Time to go

One more

Natasha sipped of the last bottle of vodka and leaned back on the couch. Tony had long passed out after his fourth glass of whiskey in his overstuffed armchair. Steve since he was a super soldier couldn't get drunk like Tony and had retired to his room only slightly impaired. While Bruce had went down to the lab after a single glass of Captain Morgan, saying that alcohol made the other guy rowdy.

So Natasha drank alone, making her memories dull away with each swallow of Russian Stolichnaya. Staring out over the smog covered city she felt numb,completely numb.

After getting herself another bottle and taking a half-hearted sip she set it down and sighed. She could hardly taste it anymore. You know it's time to stop drinking when even straight up vodka tastes dull. She thought glumly, pulling herself to her feet.

Natasha walked with her hands out to balance herself as she made her way to her room. Around her the hallway walls began to smear and blur like wet paint, but she made it to her room without tripping too much.

Basically face planting on her bed she looked down at her clothes. A black t-shirt and some grey cargo pants.Good enough, she thought and squirmed underneath the covers.

Alcohol induced dreams quickly overtook her and Natasha found herself back in a huge familiar ballroom.

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The party swirled around her but she was only paying attention to one man. Jozef Feher, a Estonian nobleman, the man whose file had been handed to her on a dirty street corner of Moscow with a single plane ticket and the orders of clean, quick and in the next forty-eight hours.

Her hand ghosted over the small but lightning sharp knife hidden under her dress and she stopped for a moment and stared at the party twirling around her.

You could be dancing like the rest of them. a tiny voice nagged in her head. You can have a life where you aren't constantly looking over your shoulder or washing dried blood out from under your nails.

Natasha tried to ignore it, but it had been talking more and more often. Part of her wanted to believe the voice, that she could do something other than hurt people but she knew better.

This was what she was trained to do. Her ledger was already red and she didn't know how to clean it, all she could do was stain it darker. She had nothing outside of killing, the red room made sure of that. She wasn't supposed to think about dancing or partying. That voice shouldn't be even there, it was a sign of weakness.

After trying her best to muffle the screaming voice she began to slowly circle in on the Estonian man. Until a hand tapped her shoulder and she heard a deep voice.

"Care to dance Miss.Romanov?"

Resisting every urge to spin around and break the man's arm who knew her name, she turned slowly to look at the man.

He was tall and well built, with darkish blonde hair and blue eyes. His nose was a bit crooked like it had been broken and re-broken a couple of times.

Natasha frowned, he seemed vaguely familiar "No thank you,I'm really quite busy at the moment."

"Oh come on. I have a feeling that one dance won't slow you down, will it?" The man smiled a funny smiled and she sighed.

"One dance."

He laughed "That's good enough for me."

As Natasha followed him out onto the dance floor she felt the pieces come together.

There was a reason he was familiar. One month ago a mission was interrupted by some American company's agent, her employers called him Hawkeye or Barton. They had his picture in the kill on site file,SHIELD agent they said.