Summary: There was never just one. And to think it was all because of the coffee. Thor was stuck on Tony duty which required lots of patience and a visit to their favorite coffee shop. It's all downhill from there as they meet Not!Clint and his brand new British sidekick that seems intent on stalking the two Avengers. In other words the time that the IMF met the Avengers.

Pairings: Clint/Natasha and strongly hinted Will/Jane. And of course, bromance all around!

Warnings: Language, I guess, and a strong possibility for crackish behaviors. Spoilers for both the Avengers and Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol.

Disclaimer: I own nothing!

Author's Note: I'm so so so so sorry about the delay between chapters. I did say that updates will be slow. But here I am with a third chapter. I'm already working on the fourth so hopefully it won't be like another month between chapters (though I make no promises). Hope you enjoy!


Occam's Razor

Clint Barton learned from an early age that sometimes you just needed to roll with whatever life threw at you. Sometimes it ended okay and other times… not so much. When his parents died, leaving him and Barney at the mercy of the foster care system, he barely batted an eye. He smiled when needed and tried his best to stay out of the way. When Barney told him they were leaving their latest home and joining the circus, he nodded and followed his brother without complaint. When Barney left him broken and bleeding by the hands of Duquesne, Clint refused to break down and instead built a wall to protect himself from ever trusting someone that much again. Of course that's when life threw Phil, Nick, Natasha and the Avengers his way. That was one time when it worked out for him. Of course there were still the bad times. Like when, he found himself mind raped, abducted and used as a tool to take over the Earth, he let it slide and made jokes about shooting Loki in the eye. One morning about a year after the Invasion, Clint went downstairs for breakfast only to find the trickster god looking like the whole world was crashing down around him. He was sitting at their kitchen table with such a hangdog expression that Clint didn't even bother reaching for the collapsible bow he kept on him at all times. Instead, he only shrugged and asked if Loki preferred waffles or pancakes.

The point was that Clint made it habit to not let things get to him. If he did, if he stopped for just one second, he felt like he would suffocate under the weight of all that life threw and continued to throw at him. So he smiled and played like none of it mattered. This was the only way he could sit in front of this man who looked so much like him. He cocked his head to the side, watching as Will did the same. Eyes he normally faced in the mirror every day looked back at him. This was freaky. They had the same grayish blue eyes with the weird color thing that made them look green sometimes. Will's brow did the same furrowed movement his did when he was thinking about something too hard. For all intents and purposes, they were identical. This was freaking strange. But he was an Avenger. He was used to strange. So he operated as he normally did.

"So…."

"So," Will murmured. He tore his gaze away from Clint to glance around the room. It wasn't hard to guess what caught his attention as they were surrounded by pure chaos and noise. The entire room was divided into a variety of conversations after Darcy's totally, Clint felt, inappropriate comment. And on that note, Clint was so going to get the assistant back for that one! To say that he was a crazed god with severe daddy issues, Loki was surprisingly complacent when asked to play tricks on the team. Besides Loki kinda owed Clint like a few dozen favors (and that was only for introducing the wonder of waffles to the god. He would be paying Clint back for the whole brainwashing and almost killing his mentor thing for life). "Huh, so that's what it looks like."

"What?" Clint blinked looking back at his… uh, person that looked like him.

"Jane told me that I get this smug look on my face when I'm plotting something. Usually revenge against Benji for doing whatever," Will replied. "Never really thought she was right but now…. that's interesting." He looked around again. "You think they're going to stop fighting anytime soon?"

Clint snorted. "They're just getting started. I think our team leaders are trying to out alpha each other." He glanced over his shoulder at Ethan and Steve who, though silent, were staring intensely at one another. Either Steve wanted to fondue with Ethan or Captain America himself was silently judging someone. Given the tiny smirk forming on the captain's lips, Clint was going with the latter. Though the first option would've made for some interesting stories.

"I guess this is going to take awhile," Will agreed, also watching Ethan and Steve. He raised an eyebrow before looking back to Clint. "This was definitely not how I expected my day to go. How about you?"

