After Eleanor had left, Nat stayed on her bed, with a small smile resting on her face after the events of the evening. It had been a long time since someone had kept her company for a genuine and kind reason, it kept the flame of hope burning.

She really hoped that the younger woman would keep to her promise of visiting tomorrow. She had been let down in the past, and so she still had some doubt about what would play out tomorrow. Natalia desperately wanted to trust her, she could become a friend and a helpful ally in life, but years of conditioning were in place, keeping her walls up, and it would take more than a couple of hours of card games to bring them down.

Remembering that Barton was coming to collect her at around midday, for what would hopefully be her final time in SHIELD's interrogation rooms, she decided to get some rest. This time, falling asleep much faster than the last.

---

Eleanor once again slowly woke up at 5:30 am. Rolling over to try and beat the crap out of her alarm clock, she over aimed and rolled harshly off of the bed, landing on her side. This was enough to wake her up, jumping up abruptly and yelling "I'm up!". She shook off the brief pain from her body, turned the alarm off, and made her way over to the bathroom. She would have given anything to be able to just hop back into bed and sleep for a week.

Quickly showering, getting into uniform, and once again putting her hair up into a high ponytail, she made her way down to the cafeteria. Knowing that the day ahead held a lot more paperwork and reports than normal, she needed the caffeine kick.

Downing 4 espressos in quick succession, she was stopped from getting her 5th by none other than Clint.

"Slow down there Speedy Gonzales! You're gonna be bouncing off the walls if you're not careful".

She quickly nodded in agreement, before smiling at the Agent next to her. "Clint!" she shouted happily, only just fully comprehending that it was him standing there. He just shook his head in disapproval. Rude, she thought, could at least show some enthusiasm as well.

"Come on Hughes, let's get some food, long day ahead of us". Grabbing her forearm, he dragged her across the room to get them both some food.

After getting some fruit and toast they sat at a nearby table. She inhaled her food, almost choking. Clint just stared at her whilst slowly chewing his food. He then started chuckling whilst shaking his head, thinking to himself 'it's really gonna be one of those days huh?'.

"So how'd the interrogation go?" Eleanor stared at Clint expectedly, her fingers drumming on the table from excess energy.

"It went fine, she's doing a good job".

"Short answer I see", she responded pointing a slice of toast at him. She wanted to actually hear how it was going not just that it was 'fine', not a very reassuring word.

"Not much to say, she says what happened, who was overseeing it, consequences if she didn't follow through, yadda yadda, it's all very repetitive".

"Fair enough", she was satisfied with that answer.

After a few seconds of silence, she groaned before placing her forehead down on the table. Confusing the hell out of her friend sat opposite her.

"You okay?".

"No".

"Aight".

After another few seconds of silence, she looked up, furrowing her brows at Clint. "You're not going to ask me why?".

He chuckled at her antics, "Fine, what is wrong with you, my dear friend". This earned him an unamused stare from the woman in front of him. But, this was quickly forgotten as she placed her head back down on the table.

"Paperwork".

"Ahhh yes, your job" he said with a laugh.

Sitting up again, "Yeah but there's so much to do today!".

"Get it done quickly and you'll be able to see your new friend".

This quickly got her attention, "How did you-?".

"After you sprinted away yesterday Fury came and found me, asking if I trusted her alone with you, not hard to put the pieces together".

"And you said yes?", he just simply nodded in response.

"I gotta go now though, prep for my next 'chat' with her. I'll come meet you at like 2 in our usual spot though and we can do some work". Without waiting for a response he got up and walked off.

Eleanor scoffed but quickly smiled, looking forward to spending some time with her friend later. Their usual spot was a small corner of one of the communal rooms, it had a beanbag, and so of course it was her favourite place in HQ. She would have headed there now, but she couldn't stay in one place for too long, so decided to head over then when Clint would.

Grabbing both hers and Clint's rubbish, she went over to the bin and threw it away. It would be about a 4-minute walk to get to her desk so she walked over there now to get there for 6:45 am.

Nodding politely at the Agents that she passed, she got into the lift and waited to reach the correct floor. With her excess energy, she was tapping her foot rather loudly, earning some annoyed looks from other Agents who were also not happy with being in the office this early. When the doors opened she practically ran to her desk, hoping to just get started on the work now. For two reasons: she did not want Nat sitting in that cell for much longer, and she did not want to be working her ass off until late into the night.

