Heart and Soul, an avengers fanfic

A/N: It took me an insanely long time to write this, what with RL and stuff happening all around me. But here it is. I fully expect IW2 will do to this story what Age of Ultron did to my attempt to predict that, but, eh. Fanfic is a reality stone.

A virtual hug is due to my dearest and oldest writing companion, Runawaymetaphor, for telling me where I went wrong.

Heart and Soul

Alpha Flyer

He'd made it pretty clear that no one was to call him on that phone, not ever again - so why he'd put it back in his pocket is anyone's guess. Laura had called it 'nostalgia'; Nat would probably have a different word for it, less kind but more true. Whatever the reason, when the thing goes off Clint stops in his tracks.

"Go ahead, I'll catch up," he calls out to Cooper, who'd stopped when his father did. His son had made clear that he didn't want to miss the school bus for the second time in a row; he'd even made his Dad promise that he'd personally explain yesterday's hiccup to the driver, the universally beloved Micky B. who takes unannounced absences very seriously.

The day before, of course, the whole family had been glued to the TV, watching the alien ship hovering over New York. The bus long gone, Clint had been forced to drive Coop into Waverly in the truck, tires squealing and dust clouds in their wake, racing back home before that fucking GPS anklet could summon Ross' Gestapo.

But because of that space ship he'd put the phone in his pocket before they left; it's been there ever since. Touched often, but resolutely silent. Twenty-four hours. Whatever shit is going down, Cap's decided to let him sit it out.

Probably just as well.

Coop nods and bounds ahead, while Clint presses the phone to his ear, but there's no one there. Nothing but traffic sounds: oddly discordant ones, honking and crashes, people shouting … Someone must have hit a speed dial inside a car, perhaps while getting out?

There's a loud crack, the sound of the phone at the other end hotting the sidewalk.

He hears a familiar voice – Fury - starting to spit out a curse before he's cut off, followed by another, more distant crack. He, too, was making a call. Only four people have this number, and it takes Clint only a split second to register who must have called him: Hill. Fury must have been beside her.

The latest space ship has come and gone, and now they call? And then go offline immediately? What the fresh hell?

Clint hits the trace button – thanks for the tech, Mr. Futurist. He is about to shout out to Cooper that he'll need to go on without him when his son dissolves before his eyes.

Blue jeans, orange t-shirt, purple backpack, dark floppy hair – all are erased from the landscape in slow motion, turned into flakes of ash scattered by the morning breeze.

A scream congeals in Clint's throat as he races to the spot where Cooper should be, but is not. He falls to his knees, the phone tossed away and forgotten, feeling the air and scrabbling in the dirt for an answer he already knows will not come. He scoops up a handful of sand but even the ashes – if that's what they were – have dissolved into the morning air.

Nothing. Cooper is gone.

Out of sheer habit Clint scans the horizon for evidence of a weapon, a presence, another threat - anything. Nothing.

A mile down the road, a yellow school bus careens off the road and into McClintock's freshly ploughed field, where it gets stuck. A handful of kids spill out of the side door, milling around in confusion. One starts running, presumably towards home. Others follow.

Clint can't bring himself to care.

He turns his face to the house, where the door is banging now (never did get that spring tightened yet). A voice rings out: "Daddy! Daddy! Mommy and Nate…"

Lila's panicked shriek is unlike anything he has ever heard. For a moment, her cornflower-blue dress is bright against the door – then the scream fades into a sigh. A brief blur, like a swarm of bees dissolving into the sun, and she too is gone.

He runs.

"You have heart," Loki had said. And taken it.

He'd touched Clint's chest with his sceptered stone, rimed it with blue ice and taken it for his own, together with Clint's mind – wiping away all memories of everything that was good in his life, and everyone he believed in, loved and cared for.

Stone to mind - mind to stone.

Clint tries to summon that emptiness now, in the silent house, but fails. Why can't he be stone now?

"Laura?" he screams out, times beyond counting.

"Nate?" And knowing it's futile because he saw them fade: "Coop? Lilaaa…!"

No answer comes. Will ever come again.

And yet, his own treacherous heart keeps beating, keeps feeling. Each pulse is a stab, and still it goes on. Finally, his voice reduced to a raw, hoarse sob for air that he does not wish to breathe, he collapses on the couch.

III

The next twenty-four hours or so pass in a haze.

There's booze, of course; fists and feet against doorframes, again and again, in search of pain and penance for being alive; the close-up view of the barrel of a gun, cocked and loaded, and the crack it makes when he hurls it against the kitchen wall because he needs something better to kill than himself.

In between the pain and the madness, there are long moments of sitting on beds, running his hands through sheets that still smell of Laura, or through the soft fur of a favourite bear. If they had to vanish like this, without a trace, why is their memory still in his head? Where's Loki's scepter now?

At some point he turns on the TV, because surely Stark was involved in this - cracking open another door to the Apocalypse, or maybe Cap is somewhere, making a stand. Or Nat, yelling at Congress again?

Anything. Anyone.

Nothing.

All he gets from the TV is wall-to-wall screaming about a world gone mad. The President is gone and so is half the cabinet; Secretary Ross has taken charge of what remains of the US Government. He yells and struts so convincingly, no one gives a shit about constitutional succession, least of all the VP. The House Speaker is AWOL, as usual.

A Republican senator appears on CNN with some B-team anchor - Tapper had dissolved right in front of the camera, a spectacle to which viewers are treated again and again. The senator tries vaguely to pin blame on coastal elites, liberals and their love of illegal aliens, but he seems to be going through the motions and the journo is too numb to rise to the bait.

