all.

“Not to mention she doesn’t even know what her father is up to. She’s barely old enough to be aware of the world outside of her own front door. She has no choice or say in her own life, let alone about what her father is up to.

“I know that as well,” Natasha repeated, less to antagonize him and more to underscore she had considered all of this. She’d done nothing but since the idea entered her head, seeing in the face of young Antonia a girl not terribly unlike herself once upon a time.

None of this allayed Clint’s worries as he now paced the limited space of the living area, mug in hand. “We would be playing with fire doing this. That girl’s got powerful family here in the government. If anything were to happen to her, it would make it exponentially more difficult to get out of here.”

“What choice do we have? It’s the one place that we can get to him he hasn’t thought of. After all, what sort of threat is a little girl?”

It was the way with all powerful entities, after all, they never considered those they thought beneath them to be a threat.

“So, if we do this,” Clint cut into her thoughts, emphasizing the word “if” harshly, underscoring just how much he did not agree with this, “how would we manage it?”

She ruminated on this for a few moments, considering which of her ideas would work best. “We would need access to her. Right now she’s secluded and fairly heavily protected at home, but her school is more open with more free access. I could get in there fairly easily. We slip the device into a book or something that she wouldn’t necessarily be interested in exploring, then slip that into her bag. If she’s like most kids, the minute she runs into the building she’s going to drop it somewhere and run off somewhere else. I doubt Dreykov is going to pay attention or care.”

“It would mean we would need to have eyes on the package to ensure it’s near Dreykov and the girl is clear.”

“I can manage that,” she assured him. “After all, I’m the one getting her into this. Besides, it’s my mission to see that bastard killed, right?”

It wasn’t a perfect idea, she knew that, in fact it was in many ways no better than anything Dreykov himself would do. What did that say about her that she thought of it?

“If we do this, this needs to be foolproof.” He was serious, graver than Natasha thought she’d ever heard Clint. “I don’t care what a piece of shit her father is, she has no part in this. I mean it, Nat, we keep her out of it as much as possible. Bad enough the kid is going to have to grow up knowing she had any part in her own father’s death.”

She would be far better off without him, Natasha thought, ruthlessly, but didn’t voice that either, choosing simply to nod instead.

None of it sat well with Clint, who set aside his mug on the nearest shelf, scrubbing at his scalp fretfully. “We will probably need to build something remote. You can serve as the eyes on the package, let me know when it’s clear to go.”

Her relief that he seemed to be nominally agreeing to the idea was tempered by the knowledge that in doing so he was trusting her to ensure this went off smoothly. “I can manage that.”

“Right,” he sighed, from the bottom of himself, carrying with it all of his unspoken unease with this. “I can start reaching out to people tomorrow, using back channels to get the supplies. In the meantime, you come up with a plan to get to the girl.”

“School starts soon, I think that’s our best bet of catching her away from Dreykov and his thugs. It is the last place he would think of anyone approaching her.”

She had thought of this, had stewed on it while Clint studied diagrams and watched Dreykov’s movements. As much as she disliked it, this plan could work…it would work.

“Promise me, Natasha, that no harm will come to this girl?”

She couldn’t promise that. She knew it even as the words left her lips. “I promise I will do what I can.”

She felt only slightly bad that she lied to him with that statement. After all, they could get lucky and everything would go according to plan, and nothing would happen to the girl. Natasha doubted that the universe would be that kind.

Chapter Text

It was alarmingly easy slipping into character sometimes. Natasha had always found it so, to meld herself into her roles, whatever they were, and blend the lines of where she ended and someone else began, to lean into the expectations of others as she donned another person’s clothes, another person’s likes and dislikes, their personality, their vices and virtues. If she were honest, sometimes it felt far easier becoming someone else that it did being herself. Being someone else was more defined, less messy than she herself was. She supposed she would have to add that to the long list of things that SHIELD would likely want her discussing with a therapist.

Her name for this role was Léna, a young woman just finished with university, with a degree in literature and a curiosity regarding education. While raised in the Hungarian Catholic Church, she herself was not a part of any holy orders, not like quite a few of the staff of Szent József’s, though not that everyone was. The current librarian, a young married woman who also attended the parish church, was on leave after the birth of her child, and the position was open, a convenient happenstance for young Léna who just so happened to have the right paperwork to fill their needs.

The principal was a priest about Clint’s age, Father János, a friendly man with the open, kindly demeanor of most of the priests she had met in her life - the good ones, anyway - who took Léna’s offered hand firmly and professionally. “Miss Takacs, it is a pleasure to meet you.”

“Likewise,’ she smiled, brightly, under a fringe of brown bangs and wide glasses. Over her shoulder was a briefcase and handbag, her outfit a neat suit purchased with cash the day before at a reputable department store in Pest. She looked every inch of the young woman applying for her first job, eager to take even a temporary one to build on a CV for future employment.

“Come in,” he waved into a simple office, where a middle-aged woman with a severe haircut and dark gabardine smiled pleasantly as they slipped past. “Sister Maria-Anna, our school office administrator.”

“Hello,” Léna greeted her with the same sort of quiet politeness she had for the priest. The nun’s response was measured, but not unfriendly, as Léna followed Father János into his plain office, dominated by a large desk of golden brown wood that looked as if it had seen many generations. There were stacks of files and a computer in one corner. Portraits of the Pope, the local bishop, and perhaps the last few headmasters lined the wall at intervals.

“Please, have a seat,” he waved to an equally ancient looking chair of wood that creaked ominously, even with her slight weight. “Can we get you water, something to drink?”

“No,” Léna murmured, setting down her things, folding her hands in her lap, nervously. After all, she had not been on many of these sorts of interviews.

If Father János noticed, he politely ignored it, rounding his desk to settle in the more stable desk chair on the other side. “I’m so happy to have received your paperwork! I don’t know how much you were told about the position, but we were caught rather by surprise when the substitute we had arranged for told us they had taken a permanent position elsewhere, and just days before the start of the new academic year, too! We thought we had planned so well for Mrs. Sarkozi’s absence and then we were left scrambling.

“Most unfortunate,” Léna agreed, despite knowing that the substitute had received a phone call saying her services were no longer needed and offering her a place at a different school further out in the city instead.

“Well, I have assurances from the parochial office that all is in order.” He turned to the screen in front of him, scrolling through the paperwork that had been sent to him. “Your university marks are very impressive, and I see you want to work in education. Why are you interested in Szent Jósef’s? What about our school did you find appealing?”

Léna demured for long moments, playing up her consideration as the well-rehearsed words came to her. “I like literature and I always wanted to teach. I love children. I hoped that perhaps I could combine them together and teach young people to love literature too. I am still figuring out what precisely I wish to do, and I saw your posting and thought that if you needed someone for a few weeks, I could use this as a chance to learn.”

It was an answer designed to hit a careful spot between naivety and curiosity, eagerness and uncertainty, a young woman who was just getting her start in the world but uncertain as to what her place in it would be. She wasn’t supposed to sound polished or professional, and it seemed to work, as the priest nodded, kindly, in the way of someone who recognized her nerves and desire to be taken seriously. “Of course, this is the type of work that could at least give you a bit of experience in the field before you jump headlong into it. Have you done much of this type of work before?”

“Just some internships in university, working with local libraries and children.”

“And how do you feel about this being a religious school?”

“This is familiar to me,” she assured him, quickly, an honest statement in a sea of carefully thought out ones. “I went to one myself as a girl, and I loved my time there.”

For half an hour this continued, his pointed questions countered by Léna’s quietly eager responses, till she had built a layer of trust and competence with the administrator. Nothing she did seemed to rattle him or give him pause, and he even offered to show her around the campus, a plain, standard affair for Christian education, an institutional box that looked little different from Catholic schools the world over. It smelled of cleaning solutions, old wood, and books, and took Léna back to her own days in school, eagerly trying to prove herself to her teachers.

“Here is the library,” Father János opened the door into the dedicated library space, a large room lined with shelves of books, with further shelves dividing the space into sections. “We of course only have the one for the entire school, so you will have to manage the older children with the younger.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem,” she assured him with more confidence than Léna perhaps should have felt, but she was young and eager to prove herself. “I assume there is a dedicated section for the little ones?”

“Mmmm, over here.” He waved her towards a reading nook filled with low tables, brightly colored rugs and pillows, and far more simple texts than could be found in other parts of the library. It smelled heavily of wax crayons. “Each of the younger forms have specific library times that we’ve arranged between the teachers to allow their classes to have use of the space. The older children will sometimes come for a class, but often will wander in as needed for their homework. This is a great favorite at lunchtime.”

That tracked with Léna’s own schooltime memories. “I think this will be pleasant.”

Father János seemed pleased. “It is rather short notice, but as I said we were caught unprepared and need someone to start this week if possible. School begins next week and we had expected someone else…”

“I’d be happy to come in, if you will have me.”

The priest looked as if he could cry with relief. “Good! I will arrange your paperwork with the office, and then we can get you started. Our full time position will return after the fall term, so I know it isn’t long…”

The rest of her morning was filled with paperwork and the other sundry items of beginning her new employment at Szent Jósef’s, as well as a brief meeting with several of the staff members on campus preparing for the school year to get a feel for the new responsibilities she was taking on. By the time she finally managed to slip away and take the transport back to her apartment, the sticky, late summer sun had lowered significantly in the sky, and the smart suit she had donned that morning was feeling decidedly more rumpled and itchy the longer she wore it. She slipped the jacket off as she wandered back to the small apartment she had left that morning, folding it over her arm as she trudged up the stairs, knocking lightly in the pattern they had established, before unlocking the door into the space she shared.

“I’m back,” she called, as piece by piece Léna Takacs slipped away, replaced by Natasha Romanoff instead. The brown wig came off first, as she scrubbed at the sweat on her scalp, both it and the jacket being tossed on a side table as she slipped out of her shoes with a soft groan.

“I’m taking it that your interview went well,” Clint called from the counter island in the tiny kitchen, where he had set up what looked like a mad science experiment.

“Given the amount of work we put into me securing that job, I would hope so.” Two weeks of hacking, forging, and arranging for the substitute who should have been on duty to get a better job elsewhere had proved fruitful. “As of this week, Léna Takacs is employed at St. Józef’s as the interim librarian.”

“Good job,” he murmured, absently, as he continued to work on a small circuit board. “I figured you would impress them.”

Natasha snorted as she rounded him and the counter to find something cold to drink in the fridge. “It will forever amaze me that other people trust me alone with their children.”

“Why? I leave my children with you all the time.”

Natasha merely shot him an eloquent look which Clint pointedly ignored. She pulled out a cold bottle of water, holding it to the overheated skin of her neck before cracking it open to pull from it in a small gulp.

“Anyway,” she continued after swallowing. “The job itself isn’t hard. Mostly filing books and reading to kids, making sure teenagers aren’t getting handsy at the back corners where it is hard to see.”

“It’s a Catholic school, isn’t God watching or something?”

“Since when has that deterred a hormonal teenager,” she returned, not particularly looking forward to that part of the job. “It is low key enough I am not responsible for enough students to be watched or need much oversight, while it puts me in the path of Antonia. Best of all worlds.”

“Good!” Clint’s tone was clipped, a sign of how much he still hated this idea. Still, as much as he disliked it, he diligently worked on the device, perhaps just as much to ensure it went off properly as he did to actually ensure it was done right. One less weight on what would likely be an already guilty conscience.

Natasha hated this divide between them, an emotion that surprised even her. Not that petty fights and even outright hatred didn’t break out in the ranks of the Red Room - there were some rivalries among the Black Widows which were legend, remembered even in her time - in truth such infighting tended to be more distraction than a help, a hindrance that could cock up the best mission. She tended to avoid it when possible, or if it could not at least try a through way, some sort of resolution that would allow them to finish their mission objectives and smooth over ruffled feathers and injured pride long enough for them to get what they needed done. Short of that, she was happy to go solo and leave others to their arguing, handling what she could on her own. But with Clint, she found herself unable to smooth this over or brush it under a rug. She could hardly blame him. He was a father, he had children he worried for everyday. His worst nightmare was what they were presuming to do, lure a child into doing something dangerous for a perfect stranger. As much as he had agreed to it, he had done so mostly because they didn’t have a choice, and he was here because of her, because she didn’t have a choice.

What a wicked web this was indeed, all of them woven together in this mess, and neither of them happy with it.

“How is the device coming,” she finally asked, cutting through the tension to bring it back to the matter at hand, the mission they were on.

“Coming along slowly, but it will get there.” He waved at the electronics spread across one of the work mats he used for his arrowheads. “The idea is that I can slip it into a slim enough package I can fit it into a package you can fit in her bag; a box of treats or something the size of a book. It needs to be big enough to have enough explosive firepower to do real damage, but portable enough we can get it in.”

“What kind of explosive?”

“One you can’t easily get,” he returned, ruefully. “It’s a type of souped up C-4, something Stark Industries created and sells for demolition purposes, mostly to the US military. I use it for my trick arrows, stable, but powerful in small quantities. I have a hook up through SHIELD who gets me what I want, but here, off the grid, it’s a bit harder.”

“Will you be able to get it?”

“Yeah, in a few weeks, through some back channels I have. Nothing that will set off alarms, but that level of discretion means I’m sacrificing expediency for security.”

It was a minor inconvenience in the grand scheme of things. “It will take time to get integrated into the school and gain the girl’s trust, so it’s just as well.”

That brought it all back to the sore spot between them…the girl.

“So how are you going to do that? Earning her trust” Clint never was one to ignore an elephant in a room. Natasha didn’t know. She hadn’t known Drekov had a daughter, and certainly didn’t know what she was like. In a way she wished she didn’t ever have to know. Knowing made this all so much harder.

“I’ll figure something out. I’m good at getting into the graces of kids.” The image of Cooper laughing as she swung him around, spinning, in the front yard of the farm came to mind, unbidden. She downed half of the bottle, holding the cold water on her tongue, letting it leach through the roof of her mouth to her head, through her brain, where she hoped it would numb the swirl of uncertainty, the mutter of that voice in her head that said that this was all a bad idea.

Clint finally decided to leave well enough alone, rising from his work to stretch, checking the time on his wrist. “What are you thinking for food? There’s that one place, does wraps, you liked them.”

In truth, the idea of food left her feeling vaguely ill. “Not hungry, really.”

He gave her a look she’d seen him give Cooper when he refused to eat. “You should have something.”

“Get a wrap, then, and I’ll have it later.” Right now she wanted nothing more than a cold shower and a shot of something strong enough to knock her out of the press of her own guilt, anxiety, and mounting sense of dread. When his look didn’t change, she threw up a small smile. “I promise, after it cools down, I’ll eat.”

He didn’t believe her, but he also didn’t press the point. “All right, I’ll be back in an hour, two at most.” She watched as he moved to where his combat boots sat, slipping into them with practiced ease. “I’ll have my comm on me if something happens.”

It was the same routine he had any time he went out. She simply nodded as he checked he had all of his things: keys, money, communication device, his weapon strapped neatly to a holster in the small of his back, a pair of knives strapped under his long slacks at his ankles. The final thing he grabbed was his cell phone, the burner he had to call back home to Laura, his lifeline. He had been taking his phone calls away from the apartment, on his own, outside of Natasha’s earshot. She wished it didn’t sting, but it did.

“I’ll be fine,” she reassured him as he gave her one last wary glance. “I’m probably just going to cool off and maybe try to get some sleep.” Never mind that the sun was still up and would be for another two hours yet.

Clint simply tipped his head in acknowledgement and made his way out of the door, leaving her to the silence of the apartment and the uncomfortable rift that lay there.

Chapter Text

It was the second week of the academic year when Antonia finally crossed her path.

Each of the lower form classes had a designated time in the library every week, a period in which they learned how to use the resources and were encouraged to look up books there. They would always enter as a class, trooping in a line together with hushed whispers and the anticipation of being outside of their classroom, even if it was only for one class period. They filtered in and around the tables as their teacher instructed, filled with childish energy, never quite sitting as still as the teacher would have liked, but behaving themselves better than they would elsewhere.

Antonia’s class came on the Wednesday of the following week, just before the lunch hour. Like all of the other classes they settled at the tables with muffled giggles and hushed little voices as their teacher, a woman who had the air of a benevolent dictator about her, eyed them all archly and silently until they fell into a barely contained silence, eager to please, but bursting at the seems to do something.

“Miss Takacs will be taking over to discuss how to use the library. I expect to hear from her that you all behaved yourselves for your lesson. Be sure, she will let me know if you weren’t.”

The children all took her dire warning seriously enough, as she turned to whisper in a tone they couldn’t hear. “Do let me know, Léna, if they are too much. They are good-hearted, but can be high spirited.”

“Of course,” she replied, though she doubted she would struggle keeping them in line. High-spirited they might be, but she’d handled worse in her lifetime. The teacher left with a pointed look to all of her charges, leaving the library to Léna alone.

“Good morning,” she greeted them, her Hungarian crisp as they echoed the greeting enthusiastically. She held up a sheet of paper, printed with names of this group, each with a little box to check if they were in attendance or not. One-by-one she read the names, as voices piped up to let her know they were there. Some were simple responses, others clearly were trying to make their friends laugh with silly voices. With each name she noted which child answered to it, until she got to Antonia Dreykova.

She answered confidently, without the silliness of the boys at her table, who earned her scorn from their antics. Despite her long-suffering eye roll, she appeared to be a perfectly well-behaved child, a sweet girl, with her warm brown hair in braids, her outfit neat and tidy. Only the roundness of her cheeks indicated she might be Dreykov’s daughter. Her smile was certainly not his, nor were her pretty features. If she had been asked to pick from all the girl’s in the room and pinpoint Dreykov’s daughter, she wasn’t the one she would have chosen.

“Thank you,” Léna said, simply, schooling her features into bland approval as she continued to check names off her list. Once completed, she brought the class to order to discuss the ins and outs of the library to them, before sending them on their way to explore it at will. While they were not allowed in the section for the older children, a boundary they would likely test eventually, on this first day they seemed inclined not to press their luck. Several of them signed up for computer time on the machines that sat in the corner of the space, partnered with friends to play educational games. Others moved towards the shelves of books and magazines. Léna watched Antonia make a beeline for the books for older children, picking one off the shelf eagerly, before returning just as quickly to her table to open it, quietly, engrossed before her table mates had finished arguing over what computer game they planned on playing.

Léna observed this for several minutes, curiously. Nothing said that she couldn’t read something the older children would, but it was rare that a student voluntarily did so. Curiously, she crouched beside the girl with a warm, speculative smile. “That is an awfully big book for someone at your level.”

The child’s blue eyes flickered up, either shocked that Léna spoke to her or that she’d noticed Antonia at all. Still, her shoulders lifted, shyly speaking into what Antonia clearly couldn’t, at least not in words. For all of her earlier confidence when Lèna taking the role, one-on-one attention left her out of sorts. It was far easier to blend into a crowd then have all of the attention turned on you. Already, Dreykov had taught his daughter that.

“You like to read then,” Lèna asked, knowing it was obvious, but hoping she could engage the girl in something. She wanted her trust, for her to like the kindly librarian who also liked books.

“Yes, ma’am,” Antonia finally murmured, blushing.

“I wish your classmates felt the same.” Léna smirked at a few of them across the way, excitedly whispering over each other in some argument over what to do in the game. For a moment a memory flashed of another Catholic school, in a different country, far away and long ago. “I was like you at this age.”

“Really?” Curiosity now peeked through the guardedness of speaking to an adult.

“Why do you think I ended up as a librarian? I like books!” She spun Léna’s story on the wind, hoping it was something the girl related to, something she understood. It clearly spoke to her, as Antonia blushed with pleasure at the notion. Perhaps they would have spoken more, Léna could have shared her favorite books with her, but just as always happens when there are too many children over a prized piece of entertainment, a fight broke out at one of the computer stations as several of her classmates argued over who had been controlling the game for longer, and Léna rose to her other duties with the class. By the time she had made her rounds and could come back to Antonia, their regular teacher was back again to gather them up and take them back to class. Léna gave her report of the mischievous ones - clearly, they were no strangers to their teacher. Even so, she cautiously brought up Antonia, more out of curiosity, to see what her instructor had to say.

“Ahh, yes!” The other woman’s smile was understanding, but tempered, something cautious and sympathetic in her well-lined face. “Antonia is a sweet girl, brilliant, an easy child to like.”

There was an unspoken “but” in that sentence. “I imagine her parents must be proud of such a daughter, so advanced in her comprehension.”

“I wouldn’t know,” her teacher replied. “I suppose it is too soon to hear, only two weeks in, but my reports from her other teachers are that they’ve never met her father. The mother died years ago, and she’s mostly raised by an aunt, I think. Still, she’s never a problem, grown up for age, smart, such a good memory. I set problems for them last week and she had them memorized by the afternoon! She’s perhaps too smart to be here, but here is where her father wants her. He’s some hot-shot businessman, you know. Several children here have such parents, but he’s got some sway. Surprising for a Russian, but I suppose he knows the right people. In any cause, Antonia’s a good girl, I doubt you’ll hear a peep from her. Now, Ervin and Sandor…”

She didn’t see Antonia for another week after that. Students came in rotations to the library, and her class had not made it to their next one. It was just as well, as her time had been taken up with the teenagers wandering in for classes, children barely younger than herself, but who felt like they were leagues behind her in all that they treated the library space as another sort of social hang out; whispering and laughing, texting on phones she repeatedly told them to put away, and using the book stacks as a good place for the sort of flirting that shocked the very prim and proper Léna. While another part of herself laughed at their antics, Léna kept an iron fist on the space, shooing them out of the door and wondering if she really could do something like this for the entirety of her life.