"I always anticipate that the day will take a detour into a new level of crazy never experienced before, usually around noon. That way when things like this happen, I'm not thrown."

Will's eyes widened. "Has anyone ever told you that you may be a little off?"

"Pretty much every SHIELD appointed psychiatrist since I was recruited," Clint grinned. Will nodded thoughtfully.

"Huh. That really makes me want to hurt people."

"Don't bother," Clint shrugged. "Tony's already fired like six of them and then had them blacklisted in the psychiatric community. The others have mysteriously disappeared. They were last seen leaving headquarters with a redhead and then never seen again."

"How odd," Will said, sarcasm dripping from his voice. Clint decided that no matter if the man sitting opposite him was a clone, a doppelganger or even a LMD, he liked him. He wondered if Phil and Fury would let him keep him when this was all over and done with. "Stop looking at me like you want to put me in a box or something."

"Is this another one of those faces you make?"

"Somehow I get that feeling that one is all you."

Clint smiled a little brighter. "So how long you been with IMF?"

Will squirmed a little in his seat before exhaling. "About six years. They got me right after I finished grad school. You?"

"Uh, let's see its 2014… So uh, officially about fourteen years. But I've known them since I was fifteen."

"Fourteen years?! That means that you were recruited when you were seventeen?"

Clint blinked. "Yeah?"

"What about high school? What about college?"

"Never went to either of those," Clint shifted slightly. "I lived in the circus until I was like fifteen. Then some things happened and I moved on. Then some more things happened and Phil brought my sorry ass into SHIELD. Been here ever since."

He suddenly felt uncomfortable. The amusement and novelty of the identical faced man was quickly wearing off. He didn't know the other man but for some reason he didn't want him thinking that he was stupid. He had no idea why Will's opinion even mattered but it did. And he suddenly felt like he was lacking.

His self deprecating thoughts were interrupted by Will letting out a tiny gasp of pain. Clint watched as Bruce pulled back with a syringe full of the other man's blood. He raised an eyebrow at his older friend.

"Bruce, what did you and Fury talk about? You're supposed to get consent before you start taking blood to perform your mad scientist experiments with."

Bruce gave him a look that was three steps above rolling his eyes. He could work with that. Every day, he pushed the man that much closer to actually rolling his eyes. There were rumors floating around headquarters that Clint and Tony had a bet going to see which one of them could annoy the unflappable doctor. Clint really wanted to know who started that rumor because well… they knew too much.

"Don't need consent when you're under orders from Nick Fury himself," Bruce smirked, handling the syringe carefully. He handed Will a Band-aid. Clint leaned forward to get a better look at the plastic strip. Looks like it was Scooby this week. He approved. Most importantly, Will seemed to approve as well. The IMF agent's lips tilted somewhat as he placed the bandage over the tiny mark on his arm.

"Wait, why is Fury telling you to take blood samples?" Clint said, shaking his head. "How does Fury even know about this?"

"You're kidding, right?" Bruce asked, giving his patent pending 'I'm surrounded by idiots' look. "Clint, there is a man that looks like you. Not only looks like you, has the same birth date and birth place as you. Now I know I'm not the rocket scientist that Tony is but that just sends up all sorts of red flags."

"Red flags?" Clint protested. "I didn't see anyone red flagging that detective we met last year. Everyone was real content to let him go about his business. I didn't see you all doing any DNA tests on him."

"Number one," Bruce held up a finger. "He was older than you by nearly a decade. Number two, just because you don't see me or Tony working, doesn't mean that we're not doing something. So in conclusion, I tested him and Tony ran a background check. Jason Walsh is not genetically related to you in any way shape or form."

Clint cocked his head to the side. He was not disappointed about that one at all. Truth be told, the good detective was a little on the unusual side. For starters, he couldn't cook. Clint learned early that if you don't cook, you don't eat. To be fair, it wasn't that the other man didn't cook, it just that he sucked. Then there was the fact that the dude was totally banging another woman while giving googly eyes to his partner. He paused, glancing away from Will to Jane and then finally to Natasha. Maybe there was something about this identical face thing after all.

