A/N. Heya :) So, 3 reviews last chapter. I'm going to be honest say I was kind of disappointed seeing as I really loved that chapter but if some of you guys didn't I understand :) they should really warn you when you start writing fanfiction that reviews are EXTREMELY addicting. I basically live off them now. xP Anyway, here's the next chapter, not as long but still longer than usual. Hope you enjoy! :D

CHAPTER IV

"Oh my God!" Tania exclaimed, getting out of the car once it was parked. "Where's the fire extinguisher? DUMMY!"

The robot in question beeped and rolled toward the door before spraying white foam all over the fire. It took a few seconds but the door was no longer burning.

"Stay here," Clint ordered Tania. He pulled back his bowstring and slowly walked toward the door as DUMMY backed up. The archer hooked his foot beneath the metal and with a mighty grunt, he kicked it up into the ceiling. JARVIS must have gotten the message and helped a little as well.

The enemy's car was absolutely wrecked and smoke was billowing out of the front. Clint heard Tania's barely audible gasp as he stepped forward, aiming the tip of his arrow wherever he looked. He walked over to the driver's side and peeked in through the shattered glass.

Blood was splattered all over the window and the seat and the dashboard. The airbag had been punctured by the shards of glass and was deflated in his lap. His head lolled and his arms lay by his side uselessly. Clint nudged his leg with his foot. No reaction. Not even a tic. He lowered his bow and pressed two fingers to the attacker's neck. Nada.

He strolled back into the garage while contracting his bow and replacing it in the back of his jacket. He shook his head at Tania. "He's dead."

She looked up at him. The sheer amount of fear in her eyes was enough to make him stop in his tracks. She was shaking like a leaf and her adrenaline was wearing off. She clutched her jacket uselessly, right in front of where she had been shot and her knees looked like they were about to buckle- oh shit!

Clint lunged forward and just barely managed to catch her when she fell. He cursed. Steve was going to kill him. He lifted his ear to his comm. "This is Hawkeye, does anybody copy?"

"This is Hulk, I copy."

"This is S'mores, I copy." That was Graham. Clint rolled his eyes.

"This is… um… Mrs. Hulk?" Betty, obviously.

"Tis Thor! God of thunder! And the Lady Pe- er, Rescue, would like me to tell you that she is in a meeting but she is listening."

The others weren't responding. They were probably busy at this time of day anyway. Well, in England it was about five o'clock at night… still.
"Everyone," Clint barked into his comm, "we've just been attacked. We've been chased all the way back to HQ and we're fine but we've both been shot."

A chorus of "WHAT?!" echoed from every person online and Clint had to wince at the volume.

"We're both wearing Kevlar vests so we're fine, but Sonata fainted. I think she might be a little traumatized."

"Bring her here and let me have a look at you both," Bruce ordered, almost always the calm and rational one.

Clint nodded and lifted Tania off the cold ground of the parking garage. He nodded at DUMMY. "Thanks. I'll have Tony upgrade you or something." He looked up at the ceiling. "Jarvis? Where is-?"

"In his room, Agent Barton."

"Thank you."

A few minutes later, Clint carried Tania onto Bruce and Betty's floor. He marched right into their bedroom without asking, careful not to hit the brunette in his arms on anything as he did so.

Betty sat up immediately from her nervous perch on the bed while Bruce stopped pacing and rushed over. "Set her on the bed," he commanded.

Clint obeyed without protest and lay her down vertically on the plush King-sized furniture. "Nice," he whispered to himself.

The married couple ignored him and began hovering. Betty was obviously anxious. She was pulling and twirling and playing with her hair and fidgeting restlessly. Bruce appeared somewhat spazzed as well, but he hid it for the most part. He started unbuttoning Tania's jacket.

"Gee, wonder what Cap would say if he saw this," Clint wondered aloud in the hopes of lightning the mood.

Bruce snorted. "That reminds me, we're gonna have to call him if Tania doesn't wake up soon."

Clint paled. That wouldn't be a fun conversation. There was no doubt in his mind that the Captain would be fucking pissed. At him no less. Before he could think about it further, Betty was in front of him. "You got shot too. Take off your coat and your vest."

