3. Hanging on the promises in songs of yesterday

"I got to tell you," Darcy said, rubbing her eyes. "I am having a really hard time figuring out how the pair of you didn't kill each other."

"Yeah, well it was kind of a close shave there," Clint admitted.

"Oh! Oh!" Her eyes lit up and she leaned into the table with a grin. "Did you finally shoot him?"

"What? No!" Clint's face crumpled in a frown

"He shot you?" She suggested, the manic brightness only increasing.

"What is with that stupid rumor?" Clint demanded, dragging both hands over his face. "There was no shooting."

"That's so disappointing," Darcy huffed, slumping back in the bench seat and folding her arms over her chest with a sulking pout.

"It was an accident," Clint muttered into his coffee.

"What?"

"What?" He asked, puzzled.

"This is the most confusing coffee date I've ever been on," Darcy sighed, slumping into the table and letting her forehead rest on her folded arms.

"For both of us," Clint agreed. He seemed to think about that a moment. "Well, maybe second most confusing." He took a sip of his coffee.

"Possibly third," he said.

"What was number one?" Darcy asked with a frown, turning her head to look up at him.

"It's complicated," Clint shrugged. She gave him a wave of her hand as if to say continue. "Turns out May was right about level three. The missions kept getting weirder, Phil was my SO so I always went out with him, sometimes with May, sometimes with bigger teams. Couple of weeks after I got promoted this suspicious death came through analysis, a girl froze to death in the wilderness in Wyoming. Real sad but it didn't seem like it was our type of thing. Couple weeks after that two more girls went missing in the same town, and then another girl, froze to death, same as the first girl."

"Oh my god."

"Fury scrambled a team," he nodded in agreement at the sentiment. "Two hours after they found the girl we were in Wyoming in the middle of winter. We didn't have any leads, and there's another snow storm rolling in. We couldn't be in a worse scenario, so I tell Fury I can track her back to where she started her hike through nowhere but I have to do it quick before the snow covers everything. So there I am with Phil and three Level Fives following me through the snow while Fury took May and the rest of the team into town to interview the families."

"What did you find?" Darcy asked with a grimace.

"You know what they say, if it exists some weird super-villain will try to experiment on it."

"Come on, Barton, one foot in front of the other," Coulson said, plodding through snow that was already knee deep and still falling, the early evening so dark is was already difficult to see.

"Only got one working one," Clint mumbled, crippling along, half draped over Coulson's shoulder.

"Are you sure they didn't shoot you?" Phil asked his jaw ticking in frustration as he struggled under Clint's weight.

"Naw's just a fracture," Clint replied. His eyelids had been growing heavy since they'd made a break from the rundown logging camp tucked away in the forest near the mountains. What they'd first thought was an abandoned warehouse converted into a temporary hunting shelter turned out to be sheltering something a lot more dangerous and they'd lost the rest of their team and their transport in the process. "Try m' radio again."

"Coulson to Fury," Phil paused his lurching march to raise the radio to his ear but the only reply was static. He stowed the radio, pulling out his phone. "I think the storm's affecting our range. Still no cell service either. We have to keep going." He glared at the phone as if it had personally offended him. He missed his old satellite phone, those things almost always worked even if they did weigh more than a small dog.

"I don't think I'm going to make it all the way to town on one leg." Clint shook his head. "The temp's already dropping and the wind's picking up, you've only got a few more hours out here too."

"It's only six miles," Phil snapped angrily.

"Nope, I'm toast," Clint let go of Coulson's shoulder, falling over in the snow in a heap.

"Barton!"

"In my pack," Clint said, shrugging off one of the straps, his movements sloppy as if he were drunk. "Top front pocket there's a thing, med kit's in th' second pocket." Coulson knelt beside him in the snow, rummaging through the pack until he pulled out a bundle of white and mylar nylon.

"What is this?" he asked with a frown. Clint made a motion as if he were throwing a frisbee and Coulson copied it, blinking a bit stupidly when the bundle unrolled into a pop-up snow shelter. "Have you been buying beers for R&D again?"

"They need someone to test their crazy ass ideas," Clint replied, dragging himself to the opening in the shelter and rolling inside with a pained grunt. "Take my radio, you'll move twice as fast on your own."

"I can't leave you out here without-"

"Coulson, they took out three of our best agents and they've still got two kids," Clint cut him off, digging through the med kit until he found an injector pen. He closed one eye, staring at the label for a long moment before taking a deep breath and jamming it into his leg with a pained hiss. "You cannot carry my heavy ass six miles through the snow in under three hours. If you don't leave me here we're both going to be dead of exposure and if you don't make it back those girls are as good as finished, we're the only ones who know where they are. If they're going to have any chance at all Fury's going to have to go in for them as soon as the storm clears. The both of us dying out here doesn't help anyone."

