The Fourth Meeting
“Hawkeye in position.”
“Strike 1 in position.”
“Strike 2 in position.”
“Ready to go. On my command.” A collective breath. “Strike.”
Dark shadows emerged from the forest and moved over the grass in front of the tall, classical building. Innumerable crickets gave the night an illusion of peace, as if the people behind the white columns would have a pleasant night’s sleep before going back to their lives.
Clint’s hands were damp against the handle of his bow. He didn’t feel comfortable on this mission but he wouldn’t have missed it for the world. This was his mission when it came down to it, his promise to a girl he felt responsible for.
They moved in silently, still uncertain of the building’s layout. Coulson informed them they detected 40 individuals but two or three rooms weren’t possible to access and the software they were using was all but exact and would practically be useless as soon as they were all in the building, synchronizing their trackers with the heat signatures hadn’t worked so far.
“The tracker is sending from the upper floor, no corresponding heat signature in the room.”
Clint cursed silently. It wouldn’t be all for nothing even if they didn’t find her, these people deserved every bit they’d get tonight, but there would be no chance to find her if she wasn’t here. Setting up this mission had taken way too long. Surprisingly, Fury had agreed almost immediately (three days), the Security Council had allowed itself more than a full week, though and since they had so little information they were much later to the party than Clint would have preferred. Alas, here they were, finally, and hopefully, hopefully there was someone left to save in this building.
There had been no guards outside. They seemed to be feeling safe in that house, and, Clint gulped, they didn’t seem afraid that someone might try to escape.
They went to one end of the building to enter, this would be a quiet attack, no bursting in through the windows. Hopefully, the people would be asleep and wouldn’t fight back. From what Clint had seen in New York, they shouldn’t provoke a fight if it wasn’t absolutely necessary.
A grappling hook was fired towards the second floor and Erikson, the leader of Strike 1, started climbing up quickly.
“Now, Barton,” he commanded when he was on the level of the window.
Clint fired two special arrows, one to the window on the lower, one on the upper floor. Instead of breaking the glass, the tip cut out the glass panel neatly and allowed the first man to take it out of the frame without a sound.
He dropped the glass and another agent caught it by the arrow.
“All clear,” Erikson signaled from upstairs after a dry sound indicated a silenced gunshot. Apparently, they had started with an occupied room. One after the other, the strike team climbed up the rope while the other entered the room downstairs. Clint followed the first team, a part of him just wanted to check the room with the tracker himself, maybe she had managed to leave a clue.
Erikson opened the door, peaking out onto the hallway when Clint arrived. Inside, the house was somehow even more spacious than it had appeared. Even with their combined force, they’d take a while to get through the building.
Silently, Erikson sent two agents to check the rooms closest to them, then the next pair to the ones a bit further off. Soon, the strike unit was off to separate rooms, Clint being last together with Erikson.
The room he entered was occupied, two people. He shot them quickly without questions. In his mind, these people were working for this organization, their problem if they were now dying for it. He knew that was vengeful, but his compassion for the young woman they were here to save had only grown within the passing weeks and he couldn’t find it in himself to feel pity for the people that knowingly allowed people to beat a young girl up and hold her captive.
They worked through the rooms, mostly in silence, leaving the doors open to tell the others the room had been cleared. No fights, fortunately. So far, this wasn’t going too badly.
Clint opened the next door, hiding in case of a gunshot, but the room was just as quiet as the other ones. A desk, a bed, a wardrobe. Everything seemed unused, the bed didn’t even have a blanket on top and there was nothing that suggested anything personal or even just work in progress. Clint frowned, moving to the wardrobe. Maybe in there… He ducked again, but no shot came. Looking inside, he gasped softly as he recognized the red fabric of a uniform.
Bowing down, he saw the shoes and managed to open the secret compartment. The tracker she had placed inside fell into his hand.
“I’m at the source,” he informed Coulson. “Appears to be her bedroom and her clothes are here, but it doesn’t look like it’s been occupied lately.”
He swallowed hard. The mission was going well, apart from the actual directive. Where the hell was she?
“Who of you made such a mess of the old woman?” Erikson asked them all through his comm. “Like, she looks like she’s in charge of this, but you could have just shot her normally, not completely cover the room in her blood.”