He sighed but followed orders, shrugging off his winter clothing and catching his bow expertly before it fell to the ground. He placed it on a nearby arm chair and removed his vest. He hissed as he pulled it away and lifted it over his head.

Over by the bed, Bruce checked Tania's pulse and temperature. She was rather cold and her heart was beating a little faster than normal. She was also incredibly and unhealthily white.

"What happened?" he asked while removing her bullet proof vest.

Clint shrugged. "I took her to the statue of Liberty."

"More please."

He sighed. "I used my bow to take us on top of her crown."

"You mean in it?"

"No, on top of it. We talked for a while before I noticed a red dot on her body and I shoved her off the statue. That's when I got shot in the back." He gestured to the spot he remembered the bullet had been. Bruce and Betty were staring incredulously at him. He didn't let them get a word in and continued his spiel faster than he thought possible. "I caught her and we both swung into the trees. She had fainted while falling and then woke up and we ran. We had a boat chase off Ellis Island and then another chase on foot and oh, I got shot in the chest when we were in the trees by the way, and then we hijacked a taxi and took off. The other guy at the same idea and hijacked someone's else's car to come after us. We had this epic car chase where I was driving and Tania was shooting at him but then she got shot and dropped the gun. The glass windows in the back were all shattered and we scraped by the door of the garage here whereas the attacker rammed into it and blew up. The end."

Betty was staring at him like he was alien. He frowned. He hated that look more than almost anything. Bruce had the same look on his face but he was concentrating on disinfecting the cut on Tania's hand.

"Anything else we should know?" he asked.

Clint nodded. "Yeah. It's not just one person after Tania. There's a whole pack. Like, an entire herd of killers were chasing us."

"How did they find you?"

"I don't know. I mean it's not like I- Oh fuck."

"What?"

Clint slapped himself on the forehead. "I threw a flare grenade off the Statue of Liberty."

"What?! Why?"

"To distract people so that I could take Tania onto the crown of Lady Liberty."

"Well that was a very stupid idea."

"I see that now, thank you Dr. Phil," the assassin snapped back.

"Well, she seems fine. The bullet didn't do much damage other than one hell of a bruise on her sternum and the cut is minor. But I think you're right. She's probably traumatized."

Guilt washed over him like a tidal wave as he stared at the pale figure that lay before him. He'd taken her out. He'd brought the attention of several killers to them. He'd forced her to shoot at them. He'd thrown her off a statue – her biggest fear. It was his fault she was here.
Suddenly, Bruce stood up and addressed him. "Your turn."

After a thorough "examination", Bruce and Betty left to go console Graham and talk to Thor and Pepper, but not before giving Clint the evil eye and telling him that he was going to be the one to tell Steve.

He sighed and sat down on the bed next to Tania. "I'm sorry," he muttered. "I'm such an idiot!" he clenched his fists in the sheets. "I should never have taken you to the Statue in the first place and I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry."

He reached into his pocket for his phone only to see that it had been destroyed. It was probably from his fall from the treetops or from the fall from the monument. He sighed and tossed it into the trash across the room. "Swish," he mumbled. "Hey Jarvis?"

"Yes, sir?"

"Can you call Steve, please?"

"Certainly."

A dull ringing sound echoed throughout the room once. Twice. Tania stirred. Three times. Her eyes fluttered open. Four times. Click. "Rogers."

Clint gulped, staring at Tania wide eyed. She didn't seem very coherent. His hopes died. He cleared his throat. "Um, hey Cap. It's Clint."

"Were you trying to reach us just now? On the… um, comm, I think it is?"

"Yeah, that was me."

"What happened? Do the Avengers need to assemble?"

"Um, no. But what happened is rather important. Is it possible to get Tony and Natasha on speakerphone?"

"Speakerphone?"

"Never mind. Pass the phone to Tony for a sec, would ya?"

"Um, okay."

There was faint shuffling as the phone on the other end was handed off. Tania groaned and sat up, leaning against the head board. Clint motioned for her to be quiet. She obeyed.

