Author's note: This one's in two parts. This fic is pretty old and I feel like it picks up as it goes so do me a favour and give it a good shot. I'll post the second part soon. Rated T.
It wasn't so long ago that there'd only been one man on the entire planet that Natasha had been truly comfortable doing recon missions like this with. One. Now there were two. Doing them alone was fine, she had a well-earned faith in her own ability to handle whatever came up, but she'd soon discovered that working with Hawkeye doubled the assurance of safety and success. Having two people you trusted completely to have your back in these situations was downright relaxing. And it wasn't that she didn't trust the others, but they were not suited to these types of missions. Stark, Banner and Thor were excellent company in an all-out battle to the death, but by their own admission they were not the guys to call on for stealth and Captain though, she hadn't been sure about. And she would be embarrassed to admit now that when they received their first recon assignment as a trio, she'd been nervous about taking him along. Embarrassed because she'd miscalculated, and it made her very uncomfortable to think she could. It was a minor miscalculation and in this case hadn't had any repercussions but all the same, she didn't like to think about it.
The thing was that all the stories in circulation about Captain America's exploits in World War Two were the explosive ones where he went bursting in the front door and took everyone down before they knew what had hit them. Her miscalculation had been that just because she hadn't heard of his more subtle work, that it hadn't happened. Her face could redden just contemplating that, because after all, the better you are at stealth and silence, the less notariety your mission gains. If you did your job right, even your colleagues at SHIELD didn't realise where you'd just been and what you'd been doing, and they didn't think to ask. That was professionalism. The Captain did both loud and quiet, blunt and sharp. Logic followed that the latter would vanish silently into the shadow of the fame of the former. And perhaps she'd underestimated him based on the time he'd come from. She realised now how foolish that had been. It wouldn't happen again.
So yes, as she and Steve crouched in the darkness on the edge of the compound, feeling but not seeing or hearing Clint's presence up in a tree to their left, she felt the recon-mission version of comfortable. Alert, and ready at the drop of a hat to snap into action, but comfortable . They'd been here for over an hour, just watching. If Tony had been here he would've talked them all to death by now, and quite possibly just walked up to the building and knocked on the door to simply ask them what the hell they were up to so they could kick their asses and go home. She was prepared to stay here all night, and so were Clint and Steve, but they'd already reached the agreement that passive observation had probably given them everything it was going to. If they wanted more from this, they were going to have to get inside.
It was a reasonably-sized, low-ceilinged, rambling kind of building. They suspected multiple basement levels. It was small enough to go completely unnoticed by anyone who wasn't SHIELD, but big enough to contain some serious assets. Nothing the Hulk couldn't take apart in half an hour, maximum. Who knew what they were doing in there? There was a solid guard patrol which only left three sites on the ground vulnerable for between five and fifteen seconds. Not enough time to get in. It would be enough, however, to get onto the roof. There was a large ventilation shaft near the centre, keeping their machinery cool. They didn't know what those machines were, this was some kind of experimental biology lab, but they knew they had some kind of heavy-duty tech in there. Of course, the small windows in the patrol didn't mean that they didn't have cameras covering every inch of the perimeter at all times, but they had a way around that. Natasha and Steve exchanged a glance of silent communication and she closed her fingers around the EMF emitter on her belt in readiness. It would scramble the cameras for just enough time for them to use the window and gain the roof. It was too high for Natasha to scale without using a grappling hook but Steve could make the jump. They'd agreed that Natasha would hitch a ride on his back and they'd infiltrate together, leaving Clint at his post to watch their backs and come in for them if necessary. They needed someone on the outside in case things went sideways.
"Ready to move," murmured Steve, for Clint's benefit, as their window for what they were calling Access Point 2 approached.
"I've got you covered," he returned softly.
Steve got into a good position to make a run for it, fingers in the grass, down on one knee like a sprinter. Natasha tried not to think about how strange it was climbing up onto his back, wrapping one arm firmly around his neck while she kept her other hand on the emitter, keeping her legs tucked close and clamped around his sides so as not to interfer with the smooth movement of his legs. The window was almost open. She felt him tense and she counted them out. "Three, two, one." On one she hit the button and Steve bolted from their cover.
He sprinted so easily she didn't get jostled about half as much as she'd expected, and only five seconds into their twelve second window, he made the superhuman leap for the roof. They were still in the air when they cleared the range of the cameras and Natasha disabled the emitter, returning the camera feeds to normal, hopefully before anyone could suspect foulplay. Steve landed in a crouch to soften the sound of their weight hitting the roof, skidding in the gravel for several feet before they came to a stop. She dropped from his back silently and, keeping low, they made their way swiftly towards the ventilation shaft.
It was a large stainless steel square pipe that came up and curved over to be parallel with the rooftop, with a grill over its mouth. Natasha and Steve had their wire cutters out before they even reached it. The grill was strong, and gave Steve the edge when it came to shearing it away. They had it off in no time, setting it aside. Natasha climbed into the mouth of the pipe and turned around. She pulled a wire from her belt and clipped herself to the complementary link on Steve's belt. He braced himself, gave her a nod, and she leaned back into the dark. She descended like her namesake, black and silent, from her own silken thread.
