Summary: Clint was beginning to regret picking a souvenir up for Coulson. Rated for language.

Disclaimer: Not mine.

Impulse Control

He'd watched her for days, tracked her like she was tracking Mohammed al-Hazir, only far more subtle and less sexily. He thought she had made him when he fired a warning shot into the brick by her head, but she'd only run. He'd fired it mostly to tell her that the police were a block away and only slightly because he could. His orders were to capture his target, interrogate, and then eliminate. It had seemed simple enough at first, until he realized just who he was dealing with.

"Why could you not have informed me we were tailing the Black Widow?" he hissed into his comm, frowning when he heard Coulson chuckle on the other end. He could see her through his scope, wearing little more than a scrap of lace and flirting shamelessly with al-Hazir.

"Concerned about her bite?" Clint could practically see the smirk on the older agent's face, and he was decidedly not amused.

The black clouds finally made good on their hovering promise, and fat droplets began to fall rapidly. Clint shifted in his nest, readjusting his sight, more for something to take his mind off the situation than for need. The temperature was dropping outside just as rapidly as it was increasing inside, and watching his incredibly attractive and lethal target get cozy with a known slave trader was not helping his state of mind . "You're loving this, aren't you?" he growled, irritated beyond measure.

"I have no opinion about this mission, much like I have no opinion about any of our missions, Hawkeye." Coulson's voice reprimanded him lightly.

"Kiss my ass, Mother," Clint replied without heat, and switched off his comm unit. There had been a scant few seconds without sight of al-Hazir, which meant that the Widow had probably killed him when he was bemoaning his position. Clint, after days of trailing her, knew he would have only a narrow window to apprehend her. Hurrying quietly along the edge of the roof, he leaned out over the back alley behind the townhouse. Checking his watch, he smiled. "And three, two, one."

As predicted, the Widow stepped out into the alleyway and Clint fired the tranq dart, catching her square on the shoulder. She stumbled slightly, ripping out the dart and staring at it, before slumping against the wall. "Thank you, R&D, for fast acting sedatives," he murmured to himself.

Clint jumped lightly onto the fire escape and slid down the ladder to the ground. Tying her hands and feet with a short length of rope, he hoisted her slight frame onto his shoulder and carried her to the car. They were at the abandoned warehouse he'd set up before the police even got the call about al-Hazir, and Clint would be gone before his bodyguards remembered the pretty little girl their boss had ordered and noticed she was missing. Holding her steady, he pulled out one of the chairs he'd found in a pile of discarded furniture. Dropping her into it, he bound her hands and feet more firmly and pulled a chair out for himself, waiting for the drugs to wear off.

It took longer than he'd anticipated for her to wake up, so he made a quick call to Coulson, setting up a second rendezvous. He'd won twelve games of solitaire and only cheated at three when her eyes fluttered and snapped open, darting wildly around the room. He waved, grinning when she focused angrily on him. Her pupils were huge, rimmed in vibrant green, and Clint was a little grateful that the sedatives weren't completely metabolized.

"Hey there, sunshine," he greeted conversationally, cleaning up the cards. "So, who hired you?"

She snorted, shifting weakly against her bonds. "New to this, aren't you?" Her English was flawless, without the slightest trace of an accent, and Clint was impressed despite himself. He shrugged, crossing his arms.

"Not really," he confessed. "I'm just not a fan of wasting time."

"But you can be patient, sniper," she murmured, eyes flashing. "You've been following me for nearly a week. And you shot at me." She glared at him.

"I shot at the wall," he corrected, pulling out his gun. "That's not the same thing." He aimed between her eyes. "If you're not going to tell me who hired you, I'll find out from someone else after you're dead."

She shrugged, the motion somewhat lacking due to her ties. "Then shoot."

Clint froze, his finger barely touching the trigger. They each stood their ground for untold moments, eye to eye, until she laughed. "You can't," she said, sounded oddly surprised. "You can't shoot someone when you're close enough to get sprayed by the blow back."

"Shut. Up," he murmured through clenched teeth. Readjusting his grip on the gun, Clint took a minute to scrutinize her. Her files said that she was eighteen, but watching her, he wouldn't have been able to tell. She moved with the grace and charm of a woman twice her age, and she killed with the precision of an assassin in the business longer than two short years. Drugged and asleep, she'd looked her age, all small and frail. Awake, and spitting mad, she was every inch a killer.

Who was very suddenly free from her bonds and attacking him.

Clint blocked her first blow reflexively and the strength behind it jarred his teeth. The gun, predictably, flew from his hand and skidded into a pile of debris, knocking pipes across the floor. She landed a couple of good punches to his torso before he managed to throw her off. She tossed the chair at him and followed it with a roundhouse kick, aiming for his head. Batting the chair away, he ducked beneath her leg and tried to sweep her other from the ground, but she cartwheeled out of his way. Standing, he turned to see her running full tilt at him. He'd seen her pull this before, but her target was always out of his line of sight when she did. As her legs wrapped firmly around his neck, Clint had the fleeting thought that most men would kill to be in his position. When they tightened, he realized what she was trying to do and bucked at the death grip her thighs had on him.

