A to X
Chapter Twenty-five - Adamant X-posure
Flint left the X-mansion (after ensuring that his power gloves were fully loaded) and drove north to Albany before following the I-90 to the outskirts of Niagara Falls. The journey was pleasantly sunny and the almost seven hour trip breezed by since there was a distinct lack of traffic. He knew that SHIELD sometimes borrowed/appropriated personnel and munitions from the Niagara Falls Air Reserve Station. Since it was conveniently close to New York City itself without being too noticeable, it was also the main way that foodstuffs and perishables were stored and freighted to the helicarrier. The archer knew it was his best bet to smuggle himself onto the fortified airship.
It was lamentably simple to sneak into the 'heavily fortified' airbase and even easier to steal into one of the cargo jets bound for the helicarrier. Flint didn't have to wait long; the engines roared to life mere minutes after he crept in.
Getting out of the cargo jet unseen was much more of a challenge but the archer took advantage of a well-placed roof access panel and let himself into the place he knew best - the ventilation system. When he'd first started working on the helicarrier, he'd spent many quality hours dropping down from the ceiling and scaring the junior agents for fun. Really, it was quite satisfying to see them flail about in surprise.
When Coulson found out, Flint thought he'd get into trouble again and be forced to do excessive paperwork or something in recompense. Instead, the agent gave him that blank look of his and told him to report any agents that handled his 'surprise visits' exceptionally well or poorly so he could add the information to his extensive files. It gave him a legitimate excuse to continue his fun while thoroughly learning the inner workings of the helicarrier and was time well spent.
Flint now put that prior knowledge to full use. He silently made his way through the decks over several hours until he found the area he was looking for. Fury's office had always been Spartan in appearance and as he peered through the vent, he saw the man himself immersed in examining documents. Unlike Coulson's anally organised desk, the papers and binders were strewn haphazardly over it, forming an actual mountain of paperwork.
In hindsight, Flint made the same mistake with Fury that he had with Tasha the evening before - surprising a superspy. When he dropped from the ceiling, the director immediately pulled out his pistol as he stood up and fired several shots at the unexpected intruder. Only the archer's acrobatics saved him from a lethal dose of cranial perforations. At least he had the presence of mind to toss a weak electricity disk at the door panel mid-cartwheel, causing the mechanism to short out. Otherwise, a squadron of SHIELD agents would have poured into the room at their earliest convenience.
Fury still had his gun pointed mercilessly at Flint but the archer saw the tension in his ex-superior's shoulders ease slightly. "There's only one man I know who could pull off a stunt like that but he's a little harder to recognise without a quiver. Especially when he's got eyeliner like that," stated Nick Fury dryly.
Flint couldn't help but smirk at the serious man. "It was a necessary precaution to escape your notice, Nicky."
The director's remaining eye narrowed dangerously before the superspy snorted with amusement. "Well, at least I know it's definitely you, Barton. No one else with the exception of an irritating billionaire we both know would have the balls to call me that."
"True, true," agreed the archer with a wide smile.
At that, the director finally lowered his weapon. "Since I'm not already dead, I assume you aren't here to kill me so let's talk. I take it from your unconventional entrance that you are not in fact here to re-join SHIELD, are you?" Any traces of amusement in the room were swiftly destroyed by the question.
Flint sighed. "I'm afraid not, Sir."
The director sent his former assassin a piercing look. "At the very least, I believe I am owed some sort of explanation for your behaviour."
The ex-Avenger internally rolled his eyes. Of course Nick would interrogate him instead of just letting him tell the man what he thought was pertinent. "I, er, well, I, I just had to get away from Coulson." His voice lowered as he added, "Well, him and the Captain."
"I was unaware that you held such strong and narrow-minded views of the romantic lives of your teammates, Clint and even if I did know, I would have thought you'd be more professional than that." Fury's already stern face seemed to glower with extreme distaste.
Flint flushed a horrible red colour but it was purely from rage, not embarrassment. How dare he? How dare he think he was a homophobic asshole? "WHAT THE FUCK?" he spat out. "Why the hell shouldn't I have left? I didn't even know we were over until that asshole announced that he was shacking up with the star-spangled bastard."
