A Chance to be Remade

Mirror and Image

When Barton and Romanov first crossed paths, technically, neither of them met.

Barton had been assigned to assassinate an eastern European political crime mogul – white collar elitist who bought all of his elections and was funding... disreputable people in Uzbekistan. He was only in the first stages of observation. Barton saw better at a distance, but in order for him to have that distance, it was (on very rare occasion if he could help it) necessary for him to get up close and personal with a target, watch from a range less than a thousand yards, to get a feel for how the target moved and thought and acted to better inform Barton on where to set up his nests or predict how the target would react or where he would go. It was decidedly outside his comfort zone when this happened, but he accepted it as part of his job and did it flawlessly.

That particular time, he was at a political fundraiser, a gaudy gala where the entry fee was astronomical, and people in tuxes and supposedly tasteful dresses ate and drank and otherwise gossiped over how important they were and what they would do once his target was in office and how much murder they could get away with. On display were a series of orphans, the political metaphor for the man's future policies, dressed up and wide-eyed and unaware of their exploitation as the adults asked them coy questions before returning to "real work."

Sickened by the entire affair, and not wanting to be too obvious, Barton had stationed himself on the landing of the ballroom, watching the people below him. If his eyes strayed to the children, he didn't think much of it. Romanov was much deeper in her assignment – also to kill the political crime mogul – and had attached herself to his inner circle. She was smiling and nodding and sipping tastelessly expensive champagne, slowly circling around the target's most important information, needing that before she could kill him. She, too, eyed the children, perfectly in character and sympathetic for them, but perhaps some of her sincerity was... more.

Neither agent took notice of the other, so focused they were on the mogul and the children.

What neither party had known was that there had been a third party that was also contracted to take this person out – with considerably less finesse.

In short, the ballroom exploded.

Barton had noticed it just seconds before, eyes suddenly noticing something off kilter and getting in contact with his handler Coulson. Romanov, too, stilled as she heard an odd, high pitch, and started looking around. When the explosives hit, everyone on the ground floor was knocked to the ground, and the people on the landing above were suddenly precariously hanging for their lives. The support beams had been completely destroyed, and Barton was left clinging to one of the few decorative columns that remained standing, eyes quickly surveying everything around him as he waited for his ears to stop ringing. Romanov hit the ground and started shrieking, per her character, and watched as the target stumbled and ran away.

But that didn't matter, because both sets of eyes were struggling to find the children. The children were crying, huddled together, under the landing, perfectly positioned to be crushed by its weight, and unable to think enough to save themselves. While the rich and powerful were flooding out of the building, screaming and crying and demanding retribution, while the target disappeared into the night, while everyone went away from the danger, Barton and Romanov instinctively went towards it.

Barton bounded across the unstable landing – what was left of it – and swung up to a rafter to grab his bow and quiver, pulling out one of his specialized arrowheads and taking aim, firing at one of the weakened columns. Upon impact the arrow exploded into a liquid mass of goo, hardening almost instantly and giving the column extra support. He did so for the other column supporting the landing before doing the same to the landing itself, furiously trying to buy even a few extra seconds of strength.

Romanov ran full tilt under the precarious landing, falling quickly into the role of adult that the children would immediately follow, and with hurried words and soft assurances got all of them to listen to her and, grabbing the two youngest, guiding them out from under the landing, around the bits of fire and smoke and funny twanging sound that she could hear but not place, and out of the building.

For their troubles, Barton was yelled at by both Fury and the Council for losing his target and compromising the mission, while Coulson took it all in with a straight face and a soft, "Good job out there," that made Barton smug for weeks afterwards. Romanov, too, was yelled at by her superiors, and threatened to be retrained if she failed in her mission again, and ultimately was left wondering what she had done wrong, because all of her work was to make the world a better place, and surely children were a part of that better place...?

It was the first time she questioned the work she was doing. It would not be the last, either.

The next time they met they were again tailing the same target, only their positions were reversed. Barton had been tailing the man from a distance of several miles. Holed up in one of his nests, he watched the South American drug cartel that was moving into black market weapons dealing with his scope. He had the habits and the patterns, now he was just looking for his moment when he saw a redhead enter into the crosshairs of his scope. He made a record of the person of interest and sent it off to Coulson on his check-in, and started noting the new woman's dynamics through his scope.

She hated high heels, always shifted her weight on them to relieve the arcs of her feet, but wore them like a natural; she moved elegantly, there was a training there that made Barton wonder if she wasn't a spy herself, or another assassin. Tension rippled through her shoulders, Barton watched as she rolled her neck and collarbone whenever she thought non one was looking, a sign that she was acting. He made more notes, wondering what her assignment was, or how this may or may not affect the mission. The woman posed as a dancer, if he was reading the lips right, and intel said the target would be attending one of her performances.

Coulson hadn't gotten back to him, and that was noteworthy but not worrying; it wasn't uncommon for Barton to come across something that required the higher-ups to weigh in, he just had that kind of luck (or attracted that much trouble, as Coulson was known to observe). As he waited for word, he tracked the target through his scope to the theater, and for the first time something distracted him wholesale from the target.

He watched her dance.

He was a performer himself – or had been, a lifetime ago – he knew what it was like to be under the lights, or practicing an act. He knew what it took, but more importantly, he knew how much of himself he had to put into the act. He remembered his nights under the tent, listening to the crowds cheers and gasps and the nerves before stepping out into the light, and he remembered how he couldn't play the crowd when he was actually aiming, because everything that he was was focused on the target, and that concentration like that couldn't be faked. It was in times of performances that a person's true character came out. And this woman, this dancer, this ballerina, this spy...

He saw the grace of the movements, the elegance of each step and gesture, but he also saw the sadness, and he saw struggle, and he saw himself in her, his old self, thrown out of the tents and pulled down to a life he didn't want or choose but didn't know how to escape from.

He lost his focus.

He lost it completely and when he realized that he called Coulson and told him he'd been compromised.

The chew-out he got for it was horrific, but it was nothing compared to what he put himself through. He had never, never, allowed himself to attach to targets or families. Snipers just didn't do that. It wasn't about the people, it was about the crosshairs, the wind trajectory, the intense periods of patience and waiting and staring at an empty patch of air until the moment came and it felt right. Without focus he couldn't do his job, and if he couldn't do his job he was less than worthless and he would be damned if he didn't do everything in his power to make himself worthy of the opportunity SHIELD had given him.

He trained himself for months after that, looking for his focus again.

When Barton was assigned to kill the Black Widow, he felt a certain amount of surprise. It was his highest profile kill, and he felt blackly proud that he had been deemed good enough to take out such a notorious target.

Then he got the file, and saw the photo.

And he realized this was a test. He must have pissed the Council off more than he thought.

His first order of business was to march right up to Coulson and demand why the hell he hadn't been told earlier that that woman had been the Black Widow. His handler kept his stoic face, but there was a distinct glance down to his shoes, a dip in the corners of his mouth, that told Barton at least in part what had happened. Someone had told Coulson to keep his mouth shut – either to not distract from his target (which had failed regardless) or as some kind of perverse test. Barton nodded, understanding, and the two left for Poland.

Barton didn't dare get close to Romanov, she was far too good to not catch him immediately. It took a week to find her, and he kept to his most extreme distances to prevent tipping her off. There were no less than three other tails on her, and that had honestly surprised Barton. He kept his distance, however, watching them and watching her at the same time. For fifteen days he observed, learned everything he could. Two of the tails were jokes, not even worthy of his time, but one knew his business. Just not as well as Barton. Romanov, however, she was a work of art.

She had no less than four safe houses that she bounced back and forth around, and she seamlessly made it look like she was shacking up with some guy when she changed houses, fooling the two minor tails and almost fooling the semi-good one. Barton, however was not fooled. He had seen what she was really like when she danced, and none of it showed when she picked up one guy or another, and he simply waited until she disappeared onto a balcony or a roof. She had, in addition to the four safe houses, five different personas; one of the old apartments she held had everyone convinced that a pair of twins lived there, and another an author, a secretary, etc. The dancer held a rundown loft apartment with a skylight – and Barton slowly came to suspect that was her favorite, though he had no basis for that assumption. Each location was stockpiled with food and weapons – just watching her move about showed her preferred locations for hiding weapons, and he had no doubt there were others laden in each room, each inch, which he didn't even guess to know about. Everything he learned about as he watched her made him respect her even more. It was obvious why she had the reputation she did, and Barton couldn't help but liking her.

