Disclaimer: 'IT's ALIVE!' The story, that is, but I still don't own the rights to either of the properties. Yeah, that sounds about right.

Gregor 'TANK' Hubbrus

"You would like us to kill who?" Natasha asked with an incredulity that Harry didn't remember ever having heard before.

The laptop in front of them flashed the name TANK at the top of the screen. The pictures underneath the title showed the seven foot tall man holding a rocket launcher in both arms.

"Come now, I know this isn't a first. You are well versed in killing your rivals." The slimy voice across the table from them perfectly fit the man. The slicked back hair and brown eyes that held only malicious intent. The man had insisted on meeting at a restaurant in town with two bodyguards following him - not that it would help if Natasha or Harry had it in their minds to kill him.

The worst part was this new form of client wasn't even unusual for them anymore. After they had killed Ares, a.k.a. Michael Hollander, they had been inundated with similar requests. There weren't many rules in the business of killing people, but it was still unusual to be able to hire people that would kill others in their own profession. Harry and Natasha had become a novelty to clients, but hated everywhere else.

It wasn't unusual for them to be glared at and avoided in Markets. Their reputation had become bigger than Harry had ever wanted again and it was starting to get on his nerves.

"Just because we aren't opposed to killing our own kind doesn't mean we take every job." Harry told the man with a sneer.

TANK was a well known mercenary for hire. His type of aggressive personality made everyone want to hit him within a minute of meeting him - his reputation of killing anyone who did warded off most people. His overconfidence and pride made him think he could get away with almost anything, but that didn't mean he didn't have some skills to back it up. The man's size was only the tip of the iceberg of the shit storm that was TANK. He had been classically training in boxing and wrestling. He then went into the military to get sent off in a number of missions which always had a higher body count than they were supposed to. It was this fact that got him kicked out of the military and put into mercenary work. He spent the rest of his life honing his skills until he decided to go off and start a mercenary crew of his own. His crew turned into one of most well known in the business for getting the job done, and getting it done bloody. The man's success in business if anything made him a harder man to be around because his ego had swelled to an unsustainable size.

Harry and Natasha had met him exactly once, for about a minute, and then turned around and jumped a plane out of the country. It wasn't because they were scared of him, but at the time Natasha was a newly minted fifteen year old and Harry had broken his collarbone the previous week. They decided to retreat instead of having to put up with him for another minute when they would be able to kill him. It was a lesson they had both learned in the years before their partnership - never pick a fight you couldn't win.

"I don't..."

"We'll take it." Harry spun to look at Natasha after her interruption.

"What?" He hissed the question at her.

"I am so glad to hear it." The slicked man pulled a stack of bills from his greasy pocket and put them on the table - unprofessional, was the only thought that shot through Harry's head. He let a slight glare show through his eyes at her, but otherwise made no move to pick up the stack.

"It was a pleasure to meet you." Natasha put her hand into the greasy palm of the client and Harry had to resist the urge to pull her away and scold her.

"What are you thinking?" Harry whispered more to himself than to the rest of the table.

"The pleasure was all mine." The man pressed his lips to the back of Natasha's hand and Harry narrowed his eyes and hissed softly. It took all of his willpower not to spring across the table and stab him in the throat. He allowed himself to fantasize about the man's cut throat oozing blood and staining the table and floors, covering the legs of the nearby chairs. Harry shook himself out of the daydream and back to the real world of revolting clients and partners that acted without approval.

Harry's lip curled back slightly. It had been almost three months since Dubai and Ares and Klein; the vicious thoughts slipped to the forefront of his mind. Three months since the warning and Harry knew that time was running short. His gut was attacking him every night now and his had to push away the ominous premonitions almost hourly. Something was going to happen soon, and it wasn't going to be good.

Natasha's own rebellious attitude didn't help a single thing. Their once tight and fluid partnership had devolved into daily squabbles and fights over nothing. Harry figured the constant travel was getting to her, because switching continents every week could be exhausting on the body clock.

Harry watched absentmindedly as the slimy client slid from the room.

"That was a good..."

"What were you thinking?" Harry hissed at her, allowing his anger to show.

Natasha's eyes flashed. "You weren't going to take it." She said almost accusingly.

"No." Harry almost spat at her. "I wasn't."

