A/N: It... uh... got slightly out of control here. Anyways - enjoy.
She can hear his steps, so incredibly loud and clumsy in the dark alley. It's almost funny, he's even lousier than his predecessors and they were bad on their own. If they really think someone like him can take her down, they're even more stupid than she thought. She's not afraid of him or them – she never is, because she is the Black Widow, the best killer Russia has ever seen, and fear does not become her. She is the one everyone else is afraid of.
With a soft smile on her lips, Natasha Romanoff rounds a corner and slips into the crowded street before her. It's night in Budapest but the city is not asleep and she will use this to her advantage and get rid of her pursuer. Work first and pleasure after; she will deal with the rookie assassin later, after she has killed her target. She sidesteps through the crowd, disappearing behind groups of tourists, evading pickpockets with the greatest of ease until she is certain that her pursuer has lost her. Only then she leaves the street and backtracks through alleyways and side streets until she reaches the mansion in front of which she has first spotted the assassin. It would have been easier to kill him on sight but Natasha is in a playful mood tonight, much like a cat that plays with the mouse before it kills it. She's almost looking forward to killing the idiot who decided to take her on.
A quick glance around to make sure nobody is watching her, and then Natasha climbs a nearby tree and leaps onto the mansion's roof. It's easier to maneuver up here, she won't have to look out for civilians who could spot her and she'll get away from the scene of crime before anyone will even know that she has been there.
The night is perfect for a kill – no clouds, no wind, only the full moon to illuminate the city. She doesn't like Budapest all that much, it reminds her of Russia and she was never particularly fond of her homeland anyway. Still, the sooner she gets out of here, the better.
It's only a short trip to the target's manor in the rich district of the city. She knows his name and his face – István Jenci, leader of a local ring of organ dealers and benefactor of the Hungarian mafia. Natasha isn't supposed to kill him because he's a bad person, she couldn't care less about nonsense like that. Other members of the organ dealers just want to see him dead, simple as that, and Natasha is only too happy to oblige them; she needs the money, after all.
From her position on the manor roof opposite of Jenci's estate, she can see the middle-aged man through the window of his brightly lit bedroom. She can also see the group of bodyguards standing around the building who look everywhere except in her direction.
"Idioty"(*) Natasha murmurs in Russian and crouches down so that she can assemble her sniper rifle. It's too big to carry it around any other way and she has done this so many times before, she hardly looks at what she's doing. While she works on her weapon, she continues to watch her target.
Jenci is undressing a woman half his age on his bed and Natasha cringes a bit. She hates leaving behind a mess and a mess it will be if the prostitute witnesses this – which means she will have to wait until the woman leaves or kill her, too. Not like that matters much, it's just one more corpse on Natasha's list.
She doesn't like waiting which is why she takes the rifle into both hands and takes aim. This is not the first time she has used one bullet to kill two people, after all. Her hands are calm as her finger curls around the trigger and then it's three, two, one…
"I wouldn't do that if I were you." Natasha freezes as she feels the pointy end of an arrow against her neck.
It's him, the man she thought to have lost down in the streets. She smiles.
"Congratulations" she says, not moving at all. She knows that every movement could be her last. "Not many manage to sneak up on me – you have outsmarted me, it seems."
"I've been warned not to stumble into your net, Black Widow" he replies and she can almost hear him smiling. "But I must admit you're good."
"Obviously not good enough" she laughs. Then, her smile fades. "Tell me, American, who send you?"
"None of your business." Another laughs escapes her.
"You are killing me on someone's orders; I think it is very much my business." He doesn't say anything but he doesn't fire his arrow, either. It strikes her as strange that they sent an archer after her – who even uses bows and arrows anymore? But he has to be good if he's here, so he'd be the obvious choice after all those who have failed to put her down.
"Why aren't you shooting me?" she asks after a long silence.
"Still waiting for you to talk me out of it. Isn't that what you do? Lie and deceive your way through situations like this?"
"Why should I? You have cornered me. I am at your mercy, American."
"I-"
She will never know what he is going to say because in this very moment, an explosion rocks the roof they're standing on and next thing she knows, she's falling. All of her instincts are useless in this situation as she hits the ground, hard, her breath beaten out of her. Natasha chokes for air and gasps a mouthful of smoke. She coughs so hard she can feel tears streaming down her cheeks but when he hears a sudden creak amidst the chaos, she rolls around just in time to evade a falling joist that lands where she has been lying moments before.
"Blyat"(**) she swears and opens her runny eyes to see the blazing remains of what used to be a dining room. Her head hurts like hell, she must have hit it when she fell, but there is no time for this now – she has to get out of here as fast as she can. She can't see the American but that doesn't mean he hasn't survived this, too. The explosion seems to have caught him off-guard so she assumes it wasn't set by his superiors. Whoever it was, they gave her the opportunity to escape and she sure as hell won't look this gift horse in the mouth.
