AUTHOR'S NOTE:

Written for my friend Frea_O, on the occasion of the be_compromised Secret Santa Exchange – quite possibly to the one of her prompts she least expected (they were all great, but that one sang to me): "Mission downtime and their favourite places because of it." I've applied the term "favourite" very loosely (more like "memorable"?) and the whole thing is probably a bit angstier than Frea may have had in mind. But I can't see post-mission time being all rainbows and unicorns, given what Clint and Natasha do for a living.

Special thanks to my betas, Kylen and JRBarton, and my ever-faithful bellwether, Runawaymetaphor. (Note that the AO3 version of this story comes with photographs).

The Long Way Home

By Alpha Flyer

Prague

"What are we doing here, Barton?"

Natasha looks at the people milling around on the bridge with a mixture of suspicion and disdain. Most of them have cameras hanging around their necks, and are either taking pictures of each other in front of the stone figures or haggling with one of the vendors over a cheap trinket, or a packet of postcards.

"Walking into the Old Town to find coffee or a beer," Barton says, rolling his eyes. "Have a yack. Like I mentioned. Once or twice. "

Natasha looks over the side, at the waters of the river, now reflecting the blue of the darkening sky. The river's surface is dappled with gold from the lanterns that line the bridge, and the floodlights illuminating the stone pylons.

A flash of memory: A body sliding soundlessly beneath the waves, invisible in the lights dancing on the black water.

Ivan, whispering: 'Well done, my little spider. Well done.'

The touch of his hand on her hair as he winds a red strand around his finger, letting it slide before picking up another. He moistens his lips with his tongue and his teeth flash in the moonlight as he smiles in approval at her fourteen-year-old self.

In the Red Room, there is little difference between punishment and reward.

She snaps back.

"I thought the job was done."

Barton stops in his tracks, looking at her in disbelief.

"It is. So?"

"So what are we still doing here?"

I hate Prague, she doesn't say.

Her feet and her hands itch to keep moving. Shouldn't they get back to New York? Fury will want to know that she hasn't run off, hasn't defected – again. And the man sent to watch over her, to kill her if she made a wrong move, should be steering her towards the plane. Not asking her to make small talk.

He's getting impatient.

"What are we doing? What are we doing? Nothing, that's the point. We're off the clock. Chilling out."

She searches her inventory of American colloquialisms.

"You mean, taking a holiday?"

He shrugs, and starts walking again.

"An evening out of sight and a couple brews aren't exactly a week in Cancun. Think of it as taking the long way home."

Barton makes an expansive gesture that takes in the bridge, the river, and all the floodlit spires on either side.

"You know, this place is really quite awesome. It looks like a million bucks, the beer is fantastic, and ever since they ditched the communists and joined the EU, you can get better coffee here than anywhere in Britain. So, fuck Fury. I'm taking a break."

They've reached the end of the bridge, and entered the cobbled streets of the Old Town. The store windows are still lit, shop doors wide open, with welcome signs in Czech, English, German, Russian and Japanese. French has lost the battle over relevancy, it seems, and the spirit of capitalism has triumphed over traditional middle-European closing times.

There are interesting smells wafting through the air: roasting meat, deep-fried food, and yes, freshly brewed coffee. The scent of spicy red cabbage tugs at an unexpected, different strand of her memory; Natasha feels her shoulders becoming less tight.

Barton stops at a wood-worker's window.

"Can't decide whether that's pretty, or offensive," he ponders, pointing at the display of hundreds of wooden marionettes. "Or both."

The dolls come in a variety of sizes and styles: There's Pinocchio; several different types of harlequin; heroes, witches, villains and trolls. Even some imitation Disney figures, trademark be damned. Handmade, it says on the sign in the window. (Here, they don't even bother with Czech.)

Natasha follows his eyes. What does he mean by offensive? The Disney Snow White? The forest of strings, the heads held up by wire rods and the limp limbs, all of which somehow makes the whole display look like a brightly colored ossuary?

Through the window, Natasha can see a shop assistant, giving a jerky demonstration with a doll in a ballerina outfit to a pair of awed tourists.

"Offensive," she says decisively.

A corner of Barton's mouth quirks up in the smallest of grins, as if he has just scored a point.

Turning away from the marionettes, Natasha grabs Barton's arm and pulls him towards the door of a restaurant whose sign promises Traditional European cuisine, whatever that is (it's sure to include red cabbage), and Semtex lemonade.

Maybe Czech beer isn't such a bad idea.

...

The Hague

Natasha has been admiring the highlights on the girl's moist lips, the translucent sheen on the single pearl in her ear. Vermeer sure has a way with light, and his brushstrokes...

The aristocratic grandeur of the Mauritshuis is a welcome respite from the cesspool that is Amsterdam's red light district, with its endless flow of drugs and trafficked sex workers. (Why is it mostly women who become a commodity, to profit others? And how does a man like Anatoly Rodchenko get to a position in which he can buy and sell human beings like cattle?)

