Title: Unmade
Author: SIGF
Summary: What if Natasha had been the one compromised and put under Loki's mind control instead of Clint? (Movieverse)
Disclaimer: Nothing in The Avengers world belongs to me, sadly.
Warning: I think this story is going to get pretty dark later, hence the M rating.
Author's Note: This story is basically going to be scenes from the movie, but changed up as if Natasha had been the one under mind control rather than Clint. Therefore, a lot of the lines in the movie will be reused here.

Only few people in the world get what they deserve, good or bad.

Clint Barton, alias Hawkeye, knew that he couldn't do anything about the former. That was God's work - well, if there even was a God. But he could certainly deliver justice and vengeance to the wicked.

Of course, the more he purged evil from the world, the more red his ledger collected, until it was practically gushing.

No one ever said that the life of an assassin was easy, after all.

But, this was the life he willingly chose for himself, and this was how he came to find himself standing in a bell tower in Montepulciano, Italy, bow in hand. His current mission was to assassinate some key players in the Amalfi family's famed weapons-trafficking ring. The Amalfi's, the largest black market weapons dealers in the world, sold high-powered weapons to dangerous groups that had no business wielding them. This included terrorist organizations looking for high-tech explosives, crime bosses looking for the kind of bullets that would rip through a policeman's protective armor, and any other unsavory sort that one could imagine.

S.H.E.I.L.D.'s plan was to attack the organization at its head, completely decapitating the leadership of the ring - metaphorically speaking, of course, as the act of decapitation itself was a messy one, and messy wasn't Clint's style. In any case, once that was taken care of, S.H.E.I.L.D. would then send in its still skilled but less subtle agents to clean up whatever remained.

Traveling throughout Europe for the past six months, Clint had managed to successfully take out four of his five targets, with his hawk eyes now hunting his last mark.

Finally the soon-to-be-perished soul emerged from a building nearly 1,200 yards away - more than close enough for Clint to hit with dead-aim accuracy, but far enough away to allow for a clean escape.

Taking a deep breath, Clint focused on the familiar feel of his arrow against his fingertips. In this moment, like the countless other times he had performed such an act, there was only himself and his bow, assassin and weapon - nothing else mattered, save for the unsuspecting target currently surrounded (in vain) by a sea of bodyguards.

That's why, when his cell phone rang and subsequently removed him from the heat of the moment, Clint let out a not-so-delicate curse. Turning on his Bluetooth so that he could keep his weapon trained on the mark while talking, Clint made his displeasure known.

"It's kind of a bad time," Clint stated with thinly-veiled annoyance.

Yet, the caller persisted. "We need you to come in," said the serious voice of his handler, Phil Coulson, who had clearly chosen to disregard Clint's uncongenial salutation.

Mildly surprised at Coulson's request, Clint wondered if his handler had somehow forgotten that he was in the middle of an important job. "Are you kidding? I'm working," Clint grumbled, sounding as close to a five-year old throwing a tantrum as a deadly assassin could get. Watching his target slowly get closer and closer to safety, Clint debated taking him out now, making a run for it, and calling Coulson back later when he was in the clear and had the time.

Completely unsympathetic to the assassin's plight, Coulson merely said, "This takes precedence."

Clint rolled his eyes. It was always something with the suits, wasn't it? Well, not this time, not when he was so close to completing his mission. "I'm about to take out my last target. Look, you can't pull me out of this right now," Clint protested, unwavering in his position.

"Barton... Natasha's been compromised."

At those words Clint's gray eyes widened, unseeing, and suddenly, everything seemed to change. The whole world now appeared so very far away, as if he were no longer a part of it. His target, who had been an easy kill only milliseconds ago, was now beyond his reach. Clint felt his precious bow slip through his hands and vaguely heard it clanking on the floor.

Natasha's been compromised... These were the words he always dreaded hearing when he and Natasha were apart, and hearing them finally spoken aloud for the first time felt as if someone had punched him square in the gut. Leaning against the wall, Clint felt his legs slowly give way, and before he knew it he had slid down to a sitting position.

Natasha Romanoff … the Black Widow. Master spy, master assassin, and partner to one Clint Barton. While a good partner was hard to find in and of itself, more than that, she was a good friend - something you didn't take for granted in Clint's line of work.

She meant a great deal to him, probably more than she should, and the thought of waking up in a world without her left him feeling cold all over.

But Coulson had said compromised and not dead, which meant...

"Where's Natasha now?" he demanded, wondering how far away she was and how long it would take him to reach her.

"We don't know," was Coulson's only answer.

"But she's alive," he stated, unable to form the words as a question, too afraid of the answer he'd receive.

"We think so," Coulson responded, and Clint shut his eyes tightly, not nearly reassured enough by his handler's lack of conviction. "I'll brief you on everything when you get back. But first, we need you to talk to the big guy."

"The big guy?" he asked with surprise. "Surely you don't mean..."

"Yes. Banner. I've got Stark, you get the big guy."

Oh, boy. If S.H.E.I.L.D. was so desperate as to involve "the big guy," whatever they were fighting had to be - well, big. Yes, now that he thought about it, it must be so if Natasha had been compromised. She was the most deadly and capable agent that he'd ever known. Only someone highly skilled would have been able to take her down and lived to tell about it.

Recalling her current mission, Clint knew that Fury had enlisted her to help guard the Tesseract, a powerful energy source of unknown potential. If that thing had as much power as S.H.E.I.L.D. believed it did, there was no telling to what lengths someone would go to acquire it...

Clint shivered as a feeling of foreboding prickled at his spine.

Stay safe, Natasha, Clint thought. I will come for you.

And with that last thought, Clint abandoned his mission and set off to find Banner.

To be continued...

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