[fic] Driver's Ed
Title: Driver’s Ed
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Avengers
Pairings: Clint/Natasha if you squint
Warnings: Violence, allusions to past abuse, gunplay.
Summary: When a rookie brings a concern to Coulson about some of Natasha’s habits, he initially dismisses her concerns. But like most everything involving the Black Widow, appearances can be deceptive.
Word Count: 3479
Author’s Notes: This fic was inspired by the most recent ATTF, where we talked about how Clint and Natasha get around when they’re not hijacking Quinjets with Captain America. I posited a theory about Natasha’s habits, and anuna-81 liked it so much that I had to put it into fic.
Also, I picture this as taking place in the same universe as my fic, The Candy Thief. It takes place between Thor and The Avengers.
At the polite knock on his office door, Phil Coulson glanced up and paused. He was surrounded by incredibly polite superiors and subordinates, so a polite knock didn’t actually identify his visitor, but he was a little surprised to see one of the rookies wanting to talk to him.
Agent Green stepped inside. Her name more than befit her current status, as it took six months for SHIELD to knock the green off its new agents, and Green had only been there four. “Do you have a moment, sir?”
He didn’t, but: “Sure. Have a seat.”
“Thank you, sir.” Green stayed at attention even perched on the guest chair. “I’m sorry to bother you when I’m sure you’ve got better things to do.”
“Something on your mind, agent?”
“It’s about the Black Widow, sir.”
That could have a myriad of meanings. Since the allegiance to SHIELD appeared real and not just another ruse by a Russian with more issues than Phil had clean-cut suits, the brass had decided let Natasha Romanoff interact with the trainees, which had been, if nothing else, an experiment in seeing precisely how many things could go wrong in a given training session. A separate perspective was considered valuable and Natasha approached training differently than anybody else in the organization. After a few broken arms and a sprained neck, though, Phil had made the executive decision that perhaps Natasha required a co-trainer during her sessions, until trainees learned their limits.
By scouring his mental files, Phil remembered that Green had been sent into the field with Natasha, a simple pick-up-and-exchange in Puerto Vallarta. There hadn’t been any chatter on the SHIELD channel to indicate that it had gone poorly, but Green was still sitting in his office and twisting her thumb around anyway.
“Does she drive?” Green asked.
“What?”
“I only ask because, sir, well, she let me.”
“Let you what?”
“Let me drive.” Green swallowed, her throat bobbing. “I was led to understand that those duties fell to the senior agent, but Agent Romanoff insisted I be the one to drive, even though she was familiar with the territory and I wasn’t. So I was wondering…does she? Drive, that is?”
“Agent, I assure you, Agent Romanoff is licensed to drive in every country on this planet, just like every agent sent through the SHIELD training.”
Green blinked. “Romanoff says she never went through SHIELD training.”
“Nonetheless,” Phil said. “She’s qualified, and she does drive.”
“Oh. Okay.” Green’s throat bobbed again as she gave an embarrassed nod. “I understand. Sorry to waste your time, sir.”
“No problem, Agent. If you’ve got a question for Agent Romanoff, however, you could ask her directly in the future.”
From the look on Green’s face as she fled his office, Phil noticed, it looked like the agent had asked Romanoff about the driving. Since the agent wasn’t walking with a limp, Phil was just going to assume that Natasha had simply evaded answering.
And that was interesting.
Phil glanced at the reports from the little imbroglio outside of Phuket, statements that still had yet to be reviewed or approved for Fury’s 1700 briefing with the WSC, and mentally juggled everything he had on his plate. He tossed half of it onto Sitwell’s workstation down the hall (Sitwell had forgotten to make coffee last year when he’d used up the last of the pot) and returned to his desk to pull up the records from the last several Black Widow missions. Most of them had been solo-work or partnered up with Barton, so he had to get past a few levels of security to full them in full detail.
It took a few minutes, but a pattern began to emerge.
When Barton found him an hour later, he’d pulled a pad of paper out of his desk drawer and had filled two pages of it with his tidy shorthand.
“Whoa,” Barton said, collapsing into the guest chair as though he belonged there (he might as well, Phil sometimes thought, as Barton seemed to regard Phil’s office as a break room). “Looks important. Aliens again?”
“Not everything is aliens these days, Barton. We still have garden variety terrorists.”
Barton mimed drawing his bow. “Point me at ’em.”
“Cute, but no, this is not about terrorists. After a fashion.” Phil tapped the pencil eraser against the page twice, frowning down at his findings. “Does it ever strike you as odd that Natasha doesn’t drive?”
