"Clint! C'mon, it's movie night!" Anise called from the living room. She was munching on the microwave popcorn while she leafed through a pile of Tony's various DVDs.
They had agreed to have movie nights after two or three days of training, just to break up the monotony of bow and arrow practice. All in all, Anise wasn't an awful shooter, but at the same time, she still needed a lot of practice. She could hit the targets with more consistency, but her arm suffered every time, as it was at that moment, even though Clint had given her two arm guards to protect from the backlash of the bow. Thinking back to the last practice, she rubbed her arm and hissed under her breath.
"One second!" The toilet flushed and not before long, Clint appeared in the living room. "So what'd you pick?"
"Well, since you haven't seen Fight Club or Forrest Gump before, I think we should watch one of those. You pick-"She held up the two movies in question and moved to the couch for him to decide which they would watch. After a careful decision, they decided to watch both, starting with Forrest Gump.
Although Clint thought Forrest Gump was a little too sappy for his tastes, he kind of liked it. He liked Bubba especially, and for some reason, he reminded him a bit of Coulson. They were both two selfless characters in the wrong place at the wrong time. But then again, Coulson wouldn't be one to want to own a shrimp company.
After the movie was over, Anise pulled out the disc and set in the DVD for Fight Club. While Clint read the description on the back cover, Anise got up, muttering something about getting more popcorn.
The whole time he was waiting, he felt the atmosphere change to a dull chill. His senses felt heightened by the seemingly-colder air, and he couldn't help but to stay on his guard, even though he had no clue as to what he was trying to protect himself from.
He had a vague idea what it was when he heard a glass crash in the kitchen.
Anise flicked through the various beverage choices in Tony Stark's fridge with a look of dismay. She couldn't decide on a cherry Pepsi or a Sprite, and since she couldn't pick one or the other, she settled for mixing the two in her own kind of combination. As she set the two sodas on the counter, she couldn't help but feel someone watching her. She froze in the best deer-in-the-headlights pose she could muster, but she heard nothing. Not like she could tell anyways-the trailers playing on the TV were muffling the disturbed silence.
Returning back to her drink, she opened one of the upper pantry cabinets and pulled out a glass, only to turn around and drop it with a sickening crack on the floor.
Standing a mere two feet away from her was a figure in a full black jumpsuit. The intruder was obviously a woman by the way her curves were outlined in the spandex of the suit and by the way her lips were a bloody red, but Anise couldn't pick out any more details before she lunged at her throat. The woman's cold fingers grasped her neck in a strangle as Anise's head slammed against the kitchen counter. Anise tried flipping the woman off of her, but she obviously had more training in self-defense and martial arts than what Anise had been working on over the past three weeks. She could barely breathe or make any sense of what was going on, why all of this was happening.
The woman snickered as she released some of the grasp on her throat to pull out a knife from a random back pocket. She held it against her skin before she began to speak. "My client assured me that you were a high priority to kill, so I figured you would be a bit of a challenge-I didn't expect you to go down so easy."
Even though she took somewhat of an offense at her words, something clicked in her mind when she heard the word "client". "What client? Who are you working for?"
"Nobody you need to worry about, sweetheart-not like you'll be seeing him anytime soon." Her accent was vaguely British, but possibly Scottish, Anise couldn't decipher which. The mystery woman traced the blade's edge across her skin, which only made Anise even more nervous. "I'll make it easy and painless, I promise."
"Anise!" Clint's voice was close and before she could understand how close it was, he pulled the mystery woman by her long brown hair and threw her across the room. He helped Anise up as quickly as possible, but the woman was fast, and certainly motivated to finish her job. She attacked Clint with a well-aimed fist, hitting him in the eye. He took the hit but didn't falter, instead giving a similar blow to her gut, where she clenched over in pain. Taking a few deep breaths, she stood up and looked at them both with a hard stare. Her breathing became heavy and ragged, like an insane wolf of some sorts.
"I won't have you bloody Americans get in the way of my money!" She hissed. In one solid move, the knife flew from her wrist and landed in Anise's side. She crumbled to the ground in an instant. Clint was on his toes though, acting unfazed as he quickly moved and smashed the woman's head against the marble counter, which created quite a break in her skull. In seconds, blood gushed from her temple and she was tracing the thin strand between life and death as she fell on the floor again. Leaning against the counter for support as she began to die, she didn't move, but instead, she only spoke a few words, in a hoarse whisper. "I wasn't supposed to die like this." Her eyes looked at Clint with a lost, glazed over look. When they fixed on Clint, the first thing he thought was that they were the same color as Loki's eyes.
"You should've thought about that before you agreed to kill someone, then."
Almost saddened by the sight of the woman, Clint took her own knife and put it through her heart. She did nothing, as she realized she couldn't avoid the inevitable any longer. She was smiling when she died, which only seemed to haunt Clint even more.
"Anise, you alright?" He was still staring at the woman in front of him, wondering how he was supposed to clean up such a mess. "Anise? It's okay, she's dead. Anise-"When he turned around, he could barely breathe. Still crumpled up on the floor, Anise was holding her side and looked as if she was shaking.
