Two Cupids Lock and Load [Valentines???? thread for aw_hawkguy ]

[red_room]

It's 2:03 am when Natasha arrives, geared to the teeth, in the Nexus.

Knives hidden in all the proper places, guns holstered, electrocharged bits in place, and lockpicks all accounted for on her person. There's a couple extra bags of gear she's carrying--equipment she'd grabbed from one of her Nexus safe houses. Her Arabic and French are as brushed up as her sign language. Ticking everything she's done off her mental list helps her compartmentalize. Helps her shut off the parts of her she doesn't need for the mission, leaving only Black Widow in place. The Natasha that desperately wanted to be a person instead of an asset isn't needed here.

She has no doubt Barton will show.

There's no backup or withdrawal order following them in. Natasha could go it alone, but a second set of eyes and ears would never be a bad thing on a mission like this. Beirut is coastal and covered in picturesque postcard snow this time of year. An ideal romantic getaway, if it weren't also touching Syria on two sides and the central hub for most human trafficking out of Asia and Africa for servitude or from Syria and their own people for sexual slaves.

Agent Romanov can't think of anywhere she'd rather be or anyone else she'd rather have watching her back.

Comments

[aw_hawkguy]

Clint isn't late, and he isn't in his usual scruffy Nexus-wear of tee shirts and sweat pants. It might be fair to say that Clint hasn't shown up at all--Hawkeye has. He's got a quiver and bow slung across his back, with three more full quivers and a backup bow stuffed in a duffel bag hanging from his shoulder.

"Hey," he greets her with a nod. "Ready to go spread some holiday cheer?"

[red_room]

This is familiar. The outfit is slightly different, and there's the matter of the hair, but the way he carries himself...the gear she can point out and differentiate with little more than a glance, the way he speaks.

She knows Hawkeye. It had not been a mistake to ask him to come.

"I'll give you the case file while we fly in." Normally he'd be the one piloting, but Natasha doesn't mind the change of pace. He needs the briefing anyway. She picks up her gear and turns back out the door she'd come in from, kicking it open so Clint can follow her to the jet.

"I don't know your background. Foreign languages?" It's the first thing she asks when they're both aboard and seated with gear tucked away. It's not casual conversation, but it's as close as she'll get when she's like this.

...and then I remembered who I was logged in as.

[aw_hawkguy]

"I'm not... great at foreign languages. I can generally tell where they're from, work out the general gist." Admittedly, he glosses over with "[French. wait, maybe some Italian. French!]" when he's not particularly interested in what's being said. When he's paying attention, he does a bit better. "I can get shot at, or sometimes not get shot at, pretty much anywhere in the world, so I can't be too bad."

He'll welcome the chance to read things over, see what they're up against. He knows Nat well enough to know any briefing will be as comprehensive as the available information allows.

[red_room]

"That's fine. It's mostly French or a variant of Arabic there. If you know either at all you should be alright." Natasha pushes an earpiece into Clint's hand. "I'll make sure you stay briefed at all times."

"We've been trying to get a peg on the leader of a serious human trafficking operation going on in Lebanon. The Syrian conflict has made for easy pickings among the refugees that stream out of the country. It's been a long game, but the timetables got pushed up majorly after we found evidence that the funds were being funneled in no small percent to a known HYDRA cell operating in northern Africa.

A small group has been working the inside of this operation for a few months now, trying to pinpoint the exact location of the transaction point. We can't shut them down unless we know where they're holding the women and children they're selling. Once the team missed two scheduled check ins, I was alerted. Drones showed no movement at the safe house so here we are."

[aw_hawkguy]

Clint nods grimly, taking out one hearing aid to put in the earpiece. "HYDRA. Damn. If Zola's in on this, it could get a lot uglier than human trafficking," he muses. "So we're starting with a cold trail and tracking it to HYDRA, quietly enough that they don't cut ties before we find the captives. Gotta admit, you never make it boring."

[red_room]

"...I really really don't want to think of there being a backup of him." Natasha says quietly. Another one, she means. Who is she kidding, of course there are. Nothing ever seems to go away for good when it's terrible things.

"Mission priority one is to rescue our agents if they're alive. ....Everything else comes second." The pause belies how much those orders bother her. If she had it her way she wouldn't walk out of there without freeing every captive person.

"You up for both anyway?"

[aw_hawkguy]

"He didn't just switch to a new body?" Clint asks. That's probably not happy-thought-making, though.

Clint listens to the mission priorities, and frowns a little. He's an Avenger. This secret agent stuff doesn't always sit well with him; he went along with Project Eucritta because it helped people, and he's here now to help people. "Here's my mission priority one: we get everyone outta there who wants out. If they're having a really good day, priority two is putting the HYDRA jerks in cuffs and leavin' 'em for Interpol to treat like opera gloves. How's that sound?"

[red_room]

There's silence for an answer for far too long. Maybe she's irritated, regretting bringing him along. Thinking, mapping out how they would do any of that. When he looks though, there's a small smile on her face.

That's why she brought him here.

"Sounds...like a party, Barton." She presses on every word, making a book of unsaid things with just those five words, spoken slowly and with an almost bored drawl.

"We going to keep score, too?"

