A/N: Hello everyone! I'm sure that, like myself, many of you have been wondering where in the world Hawkeye was during Captain America: The Winter Soldier. I figured, since we won't be finding out until May when Age of Ultron hits theaters, that I would put in my two cents on what I think he was up to during and following the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D.. There will be some tie-ins to Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (as I wish that the Hawk might pop up on the show sometime). I hope you enjoy. Let me know what you think! -Krieg

Disclaimer: I do not own the Avengers, Clint Barton, S.H.I.E.L.D., or anything else Marvel related. (Though, like most, I wish I did!) I rated this T, just in case of language. I mean, it's Clint, so who knows!

AFTER

Prologue

After New York

He could hear the squeaky wheel of the med cart from down the hall. With a groan, Clint Barton leaned back in his chair, calmly resting his arms on the table in front of him.

Behind him, Clint heard the twist and click of the key in the lock, followed by a squeal as the metal door was pushed inward. There was a rattle and an additional squeak from the wheel as the cart was rolled into his room.

"Good morning, Agent Barton," a deep, yet chipper voice greeted from behind his back. "How are you feeling today?"

With a grim smile, just for himself, Clint replied, "Well, I was feeling quite pleasant this morning. I nearly finished the puppy's face." He reached across his table, picked up a piece, and fit it into the unfinished puzzle that was spread out across the table in front of him. A Labrador lolled its tongue out from the jigsaw, its face nearly complete, lacking only one eye. Clint spotted another piece and picked it up, holding it between two fingers. His gaze never leaving the piece, he continued, "But then you came along and now I'm just thinking up ways to murder you with this puzzle piece."

"Well, good to know you're feeling better," the voice replied.

"I'm already up to 16."

"Only 16? I think you're slipping, agent."

At that, Clint turned around in his chair to meet the gaze he could feel boring into his back. In the dark lamp light, he could see that the orderly was a familiar face today. A behemoth of a man whose muscular build could put even Thor himself to shame, Louis, as Clint had come to know him, stared back with a small smile. His harsh jawline was softened by the smile and his eyes crinkled pleasantly as Clint scowled back at him.

"Is that some sort of dig? I thought you guys couldn't mock the crazy patients."

And that was what Clint was. At one point he was a circus star, then a soldier, an assassin, an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., even an Avenger, for a little while. Now he was just another crazy patient locked up in a psych ward.

It all started with Loki. That bastard has beamed himself into the heart of a S.H.I.E.L.D. base, murdered a dozen agents, and then made off with the Tesseract and Clint Barton as his own personal minion. Mind control is a bitch. Loki had just tapped him with his glowing stick of wonders and the next thing he knew, Clint had woken up with a growing bump on his forehead and the knowledge that he'd helped in an attack on the Helicarrier, one that had killed countless agents, including one of the best men he had ever known, Phil Coulson. If that wasn't enough to drive a man mad, Clint didn't know what was.

And yet, he'd pushed past the lingering barbs of mind control that had prodded his brain with every thought and helped a god, a green rage monster, a 70 year old World War II hero, and a billionaire in a metal suit fight off Loki's army of aliens. Perhaps that should have been a sign that he was losing his marbles.

But, Clint'd kept going. He'd ignored the itch in the back of his head, the feeling that something was still lurking within his mind, toying with his thoughts, sifting through his memories. He'd eaten victory shawarma with the gang and sent Loki off into the universe with his brother. He hadn't realized that his mind still had nightmares tucked away, a parting gift from Loki.

It happened in Manila. A simple, routine op as cover fire for an 0-8-4 investigation. Fury had wanted to ease him back into field work after all of the mind control shit, so Clint had allowed himself to be shipped off to the Philippines with three rookie agents, their handler, and a SWAT team. He hadn't wanted to piss off the boss. He'd been perched up on a high rise, bow in hand, carefully watching one of the rookies scan an orb that caused people to shrink in size after contact, when his head had exploded. The most intense pain he'd ever experienced (topping gun shots, stab wounds, and two snapped legs from a six story free fall) burst from the back of his mind. Images flashed before his eyes; him putting a bullet in Fury's chest, a knife held at Natasha's throat, Loki thrusting his scepter through Coulson's heart. Clint felt his legs give out as he'd crashed onto the roof, but his mind was elsewhere, trapped in nightmares he had no control over.

After the op had ended and the S.H.I.E.L.D. handler was unable to make contact with Clint, the team had clambered up to his rooftop to find him withering on the ground, his head grasped in his hands, shouting, "No, no, no!" It had taken another half hour before they'd brought him back to reality, and as soon as Clint found himself back home in New York, they'd shipped him off to S.H.I.E.L.D.'s own personal mental institute in Maine. Apparently, agents going mad weren't nearly as uncommon as one might think.

He was being treated for schizophrenia, major PTSD, and anxiety. So basically, he spent all day playing solitaire and doing puzzles while cheerful orderlies pumped him full of pills and doctors asked him "how he was feeling that day".

Louis smiled slightly as he abandoned his cart and moved over to Clint's window. "No, we can't mock the crazy people. Only you," he replied in his deep, good natured voice, throwing the curtains open and letting the sunlight flood the room. Clint threw a hand over his unadjusted eyes and grunted.

"You don't think I'm crazy?" he asked with a low chuckle and a smile of his own.

Louis moved back to the med cart and started rifling around. "Nope," he replied, returning with a small, paper cup filled with a half dozen multicolored pills. "But I do think you could use the R and R." He handed the cup over to Clint.

