A.N: Apologies that you've had to wait so long for this. I've been pretty ill for the last week or so and today is the first day that I've made it out of bed for more than a couple of hours. As always thank you to those who have stuck with me through this, I know it's frustrating when you're waiting ;-) Hopefully now that I'm kind of back on my feet I can pick up with this a bit faster!
Obsession was as good as oxygen, fuel to the fire of her vengeance, and Natasha was obsessed with putting an end to the men who had harmed her. For almost a month they had tracked their every move while she built up her strength and stamina, while they waited for the doctors to give her the all clear to go back into the field. Barton had no idea what she had said to the therapist to ensure that she was signed off or what the many visits to the doctor had been about but whatever it was it had worked wonders, she was looking much better.
Their training had taken on a new level of savagery, movements becoming sharp edged with desperation as she chafed at being held back. Almost as soon as he had shown her the file, he had seen the shift in her that told him she had locked away her feelings somewhere deep inside herself and that she had no intention of letting them out again until the job was done. In the hallways he heard the admiring whispers of the junior agents who had heard about their sparring sessions from those in his training group and were keen to see for themselves what two of the best looked like when they unleashed on one another.
He had known within twenty-four hours of them leaving the base that the mission was going to be brutal. Even armed with all of the information that they had been able to gather and the full backing of Hill and Fury, who had come through for them in a big way, they both knew there was no way that they would leave any of the group alive. Killing was what they did best and Natasha's suffering demanded no less than the lives of everyone who had caused it.
From the edge of the tree line to the west of the picture perfect farm-house, they watched for signs of movement. The house was like something straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting, idyllic, all perfectly painted window shutters and smoking chimney. Downwind from the house there were no cooking smells or obvious indications of what was happening inside but both he and Natasha knew that two of her tormentors were in there and Barton knew that the chain holding Natasha's urge to act at bay was beginning to slip.
"We go in under cover of darkness," he explained, "Two inside. I'll cover the front, you take the back of the house. Sweep through, eliminate the targets, move on."
Natasha nodded her head, fiery hair catching the moonlight and making her pale features seem so much colder. "I'm not bringing them in alive Barton," she announced, "I know that Hill would prefer it done that way but..."
"I know," he told her quietly. "That's why I said eliminate and not incapacitate. Right behind you all the way Nat."
It was easy to forget just how lethal his partner was, particularly when he had been faced with her vulnerability in recent weeks, but as they approached the farmhouse it was like a hammer blow to his senses. Clothed in leather and dripping with weapons, every step that Natasha took was that of a warrior, every beat of her heart, like his own, the beat of a war drum. Tonight the red-headed woman before him was the very embodiment of death to those she hunted.
There was no movement through the curtains as he scouted the porch windows, no sounds to be heard from within the property. The moon was high but covered by clouds that shifted lazily across the sky, providing them with enough light to see but not enough to advertise their presence to anyone inside. It took a minute or two before he spotted her in the interior, just one more shadow within the house as she cleared the downstairs rooms of threats and stepped up to let him in through the front door.
Using hand signals she told him what she planned to do, moving toward the staircase at the side of the hallway while he covered her with his bow. The location was rural but she had still screwed silencers to the front of her handguns. No reason to announce their presence to anyone before they were ready for them to know that they were there and Natasha was good enough that you'd never see her coming until her knife was at your throat. He watched her move up the stairs, clinging to the shadows, moving without a sound, steady and sure-footed as a cat, gun at the ready. Slowly, he followed.
There was a large central landing at the top of the stairs, three bedrooms and a bathroom leading off from separate doors. At her gesture, he took the bedroom at the front of the house, stepping carefully and hoping to avoid any loose boards that might announce their presence, while she moved toward the bedroom at the rear of the house. His first room was empty, nothing and nobody waiting within but he heard the muffled sound of a gunshot from the back of the house and knew that she had found one of them. Ducking back out onto the landing to look for her confirmation, he caught a flash of movement as the second man darted from the unexplored bedroom, gun raised and firing wildly as he raced across the landing and down the stairs, footsteps echoing like gunshots in the silence. They'd been rumbled.
