He worried about her. The Natasha he knew was level-headed, focussed. Even post-nightmare-Nat was hardly submissive; she would fight a lot of the comfort he tried to give her to keep herself composed. But the marks on her wrist were made with a knife. With the one he was holding now, the one he was running down the edge of stone and honing with steel.
He watched as she talked with Thomas. Did she know that there was an array of tools by his side? Did she realise that the door was unlocked? It wouldn't matter, he supposed. If Natasha Romanoff wanted to get out of the room, it would take more than a lock to stop her.
She was laughing.
What was there to laugh about? She didn't even know where she was; she hadn't even asked. Maybe she did trust him enough to feel safe. Maybe she trusted him enough to keep her safe.
Clint sighed.
Maybe. I ain't no superhero.
"That bow is going to take a lot to replace." he grumbled. No one seemed to notice. "I mean, I doubt S.H.I.E.L.D's going to be focussing on artillery any time soon."
Nothing.
"See, it would be fun if my employer existed for like -"
Natasha caught him mid sentence. She got up, strode over to him and, fingers clamped under his collar, pulled him onto his feet. Even standing a good couple of inches below him, she was as fearsome as always, a lioness with its prey yet beneath her.
The knife was on the floor.
"Stop brooding, Barton. My guess is they've brought our stuff over with them."
Without warning, he grabbed her shirt and pulled her back onto the wall with him. Though she did not expect it, she was hardly surprised at his actions. She took a cool step back, giving Clint a look of and where the hell are you going with this? He stepped in so that he was closer to her.
They were centimetres apart.
Scoffing, he raised his hand and traced the scars there, both old and new. After holding it up for a few seconds, he pulled up his right trouser leg to reveal recent bruising and a large, odd scar. A key-chain, bearing a small spider charm, swung slightly at his waist. It was secured with what looked like tape and string; Thomas observed with care.
"Clint." began Natasha, looking perfectly unamused.
He continued in faint anger, highlighting several spots that, bearing scars or not, she would know he was once injured in. His fingers lightly danced over his back, then suddenly moved up to his ear to tear out his hearing aids.
The noise they made as they clattered to the floor was petty.
'Your turn.' he signed, watching her flinch as he uncovered several scars and scratches. He moved his hand to the corner of Natasha's shirt to try and reveal her stomach. She stopped him, holding her bandaged hand to his at her waist - to which he responded by pulling it up in front of her face. Clint started to unwrap it, slowly revealing a blood soaked gauze and, underneath it, the bloodied wound. He turned her hand so that she could see it.
"See this?" he said, indicating the cuts in her wrist. His voice sounded awkward and a few decibels over what it was meant to be, something that he knew would show his inexperience of talking without his aids in. "Not glass."
He wrapped it again in the same bandage for lack of any medical supplies nearby, his fingers pulling and moving with ease as if he were carefully wrapping a gift for Christmas.
'More now.' signed Natasha, grimacing as she pulled on her left sleeve to reveal a recent scar, made by a bullet no doubt. Ballistics? (He should have asked.) Soviet slug. No rifling. As his fingers brushed against the skin, she flicked her head to the side and tensed up. He reached now towards her right hand, knotting his fingers into hers. Clint's gaze was icy as he brought it to his chest. He felt the thundering beats of his heart pulse into the palm of her hand, her gaze childish yet also locking it into place. Pushing both their hands to her chest, he hoped her heartbeat would be much the same. Her neckline, however, caught his eye - it was empty of necklace.
"What, you gonna make me recite the pledge of allegiance?" she said with a small smile.
But he wasn't paying attention to her lips.
"Did you lose the pendant?" he whispered; his eyes were settled on her neck. It wasn't his intention to be heard.
Natasha cautiously moved his hand and lifted his chin so that their gaze was fixed on each other.
'Jacket' she signed.
Clint nodded slowly in return, wondering how often she'd practised American sign language for him. She was obviously not used to using it, never needing to use the language in her line of work and forgetting to use it when she forgot that he could not understand her.
But it touched him to see how hard she would try.
He watched now as his partner bent down to gather the hearing aids, then caught her eye as she carefully pressed them back into his ears.
"They'll have our gear or we'll make them go back for it." she said matter-of-factly as she let her hands slink to her sides.
He was tempted to hug her. Hell, he was tempted to kiss her. But it wouldn't mean anything, to either of them. Besides, it would seem out of character. And, with someone at the door tapping their foot impatiently, it appeared to Clint that chance the to respond was gone.
"Ha, no."
The three of them were slouched in chairs on one side of a large meeting table, Natasha sitting in the middle. A sharply dressed, dark skinned woman by the name of Doctor Natine sat opposite them, accompanied by a thin secretary. They had been in the room for over 3 hours, and, it still being early morning, the mood was caught between half asleep and overly light-hearted.
"I don't understand the premise of our meeting here. Why do you want a bunch of traitor spies to go and break some magic machine of yours?" Natasha spoke in a casual manner, relaxed in the comfortably padded chair.
"Hey, I didn't see my face on the TV - no-one's calling me a traitor." argued Clint.
"Shut it, you."
"I'm just saying, you don't get to speak for me."
"Wanna bet?"
