A/N: I'm back! Honestly, if you're still reading this story I can't thank you enough. Simply put, you're amazing. Thank you to everyone who has favorited, followed, and especially those who have left reviews. They keep me going :)

Chapter beta'd by Cheerfuldisposition over at AO3. You should all thank her, without her none of this would be seeing the light of your laptop/phone screen.

So, without further ado, here it is.

"It's been seven hours, Tony," Clint says. His eyes are dry from staring at bright monitors for so long; they water and sting when he blinks them several times. "Staring at this for another seven isn't going to change what we see. Or don't."

Beside him, Tony puts his head down and groans. He runs his fingers through his hair, disheveling it even more. Last night, Tony called him after Eliska had figured out the code used to hack into SHIELD was written by Damienne. Eliska suggested Damienne had left a hidden message behind, but—seven hours later—they had yet to find such a message. A part of Clint thinks they are chasing shadows, that they are being too hopeful, putting their eggs in one basket because answers have been few and far between. If Damienne did leave a coded message behind, it wasn't any code Clint can decipher.

Clint leans back against his seat. The letters and numbers on the screen before him have blurred. His back, neck, and shoulders are sore and stiff from sitting in the same position for too long. To the left of him, in a corner of the lab, Eliska is sleeping on a well-worn red sofa with a quilt covering her. She sleeps curled up in the fetal position, her face pressed against the couch cushions. Her back is to them. Tony had offered her a guest bedroom that she had refused with a frown and a sleepy, "I wanna be here in case you guys find somethin'."

"Tony," Clint says, "time for a break."

"Kitchen. Coffee," Tony mumbles around a drawn out yawn.

A brief glance at a monitor's clock shows it's 2:45am. They make their way out of the lab, their footsteps sounding loud in the silent night. Clint resigns himself to another night of short-lived sleep. For a second, he muses. If he hides from Natasha and escapes their sparring session, he can catch a quick nap. Besides, he's still recovering from their last session. The scab on his eyebrow is a crisp reminder.

The kitchen lights come to life as they enter. They are faint, providing only enough light to prevent he and Tony from bumping into anything. Tony walks towards the coffee machine, while Clint heads to the pantry to put out bread and the to the fridge for bacon, ham, cheese, and eggs. He can't remember the last time he ate. If he can't, then Tony doesn't know when he himself ate either. After taking out a pan and lighting the stove, he settles himself to make breakfast sandwiches.

Beside him, Tony leans against the counter. He's holding two mugs of steaming coffee and when he looks down at the stove to see two of everything, he glances back at Clint, an eyebrow arched. Clint shrugs. Somewhere along the way he began feeding Tony too. Tony's lips pull at the corners and he hands over Clint's purple mug. Their fingers brush. Clint tightens his grip on the spatula in his other hand and forces himself to focus on the eggs cooking in the pan. He sips his coffee and burns his tongue. Tony laughs, hands wrapped around his own hot mug.

Silence descends on them, but it is comforting, unperturbed in its lack of demand to be filled. Being with Tony is easy. There are times, when Clint is silent and inimical to speech, when Tony will fill the silence, will chatter about everything and nothing under the sun, will recite the schematics for a certain project, and all Clint will do is listen, feeling the restlessness in his bones slowly seep out with each word. But there are other times that are like this: quiet, simple, unobtrusive. Peaceful. There are times when Tony will sit with Clint and watch TV or pull out a tablet to work, all the while without uttering a word.

Clint sneaks a glance at Tony from his peripheral. Tony is perched atop the counter to Clint's right, staring at his mug, lost in thought. Clint nudges Tony's thigh with an elbow.

"Food's prepared there, you know," he says, reaching beside Tony for the bacon pack he laid there a few minutes ago.

Clint tosses the bacon in a pan, watches it sizzle for a moment. All the while, Tony continues staring at his coffee—silent and unmoving. The sight is unnerving. Clint is no stranger to Tony's silence, but he is to his stillness. Tony is a fidgeter, a constant tapper of fingers and twirler of pens. Clint researched it once, booted his laptop and found some theory about fidgeting being the body's way of adapting to the lack of movement in this new post-hunter-gatherer day and age. It seems Tony's always been like that, an energetic being in a sea of static. Except for now, that is.

"She won a scholarship," Tony says, his voice rough as if he'd swallowed sandpaper. For a second, Clint wonders who he's talking about. But then he understands: Damienne. "That's how I met her. She won one of my scholarship awards when she was at MIT. July 20th, summer of '07."

Clint doesn't know what he should say. In the summer of 2007, while Tony stood on a podium and presented a scholarship, Clint was putting a bullet in between the eyes of a man in East Timor. Clint stands a little closer to Tony, bump's Tony's dangling legs with his hip. You can tell me, he doesn't say. Instead, Clint grabs two plates from the cabinet to his left.

Tony takes a breath. "I flew in. Presented her the award. Never seen anyone trying to act so nonchalant and so damn excited at the same time." He snickers. "Damn near lost her mind when I showed her the Malibu lab. Got Dummy to play fetch with her the first hour she was there. Odd one, Damienne."

"What'd she win it for?"

"New encryption she'd been toying with. Still in the nascent stage, but what I saw impressed me. There was potential," Tony says with a shrug. "Pepper said I gave her the award because she was a younger version of me."

