Disclaimer: I do not own the Avengers or any of the characters affiliated with them. If I did, there would totally be a Hawkeye/Black Widow movie in the works.

Author's Note: While I embrace constructive criticism, remember this old saying if you choose to leave a review "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all"

Thanks to all who reviewed Chapter 6: GregsMadHatter, Drake.12, viressiel, Leo-firefly, Susan M. M, lunarweather, VoldieBeth, discordchick, tpt player 5701, snitch-bewitch, N-Sarrova, Blackwindmill, Dani9513, Reteka Hyuuga, CyanB, Shanynde, The Pris, liberated vulcan, TJ, Dianthia, Fyroni, Cara, Top Hats and Other Items, bookworm1517, Clovely-littleme, ArabianForest, authorunable, Furionknight, Sam Mayer, Sam M. Holmes, and Mirabilem Electo


Last Time:

She'd no doubt be the one in control when they got to her. But that didn't mean she'd be unscathed. Phil didn't like it when his agents got scathed. The usually managed to avoid anything horribly serious, but Clint tended to attract trouble on his best days. So when he was having a not so good day, the shit usually hit the fan in a big way. Vietnam was a good example. Another was his mission in the Andes, years ago now. Then of course there was Paris, where Romanoff came into their lives. The end result of that one turned out to be for the better, but at the time it hadn't seemed that way. Coulson didn't even like thinking of Croatia.

This appeared to be one of those not so good days too and Phil knew that Budapest would go down as one of those missions they never forgot.


In the midst of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer. –Albert Camus


"Natasha, this would be so much easier, if you just answered my questions," Moreno advised as she rose from her chair and moved closer to her captive. Natasha just glared at her silently, looking unruffled by anything that had taken place over the last several hours. "I hate that you are forcing me to resort to such crude methods."

Moreno turned toward the men at the door of the cell and held out her hand to one. Immediately he rushed forward and handed her his side arm.

"Now, do I really need to ask again?"

Natasha watched Moreno aim the gun at her thigh. She flexed her hands, letting her eyes roam over bleeding cuts on her wrists from the handcuffs. Her dress had gotten torn away at the knees, leaving her lower legs bare and they were now covered in bruises, bumps and raw abrasions from a beating with a thick knotted rope. She stretched her jaw slightly, not letting the pain the movement caused show in her expression. She could feel the left side of her face was swollen and it felt hot and tender even when she was just sitting there. She could feel blood tracking its way down the opposite side of her face from a bleeding wound on her temple and her left eye was half swollen shut from a well placed fist.

She finally raised her eyes back to Moreno and merely arched a disinterested eyebrow. All in all, she'd had worse.

The woman's lips pursed and she fired.

Natasha flinched and couldn't hold back a gasp as the bullet ripped into the meat of her thigh, mercifully avoided the bone and exited through the back, burying itself in the floor of her cell. She pressed her lips together, forcing herself to keep her eyes on Moreno's.

"You are truly a fascinating creature, Natasha," Moreno mused. She cocked her head. "You really aren't going to say anything, are you?"

If Clint were here, Natasha knew he'd be smarting off with something along the lines of 'you catch on quick, bitch'. Natasha settled for just thinking it.

Moreno backed away and moved for the cell door.

"Leave her." She looked back at Natasha, "If you change your mind at any time, my men will give you immediate medical treatment in exchange for the information I want. Otherwise, it's been a pleasure, Miss Romanoff."

Natasha watched until Moreno and all her little minions were out of sight, only then did she let out the breath she'd been holding and only then did she allow the pain to show in her expression. She tried to force deep breaths as she examined the wound with her eyes, at least what she could see of it. The bullet, considering the amount of blood pooling on the ground, hadn't hit any major arteries.

Small mercies.

But there was still a lot of blood and it was flowing steadily. She could still bleed to death if she didn't do something about it. It would just take a while.

She tested her restraints, her eyes searching the room for anything that could help her. She released a frustrated breath when nothing was immediately obvious.

"Okay, Natasha, you can think of something."

She sighed and took a deep breath, closing her eyes to center herself. Then she got an idea.


