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India is hot, sun beating down on dusty roads and flat rooves, turning the town into shimmering structures with dusty tracks winding between them. Clint sticks to the shade as much as possible and is thankful that it's not the hottest part of the year yet. In general he likes the heat, but they're here on official business so the dress code is full military gear. Even with the sleeves rolled up as far as they'll go, it's not exactly the coolest thing he's ever worn.
He scans the square as he walks, on the lookout for anyone who doesn't fit with the dozens of people investigating the wares of the market that's there. Personally Clint thinks it's unlikely that they guy they're looking for is gonna show, but the higher ups say he's got contacts in the town, so here they are.
“Barton, report,” his CO says in his earpiece as Clint switches to checking the buildings.
“All quiet, sir,” Clint responds. “No sign of our target yet.”
“Keep your eyes open. Out.”
“Not as if I was planning on walking around with them shut,” Clint mutters. He makes sure his radio is off before he says it though; this guy is a nastier bastard than the one before, and Clint could do without another official write-up on his record just yet.
Across the street, movement in an alley catches Clint's eye, the flash of a small figure rounding a corner and then darting back when it sees him. It's probably nothing but...
“Got something in the alley opposite me,” he radios in. “Going to check it out.”
“Roger that. We don't have eyes there. Keep us apprised.”
Clint keeps one hand on his rifle as he approaches, the other free to catch the kid if necessary. He's learned from experience that they run fast and wriggle free faster.
“Hello,” he calls, first in English and then in the local dialect he's not really managed to pick up. “Come out slowly. I'm a friendly.” Hopefully. That one he only knows the English for, but it'll have to do.
Unsurprisingly, there's no answer. Slowly he rounds the corner, and finds the kid huddled on the ground, her back to the wall that marks an end to the alley. Judging from the way she's shaking, if she could have climbed it to get out then she would have done. Instead she's got her knees drawn up to her chest and looks like she's trying to hide behind them, presumably in the hope that he'll leave her alone.
“Barton?” his CO barks.
“Just a kid,” he reports. “Looks like she saw me and spooked. Nothing to worry about.”
“Well leave her be and get the hell out of there.”
“Yessir,” Clint says, and then promptly ignores the order. It's not as if the rest of the team isn't watching the square. They can spare him for a few moments to look after a frightened kid.
“Hey,” he says, slinging his rifle behind his back and taking a few slow steps closer to her. “Whoa, easy,” he says as she scrambles to her feet and looks around wild-eyed for an escape. He raises his hands in the universal gesture of 'I'm not going to hurt you'. “I'm friendly. Friend. Good guy.” He keeps an easy smile on his face as he speaks. “Do you speak English? I sure as hell hope you do, 'cause I don't know how to say any of this in whatever language you speak.”
“I speak English,” she says after a moment, so quietly that he barely hears her. Her eyes are still darting around the alleyway, never leaving him for more than a second, but at least she's talking to him.
“Well, that's good.” Hands still raised, he drops to one knee so that he doesn't tower above her. She's a scrawny little thing, dressed in a shirt that's too long for her and trousers that are too short, neither of which are particularly clean. She's covered in mud and scratches, too. There's a particularly nasty one on her cheek that looks like it needs attention if it's not going to get infected. He'll get to that later.
“You're not from around here, are you?” Clint asks. She looks surprised and he grins. “You might be covered in mud but I've got sharp eyes, kiddo. You're as white as I am underneath all that grime, and your accent isn't quite right for around here either.”
Hesitantly, she nods her head.
“Where ya from then? Or shall I guess?” She doesn't look as if she's going to answer, so Clint carries on. “Well you're not English or American. So, let's see, which countries do I know? There's uh, Germany. You from Germany? No? France? Uh... Switzerland? Norway? Mordor? Oh no wait, that one's not real.”
A hesitant smile appears at that, although it vanishes as quickly as it appeared. “Russia,” she says quietly.
“Russia huh? Wouldn't have guessed that,” he admits. “I'm from America, but you probably already guessed that, right? The uniform isn't exactly subtle.”
