One week after the events of 'Red on the Ledger':
Clint Barton walked down the ramp of the quinjet that had brought them into the New York City base, carrying his duffle bag, backpack and bow, all with apparent ease.
Natasha Romanoff was right behind him with her own assortment of luggage, looking refreshed after the week of light training and R&R while aboard the Helicarrier. She was even in a good mood today, though whether this was because there was work to get back to here or there was more a sense of home here at the NYC base than anywhere else you resided as a SHIELD agent, she was not sure. Although one thing was certain about Natasha being in a good mood: it was odd.
As if it wasn't odd enough that Natasha Romanoff, the Black Widow, was in a good mood, what made it even more odd – bordering on wrong – was that Clint Barton had been feeling down, as he had been ever since getting aboard the Helicarrier.
He'd been able to keep himself busy with debriefs, reports and the closing paperwork of the Budapest mission over the past week, trying to fill the designated R&R time with work. But whenever there was a moment when his mind idled for too long, it would try to occupy itself, unfortunately, by going back to this thing that had been bugging him and actually causing him a lot of frustration and grief recently.
When thinking about this, Clint had a few times tried to see where it had come from, to see if he could try and tackle the problem at its root and stop it. But he wasn't too sure where it had come from… Had it been all that with Natasha and her guilt? Had it been the mission? Had it been the fact that Fury was considering splitting up their partnership to lessen the danger of losing both of SHIELD's top agents in one bad mission? No, Clint knew he couldn't pin his bad feeling on one of these, but, he could most certainly pin it on all of them.
Agent Phil Coulson was waiting for the two agents a respectable distance from the quinjet's landing pad. The landing area was located outside, and it was a little sunny today so Coulson was wearing his shades. Those and his thin-lined mouth ensured that nothing could be read of his emotions. He didn't move, at all, until they were close enough for Clint to shout to his handler, for whom he tried to brighten up a bit.
"You know, even the Terminator smiled once! Just once. In Judgement Day – you remember?"
"He was told to."
"So how about if I tell you to?"
"Just try it."
"Is that an order?"
"Since when did you pay attention to orders?"
Clint and Natasha closed with Coulson, and Clint chuckled as he could now see the very edges of the older agent's mouth turning up slightly.
"It's good to see you, Phil."
"Likewise, Clint."
Coulson turned to Natasha.
"And Romanoff, how did you take to your first full-pitched battlefield?"
"Like taking the silencer off the secrecy that's been my life's work."
"I anticipated nothing less. You two are going to unpack, take the rest of the day off, and get a good night's sleep; we're back to the normal training rotation as of zero-six-hundred tomorrow – hope you're ready."
Clint nodded in satisfaction.
"Definitely."
"Glad to hear it."
"You in the mess later?"
"Not tonight. Being a handler means that I have to formally close the debriefings and investigations of incidents concerning my agents, and for Budapest, this is going to be a rather long-winded process."
She couldn't see it in his face (as if anyone in the world could), but Natasha could see the guard drop for just a split-second in Clint's eyes, and with that out of the way, the frustration and depression of the last week laid bare. She knew an opening when she saw it.
"Hey. Apparently I have the night off, meaning you'll be stuck with me."
With this, she delivered a friendly but firm punch to Clint's arm, perhaps to emphasise her point, but really, to get Coulson's attention away from Clint's barely concealed brooding.
Clint composed himself again and turned back to Coulson.
"See, now look what you got me into."
This time, the punch to Clint's arm was a lot more firm than friendly.
"Ow, 'Tasha. Sorry. Okay. Woah. Stop it!"
As Natasha advanced on Clint again, he began a hasty retreat toward the base, the less-than-happy redhead hot on his heels.
Coulson looked after them a moment longer, thinking, then shook his head like an Etch A Sketch to clear his mind and headed off in the opposite direction to get on with his work.
Later that night, when everything possible on a SHIELD agent's 'to-do' list was done, dinner eaten, and the moon high in the starry sky, a lone, dark figure sat on a high window ledge of a more ruined house of a ghost town situated just next door to the main SHIELD base – its very own purpose-built combat simulation arena.
The figured moved ever so slightly as she turned the page of her book, which she was reading by moonlight. However, she was gradually becoming less attentive to the book and more annoyed with the other figure in the village as the minutes ticked by.
This figure was moving around the place like an ape on steroids – Clint wasn't too fussed about being silent and stealthy tonight - scaling buildings, darting in and around houses, and bounding from rooftop to rooftop. Clint was working harder than he had even before the Budapest mission, pushing himself more and more to keep his mind from wandering, his body now obeying the orders of his mind without question, despite the building exhaustion and hunger. Preferably, he wanted to keep going until he could go no more and collapse into instant, dreamless sleep.
It was when Natasha finally put her book down for a minute to watch him and he passed close enough that she could see his face clearly, pouring with sweat, and with black-bagged eyes and a berserk fire blazing in them, that she couldn't keep quiet anymore.
"Clint?"
"Yep."
He was already behind a two-storey house a street over when he replied. The blurry shadow shot from behind the house and scrambled up the side of nearby convenience store. They didn't need to talk any louder than usual to hear one another – the night quiet was sublime.
"Do you want to come and sit down for a minute?"
"Nope."
"You know we're back on normal rotation in five hours' time?"
"I know, right. Gunna be sweet."
She sighed and shook her head. What was wrong with him?
"Clint?"
No reply, but she saw a dark figure dive out of the window of a ruined house into the window of an adjacent building.
"Clint, stop."
Again, no reply. But from another scan across the village, she could tell he wasn't moving anymore.
"Clint?"
