A/N: Your reviews never cease to amaze me, I hope that you all know that. And honestly, I can't express this with as much enthusiasm as I say it in my head while I type, so in all caps it shall be: YOU GUYS LITERALLY HAVE NO IDEA HOW MUCH IS COMING YOUR WAY AND HOW EXCITED I AM TO WRITE THE REST OF THIS STORY. It's the most exciting part and I've been holding off for so long on writing it so at this point, I'm itching to write everything for you, my beautiful readers. One thing that I really enjoyed doing for this little baby was writing outside of the whole Katniss third POV with the Stark flashback. That being said, this chapter is going to be a little different in terms of whose thoughts we're hearing. I can't say much more, all you need to know is that you might need a tissue if you have very fragile emotions.

Chapter Thirteen: Those Stormy Eyes

LOCATION: REMOTE LABORATORY

"And he's going to be putting together a team."

"Are they a threat?"

"To each other, more than likely. But if Fury can get them on track—and he might, they could throw some noise our way."

It wasn't something Clint Barton would be saying if he had any control over his tongue, or his mind for that matter. Deep down in the tunnels that Loki had burrowed them into—Clint's choosing, really, because it wasn't like the Radisson would be meeting the standard requirements for stabilizing a power source for the cube or hiding them from Fury—they were all sitting and waiting on their next move. Selvig, the bastard, was just now realizing that they needed one of the most heavily protected and rarest elements on the face of the damn planet. In his own mind or not, Clint was past the point of frustrated and tired of being a sitting duck. It didn't do anyone a bit of good.

"I want to know everything you can tell me about this team of his," Loki's voice echoed off of the walls inside one of the tunnels he and Barton had wandered into. Loki stopped in front of Clint, facing his recruit. "Tell me."

Fury would have killed him for even breathing it out, and the little bit of him—the actual Clint—that was suppressed under all of the mind control was screaming to resist, but Loki's hold over him forced it out anyways. "The first one he's going to go after is Steve Rogers. Steve was the first official superhero," Clint said. Loki scoffed at the sound of the word 'superhero', but Clint kept going. "The serum they injected him with was developed during World War Two; gave him super strength, the works. He was a threat, but he's also been on ice for seventy years since crashing into the Arctic with the Tesseract. After they woke him up, he's even more confused than your kind down here; world's a different place than he's used to. But, he'll be who Fury wants first, he's the only one fit to lead them. He gets Steve on board, uniting them won't be as hard.

"The next big guy Fury'll go hot and heavy after is Tony Stark. Stark's an engineer, very tech-savvy. His newest building in New York is now running on self-sustaining energy; huge press surrounding that one. Kinda hard to miss it, really. He's also got his suit, the Iron Man, which is as good a weapon as anything. Helps him fly, fights for him, does all the tricks, he's not much in a fight without it. Fury's going to have to do quite a bit of persuading to get him on board. Stark's narcissistic, won't play well with anyone else; I'll be shocked if Fury can get him to cooperate. He was denied for the program initially," Clint mused.

"Anyone else?"

Clint nodded. "Your brother will more than likely be traced down, I'm sure you're very familiar with his back story." A scowl twisted its way onto Loki's face as he motioned for Clint to carry on. "Dr. Bruce Banner; I'm not sure how much luck Fury will have with him since he's pretty much isolated himself off in India. Banner was a scientist, had a very nasty experience with some gamma radiation, and now he's a party of two. When the guy loses his cool, he turns into this thing they called the Hulk; pretty much a monster. Huge, horrible temper, won't hesitate to destroy you if you get in its way."

"Hmm," Loki mused, pondering in thought of all the information Clint had fed to him. "If this is the team that Fury's scurrying to scrounge up, I don't see how there will be any issue fighting off their defenses—"

"That's not all, sir," Clint interrupted. Loki stopped, raising an eyebrow at Clint.

"Go on."

Clint exhaled. "I was in charge of guarding the cube, mainly because the plan was to strap me on the team as well. Fury wanted someone observant that could keep eyes on everything, and he sat me on the cube since I fit the bill. But there was another SHIELD agent, another one he had on the roster. Agent Romanoff, the Black Widow. She was Fury's number one pick from the get go for his little response team, she's lethal and she's unsuspecting, it's hard to picture someone like her packing as hard of a punch as she does. She's very grey, sir, and it's why Fury admired her, especially for this. She doesn't fight for the good or the bad; she fights because she has to. I'd say if she was still around, she's your biggest threat."

