Hey look at that! I'm back! Thank God for summer break, otherwise I'd never have time to work on my stories. Sorry to keep you guys waiting for so long.

Anyway, guess what? Our favorite spies are finally going on a team mission! Hopefully everything goes well, right? LOL yeah right.

I don't own anything.

Just sayin'


Another head hangs lowly

Child is slowly taken

And the violence caused such silence

They are fighting

With their tanks, and their bombs

And their bombs, and their guns

In your head they are crying


Their first few missions as a team were frustrating for the two older members. Fury had relegated them to reconnaissance missions, keeping the team out of direct combat in favor of giving them time to 'bond'. The thing was, Vera was not the most open girl in the world. Bonding, socializing, and human interaction appeared to be completely nonexistent in her vernacular. Clint's cheesy jokes and American slang often went over her head, and she kept slipping into Russian whenever Natasha spoke to her, making Clint rather frustrated that he only had a limited understanding of Russian. Needless to say, after the first five missions or so, both Clint and Natasha were getting antsy.

Apparently sensing this, Fury finally assigned them to a high profile mission that they would normally receive without any hesitation. This time, however, SHIELD's top spy duo were nervous.

"We need to see how you fight." Natasha explained to Vera as they escorted her into one of SHIELD's many training rooms. "I know that we saw you fight once before, but that was during a real fight, with a lot of smoke, and a lot of distractions."

"I've seen how she fights." Clint muttered, still sore about that night on the Vienna rooftop when Vera had almost killed him – twice.

The girl had the gall to smirk.

"Well I have not." Natasha said as she motioned for the younger Widow to follow her to the mat. "Priyekhat. My srazhayemsya."*

The girl nodded and joined Natasha on the mat with a lot more confidence than most people did when facing the Russian redhead. Then again, Vera had the same training.

Clint leaned against the wall, wishing he had a bag of popcorn. Sure he had seen the girl fight, but watching a Widow fight, and watching a Widow fight another Widow was on a completely different level. He noticed a shadow standing behind one of the mirrored windows – no doubt Fury was hiding there, waiting to watch the show as well.

"Tell me about your training." Natasha asked the girl in Russian as they faced off on the mat, standing ten feet apart in deceptively relaxed stances.

"A lot changed since your generation." Vera told her, pulling her hair back into a quick braid. "The Red Room learns from its mistakes."

Natasha's gaze flickered to the girl's chest, envisioning the pale scar that ran from her sternum and down past her navel. Vera had yet to tell her anything about that, but she had no doubt it had something to do with the Red Room's 'improved' training.

"Same fighting style though?" Natasha asked.

Vera shrugged. "In some ways."

The redhead frowned at that. The Red Room had a very specific fighting style, a mixture of traditional martial arts and Russian spetsnaz fighting techniques and military tactics. Most of their training methods were illegal in most countries, being too brutal or abusive, and many died during the training. That was why there were always fewer Widows at the end of their training than at the beginning.

The thought that the Red Room had improved such procedures was… disturbing.

"Let's see what you can do, then." Natasha said, falling into a battle stance.

Vera's face remained calm, and she shifted only slightly so that she leaned her weight on her back leg, but otherwise she did not enter any sort of battle stance and kept her arms relaxed at her sides. Natasha furrowed her brows at that.

What is she playing at? The redhead asked herself.

Time seemed to slow down as they stared each other down, green eyes into black eyes, generation versus generation.

She's waiting. Natasha thought, studying Vera's dull eyes. And she will wait all day if need be. I must make the first move.

It happened in the blink of an eye.

Natasha launched herself at the girl, jumping forward into a roll and swiping her leg at Vera's ankles. Predictably the girl dodged by jumping up, and the redhead swung her leg up to follow her, pushing off the floor with her arms. Vera grabbed her leg and used the momentum to again push herself away from the redhead, avoiding her next attack.

"Stop holding back!" Natasha ordered as she swung at the girl again.

Vera's eyes seemed glint at that, and suddenly the girl was moving. Natasha's eyes widened at the sudden increase in speed, and abruptly the redhead was on the defensive, blocking punch after punch, kick after kick.

They ended up on the floor, rolling over each other before breaking apart, leaping to their feet, and rushing back at the other. Natasha had to brace herself for every hit that she blocked, her arms aching at the force behind the girl's punches, their arms colliding with a resounding smack! Vera was unusually strong for her size.

