Natasha doesn't feel in control of anything right now, least of all herself. Everything she once knew is gone, and she's not sure who she even is anymore. She's coming apart at the seams, spinning desperately out of control and she's looking for anything to hold onto to steady herself. Right now, Hawkeye is that something. Except, whatever precarious hold she has on him, she doesn't dare trust.
For a moment, with Hawkeye's fingers curled around hers, that slight laugh of his still ringing in her ears, and his smile warming her from the inside out, Natasha thinks that everything is going to be alright. But then she pulls away and--
He wants to help her remember. The bottom drops out of Natasha's stomach, and nausea claws at her throat. The time she spent convincing herself that she just heard him wrong, that SHIELD isn't behind her missing ten years, is wiped away in a second when he acknowledges her need to remember. This time, there's no way for her to misinterpret his words. He knows. She hasn't told a living soul, and yet somehow he knows.
Her eyes narrow in suspicion, and her arms fold protectively over her chest. Part of her wants to run again, as every inch of her screams that this is a trap. But it doesn't change anything, she needs to know who she was for the lost ten years, and he wants to tell her. So, she'll listen. Even though she can't trust his motives now. SHIELD's involved with this somehow.
"Out of the goodness of your heart, right?" she comments dryly, an edge of bitterness to her voice. You don't get something for nothing; she'll owe him for this. The world is nothing but debts balanced against each other. She makes a vague gesture towards him, giving him permission to go for his cellphone. He knows that if he kills her, he'll die slowly and painfully from the poison, so she doesn't think that he means her any harm.
Her fingers fly to the thin gold chain around her neck, and she toys with it in a nervous gesture she's picked up during these past few weeks. The motion tugs at the rings, resting safely against her skin and it steadies her. "You know my name," she points out, watching him pull out his cellphone. "But, I don't know yours." It's easier admitting to the lack of knowledge than the lack of memory, somehow.
If he knew, exactly, what was clawing at her-what was making her so nervous, he could tell her. He could tell her he knows just because he’s spent so much time with her he knows when she’s not herself. He could say that he knows because he’s spent an absurd amount of time with her in the past ten years and based on how she acts around him, he could probably place her at any time in their relationship. He doesn’t mean to spook her by knowing, but he also can’t pretend he doesn’t, because she may look like his Tasha, but she holds herself just like the Widow and so he knows how much time she’s lost-knows it by the stubborn jut of her chin, the way she carries herself like she’s waiting for someone to challenge her constantly, like she’s both completely sure of who she is and also vaguely uncomfortable in her skin.
So he can tell when she goes tense again that he’s said something wrong, but he can only hope what he has to show her will at least try to put some of it to rights. He moves when she nods, and reaches in the bag he’d left tucked against the wall to fish out his phone. It’s a newer model, the same kind Tony had given all of them when the prototype had been deemed worthwhile, and it should match the one she found in her pocket, if she’s still carrying it around.
“Clint Barton,” he offers absently as he goes through the motions of unlocking the device.
It takes him a moment of tapping through the different screens-christ, couldn’t his phone just, call people and send texts?-before he gets to the internet, and then to youtube, typing in various searches until he finds one of the more popular videos of the Chitauri incident that feature the two of them up close. It’s them, he and Natasha and Cap, shot from someone in the bus while they were pulling survivors out. The footage is choppy, obviously taken on someone’s phone, but it shows him lifting kids out of the window while Nat has his back, firing at incoming aliens, and then, jumpy as the owner of the phone is ushered off the bus, before it focuses on them again, side by side, him firing his arrows as she shoots, both of them in sync with the battle and what’s raging around them before the video goes dead, the person ushered into a building.
He turns to offer it to her and can’t help but notice she’s playing with the necklace that used to contain their rings. He’s-almost positive it still does, but he doesn’t want to assume. It feels like a punch to the gut because of course she was still wearing them even though she doesn’t know half of what they mean. He means to let it go, he really does, to just take that knowledge and let it sink in to the rest of the hurt swirling in his gut, but, he speaks before he can catch himself, even as he extends the phone for her to take.
