5mairer: Thank you for your steady support. I promise this one will be done:)

Jesuslovesmarina: Thank you for always being there! Few reviews on this book around, but i can only blame myself for so many unfinished works and not updating in years


Chapter 2

Working with kids wasn't hard. Dealing in office politics, water-cooler-gossip, being the attention of every single mother, single teacher, and even some single fathers, wasn't hard. Hiding his flask in a dirty pocket, refilling it each morning, each afternoon, with the bottle of hooch he kept stashed in the saddle bag of his bike, wasn't hard. But, forcing himself out of his bed every morning was torture. He'd lay there on his back, eyes staring at the reflective tile on the ceiling shining a dingy gold back down at him.

His hotel was once a cat-house, a place for 20s era flappers, spinsters, and swingers to waltz in and take care of business under the shimmering mirrors of the old gold panel. Krats stared up at himself, hugging the bottle between his arm and his chest, as he considered the man he had slowly turned into.

It snuck up on him. One day he was standing on the top of the world, looking down at the city below and defending it for whatever that was worth. For justice? For mercy? To make up for his slights, his crimes? Was he a hero for himself or the family he loved?

The silver grey of his eyes vanished under heavy lids. He palmed the neck of the bottle and brought it to his lips for another swallow. Fire burned down his throat and carved a line straight to his empty stomach. He'd fallen far. A hawk who'd dropped from the sky and hit every tree branch on the way down right before a truck swung by and splattered him over its windshield. He was washed up. Done in. Used, abused, and retired. Wanted and unwanted.

"Hell of a spot you stuck yourself in, Clint," he muttered to himself, opening his eyes again. Obadiah Krats. He used that for Tony Stark specifically. It was a risk, one that Clint shouldn't have taken with his current most wanted status, but he couldn't help the small jab.

The image in the brushed mirror didn't change, though. He'd hacked the government databases and erased his records, his footage, and his photos from all reasonable sites and figured Stark wouldn't go diving into his trove to put them back. The cops still had sketches to go off of, and that wouldn't easily change.

Clint couldn't stand the look of the contacts glaring at him or the pain he couldn't hide, shining like the beacon in a lighthouse. His grip on the bottleneck tightened and he hurled it upward, connecting with one of the panels and shattering the antique ceiling tile into a thousand shards. They rained down all around him. Some of the shards fell hard enough to leave their mark behind, but he didn't move. Grief kept him tied down. Grief, regret, and all those emotions that rolled with it.

The alarm clock across the room buzzed. It stood on its own among a group of the desecrated remains of its predecessors. He didn't have a phone, never kept a cell on him. It was a sure fire way of being tracked. He was a spy first and human second. Now a wanted man, he couldn't risk jeopardizing his identity.

It had been a year since the Sokovia accords tore the Avengers apart. Neither side was right, Clint knew. Tony was wrong for blaming a guy who had nothing to do with an assassination, for holding a grudge and letting that grudge cloud everything in his head. Cap was wrong for putting a war buddy first and forgetting everything he'd ever built since then, for trampling on every single person who got in his way and leaving them high and dry afterward. Sure he broke them out of jail, but it should have never gotten to that point. A grudge match destroyed the team, but it's what came after that destroyed Clint. Where was his team then? Where were his friends?

The alarm continued to ring. Clint forced himself up on his elbows, grabbed a shard of glass, and slung it toward the clock. The shard stuck fast through the face of the alarm and that alarm too joined the scattered remains of its fallen brethren. The last thing Barton wanted to do was to get up, to hop on that rattling saddle seat of his motorcycle, and survive another day in the remedial task of baby sitter.

He had too. Hide in plain sight, change enough to blend but not enough to stand out. Keep to yourself. That was how he survived. This was his new life.

Clint forced himself to roll over, ignoring the shards of glass as they pressed against his unprotected flesh. His bare feet flattened on the filthy carpet as his hands raised to rub his face, cruising upwards until they coursed through the short spikes of his hair. His fingers laced behind his neck and he stretched his head back and up, listening to the satisfying snap of his c-spine. The sound brought a memory, a hurried flash of a scream. A hand reaching for him. his hand reaching back. Heavy breathing in his ear. SNAP.

His eyes squeezed shut, dislodging the false lenses drying out over his corneas. His back bent forward as his head pressed down between his knees. The sickening sound reverberated through his memory.

SNAP. A single, decisive, sound. Like the crack of a whip in the air; a sound that ended it all. His shoulders shook. A scream pulled from his liquor stained lips.

He straightened. Clean clothes lay in the mesh laundry hamper where he'd thrown them. He had few possessions. He ran through his clothing stock once monthly, threw out everything he'd used more than twice, and stopped at goodwill to replace what he'd gotten rid of. That was his life now.