Clint gritted his teeth. He hadn’t shot that old woman but he certainly felt like doing so.
They had worked through the first corridor of the U-shaped building and approached the stairs. Erikson sighed.
“I’ll stay here so nobody thinks they can hide back there.”
Clint nodded, continuing on his own. Somehow, even though the girl hadn’t been in her room, he was sure that she was here somewhere. So far, everything she had seemed sure about had been true, and she hadn’t hesitated a second before saying she’d be taken to the headquarters in Moscow.
He killed three more people before reaching a door that looked different from the others, metal, much heavier than the doors leading to the rooms. The heating? On the first floor?
Clint pulled at the doorhandle violently, but it was either locked or just extremely heavy. He would have used an explosive arrow, but they didn’t want to alert the rest of the people still asleep in here, so that wasn’t an option.
“Barry,” he hissed at the muscular agent coming out of the room closest to him. “Come and help me with this real quick.”
Barry came immediately and together they managed to pull the door open completely. Confused, Clint stared at the cushion-like inside of it.
“What is that?” Barry asked in a low voice. “Is this an 1800’s asylum or something?”
Clint needed the remark to realize this was a padded cell. And like, not a modern psychiatric kind of security room, more like the ‘you go crazy from being in there’ type. It probably shouldn’t have surprised him that they had this kind of thing. It was completely dark inside, the air coming out was thick and stuffy but rather cold. Even the thought of going inside made him shiver.
“Can you remove the door?” he asked Barry. “I’m not going in there with a door that could close.”
“Sure thing.”
Barry didn't even need his help to unhinge the heavy door. Neatly, he leaned it against the opposite wall.
“Thanks,” Clint said. “I can do this alone now, I think.”
Barry nodded, moving on to the rooms on the other side to check for survivors. Clint took a small flashlight from his belt, throwing it into the room where it activated itself and hovered like a drone. The cell was circular and padded all around but he only noticed that in passing, the thing that made him gasp was the slumped figure in the middle of the room. Even in the limited light, he could make out her hair color.
“Kid!” He only whisper-called it, hurrying over to the still silhouette on the floor. With the press of a button, he increased the light to the maximum as he knelt down next to the dainty girl. She lay on her side, curled up into herself, and for the first few seconds, he couldn't see her breathing. Gently, he turned her around to look at her.
“Hey, kid,” he whispered but his voice broke as he felt the shallow breaths under his fingers. She was deadly pale, only wearing a t-shirt that seemed way too big… And there were bones practically sticking through her skin all over her. When he reached out for her, he was honestly scared to tear her skin by the mere touch.
“I have her,” he said. “She’s unresponsive, I’ll need medical as soon as the building is fully cleared.”
Her body was colder than it should be, she had to be even weaker than he had thought if she couldn’t even regulate her body temperature anymore. He wished he had brought something to cover her with. Gently, he felt her body for injuries, but he couldn’t detect any fractions. Surprisingly, she didn’t look particularly beat-up either, just insanely malnourished and weak.
Looking around the room, he shivered. Even being here for an hour had to be hell, and he was pretty sure that she had not been in here for just that. Now he got an idea why she had been so nonchalant about the bruises, those had indeed been nothing compared to this.
“Upper floor is done,” he heard through his comm. “We’ll go help the others in the basement.”
Below him, the girl stirred a little, groaning weakly. Her eyelids fluttered and she blinked -and then she cried out, shielding her face and crouching on the floor, away from the light. Clint startled and hastily pressed the button to regulate the flashlight, hopefully, this would be easier to adapt to. She shivered violently, whimpering. Clint could hardly make the connection to the young woman who had knocked him out a few months ago. He couldn’t imagine how much it had taken to leave her like this.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, breaths coming quickly and heavily, each making her body shake. Her voice was different, too, hoarse but still strangely higher, younger-sounding. “I’m sorry, please, I’ll be better, I understand, please, I can do better…”
“Kid,” he interrupted her gently. “Kid, hey, look at me. I’m not them, you don’t have to apologize. Hey, look at me.”