"I should be in radio range in under two hours," Coulson insisted, rummaging through Barton's pack until he found the thermal blanket. "I'll call in the intel, get transport, and come right back for you. Two hours out, an hour back. Three hours, three and a half tops, you can survive that long in the shelter. Hang on to what's left of my radio, it might get a signal out once the storm starts to clear." Clint nodded slowly.

"Right," he said, wrapping the blanket around himself and propping his head on his pack. "Do me a favor? When you talk to Fury tell him he's a lying bastard."

"Not that you're wrong, but is there a reason why?" Phil asked cautiously.

"He'll know why," Clint replied, closing his eyes.

"Barton, I'm coming back, you have my word."

"Right," Clint nodded again. "You better get going, Don't mind me, I'm going to put my feet up, play some canasta."

"Three hours," Phil insisted, leaning back on his heels. Clint only nodded, reaching out to zip the shelter shut against the wind.

"He left you in a snow drift," Darcy said with a disapproving frown.

"It was a nice snowdrift," Clint replied.

"With minimal shelter and no radio?"

"I had half a radio," Clint said with a shrug. "Have you ever tried to hike through the snow with a fractured tibia?"

"I'm having some really conflicting feelings and I'm not sure you shouldn't have asked Fury to buy you those bullets."

"Sometimes doing the right thing means making a shit call," Clint said taking a long gulp of his coffee. "I didn't think I could live with it if we didn't rescue those girls."

"I'm not sure how you lived anyway."

"It was close. The storm was so bad Phil had to hike five and a half miles before he could get a signal through, but by then he was hypothermic, called in the intel and passed right out. Woke up three hours later."

"Damn."

"I'm good, sir," Phil stumbled out of the treatment room in pursuit of his field commander on wobbly legs, one hand gripping the wall. "I'm drugged to the gills but I'm good." Fury turned back, eying him reproachfully. The tiny rural hospital wasn't much larger than a walk in clinic and the on-duty physician looked to be pressing seventy. The nurse, who was bustling around at a speed Phil frankly found terrifying was easily five years older. Other than the orderly asleep in a plastic chair in the corner there were no other staff. The nurse stopped at Coulson's side on her way from one thing to something else and grabbed hold of his face shining her pen light in his eyes.

"The meds make him compulsively honest," May explained as the nurse gave a satisfied nod and tottered speedily off to her next task. "Don't let him interrogate anyone." Phil glared at her, largely on principle.

"Do we have some reason to believe Barton is still alive out there?" Fury demanded, his shoulders rigid with anger. Fury hated losing agents. "Has he called in?"

"I have his radio," Phil admitted. "Mine was damaged, I left it with him but I don't think he can get a signal all the way here."

"So the answer is no," Fury said harshly. "I'm down four agents on this op."

"Three," Phil interrupted him. "Barton's not dead."

"Four," Fury spat back at him. "Because you left your specialist in a snow bank in Wyoming with minimal shelter and that is not on me. You're asking me to send you and whatever other idiot you can con out into a blizzard in the middle of the night to pick up a damn popsicle!"

"I kind of resent that," May muttered under her breath.

"I promised him I'd come back for him."

"Well you broke your word then!" Fury replied. "And I should bust your ass back down to probie just because I have to write four condolence letters and one of them is to a jackass serving three to five in Folsom!"

"Did… did Barton know his brother…"

"Damned if I know!" Fury scowled. "You were his SO! God damnit Coulson, I thought you were better than this!"

"You're saying I shouldn't have left him," Phil said, his jaw tight.

"I'm saying that when you left him you should have realized that you weren't going back for him," Fury replied. "Sometimes you have to make that call, you have to put the mission first. But if you're not prepared to live with that then you don't leave a man behind. You make the call and you accept that sometimes life is shit. You had to choose between the Asset and the Mission and you chose the Mission, end of story. I'm not losing anyone else just because you've got a damn kid's death on your conscience. Now get your ass back in bed before you fucking fall down!" he spun on his foot, stalking toward the door as May grabbed Phil's arm.

"He told me to tell you you're a lying bastard!" Coulson called after him. Fury's steps halted and Phil winced as Melinda's fingers dug into his arms like a vice. He glanced at her to find her wide eyed and unnaturally still.

