Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Plan A was doomed. It had probably been doomed from the start, if Clint spent longer than three seconds thinking about it. Unluckily for him, he didn’t have three seconds that weren’t being interrupted by the bullets currently whizzing above his head. It was the law of averages, sure. SHIELD intel had to be wrong at some point, and it had been wrong a few times in the past. It always ended ugly. 

Clint fired a few shots blind, which he hated. The nature of the mission meant his bow would be conspicuous, and any real attempt at aiming would have his head taken off. All he was doing was stalling for time. And wasting ammo. 

And on top of all that, the shipping manifests for the cargo containers full of illegal weapons hadn’t even been where they were supposed to be. 

So now here he was, empty-handed, using a weapon he didn’t prefer, slowly crossing plan A off his list while remembering how much he hated plan B. 

More shots rang out from inside the room. It was a comfort, but one that Clint was still very much unused to. It was also one of the reasons why plan A being doomed was even more infuriating than normal. 

The woman firing off the shots, Natasha Romanoff, was outside the normal mission parameters. Clint usually worked alone and from a distance. Now here he was, on only his third assignment with Romanoff since bringing her in, and they were in close-quarters combat. He had been responsible for bringing her in, sure, but three assignments and some sparring on base was far from being comfortable enough with her to know her fighting tactics like the back of his hand.

Why couldn’t the intel have been wrong on their twelfth mission? Hell, even later than that? Never?

Lucky number three, it was. 

Clint groaned, dropped his empty magazine, and loaded a new one. 

“All we’re doing is delaying the inevitable!” Natasha shouted over the gunfire. 

Clint squeezed off two more shots through the window before quickly ducking his arm back under cover. Bullets imbedded themselves in the windowsill almost instantaneously. “I know, I know,” he said, not quite loud enough to be heard. There was no way out of the room that wouldn’t get them shot, even for two people with their unique skillsets. “I’m in no hurry to switch to plan B!” he shouted back. 

They both paused in firing any shots. While the bullets from outside didn’t stop, they did slow considerably. 

Natasha slid to an overturned table closer to him. “We can be reasonably sure they’ll take us in alive. They’ll want to know who else is after the manifests.”

Clint let out a low laugh and shook his head. “It’s that whole ‘reasonably sure’ bit that doesn’t fill me with ease.”

Plan B entailed: getting purposefully captured and hopefully taken to a second location where they could either escape and get more information or wait for the trackers in the soles of their shoes to bring reinforcements to them after a certain number of hours had elapsed with no movement. If the missing manifests couldn’t lead them closer to where the Russian weapons smuggling ring was operating out of, giving themselves up probably would.

Probably. 

That, or it would make them a lot more familiar with Moscow's outer districts than they wanted to be. 

“You’re not confident in SHIELD’s intelligence that these guys are just as hungry for information as we are?” Natasha asked, her voice dripping with sarcasm. Clint looked over and saw her actually smirking at that. Confident in the intelligence, at this stage, please. 

But despite the situation, her smirk did make him feel better. It had been a few months since he had brought her in. SHIELD’s vetting process was thorough, and for someone with her background, took even longer than usual. Their first few sparring matches had been devoid of conversation. Their first mission was all business. The second had been much the same, though the training sessions afterwards allowed Clint to see just a tiny bit behind Natasha’s walls. It had been a few weeks since that last mission, and Clint liked to think he was getting better at reading her tells. They were both still figuring each other out. The way they had met didn’t mean that trust was instantaneous or all-consuming. 

Her snarking about the intelligence coming from their employer was definitely a step in the right direction.

The bullets completely stopped whizzing overhead. Clint heard the men rustling around outside. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” he muttered. The look on Natasha’s face told him she was feeling the same way. 

In the next instant, a black object was hurled through the broken window and landed with a thud on shards of glass. Clint only had a second to register the object as a flash bang before the bright light and extremely loud bang! reverberated throughout the small room. 

The sensation of it made his ears ring. That definitely wouldn’t be good for his long-term hearing, he thought distantly. His eyes struggled to focus in the aftermath as his head pounded. His brain was suddenly too big for his skull, he was sure of it. Natasha was a blur of red and black in front of him. Clint kept blinking and shaking his head to try and get his senses to clear, but they weren’t coming back fast enough. 

All he was able to register through the haze was the way Natasha seemed to be looking at something behind him. There was a sharp pain in the back of his head before everything fell away to black.

