Previously: Kat set up a trap for Slater. Clint and Natasha (posing as Kat) went to meet him. Fury brought Steve to Kat for her to teach him the ways of new tech, making Kat end her communication with Clint. Later she reconnects with them to check in, but finds the connection is severed. Also good to note is Kat is still healing from injuries from the Walmart ambush where Slater used the threat of nuclear war to push Kat and Clint out of hiding so he could find them.
PHILIDELPHIA, PA
"Stop pouting," Natasha said after Kat's end of the com went silent.
"I'm not," Clint said, his eyes darting to the street before they crossed it.
"Yes, you are. We need to focus on Slater." It was odd that Clint was less distracted when Kat was on the coms, but it was the truth. With Kat gone, she'd need to double down on getting him to focus so they didn't end up botching this setup that Kat worked so hard to arrange.
"Oh, I'm focused on the bastard alright." He wasn't going to screw up his chance to take Slater in, or out.
"Good because he's expecting us." He just wasn't expecting them to know he was there. "We only have one shot at catching him off guard."
Turning down an alley leading towards the harbor, they paused outside the shipping warehouse at the end of the road. Somewhere inside, Slater lied in wait. Probably with backup. Whereas they'd foregone backup to lessen the chance Slater caught on to the trap too quick.
"Remember, SHIELD would prefer we bring Slater in alive," Natasha reminded him.
Clint met her eyes, still a little weirded out at how much she looked like Kat, and nodded tersely. He had no plans to give Slater a quick death. Though if lethal force was necessary to ensure he didn't slip away, he'd use it.
Opening the doors, they stepped inside together. Clint kept his eyes on the shadows while keeping his steps measured, unhurried. He noticed the reflection off a sniper scope in the rafters seconds before the shot rang out. Keeping in character, he launched himself at Nat, who everyone else saw as Kat, rolling them both out of the way. More shots had them separating, darting for cover in different directions.
"Keep to the shadows around the perimeter, and try not to stop moving for too long," Clint instructed over the coms, reiterating things Nat already knew to keep up appearances.
Nat had to bite her tongue to keep from responding with 'I know' to Clint's comment like she would to other agents who tried to mansplain to her. Clint wasn't mansplaining, he was explaining something Kat wouldn't necessarily think of, and right now her job was to be Kat. Moving to the edge of the warehouse, she let out a low curse when her com emitted a high pitch noise as someone short-circuited it. Ripping it out of her ear, which still rang from the sound, she had to hand it to Slater. Disabling their communication was smart, and it'd work a hell of a lot better if she really was Kat.
Clint rolled behind a stack of wooden crates, not the best cover but good enough. When he stopped in a kneeling position, the warehouse was eerily quiet. Reaching up to his hearing aids, he adjusted the volume to no avail. Not only did he lose his point of communication with Nat, but he also couldn't hear anything lower than an explosion going off right beside him. Pulling out his hearing aids, he pocketed them in case engineering could salvage them later. With his back against the metal siding of the warehouse, he readied his other senses to take over.
SHIELD HEADQUARTERS, NEW YORK CITY
"What's wrong?" Steve asked when he returned with food to find Kat's fingers flying over the keyboard, her eyebrows knitted together.
"Clint and Nat's coms stopped working. I'm hacking into the camera feed at their meet-up locale to make sure they're okay." Not that there was much she could do remotely without having contact with either of them.
Setting the food on the cot, Steve pulled the other chair up beside Kat so he could watch as she worked. He didn't understand any of the random letters and symbols flashing over the screen, but he knew she succeeded when several pictures covered the screen.
"Let me know if you see a man with a bow and arrow or someone who looks just like me," Kat said, filtering through the camera feeds.
"Why would someone look like you?" Did she have a twin?
"Because SHIELD has some weird technology. I'll try to explain later." She didn't want to brush him off but explaining Fitz' experimental tech wasn't on top of her priorities at the moment. Not until she eased her worries.