Clint places their breakfast on two plates and moves to turn off the stove. "Was she?"

"God, no," Tony says, barking out a laugh. "Granted Damie had a bit of a wild streak. I only remember bits and pieces of that celebratory weekend. But Damie, she wasn't a younger me. Good thing, too."

During the slow days at the circus, Clint would often filch through garbage cans and read the magazines he found. Back then it seemed most magazine covers were racy and decadent news articles detailing a young Tony Stark's exploits. From liquor to cocaine to risqué sex scandals; the man had been America's favorite wild child. The first time Tony got admitted to rehab it had been as though football season had started. The press had been relentless. When Tony got out, Clint remembers the circus managers and crew placing bets on how long Tony's sobriety would last. A month in, a reporter brazenly questioned his recent sobriety. In ten minutes, a twenty-year-old Tony Stark exposed the man's gambling debts on national television.

It had been hilarious. Clint bites the inside of his cheek to keep the giggle building in his throat back. Tony had thick skin, but Clint knew he sewed it out of necessity.

"Don't think the world could handle another Tony Stark," Clint says.

Tony hops down from the counter and smiles, his eyes bright with mischief. "Right on that count, Legolas."

Clint places both plates on the counter where they each pull out a stool. They descend into their familiar silence as they eat. His thoughts drift to Eliska, or Elie, as she had insisted he call her. She had stayed awake until she began to sway on her feet, trying to help them find whatever hidden message Damienne left behind. Clint marvels at the loyalty there. Even dead, Damienne still inspires it.

"How was she different?" Clint says.

"Hmm?"

"Damienne. What didn't make her a younger version of you?"

Tony stops eating and sips his coffee. The faraway look is back again. A few minutes pass in silence, with only the sound of them sipping their coffees fracturing the quiet. Finally, Tony puts his empty mug down and gets up from his stool. He grabs their plates, setting them in the sink. He grabs the pot of coffee and refills their mugs. Standing directly across from Clint, Tony doesn't look at him when he says, "Damienne was brilliant, but she wasn't burdened by it. She went to MIT when she was supposed to and graduated when she was supposed to. She was brilliant, but she was normal."

Clint thinks back to that studio loft they walked into, with all the tech strewn everywhere, he thinks about someone who only had her job and a girlfriend to report her missing, who was abducted and killed by a terrorist organization, but left a trail behind. Is anyone normal? Or is normality a fiction, a pretty little idea humans got in their heads to feel better about who they were, a fictional measuring point of something indefinable?

In the morning, the rest of the team debriefs over breakfast. Bruce is cooking something that looks like a pancake, but isn't. He calls it dosa.

"It's basically a South Indian crepe," Bruce says, taking out some type of batter.

Clint has learned not to question Bruce's cooking, not after he made an amazing curry for dinner one night.

Tony isn't at breakfast. Clint supposes he's still asleep. He doesn't know whether or not Tony went back to the lab after their late night (or morning) breakfast. Clint couldn't handle the thought of another night spent in one of the chairs in Tony's lab and decided to sleep in his own bed for a change. He managed four hours. Progress.

"What do we know?" Steve says. He's standing by the kitchen bar, on the outskirts, surveying them all. He doesn't look as tired as he used to. There's a mission now, a target they have and Clint knows how good a motivator that can be, knows that if there's anything left to cling to, there's always that. He wishes Steve had more.

"We know a former Red Room operative and the Ten Rings have a working partnership—for now at least. We know they're using the Winter Soldier, that they're after the Chitauri weapons, that they want Tony," Natasha says. She's sitting beside Clint on a stool, the same one Tony sat on only a few hours ago.

"They forced Damie to hack SHIELD," Elie says from her spot on the table. Her hands are wrapped around a mug of coffee. She's dressed in fresh clothes. Clint doesn't think she went home at any point last night, which means she brought clothes with her. Again, he's reminded of his mother who always carried an extra shirt for Clint in her purse. He was a messy eater as a child, never failing to drop food on his shirt when they ate out.

Steve runs a hand through his hair. It's grown out since the Battle of New York. Longer on the sides, the front falling into his eyes a bit. Clint feels his frustration. They don't know enough. What they need is a location.

They're fighting an enemy they can't see and it's making them all unsettled. Thor has taken to wearing his armor around the tower, even now he sits at the kitchen table with his hammer beside him. Natasha dragged Clint around the tower floors, asking JARVIS for their layouts. There's now more than one weapon stashed in every room, including bathrooms and hallways. Clint even taped a knife to the backside of a Jackson Pollock that hung in the middle of the lobby. Excessive, he knows, but paranoia has saved their life more than once.

"Clint and I need to go to Kazan," Natasha says. "Think we may have a lead."

Ilya is in Kazan. And the lead is the Winter Soldier. Natasha hasn't mentioned going to Kazan to Clint, but he isn't surprised and he isn't going to stay behind. Wherever she goes, he goes. One of their unspoken rules.

"What's exactly in Kazan?" Steve says.

Natasha purses her lips. She wants to go after the Winter Soldier, but doesn't want them to know. Clint isn't sure why, but he can take a guess. There's a history there, unbeknownst to Clint and the others.