Clint had been trained for this kind of thing. Waking up immobilized. Being tortured for information. He knew he should wake up slow, take stock of his surroundings before his captors knew he’d truly awoken. No matter how well that rule had been ingrained in him, it never got easier to let that logical side of his brain take over from the initial panic upon the return to consciousness. 

The back of his head throbbed and his ears still rung. His left arm was sore in too many places to count. Clint tested his mobility as slowly as he could manage, only to find that his hands had been handcuffed behind his back. His legs, too, were affixed to whatever metal chair they had tied him to. The restraints around his legs didn’t feel like metal. Zip ties, maybe? It was hard to tell through the fabric of his pants. Not impossible to get out of, but also not a set-up concocted by amateurs. His feet were bare, which annoyed him more than the restraints. He only had to hope that his shoes and the tracker within were still within the building.

“I can see you are awake.” A deep, Russian-accented voice stopped his mental catalogue. Oh well. Clint had gotten most of what he needed. 

When he opened his eyes, he was assailed by the bright light coming from four long fluorescent bulbs that hung overhead. He squinted and quickly made note of his surroundings. It looked, for all intents and purposes, like a nondescript cement basement. A few pieces of weathered wood sat off to one side and remnants of hay or grass—clearly an attempt had been made to clean the place up and make it devoid of anything useful to prisoners—were strewn across the cement floor. 

The chair didn’t seem to be bolted down. Point, Clint. His back was to the door. Point, captors. There didn’t appear to be any cameras or microphones in the room. Point, no one. Never assume before you could confirm.

A large, middle-aged man was leaning against the wall in front of him. The mustache and stubbled round face immediately gave him away as Pyotr Astanov. Clint had spent too long staring at his photo on the board of smuggling ring head honchos. He tried not to feel unnerved at the fact that he had warranted a visit from the boss almost immediately. 

“Real five-star resort you got here,” Clint said. The man gave him no warning before he took two steps forward, swung his arm back, and aimed his fist directly at Clint’s jaw. He immediately tasted metal as his head whipped to the side. He rolled it slowly, going with the punch, and getting a better look at the basement without making it obvious what was what he was doing.

No Natasha. Not good.

Clint didn’t doubt that she could hold her own, but not being able to see what they were doing to her, the kind of pressure they were exerting, was disconcerting. Just another reason he usually worked alone, only himself to worry about.

“We both know what you are here for,” Pyotr said. He remained close enough that Clint had to cant his head upwards to see him and not just be face-to-face with the man’s stomach. “Who wants the information?”

Clint shrugged and rolled out his shoulders at the same time. “No clue what you’re talking about. It’s all a mix-up. Wrong place, wrong time.” 

Wrong answer too, apparently. Pyotr struck out at Clint’s cheekbone. The impact rattled his already throbbing brain and sent sparks of white pain dancing behind his eyelids. He spit metallic blood onto the floor. His head pulsed in time with his heartbeat.

“You are not going to explain anything?” Pyotr asked.

Clint opened and closed his mouth, trying to get the fire in his jaw to settle. At least it didn’t seem to be dislocated. “Nothing to explain.” 

Pyotr grunted before he returned to his full height. “Then I will not waste my time.” He gestured a waving motion at the door to Clint’s back. It opened not a second later. One of Pyotr’s lackeys brought in a metal chair and placed it facing Clint. Clint closed his eyes and blew out a breath, knowing what was about to happen.

Sure enough, footsteps sounded outside the door, heavy thunking boots interspersed with the sound of something being dragged. With their entrance into the basement, Clint could guess that there were now two other targets in the room with them. Clint opened his eyes just in time to see Natasha being deposited into the chair. She fought against the restraints, but was too out of it to do anything to really free herself. She tugged on the handcuffs even as she was locked to the chair and kept her arms bent at an odd angle for a moment before letting them go lax. Her feet were still covered in shoes. Lucky. For both of them, really. One tracker was better than none. They didn’t bother affixing her legs to the chair. 

“Your friend has been similarly uncooperative,” Pyotr said as he came to stand behind Natasha. He reached around and grabbed her by the chin to force her head up to face Clint.

Clint’s hands curled into fists in their restraints. Natasha already had what appeared to be a slash from a knife across her cheekbone, and the area around her other eye had begun to swell. Clint could only hope that Pyotr and his goons were ignorant about Natasha’s true identity. 

“I will make this simple.” Pyotr jostled Natasha’s head. Her shoulders shook with the movement, more limp than Clint would like to see. And yet…

As he looked between her and Pyotr, there was an awareness in her eyes that shouldn’t have been there if she was truly as out of it as he had originally thought. Her shoulders were almost too lax, her eyes too half-lidded. Pyotr and his men likely wouldn’t pick up on it. They hadn’t spent the last few months trying to learn Natasha’s tells and quirks like Clint had. 