"Sup, Buttercup?"

"I need you to put me on speaker."

"Aw, and here I thought you wanted to talk to me."

"Stark…"

"Relax, I did it. Say hi, Stalin."

"Clint, what's wrong? We couldn't answer your comms before because we were in public."

The archer sucked in a deep breath. "There was another assassination attempt."

Silence. He cringed. "Attempt? That's good, right? It means that our singing prodigy is still alive. Right?" Clint, being the observant Hawk he was, noticed the slight panic in Tony's voice.

"Yeah, she's fine. I don't suppose you want the whole stor-?"

"Yes," Steve interrupted before he could finish the question. Oh boy.

"Okay, well-"

"Steve?" Tania called, rubbing her eyes groggily.

"Tania!"

Uh oh. "What- what's going on?"

"… you don't remember?"

"Not right now."

"Clint," Steve barked, "What. Happened?"

The archer gulped. "Um, well you see, I thought it would be a good idea to take Tania out of the Tower."

A series of groans echoed throughout the room from Ireland. "Clint, you IDIOT!"

"I know, Tasha, I know. But everything turned out okay."

"Did it?" Tania asked, looking at him with innocent, un-traumatized eyes. He swallowed down the lump in his throat. That look would be gone in a second when her memories came flooding back.

He nodded at her. "Yeah. So, I took her to Statue of Liberty-"

"She's afraid of heights!" Steve intercepted forcefully.

"You moron!" Natasha insulted again. This was going to be a long phone call if they kept this up.

"Guys, let me finish! Okay, so we get to the crown and in order to sneak away from the tourist group I… threw a flare grenade out the window." Natasha began swearing in multiple different languages, all of which Clint understood. He winced at some of the harsh names she called him and could hear Steve's deep, uneven breathing in the background. Not good. "I used my bow and took her up to the top of the crown. We lay there for who knows how long, but you had fun, right Tania?" Slowly, she nodded. Okay, so she remembered that much. "How much do you remember?"

"Um, talking about my birthday."

Yikes. Forget about Steve killing him. SHE was going to kill him when she remembered. "Um, well, I saw a red dot on your chest and I tackled you. The bullet missed but I… well, um…" he rubbed the back of his neck nervously.

Suddenly, Tania's eyes widened and she began crawling backward away from him. "You-!" she fell off the bed only to pop back up a second later. "You pushed me off the statue!"

Several gasps nearly broke his eardrums. Natasha's heavy cursing was even louder and more harsh than ever before and in the background, Clint could hear Tony trying to calm down their Captain before he broke something.

Tania was looking at him he could see plainly on her face the betrayal written all over her feminine features. He winced and let it show because she needed to see that he felt guilt for what he did and that he deserved her hatred.

"Do you remember what I said to you, though? Before I… pushed you off?"

She looked down, thinking hard. "You told me to trust you to catch me."

"Which I did."

"How?" Tony asked. "It's not like you can fly."

"I stood up and shot a grappling arrow between my legs into the statue's head. That's when I got shot in the back." Everyone, gasped, including Tania, who hadn't been there for that. "Don't worry guys! Before I continue, both Tania and I were wearing bullet proof vests."

"That don't always work!" Natasha hissed.

"Well today they did. Anyway, I dove after her and caught her. I swung us around until we landed in the forest. It turns out that Tania had fainted on the way down and I had to carry her for a little bit. The sniper kept shooting at us but then she woke up and I was able to put her down. I climbed into a tree and shot him with an arrow. At the same time, he shot me in the chest and I fell out of the tree." He ignored Natasha's incessant cursing in Russian in the background and plowed on. "So then we had this huge boat chase where I shot most of the guys following us-"

"There were more?" Steve and Tony chorused incredulously.

"Uh, yeah. Hang on. I'm almost done. So, then we get back on land which leads to this huge car chase. Long story short, I drove, she shot. She got shot. Dropped her gun. He shot us. Glass smashed. We made it back. He crashed into the garage door and died. Tania fainted. Tania woke up. And they all lived happily ever after, yay!"

