Spiderwebs - Chapter 1

Bang. Bang.

Two perfect gunshots shattered the silence, reverberating in the enclosed chamber with the effective volume of a Lear jet breaking the sonic barrier. Natasha, with her headgear securely fastened around both ears, heard nothing, but her finely tuned senses picked up every vibration in the room as the bullets spiraled through the air and embedded themselves in wooden targets 30 feet away. Slowly, she lowered her handgun and walked over to inspect the damage. Perfect round channels were bored through the exact center of each target, still framed in a wispy smoke. She traced a finger lightly around each one, almost caressing them. 

A good gun and a standing target--the only two things that had never failed her in life. Men come and go, alliances shift, hearts break, truths change, but a shot will always be as steady as the hand that wields it. Or sometimes even steadier...

In the blink of an eye each bullet hole was suddenly protruded by a feathered shaft. In the space of another instant, before she could even process the reaction, Natasha leapt instinctively to her feet, cast off her headgear, and drew her gun. Breathing heavily, she turned to face the open door, and the man that stood there.

"Did I catch you off guard? That would be a first." He smiled at her, arms crossed coolly as he stepped into the room.

"Congratulations, Clint," she sighed. "You've effectively compromised my last safe haven. There is now nowhere in the nine realms that I can let my guard down."

"Tasha, relax, it was only me," he said in reassuring tones. He reached out to embrace her, but Natasha remained unmoving. "Besides, when did you start speaking like one of those Asgardian drama queens?"

"There's no difference between their reality and ours. I've just expanded my horizons. And it doesn't matter. If you can catch me off guard here, an enemy could do it just as easily. You of all people should appreciate that mindset."

Clint stepped around behind her, brushing her auburn hair aside to gently kiss her neck. 

"Just once in a while, couldn't we stop being soldiers? Maybe be something different instead?"

She turned to face him, cutting off his attempts to repeat the romantic gesture. 

"It's who I am, Clint. Not what I choose to be. It used to be who you were, too."

"What about what we used to be, Natasha?"

"Partners. That's what we were. And if those are the days you miss, you and I must be remembering them very differently."

He gave her a weary half-smile. "Wouldn't be the first time."

"No," she agreed. "It wouldn't."

She turned and strode out of the room before he could say anything further, her face twisted into a mask of conflicted emotion only once there was no chance he could see.

When had it come to this? In days gone by she would have given anything to have what she just walked away from. Before "it" happened, Hawkeye had been her sole motivation for survival. She didn't believe in what she did. She'd been on too many sides to believe that one was any better than another. They all just gave you the chance to protect different people. And the person she had here had been the only one she was interested in protecting. She owed him her life, and it was a debt she repaid by giving him her heart. It could never be outwardly spoken. That would have meant death, or danger, or termination. But all of her training, all of her tenacity, all of it was for a single purpose. Even when the very Earth was threatened, and Hawkeye was among the threats, Natasha hadn't been fighting to save the Earth. she'd been fighting to save him.

When Director Fury had found out--though he'd always known, he ALWAYS knew--he issued an order to terminate their partnership. Not that it did much, since her partner was at the time under the influence of a crazed maniac demigod bent on subjugating mankind, but at that point she knew there was no return. When she got him back--IF she got him back--they could never be coworkers again. It would have to be everything or nothing. Fury  knew it was a pointless injunction, but he saw the angle just like he saw everything else--as a strategic advantage. He even made Natasha use her feelings for Clint as leverage to uncover the enemy's plans. She still remembered vividly those agonizing experiences aboard the airship, blades piercing her heart as Loki described to her--

Loki.

He was the real problem, wasn't he? She despised him with every fiber of her being. And yet, since the aftermath of the Chitauri attack, he had been a constant presence in her mind. Every time she looked at Clint, she saw Him instead--his cruel and twisted grin, his mocking eyes glinting fiercely. Every time he spoke to her, she heard the icy venom of the silver tongued Asgardian instead. 

"Is this love, Agent Romanov?" 

Her jaw clenched involuntarily and her eyes began burning as she remembered her encounter with the wicked villain. He had stolen everything from her. Coulson, the closest thing she had to a friend. The security and status she used to know as Fury's right hand. And now even her love for Hawkeye, the very thing that had used to define her.

She was consumed with bitterness and hatred toward him. It was an overwhelming obsession. She couldn't close her eyes without being tortured by visions of the trickster god. She couldn't look at Clint without remembering his wicked former master. His mocking memory was her constant companion, and yet every time she heard his voice it was the same question over and over again--

"Is this love, Agent Romanov?"

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