"The Winter Soldier, Steve," Tony says, striding in. He glances at Natasha, his eyes clear and alert despite his lack of sleep. "Right? I mean, come on, genius here, remember. Isn't it obvious? Someone told her he was back, so she's going after him."

"No," Steve says.

"Steve—" Natasha starts.

"If the rumors about this guy are true, he's too dangerous," Steve says, shaking his head. His voice has the authoritative cadence Clint heard during the invasion. Here is the man who led a group of soldiers across the trenches of Europe, who awoke decades after having been frozen in Arctic ice and didn't hesitate to fight another battle. Here is the man whose final word was law.

Tony moves to the coffee maker and pours himself a cup as if it were any other morning. "Don't blame her, Cap. If I were her, I'd wanna go after my former partner in crime too."

"Tony," Bruce sighs. He's flipping a perfectly round dosa. There's already a golden stack of them in a corner on a plate.

"No, come on, Bruce. We're already dealing with enough cryptic messages and secrets as it is. I read those files you gave, so I know. Either you tell them or I do. So come on, Red, spill," Tony says, standing opposite Natasha, staring her down.

Natasha hadn't told Clint much about the weeks she spent pretending to be Tony's assistant. But he knows she made a mistake. Tony may understand her deceit, may even forgive it, but he'll never forget it.

"Natasha," Steve says. It's not an order, but a request.

She stares at Steve for a while, searching for something. Steve doesn't look away and that seems to satisfy her.

"The Red Room had a training program," she says, speaking slowly, choosing her words with care. "There were instructors."

"He trained you," Clint says.

She nods. "Ages twelve to sixteen," she murmurs.

"They made you partners," Clint says.

She nods again.

"That job in São Paulo," he says, the mission, Phil had said, that caused SHIELD to notice her in the first place, "the hospital—"

"He was my partner. Took out the guards while I set the charges," she says, her voice without inflection, blank. "I broke out of the Red Room a few months later."

"So you know what he looks like," Tony says. The knuckles around his mug are white, but his expression is neutral. Clint is grateful.

"No," Natasha says. "He always wore a mask."

"Great, back to square one then," Tony says.

"I think his eyes were blue," she says, the memory clouding over her eyes.

They're all staring at her. Clint knows the others will research São Paulo now, will learn about the hospital. Steve will ask Fury about Natasha's time before SHIELD and maybe Fury will give him the paper files he keeps of those missions, those folders filled with more speculations than hard facts. It was bad enough, the things they've already done for SHIELD. Part of Clint wishes Steve never asks.

"Could you bring him in," Steve says, "if you went to Kazan?"

"I don't know. Chances are he won't recognize me. We never remembered each other, after," she says.

There's a scar on Natasha's abdomen, below her belly button, above her pelvic bone, and to the left. Its raggedness suggests a serrated blade. Clint saw it for the first time when he was stitching up her side after they assaulted their third Red Room base.

"I don't really remember getting it," she had said when she caught him staring.

When he finished, she pulled a tank top on and finished off the bottle of rum they filched from the liquor store a half a block away from their motel. He hadn't given it much thought at the time. It wasn't until months later that he'd begin to put the pieces together and realized they had done more than make her into a killer.

"By the way," Tony says, as he turns his back to them and serves himself one of the dosas, "I figured out Damie's message."

"What?" Elie says. "What did she—"

"Coordinates. Satellite photos showed an abandoned industrial district in Kandahar." Tony cuts up his dosa and dips it in some sort of red sauce. "Was actually owned by Americans. Proud to say it wasn't owned by SI. But still, gotta enjoy the ironies of life, right?"

No, Clint thinks, no, you don't.

"You inform Fury?" Steve says.

"Nope. Figured I'd let you do the honors, Cap," Tony says, a strained smile on his face.

Steve nods. "Breakfast first. Everyone be ready to leave in an hour."

Tony throws Steve a jaunty salute and heads for the elevator with his plate. Steve and Natasha glance at Clint.

"Don't look at me," he says.

Natasha kicks his shin.

"Fuckin' hell, Nat." His shin throbs.

"You should go talk to him," Bruce says, setting a breakfast plate in front of Natasha. "He listens to you."

It is windy outside the tower. Storm clouds are gathering and Bruce wonders how long they have until the first rain falls. Even this high up, on the common room's terrace, the air smells of saw dust and wet cement. It smells of recovery.

At the railing, stands Thor, the attire of a prince and the drooped shoulders of a world wearied man. Bruce saw him slip out of the kitchen earlier and decided to follow once he finished cooking. He tended to lose his appetite after, the haphazard of being the chef he supposes.

"This must all seem so petty to you," Bruce says.

"Aye, many an Aesir would believe Midgardian squabbles were naught but so," Thor says. He's been outside for some time now, Bruce knows, standing, peering at the sky, at the gathering clouds. Thor must miss his home, Bruce musses, wherever that is. A far, distant realm. He's still trying to wrap his head around that.

Thunder cracks.

Mjölnir hangs limp and heavy from Thor's waist. Distantly, Bruce wonders if the weather is an outward expression of Thor's inner turmoil, if the reaction is uncontrollable. What must it be like to release your emotions into the sky? Bruce imagines his anger turning the sky a hot, fiery orange red, his anger a desert storm. He can't decide if its cathartic or not.

"And what do you believe?" Bruce says.

Clouds have shrouded the sun. The wind picks up and, by a degree, the air chills.

