Well, it's been four years since I updated this, and there's no un-awkward way to address that so...if you've still stuck around, this one's for you!

(Also, Bucky/Natasha isn't going to be canon in my fic universe I've got here. They knew each other, but there was no romantic cling. Just to clarify.)

Chapter 6

Natasha did the one thing she did best when she couldn't sleep: she worked. She knew she should have stayed at home and rested, but with the intense levels of anger and denial coursing through her bloodstream faster than her own blood cells, sleep was impossible. When she pulled up to the Avengers Headquarters, she scanned her ID into the building and made her way to the records room. For a place that had been started by a billionaire whose whole thing was technology, it was a surprise to find a legitimate records room in the building, and yet there were all kinds of paper records that still needed to be digitized. Until they actually got around to being digitized, they needed a place to sit.

She scanned into the records room, and she took a moment just to inhale the scent of old paper. Despite the newness of the building, the room smelled of aged paper, and she hadn't realized how much she enjoyed the smell until just then. She walked to the sturdy rows of shelves, her eyes skimming over the alphabetized names, and she carefully moved down one row, up another, and then back down yet another until she found what she was looking for.

BARNES, JAMES BUCHANAN

Steve knew that she'd run into the Winter Soldier in the past, but what he didn't know was that she and Bucky had known each other back in the Red Room. Her memories of that particular period were clear-she remembered sparring with him and the dead look in his eyes at all hours of the day. They hadn't known each other well, but they'd definitely known each other. And as much as Steve knew about her life, he didn't know that. Not yet. Clint didn't even know this little fact about her Red Room years, and that was just another fight looming ahead of them that Natasha pushed out of her head. Pulling the box of files off the shelf, she took it to the first open table and set it down before taking a seat in the chair to start digging.

Even though Natasha had looked through Bucky's file so much she'd memorized it, she needed to do something to get her mind off of everything that was going on with her and with Clint. If she thought about it any longer, she'd start screaming, and she knew she'd never be able to stop. Her eyes skimmed the page, taking in all of the familiar information while also keeping an eye open for anything she'd missed in the past.

"Hello, Agent Hill," she said after a brief pause.

"Still sharp, I see," Maria said as she stepped forward. "Good."

"So my ID let you know I was here?" Natasha asked, ignoring the comment that she knew would have been Maria's opening into the reasons why Natasha had missed her psych eval.

"Yeah." Maria sat at the table across from Natasha and leaned forward, resting on her elbows. "I don't know if I'm relieved or worried to see you working."

Natasha gave a dry smile, the corner of her mouth quirking to the side. "It's what I do best, isn't it?"

"You're more than a work machine, Natasha, and you know it."

A defense mechanism, Natasha's eyes pulled away from Maria's, and she looked back down at the files spread out in front of her. "No, but I'm damn good at it, and what I need is to get back to work. Rogers isn't going to find Barnes all on his own, and I'm the most qualified person to help in the search."

"But you can't be back in the field until you take your psych eval."

Natasha leaned back in her chair and rubbed her eyes in frustration. As much as she'd tried to put off the whole damn thing, she knew she couldn't avoid it forever. Her voice heavy, she spoke. "Alright. You want to talk about my psych eval? Let's talk about my psych eval."

"What's going on?" Countering Natasha's movement away from her, Maria leaned in toward her to close the gaping gap between them from across the table. "Talk to me, Nat. We know each other too well and have been through too much shit together for you to expect me to simply accept some shitty excuse about why you skipped it. Just talk to me."

Still without looking at Maria, Natasha kept her posture distant, her voice flat. "Do you remember when I first came to SHIELD?"

Maria let out a soft laugh. "I don't think I could forget that whole thing even if I wanted to."

Natasha's eyes shot up, and she met Maria's gaze full on, her expression hard in contrast to Maria's laugh. Her mouth pressed into a tight, thin line, and she deeply inhaled, as if trying to center herself before speaking. "So you remember how fucked up I was."

"I wouldn't say-"

"Don't," Natasha cut Maria off, eyes flashing as she shook her head. "Don't tell me I wasn't fucked up, Maria. We both know what I was before I came here. We know the things I did and how I did them. You can't look at even one of the things I did and say that I wasn't fucked up."

"And none of that was your fault," Maria countered. She tilted her head to the side, taking in Natasha's tense body language, her fierce gaze. "You were brainwashed from the time you were a child. All the fake memories that were planted in your head? All the games they played with you? It's a wonder that you made the choices you did once you left them, but the fact that you made those decisions shows that you've always been stronger than those KGB assholes in the Red Room thought you were."

Natasha blinked quickly and looked away again, this time down at her hands. "Do you know how many times I've sat through this talk? Christ..Clint's told me, you've told me...Fury and Coulson...even Steve fucking Rogers has tried...I know I was brainwashed. I know I was made to be a weapon, but here's the thing, Hill: I was a fucking good weapon. I was a good weapon for the Red Room, the KGB...even now for SHIELD, I'm a goddamn good weapon. And what am I right now this very instant after we've stopped Ultron from blowing us all to bits? What am I? A SHIELD agent? An Avenger? What?"

