Avengers Tower, New York, United States
May 2011
"Tony!"
Tony rolled over and was on his feet in a second. "Wha- what'd I miss?"
He blinked sleep fugue from his eyes. Clint was standing next to the door, eyes wide. "Get up, man! We got a problem!"
Tony stumbled to the dresser and dragged a pair of pants on over his boxers. "What?"
"Some bank robbers are making a fuss down on Sixth. Got their hands on Chitauri weapons. Police are dropping like flies, their pistols aren't doing jack shit. Suit up!"
He bolted.
"JARVIS, get me the Mark 7!" Tony said, and scrambled into a long-sleeve shirt as he ran out of the room.
"In your penthouse, sir."
Tony hurled himself into the stairwell and down one level. He burst through the doors into the penthouse and stepped backward into the Mark 7's cubicle. The suit enveloped his limbs almost instantly, metal armor falling into place.
By the time Tony's faceplate locked down and the HUD flickered on, he felt himself again. The grief was held at bay, for now.
Pepper -
No.
He dragged his thoughts away from that rabbit hole and had JARVIS open a line to Clint's StarkPhone.
"You on the jet?" Tony asked.
"Scrambling now." There was a roar from the hangar bay eleven floors down, and Tony saw a Quinjet shoot from the building, banking up into the New York dawn. He fired his thrusters and took off. JARVIS barely got the doors open before Tony shattered right through them.
"You said sixth?" Tony asked.
"Yep."
"Who's with you?"
"Steve and Maria," Clint said.
Steve's voice joined in, but as an indecipherable mumble in the background.
Clint said, "Steve wants me to-"
"Hold up," Tony said, and overrode the internal PA system of the jet. "Better?"
"Stop taking control of my ship!" Clint protested.
"Save it," Steve ordered. "This is efficient. Tony, we've got Darcy and Jane watching news feeds and satellite imagery from the Tower. They're looped into my earpiece."
Tony muted himself briefly, said, "JARVIS, get that audio feed coming into my helmet," unmuted his microphone, and replied. "Great. What's the situation?"
Then he swung around the corner onto Sixth, just ahead of the Quinjet, and roared to a halt.
"Damn," he muttered.
Three armored trucks of the kind used to transport large amounts of cash were tearing down the street. Men in body armor clung to their roofs and hung out the windows, screaming and shooting at nearby windows. There was a bank four blocks up; JARVIS highlighted the shattered walls where the trucks had burst out of its parking garage.
The lead truck slowed, then jogged down a side street.
"Yep, they noticed us," Clint said, and Tony took off in pursuit.
He dodged four blasts, absorbed one more, and threw himself into the truck in the middle. Tony's armored body slammed into the side. It veered sideways and into a line of parallel-parked cars, driving straight up and over three other vehicles until Tony fired his thrusters again and the truck flipped and screeched to a halt.
Tony picked himself off the pavement, blasted a suspect who was aiming a Chitauri gun at him, and tackled another before he could flee into an alley. The other two were still stuck in the cab, so Tony took off again.
There was fighting on the third truck. It had dodged the wreckage, but it looked like Steve was on board and handling the four men on the roof benches. The jet had gone ahead and was taking potshots at the frantically dodging truck out in the lead. They were already four blocks ahead.
Tony took off again and slammed through the soldiers fighting Steve, leaving three of them on the pavement, and chased down the truck in front.
It jinked sideways down a narrow street. The Quinjet banked hard, didn't make it, and screamed into a vertical ascent to avoid crashing into the building. Tony angled around the corner.
Bullets and energy blasts ricocheted around him. Tony had to slow down and fall behind the truck. It was too narrow to dodge effectively.
"JARVIS, I wanna poke it with something," Tony said.
"Targeting."
A plate on Tony's shoulder shifted aside and three tiny guided missiles shrieked out, aiming straight for the truck.
Each one hit somewhere on the truck's back end. One of them took out a tire, another the rear door, and the third exploded near its top edge. The truck screeched and jolted. The shots stopped coming. Tony caught up, drop-kicked a man off the roof and blasted two others, and then dove feet-first through the windshield.
Screams from the guards played in Tony's helmet through the audio input. He blasted open the passenger door, shoved one of the thieves out, and wrenched the wheel. He meant to turn the truck and keep it on the road, but the driver pulled the wheel at the same time, and it spun almost all the way around. The front wheels locked and the truck tipped.
For one long moment, the world hung precariously upside-down.
Tony grabbed the driver by the arm and blasted out of the shattered cab.
The truck slammed down and rolled with tremendous force.
