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“One more question,” says a young Phil Coulson. Something about the way his tone changes sets Clint’s nerves on edge. “Standard procedure. Are you soulmated?”
Clint Barton, aged nineteen, raises his eyebrows. “Are you asking?”
“I’ll note that it’s perjury to knowingly lie on a S.H.I.E.L.D. intake,” Coulson says, mild-mannered as ever. “So I’ll repeat myself: do you have a soulmate?”
Clint lets out a long sigh. “No.”
His first weekend off, he buys a train ticket to New York City to meet his soulmate. They arrange a time (10 am) and a place (the coffeeshop of a bookstore), and when Clint meets Laura it’s everything he’s ever dreamed of.
Laura Martin is smart, funny, and an orphan like him. But here’s the most important part: Laura agrees.
“I remember her, too,” she says, looking thoughtful. Her hair shines reddish-brown in the bright morning sunlight. “She hasn’t written anything in fifteen years.”
“But she’s still here,” says Clint. He can’t explain the gut feeling he has, just that it’s always been there. “I’m not the one washing everything off as soon as I write it. Neither are you, right?”
“No,” says Laura. She’s frowning. “Well, sometimes, but-- definitely not every time. Right?”
Clint raises his eyebrows at her. “There’s only one way to be sure.”
He produces a pen and waggles it at her. She snorts, grabbing it from him and settling her left arm on the table. Clint feels a momentary pang, but-- writing on someone else’s skin is a strong taboo. She’s not going to grab his arm after thirty minutes of conversation, no matter how much flirting they’ve been doing.
“Here goes nothing, I guess,” she says, glancing up at him.
Clint has never seen anything stranger than watching writing show up on two people at once. The weirdness is only exaggerated by Laura’s terrible handwriting, which (barely) reads, Good morning!
“Did you break your hand a lot as a kid, or something?” asks Clint. She shoots him a glare, and he puts up his hands. “Just asking.”
“Yeah, right,” says Laura, smiling at him.
They’re both distracted by the smear that spreads across both of their arms. It drips out to the other end of Laura’s greeting, then wipes away, leaving nothing in its wake.
“Well, that’s confirmation,” says Clint.
“I’ve never seen anyone so efficient at handwashing,” says Laura, at the same time.
They meet eyes and both giggle a little bit. Then Clint says, “I don’t know why she hasn’t talked to us. I can’t imagine--”
“I can.”
Laura meets his eyes and shrugs, like it’s obvious.
Clint frowns. “Are you talking about the three-people thing?”
She puts her hands on the table. “I’m not saying she’s right,” she says. “I can just-- understand some hesitance.”
“Look, I’m not going to pretend I didn’t grow up with--” Clint’s throat closes up. His dickhead of a father doesn’t deserve a mention on a sunny morning like this. “Yeah. But like, soulmates aren’t a temporary thing. We’re not going to go away. How long can she keep wiping us away?”
“That is a good question.” Laura looks at her arm, which is still stretched out blank on the table. “I’m not sure even she knows.”
“What’s your job?” asks Laura, a few weekends later.
Clint sighs. He knew this question was coming -- she already knows he isn’t in college. “I-- look, you can’t tell anyone about this, okay?”
Laura looks confused. “Okay?”
He locks eyes with her. “I’m serious. I know this probably sounds like me trying to make myself look important, but--” He takes her hands. “I’m literally a secret agent. I do violent shit for the government.”
Laura lets out a surprised bark of laughter. “What?”
“This isn’t a joke,” says Clint. “I know it sounds like a joke. But genuinely, I think I committed perjury by telling them I wasn’t soulmated.”
“What?” asks Laura. He thinks it’s starting to sink in. “You did-- Clint, what the fuck? Why did you lie about that?”
“Because we hadn’t met yet,” he says, squeezing her hands. “Because I didn’t want to name you to the government. Because I didn’t want to--” he hesitates. “Because something told me that I didn’t want to tell them about the other one.”
Laura’s quiet for a moment. “Yeah,” she says eventually. “Yeah, I think I’d do the same thing.”
