A/N: This chapter was supposed to be up way earlier than this. But a series of school projects, hard drive death, and laptop issues prevented it. But everything is good now :) Hope you all enjoy.

Beta'd by Cheerfuldisposition. Thank you, my dear. You are magnificent.

***Trigger warning: Very brief mention of 9/11. Like one sentence. It's near the end of Clint and Tony's initial scene, after the paragraph that starts "The New York skyline…" ***

Steve can't sleep. There's a restlessness in his bones that has him wandering the tower floors, taking the stairs instead of the elevator because he can't stomach the feeling of falling, no matter how brief it may be. Not tonight, when nightmares crept into his bed and embraced him with their shadows.

It's 4am and he's been awake for an hour. Though his heart has since stopped its rapid tattoo beat against his chest, he can still remember its hammering when he shot up awake in his bed. Usually, he wakes up shivering, tugging blankets around himself in a vain struggle to feel some semblance of warmth. Most nights, he dreams of being consumed by ice, of being frozen alive.

But not this night.

This night he dreamt of a scream echoing off rocky mountain walls, the echo growing, spreading with the wind.

It happens some days.

Some days, someone will laugh and it will turn into a screech and the screech will turn into an echoing scream. And Steve will hear a rushing in his ears, like wild wind whipping all around, a shiver traveling down his spine. Steve has hand nightmares most of his life. When he was younger, he oftentimes dreamed of dying, of hacking up blood, and falling down dead. When the nation went to war and he enlisted, Steve dreamed in shades of wildfire orange and the shouts of rifles. Now, he dreams about the ice and a never ending scream.

He would give anything for the screaming to stop.

Steve walks into the common's kitchen without turning on the lights, he doesn't need to—not with the serum running through his veins. He opens the fridge, letting the light spill out onto his feet, and reaches for the milk carton.

"Nightmares again, Rogers?"

Steve's head knocks against the inside of the fridge before he registers the voice. Stepping away from the fridge, rubbing the sore spot on his head, Steve scans the kitchen's depths. He notices her silhouette amidst the shadows and the play of New York City light streaming in from the windows. The light brushes the edges of her feet, leaving the rest of her in darkness.

Natasha is sitting at the kitchen table and Steve wonders how long she has sat there.

Recalling her question, he says, "Couldn't sleep." He glances back at the stove's clock glowing numbers. "I figure it's too early for a run."

Natasha hums in acknowledgement.

Steve busies himself in the kitchen, pulling out the milk and the Life cinnamon cereal Tony likes to keep stocked in the pantry, even though the man doesn't prefer it.

"Clint told me you read our files." Natasha says.

"I did."

Steve turns to Natasha. He can see her better now. She has stepped out of her shadow's secret embrace, allowed the light to hit her eyes. Her hair is tied up in a loose bun and she is wearing a t-shirt with a stretched out collar that falls over a shoulder and a pair of loose fitting sweatpants. Steve has never seen her look so normal, so average. No one can see her dangerousness like this, he thinks, not unless you stared into her eyes.

"You shouldn't trust us," she says, walking towards the living room, shaking Steve outside his thoughts.

Steve abandons his cereal and moves to join her by the glass wall looking out towards the city. It hasn't ceased to amaze him, all the lights shinning in the night. The city has grown since the 40's, expanded in every direction. There are still new streets and blocks Steve has yet to set foot on. The thought still unsettles him.

"If this is about Department X," he begins, "and what the Red Room did—"

"It's not."

Steve turns to her, confused. Natasha's face is half shadowed, stray locks of hair falling about her face.

"Clint and I are survivors, Cap." She meets his eyes and in them he can see a blank neutrality that unsettles him, has the hair at the back of his neck standing at attention. This is the Black Widow, Steve thinks. Staring off into the city lights, she continues with a shake of her head, "At the end of the day, we survive. Whatever the cost."

Minutes pass in silence.

Steve thinks of all the soldiers who will never make it back home, imagines their family and friends grieving their deaths, struggling to accept the heavy knowledge their father/mother/brother/sister/son/daughter/friend will never come back. In his mind, he sees Peggy in the interview video from the Smithsonian, the crooked, broken smile she gave when the interviewer asked about Steve. He thinks of his own grief, of how he'll walk down Brooklyn streets and remember the time Bucky walked alongside him. That space is hollow now, empty, taken over by a ghost of Steve's own creation. Bucky will never see this, he thinks, this new New York laid at his feet. He will never gaze upon the city lights, will never explore the new streets.

"Then I'll trust in that," he says, and this time it's Natasha's turn to look at him with guarded bewilderment. "I'll trust you to survive, even if the rest of us don't." He meets her eyes. "Especially if the rest of us don't."

Natasha stares and, after a moment, nods.

"You're not what I expected, Rogers," she says, looking out at the city once more.