He knew that was further proof that he was compromised.

With his distance lost, he acted with his heart and not his head; a trait that had gotten him into all sorts of trouble when he was younger. He knew with cold certainty it would get him into trouble now, and he fought with himself.

Desperately.

But he watched her dance in one of her safe houses, saw the truth of her in her ballet, and he at last came to a decision.

The next day he was not in his nests, not up on roofs and radio towers or holed up in top floor apartments; he was down in the streets, pulling a baseball hat down over his wrap-around shades and tugging the collar of his jacket as he slowly brought himself to match pace with Romanov.

"I can't talk long," he said softly, flipping through a roadmap. "The guy who's halfway decent has eyes on us, but I want to talk to you."

Romanov didn't break stride, didn't tense, didn't even look at him, just continued walking down the busy street. God, she was good. "I take it you're the good one?" she asked.

"Compared to that shlep I am," he said brightly, looking up at an intersection and making a pretense of looking for street signs. "The other two aren't even worthy of mention."

"I agree. What do you want?"

"To talk to you. Obviously not here. I suggest your dancer's loft, the other guy doesn't know about that one yet. Tomorrow. It'll give you time to shake him off permanently."

"... What if I shake you off?"

"Then you won't hear what I have to say," he said, "By the way, I'm reasonably sure you have a tripwire on that skylight. Disable it, so you know which way I'm coming." Then he stopped and spun around to look like he was orienting himself, and then walked down an alley like he was hopelessly lost.

He didn't bother trying to find her again. He had observed her enough to know that trying to follow her as she actively shook off the tail would wear him down more than he needed. Instead, he took a circuitous, complicated route to the dancer loft, shaking off any tails he may have gotten from being so close to Romanov. There were none, however, and so he climbed up the radio tower he'd been using to watch Romanov's loft and waited. It took a full twenty-five hours for her to arrive in the apartment – he was afraid she had bolted again off to who knew where - and he watched through his scope as she worked furiously through her apartment, gathering and redistributing weaponry, preparing for a total assault. Barton sighed, but wasn't surprised.

It was the nature of the job.

As night fell, he opened up his weaponry trunk. He thought about what he wanted to take, the image he wanted to project. He didn't want to give himself away just yet, meaning the bow was out (and damn that it wasn't a hard decision to make). Barton instead took a standard Colt and slid it into a shoulder holster and then added a harmless 9mm in the small of his back. Neither of these would be helpful to him in close combat, however, where the Black Widow excelled, and added a knife to his arsenal and took the time to conceal it very well. He was advertising the guns, but he wasn't stupid, he knew he would need at least one hidden advantage if things really did go south.

He didn't think about how much he loathed even the possibility.

Satisfied, he pulled out his compound bow, took aim, and stretched a zip line between him and the Widow's loft. He swung down and offered the courtesy of landing noisily. Now was the moment of do or die:

He was either right, or he was very, very wrong.

Barton prayed he was right.

He approached the skylight slowly, allowing his shadow to pass over the glass, notifying Romanov even more of his presence and examined the point of entry. She had, per his hopes, disabled the tripwire. That didn't stop him from searching it very carefully and finding a second, much more subtle, tripwire under the latch of the window. Sighing, he shifted to his stomach and tugged at his fingerless gloves, angling himself and carefully working the wire. "I know you want to make this difficult," he said, knowing his voice would carry through the glass, "I would, too. But don't you think this is a little ridiculous?"

There was no response, of course, but he finished his work and opened the window slowly, carefully.

And found a third tripwire almost invisible in the moonlight. Had he just entered he would likely been in for a world of hurt. "I really don't see how these few extra seconds is going to help you," he said softly, "Given that I've given you four hours to prepare for me coming. I guess you just like watching me squirm?"

Still no response, but Barton had finished his work and judged the distance. A rope wasn't necessary, but he set up some wire if he needed a quick getaway and hopped down.

Two guns, one in each hand, just peaked through the silhouette. Barton stiffened instinctively, but his rational mind quickly took over. Romanov was inside the reaction radius; he could disarm her faster than she could pull the trigger, and in stark silhouette like that...

A dummy then. As his eyes adjusted to the light he made out the details of the construct. He resisted the urge to touch it, push it aside, knowing it was probably booby-trapped. This, then, was why she had kept the two extra tripwires, to make him focus on something long enough for her to set this up. It was brilliant, really, and he smiled in spite of himself. He cast his eyes about, knowing she was there somewhere.

"Should I start talking to empty air, or are you comfortable in giving me a location to concentrate on as you move to a different one?"

Nothing.

That was fine, though. Barton was nothing if not patient. He would know when the moment felt right, and the longer he waited the more his eyes would adjust to the gloom and the more he would see. "I was hoping for a mutual dialogue. Do you have any questions for me?" There was of course no response, so he shrugged his shoulders. "As you wish. We've met before, you know. Sort of. You were a dancer in Peru, I was assigned to kill your assignment. I'd been on the job about a week longer than you. I saw you dance, by the way; very impressive."

He paused, waited. His ears picked up no creaks in the floorboards; she was keeping very, very still. Barton briefly entertained the idea that she had left, but none of the motions sensors he had set up around the apartment had tripped when she arrived. She was somewhere in the loft, watching him with such intensity that she didn't, couldn't move. He tried to listen for breath but found none. His eyes adjusted further, he could make out the shapes of the furniture, the blocks of paintings.

"When I was given your file, I found out we had actually met once before that. A political function. Uzbekistan."

Silence.

But, he could feel a tension in the air now, his eyes could make out dust motes floating in the air, and he could taste the memory of the explosion, and sound of the dolled up orphans. If she was here, she was remembering too.

There. Corner completely covered in shadows, the smallest wisp of movement. Got her. Barton kept shifting his gaze, however, completing a full circuit around the room, and settling his gaze to an indistinct spot. He wouldn't give away how good his eyes were just yet.

"Okay," he said, "Let's cut to the chase. I've been sent to kill you; you know that, I know that. Our intel says you're still affiliated, but after fifteen days of watching you I've come to know that you've left the organization. Given that there's been nothing on you for two months, I assume that long, and it explains those tails. You're trying to hide and doing a damn good job of it, and if you're hiding it's not because you're getting re-acclimated to some new faction, it's because you're trying to get away."

He felt more than saw movement in the corner he'd marked as Widow's, and knew he had deduced right. He fought the urge to smile.

"Here's what I propose," Barton said. "I want you to come with me to SHIELD. I can't guarantee that you can leave, people in our profession often don't have the right skills to live a normal life – I know I don't – but at the least I can offer you a job where saving orphans at a political gala is rewarded behind the paperwork, I can offer you a job where the people we're after are truly despicable. I can offer you... I can offer you a choice; because I know right now your choices are very, very limited."

And now he waited.

He kept his peripheral vision tuned to Romanov's corner, minding the slightest shifts of shadow or current. She was stock still, it was more intuition than actual sight, but when she finally straightened from her crouch, he turned and looked at her.

"You think you know me that well?"

Barton shrugged. "I was a performer, before all this," he said. "Not an actor, that's different. You always put a little bit of yourself in the performance."

Her gaze was flat and uninterested, giving nothing away. Barton waited.

And waited.

And waited.

They could have tried to out-wait each other for hours, both were patient by nature and by profession, but Barton was a sniper. He didn't have to act based on a person's reaction; Romanov, however, was a different story. Her entire decision making process was based on the kind of reactions she could provoke out of her target. She couldn't last without eliciting further input. His theory was proved right when she asked her next question.

"What do you get out of all this?"

And Barton respected her enough to answer honestly.

"Nothing."

"Nothing?"

He shrugged. "I'm taking a long shot," he said. "All the odds indicate that you're either going to try and kill me here, run away, or outright refuse what I'm offering. If you decide to come along, I get chewed out for disobeying orders, probably benched, buried in paperwork, and generally have life made very annoying. Worst case scenario they throw me out of SHIELD."

