Chapter 2
It was shocking to see him again. Coulson prepared her. He sat her down a few days earlier and explained that they needed a foolproof trustworthy shot for this op. She knew what that meant. She had dismissed it, aloud, because she knew Barton to be Austria, but Coulson had only given her a quiet, sad smile. Her heart ached then, but she had hidden it. Wasn’t that what she did best? Hide her heart away? She steeled herself for him to walk into that room, unprepared for her presence. His face, it moved, so fast from shock, to sadness, to betrayal, to anger. She hadn’t expected him to try and leave but he was always doing the last thing she expected. She never expected him to walk away from her once, much less twice. That hurt, much more than Natasha was willing to admit to herself in the moment.
He bolted from the meeting room as soon as the meeting ended, and she let him. She was angry enough to hurt him, and he was angry enough to rise to the challenge. The calm, controlled Clint Barton she knew was gone. Part of her wondered if that was her fault: if what she did—any of what she did—was the reason he was impatient, hot-headed, and prone to making mission mistakes. She saw his reports sometimes, if Coulson left them on his desk. After all, she could be wherever she wanted to be as long as she knew where it was (“It’s like a philosophical physics question,” Coulson said when she explained her gift, and he actually sounded delighted.”).
In their group room, though, she found Barton went straight to work. When she walked in, he was standing on a table, hands on his hips, staring at a drone surveillance tape with such an intense look, she remembered why he was called Hawkeye. She ran her eyes over him as she walked around his table to a corner table. He was thin, much thinner than he used to be. His fingers were curled into his palm, knuckles against his chin, and his eyes slid sideways. She looked away immediately as their eyes met and sat down at her desk. For Natasha, this was not a typical mission. She was the method of transportation. They had too many men who needed to get in and out of many places as quickly as possible. She just needed to know every single detail she could. If she was off, she could land them into a wall, at the least. At the worst, she could kill them all.
The others came in, moved cautiously around her, and sat down. They chatted, excluding her, and traded mission stories. They did things like this: drug dealers, human trafficking. They did small missions. They did not do what she and Clint did. They didn’t do things so far above the idea of states and international boundaries and god, remember that time when they gave a shit about international law? It felt strange to be on this mission. Part of her suspected this was Coulson’s coming out mission for her skills. It had been a year since she was forced to reveal them to SHIELD, a year since everything fell apart.
“Agent Romanov?” asked Amy tentatively.
Natasha blinked. “Yes?”
“Could you show us what Agent Coulson was talking about? I don’t think we really understand.”
Natasha watched Clint’s jaw tighten. She knew his attention was no longer on the surveillance tape. She returned her attention to Amy. “Where would you like me to go?”
“Volgograd,” snapped Clint.
Natasha flinched. One of the other guys said, “Lay off her, man.”
“You don’t need to defend me,” Natasha said coldly, “Not against him.”
Clint snorted. Amy’s eyes were wide. “I didn’t mean to—“
“I’ll go to the next room and back.” Natasha calmed herself down. She offered her hand to Amy. “Would you like to come?”
Amy blushed and looked around warily, like she was looking for permission or encouragement from the others. Everyone stared at the two of them. She shrugged and took Natasha’s hand with her own clammy one. “Okay.”
Jumping was a little like a high altitude parachute jump. There was the deep breath, the leap, a moment of suspension, and then a pounding rush slamming against her body, and then a drifting sensation. Somatic senses trickled in—in reality, it was milliseconds, but it felt like minutes—her hearing first, then touch—she could feel Amy’s hand clenching hers, clammy sweat the only separation between their skin—then smell, then sight, and lastly taste. She opened her eyes in the room next door where Phil Coulson stood, glaring at her. She smiled at him.
“Not exactly code, Agent,” he said, sipping his coffee. “There could have been others in here.”
“There weren’t. I guessed that. You never like your coffee with other people.” She didn’t add, except for me and Clint. You always took your coffee with me and Clint. She didn’t need to add it. She saw the recognition and sorrow in Phil’s eyes. When everything went down last year, Phil had taken it well. Phil was reasonable and rational. He understood she had made a split second decision about life and death. Other people were less rational. Other people were afraid and other people resented being called out on that fear.
“If you can get him about a half meter to the west, Tash, I got him in my sights. I’ve got too much wind interference otherwise.” Clint’s voice in her ear, terse and tense. He was edgy tonight. She wasn’t sure why. Normally he was the one who was calmly reassuring her in a mission. He didn’t know how much she gave up to work for SHIELD, to stay undercover, to stay below the radar. She had to change the whole way she operated, after all.
She slid closer to the banister, slipping her winning sultry smile to lure him in. This mark was easy. He followed her like a puppy dog. There was the sharp sound of glass shattering and an arrow buried deep through the man’s chest swiftly ended his life. Natasha heard Clint in her ear telling her to get out but she didn’t need him to tell her twice. She went out the open window, rappelling down the side. She heard the door bang open just before she dropped, shouts of the man’s bodyguards, and then they fired at her over the side of the ledge.
She yelped as one bullet sliced through the skin of her left arm.
“What’s your status?” Clint, sounding a little calmer now that they were being shot at. The day she understood the man would be the day she died, probably.
Her feet hit the ground. She cut the line so they couldn’t follow her and slipped down their previously planned escape route. She touched her shoulder and her fingertips came away red in the streetlights. Her arm burned ferociously. She grimaced and touched her ear. “Nothing serious. Grazed.”
“See you at rendezvous. Try not to bleed out.”
She would have laughed if she could have at the moment. She was wearing a ridiculous dress and it was hard enough to run in it, much less run with her left arm dangling and throbbing. She made a fist with that hand, just to reassure herself that she still could. She made the appropriate turns, and found the abandoned night club where she and Barton has stashed their getaway vehicle. He thought she was crazy but she liked riding a scooter out of the city. They’d blend in well here and they could get through traffic easily. They had a hotel on the outside of the city where they’d spend the night before taking the next SHIELD flight out of the country. It wasn’t good to stick around after these things.
She leaned against the doorway and closed her eyes briefly. He wasn’t there yet. She glanced around before touching her ear again. “ETA?”
Silence.
She frowned and took out the ear piece and inspected it. It looked fine. She slipped it back in. She wore a mic and an ear piece, he just wore the ear piece. They had had equipment failures before though. It wouldn’t be unheard of, until they got back to headquarters and Clint went to have words with R&D guys who punted it to the IT guys who punted it to Maintenance who punted it to Ops who punted it back to R&D until Clint got too tired of chasing down the problem and went to punch bags instead. More satisfying, he said.
She touched her ear again. “Widow to Hawkeye.”
Silence.
She switched channels on the earpiece. “Widow to Coulson.”
“Coulson,” came Phil’s calm voice a minute later.“You’re breaking radio silence.”
Natasha looked at her cellphone’s clock. “I haven’t heard from Clint in five minutes. Not answering his comms.”
Silence from Phil for a moment. Natasha felt her heart hammering in her chest. Phil said quietly in her ear, “Let me check his GPS.”
Natasha shifted on her feet and looked up and down the street. It was quiet. In the distance, she heard sirens wailing.
Phil said, “His GPS hasn’t moved in a few minutes. He may be down. He’s two blocks to your right.”
Natasha ran. She turned down the street, looked on porches, looked on front steps, and then with Phil guiding her, went into a small alleyway. There were a hundred things she had seen in her life before and never wanted to see again. Number one hundred and one was Clint laying on the ground, not moving.