Budapest » [Clintasha]

Chapter Fifty-Two: S.H.I.E.L.D.

Despite how Kate didn't support my decision to fight for right, I carried on anyway. I graduated from petty criminals to more; tracking down drug cartels and disposing them.

The room around me was in turmoil. Two halves of a table were lain to waste where the rotund drug lord had landed after I'd flipped him over my shoulder. His lackeys were strewn across the floor, looking like debris on a battlefield. Portraiture in the penthouse was askew on the walls, some canvases torn down the middle and flopping out of the frames. The glass table was shattered, nothing but a puddle of chips remained beneath the metal frame.

I ambled over the fallen bookcase, slipping on the landslide of literature beneath my feet - none of which I thought had been read - and raised my bow and arrow to the groaning felon. The chandelier spilling with diamonds was still swaying above, making my shadow warp and twist on the walls.

"Believe me now?" I asked, glass crunching under foot.

I staggered closer, trying not to let the pain show on my face; I'd been scathed by a passing bullet; my face had taken a good beating: my nose dripping with blood, a black eye swelling and my lip split; and I was pretty sure my knee had been dislocated.

The drug baron nodded fervently, blood oozing from both nostrils, still sitting in the puddle of glass.

"And you'll steer everyone in your drug ring away from teenagers in Central Park. Or I swear to God-" I crouched down, snatching him by the black silk tie around his neck and looping the material around my hand for leverage. "-I will come back here, and next time I won't leave you or your colleagues alive."

With that, I nutted him out of consciousness and his bulky body flopped to the ground, his white suit stained red with blood. If trashing his apartment didn't cost him a small fortune, his dry cleaners bill would be extortionate. Revenge; as far as I was concerned. His drug empire and reign of terror had cost a spate of teenage lives, this was befitting retribution.

Unseen by hostile eyes, I limped away from the wrecked apartment; pain ringing out throughout my body. The tears I'd been striving to apprehend finally sprung in my eyes as I ceased gritting my jaw. Ailments well worth it for the sake of saving others.

On I lolloped towards the window and prized open the gap wider with my bloody knuckled hands. I wiggled my arrow still embedded in the wall, testing the strength, the rope still strung between two buildings. I hooked my bow on and perched on the windowsill, the wind whipping up across the alley.

Giving myself no time to think about falling, I sprung off and zipped down the wire with a whirring sound, landing then with a clatter on the opposing balcony below. I winced, sure I'd picked up new bruises on impact.

But as I struggled to my feet in the shade of the building, a call snapped me out of my struggling.

"Hawkeye?" They called, voice amplified by the way it rebounded off the walls of the buildings. Much to my dismay, I peered through the shadows and down at the sunny street.

Peering down into the sunlight, I saw a suited man, neck craned and staring up at me. "Who wants to know?" I croaked back, specks of blood splattering around my lips as I spoke.

"Me," They retorted, waving, smug as anything. He was dressed like an FBI agent, or CIA; but his manner was informal.

I had been witnessed, I was sure, and I fired a warning shot with strained blood-stained arms, the arrow implanting in the ground between the toes of the man's shoes. "Wrong answer."

He flinched, staggering backwards with dismay. The sandy brown haired man in his impeccable suit and polished black shoes rifled around in his pocket and fumbled to withdraw a gun, cocking the pistol confidently.