#maylindamay

No matter how many bribes she brought Coulson or Fury, no matter her creativity and ingeniosity with a laptop, she couldn’t crack the code. Clint had shared everything he was with her, everything he had been and everything he wanted to be. Why the sudden need to leave?

When he came back, three months later with tired purple lines under his eyes and what felt like both longing and a sort of recharged energy, Natasha felt suspicious. She poked, asked, but as bad as he was in hiding things from her, she never got it out of him. She never got his hands on the mission report, and even tried to get him into trouble by humoring him for not filing paperwork. But Hawkeye remained serious all the while, brushed her off like drops of water against feathers, and moved on.

Natasha understood after a while, after she had been briefed on his next solo mission, that a partnership also meant that they would have to be sent on opposite sides of the earth.

He did not get sent on one of those secret and silent missions for three years. With the experience of taking down drug cartels, independent corrupt business men and even having to deal with overseas intelligence (if MI-6 was bad, they were nothing compared to the Kingsmen), she didn’t wonder about it as much as the first time. It wasn’t important, and she trusted him. 

So, when he left with an amused glint in his eyes and an expectant vibe almost glistening around him, Natasha couldn’t help but wonder what exotic mission he had been sent on. 

He was gone for a little over three months again, and came back with a sort of relaxed attitude. A colored mug appeared on his desk - a souvenir, maybe? - but he never disclosed any information regarding the mission.

One night, as she grew curious about those missions, she tried to get into the files again. She was kindly rejected by a code and a message that clearly meant there was nothing to find. Scraps of information. Nothing.

Natasha tailed him as if he was the devil himself. He cooly regarded her with a sense of self dignity and respect, and she understood that he did not want her invading him. Whatever those missions were, unlike all the other solo missions, it was clear that he did not want her near. Too personal? Political? Controversial, maybe?

The day after New York, when they’d debriefed their missions and Clint had learnt what she had done to get him back... He sent her the coordinates to the safehouse he had been staying at.

And, when she stood in front of a front yard where a wooden horse and several bikes - all of them too small for a grown man to use - she got a first feeling. When the door opened to two flamboyant kids who looked exactly like a carbon copy of Clint, followed by Clint holding a lovely woman by the hand... 

Her mind raced through the calculations - they hadn’t been missions. They had been parental leave. Camouflaged as missions. Clint had a family.