Clint and Natasha were on a mission in Paris France, they had actually been on a mission here for almost two months. It was one of those annoyingly deep undercover jobs, where they had to live fake lives, lie every second of the day, and live as people they weren't. Right now they were living as a wealthy up and coming couple, who wanted in on a weapons smuggling ring, so that they could make more money. They were almost done here, in fact hopefully after dinner tonight, they would have all the information that they needed and be able to get back to more serious jobs. Not that it hadn't been fun pretending to be wealthy conniving socialites, but now the two of them were more than ready for more serious work.
Now they were walking down a pleasantly uncrowded street that wasn't flooded with tourists, talking under there breaths to finalize details about tonight. "I need to get Samuel alone, and you need to drop the pill into Marie's drink. She doesn't want to talk, the sedative is in a small enough dose that it should loosen her tongue. Then if you have time you should hack into her computer, and use the hard drive I gave you to-" Natasha was interrupted when a small boy stumbled into her path, wiping at his eyes, bottom lip quivering. The two assassins stopped, glanced at each other, looked around to make sure this wasn't a trap, then turned their attention to the boy.
"Hey buddy… You lost?" Clint asked, but the child just stared up at him trying not to cry. Natasha knelt down, and spoke to him in french that Clint hardly understood. They had been here for months now, he still hardly knew more than a few down words of the language. It was too slippery, he couldn't get a hold of it. Natasha nodded at the boy, and looked up at her partner. "He says he lost his dog. I think that we should help him find her."
Clint's shook his head, "Nat, no. We dont have time for this, it could compromise the entire mission. It could waste all of the work we've done here so far." Natasha scowled, and narrowed her eyes at him. "It's a little boy, who lost his dog. We can't just leave him here."
Bartons eyes darted back and forth across the street they were on, taking in every person standing around them, nervously absorbing every detail. "Nat, we can't do this. Not here, not now. Anyone could be watching, it could risk the entire operation." He expected this reasonable statement to knock some sense into his partner, instead Natasha just rolled her eyes. She asked the boy in fluent french, "What does your dog look like? How long ago did you lose her?" Clint barely understood the gist of what she said, and couldn't pick up a single word of the boys anxious rapid babbling reply. But Natasha nodded understandingly, and replied in the same graceful tumbling language.
Meanwhile Clint stood watch, eyeing everyone with suspicion, scanning rooftops and resisting the urge to put a weapon in his hand. Natasha and the pitiful little boy spoke for several minutes, before Natasha looked up at Clint and spoke to him in english. "The dog ran off about ten minutes ago, slipped out of her leash and went after a cat or something. Might have been a rat come to think of it. Come on, she can't have gone far, if we split up we should find her in no time."
Clint scoffed, "Split up? Nat, are you insane? We are- "On vacation." We had plans? People we wanted to see and…. A few we need to avoid?" There was so much Clint wanted to say now, he had to take a second to reformulate his words so if any passerby happened to know english, they wouldn't pick up on the fact they were in the presence of two mercenaries who were in a deep undercover job, trying to get information so they could take down a ring of weapon smugglers. "Natasha…. We don't have time for this. We have been planning this trip for weeks. If we don't stick to the schedule, it could mess everything up." He was trying to sound jovial, but this entire situation was stressing him out.
He had to convince Nat this wasn't a good idea. They had made connections here, people could recognize them and wonder why they were not acting in character. Not to mention they were in Paris, each of them had more than their fair share of enemies here, who would be thrilled to catch them off guard, on their own if they split up. They should just continue maintaining their cover, go to a stupid museum or something and then go to the dinner tonight where they would hopefully gather a few final crucial pieces of intel. The last thing they should be doing was splitting up to help some random kid find his dog. For all they knew this was a trap.
Clint opened his mouth to say all of this and more, but Natasha had that stupid determined look on her face. The one that meant she wanted to do something, and no one could convince her otherwise. Ugh, and now the damn kid was looking up at him with puppy dog eyes, and, was his lip quivering? How was he supposed to resist a crying kid?! The boy babbled some french in a wavering voice, Natasha listened then flatly translated for Clint. "He says the dog's his only friend. He's scared if he doesn't find her soon, she's going to be hit by a car."
Clint bit his lip, and again did a quick glance around to absorb his situation, looked at the kid who was clearly about to start bawling, and then at Natasha who was wearing that determined "I do what I want and you can't tell me otherwise Barton" look on her face.
The archer sighed heavily. "Ten minutes. I will spend ten minutes looking for this damn dog, if we find her or not, we meet back here after that. We need to get ready for that dinner tonight, remember?" She rolled her eyes, "I'm not an idiot Clint. Don't worry, this won't take long. He says the dog is small, has brown hair and her front right leg is white. Her name is Ada. I'll take the kid, since you probably don't know a single word he's saying, we'll meet back here in ten minutes." See clearly saw the worry in her partners eyes, because she leaned forward and quickly kissed him hard on the lips. "I'll be fine, Barton. See you in ten minutes."
