A/N: Yes. I know. It's been forever and a day. Probably half of you have forgotten this story exists. I have been so caught up in work, in adult stuff, in my own Real Life books and in collaborating with other writers in like four different universes... that I have neglected my own stuff here. And I'm not going to promise that I'll update often. But I will try to do it more than I have been ;)

Mission Six: Sometimes, You Don't Take the Shot

It wasn't like he had been expecting an attack out in the open, but Clint had expected … well, something.

He'd even stayed in the hospital far longer than he was usually comfortable with. Just to make sure at least some people were talking about the American staying at the hospital. The annoying American who didn't like taking his medicine and who hit on the nurses. Yep, Clint made sure he was memorable.

But there wasn't even so much as a nibble on his bait, and Clint was starting to wonder if maybe he should be offended. He should probably be offended, right?

He checked out of the hospital with a sigh and a glare as he tried to plan out his next move. He'd need to find another way besides making himself a target to track down an elusive assassin, and that meant he'd need to do some serious surveillance.

And that was how he found himself where he was now, perched on the roof of his third building in as many days.

Fury had intelligence pointing to a few locations, so Clint had to give him credit for narrowing it down. Still, it wasn't much information to go on.

The air was cold and biting on the tips of his ears, and Clint allowed himself a slight movement to fix the earmuffs back over them. He'd bought a few more winter belongings after he left the hospital, since his last experience with SHIELD's winter outfitting had been sadly lacking. Sure, he had the fluffy socks, but the rest?

Well, Russia was cold; he would leave it at that.

Clint wasn't so sure about this particular stakeout. The intel on the place was decades old, back when SHIELD wasn't even SHIELD yet, but Fury must have had a reason for including it in the briefing materials, and while Clint was annoyed by Fury, he had to admit that the man usually had a good reason for his actions.

Problem was he wasn't all that good at sharing with the rest of the class, which left Clint in the unenviable position of winging it.

It was a wonder Clint was even still alive, to be honest. Probably had something to do with the fact that his whole life could basically be summed up as "winging it."

But he was trying to be a good agent, trying to make good on his second chance, so he settled down on the rooftop and had been sitting there for the last twelve hours.

He'd started early, before the sun was even up, and the only times he'd moved had been to eat a protein bar when he was worried his stomach would be too loud and give him away—and to adjust his earmuffs.

And still there was nothing. Just like there had been nothing yesterday, and the day before that.

Clint was patient, though—at least in this case. This was one of those things that was actually worth being patient for, and so he was going to stick it out in the freezing cold for however long it took.

The place seemed abandoned, and Clint could sort of see why Fury might be interested in it. It just sort of screamed "front." Clint had been on both sides of the law, and there was just something irresistible about a nice abandoned place. It was already trashed, so when the cops came, you had good terrain to hide. Plus abandoned places tended to be in areas that, well, weren't given all that much attention. After all, there was a reason they were abandoned.

Clint remembered one place with a smile—an abandoned old video store. The neighborhood had been booming, and the place had gone up with high hopes, but a tornado later and the whole place was rundown. Hadn't even put up all the movies on the shelves before they had to pack up. It was roomy and insulated, and he and Barney had holed up there one night after they ran away.

Clint allowed his mind to drift but didn't allow his gaze to drift as well, and he was glad for the training that had been half-beaten into him when he saw just the slightest flicker of movement.

And a flash of red.

It wasn't much, but Clint could feel his lips curling up into a smile just the same. This was something to work with, at least.

He reached carefully for an arrow from his quiver, his gaze tracking the area where he had seen the flash of red, watching, waiting.

There.

He saw it again, and he fired.

When his arrow hit home, he heard the shout of both surprise and pain echoing over the streets, though she had managed to stumble back away from his line of sight. He got up from his perch and took off at a full run, his gaze raking over the area until he spotted her again—another flash of red hair, moving much slower than before with his arrow sticking out of her chest. He could hear a rattling in her breath as she ran, and he couldn't help but be impressed with the fact that she was even still on her feet, much less running.

