Summary:
Fury says "We found a body in a ditch" and it's a mad dash for information.
Five days ago…
Trickshot scrubs his hands and the water in the sink runs red.
"He have a name?" Trickshot asked, looking over at the masked man.
"Winter," Rumlow said.
Trickshot eyed Winter for a moment, the man was silent and still, but his eyes… They held a storm waiting to rage free.
There's blood crusted around and beneath his nails. Annoyed, he slathers more soap onto his hands and scrubs harder.
"I need you to get rid of someone," Rumlow said.
"Who?"
"This kid we kidnapped. Don't need her anymore."
"What'd you use her for?"
"Doesn't matter," Rumlow said, then met his gaze straight on. "Don't want her ID'd yet, either."
"Okay," he said and moved to get a fire torch and pliers.
He rinses his hands and the water in the sink runs clear.
"Meet Damienne O'Connor. Found two days ago, dead five."
The face of a young woman—in her early twenties at best—with light brown hair and gold eyes appears on the monitor beside the conference screen showing Fury's form.
"She was found in the outskirts of Kandahar," Fury continues and a map of the city and its surrounding region is brought to focus, a red pin marking the body's location.
"You found her two days ago. Why are we finding out about this now?" Steve wonders.
"Fingernails and teeth were removed. Messy—whoever it was didn't have surgical experience. Fingerprints were also burned off," Natasha states, looking down at the pictures in their briefing file. "Somebody didn't want her found, at least not too soon."
Fury nods. "We only ID'd her about an hour ago."
Clint opens his own file. Damienne's face no longer resembles that of the carefree young woman on the monitor. It is mangled and bloody. Her body used and abused. For a moment Clint's mind flashes and his vision turns blue. He grits his teeth, grips the file harder, the paper crinkling at the edges.
"These injuries are extensive. She was tortured," Bruce says.
"The cuts and contusions on her chest are consistent with torture. Some were made hours before time of death, others days. The measures taken to hide her identity were done around time of death, though the fingernails showed slight signs of growth. Coroner says the nail beds show about two to three weeks of growth."
"She gave them what they wanted," Natasha says. "Official cause of death?"
"Single gun shot wound to the head," Fury says.
"What were her connections?" Clint asks, because he knows this game. If there are no teeth, no fingerprints, they have to rely on DNA. Or a missing person's report, but Damienne's face is too unrecognizable and trying to find a match would take weeks, not days.
"I knew her," Tony says and Clint turns to him, watches Tony's fingers sweep the picture's edges. "Hired her straight out of MIT."
On the screen, Fury eyes Tony and nods. "Employed three years as a high ranking technical analyst. Your people reported her missing three weeks ago when she didn't show up two days in a row for work."
"Pepper didn't tell me," Tony says, staring at the photograph.
Bruce turns to Tony. "Any next of kin?"
"Not much. Her parents died when she was young and she was put in foster care for a while 'till she aged out. She had an estranged second cousin in Arizona. Girlfriend, too, named Elie. Only met her a couple times. Still lives in New York, as far as I know," Tony says.
Clint catches Natasha's eye.
"Sir, Natasha and I can check out her home. Maybe pay a visit to the girlfriend."
"I'm coming with," Tony says.
"I'm not sure if that's a good idea. Whoever took her could be after you, Tony," Steve says.
Tony rolls his eyes. "Honestly, Cap, the thought never crossed my mind."
"Tony—"
Tony shrugs. "People are always trying to kidnap me."
"Thought the attempts died down when you unveiled Iron Man," Clint says.
"Yeah, well, one thing can be said for terrorists—they aren't quitters," Tony says.
Steve frowns. "I still don't feel comfortable with you going to her apartment. It could be a trap, they might have bugged the place for all we know."
"I appreciate the concern, Steve, really I do, but I'm going. Besides I'm sure the Wonder Twins here will keep me safe, right Legolas?"
Clint rolls his eyes, but nods nonetheless.
Steve turns to the monitor with Fury's face. "Has SHIELD done a preliminary sweep of the area?"
Fury shakes his head, stern. "I'm keeping this strictly in house. The less people who know, the better. And frankly, SHIELD doesn't have enough agents to spare for this."
Clint bites the inside of his cheek, tries not to think of how many SHIELD lives he was responsible for ending. Natasha leans closer, pressing her thigh against his own. He lets himself lean against her, if just for a moment.
"Area incident reports appear normal, nothing unusual. A few public disturbances and several citations of buildings in need of repair," Fury says. "Barton, Romanoff, you have permission to approach and interrogate. Remember people, this stays out of the news. Last thing we need are civilians panicking."