In a quick moment, Natasha made eye contact with him. She looked over his left shoulder with intent, blinked once, and repeated the motion over his right shoulder. Clint furrowed his brows just a little. Was that her way of telling him that there were indeed two more men standing behind him? 

“For every answer that you do not give me, she will pay.” Pyotr pulled a knife out of its holster on his hip and held it under her neck. 

“Look, man, I don’t know what you think we’ve gotten ourselves into here,” Clint said and leaned forward, testing the freedom of his chains. Not much room for him to move, damn. “But she’s out of it, leave her alone. You want someone to mess with? I’m right here.” He sat up straighter and shook his head defiantly. 

It was all an act, of course. Okay, maybe 98% an act. He was just hoping Natasha couldn’t see through to the other 2%. It wasn’t enough to make him compromised, but it was enough to make him want them both to make it out alive—and with minimal scars, if possible. 

Natasha’s eyes were on him, but he couldn’t gauge her level of understanding of his motives. 

“You?” Pyotr pointed the knife at him. “I think not. Everything that happens to her happens because of you. Correlation, you see? How much of her blood will be spilled in the name of your masters?” He moved to Natasha’s side and in a quick swipe, lengthened the cut on her cheekbone. 

Clint grit his teeth as new rivulets of blood ran down her face and dripped off her chin to make dark spots on her black pants. He caught the slight wince on Natasha’s face, but other than that there was no reaction. She let her head loll to the side without Pyotr’s hand to hold it up. 

“Who are you,” Pyotr said as he pointed the blood-stained knife between the two of them, “And who sent you?”

Clint considered quipping back and saying that it was the landlady and they had been apartment hunting. That didn’t account for them being armed, though. If he was being held by himself, he probably would have said it just for the hell of it. Now, he figured silence would do less to enrage their captors than a sarcastic lie. 

He raised his gaze to Pyotr. When the man saw that Clint was going to give him nothing, his stubbled face twisted into a sneer. He raised the knife to Natasha’s upper arm and sliced through the fabric. She didn’t even flinch. Which meant neither could Clint. 

Pyotr repeated the entire process a total of six times. Clint could do nothing but sit and silence and watch. Neither of them would break, they couldn’t, but that didn’t make it any easier. All in all, it could have been worse. Maybe it would get worse. But for now, it was manageable, though Clint hated to think of it that way. It was better than electrocution or waterboarding or losing fingers, he reminded himself. After the end of every repetition, Clint watched Pyotr’s teeth grind against against each other harder and harder. Each cut drew more blood. The amount of shuffling Clint could hear behind him from the guards posted by the door increased. 

“Who is worth this level of protection, hmm?” Pyotr gestured at Clint again with the knife. At least it was being pointed away from Natasha. She was still conscious, none of the cuts done to any major arteries or veins, but her clothes were stained in more red than Clint would like. 

“Certainly not the Kremlin.” Clint couldn’t help himself. Pyotr’s face contorted into a furious frown. He glanced down at the knife in his hand for a moment before putting it back in its holster. It only took him two steps to stand in front of Clint and before he knew it, Pyotr was sending a powerful one-two punch right to Clint’s gut. It knocked the wind out of him and tipped the chair legs back. Clint immediately doubled over and wheezed as he tried to breathe past the shock to his system. 

The throbbing in his head crescendoed and static rushed through his ears. He could just barely make out muffled voices in the background. He decided to stop spending any energy on figuring out what they were saying when he realized that they were conversing in Russian. Not very quietly, either. He smirked to himself. It quickly turned into a wince as he shifted in the chair. 

There was more shuffling, the sound of the door being opened and closed, and then nothing but the sound of his own harsh breathing. He listened until he was reasonably sure that all the men had left. Then, he gingerly sat up in the chair and looked at Natasha. She, too, had straightened, which confirmed that they were alone in the room. 

“You get any of that?” Clint wheezed. Natasha wouldn’t answer if she saw any cameras behind Clint, that much he knew.

“They weren’t exactly being clandestine about it,” she replied. “They’re putting us on ice. You, more specifically, to see if you’ll come around after watching me sit and bleed for a while.”

Her statement sucked any twinge of good humor from the room. Clint’s face fell as he took in all her injuries. A few could be sealed with butterfly bandages. Others would definitely require stitches. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. It didn’t change anything, not how he had acted in the past or how he would be forced to act in the near future. It probably wasn’t even necessary. But he felt the need to say it all the same. 