"What do you mean, still around?" Loki replied stiffly.

Clint shrugged. "She was killed in action a few years back, or at least, that's what they deemed it."

Loki nodded, his eyes scanning over Clint's demeanor. "I see. Agent Barton, was there anything there between yourself and Romanoff?" Clint stiffened at the sound of that, but kept his mouth shut. "Agent Barton, was there anything between you two?" Loki pried again, more demanding this time. "Answer me."

"Yes," Clint finally replied. "We did have something. But she's gone now, I can't bring her back."

"And were there any benefits in that relationship?" Clint was silent again, his mouth twisting into something like a frown. "Agent Barton, that was a question."

"Wouldn't necessarily call it a benefit, sir," Clint grumbled.

"Tell me," Loki gestured for him to continue as they continued walking down the halls of the tunnel they were currently patrolling. Clint massaged his jaw, averting his gaze away from Loki.

"She got pregnant about seventeen years ago and had the baby. Gave the baby up though; she was scared it was going to be a liability and didn't want anything happening to it. Not to mention she wasn't sure how well she'd take to being a mother, since the Red Room had programmed her to be an assassin and made her think they'd eliminated all chances of her ever having kids. Fury was sworn to keep the baby away from this world, keep her in isolation where she'd be safe. The girl's still alive from what I understand." Clint saw the warped smile on Loki's face.

"And would Fury go so far as to recruit her?"

"Not sure. Fury says he'll do one thing and does something else."

Loki stopped in his tracks, turning to face Clint. "Agent Barton, if Fury brought the girl on, would she be a…liability to your loyalties?"

Clint's face showed no emotion. "No sir."

"Good," Loki mused. "Because if she was, if the girl posed any sort of…threat to our cause, I will eliminate her; do you understand that?"

"Yes sir."

On the outside, Clint gave a curt nod before turning sharply on his heel and prowling back down the tunnel to where Selvig was to make plans to get the iridium. He could hear Loki's voice inside of his head, giving him his commands, and the threat was still echoing in the back of his mind. If the girl posed any sort of threat to our cause, I will eliminate her. Deep inside the small part of his brain in which the real Clint was tucked away, buried underneath Loki's possession, Clint was screaming for a way out. He was screaming for someone to hear him, to keep Katniss safe and away from all this. Every curse he knew he was hurtling in Loki's direction, promising to kill him if he touched a hair on his daughter's head.

A shame that he was pushed down so far and completely helpless to all of Loki's commands, even the ones that threatened to destroy everything he still cared about.

. . .

Everything hurt.

His head felt like it had been stuffed full with lead, weighing more than he remembered as he let it fall against whatever sad contraption he was now sitting on. It felt like there was a giant weight crushing his chest as he strained to move, only to be restricted by the arm restraints he'd been tied down in. The room was spinning as he clenched his eyes shut; sliding up on what he now could classify was a hospital bed and ground his teeth together. "Christ," he moaned as he strained against the cuffs once again. A blurry figure that looked a hell of a lot like Nick Fury stood in the corner of the room, almost like a statue.

"You're going to be alright, Agent."

"Oh yeah?" Clint hissed, wincing at the throbbing of his head. "What do you know?"

"I know that you're back with us, and I know that you're going to be okay," Fury stated simply.

"You don't…understand," he sighed, resting his head on the back of the elevated bed as he struggled to catch his breath. "Have you ever had someone take out your brain and play? Pull you out and send something else in? Do you know what it's like to be unmade?" He lifted his eyes up to where Fury was, standing nonchalantly across the way.

"Can't say I'm too familiar with the feeling, but I'm sure it's a relative thing."

Looking around the small room, Clint moved his hands against the restraints; they were incredibly tight around his wrists, ensuring he wouldn't break loose. "Why am I back?" he finally asked. "How did you get him out?"

"Oh, I wasn't the one who got him out, but from what I understand, it was cognitive re-calibration. You were hit very hard on the head," Fury explained, not moving from his spot across the room. In fact, if Clint wasn't mistaken, he saw the director slide back a few inches.

"Then who—" Clint started to ask who had hit him, but he found himself at a loss for words as his mind started racing. It was all slowly coming back to him; his head colliding with a metal bar and a loud bang, looking up at the face of a girl. It was a girl, couldn't be much older than seventeen, a look of fire in her eyes that he'd sworn he'd seen before and the lips and nose of someone, someone that he knew all too well. An insolence that couldn't have been inherited from anyone else. A name slipping from his lips before losing consciousness, a name he hadn't thought about, much less said in years. His eyes meeting Fury's, he could see that he looked slightly uncomfortable; something that Nick Fury had never been a day in his life. And that was when it hit him like a ton of bricks. "No," he breathed.

