Chapter Text
The biggest downside of working for a terrorist group is that there’s a ton of them out there. Everybody’s moving, angling for themselves, their own interests, and sometimes it’s hard to tell who’s on your side and who’s not. As a sniper, Clint likes to be shown a target and shoot it. He can’t get his head around all the inner workings of the organization, all the lies and espionage. Natasha’s good at that, good at seeing through people and working them to get her own way. But she’s been in Russia for the last two months, and Clint has been on his own.
And, apparently, Clint hasn’t been doing so well.
It all started out fine. He’d been sent with another agent into the field. Deep cover assassination. Only, they’d gotten into the field, met up with the target, and the other agent had promptly handed him over to the assholes running rival organization. The other terrorist cell wanted information from Clint, wanted him to spill the whereabouts of the other operatives.
Which Clint would have been fine with. Other than Natasha, Clint didn’t have emotional attachments to any of the other people in his organization. As a matter of fact, he pretty much thought they were all jackasses. Not that this new organization seemed much better (was there really a comparison between jackasses and assholes? Clint thought it was pretty much splitting hairs at this point) but they didn’t have a supply of biology suppressants for him. Not the black market, high end suppressant he needed, anyway.
Clint was a badass. He was an assassin, a killer, a terrorist, and an archer. But he was also an omega. And as long as his organization kept control of the suppressants that kept him from going in to heat, he’d keep doing whatever they asked. No matter how distasteful he found it, or how little of his soul was left at the end.
Because the alternative was too horrifying to contemplate.
It took about a week for his suppressants to start wearing off, for the nausea and fever to begin. Clint knew, realistically, that he had another three weeks before the true heat hit, but the first waves always terrified him almost as much as the heat itself. Contemplating how bad it could get was almost as bad as going through it.
Clint was pretty confident that his group would come for him. They’d only let him hit his heat before once, and then he’d been stranded in the arctic and, as much as it sucked, he really couldn’t blame them for that one. Plus, it had only been one day of excruciating, hellish nightmare. There was no way they’d let him go into heat with these fucks.
Unless, of course, these fucks managed to get their hands on experimental, highly illegal heat-inducing drugs. He’d fought them, of course. Fought like they were trying to peel his skin off when they gave him the injection, but even Hawkeye isn’t big enough to take out eight brawny alphas at the same time.
Not without his bow, anyway.
They’d thrown him back in a cell after that, and fuck if Clint knew who was the smartass that had leaked that he was an omega, but they were gonna pay! That thought, and that thought alone, pretty much occupied his mind and kept the, “Oh shit, Oh shit,” at bay.
So when the raid came, with a half dozen SHEILD agents that had no clue what the hell they were doing, it was at least a welcome distraction, even if it didn’t improve his odds of surviving by much. At least he’d die at the end of a gun, instead of letting his heat torture him to death.
Clint probably didn’t look like much of a threat when they found him panting in the back corner of one of the cells. His hands had been zip-tied together, and he hadn’t even managed to wiggle out of them. The effects of the heat had already started, the early nausea and stomach cramping, the headache and the fever. For a group of soldiers taking apart a terrorist organization, these guys were young. All in their mid-twenties, and all looking half-terrified.
“Fuck. They get you guys from the local boyscout troop or what?” Clint barked, because at least one of these kids was gonna have his head blown off in the next twenty minutes. Clint was pretty sure it wasn’t just the nausea making him sick.
“It was supposed to be a training exercise!” one of the boys blurted out, nearly hysterical.
“Wait,” Clint barked, gasping because it hurt his bruised ribs to laugh. “Are you telling me that you guys – a trainee group of SHEILD agents - just happened to stumble into a terrorist cell? For real?”
“We’re special ops trainees,” the oldest one defended. “We’ve been specially selected for these kinds of missions.”
“Any of you seen field action?” Clint asked, and laughed again when no one answered. “Alright, help me up,” he demanded, and one of the dumb fucks actually moved to help him before they’d even checked him for weapons.
“Who says we’re going to let you out?” asked the one Clint was counting as a ringleader because he had half a tick of common sense.
“Who says I’m gonna lead you to the exit?” Clint asked, “Oh, right, that was me. Anyone else know the way out of here? No? Alright then, try to keep the fuck up.”
How did his life get like this? Was there a “Let’s fuck with Clint” sign on his back? Cause it couldn’t be normal to run into this much random shit in one day.
One thing could be said about the trainees; they knew how to haul ass. The mishmash group was halfway across the complex before the terrorists even realized that there were intruders among them. And Clint hadn’t been bluffing about leading them out. The terrorists had taken refuge in a series of old mining tunnels on the outskirts of a small village in the New Mexico desert, and the whole compound was nearly a maze. Luckily, Clint had a photographic memory and was easily able to slip the group of soldiers through the tunnels.
It was only near the entrance that they faced resistance from the cell. A group of five terrorists opened fire as Clint as his group dodged behind discarded mining equipment. The soldiers Clint was leading returned fire, however ineffectually. Clint tried not to feel too annoyed when the ringleader decided to stick his head outside the cover to return fire, and Clint nearly lost a finger yanking him back to safety. The gash that appeared across the back of his hand bled slowly and Clint didn’t pay it much mind, but he cursed the young soldier well enough to make him blush.
“Gimme that,” Clint snarled and snagged the handgun right out of the hands of the tiny soldier –soldierette? Baby soldier? – which should have told the kid right there that he might want to choose another profession. Three shots, two more dead bodies on Clint’s roster, and one small explosion when Clint’s third bullet hit a fuel canister outside the tunnel. It was enough cover, and Clint had the boys running for the trees before the terrorists got their shit together enough to resume fire.
And by that time, SHEILD helicopters with actual, adult shield agents were circling, dropping men who (Clint hoped) actually knew how to use their weapons.
Which, actually, was bad news. Because Clint, technically, was also a terrorist.
Clint made a dash for the woods. He tried not to be too pissed when the ringleader of his band of boyscouts tried to grab him. He’d only taken a bullet for the kid, no big deal. Clint twisted out of the kid’s grip without much trouble, just another reminder that these kids probably should not be in open combat, but he couldn’t regret bringing them. Clint’s body count was already too high, already included too many boys just barely on the cusp of adulthood. Too many dumb shits that, really, just didn’t know what they were getting into.
When a pair of senior agents caught up with him moments later, talking him to the ground and pinning him while he struggled and cursed their fat asses because damn! They were heavy on his ribs.
“Are you guys waiting for something, or are you just too lazy to kill me?” Clint shouted, which was probably not his best line ever. He gave himself a pass, though, because he was pretty sure he could feel his ribs grinding together and the pain had him seeing spots.
When a man in a suit approached, Clint was pretty sure he’d lost his mind.
“My name is Agent Coulson,” the man said. The SHEILD agents hauled him to his feet, and thankfully they were rough enough that he didn’t have to do any of the work, because Clint wasn’t really sure he could have stood on his own. “I’d like to thank you for saving our new recruits back there. However, you’re still under arrest.”
“Just shoot me already,” Clint snarked, and passed out.