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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She wouldn't have dragged him out to Tokyo for bad coffee. And, true to her word, she pays for it - with cash and a smile, speaking in smooth Japanese.

The fact that her jacket - black, leather, vintage - is longer than her dress is made very apparent as she walks up the stairs and out onto the street, and most like she was aiming for that.

Also, you know. It's a nice jacket, and only early March.

The Japanese, and her skill with it, makes a reappearance as she talks with a taxi-driver, ordering them to Shinjuku station to go and get lost in before they go to wherever S.H.I.E.L.D. has placed Barton. She's running enough risks as it is that's more than happy for more chances to lose any tails she (or Barton) have acquired.

It's nowhere near the closest station to grab their subway, but it's the busiest rail station in the world. Also, Clint learned how to navigate it during a ridiculous three month mission that involved way too much time in the place.

(It's also protocol.)

They're maybe quieter than a couple normally would be on a taxi ride, but Clint is clearly tired so it might be written off as giving each other space. He pays the fare, when they arrive, and keeps his door open for Romanova, scanning the crowd.

The rest of the trip is fairly uneventful, even though it does include Clint employing a nasty glare and an arm around Romanova's shoulders a few times, to ward off the usual subway crowding. Normally he wouldn't mind, but he really doesn't want someone to stick either of them with something toxic.

"Nice place," Natasha says once they reach the penthouse, shrugging off Natalie as she shrugs off her jacket. The jacket gets hung up on the rack, her shoes neatly placed by the door, her handbag hung up with her jacket.

She doesn't really have anything of particular value in it, anyway. Except for her subway pass.

They can pry her subway pass out of her cold, dead hands.

(Or, warm. Warm dead hands are easier to manage.)

"Yeah," he agrees, "I knew I'd made it when I got penthouse privileges."

He shucks his coat to hang by the door, and his briefcase, but not his shoes, and doesn't disarm because it's seriously the only gun in the apartment. Except the ones packed into the bedroom with his bow. Speaking of which.

"Make yourself comfortable, find something to drink. Uh, except the milk if it's low, I don't have time to get a new one before we head out. I'm going to get something from my room, in case your friends pay us a visit."

Her eyes slide from their search for the cameras to study him. Carefully.

"If my friends turn up, do I get a weapon?"

"Yeah," he calls, muffled, from inside the room, "but the boss'd be pretty pissed off if I gave you one before that, so let's just pretend you don't know how to disarm me."

He shows back up with a brushed steel case, and a smaller black plastic one. His grin is relaxed. "Yours," he says, about the black case, setting it on a table, "and mine."

"I wasn't kidding about that drink you know. Orange juice?" He heads over to the refrigerator.

His and hers, matching gun cases now for a limited time only, runs her thoughts, giggling around the edges.

She quashes those thoughts and....doesn't sit. She hovers. For someone who is only 5'3, she's remarkably good at hovering.

The restless, edgy air he noticed damped down in the cafe is far, far more noticeable now.

"Just...water for me, thanks. Barton."

A bow, actually, though it does have an extra gun in the top of the cover just in case. Itty thing, not really his style, he prefers the one he already has holstered.

Anyway. "Sure thing," he says, getting the glasses and filling them. (His has orange juice.) He calls over: "If you're hungry, then the table, otherwise the couches have more space for pacing." It's a prod, but a gentle one.

It is something of a cliché, the gaining of a 'fight or flight' level of poise. Nevertheless, she has it, the lines of her body humming tension as she studies him.

"You are confusing, American," she declares at last, and stalks over to fridge to hunt for something to eat.

"That's what they tell me," he agrees, pushing her glass towards her on the counter, as he leans on where it turns. "Not usually the 'American,' part, admittedly, but roughly the same gist.

"There's microwaveables in the freezer."

"Most Americans," Natasha says, peering into the freezer and grabbing some lasagne, "would be all about business first. Not..." she tilts her head, quick and sharp, and then glancing over her shoulder at him. "Unless you are...softening me up?

Or just being nice?"

He grins at her. "Being nice, though if softening up means I think we might have an easier conversation if you're not," he waves at her, too polite to say panicked, "then yeah, that too."

He doesn't point out that if he was just trying to get on her good side, he wouldn't have left his gun on his person where she could get it. He's seen Romanova in more than one fight; unarmed, there's a fair chance she could take him even if she is six months out of the game.

"I'm not a spy, Romanova. Sorry if I'm a little offbeat."

Natasha is silent, for a moment.

Then,

"Romanoff. In English, I...prefer Romanoff."

He leaves his weapon within easy enough reach (it'd be ugly, given she hasn't sparred in months), she can actually microwave her lasagne and get a plate.

(The place at the table she chooses has her back to the side wall, leaving her free to watch both door and window.

Once you get shot by a sniper, even with a tranq dart, you start to be much more wary of windows)

"Romanoff," he agrees, quietly pleased. He sits, letting her cover the door; he has more experience with spotting snipers. Though there isn't a higher building outside the window. "You can drop the agent, if you want; I'm pretty sure it's not mandatory."

"'Agent' is being dropped," she says, stabbing her food a little with her fork.

Stab, stab, stab, let's pretend she's doing this to let it all cool down.

"Do you know why I was sent to Japan?"

"Not specifically, out of all of Asia," Clint says.

He takes out his phone, typing Safe. R found number in our database. Did yellow pages buy us out?

He turns the phone so she can read the text, before sending it to Coulson.

Okay, that there? That is a genuine smile, small but real.

"I suppose in the interests of being honest, it took me twenty-one hours to hack in. Which, you know," she adds, finally spearing a piece of lasagne, "isn't half bad.

Only half good, though, if anyone actually want to cause damage."

"S.H.I.E.L.D. has no shortage of enemies," Clint says, rolling his shoulders as he sits back in his chair. "I'm sure after he stops swearing, he'll thank you for pointing it out. Or make me thank you. Pre-emptively: thanks."

"I'd say no problem, but...you know why I called." She tilts her chin a little, smile fading to the corner of her mouth, making the expression wry and tired.

"Was pleasantly surprised when you decided to come, I admit. Not...just let the Tokyo branch know and have them deal with me."

"Don't be insulted when I say I think of you as my problem," he says, tone serious. "I would've come for any of the people I offered civilian status to."

Her, more so, because it hadn't even been on the table to start with. But she knows that.

"But so noted."

"Your problem," she says, huffing a laugh. "Not insulted." Another bite of her lasagne, because she really is hungry.

"You're mine. Or," she amends, "one of them."

He tilts his head at her. "Yeah?"

"Yeah." But she takes another mouthful before she expands on the idea.

"You could have killed me. And you didn't. Further more, you got me out of the game. Which has probably contributed a little to global stability, given my last few contracts weren't exactly low-key, or contained. Now," another stab at her food, this time not productive, "I owe you twice.

Have you ever heard, Barton, of the idea that if you save a life, you are responsible for it?"

"Told you you were my problem," Clint says, not entirely sure where this is going. "But you're your problem, too."

"I'm well aware that I am my own problem. But what, exactly, did you save me for?"

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