Suddenly the brunette seemed to fall back, dropping to the floor and landing on her hands, bending over backwards at an impossible angle. She lifted her legs and, hooking one leg behind Natasha's knees, forcing the redhead forward and into the Vera's other leg, which shot up to land a harsh kick on her collarbone. Natasha hissed as she felt something fracture. She tried to grab Vera's legs, but the girl was already kicking off of her and flipping over to land on her feet.

Ignoring the throbbing of her collarbone, Natasha followed her forward, and they again began to exchange lightning-fast punches and kicks, neither one giving an inch.

Vera allowed one of Natasha's punches past her defenses, latching onto the arm and flipping the redhead over her shoulder. Natasha twisted her body while in the air, landing on her feet and catching Vera with an uppercut to the chin.

Instead of stunning the girl, however, she let herself fall back with the momentum and again grabbed Natasha's arm, placing a foot on the redhead's thigh and swinging her other leg up and over Natasha's shoulder, climbing the woman's body with impossible speed as she hooked the leg around Natasha's neck and twisting Natasha's arm.

Realizing that Vera intended to break her arm, Natasha rolled forward, shaking off the brunette. They both rolled to their feet and stared at each other with narrowed eyes, chests heaving for air. Natasha rolled her shoulder, hiding a wince as it strained. Vera appeared unaffected by the bruise blossoming on her chin.

And then it was Vera's turn to make the first move as the younger Widow ran forward at Natasha. The redhead brought her arms up in defense, but instead of a punch or a kick, the girl grabbed her fists and dropped her body to the floor, pulling Natasha down with her bodyweight and kicking both feet into Natasha's stomach and kicking her over her head.

Natasha landed in another roll, the wind knocked out of her but still managing to roll to her feet. However Vera was already attacking again, and she was barely able to avoid the hammer kick that slammed down on her position. Natasha threw herself out of the way, but the girl was already using the force of the landing to propel herself into another kick, this time managing to land a side-kick on Natasha's thigh.

The redhead grunted at the impact but latched her arm around Vera's leg, yanking her forward in an attempt to unbalance her. But Vera adapted, using the redhead's hold on her leg to lever herself off the ground and spin up into a roundhouse kick to Natasha's head. The older Widow was force to let go of Vera in order to duck, and the brunette landed on all fours on the ground before standing up and falling back into a fighting stance.

Interesting fighting style. Natasha thought as they once again lapsed into a tense pause, circling each other but neither one making a move. Less of the spetsnaz style and more of a mix of the eastern martial arts – using another combat style more modified to the female physicality. Constant movement, less aggressive, more flexibility, and using the enemy's momentum against them. Strength is focused in the legs, arms are used to direct motion, but there is still something off… She seems to be overreaching. She's pulling her punches and kicks, focusing more on tripping me or knocking me down.

But… why?

"You are still holding back." Natasha said to Vera with her lips pressed into a frown.

Vera's expression remained unapologetic. "So are you."

Natasha felt her brow rise. Huh. Didn't think she'd notice.

"I will be frank with you," Vera spoke, falling back into Russian. "I am purposefully avoiding your vital areas. A direct hit from me might kill you."

Natasha narrowed her eyes at that. Was the girl being overconfident? No, Vera did not have enough of an ego for that. If she was saying it, she meant it. Did this have something to do with whatever the Red Room had done to her? Natasha frowned at that, a heavy weight settling in her stomach.

"Well, I've seen enough to know that you can hold your own." Natasha finally said, straightening from her fighting stance and bowing towards her opponent to signal the end of the match. "But we've wasted enough time. You should go pack for our trip, our flight is in three hours."

Vera returned her bow robotically, before spinning on her heel and marching away with silent footsteps, the only sound accompanying her exit being the whisper of the automatic doors sliding open and then shut. There was a minute where Natasha was alone on the mat, before movement to her left signaled Clint's approach.

"She was just as good as you said she would be." Natasha hummed, not bothering to glance at Clint as he came to stand beside her, slouched with his hands thrust into his pockets.

"Told you." He said off-handedly, but the expression on his face told her how impressed he was. "Even holding back, she was able to keep you on your toes. I don't know many who can do that."

"Namely you and Steve." She muttered, and Clint had to stifle his smirk at the near-imperceptible pout on her face.

He crossed his hands behind his head and teased, "Well, time to add another name to that list, eh?"

Clint only had a moment to flinch before she whacked him in the stomach.

"Ow!" He whined, not really in any pain. "I just had lunch, woman!"


