By the time Natasha had reached her room the guilt was eating her up, but instead, she showed this as anger. Pure anger. Taking off her heels, she launched them across the room, watching as they hit the wall with a loud thud. Sighing, she ran her hands through her hair and tried to compose herself, but it didn't really work.

A few seconds later, she heard Eleanor's door close down the hallway, louder than normal, making the guilt bubble up further but also the anger rose as well. She had abandoned her friend after she was the one who tried to initiate going further. Now Natasha didn't know what to do.

She began aggressively getting her nightclothes out and doing her nighttime skin routine. Once she had finished washing her face, she looked in the mirror and just froze, glaring at herself. She pushed back the intrusive urge to punch the mirror as that really would have been an overreaction and a painful one at that. She just couldn't seem to calm herself down, and she usually could so it was frustrating her that she couldn't, it was a vicious circle.

She left the bathroom and pondered what to do next. She stared at the door scowling, jaw clenched. Debating whether to leave and try and resolve the situation. No. She wouldn't, she had allowed herself to become too vulnerable over the last few months and she wasn't going to let it go any further. After being told one thing for her entire life, a certain set of words was swirling through her head loudly, her subconscious seemingly yelling at her.

Love is for children.

She couldn't do this. But she didn't want to hurt Eleanor either, one of the only people who had genuinely been there for her in life, no tricks, just trust. However, she was also very angry with Eleanor, she is the one she had been vulnerable with, she knew that it was irrational and that it wasn't her fault really, but if she had one person that she was going to direct this anger at, it would be Eleanor.

In Nat's mind, the only option she could see was to try and freeze her out, she didn't know how to deal with these new emotions, and so just wanted to ignore them and throw herself into her work. She was here to do a job, not to make friends. It would be painful, but she would do it. She had to, she had to protect herself, and this was the 'easiest' way to do it.

Nat did just that, she started waking up earlier to get food, and went straight to her office, she ignored all messages on the trio's group chat. When Clint had returned back to work he was left very confused as to why Nat was suddenly giving them the cold shoulder, and why Eleanor just seemed so... sad.

She had succeeded in doing this for a little over a week so far, and it was killing her inside. But she only saw this as a weakness still, and so continued committing to her freeze-out plan. Whenever she saw the other woman in the hallways she felt a pang of pain in her chest, but would always turn and walk away anyway. What she didn't know is that 90% of the time Eleanor saw her walking away, and her heart broke each time.

Whenever Nat was with Clint they kept things relatively normal, if he so much as tried to bring up the situation he would receive a threatening glare that made him silence himself quickly. They managed to maintain their usual friendship during this, but it was putting a bit of a strain on them not talking about the elephant in the room, and Clint was trying hard to make sure they were both okay. It was like being at school again for him, he really was not happy with the situation.

---

Eleanor had to wake up early for a group training day. She was struggling to get going early, recently her motivation had just dropped, she was unhappy, and it was hard to keep herself going in this state. Beating herself up for what was happening with Natasha, she was mentally exhausted.

Slowly getting ready for the day, she made her way down to the cafeteria and was met with the one person who had been plaguing her mind for over a week. She hesitated to go in but had to, or Maria would push her down the stairs or something for being late. Nat hadn't noticed her yet, so she walked over to the coffee machine and started pushing the relevant buttons for a black coffee. Whilst waiting she stood like a statue, afraid to move in Nat's presence in case she immediately left or something.

Once the drink was prepared, she turned around and was met with Nat's eyes staring into hers. This is more contact than the two had had all week, maybe progress was being made? Eleanor went to say a simple hello, but Natasha quickly turned to walk away. Okay, progress was not being made. This really frustrated the younger woman, it was one thing to not see her, but to look directly into her eyes and still walk away, this was a different thing.

She jogged after the Russian, trying not to pour hot coffee over herself, that would be all that she needed right now. Eleanor shouted her name a few times before she eventually turned around. The eyes Eleanor was looking into weren't the usual ones she was used to, these seemed to be full of hate as she glared at her, it was really intimidating, but once again only angered her more as she did not know what she had done to elicit being treated this way. She didn't want to be messed around like this, playing games that were fit for children, if Nat had a problem she wanted her to be honest with her.

Eleanor briefly looked around to make sure no one else was around, luckily there wasn't as this hallway led to the offices, and not many people were starting work yet, showing just how far Natasha had been going to avoid her.

"What the fuck, Nat?", Eleanor's mind briefly went static after saying that, she realised it might not have been a great opening.

"Excuse me?", Nat replied whilst taking a step forward, still trying to play the intimidation game.

