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Clint took two steps into his apartment, paused, shook his head, and shut the door behind him. He threw the locks, though God only knew why he bothered.
"Sofia Santos," Natasha greeted from her seat on his couch, curled up like a lean, dangerous cat, not looking up from her book.
"Who?" He stopped moving, his hand hovering over the counter, frozen in the act of dropping his keys. Then the name clicked. The woman who'd somehow stealth-fixed the fences on his farm almost a year ago. She'd paid the workers in cash, they never met her, and the trail was long cold.
"Wait, you found her? Where is she?"
"She's visiting with Director Coulson right now," Natasha told him, off-hand and uninterested.
Clint stared blankly at Natasha. "Huh?"
"Darcy, you idiot." She did look up at that to give him a pitying look. "Really, who else would it be? I don't think any hostiles are going to take the time to get your fences fixed."
Clint rolled his eyes and asked outloud the question he'd pondered earlier, "Why do I bother changing my locks?"
"I don't know. Why do you?" She asked, genuinely curious about his reasoning.
"Habit?" He guessed. "The shrinks say I'm paranoid."
"Only in the best ways, I'm sure," Natasha said with a smirk.
Clint chuckled and sat on the couch next to her. "Sofia Santos. Where'd she pull that out of?"
"Rico's grandmother's name, apparently."
"Rico. Nice." Stretching out, he propped his feet on the coffee table. Natasha lips twisted in disapproval. But, it was his furniture, if he wanted to put his feet on it, he damn well could. "Think she'll ever introduce us? If Foster didn't swear she'd met him, I'd wonder if Darcy just made him up as an excuse to get out of shit."
"He's real. Besides, you know Stark's met him. And, I think, Rogers, though we've never discussed it."
He glanced at her and laughed. "Did you stalk the poor kid?"
"Stalk is such a loaded term," she said primly. "She was our trainee, I wanted to make sure anybody close to her wasn't a threat."
"Rico? A threat?" He scoffed.
"How would you know? You've never met him." Natasha gave him a glare. "I simply went by his school and observed him for a couple days. He seems decent enough. Hard worker, dedicated, plenty of friends, polite."
"You accidentally run into him?" he asked knowingly.
"I asked for directions to administration. He walked me to the door."
Clint raised an eyebrow at her. "I'm sure he did."
"He was very respectful," she sniffed.
"You liked him," he said, surprised. Natasha rarely liked anybody. Not that she hated everybody, of course. You existed, you were a threat, or you weren't — her interest generally ended there.
"He was charming, in that sort of nerdy way. Sweet."
Clint's face fell into a thoughtful frown. "Huh."
"Oh, please. Are you jealous of the 'poor kid'?" She mocked with a nudge at his shoulder.
"No," he argued back immediately. "Pfft."
Natasha laughed, low and throaty. "His situational awareness was terrible. And you know how much I value that trait."
He grumped a little and crossed his arms, then her earlier comment hit him. "Wait. Was our trainee?"
"Yes."
"Oh." He looked lost for a moment before resorting to a small pout. "I missed graduation."
"I think you were there," Natasha noted dryly. "She graduated when New York fell."
"Yeah, I guess so."
She smiled at him and patted his knee. "You and Tony are going to have to accept at some point that Darcy's all grown up."
"Believe me, I know just how grown up she is." The pat turned into a punch. "Ow. That came out wrong."
"I'm sure."
Clint shifted on the couch, edging away from his partner and her sharp, pointy fists of death. "So, Director Coulson, huh? You went with her? You saw him?" He asked, changing the subject.
"I did. He's well enough."
'Well enough' wasn't quite the report he was hoping for, but if something was really off Natasha would tell him. "How'd he survive the spear through the chest?"
"I'm not sure exactly," she told him with a delicate one-shouldered shrug. "Some last ditch process Fury'd been working on. Part of something called the Tahiti Project. Everything related to it was destroyed, apparently. Coulson was tight-lipped about the details."
Clint chewed on that for a minute. "Who's his deputy?"
"Melinda May."
"Wow, I'd wondered where she got off to. I thought she was semi-retired. Who pulled her back?"
"I gather she's back because of Coulson," Natasha said, then her eyes drifted over to him and she frowned. "Did you really lose your temper with Darcy for keeping Coulson's survival from you?"
Chewing on his bottom lip, Clint tilted his head back and forth a couple times before admitting with a grimace, "I maybe yelled. A lot. I apologized."
"So she said."
"She told you I lost it?"
Natasha shook her head. "Not in so many words, only that you'd apologized. She was waiting for me to be angry with her, too. It wasn't hard to guess."
"Oh. Yeah, not my best moment." He rubbed a hand over his face. "She did good. She held it together, stayed sharp. There were a couple moments, right when everything started, where I had to shake her out of it, but for her first real action, she did great. She got us out of there, you know?"
