Author's note:

This is a selection of pieces about Natasha and Clint, aka S.H.I.E.L.D's 'highly skilled assassins' The Black Widow and Hawkeye. This is based only off the Avengers film, and I freely admit I haven't read the comics. So, this is just my take on things. Hope you enjoy it.

They had met in less than auspicious circumstances. The Black Widow had been on a hit mission. So had Hawkeye.

His mission, was, of course, to kill her, in her homeland, in a perfectly set up set of suspicious circumstances that might have implicated a government or two. But not the ones that mattered to S.H.I.E.L.D, of course.

It was a film-scene of a setting, a Russian oligarch's mansion, all fake old masters and tastelessly ornate carpets and throws and furs. A wide hallway, designed like a Georgian old English house, complete with the walkways around the upper floor that looked down (over fake marble railings) into the tiled and chandeliered entrance hall. It was the kind of architecture that was a gift for an archer, not that Hawkeye needed any help.

He broke in noiselessly through the kitchens, and found a perch up on the balcony, having located the Black Widow and her target as downstairs, in the dining hall. He didn't interfere. Her target meant nothing to him, in fact, he needed to die to complete the story. He could hear the murmur of voices, and wondered what was taking her so long. The dining room door was left fractionally ajar and a crack of light spilled into the hall.

Hawkeye adjusted his position just slightly, crouching in the gallery, looking through the banisters, an arrow in place but the bow string slack. This was too easy. No servants, no complications, just a lone target who- though good- shouldn't know he was here. Clint expected to be back on a plane to America by midnight. It was nine pm. He flicked through the brief in his head.

The Black Widow- Natasha Romanoff. Her case-file described her as intelligent, highly skilled, dangerous but not malicious. She wasn't one of the many psychopathic assassins that killed for fun and without feeling. Her style was not overly extravagant- she did the job and left. However she was renowned for playing up the femme fatale- only to outwit at the next step and do something tragically un-ladylike like plunge a rusty knife into a gut. She was proficient in hand to hand combat, and various firearms, and knives. She hardly ever had to break in, and Hawkeye grudgingly supposed being invited in was easier than breaking in, and oddly enough, left far less evidence sometimes. Physically she was small, red haired, and… beautiful- he acknowledged of the blurry photograph he was given in the way that one acknowledges a plate of food can be, before it is demolished, eaten, gone. Like she herself must know- thought they worked for different sides- never ever consider your hit to be a human capable of the same intensity of emotion as yourself, or anything so human as beauty.

Then the door opened and he saw her back first, green satin and the back of a red haired head- then as the bow string was taught and the arrow about to fly- she spun around, quite a feat- as she was heaving the fat old man forwards.

Hawkeye's arrow hit the man in the throat, where it should have hit the Black Widow in the back of the neck severing her spinal chord. The man's body dropped clumsily, bloodily, and Clint stood up, legs stiff from prolonged immobility, but the adrenaline of 'something going a bit wrong' making such trivialities forgotten.

The Black Widow was pointing a small revolver at him, and he was sure that she wouldn't miss. He had another arrow drawn, and he was sure she assumed the same of him. There was a silence in the hall, except for the gurgle and stutter as the old rich man's blood filled his lungs and he chocked, quite swiftly, to death.

The Black Widow wore a long green dress, an evening gown, low so her snowy white skin was exposed from the chest to the neck. She looked incredibly young and vulnerable, were it not for the steel in her eyes, and the way her hands didn't so much as tremble on the gun. It was an act. An act that it wasn't hard to disbelieve when you looked into her eyes.

"Thank you for killing him. It saved me the trouble. I assume you speak English?"

Her voice was low and husky, older and more mature than Clint would have imaged. She had no trace of a Russian accent, in fact there was an American intonation to her words- though he couldn't place from where- she smiled disarmingly. The hall was all but silent after the echo of her words faded, with a faint ticking of a large clock somewhere off to the right.

"How did you know I was here?"