Pretty sure they haven't stopped, Clint wants to say, but manages to hold his tongue.
Two days ago…
Trickshot dreams in shades of red.
In his dream, his hands are sticky. His stomach churns. He tries to get up, but he slips and falls, landing on his hands and knees. He is in a puddle of red, warm and wet. His mother won't like this, he thinks, her clean floor covered in his baby brother's red paint. When he gets his feet steady beneath him, his knees are red.
Clint is going to be in so much trouble, he thinks. He should clean up, before their dad gets home and stumbles on the mess. He shudders to think of the consequences.
He sees then, that the red isn't a puddle, but a sea, extending past the kitchen into the living room, soaking into the carpet. The smell hits him then and it smells nothing like his brother's paints. It smells like pennies and, on instinct, he brings his hands over his nose to cover the sweet stench, but that only serves to spread the red and some smudges onto his top lip.
He licks it and it tastes like iron.
As he swallows, the dread growing in his stomach, he realizes. It isn't paint.
Trickshot shoots up straight from where he lay on the couch, struggling to get his breathing under control. A screech alerts him to the warehouse door being opened. He cranes his neck over the couch and watches as Rumlow enters the warehouse carrying a black duffle bag. His steps are heavy, echoing in the metal enclosed space.
"We need to go. Start packing."
Trickshot starts shoving his weapons and a few shirts and pants back into the travel bag by his feet. He doesn't have much to pack—didn't pack much to begin with, unpacked even less.
Rumlow sets the bag on the table and unzips it. Reaching in, he takes out a rifle case.
"They find the body?"
"Yeah. A matter of time now before they ID it."
"Where are we going?"
"We need to lay low for a while. Boss' orders."
"Jesus, this place smells like a dump," Tony says, walking inside the apartment. He pushes his sunglasses up his head and holds his phone out. "JARVIS sweep the place for bugs."
"Probably expired food in the fridge," Clint says.
Natasha wrinkles her nose and goes about opening the windows.
Damienne lived in a studio loft overlooking a street of storefronts in the middle of Manhattan. The loft is spacious, yet crammed. Tech sits on every surface. Clint wonders if this is how Tony's first apartment looked like.
He makes his way around the studio. Several tablets are in the living room and one in the kitchen. Cables and wires litter the coffee table. A circuit board rests on the kitchen table, unfinished.
He passes his gloved fingers over the kitchen counter, a line breaking through the thick layer of dust.
"Looks like no one's been here since she went missing."
"SHIELD file said the police came in a few days after the report was made. They left when they found no sign of forced entry or foul play," Natasha says, scanning the shelves lining the living room walls.
"Well, they got that part right," Clint says.
"Her drive's been wiped," Tony says from across the floor, sitting at the desk beside the main window overlooking the crowded street. "Back up drive, too."
"She doesn't have a fail safe back-up to her back-up?" Clint asks, coming up behind him.
"I'm checking now," Tony says. "Ah, knew there was a reason I hired you, kid. Got it. All the project files have to do with SI, except for this group right here." He clicks open a number of files and lines of code fill the screen. "Looks like a tracking algorithm."
Clint scans over his shoulder. "Question is, what was it tracking."
"Guess we'll find out when we get back to the lab." Tony takes out a small circular tech tab and attaches it to Damienne's server. "I'm taking everything," he says and taps his phone, "JARVIS transfer everything into a separate server and encrypt it."
"She was an easy target," Natasha says. She walks over to them, a tablet in hand. "She kept the same routine, took the same route to work every morning."
"GPS tracking data?" Clint asks, looking at the map on the screen.
"Yes."
"Why do I feel like I've entered the adult version of Spy Kids?" Tony says.
Clint smirks. "That's what happens when you invite SHIELD agents to live with you."
Tony glares at him. "I've half a mind to take the invitation back, bird brain."
"Please, admit it, at this point life would be too boring without us."
Tony grins. "Ah, sadly that is true."
Natasha smacks them over the back of their heads. "Focus. There's a hole in her firewall. That's how I got her GPS data."
"Yeah," Tony says, getting back to work on the computer system, "someone hacked her and left a backdoor for themselves—Damienne mustn't have noticed. They had access to everything."
"What were the SI files on?" Clint asks.
Tony waves away his concern. "Nothing major, couple of spec files and patent forms. Stuff people like Hammer would want, nothing a terrorist organization would need. People steal these when they want to hurt SI's profit margins—not that stealing these would even cause a dent. Anyway, these specs are a few months old, now. Products were already announced and most of the specs shared. They're already in production and after that there's nothing these files contain of specs someone wouldn't be able to find out by cracking open the new phones and tablets."
