now boarding
strike team delta & co.
rating: pg
characters: Clint Barton, Pietro Maximoff, Wanda Maximoff, Natasha Romanoff
warnings: mild language, minor references to canon childhood trauma
summary: In the early days of their partnership and the last days of a border war, Clint and Natasha are sent to Sokovia with a simple mission: retrieve time-sensitive intel and get out. But there are more than bombs and fading ghosts in the city's dusty streets, and the secrets that brought death and destruction also made two barefoot orphans to shadow their searching steps.
author's note: Inspired by this fantastic art by koreanrage of Clint, Natasha, and the kid Maximoff twins. As this is somewhat canon compliant, I couldn't wrangle powered!twins, but here, have a glance at how they might have found each other.
Thanks to cybermathwitch and findthesea for listening to me yell about this for a little while. The above icon is for both of you.
It’s meant to be a simple side mission in Sokovia, a natural segue after Strike Team Delta stops by the Czech Republic. Nothing groundbreaking or world changing, it's supposed to be a quick in-and-out, a chance to pick through the rubble of the latest Eastern European border scrap for crucial intel and a local asset. ‘Supposed to be,’ Clint has long since realized, means very little when it comes to anything about Strike Team Delta. Whether it’s his decisions in the field, his partner’s rumored past, or the growing foundation of understanding and bone-deep trust between two unlikely partners, nothing seems to go as anyone safe in the cushy SHIELD offices expects.
When you take that into account, it makes sense that a jaunt described as having ‘minimal risk’ in the briefing packets will end up anything but.
So Strike Team Delta infiltrates Sokovia, where the dust is still settling, the rubble still shifting as the proud but outgunned country tries to make a place to rebuild the city from. Clint and Natasha slip through the chaos and the cracks like the plaster-covered civilians around them, heading for the secondary location where any details about the local informant are likely to be. The primary location has turned out to be a bomb-blasted apartment on the western outskirts of the city, its damage strangely isolated from the majority of the destruction in the northeastern corner. Then again, the Cold War technology used in the fights probably hadn’t been the most precise a few decades after its sell-by date - even if SHIELD suspects the weapons had been made by Howard Stark.
That knowledge makes Clint a little more uneasy about dodging the unexploded ordnance left lying in the streets.
The tourism office appears as abandoned as one would expect after several months of fighting; no rich Western tourists want to visit the capital city when beautiful mountains and gorgeous forests are equally abundant in other, less shelling-prone countries. The briefing hadn’t included more information on a drop point than the building, though, so their own visit can’t be as quick as he hoped. He and Natasha scout the office in easy silence, undertaking a routine they’re both now comfortable with, and settle in to search.
She’s flipping through files marked G. Maximoff and Clint is pulling out employee records when her shoulders stiffen. He knows her now, knows her tells, and doesn't go for the folded bow on his back or the gun in his thigh holster; just cocks his head so he can see her position a little better.
"Come out," Natasha calls in soft Serbian, gaze trained on the back door left ajar by its skewed doorframe. It opens onto a cluttered alleyway plastered with propaganda posters and gray-coated trash, already scouted and dismissed as a potential point of entry for threats when they initially canvassed the office. But the slim shadows that shift and squeeze through the narrow opening aren't threats; not the usual kind, anyway.
"You’re looking for something," the grime-streaked girl says, her eyes dark and defiant. A boy hangs onto her with a death grip, trying to restrain her with one arm and fighting a losing battle. Tough, kid, Clint thinks in commiseration. He's fought the same battle too often not to know the outcome.
Natasha nods slightly.
"You’re from SHIELD, aren’t you."
The boy tugs again on the tattered remains of the girl's shirt sleeve and hisses in her ear. His light gaze never settles, darting from Natasha to Clint to the girl and back again. Looking for threats, looking for escape routes. Not a bad instinct, but in a kid... Clint swallows against the tightness in his throat.
"Why do you think that?" His partner asks in a level voice. The girl tightens her ragged hands, the small fingers balling up against her friend's arm. Her brother, maybe. For a long moment she doesn’t answer Natasha, instead remaining mute and staring his partner down.
Clint can read their story in their clothes, their bare feet and stiff way the dust clings to every seam and hem. Orphans, probably, who might even have lost their parents in this last border spat. He and Natasha have seen the same story before in a dozen different countries. No matter the regime or language or culture, nothing ever seems to change.