Steve pointed to one of the tiny video squares when he saw movement in the shadows behind some wooden crates. Clicking on the box to enlarge it, Kat took control of the camera, zooming in and adjusting the angle until she had a clear picture of Clint. She couldn't tell much from the black and white feed, but he didn't seem in critical health. She breathed a little easier. Until Clint pulled a gun from his ankle holster and pointed it at the camera. She wished there was a way to tell him not to break her only connection to him.
Making a K with his free hand, he moved it in the sign he'd given for her name. A quick question before shooting. As fast as possible she maneuvered the camera up and down in a 'yes' gesture. His shoulders sagged in relief before he signed again, explaining he no longer had his hearing aids and asking her to kill the lights.
"You know sign language?" Steve asked, vaguely recognizing the movements Clint was going through as the language, though he had no idea what he was saying.
"Clint's teaching me," she said, pulling up a new screen to access the warehouses' electrical panel. "Slater blew out their coms, which means he blew out Clint's hearing aids."
"What'd he ask you to do?"
"Turn off the lights," she said, shifting back to the camera controls to let Clint know she could access the lights.
"Is that a good idea for him? To not be able to hear, or see?" It seemed like taking away two of his senses would be a bad thing.
"He's got good vision. Besides, Nat and Clint are resourceful. If he wants the lights off, I trust he knows what he's doing."
Clint smiled after she nodded the camera again, signing 'Thanks, beautiful' seconds before she switched screens and shut down the lights.
"What did he say then?" Steve asked, his curiosity getting the better of them.
"He just thanked me," she said, fighting the heat that crept up her cheeks when she omitted the 'beautiful' part. Steve didn't need to know the exact words used.
With the lights off, and the warehouses' cameras not set up with night vision, Kat had no way of keeping track of Clint or Nat. Once again, she was completely useless. Pushing the laptop further across the table, she kept the cameras up in case Slater got the lights back up and Clint needed her to cut them off again.
Steve watched Kat trying to figure out what to do with her hands after pushing the computer away, from tapping them against the table, to picking at her nails, to cracking her knuckles. Her unease was palpable.
"Should we eat while we wait?" he asked. Perhaps eating would help calm her nerves, or at least distract her. Lifting the bags of food from the cot he set them on the table. "I may have gotten too much."
"There's no such thing as too much food," she smiled at him, pulling out the containers and spreading them across the table.
"So..." Steve hedged after they'd been eating in silence for a few minutes. "Do you refer to all agents by their first name?"
"What?" she asked, snapping out of her spiraling thoughts. "Oh, um, no. Normally it's just 'agent' or last names. But I've worked with Clint and Nat several times, and we're friends."
She wasn't sure if Natasha would consider her a friend, but after escaping from assassins at the airport together Kat considered them on the friend level.
"I didn't know it was possible to have friends here. Everyone I met, aside from you, has been strictly business." Every agent he'd been introduced to had been overly professional and a bit stand-offish. Kat was a refreshing change of pace.
"Yeah, a lot of SHIELD agents are by the books. Those of us who bend the rules to help save the world are a rare breed, indeed."
"Doesn't that get you in trouble with your superiors?"
"Sometimes," she said, thinking of Sitwell. "But usually, the ends justify the means. Saving the world from nuclear war tends to have supervisors overlooking how it happened."
"I can definitely relate." Saving prisoners of war after being ordered to let it be had resulted in increasing his standings with his superiors instead of being penalized.
Figuring they both could benefit from it, he dived into one of his war stories that literally felt like just yesterday. None of the typical hero type stories people usually wanted to hear. Instead, he told the funny, stupid stories of him, Bucky, and the rest of the Howling Commandos. Like the time Dugan about gave himself a concussion trying to use Steve's shield one night at camp.
PHILIDALPHIA, PA
Slipping on a pair of frames from his pocket, Clint tapped the side of them twice, turning on the night vision. Per his request, Fitz made a few adjustments to the technology he originally gifted to Kat, namely putting it in a pair of purple tinted sunglasses that formed to his head so as not to fall off while he was on a mission. Holstering his gun in favor of using his bow, he kept the wall of the warehouse to his back as he moved out from behind the wooden crates.
