Arrows and Bullets

Part 4

Third person point of view: 

Natasha climbed down the stairs and found the archer who had brought her in waiting for her at the bottom, he had a kind smile on his face. 

"Hi. My name is Clint Barton, it's nice to officially meet you agent Romanoff." He said noticing the ID badge that she had clipped to the bottom of her jacket. 

"Romanoff is fine. Do you have the mission file?" She asked as she walked with him down the hallway. 

"OK Romanoff, yeah I have it right here." He said handing it to her and trying to read her, but failing. Director Carter had told him that she wasn't like the other agents , but he wasn't expecting her to be this different.

"Barton, the man we are supposed to protect already has protection. He will be fine."

"We don't question the orders Romanoff, we just follow them I talked to the Director, she wants us to see if we can find out about them if anything. Fury isn't particularly happy about us going on this mission, we should get going. Grab your gear." He smirked and turned down the corner, away from Natasha.

She paused for a moment and then went after him. "Agent Barton. I only have the gear from my former employer. Is that what I am supposed to bring?"

"Crap, no. I'm not letting you work with me in your old gear, its unacceptable. Meet me in the training room in five minutes. Pack some clothes, we could be gone for a couple days."

She only nodded and turned the other direction. She opened the door to her small room, it wasn't standard issue for trainees, but Fury didn't want to take the chance of her killing recruits in their sleep. The room had no personal effects, no pictures, nothing other than a pair of handcuffs chained to bed frame, she locked herself into them every night. They were the only thing she asked for when Director Carter gave her the room, she didn't even ask for clothes to wear, as long as she had the cuffs to chain herself with. Even if she didn't ask, the director had given her all the clothes she needed, she even promised her more as she trained. She had never experienced anything like this before, she still didn't know what to do.

She threw the clothes into her bag undid the cuffs from her bed and placed them the same. She lifted up her pillow and grabbed the gun she had snuck from the training room. She lifted up the mattress and put in her battered mission suit she had from the Red Room, she couldn't remember when she got it, why she was given it, or next to anything about it. She knew that he told her not to bring her old stuff, but she couldn't help it, it was a habit, one that she wanted to break. When her stuff was packed and she was changed into something more discrete and appropriate, she grabbed her bag and closed the door behind her. She turned down the hallway towards the training room, towards her future mission partner. 

She opened the door and found him talking to the assistant director in a hushed tone, when he looked toward the door he nodded and the assistant director headed toward the door she had come through. She walked toward Barton , but was stopped by the Assistant Director grabbing her by the arm and whispering to her out of Clint's earshot. 

"I swear to God Romanoff you make one wrong move, one misstep and you will be locked up before you can even finish executing it. You better make the best out of the one shot that the director is giving you because if I had my way you would have already been shipped off back to Russia and tried for the outstanding warrants against you there." He felt her body stiffen and continued. "You didn't think we didn't know about those, did you? One shot Romanoff, or you're on the next plane out of here." 

He released her and she nodded, her face meticulously arranged to ensure that no emotion slipped through. She continued her walk towards him and followed him toward the weapons room which he unlocked with a fingerprint scan and started talking to her like nothing had happened.      

"So this is the weapons room. You can take whatever you want, sorry they didn't give you clearance yet, something about security protocol or whatever. I don't know, but this is my weapon of choice." He said pulling out a bow from a special case. When he turned back around half of a weapons wall was missing. 

"Wait. Did you take all of those?" He asked her gesturing to the empty wall. 

"Yes." She said firmly, but he saw her nervousness. 

"Wow. That's cool. Where are you keeping all of those? You're like a squirrel, I can't even tell your carrying one gun let alone the five you have, and you have, one, two. Seven knives?" He looked at her with astonishment. 

He waited for her response, but she didn't give any so he cleared his throat and started again. "You know we are just doing an observation and protection detail, right? I don't think you will need all of those, or any more, I don't even know if I was allowed to let you have a weapon." he said as she reached for a sniper rifle and started putting it into a case. She didn't stop so he continued.

"So uh when you finish with that, down this hallway is what I call the department store. It's mostly just clothes for missions so if you need anything just grab it." He said walking down the hallway as she followed behind with her bags.

She stopped at the first rack of clothes and grabbed a pair of cargo pants and a compression shirt. She moved on and grabbed a bulletproof vest without even bothering to check the sizes on any of them.

He took notice and saw that the items she had grabbed wouldn't fit her properly so he spoke up. "Um you might want to check the sizes on those. We tend to order clothes that run on the big side." He said grabbing the few things that he would need for the mission.

"I'll make it work." She said tersely as she threw them into her bag and waited on him to finish. She looked around and saw other outfits. The more elegant ones, the ones for undercover work, even a few specialty suits. He noticed her glances out of the corner of his eye and began explaining.

"We use the nice clothes for galas and stuff, mostly for specialty undercover work. Most agents have their own elegant wear, but we have these for just in case. I know somewhere we even have a couple of wedding dresses in case its for a deep cover mission."

She didn't say anything, she didn't even nod. She just stood even more impeccably still and waited in silence. Almost like she was waiting for a punishment. Her face got hard and cold, her eyes seemed to burn with a kind of fury that he hadn't seen before. He didn't like how quickly her demeanor changed and grabbed his things quickly and headed out.

The pair made their way down the hallway as others stopped what they were doing to watch. They saw the pair leaving and pondered as to why. Everyone knew she wasn't supposed to leave, but they watched her walk out of the door trailing behind Barton.  The pair were on their way quickly after leaving the department store. They settled into the flight in silence, he wanted to asked questions, try and get to know her, but assumed it wouldn't go well if he made the first move, so he waited.

When the pair was halfway to their destination she finally spoke.

"Thank you for saving me. I owe you."

"It was nothing, I was just doing my job."