Natasha’s personal radar was a sleek and well-trained thing, forever on the lookout for danger and disadvantage and easily accessible exits. She could go almost nowhere without being utterly aware of her surroundings, and while there were a few guests in the hotel that were of her personal acquaintance, she knew where most of them could generally be found at any given time. She watched, she waited, she concerned herself with little that did not personally affect her, and she liked it that way.

It was, however, quite a surprise when her gaze focused upon someone familiar and yet entirely unexpected in the bistro, her stride slowing to a stop as she looked upon the last face she’d expected to see. She felt a fluttering of something close to relief, or perhaps just comfort. After all, wasn’t everything easier to handle with Barton somewhere in the mix? She would not have wished him here, as for all the comforts of the Nexus, it was a dangerous place, too. But he was there, and if she should’ve felt anything other than gladness in seeing him again in such a place, she could not find It within herself to do so.

She made her way across the room and to where he sat, dragging the empty chair at his table around with her foot until she could plop down beside him and brace one foot on the bottom rung of his chair. She gave him a look, then gently elbowed his bicep. She might’ve hugged him, but in that moment it would’ve been far, far too much. “Jesus, Barton,” she said with an air of exasperation, though she was smiling. Just a little. “You do find yourself in the stickiest shit. How did you wind up here?”