Title: The High Road Is Hard to Find

Summary: He had been sent to kill the Black Widow. But as he sighted down the arrow something shifted and he suddenly found himself making a different call.

Chapter title: When the Fires Are Consuming You

Author's Note: The stakes are rising! On with chapter 7! Please enjoy and leave a review on the way out, that would be absolutely splendid!

Disclaimer: This is written for entertainment purposes only. No profit will be made and no copyright infringement intended.

Clint grunted as his body collapsed and he hit the asphalt.

He felt the blood seeping out from the wound in his stomach, running down his side to pool onto the ground. It wasn't his first gunshot wound, and it probably wouldn't be his last, but it never ceased to amaze him just how much it hurt every time. His side burned and throbbed mercilessly. The sky above his head was swirling and spinning, mixing the light colors of orange and blue together. He blinked once and then everything was stationary again.

His hand instinctively reached for the gushing wound where it tried to stop any more blood from leaving his body. Clint groaned at the pain that followed that movement. He felt underneath his back for an exit wound but came up empty.

Great. That meant the bullet would still be somewhere inside his body.

The sound of rapid gunfire tore him out of his painful world and he was able to focus on his surroundings again. He blinked the haze away from his vision to see Romanoff crouching behind a vent, her gun clutched tightly in her hand. She fired off several shots in succession of each other. She received the response instantly as she had to duck behind her cover to avoid getting hit. The bullets landed in the asphalt around her feet and one ended near Clint's own body where it sprayed the gravel into the air. They were still under attack.

His eyes frantically scanned the roof until they fell on his bow lying a few feet away from him. He had dropped it once he got shot. He inched towards it slowly, gritting his teeth against the pain. He grasped it, reached around to find an arrow and fitted it onto the string with shaking hands. Then he rose to his knees. He pulled back the taut string, biting down the exclamation of pain that threatened to roll past his lips. His muscles coiled and his wound flamed angrily at the motion of pulling back the arrow before he released it. It flew through the air before imbedding itself in the skull of a Russian agent. The first one was the hardest. He got better at ignoring his body demands of rest once he nocked the second arrow and soon he was firing fluently again. He took down several of the agents, each falling with a black arrow protruding from their head or chest. It didn't last long though because soon his quiver was empty and the Widow's gun clicked empty shortly after.

Their attackers realized it quickly. A few kept shooting, keeping the two assassins locked in their hiding positions, while the others made the jump. One didn't make it and as his body flew down towards the pavement, the rest landed gracefully onto the rooftop. Romanoff didn't hesitate as she engaged them in hand-to-hand combat immediately, kicking and punching in her fluent manner. Those she couldn't distract or reach turned their attention to the wounded archer.

Normally it wouldn't have much of a problem being attacked by three assailants at once. It would be a piece of cake. But this time his attackers took great advantage of his injury, making sure they struck it as many times as they could. Clint blocked most of the hits aimed for his side. But they landed more punches on his body than they should and he gave out less than he used to. A parade, a kick to a man's kidneys followed by a hard punch in his face took down the last attacker and the archer was left swaying and breathing heavily.

Romanoff had dispatched of the rest, which lay motionless at her feet and she moved towards Clint. Wordlessly, she draped his arm over her shoulder and worked as a crutch, though she was anything but gentle.

As she swiftly dragged him towards the nearest exit that led to the street, a realization dawned upon Clint. She could easily have left him there and made her getaway while she made him the sacrificial lamb.

Instead, she had stayed.

Natasha made sure her back was clear, before she entered through the door to the abandoned apartment complex she had found.

Inside, there was no furniture and the entire room was completely bare except for the supporting pillars placed here and there. Barton was leaning against one of the walls she had dumped him at.

Natasha had gone to set out a false trail and buy them some time, leaving small blood smears on some of the other buildings in the neighborhood so the Red Room would believe they had moved on. For now, they would be safe and remain undiscovered while they dealt with the gunshot wound. She dumped the ratty blanket she had found in an alley next to his body, which seemed to tear him out of his slumbering state.

The archer looked remarkably well for someone who just got shot. His skin had gone pale and the lines in his face were strained with pain. Blood covered the right side of his abdomen and had run down to coat the top of his trousers too, but he was aware and alert, mostly anyway. It led Natasha to believe the bullet hadn't hit anything vital.

"Lie down," she instructed while she started tearing the thin blanket to smaller pieces. It might not be the most sanitary bandage they could use, but it was clean enough and suitable until they got to safety.

He did as she ordered and lay down with a small wince that he tried to hide. "There's no exit wound, so it's still in there," he supplied nonchalantly while Natasha wiped her hands and pulled the fabric of his shirt away from the hole.

She nodded at the information and got to work. The wound itself was round with ragged edges from where the skin had been torn and fresh blood still tickled out slowly. She felt around on his back to see if she could feel the bullet underneath the skin, but all she felt was muscle. So the bullet hadn't imbedded itself too deeply then.

