Hello. I've been away for a week and worked on this every night. I have a second and third chapter almost finished and at the ready, but they will definitely not be the last ones. I hope you like it and sorry if I messed anything. Rated T for blood and possible violence and maybe some later chapters. Thank you!

Disclaimer: Not me, even though I wish it was.

The sunset, it seemed, had been going on for days. Still, Natasha stared at it it little while longer. Clint's arm was draped around her shoulders and they were lain on the white-gold sand of a long stretch of beach. The sunset was orange and pink, warmth spreading over the sky. At the water's edge, tiny crabs scuttled in and out of the lapping foam. The place was beautiful; gold and green and blue and orange. Even the scent was delightful; full of salt and ripe fruits and coconuts. It was possibly the most romantic place in the world.

And Natasha was bored.

She shuffled in Clint's arms and scratched her stomach. He chuckled and rested his cheek on Natasha's head, pressing a kiss into her hair. A crab the width of an inch danced and clicked at her toes and she poked it away.

"How long's the sunset been?" She asked.

Clint sighed.

"I dunno, couple of hours?"

Natasha wriggled her shoulders. Stopped staring at the sunset. Stopped watching the little creatures frolic. She turned instead to face Clint.

"Really? Couple of hours?"

He nodded and she huffed. Natasha stood up and walked a few metres to the tips of the waves. The cool water washed over her feet. Their once-a-year vacation had gotten off to a pretty good start. They were given the chance to go anywhere in the world they wanted, and Clint had suggested the Bahamas. Cosy cottage on an island in the middle of nowhere, not a single person with whom they were forced to socialise, fresh food, sun, sand, sea, and- of course- sunsets.

"You liked the sunset the other day."

"No, Clint, I didn't mind it the other day. It was fun because we went scuba-diving and you swum into that shoal of pissed off fish, and it was exciting when we climbed the tree and watched from there; but I do mind a sunset that lasts for a couple… of… hours. OK?"

"Yes." He said miserably, rolling his eyes to glare the other way.

Natasha kicked at the sand while Clint stared up at the godforsaken sunset. Four weeks. Two weeks of holiday hadn't sounded long enough by half to Clint. Surely they'd need more time than that just to get used to the lack of constant babbling voices and angry targets pointing guns to their heads. Not to mention spending time with eachother away from the mess of the real world. So when the friendly girl behind the desk offered to extend the two-weeker to a four-weeker, Clint jumped at the chance. That had been six days ago. Only six days in and already Natasha was bored and cranky- and Clint was facing the brunt of it. He sighed and sat up, staring blankly at the back of Natasha's head.

"Nat…" he said after a few minutes. "What does that look like to you?"

He pointed into the sky on the horizon. A black dot stood out in the ochre and crimson. Natasha peered at it. It seemed to be getting closer by the second. The space around it trembled and fluttered.

"It's not a bird," Clint said, "because it hasn't moved from a dead straight path in five minutes. Not a dip, not a waiver, nothing."

Natasha peered some more.

"I can't really tell, Clint."

"Does it look like… an aircraft, to you?"

"Oh, yeah! That's… what it is."

The craft was getting bigger as they spoke and they frowned in sync.

"But who would be coming here, of all places?" Clint said.

"Maybe Fury needs something." Natasha suggested, not at all sounding confident in her idea.

"Fury said he'd go to another agent if something was wrong."

As he finished speaking, Natasha looked up from where she had anxiously been picking at her nails.

"So who's that?" She asked. Clint stared at her for a long second.

"Trees." He said suddenly and bluntly.

In response, she jumped up and the two of them bolted from the beach and into the foliage of the nearby forest. The craft was a mile or so from the island now and Natasha- from her branch a few metres off the ground- could see clearly that it was a helicopter, the air around it whizzing from the propellers. Then the helicopter was lowering onto the sand, spraying granules in all directions. The trees bucked and swayed under the wind, Natasha clung for dear life to her branch. A yelp of pain rang out and Natasha batted leaves out the way to see Clint rubbing his cheek where a thin twig had left a long laceration.

"Clint!" She hissed. "Clint! Friend or foe?"

"I don't know." He said, as men in black began to pour out of the helicopter.

Each held a machine gun that looked capable of serious damage, and they spread across the beach. High in his own tree across from Natasha's, Clint waved his arm to get her attention.

"We need to get out of here." He mouthed.

Natasha nodded and began to scale the tree to the floor. When her feet hit the soil, Clint leapt down to join her. They turned and pelted deeper into the forest. The air got colder, the bushes thickened, and the visibility rapidly lowered. A metallic rumbling trailed after them as they sprinted. Without pausing for breath, Clint rummaged in his jacket pocket, at last finding his mobile phone.

"What are you doing?!" Natasha screeched, leaping over a moss-drenched log.

"I'm calling Coulson!" shouted Clint.

