CW: graphic description of the events leading up to a violent rape, panic attack described, slut-shaming
It had been almost an hour since Natasha had vanished and Clint was beside himself with worry. The remaining members of the team had followed the tunnel as well to its exit point in a building three blocks away, but there was no indication of which direction she had gone from there.
"Romanoff, report." Coulson tried for the fifth time. It elicited no more response than the previous four attempts.
"Nat, please respond." Clint said, his voice tinged with just a little of the desperation he was feeling. Coulson picked up on it and threw a concerned glance in his direction.
"Keep looking." Coulson ordered his team, "There's got to be evidence of what direction she went around here somewhere."
"Something's wrong, Phil." Clint told his handler and friend while he searched, "I know she's not the best team player, but she should have told us something by now. The only way she wouldn't check in after this long is if she can't for some reason."
It was Clint who found the evidence they were looking for, and he almost missed it. As he was scouring an alley a few blocks away he spotted the barrel of a gun sticking out from under a dumpster. Upon investigation he discovered there were two guns that looked like they'd been kicked under there in a hurry. He pulled them out and his heart sank when he realized he was holding a pair of Glock 26s, Nat's preferred sidearm. Clint flipped one over and sighed when he spotted the SHIELD insignia stamped into the bottom of the magazine. Both pistols still had full magazines, so either Natasha hadn't had the chance to use them or had chosen not to for some reason. Neither possibility sat well with him.
"Coulson." he called over the comms, "I know which way she went. I just found her guns, both of them. They haven't been fired."
Before Coulson could respond, another voice cut in over their earpieces.
"Greetings, SHIELD agents." came a male voice with a thick Russian accent, "I must thank you."
"Thank us for what, exactly?" Coulson replied tersely.
"Why, for returning our property to us." the voice said in a mockingly cheerful tone.
Clint felt the cold ball of dread form in the pit of his stomach. The Red Room had taken Natasha, and he didn't like how the voice on the comms had emphasized the word 'property'. Before he could formulate a response they all heard a crunching sound accompanied by a squeal, then silence.
"We can track her." he said quickly.
"We could, if the tracker wasn't located in the earpiece he just destroyed." Coulson replied with a sigh.
Clint shook his head, "I embedded a tracker in the sole of her left boot."
"Why would you do that?" May asked him, "And does she know about it?"
"Because I was worried that this exact thing might happen someday." he told her bluntly, "I just didn't expect it to be so soon. And no, she doesn't know about it. I didn't tell her because she can't tell anyone it's there under duress if she doesn't know." May looked at him skeptically for a long moment until he sighed and admitted the other reason, "It's also so I can find her if she ever turns on us. I trust her, but it's almost a guarantee that there's still stuff buried in her head we don't know about."
"It was a good call, Clint." Coulson told him, "Give me the frequency and I'll pull it up."
Clint told him what it was and added, "We have to move fast, it only has a 200 mile radius."
When the tracker was pulled up they were disheartened to see that it was already nearly halfway to the edge of the transmission radius to the northeast.
Clint noted what the tracker was telling them, "She's moving at 90mph. That's too slow to be a plane, but it's heading in too straight a line to be a car. Probably a helicopter."
"I have a Quinjet en route to pick us up." Coulson told him, closing the phone he'd been talking on, "But it's an hour out. Radar picked up a helicopter at approximately the right heading and distance, no other aircraft nearby. It has to be them."
"We should take the car and start following." Clint suggested, "Reroute the Quinjet to pick us up on the move. I'm not leaving her in their hands one second longer than I have to."
"Good plan." Coulson agreed, "Let's go."
Clint insisted on driving, much to the chagrin of Coulson and May. He drove down the mountain roads as fast as he dared. The car they had was chosen to not attract attention and was not designed for performance, so its poor handling was frustrating Clint severely. When they'd been driving for fifty minutes, just barely keeping the tracking beacon in range, Coulson got word that the Quinjet was ready to collect them.
"Tell the pilot to land in the road a mile ahead and lower the ramp." Clint said without looking away from the road.
A minute later the Quinjet came into sight in the middle of the road with the open ramp facing them. Clint drove the car directly into the jet and slammed it into park with the emergency brake on. The pilot closed the ramp and took off immediately.
"Radar says the helicopter you're tracking landed at an abandoned airfield about an hour away." the pilot called back, "I have us heading there now."
"I'm authorizing you for supersonic flight." Coulson told the pilot seriously as he strapped in, "We need to be there yesterday."
