Chapter Text
PROLOGUE
In Sao Paolo, a girl slits throats, her knife cutting into flesh like rotted fruit five days old, like browned spotted bananas, like sticks of butter left out to melt in the sun.
In Jakarta, a girl uses a garrote to bring down an entire boardroom of men in three piece suits, their blood splattering the walls of the windows that overlook the city, a red tinge that drips down glass panes and mingles with the summer sunset hues of gold and purple and pink.
And in Budapest, a girl crushes people like she’s a giant stepping on ants, their bones breaking like sticks beneath her fingers, their cries lost in the absence of breath, rivers of clear and white tainted crimson in the aftermath of summer rain.
Clint goes to Tony first without even thinking about it, doesn’t bother with the phone or even the computer, instead just uses the keycard he keeps inside his wallet (the one he always forgets about until he mistakenly grabs it instead of his Starbucks card.) He shows up in the lobby of Stark Tower with his recurve bow strapped to his back and his face set into a hard scowl, his eyebrows knitting together in concern.
“What do you mean, she’s gone?” Tony asks when he meets Clint downstairs, furrowing his own brow because it’s been at least five months since S.H.I.E.L.D. fell and another three since Clint has been seen at all, much less contacted anyone other than Natasha.
“I mean, she’s just gone,” Clint says, waving his hand around as if saying the words will induce some magician’s trick where she materializes out of thin air. “No note, no code, no nothing. Not even a goddamn necklace.”
Tony groans, rubbing a hand over his eyes as Clint talks.
“It’s Romanoff. Doesn’t she disappear like, once a week?”
“Not since Hydra,” Clint returns fiercely, feeling his temper flare, the muscles in his fingers twitching with the desire to grab an arrow and release it into his friend’s skull. “Don’t fuck with me, Stark. I’m telling you, I don’t know why or how, but she’s gone, and something’s not right.”
Tony sighs, and Clint watches as his eyes take in what he knows is his rigid form, the harried resting face that he’s been told makes him look like he belongs on the front of America’s Most Wanted, his eyes widening slightly when he notices the bulge behind Clint’s jacket.
“Where are you going?” he asks, indicating the bow, and Clint snorts.
“Where do you think? If you don’t have anything for me to go off of, I’m not waiting around while you tinker some device into existence. Not with Hydra and –”
“Wait, wait,” Tony interrupts tiredly, holding up his hands. “Just…wait.” He takes a breath, leveling his gaze. “Come inside. I’ll help you, okay? See if we can find anything. Let’s at least examine our options, and then afterwards, you can decide if you wanna go all Hunger Games on the rest of the world.”
***
Despite what the papers say and what the gossip websites claim to see, Clint has only been in Stark Tower a handful of times, most times with Natasha and never by himself. They had discussed moving at one point, in the wake of New York, having lost all semblance of grounding in terms of where to put down their roots now that the whole world knew who they were and what they were capable of.
That they never got around to actually acting on that idea was partly because of Clint feeling the way he does now sitting awkwardly on an ostentatiously wide couch: Stark Tower, while rich in amenities, was too big and too lonely for the fact that their professions meant they would be spending a good amount of time apart once they got back into the field.
(The other part of it was the fact that Natasha actually agreed with his reasoning, which to this day, Clint still considers something of a victory given how often that happened for anything that wasn’t what movie to watch, or what Chinese take out place to order from.)
He presses a palm into one jittering leg while Tony creates maps out of thin air and words out of holograms, his fingers swiping through what Clint assumes are various files and reports, though he doesn’t bother to ask.
“Anything?”
“Be patient, I’m looking.” Tony’s lips are pursed in a half frown, a face that Clint recognizes as one that means he’s is actually putting effort into this rather than half-assing the whole thing just to shut him up. He falls silent again and concentrates on how to make his body stop shaking against its will, counting to five in his head the way Natasha taught him.
1. He lets his breathing slow, his head clearing slightly. 2, 3, 4, 5…
“When was the last time you saw her?” Tony asks distractedly, causing Clint to startle.
