Disclaimer: I don't own the characters of "The Avengers"-they belong to Stan Lee and the Marvel Universe. I also don't own the characters of "Mission: Impossible"-they belong to Paramount.
Author's Note: THANK YOU to the people that are reading/reviewing/alerting/lurking. Again, for the first half of this story, head to my profile and check out "Mission: Avengers".
Baltimore
Stanley High School
Job fairs meant one thing and one thing only to Clint Brandt-he got out of seventh period advanced chem. As the last bell dismissed the seniors down to the gym, Clint was thrilled beyond belief that he got to skip Murdoch's class. He liked the subject matter, but his teacher drove him insane. Murdoch was a big beefy guy with a mad scientist lab coat, an evil cackle, and a wicked grading curve.
"Remind me to skip the 'chemistry professor' table when we get down there," Clint muttered to his friend Darrin, loud enough for Murdoch to overhear. He didn't miss the steam coming from the teacher's ears.
"The Army Guard always gives away cool stuff," Darrin told him as they stowed their books in their lockers. "Let's start there."
"You're just in it for the free stuff?"
"Hell yes," Darrin replied. "When I graduate I'm gonna ride around the country on my Harley."
Clint raised an eyebrow. "You don't have a Harley." He slammed his locker shut.
Darrin grinned. "Not yet, but I will. See? Contrary to popular belief, I have goals."
Clint rolled his eyes and followed his best friend down to the gym. Two hundred seniors milled around the various booths. Clint purposely skipped the college ones. He wasn't sure what he wanted to do after he graduated, but he sure as hell knew he didn't want to go to more school.
"Try your luck?"
Clint turned to see a Marine recruiter standing behind one of the tables. The guy looked like the poster child for the entire USMC- a trim black guy with brass buttons and a cocky grin. Clint stopped and glanced behind the Marine.
A dart board was set up behind him. The number $50 was written in the bullseye, eight feet back against the gym wall. "What's my prize?" Clint asked him.
"Three darts, hit the $50, get fifty bucks. Make two, get a hundred, hit all three, get one-fifty."
"Lemme see the cash." Clint's tone was calm and confident, not cocky, like the Marine expected from an eighteen year old high school senior.
The Marine pulled three fifty dollar bills from his uniform. "You in?" he asked him.
Clint accepted the darts and set his feet. His eyes zeroed in on the bullseye, just like they did every weekend with his dad at the shooting range.
Thunk.
Thunk.
Thunk.
Clint let out the breath he'd been holding and stepped sideways.
The Marine looked at the board. Not only did Clint hit the bullseye-he'd put each dart inside the zero in the number 50.
Clint grinned. "Gimme a real challenge," he said, letting some of his cockiness in his voice.
"Sign up and I'll give you one." The Marine sounded impressed, but there was an edge in his voice. "Pretty soon it won't be darts and zeroes. It'll be tracer rounds on a mountain somewhere. Kid, I've been a lot of places, seen a lot of things, but I ain't ever seen anything like what you just did."
Clint glanced down the aisle. Will was a few booths away. He held out his hand, and the Marine recruiter forked over the money. "Wait five minutes," Clint said, and walked away.
But not before grabbing a registration form.
Four tables away, Will and his girlfriend Gemma were looking at a table for a vet's clinic. Pawsitively Pets was looking for a summer intern. "Think I could go full-time after the summer, if I do a good job?" Gemma asked.
Will nodded. "They'd be stupid not to let you," he replied. "Grab an app."
Gemma smiled. "I knew I liked you," she said. "You're good for my ego."
He grinned as she reached for a pen. A table behind him caught his eye, and he looked over. "Hold up," he said with a questioning glance. "This seems a little um….overt for you guys, isn't it?"
Big white letters were staring back at him. CIA.
"If I was recruiting you for something covert," the woman in the dress suit and skirt replied, "I wouldn't be here. We're just like any other office-we need computer technicians, administrative assistants…"
Will frowned. "No thanks," he said finally. "I think I'm gonna be a cop like my dad." Gemma tugged on his arm, and he turned to leave.
"Solve the code, get a cookie?" the woman offered.
Will snorted, and glanced at Gemma. She shrugged. "Go for it," she said.
The woman handed him a piece of paper, a scramble of numbers and letters.
He studied it for a few seconds, then snorted. "No thanks," he said. "Never been a Yankees fan." He handed the piece of paper back to her, and he and Gemma continued down the line, ignoring the cookie.