He fitted another arrow after he made the leap onto the next building, but just before he would have let it fly, the woman looked up at him, and for the first time, he got a good look at her.

She was young.

That was the first thought running through his head even as he was aware of the fact that she had her gun up, and he flung himself sideways to avoid getting a bullet in the heart. He pressed himself flat on the roof as the shots hit the bricks over his head, his eyes wide as he just… could hardly believe it.

She was younger than he was. Maybe twenty, if that.

Of course, it wasn't like he didn't know about young assassins. Heck, he used to be one. Still was, really, only this time he was technically on the side of the angels. But… the file on this woman went back a while. And he didn't like to think about how young she must have been for half this crap.

When the hail of gunfire stopped—probably because she'd realized that she wasn't going to hit him—he poked his head back up just in time to see her dash around a corner, and he picked up the pace to catch up with her.

He took the corner at an angle that he was pretty sure would keep him in her blind spot, but just as he rounded it, the brick exploded right beside him, and he gasped in pain when he realized that she'd managed to hit him in the leg.

Now they were both injured. That was no good.

He nocked another arrow and let it fly before she could shoot at him again, and he hit her again, right at the joint of the shoulder so that it was impossible for her to raise that arm and keep shooting at him. She glared up at him with more venom than she should have been able to with two of his arrows in her as she just switched hands.

Dummy, he thought to himself. Take the kill shot. What're you waiting for?

It was the age. He knew that was what was bothering him. She looked like she was hardly twenty, but her file had at least a decade in it, and… And nobody had any right to use kids. He didn't care how screwed up they were—they were kids.

He fitted a tranq arrow next, not sure when he had decided that he'd be taking her in instead of killing her, though he had a feeling that he'd already made the decision a while ago and his brain was just now catching up to the rest of him.

He was just lining up a shot when he caught a flash of something metal, and he only just managed to dodge out of the way of the knife that she'd thrown to keep it from hitting him dead in the forehead, but it did leave a nice, long, painful cut in his left ear where it had passed him.

He cried out and fired the tranq, but she ducked just underneath it and sprang down the street, still somehow on her feet even though she was leaving a serious blood trail. She was starting to slow down a bit, but then, so was he, considering the state of his left leg.

He gritted his teeth and let out a little noise of frustration before he just started to push, ignoring the throbbing in his leg that he could get looked at later. This was just like training with Duquesne—just keep going and don't fall behind or else.

It wasn't hard to follow the blood trail from there, and he fitted two tranqs to his bow, peering around the corner and getting a faceful of bricks and debris for his trouble.

But—that was all he needed. Just a second, to get her position. He was already aiming when he peeked around the corner again, and even though she shot at him again, he'd already released both arrows. About the time the shots hit his SHIELD vest, she had two tranq arrows in the chest, and she was finally, finally, slowing down.

She stumbled to her knees, the fight still clearly in her eyes as she gripped the handle of a knife with her one good hand, her teeth gritted even as she watched him fit another arrow. He could hardly believe that she was still up, with two arrows in her like that, but there she was, fighting back the fact that her eyelids were drooping apparently against her will, her teeth bared—she looked like a cornered animal, desperate and angry.

And then, for just a second, as he raised his bow to point at her in case she tried anything, he saw it.

It was the most fleeting of expressions, and if he had been anyone else, he would have thought that he imagined it. But he traded on his eyesight, on his ability to notice everything, and if he doubted his own observations, he wouldn't last very long in the business, would he?

So he knew what he'd seen. He knew that, in that moment, there was a look of pure relief. And then she finally succumbed to the tranquilizer, falling from her knees to the ground as the knife clattered out from under her.

He watched her warily for a good long moment. After all, he didn't want to let his guard down falling for a fake-out. That would be the most rookie mistake of all time. But when she didn't move, when he breathing seemed to even out as it really did look like she was totally unconscious, he let out his breath. He grabbed his own knife from his boot and kept it ready in case she did move, but still, there was no sign of life.

