The Quinjet was impressive, she'd give S.H.I.E.L.D. that. Unbelievable speeds, summoning autopilot, and–

  "Cloaking engaged." Settling himself into the pilot's chair, Hawkeye pushed a white button, then flipped a switch above him, which Natalia assumed changed the piloting system to manual as Clint grabbed the controls.

  Natalia raised an eyebrow, casually crossing her arms. "Cloaking technology?"

  "A prototype. Director wants all Quinjets to be equipped with better stealth technology for STRIKE teams. We're invisible and undetectable right now if that's what you're worried about. Figured it'd be best not to underestimate the KGB." Without removing his hands from the controls, he turned his head to look at her. "Technically, I'm not supposed to tell you any of that. So if you're reconsidering my offer, I'll have to kill you."

  "Technically, you should have killed me already," she pointed out with a half smile, "but noted."

  Clint refocused his gaze to the windshield. "Good. You have a sense of humor. All agents are required to have one." He gestured to the co-pilot's seat.

  As she sat down, Clint returned the ship to autopilot, then swiveled his chair so he was facing her. Leaning forward, he rested his elbows on his knees and rested his chin on his folded hands. "So what's our plan?"

  "Firstly..." Natalia swiftly removed her knife, twirling it in her fingers till it pointed downward. She noticed the minute tremor of Barton's muscles tensing; otherwise he didn't flinch. He remained still as she plunged the knife into her thigh, though he winced at her suppressed cry. The blade searched her flesh, dark blood oozing from the ripped fabric. The tip fround something hard and Natalia flicked it out. A tracker chip clinked against the metal floor, splattering flecks of crimson on the black surface. A tracker chip that the Red Room had implanted in her so she couldn't escape them. 

She crushed it beneath her heel.

A white box rattled in her face. Natalia glanced up to find Clint standing and offering her a med-kit.

  "Thanks." The Widow accepted the box and opened it, taking a roll of linen. She cut a piece and pressed it against the wound. The white bandage quickly turn red. It would need stitches later when she could find some privacy.

  "So what's after step one?" Clint asked, returning to his seat.

  "That's as far as I got," Natalia admitted. "I thought you would be better at the whole mission planning thing."

  He leaned back and laced his fingers behind his head. "I don't typically make the plans, though I can improvise if one goes south."

  "And how often do they go south?"

  Clint ignored the question. "I'll need intel on the Red Room and its fortifications."

Her training told her to seal her lips. He was asking for information on where she was raised, where she trained, who she worked for. He was a threat to national security and the Red Room. But so was she. She told her training to take the backseat.

  "The Red Room Academy is located in Byelorussia posing as a boarding school."

  "Byelorussia?"

  "Belarus," she corrected. "Our handlers encouraged us to call it Byelorussia even after it's dissolution from the Soviet Union in 1991." She gave him the exact coordinates since an address was nonexistent.

  "Ah. What about defenses?" He typed the coordinates into the computer. Once he hit confirm, she felt the ship adjust its course. 

  "Thick stone walls topped with glass and barbed wire, twenty-four hour guard, and watch towers."

  "That's it?" Barton scoffed incredulously.

  "They didn't concern themselves about keeping people out when everyone inside is a trained assassin. They're keeping us in." She continued, "The Academy is separated into two buildings to keep up the boarding school persona. The girls are kept in one while the other is for staff. They keep us separate in the slight chance that if we escaped at night, we would slit our handlers' throats." 

  "How old is the facility?"

  "The Red Room has used it since the thirties, maybe longer."

  "So it would have a boiler room."

  "Two actually. One in each building. Aside from technology, they never upgraded the architecture." Natalia cocked her head as she started to follow along. "Disrupting the boilers wouldn't be enough power to destroy the entire facility."

  "No." Barton's blue eyes cleared as a plan formed in his brain. "However, it's the perfect cover to make it look like an accident, especially if it's outdated like you mentioned."

  Natalia shifted her leg. The pain had finally subsided to an annoying throb. "They're assassins who know every trick in the book and then some. They'll know it's a cover."

  "Sure, but the explosion will ensure there's no evidence left behind to trace back to us."

  Natalia caught herself raising an eyebrow. She instantly lowered it to keep up her all-knowing façade, though she calculated that Barton didn't miss much. It wasn't the casual throwout of an explosion that caught her off guard. She had figured out a long time ago that blowing up the place was the only way to take them down. "What makes you think we'll be able to sneak in and out without being caught?"

  "Blind optimism."

  Natalia rolled her eyes. "It's insulting that you think my trainers are that sloppy."

  "You're the one that wanted to do this," Barton pointed out. "I'm doing my best here, Romanoff."