Thor turns towards him. Where he expected to find the wisdom of a long-lived life, he finds something else. He thinks it might be grief or regret. Whatever it is, he can now see the weariness Thor has worn into his bones.

"There will always be those who seek power at the expense of others." Thor turns away, his face upturned to the once blue sky. "If my travels have me taught me anything, it is that across the realm that desire remains unchanged. For a life long such as mine, the trivialities of Midgardians should be petty, yet I find them not. On the contrary, your realm rather astounds me Dr. Banner."

Bruce wants to ask Thor about his travels, about the things he's seen. He wants to ask where the other realms are, wants to take him down into his lab and ask him to open up an intergalactic portal so Bruce can sit and measure its energy signature. He hadn't dismissed the possibility of life on a planet outside of their own. He just hadn't imagined meeting such life.

"Have you seen them all, all of the realms?" he says.

"It is Aesir tradition that when a Prince become a man, he shall travel all nine realms. I have. And I have waged war in them all."

The day they sent Loki back to Asgard, Bruce almost didn't stay. It was Tony who changed his mind. Tony assured him Ross wouldn't be able to touch him, had been informed by Fury that SHIELD would keep the military off his back. Running was no longer a necessity for survival. But the way Steve looked at them sometimes pressed a cold weight on his chest. He wasn't a soldier. And despite the turmoil he carried inside himself, violence unnerved him.

He had even bought a plane ticket. In the end, the thought of returning to his previous life as if nothing had changed had been worse than the thought of staying. There was something to be explored here, he thought as he'd gotten into Tony's car and they sped off.

And yet, he still couldn't help but have a to-go bag ready, resting in a corner of his closet. Always ready to run.

Lighting flashes in the distance. The clouds have gotten closer, the sky darker. The blue sky of morning has gone.

Clint finds Tony in his penthouse standing by the bar, a tumbler of whiskey on the rocks in hand. His breakfast plate is on the bar, half a dosa left.

"Shouldn't you be getting ready to march out?" Tony says. He swirls the golden liquid around, but doesn't take a drink.

"Steve gave us an hour. 'Sides, I haven't had breakfast yet." He grabs Tony's plate and starts eating. The dosa is soft, still warm from the pan. Clint looks over at Tony; he's still staring at his drink, but Clint sees the way the corner of his lips have curled a bit. He keeps eating, knows Tony will talk eventually.

"You were going to go," Tony says.

Clint takes his time in chewing and swallowing his bite of dosa. "Go where?"

"With Natasha, to Kazan." Tony faces him then. "Have you always been this reckless, Legolas?"

Phil used to call him out on his recklessness, punished him by hauling him into the med bay, and dropping a stack of paperwork on his lap to complete as soon as either hand was enough to write with. Despite countless times of making heedless decisions together, it didn't take long for Natasha to catch onto Phil's strategy. She was the one who handcuffed him to the hospital bed once. Still…

"I can take care of myself, Tony."

"I'm not saying that you can't."

"Then what are you saying?" He may not have the super strength of a god or a serum enhanced super soldier, and he may not be the genius that Tony is, but he can still make a shot from a rooftop a block away and can still beat a person to death in less than three minutes.

"I'm saying that we're like a team now, or whatever—"

"Yeah, and Natasha asked Steve. He didn't say no."

"No, because he wants to run it by Fury, who's gonna send you both packing to Russia the first chance he gets," Tony says, his voice rising at the end.

"Tony, this is my job. Nat and I are still SHIELD agents. What the hell did you think we were doing before all this?"

"Clint, I shook you awake yesterday and you pinned me to the floor."

"What the hell does that have to do with following a lead?" Frustrated, Clint pushes the plate in front of him aside. Pinning Tony to the ground was instinct, is instinct. Clint's never handled being woken up well. Both Natasha and Phil had been on the receiving end of his rough awakenings. Though lately, ever since Loki, it has worsened. He still sleeps with either a knife or a loaded gun within arms reach.

"Sir," JARVIS interrupts, "Captain Rogers has asked me to remind you to prepare for a SHIELD visit."

"Thanks, Jay. Look," Tony meets his eyes, holding his hands up, "forget I said anything."

"Tony—" Clint says, but before he can continue Tony walks away towards what Clint presumes is his bedroom. The whiskey tumbler is on the bar, the melting ice cubes turning the liquid a pale gold. Beside it is the breakfast plate, a few bites of dosa left.

"Fuck it," Clint says and eats the rest before leaving to prepare.

This time, there is no clandestine warehouse and no SHIELD issued USV. This time, a Quinjet lands on the tower's roof for them.

"Huh," Tony says when it lands, "we should have one of our own."

"Somehow I don't see Fury letting us keep one," Bruce says as they board. There are two SHIELD agents up front on the controls.

"Hey, no one said anything about asking. Besides, this model's already old. I'll make us a new one," Tony says.

"Thought we just got this model," Natasha says. She takes a seat and straps in.

Clint sits next to her. "We did. In January."

None of them are in official uniform (except for Thor who's in armor), though Steve still carries his shield and Tony holds a red and gold suitcase. Beside Clint, Natasha has dual Glock 26s, one on either thigh, and her Widow's Bites peek out from the sleeves of her jacket. Bruce is a weapon all on his own.