He prodded her gently with the toe of his boot, and when she still didn't move, that decided it for him, and he let out a long sigh and leaned against the wall, sliding down to sit for a moment as his leg was killing him.

She was pretty well out, but he still made it a point to pull her hands behind her back and cuff her before he checked her over for any more hidden weapons—and really wasn't all that surprised when he found about half a dozen knives and two hidden pistols.

Once he was reasonably sure that he had searched her thoroughly enough that she wasn't going to wake up and stab him in the back, he turned his attention to his throbbing leg to get that under control as well—though, he realized, he would need to do something about the bleeding woman next to him, too.

It only took him a few minutes to wrap both himself and the redhead—that was the one nice thing about being as much of a solo agent as he was: he knew how to take care of himself no problem. In fact, it was more a matter of running out of medical supplies than not knowing how to use them, more often than not, anyway.

Finally, he was done, and he leaned back against the brick wall of the building behind him as he looked her over. "I am in so much trouble," he told the unconscious woman, shaking his head. "Barton, you dummy."

What was he supposed to do now?

"Hey, Fury," Clint said aloud, just to test out the report and see just how crazy he sounded giving it. "So, I know I asked to take this girl out, but it turns out I didn't. Actually, I decided to take her home with me."

Yes, it definitely sounded crazy.

He sighed again before he pushed himself to his feet. He was hurt, and he was bleeding—the bandages weren't going to do much good for much longer—and she was hurt and bleeding too. At the very least, he needed to get them both back to his SHIELD jet, and he could figure out the rest of it from there.

Gently, he picked up the redheaded assassin and rearranged her in his arms so that she was properly comfortable, though he wasn't entirely sure why he did that, if he was being honest. It just seemed like something he should do, seeing as he wasn't going to kill her.

Weird how not killing someone suddenly made him a gentleman.

The tranquilizing arrows were supposed to last for a good long time, but she must have had an immunity to drugs, because he was about ten blocks from where he'd parked the jet when she started to stir, and he had to quickly rearrange her in his arms to make a grab for another tranq. In the time it took him to grab the next arrow, she had woken up enough to start trying to make things difficult for him, wriggling around enough that she was able to get a knee in his gut, and he nearly dropped her.

Another knee—and this time he did drop her.

She hit the ground and rolled, her teeth gritted. He knew she had to be hurting, because he'd stuck her several times, and she really should see someone for that bleeding the way she was spreading it along the dirty ground—but she was also pretty darn determined to get away from him.

He raised both eyebrows when she popped back up out of her roll and he saw that she had managed to slip out of her handcuffs—at least one wrist, anyway. She had a knife, and he had no idea how he'd managed to miss that when he checked her over for weapons, but there it was in her hand.

Their gazes met for a moment, and she narrowed her eyes and muttered something in Russian that was not "another beer, please," so he really didn't know what it was.

"Look, I'm not trying to kill you. Clearly. Just—" Clint swore loudly as the knife whizzed past him and took a fair bit out of his cheek as it did so, though it wasn't right in the middle of his face the way she'd aimed it.

In that small moment of distraction, the redhead managed to get one ankle out of the restraints as well and staggered to her feet, taking off at a run that had Clint frowning to himself as he rushed after her, stringing his last two tranquilizers.

"How the heck..." he muttered under his breath, coming up short when he spotted the flicker of movement just in time to bend his whole body backwards to avoid the rock she had in her hands as she tried very hard to bash his head in when he came around the corner.

"Stop trying to kill me!" he shouted despite himself, which only got him a cold sort of chuckle. "I'm serious!"

"That is not how this game is played," came the response. He could hear the pain in her voice and knew that he'd tagged her pretty badly, and she was slurring her words a bit, so the tranqs were probably still working on her. But the fact that she was responding to him was a good sign—if she had a clear line of sight to a getaway, she wouldn't do that.

Unless she was doing that to throw him off so she could kill him. Which, considering their past track record, was actually entirely possible, if he was being honest.