Moreno motioned to a tall, greasy haired man as she and her husband moved towards the door.

"Call me immediately if she talks. Otherwise, call me when she's dead. I'm leaving you with some of my best in case the mysterious Hawkeye decides to pay a visit."

She waved nearly a dozen men away from their position behind her. Obediently the small group of armed men moved away and intermingled with the two dozen paid off officers lounging around the room.

"How long until we just kill her?" the man asked as he walked her towards the door.

"She'll bleed out eventually. I wouldn't be concerned."

He nodded and Moreno walked swiftly out of the station, Eduardo trailing behind.


"You have a plan here, hot shot?" Barney asked as he crouched next to Clint on the rooftop of the building next to the police station almost an hour after his conversation with Phil. It had been slow going across the city, since he'd had to stop several times in the shadows of an alley to ride out waves of pain. He'd also been followed intermittently by various victims of the contracts he'd taken back in the day.

It was taking him longer each time to remember that they weren't real.

"I'm not talking to you anymore."

Clint chose not to acknowledge that that was talking to him. Chose not to acknowledge that Barney still seemed as real as he had before Coulson's pep talk.

"Why because your friend told you I wasn't real?" Barney scoffed. "I told you before, baby bro, I'm real to you, just not to anyone else."

Clint studiously ignored him, keeping his eyes pinned on the building next to his perch. He'd arrived only fifteen minutes ago, in time to watch a black car pull away from the curb in front of the police station. It was a statement to how muddled his thoughts were once again becoming that he hadn't paid much mind to the car or who it might be carrying away.

He heard a noise and shifted, watching the side door to the building open. A man stepped out and immediately lit up a cigarette. It's what Clint had been waiting for. That door had a heavy duty lock and his attempt to pick it had failed miserably because his hands wouldn't stop shaking.

"You gonna kill that guy?"

"No, Barney, I'm not going to kill him."

Clint wasn't sure why he wasn't going to kill him, maybe just to spite Barney, who seemed to take immense pleasure in reminding him that he was an assassin, who killed people for a living.

Of course, Barney wasn't really there, so it shouldn't have bothered him.

At the moment, in Clint's mind at least, that was neither here nor there.

As the man below him took a long drag on his cigarette, Clint made his way to the fire escape.

Under normal circumstances Clint was capable of making quick work of fire escapes. His ability to scramble down them like a monkey, Coulson's words not his, with no recognizable hitch in his balance, made them nothing but a momentary inconvenience for him.

Unfortunately, these were far from normal circumstances. Instead of climbing over the edge of the landings and dropping two stories at a time like he usually did, he had to stick to the ladders and the stairs. Even so he was forced to stop several times and just curl in on himself until the wave of debilitating pain passed. Then he would continue on his way, each time more slowly and more laboriously than before.

Finally he reached the ground and let the shadows of the alley swallow him up as he stealthily moved closer to the police station. He peeked carefully around the edge of the building and watched the man blow out a puff of smoke and then flick his spent cigarette to the ground, stepping on it with the toe of his boot.

Clint frowned. Had it really taken him that long to get down six stories?

"Either that guy smokes like a chimney, or it took you like six or seven minutes to get down six stories."

"Shut up, Barney," Clint grumbled.

He watched the man turn back to the door, pull it open and step back inside. That was when Clint moved. Just before the door closed, Clint managed to get his fingers around it.


"Hey!" Natasha yelled when she heard whoever had gone out the side door, two or three cells closer to the main area than where she was now, pull it open again. "Anyone? Hello!"

She heard someone snap something to whoever had just come back inside about going to shut her up and listened as footsteps approached her cell. She slumped into her chair, and fixed wide watery eyes on the cell door.

A man with red cheeks, a product of being outside in the cold, stepped into sight and glared at her.

"Quiet," he growled.

"Please," she whispered weakly. "I just need some water. I'm not asking you to let me go, I'm just so thirsty, please," she pleaded, blinking and letting a manufactured tear roll down her cheek. The man frowned.

"They will not allow it," he informed her with a quirk to his lips that almost looked apologetic.

