So I hope you all like this one!
Disclaimer: I do not own The Avengers.
Clint wasn't a particularly vain person but he always thought that when he died he would have left a trail of destruction before he went down. That he would have fought tooth and nail before being dragged from this world. Which is probably why he took so long to realize that he was dead. It had happened so fast that he hadn't even known it had happened. The awesome Hawkeye hadn't even seen his own death coming. Clint didn't even want to think of what Stark would do with that fact.
In all honesty, when he first found himself floating in the air and then going through solid objects, like the building he tried to land on, his first thought was that he had somehow been phased to another plane. He blamed shield and the avengers for that. He couldn't remember ever having being phased but hey, he understood that. Different planes of reality could do strange things to the brain right? So his next thought was to head to the avengers tower and see if Tony or Bruce could fix this. After all they must have already started right? Maybe they could still see him.
So he found the tower (it was hard to miss) and floated down through the roof and headed to the lab because that was where he expected Tony and Bruce to be. He drifted through the lab door mentally bracing himself for the blast of music that Tony surely had on. Only, there was no music, heck there didn't seem to be any sound in here and Clint started to feel stirrings of foreboding because he had never found Stark's lab to be quiet, even when the man wasn't there. Something was always being fabricated or his bots were cleaning up some mess Tony had made.
Clint began to think that Tony wasn't here, maybe the team had had to assemble, when he spotted movement towards the back of the lab. He drifted in that direction and found Tony Stark sitting on a stool and half slumped on the desk staring at a closed bottle of alcohol like he desperately wanted it but he couldn't bear to drink it. Now Clint was sure something was wrong. All his senses were on high alert.
Now that he thought about it the tower seemed too quiet. Clint left Stark and drifted over to Bruce's lab only to find it empty. He went through the tower searching for somebody but no one else was there. He stopped and thought for a moment. Steve and Natasha were probably at SHIELD. But Bruce usually didn't leave the tower which begged the question where was he? he could be at SHIELD too but Clint couldn't get the look on Stark's face out of his mind. Something was wrong.
There was no one in the gym. On impulse Clint went to Peppers office on the lower floors. She was there handling the affairs of SI but her eyes were red rimmed and she wore no makeup. Maybe Tony and Pepper had had a fight and Bruce was trying to escape the tension. But Clint could tell that there was more. This was no fight with Tony. And Clint was wondering why Tony and Bruce weren't trying to fix him.
On another impulse Clint dived down to the bottom floor and there he found Bruce. He was sitting on the floor of the hulk room clearly meditating. It was just as clear that the meditation was barely keeping the hulk in check. Well that answered why Bruce wasn't helping fix Clint but what had happened to Bruce? Clint went back up to Peppers office and waved his hand in front of her.
"Pepper!" he said loudly but there was no response. She didn't see him or hear him. Damn thought Clint. He had suspected it wouldn't have worked but still. He stood and thought for a moment and then went back up to the communal floor and waved his hand in front of one of Jarvis sensors. Obviously had Jarvis been able to sense him he would have but Clint liked to cover his bases. There was no response. Clint sighed and debated whether or not he should stay in the tower. He finally decided that he should but after about half an hour he got bored and started drifting through the floors of SI exploring. Some of it was boring office stuff but others were pretty interesting.
Clint continued to drift between the floors until a picture of his face flashed on one of the tv on the floor. Surprised Clint went over to the tv and listened in. The reporter saying something about the country still in mourning for the fallen avenger and footage of people putting flowers on a memorial. His memorial.
The realization hit Clint like a raging Hulk. He had been phased to another plane of reality, only it was a one-way trip. He was dead.
Everything suddenly made a lot of sense. Peppers tears, Bruce's reaction, Tony staring off in the lab. Natasha's disappearance. Clint fought to remember what happened but he couldn't. He stood there in the hallway for a few moments before the emotional effects of the truth truly hit him.
He was up on the roof before he knew it, leaning dangerously over the edge and gasping for air. He stared down at the city below from his perilous vantage point and thought that maybe he should lean back before he fell and then he started laughing hysterically at the thought because it wasn't like he was gonna die if he fell. He was already dead.
He didn't how long he was up there half laughing half-sobbing in disbelief before he sobered. He was dead. Alright then. He hadn't ever expected this but okay it was here. What does he do now? It's not like there was protocol for if one died and woke up as a ghost. Natasha. He had to know what happened to her at least. His death would have affected her the worst he knew. He needed to make sure she was alright.
Four hours later Clint was back on the roof of the tower. Natasha had been cleared for active duty and was going on missions on a rampage. She was currently out of the country. Apparently, he had been dead for a little over a week. He had missed his own funeral.
