Lunch passed well enough, with Clint not talking much but being highly amused by the Stark and Banner Science Bro Show. He was certain that a manic Stark would be the thing most guaranteed to set off the Big Guy, but Banner actually laughed-when he wasn't sighing and pinching his nose. If Clint hadn't personally seen Tony mooning over Pepper, he'd be wondering if there weren't other reasons Banner was so relaxed in Tony's presence.
Eventually, Banner looked at his watch. "Lunch break's over, guys. Genetic manipulation waits for no man."
Stark beamed. "Going down to the lab to see what's on the slab?"
Banner gave him a narrow look. "I'm afraid you're the one who would look good in a corset and fishnets, Tony, not me."
An absolutely filthy grin went across Stark's face.
"Do not show me pictures."
The man pouted like a two-year-old at naptime. In a split-second, though, Stark was checking his own watch and looking like a grown-up. "Yeah, work. I want to look at those SHIELD contracts we have, Pep should have some preliminaries by now. And R&D is probably feeling safe, I should fix that."
Clint shook his head. When you were rich, none dared call it madness.
Stark followed Banner to the elevator, then looked back over his shoulder at Clint. "The tables up here have a better display than what you have in your place, if you want to do more research you can do it up here. Raid the fridge if you want."
"Thanks, man." He waited till they were gone, then grabbed a stool from the bar and dragged it to the table with his displays. "OK, Jarvis, how much display real estate am I working with here?"
Every flat surface in the big gathering room lit up, the Stark logo hanging in the air.
Clint grinned. "Good lord. Yeah, I don't need that much. Give me what's in front of me. and pull up the reports with confirmed or suspected Soldier presence. Even if it's somebody having a nightmare after drinking three quarts of vodka, I want to see it."
Rows of files began appearing. Clint settled comfortably on his stool and began reading.
Several hours later, he had files open on all the display surfaces and was walking back and forth between them, dictating notes to another screen.
Reliable sources tracked the Winter Soldier back almost to World War II, some Soviet superweapon, probably the fruit of one of the myriad captured German scientists. The name was supposed to be a reference to Russia's greatest ally, General Winter, the winter weather that had stymied Russia's enemies from medieval armies to Hitler. The Soldier appeared in reports every few years, with the longest hiatus being eleven years. But that was just appearances SHIELD had heard of, and the reports weren't always reliable. One of the kills generally attributed to him was actually one of Clint's.
The targets did not follow a pattern. There was a drug lord in Turkey, a pro-government legislator in Central America, a separatist in Sri Lanka. It looked like he was working for whomever the highest bidder was, and his kills were often messy. There were near-magical surgical strikes, but there were also blood-soaked scenes full of collateral damage. Clint remembered a scene in Peru, he'd been sent in to take out a Shining Path chief in his home village, but when he got there, the whole village was burning, and the chief's widow was screaming over his body and those of her children. The Winter Soldier looked like some cross between absolute professional and sower of chaos.
It was the politics of the missions that Clint couldn't figure out. An assassin with the skill of the Soldier would not normally be out for bid to anybody who could pony up the cash. The top people always had things they wouldn't do, people they wouldn't work with; even if the Soldier was indentured to some organization, that group would have an agenda.
None of this told him where the Soldier was or who had hired him to go after Fury. "Jarvis, has SHIELD given any updates on their so-called assassination attempt? Or word on Fury?"
"There has been no mention of Director Fury. Updates on the issue are coming from Agent Jasper Sitwell and continue speaking of an attack on a top official of a still unnamed African nation. Most of the African nations have released statements saying none of their officials have been targeted by any terrorist activity, but commentary is focused on trying to decide which of the statements are truth and which are cover ups."
Clint rubbed his forehead. "I wonder why Jasper is pushing that cover story. Maybe that's what Fury wants. Maximum confusion for maximum cover. God, I hope Tasha finds something."
The elevator door swished open. "Wow," said Pepper as she entered the room. "And I thought Tony took up space when he was working."
"Oh, sorry, Pepper-Jarvis, save it, shut it down-"
"No, wait, I'm sorry, you don't have to. That was being impressed, not a complaint." She walked up to the screens, scanning the information. Jarvis had paused in closing down the screens, acknowledging a higher authority in Stark Tower, but this was data from SHIELD's classified servers, and Clint didn't think he should be letting Pepper see this stuff. She stopped at the display of an operation in Thailand. "I *thought* that was awfully convenient," she murmured. "But nobody seemed particularly smug when he died."
OK, so maybe the CEO of Stark Industries had more geopolitical savvy than he thought. But he probably still should have stopped her before she turned and saw the full-on shot of the Winter Soldier striding towards Fury's downed SUV.
"My god," she whispered. "Who is that?"
