Chapter 35

Together, Clint and Natty hauled Commander Castillo back onto her feet, hands bound behind her back.

All the fight had gone out of the Hydra leader. Every one of her crewmembers were down on the deck, and Clint could see real grief as Castillo's eyes settled on each still body, one by one. He was having a hard time feeling sorry for her, though. The level of destruction Hydra could have unleashed on the world, even with this older helicarrier, was unimaginable. It was just lucky that Agent 45's family had caught wind of their plans in time to do something about it.

Natty wasn't looking particularly sorry for her opponent, either. In fact, there was a grim satisfaction in her expression that seemed achingly familiar to Clint. But before he could place it, Natty turned to scan the deck, and suddenly froze.

Rob was kneeling on the deck by his wife Amanda. She was lying on the ground face-down, a Hydra knife still sticking out of her back.

Natty sucked in a loud breath, her eyes widening with horror as she stared at her cousin. She must not have seen it happen. She'd had her hands full with Castillo when Amanda had showed up just in time to destroy the machine gun.

Oddly, Clint could no longer see the strange golden disc Amanda had thrown at it, even though its glowing shape should have been easy to spot; the sun wasn't quite up and the light was still dim. But the disc seemed to have vanished from the deck entirely.

Abruptly Natty strode over to her fallen cousin, dragging Castillo along with her. Clint hurried to keep up, hand clamped around Castillo's other arm. They got there just as Agent 45 joined them from the Quinjet, swiftly kneeling down to check his niece's pulse.

"Aliyah?" he said urgently, reaching up to touch his earpiece. "We need you on deck, double quick."

"Almost there," she responded breathlessly, but Clint was having a hard time believing it would do any good at this point, no matter how skilled a medic she might be. The blade hadn't gone hilt-deep, but it was deep enough; it looked like Amanda wasn't breathing. Her hand, outflung on the deck, was motionless, a slender metal bar with a pair of loops lying a few inches away from it. Like the strange piece of jewelry Aliyah had been wearing on her hand earlier. Agent 45 reached down and scooped it up, slipping it into his pocket. Beside him, Rob looked sick, the blood drained from his face as he gazed down at his wife, his hand covering her limp one. He was a cop, he must have seen things like this before, he must know the odds. But he was controlling his emotions with a terrible effort.

45 had a better poker face on, but even he looked tense as he bent over his niece to take a better look at the injury. Suddenly Clint felt a jolt go through him: there was a deep cut on the back of 45's neck, gushing blood. It had already stained his collar crimson. One of the Hydra operatives charging the jet must have gotten him pretty good with a knife.

"Hold her," Clint told Natty, and left her guarding Castillo as he jogged up the Quinjet's ramp to retrieve the first aid kit. By the time he got back, Aliyah had arrived and had nudged 45 and Rob back so she could evaluate Amanda. Her long box braids had been tied back securely, and her brown eyes were cool and focused as she examined her patient.

"Hold still," Clint told Agent 45, and pressed a bandage against the back of his neck, his stomach twisting as he got an up-close look at the wound. It really was deep. He was going to need stitches for sure.

"It's just a scratch," 45 said over his shoulder with faint impatience, but he let Clint dress it as Aliyah quickly looked Amanda over and then opened a case of syringes filled with blue fluid.

"I need room to work," she said curtly, eyes flicking up to Clint as she took a syringe out of the case.

"Natty, Clint, get your prisoner down to the brig," Agent 45 said sharply without looking at them, and both of them obeyed reflexively. In seconds they were back in the vessel's artificially lit corridors, marching Castillo straight to the elevators that led down into the belly of the helicarrier. Clint hit the button and they began to descend.

"If she dies," Natty hissed at Castillo, "guess what happens to you?" All the grim satisfaction was gone from her expression, replaced by a pure trembling rage. And despite her small frame and the fact that her implied threat wasn't even being aimed at him, Clint felt a vicarious fear move through him. He'd gotten a feel for Natty's personality by now, and he was starting to realize she was the kind who didn't stop. If she made up her mind to do something, she would do it, no matter the cost. Simple as that.

