Just for a moment I'd like to talk about the sheer hell I've been through in the last few weeks writing this chapter. I wrote it one way…didn't like it. Went another direction and hated it and then wrote pages and pages that I LOVED and my computer crashed. I'm sure all together I wrote about 50,000 words. So for everyone who is still here and still wanting to read, thank you so much for that. I about gave up on myself there for awhile. Fingers crossed nothing like that happens to me ever again! 😉

Chapter Ten

That was it.

When Erin disappeared from sight, the door shutting hard in her wake and Clint was left alone in the apartment, still reeling from the events of the whole morning, he realized he was fucking fed up. The black outs and emerging memories had bad enough, almost getting murdered by two unknown goons had sucked too, but then dragging a girl into the clusterfuck, one that he barely knew, unleashing a torrent of shit on her and then failing her when she tried to connect with him over it added a heaping dose of guilt and shame onto his insanity.

He was fucking done. The proverbial last straw had been thrown in and that was it. That was fucking it.

He should have left that morning, shoes, or no shoes, and saved her the pain. All of the crap that had gone down in the last few hours was on him, right down to the hole he had punched in her bedroom wall and he needed to fix it. He was done being a prisoner to the mind control, he was done with guys breaking into his hotel room and trying to put bullets in his body, he was done with hiding, he was done with hurting Erin.

He was really done with hurting Erin. Hearing her words, watching her break down in front of him, had ripped his heart in half and shot an unfamiliar shock of pain inside of him. And even though she was now gone, the feeling still lingered and the image of her standing in front of him, bearing her soul to him was permanently etched into his mind. He wasn't going to let this get worse.

He l…well he liked her way too much to do that.

Driven now, he grabbed his shoes, put them on and stuffed his wallet into the back of his jeans. He got the guns once again from the dresser and put both in his waist band and grabbed an old FDNY cap on the hook by the door before leaving the apartment. Stealing was fucked up, but he needs something to keep the huge gash on his head covered. He was halfway down the staircase, out of the building and away from furthering the damage he had caused when he heard a crash and a scream…and then more screaming. He was turning back and heading towards the source before he even realized it. It was all instinct and engaged senses and he followed it fast. It wasn't coming from Erin's apartment, but from the floor below it.

"You piece of shit!" he heard as he turned the corner. The owner of the angry voice was a tall slim blonde, early twenties for sure, wearing denim shorts and a loose green shirt. She was barefoot, holding her flip flops in her hand and directing her anger towards Brain who stood in his apartment doorway wearing gym shorts and a long sleeve shirt that had either seen better days or had been a recent victim the pissed off blonde.

When his eyes cut to Clint, a visible wince crashed across his face. He turned his attention back to the girl, "Look, baby I—"

"Don't you "Baby" me!" she screamed and then, with some pretty admirable accuracy, launched her last flip flop at Brian's face and hit the target dead on. "A month! We're together a fucking month! You say "Oh I love you!" and you can't stop thinking about me and then you can't even remember my damn name?!"

Brian rubbed at the fresh red mark on his cheek. "Okay, that doesn't mean I don't love you."

Clint found himself biting back a laugh. The knowledge that he had a lot of dramatic bullshit going on was still in his mind, but what was happening in front of him right now was pretty damned hilarious and a welcome distraction. As he stood there containing his laughter though the blonde's eyes flamed and she lunged towards Brian with hands out, ready to strangle. Clint stepped in fast and caught her.

"Douche Bag!" she spat, struggling against Clint's block, "I will end you! I'm going to choke you to death on your own tiny di—"

"Okay, now!" Clint cut in. He didn't need to hear the rest of her threat to know where that graphic description was going. "I think he gets it. Brian, get um…" he loosed his hold on the girl to look face her, "What's your name?"

A face that would normally be pretty cute glared at him with clear thoughts of murder. "Ask Fuck Boy over there!"

"Okay," he turned back to Brian, "Name?"