Clint has been keeping a toothbrush in Laura’s apartment for three years when he gets a phone call from the director himself. “Priority mission,” says Fury, and “Omega-level operative,” adds Coulson.
Clint tells Laura, “See you later,” and gets on the first flight.
He’ll never be able to say why he hesitates. It’s a rainy day on a rooftop in the middle of Europe. He’s cold and hungry, he has her in his sights, and nothing would make more sense than doing his job and getting back to headquarters in time for dinner.
But when he doesn’t kill her, she doesn’t jump on the chance. She just stands there, looking at him, like she recognizes the same thing in his eyes that he sees in hers.
On the plane back, he sits down next to her. “I’m Clint.”
She looks at his outstretched hand, then up at him. “This isn’t usually the way you’re supposed to treat a prisoner.”
“You’re not a prisoner, not if I can help it.” He leans back, stretching. “You’re a recruit.”
She snorts, shaking her head. “I’m both, Clint. If you can’t see that, I don’t know whether I want you defending me.”
He smiles at her, trying to convey good-naturedness. “Hey, I’m doing my best.” He stretches out his hand so she can shake it -- awkwardly -- from under her cuffs. “What’s your name?”
She raises her eyebrows. “You didn’t even read my file?”
“I read your file,” says Clint, shaking his head. “I’m asking you to introduce yourself. It’s what you do when you’re trying to be friendly.”
“Which you would know all about,” she says, but there’s a sparkle in her eyes. She grasps at his fingers with her own, graceful despite the cuffs. “Natasha.”
Fury and Coulson both tell him they’re upset, but Coulson watches Clint with a kind of respect that Clint’s never experienced, and at the end of their meeting Fury shakes his hand.
So: that’s cool. But they still assign him to be Natasha’s full-time supervisor. Both of them are stuck on-base, basically confined to the same set of quarters, until she either kills him or passes a psych eval.
Clint wants to protest. But he’s the one who chose this. And Natasha barely knows him, but at least she knows him better than anyone else at S.H.I.E.L.D.
That first night, he brings two trays of food to the suite-slash-cell that they’ve assigned both of them. Natasha is sitting quietly on the floor, her back to the wall, her eyes closed. They don’t open when he comes in.
“Dinner service,” he says, knocking on the doorframe with two knuckles. Just to be a little shit.
She smiles a little, peeling open one eye. “I don’t have a tip for you.”
“That’s okay,” he says. He hesitates, looks at the empty space on the floor next to her, and sets the trays down on the table instead. “Come on, I’ve got the best options of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s shitty mess hall.”
She unfolds herself from the ground and is at the table in two steps. She points at a grey pile of sludge. “Best options?”
Clint suppresses a snort -- he’s never met someone with her kind of comedic timing. “That, madam, is the best unidentified-meat in the city.”
“Right,” says Natasha, raising her eyebrows at him.
They sit down to eat. Natasha gamely eats everything on her plate, although Clint catches a quick hesitation when she approaches the mystery meat. But she’s a high-class spy -- the kind that probably ate caviar on every mission. He can’t blame a bumpy adjustment to the significantly crappier life she’s traded the caviar for.
“Intake tomorrow,” he says eventually. “How are you feeling about it?”
She glances up at him. “What do you mean?”
He winces. “Oh, just... they can ask some invasive questions, sometimes.”
“Like what?”
“They asked me if I was soulmated.”
She frowns at him. “And that surprised you?”
“I guess it’s normal for spies,” admits Clint. “But I didn’t start as a spy. I was a sniper in the military before this.”
“Sniper,” repeats Natasha, deadpan.
“Shut up,” says Clint. He missed her several times in the chase that lead to the rooftop. “I’m just saying. Be prepared for that question.”
She nods, straightening out the long sleeves she’s always wearing. “What do they do with that information?”
Clint shrugs. “What do you think?”
He doesn’t let himself wonder that night, too afraid of spooking her with a too-personal question. But they tell him to sit in on her intake.
