Part 2 of 4
~A & X~
The second time he met her, years later, it was under slightly better circumstances and he didn't realize it until later.
It was a month before the being-taken-over-by-the-Tesseract-and-a-psychotic-god incident, long enough that the strange encounter in the Middle East had slipped his mind. He'd lost the man he was tracking; somehow, the rat bastard had managed to slip off his radar and stay hidden. It had been important enough that he'd sought the help of one of Nat's old contacts, a man by the name of Zebra Daddy.
Through Natasha, Clint arranged a meeting with the man at a neutral location under the alias Ronin, a hole-in-the-wall place run by an old guy with more hair in his ears than on his head and who lived on Social Security checks. The bell tinkled as he pushed open the door and stepped in, alerting his arrival; Barton growled. Bells made noise and noise was not conducive to his line of work. The small, dilapidated diner smelled heavily of grease, smoke, and mold, not a pleasant combination. There was an old, cracked jukebox sputtering out warped songs from the 60s in the corner, and the remaining wallpaper was faded to the point of being homogenous.
The place was near empty, so it wasn't difficult to find his contact. If it wasn't the sweaty old man behind the grill or the bored college girl doing her trigonometry homework instead of manning the cash register, then it had to be the man sitting at the corner booth snorting what was probably coke with his arm around a teenage girl.
He was a weasely guy, with a pointy nose, beady eyes, slicked hair, and the kind of shifty look that Hawkeye associated with criminals and guys who slipped parole. One look at him and Clint knew all he needed to. But the girl next to him was a whole different story—alabaster skin, long black hair, and Goth make-up and clothing, and eyes that would have been pretty if they weren't clouded and unfocused. He suspected drugs or abuse.
The man looked up as Clint neared, his eyes narrowing as they took each other in. Bloodshot eyes, runny nose, thin as a stick, dilated pupils, a bead of sweat on his forehead—definitely cocaine. He cleared his throat. "Zebra Daddy, I presume?" The man's lips spread in a smile that a five-year-old could see through and nodded. "Yea, man, call me Daddy—ev'rybody does. Yo mus' be Ronin. The Widow told me 'bou yo." He motioned to the girl. "Dis is my girl, Boo." She didn't acknowledge the introduction. "Yo want sometin' ta eat?"
"Daddy" spoke with an accent that Clint knew was fake, and it grated on his nerves. However, he bit his tongue, figuratively, and slid into the seat across from the man. "No."
Daddy pursed his lips and Clint knew that he'd violated some sort of unknown code of conduct. He didn't want to screw up this deal, so he conceded. "Alright, actually, I wouldn't mind a coffee." How badly could they screw up a cup of coffee anyway? When Daddy's thin, rat-like face lit up like the Fourth of July, Clint knew he'd said the right thing. Negotiating with this guy was going to be like walking through a minefield.
As it turned out, the coffee tasted like burnt sludge and Daddy smelled like weed and sex. The girl he called Boo slowly ate her sundae, and even as he negotiated for his information, Clint found himself intrigued with her. There was something about her, some familiar quality that made him think that he'd seen her somewhere before. It was those eyes. He knew them, but he couldn't remember where from.
He didn't connect the dots between this sad girl accompanying her pimp and X-23 until much later, long after he'd left the diner with the information and a distinct need to take an hour-long shower, down 2K. Two weeks later, Zebra Daddy was found dead in an alley with several other bodies, presumably his goons; they had to use dental records to identify him. The coroner's official report described him as looking "like chicken con carne." Clint didn't shed any tears over that pig's death, but he beat himself up for weeks for letting her slip right through his fingers. He'd been sitting at the same table as her and he hadn't even known. Fury and Natasha both told him not to blame himself; she'd outsmarted everyone from militias and armed goons to the Fantastic Four and the X-Men. It wasn't his fault he didn't recognize her; it had been years since Iraq and she'd grown up. Still, he couldn't let it go.
How could he have possibly known that his fate would be unavoidably entwined with the strange, silent girl who had such sadness in her eyes and whipped cream on her nose?
