A Different Call

A Most Dangerous Game

Clint P.O.V.   

I sat perched on the ledge of a roof across the street from where she was staying, the concrete starting to chill my body from where I rested on it. I don't know if I'm more surprised or relieved that she took a break, as the cat and mouse game that we had been playing had begun to wear me down, although I realize that if I was tired, even with the supplies and advantages that SHIELD gave me, then she must be exhausted.

I was snapped out of my thoughts when Coulson's voice crackled in my coms-piece, "Barton, do you have eyes on the target?"

"Yeah, I have eyes on her but not a clear shot." It was a lie and Coulson most likely saw through it, although he didn't say anything. I wanted to play this out just a little longer, maybe accomplish the mission in a way that Fury hadn't intended, I mean all he said was that I was supposed to stop her from harming any more of the "good guys". I had never had a harder mission or a trickier target and that definitely intrigued me, although some of it could be due to the fact that most of my missions are just shoot the guys and leave, this mission had been much more interesting. I saw her lips move and picked up a little bit of singing, though I couldn't make out the words, most likely foreign. The girl speaks more languages than you would hear at a U.N. meeting. During that time of singing, I saw something that if I didn't know any better, I would think was part of a weird twisted dream. The Black Widow was showing human emotion, crying actually. So, you do have a heart? Maybe I can help you, as long as you help me.

Soon she went to sleep, rather easily exposed though most people wouldn't be able to see through the grime-covered window, but I'm not called Hawkeye for nothing. I could have easily gotten a shot in right then and ended this wild chase. But, I wanted to learn more about this target. There are things that I noticed in her file that makes me think that she was not all evil, maybe even more like the prey she hunts than the predator she wants people to think she is.

Her name was Natalia Romanova, a native-born Russian, though she was wanted on almost every continent except for Antarctica, which was a surprise I mean I'm sure she did something to piss off a penguin or two. According to her file, she has a specific skill set and she has honed it very well, like scary well. From what I had been allowed to read, she had amassed more kills by the time she was fifteen than I had in my past six years at SHIELD, although those were only the ones that could be directly appointed to her, and I'm sure the number is much higher when you add in the fact that at least a quarter of her training dummies were most likely live targets, given her hand-to-hand combat skills and the fact that Russians are just a bunch of barbarians with tech.

I'll admit though when I first saw her I thought I was after the wrong person. The girl that I saw looked more like she belonged in a dance studio than an assassin in the field. That was quickly extinguished after I saw her technique though. Not many people can take out multiple high-level SHIELD agents, lucky she left them alive - not in great shape but alive- possibly as a warning message for us. That is why they brought me in, I can make the hard shots literally, and distance fighting would limit the number of casualties. I should have brought her down by now, and I'm sure that Fury was getting tired with me, but I was curious and exhausted, so I let her sleep. Tomorrow our game will continue, although I wonder if she thinks this is as much of a game as I do.