"Yeah," he says, following her gaze, his thoughts drifting to Erskine. "I'm starting to think I'm not what anyone expected."

Natasha shrugs. "Most people aren't."

Clint dreams of Phil again.

In his dream he is laying on the ground with Phil standing over him, clothed in one of his standard suits. There is blood seeping from the hole in his chest. There's a gun in his hand and he's pointing it at Clint.

"You killed me," Phil says, his eyes sweeping over Clint. "You killed us."

Clint looks past Phil to find every agent who died in the SHIELD attack. The attack he planned and carried out.

"It hurt, Clint," Phil breathes, clicking off the gun's safety. "When you let Loki put his spear through my chest. When you shot your arrows at them. It hurt."

Clint shakes his head. He remembers—knows in the very marrow of his bones—his arrows never met flesh. Not the flesh of a SHIELD agent. "I—I didn't," he struggles to say. There's a weight on his chest, an unbearable pressure restricting the breath of his lungs. His chest burns with each inhale.

"No?" Phil leans down, looks Clint over. "Well what about your explosions, huh?" He jerks his head over his shoulder. "They look well to you, Clint?"

Clint looks over Phil's shoulder and sees the crowd gathered there, the bloody clothes, the half blown off faces. It isn't just the SHIELD agents in the crowd anymore, though, it's everyone he's ever killed—everyone whose met the tips of his arrows and found themselves in the middle of his crosshairs. Their faces hover above him like avenging ghosts.

They grin down at him, their mouths bloody with missing teeth.

Cool metal presses against his cheek. It's Phil, caressing him with his gun.

"You know, I don't even have to shoot you," Phil murmurs. "All I have to do is wait and see."

The ghosts around him start to laugh, a loud, deafening cackle.

Phil holds his hand lightly over Clint's chest. He finally notices it, finally feels it, when he looks down at himself. The pool of red around him, the gaping hole in his chest, the size of a fist. Clint's breath stutters and he starts to breathe quicker, but that only makes the ache worse, makes his lungs tighten and burn.

The ghosts start to speak then, some shouting, some whispering. But it's all the same: Clint, Clint, Cliiiint.

Phil pushes his hand into the hole in his chest and Clint screams.

The voices rise, shouting his name like a sacrificial mantra.

Clint, Clint, Clint, Clint…

The ground beneath him rumbles with their chant.

He can feel it now, the warmth seeping out of him, the burning pain. He can feel Phil's fingers, playing with his innards, can see the blood smeared all the way up his wrist, a vibrant red against pale ghost skin. The air tightens around him, makes him want to curl into himself, but he can't move, not with Phil's hand pinning down. After a while, he starts to choke.

"CLINT."

Clint shoots up awake, grabs the out stretched hand in his field of vision, and twists the whole arm. Heaving to the side, he brings them both to the ground, manages to land on top. He pulls their hand behind their back, holding them down with a well placed knee.

"—Jesus fuck, this is the last time I wake your ass up, Barton."

On instinct, Clint twists the hand further, presses his knee down deeper. He wonders how this person managed to break into the Tower, how they got so close. Where was Natasha?

"Fuck, Clint, it's me, it's Tony—motherfuck. You fell asleep in the lab, you dipshit. Fucking, spies and their ridiculous reflexes. Swear to god—"

Clint blinks awake. "Tony?" He glances around the room, notices the familiar surroundings, then he looks down. "Shit."

He releases his grip on Tony as if electrocuted, pushes himself up to his feet, and puts a five foot distance between them. There's an overturned chair and a shattered mug laying on the floor. Shame prickles up Clint's neck, settling with an uncomfortable warmth.

"Shit—I'm sorry." Clint says, running a hand over his face. His heart is beating too fast and too hard. His hands are trembling. He clenches them together in an attempt to keep Tony from noticing.

"It's okay," Tony says, pushing himself up from the floor. Rubbing his shoulder, he says, "I shouldn't have shaken you awake like that. I know better"—he motions towards Clint—"I just didn't think you'd—"

"Tackle you to the floor and pin you?" Clint says. He moves to take a step toward Tony, but stops midway. "You all right?"

Tony looks at Clint and gives him a soft look. "I'm fine. Just a sore shoulder." He eyes the distance between them. "You don't have to stand all the way over there."

"Tony, I—"

"You're forgiven, Clint, though really there's nothing to forgive." He shrugs, then grimaces, rubbing his shoulder again. "Like I said—I should've known better. I'm sorry I woke you like that."

"No, it's…" But Clint doesn't know how to finish the sentence. He wants to say, I could have killed you, but the words won't come. This isn't the first time this has happened and it wont be the last. It's just that Natasha is usually the one to wake him, the one he tries to wrestle. She's the only who one who wins, too.

Walking towards Clint, Tony asks, "Bad dream?"

