Monthly Challenges for All - Harmony of Souls Eternal, Sky's the Limit, Seriously Important (Not)

Fill #4 (HoSE), #2 (StL) #3 (SI(N))

Representations: Natasha Romanov, Phil Coulson, Clint Barton, Polyamorous relationship, Soulmates

Bonus Challenges: Schooner (HoSE), Three's Company (StL)

Word Count: 1,566

Natasha had never forgotten, no matter how many times her supervisors had tried to get her to. She pretended she had, but she hadn't. Those in the Red Room were not allowed soulmates. Sex, seduction, intimacy, flirtation, all of those things were purely for missions. And love? Love was for children. Natasha was no longer a child. Yet she still found herself unconsciously caressing the spaces on her arms where she knew there were burns covering a single sentence, all of which was covered by a skin-graph.

She remembered the words clearly, remembered them because she had spent many a night curled around them and wishing that someone would save her from the hell that was the Red Room. She was the Black Widow, deadly assassin and hopelessly in love with complete strangers.

Her words were strange, written in two very distinctive scripts. One sharp and neat, one sprawling out and uncaring of whether or not the lines actually formed letters. The first one held only two words. Ah, welcome. The second was a tad more expressive. I hate my job and my handler should get to the safe house as soon as he can so he can also hate his job. Natasha didn't know what to make of it. She merely hoped that they wouldn't hate her, even if they hated their jobs.

Eventually, she gave up. Far too much time had passed and she knew that the lessons the Red Room had tried to teach her had sunk in at least a little bit with the thoughts that were currently running through her head. Love was for children, but children were always so happy. Natasha knew no happiness and she was no longer a child. She knew that she was being hunted, knew that right now there was someone who had her in their sights and wasn't taking the shot. She screamed at them, fed up with her life enough that she didn't care she was yelling at the empty air of a long ago abandoned town.

"Just end it! Pull the trigger and complete your mission! That's your job!" If she hadn't had true emotional responses trained out of her, she would be crying with the frustration. She stood, completely still, in the abandoned street. Waiting for whoever it was to take the shot. Instead, what she heard were footsteps and someone stopped at the entrance to an alleyway to her right.

The man let out a huge sigh, ran his hand down his face and groaned, "I hate my job," she stared in utter disbelief as he continued, "and my handler should get to the safe house as soon as he can so he can also hate his job."

Her stunned eyes caught his and he grinned wryly at her, "Sorry, I don't think I'm going to be able to fulfil your last request. I would rather my soulmate still be alive in the next few minutes." Inexplicably, she found herself flushing. Had she really just asked her soulmate to kill her? The man shifted off of the wall he had leant himself on and gestured for her to follow him, "Come on, I'll show you to a place where we can chat. Phil will be there too. I'm Clint, by the way."

Natasha followed him, ignoring the Red Room in her mind yelling at her not to trust an enemy. This man—Clint—was no enemy of hers. "Natasha," she offered, knowing that he knew her name already, just as she had known his. But, "Phil?"

Clint nodded as he quickly lead her through the maze of back streets that lead to the outskirts of town, "You have two sentences, right? Two sentences means two soulmates. Is his for you also completely dry and neutral?"

Natasha hesitated slightly, unused to talking openly about the taboo subject of soulmates and marks. "Two words are all I have with the other mark."

Clint let out a bark of laughter, "Yeah that sounds like Phil. My words from him were Stay still and I won't shoot you again," he hums happily as he remembers the meeting. "That was a great time."

"How is you being shot great?"

"It was only in the knee," Clint shrugged, "It meant that I met one of my soulmates, gave me a great job—which I am currently in a love-hate relationship with—and let me escape from what I had previously been doing. We're here."

'Here' was a small shack that seemed ready to crumble on the outside and was even more decrepit when they entered. Natasha stared around at the building, this was a safe house? Then she noticed Clint heading towards the rather ragged carpet and rolling it out of the way to reveal a hatch door. He opened it and, after grinning at Natasha, disappeared into the black hole. A light appeared a few seconds later and Clint's voice drifted up, "I promise you it's safe down here, you'll be in no danger."

Natasha shrugged to herself, what harm could it do? She carefully peered down the hole and saw Clint grinning up at her, gesturing impatiently. Rolling her eyes—she already knew that the man was going to be a giant child at times—Natasha made her way down the ladder and immediately started to assess her new surroundings.

The room was small, built like a panic room. The walls were metal, lined with shelves containing non-perishable food items. There was a single bunk bed in one corner and a desk in another. It was not flash by any means, but it was secure and that was what mattered most with safe houses. The rug to cover the entrance was perhaps a bit insecure, but she could fix that if she needed to make the place invisible.

Footsteps were heard from above and the figure of another man started descending the ladder. She glanced at Clint and he grinned at her, giving her a thumbs up. Clearly this man was friendly. Once the man had reached the bottom and started glaring at Clint—completely ignoring Natasha which she felt was rather idiotic of him even if it did show the complete trust he had in Clint, she was the Black Widow—Natasha cleared her throat. "Am I to assume you're Phil?"

The man stopped glaring at Clint and turned to her, taking in her appearance with a quick scan of his eyes. "Ah," he said, as though the answers to all the mysteries of the universe had suddenly been revealed to him, "welcome."

Natasha blinked. She knew that was what he would say, but the sheer understanding and comfort that came from those two words were something that she could never have imagined. Phil smiled at her and she knew that for all it was a small smile, it was a true smile. It was a smile that said welcome, a smile that said you're forgiven, a smile that said don't be afraid. It was a smile that said I love you.

"Somehow he makes the weirdest things sound so romantic," Clint commented from beside her and she couldn't help but agree. If Phil had told Clint not to move or risk being shot in the same tone of voice that he had just welcomed her in, she could see how that had been a great moment.

There, in the middle of a rather terribly hidden safe house, Natasha felt herself finally at home. They all sat in a circle on the floor, enjoying the physical presence of the other. Until Clint opened his mouth, "Sooo, how do you think Fury's going to take this?" And Phil groaned because he knew that this would mean even more paperwork than normal. "Aw, Phil, no, I was joking!"

Phil glared at the other man, "Then you can help me fill in the twelve forms that have to be submitted in duplicate once we get back to base and reflect on what terrible choices you have made in your life."

"Paperwork is not my thing," Clint declared, sticking his nose in the air poshly.

"Oh?" Phil rose an eyebrow "So I should forgo editing the paperwork currently sitting on my desk that states I can pull you out of medical should I see fit?"

Clint gasps in horror, "You wouldn't! Don't leave me suffering in medical when I could be at home with the proper coffee!"

"So it's for the coffee that you break out of medical before you're allowed, is it?"

Natasha couldn't help it. She laughed. For the first time in many, many years, she laughed with genuine joy at the byplay between the two men that she knew were hers. She had loved them for years and now here they were, griping at each other with not a care that the deadliest assassin was sitting next to them and that they both held a hand of said assassin.

They both grinned at her and she realised it had been their way of making her relax. She hadn't even noticed that she was tense until then. She smiled at them both, "Thank you."

"Anytime," Clint grinned, and Phil nodded in agreement. Then Clint continued, "Seriously though, Fury?"

"Will hate us for all of five minutes and then tell us it was about damn time we stopped pining and finally got around to finding our soulmate."