So-called experts (in what exactly - the mathematics of death?) estimate that half the population has vanished. Indiscriminately, arbitrarily erased from existence, with losses compounded by collateral damage – planes crashed due to lack of pilots; hospital patients, disabled and the elderly left unattended; babies suddenly home alone, that sort of thing. Linkages are being made to the space ship that hung over New York for a time, and some others seen over central Africa.

Few mention the Avengers, except to opine that maybe Ross should have called them up to deal with the threat. Sure. Get that bow ready, Hawkeye. See if it brings anyone back.

No one comes up with a theory why, if the toll is supposed to be half of humanity, Clint's entire family is gone. Maybe the Robinsons up the road lost no one, to even things out? If so, who decided? Surely it can't have been … just … random?

Laura. Cooper. Lila. Nate - the baby. Not random. Never random. Worth a thousand shrugs of the universe. Why them?

Clint throws the empty Scotch bottle at the screen, but its one of those new-fangled plasma things that won't explode or shatter properly; the hairline cracks aren't even enough for momentary satisfaction. He is dimly aware that what he really needs is to blow something up.

It's then that he remembers the aborted call.

He finds the phone and tries the callback button; of course, the thing is dead, like everything else. Clint hooks it up to the charger and waits the requisite five minutes or so, strumming his fingers on his hips until the battery comes to life again.

There's no answer. Not hard to guess why. Fuck.

He could make other calls, of course, but at this point the last thing he wants to know is who else won't pick up. Still… something inside him is starting to want some answers.

Now Stark may be a self-absorbed jerk with a shitty track record in planetary security (and possibly a cloud of ash now, if the world should be so lucky) but his tech works. A quick uplink via the phone to the Stark Industries SatNet, plus the Avengers encryption code, get Clint a high-res image of the callers last coordinates.

This is what he sees:

A street full of abandoned cars, including one that looks like every SHIELD vehicle Clint has ever cursed out for its shitty mileage and lack of cup holders. It appears to have t-boned another, civilian vehicle. There are no bodies.

Fuck.

Best guess, Hill had tried to call him, or accidentally hit the wrong speed dial button - lots of people's names start with 'C' and why'd anyone want to call a retired assassin under house arrest? Whatever, she hit the button and crumbled to dust. The fact that the cars are still there over a day later, clogging up a street in downtown Manhattan, tells Clint something else: Emergency services have gone down with the rest of the human grid.

He looks up from the phone and scans the (his, their) silent living room. Empty, except it's not: There's the pile of books Cooper had gotten for his birthday, waiting to be read … never. The fuzzy blanket that Lila won't ever crawl under again. Laura's knitting - a jacket for the baby, half done.

A reality that is no longer his; a timeline in a cursed life, turned dead-end like everything else he'd tried to be or do at some time or other: Clint Barton. The Amazing Hawkeye. Agent of SHIELD. Husband. Father. Sometime Avenger.

All gone.

Would things have been different if he hadn't taken the deal? Been there with Cap and the others, assuming they'd made a stand somewhere? Had Clinton Francis Barton's decision to put his own family first doomed them, and half the planet?

In his peripheral vision Clint becomes aware of movement on the phone screen; someone's alive in Manhattan after all. A few meters to the right of the abandoned SHIELD vehicle, someone smashes in a window: the screen blurs and sparkles for a second with flying glass and refracted sunlight.

The looting has started.

There's the unmistakable flash of a gun being fired. Half the world is gone; does that mean the asshole quota has gone up? Is that why Laura and the kids were taken - to make room for some punks keen to re-enact Lord of the Flies?

Well, fuck this. Fuck them.

Clint recognizes the burn in his fingers, in his gut. It's the same as that time he and Nat discovered that cult-cum-trafficking ring in Montana. Fury had to call in a few favours to keep his star asset out of jail, for what SHIELD bureaucrats euphemistically wrote up as "excessive use of force".

He'd never admitted it to anyone but Natasha, but there are times when killing feels good.

He's not sure whether he makes the decision or the decision makes him. Either way, the tracking device around Clint's ankle takes but a minute to remove; the only reason he'd left it on in the first place was because he'd agreed to. His family gone, the deal is no longer needed. Chances are no one is around to monitor the thing anyway and if they do, who's gonna do something about it?

They'd taken his bows and his guns, of course, but the morons who'd cleared the house of weapons must've thought the katanas over the fireplace were some kind of nerd decoration; he still has the harness, too. It'll have to do until he gets near a gun shop; who knows what things look like out here in Flyover Country, where every nutball comes armed with an AR-15.

The gas tank beside the barn is full. He fills a few canisters and tosses them in the back of the pick-up, together with trail food, water and a few other things that might come in handy.

As he heads out into the prairie the thought of how much Cooper had loved Mad Max slices across Clint's mind like a red-hot knife.

The Waverly Walmart Super Centre is not exactly open for business, but neither is it empty. The cash counters are unoccupied and people are helping themselves – good people stocking up for an Apocalypse that has come and gone, and bad people bent on finally landing that plasma TV they'd never been able to afford.

In a world filled with empty cars and open stores, Clint figures the muddy old pick-up and its unsexy contents will be okay in the parking lot for a few minutes. Nonetheless, he secures the tarp with a couple of metal tie lines to discourage opportunity theft.