Reaching a junction, she twisted the mechanism around her wire to fix it in place, and considered her options. As she did, she retrieved another device, sliding it open to reveal its eye. She showed it her choices; forward, right, behind, left and straight down. The best stuff was always as far down as you could go in facilities like this. She clipped the camera to her belt, facing down so it could track her progress and resumed her descent until she'd passed what she estimated was probably four floors and the shaft stopped, splitting left and right. She could see the end to her left, so she went that way, getting down on her stomach and pulling herself along with her hands in perfect slinky silence until she reached the small grill looking down into the room below, peering through the spinning blades of a fan. It was some kind of computer centre, with tall, glittering servers lining the walls, making the room even smaller. At one wall there was a desk and a group of monitors. She unclipped her camera once again to take footage of what she was seeing, zooming in on the monitor screens. Some of them were just code, and nothing she could make sense of, but there was something on the screen to the lower right that arrested her attention. It was details of a private satellite that was passing overhead. Unregistered. Illegal. And not part of SHIELD's intel. Her stomach clenched. They had eyes in the sky. "They know we're here."
There was just a beat of silence, then Steve said lowly, "Your call, Natasha."
She was already backing up. "Copy that," she whispered, turning the situation over in her mind. As easily and smoothly as she made it back to the junction, in her chest her heart was pounding with a question: if they know we're here, why haven't they come for us already?
As though someone had heard her, Clint said, "We've got company. Looks like it's too late for a clean getaway." He watched as uniformed men scrambled to lift each other up to the roof. He drew the string of his bow to his cheek and let it lose, once, twice, three times, four. As the four men collapsed, others scattered, looking for cover. He took down another two almost casually before the remainder succeeded. "If this is all they've got, we don't have much to worry about."
"If we leave now, they'll abandon the site," said Steve.
"Agreed," said Natasha, pleased that he'd read her mind. "It's now or never." She passed the junction, continuing along the shaft. It went on for some distance, and as she reached the first fan she looked down into a small lab. There were cabinets full of small bottles and racks of test tubes of blood. If she could retrieve some samples, the mission would be a sound success. There was no access here but she could see a vent set low in one wall she must be able to reach if she took the downward shaft ahead. She passed over the fan. Reaching the shaft, she swung her legs over the edge and, with her back braced against one side and her hands and feet against the other, she went down. She dimly heard the rapid gunfire of an automatic weapon as the compound security tried to take down the invisible archer. She ran out of wire and had to stop to take off her belt. "I'm out of line," she told Steve in a whisper. "Disconnecting."
She dropped to the foot of the shaft and kicked out the vent grill, emerging suddenly into the lab just as the door opened and a startled man in a white coat froze on the threshold. She didn't miss a beat, leaping for him with the speed of a tigress, and taking him down with three well-placed blows to the head and neck. He crumpled in a heap at her feet and she dragged him inside, closing the door. She did a quick sweep of the room and spotted a small medical bag in a cabinet on the far side. She made a beeline for it, pulling the door open, unzipping the bag and ditching its contents. She started grabbing handfuls of vials and bottles from the cabinets and stuffing them in.
Outside, Clint had no problem keeping the gunners at bay. They still had no idea where he was, and they couldn't get an angle on Steve from the ground, so frankly he was enjoying the target practice. He was glad he wasn't in Steve's boots, just stuck on the roof, waiting for Natasha to come back. He tagged a man through the ear and afforded himself a half-ironic wince.
Things were getting hot when Natasha decided she had as much as she could carry. She could hear the chaos of pounding feet and calls coming from the hall. She noted the talk of reinforcements and the door opened once again when she was half in the vent. She paused to pull a gun and took out the two people in the doorway and one more further down the corridor with a trio of neat headshots before she put it away and ducked into the wall. Once inside, she slung the medical bag around her body and got climbing. Back up on the horizontal plane, she pulled her belt up after her and refastened it around her waist. "Reconnected," she informed, setting the wire to retract to pick up the slack as she made her way hastily back the way she'd come. "I'm on my way."
At the far side of the building, men were climbing up onto the roof, most getting picked off by arrows the moment their heads appeared over the top. Limited to standing in front of the shaft, Steve stood and threw his shield in a long curve which knocked three men from the wall in one pass before it returned and he reached out to snatch it from the air. They were making headway though, using the features of the roof for better cover. Several of them managed to get to their feet and advance to the shelter of a large box which had a short aerial tower standing on it. One of Clint's arrows clipped the shoulder of the man on the left, from an expertly bowed trajectory. Steve kept his head below the top of the shaft so they couldn't get a clear shot at him. There were three with automatic rifles, gunning for him, and a fourth man with something else who wasn't firing. The first thing that flashed through Steve's mind was that he must be using some kind of ammo he couldn't afford to waste on wild shots.