“Last night,” he says slowly, coming back to himself. “I mean, this morning. I had just gotten back from one of my assignments. Went over some stuff from my trip, fell asleep on the couch, and when I woke up, she was gone.”
“Just disappeared?” Tony asks again, and Clint tastes blood on the inside of his cheek.
“Yes,” he says, continuing the silent count in his head between breathing intervals. “Just – just gone.”
Tony sweeps through more holograms, before bringing his hands together and causing the shapes to disappear completely. The room suddenly becomes brighter, Clint thinks, or maybe it’s just because he’s managed to mute his panic enough that the world has shifted from black and white back into sharp color.
“Nothing on Hydra’s channels, if that makes you feel any better,” Tony says, getting up. “And nothing on any of the trackers Hill and I placed on those agents last week, either. Can’t trace her aliases anymore now that she’s got none.” He pauses. “I know you’re worried, okay? But maybe she disappeared for a reason, Barton. Maybe she’s fine. Hell, maybe she doesn’t want to be found.”
“Natasha wouldn’t just leave,” Clint emphasizes again, bringing his fist down onto the couch cushion, the plush softness doing absolutely nothing to quell his need to unleash his anger. Tony sighs.
“No? Look around you Barton. The world’s changed.”
“Of course it has,” Clint snaps, getting to his feet. “I know damn well that the world has changed. I saw it firsthand, Stark. So forgive me for being more than a little worried when my partner, who hasn’t left my side without telling me in months, is all of a sudden missing with no explanation, in a world where my own men turned on me and almost left me for dead.”
Tony crosses his arms, and regards Clint with a stare that looks so Natasha it almost hurts. Dimly, he finds himself wondering for the first time if her babysitting mission so many years ago did the billionaire better than he would ever admit to.
“You finished with all of this?”
No. Clint sets his jaw in a straight line. “Yes.”
Tony nods. “Then let’s go downstairs. There’s something I want you to see.”
***
Clint follows Tony into the elevator, his fingers jerking reflexively against his sides as they plunge towards the lower floors.
“I was waiting until I had more to go off of before I opened this can of worms,” he says, seemingly oblivious to Clint’s twitching limbs and the nervous vibe he knows that he’s giving off, as if it’s 2012 and he’s paranoid all over again. “But given that…reaction, I might as well clue you in now.”
“What do you mean?” Clint asks, his stomach dropping to his feet at the same time that the elevator lands with a dull jolt. Tony says nothing, and simply motions behind his head as he walks out into what Clint supposes has to be his designated workspace.
“Barton.”
Hill’s clipped tone catches him off guard and he whirls around, expecting to be met with his former supervisor’s stern gaze. Instead, he finds himself greeted with a hologram of her face, though the harsh look is still very much intact.
“What, you couldn’t beam yourself here in person?” Clint asks sarcastically, unable to stop himself. Hill rolls her eyes.
“I liked it better when I could threaten you with paperwork,” she replies dully. Despite the tension, Clint feels himself start to smile slightly because there’s a modicum of normalcy at the thought of Maria Hill wanting to relegate him to desk duty. Tony reappears in front of him with a thick folder, throwing it down in Clint’s face.
“Special delivery, bird boy.”
Clint frowns, picking up the file. “What’s this?”
“This…” Tony pauses. “This may be the reason why Romanoff is missing.”
Clint looks down, feeling vaguely sick. He opens the folder with shaking hands, his eyes falling first on the thick words scratched into the side of the manila – Project Code Widow - and then the black and white photo stapled to the front of what he soon realizes are dozens of write-ups and lab test results.
“Oh fuck,” he breathes, feeling his blood go cold at the realization of who the woman in the photo is. Despite the lack of color, her red hair sticks out like a beacon, and her facial structure is so familiar he knows he would be able to pinpoint her identity from miles away.
“We know Hydra is out there, and we know that they infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D.,” says Tony, filling in the silence as Clint rifles through the rest of the contents. “We also know that we weren’t the only ones who they were working to take down.”