[aw_hawkguy]

"Aw, hell, no. You'll get extra-competitive and break my bow or something, and then I'll have to do something stupid like crash a boat through a wall to get even." He pauses for a beat, then admits, "actually, that sounds kinda fun. I'm great at boats."

[red_room]

"Prisoners to rescue." Nat points out. No bow breaking or incapacitating him to get a victory.

If that's how her Clint plans on remodeling his house, Nat better get her couch prepped because Laura isn't going to find that nearly as funny as she does.

"...I'd pay to see that, by the way."

[aw_hawkguy]

Clint chuckles at that. "You're on. If I can't do something with a boat this time, then next time for sure."

[red_room]

Next time.

Nat smiles and inclines her head.

"We will still want to check out the safe house first, assess whether or not covers were blown. If there was a raid..." If they were dead. She doesn't consider that option yet. Can't. They'll deal with it when it comes. If it comes.

"If we're going to do a full scale rescue and take down...We're going to need to move quick. Where are we even going to take the prisoners until we can schedule evac?" She has no problems altering the parameters of the mission. One could argue that was her intention form the beginning in inviting Clint along.

[aw_hawkguy]

Clint thinks about it. "Local church. There'll be space for lots of people, they probably aren't tied in to the local mob, and even HYDRA troops'd balk at a full frontal assault." Not because it's secure, but because it's holy. And speaking of holy, holy shit, does Clint actually know a little bit about being a spy?

[red_room]

"We send them seeking asylum. Sounds fair." Securing a route to the church would be difficult, but not unmanageable. Natasha wishes vaguely that the team wasn't as fractured and missing as it is right now. Having the rest of them here would make this much more manageable.

On the other hand...Natasha stops looking at the jet's readouts and instruments long enough to watch Clint looking over the satellite images and studying maps. He may not be the Agent her Barton is, but she has a feeling they'll be okay. A thought occurs. Natasha scowls.

"...I'm not going to go easy on them, Barton. If we get in over our heads. I'm going to kill people." She doesn't know why she says it. Maybe it's her way of shutting him out. She doesn't want to do that, certainly. But he needs to know that no matter who he knows her as, She is not a person. She's a monster.

[aw_hawkguy]

Clint glances up from his reading, expression sober. "They're HYDRA and human traffickers. You do what you have to." After a beat, he adds, "personally, I plan on giving them a long time to reflect on their mistakes, over lots and lots and lots of prison-hospital food." He smiles pleasantly, a dumb, nice, Iowa guy, then goes back to his reading.

Because really, sometimes ending their pain quickly is the nicer thing to do, and a preference against killing can be more cruel. And it's only a plan--plans change, when they need to.

[red_room]

What was she expecting?

Natasha doesn't quite expect the brutality she sees in his smile. The one that says 'im going to enjoy hurting these people but I won't let them die'. This one isn't an assassin, isn't a spy.

It makes her smile that smile that's mostly in her eyes as she turns her attention back to the jet.

By the time they land and make it to the safe house it's nearly dawn. The tripwires and safeties are all in place--a good sign that the safehouse wasn't compromised. So they weren't discovered probably, either caught or dead. Neither of which is good news, but it does put the potential hunt for leaked secrets a lot less likely.

Natasha does a sweep of the house before clearing a duffel bag of weapons off of the single couch inside.

"..Well." She gives Clint a look. "This could be worse." Not by much, though.

[aw_hawkguy]

He gives her a lopsided not-quite-a-smirk. "I usually open with 'this looks bad.'" He, too, has been checking the place over. When he's not getting ambushed by raccoons, it seems Clint has some spy mojo after all. "So we go looking. Unless we know where these guys hole up?"

((What the hell, spellcheck, you have raccoon and racoon, but not the plural of either?))

[red_room]

"What do you take me for, a biter?" Natasha's eyes are scanning the walls, fingertips brushing along as she walks the inside perimeter of the safehouse. Where would they be?

Undercover? Not without a lookout, and it didn't look like anyone had been at the safehouse in some time. The gear to check in is still here and functional. Dead? She'd like to think better of them than that, even if they weren't her. Options, Natasha. You brought Barton here for a reason. You could complete the mission alone.

You could do some good with him in tow.

The hidden panel finally makes itself known and Natasha wastes no time in unfolding maps and pulling out the insides of the small safe.

"They had the route pinned down to a fairly small area by the shipyard to the north. The ring roads around the city made getting to the ports childsplay. We just need to figure out how they were moving them to and from the shipyard unseen. Under ground? If so, where's the entrance...?" She pauses, looks up.

"We go play hide and seek, obviously."

[aw_hawkguy]

"I like hide and seek," he muses. He's looking at the maps over her shoulder, or possibly upside-down, looking for either disused factories or storage spaces within the target zone, and for places that would make sense for access points to some discreet mode of transit between them and major travel hubs--a port, a highway, an airport. "We should find out where the taxi drivers eat, some'a them might know something. A rumor, at least."

[red_room]

"So we find a kebbe shop that isn't a food cart where the drivers go for arak after the shift is over?" Natasha keeps her arms crossed. "I won't be welcome in that kind of area, but I can translate for you from a lookout."

She unzips one of the duffel bags and starts checking magazines on the guns.

"Won't that be a change of roles. You on the ground and me watching over your ass." She snorts before moving on to the next weapon. "Should be some money in one of the bags. Lebanese pounds. Might be able to buy yourself some information."