"I wanted to." She said in a flippant tone that made Harry want to slam her into a wall to knock some sense into her.

"Not so long ago I was in a partnership that took into account the desires of both of its occupants."

Natasha shined, "Funnily enough, I remember that too."

Harry growled and slammed his hands on the table as he stood, "Stop attacking like such a child!"

"OH, I'm a child now? When did that happen?" She stood up herself, angrily standing across from him.

"Natasha." An exasperated sigh escaped him. He rubbed his eyes and tried not to feel as if the world was crushing him. At twenty-one years old he had never had an easy life, but these past few weeks of constant fighting with Natasha, his supposed partner, had exhausted him.

"Harry." Natasha growled back at him, still trying to pick a fight.

"Maybe it's time split ways." Harry didn't look at her face - he couldn't force himself to. The small gasp that came from her direction told him exactly what Natasha thought of that idea. His mental shoulders slumped, there was going to be no easy break for them.

"Is that what you want?" The shaky tone of Natasha's voice told him just how much emotion she had to be feeling for some of it to escape in her voice.

"No." Harry answered firmly and turned back to her. "No, Natasha, I don't want to spilt up. We have worked together for three and a half years now. You are my closest ally and friend, you know much about me that no one else does."

"And you know more than anyone else about me." Natasha said softly, her eyes searching for something on his face - a clue to his true thoughts.

"I don't want to leave you." The truth slipped unbidden from his lips. He body betrayed him farther by stepping closer to her, close enough to touch.

The entire room seemed frozen, the two of them alone in an empty restaurant - emptied by their client. Harry couldn't resist the urge.

He stepped closer.

His hand didn't belong to his body, it had been possessed by a less cynical man.

He touched her cheek - warm, soft, blushing. It seemed her body was betraying her as well as she leaned into the hand. Her own rose to cover his.

Wide hazel eyes stared into darkened green ones.

Her lips opened slightly - full, red, wet. His own eyes seemed magnetized there, he couldn't look away.

He leaned in closer, because maybe just once the world could wait. He could be in this moment and savor it and nothing would...

"Oops, sorry." The squeaking of the owner of the restaurant entering the room broke the hypnosis. Time that once seemed frozen, fractured.

His hand escaped her face as if it had been burn, his legs scurried backyard and his body turned away.

"I apologize for the wait miss, we were just finishing up here." Harry nodded gratefully to the woman and slipped past her and onto the street. He took a deep breath and centered himself.

It was cold in Chicago, the noise that came with city living overpowered his racing mind. The sound of trains on tracks above him rattling, complementing the distant honking of car horns. There was a music to city life that people that lived there took as background noise. One thing that Harry had learned on his travels was that everyone of them was different. No two cities ever sounded the same and all had their own mesmerizing quality.

He breathed in the stiff air of the city.

"We have to do this job now." Natasha's voice was normal, unbroken or cracked. The mask was back on, but that was okay it was familiar company to him.

"Yes, we do." Harry answered just the same - confident, nonchalant, apathetic. Nothing had happened after all, no need to make a fuss over nothing. "You accepted it after all."

She didn't apologize, but her shoulder's shrugged and Harry nodded in acceptance. It wasn't in their nature to truly apologize for anything, their profession had no place for it.

Besides, he hadn't liked TANK anymore than she did, what was one more mark added to an already covered body. What was one more scar to the masterpiece of his skin. He rubbed his arm absentmindedly - a nervous tick.

"The file said he was in the city." Business as usual.

"Most likely true, if I remember correctly the headquarters for his mercenary company is here." Harry took in the skyscrapers because there was no reason not to be a tourist while you could.

"Black Hull Securities, I believe, or something equally as garish." She answered from beside him, a reasonable distance yet for some reason it felt farther than normal.

"The trouble with this job is that the man knows our faces and I doubt we will be so lucky that he doesn't know our current reputation."

"He'll be surrounded by bodyguards."

"Not that it will stop us, but they will be just as well informed as he is about threats. Which means we will have to fool his security as well as him." Harry took another deep breath. "This job is getting harder by the second."

"You're letting your apprehension show."

Harry spared a glare for her, "I'm being realistic."

"Be careful or your realism may start to sound like an old nanny." She said prickly, letting some of her annoyance over the restaurant through.

