NATASHA

God I hope this works. I can't afford to think of what'll happen to us if it doesn't.

Clint's good arm is clammy behind my neck as I help him down the bell tower stairs. What little color he had regained is draining from his face as we move. I let him rest for as long as I could, but we're running out of time. If we're going to make a move, we need to do it now. As we reach the bottom steps, I can feel more of Clint's weight bearing down on me. If we make it out of this, I'm never letting him near another cheeseburger.

"Clint!" I hiss as his arm starts to go slack.

" . . .Sss'up?" he mumbles. "You're . . . back. How'sss th' field trip?"

"Interesting. I was able to slip past the agents patrolling the airstrip without a problem. You're my mission, after all. They know I won't leave without you. They're expecting the two of us to move together, bulky and slow."

"No 'ffence taken."

I pause as I lead him closer to the door. He crooks the corner of his mouth into a little smile even though his eyelids are fluttering as he fights to keep them open. What would I do without you, Barton?

I look quickly at the watch embedded in my wristlet. "It's a little two-man supply plane. The circuitry's pretty old but I rigged it to auto-start in . . . twenty-two minutes. It starts off down the runway, HYDRA calls as many soldiers as it can to the runway to blow it up before it can take off. That's when we make our play."

" An' in th' mean time?" Clint asks wearily, shielding his eyes from the bright, cloudy sky as we step outside.

"We try not to get killed."

I lead Clint slowly down the little hill where the mission sits, and I can feel him fighting his own feet. The gravity, the pain, the drugs, they all want to take him down. It'd be easy, to melt into the bristly grass and feel nothing but blissful relief as he tumbled to the little gravel lane. We reach the bottom but he still staggers with the next step.

"Clint!" I grab his chin in my hand and force him to look at me. His eyes are getting hazier, the eyelids drooping farther before they flutter open. I wonder if, behind it all, he's thinking about going back to the island. I didn't want to have to do this to him. I just hope I'm right.

I know how hard it is to return to places where you've been hurt, in any way. Those kinds of places, they're not just coordinates on a map, not just latitudes and longitudes, wooden beams and concrete. They're alive. They're memories that live in the walls, in the soil, in the people who remain there. Those special places where you've been broken down so far they've almost touched your core . . . they're ghosts. You made them that way. Your pain turned lifeless places into ghosts.

I've been back to the Red Room. It was nearly three years after I defected, and although I accepted the mission that brought me there, every fiber of me begged not to go back.

It's not pleasant, diving back into a nightmare that you cannot kill. People, sure, they can be defeated. Eventually all the people who hurt you will be gone. But the places? You cannot kill a place. You cannot kill a memory, and they will never fade.

Sometimes they even have the horrible pleasure of coming to you. I could see it in Steve's eyes. A living memory, a sign of the worst pain of his life, come back for him to hurt him more. I can't imagine that. Maybe that's for the best. Maybe if I could, I wouldn't be able to what I'm doing to Clint.

"We have to go back," I repeated, and he just stared at me.

"No. Natasha I can't."

"The only ride off this island goes to exactly one place."

"We can . . . wait them out. They'll give up eventually if . . . "

"They'll stop searching when we're both dead, and no sooner! You know that!"

"I can't —"

"Damn it Clint, I'm trying to save your life. I'm sorry, I can only do that on HYDRA Island."

"Why?" he whispered, and there was an edge of hate in his weak, raspy voice. He clawed at the fabric of my collar and did his best to pull me close. "What could you possibly — ?"

"The island seems to be HYDRA's main base of operations. If they have the stolen Dark Morpheus technology —"

"Don't say that name!"

" — then they're likely to have more experimental S.H.I.E.L.D. medical technology as well."

" 'Experimental.' Pah! . . . Means broken, means useless, means it'll just break you more."

"Clint listen to me . . ."

"I've got nothing left to break, Natasha."

Sometimes I think Clint looks like a puppy. Up there, leaning half-conscious against the bell tower wall begging me not to make him go back . . . he looked like the saddest ASPCA commercial you've ever seen.

Something broke in me then, I could feel it. One of the walls keeping everything in, one of the walls keeping me steady, not letting me slow down to feel. I felt as if something in my chest turned to water and melted away before I knew it was gone.

I pulled him close, gently, minding his plastered arm. I put his chin on my shoulder and pressed my cheek against his, so my lips hovered just in front of his ear.

"I'm so sorry," I whispered. "I'm sorry I let this happen, I'm sorry I couldn't get here sooner, I'm sorry I can't think of another way. I have failed you and everyone six ways to Tuesday over the past few days, and after everything you've done for me and everything you've been through recently, I have no right to ask this of you."

I leaned back and rested my hand on Clint's cheek. "But I'm asking anyway. You have to know the last thing I want is to see you in pain. Seeing you hurt like think, it . . . I don't know what to do."

I could feel the tears starting to blur the bottom of my vision, but Clint cracked a little smile.

"What?" I asked.

"Reminds me a little of Budapest."

I stroked my thumb against his bruised cheek. "That part we seem to remember the same."

