Disclaimer: I own none of these characters and do not claim any possession.

AN: So, this is my first fanfiction ever, and I am quite excited but please be gentle. Reviews and feedback are very welcome and much appreciated.

I will be operating in the movie-verse of the Avengers. I have not read the comics and only did some vague research for Natasha's past. I think that's all I'll use it for as the comics become very complicated later on.

Also, the cover art belongs to lettiebobettie|tumblr, who so graciously let me borrow it for this purpose. Her art is amazing, not to mention her drop dead gorgeous Clintasha works.

Thank you, and without further ado, enjoy.

The life of a master assassin isn't an easy one. But I've come to prefer it. I get a free pass to leave emotions at home and not have to worry about anything except my own skin and the gun on my hip. Not relationships. Not affection. Not people. God, especially not people. Because caring about people… now that's hard. I do without it, and it suits me just fine.

That is, it used to suit me just fine. It suited me perfectly before I met Clint Barton. Back when I was just a young girl without a care about anything in the world except getting my jobs done and over with. The fact I was doing these "jobs" at all only showed I didn't even care about my life. After all, not every little girl's first gift is a pistol and throwing knife instead of a dollhouse and fairy wand. Not every little girl begins to get sent out at the age of seven to kill people rather than to fetch the mail. I was different. And if I died...well, I was sure no one would miss me, and death seemed an almost enviable peace compared to the hell I had to deal with every day when I opened my eyes.

All I knew for sure about my childhood was that both my parents died in a fire. Apart from that, I have nothing left of my days before I was a killer except darkness and a few fuzzy memories left from the brainwashing the KGB gave me. I knew now I'd been taken to a secret facility to be trained as an assassin, as a Black Widow, as they called us. Other than that… nothing. But I didn't like to think about it too long. Emptiness was all I found in the depths of my memory and it gave me a horrible sinking feeling, like being drowned in black water. It was this feeling that still woke me in the middle of the night, screaming and covered in a cold sweat.

And the only person who knew it did was Clint, who'd woken up many a time to cradle me in his arms until the hysterics subsided.

The first time I saw him, he'd looked into the eyes of a young girl still only the tender age of seventeen. However, that didn't mean I was tender. I was a flawless gymnast, a precise martial artist, a prodigious killer. I was well-versed in the language of weapons, including the ones my own body had to offer. And I knew how to use that body to get what I wanted. I was a force. By that time, I'd killed enough people to fill my own cemetery, and it was this that had given me enough attention to be targeted. I "needed to be stopped." That's where Clint came in; he'd been dispatched to get rid of the dangerous Russian girl who'd been making a mess in Europe. He'd been twenty at the time.

How he managed disarm me that night is still a mystery to me. I've never been one to make mistakes, yet somehow, after I'd broken his bow, thrown all my knifes, shot all my bullets, and we'd tousled hand-to-hand for what felt like years, I'd drawn my pistol, my last weapon, and he'd fluidly kicked it out of my hand and across the room. I remembered watching it skitter across the floor away from me, taking my life with it. I was cornered and weaponless. He'd have a perfect clean kill.

So I turned back to him, straightened my ripped, blood-spattered dress, pushed back my shoulders and lifted my chin, and looked down the barrel of his gun into the face of Death without fear. I met his brown eyes defiantly. They'd been cold and measured, but not cruel.

We stood like that for what seemed to me a long time, his gun always perfectly poised between my eyes. I wondered if he was waiting for me try to run or to close my eyes or something, but I wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of either. I was just about to tell him to get it over with if he was man enough when he began slowly lowering the gun. I watched its progression, uncharacteristically dumbstruck in that moment, all the way until it hung loosely by his side.

"I'm not going to kill you," he told me in somewhat broken Russian, slowly placing the gun at his feet, and raising his hands in the universal symbol of surrender.

"Why?" I growled to him in flawless English. Something about speaking Russian with him seemed too personal. He did seem relieved when I spoke English, and I had the feeling he'd only learned a few necessary phrases for the occasion.

He shook his head. "I… I don't know…" he finally replied after seeming to search within himself for quite a long time. "You're so young," he whispered, as if to himself.

"So are you!" I hissed, my seventeen-year-old temper flaring defensively. He shook his head again, signaling he'd meant no harm by the statement. And though I was stunned by his sudden decision to not kill me, my instincts screamed not to let my guard down.

"So, then what do you want with me?" I asked, my hands still pressed firmly to the wall behind me. It seemed the only real thing in the world. The wall was firm and solid and real in a suddenly confusing and indistinct world where people sent to kill you suddenly lowered their guns and showed mercy. He swallowed, his eyes flicking around as if he hoped the answer would descend from the creaky rafters of the warehouse we were in. He'd been preparing to ambush me outside of a dinner party where I'd been doing some reconnaissance work, but when I realized I was being tailed, I had quickly found my way to the lonely part of the city filled with warehouses where I had planned to do off with him quietly. I hadn't bargained he'd be the one to have me pinned against a wall with my life dangling dauntingly between us.