“What? Nat’s a great driver.”
Phil tore off the top sheet of paper and held it out to Barton. The other man had deciphered his shorthand within twenty minutes of seeing it for the first time, so Phil didn’t bother to translate.
“There’s not a single mission where she got behind the wheel of a vehicle,” Phil said, as Barton read on and his eyebrows drew close together.
“No, that’s not right. What about that taxi in Lyons? The police report said she stole it.”
“She stole the driver, too. I know this because we paid him some very good money to forget some of the truly horrific things he saw,” Phil said.
Barton’s frown deepened. “She lived in L.A. deep cover for six months. Everybody drives in L.A.”
“She hired a car service. Discreetly, it appears. And she didn’t see fit to mention it-or why the very nice BMW we gave her as a cover vehicle didn’t clock more than fifty miles that the agent that drove it to her cover apartment put on it, come to think of it-in any of her reports.” Phil pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m beginning to wonder if she even knows how to drive.”
“She can hotwire a car faster than I can,” Barton said. “She can drive.”
“But did you ever see her drive those cars she hotwired?”
“She always let me drive.” Barton shrugged. “I assumed she was being nice.”
“Nice? Natasha?” Phil said. “I’ve got eighteen months of mission reports here, and she didn’t get behind the wheel of a car in a single one of them. I can’t believe I never noticed.”
“She’s the Black Widow, Phil. You’re not going to notice something unless she wants you to.” Barton picked up the baseball signed by Cal Ripken on the corner of Phil’s desk and began tossing it from hand to hand. “Doesn’t seem to have hurt her any. Her success ratio’s still the highest in SHIELD. Besides mine, that is.”
“Nobody thinks your rivalry is cute, for the record.”
“That’s a blatant lie. Nat and I find it adorable.”
“You’re the only ones.”
“But we do count.” Barton came within an inch of hitting the ceiling with the baseball. With anybody else, Phil might have worried. “Why does it matter? She gets things done, driving or not.”
“It probably doesn’t matter,” Phil said and, lunging across the desk, caught the ball before Barton could. He set it on its stand. “But it’s something to pay attention to nonetheless. You know how I feel about surprises.”
Barton climbed easily to his feet and brushed himself off. “Then I wouldn’t ask Nat how many broken arms happened at today’s trainee sparring session, if I were you.”
“Barton, I work for SHIELD. The Black Widow snapping trainees in half is the least surprising thing about my day.”
Barton’s laughter followed him out of the room. Once he was alone, Phil picked up the baseball and began tossing it, thinking it over. That sort of pattern displayed by one of his field agents was worrying, yes, but it was also Natasha Romanoff. She was the one they sent into the warehouse instead of a strike team because truthfully, she was twice as lethal as said team, even on her off days. If she was this effective while never touching the steering wheel of a car, what did it matter?
He’d watch, he decided, and if it became a problem, he’d take it to Fury. He got the feeling it wouldn’t become a problem.
It wasn’t that he precisely forgot about the observations he’d made to Barton, but he did work for an organization that occasionally employed the man who’d “successfully privatized world peace” and everything that entailed (mostly plugging cotton balls into the holes of the dam between good and evil, it felt like). So he was busy with things that took priority, and the task of discovering Natasha’s driving abilities became less of a priority and more of an occasional curiosity.
Until, that is, Natasha decided to answer the question for him once and for all a couple of months later.
Barton’s stream of obscenity over the comms summed up the situation nicely. By Phil’s count, he was down to less than a dozen arrows, there was an agent down, Natasha had taken a hit to the shoulder, they were pinned by gunfire, and by all reports, there were more enemies on the way. SHIELD had cavalry en route, but there was no way Phil and the small company of agents he had left could hold the base. They’d come for diplomacy, not a small reenactment of The Defense of Rourke’s Drift in the middle of the city, dammit.
Phil had half a clip left. It really wasn’t looking good, but if he’d learned anything at SHIELD, it was something about appearances and deception.
“As excellent as that sitrep is, Barton,” he said, activating the comms as he moved way from checking over Coates (it looked like a concussion, but they wouldn’t know until they got the man to a hospital), “let’s focus on the positive.”
“Which is? The fact that the bratwurst I had for lunch probably won’t have time to give me heartburn?”
“If you choose,” Phil said, cracking a smile even though it made his split lip burn. “But the positive I’m talking about is I think we can get somebody out of here if you lay down enough cover for them.”