He looks at the floor, clears his throat. "Yeah, yeah, just—"

"Clint, it's fine. You don't have to talk about it with me. Trust me, I'm no stranger to attacking someone when—" Tony makes an expanse gesture toward Clint—"you know."

Clint doesn't know what to say, so he nods.

"Good," Tony says with a grin, "because I found something."

Clint's head snaps up. "What?"

Tony shuffles from foot to foot and the childlike gesture ratchets up the anxiety that's been pooling in Clint's belly since he woke up.

"Think I found a video of Damie's kidnapping," he says, reaching towards a monitor. "But it's not exactly what you'd call a good image, if one at all, really."

Clint strides towards Tony. "Show me."

Tony presses play.

There is a view of a street. Clint recognizes it as the one facing Damienne's apartment. The camera is stationary, facing the sidewalk and street of what Clint assumes is one of the small shops. The time stamp reads 7:45 AM. There is no sound.

Two minutes in, a few people pass by, mostly runners out for a morning jog. At the three minute mark a car parks off to the left side of the camera. Only the front hood is visible. Clint watches and sees a human shaped shadow exit the driver's side of car.

Seconds later, there's an off-screen struggle. Clint focuses on the lower left corner of the screen where multiple human shadows are intertwined, shifting every once in a while. From the number of flailing arms, he guesses there were two people in the car. The third must be Damienne. He thinks he sees the shadow of a knife.

The struggle is over in less than a minute.

By 7:49, the car is gone.

Professional, Clint thinks. He and Natasha couldn't have done it any better.

"You saw that, right? Tell me you saw that," Tony says. "In less than five minutes, they were gone."

"We're sure this was Damienne?"

Tony, who was pacing, now faces Clint.

"I asked Elie about Damie's work route. The time matches. And, come on, what would be the odds of there being another kidnapping on the day Damie goes missing? Right in front of her apartment? Coincidence? Yeah, I don't think so. Why does everyone always doubt me?" Tony pauses, mutters, "I'm getting off track here." He points to the paused video. "This is her, Clint. Someone took her, to get to me, and we didn't even know about it until we found her body." Tony laughs, then. "Wow. Not even three months on the job and already we're failing at this superhero gig." He shakes his head and swipes his eyes. "We're gonna get horrible Yelp reviews. Steve will be so disappointed."

"Tony," Clint says, and puts a hand on his shoulder. He squeezes. "We're going to get them."

"How?" Tony asks. "We don't even know who 'they' are, Clint."

This close, Clint can see the warm brown Tony's eyes are. There's an intensity in them that mesmerizes Clint, that reminds him this is a man who escaped a desert cave, brushed away the ashes, and reinvented himself.

Leaning in, Clint says, "We'll find them. And we'll figure this out."

Tony stares at Clint, his eyes somber. "You can't promise me that. New York is still rebuilding." He shakes his head. "I don't think we can handle another hit—not anytime soon—and come out on top."

Clint won't tell Tony that he is wrong, because he is not.

The New York skyline will never be the same, not after the Chitauri attack. Memorials can still be found around every street corner, pictures of dead loved ones illuminated in candlelight. Hot candle filled in the battle cracks as if it could fix the broken parts of the city, holding them together like glue. But even so, the streets were teeming with people. The hard sounds of reconstruction could be heard full well throughout the day, construction workers and volunteers alike working alongside each other. Even the Mayor had been spotted a number of times, a hard hat on his head, dirty white dress sleeves rolled up.

Just like after the tragedy of 9/11, the city banded together.

They only had to remain together for a while longer.

Damie was Elie's fifth girlfriend and seventh partner (there were two men before her). She was brilliant and beautiful. Somehow, the sun always managed to shine on her, making her eyes brighter and her skin golden. Elie always thought this hilarious, one of the great ironies of life, because Damie spent most of her time in her apartment coding with the shades drawn. Still, she was the brightest person in Elie's life.

They met when Elie was six and new at school. Elie hadn't lived with her parents; they had died when she was four. A plane crash. So it goes.

Instead, she lived with her grandmother, who was loving, patient, and caring. Yet, Elie spent most of her nights—and many a day—alone. Back then her grandmother had been a busy woman, the office manager of a small start up charity that required her constant care and supervision, often resulting in fifty hour work weeks or more.

But Damie was there on her first day of school. She sat beside Elie in class, leaned over, eyes round and bright as the sun, and said, "Wanna hear a secret?"And when Elie had timidly nodded, she said. "Some days I wish I weren't myself."

Back then, Elie had giggled. Back then, Damie had been a strange girl, with strange quirks. It wasn't until they grew older that Elie began to understand. Damie was like the puff of a first morning cigarette, wonderful, invigorating, yet brief and ephemeral. Damie liked puzzles so much she made herself into one. For half of middle school, all of high school, and part of college, Elie had seen Damie as a schizophrenic amalgamation of everyone and no one. She had even made it into a game in middle school. She would pick a busy spot in campus, find a place to sit, and watch.