Another flash of a smile, another nod.
“You got a name? Mine's Clint. It says so on my arm, look.” Watching carefully to see how she reacts, he taps his namebadge with one hand. “Actually,” he amends, “The namebadge says 'Barton', which is my last name. You're just gonna have to trust me that Clint comes before it.” She doesn't startle too much at the movement, so he lets his hands drop to his sides when he's done talking.
“Natalie,” she says after a moment.
“Hiya, Natalie,” he says. “It's nice to meet you. I'd shake your hand but I don't wanna scare you, so I'm just gonna wave, OK?” He does so, and she smiles, raises a tiny hand and waves back. “That's a nasty lookin' cut you got there,” he says, raising one hand to his own cheek to demonstrate where he means. “Looks like it might get all yucky if you leave it like that for much longer. I've got a first aid kit in my bag, there's all sorts of fun medicines in there. Whaddya say I fix that scrape for you?” Not really in the mission parameters, but it's the least he can do after scaring her as badly as he did. Besides, he's taken a shine to her, and he's never needed more of a reason than that do to something.
Natalie looks at him carefully for a moment. Clint tries to look as unthreatening as possible, which isn't all that easy when he's heavily armed and a lot bigger than her. It must work though, because after a few moments she nods. “OK.”
“Cool. So, I'm gonna take my medicines out of my bag, and you're going to take a couple of steps closer to me. I know I've got long arms,” he waves one out in front of him to demonstrate, “But even I can't reach you over there. That alright?”
“Alright,” she echoes.
“Alright,” Clint says, and turns away to reach into his bag.
That's when everything goes to shit because the next thing he feels is the press of what is very definitely a gun against the side of his head. From the corner of his eye he can see two tiny feet next to where his knee is on the ground, which means the person holding the gun is Natalie.
“Well, fuck," he says with feeling.
“Quite,” Natalie says, sounding nothing at all like the petrified girl he'd been speaking to ten seconds ago. “Please place your hands on your head, and turn to face me. Don't try to overpower me, I'm a lot stronger than I look.”
“Where the hell did you even get a gun from?” Clint grumbles, doing as she says. The look of cool assurance on her face as she holds the gun to his forehead convinces him that, yes, trying to get the drop on her would be a really bad idea.
“You,” she replies succinctly.
“Me? How.. Damn, that's my sidearm,” he realises, blinking. Now that she's mentioned it, he can feel the loss of weight from his thigh holster. “You're good,” he breathes.
Then he plays back the events of the past ten minutes and realises exactly how good she is, because she's managed to lure him out of sight, get him to kneel to her level where he can't run, and manoeuvre herself close enough to get his pistol without raising his suspicions. She'd played him expertly since the moment she'd seen him. “Very good,” he amends.
There's a glimpse of surprise, briefly followed by a half smile that very quickly disappears. Clint can't work out if she's not trained enough to hold them back yet, or trained enough to let them slip and fool him into thinking she's just a kid so that he underestimates her.
“Most people don't say such nice things when I have a gun to their head,” Natalie remarks.
“Yeah, I've never been much for protocol.” She smirks. He groans. Yeah, she'd totally already figured that, and had been counting on him ignoring his orders to leave. She really is amazing. “So, what now? I'm really hoping the plan here isn't to kill me, y'know. It'd make one hell of a mess, and I know I haven't got much in the way of brains but I kinda like them inside my head. Also, I'm much more valuable to you alive. Don't ask me how, I don't know yet, but it's the kinda thing that everyone says in the films and it usually works then. I guess you could use me as a human shield, although I'm not sure how practical that'd be. But-”
“You talk a lot,” she said.
“It's a character flaw, I know.”
“And you are more useful to me alive, although that doesn't mean I won't kill you if you try anything. The nearest hospital is too far away for me to get medical supplies, so I need you to clean this cut.”
Reproachfully, Clint tells her, “I was going to do that anyway, y'know. I'm a nice guy, you don't have to hold a gun to my head to make me help you.”
Ignoring him, she carries on. “And then you're going to give me all the information you have on where Edhas Razdan is, what he's doing here and who his contacts are.”
