Hello everyone! First off I'd like to apologize for not posting a chapter last week, but unfortunately life has this thing with curve-balls. At any rate, I'd like to thank every one's whose taken the time to read this, and especially those who have reviewed. I am still in the process of responding to the ones from last chapter, but I thought it was best to get this up first.
But because of the terrible wait I put everyone through (and partly because of the end to this chapter) I will be posting another chapter this week, most likely on Thursday or Friday, so keep an eye out for it.
I'd also like to point out that there are going to be some bold sections of dialogue. Pretend they're in German. There's going to be a lot of German-speaking going on in the next chapter or two, and for the sake of easy reading, I decided not to translate it.
So, please enjoy the chapter, and if you'd like, leave me a review to tell me what you think.
As Always, I Own Nothing
By the time their jet landed in Taiwan, Clint had managed to work through the entire briefing with Flynn. Considering it was a fifteen hour flight, he had enough time and more in which to do so. Flynn seemed to take everything in with at least some level of comprehension, but Clint knew everything would make much more sense once he got to see how everything played out in the field.
"So how do you want to run this?"
Clint blinked in slight surprise at Newell's question as the three of them walked off the ramp of the Quinjet and down the runway. He knew that Fury had said that the older agent would be looking to him, but he hadn't expected to actually be able to run the op the way he wanted. He certainly wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth, though, and he spoke matter of factly.
"If you're good with heading to the safe house and getting everything set up, me and Flynn will go down to the docks, see what everything looks like and get a feel for it." he said, feeling slightly impressed as Newell gave a nod of acceptance. He then looked at his surroundings with slightly narrowed eyes. It may have been a fifteen hour flight, but with time zones being what they were, they had lost a full day. It was technically around noon on Tuesday. The cartel's ship was due to make port Friday night. He wanted to have a bead on Mancilla before then, and maybe even have the guy taken out before he got the chance to use his 'skills' on some poor customs' official or something. "We'll do some scouting for a few hours, come back, try to work a plan, and go back once the sun goes down. The guy's good, but he doesn't have the finesse to do his stuff in the middle of the day. If we spot him, it's gonna be at night."
He'd taken a look at Mancilla's work that SHIELD had on record. He was messy, remarkably unorganized, and frankly Clint was stunned that he had managed keep himself alive this long. Either way, the work still spoke for itself: effective, brutal, and very capable of proving its point.
When Newell pulled up to where Clint and Flynn were waiting with a rental car, the archer went ahead and dropped his duffle into the backseat before cataloguing the weapons he had on his person; a pistol, two combat knives, and a dagger. He wasn't going to take his quiver now, when he was walking streets in the middle of the day.
He stepped aside so Flynn could do the same, before he leaned in through the passenger window to speak to Newell.
"Call me if there's any problems, otherwise we'll meet you at the safe house around five or so." he said, and the handler nodded.
"You know where it is?" he asked, and Clint gave his own short nod of conformation. He'd memorized a basic layout of the city during the flight. Port was two miles from the airport, and their safe house was about eight miles north west of port. He could get himself and Flynn between those three points easily. "Then I'll see you in a couple hours. Be careful."
Clint bristled slightly at that but didn't show it, tapping the roof of the car twice as he stepped back and watched Newell pull away from the curb. He then looked to Flynn and jerked his head down the side walk and had the new agent fall in at his side as they walked into the city itself and out of the airport.
"We're probably not going to be able to get into the port itself until later tonight, but I want to get a feel for any entrances and exits, and the surrounding area." Clint explained, and Flynn nodded, stuffing his hands into his pockets as he responded.
"So we're keeping to the ground for now?" he asked, and the archer nodded, casually weaving in and out of other pedestrians and his eyes scanned the street.
There wasn't so much as a ripple of an issue in the hours that Clint and Flynn casually combed the streets near the port, getting a feel for the buildings, where their best point of entry would be, and how hard it was going to be to keep from being seen when they took to the rooftops. There were a few warehouses that they could use, as well as the stacked cargo containers themselves if they wanted to get closer to the docks. Flynn, to his credit, didn't seem completely lost, able to answer the questions that Clint tossed out to him confidently. He knew that the kid wouldn't be nearly as confident once the sun went down and he was having to sit in the same position for hours on end, but that was to be expected.
