Fears of the Widow

Break In

"Are you sure you're okay?" Clint's hand grabbed Natasha's hurt limb. A long gash sat there with blood seeping through the light, black fabric of her suit.
She nodded, standing stock still in the empty hallway. Her eyes were wide and alert, but focused on the long passage before her.
"You don't seem okay..." Clint pulled a cloth from his pocket and attempted to wrap up the gash. He tied it off without Natasha's objection, but when he pulled it tight enough she jumped, "what the hell?" She turned to her partner then looked at her arm.
"I was trying to help, Tasha," he pulled his hands away. She scared him at times. Her fierceness and unknown bouts of anger were rather detrimental to a man trying to protect his bounty- of sorts.
Her head turned back to the passage, "uh huh. We have a mission." There was the confidence he so believed in, but she wasn't being herself. Ever since the Chitari attacked them and he had been a mindless warrior of Loki's, Natasha had faltered in her thought processes at times.
"I know we do, but your safety precedes a mission," Clint stepped in front of Natasha's view out of worry rather than demand.
Natasha frowned, her annoyance rising for her best friend, "I don't want to hurt you. I really don't." Natasha wasn't in the mood to discuss the mission with Clint. They had a mission as simple as pie, and she had to get it done before a little slice on her arm would cause her troubles. Sure it hurt like hell but this was important intelligence on the line plus she owed the world her help for it's better keeping. It was the least she could do after her first impressions those years ago.
Clint stuck his lip out, pulling her from her thoughts, "you wouldn't hurt me." Clint believed it to. Natasha had saved his butt millions of times and only kicked it during practice. She could never hurt him intentionally to actually injure him severely and they both knew it.
She glanced at him, glowering before grabbing his arm twisting it back and shoving him behind her. Well that didn't render him useless, but it hurt a little. Natasha took off down the hall, and Clint turned to follow a few steps behind her.
The difference between the two was his feet made echoes down the hall while his partner was silent like a ghost. She was the ghost- the Black Widow. Neither seen nor heard, and then your dead.
After running for about five minutes down an endless hallway, Clint caught up and spoke, "Tasha, where are we..."
She turned around with large, angry eyes that told him to shut up, "to the security room like Fury said." Her eyes, the green jades that beckoned him to her, were a fierce reminder of her cat like reflexes and deadly wishes for people who crossed her- all of which she successfully carried out.
Clint followed behind, grudgingly. There were about four guards outside of a silvery door- raising the assassins' suspicions- , and that was all that they had seen since Natasha got jumped on during entry. Nat took down one with that thigh grip move Clint found so appealing, and then spun the poor guard into another fellow before shooting both in the head. Well that's one way to handle things... Clint smashed his bow into the other two and both fell into the wall, dazed. He didn't kill those who were simply following orders... like Natasha when he could have shot her the second he had made contact.
"We should tell Zohar to find new guards. These guys suck," Natasha pointed out, giving a sexy grin, and Clint had to force his eyes away from her butt.
Clint nodded forcefully before sticking a chip into the open slot on the security door. It unlocked after a moment, and Natasha kicked the wood slab down with both of her guns raised.
How was she always so prepared and so fierce and... Clint had to take his mind off of her for a minute.
The room was dark with a black marble floor, grey walls, and the entire back wall covered by monitors. Two were computers it seemed and the rest displayed a video feed of every hall in the warehouse.
Another guard from inside the room sprang at Clint from the left of the door, pulling him into a choke hold. He struggled from side to side before flipping the guy over his shoulder. Natasha shot the guy's shoulder joint before throwing stun darts into the six men running at her from the consoles.
"Thanks Nat," Hawkeye rolled his neck before snapping the security room door back into place and coming up to the console Natasha sat at now. "What are we looking for again?"
Natasha's eyes were scanning the screen for what she wanted, "Zohar's contact lists, payments, and emails."
Clint nodded, not knowing exactly how to hack into a highly protected data base. Instead he watched the door and other camera monitors to see if Zohar would pay them a visit. Well of course the dead and unconscious guards would be a pretty good give away.
There were guards running up the halls looking for where the intruders might have gone. They opened and closed doors as static came through the earpieces on the dead guards in the security rooms. Suddenly, there was a bang at the security door. Clint spun around to a monitor showing three heavily armed guards about to burst through the door.
"Nat, you done?" He asked as he drew his bow and aimed at the door.
She let out a smirk, "calm down." Why was Clint always in such a hurry. The exhilaration of waiting till that last second to do something incredible was what sped the Black widow to work a thousand times harder on her work and stay a step ahead.
Clint glanced back at her but released the arrow the second that the guards knocked the door down. The front man crumpled to the floor but bullets still shattered the room. Clint ducked and shot a disabling bullet which rendered their guns useless. Both dropped their guns and pulled out a large knife for each hand. Crap.