"Pretty damned classified. Jarvis, please shut this down."
Pepper ducked her head and smiled. "I'm sorry, Clint. Yes, Jarvis, go ahead."
"Yes, Ms. Potts." The screens blinked out.
Clint shrugged shamefacedly. "I guess I forgot whose house I'm in and who gives the ultimate orders."
"That would be her," Tony said as he appeared from the elevator. "You're off early, light of my heart."
She raised an amused eyebrow at him. "So are you-unless you're wandering around up here looking for your favorite screwdriver or something."
He grinned. "You are always my favorite-"
"I can leave if you're going to do that!" Clint said loudly. "In fact, I need a break myself. I'll leave you to your home in peace."
Pepper sort-of freed herself from the encompassing embrace of her billionaire. "No, Clint, stay for dinner, I can control him."
"Oh, please, control me."
"Tony."
Clint had to smile, even while it hurt to watch lovers snarking at each other. "Honestly, I've been staring at screens for too long, I need to get out and move. I'll grab something out on the street." He paused, expecting a Stark-esque innuendo, but Stark had buried his face in Pepper's hair and didn't seem to be paying attention to anything else.
Pepper raised a hand to Stark's cheek and gave Clint a smile. Clint nodded and silently left.
He grabbed his wallet and a few walk-around weapons and headed out into the street. It looked like the workday was over, with crowds of office drones filling the sidewalk. That didn't stop him from noticing the tail that he picked up a hundred feet from the Stark Tower doors. He didn't recognize the woman, nor the man she swapped off with two blocks later. They looked like SHIELD minions, and the bitter ball in his gut grew. He was a fucking Avenger, wasn't he allowed to hang out in the building that still just had a giant A as an identifier?
Dammit, maybe he should just do what everyone wanted and resign from SHIELD. He'd only stayed for Natasha and Phil, and Tasha seemed to be doing well kicking ass at Captain America's side. Apparently they even had their own snark, with Tasha continually trying to find Steve dates and Steve putting her off. And Phil-
Maybe he should let that go. He knew Phil was alive and well. Agent Phil Coulson always had his reasons for everything, and he was SHIELD's man first, despite the orphans he collected. There were bigger things going on, someone big was after Fury. Clint's mancrush was embarrassingly insignificant compared to an attack on the Director of SHIELD.
He always overstayed his welcome, ignoring the signals that would let him get out without blood and tears. Could he be an Avenger without SHIELD? It was always assumed that he'd do SHIELD work unless something Avengers-worthy came up, but alien invasions weren't that common on the ground. Things did keep cropping up, though, like the Mandarin and the Abomination and weird shit Thor couldn't manage to keep on his own side of the fence. Maybe he should call Xavier and the Richards, see what work there might be for a freelance so-called-superhero. It worked for that guy called Deadpool.
The tail behind him paused to look at the display in a cell phone shop three-quarters of a block behind. A guy who had been reading a paper dumped the paper in a trash can and started down the street after Clint.
Fuck it.
Clint ducked into an alley and sprinted to the dumpster 50 feet down. He jumped onto it and leaped up to the fire escape on the floor above. He skipped the stairs and hauled himself up to the sixth floor before his new tail even made it to the alley mouth. Clint dropped flat to the platform of the fire escape, against the building wall among cat-pee-stained rags, and went still, watching his tail.
The new guy looked desperately around the alley, then scanned the rooftops. He spotted the dumpster and the fire escape and scoped that route out quickly. The shadows and the garbage on the fire escape masked the shape of a motionless, prone figure. There was an open window one floor down and an easy jump away from the fire escape. Well, an easy jump for Hawkeye. The new guy stared at that window as he pulled out his phone to make a desperate call. After a call where he did more listening and wincing than talking, New Guy ducked back out of the alley.
Clint didn't move. Motion just inside the window he was lying next to caught his eye. He turned his head carefully. A man in a boring suit, seated at a card table, was staring at him, hands raised above a small pile of white powder, a razor blade held delicately in one hand. Clint waggled his eyebrows at him, then slowly turned his attention back to the alley.
New Guy cautiously leaned back around the corner of the building, scanning the alley. Full points for checking to see if the quarry had broken cover, but Clint was a past master at hunting from a blind. Fortunately only Tasha was aware of that long stakeout where a pigeon had actually gone to sleep perched on Clint's head. Pigeons crapped in their sleep. New Guy visibly swore, then disappeared again.
Clint jumped to his feet, startling the man with the powder, and pulled himself up the last two floors of fire escape and onto the roof. The building backed onto a narrower alley, and a running start made the jump over to the building on the other side easy. A short parkour run brought him to a crowded Jewish deli and a kickass pastrami on wheat with extra German mustard. He rested his mind in the silence of a good adrenaline rush as he ate.
