This is what I write when my other stories refuse to cooperate.
I don't know why I enjoy abusing Clint so much, but hey... he's one heart-breaking little shit. That's probably why I love him so much.
Inspired in part by the Cover Image.
It didn't take long for the guilt to set in. Once the rubble had been cleared from the streets of New York, and the bystanders caught in the invasion treated and Tony Stark having donated ridiculous sums of money to organize and begin the re-development of New York, there was nothing left to do but reflect. And Clint Barton had a lot to reflect on.
They – that is, the crack team of SHIELD psychologists – wouldn't allow him to know the full extent of the damages caused to the Hellicarrier and the agents of SHIELD. He had been forbidden from going anywhere near the medical wing – in fact, Fury had thought it best for him to just stay away from SHIELD headquarters for a while in general. He wasn't even allowed to attend Phil Coulson's funeral – although that didn't stop him from going. He hid in the bushes, high above the angry and grieving mass of agents, watching. And hating himself.
But the funeral was over now; his handler and one of the few friends he had in the world was gone. There was no one left but Natasha, and the other Avengers, if they could even be considered his friends. At the very least, Stark had offered him a room in his swank tower, and Clint had accepted. If not out of friendship, then out of necessity; with headquarters off-limits, Clint had nowhere else to go.
There was, at the very least, a very large very empty floor that Stark had given to Barton as his own. At Clint's request, the billionaire had brought in backdrops and targets and anything the archer asked for to make his own personal range. Clint transferred his weaponry - and there was quite a lot of it – to the tower, and there he lost himself in the repetitive motions of shooting his bows. Smoothing the feathers between his fingers as he brought the arrow forward from his quiver. Nocking it, drawing back, and sighting along the shaft before releasing. Thwack. A perfect bulls-eye every time.
It was meditative, and relaxing, but it did nothing to help him forget. The memories came in flashes – brief images that were tinged a hazy blue around the edges. Shooting down nameless guards, setting fire to the Hellicarrier, the brief look for terror on Tasha's face when they met... The feeling that he had to kill her, needed to kill her, even if he didn't know why. His hands acting of their own accord, lashing out towards the person he was closest to, and he couldn't stop himself. His mind wasn't his own anymore, every action belonged to someone else, until with a sharp pain and ringing ears, he was brought back to it all...
Before the Tesseract incident, if anyone had asked what he was afraid of, Clint would have given a stoic, non-committal answer that danced circles around the question. If Natasha, or possibly even Coulson, had asked, he might have been honest – he was afraid to lose the one thing that made him 'special': his eye sight. He was afraid to be useless, he was afraid that his abilities defined who he was; that he was nothing without them.
After, though, his answer would have changed. He was more afraid of being used. He was afraid of losing not only his eyesight, the thing that made him special, but of losing all of himself. Of someone taking away his willpower. Of having someone like Loki come again, and take him apart and remove everything that made him who he was. He was terrified of losing Clint Barton. His identity. After the Tesseract incident, the archer was afraid of being unmade.
He couldn't forget the feeling, or rather, the lack of feeling, that came with Loki's mind control. He couldn't sleep when every moment he was tense with the fear that Loki might slip out of the shadows again and steal him away. Clint couldn't sleep. So he shot instead. The archer range became his haven at Stark tower. The others – namely Tony, Bruce and Natasha, as Thor was still on Asgard and Steve still touring the nation – learned not to bother Clint when he was on his floor. The let him be, and Clint didn't know if he was grateful for the privacy or not.
A part of him – a small part, mind you – wished for someone to come and talk to him. Not necessarily talk, even, but to just listen. Once upon a time, Coulson might have been that person. Clint knew that if he asked, Natasha would do anything for him, but she would be uncomfortable. She might not understand. She might choose to hit him upside the head – 'cognitive recalibration', as she called it. It was hard to tell with Natasha. But no one came to talk with him. And so Clint continued shooting, and he never forgot.
