An Unlikely Romance - The Avengers (Part 2)

Forced Socialization

In spite of your misgivings, the entire outing with Natasha was relatively uneventful beyond her strange behavior and your own misgivings. In fact, you quite enjoyed the food and the private atmosphere, especially the free and constant refills on wine. Natasha didn't do much beyond the strange staring, seeming to indulge herself at least as much as you did in the extravagant foods and drinks offered to you. Natasha even spent a good portion of the date and time with you explaining the differences between different varieties and colors of wine to you.

"How do you know so much about this kind of stuff?" You had asked, quirking an eyebrow. "Doesn't seem like something a SHIELD Agent would be well versed in for the job... is wine a hobby of yours?"

"No," Natasha said immediately, shaking her head, "I don't mind it, but I'm hardly a sommelier."

"A soma- what?" You asked.

"Oh, finally a word you don't remember," Natasha teased. "Don't worry, lots of people don't know that one, you probably didn't forget it at all. A sommelier is a professional wine taster."

"Huh," you pondered, staring at your own glass. "Say, why do I have no problem with language anyway? How can I have amnesia and forget all the names, places, people... you know, <I>everything</I>, and yet I woke up speaking English just fine? And I seem to be able to function pretty well as a human, more or less."

"Amnesia is a strange thing, and there are different kinds and severities," Natasha explained. "To simplify it a little bit... it's pretty likely that the language section of your brain wasn't affected by what they did to you, at least not badly enough to make you unable to read, write, or talk. But we don't know what you were capable of before the procedure – you could have been a black belt, a scientist, a highly skilled assassin, an engineer, a veteran soldier, a doctor... we have no idea what you've forgotten. Think about driving a car; do any muscle memories come back?"

You thought back to the times you watched Natasha and Clint driving. You sort of understood what they were doing, but seeing their hands work the wheel and their legs the pedals... none of it seemed familiar, so you shook your head.

"Whatever they did to seems to have left language and motor function intact, more or less, but it took away all of your memories; even muscle memory. It might have been intentional... but judging by the way the rest of those experiments turned out, it was probably a happy accident."

"Can't say I'm complaining," you mumbled after her explanation. "It was hard enough dealing with Fury in English. I can't imagine trying to do it without words."

"Maybe it would have been easier," Natasha said, quirking an eyebrow at you. "If it wasn't for the snark, Fury might have actually liked you."

You laughed and finally drank the wine you'd been staring at for far too long.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The rest of the week passed mostly uneventfully, until Saturday. Natasha's strange drop-ins stopped after that, which either meant that you were wrong and she was just being friendly, or you were right and she had noticed your awkwardness. Either way, the next time someone knocked on your door, it wasn't Natasha. In fact, it wasn't even Fury, which was surprising in its own right – it was Clint, with a full case under each arm, greeted you with a two-finger forehead salute as you opened the door.

"Alright, let's get this party started," Clint said, smirking at you while taking a step into your apartment. You stepped out of the way more out of instinct than anything, a bit surprised at his appearance.

"What party, and why are we starting it now?" You asked, though Clint was already halfway into your living room.

"Don't act like you don't know. I've only mentioned it to you like twelve times over the last month," Clint said, settling himself in on your couch while cracking open the first case and pulling out a can of beer. "I mean, I know I didn't actually say I'd be coming over, so I'm kind of inviting myself in here, but I didn't think you'd mind the company. It's probably lonely in here, I figured if I'm gonna be binge drinking and annoying someone, you could probably use the company, right? C'mon, are you that surprised? You're looking at me like I'm a ghost or something."

"That... yeah, you know what, that sounds like something you'd do," you admitted, sort of shrugging off Clint's unexpected entrance. Aside from not inviting himself in before this, his behavior wasn't that out of line with his prior actions. Compared to waiting in a fake air conditioning vent for you to crawl inside, pretty much anything seemed normal for him.

"Hell yeah it does. Sit down, drink up, get down, shut up," Clint said while grinning at you. "Not necessarily in that order, by the way. Just in case you feel like partying or screaming at the TV while you're sober, or prefer getting drunk standing up. I try to be an all-inclusive party animal."

"You are the <I>least</I> professional 'government agent' I can possibly picture," you say, chuckling as you take a seat opposite Clint. "I can't tell if that makes me feel better or worse."

"If you start thinking being more professional is better, let me know," Clint says, grinning at you. "I know a certain Agent who can make you regret thinking that."

"Not a fan of professional government agents? Let me guess, something about beaurocracy?" You ask, grinning. Despite the banter, Clint's expression suddenly turns sour.

"Don't get me started on beaurocracy. The informality and the underground nature of things is probably the one <I>good</I> thing that came around after the whole..." Clint sighed, shaking his head and cutting himself off mid-sentence. "Doesn't matter, this is no time for moping over the past, this is about drinking for what's happening right here in the present!"

"So... uh... are you ever gonna actually tell me what you're here for tonight?"

"Holy hell, you really did forget, didn't you?" Clint asked, laughing as he tossed you a can of beer. "It's the American Idol season finale tonight! I've been hyping it up for weeks! Do you even listen to me?"

You chuckled, but didn't answer. Because in spite of Clint's insistence that he'd told you before... well, memories were very precious to you. You had so few of them, and you'd lost so many. You didn't know a lot of things about this base, or SHIELD, or even the world at large.

But you <I>knew</I> he hadn't mentioned anything about a season finale. So why was he insisting he had? It was hard to say; perhaps he genuinely thought he'd mentioned it, or had confused his conversations with you and another. The worst part was that none of this even seemed that out of character for Clint; he'd done almost identical things in the past, and usually with alcohol in hand like now.

So what was bothering you? What had felt so wrong the past few weeks? Were you just paranoid, was the shock of all this finally settled and your real fears kicking in?

You tried to drown the thoughts, but Clint hadn't brought nearly enough beer for you to forget.