CHAPTER ONE

Looking back, I guess it all really started with the Lemurian Star.

I didn't go on that Op, but Natasha and I had just been recalled to the Triskellion following a mission, pretty suddenly. Before I knew it, she and Cap were whisked off to the cargo ship. The mission was called a success, but I know Nat well enough to know that something went sideways on the op. It was pretty clear that she and Cap were not too happy with each other, either. Curiosity nibbled at the edges of my brain, but I know better than to put Tasha in the position of asking her about an op she goes on and I don't.

I tried exactly once. The bruise lasted a week and turned interesting colors.

Anyway, after they came back from the Lemurian Star, things just got hinky.

Sitwell had been my handler for most of my ops since... well, since Coulson. I gotta admit that I didn't much like the guy. He tended to have a stick the size of a redwood up his ass most of the time. While Coulson had allowed me some leeway to make calls when I needed to, Sitwell was more of a micro-manager. He never quite seemed to get that I could see things he couldn't, out in the field. It drove me up the futzing wall. Especially since it never seemed like he really had the brains to match his level-eight clearance. Damned toady.

But after Tasha and Cap rescued him from the cargo ship, he started acting... I dunno... squirrely.

I met Tasha as she was leaving her debreifing with Director Fury. It wasn't coincidental. I had heard it was a rescue op and if it had been important enough to send the super-soldier, I wanted to make sure that my best friend was in good shape. I know, tongues would sometimes wag around SHIELD. But those people didn't have a clue. That would have been like dating a little, more deadly, sister. No, Nat's one of the few people I trust completely, to know everything about me. And not just with my life, either. She's one of two. Used to be three, but now it's two, since Loki put his scepter through...

Well, at any rate, in our line of work, that sort of a relationship is more precious than gold. So you protect it. Tasha looks after me and I look after her. End of story.

"How'd the op go?" I asked, pushing off of the wall I had been leaning against as she trailed out of the secure room just after Fury and Cap. The latter two went down the hallway, both looking rather irate at each other. Whatever it was, not my circus, not my monkeys.

"You know better than to ask, Clint," Nat snapped back at me, her arms crossing over her chest and her face taking on that look; the one that warned me not to push or I'd not be long for this world.

Remember how I said I know Tasha well enough to know when something went sideways without needing to ask for details? This was one of those times. Her response immediately put me on edge. Normally, when I ask that, she says something like "all objectives achieved" or "mission success" and we can leave it at that. The fact that she didn't feel like she could say that...

Yeah. Not good.

Immediately, my hands went up, palms out, in a placating gesture. "Hey, no details! It's good! It's blue jello night at the cafeteria. Wanna catch a bite?"

"Shower first," she replied, hardly breaking stride, "meet you there in twenty." She continued on her way down the corridor toward the women's dormitories.

Sitwell came out of the secure room last, looking haggard and exhausted. Still he adjusted his tie in some sort of weird need to look crisp and clean, despite everything.

"Sir," I said, giving an acknowledging nod.

Sitwell gave a sour noise from the back of his throat. He continued on his way, down the hallway in the same direction a Nat. I thought this was funny, since I figured he'd want to clean himself up even more than Tasha did and the men's dormitories were the other direction. The guy could really be a priss. I just figured he had other stuff to take care of, first. Probably what made him so damned cranky.

With nothing else to do, I decided to head to the cafeteria right away. I liked choosing where we sat. There was this little mezzanine area, a floor up, that had a nice little corner where you could see the whole place and it was usually pretty empty and quiet. It was my favorite table. You could see everyone coming and going. When Tasha picked the table, it was always down on the main floor, back in a dark, little cramped corner with only one way in or out. Just the difference between us, I guess. I didn't hate her table and she didn't hate mine, but mostly it was because the Triskelion was safe ground, for the most part. On an op together, we would usually have to discuss the merits of each type before entering a place.

Grabbing a piece of pizza that had been under the heat lamps a little too long, a dish of blue jello, and a soda, I headed up the stairs to the mezzanine and toward my table. To my surprise Bobbi Morse was sitting at a table nearby, just polishing off a Reuben and chips.

"Clint," she greeted, "I heard you came back suddenly yesterday."

"Yeah," I replied, "Sitwell got himself in deep and Fury needed Tasha to help Cap bail out his sorry ass."

Bobbi chuckled around a potato chip, giving a wry grin. "I wonder why they still let him out in the field," she said, with barely contained mirth.

I propped a foot up on the chair opposite her by the table, returning her smile with a sarcastic one of my own. "Expendable?" I said. She chuckled again.

Bobbi and I go back quite a ways. We had a... well... I guess you could call it a fling when I first joined up with SHIELD, before I met Laura. It didn't last long, though, since... well, workplace dating just gets weird at this place. For about three months, we shared, uh, moments when we overlapped between missions, but the pillow talk was more than a little awkward. It quickly devolved into yelling, sniping, and even throwing things at each other on occasion. So we mutually agreed that it just didn't work and friend-zoned each other. We've gotten along a lot better since.

"Haven't seen you in a while," she said, "how's your world?"

"Ehh, complicated," I replied with a shrug, "and a weird feeling it's going to get more so before the week's out. Been a while since I've been recalled as suddenly as I was yesterday."

"Yeah, I got recalled, too," she said, "so did a bunch of level sevens. You get the feeling something big is about to go down?"

Thoughtfully, I cast a gaze out over the rest of the cafeteria, to the people I could see below. Something was off. Normally you'd see about a half-and-half mix of agents buried in reading reports or enjoying some mutual down-time with each other and chatting. But today was different. Oddly higher number of guys sitting alone for no reason at all. Heads were down, but not over a report or anything and several people seemed to be shoveling their food into their mouths as quickly as possible. It was as if a larger than normal number of agents were avoiding each other. It's the type of thing you only notice from above.

"Maybe," I said thoughtfully.

Just then, I spotted Nat walking in and heading toward the food line. She spotted me up on the mezzanine and gave a nod, then went to pick up a meal. While I waited for her, Bobbi and I exchanged a few more words. I don't remember exactly what we talked about. Something about knowing how to get in contact with each other in bad times. We had had a lot of exchanges like that in the past.

And then, in walked Sitwell, only a minute or so behind Tasha. He still looked like he hadn't been to put himself together, which was weird. I mean, seriously, the guy's a futzing neat-freak! I kid you not, he carries wet-wipes with him in the field.

Those things are flammable, by the way.

As Tasha brought her food up the stairs to the mezzanine, I watched Sitwell trail along a bit behind her and head to one of the tables just under the mezzanine. Meanwhile, Bobbi put the last bite of her Reuben into her mouth and chewed as she cleaned up her garbage.

"Well, I gotta catch some kip," she said, "got a mission briefing early tomorrow."

"Catch you later," I said, moving off toward my favorite table.

Bobbi and Nat passed each other at the very top of the stairs.

"Widow," said Bobbi.

"Mockingbird," Nat replied.

