Chapter 6: Make Up For The Horrors

Clint P.O.V

He didn't know what to think. Scratch that, yes he did. He was worried, and angry, and almost sick, and Steve had given her orders so why did she go after Doom? 'Why did she go off alone' was what he was really thinking. He was a little wounded that she hadn't included him. Sure, he had yelled at her and shut down her plan, but they always went on harebrained schemes together and always had each other's back. That she hadn't included him was a big hint about how this mission came too close to home for her. She was compromised, he was compromised, the whole team was compromised. What Fury would say when he found out about the emotional integrity, or lack thereof, of his team.

Compromised.

The very word hissed and slithered around his head, bringing back memories of a very different kind of compromised. Memories of blue eyes, dead agents, and a ledger dripping, gushing, so much red that it drowned and clawed and gagged and howled and screamed –

He pushed the thoughts away, focusing back on Natasha and a much-preferable type of compromise, but those thoughts were colored with worry and anger.

"Hey." He hadn't even noticed that Steve had moved closer. Where's your spy skills now, Barton?

He looked up at Steve, and, God, he was looking down at him with concerned blue eyes that were supporting and looked like he was about to get a friendly reassurance, which would sound fake, no matter the intentions, and would grate against his heart and ears, which he so did notneed right now.

"Listen Steve, I just don't want to hear it right now." Clint said, awkwardly sitting back from his position leaning on his elbows on his knees to cross his arms across his chest. "I know you're trying to help, but believe me, it won't."

The blue eyes looked even more tragic and older, if that was even possible, and he thought that they would belong perfectly with a golden retriever. Holy shit, he's pulling a Thor on me.

Steve ignored him. "I'm the leader, and I don't care what you want. Look, I know that you and Natasha were … " He struggled for words here, and Clint took advantage of it.

"Fonduing?" He asked with a snort, a tad too vicious to be a joke.

Cap flushed a little. "Seeing each other, and now that she's gone, you're left here while she goes and risks her life. I know what it feels like to –"

"You have no idea what it feels like!" Clint snarled, leaning forward to glare into the blue eyes. The fucker to pretend to know how it feels, when the saddest thing he's ever gone through is to be in a coma. "How could you? You, who doesn't have to worry whether or not she'll come back from a mission alive or in a body bag! She knows me, more than anyone, and she's gone. So don't tell me what it feels like!"

Steve drew upright, and Clint realized that me might have gone to far. "No, I don't know what it feels like." He said quietly, but with the authority of a man who lost everything, even time. "But I do know what it feels like to be the one to leave someone behind. I left Peggy behind, my life, the war. She begged me on the radio, but I knew there was no real choice. Sure, I could have landed that plane, but the risk of detonating the weapons wasn't worth my life. So I chose to sacrifice the good of a few for the good of the many. I was scared as hell, but I did it. That's what Natasha is doing right now. She's taking the risk to save Tony, you, and the world. I did the same thing." Steve smiled sheepishly. "You didn't let me finish."

Clint swallowed heavily. Steve was right. But that didn't mean he had to like it. He nodded a little, and Steve nodded back.

"We're here." Bruce called back to them. "We're outside the castle, far enough to duck under the radar."

Clint hurried to the back of the quinjet and waited, feeling the familiar, soothing weight of his bow, and the comfortable brush of the arrow fletching. They landed with a small bump, and the door hissed open, letting cold air and snowflakes in to dance in the air. He drew a breath, and stepped outside. It was barely snowing, and he had worn warm enough clothes.

"Activate the quinjet tracker." He said quietly, knowing they would hear him.

"A quarter of a mile due west." Bruce called back.

Without any hesitation, Clint set out west. He heard Steve tell Bruce to wait behind to guard the jet, and that they would come back when they found Natasha's quinjet. Within a few seconds, Steve fell into step behind him. Clint gave him no warning before he started running. He already knew that they wouldn't find her there; she was too smart to do something so obvious, and she was too good an agent to stall on a mission. There was an ache in his chest, completely unrelated to running, and he hoped it wasn't resignation.

Soon enough, they reached the quinjet. Clint waited outside, knowing what he would find. Steve was the one to go into the jet, and while he was rummaging around in there, Clint left. He knew that Steve would take to much time planning and coordinating, and that he would have a much better time by himself. It only took thirty seconds for Steve to notice his absence.