The store is cavernous and ugly, as all Walmarts are. He makes his way past the zoo that's the electronics section to 'hunting and leisure', side-stepping a couple of rabid teens stuffing their backpacks with iPhones.

The big guns from the glass display cases are already gone, but there's a locked drawer full of high-end handguns. Far more portable, and just as deadly in the hands of someone who knows what they're doing. The lock is no challenge. Clint loads and pockets a Glock, tosses half a dozen pieces into a display duffel bag, empties the contents of a couple of ammo drawers on top, scribbles an IOU on the back of an NRA membership application and heads for the camping section.

The guy who makes a move for the duffel – his own gun still has the price tag dangling from the trigger - doesn't even notice the katana that takes off his hand, until the blood starts spurting. The momentary rush Clint gets from the guy's scream is somewhere between disturbing and, well, satisfying; the distraction it causes among the other 'shoppers' doesn't hurt either.

Freeze-dried food sucks so there's no competition for it, and no one seems to have gone for tools, lighters, mosquito repellent and the like. The going assumption seems to be that civilization and its conveniences will survive, although why that should be the case escapes him. Clint loads up a second bag and writes another IOU, adding an extra couple hundred when he spots a sales bin with self-inflating air mattresses and a display of one-man pup tents.

Despite the deal he's cut with Ross there will still be people who remember the price that used to be on Clint's head; sticking around Waverly where people know him isn't an option. He walks out of the store before anyone can wonder at the absence of fear on his face.

You'd have thought the End Times would come with a bang or a flash of lightning, followed by eternal darkness. Not so, apparently. The apocalypse, it turns out, has a half-life.

The walking wounded are everywhere. Watching your loved ones, colleagues or even perfect strangers disintegrate has left no one unaffected. Many are empty husks around the holes where their hearts used to be. Some manage to hold on and get on with things, even take advantage of the general paralysis; others will never be the same and are moving like ghosts, dragging chains that get heavier by the day.

If Clint is able to move more sharply and faster than others it's only because he's had to do it so often – losing his parents, his brother, the circus, S.H.I.E.L.D., watching comrades-in-arms fall. The ability to carry loss is a suit of armour Clint Barton has kept polished all his life; it keeps him on his feet now.

In most cities, remnants of authority and people with a sense of duty are rallying to keep basic services running, for a population that wavers between numbness, despair and screeching fury. The attempt works wherever public servants, trying to cling to some form of normalcy even if there may not be a paycheck or things to buy with it, show up to work in power stations and hospitals, in police detachments and bus depots. But there are not enough of them to deal with all the elderly, the disabled, the very young suddenly left without caregivers, and the dying continues.

Elsewhere, street gangs, preppers and survivalists gloat over their ammo stockpiles, ready to seize their chance to prove who's the fittest among them. The "well-regulated militias" the Second Amendment waxed on about have nothing on the wannabe warlords now rising from their basements and fallout shelters, armed to the teeth.

Clint loses count of how many store robberies he breaks up on his way across the land; how many small-town diners he saves from a hostile takeover in exchange for a free meal; how many times he ends an attack on a courthouse or other vestige of civilization with maximum prejudice. Or how many orphaned, starving kids he takes to places where they might find food and shelter, maybe even fill an empty space in someone's heart.

He's hardly being a hero though, let alone an Avenger. Truth is, there's a comfort in the pattern of taking and saving lives; it's like riding a Harley down a mountain road - one hand on the throttle, the other on the brake, but always moving, moving. And the gas is free while there's unmanned stations and abandoned vehicles to tap.

One place he comes to is a farm, under siege by a gang of marauders because it promises meat and food for those who can't be bothered to grow stuff for themselves on one of the many places lying empty. When he's done with them and the bodies are burning on a stack of last year's hay, the woman who's been holding the place together for her surviving kids asks him to stay the night, to share a meal.

She's half Asian, Japanese probably, although he doesn't ask. Smart, college-educated, self-sufficient – and in mourning for her husband and youngest child. What Laura would be if the Great Death had taken him instead of her, and so he says 'yes' against his better judgment. After dinner, the surviving two kids in bed, she makes it clear that she knows who he is.

"I don't suppose the Avengers could have stopped it?" she asks, looking at him with a mixture of resentment and despair.

Clint just shrugs.

"Don't know if they ever got the chance," he says. "Haven't heard from them."

He can see in her eyes that she knows he's speaking the truth.

There's been no word of his old team, except for some pundit on what remains of CNN whining about Ross' failure to call them in, and second-guessing the wisdom behind the Accords. Ross himself, when he shows his face on TV, has been conspicuously silent on the subject.

There's no way Cap wouldn't have put up a fight, so the way Clint figures is that they tried and lost, someplace where the TV cameras didn't reach and bystanders were too busy surviving to point cellphone cameras. And now, if statistics hold, half of his erstwhile friends will be gone.

More, if some went out fighting before the Vanishing. Or if the fucking destiny fairy that took all of Clint's family had another joke at his expense.

(Natasha?)

Over a bottle of scotch Clint had scored from one of the would-be raiders – corpse looting is a thing now, and he's not above it - the farmer, Kuniko, tells him he reminds her of a wandering samurai.

"If you can't be part of the Avengers anymore, you could always be Ronin," she says.

He stays for three days, fixing a tractor, installing a tripwire system, helping bring in the hay for the cows. Kuniko offers him her bed for the night, but that's not a comfort Clint needs, nor is it one he is ready to give. He does take her up on her offer of a haircut though – it's been a while - and says nothing when she shaves the sides of his head in the style her husband apparently liked.

