A/N: So there is an epilogue coming, even though this may feel like an end to some. Thanks to dysprositos for the confidence votes, the suggestions about the ending, and general tense and comma wrangling. If anyone has any kittens to spare, send them her way. She likes kittens. Thanks to everyone who has added this to their follows and favorites. Constructive criticism is certainly welcome. Epilogue should be up in a day or two.

When Phil wakes in the morning, Clint's not in bed. He tries not to panic, but this is the first time since they found Clint that he hasn't been aware of where he is, thanks to the stupidly comfortable bed. Steve is still sleeping, so Phil climbs carefully out and throws on a blue and gold sweatshirt and some blue running pants. He purposefully wanders into the kitchen and he sees Clint pulling on his coat. Clint zips it wordlessly and just gazes up at Coulson. Something is off. Phil knows that everything is off right now, but this is different. Clint is moving with a purpose and Clint hasn't moved with a purpose since they found him.

'Different' might not necessarily be 'better.'

"Are you going out back?" Phil asks him gently.

Clint nods. "Yeah. Thought I'd sit on the overlook for a bit. It's quiet."

"I'll bring you some coffee in a bit?"

"Sure."

Phil watches as Clint walks out back, pauses at the fire pit, and then walks over the overlook and sits down, wrapping his arms around his knees. Phil watches Clint sit for a few minutes, occasionally moving from hugging his knees to cradling his head, and Phil knows he's upset. He doesn't know what to do about it, though, especially if Clint won't talk. So he goes to wake Steve and fix the coffee, and about ten minutes later he returns to the window to check on Clint.

He's gone.

"Steve!" Phil calls as he goes outside, walking over to where Clint was sitting and hoping he'd just wandered down the hill a bit. But Phil can't see him at all. Steve comes outside, pulling on an Army sweatshirt.

"What's wrong?" he asks.

"Clint left." His heart is racing, panic rising again. He turns and looks at Steve.

"Just for a walk? He'll be okay," Steve says, and then, after a pause, "But it is strange, isn't it?"

Phil nods and heads into the house, a sinking feeling in his gut. He storms up to the bedroom and heads to the desk, where his holster lay empty. "Shit!" he says as Steve comes into the room. He holds up the holster, and Steve looks at him with horror on his face. They both run. When they get to the overlook, Phil reaches out to Steve and they stop.

"He's good at disappearing, but he's not himself these days. Which way?" Phil says.

"I don't know, but probably opposite the trail," Steve replies, obviously trying to still his breathing.

Phil nods and he sends Natasha a quick text and then they set off, the trail to the cabin behind them. Phil knows they're going to have to get lucky in order to find him, and he's kicking himself. He knew Clint was a flight risk. Knew he was a suicide risk. But he just went to make coffee. He went to make coffee and then he was going to try and get Clint to talk to him. Really talk. But now, now it might be too late, and the woods become a blur as Phil picks up his pace.

They walk for a few minutes, and then there he is, holding the gun loose in his right hand, standing at the edge of a cliff, the orange and brown and green sea of trees spread behind him in a desperate last gasp of fall color. Clint looks up at them, and Phil is taken aback. For a moment, he sees his Clint, the confident, cocky sniper who isn't afraid of anything, holding his gun and ready to fight.

And then Phil sees his eyes, stormy, darting, wild.

This is not his Clint at all.

"Clint," Phil says, unsure of where to go from here.

"No, Phil," Clint says, taking a step backward, closer to the edge of the cliff. "I need to do this. You can't help me."

"Let us try," Phil pleads.

"Clint, we need you to not do this," Steve says quietly, standing still. "We need you."

Clint laughs mirthlessly. "Really? Are you sure? You've got each other; you'll get through this."

"We might," Phil says, knowing that more guilt isn't going to help the situation. "But I don't want to. Give me the gun."

Clint pulls it up and looks at it, shaking his head and grimacing. "No, it's my choice. My choice how I die. You don't get to choose for me." His voice is steady, hard, and uncharacteristically cold.

"No one should choose that," Phil says, looking over at Steve. They have to get the gun and get him away from the cliff. After that they'll deal with him somehow. Get him back to SHIELD and the psychologists there who can try to help. He looks at the gun and back to Steve, hoping he'll get the message. Steve's fast enough and strong enough to do this, especially if Phil can distract Clint.

Clint glares at Phil, and says, "No one should choose? Never? I have. I choose how people die all the time. Do I follow orders and they die by my bow, or do I let them live? Do they die slow or do they die quick? I get to choose that." The gun in his hand starts to shake and he looks at it again. They are at a standstill for what feels like eternity to Phil. Then they hear a noise behind Phil and Steve, and the gun steadies as Clint points it at a spot over Phil's shoulder.

