“Fuck, we lost Clint, we all did.”
Natasha growled into her cellphone with her back against a tree. Her hair long and straight again, now darker because the red hair was becoming too much of a staple to her appearance. Wide rimmed sunglasses hid her eyes as she chewed away at a piece of bubblegum between thoughts and phrases.
She was in a park somewhere. Not the US, that much for sure. Somewhere in Europe, probably? She wasn’t keeping track. She just grabbed a flight, swapping tickets with some other man in his forties or fifties to get away as fast as possible. She’d wiped as much of her profile as she could before she ditched the Avengers base and stepped back into obscurity. Sometimes it pained her how easy it was to disappear from society entirely. Maybe Ross wasn’t hunting her down. Maybe she overreacted.
But if Tony was right, and T’Challa told the general what she’d done, then there was no looking back.
“When you’re saying ‘we lost, what are you –“
“Both of us, Clint.”
Clint’s voice was so calm. She heard about the mass breakout. She knew that he would likely call at some point in the near future. When the dummy phone started ringing; she really had no choice but to answer.
“What?” Clint scoffed, “As far as I know, the threat was dealt with. Sure the Accords wanted to stop us, but-“
Natasha swore in Russian under her breath.
Steve, you idiot.
“Clint, has Steve told you anything about what happened?” She asked hesitantly.
A pause, followed by a depressed sigh echoed through the phone.
“Steve hasn’t said anything really,” Clint said, “A lot of sitting, a lot of lying down, not a lot of sleeping… he’s fucked, Nat. Like real fucked. And I guess that’s kind of why I called.”
“Fill in the gaps?” she cocked a grin.
She heard a small chuckle, “You know me, Nat. Always need my eyes on everything.”
A brief pause. Natasha froze as two police officers walked by in a light conversation. She put on a smile and laughed into the phone as she willed her body language to become looser, friendlier.
Then the moment they were gone, Natasha started to walk away with a little less pep.
“I don’t like saying these things over a phone,” she said quietly, “What are your transportation options like?”
“I can meet you at point… Theta in three days.”
“See you there.”
As she passed a trash can, she smashed the phone on the ground, framing it like a girl who’d just been dumped.
People were so predictable, and their actions simple. Natasha was a master of replicating those reactions, and her brain was copying this perfectly as she stared at the pieces of her phone on the ground. She slammed the heel of her leather boot into the pieces one last time for assurance before walking away.
No chances.
* * * * * * * *
A few weeks before…
Government facilities were supposed to be difficult to sneak into. Now, Nat may have had some inside help from a certain blonde agent which could make all the difference, but her request wasn’t crazy.
A few moments with the guy responsible.
She couldn’t help but chuckle at herself as she slipped past another man in the hallway. Here she was, going to talk to another sociopath in their own glass box, just to get a little more information.
She could hear them talking around the corner.
“To see it fail, so spectacularly…” Everett Ross boasted to the man behind the thick glass.
Natasha was right around the corner. The voice was so quiet that she shouldn’t have been able to hear it.
But the words pierced like a bullet.
“Did it?”
There were a few more moments. Natasha waited with a button in her hand as Ross stormed out of the room, significantly less cheerful than he was moments before, but it left a small enough window for her plan to work.
Quietly, she wandered into the room, tossing a small disc towards the main control panel, and with a spark the lights went dim, the cameras flickered and died, and Natasha wandered in to a calm and stoic Helmut sitting in the same prison that held a super powered super soldier.
He took the first word:
“Miss Romanov. This is a surprise.”
Natasha smiled, but venom filled her vibrant eyes, “Helmut Zemo. I’ve been told that you’ve been busy.”
“And the fact that you’re here alone is proof of that,” the man smiled.
Natasha could see it in his face. Resolved, satisfied, and accomplished in what he set out to achieve.
It all clicked in a moment.
“The soldiers… were a ploy. This whole thing was a set-up starting with you –“
“framing James Barnes for the explosion,” he chuckled.
Natasha assembled the pieces right away. Everything from the bomb, to the discovery of the dead body, to his moment with Bucky and the reveal that he’d framed the Winter Soldier.
“Your goal was destroying the Avengers.”
Zemo smiled, “Your empire is dead, Miss Romanov.”
She scoffed, “Thank you for your time.”
Her hand grabbed the device from the desk as she slipped out the door, and the tech whirred back to life as it had before as she stopped out of the facility.
A foul taste stuck to her tongue when she realized they’d played right into his hands. She could’ve stopped this whole thing if she had the right information, trusted the right people, and said the right things to the right people.
But it never seemed to work that way.
* * * * * * *
“So, let me get this straight,” Clint sighed as scratched behind his ear, “We were played.”
“Like a fiddle,” she groaned.
Clint couldn’t stifle his grin, “And you’re putting all this together now? You’re getting slow, Nat.”
Natasha rolled her eyes, “Says the man who got dragged into it last minute. You could’ve gotten away from this scot-free.”
“Hey, I’m the last person who’s gonna assume that a guy’s bad just because of heavy brainwashing,” Clint smirked, “and I gotta say that Cap’s great at inspiring people.”
“They both are. We were all blinded by their ideals and missed the problem that was staring us right in our faces.”
The pair paused for a moment as a man in a suit came in through the door of that tiny café, but he seemed quite disinterested. Natasha shoulders relaxed slightly when the man looked away.
“And now were back to square one,” Natasha pulled the small cup up to her face, taking in the scent of the thick coffee, “Literally.”
“Budapest was definitely not the place I was thinking about.”
The pair paused. Their silence hung on the air for a moment.
“Are you okay with all this? I mean, being a wanted criminal again?” Clint asked as he pulled his sunglasses down or a moment, making eye contact for just a moment.
“I’m not ‘okay’, but I’ll manage,” Natasha replied while adding a fake smile, “What about you? Have you called Laura?”
Clint winced, his eyebrows curling downwards as he shuffled in his seat, “Yeah, I called ‘em. Don’t think I’ll be heading back any time soon.”
“You’re not in the middle of a project, hopefully?”
“No, I… I’m not sure actually.” Clint grinned painfully.
Natasha took his hand for a moment, and the pair squeezed the other’s hand in a firm grasp.
“This will pass,” Clint smiled, “Musclehead and Numbskull will come to their senses, and they’ll find a way around these Accords. Then we can all go home.”
Natasha stared out the window. People were minding their own business as they walked by. A couple laughing into a phone pointed towards their faces; a small family walking down the street with shopping bags in hand; a woman on a Bluetooth engaged in some kind of business call.
Natasha tried to hold back a frown, “I hope so.”