now normally all of my stories are now cleared through my editor before they reach here,but I was SOOOOOO excited to post this, i couldn't possibly wait.
Disclaimer: While this is the Prologue for "In Which Hawkeye is a Pimp" it will refer to the ending of "Smashed Through the Heart" as you know, all my stories are interconnected and I could not post this until that story was finished.
Epilogue
He felt it before he saw it. A strange tingle in his fingers that reached up his arms and crawled across his chest. He pushed away from the holotable, wondering if somehow there was a shortage in the system setting off a high radio wave frequency. His head swiveled left to look at Skye.
"Do ya feel 'at?" Fitz asked her, rubbing his fingers together. He stayed away from any protruding metal surfaces, worried he may produce a jarring shock.
"I thought I was just crazy." Skye replied, standing from her seat. They both looked around them as if to discover the source. The clouds outside were clear for now, no obvious sign of passing storms. It was unlikely the plane had been hit with a bolt of lightning without them noticing. May was back behind the wheel against all doctors' orders. Her firm opinion was two weeks of convalescence was more than enough for a grazing wound. Everyone with a brain disagreed, but she was holding the gun at the time and they were not.
Ward peeked out of his cabin and looked into the main room. "All right, what did you two science geeks do now?"
Fitz meant to dispel such nonsense at once had he been given the chance. But he wasn't. In fact, the minute Ward threw his accusation, the entire outer room exploded in a kaleidoscope of rainbow light. The plane drop in the sky. Warning klaxons sounded and the team was thrown from their feet into whatever nailed down object was closest. A surely cursing May fought the controls to straighten the plane out from the right angled barrel roll that sent the bus spiraling toward the ocean 35,000 feet straight down. Air blasted outward, tossing chairs, papers, laptops, and everything not secured in a tornadic vortex.
Ward grabbed the wall to his cabin and dragged himself forward. He drew his weapon, having no real idea what he was going to do with it. It seemed like . . . was it possible? A man was in the center of the internal storm. He was kneeling, then standing, and then as if an invisible switch was flipped in the off position, the world was normal again. The magnetic storm disappeared, the plane righted itself and began to climb again, and in the midst of the blown apart main room stood a single man.
Clint Barton turned slightly to take in the wreckage around him. "Well, that was a first." He muttered.
Fitz shot up from behind the table where he was thrown. "Agent Barton!"
Clint patted down his clothes. They were strange, a pair of peculiar trousers and a tunic-like top with long black riding coat over top. He was nothing like the Avenger who had left them weeks ago. As his hands passed over the fabric little sparkles of dust faded away from him. To Fitz, it looked like the diamonds of a thousand stars.
"That be me." Barton said. "Forgive the entrance. I did not realize you were in flight. Heimdall likes to think himself clever sometimes."
Skye released the death hold on the back of a swivel chair and slowly rose to look at him. "You're back? Like, you just came back from Asgard?"
"Where else should I have been? And I thought it prudent to come here directly rather than follow Tony back."
"Why are you talking like that?"
Clint gave her a strange expression. Then realized what she meant. "Ah, sorry. Asgard has that affect. I will—I'll return to proper Midgardian-speak soon. I wasn't there long."
Fitz picked up a few computer tablets that hit the floor in the whirlwind. "Not long? Ya were gone a good three weeks near like."
"Time on Asgard is much altered to here. I was only there a few days to assist in the funeral procession and life celebration." Clint explained. He turned slightly to see Ward approaching behind him. "Someone is off their crutches."
"Didn't take me long, Barton." Ward said coldly.
Clint smirked. "There be the Mr. Smiles I remember. Did you ever grow that molar back I knocked out of your face?"
"How's that left kidney feel?" Ward growled back.
Skye attempted to slide between them and keep the clearly incompatible agents from going for each other when her job as a distraction was taken over by Melinda May. She blasted out of the hallway ready and raring to raise pure Hell on whoever screwed up her flight plan.