“Who’s the lucky victim?”
Coulson glanced at the rookies. They were holed up together in the back of what had been a tobacco stand. Thankfully, all of the buildings in this part of town were solid enough to withstand battle, but the shop was still tiny and there were still five of them crammed in there with Barton covering them from the roof.
He decided on the more senior rookie. “Green? You feeling up to it? You get out of here and get us some transpo.”
“Yes, sir,” Green, no longer quite so green as before, said.
“You gotta quit calling him that,” Barton said over the comms. He was up on the roof, trying to hold off as much of the madness as possible. “It’ll go to his head.”
“I’ll draw their fire,” Natasha said. She was crouched behind what had been the cash register, checking over the state of her stash of weapons. It was only because of her paranoia that they’d even managed to make it as far as they had, as she’d been the one to get them all into the shop more or less in one piece. They’d really pissed off an Eastern European drug lord by stomping all over his territory and now he was retaliating. Clearly SHIELD needed to do better research because they’d had no idea that Helmut Kennerlich had had access to this amount of heavy duty weaponry. “Easiest way out of here, Hawkeye?”
“East, but it’ll be tight. I can’t cover you both at once.”
“Who said anything about you needing to cover me?” Natasha asked.
Green leaned close to Phil. “Do they always flirt this much over the comms?”
“That’s when you know we’re really in trouble,” Phil said. All of the conscious agents inside the tobacco shop ducked as another round of ammunition chewed into the outer wall. It ended abruptly when the walls shook with the force of a small explosion.
Two percussive arrows left, Phil thought. When they got back to base, he was putting in a request for a larger quiver for Barton.
“Took care of the M-134,” Barton said. “Can’t promise they won’t come back with an RPG, so if you’re going to get somebody out, I’d move now. Ready?”
Both agents confirmed that they were.
“On my mark-” Barton’s silence was punctured by the rattle of gunfire and the telltale blast of one of his percussive arrows. “Go!”
Natasha exploded through what had been a window before the gun battle, both Glocks firing. Green bulleted through the door and sprinted east. Phil wasted half of his remaining ammo laying down cover fire for Natasha, who likely didn’t need it at all, since Barton had Green’s back and his other rookie was guarding the back of the shop. They were all going to die eventually, Phil thought as he took out one of the enemy with a headshot. Today didn’t seem all that bad a day to do it.
Green’s cry over the comms made him freeze and nearly take a head-shot himself. He dropped to the floor, shouting for a sitrep.
“Green’s been hit-she’s down-” Barton sounded like he was sprinting. “Hold, please.”
Phil chanced a peek just in time to see Barton swing down from one of his grappling hook arrows, landing effortlessly and snatching Green from the ground as though she weighed very little. The two agents vanished. “Natasha?”
“I’m out. I’ll get us out of here, Coulson.”
“Any plans?”
“I’ve got an idea,” Natasha said, which was not actually that much of a comfort to Phil. Natasha’s plans tended to end in pain, no matter whose side she was on.
“I’ve got Green. She’s hit, through and through, but breathing,” Barton said. “We’re barricaded about three shops down from you and I’m almost out of ammo, boss.”
“So-” Green’s voice was thready, but present on the comms. “So you can call him ‘boss,’ but I can’t call him ‘sir?’ Double standards, Barton.”
“I think she’s going to be okay,” Barton said. “But whatever you’re doing, Nat, hurry.”
There wasn’t a reply from Natasha, so Phil focused on the situation at hand. With Barton off of the roof, that opened the chance that the enemy could attack them from behind. They’d cleared out a significant number of Kennerlich’s men, but there were still too many for a rookie, a senior agent, a handler, and an injured agent to take head-on. Add their dwindling supplies, and death was a certainty.
And to think, before this trip, he’d actually liked Budapest.
“How’re you doing, Smith?” he asked the other man in the room with him. He’d posted Smith near the back door as a last resort.
The rookie was the color of raw milk, but he gave Phil a steady look. “I’d like to request a reassignment now, sir.”
“Right when the fun’s getting started?” was all Phil could say to that. He spent two more bullets convincing one of the enemy that it was a bad idea to try and cross the street. Two rounds left, and there were at least seven of the enemy standing and shooting. Unless Natasha came through, this was about to get even uglier.
“Wait a second, d’you hear that?” Smith asked. A second later, Barton repeated the question over the comms, which made Phil belly-crawl to the other window and peer out.