Nick's face showed his complete surprise plainly. He seemed to struggle with his words before he said, "Am I to understand that you and Philip Coulson were having some sort of..." he trailed off as he mentally groped for an appropriate term and eventually settled on, "tryst?"
Not trusting himself to speak, Flint just nodded.
"How long?" asked the director.
Flint sighed, "Almost two years." He actually thought he was starting to get over the pain but rehashing it with Fury brought it all straight back to him again.
"You fell in love with him." It wasn't a question.
Once again, Flint simply nodded in response.
For one horrifying moment, Fury reached a hand toward Flint's shoulder and looked like he was about to console the archer but abruptly aborted the movement. Both men were quite relieved that he did so. They'd never been touchy-feely before and were happy to adhere to the norm.
"You won't be coming back, will you?" asked Fury as he eyed his former asset.
"I'm afraid not," answered Flint with a wry grin. "I can't work with either of them anymore."
A contemplative gleam entered Fury's remaining eye. "SHIELD is an extremely large organisation..."
Flint cut the director off (knowing that if he let the man talk, he'd be conned into something he really didn't want to do) by saying, "No. I've already found a new home."
"You dropped right off the grid, Barton. It was very impressive but I'd expect nothing less from you." Fury unerringly extracted a document from the mountain of paperwork and flipped a few pages in. He began to read a passage aloud. "After twenty-four days, there is still no trace of Hawkeye. However, there is one small lead that could be followed up. During the recent Brotherhood incursion in Manhattan, Agent Bishop worked alongside an X-man who had 'exceptional vision and aim, although he did not use a bow'. She speculates that it could be Agent Barton in disguise." The director looked back up at the sharpshooter. "Was her intuition correct?"
Flint didn't really see the point in denying it. "Yeah. My replacement was totally on the money. She's good, you know. I was actually impressed with her skills."
Fury physically waved the entire conversation aside with a flick of his hand. "Never mind that, why the hell are you living with the X-men?"
Unable to stop the smug smile which graced his lips, Flint unashamedly remarked, "Because it was one of the few places that I didn't think you'd look for me."
Fury conceded the point and then inquired as to whether Natasha had joined him yet. Flint assured him that she had and added that she'd quite vocally announced her intention never to return to SHIELD again too.
The director sighed and absently rubbed his forehead. "That doesn't really surprise me. Her loyalty was always to you, not the organisation. So that's two of my best assets that Coulson has lost me."
Knowing that Fury was probably about to fire or at the very least demote the level seven agent, Flint butted in. "Please, just let it go. If you revoke his clearance or remove him from liaising with the Avengers, questions as to why will be asked. The last thing the Avengers need at the moment is another scandal."
"Another scandal?" Fury tersely repeated, the question in his tone.
"Look, you're not going to like this in the slightest but we wanted you to be prepared," Flint pre-empted.
Fury looked less than pleased with that particular introduction as he accepted a USB drive from the assassin. He plugged it into his computer and opened the only file on it. A summary page compiled by Dr Hank McCoy appeared on the screen which clearly showed the 99.99% DNA match between the two newest Avengers and the leader of the Brotherhood of Mutants.
"Wait!" yelled Flint as Fury's right hand went straight for his radio earpiece and he was instantly reminded of Tony's reaction to the very same news. Thankfully the superspy heeded his warning and turned his attention back to the archer. "We still have the element of surprise. If they were indeed planted by Magneto to infiltrate the Avengers, we can use that to our advantage."
"Elaborate," Fury said curtly as he let his arm drop by his side.
"The X-men are hosting a collaborative meeting of geniuses at the X-mansion to come up with some contingency plans next Tuesday. We're inviting Reed Richards, Hank Pym and Spider-Man along. They'll meet with Forge, Hank McCoy, Jean Grey and Tony Stark. We're hoping that between them all, we'll have everything covered."
"Spider-Man? Good luck getting him to pitch in," muttered Fury. "He still avoids gatherings like the plague. What makes you think he'll want to help out?"
Flint smiled. "Natasha."
"Hmmm," hummed Fury. "I knew I should have got her to make contact instead of Hill."