Unnamed location, Syria - 19:53

Bullets ripped through the air, screeching as they whizzed over their heads. Windows shattered, people were screaming as they scrambled out of the way, and the enemy was closing in on them. The job had, without a doubt, gone bad. They had been spent to take out an arms-dealer, and all of his closest associates, but they had somehow been discovered before they had managed to take down their target. Suddenly they had an entire merc squad out for their heads, and they were currently stuck in a small, run-down clay building in a war-torn city in the middle of Syria.

"Dammit, we're pinned down!" Clint snarled as he and his two teammates leapt into an abandoned building and ducked down beneath the window sills, periodically popping backup to shoot at their pursuers.

"With no backup either." Natasha muttered grimly.

Vera had been mostly silent throughout the whole mission, and seemed to be focused wholly on shooting back at their enemies. She was currently ducked below the same window as Natasha, broken glass crunching beneath her boots as she crouched low, a semi-automatic rifle in hand with its nozzle resting on the window sill.

Clint did a double-take when he saw it. "Wait, that's not SHIELD equipment."

"Picked it up off a body." Vera muttered as she leaned her head down to peer through the scope and breathed in deeply. Then, she began pulling the trigger.

One down. She aimed again, breathed in, counted to three, and pulled it again. Two down.

Clint watched the girl with raised brows. She would shoot every few seconds, her whole body locked in position, her eyes glinting with uncanny focus, as if she had zoned out the entire world and narrowed it down to herself and her target. Vera would pull the trigger twice per target, one-two, one-two, the butt of the gun nestled in the crook of her shoulder and jerking back with each shot, but never wavering off her line of sight.

She's quite the sniper. Clint thought, his mind flashing back to that night on the rooftops of Vienna, when a shot had rang out into the night and his witness had died with a hole in his head. He glanced over at Natasha, but she was also shooting back at their enemies with the same single-minded determination as the younger Widow. They're much more alike than Natasha would like to admit.

He popped up and fired two arrows, each on hitting their mark before he ducked back down and another wave of bullets blasted the walls in front of him. A bullet clipping the edge of the window Vera was shooting from, cracking the clay and spraying debris into Vera's face. The young woman jerked back, hissing a curse as she rubbed the dust from her eyes.

"I got five." Natasha growled as she pressed her back to the wall, eyes watching as bullets continued to fly through their window.

"Two and two." Clint nodded, pulling back another pair of arrows.

They both glanced at Vera, whose face was unusually expressive as she gazed down at her gun, brows pinched, lips pressed together in displeasure. She had pulled out the magazine of her gun and was gazing down at the last three shots, obviously the source of her displeasure.

"Seven." She murmured finally, still frowning at her lack of bullets.

Clint huffed in a mixture of amusement and disbelief. "Aw come one, the rookie is beating us?" He tossed a crooked grin at Natasha, who rolled her eyes.

"It's not a contest." The redhead shook her head.

"I'm not a rookie." Vera said at the same time, glancing at him with a completely serious face. "I've been doing missions like this since I was a child."

Clint paused and glared half-heartedly at the girl. "You seriously need to find your sense of humor."

Vera tilted her head in that strange, detached manner that always annoyed him. "I have no need for such intangible things."

Clint groaned in exasperation as another wave of bullets flew over their heads. All three agents took a moment to pop back up and take out a few more of their attackers before they all ducked back down. Vera seemed to have run out of bullets, as she threw the rifle away from her and pulled out the pair of pistols she usually fought with.

"I counted three left." Natasha panted. "Take 'em out, and then we need to catch up to the target before he leaves the city."

"Right." Clint and Vera replied in unison, standing and shooting out of the windows once more while they slowly edged towards the door of the building. Natasha kicked it open and jumped through, keeping her gun up and checking for any lurkers.

"Clear!" She called over her shoulder, the other two following her as they ran through the alleyway.

The redhead glanced over her shoulder at Clint. "You got a tracer on him earlier, right?"

Clint nodded, tapping his watch to pull up a satellite image of the entire city. "He's headed east, towards the slums. Judging from the speed at which he's moving, I'm guessing he's in a vehicle."

"No doubt armored too." Natasha muttered.

"Cut through here!" Clint interrupted her, suddenly veering right into a narrowing corridor between the buildings, the afternoon sky blocked out by clotheslines. The women followed his lead, running single-file through the alley and leaping over several barrels and crates.

"We're in the east side of the city now." Clint yelled back to them between pants. "He's stopped for now."

They all came to a stop, lingering in the shadows of the alleyway as men in armored cars drove past them. Judging from their tattered uniforms, they were part of the rebel forces. An explosion shook the ground not far off, followed by shouting and shooting.