"Yeah, well, look, I'm not exactly up on all the rules myself," Clint called out, looking for any sign of movement so he could pin down where she was… There. It was just a flash of shadow, but he took the shot, clean or not, and he had to grin to himself when he heard the satisfying cry of surprise that meant he'd hit home.

He rushed toward the shot and nearly took a boot to the face for his efforts before he jammed the second tranq into her side, and she finally slowed down and crumpled again.

"I'm gonna need about fifty of these just to get home," Clint muttered as he scooped her up and quickly jogged the last few blocks to the jet, making sure to cuff her hands and feet to the wall of the brig facilities. He was glad the jet Fury had earmarked for him even had brig facilities, if he was honest.

He wondered, briefly, if Fury had known he would need brig facilities. That guy knew everything.

He just settled in at the controls with a bit of a sigh as he heard her stirring even as he was just running through his pre-flight. By the time he took off, she was full-on trying to escape. He could hear the sounds even from the cockpit, and he couldn't help but wonder if even the genius SHIELD designers could hold up against the pure fury she seemed to be putting into trying to escape.

"Mind not crashing the plane?" he called back to her, but the response was just a whole string of angry Russian that Clint was pretty sure didn't translate well.

"Yeah, well, same to you," he said, shaking his head as he just didn't really have a response to that. Instead, he just focused on pushing the limits of the SHIELD jet and making sure they got back in one piece, radioing ahead to SHIELD that he had a prisoner once he was far enough out from Russian airspace that he was reasonably sure whoever he'd just snatched this girl from wouldn't hear.

Because he was sure he'd snatched her from someone. No one this young with that long of a rap sheet got into the business on their own, not with how good she was. Someone had trained her, made her into a weapon.

And there was the fact that she'd looked so relieved when he was about to shoot her. He knew that feeling. That relief that came with escape, with no longer being tied down. He'd used to think that way, used to think that the only way he was ever going to get out of the cycle he'd fallen into was if someone else did it for him, if he didn't get the courage up to end it himself.

That wasn't a look you got when you were the one calling the shots. That was a look that meant you were trapped.

Clint wasn't ever going to kill anyone with that look on. Ever. Not when someone else had decided not to kill him for that very reason.

So instead, he just leaned back and started up some quiet music in an attempt to get his prisoner to calm down, though it didn't seem to do much except to get her to at least stop yelling in Russian at him.

He let out a sigh. "This is going to be a long trip," he muttered to himself.

…

By the time Clint set the jet down in the hangar, word had gotten back to the higher-ups in SHIELD that Clint was bringing a prisoner—instead of coming back alone after killing her like he was supposed to. He already had the hangar control in his ear giving him the chewing out of his life for his decision-making and for forcing an entire squad of SHIELD agents to come out to secure the prisoner.

Clint looked over his shoulder at the woman resting almost peacefully in his hold. She'd stopped yelling and trying to break free long ago, and now she was just… staring at him.

"I really don't think she's going to be a problem," Clint said.

Hill's voice cut across the comms. Great—she was there too. "Are you insane? Barton, you were order-"

Clint flipped off the mic and let Hill yell at him for a while until she figured out that the mic was off. He knew from experience that it wouldn't take her long, and he'd get chewed out for it later, but he wasn't in the mood for listening to a lecture at the moment. He wasn't going to let anyone yell at him for refusing to kill someone that he was pretty darn sure had no say in her job.

When he figured Hill had been yelling for a reasonably long amount of time—and that she had figured out the mic trick—he finally switched it back on with a cheerful, "So, how many guys should I expect?"

"Barton…"

"Yes, ma'am, I know," he said with a nod as he finished with the landing procedures. He was just getting set to lower the ramp to let the big bad escort in when he heard a quiet chuckle from back where he was holding his prisoner.

He got up from the cockpit and slipped back to stand in front of her cell, his arms crossed and his head tipped to the side as she just continued to laugh quietly to herself. He couldn't help smiling—he liked getting people to laugh—but he had to ask: "What's so funny?"