He knelt down immediately, still in shock and still trying to realize what was going on. "Anise! Anise, just stay with me."
"Clint?" She looked up at his face, which was now a sort of grimace. He couldn't stop staring at her face, covered in all that blood. There was a small amount trickling down from her temple and some leaking from the corner of her mouth. She coughed, and more blood came up on the corners of her lips.
"I'm right here, it's alright. JARVIS, call 911!"
"They're on their way, sir."
"Anise, can you hear me?"
"…Yeah." She was still shaking, but not as badly now.
"I need to get the knife out of your side."
"What? No!"
"It'll make some of the pain go away, and we can't risk any infection. It'll only take a second, alright?"
"But it…hurts." She could barely muster speaking, as everything she said was close to a whisper. She coughed up some more blood, which only further stained Clint's bloody shirt.
"Just trust me. You trust me, right?"
"Yeah."
"Good. I need you to get your hands off the knife then, alright?" With slow understanding, she lifted her hands off the handle of the knife and gripped Clint's outstretched arm tightly. Both her hands were clammy and cold, to his dismay. In one quick movement, he pulled the knife out and set it to the side, covering up the wound with a kitchen towel. Her breathing became heavier and she was gripping his arm so tightly that her knuckles were a ghostly white.
"It's okay Anise, the ambulance is on their way, you're gonna be okay." He was wiping her forehead with her sweatshirt sleeves, but she didn't seem to sense the movement. Her eyelids were half closed as she focused on his face.
"Who are you…talking to?"
He looked back at the girl. "What do you mean?"
"Are you…telling yourself or...are you telling…me?" He paused, leaning back and thinking slowly on her words. Was he trying to reassure her or himself? The way he talked, the way he was panicky and flighty, it almost seemed like he didn't even know the outcome himself. She seemed reassured about what was going to happen, and whether it was a good or bad ending in her mind, he couldn't tell.
Shaking his head, he returned to wiping blood and sweat off where he could. "Not now, Anise. Just stay with me, alright?"
"I'm…trying."
"Sir, the ambulance is outside."
"Let 'em in, JARVIS."
The front door slammed open and in an instant, a large group of medical officers and paramedics were swarming to Anise's side, lifting her up on the gurney in what seemed like seconds. They looked over the intruder's body, only confirming what Clint knew. He ignored the questioning police officers and followed the trail of paramedics to the ambulance.
"Sorry sir, only immediate family is allowed." One of them tried pushing Clint away, but he found his way back up to the front of the crowd.
"Well, I'm the only immediate family she has."
The one he had addressed earlier lowered his glasses and looked him up and down in careful examination. "Sir, I understand you're worried about this girl's welfare but-"
"I'm her father, now can I get a ride?" Clint crossed his arms over his chest and narrowed his eyes at the small paramedic. He was hoping his poor lying skills could get him through, just this once. He was mustering all the effort he could put into the lying techniques Natasha had taught him in their spare time.
With a sigh, the man stepped into the vehicle and made as much room as he could. "Just try not to interfere too much, sir." He muttered, with a vain emphasis on the 'sir'.
Clint wasted no time, sitting down in the chilly vehicle in the furthest corner of the ambulance as the paramedics did their best to fix what they could before she would go into surgery. The whole way there, his mind was racing, his heart beating to another person's clock. Questions filled every crevice of his mind, leaving him on the edge and unable to calm down, no matter how hard he tried. Who was that woman? Why was she hired to kill Anise? Who was planning all of this? Why now? Why Anise? What was so special about this girl that someone had her on their hit list?
"Clint?" Anise's voice was a hoarse whisper. Her breathing was deep again, but this time supported by the oxygen mask she was wearing.
"I'm right here, kid."
She smiled under the plastic cover over her mouth. "Are you...alright?"
He couldn't help but to laugh to himself. She was still smiling, and even one of the paramedics was grinning under his mask. "After all of that, you're worried about me?"
"Well, you look kind of…sad."
"Don't worry about me, I'm just fine. Get some sleep."
She laughed again as he sat down next to her. If the paramedics were bothered by Clint's presence, they didn't make an effort to say anything. They worked as if he wasn't even there, which seemed almost true, because of how quiet the marksman was the entire ride. Anise was asleep in almost seconds, but Clint was wide awake, making sure she was still breathing.
On the inside, he felt that he only had himself to blame. He hadn't kept a more careful eye, he hadn't checked the security cameras more, and he hadn't done any of the things he should normally be doing. He let his guard down for once, and he almost lost Anise because of it. Would he lose his job because of this? No, he couldn't-he had too much of a ranking and things didn't turn out as bad as they could have, so he would be alright. Or would he? He looked at Anise again-her face was a pale white, almost ghostly in the bright ambulance lights. Her forehead had a thin layer of sweat and her muscles looked tense and strained, even though she was sleeping. Looking at her made him feel even guiltier, and made him realize how much more seriously he needed to take this mission. Whoever was after Anise was certainly serious about getting what they wanted.
Stroking a few stray hairs out of her face, he rubbed her forehead and returned to his original post in the corner. He made a quiet promise to himself as he waited, telling himself that he wouldn't let any harm come to this girl, even if it meant certain death.