Clint knows he looks like a goldfish for the few moments before he breaks out with, “Well fuck, that's our target.” He refuses to feel guilty for swearing in front of a... ten year old? Twelve? “Hey, how old are you anyway?” She looks impassively at him. “Right, I didn't expect you to answer that.”
“Use your right hand to open your bag, slowly, and get out water and antiseptic cream.”
“Hey! I haven't agreed yet!” Clint protests.
Cooly, she tells him, “Either you help me, or I go and do this with one of your team, and hope they're not stupid enough to think they can beat me.”
At the look on her face, Clint sobers up a little. It's perfectly clear that her only problem with that plan is the time it would take to implement, not the fact that she knows damn well they'd resist and end up dead.
“Fine,” he says shortly. “I'll help you. But you stay the hell away from my guys.”
“I'll hold up my end if you hold up yours.”
“How many times have people believed that only to get back and find their team bleeding out on the floor?” Clint mutters under his breath as he reaches – slowly – into his bag.
She surprises him by answering. “Some. It depends on how much I like the person.” Is that a hint of humour in her voice?
“I'd better make sure I do this right then, huh?” Clint replies.
“Yes.”
“Jesus, you are one scary kid,” he mutters. That might not be the smartest thing to say, but he's never been very good at keeping the conversation appropriate to the situation. He should probably be pissed at her for threatening his team, and he sort of is, but he's also way impressed by how she's handling this. She might be some kind of super-spy/assassin with no qualms about killing the good guys, but she's also damn good at what she does.
“I'm gonna need both hands for this,” he says when he's got everything he needs. “That OK?”
“Slowly. And tell me exactly what you're going to do before you do it.”
“You sound just like my CO. Only, y'know, his voice is a bit deeper than yours.”
“I'm flattered.”
“Hey look at that, a sense of humour!”
Natalie keeps both hands steady on the gun as he works, and watches his hands with a gaze that never wavers. As he cleans the mud away from around the cut, Clint comments, “You did a good job blending in. I didn't realise you weren't from around here until I was about three steps away, and I'm pretty good at observing things like that.”
“Thank you,” she says dryly.
“No problem,” he replies cheerfully. He wipes the cloth over her cheekbone and then stills as she draws in a sharp breath and tenses. “Sorry, sorry,” he says hastily. Then he sees the nasty purple of the bruise he's just uncovered, which looks as if it extends a lot further underneath the grime. “That looks painful,” he remarks quietly.
She looks at him like she's surprised he'd even mention it, but the only response she gives him is, “I think you've got enough of the mud off.”
“Yeah,” Clint says, but doesn't move. That's one hell of a mark for a kid to have, even a kid like this one. Almost worse than the injury is that she doesn't seem to care that much about it. There's something very wrong with having that attitude at her age, and Clint would love to know who was responsible for instilling it in her. “I'm taking the cloth away,” he says eventually. There's nothing he can do about it, apart from do the best he can to fix her up before she goes off for more.
Antiseptic in hand, he looks up at her and quirks a smile. “OK, so that's a big cut, and this is some pretty strong antiseptic. Believe me when I tell you, it's gonna hurt. It's not that I don't trust you, but could you by any chance point that gun someplace else just while we do this bit? If you flinch and pull the trigger, I'd rather it be pointed at something that isn't quite as vital as my head.”
“I don't flinch,” she informs him. A moment later she moves her gun to rest against where his right arm meets his shoulder.
“Well that's gonna hurt like hell if you're wrong,” Clint sighs. “But hey, at least it's not my left. Not that I'd be able to use a bow either way, but at least I could still shoot a gun. Thanks.”
Reaching up, he spreads his left hand on the uninjured side of her face to stop her moving, and brings his right hand with the tube of antiseptic up to her cheek. The gun presses uncomfortably into his shoulder as he moves, and he really hopes that whatever training she's had to resist torture also applies to withstanding pain inflicted in the course of being helped. He's sure she can cope, but he gets a little edgy when his future as a sniper and an archer is threatened.
