7. Ladies and gents, this is the moment you've waited for
Author's Note:
This chapter got away from me a little bit. Also, in light of the current global climate it bears warning that this chapter contains discussions and depictions of a deadly illness. I started writing this chapter in 2019, it just all worked out this way. Reader discretion is advised.
"So there was this organized crime syndicate called the Consortium that Natasha'd had some trouble with before she joined SHIELD," Clint let out a yawn, ruffling his hair. "But there wasn't actually any proof they existed. We were running an opp in Belarus and while Tasha was undercover the Consortium nabbed her out of a record store and Phil and I had to-"
"Clint," Darcy let out a sigh, leveling a tired, disappointed look at him. "That's Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation ."
"It's… are you sure?" He stared at her a long moment before shaking his head, resigned. "Okay, fine." He scrunched his face up in a frown, thinking.
"Oh! there was this one mission in Russia," He said, brightening. "We'd been tracking down this black ops Operative and SHIELD sent Natasha into the Kremlin to mess around in their files while I was on protection detail for an upper level SHIELD intelligence agent. Things went sideways on Natasha's end and the Operative we were trying to locate actually set a bomb off in the Kremlin and framed Natasha for it. Lucky for me the SHIELD guy I was with had the data we needed but when Natasha and Phil caught up to us the Operative tailed them and took out the intelligence agent and-"
"Clint! That's Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol !"
He stared back at her with his mouth hanging open, the only sound the soft clink of the barista cleaning the French Press. "How have you seen all these movies?"
"Tony Stark has streaming everything," she replied with a bored roll of her eyes. "And I think Bryn has a thing for Jeremy Renner, she binge-watched every single one of his films during that month she was bunked at my place."
"All of them?" Clint asked with a note of caution.
"Even the dumb one about the school trip to DC," Darcy said wrinkling her nose. "Though that one's probably tied with the Kung Fu one for sheer awfulness." She stirred her fresh coffee absently a moment before looking up at him.
"What?" she asked, taking in his horrified face.
"Nothing," Clint replied, his expression instantly turning shifty. Her eyes narrowed menacingly.
"An awesome Strike Team Delta story," Darcy said, leaning into the table with a hint of a growl as Clint dragged his hand down his face with a frustrated huff.
"I know, I know!"
"Not a movie," she added, waving her spoon at him. Clint didn't look up, his forehead cradled in the palm of his hand. "Honestly, Natasha told me that you guys had ops before the Avengers that were every bit as bad as the battle of New York. How hard can it be to pick one of those?"
"You can't always believe what Nat tells you," he said with a sigh.
"What, she's so used to lying that she does it even when she doesn't have to?" Darcy asked, her expression unimpressed.
"No, well, yes, she does do that," he replied, sprawling back into the bench seat. "I just meant stuff like that is kind of… subjective?"
"Subjective how?" Darcy's eyes narrowed as she studied him.
"I can't tell you that," he said quickly, leaning back as if trying to distance himself from her. "Natasha'll kill me."
"You think I won't if you don't pay up?" she asked, her glare turning menacing.
"Oh you will," Clint nodded, his head bobbling. "But Natasha'll make it hurt more. If I've got to go, I want the bleeding heart to take me out." Darcy didn't move, her eyes boring into him like lasers. Clint took a swallow of his coffee, buying time. He shifted back into the bench another fraction of an inch.
"You can't tell anyone I told you," he said, visibly swallowing. Darcy's eyebrows flicked up, but she didn't reply.
"Are you naturally occurring?" Clint stared up at the ceiling, stretched out on the floor of the transport jet, one arm folded under his head.
"Yes," Natasha replied, her own head dangling off the end of the bench seat, her ruby curls dragging on the floor. They'd been in the air for six hours already with no real idea of where they were going or what the mission even entailed.
"Are you deadly when inhaled?," Clint frowned, rubbing his eyes.
"Hmm," Natasha seemed to consider this a moment, she glanced over at Phil questioningly.
"No," he said without looking up from the file he was studying. Natasha nodded decisively in agreement.
"No," she repeated.
"How have you worked it out already?" Clint asked him with a mystified expression. "That's only twelve!"
"It's the questions you're not asking," Phil replied.
"What now?"
"Eight questions left, Barton," Natasha reminded.
"Are you on the federal government list of restricted substances?"
"Which government?"
"The one we work for," Clint ground out.
"No," Phil and Natasha said simultaneously.
"No one invited you, Coulson," Clint pointed out.
"And yet, here I am," Phil said, one corner of his mouth twitching ever so slightly.
"How much longer is this flight?" Clint asked with a scowl. Phil looked down at his watch but didn't reply, instead returning his attention to his files. Cling gave him a bitter look. "I hate need-to-know. Do you have Nutritional Value?"
"No"
"Economic Impact?
"Yes"
"Containable, lighter than air, widely distributed?"
"Yes, No, Yes."
"Are you at least partially culpable for bad hair days?"
"Yes."
"Are you Oxygen?" He asked, sitting up and giving her his widest, most profane grin.
"That's twenty, you lose," Natasha replied, rolling up in the seat and rubbing her eyes tiredly.
"Wait, how?" Clint demanded.
"Lightening," Phil and Natasha said in unison. Clint gaped at her with his mouth hanging open before turning his incredulous glare on Phil.
"You never asked if it was a gas, you asked liquid and solid and then assumed," Coulson replied. "Lightening is a plasma."
"I hate long flights," Clint sighed, rubbing his face. He stilled, dropping his hands, his grin back in place as he turned to Natasha. "I've got one."
"Are you a vegetable?" she asked, turning and laying back down on the bench the other direction.
"No."
"Animal?"
"Yes."
"Do you eat pizza?"
"No."
"Tardigrade."
"Son of a bitch ," Clint huffed out. On the other side of the jet bay Coulson was making soft choking sounds. Clint fell back on the floor, glaring up at him. Phil looked down at his watch, the barest smile tugging at his lips as he closed the file he'd been reading and set it aside. Clint scurried to sit up, spinning around on his ass and crossing his legs in front of him as Natasha hauled herself upright.