"What. The Fuck. Are you doing here?" he snarls, and Phil turns to see Natasha standing just a few inches behind him.

"Coulson called me. I was nearby in case he needed help, and he called me. Told me what he thought you were doing and so I came. I deserve a chance to witness this as it goes down, don't you think? Your closest friend? The one you saved? I get to be here if you're doing this."

"Fuck, Natasha," Clint whispers, anguish crossing his face. "You don't understand."

"None of us do, Clint," Phil says gently. "Tell us what happened." Phil knows this all ties back to the op. He knows it all goes back to that one room. "How did your team get caught?"

Clint is startled. It's not where he expected the conversation to go, clearly. He doesn't answer right away, just keeps staring at the gun in his hand. After a moment he raises the gun to his head and Phil's stomach turns and he feels Natasha stiffen behind him. This is happening. He's watching his lover and best friend in the world put a gun to his own head, and he doesn't know what to do to stop it.

He suddenly remembers the twenty-four year-old punk that SHIELD sent him to take down, the one with the cocky grin and lost eyes. Clint was looking for a place to put his loyalty then, had probably been looking for that ever since his own father betrayed that loyalty with alcohol and led him down a path where his strongest character trait was completely irrelevant. Phil saw this, saw a smart, resourceful young man in a very bad situation. So Phil brought him in, and SHIELD gave him a good place for his loyalty, and slowly, his eyes became less lost.

Clint put loyalty above everything, and this time wouldn't have been different.

"You were supposed to be their eyes, Clint. What happened that got you caught with them? Who did you try and save?" Phil asks, gently, trying to ignore the gun. "Please tell us this, at least."

Clint takes a shuddering breath, and Phil sees the tired lines in his face, the hollow cheeks that are usually fuller, the jutting chin that is usually more sloped. He notes that Steve has shifted his stance just a bit, clearly looking for an opportunity to disarm Clint, but Clint is too tired to notice, thank goodness.

"What happened in Peru, Clint?" Phil prods.

"Nothing big," Clint begins, tears leaking slowly from his eyes, unnoticed. "You wouldn't think. . ." he draws a breath. "The plan was in place, we'd left the safe house with our assignments. The mark was supposed to be at a meeting out at this compound in the jungle and we had two agents ready to infiltrate under cover and two going in hot as backup." He paused, the gun still in place at his temple. "I was up high like I was supposed to be and Johnston was about a half mile out, coordinating."

Phil cringed. Johnston should have known better than that. Any mission in the jungle you're supposed to keep at least a mile radius from your team. It's harder to beat a retreat in the jungle.

"The thing was, there was one piece of intel someone missed. They missed it, Phil," he cried desperately. "How the hell were they supposed to know that Jenkins would be made by someone who was working at the compound? The guy wasn't even involved in the meeting. He was doing a weapons deal on the side, not part of this whole thing at all. But he made Jenkins – we didn't know it soon enough, though. Suddenly the place is on lockdown and Jenkins is shot and the backup agents are trying to get him out and Johnston?"

The gun wavers at Clint's head as he pauses, then steadies.

"Johnston was too close," Clint says, and Coulson swears. It cost them. Clint continues, "Johnston got snagged by the guards, and I was supposed to finish the job and get to the rendezvous point but I couldn't finish the job 'cause the mark knew we were there. So I waited. I had to wait. I couldn't leave my spot while they were on high alert and so I had to wait. I did. But . . . not long enough. They knew that there'd be a sniper, and they caught me with a tranq gun."

Someone who wasn't supposed to be at the compound and a handler half a mile too close. One minor mistake and one stray they couldn't have calculated for if the crosscheck system didn't catch it.

"And when they took me to the guy who made us –"he breaks off and the gun wavers, so Steve moves. He ducks under Clint's elbow and snags the gun and Clint's arm, bringing him down into a crumpled heap at Phil's feet. Steve throws the gun to the side and Clint cries out, an anguished cry.

Phil kneels down and Steve pulls Clint into his lap on the ground as Clint trembles and shakes and cries out, "No, no, no, no, no let me, please let me go, please. Let me do this!"

And Phil's heart is in his throat because after all of these years of knowing Clint Barton, he's never seen him coming apart at the seams like this. He's seen the seams strain and stretch, but here they are popping apart and Phil doesn't know what to do about it.

Natasha kneels down next to them and puts her hand on Clint's cheek. She leans over and says something in Russian, gentle but firm. Clint stiffens and looks up at her. She looks at Steve and gestures him back – "loosen your grip. You're scaring him." So Steve does, and Clint sits up, tears streaming down his face.