And with that she was gone, holding the hand of the boy, jabbering rapidly in the language Clint did not know a word of. Furious at his partner for wandering off, himself for not even trying to convince her to do otherwise. The sooner he found this dog the sooner the mission could get back on track.
Hawkeye dodged through the crowd, eyes darting between the rooftops looking for snipers, and any places on the ground a dog could be hiding. Nervous, all of his senses were on high alert.
So it didn't take long for Clint to realize that he was being followed.
It could have been a coincidence at first, just someone going the same way that he happened to be walking. So he tested the man who was behind him. He purposely took the next turn that he came to, then crossed a street. He did some back tracking, and a few more turns. When he moved to walk down an alley and the man still followed, Clint knew he was in for some kind of fight.
The footsteps behind him were quickly approaching, no one else was in the alley. Just him and the stranger who suddenly was trying to punch him in the head. Clint dropped to the ground, and kicked the other mans legs out from under him, A knife was in his hand, he moved to stab it through the other mans arm, but he moved too quickly and the archers knife hit the ground. He got back on his feet, and was met with a fist colliding with his eye. Clint stumbled back, and stepped to the side before the second fist could make contact.
He then stomped hard on the mans foot, and punched his fist into the mans gut. A knife dug into the mans shoulder, and with a second punch he was down. It didn't take long for Clint to remove the mans weapons and handcuff him. And then he was stuck not sure what to do.
A quick look around showed that he was still alone. "Who are you working for?" Clint asked, the man just glared back at him. Clint asked the same question in stumbling french, and still didn't get a response. "Ok, don't want to talk? Don't worry. I've got a friend with me, she'll help you start spilling the beans. But now, I have to help a kid find his dog. So if you'll excuse me, I'll be leaving you…. Somewhere around here." Clint glanced around, and saw a large dumpster. Well, it would have to do. He pulled the scarf off from around his neck, and used it to gag the other mans mouth.
Maybe he was being paranoid. Maybe a mugger was having a bad day, and had picked the absolute worst person to try and rob. But honestly the chances of that weren't likely, they weren't even by any of the usual tourist traps where pickpocketing was so common. If this was just a huge mistake, Clint was sure Natasha could just pull out one of her cards, and use one of her many bank accounts to soothe any hurt feelings. Or halt any lawsuits.
Clint threw the man over his shoulder, and moved towards the dumpster. He tossed the lid up, and then threw the man in. Luckily some trash bags were there to break his fall. "Ok, this won't take long buddy, don't worry. I'll be back here soon, so don't try anything. My partner will want to talk to you…. And if it turns out you're just some guy who was after my wallet, I'm really sorry about this." He slammed the lid of the dumpster down, and turned back to walk out of the alley.
He had to get to Natasha. She could take care of herself, no doubt about it, but still Clint couldn't help but worry. What if the kid had just been a decoy to distract her? What if right now she was fighting for her life?
Clint was almost back to the place where he and Natasha had parted ways, when he almost tripped over something that got in his way. "What the hell!" Clint blurted out, trying to regain his balance. Something was running around his feet, trying to jump up on him. Something brown, with a white leg.
"Oh my god" Clint muttered to himself, staring down in disbelief at the small dog he had been sent to look for. "Come here you stupid mutt, I had to beat up a possible murderer because of you…" He grabbed the squirming animal, it instantly started trying to lick the archers face. "No! I am mad I had to find you and risk the safety of a monthlong mission for you. You're not going to win me over with your stupid licking, and adorable tail wagging!" The archer hissed under his breathe at the dog, who would not stop moving.
Clint felt pure relief flood through him when he saw Natasha and the still sniffling little boy right where he had left them. The chides face instantly lit up when he saw the dog, "Ada!" He cried out, then grabbed the dog from Clint's arms and began petting her, speaking in rapid french to the excited animal. Natasha was grinning, she looked so happy it almost made up for what Clint had just been through.
"Good job Barton, I knew you could do it. I was kind of worried you would just ditch us and go eat some ice-cream. See? Was that so hard? You did something nice, now we can go get ready for "dinner." Clint turned around, and saw the boy was already gone. Ungrateful little brat.
"Yeah, glad we helped the kid, really glad I made you happy that's super nice. Um…. I kind of met someone you need to meet."
I don't know what I am doing with this, I feel the story has potential but that this chapter was weak. Anything you want to see about Natasha loving animals? I have ideas, but would love suggestions! Best review will get a free french puppy who might run away ;D