Warnings & Stuff: There isn't really much plot to this... not until the end, anyway. Rated T because of language and other stuff. Mostly language. I don't own the Avengers, although if I did... Anyway, I don't own the Avengers.
Clint hated walking around New York. It wasn't because he hated the sprawling city buildings and the smell of the pollution and gasoline that always hung in the air, even though it was a far cry from the town he grew up in.
It also wasn't the amount of people that were always there, even if it did make him uncomfortable. It was easy to blend in to the city when there were a lot of people, because when you were jogging down the street you didn't pay attention to the person sitting alone at the café table reading a book.
It was, however, the people. Not the amount, per say, but just the people. Before Loki, he could walk down the street whenever he wanted to, and nobody would look at him or do anything else. He was normal, and every once and awhile he needed to feel like that. But now, the Avengers didn't trust him to walk alone, and he always went with someone else. It made him feel even more like an add-on, but there was no way to get around it. He'd already tried.
Usually, Clint went with Natasha. When the public caught sight of the now-famous Black Widow, they crowded her and demanded pictures and autographs, the usual stuff. They never noticed the shortish archer next to her, and often he found himself shoved to the side and out of the crowd, away from Natasha. He would look in her direction angrily, then comfort himself in the thought that she could handle herself perfectly well and that she didn't need him. He'd walk down the paved streets until he found a suitable café and wait for her.
He always waited, and Natasha would always find him afterwards. She'd be wearing a pleased smirk, and Clint would push aside his anger for her and smile back. However, Natasha always saw through his watery smile and would never talk about the experiences, letting the silence as they walked through the city unbroken. And if any people wanted to talk to her then... well, let's just say they went home with more, yet less that they had asked for. Certainly not in the preferable way. But Clint still hated the fact that Nat, and the rest of the Avengers -even Banner- were so well loved when he had gone through just as much if not MORE than they had. It wasn't his fault that- no, he was NOT dwelling on that.
Of course, under normal circumstances, Clint would just brush it off. Certainly, he wouldn't let it bother him, but these were anything but normal circumstances. Everyone was treating him differently, with the Avengers seeing him as fragile as shattered glass to SHIELD agents blatantly scorning him and no-one defending his honor. Of course, there were the agents who- No, he wasn't dwelling on THAT, either.
It was Phil's death that kept them separate now, Clint decided. The rest of the team -sans Banner and Thor, but they already trusted them- had gone through Phil's death together. The team had come out stronger from that event, and had gone on to become Earth's Mightiest Heroes, fighting the battles no single hero could withstand and all that jazz. Clint had just hopped along for the ride, freshly and not completely recovered from a rather severe concussion. He hadn't known about Phil yet...
It was after the battle. After shawarma. Clint hadn't eaten anything, because he knew that his stomach wouldn't hold it very long. He hadn't had anything to eat, really, for a long time.
Steve, Natasha, and himself were all being brought back to SHIELD, leaving Thor, Tony and Bruce alone in New York. Loki was already in SHIELD custody, but Thor planned to leave for Asgard and take Loki with him. The council wasn't pleased, but Fury didn't care. That's usually how it went down with them.
Clint thought of his bed, and even though it was far from comfortable, it made him feel more tired than he honestly should have been. On the flight to the Helicarrier, Clint nearly nodded off twice, both times letting his head rest of Natasha's shoulder. She looked down at him and let him sleep, but he usually jolted himself awake after a couple seconds.
"I'm keeping myself going in pure adrenaline," Clint muttered. "But still I can't sleep." He closed his eyes again.
Natasha and Steve looked at each other meaningfully. They both knew that Fury was going to tell Clint about Phil when they got there, and they knew that it would be disastrous. Even with Phil, the recovery from being Loki's helpless slave would have been difficult, but without Phil... Natasha seriously wondered if Clint would ever be the same way he used to be. Maybe, in time, but it would take a lot of it.