But when he leaves, he holds on to the name she's been calling him, because it's a gift and those are rare nowadays: Ronin.

Others who recognize him along the way aren't as forgiving.

"You could have stopped it," someone says. "Aren't you supposed to be heroes?" And another, "There were no aliens until you freaks put Earth on the map."

It' s your fault, he hears. You failed.

They're both right and terribly wrong, of course, but now when he does his killing and saving and killing, he puts on a mask and a suit. Vision always said there's grace in failure, but there's peace in anonymity.

The suit is a tacky thing, part of a vaguely Japanese-looking outfit he finds in an abandoned costume shop in Chicago. Natasha would say something snarky about cultural appropriation, but it goes with the katanas and reminds him of his days in the circus - back when hitting a target was all that mattered. Besides, whenever he puts it on, Clint Barton disappears and the shell around the emptiness gets a bit harder; and that's as good as he can hope for and it keeps him going.

Through everything he sees and hears and does he keeps moving East, drawn by some pull that he can't explain. The memory of a hole in the sky, maybe? A place where he could find solace and revenge in equal measure, if only it opened again?

VII

Natasha finds him in Manhattan.

He learns later that Cap had sent her there from Wakanda, to look for whoever might be left, for purposes of inventory if not reconciliation and regrouping. Presumably he'd hoped for Stark, but Clint is what she gets.

When they do meet it's a damn stroke of luck he doesn't kill her, since they're taking down the same street gang from opposite sides of Washington Park.

"Nat?" he blurts out when the blonde's movements, slicing through thugs with a lethal grace, start to look familiar. For a split second she freezes.

"Clint?" she gasps in return – not because she's out of breath, but because a hard cut with a baton is always done best on the exhale.

They fall into their familiar pattern almost instantly. Back-to-back, small shouts: Yours. Watch your three! Got him. Guy's got a knife! When it's over, he rips off his mask and turns to her.

"What happened to your hair?" he asks, because he can't think of any other question he actually wants an answer for and this is the first thing that comes to mind.

"Camo. Most men don't look past blonde. And you? What's with the Mohawk?" she counters. "And that whole Japanese thing you have going on. That's new, isn't it?"

"Free haircut. And … Camo."

He should probably tell her about Laura and the kids and how he's had to run from Waverly and become someone else, someone who wasn't a husband and a father and a failure as a protector, but he can tell by her eyes that she knows. She knows.

For a moment they just look at each other. And then…

Their embrace is almost a death clinch. When they finally pull apart she touches his face, runs her fingers along his cheek as if to check that he is real. The touch on his skin, the first in months – flesh, not ash – is like someone pulling a finger out of the dike.

He breaks.

Holding him tight, Natasha just keeps whispering with each sob that wracks his shoulders, "You're alive. You're alive."

You're alive.

She sounds almost happy. And yes, she'd tried to contact him at the farm for days, and when that failed, had assumed he had Vanished and added him to the ledger.

In her safe house on the Upper West Side – so many apartments that people once paid fortunes for now sit empty, with no one bothering to check on the owners or to collect mortgage payments – Clint learns that the Vanishing was the result of a simple snap, of two fingers and a Glove. And they tally their losses.

Laura. Cooper. Lila. Nate. Clint's list is short, as these things go, but it weighs. Natasha goes ashen at 'Lila'. Hill. Fury.

Sam. Bucky. Vision. T'Challa. (Who? Oh, yeah. Cat guy.) Wakandans in their thousands. A talking tree of some sort. Wanda.

Wanda...

On the plus side, there's Loki. Went out an actual hero, Thor had said, but he always was biased and it doesn't matter to Clint, as long as he's gone.

No one knows anything about Stark and that Spider Kid - which is why Natasha had come here, to New York, to look for them. There was also a mystical wizard-type that Banner tangled with somehow, but he's MIA too. She's still looking for his sidekick.

Happy thinks Stark may have gone into Space, whatever that means, so maybe those others went with him? Clint's erstwhile cellmate, Lang, has made himself scarce after the Raft – same plea deal, same anklet. For now, it's probably best to assume all of them are out of the game.

If there's a play left.

On the asset side, there's Cap; Rhodey; Thor; and a suddenly un-enhanced Banner. Some souped-up raccoon from outer space, separated from his buddies in what looks like a shitty trade-off for Stark, if that's where he went.

A teenage Wakanda girl who – bonus! - may be smarter than Stark and Banner put together and a bunch of warriors without a King, keen on revenge. They come with a decent fighting force, provided they can find an enemy to fight and can be convinced to go after him. Wakanda, Natasha says, is a hell of a ways away, and badly in need of reconstruction.

Most importantly, though, Natasha tells Clint that the source of all his pain – from the theft of his mind back in New Mexico, to the erasure of his family and the breaking of that heart that Loki had found so enticing - has a name.

Thanos.

VIII

Steve, Natasha says, considers it inevitable that Thanos will return to Earth. The Avengers had given him considerable grief and inflicted serious losses on his inner circle, and Steve figures he might want to come back to gloat over his ultimate victory. It's what psychopaths do. So, of course, Cap wants to rally the troops.

Clint isn't interested, and he wastes no time telling her so over a pizza (some things are still available in the city, it's good to know).

"Look. Apart from you, anytime I've trusted someone, worked with someone or relied on someone, I've gotten fucked, they've gotten fucked, and good people have died. Thanks but no thanks. I'm better on my own."

