And here's the fic to go with the picture ... Merry Christmas, Astrid! Thank you for all that wonderful fanart you send our way.



BIG GAME


“Curse you, Victor von Doom!”

Clint doesn’t usually utter battle cries. To top it off, he’s doing it while unclicking his safety belt. (Usually not a good idea when Natasha is driving -- not because she’s a bad driver, but because as someone who used to kill for a living, she likes to avoid the attention of law enforcement for silly things.)

“Huh?” she frowns at him, her concentration wavering a little at the sight of a horse cart that looks as if something has taken a bite out of the front part. The horse itself is nowhere to be seen.

“I always wanted to say that,” Clint explains unapologetically as he nocks an arrow and worms his (broad and admittedly sexy) shoulders out of the rolled-down window for the shot. “And now seemed like a really good time. I mean, he has a solid fuck-you coming, wouldn’t you agree?”

Natasha would. Anyone sufficiently unwise to retro-breed Komodo dragons with dinosaur DNA, after Spielberg effectively showed what a stupid idea that kind of thing was, deserves all the invective her partner can muster.

Especially since van Doom’s transgressions against common sense mean that the two mere humans among the Avengers are currently obliged to draw the attention of a live T Rex, just so Cap can take out the man and his minions without getting distracted or eaten.

“You got any of those explosive arrow heads left?”

She isn’t optimistic, not after the Agincourt-like volley he’d had to lay down earlier to help decimate that herd (flock?) of velociraptors in Central Park, but it’s worth asking. This … thing that’s currently chasing them doesn’t look like it would go without deployment of serious ordnance.

Where the hell is Thor when you need him? The God of Thunder always seems to miss the good ones; his technique for catching frostbeasts would have come in handy.

“Sorry,” Clint huffs as he lets fly. “All gone.”

The arrow hits its mark, right in the creature’s beady eye, of course, but the T Rex just shakes its head and keeps right on going, the pavement trembling under its feet.

“Fuck. Need longer arrows,” Clint grumbles. “They don’t go all the way into the brain, looks like. Head’s too big. Hey – whoa! Watch where you’re going, lady!”

Clint manages to stop himself from falling out the window (courtesy of what was recently voted the finest abs in S.H.I.E.L.D. for the third year running, take that, Grant Ward!) as Natasha swerves around another one of those pterodactyl corpses Stark keeps causing to fall from the sky. Not enough they’re being chased by a flesh-eating dinosaur, no -- Fifth Avenue, however deserted, is a slalom course.

A couple of S.H.I.E.L.D. helicopters have turned up overhead, and are trying to get the beast’s attention with the noise of their wings and narrowly targeted beams of light; maybe it’s used to pterodactyls buzzing around its head though, because it seems to be paying zero attention. The lights are, however, useful for illuminating the target in the settling dusk.