Brian looked at Clint half panicked. After a long moment of struggling and growing increasingly weak under Clint's own glare though he dared to say, "I want to say…Julie?"

"JAMIE!" and she lunged for him again, forcing Clint to be the barrier between the two again.

"Brian, give Jamie her shoes!" Clint ordered, "Jamie, ugh…make better decisions about your footwear and the guys you date, okay?"

Jamie shot Clint another glare and pushed herself out of his grasp. She snatched away the thin flip flops that Brian meekly held out to her and grabbed her purse from the floor. "This isn't over." She directed at Brian, "I'm going to tell everyone about the asshole that you are!"

The threat was immature and clearly didn't hold water, but Brian cowered back, still amused, anyway. Clint stayed by the door as a sort of protective wall for Brian until Jamie finally disappeared around the corner of the hall, the heavy door to the stairs slamming behind her. When he finally looked over at Brian he saw the amused look from just seconds before had faded and in its place was one that seemed to be a mix of exhaustion and nausea; obvious Hungover-ness or whatever you call it. Clint wasn't a fucking dictionary. Despite it though, Brian forced a lopsided smile onto his face,

"God, I could get used to having you around. Would you have gone all Robin Hood on her ass if I gave you the okay?"

Clint stared at him for a second before finding his wit among the mess that had just occurred. Finally, he shook his head, "I owe you a lot, Brian, but not that much."

Brian snorted. "Yeah, well, worth a try huh?" he turned back into his apartment. "Want a beer?" he called back.

"Um…" forced to follow Brian's disappearing form to keep the conversation going, he stepped inside the apartment and shut the door. "Are you sure a beer is what you need right now?" His tone was full of old man judgement, but he knew he was grateful for the continued distraction that pulled him farther and farther away from leaving.

"Best thing I know to cure a hangover." Brian called back to him. Clint found the living room, but Brian's voice was clearly coming from the kitchen on the other side of it. His head appeared a few seconds later as he stood up from the open fridge door, two bottles of Sam Adams in his hands.

"You look like you're about to puke all over the place." Clint told the truth as Brian approached and handed off the bottle.

"Yeah already did that this morning on Jessica so I'm not too worried." He went to the couch, covered in laundry and empty popcorn bags and pushed it all to the floor so he could sit down. As he popped the lid off and threw it to the side, he gave Clint a silent go-ahead to the same.

The apartment though similar in layout to Erin's clearly belonged to a single guy. The couch in the living room was leather, probably something fairly decent like Ikea leather at some point, but now it was too faded and worn to tell. Large sheets had been tacked to the window as makeshift curtains and the only kind of décor on the walls were two posters and a calendar from two years ago. The only thing he could see that had been given any amount of attention was the 86 inch flat screen TV mounted on the wall and the PlayStation 4 connected to it.

Clint opened the beer he didn't really want and finally sat down. He took a drink as he watched Brian. He still wore the shirt with the torn neck, but his amused expression from the hall was gone, in its place was one of pale exhaustion. He pressed the conversation forward though,

"So what's the good word from upstairs? Where's Erin?"

The mention of her made Clint swallow big a bitter taste of a nauseous guilt. "Work." He managed to reply after a few seconds.

"And I didn't get called up to babysit? Nice. So you must not only look better, you must feel better too?"

"Yeah, thanks." Despite himself now, Clint found his body sliding down onto the other side of the couch and took another few drinks of beer. The two sat in silence for a long time, drinking, taking in the non-existent atmosphere around them before Clint finally let it out. "I need to get out of here, man."

"I doubt Erin gave her approval for that." Brian said after a good gulp from the bottle.

"No, no she didn't." Clint took a drink. A long swig of the cheap beer was better than nothing he supposed. "We talked this morning and um…I just don't think she needs me around."

From the corner of his eyes Clint saw Brian tense and pull the beer bottle away from his lips. He slowly brought it down and rested it against his leg, twirling the head of the bottle in thought for a long moment while staring ahead. "She told you huh?"