"They recognized me!" he says. "The man who made us and led the catch recognized me from the start." Phil watches as Clint pulls his knees up in a familiar defensive position, wrapping his arms around his knees.

"So he made you watch," Steve says quietly, running his hand up and down Clint's back rhythmically. Clint wrapped his arms around the back of his neck now.

"Yeah," he whispers, and then, "No. I mean—yes, they made me watch. They took us back to that warehouse – a fucking long trip wherever it was, and then they tied me up and gagged me and kept beating me up. Then they started bringing people in. . ." his voice trails off.

"He made you watch because you're an Avenger?" Natasha asks, looking at Phil.

Clint shudders violently and Steve leans forward, not wrapping him up, but just getting closer. Clint shakes his head, hard, and Phil feels his stomach turn. There was more than this. More than just watching.

Clint's voice is rough, low, and halting, but he tells them. "They made me choose whether they killed them fast or killed them slow," he said, looking up and locking eyes with Phil. "Said I was an Avenger, a weapon who never made choices of my own, and now they were going to make me pay by making me choose how those people died."

Natasha rocks back on her heels in surprise, and Steve's hand stops on Clint's back, and Phil just stares.

They made Clint choose. And now he won't choose anything, couldn't, until he found Phil's gun and knew he had one choice left he can make.

Phil wants to look away, wants to go find those people wherever SHIELD has them and tear them apart, limb by limb. Instead, he reaches out for Clint's hands and pulls him up into an embrace and suddenly Clint is crying again, hard, wrecked sobs with frantic words jarring them. "I couldn't choose and they died slow and awful. And then I did choose, and it was just as awful and they died anyway, and then I thought if I choose quick then what if you guys came? What if I told them to give them mercy and a minute after their neck was snapped you guys showed up? What was I supposed to do, Phil? How the fuck was I supposed to choose? They kept bringing people in there and I didn't know what to do!"

And then he loses it in Phil's arms, just weeping and tearing at Phil's shirt with his hands and now Steve and Natasha are there, wrapping him up in their arms from behind and the three of them hold Clint until the sobs die out minutes, seconds, hours later.

Clint is asleep, passed out, and Steve gently lifts him up and sets off carrying him back to the cabin as Phil and Natasha stand there staring after him.

"What do we do now, Natasha?" Phil asks as he reaches down and picks up his gun, flicking the cartridge into his palm and shoving it in his pocket. His voice feels empty, hollow. He doesn't have anything left. He doesn't know the answer to Clint's questions, and in the end they weren't quick enough, they didn't come in time for those people and Clint paid the price for their tardiness.

"You sit with him. You let him scream, and let him sit, and you stay beside him. It's out now. That's a start, right?" She says, gently, putting her hand in his and pulling him toward the cabin.

He walks with her and they find Clint on the large leather couch in the family room of the cabin, still asleep. Steve is sitting on the floor next to him, carding his fingers gently through Clint's hair. He looks up at their entry and stands, tucking the blanket he's thrown over Clint a little tighter around his shoulders and then coming over and leaning into Phil's arm.

"Thanks, Natasha," he says quietly and she offers a small smile.

"I'm not staying long. Thanks for calling me, though," she says to Phil.

He shrugs. "I figured you were close,"

She smiles. "I'll go home this time."

"You don't have to," he says.

"I'll stay until he wakes. He needs you two, though."

"What are we going to do?" Steve says, quietly. "Maybe we should take him back to SHIELD right away. Let the psychologists help."

Phil steps over toward the refrigerator and opens it, pulls out a container of pasta sauce and a container of chicken, holding them both up. "We let him make some easy choices for a few days first."

Steve and Natasha smile.

"We'll try and get his permission to use what he said in a report to Fury and the psych staff and send it off tonight. If they tell us to come straight back we will. But if it's okay with them, we'll stay here. Let him choose what to eat for a couple days. When to sleep. Where to go and what to do. We keep a close eye on him, though."

"Watch for those stares," Steve says.

"Yeah," Phil replies. "Try to pull him out of that, and let him see that some choices are safe."

The three of them agree, Phil sits down to draft a report, and they wait for Clint to wake up.

Phil's report begins with the sentence, "It was two pieces of minutiae that triggered the capture of the SHIELD team and the death of several agents and civilians."

That night, Clint chooses pasta for dinner and then says goodbye to Natasha. He chooses to sleep pressed behind Phil, and in front of Steve, and together they hold him through his nightmares once again. Phil stays awake most of the night, gently stroking Clint's hand that is draped over his waist, and Phil is grateful, and scared, and determined to see Clint through this, to show him the minutiae and try to convince him that there was no right answer, and those choices weren't really his at all.