"I knew you were coming. Your lot have been after me for months. I intend to come in quietly."

She intended- no- "But how did you know I was here?" She shouldn't have, by all means. He'd underestimated her.

She blinked, and ignored the question. "Do you want a glass of wine? He has an excellent selection. Several very good vintages."

"It's hard to drink when you're holding a bow."

Natasha Romanoff made a face, and shrugged, then delicately kicked the dead man with the tow of her heeled shoes. He didn't move, though Hawkeye could see the point poke (painfully) into his soft fatty side.

"Come down so I can talk to you?"

Then she stepped over the body, and –lowered her gun-.

Clint didn't move. He didn't know whether to shoot her now, or lower his weapon too. He was quite sure by the time the arrow hit her, a bullet would still be coming his way.

She looked up at him, still in the shade of the dimly lit gallery, "But your bow down, Hawk, I know who you are. Even if you won't take me in, come and have a drink before-" she stopped. Hard eyed, swallowed. The first thing that wasn't an act? Or, was it?

He lowered his bow, slowly, string still taught. She tipped her head towards the stairs, indicating- 'walk down.' Hawkeye stepped out into the light. The gallery was long and wide, and he moved onto the ornate soft carpet, silent booted feet sinking in as though the pile were mud as he moved towards the stairs. Each step was considered and he kept his eyes on her. At the top of the stairs he stopped, looking down their long winding progression to her small figure, paused in the middle of the hallway.

The Black Widow held out the gun on the flat of her hand, still looked up, eyes appraising him, "I'm not going to shoot you. I said, I know where you're from. If I shoot you, I'm going to suffer long at certain American hands, that funnily enough, ignore the human rights bill as thoroughly as this delightful country." Clint couldn't suss the tone of her voice. Resigned, bitter, laughing at him? He kept the string taught, though not that he would admit it to himself, just a little less so, and walked down the stairs towards her, one step at a time. Eyes on her.

She watched him carefully, taking in his dark tight clothes, devoid of any logos for safety, his short cropped hair and his state of the art bow and arrows. Her green dress swept the floor as she stepped towards him across the pale marble gap, and held out her gun free hand to him, pale, delicate fingered. They were close now, and he could see the colour of her eyes, her full lips, the reflection of the chandelier in the small black gun in her hand, devoid of rings, short finger nailed.

An archer needs two hands whereas a gunman only needs one, so he didn't fall for it and take her hand. Instead, Hawkeye leant to kiss her knuckles as though in a period drama. The Black Widow laughed delightedly, "You're too smart. But suspicious. You're right, I lie an awful lot, but I really won't shoot you." Her hair moved as she talked, like her dress, with an imperceptible rustle, red curls reflecting the chandelier light. Her fingers were cool and soft.

Hawkeye decided then, in one of those unprofessional decisions that ought by all means to haunt you, what to do. In a quick movement let go of his bow with one hand, letting the string slack, and reached out and placed his hand over the gun, still outstretched on her palm. She met his eyes, almost frowning, almost sad -but not- and let him take it off her. That too was, surprising.

She dropped her arms and stepped backwards and turned away. She walked back slowly towards the dining room she had come from, neatly avoiding the fat body.

Hawkeye followed her, their footsteps echoing around the hall, "You know I'll still have to take you in."

"Obviously. You will have a drink with me first though? Won't you?"

For the next hour, Clint Barton drank ridiculously expensive wine with the renowned assassin Natasha Romanoff, sitting over upholstered furniture in a ridiculous room. She neatly avoided any topic of conversation about killing each other, about Hawkeye's employers, and only briefly explained what she had been doing in this deserted failure of a house on a Thursday evening in September, a handful of miles from Moscow. She spoke about Russia, literature, American TV, how she went to school there for a little (the American accent) politics (only a little) and general trivialities. Clint kept his bow on his back, and her gun in his pocket.

When they felt they had outstayed their welcome in the dead-man's house, Clint took her back to his hotel room, at a loss with what to do with this new responsibility of his. He hadn't killed her. He had acknowledged she was human, and even seen the fear in her eyes that may of may not have been acted.

