Fighting Next To You ~ A Clintasha FanFiction

Part Two

*Natasha's POV*

​After getting changed for the fifth time in the same day, I lock up my apartment. I run down the forty six concrete steps (I count them every time I go up them and every time I go down them) and push open the heavy glass door into the apartment blocks carpark. My little red BMW sits waiting for me in its space. I unlock it and climb inside. The clock reads 23:48 and I sigh, knowing that the lie in I was hoping for is now definitely not going to happen.
​
The city's asleep aside from a couple of cars here and there. The rain begins to settle down and I turn on the radio to ease my nerves. I've never been called in after I've been sent home before, whatever they need me for must be serious. Some cheesy boy band that I can't name starts to sing on the radio, I recognize the song and start to hum along to it. After aimless humming to trashy songs for half an hour, I arrive at S.H.I.E.L.D HQ. When I started out at S.H.I.E.L.D I didn't know the way to HQ. They make sure that the directions aren't available to random people, so HQ isn't marked on any maps, and isn't on any Satnavs. I remember having to call Fury and he had to send someone out to my apartment to pick me up. I park my little car and walk quickly up to a set of enormous double doors. The doors open automatically for me once I put my hand on the hand scanner. As soon as you step through the doors you enter a huge space full of people in suits rushing around, and security guards patrolling. Everyone seems a little tenser now. I walk up to the front desk.

"Hello Agent Romanoff, how can I help you?" A pale blonde woman asks me. There are dark bags underneath her eyes, and her eyes are watery. She's tired.

"Director Fury asked me to come in." I tell her. The woman nods and types something into her computer.

"Okay, please follow me." The woman walks out from behind her desk and escorts me to wherever Fury is. "Lovely weather isn't it." The woman comments sarcastically, I laugh awkwardly. The tiled floor needs polishing desperately and dust is gathering on almost every surface. The woman sees me inspecting all of the surfaces. "I know, we've let it slide a bit. We lost quite a lot of the cleaning staff a couple of days ago, nothing major, we're sorting it out." We eventually reach a door and the woman knocks on it gently before opening it. She walks in and shuts the door behind her, clearly, I'm not allowed in yet.

The woman comes out. "You can go in now." She smiles and disappears off down the corridor.

I walk into a big room. The space is dominated by a huge glass table in the centre; there are lots of important people sitting around it. "Agent Romanoff. Thank you for joining us." Fury says shortly. "Please take a seat." He points to a chair next to a man I recognise. Barton. I pull out the chair from underneath the table and sit down quickly, feeling a rush of anxiety wave over me.

"Have we got everyone?" Fury asks a bald man who sits nearest to the door.

"Yes Sir." He answers.

On the table in front of me is a file with a big red stamp on the front that reads 'CLASSIFIED'. "I know that you all have places to be, and a lot of you, if not all of you, are pissed off that I've called you into work at ten past twelve in the morning. Trust me, I'd much rather be at home too." Fury pauses. I take a quick glance at everyone in the room. I can't name many people. Obviously Barton's here, I think I can see Maria Hill and the man Fury spoke to a second ago was Jasper Sitwell. Many of the other people are dressed in suits; I have a feeling that some of them are presidents and prime ministers.

"You may have realised that we've been letting things get out of hand. This place hasn't been cleaned in months, and our tech is starting to degrade. We've been keeping a few secrets, and I'm going to apologise for that. You are all part of S.H.I.E.L.D, and you all deserve to know exactly what's happening." Fury pauses and takes a sip of water. "A lot of odd things have been happening recently. The World is filling up with more and more people, and the majority of these people can't be matched. All of a sudden, we've realised that we're not the only ones in the universe." Fury looks directly at Barton and I. "Human beings are changing. Organisations such as Hydra and A.I.M. are experimenting on innocent people, attempting to change the human race." A chill crawls up the back of my spine, and I shake it off timidly.

"A couple of weeks ago we got a phone call. It was from a woman named Avana Sparks. She used to work with us here as a tech designer. When we picked up the phone she said she needed help." All of a sudden a picture appears on the screen. It's a photograph of a woman; she's tanned and has dark shoulder length hair. That must be Avana Sparks. I flick through the file in front of me and on the 2nd page is the same photograph. "Sparks told us that she'd escaped a building, where she'd been tortured and beaten for months. Halfway through the call we lost signal. We managed to track the call; it led us to somewhere in New Jersey, so not too far away from here. We spent days, weeks searching for Sparks, but she was nowhere to be found. We figured she'd probably caught a plane and gone somewhere as far away from New Jersey as possible. We've had everyone searching, apart from all of you in this room." Fury pauses. Barton raises his hand. "Yes Barton." Fury nods.

"Is that why this place has been gathering dust?" Barton asks confidently.

Fury nods. "We should have told you all, and I'm deeply sorry for that. We couldn't have everyone searching in New Jersey; we had to keep some of you here to take care of everything." Fury sips his water once more. "I need to ask you all a favour. I need Romanoff and Barton to go over to New Jersey, infiltrate some buildings, find whoever did this to Sparks, I'll also need Janeeva and Tay to search around New Jersey's border, maybe go into Pennsylvania. All of the rest of you need to be on comms, I want all four agents being tracked and monitored at all times. I'll need all of the engineers and tech designers making new tech for the missions, if Hydra are involved, we'll need the best tech we can get. And lastly, I need all four agents having health and medical checks done almost immediately! Please take your files, and get to work!"

We all stand up and start to leave before Fury calls us back.

"Romanoff, Barton, this is your first mission together, is that alright?" Fury seems concerned.

"Sir, we were both in Budapest, remember?" Barton teases. Fury smiles weakly and leaves us in the room.