Yep, really not a great opening. Eleanor stood her ground though and did not anxiously step backwards like Natasha anticipated she would.

"You've been ignoring me for a week, I don't know what I did wrong, I thought we were friends, that you genuinely liked me, but if you really cared you wouldn't just drop me like I'm a worthless object that you just carried around for a while", she rambled whilst making exaggerated movements with the hand not carrying coffee.

Nat's cold front faltered for a split second before the walls went back up again, "I can't do this right now Eleanor, we have jobs to do, I suggest you go and do yours", she went to walk away but was stopped by the other speaking shakily.

"You leaned in first".

Nat had her back to the younger woman, but stopped in her tracks, and turned her head to the side to look at her in her peripheral, "I can't love you, you need someone who can", and with that, she walked away to her office block.

Eleanor once again stood idly in the hall, after being left for a second time, before putting her own walls up, and making her way down to the allocated training room. She didn't want to deal with the hurt from this anymore, so she wouldn't. It wasn't the healthiest of coping mechanisms but who copes with things healthily anyways?

---

Maria and Clint happened to be leading today's group training, it happened once a month with randomly selected Agents, so that they would work with people they may not have conversed with before, which is a common occurrence on actual missions. Whilst they were making general small talk, they saw Eleanor walk in and both smiled slightly, seeing their friend, but those smiles quickly dropped when they saw her with an expression they'd never seen on her before. Nothing. She looked blank, hollow.

Maria was being called over by some others and so reluctantly headed over to them, but not before nudging Clint to go and check on her.

Eleanor started stretching, preparing for the exercises, whilst Clint was walking over.

"Hey kid, you okay?".

"'M fine", she responded whilst looking at the floor, continuing her stretches. Usually if Clint gave her an opening to vent about any issues she was having, she would be all over it. But, she really didn't want to acknowledge what was going on right now.

"I've known you for years, I know you're not 'fine", he paused and looked away briefly before looking back, "Is this about Nat?". He saw Eleanor freeze slightly at the mention of her before she just stopped altogether. "Got it", Clint nodded in understanding. He was frustrated with the both of them, they needed to sort their shit out. He had noticed that Nat was overworking herself as a distraction, burnout was imminent, and now Eleanor had reached the point of no emotions.

Luckily for Eleanor, they were interrupted by Maria screaming at them all to get them in line, so the two jogged over to her. Before beginning the next few hours, Maria gave a small smile to Eleanor, to which she nodded back.

"Alright then, today we are doing some basic cardio to get you all warmed up, then working with your randomly allocated partner to get through some obstacles you will be blind to, communicating via various methods of electronic communication setups".

---

After training was done, Clint went to go and check up on Natasha. She needed just as much support.

"Hey", he began softly, not wanting to cause a rift between the two of them as well.

Nat looked up at Clint who had perched himself on the edge of her desk. "What's up?", she said leaning back into her chair, crossing her arms.

"Can a buddy not check in?", he chuckled.

Nat simply frowned slightly, but with a small smile, showing she knew what he was up to.

"Okay fine, it's about-".

"Eleanor, yeah I know, what do you want", she responded through gritted teeth, she also didn't want to acknowledge it at all. That's been the point of the last week, and she had been getting a lot of work done, and so she thought it was working; not realising that she was just doing way more work than she should be taking on to take her mind off of it.

"Okay, a bit of a sore spot, got it, just... what happened between you two? I mean I don't know you through and through like with her, but you seemed happy, and when I saw her with you she was the most carefree I'd ever seen her, so what happened to make it go downhill that fast?".

Nat sighed, "I just can't Barton", she tried to continue to look through a file, but he yanked it away.

"Can't what, Nat?".

Realising she wasn't going to be able to get away from his annoying persistence, she decided to play along, without revealing everything. "I can't do the team game Clint, I became dependent on her very quickly, I need to break that".

"Does she know this, or does she just think you hate her guts? Because I saw her this morning and she didn't look so good, it wasn't the look of someone in the know, so I'm guessing she has no clue what's going on in that head of yours, correct?".

Nat looked down at her lap, feeling guilty, "Correct", she responded in a whisper. The guilty feeling was making a swift return, which is exactly why she didn't want to talk about this, it made her doubt her decision and she didn't want to do that.

Clint gave her a reassuring shoulder rub, "Thought as much, you don't look too good yourself you know, you can't overwork yourself, please look after yourself".

Nat gave a dry chuckle, "You almost sound like you care Barton", she looked back up at him again.

"I do care", he said with sincerity, making Nat falter at his words.

