redintheledger | March, 2006: Tokyo, Clint

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c: clint barton

March, 2006: Tokyo, Clint

Natalie Rushman cycles towards the dormitory she's currently calling home, stinking of alcohol and drenched despite her raincoat. She makes it, too, which is something she hadn't been sure about. Not because of the traffic - after six months of living in Tokyo she's used to the streets - but because of something far more dangerous.

Far more galling.

She locks her bike up without incident, manages to get all the way to her room without incident. Her room-mate is there, but fortunately, the girl is wearing earphones, clearly writing an essay that was due yesterday. Natalie nods at her, grabs her towel, fresh clothes, hair-dryer, and stalks her way to the bathroom.

Again, fortunately, it's free, and she's able to lock the door without exchanging a word to anyone. What she wants to do is dump her things, jump straight into the shower; what she does is carefully place her things down on a counter, and start to remove her make-up.

Slowly, Natalie Rushman is wiped away while Natasha emerges, looking tired and angry around the edges. She braces herself against the counter, and sighs.

Natasha looks at her reflection and, because Natalie is American, says, “God fucking damnit.”

That had all been...mundanely humiliating.

Natasha lets herself indulge in precisely one minute of imagined violence as she lathers up her hair, picturing exactly what she would do to her former boss, her former co-workers, the customers who'd grab her ass, and every single sleazy photographer she could find before S.H.I.E.L.D. put a bullet in her head. By the time she's up to scrubbing the smell of her former place of employ out of her skin, she's moved onto just concentrating on the hot water, the feeling of the sponge on her body.

By the time she's twisting her hair and wringing the excess water out, she's already formulating her next move.

It is, objectively, a stupid move, and she can acknowledge that.

She's also the wrong side of pissed off to really care.

Natalie Rushman firmly back in place, she slips out of the bathroom and into the house itself. She'd hum on her way back to her room, but that would draw attention to herself. She is not, after all, pissed off enough to be careless.

“Natalie!” Valeria says, actually taking out her earphones and looking apologetic. “I'm sorry, I know you have work tomorrow, but I really need to finish this essay, so I'm probably going to be up all night...” The girl (and she is a girl, nineteen and sparkling new in a way that sometimes makes Natasha grit her teeth) is speaking Italian, as is their habit.

Natalie smiles, a little, and shrugs. “It's fine, Val,” she says, her Italian sliding smoothly off her tongue. “I don't have actually have work tomorrow, so I'll probably up all night drowning my sorrows on the internet.”

“Sorry to hear it. But I'm sure you'll find a job soon,” Valeria adds with a bright yet absent smile.

Natalie's smile very carefully doesn't widen at all. “I'm sure I will. Good luck.”

“You, too,” Valeria says, putting her earphones back on.

Natalie draws her laptop out of its bag, plugs it in, and gets comfortable on her bed. She's got a long night ahead of her; as the geekier Westerners would say, one simply does not walk into Mordor, and one does not easily hack into S.H.I.E.L.D.

Well.

Maybe they don't say that last bit.

– –

Twenty-one hours, five cups of coffee, two bowls of noodles, and one serving of the cheap sushi from down the road later, Natasha quickly jots down a phone number on a single sheet of paper and carefully exits S.H.I.E.L.D.'s database. Then she turns off her laptop and allows herself two minutes to lie face down on her bed in victory. Mission accomplished. Granting herself another full minute to contemplate when to use the number is pure indulgence, because she decided when to call within about fifteen seconds.

It's ten past one in the morning in San Diego, US, but Agent Clint(on Francis) Barton is a former military man, according to his records. He can survive.

Sitting up on her bed, Natasha leans over to grab Natalie's phone (it's pink, with some fake diamonds hanging off a cord; it's so very Natalie Rushman) and quickly dials.

If Barton is on a mission, she is going to kill him.

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The ringtone for Clint's S.H.I.E.L.D. phone wakes Clint up instantly, though the fact he's only slept 2 hours in the past 48 doesn't make it an exactly happy awakening.

"If this isn't an emergency, I will honestly kill you," he answers, not checking the number -- because Coulson can handle a few death-threats and the junior agents who sometimes call him for advice probably need more of them in their lives.

She's smiling at the grumpiness on the other end of the phone, and that smile colours her own voice. Sounding like a secretary, Natasha says, "It's Natalie R, and I've been offered twenty-five grand to go back into business. Given you might have to kill me anyway...

Do you really want me to hang up, Agent Barton?"