Her arms hurt as she pushes herself in a sitting position and stands up. The dining room is on fire, there's debris everywhere and she can't breathe properly but she ignores all of this as she frantically searches for an exit. There, the door to the next room is still intact! If she can find a window, she can get out of here and figure out what happened.
As she takes a step towards the door, pain shoots up her left foot; she must have twisted it. But Natasha bites her lip and limps toward the exit. Later. She has to get out of here. She's almost there when she hears the sudden click of a weapon. Without thinking, he draws her own pistols and whirls around to fire it at her attacker – only to realize that it's not the American from before. The man is still nowhere to be seen and instead, she's facing a dozen men clad in black whose weapons are aimed at her.
No time to think, she can just react as the first bullets are fired. She dodges three of them and rolls behind a broken table before returning the fire. Natasha doesn't know what's going on except that something went wrong in this mission, very, very wrong. But one thing is for sure – she will not die here. She grits her teeth as bullets ricochet across the burning dining room, some of them her own. She can hear grunts of pain as her bullets hit home but she can't continue like this forever. She's lost her rifle somewhere and if someone gets a hold of it, she's done for because the table she's hiding behind isn't going to stop a rifle bullet.
She has to get out of here.
Natasha rises from where she is crouching and rolls behind a heap of debris from where she has a better view on her attackers. There are eight of them left and she can't see their faces or recognize their black suits but their postures are enough to know who sent them – Petrovitch. She can't say she's surprised, it was only a matter of time until Petrovitch would decide she's too good at what she's doing.
He's finally decided to get rid of her, then.
She mutters another curse and shoots the man standing the nearest to her before whirling around and making a run for the damn door. As she runs, she yanks a gas grenade from her belt and throws it behind her. It's not flammable but it should hold them off long enough for her to escape. The grenade explodes in a cloud of thick smoke and she can hear the men screaming to each other not to let her get away. But she's already reached the door and opens it – it doesn't lead to another room but to a stairway that goes down to the lower floor. A bullet misses her by a few inches and she gasps as it bores into the wood next to her head.
She can hear another bullet whizzing towards her and from what it sound like, it should hit her – but it doesn't because somebody grabs her arms and pulls her away from the projectile, just in time. She raises her eyes to stare at the American whose face is smudged and slightly burned on one side. He's bleeding.
"What...?" she begins but he cuts her off, yelling,
"Run for your damn life, woman!" She doesn't need to be told this twice. They run down the stairs where the archer turns around and shoot an arrow upwards; it hits a man who comes tumbling down but the two of them are already gone, already on the run through the empty mansion. Her thoughts are a mess, she doesn't understand any of this, why is he helping her all of a sudden and how did he even get past Petrovitch's henchmen? But she doesn't have time to think about his become the American suddenly stops in the middle of the hallway and swears loudly.
They are facing another group of Petrovitch's men, armed to the teeth. Well, shit.
"Must've pissed off a whole lot of people, eh?" the American mutters before he reaches for another arrow from the quiver on his back.
"I wonder why" Natasha replies dryly. He smirks and they both fire their weapons simultaneously, before he grabs her wrist again and shoves her through an open door. He follows quickly and yanks the door shut – just in time, too, because another explosion rocks the mansion.
"Exploding arrows" he explains with a smirk before pulling another arrow free. "I'll cover your back – run on my signal. There should be another flight of stairs right behind them."
"Why should I trust you?" she asks while recharging her pistols. "You were sent to kill me."
"Well – I didn't kill you. And frankly, you're not really in a position to be picky about who's helping you." He flashes her a quick smile and she can't help thinking that he's actually quite handsome. For someone who wanted her dead mere minutes ago, that is.
She doesn't have time to reply anything to this because the archer opens the door and yells, "NOW!", and then she's on her feet again, running as fast as she can, shooting men left and right whose numbers don't seem to decrease in the slightest. Natasha trips over a dead body und quickly cartwheels out of the way as a bullet whizzes past. Another projectile flies past and she can feel a sting where it grazes her right shoulder but she chooses to ignore it and turns her head long enough to shoot the asshole who almost got her.
"Good one!" the archer laughs and she wonders briefly if this is some game to him. But maybe this is how he's coping with stress, who knows – she doesn't really care. She's got other priorities now. The round a corner and Natasha does a roundhouse kick in a henchman's face before firing another shot at a man who's aiming at the archer. It's not that she wants to save his life but she knows she probably won't get out of here on her own. Gift horse, remember?
