Here we go. Round 2. Prepare to get your whump on, Ms. Hawkeye. :)

Chapter 2:

Natasha went left first. She moved in silence as she stepped down the empty hallway and paused outside the first door that was left open just a crack. She just barely peered inside to take stock of the books on the shelves and the cluttered desk filled with papers and folders. There was one person inside but not a member of the security detail that she had already been dealing with. One of the scientists most likely, especially if the white lab coat was any indication. She pivoted and slunk into the room with quiet footsteps. She said and did nothing until she was standing right behind him, "Hi." She watched him stumble and fall sideways in surprise which only caused her lips to tilt into a sideways smile.

"I—I c-could fix that for you," came his nervous offer, "if you—if you don't k-k-kill me..." American. Not Hungarian.

She tilted her head to the side slightly and watched him motion to her shoulder. Her eyes flickered down to it for a moment and then she raised an eyebrow up slightly before she looked back at him. "The man with the bow, where is he?" she questioned as she ignored his offer to help her. His eyes were wide and if she weren't in such a hurry then this probably would have amused her to no end. He vehemently shook his head and she smiled as she squatted down, wriggling the bloody knife in his face. "Are you certain?" and he nodded a few times which made her sigh, "that's too bad." He almost looked relieved until she winked at him just before she knocked him over the head with the hilt of the knife. He was out cold in an instant. She stepped back out of the room and headed towards the next door, gently pushing that one open as well.

Nothing.

She moved down the hall further and pushed each door open with the same result. It was nothing if not frustrating and she glanced around the next corner, narrowing her eyes at the man standing outside one of the rooms. She supposed that was as good a place to look as any. You only place guards for something important so either they missed something earlier or Clint was inside that room. She was betting on the latter rather than the former. Glancing up, she noticed the metal rafters that hung low off the ceiling and she smirked. She reached up and with a quick hop, gripped it with her hands and then lifted herself onto them, moving across the ceiling quickly and silently until she was above the man at the door. Hints of laughter from several tones of voices sounded from the room and she dropped down to land on the guard's shoulders, twisting his neck with a quick and resound snap.

She shoved the door open without hesitation, going with surprise over stealth, and she watched as four heads turned to look at her. Clint was in a chair, staring at her as though she was the last thing he expected to walk through the door. "Hi boys," she offered up with a wry smile, giving a small finger wave.

One of the men was smirking. "Four on one," he said in Hungarian.

Natasha tilted her head to the side slightly as though she were debating the odds. "You're right," she said with a near imperceptible nod. "It hardly seems fair. Would you like me to wait while you call for back-up?" she questioned, shrugging at the searing glare she received. At least Clint seemed amused by her words and she motioned to an empty chair before she taunted them further. "I can sit and wait. I'm a very patient person," she informed them.

He rushed her and she kneed him in the gut before slamming his head into the wall.

The other three ran towards her all at once.

The first of the three reached for her and she used it to her advantage. She grabbed his wrists with her hands, holding tightly as she dropped to a slide between his legs that caused him to flip over. One quick step to the side as the next guy dove towards her had him falling right on his face. Without thought she flicked her knife out and moved next to Clint, placing it in his hands for him to free himself. She turned quickly and grabbed the last man's arm as he swung his fist at her. A forceful twist of his wrist had him doubling over and then she was kicking him once, then twice and finally a third time in the midsection. The disgruntled, "Romanoff!" from Clint made her glance to the side in time to see the slick black metal of a baton.

Unfortunately she didn't turn quite fast enough to get out of it's way as it cracked across her skull. Everything blurred in and out for a moment. When things came back into focus it was just in time to see that baton swinging towards her once again. Fortunately she didn't have to worry about her sluggish reaction time to it because Clint's hand grabbed the wrist holding it and plunged her knife into her attacker's neck. Her forehead felt wet and sticky and she gave a disgruntled noise as she clambered back to her feet.

She didn't even remember going down.