Their safe house turned out to be just outside the outskirts of the city proper, one of many small houses bunched together in clusters. The rest of the cluster they were in seemed vacant, which wasn't really surprising, and Clint found the key pad at the door without issues and typed in his access code. It was two rooms, a kitchenette, and a bathroom, the room off the kitchen holding the table and a couch, while the other room contained three cots.
"Before you ask, yes, this is a typical safe house." Clint informed Flynn as he closed the door behind them, and Newell looked up from where he had set up the map and most of their intel on the table.
"I radioed in that we arrived and got our comm channel set up." Newell informed them, standing from his seat and gesturing over the spread before looking to Clint. "How'd it go?"
"Fine, we just got a feel for the area surrounding the port; we couldn't actually get in to take a look around it. We'll do that later." Clint said lightly, moving to look at the map and grabbing a pen to mark the entry points to the port.
About thirty hours later, Clint was resting his head on his arms, eyes narrowed and scanning the dimly-lit open area of concrete that expanded between the warehouse he was perched on the roof of, and the customs' house where three men were currently stationed. All three had checked out as customs' officials, Clint having had Newell run their faces the first night of their surveillance. Now, on the second night, everything seemed quiet.
So far, there hadn't been so much as a whisper of Mancilla's presence, and with the cargo ship's arrival in almost exactly forty-eight hours, Clint was starting to wonder just how sound their intel was. There was sloppy, and then there was stupid. His mark was the latter if he was the kind of guy that went in with less than twenty-four hours to spare to get a job done.
Just as he had the thought, his eyes zeroed in on movement to the far west of his field of vision, a shadow lurking between cargo containers near the docks and inching closer to the customs' house. He watched the shadow intently for a few moments, feeling a small predatory smirk slide onto his face as the figure passed quickly through the beam of one of the lamps that lit the cargo area of the dock. There was enough time for him to confirm that the shadow was Mancilla himself.
"Flynn, my two o'clock, confirm presence of our mark." Clint murmured, reaching up to his ear to speak into his comm. He had positioned Flynn in his blind spot on the other side of the customs' house, on top of a stack of three cargo containers. His smirk twitched wider when he heard Flynn suck in a small, shocked breath before clearing his throat and responding just as quietly.
'Confirmed.'
There was the tiniest hint of wariness in the new agent's tone, but Clint ignored it, keeping his eyes glued to Mancilla. The guy was stalking around, seeming to be getting a scope of the place and his target, attention solely focused on the customs' house. Clint reached his hand back up to his ear and spoke to Flynn again, not moving a single muscle that was unnecessary for that action.
"See if you can't get a good picture of the guy's face and take it back to Newell to confirm as well." he ordered, and there was a few minute's pause in which Flynn was probably waiting for the guy to step under another lamp, before his voice returned, more confident than it had been before.
'Got it.'
he said, and Clint gave the smallest of nods.
"Radio back to me when you've got conformation." he said, and he could almost feel Flynn's own nod of assent.
'Yes sir.' he agreed, before there was a small pause and he continued. 'Are you going to...?'
"No." Clint said, already knowing where the agent was going.
Yes, he had his quiver with him, and yes, he could take the shot as soon as he got conformation from his acting handler, but he could tell by the way Mancilla was acting that he wasn't making a move tonight. Tonight was his surveillance. And Clint was curious as to whether or not the guy or his employers already had someone else in the city on their payroll. There was only one way to tell if there was.
"I'm going to stay on him, follow him, see if I can't find where he's holing himself up and who he's in contact with."
'Yes sir.'
There wasn't a single audible or visual clue that Flynn had left, but Clint didn't really expect there to be one, so he just hunkered back down and kept his eyes trained on his mark. Mancilla circled the customs' house once before he settled himself in the shadow of one of the containers to watch the door.
'Sir?' Flynn radioed back after maybe twenty minutes and Clint put his hand to his ear almost immediately.
"Go ahead."
'Agent Newell has confirmed that it's Mancilla.' Flynn said before pausing for a few moments. 'And uh... He's ordering you to take the shot, sir.'