She looked him up and down quickly.

"What's that?" she asked, flicking her eyes down to a flask on his hip.

"Not water," he grumbled.

"Can I have a sip?" She let another tear fall, "I'm so thirsty, please!"

He twisted his mouth in indecision and looked back down the hallway.

"Please!" she pleaded.

"Just be quiet," he snapped, shaking his head again and reaching for the keys on his belt. He pushed his way into the cell and made his way carefully to her side, pulling his flask off his hip. He carefully held it to her lips and let her drink for a moment.

Natasha smiled and shook her hair out of her face.

"Do you think you check the bullet wound, maybe apply just a little bit of pressure?"

She just needed to get him a little closer.

"She told us to leave you," the man denied.

Natasha opened her mouth to convince him when movement behind her visitor caught her eye. She smirked suddenly and he frowned at her. Natasha's weak and terrified expression disappeared in the time it took him to shift his expression. His eyes widened at her new, stone cold and deadly glare, taking a step backwards.

A blade suddenly flashed over the man's shoulders and tore across his throat. In the next moment Clint was visible, lowering the body silently to the ground.

"Well I didn't kill him out there, did I?" Clint snapped in a harsh whisper over his shoulder. Natasha frowned, leaning to see if there was someone there.

There wasn't.

"Clint?"

"Shut up or they'll hear you."

Natasha's frown deepened. Clint wasn't talking to her. Wasn't even looking at her. Was retrieving the keys off the dead officer and talking to someone over his shoulder. Someone that was apparently invisible.

He was suddenly focused on her and moving in her direction as if the imaginary conversation hadn't happened.

"Tasha, Jesus…"

His hand came to brush feather light against her swollen jaw, she couldn't hide her wince. It took longer than it should have for Clint to put it together, she worried at the slow processing time as he stared at her, his brow furrowed as he took in the state of her jaw.

"What a pair we make, huh?" he finally sighed with a weak grin.

She had to smile a little at that as he started freeing her ankles and wrists.

What a pair indeed.

She watched him closely as he worked at the handcuffs, his hands fumbling uncharacteristically. His normally healthily tanned skin was pale and covered in a sheen of sweat, despite the icy temperatures outside. He was wearing sunglasses, even though the light inside was minimal.

She flinched when his scar roughened hands ghosted across her abused shins.

"Jesus…" he whispered again, his tone a mixture of horror and absolute anger, "I'll kill the bitch."

He started to rise, maybe to attempt to do just that, but Natasha reached out with a newly freed hand to pull him back down. Not only was Moreno not here anymore, had been gone for over twenty minutes now, but if Clint just waltzed up to the front of this place he'd get turned to Swiss cheese in a second. She'd heard Moreno barking orders about leaving men here. There were probably at least two dozen men waiting at the front for her to die.

"I'll be okay," she assured, concerned about his recklessness and that he hadn't noticed the bullet wound yet. Clint noticed everything. "I need you to help me bandage this so I can try and stop the bleeding."

He stared at her for a moment. Then he looked down at her thigh. And finally he spurred into movement, shrugging out of his jacket and pulling off his long sleeved black shirt, leaving him in his Under Armour. He helped her tie it tightly around her bullet wound. It wouldn't have to do for now, until they could get a real pressure bandage.

She watched him quickly pull his jacket back on, shivering even though she could see sweat beaded on his skin.

She froze when Clint suddenly went rigid, turning to look at the emptiness of the cell to his left.

"Clint?"

He surged backwards suddenly, scrambling back in a crab walk until his back slammed hard against the concrete wall that had been to his right.

"No," he pleaded abruptly in a horrified whisper. "Barney, don't!"

Natasha's eyes widened when his hands suddenly grasped at a spot on his upper right chest. A spot she knew was home to an old knife scar. It took her barely a moment to put it together. She quickly levered herself out of her chair and moved towards him, her leg nearly going out from under her in her haste.

"Clint!" she hissed in a whisper. "He's not real! He's not here," she insisted in a harsh whisper. She caught his jaw in one hand and pulled off the sunglasses with the other, forcing his wildly dilated eyes to meet hers. "He's not real, Clint! I'm real! Look at me!" she pleaded when his eyes shifted away, looking at something over her shoulder.