“I have the one that matches, you know,” he says softly, not meeting her eyes, because he can’t, not really. Can’t say that and see the surprise and live through it. It’ll actually break him. “And, ah, just press play, on the screen.”
Hawkeye gives his name like it's nothing. Maybe to him it is. The first time you give someone your name, then it's something. But they've exchanged names before. To him it's just a reminder, to her it's momentous. Clint Barton. Natasha tests the name in her head, tries to apply it to the man and comes up short. It's not that it's not a good name. It is. And it's not that it doesn't fit him. But, he's been Hawkeye to her for a year now, and it's strange to think of him as anything else. What is she supposed to call him now? Clint? Barton? Hawkeye, still? What has she been calling him for the past ten years?
He looks different though. Older, of course, it's been ten years since she saw him last. But more than that. He's somehow less and more than she remembers, and she can't work out quite how that is possible. Then he's handing her the cellphone and she loses her train of thought. It looks just like the one she left behind when she ditched the car, too scared that someone might track her through it when she couldn't even work out how to access the data on it. She hasn't seen another one quite like it since.
All thoughts of them using the same unique tech and what that might mean are blown straight out of her head when he speaks. At first, there's a moment of confusion. Matches what? The cellphone? And then the realisation strikes her like a bolt of lightning followed by heavy rain beating down her, chilling her to the bone. Her fingers are still wound around the chain holding her rings. If he has the ring that matches hers...
Her eyes dart up to his face, but he isn't even looking at her, his expression far more closed off than she remembers ever seeing it before. Including the first time they met, because then at least, she could see the anger seething beneath the surface. Now, there is nothing.
Numbly, she pushes play, solely because he told her to, and she watches the choppy, low quality footage sort of distantly, her mind still reeling from the revelation and all its implications. The video seems to be of her, Clint and some guy dressed up in the American flag (for god knows what reason) fighting together and saving civilians. The slithery shapes buzzing through the air are hauntingly familiar. In the dreams the sky open and they well out, like a plague descending on the city. It was the one dream she thought for certain must be a fiction of her imagination.
"That could be anyone," she says without conviction, handing the phone back once the footage has played out. As revelatory as it is (and she means to scour the Internet once she's alone for more information and to watch them fight side by side like they were built for it again), it's nothing to his soft comment that proceeded it.
"Show me," she demands. "If you have the matching one. Show me."
Clint takes the phone back silently as she hands it over, slipping it into a pocket as he snorts. “It’s us, Natasha,” And it still feels strange, rolling off his tongue like that, her full name. He doesn’t really know what to do with it, because, well, she hasn’t been Natasha to him outside of the company of others in years. It’s Tasha, or Nat, or Tash, every now and again when he’s trying to annoy her, or kitten in Russian if he wants to get her attention and redirect it to something else-mostly how much she’s going to have to kill him if he keeps calling her kitten. Once, right before he left for the two month stint in Jakarta, he’d called her babe, and amazingly, she hadn’t killed him, but she swore it was only because there wasn’t enough time to do it properly. He still meant to try it again and see. But, well, now he supposed he’d have to wait. “Us and our teammate, Steve. Or, well, Captain America,” She might remember him from when she was a kid, he doesn’t know. They pretty much avoided talking about their childhoods and even when it did come up in the still of their rooms in the dark of the night, their childhood reading habits or movie tastes weren’t the topics of conversation. That would have been too normal. No, for them it was missions she’d taken, times her handler had let her out, people she’d had to seduce or kill and for him it had been stories of a drunken father, an absent staff in an orphanage and learning how to be a sideshow before he was fifteen.
But her attention isn’t on the footage, not really, and he turns his attention to the demand. He almost doesn’t want to. Doesn’t want to have to prove himself like this, because, well, the rings mean more to him than they have any right to. He and Tasha aren’t actually married, even though that might be what it looks like with the way they both hang on to these, but what they have means a whole lot more. They’re not just wedding rings, they’re a sign of what they two of them overcame. How they got here. A bit of the history bleeding into where they are today and for two people who try to eliminate all traces of their passing in the world, hanging on to something for this long has meaning. But does he really have a choice?
