NOVEMBER 2010: TRISKELION
Clint's file popped up on Katherine's dashboard just as she was getting ready to leave for the night. She could have pushed it off on whoever had the night shift, but instead she grabbed one of SHIELD's laptops, shoved it in her bag, and fixed her com back in her ear. It looked like she'd be working overtime again, but this time she would work from home where she could lounge in her pajamas with a glass of wine.
"You're going to have to wait about twenty more minutes before I can help," Katherine greeted Clint, waving goodbye to the agents at the front desk as she left the Triskelion.
"What if I was going to die if you didn't override the weapons system of my target right now?"
"I would tell you that you should have asked for tech help sooner and that you'll have to play dodgeball with bullets until I get home because I'm technically off the clock." This was why Clint always asked for Katherine. She got his humor and she threw it right back at him. That and she was really smart.
"You're off work and still working on my case. You must care about me."
"Or I want the overtime," Katherine pointed out, speeding out of the parking garage. Thankfully, her shift ended well after rush hour. She might even make it to her apartment in ten minutes instead of twenty.
"Admit it, we're besties now."
"It's Eric's first night shift, I didn't want to overwhelm him with you. And Angie's my bestie. You're like, maybe seventh on the list."
"I'm on the list, that's all that matters," Clint smiled as he ducked further down behind the bushes he hid in.
As soon as Katherine got home she bolted her door, stripped out of her work clothes, and put on sweat pants and her old MIT sweatshirt. Sitting cross legged on her couch, she set up the laptop on the coffee table.
"Alright, what can I help you with tonight?" She asked, taking a sip of white wine.
"I need you to shut down the weapons system of my target."
"Seriously? I thought that was a hypothetical situation." She hadn't heard any explosions in the background that time, so she figured Clint just needed her to hack in somewhere to retrieve information for him.
"Half and half. I've been hiding in the bushes for the last half hour. One move and the sensors will pick up on it and I'll be dead."
Pulling up Clint's file on the laptop, Katherine quickly skimmed through it until she got to the part about his target. She needed to know who and where she was hacking before she could even try to gain a connection with the system.
"What quadrant are you in?" The system she was looking at was complicated and the ground it covered was huge. She'd only be able to shut down a quadrant at a time if Clint didn't want his target to know he was coming.
"I'm on the north-west side of the building, about two football field lengths from it." He had no idea what 'quadrant' it was, but hopefully that was enough for Katherine to figure it out.
"Alright, you're a go, just don't go past the pond without telling me," Katherine warned.
"No swimming, got it," Clint said, darting from his hiding spot and making his way closer to the building.
Katherine spent her night switching on and off different parts of the security system so Clint could work his way closer to the target until he made it to the last quadrant.
"Thanks KitKat, I've got it from here," Clint said as he made his way through the shadows. Just because the security system was down didn't mean he was invisible to the guards.
"KitKat?"
"Yeah, you earned a code name, remember. Yours is KitKat." It wasn't the most creative, but Clint liked it.
"As in the candy bar?"
"That'd be the one. Plus you're Kat with a 'K.'"
"You're ridiculous," Katherine said smiling as she took another sip of wine. "I'll be up for a few more hours if you end up needing me again. Good luck."
Katherine clicked off the com, curling her knees up to her chest on the couch. She had a code name.
MARCH 2011: TRISKELION
Katherine had never worked with Natasha Romanoff before. She was under the impression the Black Widow preferred to work alone, and she was beyond qualified too, from what Katherine heard about her. So it came as a surprise when her case file showed up on Katherine's dashboard. She wouldn't lie, she was a bit nervous when she first made contact with Natasha through the coms. The Black Widow was a living legend around SHIELD.
"Agent Romanoff," Natasha answered, hoping against hope SHIELD had given her someone good to work with.
"Agent Lee. I'll be your contact for all things data and tech related." Natasha smiled when she heard the agent's name. Clint had mentioned her, multiple times, as being one of the best. And she trusted Barton's opinion.
"Can you hack the database connecting Tony Stark's suits and house without being detected?" Natasha had tried, but had to stop when JARVIS noticed her. She needed access to the database, but she also needed to keep her cover intact. At least if someone from data analysis did it and got caught, Tony wouldn't connect her to it.
"No problem. I always wanted to know if I was smarter than Tony Stark and his AI," Katherine commented with a smile as she pulled up a blank screen and started working on gaining access. "So what's he like? Is he as arrogant as he comes off on TV?"