She laced her fingers in his, noting carefully the slight tremors in his. His eyes opened and met hers, and he sighed and let them flutter closed. But she knew that he wasn't asleep and was nervous about that. Why wasn't he asleep, after three days of nonstop go (and one day spent unconscious) for him. But she didn't say anything, and just held his fingers in hers.
They arrived at the Helicarrier, and Clint sluggishly raised himself to his feet. He looked ready to fall asleep on his feet, and Natasha wasn't all that surprised when he did, crashing limply to the ground. She looked up at Steve, who gave her a wide eyed look of surprise.
"Can you carry him?' she asked him. Steve nodded and picked Clint up, following Natasha off the jet.
When they dismounted, the first thing she noticed was Director Fury standing there, giving his Glare of Doom, and Clint affectionately called it, at the jet. Natasha strode up to him and said, "Before you send his world crashing down around him, let him sleep."
Director Fury nodded after a beat. "What happened to him?" he asked. He seemed truly concerned, and Natasha realized that, even though Clint was a pain in the ass, Fury cared about the archer. He cared enough to listen to her request, to personally oversee his return to SHIELD. She didn't know why, but he did.
"He'll be perfectly fine, Director. But he needs sleep, and he won't get any if he's beating himself up about Phil." Director Fury's eye flashed with guilt and grief.
"You're right, Romanoff. We'll have to take him to a different room, though. Other agents know where his current room is and they aren't feeling particularly friendly toward Barton."
When Clint woke up, his arms were coated in a thin layer of sweat and his eyes were wide with fear. He'd just had a nightmare, and Clint hated nightmares. Usually they haunted him until he shared them with Phil, and this particular one was not one he wanted to keep to himself. He had dreamed that he was fighting Natasha again, in the room filled with yellow pipes and broken glass. But this time, she got closer to him before he pulled his knife out, and he managed to drive it into her abdomen with enough force that the wound was fatal. He pulled the knife out of her stomach and watched the blood drip off of it slowly.
As he did so, a cruel laughter filled his brain and would not go away, so he was forced into a fetal position, his knees tucked up into his chest. He could hear a voice saying, "I won't touch Barton, not until I make him kill you, slowly, intimately, in every way he knows you fear. And then he'll wake up, just long enough to see his good work, and when he screams, I'll split his skull!"
Clint wrenched his eyes open, and saw Natasha lying in a pool of her own blood, not breathing, glassy eyes staring up at the ceiling. "Nononononononono!" he whimpered. He had control now, all right. But it was too late. "Natasha, don't leave me!" he begged, feeling tears prick at his eyes. He blinked them away furiously. "Natasha..." he said, and his voice broke.
"How very touching," drawled Loki. Clint glared at him, filled with an all consuming rage.
"You're a monster," he spit out fervently.
Loki smiled that half smirk, and Clint's vision had gone completely white. That's when he had woken.
Aw, shit. Clint needed to talk to Phil. He hadn't seen him since before the Loki incident, and he was starting to get worried. Phil had never gone this long without talking to him, unless he was on a mission and had gotten himself captured.
Clint opened the door, and was startled to find himself in a place he didn't recognize at all. He looked around and headed back into the room. If he couldn't find Phil, he'd wait for Phil to find him.
When the door hissed open, Clint expected Phil to walk in the door. Instead, the one-eyed form of Director Fury strode into the room and gave Clint his Glare of Doom.
Clint's eyes narrowed. Now, he was starting to get edgy. "Where's Phil?" he demanded.
Fury didn't answer him. He waited a beat and then said, "Sit down, Agent Barton."
Clint stayed on his feet rebelliously. "Where's Phil?" he repeated, this time with more force.
Sighing, Director Fury sat down in a chair near the door. "Clint..." he said softly.
Clint fell silent. The Director never called him Clint, not even once. Something was wrong. His heart raced and his mind began to think of possible things Fury could want to tell him. But only one really stuck in his brain. Was Phil dead?
"Clint... Agent Coulson... is dead."