The woman was watching him incredulously. She'd been doing high school fairs for six years. Not one person had ever cracked the code.
Her eyes followed Will down to the Marine recruiter's booth, where he threw three perfect bulls-eyes and claimed his money. The Marine recruiter looked like someone had slapped him.
When the fair was over, her next stop was to the registrar's office. She needed that kid's specs. He would be perfect for the CIA but, his skills were far more suited to a fellow organization...
"Wake up, Agent Barton."
Will was no stranger to being unconscious. Hell, in the past year, he'd been in a car that had gone over a bridge, at least two gunfights, almost fallen out a 120-plus story window, gone hand to hand with a terrorist, been in an explosion, almost drowned, suffered broken ribs, gotten chased by a giant green monster and gotten his ass kicked by an alien. Being kidnapped and knocked unconscious, that was tame. He'd been awake for a solid five minutes, but playing it safe by remaining completely still and breathing slowly. He'd gone through this at the Farm-CIA boot camp. Staying in control was all part of the game.
"Come on, Clint, wakey wakey."
Don't call me Clint, would have been his automatic response. It was so old. People had been mistaking him for his brother, and vice versa, for years. But he didn't say anything, because that phrase had given him pause. Clint…they think I'm Clint…
The voice that kept prodding him was nasally. Isabelle Moreau had been more threatening than this guy. Hell, Benji would sound like a better criminal mastermind. Will kept his breathing even. Waiting for his kidnapper to make another mistake.
"Come on, Clinton Brandt, I know they didn't hit you that hard…"
It took every ounce of Will to stay calm and umoving. What he'd just heard shocked the hell out of him.
There were only a handful of people in the world who knew that when Clint joined Shield almost fifteen years ago, he'd changed his last name. There was CIA-crazy, and then there was SHIELD insanity. Clint dealt with guys who could level cities with a fireball from their hands, or giant green rage monsters that could leap forty stories in one jump. It was a whole new level of scary. Clint, ever the protector, had switched his name from Brandt to Barton ("If I don't keep some of the letters the same, I'll forget who I am," he had said) to keep his family safe.
Will could count the number of people who knew Clint's real last name on both hands. Four were in New York, or had been last time he'd checked. Mom and Dad were on vacation. One was dead. One was on another planet in another universe. One was on a flying aircraft carrier God-knew-where. And Will was here.
This guy had just called him Clinton Brandt.
This guy knew.
But he doesn't know, Will reminded himself. He thinks I'm Clint.
It was time to wake up. Will rotated his ankle, which was ziptied to his other foot. Just enough movement to signify he was awake. He needed to see who thought they were in charge of this mess.
He felt a pair of heavy boots dent the carpet in front of his face and braced himself for a foot to the face. Wouldn't be the first time. He heard them bend down, and then the world went blindingly white as the hood was pulled off his head. He blinked a few times as his eyes adjusted to the white world around him.
It was definitely the cleanest prison he'd ever woken up in. The carpet was snowy white and thick. He could make out a blurry white couch on the edges of his peripheral vision. On one wall, he caught a metal box with wires hanging from it-phone, maybe? Video screen?
"Hey! He's up!" the criminal mastermind announced to the room, like he was announcing that Will had just walked into happy hour. "Rise and shine, buddy."
Will saw a pair of tan pants and black shoes walking toward him, and a figure crouched down and filled his vision. "Glad you're up. Sorry about the zip ties, but I've heard about your aim."
"Untie me and I'll show off for ya," Will said. It sounded like something his brother would say. "I'll shoot an apple off the top of your head." Course with yet another head injury I could very well miss…not that I'd be terribly upset.
"You know, that's tempting, really," the guy said, almost sounding like he meant it. He opened his mouth to say something else, but was interrupted by someone else coming into the room. "We find her?"
The guy must have nodded because Will didn't hear a response. "Good. Bring her by." He stood up and looked down at Will. His face came into focus. He looked awfully familiar, though Will couldn't figure out why. "Gotta go make a couple of phone calls. Hey, by the way, you wouldn't happen to have Natasha Romanoff's number…would you?"
"Left it in my other hood," Will replied with an awkward shrug. "Sorry."
"You don't have your girlfriend's number? Makes you kind of a lousy boyfriend, doesn't it?"
This guy confused the hell out of Will. He obviously was smart enough to pull off a kidnapping-a second one was in the works, smart enough to have hacked SHIELD to get his brother's and Natasha's information, yet he didn't know that Will wasn't Clint or that Clint and Natasha weren't in a relationship. Who the hell is this guy?