It was their usual cold interaction. It was hard to say what it was that was between them, but they always seemed only to tolerate each other. Weird thing was, when I asked Nat about it once, she professed that she thought Bobbi was trustworthy and in general one of the good guys. Bobbi seemed to think the same of Tasha. But for some reason, they don't get along. Sometimes, I think they only put up with each other when they have to because they're both my friends.

Women. I am so glad I am off the market.

Tasha came over to the table and dropped her tray onto it with a clatter. She plopped into the chair opposite me and began tearing into the gyro she had picked up.

"You okay?" I asked, sliding my soda across to her to take a swing from the straw. She did so and then slid it back.

"Men are jerks," she said.

"All men or do I get a pass from your wrath?"

Tasha sighed and looked back down to her gyro, picking out a piece of meat with her fork and pushing it around a bit. "All right, fine," she said, "Steve's a jerk." She tore into the gyro some more.

I couldn't help but stare at her and blink. "I better check my watch. I think we jumped back in time to high school," I blurted out.

The look she shot me spoke volumes. Ice. Thin.

"Okay, care to elaborate?"

"Steve's all pissed off that Fury gave me orders outside his mission," Tasha said, "orders he didn't know anything about. He's treating me like it's my fault I had another objective."

Ah. A clash of generations. Cap came from a time when secrets weren't as compartmentalized as they are now. He'd been chafing under Fury's command style since he came out of the ice as a result. In contrast, Nat came from a background where knowing what you were told and no more and trusting the system was as natural as breathing.

Yeah, I'm as surprised as you are that the two of them hadn't butted heads before this.

Still, things were tense enough as it was around the Triskelion without the crappy morale that having two Avengers bitching at each other would cause. So, I set about diffusing the bomb, a little.

"Well, look at it from his side, Tasha," I said, "Fury sent him in on a rescue mission and didn't tell him that other stuff was going on. It was his op and some objectives were kept from him. How would you react if I went off the plan on one of your ops because I had another objective you didn't know anything about?"

"Pissed, but I'd get over it," she replied.

"Really?" I said, giving her a skeptic's stare. "Tikrit?"

Tasha sighed again, leaning back and letting her eyes roll skyward. "All right, fine, you got a point. You never miss your mark, do you Hawkeye?"

"Nope," I said, digging into my jello. Then I leaned in and lowered my voice. "By the way, you pick up a tail while you were away?"

"What, Sitwell?" she asked, in kind. "Dunno what that's about. It is a pretty obvious trailing job, isn't it?"

"Something have him rattled, you think? This whole place seems on edge since you guys got back." I polished off the last of my blue jello and started in on the pizza.

Nat reached for my soda again and took another pull from the straw, looking at the table in thought. It was that same look she had when she was trying to make up her mind about something; when loyalties were being weighed against each other. It took only a few seconds before she had made up her mind and her eyes shot up to meet mine.

The enormity of that was like running into a brick wall at sixty miles per hour. Normally, she would give a sigh, her eyes would drift off elsewhere, and she would mumble something about it being "just stuff from the op, probably." She would let me know she knows more, but she would be keeping her secrets like a good agent. This time, however, the loyalty she chose was to me over SHIELD.

So, you know, nothing ominous there...

"Fury had me retrieve some data from the Lemurian Star," she blurted out, her voice impossibly low, now, "Sitwell's been acting weird since he found out. Something big is happening, Clint. I don't like it."

Swallowing hard, I nodded slowly, my eyes locked with Tasha's. A long, uncomfortable silence passed between us. "Okay," I said around a sigh, "okay."

Have I mentioned that I don't really consider myself to be an eloquent man? Tasha has told me differently, but I think she's full of shit.

"Okay," I said one more time, desperately trying to whack at the broken record that my mouth seemed to have become.

Nat's eyes left mine and she shook her head, dropping her gaze back to the table. "I shouldn't have told you that," she said, "that was stupid."

"No, no," I whispered back, "you know intel is safe with me. SHIELD needs you not being a basket case. So don't do that. You haven't told anyone. You know I got your back. You know it, Tasha. Just like I know you've got mine."

Nat dragged her eyes back to meet mine again. "Always," she said, "I just can't shake this feeling that something is about to go down. Just... watch your back, okay?"

"You know it," I replied, "and that goes for you, too."

We stuck around for a while longer, just talking about stuff that didn't matter, catching up. Nat needed the time to decompress and we just joked around like two friends for a bit. Sad truth of this job is that conversations like the one we had just had are never far from your thoughts, even when you're otherwise having a good time.

Nat crashed pretty hard after that and it wasn't long before she just plain needed some shut-eye. To make sure she made it there, I walked her back to the women's dormitory, then said my goodbyes for the night.

Sure enough, when I turned around to head back to the men's side, there was Sitwell just rounding the corner, trying to act like he was just passing by and not really succeeding. I don't know if it was just because I didn't want to deal with him right then or because of some kind of professional courtesy, but I continued on without reacting. Sure enough, he started back in the same direction as me.

Great. I had picked up Nat's tail. Lucky me. That meant that he thought Nat told me something she shouldn't have. I mean, she did, but that's besides the point! Watching your agents is a part of a handler's job. But assuming the worst of them? That's just plain rude!

Now, I worked with the guy, but to be perfectly frank, there's a reason I was the specialist and he was the handler; I'm better'n him. Four sharp turns, an elevator ride, and a leap into an air vent later and he had no clue where I went.

Another funny thing about this job is that you never feel completely safe, no matter where you are. Take the Triskelion, for example. It was the main center for all SHIELD activity. More missions began and ended there than any other SHIELD facility. Sometimes you'd run missions from the Hub or the Treehouse, but the big ones all operated out of the Triskelion. So if there was one place where an agent should feel safe, it was the Triskelion, right?

Almost every high-level specialist had a bolt-hole located somewhere in the place, somewhere they could hide out and lay low if they ever felt the need. Natasha knew where mine was and I knew where hers was and Bobbi had given me hints as to where hers was. The place was big enough that it was riddled with specialist bolt-holes and yet we would almost never run into each other.

Since the place is gone, there's no sense trying to keep its location a secret. My hide-out was on the fifty-third floor, behind the AC maintenance, and was only accessible through the air vents. It was almost completely surrounded by metal, so no transmissions in or out; radio, trackers, bugs... all useless inside a Faraday cage. I had a spliced hard-line connection and a scrubbed laptop for those times I needed a connection.

Okay, so I mostly used it to watch YouTube videos. Don't judge me.

I spent the night there. With so many damned alarm bells going off in my head, and with the information Nat had given me rattling around in my brain, I figured it was the only place I would find enough peace to get any sleep. As it was, I tossed and turned for several hours. Someone had shoved a puzzle in front of me, hadn't told me what it was supposed to look like, and had left out too many pieces.

What kind of data had Fury had Nat retrieve? Why hadn't he told Cap about that objective? And why the hell was Sitwell so damned concerned about it all?


