Well this sucked.
It had to be at least a hundred degrees outside, and God forbid they actually set him up some place that had air conditioning. It was almost Christmas; it wasn't supposed to be this hot. He was supposed to be drinking hot chocolate, starting snowball fights, and hazing the new recruits by making them go out into the snow to make snow angels in their underwear. Instead, he was on the ass end of the world chasing a ghost.
He really didn't see what the big deal was. He went off mission a teeny tiny bit. So what? Everything turned out fine in the end. There may have been a little bit more property damage than expected he'll admit; and he may have blown his cover a little premature; and then there was that nasty incident with the Russian mob boss (which was not his fault, by the way!); and there may have been a pretty blond who may or may not have been said mob boss's daughter…
Regardless, he was damn good at what he did and did not deserve this treatment. Benefits package be damned, he didn't get paid enough to put up with this shit.
While Fury had been doing his name justice in Clint's general direction, Agent Hill had interrupted to inform them of an incident in Melbourne that was possibly the work of the infamous Black Widow. He had been spirited away on his new assignment so fast his head was still spinning. He arrived in Melbourne before the body was even cold. Not that it helped much, because while the body was still warm, the trail was cold as ice.
He was slightly thrilled to use his fake Australian accent and impersonate a member of the Federal Police, but the excitement ended there.
The girl was untraceable. There wasn't any proof she was ever even there aside from the manner in which the guy was killed. He was some rich dirty scumbag who had his hand in drugs, arms dealing, and human trafficking.
From the outside, it looked like his lieutenants had turned on one another. His brother tied to invest a nonexistent company and got pinched by the Federal Police. One guy got caught trying to sell girls to one of the guys rivals. And the man himself was found naked in bed and bleeding out from, well…everywhere, courtesy of a particularly nasty poison engineered by some soviet scientist and delivered through the smear of pink lipstick on his face. The guy's entire organization had been completely dismantled in just barely a week.
He had to admit he was impressed, but also really annoyed with how thorough she was. She left absolutely nothing for him to follow, but the brass wouldn't let him off the hook till he had "exhausted all possibilities" to their satisfaction of course.
So he found himself eating the Australian version of Teddy Grams and watching hours upon hours of surveillance tape from street cameras, ATM cameras, anything with in a ten mile radius that may have caught a glimpse of his ghost. To top off all of the suck, SHIELD didn't have a clear picture of what she looked like, so facial recognition software was useless and it meant he had to check out every red head he found.
What a shit pile of suck.
Two days in, he's sitting mindlessly in from of a computer fast forwarding through video footage absentmindedly stuffing not-teddy grams into his mouth.
Six days in, he's trying to see if any kangaroos appeared in the footage.
Ten days in, he's tallying up every rabbit he sees.
On day fourteen he decides to make up a drinking game. One sip for every redhead. Two for every bombshell redhead. Three sips for every butt ugly redhead. A shot for every rabbit caught on film being killed. And five shots for the actual Black Widow. Needless to say it was a terrible idea and he spent day fifteen in bed with the mother of all hangovers.
It was so mind numbingly boring that on day eighteen he almost misses it. A bright flash of pink bumping into none other than the overdressed bad guy who is now six feet under, outside an ice cream parlor. Her dress is so vibrant that everything in the background seems to fade to dull tan and grey. She is utterly stunning, and disarmingly sweet.
He was so shocked to actually see her he stared at open-mouthed at the screen for a couple of minutes. From there he easily tracked her progress as the guy replaced her ice cream and then spent the rest of the afternoon with her falling over himself to make her smile, ending the night at an obscenely expensive restaurant.
She was seemingly shy and sweet. Laughing at his jokes and letting him hold her hand, and her mark was entirely enamored with her. Hell, if Clint didn't know it was all an act, he would have been convinced he was watching a genuine love story. It was freaky how someone could act so convincingly sincere. She was a master puppeteer, pulling at the strings at just the right time.
He carefully tracked her movement though the week, establishing a timeline. With the exception of her forced introduction to her mark she skillfully blended in, turning her head just so and preventing cameras from getting a good look at her face. When entering a lobby where there were cameras watching the entrance, she would hide carefully behind her mark.
He found her coming out of the man's hotel the night he died. He'd missed it before because she had pulled a hood up over her head (and he'd been a little drunk at the time), but he could tell now by that confident stride and those pink high heels (seriously, what's with all the pink?) as she made her way to a waiting cab.
The cab dropped her off at a middle class apartment building and then she disappeared completely from all the footage.
He doubted he would find anything there to lead him to her, but he had to check it out any way. "Exhaust all possibilities." So far he'd gotten a hell of a lot further than anyone else who had been assigned to track her.
Who knows? Maybe he'd catch a lucky break, find her, and take her out. He'd love to see the look on Fury's face.
A flash of his fake badge got him into the apartment. He told the land lady he was checking up on a possible missing person's case. Big mistake. Now the lady was beside herself with worry over sweet little Amber Morgan, and wouldn't leave him be while he searched the pristine apartment.
"She only just moved in! And she's such a sweet girl, I can't imagine anyone would want to hurt her!" and so on and so forth. Good Lord woman, could you lower you voice an octave?
There really was nothing to find. He was about to cut his losses when it caught his eye.
Another spot of bright pink.
A post card was hung on the refrigerator, depicting a night life scene of people dancing with the night lit up all around them, and a bright pink kiss. "Want to dance?" it asked. "Greetings from Sao Paulo"
He had a bad feeling about this…
FYI I don't really think Australia is the butt of the world. The idea to set it in Australia was sparked by all the Australians on Tumblr complaining about the heat, so I decided to put Clint there and make him miserable.
Anyways, hope you liked it! Don't forget to review, cause I've kinda become a review junkie.