For his part, Clint's carrying his H&K P30—the same weapon he used to shoot at Fury and Hill when Loki possessed him. For a few days, he contemplated getting rid of it, maybe giving in to Natasha and buying a replacement Glock. But this is one of Clint's favorite semi-automatic handguns. It has an ambidextrous mag release he loves and is easy on the recoil. Its grip is familiar. It was also a gift from Phil.

But Loki's taken enough, Clint decided, and kept it.

Roughly a half hour later, they land. The Helicarrier isn't up in the air, instead its on the water, about a hundred miles off the US eastern seaboard. It's the first time he's step foot here since he blew out one engine and sent a virus to destroy another.

The sounds are the same, is the first thing Clint notes. There are yells across the runways, people in navy blue uniform milling about. On the parallel runway, a fighter jet is being prepped for take off.

Dark clouds hover in the horizon. Clint takes a breath. The air tastes of salt water.

Fury and Hill meet them on the tarmac. They are lead inside. Clint passes sections that are sealed, admitting no entry. When they get in the elevator, certain floor numbers are highlighted red. A note explains they are undergoing construction and cannot be accessed without a pass. These must be the floors the Hulk and Thor tore through.

Inside the bowels of the ship, they sit in a standard, windowless conference room. Except for Fury and Hill, they all take seats at the oval table in the center.

"I hear we have a lead," Fury says.

Steve eyes flicker to Natasha before settling on Fury. "We do."

"The Winter Soldier's back," Natasha says before Steve can elaborate.

"Excuse me?" Fury says. "All the years SHIELD has operated we've never had a confirmed sighting and now you're telling me you have one?"

Natasha tips her head. "Yes."

"Sir, no agency has verified his existence," Hill says.

"Are you sure?" Fury asks Natasha, his gaze piercing. He must have known, Clint realizes, about the history Natasha shares with Winter.

She takes a moment to respond, probably to contemplate what she knows about Ilya, measuring his trustworthiness.

"Yes," she says.

"Where?" Fury says.

"Kazan. Spotted by an old acquaintance," she says. And Clint knows then that Fury doesn't know about Ilya.

Fury nods. His eye runs over Clint for a moment before settling back on Natasha. "Take Hawkeye with you. Do not engage. Recon only."

"And if I have a shot?" Clint says.

"Take it," Fury says.

"Sir," Steve says, "I'm not comfortable sending either the Widow or Hawkeye out to pursue a highly dangerous target."

"Too bad, Rogers," Fury states.

"Sir, we don't know anything about—"

"I believe Miss Romanoff knows her target better than anyone present," Fury says.

"Sir, they are under my command," Steve says, the frustration in his voice palpable.

"No," Fury says, "they're under mine. Don't go forgetting the chain of command, Captain."

Steve and Fury hold each other's gazes. Clint's sure Steve's hands are fisted beneath the tables if the strained flex of his arms is any indication. Finally, Steve nods.

"Good. Now, anything else?" Fury says.

"Damienne was the one who hacked SHIELD's network," Tony says. "She left a message in the code, though, a set of coordinates. I checked them out and they're to an abandoned, formerly owned US warehouse on the outskirts of Kandahar. Satellite footage hasn't shown any activity in the area recently."

"The rest of you check it out. Sweep the place for anything that may tell us who's behind all this," Fury says.

"Will the Afghani government know of our presence?" Bruce says.

"Yes," Hill says. "Select officials will be notified, but we'll be keeping the details sparse. Terrorist activity falls under the purview of the Enduring Strategic Partnership Agreement recently signed between them and us. They'll keep their distance."

"Okay," Bruce says, "just making sure I won't be detained when I get out of the plane."

There used to be missions, milk runs really, that Fury and handlers gave to agents (oftentimes as punishment). They all centered on Bruce, on the Hulk. Agents would be dispatched for days or weeks at a time. First to track Bruce down and then to keep an eye on him, staying on his tail, noting down his movements. When the missions started, after reports of the Hulk had gone national, agents thought they were being sent to their deaths. Chasing someone who turned into an uncontrollable, unstoppable monsters? Yeah, that was a suicide mission, they all said.

Clint had been sent on the third such mission after Phil reprimanded him on cutting communications with the team. Bruce had taken up temporary residence in northern Guinea, living with various farmers in exchange for his doctoring. He never stayed in the main house, Clint recalls, always opting to stay in sheds a little ways away.

For all their quiet watching, Clint knew SHIELD was thinking of ways to eliminate the Hulk. And when no significant progress was made, they moved onto quarantine research. It's ironic, then, that SHIELD is the only reason someone hasn't come for Bruce yet. Though Clint wouldn't put it past Tony to have a group of lawyers already working on Bruce's protection.

"It's settled then," Fury says. "Romanov, Barton, you have seven days max. Dismissed."

The afternoon sun comes in through the open curtains of his bedroom. It's still a bit sparse, the walls bare of any poster or photographs. The room's original design hasn't changed much. The bed and dresser remain in the same spots; the bed sheets are one of five sets he found in the closet, the curtains are still the same. But the pile of clothes on the floor of his closet has spread, even if he hasn't bothered hanging up his clothes. At least, he thinks, it no longer smells like an un-lived in hotel room.