"Very well, Miss Snarky, you have a plan?" Harry asked with the appropriate amount of attitude.

She paused for a moment. Her red hair was shining and curly down her back. He didn't know when it had the chance to grow so much - just like her. Her mouth twitched - a tick - while she thought. Her head was tilted back, looking upwards to the tops of the buildings. Nothing could make you feeling like more of a rat in a maze than cities. Harry smiled at the sight of her. He could almost see the thoughts running through her head, showing off just how intelligent she was.

She tried to hide it sometimes, which Harry had never understood - that was kind of a lie, he did. She was smarter than him by far. She absorbed languages like a sponge. She took in stride almost everything that happened to her. Her entire mindset was adaptability and flexibility, to be whatever she needed to be to get the job done.

"Yes, I think I do." She smiled sharply and Harry shivered, nothing good could come of this.

"Well, well, well. What do we have here?" The voice that spoke perfectly fit the body that it belonged to, gravely and deep. The cigar that hung from the mouth of the giant was lit, allowing the smoky smell to fill the room. "Caught some cockroaches I see."

The mammoth hand grabbed his chin, wrenching it to the side forcing him to look at the tattooed and grimy face. Black lines traced over scars, instead of hiding them it accentuated them. This man liked showing off that much was obvious from his face. Harry already knew this fact of course. TANK wasn't a pretty man, but it wasn't his job to be pretty.

He had scars over his entire body, his shirt didn't have sleeves and all of the scars had the same black lines tracing them, making a ghastly lacework across his skin. The lines weren't pretty either. The ink had been forced under the skin, that much was obvious. Harry suddenly had the image of a large mucky needle the size of a nail with ink on the tip of it piercing the man's skin. He smiled grimly to himself and wondered what others might think of him, the tick marks the covered skin like trophies.

"Sorry, we must have made a wrong turn somewhere. If you would untie me I would gladly get out of your hair - oops." Harry's gaze flicked up to his bald head, "Too soon?"

The hand that snapped his head back around was the same one that grabbed his chin - the man's other hand was occupied by his cigar. Harry allowed his neck to relax and move with the hit, there was no reason to cause more damage trying to show off his strength.

Harry's hands were tied tightly behind the back of the chair he was on. More rope circled his upper arms forcing his chest out - vulnerable. His legs were also tied to the chair. His favorite part of the entire dramatic setup, though, was the six inch knife that was wedged into the seat right between his legs. It was about five centimeters from his crotch and he imagined that when they placed it there it was meant to show him just how far they were willing to go.

They probably hadn't like it when he snorted that the melodramatic action.

"Now, let's see here." The oversized man reached behind him and in a seemingly rehearsed move - because there was no way it couldn't be - grabbed a folder from one of his man goons that were all similar in height and weight. Harry wondered idly if there was a factory were you could order henchmen like this, because it always seemed to be the exact same men following every nut job with money. These particular goons even all had on a uniform of bullet proof vests and automatic weapons. The new war on the horizon in the United States looked like it was making business for some people at least. "Basilisk and Black Widow?"

"That's Mr. Basilisk to you." Harry answered with a cockeyed grin, no use in keeping silent now. The backhanded slap only served to make him hunger for more - his masochistic tendencies peaked their head out from where they had been hiding for a few years. There was something about being at the mercy of a psychotic person that man him nostalgic.

The enormous man stared down at him for a second trying to decide if he was going to hit him or not and Harry tried not to laugh at the posturing man.

"Hmm." The man hummed to himself and looked flicked his eyes back and forth between the two people tied to chairs. He sauntered over to Natasha's chair and stood their posturing for a bit - he seemed to be fond of it. "Well, aren't you are pretty little thing." The hand that grabbed Harry's chin was now on his partner and Harry forcefully stayed relaxed in his chair. The man couldn't hurt Natasha in any way that would matter, because not all the rope in the world could protect him from Harry.

"Now, you," TANK walked back over to Harry and patted his head condescendingly. "I can make a pretty penny off of you." He looked into the folder and mock whistled. "Three different companies are after your blood, and strangely enough none of them want you dead." The man was missing three teeth, one of them even looked to have been tugged from the mouth. "Not to mention all of the friends of the people you killed. It's rare that I get such a treat just appear on my doorstep." The man's crackling laugh wasn't enhanced by the soft whistling that came from his missing teeth. "Did you really think we wouldn't notice you trying to steal from one of our protected companies? The CEO was so pleased by your capture I even think he might give us a bonus. I should really thank you."