"And you're willing to risk that?"

"Yes."

And he waited.

Romanov, for her part, had no idea what to make of the man.

First blush said this guy was good. She didn't even need a full hand to count the number of people who could sneak up on her, and this guy had done it. That stood in immediate contradiction to everything else about him. Baseball cap, rumbled collared shirt that opened to some tacky tee, map, shades, the guy practically screamed American tourist; that may have made sense if he were trying to portray himself as such, but his accent indicated he was American. She tried to take in the less noticeable details: the rolled up sleeves showed wiry but powerful arms, the tilt of his shoulders suggested excellent upper-body strength, and the tilt of the hips and the strength of his gate showed excellent training – some of it military. But, while less noticeable, all the tells were there.

This guy was a spy. And he was so pitifully bad at it that anyone could spot it.

Except he was skilled enough to sneak up on her.

It wasn't until after he left, when she pondered his appearance at an open cafe, that she realized it was all deliberate. He had done nothing to hide himself in order to inform her about him. But... why?

His appearance didn't change her plans, but it did step them up a bit. Romanov's original intent was to set up her covers, live her life for a month or two, and then slowly kill all her covers off and then disappear. With this guy's appearance, she simply stepped it up.

It was a personal record, playing out all the deaths she had prepared for her safe houses: splattering blood, overturning furniture, leaving open windows, planting fingerprints, placing suspicious phone records or bills. Each cover had a different story, and it took her over a day to get through it all. She was tired, but she entered her dancer loft carefully. Romanov was certain there were bugs, surveillance cameras, but she found none, and it irked her more than a little. God, he was good.

She didn't know how long she had to prepare, but she did everything she could, cleaning the apartment of any signs that she was there, ready for a quick getaway. She also prepped a dummy and set a third tripwire on the skylight while disabling the obvious one.

She had an hour's nap before she heard a loud thunk on her roof. She saw a shadow pass over her skylight. Amateur again? No, Romanov understood this guy was a step above pro, he was giving her the courtesy of letting her know he was there. Who did that in this business? Surprise was the only advantage a spy could have, why was this guy deliberately forsaking it?

"I know you want to make this difficult," she heard, meaning he had found the second tripwire. "I would, too. But don't you think this is a little ridiculous?"

She ignored him, working in the shadows and setting up her dummy, booby-trapping it before taking her position in a perfectly shadowed corner. The third wire was a test, if he really was as good as she suspected, he would find it.

She heard the skylight open and heard a near-silent snort.

"I really don't see how these few extra seconds is going to help you," he said softly, "Given that I've given you four hours to prepare for me coming. I guess you just like watching me squirm?"

The guy's prowess was confirmed, then, and it also gave her more information about him. People with this skill level were concentrated in only a few places, and since he was American that probably meant SHIELD. That would also explain why she couldn't find any of the surveillance equipment, some of their technology was frighteningly forward-thinking, especially linked with Stark Industries as they were. Romanov didn't know of any assassins who fit this man's profile, and she still didn't know what he wanted with her that he was bending over backwards to talk to her.

She waited, perfectly still, as the agent fell lightly into the loft. He stiffened at the dummy, but saw it for was it was in less than two seconds and started slowly turning in a circle to try and find her. She held her breath, tense in anticipation, but his eyes drifted right over her and he made a full circle.

And then he talked, explaining that they had met before. She remembered Peru; but not the eyes on her as he suggested. Romanov was prone to believe that given that she hadn't felt this guy now, and she wondered just how far away he was that she didn't sense his eyes. Another clue – this was more than an assassin, this was a sniper. That meant he was patient, confident, intelligent, used to being invisible. So what the hell was he doing with this conversation?

Then he mentioned Uzbekistan.

And she cringed at the memory.

That had been the beginning of the end for her. She became further and further disillusioned as she slowly came to realize that the people she worked for, the people she had believed in, the plan she was carrying out, was a sham. A lie. Sophistry to make her do the terrible things she did, and the knowledge undid her. Every emotion she had been feeling for the last two months flushed through her in an instant, leaving her raw and uncertain and desperate no to show it.

Those children...

She wondered what the SHIELD agent had done there, the tone of his voice indicated he had his own memories of the event.

The SHIELD agent outlined his deductions, guessing correctly that she had left. Romanov clenched the gun in her hand, marveling at the man's intuition and insight, but unwilling to trust it completely. She was good, one of the best, but intelligence gathering was an art form she was very familiar with, and knew intimately well how subtle it was.

"Here's what I propose," he said. "I want you to come with me to SHIELD."

And her world screeched to a halt.

… What?

"I can offer you a choice; because I know right now your choices are very, very limited."

What... what drivel was this?

"You think you know me that well?" she asked, risking her position, knowing it was stupid to give herself away, but unable to fathom what kind of game this guy was playing.

"I was a performer, before all this," he said. "Not an actor, that's different. You always put a little bit of yourself in the performance."

Romanov didn't know what to make of that. He said that he had watcher her dance in Peru, and she had danced in her loft several times in keeping with her character. She loved dancing, as much as someone like her could love anything; it harkened back to dim memories of before, attending dance school with someone watching and waiting with a bright smile, standing on her toes and feeling... happy. What had he seen when he watched her dance? What piece of herself was left that someone like him could see it?

No, no, she was looking at this wrong. His very words were suspect; he was a fellow spy, an assassin, nothing he said could be taken at face value.

The problem was that every tell he gave was that he was, in point of fact, telling the truth.

No one could lie that convincingly – even she had tells, any spy knew to keep those tells very small, hidden away where laymen couldn't find it, or covered by other things so that other spies wouldn't recognize them as tells. This guy, if he had a tell, she couldn't find, and that was saying something. She watched him; boyish face, round, with eyes far too old for his age. Straight military posture but a hint of grace, of lithe athleticism that suggested gymnastics of some kind. So little was given away, his voice was generally brusque and to the point; his face was painfully blank. The Colt at his shoulder was classic, calling back to times of morality, ethics, and Captain America. The 9mm at his back was such a small caliber; a bullet wound from that gun would almost never be lethal. Practically harmless. Everything about him spoke to his intention, his personality. And she could trust absolutely none of it. He was so unlike any of her targets she couldn't get a read on him. Her assignments were always about drawing out a reaction, and often she was prepped on what kind of person she had to be to get what she wanted. This guy, whoever he was, was already briefed on her modus operandi, limiting her choices but not eliminating his. The problem, however, was that she couldn't figure out what he was seeing in her.

What was in her dancing that made him do this? Why was he doing this anyway? What was he getting out of this?

"What do you get out of all this?" she asked. She needed an angle, a way to wheedle an answer out of him.

"Nothing."

Huh?

"Nothing?"

"I'm taking a long shot," he said simply. "All the odds indicate that you're either going to try and kill me here, run away, or outright refuse what I'm offering. If you decide to come along, I get chewed out for disobeying orders, probably benched, buried in paperwork, and generally have life made very annoying. Worst case scenario they throw me out of SHIELD."

She blinked. He was telling the truth.

"And you're willing to risk that?"

"Yes."

That made no sense.

That made no sense.

She was at a complete disadvantage here; he knew everything about her, had invaded one of her safe houses, she had been on the run for months and was paranoid, she was keyed up on adrenaline as the perplexity of the situation she found herself in became more and more obvious, and she could not understand why this assassin was telling her the truth; that he was going to spare her and make her join SHIE-

SHIELD. American. Sniper. Obviously good. No one had a face on him, or even a name, but Romanov suddenly realized she knew exactly who this guy was.

Hawkeye.

Her wave of confused panic abated slightly as one piece of information became clear, and that was a file she had read. It was precariously short, the Hawkeye had only been on record for just over a year; that meant he had likely been part of SHIELD for around two years – if he went through his training as fast as Romanov suspected. Likely military service before recruitment, held a degree of accuracy that made several people wonder if it was done by computers or honest ability, even when he used those stupid arrows. He'd never been seen on the field, that anyone knew of; and when she remembered that she realized that any agency worth their salt would never put a sniper close to an active zone. It was a risk to an asset not worth taking.