"And the patents?"
"Already filed and glistening with a stamp of government approval."
"I don't understand. What were they after then?"
"That tracking program any special?" Natasha asks.
"Don't know. It seems basic enough, but I won't really know 'till I go through the full code," Tony says.
"We need to figure out who took her," Clint says. He turns to Natasha. "Did you find a phone?"
She frowns. "No."
"She wasn't grabbed here, then," Tony says.
"Your company reported her missing on a Friday morning. That means she was taken sometime Wednesday morning or Tuesday night," Clint says.
"GPS shows she got home Tuesday night at 9pm," Natasha says. "She must have been taken Wednesday morning on her way to work."
Tony opens the GPS program on Damienne's computer and zooms in on the map.
"Most street shops have cameras that face the street," he says. He looks up at Clint and Natasha. "I need to go back to the tower and hack security feeds. We may be able to see her kidnapping. We all done here?"
Clint glances at Natasha, who nods. "Yeah, we're good here."
Tony closes the documents and sighs. "Time to give a death notice, then."
Eliska Rose lives in an old brownstone building that sits in east Harlem. The neighborhood is bustling with people walking down scorched sidewalks and driving around small craters in the roads. The people are loud and boisterous. Music emanates from someone's open window, a slow jazz sound in sharp contrast with the chaos of the world outside. Eliska's windows are open, the curtains blowing in the breeze, but the apartment is silent.
When Clint knocks on the door, a young woman with blue eyes and dark skin opens it.
"Can I help you?"
Beside him, Tony steps forward. "Hi, Elie."
"Mr. Stark? What—what are you doing here?" Her eyes widen and worry lines crease her forehead. "Is—is this about Damie?"
Natasha glances over at Clint and he gives an answering shrug. He doesn't know how well Tony knew Damienne or her girlfriend, but it's apparent he knows them better than they thought. It's possible they don't know Tony as well as they thought, either.
"Mind if we come in?" Tony asks. He moves to step forward, but Eliska blocks the door, shaking her head. "Elie—"
Tears fill her eyes. "Is she dead?"
Tony bows his head, takes a breath, and meets Eliska's eyes. "She was found three days ago. I'm sorry, Elie."
"Oh, god." She puts a hand over hear mouth in an attempt to stifle a sob, but they hear the hitch in her breath anyway.
Clint sees Tony take Eliska's other hand and squeeze. He wonders who had notified the dead SHILED agents' family members, wonders if they had someone there to hold their hands.
"Elie, can you let us in?" Tony asks again and this time she stands to the side and pulls the door wide open.
The three of them are led into a sitting room, where the sun spills in from a window's drawn curtains. Clint sits beside Natasha, in one of the corner chairs that provide a full view of the room and lets him see outside the nearest window Tony sits in front of.
"Can I see her?" she asks, as she sits down on one of the chairs.
Tony shakes his head. "I don't think that's a good idea, Elie."
Eliska runs her fingers through her curly hair, puts her head between her knees.
"We can come back another day. You don't have to do this now," Tony says.
Eliska's head comes up. "No." She wipes her eyes and with a breath, stands up straighter. "If you're here, it's important." She clasps her shaking hands together. "Tell me what happened. Where did you find her?"
Tony shifts, eyes drifting over him and Natasha, his hands clenched on his chair's armrests. For a second, Clint thinks of offering his own hand, give Tony something to hang onto. This is probably Tony's first time notifying someone their loved one is dead.
"Kandahar, Afghanistan," Clint says.
"What? I don't," Eliska shakes her head. "I don't understand. Why would she be there?"
"That's what we're trying to figure out," Tony says.
"When was the last time you saw her?" Natasha asks, leaning forward. Her body language is open, encouraging Eliska to speak, to trust.
"Tuesday, April 7th. We got drinks to celebrate her promotion. I walked her home."
Clint sees Tony fidget from the corner of his eye.
"We think someone took her," Clint says.
This time, Eliska doesn't try to cover her eyes when they fill and spill over. "Why would someone take her? She never hurt anybody, she's—she was a good person."
"I know she was, Elie. She was the best. And we're going to do everything we can to find out who took her," Tony says.
"Did Damienne mention meeting anyone new?" Natasha asks.
"No, no, she didn't even go out much. She was really into her work. We both are—were."
"Was she working on anything private? Anything outside of work?" Clint asks.
"She was really excited about this tracking algorithm she was working on. It was supposed to protect against hackers by tracking anyone who entered a network. It would track what files they had accessed, predict which ones they would go after next and try to delete them from the system before they could be accessed. We tried it a few times, but it wasn't finished yet."