Like always, Natasha asks and he answers.
His hand slips into the collar of his own shirt and picks up his dog tags, pulling them out from under the black of the SHIELD issue uniform. He wasn’t wearing his avengers gear, mostly because it wasn’t his back when he first met her and he figured she’d recognize this more, and so the chain comes up easy. He thinks for a moment that he might just leave it there, make her come look, but then he remembers this is Tasha and he’s already trusted her with his life tonight, so why not this too? His hands come up and unsnap the chain, offering the bundle to her.
The dogtags confirm his name, if she’s interested in looking, and behind them, so it’s the closest thing to his skin, hands the ring. A little wider than hers, but obviously made by the same hand and the style is a perfect match, right down to the titanium they’re made from, and the wood that lines them both.
“The engagement ring doesn’t match,” He says quietly, watching her look over them, “but that’s my fault. I didn’t realize they were supposed to, and that one looked so much like you-“ he’s going to hope she didn’t catch the way his voice cracked just then, because he doesn’t think he can explain this right now, everything she means to him. “Took five hours to pick them out, and I nearly made us miss our flight. You were pissed.”
Natasha. Her name sounds odd and foreign on his lips. Though not quite as odd 'Tasha' or 'Nat' did. It's something that she'll get used to, she's certain, but right now it makes the space between her shoulder blades crawl with discomfort. She can't remember giving him her name and him using it sends up warning flags and alarm bells that it's hard to ignore, even though she knows that she must've sometime between now and the last time she remembers meeting him.
Captain America conjures up images of old propaganda footage, a black and white film flickering on the screen of the training room and her handler's voice droning on about some kind of supersoldiers. But, that doesn't make sense, and then her attention narrows down to the flicker of silver as Hawkeye pulls out his dogtags,
Natasha takes the offered dogtags with ill-concealed eagerness, her fingers brushing his and sending a jolt of something through her. Instead of going straight for the ring, she takes her time to look over the dogtags first, running her thumb across the embossed letters. Barton, Clint. With a slowness that makes every inch of her body scream in impatience, she turns to the ring and runs her thumb along the metal, warmed by his skin. She has spent so many sleepless nights turning the two rings she wears over in her hands and puzzling over their meaning that she knows instantly that this one is the mate to hers. But still, she examines it in minute detail, like she can find a flaw with it to prove that it's all a lie.
His voice makes her heart stutter and ache in her chest -- a solid sort of pain settling around it like a steel band -- and when it breaks on a word, her eyes snap up to him, giving him a long and searching look. This is how he knew that her memory's been lost. Because they are so much more to each other now than they ever were ten years ago. There's something in his eyes that leaves her cold, even as it sends a slow sort of warmth spiralling up along her spine.
"I can imagine," she says softly, ducking her head once more. She tugs the chain and makes the rings spill forth so that she can compare his to hers. They're a perfect match. Her throat goes dry and too tight, making each breath ache in her chest.
The rings are exactly the kind of rings she'd wish for herself if she ever even entertained the thought of getting married.
She's never seen herself as the marrying kind, but a lot can happen in ten years. Maybe the Red Room sent her to seduce Hawkeye to get an inside line on SHIELD, and maybe they got engaged and married, and then the Red Room fell and she... stayed. Or maybe it was never a lie or a mission and just... her. Because if there is one man she can ever picture herself marrying, it's Hawkeye. Somehow.
Everything about the rings make sense. Right down to the materials and color. They're spies; she and Hawkeye. They wouldn't inscribe their rings or wear them on their fingers for fear of surveillance or the risk of a tan-line ruining a mission or a cover. If she got married, this is exactly how she'd wear her rings, in a chain around her throat and closest to her heart.
