Chapter Text
The wind whips around the goggles Clint has on to protect his eyes, stinging his cheeks. He glances over at Natasha whose eyes are fixed straight ahead – or he assumes so. He can't see with the goggles she's also wearing.
The two are currently trekking the side of a mountain somewhere in Scotland trying to get to an old cabin Fury had dropped them miles away from. Clint has the map in his pocket and both of their backpacks have a couple of bundles of papers; information Fury wants them to sort through away from prying eyes and what he suspects is a mole. He'd handed them the stacks of paper on the quinjet as they were flying over, printed out pages of every possibly important piece of writing he thought they'd need. No technology aside from the heavily encrypted burner phone that can only send one 20 word text to one number every other day in case they were tracked. The phone was for check-ins every two days so they could update Fury on how far along they were and when they would need extraction.
Clint's boots drag slightly behind him and he groans, stops walking, and pats Natasha on the arm to get her to stop too. She turns around and tilts her head in a question.
"Wanna see something," Clint pulls the map out and holds it out and Natasha makes her way back over to his side. There's a crudely drawn house on the map, the kind a six year old might draw, and it's circled with red pen. "What's the point of circling it, it's like the only damn thing on here. Why do we even have a map? This does nothing, it's a shit map."
"Yeah, shit map. Better than nothing though," Natasha takes it from his hands and flips it over. The other side of the map is a wider view of the area they're in and shows the little town at the base of the mountain. She flips it over again to the side with the house which is mostly an expanse of white with some lines and other map things on it. Clint flicks the corner with his finger. Truly useless.
"Whad'ya bet the chances are that we're going the wrong direction?" Clint takes the map Natasha offers back folded up and follows her as she starts walking again.
"Don't know," she answers simply. "But Fury said to keep going straight from where he dropped us off and I'm fairly confident we've been heading straight the whole time so I think we're okay."
"What I'd give to dip into the town there and find a motel or something to do this in," Clint sighs, looking to the right of them, down the mountain and at the soft lights of the town that carry up to where they are two thirds up the mountain. Natasha just hums. The trek delves back into silence and Clint sticks close to Natasha, her doing the same.
Clint's never had a problem with intelligence gathering missions where he was stationed at some sort of outpost or safehouse and left with a burner phone and a completely untraceable unhackable laptop and his own devices and a target or two. Undercover work was one of his strong suits and he found it pretty fun too so he always enjoyed being on those missions, especially when he was sent out with Natasha and they were each other's cover. But this... in the middle of nowhere on a mountain? Not cool.
The cabin finally comes into view an hour or two later – time sort of falls away when you've got no frame of reference for it – and Clint groans in relief. "Guess you were right."
"Always am," Natasha smiles.
Clint frowns when he notices that the snow under their feet is starting to crack and splinter, looks back and sees they're a couple of feet away from where it started to crack. He holds his hand out in front of Natasha, stopping her in her tracks a couple of steps behind him.. "Nat. Nat, stop. What was Fury's weather report for this area?"
"Rained yesterday. Hard," she turns around. "Why?"
Clint nods at their feet and Natasha curses under her breath. They'd both been through extensive training for the elements and different natural disasters during their equally extensive training periods and they were both made familiar with the warning signs of an avalanche. The combination of the heavy rain the other day and the cracks in the snow doesn't exactly inspire confidence.
"Do you think we could make it?" Clint looks back up at the cabin and they're so close. They're basically right in the middle of the distance between the beginnings of the cracks and the cabin.
"We're right in the middle," he can tell Natasha's eyebrows are furrowed even behind her goggles. "It's precarious either way, I think we gotta risk it."
He doesn't like this situation at all but the cabin seems like a better alternative than turning around.
"Okay," he breathes. "Slowly."
Natasha nods and they make their way over, one step at a time. The snow keeps cracking under their boots, the additional weight of the bundles of paper in their backpacks probably not helping the situation but Clint's not any kind of weather expert or anything so he doesn't know if weight even factors into the snow cracking like this before an avalanche.
And suddenly, his next step produces a stomach-dropping whoomp sound and he freezes, Natasha following suit right behind him.
"Shit," he curses. "Shit shit shit shit shit."
Clint looks over his shoulder and sees Natasha, her goggles removed from over her eyes and her brows drawn tight, lips pressed together even tighter. Clint doesn't even want to risk breathing right now but he opts for staying as still as he can.