"It's bad enough that you'd consider that shit?" His tone is mild, but she can probably hear him standing up and starting to sort through clothes.

"I got fired. From a shitty, off-the-books job as a cocktail waitress. And I don't have even have enough money to leave the country.

What do you think?"

Her situation is humiliating, and while her desperation is one of her cards on the table (and she's not above using it), her tone is clear on just how unimpressed she is right now.

Yeah, even getting offered 25k when you usually command at least 50k is a little less insulting if you've been working as a cocktail waitress.

He breathes out a laugh, acknowledging more than amused. "Look," he says, "it'll take me an hour or two to organize it, but can I text you my arrival time at this number? And find a coffee shop you want to meet at, you're going to owe me a cup."

Cocktail waitress and the very occasional model.

He doesn't need to know about the being photographed in pretty underwear gig yet. Or, possibly, ever.

"You can text me here," she says. And then, after a pause. "I'll text you where to go once you arrive."

Slightly less chance of S.H.I.E.L.D. bugging the place before she turns up, and frankly, if they are going to kill her, she'd rather it be Barton. (At least then she'd know that he's thought about it.)

"Sure thing," he says, and then pauses for a moment. "Take care of yourself."

He hangs up on her, considers the time for a moment, and calls Coulson's non-emergency number. "Hey," he says, at the message machine, "Romanova called. I'm headed to Tokyo. Try to get the boss to treat it as work days, yeah? I'll text you my flight number."

He hangs up, and pulls open the card catalog on his desk to figure out the number to call for the Japanese SHIELD office, and where his government weapons permits are.

He hasn't been to Japan in over a year, but he still knows it's going to be a long flight.

Nearly a day later, Natalie Rushman is sitting in the basement café of Sarugaku Coffee. Natalie is there because she's waiting for someone, and because the coffee is the best in town; Natasha is there because she owes someone a decent dose of caffeine, and because snipers can hardly shoot her underground. She blends in with the crowd, just another pretty gaijin girl - maybe dressed a little more chic than most foreigners would be (a slinky grey dress that barely covers her backside with the sleeves pushed up to her elbows and a thick belt around her hips, black tights, deep purple high heels, a black jacket slung over the back of her chair) but that just proclaims her 'resident' instead of 'tourist'.

Natalie likes looking nice, likes the way this outfit makes her legs look like that go on forever; Natasha is dressed to show that she cannot possibly be hiding a weapon, without hindering her movement (as long as she takes off those heels, anyway, but she knows how to cause damage with them on).

She is too wired, running on too many cups of coffee and too little sleep, to actually remain still. Resisting the urge to tap the table, she tosses her long red curls over her shoulder and settles for tracing patterns on the tabletop.

And sipping her cup.

Slowly.

Clint is greeted at the airport by some poor junior agent whose job it was for the day to take his gear to where he's staying.

He keeps a briefcase with him, as much for camouflage as to keep his permits handy for the gun he has carefully concealed. Sure, he's allowed under Japanese law to carry, but he really doesn't want to have to test that or get Fury to bail him out of jail.

He finds his way to the coffee shop easily, with the aid of a map and long experience navigating unnamed streets, tucking his map and sunglasses into his briefcase as he ducks into the basement, and then the coffee shop. He spots Romanova immediately.

She's clearly tired and on edge, energy fraying into restlessness that doesn't show beyond the occasional extraneous movement. She'd look to most people, at first glance, like any twenty-something waiting for a friend; at second, like any twenty-something with a secret they don't know wasn't the worst in the world. She looks, even to Clint, normal. The implications of her attractiveness become immediately and surprisingly apparent to him; outside of a life-or-death situation, she's gorgeous -- inside of one, that's irrelevant. It's irrelevant now, too, he reminds himself -- Romanova's secrets are anything but normal.

He tilts his head up to her in greeting, smiling.

Natalie beams at him, happy as any other girl would be to see her overseas boyfriend. She waves him over, and then leans in once he's seated.

"I," she says, green eyes sparkling like stained glass with the sun behind them, "owe you coffee."

Thankfully, Clint looks tired enough that the slightly delayed response between smile and grin (slow, and half-genuine. He'll do anything for some coffee.) seems pretty natural.

"I'll take you up on that," he says, warm; he scans the room for a quick moment, before glancing back to her. She's skinnier than she was last time he saw her, but he's not sure if that was on purpose or not. How rough have the past six months been? "It's good to see you."

"Almost as good as it is to see you," she says; the emphasis would be understood by him, and misunderstand by any overhearing. "So, anything you want, on me," she says, and then holds up her hand for the waitstaff.