Hawkeye had field training of course, but the probabilities of having been in active combat since whatever military training he had was exceedingly low, and Romanov excelled in close quarters combat.

If he had seen her dancing, it was only fair that she saw him fight.

She moved into the reaction radius, her gun visible in the light, her steps confident and aggressive. The agent, Hawkeye, actually looked sad at her move, and reached up to grab the gun. Romanov had been expecting that however, and airily jumped up, her weight swinging his arm down and giving her the point of rotation necessary to spin around his middle, twisting her arm out of his grip and using it to balance long enough to drive her foot into his shoulder and remove his Colt as well. He took the blow well and rolled forward as she threw the weapon aside, coming up lightly on his feet and spinning. Romanov was already ahead of the game, leaping up and planting one foot on his knee to give her enough momentum to flip over him and get behind yet again, this time hand-springing on his shoulders and twisting as she flipped to wrap her legs around his neck. He grunted in surprise, but kept his calm; Hawkeye made himself fall forward, changing her center of gravity and taking the pressure off his neck slightly, enough to reach up and pinch at a sensitive nerve, forcing her to let go – but not before she had lifted and threw away the 9mm. His guns were gone; he was unarmed.

They rolled back to their feet, and this time the agent made the first move. He cartwheeled to the side and then backflipped – an impressive show of agility – getting himself behind a table and kicking it towards her. She jumped over it, landing too late to realize that he still had his foot hooked around one of the legs of the table. One kick was enough to send her slightly off-balance, which he took advantage of by jumping up onto the table and locking her in a headlock. They fought for footing on the table before Romanov was able to wrap her leg behind and around his own, shoving it back an off his balance. They both plummeted to the ground, and she twisted to make him take the brunt of it.

To her surprise it did him little to no harm, in fact he rolled and shifted until she was on the bottom, her stomach pressed against the floor and his choke hold still active.

He had more field experience than she was expecting, and she was paying for that assumption now. Romanov winced, fighting for breath, struggling valiantly before letting herself go limp, making him think she had passed out. She almost thought he wouldn't fall for it, but at last he loosened his grip, hesitantly, waiting for an attack, not taking any chances.

Then Hawkeye sighed.

And let go.

She twisted back and up, landing a viscous elbow into his face. He grunted at the surprise attack and staggered to the side, and Romanov pressed her advantage and clipped him in the chin with her fist, sending him sprawling onto his backside and a hand instinctively going to his jaw. She got her hands under her and swung her legs around, landing a third blow to his head – this time his temple, and got to her feet; stepping aggressively to attack again.

He had finally recovered, however, and blocked the kick, jabbing his legs out to knock her off balance. She hopped over the move and landed her feet onto his exposed stomach, and he gasped as the air rushed out of his lungs.

She got off before he could counter again and stepped back, reaching for one of her hidden guns, but Hawkeye performed and impressive flip onto his feet – his agility was astounding for a sniper, and pulled a knife out.

A hidden weapon.

She smirked. His true self was finally starting to emerge.

He coughed and rubbed his chin again. Blood was streaming down his nose and there was a beautiful bruise starting to form on his temple.

"So much for not wanting to kill me," she said lightly, holding her aim. Now she had the advantage, and she refused to let it go. "Now why don't you tell me why you're really here."

"I did," he murmured. "I was sent to kill you. I'm trying to make a different call."

Present tense, she hadn't changed his mind yet, either that or he was still trying to play whatever game he was shooting for. "I don't believe you," she said simply.

"That much is obvious." He grinned slightly, licking the fresh stream of blood from his nose. "What can I do to convince you?"

She offered the obvious. "Drop the knife."

He wouldn't do it. No spy or assassin would ever drop their one hope of salvation in a life or death battle; no one would willingly offer up their life for a chance to save someone else. No matter how good a player he was at the game, there were some things a spy couldn't do – and that would prove what a liar he was. And even if he did just that, if he dropped his knife, immediately after would be a string of words to convince her not to kill him; some plea to whatever reason or mercy or goodness he thought she had in order to get her to spare him. He would be forced to talk.

That was how this interrogation would begin.

Hawkeye looked up at her for a very long time, his boyish face and older eyes giving a myriad of expressions. She recognized a few of them: sadness, regret, a few broad emotions. When she learned more about him in the interrogation, she would be able to discern more detailed expressions. Romanov was curious, suddenly, which play he would make: die fighting, or play at living. Curiously, she found herself hoping for the latter.

Finally, the agent let out a long, slow breath, and flipped the knife in his hand, offering it to her handle first as a gesture, before putting it on the floor and sliding it towards her.

Interrogation it was, then. She waited for him to make his play.

And waited.

And waited.

… Where was the plea for mercy? The logical circle on why he should live? The bluster that this was a stupid decision?

Why wasn't he saying anything?

"What are you doing?" she demanded, still holding her gun on him.

He reached up to wipe the blood from his nose, licking at his injury again. "I'm waiting," he said softly.

… Waiting? Waiting?! Why was he waiting, she was the one who was waiting for him to make his move! She felt the urge to frown and bitterly repressed it; instead blinking her disconcertion away. Romanov roved through her memory banks, thinking of any time someone did something like this. It had only happened three times in her career, all with the same reason. "You want to die?" she asked, her voice cold.

"No," Hawkeye replied, a half puff of a laugh exiting his lungs.

"Then what are you playing at?" she asked. Romanov was never fond of being direct, but she couldn't deny there were times it was effective, and if this guy was as upfront as he was portraying himself, direct would be to her advantage.

"I'm not playing at anything," Hawkeye said, perfectly still. "I took a gamble. I lost. I accept the consequences."

"You'd accept death just like that?" Romanov asked.

"No, not accept it."

"Then what?"

"Wait for it. It's inevitable anyway, right? It comes even sooner for people like us; because of the decisions we make. I made a bad decision."

Her lips tugged down into a frown. That still didn't explain his play. That still didn't explain... what he saw in her to precipitate all this. That still didn't explain... anything really. "What makes you so ready to die then?"

Hawkeye gazed at her for a long time, measuring, calculating, weighing, before he glanced down. It was the first tell he gave, but to what she wasn't sure. A lie? A memory? An emotion?

"... If I can clean my slate, even just a little bit, with my death; it's worth it."

Clean his...

Red in her ledger...

The emotions hit her strongly. Adrenaline suddenly flooded her system as her pupils dilated and everything she had been wondering about for the last two months overwhelmed her and what could she do to wipe her ledger and why did he say exactly the same thing and why did he sound like he was telling the truth?

She clocked him on the head with the butt of her gun and disappeared into the night.

It was the second time in her life that she had ever run.

They met again six months later.

Barton had been reprimanded to the extreme – nearly thrown out of SHIELD – for his failure. Fury had been forced to step in front of the Council, Coulson was furious and he was never furious; his reputation on the hellicarrier took a terrible hit and he had been on the field every day of those six months: Doing surveillance, doing tailing, doing assassinations, doing everything the Council could throw at him as punishment, ranging from painfully boring to frighteningly dangerous, even deadly. Barton put up with it as best he could; he knew upfront the risks of trying to bring the Black Widow in. But damn if he didn't hate every moment of it.

And damn if he didn't understand why he was still alive.

It was Libya.

Barton had been assigned to kill a slew of targets in assistance with the country's freedom fighters, all of it covert and in the midst of ground fighting. It was a nightmare. Benghazi was a riot, guns everywhere, people firing left, right, and center, streets flooded with people, confusion and dissonance and cacophony of explosions and smoke and fire and blood and sweat and noise. Barton was above it all, his rifle set up after changing his nest for a fourth time as the safe zones kept changing. He hadn't been in contact with SHIELD in over a week; there was just no way to be safe for the amount of time to set up his satellite phone – secure or otherwise, and he knew damn well that was why the Council had chosen this mission for him; he was fighting blind, without backup, entirely on his own.

He stretched out across the flat roof, taking his time and exploring everything through the scope. He had lost track of the number of deaths he had witnessed – women, children, first responders, and it made him all the more focused on his targets, determined to take them out with extreme prejudice – even alacrity if the situation could afford it. And, if Barton happened to "miss" and hit a few particularly viscous rioters, well. Things happened.