"Hey, don't you need blood from me too?" Clint asked, once he noticed Bruce walking away. The scientist gave him a look.

"You do know that you pretty much leave a DNA trail the minute you walk out the door, right? If you're not getting blown up, flung off something, shot or stabbed then you're being poisoned or tortured. I'm more than familiar with what your blood looks like by now."

Will's eyes widened but Clint was familiar enough with those eyes to recognize the faint look of approval that flashed through them. "You don't have the best track record, huh?"

Clint shrugged, grin playing at the edges of his lips again. "I may be a little accident prone."

"A little, he says," Bruce muttered. He put of his hands on Clint's head, ruffling the dirty blonde locks. Clint scowled. "You keep believing that one, Cupid. I'm going to go test this against one of the thousands of blood samples you have in the lab. I'll be back when I find something."

"It's like you really think you're going to find something," Clint called after him. He was predictably ignored. Sometimes it really sucked to be the so called little brother of the team. He offered Will a tight smile and went back to studying the other man. There had to be something different. He tilted his head to the side. "How do you feel about arrows?"

"Is that a trick question?" Will asked, worriedly. "Like the one with cavemen and the astronauts?"

"What one with the cavemen and astronauts?"

Will sighed, seeming to come to some internal conclusion. "Benji and Ethan once spent an hour arguing over who would win in a fight between cavemen and astronauts?"

Clint nodded slowly. "Do the astronauts have weapons?"


Tony settled down in Bruce's lab with a packet of blueberries in one hand and the seemingly never absent tablet in the other. He remembered their first meeting almost three years ago. He liked to say that Tony changed a lot since then but he'd be lying. Tony was pretty much same but the other's ability to tolerate and deal with his eccentrics and ego had drastically improved. Bruce watched him out the corner of his eye. Fury's orders were to poke around in Will's file and find out as much about the man while Bruce examined the pair's blood samples. Bruce didn't know what they were expecting to find but Fury's tense voice over the phone told him that he expected to find something.

"What do you think this all means?" Tony finally cracked the silence hanging over the two genius friends. Bruce was surprised it took so long. "I mean the guy looks just like him. He even sounds the same. You don't think…."

"Think what?" Bruce asked, mildly, still bent over his computer. The great thing about Stark tech was that something as complicated as a DNA test could be completed in a minutes. It was the processing and the wondering how to break the news to a certain archer that took the most time.

"You don't think that Fury had him cloned, do you?" Tony continued either unaware or just ignoring Bruce's distraction. "I mean after the thing with Loki. He's always been a bit of a manipulative bastard and he's always talking about how much of an asset Clint is. What if he took it one step further? What if he actually had him cloned?"

Bruce thought about it for a minute before discarding the theory. While it made sense on one level, Bruce heard the concern in Fury's orders. He knew that the director was worried about the connection between Will and Clint. He wanted them to look into this for Clint's sake, not because he was hiding something. Fury was as in the dark about this as they all were and if it was one thing that Nick Fury did not enjoy, it was not being in the know.

"I think…." Bruce started. "I think that there is something really simple going on that none of us wants to talk about. We're throwing around theories like cloned and brainwashed and LMDs. But what if it's something simpler than that. We're so used to looking at the big stuff that we tend to forget the simple more obvious answers."

"Like what?" Bruce sat back, gesturing towards the screen in front of him. Tony raised a silent eyebrow but slowly rose to join him. He read over Bruce's shoulder and frowned when he didn't see what was so obvious to Bruce. "What exactly am I looking at here?"

"DNA samples from Clint and Will. As you can see, they're similar but different at the same time. That means he's not a clone. He's got organic tissue and actual human organs, so he's not a LMD. He's too genetically similar to Clint to be a doppelganger. So that leaves only one answer. Occam's razor says that the simplest answer is often correct."