“We think that they’re planning to build from the ground up,” Hill supplies, as Clint raises his eyes in confusion. “I don’t know how much you remember from your research on the Red Room, Barton, but Russia’s Black Widow program was one of the most successful ways to covertly train dozens of highly advanced assassins.”
“Yeah, I remember,” says Clint slowly amidst a dull roaring in his ears that makes him feel like he’s listening to the whole conversation from underwater. He swallows down a mix of bile and rage. “How long has this been going on?”
“We don’t know,” Tony admits. “That’s what we were trying to figure out, before you came knocking down my very expensive door. This report is dated two months ago, but we have no idea how long they’ve been operating.”
“Well, find out,” Clint retorts irritably as his mind immediately flips to what Natasha had told him after they had reunited, how Hydra had been under their nose for over seventy years, how so many of the colleagues and friends they trusted were no longer loyal to S.H.I.E.L.D. “I mean, isn’t that your job?”
“Barton,” Hill intones warningly, and for a single moment Clint wishes that she wasn’t a hologram, because while he would feel quite silly yelling at a video call, he knows he would have no problem getting in her face if she was standing in front of him. He sighs, trying to keep himself calm.
“So what the hell does this mean?”
“It means that may not even be Natasha in the photo,” Hill continues. “Not if they’ve been successful in developing their assassins. But, so far as we can tell, they’d need a viable way to recreate her genes in order for something like this to be even halfway feasible.”
“So what?” Clint snaps the folder shut, unable to tamper his frustration any longer. “You think that they just took her? You think that I’d allow them to…to walk into my apartment while I was sleeping and just take her while I had no goddamn idea?”
“No,” Hill says at the same time Tony shakes his head. “I have no idea how they could have done this. But I think what Stark said before is exactly right. She realized what was going on, got out before they could get to her, and as usual, decided to save your ass in the process. I know Romanoff, and I’m betting that she doesn’t want to be found – at least, not right now.”
Clint huffs out a breath in the wake of her words. “Bullshit,” he says roughly, rocking up to the balls of his feet before turning away, because none of it makes sense, not the file or the information or the fact that Natasha would just leave, even if he’s known her to disappear in the past, even if her vanishing meant that she had the option to give one of them a chance at survival.
“Never again,” she had whispered when he returned, when he held her in his arms, the stress of the press conference and destruction of the Helicarriers still weighing heavily on her soul and in the feel of her skin.
***
It’s mid-afternoon when Clint finally returns to his apartment, and when he opens the door he half expects to find her sitting on his couch the same way he had after he made it home for the first time. Her presence hadn’t surprised him, not really, and the only reason he hadn’t worried more when he saw the broken lock was because of the music playing from small iPod speakers, the soft classical violin medley that he knew was their code for “it’s me, I’m here, it’s safe.”
“You look like shit.”
He did, he knew that much – bruised and broken and hurting and worse for the wear but he was alive, and at that point, he had figured that small victory was worth it. She had helped him into bed and cleaned the rest of his injuries, taping bandages over torn skin while talking about Hydra, about Fury and Pierce and what he had already suspected from his own experiences. She had named people like Senator Stern and Jasper Sitwell, and used words like “compromised” and “neutralized” and “traitorous,” and Clint had felt confused and annoyed and sick at what it all meant.
“It means that we’re on our own. You know that,” she’d said a little impatiently.
“But you’re okay, right?” he had asked, searching her face, brushing off her hand as she tried to clean blood out of one of his deeper cuts. “You’re okay?”
“Clint. I’m fine.”
He could tell it wasn’t exactly the truth because there was something in her eyes that looked tired, defeated, and a little lost. He knew better than to press further, though, and so he didn’t bother.
“I’m here, now, and you’re safe. You can relax.”
Except he wasn’t safe, not really, not with the world falling apart at his feet. Natasha made him feel more secure, clinging to his arm at night when the shadows on the wall could be anything besides harmless shapes, but then again, she always had. It’s part of the reason he suspects he’d fallen apart so quickly when he went off on his own following Hydra leads, when he knew he had nothing tangible to hold onto as everything around him went to shit.