"Shit." Natasha muttered as she peered around the corner of the wall down the street. "Looks like another battle between the army and the rebels just blew up."

Clint muttered a curse. "Of course we would got caught up in the civil war during a mission. Now we just need to avoid two armies and a band of mercs. No big deal, right?"

"Your sarcasm has been noted." Natasha told him with a deadpan expression.

The rustling of cloth behind them caught their attention and they turned to see Vera snatching a variety of apparel off of one of the clotheslines. It took her less than a minute to throw on a dress and wrap her head in a scarf and suddenly she was a different person. The tan of her skin coupled with the slant of her eyes made her look uncannily middle-eastern. Her body language shifted, her shoulders hunching, body slouching forward, eyes cast downwards.

"Wow." Clint raise his brows at her.

"You look like a local." Natasha blinked at the sudden transformation.

Vera ignored their remarks and locked eyes with Clint. "Can you tell me which building he's in?"

He glanced back down at his watch and pointed in a very general direction across the street. "One of those. I'm not quite sure which, though. But he's approximately seventy feet ahead of us, forty degrees from our position."

He could see Vera calculate that exact position as her eyes locked in the same direction he had pointed and never wavered.

"Stay here." She ordered as she pulled her scarf up to cover her face so that only her eyes peered out at them. "I'll signal you when I'm done."

"What –hey wait –" Clint protested, but she was already darting across the street. He went to grab her, but Natasha snatched his arm and held him back.

"Let her." The redhead told him, clenching her jaw as another explosion rocked the city. "She's got the right idea. There's no way two white people would not be noticed around here, even if I was to hide behind a scarf."

Clint hated to admit how right she was, narrowing his eyes as a tank drove down the street past them. The two agents drew back further into the shadows.

"We need to find a better place to hide." Natasha murmured in his ear. "The battle is getting closer to our position."

As if to emphasize her words, one of the buildings across the street from them took a hit, the top half of it crumbling in the wake of a mortar shell. They both flinched at that.

"Let's hope Vera wasn't near there." Clint muttered as he turned to follow Natasha back down the alley and further away from the conflict.

The in-fighting seemed to escalate in the few minutes it took for them to find an abandoned building that was far enough from the conflict to be deemed safe, while still providing them with a good view of the area. They waited in tense silence as the explosions went off with increasing frequency, before the area where Vera had been headed towards seemed to implode in plume of smoke.

Natasha gasped, and the two of them nearly leaned out of the window with bated breath at the sight of dust clouds rising up in the air, so thick that they could not even see what was left of the buildings there. There was an increase in noise from both sides of the civil war, as men began shouting and the shooting increased in their panic. The two agents exchanged worried glances.

"You think she's dead?" He asked her in a grim voice.

Natasha snorted. "It takes more than that to kill a Widow." But he could easily read the worry in her eyes.

Three tense minutes later they heard static whispering in their ears as their comms came online.

"One-seventeen to Hawkeye and Widow." They both nearly slouched in relief as Vera's voice came through their earpieces. "Targets are down. Requesting current location."

"We're in one of the taller buildings." Natasha answered her. "It's an abandoned clothing store. You'll see an old advertisement for jeans plastered above the door."

"We'll meet you on the first floor." Clint added, before they cut off their communication. Then he and Natasha were picking up their guns and descending the stairs, carefully keeping an eye out for any stray soldiers.

After reaching the first floor, they remained out of sight of the main entrance, keeping their guns trained on the doorway. A few minutes passed in silence before a shadow moved by one of the windows, and suddenly a woman hidden by her scarf stepped through the doorway, hunched and frail looking. Neither of them moved or made a sound, not revealing themselves until the figure identified herself.

Suddenly the woman straightened, casting off her scarf to reveal a familiar face. There were a couple more scratches on Vera's face than before, but otherwise she seemed unharmed. She shrugged out of her borrowed dress as Natasha and Clint stepped out of the shadows and came towards her.

"Target and company have been eliminated." She told them as their approached her.

Clint shook his head at her as he gave her a light punch on the shoulder. "Don't worry us like that, kid."

She looked at her shoulder and furrowed her brows, seemingly unfamiliar with the friendly gesture.

"You'll have to tell us the story later." Natasha told her. "Right now, we need to get out of here. This city is about to become a warzone."

"It already is." Vera said as she led them out of the building and the three of them slipped back into the alleyways. "The southern half of the city has been wiped out. The army is using mustard gas against the rebels. Don't wanna get caught in that."