She flinched from his voice but turned to him, eyes fixing on his face. He carefully lowered the light source a few inches so she could recognize him better.
“You-” It was almost a question.
He reached out to put a hand on her shoulder. She flinched a little, but not quite as much as before and she seemed to stay relatively calm. Probably she was overall sensitive to touch right now.
“Yeah, it’s me. Don’t be scared, it’s gonna be okay now.”
“You came.” Incredulous. Almost shocked.
Clint swallowed hard. “Of course I came. I promised I would. I’m sorry it took so long.”
She whimpered. “You came for me,” she repeated. Clint met her widened eyes and knew he couldn’t even imagine what she felt right now, how overtaxed she was with the concept that someone would come and search for her out of genuine care.
“Yes, I did,” he replied softly. “I’ll get you out of here as soon as possible, we have to wait till my team finishes off the rest of these bastards in here.” He sighed. “I’m so sorry we didn’t come earlier. We had to plan this operation, you know, and get permission, too, we couldn’t make it sooner… How long did they leave you in here?”
He knew it was a stupid question the second he voiced it. She shook her head silently.
“Sorry, that was dumb. Do you know how long before they put you in here after they took you?”
A pained look passed over her face. “Two or three days? I think?” She sounded miserable, like probably everyone would when they have no sense of time anymore. Clint drew a sharp breath.
“Oh god.” He felt his stomach cramp up at the thought. “Shit, that’s… that’s two weeks, kid. Two weeks, alone, in here?” His voice had grown incredulous.
She shivered. Clint had the overwhelming urge to kill the people responsible for this. Or better, put them in here to feel it. To feel the insane fear and torment that they must have inflicted on this girl for refusing to kill an innocent child. How was she not absolutely out of her mind at this point? Another good question, how was she even alive?
“Food?” he asked, voice faltering.
She shook her head. “Water,” she mumbled. “When I was out.”
Another wave of anger rolled through him. So that was them keeping her alive, keeping her just functional enough so she could work for them again at some point, but making sure she’d have to feel the isolation without breaks. He lacked even thoughts to describe what he felt about them.
“I don’t feel right.” Her voice broke as she weakly ran her fingers over her ribcage. “There is… too much bone… It’s not right.”
Gently, he moved her tiny hand away from her body. “Don’t think about it. You’re gonna be fine, we can fix this. You’ll be okay.” She shivered again, actually, she hadn't really stopped trembling since waking up. "Are you cold?"
“All the time…”
He saw tears glistening in her eyes. She was obviously at the end of both her physical and mental strength.
“Guys,” he asked the team over his comm. “How long till we’re done here?”
“Give us like ten more minutes, Barton,” Agent Fernandez from Strike 2 replied. “And don’t complain, since you’re not particularly helping.”
“I’m not complaining,” Clint returned. “I wanted a general idea of how long till medical, that’s all.”
He turned back to the girl. “Ten minutes,” he said softly. “Ten minutes and it’s over. I want to wait till it’s safe, you know, because I can’t shoot if I carry you.”
She nodded, weakly curling up, a bit closer to him, for warmth maybe. He kept a hand on her bony shoulder since she didn’t seem to mind the touch and it gave him the feeling he was maybe helping.
“Why?” she asked in a whisper.
“Why what?”
“Why come here? Your team, S.H.I.E.L.D… what do they get out of this? Why for me?”
“The elimination of an organization that illegally trains children to be killers and keeps them as slaves?” he asked back. “Isn’t that a good reason? Besides, most people would agree that what they did to you is barbaric and has to be stopped.”
She groaned a little, turning again to find a more comfortable position. Clint reached out to help-
“Natalia!”
Clint started violently but it was nothing compared to the painful flinch of the girl next to him. His eyes flashed to the door, where a tall figure blocked most of the light, a gun pointed at them. He heard his companion whimper softly.
“One wrong move and you are dead,” the woman said in his direction. She spoke English with a Russian accent. He noticed blood on her nightdress and face, carelessly wiped off. The old woman… fuck. She had to have noticed their intrusion and staged her death in time. Erikson… he hadn’t alerted them… which meant that she had been faster… Clint felt a lump come to his throat.