"Don't hurt your brain." Harry said smarmily and wasn't surprised by the second backhand that came his direction.

"You've got a smart mouth for someone tied to a chair." And Harry's only response was a bloodied smile. The man's eyes flashed in anger, upset that he couldn't get Harry off guard. "I think you are being a little to obstinate."

TANK crossed the room to Natasha's chair in two strides, his seven foot tall body moving much more gracefully than Harry thought should even be possible.

"Ooh, big word, ten points."

The giant man grinned cruelly. Harry didn't tense which the man grabbed a handful of Natasha's hair and pulled her head backwards roughly, but it was a close call. "You're mighty wordy for someone in your position. See, I can make some money off of you, but her." He shook her head roughly and turned it to face him. "I might save her for a morale booster for the boys." Harry ignored the disgusting grins on the nearby goons faces because there wasn't much else he could do right now. It was Natasha's plan, not his, and she wanted to be responsible for this one.

Tears started leaking from Natasha's face and Harry relaxed a little more in his chair. Her fake crying face was a comfort to him, like a warm blanket on a cold night. It only made him more pleased when a couple of the thugs in the room shifted uneasily. There was something about a crying woman that set most people off balance. TANK just glared down at her, which was to be expected, he was the type of person who had killed entire families worth of people and had no sympathy for crying women or children.

"So-sorry, I'll stop soo-on. I swear." The hiccupping of Natasha's voice made Harry want to give her a standing ovation and nominate her for an Oscar. The men shifted more.

"Boss..." The voice of the goon that handed him the file called softly.

"Shut up." TANK's gruff voice snapped at them. "Hardly the first crying woman in this office." He grinned repulsively at Natasha's wet face.

The turn of his head and the distraction of the rest of the room gave Natasha her chance.

Like a bit of rope would ever stop Natasha, her hand slipped behind the giant's leg. She must have done it because he twirled back to her with wide eyes of terror.

"WHAT DID YOU DO? WHO TIED..." He loud rage filled tone petered off. He coughed into his hand.

His entire body seemed to crumple in on itself, no longer seeming the giant - just a man. Harry looked on in wonder.

It was so easy, he thought, to kill somebody. Why was that?

The man's body crashed to the floor and Natasha moved. Her body pulled out throwing knives that the search of their bodies had missed. He looked apathetically at the hunk of dead body that lay on the floor and then moved himself. The rope fell off with a flick of his wrist, the knife in his hand sliced through the rope without much trouble. He wondered when exactly they were going to learn not to use rope.

Natasha moved through the rest of the room quickly and Harry joined her. It was a deadly ballet of swiping knives and pulling guns off of dead bodies.

Harry ducked under the arm of one of the identical thugs and tugged it with him, pulled the arm into a locked position and maneuvering the man's body in front of him. The pops of gunshots cracked through the room. The body that he was holding in front of him jerked. The impacts of the bullets in the body almost forced it out of his hand, but he went with it.

It took a forceful push and the body was rushing forward - dead even if it didn't know it yet. It knocked into the person that had killed it accidentally. Bodies fell to the ground and Harry was over them in a second. His hand weaved his way through the bodies and found the jugular. He stared at the blood gushing from the body of the helpless man, mouth moving trying to ask for something - mercy, maybe? - Harry didn't care.

He pulled the gun from the dead man's hopelessly grasping hands. He almost turned around when he felt it.

His body fell to the ground instinctively, anything to get away from bullets. He pulled the gun around and spun on the floor, the gun springing to his hands as he shot.

The man he was shooting at looked surprised for a second before his body tumbled over, shot through the head bleeding lightly.

Natasha was moving quickly through her side of the room. Her grace and speed was the most helpful to her. She slipped through the legs of one tall man, dropping him to the floor. It only took a twist and a slice for the man to fall bloodily to the floor one last time. She spun again, knife leaving her hand before she had even fully turned. One of the new men entering the room crashed to the floor surprised, knife in the throat. The man that stepped over him uncaringly and pushed it further into the body.