She'd watch and then she'd borrow.

She'd borrow hand gestures, picking them up and discarding them with the flick of her wrist. She'd borrow handwriting fonts and fashion styles; she'd watch the way people sat, find which one she liked best, and mirrored it. Elie had watched her try on person suit after person suit, until she created a patchwork version of her own.

She had been Elie's first—and, for a while, only—friend. Even if Elie had spent most of their friendship and part of their relationship trying to puzzle her out.

When Damie was officially declared missing, Elie had felt lost, hollow, like someone had gutted her from the inside out without raising a hand, without leaving a mark, turning off the lights on their way out. She took a week off of work and wandered. After packing her car, she left the state behind and visited their old haunts. She went to their childhood hometown, visited friends she hadn't see nor thought of in years. She went to their college town and tracked down one of Damie's old girlfriends only to learn she hadn't seen her in almost a year. In a fit of desperation, Elie called hospitals, police departments, and morgues. She saw three Jane Does who matched Damie's description only to feel a short sick breath of relief when she realized they weren't her.

Weeks later, when Tony knocked on her door and said it was about Damie, something inside Elie knew. Her gut had churned and her eyes had burned with tears, but through her grief, deep down in a place her grandmother had always told her to acknowledge, she had felt it.

Relief.

She could stop looking, stop hoping, press play, and start picking up the hollow pieces of her life. After Tony and his friends left, Elie had let herself cry for an hour. Then she wiped her eyes, took a shower, made a cup of tea, opened all the windows of her apartment, picked up the phone, and dialed her lawyer. Elie was Damie's beneficiary, just like Damie had been Elie's.

Now, hours later, in the middle of the night, Elie finds herself in Damie's apartment.

The quiet is haunting.

Even when Elie had been in the apartment while Damie was out getting them breakfast in the mornings, the place had never been this quiet. There had always been the hum of machines and soft music playing from the stereo Damie never turned off, no matter how many times Elie told her she was wasting electricity and contributing to global warming. She remembers the way Damie would just roll her eyes and say, "Elie, love, live a little."

And when Elie would only cross her arms, Damie would lean in, plush lips brushing against Elie's own, and murmur, a faint smirk on her lips, "Everyone loves music, Eliska. Especially the animals."

But there was no music now, only a chocking, stifling silence.

For hours, Elie sorts through Damie's apartment, piling together circuit boards and notebooks. She draws the shades and opens all the windows before cleaning out the fridge. The bedroom she leaves for last. When she opens the door, she finds the sheets are still rumpled on both sides of the bed. The day before Damie was taken, Elie had slept over. They had bathed together before bed and Elie had woken to the soft sounds of Damie's jazz murmuring from the speakers. With a breath, she starts opening drawers. She makes three piles: what she'll keep, what she'll donate, and what she'll throw away.

When she opens one of the drawers by the bedside table she finds a lighter and a pack of cigarettes. Picking it up, she flicks it open, and finds half of them gone. She doesn't try to fight her smile or the tears that accompany it. Somewhere in her game, Damie had picked up the habit of smoking and failed to discard it. Last year, Elie had persuaded her to quit and, for the most part, she did. Though Elie had a sneaking suspicion Damie still sneaked a cigarette here and there.

Grabbing a small crystal bowl from the kitchen Elie walks to the big open window in the living room. She sits on the ledge, looks at the darkened storefronts below, taps out a cigarette, and lights it. Sometimes, Damie's acquired habits rubbed off on Elie.

A cool breeze blows in.

Elie grabs a nearby blanket and throws it over her shoulders. She glances up, counting the few scattered stars in the sky. It had always bothered her, how much light pollution the city had. When they were in college, Damie had surprised her during one of their Spring Breaks with a trip to the Rockies in Colorado to go stargazing. Elie had been so amazed then, looking up at all the stars, so old and far away in the very depths of the universe, some already long dead.

She had asked Damie then, "Do you believe in heaven?"

And Damie had said, plain and simple, "No."

Ever since she was a child, Elie's grandmother had told her about heaven, of how her parents were there now, watching over her. Back then, heaven had been a child's comfort. "What do you think happens when we die, then?"

Damie had shrugged. "Nothing, we just die."

"And you're just okay with that?"

"Gotta be, there's nothing else."

Elie had looked up again, at all those stars. She knew there were billions. How couldn't there be more, she had thought, how could death be the end when there's still so much more out there?

"You don't think you'll come back or anything?" Elie had asked.

"Wouldn't want to." Damie had turned to her then, a smile in her eyes. "At least not without you."

Elie smokes her cigarette down to the filter. Checking the time on her phone, she sees it's 4:20am. In a couple of hours the sun will rise. Tightening the blanket around herself, Elie taps out another cigarette, and lights it.

