Okay guys, this is where things get a little weird...

Clint was down.

The bullet had pierced though the right of his abdomen, and he groaned as he sank further to the floor.

Natasha surveyed her options. But there weren't many, not many at all, and although she knew better to panic, she realised that she could not free them both from this mess. She could carry him - it wouldn't be hard - but she could not run with both of them back the way they had entered the building. There were not many of them blocking the way to the hotel room. Not many, however, could soon become too much. And then there was Thomas.

She didn't want to leave him.

The spy took down the four guards at the door with relative ease and then made her way back to Barton. He complained incoherently as she worked quickly around him, forcing him to press down onto his wound. Blood seeped out from under his hand.

"Come on, Hawkeye." she rasped as she lifted him up onto her shoulders. He winced from the pain and Natasha stumbled.

"Nat." the archer whispered in his discomfort.

"Shut up birdie."

She carried him further down the corridor, and although she did her best to ignore it, she could feel his blood sink into her clothing.

"Machine." he managed, his voice obscured by his obvious attempts to try and hide the pain. He was, after all, only human.

"12 minutes, yeah? Can't die on me." The fear in her voice was something she tried not to acknowledge - there was not much she could do with fear now. She had landed in the hotel room, and Clint slowly fell off her back. Nat moved his heavy hands again to the wound and pushed down on them until he scrunched up his face in pain. Blood soaking into her fingers, she then stood up, working swiftly at the machine to finish its assembly. When she had done, she fumbled around for the detonator, and when she had found it, she brought herself to her feet. The late evening sun, hearty in its English summer surrounding, fell softly onto her face.

Her focus drifted to Clint.

Clint, who was slumped against the wall.

Clint, who was bleeding out onto the floor.

Natasha looked away, the detonation device feeling heavy now in her hands. But she was perfectly capable of what she was about to do.

They both were.

"Well," she whispered, cocking her head to the side.

"'Till kingdom come."

The glass exterior of the hotel facing the apartment block shattered with the explosion.

Clint looked upwards and then down at his torso. Though the wound was still there, it seemed as though the bleeding had stopped, and even the pain was now not pulsing through his body. Around him, a white dome that left enough space for 5 of him, and in front of him, the woman that had launched him into it.

"Isn't there a control panel?" she asked, but her voice was warped, fuzzy almost. She looked lost as she spun in the enclosure, slight panic woven into her expression.

Clint's strength seemed to have returned to him, and he stood up with little effort.

"This isn't too bad." he muttered as he limped to her; the physical injury was, evidently, still an injury. She directed her attention to him and she looked him over, her eyes vaguely tear stained under the white light.

"Could use an exit." Natasha said as she walked to the edge of the dome. Clint was watching her eagerly, still amazed at how calm she appeared. He looked on as her fingers extended out to touch the outside of the enclosure. As she did so, the bright white of the wall flashed a violent purple, and she quickly took a step back. But, as Barton was noticing now, she seemed to be copying herself, repeating, with new Black Widows popping into existence around him.

"What -?" His sentence was cut off by the formation of more copies, and he found himself to be the one spinning now, just to observe them. They all moved in synchronised, choppy movements, a thousand different angles of the same thing throwing themselves at Clint.

"Nat!" he shouted in attempt to stop it, but the attempt had failure. The dome seemed to have expanded threefold, duplicate Natashas spreading for as far as his eye could see. They turned to face the archer with their orange hair cupping their centred faces. Each glared at him in a familiarly unfamiliar way, eyes like tunnels, scarily unblinking and eerily deep.

"Stop! Stop!" he shouted at the figures.

More clones generated, and Clint's distress throbbed through his heartbeat.

*i*

Natasha watched him carefully at the edge of the dome.

"Stop it!" Clint ordered, and it was like he was speaking to her even though he faced a different direction. She was unsure how to proceed. The whiteness of the enclosure prompted Nat to feel open, but she felt more and more that she was being pushed inwards. She took a few steps towards her companion, but he flinched backwards before she could reach him. Again, he was faced away from her.