"And that's exactly why you're on my shit list," Fury said coldly. "Because you just lost me the smartest specialist I had." Without another word he stormed out of the Hospital, stomping through the still falling snow to the Sheriff's office a handful of yards away.

"I promised," Phil said, his voice shaking.

"I'm sure Barton believed that," May quipped, tugging on his arm to get him moving. Phil turned on her with a gimlet glare. "What are you mad at me for? I'm the one that's spent the last six months listening to the two of you snip at each other constantly. It's given me a damn headache. And unlike you, I actually liked Barton."

"Stop talking like he's dead."

"He's been out in a blizzard for nearly eight hours!" she replied. "Even Hawkeye's not that tough." Phil's shoulder's rolled in an angry huff and he tugged his arm free from her grasp, taking a handful of steps before sinking tiredly down into one of the plastic chairs clustered around the small hospital.

"Do you know, Steve Rogers didn't keep a journal." he said.

"Oh here we go," Melinda groaned, leaning into the counter of the nurse's station.

"He didn't have any family left by the war so he didn't have anyone to write home to either."

"Sounds like Barton," she observed. "No wonder you keep obsessing about him." Phil shot her a cold look.

"He wrote one letter though, right after Barnes died Rogers wrote to Barnes's kid sister."

"How do you know this?"

"SHIELD has the original draft in the archives. In the letter he told her that he'd wanted to go back and look, to at least bring Barnes body home but the snow was too deep and they couldn't make it into the ravine. It's four pages of how sorry he is, how ashamed he was he let them down. He'd pulled Barnes and 400 men out of a Hydra camp just a couple of years before, everything he did and the only thing he could focus on was the one he couldn't go back for."

"Phil"

"I've been letting Barton down since I met him," he said. "I wasn't listening to what Director Carter tried to tell me. I was so focused on getting Barton to trust me, I didn't think about showing him that I trusted him. That I believed in him. He's alive out there, I know he is. I have to go get him."

"Sure, why not, I'd love to get fired and black-balled from every intelligence agency on the planet," Melinda replied, rolling her eyes. "You have a concussion and your toes are an interesting shade of blue but hey, lets slap on the snow shoes and hike into a blizzard."

"We need to steal a jeep."

"I hate you."

"Why was Fury a lying bastard?" Darcy asked curiously.

"Oh, he told me if I signed on with SHIELD I'd never be left out in the cold again," Clint replied, his mouth twisting up in a wry grin as Darcy laughed. She tipped over into the bench seat, only her shoulder visible as she cackled. Across the coffee shop the barista looked up from where she was cleaning the pastry case but didn't seem terribly interested.

"Phil riding in to save you on a white horse though," Darcy said, shaking her head as she finally pulled herself upright. "That's heroic."

"Well it would have been," Clint agreed. "If it wasn't on an ugly yellow snowmobile he stole from the hospital." Darcy let out another snort of laughter.

"And if he had actually got to do any rescuing," Clint added as an afterthought.

"Oh no."

"Oh yeah."

"Well I guess we have an answer to the question: Why was there no sign of a barracks at the Evil Lair Warehouse?" Phil let out a breath that was nearly a sigh, lowering his binoculars.

"Why, why does this shit always happen with you?" May demanded from her spot crouched in the snow beside him.

"This is my fault?" Phil demanded, glaring at her. "Aerial surveillance cleared this area days ago. I have no idea why there's a half dozen mobile homes out here in the middle of nowhere!" But there they were, a nondescript cluster of hastily installed single wide trailers, shabby industrial front stoops connected to each of them. They were little more than serviceable shelter from the blistering cold, each of them eerily quiet, a bare half mile from the logging camp that held the missing girls and practically right beneath the ridge where Phil had left Barton more than nine hours ago.

The snow had finally started to let up a little and patches of inky star strew sky bled through slate colored clouds, the full moon bright enough to illuminate their path even this late. They'd left the ancient and dilapidated snowmobile, the word Ambulance inked sloppily on the sled it was dragging, sheltered along the tree line. Phil was feeling a profound sense of relief that he'd decided to scout the hillside before trying to drive it any farther or they likely would have driven right into the middle of the encampment.

"Maybe they're hunting cabins." May suggested. Phil shot her a disbelieving look. "Well I don't know! Do I look like someone who shoots for fun?" Phil didn't say anything, his expression going blank.

"Don't answer that," she snapped in frustration.

"What do you think the odds are no ones home?" Phil asked, turning his attention back to the ring of trailers.

"Zero," Melinda replied fatalistically. "We have to call this in, get backup."

