Present Day
The shit had hit the fan again.
Natasha checked her guns, calculating the amount of ammunition she had left. Not enough to deal with this. She checked the sky, searching for the plane that was to drop off ground support, or the red flash that was Tony Stark in his Iron Man suit. Other than flying debris and the haze of dust settling, there was nothing. Glancing to her left, she watched as Clint pulled an arrow from a foe's throat, cleaning it briskly on the man's cotton shirt. He was getting very low on arrows. Clint glanced at her.
"This time it really is like Budapest all over again."
She smirked at his remark, turning her head just in time to see a flash of movement from the corner of her eye. Her left arm came up in time to block the knife to her chest, but barely managed to roll out of the way of the guy behind her with what looked like a hammer. Where had he gotten that? No time to think. Another block, this time to her left, another roll, her shoulder hitting jagged rock but there was no time for pain now. The enemy recruits had arrived before her back up.
Surrounded by incoming bodies, she couldn't see Clint, but she could hear the twang of his bowstring nearby. Natasha fired point blank into the face of an oncoming assailant, pivoting on her foot to hit another on her left. The shot went low, nicking him in the abdomen instead. Her arm was losing strength. The shoulder wound was streaming blood, but the pain was non-existent now. She finished firing the gun in her left hand and dropped it to the floor, transferring the gun in her swiftly numbing right hand.
"Shit!" Clint's voice came from her left, the tone frustrated. He wasn't hurt; must be out of ammo. Natasha's awareness of her surroundings had narrowed to twenty feet all around her, and she couldn't risk another glance at the sky.
Seven days prior - War room
The Avengers Tower was almost fully operational. The debris from the fight with Loki had been removed, the walls repainted. The top four floors had been requisitioned for use by the Avengers, the remainder used by Tony for god-knows-what. In many ways the operational centres, the top two floors, were strongly reminiscent of SHIELD's, though the Stark stamp had clearly left its mark. New-Age art dotted the walls; Tony had installed a sound system in every corner. The Iron Man face stared down from every second wall, though a few had conspicuously gone missing over the last week. Pepper's touch was also present, a hint of sanity in an otherwise gadget boy's playhouse. A few plants here, a comfy chair there. There was only so much chrome and steel a person could take.
Clint leaned back in the expensive leather chair, propping his feet up on the table, ignoring the folder in front of him and watching the doors for the others to enter. Thor was still incommunicado, not expected back for a while. It had been several weeks since the near end of humanity, and people being people, the world was business as usual. The idea had been for all of them to lay low for a while, let the dust settle. But a few opportunistic souls had decided that now was the best time to start their own quest for world domination, and the Avengers had been recalled.
It hadn't been much of a vacation anyway. Less than forty-eight hours after the doorway to another galaxy closed, Clint had been on another mission. And then another. He hadn't had time to breath, to take stock of everything that had happened. He was beginning to think that was the idea.
The doors across from him swished open, and Natasha strode in, all geared up and ready to go. The purposeful stride made her short hair bounce with the movement, and her arms swung at her side like she was ready to start running. She hadn't had much to do lately, mostly coordinating between Stark and SHIELD. She was more than eager for a little action, though she would never admit it. Their work was a drug, and she insisted she was not addicted. Clint smirked. She noticed him, and moved to take the seat beside him, to his left. The table had one seat at each end, four on the other two. Back against the wall and a clear vantage point, Clint wasn't surprised when Natasha muttered "dibs next time."
Clint watched as she bent her knees and reached down with her hands to pull the chair under her. Everything she did was eye-catching in that suit. She flicked her hair over her shoulder and shifted the chair closer to the table, settling in. A whiff of vanilla reached him that caused Clint to look closer. Women seemed to have the prerogative on smelling nice, and Natasha was no exception. But when suited up and set on a mission, both of them took pains to eradicate any smell, using odourless shower products and detergent. It wouldn't help to let their targets know they were coming by smelling of fruit and flowers. Where had Natasha just been?
Close on her heels came Captain America, face mask hanging down his back and shield nowhere in sight. He nodded in their direction. Taking a seat, he picked up the manila folder and began to read. He was even more eager than Natasha. Life in the twenty-first century still felt foreign to Steve. Reality TV made no sense, and there was only so much time a guy could spend pounding a boxing bag. Any books he was interested in referenced everyday things so much that he often missed the meaning of whole paragraphs, and the idea of 'catching up' with everything was so daunting that he often didn't even feel like trying. A mission on the other hand… that he could do. That he excelled at.
Next in was doctor Banner. Dressed in shirt and chinos, he looked out of place in a room filled with see-through computer screens and glass tables. Dry-washing his hands as he looked around, he spotted Natasha and smiled. She smiled back. Steve kept his nose in the folder. Clint eyed Banner, glanced at Natasha. The display of warmth was unusual. The doctor took a seat next to her, directly across from the Captain and leaned in slightly.
"Have you seen the latest?" He indicated the folder in front of him.
"More scientists thinking they can replicate and control an x-gene serum." She glanced at Clint. "We've dealt with this… What? Six times? Seven?"
"It's a staple mission for SHIELD." Natasha chuckled. Clint watched as she turned from him back to Banner.
"The average agent cuts their teeth on these ops."
"Well, this is a little more like mutants meet the zombie apocalypse." Tony strode into the room, hand holding a fistful of grapes. He popped one into his mouth. "The test subjects aren't dead, but they are completely mindless." Taking the seat at the head of the table, he flicked open the folder, shuffled the papers around a little with his fingertips, closed it, and continued eating his grapes.