Clint couldn't help arching an eyebrow with that, eyes narrowing and sparking with a defiance that no one was there to see. No one ordered him to take any shot. He was not just a bullet in a gun, and he would take out his mark when he thought it was best. Knowing whether or not Mancilla's cartel had any other ties in the city would provide SHIELD with intel it didn't already have. Intel that would prove useful down the line, and could potentially save lives.
"You can tell Agent Newell that I will take my shot when I believe that no further information can be gathered from the target." he said lowly, sharp eyes tracking Mancilla's every move as he shifted to a different section of shadow. "Until that time, I will continue to track his movements."
There were a few long, tense moments of silence, and he could only imagine the argument Newell was putting up. In the end though, it was Flynn's voice that came back again, sounding empty.
'Yes sir.'
There wasn't another word from the comm after that, and the archer returned his full attention to the man in the shadows of the cargo containers.
Clint knew that the three officials had a clock-work like security sweep pattern, one of them leaving every thirty minutes to check a different section of the port. He suspected that Mancilla already knew that somehow as well, seeing as he was ready with a darkened camera phone every time the half hour was up, probably taking pictures of the customs' officials' faces.
Dawn was just barely beginning to brighten the horizon when Mancilla finally moved.
The man moved through containers back the way he had come hours earlier, and Clint followed him near silently, sticking to the roofs of warehouses where he could, and the tops of containers when he had to. No matter how hard he tried to maintain his silence, the steel containers always made some sort of noise at his boots' impact.
Even so, Mancilla never once looked up and continued out of the port and back into the city itself as the sun continued to rise and brighten the streets.
It was noon before Clint returned to the safe house, starving, thirsty and exhausted. He was greeted by a scowling Newell and an apologetic looking Flynn, the older man's arms crossed over his chest and eyes narrowed into an accusing glare.
"What kind of game are you playing, Barton?" Newell demanded, starting to take a step toward him but evidently thinking better of it as the archer continued further into the safe house and slid his quiver off his back, depositing it into an empty chair. Clint turned his head slightly towards Newell but didn't fully face him, listening as he continued. "You go in, you eliminate the target, and you get out. That's your job, not further investigation."
"Believe it or not, I don't need you to tell me what my job is, Newell." Clint said, voice lowering before he turned back to the map and made a few X's on the map. He'd followed Mancilla around, found a restaurant he seemed to frequent, if the fact that the waiter knew him by name - a fake name, of course, but a name none the less - meant anything. He'd also found the apartment where the man was staying, and gotten pictures of the outside. "I also don't need you to tell me how to do it."
"I'm your handler," Newell spat, but that made Clint round on him, eyes just barely blazing as his posture stiffened.
"You are not my handler." he said coldly, stepping up closer to Newell and noting that the man's eyes flashed with something unreadable, but he didn't step back. "You are his handler. You are both here to shadow me. Are we clear on that?"
"I may not be assigned to you Barton, and this may be my first time running a distance operation, but I am still acting as your handler, and I still know how eliminating a target works. If I say pull the trigger, you had better damn well do it." Newell returned, voice raising and practically oozing a demand for respect.
For a few moments, not a single muscle twitched in Clint's body. Then, his entire expression smoothed over into nothing, his eyes darkening with a cold, predatory deadliness that almost seemed to lower the temperature in the room by a few degrees.
"That is not how this works." he said, tone lowering in a stark contrast to Newell's raised voice. "Not with me, and not with him. I will not kill another human being just because someone else tells me to." at that point, Clint's voice was dripping with a just barely audible venom, and Newell seemed to swallow whatever it was he had been planning on saying next, jaw clenching stiffly. "If I kill someone, it will be because they pose a threat, or have done enough to warrant my attention. Mancilla is both those things, and I will put him down with extreme prejudice when I see fit. If you have an issue with that feel free to take a plane back to New York. Otherwise,"
Clint turned away from Newell easily, pulling his phone out of his pocket and reaching over to plug it in to the laptop set up on the table. Within a few moments, he had pulled up a slideshow of pictures, leaving them up as he shouldered into the kitchen.
"Feel free to have a look at Mancilla's local contact."