"Barney…"

She could only describe his tone as the look in his eyes when he had dreamed of his brother put into sound. It was heart wrenching and tortured, full of pain and despair. She hated it immediately and never wanted to hear it again.

"Clint!" she hissed again, casting a glance towards the hall outside her cell. She didn't hear anyone coming to investigate yet. She looked back at Clint, felt the heat of a fever beneath her hands, saw the wild confusion in his eyes.

She didn't the only thing she could think of to get him back to reality.

She kissed him.

He froze and she pulled back. He was watching her and she could tell by the terrified confusion in his eyes that he was back with her.


Clint had managed to forget about Barney when he saw Natasha. He'd managed to forget about everything else as he took in the damage done to her. He lightly brushed his fingers against her swollen jaw. It took him several moments to pull the pieces together, his mind moving more sluggishly than normal.

He should have been concerned when he didn't notice how long that took. But he wasn't.

"What a pair we make, huh?" he sighed.

She smiled slightly, watching him closely as he got to work on the handcuffs holding her captive. Fine tremors shook his hands, making him fumble with the keys he'd taken off the officer. Making it take longer than it should have to free her.

His eyes focused on the harsh bruises and abrasions on her legs.

"Jesus…" he gasped feeling a wave of anger wash over him as the horror of her abuse sunk in. "I'll kill the bitch," he hissed. He started to rise, maybe to seek Moreno out right now. He wasn't sure. He wasn't sure of anything but the fact that Natasha was hurt. That Moreno had hurt her.

"I'll be okay," she insisted, pulling him back down. "I need you to help me bandage this so I can try and stop the bleeding."

He stared at her for a long moment, wondering what she was talking about. Then he registered the blood pooled on the floor and tracked it to her thigh. It took another moment before he reached to pull of his jacket and then his black shirt. He helped her tie the makeshift bandage around the bullet wound. The bitch had shot her and left her to bleed to death.

"We offered to cut you in, Clint, but you just had to be a little bitch about it."

Clint froze, turning his head slowly to look at Barney, who was leaning against the cell wall to his left.

"Clint?" he heard Natasha's voice, but it didn't quite register as he stared at the knife in his brother's hand.

"Why'd you have to make me do this, Clint?" Barney stepped towards him. "Why couldn't you just keep your mouth shut and join us?" He lunged forward and Clint scrambled backwards, only stopping when his back cracked painfully into the wall. Barney pursued him.

"No," he pleaded, "Barney, don't!"

But Barney ignored his pleas and brought the knife down into his Clint's chest. Clint gasped and moved his hands to the knife, feeling the pain of the blade and the warm blood suddenly running a river down his chest. It was suddenly hard to breathe.

"Clint!" Natasha was suddenly in front of him. "He's not real! He's not here," she insisted. Her hand locked around his jaw and his sunglasses were ripped away. Pain sliced through his head. She forced his eyes to meet hers. He saw Barney shift closer and moved his eyes to watch him. "He's not real, Clint! I'm real! Look at me!"

"I'm sorry, Baby Bro. But I've got to look out for myself now…"

"Barney…" he begged brokenly, he wasn't sure what he was begging for. His brother not to leave him here to die. His brother not to have betrayed him. But Barney was just staring at him. He didn't hear Natasha call his name again.

He wasn't aware of anything but pain, spreading from the knife wound on his chest across and down to his abdomen, locking up every muscle.

Then suddenly there were lips on his and everything faded away, even Barney, even the pain.

He blinked and Natasha was there. Face bruised and bloody, jaw swollen and discolored. His beautiful fiery spider was there, pulling him back to reality.

"Natasha." He whispered her name like a prayer. Hoping she could do something, anything to help him. To keep him from coming apart. He couldn't separate it anymore. He couldn't even force himself not to react to Barney. Couldn't find the presence of mind to remember he wasn't real. He was losing his grip on reality. He could feel it happening and he couldn't stop it.