It took a second for him to believe what he was seeing. One of the garishly-colored double decker buses that ferried tourists from one overpriced trap to the next was barreling down the street, crunching past tiny Eastern European cars like they were Tinker Toys. And sitting behind the wheel, looking both frightening and determined, was SHIELD Agent Natasha Romanoff.
“Holy hell,” Phil breathed. “Smith, grab Coates and get ready to move. The cavalry’s here. Toss me your gun.”
Smith did so. “Sir?”
“Just be ready,” was all Phil said as he checked the clip. Seven rounds. If he could do some sharp-shooting, it might be enough. “Barton, you copy?”
“Copy, but I’m not sure what I’m actually seeing.”
“If it’s your partner the bus driver saving all of our asses, you’d better become a believer fast. How many of them can you take before she gets here? She’s too open in that seat.”
“Three,” Barton said. “Green, you get the one on the left. Three for you, Phil?”
“Roger that,” Phil said, and took aim. The minute the group across the street turned their focus toward the very large bus currently barreling toward them, he started firing, nailing two of them on the first hit. Natasha didn’t roll to a stop, but she did slow, and for a moment, there was nothing but chaos and confusion punctuated by gunfire as the SHIELD agents piled onto the bus through any entrance they could find. Barton swung onto the roof, raced across, and began putting arrows through eye sockets as Natasha motored away.
It was a tense, humming eternity while Phil and the conscious agents huddled amid the broken glass and dust in the aisle of the middle of the bus. Finally, though, they were pulling clear of the tiny street, and Barton was thundering down the stairs at the back of the bus. “Clear,” he announced, shaking dust out of his hair.
Phil let out a long breath. “Natasha, how’s that arm?”
“I’ve had worse,” was all she said.
It wasn’t all that reassuring, but she sounded lucid and her driving seemed fine, so he let it pass. “Get us to a hospital?”
“Ditch the bus first?”
“No, I like it. It makes a statement.”
“Yes, sir.” Natasha’s lips twitched as she made an illegal left turn.
According to scuttlebutt around base when Phil and his crew arrived back, Fury’s reaction to the news that the team he’d sent to wrangle some diplomacy in Budapest had instead taken a double-decker bus to the hospital was a very loud laugh-instead of the aneurism Green had worried about. She and the other injured rookies were hailed as heroes, surviving a mission with the notorious Black Widow and Hawkeye. None of the senior agents had the heart to tell any of them that this was just another day in the life of a SHIELD agent. They’d soon learn. As for Phil, he filed his reports, dealt with the jokes about tourism being the death of him, and tried to focus on the next mission. There was always a next mission.
He was reading a surveillance report on that when a knock sounded at his door. Like all of the others, it was polite, but he wasn’t surprised to see Natasha standing there. She raised an eyebrow at him.
“You should know,” he said as she took a seat, “that the insurance report for that bus you stole came back. The driver’s grateful you didn’t actually club him like you said you would.”
Natasha moved one shoulder, a bare shrug. “He was scared enough.”
“I’m half-surprised you didn’t just kidnap him along with the bus.”
“Yes, well.” A smile quirked at one corner of Natasha’s lips. “A little birdbrain told me you don’t think I know how to drive, so I had something to prove.”
“By driving the biggest vehicle you could find?” Phil rooted through his desk drawer until he found the roll of Wint-O-Green Lifesavers he kept there. He offered one to Natasha, knowing she’d take it. She did. “I have to admit, you’ve got style, Agent Romanoff.”
She sucked on the mint for a second. “In the Red Room,” she said, and Phil blinked. Natasha never talked about the agency that had formed her, not with anybody but Barton. She took a deep breath and started over. “In the Red Room, they never let their agents learn anything about engines or how to drive.”
“But you learned.”
“The very first thing I did when I escaped,” Natasha said. “I was always smarter than they thought, and driving is not hard. But it is also boring.” She smiled. “So I let others drive.”
“Ah. Well, I hope you’ll forgive me for doubting you.”
“I’m the Black Widow. Getting people to doubt me is my M.O.” Natasha gave him a smile as she rose to her feet. She made it all the way to the door before she paused, and turned. “Though you really should know I am the best driver SHIELD has. If anybody-and I really mean Clint-asks.”
“You’ll have to prove it, but I’ll put it on your record,” Phil said.
Natasha grinned. “You do that,” she said, and left.
Phil let out a chuckle and eyed the baseball that sat all alone on the corner of his desk. The next time he was in London, he thought, he really should pick up one of those double decker bus toys to keep the ball company.