When she next encountered Antonia Dreykova, it was in the lunchroom a few days later. Léna wasn't prone to eating in there, but like all the staff of Szent Jósef’s, she is required to do a turn monitoring some of the shifts, and it was her turn to watch over the younger children as they had their meals provided in the tidy cafeteria. Like such places the world over, it smelled of hearty, if bland fair, nothing as exciting as pizza, but nutritious none-the-less. Some children ate with gusto, while others picked at the stew with decided distrust as to its edibility. Léna was just considering she couldn’t blame most of them, considering the consistency of the food, when the telltale signs of some argument reached her ears.

“You think you can boss us around because of who your dad is!” The sneer has Léna spinning to find one of the little boys, Sandor, leaning across the table, his eyes narrowed at Antonia accusingly. “I’m not afraid of you! I don’t care who your father is!”

“You’re a bully, Sandor,” Antonia shot back at him, as she leaned into his space as well. At her side was a rather woe-begone looking little girl, with darker features than most of the children, something that would mark her as different in this school. “Dika did nothing to you!”

“She didn’t have to,” the other little boy sneered, full of borrowed dislike and assumptions. “Because she is a filthy, dirty…”

He didn’t finish the sentence. Rather, Léna’s hand came down hard on the very top of his spine, her fingers lightly pressing into the nerves there that made the boy go very, very still.

“I would consider your next words very, very carefully, Sandor,” she said, gently, but with a thread of chastisement there, one she could tell the boy heard, judging by the way he tensed under her fingertips. To all the world, she looked like she was placing a comforting hand on him, but he knew differently, and so did the two, wide-eyed girls, watching the tableau with the quiet awe children had when one of their peers got in trouble.

Léna knelt down to the empty seat next to the boy, vacated by his classmate minutes earlier. She never raised her voice more than a pleasant and slightly disappointed murmur. “Do we call each other names in this school?”

The boy stared straight ahead at his mostly eaten food tray - the vegetables, she noted, were conspicuously untouched - his pale cheeks reddening clear up to the tips of ears. “No, miss,” he whispered, the words barely audible, even in the hush that immediately surrounded him.

“So why are you calling Dika names?”

His lower lip wobbled slightly, a suspicious sheen hovering on the edges of his lashes. “I don’t know,” he mumbled, even more softly.

“What was that?”

Under her hand muscles twitched, the hint of a shrug that perhaps conveyed confusion, but more likely shame.

“Did Dika deserve it?”

Now the sheen welled, threatening to fall down his blotchy, fiery cheeks. He shook his head silently.

“So why did you try to say it?”

He closed his eyes then, shame radiating out of his small being. It was enough, Léna decided. Best not to shame him too much. This was just enough to teach him a lesson he wouldn’t soon forget, but not enough to make him embarrassed and angry and cause him to lash out at his potential victim later on.

“How about this,” she offered, gently, removing her hand. The child’s shoulders, which had hunched up near to his ears, relaxed. “You tell Dika you’re sorry, and I won’t tell Sister Augusta to assign you lines and extra Hail Marys at chapel tomorrow, hmmm?”

The boy gave her a long, sidelong gaze, but nodded, mumbling something that sounded vaguely like “I’m sorry” without even looking at the girl sitting by Antonia, looking just as embarrassed.

“Good decision,” she said, simply, nodding at the two girls. “I hope this ends things?”

They nodded. “Yes, miss,” they whispered in unison.

“Good,” she nodded, wandering off as if this were a momentary blip in an otherwise quiet, unproblematic day. Still, she didn’t miss the sour, sullen look on the punished boy, nor the continued dirty looks that passed between he and Antonia. She supposed what happened later in the week was to be expected, then, as much as she hated to see it.

Three days later the children had ended their lunch period and were lining up to return to their classrooms so the area could be prepared for the next round of students. There was always the chaos of transition in these moments, children moving to and fro, some not paying as close attention to what they were doing. Léna was busy reprimanding a cadre of girls, busy giggling over notes written in one of their notebooks and not taking up their trays, when a loud clatter sounded behind her, followed quickly by childish laughter. Léna would not have spun so quickly, after all she didn’t have those sorts of reflexes, but she supposed working around children brought them out. There by the far wall, where the children were waiting patiently to deposit dirtied trays, sprawled Antonia Dreykova, pushing herself up to her hands and knees, her once neat and tidy white blouse now covered in the remains of lunch, as her fellows around her sniggered.

“Antonia,” Léna gasped, rushing to the girl, as her teacher began berating one of the boys, a friend of Sandor’s, the boy Ervin.

The girl's cheeks were as bright as the red stain across her chest and over one shoulder. Her chin set in an all too familiar and disturbing way, but she held it high, nodding, as tears threatened. “Yes, miss.”

“Antonia,” her teacher murmured, turning her attention to ensure the girl was all right. She had Sandor’s crony in one hand.

“I have her, Maria,” Léna assured the other teacher. "I can take care of her if you can get someone else to take your class back.”

“The teacher’s lounge,” the other woman nodded, giving Maria a kindly and apologetic look as the girl sniffed and tried to gather her tray. “Don’t worry about that dear. Go with Miss Takacs and get cleaned up.”

With hard looks for any of the students who dared to giggle as they walked past, Léna wrapped an arm around Antonia, leading her out of the lunch room and down the hallway, to the lounge for the teachers and staff. It wasn’t much of a room, in true Catholic tradition, she supposed. It had tables and chairs, cubbies for mail and papers, a small kitchenette for lunches, a standard for most schools, she supposed. She let the girl there, sitting her down in one of the chairs near the sink as she ignored the stream of tears falling down the girl’s cheeks. Her chest was a red mess of sauce and leftover food, the humiliating wounds of a childish prank in those thoughtless wars of dominance that children always cruelly played with one another. It was unfortunate Antonia was the loser in this one.

“Let me look in the closet for something for you, hmmm?”

The girl’s nose wrinkled, cause tears to dribble down the sides, but she nodded, as Léna made for the closet of lost and found items and other miscellaneous bits that had gathered over the years. There were a stack of t-shirts from some long ago event, neat and clean and never worn, all printed in the name of the school. She found one, overbig for Antonia, but which would serve their purpose.

“Take this in the restroom, change out, and then bring it back to me.” She gently waved the child to the bathroom in the corner, before searching for anything at hand that might be used to treat it. A bottle of white vinegar in the refrigerator and a single lemon on the counter would do the trick, or at least do enough of a job that whoever laundered the girl’s clothing later wouldn’t have so much of a chore. She prepared a solution of vinegar as the door to the bathroom opened, and the girl scuffled out with a loud sniff.

“Come, sit,” she ordered, not unkindly. The girl compliantly did as she was asked, handling Léna the blouse as she did. She clucked, but not in recrimination so much as sympathy for the mess of it. “They couldn’t pick a better day to be jerks, then? Maybe a day when there wasn’t a red sauce?”

The girl’s woebegone expression lightened, at least a little. “I guess not.”

“Hmmm, well, jokes on them, because you got to go to the teacher’s lounge and see what that was like.” She waved a hand around the shabby and spare looking space. “So spectacular, right?”

That did make Antonia laugh. “Not really.”

“Well, let the others keep the mystery.” She shrugged, gamely beginning to work on the blouse, gently scraping off the excess before turning it inside out to run water through the back of the stain, rinsing it out as much as she could. “I wouldn’t want your Mama to have to get this out for you, so I’ll do what I can to make it better.”

Léna was well aware that Antonia Dreykova had no mother, and likely had some hired help at her home who would wash the garment for her, but Natasha Romanoff wanted information, and so she she leaned into surprise and sympathy at the sudden well of tears and the return of her heartbroken expression as Antonia rubbed viciously as the wetness on her face.

“I don’t have a Mama,” she finally muttered, almost defiantly. “She died when I was little. It’s just me and Papa, and my Aunt Júlia, that’s it.”

Léna felt empathy well for the poor motherless child, glaring at her as if defying her to have pity on her for the fact. “I’m sorry about that. It must be hard.”

The girl shrugged, but even underneath the brave exterior there lay a deep hurt and an aching longing that beneath all the layers of Léna, Natasha Romanoff understood, even if she barely allowed herself to acknowledge it. “I have pictures of her. Papa says she was a lovely, caring woman, and that sometimes I remind her of him. He doesn’t talk about her a lot, though. I think it makes him sad.”

What Léna thought of that was neither here nor there, only that the girl believed it, and she wouldn’t question it. “I’m glad he has you to make him less sad.”

“Yeah,” she returned, softly, not as certain. Léna eyed her as she worked, first gently rubbing dish soap into the stain, following that with vinegar.

“You did a good thing the other day, you know, standing up for your friend.”

A hint of pride rose underneath the humiliation and embarrassment within Antonia, her chin lifting a little. “They don’t like Dika because she’s Roma. There aren’t many kids like her here, but her family lives nearby, so she goes to school here.”

That much Léna had picked up on, listening, knowing all too well the racism against the Romani in Hungary, just as it existed elsewhere. “Hating anyone just because they are different is a horrible thing.”

“I think so,” Antonia quickly agreed, pleased to see that Léna seemed to agree with her. “I told Papa so. He said I did a good thing, but told me that I shouldn’t be picking fights with boys in school.”

A mix of emotions welled up under Léna’s calm, nurturing surface, threatening to rip open the facade with the force of it, but she swallowed them down, shoved them deep as she poured more vinegar on the fabric. “Those are wise words. You don’t want to start a fight you can’t finish.”

“I could finish it,” she assured Léna, with far more bravado than actual competence, Léna suspected. “But Papa would likely be mad at me for it. He doesn’t believe girls should fight with boys, or argue with boys, or be do sports against boys. He says girls are supposed to be smart and make their fathers proud.”

Léna held her breath and counted to ten, even as she forced her fingers to unclench from the wet, astringent fabric. “There are many men who believe the same thing.”

“I don’t think so,” Antonia pipped up with all the confidence of youth. “I think I can be whatever I want.”

Léna felt a spike of approval at that, shooting the girl a bemused smile. “And do you tell your Papa that?”

As expected, the girl’s confidence melted at that suggestion, turning her into water as she sank into the chair. “No, I don’t.”

True curiosity pushed Léna to ask “Why not?”

“Because he will become angry.” Her face shifted as she sat up, puffing out her chest, her pixie expression disturbingly taking on the stern, jowly features of her father, as her voice deepened to the lazy, husky growl that Anton Dreykov always spoke in. “Know your place, little Toni, and don’t make me show you. No one has any patience with that sort of foolishness!”

The accent was impeccable, down to the timbre and the hints of Russian peaking through the Hungarian. While her voice was still childish and girlish, she could hear the threads of Dreykov in there, and it made ice run in Léna's veins. The girl was a talented mimic, and she wasn’t so certain that was a good thing.”

“Is that what your Papa sounds like?” Léna forced herself to chuckle as she asked that.

“Mostly,” the girl grinned, impishly. “Do you think he is right, Miss Tackas? Do we always just have to accept being bossed around by boys?”

Something bitter coated her tongue, as for a moment she was once again a girl of Antonia’s years, standing on a sticky tarmac in Cuba, the salty sea breeze mixing with her tears as she held a gun on young and confused boys, prepared to shoot them down. Alexei knelt before her, quietly taking the gun out of her hand, reminding her of her place, as Dreykov watched, impassively, waiting for her to accept this fact for herself, even as the drugs swept her away to oblivion. Léna was far more circumspect about all of this, however, shooting the girl a speculative look. “I think the world can be a hard place sometimes. But a girl as bright as you, who knows. Maybe you will make it a better place.”

She rinsed the blouse one more time, before cutting the lemon in half, squeezing one end and rubbing it over the faint outline of the stain. “It will need to be washed when you get home. I’ll pack it up for you and then you can have someone wash it for you later.”

Antonia nodded as Léna wrung it out and neatly folded it, placing it inside of several plastic bags to prevent the damp from getting out. She presented it to the girl, before reaching up to chuck her chin, gently. “Don’t let anyone tell you that you can or can’t do, not even your father.”

It was one of those phrases that a teacher like Léna could say and not mean anything by, an empty phrase, like one would find at the bottom of a poster, inspirational but ultimately pointless. But Natasha, underneath the layers of fledgling school librarian, meant every word of it. It was the only wisdom she could give the girl, the only warning.

Whether or not Antonia would take it was uncertain.

“Let’s get you back to class,” Léna murmured, gently guiding the girl back out of the lounge and to the classroom she had been too long away from already.

Later that night, as Natasha sat watching Clint fiddle with a remote control detonator, she rolled over this conversation, sharing tidbits of it with him as she mulled it over now as herself, the broken, deadly creature that she was, the butterfly who’d been snared in Dreykov’s web, trying to free herself before it was too late.

Clint listened as he worked, silent for the most part. When Natasha’s voice ran dry he finally looked up, watching her with the sort of wariness he would for his neighbor’s cow the moment she broke out of her pen. “She sounds like a good kid, despite her father.”

“Yeah.” It seemed impossible that anything that pure and good could grow up in the shadow of Anton Dreykov.

She should have expected his next question. “You having second thought about this?”

She knew he meant the plan, and she knew that if she admitted it to herself, she always had reservations about it, but she refused. As much as she hoped that Antonia did not get ensnared in the same way Natasha had been, she also recognized that if she didn’t free herself soon that one way or another he would finally consume her.

“Nope,” she returned, uncaring it was a lie. It was hardly the first or only lie that had spilled from her lips, even to Clint…or herself.

“All right,” he returned, less certain than she was. “I meet with my last dealer tomorrow for the explosives. I should have it ready in a few days. You ready for the drop off?”

She wasn’t, but she could pretend and say she was.

“Let’s just get this done and get home.” She could worry about things such as her existential guilt later, once she was out of this city, away from this place, and Dreykov was dead and no longer a threat. Then she could deal with the knowledge of Antonia, the child he would leave behind, and the legacy that Natasha had created for her.

Chapter Text

It looked like an ordinary school book and that was what Natasha found the most disturbing about it.

“It rigged with enough of this stuff that it should wipe out anyone within a 100 foot radius of it,” Clint assured her, looking nervous as he passed the bomb to her. Natasha felt just as hesitant holding it, let alone putting it in her own bag.

“You are certain this won’t blow up the school on accident?”

“Positive, this stuff is stable until I detonate it.”

Her worries didn’t just end in terms of collateral damage. “You are sure this is enough to do the job?”

“Like I said, I use this in my own armory, and a little bit goes a long way. If your girl gets it close enough, he won’t survive it.”

Therein lay the problem, didn’t it? She would have to hope that Antonia unwittingly did what they needed and put her father directly in the path of this thing. “Let’s go over the plan again.”

It was perhaps the hundredth time, but she had to be certain. Nothing could be left to chance.

“You will take the package with you to school today,” Clint began, rattling off the details with the same sort of familiarity he could recite Cooper’s favorite bedtime story. “You will get the package into the girl’s bag before she meets with her driver to take her to her father’s office.”

Natasha nodded, already formulating plans on how to do that. “As soon as the package is dropped, I will make for the car that is parked one block over. I will take a shortcut to Dreykov’s office, and I’ll park in the designated area to watch when she arrives. If she’s going there, we know he’s there.”

That had been a fear, expressed by herself early on, that they would go through all of this planning only to have Dreykov get wind of it, or plan something completely unrelated and not be there. Clint had been the one to assure her that if Antonia was going to the office, chances were high he was there and that he suspected nothing. Clint was working under the assumption that as a father, Dreykov wouldn’t allow his daughter to come to any danger should he get wind of a plot against him. Natasha privately thought Clint was both projecting his own fatherly expectations on Dreykov and grossly underestimating the lengths the man would go to in order to ensure he would survive, even at the cost of others.

“I will be a block over,” Clint continued with their plan, oblivious to the turn of Natasha’s thoughts. “I’ll have the detonator and will be waiting for your signal to let it go. You will stay on sight long enough to confirm the kill. I will make my way out with anyone fleeing the scene and take the long way back here.”

“I will take the car to an abandoned lot, ditch it, and make my way back here on foot.” She had already placed a go bag at the school with all the things she would need to change from her Léna Takacs persona back into herself, shedding it like she did so many other things in her life. For now, however, she still wore the brown wig, tucked up in a neat hair clip, her practical slacks, and printed, rayon blouse. Her nervous fingers drummed on her mug as she went over the beats of the plan, mentally, one more time, tapping them out on the ceramic almost like the beat of a dance.

“The timing of this has to be perfect,” Clint reminded her, tension thick. She acknowledged it absently. She knew this, obviously, he had drilled it home with her this whole time. They had to get the device close enough to Dreykov to make it effective, and do it before he left his offices for the day, taking Antonia home with him. If they did not, then the girl would be with him in the car, which would be a more mobile target, killing more than just Dreykov. If they aborted and allowed the girl to take it home, they ran the risk of it being discovered and Dreykov becoming aware of the very real threat, which would further solidify his already tight defenses. This was their one shot, and it had to work.

“I got it,” she assured him, tightly, knowing he was as nervous as she. This may be her life, her freedom at stake, but it was his life as well, as well as the life of his wife and children. In so many ways Clint had more to lose in all of this than she did. He had the protection of SHIELD, certainly, not even Dreykov would openly challenge that, but that would only go so far and wouldn’t help him get out of Budapest if things went pear shaped.

Clint’s steely eyes met hers, a steadying presence, before nodding once. “Right, get out of here. I’ll see you after it’s all done. You know how to let me know if anything goes wrong.”

“Yeah,” she breathed, setting the mug aside. She couldn’t finish it anyway, her stomach churned too much for that, but she kept her composure, snagging the backpack and purse she used for cover, filled with the minutiae of the life of a woman who didn’t exist, and after today would never exist again. “So long to being a school librarian, I suppose.”

It was an off-handed comment, meant to break the horrible, nervous tension, and it piqued Clint’s curiosity. “Would you ever want to do that in the future? Work with kids?”

She considered it for a moment. “I don’t know, honestly. I don’t know what I want. Let’s just get through today.”

Wasn’t that the story of her life?

She made her way to Szent József’s much as she had the last few weeks, via the public transit, arriving there with smiles for the beaming children. Léna always had kind words and gentle hugs for the little ones who cheerfully greeted her, talking about the books they had borrowed and read, or just wanting to share small, inconsequential things from their days. She went about setting her small library domain into order. Even after only a handful of weeks it felt like hers, the small space that Léna had carved out for herself, however temporary, in a role she knew she wouldn’t inhabit forever. She filed away books, neatly arranged magazines, cleaned off keyboards, and kept an eye on older students wandering in, as if there were nothing strange or off about this day, all the while ignoring the bag she had tucked so neatly into a closet behind the main desk.

It wasn’t a day when Antonia’s class would normally be in, and so she waited till lunch to wander by and check in on the girl. She was sitting with her friend, Dika, but away from Sandor and his friends, a move likely made on purpose by her teacher to keep the two feuding parties apart. She and Dika chattered, giggling over something together as Léna wandered up, a bemused smile for them both.

“You two seem in much better spirits,” she teased, lightly.

The girls both blushed. “Yes, miss.”

“No more trouble, then?” Léna case a sideways glance towards Sandor and his clique, who seemed to be content to themselves further down the table.

“No,” Dika said, her voice a soft lisp. “Teacher says he is to stay away from us, even on the playground.”

“Good!” Léna approved, if nothing else, to keep the peace. She had no love of bullies, but also had no desire to antagonize them either, and was glad that there would be less opportunities for them to cross paths. “Antonia, before you come home, stop by the library on your way out. I think I have one of your books.”

The girl shot her a puzzled look, but didn’t question it. “Yes, miss.”

Léna left the girls to it, ignoring the tightening fist forming in her middle as he finished her shift watching the students before returning to the library. She had expected the hours till the end of school to crawl by in an agony of anxiety and guilt, but several classes of the upper form teenagers came in, demanding her attention and preoccupying her from the dreaded worry of what sat in her backpack. She fiddled with computers and helped students find texts, and did everything but watch the clock as it ticked by on the wall, the school day flying by.

The last bell rang with a flurry and rush of students, as young voices sounded in the halls and instructors desperately attempted to bring some order to the chaos. Léna waited, eyeing the clock as finally moved towards the bag in the closet, removing the book that so carefully concealed the device within. She waited more. No one came. There were no childish voices outside the door, no skid or scuff of shoes on the wooden floor beyond, no flinging open of the wooden door and breathless apologies. As the seconds ticked, fretfully, on the clock, she debated. Chances were high that Antonia forgot. She may have a good memory, but she was still a child, prone to letting things slip her mind in the rush of going home. She could be gone by now, already whisked off to her father’s car, the opportunity lost.

Natasha could abort…she should abort and wait for another day to try it. She probably should.

No…Natasha had waited too long for this chance, and she wasn’t about to lose it to the thoughtless forgetfulness of a child! Decisiveness driving her more than common sense, she grabbed her bag and made for the door, the book in hand as she rushed past the students milling around, scooting around gossiping teachers, and out of the front door, past the principle waving at children as they made to leave. Desperately, she scanned beyond the main area to the spot where parents waited for children, either to walk them home or escort them to their vehicles. Antonia’s driver often waited there, a dour-faced man in a dark suit, who looked more like a mob enforcer than a man sent to pick up a child. To her utter relief, he stood there still, smoking a cigarette and waiting, dark glasses hiding the obvious boredom he felt standing there. Antonia trudged towards him, her leather backpack bouncing on her shoulders, Dika by her side.

“Antonia!” Her voice carried across the space, causing the two girls to whip their heads around, as even her enforcer guard looked up, a small frown forming over the black rims of his sunglasses. Natasha ignored him as she rushed over, holding the book up in her hand. She could see the moment realization hit the girl, and she immediately looked sheepish for it.

“I’m sorry, miss,” she said before Natasha had even reached her, abashed that she had forgotten and embarrassed that one of the adults had chased her down.

