Chapter Title: I'm Not Getting Out of Here Alive
Author's Note: Ready for the climax?
Disclaimer: I claim no ownership or copyright of anything depicted or over anything you might recognize.
The tension was palpably suffocating inside the large room.
The entire office space held their collective breath as they waited. Clammy hands kept clenching and relaxing as the guards readjusted their grips on the rifles, all aimed at the locked double doors. Gunfire and small explosions thundered and boomed from the outside, etching constantly closer.
Aibek Omarov sat with his back rigid and his hands splayed out on the teak desk in front of him. His face displayed no emotions while his dark eyes never left his secured doors. His jaw was tightened, and his shoulder tensed with every boom that echoed in the compound.
One of the guards by his side, a stocky man with a firm grip on his weapon and anxious features broke the smothering silence. "Sir, you should leave while you have the chance."
Omarov didn't look away from the door as he picked up the handgun resting on the desk and shot the man in the chest without a flinch. The guard flopped to the ground, dead. None dared moved a muscle.
Silence stretched and expanded until it once again swallowed the office space, only broken by a nervous, labored breathing.
Agonizing seconds dragged by.
Then, the thick double doors burst open with such force that one of them hung loose on the hinges. A cylindrical device rapidly sailed through from the somewhere outside the hall, where it rolled and clinked onto the cold, hard floor. With a hiss of air, smoke poured out from the small device and quickly filled the room with the choking, grey haze.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened.
A knife cut through the air as it sailed through the doorway. Its hilt slammed straight into the eye of one of the nearest guards. The room exploded into chaos, as Natasha came roaring out of the mist a breath later. She pounced onto one guard, who had been staring dumbfounded at his partner, being smacked in the face with a knife. She planted her Widow's Stings on his neck, the electricity crackling as it ran through his system. As he crumpled to the ground with gurgled cry, she leaped onto the next one, using the knife Clint had thrown in the guard's face to stab him in the throat.
The remaining guards started firing whenever they saw a flash of movement through the lingering smoke, fear driving their instincts instead of rational thought. Natasha used it to her advantage. She jumped, using the gained momentum to slide across the floor, towards the nearest guard. She kicked out the legs from under him and he went down with a surprised yell. When he crashed down to her eyelevel, she quickly seized him by the throat, hold his body to cover hers and aimed his weapon at his fellow guardsmen. Four rapid shots took down the rest of the guards. Natasha then snapped the neck of the last remaining man, who she had used as a human shield.
An eerie quiet enveloped the room as the smoke steadily dripped onto the floor, evaporating from the air. Natasha breathed heavily, her lungs aching for a proper breath while the gunshot wound in her side screamed at the sudden abuse. She steadily ignored all her throbbing, persistent hurts as she took the gun from the dead guard's holster and rose to her feet.
She made sure to keep her movements controlled and steady, never faltering for a single breath. There was still one person alive within this room, and he was still sitting frozen in his office chair, maintaining eye contact as Natasha stalked slowly in front of his desk. Omarov maintained his exterior of calm, collected indifference, but Natasha saw right through his lies. His hands were clenched so tightly his knuckles were bone white, a vein throbbed on his forehead and his normally stoic, dead eyes were wallowing in a defeated and furious despair.
Natasha didn't even bother hiding the smirk that spread over her lips, as she stopped before the broken-down criminal mastermind, the gun aimed directly at his head.
"What? Disappointed to see me?"
Omarov, for his part, still clinged to his shattered façade as he leaned forward with a small, triumphant smile. "Where is your partner, Ms. Romanoff?"
A millisecond passed between them. Then the answer sailed past Natasha's head, before firmly burying itself into the wall a few feet from Omarov's tall backrest. She felt the wind of the arrow caressing her red locks as it travelled inches away from her messy hair. On any other day and any other situation, she wouldn't have reacted. But this time, she couldn't help the muscles in her back tensing up when it came close. She just hoped Clint hadn't noticed it.
Instead, she focused on the look of surprise and disappointment that was painted on Omarov's face, as he eyed the black arrow quivering in his wall. She savored every second of it. Her grin grew wider. She relished in the fact that Omarov knew he had lost. Even better, he knew it had been her doing.
"You know, if you keep wearing that disappointed scowl, your face might set that way." Natasha couldn't help the remark flowing past her lips. No doubt, Barton was glowing with pride somewhere behind her.
"Are you going to shoot an unarmed, innocent man?" Omarov retorted, his voice rough.
The urge to smile completely evaporated from Natasha's mind at the statement and she allowed her cold anger and resentment to slip into her eyes. "Don't bother. We saw your twisted, little experiments in your basement."
"They were necessary," the Kazahk stated in an even, determined tone, his face turning grave.
"I can't imagine any reason for that to be necessary."
"Have you ever watched someone die of starvation, Ms. Romanoff?" Omarov's gaze suddenly turned urgent and haunted as he leaned forward in his seat. Natasha tightened her grip on the gun handle. "It is neither glamorous nor a worthy death.
"We were poor, growing up. My baby sister never made it past the crib, and my mother went hungry most days to make sure I was fed. Slowly, I could only watch as she faded away, while I grew stronger. She made it till my eighth year. I witnessed my mother die of starvation. On that day, I decided I would never go hungry again."
Omarov's eyes bore into Natasha's own, as he talked, growing ever more agitated and resolved.
"We're too many people on this planet. People starve, wither, and kill; men, women and children alike, yet our population continues to rise by the year, undeterred. Epidemics, catastrophes, diseases… All of it made to keep us in check. I will make my own epidemic. Cleanse our world as it has been done before. Then no 8-year-old boy will have to watch his mother starve before his very eyes, just so he could live."