“One more question, Ms. Romanoff,” says Coulson, glancing up from the clipboard in front of him. “Are you soulmated?”
Natasha says, “No.”
“I don’t know, Laura,” says Clint, leaning against the wall of the call booth. “There’s something about her...”
“What do you mean?” asks Laura, her voice tinny from the phone.
He sighs. “That’s the thing. I can’t describe it. I know she’s the best liar I’ll probably ever meet. But something about her feels... familiar. Something real.”
Laura pauses. “You have a good sense for people,” she says. “I think you should follow that instinct. Just don’t-- don’t be dumb about it.”
Clint snorts. “Since when am I dumb about stuff?”
“Shut up,” says Laura.
“How’s the job?”
She sighs. “It’s fine. It’s whatever. Freelancing sounds more and more appealing. Do you know when you’re visiting?”
“I don’t,” admits Clint. “They want me with her until she passes a psych eval or--”
“--or until she kills someone, I know,” says Laura. “That’s a fucked-up metric, you know that?”
Clint laughs. “Yeah.”
“Well, she sounds cool. Ask her if she wants to take a trip to New York City sometime,” she says. “After she passes the eval or starts murdering, I don’t care. Some of your coworkers deserve it anyway.”
“Yeah, if she kills Rumlow I think Fury would give her a medal,” says Clint, smiling. Something’s loosening in his chest. “I wish you could meet her. She’s funny.”
“Yeah,” says Laura, her voice getting quiet. Neither of them are really sure why they’re still hiding their bond from S.H.I.E.L.D. -- Clint’s declared his relationship to his handler, Laura’s in his paperwork as his emergency contact, but for some reason, they’re both sticking with the story that they’re not soulmated. And that means Laura doesn’t visit him in Washington.
“Hey, I’ll get you guys in the same room someday,” says Clint, feeling certain but not sure why. “In the meantime, I need to make sure no one gets murdered.”
Laura snorts. “You do that.” On her side of the line, Clint can hear the subway squealing. “See you later, babe.”
Clint wakes up a few nights later to the sound of ragged breathing from the other room.
Natasha hasn’t been sleeping well. She hides it well, but Clint’s with her every day, from the minute she wakes up until they both turn out the lights, and he sees her tired eyes in the morning.
But it’s still dark now. He lies there for a minute, listening to the quiet sounds coming from the other room, and then sits up in bed.
The other room goes silent.
He sits there for another minute, waiting for his brain to boot up. He’s with Natasha every second of every day -- aside from when he leaves to report on her mental state. Maybe he should give her what privacy he can.
On the other hand... she’s perfectly capable of being quiet enough to let him sleep. And if she really didn’t want him to bother her, she could’ve taken the bathroom.
Decision made, he pads over to the doorway separating their quarters and leans through. “Hey,” he says.
In the smudgy darkness, Natasha’s pale skin stands out against her bedcovers. “Hi,” she says, her voice perfectly level.
“Can I come in?”
There’s silence for a moment. Then her head slowly tilts to the side. “Sure.”
He slips into her room, sitting down at the table before either of them have to consider him sitting on her bed. He doesn’t ask her if she’s okay, because those kinds of questions aren’t really helpful. Instead, he asks, “Do you wanna talk about it?”
Although the dark means everything’s blurry, her face looks perfectly clear, like she’s never even considered crying. She says, “About what?”
He smiles at her, ruefully. “I’m not gonna tell them about this, if that’s what you’re worried about.” He pauses. “There aren’t cameras in these rooms, either.”
Her silence speaks volumes. He winces. She definitely swept this room the first time they came, and probably every time they’ve gotten back, too. “Yeah, okay, sorry to state the obvious.”
She draws her knees up to her chest. “It’s a good thing to be thinking about.” She looks up at the skylight. “It’s shitty opsec to not put cameras in here.”
“Have you considered that they’re trying to build trust with you?”
“Part of the reason you’re here is that you’re hard to kill,” Natasha says, flatly.
Clint snorts. “Yeah, okay.”
