This chapter's a bit on the short side, but I hope you enjoy it regardless! C:
Disclaimer: I do not own the Avengers or any characters associated with them.
Underneath the shuttered expression of blankness his eyes were veiled with, Clint felt a pang of guilt and fear rip through his side as the door slammed closed behind him. He trusted his partner to understand, but that didn't mean she would be happy with him. The instant he'd seen the guns, seen the woman, he knew something had gone wrong. His mind moved faster than a freight train as it whirred and processed to figure out just where they had gone wrong.
He stood confidently, though his mind raced for an explanation. Maybe he should've thought this through more carefully. Maybe he should've accounted for the unexpected. Maybe it went wrong because he was weak.
The woman strode up to him, interrupting his thought process before it could delve down that depressing path. She smiled sweetly, like a venomous snake poised to strike and he felt his muscles involuntarily tense in preparation for attack, hands tightening around the handle of the gun.
"You have come a long way," She purred, her English near flawless.
"Have I?" He asked, no emotion shining through the question.
"Do not think me an idiot. I know who you are, Hawkeye," She said silkily.
Clint made no move to show his surprise when she recognized him, but arched an eyebrow in faux confusion.
"Hawkeye?" He asked. "I believe you have me mixed up with someone else."
The woman laughed, a mocking sarcastic notion, and sidled closer to him. "Oh, do not play games with me, Hawkeye. SHEILD tried to pull all the footage of you from the broadcasts, but some slipped through the cracks."
Stiffening slightly, Clint quickly hid away any impression that she was right. Obviously, that had been what Jacob had obtained for her, recordings that shouldn't have existed in the first place. His grip on the gun tightened a bit more as she sidled closer. He eyed the others in the room, all seemed prepared for him, each holding a gun close by. He could eliminate plenty before they even realized he was firing, but there was no way he could get rid of them all without getting killed himself.
Besides, he needed to know how this woman knew who he was. Despite the recordings, neither his nor Natasha's names had ever been mentioned and they'd been able to expertly stay under the radar of the media ever since joining the Avengers. So how had this strange woman discovered his name, and more importantly, did she know Natasha's?
His gaze hardened as she purred in his ear again, the hilt of a knife grazing against his arm. "Where is the Widow?"
Well, apparently she did know Natasha's name and seemed more focused on his partner than on him. A protective instinct welled up from the pits of his heart and he glared at the woman before him. This woman was after his partner, after his best friend. He would not give so easily that which was most precious to him. She chuckled, drawing back.
"My apologies, I have yet to introduce myself," she said smoothly with a slight bow. "I am Isabelle Kortkoff, and I have unfinished business with the Widow."
Clint arched an eyebrow, hoping his partner was listening in from the other side of the door. They both knew what the 'unfinished business' meant.
It meant their dripping ledgers were coming back to haunt them.
"What unfinished business?" He inquired, letting his grip on the gun shift tighter.
She sneered, straightening. A burning passion flicked to life in her eyes, a passion fueled by hate and vengeance. Clint had seen that passion enough times to recognize it anywhere and he took note of how she made no notion to veil or hide any of her emotions.
"She killed my sister," Isabelle hissed. "And only now have I been able to find her killer."
The archer tried to swallow the thick lump that had suddenly formed in his throat, trying to ignore the sinking feeling in his stomach. That was what was wrong. Haydes had been killed for more reason than his usefulness ending. This woman had wanted to get SHEILD's attention and the drugs she produced as well as the murder were enough for the two most highly skilled agents to be deployed. She knew they were coming, had been counting on it even. What she didn't realize though, was that he wasn't alone.
She believed Natasha wasn't here. She believed his partner was nowhere near. That was a positive in the situation, he supposed, and it was one he intended to keep that way.
The woman edged closer again, the blade in her hand glinting with the bright lights. "Where is she?" She hissed again, a snarl ending her words.
Clint's finger drifted to the trigger, knowing if he didn't deliver the information she sought, the woman would probably try to kill him. 'Try' being the key word.
But for now, he had to play along. The others in the room seemed to sense the imminent confrontation, stilling in their work and reaching for their respective weapons.
"You must not know me well enough," The marksman breathed as she drew even closer. She looked like she wanted nothing more than to drive the dagger through his heart and he wanted nothing more than to do the same, but with an ebony arrow. He chose his next words carefully, hoping that his partner had caught on by now. "Where the Hawk goes, the Widow follows."
There was all of two seconds of silence, before the words seemed to sink in. It was half a second after that did an explosion rock the floor, shoving everyone but the one who had been expecting it to the ground.
Yeah, Natasha had caught on.
Natasha leaned against the cold metal, trying to press her ear even farther into the door as if it could increase her already remarkable eavesdropping abilities.
"…unfinished business with the Widow."
It was in that moment that she realized what her Hawk had seen that she hadn't. He had seen an underlying animosity within a woman she herself had not even noticed and had had the sense to keep her away.
But now that animosity was turning from her to him and she had to find a way to shift it. She glanced over the quiver he had left with her, eyeing the explosive tipped arrow heads he had packed for the destruction of the drug lab.
She smirked, realizing her partner's foresight and swiveled her head around, searching for an air vent. Spying one underneath the metal staircase, she pulled the cover off and pushed the quiver and bow in before her. Groaning inwardly at the dress she wore, she slid into the vent and replaced the cover just as footsteps cascaded from above.
Pushing herself through the metal tunnel, Natasha went in what she could only guess was the general direction of the drug lab. Thankfully within a few moments, she saw the light of the lab cascade in from a grate ahead. Edging towards it, she heard the faint whispers of words that carried the sound of her partner's voice filter in through the vent cover.