"Clint…"

He shakes his head; it's amazing how easily the 'no' comes, despite the momentary joy and relief of seeing her alive.

"I'm done with the super-hero bullshit. It's no good anyway. The problems people have right now? They can't be solved by giant green monsters and divine lightning. People need a helping hand, or a gun."

She looks at him, uncomprehending.

"You haven't seen them, Clint. Thanos and his so-called children. Tech beyond our comprehension. Magic that makes Loki look like a kitten. And those Infinity Stones, they…"

He shakes his head.

"I get that, Nat. All of it. Been there, done that. Got a pretty good idea from Loki when he was in my head, remember?"

She tries to protest.

"This is worse, Clint. Much worse!" but he waves her off.

"Have you been out there? I mean, out there with real people, ordinary folks who know nothing about ancient Gods, aliens and magicians? There's kids without parents. Little kids, with no one left alive who knows they even exist. Farmers without workers to get the crops in. People will starve this winter, Nat, until everyone finds ways to cope. And where there is food, gangs try to take what isn't theirs, from people unable to protect themselves. Who's gonna fight for them?"

Exhausted, he runs a hand through his hair.

"What people need isn't another fight. It's order. Basic governance. Hope."

"And you're the guy to provide all that?"

She's trying to keep her tone neutral, but the skepticism is palpable.

"No. Of course not." He snorts, without humour. "Notorious criminal, out of jail on conditions that can be revoked any time? No one would do a damn thing I'd tell 'em, even if I could figure out what that should be. But I can fight and help out, one bit at a time, until someone does."

He glances past the garish costume, discarded in a heap on the floor, and looks at his hands. They're still callused from his bow and the farm, utterly free from any ability to build a repulsor, weave magic, or shoot lightning.

"You guys don't need me anyway."

"You're wrong there, as usual," she starts, but he shakes his head again, this time more slowly.

"Spare me," he says. "Why don't you tell me instead how you are doing? You. Tasha. Because right now, I could sure use just few hours talking with a friend."

It turns out, they both can. And when they part ways in the morning, he does agree to take the phone she's brought with her from Wakanda.

When the phone finally rings, months later, Clint is in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York, after a tour that's taken him through much of the Eastern Seaboard and bits of Canada.

The stories he's found are the same everywhere, regardless of borders: loss, grief, and rage; burgeoning efforts to cope. Religion is changing. All those televangelists? The surviving ones have been run out of their plush studios, their private jets stolen or grounded for lack of pilots; their mega churches stripped of gold plating and crystal chandeliers. People who in the wake of Thanos' destruction still believe in a superior being - or found that they need one to carry on - are finding comfort in parishes with pastors for whom 'help your neighbour' is something to be practiced, not preached.

It's there, in the small places, that Clint takes the occasional break. Places where people don't judge but take any help offered, whether it's bringing in crops, raising a barn or repelling bandits. By now he's been around long enough that being 'Ronin' gets him a meal, a shower and a bed.

And it's in one of those places that the phone disrupts his journey.

"He's coming back," is all Natasha says. "Manhattan."

New York. Where else?

Yes, Thanos could have picked Wakanda, site of his ultimate triumph, to make his comeback. So why New York? Cap's theory had been right. Guy's like Trump - can't forget being dissed by the paperboy, even while sitting on a golden shitter.

And Clint has to admit to himself, that theory is why he's been hanging around the area himself.

There's a donut-shaped spaceship hanging in the sky over Central Park when Clint roars into Manhattan on a Harley he'd picked up somewhere in Vermont. Thanos has the tesseract. Why would he use a spaceship?

What remains of the Avengers is gathered near Bethesda Terrace, in Central Park. Figures the place would be some kind of alien magnet what with the marks from Loki's deportation still burned into the pavement.

Turns out the space ship isn't Thanos – not yet. It's Stark, who's back from Outer Space in the company of an odd blue alien who moves like Pinocchio before he became a real boy. Stark himself looks older, much older - burning with a cold fire after losing that Parker kid on some asteroid and Pepper turned to ash while he was gone.

He greets Clint with a grunt, "Barton? 'Bout time you showed up!" before turning back to continue his conversation with the blue alien, and a small black girl in full war paint who ignores Clint altogether. The genius Natasha had mentioned?

Thor, by contrast, nods and smiles a broad welcome. He slaps Clint on the arm (ouch) and says something about having missed him in the previous battle. The mangy raccoon Natasha had warned Clint about sits on Thor's shoulder like some kind of live ornament, looks him up and down and scrunches his whiskers in contempt at the sight of the katanas.

Natasha gives him a fond, crooked smile that somehow means the world.

Of course, Cap and Rhodey immediately want to know what assets Clint brings to the fight, apart from himself. That there will be a fight, now that Stark is back, is not in question and soldiers gotta soldier.

"Even more medieval shit than usual," Clint says. "Bow's gone, so I moved on to blades. Plus a few guns, just in case."

Cap looks at him with a funny look in his face. Pity? Contempt? Hard to tell. But then…

"You want your bow back, Hawkeye?" he asks, but before Clint can answer, he calls over to the young black girl.

"Your Highness," Cap says. "Shuri? This is the archer I told you about. You know, the one I asked you to build the bow for, when Natasha told us he was alive."

Huh. Clint isn't sure what surprises him more – that someone's been thinking about him at all, or that Cap expected him back and planned for his return.

But he stops thinking altogether when the girl gives a quick nod to Stark, goes to what must be her own personal little spaceship, and comes back with a bow that is unlike anything Clint has ever seen.