The next day started out normal enough. I got up, left my bolt hole, showered, ate, and then headed to the armory for a little maintenance.

Yes, I said maintenance. It may not look it, but archery has quite a bit of science to it. Just like a gun or a blade, you have to do regular upkeep on the equipment if you want to know how it's going to perform. Doubly so for projectile weapons since once the ammo is in the air, it's all down to physics.

See, when it comes to arrows, you gotta know how much the shaft is going to flex when the bowstring pushes on it. You gotta test the poundage on the bow and how much the arrow is going to bend when the shot is fired. It's all because of a little thing called the archer's paradox that...

Heh. There I go again. I'm sure you don't care. Laura's always telling me that people's eyes glaze over when I start in on this stuff. She'd give me a swift elbow in the ribs if she we here right now. The internet can tell you all about it. Go look it up, sometime.

So, anyways, maintenance. That's what I was doing when Sitwell found me the next day. The guy must have casually passed by the armory six times waiting for me to be alone in there. Futzing gargoyle.

Okay, I'm so I'm speaking pretty badly of him. In point of fact, we had a pretty good working relationship. We weren't friends, or anything, but I could work with him. Mostly, these days, I look on all this with the benefit of hindsight and that's what makes me want to have put an arrow between his eyes. Even saying that, there was something about him that made my skin crawl that day when he came in to talk to me. At the time I put it down to feeling hurt that he was tailing me. I mean, he was my handler, I was supposed to be able to assume he was on the right side and he hadn't really given me any reason to think otherwise. At least, not concretely.

Yeah, I know; when it doubt, trust your instincts. I must have had that drilled into my head so that I would chant it in my sleep. And yet, I didn't listen to that little voice that day. Why? Well, plain and simple, it's because I'm screwed up.

Oh yeah. That's another thing this job does to you.

"Agent Barton," Sitwell said, approaching the workbench I had taken over, "I'd like a word with you."

"Yes, sir," I answered, not bothering to look up from my work, "what can I do for you, sir?"

"I wanted to ask you about Agent Romanoff," he replied, "I noticed you were talking to her after we got back from the Lemurian Star yesterday. What is your assessment of her at the moment?"

"Assessment, sir?"

"Yes. What is her state of mind?"

I shrugged, giving a shake of my head. "She seems fine, sir," I said, "nothing out of the ordinary. She mentioned some trouble between her and Captain Rogers during the op, but nothing too out there."

"Did she mention to you what it was about?"

I gave a non-committal shrug. "Need-to-know stuff."

It wasn't entirely a lie. It was need-to-know stuff that she had told me. I learned a long time ago that lies of omission went down better than straight-up lies. Easier to remember, easier to mask, easier to let the other guy draw his own conclusions.

Yeah, yeah, I know, chain of command, loyalty, orders, blah blah blah. But some loyalties exist outside of orders, above them. Nat had confided in me so that she didn't lose her marbles. I wasn't going to betray that. So yeah, I lied to Sitwell. If you got a problem with that, you come find me. We'll talk.

Apparently, Sitwell bought it, because he nodded, letting out a sigh. "And have you spoken to Captain Rogers at all?"

"No, sir," I replied, "not for a few days. There a reason you're asking?"

"The op on the Lemurian Star was stressful for both of them," Sitwell replied, "and since you're close to both of them through the Avengers, I had hoped you might be able to help keep an eye on them for any signs of... fatigue."

"Fatigue, sir?"

Sitwell held up a hand as if to placate. "Don't misunderstand me," he said, "I just want to make sure that two of SHIELD's top operatives are in top condition."

I briefly considered asking him how it was possible for a super-soldier to be in anything less than peak condition, but thought better of it. The last thing I wanted was a confrontation. So, instead, I plastered a smile on my face, one of the ones I normally reserved for under-cover ops, the ones where I was feeling anything but what I was expressing.

"Of course, sir," I said, "I let you know if I see anything worrying."

Sitwell nodded, then turned on his heel and left. I went back to to maintaining my gear.


The rest of the day passed by relatively quietly. So much so that I almost began to think that maybe I was losing it and jumping at shadows. I was starting to consider a well-deserved evening out. Maybe I'd go catch a movie or a band at some dive bar. I don't get to do that sort of thing enough. I mean, geeze, I never got to see Star Wars episode three in the theater. I have a feeling it was better on the big screen.

It was right around 17:00 that I got a call on my cell. It took a second for it to register that it was my personal one, not my work one. This was the phone that few people at SHIELD knew about, the one that my wife would use to call me and that only a handful of others knew the number for. The weird part? The caller ID was blocked.

I almost didn't answer and took the battery out because alarms were sounding anew in my brain. The only people who were supposed to have this number were supposed to come up on the phone's caller ID. No one else was supposed to be able to even reach the number.

Curiosity got the better of me. Ducking into a deserted hallway, I tapped the screen to answer.

"Hello?" I said, tentatively.

"Barton, thank god!" came the voice from the other end. I immediately recognized it as belonging to Agent Maria Hill. "For a second, I was worried you wouldn't answer."

"I almost did more than that!" I replied. "How'd you get this number?"

"I know, I know," she said, "it isn't supposed to be listed in SHIELD databases, and it's not. I got it straight from Fury and committed it to memory a long time ago. There's no record. Are you at the Triskelion?"

Hill sounded on edge, nearly in a panic. Hill's another one of those people that I trust without reservation. She's honorable, reliable, loyal, smart, and a damn good agent. Something had her rattled and that couldn't be good. Whatever it was, it had prompted her to risk breaking a rather sacred trust that I had put in Fury. And given how loyal she is to Fury, it had to be something huge for her to risk it.

"Yeah."

"Leave, as soon as you can," she said, "meet me at Union Station within an hour."

"What's this about?"

"Fury's missing."

And that was when the call cut off. She didn't elaborate. She didn't need to. I knew she would be filling me in face-to-face. Whatever this was, she didn't want it in the air. And that made my blood positively run cold.

I pocketed the phone and was in motion right away. I swung by my quarters for a little extra gear, then hit the motorpool for something fast on two wheels. Motorcycles and I get along real nice, almost as well as I get along with fixed-wing aircraft. If someone ever figures out a way to combine the two, sign me up.

Seriously, Stark, you need to get on that. Avengers plus hovercycles equals awesome.

DC traffic at 17:00 is no picnic. But if you're willing to take a few chances and accept a few middle fingers, and if you have the skills, you can get through without too much trouble. I call it two-wheeler parkour.

The Triskelion is on Roosevelt Island and Union Station is just a few blocks north of the Capitol, near the other end of the Mall. I was up Constitution Avenue in about ten minutes and was on foot going into the Station three minutes later. I knew where Hill would be; near the Red Line platform. All the better to make a fast exit amid a lot of people. Weaving through the crowds of Amtrack riders and shoppers, I headed straight there and found her not too far from the escalators, leaning against the sign pillar on the side opposite the camera that was mounted on the ceiling.

