Clint wasted no time hauling Lucie out to range his makeshift range just off to the side of the barn where it was hidden from both the house and the winding road that led to it. A half structure built of old pallets and canvas stuffed with sand and hay. Every inch built painstakingly by hand to fit Clint's demanding specifications. The latest project to clear his mind. Apparently, home renovation wasn't the only thing he'd done to occupy his time.
"How did you get hold of these?" Lucie asked, barely a whisper as she traced her fingertips along the edge of the familiar rifle case, unable to stop herself until she had already made contact. Following the outline of the etched name that lived there.
The last she had seen of it had been in her assigned quarters onboard the Andraste, tucked away beside the empty desk; out of sight but never out of reach. She knew what she would find inside the case. Evidence of a life fought, her time as an agent made real in carbon fibre and steel.
"It wasn't me," Clint said with a shrug, moving her ever so slightly to the side to unlock the case.
The box opened to reveal the majority of her working knives, organised by occupation rather than size or colour. The top three rows were exclusively throwing knives, razor-sharp and perfect weighted. Below them were blades of various lengths, some as long as her forearm and others tiny enough that it could be disguised as a piece of jewellery, each as lethal as the last. In the two centre compartments were twin handguns but those slots were empty, handed back to SHIELD at Stark Tower following Loki's arrest. They hadn't made it back to their cache, not that it surprised her.
"Then tell Nat I said thank you," she replied politely even though she was anything but happy to be reunited with her cache. She stepped back and stuffing her hands into the back pockets of her jeans so that Clint couldn't see them tremble, seeing his behaviour for what it was. This wasn't a kind gesture from one friend to another, this was an evaluation. An interrogation.
"Wasn't her either."
Clint held out a throwing blade, handle facing her, ready to gauge her reaction. "Luce, take the knife," he ordered, his voice careful and measured, careful to maintain eye contact.
"I'm not an agent anymore. Those don't belong to me. Even says there, 'Property of SHIELD'," she argued, pointing to the stencilled declaration in white spray paint.
"Take the fucking knife and throw it." He left no room for argument this time, all but thrusting the blade into her hand.
It fell to the floor, gravity claiming it rather than her faultless grip. Even inch of her screaming to catch it as it hit the damp dirt at her feet, her forced defiance almost painful. Dropping a knife felt about as natural as trying to take a breath underwater as a momentary panic set in as her brain demanded that she catch it. She couldn't remember the last time she had dropped a knife, couldn't remember the last time a blade felt alien in her hand.
With the kind of patience awarded to barely a handful of people, Clint bend down and retrieved it. That was where his gentle coaxing ended and on the second attempt, he gave her no option; slamming it into her hand and giving her no option, closing his hands around hers. She flinched at the contact, both of his hands on hers and the cool bone of the handle.
Lucie knew the blade instantly, feeling the four tiny pins that held the tan camel bone to the Damascus steel. The only one of its kind in her arsenal and like many of her favourite weapons, a gift. She didn't even remember the man's name, he was just a stallholder in one of the markets of Aleppo while she was on a scouting mission to assess just how bad the situation in Syria would get.
"You think he'd want you moping around Chicago kicking the crap out of drunk guys? No, he would want you to pull yourself together and prep for the next mission."
Lucie opened her mouth to argue, to say that she had only knocked the wind out of the drunk. That she didn't leave a scratch on him and that he had no idea who she was but instead she was cut off before a defence could pass her lips.
"Yes, we know about that. When you don't answer phone calls and send two-word texts, we check-in."
There was no doubting who the 'we' was that Clint was referring to. "You should have called."
There it was, the disappointment that she knew that he had been holding onto but trying not to show.
"You had enough going on," she whispered. For once it was true, she didn't attempt to hide behind bravado or pretend that her emotions didn't exist just for the sake of keeping up with the agents around her.
"Looking out for you isn't a chore."
"You had a literal god mess around with your head, my problems shouldn't even be on your list."
"So you admit that there are problems?"
"Of course I have problems! Phil was murdered right in front of me with my knife while I did absolutely nothing!"
She stared in horror at the knife in her hand, the intricate engravings, the dull edges and the razor-sharp point. So much potential danger in barely nine inches of thin steel.
"What did he say to you?"
He. Not, Coulson, that wasn't the direction that Clint was heading, that wasn't the fire that needed to be poked at. Coulson, although tragic and traumatic, wasn't the reason that Lucie had fled to Chicago and gone into reclusive isolation for months.
"Nothing I didn't already know."
She thought back to that day in the detention centre. If she closed her eyes when she was certain that she would be able to watch it play out like a movie, everything from Loki's suspicions to his offer. The truth was that it wasn't the god's power that scared her, it was the knowledge he held, the things he had been able to see that those closest to her had not. That she wasn't broken by Ashgabat; that she was forged by it. Promises of a splintered soul had fallen flat, her soul didn't even come into it. At her basest level, she had enjoyed it. She had enjoyed that moment of security as the General fell to the floor knowing that they would be able to walk out alive. At that moment, she didn't lack conviction.
"Who did he threaten?" Clint asked, trying to study his former protégées' expressions or lack thereof. Sometimes he wondered if Natasha had schooled her too well.
Lucie kicked a loose rock along the ground, anything to give herself a break from Clint's interrogatory stares and desperate to have a distraction so that she could ignore the weapon in her hand that she couldn't quite release her grip on as if it was holding onto her.
"He made me an offer, said he would let you go if I went with him. I would have-"
She was interrupted. "And it would have been a stupid play."
"I know. It would have pissed the Avengers off. Dad, you, Tasha. Steve. I still would have done it, just so we didn't have to explain to Laura why you didn't make it home."
Clint offered a half-smile, sympathetic and full of gratitude that made laced with just enough fury. In one swift movement, he let go of her hand and used it to smack the side of her head with enough force to skew her ponytail.
"Ow!"
"Don't you ever do that again!" he scolded. "You think that I won't just right back into the fire just to pull your stupid ass out of it?"
He smiled, the kind of smile he gave when he gave his unconditional forgiveness and pulled her into his chest in a tight hug.
"We make it home together," he vowed.
He took a knife from the case, this one smaller and black, far more traditional for throwing than the Damascus steel that was gradually warming in Lucie's hand. Face on to the target, he let the blade sail through the air with minimal spin and find a home just inside of the inner gold ring, barely a centimetre from dead centre. Just enough to be intentional.
"Beat that," he challenged.
The pair stayed there for hours until dusk started to settle in the air and the target became nothing more than a peppered haze at the end of the range. They talked about everything, New York, Loki, Steve, Tony. All of it. Everything that had once been so easy to say and once they started it was difficult to stop. Eventually, Laura had to call them inside with a promise of pot roast and cold beer.