Date: March 14th, 2014
Natasha punched Clint so hard he was already on the ground before he even realized she was in the room.
He rocked to his right side, holding his forearm out defensively to shield his head and spat the blood on to the tile floor. The shafts and fletchings he'd been working on clattered to the floor of the small weapons lab. "Something on your mind, sweetheart?" he asked and quickly drew up his left leg to protect his lower body.
"Don't you 'sweetheart' me, you son of a bitch!"
He rolled deliberately to his feet, and surveyed the chaos her entrance had made of his work station.
"Working on some 'hacker arrows?' Or more hidden camera arrows? How about an arrow that shows some respect? Bet you don't have an arrow that does that."
"If that means blindsiding with a blow to the head, I have a lot of arrows that do that." Clint caught her wrist about two inches before she connected with his jaw and held it in his iron grip, glaring at her. "You got your one shot. What the hell, Na-"
She cut him off by simultaneously bringing her elbow to his collarbone and her knee to his gut. He deflected the elbow and pinioned it, but the other blow thudded off his abdominal muscles and he grunted through his teeth.
Well, he rationalized, wincing with the effort of restraining her, the fact that her last volley was leveled at his stomach and clavicle was a good sign; had she really wanted to hurt him he could think of a dozen more painful places she could have attacked more effectively. Several of which would have probably put his ass back on the floor.
"Are you done?" His voice was level and cold. "Are you going to tell me what's going on or are you going to keep hitting me if I let you go." She stared back into Agent-Barton-of-SHIELD's icy eyes; the eyes of the man who had hunted her to a standstill all those years ago.
The blinding fury wilted under that calculating scrutiny. She nodded once and stepped away from him when he released her.
"You have exactly 30 seconds to explain to me what you were thinking," she commanded. Without the Hawkeye-punching-rage that had propelled her down here, her words sounded sad, even with the hoarse threat still lingering at the back.
"Tasha. What. The. Fuck. Are you talking about?"
She thrust a tablet at him. "It's already queued up to Rumlow's favorite part," she snarled.
Clint stared at the screen, recognizing it by the single frozen frame. He looked between his furious partner and the high-def image, mouth open in shock and brows crimped in confusion. He tapped play and watched it in stunned silence for a few seconds before pausing it again. "Nat...? What is this?"
"You had nothing to do with this," she stated, not asking. The hurt, stunned expression assured her that this was not something that he had purposely recorded that had then been stolen.
"I swear to you, Tasha," he said, "I would never record you or us without telling you. You should know that. I remember this night. Really well, actually. It was the night that... Oh, fuck me!" He dropped the tablet on the counter and scrubbed his hand over his face, staring up at the ceiling. "...the night I was testing that mobile camera for Rick Jones. I thought I lost it. I came home, thinking it was gone, but it must have been still active."
"Jones...," Natasha growled. "I bet no one in the world has ever been as grateful for an accidental gamma transformation as that little shit should be right now. I'd make him wish he were dead. Or that you got to him first."
"You know, that's exactly what Jones was afraid of when he uncovered the footage," said a calm voice behind them, "that you'd get to him before Barton, Natasha."
"You knew about this, Phil?" Clint turned on their unflappable handler.
"I did. I'm sorry. Jones came to me as soon as he could and we tried to bury the footage . He lost contact with the firefly but it continued to record you, Clint. Once it came back online, it immediately dumped all its data to the servers. Since it had been in active-field mode, all of the footage was immediately under the 'no data left behind' protocol." Phil pressed on, surprised that neither agent asked how long the camera had been AWOL and decided not to call attention to the fact.
"He didn't want anyone to know it existed, because he respected your privacy, Natasha….and, you scare him."
She pursed her lips and looked uncomfortable.
"Rick's a really good guy. He didn't show it to anyone but me. He even defied the agent-on-duty who demanded to see all of it. It's not easy for a young technician with very little PT to stand up to someone like Brock Rumlow."
"Rumlow," Clint repeated, low and thoughtful. "Was it him? Who sent this out?"
"We can't be sure, without an investigation, but likely."
"How far has it spread?" Clint asked.
"Just SHIELD internal," Natasha answered, "so far."
"We should have been informed. Immediately." Clint slammed his fist on the industrial cabinet.
"Jones didn't want you to know because he didn't want to embarrass you... Or have you mad at him." Coulson looked from the glowering Natasha, blood in her eyes, to Clint, somehow looking more formidable with the fresh bruising on his face. "He seemed to find you two intimidating."
Phil indicated their hostile stances and offensive positions. Natasha stood in the center of the room directly in front of him, commanding the whole space. Clint leaned against the counter and the back wall, arms folded and eyes flicking warily between his partner, his handler and the door.
"I approved Jones' classification of it as test footage and we locked it in a Level Seven archive. Unfortunately, since it was labeled as test and debug footage, it all was downgraded to Level Four after months of no access. I had planned to delete it all then, but in all the chaos, Jones and I both forgot about it. Someone found it and is distributing it within SHIELD. I dropped the ball. I'm so sorry."
Natasha touched Phil's jacket. "I understand, Phil. It's ok."