"Thanks Lou."

"For what, the pills or not thinking you're crazy?"

"Both, I suppose," Clint said, raising the tiny cup up in a small toast. He lowered it, waiting for Louis to head back to his cart and move on to other patients.

With a pointed look at Clint, Louis sighed, crossing his arms, and turned to look out the window at the mountain lake the mental institute was nestled next to. Clint followed his gaze to the tall, lush pines that waved back and forth and the ripples of the waves on the lake. It had been a long time since he'd felt the wind.

Noticing Clint's interest, Louis said, "Agent Barton, you've been here over a year and a half. You must be dying to get out of here" -he gestured at the bland, white room- "and back in the field."

Clint didn't say anything.

"You and I both know you haven't been taking your meds."

No reply.

"There must be something out there you're still willing to fight for? Something to get back to? But you have to let us help you first."

Clint looked down, at the puzzle, the pills, then back up at the orderly. "Yeah, I guess there must be something." He knocked the pills back like a strong shot of whiskey. The paper cup was crushed in his fist. "I just don't know what it is."

"So how are you feeling today, Clint?"

"Why does S.H.I.E.L.D. even have this place?"

"That's not an answer Clint."

"Neither is that. But honestly, let's be realistic here Gloria. What's the point?" Clint looked up from where he had been fiddling with his medical wristband and stared intently at the doctor.

"Clint, call me Dr. Muniz." The woman gave him a tiered look; they'd had this conversation many times before. She rested her arm on the arm of her chair and pressed her fingers into her forehead, rubbing methodically. Clint had a feeling she got a lot of headaches from him.

Ignoring her, he continued, "S.H.I.E.L.D. ships us out here, but what do they really expect to happen? Sure, you might cure us. Sure, someday we might be able to live within society without having mental breakdowns. But, it's not like S.H.I.E.L.D.'s just going to hand us our jobs back. 'Hey Hawkeye, glad to see you're out of the looney bin, how about we head over to the Middle East and infiltrate some terrorist cells.'"

"Clint-"

"No, they're never going to trust us to do our jobs. But they can't just release us into the wild. To live in suburbs and drive our kids around in minivans and host block parties. No. So, my question again, Gloria; why does S.H.I.E.L.D. even have this place? Why aren't we terminated the minute we become useless?"

Finished with his rant, Clint leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms, intently glaring at the woman seated across from him. Dr. Gloria Muniz straightened in her chair, smoothing out the fabric of her floral dress. Unlike the orderlies and nurses, who always wore the same white scrubs embroidered with the S.H.I.E.L.D. emblem, Dr. Muniz wore bright, colorful clothing. It made her look kind, approachable, easier to talk to. Except for Clint. But he enjoyed making everyone's lives more difficult, so he never openly spoke to her. It didn't really matter what she wore.

"Do you feel like you deserve to be terminated Clint?" Dr. Muniz asked in a calm, quiet voice. She tucked a strand of dark hair behind her ear and picked up her pen from where it lay on the table.

Clint looked around the room, studying the one way mirror along the wall, behind which he knew the discussion was being videotaped and a half dozen neurologists and twice as many psychologists were analyzing every word he said.

"Maybe." Clint shrugged nonchalantly.

Dr. Muniz scribbled something down in Clint's folder, a three-inch-thick monstrosity. With an irritated frown, she asked, "And why do you feel that way?"

Clint turned away from the mirror and let his gaze fall back on the doctor. He raised his eyebrows condescendingly, a small smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. "Well, Gloria, we've both seen the footage from the Helicarrier. You're the psychologist. What do you think?"

Dr. Muniz sighed, capped her pen, closed his folder, and pushed everything off to the side. "Clint, of the countless times we've spoken to one another, the conversation has always been the same. You state the impracticality of our institute; you claim that agents like yourself should be eliminated. Now, I'm not Director Fury, but clearly, he has some reason for wanting you to recover. And if that's apparent to me, I think we both know that it's very apparent to you." Dr. Muniz stood, picking up Clint's folder, and turned towards the door. "Something in that stubborn mind of yours is telling yourself that you don't deserve to live. That if you were to recover, you don't deserve to be allowed back into S.H.I.E.L.D.. As I've told you before, I believe you feel guilty for what took place on the Helicarrier. But you treat these sessions like an interrogation, and as a good agent would, you say nothing. So, I really don't know what's happening in your head."

She walked towards the door and was halfway out the room when Clint finally spoke. "You're wrong," he said, his voice strong and confident. "I was being mind controlled by a psychotic alien. I didn't attack the Helicarrier, he did. Loki did. You want me to talk? Well, write this down."

Clint looked up, his gaze empty and emotionless, and stared into Dr. Muniz's eyes. "I'm as good of an agent as I've ever been. What happened on the Helicarrier wasn't me. I don't feel guilty."

And no matter how good of an agent Clint was, they both knew he was lying.

Clint was in complete lock down. Everything he did was monitored. His diet, his respiratory rate, his brain activity. If he wanted to shower, he had to be escorted. If he needed a new puzzle, the nurses had to sign it out to him.

He had no contact with the world outside of the institute. No television, radio, Internet. No way to know that everything the world had ever known was changing.

He didn't know that 700 miles away the Triskelion in D.C. was under attack. He didn't know that Captain America and the Widow were in a locked battle against an assassin, the Winter Soldier. He didn't know about Hydra.

But he was about to.