"Is that what you told to the 8-year-olds before you dosed them with poison?"
"They were all dying anyway… I gave their deaths meaning."
"How noble. Sacrificing your trafficked children for the greater cause. You'll forgive me if I don't share your sentiment. Somehow, killing thousands of innocent people over your childhood trauma doesn't agree with me." Natasha's trigger finger itched and tensed. She wasn't entirely sure why she hadn't pulled it yet.
Omarov sneered at her statement. "Innocents? No one's innocent. Certainly not you, or your partner. I might kill thousands, but millions will live on, and the world will be better for it."
He leaned forward again, his eyes twinkling menacingly. "You see, Ms. Romanoff-"
His sentence cut off abruptly. An arrow imbedded itself deeply into his right eye socket. Omarov let out a startled, choked gasp as the force of the impact forced his body back into his chair. The life snuffed out of his features an instant later. His face grew slack and his lifeless limbs sagged towards the floor.
Natasha whipped her head around in surprise.
Clint stood in the rigid, firing stance, his bow clutched tightly in one hand while the other still lingered around his ear where he had drawn back the now lax bowstring. For a moment, he remained steady and lucid. Then he faltered.
He shakily began lowering his bow. A tremor ran down his arm and he dropped his precious weapon with a loud clatter. He didn't even seem to notice as he swayed dangerously on his feet. Natasha tossed her gun to the ground and ran over to catch him as he toppled to the side. Her side burned as she precariously held his weight in an attempt to keep him standing. If he collapsed, she wasn't sure she was strong enough to heave him back up.
"He was droning on…" Clint muttered in her ear. He turned his tired, worn-down eyes towards her, something flashing in them that she couldn't immediately identify. "… and you let him."
Natasha reached down as slowly as she could without losing her grip on her partner and fumbling grasped his dropped bow in her free hand. She would be damned if she left it behind. "Just buying you some time. I promised you could put an arrow in him, remember?"
Clint's eyelids sagged further, as he let his head loll tiredly on his shoulders. He mumbled, "How nice of you."
A small part of Natasha sighed with relief. If he could still banter with her, no matter how quiet, he stood a chance.
"You have the detonator?" she asked. Clint nodded his affirmative and gestured towards his pants pocket. "Good. Then let's get the hell out of here."
Natasha steeled herself. Then she hoistered Clint up, one arm slung around her shoulder which she kept in a firm grip. Clint barely managed to get his feet under him, stumbling with the simple task. But she knew he gave all he had to help her. He stubbornly fixed his gaze towards the doors and their exit.
Together, they staggered away from the limp, dead form of Aibek Omarov.
Natasha stared hatefully at the compound below, taking in the last details.
She had continued to walk until she was absolutely certain they were clear of the blast zone. She had walked until she could no more, and she had felt Clint go almost completely limp in her grip. When he had started to slide away from her, she knew it had to be far enough.
They were on a small hilltop underneath one of the pine trees, overlooking what remained of Omarov's compound. Smoke billowed out from several places in the building already, small fires were burning around emergency exits and dead men lay scattered in the snow along with their weapons and ammunition. It looked pitiful from their vantage point, small, insignificant and not containing 28 dead children and a psychotic, soon to be dead and buried, criminal mastermind.
Natasha pushed the button on the small detonator device in her hand.
For a heartbeat, only the tweeting birds and snow crunching under her boots echoed.
Then the building before her eyes disintegrated with a deafening boom and a plume of smoke. The heatwave rushed towards her and struck her face. Another, louder explosion followed shortly after, as the fire reached the ammunition stores. It was succeeded by another, and then another until the sky was swallowed up by the thick column of black smoke that rose from the remains of the smoldering building. Angry, orange flames greedily burned and ate through the still-standing walls, the roaring inferno a stark contrast to the pristine white snow surrounding it.
"Did you do it?" Clint's muttered voice was so low, Natasha almost missed it. She turned to where she had propped him up against the tree trunk. He seemed utterly spent, too tired to shift into any other position than the one she had placed him in, his chest heaving with every wheezing breath. His exhausted eyes languidly tried to focus on her.
"I did." Natasha crouched down next to him in the snow, dread and concern clutching painfully at her heart.
"Good…" Clint mumbled, his eyelids growing heavier by the second. "'s good, Nat…"
His eyes slid completely closed as he slumped further down.
"Clint?" Natasha searched his face as she grabbed his shoulder. She squeezed a single time. "You gotta stay awake. I contacted Phil – he's on his way. Just a little while longer."
His head lolled weakly to the side as his eyelids fluttered briefly. Then they closed shut.
"Clint?" She shook him gently at first. When he didn't respond, she dared do it harder.
"Clint!"
No matter how hard she shook him, slapped his cheek, threatened, begged or ordered him to wake, he remained unresponsive and limp. The only sound was that of his ragged, labored breathing as he struggled for every breath of fresh air.
Natasha pulled him close against her chest, wrapping her arms around his body and rubbing her hands on his arms to keep him and herself warm. The cold temperature had already numbed her body and her movements quickly grew clumsy and shaky. Exhaustion overwhelmed her senses and sleep pulled at her thoughts.
It should have been concerning.
As should the realization that her wound had re-opened and blood was steadily covering the bottom of her shirt and her pantleg. But the cold dulled every painful sensation and her instinctual panic. All she wanted to do was go to sleep.
Natasha's eyes drifted shut as she remained on her curled position, her dying, unresponsive partner cradled in her arms and her blood dripping rhythmically into the white, powdered snow beneath.
TBC