It was like something had snapped inside of him, when Fury didn't move to deny. Thrashing against the constraints that were keeping him to the bed, Clint fell into a blind rage. "You promised her, you son of a fucking bitch! You promised us that you would never drag her into this! Son of a fucker—fuck, fucking bastard, how dare you?!" Clint roared.

"Agent Barton—"

"I'm going to kill you, Nick, I cannot believe you!? We trusted you; she trusted you and you betrayed that? Do you know what she did for that child, do you know the things that we all sacrificed to keep her safe, just for you to go and tarnish that because you're down a few people? I swear to god, you're lucky she's not still alive, because she would have destroyed you until there was no one left to remember what you looked like before." Clint was seething, his vision blurred red and the taste of metal in his mouth as he tried to break through the straps holding him down. He knew that he could do it if he tried hard enough, and in that moment, all that mattered was getting his hands around Fury's throat and squeezing until the life drained out of him.

"Agent—" Fury tried, to which he was cut off yet again.

"She died for this, Nick!"

"Clint!" Clint fell silent, his chest rising and falling quickly as he tried to catch his breath. It had been years since Fury had called him by his first name. "Look, I know you're not happy about this—"

"Not happy? You didn't even scratch the surface with a toothpick on that one," Clint hissed.

"Stark knew about this, Coulson recruited him on this to keep her out of harm's way. We're still doing our best to keep protecting her, like you wanted."

"By putting her on this ship with a god and a grudge match that's caused how much damage, exactly? By dragging her into this world against Natasha's one and only wish, against my wishes, against every promise we made you swear to keep? Oh yeah, Nick, she's definitely safe. Especially with Tony watching her; someone who can barely take care of themselves looking out for my child? I'm feeling very reassured."

"Romanoff named Stark the girl's godfather shortly before going missing—"

"—I never said I agreed with everything that woman did—"

"Bottom line is," Fury said. "Is that we did what we had to do, and that was keep our world safe. We didn't have you or Romanoff—"

Clint was past appalled at this point. "So you call in our child as some sort of sick compensation? What the fuck is wrong with you?"

"Agent," Fury warned, his voice low. Clint shook his head.

"No. Get out of my sight. I can't even bear to look at you anymore." To prove his point, Clint averted his gaze and stared at the floor, trying to control his heart rate. He lifted his head only slightly to watch Fury turn his back and walk out of the containment room, not looking back twice. Clint didn't mind.

. . .

Katniss took a deep breath before placing her hand on the door's scanner, a small beep as it read her handprint and the door sliding open to grant her access. Fury calling for her over the comm to go down and visit Agent Barton was one thing, but the tone of voice he'd done it in was different. He sounded defeated for once, like he had just been punched in the gut. It was definitely something new. Agent Barton, who was sitting in the chair with restraints, opened his eyes slowly at the sound of company, letting out a low groan as he moved against the restraints currently holding him captive. His eyelids fluttered open wide as he realized who was standing in front of him, breath hitching in his throat.

She really did look just like her mother; the curve of her lips, shape of her nose, same body type and stature. Although she carried herself a lot differently than Natasha did—not with the same confidence, he noticed, her long brown hair hanging down her back in limp, heat-induced waves and her eyes. Those weren't Natasha's eyes, they were his. Clint straightened himself in his seat, clearing his throat as he did his best to smile at his daughter and not break. "Hi," he uttered out.

"Hi," she whispered back, awkwardly rolling the weight from one leg to another as she stood in front of him, unsure of what to think. "I, um, Fury said to come talk to you?"

"Said you were the one who knocked me out, broke the spell," Clint shrugged, before adding, "Thank you. For that."

"Glad I could be of service."

She watched as he shifted his legs over, nodding in the direction of the now-opened up space. "Sit down," he said, to which she complied with wordlessly. He watched her closely, how she moved just as gracefully as Natasha had doing even the smallest of things. Clint wanted nothing more than to reach out and wrap her up in his arms, but he needed to pace himself. Knowing Fury's twisted logic, there was still a great chance she was entirely unaware, still living in the dark, and springing it on her would do neither of them any good.