I let my eyes drift to my still loaded gun, lying on the floor not ten feet away. Whatever he might say, he was still the enemy, and if he was willing to let his guard down, well, that just made an easier kill for me. And shame on him for being so appallingly stupid.

"Come with me," he said suddenly, making my eyes snap back to him.

"What?" I said, genuinely surprised.

"Look, there's no doubt you're good. I've never seen anyone as tiny as you fight like that," he said, ignoring the growl I let slip when he called me tiny. At seventeen, I'd already begun to grow into my body, but I was still skinny, even if I was all muscle. I must have seemed especially puny to him, though, who already towered over me and had plenty of rippling muscle beneath his luxuriously tanned skin. "We could use someone like you. You don't have to be this."

"This is all I am. I wouldn't be any different with you. The same killer just playing the game for another killer," I spat. My eyes flicked again to my gun.

"At least we know what we fight for. No one comes and steals our memories in the middle of the night," he said fiercely, a trace of what seemed to be his American pride flaring up. I sniffed disdainfully. But deep within me, I faltered. Because he'd hit a very tender spot. Truthfully, I'd already begun to notice the disconcerting and unexplainable gaps in my memory and hidden in the depths of my mind—deep, deep down where no one could possibly read the traitorous thoughts except me—I'd been harboring some resentful doubts and suspicions for the agency I worked for. And though I'd tell no one at the time, the deepest desire of that young heart was simply to know the truth of my own past.

"Fine, I'll break it down even easier for you, Natalia Romanova," he began again, obviously taking my silence as a continued refusal. I growled at him, startled at his use of my actual name. Natasha Romanoff had slowly stemmed off from it and become a sort of alias, my real name so unused that it seemed all but forgotten. I liked to think it was my personal little secret with myself; a way to keep a hold on the real me, something no one could take away. "That's right. I know things," he continued, not missing the expression of shock in my wide eyes. "We have the answers you want."

I bit the inside of my cheek, my eyes narrowing. He was trying to bait me, I was sure of it. But why, when he could have already killed me so easily with the gun that even now lay at his feet?

"Or look at it this way..." he shrugged, expertly flicking the gun back into his hand with the tip of his boot and training it back on my forehead in a split second. "Join... or die."

My proud tongue ached to lash out and tell him I'd sooner drive a bullet through my own head, but my curiosity burned and stilled my pride. We stood, eyes locked, for what could have been another minute or hour or year. I couldn't be sure, but finally, almost unwillingly, my lips moved and I said, "I will go with you."

And that was that. He dropped his fierce exterior almost as if it melted off him, his shoulders unstiffening, his arms relaxing, the gun still in his hand, but now hanging at his side rather than pointed at my face. He motioned for me to move towards the stairs to go below, but at first we both moved awkwardly around each other with the residual instinct of two people who had sworn to never give their back to the other. Finally, he sighed exasperatedly and turned me none too gently toward the stairs. And I twisted his arm, reacting instinctively to his sudden movement toward me.

"Easy," he said, pulling the gun out without hesitation and motioning for me to turn back around with it. I sneered. Obviously the fact I was going with him hadn't made us best friends. Which was practical, in all honesty. Maybe he wasn't entirely stupid after all. I swallowed my pride and instinct and trudged down the stairs though my back itched on having been turned to him and my eyes begged to keep him in sight at all times. Halfway down the wobbly staircase, he gripped my wrist and again turned me around suddenly. I reacted and readied myself to kick him away from me, but he had me pinned to the wall in less than a moment. I writhed beneath him, torn between outrage and actual fear because I still hadn't been able to think of a logical reason why he might have kept me alive except that he might be some freak that got off on giving slow, painful deaths to his victims and that was what he planned to do now. Never once did I consider he really only intended what he had already told me.

Only when I saw him pull a pair of handcuffs from his belt did I realize what he was doing, but I writhed harder than ever because I'd sooner chew off my hands than submit myself to that. Apart from how vulnerable it rendered me, my pride would sting with humiliation. I was a master assassin. I didn't belong in anyone's handcuffs. He shushed me impatiently, rolling his eyes in my face as he pressed me to the wall with all his weight and easily clicked the first handcuff around my small wrist.

"You didn't think I was just going to blindly trust you, give you hot chocolate, and cuddle with you all the way to America, did you? I saw you eyeing that gun," he said matter-of-factly, shifting his weight to get the other hand. Okay. So he definitely wasn't stupid. Here I'd been thinking that my furtive glances had gone right over his head. And the fact I'd failed to notice he'd seen made me feel stupid. And I hated him for it. I heard the second handcuff lock with a resolute little click. He stepped away from me then, leaving me coughing as my lungs expanded for air.

"Bastard," was the only thing I managed to gasp in between coughs that had me doubled over against the wall. He didn't seem the least bit remorseful and actually leaned forward to look into my face with an amused grin that I yearned to slap right off him.

"It's Clint, actually. Pleasure."