He lined up his sights when he found his next target, breathing in slowly through his nose and reaching for that beautiful place in his mind where the only thing that existed was him and the target. Even time left his sense of perception, he had everything he needed, and he simply waited for it to feel right. One heartbeat, then two, then three, and then four; and then he felt it all connect, and he pulled the trigger. Blood splattered on the corner of the building behind his target from the headshot, the screaming refocused and people that were already running hither and yon changed direction mid-stride to try and dodge the latest danger.

Barton was slinging his gun over his shoulder when something in his peripheral vision drew his attention, and he looked just in time to see heavy ordinance being aimed. A rocket launcher? Seriously? As if the city wasn't in enough chaos! He was already running across the roof, cursing that his position had been made again and leapt, already calculating the distance between himself and the next roofline two stories below when the RPG hit. The explosion ripped through his ears as a wave of heat assaulted him. Fire licked at his body and seared his skin; and worst of all the shockwave threw off his trajectory. A slew of curses flew of out his mouth as he started to spin in midair, but his momentum was too much and he crashed into the lower roof. Pain exploded all over his body, too many and in too many places and all at once and he was too busy trying to stop rolling and orient himself, but he rolled off the roof and suddenly he was looking out over open air, down into a dusty alley and a fall from this height would kill him.

He grabbed at the first thing he could wrap his desperate hands around, a clothesline of all things, and felt it snap, but not before he used it to angle his fall. His next grab was at an open window, and his arms revolted valiantly against the sudden arrest in gravity, threatening to pop out of their sockets, but they ultimately held, and he pulled himself up and into the building, rolling onto his back and taking a moment to breath damn it breath.

That, Barton thought, was decidedly not fun.

This was why he liked his bow. However corny people thought it was, he had lost count of the number of times an arrow with a tether had saved his life.

He didn't have time to contemplate that thought, however, and so he quickly collected himself and rolled to his knees.

Whoa...

He grunted, falling back to the floor and waiting for his vision to stop swimming.

Gingerly, he examined his head and found a gash somewhere in his hairline. Concussion? Great, just what he needed. Coughing, taking a deep breath through his nose, he pulled himself to his feet as fast as he could. That RPG was probably getting ready to launch again, he really didn't want to be in the same general vicinity when it was fire. Barton looked up to see a white woman, wrapped head to toe, hijab hiding her face, staring at him with wide eyes.

"We have to move," he grunted, but shook his head, trying to remember the right language. "An RPG..." he tried again, but she didn't move. God he hated scaredy-cats. "Fine," he muttered, and lumbered forward and threw his arms around the tiny woman. Her entire body stiffened as he stumbled her out of the room and into a hallway of some kind.

That was when the RPG struck again.

And the floor fell out from below them.

When the dust finally settled, his head was not the only thing hurting him. A quick mental inventory and a glance showed that his leg was pinned under a ceiling joist, buried under drywall and wood and god knew what else. His arms were bleeding, from where he wasn't sure, and he knew for a fact something was broken. Beside him was the woman, coughing the drywall out of her lungs and crawling up to her hands and knees. Her hijab was lost somewhere, and he saw the cascade of red hair.

The Black Widow.

He couldn't help but smile, his head dipping back to the floor. Somebody upstairs definitely had it out for him.

Romanov, for her part, was having her own problems. When the RPG had rattled the building next to her, she was in the instantaneous process of getting up to leave when an arm had reached out and grabbed her window sill, and that man, Hawkeye, had crawled into her apartment. The fast movements, the impressive acrobatics, were all gone; he was slow and lethargic, and was bleeding freely from a wound on his head. Concussion? When he couldn't get up to his feet right away her theory was confirmed, and she had perhaps two seconds to decide what to do.

And so she played the part of a terrified native.

It did not require much acting.

Hawkeye had been right, she didn't have the skills to live a normal life; six months had proven that. She couldn't connect to make friends without thinking how easy it was to manipulate them, she couldn't just go out and buy things without eyeing security cameras or using only cash, she didn't know what a normal person did when there was no one else around. The paranoia that forever followed her, too, could not be fought off. Six months of looking over her shoulder and running at the first whiff of a hint of a sign that someone recognized her and she would be running to a new continent, a new city, a new identity and slew of safe houses; she had become a shade of her former self: thin, jumpy, and entirely unlike what she had once been. She had found herself missing her old life.

And that thought terrified her more than her paranoia did.

Seeing Hawkeye crash into her latest safe haven only drove it all to the forefront of her mind, and some dark corner of her brain, the part that was still the Black Widow, and decided she was tired of running and would demand answers from the man who had made such accurate predictions of her future.

In his unexpected arrival in Poland, he had had every advantage. Hawkeye had known all of her bolt holes, had cased her loft enough to disengage all of its traps and set up surveillance, had made the best presentation of himself he could manage. He was selling himself, his idea, his proposal to join SHIELD. Now, she had all the advantages. He didn't know who she was, he was running roughshod from whatever assignment put him here, was clearly injured – and even better, concussed – and she could effectively do whatever she wanted with him. She planned to, and allowed herself to be roughly grabbed by him when his blurry speech tried to warn her of the RPG.

The floor falling out from under them had not been expected, but she was nothing if not adaptable.

Her arm had been broken in the fall, and her hijab had long since disappeared to somewhere, but as she looked around she saw that they were effectively trapped. The floor had not been the only thing to be ruined, the ceiling above had also collapsed, several floorboards and ceiling joists were piled two stories above them where they had fallen in a tangled knot. A few small shafts of light peaked through, meaning the roof of the building was also destroyed, and that the weight of everything above them would kill them if they even blinked at it wrong. The two of them were surrounded by debris; broken furniture, a fridge, an air conditioner leaking and other unrecognizable things interspersed with partition walls, door frames, and broken bones of architecture. One window was broken and crushed in on itself, and the only door she could spy was blocked by a ton of debris she could not lift with a broken arm. Looking down, she saw Hawkeye pinned under a similar pile.

He looked up at her and she saw the recognition in his face, and saw the dry, ironic smirk that followed before he lowered his head back to the floor.

Romanov did and said nothing, simply waited.

He stared at nothing for several seconds, gaze foggy from the concussion, before painfully lifting himself to his elbows and testing his leg under the debris. Nothing yielded. He looked around sluggishly, seeing their trapped circumstances and taking the time to absorb it. He sighed and finally looked to her.

"We've got to stop meeting like this," he said in a soft, wry voice. Typical American irreverence.

"What are you doing here?" she asked.

"What I always do," he said, testing his leg again. "Get thrown around like a hacky sack."

Romanov raised an eyebrow. "You're a sniper," she intoned, voice closed off.

"I'm an assassin," he said slowly, twisting onto his hip to get a better view of his pinned leg. "Distance is just a preference."

She had guessed as much, given his extraordinary fighting skills she had seen in the loft in Poland. There were precious few people indeed who could keep up with her, but he had managed it, mostly. It did surprise her, however, to learn that he did close-quarters missions. That made his repertoire much wider than his file suggested, and also implied there were hits out there that no one even suspected were him. Interesting. She filed that away for later. Instead she asked another question.

"Was that what you were trying with me?" she asked, sitting down and holding her broken arm to her chest. "Preferred distance?"

The SHIELD agent looked at her, nothing more than a twitch of his eyes, and went back to examining his leg, reaching out and tugging at some of the material burying it. The building rocked slightly from another strike of some kind, and dust rained down from above, but the structure – what was left of it – held. Romanov absorbed the tell, glad the man was concussed and unaware of how loose his expressions had become. He'd been utterly closed off in Poland, showing only what he wanted, she could tell now that he was much more expressive. His eyes gave him away.

"I made a different call," he said simply, wrapping a fist around an exposed joist and tugging at it slowly, adding pressure until it shifted slightly under his attention. His leg twitched and he was able to shift it before his eyes winced shut in sudden pain.

