A Final Battle
Sorry for the wait. I am trying to find edit the ending but am not finding the time. Hopefully the next couple of weeks will be a bit better.
Leaves brushed her side gently as a breeze rushed through the tiny strand of woods she had chosen to hide in as she scouted the area around the docks keeping a sharp eye out for the Hydra operatives as she looked for Hawkeye.The sound of voices had her slipping silently through the slight undergrowth until she was peering out onto the shore of the river where the SHIELD issue water craft were housed. Outside the SHIELD boat dock several people, Hydra by the sounds of their conversation, were gathered, acting as security as several people used the small cranes that were usually used to lift the water craft out of the water to load crates on to a waiting submersible.
Natasha watched the Hydra operatives work for a few minutes, catching snatches of conversation here and there but not enough to figure out what was in the crates before going completely still as a piece of wood lands right beside her. Moving only her eyes she examined the piece of sun bleached wood then darting a glance at Hydra to assure herself that they had not spotted her allowed her eyes to roam the area around her. At first her eyes slid across the old lifeguard tower further down the beach, a legacy of the 1920s when the beach had been a public swimming area before SHIELD had bought the land in the late 1940s, as being too delapidated and clearly so unsafe as to keep even the most foolhardy from attempting to climb it but then her eyes scittered back as she realized that that had been a pair of eyes peering at her over the rotting leadge of the tower.
'Clearly a talented fool will try anything,' she thought sarcastically as she met Hawkeye's eyes and watched as he gestured toward a clump of trees then held up five fingers. Natasha found the need to roll her eyes at the man almost overwhelming but with an effort she merely inclined her head and started silently making her way to the clump of trees all the while wondering how Hawkeye was going to get down from the tower without breaking his neck or bringing the tower down around him like a particularly hazardous Jinga puzzle.
Minutes later she was crouched in the indicated clump of trees watching the Hydra agents as they continued to load the crates onto the sub. The slight rustle of leaves to her right caught her attention and she turned her attention to the sound, a knife in her hand. About ten seconds later Hawkeye poked his head out of the foliage and gave her a cocky smile which drove a sigh of exasperation out of her.
"Do you have any idea what they are loading," Natasha asked indicating the Hydra agents.
"I didn't get everything but they were saying something about loading some sort of weapons onto the sub. Something to do with a te-aract or something similar," Hawkeye told her and she cocked an eyebrow at him questioningly, wondering how he could have possibly heard them from as far away as the lifeguard tower.
A cocky grin spread across his face before he told her in a teasing voice "I lip read. Want to help me practice?"
Usually Natasha would have cold cocked any guy who made such a lewd suggestion but the teasing tone of Hawkeye's voice combined with the fact that she could tell that he wasn't in any way attracted to her just left her rolling her eyes and asking "Do you really use pick-up lines that bad?"
"Hey, what was wrong with it," Hawkeye asked back an exagerrated pout on his face while his sharp eyes were scanning the Hydra agents.
"Better to ask what wasn't," Natasha joked back before she thought about it then blinked as she realized what she had just done. She rarely allowed herself to just react without thinking through the consequences of her actions and the fact that she had threw her. Trying to regain her mental equilibrium she asked brusquely "Are you getting anything else?"
Hawkeye seemed unfazed by her change in tone and merely squinted his eyes as he stared at one Hydra agent who seemed to be directing the proceedings.
"Can't get much else. The guy has a mustache and that makes it harder to read his lips but I think they are about to launch. They are getting nervous and are thinking about leaving without the rest of the stuff," Hawkeye paused as the man he was watching stopped and listened to his comms before he was talking again to the people loading the sub. The loaders immediately dropped the crates they were carrying and started to scramble to get the sub ready for departure.
"Change of plans, Widow. They are heading out now. Apparently Steve and the rest of the Avengers just defeated the main force and that has spurred them into action. We have to stop them," Hawkeye told her firmly as he gripped his bow and in one smooth motion stood up, stepped out of cover, and strung his bow. Natasha cursed mentally as she moved to follow the idiot just as he released his first arrow striking the leader in the center of his chest.
Before the body had even had a chance to begin falling they were running toward the dock, Hawkeye firing a few shots as they ran and downing three more Hydra agents before they were amoung the enemy and it came down to hand-to-hand combat.
Immediately, Natasha sprang up into a handstand and used her legs to snap the neck of the first Hydra agent she encountered and as she flipped into the next Hydra goon coming at her she noted the way that Hawkeye used his bow to trip one woman and had already strung and fired an arrow into another man before he stabbed the woman through the eye.