"I'm right here," she promised, shifting one of her hands subtly to press her fingers into the pulse point on his neck. His pulse was easy to find, it was pumping too hard and way too fast.

He hesitated as he stared at her.

"You're real, right?" He had to ask. He needed the assurance. Because Barney had felt just as real for the past seven hours.

Natasha didn't know what to say for a moment, the question was so unexpected. She could see the pain in his eyes, the confusion and the fear. He honestly wasn't sure and it broke her heart a little.

"Yes, мой сокол, I'm real," she assured. "We need to go." (my hawk)

He nodded and pushed himself to his feet, letting her lean on him to take weight off her wounded leg. They'd made it to the cell door when the spasm hit. Cramping pain tore through his abdomen like a blade and he gasped, falling to his knees. Natasha nearly fell with him, but kept her balance with by a grip on the cell bars.

"Clint?" she gripped his shoulder in concern. He tried to stand, she watched his trembling hand wrap around the bars in a white knuckled grip. Bless his stubborn heart, he tried. But she could see it in his posture the moment the muscles in his back suddenly locked up. He lost his grip on the bars, curling in on himself with a groan.

Natasha thought quickly, she limped to the dead guard and yanked his gun out of its holster and made her way back to the door. She peeked out of the cell just as a man came around the corner from the main room, no doubt in search of their wayward officer. She had hoped she would have the element of surprise. Luck, it seemed, had continued to elude her.

He stared at her.

She stared at him.

She fired twice. Both bullets ripped into his chest and he fell. Natasha scrambled back into the cell as three more men came around the corner, guns already up. She watched the bullets crack into the concrete wall beyond her cell. She grabbed Clint's bicep, dragging him to the right side of the cell, where he'd be protected from any gun fire.

He seemed to be coming out of whatever had happened to him, because he uncurled and braced himself on his hands and knees. He heard the footsteps approaching the cell the same as Natasha did. He pulled his own side arm as he forced himself to straighten.

"Okay?" she breathed.

"For now," he assured. "On three."

She nodded.

"One, two, three."

They both moved and leaned out the open cell door, Clint took the floor and Natasha gripped the bars with one hand to stay on her feet. Clint killed two men with four bullets. Natasha killed two more with three. Half a dozen more men came around the corner. Natasha fired once and then her gun clicked empty.

"Seriously?" she scowled, ducking back into the cell. What kind of police officer didn't keep his gun fully loaded?

She watched Clint fire off the rest of his rounds to take down the six men. Then he cursed and crawled back towards her.

"How bad is your vision?" she demanded. Because there was no way he was seeing normally if it took more than six shots to kill six men.

"It's just blurry."

The way he was pressing his palms against his eyes, suggested he was dealing with more than just blurry vision.

"Clint, how bad is it?" she asked quietly.

He uncovered his eyes and squinted at her, the meager light of the cell too much.

"It's bad."

That he admitted it scared Natasha more than anything else. Clint was tough. Clint could always "take it". But now Clint was shaking, having to fire more than once to kill someone, and seeing things that weren't there. She watched his head turn suddenly to look at something to his left.

Clint frowned at the sudden appearance of Marcus McGuire, a man he'd been contracted to kill seven years ago. Marcus moved towards him, raving angrily at Clint for murdering him. Clint couldn't take his eyes off the arrow protruding from the man's heart.

Natasha looked to where he had suddenly focused his attention.

There was nothing there.

Before she could tell him that, she heard footsteps approaching. She stood, careful to keep her weight on her good leg, and waited. When the first one came into view, she reached through the bars, grabbed his gun and used his moment of shock to slam it back into his nose. Then she stripped it from his hand and fired into his chest. She pulled the gun back through the bars, firing as she moved and once she was through the cell door, she attacked.

She kept it simple.

She snapped the first man's neck with her hands and a sharp twist. As he fell, she used him as a platform to launch herself at the next man. She wrapped her legs around his neck and twisted her body towards the ground. She nearly cried out at the fiery pain that ripped through her thigh, but the man's neck broke and she forced herself to stay focused. From her position on the ground, she slammed her elbow into the side of a man's knee, forcing it inwards. She used a fistful of his uniform to pull herself up and then snapped his neck with her hands. A hand landed on her shoulder. She grabbed it and spun, twisting the limb and hearing bones crack. The man had turned with her movement, but it wasn't enough. She twisted his arm out of socket and ran him into the bars face first. He fell with a thud.