Natasha pulled out her knife. Her eyes drifted to Hawkeye's. She had to dig out the bullet, otherwise infection would set in and that was not something they could deal with right now. But they had nothing to numb the area and nothing to take the pain. It would hurt. She didn't know why she sought the permission from him first, but she did. His grey eyes were determined and hard. He knew what was going to happen and he nodded his head once as if saying that he understood. He grabbed one of the torn blanket pieces and folded it into his mouth.

"Do it," he whispered through the gag and pointedly looked up at the ceiling.

The knife touched the skin and broke it as she made the hole bigger so she could access the bullet. Hawkeye's body turned as taut as his bowstring as his muscles contracted with the sudden agony and his teeth clamped down on the gag so hard his jaw tightened. She continued on relentlessly.

As soon as the wound was a little bigger, more blood oozed out of it to mix onto the floor. Groans and grunts erupted from Barton's throat as Natasha's lean fingers searched around for the small round hiding in there somewhere. It wasn't long before they ran into something metal and she pulled it out, ignoring Barton's pained moans. She let it fall to the floor with a small clink and took one of the fabric pieces, rolled it to a small bundle and pressed it into the wound. Barton let out a harsh exhale through his nose. His eyes were clenched shut. Still, he hadn't succumbed to the pain he must be feeling or even yelled out. Natasha was slightly impressed by it. She had seen better men tremble and scream with lesser wounds.

When the cloth ball was soaked through with blood, Natasha made another to replace it, ditching the drenched one on the ground. She continued doing that for the next half hour until the bleeding had partially stopped. By the time she started wrapping the rest of the blanket strips around Barton's abdomen, his breathing had returned slightly to normal but his forehead still held a light sheen of sweat.

Natasha made sure the makeshift bandage would hold and when there was nothing more to be done she leaned against the wall tiredly. She rubbed absently on the blood on her hands and smeared it wider across her palm. She watched it dry while Barton's heavy breathing filled her eardrums. Both of them were silent. This was the first chance of breath they had had since fleeing the apartment, so none of them were particularly willing to break the quiet respite they had gotten now. But there was something nagging at Natasha's mind; a question she couldn't shake. She had been hesitant to ask before and wasn't much for it now, but she had to know. If she wasn't even going to make it to her second chance she might as well know why she had gotten it in the first place.

"Why did you save me?" she asked. She didn't even glance at him, but she knew he was still awake.

"I already told you," was his quiet response.

"No. Why did you save me?" Why did she out of all people deserve mercy?

"The look in your eyes," he simply stated. She looked down at him with a frown and he elaborated. "You wore the same look I did before I joined SHIELD; filled with hopelessness and fear. Fear about what was coming and how it was all going to end."

Natasha swallowed. She hadn't realized she had openly worn those feelings. If he could read it on a complete stranger's face, who knows who else might have seen them too. "I am not worth saving," she said.

His eyes turned towards the ceiling, away from her. "Neither was I. Or at least I didn't believe I was. But I got a new chance. One I did not deserve, trust me." He laughed out the last bit hesitantly. Then he looked at her again. "I know this isn't the life you want. Not deep down. You are not a monster."

"Killing is the only thing I know how to do. The only thing I'm good at," she admitted quietly.

"I know. So am I. But now we can do it for the right people. We can do it for the right reasons. We can do it while we're saving the world."

Natasha looked the archer. It seemed an absurd ideology to have in their line of work. "Do you think of it as saving the world?"

He huffed as an answer and shook his head. "No," he smiled. He seemed to share her view of the idea. The smile vanished from his lips as he spoke once more. "I think of it as repaying everything I owe and that is just as good."

She had no answer to that. Silence fell upon the two assassins once again and this time none of them broke it. Barton sighed heavily as he wallowed in the fatigue that small amateur surgery had caused. He clenched his eyes shut and breathed loudly through his nose. At first it was calming high breaths that flew through his nostrils, but soon their volume fell slightly and evolved into something more relaxed. His breath evened out and his body turned limp, his head tilting slightly to the side as he fell asleep.

Natasha turned her head away from the archer to give him as much privacy as she could. She suspected he wasn't high on being this vulnerable in front of strangers.

She had hauled him out of there. She had dragged him from that rooftop and to safety because she needed him alive. She needed him to be at least present when she walked on board that plane otherwise she wasn't going to make it. If she arrived alone, she suspected she would be shot on sight, right there on the tarmac and her chance would be over before it even begun. That was the only reason she saved him.

Or so she told herself.

Natasha wasn't a fool and she wasn't blind. She knew exactly what had happened out there. Clint Barton had saved her. He hadn't just pushed her out of the way, saving her life on that roof in the blink of an eye. He had saved her in every sense of the word. And that created a debt she knew she would never be able to pay back.

She gazed down on the sleeping assassin, his body twitching slightly every now and then. The words slipped over her lips involuntarily. She whispered them to deaf ears, but still they escaped without meaning to and yet she didn't try to stop them.

"Thank you."

TBC