"Fitz, I swear if you decided to test that magnetic—" She was shouting already before she appeared in the entryway. Seeing Clint brought her up short. She blinked at him, no doubt trying to understand how on the planet he managed to get on her bus without her ever knowing it.
"Barton." She stated.
"Hey, Cookies." He said.
Her eyes narrowed at him. "Really? Are you still calling me Fortune Cookies?"
"You said the next time I called you that you were going to skewer me with your chopsticks, I just wanted to see if you remembered."
The standoff that once existed between Ward and Clint, now shifted to May and Clint instead. They stared at each other for a few moments before, at last, May caved. She strode forward and extended her hand toward his. While Clint knew that displays of affection like this were as rare as a rainbow striped zebra, he allowed her the character slip. They shook hands. She let go and stepped back.
"Thank you." She said.
He continued to smirk. "Oh, I believe that hurt."
"Not as much as you will when I throw you off my plane."
"Will I at least get a parachute, Calvary?"
Her eyes rolled in her head. She retreated back toward her cockpit. "This makes us even, Hawk."
"Do not think that I don't know that." Clint said. He smiled at Skye and winked. "She ever tell you it was me she pulled out of the no win scenerio? I called her the Calvary for it."
Skye's jaw dropped, she meant to say something but a voice across from them cut her off.
"Hawkeye?"
Barton looked away from her to the figure descending the spiral staircase. Phil stood there, the same stunned look that everyone else bore was in full display on his face.
"How did you get here?" Phil asked.
"Transdimmensional portal through the Bifrost guided with the sword of Heimdall to be specific." Clint said. He pointed up. "Can we talk, sir?"
:(:):(:):
Clint stood by Coulson's book shelf like a child. He couldn't resist the touching, playing, and fiddling with every small knickknack which received a coveted place of honor among Coulson's things. The little tin plane he collected from a World War II friend of Steve Rogers. There was a hacky sack from the time they spent in Khufar together. A few arrow heads he'd unearthed from New Mexico when Thor first hit earth's soil. He gave one of them to Clint a long time ago. It was strange to think just how many years it had been.
"Quitting?" Coulson repeated, the shock not hidden from his voice.
Clint picked up a slide ruler and angled away from the shelf as he held it. He was facing Coulson now, but looking at the object in his hands.
"Yes, quitting. I'm leaving SHIELD."
Coulson had been in his chair, but he stood now. He crossed his desk and perched on the corner, facing his friend. "After all that? After everything you just did for us? Clint, if this is about the person you lost—"
Clint put the ruler back on the shelf and looked up. He wanted Coulson to see the determination in his eyes. "Frigga didn't want me to leave SHIELD. She would want me to help, however I can. Bruce asked me to leave."
"Banner?!"
The archer nodded. "We found something. Someone very close to him, she was SHIELD, assigned to infiltrate Stark Tower, get close to Bruce, and steal secrets. She changed her mind on that. She told me she worked for Blackstone. That Blackstone is operating within SHIELD. Bruce, Stark, everyone agrees. I'm leaving. Someone who understands how SHIELD operates needs to be on the outside looking in. That's why I wanted to come here and see you first."
Coulson looked at him sadly. For as long as either could remember, SHIELD was everything to Clint. For Bruce Banner to ask him to leave it all behind was not only shocking as a request, but that fact that he agreed to it was even more distressing.
"Are you sure?"
"It's already set." Clint said. "I'm going to be a liaison for a little while, work on a few small missions with Steve and Nat, they are staying in SHIELD, but at a certain point I'm going off grid. Deep cover. You won't be able to reach me when I do."
Coulson wasn't sure what to say. It was obvious this plan was already well into motion and there were no words he could conjure that would work to convince Clint out of it. Perhaps it was for the best. Clint was always good about finding the truth of things. He could read people, situations; he knew things others couldn't come up with even though he never finished high school. If Clint was determined to leave and follow this Blackstone thread, the least Phil could do was help him.
