Fill in the Blank - Clintasha

8

**November 19th 2009**

Clint had never been in a fight quite like this before.

He shot a woman in the head when she charged him. He ducked a man's brass-knuckled fist and took him out with a shot to the stomach. Someone was behind him, their shadow blocking out the sun. Clint drew a knife from his boot and jammed it under their ribs, wet blood spurting from the wound in an arching spray. It drenched his hand and face in red, the knife's handle slippery in his grip. Clint had no time to think, he was already moving again. Whirling around to wrestle a carving knife from a man before he was stabbed in the back.

Someone punched him in the face but the pain hardly registered, Clint was too busy blowing the offender's kneecap out to notice.

His heartbeat pounded in his ears. He threw his knife into the chest of a man with a pistol and saw him crumple to the ground. Mouths opened in ear-splitting screams but Clint couldn't hear them. He rugby tackled someone to the concrete, smashing their skull against the ground until they stopped fighting back. He needed to get out. There were too many. Bullets ricocheted off the ground around him as Clint scrambled away from the thick of the brawl, taking cover in a nearby alleyway.

Clint's chest was heaving but he wasn't out of breath. Adrenaline flooded his veins but he wasn't panicking. He was bright and alert and ready, his Glock in one hand and Nat's knife in the other.

Budapest was turning out to be at tad more intense than Clint had expected.

'Nothing but another gang assault,' their client had said. 'You'll get in and out without a scratch.'

They had been very, very fucking wrong.

Clint and Nat had found themselves in the centre of a full on gang war. Over what? Clint had no idea. The fighting had started moments after he had taken out his target, so that probably had something to do with it.

Tensions in the area were at an all-time high, both gangs suffering severe losses when shit escalated. Clint was pretty sure no one even knew what they were supposed to be fighting over anymore, but no one pointed that out. Clint's plan had been to use the hit to spark a fight between the rival gangs while they were negotiating a deal. They would attack each other in a fit of rage while Clint and Nat slipped into the shadows.

It worked, sure.

It just worked too well.

Clint, of course, hadn't been fast enough. Some asshole had spotted him when he'd ducked down for cover and after that, well. Clint had found himself fighting a small army and Natasha had followed with a roll of her eyes, her dual pistols twirling in her hands, dealing out death without discrimination.

The fight seemed endless. Clint had lost sight of Nat almost immediately and then he'd been distracted. His entire world had narrowed down to fucking surviving this bloody, unrelenting hell he'd been thrown into. The attacks were ruthless and they came at him from all sides and he'd struggled not to die. There'd been too much to focus on, too much to remember, too much to take in at once.

Nat's training had helped a whole fucking lot. Clint had found his body blocking attacks before his brain had even registered the movement. His reflexes taking over in a way they never had before. Soon he'd fallen into a rhythm and after that things became easier. He'd gone numb to the violence, his only thought to make it out of this alive. And huh, here he was. Alive. It had worked, kind of.

Now all he had to do was find Nat and get the fuck out of this shithole. Clint licked his dry lips, the coppery taste of blood bursting on his tongue from where the skin had split. They couldn't wait around anymore, one lucky shot and it would be all over.