She turned at the sound of a gun cocking.

A man had slipped past her, was standing just ahead of the cell door, pointing a gun at her.

Then suddenly Clint was there, pulled back to reality by some sixth sense that told him his spider was in danger.

He grabbed the man's gun hand. He twisted up and backwards, forcing the man's elbow to point straight up even as Clint stripped the gun from his hand. Then Clint's other elbow was snapping into the man's cheek, quickly followed by a sharp knee to his solar plexus. The man stumbled back and Clint fired the gun, upside down, using his pinky on the trigger.

Natasha was already moving. She gathered every gun she could find and pushed Clint back into the cell, just in time to avoid the barrage of gunfire at their backs. They flattened themselves against the wall and waited for it to stop.

When it finally did, silence reigned for a moment.

"We have many men. Surrender now or we will be forced to attack."

Natasha arched an eyebrow. That sounded like one of Moreno's lieutenants that had taken joyful part in her interrogation.

"Well we have a lot of guns. So if you wanna give it a shot," she paused, let them get a look at the pile of bodies outside the cell, "go for it."

She heard them talking fiercely amongst themselves the forefront of the conversation being 'when had she become we', but her attention was diverted when Clint suddenly gasped and slid down the wall into a hunched ball. She fought the urge to tend to him immediately and quickly tuned back in to the conversation down the hall. She heard Moreno's lieutenant's voice demand for someone to get Moreno on the phone.

Satisfied that they had a few minutes at least, she turned to Clint and lowered herself onto the ground beside him.

"Clint? We're in the clear for a few minutes," she informed him. He nodded jerkily, hands pressed into his eyes. "Have you been able to call in?"

He nodded again.

Hope soared through her.

"What time is it?" he asked shakily.

She twisted the watch on his wrist so she could see it.

"Almost ten."

"Two hours."

"What?"

"Coulson will be here in two hours," he sighed wearily, suddenly seeming to completely drain of energy. She caught him before he could completely collapse and guided his head to her unwounded thigh. She carefully traced her fingers through his hair, swallowing back the worry that bubbled up at the heat he was giving off. She watched fine tremors race through his body and he squeezed his eyes shut as another pain rocked through his abdomen.

She winced as her thigh pulled painfully. She shifted it and frowned as blood seeped out through her soaked make shift bandage.

Two hours.

She was suddenly terrified neither of them had that long.


"How much longer?" Phil snapped as he hovered over the pilot's shoulder.

"Less than two hours till we touch down."

Phil paced away to the back of the jet, scrubbing a hand down his face.

They were running out of time. He could feel it.

"We'll find them, Phil," Todd assured quietly.

Coulson couldn't bring himself to accept the attempt at comfort. Not when it had been an hour since he'd last talked to Clint. Not when he didn't know what state Natasha would be in when they found her or if she was even still alive. Not when he didn't know if Clint would even survive whatever he'd been injected with. Not when he stood to lose the single most important person in his life and also someone who was rapidly becoming the second most important person in his life.

He couldn't think about anything but them. Clint and Natasha.

"I want everyone geared up and ready to move as soon as our wheels hit the tarmac."

"Yes sir!" the men chorused.

He continued pacing.

He was going to be in time. He had to be in time. He wouldn't lose them, not after everything they'd all gone through to get to this point.

He had to be in time.


End of Chapter 7

Yikes! Will Phil be in time?! WILL HE?! You'll find out tomorrow! :D

Reviews bring a smile to my face!

Preview!


"Your leg."

He said it like he had only just thought of it.

She frowned. Had he forgotten that she'd been shot? That he'd helped her bandage the wound. He was suddenly rolling to his hands and knees, shifting to lean over her and inspect the sluggishly bleeding wound.

"What happened?"

Her frown deepened.

"I got shot."

But he was already supposed to know that.