He felt the weight come back to the line connecting him and Natasha, letting him know she was on the vertical again, and she was just a fraction heavier this time. That was good. She had something. Possibly something they could take back to Bruce for analysis. He smothered a smile when it occurred to him this recon had effectively become a fishing expedition and, bizarrely, the Black Widow was playing the fly. Two of the men with rifles made a break for closer cover, spraying the ventilation shaft with bullets which punched a constellation of neat little holes in the metal at the back. One quickly went down with an arrow in his throat while the other skidded out of sight. He did a quick automatic scan of himself but he was unscathed. Except, the closer man had perfect cover to approach him from the other side without suffering the Hawkeye-delivered death his colleagues had. As expected, he appeared at Steve's right and immediately got a shield smashed into his face, going down like a ton of bricks. It happened so abruptly that Clint actually laughed in his ear.
A head of red hair appeared in the shaft and Steve reached in to take a hand and haul the Black Widow into the cool rooftop air. "Nice work," he said, taking in the medical bag on her back. She gave him a modest shrug, pulling her handgun out. She nailed a couple of guys coming over the top. Steve unhooked her wire from his belt and it retracted. He gave her a look which clearly said, "Stay here. I'm going to flank to the right." It sounded good to her, and she kept everyone's attention as he slunk away round the other side. A moment later, she heard the quiet scuffle of him disarming a man and tossing him over the edge to the ground below, then a new stream of gunfire joined hers. As he closed in on them they shifted positions, two getting caught out by Clint, another by her. Their numbers were diminishing rapidly, but in their new positions she would have to adjust her's before she lost her cover altogether. Steve could see she was going to have to retreat and she'd be vulnerable for a couple of seconds and he advanced to cover her as she left the relative safety of the ventilation shaft. Three guys made a move. An arrow manifested itself in the chest of the first and Steve gunned down the second while the third, the man who'd been conserving his ammo, fired off his precious rounds. There was less than no time to swing his shield arm round to block the rounds. The best he could do was throw his other arm up, expecting to feel it get ripped to shreds. It happened too fast for him to wonder what would happen if they had some explosive property and left him without a right arm, because although he felt the sharp pain of three impacts, nothing more happened, and he shifted the aim of his weapon and squeezed the trigger.
Clint swiftly took care of the last man up there with them, finally leaving them clear to run for the far edge. Natasha was closest, and she reached it first, shrugging the medical bag off and tossing it to Steve without looking back to see him catch it before she leapt from the edge and out of sight. She rolled to absorb the impact of her landing, which was why she'd ditched the bag, not wanting to crush its contents. The moment she rolled to her feet, she turned and reached up to catch it as Steve threw it down to her. She threw it onto her back again as she took off for the trees, Steve hot on her heels as he jumped down after her. They passed Clint, where he remained perched in his tree to guard their retreat. He would've loved to be able to level the place as a parting gift. Steve could've dropped something down the ventilation shaft before they escaped, or hecould've fired something from here in his perch, but they didn't have the go-ahead. For all they knew there were live test subjects down there. Possibly innocent and potentially quite valuable. They couldn't take the risk. Their orders were simply to retrieve what intel they could on the work going on inside and get out so that's what they were doing.
When Steve and Natasha were a good 200 feet into the forest, flying through the damp and tangled undergrowth in the dark, Clint fired a corded arrow into another tree and swung in a wide low arc into the brush, cutting the line and racing after them. They could hear a chopper in the air, approaching fast, and even with what seemed like the thundering of their feet, the loud rasping of the foliage as it whipped at their legs, and their pressured breathing, they all thought they could hear more behind it.
They ran like that flat out for about a mile before, with the searchlights of the helicopters sweeping back and forth through the canopy overhead, Natasha dove into the shelter of a large fallen chestnut tree to catch her breath. She watched Steve take cover under a thick tangle of hawthorn, his eyes on the sky. He was still carrying his stolen weapon and he took the opportunity to check its ammo. He pulled a face and she knew he hadn't found much. All the same, he set the safety and slung it over his shoulder in case those last few round proved useful. Then he lifted and twisted his right arm so he could see the lateral side of his forearm, where a trio of somethings glinted dimly. The lights of the helicopters moved to a more comfortable distance and, glancing up and around, Steve took his chance to come over and fall down next to her, leaning back against the tree trunk like she was. He looked down at his arm again and now he was close she could see that they were three small silvery darts. He slipped his shield off and set it down by his leg to free his left arm up. He swiftly pulled the darts from his skin and peered at them.
"What are those?" she asked breathlessly. "Tranqs?"
"I don't know," he replied honestly.
"Would you be affected by those?"
He shrugged. "Probably not. I don't feel anything."
"Here," she said, pulling the bag from over her head onto her lap and unzipping it. "We'd best take them with us." He dropped the darts in the bag and she zipped it up again, putting it down on the ground between them.
