Okay, so I'm procrastinating on final studies and thought up a little bit of a challenge for myself. This is basically going to be a POV fic with scenes from Avenging Angel, in different points of view, mostly with Clint and Natasha, but I'll try to throw in some others as well. For the most part, it'll be chronological and the beginning couple will be chapter one and two, since I really thought it would be interesting to write those in Clint's POV. Anyway, I hope you all like it and let me know what you think!
Clint stared at the girl before him, knowing she was no more than just a child. She had a gun pointed directly at his forehead, her pale blue eyes steely as she stared back at him defiantly. He didn't know what she was waiting for. She was just standing there, her aim unwavering, but gave no indication that she was going to actually kill him. He had his bow up and an arrow strung, but couldn't convince himself to release.
He'd been here before.
The resemblance was uncanny. Even though this girl had pale blonde hair that was pulled back into a messy ponytail, blood sticking loose strands to the side of her face, the cold expression on her face was all too familiar. He'd stayed his hand once, but he wasn't sure he could convince himself to kill this girl. She'd put up as much of a fight as she could, more of a fight than any before her. He'd barely managed to detach her long enough to pull up his bow, but she'd already had a gun on him, waiting for his decision.
"You're good." He let his lips quirk, trying not to scare her into anything she didn't want to do. He was afraid, but not for himself. There was a time when he would have done anything to get out of a situation like this alive, but the face staring at him was too familiar to ignore. Cold, with surprisingly expressive eyes if anyone had bothered to look. She wasn't as cold as she could be, she hadn't quite given up on humanity yet, but he could practically see her tottering on the edge, ready to fall if someone dared to push.
"So are you, it seems." He wasn't expecting her to answer. He also wasn't expecting her to have such a quiet voice. It was bell-like, with no accent whatsoever, as though someone had beaten it out of her. If he could shoot that person, he would. No one deserved to be that defeated and no child deserved to be made into a weapon.
"Yeah, well, I've had years of training." He tried not to sound proud, but his training was something of an accomplishment. Not only that, but he wanted to see her reaction to be able to gage what she would do next. She had training, it was obvious, but how much?
"I have years of training as well." She seemed honest, which shot a bolt of anger through him. Someone else he knew had years of training and she held a very disturbing resemblance to that person. He shut the emotion down, eyeing her critically.
Christ, she couldn't be more than eighteen. Small, she was the perfect assassin. Unlike his partner, she could fade into the background. People picked Natasha for missions because she could seamlessly slip into any facade. They'd pick this girl because she blended in. Walking past her on the street, even he wouldn't give her a second glance. She looked like any other teenage girl, accept for the way she held herself right now, her back straight, her face cold. If she was trained as a spy, she would take down countries without breaking a sweat.
"You fight like someone I know. Are you, by any chance, Russian?" He couldn't just keep his goddamned mouth shut. After taking out the Red Room with Natasha, he'd thought it was over. He thought that the training of young girls to kill and be killed would end with the Red Room. Instead, it seemed to have picked up right where it left off, at least, some semblance of it did. "You're a lot like her, actually."
"The Black Widow and I have much in common." He immediately tensed and thought critically about releasing the arrow at the thought of her hurting Natasha. While some partners were just work partners, he and Natasha had something deeper and he wasn't about to put her life in danger just because of his goddamned conscience. He could live with the torture of knowing he killed a kid to keep Natasha from harm.
"You know Natasha?" He asked, keeping his teeth grit to hold back a snarl of warning. He had to repeatedly remind himself that she didn't know any better. She was a child, a young girl. Older than Natasha when he'd been sent after her, but it didn't matter. She had been raised to kill and probably knew very little about normal people. If he could call himself normal, at least. That thought was one of the only things that was keeping her alive at the moment.
"I have been hunting you for some time, Agent Barton." Her words chilled the blood in his veins, bringing on a large dose of paranoia. How long has she been watching them? How could they not have realized it? They were paranoid to a fault, Natasha had been moving them from safe house to safe house every few weeks lately…
Oh.
One night, almost a year back, Natasha had woken him up in the middle of the night and basically thrown his go-bag at his head, forcing him out of the apartment and into the night. They'd driven like crazy, back roads and pin point turns designed to throw someone off. He'd been confused until she'd said that someone had been following them, then he'd just gone along with her idea, letting to direct him into a stolen car before driving to a SHIELD base and hiding out for a week. She'd made a SHIELD team erase their time in that apartment, almost three months of their lives, before calming for a little while.
After that, it was every few weeks she'd change where she wanted to be. He'd assumed she was just going through another phase, she did it a lot where she just couldn't sit still, but what if it had been this girl?