Picking off the snipers in the rafters was too easy once he realized none of them were equipped with night vision goggles. Apparently, Slater hadn't held onto SHIELD's obsession of being prepared for anything. Then again, without a Fitz and a Kat, and all of SHIELD's other resources at his disposal, even Slater was limited on what he could pull off. Unless he had a deep pocketed investor, Slater was on his own, and clearly, he wasn't the sharpest arrow in the quiver if he didn't find workarounds for when his funds were limited.
Taking out each sniper in rapid succession, the last body fell to the floor a second before Clint turned, arrow loaded and pulled at the ready. If he hadn't had Fitz' glasses that showed him a wider peripheral view, he wouldn't have noticed the movement behind him. It wasn't as though he could hear a damn thing without his hearing aids.
Slater stood with Nat in a chokehold, a gun pressed against her head and his mouth moving as though Clint could hear him. He couldn't, but he could read his lips. He wanted Clint to drop his weapons, or he'd shoot. If it was Kat, he wouldn't have hesitated. Instead, he simply smirked, tightening his hold on his bow. Natasha could handle one man with a gun just fine.
"Do you not care if I murder your girlfriend?" Slater asked, baffled when Barton didn't do as he said.
"She's not my girlfriend," Barton said, his voice an octave louder than necessary and that same insufferable smirk on his face.
"Lover, fling, side chick, whatever you want to call her, she won't leave here alive if you don't put down your bow," Slater reiterated, slowly and loudly as though Barton was stupid. SHIELD didn't always put their brightest in the field, but by Barton's record he'd assumed he was at least semi-intelligent.
Slater was so focused on Clint, he didn't notice Natasha slipping from his grip and taking his gun as her own, until she had it pressed against the side of his head instead of hers.
"What he means, is I'm not Katherine," she said, peeling back the mask Fitz made and letting the wig she wore fall to the floor.
"Agent Romanoff," Slater greeted her. Her reputation preceded her, and he knew without backup he didn't have a prayer of getting away. Still, a muffled thwack and piercing sharp pain in his thigh followed by an electrical jolt had him letting loose a string of curses.
"Was that really necessary?" Nat asked, turning towards Clint.
"Yes. He tried to kill Kat," Clint shrugged. "And he almost started a nuclear war. But mostly the multiple attempts to kill Kat."
"Why don't you contact SHIELD for transport," she said, pulling heavy-duty restraints from her jacket pocket and securing them tightly around Slater's wrists.
Pulling a flashlight from his utility belt, Clint flashed it several times at the nearest security camera to get Kat's attention. He smiled when the camera moved up and down again. He knew she'd keep monitoring them, even though she couldn't see anything with the lights off. Seconds later, the lights flickered back on in the warehouse. Shouldering his bow, he signed to Kat, asking her to notify transport to meet them at the warehouse. Another nod of the camera and he knew she'd gotten the memo.
Nat glanced between Clint and the camera after their mini conversation. It didn't take a genius to figure out what transpired.
"Kat?" She asked, nodding at the camera.
Clint nodded, his smile widening. "She's something else, isn't she?"
"She has to be to put up with you," she said, making him stick his tongue out at her. "For real, though. You should reconsider the whole 'she's not my girlfriend' thing. If you don't lock down your relationship, there's probably a dozen others who wouldn't mind defining a relationship with her."
His brows furrowed, but he didn't have time to respond as their SHIELD transport arrived, bursting through the warehouse doors.
A/N: I'm baaacckk. So sorry it's taken so long. New baby and moving states have kept me busy. I'm still trying to find time to write. I'm used to writing whenever inspiration strikes and now I have limited hours during my baby boy's nap time to get words in. I hope you enjoyed this update. I'll do my best to update more regularly, but we're still looking for a house to buy and a place to rent until we buy a house.
Onto guest review responses:
To the guest who said this story is amazing and they love Steve and Kat together thank you! I'm glad you're enjoying the story and I have so much fun writing Steve and Kat interactions so I'm glad you like them together. Hope you enjoyed this chapter with more Steve and Kat in it.
Marauderfranky: Your review means so much. I'm so glad you enjoy my writing and find my OC likeable. I try my best to write OCs that are likeable without being Mary-sue (not that I always succeed). Thanks for leaving a review!
Rach
xoxo