"Agents," Phil said, reaching up to straighten his tie. "We have a situation in Budapest."
"Wait, the Budapest?" Darcy stared at him, breathless and wide eyed.
"Pretty sure there's only the one," Clint replied.
"You know what I mean," she said, flicking an empty sugar packet across the table at him. " TheMission. The one where if everything's gone to hell and we're all about to be horribly murdered Natasha says: Still not as bad as Budapest."
"You can't ever let her know I told you this," Clint insisted.
"Yeah, like she's not going to know," Darcy gave him a condescending look. Clint made a face.
"Over the last few weeks there'd been three really unusual drug overdoses," Clint explained. "unusual for a bunch of reasons but foremost because none of the three victims had any history of drug use or criminal activity."
"That still doesn't seem like a thing SHIELD would involve itself in," Darcy observed.
"Well it wouldn't have been," Clint admitted. "Except all three of the victims went on violent rampages right before they developed telekinesis and spontaneously combusted."
"Holy Shit."
Clint nodded in agreement. "There were only two things that all three victims had in common besides leaving scorch marks in the middle of the street. They'd all worked in the high end food industry and they'd all traveled to Hungary recently.
"What you have to understand from the get go is that normally SHIELD is extremely careful with what Phil always called Asset Utilization and Fury called Taking a Damn Nap," Clint explained. "SHIELD doesn't, on principle, overwork its people. You get sleep, you get breaks between missions, after a long mission you get enough of a break to take a vacation. There's no PTO time and no sick days because if you need time off you take it, SHIELD attracts the kind of people that have to be forced into down time and Fury knows this and he respects that well rested agents perform better. So you don't pull back to back missions."
"I'm sensing a but here," Darcy said.
"But," Clint said, nodding. "Sometimes things go to hell. You can't schedule world threatening crisis. When we got on the plane for Budapest we'd just come off a two week op in Vegas and before that we'd spent a month in Panama City. We'd had a grand total of thirty-six hours off in six weeks. But the other strike teams were already on mission, there wasn't anyone else to send. It doesn't happen often so we didn't think to complain. That should have been our clue, though. We were already too tired to realize we were off our game."
"Needle, haystack is all I'm saying," Clint observed, his feet picking their silent way across the steel girder that stretched over the Great Market Hall. From his position wedged in against one of the awnings he had a clear view to the ground floor below where Natasha was idly perusing the vendors, Phil trailing in her wake, his arms plied with shopping and a bright blue handcrafted scarf twined around his neck that made him stand out against the sea of food vendors. Clint zoomed in on them with the scope on his goggles, its digital display analyzing everything Natasha touched. An endless stream of identifiers slid by in the corner of the lens like a digital grocery list, colored green as known and expected compounds.
"It's the only thing we have to go on," Phil murmured into the com as he stopped leaning closer to Natasha as her fingers brushed over the fresh cut flowers at one of the stalls, "They were all here fifty hours before they died." Natasha gave him a demure, flirty smile, playing her part flawlessly.
"Except for the guy who nearly blew a hole in Charleston International baggage claim," Clint said. "That was what, a hundred?"
"It was ninety-seven, pay attention Hawkeye," Natasha whispered, one hand twining around Phil's arm affectionately as the other trailed over crates of produce absently.
"Wait, wait, Widow, go back," Clint said, tensing up as one of the readings changed abruptly. Natasha paused, her deft fingers reaching out toward a bright, fresh pear. "No, sorry, false alarm. It's the cyanide in the apples."
"This would go faster if I just licked everything," Natasha huffed under her breath though her cloying expression never faltered as she looked up into Phil's face, Clint cackling over the coms.
"Just because you have a heightened immune system doesn't mean we take risks," Phil reminded, his tone stern but his smile besotted. "It's the best sensor tech we have."
"It's crap," Clint replied, continuing to watch his team and the readings while still keeping an eye out for threats.
"Philipé, darling, so many choices. Do help me decide." Natasha's English lilted with a French cadence as she tugged Phil along further down the lane.
"Whatever you want, my dear," Phil answered indulgently as Natasha slipped out of his arms to inspect a paprika vendor's stall, rich red spices in hues like a sunset.
"We've got the best paprika in the market, miss," the vendor said, his English polished nearly to perfection.
"Seriously," Clint grumbled softly. "This is what, the twelfth paprika vendor? What are we going to do, shake all the pepper trees until freaky drugs fall out?"
"Peppers don't grow on trees," Phil murmured drily as Natasha charmed the vendor. "What little evidence we could pull off the victims indicated an unknown narcotic."
"Just because drug dealers like to hide cocaine in paprika shipments doesn't imply a connection," Clint huffed.
"If you've got a better idea, I'd love to hear it." Phil replied, fixing his smitten expression in place as Natasha motioned him closer.
"Philipé, my love, come talk to this charming gentleman for me," she coaxed, once more twining her arm with Phil's. "If we are to have the best restaurant in Miami you must work something out with him."
"I was just telling your charming lady friend that we're prepared to supply internationally," the vendor replied.
"I will have only the finest," Natasha stated imperiously. "We are crafting an experience, something truly extraordinary."
"You are all about the experiences, my love," Phil replied, a soft smile twitching his lips as Clint made gagging sounds over the coms.
"I don't think this is the guy, sir," Clint let out a sigh, taking a moment to scan the rest of the market hall. "He's not staring at Natasha's rack, anyone slimy enough to sell killer drugs would be looking at her rack. The pot dealer eight stalls back couldn't keep his eyes off her." Clint's attention swept back to the vendor with a frown. Maybe the guy was gay, he still wasn't staring at Natasha's chest. He'd glance down every once in a while but even straight women did that. They were very distracting assets. He was either really nearsighted or his wife had had him neutered at some point.