He wasn't moving, and Natasha knew he hadn't hurt himself. But right now, she knew he was in a far worse position; motionless somewhere, his tired mind no longer able to resist that horrible thing that had been causing him his hurt.
She was in motion before she could think anymore, now a weightless creature of the night, speeding toward the last building she saw him enter. In a matter of seconds, she was leaping through the window she had seen him enter. As she rolled to stand, she saw that this house was ruined too, looking very much like it had been sawn in half, though she hadn't seen this side of it from where she had been sitting in her window.
Natasha's eyes scanned the view in front of her. The building she stood in was one of a few which surrounded a small plaza in the centre of the village. The plaza was decorated with flower beds and classical lampposts, all surrounding a perfectly intact bandstand. While pale moonlight illuminated the plaza and the buildings around it, her eyes couldn't penetrate the sheltered darkness of the bandstand's interior, and without looking anywhere else, she knew that was where her broken friend was.
Heartbeats later, she was stood at the entrance to the bandstand. Looking into the darkness, she was just able to make out the blurry-edged, shadowy mass of Clint sat in a seat about half way around the wall. He was still. Very still.
She went to sit down next to him, making sure to give him plenty of personal space, especially in his current state, lest he should end up putting her life in danger by believing her to be a threat. She had learnt that lesson the hard way a long time ago.
She sat, and stared at him, waiting. As far she could tell, he hadn't moved since arriving here.
"Clint?"
No answer, not even a stir.
"Clint."
She repeated herself more firmly, in a way that demanded his attention.
No response came from Clint; He was a statue, his face as hard as stone and his body immovable.
She sighed and prepared a more demanding address.
But before she could speak again, he did. He still didn't moving at all, but he spoke.
"How long did it take you to get from the top of that building to the doorway here?"
Natasha narrowed her eyes, confused.
"What?"
"How long?"
"Clint, I don't understand wha-"
"Dammit, 'Tasha, just answer the question, please. You know it."
He turned his shoulders slightly so he could face her, those stormy, grey eyes locked onto hers.
"I don't know exactly, Clint, but… It was definitely less than nine seconds."
After a lifetime of constant, painful training, at least one small part of Natasha's mind was always 'on,' so she was quite confident about her answer despite that not being what her mind had been focussed on at the time.
Clint bowed his head, staring at the floor.
"You proud of it?"
Natasha sensed where this conversation might have been going, but she needed to play along just a little more to be sure.
"I don't need to be proud of it, it's just necessary, so that I'm able to complete an objective with the least risk possible to myself, and before you ask, no, I don't feel pride in my 'objectives' either."
Clint bobbed his head, agreeing with everything she had just said, and while it had been mostly true, she knew what she had had to say to get to him to talk back.
Before she could speak again, he did.
"So this is just it for us? We got the rest of our lives already planned and filed…"
She stared intently at his face, which was more animated now, but it was not something she was glad of.
"… Lives of killing… Training to kill… Being told to kill… And of course, zero room for humanity."
"Cli-"
"Until one day, we find ourselves on the wrong end of a gu-"
"Clint!"
His whole body wheeled around, face tense, eyes searching for some source of threat or danger. That was because she only ever took on the tone she just had when they're on a mission, in danger, or in the middle of a firefight.
He realised then why he reacted that way as well, and that just further reinforced his bleak outlook on their careers, their lives. He rubbed his hands through his hair while shaking his head and groaning in anger, trying to 'deactivate' himself almost, shake out his 'programming' that was born of a lifetime of in the job, no longer wanting to be what he was.
"Just a fucking machine; action and reaction. And as I said, one day, someone's gunna shut us down – that's it, we already have too many enemies, we can never stop them all, we can never run from them all! But with that, what goddam choice do we have but to go on…"
That was the line she needed. That was what she needed to hear to start talking back.
"You do have a choice, Clint. You don't think that every time Fury slides a case file across the table at us, we can slide it right back? That if he wants to split our partnership, we can say no? That if you want to retire to Hawaii with a healthy fund and a SHIELD obligation to protect your new life, you can?"
He had removed his hands from his head now and stopped shaking it, cocking it in her direction to listen to what she had to say. Now she just had to say the right thing, or else he might actually sprint out of the bandstand and take Fury up on that last option (or worse) that very hour… And she really didn't want him to.
"You made the choice when you first joined SHIELD, to do something good for the world, and, while we don't want to take pride in our ability to kill – who ever would - we can take pride in that fact that when we do, we have just made the world that little bit safer."
In his hunched position, his face had turned so his eyes could meet hers again now.
"And you hate it that our job is always to kill and it's the only thing we're good at, but then, if we want to serve an organisation like SHIELD and fight for good, doesn't it make sense to serve in the job we're best at, to do the most good where we can? And Clint…"
He had sat up and turned to face her fully now, eyes staring at her in bewilderment.
"A lot of people at SHIELD, and most other organisations around the world, wouldn't have the strength to pull a trigger and end a life just because they were told to…"
As she was bringing together, she could see the pieces falling into place in his eyes.
"We do… We do that job without it letting it get to us because we have the strength of mind and the set of skills to do so… Because we're the only ones who can."
Understanding filled his eyes then, as well as strength, and purpose. He remembered who he was, why he was that person, and, most importantly, hearing it in her final plea, his duty as that person. He realised that his life was not over, but his work, his legacy, had yet to continue.
He fell forward into Natasha's arms then, sharing this moment of enlightenment with his partner and friend, the one who had brought him to this moment. And as a man who had been born in the shadows of the world, and who would die in the shadows, Clint Barton had been reborn in those shadows of the bandstand in that ghost town, the world just outside, existing parallel to his, continuing, in oblivious, wholesome illumination. For the shadows were where he lived and served, and he would never let them breach the peace of that light.