"They're beautiful," she says without thinking. She swallows tightly, as if she can swallow back the words and she tucks her rings away decisively before handing his back. Meeting his eyes is difficult and it takes real effort to not let her gaze skitter away. "So. You and me, huh?" And there's none of the doubt that should be in her voice. Of all the things that he's told her, this is the first thing she trusts implicitly, even though she really, really shouldn't.
He watches her as she looks at the rings and tries not to get lost in the memory of how she looked when she saw them for the first time. How she protested when he tried to make her look when he first got back from the jewelry store, already annoyed that there was a possibility they were going to miss their flight and expecting that he’d picked out the first two fake gold bands he found and a fake diamond engagement ring and that that simple process had taken him five hours.
At the time he couldn’t even justify why he’d spent so long picking them out. Mostly because it was Nat, and he wasn’t going to start their first undercover mission after Loki with something fake wrapped around his finger. Wasn’t going to start repairing their friendship with something cheap and tacky and not at all them, but now? Now he was glad he did, because they’d come to mean a hell of a lot more than just the things worn for a cover-
But watching her watch them, and he can almost imagine that they’re back in the helicarrier, and he’s making her take the time, and she’s looking up at him with that look on her face and he’s having to take a breath because well, he was slipping a fucking wedding band on her finger like it meant something. But, he’s not, and they’re not, and she’s still back where she was ten years ago, and he’s got to bring her back. Somehow. He has to.
“Glad your taste didn’t change that much,” he says in reply to her first comment, the one she looks like she wants to take back, because he can’t help but try and make her smile, try to lighten this situation a little because he feels a little like he’s drowning and can’t quite get a foothold and he doesn’t, exactly, want to see where that path leads.
“And, ah, yeah. Us.” How does he describe ten years of being half of a whole to someone who doesn’t remember that they were the opposite side? “Friends for longer than either of us expected, and, ah, recently, more” He takes his ring back, rubs a thumb over it gently and then slips it back over his neck, tucking it away under his uniform and trying not to let out the soft sigh of relief as it settles back against his skin.
A brief, pale smile flashes across Natasha's features at his comment about her taste, and her fingers play absently over the thin chain where it rests against her collarbone. It's the engagement ring she can't get over. The one with the black diamond. Which she knows is real, because she took the rings to a jeweler to have it valued, to see if maybe she was carrying the rings to sell in case of an emergency, but even though she didn't have a dime to her name at that point, she hadn't sold them. Because the engagement ring is perfect for her. Because they seemed too important to lose.
"It took us that long?" Edging the rooftop is a low sort of barrier to keep people falling off, and she leans against it, not quite outside of his reach, the wind wiping at the few strands that have escaped her French twist. She braces her hands against the cold metal edge of the mostly brick barrier, her back against the party in the building on the other side of the street.
"The last time I remember seeing you," she begins haltingly, "we were in Hong Kong for New Year's and I was really hoping to kiss you on the stroke of midnight." It hadn't quite worked out that way, of course. But, to think that it took them ten years to get from that to married is... Odd. Of course, she probably dug in her heels on the marriage thing. She can't imagine that she didn't.
If she had been there, when Clint was agonizing over which one to pick out, she might have laughed at him. The Nat he gave the ring to definitely would have. That ring, the engagement one, was what took him five hours, because he had been staring down at a sea of gaudy gold and platinum and diamonds and rubies and nothing at all seemed to fit her. And he'd even settled, because he knew he was running late and was going to be killed, on this little white gold number with a ruby in it, until the clerk had looked at him, asked him about Nat and when he'd said, far more honestly than he meant: 'she's as dangerous as she is deadly and gorgeous beyond belief. And the only person you'd trust to have your back in any situation that might come up', the man had smiled, somehow knowingly, and pulled that one from the back.
He hadn't even had to think.
So--he is rather glad she didn't sell it,because he's not entirely sure how he would have dealt with that. He wouldn't have held her responsible, of course, because selling it would probably be the smart thing to do if you were loose in the wind and had nothing to tie you to anyone and no money but a two thousand dollar ring on your finger.