“I’m glad I caught you,” Natasha waved it off. Instead, she gently turned the girl so she could unlatch her bag and slip the book inside, wedged behind notebooks, textbooks, and a pencil case in bright colors. She closed it again before patting it, softly. “You are good to go. I’m glad I caught you, else you might have left your book!”

“I forgot,” she admitted, neither questioning the book or her librarian’s intentions.

“Don’t forget again,” Natasha reprimanded, but only lightly, softening her words with a grin. “Now, get to that driver of yours before he glares me to death!”

“That’s just Sergey, he glares at everyone,” Antonia sighed in that aggrieved way that children had for adults whose behavior they little understood. She doubted Antonia really knew what her father was up to or what her protector did for him when he wasn’t ferrying Antonia and her friends. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Miss Takacs!”

With that, she and her little friend were gone, escorted by the driver to the waiting car beyond. Natasha didn’t stay to watch them. Instead, she turned her back on the school, with its little library, its children, and the person of Léna Takacs, her steps firm as she hurried to the waiting car, parked on a side street just beyond the campus, a residential spot with many day workers and few cameras. She had taken care to park along the route that Léna took, so that anyone who wondered would assume she had just left to go home. Once she was out of sight of any children or faculty, she ran the rest of the way to the car, a dark black sedan, so nondescript it melded in with the other sedans wedged along the narrow roads in the area. She opened the trunk to throw in Léna’s things and pull out the go bag with her own.

She had prepared carefully in her dress that day, swapping the rayon top for a serviceable black one, a jacket going on top of that. The large framed glasses went next, followed soon by the wig and cap, unpinning the two braided cords of her red hair, allowing them to trail down as she threw it all into the bag with Léna’s ID, credentials, and paperwork. All that was shut in the trunk, as Léna Takacs vanished as suddenly as she appeared. Herself once more, she slipped behind the wheel, testing her comms with Clint as she started the car.

He answered immediately, having been waiting on her. “The package on its way?”

“Ten minutes ago. They will take the long route to Dreykov. It is more secure. Antonia had a girl with her, a friend. I think she will be dropping her off, so it will give us more time.”

“You sure of that?” They were already gambling with one child in the mix, Natasha couldn’t blame Clint for worries about a second.

“She’s not the type Dreykov would want his daughter bringing home,” she said, hoping that conveyed enough. Dreykov's racism was only one of many things to add to the long list of reasons to dislike him, another piece of kindling to throw on the pyre as she prepared to burn him for all that he had done.

“I’m trusting you on this,” Clint murmured. She imagined he was likely in the coffee shop she had frequented when she had been here before, drinking coffee and perusing the paper or a book, cool boredom as he watched with his hawk-like gaze through tinted glasses, waiting for her to take her position.

“I’m in route,” she said, pulling away from the curb and down the quiet street, towards the center of the city where Dreykov’s offices were. “I’ll be there in twenty. If there is a glitch, I’ll let you know to abort.”

“You know what that will mean.”

“I know.” What could they do then if something happened? “We will have to deal with whatever happens, right?”

“Yeah,” he grumbled. “Hit me again when you are in position.”

“Roger, out,” she said, clicking out of the conversation, swallowing the rising bile and dread clawing up her throat. She would do this! She could do this! She would make an end of this!

She wouldn’t think of Antonia’s trusting smile of farewell as she turned with her friend to have a few more precious moments of blissful childhood before Natasha turned her entire world upside down.

Chapter Text

She pulled into a spot across the street with a good enough view to see into Dreykov’s office. Not that she could see his face, Natasha didn’t want to see it, to confront the monster from her nightmares again. It was just as well as Dreykov also didn’t like showing it unless he had to. All she could make of him were the random glances of a profile, the glint of the sun off of his glasses, the broad, beefy shoulders in their suit coat as he paced near a window. He was there. She knew it was him. Why else would the place be so heavily guarded at this time of day? Why else would Antonia be headed here?

Natasha pulled up her comm, holding it close, like a lifeline, as she reached out to Clint. “In position now.”

For a long moment there was silence, before his voice, gravely and soft, whispered “Copy!”

It had only been twenty minutes since she signed off last, her trip across town surprisingly easy. In the back of her mind a host of different possible scenarios played out, ways this entire endeavor could go wrong - a traffic jam, road construction, an accident - anything to keep her from where she needed to be. But nothing hindered her as she made her way through the old streets of the one-time imperial city. She was there before Antonia’s driver, who had yet to make his way past Clint and to the front doors of the office building.

The comms opened up again, Clint’s voice sounding. “He still in there?”

“Yeah,” she murmured, her accent thickening as she watched up above her, the shadow stalking just past the edge of where light allowed her to see in through the plate - glass windows, as if Dreykov’s very presence reduced her to her most primal self - that of the scared, little Russian girl who just wanted so desperately to not have to do this anymore.

“A few more minutes and this will all be over.”

Clint said it with the sort of reassurance he would give one of his kids when they had a nightmare. How Natasha wished that bogeymen really did work like that.

“Have you seen anything unusual,” she quizzed, praying he didn’t…or perhaps praying he did.

“No.” His return was curt. Good to know Clint suffered from nerves, too. “I let Zovak know, so SHIELD is aware.”

Good…that was good, she supposed. She gripped the radio in her lap, watching the office building. On the second story in the corner sat Dreykov and his massive, masculine desk, just beyond the bullet proof glass and the blinds. Outside of his bubble, traffic still moved down the street, people leaving offices and schools, oblivious to the threat that soon would be imminent. As a Black Widow, Natasha had been trained to compartmentalize guilt, to ignore it and not feel it as much as possible, and here she was, allowing it to niggle at her bit-by-bit. Strange how her freedom came with that sorrow and uncertainty, and now she couldn’t just shove it back in the box like she used to. Stranger still how Dreykov had conditioned her once to the point she couldn’t feel it.

“We have incoming.”

Clint’s voice had her turn in the direction of the large, dark car that Natasha had seen only a little while before at the school. Her driver was behind the wheel, but there was little she could see in the opaque, tinted glass in the back. It pulled through the afternoon traffic slowly, as if aware of its self-importance, before coming up to the curb in front of Dreykov’s office, easing to a stop.

“She alone?” Clint’s voice called ghostly in the car.

Natasha watched and waited as the driver stepped out. Just as before, he scowled at the world as he scanned for threats, before rounding the car to let Antonia out. Only one girl bounced out, her leather backpack jostling on her shoulders, her twin braided pigtails rising and falling as she jumped out of the seat. She was alone.

“It’s just her,” Natasha returned, tugging absently on one of her own braids with bloodless fingers. She stared hard at Antonia’s retreating back and the leather bag, where inside a bomb sat, nestled next to the pink pencil case. A few steps and she would be in the elevator. A few seconds and she would be on the floor. How long to make her way past her father’s secretary and the rest of the security to get to Dreykov?

Below, by the curb, the car remained. Natasha clocked it, dispassionately. “The car is staying. He might want to leave soon.”

“Keep your cool,” Clint soothed, though it did nothing. Natasha’s veins felt like ice. He could decide the minute Antonia arrived to leave for the day, to turn heel and go back downstairs. What would they do then? What could they do then?

“You have eyes on the package yet?”

“Not yet,” she whispered, watching and waiting. It had felt like hours, but likely was only minutes. She could imagine the girl cheerfully accounting her day to the killers under Dreykov’s employ, blissfully oblivious that she was surrounded by death and murder as she shared lessons or complained about her bullies. In that, perhaps, she was like Yelena, another little girl who never knew a stranger.

A flash of light above, Natasha’s attention caught. Her gaze flickered to something flickering - a glass pane in a door, a metal barrier opening, she couldn’t be sure - and into the darkness beyond the windows, movement. Into the room where Dreykov sat, lording over his empire and the lives of so many, Antonia wandered in, cheerfully chattering as she danced into her father’s lair, a girl there to see her father and tell him about her day, all so regular, all so normal. She had no idea the monster he was, about the women and girls he meticulously trained and sent across the world to fight and kill at his command. He was just her father.

“Are we clear?” Clint’s voice cut, jagged, through the stillness.

They weren’t. Antonia remained, taking off her backpack and setting it at some chair by a table. Her white legs and socks flashed in the dim light as the girl wandered to the desk. She wasn’t leaving.

“Not yet.”

For long, agonizing moments she waited, willing the child to leave, to go anywhere, just to move, to use the washroom, find a snack, leave to bother someone, anywhere but the office itself. Natasha had promised nothing would happen to her. She had sworn that to Clint…

His voice rose, insistent and authoritative, underscoring they were well past the point of no return. “Natasha, are we clear?”

Her lips thinned, words choking in her throat, thick with fear and uncertainty. High above she watched as Antonia moved, hopeful for a brief, shining moment. That died, however, as the girl instead stopped to sift through her bag, as fear and frustration clutched at Natasha’s, tearing at her with the realization that sank in with bone chilling certainty.

“Natasha?”

Antonia would find the book in a minute. Perhaps she would open it, perhaps she wouldn’t, but it was only a matter of time. It would be revealed, uncovered, Dreykov would know, would recognize what was happening, and take action. She’d lose a second chance at ending this, a second opportunity, and she would still be trapped, caught in his web, and she would never be free, it would never end, and he would hunt her down till he saw her dead for daring to try and bite the hand that raised her, for laying a hand on the only girl he ever cared for. This was the one chance they had, the only chance she had, and she had to take it, whatever it took…

“Natasha?”

The words slipped past numb lips, a sigh into the radio clutched tightly in her trembling fingers. “Yeah, all clear.”

She wanted to say she felt something as she gave the death sentence, but she did not. Not regret, not anger, not guilt, not relief, only nothing, as she turned her face, as hard and blank as her mind, up towards the windows above, forcing herself to look as first one breath, then another came...

Then the world above exploded in fire and glass, flashing for the briefest of moments, before fading before Natasha’s still gaze into smoke and destruction. Around her cars swerved, people ducked, holding arms over their heads as they screamed in a rain of shattered glass. But Natasha sat, frozen in the moment, in the choice she had made…one of the first choices she had made free of Drekov. She would have to live with that choice, with the flash of fire, the smoke, the shards of broken glass, and the fear from the people around her.

And she would have to live with the little girl, with her braided pigtails, keen mind, and fierce heart. She would have to go on knowing forever that she had sacrificed Antonia for her freedom, for the freedom of Yelena and all of her sisters, the ones that had not enjoyed the privilege of Dreykov’s name and protection. One life for all of the rest of them, in the grand scheme, was price well worth paying.

One precious life taken before her time so the rest of the murderers could be free.

“Did we get the target?”

Natasha blinked at the radio, unsure of what to say. Was the monster dead? She didn’t know, couldn’t see. Protocol said she should check, should rush in and look at the bodies, to ensure that Dreykov was gone, before the medical and emergency services arrived, but she found herself paralyzed, unable to open the door, to confront the truth. She wasn’t sure what was worse, the idea of seeing Antonia’s broken body, the little girl she had greeted hail and whole that morning, destroyed at her hand, or seeing Dreykov’s, the man who had turned her into this, the thing that haunted her nightmares.

She instead turned the ignition and pulled away.

“Natasha?”

The car maneuvered around the crying, frightened, shocked people on the sidewalk, some pointing, some running, others standing with hands over their mouths in awe and fear. They were not used to bombs in Budapest, not like other places in the world, and to have it there was as strange as having an elephant run through town, or aliens land in the center of the city. She caused that reaction, that terror. And now she just drove away from all of it.

“Natasha!”

Clint’s voice snapped her partially out of the daze, at least enough for her to hold up the comm, finally. “What?”

“Did we get the target?” Clint was breathless now, likely fleeing the scene with all the others who had run in fear.

“Yes.” It felt like it was true, as much as she could feel anything in the moment. Perhaps she wanted it to be true.

He was quiet for a long moment. “Stick to the plan. I’m going off grid. If I don’t hear back from you by midnight, I’ll assume you’ve been compromised.”

“Roger,” she mumbled, as traffic stalled in panic. She could hear sirens coming. Automatically, she turned into an alley between buildings, seeking her way out of what would become a nightmare soon, as people stopped to gawk in curious horror at a burning building and corpses, shaking their head to mutter sadly at the death of a child.

As the sirens screamed past, she wound her way through alley and backstreet, avoiding the main thoroughfares as she picked her way carefully through the city, until she was far enough away that everyone seemed oblivious to the death and destruction. In this part of the city, people walked with their bags of take away for dinner, or wandered the grassy spaces with dogs and small children, and eyed their phones and didn’t noticed a murderer in their midst. Natasha drove past them all, praying no one would look too closely at her car, at her face, at her hands as they gripped her steering wheel tightly.

She drove well outside of the city center, towards the industrial fringes, to some Soviet-era factory, broken and forgotten about by most everyone. She knew no one saw or cared as she doused it gasoline, ensuring that any traces of Lèna Takacs were left to burn, before lighting it. She waited, watching in the growing gloaming of nightfall, well away from the acrid smoke, as it burned, plastic melting, paint peeling, and gasoline roaring hot and fierce. It was a controlled rage, without the force and fury of the bomb that finally destroyed one nightmare, but now left her with another.

She waited till the heat from the blaze grew too hot, her cheeks singed and soot stained with it, before walking away, turning her steps away, into the darkness, back into the city. Her bag hung heavy on her shoulders, her hood was pulled up tight over her hair, her headphones were on, but she heard nothing. She stayed to the shadows, walking in blackness, till she found a bus going back into the city. From the vantage of the darkest corner seat she watched out of the window as the lights of Budapest returned. Would they feel as oppressive now? Would Dreykov’s presence still hang as heavy? Would she ever truly feel free from it?

American’s always liked to talk about things like the “price of freedom”, as if it were something that could be bought or sold. Perhaps to a nation built on the blood and backs of others treated like property, freedom was easy to understand as transactional rather than inherent. Natasha had always only ever understood herself as someone who should be one thing, but wasn’t, and she wanted out. It had never occurred to her what the cost of that freedom would be, or that there would be a cost. Now she knew. Her freedom was the price of a little girl, whose privileged, if cloistered, life was worth the price of Natasha’s freedom. She would have to carry that knowledge and burden with her for the rest of her days, knowing she was the one who agreed to that price.

She had better make Antonia’s life worth it.

Chapter Text

Carpathian Mountains, Ukraine, 2009

Antonia sat on a large boulder in the waning light, the gold burnishing her with gold, like a saint in an old church. Natasha had never been one much for either saints or old churches, but there the thought was, as she studied the girl with her twin braids and her wide, curious blue eyes, watching as the sun began to slip past the rolling cliffs and mountains and towards the darkness of night.

“Is this what you felt when you were dying?” Whether Natasha asked the question out loud or not seemed rather superfluous in the grand scheme of things, as Antonia heard it all the same, turning to face her with a sad sort of smile.

“You didn’t go and find out if I was dead or alive. I guess neither of us will know.”

“Fair,” Natasha conceded to the ghost haunting her as she lay dying, alone, with no one to see her end, either. “I suppose I deserve that.”

Antonia’s wide eyes watched, but never blinked, staring at her with the fixity of an altar piece. Was it in accusation? Pity? Anger? Indifference? Natasha didn’t know.

“I’m sorry,” Natasha gasped, tears leaking out of her eyelids, down her flushed face. She shivered in fever and blood loss, her entire side on fire. She heard being gut shot was the most horrible way to die, because it hurt like hell, but it would take hours for you to finally succumb. Perhaps she deserved it, dying this way, alone on the side of a mountain. After everything she had done…after Antonia. Everyone else she could in theory claim was on Dreykov. She had no more control over her actions than a gun in his hand did. Not with Antonia. She had a choice, she always had a choice.

“Did it hurt,” Natasha asked the apparition, staring into her soul. “Were you scared?”

Up lifted one of her shoulders in her school-girl blazer. “No more than anyone else, I suppose, when they die. I don’t know, I hadn’t done that before.”

Natasha supposed it was a really stupid question in the end.

“Why?” Antonia’s voice rang, high and soft on the wind, but somehow ringing in the hills and valleys of the range around them, a clarion call. It wasn’t angry, or hurt, just curious, as if her stolen potential were nothing more than a spilled cup of water, gone, but minor in the grand scheme of life. Perhaps Natasha had believed that herself, once.

“Because,” she whispered, the ringing of Antonia’s voice still echoing in the distance. “I had to be free of him.”

“Was it worth it?”

“Yes,” she sighed, her eyelashes fluttering before her swimming vision, spiraling her into…

Budapest, 2006

Darkness swallowed her as she slipped through shadows, head downturned, but watching, always watching. Few paid any mind to the girl in the hoodie who looked as if she were making her way back from a long day. She moved without hurry. To run would be to draw attention to herself, but she did move with purpose in the night, to the neighborhood she had been hiding out in and the apartment that she and Clint had holed up in. She waited long minutes in the ally across the way, knowing Clint was watching at a window above, eyeing the street and its occupants. Three cars passed by, a woman walked her dog before going to bed, and a young man on a motorcycle parked it in an alley behind the building neighboring their own. When all was silent and still, Natasha stepped out across the road, toward the building, and let herself inside.

Clint had to know she was coming, but she knocked all the same, keeping their code. She waited before turning the knob, slipping in the door, a panel of wood between her and the outside. For now, at least, in the moment, she was safe.

“Were you followed?”

She turned. Clint sat on the sofa, service weapon loose in his left hand, his bow near his right, expression taut and unreadable. Natasha shook her head, pressing her shoulders against the flimsy bit of pine. “No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” she snapped, lightly, mildly glaring at him as she pushed herself off. “I followed the plan.”

His jaw twitched. “Did you?”

Something sick rose up in her, but she ignored him, moving into the kitchen area. Her clothes smelled of smoke and gasoline, and she wanted nothing more than to strip everything off and scrub her skin raw, to rub off all traces of the day and what she had done. Instead, she grabbed a glass, filling it to the top before downing it, swallowing tears and bile.

“The reports are coming through about the bombing.” Clint sounded far too calm. She could hear the icy thread of his anger wound into his words.

“Are they?” She tried to be as nonchalant as he. Instead, she simply came off as monotone, lifeless, unfeeling, all of which was a lie. She felt everything in that moment...she felt too much.

“Yeah,” Clint returned, rising, gun in his holster at his thigh. He stopped, leaning against the counter in a deceptively easy stance. “They pulled bodies out of there.”

“He had guards,” she said, automatically, knowing they were dancing around the truth. Clint obviously knew it, but she was unable to verbalize it herself.

“That’s not what I am talking about, and you know it!”

She did. She set the glass aside, her trembling hands threatening to hurl it somewhere, to shatter it into pieces. “You had me make the call, so I did.”

“I said no kids, Natasha.” There was the anger, flaming to life in an angry, low hiss, the only way he could express himself without alerting the neighbors. “I don’t care who her father was, she was a kid, she had no part in this.”

“It was the only way I could be sure,” she snapped, finally breaking from the numb stupor that had suffused her since she spoke her lie into the comms, prompting Clint to detonate the bomb that took Antonia’s life.

“I only agreed to your plan to get the device close, not to catch her in it.”

“The whole thing was going to be compromised. I had to act. She was going to find the device. We both know the minute she did, the whole thing was over, and I’d never have a shot like this at Dreykov ever again.”

“You’d never have a shot?” Clint glared at her in disbelief. “I thought we were in this together, Romanoff.”

His hurt caught her by surprise. “I hadn’t assumed we weren’t.”

“And yet you made a call that affected us both based off your own desire to see Dreykov dead rather than doing this right.”

“And what, let you lose the chance just to keep your conscience clear from a girl’s death?” Everything finally broke, the welling guilt, ire, pain, shame, and release of the entire day, lashing out at her partner in an ugly gout of viciousness. “I lost one chance to do this right thanks to you, in Rome. I could have taken him out alone, he’d be dead, and no one else would have been hurt. You stopped that.”

“Because you were going to get yourself killed.”

“So you saved me, but that cost Antonia’s life.” It was too harsh and unfair, but she threw it out there ruthlessly at him. “I had to be sure, Clint. If I waited, the whole thing would have been blown and we’d have lost the element of surprise. I couldn’t take that chance.”

She had never seen him look this hard, this immovable, this angry. Ice laced his words as he spoke in a barely controlled hush. “This wasn’t just about you, I’m caught up in this, too, you know. You weren’t the one pulling the trigger on this, I was. Her blood is on my hands as much as yours. I had one order, Natasha, and I trusted you with it, and you betrayed that.”

His words cut, both because they were meant to, but also because of their truth. He had trusted her to adhere to the plan. He was the one who set off the bomb. Part of the blame of Antonia’s death was on his head. He hadn’t wanted it, she had thrust it on him.

“I was the one who made the call, not you,” she tried to reason, but he cut it off ruthlessly.

“You think that matters in the courts, in public opinion, on my own conscience?”

She they were getting into the territory of moral relativism, and knew it was a slippery slope, but found the words coming out anyway, propelled by her own jumbled and confused feelings about all of it. “One girl’s life, Clint. One little girl’s life for the lives of so many more. Hundreds, thousands of girls, all of whom are now saved from Dreykov because of this, children who would have been captured, trained, and experimented on. Those who survived would have been turned into weapons to kill how many other innocent lives at the hands of Dreykov or any one of his cronies or whoever he decided to sell them off to at the moment. One girl’s life is worth ending all of that.”

“So, what, you are going to stand there and give me moral justifications for any and every other sort of crime just because it’s for the ‘greater good’? Because once you start down that path, Natasha, there is no coming back.”