"Sometimes worse. Part of it is a defense mechanism to keep people from getting too close." As over confident as Tony could be, Nat recognized an act when she saw one. He did believe he was a genius and better than almost everyone else, but he exaggerated that persona to keep people at arm's length.
"How do you put up with that?" Katherine asked as she considered which pathways to hack so she could slip in under JARVIS' radar.
"It actually makes him easier to manipulate. It definitely made getting in as his assistant easier."
"Is it true he turned over his company to one of his old assistants?" It seemed out of character for someone so egoistical to give up ownership of his company.
"Pepper Potts. She might actually keep his company from going bankrupt." Pepper was a strong woman who didn't take any of Tony's crap.
"I wish her luck. Tony Stark seems to make a lot of messes and as CEO I can only imagine she has to clean them up." Even if he didn't run the company anymore, he was still the face of it. It still had his name on the logo. His actions would still affect stockholders.
"It is kind of like watching a nanny run around after a toddler at times." Lord help Pepper if she ever acted on her feelings for Tony. He was a handful for her even though they weren't dating. "Do you need me to give you some time alone to work on hacking his system in peace?"
"No, I got in five minutes ago." Katherine was just interested in what all Agent Romanoff had found out on her mission.
"You really are the best." Clint hadn't been exaggerating for once.
"Who said I was the best?" Katherine found it hard to believe anyone who knew Agent Romanoff would ever consider her skills the best. True, she was good with computers, but Agent Romanoff mastered an array of skills.
"Just a friend. Can you access any health records as well as the defense protocol for his suits and send it to me?" Nat wasn't about to rat Clint out.
"How far back do you want the health records?"
"Make it four months to be safe. Thanks Katherine." The line went dead before Katherine could consider how Natasha Romanoff knew her first name, let alone ask her about it.
DECEMBER 2010: TRISKELION
Katherine leaned back in her desk chair, observing the changes she'd made to her desk. It was officially Christmas time and she'd decorated her desk with a miniature Christmas tree, lights and ornaments included, and a chocolate advent calendar from the dollar store. No Christmas holiday was complete without a chocolate advent calendar.
Taking a sip of the Christmas flavored coffee Angie had gotten her—it tasted minty with a hint of chocolate—Katherine almost spilled some on her blouse when her com started ringing in her ear. There were no files on her dashboard yet.
"Hello?" She answered. She preferred knowing who she'd be talking and working with before answering, to mentally prepare herself based on the agent.
"Merry Christmas, KitKat," Clint greeted. She recognized his voice, but even if she didn't, he was the only one who called her KitKat. "Or Happy Hanukah if you're Jewish."
"If I was Jewish I'd be working at a family owned business making twice as much as I do now and actually taking a vacation once in a while." God, she couldn't remember the last time she took a vacation.
"But then you never would have met me, and your life would be incomplete."
"Technically we've never met," Katherine pointed out.
"Semantics," Clint shrugged. "So it's Merry Christmas from now on then?"
"Yep. I just decorated my mini office tree, since I'm rarely home enough to enjoy one there. Although I better get leave to go to Christmas Mass because my Aunt and Grandmother won't take work as an excuse and I'll be bombarded with Catholic guilt and be told I'm going to Hell unless I say fifty Our Father's and pray the rosary." Katherine's mother's side was very stereotypical Catholic.
"Wow, intense." Clint's family had always celebrated Christmas more commercially than religiously. "Is that all it takes to get in good with the big guy?"
"Apparently," Katherine retorted with a wry smile, clicking open her dashboard only to find it empty. "Are you on a mission? Because your file didn't pop up on my computer."
"That's because this one doesn't require any data analysis." It was an off the radar, no technology, old school, James Bond type mission to take out a target. He wasn't even allowed to use his fancy arrows. Just plain old fashioned, pointy ones. The only reason he was able to contact Kat was because SHIELD couldn't deny him his hearing aids.
"And communications still patched you through?"
"They don't have access to my mission file. For all they know I was in a do or die situation and I needed your help to 'do' or else I'd die."
"Sneaky, and a little devious. So you don't need my help?" It sounded like this was a social call, but that was probably her reading too far into it.
"Nope. It's boring out here. Remind me what civilization is like." Clint had called for her company. No interaction with anyone was harder than he remembered, and it was really cold in the Alps.