Clint took my hand and for an instant I thought he was going to swat it away, but instead he laced his fingers between mine. "What is it you're after, Natasha?" he asked slowly. "What's on the island?"

When I did't answer he squeezed my hand hard. "Damn it Tasha, I need to know why!"

I was quite for another minute, but I parted my lips so he would know I was trying to get the words out. "If they have the DM technology," I began, "it's likely they have the S.H.I.E.L.D. prototypes for the Osteo-bypass as well."

Clint didn't react. After everything, all this pain, all this information, his responses have been so erratic. Mine have too. We need food, we need sleep, we need to rest and heal. That's why I didn't want him to know, not yet. I wanted to steal the Osteo-bypass and give him the choice later, when he could think straight . . . and only if I could tell that I'd been thinking straight proposing it in the first place.

The Osteo-bypass, or Bone-pass as some of the soldiers called it, is a robotic implant meant to divert all pressure away from a limb injury to allow the soldier limited mobility until they can be extracted. S.H.I.E.L.D. was never completely happy with the performance of the device. Its use can be crude and inexact. And painful. That's why I was so surprised when Clint said, "Do it."

"What?"

"Your plan. Whatever it is, do it. Let's go."

"I didn't want to tell you because I wanted you to rest before you decided —"

"I've decided that I'm putting an arrow through Barron Zemo's skull. I'm not waiting six months for my arm to heal before I do it."

I stroke his cheek again. I don't like seeing revenge on him. This is what I wanted, isn't it? His compliance? Not like this. "Okay," I say softly.

"So. What's the plan?"

The watch beeps in my wristlet and I immediately tap the alarm silent.

"That's our cue," I say as we lean against the rough stone of a house not far from the bay.

"Aren't we 'posed t' wait for . . . y'know 'boom?'"

"It took us almost twenty minutes to make it this far. It won't take them long to take the plane down. We need to be out of here by the time they do. We're just going to have to trust that the plane started up."

Sure enough, the gravel grinds as six synchronized pairs of boots stomp along it. I spin Clint around the corner and wait for them to go by.

"You remember the plan? Clint? Are you with me?"

"Yup! Yup! I'm here. I hide in the little boathouse and cover you with my good arm. You tap and zap."

"More or less. Are you ready?"

Clint nods and I check one last time to make sure I don't have a better idea. Nope. Guess this is all we've got.

This whole plan hinges on HYDRA thinking we're trying to take that plane. I peek around the corner to the dock where HYDRA's little fleet of speedboats are moored. Ten agents, still on alert but flicking their eyes in the direction of the runway, waiting for us to be killed or captured.

BOOM!

A smoke cloud curls up in the distance as HYDRA takes out the little cargo plane. I imagine a well-timed RPG would have done the job nicely. One of the guys I'm watching leans into his radio. Whatever he hears, he nods. He's pleased.

He won't be for long. I was sloppy at the arms dealer's, and working with the disadvantage on the docks. I will not let these snakes get the better of me again.

With the HYDRA agents' gaze focused on the smoke cloud, they don't see me run out and throw two Widow's Stings at the nearest guards. They gurgle as they try to scream, and collapse on the ground in convulsions.

With Clint back on my shoulder, we advance past their position and I dump Clint off in the little closet of a boathouse. A second later I hear the crash of breaking glass as he clears a panel to shoot through.

A guard is reaching for his radio. I'm on his shoulders with a cord around his neck before he can hit the talk button. He crumples and I kick off, slamming into the guard coming at me from behind and letting him break my fall on the wooden planks of the dock. The guard to my left screams as a bullet pierces his arm. I rip his radio away before he can grab it and kick him into the water. I down two more with the Widow's Stings in my gloves, and Clint cripples the remaining three from his place in the boathouse.

" S'my girl," Clint says when I come to haul him out of the boathouse.

"Not so bad yourself."

"Was aiming f'their chests."

"Then they should be lucky they met you on a bad day," I say as we walk towards the nearest boat. I help Clint into the cabin and grab what rope I can find. "Start the boat. I'll truss up a few guards."

"I'm great at boats," he mutters happily as he fumbles for the control console.

I choose three guards who aren't bleeding and tie them up, ankles, wrists, and mouths. The first I drag into the boat with Clint, the other pair I haul to their own boat. Perfect. That's the plan. Set this boat to head toward wherever — the closest island I can find, wherever we might try to run. The two guards will look like us on an infrared scan. Clint and I pursue in the second boat pretending to be HYDRA agents. Again, extra body to throw off infrared scans they'll use to verify our story. We blow up the first boat out at sea and Clint and I return to HYDRA Island back the way we need to be — invisible. I just need to set the GSP on our "rebel" boat here and —

"Natasha!" Clint's voice crackles over the radio. "I've got a squadron headed down the hill. Repeat. I've got —"

"Go!" I shout.

"You've got to be in this boat for this to work, remember?"

"We'll fix it on the way! Just give me a few seconds head start," I say as I slash the ropes connecting the boat to the dock, then turn the key and punch the throttle, pushing into a tight turn to reverse direction and speeding away from the island.