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Avengers
Pairings: Clint/Natasha if you squint
Warnings: Violence, allusions to past abuse, gunplay.
Summary: When a rookie brings a concern to Coulson about some of Natasha’s habits, he initially dismisses her concerns. But like most everything involving the Black Widow, appearances can be deceptive.
Word Count: 3479
Author’s Notes: This fic was inspired by the most recent ATTF, where we talked about how Clint and Natasha get around when they’re not hijacking Quinjets with Captain America. I posited a theory about Natasha’s habits, and anuna-81 liked it so much that I had to put it into fic.
Also, I picture this as taking place in the same universe as my fic, The Candy Thief. It takes place between Thor and The Avengers.
At the polite knock on his office door, Phil Coulson glanced up and paused. He was surrounded by incredibly polite superiors and subordinates, so a polite knock didn’t actually identify his visitor, but he was a little surprised to see one of the rookies wanting to talk to him.
Agent Green stepped inside. Her name more than befit her current status, as it took six months for SHIELD to knock the green off its new agents, and Green had only been there four. “Do you have a moment, sir?”
He didn’t, but: “Sure. Have a seat.”
“Thank you, sir.” Green stayed at attention even perched on the guest chair. “I’m sorry to bother you when I’m sure you’ve got better things to do.”
“Something on your mind, agent?”
“It’s about the Black Widow, sir.”
That could have a myriad of meanings. Since the allegiance to SHIELD appeared real and not just another ruse by a Russian with more issues than Phil had clean-cut suits, the brass had decided let Natasha Romanoff interact with the trainees, which had been, if nothing else, an experiment in seeing precisely how many things could go wrong in a given training session. A separate perspective was considered valuable and Natasha approached training differently than anybody else in the organization. After a few broken arms and a sprained neck, though, Phil had made the executive decision that perhaps Natasha required a co-trainer during her sessions, until trainees learned their limits.
By scouring his mental files, Phil remembered that Green had been sent into the field with Natasha, a simple pick-up-and-exchange in Puerto Vallarta. There hadn’t been any chatter on the SHIELD channel to indicate that it had gone poorly, but Green was still sitting in his office and twisting her thumb around anyway.
“Does she drive?” Green asked.
“What?”
“I only ask because, sir, well, she let me.”
“Let you what?”
“Let me drive.” Green swallowed, her throat bobbing. “I was led to understand that those duties fell to the senior agent, but Agent Romanoff insisted I be the one to drive, even though she was familiar with the territory and I wasn’t. So I was wondering…does she? Drive, that is?”
“Agent, I assure you, Agent Romanoff is licensed to drive in every country on this planet, just like every agent sent through the SHIELD training.”
Green blinked. “Romanoff says she never went through SHIELD training.”
“Nonetheless,” Phil said. “She’s qualified, and she does drive.”
“Oh. Okay.” Green’s throat bobbed again as she gave an embarrassed nod. “I understand. Sorry to waste your time, sir.”
“No problem, Agent. If you’ve got a question for Agent Romanoff, however, you could ask her directly in the future.”
From the look on Green’s face as she fled his office, Phil noticed, it looked like the agent had asked Romanoff about the driving. Since the agent wasn’t walking with a limp, Phil was just going to assume that Natasha had simply evaded answering.
And that was interesting.
Phil glanced at the reports from the little imbroglio outside of Phuket, statements that still had yet to be reviewed or approved for Fury’s 1700 briefing with the WSC, and mentally juggled everything he had on his plate. He tossed half of it onto Sitwell’s workstation down the hall (Sitwell had forgotten to make coffee last year when he’d used up the last of the pot) and returned to his desk to pull up the records from the last several Black Widow missions. Most of them had been solo-work or partnered up with Barton, so he had to get past a few levels of security to full them in full detail.
It took a few minutes, but a pattern began to emerge.
When Barton found him an hour later, he’d pulled a pad of paper out of his desk drawer and had filled two pages of it with his tidy shorthand.
“Whoa,” Barton said, collapsing into the guest chair as though he belonged there (he might as well, Phil sometimes thought, as Barton seemed to regard Phil’s office as a break room). “Looks important. Aliens again?”
“Not everything is aliens these days, Barton. We still have garden variety terrorists.”
Barton mimed drawing his bow. “Point me at ’em.”
“Cute, but no, this is not about terrorists. After a fashion.” Phil tapped the pencil eraser against the page twice, frowning down at his findings. “Does it ever strike you as odd that Natasha doesn’t drive?”