“Oh, please,” she sneered, throwing her hands up in frustration at his bout of rectitude. “You have your own list of collateral damage. You think every mission SHIELD sent you on was without its own innocents caught up in the crossfire? SHIELD gets away with it because they can claim the high ground of UN sanction and global protection, but don’t think for a minute I don’t know you have a list, too, Barton, and that you haven’t had to make decisions between one innocent and many.”

It was a low blow, one designed to cut at him in his softest, most exposed parts, to hurt him in a way that would push him back and away. She was lashing out, and she knew it, and likely he did as well, and she didn’t care. Clawed fingers dug into the tight hair at her scalp, pulled close by her twin braids, as she pressed the heels of her palms into her burning eye sockets, willing air into her aching lungs. She would not break down like this, not here.

“You knew what I was when you came to find me,” she said, instead, her voice a broken whisper as any semblance of self control left her. “You knew what I was and who I was. You may see me as a little girl lost, like some feral kitten you can train into being a proper pet, but I’m a Black Widow, Clint, a trained killer. I am what Dreykov made me first and foremost, and I can’t and won’t apologize for that. If you can’t live with that, then maybe you should rethink all of this - my coming over to SHIELD, working with me, letting me into your life, your home, near Laura and the kids. I’m not a safe person, I’m not a good person, and I don’t make the moral choices if it means I get my mission objectives accomplished. I do whatever it takes, whatever that is, and if that is a problem, then perhaps this was all a mistake to begin with.”

She didn’t wait for a response. She simply turned, blindly, to the room she’d claimed as hers, closing the door behind her. Piece by piece, she stripped off everything she had on, all the bits of armor she had surrounded herself with, before crawling into the security of the bed, pulling the blankets over her, and burying her face into the pillows before she let the first tears fall, stifling the sound of her sobs for herself alone.

In the distance, she could hear Clint in the other room, and the quiet drone of the television all through the night.

Chapter Text

Natasha had showered and dressed the next morning before making her appearance in the other room. Her hair was bound in a single braid today, laying damp across her straight shoulders, her chin up as she wandered out, even if she had yet to meet Clint’s eye. She doubted he noticed anyway, as he seemed glued to the news on the television, a well-dressed news presenter sitting behind a desk as the lower-third screamed about a terrorism attack in Hungarian.

“Any updates?” She kept the tenor of her voice light, even if it was anything but.

“From my broken Hungarian, I’m guessing that it is being pitched as a terrorist attack on a noted businessman.” It sounded as if Clint was going for the same sort of vibe, professional and all business. Natasha tried not to wince at the audible distance he placed between them. “The police and government security forces are investigating, and I’m sure they are going to start asking some uncomfortable questions as to who targeted an innocent man and child. After that, I am guessing it is only a matter of time before someone among Dreykov’s people will leak something about you, and chances are high that will lead back to the school.”

From there Natasha could see where this thread was going. “We will need to get out of here.”

“That will be the tricky thing, won’t it, with your face out there and us running dark?”

Another quiet reminder of how badly this situation turned, all because she chose to sacrifice one girl for many. “If we need to split up to get out of here…”

“We are not splitting up,” he returned, vehemently, glaring at her before moving, restlessly towards the windows, likely keeping an eye out for anyone who may come up. “I’m still the agent-in-charge on this, and I'm your handler, besides. We came into this together, we will go out together.”

In a world of shadows and gray, the idea that Clint of all people would have a stubborn bright streak of principles was both heartening and aggravating. “You have a lot more to lose than I do.”

He turned from the window, his blue eyes piercing. “Don’t, Natasha!”

She wanted to argue the point, but they had already fought so much already, she didn’t have it in her heart to keep bickering. “Okay, so getting out, chances are high they are watching all the trains and public transport. Flights are going to be watched. We could maybe drive.”

“They may have checkpoints set up already, especially at the boarding crossings.”

It was a fair point. “I used to know a few ways in and out of Ukraine through the mountain passes, ones no one was looking at. We can drive up in there, hike if we need to. From there, we could get to a town with a train that will get us to Poland and Germany.” It was less than ideal, but at the very least it would get them moving and out of Hungary.

“How are we going to get up to the mountains? You torched the car and renting anything will look suspicious.”

“You could rent,” she said, seeing it as the next most logical conclusion. “I don’t think that Dreykov knew about you or SHIELD’s involvement. Your face won’t be out there to be seen.”

He mulled that over, pondering. “Fair point. You don’t think Hungarian security forces haven’t set up checkpoints all over the city, though?”

They likely had. “We hunker down here, then, at least for a few days. Let things cool off, let them throw themselves against the wall trying to find us, and then when they finally calm down, we can slip out.”

Most protocol usually called for beating a hasty retreat, but Natasha had found the strategy of waiting right under their noses till things had cooled far better over the years. It would give them time to get themselves together, process…maybe figure out how to breach this divide…if she were honest with herself, she doubted anything could. Studying Clint standing by the window, he looked as if he hadn’t slept all night. She didn’t think he had. She had fallen into a restless slumber out of sheer exhaustion. If the weight of her actions weighed on Natasha, how much more did they on Clint, who asked for none of this. She had foisted it on him, the death of Antonia, as well as the now even more problematic retreat from the city. Hungarian security forces were already going to hunt them down just for Dreykov, but adding a child to the mix add the level of horror and pity, which meant more eyes and ears would be on it. The general public would be looking for her, the murderer of a child. It was why she suggested he leave without her. If he were smart, he would.

“We may have a problem.”

Her attention snapped to Clint as he inched away from the window and the curtains there. She moved to see, but he held his hand up, a silent warning to stay back.

“What is it?” Her fingers curled, nails digging into her palms.

“Someone taking a lot of notice of the apartment,” he murmured, watching. “Woman from down the street. Has a terrier that she walks.

Natasha knew of whom he spoke of, had seen her just the night before. “You think she’s suspicious?”

“Judging from her horribly obvious covert skills, yeah, she might be.” He let the curtain fall, casually, as if he happened to be looking out and hadn’t a care in the world about why his neighbor was taking an inordinate interest in his front window. “Times up! We need out of here now!”

She didn’t question him, merely turning to move down the hall and grab her go bag. What little wasn’t already kept in it was shoved inside, as she strapped on her weapons and vambraces. Down the hall, she could hear Clint doing the same. She was ready in less than five minutes, rushing back to the main room, checking to make sure it was clear of anything that tied back to them.

“Ready,” Clint muttered, dressed in similar dark clothes, his go back slung across him, resting on his left hip, his quiver, as always, slung to his back. “Let’s head out of the back, fewer eyes watching.

In the distance, faintly, Natasha thought she could hear the sound of alarms. “I think they are on their way.”

Clint only nodded, curtly, moving to the door and its peephole to glance out. “Looks clear, but better be prepared.”

She flexed her vambraces as they glowed a light blue. Her darts would taze and sting, but not permanently harm. She’d had enough blood on her hands this mission. Clint, for his part, had his gun out, but he held it down as he peeked out of the door and on both sides of the long, narrow hallway. Natasha held her breath until he jerked his head silently, indicating the coast was clear. On light feet, she followed behind him, moving swiftly towards the back stairs that led to an alley and a garbage area. They hit the outside, the space empty for now, but the sirens sounding closer and closer.

“They are going to try and surround the place,” she pointed out, eyes to the roofs above them, knowing they likely already had aerial security on the way.”

“Yeah, they’d be smart to do that.” His tone dripped regret, sliding his service weapon into his holder, reaching instead for his collapsible bow. “I’m not interested in getting anyone else killed.”

His tone was even, but she could hear the recrimination all the same. “They may not feel the same, you know.”

Beyond the buildings, out on the street, the sirens were turning into a wail, promising them only minutes more to decide on what to do. Natasha spun around considering options. There was an alley out, certainly soon to be covered. They could hide in a neighboring building and sneak out of the block unobtrusively, Or…

“How are you at hot wiring a motorcycle?”

Clint spun in his spot, confused, till he followed the line of her finger to the Ducati parked by the neighboring building. “You got to be kidding!”

“It’s tight, but if I scoot forward, you hold on to the back…”

His disbelief turned directly on her. “And what, let you destroy that? It’s a Ducati! That’s $15,000 easy!”

“You want to get arrested by Hungarian security forces and create an international incident?”

He didn’t, and she knew it, which was why she knew Clint would do as she asked. He passed her his bow as he reached for his go back, swiveling it around to rummage inside, pausing only long enough to scowl at her, likely for all of the mess they were in now. “Cover me! It will take a minute.”

She nodded, vambraces at the ready. “Just do it fast.”

He only grunted by way of acknowledgement, finally pulling out one of the boxes he stored the bits of his various creations in, fishing out a length of wire from it. Crouching down, he fiddled with the wiring on the engine, just under the seat of the machine. Natasha kept watch on the buildings around them, as tires screeched up the asphalt in front of the building, and the whining of the sirens began to echo back.

“We got seconds, Clint!” She snapped around as he finished removing three cables from the main starter one, and shoved the bit of cable into one of the remaining sockets.

“Rendőr,” someone shouted from the front. More sirens sounded, more tires, and she could imagine large SWAT style vehicles waiting out there, filled with members of the Rendőrség, ready to siege the apartment complex and force her out.

“They’re here,” she snapped, turning to see him try the wire in a new configuration as he pressed the start button. Nothing purred to life.

“One more,” he grunted, pulling one end of the wire and plugging it into another socket. Above she could hear helicopters beating the air from a distance, and the sounds of people storming into the front of the apartment. Natasha held her breath.

Behind her the motorcycle roared to life. The breath she hadn’t realized she had been holding released in a rush as she turned to a grimly pleased Clint. She handed him back his bow, nodding to the handlebars. “I’ll drive.”

He didn’t even question it as she hopped on the small bike, scooting as close to the front as she could as he slipped in snuggle behind her, snapping his bow to its fullest extent. “You keep this thing straight, I’ll fend them off.”

“Got it,” she grunted, revving the engine as he balanced himself. From the other side of the block now she could hear other cars, other sirens, all with the thumping of helicopters threatening to catch them soon overhead. No sooner than she felt Clint secure himself, she pulled the bike out and down the alley, to where a police car sat, waiting.

She revved the engine and gunned it.

The Ducati purred beneath her thighs as it screamed down the narrow alley and out towards the street. Clint held on long enough for her to get out into the open air, bank by the car, and tear off down the street, all before the police seemed to realize what was even happening. She heard voices shouting as buildings and cars whipped by, her long braid following in the breeze as she dodged around vehicles, tilting the motorcycle at just the right angle to slip between sedans and larger box trucks, Clint helping her maneuver it as he watched their backs.

“They caught on that was us,” he called over the sound of the engine and the wind in her ears.

Sure enough, she could hear the sirens, as ahead police vehicles came tearing towards them.

“Clint,” she called, turning his attention forward.

“I got them,” he yelled, as she felt him shift back on his seat. Over her head came a whistling sound, as a few seconds later two small explosions sent both cars bouncing on their sides. Not fatal car accidents, certainly, but ones that would keep the cars from chasing them. Natasha slid between the two, as behind them, she could hear similar explosions.

Traffic around them began to clog and thicken as people in their cars saw the explosions and panicked, wondering what was going on. Cursing, Natasha glanced over he shoulder, to where Clint was eyeing the helicopters overhead. “Where do we go?”

“Try the metro, underground, closest station.” He gestured towards the skies with his bow. “They can’t follow down there.”

She jerked her chin by way of a nod, focusing back on weaving between vehicles as Clint covered their escape. While no further explosions rocked the street behind her, she could hear his bow twang, as soft whistles of whatever he was firing carried on the wind. She almost didn’t want to know what he was up to, content to bank around an SUV and behind a small group of cyclists. The closest station to them was not far from the river, a few blocks away. Traffic was grinding to a halt in front of them - either police were stopping it, or it was slowing of its own accord. Whatever the case, she eyed the curb and the sidewalk as a potential shortcut.

“Hold on,” she snapped back at Clint, as she dove between two parked cars, jumping up on the sidewalk, scattering pedestrians as she did. Screams and curses followed, as Clint clung to her shoulders, bouncing as she maneuvered around people, whipping around the corner and down the sidewalk towards the metro station, located under the stately buildings that lined the Danube River.

“Are you taking her in?” There was a hint of terror in Clint’s voice as Natasha gunned the engines full throttle, not even stopping for to allow them to get off and run down the concrete steps.

“Yeah,” she shouted, grinning. “Hold tight!”

He did, for what it was worth, wrapping both arms around her middle as she sent the Ducati down the concrete steps, sending metro riders scattering with cries as the motorcycle bounced and jostled, before coming down at the bottom, losing balance, and skidding across the tiled floor, sending both Clint and Natasha flying across it. They bounced, Clint letting go, as Natasha rolled, flipping herself up as fast as she could, finding herself surrounded by a crowd of shocked onlookers, many asking if they were okay.

“Fine,” she yelped, rushing over to help Clint up. His arm was scraped up, but otherwise he seemed relatively fine. She ignored the Ducati, which had spun into a trash can and turned off, perhaps too heavily damaged to continue anyway.

“Downstairs,” Clint grunted, ringing his right arm. Thankfully, like her, it was not his dominant hand, and besides, it only seemed stung, scraped and battered, but usable.

“Come on,” she tugged him, breathlessly, to the turnstiles, pulling out the card she had been using to get around the city. It was best not to draw the further eyes of the Metro authorities as they made their way through the crowd, blending in as best they could after driving a motorcycle down the steps and into the busy lobby area, which was to say not at all. They likely had minutes, if not only seconds to decide next moves. A Metro train could get them somewhere else in the city, but not much beyond that. Besides, the minute they discovered the bike, they would assume they had hopped onto one and would be scouring the train cars looking for them.

“Do you think,” she began, but Clint grabbed her forearm, dragging her behind him on the busy train platform, to an area walled off from the main space filled with travelers, bored and waiting for their connections and unaware of the events top side, or the police chase, or who the pair of them were. Natasha had only a moment to glance at a partition covered in the smiling face of a young woman promising a faster, smoother ride in the future, before Clint yanked her behind it, closing the gap in the temporary barricade, shutting them off, for now, from any prying eyes.

“What are you doing?”

“Hold this,” he shoved a toolbox at her, one he clearly had in his pack, and pulled out one of his trick arrows, along with his bow. Before she could ask why, he had already fired, as a grappling head opened up and bit into the ceiling, right next to an HVAC duct high above. The cable tugged as he tested it, clipping it to his belt, before he turned back to her and the toolbox.

“One of these should work.” He snagged what looked like a dual ended screwdriver in hand.

“The vents? Seriously?”

“You got a better idea?”

She didn’t. “This is turning into a cliche Cold War trope the further we go along. Assassins hiding in the vents?”

“Cliched it may be, but it’s just so out there, it might work. Why hide in the HVAC when we could hop a train.”

All true and sound reasoning, and she was mildly impressed and somewhat jealous that Clint had thought of that. She said nothing more, though, as he rose up to the ceiling, slowly, dangling as he carefully began to unscrew the bits of metal holding the grating in place. He worked quickly. Before she could talk herself out of this scheme, he had metal grill popped off and pushed inside, a hole now open just big enough for each of them to shimmy inside.

“I’ll come down to you,” Clint offered by way of explanation for her next question. He lowered himself down again, just as slowly, holding his left arm wide. She closed the toolbox, slipping it in her own pack before stepping inside his grasp, looping her hands around his neck as he held her tight, pulling her back up with him.

“You first,” he ordered, jerking his chin up towards the open vent shaft. She complied, reaching up to grab the lip and pull herself inside, boosted by Clint as she did so. She scrabbled into the darkness, the dirt and dust of years making her purchase slippery as she shimmied into the cramped, tight space, before turning around to help him inside. He had just unhooked his grapple from outside in the ceiling when the first noises indicating the arrival of security came.

“Nick of time,” he breathed, putting the grate vent back into place, loose, but sitting flush in its frame, allowing them a limited vantage of the area just behind the barrier. In the distance, Natasha could hear voices calling “rendőr” as people murmured. She held her breath, and knew that beside her Clint did much of the same. For long moments they waited, tensing as someone opened the temporary partition to peek inside. A light flickered as an officer looked about at the construction going on there; the torn up tiles, the bare and open work beyond, but turned away soon after, uninterested, closing the partition once again. His steps moved away and were lost in the sounds of people being asked to leave the platform for now as they conducted a police investigation.

It was then, and only then, that Clint began to relax, sagging onto the dusty metal, his expression dark, lit only from the faint light coming through the grate. “Now what?”

That, Natasha didn’t know.

Chapter Text

They spent three days up in the vents, waiting in the darkness and filth.

The first day was spent in utter stillness and silence, watching below and listening for the police activity on the platform. For a while very little happened, as they held their breaths, expecting them to intuit where she and Clint had gone. Even when the Hungarian government task force opened up the area to look, shining lights all over the work area, they didn’t look up to the ventilation. For long hours they hovered, waiting, but little and less happened. Eventually, the investigation ended and the platform was opened. Natasha guessed they either assumed that she and Clint had hopped a train to some other part of the city, or had simply gone into hiding and were waiting for them to pop back out in order for security cameras to catch them.

“Better settle in,” Clint suggested, curling up with his pack as if it were a pillow. “It’s going to be a long night.”

He wasn’t lying. Every groan of metal and tick of the fans had Natasha’s eyes fluttering wildly, left hand flexing to enable her vambrace, expecting the police or government officials to have finally figured out where they were. She was only greeted by swirling dust. Morning arrived with an influx of passengers, all going about their days as if an explosion hadn’t happened in their city, as if a little girl hadn’t died from it. Natasha listened to the sounds as she sipped from her water bottle, eyeing Clint in the dim light. They hadn’t spoken, really, since they had climbed up, outside of the occasional comment that they supposed that they were safe enough for the moment. They hadn’t formulated an idea of how they were getting out of this, and they absolutely hadn’t discussed the bombing itself. For now, it was best to remain quiet, huddled in the darkness, avoiding the brutal light of confrontation and truth.

It was mid-day, she guessed, when Clint finally grew bored, pulling out his flashlight and one of his many utility knives. She watched, curiously, as he grunted, flipping over on his back, shoving one of his packs under his head as he lay there, underneath one of the main girders of the ventilation system. Nonchalantly, he pulled his knife, and began scratching at the metal, the small cuts glittering in the light propped up on his chest.

“What are you doing,” she whispered, curious, as his knife strokes took the aimless shape of a stick figure.

“Doodling,” he returned, tilting his head back to look at her. “What does it look like I’m doing?”

Well, she had to grant him that. “You’re scratching up the vent shaft.”

“No one is going to care, are they?”

She supposed they wouldn’t.

“Can I join you?”

“Suit yourself.”

Eager for something to do to pass the long hours, she pulled out one of her own knives, longer than his more utilitarian one, but the only one she had on her. As quietly as she could manage, she scooted alongside him to lay on her back, shoving her bag under her head as he did, relying on the light of his flashlight as she too doodled. She recalled doing this a great deal, once, when she was a girl, sometimes in class, sometimes on long car rides in Ohio, other times just because she was daydreaming without anything else better to do. Out of habit she scratched out a butterfly, a favorite one, before she turned her skills to a flower, a simple tulip with triangle edging.

Clint watched her for a long moment, before he reached over between them and drew a large hashtag, the classic grid for tic-tac-to. Lazily he crossed an X on the far middle box, then turned to her, speculatively. It was an opening to her, and she took it, topping it with an O. He followed by placing another X, followed soon by one of her Os. Before she knew it, he had completed a trio of them, scratching a line through it and looking rather smug about it.

“Hustler,” she snorted, as he grinned in the gloom.

“Long car rides with Mom, me, and my brother, what else do you think I played? I was the tic-tac-to champion of the Midwest.”

“Self-proclaimed,” she snorted. “Anything else you and your brother got up to in those long car rides?”

He thought for a moment. “Hangman,” he offered, explaining upon her confused expression. “It’s a spelling game, kind of like Wheel of Fortune. You have to guess a letter in the word. If you guess wrong, you draw another little bit of the hanged man.”

As he spoke, he drew an upside down “L” of a gibbet, before dashing lines beside it. “You go first. Pick a letter.”

“E,” she said, remembering that it seemed to be a common letter in the English language. One “E” went in the middle, as slowly, bit by bit, both her word and the poor hanged man began to take shape.

“Butterfly?” Her gaze flickered to the one she had sketched elsewhere. “Original!”

“Well, it was top of mind. Your turn.”

So it went for a while, each taking turns at various words, before shifting games completely. Even then, they seemed to soon run out of imagination, as the small section of metal was soon scored with their all-too-brief entertainment. They both were soon reduced to absently staring at their work, the noises of pedestrians rising below them.

She knew it was coming, could sense it in the air, the question she knew Clint wanted to ask. Natasha almost wanted him to ask it, to lance the festering, ugly boil that was rising up between them, and yet, she didn’t want him asking as well. She didn’t want to have to show this side of herself, the ugly, awful side of her. Too late, she reasoned, staring at the butterfly on the metal in front of her, he had already seen it, already knew who she was under the exterior. It couldn’t be any worse.

A voice in her head laughed, reminding her it always could be worse.

“Why did you do it?” His question rumbled out, gruffly, underscored with his hurt, confusion, and bewilderment. “She was just a kid, Natasha. She wasn’t her father. She didn’t have anything to do with it.”

He kept reminding her of that, as if she wasn’t aware of all of that, as if any of the girls whose lives were ruined by Dreykov had anything to do with any of it. She toyed with what to tell him, to stick with brutal, unfeeling pragmatism, to argue that Antonia simply destined to follow her father’s dark path. Instead, she went for the truth, unvarnished and messy as it was.

“I panicked,” she whispered, softly, running a thumb gently and carefully over the edge of her knife tip. “She wasn’t leaving. She started going through her bag, and I thought either she or Dreykov would find the bomb, and that would be it, my one chance at ending all of this for good would be gone.”