Life’s a bitch like that.
"You want this." The girl starts to open the curled fingers of one hand; in a flash her brother has clamped his own hand down on it, staring with wide eyes at her.
"What are you doing? Why are you giving it to them?" He demands, and she turns that intent gaze on him.
"Because it won't bring our father back," she replies with an expression that could have been carved from stone. "Or our mother."
Sometimes Clint really hates being proved right.
"Your father worked here?" Natasha asks without any hint of heightened interest. The boy leaves off his silent staring contest with the girl and looks at her, nodding reluctantly.
"He worked for SHIELD," he says in a cracking voice. "It was supposed to be a secret, but we knew."
Natasha's gaze flicks back to Clint for the first time since she caught onto their shadows. They have their answer as easily as that: the informant is dead, and what intel remains might as well be lost. Except…
The brother exchanges another look with his sister; then, slowly, he takes the key from her palm and shows it to them.
"He left everything in here," he says, and his words barely tremble.
They're just out the door with their ghost-like guides when everything goes to hell. Clint is vaguely not surprised at this because of course it does, they're Strike Team Delta, and nothing's ever easy. It turns out that someone in Sokovia really resents the idea of SHIELD’s boots on the ground and SHIELD’s interest in the country’s future, to the point that Natasha and Clint end up playing hide-and-go-seek with assailants for twenty-six hours. In light of this new information the odd damage to the apartment starts to make more sense; so do the twin orphans who stick to their sides like glue despite their best efforts.
They try to get the twins out of the battle in the first respite after things go to pieces. The two children look like a dozen other orphans on the street; in five minutes they could slip through another alleyway and become anonymous shadows once more. Still homeless, maybe, still hungry, but alive, which is something neither he nor Natasha can guarantee if the manhunt keeps up. Clint feels Natasha's shoulder bump his while they're flattened against an alley wall and takes his cue, looking down at the wide-eyed kids caught up around his knees.
"You got the key to us. You can just tell us where the safe is and walk away. They don't know who you are and they won't come looking for you, okay? Your way out is right over there."
He nods towards the rusted window set in a brick wall twenty feet away. There's a vein throbbing in the boy's scrawny neck as he meets their terrified eyes, and the girl's knuckles are hooked bleach-white on Clint's pants. They're scared, with good reason. But Clint and Natasha got them into this mess, and they'll get them out.
"You won't find it," the boy tells him even as he flinches at another burst of gunfire. Natasha returns the shots coolly, the bark of her guns a sharp retort by Clint's ear, and both children jump. "It is hidden. You won't find it."
"Trust me, we're good at finding things," Clint says to himself in English. Like trouble. "We will. Where is it?"
The girl wraps her hand around her brother's, the key sandwiched between their fingers, and glares at him with eyes wide with fear.
"Clint," Natasha snaps. The bow is up and an arrow is in his hand before conscious thought kicks in. He sights the man on the rooftop, fires; catches a glimpse of another fighter ducking behind the brickwork and curses. And just like that they're moving, running, the girl scooped up under Natasha's arm and the boy holding onto Clint's jacket like a lifeline as Clint rams his shoulder into a narrow door to let them through.
Okay, the twins become targets the moment the assailants see their faces. And maybe SHIELD owes their father, who died for his job, and their mother, who died for her love. But what pulls Clint in is knowing clinically that the twins are not the mission, are utterly expendable, and finding down in the grit and grist of his soul that letting them die is not an option.
What Natasha or Pietro or Wanda find in that dusty, impossible day before they find the safe and its contents, he doesn't know. But when the twins have the choice between returning to the city or stepping into an airplane with strangers still smelling of gunpowder and smoke, they choose the latter.
Clint knows what it's like to be taken away, to have a home and family and comfort, to see it crumble away in alcohol or bruises instead of bombs. But this time, this time, there's more than just a string of empty promises and heartache waiting ahead. He has a gun and a badge, just like the policemen who took him away, but he also has his hand on Pietro's shoulder and Wanda holding onto his jacket, and his partner flanking them all.
This time, although he and Nat might seem like figures from his own past, the twins won't have a future like his.