Silence rang through the safe house, dark and filled with tension. Flynn, for his part, stayed completely silent as he stood and moved around to look through the pictures Clint had gotten. Slowly, Newell followed his lead, scanning the images intently as he scrolled through them. Clint was content to ignore them both, grabbing a water out of the fridge and gulping down half of it, before he grabbed a container of leftover take-out from the night before.
"I'll uh..." Newell paused to clear his throat after starting, but Clint didn't twitch in response, not looking up or acknowledging him. "I'll get these pictures back to base; see if they can't identify this guy."
Clint snorted to himself, fighting not to roll his eyes. Sounded like the older agent was almost admitting that he had been wrong. Shocking. Either way he chose to ignore it, and the man entirely, stepping out of the kitchen and speaking exclusively to Flynn, who met his gaze as soon as it was pointed towards him.
"Did you get any sleep since last night?" he asked, not wanting to send the kid out if he was exhausted as he himself was. Thankfully, Flynn just nodded.
"Yes sir. From when I got back to about two hours ago."
"Good. Get to Mancilla's apartment, find yourself a nice spot, and wait. Radio in as soon as he leaves." Clint instructed, and Flynn started to nod again, before he gave a small frown and asked a question.
"Do I follow him?"
At that, Clint hesitated. Flynn had little to no actual experience tailing a hostile like Mancilla. But he wasn't going to get any being coddled either.
"Carefully." he said eventually. "If at any point you feel he's going into an area that you think could give away your presence, I want you to double back and meet me at the docks, understood?"
"Yes sir." Flynn nodded, moving quickly to collect his side arm and get a good look at the 'X' that Clint had put on the map to mark the apartment.
Clint then walked straight by Newell without a word, toed of his boots as soon as he was in the other room, and all but collapsed onto his cot, eyes closing briefly as he allowed his exhaustion to ripple through him.
He jolted into wakefulness as soon as he felt a presence enter his immediate vicinity, eyes snapping open as he swung himself into a sitting position, gleaming blade already in hand. Newell had stopped a few feet away, eyeing his blade with a tiny bit of apprehension before he found the archer's gaze and spoke.
"Flynn just called in. Mancilla's on the move."
Clint didn't wait to hear anything else, sliding his feet back into his boots and slipping past Newell to exit the room. He stowed his knife as he went, picking up his quiver from where he'd left it on a chair and slinging it onto his back before reaching for his comm and slipping it into his ear.
"He said that Mancilla had a duffle with him, but it looked too empty to be all his belongings." Newell informed him, and Clint gave a short nod of understanding as he looked down to check his watch. He'd managed to sleep for six hours after tossing and turning on his cot for a few beforehand. Thank heaven for small miracles.
"Probably tools of his trade; he's most likely planning on making his move tonight. Not that he'll get that far." Clint gave a small wolfish smirk before he turned back to Newell as he paused at the door. "Keep on the comms, I'll radio in when I have my shot, and again once I've eliminated the target."
The way he spoke to the man said absolutely nothing of the argument they'd had before, and Newell certainly wasn't about to bring it up, instead just returning the short nod that the assassin had given him. Clint didn't wait for any more conformation than that, slipping out onto the darkened streets and into the shadows, heading towards the docks.
He got into the port without a ripple as he had for the past two nights, making his way up to the roof of the warehouse that had become his perch. Mancilla would likely come in the same way he had the night before, so from there he would know roughly the direction he needed to look in. Barely ten minutes after that he heard someone scaling the fire escape to his right and he flicked his gaze over just long enough to confirm Flynn's presence before they went back to the shadowed expanse of concrete below him.
"He's here." the young agent muttered the answer to the unasked question, and Clint didn't give a response other than to slip his bow out of the slot on the side of his quiver, and jerk it open.
The silence between the two of them was almost oppressive, but that wasn't at all Clint's focus. He zeroed in on the first sign of movement, watching with narrowed eyes as Mancilla slipped out from between the same two cargo containers as he had the night before and made a bee-line for the customs' house. He wasn't trying to be discrete, and he obviously held no concern for his surroundings. That was his mistake.
Clint pulled an arrow easily, nocking it and pulling it back into his bow with a single breath as he straightened his crouch and tracked the man's movements.
