"Agent Barton," he answered the phone as he tossed another dart at the board in his office. His bosses were waiting for a report but really, they were used to his reports being late.

"I have some information that may be of interest to you."

He leaned forward in his seat, the rest of the forgotten darts rolling off his desk and landing on the floor. "Phil! Man, how have you been? It's been WAY too long since we've talked! I know this isn't a social call. What's up?"

"One of my cases just intersected with one of yours."

"All right, spill," Agent Barton encouraged, kicking his chair back from his desk so he could slouch.

"I'm in Turkey, following a lead," said Coulson. "I've had a team hunting this one for a while, ever since he tried to kill one of ours. We've gotten close a few times, but he's always managed to slip by. We thought we finally had him cornered in the Carpathian Mountains yesterday but he jumped into a river."

"In January?!" He couldn't decide if that made the man brave or stupid. Probably both.

"We were close," Coulson replied in his dry tone. "We've been chasing him since we found his safe house last week."

"Look babe, you know I'm loving story time here," Barton could hear Coulson's snort over the pet name and grinned, "but it's not like you to wax poetic. I'm assuming there's a point to this?"

"Have I ever wasted your time?"

"There was the epic Hot Dog Discussion of '02…"

"Now who's wasting time?"

Barton smirked. "Point taken. So what made this so interesting?"

"He had to abandon his gear to swim the river. He left his bow behind."

"HOLY Mother of… you found The Archer?" he exclaimed, his lack of interest solved. He'd been one of the people working on the mysterious hit man for months, tracking him across South America, the Middle East and Europe.

"Want to team up on this guy? We've made a thorough search of the towns and villages downstream. We think he went into the wild. We'll need more manpower for that."

Frantically reaching for a notepad he replied, "Damn skippy I do!" He settled down for a long planning session, sending out emails and making notes on what his team would need in order to finally bring down their target.

Seven days, a long plane ride and many miserable hikes in the Romanian mountains later, he answered his mobile phone while standing on a street corner in the pouring rain, trying to gather his scattered team. Nothing had worked out; the Archer was continuing to earn his reputation as someone who could live off the grid, fit into crowds, avoid standing out and in general making himself damned hard to track.

"Agent Barton. Make it good, I'm feeling irritable."

"He's in Craiova." Coulson sounded warm. And dry. No, it wasn't possible to hear temperatures, but the bastard sounded like he had everything HIS team didn't.

Barton started cursing. "He was in the Piatra Craiului Mountains!" He glared in the direction of the mountains, hidden by miles and rain. "I knew Brașov was going to be a dead end, but no, intel has us searching a walled city for this asshole." He made an obscene gesture in the general direction of Craiova and the SHIELD agent. It was childish, sure, but it made him feel better. Something had to. "He's in Craiova? How did he get there? No, wait, better question, how did you find him?" He began the long slog back to the cheap hotel they had rented rooms in. If their target wasn't here, then at least they could get warm and dry and actually take the time to eat. And damned if he was giving up the first shower; rank had to come with some privileges, didn't it?

"I found the account his clients were paying into. There was enough in that I think it may have been his only one. SHIELD will have to thank him for his charitable contribution when we finally meet."

"Smug is not becoming on you, Coulson, it really isn't."

"I'm not smug."

"That's smugness in your tone."

"Just keeping you informed."

"Smug bastard."

They didn't catch him in Craiova. Barton's annoyance was soothed somewhat by the fact that Coulson's team had ended up just as empty handed. They didn't catch him in Belgrade, nor in Sarajevo, but by then they had switched tactics. Now they were just driving him, not letting him rest. Barton and Coulson kept leap frogging their teams, one behind the Archer, pushing him, while the other team set up ahead. Their main goal was to keep him moving, deny him a chance to rest and recover.

Six days in, his phone rang with the call he'd been waiting for. Coulson's voice, calm and collected "He's in Nis."

"We can be there in an hour." He was grabbing for a map and pointing out their new destination to their pilot.

"Get him."

Barton didn't bother to hang up as he turned around to brief his team.

Two hours later, in Nis, he sat on a rickety chair in a dump of a room and called Coulson back. "I'm sitting in his room. Real five star place here, the roaches were very welcoming." He watched one calmly walk up the wall, not seeming to care about the people in the room.

"Sounds lovely. Is he there with you?"

"No, but now he's poor, cold and desperate."

"He's been that for six days."

"He's also now a brunette." Barton looked at the hair dye staining the cracked bowl. He got out of the chair and looked out the broken window down into the alley slowly filling in with freshly falling snow. "Hope he enjoys running through this delightful February weather we're having. Did I mention I have his jacket? Little too small for me, but it's good leather. At least, it was before it got water logged." He looked at the agents still stationed in the alley and kicked at the wall in frustration. They'd been that close. "I hate this cat and mouse; I'd really rather try to grab him now."

"We need to keep this up for just a while longer. This is where he's going to start to slip up," Agent Coulson's voice sounded confident.

"I just hope it's with me and not you. I want to take him down. This guy is making me feel like a fool."