"You're Natasha Romanoff," Maria said firmly. She leaned forward even farther, resting her weight on her elbows against the table. "That's all that matters now. You're a hero. You and Clint both. But you are the one who made yourself over again. You made the choice to be a hero, and that's who you are, Nat."

A quick swell of emotion filled Natasha's chest, but she still didn't look up at Maria. Instead, she kept her eyes on her hands as if her hands were suddenly the most fascinating things she had ever seen in her entire life. "Am I, though? Am I a hero?"

Maria was quiet for a moment, and Natasha had the feeling that she wasn't going to get any kind of response. How could anyone respond to that question without giving false hope or saying something that would eventually let the other one down? But then Maria spoke. "What happened to you, Nat? What did the Maximoff girl show you?"

Natasha weighed the option of telling Maria what she'd seen. She thought about telling her friend all her memories of being a ballerina, of being trained, of knowing The Winter Soldier...the urge to spill everything filled her to the point where she could taste the bitter truth of it all in the back of her throat as it flooded out across her whole tongue. It would be so easy to tell Maria about her past. But then she pictured Clint at home, Clint sitting next to her in the hospital looking so worried. She remembered Clint telling her a lie as he said he didn't love her.

"She showed me everything," she finally said. "You know enough about my past to know what I mean. And if I go through a psych eval, and I tell whatever doctor you assign to listen to me everything that I saw, I will not be approved to go back into the field, and I can't handle that, Maria. I can't. I need to work. I need to get my mind on something."

"But that's not how it works, Nat. You know that isn't how it works," Maria protested. "Listen, I know that you're you, which means that you're the best of the best out here, but even you can't act as though you don't have a breaking point. If this is your breaking point, you need support to heal."

Natasha's jaw clenched. What Maria was saying wasn't wrong. She knew that she wasn't above being human and needing patience and support. She knew that she could break as easily as anyone else could. That didn't mean she had to like it, and that didn't mean she had to accept it as gracefully as Maria wanted her to. When she looked up to finally look Maria in the face, she appeared every bit as pained as she felt. "I know. But Maria...please...I can't be taken out of the field. I can work through everything with whatever head shrink you want me to, but please don't say I can't work."

For the first time since she'd come to talk to Natasha, Maria's expression became exasperated. "Natasha...you know I can't. If I wanted to, I couldn't, but I'll be frank with you-I don't want to. I don't think you should be working. You're calling a psychologist a head shrink, I mean, come on. What do you want me to do?"

"What I want is for you to make one goddamn exception for me!" Natasha snapped, that hot flame of anger shooting back up through her. "After everything I've done for SHIELD, all the bullshit I've been through for you and Fury, and you won't give me this one thing?"

"I'm doing this because I care about you, not because I want to punish you!" Maria snapped back. "If I approve you to go back out and work and something happens to you? How can you think I'd be able to live with myself if I let that happen?"

"It's not about you," Natasha protested. "It's about letting me work."

"You're right." Maria leaned back in her chair and sighed, rubbing her face in exhaustion. "It's not about me. It's about you and keeping you safe. You've always been your own worst enemy, Natasha. I can't expect you to change your arch nemesis this late in the game. Want to be mad at me? Fine. Be mad. It's not going to make you get your way any faster. Follow protocol, see the psychologist, and receive the support you need until you're cleared to work again. You do all that, you can jump back in. Until then...you're suspended. Effective immediately."

Biting back her response, Natasha tightened her jaw even more, and she sat silently as Maria got up and left. She'd known that this would be the consequence if she refused, and now she'd been served the fruits of her refusal. She'd known a suspension was coming, but that didn't make her chest unclench any more. Placing her head in her hands, she closed her eyes and let out a deep sigh. "Goddammit."

Natasha knew better than to push her luck, and it wasn't long before she started putting Barnes's file back in its place. One half of her wanted to keep pushing, to show Maria that she could still do whatever she damn well pleased, but the other half of her was tired of fighting. Exhaustion weighed down every cell of her body, and so Natasha, for once, took the easy way out and went home.

On her drive back to the apartment she shared with Clint, she turned on the radio. She actually didn't mind driving in silence, but tonight, she needed something on her mind instead of the conversation she and Maria had just had. If she replayed it one more time, she wouldn't be able to stop for the rest of the night, and she needed some respite at some point. A Led Zeppelin song quietly filled the car, and for a moment, Natasha forgot about everything as she thought about Clint and how much he loved this song. He'd been a classic rock junkie for as long as she'd known him, and if anything was comforting, it was Clint's consistency with his music.

By the time Natasha was home, midnight had come and gone. Her feet felt like anchored weights as she climbed the stairs to her apartment, making her feel as though all the lightness in her life had evaporated without any warning whatsoever. She fumbled in the dark with her key and turned it in the lock. Inside, the apartment was silent. The lights were off, and there wasn't any sound coming from anywhere in the entirety of their shared space together. Pausing, Natasha listened to the silence. As secure as she knew she and Clint were, she also knew that that could change at any time. God, if SHIELD's collapse hadn't shown her that everything she knew could be a lie, then she'd learned nothing by this point. Even the good guys could be the bad guys, and as much as it pained her to admit it, she'd been fooled.