They’re on the flight manifest as ‘Strike Team Delta & co.’ In the weird way these things have, Clint thinks, it kind of fits.
rating: pg
characters: Clint Barton, Pietro Maximoff, Wanda Maximoff, Natasha Romanoff
warnings: mild language, minor references to canon childhood trauma
summary: In the early days of their partnership and the last days of a border war, Clint and Natasha are sent to Sokovia with a simple mission: retrieve time-sensitive intel and get out. But there are more than bombs and fading ghosts in the city's dusty streets, and the secrets that brought death and destruction also made two barefoot orphans to shadow their searching steps.
author's note: Inspired by this fantastic art by koreanrage of Clint, Natasha, and the kid Maximoff twins. As this is somewhat canon compliant, I couldn't wrangle powered!twins, but here, have a glance at how they might have found each other.
Thanks to cybermathwitch and findthesea for listening to me yell about this for a little while. The above icon is for both of you.
It’s meant to be a simple side mission in Sokovia, a natural segue after Strike Team Delta stops by the Czech Republic. Nothing groundbreaking or world changing, it's supposed to be a quick in-and-out, a chance to pick through the rubble of the latest Eastern European border scrap for crucial intel and a local asset. ‘Supposed to be,’ Clint has long since realized, means very little when it comes to anything about Strike Team Delta. Whether it’s his decisions in the field, his partner’s rumored past, or the growing foundation of understanding and bone-deep trust between two unlikely partners, nothing seems to go as anyone safe in the cushy SHIELD offices expects.
When you take that into account, it makes sense that a jaunt described as having ‘minimal risk’ in the briefing packets will end up anything but.
So Strike Team Delta infiltrates Sokovia, where the dust is still settling, the rubble still shifting as the proud but outgunned country tries to make a place to rebuild the city from. Clint and Natasha slip through the chaos and the cracks like the plaster-covered civilians around them, heading for the secondary location where any details about the local informant are likely to be. The primary location has turned out to be a bomb-blasted apartment on the western outskirts of the city, its damage strangely isolated from the majority of the destruction in the northeastern corner. Then again, the Cold War technology used in the fights probably hadn’t been the most precise a few decades after its sell-by date - even if SHIELD suspects the weapons had been made by Howard Stark.
That knowledge makes Clint a little more uneasy about dodging the unexploded ordnance left lying in the streets.
The tourism office appears as abandoned as one would expect after several months of fighting; no rich Western tourists want to visit the capital city when beautiful mountains and gorgeous forests are equally abundant in other, less shelling-prone countries. The briefing hadn’t included more information on a drop point than the building, though, so their own visit can’t be as quick as he hoped. He and Natasha scout the office in easy silence, undertaking a routine they’re both now comfortable with, and settle in to search.
She’s flipping through files marked G. Maximoff and Clint is pulling out employee records when her shoulders stiffen. He knows her now, knows her tells, and doesn't go for the folded bow on his back or the gun in his thigh holster; just cocks his head so he can see her position a little better.
"Come out," Natasha calls in soft Serbian, gaze trained on the back door left ajar by its skewed doorframe. It opens onto a cluttered alleyway plastered with propaganda posters and gray-coated trash, already scouted and dismissed as a potential point of entry for threats when they initially canvassed the office. But the slim shadows that shift and squeeze through the narrow opening aren't threats; not the usual kind, anyway.
"You’re looking for something," the grime-streaked girl says, her eyes dark and defiant. A boy hangs onto her with a death grip, trying to restrain her with one arm and fighting a losing battle. Tough, kid, Clint thinks in commiseration. He's fought the same battle too often not to know the outcome.
Natasha nods slightly.
"You’re from SHIELD, aren’t you."
The boy tugs again on the tattered remains of the girl's shirt sleeve and hisses in her ear. His light gaze never settles, darting from Natasha to Clint to the girl and back again. Looking for threats, looking for escape routes. Not a bad instinct, but in a kid... Clint swallows against the tightness in his throat.
"Why do you think that?" His partner asks in a level voice. The girl tightens her ragged hands, the small fingers balling up against her friend's arm. Her brother, maybe. For a long moment she doesn’t answer Natasha, instead remaining mute and staring his partner down.
Clint can read their story in their clothes, their bare feet and stiff way the dust clings to every seam and hem. Orphans, probably, who might even have lost their parents in this last border spat. He and Natasha have seen the same story before in a dozen different countries. No matter the regime or language or culture, nothing ever seems to change.
