Time to go

Act Four

~Three Weeks Later~

Thirteen floors above the lab, Clint woke up gasping. He couldn't breath. He couldn't move. The room was too small. Too quiet. This cell was going to kill hi-

Wait. Clint shushed his overactive brain that was screaming for him to flee. You aren't with SHIELD anymore. You are at the tower; look around.

Clint stared down at the crumple of papers and the jumble of markers he had been using as a makeshift pillow at his desk. His vision began to clear.  He counted the little holes in the wall from the countless darts he had aimed into it. His heartbeat slowed. He looked out the window, at the glittering skyline of New York; the view he thought he would've never seen again. His breathing went from shaky puffs to soft inhales and long exhales.

Everything is okay.Everything will be okay.

But will it really be okay? Clint brought his focus back to the papers scattered across the table. He trusted the plan he had strung together with Natasha's expertise. At first the plan had felt too outlandish, like it belonged in a superhero movie, but as they tweaked it, Clint saw the makings of a real, well made, heist.

This could work. Clint reminded himself, as he slowly unfolded himself from his desk chair and stumbled over to his bed. The plan is good. Bucky is nearly healed. And you, well, you are as about as good as you'll ever get.

Reclining onto the perpetually unmade bed, Clint repeated to himself again and again:

This could work.

This should work.

This will work.

Though as he stared up at the ceiling, Clint couldn't help but think that this may be his last week in this bed. Or in any bed for that matter.

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One floor above him,Natasha was working. She, as always, was working on the fine details.

The hour at which would be best for Clint and Bucky to leave the tower. The speed that they should fly the jet at to lessen chances of detection. The distance they should be dropped from the tesseract supposed location. What the location actually looked like.

Natasha was having a bit of trouble with that one. She managed to find a basic satellite image of the industrial building where the tesseract had been hidden, but she couldn't date the image, or find a floor plan of the building, much less which room would have the highest probability of housing the tesseract.

She was certain that if Tony gave her access to a few stealth drones and a modified geiger counter she could locate the exact room that Hydra was keeping the tesseract in. If she could do this she would save Clint and Bucky from going in blind and having to do a room by room sweep. It would lower their chances of being captured significantly,but unfortunately, there was nothing Natasha could do to lower their chances of being shot. That was up to Clint and Bucky, and frankly, luck. All the training in the world can't stop a bullet that lady luck has her eye on. In the end you just had to trust that your luck is better than the shooter's and trust that your gear is good.

That was the one thing Natasha trusted without question. Banner and Stark had worked around the clock, creating armor and weapons specifically tailored for Clint and Bucky. There was no doubt it was the safest gear either of the assassins had ever worn, and Natasha could be certain of that. Bruce went over the designs with her for hours; letting her pick apart the design and make her own suggestions based on experience.