"Then you're saying that…" Tony trailed off as his tablet beeped from where he left it on the table. He reached for it, looking over the data before flicking it to the larger screen in the lab. "JARVIS scanned every hospital in Iowa for that date and came up with two hits. There are birth certificates for two boys born on that date at the same hospital. Clinton Francis Barton born to John and Mary Barton at 1:40 PM. Wait, really? His middle name is Francis?" Tony paused with glee. "JARVIS, remind me later to mock Legolas for that one."

"Of course, sir. Wouldn't want to forget something like that in the midst of Agent Barton's impending familial crisis."

Tony narrowed his eyes while Bruce covered a laugh. "You were saying, Tony. You found Will's birth certificate?"

"Yeah, I did. William Michael Brandt born to Dr. James and Emily Brandt at 1:30 PM. They have two different sets of parents but similar DNA that proves they're biologically related. How is that possible?"

"Sir, it appears that the birth records supplied by the hospital that afternoon have been forged."

Now it was Bruce's turn to frown. "The birth certificates were forged?"

"That seems to be the case," JARVIS reported.

"So we have two biologically related identical looking men with secret organization ties and falsified birth records," Tony summarized. "No, nothing seems suspicious here at all."

"We have an even bigger problem than that," Bruce pointed. "Who exactly is supposed to be the one that breaks this one to Clint?"

Tony's mouth opened for a second before snapping shut. Before Bruce could even process that the mighty Tony Stark was speechless, Tony was speaking again. "JARVIS, call Agent Coulson down here."

"Of course, sir."

Bruce gave Tony a look. He shrugged. "Clint is his pet assassin. Let him risk getting skewered by an arrow."

"This coming from the guy that threw a hissy fit when his lawyer told him that it was legally impossible to adopt a nearly thirty year old man as his brother and then still needed Pepper to stop him from trying to change Clint's last name to Stark. And I'm pretty sure you haven't given up the fight almost two years after the fact."

Tony sniffed. "All I'm saying is what good is it being a billionaire thing if I can't use that money to cater to my every whim? And my whim is to adopt the thirty one year old ex carnie. What's wrong with that?!"

"You know how they say there's a fine line between genius and madness?"

"Yeah?"

"You killed the line."

"That's the sweetest thing you've ever said to me."


Growing up, Will always wanted a brother. At first, he was willing to accept a sister but as he got older and girls started looking good, he realized that if he had a sister, he'd be in jail. He knew how he looked at girls and couldn't stand the idea of someone looking at his imaginary sister that way. So he changed to wishing for a brother.

His parents were older when they had him. So they weren't always able to keep up with the small child. When it became clear that his memory was a little sharper than others, his parents were confused as to what to do with him. His father tried to nurture his memory. He gave him books and shared his own knowledge with his son. His mother, on the other hand, was distant. The way she looked at him when she didn't know he could see her was not of love or devotion. It was of carefully concealed fear. She was scared of his ability to remember things. Of the way that he analyzed everything in a room within seconds. He never understood it but he always made sure to avoid her when his father was away.

Dr. James Brandt was a neurosurgeon and apparently one of the best in the country. He was always traveling to some state to speak about his vast array of knowledge or to perform some risky surgery. It was James who gave a name to what Will always thought was a nifty memory trick: eidetic memory. He nurtured his son's talent. He encouraged him to use it. But Will soon found that his mother wasn't the only one who thought it was an odd gift. Other children thought he was weird. Even teachers began to dislike the child that remembered everything he read from a textbook and corrected them when they were wrong in the classroom. The only ally he had was his father… and then on Will's fourteenth birthday, he was gone.

Will wanted a brother to share the burden of being different. If he had the eidetic memory, surely his sibling would too. They could be freaks together. He wouldn't have to bear the brunt of their mother's emotional distance alone. He could have a friend and a partner in crime. He could share his knowledge with his brother just like his father had. He wouldn't have to be alone. But a brother never came and Will learned to adjust. He learned to be quiet and keep his observations to himself. He didn't have friends so much as acquaintances and found he was okay with that. He learned to enjoy his own company though he still secretly longed for a little brother to share his genetic burden with.