Clint did another check of the market as Natasha worked her particular brand of manipulative magic on the paprika vendor. He wasn't sure how she did it but she could convince just about anyone to tell her what she wanted to know. It was damn unsettling. His eye swept the mezzanine and he let out a curse. He should have been out of the line of sight, he'd picked this spot because no one should have noticed him but there she was, a little girl of about four, peering at him from beneath the lower rail, her gloves dangling from ribbons tied to her coat, her height the only reason she had a view of him.
"Not to be unnecessarily alarming, sir," Clint said softly, edging farther back into the shadows of the awning. "But I've just been made." He looked down at the paprika vendor's stall to find Phil flicking glances in his direction. Clint gritted his teeth, darting another look at the child before moving further back against the wall, cutting off his sight-lines.
"This is so humiliating," Clint muttered as the girl leaned under the railing in an attempt to see him better. He cursed under his breath pressing closer to the wall as she turned toward her mother, one glove flapping like a flag as she pointed in his direction.
"Shit, shit, shit," he whispered, but the girl's mother only tugged her away without so much as a look and he let out the breath he'd been holding in a rush, his shoulders sagging.
"This job is going to kill me," he grumbled under his breath. His attention returned the readings on his goggles and he started, his eyes growing wide. "Widow! What did you just touch?" He scrambled forward, slithering back out onto the
girder to see Natasha tasting paprika samples. Phil glanced back up at him, giving a barely visible shrug and Clint zoomed his goggles in, the trace detection alert still blinking in the corner of the screen.
"Widow, we got a ping," he hissed into his com. "There's something contaminated at that booth, you've got to convince this guy you're a buyer!"
"I wouldn't normally make this offer, but I think I have something you'd find especially intriguing," The paprika vendor's voice came over his com with a shrewdness as if he were choosing his words carefully. "Something I don't provide to just any customer, I don't even keep it here at my stall. If you cared to return tomorrow I would be willing to offer you a taste."
"Holy shit," Clint blurted out, barely more than a whisper.
"Philipé," Natasha had turned to Phil, grasping his arm with her most cajoling expression.
"Whatever you wish, darling," Phil replied. Natasha gave a little squeal of delight, turning back to the vendor to make arrangements to return the next morning.
"Hawkeye, talk to me," Phil murmured as they turned away, Natasha taking his arm as they headed down the lane.
"Sir, I don't know what Widow's sensors came in contact with, but I'm getting readings of an unknown compound," Clint said shaking his head, mystified. "I didn't have eyes on."
"That's it," Natasha said confidently.
"Hold surveillance on our mark, Hawkeye," Phil said, wrapping his scarf smartly around his neck as he and Natasha made their way down past the stalls. "With any good luck we'll be back home by the end of the week."
"Does that happen a lot? Bad guys just offering to sell you their scary drugs?" Darcy asked with a frown.
"Well the thing with drugs in general and scary ones in particular is that they're only worth money if someone will buy them," Clint replied. "Also Natasha. Pretty much the explanation for a lot of our intel boils down to Tasha, she's actually a checkbox on the after-action report."
"No."
"Under source of intel," Clint nodded. "Between Interpol and Crime Syndicate: Domestic."
"I always wondered what that stood for," Darcy said, stymied.
"Anyway, Phil and Nat each tailed another vendor we thought could potentially be involved and I stuck on Mr. Something Special, followed him all the way to a farm outside the city. We'd thought he'd possibly meet up with his connections but he just went home, had dinner with his wife and kids and turned in early."
"And what sort of time is this?" Phil asked as Clint clambered into the tiny flat through the window at the fire escape, two pizza boxes balanced delicately on the fingertips of his left hand.
"I got dinner," Clint replied, offering up the boxes with a flourish. He slid them onto the formica table with a showman's air before sloughing off his heavy winter coat and tossing it across the room to land neatly on the hook by the door. "Scoped around the Market Hall for a good place." He flipped both boxes open as Natasha reached into the cupboard for plates.
"Why does the crust look like that?" Phil asked, his brow furrowed.
"Because it's all puffy," Clint replied, tearing a slice free and shoving it in his mouth. He flopped down into one of the vinyl upholstered kitchen chairs, its metal feet squeaking against the linoleum as Natasha and Phil settled in around the table. "So did we learn anything interesting while I was busy tailing Farmer Giles?"
"I learned that the local authorities aren't particularly interested in drug enforcement," Natasha replied drily. Which had turned out to be lucky for her the whole way around.
"I learned how to pattern knit wool yarn," Phil added, chewing thoughtfully. Clint stared at him for a long, silent moment.
"The worst of it is, that's going to come in handy at some point," Clint said with a frown. He shook his head. "You know there's something not right here and I can't put my finger on it."
"What's not right is that we've found at least two drug dealers today and so far no solid identification of the compound we're searching for," Phil sighed, rubbing his eyes with a frown.
"You okay, sir?" Clint asked, his brow knitting. Phil's eyes were the faintest hint of bloodshot, a look Clint had seen on him numerous times during ops that had gone off the rails. There was a tightness in his shoulder that he reached back to rub absently as he frowned.
"I've smelled so much paprika today I have a headache," Phil admitted, leaning back in the dingy kitchen chair. "The only thing we have to go on is that paprika vendor. He has to be connected. We'll meet up with him tomorrow and hope that he tries to sell us the compound. If he doesn't we'll need to think of some way to lean on him harder."
"To look at the guy I wouldn't peg him for the type," Clint shook his head, disappointment settling in the creases around his eyes. "He's a family man."
"Kids are expensive," Tasha pointed out, delicately picking peppers off of her pizza and licking them from her fingers.
"Well he's not keeping them in style," Clint replied. "What I really don't get is why he's driving a truck that's older than I am and living at Green Acres. You'd think a big time freaky drug dealer could afford better."
"Perestroika wasn't that long ago," Phil reminded, tiredly chewing his way through his pizza. "These people lived a long time with scarcity."
