Clint thought she'd been going to Russia on missions to infiltrate and shut down the Red Room before they could train her successor. Solo mission content was usually confidential, so if she didn't want to tell him anything, he didn't mind. If she came back reserved and wary, he attributed it to her reliving the past.

But when, on a double mission to Moscow, he found himself strapped to a chair with her laughing over him, he realized how wrong he had been. She didn't come home. She wouldn't. SHIELD wasn't her home and neither was he. Natalia Alianovna Romanova had never truly defected. When he came home battered and alone, Fury made a decision he never thought he would have to: they needed Natasha dead and they needed it now.

When that day came, she stood before him in the empty alley. She knew why he had come back. "Вы можете также убить меня," she spit "Но вы не будете, потому что у вас есть слабости, которая не изменилась. Я удивлен, что они послали тебя, Ястреб. Вы всех людей." His bow was drawn, the arrow trained at her heart. And then she left.

She came back to SHIELD a year later, broken and bruised. He wouldn't help her, he let her loose to Fury's wrath, whatever that might be. She stayed in insolation for months until they determined she really was telling the truth, that she was coming back, that she was sorry, and that if they couldn't forgive her, then it was alright, they could kill her. She'd rather be dead anyway, she deserved it.

When she came to him, he pinned her down with a knife to her throat. He was met by resignation and acceptance in her eyes. She didn't fight back, knew it wasn't worth it. They stayed that way for what felt like hours to both of them until he sat back, stabbed the knife in the ground beside her, and stalked off, slamming the door behind him.

She curled in his bed one night when the nightmares came and he pushed her out with his feet. She slept on the floor. He came home from a mission with broken ribs and she stayed in his hospital room until he recovered. He didn't say thanks. He found a new bottle of vodka, the real Russian stuff she had introduced him to years ago, in his room along with a handwritten note. He drank the vodka and tossed the letter in the trash, wasted.

Three months later he found the letter under his bed. He had missed the trash can. He read it for the heck of it and found himself at her door when he had finished. He didn't knock, he didn't need to; she opened the door as if she'd been waiting for him.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly.

She smiled, more with her eyes than with her mouth, and stepped back, a silent welcome.

"I shouldn't..."

"Clint." He looked down at her. "Don't. Apologize. Go. Whatever you think you shouldn't do." She turned from him and sat on the edge of her bed, looking down at her hands.

He stayed.

The Russian (roughly) translates to: "You can kill me. But you won't because you have a weakness that has not changed. I'm surprised they sent you, Hawk. You of all people."