“Who the hell are you?” he demanded harshly, even though he could guess. The initiator, the boss of this torture chamber. Ready to take back the Black Widow.
She ignored him. “Natalia,” she said again, now clearly meaning the girl. He hadn’t known her name until now and he didn’t like how this woman used it, like a trigger-word. "Come here, Natalia."
Clint felt the girl moving at his side, slowly forcing herself to her knees.
“Are you insane?” he fired at the woman angrily. “Aren’t you the one who practically starved her to death? She can’t get up, let alone walk!”
“Come here, Natalia,” the woman repeated coldly.
The girl panted, trying in vain to get to her feet. She whimpered in pain but managed to get on her hands and knees, crawling over towards the woman. For a few seconds, Clint was simply shocked as to how on earth she could muster the strength for that before anger took over again.
“What are you?” he asked the woman who stood by the door, coldly waiting for the weakened girl to reach her, not even moving an inch closer to make it easier for her. “What kind of monster are you even? Like, serial killers would be ashamed to be associated with you. You did this to her, all of this because she wants to be a good person? Because she’s not a psychopath and doesn’t want to kill innocents? What was the endgame in this? Nursing her back to health from death’s door so you can say she owes you her life? But you can’t win, do you understand that? Even if you break her will, you can’t make her want to kill, because you can’t change a person like that. You’ll lose anyway, no matter what you do!”
He spoke loudly and confidently, as much directed at the girl -Natalia- as the woman. He couldn’t draw his bow fast enough before being shot. He couldn’t save himself, so his mission was her, giving her hope, encouraging her to -well, at least to let her know that she was in the right. She had reached the woman now, leaning against the wall to get to her feet and she managed it, Clint had no idea where she could possibly be drawing the strength from. The woman waved her closer, taking her by a shoulder. She didn’t take the gun off Clint for a second. Natalia seemed like she would break any second, but she stood, impossibly supporting her body. The woman pulled another gun from her belt and handed it to the girl whose fingers closed around it automatically, hands shaking even from that little weight.
“Eliminate the target, Natalia,” the woman commanded firmly.
Clint breathed in sharply. For a moment, he wanted to say ‘don’t do this, you’re better than that, you don’t have to’ but he didn’t. The girl was scared to death and this woman had hurt her beyond comprehension. If she couldn’t endure more torture it would be understandable if she obeyed, just to finally have peace. He hoped she’d at least think of stalling a little so back-up might arrive though he didn’t think they would.
“Eliminate the target, Natalia,” the woman repeated dangerously. Natalia flinched.
“Will you make me go in there again?” she asked, voice breaking and automatically flinching, expecting to be hit. The woman put a hand on her shoulder, pressing it. Clint saw Natalia grimace with pain, her eyes darting around nervously, clearly thinking of a way out as much as he did.
“You are forgetting your place, Natalia. Punishments are not to be bargained about, you are to take them with dignity.”
Natalia pressed her lips together tightly.
“I don’t want to go in there again,” she repeated stubbornly. Clint couldn’t hold back a tiny smile. Show her, kid.
"You will not if you obey. What is the matter with you, Natalia, have you forgotten all your training?”
“Might be because you locked her in a torture chamber for two weeks,” Clint remarked harshly. “Isn’t good for people’s memories, I’ve heard.”
Think, for fuck’s sake, how do I get the two of us out of here alive?
“Every refusal makes matters worse, Natalia,” the woman said, threateningly. “Eliminate the target, now!”
A pained, desperate look flashed over Natalia’s pale face as she shook her head a little. She was doing good, but it was hurting Clint’s soul to see how afraid it made her.
The woman closed her fingers around Natalia’s thin arm, pressing down until the girl whimpered with pain.
“You will obey me, or this punishment will be nothing compared to what’s coming!” she hissed angrily. “I can break you, Natalia, until you are exactly what you are supposed to be and if you spend the rest of your life in that cell! Eliminate. The. Target!”
Natalia flinched, tears blurring her eyes. She shivered as she lifted up the gun, needing both hands to keep it up but she didn’t shoot, she just stared at Clint, wide-eyed.