Ebony black and light as a feather, strung with a filament you can barely see but that sings of pure strength. It's so perfectly balanced, the stabilizer seems more like a nod to style than anything else.

Clint knows what it's made of the instant he touches it: Vibranium. Never cold, never hot. He whips it in his hand: the tensile strength in the frame alone should let him shoot a mile or more, never mind the string. He twirls it in his hand, nocks an imaginary arrow, draws dry and lets go.

It's a thing of beauty, utterly entrancing, and he can think of only one target worthy of it.

It gets better.

"I'm told you don't really need a sight," Shuri says, "so I put in something special into the arrow rest instead, same weight so it won't alter the balance."

Clint looks at her expectantly. He may have only just met her, but anyone who can design a weapon with such lethal perfection has his full attention. She points to a small portal in the center of the bow.

"This brings your bow into the 21st century, White Man. It changes arrowheads through instant 3D printing that reacts to voice commands. I made a list of the options; I suggest you look at what's available and then we imprint your voice."

And so, while Cap is barking orders, Stark complains about how people aren't moving fast enough, Natasha tells them both to grow up and Thor gives a pep talk to Banner, Clint sits down on the stone wall on Bethesda Terrance, studies a chart of lethal projectiles like a box of high-end chocolates, and learns to talk to his bow.

Thanos arrives an hour or so later, greatly displeased.

Presumably he missed the ship Stark and the blue Womanoid stole to get back to Earth, or maybe he's just pissed off that his avadacadavra routine didn't kill all the right people. But honestly? Clint couldn't care less about the how or why he came back. He's here.

And … he's alone.

Clint, in full tactical mode now, spends a split second considering this fact. Presumably, if you eliminate half the universe, half your minions would disappear as well - in which case the other half may well reconsider their affiliation. Not the only thing wrong with the Snap approach, but a miscalculation that means there will be no reinforcements coming from the back. Good.

Battle is joined almost immediately.

In the absence of Wanda, Viz and Falcon the Avengers' air game is limited, but Shuri in her little space ship does a keen job keeping Thanos distracted by unleashing some awesome firepower, buzzing around War Machine and Ironman as if they'd all trained for dogfights together. Maybe they have?

Thor brings it on, coming in hard from above in a cloud of lightning, his new axe raised. He gets smacked by Thanos' gloved fist, though, when he exposes his flank unnecessarily by going straight for the Titan's head, instead of feinting first.

Clint resists the temptation to watch Thor's arc towards the lake and instead lifts his new bow. EMP, he calls out, and lets fly.

The arrow flies strong and true, heading straight for Thanos left eye - but the giant uses that precise moment to blink out of existence, the shockwave briefly illuminating what looks like a red force field. The arrow goes on for what seems like miles.

Thanos emerges again in the spot where the blue alien (Nebula, Clint has learned) is screaming in rage as she fires some sort of ray gun, side by side with that raccoon. Their weapons seem to have little effect though as Thanos surrounds himself with that same red haze he'd used to foil Clint's arrow, although this time he stays put and sweeps both his attackers aside with a shockwave from his glove like a pair of annoying bugs.

The raccoon utters a foul-mouthed curse but lands on his feet, weapon blazing, while Nebula makes some funky moves as if she's rearranging her spine. They're joined by Natasha and that Wakandan general with the fierce eyes. Both women are blurs of lethal grace, evading the purple bolts Thanos is firing from his balled fist, and strafing his legs and torso with bullets.

Bullets that fall off the giant's skin like soft-cooked peas.

Clint stops wasting his time watching and tries another arrow, this one timed to arrive while Thanos looks elsewhere; of course that means he can't go for the eye and has to try and figure out where the alien keeps his larynx. But it turns out the giant's neck is protected by some kind of armour and the arrow glances off ineffectually. Fuck.

He nocks another.

Meanwhile, Lang has turned up from out of nowhere - Cap must have had him on speed dial, too - and does that thing where he sometimes becomes invisible, other times rivals Thanos in size. Then some Chinese dude in boho clothes steps out of a hole in the universe and starts shooting little firebombs out of his hands. All of this is being somewhat useful keeping Thanos distracted, while Cap tries to get at his privates (assuming he has them) with a super-high Muay Thai kick, but none of it does any good.

Thanos just waves his gloved fist around, gemstones sparkling in the mid-afternoon sun, and people go flying, even the ones who normally can't. They get up, shake it off, and starts over. Again, and again, and again…

But then, finally: Banner.

The Big Guy seems to have successfully activated his gonads, now that the Other Big Guy is on the scene; Clint can hear Natasha saying something to that effect to General Okoye. "Men," she says - and where's the lie?

With a roar that has Thanos turning around in mid-swatting of another aerial attack, the Hulk comes at him at a gallop. Clint inserts an arrow into the melee, aiming at Thanos' face more for distraction purposes than anything else, hoping he won't blink himself out of existence again before Hulk can knock him down. Ironman does the same, firing his repulsors.

Thor comes back from wherever he's last been flung, throwing lightning; there's gun fire and ray guns and aerial acrobatics, purple explosions and Lord knows what else. Nothing has any effect.

Clint nocks another arrow. Maybe fancy isn't the thing? Maybe plain old hardware is the way to go here?

Thanos snarls something that sounds like, "You're wasting your time, fools! I made a mistake not killing you all."

And then there is Hulk, coming at him. Thanos swings his fist … and connects.