  "You'll thank me later when S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn't have to deal with an army of Black Widow assassins because one of their own joined their ranks." The "if they allow me to defect" remained unspoken. 

  Hawkeye shrugged, conceding a point to her. He glanced at the coordinates, which were quickly growing smaller. "We should be crossing the Russian-Belarus boarder soon. The bathroom is behind you to the left. You can stitch yourself up there."

The bandage was completely red now, unable to soak anymore blood. Some trickled down her leather pant-leg and dripped onto the floor. 

She stood with some difficulty, grabbing the med kit before hobbling into the bathroom. It was tiny, similar to any commercial airplane restroom, only much cleaner and more room for a compact shower. Locking the door behind her, Natalia slowly tore the fabric around the wound, hissing as her fingers brushed against it. She turned on the shower and placed her injury under the rain. Diluted blood painted a gory image on the black tiled floor until her wound was clean. She toweled off, careful not to squeeze out more blood and stain the fluffy white towel in the process. 

Natalia had stitched countless wounds, all her own. She was no stranger to the searing pain. Her hands remained steady has she punctured her own flesh. Despite her experience, she couldn't help gritting her teeth with each stab of the needle and pull of the thread. 

Once she had finished, Natalia leaned back to admire her handiwork. To top it all off, she spread a packet of antiseptic goo to prevent infection and quicken the healing, then wrapped a bandage over the sutures for extra protection. As an afterthought, Natalia pocketed a pain killer syringe. Her pant leg was still torn, but there was nothing the assassin could do about it now.

At the sink, she splashed water onto her face and smoothed her hair in the mirror, wondering what the other present assassin was doing. She had her answer when she emerged, greeted by the sight of Barton sitting at a table in the center of the ship. 

Natalia approached and dropped the medical kit beside the man's mess of wires, tools, metal, and... yes, explosives. She pulled back a stool to sit. It scraped against the floor, yet he didn't glance up from his work at the sound. Two tweezers instructed by skilled hands twisted two open ended copper wires together. 

  Barton cracked his focus long enough to ask, "Have you ever built a bomb before?"

  "A couple of times."

  Satisfied with his wiring, Clint dropped the tweezers to push some equipment to Natalia's side of the table. "We'll be landing soon," he explained. "I was hoping to make four, but we may only have time to make two."

Natalia nodded. They worked in silence, both singularly focused on the task at hand where one wrong move could blow them out of the sky. 

  "Are you sure you want to go through with this?" 

Natalia's head snapped up at the sudden inquiry. Barton was looking at her, his hands stilled. 

  "Of course." She dipped her head again, signaling the end of the topic. 

She quickly learned Barton was just as stubborn as her. 

  "There will be girls in there, some the same age as you when you started. All of them are victims just as you were."

  "Are you trying to talk me out of this, Barton?" she growled. "I know what I'm doing."

  "You don't view them as sisters?" No. The only one she could view as a sister was taken from her. She could be dead for all she knew. "Comrades at least? Any kind of attachment at all?"

  "They didn't train us as sisters-in-arms," she spat just to get him to shut up. "We were trained as competitors. We were forced to kill each other to stay in the program. Only the strongest survived to become Widows."

  "I'm not asking to be nosy." Clint's voice was soft. "You have a right to privacy–" that's the first time she's heard that one– "but I need to know if you're up for this. We are but two assassins in an academy full of the most dangerous women in the world. Once we're in, there's only two ways this plays out: they die or we die." 

  "I need to know if I can trust you" hung in the air unsaid because they both knew they couldn't trust each other. 

  "What about you?" asked Natalia after a prolonged silence. "You claim S.H.I.E.L.D. are the good guys. How do you feel about killing girls who were forced to become assassins?"

The archer paused in his bomb-making, his tanned face thoughtful. "Not great, to be honest. I'm not the most moral man—God knows my hands are drenched in blood—but I do have a code. Killing kids is a strict line I draw." Hope flickered in his eyes as they met her own. "How far gone do you think they are?"

  Innocent, Natalia wanted to tell him. Memories of her countless kills before she even turned eighteen and graduated from the program flashed in her mind like a speeding slideshow.

  "There are no children, only trained killers." 

Even as she spoke, Natalia caught the defiance in his expression; the refusal to believe her words. No assassin was good, and yet here was a man before her willing to kill yet unwilling to compromise his morals. 

  Clint lowered his head and snapped the final pieces together, completing the bomb. "Save who we can," he muttered, "deal with the rest." 

Because "kill the rest" sounded too dark even for her in these circumstances, Natalia nodded in agreement. 

A gentle beep followed by a flashing light interrupted the moment of determination. Hawkeye left his station to drop into the pilot's chair. He flipped a switch, returning the controls to manual. 

  "We're here," he announced grimly as he guided the Quinjet to the ground.