"You've got room to talk," Castillo said scornfully, with more than a hint of her own anger. "Look who just did all the killing."

Natty's eyebrows came together dangerously. "You brought this on yourselves after everything you did to my family."

"I have no idea what we've done to your family," Castillo said, sounding almost bored. The elevator doors opened, and Clint and Natty pulled her out into the corridor. "I've never seen any of you in my life. Haven't even heard of you."

"Yes you have," Natty shot back, coming to a sudden stop in the hallway and roughly forcing Castillo to stop as well, her grip on the woman's arm so tight that her knuckles had gone white. "Yes you have. My grandparents fought an entire war to stop the Red Skull. That would have been plenty by itself. But it didn't stop there, did it?" She gave Castillo a fierce shake. "My father fought a whole roomful of your agents in 1990. They left him deaf in one ear but he stopped them from taking the Tesseract. You've heard of that, right?"

Natty was breathless with anger, the words tumbling out of her mouth like water rushing out of a dam, and Clint was taken aback at the abruptness of her rage... and more than a little stunned at her admission. There had been an attempt to steal the Tesseract from S.H.I.E.L.D. that long ago? Before it had even been turned over to Dr. Lawson? He'd never seen any record of that, and he'd been given access to all the intel S.H.I.E.L.D. had when he was assigned to watch over Dr. Selvig and his team's experiments for Project Pegasus. Or so he'd thought.

"Then your people attacked my aunt in her home and tried to steal her work," Natty drove on relentlessly. "Frank Rumlow put a gun to my cousin's head to make her cooperate. He was 12 years old! Twelve!" She grabbed two fistfuls of Castillo's shirt front and gave her another savage shake. "My whole family had to move, had to go into hiding, had to scatter across the world. You screwed up my little brother for good! You drove him to addiction, you made him hate who he was, you ruined his life!" Her face was inches from Castillo's, eyes blazing with fury. "And now look!" she ground out. "Here we are, still fighting you, because you couldn't leave well enough alone, could you? You just... couldn't... help yourself!"

Castillo looked down at her enraged captor, and an ironic smile pulled up one corner of her lips. "So," she said coolly. "It's revenge, then." Her eyes narrowed. "And you still think you're more virtuous than me?"

"My revenge?" Natty's grip on her shirt tightened. "I'm here for Stark," she hissed through clenched teeth. "I'm here for Rogers. I'm here for Barnes, and every other person whose life you destroyed so you could build your precious little freedom-free utopia. I'm here for the innocent people you wanted to execute. Do you have any idea who was on Insight's list? How many millions? Did you read their names? All of them? Men... women... children?!"

Castillo's smug expression had faded away, and now there was open fear in her face as she suddenly scrabbled for a toe-hold on the floor. Clint felt a spike of alarm: Natty — petite as she was compared to her prisoner — had Castillo actually dangling from her death-grip on the woman's shirt.

"Hey hey hey," Clint said quickly, laying his hand on Natty's arm, feeling muscles as taut as a bowstring underneath her heated skin. "Cool it. She's a prisoner. You can't do that."

It was like a rubber band snapping. Abruptly Natty dropped Castillo, who staggered a little before regaining her balance and then backed several steps away, looking at Natty in both fear and loathing. Natty was panting for breath, face flushed, and she closed her eyes tightly for a moment, visibly working to regain control.

"Okay, let's go," Clint said firmly, taking Castillo by the elbow and pulling her down the corridor once more. Meekly she went along with him. After a beat, Natty followed behind them, but at a distance. Clint glanced back just long enough to see that her anger was fading only to be replaced by an expression of sickened shame. She'd gone too far, and she knew it.

They arrived at the brig. Clint put their prisoner inside and then reprogrammed the security codes at the door; as commander of the vessel, Castillo undoubtedly knew the originals. He took the time to triple-check the security system to make sure there weren't any back-door workarounds, but he couldn't help but glance over at Natty surreptitiously as he worked, trying to figure out exactly what she'd meant earlier.