"Given enough time I'm sure they can learn to blow their money on Lamborghinis," Natasha added as if amused. Clint threw her a dirty look. "Just because I don't understand the Western obsession with excess it doesn't mean I necessarily approve of Eastern austerity. There has to be somewhere in the middle between eating gruel every meal and three thousand dollar shoes."
"We should have never taken her to New York fashion week," Clint said, throwing Phil a particularly aggrieved side-eye. Coulson's only reply was to shrug resignedly.
"Neither of the other suspects looks promising," Phil pointed out. Clint made a face. Phil had tracked his mark back to a convent on the other side of the city where the young man had donated a decent chunk of his daily earnings and his remaining unsold produce to a group of orphans. Natasha's mark was, apparently, the bookie for a gambling ring and basement marijuana den popular with the local constabulary.
"I don't know, maybe this guy doesn't even realize what he's peddling," Clint added after a thoughtful moment. "I just can't put it together."
"Well we can put it together tomorrow when we have the goods," Phil sighed, dragging himself to his feet and heading down the narrow hall. "I'm going to turn in early, take the morning watch." Clint glanced at Natasha with a frown, her head tilting in a silent agreement.
"Go ahead and sleep in, sir," Clint called after him. "I'm too wound up from sitting in the rafters all day, I won't crash for hours. Nat and I can handle it." It was a testament to how tired they all were that Coulson's only reply was a wave of acknowledgment as he disappeared into the bathroom.
"You know, even I'm starting to pick up on there being a problem here," Darcy said, her eyes narrowing.
"Well I did know there was a problem," Clint replied a bit defensively. "I just was having a hard time working out what it was."
"That's your job."
"I know ." He made a face at her that she blithely ignored.
Clint shambled into the kitchen, rubbing his hair dry with a threadbare towel. He let out a jaw cracking yawn as he stopped in front of the coffee pot, the distinctive bouquet of locally sourced java tickling both his nose and his awareness as he stared at the nearly full pot. Something wasn't right here. Something he couldn't quite put his finger on.
Ah, that was it.
"Coulson isn't up yet?" he asked, turning bleary eyes on Natasha who was nursing her own cup as she sat encamped on the sofa in the early morning light. She gave him an amused look as he pointed at the pot that should most certainly not be that full if their mission handler were awake. Natasha didn't reply, her eyebrow ticking up. Clint's unfocused gaze settled on the kitchen clock. It was nearly eight and he let out a grumbling huff, turning on his heel and draping his towel over his head as he shuffled back down the hall.
"Rise and shine, sir!" he said, thumping his fist against the door of the bedroom opposite his own. "You got to go catch bad guys in two hours!" He heard a muffled curse from the other side of the door and nodded to himself before heading back to the kitchen. He stared at the coffee pot for another long moment. Down the hall he heard Phil's door open and the bathroom door shut. He let out a huff, peering out from under his towel to grope for a mug on the shelf.
"You got an idea how we're going to play this or are we following your lead?" he asked, filling the mug and heaping a generous amount of sugar into it.
"I'm not too concerned," Natasha replied easily, her defensive posture beginning to ease as he blinked himself awake. Nat never dropped her guard when she had the watch, even when she looked to be relaxed she was still on high alert. "Except about the weather, the reports this morning say snowstorms. There's a least a chance our mark won't show today if he's worried about making it home." Clint let out a muffled swear, leaning back to let his towel-covered head rest against the cabinet.
"Yep, I've had enough," Clint said, staring at the ceiling through thinning terry cloth. "I definitely need down time. Preferably somewhere with palm trees." Natasha let out a snort of a laugh.
"You're not the one who's going to be freezing their ass off in the rafters!" he snapped at her.
"I bought mittens yesterday, you can borrow them if you like," she offered. Clint flipped her off but her expression never changed. "Well you won't be doing that wearing mittens."
The bathroom door opened and Clint tilted his head to see Coulson shambling toward him. He straightened almost immediately, his body going tense. Phil was staggering into the kitchen on leadened feet, his shoulders hunched and his eyes red-rimmed and bloodshot, a sickly gray pallor to his skin as he dragged himself toward the coffee pot. Clint backed out of his way on instinct, tugging the towel off his head as Natasha rolled to her feet, concern on her face.
"Morning," Phil croaked with a voice that sounded like he'd been gargling glass. He swayed just a little as he reached for a mug and Clint's eyes widened. He glanced at Natasha to find her expression nearly as alarmed.
"Phil you don't look so good," he observed hesitantly. "You okay?"
"I must have picked up a bug," Phil's gravely voice replied as he reached for the coffee pot. "I'm sure I'll be-"
It all happened in an instant. What little color there was drained from Phil's face and the coffee pot slipped from his grasp, shattering on the floor. Clint let out a yelp surging forward in a scramble as Phil's knees went out.
"Now I'm concerned," Natasha said her eyes wide as she grasped hold of Coulson's legs, the pair of them heaving him toward the couch.
"Phil?" Clint gave him a gentle shake as Natasha tucked one of the needlepoint throw pillows under Phil's head. "Come on, sir, talk to me."
"Might be sick," Phil replied, his unfocused eyes blinking.
"Really?" Clint asked, frustration lacing his tone. "What clued you in?"
"Medical cleared us before we left," Natasha reminded, her posture rigid as she met his gaze. Clint swore under his breath shaking his head. Say what you would about SHIELD but they were always conscientious about the health status of agents on an active mission. Phil couldn't have been infected when he left headquarters and that fact didn't bode well considering the mission they were currently on.
"Sir, need to know on this mission just escalated," Clint said, dragging one of the blankets off the back of the sofa and bundling it around Phil as Natasha swaddled his feet. "Do we have any idea what the early symptoms were for the narcotic exposure?"
"Um," Phil swallowed thickly as he gazed blearily into the middle distance. "Fever, chills, bloodshot eyes."
