Ficlet: Natasha's knife skills

[xwyndx]

MCU | 392 words | Gen | Rated G | Natasha Romanoff & Clint Barton (& a Tony Stark appearence)
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A knife thrown. A target hit. Sweat shining in Natasha’s forehead.

She’d been training in the gym for hours: body tone, cardio, hand to hand combat, and finally this, her favorite part. Knives were the easiest weapon to hide, the quickest to draw. And she was a master at throwing them, each knife handled with the precision of the best assassin in the world. Which, she was.

And then Clint jumped down from the vents.

“Oh my god, yes!!!” he exclaimed, both fists in the air. “You’re exactly what I needed!”

Natasha raised an eyebrow, but Clint didn’t let her skepticism deter him.

“You have to come with me, quickly!” he said, and grabbed her wrist.

Now, normally grabbing Natasha by the wrist was synonym of getting your ass handed to you, but turned out this idiot was Natasha’s best friend in the world, so she only reacted by raising her eyebrow even more pointedly. He huffed.

“Come on, Nat, trust me!” he pleaded, which didn’t make her trust him at all. “I just need your help!”

She sighed, finally giving up on getting an explanation. “If anything goes south, I wasn’t a part of it.”

Clint laughed. “What could go wrong? Come on!”

Not comforted in the least, she followed him. Minutes later, she found herself in the kitchen, in front of a bunch of hollowed pumpkins.

“Clint, I told you I got it!” Tony complained. Clint just pointed at Nat, then at the pumpkins, then at Nat, as if that was an explanation.

Although, to be fair, what Clint expected from her was pretty obvious. She couldn’t help but let out an amused huff. That was definitely not what her knife training was for, but well, why not? Before anyone could react, she was already moving like the wind, slicing and carving at the speed of sound. Tony and Clint looked dumbfounded at her shadow moving across the orange forms, which were transforming quickly into all kinds of Jack-O-Lanters.

When she finished, she had to admit Tony’s face was the best thing that happen that day.

“See!?” Clint exclaimed. “The kids are going to love this!”

“What kids?” Natasha asked.

Again, she didn’t receive a direct answer. But when she found herself outside the tower with Clint, gifting the lanterns to the neighborhood kids, she couldn’t bite back a smile.