"You good?" came her partner's question. She flicked her gaze to Clint who had turned towards her and she could see the brief flicker of concern cross his features. She heaved her second knife with ease and it wedged itself into a man's forehead. Clint's brow furrowed in response as he turned to look at the man who dropped to the ground behind him and then back at her. "Nice throw. But a little warning next time," he requested with a sigh.

He studied Natasha and the shuttering intake of breath that she took. There was blood dripping from the head wound she had just received and it was going in a steady flow from her temple, down in front of her ear. Then there was also the blood pooled at her shoulder from what looked like a bullet wound. "I was aiming for his heart," came her half-hearted reply and he narrowed his eyes at that. With Natasha it was hard to decipher if she was merely teasing or being serious but he was hoping for the former. "We should go, and fast...I dropped a lot of bodies before I got here." She was shoving past him and going out the way she came in before he could even think twice. "This way," she murmured.

They only made it around the first two corners when a door to their left slammed open and a shotgun sounded. Much to her dismay, it was Clint who let out that scream of pain and dropped to the ground. She lifted her gun and shelled out the last bullet into the man's brain, then she instantly turned to Clint to look at the gaping wound. It was at least six inches in length in his outer thigh. "Der'mo..." she growled out the Russian expletive. She dropped the pistol, having used its last bullet, and instead she took hold of the shotgun. "Can you get up?" He was shaking his head and groaning, holding his leg tightly. The blood was practically spilling out. "Okay..." and now she needed to figure out what to do about this situation.

"Go..."

"Not going to happen," she informed him curtly as she came to a decision and shoved her hand under the zipper at the chest of his uniform. She was clenching it in her hand from the inside and dragging him slowly down the hall with all the strength she could muster. "I didn't fight my way through all of this just to let you bleed out in their hallway," she told him, breathing heavily with the effort it took to drag him with one hand.

He grunted and watched the trail of blood his leg was leaving. He had to give her credit for the sheer upper body strength that it had to take to drag his weight, let alone to do it single-handedly. "Romanoff..." She was ignoring him. "Natasha." He watched her pause briefly to look back at him. They never used first names, as though it were some sort of unspoken agreement to keep some distance between them. It was a line they had never crossed. Until now... "You can't drag me forever... this isn't gonna work." She turned away and he groaned as she continued their trek. They were nearly at the front doors of the facility now and she was making damned good time considering he was dead weight. "You weren't supposed to come back, Romanoff, you were supposed to contact SHIELD so why didn't you?" he questioned.

"I tried," she huffed out as she shoved the doors open with the shotgun and pulled him through them. She was glancing around and he assumed she never actually had a plan for once they were outside. "They never answered. We're on our own." That was more disconcerting than he wanted to admit. She yanked him against the wall outside the doors and leaned him so that he could sit up. Then she shoved the shotgun in his hands as she spoke, "Focus, Barton. I'm going to get us a ride so you better stay alive and shoot anyone that isn't me."

"Don't have to tell me twice."

His voice was shaky, the sweat was beading off of his forehead, and she grimaced internally. Her gaze flicked to the wound on his leg in concern before she took off around the side of the building.

Clint did his best to keep his eyes from looking down at his leg...and to not throw up. She was only gone for a few minutes when tires screeched around the corner from where she had gone as she came to a sudden jolting stop just in front of him. She had stolen a jeep, though from where he couldn't quite fathom. "Is there anything you don't know how to do?" he joked.

"Not that I'm aware of," she informed him as she got out and got both her arms under his armpits. She locked her elbows and pulled him up. He gave his best effort on one leg to help her get him into the backseat.

"Move!" Natasha did and only just in time. She barely shifted to her left and he fired the shotgun, taking out the man who had come up behind her. If it bothered her that she had been snuck up on then she wasn't giving any indication of the sort. "Why'd you do it?" he finally asked her.

"Do what?" she questioned as she adjusted him more comfortably in the backseat before she got back into the driver's seat.

