Freetown, Sierra Leone (31/10/2006)
Planes were crowded as soon as there were more than two people on them, Natasha had decided.
Usually, Clint flew, she took lessons from him, and there was no one in the back. Occasionally they took Coulson with them, but that was unusual. The problem lay in that Coulson was very friendly, and often popped into the cockpit to see them.
Natasha knew he was being friendly, but it did grate on her. He hadn’t immediately warmed to her, though he had pretended he had, and Natasha didn’t know if he still had reservations about her or not. She had mostly interacted with him through mission reports, lunches, and shared good-natured complaints about Clint.
Handlers were normally on comms with their agent, and Coulson used to be on comms with Clint, but when Natasha joined up, her and Clint just kept each other on comms, effectively shutting Coulson out and managing themselves. Natasha knew that Coulson and Clint were exceptionally close, and that they still had meetings over coffee or sandwiches - which was mostly what Clint’s diet consisted of, if Natasha couldn’t sneak him into eating out with her or Coulson.
On this plane ride, things were different. Natasha was no longer the co-pilot, Coulson was, and Natasha was sent to ride in the back with Masha.
They were flying to Freetown, in Sierra Leone, because a Nazi supporter group had managed to get their hands on some old HYDRA technology, and as everyone knew, SHIELD fought HYDRA. Masha was coming with them, because she was Fury’s little protege, and as such was training under Coulson. Coulson was coming with them, because he had recently lost an agent - possibly in the Shanxi province, though they’d sent a team and come up with nothing - and Fury thought he needed a boost.
Natasha liked working with Clint. It was normal. She’d fallen into an easy rapport with him over the missions they’d been on together - before him she’d always worked alone. Sure, she’d trained with Yelena, Alexei and Melina, been trained by the Winter Soldier, Taskmaster, Madame B - but no one had been her partner in the way Clint was now. Adding Masha and Coulson to the mix felt somehow wrong, and there was a tight feeling in her chest as she saw Coulson and Clint talking quietly in the cockpit.
Comms were to be turned on during the mission. Masha had her Beretta - Natasha felt somewhat naked without it, remembering with vivid clarity how it had literally saved her life in Cairo - and Coulson was armed with a Sig Sauer. Clint had his arrows, rather than his sniper rifle, and Natasha had her Makarov, her Glock, her knives. Clint was going to be protecting the rear, Coulson running back-end from the safehouse, a block away from the Neo-Nazi base, and Natasha was heading up the frontal attack with Masha.
As soon as the plane touched down, they were unloading their tac bags, making sure weaponry and tech alike were concealed in suitcases and satchels, floppy hats on Natasha and Clint, caps on Masha and Coulson, their cover as a single father with his children very much secure. The thought of Masha as her sister felt wrong to Natasha, but she cleared her head, falling in step beside Clint.
“It won’t take long?” She was quiet, subdued - her alibi was bubbly and excitable, but Natasha couldn’t bring herself to feel excited at all. “Just a few days, then we’re back home?”
Home. That was a loaded word, if ever there was one. She knew Clint had a cousin in Iowa he visited when he could, but Natasha’s home was her bunk at the Triskelion, the safehouse she was at, or with her partner. Clint nodded, answering her question, and was clearly about to ask her something when Coulson came up on his other side, and tapped Clint’s shoulder.
Natasha left them to it.
Masha had always been kind to her, at SHIELD - since the day Natasha had first joined, Masha had brought her food, eaten with her, and taught her about SHIELD culture. She was quiet - they both were - and supported her. Masha had given her the Beretta, had picked her up from Cairo, had supported her and put in a good word for Fury. But Natasha knew that people generally didn’t care, that Fury had his eye on Maria and Natasha was a senior operative - she knew that Maria could have endless reasons for befriending her.
Maria had never been on an op with her and Clint before. Natasha didn’t know her fighting style, how she moved, her tactics - she didn’t know her skillset, couldn’t rely on her to take out a target while Natasha was fighting them. She wasn’t Clint.
And Natasha didn’t know if she wanted a partner that wasn’t Clint. Coulson had brought up maybe adding Bobbi to their team, and she could maybe try that out, but having Maria sprung on them felt too much like a test, and Natasha didn’t like it.
By the time the team finally reached the safehouse, night had fallen, and they barely had time to run over the plan one more time before Coulson hustled them all into bed.
He woke them before the sun had even risen. Natasha was convinced Coulson was possessed, and was all set to see if he needed cognitive recalibration before she remembered they were on mission.
Breakfast was such an odd affair. When Natasha and Clint were on an op, they generally… didn’t have breakfast. But Coulson mentioned that there was a Starbucks near the base, and Maria made the age-old point that breakfast was the most important meal of the day, and somehow they found themselves in a Starbucks, pretending they were functional people, drinking coffee at 4 am.