"Target sighted," he murmured, waiting a single beat just in case of any protest, before let out his breath, fixed his aim, and loosed his arrow.
There was a small sound of impact as the arrow imbedded itself into Mancilla's chest, before a much louder thud as the man crumpled to the ground, instantly dead. Clint watched for another beat, just to make completely sure that there wasn't a twitch of movement - not that one of his arrows had ever missed its mark - before he spoke into his comm again, standing fluidly and collapsing his bow.
"Target eliminated. Call the mission in as complete, Newell, we'll be back at the safe house in a few minutes."
'Copy that, Hawkeye.' the handler's voice came back instantly, and Clint gave a small nod before he glanced around to Flynn. The younger agent had stayed in his crouch, still staring at Mancilla's body with an unreadable expression and a small frown.
Clint could see the conflict playing out in his eyes, and recognized it as the same he had experienced after his first kill, an Afghani man who had been about to turn an automatic weapon onto his unit. Having to reconcile the knowledge that what had been done had been with good intentions, and yet it had killed another human being. This may not have been Flynn's kill, but he had certainly helped facilitate it. After a few moments, Clint stepped closer to him and pulled him up by the shoulder, pulling his gaze away from Mancilla and meeting it.
"Don't think about him." he said firmly, nodding down to the body crumpled on the concrete. He turned Flynn by the shoulder and nodded to the customs' house. "Think about them, and what you saved them from."
It only took a moment for Flynn's expression to harden and for him to give a short nod. Clint returned it before stepping away, making his way back towards the fire escape.
"You did good, Flynn, I was impressed." he said lightly, landing in a crouch on the fire escape's railing before leaping down the rest of the way. "Now let's get home."
Clint let out a long breath as he stepped out of the SHIELD SUV that had dropped him off in front of Stark's tower. The flight had been long and awkward between him and Newell, but Clint hadn't really paid it any mind, more interested in trying to stave off what threatened to be soul-crushing boredom. He'd ended up spending the majority of the flight teaching Flynn the basics of Mandarin. But, even the flight itself had ended almost four hours ago, being followed up by an extensive debrief, as well as seeing what a team of agents had been able to uncover about the identity of the man that Clint had observed Mancilla having contact with. Suffice it to say he and his ties were being heavily investigated.
In all honesty, he was just glad to be home. As odd as the thought was, he was starting to come to terms with it, not immediately berating himself internally for the use of the word anymore. The tower was his home. The little pessimistic part of his brain felt the need to add 'at least for now' at the end of that statement, but that could be ignored.
He stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for the team's main floor, unsurprised when JARVIS' voice followed the elevator's movement.
'Welcome home, Agent Barton.' the AI greeted smoothly. 'Would you like me to inform the others of your return?'
"Sure JARVIS." Clint said with a slight grin, still amazed how Tony Stark could have programmed something so eternally polite. "Nothing explode while I was gone?"
'No sir. Everything was as calm as Mr. Stark and Mr. Odinson in the same room could possibly be.'
Clint's grin widened at that announcement, giving a slight shake of his head. And then there was that.
When he stepped off the elevator, Natasha was there to greet him with a twitch of a smirk. He returned it, not protesting when she transitioned his duffle from his shoulder to hers without so much as a ripple and started forward towards his room. He made to follow her, but she just held out a hand to stop him, grin turned mischievous.
"Wait here." she instructed, and Clint arched an eyebrow but rocked back on his heels to do so, crossing his arms over his chest and waiting.
She returned in less than a minute, just having set down his bag, and he spoke as soon as she had snapped his door shut behind her.
"What, I get home and I'm not even allowed to go into my own room?" he asked sarcastically, and she just gave a slight roll of her eyes and a more obvious knowing grin.
"Clint, what's today's date?" she asked pointedly, and his eyebrow arched higher with the question.
"In what time zone? I've been in almost all of them today." he returned and she punched him lightly in the arm with an exasperated sigh.
"It's the 20th. Of March." she supplied helpfully, and for a few moments Clint's confusion ran rampant, before it ran into a brick wall of realization, and his eyes widened slightly as his arms fell to his sides.