Flint couldn't help but snort at that. "You sent Maria after him? No wonder he wants nothing to do with SHIELD!"
"It was a tactical error," admitted the director, to Flint's surprise. Had the sky turned purple and blood rained from the skies too? "I'm not about to make another one. No matter what, I know that I cannot force you back to SHIELD, you'd only rebel and make my life a living hell. I don't need the extra headaches or paperwork. What I can do is give you this." He opened his desk drawer and withdrew a small phone which lacked the usual eagle motif. "This phone was specifically designed for extreme emergencies only. It cannot receive calls and connects directly to me and me alone. It bounces around frequencies more than the Hulk smashes, making it completely untraceable. If you need to contact me again, use it. That way I won't need to waste my ammo if you decide to drop by."
Grabbing the offered handset, Flint stowed it safely in a hidden pocket of his pants. "I will, Fury." He extended his hand across the mountainous desk and the director clasped it firmly. "Thank you, Sir. For everything."
Fury gave the archer a half-smile. "You can thank me by making sure these 'New Avengers' don't get New York or the entire bloody planet destroyed."
"Sure thing, boss," agreed Flint, as he was released from the handshake. "It was an honour working for you." He truly meant it. The director had taken a huge chance in turning Flint into an agent and once more when the archer spared and later flipped the Black Widow. If it weren't for Fury, he wouldn't have become the hero he was today.
"I've had worse agents than you, Barton," said Fury with an honest to God smile. "Tell Romanoff the same," he added as he extracted a second phone from the still-open drawer and tossed it his way. "Pass that along while you're at it."
Flint had just stored the second phone with the first and was about to give a cheeky reply when the doors to Fury's office exploded open with a bang and a cloud of dust. Knowing that he wouldn't be able to sneak back into the vents, he abandoned all subtlety and barrelled his way down the hall, knocking surprised SHIELD agents out of his way before they had a chance to register his presence.
At least the archer still had home court advantage. He negotiated the hallways with practiced ease, dodging bullets like a madman. Remembering the secondary hangar was only a couple of floors below him, he vaulted over a balcony, fell three stories and rolled back to his feet. Just as he reached the door to the room, he felt a bullet tear through his leg but didn't let it stop him from reaching his goal. He jumped onto a sky-cycle (it was a cross between a motorbike and a jet) and was exceptionally pleased that he'd actually trained on one of them before. Using the on-board weapons system of the vehicle, he blasted the hangar door open and flew the fuck out of there.
It wasn't until he was freefalling that Flint realised that his wound must have been worse than he'd originally thought, since he hadn't even noticed that he'd lost track of his appropriated sky-cycle. He vaguely hoped the machine wouldn't fall on some poor unsuspecting citizen. The gathering thunderclouds also escaped him but the chilling gale-force winds were enough to bring back at least a small modicum of his intelligence. He felt arms encase him and felt immediately safe, despite the unexpected tempest. Realising that his velocity was decreasing, he finally allowed the blackness at the corner of his eyes take him over.
"Вы чертов гребаный придурок! (You bloody fucking moron!)," were the words from his left that brought the ex-Avenger back to consciousness. He thought Natasha had yelled them but was far too disorientated to comprehend pretty much anything. Both of his hands were tightly clasped by someone, although he was momentarily confused since he was certain that they were on opposite sides of his body and Natasha couldn't be in two places at once, could she?
"Она права, вы знаете (She's right, you know)," came from the right in a deep male voice that he recognised as Петр's. "Это было действительно тупой, вы знаете, получить выстрел и все (It was pretty dumb, you know, getting shot and all)."
If he felt like he could have snorted and not felt pain, he totally would have. Instead he growled out, "Мои извинения, Чайник. Я постараюсь, чтобы не напали на моем следующей миссии, то. (My apologies, Teapot. I'll try not to get attacked on my next mission, then.)"
"Вы делаете это (You do that)," snarked Петр with what sounded like palpable relief at the same time as Natasha said, "Дик (Dick)."
"Вот это да! (Wow!)," muttered Flint with sarcastic humour. "Я чувствую себя так любил (I feel so loved)."