Katniss didn't miss a beat in reaching over to Clint's restraints, undoing the buckles on them. Clint stared at her bewildered. He wasn't quite sure what the logic currently running inside her head was, and he wasn't sure why it was there to start. She didn't even know him. The only things that she could possibly know about him were that Loki had taken him and that he had tried to kill her. She had been his target, and here she was freeing him without a second thought. He wanted to ask her why, but he figured that there wasn't a legitimate enough answer behind it. He knew he wouldn't have had one anyways, had the roles been reversed. She slid the strap off of one completely, freeing his right wrist. "How many agents?" he asked quietly, feeling the weight of the guilt slowly pressing back down on his shoulders.

Her head snapped up, every sense on red alert before realizing that he wasn't referring to what had happened after Coulson died. Relaxing, she reached over for the other restraint. "It's not important," she dismissed.

"To me it is," Clint explained.

Undoing it completely, Katniss let her hands fall from the cuff and rested them on the bed for a moment, trying to iron her thoughts out before speaking. She could feel the tears building back behind her eyes, even though she knew that now was not the time to cry. "Why, because you're the only person who's done something because of this?" she asked, her voice watery. "You're not. I killed a man a few hours ago. I killed him. I've never killed anyone before, only animals, I had a code…and I still put an arrow straight through his chest and unlike you, he's not waking up from what I did to him. Ever."

"You're…you're an archer?" Clint uttered, disregarding the fact that his daughter had just gotten something that was clearly very heavy and troubling off her chest, especially something as troubling as unprovoked murder.

Katniss looked up at him, puzzled. "I don't think you heard me when I said that I just killed someone."

"Right," he said, shaking his head as he swung his legs over the side of the bed, making more room for Katniss. She scooted back a bit, almost bumping shoulders with Clint. "Sorry, I just…I was kind of stunned to hear you say you shoot. Archery is kind of my thing."

"Oh, didn't mean to steal your spotlight or anything," she mumbled apologetically.

"No, it's okay," Clint quickly said, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly. "I'd love to see you shoot sometime."

"Yeah, well, I'm not sure if I'll be able to shoot again. Every target from now on will just be that guy's face that I killed."

Resting a hand on her shoulder, Katniss could feel the man next to her burning holes in her side as she desperately tried to keep her eyes away from his, out of fear the tears would start. "Hey," he said quietly. "You did what you had to do."

Katniss' head shot up, her eyes locking with Clint's. "That's the thing. I didn't do it because I had to. I did it because I wanted to. The only reason I killed him because I was…I don't know, angry. Because I let my temper get the better of me." She stood up from the bed, walking towards the door and looking out the window. "God," she mused remorsefully. "Loki was right; I'm just a time bomb waiting to go off. I do it to myself."

Grabbing the glass of water sitting on the small tray next to him and taking a swallow of it, Clint spoke up in an attempt to derail her train of thought and change the subject. "Loki. He get away?"

"Don't suppose you know where," Katniss replied.

"Didn't need to know, I didn't ask." It was quiet for a moment as Katniss stared out of the window in the cell, Clint trying to swallow the water around the large knot that had formed in his throat the minute his child had stepped over that threshold. "He's going to make his play soon though," he said. "Today."

"We have to stop him."

"Yeah? Who's we?"

Katniss spun back around on her heel, shrugging and letting her hands brush her thighs. "I don't know. Whoever's left, I guess."

"Well, if I put an arrow in Loki's eye socket, I'd sleep better, I suppose." Clint sat the glass of water back on its tray, both hands resting in his lap as he stared back down at the floor. Katniss made her way back over to where he was, sitting back down beside of him.

"Yeah? Get in line," she muttered under her breath.

Clint chuckled. "You sound a lot like her, you know." Katniss lifted her head at the sound of that, averting her gaze up to where Clint was. "Your mom. I knew her. Crazy woman, but I loved her."

"Loved…?"

Letting out a long sigh, Clint finally brought himself to look his daughter in the eyes. God, those were his eyes looking back at him, her face, and it was killing him as he took a ragged breath. "Your mom did everything she could to protect you, so did I. We all did, everyone who knew about you from the get-go, and I thought Fury would hold up his end of the bargain. But it wasn't enough, because here you are, sitting here and talking to me." Pausing, he scratched the side of his face awkwardly, the tension growing as his heart sped up. "Katniss—"

Clint inhaled once again, holding it for a moment before exhaling deeply, a rush of courage flooding through him. He reached up behind his head, rubbing his neck sheepishly. "Yeah, I don't…I don't know if you know it, but I'm your father," he whispered, the words tumbling out as he exhaled as he raised his eyes to where she was. Katniss could feel the words punch her right in the stomach.