If that was all Damienne had been working on, Clint can't figure out why someone would target her. If her kidnappers needed someone to hack SHIELD, why risk taking someone with a high profile job? Why someone from SI? Sure, SI employed some of the best minds, but there are hackers the world over. And why take someone from the U.S if they were going to Afghanistan? Why not take someone closer?
"Are you sure there was nothing else?" he asks.
Eliska nods. "Damienne couldn't help talking about what she was working on, was always so excited to—" a sob escapes her. She puts her feet on the couch, pulls her knees to her chest. "I can't believe she's gone…"
Tony rises from his seat and kneels in front of Eliska. "We'll figure out what happened, Elie." He pulls a card out of his jacket and scribbles something on the back with a pen. "My personal number's on the back. Call me or come by the tower if you need anything. Anything at all, Elie."
With a shaking hand, Eliska grabs the card.
Clint and Natasha drive back to the tower. Once outside, Tony had taken off in the suit, muttering about getting to the workshop to review Damienne's data.
"Stark seems better," Natasha says, eyeing him for a second before glancing back at the road. "Both of you do."
He shrugs, stares out at ruined buildings and makeshift memorials for the dead.
Clint doesn't feel better, not really. But he doesn't feel worse either.
"We have a mission, now," he says. "Had to postpone our pity party."
A red light catches them.
From his peripheral he can see Natasha frown, notices the way she bites the inside of her cheek.
"Maybe you were right."
Surprised, he turns to her. "About what?"
The grip she has on the steering wheel tightens. "Going away for a while. Taking some time for yourself, away from all of this."
He laughs. "Seriously? After telling me it was the worst thing I could do?"
"I never said—"
"Bullshit, Nat. You didn't have to say it. What? You think I can't handle this?"
"You need a break, Clint."
She turns to him and Clint can feel an edge of panic creeping in. His heart beats faster, a crazed tattoo against his chest and he wonders if she'll talk Fury into pulling him out of the mission. Clint knows he's been unstable these past several weeks, knows that not long ago the thought of leaving all this behind let him breathe easily. But now the same thought makes him panic. What would he do with himself, besides lie in bed? What purpose would he have, then? How would he atone? Make up for his mistakes, for all the blood on his hands? How would he even begin to balance his ledger after all the added red?
"Clint!"
A car behind them honks and Clint sucks in a breath, startled. When he looks up, the light is green and Natasha is glancing at him, concern lining her face.
Natasha drives, but her hand on the gearshift tightens its hold.
"I'm fine," he says, before pulling out the phone Tony gave him several days ago.
He sends a quick text and steels himself for a tense, quiet drive. But when he looks out the window once more, he notices they have passed the turn for the tower.
"Nat, where are we going?"
"I found something," she says.
But before he can ask, they pull over in a parking lot behind a row of consignment shops and boutiques. He follows Natasha out of the car and up six blocks where they find a subway station and make their way down. The silence of their ride worries him. The feeling increases once he realizes where they are headed.
After twenty minutes, they get off at the Franklin Street exit and Clint thinks he knows their destination. Once on the street, they make a left, crossing an intersection. Natasha leads him to a gray nondescript apartment building.
"Wouldn't have thought you'd kept the place," he says as Natasha unlocks the front door.
"Technically, it was never compromised."
Clint huffs.
They trudge up five flights of stairs and walk down a dark lit hallway. At the last door on the left, Natasha stops, pulling out a small golden key. Slowly, she unlocks the door and pushes it a few inches open.
They both glance down at the untouched, thin piece of string hanging in between the open space of the doorframe and door at ankle level. Satisfied, Natasha pushes the door open the rest of the way.
The apartment is barren. Evening light streams through grime layered windows, casting shadows across the dark wooden floorboards. A few sparse pieces of furniture stand in the living room: a worn down couch, a small coffee table, a stand-up lamp, and an old TV.
Clint runs his fingers down a familiar crack on the wall, a result of Natasha throwing him against it years ago. It had been a few months before Budapest, at a time he had been chasing her all over the globe trying to get her to stop and listen for once.
Phantom pain pulses against his head. He runs his fingers through the hair at the back of his head trying to dispel the memory. It had been quite the concussion.
Natasha walks to the small kitchen, opens the cupboard beneath the sink, and pulls out a bucket and paint roller.
"There's wallpaper in the bedroom closet," she says, flicking open a pocketknife.
The bedroom is the same as the living room, bare, with only a naked mattress on the floor and a lamp beside it. He takes out the roll of wallpaper from the closet, notices it matches the one in the living room, and hefts it onto his shoulder before going back to the living room.