Clint nodded, "Yeah." The silence between them said the rest.

"I figured she might." He shook his head as the atmosphere between faded into the dark discussion. "It's a lot to take in. She told you everything?"

"Yeah, all of it, well I think so anyway. That's what it seemed like."

Brian struggled for the words that came next. "Suicides?"

Clint simply looked back at him. Acknowledging the subject just didn't seem right.

Brian nodded. "Yeah, well you're one of the few then. She doesn't tell anyone, hell she hasn't even tell her own parents." He shook his head in disapproval, "Didn't tell the Air Force, she wouldn't have even said anything to me if I hadn't walked in on her the last time she tried She just doesn't tell anyone. Just keeps it in and drags it around with her like some dead animal on her back." He paused and then took another drink. "She tells herself she's dealt with it, but all she's doing is non- consistently taking the anti-depressants that the military throws at her like candy and being a dedicated workaholic."

"How did she do it?"

"First time, pills. That was a few months after she got home from Afghanistan." The truth he spoke was clearly painful and added another shade of pale to his face. "I feel stupid because I didn't catch the signs at the time. I don't know, she like came home, we all met her at the airport; me, my parents, hers, Mike—"

"Mike?"

"Then boyfriend."

Clint nodded, acknowledging a slight sting that quickly faded against the emotional havoc Brian's words were having on his heart and mind.

"Yeah well anyway. A few weeks went by, I thought we were kind of settling back into life. It was her second tour so I knew how things went, ya know? She slept a lot, started back at the hospital and worked a lot and never really came into the bar, but I just thought it was an adjustment. Then she breaks up with Mike. They had been together a couple of years, but he hadn't been around for the first tour and I figured it was just one of those things, ya know? It's hard, right? You hear about military relationships busting up all the time, I thought that was what had happened. Mike was a good guy, he's from Williamsburg, he's a cop and they were good for one another, but I didn't even think her breaking up with him was anything more than just relationship shit." He shook his head, his expression darkening, "I kick myself for that every day."

Clint swallowed back, catching the clear pain that Brian felt over something that hadn't been his fault.

"Anyway, "he took a breath, "She took the pills a couple nights after the break-up. I was right downstairs and didn't even know. I don't know what it was, but she said she threw it all right back up. Spent the next twelve hours on the bathroom floor alternating between barfing and passing out."

"Fuck…" Clint muttered.

"Yep and even in the days and weeks after, I didn't see it."

"That's more common than you think, man." Clint could speak from experience on that one.

Brian nodded. "Second time was with my dads .45. My parents live a few streets down and with hers living upstate and all of us being so close, she was over there often enough, had a key and all that. It's her place just as much as it's mine or theirs. I'm sure she just went in at some point and got it out my dads closet. I was working the bar that night again and needed to come up here for something and decided to go to her place before going back down. Didn't even knock, because I never knock and I walked right in on her holding the thing and I just knew. It hit me like a fucking bag of bricks." He swallowed against the painful memory. "I didn't even think, I just got it away from her and threw it down the garbage shoot. My dad still doesn't know where the damn thing is."

Clint absorbed the memory with a painful swallow. "She hasn't told anyone else?"

"There's an older guy at the hospital, he's a "sometimes" patient, he knows. Hell if I know why, but no one other than myself and now you. She hasn't said anything to anyone and she's sworn me to secrecy too. I guess since she told you that gives me permission though."

"The Air Force doesn't know anything?"

Brian shook his head. "Nope. They put her through some mandatory counseling when she got back and whenever she's active they give her "just in case" pills, or that's what it seems like to me, but other than that, no. They just assume everything is fine and she keeps doing her one weekend a month, two weeks a year, kicking ass at it like she always does. She told me if they did find out, the military career would be out the window. She'd be a liability they didn't want. Fuck if I know why she wants to stay in though."