"You are," she said in a voice heavy with a Russian accent, though before he could get too excited about that, she added, "SHIELD is. You think you are so very intimidating?" She laughed again, no trace of amusement in her features.

"Ah, no, not really," Clint said honestly. "Not me, anyway."

She turned a penetrating gaze his way, deep green eyes drinking in everything about him from the way that he stood to the way one of his boots was coming untied. He recognized the look; he'd used it himself sizing up targets, locations—it meant she knew what she was looking for, and she knew how to use it to her advantage.

She made a little derisive noise in the back of her throat as she pursed her lips together and shook her head. "No," she said slowly. "No, you are not."

He couldn't help smirking at her. "Thanks for the pep talk."

The slightest smile creased just the corner of her mouth, though it only lasted for a second before she schooled the expression back into place, and he shrugged it off, heading to the opposite wall to work the controls to lower the ramp for the escort team.

He stepped out of their way as about five huge guys came walking on like they were the heroes of the story, all swagger and a monosyllabic vocabulary that even Clint's grade-school education knocked out of the park. But for as lunkheaded as they were, they weren't totally stupid, and they hit Clint's prisoner with heavy sedation as soon as the doors were open, carrying her out while she was completely unconscious and unlikely to offer the least bit of resistance.

Good thing, too, because Clint could see now that she had slipped one hand out of the cuffs. Again. And it looked like she had managed to get her hands on a blade—he could see the glint of light off of it as it lay on the floor of her cell, though where she would have kept it or what she could have made it out of was beyond him.

Clint was perfectly content to just let the escort pass him by, but that apparently wasn't in the cards for him, because two of the big guys stayed on the plane, one of them by the cockpit as the other put a heavy hand on Clint's shoulder that made Clint's heart drop into his stomach.

He should have known. He'd gotten comfortable in SHIELD, but he should have known better than to think they trusted him with anything like making his own decisions. He was a screw-up and a criminal. Like they'd ever let him pull anything like this without consequences.

"Come on, guys, is this really necessary?" he asked as the big guy behind him slapped on the cuffs, but he didn't expect a response. The big escort teams got the job because they didn't listen to excuses, pleading, or anything else, for that matter. They were basically just big bulldozers, and Clint had seen them pick up people twice his size and carry them like sacks of potatoes to wherever they were supposed to be.

He wasn't going to fight these guys—not yet anyway. First, he knew he was in for a long grilling session with someone in charge. Then he'd decide if SHIELD was worth sticking around for. If they still wanted to lock him up for his decision, if they thought killing someone who had clearly been used was good policy, than screw them. He didn't want anything to do with them.

The whole point of working with SHIELD was to turn his life around, after all.

The pair of escorts had come prepared to fight with Clint—his reputation probably preceded him for being tough to deal with (thanks, Hill)—so both of them looked surprised when he didn't do much other than to protest the cuffs. Clint could see it in the way their shoulders were tensed and the way they stayed tensed, even as the way they were holding themselves shifted. Indecision. It was written all over them.

There was one huge mitt on each of Clint's shoulders as the two of them led him down the hallway in the opposite direction they had taken the redheaded assassin, and they wound up in Hill's office as Clint's new 'friends' all but shoved him into a seat in front of her desk. They stuck around, too, because even with his hands behind his back, Clint was a threat, and Hill was recently kicked up to assistant director. They had to play it ridiculously safe with her.

But when Hill did arrive, she waved off the clunky bodyguards. She knew and Clint knew that she wasn't intimidate by a handcuffed Hawkeye that hadn't put up more than a few words of resistance all the way down here. Though… he had to wonder if she would be a little more cautious if he had kicked up a racket. He liked to think he was at least a little dangerous. Rated a little wariness, even this far into his stint with SHIELD.

Clint's newfound muscled friends paused, but when it was clear that Hill really did want them gone, they left and all but slammed the door behind them, leaving Hill and Clint alone as she frowned at him over her hands folded in front of her for a moment. It looked like she was just trying to decide where to start with him and his many, many transgressions.

