For notes and disclaimer, please see part one.

Previously, on Avengers: Natasha learns Clint was right about her target's new security. The Black Widow and Hawkeye work surprisingly well together.

By lunchtime, the body count was astronomical. They'd long since run out of ammunition and had to result to hand-to-hand combat. His left arm was bleeding from a moderately deep cut. Her face was scraped up, bruised. Both were exhausted, having surpassed their own "fighter's high," something akin to a marathon runner's emotions.

Dozens of bodies lined the still burning, charred entrances of the building. A handful of the still-living guards were fleeing, while others were surrendering in droves, laying down their weapons at their feet. It was quite a feat, to have accomplished so much between just the two of them.

It still wasn't a success in her book, though. She'd been handsomely paid for a job, and Dimitri Volodin was still missing. The more who came to surrender, the more who ran, the more agitated she became. As the surging rage sped through her, she stopped one of the guards. "Where is he?" she spat angrily.

The guard pointed weakly toward the building he'd just vacated.

She all but threw him backwards as she released him, and she stalked toward the building, picking up one of the abandoned weapons, ensuring that a round was in the chamber, and that it still held an adequate number in the clip.

Clint was on her heels. "You sure this is what you want to do?" he asked quickly.

She saw red, and had for a while. He was either incredibly brave or royally stupid to ask such a question to her when she held a loaded weapon. "I was hired to do a job; I'm going to do it."

"Volodin's the lowest kind of criminal, one who preys on our basest desires. Why kill him? Why not let justice run its course, let him be held responsible for his crimes? Let him pay back the people he's hurt?"

"I was paid to do this," she said, nearly exasperatedly.

"Then, fine. Do your job." He stopped walking. "Just one thing, Natasha…"

Reluctantly, she looked back at him.

"I was paid to come here, to kill you."

She leveled the weapon at him in the blink of an eye, her breath, unbidden, catching in her throat.

"You see how well I followed that order," he said, his hands up in surrender.

"Why didn't you?" she asked. Her energy had shifted, from being frustrated at her target to a more personal, panicked variety.

"My orders said you were a live wire, crazy, blood thirsty, and a danger to the world. You're none of those things, not from what I've seen. Certainly not from what I saw out there," he said, gesturing toward the grounds. She was calm, cool, and collected, and, if anything, would be a benefit, if she used her abilities differently. "If this is what you want to do… by yourself… running afoul of the law, having no one to watch your back, to look out for you…" He shrugged. "I'll go back, say I missed you. That, by the time I caught your trail, you were already gone."

She didn't want to believe that he was decent like that. She had very definite rules about relationships with other people whether they were partnerships, associations or even friendships. He wanted her to break them, to mold her into something different—something she wasn't. Her history refused to allow her to let him in or to believe in what he was telling her, not without cause. "Why would you do that for me?"

"You're lost right now. I've been there. Somebody had to pull me out. I can do the same for you."

She shook her head. "I'm not about to wear a uniform, to conform to some… government drone. Not American or otherwise."

"Well, this one is more global anyway."

"It is Interpol!"

Clint couldn't help but smile, chuckling that easy, light sound. "It's SHIELD," he told her. "It's more than an acronym for a mouthful of words. It is what we are, what we do. It's not that different from what you're doing now. Someone will still tell you what you have to do. You'll still get paid for it."

"Then what makes it any different than now? Than this?" she asked, frustrated. She felt like he was trying to corner her.

"It means I'll still have your back, that a whole agency will protect you, and that you'll protect them. It means you don't have to wonder when another SHIELD agent is coming to kill you. Because if I go back empty handed, you can believe that the kill-order will stand. And somebody worse will come after you, and they'll succeed."

"It was all a set-up, from the moment you started tailing me…"

If it was an accusation, he decided, it was a weak one. It was like she was deflating in front of him. "I was ready to take you out," he admitted. "But why? You have skills, talents, abilities, strengths… all things that SHIELD needs. If you were a little less frightening, they probably would've been after you—to recruit you—sooner."

"You have the authority, to turn a kill order into a keep order?" she asked, the gun never once wavering from where she had it aimed at his chest.

"No, I don't."

She chided herself for getting her hopes up, however momentarily, that he was a good guy. Shaking her head, she looked away.