Phil walked around his desk and pulled open a familiar drawer. When he was feeling especially nostalgic, he liked to peruse these files and remind him of the good he'd done in the world pre-T.A.H.I.T.I. He found the right file and extracted it.
"What I'm going to show you doesn't exist outside this room." Phil explained.
Clint straightened. Phil placed the file on his desk and Clint approached to read the top.
Agent Clint Barton
"Hawkeye"
Blackstone Project Analysis
The archer pulled the file toward himself and flipped through the first few pages quickly. He recognized his own handwriting immediately. Two lists of names, one was eerily familiar, a list of all the men he'd killed on the Helicarrier under Loki's possession. The second was in his own writing. Many of the names matched, though there were more he had listed in his own hand. Some were crossed out. There was only one reason he would have done that.
"I can at least help you start back where you were before." Coulson told him.
Clint looked up. "I remembered this. Some of it. Like a dream I could never quite get. What is this? How did I forget it?"
Phil returned to his seat with Clint pulling up a chair directly beside him. He slid the file onto his lap and began turning all of the pages.
"Fury ordered it. When you came out of it, the possession I mean, you were about as fried as Selvig was. Fury wanted to spare you a little of that, and try to mellow you down too. They apparently gave you half a hit of something called the G.H. serum, part of a T.A.H.I.T.I. project that is now defunct. They replace your memoirs with something else. Something they think you can handle."
Clint looked up. "I don't remember anything else."
"A small hit." Phil reminded him. "Trust me. The only reason I'm walking around now is the mass slap they gave me with the stuff and . . ." he shook his head. "Let's just leave that alone for now. What matters is if you are leaving SHIELD to investigate these men, you are going to need all the research you already did on them. Fury didn't trust it to anyone else, but after all that happened in New York this dropped to a priority ten, if that."
"Tony couldn't find these files. We knew they were part of my personnel entry but we couldn't even find a ghost of where it may have been and got deleted."
Phil sighed. "It was never digitalized for that reason. Anything anyone knows about Blackstone is in those handwritten pages. Fury didn't know how deep it went so he didn't want to risk someone knowing what you were involved in."
Clint closed the file. "I'm trying to pretend that you didn't tell me someone wiped my brain after New York and failed to follow up on a team of sophisticated infiltrators."
Phil shrugged. "I'm trying to do that every day."
Their eyes met and for some time they sat in the collective silence. It was strange how much they wanted this moment. It was them again. The father and prodigal son meeting together and no words were enough to fill all the things they wanted to say to each other. No time together would be long enough to make up what they had lost.
"It'll be weird thinking of you without a SHIELD patch on your arm." Coulson admitted.
Clint nodded, "Yeah, well, I owe them a lot. But I've got to follow Bruce on this."
"He's right to ask it of you." Coulson told him. "Don't hold it against him. I don't want you to leave, not really, but if it's to help with this, and if it keeps you safe, then I want you to do it. When do you go dark?"
The archer's head shook left to right. "They haven't told me yet. Steve and Banner are working out a good time frame. A couple months maybe. Expect a fall out between Stark and me. I'll run off. And that'll be it. When I think it's safe, I'll contact you and let you know I'm all right."
"How long will you be off the grid?"
To that Clint could only shrug. "As long as it takes to get to the bottom of this." He set a finger on the Blackstone file. "This goes deep, Phil, I think you know it as much as I do. And there's something else."
Phil's eyebrow raised.
"I still don't know how it all fits. She said something else, the agent Bruce loved. She said Hydra. It was as if she meant that Blackstone and Hydra were working together. Does that mean anything to you?"
"No, I'm afraid it doesn't."
"Us either. I need to follow these on the outside. If there is still an agency working in SHIELD it's too risky to stay an agent while I investigate."
"Natasha and Steve are staying inside? On the ground?"
"They're going to feed me info as needed. I'll tail them once in a while, or other agents. I'm sorry I can't say more. I will always trust you, sir, but I don't know your team and I know Fury likes to bug his toys." Clint raised a hand and gestured around them.
Coulson indicated he understood. He decided to change the subject. "The funeral?"
