Silver and Red

Silver's Call

He had been searching for so long, had finally lost hope of ever seeing her again.

And now this.

Woken in the middle of the night by a phone call, Coulson had given him the last news he had expected.

"The necklace has been activated."

Speechless at the news, he sat there gaping, mouth moving soundlessly in an attempt to find something to say.

"Barton? I have notified Stark. We will be at your place with a quinjet in ten. Be ready."

When he had not gotten a signal from it after the weeks he had searched, he thought they had taken it away, perhaps ripped it from her neck in a sadistic display of unnecessary cruelty, and dropped it in some random dumpster.

He scrambled from the bed, apologizing to his sleepy wife as he struggled noisily into his suit, grabbed his bow and arrows, and ran to the yard, where he waited impatiently for the quinjet to arrive. It had appeared in five minutes, but those five minutes felt like five eternities.

Now in the air, he tapped his foot nervously, gruesome and terrible images of Nat's possible fate filling his head. Not even when his wife had been in labour the first time had he felt so anxious.

Finally, they reached the source of the signal. It was coming from the roof of an abandoned mansion surrounded by neglected fields and dense forests, the only path to which was an old dirt road. Landing the quinjet in the grass by the front entrance, the pilot opened the doors, and the rescue team hurried quickly and carefully out into the moonlight.

They split up silently to sweep the building first, but Clint ran in with little thought for his own safety, his only goal to reach Nat in time. Grasping the tracker tightly in his hand, he followed the signal up many flights of stairs, stepping over the occasional body with the marks of Nat's signature moves still on its skin, till at last he reached the roof. Sweeping his gaze across the flat expanse, he caught sight of a crumpled form in the far corner, propped up and partially hidden by an air vent, and his heart nearly stopped.

He was too late.

She didn't move as he ran up to her, didn't give any indication that she felt him kneeling beside her, grasping her hand in his. A hand that was stained with blood, coloured the same shade as her hair. He called to her, but she did not open her eyes, didn't so much as twitch in response. Hopelessly, he held his fingers to her neck, searching for a pulse that he was sure was not there.

And yet, impossibly, inexplicably, it was.

It was faint, a mere flutter, but it was there.

Hope flaring, he stumbled backwards, hands fumbling to activate his radio, the words rasping out in a shocked rush.

"I found her! I repeat, I found her! On the north-west corner of the roof, on the left side of the building. Bring the med team up, she needs help! Hurry!"

The radio crackled as Coulson and the medical team responded, but he was not listening anymore. All his attention was on the woman before him, her life slowly draining away. He tore off his jacket and placed it over her in an attempt to keep her warm, while his hands pressed on the wounds in her torso, stemming the flow of blood and keeping the life inside her.

He barely notice when the med team arrived, so intense was his focus on keeping her alive. Gentle hands finally drew him away as dark figures swarmed her body, replacing him in the battle to bring her back safely.

He stood watching, hands clenched, heart racing, as they worked over her and finally got her stable enough to move. He had never thought things could get this bad, had never thought that this could ever happen to one of the Avengers.

As they flew back to the compound, they lost her twice, but each time they brought her back. It was during those times that he realized how strong, yet how fragile she really was. She had always kept a mask of strength and detachment over her true thoughts and feelings, and had never let herself show too much of who she really was to the world. Rare was the time when she had opened herself up to the team, and each time he had longed for her to always be like that.

Perhaps this time, after all she had been through...