She'd spoken of Hydra destroying Steve Rogers' life... which was true enough, considering he never would have spent nearly 70 years buried under ice if not for the Red Skull. And the name Barnes was definitely ringing a bell. Hadn't he been one of Steve's Howling Commandos? The one who had died while capturing the Red Skull's chief weapons inventor, if Clint remembered correctly. But what was all that about Stark? Hydra had never laid a finger on Tony Stark. He'd been born long after the war, and clearly had no idea they'd still existed in some form all this time or he surely would have done something about it as Iron Man.

Maybe she'd meant Howard Stark, Tony's father, given that he was Steve's contemporary. But as far as Clint knew Hydra had never laid a finger on Howard Stark either, as much as they would have liked to. His inventions had been instrumental in their defeat during the war and his role in creating Captain America alone would have been enough to attract their attention. But he'd lived a life of wealth and fame until long after the war was over.

Prisoner secured, they left the brig and went back out into the corridor. Natty didn't seem inclined to rush back up to the deck, though. Her arms folded tightly across her chest, she lingered by the broad windows, where the sun was just beginning to cast its first rays across the ocean waves outside.

"Which Stark were you talking about?" Clint asked, coming to stand by her side.

She didn't answer him for a long moment, staring fixedly out of the window at the waves, tipped white where the early morning breeze was whipping up the water.

"I'm sorry, Hawkeye," she said at last, her voice smaller and higher than before. "I didn't realize... I was that angry." She took in a slow, careful breath. "I've been training to fight all my life, but the truth is..." She bowed her head, and the wisps of dark hair that had escaped her dancer's bun fell against her cheek. "I've never been in a real fight before," she confessed softly. "I didn't know it would be like that."

Clint felt a throb of compassion. "Hey, I get it," he said gently. "I've been there, you know? There was a time when I could have put an arrow through Loki's eye without a thought. And if he'd hurt someone in my family instead of me? I'd have-" Abruptly his lingering anger over what had been done to him threatened to boil over into a blind rage at the very thought, and he tamped it down with an effort. "-well, it wouldn't have been good. For anyone."

Natty turned to look at him, her brow crinkling with a sudden concern... for him?

"It's dangerous for people like us to do this kind of work, Hawkeye," she said after a long hesitation. "We have families. We have... more to lose than the others."

"Yeah," he admitted.

She reached out and squeezed his hand. "But we can control it. We can." She emphasized the words oddly, squeezing his hand again even more tightly, and he wasn't sure anymore if she was trying to convince herself, or him. "Even if they did hurt our family, we don't have to- we don't have to forget who we are, and- and-" She broke off, seeming to search for words.

Suddenly the sound of footsteps sounded from down the corridor, and they both turned to see Rob and Aliyah coming toward them. Natty moved with sudden swiftness to meet them.

"Is Amanda-?" she asked anxiously.

"I've stabilized her," Aliyah said quickly, reaching out to grip Natty's upper arms reassuringly. "She's okay for now. We've moved her into the medical bay. I've come to check over the prisoner." Her medical bag was slung over her shoulder.

"I can take over guard duty," Rob put in. He still looked pale from witnessing his wife's injury, but he was unhurt himself and seemed calm enough, considering everything that had happened. "Agent 45 wants the two of you on the bridge now. Sammy's ready to try lifting off."

"What about Roger?" Natty asked, still tense.

"We made radio contact," Rob said. "Everything went well at the control tower. Your dad took the Quinjet to pick him up." Natty looked visibly relieved, and after a moment she nodded crisply and began striding toward the bridge, looking relieved to have a new job to do. Clint followed her.

"Is Cap really there at the control tower too?" Clint asked as they walked. He'd been wondering about that for some time now. "I thought your dad said he wasn't bringing anyone else into this."

"That voice you heard over the intercom was really Captain Rogers," Natty said. "He was at the Triskelion when he made that announcement, we just re-transmitted it." She hesitated a second, and then admitted: "My son was at the control tower alone. We had him... impersonate your friend. We thought that maybe if we put the fear of God into Hydra..."

"Yeah," Clint said, understanding. It was a ploy that had worked; the Hydra agents at the control tower had clearly been too flustered to provide any useful help to the agents here on the helicarrier. But still, for a 15-year-old kid to willingly pretend to be an Avenger in a real-life combat situation...

