Picture: Seychelle Gabrielle as Dariya Romanova

Music: "The Hunt For Red October" by Red Army Choir

All rights go to their rightful owners.

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SIX

Clint Barton P.O.V.

"What the hell was that?" I shout, stomping into the conference room where Phil Coulson stands with Doctor Garner. "You had me shoot a girl. A young girl!"

"That girl was about to kill everyone on this base," Coulson snaps back, looking over the maps on the table. "If you hadn't taken her out, we wouldn't have had time to evacuate anyone. It was either her or our two hundred young agents." Coulson looks up at me with agitated eyes. "But you didn't take her out, did you. Why?"

I pull at the ends of my short hair. "Because she's more than likely a minor! And I just... I have this feeling, okay?"

"What kind of a feeling?" Dr. Garner asks.

"A feeling that she's going to help us somehow," I say.

"It doesn't matter now," Coulson says, walking past me. "We need to scrub and evac. Natasha fell and hit her head on the sniper's box when the blast came off of that girl. If you had shot her sooner, maybe Agent Romanoff wouldn't be in the sickbay with Hill."

I close my mouth from asking further questions. "She hit her head? I didn't see..."

"No, you were too busy having a lapse of conscience." Phil sighs. "Go to her. Make sure she's okay. We're up and out in ten."

"Where are you going?" I ask, turning around to face him as he walks down the hallways.

"I'm going to get our men and women in the Quinjets."

I turn to Dr. Garner. "Has he always been this much of a pain in the ass?"

Garner shrugs and smirks. "From what I hear, you're a handful as well, Mr. Barton."

"Agent," I correct, turning to walk towards the medical center of our base.

Turning the corner, I see doctors scrambling to pack up their necessities. "Only take what you need," one of the doctors says to the others. "We have ten minutes."

I find Natasha sitting in a chair in the corner, a bandage wrapped around her forehead. Maria sits next to her, handing her a glass of water. Her eyes perk up when she sees me enter the room. "Did you hear?"

I nod, my eyes on Nat. "We're moving out. Coulson's orders."

Nat grumbles, "Some mission. We didn't even fight back. We're just going to run?"

"Coulson knows what he's doing," I say, biting my tongue.

Natasha looks up at me and smirks. "Now, that doesn't sound like the Clint Barton I know. Where's your rebellion? Where's your need to fight back?"

"It's my job to follow orders. I didn't last time, and that nearly got you killed, Romanoff."

She rolls her eyes, standing and taking the bandage off her head. "They just pretend to know what they're doing. I am fine." She stops smiling. "But you are not. Why?"

I start pacing. "I can't shake a feeling of doing the wrong thing."

"Shooting that girl?" Maria asks. "We all would have died if you hadn't-"

"-No, it's not that. I just feel that we should do something about her." I turn to Natasha. "How many of you were there in the Red Room?"

She visibly swallows, looking uncomfortable. "Including myself, twenty-eight."

"What if she's just another Black Widow from another Red Room?" I suggest. "What if she's being held against her will? What I saw just a few minutes ago, that was not a soldier of HYDRA. Hell, that wasn't even a brainwashed girl. That was a girl who had no choice."

"You want to go after this girl?"

"And any others like her," I admit. "Look around us. We're running. We're going to lose yet another base to HYDRA. How many is that this year alone? Five? Six?"

"Eleven," Maria whispers.

I motion with my hands to Maria. "Exactly! And what is Fury doing about it? Nothing. This girl, and others like her, could be the key to pushing back! At the very least, we'd take a weapon from them." I turn to Nat. "I have no right to ask this of you, but I ask for your help anyways. I can't invade HYDRA by myself. I need someone to cover my six."

Nat lays the bandage on the table next to her and cracks her knuckles. "Sounds like fun."

"I'm coming, too," Maria pipes up.

"No way," I shame my head. "No."

"You'll need backup, and everyone knows I can read a map better than you, Barton."

Sighing, I relent. "Fine, but you can't go tattle tale to Coulson about this."

Maria smiles and bounces up and down. "When so we start?"

"Do you even have a plan, mudak?" Nat insults.

I scoff. "Me? Without a plan? How rude!"

She raises an eyebrow, waiting for my answer. "Well...?"

I scratch the back of my head. "I'm... I'm working on it, alright?"

Natasha brushes past me and smiles over her shoulder. "Come with me. I have just the thing."

I turn to Maria, and she shrugs. "Don't look at me. I do what she does, just slower."

We follow Agent Romanoff through the bustling people, the evacuation timer counting down from ten to seven minutes. We have seven minutes to figure out a plan, get out equipment, and find a way of getting off the Base without letting Coulson know. Luckily, he's a bit preoccupied at the moment, so getting off with a jeep or a couple bikes will be easier than on a normal day.

No big deal. Not gonna be hard at all. Can you tell I said all that with sarcasm?

"Romanoff," I whisper, rushing up behind Natasha. "Where the hell are we going? We have seven-"

"-Here," she says, walking up to a large vault. "Do you know what they were up to on this base before we arrived?"

I shrug. "Beating the hell out of newbies?"

"Well, yes, but the scientific division of this base were working on a new breed of weapons." She hacks into the computer on the vault door and gets us inside. Opening the door, she asks, "Care to take a look, Barton? Something tells me you'll love it."

I raise a skeptical eyebrow at her and peak my head inside the room-sized safe. There are rows and rows of different guns, snipers, missile launchers, swords, bow staffs, knives, throwing stars, and at the very end, a bow and group of arrows.

My jaw drops. "Hellooo, gorgeous. Come to daddy." I reach out my hands and grasp for the bow, like a two year old grasping out for treats.

The bow is black with purple accents all along the shaft. Slender and light, yet still durable as hell. The string is tight and flexible as I pull on it, testing it. It fits right into my hand as I pose with it.

I place it down and go for the arrows. They're matching in color to the bow and have a similar structure. Though they have different arrowheads. Some of them don't have points at all, their arrowheads rattling around in a bottom part of the quiver, which is gorgeous, by the way.

"Not that I'm not freaking out over this gorgeous piece of work," I say, smiling like a kid in a candy store, "but what makes these so different from what I have in my arsenal already?"

"These are compactable." She taps the bow in a certain place, and it shrinks down to the size of a .22 magnum pistol. "And the arrows can be personalized. There are five different types of arrowheads: explosive, multi-tip, grapple, acid, and electric. You press a button on the bow here," she presses a button with a lightning bolt," and the quiver aligns your plain arrow with the correct arrowhead." She pulls out a completed electrical shock arrow.

I smile like a giddy teenager after passing their driver's test. "Just one question?"

"Yes?"

"Do they have boomerang arrows?"

END.