Much later, Natasha told him it hadn't been acted, though it had been a trick in the sense that she was well versed in disguising emotion, and so tactically chose to show it. Natasha also mentioned that she knew she had won, at least in a small way, when he followed her back through the corridor and told her he'd have to take her in. Take her in. Not kill her. That was what she had been aiming for. She'd heard of Hawkeye and she knew that fighting wasn't the best option. It was one of those desperate moments in your life that to retain what freedoms you have, you have to use other means.

In his hotel room, she turned and kissed him like a drowning woman gasps for air, and so he'd fucked her, or more accurately she fucked him- all the while in his head his code of conduct disintegrating, all the facts he'd learned about killing flaking apart in his mind. Sleeping with your target is certainly not one of the tips they tell you. Her cold eyes held his as he came, swearing, so he returned the gesture, the Black Widow naked in his cheap hotel bed, breaths gasping in her throat and her toned back arching off the sheets. It wasn't serious, it wasn't dark, and the cheap hotel lighting was yellow. They laughed and swore.

But- it wasn't love at first sight. It was manipulation and fear, dually, though when Clint half fell asleep Natasha didn't shoot him, just left a note on his pillow that said, "Sorry I'm not ready to settle down." Signed with a small spider. It made him laugh, tragically, and he left then, at 3 in the morning to hunt her down. Black clad, cold eyed, confused and determined. That went for both of them.

When he found her he didn't shoot her, only her clothes which pinned her helpless to the wall- she wore his things, trousers belted to keep them up and one of his black tops, loose on her- which stuck her to the wall, and like a cat she tried to wriggle out.

By then S.H.I.E.L.D had become in involved in her tracking, so she was taken off his hands and bundled away into a plane by some agents who looked less than amused. It was partly to cover up of his stupidity (or humanity) that he pleaded her case with Fury, and that she eventually got her place own place in S.H.I.E.L.D. Maybe she wasn't 'ready to settle down,' but as she put it to him later- "It was that or die, and I'm painfully pragmatic. Plus they pay well. I was almost going to go with you, the first time- I liked you. But I thought I'd try for freedom one last time." She also added that she got herself the place in S.H.I.E.L.D.

They made up a year later over coffee in the city, just another inconspicuous couple at a table in a corner speaking in low voices over cappuccinos, albeit a good looking and disproportionately muscled couple. He apologised for sleeping with her, and she laughed, and said the same, because she was clearly just desperately hedging her bets on him being one of those kinds of guys that can't help but fall asleep after. It was less awkward than it by all means should have been, but then in their histories they had both done far worse things. They didn't apologise for trying to kill each other. It was just a job.

Clint still held that it was weakness that spared her, but Natasha, uncharacteristically, said it was humanity, "But whichever you think it is, it doesn't really matter, because we're both here now, alive, well, and, well, I'm glad they chose you to kill me, and I'm glad you failed." Her hard eyes weren't lying, and two years after the last time, Clint stopped and kissed her, in the dark on the lawn of the narrow green space that passed as a park in the cramped city. She ran her fingers over the lines of his muscles in his arm as she considered.

"So can we be friends then? And maybe fuck buddies too?"

Clint laughed. Agents didn't have relationships that could disintegrate as easily as theirs- they were both too high profile, too skilled, too likely to die. Natasha knew that, so he kissed her again, and slid a hand under her top. She curled her fingers into his short hair.

At work now Natasha was trusted (it didn't take long, 'I've always worked for the highest bidder, and you outbid everyone,') Hawkeye requested they work on a mission together. He could see Fury's suspicion, and was glad of it, and he knew that Fury asked Natasha behind his back too- as if Clint could manipulate her. They were a perfect team, both highly skilled in separate ways, Hawkeye's long distance sniper like skills, and Natasha's more close range combat and general knack for deceit.

A perfect team.

They both knew not to think about how long something like that could last.