In her mind she still replayed that horrible moment with perfect clarity: Antonia wandering from her father’s desk to her bag, grinning as she dug through it, searching, the clawing fear at the knowledge of what was at the girl’s fingertips, the realization that if she found it, Dreykov would know, would foil it, would get away.

“You aren’t one for losing your head, Nat.”

It showed how little Clint still knew her, and how much she kept internalized, that he even believed that. “I did then. I had to be sure this worked. The only way to get that close to him was through her, and the only way I knew it wouldn’t fail was detonating it then, before it could be found. I had to be sure…I had to be free…I had to make an end of it.”

He couldn’t possibly understand it, not really. Certainly, Clint had his own history with abuse and fear. His father had terrorized his family. But even in that, it was different…so different. She didn’t even know how to make him understand.

“Do you know what it is like not knowing if your mind is your own?” She turned to him, eyes burning in the faint glow of the flashlight. “Do you know what it is to be certain that what you are doing is right, no matter how horrible it is or how much you don’t want to do it? Do you know what it is to coldly murder someone with your own hands, without batting an eye, without feeling a thing, for nothing more than a petty whim on someone else’s part, knowing you were the one carrying that blood guilt? I can remember being in the Red Room as a child. I was younger than Antonia when I learned how to use a gun, when I was forced to shoot at people. I was fourteen when I killed my first man, someone who had crossed Dreykov. I don’t remember if I ever saw his face or what he looked like. I still remember how Dreykov congratulated me after that kill, sitting at his feet as he petted my hair, as if I were a dog. He promised I would do great things, be his greatest creation, his greatest weapon. And in that moment, I wanted that more than anything, even as he was getting ready to take every choice I could ever make away from me. I wanted to make that monster happy, to please him, to do whatever it took to be great, for him. I lied, I stole, I killed, I tore down people and governments, and I did it all because he wanted me to, and I wanted to do what he wanted. It didn’t occur to me, couldn’t occur to me that I could ever do or be anything different…not till I finally broke away. And when I did, I never wanted to be that again, to ever feel like again, to be beholden to him, tied to him, to have who I am subsumed by that monster. He treated us like things, Clint, like dolls, weapons, not people. He had us beaten, starved, drugged, psychologically brainwashed and traumatized, all so we could forget who we were, so we would lose any vestige of ourselves or any will to fight it or him, and if we were less than what he wanted, he killed us. All I could think in that moment was that if I didn’t explode that bomb, if I didn’t do something, I would be forever trapped by that, forever stuck in that horrible nothingness of existence, a machine he could just summon and beckon at a moments notice and be pulled back into his world, that life, to become his tool once again, and I would never, ever be free.”

She had felt that horrible, tugging certainty that it could happen, ever since she stepped into Budapest, with its thousands of eyes all belonging to Dreykov, all threatening to expose her.

“I didn’t want to kill Antonia,” she finally sighed, her throat burning as the words escaped her. “I didn’t want to, not at all. I didn’t mean for her to get caught up in all of that, but she wasn’t leaving, and I couldn’t let him get away. It is horrible, I know it is, and I’ll carry that guilt with me for the rest of my life. Every other crime I’ve done, those can perhaps be laid at Dreykov’s feet, but Antonia was my own choice, and I know that. I’ve done horrible things…horrific things. But she was the one I made as me…myself. And I suppose that begs the question, am I the monster Dreykov made me, or am I just a monster all on my own?”

Her question died off, as silence fell between them. Below, the hum of people coming and going, and the screeching noise of the train, all blended in a cacophony of white noise, neither soothing her misery or easing the aching pain in her conscience, the horrific and terrible knowledge of what she had done and why. Perhaps, for someone like her, there was no freedom, no ability to move on from the crimes she had committed.

Slowly, from across the distance, Clint reached out, found her hand, and hooked his pinky around hers. “You’re not a monster, Natasha.”

She wanted to believe that, desperately. “All the evidence seems to point to the contrary.”

“You’re not,” he insisted, his finger tightening. “You’re a victim, as much as Antonia was. You were groomed to fight and murder, and trained that your first instinct should be to get the job done whatever it takes, no matter the cost. You aren’t the monster in this scenario, only the victim in all of it, and I should have remembered that.”

“Clint, it’s not your job to clean up my messes.”

“No, but it is my job to make sure I don’t put you in situations that compromise you. That compromised you.”

She made to protest, but he held up his other hand to silence her. “You said it yourself. You panicked, right?”

She had. “I shouldn’t have. You are right, I should have kept my head.”

“Natasha, it’s the man who made your childhood a living hell for decades, if you didn’t have a reaction to that, I’d be worried. Speaking as someone still working through his own childhood trauma, I know. And I should have thought of that, and I didn’t, and for that, I’m sorry.”

She stared at him, unsure of whether she should upbraid him for trying to absolve her guilt or thank him for giving her perspective. She landed somewhere, uncomfortably, in the middle. “That doesn’t make it better. Antonia is still dead, and it is still my fault.”

“It’s my fault too,” he pointed out, gently. “I detonated that device.”

“On my information,” she pointed out. “You were blind, Clint, and I was the one who told you to do it. You are right, I betrayed your trust. You told me to make sure she wasn’t hurt, and I did it anyway, and I’m sorry. I put you in that situation, and I shouldn’t have, not after everything you and Laura have done for me.”

It ached to think of all they had given her, the pair of them. They had provided her with a home, a family, a place where she belonged. They had introduced her to their children, to their friends, to their community. She’d been there for Lila’s birth, for the holidays, they had celebrated her birthday. When she was kidnapped by men hoping to profit off of Dreykov’s handsome ransom, Clint had been the one leading the charge to get her. After all of that, she had still put him in that position, and it was only now, as she considered it from outside of her own grief and guilt, that she realized just how untenable and unfair she had been. This man had risked everything for her, and she had just had him unwittingly kill a child in a bid to remove Dreykov from her life forever.

“I’m not a good person, Clint,” she reiterated the same comment she made the other night. “I don’t know if I’m the type of person you should be putting so much effort into, doing all these things for.”

That thin line of connection, his small finger wrapped around hers, calloused from years of training and fighting, tugged ever so gently. His voice, thick with emotion, rumbled in the dimness between them. “None of us in this profession are good people, Nat. We lie, we deceive, we fight, we sometimes kill, and I don’t know any path of morality or world religion out there that would call us good for it. But I do know this, just because our job requires us to do dark things, that doesn’t mean we have to be dark ourselves. We can choose to be different, to do something better. And I think you have a chance to be that, if you take it.”

To be something better. She longed to be that, to be someone she could feel proud of, someone who wasn’t weighed by the ponderous weight of all the lives she had ruined, whether for Dreykov or all on her own. “Do you believe that? That I can be someone better?”

His answer was instantaneous. “Yes, I do. I have to believe it, because I got to believe that about myself, too. We both can be better people who do good, but it has got to be a choice we make everyday to do that, to do what is right for the most people, to protect them, to do what we can to make them safe. I choose to do good, Natasha, to make the right choices, because otherwise I’d go crazy in this job.”

“You say that like you aren’t crazy,” she teased, adding a hint of levity to their otherwise heavy conversation.

“There are days I wonder,” he admitted, shifting slightly, the bag under his head creaking as he did. “I don’t know, I think of my mom a lot in moments like that, of what she went through with Dad. I may not agree with it, but she was trying to do good, even by him, and he was a jerk. I want to do the same. I know you were trying to help your other Black Widows, doing what you did, and don’t forget that.”

They would now be free as well. It did not absolve her of Antonia’s death, but it somewhat eased the burden, knowing that they would finally be free themselves, have the choice and opportunity to try and do good everyday, just like she would.

“I’m sorry I broke your trust.”

He said nothing for a long moment, before turning his head to look at her. “The thing about trust is it is easily broken, but it can be rebuilt. So let’s you and me rebuild it together, make better choices, and somehow try to get out of this goddamn mess together alive, huh?”

His face blurred in a sheen of surprising tears she refused to let fall. “I think I can do that.”

It wasn’t completely better, not by a long shot, but it was perhaps a step in the right direction. She held onto that as they continued to hide there in silence throughout the afternoon and into the night, occasionally picking back up their games, until fatigue sucked them both under again.

Their third day in the vent, and Natasha thought she might just go mad from it. She’d been in far worse places, truly vile ones, but the high tension of the last two days, coupled with the discomfort and filth of the tight, aluminum space left her dying to get out of there.

“We could maybe slip out when it is quiet,” Clint suggested, ever cautious. “After this long, I suspect they assume we have fled somewhere else.”

Natasha hoped he was right. They waited till a particularly busy period, slipping out of the ventilation with stiff limbs, skin and hair dusty, and eyes blinking blearily at the light. Natasha paused long enough behind the petition to pull out her hoodie, using it to cover her hair, as Clint tucked his bow and quiver inside the larger of his bags. Then, just like that, they slid out past the partition and into the crowds of commuters, heading up the stairs to the sunlight and fresh air. The Ducati was now long gone, likely carried off as evidence. Beside her Clint climbed the steps, having pulled on the old standby of a blank, black baseball cap and sunglasses. Weighed down as he was with his bags he looked every bit the tired American tourist, if a bit on the grimy side. “So now what?”

Natasha reached for her burner phone, flipping it open. “I still pay on the place I keep here. I could ask Mason if it’s available.”

“Mason?” His tone and frown all indicated Mason wasn’t a name he recognized.

“A fixer friend of mine,” she assured him, smirking as his expression shifted from confused to distrustful. “You have your networks, I have mine. Not all of us have the backing of SHIELD or a wife who has all of the connections in the world to help us get by out in the field, you know.”

“Is he trustworthy?”

That was the million dollar question with any of these people living in the shadowy gray, wasn’t it? “He’s reliable, especially when money is involved, and I pay him, so he comes through for me. In any case, if my place is still there, we can hide out there. Dreykov never found it, so he never knew about it, and I doubt anyone else would be able to trace it, either.”

“I found it,” he groused, all too pointedly. “SHIELD knew where you were.”

“Well, let’s hope they can find us and get us out of this. Think Zovak will take your phone calls?”

“I suspect she’s been waiting to hear from us. If you think your old place is safe, I’ll go through the back channels and see if she will answer.”

Natasha nodded, something of the weight lifting off her as they moved through the city, gazes moving, watching every police officer and security guard they passed. Maybe, just maybe, she mused, they both may get out of this in one piece.

Chapter Text

She found her leased flat little unchanged from when she left it. Natasha knew Clint had come sometime after she left to gather any other things she left behind that she may want, but most of it was junk, bits and pieces left behind by previous tenants and others who had used the place before. She had personally left two bikes there, not to mention several cooking utensils, and a rather nice throw blanket that she wished she could bring back to America with her. She thought of it as cozily cluttered, a place that to the untrained eye would looked lived in and comfortable and not as a place where a spy was hiding out.

Clint, who lived with the very neat and tidy Laura, clearly had other opinions.

“Why are there so many random books in this place?” He held up a textbook on economics that she was convinced had been in the flat since it was built sometime during the reign of the Hapsburgs.

“Came with the place.” She hadn’t really questioned it much at the time, not when it was more or less just a convenient place to crash. “I think this place used to belong to an old college professor who had been here for decades. I found a lot of books stashed in here, things I am fairly certain the Communist government would not have been thrilled knowing anyone had.”

“Maybe he was part of the revolution in ‘56?” He flipped through the ancient tome, stirring the air with the smell of old pages and dust, before sniffing and tossing it aside. “I somehow suspected you didn’t leave all of this in here.”

“It was furnished.” She didn’t ask Mason too many questions. No one asked Mason any of these kind of questions. All of his places came furnished with items, often left there by previous owners, all designed to give the impression anyone else other than a spy lived there. “Besides, why would I need ancient economic textbooks from the 1930’s and 40’s?”

“I don’t know, you’re a smart woman. You might be into global economics.”

“With those kind of lines, Barton, it’s a wonder that Laura ever fell for you.”

“I think it was persistence more than anything.”

She didn’t respond, choosing to bury her nose in the novel she had picked up. They arrived in the apartment four days ago, dusty and filthy, exhausted from not sleeping properly in the close quarters of the vent. They each took a turn crawling into the shower, before splitting up into the separate bedrooms to sleep for the next twelve hours. Since then they had been laying low in the apartment, raiding the store of canned and boxed foods in the pantry. There was no television in the place, only a radio that looked as if it might be pre-Soviet era, and a collection of old records of classical music that Natasha had admittedly grown fond of, but of which Clint was less enamored. In fact, his own boredom was now starting to grate on her nerves.

“Have you heard from Zovak yet?”

“Nope,” Clint grumbled, flipping through a new book, this one in German, a language he actually could read. “I don’t know what her status is, and we were using arcane back channels to reach out. It’s not like we can openly meet somewhere at the moment, obviously.”

While Clint’s face was not as well known in all of this, they had determined that it was the better part of caution to not go outside again, for fear that he might have been identified and pictures of him were put out. Natasha couldn’t see how it wouldn’t be, there were precious few people in the world who used a bow and arrow as a primary weapon anymore, and that meant Clint was fairly identifiable…which of course led them back to SHIELD. This in and of itself might explain why Zovak was so late in checking in. After all, she could have been pulled out from fears of the Hungarian government finding her and arresting her in order to draw them out. She could be under orders not to engage with them at all, as SHIELD spun damage control on their actions. Or it could be as simple as Zovak waiting till the coast was clear, and Natasha was simply paranoid. That was just as viable an option, given the week they had been having.

“You think she will reach out,” she finally asked, eyeing him over the top of her paperback.

His shrug was noncommittal. “I hope so. Ideally, we were supposed to slip out on our own, but I don’t think that is happening.”

“This was supposed to be a dark op and we bungled that. Do you think SHIELD will help pull our asses from the fire?”

It was clear he wanted to believe it, but also just as clear he wasn’t sure.

“We’ll have to make some sort of plan to get out,” he finally muttered, pushing himself out of the worn and tired armchair, grabbing his glass to wander back towards the kitchen. “Foods getting low and I’m not sure I want to chance going out to get anything fresh. Our luck, we’ll be at the check out and someone will see a paper with our faces and call us in.”

Natasha would have liked to argue, but their luck certainly hadn’t been good of late. Pity she would kill for something fresh at the moment - fruit or veggies, something that wasn’t pasta, or tinned stew, or…

Clint stopped, still, halfway between the sitting room and what would have been the formal dining room once upon a time. He cocked his head, listening. “You hear that?”

She paused, concentrating. She could hear it, too, a scraping, sort of scrabbling sound, something against brick or stone. It came from the back somewhere, in the kitchen that overlooked the central courtyard of the apartment complex. It made Natasha’s blood run cold.

In an instant, Clint had his bow out and loaded, three arrows notched and ready to fire. Natasha's gun was in her hand, up and pointed through the dining area to the wide, open doorway that led into the kitchen. The scrabbling sound grew louder, as the ancient window in the kitchen began to shake. Someone was trying to get in.

“If needs be, grab what you can, run for it,” he ordered, eyes never leaving his target.

“I’m not leaving you,” she shot back, incensed he would think so.

“I’m SHIELD, they won’t hurt me. You, I can’t guarantee that, not with Dreykov’s ties around here.”

“No,” she insisted, her angry whisper harsh.

“That’s an order, Romanoff,” he growled as the creaking frame screeched in protest at whoever was trying to force it open. It would be far easier to just break through it. If they thought they were being quieter and more clandestine this way, they weren’t.

Natasha tensed, ready to fire or spring away at a moment's notice.

A hand reached in to pull through a head and upper body. Natasha barely had time to register that it was a woman, dark haired, save for a streak of bright fuchsia, before three streaks of lightning flashed from Clint’s fingertips, coming within centimeters of hitting Hannah Zovak through the skull.

“Jesus Christ,” she yelped. To her credit, she didn’t fall back or stumble, but she did stop cold, staring in wide-eyed terror at the three arrows, closely grouped, one on top of the other, now embedded in the dingy wall, just over a toaster oven and just below a series of hanging hooks.

“Son-of-a-bitch, Zovak!” Clint’s steely determination melted into stunned relief. “The hell! Another inch and I’d have taken you out!”

Natasha blinked for a moment, still grappling with the idea that it was Zovak and not the Hungarian security forces climbing up the apartment’s walls, before lowering her gun, adrenaline pumping through her veins.

“I didn’t expect you to start shooting at people the second the window was opened,” Zovak defended, still shaken to her core by how close Clint had come.

“I wasn’t aiming to kill, really, just scare, distract.” It was hard to tell if he was fibbing or telling the truth. He was a deadly shot enough it could have been either.

It was Natasha who cut to the chase. “Why did you climb up the side of the building?”

She shrugged. “Wasn’t sure who all knew this as one of your hiding spots. SHIELD did, obviously, but with all of Hungarian security out looking for you, I couldn’t be too sure. Coming in the front would blow my cover.”

“And climbing up the side wouldn’t?” Natasha questioned, dubious.

“I don’t know, it was how I got in,” Clint reminded her, pointedly. “Though I had the cover story of the electric.”

“Cable internet,” Zovak offered, tapping a logo on the polo shirt Natasha just now noticed she was wearing. “Flimsy cover, but believable at the moment.”

Natasha had to give her that. “What took you so long?”

Zovak eyed the arrows in the wall, moving around them as if they were poisoned asps ready to bite. If she was offended by Natasha’s bluntness, she didn’t show it. “It’s been chaos since last week. Dreykov’s death caused a chain reaction. People were brought in, questioned, even me. I got to you as fast as was safe to do so.”

“You know for sure he’s dead,” Natasha pressed, her heartbeat roaring as she realized she never actually double checked that, never made certain for herself.

“I’ve seen photos from the scene,” she returned, grimly. “They showed them in the interview, maybe to make one of us talk. I’ve seen the scene, Romanoff, there is no walking away from that.

Natasha wanted to ask about Antonia, but couldn’t bring herself to do it.

“Who else died besides Dreykov and his daughter?” Clint glided past the most painful bits for Natasha as he wandered over to pull his arrows from the ancient plaster. They didn’t come easy, embedded deep into the wall, but they did, eventually.

"Several of his close security. His secretary was injured, but she will survive.” Zovak eyed Natasha. “They were quick to pin it on you, though. They have warrants out for Natalia Petrovna, the name you were going by at the FSB.”

Another cover she would have to burn, she sighed. “Anyone around these parts would only know me as Natalia Petrovna. What’s the story on it?”

“Rogue FSB agent, inter-departmental struggles in Russia, Dreykov in the middle. The Kremlin is denying any knowledge of this, and are just as eager for you to be caught as Hungary is. Everyone is saying that it is part of a larger shakedown in the Russian intelligence community, pushing out Dreykov and other ex-Soviets.”

“No one is looking at SHIELD?” Clint wiped the ends of his arrows off on his trousers, moving back towards the living room and his quiver to put them away.

“Not yet, though they might get to it, eventually, given your arrowheads,” Zovak grumbled. “Your weapon sticks out like a sore thumb.”

“I could use a sniper rifle, but it’s not as elegant,” he joked. “Besides, I wasn’t aiming to kill, only to stop them. Did anyone get hurt on our escape?”

“Outside of a fractured leg and bumps and bruises, no.” She trailed behind Clint, into the sitting area where they now all gathered. “Word on the street is, though, that Hungarian security forces are out for blood. You embarrassed them, a couple of rogue agents, and they didn’t like it. Worse, Dreykov was in close with the head, so it’s personal for them. They feel you two of come in and shit on their carpet, and they would be happy to take you down - dead or alive.”

“Dead?” Clint arched an eyebrow in surprise. “That’s a bit extreme.”

“You are terrorists according to the Hungarian government, and they won’t be shy about using deadly force on you both. They have to make an example.”

“Not my first time as a terrorist,” Natasha smirked, throwing herself on the sofa, loose limbed as the fear gave way towards relief and now the possibility of a plan.

“Speak for yourself,” Clint grunted, following suit in his armchair, waving to the other for Zovak. “What does Fury have to say about all of this?”

“Beyond being annoyed you two went so public? Mostly, he just wants to get you two out.” Zovak eyed them both, dryly. “We’d hoped you were smart enough to get out on your own.”

“It all went down too fast,” Clint defended, mildly. “We thought we’d have a bit more time. The…death of the girl complicated things.”

Natasha bit the inside of her cheek, but said nothing. Zovak eyed them both, regret evident. “Yes, well, it shouldn’t have happened, but it did. I won’t lie, the girl’s grandfather is behind most of this. He’s the one that pushed for the dead or alive. I guess he lost his daughter, now his granddaughter, and you are who he’s directing his grief at.”

“Not like it isn’t deserved,” Natasha sighed, darkly. “So will Fury help us get out?” She didn’t think Fury would allow an asset he had worked so hard to get languish in Budapest if he could help it.

“That’s the plan. SHIELD can do an extraction of all three of us, get us out of here to Berlin. Trick is, we have to be at the Citadel at Gellért Hill tomorrow, 1 PM. It’s a shift change with air traffic control. They are flying a quinjet illegally into Hungarian airspace, and that window is the best time to get in and out without being chased to ground. If we’re late, we’re stuck, and we’ll have to wait till they can find another window.”

Natasha looked to Clint to judge his opinion. “Think we can make it?”

“Where is Gellért Hill?”

“On the Buda side of the Danube, across from here” Zovak said, pointing in the general direction. “South of Parliament, across from the Market Hall. It’s the tallest point in the city, you can’t miss it.”

“How many ways to get there?”

“Depends on what bridge you take.”

Clint considered. “If we go further north, up by the castle, we can make our way down.”

“And there are a lot of neighborhoods between there and the hill,” Zovak pointed out. “Lots of ways for you to get caught. Besides, I think they have a checkpoint by Parliament.”