“What? Nat’s a great driver.”
Phil tore off the top sheet of paper and held it out to Barton. The other man had deciphered his shorthand within twenty minutes of seeing it for the first time, so Phil didn’t bother to translate.
“There’s not a single mission where she got behind the wheel of a vehicle,” Phil said, as Barton read on and his eyebrows drew close together.
“No, that’s not right. What about that taxi in Lyons? The police report said she stole it.”
“She stole the driver, too. I know this because we paid him some very good money to forget some of the truly horrific things he saw,” Phil said.
Barton’s frown deepened. “She lived in L.A. deep cover for six months. Everybody drives in L.A.”
“She hired a car service. Discreetly, it appears. And she didn’t see fit to mention it-or why the very nice BMW we gave her as a cover vehicle didn’t clock more than fifty miles that the agent that drove it to her cover apartment put on it, come to think of it-in any of her reports.” Phil pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m beginning to wonder if she even knows how to drive.”
“She can hotwire a car faster than I can,” Barton said. “She can drive.”
“But did you ever see her drive those cars she hotwired?”
“She always let me drive.” Barton shrugged. “I assumed she was being nice.”
“Nice? Natasha?” Phil said. “I’ve got eighteen months of mission reports here, and she didn’t get behind the wheel of a car in a single one of them. I can’t believe I never noticed.”
“She’s the Black Widow, Phil. You’re not going to notice something unless she wants you to.” Barton picked up the baseball signed by Cal Ripken on the corner of Phil’s desk and began tossing it from hand to hand. “Doesn’t seem to have hurt her any. Her success ratio’s still the highest in SHIELD. Besides mine, that is.”
“Nobody thinks your rivalry is cute, for the record.”
“That’s a blatant lie. Nat and I find it adorable.”
“You’re the only ones.”
“But we do count.” Barton came within an inch of hitting the ceiling with the baseball. With anybody else, Phil might have worried. “Why does it matter? She gets things done, driving or not.”
“It probably doesn’t matter,” Phil said and, lunging across the desk, caught the ball before Barton could. He set it on its stand. “But it’s something to pay attention to nonetheless. You know how I feel about surprises.”
Barton climbed easily to his feet and brushed himself off. “Then I wouldn’t ask Nat how many broken arms happened at today’s trainee sparring session, if I were you.”
“Barton, I work for SHIELD. The Black Widow snapping trainees in half is the least surprising thing about my day.”
Barton’s laughter followed him out of the room. Once he was alone, Phil picked up the baseball and began tossing it, thinking it over. That sort of pattern displayed by one of his field agents was worrying, yes, but it was also Natasha Romanoff. She was the one they sent into the warehouse instead of a strike team because truthfully, she was twice as lethal as said team, even on her off days. If she was this effective while never touching the steering wheel of a car, what did it matter?
He’d watch, he decided, and if it became a problem, he’d take it to Fury. He got the feeling it wouldn’t become a problem.
It wasn’t that he precisely forgot about the observations he’d made to Barton, but he did work for an organization that occasionally employed the man who’d “successfully privatized world peace” and everything that entailed (mostly plugging cotton balls into the holes of the dam between good and evil, it felt like). So he was busy with things that took priority, and the task of discovering Natasha’s driving abilities became less of a priority and more of an occasional curiosity.
Until, that is, Natasha decided to answer the question for him once and for all a couple of months later.
Barton’s stream of obscenity over the comms summed up the situation nicely. By Phil’s count, he was down to less than a dozen arrows, there was an agent down, Natasha had taken a hit to the shoulder, they were pinned by gunfire, and by all reports, there were more enemies on the way. SHIELD had cavalry en route, but there was no way Phil and the small company of agents he had left could hold the base. They’d come for diplomacy, not a small reenactment of The Defense of Rourke’s Drift in the middle of the city, dammit.
Phil had half a clip left. It really wasn’t looking good, but if he’d learned anything at SHIELD, it was something about appearances and deception.
“As excellent as that sitrep is, Barton,” he said, activating the comms as he moved way from checking over Coates (it looked like a concussion, but they wouldn’t know until they got the man to a hospital), “let’s focus on the positive.”
“Which is? The fact that the bratwurst I had for lunch probably won’t have time to give me heartburn?”
“If you choose,” Phil said, cracking a smile even though it made his split lip burn. “But the positive I’m talking about is I think we can get somebody out of here if you lay down enough cover for them.”