"What are you doing, Clint? Where are you?" He demanded over the comms.

"I'm going after her myself. With respect, you were going to take much more time than I was willing to waste. I'll call you guys when I get her. Don't wait up." He muted the device, another one of Stark's brilliant inventions, and kept running.

He could see the castle through the trees, and his pulse quickened at the thought of Natasha being so close. She would have gone in quietly, which meant a side door. He was reviewing the blueprints in his head, when he caught a stark flash of red against white, and stopped.

Blood.

There was fucking blood on the ground, and there was footprints and shuffles on the snow around the blood. There was a single set of small, running footprints, and one set of bigger, walking, bare-footed prints leading up to the blood. Wait, barefoot? Who the hell would walk around in winter without any shoes? Someone who didn't bother to think about frostbite.

This wasn't good.

Clint walked along the smaller set of footprints, tracking them back in time. They led up to a frozen rock. His heart stopped when he saw the arrow pointing left. That was the sign that he and Nat had come up with to signify a note. An arrow pointing to or away from the rock would have been too obvious, so one to the left would be better.

When he reached out to pick up the rock, his hands sure as hell weren't shaking. The rock was the heaviest thing he'd ever had to lift, much heavier than Mjolnir, and when the plain, white, folded paper was revealed, crinkled and fragile and wet like a baby bird, he felt something break inside him. The note was folded twice to protect it from the water, but it was still soggy, and a corner broke off by the fibers when he opened it. The ink was somewhat smudged, but he could make out most of it.

Was set up. Didn't get sample. Doom has allies. Blue skin, red eyes, tribal markings, tall, strong. Tear gas ineffective. Bites effective.

- Sorry.

He kneeled among the frozen ruins of his heart, feeling a hole yawn wider by the second, and the ground churning beneath his feet. He had known the risk of being involved with another agent, known it from the start, known that it could only end like this. But he'd hoped, oh, he'd hoped. And now, here he was at the end, and there was nothing to keep him from toppling over the edge of the yawning hole stretching out forever in front of him. Nothing at all. Doom would pay.

Compromised.

He hoped she gave them hell.

Natasha P.O.V

She woke with a start, but expertly concealed it. Her arms and legs were tied to a vertical metal table, which didn't help her stab wound. The room she was in seemed empty, but even though she didn't hear anything, she could faintly feel the heat of another body in the air. She was just surreptitiously testing her bonds, when a laughing voice stopped her cold.

"I know you're awake, Natalia. I can sense you. There's no use in playing games with me, little spider." Doom cackled.

"Oh, I'll let you know when the games start, Doom." She gave up her advantage, knowing that it was lost anyway, and opened her eyes.

Doom was standing only a few inches from her, but she didn't give him the satisfaction of flinching. He looked at her dispassionately.

"Do you know why you are here, rather than dead in the snow?"

She raised an eyebrow. Her arm throbbed. "Because I'm bait?"

He chuckled, and she felt a wave of hatred. "Quite. Very astute of you. Now, do you know why I let my allies hunt you rather than squash you with my magic?"

The word 'hunt' sent unpleasant shivers up her spine. "No."

"Because I knew that you wouldn't get away. And I wanted you to taste the honey of hope, and then have it snatched away from you at the last second. I wanted you to run, little spider, and watch as your hopes shatter in front of your eyes as you fell into my perfect plan." The bastard sounded smug.

She sighed as she understood. "It was the cook, wasn't it. She was sent by you to let me in without me realizing it, therefore giving me a perfect opportunity to go exactly where you wanted me to. I knew that she was suspicious, and that finding the room so quickly was too, but I didn't put it together. There were no doors in the hallway for her to have come from, not unless that was the only door in that half of the castle."

Doom clapped sardonically. "Bravo, Natalia. Now that we have taken the time to marvel at your brilliance, let us get started. As I have some sense of mercy, shall we call it, I will indeed give you a sample of the poison used to infect Tony Stark. Just not in the way you wanted."

She watched as Doom drew a needle from his cloak. Torture was nothing new to her, but this poison, it was something else. And since he had an antidote, he could inject her with it as many times as it took for her to break. She closed her eyes when the needle pierced her skin, and she quickly fell unconscious.