When he was twenty five, he finished grad school with a Masters in Criminal Justice and about a dozen government agencies interested in recruiting him. The offers were all lucrative but there was one, SHIELD, that held some promise. That is until he was approached by the man that would eventually become the Secretary of IMF. He was recruited into the agency and immediately put behind a desk where his brain could work for the benefit of the agency. But that wasn't why he wanted to be an agent. He wanted to be out in the field. And so he was... for about two years. And then Croatia happened and he retreated back to his desk with no intention of ever emerging again. And then Ethan and the Ghost Protocol happened and he found himself back in the field. He loved it but Croatia left its scars. Every decision he made now was shadowed with self doubt. He loved his team but always wondered when he was going to make a mistake that would cost one of them their lives. With the anniversary of Croatia rolling around, Will was left wondering if IMF was really the place for him.

He knew the mission they were currently on was for him. It was to give him time to either pull it together or pull out. He knew it but it didn't make anything easier for him. He was still lost in his own head. It was times like this that he wished he had someone like him to help him figure out all the thoughts floating through his head. Benji tried but he would never understand what it was like to remember everything and have no way of filtering out what was real or what wasn't sometimes. His brother would. His imaginary ideal brother that he longed for his whole life. His brother would know what to say to help him out. The brother that he always imagined was his perfect counter part.

But reality always had a way of creeping in and bashing him over the head. Because twenty six years after he first admitted to himself that he wanted a brother, he got one. And he was a little concerned about exactly what the universe was trying to say.

"Let me get this straight," Clint said, breaking the silence that settled over the room following Agent Coulson's report of Dr. Banner and Stark's findings. "We're two biologically related, perfectly identical looking men with falsified birth records and secret organization ties." He shook his head. "Nothing shady about that at all."

"That's what I said," Tony mumbled, from where he sat behind Phil He elbowed Bruce beside him. "I told you he was like my long lost little brother."

"Yeah, well he actually is Will's long lost little brother," Phil corrected, cutting off whatever retort Bruce was about to deliver. Will was mildly disappointed. He had only been around these people for the better part of three hours and he could already tell that fight between those two would be hilarious. Maybe he was more like Clint than he thought. "How about we deal with that before we deal with another one of your crazy plots to adopt Clint?"

"Is that why I keep getting mail addressed to Clint Stark?" Clint asked, scrunching up his nose. "I thought that was weird."

"It's only because it's new," Tony replied, slipping an arm around Clint's shoulders. "Once you give it time, you'll learn to adjust. And then everything will be fine."

"Said every psychotic kidnapper in the history of ever," Natasha murmured, shaking her head.

"Can we possibly focus for just a minute here?" Steve asked, his voice reflecting that he did this a lot. It might have a lot to do with the fact that he was frigging Captain America. All eyes fell on him and silence settled over the sidebar conversations. "You're saying that Clint and Agent Brandt are actually twins?"

"Identical," Bruce clarified. "The DNA test proved that much."

"JARVIS is still trying to crack through the encryption on the birth records to find out who forged them," Tony added. "Once we figure who did it, maybe we can get an answer as to why they did it."

Will simply blinked. When he said he wanted a brother, he didn't think it would be quite like this. Because it was beyond obvious to everyone in the room that while Will didn't mind the reveal, Clint wasn't exactly happy. Will was familiar enough with his own emotional tells to see that his newfound twin wasn't jumping for joy at having a brother. It seemed the only thing keeping Clint in the room at the moment was Phil's steady and unwavering gaze. Will knew he had a tendency to get lost in his own head and really didn't make for the best company all the time but this was a bit of an extreme reaction. Wasn't it?

"Jane, would you care to spar with me?" Natasha asked, suddenly. "Clint's occupied and he's the only one here who presents even a slight challenge." Jane's eyes darted between the two brothers and Natasha before settling on Will. He nodded his head.

"Sure. I can cross sparring with the Black Widow off my bucket list."

"She's just kidding about that, right?" Benji asked, watching the two women disappear. Will wasn't sure Jane knew how to joke about things like that. The woman was deadly and she enjoyed every minute of it. She might've just met her soul sister in Natasha. "I think I'm going to go watch."

