Under or Over: Hawkeye & Black Widow

CHAPTER #26

"Everything suggests that. But I don't know her like you do."

Clint grinned, "Pepper don't you hate it when Tony's too smart for his own good?"

She laughed and kissed Stark, "brains and he's sexy.... what can I say?"

Barton rolled his eyes.  He stayed with them for dinner and then took one of Stark's sports cars and made sure he was seen bar hopping.  Girls on each arm and he went to their house to have some physical fun.  The next day he took both ladies out for lunch and then they parted ways.  He went to a shooting range and then visited some old friends.  Finally he returned Stark's car and booked a flight out of New York.  But his cabin reminded him of her too.  So he was almost relieved when Iron Man and Bird arrived.

"Money, passports, coms, your suit, equipment, pretty much everything you need is in Bird.  Like her new hover ability?" Tony asked when he lifted the mask of Iron Man.

"Excellent. What about fuel cells?" Clint asked.

"Taken care of.  How'd that bow and quiver I gave you work out?" Tony asked.

"We need to work on the balance of the shaft, now that it has the weighted end from the homing devices.  When I get back from overseas, we'll work on it."

Tony put his mask back on, "Jarvis already uploaded the flight information to Bird. So you can just have her fly you in on auto pilot."

"See you in a few months," Clint said getting into Bird.

Iron Man flew in one direction and Barton flew in the other.  It wasn't long before they were over the ocean heading to Europe. Since it was a long flight he activated the auto pilot and sat back to relax.  He looked at the various passports he'd been given, the bank roll and list of new arrow heads.  He was impressed with what Stark had provided. BIRD also had some language programs, that helped pass time. Unfortunately the countries he would be searching for HYDRA locations, were all near Budapest. And of course that brought back memories of the woman he was trying to forget.  

Try as he might, he couldn't keep the memories from flooding his mind.  When they had been on the assignment watching FuturePharm and killing time, Romanoff had explained how she remembered Budapest.  She said that they had been on an operation together, where she was the lead and Barton was tactical support.  She had to extract a Russian defective that was playing both sides of the Armenian vs Azerbaijani conflict.  The Russian was selling alien grade weaponry.  When Black Widow had gone in to manipulate the Russian into following her exit strategy, they discovered that he was really a HYDRA agent in disguise.  Both factions joined forces with the HYDRA team that had been sent in to kill Black Widow and Hawkeye. They fought side by side, back to back for a while before S.H.E.I.L.D. sent agents in to assist.  They got their target as required, and got out.  But Barton remembered it differently and they had squabbled back and forth about who's memory had been correct.  He agreed with everything except, he didn't remember fighting anyone except HYDRA's men.  And he remembered the HYDRA men retreating, before S.H.E.I.L.D. arrived to pick them up.  In the end she had said that he'd probably been hit in the head and that's why he didn't remember the fighting correctly.  Barton had noticed her irritation and kept his mouth shut.

Now as he sat in the modified plane, he wondered if she'd been right. It was very possible he had been knocked out for a while.  Anything could've happened back then. They'd been on so many operations together, both as part of other teams, with Captain America or just on their own, that the details often blended together.  

Clint rubbed his hands over his face, "Bird how much longer?

"One hour, ten minutes, forty-three seconds."

"So arrival is around 2 am. Just great, I don't suppose anyone booked me a hotel room?"

"Already taken care of sir.  You have a room at Hotel Nobel Tirana, for two days," Bird answered.

"Did you or Jarvis do that for me?" Clint asked, bemused.

"Jarvis sir. But if you would like me to book you a room elsewhere, I can do so," Bird replied.

"No thank you, that's fine."

As soon as there was a road visible, he converted the machine back to the motorcycle. Bird monitored the frequencies to make sure entry into the country was undetected. The rest was pretty standard. He wasn't as well versed in languages as some agents, but he knew enough to get by. 

While Barton was in Europe, Romanoff was on the Isle of Man with HYDRA.  They were about to mobilize and move the whole operation to a new base.  She hadn't been told yet where that was, except that she'd been there before.  Considering how many different locations around the world she'd been, that could be anywhere.  They had possession of equipment that had the potential to open universal portals, the problem seemed to be that the unit was missing a component.  So they were looking into another source.  Because she had not successfully killed agent Barton, HYDRA still didn't trust her 100% to give her all the details.  But with her superior skill set, Baron Von Strucker would soon tell her everything.  All she needed to do was either kill a S.H.E.I.L.D. agent or an Avenger. If Barton came around again, he wouldn't escape so easily.