"We--" he shrugs a little, and leans against his bow. He wants to sit next to her, but he's not entirely certain she won't either push him off or start running again, "We had a partnership that was more important than anything else--we weren't sure we could risk it. It took a Norse God getting in my head and fucking me up for me to crack enough to admit how I felt. Hell, might have taken that for me to realize it fully myself."
Hong Kong though--god, he remembers Hong Kong. He would have taken that kiss too, then, and maybe their lives would have gone a completely different direction. "The whole building collapsed out from under us in Hong Kong. A minute before the stroke of midnight. I was lucky enough to have my bow, and a grappling hook arrow. Got us both out of there--but then we were being swarmed by agents from another group--God, I can't even remember which group now, it's been that long. I think it might have been MI6."
"A Norse God? Damn, my life has changed," Natasha jokes weakly. Her forced laughter catches in her throat though. Because it's not a very funny joke. It's ten years of her life gone, and apparently sometime during those ten years, she had dealings with a mythological figure and that's just a little bit hard to swallow. She ducks her head and looks down at the scuffed toes of her high heels, fingers twisting in the delicate material of her dress. It's all just too much. At least Hong Kong is a welcome distraction. The fact that he remembers it too -- that she has a real connection to someone in this world again -- is comforting beyond words.
"You're remembering things wrong," she scowls, though the severity is counteracted by the grin on her face. It may've been a long time ago for him, but for her it seems like it was only a couple of months back. She still remembers the look on his face when he saw her in her evening gown, and the way her stomach had knotted up with anticipation as the clock inched towards midnight.
"First of all, I was doing fine on my own when you grabbed me. Nearly knocked me out. And they weren't MI5, they were KGB, posing as Brits." Though she never told him that, did she? They'd been good, the agents. She wouldn't've caught it herself if she hadn't recognized one of them. "Once we got out of there--" And working together with him against a common foe had been surprisingly nice, "it was already a quarter past. Moment was sort of gone after all that."
Natasha looks over at Clint and her mocking grin fades. Hong Kong is in the distant past, and there are more pressing things here and now. "There are so many blanks I need you to fill for me." Her words are soft and achingly honest. "But this isn't the place and--" she glances over her shoulder at the lit windows of the embassy, "I still have a job to finish."
For a moment, with Hawkeye's fingers curled around hers, that slight laugh of his still ringing in her ears, and his smile warming her from the inside out, Natasha thinks that everything is going to be alright. But then she pulls away and--
He wants to help her remember. The bottom drops out of Natasha's stomach, and nausea claws at her throat. The time she spent convincing herself that she just heard him wrong, that SHIELD isn't behind her missing ten years, is wiped away in a second when he acknowledges her need to remember. This time, there's no way for her to misinterpret his words. He knows. She hasn't told a living soul, and yet somehow he knows.
Her eyes narrow in suspicion, and her arms fold protectively over her chest. Part of her wants to run again, as every inch of her screams that this is a trap. But it doesn't change anything, she needs to know who she was for the lost ten years, and he wants to tell her. So, she'll listen. Even though she can't trust his motives now. SHIELD's involved with this somehow.
"Out of the goodness of your heart, right?" she comments dryly, an edge of bitterness to her voice. You don't get something for nothing; she'll owe him for this. The world is nothing but debts balanced against each other. She makes a vague gesture towards him, giving him permission to go for his cellphone. He knows that if he kills her, he'll die slowly and painfully from the poison, so she doesn't think that he means her any harm.
Her fingers fly to the thin gold chain around her neck, and she toys with it in a nervous gesture she's picked up during these past few weeks. The motion tugs at the rings, resting safely against her skin and it steadies her. "You know my name," she points out, watching him pull out his cellphone. "But, I don't know yours." It's easier admitting to the lack of knowledge than the lack of memory, somehow.