"Due respect ma'am," I said in a low voice as I approached, "but what the hell?"

"Not here. Walk with me," she said, moving back up the escalators. Within short order, we had gone back outside and crossed the street to the National Postal Museum.

Why the Postal Museum? Have you ever been there? No, you haven't. The place is dead. And why wouldn't it be? If you're playing tourist, and you're able to walk a couple blocks to the Capitol, the Mall, and most of the Smithsonian, would you waste time at the Postal Museum? Be honest. The answer's no.

"What the hell happened?" I asked Hill, as soon as we were both sure that we were deep enough into the museum to be alone.

"Fury's gone dark," Hill replied.

"I assume there's more to it than that, or we wouldn't be here," I said.

"Yeah," she said, "he called me just after a meeting he had with Alexander Pierce, telling me he wanted to meet on an urgent code in three hours. He never showed. And his SUV was involved in a chase and a wreck."

"Body?" I asked with mounting dread.

"No. He's in the wind. But he left Pierce's office and came under fire. We need to find out why, now. I have an idea where he'll go, but I'll need to go dark to get there and contact him. And if Pierce is involved, the Council probably is, too."

I nodded in grim understanding. "And that means SHIELD."

"Yeah," Hill said, looking as grim as I felt, "something big is happening. I don't know what or how deep it goes. But I need eyes and ears inside SHIELD to find out. I can't say for sure, yet, but it may mean going against SHIELD command in the end."

I have a short list of people I know I can trust and who I will always back up. If Fury was in trouble, I was on his side. I owed him big-time for many reasons. Truth be told, if Fury hadn't accepted me into SHIELD, I'd probably be in prison or dead. Plus, he helped me keep my family off the grid. Get right down to it, I basically owe him my entire life. All the good parts, anyway.

"Where do we start?" I asked with a nod.

Hill handed me yet another cell phone. "Burner phone," she said, "purchased this afternoon under an alias, new number, one number programmed and it's to a phone in my pocket. The shit hits the fan, it's good for one call, then dump it. If you find out what's happening, then bring me up to speed. Other than that, keep an ear to the ground and try to find out who's who and what's what. I'll do the same from outside. If you get a call from me, it will probably be to tell you to get out, so have a go bag prepped."

"That's not much to go on."

"No, but it's all I've got. Barton, you're the only one I can get a hold of that I can trust. I need you on the inside."

"You have me, but it's a tall order."

"I know, it's asking a lot. Especially since you'll be in this without a handler."

"Wouldn't be the first time," I said with a shrug.

"You good without an extraction plan?"

I scoffed at this. I had a reputation to maintain, after all. "You know me, ma'am. I make my own."

"All right then," said Hill, looking a little relieved to have a co-conspirator, "I'm dark as of now. Thanks Barton, I owe you one."

I shook my head as I turned to leave. "No you don't, ma'am," I tossed back at her over my shoulder.


I decided to follow through on my idea to take a night out. It would make it look like my sudden departure from the Triskelion wasn't for clandestine purposes. Down side, of course, was that I was out of touch for a while. I headed toward Georgetown and got some grub, then found some dive with music and a cover. I paid five bucks and got a nice, bright orange hand-stamp of an alibi.

Other than the bartender and the bouncer, I was probably the oldest guy in the place. The bouncer was big and intimidating-looking, but kept his weight on his heels. A couple well-placed throws and he'd be down. The crowd was largely a bunch of college kids. I briefly wondered how many of them had fake IDs.

But hey, not my purview. Besides, I'd be a hypocrite.

The music sucked. Crappy twenty-something angsty crap that my daughter will probably be listening to in six or eight years. Not looking forward to that.

I could only stand the place until 21:00 or so. I figured I should get back and start putting my ear to the ground, anyway.

The Triskelion was an absolute mad house by the time I got back. Everyone was running around like the place was on fire and they were all too busy to spare me a moment to get me up to speed. I tried to find Natasha, but she was nowhere to be found. Eventually, though, I ran into Bobbi.

"The hell's goin' on around here, Bobbi?" I asked her as we quite literally bumped into each other in the cafeteria. "I leave for a few hours' R&R at a crappy concert and chaos descends!"

"Jesus, Clint, where've you been?" Bobbi tore into me.

"I told you, a concert," I said, as defensively as I could muster, casually showing off the orange hand-stamp.

Bobbi shook her head in disbelief, putting a hand on her hip in that way that said she was going to let me have it. "Well, you picked a hell of a time! Director Fury's been shot!"

No acting here. I was genuinely blindsided by the information. I sputtered for a moment, trying to find words. Fury was the best of the best. Hill had said he was in the wind. For someone to have tracked him and shot him... it was huge, it was frightening.

It was one big-ass futzing disaster.

"Where? When? Who?" I finally managed out, still sputtering.

"They don't know yet," Bobbi said, "and that's not all. No one can find Hill."

"My god," I said, turning away from her as if in shock, mostly to hide the lie from her.

"Sitwell's getting a task force together," Bobbi pressed on, "he'll want you on it."

"Right, right, right," I said, "where do I find him?"

"Ops Three. I'm heading there now. C'mon."

The formal name for Ops Three was Operations Control and Communications Center Number Three. You can see how that's a mouthful. Pretty much everyone in SHIELD shortened it for efficiency's sake. It was located on the twenty-second floor of the north tower, toward the inside of the Triskelion. The location was chosen because it was about as close to the dead center of the structure as you could get. Ops One and Ops Two were in the south-east and south-west towers, respectively, in almost the same place.

The words "man cave" came to mind the first time you walked in. The place was dark and lined with monitors and control stations. Ops officers were crowded into every seat in the room and then some, frantically talking on headsets and pressing earpieces to their ears to hear better. Sitwell was at the command position, shouting orders and taking in information as it came. He spotted Bobbi and me as soon as we came in.

"Agent Barton, good of you to join us," he all but snarled.

"Apparently, I can't take an evening," I groused back. It was probably disingenuous, but I really didn't care right then.

"Sir!" a ops tech shouted above the din, turning to Sitwell. "They've located Agent Hill!"

My blood ran cold for an instant. As I said before, Hill was good. For her to have gone dark and been found this quickly did not bode well.

"Where?" Sitwell barked.

"At GW, where they took Director Fury," the ops tech stated, "she's reporting in. Video call."

"Put it on the main screen," commanded Sitwell, donning a headset.

The tech punched a few keys on her station and Hill's face came on, larger than life, on the room's biggest screen in glorious, nauseating shaky-cam. She looked like the deepest circle of hell had taken flight and then done a three-point-landing on her shoulders. For just an instant, her eyes flicked my direction, so I knew she spotted me there in the room.

"Agent Hill," Sitwell said into his headset, "we're relieved to finally hear from you. Do you have a report?"

"Yes," Hill replied, sounding disturbingly numb, "Director Fury is dead."

The whole room went silent in shock. For ten seconds, there wasn't a voice, a keystroke, even a breath.