There was a beat of silence. "How is that different from any other day?"

"Now that was uncalled for, Coulson."

"I'm certain your team is capable."

"Smug bastard."

Three days, six cities and one pounding headache later, he answered his phone.

"Agent Barton."

"Sofia, Bulgaria."

Agent Barton sighed tiredly. "I'm going to stop listening to our analysts. I told them to go to Sofia." He sat down tiredly on a nearby bench and motioned for one of his agents to come over. His only consolation was that if he was feeling this tired, the Archer had to be feeling worse. The two teams at least could trade off and get some sleep, eat some decent food.

"Why?" Coulson's voice sounded mildly curious, which in any other person would be a demand for information.

He gestured at the agent to round everyone up. The man gave a resigned sigh and started calling over their comms for the team to gather back at their base. Barton rubbed at his temples in frustration. "Just had this feeling that's where he would go. So what's the latest update?"

"Things are really start to get interesting."

In the background, he could hear a sharp intake of breath and low cursing. He knew those sounds; someone was getting patched up. "You calling a situation interesting scares me." His phone buzzed to let him know of an incoming call, but he ignored it for now.

Coulson ignored him to continue. "One of my agents is a long time analyst with S.H.I.E.L.D. who just qualified for field work. I wasn't 100% certain about taking a rookie, but we figured her skills as an analyst would come in handy. She caught up with him through sheer dumb luck. She'd fallen behind and got lost. She's walking down the sidewalk when she sees him jumping down from a fire escape. She ducks into a coffee house and calls it in. We tell her to get out of there but she isn't fast enough. She heads out the back door and into the alley when she hears the footsteps behind her."

"She hears the guy?"

"You ever walk on melting snow? That crunching sound, it's not subtle."

"So your rookie stumbles on your target and has the perfect footing to hear him? Tell this girl to buy lottery tickets, she's got the luck." Barton looked to the heavens and silently asked why he couldn't manage to have this sort of luck. A handful of wet snow dropped off of a tree branch and onto his face. Typical.

"It gets better. Rookie blurts out 'My daughter is almost three. I promised I'd be home for her birthday.'"

"She's appealing to the, what, sense of family? Empathy? Of a hired killer?" Barton snorted. "This guy doesn't give a shit about family." Another phone call came in and he sent it to voice mail. He got most of the snow off of his face, but some of it had trickled down the front of his coat.

"Whatever it was, it worked."

He stopped his quest to get rid of the cold, wet intrusion to stare at his phone in shock. "You are shitting me."

"This all went out live over comms. She says 'I've got a picture of her on my phone.' There's silence for a few seconds, then she screams. Yells out 'What was that for?' We get there as fast as we can. Our agent is in shock in the alley. She tells us the guy said she should go back to her old job, shouldn't be out in the field with a kid. Then he shoots the rookie through the phone and into her hand."

"She gonna recover?"

"Medic say she's going to have problems with her hand for her rest of her life, most likely, and she had to be treated for shock but yeah, she's going to recover."

"Your rookie's got the luck, that's for sure." One of his agents came up, pointing at his own phone urgently, then at Barton, who waved him off irritably.

"It gets better. The rookie got a picture of the target on her StarkPhone. We were able to recover it. We're running it through facial recognition right now."

Less than an hour later, Barton was in an airport, tired, frustrated and dialing Phil's phone while he waited for a flight in a direction he hadn't anticipated.

"You've reached the voice mail box of Agent Coulson."

"Coulson, goddammit, pick up. I just got pulled off of the Archer and I know you know why. Who is he? What's going on? Coulson, I swear to God you'd better pick up. Smug bastard. Call me."

Coulson, of course, didn't. Not once on the long flight back to D.C., nor while he was finally getting caught up on his sleep, nor during the longest debrief of his life, especially considering that the op was still ongoing. As soon as he could make it back to his office, he opened all of his files on the Archer, stared at the wall map, and sent out some painstakingly casual emails to friends in as many different alphabet agencies as he could. By the next morning, he had his answer. He called Phil.

"You've reached the voice mail box of Agent Coulson."

"Phil! How's Greece this time of year? So, Thessaloniki, huh? You close to getting him yet?" He couldn't keep the cocky grin off of his face or out of his voice.

His triumph lasted less than an hour. He knew it was somehow Phil's fault that his computer access had been rescinded. Using paper files slowed him down, but he hadn't built up the network of connections he had for no reason. Emails were faster, but coffee and doughnuts opened up the lines of communication in a way that nothing else could. It took him two days, but as he put together the clues gathered from all of his sources, his gut started bothering him more and more. Phil was headed in the wrong direction. He may have been pulled off of the case officially, but he was invested in this one now. Time for another call to Phil. Barton mentally placed a bet with himself that this time, Phil would take the call.

"You've reached the voice mail box of Agent Coulson."

"You've stalled. I know the analysts are telling you that he's gonna go west, but they're wrong. My gut's telling me that he's gonna run east. "

CLICK. Barton fist pumped and silently congratulated himself.