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So he can tell when she goes tense again that he’s said something wrong, but he can only hope what he has to show her will at least try to put some of it to rights. He moves when she nods, and reaches in the bag he’d left tucked against the wall to fish out his phone. It’s a newer model, the same kind Tony had given all of them when the prototype had been deemed worthwhile, and it should match the one she found in her pocket, if she’s still carrying it around.
“Clint Barton,” he offers absently as he goes through the motions of unlocking the device.
It takes him a moment of tapping through the different screens-christ, couldn’t his phone just, call people and send texts?-before he gets to the internet, and then to youtube, typing in various searches until he finds one of the more popular videos of the Chitauri incident that feature the two of them up close. It’s them, he and Natasha and Cap, shot from someone in the bus while they were pulling survivors out. The footage is choppy, obviously taken on someone’s phone, but it shows him lifting kids out of the window while Nat has his back, firing at incoming aliens, and then, jumpy as the owner of the phone is ushered off the bus, before it focuses on them again, side by side, him firing his arrows as she shoots, both of them in sync with the battle and what’s raging around them before the video goes dead, the person ushered into a building.
He turns to offer it to her and can’t help but notice she’s playing with the necklace that used to contain their rings. He’s-almost positive it still does, but he doesn’t want to assume. It feels like a punch to the gut because of course she was still wearing them even though she doesn’t know half of what they mean. He means to let it go, he really does, to just take that knowledge and let it sink in to the rest of the hurt swirling in his gut, but, he speaks before he can catch himself, even as he extends the phone for her to take.
“I have the one that matches, you know,” he says softly, not meeting her eyes, because he can’t, not really. Can’t say that and see the surprise and live through it. It’ll actually break him. “And, ah, just press play, on the screen.”
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He looks different though. Older, of course, it's been ten years since she saw him last. But more than that. He's somehow less and more than she remembers, and she can't work out quite how that is possible. Then he's handing her the cellphone and she loses her train of thought. It looks just like the one she left behind when she ditched the car, too scared that someone might track her through it when she couldn't even work out how to access the data on it. She hasn't seen another one quite like it since.
All thoughts of them using the same unique tech and what that might mean are blown straight out of her head when he speaks. At first, there's a moment of confusion. Matches what? The cellphone? And then the realisation strikes her like a bolt of lightning followed by heavy rain beating down her, chilling her to the bone. Her fingers are still wound around the chain holding her rings. If he has the ring that matches hers...
Her eyes dart up to his face, but he isn't even looking at her, his expression far more closed off than she remembers ever seeing it before. Including the first time they met, because then at least, she could see the anger seething beneath the surface. Now, there is nothing.
Numbly, she pushes play, solely because he told her to, and she watches the choppy, low quality footage sort of distantly, her mind still reeling from the revelation and all its implications. The video seems to be of her, Clint and some guy dressed up in the American flag (for god knows what reason) fighting together and saving civilians. The slithery shapes buzzing through the air are hauntingly familiar. In the dreams the sky open and they well out, like a plague descending on the city. It was the one dream she thought for certain must be a fiction of her imagination.
"That could be anyone," she says without conviction, handing the phone back once the footage has played out. As revelatory as it is (and she means to scour the Internet once she's alone for more information and to watch them fight side by side like they were built for it again), it's nothing to his soft comment that proceeded it.
"Show me," she demands. "If you have the matching one. Show me."
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“Us and our teammate, Steve. Or, well, Captain America,” She might remember him from when she was a kid, he doesn’t know. They pretty much avoided talking about their childhoods and even when it did come up in the still of their rooms in the dark of the night, their childhood reading habits or movie tastes weren’t the topics of conversation. That would have been too normal. No, for them it was missions she’d taken, times her handler had let her out, people she’d had to seduce or kill and for him it had been stories of a drunken father, an absent staff in an orphanage and learning how to be a sideshow before he was fifteen.