Thirty-five minutes later they were landing at the indicated airfield. They saw a black helicopter parked on the tarmac near a dilapidated hangar. The tracking beacon had remained steady since it stopped here, but the fact that there was no sign of anyone around had Clint's stomach churning. When they entered the hangar, Clint felt even more sick when his sharp eyes spotted something deliberately placed in the center of the cavernous space. He got closer and his fear was confirmed when he saw that it was all of Natasha's clothing and equipment, placed in a neat pile. Including the boots he had hidden the tracker in.
Upon seeing it Coulson immediately pulled out his phone and called to get satellite footage of the area sent to his tablet. He nudged Clint when it appeared. They watched the video and their hopes fell when they saw six identical trucks pull out of the hangar and drive off in different directions.
"Unfortunately, now we have to wait." Coulson explained, "We're centrally located. As soon as we have any indication of which truck she's in we need to move immediately. If we follow one now we might have to cover twice the distance to reach her if we're wrong."
"This is on us, Phil." Clint said bleakly, "She wasn't ready, and we knew it. The only reason she was cleared for this op was because all the intel indicated it would be an easy in and out and make for a good field training mission. We're within a couple hundred miles of the last place they saw her, which wasn't that long ago. We practically gave her to them on a silver platter."
"I know." Coulson admitted with a frustrated sigh. He was rattled enough that it was actually showing a little, which was telling for the normally unflappable agent, "We'll get her back, Clint."
Natasha awakened with a start in a bare concrete room. She felt a familiar sting in her neck that she knew came from a needle being jabbed into her, likely a tranquilizer of some kind. The last thing she remembered was a man she didn't recognize stepping out in front of her in an alley and saying something she couldn't comprehend. She noticed how cold she was and looked down at herself to see that she was clad only in her underwear and none of her clothing or equipment was in sight. She felt a growing sense of dread, verging on panic, steal over her.
Wake up. Natasha thought desperately with her eyes screwed tightly shut, Please let me wake up. Please, don't let this be real.
When she opened her eyes her stomach twisted when it sank in that it wasn't a nightmare. She was really here. They had her again. The dread had quickly grown and Natasha could feel a panic attack lurking at the edges of her mind. She made an effort to quash it, she'd have to have her wits about her to get herself out of this.
Natasha had no idea how long she had been unconscious, or really what had even happened. Her best guess was that a Red Room operative had found her and spoke trigger words that SHIELD had missed in order to subdue her. She felt like an idiot for rushing off after Klaue without waiting for backup, and hoped the others had some idea where she'd been taken.
While she was pondering how she had come to be here, Natasha heard footsteps approaching from outside the door and steeled herself for whatever was going to happen next. The door opened and a dark-haired man with a cultured goatee she didn't recognize stepped through it followed by three others. The goateed man stepped aside and the other three took up positions in a semi-circle around her. Natasha stood up quickly to fight them off and the fourth man finally spoke, in Russian.
"Are we going to do this the easy way?" he asked with a cruel smile, "Or the hard way? Which is it going to be, my dearest Natalia?"
At the sound of her given name Natasha flinched violently as she always did and two of the three men took advantage of the opening to grab her arms with an iron grip. She tried to pull her arms free, but the men were smart and pulled her arms straight out to the side in either direction to eliminate any leverage she might have had. She didn't have the upper body strength to break their grip and they knew it. They twisted her arms so her elbows faced upward and pressed down on them with their free hands. Natasha's arms were starting to ache already and she knew it would only be minutes before it became excruciating. She tried to kick the kneecap of the man on her left, but her captor on the other side jerked her in that direction, causing her foot to swing wide. This was repeated several more times before the third man stepped around behind her and kicked the back of her legs to force her to her knees, keeping one foot pressed down on her calves to keep her there.
The man in charge stepped forward then and Natasha shook her head frantically in denial when she identified the object in his hands. A wave of panic washed over her and she tried to ignore it. She knew pleading with him would do no good, but she tried it anyway.
"No. Please, no." Natasha pled desperately. She felt the shame burning through her. He hadn't even said anything yet and she was already reduced to begging. She had thought herself stronger than this, but the object in his hands brought back memories she'd give anything to forget."I'll be compliant. Please don't put it on me. Please."
The man ignored her protests and fastened the muzzle around the lower half of her face. He stepped back and looked directly into her wide, fear-stricken eyes. He snorted in disgust when her panicked breathing quickened even more.
