Fury had sent Clint off on another mission, another solo mission.
One up in Alaska during this bleak winter in New York.
Yes it had snowed in the city, but there were so many people and so much hustle and bustle throughout the city that Jack Frost didn't seem to come to stay.
But now, here Clint was in the Alaskan wilderness with a cabin as shelter and with just about any weapon you could think of to protect himself.
Fury had briefly warned him of the fact that there could be some HYDRA agents stalking around in the snow up there, but Clint had not taken it too seriously.
Fury should have been worried about Agent Barton's mental health, how he was dealing with the mind control and the agents he killed during the Avengers initiative because of Loki.
Of course these thoughts would never leave, they would plague him, another demon that would keep Clint awake at night.
He spent most of his nights thinking about things of that nature, the hard lines of his face showing the many years of stress and his cold grey eyes staring at the ceiling and almost trying to see through it as a sad way of begging for an escape.
Begging to leave this mindset or maybe even begging for redemption.
Here he was now, inside the cabin and in his feeble excuse of a bedroom with a rickety twin bed.
Clint let his things slowly drop to the darkened wood floor, his fingers unfurling from the handles.
He looked around, seeing as this place had been seemingly abandoned or not well tended to.
The place's windows were boarded up sloppily with boards that were rotting and the doors did not have door knobs.
There wasn't a single picture on the wall, which Clint found a bit unsettling.
So, all he was left with were wooden walls, boarded up windows, and a small bedroom with a little bit of furniture, hopefully.
Clint shook that thought off for the time being, seeing what was in the room. Next to nothing was his conclusion - there was a bed, a bedside table, a lamp, and a full-length mirror.
It was about time Clint changed for bed anyhow.
He slid his jacket off, then his shirt, then his thermal he was using as an undershirt.
That's when his eyes slowly drifted to the full-length mirror.
There he was, standing there, looking at it with his body facing sideways.
Clint could see his ribs, his arms, and his own cold eyes staring back at him.
Clint felt there was something off, something wrong... with everything.
That was just it though, Clint realized at that moment that he absolutely hated himself.
His eyes only found the flaws on his body- which was coated in scars.
That part disgusted Clint to no end.
All the scar tissue and the fact that he looked like someone let him heal after hitting him over and over again with a weed whacker and an air soft gun.
Some scars were more circular from bullets and arrowheads, and some tended to be longer from swords, knives, daggers, or even glass.
If it was a scar, Clint hated it.
He turned to fully face the mirror and his eyes traveled across his exposed torso to count every scar.
57 of them.
57 scars; and that's all he could count on the front.
Each scar told a story that was obvious Clint did not want to revisit.
And so, said stories were never revisited.
Steve had asked once for Clint to tell him, and Clint could only give Steve a broken look that practically begged him not to make him tell him the stories of why Clint was this way.
Why he was distant, why he never felt like anything necessarily important after the Avengers initiative.
Some people worshiped the Avengers for winning the battle of New York, but they merely paid attention to the big four- Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, and the Hulk.
Natasha had asked once about said stories also, and Clint had ignored her.
He did not want her pity for him, because even though Natasha was emotionless, she cared about Clint and all he ever seemed to do was push her away.
He only pushed her away because he didn't want her to have to deal with his self-pity, relapsing on memories, and his now low patience and ticking time bomb of a temper.
How did he cope with all this?
So many people wondered how he dealt with being in 'the service of liars and killers' as Loki had called it, how he dealt with the pain of slaying a fellow agent, and how he dealt with the constant depression and apparent self-loathing.
No one knew but Clint because these things were never discussed aloud, but kept in the very darkest corners of every SHIELD agent who had come in contact with Clint's mind.
He was quiet and they all had an inward fear that one day a fellow Avenger would pull his strings too much and he would lose it- everyone had bet on it to have been Tony.
But Clint did not cope by yelling like Fury and Thor did, drinking like Tony did, bottling it up like Natasha, training like Cap did, or smashing like Bruce did. No, no. Clint resorted to pills.
That was the only thing that seemed to successfully numb his whole body and mind simultaneously.
Any pill you could think of Clint seemed to have.
He took natrol, melatonin, ibuprofen, aspirin, and Oxycontin-anything he could get his worn hands on to make him forget.
But he couldn't forget.
Even in the sea of pills he was cracking under pressure from stress, lack of sleep, not eating... Clint was a mess.
He tended to take about two of each, get numb enough, then go to sleep so he would not have to be worried about making a mistake.
That was another thing Clint did well besides pop pills and hate himself.
He made a million mistakes and everyone made fun of him for it.
He tried extremely hard, and if he messed up he was either screamed at her or laughed at.
Clint may have been an adult, but things like that still hurt him, as it would anyone else.
Sometimes they were simple mistakes that people would snicker at, but they could also be large mistakes that would leave him red-faced in embarrassment while Fury practically dragged him into his office by his ear to yell at him.
Tell him what a failure he was, threaten him that he would demoted.
Clint snapped out of these memories that brought him down, letting out a deep sigh and running his fingers back and through his short, ash brown hair and rubbing his temples.
A headache as usual, he was thinking far too much again.
He slid into his pajamas that were made of wool so he could repel the cold of the Alaskan wilderness that had seeped through the rotting boards and into the cabin.
He took all his pills and slid under the covers, spending this night like he did most others- staring at the ceiling while tears slid down his face.