Thanks to everyone who was able to review the last chapter, and thanks for the feedback on Tony's characterization! I'm excited about the next fic, and also super-excited about the next chapter of Slipping, so please read this chapter (and review if you can) so you're all caught up. ;)
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Slipping
By: Syntyche
It's 5:16 on Wednesday night.
Hill checks her watch, slides her chair surreptitiously from her station. She's finished for the day; the rest of the night is hers. She could go to dinner, or her neglected Pilates class, or even try to get through a few more pages of the thriller that's been gathering dust under her bunk. The fallout from the Chitauri invasion is still taking up a lot of her time, and this whole Barton mess has gotten really out of control. It doesn't help that Stark keeps calling Director Fury day after day and hyping him up about Barton's disappearance.
The thought of the wildly disrespectful, smirking Stark makes Hill's mouth twist in a frown. She hates Stark even more than she loathes Barton.
Hill does go back to her quarters, but it's only long enough to throw on street clothes. She leaves the base, flags down a taxi, and sits silently during the nearly two-hour ride to a crumbling building in a neighborhood that's seen better days.
The SHIELD agent doesn't know why she's here; she personally doesn't have to be, and if they get caught it's not going to reflect well on her at all. But here she is.
Hill shoves some money at the taxi driver and enters the building, an old apartment complex that's been mostly gutted by fire and abandoned. The fading light dances off shards of broken glass littering the floor and Hill ignores the chill creeping across her body, burrowing deeper into her parka. Fall's nearing its end, and winter is just around the corner. There's no heat in the building, but they won't be here much longer.
She trudges up a few flights of stairs and down the hall to a door with faded numbers announcing apartment 564, and she knocks a quiet pattern against the peeling paint before sliding keys methodically into four different locks bolting the door shut.
There's an agent on the other side of the door that Hill doesn't recognize, but the young woman snaps to attention when Hill enters.
"Sir," she nods respectfully and Hill nods back, wondering how far out of control this is going to get. She needs to let her agents know to stop telling their friends, that Barton isn't some kind of free freak show. The more people who know, the greater their risk of everything going to hell and someone like the director actually finding out. Hill suspects the only reason Director Fury doesn't know yet is that he's busy trying to track down the now-missing Romanoff and keep the rest of the Avengers busy and he's still trying to track down leads pointing to Barton's disappearance, which are all carefully sanitized by Hill.
And he's doing it all without Coulson to help him.
It's a lot for one man to carry, and Hill knows too that Fury's under pressure from the Council now that his dream team has fallen apart after he fought so hard for them. If she didn't hate Barton so much, she'd see him returned to SHIELD just to ease some of the director's worry and shut Stark up.
But she won't do that. She can't.
Hill nods to another agent posted outside the bedroom door, unlocks the locks, and enters quietly.
Barton is slumped in his chair, head sunk low against his chest. Dark smudges blacken the papery skin under his closed eyes and he - rightfully - looks frail and exhausted. If not for the multicolored rainbow of bruising and crusted blood marring his face, he'd look just like he had when he'd led the attack against the helicarrier.
Barton looks worse now, though, and the fact that she's partially responsible isn't lost on Hill.
Hill's fists clench as she steps closer and Barton somehow senses her presence because he immediately tenses, the muscles in his arms cording, and without even lifting his head he starts mumbling broken words around a thickening drawl, and Hill leans in to catch the words that make her stomach turn in revulsion:
"Hawkeye … 091867 … "
She's noticed he's been doing this more frequently, sliding into memories or talking to people he's conjured up in his head, and Hill knows Barton can't take much more. He'd already been injured when her specially collected team had ambushed him in the alley near Stark's, and days of repeated abuse were taking their toll. Hill also knows she can't take much more. She'd thought she'd scored a hit on the bastard by mentioning the casualties he's responsible for, but the first day, when she'd held his chin in her hand and whispered the name of the agent at the top of the list, Barton had finished the name for her and given her every name after that. Her ideal of him as an unrepentant killer had been shaken because suddenly, he isn't an undeserving hero whose horrendous crimes have been glossed over because he'd helped out when the Chitauri had invaded.
He's a man who was punishing himself more than she ever could.
Hill shakes herself from her reverie; Barton's still muttering the basics: name, rank, and serial number, and Hill is almost glad for him in that death will be a release, more merciful than she is, more merciful than the agents who greedily take their turns tormenting their own in the name of what they call justice, and then patching Barton up just enough, forcing food and water on him so he'll survive one more day.
She leaves then, and when she comes back the next day, something about seeing the archer's own black arrows sprouting out of his calf and shoulder make her realize that she won't return again. This is no longer justice, no longer restitution; it's something meant to be both that has slid way beyond its original intent and into something much, much darker.
Barton's barely conscious by this point, and Hill fingers the sidearm tucked beneath her jacket speculatively, wondering if she should just end this now. But her phone chirps and it's Director Fury, announcing tersely that there's a "problem" and he's called the Avengers together but since he doesn't know who the hell will even respond she'd better get back to base and prepare her own response team.
Hill snaps her phone shut, notices that Barton is looking at her blearily and oddly. She doesn't know his hearing aids are gone, even though she's the one who accidentally let it slip that SHIELD's famed marksman is deaf. She ignores him, chewing at her lower lip before sighing and muttering, "If the director's relying on the Avengers, we're all in trouble." Hill doesn't spare a backwards glance as she closes the door behind her.
Clint slowly looks up as Hill exits; he knows she's gone because he felt the vibrations through the soles of his bare feet. He's not quite as bad off as he looks - which is fantastic because he looks like shit, and also, he acknowledges, a lie that he keeps telling himself in his random moments of sanity because he knows he's dying. Their goal is to torment him, so they've been sort of trying to keep him alive, to see just how far they can push the archer's legendary reserves, and Clint hazily wishes that reputation hadn't preceded him.
They have access to SHIELD meds and they even feed him once a day or so, but Clint knows he's almost done and he thinks the actually decently-patched bullet hole in his thigh might be getting infected; God knows it's the only part of him that feels warm anymore, since he's missing his shirt and shoes and it's really fucking cold in here.
Also, he's seen Loki three times now, Natasha once, and even Phil, which was oddly relieving because now he knows he's just going crazy.
Clint couldn't hear Hill's phone conversation, but he'd managed to lipread the words "Avengers" and "trouble." Clint sighs, because he's an Avenger, damn it, and if the rest of the team needs him to have their back then he'd better fucking well be there: flawed, human, just about dead Hawkeye.
"Well, shit," he mutters weakly, and sets to work on the ropes around his wrists.
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