Chapter titled named after the song For You by Keith Urban

Author's Note: I thank you all for taking the time to read this fanfiction. I love Clintasha so much, and hope to write even more of these two characters in the future. While like a lot of fans, I was disappointed it didn't become canon, but this doesn't mean as I can't still write fanfiction about it. There was a lot that went into the making of every chapter, and I will reveal the inspiration for this story when I conclude it. I hope that while it is a sad story, my readers enjoy this fanfiction. This first chapter is rather basic, I will admit, but beyond this chapter I truly love the deeper story line it gets into. That being said, I hope you continue reading. Your support in reading my works is why I write in the first place, and so thank you and enjoy.

Chapter 1: For You

It had been over three years since SHIELD fell to HYDRA, and Nick Fury and the Avengers were still out, fighting to bring down the Nazi developed agency. Clint Barton, Hawkeye, and his partner, Natasha Romanoff, The Black Widow, are sent into an old SHIELD base to try and recover old records of plans that could help Hydra develop weapons of mass destruction. Going into the mission, the two highly trained assassins knew their ultimate objective, to get the records. But when arriving at the base the two are ambushed by an unexpected battalion of Hydra troops. Natasha fights her way to the base's database and manages to download the records while Clint tries to contact what is left of SHIELD for backup and an extraction team.

There Natasha stood with Hydra enemies advancing towards her from every side, and not a single person to help her fight them off. She had made it to the top level of the hijacked Shield building only to be ambushed by over thirty Hydra troops. Of course being the Black Widow she could handle her own, but seeing she was already injured and facing thirty men, she began to question how long she could hold them off.

Gritting her jaw as she ruthlessly dodged the flying bullets, she slid to the hard floor in a split second and shot her arms up, and as she did released a rain of pounding bullets, shooting anyone who advanced towards her. They all shot at her, kicked her, stabbed at her, or attacked her by throwing punches. Being a skilled hand to hand combatant she easily was able to keep them at bay, kicking them square in the head and knocking several men out before she sent bullets through their skulls. She had seen up close what Hydra was capable of, they were ruthless and merciless. She wasn't here to give pity to them, no, they were here to kill her, and she would do the same.

While she was plowing through them either by bullet or by her own hand, more soldiers rushed onto that top level where Natasha was, as Hydra was planning to take out the Black Widow once and for all. She had her aim on one man, when suddenly she saw another man aiming at her out of the corner of her eye. Acting at lightning quick speed, the young assassin ducked the bullet that was fired right over her head as she pulled the trigger and shot the man. It was as she did that she extended one of her legs and easily tripped another advancing soldier, only to shoot him in the head before he fell completely. She knew she couldn't take them all on, and as she aimed to shoot another man she felt a sudden thrust of searing pain run right into her side.

Glance downward quickly, she saw a stream of thick red blood from a gunshot seep out of her side. Since she was moving as the bullet hit her it didn't seem to have caused immediate fatal damage, but it surely weakened her for soon an endless gush of crimson blood ran from her side. It slowed her down, and with every move, whether it be to shoot or dodge an oncoming bullet, a wave of pain ran through her. Her eyes grew bloodshot, and sweat began to race down her brow as she bared through the hot and intense pain. With every movement she made, the bullet lodged itself deeper into her side and the gnarly wound opened more. She wouldn't allow herself to go out like this, gunned down out of her own weakness. No, not when Clint was relying on her to hold these troops back. She knew if they got past her and Clint didn't know, he may as well be dead as well, and so she held on. Using her pure rage and hate for her ruthless enemy to power right through the waves of pain, she fought on.

It was as the russian fought on that she realized it didn't seem the reinforcements of Hydra soldiers were slowing, and if things were going as they should have Clint would have contacted Shield by now. Yet there was still no sign of the agency or Clint, and she couldn't afford to try and call him on her own, because if she stopped her fight for a second she'd die before she could make the call. It was as she felt another bullet break her right leg as it run right through her flesh and into her bone, did the agile assassin collapse completely onto the floor.