He would have rolled his eyes if he weren't still attempting not to throw up. Instead he just squeezed the shotgun tighter in his hands. "Come back for me," he answered even though he knew that she knew what he meant.

Natasha's thin smile was visible in the rear-view mirror. "Well, I don't imagine leaving without you would look good for me," came her casual response. As usual she was avoiding a real answer but apparently that was the only answer he was going to get, so he let it go for now. He lost track of time as she took several turns and went several miles. It was hard to tell if he had either passed out or spaced out for most of the ride and then suddenly she was tapping his cheek, hovering over him. "Sorry, but when I do this I wanted to make sure I wasn't going to get decked," she admitted with a shrug, "that shot nicked your femoral artery, so... we're going to have to do something about that because it can't wait any longer."

"Fantastic... and exactly how are you planning to fix that?"

His words were slurred, he was shaking and sweating, and this was probably way beyond her scope of expertise. "You're not going to like it," she admitted.

"F-figured..."

She gave him a grim smile before she grabbed a shirt that was in the trunk of the car and balled it up, shoving it in his mouth. "Unsanitary, I know. But bite down," she ordered softly. She grabbed the pistol that she had gotten from the glove box and took the clip out. A second later she let the bullets roll into her hand and she used the knife to pry the edges off the first one. "Deep breath, Barton. This is going to hurt like a bitch," she admitted. She watched the wary look he was giving her before she dumped the powder from the bullet into one hand, and using her other to keep the gaping wound in his leg open, she planted the gunpowder on the nick in the femoral artery. She met his gaze for half a second before she took a match and lit it a blaze. She flinched back as it puffed up in a spark and she grimaced at the sound of Clint moaning and groaning into the shirt.

She was yanking fragments from the shotgun out of the wound once most of the bleeding was taken care of, tossing them onto the floor of the car without a second thought. She grabbed the sewing needle and used another match to sterilize the tip. She waved it out, tossed that out the window and then threaded the fishing line through it. "I'm going to apologize in advance," she told him, but he grabbed her hand and she watched him yank the shirt out with the other. She narrowed her eyes slightly, "Barton-"

"Ever fly a plane?" He saw her confused expression. "Natasha, plane?" Finally she shook her head. "Well, first time for everything. Remember that little airfield we passed earlier?" He grunted when she started threading the fishing line through the wound without warning. "Son of a bitch..." he mumbled, "well...if we can't get a hold of SHIELD then we'll have to get ourselves out."

"You want me to steal one of those Hungarian death traps and fly it?" she questioned, and her look was nothing if not sardonic. It was a reaction that she did remarkably well. He could see the briefest spark of amusement in her green eyes. "I suppose that would be a new one to add to my file," she finally added, "if I knew how to fly a plane."

The comment was enough to take his mind off things for a second. "Did Natasha Romanoff just admit there was something that she couldn't do?" It didn't happen often but occasionally both corners of her lips would curve upward into a real smile. This appeared to be one of those moments. "But no... we aren't stealing a death trap. Sort of..." There was the pain again. "A quinjet. SHIELD hides it in a warehouse there..."

She gave a sideways nod at that. "Alright, well I've never flown that either," she reminded him, "but I suppose we're making Plan G, and in Plan G I learn to fly the quinjet."

Clint gave a pained laugh, he couldn't help it. "There was a Plan C through F?" he asked her.

"Of course, but you die in all of those so we're skipping them."

"Well, I appreciate that." He dared to peek over at her handiwork, surprised to find how even when she was working with a leg that had looked like mincemeat, her suturing skills were nothing if not neat and precise. "Where did you get all this stuff?" he muttered in curiosity. He didn't remember her stopping at any point during the ride.

