"Where were you when the Great Strangeness began?" is the common drinking question when agents gather in bars after fighting the good fight by day.

Natasha always wants to laugh as she drowns the words away in a shot of good Russian vodka. She feels Clint's knee bump hers under the table and ignores it.

"It began before we knew," she says once, slurring a little, in Russian. She is drunk after Sao Paulo. Clint dragged her halfway across the country for a month to take away the sting, but it wasn't enough, and now she sits with truths clawing out from under her skin. "None of us were born."

Maria and Sharon look uncomfortable. Phil looks politely interested, but he isn't. She knows this. None of the three of them speak Russian.

Clint though. He sits beside her and sips from his beer laced with the scent of dust and scorched ash and water, and she wants to kiss his mouth and taste its burn. He knows Russian, and he knows what she has said. By his silence, she knows he is very interested indeed.

(rest on AO3)