Clint lifted the file and dropped it on the desk. He leaned back in his chair and tried to relax. "I helped how I could. Veurr, the captain of the guard now, was happy to see me again. Odin was melancholy but who could blame him? God, Thor was torn to pieces. I had a hero's welcome. The people do love their champion of Midgard, Brother of Asgard, and all those other titles they decide to ordain me with. Arrow was happy to see his siblings and sire."
"What about you?" Phil asked sincerely. His gaze was fixed steadily on Clint, breaking through that calm, diverting face he put on.
The right shoulder shrugged. His fingers came together and he began to pick-pick-pick at the pin point needle scars.
"Fine. I didn't know her that well. I was with her a few times. She saved my life and all. But that's it."
Phil leaned forward and placed his hands over Clint's. The archer stopped picking.
"I'm sorry, Clint." He said gently.
Clint bobbed his head. "It's nice to have you back, Phil."
:(:):(:):
Ward stalked quietly away from the door. He had a few calls to start making regarding this very difficult development with Clint Barton. The last thing he needed was that archer to start peeling back the onion layers of Blackstone and unearth what Ward's S.O. was trying so desperately to keep under wraps. Hydra had its own plans in progress and letting that agent walk out of SHIELD and start poking into Hydra's secret information gathering ventures was no good. He had no problem taking out a second kill order on the agent if necessary, all he wanted was the clearance.
He ducked below the main level of the plane into the corridors below by the stock rooms. He slipped into the supply closet and keyed the speed dial on his cell phone.
"Yes this is Agent Grant Ward looking for Agent Garrett? Priority one." He waited while the line connected. After a characteristic click, he began again. "Sir, is this line secure?" the man on the other line responded. "I have information that Phil Coulson was not the only one involved in the T.A.H.I.T.I. trial. I also know that Agent Barton is planning to reopen the Blackstone investigation. I don't think I have to tell you how bad that can be. Would you like me to take care of it?"
He waited, listening to his C.O.'s all powerful reasoning. He nodded to no one at the various points. He didn't like it, but Garrett was right, as always.
"Understood, sir. But if the Barton brother wants to pick Hawkeye up, he has to do it soon. He's planning to drop off radar. I'll wait for your instructions."
Ward pressed the button to end the call and slipped his phone back into his pocket. While he would have enjoyed the satisfaction of strangling Clint Barton to death with his own two hands, Garrett was right. Given the new intel, it was important to keep Charles Barton happy. If he wanted Clint alive if only to torture the T.A.H.I.T.I. right out of him, then Ward would take a step back and let the chips fall where they may. Besides, Charles was more sadistic in his need to end Barton than Ward could ever muster.
Did Ward feel he owed Barton one the way May and Clint obviously kept score? No, not really. Barton had been a thorn in his side longer than Ward could think. Coulson tried to make Ward see the good in Barton not long ago, and while it was impressive the things Clint had accomplished, it did nothing to change Ward's true opinion. Barton was a loose cannon who killed a lot of Hydra men Ward considered friends. This was going to be a sweet sort of revenge for him. If he was only allowed to sit back and watch the firestorm, then that was enough.
If there was one thing to be said of the future now, it was this: so much more was still left to be written into history.
ok, so that IS the final ending!
stay tuned to the new stories coming:
Arrow's Little Hits: Clint has quit SHIELD, what trouble does he and arrow get into with all that free time on their hands? series of oneshots about Clint and his little dire wolf
These Memories: Clint wakes up to a reality he has trouble remembering. Natasha is his wife, he has twin boys, and he runs an archery range in his spare time. The only problem? He can no longer use his bow. Something is amiss in this wonderful fantasy life he is leading and when those memories break away he returns to the real world: Steve and he are being held captive by none other than Clint's only brother: Charles Barton
Unnamed Alfheimr: Don't want to give out too many details yet, but takes place at the downfall of SHIELD. Clint is whisked to Alfenheim where instantly his life is in jeopardy.
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