The Doctor rubbed her temples as she began to lose her patience. "If we could please just focus. And it's not a magic machine, it's a complex dimension manipulator."
"Yeah yeah, sub realities and all that." Clint waved the sentence away without much consideration.
"No-one's going to buckle down and focus without knowing the conditions of your preposition. What happens if we 'accept your quest'? What happens if we refuse?"
"That's something we have to negotiate and discuss." said the Doctor with a less than enthusiastic countenance.
"Can we do it over coffee?" asked the archer, with all seriousness.
"Are we prisoners or are we free to go?"
"At the moment, Agent Romanoff, -"
"At the moment, I'm not working on behalf of an agency."
"You might be working on behalf of ours."
"What, the spacey division of S.H.I.E.L.D's French cousin?"
"We've always been separate from S.H.I.E.L.D."
"Well that's great to know, Doc, but-"
"Look, will you take the job or not?"
The job in question involved infiltrating a nearby military bunker to recover some blueprints for the reality machine, then sailing from Calais to a secure location in England to deactivate it. The task would be dangerous and could only be completed with a minimum of 2 living organisms existing within the sub reality created by the machine - the separate DNA strings acting as a confirmation code for any workings done. Although any organism could be used, most multicellular organisms smaller than a cat would not be able to cope with the conditions inside the pocket world created, and bacteria or other micro-organisms (that were separately existing) would not survive the strange blast emission that the machine would give out when activated. Any bacteria in or on the appropriate organisms would not be affected.
Due to the blast, the surrounding of an appropriate containment chamber was vital - without it, the blast could endanger anyone within a 6 mile radius, including the organisms attempting to work within the sub reality.
Upon activating the machine, Natasha and Clint would be subject to several mind tricks and illusions, leading perhaps to vivid and personal hallucinations. That was why it needed to be shut down, explained Doctor Natine; although the machine worked, it was far too dangerous to control and shape. Anyone inside it could survive without complications for just over 30 hours if conditions were stable - but any upset and anything in there would be subject to harsh trickery and attempts on safety - with the time reduced to as little as 12 minutes. And recently, the machine was destabilising rapidly - if it got to a certain point, it could tear a hole in the fabric of the earthly realm, connecting it to a whole bunch of places that it did not want to be connected to. So, while it was stable enough, it was essential that it be shut down before it could cause any damage.
Of course, the conditions in there would require immense mental strength. As well as this, the instructions to shut down the machine were complex (and, evidently, hard to get by).
It was certainly something to put on the C.V.
"I'm not done talking."
Doctor Natine rolled her shoulders back and started to get up. "We can go for a walk, but it'll get crowded with all 5 of us."
Clint took this as an invitation to chip in. "I'm happy to stick 'round here if we can get some refreshments."
"Yeah, me too." added Thomas, who had been silent for the majority of the discussion.
The doctor smiled a sickly sweet smile and exchanged a few words between her secretary. When the two women of the room had wandered out of earshot, they continued the conversation.
"I need to ask some questions."
"Shoot."
"Why us?"
"You were closest, of course."
I bet we weren't. And closest what?
"And how did you find us?"
"We've got some eyes watching out for Avengers."
Eyes that sell their information to multiple associations, no doubt. Her mind cast over the arrival of the Red Room messenger.
"Besides, that mess up by the apartment was a pretty good indicator."
"How many people know we're here?"
"There are about 30 members in the apartment. About 10 of these know the exact nature of the situation, no more."
10's a dangerous enough number.
"There's a lot here that we're gambling on, Agent Romanoff. We need to pay attention to probabilities."
"Probabilities won't cover your ass when you're out in the field. And it's not agent."
"That's why we brought you in to make sure each-other's backsides are covered."
"Those eyes you got, they belong to you or are they an exterior source?"
"Multiple sources. One of them owns the buildings around the apartment site. You might have noticed some of the teleport discs in the interior design."
Natasha took a breath.
Thomas' father.
"Right. And I presume we will get some information regarding that particular method of transport soon."
The woman appeared deeply offended. "These are highly classified pieces of equipment, Agent."
Natasha stared at the woman and forced a cough.
"When you accept the job offer, you will be using more traditional methods of transport. You'll have an emergency teleport link to take you back if needs be. That's as far as it goes. That's as far as it can go."
"When we accept the offer?"
"As I said, negotiations had to be made. Most of that will be over payment." She turned towards the spy. "This project, this experiment gone wrong? It can't go out into the real world. As far as anyone knows, this stuff doesn't exist. If you take the offer, and let's face it, you will, there's enough risk and temptation in it to make you rather susceptible to running off. We'll be making sure you stay."
Although the metaphorical anchor that would keep her tied to this place wasn't something Natasha was keen on accepting, the prospect of the work was tempting. And as for running off with the equipment? Well, she would return what she needed to, presumably returning with it, anything that would be worth to potential buyers of this sort of equipment and information. But even if there wouldn't be chance for pitching the teleport and dimension manipulator systems whole, there were ways in which she could drip-feed the information to private buyers or even into the mainstream. It could be handy as leverage.
There must be a computer somewhere.
"Alright. When do we start?"
We'll be back into some more action soon, I promise.
Thanks for reading and sticking with the story so far!
More on Monday :)