The idea for this came to me randomly, so I hope you all enjoy reading it. Thanks to glitteratiglue for the encouragement.
I own nothing to do with Marvel…unfortunately.
Compromised
GET OUT. SHIELD COMPROMISED. HYDRA. WAIT FOR CONTACT.
The message came through to his private cell in the middle of an undercover operation. It was brief and from an unnamed number, but he knew immediately who it was. There were only a handful of people who knew who could contact him when he was off the grid.
Shield compromised? By Hydra? Cap's Hydra?
He froze for a split second and then relaxed into his post on the roof of an Australian night club.
Keeping one eye fixed on the door of the club through which his target should be appearing any moment, he swiftly mentally reviewed through what he already knew about Hydra: cut one head off, etc. etc., science division, experts at infiltration, shot dead Erskine in front of most of the heads of the then American Army.
Infiltration, that was the key. Which meant he could be surrounded even now.
Two minutes. He would give it two minutes. That would be long enough for him to know, to get a sense for this mission and feel whether it was legitimate or not. And then he was taking Tasha's advice and getting out of there.
There was a faint crackle in his ear and then Merrick's voice came over the radio. If he hadn't been listening out for it, he wouldn't have heard the faint note of glee in the man's tone.
Clearly everyone's cover would be dropping tonight.
"What's your position, Barton? We're going to send up a second marksman. Get all the exits covered for when Hunsdown exits."
Clint swore silently. Now that was a lie if he'd ever heard one. They didn't have another marksman on the team, not a skilled one anyway. Which meant that the second agent on the roof was there for him, not Hunsdown.
Still, maybe he was mistaken. Maybe Tasha was mistaken. He snorted at the probability of that. It wouldn't hurt though, to find out for definite whether this was a trap or not. At least then he would know whether he was a target… one way or another.
"Roof of the law firm," he lied easily, "three buildings down on the left. Set the other guy on top of the top of the Subway on the right and we'll be covered 360."
He moved quickly and quietly as he spoke, not letting his breathing over the comms give him away. He concealed himself into the shadows of the fire escape of the roof, out of sight of the strobe lighting, and stealthily packing away his gear, leaving his bow in his hands, arrow already drawn.
For the first time that mission, he let his eyes drift away from the club's bustling exit and switched his sight to the roof of the law firm opposite, hoping that he would be proved wrong. Hoping that Tasha would be proved wrong.
He knew these guys, knew Merrick. They'd been on missions together for years. Hell, he'd been to Stanley's daughter's christening just last year.
Maybe Tasha was wrong.
She never was.
The door to the roof opposite inched open quietly and the nozzle of a rifle preceded the man carrying it out, as they scoured the space for his position.
"Barton, report in." Merrick crackled in over the comms.
Clint allowed a small, cold smile to cross his face as he carefully nocked the arrow and held his bow steady.
"Eyes on the target now, boss," he reported.
Not for the first time, he thanked Coulson that his handler had never made him give up his preferred weapon. The rest of Shield might have sworn by guns, but at times like these the stealth afforded to him by his bow and arrow.
The black figure opposite crept further into the open and below the law firm, he could see his three other team mates approaching the law firm from different angles. He would deal with them in a minute. First, he needed to take out the immediately threat.
Peters didn't know what had hit him. He went down silently, and the second he hit the floor, Clint was on the move.
His comms unit had gone silent, which he took to mean, they had shut him out, so he tossed the earpiece to the floor and ground it under his foot. Backing to the farthest point of the roof, he took a run up before leaping to the next building. It would be faster to get away by going downstairs through the club and trying to sneak out in a group of people, but the second he went downstairs, he would lose his advantage.
The roofs and nests of the world were where he operated best from, where he felt most at home, where he saw best from. So up here, he would stay.
He made it across four more buildings before two other figures burst onto the roof of the law firm. All attempts at stealth were gone.
Clint immediately took over and peeled two arrows from their sheath. Normally, he would prefer to take them one at a time – not that he ever worried about his accuracy – but time was of the essence. Peter's was clearly in sight, while his wasn't and it would be seconds before they started sweeping the area using the infra-red sight on their rifles.
The two agents never saw it coming and he felt a brief flicker of regret as they fell.
He pushed it ruthlessly to one side though.
It was fine to regret the loss of comrades and to regret the pain their families would experience, but he couldn't regret it for himself.
He was their target and they had known – better than most – just who they were coming after. They had also made the decision to choose Hydra and defend Shield.
No, Clint wouldn't regret their deaths.
What he would regret, however, was focusing on the two members of this squad opposite, rather than wondering about where the leader of their little team was. His arrows would have given his position away and Merrick was probably on top of him already.
Even as his eyes scoured the streets and rooftops from his perch, he could hear someone running up the fire steps to his position.
Sliding behind a flag pole out of visible sight, he waited, arrow already drawn.