She watched, impassive, seemingly indifferent as she took in all the information from that one sentence. A different call, an evasion to the question, a glance at her... He had taken a huge hit for his stunt, SHIELD had not sanctioned what he had done, and she realized, or perhaps more accurately accepted, that much of what he said that night was the truth. She shifted her weight uncomfortably, uncertain what to think of that. "Do you think you're Captain America or something?" she asked, voice cold and closed off. "A crafted hero of the old days to justify dropping atom bombs or entertain real soldiers?"

Hawkeye didn't answer for several seconds before slowly turning to her. "My handler would kill you if you dissed 'the Cap' like that and he was in earshot," he said.

More information for her, this time about his handler. She filed it away as well.

For a long time, neither of them spoke. She waited, holding her broken arm, and he worked at his pinned leg, slow and lethargic. Eventually he worked it free, boot coming off and revealing a swollen, purple mess of an ankle. Hawkeye grunted but finally sat up properly, turning slightly so that she was in his line of sight. "... I'm no Captain America," he said softly, his eyes downcast. She had seen it before, in Poland, and decided it was the look of a memory. It was the perfect opening.

"Then what are you?"

Her answer was watching him completely shut down. He stopped moving, his eyes lowered into memory, and a face empty of everything. It told her more than any sentence he could have spouted. She watched, absorbing the information, taking in everything she could before deciding her play.

He had a hero complex, despite his rebukes; that much was obvious from his trying to save her upstairs. That meant nothing on paper, except he had just given her the why. She knew what character she had to play now, and so she took a breath and slowly doubled over her broken arm, allowing the pain to show and gave a soft whimper.

The noise brought him out of his reverie, and he turned his bloody face to her, frowning at her pain. "You alright?" he asked.

"It's nothing," Widow said in a soft huff, throwing a glare at him.

Barton sighed, reaching up to touch his head. It hurt more than he could hide. "Look, we're trapped here," he said. "Until we're out of this, we're stuck with each other. It behooves us to work together."

She glared at him again, eyes bright and fiery, before breathing loudly out her nose and admitting, "Arm's broken."

He nodded, grateful for just that. He reached up behind him and tugged his rifle off his shoulder. It was mangled beyond recognition, it was useless as a weapon, but he ignored that and instead started the now tedious task of disassembling it. He handed the barrel over to Widow. "A brace," he said, and watched as she ripped off a strip of her sleeve and began bracing her injury. Barton used some similar, smaller pieces for his mangled leg. Work was slow, and focus was hard to maintain. It reminded him of Peru, when he had lost his focus so totally watching her dance. It had never happened since, but it was a mark on his record that he could not shake off. He turned to watch her as she stripped off another piece of her sleeve and bound her arm.

Barton pictured her dancing, the elegant lines of her legs and arms as she hopped and leapt and performed fancy moments of footwork he couldn't pretend to name. It reflected in their tight, close-quarters fight, and even now, binding her arm to a rifle barrel, there was a grace in every movement she took. He wondered why nobody thought to mention she was a dancer.

"Was it part of your training?" he asked.

"What?"

"The dancing. Was it part of your training?"

Her glare could have melted ice. Or out-frozen it, he wasn't sure which. It was enough confirmation, though, that he let the matter drop and got up shakily to his knees.

"What are you doing?"

"We're trapped here, in case you didn't notice," Barton said with a wry smile. He winced as a shaft of light hit his eyes and nausea swept over him. Stupid concussion. He looked up slowly, swaying on his knees and tested his good foot before putting his weight on it and hoisting himself up to his feet. His bad foot protested any sort of weight, and so he half limped, half hopped over to the crushed window, looking to see if he could do anything. Beyond the glass were the ruins of a different building, meaning it was useless and an exit. He sighed.

"How structurally safe is it above us?" he asked, looking up. The afternoon sunlight was too hard for him to see.

"It'll collapse on us if we so much as blink at it," Widow said in a dull voice. "And neither of us can lift the debris by the door."

"So we'll have to wait for nightfall," he said, sliding back down to the ground.

"To what?" she asked, incredulous.

"To get out of here."

She leveled a flat glare this time. "How?"

He pulled out one of his bullets, large caliber, and popped the cap. Pulling out a handkerchief, he emptied the powder onto it before repeating the process with the next bullet, and the next, and then next. The Black Widow began doing the same, seeing where this was going, and quiet settled between them, focusing (as much as Barton could manage) on the task at hand. Most of the powder came from Barton's higher caliber bullets, but the sheer volume of weaponry she carried was impressive, and he smiled appreciatively at what she could bring to the pile. His mind got lost in the tedium.

"What did you see?"

He blinked owlishly, his gaze slowly lifting up to the redhead across from him. Her mouth was moving, sounds were coming out, and it took him a long time to process the question.

"... What?"

Her eyes did not look to him, focused on the work at hand, but she repeated her question. "What did you see? When you saw me dance?"

Elegant lines, grace in form, signs of an old life, and a deep, deep pain in her work. He watched her dance in his mind, over and over, looking through his scope and then later in her loft. The pain in his head and his foot fell away, and all he could comprehend was that moment in Peru, when he realized what he was looking at, what he saw, what he knew.

"... Myself..."

The word was barely a whisper, nothing more than a twitch of his lips, and he wasn't sure if he said it aloud or not, all he could picture was her dancing. It triggered memories of his life before SHIELD, his world after the tents, the options and decisions that had led him to... that. The blood, on his hands, on his spirit, in his mind. He took a deep breath, tried to focus, tried to reach for that beautiful place in his mind, but he couldn't find it, he couldn't find it, and he was back in that nightmare. He remembered the look in his eyes, every time he saw himself in a mirror, how much he hated himself, and he saw every sign of it in the Black Widow; it was in every motion, every gesture, every nuance of her dance, and his focus was completely lost and he had to call extraction. He was compromised. She had compromised him. She had compromised him. She had-

"Hawkeye?"

Everything snapped back, and he looked up to see the Widow staring at him uncertainly.

"I'm fine," he said, voice toneless. "Concussion. Hard to focus."

It was a lie and they both knew it, but she seemed to have the decency to let it slide.

He got back to work, emptying everything onto his handkerchief. It wouldn't be enough power to blow them out of anything, but a few well-placed charges could weaken the right structural linchpins to get them out some other way. His bets were on the ceiling and it's annoyingly bright shafts of light. He winced as the pain in his head started to split even more, and he held his temples, trying to keep himself together.

It was up to her to find the best places to put the powder; she was clearly more mobile and without the concussion to impede his focus and concentration. God, thinking was hard.

It was why her next question threw him off.

"What's your preference?"

He watched her climb up to the canopy of debris above them. "... What?"

"Weapon preference?"

"Bow and arrow," he said without hesitation.

She paused at that, turning around and looking down at him from above. "That isn't a gimmick? A call-sign?"

"It was my weapon preference long before it was my call-sign," he said, leaning back against the crushed window frame. "I was trained in it." Her gaze was unreadable, mostly, but he caught the twitch of a mouth, a hint of a reaction to... something, he wasn't sure what. His focus drifted again, different things flitting through his mind's eye as the Black Widow did her work. He considered, briefly, that she was the only one contributing to the conversation, needling him by asking questions – presumably to keep him focused and alert, but more likely she was trying to get information out of him. He frowned when he realized he couldn't completely remember if he had told her anything. That made him uncomfortable, and he tried turnabout.

"Is it working out for you?" he asked, fighting his splitting headache. "Being on the run?"

"... No."

Of course that would be all she would say.

"Still don't want to work for SHIELD?"

"Still determined to save me when I don't need it?"

"We all need saving," he whispered. "Whether we see it or not."

She looked down, pausing in her work. "And you think you can save everyone?"

Barton shook his head and immediately regretted it, clutching his temple to stave the sudden throbbing and the swimming of his vision. "I'm not built to save people."

"... Then why are you so set on saving me?"

"I'm not," he whispered, his mind full of memories. "I just..."

Romanov watched from her perch two stories up. His concussion had thrown off his focus again, and he was drifting off into another memory, his eyes downcast and full of emotion. She had learned a lot about him so far: he was trained in archery before his formal SHIELD training, and probably before his military training as well; he had measurable skill in pyrotechnics – or he just knew the capabilities of his weapons really well.