"We both care about you, a lot. Please don't shut us out. Whatever it is that's happening up there", he proceeded to poke her in the head, earning a punch to the knee in return. He had to stop speaking for a few seconds to stop himself from yelling a string of profanities before continuing, "Talk to her, I'm sure if she knows what's going on she'll understand, she's a very empathetic person, chances are she'll bombard you with compliments and food, water will be under the bridge, she isn't a very complicated person, to be honest".

Natasha scrunched her face up in confusion, "What do you mean not a complicated person?".

"Well, she never hides her intentions, what you see with her is what you get, the intentions are never bad either unless she's on the job, I've seen her be quite scary". This made Natasha smile a bit, trying to imagine her being scary. "What?", Clint said laughing, "I'm serious, she looks like butter wouldn't melt but in the field, I've seen her make grown men cry".

Nat smirked, "I'll have to take your word for it".

"Oh, you'll see Romanoff".

---

Nat had wanted to take Clint's advice, enough was enough and she really missed her. She just didn't know what the outcome she wanted was, but that could be figured out from talking.

Unfortunately, she had been called into Fury's office for a mission: Iran to Odessa. It was well within her skill set, so she wasn't worried that anything bad would happen to her, but she still needed to go and see Eleanor briefly before leaving. She couldn't just up and leave completely to a different country without saying something, if it was the other way around she would be livid, they always say goodbye if there is the opportunity to. Just in case they don't make it, they don't like thinking like that though so the goodbyes are usually quite chill. Living in a bit of denial.

She sprinted from Fury's office to Eleanor's room, almost wiping out a few Agents along the way.

She hurriedly knocked at the door, before realising she had no clue what to say. Before she could think though, the door opened.

Eleanor was shocked at who was on the other side, but she gave a small smile anyway, "Hey Nat". She desperately wanted to be angry with her, for blocking her out for a week, but when face to face, she just couldn't. Eleanor was still annoyed, sure. But she couldn't hate her, no matter how hard she tried.

"Hey, can I come in?".

Eleanor nodded before opening the door further, watching Nat walk in, the intimidating demeanour was gone, and so Eleanor's walls also dropped.

Nat turned around back to Eleanor and walked towards her slightly, "Uh, I wanted to come and talk to you, to bury the hatchet and figure things out, but Fury called me in".

Eleanor smirked a bit, "That man has perfect timing". The number of times Fury had interrupted plans with last-minute emergency operations was unreal.

Nat chuckled, enjoying the familiarity and the lack of hostility, "Yeah, he does".

The two gazed at each other for a second before Eleanor cleared her throat, "So, where you being sent?".

"Iran, I have to move a nuclear scientist to a safer place, should be fairly easy, hopefully not too many bumps in the road, but I didn't want to leave without saying goodbye".

Eleanor nodded in understanding, "Well, you'll do great, you're probably the most skilled in the entire building, do you have enough food for the flight, it's quite far, I have a snack box you can ta-", she was cut off by Nat laughing about Clint being right, which made her smile.

"What?", she crossed her arms playfully.

"Nothing, just... you're predictable".

Rolling her eyes in amusement, she responded, "Oh really? Well you are too".

"Am not". Natasha thought of herself as anything but predictable.

Eleanor walked over to her desk and grabbed the snack box she kept for emergencies from a drawer, "Yes you are, do you wanna know why?".

Natasha scoffed in disbelief, "Okay sure, why?".

"I know you're going to take the snack box". Natasha always loved the hoards of snacks that Eleanor kept around for movies or to sneak into meetings, so unless Nat had had a complete personality switch over the last week then she knew that she was going to take the snacks.

Nat squinted her eyes at her, not wanting to show that she really wanted the snack box, Eleanor always seemed to have the best snacks.

After a few seconds of silence, Eleanor went to go and put the box away, internally smirking, knowing what was about to happen.

Nat panicked slightly when she went to put it away, "I want the snack box", she said in a voice so small you almost couldn't hear it.

Eleanor did a very fast 180, with a beaming smile, "What was that Nat, I didn't quite hear you?".

"I. Want.", she paused. Eleanor gestured for her to carry on, which she reluctantly did, "The snack box", Nat said with a sigh. She lost the game.

"Well, you only had to ask Romanoff", Eleanor smirked before grabbing Nat's backpack and putting the box in.

"Thank you", Nat said softly, jokes aside she did appreciate that Eleanor was looking out for her, even after everything that had happened between them over the last week. She pulled the younger woman in for a tight hug, neither wanting to let go, but being interrupted by Nat's phone beeping, indicating that she needed to leave.

"I'll be back in a few days, and we can talk, okay?".

The younger Agent nodded sadly, "Stay safe, please".

"Always", Nat smirked before exiting the room.