"Although I would prefer it if you didn't break my bank-balance, darling," she adds, tone teasing and eyes serious.

Thanks for not putting a kill-order out on me is a little bit of an awkward thing to reply to, especially when the person saying it is slipping it a phrase not even her persona would interpret that way. Spies.

So, he ignores it.

"I ate on the plane," Clint says with a quick smile, because while he wasn't the one who froze her accounts, he's quite aware that they were frozen. "A regular coffee," he requests, from the waiter, and then specifies strong when asked which blend he'd prefer.

As the waiter leaves, he asks "Those recruiters been causing you any trouble?" He sounds concerned, but not as concerned as he actually is -- like his girlfriend told him about some guys hassling her to do modelling, not that he is seriously not looking forward to maybe getting caught in violence by someone who wouldn't want Romanova talking to a peace-keeping agency.

S.H.I.E.L.D. made a deal with Interpol to freeze her accounts, as far as Natasha can understand it - buying Interpol off so they wouldn't make her stand trial.

She's not a big fan of Interpol.

Nor is she, from the serious cast to her face, a big fan of the 'recruiters'. "Not since they last talked to me," she says, carefully. "And the guy I dealt with? Said they'd understand if I turned the offer down, and they'd all act like gentlemen.

But they want my answer by tomorrow. And you know how these recruiters can get." Particularly if they found out she went running to S.H.I.E.L.D. for help.

(God, the last year has sucked, as Natalie would say.)

He breathes out a half-laugh, with an acknowledging nod. He has no faith in the recruiter's definition of gentlemen.

Well, okay. Good thing he's had the penthouse set up.

His eyes flick over the restaurant again; the lines of sight aren't very good, he knows because she was avoiding detection. It still makes him antsy.

Because he should say something here, for cover, he says "Everything's going to be fine, doll."

Mmm, he's not bad with the delivery, either; 'doll' rolling off his tongue where she might have expected a 'baby' or a 'sweetheart'.

"Well, you're here, aren't you?"

That means something, and she looks pleased as she sips her own cup.

Pleased as a porcelain doll and, under the smile, just as readable.

"Have to say, though," she says, "it took me hours to find your work phone number. You might want to talk to your company about that."

"I'm just glad you didn't have to get it from someone else," he says, though he is impressed. Clint's handy at computers, but isn't a hacker -- and S.H.I.E.L.D. prides itself on its security.

"And admit that I couldn't find my way around a website? Please, Clint, I do have some pride."

He smiles. "For good reason. What else have you been getting yourself into?"

He extends his right hand over the table, palm up, so she can take it if she wants to stop tracing the tabletop.

Also, it leaves his left hand free, which is the one he'd need to use at this angle to shoot anyone but her, anyway.

She wasn't expecting that. Oh, endearments and smiles and slow grins like he means it, but not an outstretched hand.

For a moment - just a fraction of a second - she looks honestly startled. Then, she reaches out and curls her hand around his, like she means it.

She does mean it, but not how anyone watching this would interrupt. Help me, her look and her fingers curled around his hand are saying. Please.

(You extend a hand when you are helping someone up, don't you?)

"Mmm, not much. Apparently I'm entirely the wrong shape for modelling. For normal modelling," she amends. "Mostly, just been...keeping my head down. Being a good girl."

... uh.

"The fashion industry has no taste," he assures her, once he's found his footing, "which is ironic, considering."

Ironic, or just unexpected? He won't lie, he got taught all this by Alanis Morissette.

"That doesn't sound like any fun," he adds. "I got a room on company dime, if you're bored of it."

He says that just before the waiter comes back within earshot.

Nice save there, Agent Barton. Nice save.

(And, of course, his reaction is noted, filed neatly away.)

Her smile, still small, is now wicked. "Oh, trust me, I'm very bored." She leans back in her chair, gives a little smile to the waiter.

"Enjoy the coffee."

He retrieves his hand to take the coffee, smiling thanks to the waiter. He takes a drink.

"You bring me all the way to Japan," he says, genuinely amused, "and then you rush my coffee."

She leans in, just a little. "It's been a long few months, darling.." Then she settles back in her chair with a little toss of her curls.

"But point made, I'll...settle."

'Settle', in this case, means watching the rest of the cafe as she waits, as still as she can make herself without appearing odd.

It'd be easier calming her nerves if she could be still.

It's ridiculous, but Romanova keeping watch makes him feel just a little bit easier about not having both hands free.

And it is good coffee.

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