"What did you get?" he asked. Somewhere ahead of them they could hear the sound of Clint approaching.
"Everything I could find. Bottles with coded labels, blood samples. I also dropped a couple of tracers into what was left behind. Hopefully they'll take those with them when they move their base of operations."
"Great," Steve enthused, impressed by how much her quick fingers had achieved in such a brief time.
"Some of these things were refridgerated, we're going to want to get them to a lab as soon as possible. We must be about five miles from the pick-up point here."
"I wonder how they have helicopters on call," Steve thought aloud. "Who are these people?"
"Anyone with a bit of money can get helicopters," she replied. "They could work for a pharmaceutical company for all we know."
Steve pulled a face. "No pharmaceutical company is going to be involved in mind experiments on civilians."
Natasha regarded him with uncharacteristic pity. "Aw. Steve."
His eyebrows rose. At that moment, Clint came sprinting through the trees and practically crashed down on Natasha's other side, panting from trying to catch up. "Phew!" he blew out. "That was bracing. Not seeing any ground pursuit, they're all in the air. You get tagged?" he asked Steve suddenly, watching him swipe the trace of blood from his arm. The three tiny holes from the darts had already closed up, leaving no marks on his skin. "I saw you block something up on the roof."
"Thanks for that, by the way," Natasha added, twisting to look over the tree trunk in the direction they were going to take.
"No problem. A few darts. They don't seem to have any effect on me though."
"Mm," Clint grunted. "Probably sedatives. They clearly didn't know who they were dealing with."
"Maybe they did," said Steve. "They weren't aiming at me."
"Those helicopters are going to want to circle back around," Natasha commented, tracking the searchlights. "We should wait until they make another pass over us."
"Sounds good to me," Clint nodded, still trying to slow his breathing. The three of them sat there, mimicking each other's position. Backs against the tree, legs up with their arms resting across their knees, chests rising and falling, the only sound the sound of their collective breathing. A drop of water hit the back of Natasha's hand. Another fell, and another. Infrequent and cool, the raindrops hit them softly. Clint closed his eyes and tilted his head back to let them fall on his face. Natasha's line of sight was drawn by a motion to her left.
"Steve," she said. He looked at her expectantly, and found her looking at his right hand. "You're shaking." She was right. His hand had a tremour. They both did. Clint opened his eyes and looked across at him.
Steve frowned, perplexed. "I feel fine."
"Sedatives wouldn't do that," said Natasha. "Must be some kind of toxin. Looks like you're fighting it off."
"I think you might owe him a batch of chocolate pancakes, Tasha," Clint pointed out with a grin.
Steve's brow furrowed further, an amused smile sneaking onto his face at the thought of Natasha doing something so maternal and domestic. "Chocolate pancakes?" he queried.
"The first time I took a hit for Clint he made me chocolate pancakes," said Natasha.
"She'd never had any!" Clint explained, sounding scandalised. "I was righting a wrong."
"It's become kind of a tradition," she admitted. She gave him a warm look. "I'll make you some for breakfast tomorrow."
Steve was taken aback, almost rendered temporarily speechless by the gesture. The relationship between Natasha and Clint was a sacrosanct bond of trust, he knew that, and to be included in something they'd previously reserved only for each other was something he'd never imagined. "I would be honoured," he told her truthfully.
She shrugged, modestly. "No problem."
"Believe it or not, they actually are worth getting poisoned for," Clint said, stretching his arms out over the tree behind them like he was sitting comfortably on a sofa, and not on the floor of the woods in the rain. Steve guessed the marksman had spent a considerable amount of his life in places like this during his training. He had the air of a man who'd trained in the solitude afforded by nature.
The searchlights were approaching again, as Natasha had predicted, double-checking their targets' most likely route before they split up and searched the areas to the north, south and west of the compound, leaving the three Avengers free to keep heading east towards the pick-up. They waited in companionable quiet for the pass, pushing themselves a little lower and deeper into the shadow of the chestnut, letting the undergrowth obscure their forms. By the time the helicopters had passed them and they were getting to their feet to get moving again, Clint and Natasha's breathing had returned to normal, but when Steve stood with them he stumbled and his breathing was still as laboured as when they'd first stopped.
Clint frowned. "We'll set an easy pace."
Steve slung his shield onto his back without debate. It was telling that he said nothing on the matter, and Natasha nodded at the wisdom of the suggestion, slipping the medical bag over her head and arm again. Almost as one, they climbed over the fallen tree and started tramping at a swift stride. It was at this rhythm that they made it about a mile and a half, but over the next half mile they found themselves slowing down so as not to leave Steve behind.
"You okay, Cap?" Hawkeye asked over his shoulder, keeping his sharp eyes on where he was going. He'd been tracking the Captain's breathing by ear and it seemed to have taken on a worrying shudder.
"Yeah," he replied almost automatically, but his voice was breathless and strained.
Natasha slowed to look back at him. "Maybe we should stop."