"He gets a pat on the shoulder for admitting it. I had literally nothing to do with it, and you punched me in the face and tried to knee me in the spine through my body..." He rubbed his stomach and scowled at her and Phil.
"Quit whining," Natasha dismissed. "You look like a total stud being serviced by your whore. Look at the vid; I bring you a beer and you shove my head in your lap."
Clint looked more shocked than when she'd actually struck him. "It wasn't like that... Nat...?" he breathed defensively. Natasha's jaw twinged and she wouldn't look at him, but she relaxed her aggressive posture. Coulson shifted uncomfortably, hearing his agents talk about what he saw on the leaked footage made him more embarrassed than the few moments of it he'd watched.
"You know it wasn't like that!" His voice grew louder as indignation regained the upper hand. "This is bullshit. I'm going to kill Rick Jones or, what the fuck is he calling himself now…?" Clint cast an angry glare at Phil.
"A-Bomb."
"...Seriously?"
"You really don't want to go there. And, honestly, he's above your weight class these days, Clint."
"Gimme some time to plan," Clint growled.
"Who are you now? Batman?" Natasha snorted. "Give it a rest, Barton."
Clint rounded on her. "You know what, Romanoff...?"
"Time out," Coulson said, cutting Clint off before he said something Natasha would surely make them both regret. "You two need to get a grip. Actually, I'm not sure why you are mad at each other."
"Sounds like we should be mad at Brock Rumlow," Clint muttered. He picked up the discarded tablet and watched a brief segment without the filter of his own memory.
It was obvious to him that the footage had undergone subtle editing, most of their conversation had been smudged and the events had been compressed. Natasha's description was accurate. The editing seemed particularly calculated to be degrading. His hand, which he recalled twining tenderly in her hair, did seemed to be controlling her momentum. He felt a sick flop of rage in his chest.
Clint dropped the tablet and headed for the door. He wadded a tissue he snatched in passing against his nose.
"You are going to go, what, defend my honor?"
"You're goddamned right I am," he shot back.
"Clint, don't be such a Neanderthal. Get your ass back here," Natasha called after him.
"Hey, stop it with the Neanderthals. They were a noble species."
"Oh, God, spare me your time-travel shit, ok? No one cares if you and Steve DID teach Paleolithic man to..."
Phil pinched the bridge of his nose. He needed to get these two out of HQ, out of the country altogether before things took a very, very bad turn. When he took the position of handler, he had no idea just how much handling he was going to have to be doing. Stark had been a cakewalk after these two.
"I'm sending you both to do some recon for a few weeks… separately, and with personnel from local offices only."
"You are just going to let this stand? No way." Clint declared mulishly, "No way am I leaving until this is resolved."
"You will go, Agent, because I'm ordering you to. Neither of you are going to be involved in SHIELD's handling of this. It's not appropriate. Deputy Director Hill will deal with it. It will be handled, but not by you."
"How is Hill about this?" he asked.
"Not as, ah, understanding, as I could wish. I'm working on it. She has her own opinions, but I believe she will resolve it."
Natasha and Clint exchanged a glance that told Coulson they understood; Hill disapproved of a woman like Natasha having sex on camera, irrespective of the fact that it was recorded without her consent and was a complete violation to have it shared around the office. She would of course be professional in her handling of the matter, but her personal opinion was less forgiving and more like the general attitude Natasha could expect from many here.
"This is bullshit, Phil," Clint ground out.
"I know," Phil said quietly. "I get it. I do, but I need you two gone for a bit. I am very sorry."
"It's not me you need to apologize to," Clint said, jaw tightening. "Tasha is right. That tape looks bad. It's obviously been edited to humiliate her. What are you going to do to them? Sensitivity training? You think these macho assholes are ever going to respect her again?"
"And what, precisely, are you going to do about it?" she spat at Clint.
They both looked at Natasha, her anger flaring out as her partner spelled out her exact concern. She turned away, afraid the rage-tears she had been fighting might well up under this empathy. She liked it better when they had all been yelling.
"I need you in Budapest, Natasha. And Clint there is a matter in Africa that I need you to attend to. Neither of you are going to act on this. At all. Is that clear?" He held a pair of briefings out to them.
Clint stared hard at Phil as he took the briefing folder and strode down the hall, slowing until Natasha caught up with him. She walked a few feet ahead of him, stiff and keeping a wide berth between them.
Phil watched them go and hoped their professionalism would prevail; two down, he thought. And, bickering aside, those two, as the wronged parties, were probably the easiest. He doubted Rogers would be nearly as forgiving. Thor was thankfully off-world. Phil wouldn't have enjoyed neither the Asgardian's blithe non-comprehension of the problem nor his blazing anger once he did.
He wondered if he could enlist Steve in figuring out a way to tell Bruce and Tony... Or—even better— a way to not tell either of them. Neither Bruce's initial reaction nor Tony's false indifference and subsequent retaliation were things Phil wanted to deal with. Whatever Stark would come up with, no matter how much Rumlow or whoever deserved it, would cause more problems than it solved.
He was pretty sure he could keep Bruce from hulking out in the short term, but he could never risk Bruce being anywhere near Rumlow ever again.
Gamma monsters were scary.
A thanks to texts from superheroes where I swiped the "I have a lot of arrows that do that" line.