Natasha kicked a man hard in the chest before using him as a spring board to attack a man trying to sneak up on her from behind and as she rode the man to the ground she clicked her comm.
"Steve, Hawkeye and I have engaged the Hydra agents at the docks. They are trying to sneak away with stolen weapons made from the tesseract," Natasha reported. As she was using her widow bites on the man under her she heard her comm crackle to life.
"Ironman is in route to your position. ETA two minutes. Can you hold them until then," Steve asked and Natasha quickly glanced around assessing the situation. As she watched several of the Hydra agents were boarding the sub, moving to go down the hatch, and she knew if they made it down that hatch their chances of keeping the sub from launching would be almost nill.
"We will try," she told Steve shortly as she searched for Hawkeye, catching his eye she gestured to the sub and saw the light of understanding in his eyes.
"Cover me," Hawkeye shouted before stringing his bow. The person closet to the sub's hatch went down with an arrow shaft sticking out of his throat and the next person was down a moment later with an arrow through the eye. A man was rushing at Hawkeye and Natasha immediately moved to intercept the man. The man was surprisingly well trained and it took her a full minute to subdue him, a minute that she cursed as she watched as Hawkeye was forced to retreat up onto the roof of the boat dock in order to keep the Hydra agents on the sub under fire without being overwhelmed by the agents still on the dock. Finally with a last blow she was able to lay the man out and was moving to help defend Clint but he caught her eye and gestured her on to the sub.
"I've got this. One of them managed to get down the hatch but is injured. Need you to go after him," Clint shouted to her as he loosed several more arrows at the few people still on the sub's roof without even looking to make sure his shots had connected. Natasha noted that every shot hit its mark as she slipped through the Hydra ranks while arrows flew around her picking off any people who got too close or who seemed like they might be about to get in her way.
With a final push she threw herself into the hatch of the sub and sped down the cramped corridor to the control room knowing that she might be followed at any moment and that the cramped quarters would severely limit her fighting ability. Spotting the man at the controls she noted that he still had an arrow sticking out of his shoulder, an arrow that was only a inch from having hit the vein pulsing in his neck.
The man spun, hearing her approach, and fired off several shots which she barely managed to dodge before she was twisting the gun out of the man's hand and snapping his neck moments later. Her breathes came hard as her body fought to get enough oxygen after her mad dash but she only gave herself a few moments to catch her breath before she was moving back down the corridor to the hatch, surprised not to encouter any Hydra that had followed her.
A body was laying over the hatch and with a practical air she dragged it down the hatch before allowing it to drop at her feet. Catiously she poked her head out of the hatch and surveyed the area before spotting Hawkeye still on the roof of the boat house, keeping lookout. He almost immediately spotted her and nodded at her with a smirk on his face which faded into a look of surprise as he was thrown backward, blood blooming on his upper chest as a high calibre bullet struck him in the lower shoulder.
Natasha started toward him without thought before forcing herself to take cover and scan the area as a hail of bullets continued to rain around the dock area. She gritted her teeth as she heard the distinctive sound of a large object hitting the water and knew that she had to take out the sniper quickly before Clint managed to drown in the murky river.
She located the sniper fairly quickly but while the man was not very skilled he did have a seemingly endless supply of semi-automatic weapons which he kept targeted on her position. As each second ticked by all she could think of was Hawkeye sinking to the bottom of the river, unconsious from the shock of the bullet wound, and she was just about to fling herself from cover and try her luck with getting off a head shot when she heard the sound of repulsors. Relief flooded her as Tony quickly took out the crazed man but she didn't give herself time to relax as she was already sprinting to where she estimated Hawkeye would have hit the water.
"Hey, what is up. Are you ok," Tony asked his voice made mechanical by the suit but still conveying his worry.
"Hawkeye was hit. He should have gone into the water somewhere around here. You do airily surveillance. I am going in to look for him," Natasha told him shortly as she stripped off her widow bites. The last thing she needed was them going off in the water and electricuting both of them.
"Shit," Tony said from behind her but didn't saw anything else as he took to the air. Cold water closed around Natasha's head as she took a shallow dive into the river and began searching the river bottom for the man who had become something almost like a friend in the short time she had known him.
'Don't you dare die you idiot. Matt needs you,' Natasha thought fiercely as she felt around the river almost blindly.
"JARVIS, start a heat signature scan of the river area and get me a current chart for the river," Tony ordered as he flew up scanning the river and hoping desperately that he would spot a head of gold hair floating in the waters.
"Already started, sir. Charts of currents in the area indicate that the currents around the boat dock during this part of the tide cycle are particularly strong and as Agent Romanov is already being swept down river despite her best efforts I believe it might be best to start searching further down river," JARVIS told him and immediately Tony started moving slowly along the river scanning the shore for any signs of movement or unusual heat signature.
