As requested in the reviews, here is Clint in an explosion and Nat running into the burning building after him. This one was fun. :3
Clint's voice was sharp in her ear, urging her faster as she sprinted down the length of the warehouse.
"Move it, Widow! You've got two on your six with grenades."
She skidded around a stack of shipping containers and tightened her grip on the little chrome box she'd swiped from the office upstairs.
Computer chips, housed in protective foam casing. She wasn't sure why they were important. Fury hadn't told her what she was retrieving, just described the box and sent them off to board the Quinjet.
Need-to-know missions always went to hell.
She could see Clint now, far ahead, a vaguely human shape under the harsh glow of fluorescent lights, perched on the catwalk that ran the perimeter of the warehouse.
"Fish in a barrel?" she suggested, and Clint groaned.
"Yeah, fine," he agreed grudgingly. "I'm always afraid you'll get shot on this one."
"That was one time," she muttered, her tone suggesting Clint should drop it; Steve's comm unit was also set to their channel.
"And I had to dig a bullet out of your ass cheek in the parking lot. Not something I want to experience again, thanks."
She heard a choked sort of noise, somewhere between a laugh and an expression of horror, that could only be Rogers. She scowled.
"Get it position, Barton."
He giggled - giggled - and gave her a snarky "10-4, boss."
She waited until he melted into the shadows, then peeked around her shipping container. The two men with grenades had called in reinforcements. There were six of them now, spreading out across the warehouse, dodging around crates and shipping containers with their guns drawn. She thought longingly of the stack of spare magazines stowed in the Quinjet, let her fingers brush briefly against the empty gun holstered at her hip.
She darted out in full view and began sprinting again. She threw in a theatrical limp, took little glances over her shoulder and let her eyes go wide with manufactured fear, breathed with audible, uncontrolled pants. The men pursued, as she knew they would. She let them close in. She brought them right up to Clint's last visible position and paused in the middle of an empty expanse of floor.
When she spun to face them, one hand extended in a placating gesture for mercy, they paused. They gave her identical feral grins. One identified himself as the leader by stepping forward and leveling his gun at her head. He growled an order for her to slide the box across the floor.
Clint dropped him and three of his buddies - onetwothreefour - with precise shots through the eye. The bodies thudded to the ground almost simultaneously. The other two bolted.
She waited for Clint to say it, waited for him to put on the cheesy Midwestern drawl that somehow always made her smile.
Like shootin' fish in a barrel, sweetheart.
He kept uncharacteristically silent. She tilted her head back and scanned the catwalk, traced the trajectory of his kill shots with her eyes, but couldn't find him.
"Nat," he called urgently. His voice was loud in her earpiece and echoed faintly around the cavernous warehouse, too. "Nat, get clear, now. Go!"
They'd been partners long enough that she didn't question him.
There was an access door a hundred yards back the way she'd come. She sprinted again, hugging the wall, dodging pallets and crates, until she slammed through the door and into the cool night beyond the warehouse. Clint hadn't said get out, he'd said get clear, so she kept running.
She made it ten lunging paces before a rush of heat washed over her. She looked back in time to witness the burst of light and noise that signaled the end of the warehouse.
The force of the concussive explosion threw off her balance; she fell and glanced her head against the concrete, and the too-bright flames dimmed to grey. When her focus sharpened again her head was pounding and the ear with the comm unit was ringing.
"Natasha?"
Clint.
At least she hadn't been shot in the ass this time.
She pushed herself up to sit, blinking hard to clear her vision as her partner advanced at a run. Only...
Wrong teammate.
Not Clint. Steve.
Steve, who had been playing lookout, guarding the perimeter, tagging along to finish the mandatory supervised training that would make him an official S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. (No exceptions made for Captain America, he had to jump through hoops like everyone else.)
Her focus shifted beyond Steve and fixed instead on the burning warehouse. Nausea and panic twisted her gut.
"Natasha," he said again. He dropped to his knees and gripped her shoulder, gave her a little shake.
"Clint's in there," she said without thinking. It was her rule to break, anyway: only using codenames or last names when they were paired with the other Avengers, to keep them from knowing how deeply her relationship with Clint ran. Just until she felt them out, she had promised Clint, just until she had made sure their new team wouldn't use their closeness against them.
She pressed the comm unit in her ear. It whined with feedback that made her wince, but she rode it out until the sound transitioned to soft static.
"Hawkeye?" she barked, and waited. More static. "Barton, what's your position?" Silence. "Clint, goddammit!"
"Easy," Steve admonished. He ran his fingers through her hair, but there was nothing intimate about the gesture. He found the spot where her head had connected with the ground, assessing the wound with a precise, gentle touch. His fingers came away bloody and he frowned. "You wait here. I'll go find Barton."
"Like hell," she snarled back. She surged to her feet and brushed past him, ignoring the way the warehouse tilted to one side before her and how uneven the ground felt beneath her boots.
Steve didn't know Clint. He didn't know the other half of Strike Team Delta, he hadn't been on enough missions to earn their own special brand of blind trust, he hadn't learned to instinctively predict Clint's next move. She and Clint were a unit, a package deal. Clint was alive because of course he was. All she had to do was find him. She was the only one who could find him. Partners didn't leave each other behind.
Still. She couldn't quite spur herself into a run as she moved toward the flames and smoke. An old fear uncoiled in her chest and slowed her steps.
Steve caught her arm.
The only thought in her head was Steve's voice echoing 'You wait here' as she freed the last taser disk from her belt and slammed it against Steve's chest. He faltered and she wrenched away, and this time she ran.
The access door had been blown off. Convenient. She drew a last deep, shuddering breath, forced away the old fear and memories, then plunged into the warehouse.
She could hardly see three feet in front of her. Her eyes stung and the breath scorched in her lungs, she brushed against a shipping container and earned a shiny burn to the forearm, but she pressed doggedly on, maneuvering carefully toward the end of the warehouse where she'd last seen Clint. He had obviously moved on from his original position, but instead of wandering with no direction, she decided to start there.
Her next blind step came down unevenly, the ground rolling and crunching beneath her boot. She knelt and wrapped trembling fingers around the shaft of an arrow, the usually cool metal warm against her skin.
She ran her hands through the pile, identifying each by touch, by the unique arrowhead or fletching. Explosive arrows and acid arrows and electric shock arrows and ordinary shoot-em-through-the-heart arrows. She found the strap of the quiver next, the leather snapped. The ends of the break were ragged, not cut cleanly with a blade. Her chest went tight and she wasn't sure if it was from fear or the smoke.
Something had gone wrong.
A smaller explosion from the other end of the warehouse, a hot draft of dry air, and the smoke thinned just long enough for her to cast her eyes up for more clues.
The catwalk overhead was mangled, thin beams twisted and metal grating melted.
A cord dangled from the ceiling, and she could make out the frayed, broken fibers and a dull glint of silver that was a grappling arrow stuck in the roof.
"Natasha!"
The shout was muffled over the rush of flames. Relief made her shoulder sag, and she reflexively gripped the arrow she still held a little tighter. She spun in the direction of the voice, saw a dark form advancing through the smoke and falling ash. Then she heard the thrumming reverberation of steel beam on Vibranium shield.
Wrong teammate.