Clint did. He didn't say it out loud, but the answer to why was clear to him.
To save those that needed saving.

His reason for joining the Army and ultimately SHIELD had been the same; saving, protecting. He wanted to give the very thing he had been denied in his childhood and he wanted to use the talent he had to do it. Somewhere along the way, maybe when his parents had died or when he was being shuffled from one foster home to the next, he had come to value both the idea of safety and depending on himself to get things done. The whole thing wasn't built on a foundation on what was right or wrong or black and white to him, but there was a lot of comfort in that ethically positive gray area he had existed in for so long. A soldier, an assassin…he saved people, he protected the world, he took the steps needed to make the ultimate outcome occur.

At least that was how he had seen it until recently.

Still, sitting there on that beat-up couch next to a guy he barely knew, Clint found that the thought of Saving and Protecting was still very much in his mind. He felt the pull to do it even know after everything that had happened and it was for that reason that he knew the answer to the question that had been asked. Erin existed in another area of the gray world, but her goals were the same…even after everything that had happened to her.

As the thoughts turned around in Clint's mind, silence fell in the room between him and Brian. Both continued to take drinks from their bottles and both let whatever was going on in their heads take over. When Clint drained the last of the beer he set the empty down on the floor in front of him. Brian was a few seconds behind and seemed to suddenly pull himself back into consciousness at the idea that Clint no longer had the beer to anchor him to the apartment. "You know she doesn't care about the fact that you're an Avenger right?"

Clint inhaled, both at the sudden words and the hate he had for the label. He hated what it meant, hated what it made him feel, hated that it was apparently such common knowledge. True to form though, Brian didn't let an obvious discomfort stop him from saying what he wanted.

"She doesn't care that people are trying to kill you. She doesn't care that there is shit you won't or can't tell her. She doesn't care that she had to stitch up your bleeding ass after someone tried to kill or that have some freakish bow and arrow abilities that defy the laws of physics. She doesn't care about any of that bullshit." He leaned forward. "She just cares about you."

Absorbing Brian's words, Clint sat for a long while, his gaze straight down to the floor. He didn't doubt the truth in what had been said, but hearing it outloud made more of a difference to him than he thought it would. He looked up at Brian, "You don't think I should leave?"

"I think it would be fucked up if you did." He was brutally honest. "Even if she wasn't basically my sister, I'd tell you that."

Clint smirked. "Are you sure about that?"

"Did you not see the fucking crazy that just left here? There's a million others even worse out there too. Trust me, Jill is just the tip of the fucking iceberg."

"Jamie."

"Whatever." He replied, showing he was every bit the asshole that Jamie said he was, but Clint was still slightly humored by it. "Just stay, man. If you leave you're just going to piss her off and then she'll never marry you and have your babies. Lose-lose situation for everyone."

Shit was just becoming weird now. "Are you sure you're not still drunk from last night?" Clint asked.

"Hell, I might be. I think I'm starting to see sounds…" As he said that, words slurring and all, Brian fell back against the couch. Clint watched as he slid down into some half fetal position and swallowed back a choke of nausea. "I regret the vodka. And the Irish car bombs. I regret them so hard."

Clint got up, doing his best to hold back his laughter and gave Brian the space he needed to stretch out. He grabbed the lidless trashcan from the kitchen and set it near Brian's head before going back and finding a clean glass to fill with water. Brian was more than halfway to passed out when he returned. Clint handed him the water. "Stay hydrated."

"Uh huh."

"Where's your phone?"

Brian pointed to the TV stand as he attempted to sit up and put his lips to the glass. Clint grabbed it, found it unlocked and added his phone number to Contacts. "Text me if you need anything, okay?"

Brian put the glass down on the floor and collapsed back against the couch. "But no dick pics right?"

Clint rolled his eyes as he set the phone down within reach, "Right."

"Staying?"

Clint nodded, "Yeah, I'm staying."

He had some shit he needed to get done first, but yeah, he was definitely staying.