They sit there in silence for a moment. Eventually, Clint asks, “Bad dreams?”
Natasha exhales, long and quiet. “Yeah,” she says.
Clint wakes up the next morning to the feeling of prickling on his elbow. He pulls up his arm to check -- sure enough, it’s Laura drawing stars on her elbow, the way she does on quiet mornings.
They’re generally pretty careful about writing on their skin while Clint’s on-site. Laura hasn’t written anything at all since Clint moved in with the world’s deadliest assassin. They both figured it wasn’t a risk worth taking.
Apparently that changed this morning. Their soulmate hasn’t, though. As Clint watches, Laura’s stars smear and then vanish, courtesy of the world’s most efficient handwasher.
He glances up at the sound of Natasha walking out of their shared bathroom, tugging down her left sleeve. She looks at him, startled, like she didn’t expect him to be awake yet.
“Good morning,” he says. He hesitates. “Did you sleep okay?”
“Yeah,” she says. She rubs at her arm. “Better, at least.”
The next night, when he opens his eyes, she’s sitting next to his bed. He almost jumps out of his skin.
“Holy shit, are you okay? What’s wrong?”
Natasha’s face isn’t impossibly composed tonight: it’s covered in wet streaks, like she’s been crying for a while. She says, “Bad dreams again.”
He sits up. “I’m sorry.” There’s a vague sense of relief -- at least she came to him. At least he can try to help. “Do you want to talk about it?”
She draws into herself. “Do you ever worry about being left alone?”
He doesn’t have to think about it. There is something so, so familiar about her posture, about the way she doesn’t want to meet his eyes. “All the time.”
She closes her eyes, tilts her head back. “What helps?”
“Reaching out to other people,” he says, slowly. “Distraction. Remembering that I can find other people, if it comes down to it.”
“But who can I-- who do you ask?”
Natasha’s face is a white streak in the darkness. Clint aches for her. “Uh... family, I guess, although not for me. Partners. Friends. Soulmates.”
She doesn’t say anything. He knows the cynicism that poisons the brain late at night, the way it makes anything sound impossible. He opens his mouth to tell her about Laura--
--and instead, he says, “Natasha.”
She must hear something in his tone, because she opens her eyes to look at him. She shifts minutely -- her entire body language transforms, turns concerned. “Clint?”
He raises his eyebrows at her. “Natasha, I’m not a mark.”
Her face slides back into stillness, which he’s starting to recognize as her natural expression. “No,” she says, “you’re not.”
The next morning, he sets their breakfast trays down on the table. Natasha looks at her tray, then up at him. “Are you going to report me?”
Clint frowns at her, grabbing an overripe banana. “For what?”
“For trying to kill you,” she says.
“You didn’t do that,” says Clint. He takes a bite and chews, trying to come up with a way to put his thoughts into words. Eventually, he says, “I don’t think what happened last night is anyone else’s business. Do you?”
Natasha watches him. “If they find out that I tried to grift you, it’ll be like I tried to kill you. They’ll take you off my case and, probably, stick me in a cell for the rest of my life.” She raises her fingers to form air quotes, sardonic. “Confirmed unstable.”
Clint puts down his banana. “Like I said,” he says, leaning towards her. “No one else’s business.”
Clint knows she’s watching for the signs of him reporting her -- the guards’ expressions as they deliver food, the lengths of his debriefings with Coulson, even Clint’s presence itself. But he keeps his promise. He sticks around.
And, slowly, Natasha starts to loosen up.
The first changes are quieter. She’s less expressive around him -- lets her face go flat as they play cards or comb over the newspaper.
Then the quality of the intel she’s giving him increases dramatically. She doles it out quickly, carefully, spelling names so he can take notes for his meetings with Coulson.
At the same time, she starts to drop tidbits about herself. The location of one of the safehouses she’s kept secret from everyone else, including her former Soviet handlers. Mentions of missions she messed up or never completed. One memorable time, she mentions learning colloquial English from an American with a metal arm, so casually that Clint knows he’s meant to remember it.