If only he could somehow make her shoot and miss him, that might give him enough time…
Quickly, too quickly to use the moment, the woman turned her gun, barrel pressed against Natalia’s temple. Clint knew that she couldn’t kill them both at the same time, but he still couldn’t fire an arrow before taking a bullet…
“Natalia!” The woman’s voice was sharp like a knife.
Natalia started a little.
“I’m dizzy, ma’am,” she mumbled weakly and then her knees buckled. Clint reached for an arrow, but before he could fire, he saw in a sort of slow-motion how Natalia turned, grabbed the woman's gun, and shot her own three times in quick succession.
Blood spread on the woman’s white shirt quickly as the shots echoed through the hallway. A look of incomprehensible surprise spread on her face slowly as her hand touched her chest and she collapsed, bringing Natalia down with her. They landed on the floor with a heavy thud.
Clint gasped in shock, jumping to his feet.
“Check for survivors!” he called into his comm, more loudly than anticipated. The shots the girl had fired had been heard everywhere anyway. “We’ve had a stray, armed, check if the people are really dead and not faking! Erikson!” he called, knowing that it was hopeless. “Erikson, do you copy?”
Barry replied as silence seeped through his comm.
“Upper floor, Barton? Are you injured?”
“No, I’m good, but Erikson… He didn’t warn us.”
“We’ll look. The girl?”
Clint pulled the woman’s dead body away from Natalia rather roughly, practically throwing her aside.
“Has a competition with someone how often she can save my life, I think.”
Natalia’s eyelids fluttered, dazed from the fall. She didn’t make a sound. Her hands still held the guns, as tightly as her exhausted body allowed her.
“Kid?” he asked softly. “Give me the guns, yeah?”
She didn’t quite let go, but he could pull the weapons from her fingers without resistance. He holstered them both.
“There you go. You okay?”
Again, he carefully checked her body for injuries, she neither protested nor helped him. The woman’s blood had left stains on her shirt and she had goosebumps all over.
“Erikson is down,” Barry said softly through his comm.
Clint stopped for a moment, bowing his head a little in honor of their fallen comrade. He couldn’t process this yet, he’d have to manage later. There was nothing to be done right now.
“Thanks, Barry,” he replied quietly.
Forcefully removing the death from his mind, he turned back to Natalia, deciding that she hadn’t broken anything from the fall. She looked stunned, as if she, too, couldn’t process. Her eyes were fixed on the body next to them and Clint carefully moved in the way to block her from the sight.
“Kid, hey… It’s over, she’s dead. You did it, it’s over.”
She shivered, eyes widening.
“What have I done…” she whispered shakily. “What have I done?”
Her voice sounded breathy and strained like every word was hard to get out.
He understood at this point why she wasn’t relieved. For her, this was probably like murdering a parent, an abusive, horrible parent, but still a parent. She might have hated this woman, but killing her…
“Hey,” he murmured softly. “You did good, kid. You saved my life, again, and you freed yourself. You never have to come back here. It was self-defense, okay? You had to do this.”
She looked up, eyes full of tears, then shook her head with a shuddering breath.
Clint bowed down and carefully helped her to sit up, supporting her head and back. He wasn’t sure if that would make breathing easier or not since he wasn’t even sure what made it hard in the first place. Shock, most likely.
“Let’s not figure that out now. You’re exhausted, you have to rest.”
A tremor, more violent than the ones before, shook her body. She whimpered in fear, movements uncontrolled. Instinctively, Clint pulled her closer to hold her.
“Shh, kid, it’s okay.”
He felt her heart, fluttering like a young bird in her chest. Her teeth were chattering. Still, he wasn't sure she would let him hold her and was careful so he wouldn't miss a signal of hers to let go, no matter how weak that signal might be.
And suddenly he found her curling up against him, burying her head in his uniform and hunching her shoulders to be even smaller. Surprised, he lifted the trembling girl onto his lap.
“There,” he said softly, stroking her back. “There, it’s gonna be fine. Don’t be scared.”
“Building is cleared,” Fernandez announced.
“Sending up medical to you, Barton,” Coulson added. “How bad is it?”
“She’s alive?” Clint replied. “I don’t think it gets much more positive than that. She’s just skin and bones.” He felt Natalia’s skeletal frame flinching at the remark. “But she’s a fighter,” he added mainly for her. “I’m sure she’s gonna be alright.”