"Well shit," Clint let out a breath.
"We must have been exposed," Natasha said grimly, gently prying open Coulson's eyes to reveal them nearly red.
"Are we absolutely sure it wouldn't affect you?" Clint asked worriedly.
"Drugs have never worked on me before," She replied with a hint of discomfort. She hated any talk of her augmentation. "Do we call it in?" Clint bit his lip, looking first at Phil and then back at Natasha.
"No," he shook his head. "Whoever they'd send to take over wouldn't get here in time to help Phil. I'm going to take over the opp." She gave him a firm nod of agreement and he looked back down at Coulson. Whoever they sent might not prioritize Phil's life over the mission and that was something he wasn't willing to leave to chance. They'd have to muddle through on their own.
"Okay, you get what info you can out of Coulson," Clint said decisively, standing to his feet and striding across the narrow room to pull his winter gear from the hooks by the door. "I'm going to case our mark, make sure he's coming in today for your meeting."
"And what if he doesn't?" Natasha asked, glancing at Phil worriedly.
"Then I'm going to track him down," Clint replied, shoving his feet into his boots. "Keep the line open, I'll let you know how things are going. Be ready to move out to make your meeting."
"What about Coulson?" she asked with a grimace.
"I'm fine," Phil rasped.
"If we don't get this stuff secure he's going to have more to worry about than his inability to stand upright," Clint replied grimly.
"Bundle up," Natasha insisted, taking her hat and Phil's scarf from the hooks and handing them to Clint. "If you have to go after the mark you're going to end up out in a blizzard." Clint nodded tersely, mashing the stocking cap down on his head and wrapping the scarf around his neck. He grabbed the innocuous backpack that held his collapsible bow and turned the lock on the door.
"Obviously Phil lived," Darcy said, staring at him wide eyed.
"Obviously," Clint nodded in agreement.
"Don't get me wrong, because if I didn't know how this story ended I would be freaking the hell out right now," she stated. "I'm just surprised Natasha counts this as her worst mission, I didn't think she was that sentimental. Don't you guys deal with near death all the time?"
"Oh we're not even to the part that really freaked Natasha out yet," Clint replied.
"Worse than unknown Phil-killing psycho drugs?" Darcy asked dubiously.
"If you ask Nat," Clint said.
Clint rubbed at his eyes with cold fingertips, settling lower against the rafters in the Great Market Hall before sighting down the scope of his bow. The vendor they were targeting was in his direct line of sight and somewhere off to his left Natasha had shrouded herself, ready to make her entrance. It wasn't yet midmorning and already some of the vendors were packing up, preparing to call it a day early to avoid being stranded by the storm. Clint drew in an unsteady breath, pulling his coat tighter around him against the chill.
"Nat, if we move up the timetable is it going to make this guy suspicious?" he asked, pausing to breathe on his hands to warm them.
"Not with this weather," she replied. "Even if it did, we're wasting daylight." Clint glanced down at his watch, computing the time in his head since Coulson had entered the Market Hall the day before. There was no way of knowing for certain how long the other victims had been exposed which meant they had less than a day to track down the source and find a cure. Clint pulled his goggles down over his eyes, waiting for the sensor transmitter to come online.
"Widow, you have a go," He ordered, readjusting his focus and settling against the rafter. "You're clear to engage at your discretion." Natasha materialized out of thin air, mere yards from their target, her fingertips lazily trailing over produce at one of the stalls along the way, the sensor's data scrolling across the screen of Clint's goggles.
"Oh I was hoping I wouldn't miss you," the vendor said with a smile. "I was about to pack up ahead of the storm. Your friend isn't joining us?"
"He had another engagement," Natasha replied with her most charming smile. "What do you have for me?"
"A rare and very special treat," He replied, pulling a bundled scarf from behind his counter and gently tugging the knots free. Natasha leaned a little closer as the wrappings fell away, revealing a clay pot. He lifted the lid.
"Is that," she frowned.
"Black Paprika," he replied proudly.
"Paprika?" Clint muttered, bewildered.
"The very finest. My dear," the vendor continued. "My mother, rest her, was arrested by the communists for selling this very paprika to one of our neighbors."
"It's okay, it's probably contaminated," Clint insisted hurriedly as the vendor prattled on. "Get us a reading so we can break down the compound."
"May I?" Natasha asked demurely. The vendor nodded eagerly, producing a small spoon and offering her a sample. She gave it a sniff, reaching out one finger to rub a few of the grains together.
"Paprika," Clint's breath caught as he stared at the readings. "Nat, it's paprika, it's, there's nothing. There's nothing here." Down below him Natasha was staring at the spoonful of paprika with a knitted brow.
"I don't understand," he said angrily, pushing under his goggles to rub his stinging eyes. "There was a trace reading here, There's got to be something around here! If it wasn't for this damn headache I could…" the words trailed off as he looked down at his hands, his eyes reflected in the surface of his watch.
"No," he whispered, horrified as he yanked off his goggles, turning them around so that he was looking into their reflective surface, his own bloodshot eyes staring back at him. He mashed the goggles back onto his face, thrusting his hands into his pockets until he brought up a thin transparent membrane, wrestling it onto his fingertips as he grasped first at Natasha's gloves and then Coulson's scarf still twined around his neck.
"Widow, abort," he croaked out as the unknown compound reading flashed over his screen. "Abort, it wasn't the paprika, it was the scarf. It's Coulson's scarf." He didn't wait for her confirmation, didn't pay any attention as she disengaged from the vendor, he was already up, his feet scrabbling over the rafters toward the second floor.
"Hawkeye, what's going on?" Natasha hissed through his com.
"You must have touched Coulson's scarf when you were undercover yesterday," He replied as he leapt across one of the girders. "I'm compromised." She let out a string of curses that he ignored, shaking off the ache in his head and bones as he scrambled down to one of the shops below, dropping to the floor behind it and drawing in a sharp breath before charging in through the back
"What the hell's in the scarf?" he demanded in halting Hungarian, his bow trained on the gnarled old woman at the back of the market stall, the rows of brightly colored scarves shielding them from the view of the shoppers on the promenade.