"Ты лучше (You better)," growled Петр. "Она пыталась убить меня за то вэтой проклятой комнате и...(She tried to kill me for being in the damn room and...)" A thunderous look overtook the mutant. "Вы говорите чистейшем Русском (You're speaking perfect Russian)." The man gently shook his head and switched to English, which made his words sound even harsher to the archer. "What the fuck is going on here?"
"I-I'm sorry, Петр. I haven't been entirely honest with you." Before Flint could continue to explain, the hand holding his right one released it and the loud scraping of a chair on the floor caused a huge throb of pain in his head. "My real name is Clinton Francis Barton..." he started to explain but the Russian spoke over him.
"At this point in time I really don't care. I, er, I have to go," Петр said before he all but ran from the room.
Despite the fact that he'd only met the man a few weeks ago, Flint felt the Russian's physical absence more than he thought possible. How had he come to care for him so much in such a short amount of time?
"Well that could have gone better," noted Tasha calmly from the archer's side. She gave his left hand a comforting squeeze which he gently returned.
"You're not wrong," pouted Flint.
"Forget him," the superspy ordered before she smacked the back of his hand when he tried to protest. "What the hell were you thinking? How dare you get shot! You're too good to make such a rookie mistake. If Storm hadn't caught you..." she trailed off.
Flint shrugged his shoulders and regretted the action immediately when his body felt like it was going to kill him. "I had no options. There I was, having a pleasant conversation with Fury and some green agents actually blew the door open. Would you blow Nicholas J Fury's office door open? Ever?"
Natasha answered, "Not unless I was feeling particularly masochistic."
"Exactly, so I had to improvise. Oh, by the way, old Cyclops sent you a present. Oh, I suppose I can't call Fury that anymore since we already have a Cyke here. Damn." Flint knew he was babbling but it was the only thing keeping himself from falling apart.
"Present?" inquired Tasha with a spark of interest.
Flint nodded. "Back inner left trouser pocket. One's for you, one's for me. He said to tell you 'he's had worse than us' or some such shit. I think he misses us, like Tony does."
Natasha just snorted as she quickly found the hidden pocket and emptied it of the two phones.
"They're private lines to Fury. Completely untraceable. He said it was for emergencies only. We're officially out," Flint said as he made grabby hands at the phones that Natasha held out of his reach. "Aw, come on," the ex-Avenger pouted, "I want to order a pizza."
"I don't think the phone works that way and if it did, Fury would kill you for being an idiot. I'm glad he knows where we stand and that it's no longer by his side. Get some rest," ordered the Black Widow as she rolled her eyes. The slight twitch of her lips were the only indication that she was mildly amused with his petulant behaviour. "Now. Otherwise I'll put you to sleep and you won't like it. You're already in enough pain."
"Fine," muttered Flint as he closed his eyes and let sleep take him.
The next time the fake-mutant opened his eyes, neither Tasha nor Петр were in the room. Instead he was faced with Jubilee and Monet.
"So sleeping Biceps finally decided to face the damn music," snarked Jubilee and Flint desperately wished he was unconscious again. The loudness and sharpness of her tone caused his head to throb uncomfortably.
"Never mind her," soothed Monet. "She's just pissy because she accidentally let slip to Peter that she already knew you were Hawkeye when he was complaining to her and now he's avoiding the both of you. I'm sure you can imagine exactly how much she likes being ignored."
Flint could and it wasn't a pretty picture. Bored Jubilee was bad enough but ignored Jubilee would be plain trouble. Not even Wolverine would tolerate his favoured junior X-man in that sort of a mood.
"For fuck's sake," snarled Jubes unexpectedly, causing both Flint and Monet to jump in surprise. "You're a goddam Avenger. How the hell did you manage to get shot?"
"Just unlucky, I guess," shrugged Flint nonchalantly.
"You could have taken us with you," pouted the firecracker as she crossed her arms and looked away.
"Really?" questioned the archer in surprise. "I thought Xavier was going to smack your mind around if you went on another unsanctioned mission or something. Plus, I spent over four hours crawling through the vents and I recall from our last adventure that you hated every minute of it."