It's been months since he was sent on an overseas mission. A part of him is glad Fury overrode Steve. Staying stateside for weeks at a time still causes an itch to grow beneath his skin. After all the years traveling with the circus, his years as a freelancer, and his years with SHIELD, Clint is weary of staying in one place for long. These past few months have been a drastic change from when he bounced from city to city, country to country. The only constant the pernicious state of motel rooms the world over. And while SHIELD had provided him with a semblance of geographical stability—in that he had a permanent place to come back to—most of those days were spent beyond the border, sometimes in little known countries.

But then Phil's voice in his ear was another type of stability. One he wasn't getting now or ever again.

He packs his compact bow and numerous trick arrows. Arrows have always been his signature and it's no secret he has ceased free lancing and is now under SHIELD's employment. It's no problem; the only person who knew his face and would have cared to track him down is long dead. The H&K P30 is tucked into its case and put within the bag as well, alongside several ammo clips.

He throws a few shirts, jeans, and jackets in too. From under the bathroom sink he grabs one of the many packaged toothbrushes and tosses it into the bag. Zips it shut.

The creak of the door makes him turn around.

"Does Stark know you're purposefully rusting his door hinges?" Natasha says. She's standing at the doorway, a dark green familiar go bag at her feet.

The day he moved in he'd taken out the pin of the hinge, cleaned it with Dawn and water. He'd then let it sit in potassium permanganate for a few hours before wiping it dry and settling it back in the hinge. Now the door groaned at the slightest touch.

"JARVIS?" Clint says.

"I have not found it necessary to brief Sir, Agent Barton," JARVIS replied.

Clint shrugs. "Well, that answers that."

"Here,"—she tosses him an envelope—"we're flying commercial. Flight's in three hours."

"Just got done packing."

He's missing his sunglasses though. Thinking he's last seen them atop the dresser, he starts rummaging through the papers and knifes he's left on there. Every once in a while he checks the mirror and every time he finds Natasha staring at his back. She's trying not to be obvious, but Clint has spent enough time around her to know. She's not waiting; she's hovering.

"You gonna tell me whatever it is?" he says, moving aside another request from SHIELD medical. Underneath is a postcard with an arrow on the cover. There was no sender, but his name was printed in clear blue ink. He remembered getting it a few days ago, surprised because he hadn't gone through the trouble of changing his address and anyone who wanted to contact him was either at the Tower or could just as easily call him. In the end, he concluded it was a fan. It wasn't exactly a secret they were all staying with Tony. Though the long loops of the "l" and "t" looked vaguely familiar.

Natasha's boots are a whisper on the floor as she walks into his room. The mirror allows him to follow her every move. Clint wonders if she's afraid. There's something brittle around her eyes. Desperation, he thinks.

"Don't take the shot," Natasha says, coming to stand behind him.

"Nat—"

She meets his eyes in the mirror. "If you have the shot," she says, a tremor in her voice he's never heard before, "don't take it. I'm cashing in your side of the ledger. Please, Clint. Don't."

The first time Clint officially met Natasha they bargained. The Red Room for his life. That debt had kept them together during a time when there was no trust between them. It was a language, a form of currency they intimately understood. But taking out the Red Room hadn't been a matter of weeks or months. It had taken years. It was a time during which Clint learned that Natasha would stab the person sneaking from behind him, a time during which he repaid her by clearing her out of tight corners. Somehow, between the quiver of his bow and the silent strike of her knife, they forged something between them.

Debt no longer holds them together. Clint thought Natasha understood that.

"There is no ledger, Nat," he says, clasping one of her wrists, "not between us. There hasn't been one for a long time. You ask me not to take the shot. Done. Hell, I won't even ask why." Though he has his suspicions.

For a brief moment, she rests her forehead between his shoulder blades. "Thank you," she says, her words a murmur. Clint tightens the grip on her wrist.

"Please tell me I'm interrupting something," Tony says from the doorway.

"Not at all, Stark," Natasha says, taking a step back.

Clint releases Natasha and turns around. Tony's carrying a thick, long rectangular case with the SI logo.

"Good," Tony says, "because I have spy toys designed by yours truly for the both of you for your little trip."

Tony sets the briefcase on the bed, flips the clasps, and opens it. He pulls out a small box and throws it to Natasha who eyes Tony before opening it.

"Upgraded your Widows Bite," Tony says. "I expanded the plate area of the capacitors, decreased the spacing between plates, and managed to use calcium copper titanate as a dielectric. In plebeian terms, I upped the voltage. Oh, and I made it so you can adjust voltage output. You can now produce currents up to 200milliampere, meaning your output spectrum ranges from unconscious to dead." Natasha gives Tony a feral smile. "Yeah, figured you'd appreciate that."

Natasha slips the Widows Bites on her wrists. When she powers them on the light is blue instead of red. She nods her thanks. Sometimes, Clint thinks Tony sleeps less than he himself does.

"And for you, dear Legolas," Tony continues, pulling out a long black tube and handing it to Clint, "new arrows."

There are several dozen arrows, some sporting different colors and labels. Clint pulls several of them out at random. One set is familiar: the arrowheads tipped a bright orange.

"Are these—"

"You guessed it: acid arrows," Tony says. "And before you ask, yes, the arrowheads are detachable just like your other arrows. I put these together purely for aesthetic and showmanship reasons."

Natasha laughs. "You really do bring the best toys, Tony."