"You gonna tell me what you found?"
Natasha has pushed the coffee table against the far north wall, between the windows facing the street. She's standing atop it, stretching upward, with her knife pressed against the space where the wall meets the ceiling.
She brings the knife down and the wallpaper droops like a flower's heavy petal, revealing a stretch of wooden panels beneath. Hands touching along the wall, she searches for a loose panel. The motions are as familiar today as they were years ago, when Clint sat on the couch, bloodied, holding a bag of ice to his aching head. Now, Clint watches as she presses on a wooden panel he knows is loose. Using the tip of her knife, Natasha opens the panel, revealing a small crevice. She reaches in and pulls something out.
She jumps down and walks over to him. "The unknown Raza was dealing with, they were Red Room."
"That's not possible. We made sure of that."
Natasha shakes her head. "My contact in Russia sent me a confirmed visual ID. And there's been rumors."
"What kind of rumors?"
"The American is back."
Clint resists the urge to pace. "That doesn't mean anything. There's been rumors of his sightings for decades and all those trails we followed lead nowhere. Man's probably been dead for years, there's been no concrete sign of him. Now, he's just some ghost story told to every merc and terrorist to scare them, make them cautious, make them think twice of who they're doing business with."
"He's not dead."
She opens her hand to reveal a USB drive.
"We need to give this to Stark. It contains all the Red Room files from every base we destroyed. I kept them along with multiple copies. We never found the sleepers, Clint. It's him. It has to be. Someone's using him again."
"Great, this just got way more complicated than we needed it to be." He picks up the paint roller. "Lets get this over with, then."
They spend the next twenty minutes removing the rest of the wallpaper in the living room. Natasha mixes the paste they need, while Clint measures the walls. The next several hours are spent re-wallpapering the living room.
"Man, this place is such high maintenance," he says when they finish covering the last wall. Parts of his arms are covered in paste, with every move the hairs on his arm pull against the paste. "You should reconsider getting rid of this place, Nat. Seems more trouble than it's worth."
Natasha's lips thin, but Clint know she's fighting a smile. "If you no longer want this place anymore, yastreb, all you have to do is say so."
Clint is about to say something snappy back when her words catch up to him. Natasha saying he has any say on whether or not this safe house remains in house implies co-ownership. It hits him then, why she said the safe house wasn't technically compromised because now it's his safe house, too. Probably has been since he broke in and Natasha smashed him into the wall hard enough to see stars.
Despite himself, he smiles.
When Clint and Natasha return to the tower, it's to find everyone—save Tony—gathered in the common room. The TV is on, a loud movie Clint doesn't recognize, but the others don't seem to be paying it any attention. Clint clears his throat and when they all turn to him, he can they are worried.
"He got back and went straight into the workshop. Hasn't been out since and he's not allowing anyone entry. What happened?" Steve asks, rising from his seat on the couch.
JARVIS pauses the movie.
"He knew her better than he let on," Clint says.
"He needs to get up here. We may have a lead," Natasha says. "JARVIS?"
"I have alerted, Sir. He shall meet you in five minutes."
When Tony walks in he looks too tired for three in the afternoon. Clint can tell he's been drinking, but considering Clint sleeps with a gun beneath his pillow, he's not one to judge.
Tony turns towards Clint and Natasha. "Took you guys long enough to get here. Did the Spy Kids get lunch or something? Because if you did and you didn't bring any back for the rest of us, I will be sorely disappointed in you. I mean really, I put a roof over your heads, give you 100% Egyptian cotton sheets, the least you could do is bring back—"
"Tony," Clint says.
"—I mean seriously—"
"Stark," Natasha says and hits him upside the head.
"Ow, Jesus, come on."
"Sit. We think we have a lead," Natasha says.
Her hands are fisted, her knuckles tight. In his mind's eye he sees crescent moon outlines on her palms.
"Any of you heard of the Winter Soldier?" he asks.
"Wait," Tony says, "you mean 'The American'?"
Clint leans forward, staring at Tony. "That's the one. How did you—"
Tony shrugs, pulling a tablet onto his lap. "Hacked the CIA when I was thirteen. You'd be surprised at their paranoia, the stories in those files…I swear some read like fiction."
Bruce clears his throat. "Ah, who exactly is this?"
"He's a ghost story," Clint says, "or he started out that way."
"After World War II," Natasha says, "the Soviet Union made intelligence gathering, both domestic and international, one of its primary objectives. With the establishment of the KGB in 1954 came experimentation. Contrary to popular belief they didn't want perfect soldiers. The Red Army defeated Hitler, the Union no longer had to prove its military strength. What they wanted were sleepers, infiltrators. They wanted empty people they could fill what whatever they wanted, mold them however they wanted. So they experimented."