Her mind veers back to the painting. Who was that girl, who gave immortality to the man who painted her, making his name famous while her own is unknown? Was she a neighbor? A lover? A maid? Did she get paid to sit for him, or was it expected of her, as part of her duties?

Would she have said yes, had she been told that her face would be known to millions? Would she have been given a choice?

"She looks like you," Clint disrupts Natasha's rapidly derailing train of thought. He points over the heads of a couple of selfie-snapping Japanese tourists, who are chattering excitedly about the thing they have come here to see. "If you were into wearing turbans and earrings, that is."

He scrunches his face up critically, eyes focused on the small painting like twin laser beams.

"Guess they'd get in the way during a fight, eh. Earrings, I mean. Rip your lobes right out. Pity."

Pearls before swine, Natasha wants to say, but the look on Clint's face stops her. He likes the painting, judging by the small smile that's playing on his lips in reaction to its simple beauty. People like Rodchenko buy art because they need a corner in their house filled, or because it's famous and costs a fortune. Others take their picture with it, to prove … what, exactly? To each his own, she supposes, and at least Clint is moved to think about what he sees, if not exactly in a direction Vermeer might have considered.

Besides, he gets points just for being willing to go to the Mauritshuis. Leaving Amsterdam behind for the bourgeois gentility of The Hague had been her idea, but when Clint agreed he'd had Indonesian food in mind, not culture.

They finish the gallery – it isn't big, which had been one of her sales points – and stop on the Plein for the one thing the Dutch really know how to make: Apple cake. Clint eats his smothered in whipped cream ("met tvee porties van room!" he says, in passable Nederlands that nets him a double portion, despite his failure to say please).

The third time she reaches across the table to nab some to stir into her coffee, he parries her spoon with his fork.

"Hey. Mine. Get your own, Romanoff."

"If I did that, it would have calories. You obviously don't understand how this works, Barton."

He hastily makes to scrape the remainder of the cream off his cake, then reconsiders and divides it into equal parts, plopping one half down on her cake. For a moment, they eat in silence.

"You know," he finally says, "you'd look good with earrings."

...

Kampala

May is the height of the rainy season in Uganda. The temperatures aren't a problem this close to the equator, but the rain hammering against the corrugated metal roof sounds like bursts from a Kalashnikov.

At least they're inside. There's no flushing toilet, of course. Room service consists of a green gecko staring at her from the ceiling, air conditioning is a far-fetched dream, and why is her mind racing a mile a minute?

Natasha thanks her lucky stars (or whoever is in charge of failed ops) that they've made it back to the outskirts of Kampala.

A sudden sharp pain momentarily lifts the fog from her brain.

"Can't that wait till we get back to New York?" she grates out, as the needle slips into her skin again.

"It could, if you'd actually go to medical," Clint replies tersely. "But since you won't, I'll rather sew you up myself. Make sure nothing falls out, and nothing gets in. Now hold still."

The shred of fabric that passes as a curtain barely keeps out the raindrops, which come down in the size of small eggs. Natasha pushes back the memory of an endless drive through that same rain, in an open jeep on roads barely deserving of the name. Someone (Clint?) swatting tsetse flies away from the seeping gash in her shoulder.

"Well, at least hurry up, then, and get it over with."

She resists the urge to pull back her shoulder.

Why the shoulder?

"People always aim for center mass, you know that. And kids can't handle the kickback. So, the shot goes higher."

Oh, shit. Had she been talking out loud?

"It's okay. I'm not recording, and contrary to what Coulson says, I can keep my mouth shut."

He turns away to rinse out the rags he's been using in a bucket. A figure, wearing an elaborate headdress of some kind, comes out of the shadows to take it away; he or she reappears a few minutes later with fresh water. (It's probably a stretch to think the water might be clean.) Natasha tries to wrench a name from her memory, and fails.

"Who's that?"

"The mother of one of the kids Kony took."

It's coming back now: The kids they'd gone to rescue had been armed … and trained to lash out at whatever came out of the jungle, no questions asked. Ever. A hail of bullets, one for each stolen childhood.

The thought makes her dizzy.

When she wakes up, it's in a clean bed, with actual bedding and a mosquito net. Daylight is streaming through a large window, and she can just make out the leaves of a banana plant waving in the breeze outside.

"I thought relocation was in order," Clint says. "Now that you won't be bleeding on the sheets anymore. Munyonyo Resort, on Lake Victoria. Officially, you're having some kind of tourist disease. Couple of days' poolside should be good for you. Fury knows."

His voice sounds wrong. She opens her eyes, and finds herself able to see surprisingly clearly.