… He saw himself when he watched her dance in Peru. She hadn't decided what to make of that, only because she didn't know him, but he had dropped enough hints that things had been bad for him before SHIELD. Really bad. The darkness in his eyes when he had drifted off earlier had looked almost exactly like her own eyes, and that realization had startled her. Now, he was lost in trying to explain why he was hell-bent of "saving" her, and she couldn't refute that he didn't think he was the next Captain America. But then why was he doing what he was doing? He obviously felt fulfillment in his work (and her envy of that was scrupulously shredded whenever she decided to acknowledge it), but where did it stem from? No agency, even SHIELD and their high and mighty rhetoric, was free of innocent blood, and yet he had found a way to live with himself, a way to live with the work that he did. How?

She was tempted to join SHIELD just to find out.

Sighing, she left Hawkeye to his thoughts and went back to work. They didn't have a lot of powder, even with the glut of weaponry they (she) had, but they didn't need a lot of powder. She found three key places and loaded them, using electrical wiring to carry whatever charge they would concoct and slowly traced it back to the ground floor. He was still lost in thought, this one filled with a mix of emotions in his eyes. She identified sadness, hope, happiness, and then a sharp turn to something very dark. His eyes winced closed, grimacing and holding his temple.

"Hawkeye?" she asked softly, reaching out to touch his shoulder.

He startled, the jerk of his head causing even more pain. "I'm fine," he murmured, his voice barely audible, his lips barely moving. "I'm..."

He passed out.

It was to be expected, she supposed. His concussion was severe enough that it was a miracle he had stayed awake as long as he had. She could allow him an hour's rest before waking him; she didn't want such a lucrative source of information fall into a coma because of the damage. At least, that's what she told herself. The last thing she wanted to admit was that Stockholm Syndrome might be setting in; she was too guarded for that.

But... there was something about him, and as she went back to work she tried to pin it down.

"... Myself..."

That was what it boiled down to. The way his eyes had fallen completely to memory when she had asked what he saw, the way she could tell what memories were of her and what were of something very different, very dark. As closed off as his face was, his eyes held the same look that she had held whenever she looked in the mirror; it was his inaudible confession, utterly lost in his concussion, that made her want to believe him. That had been the truth, the hardest and most painful truth for him to admit; and if he saw himself when she danced, if he shared that look on his own face, if he joined SHIELD and became not only the success of his file - but the self-assured, confident, man at peace with his work – then Romanov could admit, in the innermost circle of her thoughts, that she wanted that.

If Hawkeye could come out the other side after whatever he had done, it gave her hope that she could do the same.

Hope, like love, was for children; but for the first time she found herself daring to think hope could work for adults, too.

An hour later when she touched his shoulder, his entire body stiffened, and his eyes, glassy and unfocused, took several minutes to process where he was. When he at last settled on her, he asked, "Did your mother teach you?"

She frowned.

"To dance."

She made a show of thinking about whether or not to give away the information, before saying. "Ballet school."

He nodded, as if such a vague answer explained so much. For him, it probably did.

"Natty Bamppo."

She blinked.

"What?"

"Natty Bamppo," he said, sitting up and wincing with every motion. "The Leatherstocking Tales. They were read to us every night. American Romanticism, he was the main character. Frontiersman, raised by Indians, had a ton of nicknames. Leatherstocking. Deerslayer. Straight-Tongue. Hawkeye..."

When she realized what he was trusting her with her eyes doubled in size, no acting required. Ever since he was a child, then, he had trained to be what he had now become. Just like her. This was more than two people going through a dark past, this was two people destined for their work since they were children. The thought was chilling, haunting, and she sat back, putting distance between them to prevent herself from completely breaking her mask. She reminded herself that she didn't want to like him, didn't want to feel connected to him, didn't want to follow him to SHIELD. She was pumping him for information, not discovering more reasons to go back to a life she was trying so hard to run away from.

Except... Hawkeye had been right. She wasn't suited for normal life. He had said he wasn't either, and another piece of her carefully constructed shield broke.

What a sales pitch... And he wasn't even trying...

It was several hours before nightfall. She and Hawkeye talked intermittently, each trying to get information out of the other. Romanov had the distinct advantage, but used it less and less as she came to know this badly concussed man. Once the sun was gone, they ignited their charges and blew at the support bases they had planned on. Everything gave almost exactly as they wished, and soon she was leveraging what she could with her broken arm, and he helping to lift the debris out of the way. The air was filled with the scent of smoke and fire, the occasional concussive sound of detonation. Orange permeated the horizon, the city had fallen into even more chaos as the rebels struck.

Hawkeye sighed deeply through his nose, blinking slowly and hopping slightly to keep his balance. How he could hop around with the nausea he obviously felt was beyond her.

"Well," he said slowly, "It was a fun little date. Call me, next time."

She looked at him like he had grown a second head.

"Excuse me?"

"We part ways here," he explained. "You're on the run, you don't want to join SHIELD. We're out from under, so you can do whatever you want now."

She frowned at him deeply, her rigid gaze twitching down to his swollen foot and his concussion, as if to demand just how he was going to survive the next block, let alone get back to his latest safe zone. He shrugged in response, limping down the pile of rubble to street level. He grabbed the edge of the adjoining building and hopped along, looking up to orient himself. Once he knew where he was, he hobbled across the street and down an alley. Going was slow, to be sure, but not impossible. On the up side, the activity had died down with the loss of light, and with – he glanced over his shoulder – three collapsed buildings no one was going to stick around for any extended length of time.

In the alley he found a shaky looking two-by-four that he pulled for a makeshift crutch. If nothing else, he blended in with the scenery.

Widow had disappeared from his line of sight, but not from his peripheral vision. He let her make her own decisions, continuing down the dark alley. He had a three mile hike before getting to his weapon stash – and god he was looking forward to getting his hands around his bow. He'd feel infinitely better once that happened.

Barton kept to the alleys, away from beaten paths and in the shadows. He let himself groan on occasion; it was an invitation to the opportunistic but even with a concussion they would be hard pressed to do him much damage, and it let the skittish know there was somebody coming that wasn't a threat. Twice he was pleasantly surprised to have someone come up and ask if he needed help or a doctor. One, a woman with a boy clutching her legs, offered fresh bandages, and they were able to properly brace his ruined foot. He thanked her profusely, a grateful refugee in a sea of refugees, and moved on. Once he was near his weapon stash, he laboriously made his way up a fire escape to the roof. The duffle bag was still hidden under the pile of bricks, and once he unzipped it and restocked his bullets and grabbed a second rifle, he pulled out his bow and snapped it open.

Ah. Much better.

All kinds of muscles relaxed in his body, especially his neck and shoulders from tension, and with it his headache diminished greatly. He sighed in relief.

He pulled his quiver over his head and slung his duffel bag over his shoulder. He was in no condition to continue the mission, though he was sure the Council would try to screw him some more. After six months of success they would certainly find something wrong, and he didn't look forward to that meeting. But he had his bow and quiver, and frankly, with that all was right with the world. He took a deep breath and stood, looking east to see more firefights. The north was filled with smoke, and he had just come from the south. West it was, then, and he had an extraction point in that direction.

Nodding, he anchored a tether line and slowly drew his bow. The torque strained against his muscles and threatened his concussed nausea, but he looked down the shaft of his arrow and waited for everything to piece together: his target to come into focus, his crosshairs to align, his mind to feel the connection, and the certainty to sweep over him. When it all clicked together in his head, he released the arrow, and it flew through the air. The concussion made him miss his mark by a good foot, but the arrow was secure enough that he pulled his harness out of his dufflebag and clipped it to the tether.

Barton looked out over his shoulder to where he thought the Widow was, silently asking if she was joining.

She never showed, and so he lifted himself off the ground and pressed a button on the joist, a tiny motor kicking in and dragging him up the incline of the rope, over two streets to where his arrow had embedded itself. He performed the feat three more times before at last leaving the core of the city, his arms were shaking from the exertion, a sign that he was well past his limits and Barton cursed when his concentration slipped on his last landing. He jarred his bad foot on impact and thudded to the roof; the jarring of his body sent spikes of pain through his head. Goddamn concussion. For several minutes he just sat there, trying to pull himself together.