"No," Steve waved it off. "We have to get to the pick-up. I'll be alright." Suddenly he saw a shadow moving through the trees and dropped, hissing "Left flank!" At his word, the other two dropped into the brush, drawing weapons.
Clint's eyes were wide in the dark, trying to catch every last bit of light. "Where? I don't see him."
Steve scanned the area, his jaw clenched. After a moment he shook his head, frustrated. "I don't know. I've lost him." Shadows appeared in his right periphery and he whirled around, pointing. "Wait, there!"
Clint and Natasha spun with him, following his indication. Natasha squinted. "Steve…"
"Quiet," he barely breathed. They did as he said, still searching for what he was looking at. He took the safety off the automatic rifle with a click which was loud to his ears. His eyes traced shapes moving on the right, and then up ahead on the left, moving round to cut them off. They blended in so well he kept losing track of individual forms, making it hard to total in his head just how many there were, but his first guess was about nine. He hadn't heard them coming. Still couldn't. Who knew how many more there were? He twisted to look behind them and spotted at least four more. They were completely surrounded. He gestured silently, to help his teammates locate the enemy and they responded attentively, but their gaze never seemed to catch the fleeting figures. He missed the look they exchanged.
Natasha turned to him, "Steve. We don't see anything. I think you've been affected by whatever was in those darts."
Steve wasn't listening. That in itself was a surreal experience. Steve always listened, even when it was just Tony rambling at 90 miles an hour about things that no one except Bruce (and sometimes not even Bruce) could understand. He turned, raising his stolen rifle.
"Steve," Clint said, a little louder than Natasha.
"Quiet!" Steve urged in a whisper.
"Steve, there's nothing out there," Clint insisted.
"They have us completely boxed in," he muttered, almost to himself. Suddenly he heard the distant sound of gunfire and yelling and he straightened, blue eyes wide. "They have the 34th. We're gonna have to rush them. Stay low!" Then he took off running through the bracken. Clint and Natasha shot each other another look which translated roughly as "?!" and started after him.
It was a testament to their training that they were able to keep him in their sights. In spite of the fact that the Captain had been lagging behind not five minutes ago, and was obviously running low on energy, he was running as fast as a professional sprinter. He had good motivation. He could hear the gunfire rattling, and men's distance-muffled voices rising and cutting out in screams and awful silences. They were being mown down. A whole company. They sounded too far away. How was he going to reach them in time to stop every last one from being executed? He was ready for the men who'd been surrounding them to turn their guns on him, ready to catch them out first the moment he saw them, but they never came back into view. Everyone seemed to be somewhere ahead.
He could hear his own people behind him. They had his back. He only hoped he wasn't leading them to their deaths in an effort to save an already perishing unit, but he had to try something. And they knew just as well as he did that every day out here was another day they might give their lives attempting to do the right thing, with every possibility of failure hanging over their heads. All the same, it never hurt to send up a wordless prayer that this wouldn't be their last mission.
"Steve!" yelled Clint. "Stop running! There's nothing there!"
To his considerable surprise, Steve did exactly what he asked: he skidded to a sudden halt, and looked up. Steve's heart skipped a beat. He could hear that terrible buzzing from the sky. He held his breath as he listened to it till his lungs burned. Just as it got right overhead, it stopped as silent as death and his stomach turned over. His two comrades pulled up alongside him as he murmured in horror; "Doodlebug."
Clint stared, "What?"
"Get down!" he cried, grabbing Natasha by the shoulder with his free hand and dragging her to the ground with him. When Clint didn't follow, and just stood there looking down at them, he dropped his gun and grabbed him by the belt, yanking him to the ground with them with unnerving strength. He snatched his shield from his back and had just gotten it over their heads when the world to his two o'clock exploded. Earth, foliage and trees erupted in a boom that was so loud and so deep you felt it in every scrap of your being; shattering, splintering, and rending in the air, sending out a pressure wave of destruction, obliterating everything. It almost knocked him back but they were just far enough away to stay on their feet. Then everything came raining down, showering them as they huddled together under the inadequate cover of his shield. As soon as things stopped falling, he lifted his shield enough to see his companions, checking them for injuries. "Everyone okay?" he yelled over the ringing in his ears.
Clint reached out and grasped his shoulder, looking him in the eyes. "Steve, we're fine! Nothing's happening. You've been dosed with something."
Steve recoiled as another detonation shot the ground straight up like a geyser to his left. He could hear planes, maybe a dozen or so, and looking up he could make out a dogfight going on through the network of tree branches. There was no time to think much less act before other detonations went off around them. "Let's move!" he shouted over the cacophony.
"No!" Clint shouted back.
The marksman opened his mouth to argue but Steve clamped a hand on his shoulder and told him loudly and seriously: "We're getting out of here, soldier. You follow me and I'll get you home safe and sound, you hear?"
"Captain!" Natasha interrupted. "We need to get to camp, three miles east of here."