There was heavy breathing and then he heard a low laugh come from the wrong side of the roof.
He ducked just in time to avoid the bullet that would have splattered his brains across the concrete and spun to face his enemy. His arrow was drawn but there were two targets now, so he would have to be smart about this.
Merrick stood in front of him, gun aloft, pointing directly at him, but there was another person, an unfamiliar male, lurking near the stairs.
"You really don't think I'd be stupid enough to telegraph my arrival that much, do you?" his old friend asked.
Clint smirked, his brain frantically calculating his options as he answered. "Well, clearly you were dumb enough to throw in with Hydra, so what was I supposed to think?"
Disarm them first. Keep moving so they didn't have a clear target. Then move tall, dark and ugly away from the steps for a clear exit down.
Merrick's taunting smile disappeared at the mention of Hydra. "Cut one head off and two more shall grow." He lowered his gun for a second.
A second was all Clint needed.
His strange opponent fell quickly and without warning, an arrow to his throat.
Exit clear. Escape now possible. Roll to avoid counteracting strike.
He ducked just in time as Merrick fired again, only as he did, the catch on his quiver loosened and was left on the floor and he jumped up.
Well, that wasn't according to plan. His mind immediately switched to coming up with a new plan.
Kill and subdue rather than running. Without the arrows, he had no long range defence, so getting out of their without taking out all opponents was no longer an option.
Merrick laughed mockingly at him. "Oh dear, little bird. You appear to have lost all your tricks."
Any hesitation of regret Clint may have had for this man, his ally for the last ten years, vanished. If there was one thing he hated, it was when people at the agency thought he was just some dumb one-trick-pony carnie. He had thought that Merrick was one of the few people in Shield who could look beyond his past and the obvious, like Coulson, but clearly not.
Never mind. The other man's stupidity could be used against him.
People often saw the bow and neglected to remember the rest of him. They forgot that it was he who had brought Tasha in when she had taken out at least fifteen of their best. They forgot that he had trained with her, with the Captain, with Thor, with Iron Man, with the Hulk and held his own. They forgot that he was a deadly weapon in his own right, with or without a bow and arrow in his hands.
He struck while Merrick was still gloating, whipping his bow across the other man's face and drawing a red, dripping line along his cheek and eye. Merrick was too slow to avoid the attack, but his gun arm came up firing wildly in response and Clint spun away out of direct line. As he twisted, his knee came up to hit the other man's wrist and he went to jab him in the neck, only for his opponent to duck and avoid the blow, hitting him in the gut and then punching him in the kidney.
Clint twisted away again and the two men stopped, facing each other, crouched down in readiness.
Merrick ran the back of his hand over his face and then flicked his blood onto the pavement. "So," even bleeding, he wouldn't stop running his mouth, "Romanoff taught you a few tricks, huh?"
Clint sighed and then straightened. "Some things she didn't need to teach me," he finally replied.
"Like what?" Merrick was incredulous.
Clint ran towards Merrick and then jumped at the last minute, twisted over the man's head and slamming him to the ground before somersaulting backwards out of the way.
Merrick scrambled to his feet and raised his fists unsteadily like a boxer, gun still clasped in one hand. Every punch he threw, Clint twisted, jumped and flipped around him, until a wild swing caught him in the nose and he swore loudly before sliding under the man's arms. Flipping himself back onto his feet, he caught his team leader's gun hand and slammed his wrist down over his knee, a small part of him enjoying the crack that rang out as the bones shattered.
Merrick inadvertently screamed and let go of the gun, which Clint quickly kicked aside. By his reckoning there were only two bullets left, but he had no intention of finding himself on the wrong side of one.
"Now that, I learnt in the circus," he mocked the older man. "No Shield training necessary."
Merrick spat furiously, glowering at Clint as he braced himself opposite for a counterattack. The older man's eyes was starting to swell up from the bow string and the archer's brain immediately began factoring that into his future attack plans.
Keep to the right. He'll struggle to see you. Use the bow as an offensive weapon. Get the arrows back as soon as possible.
Without his gun the other man's attack became even more vicious, as if he knew that this was it – the final showdown.
The two men began fighting in earnest now, grappling from one side of the roof to the other. Merrick somehow managed to produce a knife out of nowhere and with a lucky strike to the hand, managed to disarm Clint of his bow.
Clint lunged for it, but was tackled onto the floor, dirt and grit embedded themselves into his bare arms. Shoving the other man off, he spider crawled across the roof to his quiver before he was tackled again. He managed to spin around just in time to block the knife strike hurtling towards his neck.
"You're nothing," Merrick spat at him, his eyes wide with fury. "Just a dirty little carnie that got on Coulson's good side." He pressed down harder on Clint's arms, trying to drive the knife further down. "But he's dead, and Fury too. Soon your little bitch will be gone as well, along with all your precious Avengers."