He dropped down to street level and traveled for another four grueling miles before getting to the safe house. His body hated him by that point, his head was threatening to split into tenths instead of just halves, and his mangled foot was killing him. Exhaustion was overpowering, and he swayed heavily on his feet as he struggled to remain upright. His concentration was almost completely shot, it took him easily three times along to put in the call, and his voice was disturbingly slurred when he finally was able to think long enough to string up a sentence, give his sit-rep, and beg extraction. He thought he heard concern on the other end of the line, but couldn't focus enough to know for sure.

All he really understood was that help was on the way, and that it was safe to shut down now.

The last thing he remembered before passing out again was the figure of a woman entering the safe house, and his wondering how she had gotten in.

Romanov was in Israel when she came across Hawkeye again.

No, scratch that, "came across" was the wrong word. It was Israel when she found him.

The SHIELD agent's words and attitude had haunted her for four months; his belief in her first and foremost.

In the end, she decided that she bought what he was selling. She hated herself for it; she was the one who manipulated people, not the other way around. But her time brooding had brought her some perception of understanding. That first night, when he talked about wiping his slate – that may or may not have been forged – but lost with a concussion, falling for her every ploy, he had admitted that she reminded him of himself – absolute truth; and she found she respected him. He was good, very good, and he wasn't broken by his work.

Or rather, he had been broken, and had pieced himself together into something better.

That... that was what she wanted.

She had been broken. She was still broken. She wanted to put herself together again.

And if it meant joining SHIELD, she figured it was a small sacrifice.

Finding him had taken some skillful work on her part. She wanted to stay invisible, but she needed to touch her old contacts, and that required quite a feat of acting, make up, and blackmail.

All she really knew was Israel; but that proved to be all she needed. With the Palestinians and the Israelis fighting each other constantly, she needed only sift through the mountains of deaths to pick out the unique call-sign that was Hawkeye. There were no arrows, whatever he was doing was covert, but she found a list of deaths that were by sniper. When she researched the targets, she found the pattern, and was able to reverse engineer the mission.

That he had been ordered to kill "militants" that were selling weapons to both sides and making an absurd profit off of the conflict, only convinced her further that she was making the right decision. She had pulled up his file again, one of the many bits of data she had stolen when she left as insurance, and researched all his targets to find similar profiles of despicable nature. He only assassinated the lowest of the low, men that she often was sent to pump information out of. She wondered briefly what it would be like to work with him; her gather the information and he assassinate the target when it was over.

No, she wouldn't be that lucky. She'd be happy just to save herself, clear her ledger, anything after that was a luxury.

Regardless, once she saw the pattern of his targets, she looked up other militants and picked one to stake out. She couldn't afford to be in the man's inner circle; Hawkeye would spot her right away. She settled for the wife's assistant secretary, far enough away that she had little to no contact, but close enough that a few hours rifling through files and she knew all about the man's schedule and appointments and likely locations.

After that was the hard part. She could take an educated guess on what variables snipers took into account when picking nests – visibility, winds, range; but Hawkeye was a league above other snipers, she couldn't imagine what kinds of variables he took into account when sighting his scope. He kept a far enough distance that she hadn't know she was being tailed, either in Libya or in Peru or even in Uzbekistan. Still, as she studied the militant's likely locations, she found a building in the Gaza strip that was just too perfect. It was a mile away, but Romanov suspected that distance was at best an annoyance for Hawkeye. Nodding, she waited.

Unlike Hawkeye, all she needed to do was watch, and so she picked a building much closer to the likely kill zone, where she could watch the militant and know exactly when he went down. It was three days later that she witnessed exactly that, and she couldn't deny a smirk of satisfaction at a job well done and watching a killer get what he deserved.

Still, she couldn't linger, and quickly moved to street level and grabbed her motorcycle. It was a short ride to Hawkeye's building, and she had already set up a discrete zipline beforehand to ride up the elevator shaft to the roof, where she tucked herself into a shadowed corner and waited. Not three minutes later, the SHIELD agent appeared, duffle bag filled with his sniper rifle, and of course a bow and quiver slung on his back. She moved slowly but deliberately, giving him the courtesy of noticing her presence.

"Fancy meeting you here," she said softly.

He blinked, the only sign of his surprise, and his body tensed, dropping the duffle and angling to face her more fully. He didn't go for his bow. Perhaps she should have expected that.

"Are you so convinced I'm not going to kill you?" she asked.

"No," he replied. "But I think the conversation will go a lot better if the weapons aren't blatantly obvious."

She nodded, following the logic and appreciating the pragmatism.

"What do you want?" he asked.

Romanov shrugged her shoulders, getting right to the point. "To join SHIELD."

He blinked again, his face utterly blank save for that one tell; but he did give a wry grin. "Now, that you're going to have to convince me of."

"You made your sales pitch. I'm deciding to buy."

"Lady, you've been on the run for eight months, determined to leave it all behind. Now you suddenly decide to take me up on my offer? You suddenly go through the hassle of tracking me down just to sign up? Try again."

So he wasn't completely naïve. She liked him even more. She narrowed her eyes slightly, crossing her arms and working her jaw for effect. "It's hard to picture that you would have understood it."

He shifted his weight in response, saying nothing, waiting for her to continue.

"I read the series, you know. Leatherstocking," His face paled very briefly before his coloring returned to normal, the only reaction he was going to give, "and I find it hard to picture American children being able to sit through all the period language." She shifted her weight, crossing her feet at her ankles. They stared each other down for a long time, and Romanov was reminded that he could outwait her – probably always could. "I did pick out one thing though," she said finally. " 'One shot, one kill.' Sounds like someone I know."

"I see I was chatty during my concussion."

She raised an eyebrow. "You were... readable... during your concussion. I don't think I would have ever bought the sales pitch if that hadn't happened."

He blinked. "So you're saying that because you pumped me for information when my head was threatening to split open made you decide that it was worth signing up for SHIELD."

And now came the hard part. "I don't want to join SHIELD," she clarified. "I'm not remotely sold on them."

Hawkeye said nothing. Waited.

She took a deep breath that she didn't have to fake. She worked her jaw again. "I want..."

Her voice trailed off, unwilling to finish the sentence aloud. She pouted and tried again. "I want to remake myself." She paused, unhappy with the sentence, and tried again. "I want to believe in what I do."

"... You're not convinced SHIELD will do that, but you want to join SHIELD," he reiterated. "This makes sense because...?"

He was going to make her say it. Romanov considered working her way out of it, to manipulate the situation. It would be easy, to be sure, but she wanted this to be on the right foot. She wanted this to be the start of something, and that meant doing it right. She breathed out heavily through her nose. "Whatever you did before, you're at peace with it now. If you got that at SHIELD, then it's worth trying out."

He frowned, studying her with his bright, penetrating eyes. She let herself be open to it, fought her instincts to keep everything out in the open. She waited, and waited, and waited.

And at last, he sighed.

"I'm gonna get screwed over again for this," he muttered before reaching up and tapping his ear. "Sir, Agent Hawkeye reporting in. Yes, sir. No, sir; no problems, at least not the way you mean." He winced. "No, not like that, either. I've come across a possible resource. Yes, sir, an asset. Okay. Okay. We'll be there." He looked to her. "Can you keep up?"

She smirked in response.

"Name's Clint Barton."

Her reaction was to withhold her own name, but she reminded herself that new starts meant breaking old habits.

"Natasha Romanov."

It wasn't her true name, but it was close enough.

"You're going to go through hell, you know that?" he asked, pulling his bow and an arrow. "Forget the obstacle course of getting their trust, they're going to punish you something fierce for daring to surprise the Council – to say nothing of what they're going to do to me. Again."

"I can handle it."

"I'm sure you can. Try to play by the rules, though; I had to learn the hard way and it will save you a lot of irritation if you don't upset the apple cart too much."

"Anything else I should know?"

"Yeah. Don't piss off Coulson. That's like signing your own death warrant."

End

Author's Notes: Ah, it's out of my head. At laaaast. It's a common story, how Hawkeye and Widow met, there's not shortage of it on ff . net, but now we (re: I) submit my own version of it. Heavily influenced by a fic called Origin of the Debt in places, but I think its unique in it's own way. Hope you liked!