Clint grimaced. “Okay, so where aren’t there checkpoints?”

“Some of the less tourist areas, mostly further south.”

“And how do we get to those? We don’t have a car, and stealing one will draw attention,” Natasha replied, thinking. “What about the Elisabeth Bridge? They got anything on there?”

Clint and Zovak shared a pointed look.

“I don't think so,” she finally said. “It’s usually quiet. That’s why I used it as a meeting point with Barton while I was watching Dreykov. It’s got lots of foot traffic, busy with car traffic, but I don’t know if anyone will be watching. No one thinks you will be heading up to a park, they think you will be trying to get out of the country. I can't be sure, though.”

“Then let’s try that, then?”

Zovak glanced at Clint. “I say we follow Natasha’s call.”

The other woman clearly had no reason to argue with it. “All right, I’ll head up to the hill tomorrow morning and wait. When will you two head out?”

Clint weighed their options “After commuter traffic. Best not to be seen.”

“Right,” she murmured, eyeing them both. “Think I could get out of this place without having arrows being shot at me?”

“Depends, are you going back out the window?”

Zovak didn’t dignify Clint’s rejoinder with a response. “I’ll see you tomorrow. I have to go break a boy’s heart right now, then maybe have a drink.”

Natasha realized that she was cutting off her cover, giving a reason for her to leave the city. No matter how fake it was, it couldn’t be easy to do, breaking someone’s heart. In the long list of crimes she had committed, it was one of the few things Natasha hadn’t done. “Good luck. We will see you tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” Zovak grunted, rising. Clint followed her out the door to see her out, locking it back up. He was slow in making his way back, thoughtful, hands in pockets as he came.

“You’ll finally get to go home.” It had been too long, over two months. When they arrived, Lila was just beginning to scoot. By now, she should be getting ready to walk. “You can be with Laura and the kids.”

“Yeah!” He flopped into his chair with a thud, boneless as he stared up at the ceiling. “God, I miss them.”

“I know.” She had kept him away from them too long. “They’ll remember your face.”

“Cooper will.” That thought made him smile. It made Natasha smile as well. She felt as if she should smile, but she did. “We still have a whole city to get across, though.”

“Yeah,” she agreed, looking out the window to the buildings around her, with their red tiled roofs.

“It’s still going to be dangerous.”

“Yes, it will,” she agreed. “Think we can do it?”

He regarded her for a long moment, his blue-eyes steady. “Yeah, we’ll make it.”

Trust Clint to have confidence, even when she didn’t.

Chapter Text

Natasha gave the flat one last look to make sure there was nothing else in this city, in this world, that she wanted.

“You going to keep it?” Clint had packed and repacked his things. Now he filled his quiver, in the off chance they would need it.

“Keep what?”

He let his eyes roll around the room, before coming to settle back on her. “The place, all of this, it’s a nice spot to hide out when you are working this part of the world.”

“Somehow I don’t think that the Hungarian intelligence community will much like me being in this city after recent events.”

“Ah, they won’t like Natalia Petrovna after recent events. Natasha Romanoff, Agent of SHIELD, that is a different matter.”

“I don’t think they will split hairs that finely,” she snorted. “You think SHIELD would do that, though? Go to those lengths to protect me?”

Clint met her question with a firm expression, the sort she’d seen him give Cooper many times over. “Fury sent me in to get you. He put his name and mine on the line to get you out, to give you a chance, all because he saw something in you. I think he will go very far indeed to protect you, Nat.”

“As an asset?”

“Sure, but as a person, too.” He finished loading his quiver, stowing it in the bag he slung over his shoulder. “I think you should get to know Fury. It isn’t easy. He’s damned hard to get to know, but he might surprise you. He’s someone who I think will understand all this.”

“And what ‘all this’ would he understand?”

Clint eyed her, ruefully. “The weight of difficult, no-win decisions.”

He had her there. Perhaps Fury would understand that, too.

Their plan was to head out together, where in theory Zovak was waiting with a quinjet to fly them out. They would head out on foot, as cars were likely being checked. Natasha had insisted that if they were cornered, Clint was to make a run for it and get out with Zovak to go home. This had, expectedly, precipitated an argument.

“You are trying so hard to die for no reason, Nat,” he had snapped, angrily. “Dying won’t make anything better. It won’t bring Antonia back.”

“But it will get you back to your family,” she shot back, just as heatedly. Of all the many things she had on her conscience, having a widowed Laura and an orphaned Cooper and Lila was not something she wanted to add to it.

“So will the two of us getting on board that quinjet, so don’t make it more difficult for me. If you don’t show up, then I have to go find out what happened, and that delays things, and puts me in even more danger…”

“I get it,” she conceded, seeing where he was going with it, and not happy about it. “Be there or you won’t get on the plane.” They just had to get there, she supposed, and that was a much harder proposition that it would appear on the surface.

“You ready,” he called, turning her attention up from where she had been adjusting her vambraces.

“Yeah,” she said, tugging the right one firmly, before doing one last check on the truncheons at her back and the matching pistols on her sides. She grabbed her hoodie, big enough to cover all of it, before she followed him out of the door.

The building was quiet, for the most part, only the hum of televisions in the distance and the occasional grandmother peeking their head out as they swept. None paid attention to or cared about Natasha and Clint. As they hit the cobblestone street outside, they made for the quieter back alleys and streets, places where neither the police nor prying eyes would catch them. Down every long stretch of plaster and cobblestone Natasha held her breath, expecting to find military security waiting to take them in. Thus far, no one did.

They had been wandering for a while, the pair of them, through this warren of back alleys and smaller, medieval side streets, before Clint finally spoke up. “Pity I never get to be here in Budapest for a vacation.”

It was such a random non sequitur that Natasha nearly stopped in her tracks. “Why?”

“It's just a pretty place, and it would be nice to bring Laura to. She’d get a kick out of the history, culture and architecture. Her Hungarian is way better than mine.”

That wasn’t a stretch, considering how bad his was. “Maybe wait a while before you come back, when you aren’t a wanted fugitive suspected of terrorism in a NATO country.”

“I mean, when you put it that way…”

At the mouth of the side-street they were in, sirens blared loudly, sending them both scuttling behind a parked car, eyeing the area it passed until the sirens died into the distance.

“It may have nothing to do with us,” Clint reminded her, quietly, as she white knuckled the batons of her two truncheons over her shoulders. His words shocked her out of her cloud of anxiety and flight, reminding her that there were normal, average, everyday occurrences going on that the police were worried about beyond just her.

“Come on,” he urged, gently. “We got to keep moving.”

She followed him, heart in her throat, her skin prickling as they continued to meander in the general direction they needed to head. Walking from Pest to Buda was doable, if onerous. Two-thirds of the city lay on the Pest side, and while her flat was more centrally located than most, it still was not close to walk only by foot to the Danube and the bridge they needed. Midday was on them, and Natasha fretfully checked the time, realizing just how little time they had.

“It’s near noon,” she muttered, glancing over the streetline as much as she could to get a sense of how close they were. In the distance she could see the Great Market Hall, which sat at the end of the Liberty Bridge. It meant they were getting closer, as the Elisabeth Bridge was north of that. Follow the river, they would get to their target.

“Right,” she called to Clint, directing him to bear more northwards.

“I think I see the hill up ahead,” he returned, pointing to the high rise of green, verdant parkland and trees, crowned with a citadel perched on the top. Above even that was a high tower, where stood the Liberty Statue, a monument erected after the liberation of the country from the Nazis by the Soviets, a beacon over the city. If they could get there, she too could be free.

“Come on,” Clint urged, glancing over his shoulder, at her. “Almost there.”

She picked herself up and began trudging again.

The city center was busy. The weekend had passed while they were in hiding in her flat, and today was a workday with people bustling through the streets, going about their business, and not caring so much about two strangers in dark clothes. At least Natasha hoped they didn’t. She kept a surreptitious eye on everyone, painfully aware of anyone watching them or doing double takes. So far, no one did, but she couldn’t be sure.

“Breathe,” Clint reminded her. “Play into expectations.”

She was doubt that, she thought in bemusement, as they trudged along. She was the disaffected, grungy, paranoid youth. That couldn’t be a better statement of her mindset and where she was in life. She at least had a reason for it, she told herself, much more than many young people in their rebellious phase, the emo children and the mall goths, with their dark make up and darker attitude. Their anger was nothing to hers. She was fighting to survive.

The Elisabeth Bridge rose in front of them, a quarter mile span across the river. Natasha in general wasn’t the romantic type, but she didn’t consider that once upon a time, long ago, that river had served as a boundary of sorts, the liminal space between an empire and what they considered to be barbarian lands. People had fled across this river to find freedom and a new life in that empire, to build something better for themselves. Perhaps she could do the same. She ignored the sarcastic part of her brain that reminded her that those same people were used and abused till they rose up to tear the system down. Natasha hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

“Shit,” Clint gunted, angrily, coming to a dead stop on the sidewalk. Natasha nearly bumped into him, but caught herself, peeking around where he stood. He pointed, in the distance, a collection of white cars with a vivid blue strip down their side collected there. It was most certainly a checkpoint, judging by the amount of cars backing up to get across the bridge.

Natasha’s heart sank somewhere to her knees. “Have we been made?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. They’d gone radio silent with Zovak and had no idea where she was, let alone the quinjet which would be flying in to get them. “They could have gotten a tip off, I don’t know.”

“Do we risk it?”

Clint’s jaw worked quietly, his gaze turning to the top of Gellért Hill. A mile away from them, perhaps, was a way out, if they could get to it. “I don’t think we have a choice. They are looking for cars. We’re heading for the footpath across. Maybe they won’t be paying as much attention.”

It was an optimism Natasha didn’t share. “I’ll follow your lead.”

They crossed the busy street and made their way as nonchalantly as they could over to the bridge. It was an older, ornate affair, built at the end of the 19th century in the waning days of the old empire, though no one knew it yet, all for a dead queen who had been killed for no reason other than someone wanted to make a political statement. It hadn’t brought on the revolution he wanted. But here the bridge was, a tribute to a woman who likely was not nearly as wonderful in life as everyone thought her to be. She wondered if Dreykov’s legacy would be similar, eulogized in death by those who supported him, used as a tool to gig up a narrative of terrorism and fears of foreign influence, or would those he controlled be dancing on his grave, thrilled he was gone? That a monster like that would have such a complicated legacy left Natasha feeling angry. The world would never know what he had done, what generations of men just like him had done to women in Russia for nearly a century.

As they neared the bridge, Natasha could see better the situation of the checkpoint blocking all traffic on this end of the bridge. Several cars and yellow traffic cones blocked off lanes for those trying to cross, while on the far end another setup blocked the eastward flow of traffic coming from Buda to Pest. Foot traffic was being monitored on the walkways by a single officer on this end. She imagined it was likely the same on the other. Her fingers curled, plans spinning through her head.

“We’re American tourists,” Clint said, his tone clipped and commanding. “We can’t speak Hungarian. I’ll be loud and make a bunch of gestures asking if that is the park over there, and maybe we will be obnoxious enough they will just wave us through.”

It wasn’t a good idea, but it was better than what Natasha was coming up with at the moment. Her single nod was all the affirmation they gave as they got into the line of pedestrians waiting to cross over, all silently bemused that this was even happening. She could hear the officer, a bored sounding man in his late 20’s, ask the same questions and give the same spiel, as if by wrote. Please have your identification out for review. Even if you are going to the park, we still have to see your papers. If you don’t have your identification, you cannot cross the bridge today.

Natasha pivoted. “Do you have any American identification?”

He paused to look at her. “A fake passport.”

“Just pull it,” she ordered, pulling her own bag around and looking for the one she had. It was an old one, but had the name of Natalie Rushman on it, the name of her childhood identity. Natalie was from Ohio, born and bred. It should be enough to get them across. They waited, Natasha heart racing, tingling, blood roaring in her ears, as they made their way up to the officer. He stood, hands stuffed in his windbreaker, bored and skeptical as they stepped up, starting his entire little speech all over again in Hungarian. The pair of them practically shoving their passports at him.

“Sorry, I don’t speak Hungarian well,” Clint offered, loudly, with the worst twang Natasha had ever heard. She tried not to snort out loud, as even Clint’s fake American accent was as bad as his Hungarian.

The police officer was clearly just as startled, eyebrows arching up at him in surprise. “Errr…passports?” He waved at their small books, looking them over, briefly. “You are tourists?”

“Yeah, brought my girlfriend here for a romantic get away. First time we’ve been to Europe, and we are seeing everything!”

The idea of being Clint’s romantic interest left Natasha slightly horrified, but she played into it, pulling her Midwestern American accent from somewhere, a much better one than Clint’s twang. “Yeah, my family were from here, but immigrated long ago. It’s sort of a chance to see where we came from.”

If the cop cared, he didn’t show it. Instead, he glanced at both of their passports, frowning at them for a long moment. Natasha counted the seconds, heart in her throat. She could practically see the gears turning in his brain as he looked them both over, but at long last he nodded, waving them across.

“Thanks,” Clint called, sunnily, stuffing his passport back in his pack. “Have a good day!” He wrapped an around over Natasha’s shoulders, as they walked, side-by-side, down the walkway spanning the bridge. Only when they were several meters away did she finally relax, her breathing returning to normal.

“I can’t believe that worked,” she muttered, glancing up at him.

“Play into what they expect, remember. Americans are loud and obnoxious to most Europeans. So as long as I leaned into that, they wouldn’t be suspicious.”

It was one of the first lessons spies were taught. Natasha had it etched into her bones, play into their expectations. “What the hell was that accent?”

Clint flushed, dropping his arm, finally. “I was going for Texas. Was that not Texas?”

“It sounded like Bugs Bunny faking a hillbilly accent by way of American southern stereotypes.”

He grimaced at her description. “I was going for West Texas drawl.”

“Seriously, we have to work on your language skills. I am Russian and I sounded more American than you.”

“I would like to point out it is my home country, so, I’ve never had to really fake any way of sounding American because I am American.”

She let it slide, relaxing under the good humor the closer their steps led them over the quarter mile across the river. Down below, the Danube ran, a ribbon of slate grayish-green glass, with boats of all shapes and sizes meandering up and down it. It would have been a sight she would have loved to stop and admire, had their situation not been so dire. Even a glance at the time set her heart racing. Twenty minutes till SHIELD arrived. How long they would wait for them to get up the hill, she didn’t know. They were so close now, she feared jinxing the good luck they had so far.

In the car lanes of the bridge, two police cars raced across, dodging around the scant cars there. Both she and Clint’s attentions snapped towards it, as dull, sour fear rose in her mouth.

“What do you think that’s about,” she asked, quietly, continuing to step forward, even as ever instinct she had screamed to run.

“Shift change, maybe?” He was much more optimistic, but still cautious.

Another police car followed behind. She couldn’t be sure, but she thought she heard the slow beating of helicopter blades somewhere.

“Do you think we were made?”

Clint’s steps picked up slightly. “Possibly, they could have let us through to pin us in, trap us on the bridge, and give us no escape.”

The slight rise of panic now gave way to full blown terror. “So what’s our plan?”

He rolled his shoulders, setting them with determination. “We make our way past whatever they got planned.

A fourth car passed them, as in the distance, Natasha could see the helicopter making its way towards the bridge. “They are bringing arial back up.” A problem for their SHIELD quinjet should it arrive.

“I see it,” he muttered, already unzipping the top of the bag where his quiver lay, hidden. “Play it cool till we get to that end.”

“And if it’s a trap?”

Clint cut his gaze towards her, something dangerous glittering there. “Then play into their expectations till we make our move.”

He made it sound so simple. “Yeah, right.”

“Follow my lead.”

He was asking her to trust him in this. Natasha wasn’t sure she had a choice. Since that fateful day in Rome when he stared down the end of his sight at her and held his shot, she had followed his lead in all of this, praying that down this path led freedom and redemption. Thus far, he hadn’t failed her. She would trust him to get them out of this. As they neared the other end of the bridge, the increased police presence became undeniable. What had been only two or three cars when they started their crossing now had ballooned to six or seven, blocking both sides of the bridge. Civilians sat in their cars behind a barricade, trapped and curious, as up ahead, a group of officers began rushing people away.

“Be careful of the non-security civilians on the ground,” Natasha warned, eyeing a group being rushed off to the side and further down the path, away from all the action.

“I’m aware,” he sighed, glancing at the long line of cars. “They didn’t think this through, well.”

“Or maybe hoped to use them against us.”

“That too,” Clint grimaced, already calculating how to approach this. “We need to keep them out of this as much as possible.”

“Got it.” She didn’t need anyone else’s blood on their hands.

They neared the end, where four dour-faced officers waited, each eyeing them both as if they were particularly dangerous bombs waiting to go off. They each had hands on weapons, bullet-proof vests on as they called out in accented English. “Stop, please, right there.”

Clint did so, looking appropriately confused as he did. Natasha did as he did. “Is there something wrong, officer?”

“Just stop,” he barked, eyeing them both, as one of his compatriots spoke into a radio mic at his lapel. The other two gripped their weapons, prepared to pull at a moments notice. Behind her, she could hear the steps of other pedestrians come to a screeching halt.

She glanced at Clint, who stood, still as a statue, waiting. Above them the sun beat down, below them river traffic meandered. None of this was a good scene for this kind of ambush. Finally, the one with the radio murmured to the leader. He nodded, firmly, before waving at the two of them.

“You two, step onto the street, please.”

There was only a curb that separated the pedestrian walkway from the road for vehicles. As ordered, Clint and Natasha stepped into it, moving out of the way of the pedestrians behind them, as the other officers hurried those people off of the bridge. Meanwhile, the pair of them were ordered to stand in the middle of the two lanes, before the roadblock of cars, hard-eyed, twitchy police officers, men and women, all standing there watching them, daring them to move.

They were absolutely made.

“I hope you have a plan,” Natasha whispered as she stood, deceptively relaxed as they eyed a group of twenty-five or thirty officers, wondering how the hell they were making it through this.

“More or less, yeah.”

From the distance, someone with a bullhorn in heavily accented English told them to put their hands behind their head and to kneel down on the sun-heated pavement. Clint moved to do just that, and Natasha followed, her heart in her throat.

“You going to share,” she managed to rasp at him, the hot concrete digging into her knees.

“How far do your shock discs reach?”

Shock discs? She snorted. “Pretty far. Which one you want?”

“Think you can get the guy in the middle with the bullhorn?”

She estimated the distance. “Yeah.”

“You take him, I’ll cause a distraction.”

“Such as?”

“You’ll see.”

Ahead of them, four of the officers were now moving around their blockade, weapons out. Natasha could hear the voices of civilians in the neighboring cars being hustled out of the way. Good, one less thing to worry about.

“You are under arrest,” the man on the bullhorn called. “Please come along quietly.”

“Oh, I think we are going to ruin their day,” Clint sighed, tensing.

The four outliers were drawing closer. Natasha eyed them, wondering how close he planned to let them get. “When do you want to move?”

He hummed. “How about…”

He paused, as the air pulsed with the helicopter circling overhead. Natasha held her breath.

“Now,” he barked, like a gunshot in her ear.

As swiftly and gracefully as she had always been trained to do, she raised her arms from behind her head, shaking down the sleeves of the hoody she wore and exposing the ends of each of her vambraces. With her left one, she aimed straight at the man with the bullhorn, her right towards two of the officers heading towards them. A simple flex of her wrist, and out flew the small, electrified discs, one hitting the shocked bullhorn cop, while two flew at the officers on her right. She shifted her left hand aim towards the ones coming towards Clint, all too surprised by what was happening to be able to react fast enough. They too felt her Widow’s bites, as all of them hit the ground twitching, muscles convulsing with the voltage going through them.

Meanwhile, Clint had already snapped his bow out, and had pulled one his trick arrows, aiming at the foremost car in the blockade. Police scattered as it exploded on impact with the pavement in front of the vehicle, sending it flying and tipping over on its side, a natural barrier between them and the gunshots that began flying as soon as any of them gained enough of their wits about them to realize what was happening.

“Come on,” Clint urged, as he rushed for the car, using it as a shield from the onslaught of their attack. Natasha pulled her guns, looking to Clint for direction.

“We need to scatter them enough so we can get through there, get one of their cars, and get up the hill. Think you can do that without killing anyone?”

She considered, shrugging. “Mildly maiming?”

He mulled that over, considering his arrow tips. “Shoulders, hands, nothing that will ruin their lives forever.”

“Got it,” she returned, popping up to glance over the top of the car…or at least the side of the car that now faced upwards. Short as she was, it covered most of her body without her needing to crouch. A pistol in each hand, she aimed for those closest to them, taking care to aim for parts of them that wouldn’t end in life-threatening injuries - shoulders and lower legs, all away from the trunk of the body. She managed to take five officers that way, including one attempting to make an end run around the vehicle to get at them.

Clint beside her did much of the same, regular arrow tips that sank deep into calves and upper arms, maiming, but not deadly. If the police caught onto their game, they hadn’t shown it yet. If anything, judging from their screamed orders to one another, one would have thought they were in the middle of a war.

Natasha eyed the aircraft up above. “We need to move.”

“Yeah,” Clint grunted, shuffling through arrows before standing tall. “Get ready to run in a second.”

Without warning, the world in front of them exploded in fire, as glass flew and people shouted. One of the cars was now engulfed in flame.

“Go,” Clint ordered, shoving her, as they made their way around their barrier on the right, towards the untouched cars on the other side. Police were scattering, but a few brave souls still stood their ground, in between them and the relatively undamaged cars. The one closest to Natasha held their stance, aiming straight at her, barking at her in Hungarian. “Hagyd abba, vagy lövök!”