"I didn't, actually," she said, looking interested. "She didn't say much about New York."
"Yeah, I told her to learn the layout, and she went above and beyond into the historical plans of the place. Found us an out. Some rank tunnel I don't think had been opened since the 50s. They built it and forgot it." He clucked his tongue. "She doesn't give herself enough credit."
"No, that's always been an issue with her," she agreed. "I've wondered at the self-esteem. That's an easy in for manipulation. I'd worry more, but she's too self-possessed. She doesn't crave approval."
"Can't be from Stark," Clint said as he considered the wild fluctuations of Darcy's self-confidence. She could go from Stark levels of arrogance to self-deprecating in a heartbeat. "I mean, he's an asshole, but not to Darcy. He talks her up all the damn time. She can do no wrong in his eyes."
"No, nor from her other family, as far as I can see. I did bring it up with Coulson. He says she got too comfortable in her father's shadow."
Clint nodded. "Doesn't want to stand out. That makes a lot of sense."
"Just as well for spy work, I suppose."
"She's got some bad habits, but, yeah, good instincts, too." Clint thought for another moment and then groaned, dropping his head to the back of the couch. "She is hard as fuck to read sometimes. I guess … well, Hydra'd just hit and then she pops off that she'd known Coulson was alive all the time."
"You felt betrayed," Natasha observed, her tone mild, free from judgement.
"I don't know. I guess so. It was out of God damned nowhere, I never had a clue." He rolled his head to look over at her. "I was an absolute dick to her. I scared her, I could tell. Kid was already terrified, and then I start yelling at her."
"It was a stressful day."
"Don't placate me, Nat," he growled.
Natasha raised an eyebrow at him, cool and sharp. "Don't beat yourself up, Clint. Darcy didn't seem to take it personally. She was more upset by her disagreement with Rogers."
Clint let out a long, low whistle. "I overheard her end of that. Sounded kind of rough. She okay?"
"She's irritated, and dug in about it. They can both be so intractable when they think they're in the right. It was only a matter of time before they butted heads. But, that's something …" Natasha sighed and tossed her book on the coffee table. "Coulson made her Barnes's handler."
"He did …" He stumbled to a halt and frowned. "Uh, I don't even know what to say to that."
"I'll admit, I'm afraid for her. I warned Rogers not to pull those threads, and there's Darcy walking right into them. He can at least take care of himself."
"She's no slouch," Clint pointed out, trying to sound more confident than he felt about this new situation. "We trained her the best we could."
"Unevenly," she pointed out with a worried glance at Clint. "When we could fit her in. I feel like we didn't always give her the priority she should have had. If we'd known—"
"Yeah, well, we couldn't know, and stuff comes up," Clint interrupted. "We couldn't have predicted she'd be kicked to the front lines. But, she's smart, she knows how to avoid trouble. Mostly."
Natasha gave a hollow laugh. "Avoid? You mean embrace."
"Nah, it just finds her. It's like a gift, really."
"Curse."
"Potato, potahto." Clint considered his partner in silence for a moment, taking in the drawn look on her face, the crease between her eyebrows. "She's going to do her own thing anyway. You know that. What did you call her? Intractable? Yeah, 100%."
"She tries to do everything herself," Natasha argued back. "She takes on too much, and is far too reluctant to ask for help."
Clint chewed on his lip and stared at his battered shoes. "I called her Fury Jr." Natasha snorted. "It kind of fits, though."
"In a way, I suppose."
"She really didn't like that."
"I imagine not." She backhanded his arm, gently this time. Well, gently for her. He probably wouldn't have a bruise. "You're an idiot."
He laughed. "He banned her from the Triskelion for asking about Coulson."
"Was that why?" Natasha shook her head. "She wouldn't say. I'm sure it had more to do with suspecting something was rotten in SHIELD. Better to keep her out of the way. Tony's reaction to this has been bad enough, if Darcy had been caught in the crossfire …" she trailed off.
"Jesus." Clint ran a hand over his face. "He did threaten to burn Fury's world down if he messed with her."
"Must have missed that."
"It was fun," he said with a wince. "I believed him, too, you know? Guy can be a lot of talk, but he was dead serious about that."
"Starks; they're all such hard work." Her lips twisted in frustration.
Clint snorted a soft laugh. "You like both of them, you can admit it."
"I can take Tony in very small doses, and, yes, I like Darcy. She's easy enough to like."
"She'll be okay, Tash."
"I wonder." She let out a long breath and tilted her head back, rolling it on her shoulders, trying to work out the stress. "I told her it was just as well she was the one to make contact with Barnes. But, I wish it hadn't been. I wish it had been almost anybody else. Or nobody. I don't know. Let Steve find him, let Steve handle this. Why Darcy?"