Clint's face looks drawn, almost ashen, and he moves around the room slowly. He's not injured, is he? He stops to stare out the window, and Natasha wonders what he is looking at, if anything.

The children. Of course.

She lets herself relax back into the pillow. Her shoulder still hurts, but she'll get over it.

"Poolside sounds good."

...

Lijiang

"Fury's gonna be pissed."

Clint sounds far more pleased than concerned. The Director has begun to understand that Team Delta tends to take a few hours – or days, depending on the nature of the mission – of downtime before reporting back in. One of the S.H.I.E.L.D. shrinks has even come up with a name for it – leveling out – and now Fury even foots the bill.

What he probably had not fully internalized, though, is the possibility that they might fall off the map entirely. Yunnan province is 7,000 kilometers from Budapest, but as Clint pointed out, the world is round, so they're still just taking the long way home.

Lijiang isn't totally out of this world, of course. It has an airport, just an hour's flight from Kunming; roads; and a spot of pride on the UNESCO world heritage list. But the streets of the old town are a rabbit warren that can't be accessed by car, and once you get up into the hills above town, well, you might as well say "Shangri La" and forget that such things as helicarriers even exist.

"Ask me if I care."

Natasha is surprised how much she means it. Budapest had been a clusterfuck, even if they'd come out on top, and dammit, they deserve some peace and quiet.

She pulls her sleeve down a little to hide the bruise on her skin.

The friendly woman in charge of the Zen Garden guesthouse sends them off to their room with a pot of tea the size of a watering can, and apologizes that the heat has already been turned off. It's April and the cherry blossoms nearly gone, so who could have expected the sudden chill in the air? She hopes the electric blankets will make up for any problem.

Natasha has been this close to Tibet before, actually, and knows that they're being hoodwinked. Cold air is normal at this height, and the heat is never on – if it even exists. But the Naxhi food should make up for anything. (Would Clint try the tree bark for dinner? He'll eat almost anything once…)

But first, there's green tea on the balcony and the quiet of the gardens below. It's not quite still enough to absorb the memory of gunshots, screams and explosions – but at least here, there is no echo. The only sound she hears is Clint, who must have tried out the electric blanket on his bed, found it to his satisfaction, and is now snoring softly behind the door.

It really is unseasonably chilly, and a mid-afternoon nap in a warm bed sounds great. Natasha leaves her seat on the balcony and heads back into their room. Sharing has become a habit, after missions like this, even if extra rooms are available. Keeps Accounting off their backs, too.

The room has two beds, though; Clint, as usual, has taken the one that backs onto the far wall, leaving her the one closest to the door. (Natasha has never been able to figure out his tactical objective; it can't be because he's a gentleman.) For a moment she watches his chest rise and fall, and the small cloud puffs of his breath.

She lies down carefully, so as not to make her bedspring squeak, turns on the switch and pulls the blanket over her shoulders; it doesn't take long to heat up.

But just as she drifts off, she finds herself wondering just how much warmer Clint's bed might be.

...

South Hampton, Long Island N.Y.

Everything changes after Manhattan. Everything, and nothing.

They never speak of it to anyone.

...

Istanbul

She finds him in their usual place in Sultanahmet, the one with the rooftop breakfast bar, just as the muezzin's call to evening prayers echoes down from the minarets of the Blue Mosque.

It's a recording, of course, but there is something about a voice rising and falling with the purity of devotion that will never cease to send a small shiver down her spine. Right now, it sounds like a lament for what they have lost.

"Mr. Jones is in three-oh-one, Mrs. Jones!" the friendly guy at reception says, his gap-toothed grin wide. "He arrived yesterday."

Yesterday, she'd stormed out of Congress, ready to kill the next politician who asked a stupid question. And received word from Maria Hill that Clint was alive. (Was it really only yesterday?)

Natasha climbs the stairs and poises her hand to knock on the wooden door.

"It's open."

His voice is cracked, grating, as if drawn across rubble. She pushes on the door, and sure enough, it opens. She's not sure what to say: 'How did you know it was me?" or "You have a death wish, Barton?"

She settles for, "Not our usual room."

He doesn't answer, just strides across the floor, stopping a couple of feet short of her.

She drops the suitcase on the floor and lets her hands fall by her side. For a moment she looks into his gray-green eyes, looking for a trace of what she had seen in Sitwell's, and Rumlow's, and Pierce's.

He lets her search, asks nothing in return. Just waits.

When she steps into his arms and leans her cheek on his chest, it feels like coming home.

...

END NOTES:

Kampala: Joseph Kony, the leader of the so-called "Lord's Resistance Army" that operates in Northern Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, is one of the world's most wanted men. In 2005, he was indicted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity and war crimes, including the recruitment and use of child soldiers and sexual slavery. He remains at large, despite recurrent rumours of his death.

Long Island: If you are wondering just what happened there, you find the story in "Going to Ground."