"I don't, that's true," he continued. "But you do."

"Barton, just… stop," she said, nearly begging.

He took a step toward her. "You can help prove to Director Fury that you're worth more to him—to the world—alive. I can open that door for you. But you're the one that has to walk through it."

"Or you're waltzing me in for slaughter," she said, her eyes narrowing.

"If you're as good as I know you are… what do your instincts tell you?"

She drew in a slow, shallow breath. "That I'm going to regret this, one way or another."

Much later…

The exhaustion turned to starvation once the Chitauri had been defeated, and the atomic bomb had been averted from taking out Midtown. They all thought he'd been kidding, when Tony Stark said something about going for schwarama.

It was all just a little too surreal, with the aliens and their technology lying dormant on the sidewalks, dropping wherever they happened to be when the inter-dimensional door powered by the Tesseract had been closed. While the proprietors of the shop had been kind, welcoming them in, it had been peculiar, to turn off the fight.

After all, they'd been fighting each other even before Loki's army arrived.

Clint glanced at Natasha as they settled in to wait on their orders, sliding enough chairs around the table that they could all eat together. "How was this like Budapest?" He distinctly remembered that mission, and there had been no aliens there.

Tony glanced at them from across the table.

"Buda-what?" asked Thor.

Bruce Banner cleaned his glasses on the edge of his shirttail, glad he was back to normal size. "Budapest. It's a city in Eastern Europe, a country called Hungary."

"I'm definitely hungry!" Thor said, glancing back at the kitchen.

"No, I think he meant…" began Steve Rogers before waving off the demigod. "Never mind."

Clint was still looking expectantly at Natasha, who was squirming under his scrutiny. "Well?"

"Doesn't matter, does it?" she asked, swirling her straw in her soda, listening to the ice cubes clink together.

Clint slid closer to her, propping his foot up on the back of her chair, as she sat on the very front edge.

Natasha hoped that if she avoided the question, his stare, maybe she could avoid confessing how much the past few days had reminded her of when they'd met. How they'd been on opposite sides, how they'd fought against the odds to bring the other into the fold, or how they'd taken on numerous enemies and survived, relatively unscathed.

Or how relieved she'd felt, that he was fighting at her back again.

Mostly just that.

While Bruce and Tony chatted about the effects of nuclear fallout slipping through a closing wormhole, and Steve and Thor attempted to figure out exactly what they'd ordered, Clint watched her, how she deftly avoided everyone's eyes, especially his. "Nat," he breathed.

She closed her eyes, hearing him practically whisper the nickname he'd given her.

Tony drifted off in mid-sentence to return his attention to the couple across from him. "I'm sorry, I just…" He waggled his finger back and forth between them. "Are you two…? I mean, is this… I see sparks. Don't you see sparks?" he asked, looking at Thor. "You, being the god of thunder, you'd be the expert, right?"

Steve jumped in. "I think it's pretty obvious they don't want to talk about it. People deserve some privacy, even us, don't you think?"

"You do seem… lighter… when he's around," Thor said with a nod.

"Lighter. That's a good word," Tony agreed. "Does SHIELD have rules about things like that? Not that I'm advocating you follow rules because…" He shivered uncontrollably for just a second.

Natasha closed her eyes.

"Stark, c'mon. Take a break."

"Cap, I can't help it," returned Tony. "I see the human condition at work, in particularly interesting subjects, I have to say something."

Bruce watched as Natasha shook her head subtly. "Guess it's a good thing you don't have… an 'other guy.' Or, I guess, an 'other girl,' in your case." His eyes flew to Clint as he nearly tripped over his tongue to correct himself. "Woman. She's a woman."

Clint gave that easy, warm, soft chuckle that had wormed its way into her heart so early.

"All right, that's it. The next one to speak…" She drifted off menacingly.

Tony started to open his mouth, but shut it when she pointed at him.

"I'm not joking," she promised.

Clint wordlessly placed a hand on her shoulder, rubbing it for the minutest of moments. As he'd told her in Budapest, she was the one to save her own life, and she had. And she held the lives of all the Avengers in her hands.

Whether the others knew it or not, they'd never be safer than with her. Clint knew that for a fact.

End.