Clint flipped open his folder. The first page had the usual field de-briefing, their orders, and a nice little SHIELD symbol in the top corner. Clint skipped that page. The second was a list of minutes between an agent who had infiltrated the laboratory as an employee and SHIELD headquarters. Nothing too interesting there. Next there was a series of glossy A4 photos and satellite images. A sprawling compound, people entering and exiting buildings, repeated images of a middle-aged African-American on his cell phone. The stamps for these were on different days, but always the same time. The agent, maybe? The last image was the strangest of all. The parking lot was full of people milling about, but no cars. Barriers taller than the people had been erected around it. The cameraman had chosen the exact right moment to take the picture, capturing a man trying to climb the barricade, a spray of blood blooming behind his back. He had just been shot with what looked like a high-calibre bullet.
"So, what exactly is going on here?" Steve looked up from the photo. "Who was shooting, and why?" Clint checked the rest of the folder. Some chemical names, possible scientists involved, no real indication of what was going on.
"Fury isn't sure." Tony shrugged as everyone looked up at him in surprise. "Yeah, I know. We're kind of going in blind. Or we would be, if not for me." Tony jumped out of his chair and reached across to the centre of the table to bring up the computer screens. "That agent in the minutes? He didn't find out much. Seems this group, whoever they are, work in tight-knit cells that have no communication with each other. JARVIS managed to hack into some of the e-mails, a few internal memos, that kind-of thing. They were trying to re-create the x-gene. They added a few of their own personal tweaks. They tested it." He brought the last photo up on screen. "Now, they're shooting the test subjects. This was taken yesterday, not far from New York. The latest satellite images have all come back out of focus and grainy. No idea who or how they're doing that."
Clint reached for his own screen, flicking the current image into the corner and pulling up one on the guy with the cell phone. Details were hard to make out, but the man had broad shoulders and a shaven head. No facial hair. Clint zoomed in a little on the hand holding the cell phone. A criss-cross of white scars ran across the back of his hand. Natasha glanced over, leaning back in her seat to get a better angle of what he was looking at.
"Who's this guy the cameras seem to love so much?" Clint flicked through some of the other images, but none revealed any more details on the man. Tony brought the images up for everyone else.
"I haven't been able to find that out. I'll get JARVIS to run some facial-recognition software after he decodes the rest of the files he downloaded." Tony flicked the images to the corner of the screen and brought up an image of a double-helix with sections of it flashing red against the blue. "I think we all know what this is. The problem is; we don't know what they were doing to it. So!" Tony clapped his hands together and glanced around at everyone. "How about we go take a look?"
Locker Room
Clint finished tightening the straps on his forearm, stretching the fingers of his left hand into the finger braces and shifting his shoulders to help his suit settle. The first few moments of donning the outfit always felt a little tight. He reached into his locker and pulled out his bow case, glancing over at Natasha as she checked her guns and the release strap on their holsters. Captain America had already donned his mask and was standing in the corner, flexing the arm holding the shield.
Flicking open the latches on the case, Clint pulled out his bow, snapping his arm forward and back to open the bow to its full length. He tested the string, feeling its tautness. He loved the idea of a collapsible bow, but there was a part of him that always worried that the constant folding of the tips would cause the string to lose its tension. He was good enough to work around that if it ever happened, but he would rather the bow be at peak efficiency. Running a finger down the length of string, snapping it slightly and listening to the perfect twang, Clint felt satisfied that it was in good shape. He collapsed it again, looking up in time catch Natasha staring at him; at his hands. She blinked, almost seemed a little surprised. Then she caught his eye.
"Ready to go?" She closed her locker and cocked an eyebrow. It must have been his imagination. Slinging his quiver over his shoulder and tightening the thick leather strap across his chest that held it in place, Clint nodded the affirmative and followed her out into the hanger bay, the Captain close behind.
Enroute to Compound Alpha
Natasha checked her console again. ETA was eleven minutes, the sun still high in the sky and the muted colours of fields flowing by beneath them. Tony was due to arrive on scene shortly after they landed, while Bruce had elected to stay behind and help JARVIS with his work. Stealth missions weren't exactly his thing. Then again, neither were they Tony's.
Sighing, Natasha leaned back against the head rest and looked over at Clint. He was flying the plane, but it didn't require much mental input when they were cruising like this, and the far-off look on his face attested to his mind being elsewhere. After his initial awakening from Loki's brain-washing, the shadows around his eyes had quickly cleared. They were back again now with vengeance. His skin looked paler, his suit a little looser around the thighs. It was to be expected, after what had happened, but she couldn't help worrying a little. Or a lot.
Clint had been her focus the few times since joining SHIELD that she had been compromised. This was his first time, and he had no coping mechanism. Nor did he have a focus. On the surface he seemed to be dealing with it, but his physical appearance belied his easy smirks and down-to-business attitude. Natasha had no idea how to reach him. Even more worryingly, she had no idea why she wanted to so badly. They were partners, they trusted each other. His leaving her had compromised her, and his returning had her wanting to follow him around just to make sure he was okay. She fought down that urge savagely several times a day. It helped that he had hardly been around the last few weeks, and that Tony was a big enough handful to keep her mostly occupied.
Her mind was returned to the present when a shadow passed over her, and Steve leaned against the back of Clint's chair. "We nearly there?"
"Just arriving." Clint's soft, gruff voice sounded preoccupied, already focusing on touching down and the mission ahead. Natasha did the same.
AN: Thank you for reading. I do not own the Avengers, I'm just impatient for the next movie.
