Chapter Text
The night was quiet. Winter was just beginning to set in in Vienna, Austria, and Clint Barton was grateful for the winter gear SHIELD had provided him with in preparation for it. It was a mission not unlike many others he’d done before. He sat at a window, stringing his bow. He knew his job, and he was comfortable enough in doing it. He knew that many wouldn’t be. He knew that for many, the guilt would be too much, that they’d quit before it overtook them, or they killed themselves to get away from it. It took a special sort of person to do this job. A person like himself, or his wife, or Nick Fury, or Maria Hill, or Natasha Romanoff. He’d been doing this for decades and still didn’t quite know the indicators of what makes a good killer. All his friends, the ones that did just the same work he did, were just so different. Maybe it was luck of the draw, maybe it was how one was raised.
It didn’t matter. What mattered was that he was here to do a job. He was here to take out a mercenary that had been killing internationally. It had taken months for SHIELD to get a trace on the killer, and even longer to actually catch up. They didn’t even know exactly who they were looking for. The intel they’d gotten had been murky but considering the fact that six different sources had flipped and said that the mercenary was going to be here at this time was enough for SHIELD to take a gamble.
He tensed as a light flickered on in the apartment that he was watching and was immediately on his feet.
The buildings were set up in such a way that he could get to the building the mercenary was in by moving from roof to roof and entering from above. He’d been tempted to get into the apartment earlier, surprise the mercenary when they got back and have the advantage of knowing the space as well as them, but he couldn’t risk tripping an alarm. Whoever they were, he knew that they were good enough to have a strong enough gut instinct to know that the alarm couldn’t be an accident. People this good didn’t survive by taking chances.
His footsteps were uncomfortably loud in the concrete stairwell as he made his descent into the building, counting the floors until he was on the correct one. He knew the layout just as well as that of his own home as he stopped outside the door. Faintly, he heard the TV playing. Good.
He took out a lock-picking kit, spending no more than a minute fiddling before the lock twisted. He forced himself to breath. No matter how many times he did this, Laura making him promise to come home to her and their kids was never far from his mind. He twisted the knob, lifting the door just a little so the hinges wouldn’t creak.
He knew the entryway was fairly hidden from the rest of the room from the blueprints, and now he couldn’t be gladder for it. He lifted his bow as he stepped into the living room, kitchen, and dining area. The only separated rooms were the bedroom and bathroom. The TV was playing, but no one was watching it. Right. Bedroom or bathroom? The bedroom posed more opportunities for escape, so he moved towards that one first.
He had only one foot through the doorway before a gun to his temple had him stilling.
“You’ve got three seconds to tell me who the hell you are, why you’re here, and who sent you.”
Slowly, ever so slowly, Clint released the pressure on his bowstring until he could drop the weapon without the arrow flying. He wasn’t stupid. An opportunity for escape would present itself, but not if he fought at the wrong time and got himself killed.
“Three.”
Clint glanced at the- woman? No, not even. This was a girl. Surely no older than eighteen.
“Two.”
What was a kid doing here? Where the mercenary was meant to be?
“You’re running out of time,” she growled.
“You’re a kid.” In hindsight, not the brightest thing to say with a gun to his head.
“And you’re Sherlock Holmes. Now are you going to answer my questions or will I spend the rest of this lovely evening scraping brains out of the carpet?”
“My name’s Clint Barton,” he answered. “And I was sent to eliminate you.”
The girl went so still Clint wasn’t even sure if she was breathing. God this brought back memories.
“You know this is usually the point where people try to give me reasons not to kill them.”
“You don’t seem like the sort to listen to that sort of bullshit.”
A smirk threatened to upturn the corner of the girl’s mouth, but she clamped down on the expression.
“You didn’t answer my third question.”
“I’ll answer it if I can ask you a question.”
“You’re not exactly in a place to bargain.”
“True, but grant a dying man a final question, won’t you?” The girl paused before inclining her head, and Clint racked his brain to think up a question before she could change her mind. “Do you work for the Red Room?”
If Clint had thought the girl was tense before, now she was so stiff one would think they could snap her in half.
“How did you-“
“You fit the profile, and this isn’t the first time I’ve been sent to eliminate a widow and failed.”
Realisation dawned on the girl’s face, no matter how much she tried to hide it. “You’re the agent that turned Romanov.”
