Live to Rise

Chapter Four

Back in the prison in Kiev about four hours later…

The moonlight continued to shine through the cell window's bars, slightly illuminating Clint as he remained tied tightly to the chair in the center of the room. The archer wasn't sure of the time, but based on the time he had been captured and about how long he felt he had been a prisoner, he knew that it was early into the next morning.

The needle was still sticking out from his neck, but the effects of the powder substance that were causing the extreme burning sensation throughout his system had finally begun to dim, enough for Clint to be able to focus on his escape from his bonds. However, as he was working on twisting his wrists in order to loosen up the cords, despite the pain from them biting into his skin, Petrovich slowly opened up the door and walked back into the room as a smirk lined his face, while two of his men stood guard just outside.

As his captor moved forward and once again took a seat in another chair in front of Clint, not noticing that his bonds have been loosened, the archer kept his head down on his chest and his eyes closed while he listened, not only to the man before him as he began to talk, but also to his surroundings while he waited for the opportune moment to make his attack. Listening to the noises around him allowed Barton to be aware of what was outside waiting for him. The more he knew, the easier the escape would be.

Petrovich put his fingers over the end of the end of the needle and gently pulled it out from the assassin's neck as he spoke up saying, "You obviously have a very high threshold for pain, Hawkeye. However, it is not unexpected that you would be so resilient to the needle's effects. I am curious to see how you would do if I were to be forced to inject the second one. Are you ready to tell me of Natasha Romanoff's whereabouts?"

When Clint didn't reply, Petrovich continued, "Do you even know why I want the Black Widow dead? Because, she murdered my brother and nearly killed me. I was lucky to have escaped. I will kill the woman, one way or another, just as she is killing you by you keeping silent. I suppose a second needle is required after all, just as I hoped it would be."

"I really don't think you want to do that," Clint replied firmly and quietly as his captor raised up a second needle and was about to inject it into the crook of his left arm.

However, before the man could react, Clint suddenly pulled his left wrist free of the cord, swiftly grabbed the needle from him, and thrust it into Petrovich's neck, just as the captor had done earlier to him. Petrovich was too stunned and in too much pain as the powder began to kick in to talk or to scream out to his men for help. Instead, all he could do was stare up at the master assassin as he worked on breaking free the rest of the way.

"I told you that you shouldn't do that," Clint said as he moved to stand above the man on the ground and roughly pulled him up by the collar of his shirt. "Monsters like you always underestimate what it is I'm capable of and it's not like I'm even a pretty face. My old partner on the other hand, she's gotten a lot of men to fall in love with her, just by her looks alone. You were a fool if you truly believed your men were able to capture me because they were that well trained."

Petrovich struggled to ask, "What are you… talking about?"

Hawkeye let him fall back to the ground as he responded, "I learned of your plans to try to kill the Black Widow a few weeks ago and thanks to a few contacts, I found out that you had men stationed in Prague. So, I purposely set them up to capture me, just so that I could get to you. You sat there and spoke of wanting her to pay for killing your brother, yet you don't see that the only reason why she did was because you betrayed her and her father and then killed him when you wanted to take over his men and enterprises. I won't allow you or your men to hurt her anymore. Goodbye, Petrovich."

As soon as he finished, Clint pushed the needle deeper into the man's neck in order to kill him as he had said that he would. Then, he walked over to the door and as soon as he opened it, he swiftly took down the guards standing watch. Once he found his bow and quiver, still full of his arrows, he worked to take out the rest of Petrovich's men inside and outside of the prison. It wasn't until after his task at hand was finished that he rested for a few minutes against a jeep that sat outside the building, as the fiery drug was still in his system and was feeling tired and ill after being tortured for as long as he had been. However, he finally pushed on and drove off toward the center of town.

Meanwhile…

After landing on the outskirts of Kiev, Natasha and Steve walked into town and began to question some of the locals in hope that maybe they had seen their friend around at all, most likely made to look like a prisoner or captive. The two Avengers knew that Clint had been taken by multiple men, but they didn't know who. If they had come through town, somebody would have seen something, but as person after person claimed they saw nothing, they had begun to suspect that his captors had not come through after all.

Natasha and Steve were talking quietly amongst themselves as they stood in an alleyway away from prying eyes, but after a few minutes, Natasha suddenly grew silent as she began to look around their surroundings, as she had begun to sense someone was behind them, and then Steve asked, "What do you hear? Are we being followed?"

"We have been followed ever since we left New York, but they are starting to become sloppy," Natasha answered softly, then called out loudly to their invisible aggressors. "You might as well come out to face us. We know you're there."

"We're sorry for the deception, Agent Romanoff, but we are here for the same reason as you," a man whom she and Steve discovered to be a S.H.I.E.L.D. replied smugly, as five others stepped out from the shadows behind him.

"Our reasons aren't the same," Natasha responded. "We're here to protect Agent Barton from your bosses. We're here to protect him from you. You knew we'd go look for him once we received word that the council had put a kill order out on him, so you followed us, hoping we would lead you straight to him."

Steve spoke up as he said firmly, "I suggest you go back to the council to tell them that we will be bringing Barton in, alive, and that we will prove his innocence against these ridiculous charges they have him on. If you don't, if you make a move to stop us, we will stop you in turn. Do I make myself clear?"

One of the other agents answered, "Is the great and honorable Captain America really threatening us? If we had any say, all of you freaks deserve to be locked up for the destruction you caused. If it wasn't for you…"

"If it wasn't for the Avengers, Earth would be under Loki's rule by now and millions more would be dead," Natasha interrupted. "Leave as the captain said, or you will know how it feels to be threatened."

"Agent Barton will die as he is nothing but a murderer and a traitor," the first agent who spoke replied. "And there is nothing you can do to stop the council from bringing justice for his crimes."

As soon as he said this, Natasha made the first attack against the man that threatened her partner's life by punching him in the center of his face and then kicked his legs out from under him. Steve followed as he took on three of his own men. It wasn't long before each of the men were down on the ground, some of them alive, but unconscious and two of them dead, as they had advanced the attack by pulling out their guns. Unfortunately, the Avengers were too distracted to notice as the agent that the Black Widow had knocked down first had come to and pulled up his own gun, pointing it directly at Steve's back.