“Don’t get all soft on me now,” Natasha said. Clint caught the way her mouth had opened, as if to finish the sentence with another word. Barton, probably, as she had taken to calling him. “We were trained for this.”

Clint didn’t ask if the “we” meant the two of them, or the Widows, or all of the above. “Still.” He shrugged, which pulled at his bad arm. 

She waited until his eyes settled on hers before saying anything else. It was as close to a Barton as she could get. The determination in her eyes, coupled with a short nod, was all the confirmation he needed. It was a “trust me” and an “I can handle this” and a “don’t you dare screw this up on my account” all wrapped up into one. At least he knew her well enough by now to know what that look meant. 

“How long we got?” she asked as soon as she figured Clint had gotten her meaning. 

“Four hours from whenever we stopped moving after the firefight. So…?” he trailed off, not knowing how long they had been captive for on account of his bout of unconsciousness. They could have been moved down the street or all the way across town. Add that to the time it would have taken to rough up Natasha and shackle him and try to torture the information out of them, and worse case scenario, he figured they would have three hours to wait before SHIELD backup broke the door down. 

“Three hours, give or take,” he settled on.

Natasha nodded. 

“And that’s only if we don’t bust out of here ourselves before then,” Clint added for hopefulness’s sake. He watched a drop of blood roll down her cheek and bead off onto her shirt.

“Think they’ll come if we move early?”

Clint nodded. “Coulson’s watching the trackers. He gets antsy after even an hour stationary if he knows we were supposed to be moving. Some call it overbearing, I call it being a helicopter parent.”

Natasha didn’t look convinced. She fiddled with her hands behind the chair. “They took my bracelet,” she muttered, a complete diversion from what they had been talking about. It was spoken less like a new finding and more like something she had known all along and was just now informing Clint of. 

He was confused by her mentioning of it at all. Did it have sentimental value? To his knowledge, she had brought hardly anything with her to SHIELD when she defected. “I’m sure your paycheck can cover a new one.”

Natasha rolled her eyes and let her hands sag back. “There was a lock pick in it.”

“Ah,” Clint said with a nod of his own. “James Bond has nothing on you. You got any more tricks up your sleeve I should be aware of?”

That earned him a real smirk, wicked and all-knowing. She said nothing. Clint figured the look on her face meant “wait and see”. He filed it away with the rest of her known expressions.

They settled into an anticipatory silence. The basement was dead quiet. There were no mice scuttling around the remnants of hay or drips of water anywhere. Clint watched as Natasha took a breath in through her nose, let it out in a long sigh, and closed her eyes. Clint kept his eyes open, the throbbing in his head and left shoulder too much to allow him any semblance of rest, never mind their situation. That, and if it allowed Natasha the peace to get even a modicum of relief, he would gladly keep watch as long as she needed.

Chapter Text

There were no slits of light coming into the basement. No cracks of darkness, either. Time was hard to keep track of with no visual or temperature input. Clint was used to staying absolutely still for long periods of time on overwatch, but that was different. Sitting immobilized without knowing how much time had gone by or how much longer they would have to sit in these positions was very far down his list of things he enjoyed.

They had been left alone long enough for the blood on Natasha’s face to mostly dry. She had been fairly still and silent the entire time. Clint could tell she wasn’t sleeping. Biding her time, probably. Maybe she really did have another James Bond-esque spy gadget tucked away somewhere. Clint couldn’t wait to see when it was unveiled. Every so often she would roll her shoulders or shift her hands behind her back. 

Clint wasn’t fidgeting, per se, but he wasn’t comfortable. His left arm was beginning to scream at him from being pulled at an unnatural angle towards the chair. He was even annoyed at the bits of hay and debris that made themselves known every time he had to shift his bare feet on the floor. 

It had been at least an hour. Maybe two. If the universe didn’t hate them, SHIELD would already be on their way. Clint didn’t often put much stock in the universe deciding that today would be his lucky day. 

“I can hear you thinking,” Natasha said quietly. It sounded loud compared to the silence. Her eyes remained closed.

“Thought it would have been the smoke from the mental gears turning that would’ve given me away.”

“You’re agitated.”

Clint looked at her and frowned. Her eyes were closed, how could she…?

“It makes the chains rattle,” she said before opening her eyes. Her gaze settled on him, knowing.

Clint had a bad habit of opening and closing his hands when the otherwise boring or stressful situation permitted to keep himself occupied. Doing it while holding a sniper position? Hell no. Doing it while chained in a basement wondering how much time had gone by? That was more likely. 