"Go, I'll slow him down!" he yelled, as Natasha darted from the bedroom and made to follow him to the lower level. He moved through into the front room where the guy had slept and headed directly for the window. Throwing open the old sash and raising his bow, he waited. He didn't have to wait long. Below him he heard the front door slam and then tracked the target as he took off across the clearing, gait slightly uncoordinated, but doing nothing to slow his stride. Where the hell was Natasha?
As if his thoughts called out to her, he heard the crash of glass and looked down to see his partner diving head first through the living room window, glass exploding outwards in a shower of diamond bright shards. Natasha tucked in her limbs, rolling like an Olympic gymnast and taking off after her target at a run, gun already aimed at the target. Like leather clad lightning, she shot across the open space after him, lowering the gun to enable herself to run faster. Catching his breath, Clint also focussed on the running man ahead of him, knocking an arrow he smiled. The arrow flew straight and true, striking the guy in the right thigh. Unable to bear his weight, the limb buckled the next time he tried to use it and he stumbled. It was all that Natasha needed to catch him.
As soon as he was sure that she had him, Clint moved from the window, jogging down the stairs and through the house to the front door. He was half way down the stairs when he heard the gunshot. His step faltered, the shot was too loud, unencumbered by a silencer, meaning that it hadn't come from either of Natasha's guns. With blood turned sluggish in his veins, he doubled his pace, flying out of the house and down the porch steps, feet carrying him as quickly as possible through the long grass to where his partner and her quarry struggled on the ground. Lungs screaming, he surveyed the scene before him, noting the bleeding wound to his partner's hair-line but no other obvious injuries. A gun lay discarded in the grass, not one of hers. There was no need to intervene, the Black Widow had her prey pinned beneath her, arms trapped beneath her knees while she aimed her gun directly between his eyes.
"Tell me where they are," she exclaimed coldly, never taking her eyes away from the man beneath her. When no answers were forthcoming she reached behind her with her left hand and twisted the arrow shaft that protruded from his thigh. Her captive cried out a string of what sounded like curses in a language that Clint neither spoke nor recognised, but he noticed that Natasha seemed to know exactly what was being said. "Where?"
"You were never anything but trouble," he ground out. "I told them you were more trouble than you were worth. Should have killed you when we had the chance." There was nothing that could even be considered slightly repentant in his face, tone or words and something inside Barton hardened at the thought that none of the men who had harmed her thought badly of their actions. Had Natasha not had control of the situation, he would have happily put an arrow through each of the man's limbs before beating some answers out of him. Instead he did nothing, just watched as she absorbed the words that had been offered.
"You don't realise how much I learnt about your organisation, how many secrets you spilled in my hearing," she told him. "You're right, you should have killed me when you had the chance." Shifting her weight slightly, she pointed the barrel once more at the head of the man pinned beneath her. She didn't even flinch as his blood slashed across her face.
"Nat?" Barton exclaimed crouching to bring himself into her line of sight, "will you let me check out that head wound?"
"Two down," she murmured, voice dreamy but laced with steel. She turned her face toward him, a weariness that wasn't evident in her body obvious in her eyes, "we need to search the house first, see what we can find and then when we get back to the safe house you can check me over."
It was almost dawn by the time they arrived back at the loft that had acted as their safe house and they were both exhausted. Searching the house had turned up some weapons and some paperwork that they would go through after they had caught a couple of hours sleep, but there had been nothing there that contradicted their current intelligence on the whereabouts of the others. Stepping out of the bathroom following a shower, he found Natasha already sleeping, the wound on her forehead cleaned and revealed to be nothing more than a tiny cut caused by a ring worn by the target. They had made it safely and largely unharmed through the first part of the mission, two targets down but there was still a long way to go and the demons that were driving his partner right now would not be patient in their pursuit of retribution for her hurts.
Lying atop his bed, he stared at the ceiling and considered the meaning of the words that she had said and all that had remained unsaid in the fields surrounding that farmhouse. Two down, three to go.