Natasha turned around and swiped her attacker's feet before smacking his head against the marble floor leaving a pool of blood around him. The other came up from behind her and tried to subdue her, but Clint put an arrow in his skull.
"Hawkeye, wanna cover my six?" Natasha grew impatient as she slipped a device into the computer and waited for the data to enter her sticky little hands.
Clint could have responded with 'I would happily watch it for you' or 'I always do' but he valued his life.
He set his bows in lock and stood at the door waiting. There was an uncanny silence for all of three seconds before loud sirens filled the air. Clint covered his ears as the noise drove him literally mental. His eardrums popped with the noise as did Natasha's
Natasha finally pulled her USB drive from the computer and smashed both systems with a good kick.
Guards came running from both directions of the hall, and Hawkeye froze to ask his partner what they should do. When he turned around, her butt and legs were disappearing through a side vent. She yelled for him to follow which he did as he closed the vent behind them. The vent system was huge once they reached a large alcove big enough to stand in. The sirens were deafened by the metal walls of the vents, thank God, and finally, they could hear one another again.
"Now what?" Clint panted. His hand instinctively ran through his hair to smooth back what had already began to moisten from the inexplicable heat in the metal vents. It was summer so why were these things so damn hot?
Natasha was looking at their six choices of vents to crawl through with equal precision, "Hawkeye, if I knew I would be making all of the decisions on this one I would have asked for Steve to be my partner."
Clint froze and his face paled, "Nat, you're my partner. The captain is great but he would just tell those people their rights and then let them on their way or sing the national anthem until they were begging for mercy."
"Jealous, Clint?" Natasha smirked in his direction. She batted her eyelashes just to bug him, but even she knew that mentioning Steve had been harsh. They went on one operation together and Fury had Steve and Tasha bust a few places while Clint was on assassination details. Hawkeye was equally jealous by Steve and Natasha's partnership. It was supposed to be the two assassins not the assassin and the super soldier!
Clint glared at Natasha, "no. Just reminding you that you're my partner." He was jealous, but he wouldn't admit that to Natasha plus Stark would eat it up. Gosh. Clintasha. Ever since Stark had called them that last week, the iron man hadn't dropped the name. It was apparently the biggest reality 'ship' out there. Whatever that meant!
"I could never forget that, Clint," the black widow spoke truthfully before throwing her hands up, "but you gotta pick which way we're going." Hawkeye set aside his jealous to take her words into consideration.
Clint looked down each vent. They were all dark and each looked the same. Instead he tried to remember the floor plan. From the security room, the front door was far to their right. He looked at the two tunnels to his right before picking the brighter of the two and ushering for Natasha to follow. And boy did he hope he was right.
"I sure hope your right, bird boy," Nat waited for him to go down aways before following at a crouch. If they didn't get out before all of the vents turned on then they would be chopped into pieces of assassin.
The tunnel had many turns and then they came to an intersection. Really? One side had a sharp current of wind pulling them in that direction and the other pushed them away.
"Wanna go back?" Clint turned to face the widow. He honestly hated to have to say maybe he'd been wrong, but being wrong was worth it over being filleted.
Natasha shook her head and activated some sort of glowing things on her gloves, "this is the right way. There was a large fan pushing out air by the front entrance. We need to go to the direction of the sucking wind."
"How? A fan will shred us!" Hawkeye objected.
She rolled her eyes, "give me like five minutes, and don't do anything stupid!" Natasha pulled her hair into a bun and pushed Hawkeye into a place in the vent where the wind wasn't so strong. And yes, she was always this demanding.
Hawkeye waited at the intersection as Natasha attached herself to the walls of the vent and edged towards the fan. She took a turn so Clint couldn't see her, but there was no sound of dying or screams. That was a relief.
Natasha reached the fan which attempted to suck in her curly red hair, but she had secured it tightly. It took only moment for her to activate the screw driver in the glove on her pointer finger. She unscrewed the fan, and it slowly stopped spinning. Her boots were enough to kick the side blades to the center so she could climb through.
"All clear, Hawkeye!" She called back.
Clint relaxed and headed her direction. It was hard for him to fit between the blades, but Natasha helped pull him out.
Both fell to the ground as they cleared the shrewd fan, and then there was the siren yet again. They both ran for the woods to their left and disappeared into the trees.
"Glad to have you along on these again," Agent Barton held Nat's shoulder as they signaled Fury.
She blushed just barely, but Natasha always kept her feelings under that beautiful face of hers, "I've missed working them... And you."
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A/N:
Thank you for reading thus far! Please vote and comment so that I know I should write more! Thank you so much!
Enjoy,
GraceMaze