"You mean like having coffee shop coffee that tastes like winter, a warm soft bed to sleep on, and indoor plumbing?"
"I take it back, you're making me jealous. I don't want to hear about civilization."
"I think getting away from everything sounds kind of nice. Maybe I'll rent myself a cabin with no internet access. Force SHIELD to give me a vacation by default."
"Trust me, they'd find a way to contact you." They would send someone for her, maybe even him.
"Or they'd just report me AWOL and then I'd be demoted to less complicated, less entertaining files when I got back."
"But that would mean I wouldn't be able to convince communications you're working on my case and I'd have to break in a new data analyst." Clint doubted there was another analyst who would understand him and his sarcasm as much as KitKat.
"We wouldn't want that," Katherine murmured as she took a sip of her coffee just as a skype message flashed across her screen from Angie in the secret code they'd made up in case higher ups were monitoring their computers.
I'm slipping off to 'accidently' bump into Jensen in the elevators. Cover for me?
Katherine chuckled under her breath before typing back her response.
If Johnson asks it's your time of month and you're in the bathroom.
Thanks babe xoxo
"What's funny?" Clint asked when Katherine chuckled in his ear.
"I'm helping with a clandestine, potentially romantic meeting in an elevator," Katherine said, tapping into the elevators on the north side of the building until she found the one Jensen was in, alone. Smiling, she waited until Angie was with him before stopping the elevator and shutting down the camera. SHIELD didn't need to see her best friend flirting with her spy crush.
"How noble of you. But aren't love connections supposed to be natural, not contrived?" Two people couldn't be forced to like each other.
"Shush, let me have my fun playing destiny or fate or whatever you want to call it." Angie would thank her for this small favor. She'd get more alone time to talk with Jensen, instead of staring at his butt in the gym whenever Katherine forced her to work out with her.
"Remind me to take the stairs the next time I'm at the Triskelion."
"Don't worry, I only do this for my bestie. Any love connections you make in elevators will be fates design, not mine." The thought of Clint trapped in an elevator was amusing though. Mainly because Katherine figured he'd bail out through the panels in the top and find a way to get the elevator running again instead of just wait it out.
"It takes more than fifteen minutes of forced communication for me to fall for anyone." Relationships that lasted were built over time with a strong foundation. Or food. Food would also work.
"Good to know, but I'm not expecting Jensen to fall for Angie today. We're just setting some ground work."
"Jensen, huh. He's someone I could see falling in love in an elevator."
"Not nice," Katherine commented, trying to suppress her smile. "But still true. Crap, my boss just came in to make the mandatory morning rounds so he can say he supervises us. I've got to go." If Johnson caught her talking to Clint without a case file present it might have him paying closer attention to her cases. SHIELD didn't pay for social calls.
"Keep me updated on the Angie-Jensen front. I'm intrigued now," Clint retorted before their connection cut off.
Removing her com from her ear, Katherine went to intercept Johnson before he got to Angie's desk. If he found out Angie had abandoned her post to flirt with an agent it would be worse than catching her talking with Clint on the coms. At least Katherine could pretend the computer glitched when it tried to pull up Clint's file. In fact, if she would have thought about that a minute earlier, she would have used it to keep Clint on the line. She enjoyed their conversations. They made her day more interesting.
A/N: Hello! I'm back at it again with another chapter. The last few weeks at work have been hectic and draining so I haven't gotten too much writing done lately. But I did manage to finish this chapter. I hope you enjoyed it!
Guest review responses:
To the guest who said this story was awesome and fun: Thank you! I'm having a blast writing this one because it's so lighthearted and has a bit of comedy to it. Sorry it took a while for this update!
Cheryl: The back and forth between Clint and Kat is soooo much fun for me to write. It makes me smile whenever I sit down to write this story. I'm flattered my writing fascinates you, I hope I can continue to enthrall you with my stories. And OMG I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU GOT YOUR HUSBAND TO LISTEN TO YOU READ REHABILITATE AND THAT HE ACTUALLY LIKES THE ACTION SCENES! Reading that seriously just made my month if not year. I always thought of my stories being loved mostly by fellow fangirls (since there's pretty heavy romance in all of them…not that boys don't like romance just that usually I figure they'd want more action plot and less romance main plot if that makes sense). Anyways thanks for leaving a review and letting me know your husband likes the action scenes I wrote.
Rach
xoxo