But her attention isn’t on the footage, not really, and he turns his attention to the demand. He almost doesn’t want to. Doesn’t want to have to prove himself like this, because, well, the rings mean more to him than they have any right to. He and Tasha aren’t actually married, even though that might be what it looks like with the way they both hang on to these, but what they have means a whole lot more. They’re not just wedding rings, they’re a sign of what they two of them overcame. How they got here. A bit of the history bleeding into where they are today and for two people who try to eliminate all traces of their passing in the world, hanging on to something for this long has meaning. But does he really have a choice?
Like always, Natasha asks and he answers.
His hand slips into the collar of his own shirt and picks up his dog tags, pulling them out from under the black of the SHIELD issue uniform. He wasn’t wearing his avengers gear, mostly because it wasn’t his back when he first met her and he figured she’d recognize this more, and so the chain comes up easy. He thinks for a moment that he might just leave it there, make her come look, but then he remembers this is Tasha and he’s already trusted her with his life tonight, so why not this too? His hands come up and unsnap the chain, offering the bundle to her.
The dogtags confirm his name, if she’s interested in looking, and behind them, so it’s the closest thing to his skin, hands the ring. A little wider than hers, but obviously made by the same hand and the style is a perfect match, right down to the titanium they’re made from, and the wood that lines them both.
“The engagement ring doesn’t match,” He says quietly, watching her look over them, “but that’s my fault. I didn’t realize they were supposed to, and that one looked so much like you-“ he’s going to hope she didn’t catch the way his voice cracked just then, because he doesn’t think he can explain this right now, everything she means to him. “Took five hours to pick them out, and I nearly made us miss our flight. You were pissed.”
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Captain America conjures up images of old propaganda footage, a black and white film flickering on the screen of the training room and her handler's voice droning on about some kind of supersoldiers. But, that doesn't make sense, and then her attention narrows down to the flicker of silver as Hawkeye pulls out his dogtags,
Natasha takes the offered dogtags with ill-concealed eagerness, her fingers brushing his and sending a jolt of something through her. Instead of going straight for the ring, she takes her time to look over the dogtags first, running her thumb across the embossed letters. Barton, Clint. With a slowness that makes every inch of her body scream in impatience, she turns to the ring and runs her thumb along the metal, warmed by his skin. She has spent so many sleepless nights turning the two rings she wears over in her hands and puzzling over their meaning that she knows instantly that this one is the mate to hers. But still, she examines it in minute detail, like she can find a flaw with it to prove that it's all a lie.
His voice makes her heart stutter and ache in her chest -- a solid sort of pain settling around it like a steel band -- and when it breaks on a word, her eyes snap up to him, giving him a long and searching look. This is how he knew that her memory's been lost. Because they are so much more to each other now than they ever were ten years ago. There's something in his eyes that leaves her cold, even as it sends a slow sort of warmth spiralling up along her spine.
"I can imagine," she says softly, ducking her head once more. She tugs the chain and makes the rings spill forth so that she can compare his to hers. They're a perfect match. Her throat goes dry and too tight, making each breath ache in her chest.
The rings are exactly the kind of rings she'd wish for herself if she ever even entertained the thought of getting married.
She's never seen herself as the marrying kind, but a lot can happen in ten years. Maybe the Red Room sent her to seduce Hawkeye to get an inside line on SHIELD, and maybe they got engaged and married, and then the Red Room fell and she... stayed. Or maybe it was never a lie or a mission and just... her. Because if there is one man she can ever picture herself marrying, it's Hawkeye. Somehow.
Everything about the rings make sense. Right down to the materials and color. They're spies; she and Hawkeye. They wouldn't inscribe their rings or wear them on their fingers for fear of surveillance or the risk of a tan-line ruining a mission or a cover. If she got married, this is exactly how she'd wear her rings, in a chain around her throat and closest to her heart.
"They're beautiful," she says without thinking. She swallows tightly, as if she can swallow back the words and she tucks her rings away decisively before handing his back. Meeting his eyes is difficult and it takes real effort to not let her gaze skitter away. "So. You and me, huh?" And there's none of the doubt that should be in her voice. Of all the things that he's told her, this is the first thing she trusts implicitly, even though she really, really shouldn't.