A month passed. New York was slowly rebuilt from the ground up. Steve sent a postcard that Tony had initially scoffed at, although later Clint found it hanging on the fridge. Natasha continued to go on missions wherever SHIELD sent her – she tried at first to get Clint back into the field with her, but he had refused. Tony developed a new model of his suit, improved body armour for Steve, Hulk-proof pants for Bruce, arrows for Clint, and a dozen other weapons and knick knacks for the team. Clint muttered his thanks for the arrows and had retreated once more to fire them off into his targets. Natasha returned Tony's questioning look with a frown of her own.
The only Avenger currently living in the Tower that Clint had yet to really see was Bruce. The scientist spent a lot of his time in the lab, or in his room, or in the Zen garden that Tony had set up on the roof top. He never spent more than a few minutes in a room with more than a few people, usually retreating with a small smile and a few mumbled apologies. It wasn't like Clint actively tried to notice these things, or that he was watching but he was a marksman. His job was to see the things that others didn't.
Clint was down to the last arrow in his quiver when he felt a presence enter the room. He didn't even hear the being enter, which led him to assume it was Natasha. Very few people could move with such stealth. Clint didn't even bother turning towards her, instead focusing on the target at the opposite end of the room. "You want something?" Thwack. If he came off sounding petulant, Clint didn't care. He lowered his drawing arm to stare down the target. Right in the centre of the head. Clint imagined the target with Loki's face.
"Nothing in particular."
The voice caught Clint by surprise. Turning slowly, he was met with the face Dr. Bruce Banner, tucked away against the door with a small smile on his face. His capable hands twisted the frame of his glasses between his fingers – a nervous habit that Clint had noticed before. Still, Bruce was the last person Clint would have expected to enter his 'nest', as Tony had dubbed it.
"Shit, Doc. You move pretty quiet for a scientist." He was impressed, and he allowed it to creep into his tone. Bruce's smile widened.
"Years spent running from covert ops, and you learn how to move like them," Bruce volunteered. Clint snorted slightly. His lips quirked, just barely, before he caught himself. Quickly, he turned and stalked off in the direction of his arrow. Unexpectedly, he heard the soft sound of footsteps behind him; Bruce was actually following him. "Think like them, too."
Clint paused. Bruce did as well. Without turning around, Clint inhaled sharply. "I'm not your average covert ops, Doc."
"Well, then, I'm not your average Doctor."
Clint turned, an eyebrow raised; hiding his anger behind a thin veil of scepticism and contempt. "Wrong 'ology', Banner. Go take your psyche eval somewhere else."
"I'm not here to evaluate you, Clint." Bruce raised his hands defensively, his eyes widening with innocence. Clint wasn't fooled. "I just want to talk."
"Yeah, well I don't," Clint countered just as quickly. He turned back to his targets again, striding forward more quickly and with purpose. "I've had enough of talking. To psychologists, and grief counsellors, and a whole hell of a lot of other people who don't really give a shit." His arrow was wedged deep into the target's foam skull. Clint grasped the shaft in one hand; the other he braced against the target, and pulled.
"I'm not here to give advice, Clint. You wouldn't listen to me if I did." Clint snorted again, this time in agreement. He tugged the arrowhead free of the target's head. "It doesn't take a genius to figure out that something isn't right, Clint. We're your teammates, even if we haven't known each other for very long. I just want to help. We want to understand-"
"Don't talk about to me about understanding!" Clint spat, turning to face the Doctor. Rationally, he knew he shouldn't be engaging in a shouting match with a man who had a tendency to explode into a giant green monster of rage, but Clint wasn't feeling entirely rational just then. "Pretend to give a fuck all you want, but don't pretend that you understand. None of you understand."
Clint shoved past Bruce - likely another idiotic move, but he did it anyways – and stomped off towards the door. He didn't hear Bruce following him, and most of him was relieved. His bow he placed carefully on the weapons rack that spanned a portion of wall by the door. Still, Bruce remained still and didn't say anything. Then: "It's terrifying, isn't it?"