He could almost see Coulson raising his eyebrows. He would definitely see through that last sentence.
“Can you give me a number from one ‘good’ to ten ‘critical’?”
Clint looked down at her, grimacing. “Maybe eight.”
Coulson was silent for a second. “Okay, they’re on their way to you.”
“Copied,” Clint replied, hoping that Natalia hadn’t picked up. Looking at her ashen, tired face, he was pretty sure she hadn’t.
“We almost failed to introduce ourselves again,” he remarked more cheerfully than he felt. “Natalia, right? And I’m Clint.”
She looked up briefly, registering the name but too weak to reply. She curled up again, giving a miserable, exhausted sound that sounded a lot like a sob.
“Shh, it’s okay,” he whispered, continuing to stroke her. Hopefully, he was keeping her at least a bit warm, her skin was feeling so clammy against him. The incident with the woman must have cost her so much strength… “Don’t worry, kid, you’re gonna be fine. Hang in there, you’ll be okay, I promise we’ll take care of you.”
Carefully, he ran his fingers over her matted red hair, heart aching from the small, fatigued sounds that she made, acting like it wasn’t scary as hell how much she let her guard down all of the sudden. This just wasn’t right. He kept muttering calming phrases under his breath, taking care that she wasn’t looking at the dead woman.
Steps were to be heard outside and they both started.
“This is medical, Barton, don’t shoot us,” one of the paramedics called out before they came into view. Hastily, Clint gestured them to stay back.
“I’m gonna lift you up now,” he told Natalia. “You’ll probably get dizzy, but I won’t drop you, I promise.”
Her dainty hand closed, trying to get a hold of his uniform. He came to his feet rather easily, she was scarily light, closer to Cooper than to Laura, he felt like, though his mind was probably exaggerating on that. She groaned softly.
“It’s okay, worst part is over,” he said calmingly. “I’ll carry you over to the medical team and they’ll look at you.”
She tensed up in his arms, eyes snapping wide open. She opened her mouth as if to protest, but no sound came out. Violently, she shook her head, holding on to him as if that could protect her.
“They’re not like the doctors here, kid, they just want to help.”
She shook her head, breath quickening. Clint met eyes with the paramedic.
“I’ll sit down with her, okay?”
Silently, the man nodded.
“Shh,” Clint murmured as he stepped over. “Don’t be scared, kid, you’re safe now. There, it’s alright, no danger.”
She moved weakly, making a first effort to escape his arms, but then she drew a shuddering breath and fell limp as if someone had cut her strings.
“Natalia!” Clint exclaimed, shocked, as he felt her head sink back against his arm. Hastily, he stepped forward, putting the unconscious girl down on the stretcher. He would have liked to stay closer, protect her even if he knew she was safe, but he had to move out of the way and let the medics do their work, he couldn’t do anything.
He only understood fragments of what they were talking, ‘malnourished’, ‘dehydrated’, that kind of thing. From their tone, he couldn’t even figure out if she was in danger or not.
He followed them when they left, down the corridor, down the stairs to the massive entrance portal of the facility where they met with the back-up, Coulson greeted him in the plane and gently congratulated him on the mission with that sad note that always slipped in when they lost an agent. Clint nodded erratically, eyes still fixed on the tiny red-head, now under a warming blanket, tubes coming from her arms, lying so perfectly still that he could only tell from a monitor that her heart was beating.
He drew a long breath as they took off, throwing back a last glance on the facility with a sort of grim gratification. They’d never hurt a child again. They’d never hurt anyone again.
“She will almost certainly survive, Clint,” Coulson said softly, surely meaning it as an encouragement. Clint looked up, at him, then back at her.
"I hope," he replied grimly. "And I hope that she is strong, stronger than we can imagine because otherwise, I don't know how she'll recover from the harm they've done. I don’t know if anyone can mend that. We should have come earlier.” It came with an almost desperate force.
“You know we came as early as possible,” Coulson remarked.
Clint nodded, eyes damp.
“I know. But I’ll feel guilty, for the rest of my life, that I didn’t come earlier.”