Fears of the Widow

Captain in Shining Armor

"What the hell just happened?" Fury yelled at the fuzzy screen, "Agent Barton? Agent Romanoff? Can anyone hear me?"

Stark played with some dials, flipping two switches and then typing in demands across his keyboard, "they are in jamming signal ranges."

"Well get them out of jamming signal ranges! I'm losing my two best agents, and one of them has a serious medical condition!" Fury snapped again.

Bruce had left thirty minutes ago to retrieve some sort of prime link in the poison leaving Stark to struggle with the electronic decisions dealing with the assassins. Neither of them had given distress signals meaning neither wanted to call in Steve to help, but maybe...

"I'm sending in Steve if one of them doesn't make contact within ten minutes," fury grumbled before stomping out of the room.

Stark muttered and typed in a few more codes which were denied. Kretsky and Zarcov would have been smart enough to put up fire walls and trackers. But Stark had to communicate. Natasha's cover was blown and she could be dead, and Clint's cover was blown and he was being fed to Zarcov. The two people who Zarcov almost killed were going to be trapped in Zarcov's grasp. Not. Good.

So they had to communicate... Noise was definitely going to trigger some sort of alarm installed in their high tech programming. Visual on Clint's glasses would send an alarm too. So what else was there? Any form of communication. Something that would be easier for them to say something back without getting caught... Like Morse Code.

Stark input a demand for the pieces to start beeping little bursts. He'd send the morse code quickly and then turn on the receiving end which shouldn't have set off any alarms.

Now for a code... What are you doing? No. Are you okay? That's a stupid question. Where are you? Except Steve would be sent in. Steve is coming? NAT would flip out, but it was like a 'rescue is on the way' sort of message.

"••• - • •••- • •• ••• -•-• --- -- •• -• --•".

The message sent about as slow as a turtle, but when it did send waiting for a reply was like slug in molasses time.

Suddenly something came through on Clint's end.

"•-- • -•• --- -• --- - -• • • -•• •• •- --

••-• •• -• • •• •••• •- •••- • •- •--• •-•• •- -•"

"We don't need him. I am fine. I have a plan."

Too bad is a pretty good response... Right. But this was serious. Of clint had a plan then we needed to focus on Natasha. We'll look for Natasha! Too wordy. Going to Natasha. No. Going to find Natasha... Gonna find Nat. That would have to do. The tracers on Kretsky's system had almost found Stark's bug sniffing him out.

"--• --- -• -• •- ••-• •• -• -•• -• •- -"

His reply, "ok."

"--- -•-"

Stark shut the system down the minute he got Clint's message, and Fury came stomping in, "it's been twenty! I was merciful! Any contact?"

Stark pulled up the chat history consisting of blurbs from where the war piece was tapped or the mic was tapped, "I contacted Clint via morse code. Told him Cap was coming. He said he didn't need rescuing because he had a plan."

"A stupid ass plan, no doubt. One that will almost get him killed," fury snapped.

"Well he said go find Nat. I assume his plan is to jump into action during the trade between Kretsky's undercover and Zarcov. A dangerous time, but that is what their is for him to use."

Fury marched forward, "and why didn't you call me in?"

"I only had a few very short moments to covey in message."

Fury was red with anger at the lot of the situation. "I'm sending in the captain, and I want a bullet through Zarcov's head by the end of this. No luck on the neurotoxin either. It's a complete bust. If Kretsky blows up Zarcov's base, he's going to destroy Natasha's chance at survival as well."

Everyone felt the wrath as Fury stormed out of the room again.

Steve, however, was giddy to get into action and rescue Nat like some night and shining captain. Unlikely but... That's what he thought. Stark thought that Nat should go for men outside of SHIELD, and Steve and Clint should leave her alone. Why were they so difficult all the time anyways? There were twenty billion other women in SHIELD. Broaden your horizons people.

However, that was very unlikely especially when Steve came bursting through the satellite doors, "their covers were blown?"

"No, they just went around shouting 'SHIELD AGENTS HERE!" Stark rolled his eyes.

Steve stomped up to the computer system, "of course. I'm sure Clint was the route of evil here."

Stark grunted, "would you two just give this competition a freaking break. Just shut up about it, good grief!"

"I thought we were supposed to tell our friends about how we feel."

"Not every shitty second of my life!" Stark snapped, "so go get your suit on and Fury will meet you in the conference room. K? K."