Chapter Eight
“Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop.” Screams. Wails. Pain. Mostly, terror. Kate’s eyes shot open and she panted for a moment, and her mop of dark black hair fell before her eyes. Nightmares were becoming more frequent, or they had been. But… It was only once a week now. That was an improvement. Clint seemed to have helped, maybe. It was weird having someone who actually gave a shit about her. There was a cold sweat filtering around her body and she wiped her skin, scrubbing the flushed color from her face. She tied her hair back into a braid to take the hot feeling from her body, and took a small breath. There was a sudden thumping by the door and her blood ran cold. She looked up with a pale face and looked to her cabinet beside her bed, and she almost smiled when she saw her bow there. Of course it was there, she couldn’t have expected it not to be. But still, she drew the string back and placed an arrow in between it, but when there were footsteps, she saw a wagging tail and golden furry paws.
Kate visibly deflated and she looked down, quickly placing the bow back and touching it back down as if it had burned her. “How the hell did you even get in here?” She remembered there was sunlight streaming through the windows, and the light illuminated a new addition to her door. “... oh, you bastard.” Kate whispered and she stepped up from her couch, looking at the door and seeing the new dog-port through the center, with a little sticky note atop it. Kate reached down and picked it up, and she smiled at the little note.’Don’t kill me when you see the door… or the dog. Out on Patrol in the upper east if you want to join me.’ She crossed her legs and sat down on the rug, rubbing the ink of the paper and her thumb into it until she looked back at the bow.
Bad idea, Kate. Bad idea. She shook her head and looked at the bow, and her costume was locked in some deep cabinet in her room that she had forgotten… or hoped to forget. And an abundance of sudden sirens through the air and she rolled her eyes, laying her head against the rug for a moment before getting up. You old dinosaur. There were a large number of sirens, which meant big emergency, or super-villain. Clint’d need help. “... shit.” She whined as if she were a child for a moment and wanted to just stomp and complain. God, she could see Clint releasing Madame Masque or Baron Zemo, releasing a supervillain across Manhattan, just to get her back in the mask. Though, he also knew that because he was the only thing she had, he was now her weakness. Maybe this was all some elaborate cover-up.
She wouldn’t put it past him. Still, her eyes burned into the bow by her bed, and she remembered it hadn’t been there when she slept. Of course he put it back. It was technically his bow, his first bow. She had cherished that bow, but it meant something different for her now. Still, the tracksuit mafia were out again and Clint was in trouble, so she picked up the bow and her quiver and opened the window to the fire-escape. Idiot. She rolled her eyes and crossed down the fire-escape, still in her flannel pajamas and a large sweatshirt, but it was just this one time then back to not being Hawkeye. Besides… it wasn’t like she would need the mask anymore.
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So, this is bad, right? It feels bad. Clint thought as he was pushed back by one of the men in the tracksuits and before he knew it, his bow had been kicked away and he could feel feet planting into his stomach and striking him. Clint groaned, and he tried to stand again but they pushed him back down and kicked him once more. God… should’ve paged Katie-Kate. Clint thought as he was kicked once more and he heard something snap. “Probably not good.” He muttered as they began to pause, and he looked up, uncovering his hands from protecting his head and saw one of the men had a violet arrow in his back, and he quickly fell beside Clint. Clint released a slow exhale of relief when two more arrows sailed towards another man’s knees and brought him down towards the ground, as well. Kate was almost as good as him, her aim was spot on. Almost.
There were more men now, and he realized they’d come from a car that parked beside the alley, and he scrunched his features together in pain when he tried to stand to fight with her. He was pretty sure one of his ribs was broken, which he thought was because of the coughing that spurted from his lips. Shit. Kate thought as she saw the now surplus of men, and she looked down to her waist, taking her sword from its sheath, one Clint had given to her, and sliced it against one of the men and he fell. Clint felt a little relieved, because he realized that she could certainly take better care of herself than he could. He felt a little more relieved when he saw three of the five men hit the floor beside him, cuts or bruises on their skin.