As she hit the ground, her entire body seemed to succumb to the pain. Her vision was growing blurry and distorted as she was on the verge of going unconscious due to the blood loss. She managed to prop herself up against a wall even with the bullet wound in her side opening wider and her leg broken. Her eyes grew sharp and cold as she lifted her head and tried to see around her, but everything moved in slow motion as she was about to blackout.

It seemed the gunfire had stopped for now, and more than half the troops had left the room. She assumed this was because they thought the battle done, and only a few men were needed to finish her off. She was completely unable to stand, and as she sat up against the wall with her strength fading, it took all she had to defend herself. As the leader of the Hydra unit slowly approached her, a menacing and vile grin spreading across his face, she quickly whipped her arm upward and fired two shots at the man beside him; killing the "henchman" instantly. Realizing the Black Widow wasn't completely crippled, the leader raced forward and kicked her square in the head, which left her with a bleeding gash in her temple. He then turned around to shoot her gun right out of her hand, but of course being a master assassin she never had just one weapon. As she reached for her smaller pistol, the man lunged forward and dug a knife into her hand.

She screamed as the weapon pierced through her skin and deep into her small hand, a steady stream of red blood trickled out of the wound. The man who stabbed her had a scarred face and a devilish look in his eyes as his hard boot kicked right into her injured side once again. This made her wince and grunt in pain and topple over onto the ground that was now soaked with her own blood. She gasped for breath, her lungs heaving for oxygen as she started to cough up blood. The red haired women expressed nearly none of the pain she was actually in as she held their brutal stares. She wouldn't give them the satisfaction they craved, even if they were to kill her right then and there she would never show them weakness.

The men that crowded around her slowly backed up, they all had looks of satisfaction on their face for thinking they actually would bring an end to The Black Widow. The leader glared without a drop of empathy in his eyes as he cocked his gun and raised the pistol, aiming directly at her forehead.

"Any last words, Widow?" He nearly growled as his finger was ready to pull the trigger.

With a sparking fire in her eyes, the assassin spoke sharply, her voice cold and spiteful,

"иди к черту! Even if you kill me, it won't matter in the end. I'm just one agent out of many."

The men simply chuckled brutally, but just as he was about to fire the bullet he suddenly jerked up stiffly as a sharp point of an arrow that was shot into his back came out through his chest. Blood soaking his uniform as the leader fell to the ground instantly, everyone's attention and gunfire was turned towards the one who let loose the arrow.

The archer was none other than Clint, who thankfully had come back for Natasha, even though his orders prevented him from doing so. This was nothing new, seeing as both Clint and Natasha were notorious for stubbornly breaking orders to come to each other's aid. Natasha didn't know how he knew she was in trouble, but relief had filled her the moment she saw the arrow hit its target, and as the man fell she extended her arm and took the gun from Clint's victim to use it to help him shoot down the remaining Hydra soldiers. Since most of them fled the room when Natasha was shot, it was fairly easy to take down the rest of them.

It was right after Clint released an arrow into the last standing Hydra soldier's skull that he ran over to Natasha, who still sat propped up against the wall as blood continued to run from her side. The rage that had filled her eyes in combat seemed to fade instantly the moment she looked upon Clint, who was now kneeling down right beside her, his grey blue eyes filled with worry as he placed a strong yet gentle hand carefully on her wound as he pushed down steadily to try and get the bleeding to slow. She wasn't ashamed to let out a small wince of pain as he pressed on her wound, after all they were both injured, and she never was ashamed to admit her pain around Clint.

Clint wasn't in best shape himself. A bullet seemed to have clipped his shoulder, because both his sleeve and the skin below it were torn by the bullet's path. He had a large cut on his upper arm, which was thin yet deep, and the inside of his arm was coated in the blood that leaked out of it slowly. Yet he could still fight and shoot just as well as always, and didn't seem to be slowed down by his injuries.