He swore he heard crickets. On the floor beside the bed, Tania turned pale again. "I got shot… holy SHIT I got shot!" She reached up to her chest as if she could claw the bullet out.

Clint leaped over the bed and landed on the floor on a crouch before grabbing her wrists to prevent her from scratching herself. "TANIA! Tania! Tania, listen to me! You were wearing a Kevlar vest! You're fine! The bullet is gone! The man is dead."

"Dead," she repeated like a robot as she stopped squirming. "Dead. He's… dead."

"What's wrong with her?" Steve's frantic disembodied voice asked.

"I think she's in shock."

"Fall." She looked up at him. "You made me fall!"

"Do you even remember falling?" She shuddered and curled in on herself, huddling into a tight ball. "I'm gonna take that as an unfortunate yes."

"You-!" Steve growled in place of an insult before continuing, "I'm coming over there."

"Did you find the guy responsible?"

"No-"

"Then you need to stay there. Tony and Tasha need you. I can take care of Tania."

"Evidence points to NO YOU CAN'T."

"STEVE! Look, there are multiple people after Tania right now. I managed to kill nine of them but there could be more. Until you guys get a real lead, the Tower will be on lockdown and Tania will be safe. You don't need to be here. You need to stay wherever you are and get the job done."

His deep breathing encompassed the room as everyone waited for his answer. Finally, he replied, "Take good care of her. And this time, I MEAN IT."

Clint winced again. Right. Okay. He could do that. "Don't worry Steve, I got this."

"You'd better," he mumbled.

"Clint," Natasha called, "England was a bust. Zane is clean."

"And Flannigan?"

"We just finished interrogating him. That's why we couldn't answer you before. It took a while, but he's clean too."

Clint nodded. "That leaves Austerlitz."

"We'll be ten-seventeen in twenty minutes."

"Ten-four. ETA?"

"Twenty-one hundred hours."

"Copy that."

"Clint?"

"Yeah?"

"Don't fuck up this time."

He sighed and sneaked another look at Tania. Colour was returning to her skin tone, which was a good sign. She was breathing normally, also a good sign. She was staring blankly into space – not a good sign.

"I won't."

She said farewell in Russian before Tony took over. "Okay, you're off speaker phone. Tell Jarvis to initiate the Mandarin Protocol. The whole Tower will go on Lock Down."

"Got it."

"… What Natashalie said."

There was shuffling as the phone was no doubt passed to Steve. "Barton, you and I will be having a serious talk when we get back."
Clint closed his eyes. "I know."

"Could I… talk to Tania, please? Alone."

The archer eyed his friend warily. She blinked furiously before looking him straight in the eye. She sucked in a breath, paused, and then nodded. He pushed himself to his feet. "Alright." If you need me, I'll be right outside.

She nodded and began signing back. If I need you, I'll come get you.

When he left, Tania clambered back onto the bed and lay down, closing her eyes and pretending that Steve was really with her instead of over the phone. "Hi Steve."

Relief flooded his tone in waves. "Hi Darling. Are you okay?"

"… I think so. I'm not hurt, I just… it's a lot to take in, you know?"

"I know."

"I… dropped off the Statue of Liberty. That's like, almost a hundred meters."

"I know. But you were apparently unconscious for most of it."

"Apparently."

"And you… remember it?"

"I remember the shock and disbelief when Clint told me he was going to push me off. I almost didn't believe him. That's when he did it and I felt paralyzing fear squeeze my entire body. Everything was a blur and colours were rushing past and I couldn't hold anything, couldn't control anything, couldn't see anything couldn't hear anything more than the roar of the wind and it was terrifying! I couldn't… I couldn't sense! I just knew that I was falling to my death and that's kind of when I just… accepted it. I closed my eyes, thinking I was going to die."

"But you didn't. You're he- er, there. You're there at the Tower and you're safe. You're not going to fall again."

She huffed out a breath of air. "I know. But that fear is still… lingering."

"I get it. That probably won't go away for a while."

"And then there was the fact that I held a gun. Not only that, but I used it to try and shoot somebody! I missed and never hit anything but still! I tried… I tried to kill someone!" Her breathing was picking up.