"It wasn't so bad," argued Jubes with a frown.
"There was no billionaire with alcohol at the end of this journey, just a bullet." Flint just shrugged indifferently. As much as it shouldn't be the case, this was the ninth bullet wound he'd had to endure. So in all honesty, it wasn't a big deal at all.
"NINTH?" yelled Monet in horror, having no doubt overheard his thoughts. Damn, he'd forgotten to maintain his psychic shields after coming to. Of course, the whole Петр running away from his thing had certainly been a powerful distraction.
"Ninth what?" asked Jubes, her confusion apparent.
Flint sighed. "This is the ninth time I've been shot."
This announcement actually robbed Jubilation of her ability to speak, which amused the other two X-men despite the current circumstances. Since she was unable to find her words, the firecracker slapped Flint on the shoulder.
"Hey. What was that for?" the archer sulked.
"For being stupid enough not to learn from your mistakes. I thought it was, like, bad enough that you (an ex-Avenger for shit's sake) were dumb enough to get shot but nine times? What are you? A complete moron?" There was the usual Jubilee spunk.
"Nah," shrugged Flint. "Just a slow learner."
"Well you better improve or poor Petey will be left without a..." Jubes trailed off at the obvious grimace that crossed Flint's face. "Shit. Sorry, I, er, fuck, I mean, erm," floundered the Chinese American mutant.
Monet talked over the firecracker in an attempt to save her some embarrassment. "Clint."
The name brought Hawkeye and Jubilee's attention to the French woman. She flicked her hair (something that the archer saw quite often from her - it appeared to be her trademark move) and shrugged. "There's no real reason to keep it secret anymore, is there? Colonel Fury knows, most of the X-men too. Even Петр. Who exactly are you still hiding from?"
Flint, no, Clint sat there and seriously thought about it. There was no real need for deception now, was there? Pretty much everyone knew. Really, he just needed to stay hidden from Coulson and Rogers. Xavier had already suggested he drop the charade, now Monet agreed with him and if it's only going to cause problems with his new friends like it had for Петр, well, that he could certainly live without.
Monet's eyes bored into Clint's and despite the fact that the latter was certain he'd hidden his thoughts once more, he was also quite sure the telepath had divined his intended course of action. She smiled broadly at him which he quickly returned.
"What the hell are you both smirking at?" asked a rather pissy Jubilee.
Clint's amused glance turned her way and he said, "Hey there, I'm Clint. I used to be an Avenger. It's nice to meet you."
"I already know who you are, you idiot," groused the firecracker and it wasn't until Monet explained why he'd reintroduced himself that she finally understood the significance. "Oh, it's about time! Does that mean we can tell the others about the Black Widow too?"
Clint quirked an eyebrow. "You'll have to ask her yourself. If you expose the Black Widow's identity without her blessing, she'll probably stab you in the neck with a letter opener or something."
Not to be put off, Jubilee's expression became momentarily dreamy before she came back to the present, smirked and thwacked the ex-Avenger on the shoulder again. "I'd love to 'expose the Black Widow' pretty much all the time."
Monet groaned aloud and face palmed loudly while Clint looked at the firecracker in horror. "Um, Jubes honey. There's a little factoid you should know about the Black Widow."
"Oooookay?" stretched the woman in confusion.
"Despite her codename and outward appearance, she's much more of a mamma bear type of girl," Clint hedged, hoping she'd get the hint. Unfortunately, only Monet seemed to comprehend the statement and her eyes widened before briefly flicking to the ceiling.
"Alrighty, Biceps. I have no idea what you're talking about."
The archer sighed loudly. "Whenever a close, personal friend of Natasha is either in danger or recovering from harm..."
The Black Widow slipped from her perch on top of a cabinet and landed right in front of a very startled Jubilee and finished, "I protect them at any cost."
Clint and Monet both somehow managed to contain their amusement as Jubilee squeaked and stumbled backward, away from the superspy with a few loud, choice expletives.
When Jubilee collected herself, she instantly paled. Clint assumed that she'd finally made the connection that the Widow had overheard her earlier statement about exposure and for the first time since he'd woken up after bagging his ninth bullet entry wound, felt content.