He nodded, "Right." The moment he said it his expression clouded and he shook his head almost compulsively. "No, wait," he muttered, trying to remember, "there's something we have to- The 34th! We have to reach the 34th."
"No, it's too late for the 34th," she pressed on.
He looked quietly shocked. "Are you suggesting we leave them behind?"
"No, I'm saying there's no one there to leave behind."
"We don't know that."
"Yes we do."
He turned his head, straining to hear through the rain of explosives the sounds that had alerted him to their fragment of Hell in the first place. He could hear sporadic gunfire in the woods all around them but not the cluster of a massacre. His teammate was right. There was no one left. The entire 34th division was gone. Wiped out. He knew men in the 34th. He'd seen pictures of their wives, their girlfriends, their parents; worst of all, their children. He wanted desperately to go to them anyway. To see the bodies with his own eyes, so he could be sure. But he was still responsible for getting these two soldiers back to camp alive and he had to put their needs above his own. He swallowed his reluctance. "You're right. Let's get out of here." He shielded his face with his arm from the debris of a nearby explosion and rose, his teammates standing with him. Then without pause he took off, leading them east.
Keeping up behind him, Clint spoke in a low voice as they ran. "What the hell did they hit him with?"
Natasha didn't answer, instead getting her tiny cell out and hitting speed dial. "This is Black Widow, we're approaching pick-up, ETA unknown, we have a situation here."
Steve didn't slow down as he raised his weapon and emptied the rest of his rounds into the dark, seeing the figures collapse out of sight. Risk eliminated, he tossed the gun and kept running. He was down to his shield now but that wasn't as desperate a situation as one might be tempted to think. He'd protected greater numbers for longer distances with nothing but this shield, and the pair he had with him were still armed. Pair? Where did that come from? He had to have at least thirty men behind him. The real problem was there was nothing he could do to protect them from the bombs which were falling like a meteor shower. He was pacing himself so the men could keep up with him but he needed to keep the momentum of the group going so no one panicked and broke off or tried to take cover on the ground. So they ran through the madness, but while they progressed that madness grew, brewing like a storm of which they were the eye. Everywhere in the encircling dark he saw enemy gunners, foot soldiers, the deadly flash of Hydra weapons, and the hulking forms of chitauri stalking them, hungry for blood. It was a seething ocean of hostility; a blur of flashes, shadows and half-glimpsed shapes and movement. Everything was becoming difficult to track. He felt the world tilt and lurch with a sudden rush of vertigo. Then not ten feet behind him, an explosion rocked the earth and he went down.
"Bruce is already on his way to SHIELD," Natasha had informed her partner, hanging up her call. "They're trying to contact Tony in case we need an emergency extraction but apparently he's out of range."
"Out of SHIELD's range?" Clint asked, sceptically.
"He may be in space," she admitted.
Up ahead, Steve collapsed to his hands and knees. Clint and Natasha lunged forward to catch him in case he passed out altogether, crouching on either side of him, gripping his arms. The moment they saw his face they knew things had gotten a lot worse. His eyes were distant and unfocussed; he was clearly exhausted and, more than that, he looked distressed. The tremour that had begun in his hands had spread to take over his whole body, making him quake from head to foot as though in the throes of a fever. He twisted to see over his shoulder and his expression dissolved into a grief so complete that the two veteran SHIELD agents were at once deeply concerned.
After their years of relative isolation and self-reliance, much had changed for them in the last year. They'd both found in the Avengers a team they were not just comfortable being a part of but they were actually content to be with as people. Their new teammates had earned their hard-won respect with unprecedented speed, and in the following months gained their rare and genuine affection. The Captain was no exception. And now they found themselves with this man who'd always carried himself with such strength and led them unerringly in and out of battle, showing no fear in the face of what looked like overwhelming odds, rendered vulnerable. Suddenly it was very easy to remember just how young the Captain was. He looked every bit his mere twenty-three years, and every one of his five years of active service was written across his face. He just stared, broken-hearted into the woods behind them, unable to form words to express what he saw.
For a moment, both Clint and Natasha, who always had a rapid response up their sleeves, were so stunned by the emotion radiating from him that they did nothing. Steve shut his eyes to the invisible sight and turned away. He brought his hands up to his face, as though to bury himself in them, but instead he tore his winged cowl from his head and threw it aside and did the same with the shield on his back. Then he started on his gloves, undoing the catches and snatching them off, tossing them away and his badly shaking fingers went to the collarbone of his suit, tearing at it like a claustrophobe desperate to escape its confines. This was the action that galvanised Natasha into reaching out and grabbing for his hands. "Steve!" she cried, "Steve, stop. Stop it." But she couldn't keep him pulling the body armour open and shrugging it off, letting it drop to the earth, when he finally seemed satisfied and this time he did bury his face in his palms, pushing his fingers into his hair and curling in on himself until the backs of his hands rested on his knees.