"Now I won't have to listen to you beg." he said cruelly, "Look how pathetic you are. Gone only four months and the Americans have made you soft and weak already. There will be no mercy for you. I'm sure you remember your training began with the muzzle. We're starting over from the beginning. And I assure you, this time when we are done the very concept of disobedience will be purged from your mind completely. I hope you enjoyed your little taste of freedom. You will never experience it again, and you won't even miss it."
This muzzle was different from the one that had been put on Natasha as a child. Instead of preventing her from opening her mouth at all, it was open at the bottom and there was a row of razor sharp prongs jabbing into the underside of her chin. She could open her mouth, but if she did the sharp protrusions would stab into her. This muzzle wasn't designed to prevent sound, it was designed to punish it. When she was inevitably pushed into screaming, the pain from the lacerations would add another layer to her torment.
"Don't count on your American comrades to save you." the man smirked, "If it's any consolation, they died well. Especially the Asian woman. The archer? He died screaming."
No! That's a lie! Natasha thought frantically, Clint will come for me. He WILL. Clint! Please find me!
Seeing the flicker of hope in her eyes, the cruel man doubled down, "No one is going to come for you, Natalia. No one cares about you and no one will ever love you, because you don't deserve it. They've all abandoned you, and you're going back where you belong. Traitor."
As he spoke Natasha started to feel the doubt she'd had back when Clint first found her creeping back in. She had believed at the time that the promise of freedom was just an elaborate lie concocted to punish her for fighting her conditioning. As the doubts grew stronger, she began to wonder if she had been right after all. But she knew Clint cared about her and wouldn't abandon her if he could help it. He would come for her, she had to believe that because it was all she had. It was the slimmest of hopes, but Natasha desperately clung to it like a lifeline. If he didn't come, then soon enough she wouldn't even remember that she had ever been a person.
"But before we can begin your retraining." Natasha's captor continued. She had missed part of what he had said while she was spiraling into despair, "You must be punished for running away, in every way we know you fear most."
She had been expecting as much, but that didn't make it any easier to hear. They had detailed files on every girl that had ever passed through their hands, each with an outline on how to quickly and brutally break them. All the techniques would work eventually, but they had learned which technique would break which girl the fastest. Natasha knew what her breaking point was as well as they did, and she could feel the panic getting stronger and starting to compress her chest with an iron band. After all, there was a reason they hadn't provided her with any clothes. It had been unbearable enough back when she believed they had every right to use her like that. Now that she fully understood how violated she had been she knew it would be so much worse. Some of the other girls hadn't minded the seduction training, but Natasha had always tried to do everything she could to have to practice it as little as possible.
Her captor chuckled softly as the tears started pooling and watched her with narrowed eyes. The instant the first one broke free and ran down her cheek he backhanded the left side of her face hard enough to make her ears ring. Natasha gasped involuntarily and abruptly clamped her mouth shut again when she felt the protrusions on the muzzle she wore draw blood under her chin.
"You're already half broken from the anticipation alone." he spat, "Worthless fucking whore. I think you like it."
Natasha willed herself not to cry. She knew it was a losing battle, but she fought it anyway. Every nightmare that had plagued her for the last four months, they were all coming true. For the first time since it had been broken she found herself wishing she could let herself fall into her conditioning and forget. But it was gone now, so that wasn't an option for her. She had clocked her captor's claim that her team was dead as a lie immediately. For the first time in her life she had hope that someone cared enough to help her. Clinging onto that hope was the only thing preventing her from breaking down completely.
"Bring her." the man in charge ordered the three completely silent men, "I believe the men have earned a reward."
Natasha was roughly hauled to her feet and unceremoniously dragged from the room. Her arms were being held at such an angle that it tilted her torso forward and made it impossible for her to gain any leverage or really even keep her balance. They dragged her to another room down the hall and she felt another surge of paralyzing fear course through her when she saw what was waiting for her. The memories were assaulting her now, her ability to compartmentalize had shattered when she realized what was going to happen to her. The only thing that filtered through that she could hold onto was the thought of one person. Natasha despised herself for becoming so weak in such a short amount of time that she was this dependent on anyone else but she had no alternative. She knew it was irrational but threw a silent plea into the void anyway, hoping beyond hope that he could somehow hear her.
Clint! Don't leave me here! Please, I NEED you! Please!
A group of more than a dozen men were gathered around a metal table with straps attached to it. The men holding her arms pulled her over to it and slammed her down face first hard enough to knock the wind out of her. It was done deliberately so she would be gasping for breath instead of fighting them. Natasha was secured to the table with her legs hanging off one side and she felt a rough hand pull at her underwear until it tore off. She couldn't help the involuntary whine that forced its way out of her throat and felt utterly pathetic for it. She squeezed her eyes shut as tightly as she could, trying and failing miserably to pretend this wasn't happening.