Clint had coffee - obviously - one black coffee, no milk, no sugar. He would drink straight from the coffee pot if Coulson would let him - as Natasha often did - and after he’d finished he ordered another. Maria ordered some disgusting honey latte and offered everyone a sip. It was the sweetest thing Natasha had ever drunk, and she nearly spat it out after. Coulson didn’t even have coffee - traitor - which made Natasha reassess her earlier acceptance that he hadn’t been possessed.
They all had a chocolate coin.
After they had finished, the first rays of sunlight lit the streets in an eerie half-light, the street lights flickering off. Maria shepherded them back to the safehouse so they could change and pick up their weapons, though Natasha was loath to leave the comfort and safety of the coffee shop. For a few minutes, they had just been people - friends, even - hanging out in a coffee shop like they weren’t in Sierra Leone simply to break up a Neo-Nazi ring who had their hands on technology that could annihilate people.
Once the team had finished changing into their tac suits and loading themselves up with guns and ammo - in Clint’s case, a bow and his arrows - they all filed into the rented minivan and Coulson drove them around the block to the base. The roads were bumpy, and every time they hit a pothole, the whole team was bounced around in the back.
Natasha and Clint had argued about who got to call shotgun, and once Maria started telling on them to Coulson, he decided that they all had to ride in the back - Maria got the whole middle row to herself, but Clint and Natasha were squished in the back together, and they fought good-naturedly the whole five minute drive.
As soon as they reached the base, Natasha’s good mood dried up. Her muscles tensed and she clutched her Makarov with a white-knuckled grip, the familiar shape lending memories of Russia and faceless marks rather than Clint’s jokes and their easy rapport.
Clint nudged her, trying to get her to relax, but he had to go, at Coulson’s insistence, and he tipped her one last salute before scaling the wall of the building next to the base, and disappearing over the top.
Alone with Maria and Coulson, Natasha knew she was safe, but her face had turned guarded and cold, and she brushed off their attempts to include her in running the plan again. As Coulson got back in the van to drive off, a crackle of static echoed across the comms, before Clint’s cheery voice filled Natasha’s ears.
Once Coulson’s van vanished round a corner, Natasha and Maria took their places, waiting until the first Nazi showed up.
Clint’s steady commentary on anything and everything was usually a welcome distraction from the tedium of waiting for a mark, but with Maria and Coulson on comms, he was quiet, something which disturbed Natasha. They were friends with Maria and Coulson - she could see why they might not appreciate some of the things Clint said, but the quiet was weird, so she took it upon herself to kick-start his commentary.
“Clint, any opinions about your rooftop?” She was joking, her tone light, but there was an element of tension in her voice that there wasn’t usually.
When there was no reply from Clint, Natasha frowned, chancing a glance up at the rooftop. She couldn’t see anything from her position on the ground, and that irked her. “Clint?”
Maria’s worried voice came through on the comms, and Natasha would be lying if she said the familiar voice didn’t ease her worry a little. True, she’d never been on mission with Maria before, and she had no idea how she worked in the field, but Maria had been associated with safety as long as Natasha had known her.
“Coulson, Barton could be down. We don’t have eyes on him. Do we abort?”
The thought of aborting the mission hadn’t even occurred to Natasha. There wasn’t an extraction team or timeframe on the mission - no one would be waiting if they postponed it for another day - but Natasha didn’t want to stop, didn’t want to abort. She saw her mark rounding a corner, and narrowed her eyes.
“I’m going in.” She turned off her comms and wandered into the street, looking lost. It took barely a second for the Nazi to notice her and turn sympathetic. He hailed her in Krio, asking if she was lost, and where she was going, and she offered him a smile, waiting for him to get closer. As soon as he was in range, she knocked him out with a poke to his pressure point and nodded in satisfaction as he dropped. Kicking his unconscious body into an alley and picking up his pass, she walked in the front door of the Nazi building, swiped his pass, and smiled predatorily as no alarms went off.
Natasha had made it up to the top of the building, confiscated the HYDRA tech, and was preparing to head back down to start a fire when a hooded figure dropped in through the window.
Bringing her pistol to her face in a split second, Natasha fired, the bullet hitting its target in the figure’s foot. She had no way of knowing who it was, so she dashed forwards lightly, flipping up the cowl of the quietly moaning person. It was the head of the organisation - she recognised him from photos. As she was about to bury a bullet in his head, he bit down on a cyanide pill, choking as his mouth filled with foam. He was about to say something, but it started with ‘Heil’, and Natasha really didn’t want to hear his Nazi spiel.
She stomped on his mouth, and made her way back down, setting her fire and feeling good about it. By the time she was outside, Coulson was pulling up, and he didn’t look happy. The others were already in the van, Clint looking a little worse for wear but generally okay.
“Natasha, what were you thinking! You could have been killed - you had no way of knowing if the person who knocked Clint out was still there - you were very irresponsible!”
Natasha grinned and took shotgun, stowing her Makarov in her holster.
“Aw, you care about me, Phil.”