Clint would have nodded if he weren’t afraid that the small movement would startle the widow into pulling the trigger.
“I can help you.”
The girl was clearly trying not to show how unsettled she was. She took a few steps away and Clint allowed himself to drag a breath into his lungs. He didn’t miss the way the girl limped heavily.
“You can’t help me,” she scoffed, face scrunched in pain.
“What happened?” He glanced at her leg as she sat, the gun still carefully aimed at him, as if daring him to run.
“Nothing.”
Clint didn’t push. He wasn’t sure whether the girl had sat down because of the pain in her leg or she was hesitating to kill him.
“Do you have medical supplies?” he had to ask. The girl couldn’t be all that much older than his own daughter. God. She was younger than Natasha had been. She’d been twenty-three when he’d found her.
The girl observed him warily, eyes narrowed and untrusting. “Nothing that helps.”
“Did it happen recently or is it an old injury?”
“Why do you care? You were going to kill me before you walked through that door.”
“I was going to kill you until I realise that you’re about the same age as two of my kids. I don’t kill kids.”
The girl tilted her head, as if trying to decide if he was pulling her leg or not. After a few moments of tense silence, she said, “It’s an old injury from about a year ago. I was on a mission and I was fighting this woman. She shoved me out a window and I landed wrong. Next thing I knew, I was exposed to a gas that broke the Red Room’s mind control or whatever and she set my hip and told me to run. Now I’m here.”
“You don’t work for them anymore?”
The girl shook her head, hesitantly placing the gun down, though seemingly not for any reason other than to see what Clint would do. “You said you have kids.” Clint allowed her to change the topic.
“Three. Cooper’s the oldest, then there’s Lila and little Nate. My wife sent me a video yesterday of him riding his bike without training wheels for the first time. He’s five.” A fond grin tilted his lips before he turned serious again. “I can help you; you know.”
“I can’t imagine your bosses would be pleased if you came back with another stray Russian assassin,” the girl said dryly, standing.
It wasn’t a flat-out ‘no’, Clint was pleased to find. “I don’t know much about the Red Room, but do you really think that Natasha would have stuck around if they were as bad as that place?”
“Believe it or not, just because we are both widows, that does not mean I know her. Just because she stuck with SHIELD doesn’t make it good.”
He could see her eyes darting around the room but was willing to bet that running would be a last resort with that leg of hers.
“Why haven’t you killed me yet?” he had to ask.
The girl met his gaze. “You haven’t given me a reason to.”
“You’ve killed six SHIELD agents in the last nine months.”
“Well they gave me reasons, didn’t they,” she bit out, clearly getting antsier by the second.
“Okay, fair,” he said placatingly, leaning against the wall behind him and forcing his body language to remain as non-threatening as possible. “I guess I just wanted to know why.”
“I got paid for some, others got in the way.” The girl swallowed, glancing at him as though waiting for him to begin yelling.
“You did what you had to do to survive,” he surmised.
The girl gave him a look. “You don’t care that I killed your peers?”
“Of course I care. I mourned their deaths like everyone at SHIELD did, but judging by the fact that I’m still standing, when you killed them, you didn’t have a choice.”
The girl let out a harsh breath. “Don’t humanise me.”
“You’re human.”
She shook her head. “No. Just-“ she pinched the bridge of her nose. “Get out of here. Please. Just go home to your kids or whatever.”
Clint hesitated. “You should come with me.”
She choked out a laugh. “No.”
“You deserve another chance. The next agent they send will kill you or you will kill them, and I don’t think you want another death on your hands.”
“Don’t pretend to know what I want,” she snarled
“No one wants to kill. No one is a natural-born killer no matter how much Dreykov likes to make you think so.”
“I am giving you an option here!” she yelled, a hint of desperation in her tone. “Walk out of here without a fucking bullet in your head please. Because you seem like a decent person and I do not want to kill you.”
“So don’t.” Clint stepped forwards and she stumbled back, a hand reaching behind her to grip the windowsill. “You don’t need to run.” Clint seemed to know where her thoughts were headed. He realised moments too late that he’d accidentally backed her into a corner, and the girl did the only thing she felt she could. She spun on her heel, yanked the window open, and made to jump.
She never got the chance to leap, because the second she’d turned her back, Clint had grabbed his bow, and milliseconds before she’d jumped, a stun-arrow embedded itself in her back.