"I know right? Better than the shit SHIELD has given you," Tony says. "Spoke to One-Eye, by the way. Ditch your commercial flight tickets. You guys are taking the jet. More private that way, and you can manage to bring all those weapons I know you two are so fond of."

"Packing weapons has never stopped us from flying commercial, Tony," Clint says.

"What, is there like Super Secret Spy School permission slips for carrying a bow and arrow and guns onto a plane?" Tony says.

Clint smiles. "There is actually. How else would government spy organizations get any work done?"

"I honestly can't tell if you're serious or not. Whatever," he says, waving a hand around. "Packed you some taser arrows in there too. Enough to send an average person—of both weight and height—into unconsciousness. You can't fiddle with the voltage on those. I'm still trying to find a good way to do that. Damn arrows and their damn weight and balance restrictions. Seriously, Barton, why the medieval weaponry?" Tony moves back, leaning over the open case.

"He grew up in a circus," Natasha quips.

"Nat!" Clint yells.

Tony whirls around. "Wait, seriously? That isn't in your file."

"And that's my cue, gentlemen," Natasha says. She hefts her go bag over her shoulder and walks out. "Don't forget, three hours Clint!"

"Huh," Tony says, "have I mentioned how ridiculously glad I am she's no longer my PA?"

Clint grunts and tries to get his bag to zip shut after maneuvering in the tube of arrows. Really, he bets Natasha is just as glad as Tony, if not more so.

"So," Tony says, lightly, "you grew up in a circus?"

"Bit of a clichéd story. Drunken abusive father beats mother to death and with no other family the kids fall into the system, going from foster home to foster home, until one day they run away," he says, finally tugging the zipper shut.

Clint turns to find Tony starting.

"Yeah, okay, except the part where the kids end up at a circus? Definitely not clichéd," Tony says.

After his mother died and his father was arrested, a social worker came and gave Clint and Barney each a black trash bag to pack their belongings in. That day, he thought his world was ending. And, in a sense, it had. That morning the air was stale inside the house, the harsh smell of chemicals burning his six-year-old nose. The social worker steered them away from the kitchen, but on his way back downstairs with his full bag trailing behind him he snuck a glance. The bottoms of the cabinets were still spattered with his mother's blood.

In some ways, the circus had been better than their home. But in others, it had been worse, far worse.

Clint knows he's impulsive. When he was little his mother used to say he flew by the seat of his pants and, though he didn't understand what she meant at the time, she always said it with a smile, blue eyes crinkling at the corners. Now he does. But age hasn't blunted him enough, hasn't shaped him into a person who thinks twice over their every step, even if it should have.

"Guess growing up in a circus is a little unconventional," he agrees.

"'A little,' he says. God, you're ridiculous," Tony says. "You know, I might just start keeping my own file on you."

"Be my guest," Clint says, thinking that this is how Tony shows his care, by gifting his creations and recording personal data.

"Oh, before I forget," Tony says, taking a small case out of his pocket and handing it over, "here."

Inside are two flesh colored comm units. Clint pulls one out. They feel lighter than their SHIELD comms. He presses against them and finds the silicone casing has more give.

"Try it on," Tony says, and Clint does.

It molds to his ear, matching its every contour. Clint turns it on.

"Hello, Agent Barton. How may I be of assistance?" JARVIS says.

"Holy shit, you hooked our comms to JARVIS?" Clint says, grinning.

Tony beams. "Hell yeah. This way you and Romanov can report to the team. Don't worry, SHIELD has access too. Even I know it wouldn't be a good idea to block Fury and his minions from comms. They're connected to the SI satellite, so no matter where you are you should be able to contact us and vice versa."

Clint laughs. "He'd probably ask the council to sanction your murder."

"Eh, I'm not worried. As long as I feed One-Eye's tech obsession, he'll keep me around."

"Suppose you're right," Clint says.

He plucks the comm from his ear, places it back into the box, and pockets it.

"I made some for the whole team. You and Romanov get to be the guinea pigs," Tony says, handing over another small case.

Clint forces both cases into his bag.

"Last thing," Tony says. Apparently, the long case Tony set up on the bed has a bottom compartment. Inside is Clint's L115A3 AWM rifle. "I finally finished the modifying your scope."

Clint picks up the detached scope. It feels faintly lighter. He faces one of the windows and sights it, incrementally increasing the zoom. There are people in the office of the building across from them. A blue mug rests on someone's cubicle. There is debris in a corner, broken computer monitors, office chairs, and torn cubicle dividers.

"You increased the zoom range," he says, putting the scope down.

Tony nods. "Also, changed the glass. This one's more high quality."

Clint places the scope back into its cut out spot within the case. "Thank you."

"You're welcome."

"About earlier…" Clint says.

"Yeah, no," Tony says, waving his words away as he looked aside, "don't worry about it."

Normally, Clint doesn't have to suffer through this. Trying to reassure someone he's leaving behind for a mission is foreign. Even when he and Natasha went on separate missions together, there were never awkward goodbyes, or reassurances that needed to be issued. One day, one of them wouldn't come back. They'd long ago made peace with that.

"We'll check in three times a day: morning, afternoon, night." Under SHIELD regulations they only had to check in once a day, but maybe the team (Tony) would appreciate more contact.