One of the men wrapped their arms around her waist and tried to hoist her up and Kate screamed in fury, kicking against him as the other man began to strike her from before her. Kate screamed an expletive at him and took her knife from her waist, pushing it back into a non-fatal joint in the man’s shoulder and he quickly dropped her, and she quickly got up and swept the other man’s leg, and he fell down as well. Kate held her knife against his throat and she eventually struck him and he fell unconscious. She took a few deep breaths and blew her hair out of her face with narrow eyes.Clint began to rise to his knees very slowly beside her, and Kate breathed again, letting out another audible exhale. There was a trace of a black eye blossoming across her right eye, and Clint struggled to start to get up.
This man looked familiar, she could see his eyes through his mask, and Katie slowly took the bottom of his ski-mask and slowly began to pull it upwards. It was him. Kate’s breath drifted from her lips, and she held the mask in the same position, absolutely frozen in time. They were his eyes. Amber eyes that burned into her skull, and her flesh suddenly felt freezing cold. She couldn’t… move. She felt frozen. Kate felt her knife in her other hand, and her eyes moved from his burning irises that she could see through his shut eyelids towards the blade. She heard Clint getting up behind her, and soon felt his hand on her shoulder as they both stared down towards the man’s face. “Katie.” He nudged her gently and she hummed in response, swallowing and placing her thumb above his eyelid, and holding it up to see his burning amber eyes. She was kneeling beside his body, and slowly Kate retreated her hand and his eyelid fell down once more. He was breathing. Kate felt Clint slowly take the knife from her hands and slip it into a slit in his quiver, and he bent beside her on one knee. “Katie, come on, let’s go home.”
Her eyes looked down to the handle of her sword in its sheath again and Clint could see the thoughts in her head when her pupils then traveled to the man again. He had a normal face. That was probably what had scared Kate the most originally. It made her sick to say he almost had what had first appeared like a kind face. If someone with a kind face could do that, anyone could. But she looked to her sword and then to her face, but Clint placed his hand on the handle of her sword when she started to reach for it, and he shook his head. “Kate. No.”
“Clint, have you ever killed someone?” She asked him with a barely audible voice and Clint watched every movement of her face carefully, but she wasn’t looking at him. She was staring at that man’s shut eyelids. Clint nodded his head, and Kate looked to him for a moment, and he could see those eyes in the reflection of her own irises. “What does it feel like?” Kate asked him in a soft voice, and it was weird how she sounded so innocent, and there were still people lying in very shallow -yet existent- pools of blood behind them. And she’d attacked them to protect him. As protective of her he was, it was more than double that effect on her side.
“You don’t want to go down that road, Katie. It breaks something inside of you. It destroys you.”
“… he destroyed me.” Kate whispered, but it didn’t even sound like she was aware of his presence, she was just speaking that remark to herself. “Maybe it’s not-”
“Kate.” Clint spoke to her in a firm voice, and it made her turn her head, and there were shines in her eyes that he recognized as tears and Clint sighed, reaching up and brushing her tears away with his sleeve. “You don’t want to do this. This will get so much worse if you do this right now. We can just go now.” He nodded and Kate looked deep into his eyes, her body completely still with each second, and he nodded his head in reassurance. “Okay? C’mon.” Clint slowly stood with a small wince, and he reached his hand down, and took hers. “C’mon.” He nudged her once more and Kate exhaled, looking down towards the man again. He could see a scar on his neck, fingernail scratches, and when Clint saw them, too, he knew they had come from her. “Katie.”
“I told you not to call me Katie.” She whispered softly and slowly took his hand, and let him help her to her feet and place her arm around his shoulder since those guys had gotten in a fair few punches on both of them. Clint smiled and internally, he felt relief inside of him that he had taken her away from that possibility of killing someone. Slowly, they began to limp away.
“Come on.”