They reach the flight of stairs the archer has been talking about and Natasha curses again as she spots a new group of attackers. The archer just sighs and shoots another arrow before ramming his elbow in against a pursuer's chin and whacking him with the bow. She's getting tired by now and her ankle hurts, not to mention the rest of her body, still sore from her fall through the roof.
She swings down the stairs and uses the curtains of the window on the lower floor to tangle up some of the attackers before quickly reloading one of her pistols and firing a bullet between the eyes of the man who's nearest to her.
They run and kill and kick and kill more. She loses count of the dead after seventy-two (where are they even coming from?) and then, suddenly, they're standing in the main hall, just a dozen feet away from the exit. Natasha and the archer exchange a glance but before they can cross the hall, a single man walks between them and the front door.
He has no hood and even in the flickering light of the burning estate, she can recognize his face. Petrovitch.
"Natasha" he smiles. "Glupaya devochka."(***)
"Out of my way" she replies in English. For some reason, she wants the archer to understand her part of the dialogue, to understand her motives. She doesn't know why.
"Oh, does our archer friend not speak Russian?" Petrovitch wonders, his voice heavy with the thick Russian accent he has. "How thoughtful of you, my pet."
"I don't remember us being friends" the archer frowns. "Get out of the way!" He aims an arrow – his last, she notices – at Petrovitch's face. Natasha stiffens as she can hear numerous weapons click behind them at the same moment. Damn Petrovitch – he's detained them long enough for his henchmen to catch up.
"I'm afraid I cannot let you go" Petrovitch says and shakes his head. "You see, our lady friend here has become a much too good assassin to be left alive. She's dangerous. And if I were you, I would drop that bow of yours."
"Why?" the archer grunts. Petrovitch simply smiles – and produces a detonating device from the inside of his black jacket. Natasha grits her teeth and growls. That bastard.
"Because one false movement will kill all of us" the Russian spy informs them. "Leave the girl to me and you can walk away in peace."
"He's lying" Natasha whispers.
"I know" the archer replies. For a single, endless moment, nobody moves, nobody speaks. Then, the archer says,
"I don't negotiate with terrorists, sorry." Before Natasha can blink, he's already fired his arrow which pierces Petrovitch's chest. The Russian spy stares at the archer in shock before his face changes into a grimace of hatred.
"Sukin syn"(****) he coughs as a rivulet of blood trickles down his chin – and then, Natasha's world explodes.
Fire and heat and she can feel her skin burning, can feel the sudden and piercing pain in her body, she's on fire and she's deaf from the explosion and if this is death, she hates it with every fiber of her heart. It's like the zoo in Moscow all over again and there's so much pain and the world is red with blood.
Maybe she's hallucinating, maybe she's dying, maybe she's lost consciousness and is dreaming. She doesn't know. But suddenly, she gasps sharply and the pain is still everywhere but somehow, she knows she's not dead. In fact, she's very much alive because she can feel the sizzling pain of burned skin on the right side of her ribs and the sickening sensation of blood all over her body and smell its awful stench. She wonders how many bones she has broken.
She can't see a thing and she can't move but she's alive. There's a groan and she realizes it isn't hers. Something moves in front of her and then, she stares into the archer's eyes. Or rather his one eye because the other side of his face is swollen and smeared with blood. He must have shielded her from the explosion with his body… He must be hurt even more than she is but he has saved her life. Twice, it seems.
"You saved me" she whispers and he gives her half a smile.
"Guess so." She doesn't understand. He was supposed to kill her. She should be dead by now. So why has he saved her…?
A sound of a siren pierces through the night and the remains of the mansion around them. There are still fires burning and so much debris – it's a miracle they're alive. But somehow, they are.
She stares at the archer as he groans again and straightens until he reaches for a communication device that's hanging from his neck.
"Hawkeye here" he grunts into the earpiece. "I could use some help." Natasha frowns. So he has rescued her just to let somebody else kill her? That doesn't make sense.
"You should have killed me while you could" she hisses and the archer looks at her, surprised. "You bastard, making me believe I could trust you! I'll kill you!" She attempts to get up and hit him but her body hurts so bad and she screams as he clutches her half-raised left hand – it's obviously broken.
"Lie the hell down and let me handle this" he instructs her calmly before letting go of her broken hand. "I won't kill you, I promise." He stares at her intently. "You can trust me."
And for some crazy reason, she does. She believes him. Maybe she has lost her mind, after all. But maybe she's just tired of suspicion and running away.
She doesn't care anymore.
As the pain becomes too much, Natasha slips into unconsciousness.
(*) - (russ.) "Idiots."
(**) - (russ.) "Fuck/Shit."
(***) - (russ.) "Natasha. Foolish girl."
(****) - (russ.) "Son of a bitch."