Natasha had been getting to know his quirks, too. 

“No chain rattling from you?” he asked. He doubted he had been making that much noise if even he hadn’t picked up on it. He certainly hadn’t heard the same from her.

Natasha sighed and shifted in her seat. “Not after a few hours in a basement.”

What would it take, then? Clint had heard some of what the Red Room had done to her and the Widows in general, either from herself or from Fury. More details would come with time, he knew, but for now it just left him morbidly curious at all that she had been put through to make her seemingly not bat an eye at their current situation. That, or she was better at hiding it than he was. 

Clint was just about to open his mouth to reply when the door opened behind him. Natasha somewhat hung her head like before, but not until she had looked at Clint and blinked twice. Two men. Pyotr and only one guard?

“Have you reconsidered our arrangement?” Pyotr asked as he came to stand by Clint’s left side. 

“Wasn’t aware we had one,” Clint said with forced nonchalance. He expected the punch to the gut, but that didn’t make it hurt any less. He really didn’t want to go to medical to get checked for internal bleeding, but at this point it may become a necessity. 

Pyotr then tugged down on Clint’s left arm, making him hiss and grit his teeth. He had no choice but to go along with the movement, which brought his head next to Pyotr’s. 

“Tell me the information we both know you possess,” Pyotr started, voice dripping with barely-restrained rage, “or she will die for your stubbornness.”

Clint pursed his lips to avoid grunting as Pyotr pulled his arm nearly enough for his fingertips to brush the floor. When the added pressure wasn’t enough to get the reaction he wanted, Pyotr aggressively shoved Clint’s arm and relinquished his hold.

Clint couldn’t hide the wince on his face as he resumed his sitting position. In front of him, Pyotr had moved to stand behind Natasha. When he was sure Clint was watching, he grabbed a handful of her red hair to pull her head up at an unnatural angle. He slid the same knife from earlier, still stained with her blood, out of its holster and pressed it to her throat. There was no preamble. He placed it with enough force to immediately draw blood and leaned in close to Natasha. 

“Who wants the information?” Pyotr demanded.

Clint grit his teeth and frowned. 

Pyotr jerked his hold on Natasha enough for her to gasp. Clint wasn’t sure if it was real or all part of her play to look more vulnerable than she was. With her skillset, past, and a knife drawing blood at her throat, the odds were about even. 

“James,” she said suddenly and in a voice much too small and pleading to be her own. As if the wrong name and the determined look in her eyes wasn’t enough of a warning that she was about to pull something, her next words were. “Tell him or I will.”

Clint didn’t believe her for a second. 

It seemed that Pyotr did. For just a moment, the surprise at having an opportunity presented to him made him inch the knife away from Natasha’s throat. That was all the opening she needed.

Several things happened in very quick succession, and not all of them Clint got a good look at. Natasha used that separation between her and the knife to knock her head backwards into Pyotr’s nose. The impact must have hurt him, because he let out a grunt and stumbled backwards in surprise. Clint’s attention was so focused on the knife still in his hands that he completely missed how Natasha got her hands out from behind the chair.

One side of the cuff was still on her wrist, while the other cuff was locked in an empty circle. With her legs not bound, unlike Clint’s, she stepped around the chair in a fluid motion. Before Pyotr even had a chance to recover from the blood that was now pouring from his nose, Natasha had grappled him to the floor and snapped his neck. 

Clint mourned the loss of the intelligence he could have provided only for a split second. The guard behind him had finally become fully aware of the situation. Clint saw him pull a gun from its holster as he stepped around Clint’s side to get a better angle.  Clint would have loved nothing more than to have reached out a foot and tripped the guy, but alas.

Before he could even get a shot off, Natasha wrenched Pyotr’s knife from his hand and sent it careening with deadly accuracy into the guard’s chest. He dropped to the ground next to Clint without a shot fired. 

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Bond,” Clint said with a grin.

Natasha smiled at him, chest not even heaving with exertion. The cuts from earlier had reopened, weeping fresh red across her skin, but she didn’t seem to pay them any mind. She reached behind her ear as she walked behind Clint. Had she hurt her head in the fight? He didn’t think so.

The next thing he knew, there was some light tugging at his handcuffs and the distinct feeling of the lock being picked. They clicked open a few moments later and Clint eagerly shook them off. Natasha pulled a knife from the guard’s chest and used it to cut the zip ties around Clint’s ankles as Clint tried to get normal feeling back in his arms. 

