The bar is small and dark, almost empty except for an old man sitting in the corner, probably dead, the bartender, and a lone woman, sitting at the bar, a glass of whiskey sitting in front of her, full of the strong amber liquid. The woman has blood-red hair that grows out to her waist, and cold grey eyes that are heavy and tired. Her white dress hangs off her curves, and her feet are bare.
She ordered the whiskey for some kind of normalcy, and was planning to drink it, but when the bartender had placed it in front of her and the heady smell had filled her nostrils, she knew she wasn't going to drink it. Just like she knew, soon enough, she would have a drinking companion.
After about ten minutes, the door to the dingy bar opens, letting the snow in, ruffling this woman's hair, even if for a second. And then the door is shut, there's a heartbeat of silence, and the bar stool next to her is dragged across the floor loudly, scraping, increasing her headache.
It's a man, a tall man dressed in black, his dark blond hair windswept, holding traces of the snow. Snow that's melting, dripping through his hair and down his cheeks. He orders a shot of vodka, and she notices he orders nothing to chase it down. It unnerves her slightly. She turns to her whiskey and swirls the cup around her finger, hair blocking his view.
"I suppose you are the man who has been trailing me." She says – it's not a question, and he doesn't answer.
"Are you going to drink that, Miss Romanov?" He asks of her quietly, motioning toward the whiskey, which is spinning faster and faster around her pointer finger. She stops it suddenly and looks at his full vodka shot. She looks toward him with dead, grey eyes, and with one quick flick pushes the glass to the floor, where it shatters and spills amber all over the floor.
The bartender doesn't look up at the noise, the old man doesn't move either, and her companion flinches slightly but doesn't comment.
"We can help you, you know, Natasha." He says instead, turning to stare at her front-on. She laughs humourlessly, and this man continues on. "My name's Agent Clint Barton, of SHIELD – Strategic Homeland Intervention Enforcement Logistics Division – and I was sent to kill you."
Natasha shakes her head and looks at him. "Do you not think others have, Mr Barton? Many have tried, and obviously failed, to kill me, or recruit me. What makes you think that you could help my any more than they could?" Clint stops, thinking, and then cracks a snarky grin.
"Because," he says quietly," SHIELD can make all of your mistakes disappear."
Natasha freezes and turns to him with wide eyes, a smirk tugging the corner of her lip. "I do not trust men with eyes like yours." She speaks suddenly. Clint chokes on what Natasha thinks is his own spit and looks at her with dark eyes. "With eyes that are clouded with shadows of their past. It means they have something to regret, and those men I commonly avoid." He stares at her, eyes suddenly sharp, and Natasha laughs outright, but this time there's a bit of happiness laced in there.
"But see, Mr Barton, there's a problem." She leans in close to her, so close that her breath tickles his ears and if he turns his head a fraction he would be able to kiss her jaw – it shocks him that the thought even occurs to him. "I don't think SHIELD can make this mistake disappear." He's close to asking what mistake she's talking about when she reaches up her blood-red nails, grabs his chin with a vice-like grip and kisses him.
Her lips taste of fire and whiskey and cherry and goodbyes. It's over soon, and Natasha's leaving him with nail marks on his cheeks, scorched lips, and a tinkly laugh ringing in his ears while she disappears into the night.
He can't help but feel that there was something right about that kiss.
\\
He makes a different call only because, for the next three days, he screws her, and she screws him. It's hot, and hard, and desperate, and her toes curl when she comes and she's never heard a more beautiful noise than when he whispers her name softly into the pillow.
He radios Coulson while she's in the shower and tells his boss that he's still tracking her, that she's an elusive bitch and he's really getting tired of trekking halfway across the world for someone he doubts is going to kill again.
Coulson sighs and says, "There'll be a plane tomorrow to pick you up near Stalingrad. You're both to be on it, and I'll see what I can do to get her a proper job as a SHIELD agent. No promises, though." The lines go dead. Clint smiles to himself as Natasha swaggers from the bathroom, stark naked, smiling slightly.
He smiles into the kiss and bites down hard against her lip, and Natasha laughs.
He's never heard a more beautiful laugh.
\\
Budapest is dark.
\\
Stark's an ignorant pig with an overinflated ego, a woman willing to cater to his every move, and a master assassin who's constantly fighting with herself not to just put a bullet through his head the next morning.
His house is almost in ruins, and he's blowing watermelons to pieces and putting his hands on Natasha where he should keep them to himself. And then his idiotic friend goes and puts on the silver suit, they get into a fight, and as Natasha looks up at the roof, wondering how she's going to explain that to Fury, she swears she sees the glint of a bow and a slip of black. Her eyes narrow and she growls deep in her throat.
She clambers up to the roof, eyes dark. "Cli-int!" She sing-songs, her voice holding a dangerous edge. "C'mon, bow-and-arrow, I know you're out here! There's no point in hiding, you know I'll find you!" He sticks his head up, she glares at him, kicks off her shoes and leaps at him, knocking him flat on his back so that his wrists are pinned to the gravel and she's straddling him, leaning in close. "I don't care if we are partners, Barton, come anywhere near my protection details again and I will kill you." She presses a light kiss to each of his eyelids, gets up, straightens her dress and walks away with a smile on her face.
Clint's left lying on the rooftop, wondering what the hell just happened.
\\
"Barton's been compromised."
\\
"I've got red in my ledger. I'd like to wipe it out."