So, he'd beat her to the punch.

"I wasn't gonna shoot a kid," Clint said before she could get started. Had he been able to move his arms properly, they would have been crossed to accentuate the point. "And that's what she is. Can't be more than twenty, Hill. You've seen her file—someone was sending a kid to kill people."

Hill's frown deepened, but her expression didn't give much away as she just took in a breath through her nose and mouth. "Barton—"

"It was the right call, and you know it. I'd do it again in a heartbeat. Nobody should be happy about getting shot. That's no way to get out of this life," Clint pressed right on.

"Barton—"

"And another thing," Clint continued. "If you try and tell me you're planning on executing her anyway after all the work I put in, I will stop you."

"Clint."

That finally got him to look up at her, and when he did, he almost thought she was smirking.

She shook her head and took in a deep breath. "The reasons you're outlining are perfectly understandable. Possibly even legitimate. But we just want to make sure you made the final decision yourself."

He blinked at her as the understanding hit him. "You think I was compromised."

"I think you were unconscious and woke up tied to a radiator with no idea what happened to you in between, according to your last report from Russia," Hill countered. "I think you went on this mission with a grudge to settle and came back ready to defend a woman who put you in the hospital and on multiple occasions tried to kill you." She held his gaze for a long moment before she let out a sigh. "I'm just saying—it's a little unbelievable."

He fixed her with a frown. "C'mon. You really think—"

"I really think it's worth checking to be sure," she told him, though at least she did have the decency to look apologetic about it. "It's just a precaution, Clint."

Clint just fixed her with a glare for a good, long time. "I'm telling you. Someone else is pushing that kid's buttons. And if that's the case, she's not the only one," he said through his teeth, the very idea of it rolling off his tongue like poison. "You should be going after them, not playing twenty questions with me."

"We're going to check into it," she promised him.

He frowned and leaned back into the chair, trying to get a little more comfortable, shifting his shoulders in time with Hill's shifting paperwork—though before she could really get started on anything, the door opened once more.

There really was no other person it could be; no one else could possibly just stroll into Hill's office without her express permission, and Hill was already getting to her feet with a deep glare as Fury came sweeping in. "We haven't gotten—"

But Fury just waved her off and looked Clint's way, and Clint could feel his spin straightening and shoulders leveling under the one-eyed stare. There was something about Fury that lent him authority; when Clint had first met him, it had put him off. He was the kind of guy that would have sent Clint and his old crew scattering to avoid being caught, so it took a while for Clint to readjust his response from 'scatter' to 'hold the gaze and try not to look guilty, you haven't done anything, Barton.'

So that's what he was doing now, holding Fury's gaze, only this time, it had a lot more fire to it when he knew that he was right.

"You knew," he said Fury's way as soon as the door was shut. "That's why you sent me in. You knew what was going on."

Fury watched Clint for a moment before he nodded, once, almost imperceptibly. "I had my suspicions."

"She's not a free agent, Fury," Clint said.

"No."

"Do you know who's pulling her strings?"

"That's a little above your head, don't you think, Barton?" he asked with one eyebrow raised, though if Clint hadn't known any better, he could have sworn the director of SHIELD was threatening to break into an honest-to-goodness smirk.

"Sir," he said, leaning forward with his jaw set, "you sent me in to kill a kid who's probably been stuck working for whoever this is since before I even knew how to string an arrow. I think I deserve an answer—and if you don't give it to me, you know I'll go looking anyway."

Fury watched him for a moment, and when Clint held his gaze, he just nodded once. "All I can tell you," Fury said slowly, "is that you're not wrong. We'll want to question her to be sure, but if she's part of the organization I think she is—these people have a long, long history of screwing with kids."

"Then, sir," Clint said, slowly and evenly, "what the heck're you waiting for? Let me loose; let's go wreck their days."

Fury's gaze never left Clint, and for a while, it seemed like the director wasn't going to answer him. Then, with a subdued little smirk, Fury said, "That's the plan."