He steadily tried to catch his breath, but blood continued to pour out of his deep wound and stained his black shield suit. It was obvious the archer was exhausted, but his steady pressure on Natasha never weakened. He couldn't help but cock the smallest of smiles at the thought of being with her, when moments ago he thought he wouldn't make it out of the building alive. Natasha caught his quick smile, and while too overwhelmed to comment on it, couldn't help but feel relieved that the situation wasn't too dire.

She was in worse shape than he was, and seemed to be on the verge of passing out. Blood gushed from the gunshot wound in her side, and while he was applying a great amount of pressure to the wound, the bleeding barely slow. Her other injuries were not helping either, for the longer she sat there, the longer she could feel her strength slowly leaving her. Clint eventually settled to keeping one steady hand on her side as he let his other hand raise to very gently touch a cut on her cheek.

"Nat, you really got yourself beat up here...I'd hate to see what the other guy looks like." He said with a slight dry sarcastic tone in his voice, yet it was also lovingly worried.

While she was in pain, she couldn't help let out a huff of what was meant to be a laugh as her emerald green eyes met his storm grey ones. Finding a simple comfort in his gaze, she spoke up in a strained yet equally as sarcastic voice,

"Well, all the other guys are dead. Clint, did you contact SHIELD?"

He looked out of the glass window towards the war torn sky before looking back her and answering in his usually calm yet still rather gruff tone,

"Yeah, they said they are sending several jets as reinforcements, but who knows how long it's going to take for them to get here. I couldn't reach Fury, but the agent I talked to said to blow the building if we can't hold it."

Raising a thin eyebrow she looked up at him and remarked quickly,

"But if you haven't noticed...You didn't blow it."

He let out a small chuckle and stood up to retrieve the arrows from his victims after feeling assured Natasha was alright to sit by herself. He said quickly as he put the arrows back into his quiver,

"Well of course not, we're still in here after all…"

He pulled a small remote out of his combat suit's pocket, and Natasha recognized it as a self programmable detonator that agents Level 7 and up were cleared to carry on the field. He continued,

"I managed to set program a detonator to activate the self destruct mode of their system, and if for some reason we have to blow it, well one click of the button and this whole building will go up in flames."

He walked back to her and locked gazes with her for a moment. It hurt Clint to see Natasha so weakened, and there was an obvious sense of protection in the archer towards his partner. Natasha was struggling to simply stay awake, and so Clint once again kneeled down next to her and gently put his hands around her face as he spoke softly,

"Hey, stay with me Nat. If I'm staying awake, so are you."

He said this sarcastically, which as he intended, got a pitiful laugh out of Natasha.

"We're going to be alright. Hopefully when SHIELD does get here, whatever is left of this HYDRA unit will be so busy trying to find those records we can slip away easily."

Natasha suddenly seemed to regain some life in her as she shot him an almost disapproved look and spoke up quickly in her usual fiery tone,

"And that's exactly what we don't want them to do. Damn it Clint, if they get those files, this whole mission would be for nothing. We'd be better off blowing the building up now while we still can."

Clint shook his head and rebuked her instantly as he threw his hands up, and he said quickly yet all with a certain glare of love in his eyes,

"Before you completely freak out, let me finish. I said they would, 'try to find those files.' I don't think they ever will though. See, why it took me so long to get back up here and "rescue you" is because I put an encryption code on all the files under the name SHIELD gave us at the beginning of this mission. Only Alpha Level SHIELD Agents will be able to open it now, so it's safe from HYDRA, even if they can get their hands on the file itself. They won't know it's a locked until we're long gone."

She went silent and nodded quickly before saying with a small amount of doubt in her eyes,

"Not bad Clint, though I was handling the situation just fine so I think "rescue" is a bit of an overstatement. But...what good will that do if the building blows like SHIELD told you to do. The files will be destroyed anyway."

Clint gave a small smirk and put his hand in his suits pocket only to pull out a SHIELD USB drive, and placed it into the palm of her hand.

"That's exactly why I put the files on this drive, because we probably will have to blow the building, but I say we try and get out of it first. I'd rather not blow up with it," he said as he slung his black bow over his back and then sat down next to her again.