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At the time he couldn’t even justify why he’d spent so long picking them out. Mostly because it was Nat, and he wasn’t going to start their first undercover mission after Loki with something fake wrapped around his finger. Wasn’t going to start repairing their friendship with something cheap and tacky and not at all them, but now? Now he was glad he did, because they’d come to mean a hell of a lot more than just the things worn for a cover-
But watching her watch them, and he can almost imagine that they’re back in the helicarrier, and he’s making her take the time, and she’s looking up at him with that look on her face and he’s having to take a breath because well, he was slipping a fucking wedding band on her finger like it meant something. But, he’s not, and they’re not, and she’s still back where she was ten years ago, and he’s got to bring her back. Somehow. He has to.
“Glad your taste didn’t change that much,” he says in reply to her first comment, the one she looks like she wants to take back, because he can’t help but try and make her smile, try to lighten this situation a little because he feels a little like he’s drowning and can’t quite get a foothold and he doesn’t, exactly, want to see where that path leads.
“And, ah, yeah. Us.” How does he describe ten years of being half of a whole to someone who doesn’t remember that they were the opposite side? “Friends for longer than either of us expected, and, ah, recently, more” He takes his ring back, rubs a thumb over it gently and then slips it back over his neck, tucking it away under his uniform and trying not to let out the soft sigh of relief as it settles back against his skin.
"A few weeks after that video you watched."
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"It took us that long?" Edging the rooftop is a low sort of barrier to keep people falling off, and she leans against it, not quite outside of his reach, the wind wiping at the few strands that have escaped her French twist. She braces her hands against the cold metal edge of the mostly brick barrier, her back against the party in the building on the other side of the street.
"The last time I remember seeing you," she begins haltingly, "we were in Hong Kong for New Year's and I was really hoping to kiss you on the stroke of midnight." It hadn't quite worked out that way, of course. But, to think that it took them ten years to get from that to married is... Odd. Of course, she probably dug in her heels on the marriage thing. She can't imagine that she didn't.
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He hadn't even had to think.
So--he is rather glad she didn't sell it,because he's not entirely sure how he would have dealt with that. He wouldn't have held her responsible, of course, because selling it would probably be the smart thing to do if you were loose in the wind and had nothing to tie you to anyone and no money but a two thousand dollar ring on your finger.
"We--" he shrugs a little, and leans against his bow. He wants to sit next to her, but he's not entirely certain she won't either push him off or start running again, "We had a partnership that was more important than anything else--we weren't sure we could risk it. It took a Norse God getting in my head and fucking me up for me to crack enough to admit how I felt. Hell, might have taken that for me to realize it fully myself."
Hong Kong though--god, he remembers Hong Kong. He would have taken that kiss too, then, and maybe their lives would have gone a completely different direction. "The whole building collapsed out from under us in Hong Kong. A minute before the stroke of midnight. I was lucky enough to have my bow, and a grappling hook arrow. Got us both out of there--but then we were being swarmed by agents from another group--God, I can't even remember which group now, it's been that long. I think it might have been MI6."
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"You're remembering things wrong," she scowls, though the severity is counteracted by the grin on her face. It may've been a long time ago for him, but for her it seems like it was only a couple of months back. She still remembers the look on his face when he saw her in her evening gown, and the way her stomach had knotted up with anticipation as the clock inched towards midnight.
"First of all, I was doing fine on my own when you grabbed me. Nearly knocked me out. And they weren't MI5, they were KGB, posing as Brits." Though she never told him that, did she? They'd been good, the agents. She wouldn't've caught it herself if she hadn't recognized one of them. "Once we got out of there--" And working together with him against a common foe had been surprisingly nice, "it was already a quarter past. Moment was sort of gone after all that."
Natasha looks over at Clint and her mocking grin fades. Hong Kong is in the distant past, and there are more pressing things here and now. "There are so many blanks I need you to fill for me." Her words are soft and achingly honest. "But this isn't the place and--" she glances over her shoulder at the lit windows of the embassy, "I still have a job to finish."
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