He left his door unlocked. Even if the room was searched, the only one likely to find evidence of his real identity would be Black Widow. She'd found him twice, Natasha did. She tried to convince him to come home, to return to what little slice of it he had left. Ultimately, she failed. For now, she didn't seem all that interested in looking him up again. That hurt as much as the team breaking up. She was an aunt to his kids, as much a part of Thanksgiving meals as the burnt turkey Clint managed every year. He hadn't heard from her in six months, hadn't seen her in longer. Whatever they had was done and buried.

The Indian motorcycle stayed chained to a fire escape in the back alley. It had a false license plate. He changed the paint color with sharpies and spray paint every few weeks. Occasionally he'd dump it somewhere and steal a different ride for a few weeks to change up his routine. It was stupid to not wear a helmet on the broken New York streets. He'd crashed four times already, ended up on the front of cabs or road rashed from going over the bars. Each time he stumbled to his feet and dragged himself back to the old bike.

The silencing roar of the wind made waking up tolerable. That morning rush, cheating death by riding like a daredevil out to prove himself more impressive than Evil Knievel, kept him from staying glued to his mattress in the dirty old building nestled in center-city Bedford-Stuyvesant.

He revved the engine. The louder the better. The hot muffler pipes grazing the inside of his thigh as he pushed the bike over its limit. He tore off down the streets until he stopped at the steps of the Midtown high school on the Queen's side of the New York district. It was an outrageous distance to commute. It would have made more sense to take public transit, and sometimes he did. But nothing would compare to that morning rush he needed to feel alive again.

Clint pulled up to the sidewalk and kicked his bike over the concrete to the nearest gate. He didn't lock it on this side of town. Fort the most part, he didn't need to. The high school kids viewed him half like the bogyman, half Arthur Fonzarelli, only most had no idea who the latter even was. Fellow teachers acknowledged him as he entered the office space. He nodded his typical pleasantry and disappeared down the stairs to the main floor, then down a second set to the sub-wing where the shop class was located. He came in early, otherwise he might not come in at all. It gave him some time to kid himself into thinking the alcohol wasn't present on his breath or leaching through his pores.

His father did this. The drinking began as an insidious nebulous, sneaking up on him with every extra bottle with dinner, which became a beer for breakfast, then all day long. Clint remembered finding bottles rattling around the floor boards of his father's Buick as they rattled down the Iowa roads. The old man was mean when he was drunk, as angry as a hornet shaking his fist at the government, the world, and God. He worked in a butcher shop and had a hand and fist as strong as Thor and Captain America. At least that's what it felt like to Clint's childhood self. He never felt a day of love from that man. The past didn't excuse the way Clint wasted his life now, but regardless he clung onto it, as if it might dull the ache he bared every time he unscrewed the cap to his flask.

A sound stirred behind him. Momentarily surprised, Barton acted on instinct dulled by a morning of cheap schnapps. His hand flattened on the desk. He pushed out of his chair and spun around at the same time. His fingers curled into a fist he had nearly decided to throw when a last-minute restraint came over him. He stopped.

Peter Parker stood in the doorway a few feet behind him. The teen's back pack was slung over one shoulder, his hand outstretched as if to prevent his teacher from striking him. Instead of showing unadulterated fear, Parker's face was strictly smooth determination, as if the kid had been fighting battles all his life. Barton didn't know anything about him. It was possible Peter did just that.

"Sorry," Barton said shortly, willing his muscles to relax. Training took over like a second skin and every tensed tendon slid into an easy repose. He forced a smile to turn up the corner of his cheek and he half sat on the edge of his desk. "You're early. Shouldn't sneak up on people."

"Sorry Dr. Krats. Chem lab got canceled this morning and I had a couple things I wanted to work on here. I didn't think you'd be in yet," Peter replied. His eyes snapped down to Clint's hand, noted a knuckle full of scrapes and bruises. Clint had gotten into a bar room brawl two nights ago with a guy he never should have taken on. It was a lapse of judgement, one of many he'd dealt with the further into the bottle he crawled.

Peter's eyes snapped back up. "You ok, sir?"

"Bit the dirt mountain biking." Clint could lie as easily as he could drink. He displayed the hand for the teen to see, which put Parker slightly at ease. He slid into the room a little more and stopped hugging the doorway as if he might flee into the hall again. Parker noted the marks Clint pointed out to him.

"Looks like a hard fall. Where were you biking?" Peter asked innocently.

"Upstate," Clint flexed his hand, working the soreness out of it.

"Have a good weekend beside that?' Peter asked. He side stepped around the desk to head for his work bench. The small talk continued along his way.

"Mostly uneventful," Barton replied. In his mind's eye he replayed the bar fight. Clint twirled the gold band around his left ring finger. "Can't say anything good happened," he went on, shaking the memories away. "What about you?"

Peter smiled, shrugged, and sat down at his station. "You know. Same old, same old."


OMG poor Clint. I've really done it this time. Stay tuned.