“Don’t tell me,” Clint said and held up a hand as Natasha came around to his front. “Bobby pin?” It was the only thing he could think of that would be concealed in her hair and could still do the trick with the handcuffs. 

Natasha brandished said instrument with pride and used it to drop the remaining cuff from her wrist. Clint couldn’t help but smile back. He snagged the guard’s gun from his limp hands, checked the magazine and the chamber, and moved towards the door. 

He turned back to her, about to ask how she had slipped the cuffs, when he saw her tuck both the knife and the bobby pin away. Then, she grabbed her left thumb with her right hand and yanked in a practiced movement. Clint heard the dislocated joint pop back into place. The briefest wince crossed Natasha’s face, but that was it. 

Clint tried to tamp down the unease he felt at how used to all this she was. He shouldn’t have been surprised, but still. She was younger than him by at least a few years. Too young to be this cavalier about the situation.

When she looked up and saw him watching, she nodded at him. Clint watched her flex her finger for a moment more. When she seemed to have deemed it acceptable, she pulled the knife back out and wordlessly settled on the opposite side of the doorframe. After her nod, Clint slowly turned the handle and eased the door open.

The door wasn’t locked from the outside. Whether that was due to the age of the building, their captors not anticipating prisoners, or pure arrogance, Clint wasn’t sure, but it worked in their favor. 

He cleared the stairway in a fluid motion and waited for Natasha to settle in behind him before he began up the wooden stairs. With every step he could feel splinters worming their way into his bare feet. His ire for their enemies grew the closer they got to the ground level. 

When they got to the door at the top of the stairs, Clint paused and listened. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Natasha doing the same. The house creaked around them and Clint could hear at least two different muffled voices. They didn’t seem to be making a beeline for the basement, so they probably hadn’t heard the bodies drop below them. 

Clint glanced back at Natasha and shrugged. Think we can take them? 

She must have understood his meaning, because she nodded readily. Blood dripped onto the wooden steps from the knife in her hand. It may have been from one of her victims, or it may have been her own from the wounds on her arms. Even more reason to get out of here as soon as possible. 

Clint slowly turned the handle on the basement door. Like the other door, it was unlocked. Unlike the other door, it creaked horribly. Clint immediately stopped and winced, but his action wasn’t fast enough. The conversation cut off in the next room over. Before the others could get their bearings, Clint flung the door open and allowed Natasha to exit behind him as he covered their entrance with the pistol. 

Sure enough, two men were standing in the dining room. Papers were strewn over the rectangular table. They were both about Pyotr’s age and seemed to have his temperament, for they immediately shouted and grabbed for their weapons on the table. 

Clint put a bullet in each of them before their hands had the chance to close around their guns. He ducked behind the wall to the kitchen, Natasha having done the same on the other side. It was with good reason. Clint hadn’t realized until he heard footsteps above them that the house had two stories. 

Crap. 

He looked past the yellow curtains on the kitchen window and out to the street. It was already dark outside and the few street lights didn’t do a great job at illuminating the surroundings. Clint could see enough to know that they were in an older portion of the district, but hopefully not too far from their initial location. They could blend in here, lose any would-be tails in the alleys amongst the civilians. 

“Cover me,” Natasha said, derailing his initial plans for escape as she made her way into the dining room. Clint followed behind and shot at the first leg he saw descending the stairs towards them. The man yelled in pain, but must have been pulled up by a comrade, because he didn’t tumble down the stairs as Clint had hoped. 

He moved closer to the table to better cover Natasha. She was rifling through the papers, blood-stained fingers leaving traces of red against the white paper. He was tempted to look around for his shoes, but he couldn’t leave her without cover.

“Any day now,” Clint said impatiently. The writing was all in Russian; he’d be useless at deciphering what they needed. They could just try to scoop the whole stack, but it was dozens of papers. Not a good option for trying to make a clandestine getaway. The men at the top of the stairs shouted down at them. Clint wanted to fire a warning shot, but didn’t want to waste the ammo. The latter won out. “Do I want to know what they’re saying?” 

Natasha pushed papers onto the floor. “Something about skinning you alive.”

“How hospitable.” Clint fired that warning shot out of pure spite. 

Natasha didn’t even flinch. “Here.” She passed off a few reddened papers to him. Clint took a cursory glance, seeing a few maps, before he folded them up and stuck them in his pants pocket with one hand. Her hands didn’t still as she picked up a few more pieces of paper, flipped through them, and folded them into her own pocket. “Got them, let’s go.”

