STRIKE Team Delta: 26 missions

Clint stared out of the window, unmoving. The two of them had been awake for hours - it didn’t bother him, he’d stayed up longer - and Natasha had finally dropped into a fitful sleep.

He chanced a quick look over at her, and something in him relaxed at seeing her calm face. Natasha looked so much younger asleep - they were the same age, basically, but she acted so much older. She was so much more mature, more experienced - had seen more horrors in her life than he had in his - and yet, when she was sleeping, she almost looked like a normal twenty-three year old. Like her biggest worry was whether she could finish her college work on time.

The curtains were open, but no one was looking in. Strike team Delta were stuck in the middle of nowhere, also known as Buchanan County, Iowa - and boy if it didn’t bring back memories. Clint had grown up in Iowa before he was shipped out to foster homes and then left for Carson’s, and being back after so many years was a little off-putting.

Phil had noticed Natasha hadn’t been sleeping, had been throwing herself into training with too much vigour, had been skipping out on lunches, and had decided to cancel all of their upcoming ops. They had been sent to Iowa for ‘recuperation’, which was apparently valid as a mission parameter, and were going to be there until they were back to mission strength.

It looked like it was going to be a while.

Natasha had been… not right, ever since Helsinki. Clint and Phil had tried their best - they had dragged her to lunches, dinners, Phil had offered to host a sleepover as the only one of them with a residence bigger than a bunk - but Natasha had barely responded.

They had been in Iowa for less than a week, but there had been no fights, bruises, guns or blood. No handcuffs or scalpels, no metal detectors, and no one had made her wear glasses of any kind. Natasha had been coming out of her shell slowly, but surely.

She had been surrounded by violence at SHIELD since they had got back from Helsinki. If ever anyone so much as touched the back of her neck, they would be unconscious on the floor before anyone had a chance to think. Natasha had been wild, unpredictable - similar to how she had been when Clint brought her in. Arguing with Fury that she should be allowed to stay had been terrifying, but Clint and Phil had both known that she would be an asset. Now, though? Fury had been the first on the bandwagon to agree that she needed a little time off, had even called it a mission so she still had vacation days stocked up.

The friendship Natasha and Fury had built up was a little scary. Clint knew Nat could handle herself, but it was a little odd seeing the normally stoic and terrifying Fury joking around with the normally icy and terrifying Black Widow.

Fury had hugged her when they left. Hugged her! If Clint weren’t so sure that Fury would annihilate anyone who tried, he’d be worried he was an impostor.

During their time in Iowa, Natasha had finally begun to relax - she had slept through the night at least twice, and Clint would never admit that he’d had that thought, because it really ended up sounding like she was a baby and he knew she would hate that.

The quiet sounds of Independence, Iowa, drifted in from the open window, and Clint shifted for the first time in around three hours, getting up from the hotel chair to sit on his bed. There was a light breeze, and it ruffled Natasha’s hair - back to its natural red - but didn’t wake her.

Clint got changed for bed, and curled up under his own covers, keeping one eye on Natasha. He felt responsible - he had told her, promised her that she would be fine - so he was keeping an eye on her. Making sure she didn’t wake up, that if she did - that then he would be there for her.

In the morning, Clint woke with the sun. He stumbled out of bed blearily, and moved to close the curtains- when he noticed the window was shut.

He hadn’t shut it.

Their room was on the third floor of the hotel, and there were no pipes on the outside. Clint could only think of four people who could scale a sheer wall to get up to their room, and two of them were inside it.

One of the others was Bobbi, and excellent as Bobbi was, Clint didn’t think she would haul herself all the way to Buchanan County, Iowa, to close a window.

That only left one person, but Clint had been fairly sure he was dead. He had hoped he wasn’t - as bad as that made him feel - but Clint had been sure he was dead years ago.

Working himself up to a panic, Clint spun around, ready to rouse Natasha, when he stopped himself. She was sleeping - peacefully - and she hadn’t had enough sleep recently. It was his fault if he had broken in - he had left the window open, left the curtains open. Clint closed his eyes and took a deep breath, trying to centre himself.

Of course, someone else could have trained to scale a three-storey building, but that was the kind of thing you learn in an organisation that trains little girls to be assassins, or in the circus. It was unlikely that it was a Red Room operative, or they would both be dead, so that only left the fourth option.

When Clint was little, his father used to drink, and take his anger out on him, his mother, and his big brother Barney. They had grown up in fear of him, but when Clint was seven, their parents died in a car crash. Barney was delighted to be out from under his thumb, but less than a day later, they were under the system’s thumb instead. They had bounced around foster homes, until they ran away when Clint was thirteen.

