It was irrational. It was illogical. It was the dumbest thing she had done in a long time, but Natalia's thoughts were now completely taken up with the arrow sticking out of the bedroom door, that once she had dealt the blow to Gravardas' head that knocked him out, she forgot to actually kill him. Her feet automatically carried her to the door, and once her thoughts became solely about the arrow, and Gravardas' body was out of her peripheral vision, she forgot he was even there.
Her fingertips hovered over the thin weapon, not daring to touch it. Then she pulled herself together; the sight of her hesitant hand angering her. She was the notorious Black Widow for Pete's sake; a measly arrow couldn't throw her. She ordered her pathetic hovering hand to grab the arrow and ripped it from the door, leaving a splintered cut in the wood.
She slipped through the door and down the corridor, her mind far from the unconscious, yet breathing, man she had left behind her. A mistake that would cost her dearly.
She swiftly moved past the elevator and towards the stairs, knowing better than to trap herself in a hanging, confined space when there was someone out to kill her.
The arrow could have had two purposes: the first, that Gravardas would go to laugh about it with Natalia and find her tipping poison in his glass; which he did, and then kill her, which he didn't. Natalia, doubted this was the primary reason for him leaving the arrow; it was juvenile and lazy, hoping someone else would do your dirty work. But the only other reason she could think of was that he was leaving her a message, was trying to scare her. But what sort of assassin let their mark know they were being marked? It was as dumb as falling back to a distance instead of getting closer to a mark. It was infuriating.
She flew down the stairs, deliberately putting him from her mind. There was no point in dwelling on her aspiring killer's behaviour if she was going to get out of this alive. And she was going to get out of this alive. She realised it was more than just her survival instincts trying to avoid death; it was an innate stubbornness that flared at actually being challenged: there was someone cocky enough to actually think they can get a hit on her? She wasn't the most feared assassin in Russia for no reason.
She realised her mistake when she reached the bottom of the stairs and heard a yell of rage from the upper level. Antonio Gravardas was still alive. Alive and very, very angry.
She peered into the main club and saw Vloskov on the other side of the dance floor looking extremely annoyed and shoving his henchmen off to carry out some order or other. She had an inkling that she was part of their orders.
Another door lead down a corridor with doors leading off to the wine cellar, the kitchens and other rooms that didn't have windows in the doors. The arrow clutched in her right hand served useful as Vloskov's suited employees appeared in front of her, attempting to stop her from escaping. One man got an arrow hole in the neck, another got sliced and diced with its tip before she put her heeled foot in his face. She sent her Bites flying from her wrists, soaring into her targets, dead on.
She ran into the kitchen, causing its staff to become very surprised as gunshots followed her in. Sliding on her knees under the counter, her green dress trailing behind her. She was not in the right attire for this.
She had just reached the back door when something behind her exploded, pushing her through the door at a speed she was not expecting. One of the henchmen must have caught his gunshot on the gas. Dumb ass.
Her sudden burst of explosion-fuelled speed almost made her run into a thin pole that was being swung towards her. But her training had given her the eye for noticing things quickly and she grabbed the pole before it smashed into her face. She pulled the pole up and tried to twist it out from her assailant's hands but they had a hard grip and it wouldn't give. Her fingers tightened stubbornly around it too and kicked the man in front of her in the stomach. He spun her around as they both held the pole, their hands grasping it so it was a horizontal bar dividing them and she was slammed into the wall next to the blackened kitchen door she had just jumped out of.
That's when she noticed it. The pole she was clinging onto wasn't a pole at all. It was a bow.
Thankfully, her assailant couldn't use her hesitation to his advantage because just then, Vloskov thundered out of the door beside them, coughing from the smoke, and shot blindly in their direction.
The shot missed, but it roughly pulled Natalia out of her momentary shock that came from realising who she was fighting. Not only was she standing face to face with S.H.I.E.L.D's infamous Hawkeye, she recognised him as the man from her photographs.
She let go of the bow as he spun it around to Vloskov and smashed it into the side of his face. The Russian mobster was joined by an extremely angry Italian arms dealer: the vein in Gravardas' temple throbbed as his face got redder and redder.
"Voi! Ho intenzione di ucciderti!" He threatened in his mother tongue, his anger causing spit to fire from his mouth as he spluttered the words.
Suddenly, Natalia found herself shoulder-to-shoulder with the man she was face-to-face with not thirty seconds ago as Gravardas, Vloskov and Vloskov's henchmen streamed from the unhinged kitchen door and advanced on them.
She threw her Bites at a couple of henchmen and used a dumpster as a springboard to flip herself onto an unsuspecting Gravardas, trapping his neck between her legs and flipping him onto his back, leaving her to land in a crouch.
Hawkeye had caught Vloskov's throat in his bowstring, pulling it in a way that made him instantly pass out.
"Hey!" Natalia found herself yelling to the S.H.I.E.L.D agent before she even knew what she was doing.
She dislocated the shoulder of the henchmen behind him before slicing the arrow she still had in her hand across his throat. She then threw it to Hawkeye himself as he tried to take down another one.
She turned after shooting the last of her Bites at the last man, her breath coming in heavy, to find the tip of the arrow pointing straight between her eyes, and her breath caught in her throat.
His blue eyes were narrowed as he looked down the shaft of his arrow: the arrow she had just thrown to him, what had she been thinking?! Her pulse thumped in her ears as she registered nothing but the pointed, blood-stained tip of another spy's weapon; resignation folding over her. She jumped slightly when his aim twitched to the right, letting his fingers relax on the bowstring and the arrow soared past her. It landed in the heart of the stirring form of Gravardas who had been reaching for a fallen man's gun.
Her mind reeled at the fact that she had just come so close to death and it was completely out of her control. Her still beating pulse derived from the fact that someone else had controlled her fate. She didn't much like the feeling.
Her unblinking eyes never left his face but he seemed to be taking his time in bringing his gaze back to her. When he did, he finally spoke.
"Black Widow." His voice tilted the sound of the syllables into an American accent.
She opened her mouth to return the curt greeting when more shouts and men tumbled from the kitchen door and instead the yell "run!" fell from her mouth. She cursed herself for warning him as he would have been shot in the back otherwise and would probably have saved her a hell of a lot of trouble. He is your enemy, fool she had to remind herself as she sprinted down the alley into the market square.


I was planning on taking this chapter further but I've had a sudden burst of unexpected (but lovely) followers and I didn't want to leave you waiting (because unfortunately, I do tend to prune my chapters for longer than it actually takes me to write them).

I hope you're having a good new year's eve fellow UK citizens (and to anyone else behind or in front of our timezone: Hope you have had/will have a good one)