Clint rested a hand on his back with a pained expression. He looked across at Natasha. "We're never gonna get him to the pick-up," he said solemnly. "Get SHIELD back on the line and tell them they need to meet us with a Cap-proof sedation kit and a stretcher. We'll carry him home." Natasha nodded and got to her feet, fishing her cell out and wandering away a short distance to do as he'd said. Clint looked down at Steve, whose shaking was in part, he realised, coming from almost inaudible sobs. "Hey," he said softly, rubbing his back a little and moving his hand up to rest warmly on the back of his neck, "it's okay, buddy. We're gonna get you out of here. Bruce and the guys at SHIELD will figure this out."
Clint listened to Natasha ordering someone about on the cell before she hung up and returned. "They only have liquid sedatives but in this state they might be enough to get him to the plane. They're on their way." She sat down cross-legged on the earth, looking surprisingly at ease for someone just a few miles from a secret compound she'd just broken into, safe in the knowledge that their pursuers were aiming their resources in entirely the wrong direction. "We just have to wait. How's he doing?"
"He's pretty sick," Clint replied seriously. "The shakes are worse and he is really cold." He moved his hand and pressed a couple of fingers to Steve's neck just under his jaw. "Pulse is fast. Difficult to track; his blood pressure's low." He shifted to kneel directly in front of Steve and took him by the shoulders, forcing him with great effort to sit up a little. He pried Steve's hands from his face and Natasha reached over to hold his head up while Clint snapped a tiny penlight from his belt, flicking it on and shining it in Steve's eyes. Steve recoiled instinctively and Natasha fought to hold him still while Clint flashed the light. "Pupils are dilated. Slow to react," he noted, switching the torch off and putting it away.
"You have no idea what that means do you?" Natasha stated more than asked.
He paused, caught out. "Well…no. Not in this particular case. But at least we'll have something to tell the EMTs when they get here." Natasha let her hands drop to Steve's shoulders and held him steady when he swayed, mumbling something incoherent. Clint snapped his fingers in front of his face and just about arrested his weakly-directed attention. "Steve. Can you hear me?" Steve's eyes found his face, widening in worry. He reached up and touched Clint's forehead with the firm but gentle pressure of hands practiced in checking injuries. But then he seemed to lose the thread of what he was doing and both his eyes and his hand drifted indeterminately. He flinched at something the others couldn't hear and started muttering again. The only words they could collectively discern were 'unit', 'Fury', 'checkpoint' and 'lost'; nothing that could conceivably make any sense. He swayed again and Clint watched him with sudden suspicion. "Wow, he looks really green. You don't think he's gonna-" He dove out way as Steve lurched forward and emptied his stomach. Clint almost felt the look on Natasha's face before he saw it. "What's wrong?" he asked over Steve's heaving back. 'Besides the obvious' was implied.
She took a controlled breath, and spoke frankly. "If those darts had hit me, you two would probably be dead by now."
Clint considered that. She was right. A confused Black Widow suffering disturbing hallucinations was just about the most lethal thing he could think of. She could easily have imagined her friends were enemies and taken them out before they knew anything was wrong. They were lucky as it was that Steve hadn't taken them for Hydra or something and gunned them down. Right now he seemed hardly aware of their presence at all. "Maybe that was their intent," he suggested thoughtfully. "Do you think they might've targetted you specifically?"
"Impossible to tell. They may've just been waiting for a clearer shot."
Steve let up for a moment, gasping for air, the muscles of his back and shoulders seizing. He moaned something unintelligable and Clint leaned closer to try and pick it up. "Have t'relay…" he slurred drowsily, "Dalen…take north'v take bridge an' cut 'em off, relay, they can't…they can't get through, get Hawkeye…" he said suddenly. "Get Hawkeye. C'n stop it, have to…Have to…" He was interrupted as his stomach resumed it purge.
Even Natasha had heard the last part, which had been injected with even greater urgency. "You should be flattered," she said.
"I think if you'd taken those darts, you might be dead by now too," Clint said grimly.
It took another fifteen minutes before Steve's reflexes stopped telling him to eject the contents of his stomach. Around the time he started throwing up bile he became increasingly distressed, his words degrading into a meaningless stream of syllables until finally he all but passed out; at which point Clint and Natasha, fearing they'd run out of time, picked him up between them and started carrying him. It wasn't easy. As strong as their respective training had made them, neither of them were very big and the sustained effort of carrying the tall, muscle-bound Captain through difficult terrain was not something they were well-equipped for. And it was made all the harder by having piled his armour onto his stomach and having to keep him balanced enough that it didn't slide off, Natasha carrying his shield on her back. Spurring them on was the fact that Steve never fell completely unconscious, instead remaining in a highly weakened state of delirium. He shivered in their arms, his skin alarmingly cold. The rain, though not particularly chill and falling only lightly, had soaked his t-shirt through, making them worry further about the possibility of hypothermia setting in while his body was so occupied in fighting for his life. But a short and semi-telepathic debate had led to the consensus that they were better off not trying to get his armour back on; letting him breathe as freely as possible. Furthermore, they didn't want him misinterpreting the interference in his confusion and escalating.