"Department X was established and, years later, rumors about a man, a former American soldier, start popping up. No one knows what he looks like, who he is, or where he comes from. Just that he's ruthless, efficient; a killer so cold it's said he must be part machine. It's rumored he's never failed a mission, never misses his target."
"Intelligence agencies don't think he exists. Every time an investigation's been opened," Clint shrugs, glances at Natasha, "it always led to dead ends. Besides the rumors, there was—is—no trail of him."
"How does a Cold War super secret spy agent have anything to do with Damie's death?" Tony asks.
"He's back," Natasha says.
"Wait." Bruce holds up a hand. "You're saying this man is still alive? That's impossible. You said this started after World War II, he should be dead by now or in his late 70's at least."
"Aye," Thor says. "Mortal lives are shorter than the Aesirs'. Unless this man has eaten the apples of Idun, he must surely be dead."
"Ignoring Thor's comment about possible immortality," Tony says, "please don't tell me we're taking out geriatric criminals now. I'm pretty sure the NYPD can handle an old man."
Clint shrugs. He doesn't know if the American is an old man or if he even is a man.
Natasha shakes her head. "I doubt he's much older than me, Clint, or Steve."
"How is that possible?" Bruce breathes.
Natasha stares, unseeing.
Despite how long Clint has known Natasha, their relationship is still littered with a land mine of secrets, both hers and his. He's never known the full extent of what the Red Room had done to her, but he had his suspicions.
"He gets frozen. In between missions, he's frozen, put in some sort of stasis. Whenever the Department needed him again, they would thaw him out, and give him a mission. Sometimes, his mission was to become someone else. To make it foolproof, X scientists figured out a way to manipulate human memory. They could take someone and strip their life, their identity away. They made people empty vessels, filled them with whatever they wanted, made them whatever, whoever." Natasha smiles. It is crooked and wrong and unbearably honest. "I thought I was a ballerina once."
Bruce, Tony, Thor, and Steve's eyes snap to her. There is pity and curiosity and a solemn look from Thor that has Clint wondering.
"Natasha," Steve starts, "you don't have to—"
"To train these special agents, Department X established the Red Room. The unknown Raza was meeting with was a former Red Room operative."
"Was? Did they he break ties with them, then?" Tony asks.
Clint steps forward. "Before joining SHIELD, Natasha and I destroyed the Red Room. Eliminated all their bases." He meets Tony's eyes. "The last one was in Budapest and we burned it to the ground."
"Seems like they're back now," Steve says.
"We can't be sure," Natasha says. "Department X itself was a vast network. It's unclear how many side branches there were. Some things were never recorded, numerous branch departments were off the books. It's rumored that the end of a branch's usefulness, all employees were killed, their identities systematically erased. In the end, it was as if they never existed. None of us did, not really."
Clint can hear the tension underlying her words. Budapest had been a war. By the time Natasha and he had left, the surrounding area was leveled, decimated, as if someone had attempted to blow it off the map. He remembers the way Natasha had stood, bloodied, bruised, leaning heavily on her left because her right ankle was sprained. He remembers the way she smiled and emptied her gun clip into Rodchenko's face.
But then he remembers the weeks that came after, the entire days she would grow quiet, as if the very act of speaking were too much.
"Tony," Natasha says, reaching out her hand, "this contains Red Room files from several years ago. I copied everything I could. They could be a lead or a dead end."
Tony watches Natasha for a moment before accepting the drive. "I'll go through these tonight, see what I can find. I''ll compile everything known about the American, too. Cross-reference these files with the CIA, Interpol, MI-6, Mossad, and the rest of the major alphabets in the soup."
"I'll help," Clint says.
Tony nods absentmindedly in his direction, already typing on his table.
"And what of the young maiden? Is the cause of her abduction known?" Thor asks.
In all the panic and surprise about the Winter Soldier, Clint had forgotten about Damienne's abduction. He looks over at Tony, remembering the way he had said "Hi Elie" earlier today.
Tony stops typing. He shakes his head, gripping the tablet tight, hugging it to his chest. "No. Besides using her to get to me we don't really know why she was taken."
"You haven't found anything in her systems?" Natasha asks.
"No, but I haven't finished looking either."
Thor's eyes are solemn. "I am sorry, Anthony. The loss of a friend is a difficult burden to bear."
Clint feels a stab of anger at Thor's words. He wants to say that Damienne's death ins't Tony's burden because he didn't cause it, though he knows the idiot genius has convinced himself of his fault.
