Chapter 1
Six Months Before New York City
Clint Barton was not a patient man. Oh, in some ways, he had infinite patience. Stakeouts and sitting in uncomfortable positions waiting for the perfect shot was how he made a living, after all. He could have all the patience in the world when he wanted to have it, and therein lay the key. He didn’t want to have patience. Not this morning. He hated meetings. He really hated meetings that pulled him out of the fields. The cherry on this less than cheerful morning was he was required to wear a suit. A fucking suit. Like he was one of them.
“Stop looking like I’m waterboarding you. It’s a button-down shirt tucked into somewhat clean looking khakis. That’s all I asked for.” Coulson handed him a manila folder when they met in the hallway. He seemed nonplussed by the scowl Clint shot at him as he opened the folder and flipped through. “How was Austria?”
“Would have been better if I could have kept an eye on our mark instead of getting called out.” Clint muttered, half distracted as they wove through the hallways of one of SHIELD’s top secret bases. In the back of his head, he thought, It’d be easier if I traveled the way I did that once. But he didn’t anymore. That part of his life, of his missions, was over. In a world of magic and nightmares, he never thought he’d miss something so unnatural. The emptiness that absence left in him was slowly, over the months, overwhelming the anger that consumed him at first. “How’s your cellist?”
“She has a name, Barton.”
Clint glanced up at his friend, recruiter, and largely, the only person he could ever get along with for any amount of time. “I know. How’s Nicole?”
Coulson shot him a smile that was partly between forgiving and grateful. “She’s good. We’ve been busy here so I haven’t seen her in a few weeks.”
They stopped at a set of doors and Coulson said, “A few other people are in here already. We pulled a few people out of the field for this one.”
“Anyone I know?” asked Clint, still distracted by the aerial surveillance photos in his briefing packet.
“Keep an open mind and don’t be an idiot,” Coulson replied, opening the door.
Clint stepped into the room, casting Coulson a curious look over his shoulder. There were two or three people in the room already, flipping through their own briefing packets. Eyes flicked up to Clint, and he heard someone murmur his last name in greeting. He didn’t recognize the voice and it wouldn’t have mattered. One person looked up when I came in and she didn’t drop eye contact with me. She didn’t look much different than the last time I saw her. Maybe a little thinner in her face, but her red hair was as wild as it ever was. She could tame it, if she wanted, but she never wanted. Her blue eyes chilled when they met his eyes, her lips thinning into a bright red line. Her hands curled into fists around her pen and on her briefing packet.
“You have to be fucking kidding me.” Clint’s voice started out completely normal, and then rose, pitching forward with his anger and he threw his briefing packet and spun out off the room to leave. Coulson shut the door and blocked the handle. Clint met Phil’s calm eyes with his furious ones. He growled deep, “Get the fuck out of the way. You’re fucking kidding me. I’m done.”
“You’re not done. You’re a professional. You’re an agent of SHIELD and you have worked here longer than anyone in this room.”
“I’m not working with her.”
Phil’s eyes moved over Clint’s shoulder to look at the woman on the other side of the table. “Agent Romanov knew that you would be here. She is here to work on this operation. I ask that you match her professionalism.”
It was a low blow. A low, dirty blow. Clint scowled at Phil. Lowering his voice, he said, “You know what you’re asking.”
Phil met his eyes calmly. “I know.”
Clint scrubbed a hand over his face. “Fuck, Phil.”
“Sit down, Clint.” Phil spoke quietly and calmly, the voice Clint had heard before, had heard used against Natasha Romanov when Clint first came home with her, battered and bleeding, the voice Clint had used before, with too many people, with too many people now gone, with Natasha, and maybe, once with Phil. The, I know. I hear you. Trust me., implicit in the tone, lacking in the words.
Clint sat down, across from Natasha. No one spoke, and he could feel the weight of everyone’s eyes moving between him and the woman across from him. That’s how it had always been. That, at least, felt normal. Not meeting her eyes, not teasing her, not looking at her…that was abnormal. But then, so was she.
A lead SHIELD agent, on par with Coulson, came into the room and turned on the projector. “My name is Hector Vasquez and I’m briefing you about the leader of LARC and our target for this mission. We have a very short window. In the next eleven days, we’re tracking and verifying Omar Martin’s identity and taking him out. As you know, LARC is the Latin American Resource Council whose primary goal is to overthrow democratically elected governments and turn Latin America into some kind of anarchy. They kidnap people for money or to use as drug mules and are generally all around bad news.”
“If you don’t know LARC, you shouldn’t be sitting in here.” Clint met Vasquez’s eyes. No one looked at him.