When she woke, she recognized the metal walls immediately. It was Avengers tower, but it wasn't. It was cold and bare, and a faint smell of … something hung around the air. What had she been doing before this? She couldn't remember, and that bothered her. Why couldn't she remember? A faint scuffling noise jolted her out of her thoughts, and she spun around, reaching for her weapons and coming up with air. It was Steve, but he looked … cold, like he had lost a vital part of himself. She knew what that was like.

"Steve, what's going on?" She stepped out of her crouch and took a couple steps to him. Something wasn't right with him, but he was better than no one.

"I can't believe that I trusted you." His tone was harsh and unforgiving. "You're nothing but a killer. I trusted you to have my back, and look where that got me; stabbed in the back." He turned around and showed her the knife embedded in his back. "I thought that you could rise above your nature and become a good person, but I guess you can never change a person. You're done, Nat. You're not an Avenger. I can't believe I ever though you were." He collapsed in a pool of blood.

Natasha staggered back, tears pricking her eyes. "No …" She whispered. "I would never …."

"Never … what, Nat? Kill someone? You've done that plenty of times. I should know. Take a look at yourself, Nat, and see what you would never do." A familiar voice told her, but there was no one in the room. A mirror hung on the wall, and her feet drew her to it. She looked in it, and recognized the face, but it wasn't hers. It was a small girl, barely ten years old, with the classic Russian cheekbones and long, dark hair. She staggered back, and the girl did the same, her face twisted into a mask of terror and her arms reaching out to protect. Her reflection snapped back into her regular face, but her face had the same expression of mind-rending horror.

"Drakov's daughter, Nat. You said you would never kill a child, not after the training in the Red Room, but what about her, Nat? Did she deserve to get killed just for being Drakov's daughter and for being in the wrong place when her father was killed? You gunned her down without a thought; an innocent child, Nat. Did you really think that the Avengers would accept you as one of theirs knowing that you're a cold-blooded child-killer?"

She sobbed, but the voice was unrelenting. "Even without that, who would want to be in a team with you? You lie and backstab and cheat, because it's in your job description. I don't know why I let you live. I would have done a lot of people a favor if I'd killed you when I had the chance, Nat, before you killed me."

She turned around and saw Clint, but he was facedown in a pool of blood. He had been shot in the heart.

"No!" She sobbed and ran to him. "No, no, no … no."

She pressed her shaking hands to his chest and turned him over. His sightless eyes were cold as his skin. He was gone. She held him, regardless of the blood covering everything, and cried into his blood-caked hair. The faint smell permeating the air was stronger, strong enough for her to gag at the cloying smell of blood. She was hollow, even more that she had been at the Red Room. He was gone, and she was gone, and the team was gone. How was she to live with all of this goneness? She hadn't realized she was crying until her tears mixed with the blood on Clint and ran to the floor red. Red was everywhere. Her hair was red, Clint's blood was red, the floor was red, her ledger was red. The red crept up the walls and into her eyes. All she could see was red.

"Pathetic." She knew that voice, and the shock made her immobile. This couldn't be happening. He was dead. "I raised you better than this, Natalia. I gave you power, and this is how you squander it? Crying over a dead man? Weak. Emotional. I should have known you would turn out like this. Like mother, like daughter. Perhaps you require more … training to mold you into a better weapon, because that is all you are and what you always will be, Natalia; a weapon, not an Avenger. You should have never thought differently."

Ivan Petrovich stood in front of her, hands clasped behind his back and shoulders ramrod straight, just as he always had. Then he smiled, and instead of red, all she saw was black.

Sentiment.

Ohmigosh, I feel so sorry for Clint and Natasha! But then again, I don't. Does anyone else know the feeling of luxuriating satisfaction and smugness when you have total and absolute control over characters? No? Just me then. *evil laugh and smirk*

In this fanfiction, Natasha was tortured by Ivan, who was part of the Red Room (imagine a Salt/Orlev relationship for those of you who have seen the movie). Any questions, then PM me or leave a review. I need reviews people, it's at a measly eight!

Favorite/Follow, and get to tease Steve about "fonduing" (gotta love that euphemism!). Review, and get to comfort Clint (not Natasha because she'd kill anyone who tried). Favorite/Follow me, and get to break Natasha out of the castle, complete with fireworks/explosions, guns, your favorite mode of transportation, and awesome badassery. Vote for me on the poll, conveniently located on my profile, and get to thump Doom upside the head and/or wipe some red out of Natasha's ledger.