Tony and Clint share the video feed with the others in the morning when they gather for breakfast. Today was Steve's turn to cook and he had decided to prepare omelettes with everything in them, from spinach to tomatoes to corn. The result was the heaviest omelette Clint has ever eaten and a ransacked kitchen with cabinets open on all sides.

"Have you tried using the reflection from the other store windows to try and get a VIN number?" Bruce asks.

"Tried. I can barely see the bottom edge of the license plate as it is. Enhancing the image is useless," Tony says, stabbing his eggs.

Clint is leaning into his omelet. He is exhausted. After waking to finding himself pinning Tony down, he'd stayed awake the rest of the night, too weary to fall back asleep. He's caught Natasha staring at him throughout breakfast and has tried his hardest to avoid her gaze. The last thing he needs is her reporting to Fury he is unfit for duty. But he also knows he can't continue like this either.

"At least we have a timeline," Steve says.

"We're late," Natasha says. "Whatever they're up to, they've been planning it for months."

"Lady Natasha is right. It does not bode well for those in war to be late to battle," Thor says.

Tony frowns, putting down his fork. "This isn't a war, Thor."

"Is it not? I am afraid it has all the markings of it, my friend," Thor says. "Our enemy is unknown, their motives unclear, and they have already taken one of our own."

Clint forgets who Thor is, sometimes, forgets he is a centuries old god-prince who has lived through more wars and fought more battles than they—in all their combined years—have. There are times when Clint wants to ask Thor how old he is, if he was there when it all began, if the Aesir are as old as time itself—if not older.

"Thor's right," Steve says, and Clint agrees. "There's a war coming." He turns to Tony. "I know you said you weren't a soldier, but you've already fought one war already. We need to be ready to fight another one."

Tony stares at Steve, lips disappearing into a thin line. After a moment, he turns his face away. "I don't like this."

"As it should be. War is not to be liked, my friend," Thor says, his blue eyes solemn. "Only fools court war. And those who do court her, find she is naught but a fickle mistress. Selfish and cruel."

Clint watches Natasha and remembers the days they courted violence, how some days they slept in clothes spattered with blood, blades in hand. The nights they had woken up to shots on the door and knifes to their throats. Once, years ago, a woman he had slept with asked him, "Why do you do it? You have talent. Why don't you go straight?"

He had traced the knife wound on her bare breast, had circled the cigarette burn adorning her collarbone and said, "It's all I know how to do. People like me weren't meant for peace. It's not in our blood, not in our DNA. It unsettles us."

He wonders if that's still true. He remembers feeling unsettled a few weeks ago, an itch in his bones urging him to run. He remembers sparring with Natasha and needing to draw blood. Maybe, he thinks, it still is. As a mercenary, he had never stayed still for long. And habits are hard to break, after all. He wouldn't know what to do with peace, as foreign a concept as it is.

A plate clatters, shaking Clint out of his thoughts.

"We need to prepare," Natasha says. "We need to get ahead of them."

Natasha's eyes are narrowed in determination and her lips are pursed in focus. There's a quiet fire in her eyes Clint doubts will ever truly expire. The last time Clint saw her like this, they were planning to take down the Red Room. She'd stood over the blueprints of a Red Room base in Slovakia and explained to Clint the movements of every guard, the timing between shift changes, where all the entrances and exits were placed, and what places were the best to plant explosives in order to bring the whole building down. She'd been merciless—they'd been merciless.

"How?" Bruce asks. "We don't even know who they are."

"No," Tony says. "But we know Raza's involved and so's Red Room." He points at himself, "I know Raza"—then points at Natasha—"and you know Red Room."

"Their MOs will lead us to the who," Steve agrees, and rises from the table with his empty plate.

As if on cue, they all stand, gathering their plates and cups.

"Sir, you have a visitor," JARVIS announces, as they step into the kitchen.

"I'm not in," Tony says, rinsing his plate.

"I believe you may want to reconsider, Sir."

"JARVIS—"

"Tony, I swear to god if you don't let me in—I know you're in there."

Tony almost drops the plate in his hands. "Elie?"

He motions with a hand and a screen materializes next to him. It shows the camera feed to the tower's entrance. And there, facing the camera like she knows Tony is watching, stands Elie.

She looks regal, Clint thinks. "You better let her in, Tones."

Tony smirks. "Let her up, JARVIS."

They clean the kitchen in silence, though Clint can see Thor, Steve, and Bruce shooting furtive glances at Tony.

Elie steps into the kitchen and stops short. Her hair is wind blown and there are lines in her face Clint knew weren't there yesterday. For a moment, he's reminded of his mother. Tired, yet determined, still fierce. Elie, Clint realized, was the type of person who persevered, who survived the blows of the world, who got stronger because of them.