Tony skidded to a halt on the pavement, holding the driver in the suit's arms, then shoved the man aside and stood up. The street was quiet. The four men from the lead truck were scattered about the street in various states of consciousness.
Tony felt like the moment when you've been suffocating under water and you finally come up for air. Like he hadn't taken a full breath in the last month and was only just now remembering what it felt like.
"Stark!" Steve's voice snapped through Tony's open comms line. "What's your status?"
"All good here," Tony said. He flexed his fingers and grinned at the truck. He felt electrified, and not just because of his arc reactor.
"Not quite," Darcy said. "The news coverage's already starting. You need to get back to the Tower. There are some people who are really not happy with your guys."
"What is wrong with these people!" Tony raged.
Across the table, Darcy threw her hands up. "It would help if you would calm down, Tony."
"This is your fault," Steve pointed out.
Tony whirled on the other man, furious. All he knew was that he had been doing something good , something helpful , and it had been a dam between him and—and—
But the goddamn talking heads on the news were calling him a reckless fool who endangered lives.
"What was I supposed to do? Pretend it wasn't happening?" he snapped. "Let them get away?"
"You were reckless. They're not wrong about that," Steve said.
Tony glared at Steve and did his best to contain the storm inside his skin. Grief and anger and frustration made a toxic combination and he wanted to either beat his fists bloody on a punching bag or drink himself into oblivion.
"Wait until you're the one they're condemning," Tony snapped. "Then you won't be so forgiving."
"Tony-"
"Whatever." Tony turned to go.
"You're not leaving the tower."
He turned around with seriously ? written all over his face.
Darcy was standing up and smiling sweetly.
"My tower. I do what I want," Tony snarled.
Darcy's smile acquired an edge. How had he ever thought this girl was just Jane's dumb intern? It had been a short-lived miscalculation, but still. "I'm gonna say no to that one. For your own good. JARVIS, don't let him leave."
"Consider it done, Miss Lewis," JARVIS said.
"Seriously?" Tony shouted at the ceiling. "Traitor."
"I have a protocol which requires me to ensure your continued health and safety, Mr. Stark. I suspect that should you leave the tower tonight, you might engage in self-endangering behaviors."
"Go to hell," Tony muttered. "Fine. I'm getting blind drunk in my penthouse. Don't worry, Mom, I won't tie a rope out the window out of my bedsheets," he added. "If anyone tries to get in, I'll blast them."
He stalked out.
He didn't get drunk.
Well, not very. A couple glasses of Scotch down and Tony felt the wave begin to recede slightly. But he found himself wanting to find another way out. Another way to cope.
Pepper never liked seeing him like this.
Tony reached out for the only other escape he knew.
"JARVIS, lemme have the protocols from the Pentagon in oh-nine," he said. "Screen four."
"Yes, sir."
The file opened, and lines of code began scrolling down the screen. Tony made tweaks and adjustments and alterations, updating for newer firewalls and security defenses. JARVIS applied his considerable processing power to the code and brought it to sentience. This was part of the reason Tony had created JARVIS in the first place: with the AI's algorithms and neural network, any hack job went from taking months to weeks or days.
Tony worked until his hands hurt and his eyes burned, drinking coffee and alcohol to keep himself awake and buzzed.
"Sir, the program is ready for deployment."
"Go," Tony said, and knocked back a shot. He wasn't sure what number this was. He lost count around four.
"Running. Estimated time remaining: three weeks, four days, and forty-seven minutes."
"Great," Tony mumbled. "Will I get some files before then?"
"It is possible that some surface networks will be breached in less than that time."
"Awesome." Tony climbed to his feet. The room swayed around him, but his purpose was clear, and he let himself relax for the first time in weeks. The alcohol and caffeine and the goal—hacking into SHIELD's files—held back everything he didn't want to feel.
Victorious, Tony staggered into the guest room of his penthouse suite and collapsed face-first into the clean sheets.
Avengers Tower, New York, United States
May 2011
Clint wasn't sure when they'd picked up his tail, but he knew he had to lose them soon.
There were at least five of Fury's lackeys following him. Two in the car behind him, another one on the street, and there were two other vehicles rotating in and out of the lineup in an effort to keep him from noticing. He'd noticed. If he hadn't been so concerned with losing SHIELD before he led Fury straight to Tasha, Clint would've been insulted.
He sighed and put on his right turn signal at the last second. The car screeched around the corner and Clint floored it. He'd lose at least the one on foot this way, unless one of his buddies stopped to pick him up.
The other car, an ugly little Honda thing, accelerated with a burst of nasty brackish smoke. Clint rolled his eyes and dodged the other vehicles in his path, aiming for the subway station.