"Oh." he responded simply, trying a small, almost sheepish smirk. The fact that it was the 20th was significant in that it meant the 18th had been two days ago. And it had been his birthday. He had been twenty-six for two days without realizing it.
Then again, it wasn't that shocking, seeing as he had spent most of his life without the day holding any real significance. But somehow he doubted that would hold true with his five occasionally over-exuberant team mates around.
"They disappointed I wasn't here?" he asked, and Natasha rolled her eyes again, her expression now affectionate.
"A little." she confirmed, before continuing with a raised eyebrow and a slight head tilt. "Tony especially seems to be channeling it to Fury though. The rest of them have been waiting like pent up balls of excitement for you to get home." she said before meeting his gaze consideringly. "Have you ever experienced Thor as a pent up ball of excitement?"
Clint gave a snort of laughter at that mental image, now more amazed that nothing had exploded in his absence.
"They didn't go overboard, did they?" he asked, the tiniest bit of joking caution in his tone.
"Let's just say they've been planning this for weeks now." Natasha said coolly, before grinning and pulling him back into the elevator. "You shouldn't be surprised. This is them."
"But they didn't have to-" Clint started, only to have her cut him off with a small, quick kiss as the elevator doors slid shut.
"Give them this." she told him, her grin softening. He held her gaze for a few moments before the corner of his mouth lifted in a smirk and he gave a small nod of concession. Then he ducked his head to kiss her again, feeling her hand come up to rest on the side of his neck.
They only pulled apart when the elevator doors opened up to the top floor of the tower, revealing the rest of their team mates, and Pepper, crowded a few feet away. Clint grinned when he saw them, which was instantly returned from all five faces. He quickly noted the almost shrewd edge to Bruce's expression and turned to face him with a roll of his eyes, already knowing the reason behind it.
"Not a scratch, doc, I swear." he assured, and Bruce raised his hands in surrender and relaxed.
"Well that's good. Then again, if anyone was going to be unlucky enough to get shot or something on their birthday, it'd be you, Featherhead." Tony pointed out making Clint shoot a slight glare at him, though he didn't look at all repentant as he continued. "What? You have an alarming propensity for injury. You can't pin that on me."
"Happy birthday, Clint." Steve cut in with an exasperated grin, clapping a hand down on the archer's shoulder, only to give a slight sigh when Tony interjected quickly.
"Late. Late birthday. Because old Nick had him off doing super-spy stuff when he should have been celebrating and getting drunk and doing all kinds of fun stuff." the billionaire sounded remarkably indignant on Clint's behalf, which the archer found more amusing than anything else.
"You think Fury cares when my birthday is?" he asked with a slightly raised eyebrow, but Tony just scoffed, and moved over to a table near the couches.
"Whatever, we have food. And cake. And presents." he said dismissively.
"You guys didn't have to," he started, almost thankful when Thor cut him off. What was he supposed to say? That they hadn't had to go through the trouble of planning something for his birthday, or getting him anything, or basically acknowledging what not many people other than Phil or Natasha had since he was six? Yeah, that wasn't a buzz-killer or anything.
"My friend, it was no trouble." Thor said with a wide grin, before taking advantage of being one of the few people Clint would allow a bone-crushing hug from. "We are all thrilled to participate in the celebration of the day of your birth."
The rest of his night served to allow him plenty of opportunity to decompress from his mission in the mostly relaxing company of his friends. He said mostly because evidently somewhere along the line Tony had thought it would be funny to start an M&M war, pegging them at everyone else to entice them into joining in. It worked, M&Ms were littered everywhere across the floor, and they had taken refuge behind various pieces of furniture with handfuls of candy all at some stage of melting. It had ended when Natasha had gotten fed up, stalked over to Tony despite the feeble barrage of chocolate, and reminded him just how many ways she could kill him with an M&M.
They had settled quickly after that, cleaning up their mess, and Clint had no sooner sat down than he was presented with a large, sleek, black backpack from Tony.
"Your bow and quiver fit inside." the billionaire explained lightly as he plopped down beside Clint on the couch. "So you can carry them around without being quite as conspicuous if you need to. The top has a quick release snap if you need to get in there quickly. And it might have a comm with a direct connection to JARVIS."