"Uh, I didn't know you had company," she says, fiddling with the bag strap slung across her chest. She gestures behind her, "I can wait, or come back later if—"

Tony smiles. "Nah, don't worry about it. These fools can get by without me, well"—he glances at them—"maybe for a few minutes, I swear they always bug me about one thing or another. If it's not weapons, it's asking me how to work the universal remote control or how to change the room temperature or—"

"Ignore him, please." Bruce chuckles and Tony scowls. Bruce says, "You must be Eliska. I'm Dr. Bruce Banner. I'm sorry for your loss."

Elie gives Bruce a soft smile; Clint notes it doesn't reach her eyes. "Elie, please, only my grandmother calls me Eliska. And thank you."

At this Steve steps forward, introducing himself and offering his own condolences, grief in his own eyes. Elie blushes when she shakes his hand, but her voice is steady—if tired—when she thanks him.

She must know who all of them are. After all, it's no secret they live with Tony. All the villains in the world know where to find them. Absently, Clint wonders if JARVIS filters their mail.

Natasha introduces herself and points over at Clint, introducing him as well. He and Natasha don't offer condolences.

"You were there yesterday," Elie says, glancing at both he and Natasha. She toys with her necklace. "Thank you, for telling me what happened."

Both he and Natasha nod.

"So, mi casa es su casa and all that wonderful jazz," Tony says. "What brings you here?"

Elie meets Tony's eyes and Clint sees it again, that flash of his mother he saw when she walked in. He thinks they even have the same blue eyes.

"I want to help. I need to know what happened to her," she says, squaring her shoulders. "I know her coding better than anyone here. I can help." She takes a step forward, straightening her spine in a move that has Clint thinking of his mother, ever so brave, facing down her husband. "Let me help."

Natasha attacks and Clint can only cede ground. They are sparring, basic hand-to-hand. Natasha kicks out again and this time he takes an extra step back than he needs to. Instead of blocking, he grabs hold of one foot and tugs. Natasha's stance falters. For a second, Clint thinks he's gained the advantage, but Natasha proves too fluid. She adds force to the foot trapped in his hands, forcing his hands to shift their hold. Using his hands as a brief foothold she manages to push herself forward and up, wrapping her thighs around his throat.

She brings them down with her momentum, but Clint grabs hold of her. He loosens her hold and drags her down across the mat, hands wrapped around ankles when she kicks out, clipping him in the face. There's blood in his eye.

"Get up. We're not done," she says. Her hair is falling out of her bun. A bruise blooming on the side of her jaw.

Clint pulls himself to his feet, a hand pressing against the wound on his head. They have been training going on two hours now. But Clint doesn't question it. Like Thor said, they are at war. And the last time they went up against the Red Room, they almost didn't come back. He wipes the blood off his face and hand. Bending his knees, he gets into stance.

For a moment, Natasha stares at him, eyes traveling from his feet up to his face. "Get your knife."

He doesn't hesitate to walk to his bag and pull out his combat knife. When he steps back onto the mat, Natasha is already there, flipping her knife in one hand.

They used to this a lot, before the Avengers, before SHIELD. Natasha has given him more knife scars than anyone else. It's a strange comfort.

Natasha darts forward, knife aimed high. Clint blocks, twists, and slices her cheek. Natasha might be better at hand-to-hand, but give Clint a knife and he'll get creative, find weak spots you didn't know were there.

It's a well-known dance between them that doesn't end until they've both tumbled down, their blades at each other's throats.

He forgets sometimes, how dangerous they are. SHIELD keeps them on a tight leash, letting them loose whenever they deem fit like pet beasts. There are times, few and far between, when Clint misses the days before SHIELD, when he adhered to no one's rules but his own. He wonders where he would be now if it weren't for SHIELD, if it weren't for the Avengers.

He and Natasha are breathing deeply, their faces so close their noses are brushing and their breaths are mingling. Natasha pushes off him and grins, feral and wild. He matches it, rising to her his feet.

A moment later, they sit opposite each other on the mat, drinking water and cooling off.

"Who told you about Winter?" Clint asks, capping his bottle.

Natasha stares at him. "Vasily told me, though he's going by Ilya now."

Clint knows of Ilya. He was a man in the Red Room with Natasha. Ilya was in charge of training girls eight to twelve and was Natasha's first brush with rebellion. Before he was a trainer, Ilya was a soldier, a spy, a sleeper agent. He was whatever the Red Room wanted him to be, but by the time Natasha met him, he was no more than a relic of a time gone past, a time before the Widows became the Soviet's hidden pride and joy.

Clint may know of Ilya, but the last time he'd seen him, Ilya had shot him. Then again, Natasha had planned to kill him. So it goes.

"Sure we can trust him?"

"Yes," Natasha says, wiping the blade of her knife.

"How can he be sure?" Clint asks.

"The idiot's been in Russia the past few weeks," she says. "He says he saw him. Across a rooftop when he was doing a job."