Clint blinks his thoughts into nothingness, rubbing at his eyes as he sits down on the couch. Unearthing the folder from his jacket, he opens it up again and nearly misses the small object that slides out from between the folds of the dossier and onto the floor.
He picks it up slowly, his eyes traveling curiously over the dark, slender stick. It’s the smallest and most discreet flash drive he’s ever seen, the kind of tech Clint immediately knows only Stark Industries could own or design. He turns it over in his hands a few more times before getting up and moving to the bedroom.
Grabbing his laptop from a underneath a pile of dirty clothes, he sits down on the bed and sticks the drive into the side of the USB port, his breath catching in his throat as he waits for something to materialize. At first, there’s nothing, and Clint wonders if the whole thing is a joke, if maybe Tony is messing with his head after all. Eventually, however, images begin to show up on the screen, grainy black and white captures that look like they’ve been imported from a bad surveillance tape.
Clint brings his laptop closer, bending into the screen. There’s a room and there are people talking in a language he can’t understand, but he discerns enough from the visuals to know what he’s watching, the terrified cries of women he can’t quite see but can certainly hear, their screams taking over as a white-hot flash sears the picture, rendering any visuals useless.
There’s a shift, then, and Clint finds himself on the street corner of what he supposes has to be some country he’s never set foot in, watching as a woman dressed in all black takes out a number of individuals with breathtaking force and unimaginable agility. She’s a blur across the distorted monitor but her movements are sharp and familiar, and Clint finds himself transfixed, barely breathing as he watches her slit the throat of the last man before looking up, lips splitting apart in a cold, emotionless grin.
She reminds him of a fire burning angrily through ravaged villages, of a wolf on the run and a light in the darkness. She reminds him of anger and fear, of death and salvation all at once.
She reminds him of Natasha, and, Clint realizes a few seconds later, that’s because she is.
***
This time, he calls Tony instead of storming over to the Tower, finally making use of the burner phone that Natasha had forced him to start carrying around in her increasing paranoia after the events of a few months ago.
“Why didn’t you tell me about this?” he asks, not even bothering to reference the flash drive and when he hears Tony sigh, he knows he doesn’t have to.
“Jesus, Barton. Are you that dumb? What do you think would’ve happened if I had given that thing to you while Hill was watching?”
Clint takes a breath, because he knows damn well what would’ve happened, and he knows that Tony is right. There’s no doubt in his mind that Hill understood how important it was for him to find Natasha, but at the same time, he also knows that it would be her duty as a friend and as a former supervisor to talk him out of his inevitable rescue mission.
“Yeah, well.” He pauses. “Did you watch it?”
“Yes,” Tony replies after a long beat, and Clint believes him without thinking about it. “Only enough to know what you would be reacting to. And what Hill would’ve said if she had known.”
Clint nods, forgetting for a moment that Tony can’t see him, and realizing for the first time how much he’s going to potentially be on his own. In the old days, before all of this, Hill would’ve been the first call – Coulson, too, and maybe Fury. And then after that, Clint would’ve marched straight down to headquarters and demanded access to a quinjet, as well as any other resources he could get his hands on.
But there was no Fury now – not really. There was no Coulson, either, and no headquarters or quinjets or other agents for support. There wasn’t even Hill, not in the way there used to be. Clint sighs as he lets his eyes travel around his apartment.
“You gonna need us?” Tony asks after a beat, as if reading Clint’s mind. “When you go off on this whole rescue mission, I mean. Because it’s been awhile, and I could use an adventure.”
Clint laughs slightly, surprising himself with the reaction. “Maybe,” he says truthfully, before turning off the phone and tossing it onto the bed. It would be stupid to say no, to rescind the offer of any kind of trustworthy back up. But Clint also knows that, like so many years ago, this is something he needs to do on his own.
“I’m gonna bring you back,” he murmurs to himself as he stares at the bed, the imprint of Natasha’s head on the pillow still painstakingly visible in the front of his mind.