➵ for
deltas ● you scared me i see the glint of stone but you never come through
( The battle is not yet lost, but it will be, soon. Loki has managed to scatter the Avengers, unleashing the beast and hurtling his brother off the helicarrier. Whith the Chitauri descending upon New York, only Iron Man and the captain are left to stand against them. And what of the Widow? She weighs her priorities, and chooses her partner over the rest of the world. She goes after Hawkeye.
Not that he is aware of any of this. After escaping the helicarrier with his master, the enslaved agent has been standing guard, waiting for orders. He is underground, in the subways. Arrows and bow at the ready, he is the perfect soldier. His eyes, his most famed feature, glow an eerie, lifeless blue. He stands straight, moves with hollow and robotic motions. He is an empty shell.
And the real Clint Barton? He is locked away, somewhere. Surrounded by darkness and shadows, he is minimally aware of what is transpiring around him. Only hollowly conscious, he must have still felt it when the helicarrier crashed to earth. Must have felt Phil Coulson's dying breaths. Must have known the name of every agent he took out. But locked away as he is, he can do nothing, not even scream. )
Not that he is aware of any of this. After escaping the helicarrier with his master, the enslaved agent has been standing guard, waiting for orders. He is underground, in the subways. Arrows and bow at the ready, he is the perfect soldier. His eyes, his most famed feature, glow an eerie, lifeless blue. He stands straight, moves with hollow and robotic motions. He is an empty shell.
And the real Clint Barton? He is locked away, somewhere. Surrounded by darkness and shadows, he is minimally aware of what is transpiring around him. Only hollowly conscious, he must have still felt it when the helicarrier crashed to earth. Must have felt Phil Coulson's dying breaths. Must have known the name of every agent he took out. But locked away as he is, he can do nothing, not even scream. )
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When she says his name, he barely shrugs. He knows it belongs to him, has all of his memories, somewhere. But they don't seem to matter. He can't feel them, can't connect to his own identity. So he leaps mechanically over the fissure created by the explosion, bow in hand.
And when he comes up to her, he reaches out, hands grabbing for her throat. )
He asked me, you know. All about you.
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Yeah, he told me. We had a nice chat.
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You could have let him take you, too.
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You may be in his body, but you clearly don't know me if you think that's an option.
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Knowing you isn't really important.
( Muscle memory. That's all he has. And he knows the way Natasha moves, even now as he grabs for her shoulders and presses the weight of one arm down on her throat. )
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Bad idea.
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You going to use that on me?
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[please remove your arm from her throat that hurts]
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( He says this with absolute certainty. It's not that Natasha doesn't have it in her--of course, she does. But there is a balance between him, and if she kills him she'll never be able to even the score. Somewhere, though, Clint is wishing she would just shoot him, would take that over preserving this shadowed half-life. Just do it, Tasha, he thinks desperately, and something flickers in his eyes. End it before I do.
The hesitation lasts only a moment. Still pushing down on her windpipe, he grabs a knife from his belt and presses it against her cheek. )
What are you waiting for?
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It's a look she never wants to see in his eyes again.]
I -- [but her words are caught in her throat, more because of the physical pain rather than the inability to talk. and then the feeling of his knife on her cheek --
Do something, Natasha, you're not an idiot. What does it matter if he's got Clint's face? Do something do something do something
She fires the gun, aiming for his shoulder. She'll apologize for it later, when they're both okay. Because they will be. They have to be.]
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He recovers, quickly, biting down against the pain. But by the time he scrambles for the knife, he's already lost a few moments. )
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Is there some version of this in your head, where you win?
i keep wanting to win this fight even though i know we're not writing that whoops
[She keeps her voice steady, even though she feels anything but it, and his laugh unnerves her. She moves to get away from him, still holding the gun at ready.]
You're not really in the best position to talk.
that just means you're channeling your inner tasha
Actually, I am. Because whether you kill me or I kill you, my mission is done. Either one would destroy you, in one way or another.
well it's a start!! it looks like you're channeling your inner loki there
now is the time to panic
i am panicking
she fires the gun instinctively, but it's anyone's guess where the bullet is actually aimed.
damn it damn it damn it damn it]
flailing with you
If those words didn't pop up in his head, he would have slit her throat and been done with it. Instead, he leaves the knife where it is for a moment, twisting it before yanking it free of her flesh.
The bullet hits him in the leg. He lets out another mangled cry, but something in his brain overrides the pain and forces him to keep going. One arm still around her, he lowers them both to the floor--partly to take the strain off his leg, which is now searing with pain.
The hand he lifts to her face is bloody. But it lingers against her cheek for a moment, his expression blank but his eyes wild. )
screaming how can you do this to me
But most of her brainpower is simply focusing on breathing calmly, trying to give away nothing. Be the Black Widow, Natasha.
The gun falls from her hand, the sound of it too loud against the ground. She makes a conscious effort, then, to move away from his hand, but it's a jerking motion in reaction to seeing his eyes like that and it makes her feel the wound more poignantly and she gasps from the pain.
She was going to kill Loki when she got out of here. She wasn't even going to waste her time to make it slow, a hundred bullets to his brain if she had to, emptying cartridge after cartridge if that's what it took. He damn well deserved it for what he was doing to Clint - for what he was doing to her.]
Get off. of me.
because i love you
( He means that in several ways. For one, his leg is all but useless, and he probably couldn't life himself off her even if he'd wanted to. There was the obvious fact that he was being controlled, and he didn't actually have control over anything he was doing. It was his skill, his training, and his connection to Natasha that were winning him this fight--but it was Loki's control that was making it happen.
But maybe there's something else. Maybe there's some small part of Clint Barton left in him, that remembers what it is like to touch her, to hold her, to embrace her. And maybe that part doesn't want to let go, even in this twisted scenario.
Clint Barton kills with arrows, from afar. He takes out his targets before they know that's what they are, and they don't feel pain. An arrow through the heart, through the head, through the throat--no time to think. But this isn't like that, at all.
Because now Clint is taking the knife, already soaked in Ntasha's blood, and lifting it to her throat. This will not be quick and painless, rather-- slowly, intimately. The orders echo through his skull. )
i love you too but i don't think that's an appropriate response
[Her voice is steeled as she watches him. But she knows, because Loki told her the plan. And quick wasn't it.]
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He remembers the first time he saw her. He remember that she was the only target he'd ever missed. Had that just been a delay? Had they been living on borrowed time since then, so that this moment was inevitable?
He loves her. Has loved her, since that moment he saved her life. But all that emotion is being squeezed, pressurized, and warped. He's allowed to feel it, all too keenly, because that makes this worse.
He digs the knife into the spot where her neck meets her shoulder. )
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But she wasn't just going to lay down and die for him, and she moves her free hand to push on his shoulder, though between the two wounds there's not much force left in her.]
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That realization ripples through him, and he blinks. His eyes clear, for a moment. )
Natasha?
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