Natasha was smirking at the question as though the answer were obvious. "Here and there," and her answer elicited one of the most exaggerated eye rolls he could manage. She finished the suturing and held up a half-empty bottle of cheap vodka, sloshing it back and forth for him to see. "Found this in the trunk though." He wasn't sure exactly how to feel about the controversial look on her face as she glanced between him and the wound. "Hate to be wasteful but I suppose it can't be helped. Want a swig before we get started?"

"Started?" She had that morbid gleam in her eyes. He hated seeing that. "Oh, no. No, no, no! Don't you even think abuh-" she shoved the shirt back in his mouth and then poured the vile liquid onto his leg before he could do anything to stop her. To her credit, she was at least grimacing at the decibel his voice reached, even through the shirt clenched between his teeth. Once he was sure that she was done, and that he wasn't going to try and strangle her, he spit the shirt out. "Bitch..." he moaned out. It was hard to stay mad when she gave him a shit-eating grin at hearing his current opinion of her. Hard... but certainly not impossible. "Really... really hate you right now," he mumbled out next.

The amused yet concerned look never quite left her face as she replaced the cap on the bottle and tossed it back into the trunk. "I know, but I prefer that over the inevitable infection if I hadn't done it." He shuttered out a few shaky breaths, blinking through the haze of pain before he felt pressure on his leg. It took a moment before he felt brave enough to even look at what she might be doing next. Where the hell did she get that? She was duct taping a white washcloth to his thigh. Apparently, she could see the question in his eyes without him having to voice it because her voice flowed smoothly to answer it, "I may have seduced a maid in the hotel around the corner and stolen a bunch of toiletries."

He froze, his eyes wide at her explanation. "A ma—a maid? You seduced a maid?"

"Mhmm..." When she finished with the duct tape, she was flopping a pile of clothes on his chest. "You need help getting changed?" He shook his head and watched as she nimbly hopped out from the back seat and into the alley they were currently idling in. "She was a cute little thing. Tan. Dark eyes. Dark curly hair. Nice and soft, too. I'm not sure she was actually that into me, perhaps just curious enough to give it a try—"

He groaned. "Natasha..."

"Yes, Clint?" She almost never said his first name in two years but her voice came out soft and teasing now that she did and he was honestly relieved by it.

"Just don't..." He could almost hear her smirking as he wiggled himself out of the backseat, leaning his full weight onto the car and his good leg as he changed into the clothes she had retrieved. "Ready—" he turned in time to get the perfect view of her bare back and he sighed, averting his eyes, "okay...eventually we're going to have to talk about you stripping without warning."

She just barely glanced back at Clint and snickered at the comment. "I'm not shy," she reminded him.

Natasha was one of the most brazen women he had ever met. He huffed out a laugh, "I'm well aware." And he knew she was smiling again.

"I'm done," she informed him, depositing her own catsuit into a heap in the back seat along with his own clothes. "It'll take about two hours to get to that airfield from here if you factor in that those guys from the lab are all over the streets looking for us." She rolled her shoulder and winced at the sharp pain she felt at the motion. She waved off the concerned look he was giving her when he noticed it. "There's another car around the corner we should switch to. I'm pretty sure they've already noticed that this one is missing."

"But your shoulder—"

"Can be dealt with later," came the curt reply he had come to expect, "I've wandered around a lot longer with a lot worse."

He blew out a frustrated sigh. "You know, that's really not as comforting as you seem to think it is." She didn't say a word. There was just the barest hint a somber shrug and nod of her head before she gathered what they were keeping and began to quietly pad down the alley. Two hours way from freedom with streets of hostiles searching for them. He grunted, "This isn't going to be easy."

The weak smile that she flashed back at him was grim at best, foreboding at worst, then she tugged his arm over her shoulder to help him along. It was unsettling that she didn't seem any more sure that they could do this than he was. "Yeah...but I guess they don't send the two of us if they think things will be easy though, hm?"

The question was rhetorical and they both knew it.

Truer words were never spoken.


Don't worry, there's more shit to hit the fan in the upcoming chapter because, well, Budapest can't be that easy, right?