He knows she’s testing him. He keeps the secrets that aren’t direct intel. No one raids her safehouse, no gains are made on the cold cases related to her failures, and no one orders Clint to follow up on the American Soviet operative.
(He’s not sure how she confirms any of that, but he probably needs to accept that there are things about Natasha that no one will ever understand.)
At their twice-weekly debriefings, Coulson confirms most of this week’s intel from Natasha. “The rest is consistent with our existing information,” he says. “And it’s already led us to several promising leads. I don’t know what you’re doing, but--” he pats Clint on the shoulder. “Great job.”
“I don’t feel like I’m doing a great job,” Clint tells Laura over the phone. “I feel like I’m missing something.”
“What are you supposed to be seeing?” says Laura. “You’re just telling them the intel she shares. Is it the stuff you’re hiding from them?”
“No,” says Clint. “No, that’s the thing I’m most sure about. I’m just-- I don’t know what else is going on.”
Laura’s quiet for a moment, thinking. Eventually she says, “Maybe you should talk to her about it.”
Clint snorts, leaning against the wall of the call booth. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” says Laura. “She’s clearly seeing something in you, too. Maybe you guys can figure it out together.”
“I feel like I should remind you that she’s already tried to manipulate me once,” he says.
“Which I have not forgotten,” says Laura. “But she’s completely alone in a strange place and she hasn’t been able to leave in a month. I don’t blame her for grabbing at some control.”
“...yeah,” says Clint, quietly. He knows why Laura can see it so clearly -- it’s the same reason why he was able to spot it that night. The same reason he didn’t even consider turning her in. “It’s what I would’ve tried to do.”
He closes the door to their quarters. “You wanted to know about my soulmate,” he says.
Natasha’s sitting at the table, a half-finished game of solitaire spread out in front of her. She looks up at him. “Sorry?”
“That was what you were guiding me to, that night,” he says. “You wanted to know if I have a soulmate.”
Natasha looks at him with confusion, still placing cards. “Did you just figure that out?”
“No,” says Clint. “No-- I want to tell you about her.”
Natasha sets down her deck of cards. “I thought,” she says slowly, “that you don’t have a soulmate. That that’s why the intake question surprised you so much.”
“That’s what I told you, yeah,” says Clint, not bothering to point out that she obviously hadn’t believed him. “That’s what I told S.H.I.E.L.D. too. But I lied.”
Natasha raises one eyebrow. “Why would you perjure yourself about a soulmate?”
He sits down at the table, across from her. “If I’m being honest, I’m not really sure.” He watches her stack the cards with graceful movements. “But I don’t want to lie to you.” At her questioning look, he says, “You’re telling me literally everything about yourself, and I know that goes against everything you are. I might as well return the favor.”
He knows he’s said something right -- she stops shuffling the deck. “Okay.”
Clint grins. “Her name is Laura,” he says. “You’d like her. She’s funny, too.”
Natasha smiles back, contained. “I’m sure I would.” She cuts the deck, deftly keeping her sleeves from catching on the edges of the cards. “How do I know this isn’t just a ploy to gain my trust?”
“I have less dickish ways of doing that,” says Clint. Then he winces. “Sorry, that isn’t helpful. This is the truth.” He pulls out a pen and wiggles it. “I’ll show you.”
He and Laura have discussed the logistics of this over the phone. He hopes she’s ready. Setting his forearm out on the table, he writes, Hi, beautiful, keeping the strokes slow and even so Laura can’t miss the prickling feeling.
In front of him, Natasha stiffens. He winces. “I know it’s weird to watch someone else’s bond in action. Just-- bear with me, okay?”
Laura’s unmistakable handwriting blooms on his arm, underneath his own words. Hey. Is your friend there?
Yeah, writes Clint, catching Natasha’s eye. “Do you wanna say anything to her?”
Natasha is tenser than he’s ever seen her -- including on the rooftop when he was about to kill her. Carefully, she asks, “Why are you showing me this?”
“I told you--”
“--yes, I know you told me,” Natasha interrupts, tugging at her sleeves again. “That’s it? That’s the only reason?”
