2010 – Thor

"Nat, I swear Coulson is trying to bore me to death." Clint groaned as he dropped down onto the bunk he'd been calling his since they arrived. He'd been in New Mexico with Coulson for a few weeks now, in the middle nowhere, watching a hammer. Which his bosses have decided was above his pay grade.

"Coulson wouldn't drag you out there to watch over a hammer for no reason and you know it. There must be something you're missing." Came Natasha response from the other end of the phone. Natasha was at SHIELDS main base across the country in New York getting ready for her next mission, a typical Intel gathering op that shouldn't take longer than a week or so. "Come on Hawkeye, live up to your name." she said smirking.

"It's a hammer Tasha, a freaking hammer and he has me watching it as if it were gonna get up and do tricks or something. There are so many other things that I could be doing. Stopping drug smuggling rings in Peru or taking down some dictator in a country no one's ever heard of or going to Russia with you, watching your six. Anything other than babysitting duty."

Natasha rolled her eyes as she held up two dresses, comparing them, before putting both of them in her go bag. Tossing her faithful black heels in alongside them. "If it makes you feel any better, I was talking to Coulson earlier and apparently the lab techs were getting weird readings off of it and apparently no one has ever seen before, in SHIELD or anywhere else. You never know these days, with men of iron and Harlem last year with that Dr. Banner, maybe it's something like that, then you'd be pissed that you missed out if you bailed now." Smirking into the phone, knowing that her partner was never one to miss out on the crazier missions that SHIELD had to offer, he lived for them. After the Hulk destroyed half of Harlem and they weren't called in to help deal with it he had sulked for weeks.

She was right, he knew she was right and he hated it when she was right. Rolling over onto his side so he could grab the tablet that was on the table next to his bunk he swiped to unlock it. "You're only saying that because you have an actual mission. What's it for anyway? You told me it was an Intel gathering mission but what could an old retired Russia general honestly have that SHIELD would have any use for?" he asked, "I've been looking at the case files and there's nothing here that I can see that would make it worth their time sending you in, a level 3 agent maybe but why you?"

"First of all, they need someone fluent in Russian, looks the part and someone who knows the area to avoid suspicion and second, how the hell did you get access to the mission files, they're supposed to be classified except for those involved." Natasha asked, momentarily stopping her packing efforts to sit down and question her partner's hacking antics.

Clint scoffed, "what kind of partner would I be if I didn't hack the files to watch my partners six even if I can't be there in person?"

"Clint." The warning in her voice was palpable. "I thought we agreed to stop hacking each other's files?" This wouldn't be the first time they'd hacked the other's mission files for solo ops. It didn't happen often but when it did they couldn't help it, but after the last it had happened and Fury found out he had put a stop to it, or so he thought, apparently.

"Oh come on Tasha, like you didn't hack my file to see if there wasn't something up with my last op to Kazakhstan." He said smiling, with a knowing tone in his voice.

Before she could respond the overhead alarms started to go off. Clint bolted out of bed and rushed to the door, throwing the door open. Agents were rushing up and down the hallway as lights flashed above. "What's going on?" he asked as an agent rushed past "someone's breached the perimeter." And with that they turned the corner and out of sight. "Tasha I gotta call you back."

"Go, go you can tell me everything later, but I'm shipping out soon so it may have to wait until I get back. Good luck and stay safe." She replied.

Clint ended the call as Coulson's voice came through on his radio "I need eyes in the sky, with a gun." At this point Clint was already in the armory grabbing his gear. As he reach for the long range rifle on the shelf he changed his mind and grabbed his compound bow off the rack above it. He rushed outside into the rain towards the crane, tossing his bow in first before jumping up onto platform. Pressing the control buttons on the remote the platform began to rise, high enough to see everything going on down below.

He could see a blonde giant running through the compound in and out of the tunnels knocking down agents left and right. As the crane stabilized Coulson's voice came through his coms this time, "Barton, talk to me."

"Want me to slow him down sir?" as he knocked his arrow and drew back the string of his bow, aiming at the giant. "Or are you sending in more guys for him to beat up?" Clint responded trying not to laugh.

"I'll let you know," came the response. So Clint stood, poised to release his arrow. A minute passed and another and Clint continued to watch as the stranger went toe to toe with Agent Braxton. He watched as the two fought and when Braxton went down and the blonde headed straight towards the hammer he decided to call out to Coulson "you'd better called it Coulson, I'm starting to root for this guy."

There was a brief pause and then "last chance sir." He warned.

"Wait" came Coulson's voice "I wanna see this." So he waited, and watched as the man approached the hammer and made a grab it. For a moment Clint thought that after all these weeks of seeing people try to lift it, push it, use heavy equipment to try and get it out of the ground with no luck, that for a brief moment something would finally happen and make the time he'd spend in the desert, away from his partner worth it. When – nothing, the man fell to his knees in defeat. Then came Coulson's voice again, "alright shows over, gather it all."

With that Clint lowered his bow and lowered the crane to the ground and packed everything up and went to find Coulson. He couldn't wait to tell Tasha what happened, especially since she hated Braxton, but what he didn't know then was he wouldn't get a chance.