”Megpróbálhatod,” she replied, evenly, as she pushed off the concrete at a run. She had a knee in his chest, batting away his gun before he could fire, knocking him to the concrete and pinning down before he could blink. Fearful hazel eyes stared wide up at her, blown open in terror and dread.

”Kérem a kocsi kulcsait,” she requested, pleasantly, despite the low rumble of threat under her tone. He trembled under her knee, and she pressed the muzzle of her pistol against the side of his temple.

“Jobb zseb!” His terror stricken gaze flickered downwards to a lump bulge of what she assumed were keys in that pocket.

“Melyik,” she inquired, holding her right gun in place as she pulled the key fob out of his pocket.

“All of them,” he returned in whispered English.

“Thank you,” she smiled, patting his cheek with her fingertips. She rose to let him go, watching as he crawled away, calling to Clint, who had handily taken on the other two by himself. “I got keys, works on any one. Let’s go!”

The two police at his feet looked battered, but not severely. He turned, twirling the bow he’d been using as a staff in his encounter, snapping it into a more manageable position. “That ‘copter will follow us.”

“Yeah, well, let’s hope your friends scare it off,” she said, moving between the cars to the furthest on the end.

He didn’t argue, crawling into the passenger side as she slipped behind the wheel, pausing long enough to start up the car and adjust the seats. She was half afraid they would be disabled, but it started and moved, and no sooner had she cleared the nose from the others blocking the road, she punched the gas and made for the winding roads into the heavily wooded parkland. On either side of the road, gawking spectators scattered, terrified, as the sound of wailing sirens in the distance betokened backup arriving soon to give chase.

“Get us up there, I’ll do what I can to hold them off,” Clint ordered, locking the door and rolling down the window in order to sit securely on the edge of the door. Natasha left him to it, taking the hairpin turns of the winding road up the hill overlooking the city, maneuvering around cars on both sides and hoping to God that Clint didn’t tumble out. The helicopter meant they couldn’t lose the police completely, so they didn’t have long to wait for the reinforcements to come. Screaming up the road behind them, other police cars came tearing up around traffic, sirens flashing. Clint waited till they were past civilian cars before he sent an arrow flying into the windshield of one, startling them enough to stop, and then held off till the curve in the road to get the tire of the one behind that.

“Nice,” Natasha called, grinning.

“Yeah, keep your eyes ahead,” he warned, as she slowed enough to not hit the backend of the sedan in front of them. It went slowly, and unfortunately, there were three cars in the lane beside them and no way to get around it easily.

“Keep holding them off,” she called, waiting, trying not to tailgate the car in front of her, who may stop suddenly. Impatient to get around it, she scanned ahead, there was a patch of land between the road and trees, a turn out for sightseers.

“Hold on,” she yelled Clint, as she turned the wheel hard, gunning the car around the sedan’s right, and taking the turn out, gravel and dirt flying, as the shocked driver with their family stared at her, off roading with a cop car, and the sight of a man hanging out of a window with a bow and arrow.

Above them the helicopter circled, and behind them the police cars streamed. A whole line of them followed now, taking up both sides of the road, undeterred by Clint’s shots. Slowly they climbed together, up the hill, to the Citadel high above. The sirens broke the peace and tranquility Natasha imagined was normally there, and rose to a chorus chasing behind them.

And over all of that, there came the roar and wooshing of a jet engine, a sound she recognized from Clint’s own quinjet. It brought immediate relief to Natasha as she pulled up the hill, into a clearing where she could see the high, stone parapets of the Citadel, and hovering over that the promised SHIELD rescue.

Clint slipped in through the window, now, nodding at the aircraft ahead. “Looks like the calvaries arrived.”

“Just in time,” she muttered, glancing at the situation behind them. “Think we can get up the steps and to them?”

“Got to run fast,” he said, snapping his bow down and shoving it in his pack. “Leave the car and make a run for it.”

She wanted to laugh. All she had been doing since that fateful day in São Paolo was run; away from Dreykov, away from what she had done, away from the threats to her life. Now she was running to something, and if she made it, she would finally be away from all of it - the Red Room, the Black Widows, the horrors of the life she had been living before. She could do this.

Tires screeched as she brought the car to a stop near the steps leading up to the Citadel. The fleet of police and Hungarian security were flying up close behind them, but Clint was already out, taking the steps three at a time, Natasha not far behind. Her pack bounced at her side as she ran, rushing up the gray, stone steps behind him.

“Come on,” he yelled, as he made his way up the first set, turning to check on her progress, before turning to continue. She followed behind, seeing the quinjet hovering overhead, near the large, imposing Liberty Statue, her arms stretched, victoriously, above her head as she stood watch over the city. Just a little bit more and…

She should have known it wasn’t going to be that easy to escape her past. She didn’t see where it came from, either the police on foot or someone from one of the streaming sea of cars giving chase, but she felt it, the burning trail of fire that cut across the back of her left thigh, the muscle their seizing as it did. She stumbled, yelling in pain as her palms hit the steps in front of her. She didn’t have to reach behind her to know she’d been shot, not fatally, but enough to handicap her in this escape.

“Nat,” Clint yelled, but she waved him on, as she pushed herself up, blood dribbling down her fingers from the torn skin, bits of gravel now embedded in it.

“Go,” she screamed back, even as she could hear the booted steps of the Hungarian security forces stomping up behind her. “Just go!”

He was going to argue, she knew it, and so she forced herself up, hurrying as best she could on a leg that sang with pain, threatening to buckle and tumble her at any moment. Up the stairs she went, the full force of her weight landing on her right leg as she more hopped than ran up the rest of the steps. Clint had finally heeded her, running ahead, making it for the quinjet.

She wasn’t going to make it there herself after all.

Bitter anguish and disappointment warred with the stoic, Russian pragmatism that was her legacy from the Red Room. Tears blurred her eyes, but she reasoned, she had gotten this far. She had killed the bastard. Anton Dreykov was dead. He couldn’t hurt her anymore. He couldn’t hurt anyone anymore. If she went to prison now for her crimes, she could go with the full knowledge that she had succeeded in that much. That monster was gone. In that sense, she had won. She was free.

As for the rest of it…

She pressed forward, blood soaking through her pant leg, her thigh stiffening as she made it up the steps. Not far behind her, now, the police came. She turned to face them, standing on the edge of one of the parapets. To her right was a sheer wall face of stones, built up to overlook the city, looming over the forest of trees below it. To her left stood the Citadel itself. She didn’t have anywhere to go, and no way of fighting them all off by herself. She stood there, alone, waiting for them to surround her.

The first faces came up the stairs, arms raised. They barked orders at her in Hungarian, to stand down, to put her hands up, to kneel on the cement. They could shoot her down there, where she stood.

Except they didn’t.

Overhead, the air filled with air and heat, moving to her right, as Clint shouted her name above the roar of the quinjet’s turbines. “Natasha! Run!”

The sight so startled everyone, herself included, that she blinked for a long moment. She had told him to run ahead, expected him to take off with the quinjet, to go home to his life in Missouri. Instead he hung there, on a cable being manned by Zovak above, desperation on his face, urging her to run, to jump for it.

So she did.

Ignoring the shouts and flurry of bullets flying around her, chipping off bits of cement and ancient stone, she made her way, hobbling and faulty, her injured leg protesting and screaming, as she pushed off with all of her might, sending her body flying over the edge of the Citadel and into open space, with nothing between her and the trees below but hope.

And then Clint was grabbing her right wrist, holding onto her with a grip so tight, it threatened to bruise flesh and bone. Natasha hung there, dangling, staring at the stunned and angered security forces on the Citadel as Clint yelled at Zovak to bring them up. Despite the blood and stinging pain in her own hands, she held onto Clint’s forearm, clamping her left hand to it and holding on for dear life, as the quinjet hovered away from the shots and shouts below.

“Nat, don’t let go,” Clint yelled. If she weren’t holding on for dear live, she would have laughed. She had no intention of doing so.

It felt like years, but was only seconds, as Zovak reeled them both up and into the quinjet like a pair of fish yanked from the Danube. She reached for Natasha first, as she was unsecured, hauling her into the safety of the quinjet, before bringing Clint in. From the cockpit, a pilot turned, headphones over his ears, checking to see if they were in all right. Zovak signaled that all was well as she slammed a fist on the side hold door, closing it.

And just like that, Natasha was finally free.

“Natasha,” Clint gasped, yanking her hands to look at them. Numbly, she let him do it, realizing he was checking her over. He hadn’t left her. He should have left her, but he hadn’t. All common sense said he should have left her behind, made for the ship, and fled. She was damaged goods, injured, he could have risked everything by not letting her go.

It took several long moments to realize he was speaking to her, shaking her gently when she didn’t respond. “Are you all right? Can you walk?”

She shook her head, numbly, her injured left leg going out when she tried to push herself off the steel floor of the ship. Already a pool of blood slicked the floor.

“Where were you hit?”

She couldn’t process what he was saying. Her blood rushed in her ears, not just from the quinjet crawling higher up above, but from the realization she had made it. She was on here, making her way back to the West, to freedom, to…home. She was going home. Finally…

“I’m free,” she murmured, blood loss and surprise…perhaps shock…making her giggle, her eyes unexpectedly filming. She turned up to Clint, blinking hard. “I’m free now, aren’t I?”

It took him a long time to realize what she was asking him. A flurry of emotions softened the hardened worry and fear on his face. “Yeah, you’re free.”

And at that she laughed, a giggle, really, one that grew louder and brighter until it burst within in, and she found herself making horrible sounds, ugly, painful, broken sounds, as a lifetime of fear, misery, and pain released itself in a flurry of sobbing tears that tore through her chest and out of her throat and left her weeping on the floor of that quinjet. She was vaguely aware of Clint wrapping his arms tightly around her, like one his children, holding her against his shoulder, crooning softly to her that it was okay, she was all right, and that she was finally safe.

Chapter Text

Eastern Carpathian Mountains, Ukraine, 2009

In the tumult of sounds and noises, she thinks she hears Clint’s voice. He is loud and bossy, giving orders and demanding information. Typical of him, she muses, wondering, briefly, how he got there so fast. He hadn’t known where she was. He had asked, but she had assured him she could handle it alone, and he should enjoy his time off with his kids. She would only be gone a few days, a simple extraction, and then she could come join him on the farm. They could have a cook out. Laura could make potato salad, and Sally could make her famous cookies. Natasha would be home before they knew she was gone.

“Nat,” Clint’s voice rang close to her ear. “Nat, just hold on, for me, okay! Don’t let go, just hold. I won’t let you go like this, you hear me?”

She wanted to assure him she did, but it all because too much, the noise, the sound, the jostling that made everything hurt worse. As blackness threatened her, she wished she had never agreed to go to Tehran.

Triskelion, Washington DC, 2006

Despite the fact that she was perfectly capable of managing her crutches on her own, Clint still insisted on hovering near her left elbow. “You sure you can make it down to Pierce’s office?”

“I’m fine,” she snapped, mildly, glaring at him. “You’re as bad as Laura, hovering.”

“She told me she would kick me out of bed and make me sleep on the couch if I let you get hurt again.”

Natasha snickered. “Well, that’s your problem. I can’t help it if your wife likes me better.”

It was a moment of levity in an otherwise sober situation. Despite being back state side now for nearly a week, they were only just now being called to make their statements to Pierce and Fury together. Fury, of course, had met Clint and Natasha at the medical facility in Berlin, relieved to see them both alive and cautioning them that there was going to be hell to pay for the mess they left behind. It wasn’t as clean as he or Pierce had wanted, but it was successful. In that, Fury wasn’t sorry for the drama they had created. Strangely, his attitude to it all had provided Natasha with an immeasurable amount of relief. Maybe they would all walk away from this experience wiser, trying to do better.

This, however, was a far more formal meeting. Their actions were the sort that caused international incidents, and she could imagine Hungary had more than a few things to say regarding the fact that a SHIELD operation killed a naturalized Hungarian citizen and his native-born daughter, a man who had the sort of political sway that could put the Hungarian government in a precarious position now with his loss. It was going to be the sort of mess that Natasha was happy to leave in the hands of the political types, like Pierce, but she would have to answer for her part in it.

She had dressed sensibly, a dark suit, fitted to her petite figure, choosing the skirt over the slacks as her left thigh was still bandaged. Her flat shoes allowed her to limp along without putting pressure on the still knitting wound. The bullet had thankfully torn through muscle, but nothing else major, and at the moment more just ached and itched than anything else.

That didn’t stop Clint from staring at her as if she might be on death’s doorstep. He too had dressed for the situation, a dark suit she didn’t know he had, but she surmised Laura kept in reserve for him. He looked disturbingly like every other suit-clad SHIELD agent, and she found she didn’t like it. Clint was too much like her, a down-and-dirty operative, ready to take on any mission that came their way. He was far from being just a suit.

“Agent Barton, Miss Romanoff.” Pierce’s assistant called their names. “The Secretary will see you now.”

The other woman held open the heavy door for them as Natasha limped in first, Clint close behind. Even before they hit the door, they could hear the angry voices being raised in Hungarian on the other end of a phone connection, demanding to know why SHIELD had violated Hungarian sovereignty by sending in operatives to run a covert mission without informing them, then further compounding it by sending SHIELD aircraft into Hungarian air space without warning or clearance.

“Because, Ambassador Bathory, if I had warned you all of a SHIELD operation against a figure as prominent and powerful as Anton Dreykov, it would have been likely that you would have tipped him off about what we were up to.” Pierce rolled his eyes as he paced the area behind his desk. He caught sight of Clint and Natasha, waving them to chairs by Fury. Gingerly, Natasha sat on the edge of the chair in the middle, her spine straight, listening to the rebuttal on the other end. The Hungarian ambassador clearly took umbrage to the accusation that he would have tipped Dreykov off and said so.

“Well, I’m sorry, but that wasn't a risk we were willing to take, given Dreykov’s record. You did get our file on him, correct, showing his deep ties into ex-Soviet programs, including the Red Room, funding by oligarchs and more than a few government officials from other countries, including yours, as a matter of fact.”

On the other end of the line, the ambassador only replied once, in thick English. “I did.”

“So you can understand how it is we didn’t want to inform you or your government what we were doing, at least not until such time as the situation was taken care of. It was going to all save everyone a hell of a lot of face in the end, after all. Wouldn’t want to add embarrassment to our list of crimes.”

“He was a Hungarian citizen, Mr. Secretary!”

Pierce rolled his eyes, throwing up his hands as he wandered in his rolled up shirtsleeves, forearms bare, clearly aggravated with this conversation. “Well, then, perhaps you should be more careful in who you grant Hungarian citizenship to, Mr. Ambassador. I’m not sorry we did it, and if your government plans on aligning itself with any more ex-Soviet child thieves and spymasters, then maybe we should be paying more attention to the actions of the Hungarian government in this arena. Is this something we should be paying more attention to?”

It was a power move on Pierce’s part, born out of irritation and frustration, but it seemed to work. On the other end of the line, the ambassador only uttered a rather sulky “No.”

“Good, I’m glad that is all settled,” Pierce replied, glibly, moving lean on the back of his heather chair. “Is there anything else you would like to complain about before I let you go?”

The idea that Pierce just made a legitimate complaint on the part of an independent sovereign government sound like petulant whining surprised Natasha, but she remained silent, twisting her fingers in her lap. After several breathless moments, the man finally drawled “No, I will take this back to my government. Perhaps, given this new information on Anton Dreykov’s doings, cooler heads will prevail.”

“That’s what I thought,” Pierce snarked, dryly. “Have a good afternoon, Mr. Ambassador.”

Pierce reached over to press a button, clicking him off the line, before he looked up at the pair of them with his clear, blue eyes under the tangled scraggle of pale ruddy eyebrows. “You two created quite a mess in Budapest we’ve had to clean up.”

Natasha flushed, cutting her eyes sideways to where Clint shifted, uneasily. “The mission didn’t go off as cleanly as we wanted, sir…”

“Clearly! Dreykov’s kid is dead, and her family is understandably crying foul over it, and that's not to mention any number of police officers you injured in your escape.” Pierce let his grizzled gaze flicker between the two of them.

“It wasn’t the outcome we wanted.” Clint fell on that grenade for her. “The plan didn’t go as we expected and we had to act.”

“I know, I read the report.” Pierce waved Clint off, standing up straight to pull out his chair before slumping into it. “Neither of you followed up to check that Dreykov was taken out.”

“We didn’t have the time,” Clint began, but Natasha cut in, realizing she couldn’t allow him to carry the weight of the many things that went wrong during this mission.

“I should have done it,” she pronounced, meeting Pierce’s unnervingly direct expression. “I was the closest. I dropped the ball on that one.”

He regarded her for a long moment, but then only sighed, scrubbing at his well-lined face. “We have people on the inside with Hungarian security forces. They confirmed the kill. He’s dead, and that has created a whole hell of a mess, but it’s not our problem to clean it up.”

Natasha frowned at his blase irritation. Pierce waved it off as a mere annoyance and not the lives of hundreds of women, including Yelena. “Pardon, Mr. Secretary, but will anyone be handling the Red Room?”

“The FSB has announced they will be doing a thorough investigation,” he replied, with a note in his voice stating he believed that would happen as readily as he believed in Santa Claus. “Given their other three opportunities to conduct a thorough investigation on the matter previous to this, I think this will end up the same place all of them have. But we’ve been warned to stay out of it. In exchange, the FSB has willingly given us all of your files, Miss Romanoff, and agreed to seal off any trace of you as one of their own. For all intents and purposes, your entire record before this is now expunged, sealed behind SHIELD protocols. Natalia Petrovna and whatever she did before this is now gone. You are truly free to live your life, without the cloud of the FSB revealing your secrets.”

No, she mused, just SHIELD now held them. That was threat enough. “Why did they agree to that?”

It was Fury who spoke up then. “Because they didn’t want to have to answer uncomfortable questions about why they were sending a sixteen-year-old girl to seduce a thirty-five-year-old man on his yacht in the Black Sea.”

Well…there was that. “And the other Black Widows?”

Pierce tapped a thumb against his desk top, restlessly. “They promise the program will be shut down for good this time and all of the other women let free.”

“And you believe them?”

“No,” Pierce replied, with a grim smile. “Which is why I said if they didn’t do so within the next thirty days, they would find a rather uncomfortable report ending up on the desks of the UN Secretary General, the Presidents of the US and the EU, and a special report sent to several world countries regarding any missing female children and the Red Room program. Not to mention I’ll make sure the whole thing gets out to the international press corps so fast it will make their head spin.”

Pierce seemed to feel confident he could force the issue. Natasha was less sure. “You know, SHIELD tried once before to end it, and no one listened then.”

Pierce’s hard edge softened to something almost grandfatherly. “Maybe they will listen now.”

Maybe…Natasha somehow sensed it likely wouldn’t.

“In any case, we have other work to do now that Dreykov is gone,” Pierce pressed on. “He had deep influence in the intelligence community, even in the West, and it will take some time to root it out. We don’t know how deep it went or how extensive it was, for sure, and we may be at it for years.”

Dreykov’s web remained, even though Dreykov himself did not. “Whatever it takes, Mr. Secretary, I’d like to be there for it. I’d like to see this through, remove his influence once and for all.”

“You’re damn straight you will be,” Fury snorted, amused, tossing a file and a wallet on the desk in front of her. Natasha eyed it, reaching for it, curious. The file was a proper SHIELD personnel file, not a case file. This was slim and contained all of her personal information and none of her long list of other crimes. The wallet was an ID, with her name and a badge, designating her officially as an Agent of SHIELD.

“The World Security Council is satisfied, Miss Romanoff, that you have met the requirements they set forth to bring you in under SHIELD’s auspices.” Pierce waved towards the wallet in her hand. “They agree, as do I, that you will be an asset to SHIELD.”

For a moment, just a brief, fleeting one, she felt humbled by what was being given to her, the second chance to prove herself.

“Besides,” Pierce smirked, glaring mildly at Fury, “If I said no, he wouldn’t stop pestering me about you.”

“I see only potential in Agent Romanoff,” Fury returned, his one good eye piercing as it met hers, dark and dangerous. “I want to give her a chance to make her own choices in life to do what is right.”

Fury believed in her enough to give her this chance, to give her the opportunity to do something good and make up for all that she had done, including Antonia. Natasha was not a demonstrative sort, not so much, and she didn’t think Fury was either, but a part of her could have hugged him in that moment, for having the vision to see beyond who she was on paper in her files, for believing she could be someone better, do something better.

Instead, she folded the badge up, meeting Fury’s gaze. “Thank you.”

Fury accepted her thanks with only a nod, his eye flickering over to Clint. “I’ve been thinking, Barton, you’ve spent years now working as a solo act. It’s time you had a partner. You and Romanoff work well together. You willing to take her on alongside you?”

Clint, for his part, didn’t hesitate a second. “I wouldn’t want her with anyone else. She’d eat Rumlow alive.”

“He makes it so easy,” she snickered, shrugging.

“Fun as that may be, I can’t have you chewing up and spitting out perfectly good agents, so Barton it is. I’ll have you two set up as one of my STRIKE teams, there to handle the most trick or difficult situations. You think you can trust her, Barton?””

“With my life,” Clint returned with all the confidence that Natasha hadn’t realized he felt for her. His belief in her felt overwhelming, and yet, Natasha found herself sitting up taller for it.

Fury was pleased by that, a rare smile leaking onto his craggy face. “Good, now get out of here. You two have two months leave. Let Romanoff heal that leg of hers, then I want you both active duty, here, I got some things I need you both on.”

They both rose, Natasha more slowly and carefully than Clint. As she thumped behind her partner out of the office a swirl of different emotions rose in her - relief, amazement, sadness, worry, grief, and joy. In one fell swoop the prison that her life had been trapped in had opened, and a whole new life and a world of opportunities now presented themselves to her.