There's an old adage; no plan survives contact with the enemy. Every day, SHIELD had been in the business of proving that adage wrong. Sure, there were days when everything went sideways. That was how we ended up with a portal the size of Texas floating over New York City and belching hostile aliens, after all. But normally, we could out-plan, out-wit, out-maneuver anyone we came up against. Plans within plans within plans, like layers of one big, stinking onion.

At that moment, I realized that Hill's plan to go dark, find Fury, and help him with whatever was happening had one fatally mistaken assumption; that Fury was alive to need the help. Without him, we were left to find out what had happened to get him killed. Hill must have decided that it was going to be easier to do so from inside SHIELD.

Again, that didn't mean anything good.

Damn, but this past year and a half have been rough. First, Coulson, now Fury. It was hard to believe it could get any worse.

Yeah, yeah. One of these days I'm gonna learn not to say or even think that.

Hill continued with her report amid an uncomfortable silence. To say that the room was stunned was an understatement. A lot of the younger techs, the ones who had only been around since the beginning of the Avengers Initiative, simply stood there with eyes glazed over. Be honest, I can't say I was far off from that myself.

Sitwell took in the report like the pro he was. There was almost no emotion in his face at all. Within just a few minutes, he had dispatched a small army of agents to Cap's apartment. Hill and Cap he had ordered back to the Triskelion immediately.

For my part, I was told to stay on standby. God, but I wanted to go to my bolt hole! But I needed to be reach-able and the bolt hole was designed to be anything but. I spent a restless night in my quarters in the dormitory, barely sleeping and going over everything in my head.

How could it happen? Who could have done this? And, most importantly, why?


At some point I must have fallen asleep, because I was snapped awake by a vibrating sound from under my pillow. With a jolt, I realized that it was the burner phone that Hill had given me. I tapped out the code to answer that I had programmed in as quickly as I could manage in my half-awake state.

"Yeah?" I said.

"I need you to meet me," Hill's voice came back, "Jefferson Memorial."

I looked over at my clock. It was just after 04:00. I had a vague memory of seeing 03:00 pass. So much for sleep.

"Yeah," I said, rolling out of my bunk. The phone clicked off an instant later.

What? You were expecting code or something? Look, the point of a burner phone is to be untraceable. The longer a call is, the more it's used, the more traceable it is. Talking in riddles and codes and crap just takes more time. If you want to decrease the chances of someone noticing the call, you make it fast. That exchange took five seconds on numbers that no one knew to look for activity on.

After pulling on the closest t-shirt and my shoes, I took the battery out of the burner phone. I couldn't ditch it at the Triskelion, since it would be found.

Seriously. All the garbage was screened before it left. Glad I never had that job.

I decided to go on foot. Checking out a vehicle from the motor pool again would mean a record of my departure. Besides, once you get toward the Mall, there are a bunch of those automated rent-a-bike stands that the tourists like to use. So I wasn't slowed down that much. The burner phone I ditched in a trash can near the bridge over the Tidal Basin that looked pretty full. Since it was a tourist hot-spot, it would probably be emptied before the morning rush to make everything look nice and pretty.

I found Hill on the path next to the Tidal Basin, pacing back and forth.

"A rent-a-bike, Barton? Really?" she asked with skepticism as I came to a stop and got off, leaning it against the nearby stone wall.

"Hey, you take what you can get, when you don't want to leave a paper trail," I replied with a shrug. "I take it this is about you not going dark after all?"

"Yeah, that lasted all of about four hours," she agreed with some annoyance in her voice. It was pretty clear to me that she hadn't slept at all since we had last spoken. She looked drained in more ways than one. "Look, we don't have a lot of time, so I'll get right to it. Fury's alive."

I stared at her stunned for an instant, then looked away, releasing a breath I didn't know I had been holding. The sense of relief I felt was palpable, as if a weight had just been lifted off my chest. In a lot of ways, Fury is SHIELD. At the very least, he's the glue that holds it together. In a way, I didn't realize it until Hill had told me that he was still alive that SHIELD had become a sort of home for me and I had felt a sense of loss for that when I had gotten that awful news in the Triskelion.

Aw, c'mon, don't look at me that way! Yeah, I have an actual place I call home, but SHIELD was home, too, ya know? I mean, it was a psychotic, other-worldly, bat-shit insane home that could get me killed on any given day, but still...

"Jesus," I said with a sigh, "I've had to fake my death before, but I never had to fake it to my own people! What the hell is this?"

"We're still not sure," Hill replied, "but it has something to do with the information that Romanoff brought back from the Lemurian Star. Fury said it was locked under his name, but he couldn't access it."

"What? That doesn't make any sense."

"Exactly," said Hill, "it means that someone's hijacked at least some of the security protocols in the SHIELD network. He wants both of us on the inside to try and find out who and why."

"And the data from the Lemurian Star?" I asked.

"Fury was able to get it to Rogers," Hill replied, "what he's doing with it, right now, I'm not sure. It's probably best it stays hidden, for now. It's the only thing that Fury had on him when he was shot that the assassin could have wanted."

"Wait, assassin?" I asked. "So he really was shot and it wasn't all for show?"

Hill shook her head. "Rogers chased the trigger man over the rooftops," she went on, "guy in a mask with a metal arm and strength to match Cap. Even caught his shield."

"Wait, that sounds an awful lot like..." I trailed off in disbelief.

You see, sometimes in this business, the only things you have to go on are sketchy rumors and apocryphal stories. Fish tales more often than not have some kind of a seed of truth to them. You just gotta dig around in the dirt enough to find it. In the end it's almost never as fantastic as the fish tale would have you believe.

The rumor of the Winter Solider, however, was something else entirely. The sketchiness of that fish tale was enough to make even me believe that it was complete bull shit. It was one of those stories that makes you think it was written by some back room hack, trying to get his first noir mystery paperback published.

Heh. Says the guy writing like a noir mystery paperback.

"But he's just a myth," I continued, looking at Hill as if she had completely lost her marbles.

"That's what I thought, too, but Fury tells me otherwise," said Hill, "he hasn't been able to read me in all the way, yet. But if he believes the Winter Soldier is real..."

"You gotta be kidding me," I moaned, scrubbing a hand over my tired eyes.

"I wish," Hill said, her voice barely a whisper, "I keep wondering when the world will decide it's crazy enough, but every time I turn around..." She shook her head.

"Ah, hell," I said, "I got brainwashed by a Norse god and then fought along side his brother. I suppose it's not that big a leap to a 90-year old super soldier that doesn't age manipulating the history of global conflict. Why not? I'm in. So, what's our play?"

"Everything leads back to the Lemurian Star," she said, "Fury was attacked as soon as he told Pierce about his reservations about that data. I've got the clearance to work the software and records side of this. I need you on the hostages and crew from the op, searching for hard clues."

"What kind of reservations did Fury have about that data?"

"Stuff you haven't been read in on."