Her motivation was short-lived though, as when she sat down at her desk, she was immediately distracted by a piece of fluff. After about 5 minutes of this one way staring competition, she realised that she wasn't working and immediately jumped into action. Writing report after report of what she had learnt yesterday, and also tying in what Clint had learnt in the interrogation. Having it all put together in this way would mean that her getting immunity would hopefully go through if the rest of the case went smoothly. So, it was crucial that she made no mistakes. No pressure or anything, but Nat's life was hanging in the balance of some documents that Eleanor was filling out.

After seemingly forever, it was 1:50 pm. Remembering her agreement to meet Clint, she grabbed some granola bars from her desk for lunch, picked up her laptop, and went down to the communal area.

Seeing Clint was already there in his seat, he refused to sit on a beanbag which she thought was quite rude. She sprinted over to their corner and body slammed into the beanbag, scaring the crap out of Clint who hadn't seen her enter the room.

"JEEZ HUGHES" he yelled, grabbing his chest. She just smirked at him, payback for leaving her with his rubbish this morning at breakfast.

"You alright, old man?". Clint glared at her before throwing the scribbled up notes he made on the documents used in today's interrogation at her.

Getting herself comfortable on the beanbag she said, "All business today huh?".

Wanting to tease her as revenge for almost killing him, he responded with "Trust me, this isn't pleasure". Once again, rude.

"I'm offended Barton, it is always a pleasure being around me". Clint just let out a short and loud laugh, before shaking his head and getting on with some of his own paperwork.

After an hour or so, Eleanor felt herself crash. She should not have had that much caffeine in such quick succession. She let herself flop backwards in the beanbag, causing Clint to briefly look up before looking back at his own laptop.

"Is someone crashiiiing" he said in the most mocking tone he could muster.

"Shut it Tweety Bird" was her response, whilst massaging her temple.

"You know, I don't have to hang out with you right?" he scoffed.

"You're the one who told me to meet you here! You love me really Barton, admit it".

"Do not".

"Sure man, keep lying to yourself".

She resumed her work, suddenly remembering the importance of this case. Her attention span was -100000, and so doing work for long periods of time meant she had to mentally slap herself every now and then to keep on doing it.

---

After another 3 hours of work she threw her arms up in the air in victory, "Aaaaand I'm done!". She was relieved as her role in this case was now complete, but it also made her nervous as it was now out of her hands. She just hoped that she had done enough to earn Nat some well-deserved freedom. reading through all of Nat's information SHIELD had on her, she learnt a lot about the woman. The Red Room did not sound pleasant, at all, and she felt sick that this had been happening whilst she was blissfully unaware. Eleanor felt bad that she knew as much about Nat as she did, but it was a small price to pay if it meant that she could get the woman out of the cage that she was currently in.

Realising that it was almost time to meet Nat, she bid Clint farewell. She didn't have an official agreed upon time to meet the other woman, but she wanted to give her some consistency, given that her world was currently in chaos, it was the least she could do.

She sped walked around HQ, grabbing her UNO cards whilst putting her laptop away, and instead of coffee, she grabbed some tea. She would not be able to stomach another cup of coffee today. Now happily making her way down to Nat's cell, she did her little kick-knock again before opening the door.

Walking in, she smiled at Nat. Instead of being met with confusion like yesterday, she was just met with a woman who looked completely lost. Putting the UNO cards and tea down, she slowly walked over to Nat, so as to not startle her.

Nat just looked up at her with sad eyes, breaking the young Agents heart. "Are you okay?", of course, she wasn't okay, but how else was she supposed to start the conversation.

Nat didn't know what to do, she desperately wanted to open up, to have someone to comfort her, but she couldn't there was still a mental block. So, she just looked at Eleanor before looking away again.

Knowing that Nat wasn't ready to open up, Eleanor simply grabbed the tea she got for her and offered it to her, along with a small smile. Nat took it with a small nod.

"Would you like me to leave?". Eleanor expected that she would want some alone time when feeling like this, sometimes the extra stimulation of someone else being in a room with you can make it worse.

"No". This made the Agent smile a bit, this was unexpected but, progress.

"That's okay, I can just sit over here, we don't have to talk". She made her way over to the small chair, putting the cards on the floor and taking a sip of her tea. Nat just stared at her actions, but gratitude could be seen in her eyes. Eleanor smiled at her, before looking elsewhere in the room, to not freak Nat out.

As always, she found it incredibly hard to sit in one place for so long, in silence, doing nothing. She was growing very restless but did not want to ruin things with Nat. She could slowly sense that she was calming down slightly, and so getting up and moving around or leaving would likely make Nat think that she didn't care. Which she did.

