Nomad (Steve Rogers)

15

The latest massacre is enough to summon both Steve and Nat to the place where Clint and I are currently located. We keep to the shadows as we watch them search the warehouse that has long since had a good clean up, but blood stains still remain. Our mark to let everyone know not to go up against us.

Because they will always lose.

It's a messy job if there's more than one, but someone's got to do it.

"You wanna make ourselves known?" Clint looks to me and asks quietly from behind his mask.

My eyes look across at him and I slowly shake my head. "There is nothing they can say or do to make us go back with them. Technically you – they don't know I'm here."

"Good call." Clint mutters, "Anyway we have that job in Tokyo to handle...gonna be just as messy."

"How many we talking?"

"12, maybe 15 if they bring in the big guns. Perhaps twenty at a stretch." 

"We've taken on more than that before. Easy peasy." I say confidently, eyes still on Steve. He doesn't have his beard anymore; his hair is just perfectly styled. He looks like some kind of God. All I want to do is just go on down there feel his lips on mine again, the warmth of his body against my own.

But I can't. I just can't. If he knew about everything that I've done since leaving then he'd turn his back on me.

Clint is still watching me. "You wanna leave?"

I say nothing, but just nod my confirmation and turn away.

Five years.

Five years that have passed by us in the blink of an eye, and all while being on the run, killing criminals as a form of bringing justice to the world. But for every man Clint or I take down, there's always another to take their place. I asked him once what would happen when one day all of them were gone for good.

"There will always be more." He'd said, staring at the sword in his hands that he'd recently sharpened. "Even you know that." Clint looked over to me. "You don't have to stick with me Aster. You can always make your own way."

I snorted at that. "I have nothing else, no one else. So you're stuck with me Barton."

"S'pose it beats going it alone." He'd smirked.

"Come on, without me you'd be dead by now."

"Perhaps that wouldn't have been a bad thing."

Clint passes me a beer when we get back. "Drink." He orders.

I pop the cap and take a long swig. "They've been onto you since the whole Mexican Cartel massacre..."

"I know."

"So what do we do?"

Clint cracks open his bottle. "What we usually do? Move on." Not caring as to whether Steve and Nat carry on trying to look for him.

"Five years of this shit...think they'll give up?"

"Nat will soon take the hint. Even if it ends up with me going toe to toe with her." He leans against the window and looks out as he continues drinking. "We'll leave early for Tokyo tomorrow."

I finish my beer and chuck the bottle into the trash. "You gonna sleep?"

"Are you?"

There's no question that both of us barely get a full night. "Probably not."

He lets out a small 'ha'. "Me neither."

I settle down on one of the beds in the room and open my laptop. Pulling up everything that we have on our next targets. The Yakuza. "This guy...he's the one who calls the shots."

Clint walks over and looks over my shoulder at the screen. "Not after we're finished with him." and we both look at one another with determined expressions. 

"He's a dead man walking."