Clint allowed himself to feel exactly two seconds of relief. One for having completed their objective and a second for everything they had been through not being in vain. When second number three hit, he was stepping backwards towards the front door as Natasha led the way out. The Russians on the stairway were still shouting as they made their way out. 

“How much time do we have?” Clint asked as they exited the building and turned left on the first street they came across. He stashed the gun in his waistband—which he hated, it was horribly unsafe—only because he had no other option, since getting rid of it wasn’t one. 

Natasha similarly slipped the knife into her sleeve before a passerby could see it. “The clock in the kitchen said SHIELD should already be on their way. Is their response time better than their intel gathering?” 

Clint laughed at the deadpan way she said it. His feet stung as they hurried along the sidewalk. Between Natasha’s blood and red hair and his bare feet, they were hard to miss. Priority number one was putting some distance between them and the building. “Usually. With Coulson looking for us, we should be in the clear.”

This was only Natasha’s second mission with Coulson as a handler. She hadn’t begun forming the thin ropes of trust with Coulson that she had barely started throwing across the chasm of wariness to Clint. 

Clint caught her look, as if she were trying to gauge whether he was serious or just pulling her leg. Coulson hadn’t had the chance to demonstrate his propensity for putting himself into situations for the sake of his agents, not yet. Natasha would probably come to hate it as much as Clint did. “He takes care of his people,” he said honestly. 

Whatever came across in his tone must have been enough because Natasha fixed her attention forward and kept moving. 

They walked for close to a mile, dodging people as best they could and sticking to side streets and alleys when possible. The darkness helped hide the worst of what might draw attention to them. Clint’s feet were aching. His head and abdomen had never stopped throbbing, and their brisk walk certainly wasn’t helping things. 

When they turned a corner into the next alley, Natasha nearly stumbled into him. Clint caught her upper arm, mindful of the cuts, and took a moment to steady her.

“I’m fine, Barton,” she said, the name finally slipping free. What should have been an admonishment was made softer by the fact that she didn’t tug her arm away. Clint simply let his hand drop when it was clear she wasn’t about to collapse. 

“Coulson can’t be far, they’ll be tracking us,” Clint said. Natasha still had her shoes. No blisters on her feet, and the tracker remained useful. Small mercies. 

They had only just started down the alley when a beaten-up, dark red car blocked the opening to the other end of the street. Clint and Natasha both immediately halted. Clint couldn’t see the driver from this far away, not with the low lighting and the tint on the windows. He raised his right arm to keep Natasha behind him and could feel her tense where his arm brushed against hers. 

Nothing happened. At least, not until the window rolled down and a hushed, “Get in!” sounded from the vehicle. Clint immediately dropped his arm and grinned. 

“Speak of the devil,” he muttered. Coulson’s timing was impeccable. “Come on,” he said to Natasha and jerked his head towards the car. Natasha still looked wary, but she followed Clint without argument. As they closed the distance, Clint looked behind them just to make sure they weren’t actively being pursued. All clear. 

He didn’t let out his breath of relief until the back door opened and they were safely inside the vehicle. Coulson tore away from the sidewalk and back onto the street with more speed than was necessary, but quickly disappeared into the flow of traffic. 

“What the hell happened?” Coulson asked before a minute had passed. Clint caught his gaze in the rearview mirror. 

Clint immediately began rummaging in the back for a first aid kit. Coulson was usually good about keeping one in the field vehicles—especially for missions where Clint was involved, Clint had been told, many, many times. “Short answer,” he said as he leaned down to grab the kit under the front seat, “is we went to plan B. Got the intel, got out. Two hostiles that we know of left in the building.” 

His face twisted into a wince as he unfolded himself with the kit in hand. His head felt two sizes too big and now that he was stationary, he was pretty sure he could feel a few cracked ribs adding to the pain in his midsection. 

Coulson was probably shaking his head in the front seat. Clint didn’t look up to see. His attention was more focused on seeing how he could stop Natasha’s still-bleeding wounds. 

“And your tracker?” Coulson asked. 

And my shoes, Clint groused unhappily to himself. “Our captors weren’t too concerned with making sure we felt at home.”

A breathy half-laugh from Natasha was all the response he got. He turned his attention from the kit to her. Now that they had a moment to breathe, she had deflated against the back seat. She was still alert, which was good, but she looked worn out, her skin pale in the seconds he could make out its color under the passing streetlights. 

“How long until the safe house?” Clint asked as he grabbed a roll of gauze and began winding it around the worst of the knife wounds on Natasha’s upper arm. 