Clint and Phil had shared a special bond, and while the others had been made stronger by his death, Clint had been made weaker. It wasn't fair, why did it all happen to him?
Phil had saved him, had pulled him up by his bootstraps when he had fallen and given up on himself. He was always there for Clint, whether it was with a small thing like a bottle of his favorite blue Gatorade to literally dragging his broken, bleeding body out of an enemy compound. Clint owed everything to Phil, but he refused to take the debt. Instead, he'd made Clint swear to always give everything his best, because that's what he owed him. A nineteen year old Clint had agreed. And now, 9 years later, Clint still upheld his end because, if anything, he was more indebted now. He had let Phil down. He had fallen again, but this time, Phil wasn't there to pull him back and tell him to get his shit together.
Now, nobody on the team except Natasha knew of the bond between the two agents. He'd even once overheard Stark shouting, "We're all upset about Phil, but none of us are still moping about it!"
Tasha hadn't told him anything, and later she had approached Clint with a disgruntled-looking Stark in tow and told him that he'd have to go on his next walk with Tony. She didn't know he'd heard Tony's word, didn't know how badly they hurt him. It made him feel weak, even though he knew that everyone else thought he was because of his time spent as Loki's bitch. He hadn't made a great first impression, and he wasn't fixing it. He spent too much time punishing himself for that.
Now, at this moment, Clint grimaced. That was one hell of a tangent. Of course, he wasn't surprised that he had so much time to think. Even before the Avengers, Stark had been wildly popular. He been practically leaped upon by the New Yorkers the second he set foot out of his tower. Clint, as usual, was shunted to the side, alone as always. He did what he usually did and found a nearby café to sit at.
The waitress looked out the window and saw his slumped shoulders, and decided to move towards him.
Clint looked up when he heard the door open. His eyes narrowed and focused on a woman that had just exited the café. She wore an apron, but when her gaze flickered toward the direction of the mob, Clint assumed that that's where she wanted to go.
"Can I interest you in anything, sir?" she asked politely.
Clint blinked in surprise. He wiped it away hurriedly. "I don't have anything to pay you with," he told her. Never mind that he could just get Tony to pay for it later.
The waitress nodded. "Who's out there?" she inquired, gesturing to the crowd down the block.
"That's Tony Stark," Clint muttered.
"Really? Wow!" The waitress grinned and headed back into the café. Clint assumed that she had left him and had tried to get a look at Stark. He allowed his sharp gaze to wander, immediately thinking about the time when he and Phil had come down to a home game for the Yankees. Clint smiled slightly. He still wore that contented expression when the lady came back out, this time with a steaming mug.
"It's nice to see you smiling, sir," she commented, startling him out of his pleasant daydream. Clint blinked. The waitress had placed the mug on the table in front of him and was watching him.
He wrapped his fingers around the handle and pulled it closer to himself. It was steamy, cream-covered coffee. It smelled heavenly, and the cream on top had been formed into the shape of...
A bow. Clint stared at it, at a loss. He looked at the waitress, who smiled at him like a kid who'd just met their hero. Clint blinked. He felt touched, and figured that the warmth he now felt had nothing to do with the physical warmth of the coffee in front of him. Clint said nothing, however.
The waitress winked at him. "It's on the house, Hawkeye. Just as long as you tell the others that you've got the best fanbase."
Clint allowed a smile to curve his lips. He raised the mug in a sort of toast, and drained it. He shook the woman's hand firmly, muttered 'Thank you,' and decided to end his walk and go back to the Avenger's Tower. Back home.
Aren't fangirls great?
Now, I have a few ideas about more little chapters (as well as the thing that *GASP* actually has a plot at the end), but I'd like to make it longer than just what I've planned out. After a suitable amount of time, I'll post the next chapter, and during that time you should REVIEW with an idea and if I like it, I write that idea and dedicate the chapter to you, as well as link your profile in the top AN (unless you're a guest). Does that seem fair?
-Shadow