Something far more than a bang, more like a seismic shock, temporarily fills the air and the earth and for a moment, everything stands still. Even Thanos freezes, as Hulk, hit by the uppercut to end all uppercuts, flies through the air and lands with a thud on the grass.

There's a crack, and a streak of light like a small comet shoots from Thanos' gloved fist.

Suddenly the whole scene is bathed in a strange glow, and Clint hears an unfamiliar voice – Nebula? - filled with rage and pain and hope: "The soul stone! The Hulk knocked out the soul stone!"

As if in slow motion, Clint sees a glittering shape flying towards him, its trajectory as easy for him to read as that of one of his arrows.

Natasha had told him of the power of the stones, how no mortal can hold them, but dammit Thanos isn't going to get that thing back – he's going to have to pry this sucker from Clint's cold, dead hands, if that's what it takes.

He sprints and he jumps, right hand held high, bow and arrow in the other.

Snitch, his mind offers incongruously as he reaches for the golden gem.

"The Fuck?"

Clint finds himself standing in a bleak and barren landscape, something like the black sands of Iceland where he and Natasha had once spent an interminable week saving an international fishing agreement from organized crime. Off in the distance there's an active volcano complete with lava flow; the ground is rumbling and feels warm under his feet, and the air smells vaguely of sulphur.

Clint could have sworn there was no Heaven, and he'd never expected to get there even if it existed - but this is a shitty moment to find out that there is, in fact, a Hell.

He checks his hand for the stone he'd been about to catch before this transfer to Mordor. It's empty.

"Not so fast," a raspy voice comes from behind.

Clint whirls around, bow at the ready. The gem – the soul stone, if Nebula was right – is hanging in mid-air, shining like burnished gold against the dark cloak of a figure that looks like something out of a third-rate horror flick.

The alien – how easy that term comes these days - hovers a foot or so off the ground, its face shielded by a hood so deep Clint figures it provides zero peripheral vision. He briefly considers flanking it and striking from the side, but anything that can defy gravity probably has a few other tricks up its rotten sleeve.

"Who or what the hell are you?" he asks instead.

The alien doesn't move, although his cloak flutters a little in the hot wind.

"I could ask you the same question," he says, with what Clint's ear picks out, incongruously, as a German accent. "No one comes here for decades, and then all of a sudden there's a Zen-Whoberi, a Titan, and now you. A human. American, if I'm not mistaken. You people do have a tendency to overreach, don't you?"

Clint ignores him. If there is one thing he has learned in his encounters with people who think they're important, it's that getting pissed off at their monologuing is counter-productive.

"My name is Clint Barton. And I want that stone," he says, but doesn't make a move for it. (Yet.) "Figure it'd be useful in the fight we're having."

Provided the fight isn't over by the time he gets back with it. Provided he gets back with the stone at all, interstellar travel not exactly being a Barton thing.

"Thanos," the alien says, rolling the name in his mouth like an unpleasant taste.

"You're fighting Thanos, are you? Last to have come here and taken the stone. And now, it appears, he has lost it again." He tut-tuts a little. "Oh, dear. Such a waste of a good sacrifice."

The floating figure tosses back its hood, revealing ghastly red, flesh-less features that look more like a skull than a face. An unpleasant smile distorts its mouth.

A memory briefly stirs in Clint, the echo of a story told over a beer: Cap and Bucky, and the Hydra fanatic who would rule the world….

Red Skull, in the less-than-flesh. Human – not alien. Should be dead though. The universe is a strange place indeed.

"So you want the soul stone now, do you, Mr. Barton? I suppose you want to be a hero, use it to reverse Thanos' Snap and turn the world back into the heaving mass of mediocrity that it is?"

He gives his ragged cape an unnecessary swirl.

"You might wish to consider the power that has kept me here for seventy years, and whether you can hope to measure up to it. Are you prepared to give the stone what it takes?"

Clint doesn't have time for riddles.

"Fuck you, Nazi," he snarls and lunges for the stone, only to stumble ungracefully as the gem recedes from his grasp. He barely manages to stay upright on the rock-studded ground, using the bow in his left hand for balance as a tightrope walker would a pole.

"Ah, yes." The Red Skull tut-tuts a little. "You Americans always think you can just … take things. This one, I am afraid, will cost you."

He pauses for what Clint is certain is dramatic effect. Guy must be in love with his role as desert planet sphinx; sphincter, more like.

Sure enough, the Skull isn't done.

"Are you prepared to pay the price? Thanos was. And did."

Thanos did. He hadn't looked too damaged, apart from whatever scratches Thor's lightning had left on his skin. And … did the Nazi say "reverse Thanos' snap"'?

Clint summons his inner diplomat.

"What is it then, that 'price'? Say three 'Hail Hydras' and kiss your pinky ring?"

Anger flares up in the spectre's eyes.

"Petty insults will get you nowhere, Mr. Barton. You could only wish it were that simple," he snarls. "This is the Soul Stone, you ignorant barbarian. It is beyond the reach of mere mortal desire. He who would possess it must sacrifice that which he loves most in the world."

There's a flash of green behind one of the rocks just then, but Clint refuses to be distracted.

"Oh, c'mon," he says contemptuously. "That's just more of your Hydra mumbo-jumbo. Like Thanos could ever love something, and then actually give it up. Nice try."

"Well, then," Schmidt – that's his name, isn't it, oddly banal for an evil out of time – says, contempt lacing his voice. "In that case, we have no further business, you and I. Good luck finding your way home."

Home.

