It's that time of the week again! You can submit between 500 - 1000 words of your unfinished fic to bc.unfinished@gmail.com and get the help you need. Let's all be wonderbras of creative support, shall we?

Today's submission comes from hermyfan. She said: "This was written for a promptathon prompt that I found way too late and promptly lost the link to. Basically instead of becoming a paid assassin after leaving the Red Room, Natasha became an art thief. And plot happened! Except now I’m stuck-ish. Anyhoo…"

In Madrid, he thinks he’s going mad.

In Dubai, he’s starting to think he’s being followed.

It’s Melbourne that sees him staring up at Coulson’s blank face, and he knows that he’s been set up.


The past two years have seen a string of art robberies that have captured the world’s attention. Everyone’s looking, but nobody really knows where to turn. (Coulson looks at him oddly as he explains this, but really, when has Clint ever followed the news?) And it turns out that they’ve taken place in every city Clint has been in the past two years.

He’s given a week before SHIELD will turn him into the proper authorities. Coulson lets the other agents throw Clint out of the van, but there’s a plane ticket in Clint’s pocket that wasn’t there before, and a softness rarely seen in his handler’s eyes. Clint doesn’t know where he’s going, but he knows who he’ll find.


It’s an art gala that’s all too similar to the one in Moscow, nearly a year ago now. But Clint dons the tux, never minding how he’d rather be in jeans. His bow is stashed in the safe house down the road, but he’s sewn a knife into the lining of his suit. He doesn’t expect trouble, but without the bow he feels naked, and the small weight on his right side is enough to keep the worries at bay.

He walks in through catering, head held high. The kitchen is so busy that no one looks his way, and he counts himself lucky. But before he walks through the double doors he catches a waitress by the arm. She’s barely eighteen, and looks up at him, wide-eyed. Clint gives her an easy smile, gently letting her arm go.

‘Have you seen my girlfriend? About your height, red hair, killer dress? I can’t find her anywhere.’

The girl smiles sympathetically, loosening up. ‘Yeah, she passed through here about two minutes ago.’

‘Great, thanks so much.’

He walks from the kitchen, and it only takes a moment to scan the crowd and locate her. The beauty in defined shapes strikes him harshly, and he feels a breath of relief that says no, you weren’t imagining her. Her lips are painted a dark rouge, her dress, black silk pools where it hits the ground and her hair, the colour of his dreams, cascades in soft waves over one shoulder. Her expression is one of polite disinterest, and she barely glances his way when he approaches. The scent of her perfume is the on the air, and he knows this is the woman.


She finishes her drink and Clint choses this moment to lean forward, closer but not (yet) intrusive. She tilts her head towards him, barely, with an eyebrow raised.

‘Yes?’ she asks curtly, but there’s something in the way she shifts herself that Clint reads as relief. Which is odd, because he was expecting something else entirely. Defensiveness, an attack, even, but certainly not relief.

‘Dance with me.’ It’s an impulse, complete and true, but it’s not he’s not going to take back.

She smiles up at him curiously, and he pulls back with a laugh.

‘Surely I’m not the first person to ask you to dance.’
‘It happens less than you’d think,’ she replies, flat accent dipped in something foreign.

‘Clint,’ he says as way of introduction.
‘Sandra,’ she replies, taking his hand gently in hers. He can’t be sure if it’s her real name or not, but he honestly doesn’t care. Enough involvement to find where she’s stashed the paintings. Enough involvement to get him off the line (he’s not morally opposed to stealing, just opposed to implicating others in your crimes.) But she leads him to the dance floor and the quartet (God, violins, he scoffs to himself, Barton, what are you doing?) strikes up a new song.

He leads her in small talk, finding out everything he doesn’t need to know about her cover. But he knows she’s letting him clumsily spin her around the room, punctuated by periods of swaying. It’s when she starts asking of his work and the music starts to slow down that he’s had enough.

‘Didn’t I see you in Sydney last week?’ It’s casual enough, and she smiles up at him, eyebrow vaguely furrowed.

‘It’s certainly a possibility, but I wasn’t there for very long?’
‘What about Shanghai?’
‘I was there about a month before that.’
‘Dublin?’

At this she pauses, and Clint feels a surge of pride as she shrinks before him.

‘Paris, Dublin, Mulan – shall I go on?’ He says quietly.

Something shifts, and Clint doesn’t quite know what’s happened. All he knows is that his world has narrowed down onto this woman and she’s stiff in her arms but her eyes are blazing with something that wasn’t there seconds before.

‘Coincidence,’ she purrs into his ear, and the bottom of Clint’s stomach drops out. She has a hazy grin on her face, and Clint all but growls, hand tightening on her waist. A faint hiss of a laugh finds its way out of her chest, the world tries to shift back, she’s pulling away, but he’s already seen everything he needs, and he lets her know it, pulling her closer.

‘The thing is, sweetheart,’ he growls, turning them both around in time with the music, ‘I don’t believe in coincidences. And I have seen you in every city I’ve been in since London.’

At this, finally, she pauses. Her brow furrows infinitesimally, and her smile falters. But she doesn’t draw away from him, and the moment passes. She smiles at him through bared teeth, and tilts her head back in a laugh.

‘London? You were at Shanghai first.’

The quartet stops playing, the moment passes, and they draw away from each other to softly applaud. But his eyes don’t leave hers, and he’s close enough to grab her if she tries to dart away.