Chapter 15

It didn't take them nearly as long to get to the Hydra base as she thought it would. Then again, she and Clint were on much better terms with each other than they were when they had their first road trip. Clint showed no detrimental effects of being shot, he said it was because he was used to almost dying. Daisy slapped him on the back of the head, for Laura's sake. But Clint was back to his normal self; cracking jokes and making her laugh the whole way there. When she looked out the window to see that they were near their destination felt like it was too soon to give up the nice time they were having, but she saw Clint shift into mission mode and knew it was time to do the same.

"Scout the perimeter. Then I've got a few toys that should tell us exactly what we will be dealing with. Did you find anything on that USB drive?" He looked back at her as he was going over his bow on the trunk.

"I ran a few algorithms, but it didn't have any information that we didn't already know. My guess is that the mainframes in the base have the data." Her hand ghosted over the USB drive in her pocket. Clint looked down guiltily.

"There probably isn't any data left. There is no doubt they know we are coming now, thanks to me getting shot. They probably scrubbed it all. I'm surprised they haven't torched the building just to be safe." Daisy nudged his shoulder, causing him to look up at her.

"No worries, I can find the back-up data and recover most if not all of the deleted data. So no worry, just don't get shot again. That'd be really annoying and repetitive." She gave him a comforting smile and he grinned back. She furrowed her brow, his other words registering with her. "You are right though, if they know we are coming, why not just burn the building and leave?"

He shrugged his shoulders, "Probably a trap. That's gonna suck for them."

Daisy laughed, agreeing with him, straightening her gauntlets. They were about a mile away from the base. Knowing that what awaited them was probably an entire platoon of men who couldn't help their pride when the prospect of taking down an Avenger presented itself, she made sure to pack a couple extra magazines of ammo. She saw Clint grab a couple extra arrows, including a weird looking one.

"What does that arrow do?" She saw him grin like a child with a favorite toy.

"Boomerang arrow." He looked at her as if he expected her to grin madly like he was, but frowned when she just raised an eyebrow. "What is it with all the women in my life and the eyebrow thing?"

"The only common denominator in that equation is you. Really a boomerang arrow? That's the dumbest idea I've ever heard." She scowled at the arrow like it was personally offending all of nature. In all honesty it was probably only offending physics. Fitz would probably agree with her.

"That's what Katie-Kate said. Don't worry; it'll prove you wrong eventually. It proved her wrong, and she is a lot harder to impress than you are."

She rolled her eyes and pushed off the trunk. They started off to circle the perimeter. The base was built next to a lake with a forest surrounding it. One road in and out, it was a very good strategic place for a base. What was strange was the lack of activity. There were two guards at every door, with battle gear on, but no other people walking through the hallways visible. The battle gear of the guards suggested that they were, in fact, expected.

Clint pulled out some goggles, placing them on his head. "This'll help me see the heat signatures inside. Good tech is always helpful. You have those scientist friends right? Tell them thanks from the Avengers."

Daisy chuckled, "You'll make their year. What do you see?"

Clint frowned, "Besides the guards on the outside I'm only reading two heat signatures. The room that we can get the data on is not too far from the two signatures though. Most likely waiting for us to drop our guard."

She shrugged, "I'm fast. It'll take me maybe three minutes to get the data, especially if it's been deleted. You keep them on the chokepoint of the door and we should be able to hold them off long enough for me to join in and help you clean up."

Clint nodded, "Let's take the guards out first, then we can worry about who is waiting for us." He placed the goggles around his neck and began moving close to get in range of the first set of guards. Clint's eyes lit up when he found a high place to climb up and take out the guards. He told Daisy to wait below him, he would take out the guards who were in range, and then they could move left and take out the remaining ones.

Daisy sighed and began to float a leaf with her power, waiting for it to float down before shooting it up and trying to control it. She heard the thwip of Clint's bow and waited. He shimmied down, before jumping the last couple of feet. He grimaced a bit and held his hand to his recovering wound. He smiled at her when he saw her worried expression and patted his side to show he was fine. They began to trek left to another tree that Clint spotted from his last spot. Daisy waited for him to do his thing again, once he got there, and then they made their way down to the building.

They stacked up on the door, Daisy drawing her pistol again, with Clint notching an arrow. They busted in and, like expected, there was no one home. They didn't let this fact effect how they cleared the rooms next to the data room. It was always safer to err on the side of caution. Unless you were a Barton, then you had someone else force you to be cautious. Finally once they made sure the data room itself was clear, Daisy holstered her weapon and plugged the USB drive in. She heard Clint move to the door, planning on the two heat signatures from earlier to come barging it with some form of ambush. But, as Daisy moved from screen to screen downloading everything she could dredge up, they heard nothing.

Finally she finished up and nodded to him. He smiled and waited for her to come next to him. The next part of their plan was to move throughout the building and find any other smaller data rooms that the original Intel from S.H.I.E.L.D. had missed.

They pulled open the door, to a room they hadn't cleared yet and Clint went through first. Daisy followed only a second behind him, only to run into his back. She looked up at him confused. His back was rigidly straight; the bow in his hand was clutched until his knuckles turned white. She moved to the side to get a look at his face, which was as pale as it had been when he had been bleeding out. She followed his eye-line to see two figures standing in the middle of an empty room. That usually didn't mean anything good. Then she took in their appearances.

One had a moustache, curled up at the ends, with a dark head of hair. He seemed to be around Coulson's age, though he was still rather fit. What made him stand out was the large broadsword resting casually on his shoulder.

The other one, the one who had Clint's eyes locked on him, was as unassuming as they come. He was, maybe a little older than Clint with rusty brown hair, long and swept to the side of his eyes. He had a bow, almost the exact make and model of Clint's. He had a cocky smirk on his face as he faced Hawkeye. He spared half a glance at Daisy, before he focused back on Clint. Finally he opened his mouth, and Daisy would remember the hauntingly false happy tone from the man, as he addressed Clint, for years afterward.

"Hey, little brother. How's the family?"