"Wool," the bent, ancient looking figure replied, eyeing his weapon with supreme disinterest. "Am I supposed to be intimidated?"
"I don't have time for games," Clint snapped back. "Three people are dead, and more are going to die if you don't tell me what you're putting in these scarves. Is it the dye? What is it?"
"Clint?" Natasha had appeared just inside the entrance of the stall, her gun drawn but hidden from the rest of the market.
"I need to know what you're doing to these scarves when you make them!" Clint snarled.
"Idiot boy," the woman replied, glaring at him with disgust.
"Clint, her hands," Natasha said softly, never lowering her guard. "Look at her hands." He looked. Claw like fingers bent with age and a life of scrambling for survival, barely able to uncurl. One gnarled, boney fist grasped a walking stick, the other she raised at him, waggling a crooked finger under his nose.
"You stupid Americans," she scoffed, unafraid. "You know so little. You come here and you think someone can knit a scarf for five dollars." Clint let the tension out of his bow, staring down at the scarf around his neck.
"I need to know where you got this." he said, holding it out to her. "Lives depend on it."
"Stupid American lives," Natasha observed. "But lives." The old woman frowned.
"They all come from a yarn mill in Hidegség," she replied grudgingly.
"Where the hell is Hidegség?" Clint asked in English, turning to Natasha.
"About three hours West of here, near the Austrian border." She replied, wincing.
"We're never going to make it there and back in this weather," he said, panic leeching back into his voice.
"Not in time," she agreed. Clint stared at the old woman a moment longer before lowering his bow and turning away, ducking back behind the stalls. He fished his phone from his pocket, dialing and wedging it against his ear as he broke down his bow, stuffing it into his pack.
"Pick up pick up pick up," he chanted as the phone rang.
"Who the hell is this?"
"Sir?"
"Barton," Fury's voice dripped with venom. "You better have a damn good reason for why you have my personal cell phone number."
"Coulson's been compromised," Clint replied without preamble.
"Well fuck, that's a reason."
"Before you say anything sir, I know I screwed up," Clint began, signaling to Natasha who had just joined him and heading down behind the stalls. "And I'm going to make this right, but Coulson needs medical containment and evac at the Budapest safe house within the next three hours and Widow and I are going to need emergency extraction on my signal in the next ten hours."
"Take a breath, son," Fury said, his tone suddenly one of calm understanding. "I'm on my way now but you need to tell me what happened."
"Sir, are you in Geneva?" Clint asked, coming up so short that Natasha nearly collided with his back.
"You're not cleared to know where I am, Specialist," his boss replied. "Now fill me in."
"Fury was too far out so we went to the swankiest part of town and boosted a Hummer," Clint gave a sentimental sigh. "Damn I miss military grade civilian transport."
"I'll bet," Darcy replied. "Probably also wouldn't have helped if Fury had realized you were exposed too. Seeing as you didn't tell him." Clint cringed.
"I am still in so much trouble for that," he admitted, twisting a plastic stir stick around his finger. "We more or less raced the storm out into the countryside. We made Hidegség just as the wind started kicking up and let me tell you it is hard to conduct a covert investigation when you're the only one stupid enough to be standing out in the snow. We broke into the scarf factory, little shamble down place, but no sign of our narcotic so we went through their records, all their wool was coming from a couple of farms outside of town. Of course, it's always the last one you check.
"Hawkeye?" Natasha's voice was nearly blown away on the wind as they crouched along the leeward side of the shamble down barn. Snow drifted up around the corner, spilling over her boots as she looked up at him, the tops of her cheeks burnt red from the cold and her lips pale. Clint blinked his eyes twice, slowly, trying to shake off their burning. The blizzard that had been raging all day and into the evening was finally letting up now that the dark was settling in, the bitter cold clawing at his raw throat.
"I know what it looks like," he replied, his voice hoarse. "But I'm good." Natasha glanced away, peering around the corner of the barn, her shoulders rigid.
"Nat?" She turned back to him, her brow furrowed and he let the tension out of his bow, holding his hand out to her. "I swear to you, I would not do that to you, I would not send you into the field without backup, Coulson would never do that and I won't do it either. I am not my best, but I'm good enough, I am going to have your back." She took hold of his hand, squeezing so tightly it hurt and he drew in a shaky breath though his raw throat. He gave her a sharp nod and she turned back to the corner of the barn, bracing her feet under her. He gave the signal and she darted forward, grasping hold of the barn door, Clint hot on her heels, his bow drawn, she pushed the door open, dropping into a crouch and he took aim over her shoulder.
"Well this is anticlimactic," he observed, peeling his balaclava back from his face. The barn smelled heavily of damp and manure, the low ceiling stretched out over their heads and the heads of close to a hundred sheep, their winter coats so thick it obscured their eyes as they stared stupid and blank at the humans in the doorway.
"Not locking the barn door was probably a clue," Clint muttered, sidling around Natasha and pushing the door closed behind them, shutting out the cold. He let out a painful cough, turning back to the barn and squinting into the darkness as he adjusted his goggles.
"Okay, other side of the barn I see a door," he said, nodding slowly. "People door, so probably either storage or a tack room. We should check that and if we don't find anything we'll have to move on the house." He winced, rubbing his eyes.
"Really don't want to do that," he sighed. "On account of the five kids, but better than dying so there we are." It was testament to how sick he was that he hadn't noticed until that moment that Natasha hadn't said a word.
"Widow?"
He looked back over his shoulder to find Natasha pressed up against the door, her eyes unnaturally wide. She didn't move, she didn't even blink, her gaze locked on the half a dozen sheep that had ambled closer to her.
