"So Romanoff." Barton started. Natasha pushed down her irritation. He seemed to enjoy useless small talk more than any other person she'd met. "Is this the first halfway interesting job you've had since S.H.I.E.L.D.? It seems like Fury's been keeping you on a pretty tight leash."

"I had a retrieval mission in Bangkok, but after that it's all been strictly recon." She'd swallowed back the memories of that trip, tucked them back with all the other jobs that she'd completed.

"What happened in Bangkok?" He sounded genuinely curious, damn him.

"A bomb happened in Bangkok." Natasha said shortly. There were the flashes - a rookie agent, just a kid had been there. She hadn't listened to Natasha's warnings, and maybe Natasha hadn't tried to stop her as hard as she could have. She'd been a recent acquisition to Natasha's nightmares.

The small talk stopped after that.

As the light faded and the crowd of tourists began to dissapate, Natasha could feel Barton growing restless, twigs cracking as he shifted around.

"Those angels creeping you out yet?" He asked finally. Natasha was loathe to admit it, but she'd been hard enough on him today - he had saved her life, after all. It wasn't like she was ever going to be able to repay him, but being civil to him was a start.

"There's something - off - about them." She agreed. "Although why anyone with abilities would use them to move statues around is beyond me."

"Maybe it's not a person." Barton mused.

"What do you mean?"

"What if the statues themselves are what we're looking for? They could be some sort of alien object."

Natasha thought about it. "It's possible." She admitted. "But there's still something strange about it all."

"I'm with you there." Barton agreed, and something about the way he said it - I'm with you - made her do a double take. Like maybe he didn't consider them to be on different teams - didn't blame her for his alienation from the S.H.I.E.L.D. higher-ups.

It was an odd concept.

They waited until the sun went down beyond the horizon and the doors of the church closed to the public to come down from their perches. The moon was hidden behind clouds, and the only thing piercing through the murky blackness was the dim yellow of the street lamps.

They met at the back doors, Natasha picking the lock with a hairpin while Barton called in their report.

"Coulson's going on comms." He said when he'd hung up the phone, and a few seconds later there was another voice in her ear.

"Agent Romanoff responding." She said, still fidgeting with the lock.

"Agent Barton -" Beside her he cut off and dissolved into some sort of surprised gasp. Natasha resisted the urge to roll her eyes.

"Very funny, Clint." Coulson's voice was dry, but not entirely unamused. It seemed these two were closer than she'd thought.

"Just checking that you're awake over there." Barton said with a smirk, just as Natasha felt the last click of the lock. The small wooden door swung inward, and they stepped in the doorway, waiting for their eyes to adjust.

When they did, the view that met their eyes was magnificent, to say the least. A narrow corridor whose width was made up in the rising expanses of the ceiling. Stone spires lined the hall, with contorted gargoyles perched on top. In daylight, it would've been stunning, but in the dim half-light there was an air of malice to it. Natasha shook off her unease with a scowl. This shouldn't be getting under her skin - nothing should be getting under her skin. Wandering around an old church at night was hardly the most frightening thing she'd done. As they reached a larger room that split off in different directions, they both automatically went opposite ways. Natasha followed the winding passage to a flight of spiral staircases, which she climbed cautiously. She appeared in another passage, this time filled with windows open to the sky. There was nothing unusual here. She started to move towards the front of the church when Barton spoke up.

"Romanoff - you remember seeing those angels on the front balcony, right?"

"Of course. Why?"

"Well, I'm standing on the front balcony, and there's no sign of them."

"Romanoff, go meet him." This was Coulson now, a trace of worry in his tone. "You two should stay together until we've identified the threat."

"Will do, sir." She responded, immediately heading to where Barton was located. Something caught the edge of her eye and she turned, suddenly. One of the angels was a standing just a few feet away from her, hands outstretched in clawlike form.

"Agent Coulson, we may have a problem." She said, as calmly as she could manage. "The angels seem to be attacking."

"How?" Coulson's voice was urgent.

"I don't know." She responded. "They aren't moving when we can see them."

She backed away, slowly, keeping her eyes on the thing, whatever it was, until she stumbled into another room and slammed the door behind her. And then she saw something, in the shadows - and she was running, more terrified than she could ever remember being.

"Romanoff?" She heard Barton's voice in her ear, and there was something - worry, maybe, or outright fear - in his voice that made her that much more afraid.

She reached a small room, with no windows and just the one door, and she slammed it behind her, grinding the stone bar across the door.

"Romanoff. What the hell's going on?"

"I got away, barely." She said, gasping for breath. "Those things aren't natural."

There was a long pause on the other end of the comms, and then Barton's voice came back on.

"Do we have an extraction team?"

"Don't be stupid, Barton." Natasha replied, leaning against the wall and trying to keep the despair from seeping into her voice. "We never have an extraction team."

"Then Coulson, find a way to get us out."

"I'm working on it, Clint."

"Oh, and Romanoff -"

Barton's voice cut off. And suddenly it was very, very quiet.

"Barton?" And something was wrong, something was very very wrong. And so Natasha did something incredibly stupid. She pushed back the stone block, and before she could think twice about what she was doing, she ran. Ran without stopping, without looking back, until she was standing on the balcony that Barton had stood on just moments before.

"Barton? Clint!"

Her voice rang out into the still night air.

"Clint? Romanoff, damn it, tell me what's going on."

"He's gone." Natasha was numb.

"What do you mean, gone?"

"I mean, he's vanished!" She snapped, but her heart wasn't in it. She couldn't move, and her head wasn't working right. She should be on the defensive, but she couldn't think. Couldn't formulate a plan.

"Agent Romanoff, I need you to get me specs on the attackers right now." She could hear Coulson's voice, sharp and demanding, and that helped snap her out of the haze. She lifted a hand to her ear.

"I'm on it."

And then she turned, to see a crowd of angels clustering around the doorway.