"Can you? Can you wipe out that much red? Drakov's daughter? Saou Paulo, the hospital fire? Yes, Barton told me everything. Your ledger is dripping, it's gushing red, and you think that saving a man no more virtuous than yourself will change anything? This is the basest sentimentality. This is a child at prayer. Pathetic! You lie and kill in the service of liars and killers. You pretend to be separate, to have your own code, something that makes up for all the horrors. But they are a part of you, and they will never go away! No, I won't touch Barton. Not until I make him kill you. Slowly, intimately, in every way he knows you fear. And when he wakes, he'll have just enough time to see the work he's done, and when he screams, I'll split his skull! This is my bargain you mewling quim!"
"You're a monster."
"Oh no, you brought the monster."
"..So, Banner. That's your play."
"What?"
"Loki means to unleash the Hulk. Keep Banner in the lab, I'm on my way, send Thor as well. Thank you…for your cooperation."
\\
The fight's bloody. The Chitauri are vicious, ugly creatures. And, to be incredibly honest with you, Natasha's a bit scared that she won't make it out of there alive. When she finds out that she can shut the portal, she almost screams for joy. But then, Stark decides to play hero, send the missile up to the mother-ship and die trying. She doesn't think he even gets to say goodbye to Pepper.
Natasha waits for Stark before she shuts the portal, clinging onto a shred of hope that he'll come tumbling through, whooping and catcalling and laughing and Natasha will laugh and everything will be as it should be. But he doesn't.
She shuts the portal.
\\
Shawarma is weird, exotic and interesting, but in a good way, even if none of them know quite what it is yet. Tasha's split one with Clint, and she's glad she did, because it's the biggest thing she's ever seen. He props his leg on the back of her chair, and she does the same, almost naturally. None of them – all six – say anything. Death and murder are heavy on their minds, but Natasha's more concerned about Clint.
He's shaken to the core by what happened with him and Loki, yes, but there's something else going on, something deeper into his bruised and battered soul. And it's driving Natasha insane.
Suddenly, she stands to her feet, grabs the shawarma plate and tosses it to Thor, who's been eyeing it, and walks out of the crumbling restaurant, knowing Clint will follow. She leans against the wall outside, head down, until she hears footsteps behind her and turns to see Clint next to her, arms over his chest. They're silent.
"Demi-gods." He says suddenly, as if hoping it'll make all of this clear. She doesn't understand what he's talking about, but she doesn't think she wants to know.
"He's a monster, you know. Loki." She adds – as if there's any other kind of monster. She reaches out to grab his hand, out of habit more than anything. Because suddenly, she understands why he's so upset.
"I could have killed you, Nat." He murmurs heavily, tears choking his voice. Natasha's in front of him instantly, her arms around his shoulders, tugging him close, running her fingers through his hair, whispering into his ear.
"But Clint, you didn't. I'm still here, see me?" She cupped his face in her tiny hands and made his clear blue eyes meet hers. He had tears tracing down his pale complexion, and she wanted to smile and laugh and kiss him. "You didn't kill me. You could have, but you didn't. I'm still here." She cracked a weak smile, and he laughed drily, placing his hands very gently on her waist, drawing her in close.
Natasha leans in close to his chest, her hands pressed into his black suit, sandwiched between them, and he holds her tighter than ever before, his tears seeping through his eyelashes and into her hair, and she's breathing him in, trying her hardest to forget all her mistakes in the past and she's fighting through the darkness and mist and cobwebs and-
Before she knows it, she's screaming, and she knows Clint understands.
\\
He finds her listening to music in her room, something he doesn't really understand because of the decibel she's playing it at, but it sounds like Taylor Swift. She's dancing around her room, wearing a black singlet and a pair of cut-off shorts, her hair whipping everywhere, and he can't help but laugh at how strange she is.
Natasha turns to him when she sees him watching with a smile he hasn't seen in years, and then she ducks forward, grabs his hand and says quietly, "Dance with me, Barton." She drags him into the middle of the room as a new song starts, still Taylor Swift. He doesn't know what it's called, but it has a good guitar strum, he likes it, and evidently so does Nat, as she starts singing.
It's the first kiss, it's flawless, really something…it's fearless.
He kisses her, she kisses back, and she tastes like victory.
\\
The nightmares are always in colour.
\\
Tony Stark and Pepper Potts get married and have three little children, two girls and one boy – the boy they name Phil, and the girls they call Natasha and Peggy.
Bruce Banner leaves for India and never comes back.
Steve Rogers goes to his girl's grave every night and remembers.
Thor returns to Asgard with his brother's body and Mjolnir.
Fury and Hill elope (for some unknown reason) and everyone's shocked by the news.
Clint Barton dies in a crossfire, and at his funeral the sun's shining and they're all crying.
It's said for years that when Clint dies, so does Natasha, not physically, but emotionally, she's empty – empty eyes, empty voice, empty everything.
She commits suicide two years and eighty-two days later, and nobody gets to say goodbye. They don't find her body, but they find a note that makes Bruce hulk out, causes Tony to blow up half of Stark Tower and for Steve to cry.
Let's say goodbye now, boys.
I can't really tell you what happened here...it was just supposed to be that first little part about them in a bar in Russia, and it kinda snowballed into...this. I need to say something, just to get it off my choice. People always say that Clint was sent to kill Tasha in Budapest, but i don't think so. I think they were partners in Budapest, but I dunno. Leave your reviews, dolls!
Semper Fi xoxo