His heart was racing as he considered having to tell that little boy lying in his infirmy that he had lost his father but with an effort he wrenched his mind away from that train of thought.
"Sir, I am picking up a human heat signature approximately seven hundred feet to your left, on the shore. The person appears to be kneeling within some bushes," JARVIS informed him and Tony moved that way. He breathed a sigh of relief as he noted the blond hair of the man kneeling in the bushes and the recurve bow slung across his back.
"Widow, I have found him. Going in to see how bad he is hurt," Tony called over the comms then winced as a cacophony of voices came back to him asking who had been hurt and he realized that both Natasha and he had forgotten to inform the team what had happened.
"Sorry, sorry," he quickly said hoping to stave off Steve's voice of disappointment or Coulson's bland rebuke "Forgot to call it over the comms but Hawkeye was injured and fell in the river. Widow went in after him while I took aerial search. I found him downriver and he appears to be alright except for the hole in his shoulder. I am going into retrieve him now and will meet you back at where ever triage has been set up."
He finished as he came down behind Hawkeye and walked up to lay a hand on the shoulder that had not been shot. A blur of movement later he watched in surprise as sparks flew literally as Hawkeye spun around a knife in his hand which he dragged across the belly of the suit in a way that would have disembowled Tony if he had not been in the suit.
Surprised by the violent response Tony immediately backed up, hands in the air, saying "Wow, calm down. Its just me."
"Stark," Barton said panting and Tony frowned briefly at the slur to his words.
"Tony, report," Steve said firmly and it was only then that Tony realized that he had left comms open.
"It is ok. Just surprised Hawkeye and he tried to disembowel me. I am fine. The suit absorbed the damage easily but I think he might have a head injury. He is slurring his words," Tony reported.
"You ok," he directed toward Clint but the archer simply starred at him a frown of confusion on his face.
"Ironman, don't try to fly him out if he has a head injury. Coulson is going to come with a car to pick you up," Steve told him after a brief moment.
"Stark," Clint said thickly "take off the face plate I can't hear you at the moment. My aids got shorted by the water."
Tony blinked at the words not understanding and blurted out "What?"
Steve started to repeat his order but Tony stopped him.
"Sorry, Cap, wasn't talking to you. Hawkeye just said.....," Tony trailed off as realization of what the archer had meant penetrated and he cursed as he brought up the faceplate.
"You're deaf," Tony blurted then actually flushed at the dry look Clint shot him.
"Yeah, what of it," he growled and Tony quickly said gesturing wildly "Nothing, nothing. Just ignore me. I am an idiot. I...."
"Stark, calm down. It is fine but could you look at me while you talk. Lip reading is hard enough when the person isn't moving around like a hyper kid and doubly hard when said person has facial hair," Clint told him tiredly as he sat back down on the ground, applying pressure to his wound.
"Sorry,...umm....what would help....with the lip reading," Tony asked awkwardly gesturing to his face as he spoke.
"Just speak slowly and make sure to get my attention before speaking," Clint told him with a smile obviously amused at his discomfort and the fact that he wasn't angry put Tony at ease.
"Asshole," Tony pronounced with exaggerated care and grinned as Clint laughed.
"Don't worry Stark everyone knows you are," Clint shot back and Tony stuck out his tongue at the other man.
"Real mature," Clint snarked.
"Ironman, Coulson is heading your way. Can you give us your exact position," Steve called over the comms and Tony grimaced again as he realized that he had forgotten again to relay information to his team. Steve was so going to give him the 'Captain America is disappointed in you' face later.
"Tell him to stay put. Hawkeye doesn't have a head injury so I am flying him out and picking up Natasha on the way. Will update you on the details when we get there," Tony added as he could feel Steve about to start firing off questions over the comms, he didn't think that Clint would appreciate him telling all of SHIELD about his deafness. He didn't think Clint viewed his deafness negatively but the fact remained that if people learned about it then it could present a point of weakness for Clint.
"Ironman, I have already obtained transport and will meet you back at base," Natasha called over comms and Tony smiled.
"Guess it is just you and me then Legolas," he joked then felt like an ass again as Clint frowned at him and Tony realized that the archer would not have been able to hear Natasha.
"Natasha found a ride so it will just be me and you on the ride back," Tony explained. Clint nodded his understanding then asked gesturing at Tony "So how do we do this?"
Tony grinned mischeviously then said teasingly "Bridal style."
He laughed in amusement as Clint shot him the bird and told him exactly where he could shove it.