"Then maybe you'd better read me in," I said.

"Fury didn't authorize me to-"

"I don't give a damn!" I said, finally breaking, throwing my arms wide.

"Barton..." Hill sighed, turning away from me with a roll of her eyes.

"I'm serious!" I pressed. "I need a direction, here, Hill! You're asking me to investigate the people I work with. I need more than looking at who's acting weird. Everyone at SHIELD is acting weird right now! I gotta narrow it down, somehow!" I paused, hoping that Hill would relent. She continued to shake her head, not meeting my eyes, though her body language clearly said she was wavering. I pressed. "Besides, officially, Fury's dead. As his number 2, that puts you in charge in the interim, until a new Director is appointed by the Council. So technically, it's your call, anyway."

"That's splitting the hair pretty thin, Barton."

"Maybe so," I admitted, "but we're already splitting that hair, or we wouldn't be out here visiting Tom at 05:00." I chucked my thumb over my shoulder to indicate the Jefferson Memorial.

Hill's shoulders dropped and she looked to the sky. I'm pretty sure I heard her mutter something about how Fury was going to kill her. Eventually, she turned back around to me, her decision made.

"Project Insight," she said, "you'll need my access codes to look it up in the system. Lamba, alpha, nine two zero. I assume you've got a clean computer?"

I nodded. "No one will see me on it."

"All right. You have four hours, then I'm changing my access codes. Project Insight and only Project Insight. I want your word."

I nodded. "You got it," I said, turning back to my rented bike.

"Barton," Hill said, halting me, "no kidding. There are things in there... they'll damage you if you know them."

I nodded again, sobering even more than I already had, if that were possible. Without anything further, I rode away, back toward the Triskelion.

As I left, I swore I heard Hill muttering something about a vacation in Tahiti. Gotta admit, someplace tropical and off the grid sounded really magical right about then.


Hill was true to her word when she said she would give me four hours before I got locked out again. But I made good use of the time, after I got back to the Triskelion and into my bolt hole. It wasn't long before I had copies of the Project Insight files saved safely to a portable hard drive that I had on hand.

Was I tempted to look at other stuff? Bet your ass, I was. Did I? Ended up keeping true to my word. Sucker for puppy dog eyes, I guess. There had been something very pleading in Hill's eyes when she had told me to keep to Project Insight.

Some times, there are just things you don't want to know about. Trust me on this one.

As it stood, it turned out that I didn't really want to know about Project Insight, as it was. A sniper I may be, but I couldn't have an eye on the whole world all at once. Three advanced helicarriers, primed to take out anyone we don't like from near-orbit with the push of a button? Not only would I be out of a job, the very idea gave me the futzing creeps. Fury had reservations about how it would be used? Hell, I had reservations about its existence.

I left my bolt hole around 09:00 and checked in, then grabbed some food. And some coffee. God, did I need coffee. Would have drunk it by the pot, if I could have, at that point.

I ended up bringing an insulted mug of sweet, sweet caffeinated goodness with me to the status meeting that Sitwell was holding at 10:30. I wasn't the only one. Apparently, a lot of people had lost sleep in the wake of the news of Fury's demise the previous night. Not that I blamed them. But it also made me wonder who else was skulking around in the shadows the way I was.

There weren't a lot of people in the room. Apparently, Sitwell was keeping the core of his task force small. Bobbi was there and I instinctively claimed the seat next to her. She looked... disturbed, to say the least; dark bags under her eyes and a slump in her shoulders.

Rumlow, the head of STRIKE, was there as well. I had been with STRIKE for a while and he and I had not really gotten along very well, so it hadn't lasted. Around that time Coulson rescued me from it, recognizing that I work pretty damned good on my own or with a single partner. Oddly enough, Rumlow looked well-rested, as if this was just another day. Part of why I didn't like him; the man never seemed to have any feelings except when he was fighting. It just wasn't right.

Doctor Deidre Wentworth was also in the room. She, too, looked weirdly composed, with her black hair pulled back into a tight bun and the aquiline features of her face looking well-rested. I didn't know her very well, since she spent most of her time in labs at various SHIELD sites, doing bio-tech work. Coulson had briefly consulted with her when we first came across Mjolnir in New Mexico. No one could lift the damn thing and Coulson had called on Wentworth to make sure there wasn't a dangerous bio-component to it.

Turned out it was just magic. Who knew?

I hate magic.

Sitwell swept into the room, closing and locking the door behind him. He tossed files out to each of us, then took the seat at the head of the table. "All right," he said, "this meeting is going to be difficult. But I need you all to put aside any personal feelings you may have. We need to treat this like any other investigation that SHIELD might undertake. By now, you've all heard that Director Fury was shot and killed last night. Our job now is to piece together why and by whom. Now, based on some preliminary findings from the scene, we have something of a working theory. Agent Rumlow?"

"STRIKE was first on the scene, last night after the incident," Rumlow said, standing up, "my men secured the sight and did a preliminary search of the premises."

"STRIKE conducted the preliminary search?" Bobbi spoke up. "That's a little unorthodox."

"My team asked for their assistance," Wentworth stated, crossing her arms over her chest, "as soon as he got the news of the shooting, I was dispatched to head up a forensics team, since my clearance allows me access to most of the classified information that Fury might have had with him or that Captain Rogers might have had in his apartment. Given the sensitive nature of the incident, and the probability that it would be a media nightmare for SHIELD, I asked STRIKE to search while my team was en route in order to get information as quickly as possible."

"From what we were able to piece together, Director Fury had forced entry into Captain Rogers apartment," Rumlow went on, "this happened sometime after the chase that occurred yesterday afternoon. From the amount of blood present on the chair he had been waiting in, and based on the reports of his injuries from the chase, we think he had been there waiting for a while before Rogers showed up."

"Do we know why he went to Cap, yet?" I asked.

"That's... the difficult part," Sitwell said, "we think that he was trying to hand off information to Captain Rogers."

"So?" Bobbi said with a shrug, "Cap's SHIELD. What's wrong with that?"

"It's the nature of what he was trying to hand off," Sitwell answered, "following his meeting with Pierce, Director Fury was in possession of a flash drive containing the data that Agent Romanoff retrieved from the Lemurian Star, data on a highly-classified project called Insight. Of all of you, Doctor Wentworth is the only one at this table with clearance to be read in on it. Captain Rogers... does not have that clearance."

"Further, the encryption on the data was set to unlock for Director Fury himself," Wentworth put in, "so the idea that it would have been stored on the Lemurian Star in the first place, is... dubious."

"Then, how'd it get there for Romanoff to bring back?" Bobbi asked.

"We believe that Agent Romanoff and Captain Rogers brought the data to the Lemurian Star themselves," Rumlow stated, as if the very idea was obvious.

I suddenly had a very bad idea of where the conversation was going. I sat up a little straighter in my seat, feeling very on edge. I couldn't help but glance over at the door for just a half a second, unnerved that it had locked us in. I hate to admit it, but I was starting to freak out a little, so much so that I actually missed a little bit of the conversation. It sounded like Bobbi was trying to poke holes in their so-called theory when I snapped back in.