There was stillness for an agonizingly long moment before a man she couldn't see walked up behind her and slapped her ass with a derisive laugh. Natasha tried to prepare herself as best she could for what was to come, even though she knew it was useless. The Red Room knew very well what worked best on her. The combination of shame, sexual abuse, and utter helplessness had always broken her because it hit on her worst fears, and they fed on each other and grew until she was lost in a cycle of mindless terror. She heard the sound of a zipper and felt a rough boot kick her legs open wider. The panic attack she had been trying to stave off since awakening would not be denied any longer and had her fully in its grip. Her terror was suddenly tinged with a burning shame when she felt the urine running down her leg. Sometime in the last couple minutes she had lost bladder control and hadn't even noticed. Natasha was already hyperventilating and shaking uncontrollably when she heard the voice of the Red Room agent again. He removed the muzzle before grabbing a handful of her hair to yank her head up and force her to look at him.
"You deserve all of this and more." he said while staring into Natasha's eyes, before turning to the men arrayed around the table, "Treat her like the worthless whore she knows she is. And make it hurt, I want her screaming until she can't."
It didn't take her long to comply with his order.
It had taken nearly nine hours to pinpoint where Natasha had been taken. Clint's patience had eroded after the first. It was reluctantly decided that they would leave the Quinjet at the airfield to serve as their extraction plan. Its stealth mode only worked on radar, they would see it coming. May had taken it upon herself to disable the abandoned helicopter's engine so they couldn't be followed after they got their missing teammate out.
Clint had found a dirtbike stashed in a supply shed and readied it so he could go the instant he had a location. When it was confirmed via satellite footage he stalked over to May and asked her if he could borrow the sword she had brought. May was a little nonplussed when Coulson ordered her to hand it over with a look of sad resignation on his face. After Clint had raced off they started walking towards the car they had wisely brought with them.
"Do you want the good news first?" Coulson asked May with forced casualness, "Or the bad news?"
"There's good news?" May shot back incredulously.
"Yes." Coulson confirmed simply, "The good news is those bastards have no idea what's coming for them."
"And the bad news?" she asked him after that had a chance to sink in. She didn't miss the fact that Coulson had very deliberately said what instead of who, and that disturbed her a little. She didn't know Barton all that well and was starting to suspect that Coulson knew something about him that wasn't in his file.
"Barton is opening the door to who he used to be." he told her, "And if he goes too far he might not come back from it. There's a part of him that he won't admit exists. It's a small part that he keeps locked away because it scares the hell out of him. That part? It enjoys the killing. It's going to get bloody."
Clint's words before he'd left still echoed in Coulson's head. They were delivered in a monotone as Clint climbed on the bike. He'd refused to look back at them when he spoke.
"I'm not Hawkeye today, Phil. You know the name to use."
Coulson did know it. He hated that it was necessary, but accepted it. He was reluctant to say it out loud, but it bounced around in his mind and made him a little uneasy.
Ronin.
A/N: Okay, I figure there's probably a little anger that I had Nat break that quickly, so I think an explanation is in order. Bear with me here.
If anyone else had captured Natasha she wouldn't have broken at all. But a Red Room operative knows exactly how to get her to crack because they planted triggers in her for exactly that purpose. They have files on each individual widow detailing which methods of torture work best on each girl. The guy used the muzzle immediately because Natasha's file indicates she is prone to panic attacks when one is put on her and it would put her in a mental state that makes other methods more effective. It was basically a worst-case scenario for her. She was captured by someone who knew exactly what to do in order to manipulate her reactions and push her into breaking. Any other widow would have broken just as fast, but the methods would vary.
This is, of course, all my own headcanon. Every writer has different ideas of what the Red Room was like. This is my take on it.
And yeah, SHIELD screwed up by sending Natasha into the field too soon, but that's also partly on her. She convinced them she was ready when at least Clint should have known better. But we all know she's a gifted liar and can convince almost anyone of damn near anything.
At the end of it I decided to explore a theory I have about what happens to Clint in Endgame: Ronin has always been a part of him, he just represses it most of the time. Moments of extreme stress can bring it to the surface. If it's any consolation, the people who took Nat are about to have a VERY bad day. They gave Clint a really good reason to let the killer inside him off the chain, and they aren't going to have a lot of time to spend regretting that.