Clint kept both arms up, pushing against the knife, the other man's mention of Tasha driving him on.
"We will bring order to the chaos. We will eliminate those who threaten us," Merrick continued to rant. "Your little Russian doll will be broken and then destroyed. You should have never brought her to Shield. You had so much potential. Now there will be nothing left of you."
Clint smirked up at the man, knowing that it would throw him off. "You know, never let it be said that I don't learn from my mistakes."
Throwing his legs up, he wrapped his legs around Merrick's neck, his grip on the other man's arms stopping his from fighting against the move. He twisted his body as he released one of his hands and sent the arrow he snatched up from the floor behind him straight through Merrick's eye, even as heard the older man's neck crack.
"Now that, Natasha did teach me," he announced to the now dead man.
Twisting into a crouch, Clint assessed the scene, waiting for another stealth attack. When there was none, he straightened up and scooped up his bow, quiver and the arrows he had dropped. Packing them away tightly, he began a series of jumps and rolls over the rest of the buildings on the street, sticking as closely to the shadows as he could.
If Merrick was expected to take him out tonight then Clint would bet his right arm that he would be expected to check in at some point. Once his allies realised he was dead, they would automatically know that Clint was still alive and a threat to them.
He had to get out of Australia and to a safe house, and he had to do it without stopping. That was fair enough as far as he was concerned. He never took anything of personal importance with him on missions anyway apart from his bow and that was staying within arm's reach from now on.
Finally deeming it a safe enough distance from the club where he had started his mission, Clint packed his bow away into his bag and pulling a jacket out to cover his arm guards, descended down onto the streets and into the crowd.
Heading towards a backpacker's hostel, he managed to swipe a tourist's wallet out of their jacket and used the ID within to hire a car and get him out of Sydney.
Twelve hours later he was stowed away on a boat heading for Indonesia. By the time he reached the country though, the damage was done.
Everything Shield had done, had stood for, was gone – exposed and burned to the ground by Tasha and Rogers.
Everything about him was out there too. All of his covers, his missions, his kill list, his handlers and his past, including information about his family life…what there was of it of course.
He wanted to curse and rage and tear down the fucking walls of the empty building he was squatting in, but he knew that Tasha would have had a reason for splashing all their private details over the internet. It did mean that things would be harder now though… for both of them.
He would need to stay low for a while, throw his old covers out, start working out some new ones. He could make a start on getting some new IDs if he headed for Jakarta. He would definitely need a new passport to get out of the country incognito.
As it was, he had barely crossed the outskirts of the city before he was recognised and set upon. This time he was prepared for it though and apart from startling a few locals when he crashed through a roof, he managed to get away relatively cleanly.
Getting out the country was less so.
He took a knife to shoulder before he could get away and this time he had to let his attackers live in favour of escaping. It was sloppy, but he made a mental checklist of all the faces he had seen. He would be back for them.
His priority was getting north. Tasha was the one to send him the alert, she was the one to expose them all online, no doubt she would also be the one with a plan for what to do next. She would be in the same position as he was though, and just as he had his farm in the US, there was only one place he knew she would go to ground to regroup.
About two weeks later, he checked any available information on his Avenger teammates. He was on radio silence until Tasha gave him the all-clear, but sometimes he cursed not being able to just get Stark to send his jet over to get him back home. To his surprise most of the information on him and his teammates was gone, as if it had never existed.
'Borrowing' a laptop from some girl's bag, he checked it out. The electronic trail led back to Stark, so he assumed that the worst of the information had been pulled by JARVIS as soon as possible, something he was very grateful for.
He reached the bolthole a hundred miles outside St Petersburg one month, seven attacks from Hydra and three new scars plus another broken nose later. Checking that he hadn't been followed, Clint slid through a seemingly flimsy door only to be greeted by a gun to the forehead.
He froze and then grinned at the redhead staring at him blankly with wide eyes.
"It's good to see you too, Tasha."
The gun wavered and then dropped.
"You got out safely?" her voice was still blank. It was her way of coping he knew, until she finally dealt with everything that had happened.
"More or less." He walked over to the table and unshucked his quiver and bow from their holds. His bag was tossed carelessly to the floor. Kicking his boots off, he threw himself onto the sofa and stretched his arms across the back.
Natasha had spun on her heel to watch his casual movements. She cocked her head to one side.
"Your nose is broken."
Clint raised a hand to his still sore face. "That's the less part."
Making the gun in her hand disappear, she walked over to stand in front of him. Clint looked up at her and then yelled out in pain as she quickly reached out and yanked his nose back into place.
"Jesus, Tash!"
She smirked at him and then sat down next to him, one leg tucked gracefully under her. She slumped down and rested her head against his arm and he curled it around her shoulders.
"Rough time, huh?" He hugged her closer.
She shrugged and tilted her head up to press a kiss to his cheek. "Better now."