So a good friend and I were doing timed drills with one word as the topic for the Avengers characters. Out of the three I did, two I liked enough to post here. This was actually the first, a drabble about Clint, the topic being flowers. The second I turned into a longer fic centering on Clint and Natasha called Remade if you are interested =) Ok, shameless plugging will cease now. Enjoy!
Snipers are trained to watch every detail. Every flicker of motion, every twitch of a shadow. Until their target is in sight at any rate. Then the field of vision narrows to the single speck of space that the target occupies. But until then, everything is observed and noted.
Clint had done hundreds of jobs, and he preferred the ones in industrial areas. Number one, it was easier to escape and disappear once the job was over, but two, the cold sheen of the metal or the stiff rust seemed more fitting for the work he did. Jobs in the country side, where the flowers swayed back and forth and perfumed the breeze with their lovely incense…sometimes made him question why he did such a brutal job.
His victims were sometimes lovely but always so fragile. With his eye sight there was no need for a scope, he could see every detail, and especially when they were beautiful and delicate, like the flowers, there was no joy when the arrow flew from his bow. Sometimes they were one in a sea of hundreds of other people and his eyes would scan the crowd, trying to pick one from a field of others that looked exactly alike. He had never missed before, but sometimes he wondered if he would one day.
Clint does his best to stay away from the gentle tender things in life. There is no need for it. Doing so would in fact be a hazard. But when he's stretched out on a rooftop or perched in a tree, waiting for his prey, his eyes are drawn to the bright colors. The earthy green, the glowing yellow. The bursting red of roses make his stomach clench sometimes, as they remind him of the blood he is about to spill. Sometimes he can't help himself, and he allows a fantasy to linger in his mind. A bouquet of flowers (never roses) for someone he cares for. A reminder of affection, of tenderness, that such things still exist. Do they really? Or are they but minuscule pieces of a life he will never know, thanks to a gift that he never necessarily wanted.
When the flowers die and the petals fall to the ground, swirling on the breeze, he'd like to say he has no feeling. He knows its a lie. But it doesn't matter. Such small things cannot matter, not when there is a target walking into the line of fire.
He lets the arrow fly and he knows without a second glance that he has made a kill. The ground is coated with red and he is thankful the roses have died.