"Clint we gotta move," Natasha puts her hand on his arm, hand gripping his sleeve tightly.
"If I move, this side of the mountain might move." Clint tries to wrack his brain for any alternative to this situation but his S.H.I.E.L.D training seems to be escaping him. Which is a first. He hates the feeling a whole lot.
"The snow is settling, it could move soon whether or not you move and I'd really prefer if you moved, Clint, so we can be safely in that cabin." Natasha squeezes his arm and her grip would probably be bruising if it weren't for all their layers and the fact that she's mostly gripping his jacket.
"Okay," Clint breathes shakily. "Okay, fine. Fuck."
His next step is welcomed with the same stomach-dropping whoomp sound and he curses, closing his eyes and dropping his head. Natasha doesn't let go of him, using her grip on his arm to nudge him forward. The steps they take are even slower than before they'd started to hear the whoomp-ing sounds, Clint taking a shaky breath between each step and Natasha's grip on his arm loosening and tightening over and over again as she steps right into the footsteps he's leaving behind.
Then they're almost there, steps away from the front door and Clint feels like he could scream. He knows realistically that being inside the cabin won't protect him from the avalanche but the idea of feeling safe by being inside, away from the snow and shit outside is overwhelming.
And then the world goes dark.
Clint gasps in shock, snow pummeling into his mouth when he opens it and he hears a sickening crunch when his shoulder hits something hard. Clint tries to chew through the snow and spit it out or swallow it, anything to get it out of his mouth and throat so he can breathe. He's being tossed around in the snow, hitting his limbs off things. His backpack snags on something and he feels the fabric of one of the straps tearing, his arm all but getting torn out of the other strap.
The light slams back with an intensity that makes Clint flinch when the snow subsides enough for him to resurface.
"Natasha!" He calls out; she's the first thing he thinks of as he wrestles with the snow, trying to get out of it.
His backpack is long gone, his shoulder is dislocated, he has a few scrapes and cuts and the back of his jacket has a large gash running up it presumably from when he lost his backpack but he's otherwise fine. When he looks around he realises they've been dragged halfway down from where they were at the cabin and that the cabin itself has been demolished in the avalanche.
"Natasha!" He's screaming now, shoving the top layers of show out of his way as he moves, trying to get even a glimpse of her. He curses out the white S.H.I.E.L.D tactical gear they're wearing because even though he knows it was for their protection so they couldn't be seen as easily, it's currently severely hindering his ability to find Natasha. The scream of her name he lets out is almost animalistic as he throws aside more snow. And then he sees it. Red hair.
"Nat!" He manages to shake himself mostly loose from the snow, only knee deep now, and he falls forward, crawling towards Natasha and ignoring the screaming pain from his shoulder as his arm drags beside him.
He digs her out almost desperately, slower than he'd like with one dislocated arm, and lifts her unconscious body onto his lap. Her backpack is still intact but her goggles have been ripped off and she has a considerable cut down her cheek. Her hood's fallen off and her red hair is matted down at the back with something slippery. Clint pulls his hand away and finds the fingers of his glove bloody. It's not enough to be serious but she's unconscious with a head injury in the cold and it's not ideal.
"Okay," he takes her backpack and puts it down in front of him. "Okay, I'm gonna set my arm back in place, Nat, then I'm gonna get us outta here."
"Okay," he says again as he breathes deep, bracing his dislocated arm against Natasha's backpack and gritting his teeth. He mumbles "okay" to himself over and over again before he gets the guts to push, his shoulder shoving back into place roughly and a scream tearing through his gritted teeth.
He collapses forward, forehead digging into the bag and he bites into the fabric of it as he breathes through the pain that's threatening to cause him to pass out. He squeezes his eyes for a second then sits up, carefully moves the backpack around so he's wearing it.
"C'mon, Nat," Clint clambers to his feet and gathers Natasha in his arms, heaving her up. It proves difficult with his recently relocated shoulder but he grits his teeth again and breathes through it. He doesn't know where he's going for the first half hour or so until he catches the lights of the town below in the corner of his eyes.
"The fucking town, of course," a strangled laugh escapes him and he looks down at Natasha, whose head is braced carefully on his bicep and chest. "I'm gonna get us safe, Nat."
He makes his way down the mountain at a slightly diagonal angle, though there's definitely a safer way to get down this thing Clint's not very inclined (ha, inclined. Puns) to take things the safe way right now when the quick way is right there and an infinitely better choice considering they need time more than anything right now.