Forgetting that he was supposed to remain stubborn and indifferent to Bruce just then, Clint turned. "What?"
"There's nothing scarier than losing yourself. Or losing control of yourself." Bruce had his profile turned to Clint, but even then the archer could see the distant look in his eyes, and the tense set of his shoulders.
"What the hell are you talking about?" Clint tried his best to sound defiant, but he failed. Bruce turned to face Clint. Playing at the edges of his dark brown eyes was electric green, fluctuating as it threatened to take over the scientists face completely.
"It's even worse when you can feel it happening. When you can't do anything to stop it, as something pulls you out of your own body, and sends something else in." Clint felt his own words echoing around him, whispered to Natasha on the Hellicarrier after her regained consciousness. You don't understand. Have you ever had someone take your brain and play? Take you out and stuff something else in? You know what it's like to be unmade? Had she told Banner? Bruce's expression seemed to soften as he looked at Clint. "There's no worse feeling, isn't there?"
"Shut up." It was quiet, and half hearted. Clint sank to the floor slowly, crossing his legs in front of him. Quiet vibrations through the tiled floor warned him of Banner's approach. Bruce sat cross legged in front of him, though Clint refused to meet him in the eye. "How the hell do you know about it?"
Bruce's chuckle held no humor whatsoever. Clint met the scientists gaze, and there was something darker there than Clint had ever seen in the typically reserved man's face. "The first time I 'Hulked-out'... I don't remember much. The memories all return in flashes later on. I just remember I was conscious, I was happy, and Betty's face was right there in front of me..." His voice trailed away, and his eyes flicked downwards. When they returned to Clint's face, the green had begun bleeding into the iris again, albeit more subdued this time. "And then it just hurt. It was like something had reached into my skull and was slowly dragging every piece of me out. And something horrible was replacing it. I blacked out, and I couldn't even tell you where I was. It was like I just didn't exist anymore." There was silence.
"I keep remembering things, but they don't feel like my memories." He kept his voice quiet; almost as if he were afraid someone would over hear. Or as if he thought SHIELD would lock him away with a straitjacket if they knew. "There's... something else in my head. And ti feels like me, and it looks like me, but it isn't. I'm afraid to go to sleep, because..."
"You're afraid of who will be there when you wake up," Bruce finished, and Clint nodded. "You're afraid that you won't be you anymore, you'll be that other monster." The long pause stretching between them was confirmation enough of Bruce's words.
"What do I do?" Clint heard himself ask. "What do you do?"
Bruce smile was sad, and in it, Clint saw that the Doctor didn't have any answers for him. He lowered his head again, inhaling deeply through his nose. As he exhaled, he felt Banner rising to his feet in front of him. He didn't move to leave the room, though, and after a time, Clint lifted his head back again. Bruce's eyes were kind, and his smile was warmer than Clint had seen before.
"You're probably always going to be afraid," Bruce admitted. "I still am. And you or I may never be able to forget the feeling of what it's like to be unmade." To Clint's surprise, the smile widened. "But at least now we have a team who finally understands it."
Bruce turned, and with silent footfalls he left the room. Clint sat alone for a moment longer, pondering in silence. Then he stood, and he turned back to his weapons rack. His bow lay where he had left it, and Clint picked it up once more. He grabbed a full quiver, and slung it over his back as he walked into the centre of the room. So, he had people that understood him, now? The feathers were smooth between his fingers, the wooden shaft warm on his calloused skin. He would never forget, but at least now he had five other people he could talk to about it. The bow drew back easily, his fingers touched lightly to his cheekbone. There were other people, people who he could call his friends, and every one of them knew exactly what it was like to lose oneself. Thwack. Huh.
Another bulls-eye.
I may or may not continue this with the rest of the team. Sort of like 'How the Avengers and Their Own Tragic Stories of Self-Re-Discovery Help Clint Get Over His Own', or something like that.
It depends on the interest. And if I have time. And if I ever getting around to writing my other stories.
Anywho, Love it? Hate it? Drop me a line!