That sparked a long run in Carson’s Carnival of Travelling Wonders. Clint had been trained up by Swordsman and Trickshot - both long dead - but Barney had been jealous, and wanted a normal life. He had trained up under Trickshot too, but when Clint found out that Swordsman had been stealing from the circus to pay for gambling debts, his mentor had tried to kill him, and left him for dead in the middle of nowhere - in Wisconsin. Barney had left him and the circus - he had killed the original Trickshot and stolen his identity, to go on to kill Swordsman in revenge and run away, leaving his own trail of bodies behind him.

Clint had assumed that Barney had died a long time ago, but he was the only other person that had the skills Swordsman and Trickshot the original had taught them. There was no-one else who Clint knew that could make that climb.

It was only when he had finished pulling himself together that he noticed the little surprise Barney had left.

There was a specialty arrow lying on the table. Clint recognised it immediately - SHIELD tech. One of his. It was an explosion arrow, but it had probably landed without going off, and Barney had probably picked it up from the scene.

As soon as Clint picked it up, the red light below the tip started flashing, and he started. Of course Barney would leave a bomb in the hotel room of two master assassins.

Clint opened the window and chucked the arrow out, sighing when he saw it detonate in midair, rather than hear it. Slipping his hearing aids in from where he’d left them on the table, he thanked the high heavens that Barney hadn’t taken them. It would have been all too easy to render him useless.

There were still a few more hours before the hotel’s breakfast cafe started serving, and Clint got started on securing the room. He was aware he was probably being paranoid, but Natasha was on the road to recovery, and he didn’t want to put her back even further by letting her know that his psycho serial killer brother was after him.

He barely wanted to admit it to himself.

The requisite few hours later, Clint roused Natasha with a cheery smile, urging her to get dressed and down for breakfast. He had gotten dressed far earlier, and he tapped his foot impatiently waiting for her to get dressed.

“Clint, why didn’t you just order food? You didn’t have to wait.” Natasha’s sleepy remark made Clint’s jaw drop.

“Wow, Arachne, I didn’t even think of that! That’s such a good idea, I totally should have done that.” He attempted to make his way to the phone, but tripped over an ottoman, frowning at the paisley pattern. “Hey, did you pick this room? I thought Phil had, but he would never let me sleep somewhere with that monstrosity. I can’t believe I didn’t notice it before.”

Natasha’s tired grin was brighter than the terrible hotel lighting, and Clint offered her his arm to hold as they made their way down to the breakfast on offer.

“Hey, Little Miss Muffet, why were you up so early?” Natasha joked, tweaking Clint’s ear. He forced a grin and ruffled her hair straight back.

“I traded a decent sleep schedule for an unlimited supply of coffee years back.” He couldn’t let on that anything was wrong - Nat deserved a holiday, not an op - so he smiled and led her down to coffee and cake for breakfast.

When there was no Phil nagging at them to eat healthy, they often skipped on breakfast, but the hotel cafe made the best chocolate cake Clint had ever tried and the only chocolate cake Nat had ever tried, so that was what they ate.

Up until lunch, absolutely nothing went wrong. The pair went out to buy Nat a floppy hat to replace the one she lost in Freetown, and they stopped in a Starbucks to reminisce. It was nice, quiet, until they slid into a Wendy’s to grab a Baconator and a drink, and then it all went to hell.

Clint spotted Barney outside. There was no mistaking him, even though it had been almost a decade - Barney had barely changed.

Natasha was still ordering, up at the cashier, so Clint slipped outside to confront him, muscles tense.

“Barney, you need to leave. I - I’ll have to arrest you. You know that, right?” He desperately didn’t want to have to deal with Barney; it had been easier when he had been presumed dead.

“I ain’t here for the easy way out, Clinton,” Barney growled, looping an arm around Clint’s neck, just shy of painful. “I’ve been trackin’ you, but you ain’t an easy kid to find. I taught you that.” He stabbed a finger into Clint’s chest, making him twitch.

“You used t’ protect me, Barney,” Clint wheezed, aware that they were drawing looks and that Natasha would be out soon. “From pa, from Swordsman. What changed?”

At Barney’s scowl, Clint winced, preparing for a blow that never came.
“You did, kid. You left me. An’ now, ya don’t need me, I don’t need you. Only one way this is gonna end, baby brother. It's in our blood. One'a us is gonna hafta kill the other. An' I ain't gonna stop until I come out on top.” He was sneering, and Clint was seven again, trapped between the counter and his father’s beer bottle.

Natasha was his saving grace. He hadn’t wanted her to find out, but she walked out of the Wendy’s with their burgers in a bag, and waltzed straight up to Barney, poking him.

“I’m a very unpredictable lady, Mr. Barton, and I’m really rather fond of your brother, so I’d suggest you leave. Now.” As soon as he had fled from her, she turned to Clint. “Come on, Clint. Burgers’ll get cold.”