"Were you aiming at their chest or head?"

"N-no. I was… was actually aiming for the tires."

"Then you didn't try to kill him. And it was self-defense. In a situation like that, it's usually kill or be killed. And you tried to find a compromise."

"I… I guess. But… but now he's dead."

"That's his own fault. From what I understand, he crashed himself into that garage when he could have turned away a lot earlier. He killed himself."

"And Clint… he shot them without a care in the world."

"That's his job. He kills people for a living – but he kills the bad people. I kill people too Tania. I was in a war."

She bit her lip. "I know, I just… he was so… unfazed by it."

"That's just how he is. He's been doing this for a very long time."

"And then I got shot." A hand fluttered to her chest where the bullet should be; but wasn't. She touched it carefully and winced. It stung quite a bit but she was fine. She could breathe normally again. "I've never been shot before."

"You were wearing Kevlar, Tania."

"I know but… it hurt."

"I know. I wish I could be there but I'm not and… We're gonna get this guy Tania. We're going to get all of them and you are going to be safe."

"You're a better therapist than Bruce."

He laughed breathily over the phone. "Are you feeling better?" he asked hopefully.

She nodded even if he couldn't see her. "Yeah. Yeah, I am. Thanks Steve. I love you.

"Love you too. Don't go anywhere until I get there."

"I won't."

"Bye."

"Bye."

JARVIS hung up the call and Tania sighed. She sat up with some difficulty and swung her legs over the edge. She kicked off her shoes and picked them up before padding along the carpet over to the door. When she exited into the hallway, she found Clint sitting next to the door with his knees pulled up to his chest and his head resting in his hands.

She dropped her shoes and sat next to him, leaning her back against the wall and spreading her legs out. "Clint," she nudged his shoulder with her own. He turned his head so that one stormy grey eye looked at her. "I don't… I'm not going to hold what you did against you."

"You should," he whispered.

"But I'm not going to. I'm sorry."

"For what?" He removed his hands so that he faced her completely.

"For blaming you initially. For not trusting you when you told me you'd catch me or when you promised you'd keep me safe."

"But I didn't."

"You did catch me and I'm still safe. You did your job."

"Is that what you think this is to me? A job? Tania, I'm protecting you because you're one of my closest friends and I care about you. I don't want anything to happen to you."

"I'm not made of glass, Clint."

"I know. Neither is Natasha but I worry about her all the time."

She softened even further. "I'm sorry I made you worry. I can't believe I fainted twice when I didn't even faint the first time I fell from the Tower."

"You weren't scared of heights then. Now you are."

"Still. Fainting just screams damsel in distress and I hate it." She crossed her arms and pouted like a little kid.

He chuckled at her. "You sound like Nat."

"Well it's true. I don't like needing to be rescued."

"We all need to be rescued sometimes. There was this one time in Jamaica when I got compromised on a mission and Nat totally saved my ass. Wasn't the first time, either. I've saved her a number of times too. I'm pretty sure every member of this team has saved each other at least once."

"Yeah, well, I don't think I've saved anyone yet. It's always been you guys save me."

"You save Bruce from himself all the time."

"I don't think that counts."

"I do. And you saved some of those kids at the school shooting."

"Yeah…"

"And today when we were running, you save me from being run over by a car."

A smile started to play on her lips as she remembered that particular incident. "I guess."

"So let's get this straight. You save us we save you. No one minds, honestly. Well okay, we mind if your health is at stake but we don't blame you. We just don't like the fact that something is threatening to take you away from us or hurt you.

"And to recap what you said about me. You're saying that you don't blame me and that I shouldn't feel guilty about what I did because it was the right thing to do."

She nodded in agreement. "Exactly."

"… I'm still gonna feel guilty."

"And I'm still gonna hate needing to be rescued."

"… well at least we sort of feel better."

"Sort of."

"Shall we go downstairs?"

She wrinkled her nose. "And have the others smother me? No thanks."

"Fine then. Jarvis, activate the Mandarin protocol."

"Yes, Sir."