"We can't," Phil shook his head, resigned. "The snows still coming down we'll have to ride back to get a signal out."

"Great, and it took us an hour to get out here and we still don't have what we came for." Melinda had that frustrated look Phil was used to seeing on her face right before she lost her temper and started shooting all her problems. He really didn't care for that look, largely because he was fairly sure Mel considered him one of her problems right now.

"Barton's shelter was just over that ridge," Phil said, nodding toward the snow covered hillside. "I'm not seeing any guards or surveillance here. You cover me, I'll go in real quiet, check the structures. If no one's awake I'll hike up on foot, grab him, bring him back down, and we'll book it back to town."

"What if someone is awake?"

"I'll still hike up the ridge and get Barton," Phil replied. "I'll signal you and you can bring the snowmobile up around the back side of the ridge. If they do hear us, we won't sound close."

"I love this plan," Melinda replied, anger pulling at the corners of her mouth. "There's just one problem with it, you can't cover me and your position on the ridge at the same time." She reached out, smacking him in the back of the head.

"Barton can cover our position, I'll cover you," Phil replied, frowning at her.

"Are you deranged?" she hissed at him. "Barton's been out here in the snow since yesterday noon and he's been buried in a snow drift since you left him there last night! What do you think he's going to shoot with his frozen hands and icicles hanging off his face?"

"I'd put my faith in Barton's accuracy if he'd broken his shooting arm and lost an eye," Phil replied vehemently.

"I want new friends," she snarled half under her breath.

"Five minutes," Phil said, shuddering as he lowered the hood of his parka and pulled his hat more snuggly around his ears. "If anyone's awake they'll have to have a light on, it won't be hard to tell from inside the compound. Cover me." Melinda threw him a dark glare, crouching into the shadows of the drifting snow as Phil skittered along the tree line, creeping up on the first trailer.

Phil was never one to let himself get distracted in the field. He was very good at compartmentalizing, generally speaking. He'd discovered early on that the easiest way to stay focused was to have a mental checklist, like surveillance cameras flicking from one view to the next. Porch six, porch five, the gap between two and three, the gap between one and two. His eyes swept over each access point in his line of sight, his feet crunching through the snow as he crept up on the back of the nearest trailer. The windows were high off the ground, higher than he could stretch but he wasn't surprised by that. He fished in his pocket until he found what he was looking for, a small mirror on a telescopic arm. He felt a smug grin pull at this lips as he extended it, checking the gap between trailer five and six again before chancing a look in the mirror, all clear. Trailer two and three were dark as well. In trailer four he found the TV on, droning softly, its picture snowy but no sign of movement and a figure asleep in a heap of a recliner. Trailer five was also dark and he reeled in the telescopic mirror, checking all the porches and Melinda's sight line before creeping through the darkness toward trailer six. This one was the only one with an obstructed sight line, but if he was careful he should be able to check it without leaving his six exposed.

His radio made a hissing noise just as he'd doubled back and rounded the corner of trailer five, preparing to make a quick dash across the yard to trailer six. He frowned down at it, glancing over at where he knew May was watching before checking every door again. He pulled the radio from the clip, lowering the volume as he swept the compound before heading toward the last trailer.

"-olson - cop-" The voice was broken and barely understandable but the sound of static seemed almost percussive in the cold stillness and he scrambled to get his gloved thumb on the button to silence it.

"Jes- Couls- get -own!"

He didn't get another warning. The door of trailer six nearly blew off its hinges from a shotgun blast, the sound piercing the stillness. The shot hit him square in the chest, impacting his vest and sending him flying off his feet to land flat on his back a handful of yards away, well out of Melinda's line of sight. Phil gasped for breath, his ears ringing, the impact of the shotgun to his chest forcing the air from his lungs and making his vision swim. He could hear more gunshots and screams but the sounds were distant, drowned out by the rush of blood in his ears. He scrambled to draw his sidearm, emptying it into the kneecaps of the man running toward him brandishing a hand gun. He scrambled for a fresh clip as the man tumbled to the ground, but before he could reload he felt the gun wrenched from his grasp and he looked up into the barrel of a semi-automatic rifle.

"Say goodnight, G-man," the man standing over him said.

Phil flinched as the shot rang out, his hand flying up to cover his face on reflex as the gunman was blown off his feet, landing in the snow in a splatter of blood.

"You know if you were going to turn up so fucking late the least you could do is not get shot!" a very raspy and familiar voice said derisively. Phil gulped in a struggling breath tilting his head back farther into the snow to see Barton standing only a few yards behind him, a couple of tree branches duck taped to his broken leg and a sniper rifle clutched in his hands.