"Wait, hold on," I jumped back in, shaking my head in disbelief, "just what are you saying, here?"

The room went quiet as they all looked at me.

"What?" I pressed. "Someone's gotta ask. Let's stop tiptoeing. What are we saying is going on around here?"

"What we are saying, Agent Barton," Sitwell finally said, leveling a frankly creepy-ass gaze at me, "is that we believe that Director Fury sent Agent Romanoff to the Lemurian Star to sell classified SHIELD intel to Batroc. When the deal went south, he ordered Captain Rogers to assist his cover up. But Batroc's men came to DC to take the data or take their revenge."

Well, that bombshell sure as hell made my job more complex. I just plain couldn't help it. I gaped at Sitwell.

"You can't be serious," I said, "I know Natasha, I vouched for her when she joined SHIELD. She wouldn't do something like that!"

"Clint," Bobbi put in, looking quite uncomfortable herself, "maybe we should-"

"No, no, no, c'mon!" I pressed. "We're talking about Director Fury and Captain freaking America! It's absurd!"

"None the less, Agent Barton," Sitwell said, sounding colder than I had ever heard him, and that's saying something. "It is the scenario that fits all the facts. Pierce is speaking to Captain Rogers as we speak and is ordering him to turn over the data. Agent Romanoff... is missing. No one has seen her since she gave her statement last night."

My blood went positively frigid at that. Nat doesn't trust a lot of people, to be sure. And she has reason not to. I figured that she had gleaned a lot of what they were thinking from their line of questioning, but going to ground... it didn't look good. And the fact that she did so without coming to me first?

Nope. Didn't look good at all.

"Agent Barton, I know that you have reservations," said Sitwell, "but those must be set aside for now. We need to track down Agent Romanoff and you know her best. So, your assignment is-"

Just then, Sitwell's phone rang and he fished it from his pocket, looking at the caller ID on the screen. He immediately answered it.

"Yes sir?" He said, then paused to listen. "Yes, sir. Understood. Yes, sir." He then turned the phone off again without so much as a pause. "That was Councilman Pierce," he told us, "unfortunately, our attempt to handle this delicately has not worked out. Captain Rogers has refused to assist in the investigation. Agent Rumlow, you are go."

"Yes, sir," Rumlow said, springing to his feet and making for the door. He disappeared behind it before I had a chance to ask any questions about what was happening.

I turned inquisitive eyes to Sitwell.

"Agent Rumlow will be bringing Captain Rogers in for questioning," he said.

Next to me, Bobbi gave a hint of a chuckle, smirking slightly. "Hope he's bringing the rest of STRIKE," she said.

"As a matter of fact, he is," Sitwell confirmed.

"And if he overpowers them and runs?" I asked. All eyes uncomfortably turned back to me again. "Like I said," I elaborated, "this is Captain America, we're talking about, here."

"A tracker has been planted on him," Wentworth put in, "if he runs, we will be able to find him. We'll call in the Hulk-Busters if we have to, but he will be brought in."

"A tracker? How'd you manage that? Where is it on him?"

"It's on the one thing that Captain America is never without," Wentworth said, almost crowing, "his shield. If he does run, he will undoubtedly take it with him."

Well, that was unsettling. I made a mental note to check my bow and quiver thoroughly before heading out on my next op.

"In the meantime," Sitwell went on, "we need to find Agent Romanoff. Barton, Morse, you will be on that. Wentworth and I will continue to look into the Project Insight angle."

The rest of that meeting isn't really important. More plans within plans that never got used. For my part, I processed what I knew.

The first thing that I decided was that this business about Nat and Cap selling out SHIELD intel was complete bull shit. Same with Fury. Just couldn't buy it. Everything that Sitwell had just presented had made it seem like I was crazy for it, but my gut was telling me otherwise. That, and Hill's having let me in on what Project Insight was all about. Everything came back to the biggest weapon that SHIELD was ever going to have at its disposal and how it connected to this data that Nat brought back from the Lemurian Star and that Cap was supposedly refusing to hand over.

And then, for some reason, it suddenly occurred to me that Sitwell and Rumlow had been on the Lemurian Star, too. Sitwell had even been there before all hell broke loose. And now, here he was, heading up the investigation, putting him in the perfect position to cover up anything he wanted to.

Pretty sure that was the moment I started hating the guy with every fiber of my being.

The next thing that occurred to me was the old tactic of planting a lie inside the truth. I had done it to Sitwell just the day that Nat had gotten back. Who's to say that Sitwell wasn't doing exactly the same? The guy was well aware of the tactic, after all. Did that mean that Sitwell was the one selling SHIELD intel to Batroc? But then, why would Batroc send the Winter Solider to kill Fury?

Was it even the Winter Solider?

At any rate, I needed to talk to Hill about it, and fast. And somehow, I needed to get word to Cap that he had a tracker planted on his shield.

It was about seven minutes after Rumlow had left to collect Cap that alarms started sounding. Sitwell got another phone call just about the same time. He listened for a moment, then looked back to the rest of us.

"Well, it seems Captain Rogers has elected to run," he stated, darkly, "Barton, Morse, I want you out there with the rest of the Specialists. Don't let him leave and if he gets out of the Triskelion anyway, go after him."

"Yes, sir," Bobbi said as she and I stood. We made for the door at once and she was first through.

"And Barton?" Sitwell said just as I was about to exit. I looked back at him in silence. "Best decide quickly where your loyalties lie, hmm?"

Grinding my teeth, I nodded to him and left, allowing the door to slam behind me.

As far as I was concerned, there was nothing to decide.


I was walking on the lobby mezzanine when Cap came crashing through the glass roof, landing hard on his shield. From how slow he got up, it looked like the fall hurt even him, so it must have been from quite a few floors up. I made a show of joining in the general bedlam the lobby became and got myself caught up in the pushing crowds just enough to justify not being able to get to Cap right then and there. I saw him sprint out the main door and then I heard the tell-tale sound of a motorcycle making its way over the bridge.

Wait, hold on, right? Didn't I want to get word to Cap? Why not right then and there? Thing is, the longer he was in the Triskelion, the harder it was going to be for him to get away. If I was going to get to him, I needed to do it on the streets of DC. This was going to be hard.

And, for me to stay inside... yeah, I pretty much resigned myself right then and there to a world of pain in my near future.

Hearing a series of explosions from the bridge, I made my way to the armory and grabbed my gear. I couldn't help but eye my bow and quiver with suspicion. If they could plant a tracker on Cap's shield, lord only knew what they could put in my quiver. I decided that I had to act as if they were listening in on me. I knew Sitwell was keeping an eye on me, watching me for any sign that I was going to follow my fellow Avengers and join Cap and Nat on their crusade. Had to make it look good.

I ran into Bobbi on my way to get a motorcycle of my own.