There . He spun the wheel and spun haphazardly into a parking space. He threw the car in park and took off without bothering to lock the doors.
Behind him, brakes squealed and doors slammed. Clint didn't look back. He dove into the rush-hour crowds around the entrance to the subway station and ducked down, making himself shorter and more jagged-strided. His whole posture, gait, and air changed in an instant. Clint yanked off his black baseball cap, exchanged it for a sky-blue beanie, and deposited the cap in a trash can on his way. The next thing to go was his jacket; he yanked it off, turned it inside out, and pulled it back on, all in the space of a few seconds. It had taken a lot of practice to be able to do that motion so quickly, and with a backpack on. The jacket's inside was beige.
Colors reversed, Clint changed posture again, just a little bit, and ducked into the thick of the crowd.
He kept his eyes down but his ears and peripheral vision were on high alert, scanning around him.
There. Up ahead—the man from the tail car. Clint caught a glimpse in profile and changed course slightly to put a bit more distance between them.
By the time he got to the train, there were no more agents within sight. Clint didn't let himself relax. These were SHIELD agents, and Fury would've put some really well-trained people out to tail Clint. Maybe not the best, though. He shouldn't have been expecting Clint to run. Probably he was just hoping Tasha would turn up to see Clint.
At least Fury had something right. Clint and Tasha would find their way back to each other. But this time, Clint was done waiting for Tasha to swallow her pride and admit that she needed help. She was taking off on her own into the heart of a country where the name of the Black Widow was whispered in ghost stories among the most covert circles, where her enemies were as common as tuberculosis in overcrowded Russian prisons.
There were two subways up ahead, as Clint knew there would be: one that connected to a train bound for New York and eventually the border; the other would meet a train heading south for Atlanta. He could've made it on either, really. That didn't matter.
Clint started toward the New York train.
Unease twisted his stomach.
He slowed down slightly and ramped up his situational awareness. Nothing, nothing—at least, nothing he could see. But his instincts were never wrong, and right now they were screaming that there was someone watching him. That he was in danger.
"No help for it," Clint muttered, and walked a little faster.
The feeling faded a bit once he was on board, but Clint still didn't lower his guard. This was the dangerous part for too many operatives. Getting complacent, easing up too soon—those were the things that tanked many an operation.
He stuffed the jacket and beanie away inside his backpack. Underneath, he was wearing only a T-shirt in a neutral shade of green.
Clint moved slowly through the subway car, cautious but pretending to be absorbed in his cell phone. The other passengers ignored him entirely. There was a woman reading the newspaper, another in a burka scrolling through her phone, a group of young people between sixteen and twenty in an assortment of torn jeans and flat-billed trucker caps, and a hassled man with a baby in a stroller. The rest of the car was taken up by men and women in professional clothing, most on laptops or phones. Clint smirked at the guy using a Bluetooth earpiece who looked like he was talking to thin air.
Oh, what the hell .
Clint reached into a side pocket of his backpack and curled his fingers around a jammer.
Seconds later, he saw the reactions as every person who'd been on a phone or tablet suddenly came alert. Annoyed looks crossed their faces and fingers stabbed angrily at screens.
Clint grinned. Causing a little havoc was always fun.
Most of the commuters poured out of the subway car at the next stop, which was near downtown. Clint was left with the newspaper woman, the father and his baby, and the teenagers.
Three more people poured onto the subway car just as the doors began to close.
Clint maintained his relaxed posture and made sure he appeared to be entirely lost in his phone. He looked nothing like the highly trained assassin/spy/special operative that he was. Then again, the three people who'd just boarded didn't look very suspicious, either, and Clint's instincts were twitching. They were perfectly innocuous: two men in simple professional clothes and a woman in workout clothes. But inside, the little voice in Clint's head screamed Get out get out get out right now.
The subway started to move.
They rumbled out of the station and into the tunnel, and that was when the woman moved.
She swung the hefty GPS running watch up and pressed the button.
Clint dodged and the Taser's prongs shot past him and found a mark in one of the teenagers. The girl went thrashing to a chorus of screams from her friends.
The two men in business suits pulled guns from beneath their suit jackets.
Clint threw himself into a roll, got inside the range of the Taser woman, and socked her in the stomach. She choked and fell back but her training was solid and she kept her feet.
Shit.
Amidst the screaming and panic of the newspaper lady and the teenagers and the young father, Clint and his assailants stood frozen. Taser was trying to get her wind back and Suits 1 and 2 had no clear shot at Clint.