"Nice shooting," Phil said, coughing, his vision graying out around the edges as he noticed Melinda running through the snow drifts toward them.

"I hope you told Fury I said he was a lying bastard," Barton declared, limping across the yard to lean over him with a frown. "Because I'm pretty pissed at all of you right now."

"Noted," Phil replied, nodding slowly before passing out.

"Shot in the chest?"

"We get shot a lot in our line of work," Clint admitted.

"Define: a lot," Darcy prompted with a narrow eyed look.

"Counting kevlar shots," Clint tipped his head back, staring at the ceiling as if the answer were recorded there. "Fifty… six. Fifty-seven. Does being shot with a slingshot count as being shot?"

"How big was the rock?" she asked.

"Not rocks, little napalm pellets," He replied, leaning his elbow on the table and making an 'okay' sign, eying the diameter of the shape of his finger and thumb.

"Then yes, that counts as being shot," Darcy said, making a face.

"Fifty-seven," Clint nodded, returning his attention to his coffee. "Anyway, body armor protected his chest but he still broke three ribs, May and I ended up loading him into the sled and I had to hang on to her the whole ride back into town."

Phil blinked his eyes open to late morning light filtering in through the window of the tiny rural hospital and the sound of angry swearing out on the front porch. He'd feel bad later about leaving Melinda to deal with his latest brilliant plan but right now he was getting a perverse sort of glee listening to her and Fury spew profanity at each other in Mandarin. He didn't actually speak Mandarin but he knew for a fact that the only Mandarin Fury knew consisted of vulgarities and ordering alcohol. It was probably a really interesting conversation.

The curtain separating his room from the rest of the hospital was partially pushed aside and Barton appeared, his leg in a bright purple walking cast and an extra large plain styrofoam cup in each hand.

"I see you got an upgrade on your splint," Phil observed, his voice raspy. Barton looked better than he had a few hours ago, there were pink wind burns on his face and his fingernails still looked a bit pale but otherwise his color had improved.

"Make fun of my duck tape again, sir, and I will drink both of these right in front of you," Barton replied, but there was the slightest smirk to his lips. Phil smiled back at him, wincing as he reached out for the second cup, Barton made sure he had a stable hold on it before carefully sinking into the plastic chair beside the bed. The first sip was like heaven and Phil tried not to sigh in pleasure, whatever the hospital had him on for his cracked ribs they weren't being terribly generous with it.

"Team was already heading out while we were on the way back, got the girls and the ringleaders," Clint reported. "They're on the other side of the hospital. Their families just got here, I think they're going to be okay."

"Good news," Phil nodded. "Sorry it took me so long to get back."

"Naw, May told me you were hypothermic, you can't help that," Barton brushed the apology aside. "This whole opp was a shitshow, happens sometimes. I think I'm going to have to buy the R&D guys donuts when I get back though, based on my field test I'm going to recommend the emergency shelter as required winter gear."

"You and me both," Phil nodded.

"At least we made the best of a bad job," Barton declared, wrapping his hands around the styrofoam cup.

"Some of us better than others," Phil shook his head. "You saved my life, Barton." Clint let out a snort of a laugh.

"You're a tough bastard. You saved your own life."

"I'm not too proud to be honest with myself," Phil swallowed, meeting Barton's gaze. "I got lucky."

"Let me tell you something, Phil," Clint said, running his fingers through his unkept hair. "Luck lives in the city. That's whether you get hit by a bus or not. Where your bank is robbed or not, that's luck. That's winning or losing. Luck doesn't live out here in the middle of nowhere. Here, you survive or you surrender. Wolves don't kill unlucky deer. They kill the weak ones."

"You are so full of shit," Darcy said with an unamused frown.

"What?" Clint asked, eying her warily.

"That's the end of Wind River," she replied, her brow knitting in disapproval. Clint was silent for a long moment.

"Was it good?" he asked finally.

"Are you kidding me?" she demanded. She was doing a fairly decent impression of Steve's disappointed face, it was very unsettling. "Did you just make that whole thing up?"

"No!" Clint protested. "I swear that's what happened!"

"And you have the balls to ask," she said, jabbing her spoon at him. "Where the rumors that Coulson shot you come from."

Just another heart in need of rescue
Waiting on love's sweet charity
An' I'm gonna hold on for the rest of my days
'Cause I know what it means to walk along the lonely street of dreams

David Coverdale & Bernie Marsden - Here I Go Again