They were outside before Clint spoke. “So, you’re still an operative, but now on the other side. You think you are ready for this?”

“Yeah,” she replied without a moment’s hesitation.

Clint grinned, the devil in his expression. “You know, I can be sort of an asshole as a partner.”

“Isn’t it a good thing your wife knows me and likes me better than you?”

“I’m already regretting this,” he grumbled, without any heat, as they meandered down the hallway to the elevators.

Chapter Text

SHIELD Medical Center, Berlin, Germany, 2009

She awoke to a fuzzy, floaty feeling. Her limbs felt heavy and detached, her body unfocused, but she was breathing and relatively alive. Her eyes fell upon the machine at her bedside, the heavy tubing to her right hand, and the thick wads of bandaging on her left side. It came back to her, slowly, what had happened.

Why wasn’t she dead?

From out of the corner of her dim vision, she could see someone move. Clint stood there, equal parts anxious and grim, leaning over the railing of her bed. Judging from his appearance, he looked as if he hadn’t slept in weeks, though it was probably only days. “Hi there! How you feeling?”

She stared at him, wanting to answer, but her tongue was thick and felt like it was coated with paste and sawdust. He seemed to sense her dilemma, as he reached for a sealed cup on the bedside table, turning a straw in the top just enough for her to sip from it. The water was cool on her tongue and was the sweetest thing she had ever tasted in her entire life. He pulled it away after a few sips, shooting her a regretful look.

“Sorry, not too much.”

She sighed, working her tongue behind her very fuzzy teeth. She managed to croak “Where am I?”

“Berlin, SHIELD medical facility.”

That would explain what he was doing there, then, but not how she got here. “How?”

Clint’s expression warred between annoyed and amused, and came out sarcastic instead. “Since you didn’t tell anyone which route you were taking from Tehran to Budapest, you could have very well ended up dead out there. Lucky for you, I put a tracer on your stuff, so I could find you if anything happened, because if you were going to go on a mission without your partner there to have your back, at least I could keep an eye out for you.”

If she didn’t feel like seven different kinds of hell at the moment, Natasha might have been offended, even pissed. In her drug induced haze, however, she simply felt grateful. “How did you know I was in trouble?”

“You didn’t show up with Pasdar when you were supposed to. After an hour, people got worried, and called me in. They found you out there, and I met up with the team here in Berlin. By the way, Laura says that when you’re better she’s going to kick your ass.”

She was certain that Laura likely would. “Sorry for ruining your vacation.”

“Fuck the vacation, Natasha, you’re family! Do you know what it would do to us, to me, if you ended up dead out there?” Now his anger did shine through, undercut with real worry. “How in the hell did you end up nearly getting killed doing an extraction? You can do those in your sleep?”

She wanted to tell him about the man with the silver arm, who had so coldly shot through her and got to Pasdar. She couldn’t, though. “How bad is it?”

She didn’t need to clarify for him to know what she was asking about. “You got lucky, a few more centimeters and you might not have made it long enough for us to find you. Entry and exit wounds are clean. It didn’t hit your spine, and just missed your pelvic bone, but it did get everything else in between. Went through your peritoneum and got one of your intestines - don’t ask me which one, I don’t remember. They repaired it, but between blood loss, the leakage, and sepsis, you’re on the heavy-duty stuff. You’ll be down for the count for a while.”

Natasha groaned, hating the sound of that. “How long?”

Clint snorted, rolling his eyes. “Six to eight weeks healing, then physical therapy. You’ve got to behave on this, Nat, this could have been so much worse. We’re just lucky…”

He trailed off for a pained second, before pulling up a strained smile. “You’re going to rest for a while, okay? No more running, no more playing hero, at least for a bit.”

She had scared him. That felt…odd. If he was this bad, she didn’t want to face Laura. Still, the idea warmed her, until she recalled what had gotten her in this predicament in the first place.

“Pasdar,” she whispered, painfully. That was coming back to her now, too.

“Yeah, we found him,” Clint murmured, regretfully. “I’m sorry, Nat. You tried.”

Tears welled up in her eyes. She hadn’t known she could cry like this. “I promised him I would get him out, that I’d get him to his family in Paris.”

“I know,” he whispered, softly, wiping at the tears as they fell. “I’m sorry.”

“I thought I was doing good,” she sniffed, her voice cracking, her already strained vocal cords fraying with the pressure of tears.

“It’s okay, Natasha!”

It wasn’t and she couldn’t make him understand why it wasn’t.

“I thought I was going to die out there,” she admitted, thickly, tears tracking down her face. “I knew I was going to die. I saw her sitting out there, waiting for me.”

“Saw who?”

“Antonia,” she whispered, her lips thick and dry as the long-dead girl’s name whispered across them. “I saw her.”

“Natasha, she’s been dead for years. You had a fever, you were hallucinating.”

“I didn’t go to see her body when it happened, to check she was dead. I was too scared to see, too guilty. I couldn’t face her for what I did.”

Clint grimaced, clearly pained they were rehashing this. “It’s in the past, Nat. Let it go!”

He didn’t understand, though. “I keep trying to make up for it, for all of them, and I try, and then this happens, and…” She shuddered, more tears brimming to the surface. “I wanted to do something good, something right, and I got him killed, Clint!”

“It happens,” he sighed, reaching for a tissue and gently blotting her face. “You can’t save everyone, every time.”

Then how could she ever get all the blood off her hands, she wanted to yell at him. It wasn’t rational, and honestly, in the moment, she knew she wasn’t rational. She was just tired…bone deep tired, and so very, very sad. All she brought was death, no matter what she did. A trail of it followed her, a plague of it…

“Natasha,” Clint’s voice was urgent. “There was nothing you could have done.”

She wanted to believe that was true.

“I thought I was going to die out there,” she reiterated, sluggishly. “I thought that would make up for it, repay all of it, everything I had done...make up for all of it.”

It was the wrong thing to say. Had she been in her normal frame of mind, she wouldn’t have said it. She might not have even thought it, but she wasn’t, and it spilled out, and Clint heard it, and the stricken look he gave her hurt nearly as much as the bullet that had ripped through her had.

“Don’t ever say that, Natasha! Don’t think it! Don’t say that!”

“I only destroy lives,” she mumbled.

“Don’t,” he pressed, harshly, though not loudly. “I didn’t work as hard as I did to get you out of all of that just so you can martyr yourself on your failures.”

She blinked at him, blearily, her head swimming with painkillers and antibiotics. “I am so tired of people dying.”

“I know,” he soothed, and she knew he understood, better than anyone. “But you dying won’t make that stop, Nat. The only thing you can keep doing is to keep living, to have a life to make good choices, and to honor all those lives lost, everyday, by choosing to live your life better…better than Dreykov would ever have allowed you to do, at least. You can choose to do the right thing. And that’s all you can do. And if you did the right thing and still failed, that’s the thing you can hold on to. Don’t let Pasdar’s death be in vain. Don’t let Antonia’s death be in vain, either.”

She sobbed, brokenly at that, pulling painfully at the stitches on her abdomen and lower back.

“Hey,” he gently smoothed her sticky hair back from her face. “What was that saying you told me, the one that Melina always used to tell you girls whenever you got hurt?”

She searched her fuzzy memories,looking for Melina’s words, the ones she clung to all these years, long after Melina had been ripped away from her. “The pain only makes you stronger.”

“And you are strong, one of the strongest people that I know. You’ve made it through so much, and I’ve never known you to give up or lose heart, not once.”

He was right, she realized, or perhaps he was just so used to soothing his kids that he finally got through her pain, drugs, and self-loathing. She nodded, finally, sniffling sadly as he stood by her bedside, ignoring the sight she must make to her partner; tear stained, grimy, and stuck through with needles and tubes.

“Rest, Natasha,” he finally murmured. “Get better and I will take you out to the farm with Laura and the kids.”

She hummed in acquiescence, letting her eyelids slide closed, her breathing relax. She felt the edges of sleep closing in around her, to envelope her, as his voice broke through, one last time.

“By the way, you are to never take another mission without me again, not unless I approve of it.”

She snorted at that, knowing with a certainty it would happen again, but amused he thought he could do anything about it. “Yes, Dad!”

He laughed at that, perhaps realizing just how he sounded saying it, but clearly not sorry for it. Natasha finally allowed herself to fall asleep, resting in the assurance she was in fact safe.

Chapter Text

Brooklyn, New York City, New York, February, 2010

Her steadying breaths left cold fog in the icy weather of early February. Brooklyn was dreary this time of year, dingy with dirty snow and salt-rimmed ice, but even here in the weak, late afternoon sun, she could hear the sounds of children screaming and laughing in play, carefree, without a care in the world.

She crossed the mostly quiet street to the unassuming brownstone with the address she had been given affixed on it in brass numbers. It was dark with age, more maroon than brick colored, with a large, wide, thick trunked tree that promised to have beautiful shade when the leaves grew back in a few weeks. A wide bay window overlooked it, and on the upper story she could see windows with childish pictures stuck to the glass. It looked warm and inviting.

Abdullah Pasdar would have loved it here!

Her steps ground wetly on the damp cement, her heels clicking as she lightly bounced up the steps to the front door. Only months ago she wouldn’t have been able to do this, walk up these steps, let alone with a bounce in her high heels. It had been a long, less-than-pleasant road to recovery, hounded every step of the way by Clint, Laura, and on occasion the kids, particularly Cooper, though now that Lila was walking it was all the more incentive for Natasha to get walking, too. She now moved much as she once had, though with a lingering stiffness some cold days, and a pair of scars she would carry with her for the rest of her life, a reminder of what she had been through. She might as well add it to the rest of the list of scars she carried, physical and otherwise.

The door to the house was dark green, with a doorbell that Natasha dually pressed. A child’s voice called out in Farsi, as heavy feet ran along what sounded like hardwood floors, calling for their mother. She smiled, waiting patiently as a new set of footsteps sounded, and a cautious faced peeked out of the window to the side of the door. Natasha waved, hoping to exude friendliness. The door opened, just enough for Azadeh Pasdar’s slight body to be seen between the door and its frame. She studied Natasha, quizzical, but wary. “Yes, can I help you?”

“Uhh…yeah.” She found herself suddenly, and uncharacteristically, without words, as she fumbled in the pocket of her leather jacket, pulling out her SHIELD badge. She unfolded it and held it up as identification. “My name is Natasha Romanoff, I’m a SHIELD agent. I wondered if I could speak to you for just a few moments.”

A troubled frown flickered over her face, but she nodded, finally opening the door wider into a tiled vestibule. “Come in, please.”

Natasha did, stepping into the warmth inside. From up the stairs, a little face peeked over the landing, one of the children…the girl, she thought. She wished she could remember her name at the moment. She remembered her being of particular delight to her father.

“Come have a seat,” Azadeh offered, waving her into the living room area. It was cozy and comfortable, here and there a child’s toy or a missing sock marring the otherwise organized space. Managing three rambunctious children on her own meant things like toys and socks in a living room had to be overlooked. Natasha smiled as she took it in, perching herself neatly on the edge of one of the comfy pillows, as Azadeh twisted her fingers in knots in front of her.

“Can I get you tea to drink? Perhaps something to eat?”

“No,” Natasha assured her, not wanting to put her out of her way, "I’m fine.”

The other woman nodded her dark head, uncertain, deciding to finally settle on a chair across from Natasha. She was a lovely woman, just like her photograph. A bit older, perhaps, with silver now threading through dark hair, and a little softer with motherhood and age, but lovely and sweet. She could see why Abdullah had loved her so much.

“You said you were from SHIELD,” Azadeh opened, nervousness in her accented English. “Is everything all right?”

It only occurred to Natasha in that moment that a SHIELD agent darkening Azadeh’s door had never betokened good things. “Oh, yes, fine, everything is fine. How are you and your family? Are you acclimating?”

For a moment, a broken fault line of aching loss broke across Azadeh’s expression, quickly subsumed by a bittersweet smile. “We are…adjusting. This wasn’t how we planned for any of this to go.”

She knew that. For a moment, Natasha felt horrible for even asking. “You have family here?”

“And aunt, some cousins,” Azadeh confirmed. “They left Iran after the revolution and settled here. When they heard what happened, they had me come here with the children. SHIELD helped me settle here, got me this house.” She waved a hand. “It’s all very nice.”

But it didn’t bring back a dead husband. Natasha felt her guilt roil within her, wondering even how to broach the next subject.

“The truth is, Mrs. Pasdar, I have been wanting to come and see you for some months now.” The words stuttered out of her, strangely broken and uncomfortable, the tender part of her that she was certain was herself…the real Natasha under all of the layers of Red Room ingrained confidence. “It took me a long time to get well enough to come see you. I was injured, you see, and…”

She was meandering around the point, dancing around it on satin toe shoes, afraid of just saying it.

“I was the agent assigned to get your husband out of Iran,” she hurried, in a rush, spilling the words between them. “I…we were driving in Ukraine and were attacked. I tried to protect him, I did, but…it wasn’t enough.”

Even now, months after the fact, that failure still burned. “I wanted to come earlier, but our attacker shot through me to get to him, then left us both for dead. It took me this long to get back on my feet to see you and tell you how very sorry I am for what happened, that I couldn’t stop it, that I…failed in keeping him safe.”

She turned dry eyes up to Azadeh Pasdar, the truth now out there. She wasn’t sure what she hoped from the woman…anger at worst, understanding at best. What she found, however, was a deep well of compassion, as Abdullah's widow regarded her with shining hazel eyes brimming with tears.

“They said that the agent who was with him tried to protect him. You were that agent?”

Natasha nodded, mutely.

The other woman stood, walking with measured steps to sit beside her on the couch. She simply reached for Natasha’s left hand, holding it between both of her own, tears dribbling down her cheeks. “Thank you! Bless you!”

Natasha froze at the gesture, confused, uncertain, and hopeful all at once. “But I failed. He died.”

“He did.” Her hold on Natasha tightening for the briefest of moments. “But he died trying to do what was right. You helped him. And I’m glad that if he couldn’t live, you at least did.”

Whatever reception she had expected, it hadn’t been this. Censure, perhaps, thanks at best, but her compassion…it felt too much. “I don’t understand. I failed your husband, and you are thanking me?”

A flush spread over Azadeh’s warm complexion, though she didn’t let go of Natasha’s hand. “I know it must be strange to you, especially given what happened. You were the agent assigned to protect him, you barely knew my husband, didn’t know why he was doing what he was doing.”

She wasn’t wrong. Natasha knew so little of Abdullah, of what he was doing, save that he was taking with him secrets his government would kill him for fleeing with. “He told me a little. He said he was doing it for you and your children.”

Another bittersweet smile, another aching moment. “Yes…though, my husband, as much as I love him, wasn’t a perfect man. You know that, right?”

Natasha did. She recalled that conversation in the little coffee shop in Tehran all those months ago.

“He saw what was happening, watched it happen for years.” A hint of bitterness etched the woman’s grief, though bitterness towards her government, her husband, or the situation was hard to say. “He saw it and said nothing. He was troubled by it, but said nothing. When I asked him why not, he told me he didn’t want to upset things, to threaten our life, our children’s lives. It was easier to stay silent against the wrongs happening in front of his face for the little bit of security he gained than to call it out and put that all in jeopardy.”

Natasha considered the other woman’s words. “Some would call him wise for taking care of his family first.”

“But at what cost?” Her words weren’t loud, but there was power in them, as it occurred to Natasha just how much Azadeh might have hated the way things were in her home, and for how long, but who also put up with it out of love for her husband. “I watched him, day after day, little by little, as it wore him down, tore him up. They took away so much from him…his courage, his free will, his conviction. Until one day, they pushed too hard, and he found it again, and I found my husband again.”

A quiet, aching joy sounded from her at that. “I did realize till then, myself, how trapped I had been, both of us had been, by fear, by doubt, by worries for our children. It wasn’t till that day, when Abdullah decided to act, that I think either of us realized how much we were suffocating under the banality of it all, the weight of accepting one horrible thing after another, as long as we were kept safe, as long as we lived. Once we decided to flee, we were left free…we had a chance, to do it differently, to speak to what we knew, to make right the wrongs we allowed to happen. That was what Abdullah wanted, more than anything. He agreed to help SHIELD, knowing what the cost and consequences would be. He wanted to make it right. And you helped him have that chance. For that, he will be forever a hero in my eyes and the eyes of my children.”

Perhaps, in part. The secrets, or at least some of them, did get out, tucked away in the lining of the fine leather journal he had carried. Slowly, with her free hand, Natasha unzipped her tight fitting jacket, reaching inside where the hazelnut colored book was tucked away, with its creamy pages covered in the beautiful Farsi written in Arabic script, and the small photograph of his three beaming children.

“I wanted to make sure you got this,” Natasha said, passing it over to Abdullah’s wife. “He made me promise that no matter what happened, that it got to you. He said he wrote down his life in there, everything he wanted for you to know, for his children to remember. I said I’d get it to you.”

For a long moment, Azadeh stared at it, that unbearable grief rising to the fore again, as she gently let go of Natasha’s hand to take the journal with trembling fingers. She murmured something - an endearment, Natasha though - as she held it close to her, pressed against her heart, her composure breaking for just a moment. Natasha forced herself to look away.

It was some seconds before the other woman could speak again. “Thank you for bringing this, for returning him to me.”

“You’re welcome.” She felt suddenly shy in the face of this woman’s obvious grief. “SHIELD cleared me to get it for you. Usually they would hold on to material like that, as it was on his person when he died, but I pulled strings to get it. You deserved to have it. Those words are for you.”

Azadeh nodded, her face wet with everything she was feeling in that moment.

Natasha didn’t know what else to say. Slowly, she zipped her coat back up, rising to stand. “I need to get going, and I’ve taken up too much of your time, but if you and your children need anything, anything at all, call me. SHIELD will know how to reach me.”

Azadeh stared up at her as if she had already given her everything she wanted. “Thank you, Agent Romanoff.”

Natasha saw herself out, pausing long enough to wave at the curious little girl at the top of the stairs, before opening the door and stepping back out into the cold and gray. Across the street, sitting in the standard SHIELD issued SUV was Clint, watching her with a curious expression as she closed the neatly painted gate and stepped across the street again to slip into the passenger’s side.

“How did it go,” he asked once she was settled, her seatbelt on.

“Emotional,” Natasha replied, ruminating as he started the engine once again. “She thanked me for protecting him, for bringing the journal back to her.”

Clint hummed at that, slowly turning the car into the street before speaking. “And that bothers you?”

“Yes,” she admitted, frowning at the line of other brownstones in the quiet neighborhood. “I got her husband killed.”

“You didn’t get him killed. He knew what he was doing when he came to SHIELD, Natasha. He knew the risks. And if anyone killed him, it was whoever hired the silver-armed assassin who took you guys out, not you.”

He was right, and her therapist had warned her of this, the projection of her own guilt and trauma onto this event. “It was just strange that she was grateful, that was all.”

Clint seemed to understand it better than she did. “We all process grief differently, I guess. Some people get angry. Some people go numb. Some try to hide their pain in a bottle or with a syringe. Perhaps she is finding solace in knowing her husband was trying to do something he thought was right. Don’t take that away from her, Nat.”

“I didn’t,” she assured him. “I just…wish I was as much of the hero as she saw me as.”

“I think you sell yourself short, Natasha.”

He always did. But it was Clint, he had seen the best in her from the beginning, even when she didn’t see it herself.

“While you were in there I got a call from Coulson. He was wondering if you were cleared for active duty yet. I told him no, but you could be by next week.”

That piqued Natasha’s curiosity. After months of rest and recuperation, she was ready to take on something a little meatier. “What’s he got?”

“You know Tony Stark?”

Natasha would have to be dead to not to be aware of Tony Stark, and even then she probably still would know of him. The man loved the spotlight like plants loved the sun and he was forever seeking it. “What’s he done now?”

“Gotten himself kidnapped in Afghanistan.”

Now Clint had her attention. “What do you mean? None of his people have said anything, and something that big would be explosive in the media.”

“And no one will say anything, this one is under wraps for now, but Coulson says Fury wants us on the case. He has someone he wants us to work with, only top level clearance can do that, and that’s you and me.”

It took Natasha less than a second to piece together who that possibly could be. She may have been injured, but she’d been well tapped into the SHIELD scuttlebutt over the last few months. “So are we supposed to act surprised when we are told that we’re working with a woman claiming to be Peggy Carter?”

“Fury seems pretty sold on it.”

Clint had a point. It was hard to sell Nick Fury on anything, especially not on a woman who disappeared on New Years 1949 time traveling to the future, and yet he seemed to buy into it completely. “I don’t think it’s unreasonable for me to have reservations.”

“I don’t either, but Fury is clearly playing an angle. Let’s see what he wants before we go prejudging anyone.”

“You take the fun out of everything,” she joked, sighing. “I suppose this is the end of the long vacation.”

“What are you talking about? You’ve been crawling out of your skin for weeks.” Clint snorted as he pulled into heavier traffic. “You can’t wait to get back into it!”

He was right, she couldn’t. “I don’t know, it has been nice just being Natasha, figuring out who I am, what I want.”

“And?”

He was calling her bluff. “Yeah, I still don’t know.”

“You’ll get there,” he assured her, with that confidence only he ever seemed to have. “Since this is your last weekend off, do you want to go back to DC, or do you want to come out to the farm?”

Natasha considered. She could return to the small, empty apartment in Washington, or go to Missouri with Clint to gossip with Laura, play with the kids, and be smothered by their neighbors, Sally and James Morlan. Between the two options, she knew which one she wanted.

“Think I could get Sally to bake some cookies for me,” she joked, grinning.

“As if she needs an excuse,” Clint quipped back, as they melded into the early evening Brooklyn traffic.