"Why do you say that?"Coulson's voice was quiet and calm, as always, but to those who knew him, an edge of exhaustion was creeping in. The strain of running both teams was getting to him. "Why would he run east? He's wanted by the authorities in Turkey."

"Exactly. It's the one place in that area that he really needs to stay out of. It's perfect. Check Istanbul."

Coulson hung up. Barton smirked.

The next day, it was Phil that called him. "He zigged when we thought he would zag. It gave him time to take a contract, make the hit, we couldn't get there in time to stop him."

Barton ran his hand over his face, dismayed. "Now he's got money. It gives him some more options." He looked at his office, every horizontal surface covered in files and papers, the walls covered in maps. "Where was he?"

"Istanbul."

"I …"

"Don't say I told you so."

Man, Coulson sounded bitchy when he was tired. Agent Barton grinned. "Would I do that?"

"Yes."

"Yep. I told you so."

Agent Coulson sighed.

"Sooner you get him, the sooner you can come home, Phil. It's nice here. They have cheesesteaks."

Coulson hung up. Barton left to go get a cheesesteak. In Phil's honor, of course. He hadn't even finished it when the next call came in. "You've reached the voice mailbox of Agent Barton."

"Stop messing around."

Barton laughed and polished off the rest of the sandwich. "Just giving you a taste of your own medicine. What's the update?"

"The Archer just got captured by the opposing gang." This time, it was obvious that Agent Coulson was tired.

"Problem solved then, wash your hands and come home."

"We're going in to get him."

"Wait, what? He's K.O.S., the people that have him aren't exactly going to show him a good time. Let them solve your problem for you. You're not a contract killer, you get paid no matter who takes him out. Relax and come home, man."

The silence on Coulson's end lasted long enough that he knew something was up. "Spill. What's going on?"

"Sofia changed things for me."

Agent Barton knew his voice had to be incredulous. "You goin' soft on me, old man?"

Coulson's voice was oddly hesitant. "I want to give him a chance."

"You're crazy. He'll shoot you in the back. There's no way this freak is worth it." He tossed the paper the sandwich had been wrapped in at the trash can on his way out of the restaurant.

"I've got my reasons."

Barton shook his head. "He might already be dead. How pissed off are the people that grabbed him?"

"Remember that hit he took? He just shot their leader."

"Ouch. Well, if you're going to get him, go do it while there's still something to get. Still think you're crazy, though."

"I'll let you know one way or the other." There was something off about Coulson's voice, but he couldn't place it.

"Sounds good old man." He headed back to his office. He'd been getting increasingly less subtle reminders that he had reports that needed to be written. Maybe this would be a good time to work on them.

Over the next five hours, Barton finished off an entire pot of coffee. He hadn't been drinking it to stay awake for Phil's call. Nope. Just happened to feel like having some coffee. A lot of coffee. Of the foul break room variety. He'd caught on all of his overdue paperwork as the offices cleared out around him and the constant hum of activity dwindled down to near silence. The ring of the phone, when it finally came, startled him out of the light doze he'd fallen in to.

"We got him." Mentally, he did a victory dance around his office. In reality, he was tired, and the exhaustion bleeding through Agent Coulson's voice made Barton wince in sympathy. "He still alive?"

"We got there in time, although it was…less than pretty." He frowned a bit; Phil wasn't normally this reticent with information. They were both experienced with the less than pleasant aspects of their job. When you dealt with the sort of scum they did, you learned to deal with the horrible things people did to each other. It never got easy, but it was a little bit less horrible when the scum did the bad things to each other, instead of decent people. Still, he tried to make himself care. A bit. "He gonna make it?"

"Yes. He'll have some scars out of it, but yes. He's in medical, sedated and undergoing treatment."

"What are you going to do with him?" He knew that the various agencies had people that did the dirty jobs, but most of them were military vets with specialized training, not half crazy contract killers. He didn't think S.H.I.E.L.D.'s recruitment policies were that much different.

Coulson uncharacteristically hesitated. "We're extraditing him to the U.S."

He choked on his coffee at Phil's answer. "You didn't offer him a job with S.H.I.E.L.D.? I thought you were going all soft on this guy."

"I did. He refused. This was his other option."

Barton upgraded the Archer's mental state from 'half crazy' to 'completely crazy.' Then again…"He hasn't taken any hits on U.S. soil that I know of, it might have been a smart move." He idly wondered if it would be bad taste to make a jail visit to gloat at the guy. Not a lot. Okay, maybe a lot. But really, it was deserved. And there was a good chance they wouldn't be able to keep him imprisoned for long.

"He has two previous warrants. He's going to go to trial for murder." Coulson's voice was sounding pained, but not like he was hurt. Barton never thought he'd think something like this, but if he had to describe Coulson right now, he'd have to say upset. And that was rocking his world. Coulson continued "Both charges are for murder in the first."

Barton winced. "Ouch. Okay, that may not have been a good idea." He revised 'completely crazy' to 'completely batshit insane.'

Another long pause. "It gets worse."

"Okay, what's worse?" replied Barton, a bit confused.

"Bernard," Coulson said, his voice gentle, "the Archer is your brother Clint."