Disclaimer: For entertainment purpose only.

A/n: A big thank you to the wonderful people at The Beta Branch for their beta support and editing! After Winter Soldier, I (along with pretty much every other Clint fan) wanted to know what the heck he was up to off-screen during that movie. Here's my take on So Where The Heck Was Clint?

Warning: Contains MAJOR SPOILERS for Winter Soldier, but surely you wouldn't be here if you hadn't see it by now? ;)

Breaking the Surface

Clint clawed his way up the muddy riverbank, gasping for breath. The river had not seemed that wide and deep when he'd first jumped in. Then again, swimming across the current with a bullet hole in your shoulder blade and a couple of knife slices between your ribs wasn't exactly easy to begin with.

He rolled onto his back, trying to ignore the pounding pain in his body. The knife wounds weren't deep, but they still hurt like hell, as did the through-and-through in his right shoulder. Far above him, Nicaragua's stars were masked by the thick smoke and hazy orange glow coming from the burning complex in the distance.

Well, he thought, still gulping air. That was fun.

Technically, he'd completed his mission and then some. A supposed-to-be-simple mission to kill a drug lord had turned into a minor, short term infiltration mission when his cover which had nearly been blown by a mouthy CI. That had turned into a full deep cover op when said CI was caught passing info to the CIA and Clint had to make the best of a sticky situation and, well, stick it out.

As it stood now, six months and change down the road, Ramiro the drug lord, his boss Lucas, and about a dozen or so other drug dealers were dead. The cartel was dismantled, as well as most of Lucas' network in one fell swoop – it went down like a house of cards without Lucas. Clint almost admired that the man was so integral to it all, keeping himself the centre of such a large web. At the same time, however, it was the exact thing that made it possible to take him and his network down so swiftly.

Clint had been intending to complete his unintentionally extended mission with a much lower body count, but for some reason at the eleventh hour, Lucas had discovered that Clint was SHIELD (and he was especially pissed after the whole CI thing months back).

The archer had no clue how it had happened. One minute he and Lucas were chatting amiably, Clint about to make a clean getaway and disappear like a ghost in the night (finally ending the mission-that-wouldn't-end). The next minute, Lucas answered a phone call and immediately did his best to kill Clint, furious that a dirty spy had infiltrated his operation so deep. It made taking the entire compound down, Lucas and a fair number of his men still inside, a necessity rather than an option to stop the mission from unraveling and being all for nothing.

Clint swiped at the water in his eyes and struggled to a sitting position. He'd probably catch hell from Fury over it – there was supposed to be a certain amount of evidence left behind – but in the end the Director would understand, especially as the mission had continued to grow past what initially was expected of the archer. Clint's skin was worth more than some damn baggies and hard drives. He wouldn't have let Clint dig deeper for six and some months if he didn't think the archer could make the right call when it came down to it.

With a sigh, Clint managed to get to his wobbly feet, hissing in pain as he aggravated his injuries. He pressed his hand to the stab wounds in his side and began limping his way up the riverbank towards the trees.

Civilization was thankfully not too terribly far away, but he'd already lost a fair amount of blood and with absolutely no gear on him, he didn't have a way to patch himself up. If he'd learned anything from his time here in Masaya with the cartel, however, it was where to get a gunshot wound fixed up with no questions asked.

He lifted a cellphone from a local merchant with a minor pang of guilt – he didn't like stealing from people unless he absolutely had to. Clint headed deeper into the busy marketplace and dialed a secure line at SHIELD.

"We're sorry, the number you are calling cannot be completed as dialed. Please hang up and try again."

Clint frowned. ...the hell?

He dialed again, and received the same response. He tried a secondary line, a third, a few fellow agents who worked desk jobs, and out of desperation, he tried main reception. He ignored the anxiety steadily building in his gut and called one of Natasha's numbers next. No answer.

This was less worrying, as both she and him had multiple voicemail boxes set up with various aliases – it was a way to still keep in contact without carrying a physical cell phone they each had the number to at all times. He attempted to make contact with her through a couple of her other numbers he had memorized, to no avail. Before leaving a message, however, he thought to check some of his own mailboxes in case she'd left him a message.

In the second voicemail box he called, he found one.

Her message was tense and short. Clint found he had to sit down and play the message several more times before he was able to properly absorb it: Fury is dead, SHIELD is gone. Trust no one.

Well, that explained why he couldn't get through to anyone.

Clint raked his fingers through his hair with his uninjured arm and exhaled heavily, still reeling but refusing to dwell on everything just yet. For now, he had to focus: he was on his own, and he had to get out of here.

Two weeks later, he left a message for her: Ostrava.

He didn't quite wince as he reached for his drink; his shoulder was still healing and tender. After taking a sip of the cooling coffee, he set the mug back down and adjusted his sunglasses, which only partially hid the healing black eye from a run-in with a couple of Hydra agents the other day.

The quaint coffee shop in Ostrava, Czech Republic was a familiar one, even if he hadn't had the chance to stop in and have a drink in years. Not since he and Nat's mission here some six or seven years back.

Natasha joined him just shy of an hour after he'd made himself comfortable (well, as comfortable as he could be, with healing bullet and stabs wounds, and after spending two and half weeks running blind from a whole hell of a lot of people trying to kill him).

"So," he smirked at her as she settled in the chair across from him. "You could've given me a heads up."

"We were a little busy trying not to die," she replied dryly, the corner of her lips quirking up slightly.

"You changed your hair," he said. By this, he meant: Thank God you're alive. How are things? The best part of talking to Natasha was not having to say everything he was thinking, and she understood anyways.

She tucked a lock of short blonde hair behind her ear. "It was time for a change." She shot him a soft half-smile. Glad you're alive too. It's crazy out there. We'll talk about it all later.

He nodded. She'd give him all the details of what went down and what their next move was somewhere less public. For now, he thought of the little ritual they'd developed with Coulson, Hill, and few other agents when one of them came back to HQ after a particularly long deep cover mission, and his smile widened.

"Good thing I didn't bring Starbucks."

-end-

A/n: And thanks to Spontaneous Me at The Beta Branch for inspiring the ending. ;) Thanks for reading, feedback is love.