Chapter 21
The trap is set from the moment Clint walks into the airplane hanger.
He should have known it wouldn’t be easy. The first shot misses him, as he ducks and moves to the left.
Taking cover as two widows emerge, Clint swears, their guns drawn effectively pinning him down.
There’s no way out, unless he kills them, and every time he looks to them, all he sees is Natasha in her widow suit.
Instead, he shoots the light fixture above them, making the place dark, glass shattering everywhere.
They separate and duck, allowing Clint to move to the door.
The first shot is a warning, as a third widow approaches in the dark.
“Drop it,” she says, accent strong.
“Okay, okay,” he says loudly, the tall widow approaching.
He throws his gun to the right, and then turns to face the three widows now surrounding him.
Clint holds his hands up, dread at whatever is going to happen next, holding him frozen. He wishes he could say it was part of his plan, but at this stage, it’s not.
He can be flexible though; if the outcome is still the same.
As they march him into the offices, he takes all the terrain in, making a plan as he goes.
Part of him wants to see Dreykov, meet the man that he knows from Natasha’s stories.
Some of them, he wishes he didn’t know.
He’s ready to kill him, regardless.
.
Natasha runs, sprinting into the cockpit of an empty plane. She doesn’t think she’s been spotted, the darkness covering her.
She breathes heavily, wondering why the room is clear and quiet. There’s evidence of a fight.
Clint must be somewhere around, she should be in in the rafters, because that’s what he’s likely to have gone.
If she can get to the roof, then she can scope the place more easily.
Moving quickly back outside, she climbs the drain pipe, getting to the roof quickly, finding a skylight to look through.
.
He’s cuffed to a chair, his head tipped back, towel on on his face. It’s a torture he’s endured before, but one he feels you can never prepare for.
Natasha used to hold her breath in the shower, trying to extend the time she could hold onto that one bit of oxygen.
He’d laughed then, but sees the necessity in it now. He wishes he could hold his breath like Natasha.
The water is cold as it blasts through the towel, shocking him into taking a breath, regretting it immediately as he chokes on water coming through.
They don’t even bother with questions.
He counts six times before he hears the opening and closing over the doors, even though he can’t see anything; her knows.
The footsteps are of the man in charge.
“Clint Barton,” he hears, the towel removed from his face.
He’s older than he expected.
His teeth yellowing, an incisor missing, as his accent doesn’t feel wholly right.
“Hello,” Clint grins.
.
Natasha sees it and her heart sinks.
Clint is tied to the chair, water boarded by Max. The widow who seemed to have an affinity with drowning. Natasha knows it’s because she almost did.
In their water training, tied to the bottom of a swimming pool, Max had been the one that couldn’t hold her breath long enough, effectively drowning where she was held.
When she was resuscitated, they used her as an example. How to survive drowning, how to resuscitate someone who had.
She knows it’s Max’s preferred method of torture, because she knows how much it hurts. How much your lungs scream and your brain shorts out wanting air.
Natasha watches Clint cough, buck against the ties and she is about to drop down, when it all stops.
Dreykov walks in, and Natasha can’t breathe, panic making her skin crawl.
.
“Where is she?”
His voice is gravelly, like a lifetime smoker, which Clint assumes is not far off.
There are four widows around him now.
“You can’t protect yourself from me? That you need to be protected by girls?”
Dreykov backhands him, his rings cutting into Clint’s face.
“Yeah thought so. You hit like a child.”
Clint laughs to himself, “but from what I hear, the children you traffic can probably hit harder than you.”
He’s hit again, the smack resounding.
He takes a little pleasure that Dreykov’s face is red and anger clear on his pudgy face.
“Where.”
Hit.
“Is.”
Hit.
“She.”
Clint sees stars. His head pounding, as he feels the swelling around his cheeks and eyes start.
“I’m here because we failed at killing you,” he smiles, “I won’t fail this time.”
This time his hand is grabbed, two fingers pulled back and snapped.
The man is such an idiot, he doesn’t know Clint is left handed.
He starts to say something else, when the skylight above them breaks, and Natasha falls through, guns drawn as two widows are dropped immediately.
The second she points them at Dreykov, her face changes, body frozen.
He laughs and claps his hands.
“You should know, my Natasha, that you can’t hurt me. My pheromones prevent it.”
Clint has no idea what that means, but he thought that Tony and Bruce cured it.
Was this the same for something different? What did it even mean?
He watches as her face turns to one of consternation, not pulling the trigger and standing motionless in anger.
“Try and pull the trigger,” Dreykov snarls.
“You can’t, can you?”
“You haven’t figured it out yet?”
He steps closer to her, the two black widows flanking her.
“You can’t hurt me.”
There seems to be a moment where Natasha realises the gravity of the situation, dropping her guns and pulling a knife.
“Try it,” he gloats, confidence as he steps towards her.
It’s like an invisible force field surrounds him as Natasha strikes down. It doesn’t get anywhere near him and she grunts in effort.
Easily, Dreykov disarms her, holds her face in his hands and licks her face.
“Pathetic.”
The two other widows pull her back, secure her to a chair opposite Clint, as finally she makes eye contact with him.
Morse code was never his strong suit, but as she blinks rapidly, he understands.
“I’m sorry too,” he blinks back.
.