Clint eyed it with an obvious air of appreciation, knowing how useful it would be to have the option of carrying his quiver without drawing the attention and suspicion of others. The connection with JARVIS was just Tony's round-about way of making sure there would always be a way for him to get help if he needed it.
"Thanks Tony." he said, glancing to the billionaire and giving a nod and a grin that was returned quickly and sincerely before Tony was looking away quickly and turning his attention to where Bruce leaned forward where he sat on the couch across from him.
"Steve, Natasha and I have known for a while now about your little habit of borrowing from our bookshelves and putting them back before you think we'll notice." the doctor started, tone amused, and Clint had the decency to look a little sheepish. He enjoyed a good book when he was bored, but he hadn't thought anyone but Natasha had known about that. At least if Bruce and Steve were amused, they weren't angry about it. "Despite that, you never seem to actually take yourself to a bookstore, so we took the liberty for you. There's a bookshelf in your room now. I think we filled what, three shelves?" Bruce asked, looking over to where Steve and then Natasha sat, both wearing grins.
"Something like that." Steve said lightly, and Clint felt his expression brighten slightly as his eyes sparked at the thought of so much more reading material at his disposal. That was his. He wasn't worried at all over their choices; Natasha knew what he preferred in books.
"That sounds awesome." he said honestly, and Bruce and Steve's smiles brightened as Natasha leaned slightly into his side. "Thanks guys."
"I just hope you enjoy them." Bruce said before looking to Thor who was waiting with what looked to be poorly controlled excitement for his turn.
When the demi-god held what looked like a knife in a leather sheath out to him he straightened slightly before reaching forward to accept the weapon with open curiosity. Once it was in his hand, there was no doubt that the sheath may indeed be made of some form of leather, it certainly wasn't cow. Or anything else he'd seen before.
"I know you already have many a fine blade, my friend, but I saw this on my last trip to Asgard and could think of no one that it would fit better." Thor explained smiling before giving him a slight nod.
Still slightly awed by the fact that he was being given an Asgardian weapon, Clint considered the hilt, noting that it looked somewhat like the hilt of Mjolnir, covered with a darker leather and wrapped with thin strips of a lighter color. He gripped it lightly before pulling it out of the sheath, and had to immediately stop all mentions of the word 'knife' in his mind. Because what Thor had just given him constituted as no less than an eight inch, double-edged short sword. He felt his eyes widen because the weapon was legitimately beautiful. It gleamed in the light, looking sharp enough to leave a paper cut with the lightest touch. The blade itself looked to be made of some kind of cross of copper and silver with the coloring, but considering it was Asgardian, it was probably made with some metal he had never even heard of. It was almost feather-light when he twirled it experimentally in one hand, and didn't so much as waver a fraction of an inch when he tested the balance by holding it on a fingertip placed at the joint of blade and hilt.
"Thor, this is amazing." he said, still amazed, and heard Thor give a chuckle in response.
"Indeed, it is a fine weapon, and I know you will put it to good use. It will not dull or rust as some Midgardian ones are prone to." the blonde Asgardian told him, and Clint gave a quiet huff of disbelief but slipped the blade back into its sheath.
"Thanks."
When Clint finally returned to his room hours later, he heard himself give a small groan as he opened the door.
As Bruce had told him, there was a new black wooden bookshelf in the far right corner of his room facing his bed, three shelves packed with all manner of books. But there were also purple and black streamers hanging from every single viable surface of his room, making his ceiling look like some demented canopy, though he did note there was a space left thoughtfully beneath the air vent.
"You guys seriously did not T-P my room with streamers." he said, turning back around to see that everyone else had paused a few feet away, grinning at him without a speck of remorse.
"We so totally did." Tony returned smugly, and Clint had to turn back around to hide the fond grin he gave before he could help it.
"If you do it again, I will not hesitate to take your heart out with a spoon." he muttered to more or less save face, and no one took him seriously, laughing in response.
It was only four days later that Steve approached Clint at breakfast, looking solemn and worried almost, which instantly made Clint frown and straighten.
"Hey," he started, stiffening himself somewhat. "Would you come with me to SHIELD? The director wants your input on something." the Captain said, though he didn't sound pleased, and the archer shifted, immediately understanding what was going on.