Ilya, Clint knows, makes a living out of trading in secrets. The man is a veritable fount of information, aware of all the players and pieces on any chess board. Whenever someone pulls a job, Ilya, even half way round the world, knows about it. But Ilya, Clint knows, doesn't take field jobs. At least, not anymore, not since the Red Room fell.

"What was Ilya doing on a rooftop? Thought he retired."

Natasha lays on her back and stretches her left leg up, straight in the air. Wrapping her fingers around her ankle, she pulls it close to her chest. Clint moves to mirror her.

"There's been some unrest in Kazan," she says, breathing out. "You know how Ilya gets about Kazan." She releases her leg, and moves to stretch out her right.

Clint pulls his right leg towards himself and relishes in the stretch. "Downright paranoid, the bastard."

Natasha lowers her leg. Still on her back, she pushes off from the ground, creating a bridge with her body. "The Middle East has become a blackhole of information. He's worried."

Clint mirrors Natasha's bridge, feeling his spine curve like the string of his bow. He thinks this is her (un)subtle attempt of letting him know they should pick up yoga. Through his eyes the gym is upside down, reminding Clint of his days in the circus, of the time he stole a contortionist's aerial silk, and ended up tangled up, fifty feet in the air, spinning upside down. He'd been so tangled his brother had to climb up and cut him down.

"If the Middle East is the problem, what's he doing in Kazan?"

"Apparently there were news some old friends were in the city," she says, lowering herself to the mat. "He thought it would be best to check it out."

"He thinks they're related?" When Clint brings himself back down to the mat, he has to suppress a groan. His muscles feel fluid, loose, and relaxed.

Natasha sits up, looking down at Clint. "Yes."

When Ilya gets a hunch, he's usually right. The man, Clint thinks, must have some sort of sixth sense. It's eerie, really, the man's uncanny ability to read the world around him, to understand the causes and effects of their lives.

"Has he said anything else?"

Natasha shakes her head. "He'll monitor the situation from his end."

Clint lays on the mat, staring at the ceiling beams, taking slow, deep breaths.

"You haven't slept in your own bed these past few nights," Natasha says.

"I haven't been sleeping in Tony's bed, if that's what you're asking," he says, shifting to his side to face her.

Natasha stares at him, unimpressed. He rolls his eyes. "We were working last night."

"What about the nights before then?"

Clint throws his hands up. "Come on, Nat. I was doing what you all told me to do. I kept Tony from drinking himself to death. There's nothing going on."

"But you wish there was."

Laying back down he stares at the ceiling beams again. There's a suspicion running through his mind that Tony put them there on purpose. For him. Because Tony knows he likes perching on high places where he can see the full world below and he knows he prefers local honey to the name brands and that he likes open spaces because too many walls make him feel stifled and trapped. Tony knows about Clint's nightmares, has had Clint's body pin him to the ground, and had been the one to apologize. He had been the one who drew him out of his self imposed isolation, who gave him sleeping pills when he realized Clint wasn't sleeping, all the while admitting his own nightmares.

Clint thinks about the calm he feels in Tony's workshop, despite all the chaos the area imbues. But Tony is getting over Pepper. And the man can have whoever he wants and deserves better than someone who has the blood of friends on his hands. Better than someone who used to be a killer for hire, and, in a sense, still is. Tony deserves someone without an unbalanced ledger written in red.

Clint gets up, grabbing his workout gear. "Doesn't matter."

"What do you mean someone saw you?" Rumlow asks, fists clenched.

They left Kandahar days ago and are now in Russia, much to Trickshot's discomfort. Compared to Kandahar, Kazan is a quiet city, but it has a seedy underbelly where the criminal underclass gathers round to gossip and trade. He isn't sure why they are there, doesn't know if it's for a who or a what, but he knows Kazan is a centralized hub of information. And in a country that used to house the largest spy network, information is a currency like no other.

Trickshot watches as Winter stills and his eyes go distant, unfocused. Winter does this, Trickshot knows, he stops and stares somewhere deep within, as if straining to see something trapped inside himself only he can see. Sometimes, when Trickshot looks at him, he thinks Winter himself is what's trapped inside his own body, that it's himself who he's looking for, but then the man will blink awareness back into his eyes and Trickshot will be left wondering.

"There was a man," Winter says. He sounds confused, unsure of who or what he saw. "Across the roof. He had a shot on me…but he didn't take it. I think he knew me." His eyes focus and he looks at Rumlow, as if waiting for the man to explain something to him.

"Oh, hell," Rumlow says and moves to stand beside the window of their hotel room. Pulling the shade aside, he examines the area outside.

"Anything?" Trickshot asks, muscles tensed as coiled springs. If it's one thing he's learned over the years, is when to retreat, to pull back and reassess.