Thor stands and walks over to Tony, his eyes solemn. He clasps Tony on the shoulder, causing Tony to jolt. "We are here for you, Anthony. I have lost many a friend in battle. I find the company of your Shield Brothers, alongside a barrel of mead, to be of great help."
Tony grins. "Thanks, big guy. Though, I think I'll skip right to the barrel of alcohol. Was never much for company."
Clint glares at Tony, thinking of the trouble he went through to sneak into the lab and keep a drunk Tony from dying of dehydration. When Tony glances his way, however, all he does is laugh.
"Sheesh, I'm kidding, Legolas. I'm aware we have work to do requiring our mutual sobriety. Besides, JARVIS and the bots conspired. The lab is, sadly, clear of alcohol."
Clint spots a camera a little ways off on the ceiling. He tips his head in its direction, hoping JARVIS understands the message: Tony's been drinking enough.
He's in the kitchen preparing green tea when Steve approaches him.
As he searches the pantry for honey, he hears soft, hesitant foot falls on the tiled floor. He doesn't need to turn around to know it's Steve. Pushing aside a few cans of beans, he finds an unlabeled jar with what appears to be honey inside. Shrugging, he grabs it and pulls the pantry door shut. Still, he doesn't turn to face Steve who, in his mind's eye, is shuffling from foot to foot.
Clint pours his tea and adds the honey. He takes a sip, familiar comfort heating his throat. When he turns, Steve is watching him, mouth downturned, a guilty look in his shifting eyes.
For a moment, neither speaks. Clint sipping his tea and Steve observing, trying to puzzle something out.
"I read the files. All of them," Steve says and Clint knows this means he's read the paper files Fury has tucked away in his office.
Clint nods.
"I read yours too, you know. And Natasha's."
Clint smiles, crooked.
"Does Tony know? About you and Natasha, about—"
"About our terms of employment?"
Steve massages the back of his neck with a hand. "Look, forget it, this isn't any of my business, I'm just going to—yeah."
Before he can walk away, Clint snorts into his tea mug. "It's fine, Steve. Trust me."
He finishes his tea and places the mug in the sink. When he glances at Steve he sees the man staring back, his blue eyes focused and intent.
"All those things in your file," he says without looking away, "did you really do them? You and Natasha?"
Clint takes a breath. "Yeah," he nods, "And a slew of others SHIELD still doesn't know about."
"Clint, I need to know I can trust everyone on this team."
Steve's words remind Clint of Phil, of the first time he met the man in a broken down motel room, in the middle of Austria, Clint's blood soaking into the bed sheets. Phil hadn't trusted him in the beginning, had no reason to, really. But months later, when Natasha got on SHIELD's radar and he was assigned to take her out, Phil trusted him to come back. Clint had gone off mission not even five minutes in, with nothing more than a "Trust me, Boss." It still surprises Clint, the trust Phil had for him.
Clint leans back against the counter. He thinks of Natasha cooking the team breakfast, of her sending him to check on Tony just a few days ago. He thinks of her outstretched hand, holding a USB drive with her history encrypted within, and saying, "We need to give this to Stark."
He meets Steve's steely blue eyes. "Natasha and I are loyal to this team, Steve."
Steve nods and there is relief in his eyes. He takes a step back, as if to leave, but then stops. "Is Tony…" He says and trails off.
It takes Clint a moment to realize what he's trying to ask. But when he does, he's quick to say, "He's fine, Steve." He gives Steve a crocked grin, "Just don't mention Howard or Maria. And take Natasha's assessment with a grain of salt."
Steve laughs, says he will, and walks out, leaving Clint alone in the dimly lit kitchen. Picking up the jar of honey, Clint notices an inscription on the lid: Hal's Local Honey.
Clint steps out of the elevator, carefully balancing a plate of sandwiches and two mugs. The workshop's glass walls are clear. He can see Dum-E whirring around, picking up tools left and right. He can't see Tony.
Clint eyes the touch pad next to the doors. "JARVIS?"
The doors open and music spills out. Clint recognizes Nirvana's cover of Lead Belly's "Where Did You Sleep Last Night."
Walking around a pile of circuitry and past the work bench, Clint catches sight of Tony. He is standing in an array of holographic monitors, streams of code scrolling down each one, spinning a pen in one hand. There are several empty mugs scattered around.
"I'm assuming you haven't eaten since yesterday," Clint says.
"Jesus!" Tony jumps, dropping the pen. Whirling around he says, "What the hell, Clint. You and Romanoff. Bells. I mean it. Big, noisy, cow bells—" he points at Clint—"just you wait."