"A week before." She seemed to answer his very thoughts, her calculating eyes catching the miniscule amounts of surprise he allowed to show. He didn't want her to think of him as a cold, clinical assassin, because that wouldn't get them anywhere. He had to make her see a human being, if he wanted to save her.
"That was almost a year ago." He informed her, though he was sure she was fairly certain of that fact. She'd been hunting him for a year. And he hadn't known.
"Yes, it was. A year ago next Tuesday." She shot back, her eyebrows twitching when he let out a chuckle.
"So the times Nat finally calmed down?" He asked, thinking of the times they'd been able to stay in a place for more than a few weeks, the times when they'd settle down for a month, month and a half before she was back at it again. He'd simply gone along, like he usually did, waiting for her to confide in him. Now he knew that she had no idea what they were running from. Which was probably why she'd been so frantic.
"I assume I was on other missions." She seemed to be trying her hardest to be honest, an interesting choice. He couldn't help laughing for real, unable to hold it in. Nat was going to be so pissed off when she found out. The lengths she'd gone to protect him and the one time she wasn't there, their personal stalker was. It was hysterical.
His bow never wavered and neither did her gun, even as he started to calm down and she tilted her head just slightly to the right, eyebrows quirking once before a smooth expression ran over her face. If he didn't know any better, he'd think she was related to Natasha.
"She's going to be pissed when she figures it out." He explained, but she only nodded slightly, as if she understood what he meant, even though he figured she had no idea. She might have been watching them, but there was no way she could have that much information on the Black Widow. Natasha was too careful, even when it was just the two of them. She never understood calming down, never understood how to let her guard down. She got the concept, but putting it into practice was difficult for her when she felt she was in danger. And the last year had been one constant battle after another with her.
"So we're at an impasse." He offered conversationally, her ice blue eyes snapping to his own grey eyes. Her eyes matched the weather, ridiculously cold and the temperature just kept dropping. He could see her breath coming out in small clouds, but she didn't seem bothered. Then again, Russia was freezing in winter. She was probably used to the cold.
"I suppose we are." She allowed, her eyes showing her caution. He could see the hesitance in her, knew she was confused. Probably because he hadn't been able to kill her yet. And, if he was being honest, he didn't want to have to. She'd tried to kill him, yes, but she easily could have over the last few minutes. One squeeze of the trigger and he'd be a dead man, bleeding out in an alleyway no one knew he was in. It wouldn't take much. But she hadn't done it yet.
"You know, it doesn't have to be this way." His mind slid through the options and he motioned to their weapons, which were still poised for attack. "You don't have to kill me. It's just an order, and, you know, orders are meant to be broken."
He grinned at her cheesily, hoping it would entertain her, but she just looked a little confused as she thought about what he'd said. She seemed to be someone who thought a lot. Natasha had been wild when they'd first met, she'd almost succeeded in killing him and had succeeded in breaking his arm and a few ribs. This girl had been a lot more careful. She was almost analytical, more like the Natasha he knew than the one he'd found in a similar alley all those years ago.
"I do not think these are meant to be." She informed him slowly, as if she wasn't quite sure of her own statement. He could run with that. Hesitance was enough to keep him talking, trying to talk her down. If there was anything he was good at, it was talking.
"I think there are places you could go that would be safe if you chose to." He said carefully, not wanting her to run at the first sign of trouble. Because that was her other option. She could just disappear. That was what Nat had done after escaping the Red Room. And he didn't want her to disappear. It wasn't quite clear yet, but he was pretty sure he just wanted to help her. If she was as smart as he knew she was, she would take his offer. If he believed in a god, he'd have prayed for it.
He tensed automatically when she took a slow step back from him, her eyes still glued to him. He knew that she noticed, she noticed everything he'd done, but he made no attempt to follow her, knowing that would scare her off faster than anything else he could possibly do.
She stood there for a long moment, her eyes on his, indecision flaring there. He waited while she thought, tense, prepared for anything.
Accept for when her finger tightened on the trigger.
It was all too fast to account for, her finger tightened and he was already letting the string go, the bullet whizzed past his ear, he could hear the noise of it, but it never hit. He swore out loud as his fingers slipped and the arrow started to fly, his arms wrenching down and away, but not fast enough.
Before he could cry out, the arrow slammed into her stomach, throwing her back onto the ground, where she stayed.
He was running before he could remember why it was a bad idea. "Are you alright?! Can you hear me?!"
She didn't acknowledge him at all as he dropped down to the ground beside her, her hand shakily moving to press into the area surrounding the wound, blood slowly spreading out from the arrow. She pulled her hand away and just stared at it for a moment, the blood dark against her pale as snow skin.
He went to work immediately, yanking a first aid kit out of one of his many pockets and starting to rip gauze out, pressing it around the arrow as his heart pounded in his ears, guilt eating away at him. He should have known she wouldn't kill him, he should never have taken the shot. She was so like Natasha that he couldn't think straight, almost panicking at the thought of her death.