When it was full dark, he took the rooftops back to Stark Tower, until the heights of the buildings became more than he wanted to deal with. Maybe he could get Stark to recreate those web thingies Spider-Man used, that would rock, to swing from building to building. He dropped into an alley near the Tower and strolled out into the street to head for the main entrance. Half a block later, an allegedly homeless man in a doorway jerked and stared at him. Clint actually heard him mutter, "Dammit, Barton just showed up," into the collar of his hoodie. Within minutes he had two tails tracking him to the Tower. These two tails seemed to be closing awfully quickly, so he picked up his own pace to make sure he reached the Tower first.
Jarvis was his usual efficient self. "Welcome back, Mr. Barton," the speaker at the front entrance said, followed by the click of the door unlocking.
"Evening, Jarvis." Clint slipped inside, with the door closing behind him a little quicker than normal. The tails were left on the sidewalk, fuming.
He crossed the lobby to the elevators, waving at Ahmed the Security Guard, who waved back. The elevator to Avengers Land opened as he approached.
"Which floor, sir?" Jarvis asked.
"Is the way clear to the helipad? I don't want to bother Stark and Pepper if they're still having dinner or whatever." Especially the whatever.
"Sir and Ms. Potts have retired for the evening. The common floor is unoccupied."
"Take me there." The elevator went up.
He wanted the night and the sky around him to keep the thoughts away. There was nothing he could do on either his Phil-hunt-and he still wasn't sure if he should continue with that-or with what was going on with Fury. This was the worst part of his job, waiting for events to evolve. If he had a target, he could sit in perfect stillness for hours, if not days. But he was a tactician, not a strategist. Give him a goal, he'd find the best way to it. Don't ask him to pick the goal. If he didn't try to silence his brain, he'd keep flailing around in his head, looking for something to aim at.
The common floor was quiet, lit only by some sconces on the walls and the stand-by lights on various electronics. The lights of midtown Manhattan were bright in the windows.
"I still don't have the code for the door," Clint said.
"That will not be a problem, sir." The door to the helipad clicked, and he pushed it open and went out into the night air. "Shall I leave the landing lights on?"
"No, turn them off unless they're needed."
"Very good, sir. Please be careful of the edge."
"I will."
He walked out to the farthest edge of the helipad and crouched down again, leaning against one of the railing uprights for extra stability. The winds were heavier tonight than they had been at dawn the other day.
The City That Never Sleeps was wide awake and bustling. Streams of headlights flowed through the streets, horns and sirens floated up, and very faintly in the background was the murmur of people. He could see some of the theater signs on Broadway, and Times Square was a small sun of its own. He liked the idea of being a gargoyle on Tony Stark's cathedral to his will and ego.
He didn't know how long he'd been in his height-trance when his phone gave the crystal tone of a call from Natasha. His hand moved without his brain having to function to pull out his phone. "Hi there." He frowned at the faint, uneven breathing he heard. "Hello?"
" . . . Clint?"
He got to his feet and headed for the door. "Where are you?"
"Washington." Her voice was faint, more fragile even than the moment when she admitted she wanted to come in from the cold. "Don't come."
"The hell I'm not-"
"Fury's dead."
He rocked to a stop in the middle of the helipad. "No. He got away."
"I saw him flatline in the OR. I touched his body. He was cold."
Clint slowly sank into a crouch. "How?"
"He was at Steve's apartment. The Winter Soldier shot him through the window."
A thousand questions spun through Clint's mind. Had anyone at SHIELD been looking for the Soldier, somewhere that Jarvis hadn't gotten his fingers into? Had the tracking missed him? Or just ignored him?
"Mr. Barton," said the speaker next to the door, "an all-hands alert has just been issued by SHIELD. It regards Director Fury."
Finally, officialdom was admitting things had happened. A bit fucking late. "Yeah, Jarvis, I know. Tasha, why won't you let me come?"
The barest cold wash of a Russian accent tinged her voice. "I'm not sure where I'm going, where I'll be. You be where I know you are, where you're safe."
"Tasha, I don't do safe."
"I've lost Phil, I've lost Nick, I am not losing you!"
He had to put a hand down to the tarmac to brace himself. "Don't make me lose you, either."
She took a breath. "I'll find you, solnyshka moyo."
"If I don't find you first."
She hung up without a word.
After a moment, Jarvis spoke. "Do you want to hear the alert, sir?"
He took a deep breath and straightened. "Better interrupt Stark and Pepper first. They're going to want to hear this, too."
"Yes, sir."
Clint put his phone away and went to the door. He leaned against the handle for several moments, getting his mind in order, trying to get his thoughts around the idea of a fallen colossus and the collapse of his world.