Laughing, Clint settles the plate down and offers Tony one of the mugs. Without turning away from the monitors, Tony takes a sip, only to sputter and cough.
"The fuck is this, Barton?"
Clint grins, taking a sip of his own drink. "It's called tea, moron." He eyes the empty mugs standing on various surfaces of the workshop. "You've had enough caffeine, Tony, don't you think."
As usual, Tony dismisses him away with a wave of the hand. "No such thing."
Still, he sips the tea again, this time with no complaint.
"Eat, Tony. Whatever you're doing can wait." Clint hands him a sandwich. "Here, have a sandwich."
Clint is surprised when Tony turns away from the monitors, grabs the sandwich, and bites into it with no complaint about how he has more useful things to do than eat. Pleased, Clint pulls up a chair, perches his feet on the nearest surface, and leans back to eat his sandwich and finish his tea.
"How did you get in here, anyway?"
"JARVIS opened the door."
After a moment of silence, he looks up to see Tony eyeing him, head cocked to the side like a curious dog.
"What?" Clint asks.
Tony shakes his head. "Nothing."
Clint shrugs. "You find anything yet?"
"No." Tony's shoulders slump.
"They took her because of her connection to you then. Somehow, this is personal. I'd ask who you've pissed off recently, but somehow I think that list would be too long to work through."
Tony huffs. "Could say the same about you."
"Yeah," Clint says, remembering his days before SHIELD, "I guess you could."
He puts his empty tea mug on the desk and reaches over, pulling down one of Tony's holo-screens.
"So, this American," Tony starts, "you ever seen him before?"
Clint looks up at Tony, eyes catching on the way his fingers beat a tattoo against his mug.
"No," he says. "Heard the stories for years, though. Ever since I became a merc. They used to say he was an American soldier who fought in the Vietnam War." He shrugs. "That he was a deserter, a man with no allegiance, no loyalties tying him to anything, anyone, or anywhere."
"Let me guess, except money," Tony says.
"Hell if anybody knew. Somebody would spot him and then no one would hear or see anything for weeks, months, years."
"Why call him the Winter Soldier?"
"Story is he used to only appear in the winter, on the coldest day of the season. They used to say the coldest Russian winter couldn't keep him from his target."
"I started on the Red Room files." Tony grabs one of his tablets. "Everything's there. Pretty sure Bruce and I could build our own stasis chamber."
"Don't think that's a good idea, Tony," Clint says.
Tony moves around the workshop. Grabbing mugs, only to find them empty, then setting them down again. "Did you know there was more than one Black Widow?"
"Yeah, I knew."
Clint closes his eyes. Behind his closed lids he can see Natasha, younger and drenched in red as if someone had taken a can of red paint and dumped it on her head.
"You know there was no mention of the Red Room in the mission report from Budapest?" Tony asks.
Clint opens his eyes and nods. Tony is sitting atop the workbench, tablet in hand, gadgets, wires, and papers everywhere.
"It was redacted. Phil, Fury, and Hill agreed. The Red Room was a ghost story at best at the time, too. No one ever really believed in the whispers. Not until Natasha left the fold and decided to take them down. We changed the details—"
"Made it seem like she was supposed to be your target, but then you changed your mind and brought her in," Tony says.
Clint nods. "Twisted version of how we met."
"The KGB was one of the world's largest spy networks. You know what the CIA have next to the agency's mission and assassination counts? Unknown." Tony shakes his head. "Suppose, you gotta admire their ability in secrecy."
They're silent for a while. Clint checks the news, a compulsion he's never been able to shake since his days as a merc. It was an advantage, learning the happenings of the world.
"How did you two meet? You and Natasha." Tony asks.
"After she left the Red Room, she started taking contract jobs. Someone hired her to kill me." Clint reaches for his mug, then remembers he finished his tea. "I managed to change her mind."
"How?"
"Red Room whispers were louder if you were in contract work. I figured out who she was and offered her something she wanted more than money."
"And that was?"
"To take out the Red Room."
A/N: I've put myself on a (somewhat) writing schedule, so updates should (hopefully) not take 6 months from now on. I hope everyone enjoyed this chapter. Feel free to leave a comment below; I promise you'll make my freakin day. No, seriously, you will. They make me ridiculously happy. Niom Lamboise, I have not forgotten what you said to be about the Clint angst factor in this fic! Trust me, I'm working on it! Hope this wasn't too shabby and rest assured I have a lot of angst planned out for Clint in this story. I'm also toying with the idea of having a few scenes from other characters besides Clint & Tony. We'll see. Thanks for reading! :)