Sometimes is seems that the past and the present collide...
The Echo
Clint often caught Steve looking at him. But it was one of those odd, see you but not see you kind of stares. Like he was looking back a long ways. Through time and space and remembering someone else. It didn't necessarily set Clint off, it confused him and made him curious but he never asked.
Had he, Steve would have related a story to the archer that seemed more like it had been written in Hollywood and not what happened in reality.
Steve would have told a story about a young, brash sniper. A small, slight man with a keen eye and a sharp wit and a mouth that ran a mile a minute when he wasn't on duty. The kind of man that never started a fight and but always finished them. He'd told endless stories about his service and kills and time locked up in a German POW camp, including every single one of his escape attempts and his one success that had gotten him out of Nazi hands and back to what he referred to as 'more peaceable people that didn't lie to a man about the sawdust in his sausage' in Europe. The kind of man that laughed and cussed and sang horribly to keep himself from sobbing over what he'd been through and seen. A man that rarely seemed to sleep, never complained and without hesitation was quick to take up a new mission and his rifle again.
The sniper had not been one of Steve's Howling Commandos but they had crossed so often that the sniper often teased Steve about stalking him, of pulling strings to make their meetings happen, suggesting that if Steve fancied him all he had to do was ask for a dance and to quit risking his life, the sniper noticed him without all the fan fare and combat medals.
The sniper had always been able to get Steve to blush and laugh and smile, even after Bucky's death the sniper had been a welcome sight when no one else comforted him.
Steve had long been under ice and sleeping when the sniper had been killed in action but Steve would never forget the man's name and now with Clint there would not forget his face either.
Had Clint asked, and had the archer known anything of his own family history the name 'Francis Victor Barton' would have been easy to place a few generations before his own in his bloodline.
A/N: One of those short and whimsical little ideas that needed writing, hope you guys enjoyed!