Disclaimer: I do not own these characters. They belong to Stan Lee! I am simply borrowing them for my non-profit story.
16:44 24-AUG-09, ZURICH, SWITZERLAND
"Let's go to the roof." Clint pointed to the staircase with his bow. He preferred to be up high where he was able to see everything around him.
His partner agreed and they ascended the rickety staircase. They found the door to the roof barricaded, but Clint kicked the door with his boot-clad foot a few times, and the door swung open. The sudden brightness from the afternoon sun temporarily blinded the assassins, whose eyes were accustomed to the darkened interior of the warehouse.
The view that the two saw from the roof surprised them. They didn't expect to still be in Europe, much less Switzerland. The familiar skyline of Zurich, Switzerland was laid out before them. From their spot, they could see a part of the city where police officers swarmed the area - it was the street where the acidic liquid had spewed out of the sewers.
"Natasha," Clint said. "Do you think those people survived?"
She turned to him with a hardened look in her eyes. "I don't think so."
"Should we-"
"No," Natasha said firmly. "We are not going to check. It wasn't our fault. Their city can deal with whatever caused that to happen."
Clint's light eyes continued to watch the scene in the distance. He knew that whoever caused the eruptions was targeting him and Natasha. The attacker must have been someone who knew who they were and their motives. They had been sent to look into a secret underground crypt and retrieve some information. Natasha was responsible for getting into the vaults and actually getting the intel. Clint had to watch her back, tracking her with a special device from their agency, and take any potential attackers away from her.
That had always been Clint's job: having a birds' eye view. His bow and arrows were a perfect match for him because it allowed him to take down a target unawares from any distance. Clint was the world's best marksman. He recognized that fact although it seemed a bit pompous. Ever since he discovered his talent while in a travelling circus, he had never parted with his bow. Natasha had teased him about it, saying that he probably slept with it (which he had only done once, but he had truly been drunk that night).
"Clint," Natasha said, pulling him out of his thoughts. "We should go. S.H.I.E.L.D. will want to know that we're alive."
Clint put a hand to his ear where is earpiece usually was. It was gone. Their captors must have spotted them and removed them while they were unconscious.
"Wait, Nat," Clint said, putting a hand on his partner's shoulder. "What about that other guy earlier? Did you see him? Or better yet, did you kill him?"
"You mean the guy with the sunglasses?" Natasha asked, and Clint nodded. "I didn't see him. If he was ever in this building, he's probably long gone by now."
"Have you seen him before?"
Natasha hesitated. "I think so. I recognize him, but I don't know where I've seen him before."
"Maybe you saw him during your time in the-" Clint paused seeing the warning look on Natasha's face, "the Red Room."
As soon as the two words were uttered, Natasha felt a rush of blood go to her head. Instantly, her vision began to darken and she couldn't do anything to stop it. Then, she passed out.
Natalia was facing a plain grey wall. She longed to look anywhere else in the room except for that spot. Lined up against the wall were three humans with cloth bags over their heads. Their hands were tied to the wall. One of them was visibly shaking while the other two stood almost completely still. It was as if they thought standing still would spare them.
A man with blonde hair and piercing green eyes smiled at Natalia. It was a menacing smile that Natalia didn't return. He tossed her a knife and she caught it easily in one hand.
"You know what to do," the man said. "Just kill them and you will officially become the чернаявдова." Black Widow. "I want you to make them suffer and see the fear in their eyes before you kill them. Take the bag off their heads."
Natalia pulled the bags off roughly revealing three girls, no older than twenty, with their grimy faces looking vacant. Natalia recognized them. They were also part of the Red Room Academy, competing for the same title that Natalia was. Natalia had thought that they had already been killed after not being qualified.
One girl, whose name Natalia didn't remember, stared her down, blue eyes to green. A look of fear was absent, but rather a look of pity and a bit of anger was present. For a moment, Natalia thought of sparing them and somehow having them escape, but then a thought of Alexi's face made her lose that idea. Once again, Natalia's eyes hardened and with a swift kick to the stomach, she made the girl stumble to the side a bit, the ropes around her wrists holding her up.
The girl, having been trained the way that Natalia had, didn't begin to wheeze like anyone else would have. Instead, she continued to look at Natalia with pitying eyes. For some reason, that made Natalia angry. Drawing back a tight fist, she punched the girl's nose hearing a satisfactory crack. Blood instantly streamed out of her nose. Natalia continued to beat the girl cruelly, but not once did a gasp or cry emit from the girl. At last, Natalia snapped the girl's neck, causing the light to leave her bright eyes.
"Natalia!" the man called. "Stop. Don't touch the other girls."
Natalia's head snapped back to the man. The man smiled again and gestured for her to go to him. Once she stood within five feet of him, he stopped her with a hand.
"You are now the Black Widow," he said. "Natalia Romanova, you are free to go. For now. If we are in need of your services, then you will come straight back to us."
She was at the door when the man said, "Just remember this, чернаявдова, if you ever decide to turn your back on us, we will find you. We will kill you. You may be strong, but remember that we are the ones who trained you."
"I'm not afraid of you, Bogrov," she replied coldly.