Gutsy. Gutsy, bordering on insane.

Like his mother.

They arrived at the bridge to find Sammy standing in Nick Fury's place at the central controls. The bodies from the earlier fight had been cleared away and all the monitors on the bridge had been reactivated. Judging by the diagnostics scrolling by on each one, it was clear the helicarrier was preparing for launch, despite the fact that it no longer had a crew at its stations.

It was also clear no one had told Sammy yet about what had happened to her cousin, judging by her expression of unconcern as she tapped at the controls.

"All systems are go," Sammy's A.I. announced, his voice echoing throughout the spacious bridge. Sammy glanced over at Clint and Natty as they joined her on the top level before responding: "Great. Nice work, Edwin. Go ahead and start the turbines."

She had a giddy, barely-restrained smile on her face as she said it. Like a kid who had just gotten a Christmas present she had desperately wanted but feared she would never get.

The dark seawater in front of them gradually turned white as the four turbines began to churn through the waves. The sun was fully above the horizon now, its rays turning the clouds to gold amid a rose pink sky. And then, far beneath their feet, they felt a gentle thrumming that gradually intensified into a steady vibration. Clint had experienced this enough times to feel blase about it, but he saw Natty reach out instinctively to hold the railing in front of her.

"Power at 100 percent," Edwin announced when the rising sound of the engines leveled out.

"You know, your A.I. sounds like a lot like Tony Stark's," Clint put in.

"Any resemblance to real A.I.s, living or dead, is purely coincidental," Sammy said jauntily. "Okay, Edwin. Let's rise."

A new high-pitched whine threaded through the distant noise of the engines, and slowly, ponderously, the helicarrier began to lift up from the water. Natty's hands curled tightly around the railing, but Sammy's chest was moving up and down visibly as she drew in deep breaths, and spontaneously she let go of the central controls and spread her arms out wide, bracing her feet as the helicarrier majestically pulled free of the sea. Her eyes were glittering with unrestrained emotion, and she tipped her head back and laughed, her eyes crinkling up at the corners. Looking at the joy lighting up her face, Clint suddenly wondered how he had ever thought of her as the plain sister.

"You can't keep it," Edwin pointed out to her mildly.

"Oh, don't you go popping my bubble, Eddy," Sammy said blithely. "Let me enjoy it while it lasts."

"If you insist." Edwin's voice was faintly resigned. "We are now at level," he added. "Course laid in."

Sammy's hands finally dropped back onto the controls as she heaved a deep sigh of satisfaction. "Activate retro-reflective panels," she told him. Her smile deepened. "Let's vanish."

Sharon Carter got back onto her feet - painfully - and looked around to take stock of her situation.

She was alone on the Triskelion's plaza. Everywhere she looked, rubble from the fallen Insight helicarriers billowed smoke. In the distance, a black helicopter was thump-thumping its way back and forth along the river, lingering over the area where the third helicarrier had dropped a tangle of debris during its final descent. It looked like they were looking for something. Survivors? After a fall from that height? It didn't seem likely.

No sign of Harrison and the team of Marines who had been helping him. No sign of Bram, either. Had he managed to find Steven on the ground below and get him evacuated in time? Sharon looked around but saw no vehicles driving away from the Triskelion on any of its causeways. The vehicles her family had brought to evacuate everyone from the operations room were long gone, and it was a good thing, too: the water of the Potomac was roiling like the sea in a storm, and several of the bridges that spanned the river had been pummeled by enormous chunks of burning rubble falling from the sky.

Suddenly Sharon realized: if Bram had managed to evacuate Steven and was already transporting him to a hospital, how was she supposed to get out of here? Where was she supposed to meet up with Harrison and the rest of the team? In all the confusion there hadn't been time for anyone to explain the extraction plan to her.

She put her hand up to her ear to speak to Harrison... only to find that she no longer had an earpiece. It must have fallen out in her frantic dash to get out of the building. Sharon swore, looking around her but not spotting it anywhere on the ground.

"Harrison!" she shouted as loudly as she could, scanning the plaza for any sign of her cousin or his team. But she saw no one at all. Assuming they'd made it out in time, they must have exited the tower on the other side, leaving them much too far away to hear her, especially over the roar of fire that was now consuming the collapsed upper levels of the Triskelion.