"Tasha?" he glanced from the perfectly normal barnyard animals to the most terrifying operative in KGB history and then back again. One of the sheep looked up at him with a sublimely contented expression on its dumb face before it reached out and very gently nibbled at his tack pants. Natasha let out a strangled sound, flattening herself against the door.
"Aw, sheep, no," Clint said sadly. "I haven't got anything for you and you can't eat my pants, I'm going to need those." The sheep nudged at him before deciding he wasn't a likely source of feed and shambled off. He glanced back at the Black Widow who was still braced against the door, unmovable as concrete. He was just way too sick for this crap.
"Nat, they're perfectly harmless," he said softly. One of the sheep along the wall kicked up its heels and Natasha's gun was in her hand trained on it a moment later. Clint cringed, reaching out toward her slowly, telegraphing his movements.
"Tasha, I need you to not shoot the herbivores, okay?" His hand closed over hers, forcing the barrel of the gun toward the floor. It took more effort than it really should have. "They're not going to hurt us, I need you to take point, just move along the wall, real nice and slow." Natasha didn't move, her eyes so wide it looked painful. He reached out, gently turning her face toward him.
"I'm going to have your back," he promised again. "Don't look at them, just concentrate on getting to the door on the other side of the barn. If it helps, tell yourself you're walking by a bunch of sweaters."
"Sweaters," the word was flat, devoid of inflection as she stared back at him.
"Warm, fluffy sweaters," he said with forced cheerfulness. Natasha gave a sharp nod, warily glancing at the sheep and making a faint high pitched sound as she edged between him and the wall, slithering slowly toward the door on the far side of the barn.
"I want a damn vacation," Clint muttered under his breath, smothering a cough in his sleeve as ahead of him he was pretty sure he could hear Natasha softly murmuring about wool socks. One of the sheep on the far side of the barn let out a mellow bleat and Natasha flattened herself against the barn wall, both guns drawn and trained on the fat lump of wool that only she seemed to find threatening.
"Warm fluffy sweaters?" Clint suggested, his raw throat making his voice sound gravely. Natasha didn't move, her eyes fixed on the sheep who seemed largely unperturbed by the unknown humans in their barn or the quieting storm outside it.
"Merino," Natasha said, her voice catching, the faintest tremor in her hands. "Cashmere."
"I think Cashmere's goats actually," Clint replied, patting her arm ineffectually. "Goats, now those assholes are a threat." He shoved ham-handedly at Natasha's shoulder, getting her moving along the wall again, but she was now staring at the sheep with unbridled horror.
"Goats are mean, nasty spawns of hell," He continued to ramble, though the distraction didn't seem to be working at all. "I'm not saying they'd eat you, but given the right circumstance and the right goat those fuckers would at least put in the effort to try." Natasha's breath caught as they reached the door and she turned to face him, her wide eyes fixed once more on the sheep.
"No goats here though," he said, reaching around her to try the iron door latch. The latch lifted and he nudged her back around, blocking her in. If she were a little less terrified she'd have probably killed him for that but she didn't seem in a very aggressive state of mind at the moment.
"No goats here," he repeated. And it occurred to him that that probably wasn't the most effective distraction he could have employed. "We're going to go through the nice sturdy door and then we'll have it between us and all these sheep." Natasha's guns were once more in her hand and he tried not to roll his itching, burning eyes.
"God don't let there be goats behind this door," he murmured under his breath. Natasha rallied just enough to burst through the door and he drew, covering her as they scrambled into the room. No sooner had they crossed the threshold than she whirled around, slamming the door behind him and leaning against it with all her weight.
"City folks," he grumbled, the words buried under Natasha's stream of extremely lewd Russian curses.
It was neither a tack room or an office. This part of the barn was also completely dark, he could make out a rusting hulk of an ancient tractor, a wagon with a slightly bent axel piled up with several hay bales, a stack of crates stamped with faded red ink indicating produce, and a pile of feed bags leaning against one wall under a row of rusty garden tools.
"Fuck," he coughed. Natasha was still leaning against the door, her back to it but her breath no longer coming in ragged gasps.
"I was expecting, I don't know," Clint let out a huff of despair. "Some contraband, a lab, a big pile of crates with weird steroids in them. I don't know!"
"There's nothing here," Natasha said, and she seemed as confused and horrified by this as he was.
"Fuck," Clint repeated, rubbing his burning eyes.
"What do we do?" Natasha asked, and it was a testament to how rattled she was that the words sounded small and frightened. Clint looked down at his hand, a faint tremor running though it from the fever that was burning him up. He was going to die here, he was going to die in a shitty sheep barn in Bumfuck Nowhere Hungary and Phil was going to die in SHIELD containment. He'd killed the both of them.
"Screw that," He snapped, his hand clenched in a fist and he straightened his shoulders. "Look around, there's something here, we're just not looking for the right thing. We might be off our game but even sick and half blind and bleeding out we still have a ten percent better record than any SHIELD team ever. We need a lead on our next move." Natasha straightened, drawing in a steadying breath and giving him a nod before moving stealthily across the barn. Clint took the other side, starting with the crates.
"What if it's not drugs?" she asked presently, the wind howling outside masking the sound of her movements.
"I don't think it is drugs," Clint said with a frown. "Not the kind we thought we were looking for anyway. Not recreational. This isn't intentional. Whatever's contaminating the wool it's not… it's meant for something else."
"What?" Natasha asked. "This is outside my skill set."
"Wool," he said with a frown. "Somewhere this is about wool. How much you can produce, how much you can sell. Farming's hard work and there isn't a lot of security."
"What if they gave something to the," she nodded at the door, seemingly unwilling to even say the word sheep. Clint frowned.
"I wouldn't bet on that," he shook his head thoughtfully. "There's food livestock and then there's producing livestock. There's all kinds of guys who wouldn't think twice about mistreating an animal they were going to turn into steaks, but an animal that's producing a product, you want it healthy and fat and happy, well fed, low stressed. You want it to live as long as it can so that it can keep producing, so you don't have to replace it." He knelt down beside one of the open bags of feed, adjusting his goggles and running his glove through a handful of the pellets.