Eleanor didn't know why she cared as much as she did, especially with the situation with her father. But, for some reason, she just really wanted her to be okay. She suspected no one had ever really wanted that for her, at least not for a while, so she would make sure whilst she was here that she would be.

Eleanor sat there for exactly 1 hour and 52 minutes, allowing Nat to sit in thought. She looked over at Nat occasionally and just kept seeing how lost she looked, she assumed that something bad had happened during the interrogation.

---

Eleanor had assumed correctly, going over every bad thing Nat has done in her life was very overwhelming for her, she felt regret, remorse, and grief. She also felt extremely vulnerable having to be this open with people, and knowing more people were reading over her files.

Nat sometimes looked over at the younger woman sitting on the other side of the room. She felt bad that she was being kept here just to sit, but Nat wanted her company, she was getting a sense of comfort from her, and didn't want that to go just yet. But she felt selfish and conflicted. Eleanor of course didn't mind sitting with Nat in the slightest, even if she was having an internal battle with keeping her body still.

She so desperately wanted to tell Eleanor what was going on in her head, but even she didn't really know that, not enough to put into clear words anyway. So she sat, trying to figure it all out.

After almost 2 hours, she felt herself become less tense, she still didn't really know how to feel but her mind wasn't screaming at her as much anymore. She looked over to Eleanor, seeing her looking at the wall with a content look on her face.

"Could we play UNO?", Nat said whilst looking down at her hands, it was almost a whisper, but the room was so quiet that it could be heard.

This caused Eleanor to turn her head and face her, seeing how nervous she was, "Yeah, of course". She bent down to pick up the deck and walked over to the bed.

Nat repositioned herself so that Eleanor could sit at the bottom like she did yesterday.

Seeing the warm smile Eleanor gave her made Nat let out a shaky breath she didn't know she was holding, which did not go unnoticed. Eleanor looked up and examined Nat's face, blue eyes looking into green. "It's okay, I got you".

This made Nat tear up ever so slightly, but she was not going to cry in front of someone, so she pushed them down as quickly as they threatened to come up. Eleanor at this point was looking at the cards, organising and shuffling them, which Nat was thankful for, as she didn't have to worry about whether she had seen that.

"Now, my ego is telling me to say 'prepare to lose', but my very big brain knows that's not likely to happen" Eleanor said chuckling and shaking her head.

Nat let out a small laugh, before taking the plunge and making her own joke, "Yeah, you do suck at this game".

When Eleanor looked up with slight shock in her eyes, Nat panicked thinking she had said something wrong, when it was actually because she had never heard her crack a joke before.

Seeing the quick change in Nat's demeanour, she quickly laughed, "Wowwww that was brutal Nat, so mean", smirking towards the end.

Nat just smiled back, a bigger smile than she had given the Agent before. This wasn't so bad.

They played many games of UNO, Nat still winning about 70% of them, but Eleanor still clinging to every victory she had, earning many amused eye rolls from the Russian.

Both women found themselves getting lost in the moment, they weren't thinking of anything else other than each other's company, and how to completely screw each other over in the worst possible way in the card game. It was nice, and even though the room was filled with laughter and annoyed groans, the atmosphere felt quiet. Peaceful.

Once they started getting bored they turned to general conversation instead. "Oh, I hope you liked the tea, by the way, forgot to ask earlier, I just couldn't stomach any more coffee".

"It's fine, I like tea". Usually, Nat would stop with this short answer, but she wanted to carry on the conversation, unlike yesterday when Eleanor had to carry the whole thing.

"Why couldn't you have more coffee?".

Eleanor gave a short, loud laugh, startling Nat a bit. "I had wayyyy too much coffee this morning, I don't do mornings, I crashed in the middle of doing paperwork, it was awful".

Nat gave a small chuckle. She was proud of herself for asking a question in the conversation, but the walls went back up again, she wasn't confident enough to do it again, and so Eleanor carried on chatting away, satisfied with Nat's small contributions.

After a while, like yesterday, Eleanor grabbed the cups and the card deck, said her goodbyes and prepared to leave. Nat took in a big breath, before saying "Thank you".

Stopping in her tracks, Eleanor turned around, "What for?".

"No one's ever 'got me' before".

Eleanor smiled, but inside her heart broke a little bit, hearing the vulnerability and sadness from her.

Giving a cheeky grin, "Well you better get used to it, because I'm not going anywhere, sweet dreams Nat".