Sharon came to the grim conclusion that she had to assume she was on her own. She'd have to escape over one of the causeways on foot and pray that no Hydra agents spotted her as they fled the scene too. She didn't even have Rumlow's gun anymore. It had gone out the window when she did.

And then she heard a motor in the distance, and coming closer. She turned to look.

It was a motorcycle, speeding across Causeway 5, the furthest access point from the Triskelion's damaged north tower, its driver weaving skillfully around the chunks of flaming rubble littering the road.

For one crazy moment, she thought blankly: Captain Rogers? How did he know where to find me?

But no... the driver was dressed in blue jeans and a white tank top, not exactly the kind of thing Rogers wore into a combat zone. And as he got closer - he was definitely headed straight for her - she saw that he had jet-black hair and that his bare, muscled arms were inked with geometric designs.

The motorcycle skidded to a stop in front of her, kicking up gravel.

Clint!

Sharon's relief was instantaneous. Harrison's younger brother must have been waiting nearby, assigned to extraction duty. To be honest, she was a little surprised to see him. Clint had a reputation for being the black sheep of the family - a former addict, actually - and unlike Harrison and Steven, he had no experience whatsoever with combat. Last she'd heard, he was working at a tattoo parlor of all places. He was wearing a handgun strapped to his thigh, but the holster looked brand-new and so did the gun. Did he even know how to use that thing?

"What are we waiting for, Christmas?" he shouted at her with a whimsical twist of his lips, and Sharon took the hint and clambered onto the seat behind him, wrapping her arms around his waist. The engine roared, and they were off like a shot.

They turned onto the causeway and crossed the Potomac. Then they rounded a bend to skirt the edge of the river and passed a caravan of emergency vehicles, heading for the Triskelion with lights flashing. Now that the sky was no longer filled with hovering weapons of mass destruction, they must have been cleared to approach.

Her hair whipping into her face, Sharon reluctantly tore her eyes from the smoking ruins of the Triskelion, but as she turned forward once again, she noticed movement in the river flowing alongside the road to their left.

She squinted her eyes against the glare of sunlight off the water and realized there was a man floating in the middle of the Potomac amid all the debris. She was lucky she'd seen him at all; only his dark head and one arm were visible. He was swimming at an oblique angle against the current, headed toward the shore with a strong, confident stroke despite the fact that he was using only one arm to propel himself.

That was when Sharon realized that the only reason she'd noticed the man at all was because with every stroke, the sunlight was flashing off his arm with a metallic gleam.

A metal arm?

Sharon sucked in a noisy breath through her teeth, but the wind of their passage whipped the sound away into the wind. She sat up straighter in her seat behind Clint and squinted her eyes intently, trying to get a better look, and felt a jolt when she realized the man was hauling something through the water with his other arm.

A lifeless body.

It was hard to tell through the murky water, but for an instant, too brief to be sure, Sharon thought she caught a glimpse of a white star on the chest of that limp form.

Her heart seemed to stop.

"Stop!" she shouted, slapping at Clint's shoulder to get his attention in case he couldn't hear her over the roar of the engine. "Stop! Pull over!"

"Are you crazy?" he shouted back, glancing back at her in disbelief without slowing down. "It isn't safe here!"

"Pull over!" Sharon shouted again. "Hurry! It's an emergency!"

Clint braked hard, and Sharon clung to him with all her strength as they skidded to a stop in the gravel by the side of the road. "Stay here," she barked, and then snatched the gun from her cousin's thigh holster, leaving him sputtering with surprise as she scrambled off the back of the motorcycle and ran into the wooded strip of land between the road and the river.

She forced herself to move as silently as possible, although between the thick brambles underfoot and the way she couldn't seem to catch her breath, it wasn't exactly easy. At least the stinging cuts on her arm and her hand and her back seemed to fade away as she felt the reassuring weight of a gun in her hand once more. She took only a second to ensure it was loaded and ready to go, and then she crept from tree to tree, eyes and ears sharp.