It was very simple; his wording of it, but that didn't mean it didn't knock the wind out of her. She looked down, eyes focusing on the floor as she started counting her breathing like she always did. After her panic attack, she was still walking on shaking legs it seemed, and any little thing that had surprised her didn't take easily. She felt one of her hands slowly be encompassed by a larger, rougher one, rubbing small circles on the top of her hand. "Katniss," Clint whispered, his voice barely audible. She could feel the tears pricking her eyes as she did her best to process it all. The truth was out in the open, who both her parents were. Her father, her real father wasn't dead—she'd mourned for a man who wasn't even related to her, and yet she'd never mourned for the mother who she truly belonged to, only mourned for the loss of the one who sat in front of her and stared blankly ahead every time she walked in a house. This was her family, not what she had known before. The feeling of Clint's thumb rubbing her hand kept her tethered to reality and not drifting among her sea of thoughts.

Looking up at him, she could see that his eyes were shining; most likely glazed over from tears. His eyes were the same stormy blue-gray as her own, exactly the same at that. And that was how she knew. Her lip quivering, she launched herself into his arms in a bone-crushing hug. A small groan escaped Clint, seeing as how she'd taken him by surprise and the fact that he was still aching from their fight earlier, but he got over it quickly. Wrapping his arms around her and feeling her own lock around his waist as she buried her face in his chest, he sighed. "You're here," he muttered before pressing a kiss into the top of his daughter's hair.

"And you're real," Katniss mumbled her reply into his shirt. "For a moment, I thought Fury had just…made up the fact that he knew my real family, just so he could lure me along."

"I'm sorry," he said. "For putting you in danger, for dragging you into all this—hell, for deciding we weren't keeping you all those years ago. Letting her give you up just like that without so much as a second thought? I'd take it back; I'd take it all back now if I could."

"It's okay," Katniss whispered in reply. "I'm sorry for knocking you out cold earlier."

"Really, don't apologize for that one," Clint said, a biting laugh following. "I'm glad you did."

"If we're being all honest, I'm kind of glad I did; you were trying to kill me."

"Yeah…sorry about that, too."

Clint adjusted his grip on Katniss, leaving it so an arm was still resting around her shoulder but the other was resting by his side. "But now it's my turn to ask you a question," he said. "Why are you acting like this all of a sudden?"

"Acting like what?" Katniss asked.

"You're not a spy, you're not a soldier; you're not even an agent. But you're walking around ready to wade off neck deep into some war. Why's that?"

Katniss was silent as she bit down on her lip, trying to think of a legitimate answer. "I don't know," she finally mused, pursing her lips together. "Guess it's just got to do a lot with I don't know who I am anymore."

Clint nodded understandingly, giving her another side hug as she fell silent. "You'll know when you know. Just give it some time."

The duo was silent for a moment, enjoying finally being in each other's presence before Katniss spoke up. "Well, at least now the baby bird nickname makes sense."

Clint's eyes narrowed. "Stark, that son of a bitch." For the first time in what felt like forever, Katniss laughed, and not just because something was funny either.

A/N: Ouch ouch ouch ouch ouch ouch ouch (insert about a trillion more ouches in here). Man, as much as this chapter hurt it was SO nice to finally write their coming together. There were so many different ways that I wanted to word it because I felt like when he told her it needed to be punch-in-the-gut kind of painful, and I hope the way I went about it was very simple but very real and didn't feel too overly 'scripted', you know? I'm so so happy that these two are finally together now because their father/daughter relationship is going to be super fun and there's a lot of good stuff I have planned for it. And in case no one realized, we're literally perched right on top of the Battle of New York. I think it's very safe to say that none of you have any idea what's going to happen during that. So my questions for you are: what do you think is going to happen when it comes to the Battle—is Clint going to keep trying to protect Katniss and make her stay back? Why do you think Katniss trusted Clint so quickly without even knowing who he was to her? Are you hoping and praying like myself, that Clint and/or Katniss will slap Fury? What do you think the rest of the team is going to say about Clint and Katniss' special relationship? Let me know what you thought about the chapter in that pretty little review you're going to leave and I promise I'll update super fast. You're gonna want the next few chapters badly, that's for sure.