"You don't have to—"

"Afternoon check-ins will be short since we'll probably be out in the city. We'll report if we find the Soldier and/or make contact. We'll be back in seven days," Clint said trying to sound as matter-a-fact as he could.

"We'll let both of you know if we find anything in Kandahar."

"Good."

He's pounding the heavy bag when she finds him, quick strong jabs that rattle the chain suspending the bag. At least this time his hands are wrapped. Tony must have figured out how to create heavy bags able to sustain serum-induced strength, Natasha thinks. That, or Steve is holding back. Her steps are loud when she approaches, boots tapping against the hard wood floor before she hits soft gym floor padding. Steve, she's found, takes it worse than Tony does when people sneak up on him. It's not even purposeful, her sneaking, it's just that after graduating the Red Room she has to try at making a sound.

"I don't like this," Steve says. Sweat has caused his hair to tumble outside of its regular orderly style, now strands of it stick to his forehead.

"I know," Natasha says, coming to stand beside him.

Steve doesn't stop his assault on the bag. The rattling of the chain, Natasha muses, will make a suitable soundtrack for their conversation.

"We're divided this way. And if something happens to you or Clint, we can't—" he spins and kicks at the bag. To Natasha's surprise, it still holds.

"This is what Clint and I do, Steve. We've gone out to face worse with less." Though never against someone as well trained as Winter. The last memory of him she has is that of a group of armored men leading him away. He'd never even looked back.

Steve punches the bag hard, causing it to sway wildly before he settles it with a hand. There are no heavy bags in a war zone. Natasha wonders how Steve used to vent his frustration or if he just let it fester.

He turns to her, eyebrow raised in a way that reminds her of Tony. " See, that doesn't exactly make me feel all that better."

Natasha shrugs. "If it's reassurance you want, Rogers, you're talking to the wrong person."

Without the chain rattling in the background, their voices seem louder.

Droplets of sweat fly through the air as Steve runs a hand through his hair. Still, Natasha spots the slight upturn at one corner of his lips. Steve ambles towards a bench and she follows.

"I looked up the hospital," he says, taking a seat and unwrapping the tape from his knuckles. He's not looking at her and Natasha wonders if he will ever deign to meet her eye again. "A lot of people died. Kids died."

She allows herself, for a second, to close her eyes. When she opens them, Steve is peering up at her. "I know. I remember." Because sometimes, if she was good, if she behaved, they did not secure her in cryo. And, sometimes, if her hands never hesitated or shook, they did not alter her memories.

Natasha remembers the São Paulo job because she did it with a clear head, of her own free will.

"I don't"—he takes an unsteady breath—"I'm not accusing you."

You should, Natasha wants to say, but there's a stone in her throat she can't swallow past. Natasha looks away, unable to stare at Steve's clear, blue eyes. Before, outside of Clint, Phil, Fury, and Maria no one had known. While Clint's blood count didn't match hers, there's still enough that she never feared he would look at her with disgust. Phil had placed a contract before her on the table and said her past was hers, and no matter of his. To Fury, she was an asset. Maria trusts Natasha to do her job, but still side eyes her whenever they are in a room together.

These people aren't her family. Her blood family died long before memories of them could be formed. For years, she had Clint and then she had Phil. They had been enough, far more than she thought she deserved. Phil was dead and she almost lost Clint. She still had him, though, still had more than she deserved.

What Steve and the others think of her shouldn't matter. They are not her family, are barely stumbling into being a team as it is. But she's cooked with Bruce, exchanged quiet morning greetings with Steve, smiled at Thor's enthusiasm over Midgardian cuisine (especially pop tarts), and became concerned after Tony's fourth day in his workshop after his break up with Pepper. Without noticing, she had begun to care for these people, whom she may never consider family, but might one day consider friends.

"Your past," Steve says, stepping into her line of sight, "whoever you were then, whoever they made you into, whatever you felt you had to do that doesn't define you. We've all done things we're not proud of, things we wish we could take back. Believe me, I know."

Steve's breathing is steady. Natasha meets his azure blue gaze, eyes that remind her of others that had once been bright with daring. And just like those eyes from her past, these don't flinch from her stare. "So what does define me?"

"Every single choice you've made since the day you broke free."

A/N: Bit of news: I graduated college! I'm now the proud owner of both a B.A. and B.S. (why, yes, it does stand for bullshit degree lol). Was I the only one who thought, "Okay, these are way smaller than I thought they would be," when they held their degree for the first time? I guess it was a bit too much to expect some sort of majestic style poster length paper.

I've also gotten a job, a regular, steady 7am-5pm gig. This means that updates will be coming faster. Unless something major happens, there shouldn't be another update that takes 7months (I really am sorry about that). I've already got chapter 8 outlined. And since I no longer have school projects to worry about, the next chapter should be up sometime next month. Yeah, I don't think I'll ever be one of those authors who can update on a regular schedule; at least not when the story is a WIP.

I hope you've enjoyed this chapter. Someone left me a comment over at AO3 saying they were far more interested in the interpersonal relationships within the team than the big Hydra plot, and, really, if you had to pick between one or the other to be interested in, Im glad they choose the team dynamics. This is, at its core, a story of the team as a group of people unexpectedly thrust together and who have to learn how to navigate each other.

I'd love it if you left a review with your thoughts :)