With nothing else to do but wait until she was back in the country Clint hung around the tower. Eventually that turned into him hanging around Stark because he couldn't bear Pepper's tears and seeing Bruce go through so much pain as he struggled to keep himself in check was too much to bear as well.
Tony's grief was hard to watch too but it was a sort of driven grief. After the first few days of just doing nothing Tony had come alive with a sort of fierceness Clint rarely ever saw. He built and upgraded and built and upgraded and never drank and barely touched coffee, working at an unhealty pace. Clint could bear it as much as he couldn't bear leaving them alone and drifting over the city even though it would have been a much easier thing to do.
After about a week of watching Tony though Clint had had it. He was not going let this go on. He sat on a table in Tony's lab and concentrated. He had early on discovered that while he could sit or stand on things he couldn't move them. He was going to try and change that.
An hour and a half later a small wrench fell of the table. Tony looked up startled, frowned at the wrench but eventually decided that the wrench must have fallen on its own somehow. Clint smirked. And then celebrated. He drifted over to another table next to DumE and started the process all over again.
"Sorry little guy," he told DumE, "you're going to take the fall for this."
Clint began to poke a slender tool on the table. More often than not his finger went through it but he concentrated, forcing himself to solidify for brief moments. The tool eventually clattered to the floor. DumE squealed in surprise and dumped fire foam on the tool.
"DUME!" yelled Tony.
DumE ended up in the corner and Clint was already working on another larger tool. Tony started to wonder if he was going mad. At the fifth time something fell down he asked Jarvis to scan for an intruder. Jarvis reported that there was no one there nor were there any strange energy signatures.
"However, sir the objects seem to be moving on their own."
"Why didn't you say anything?"
"I couldn't believe my sensors sir," Said Jarvis dryly.
Tony cursed and called out "Ok whoever you are you better show yourself I'm not in the mood to play around. Clint knocked something over by mistake and before he could react one of iron man's gauntlet had attached itself to Tony's arm and a repulser blast hit him. Clint gasped expecting to feel pain and something happened. Then he realized there was no pain and that the blast had gone through him. Of course he was a ghost. Looking up realized that Tony looked like he had seen just that.
"Tony?" he asked.
Tony face was set into battle mode and he swept the area with his gauntlet. Clint slipped away behind Tony and to his surprise Tony shuddered and spun and fired again.
"Did you get that J?"he asked.
"Sir" said Jarvis, "there have been some slight energy readings on the very edge of my spectrum in two instances."
"Which end?"
"The higher one sir." Tony frowned.
"Whoever you are you better come clean now," he said warningly.
Clint hesitated and then spying a set of thin tools on another one of the tables he made for them and began pushing them into positon. A repulser blast went past him. But he kept moving them gritting his teeth in frustration when his hands went through them. A repulser blast went through him and he felt strange for a moment but he finished what he was doing and fled before he got hit again. Tony spun around the lab and began prowling around obviously trying to feel him out.
However, Jarvis interrupted him.
"Sir I think you should look at the left table."
Tony frowned and then keeping an eye out walked over to the table and glanced at it. His face paled and his extended arm trembled as he read out what the tools spelt: CLINT.
"If this is a sick joke..." he began. But Clint sprinted back and carefully changed the tools. Tony stiffened but allowed it.
Clint got the tools to spell out: NO JOKE. AM GHOST. DONT SHOOT. IS CLINT. GOOGLE GHOSTS?
"Really featherhead you actually came back from the dead to haunt me?" said Tony going for nonchalant but Clint could hear his voice shake.
WITH MY COLD DEAD ARROWS.
"Hope you haven't been watching me in the shower."
BETTER THINGS TO WATCH.
"What's your access code to the tower?" asked Tony his voice trembling despite his attempt to be nonchalant. Clint sighed and began to write out his code in the tools. When he saw the code, Tony lowered the gauntleted arm.
"You're really here?" he asked, like he couldn't believe his eyes.
IN THE SPIRIT.
Tony let out a half hysterical laugh and then picked up a starkpad opened the memo app and asked "can you use this?"
Clint's eyes lit up and he went over and tried. His finger went through the pad a few times but he managed to type in YES. Tony grinned and then said "Jarvis! Compile everything we can find on ghosts. Use the sites that seem most professional and less whackjob."
"As you wish sir." said Jarvis.
"Alright featherhead," said Tony rubbing his hands together, "Let's see if we can do something about this communication problem."
Review! please! I am a review junkie and I require my daily fix!