He couldn't help but place a reassuring hand on her shoulder as he looked from her broken leg to her gunshot wound. His brows furrowed and his eyes grew sternly worried as he began to look through his belt and combat suit to try and find anything to help her. When he couldn't find anything he quickly resorted to tearing off a small piece of fabric from his suit, and then used it to bandage up her hand, which was bleeding from where she was stabbed. Natasha smiled softly and placed a hand on Clint's shoulder in return as she pushed him gently as she said,

"You worry too much..."

Before she could say any more he leaned in and softly kissed her. She closed her eyes and for that brief moment, found peace and strength in his kiss. Opening his eyes and pulling back he pushed a strand of her red, yet lately almost dark brown, hair out of her eyes as he said,

"Well only because you're absolutely reckless. After all, his battle isn't over yet. We still have to get out." He said protectively as he finished wrapping her hand with the makeshift bandage.

Despite their moment to regain their composure and confidence, Clint had an uneasy feeling that something wasn't right. Before Clint could put any thought into his discomfort, the door was kicked open and over a dozen of HYDRA soldiers flooded into the room and surrounded the two assassins.

Clint tightened his jaw as he leapt to his feet, cursing to himself for letting them get the upper hand. Quickly grabbing an arrow right out of his quiver and pulling it into place on his bow, he moved quickly to aim and shoot it at the soldier in the front. Clint stood in front of Natasha, who was grounded due to her broken leg, but still was able to shoot from a sitting position. He aimed and fired quickly to try and drive the group of enemy soldiers back and away from her, so they couldn't get a good shot at her. While one soldier fell by the archer's hand, another shot right at the Russian assassin who lay half unconscious behind the archer. He looked over the crowd of soldiers as he loaded another arrow at the same time he moved quickly to dodged a bullet. Just as he dodged one bullet, another bullet nicked hit him in his other good arm.

He grunted as the force of the bullet knocked him off his feet. He looked around and a haunting realization grew over him. HYDRA wasn't stupid, they were waiting for reinforcements to engage the two SHIELD agents, so to ambush them and make certain they both died. There was no way for him fight out of this, there were simply too many of them for Strike Team Delta to take on alone.

As Clint continued to try and fight, an enemy soldier shot back at Natasha. Clint raced forward, trying to come between her and the bullet but he wasn't quick enough. The bullet shot Natasha in the chest, and fell back from the force of the shot. As she laid on her side, she didn't attempt to get up, or even try to look at Clint. No gunshots caused her to flinch and Clint could not see her chest rise and fall.

Realizing his wife could may as well be dead behind him, rage filled the archer as he shot the soldier who fired at her, and then ducked beneath the gunfire to make his way over to Natasha. She laid lifeless in a pool of her own blood, her head tilted to the side. Her skin was pale and eyes firmly closed. Parted lips were scarlet red, from the blood that dripped out of her mouth slowly. Clint didn't even have time to check if she was breathing as he leaned down to pick her up while dodging bullets shot at him. Acting quickly, he held his bow with one hand and picked her up with the other.

He knew he didn't have many choices, but he knew if he didn't get Natasha out of here she would die. There were too many Hydra troops to fight, and if he tried to hang on any longer they would both die. As they cornered him against the windowed wall of the tall building, he lunged forward as if he was going to charge at them. Only to step back after fooling the soldiers he was running one way, and then charge at the window.

He ran with Natasha still firmly in his arms right towards the glass windows behind him, and with putting his shoulder forward, so to break the glass with his weight, he turned himself to shield her from the flying shards of glass. As he crashed through the glass the men open fired, and at least two bullets hit the archer before he completely fell out.

Gravity began to pull Clint downward quickly, and yet to him everything seemed to move in slow motion. The crash of the window and the several gunshots were enough to make the nearly deaf assassin lose his sense of hearing, and so he couldn't hear the rapid force of the wind as he fell. Everything around him moved in a warped slow motion, he couldn't get a grasp of where he was or even how fast he was approaching the ground. The only instinct he had was to hold Natasha close, because with the force of him falling so rapidly, he was afraid she would slip through his grasp. He held her close to his bloodied suit, as if his injuries had no effect on his efforts to securely hold her.