"No," Rumlow murmurs, still looking outside. He pulls back and says, "We'll stay until we get what we need." He eyes Winter. "You're grounded until we're done. Protocol X. There are civilian clothes in the bottom of your bag."

Winter nods and goes to the room where the bags are laid out.

"What are we here for?" Trickshot asks Rumlow.

"Information," Rumlow says. He jerks his chin towards the room. "Now go and make sure Winter hid that arm of his."

Trickshot nods and walks into the room. Winter is wearing jeans and a black t-shirt, his wild hair framing his face. For the first time since meeting him, Winter looks like a civilian, if a battered one at that.

"Here," Trickshot says, rummaging through his own bag and pulling out a blue hoodie, "this will cover your arm."

Winter grabs the hoodie, but doesn't move to put it on. Instead, he stares at his metal arm, turning his hand before his eyes.

Trickshot has never before seen a prosthetic this advanced. He doubts it's one average doctors even know about.

"How'd you manage to get an arm like that, anyway?"

Winter's eyes go distant again, like the still blue waters of a pond whose surface is covered by mist. "I don't remember," he says.

"How can you not—"

"You two done in here?" Rumlow asks, leaning against the doorway, staring at Winter.

Trickshot backs away and nods to Rumlow at the door. He understands the hidden warning and he will heed it. But still, he wonders. Winter, Trickshot realizes, is what his mother would have called a troubled soul, lost and misdirected.

Glancing back, he notes the gun tucked in Rumlow's back. He doesn't think it has left its place since they were in Kandahar, possibly since before he ever arrived. He isn't sure what to make of it, considering the ever present knife in his own boot.

Elie wanders the workshop, bright eyes scanning every nook and cranny, hands hovering over strewn about tech as if unsure whether or not she can touch. Tony watches from the sidelines and doesn't say a word. He can't help but think of Damie, of the way she had stared the first time she saw the inside of his workshop, back when he still lived in Malibu. Back then, she had turned to him, her eyes bright, and said with a grin, "If there's a heaven, this is what mine is going to look like."

Back then, Tony had laughed, made some joke he can no longer remember.

Now, he just feels tired and sad. He feels as if he failed Damie somehow, and, when he really thinks about it, he supposes he has. Making Pepper CEO distanced him not only from the company, but its employees. Tony hadn't seen Damie is nearly a year, only a scant few times after her graduation and subsequent employment. But Elie is here now, and he won't let her down. That is a promise he can keep.

"Damie wrote this," he hears Elie murmur.

Tony walks up to her and finds she is holding one of his tablets, scrolling through a stream of code. He glances at the lines and, with a surprised jolt, remembers what they are. Resisting the urge to snatch the tablet from Elie's hands, he turns to her instead. "Are you sure?"

Elie nods. "Positive. Damie had a thing for signing whatever project she worked on." She zooms in on a line and tilts the tablet toward Tony. "See?"

And there it is, nestled in between a string of numbered code: !- -32643- -

He sinks down into the nearest chair. He should have known, but the truth is he hadn't put two and two together, had never thought Damie might have done it. Because Damie, for all her faults, was fundamentally good.

"Shit."

Elie turns around and looks at him, concern in her eyes. She glances at the tablet in her hand, looks back at him. He can see her putting together what he should have seen hours ago.

"Whoever took her," she says, taking a deep breath, "made her write this."

"Looks that way, yes."

"What else did they make her do?" she whispers.

Tony shakes his head. "I'm not sure. But that code was found in SHIELD's servers after they got hacked. Smart, but dumb if you ask me. No way that code would have gone unnoticed for long…" Tony stops, a thought occurring to him. Damie was resourceful, always had been. "Maybe that was the point."

"What?" Elie asks.

Tony stands, motioning to Elie to pass him the tablet. He finds Damie's signature and reads the line it is embedded in. If only they had seen all this sooner, maybe Damie would have still been alive.

"Tony?"

"Think about it," he says, drawing his thoughts to focus. "Damie gets taken and then, within the same month, SHIELD gets hacked. That's no coincidence. And this is Damie we're talking about. When has she ever rolled over for anybody? Really?"

Elie chuckles, "You have a point there. So they made her hack SHIELD. And she left an obvious backdoor for us to find."

"Christ, she even signed her name," Tony says, running a hand through his hair.

"Maybe that isn't all she left us," Elie says.

"What are you thinking?"

"Damie had this thing she'd do when we were younger. She'd kinda borrow from people, their gestures, their demeanor, just the way they did anything. Anyway, when she started coding, she did the same thing." Elie gestures at the table in his hands. "That's how she got into signing her code. She saw someone do it, liked it, then did it herself. Before she settled on the numbers, she used an internet name, before that it was a phrase. In high school, when she started hacking, I remember her telling me about this guy she met online. He hid code in his code."

"You think she did the same thing when she wrote this?"

"Like you said, Damie never rolled over for anybody. But she was good at making people think she had."