Clint put his hand on the back of her neck, squeezing lightly, offering a massage. She shifted, facing away from him, letting him do his work.
"Nobody else would have sat there and told him how they take their coffee," Clint said, "or detailed their collection of Norse gods, or whatever it was she talked about. Nobody else would have gotten him to sit still for ten minutes without an ugly fight. And he talked to her. Actually talked to her. I mean, really, who's he going to talk to? Darcy and nobody. In that order."
"He wasn't the Winter Soldier then. She's never seen that man. I have." She raised a hand and wiped it across her mouth, a rare show of anxiety from her. Clint bit his lip.
"I don't know what to tell you, Tash. I don't like the idea a whole lot. But, what are we going to do? Tell her 'no'? She'll just go around us."
"I know, I know," Natasha slumped back towards him, trying to let the tension go with his gentle kneading. "I've made her promise to call me if she needs to dig into the Soldier's history. Still, I really wish Coulson hadn't jumped on the assignment so quickly."
"Was it Darcy's idea, or—"
"No, it was Coulson. She was as surprised as I was."
"That's not like him." Clint shook his head. "He won't hesitate to send somebody out, but he's never really been the 'throw an agent to the sharks' type. And handling the Winter Soldier?" He took a deep breath and shuddered. He had his own vivid memories of Natasha's encounter with the assassin.
"He's desperate. Things are bad. They're not having much luck with recruiting, particularly with Stark pulling in higher-level agents and Talbot on the hunt. I'm sure the chance of getting Barnes onboard was too big an opportunity to pass up. And I think he's a little concerned about losing Darcy, so he's trying to give her more autonomy. She's got access to too many resources; resources he can't afford to do without."
"It'll be a cold day in hell before she abandons ship," Clint said with certainty. "I may have yelled at her, but, believe me, she yelled back."
Natasha laughed and pulled away from him, turning back around. "I never doubted that."
Clint let a piece of her hair slip through his fingers before letting his hand fall. "Bucky Barnes. Damn. I can't imagine what Rogers is going through right now."
"I've got some idea," she muttered, her expression going dark.
He nudged her shoulder gently with his own. "I was only gone for like a week, though."
"Bad enough."
"At least you knew I was alive."
"Yes," she sighed and bowed her head.
"And you went and got the Hulk for me," he told her in a teasing tone with a boyish dip of his chin.
"I went and got Banner with the hope that he'd do to Loki exactly what he did end up doing." She pursed her lips, thinking, and then nodded. "That was extremely satisfying."
"You're telling me."
Natasha offered him a smile and leaned back, propping her feet up. Not on the furniture, of course, but she crossed her feet and braced them on his shins.
Clint tapped her knee. "You sticking for a while?"
"Yeah, I might as well. Apparently, I can't trust people not to get into trouble when I'm not around."
With a snort, Clint threw his arm across the back of the couch behind her head. "I have been trouble free for like a week."
"Let's keep it that way," she mumbled. "For a little while, at least. I need a vacation."
Clint's eyebrows rose and his eyes went a little wide. The last time she said she needed a vacation she'd been gutshot. "How are you doing with everything? The leak?"
"The leak I caused?" She asked with a smirk and a raised eyebrow. "Not bad. Not as much about me in there as I feared."
"I noticed that."
"I owe Fury a lot."
Licking his lips, he leaned his head forward to get a better look at her face. "And how are you about Fury?"
She waved her hand casually and told him, "He's not dead."
"He's … not?"
"No." She looked over at him and laughed a little. "Just between us."
"Copy that."
Natasha yawned and rubbed a hand over her forehead. "I want Greek."
"Sure. I got a menu for Nico's on the fridge."
"No, their spanakopita is too greasy," she said with a disgusted twist of her lips. "Parmenion's."
"Par— but, they don't deliver."
Rolling her head against the couch cushion, she grinned up at him. "Please."
"You are actually the worst person."
"I know. Go get me souvlaki, Clint."
He glowered at her, unmoved.
She smiled even more brightly in response. "Go get dinner, and next time, I'll go with you to that tacky Mexican place you love."
"Yard long margaritas, baby."
Her smile didn't dim, but it did become profoundly fake. "Yeah, sure, how wonderful. Can't wait. Very excited."
"You will love it." He pushed her legs off his, and stood up, pointing a finger at her. "Awesome fish tacos."
"Okay."
"Free sombreros during happy hour!"
"I want salad, too. And, I mean actual salad, Clint," she called after him as he swiped up his keys and headed for the door. "Not just three leaves of lettuce on the side."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," he waved a hand and stepped out the door.
"And mosaiko!"
Craning his head back around the door, he gave her a flat look. "I was going to say I was glad you were home. But, I'm rethinking that."
"I missed you, too." She smiled. "Now go. I'm starving."