His initial plan was to shoot an arrow at the building above to land somewhat safely but he then cursed at himself, realizing how stupid and idiotic that plan was, because how could he couldn't shoot with one arm. The ground was approaching quickly, he had but seconds left to act. He felt a sudden wave of regret and dread fall over him as he knew the almost certain outcome of his actions, and for a moment he froze. After all he and Natasha had been through, he didn't understand how they had got to his point. Here they were, plummeting towards what would seem to be an instant death for both of them. Was this always destined to happen? Was this fated the day Fury sent Barton to go kill her, that Clint would find himself defenselessly sending both himself and his wife to their death?

It may have been because of the fact that he couldn't hear the rush of the wind, or maybe it was because he was too numb to feel fear or adrenaline, but Clint suddenly forgot where he was. Instead of seeing the sky above him, he saw quick images from his subconscious past. He saw a small wooden bow and arrows made from sticks, a humble and peaceful farm, physical abuse from his father and even brother, red hair of the KGB assassin he was sent to kill in the street lights of Russia, a one eyed golden retriever, seeing himself fight the woman he loved through a haze of blue, kneeling in the rain, and finally an ivory white

dress on the beautiful red haired and emerald eyed Russian he would marry.

The odds were against him in, but in a sudden protective act he realized he had to try. He remembered his vows, Till death do us part. Even if there was little to no chance he could manage to save her, he wouldn't stop trying until death stopped him. Which he knew, would be within seconds. And in those final seconds he had left, Clint prepared to give it all for her.

He let go of his cold metallic bow and used that other hand to grab the detonator. He tucked it into his palm, his hand ready to squeeze the button as he then wrapped his other arm around Natasha tightly.

Even with every force of physics working against him, he managed to turn himself around completely so when he would hit the ground, he would land on his back. He used his last bit of strength to press Natasha close to his chest. Even with the chaos around him as he fell, he could feel the very shallow rise of her chest, and so knew everything he was doing may be worth it after all. When he jumped, a bullet had found its mark in his back, and so as he fell the bullet only lodged itself deeper and deeper, sending pain so extreme Clint feared he would blackout and let go of Natasha.

Only a few more seconds, he thought, sadly.

He only had to bear the pain for a few more seconds. Yet he only had a few more seconds before he knew it would all be over.

He could feel his heart rate slow as the force of gravity made the bullets dig deeper into his back, they would soon pierce his lungs. He felt his eyelids slowly drop and tasted blood at the back of his throat.

Before he could start to cough up blood or lose his vision, a small tear streamed from his loving grey blue eyes. He knew this was it, and so he as he quickly kissed the top of Nat's head and whispered softly,

"Мне так жаль , Нат . Я люблю тебя."

He continued to keep his head near hers, but he also tucked her closer into his chest, and rounded his broad shoulders around her. The ground approached, and Clint's eyes remained on Natasha, wanting the last thing he saw to be her.

He then squeezed the detonator in his hand which ignited the building violently as the sky was filled with black smoke. The force of the explosion made their fall that much more lethal, and within a millisecond of Clint destroying the building, they both hit the ground.

Translations:

иди к черту: go to hell [said to the HYDRA soldier]

Мне так жаль , Нат . Я люблю тебя: I'm so sorry, Nat. I love you. [what Clint whispers at the end]

Lyrics:

Lyrics from the song this chapter was named off of that inspired it.

For You by Keith Urban

"All I saw was smoke and fire, I didn't feel a thing

But suddenly I was rising higher

And I felt that I just made the biggest mistake...

When I thought about my wife

And the answer rang out clear

From somewhere up above

No great a gift has man than to lay down his life for love…

It's weighing on my mind

I'm not trying to be the hero

I don't want to die

But right now in this moment

You don't think twice...

And I wonder, would I give my life?

Could I make that sacrifice?

If It came down to it could I take the bullet?

Yes I would,

For You