“Who’s the lucky victim?”
Coulson glanced at the rookies. They were holed up together in the back of what had been a tobacco stand. Thankfully, all of the buildings in this part of town were solid enough to withstand battle, but the shop was still tiny and there were still five of them crammed in there with Barton covering them from the roof.
He decided on the more senior rookie. “Green? You feeling up to it? You get out of here and get us some transpo.”
“Yes, sir,” Green, no longer quite so green as before, said.
“You gotta quit calling him that,” Barton said over the comms. He was up on the roof, trying to hold off as much of the madness as possible. “It’ll go to his head.”
“I’ll draw their fire,” Natasha said. She was crouched behind what had been the cash register, checking over the state of her stash of weapons. It was only because of her paranoia that they’d even managed to make it as far as they had, as she’d been the one to get them all into the shop more or less in one piece. They’d really pissed off an Eastern European drug lord by stomping all over his territory and now he was retaliating. Clearly SHIELD needed to do better research because they’d had no idea that Helmut Kennerlich had had access to this amount of heavy duty weaponry. “Easiest way out of here, Hawkeye?”
“East, but it’ll be tight. I can’t cover you both at once.”
“Who said anything about you needing to cover me?” Natasha asked.
Green leaned close to Phil. “Do they always flirt this much over the comms?”
“That’s when you know we’re really in trouble,” Phil said. All of the conscious agents inside the tobacco shop ducked as another round of ammunition chewed into the outer wall. It ended abruptly when the walls shook with the force of a small explosion.
Two percussive arrows left, Phil thought. When they got back to base, he was putting in a request for a larger quiver for Barton.
“Took care of the M-134,” Barton said. “Can’t promise they won’t come back with an RPG, so if you’re going to get somebody out, I’d move now. Ready?”
Both agents confirmed that they were.
“On my mark-” Barton’s silence was punctured by the rattle of gunfire and the telltale blast of one of his percussive arrows. “Go!”
Natasha exploded through what had been a window before the gun battle, both Glocks firing. Green bulleted through the door and sprinted east. Phil wasted half of his remaining ammo laying down cover fire for Natasha, who likely didn’t need it at all, since Barton had Green’s back and his other rookie was guarding the back of the shop. They were all going to die eventually, Phil thought as he took out one of the enemy with a headshot. Today didn’t seem all that bad a day to do it.
Green’s cry over the comms made him freeze and nearly take a head-shot himself. He dropped to the floor, shouting for a sitrep.
“Green’s been hit-she’s down-” Barton sounded like he was sprinting. “Hold, please.”
Phil chanced a peek just in time to see Barton swing down from one of his grappling hook arrows, landing effortlessly and snatching Green from the ground as though she weighed very little. The two agents vanished. “Natasha?”
“I’m out. I’ll get us out of here, Coulson.”
“Any plans?”
“I’ve got an idea,” Natasha said, which was not actually that much of a comfort to Phil. Natasha’s plans tended to end in pain, no matter whose side she was on.
“I’ve got Green. She’s hit, through and through, but breathing,” Barton said. “We’re barricaded about three shops down from you and I’m almost out of ammo, boss.”
“So-” Green’s voice was thready, but present on the comms. “So you can call him ‘boss,’ but I can’t call him ‘sir?’ Double standards, Barton.”
“I think she’s going to be okay,” Barton said. “But whatever you’re doing, Nat, hurry.”
There wasn’t a reply from Natasha, so Phil focused on the situation at hand. With Barton off of the roof, that opened the chance that the enemy could attack them from behind. They’d cleared out a significant number of Kennerlich’s men, but there were still too many for a rookie, a senior agent, a handler, and an injured agent to take head-on. Add their dwindling supplies, and death was a certainty.
And to think, before this trip, he’d actually liked Budapest.
“How’re you doing, Smith?” he asked the other man in the room with him. He’d posted Smith near the back door as a last resort.
The rookie was the color of raw milk, but he gave Phil a steady look. “I’d like to request a reassignment now, sir.”
“Right when the fun’s getting started?” was all Phil could say to that. He spent two more bullets convincing one of the enemy that it was a bad idea to try and cross the street. Two rounds left, and there were at least seven of the enemy standing and shooting. Unless Natasha came through, this was about to get even uglier.
“Wait a second, d’you hear that?” Smith asked. A second later, Barton repeated the question over the comms, which made Phil belly-crawl to the other window and peer out.
