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Tony’s more powerful; if one of you is staying back to finish this job alone, it had better be him. He acknowledges, little more than a half-nod in the iron suit as he keeps fighting, and you sprint out across the compound in the direction of the cell block where you know Bruce, Thor, and Sitwell were headed.
You’re counting on Tony to be a distraction at one side and the rest of the team to be one at the other; you’re counting on your years of sniper instincts and S.H.I.E.L.D. operative training to keep you as close to invisible as possible while you head for the other side of the compound. You’re counting on a lot of things, but what you’re not counting on is that those things are all fallible.
This is something you figure out fairly quickly in a hail of gunfire and a dozen tiny, agonizing fires that bloom across your body, and you know what’s happened before you even look.
“Tony,” you cough out, needing him to know you won’t be coming back to finish out the job, and he must already know, because he says, “I got her, Clint, I got Natasha,” and you don’t know if it’s the truth or a kind lie, but either way, as you lose your grip on everything else, you think you’re grateful to Tony for either one.