"What the hell were you thinking? I almost killed you!" He growled, working hard to stem the flow of blood and stop the panic building in his chest. He didn't want to be the cause of her death, even if he knew on some level that that was what she was going for when she'd taken the shot. She'd had perfect aim until she'd pulled the trigger, when she'd moved the gun just enough to miss him completely.
She was in shock, he could tell, her face paling rapidly as the pain finally began to process, her eyes squeezing shut for just a moment before she opened them to stare at him, determination in her eyes.
"You have five minutes before they arrive to extract me. I suggest you take it." An accent colored her words, a bastardized version of Russian, similar to the accent Nat had when she was upset, which was why it was suddenly completely ridiculous to think about leaving her there. If they found her and realized she failed, he knew what would happen. And he wasn't about to let that happen.
"They'll kill you if they find you." He informed her, trying to fight back a burst of panic at the thought.
"Yes, they will." She nodded, completely honest. He could see the determination still in her gaze and knew that she'd given up. She was ready to die if that was what this meant. She was ready to be free from whatever torture they were putting her through, she just wanted out. Instead of running like Nat had, she was content to let them just kill her.
He couldn't get the part of him that was Clint Barton to shut up. Hawkeye and Clint were separate people, Hawkeye could care less about a little girl assassin from Russia. She had been sent to kill him and he wanted to survive. But Clint could see the girl beneath, the one that resembled Natasha in a way he couldn't get past. And Clint Barton wouldn't let anything happen to Natasha so why would he let this girl die before him?
"I doesn't have to end this way. You could come with me." He finally offered, hoping she'd accept his proposal.
Then she coughed, hacked was more like it, a wet gurgle in the back of her throat warning him that her condition was worsening. She'd drown in her own blood if he didn't make a decision soon. "You've seen what Nat and I do. We work for the government and the World Council. We choose assignments and get paid to do our jobs on a monthly basis. You'd have a place to live, a bunk, aliases all over the world. You'd fight for a cause."
It was the same words someone had said to him once upon a time, the words that had convinced him to cross over to the side of the good, but he could see that she wasn't quite on board with his idea.
"Three minutes." The words sounded forced, pained, and he fisted his hands for a moment, fighting back a wave of emotion as Clint Barton made his way fully through, Hawkeye pushed to the back of his mind. His mission was over and Hawkeye couldn't be blamed for the consequences of his soon to be actions.
"I can help you. Let me help you." He was reduced to begging and he didn't give a shit, grabbing her carefully and forcing her upright, knowing it wasn't good for her wounds but unable to stop because hesitation would mean her death. He fought to ignore her hiss of pain, keeping his arm wrapped around her waist, just above the arrow that protruded from her abdomen as he waited for her to get her feet under her.
"How much time do we have?" He asked, starting to move with her at his side. She started jogging, which wasn't as surprising as it could have been. If she was like Natasha, she'd fight through the death rattle in her lungs and keep going until she fell over, not stopping for something she'd deem insignificant. He wasn't looking forward to that.
Her pale hair blew into her face, sticking to the drying blood there. She coughed again, blood dripping down her chin, but she made no move to wipe it off, instead ignoring it as she started moving, pulling different things off of her body as she went, weapons littering the ground around them.
"What are you doing?" He fought the concern leaking into his system, knowing that Nat never got rid of her weapons, especially not in enemy hands.
"My weapons could theoretically be tracked. Can't keep them." She informed him, letting him move her towards the van he was supposed to take back to the meeting place.
"Here." He basically picked her up and shoved her into the back seat, throwing the med kit in after her. If she was anything like them, she'd be able to take care of herself while he drove. At least, long enough to keep herself alive until they could get her some professional help.
He slid into the driver's seat and started the engine, driving like a bat out of hell as he tried to get them out of there without someone following them, his teeth grit as he took a hairpin turn, switching the lights off so there wouldn't be a visual from above. He was already trying to figure out the best route to take when he heard something weird from the backseat that had him spinning to look at the small blonde, staring as she grunted in pain, one hand wrapped around the arrow shaft and the other gripping the back of the passenger's side seat, bracing herself.
"What the hell are you doing?!" He went to hit the break, stopping when she spoke.
"Keep driving." He didn't like taking orders from her, but knew that stopping would get them killed faster than her yanking an arrow out of her body with her bare hands. Muttering a few choice words, he kept driving, spinning to keep his eyes on the road.
He heard the rip of packages being opened before silence dominated the car, his eyes flicking to the rearview mirror to see her eyes slipping closed.
"Hey! Stay awake! Come on!" He yelled, but there was no use. She was already gone.