It took a second for him to believe what he was seeing. One of the garishly-colored double decker buses that ferried tourists from one overpriced trap to the next was barreling down the street, crunching past tiny Eastern European cars like they were Tinker Toys. And sitting behind the wheel, looking both frightening and determined, was SHIELD Agent Natasha Romanoff.
“Holy hell,” Phil breathed. “Smith, grab Coates and get ready to move. The cavalry’s here. Toss me your gun.”
Smith did so. “Sir?”
“Just be ready,” was all Phil said as he checked the clip. Seven rounds. If he could do some sharp-shooting, it might be enough. “Barton, you copy?”
“Copy, but I’m not sure what I’m actually seeing.”
“If it’s your partner the bus driver saving all of our asses, you’d better become a believer fast. How many of them can you take before she gets here? She’s too open in that seat.”
“Three,” Barton said. “Green, you get the one on the left. Three for you, Phil?”
“Roger that,” Phil said, and took aim. The minute the group across the street turned their focus toward the very large bus currently barreling toward them, he started firing, nailing two of them on the first hit. Natasha didn’t roll to a stop, but she did slow, and for a moment, there was nothing but chaos and confusion punctuated by gunfire as the SHIELD agents piled onto the bus through any entrance they could find. Barton swung onto the roof, raced across, and began putting arrows through eye sockets as Natasha motored away.
It was a tense, humming eternity while Phil and the conscious agents huddled amid the broken glass and dust in the aisle of the middle of the bus. Finally, though, they were pulling clear of the tiny street, and Barton was thundering down the stairs at the back of the bus. “Clear,” he announced, shaking dust out of his hair.
Phil let out a long breath. “Natasha, how’s that arm?”
“I’ve had worse,” was all she said.
It wasn’t all that reassuring, but she sounded lucid and her driving seemed fine, so he let it pass. “Get us to a hospital?”
“Ditch the bus first?”
“No, I like it. It makes a statement.”
“Yes, sir.” Natasha’s lips twitched as she made an illegal left turn.
According to scuttlebutt around base when Phil and his crew arrived back, Fury’s reaction to the news that the team he’d sent to wrangle some diplomacy in Budapest had instead taken a double-decker bus to the hospital was a very loud laugh-instead of the aneurism Green had worried about. She and the other injured rookies were hailed as heroes, surviving a mission with the notorious Black Widow and Hawkeye. None of the senior agents had the heart to tell any of them that this was just another day in the life of a SHIELD agent. They’d soon learn. As for Phil, he filed his reports, dealt with the jokes about tourism being the death of him, and tried to focus on the next mission. There was always a next mission.
He was reading a surveillance report on that when a knock sounded at his door. Like all of the others, it was polite, but he wasn’t surprised to see Natasha standing there. She raised an eyebrow at him.
“You should know,” he said as she took a seat, “that the insurance report for that bus you stole came back. The driver’s grateful you didn’t actually club him like you said you would.”
Natasha moved one shoulder, a bare shrug. “He was scared enough.”
“I’m half-surprised you didn’t just kidnap him along with the bus.”
“Yes, well.” A smile quirked at one corner of Natasha’s lips. “A little birdbrain told me you don’t think I know how to drive, so I had something to prove.”
“By driving the biggest vehicle you could find?” Phil rooted through his desk drawer until he found the roll of Wint-O-Green Lifesavers he kept there. He offered one to Natasha, knowing she’d take it. She did. “I have to admit, you’ve got style, Agent Romanoff.”
She sucked on the mint for a second. “In the Red Room,” she said, and Phil blinked. Natasha never talked about the agency that had formed her, not with anybody but Barton. She took a deep breath and started over. “In the Red Room, they never let their agents learn anything about engines or how to drive.”
“But you learned.”
“The very first thing I did when I escaped,” Natasha said. “I was always smarter than they thought, and driving is not hard. But it is also boring.” She smiled. “So I let others drive.”
“Ah. Well, I hope you’ll forgive me for doubting you.”
“I’m the Black Widow. Getting people to doubt me is my M.O.” Natasha gave him a smile as she rose to her feet. She made it all the way to the door before she paused, and turned. “Though you really should know I am the best driver SHIELD has. If anybody-and I really mean Clint-asks.”
“You’ll have to prove it, but I’ll put it on your record,” Phil said.
Natasha grinned. “You do that,” she said, and left.
Phil let out a chuckle and eyed the baseball that sat all alone on the corner of his desk. The next time he was in London, he thought, he really should pick up one of those double decker bus toys to keep the ball company.