"No! We can…"

Gunfire echoed in their ears and shots sped ahead of them to bounce off rocks and tree trunks. Natasha and Clint wrapped their arms protectively around their heads as best they could and willed their legs to move faster. She'd been about to say they could handle it themselves. It was usually her job to convince people, to persuade them- and a lot of the time, Clint was her guinea pig. She had manipulated him and many others into doing as she said thousands of times before; making Clint understandably wary. He had insisted that, instead, the two of them always talk about things together. But in this situation there was no time for talking. And maybe they couldn't handle it? They had been so unprepared…

"This was supposed to be our holiday…" was all Clint managed to growl before Natasha grabbed his arm and spun him down into a small cavern. Clint blinked and looked around in the dim light. They were crouched between two rocks beside the bank of a roaring river. The gunfire had cut off and the jungle was eerily quiet around them. Natasha was panting beside him.

"Alright! Call him!"

Clint hadn't even had time to dial the number before a pair of thick, black boots stalked into view in front of the cave. Natasha shrunk back into the wall, pulling Clint with her. Their backs pressed against the solid rock and Natasha held her breath. The muddy boots twisted in the grass so the steel-capped toes faced towards them. Clint's fingers froze on the mobile keys. All they had to do was look down… Clint turned Natasha's face to his own and pressed his finger against his lips. She nodded once.

The boots suddenly walked heavily out of sight, kicking up mud and leaves. Natasha didn't dare let out her breath. The forest was still. No gunfire, no footsteps, no metallic rumbling. Clint could hear his heartbeat.

They saw it together. A silver barrel poking out of a thistle bush. Poking out of a thistle bush and straight at their little cave. The gun all but glinted in their eyes.

"Feuer," came a voice, and what had been said registered with Clint nearly too late.

He slid in front of Natasha.

Her eyes were clamped shut. She heard the shot go off, she was sure of it. It had rung in her ears and rippled through her jaw. So where was the pain, the pain she had gotten so accustomed to over her years as an assassin? Her brain kicked in and during the slow second that passed, her memory whizzed through. The last thing she remembered was Clint moving to in fr- oh. Clint.

Her eyes shot open. He was lain in Natasha's lap, clutching the right side of his chest, close to his shoulder. His face scrunched up in pain and a long moan escaped his lips. Then a unique series of curses, one of them Russian. Natasha smirked and pushed him gently upright.

The river was chaotic now. The sudden serenity had vanished after the gunshot and Natasha could barely make out individual people. They all ran and jumped and bumped into eachother. The group that had spilled out of the helicopter had doubled, no, tripled in size- one hundred, maybe two hundred. A group of about twenty shuffled into a semi-circle in front of the rocks, ten or fifteen feet away. Every man pointed a gun right at them. The boots stood in the middle of the circle, and the man wearing them held his hands behind his back.

He smiled sadistically. The stationary soldiers smiled too.

Clint was leant back against the cave wall again and Natasha moved her body over his as much as she could, her eyes not leaving Boots'.

"S'okay, Nat." Clint mumbled. "S'just my shoulder."

She peeled back his bloody fingers. There was a messy wound deep in the fleshy part in the front of his shoulder, too close to his chest for her liking. It wasn't a perfect hole- the flesh was torn and mashed, and Clint's hand had spread the blood up to the crook of his neck.

"Just stay still, Clint."

"Aufstehen!" Shouted the man in the boots.

Natasha groaned internally. It was German. She knew Russian, French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch; and ten more- but no German.

"'Stand up." came a small voice from her side.

"What, Clint?"

"He said 'Stand up'."

Natasha mouthed 'oh' and nodded slowly. She turned to face the guns.

"He can't get up! He's hurt!" She shouted. "No thanks to you." She added under her breath, Clint nudged her with his elbow. The men muttered awkwardly to eachother at the sound of her voice.

"They don't understand you, Nat. And I'm fine, it's just my arm!" Clint hissed. He clasped her shoulder and pulled himself up onto his knees. He nodded once reassuringly.

"AUFSTEHEN!"

"We'd better get up, Nat. He's getting pissed."

Natasha swallowed and stood, ducking up and out of the cave. She stood straight and puffed out her chest, raising her chin when she felt Clint's side press against her own.

"Translate for me, Clint." She whispered.

"What?"

"Translate." She said and stepped slightly towards the soldiers. They took a step back. A few cocked their guns.

"Who are you?" Natasha called to no one in particular. Silence. She glared at Clint.

"Oh, right! Um, wer bist du?!" He translated. The man in the middle chuckled and replied in German.

Clint paused. "His name is Kreiptkof. He is the leader."

"Of what?"

"… He didn't say."

Natasha gulped. "What do you want?" She addressed Boots- no, Kreiptkof. Clint translated fluently and Kreiptkof replied.

"'You'."

"Me?"

"No, us. The both of us."

"Why?"

"Warum?" Clint shouted.

Kreiptkof laughed loudly and stepped across the flatted grass towards them, painfully slow.

Then he spoke, his voice hoarse and low and twanged with an accent, "Now…" he smiled. "…that would be telling."

Something sharp collided with the back of Natasha's head, her vision went dark and her head hit the ground. She faintly heard someone shouting her name and pulling on her hand, but then all she wanted was sleep and she quickly blocked out the sounds.