Making the most of Clint's upper-body strength, he had his arms hooked under Steve's, with Steve's head resting against his chest while Natasha led the way carrying his legs. Clint was so focussed on where he was walking and the fierce burning in his arms that he almost didn't notice when Steve very suddenly relaxed. "Tasha."
She looked over her shoulder at him and stopped in her tracks. "Put him down." She didn't need to ask; Clint was already lowering him to the ground. "Is he breathing?"
Clint leaned over him, placing a hand on his chest. He paused, listening. "I can't hear anything." He whipped one of his fingerless gloves off and licked the back of his hand, holding it close to Steve's face. He stilled. Then cursed. He pressed his fingers to Steve's neck. And cursed again, louder this time. Natasha ran to kneel opposite as Clint moved to the Captain's side and snatched the body armour out of the way as he clasped his hands one on top of the other, interlocked his fingers, and started pumping on Steve's chest. She counted with him in her head, trying not to hold her own breath. He stopped, leaning in to listen, then sat up and kept on pumping. The seconds trickled by like grains of sand through an hourglass, deceptively small and lethally fast.
Where were those EMTs? Even if they were here, she wasn't sure how much equipment they'd have with them. What they needed right now was a defibrillator. A thought occurred to her. "Clint, your arrows." He immediately knew what she was referring to. On this mission he'd brought arrowheads which discharged 400 volts upon impact. It was still raining, and they were all soaked, but it didn't look like they had much choice. Hopefully the ground they were kneeling on would keep them safe. He didn't have to say anything for Natasha to take over when he stopped the compressions, not missing a single rapid beat between them. He set an arrow to adopt the electrical head, then drew it from his quiver, the next one already following suit. If it didn't work the first time, he'd need to increase the voltage, so it was better to start with one. Natasha lifted her hands out of the way and Clint brought the arrow down head first onto Steve's chest. There was a buzz and Steve jerked, the arrow emitting blue sparks in the rain. When it died, Clint dropped it and checked Steve's pulse. He shook his head and drew two more arrows. With a collective voltage of 1600, he brought the arrows plunging down and a loud buzz filled the air with straying sparks; Steve's back arched until the buzzing ended and he sank back to the ground. Clint checked his pulse again, hesitating.
Finally he said, "It's weak but it's there. We've got him. We've got him." Funny how extremely fast a minute and half could be. Clint gathered his arrows and Natasha moved Steve's armour back onto his stomach but when she stood she spotted something up ahead.
"The EMTs are here."
"Bit goddamn late," Clint muttered, running his ungloved hand through his hair, shaking the water off. Natasha waved the three SHIELD paramedics over to induce their brisk march into a run and within a couple of minutes they were swarming the Captain, checking his vitals while Clint informed them as best he could. Natasha was struck even as they went about their bustling activity at how little they were likely to know about what to do here. They may've had access to Steve while they were, for lack of a better word, defrosting him but she knew better than to assume they fully understood his physiology, not to mention the fact that they were dealing with the effects of an unknown substance. All the same, they were making a fine job of pretending they knew exactly what they were doing. Before she knew it, they'd moved him onto the stretcher, inserted an IV line in his arm, and placed an oxygen mask over his face. One of them handed her the IV bag, picking up the oxygen tank himself while his colleagues lifted the stretcher. Clint scanned the woods as they got moving.
Steve's heart stopped a second time on their way through the thinning woods. At first the EMTs had been alarmed at the Avengers' insistance on shocking him with arrows, in the rain no less, which was starting to fall more heavily, but given the lack of alternatives and the fact that it didn't seem to be up for debate, they allowed it. It took three tries to get Steve's heart beating again, going up to a triple arrow hit of 2000 volts. Of course it wasn't the voltage they were concerned about; they had no idea what kind of AMPs they were exposing him to. But it was all they had with them and once they felt his pulse fluttering under their fingertips it was hard to disagree with the method.
In the last mile the heavens opened wide and the steady rain became a torrent, which pounded on them like so many fists and shrouded the world around them. Regardless, they made it to the road, where the truck was waiting. Clint ran round to the passenger side to get in beside the driver while everyone else piled into the back and slammed the doors shut. Influenced by Clint's body language, the driver breaknecked it to where they'd concealed the plane in less than an hour. Then they did a quick transfer and were off the ground in under a minute soaring up and banking smoothly away. This whole time, they kept Steve alive. That was the most they could claim. They couldn't claim he was stable, or that he improved in any recognisable way. In fact, when it came down to it, they couldn't exactly claim it was definitely them that had kept him breathing. Excusing their efforts to keep him warm, there was nothing they could do. He remained as cold as ice, his pulse a barely detectable vibration in his throat. They had to check his breathing at regular intevals to be sure it hadn't stopped. And things stayed this way until the plane was about ten minutes from SHIELD's aerial headquarters, when he flat-lined for the third and final time.
Author's note: Dun dun duuhhh! Read and review. :-D