She entered the apartment and shut the door behind her, locking it. No sign of anyone or anything, which meant that either Clint was sleeping, or he was up on the roof. One quick check in the bedroom proved that no one was there except for a snoring Noelle, and so she squared her shoulders, mustered up her courage, and forced herself to go to the roof.

Sure enough, Clint was there. He didn't turn to look at her when she opened the door, nor did he offer a greeting of any kind.

"Clint?" she called softly, but he didn't turn around. Contrary to her spy training and instincts, she made her footsteps heavy as she crossed the concrete roof. The late time of the night-or early hours of the morning-combined with the lack of response to auditory stimulus led Natasha to believe that he didn't have his hearing aids, and the only way to let him know that he was no longer alone was to engage his other senses. Tapping him on the shoulder could be lethal, as could showing up out of absolutely nowhere in his sightline, so she settled on making as many vibrations as she could with her footsteps to alert him. After several steps, Clint finally turned his head, and he looked at her.

I thought you'd be up here, she signed, hoping that she didn't look as abashed as she felt so acutely inside herself.

Couldn't sleep.

She sat down on the seat beside him and looked at him, her face softening as she caught sight of the dark circles under his eyes. He'd never been a particularly sound sleeper immediately after a mission, but he looked a little more worse for wear than usual. As she looked at him, her instinct was to draw him close and to tell him how sorry she was for the past few days. She wanted to tell him what was wrong with her because out of everyone who could understand, it would be Clint.

Where'd you go? he signed.

Headquarters. At least she had the grace to look a little embarrassed. I was going to look through Barnes's file. See if there was anything I'd missed in the past.

Any luck?

Natasha shook her head. Hill wound up catching my ID scan, and she came down to talk to me. Talk didn't go well, and she suspended me. No surprise.

She waited for him to sign something in response, but he didn't. His hands flexed and released in his lap the way they did when he wanted to sign something but was consciously making the effort not to.

What? she asked.

Nothing.

Clint.

I don't want to push you.

Shame rose up in Natasha's stomach, and she had to look away from him. Even though she'd been cruel to him earlier, had been ungodly difficult, he was still being considerate of her feelings. "Jesus."

What? he signed, missing her tiny mumble.

Just marveling at my own pigheadness, I guess.

What?

She sighed and put her hands over his, her eyes large and remorseful. I'm sorry.

Clint blinked, staring at her. One second passed, then another, and still he didn't move or speak. Right when she was about to anxiously ask him something else, he made his move. Instead of saying anything to her, anything that could have made her feel worse or even better, he lifted her hands and brought them to his lips. Kissing the back of her knuckles, he made her feel better with that one gesture than an entire monologue about his love for her ever could have.

Do you forgive me? she asked.

There was never anything to forgive.

Natasha winced and shook her head, her short red hair brushing against the bottom of her chin with the motion. I've been stubborn. You were right. I- She stopped signing. Admitting something to herself was one thing, but admitting it to someone else, even to Clint, was a whole other thing. She was about to show her vulnerability in a way she never had, and for someone with as much intimate history as she had with Clint, she was taking a step she'd never allowed herself to before.

Nat? Clint's eyebrows drew together in a worried frown that made her heart just about tear in two.

You were right, she repeated, though slower. I'm not ok.

Clint started to sign something in response, but she put her hands on his and shook her head, lips pressed firmly together.

What Wanda did to me...it's done something to my head. Hill made it very clear to me that I won't be allowed back in the field until I get my psych eval, but I can't do that. Not yet. There's something I need to do first, and I need your help.

You know I'll help you with anything, Clint signed back, urgency in his hands. I always will, Nat.

I know, she gently replies. I know you will. What I need your help with is going to be a bit more complicated because I need you to access some things I can't get to while I'm suspended.

Clint's mouth twisted into a frown. This doesn't sound like the most ethical idea you've ever had.

Well...it's not.

What are you planning?

I can't tell you. Not yet. But I need you to trust me. Do you trust me?

Her green eyes gazed up anxiously at his, and there was no way he could ever not trust her. There had once been a time when he hadn't been able to trust closing his eyes long enough to blink when in the same room with her, but now...now Clint knew that if he lost every sense in his body, he would trust Natasha to lead the way and reintroduce the world to him. He trusted her more than he'd ever trusted anyone. As much as he hated to think about it, he even trusted her more than he trusted Barney.

If he'd known all those years ago when he'd spared the Black Widow's life that he would have ended up in the exact situation he was currently in, he would do it all again. He knew he wouldn't trade a single moment of his wild life and career with Natasha for a chance at a normal SHIELD agent's life. Hell, he thought, was there anything normal at all in this line of work? For a carnie and a fuck up like him, there wasn't. He'd had no other choice than to turn to crime and then to SHIELD, just as Natasha had after him.

I trust you, he wanted to say.

I always have, his mind screamed.

I always will, he thought.

He signed: You know that I do.