"I don't want to do this," Clint said. "I have no quarrel with SHIELD."
"Evidently our Director has a quarrel with you," sneered Suit 2, and fired.
The bullet—rubber by the sound of the shot—went wide. Clint threw himself forward into Taser, ignored the blows that landed on his ribs and near his groin, and detonated a smoke grenade halfway through the fall.
Green-gray smoke hissed out, rebounded off the walls of the subway car, and engulfed its occupants. The frantic civvies panicked more. Someone rebounded off Clint like a bowling pin. He was blind as the rest but he had training. He found a pressure point on Taser's neck. She was out in seconds. He rolled aside as a rubber bullet bounced through the space he'd occupied a heartbeat before and dropped belly-down. The smoke would rise—it was ever-so-slightly less dense than typical air, and usually left a few inches of space less obscured near the floor.
Sure enough, Clint could see through the haze well enough to pick out two pairs of shiny shoes. They moved in a practiced tactical pattern toward Taser's body.
They'd never get there.
Silently, he crept along the floor until he was within two feet of Suit 1.
Clint popped a slender needle out of the metal plate on the braided leather wristband he always wore. It was a gift from Tasha for Christmas four years ago.
He lashed out and pricked Suit 1's ankle.
"What the-"
The words cut off as Suit 1 swayed.
The subway roared around a corner.
Suit 1 collapsed.
"Jenson," hissed Suit 2. "Jenson, come in."
Clint rose off the ground and got a bowstring around Suit 2's neck from behind.
"Tell Fury not to start any more shit," Clint gasped into Suit 2's ear, "so I don't have to finish it."
Suit 2 struggled, but Clint was stronger and the bowstring was too thin for the man's fingers to grasp. He thrashed around a bit and then went limp.
Clint dropped his body and felt through the smoke for the man's neck. It was inflamed to the touch, but he was still breathing. They all were. Good. He was done with SHIELD, but that didn't mean he wanted to cost Fury any more blood pressure meds than he had to.
With one last check of his gear, Clint tugged his jacket back on, navigated the minefield of still-terrified civvies who were now talking loudly about how their phones weren't working, dropped the jammer on the floor so their phones would continue to not work, kicked out the back door of the subway car, and waited.
Smoke poured from the gap in the subway, sucked out by the pressure drop created by the speed. Clint had seconds before he'd be visible again to the other occupants.
Light flared along the wall of the tunnel.
He hurled himself into the black.
Instead of splattering on the wall, Clint landed and rolled in a maintenance access platform.
The train roared by and was gone.
With a groan, Clint flipped over and climbed to his feet. He'd taken harder hits, but that hadn't exactly been a picnic.
He glanced around. The access landing was only twenty feet wide.
Shaking his head, Clint grabbed a fire extinguisher, broke the lock off the door, and slid into the maintenance tunnels.
He'd forgotten how much he hated Russia.
Clint scowled at everything: the people, the streets, the buildings, the snow crusted in alleys even though it was May , goddammit. No one had ever taught Russia the meaning of "spring." It went straight from winter to summer and somehow both seasons managed to be unpleasant. Although winter was definitely worse. Good job choosing May instead of January to go haring off after your soldier lover, Tasha.
Clint thought briefly of Maria, as he had so often on the four flights and three train rides it had taken to get here. She'd be pissed. And possibly jealous. Clint would have to explain things to her when he got back. He'd only realized as he was settling in on the train to Quebec City that Maria would probably take this as Clint being romantically attached to Tasha. As if—Tasha was twice his age and terrifying on a good day. But he owed her. He couldn't just let her waltz off to Russia without backup. That was no way to be a friend or a teammate.
What about the rest of the Avengers? Your other teammates ? whispered a nasty little voice in his head. Clint shoved it away. They could take care of each other in his absence.
" Three nights, please ," Clint said in flawless Russian.
The woman behind the hotel counter frowned at him. " Passport?"
" I have this ," Clint said, and pulled out a (fake) standard-issue Russian driver's license. The woman barely glanced at it, took the stack of rubles he shoved her way, and handed him a key. " Room thirty-eight. Second floor."
"Thank you ," Clint said, and took the stairs.
The hotel room was basic but perfect for his needs. This shitty little hotel on the outskirts of Chita would be his base of operations for the next few days, until he tracked down Tasha's trail. Then he'd be gone like smoke in a blue sky.
This is what you get for training me so well, Fury, Clint thought with grim delight. He pulled out his laptop and other supplies and began setting up the workstation that he'd used dozens of times before. It provided everything he needed but the essentials could be packed up within the span of five minutes. You can't find me if I don't want to be found .