Road to War Part II: Yes, Anastasia

All the girls seem to be there

After she finishes talking to Steve, she sits back and considers what to do now. She's in hiding, but the excitement from getting here is hard to adjust away from. Taking a deep breath, she decides to send James a message. After some deliberation, she tells him to be careful, and that she's thinking about him. When she was going through the same thing, knowing Clint was on her side was always beneficial to consider. So she hopes this will have the same effect.

She waits a few moments to see if he will respond right away, but supposes he's still walking, and may not have noticed what she gave him yet. So she goes back to the porch to sit with Clint. Opening the door very quietly, it amuses her to see that he is likely asleep. He always could sleep anywhere. She sinks into the chair next to him and looks out, absorbing the peacefulness of the scene.

"How'd he take it?" Clint asks suddenly.

"Did I wake you?"

He snorts, sitting up a little to glare at her. "I was just resting my eyes."

"Sure," she agrees amicably. "He took it alright. Once it sank in."

He nods, settling back down like he had been before her interruption. "It was good to tell him," he mutters.

"Hmm?"

"I was just thinking, if one of my best friends was out there, I'd want to know he was okay, no matter what else might be going on."

She studies him, gauging his statement. "Who are your best friends?"

"Fine, it's just you," he answers with a sigh.

Smiling, she shakes her head. "I don't have a lot of friends," she says after a pause.

"That's alright."

"Is it?" she presses.

"Tasha, you weren't exactly brought up to be friendly." She glares at him, and he holds his hands up disarmingly. "Not that you're a bad friend, it just doesn't come as naturally to you as, say, dropping a guy using nothing but your thighs."

The phrasing makes her laugh, and she ditches her offended expression. "You're right. Making contacts and cozying up to strangers was encouraged in the Red Room, but we weren't expected to actually maintain relationships."

He nods sleepily, then turns to look at her with sudden clarity. "That's it, isn't it?"

"What?" she asks, at a loss.

"Why you're being so... helpful toward Barnes. Because of the Red Room."

She shrugs, breaking eye contact. "Not because I'm friends with Rogers?"

"No, though that's part of it. But you think he's like you."

"Isn't he?"

"You'd know that better than me. I haven't ever met the guy. But I think rehabilitating another conditioned assassin would go a long way toward cleaning up your ledger," he says gently.

She bites her lip, surprised. But Clint always saw through her. "I hope so."

After watching her for a moment more, he closes his eyes and seems to fall back asleep. She waits for a while, digesting Clint's insight. Was that all the explanation, then, for her strange connection with Barnes? It might be, she concedes. It would be better to help him become human again than any other motives she might have. And having gone through a similar process herself will help.

Silently, she slips out of her seat and heads back inside. Her laptop is still on the coffee table in the living room, and she boots it up, then settles back to read. The SHIELD leak also released files of which she was not aware, and she wants to catch up, not to mention more recent stuff from the HYDRA bases they've taken down. Knowing more than her adversaries has always been an effective tactical advantage. She opens that database and pauses, considering what she wants to see. Then she gives in to her curiosity and searches for the Winter Soldier.