"Make it stop!" he suddenly screeched, a fallen bird in an empty forest. The spy stumbled backwards as Clint ducked down and covered his ears. Although he sat alone, he curled up as if he were being watched by a thousand souls, and his face appeared anguished and shaken.

Natasha didn't want to get too close to him. Her feet glued her to the ground and she stood there, paralysed as her friend screamed. While he lived in a world of numbed pain, clones and sirens, she seemed to observe through but an empty cage. She was - she searched around in her head for the name of this feeling - scared. Properly, genuinely fearful. The last time she felt this was 3 years back in New York. And at least with Loki, they seemed to walk the same earth.

"Clint, you're scaring me." she said involuntarily. The archer looked up. He seemed to take a moment, but she was relieved to see some kind of reaction. Clint turned to her to speak, but suddenly the room was plunged into darkness. Blackness wove itself in and out of Natasha's head, a cloak settling on the world around her that made it hard to move and breathe. She felt suffocated by her blindness, and her eyes squeezed themselves shut to keep her focussed.

"Clint!" she called through the opaque veil. "You seeing this?"

Her words did not betray her feelings. Clint would answer, but he was suddenly lost for words - a recovery to the apparent attack he had just been subject to. He watched her in the bright light of the dome.

Nat tried to move; he felt something slither beside her and stopped.

"Hawkeye?" she said in as quiet a voice she could manage. The slithering thing seemed to bypass her heavy duty clothing and go straight over the skin - its scales now climbed their way up her leg and she swallowed hard as it made its way upward. Her eyes, though shut, seemed to flicker - she felt the darkness and the monsters it brought. "Clint?"

It was Barton's turn to watch his friend now. He could not force words out of his mouth so looked on as she squirmed, eyes shut and lips pursed. His hands moved to his injury without him knowing.

In all the time he had known her, he had never seen the Black Widow squirm.

"Natasha?" he finally managed. The spy's eyes flew open with this, and she looked around her, confused, when she realised the darkness had subsided.

"Okay."

Time ticked onwards, and the pair began to realise that the machine's stability could be hanging in the balance.

Something moved in the corner of his eye. The archer pulled a gun from his belt and aimed it where he thought the motion came from, but found nothing. Another movement, and he spun again, with no result. Clint frowned. Whenever his ears had failed him, he knew that he could rely on his eyes.

Or so he thought.

When he saw it again, he shot at it. He felt, somewhere in the distance, Nat speaking, but his vision was locked on the walls. At the reception of the bullet, the dome wall pulsed with a metallic texture.

This was weird.

"Natasha?" he asked, and fought back the the motion at the corners of his eyes to find her face. She was grounded at the very centre of the dome, looking down. The movements, trying hard to pull at his attention, etched at his eyes. Clint shrugged them off.

He stuttered towards her and instantly hit a wall. The chamber around him was reminiscent of a mime's trick; it seemed no glass or brick stopped him, just the force of nothingness compressed into a cube. It was as if he were a street act once again. Natasha's focus centred on a spot on the floor. Her fingertips waltzed up the zip of her heavy duty jacket and pulled carefully down so the ties broke open. She shrugged it off, revealing a plain black t-shirt underneath. Her concentration moved now to her arms and she tugged fruitlessly on the bandages that wound round one of them. With building panic, she scratched her skin, Clint spotting little droplets of blood forming where her nails had cut through.

"Stop it." he told her, and she could hear him, but she did not respond. He heard her frustrated sobs now, this time loud and clear, and when finally she turned to face him, she had deep fear struck across her face.

"No!" she shouted unexpectedly into the blue. She fell into herself and screamed. Without thinking, she brought herself to her feet again, hoisted her gun and fired a shot at Clint. He ducked instinctively and listened as she fired again at the same place in anger.

"No." Her voice was weakened and carried tears. "No more!" she was screaming again, and this time she fell to the floor. Memories pounded in her head and she felt the imprints of needles pierce her skin. She flashed back into a state of childishness and gripped her hair as she began to weep, a young girl broken by those who used her, oh so long ago. Clint watched at his invisible wall while she rocked herself for comfort...

So this one was a little longer... (and possibly a little worse)
Reaching the end couple of chapters now
More soon.