She heard splashing just before she reached the treeline near the edge of the water. She froze behind a tree, muscles tensed. Boots squelched in the mud, and then something heavy slid across the ground. She could see movement just ahead through the thickly clustered tree trunks, and she could hear someone panting for breath. Sharon crept forward silently, gun held firmly in both hands.

If he ran, she'd have no earthly chance of catching up to him. She knew that. Even Steve Rogers hadn't been able to chase down the man with the metal arm. She'd only get one shot, and she couldn't miss it.

She set her jaw, eyes narrowing with determination. She wouldn't miss. Not this time.

The boots were coming toward her now, fallen branches snapping under his weight. He wasn't even bothering with stealth. So sure he could fight his way out of anything. The arrogance of it galled her. Sharon took a knee behind a prickly bush, raised the gun and took careful aim at him through the gaps in the brambles, tracking his movement. The moment he emerged from the trees, she'd have him. His arm might be bulletproof, but the rest of him wasn't. She'd empty the clip to be sure, but at this range she had never failed.

He was coming closer. She was catching glimpses of him through the trees now; he was dressed in black combat gear as before, but this time he wasn't masked. She could see that he had longish dark hair, dripping wet and sticking to his scraped-up face, and he seemed to be cradling his normal arm against his chest. So he was hurt. Good. So much the better for her.

Closer and closer. In moments she'd have a clear shot of him. Her pulse quickening, Sharon's finger moved to the the trigger. Just a few more steps...

A hand touched her arm.

Sharon startled violently, narrowly avoiding squeezing the trigger prematurely, and her head whipped to the side to see her cousin Clint crouching next to her, an expression of deep alarm on his face, vigorously shaking his head no at her.

As quietly as she could, she shook his hand off her arm and gestured wildly for him to back up. What was he thinking? He wasn't trained for combat in any way, had probably never been in anything worse than a bar fight. Did he imagine she needed his help? Why hadn't he stayed back with the motorcycle like she'd told him?

But Clint didn't back up. Instead he grabbed her arm again. She tried to shake him off, but this time he clung to her tightly, fingers digging into her bicep. Sharon's eyes darted back over to her target, fearing she had already missed her window of opportunity. But she could see through the brambles that the man with the metal arm had frozen in place between two tree trunks, tension written in every muscle of his body.

Sharon held her breath, heart pounding unnaturally loud in her ears. Had he heard them? Was this about to turn into a hand fight? If so, she was a dead man walking. And so was Clint.

But the man with the metal arm wasn't looking in their direction. He was looking back toward the waterline. And far from looking alert or suspicious, he had an unmistakable expression of longing on his face.

Longing, and pain.

It wasn't what she had expected to see from a hardened assassin, but Sharon pressed her lips together and scowled. Didn't matter. As far as she was concerned, he'd sealed his fate the moment he murdered the director. In a flash, she saw it all over again: Nick Fury sprawled insensible on the floor of Captain Rogers' apartment, blood pooling beneath him. Sharon glared at her cousin.

"He's Hydra!" she mouthed furiously. She had a beautifully clear shot from this position, and it wasn't going to get any better than this. It was now or never.

"No!" Clint mouthed back just as furiously.

"He killed Fury!" she mouthed.

Clint shook his head vigorously, keeping an iron grip on her arm.

Had her cousin gone completely crazy? Sharon's mind raced with possibilities. She could elbow him in the face, startling him long enough to pull her arm away and get a bead on the soldier again. But would she have enough time to pull the trigger before he was on them both?

Clint put his other hand on her gun hand and slowly pulled it toward himself. Sharon gritted her teeth and resisted, but it was useless: Clint was simply stronger than she was. He pressed the barrel of the gun against his own chest and held it there. His eyes were wide with fear but his grip on her gun was implacable. Terrified, Sharon very, very, very carefully took her finger off the trigger. Her heart was a drumbeat in her ears. What was wrong with him? Maybe Clint really had gone crazy. There was no reason, no reason at all-

The Hydra assassin shook his head vigorously, his eyes squeezing shut for a moment, and then he abruptly darted away. In seconds he had disappeared into the trees. Furious at her missed opportunity, Sharon tried to pull away again. Clint let her move the gun away from his chest, but he kept his other hand locked on her arm.

