If Clint was being honest – and he was nothing if not brutally honest – he had been slightly less than thrilled the first time Fury assigned him to a mission with Captain America. It wasn't that he didn't like the guy – quite the contrary. How do you not like the guy who trusts you with his life mere hours after you tried to kill him and everyone else aboard the helicarrier? No, it wasn't that at all. But Steve was a soldier, not a spy. His only field experience had been seventy years ago, in a war unlike any other. And while he successfully led his team in attacking and destroying countless Hydra bases, their MO hadn't exactly been about stealth.
But Clint followed orders, even if it was grudgingly, and he met up with the Captain in the hangar exactly when he was supposed to. Cap surprised him by speaking up first. "I hope you don't mind taking point on this one. I told Fury this isn't exactly my area of expertise, but he wants me to get some experience with covert ops and I'm happy to be learning from the best. I'll be following your lead, so just tell me what you need me to do."
Clint hadn't been sure what to expect, but that definitely hadn't been it. Cap had just fallen so naturally into the role of leader of the Avengers that Hawkeye had assumed he would have a hard time relinquishing control. This was far from the case, however. As time passed, and the two were sent on more and more missions together, Clint learned that Steve looked forward to taking a break from the pressures of leading their team and taking a subordinate role for once. Clint was happy enough to oblige, and before long they worked so well together that they hardly needed words to communicate out in the field.
This didn't stop Hawkeye from screaming through their radio a year later, however, when Cap failed to appear at the door to the weapons cache they were blowing up. Clint's watch, which was synced with the timer on the bomb, read 00:45, and Steve was still in there. "Steve, I swear to god, you get your spangly ass out here right now or I'm coming in after you!" Static was all that met his ultimatum, and Clint jumped out of the helicopter to follow through with his threat.
"I'm on my way!" Steve's voice, breathless and tight with pain, finally broke through the static. A second later his limping form appeared through the open door. Clint thought he was going to make it, was sure he was, until gunfire broke out behind him. Cap whirled around, bringing his gun up to deal with the new threat, and the warehouse erupted in flames and flying shrapnel. The shockwave sent Clint flying backwards into the side of the chopper with enough force to stun him for a moment.
As soon as he recovered, he sprinted toward the burning wreckage. "Steve, damn you, you better be alive." He found him half-buried under a slab of what used to be the roof, and when he moved that he nearly lost his lunch. Clint was an elite spy, one of the three most talented SHIELD agents, and as such had seen and done things that would put an average man in a psych ward. But this was different. This was Steve, his partner, teammate, and… dare he say it… friend. Steve was unconscious, and blessedly so. His uniform top was almost entirely burned away, and what was left was melted into his skin. Burns covered his face, chest, and arms. Large, jagged pieces of shrapnel were buried in his left shoulder, stomach, and both legs. There was already blood everywhere, and Clint knew that there was no way any normal human could have survived that.
But Steve wasn't normal, and without pause Clint heaved the taller man over his shoulder and took off as quickly as he could manage for their get-away vehicle. The pilot was still in the cockpit ready to go, and took off before the door was fully shut. Trusting the man to get them to the helicarrier as quickly as humanly possible, the archer focused his full attention on trying to keep his partner from bleeding out. Which was easier said than done. He hurriedly tore open the medical kit and used the sterile gauze to apply pressure to the worst of the wounds on Steve's abdomen. It was tricky business, working around the giant hunks of metal embedded in the flesh, and Clint felt panic trying to creep in through his defenses.
He vaguely heard the pilot calling ahead for medical, and then yelling back to him that they were ten minutes out. Hawkeye was not a praying man, but he sent out a prayer to anyone who would listen that Cap would hold out for that long. "Come on man, we're almost there. Just hang on. I am not going to be responsible for Captain America dying, again. Coulson would come back from the grave and haunt my ass if I let that happen. If Tasha doesn't get to me first." Blood started to trickle through the other man's parted lips, and Clint's pleas became more desperate. "Steve, you can't do this to me. We're partners, and you never quit on your partner. Damn it, man, quit bleeding!"
He had no idea how they got there, but Clint was suddenly aware that the chopper had landed. The door was open almost as soon as they touched the floor of the hangar, and before he knew what was happening he had been pushed out of the way. People appeared out of nowhere to put pressure on the wounds and monitor vitals, and Steve was quickly loaded onto a gurney and wheeled out of sight.
Clint stood by the chopper, covered in his friend's blood, not quite sure where to go from here. Natasha was on a mission in god-knows-where, and right then all he wanted was to hold her in his arms and hear her tell him he was being an idiot. But she wasn't there. He slammed his fist into the unforgiving metal of the helicopter and then did the only thing he could think of. He called Tony Stark.