“You ready?”
“Yes.”
“Please don't shoot me," he begs, and then gets on with it.
She stays absolutely still while he squeezes the gel along the length of the cut, and remains equally as steady when he spreads it in with his fingers. There's a tightness to her features that indicates the pain he knows she's feeling, but that's the only reaction she gives throughout it all.
“Done,” Clint says quietly, letting his left hand fall away now that he doesn't need her to stay still. “You got any more you want me to look at whilst you've got me here? Like that bruise, for example?”
“No, that's all,” she tells him, moving the gun back to rest against his forehead.
Clint doesn't move yet though. Instead he pushes her hair gently away from her face and lets his thumb rest just above her bruise, careful not to press as he cups his hand over the side of her face to enclose her wounds. His gaze finds her eyes and he asks quietly, “Who hurt you?”
He doesn't expect an answer – not as to who gave her the cut or the bruise, nor as to who is responsible for her being in the situation where she can get that kind of injury - but he needs to ask anyway. She looks almost confused at the question, although again Clint can't tell if it's real or not.
“No-one hurt me,” she replies. “I hurt people, not the other way around.”
“I beg to differ,” he murmurs, but drops his hand and sends her a half-hearted smile. “So, we done?”
“I need all the information you have about Edhas Razdan,” she reminds him.
“Damn, I was hoping you'd forgotten about that.” She raises an eyebrow at him. “Oh, I didn't actually think you would,” he assures her. “I was hoping anyway though.”
He swears a smile almost breaks through at that, but then she slips back into spy-mode and starts interrogating him about their guy. She spots everything he tries to hide from her, which is really fucking annoying because his CO is so not gonna believe that a twelve year old made him give this intel up, and doesn't stop until she's got every last bit of information from him. It takes twenty minutes and there's a harrowing moment where his earpiece crackles to life with an irate voice demanding to know where he is, but Clint does as Natasha tells him and his CO subsides annoyed but unsuspecting of anything.
“Jeez,” Clint says when Natalie has finally stopped asking questions. “Now are we done? Please? You're exhausting. I don't think I've ever met anyone as thorough as you are. My brain hurts. Can this please be done so I can go back to base and tell everyone how a tiny kid stole my gun and made me tell her everything that's supposed to be a secret?”
“I'm done,” she confirms.
“Great!” He grins at her. “So, you walk out of here, I count to a hundred so you can disappear and then I leave too?”
“I don't need that long to hide."
“Of course you don't.”
“And no, not quite.”
Clint narrows his eyes as she takes a step back. “This is not going to be pleasant for me, is it?”
“No.” She smiles politely at him. “Thank you for helping me.”
“No problem.” He hesitates and then adds, “I hope I see you again, little Nat. Take care of yourself.” If he can do nothing else, at least he can let her know that someone cares about her. Whoever is in charge of her clearly doesn't.
After a moment where he'd guess she's trying to work out if he really means what he just said, she quietly responds, “You, too.” Then she brings the butt of the gun down against his head and finishes him off with a kick to the jaw, and he's out for the count.
-- -- -- -- --
When he swims back to consciousness, he's still in the alley, but now his CO is glaring down at him and he's got a headache to rival even those he suffers on the rare occasions he goes drinking with the team. Quite frankly, he preferred it when Natalie was there, even if she was holding a gun to his head. Her interrogation was way preferable to the chewing out he knows he's going to get later.
“Hi, boss,” he croaks. “Got any painkillers on you?” He doesn't bother trying to sit up; the dusty ground doesn't make a great pillow but he'd probably throw up if he tried to move.
“What the hell happened to you, Barton?”
“You remember that kid? The one who I said was nothing to worry about? Yeah, I was very very wrong about that.”
“A kid took you out.”
“A tiny girl with a gun,” Clint confirms. “She made me patch her up and tell her about our target. And then she left, but not before rendering me incapable of calling for help by means of an excessively forceful manoeuvre in the vicinity of my temporal lobe.”
A blank look meets that statement. Clint groans and shuts his eyes. “She hit me really hard in the head.”