Harry's gun was shooting bullets, before he was even thinking about it. His entire body was working on carefully built muscle memory now. He didn't even have to look behind him to turn suddenly and shoot the goon that was about to hit him.

In brawls like this there is not time for conscious thinking, it is all experience and instincts. It's taking out the biggest threats and letting a few of the small ones hit you because even if you were injured you were alive.

He focused back on Natasha for a second. She had her wire wrapped around both hands - a skill she had become more than proficient at over the past. The weight attached to one end spun in one hand. The throw was perfect, the end of the wire wrapped around the throat of the lead man. She tugged down on the wire, pulled the man to the floor. The leap over the downed body was so natural it looked like she was born to do it.

Harry pulled his eyes back to his own fight. The gun clicked, the sound of an empty mag. Harry threw it from his hands to the face of the closest goon. His body quickly followed. He pulled a hand gun from the man's front and knocked the man's hands away. After a few seconds of dodging fists and punching vulnerable spots on the body, his hand found the man's head. The barrel of the gun was pressed there for less than a second before the head whipped to the side and the dead body followed it.

Harry's gun was shooting, his body was ducking behind useless shelves for cover. Every shot hit a mark - head, throat, arms, legs, groin - no place was to open or too protected. He stepped over a man that was clutching his leg and groaning.

Harry's body jerked and he stared down at the bullet wound on his arm in slight confusion. He shook his head and shoot toward the place it had come from. His now useless left arm was tucked against his side.

A man fell to the ground, and another followed, another, another. Harry didn't even notice the bodies he stepped over, they weren't important, not really.

Nothing was important... but her.

She was like an angel of death come to the earth, an Amazonian or goddess of war.

Harry grimaced at his thoughts, when did he become a forlorn teenage poet? Natasha spun through the men still alive, leaving a trail behind her. A modern day Gretel with her bread crumb bodies.

Harry stopped, the room was too silent.

Natasha stood panting, but no one else did.

Bodies littered the floor, almost twenty of them and Harry thought that wasn't normal because what two people could take out twenty trained goons.

Blood covered both of their bodies - some of it theirs, some of it not.

Their bodies drew to each other, pulled by some unseen force. Whether it was to prove that both of them had survived mostly unscathed or for some other purpose Harry didn't know or care.

All that mattered was her. He tried to shut his mind off because he didn't like Natasha like that - love, part of his mind betraying whispered - he couldn't.

They didn't touch each other because they weren't civilian lovers. There was no reason to grab the other's body in relief or worry. They couldn't stop their eyes from searching though, absorbing the other person like it was their very life force.

Natasha's eyes slipped from him, looking around the room. She toed one of the nearby bodies and snorted. Harry didn't join her because hysterical laughter never helped anything and he was a professional.

"You okay?" She gestured to the bullet wound in his arm.

"Merely a consequence of the job." He motioned to the slash that had cut into her stomach armor showing skin. "Right?"

She looked down and shrugged, because in the midst of battle it just wasn't something you noticed. Her gaze flicked around the room and settled on something in the corner. "Smile, we're on candid camera."

Harry's gaze snapped to the camera just hanging in the corner and sighed exasperatedly. He was supposed to be incognito, unseen and unheard. When had he and Natasha become so obvious. He needed to disappear that was the entire reason he had taken this job in the first place and look where it landed him now. He was more in the light now than he had ever been.

He turned away from the camera and purposefully kicked TANK's body on the way towards the down.

"Time to go." He said loud enough for her to hear.

"Right behind you."

AN: HELLLLLLOOOOOO. Happy New Years 2013. Hopefully this will be a productive year for me. I'm graduating college in may. Everyone can congratulate me now. Alright, you can stop, thank you.

I'm sorry it took me so long to write this. School absorbed my entire life and I had to focus on that. I finished a chapter and I do have a plan already for the next one, but if you want it quicker you have to review (Blatant Bribe/unrepentant author).

I hope you are having a good day and I hope you have an amazing new year! I hope you enjoyed your rewards and are relaxing with friends this holiday season.

Wishing you the best,

~Rain

PS: If you notice any blatant spelling or grammatical errors or missed/extra words, please just point it out to be and I'll fix it.