Life’s a bitch like that.
"You want this." The girl starts to open the curled fingers of one hand; in a flash her brother has clamped his own hand down on it, staring with wide eyes at her.
"What are you doing? Why are you giving it to them?" He demands, and she turns that intent gaze on him.
"Because it won't bring our father back," she replies with an expression that could have been carved from stone. "Or our mother."
Sometimes Clint really hates being proved right.
"Your father worked here?" Natasha asks without any hint of heightened interest. The boy leaves off his silent staring contest with the girl and looks at her, nodding reluctantly.
"He worked for SHIELD," he says in a cracking voice. "It was supposed to be a secret, but we knew."
Natasha's gaze flicks back to Clint for the first time since she caught onto their shadows. They have their answer as easily as that: the informant is dead, and what intel remains might as well be lost. Except…
The brother exchanges another look with his sister; then, slowly, he takes the key from her palm and shows it to them.
"He left everything in here," he says, and his words barely tremble.
They're just out the door with their ghost-like guides when everything goes to hell. Clint is vaguely not surprised at this because of course it does, they're Strike Team Delta, and nothing's ever easy. It turns out that someone in Sokovia really resents the idea of SHIELD’s boots on the ground and SHIELD’s interest in the country’s future, to the point that Natasha and Clint end up playing hide-and-go-seek with assailants for twenty-six hours. In light of this new information the odd damage to the apartment starts to make more sense; so do the twin orphans who stick to their sides like glue despite their best efforts.
They try to get the twins out of the battle in the first respite after things go to pieces. The two children look like a dozen other orphans on the street; in five minutes they could slip through another alleyway and become anonymous shadows once more. Still homeless, maybe, still hungry, but alive, which is something neither he nor Natasha can guarantee if the manhunt keeps up. Clint feels Natasha's shoulder bump his while they're flattened against an alley wall and takes his cue, looking down at the wide-eyed kids caught up around his knees.
"You got the key to us. You can just tell us where the safe is and walk away. They don't know who you are and they won't come looking for you, okay? Your way out is right over there."
He nods towards the rusted window set in a brick wall twenty feet away. There's a vein throbbing in the boy's scrawny neck as he meets their terrified eyes, and the girl's knuckles are hooked bleach-white on Clint's pants. They're scared, with good reason. But Clint and Natasha got them into this mess, and they'll get them out.
"You won't find it," the boy tells him even as he flinches at another burst of gunfire. Natasha returns the shots coolly, the bark of her guns a sharp retort by Clint's ear, and both children jump. "It is hidden. You won't find it."
"Trust me, we're good at finding things," Clint says to himself in English. Like trouble. "We will. Where is it?"
The girl wraps her hand around her brother's, the key sandwiched between their fingers, and glares at him with eyes wide with fear.
"Clint," Natasha snaps. The bow is up and an arrow is in his hand before conscious thought kicks in. He sights the man on the rooftop, fires; catches a glimpse of another fighter ducking behind the brickwork and curses. And just like that they're moving, running, the girl scooped up under Natasha's arm and the boy holding onto Clint's jacket like a lifeline as Clint rams his shoulder into a narrow door to let them through.
Okay, the twins become targets the moment the assailants see their faces. And maybe SHIELD owes their father, who died for his job, and their mother, who died for her love. But what pulls Clint in is knowing clinically that the twins are not the mission, are utterly expendable, and finding down in the grit and grist of his soul that letting them die is not an option.
What Natasha or Pietro or Wanda find in that dusty, impossible day before they find the safe and its contents, he doesn't know. But when the twins have the choice between returning to the city or stepping into an airplane with strangers still smelling of gunpowder and smoke, they choose the latter.
Clint knows what it's like to be taken away, to have a home and family and comfort, to see it crumble away in alcohol or bruises instead of bombs. But this time, this time, there's more than just a string of empty promises and heartache waiting ahead. He has a gun and a badge, just like the policemen who took him away, but he also has his hand on Pietro's shoulder and Wanda holding onto his jacket, and his partner flanking them all.
This time, although he and Nat might seem like figures from his own past, the twins won't have a future like his.
They’re on the flight manifest as ‘Strike Team Delta & co.’ In the weird way these things have, Clint thinks, it kind of fits.