"So they'd be careful of the-" Natasha let out a shudder. "What wouldn't they be careful about?"
"Just about everything else," Clint replied. "It can be a hard life, particularly if things don't go your way." He glanced at the other bags, dusting the grit off his hand. The other bags looked the same but there was one in the corner.
"Hey, Tasha, come over here and give me a hand," she was at his shoulder in a moment, helping him heave the heavy bags out of the way.
"Well shit," He said, gobsmacked as he stared at the bag bearing the Alchemax logo.
"Fertilizer," Natasha read the poorly stamped Hungarian printed on the bag. "Black Market fertilizer." Clint blinked at her stupidly.
"The Communists rationed everything," she explained. Clint rolled his eyes.
"You know things are bad when your government feels the need to ration actual shit," he declared, rolling his eyes as Natasha pulled out a knife, cutting into the corner of the bag. As soon as her glove came in contact with the fertilizer Clint's goggled flashed red.
"We've got it!" He said, relief washing over him as Natasha produced a containment case, taking a sizable sample as Clint switched his com to Fury's channel. "Sir, we've got it, we need pickup and a containment and pursuit team."
"Extraction is in-route in ten," Fury replied. "I'm scrambling teams now. Good work agents." Clint closed the channel, letting out a relieved chuckle as Natasha rolled to her feet.
"Guess I'm not dying today," he said with a grin. Natasha stared back at him blankly. "What?" That was the moment he realized she wasn't staring at him, she was staring over his shoulder at the other barn door at the far end and he whirled on his feet, letting out a low curse at the sickly glow of a lantern bobbling though the darkness toward the barn.
Without another word they scrambled, Natasha skittering back behind the hay bales and Clint scrambling onto the tractor, pulling himself into the eaves as the barn door opened.
The sheep farmer cursed as he wedged the door open against the wind, his heavy winter coat wrapped so tight around his frame that it made him appear more short and round than he probably was. He stamped the snow from his boots, muttering to himself as he rubbed his gloved hands together, the lantern dangling from his arm. Clint held his breath as the man waddled across the barn, passing beneath him, mere feet from where Natasha was hiding, and making his way toward a kerosene lamp mounted on the wall by the door to the sheep pen.
The Farmer's sharp curses had turned more soft as he paused to pry the gloves from his meaty hands and Clint caught Natasha's eye, waving her toward the door the farmer had entered from. She gave him a sharp nod, melting into the darkest corners of the barn and moving on silent feet toward the door as Clint peered down from the rafters to where the farmer was struggling to light the lamp with frostbitten fingers. He couldn't risk the drop to the floor without being detected, he couldn't wait and risk missing the extraction. He needed an exit strategy, and fast.
It was only a moment to judge the distance and the angles, the probabilities. Clint silently drew the smoke bomb from one of the pockets on his uniform, his feet finding their way backward across the beam in the darkness as he increased the distance between himself and his target. He armed the smoke bomb, taking aim and gently lobbing it toward the floor. He didn't miss, he didn't even miscalculate. He just hadn't figured on the farmer turning away from the now lit lamp at that exact moment, his foot catching the normally perfectly harmless smoke bomb and sending it clattering though the door to the sheep pen he'd just opened.
The smoke bomb went off with a sharp clap and the farmer let out a frightened scream more befitting a five year old than a grown man. Clint didn't pause as smoke billowed up from inside the barn, he leapt to the floor, running full out for the door as the sheep began to bleat in panic.
"What happened?!" Natasha shouted at him over the cold wind as smoked billowed from the barn door he'd just come sprinting through.
"I need a vacation!" He snapped back running toward her, it took him a moment to realize she was rooted to the spot.
He looked back over his shoulder, making a face as twenty or so sheep hurtled from the smoke filled barn toward them.
"Aw, sheep, no," he groaned, spinning on his heel and running straight for Natasha, her eyes terrifyingly wide as she drew her gun.
"Sweaters!" he shouted over the wind, grasping her by the arm and towing her after him as he ran toward the trees and their extraction point. "Fluffy sweaters!"
"Sheep?" Darcy asked him, disbelieving.
"Yeah," he nodded slowly.
"Most terrifying mission in history was panicking sheep?"
"The bleating and the stampeding can be a little unsettling if you've never seen that sort of thing before," he replied. "It was storing the fertilizer next to the feed that caused the problem apparently. A couple of the other farms in the area were using it too but they hadn't contaminated the animal feed with it. The sheep were immune so they ingested the chemicals and it ended up in their wool."
"What happened to the sheep that got loose?" she asked. Clint stared at her for a long moment.
"There was a fence around the barnyard, I don't think they got out."
"You don't think ?"
"Look, less than twenty minutes later SHIELD containment got there," he said defensively. "They said they tested all the sheep for contamination and got the farmer to roll on his black market supplier. They took out an entire division of Alchemax."
"And you're one hundred percent sure none of the sheep got out?" she frowned at him.
"I-"
"Right now there's a kaiju-sheep roaming rural Hungary bringing curses down on unsuspecting travelers." Darcy declared disapprovingly. "This is how Chupacabras and Mothman happen!"
"That's ridiculous," Clint snorted as she scowled back at him. "Those were both deliberate experimentation." He took another gulp of his coffee distracted momentarily from the growing silence.
"What?" Darcy asked softly.
"What?" Clint replied, staring back at her. She didn't make a sound, just let her head thunk down on the table.
Don't fight it, it's coming for you, running at ya
It's only this moment, don't care what comes after
Your fever dream, can't you see it getting closer
Just surrender 'cause you feel the feeling taking over
It's fire, it's freedom, it's flooding open
It's a preacher in the pulpit and you'll find devotion
There's something breaking at the brick of every wall,
Ryan Lewis, Justin Paul, and Benj Pasek - The Greatest Show