"The HYDRA thing?" he asked shortly, and Steve nodded. As soon as he did, Clint stood, expression hardened. "Of course."
Within half an hour, they had arrived at the base and found themselves in a briefing room with Fury and a pair of intelligence agents that Clint wasn't familiar with.
"Agent Barton, Captain Rogers told me he told you the basics of what's been going on." Fury started as soon as the door slid shut behind them, and Clint looked to him and gave a nod.
"Yes sir, the very basics." he confirmed, and Fury nodded and pulled out a file, handing it to him.
"There's some new information that's come to light."
As it turned out, that new information was the fact that HYDRA's leaders were putting feelers out, not for Cap, but for him. Clint listened to the briefing with narrowed eyes, understanding exactly what Fury was going to want before he even finished. HYDRA knew that he had been involved with the Avengers in the Battle of New York, but considering that Clint had some vaguely supernatural ability to keep himself out of the press and most of the news reels of other battles, intel said HYDRA didn't think he was a permanent fixture within the team. They had taken every body that could be tied to him since the battle, and assumed he was still taking contracts. Which meant they thought that with enough financial incentive, he'd be willing to provide them with information.
"I don't like it." Cap said, standing at the back of the room with his arms crossed across his chest, as soon as Fury finished. "There's too big of a risk that it's just a trap to lure Clint in to get to me."
"The intel is sound, Captain." Fury countered firmly, with a tone Clint knew to mean that they'd been over it a few times already. "We have no reason to believe that HYDRA is putting out false information, and any gathered by Hawkeye would further our own operations ten-fold. The Council has put their two cents in as well. They want Barton on this."
"But the risk," Steve started, only to be cut off by Clint, speaking up for the first time.
"Is outweighed by the benefit." he said firmly, and Steve's eyes snapped to him, some of the anger simmering into worry. "Cap, this is me. I'll be fine, even if things do turn sour. This isn't anything I haven't seen before. Besides," he flicked his gaze to Fury, who straightened somewhat. "I could probably manipulate them into keeping me around for more than information."
"So you can what, assassinate people for them?" Steve demanded, and Clint straightened, turning to narrow his eyes at the Captain.
"No. There's more ways than one that I can be a valuable asset, and it looks like they've done enough of their homework to recognize that." Clint said coolly, and Cap sighed.
"These people are dangerous."
"So am I."
And that's how, a little less than a week later, Clint found himself walking into a small cafe in Prague that was nearly empty. In fact there was only one occupied table. A single man sat at a booth in the back that was flanked on either side by an armed man. Both stiffened as Clint entered and approached, but the archer didn't look concerned in the slightest, stride confident and gaze cold and deadly.
"This place is not open to the public. Leave." one of the men ordered, but Clint paid him no heed, pausing as he came within a few feet of them.
"I want to talk to the boss, not the grunt." Clint returned dismissively, German sliding effortlessly as he raised a single, dangerous eyebrow when both men pulled pistols and trained them at him. The man seated at the table looked interested but unconcerned, watching silently. "Put those away before you hurt yourselves."
One of the men stepped forward as if to herd him away from the table, and Clint raised a hand in surrender and started to turn away, only to spin back around, grab the man by the wrist, and twist his arm enough to both disarm him and dislocate his shoulder. Before the breath for the cry could fully leave him, Clint had followed up with a sharp punch to the temple that snapped his head back and made him crumple bonelessly to the ground. In the next moment, he had spun and brought up his right leg, kicking the wrist of the second man to disarm him as well. Clint's next sequence of movements left him motionless on the ground like his companion, and Clint's expression didn't so much as flicker as he then brushed off his shirt and slid into the other side of the booth, across from the older man, who was now openly curious.
"Mr. Fleischer." he greeted smoothly, not an ounce of emotion in his tone. "I believe you've been looking to speak with me."
Ooh, look! Stuff's starting to happen, fantastic! And it was longer than usual!
I hope you enjoyed the chapter, and that you'll leave a review if you have any comments or questions you'd like to throw at me. I'd be more than thrilled to catch them. *grins*
Until later this week,
~Dogstar