Summary: It has been two years since everything changed, since a bow became better than a gun and a horse better than a car, since a disease wiped out four billion people in six months. Here and there, survivors cling on.

Set: Out of time. Post Ultron.

Spoilers: Avengers Assemble, Avengers Age of Ultron, no other major spoilers.

Genres: Apocafic. Beyond that, some action.

Rating: T for being an apocafic. Moderate violence, more is implied than is seen.

Disclaimer: This world belongs Marvel. Only the original characters and this plot are my own.

A note on formatting: The lines with only a comma on them are not intended as time breaks. They are my attempt to preserve some of my original formatting and break the text up to make it easier to read.

A note on shipping: I am a very submissive shipper. I ship where cannon tells me to. If you don't like it, blame Joss Whedon.

Carl dropped his head forwards and sighed as the truck's engine coughed feebly. The gas metre read zero, it had done for about ten minutes. They'd been driving so carefully all day, staying at a constant speed, coasting down hills where they could, but the inevitable had happened at last.

"Sorry everyone." He said. "We're out."

"Well I guess we're walking then." Rachel said from the back seat. He looked round at her. She looked exhausted. She hadn't slept last night, she'd been up with Fey, their younger daughter. It wasn't fair. Rachel was such a good mom, and a good wife to him. Whatever else, she didn't deserve this, not now.

"Fey, honey." Carl started. "Do you think you can walk some of the way?" Fey nodded weakly. She was pale and looked more tired than Rachel did.

"How far is it Daddy?" Imogen, their other daughter, asked from beside him. Carl got out of the car and picked up the two rucksacks, containing all they had now, from the trunk. He put one on and handed the other to Rachel.

"Look up there." He said to Imogen, pointing. "Do you see that smoke rising?"

"That's far."

"It looks far, doesn't it sweetie? But where there's smoke, there's fire, and where there's fire, there's people." Imogen nodded. Hopefully, those people had food and water. They had no food and precious little water. And hopefully, they were the sort of people who'd accept a man, a woman and two children with nothing and treat them fairly. There was no way to tell anymore, not since the outbreak, not since everything had fallen to pieces.

,

Clint Barton stooped, picked up the dead pigeon and handed it back to Lila.

"Thanks Dad." She said, a note of sarcasm in her voice.

"C'mon Lila. You get the pony, you get the dead stuff." Lila smiled fleetingly. "You did well today; three pheasants in two hours, two of them dead on impact." He'd had to run and wring the neck of the third. She'd hit it too far back.

"You did better." He had. Two squirrels, a pheasant and a young white-tail buck, only 80 pounds, but not bad.

"How long have I had to practice?" Lila smiled and yanked the pony's head up to keep it from grazing. There was nearly no fuel now. The dozen horses the town had were the main way of getting around. They'd gone back to the dark ages, or nearly. They were clinging on to clean water and antibiotics, not much else had survived. Lack of ammunition was going to make the bow better than a gun again, arrows were easier to make than parabellum rounds. That made him valuable. Teaching his children to arch made them valuable, and worth protecting. He could have got this much game twice as fast on his own, but Lila was getting better. Their hunting was necessary, they couldn't raise enough meat to feed 200 people, they had to go and find it. Barton had been out with his bow almost every day for two years now. It had been months since he'd killed a man. Time was going out with his bow meant killing a man. In a way, this felt purer. He'd always killed to protect, now he killed to provide.

"Dad,"

"Yeah?"

"Can we sing something?"

"Sure, what do you wanna sing?"

"Boy named Sue?"

Clint grinned. "OK. Well, ma daddy left home when I was three,

He didn't leave much to mama and me,

Just this old guitar and an empty bottle of booze," They didn't so much sing it as chant it, like the old record they'd had at the farm, with the censored curse at the end. It always had been, and still was, odd to hear Jonny Cash's words coming out of a little girl's mouth, but it made her smile. They kept on walking homewards, not hurrying, they'd done their work, and it wasn't fair to make the pony rush with that much stuff on his back. They were at the bit about the fight, when Clint stopped dead and grabbed the pony's bridle.

"-mud and the – Dad?"

Clint ducked under the pony's neck and stared north in to the distance.

"People coming." He said simply. "Go home, quick as you can. If game falls off, don't go back for it. Get home, find Steve and Tasha and tell them we've got people coming." It was a sign of the world they lived in now that Lila's eyes widened with fright.

"What about you?"

"I'm going to look."

"What if they're raiders?"

"Then I don't want to be worrying about whether you're safe. There's not many of them, two or three. I'll be fine. Just go, Lila." Lila gathered up the reins and kicked the lazy animal in to a trot. Clint watched her for a moment, then turned back towards the newcomers. They were moving slowly, which might mean they were heavily armed. All he had was hunting arrows, he'd made most of them, they weren't as good as the arrows made for war. He could still shoot better than most guns. He could take care of himself. In a world where food was worth its weight in almost any metal, raiders came to anywhere with more than a half dozen people. They'd seen off a few groups, some armed like Saharan warlord mercs. He dropped to hands and knees and advanced at a crawl.

Updates should be swift. The fic is complete, I just need to deal with doc manager.