"Clint, Cap's on the move!" she said. "Sitwell wants us in the air. Quinjet's warming up."

"Right," I said, nodding and following.

When we got to the Quinjet, I let Bobbi take the controls, taking a place near the hatch and making ready to use the vantage point I was about to have. It was, after all, my specialty, so no one thought any different of it. A few other agents piled on to the Quinjet after us.

"This is Mockingbird," Bobbi said into the comms, "I have Hawkeye and we've got the signal from the transmitter. Preparing to take off in pursuit."

"Roger, Quinjet six," came the always collected voice of mission control, "suggest you employ stealth tactics."

"Understood," Bobbi replied as the jet took off and hurtled into the sky. A moment later, there was a soft hum and I knew the jet's reflective plating had been activated.

I didn't want to believe it, but Bobbi was being a good little soldier. That was the moment I had a first glimpse of a bigger struggle; agent against agent, brother against brother. In this fight, we were going to know everyone we were sent to deceive, bring in, or cross off. I had been placed in a similar situation, years ago before I joined SHIELD. I had hoped never to be in one like it again.

But that's a whole other story involving a lot of cuts, bruises, and broken bones. I won't get into it, here.

The Quinjet took off at a tear over DC, following the tracker on Cap's shield. We were over downtown Washington in less than a minute.

"He's on L at 17th," Bobbi called back to me, "heading toward Vermont."

"Drop me on a building at Vermont," I said, readying a line, "let's see if we can cut him off."

Bobbi slowed the Quinjet enough to let me descend to a rooftop, then I heard the Quinjet move off, positioning itself over the intersection of L and Vermont. I needed to get in control of the situation, get some idea of which way Cap was going to go. Spotting some trees on boulevards, I readied three explosive-tip arrows. From my vantage point on the roof, I quickly lined up a shot at a tree on L, after Vermont, then one on Vermont. As soon as Cap's cycle was in the intersection, I felled another tree behind him on L, leaving only the northbound path on Vermont open. As I figured, Cap rounded the corner before I could get another shot off.

I took off at a run along the rooftop, northward up Vermont. With a quick shot of a grapple arrow, I jumped the gap between buildings across an alley, barely breaking stride as I rolled back to my feet and sprinted toward the narrow point of rooftop at the place where Vermont entered Thomas Circle. Another grapple arrow and I was able to rappel down a set of balconies and light on the sidewalk just as Cap's cycle shot into the circle, rounding the curve.

I loosed a couple of arrows, an old trick I learned back in the day, and cut off his path only a few feet in front of him as I cut straight across the grass of the circle. Cap's cycle veered toward me as he tried to avoid the sudden obstacle. As he tried to get control of the cycle, I vaulted off the fence, swung on a nearby tree branch and landed in front of him. Cap dug the tires of the cycle into the grass as he skidded to a halt. I readied an arrow and drew a bead.

"Clint, don't do this," he said, his eyes looking more puppy-dog than I had ever seen. And the man is the king of puppy-dog eyes, believe me!

I shook my head, trying to look as hard as I could. It was quite possibly the most difficult deception I had ever tried to pull and it tore at me in ways you can't understand. "Can't do that, Steve," I said, "too many questions need answers. I gotta bring you in." Our eyes locked as we stared each other down. This was the moment that I could communicate with him. I flicked my eyes down to the pile of dirt that had piled itself before his front tire, then looked back. He didn't seem to notice, so I did it again... and again.

C'mon, old man! Figure it out! We didn't have much more time. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end. Bobbi had caught up in the Quinjet. It was just above us. Risking just a little raised eyebrow, I looked to the dirt one more time.

Finally, he got it. Cap revved the engine, throwing the cycle into reverse and kicking dirt into the air between us. I acted as if some of it had been thrown into my eyes and shot my arrow wild. By the time I got my eyes open again, Cap was rushing back toward me on the cycle. This was it, my one chance.

Bracing myself, I reached an arm out to try and make it look like I was trying to knock him off the cycle. Let me tell you, that was a punch that hurt. I'd hit a lot of people with hard heads before, but, man-oh-man, Steve is like a brick wall.

I made a show of fumbling around to get purchase and let him drag me along for a few yards, before I found enough of my feet to swing around and position an arm in a headlock around his neck, but only squeezed enough to hold on. Still, Cap weaved the bike as he struggled a little.

"Listen!" I hissed in his ear. "They're tracking you! On your shield! Make it look good!"

"What are you-"

I squeezed just enough to stop the question before it could be picked up by anyone listening.

"I'm on the inside of this!" I told him. "And I gotta stay there. You gotta hit me, knock me out! So you can get away! Find Nat, find the data, and run!"

Without so much as hesitating, Cap threw an elbow back into my ribcage. I felt something crack. It wasn't the first cracked rib I had had and it certainly wouldn't be the last. But it would lend some credence to Cap over-powering me. I let go of Cap's neck and swung down, pulling him and the cycle down with me. We skidded to a halt in the middle of 14th. It turned into a brawl and I fumbled with my quiver until I found the arrow I was after.

"On your right!" I breathed as I brought the arrow around tip-first, like a knife. Cap blocked it with his shield, setting off the specialized tip. The arrow hit with a vibrating clang and a wave of pressure went out from the shield. Cap looked at me for a moment in puzzlement. "EMP tip. The tracker is out, but we're being watched! Hit me!"

"Clint, I-"

"Hit! Me!"

Cap and I wrestled a little more. It was obvious that he was wrestling with his conscience at the same time.

"Thanks," he finally said, then pulled back a fist.

The last thing I remember is seeing it sail toward me and feeling the impact. It was like having a building land on my forehead.

Which, in retrospect, has also happened, actually.


FROM THE EDITOR...

Thanks for reading part one. The ending for this chapter was one of the big plot bunnies that originally inspired this fic. I recently read about a scene that had originally been written into Captain America: The Winter Solider to include Hawkeye and reveal right away which side of things he was on. In it, Cap was going to be harried by Clint and they were going to end up in a fight. During the fight, Clint was going to whisper to Cap that there was a cloaked Quinjet above them watching and that he had a tracking device planted on him. Clint would then tell Cap to knock him out to make it look good. The scene was scrapped because Jeremy Renner had other commitments, making all us Hawkeye fans terribly sad.

It got me thinking. A, what was Hawkeye doing that day? B, why did he need to stay undercover? C, how did he make it through the fighting?

I'm also somewhat inspired by the recent Hawkeye comics, many of which have an element of narration from Clint. Each issue tends to begin with some form of "this looks bad." It makes me giggle every time and I'm not sure why.

Given the history for Clint and Bobbi in the comics, I couldn't resist having them have been in a relationship previously and still be really good friends. They seriously need to have some shared screen time in the MCU, even though both of them are in committed relationships with other people. I will accept no other headcanon.

Finally, Deidre Wentworth is based on a character from the comics. She'll be playing more of a role later.

Thanks for reading. See you in chapter two!