Predictably most of the others agreed. Will knew it had less to do with watching two very attractive women fight and more with trying to give Clint and Will alone time. For a bunch of superheroes and spies, they were remarkably unsubtle. Especially when Thor claimed that he had no interest in watching the two women spar and was forcibly dragged from the room by Bruce and Steve. Phil left shortly after claiming that he needed to report in with Fury despite the fact that he sent Darcy to do that very same thing not too long ago. This left the two brothers alone for the first time since the big news was revealed twenty minutes before.

The silence that hung over them was beyond awkward. Will found himself longing for the bordering on insane babbling from earlier. He studied the identical face across from him. Clint was worrying his bottom lip between his teeth. Will could already see a bit of blood from where he bit too hard but he didn't say a word. He got the feeling that Clint needed to make the first move and so he waited. He didn't need to wait long.

"I had a brother," Clint blurted out. Will raised an eyebrow. "Well, I still have him. I guess. I don't think he's dead. He might be. I haven't seen him in like sixteen years. We didn't exactly part on the best of terms. But anyway, I had a brother once."

"Uh, that's… good?" he trailed off, unsure what he was supposed to think about that. "I was an only child. Grew up with just my parents."

"My parents died when I was seven," Clint replied, his shoulders hunching down. "Before that my dad used to beat us. Don't worry. It was only when he was drunk. Then again, he was almost always drunk." Clint laughed bitterly. "I always thought I didn't look anything like them. Barney is the spitting image of our dad with our mom's eyes. I don't look like any of them. Guess I know why now."

"What happened to him?" Will asked, despite himself. "What happened to Barney? Why'd you guys stop talking?"

Clint raked a hand over his face before laughing a little hysterically. "I guess it was a mutual thing stemming from the fact that he stood by while my mentor tried to murder me. He felt that I had it coming since I ratted Duquesne out in the first place. He didn't say a word when he beat the hell out of me. He just left me there to die." He looked up suddenly. Blue met blue and Will found himself breaking eye contact. "You know what the screwed up part is?"

"Was the whole thing not screwed up? I'm confused."

"If he was to come waltzing through that door right now and said that he wanted forgiveness, I would've given it to him. Because he was my brother. But… he's not. I… I don't know… what am I supposed to do with that?"

Will opened his mouth but closed it just as quick. He didn't know what Clint was supposed to do. He had his own doubts and confusion. But all he had was distant mother. It seemed that Clint had another series of problems in itself. Although….

"What about your mother? What was she like?"

"Mom," Clint whispered. His lips quirked in a smile. "She was… the best. She used to be a nurse at a big hospital or something like that. But she quit when I was born. She said she needed to be a full time mom since I was a special needs kid."

Will's brow raised as he took in his brother. Nothing about the SHIELD agent screamed special needs but he didn't think that the man would make something like that up either. Clint caught his look and snorted. He reached up to his ear and pulled out a tiny, almost microscopic device. He held it closer for his brother to see.

"It's a hearing aid. I was born with almost sixty percent hearing loss in both ears. A mission a few years after I joined SHIELD took out another twenty." He held up his free hand while depositing the tiny device with the other. "It's cool. I've adjusted to it. It doesn't even faze me anymore. Might be deaf but I've got kick ass eyesight to more than make up for it."

Will nodded. "My roommate in college was deaf. He was the only person that could really stand to talk to me."

Now it was Clint's turn to blink. "Your life is more than a little depressing."

"So I've been told."

He met Clint's gaze again and wasn't surprised to see the humor shining in the depths of his eyes. Will knew without really understanding how that the look was reflected on his own face. He felt his lips twitch upward. Maybe this twin thing wasn't so bad after all.


*The end for now. I'm definitely not done with this story yet. So have no fear. I just figured I'd leave it in a good place before all the government conspiracy stuff hits the fan. I apologize that this chapter wasn't as fun as the previous two. Clint and Will are just too angsty for their own good. Hopefully, it'll start to pick up again. Hopefully!