"You must not know me well enough."
The lithe spy snapped the bow open within the generously large vent as she reached the source of the light. The slots in the grate were just big enough to fit an arrow head through. Slipping an explosive tipped arrow from the quiver she nocked it and pulled the string taut.
"Where the Hawk goes, the Widow follows."
Natasha had good aim, arguably better than most, but it was no match for her partner's. However, she hadn't had quite as much practice with a bow as Clint did, and her aim was off by quite a bit.
It was a good thing all she needed to do was figuratively hit the broad side of a barn.
For a few agonizingly long moments, there was silence and her heart dropped as she realized it might not have worked; that she had grabbed the wrong arrow, that her aim was much worse than she had thought, that she had not triggered it correctly.
Those thoughts were shaken away, however, as a large explosion shook the foundation and everyone but Clint was thrown to the ground.
They both took advantage of the sudden confusion and rising dust. Clint jerked the gun up from where he had been holding it, firing three shots as three bodies fell. Natasha kicked the cover off and jumped out, throwing the archer his bow and quiver and whipping out her own gun before anyone could blink.
The next few minutes were the very definition of chaos.
Bullets punctured the air and flew in all directions as arrows ripped across the room and embedded themselves in the hearts of the enemy. Both assassins ended up behind the same metal table, downing their enemies one by one from behind their cover. They worked as a unit, their movements coinciding without a second thought. When they fought together, they fought as one, and when they fought as one, they became the most deadly team the world had never seen.
For they would never be seen. They would remain in the safety of anonymousness, never to be recognized for their heroics or for their deeds. But that was good enough for them, for the simple chance to wipe clean a ledger that was stained so deeply with red. They didn't need recognition. Frankly, they didn't want it. They enjoyed being the unsung heroes; the unnamed and unrecognized. That was how they had always lived before, and that was how they would live now.
They would live as the nameless shadows that protected those that could not protect themselves.
There was a piercing scream of pain as one of the men seemed to have been punctured by a piece of glass and the deadly serum he had been working on seeped into his bloodstream.
Clint noticed the liquid underneath them and immediately pushed himself up off the floor, careful to not touch the fluid. The lithe spy beside him seemed to notice as well, and kept her distance from the wet surface. One could never be too careful when in a lab used to design lethal drugs.
Two arrows. Two Bodies.
As the archer whirled around to fire another arrow into an enemy whose location he'd only identified within a second, a burning pain shot through his arm and he hissed at the stinging ache that settled from the wound. He leaned against the table, glancing at his arm. The jacket was ripped at his upper arm and stained red. He didn't bother looking further. He knew when he'd been shot. It had occurred more often than he'd like.
It was a pain he'd quickly learned to ignore.
Four shots. Two bodies.
A clanging noise echoed form the stairs outside, the chaos having alerted those above. Natasha threw it a worried glance. The last thing they needed was either backup for the enemy or innocents getting in the way. Or worse, hostages.
The archer shared her worry, also hearing the clanging, and kicked a wooden chair towards the pair of doors. It clattered against the steel door, bouncing up and over the knobs, preventing it from being opened. The lithe spy smirked at her comrade's aim, even being able to kick a chair so it locked a door from several yards away.
One shot. One body.
The gunfire began to slow as the men fell, Isabelle yelling at them all as she took cover. They had overturned their own tables, using them as their own cover. Clint chanced a glance from where he crouched, merely to confirm what he had seen before. He smirked when he saw the forgotten tanks of oxygen lying behind them.
He signaled to Natasha, who lowered her gun and nodded. Nocking what was his last explosive arrow, the archer pulled the string taut, imagining where the tanks would be when he would have to whirl out from behind the cover. In one fluid movement, Clint spun out from behind the table, let go of the arrow, and was back behind it before the enemy could blink.
Grabbing his partner, they both ran to the opposite wall, their hands over their heads. A loud explosion rocked the ground, scattering dust and debris all across the room.
One arrow. Five bodies.
Coughing, the two assassins pushed themselves up from where the blast had knocked them down. Glancing around the room, Clint mentally counted the bodies. He hissed under his breath as he stalked around the room, double counting and triple counting.
"What's wrong?" She asked, her voice sounding course. Her dress looked tattered and was covered in dirt, her face marred by a cut across her cheek from flying debris.
"Isabelle," The archer muttered, looking up to meet her eyes, an equally deep cut on his forehead from the same reason.
Walking closer, Natasha arched an eyebrow, scanning the room herself. "What about her?"
He ran a hand through his hair. "She's gone," He murmured, the veil in his eyes lifting for a fraction of a second to reveal the concern lying underneath. He frantically overturned rubble, desperately searching for a body that wasn't there. The woman that wanted his partner dead was gone and they didn't know where. His heart skipped a beat as memories flashed to the surface of his mind; memories of being hunted, of the maniacal laughter of a man echoed through his mind. He had already gone through that, he didn't want Natasha to have to as well. Even if she had already endured it, once was one time too many to be the prey of a hunter.
Suddenly the door swung open, the chair that had locked it cracking under the pressure, and they jerked around, instinctively cocking and nocking their respective weapons.
Desmond stood in the doorway, a look of surprise and underlying amusement playing on his features as he held his hands up. Clint visibly relaxed at the sight of his friend, but Natasha remained wary.
"When you said a party," Desmond said, motioning to the rubble, "I did not think this is what you meant."
Okay, I'm fairly against using OC's in stories, and the whole revenge trope is kinda overdone, but this is what was planned for this story for a good while, so I'm going with it. I hope you guys like it despite Isabelle. :3
Thanks for reading and bearing with my odd updates! As always, reviews and constructive criticisms are appreciated!