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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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?"

"My dad was a contract killer," he says, and it's clearly the start of a story. (A true one, at least.) "Not near your level, but he made enough money at it to live pretty comfortably. He was a good dad, too. I don't know why he stayed in the business until he got caught, we don't talk about it. He had some mob connections, it'd probably be a pretty easy story to unravel if I ever went looking. He hates prison, you know? But even he likes it better than the business."

He's watching her, steadily. "Being a spy is all-encompassing. I didn't save you for a purpose, I just -- offered a way out. Unless the purpose was to find who you could be outside of it."

For a moment, she just regards him, her face revealing as much as one of the Botticelli paintings she so often resembles. Then she nods, once.

"My parents...were a chemist and a violin-player. They died. Then the Red Room found me, raised me. Trained me and gave me purpose. I was built to attack, to lie and to kill in order to defend the glorious U.S.S.R. I killed my first man when I was thirteen. When I was fourteen, it was the Soviet Union that died.

I had no purpose but to obey orders, so I left. I know you know this, but...

I had no purpose, but I had skills. And they were all I knew. So I used them.

Then you come along, and rather blatantly not kill me. Your agency backs you up, which I can assure you would not have happened for my former masters unless you had actually turned me.

Your agency leaves me alone, just as they said they would." She huffs a laugh, shakes her head.

"I can think of a few of my sisters who would have been happy to pretend to be normal. Have a regular job, lie all the time and try be happy.

You offered me a way out, find out who I am?

I'm a liar and a killer, but I'm not that good of a liar that I could do it every moment of every day for the rest of my life."

She watches him.

"Also, the lack of purpose kinda sucks. Still."

His face is still. Not the stillness that comes with trying to defy being read; the stillness that comes from long years watching people at a distance where expression doesn't matter.

"What are you proposing?"

"I can't repay my debts I owe you and...the world, let's say, by working as a cocktail waitress.

I can, try, to repay those debts by working with you."

She raises her eyebrows, just a little.

It makes sense, in a way, that she's so hung up on debts. It's just about one of the only practices you can universally find amongst successful spies and assassins. That is, the ones people will hire.

"You know that's not my call," he says.

Her wetwork is geniusly efficient, and Fury would be pleased to finally have an agent with a long and solid history of infiltration.

"Purpose makes more sense to me than debts. If you'd been happy as a cocktail waitress, paid in full." He watches her for a moment. "I'll see if one of the higher-ups picks up the phone."

She is about to say 'I know it's not' when he keeps talking, when he...

Agrees.

Agrees to ask the agent at the other end of his cell phone, just like that. Without all the arguments she had in her head, all of the quips to make him laugh and like her.

She should feel pleased that it didn't take much more baring of her soul than she did to get her foot in the door, but instead she's feeling hollowed out and too full of sentences and emotions, all at once.

It's not his call.

Blame the lack of decent sleep for the tangled, jagged feeling (she had a quip about that, too, about roommates and snoring leaving a lot of time to think, which is true, but it's also blunting her edge) and so she just nods.

"Sure," Natasha says, and numbly starts to eat again.

He finishes off his orange juice, and stands up, going to rinse it in the sink.

"The guy I'm calling will almost definitely be up, because he's like that, but it'll be a few hours before anyone with final decision power gets word. And they're obviously going to want to meet you first," he says, glancing at her. "So between calling and getting a response, I'm probably going to crash for a bit. Feel free to sample the DVDs, or the books, or whatever."

He rolls his back, thoughtfully. "And I told the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents to contact me before showing up, if they have to, so if anyone walks in you can take them out."

He doesn't have to specify that disabling is preferable; Romanoff knows the importance of gaining information from one's enemies.

"Oh, I always bring a book," she says, is this were a normal conversation and not an incredibly surreal one.

Books are good, you can read them and fill in the time without blocking out audio, and they can be used as weapons. Perfect.

(She'd ask if Barton were for real, but it'd be counter-productive to question his apparent trust of her at this juncture. And she's starting to believe that he is for real.

It's.

Disconcerting.)

He does trust her. It's not an unqualified trust, but it's trust all the same. People who believe in debts don't tend to take out the people they owe. Especially when they know how good their agency is at tracking people down.

And, well. She doesn't feel like a threat, right now. Clint tends to pay attention to his senses.

"Sure," he says, before clearly pulling himself straight and looking more awake as he dials a number.

"Hello, sweetheart," he says with a smile on his face and an overly-perky tone, shooting Romanoff a thumbs up as he heads back towards his room. The faint sounds of disgruntlement over the phone might be audible to her, anyway. "Yeah, I love you too. Hey, look--"

The door shuts, and the sound cuts off with it.

Natasha doesn't collapse, doesn't sigh, doesn't do anything to show her reaction to any of that.

Instead, she finishes her lasagne; taking her time, savouring it like she has the time in the world. Then she washes her plate (thoroughly), drains her glass and washes that of fingerprints and traces, and starts to explore.

She finds most of the cameras, and leaves them alone. The gun in the case he left her is inspected, but she leaves it unloaded, puts it back.

Finally, true to her word, she takes her book from her bag, and curls up on the couch with it. She should possibly catnap, but she's far, far too wired.

But rest, possibly even doze off on occasion?

She can do that.

In the over ten years Clint's worked with SHIELD, he's never actually attempted to recruit anyone. (Though it could be said that Romanoff is attempting to recruit herself.)

Coulson's surprisingly willing to consider it, the footage of Romanoff's work in São Paulo a pretty strong incentive. From stuff Coulson doesn't ask, Clint gets the funny feeling Coulson and Fury had discussed the possibility before. Whatever, that sort of thing isn't his responsibility.

He drops into sleep after finishing briefing Coulson on the situation, and securing a promise of three hours of napping time.

When he walks back into the main room, almost exactly three hours and a half hours later, he smiles at her. "You got stuff to grab? The boss wants to meet you."

Three hours of chilling on the couch seem to have worked their magic on Natasha; she might still have shadows under her eyes (under the foundation that makes her look younger), but the restlessness has been pulled back under her skin.

"I do have things, and...Director Fury wants to meet me?" she asks, as if she were at a party, a baroness enquiring after a count.

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