The word strikes Clint like a hammer blow. For a moment, he can almost see it among the black, jagged rocks and the faraway glow of the lava: The white house surrounded by golden fields; the old tractor out front; Laura's vegetable garden; Cooper and Lila on the porch swing…

"Could the soul stone bring them back?" he asks, his mouth suddenly dry. "My family, I mean."

Red Skull cocks his head and considers for a moment, probably torn between the distasteful option of being helpful and the prospect of striking back at the cosmic powers that have stranded him here.

He picks Door Number One.

"On its own, no. Thanos used Power to change Reality across Time and Space, reaching into the Minds of sentient beings to deprive them of their Soul. You need all Six to undo what he has wrought."

His dead eyes give Clint a sly glance.

"But on its own, used by one who can hold it, the soul stone can bring about its former master's death. Only when Thanos is dead can the glove be taken from his hand to be wielded by another. I for one would salute the one who does the deed."

"Lemme be clear, Nazi," Clint says. "I'm not doing anything to make you feel better, or end whatever spell that keeps you here. Cap says you're pretty good at that world-wiping thing yourself, given half the chance. But thanks for the info."

The green flash behind the rocks moves again, this time stepping out from behind its hiding place. It's a young girl, alien but humanoid - transparent, as if she were a ghost. She stares at Clint intently, with a mixture of hope and fear in her luminous eyes. Her mouth forms a word he doesn't understand, but the language of her hands reaching out in a silent plea is universal.

Clint looks at her for a moment, and nods.

"So, to the price then. That which I love most in the world," he says, rolling the words with his tongue. "Okay - I'm extremely fond of this bow. Who do I give it to? You? Her? Throw it down some magic hole?"

Schmidt throws back his head and gives a short, unpleasant cackle.

"You think you could win the Soul Stone with a trinket, like you Americans bought a continent with glass beads? You wish. That which you love most in the world. Nothing less than that will do."

He points to the girl; the black jagged rocks of the desolate landscape visible through her shimmering shape.

"She was his price. "

Clint swallows. Human sacrifice? If he didn't have issues with Thanos before…

"Just my luck," Clint says, his mouth dry as ash. "I've already lost my family. That which I love most in the world is already gone. Nothing left, buddy."

Schmidt measures him with his eyes as you would a used car, trying to determine whether it's worth your time.

"Oh, but there is, Mr. Barton. You're just too dim-witted to see it. If you bring the Soul Stone back, the glove can restore life to the galaxy. To everyone that was lost. Except…"

He makes a gesture that starts as a shrug, and ends with his hands outstretched in a 'you see'?

Clint does indeed see. Oh yes, he does, and it's as if his heart were pierced by a spear of ice.

Laura. Cooper. Lila. Nate. Never to come back….

He shakes his head, again and again.

"Who's to say we could even find anyone able to undo Thanos' snap?"

Clint isn't sure what answer he wants.

"I can't help you there. Talk to my old friend, Captain America -sometimes a sacrifice is worth making, and sometimes it's not. Life is full of uncertainties," the Red Skull says, his lipless mouth giving his words the hiss of a snake. "Either way, what have you lost that isn't gone already?"

Knowing that would have I killed my family all over again, Clint wants to say, but no words come out.

The small green figure opens her mouth. Her lips shape an O. Is she saying 'do', or 'don't'? (Does she even speak English?) The possibility that she could be saying both strikes him like one of Thor's bolts of lightning.

They could never come back, unless he agrees that they cannot come back at all. An impossible universe, measured against a universe of possibilities. A universe of lives, against a certainty of death.

He decides, knowing he will carry this choice in his soul for the rest of his days.

Clint reaches for the stone.

It is almost as if he could hold it all in his hand: The glow of a late Iowa afternoon; the children's laughter as they chase a butterfly through the garden; the curve of Laura's cheek, bathed in the golden light of the wall sconces she'd scattered through the house.

Yes, it's almost as if he could hold them all in the palm of his hand. And then, suddenly, he can.

And does.

The Soul Stone feels like amber, warm and almost alive. Smooth, but not hard, it pulses with an inner light that reminds him – absurdly – of the orange lampshade in the living room, the one that Laura had insisted on buying at the annual flea market in Waverly.

There is a sudden pull as if he were being borne away on a whirlwind; the world turns grey and featureless. Clint is dimly aware of a small green figure clinging to his waist and then streaking past him, growing as she goes, like a genie uncorked from a bottle. Her arm is raised and she is running, a double-edged dagger glinting in her hand - and he finds himself back in Central Park.

The stone is still in his hand.

No time seems to have passed since he left. The Hulk is struggling to his feet; Ironman is sending shockwaves at Thanos who is warding them and Thor's lightning bolts off as he might a swarm of mosquitos.

No one notices Clint's reappearance. It's as if he'd never left, or never been here in the first place. Perhaps that's the good thing of not having superpowers – no one notices you, or cares when they do.

XII

"You have heart," Loki had said, and pulled it out with the first of Thanos' stones.

Clint holds his heart, his soul, to the light. Maybe Thanos was right, and there is balance in the world: A heart for a trillion souls.

If I put an arrow through his eye socket, I'd sleep better I suppose.

"Special tip," he commands his bow, nocks the arrow and watches the stone click into place at the tip.

"Hey, Thanos!" he shouts. "Over here!"

Clint watches the Titan turn his head; all he needs is a second's worth of his contemptuous stare. The bowstring sings and there's a streak in the air like a small, golden comet.

Thanos will never see it coming.