Natasha and Clint faltered at that, pausing to glance at her back in horror. She looked over her shoulder at their silence and raised a brow at them.

"What?" She asked. "Didn't SHIELD already know this?"

Natasha nodded. "Yes, but…"

"Seeing it is different than hearing about it." Clint muttered, a dark look on his face.

Vera shrugged. "No use worrying about it. It's not our problem." With that she turned away and continued to lead them to the northern portion of the city.

Clint stared at her back as she continued walking, then glanced at Natasha. She seemed almost as unaffected as Vera, although he knew that she was just hiding her feelings on the matter. Natasha was far more empathetic than Vera on such matters.

"I've been doing missions like this since I was a child." He frowned as he remembered her words, remembered how she had slipped on her costume and ventured out into the war-torn city, dodging bombs and bullets with ease, stepping over bodies without a care. He had also been young when he had been pulled into the underworld – sixteen and in many ways still a child – but Widows were practically veterans by that age. From what Natasha had told him, Widows were lucky to reach the age of thirty.

Had Tasha once been this cold? He knew that Vera was, in many ways, worse than Natasha had ever been. But Natasha had been away from the Red Room for a long time before he had run into her. The Red Room might have been disbanded, but its teachings were still alive and well within the younger Widow.

Bullets sounded in one of the streets nearby, forcing the agents to veer away from that direction. They came upon an armored truck from the rebel forces, which had been left on the side of the road after its drivers had been shot to death. The agents pulled the bodies out of the seats and dumped them on the street with grim faces (save for Vera's lack of expression) and collected the leftover guns. All three of them pulled the rebel jackets over their SHIELD uniforms, the women covering their heads with helmets so as to blend in with the rebel fighters. Then the three of them continued north, driving with enough purpose through the streets that the rebels assumed that they had official business. They exited the city and continued on to the next town over, leaving the city in flames and ruin, the sound of mortar and the dying ringing in their ears.

A SHIELD helicopter was waiting for them out in the desert, just beyond the hills overlooking the smaller town. They boarded the copter in grim silence, flying over the city on their way back to see that that it was mostly a pile of rubble, a tell-tale yellow haze hanging over the city like the shroud of death.

A few of their fellow SHIELD agents swore at the sight of it, shaking their heads in shock. Clint and Natasha glanced at Vera, but the girl was looking the opposite direction, staring at the desert as the sun sunk beneath the sands. Her expression was unreadable, as usual, her body relaxing against the seat of the copter as she leaned her arm on the windowsill and cupped her chin in an uncaring manner.

"They're actually using mustard gas!" One soldier hissed in revulsion.

"Dear God…" One of their soldiers muttered as he looked down at the dying city below them. The winds changed, and somehow managed to carry the faint scent of mustard and rotted flesh upwards through the open doors of the helicopter.

One soldier gagged at the smell. "That is awful…" He whispered, staring out of the door, his fist clenching the side of the copter. He was young, probably with only a few missions under his belt.

Vera glanced at the soldier with a bored expression, though it could easily be mistaken for disdain. "That is war."

"There are rules against mustard-gas!" The soldier protested. "The Geneva Contract states -"

"Oh please." The young Widow scoffed. "There's only one rule of war: there are no rules."

The soldier stared at her in disbelief.

"Some countries are just more discrete in how they play the game." Vera finally glanced down at the burning city, which was growing smaller in the distance with each passing minute. "Others lack such subtly. But they all have blood on their hands, one way or another. What do you think SHIELD is for?"

The young man stared at her in shock, and then shaking his head as he turned to look back towards the city, which was now just a plume of smoke on the horizon. Natasha leaned over and pinched Vera on the arm. The younger Widow hardly flinched, and turned to look at her elder with a questioning gaze.

"That was mean." Natasha scolded her.

Vera shrugged. "The idealistic ones always irritate me."

Clint chuckled at that. "Finally, something that gets a rise out of you!"

Vera glanced back to the soldier in question, which had left the doorway to speak to the pilots. "Not exactly a good thing." She replied to that. "I killed a guy like him once just because I found him annoying."

Her teammates stared at her in shock, both caught somewhere between horror and amusement.

Vera lifted a brow at them. "What? It was a mercenary group; they didn't care. They found the boy annoying too."

Natasha was the first to recover, clearing her throat and shaking her head in exasperation. "Well, for future reference, you can't just kill the people that annoy you."

"How unfortunate." Vera replied, actually sounding disappointed.


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