These were from Omsk. One across the knuckles. A light trough over the forearm. A cut just across the jawline. She drew imaginary patterns over them with her fingers. A quick flick there, a long unbroken line here. If she were to imagine colours, it would be purple. Everything on various shades of purple. She didn't want to think about red.

The scuffle of limbs. The screams of terror. The shouts of orders. The maddening chaos. The swipe of the knife. The stinging pain. The dripping blood.

The deafening bang from her gun!

The end.

A burn scar. An unsightly red mark that bloomed like a deformed flower in spring; huge, bright, proud and completely ugly. She palmed it, her fingers splayed over the shoulder; it was twice the size of her whole hand. From Greece.

Fire dancing.

Skin burning.

Skin melting.

Multiple, multiple gunshots wound from all around the world. She played connect-the-wounds; one… two… three… four… five... From the lower stomach, to the right clavicle, to the hip, to the chest, to just above the heart. It formed a star that covered the whole torso.

The acrid smell of burning gunpowder; like smoky dirt and burnt charcoal. The icy ground slamming against their faces. The sharp scent of metallic blood, pooling around their bodies. So red... so much...

SHIELD may have one of the best healers around. They can stitch wounds, fix injuries, heal broken bones; but these scars, the pictures it brings; it cannot be erased. It brings back memories from deep within the recesses of their mind. Not just visuals, but everything. Every sense was hypersensitive. Each moment being relived instead of remembered.

They may be trained, experienced agents, but people do not just forget these things. Not even people like the Black Widow.

"Nat?"

Her eyes caught his blue ones in the dark. His eyebrows rose in question. He had been silently watching her every move, and he sensed that she had something in her mind. He was rarely wrong when it came to Natasha.

"Scars," she quietly said, her chin on his shoulder, her breath hot against his neck. Her thumb was stroking the one on his stomach. "There's a lot."

"Speak for yourself, Natasha," he chuckled. He turned so he was stomach down, propped up by his elbows. His forearm was level against her arm. She could feel his eyes running across her body, just... quietly observing. Just as she did. The roles were reversed now. He was observing her, she was watching him.

He lifted his hand and swept the red hair away from her face. A gash just over her eyebrows, just about healing. "Two weeks ago, from Croatia." The back of his fingers caressed the curve of her cheek, down to her neck. "This was from France," he mumbled, tracing a fading scar over it. His fingers trailed to her shoulder, one.. two.. three.. "SMG. Ukraine." Her sternum. Her stomach. "Serrated knife. Kazakhstan, Poland."

"You remember them."

"I can't forget them, Nat."

His gaze stopped upon her. "And this one..." he whispered, his hand carefully running over an area of deformed skin over the curve of her waist.

He did this. He was careless. He was fucking careless.

Two years ago in rural Uzbekistan. They lost the missile codes. Natasha was close, her aim exact. One was shot in the thigh, toppling over, now immobile on the cold harsh ground. He twisted his body to produce a silencer. She jumped, deftly kicked the gun off his hands, her foot locked onto his throat.

The other man was just getting into a black car. Natasha aimed. She pulled the trigger. The gun jammed. She cursed.

Clint, high up, reached out for one of his trick arrows: a stun arrow. He docked it. He shot. It locked itself onto the man's tightly clenched hand.

The arrow beeped.

It beeped?

It exploded.

It wasn't supposed to explode.

The impact was catastrophic. No one had prepared for that. The car exploded in a thick ball of fire. High-concentration acid flew everywhere. Every surface melted. Screams of panic, of terror, of pain. But in the chaos, he could only hear his own voice, drowning out the others,

"Natasha!"

The codes were irretrievable. The two men died; one burnt to death, the other, melted beyond recognition. Two innocent people dead. Five more critically injured.

Mission failed.

"You fell into a coma for two months..." He unpropped his elbows and lied down flat on the bed, his left arm encirling her waist and pulling her desperately close to him. Eyes shut tight. Natasha couldn't feel his touch there. The nerve endings are gone. Dead skin still clinging onto her body. She wouldn't let him say it anymore, but in his mind, the word repeated endlessly, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry..."

Normal people do not get injuries like this. Normal people merely get cuts from the kitchen, get burns from the grill. Nothing of this degree. Of course, Clint Barton and Natasha Romanov were far from normal.

Time passed, and neither knew how long. He didn't move, only the rise and fall of his back indicated that he was alive. Natasha ran her hand across his back. Even in the dark, red lashes were flaring all over his back, criss crossing each other in an arbitary pattern. She did this. An hour ago, on this bed.

She kissed him on the cheek once. Pushing her hand into his hair, she placed butterfly kisses on the scar on his jawline, going lower. She cupped his face in her hands, foreheads touching, eyes connecting.

"We are marked, Clint," she murmured. "These scars mark us; as agents. As SHIELD agents."

She kissed him gently on the neck before biting down, hard. He winced, but didn't make a sound. She pulled away, their eyes meeting each other's briefly. She touched the area, feeling the jagged imprint with her thumb.

She did that. Just now, here.

"You are marked," she murmured, her small smile mirroring his.