“Yeah,” says Clint, slowly. “What other reason would I have for showing you my soulmate bond?”
“Laura,” Clint gasps into the phone. “Laur. Tell me you’re there.”
“Yeah, I’m here!” says Laura. “Calm down. What the fuck is going on?”
“She’s-- on her arm. It’s her.” He takes a deep breath. “Laura, I found her.”
Director Fury folds his hands over his desk. “Explain to me,” he says, “why I shouldn’t have you arrested right now, Barton.”
Clint offers him a smile. “Because I’m good at my job, sir?”
“Don’t be cute with me, Barton,” says Fury.
“Yeah,” says Clint, his smile fading. “Okay.”
“We don’t just ask about soulbonds for our entertainment,” says Fury. “There’s issues with classified intel. There’s issues of protection -- yes, for your soulmate too, which is a separate system from romantic relationships because soulbonds are targeted so often.” He leans back in his chair. “So what reason of yours was more important than all of ours?”
“Sir, I didn’t know that it was Natasha,” Clint says. “I feel like I should say that right now. I didn’t-- I didn’t vouch for her because she’s my soulmate. I didn’t know until two hours ago.”
Fury nods.
Clint sighs, looks out the window. He’s gotta sell this -- reluctant but apologetic, straightforward enough that Fury won’t see what else he’s hiding.
Natasha walked him through this earlier -- while dripping ink over his hand so no one would need to ask how they figured it out. But it’s hard to remember her advice with Fury right in front of him.
“I knew I had a soulmate,” says Clint. “I’ve known that my whole life. But she-- she stopped responding when we were kids. I think I was four or five. The only reason I knew she was alive was because she kept washing off my writing.” He gives Fury a rueful smile. “She was always really fast about it, too.”
“So you say you weren’t in contact with her,” says Fury. “Assuming you’re telling the truth about that. Still. Why lie?”
“I don’t--” Clint shrugs. “Director, I wish I could tell you. I didn’t know anything about her. Maybe it’s that I didn’t feel like admitting that. Maybe it’s that I had a hunch -- some kind of feeling, that trying to find her would be worse than waiting.”
He tilts his head, grins a little. “You have to admit, my instinct was right about that. If I’d pushed it--”
He takes a deep breath, imaging a world where Natasha’s handlers would’ve had to work harder to keep her skin free of distractions. He lets his grin turn a little rueful. “I don’t think it would’ve been ideal for either of us.”
Fury shifts in his chair, watching him. “That much, I do believe.”
As Clint leaves Fury’s office, Coulson stops him in the hallway. “You know Natasha has to go in your file now, right?”
“Yeah,” says Clint. “Obviously.”
Coulson puts his hand in his pockets, looking down at the ground. “Barton,” he says. “I’ve been your handler for a long time now. I trust your judgment. Is there--” he hesitates. “Is there anything else you want to tell me about your bond?”
Clint looks at him. This is his cue, he knows -- if he lies about Laura now, he’s not going to get a third chance.
“No, sir,” he says.
“Okay,” says Clint. “Here goes nothing. Are you ready?”
He looks at Natasha, who meets his eyes with grim determination. She nods.
“Cool,” he says. “Let me get--”
His reach into his pocket is interrupted by Natasha, who’s already got a pen in her hand. She wiggles it, giving him a slow grin. “I’ve got it.”
Clint grins back at her. He’s pretty sure she stole his pen for that. He can’t believe he gets to have her steal his pens for the rest of their lives. “All yours,” he says, gesturing at the table between them.
Natasha takes a deep breath, setting her bare forearm down in between them -- the first time she’s worn short sleeves since they met. Based on what she’s said, maybe the first time in many years.
Hi, Laura, she writes.
They both wait. After a moment, there she is: her handwriting blooming to life on Natasha’s arm, at the same time that Clint can feel the tingle on his own. Hi, Nat, it reads. I hear you’re going to be with us for a long time.
Natasha glances up to catch Clint’s eye. She writes, As long as I can.