Clint had to lean his left arm up against the seat to stabilize himself, which was a painful, shaky endeavor. He didn’t stop his wrapping until her blood stopped soaking through the fabric. 

“Half hour, give or take. They took you further than we had anticipated. Location wasn’t even on our list.” Coulson sounded worried. And frustrated, which was honestly a surprise. Clint definitely wanted to be there when whoever was in charge of gathering intelligence for this operation was brought in for questioning about the massive holes in their information. He didn’t envy them one bit.

Clint tied off the gauze and began wrapping another around Natasha’s other arm.

“I’m fine,” she halfheartedly protested. Had she pulled away, Clint would have stopped. But she didn’t, and he took it for the permission to continue that it probably was. 

Coulson turned back for a split second to look at them. 

“Hey, hey, watch the road! I got this!” 

Coulson did just that. “Hospital?” he asked. He used one hand to pass back a bottle of water from the passenger seat.

Yeah, right. As if it was even safe for them to go to one. Clint didn’t want to risk it, and he didn’t really think it was needed. He shifted to get a better look at Natasha’s face. Once again the movement pulled at his midsection. Annoying, but hopefully not internal bleeding. “Nah. She’ll need stitches, though,” he said and passed the bottle over to Natasha.

Natasha frowned at him as she took a drink. Clint could hear the ‘I’m right here, Barton,’ as clear as if she had verbalized it. 

Clint brought an alcohol wipe out of the kit and offered it to Natasha. He could disinfect the wounds on her face himself, but he didn’t know if that would be crossing a line. She looked between him and the wipe for a second before she handed the water bottle to him, took the wipe, and began dabbing at the cuts on her face. 

“Clint took some hits to the torso,” she informed, which had Clint gaping like a fish out of water, trying to come up with a response. He could see Coulson frowning at him in the rearview mirror. Great. 

When he looked back to Natasha, she wasn’t quite smirking, but she didn’t look displeased with herself. Clint busied himself with pulling out a few butterfly bandages. 

“Clint?” Coulson pressed when no explanation was forthcoming. 

Clint sighed. Even sighing hurt. “Probably cracked some ribs. Quit your worrying.” 

Natasha dropped the wipe from her head and leveled Clint with a look. He didn’t even need to try to translate that one. 

“Like you told me not to worry in Brussels?” Coulson sounded exasperated.

Clint focused on gently applying the butterfly bandages to the cuts on Natasha’s face. Hopefully they would be enough to avoid stitches, but they’d have to wait until they got to the safe house to know for sure. He avoided Natasha’s eyes as she looked between him and Coulson.
Out of nowhere, she asked, “What happened in Brussels?” 

Clint dropped his hands and hissed a “really?” at her before grabbing another bandage. 

Natasha shrugged. “I should know what kinds of scrapes my partner is prone to getting himself into, no?” 

“Absolutely yes—“

“Now is not the best time,” Clint cut Coulson off and smoothed on the final bandage. 

“I have a captive audience, now is the perfect time,” Coulson insisted. 

Clint was tempted to shut him down. If he asked seriously, he knew Coulson would drop it. But then he looked back at Natasha, who had asked a question that she hadn’t needed to, but wanted to, and remembered how rare a thing like that still was. Maybe something good could come out of this botched third mission after all.

Clint let out a long sigh. Camaraderie had to be built somehow. Hopefully it wouldn’t always be at his expense, but for now, that seemed like the best way forward. When he didn’t offer up a real protest, Coulson took that as his cue to launch into the story of how Clint had ended up with a sprained ankle, three broken ribs, and a concussion, and still thought he could get away without being checked over by medical upon his return from a week-long mission. 

Coulson was too animated when he told it, maybe exaggerating a little too much at Clint’s antics and his own worried frustration over the event even though two years had passed. The way Natasha looked between the two of them before she leaned her head back against the seat made it worth it, though. 

Clint swallowed a few painkillers—he offered them to Natasha too, but she shook her head—and put the unused medical supplies back in the kit and settled into his own seat. His head pounded as they went over a bump too fast and his left shoulder was sore no matter how he tried to position it. Maybe a trip to medical wouldn’t be the worst idea, especially if it got Natasha more comfortable with going. He had to be a good influence, at least for now, until she really got her feet under her. 

There would be a debrief waiting for them at the safe house. He had about twenty minutes to rest and process before real life came flooding back in. Content in the knowledge that his partner was alive, albeit bloodied, and happily listening to Coulson wax poetic about how Clint had practically run from the doctors—practically was the key word there—he closed his eyes and leaned as far back in the seat as he could.