Vasquez must have been prepped for Clint’s typical briefing behavior. He did not even give Clint an eye roll. “I’m briefing thoroughly, Agent Barton. Here’s the deal. We believe that Martin is going to be this location,” he brought up a map and zoomed in on the screen, “the day after next for a meeting with some of his top lieutenants. Judging by the amount of food they’ve had shipped in, they’ll be there for a few days. Martin will be touring some of their local installations. This is territory they hold well. Our intelligence is good that Martin should be here every evening, however. In 48 hours, we’re sending Alpha Team—that’ll be Barton and Raines—to make visual contact and verify identity. Then on Saturday night, we’re sending in the team to take out Martin, blow up some key installations, and acquire a laptop from an office. In your briefing packets, you have identification material on all of the top people. We’re running three exercises, one today, and two before the team goes out on Saturday.”
“Exercises,” repeats someone else.
“Everyone in this room is about to be read into a top secret project by Agent Coulson.” Vasquez gestured to Phil.
Coulson took the podium. “You are reminded that everything in this room is for your ears only. You will receive no documentation.”
Clint’s stomach turned cold. Without meaning to, he glanced sideways at Natasha. She was incredibly still, staring at her hands. Only her right forefinger trembled. He knew this, instinctively, to be a nervous twitch. The only one she had. She was reaching for her ring, the one she didn’t wear anymore, the one that used to be on her left ring finger. He watched her lips part to make room for a shuddering breath. His heart wanted him to reach out, kick her gently under the table so she’d know she wasn’t alone. His mind held his tongue and his foot back, kept them where he was. Safe. Silent. Far away from her.
“Agent Romanov has a unique ability to do what we call folding time and space. She is able to instantaneously travel between locations and targets.” Coulson stated this calmly, like he expected everyone to keep up with the information. Clint knew he was the only one who did. He was the only other one—other than Coulson and Fury—who knew what she was—what she could do—before this moment. Coulson continued, “There are, as with everything, some limitations. She must know the exact specifications of the room she’s entering and exciting. To move others, she needs to be touching them. And if she is injured or has low energy, the distance and length of her jumps are limited.”
“What?” asked Raines faintly.
“I don’t understand,” said the only other woman on the team, Amy Kaplan.
“You’ve read Harry Potter?” asked Clint. He knew his tone was harsh but he couldn’t be any kinder right now. He was barely holding it together. “She apparates. She’s like a fucking wizard.”
“Fuck you,” snarled Natasha, looking up for the first time in minutes.
“Enough,” barked Coulson. “Agent Barton, enough.”
“It isn’t Harry Potter.” Natasha’s growl, throaty and wild, filled the room. He couldn’t meet her eyes. Couldn’t look at her. “It’s jumping. I do not have another word for it.”
“Barton and Raines will get dropped into the jungle. They will not be jumped in by Romanov. They will identify Martin. When they return they’ll provide the identification and the specifications of the compound to Romanov and the rest of the team. We’ll practice jumping. It’s an unusual experience. You’ll need to be able to do it comfortably.”
“Why are we doing this?”
“Zero chance we could get planes into this air space and get ex fil without putting you guys in LARC territory during monsoon season. This is the best option.” Clint had to give Coulson credit. When he said it like that, it seemed rational. Reasonable, even.
He wasn’t married to the woman who did it though.
“Any questions?” asked Vasquez. There were none. “Your team room is A121. I’ll see you there at 1600 hours. Dismissed.”
Clint was out of the room by the time everyone else exhaled in relief. For a moment, he hoped she’d come after him, that they could just get this over, but she didn’t come after him. It wasn’t her style. She wouldn’t do that.
“It’s not right, Phil,” said Clint, scratching at the beard he accidentally grew chasing the Russian assassin across Europe. “She moves too fast. I don’t see her leave and then she’s in another city an hour later. She’s got dopplegangers. Maybe clones. Do you think they clone in the Red Room? I can see them getting into that. Probably lucrative, especially if they all look like her.”
“What I think is you’re talking too much, Barton, which means you need to sleep. Go catch some z’s.”
Barton looked sideways at his handler. “What the fuck did you just say?”
“I’m trying hip new phrases. I’m taking a class.” Coulson’s eyes never left the glass pane from where they stood watching a medical team treat a heavily sedated Russian assassin for her various wounds. Clint half wished he had been the reason she showed up so battered and bruised, but he wasn’t. He was the reason she was still alive, however. He had chased her for seven months across the continent, called her elusive, but Fury told him to stick with it, that she was a crucial target. Then one night, she had shown up at the café where he was buying coffee, bleeding, broken, barely coherent, and said she’d turn if he could keep her safe.
It’d take Clint a few more years to realize how far he’d take that promise.