Thanking the Maker that the drugs were still in her system and slowing her response time, he ran through all the ways he knew to incapacitate an enemy's legs. Finally settling on the most feasible method in his situation, Clint was suddenly fervently glad his Army buddies had taught him how to play Dead Leg. Drawing back his fist, he landed a solid punch to the main nerve in her left leg, smiling grimly when it went lax around him. He wormed his way out from her hold, much more cautious of the snarling woman before him. She recovered swiftly and attacked again, fingers curled into claws. Clint did the first thing that came to his mind, picking up the length of pipe nearest to him and knocked her out of the park. The Widow dropped like a sack of grain and Clint finally relaxed. After making sure that she wasn't faking it, he walked over to his duffel bag and pulled out a roll of duct tape. Turning and eyeing the unconscious redhead, he pursed his lips and reached for a second.

The first roll went to what amounted to the mummification of her lower body, and part of the second immobilized her arms and gagged her. Clint glanced at the blood pooling on the floor beneath her head. Gently shifting her to her back, he frowned at the head wound left by the jagged end of the pipe. He stalked back over to the duffel and pulled out the med kit, cursing his sensitivity. When she woke again, he was stitching the cut closed. She fixed him with her blackest glare, but Clint simply smiled down at her.

"You are one crazy bitch, you know that?" Her eyes narrowed to slits at the insult. Clint chuckled, making another small stitch. "I mean it," he continued laughingly, wiping away a rivulet of blood from her hairline as he tied off the string. "I thought my ex-girlfriend, Shauna, was batshit, but I think you might have her beat."

Carefully placing a piece of gauze over the stitches, he taped it down. Clint rested his hand on his knee and peered down at her. "Are you going to be nice if I take the tape off your mouth?"

Still glowering at him, she nodded slowly. Clint reached out and peeled the tape away as painlessly as he could. She worked at her mouth for a moment, trying to remove the remaining traces of adhesive. Fixing him with a fiery stare, she began cursing a blue streak in Russian.

Clint wasn't fluent in Russian, by any means, but he knew enough to get along with the general populace and more than plenty to get along with the unsavories. When the little spitfire called him a half-eaten cock sucking son of a troll, he intervened. "I know what that means, raspootnaya dyevka," he chided her. "And it is not nice."

She snarled and launched into a new tirade, this one in Hungarian. Clint chuckled again, hauling her to her feet and hoisting her over his shoulder.

"Let's go, Anastasia." He smirked when she tried to jerk away from him, clamping a hand tighter across the back of her thighs.

Her censure switched from Hungarian to Turkish to what he thought might be Kurdish to Arabic, and he began to grow annoyed at her never ending, but increasingly creative stream of insults. By the time they reached the car, she showed no signs of relenting in her anger and Clint was thoroughly peeved. Sliding her from his shoulder, he leaned her against the car and ripped off a new gag, slapping it over her mouth with a flourish.

"You don't deserve shotgun," he lectured, popping the trunk with the remote and pointing a stern finger in her face. "Trunk for you, missy."

He showed no outward pleasure as her eyes widen in outrage, but he was damn sure happy that she was uncomfortable. Tossing her in, he slammed the lid shut on her glare and slid behind the wheel. The ride to the airport was smooth, if not quiet. The hellfire girl in his trunk kicked and screamed as best she could, punching a drum beat against the underside of the trunk that he tried to drown out with music. Pulling directly on to the tarmac, Clint threw the car in park and grinned at Coulson.

Coulson frowned. "Why did you miss the initial rendezvous?"

"I was compromised," he replied nonchalantly. Coulson raised an eyebrow at the information.

"Your mission?"

Clint opened the back door and pulled out his gear. "Completed, to a degree."

Coulson finally showed an emotion other than indifference. "Meaning?"

"I picked you up a souvenir," Clint exclaimed, grinning from ear to ear and ignoring Coulson's question. Clapping Coulson on the shoulder as he dropped the keys in his hand, he whispered in the older man's ear. "Careful. This one's non refundable."

He hopped lightly up the stairs and on to the plane, peeking out the window at Coulson. Coulson frowned at the car keys in his hand for a moment before he rounded the car and clicked the remote. He cocked his head at the infuriated Russian spy curled in the trunk. She was duct taped beyond measure, to which Coulson could only shake his head at his agent. Her hair was mussed and he was certain that, if looks could kill, he'd be deader than a doornail. Glancing up at the plane, he met Clint's smirking eyes.

Dropping his gaze back to the bound woman in the trunk, he offered her a calm smile. "Hello, Ms. Romanoff. My name is Agent Phil Coulson. I'm with SHIELD, and we're prepared to offer you a deal."