"Oh, but you should be."
Natalia turned her back on Aleksandr Bogrov and left the room, quickening her pace as two gunshots were fired back inside the room.
16:49 24-AUG-09, ZURICH, SWITZERLAND
"Natasha." A familiar voice was calling her as she slowly regained consciousness.
Her eyes flew open and she winced at the bright sunlight that was shining directly down on her. When she could see again, she saw Clint kneeling next to her with a concerned look on his face.
"Nat, are you alright?" he asked placing a hand on her arm.
"Yeah," she lied, remembering her flashback. "I'm fine. Just… dehydrated I suppose."
The look on Clint's face told Natasha that he didn't believe her, but he didn't say anything about it. Instead, he helped her up, handing her the gun that she had dropped.
"We'd better go find a phone to call Fury," Clint suggested at last.
"We have to blow this place up first." Natasha held up a couple grenades that she kept in her belt.
A small smile tugged at Clint's mouth. "Plan R?"
The plan was that they rappelled down the side of the building, tossing grenades in through the windows. It would be timed so that they would be safely on the ground by the time the grenades blew.
Natasha nodded. "Go on, Arrowhead. Jump."
Clint readied his bow. Taking a deep breath, he leaped off the side of the building, twisting his body around in midair so that his back was facing the ground. Then, he grabbed an arrow and released it. The grapple-hook arrow latched onto the ledge of the roof. He saw Natasha watching him from around twenty feet above him. Clint pressed a button on his bow which stopped the rope from lowering him.
"Now?" Natasha called.
"Yeah."
Natasha carefully placed on foot on the other side of the ledge. Then she slid her whole body down and grabbed the rope that was suspended between the building and Clint. Slowly, she shimmied down, stopping right above Clint. He was careful not to look straight up at her, or else he would be pressing his nose against her behind which he was sure she wouldn't appreciate.
She glanced down at Clint holding onto the rope tightly. She didn't want to fall, or else the whole mission would've been pointless.
"Hold onto me," Clint said. "We have to rappel down together."
She clambered precariously onto Clint, putting her arms around his neck. Loosening one arm so she could toss the grenade in time, Natasha nodded to Clint, signaling for him that she was ready. The archer pressed the button on his bow again plunging them towards the ground. Natasha aimed one grenade into a window, and a couple floors down, she tossed the other one in. They reached the ground and Clint tossed the now-useless arrow away.
The two assassins ran quickly away from the warehouse. Just as they reached the street, the building exploded, the higher floors collapsing in on it. Luckily, there wasn't anyone around the deserted neighbourhood. Natasha hadn't thought about the civilian factor when they were up there. If someone had seen them toss the grenades in, they would've been reported to the police. It wasn't like that was a problem though because she had several aliases registered, none of which were her real name.
"Let's go before anyone comes to the site," Clint said, tugging on Natasha's arm.
17:18 24-AUG-09, SHIELD HELICARRIER
"Did you find out who was behind it?"
Natasha and Clint were aboard the SHIELD helicarrier and were reporting back to the SHIELD director, Nick Fury. Their one-eyed boss was sitting at the meeting table in the main control room. Agent Phil Coulson, the assassins' handler, was also there. He was standing behind Fury with his arms crossed, listening intently to their recount of the mission.
Clint was shaking his head to Fury's question when Natasha said, "Yes."
The archer looked questioningly at his partner. "What? You know his name?"
Natasha sighed. "I know him from the Red Room."
Clint looked down at his folded hands. He knew that Natasha didn't like talking about her past, especially her horrific time in the Red Room.
"Go on, Agent Romanoff," Fury urged her.
"His name is Aleksandr Bogrov," she said. "He was a trainer during my time in the Red Room. He was the one who… chose me to be Black Widow. He was there in Switzerland with an army of masked men. Clint and I were taken to a warehouse, as we said before, and we didn't see him there. We assume that he escaped when he heard us killing our captors."
Fury turned to Agent Coulson. "Find out everything about Bogrov, then report back to me."
"Yes, sir." With that, he left.
"And what happened to your comms?" Fury asked the assassins.
"Taken, I assume," Clint replied. "And probably destroyed, or else you probably would've heard something."
Fury shook his head. "I didn't hear anything unusual from the comms," he said. "Now, tell me what you found. You have the papers, right?"
Natasha reached into the neckline of her cat suit and retrieved a folded piece of paper. She unfolded it and slid it across the table to Fury.
"I thought that women only put phones and money in there," Clint mumbled, gesturing the Natasha's chest.
His statement was ignored. Fury was scanning through the papers, his eye that wasn't covered by the eye patch moving quickly and slowly widening. Then, Fury muttered, "Shit," and he stood up and left the room. His chair was still spinning by the time Natasha registered that he left.
"What the hell just happened?" she said.
"Maybe something in the papers scared him," Clint suggested. "Did you read what was on the documents?"
"Actually, no."
"I didn't either. We were in such a rush to escape, so I didn't even bother to check that we had all the files."
Natasha's eyebrows furrowed. What could've been on the paper that was so alarming, that it could upset Nick Fury?