The first time they meet is during a terrorist attack in London. One is curious, the other annoyed.

Chapter Text

It’s all sirens and smoke and screaming. From a rooftop, Anna smiles down at the chaos.

She’s spotted her target—the man responsible for detonating the bomb that just exploded. The plain backpack she’s brought with her is quickly unzipped and a compact item reverently lifted out of it.

She will never get over how awesome this bow is. It's her child. Her precious little instrument of death and destruction.

With a casual flick of her hand, the bow springs open, unfurling from its center. The next item she pulls out resembles a pen until she pulls on both ends of it, extending until it's the size of a normal arrow. On one end is artificial fletching, meant to stabilize the arrow even when it's under a crippling amount of pressure. She screws a specialized arrowhead onto the other end, placing a smacking kiss on the tip. This particular head was one of her very first inventions and has since become something of a calling card for her.

All set up, she sweeps the bow up and towards her target. He's still running towards her building, presumably to enter the Tube and be lost in a sea of people. Anna easily tunes out the noise around her, sharp eyes honing in on the target with single-minded intensity. The bowstring is pulled back, settling comfortably against her cheek.

“Shine for me baby," she murmurs, loosing the arrow.

The resulting explosion is small, contained only to the target's chest. A gaping hole appears in the space his heart once filled, and he falls to the ground without making a sound. Most of the people around him don't even notice his demise, concerned with their own well-being. All in all, it's a fitting end for a man who set off bombs for a living.

Despite the job well done, Anna can't stop a frown from crossing her face as she packs up. She doesn't feel the rush of satisfaction like she used to. Her freelance work is as sought after as ever, but lately she feels like she's plateaued or something. Like she could be doing something better with her time than offing random terrorists and crime lords after they've already done something horrible. Sometimes she wonders if there's a way she could prevent this kind of attack from happening in the first place.

But prevention means having an intelligence network, some degree of foresight, and espionage skills that are beyond her current level.

It would require more than just her, basically. Her bow is the only partner she's ever had, which somewhat limits what she can do.

Chewing this over, she pushes open the ground-level door, brushing a lock of copper hair out of her eyes. She's especially pleased with the ensemble she's put together for this little trip. The shirt she's wearing says 'MIND THE GAP' in bold lettering, and her jean shorts are dyed red, white, and blue. The baseball hat she's sporting is twisted backwards on her head, instantly making her look years younger than she actually is.

'90s exchange student' is the look she's going for, and she has to say that she pulls it off rather well.

She follows the flow of the crowd, not really bothering to look as panicked as those around her. She never was good at faking fear.

As she's wondering where she can get some decent Indian food before she leaves the city, she notices someone in her periphery moving against the flow of people. She straightens and looks towards the source in curiosity, gaze flickering to the shops lining the streets.

She stops abruptly, causing the people behind her to bump into her. She can't say she really cares, because damn. The woman she's looking at is, hands down, the most beautiful person she's ever seen.

Her hair is in a carefully maintained bob, deep red with a hint of curl. The pointe shoes poking out of her tote explain just why her legging-clad lower half is so slender and toned. Her upper body is probably just as perfect, but the zipped up hoodie she's wearing forces Anna to use her imagination.

The woman's eyes narrow in her direction when she realizes she's being blatantly checked out by a stranger. Anna thinks that if she could, the woman would freeze her with those cold blue eyes. The look she's getting is absolutely lethal, and it does nothing but encourage a slow, cocky grin from coming over her face.

Anna drifts a little closer to her, noting that the stranger is lengthening her stride, probably hoping she can pass by her before Anna gets too close.

Realizing that the woman will be gone in a few seconds (and not wanting to double back to her crime scene), Anna calls out, “You’d make a killer blonde!”

The words carry over the waves of people and Anna sees the woman tense, though her stride is still fast and determined.

Anna can’t help but keep the grin on her face. It’s not every day you see someone like that.

Hours later, when she’s scooping curry onto a piece of naan, a thought hits her, sudden and cold.

There were always rumors in her business, and no one had more rumors to their name than Black Widow. Hadn’t she heard that the assassin-slash-spy was said to be in London now? Of course, Anna always took rumors involving locations with a grain of salt, as she’s heard her own name whispered as being on different continents than reality far too many times.

Still.

That woman was too interesting to just be a ballerina. Maybe that was a cover or something, and she was walking towards the target Anna had taken out...

Anna absentmindedly bites into a pepper, the sudden flood of heat entering her mouth and forcing out all rational thoughts for the next few minutes.

By the time she’s eaten a whole bowl of yogurt, she’s pushed the mysterious woman to the back of her mind to focus on the remaining food in front of her.

Elsa failed. She never fails, yet here she is, staring at the corpse of Yuri Anklav. He was her final target, the last of four bombers that would have left London in rubble.

The first two had been easy kills; she had taken the first to an alley the night before under the pretense of romance, snapping his neck and hiding his body in the dumpster. She had found the second’s hotel room and came for him in his sleep.

But the third had taken too long. He was smarter than the others, rightfully paranoid. He changed his room number at the last second and almost reached reached his destination by the time she tracked him down. She had to disable the bomb in his bag, which had come frighteningly close to reaching its countdown.

That was when the last bomber fulfilled his mission.

She felt the tremor from across the city and immediately made her way to the source, passing bloodied bodies and ruined buildings. Fear is still riding high in the civilians when she finds Anklav, and they shove by her with only escape on their minds.

It’s the strangest thing though, Anklav’s body…

His heart is nowhere to be seen.

Instead, there’s a perfect circle burned through his chest. Elsa searches the debris around him, overturning cement and pieces of glass. She comes up with a piece of material that doesn’t fit the surroundings at all—a small, oddly shaped piece of carbon fiber. When she swipes the blood off it with her thumb, she sees a black ‘H’ stamped into the material.

She clenches the fletching tightly in her hand. Hawkeye had finished her job for her. She stands quickly, leaving Anklav’s body where it is. He doesn’t matter any more. All that matters is that Hawkeye is somewhere in the city. She knows the marksman won’t pose a threat to her, but there’s always a heightened sense of awareness that runs through her when another assassin is nearby.

She spares the fletching another glance as she gets up and follows the mass of people. Had she passed Hawkeye on her way here? Her mind flips through each suspicious person that had been under her gaze in the last thirty minutes.

Unexpectedly, she lands on a young woman, the one who looked like a caricature of an American tourist. No one was supposed to notice her during the fallout. She was just to be another face in the crowd. But this tourist, with an easy smile despite the chaos going around her...could she have been the archer known for her pinpoint accuracy?

The thought is brushed away as quickly as it came to her. No, that would be ridiculous. That woman—more of a girl, really— couldn’t be anything other than a brazen idiot, probably busy getting drunk before the bomb detonated.

Though her only words, said clearly and confidently, held no sign of liquor on them.

“You’d make a killer blonde!”

If only she knew.