"Are you insane?" Sharon hissed at him. "Why did you stop me? He killed Fury!"

Before Clint could say anything, an engine started up from the direction of the road.

"-and he just stole your motorcycle!" she snapped.

Clint's shoulders sagged, but his voice was steady as the sound of his motorcycle engine faded into the distance.

"It's his now," he said. "He can have it."

Sharon opened her mouth to press him, and then closed it, suddenly remembering the body the soldier had been hauling through the river. Shaking Clint's hand off at last, she scrambled around the bushes and headed for the river, only to freeze right as she reached the treeline.

Steve Rogers was lying motionless on the bank of the river. He was soaking wet. Eyes closed. Bloodstains on his uniform. But his chest was moving up and down. Sharon felt a crashing sense of relief. He was still alive. She wasn't too late.

She turned toward Clint, who had just joined her, intending to ask to borrow his phone. But Clint was staring at Captain Rogers in abject horror. She could actually see the color draining from his face as he suddenly put out a hand to brace himself against a tree trunk.

"Are you okay?" she asked, taken aback. Hadn't he ever seen someone unconscious before? There wasn't all that much blood.

An unexpected sound caught their attention before Clint could answer. The roar of a rocket overhead, faint but coming closer. Sharon gazed up at the sky, squinting against the brightness of the sun, and saw a streak of golden light headed in their direction.

For one crazy moment, Sharon thought it was a missile. But within seconds the object resolved into the shape of a man, a man wearing red armor and trailing golden light behind him as he rocketed directly toward their position. Clint shrank back behind a tree, and instinctively Sharon did the same. Iron Man's weaponry was powerful, and Tony Stark didn't know her; he might take her for a combatant. At this point identifying herself as a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent might be a liability rather than an assurance of trust. A lot of things had changed in the last few hours.

Iron Man came down a few feet away from Captain Rogers in a precisely controlled power landing.

"Cap?" The front of the helmet snapped open, revealing Tony Stark's worried face. "Cap!"

He knelt in the mud, and a blue beam emitted from the chestplate of his suit and swept across Captain Rogers' limp form.

"Multiple gunshot wounds detected," a man's voice said in a British accent.

"He's still breathing," Stark said breathlessly, laying an armored hand gently on Rogers' chest. He looked skyward, and the low thumping sound that had been approaching their position manifested itself as the same black helicopter from before, soaring over the trees and then slowing to hover above him. "GW's only a few minutes away."

There was a short pause, as if he was listening to something, and Stark replied: "Yeah, you got it. Jarvis, is it safe to move him?"

"The spinal column is undamaged," the disembodied voice said, and then Stark stooped down and carefully lifted Rogers up in his arms, moving with surprising gentleness despite his bulky armor and the weight of his burden.

"Come on, buddy," he murmured, getting to his feet as Rogers' head lolled against his shoulder. "Here we go."

His helmet snapped shut, his head tipped back, and the jets under his feet flared. Stark rose upwards in a smooth, carefully controlled flight until he pulled even with the chopper. Two people leaned out with arms outstretched. The chopper was hovering low enough that even through the tree branches Sharon instantly recognized Agent Romanoff by her distinctive red hair, while the other was a black man she didn't know. The two of them carefully took Rogers' limp body from Stark's arms and transferred him into the chopper.

Iron Man's boots flared with light once more, and he was off like a shot, heading toward downtown D.C. The helicopter banked and then followed him, slow by comparison even though it was S.H.I.E.L.D.'s latest model.

The thump-thump of the helicopter faded into the distance. Clint and Sharon stared at each other for a long moment in silence.

Then Clint put his hand up to his ear. "Harrison?" he said, then paused as if surprise. "Oh, Mom. Uh, Sharon and I are going to need a lift to the safehouse."

He paused. "It got stolen. Yes, stolen." And even though he still looked strangely queasy from seeing Captain Rogers injured, he suddenly let out a forced laugh.

"Three guesses who took it," he said, trying hard to sound casual. "And the first two don't count."

TO BE CONTINUED

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