Disclaimer: I do not own the Avengers or any of the characters in the story except for Cole Williams. If I did, there would totally be a Hawkeye/Black Widow movie in the works.

Author's Note: This is my first story to post on this site and my husband had to talk me into it. That being said, while I embrace constructive criticism remember this old saying if you choose to leave a review "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all"

Thank you to all who reviewed! We've seen Tony, Thor, and Steve all help Clint out in their own ways...now its Bruce's turn...and Williams returns!

Enjoy!

Last Time:

"That string tension was perfect." Tony muttered to himself, leaning to see the target. He laughed. "You're welcome." He stated to no one, heading out the same way Clint had. He left behind a target full of arrows perfectly spelling out three simple letters.

THX

"The hero is one who kindles a great light in the world, who sets up blazing torches in the dark streets of life for men to see by." Felix Adler

It was late when Bruce ventured into the briefing room. He wanted to do some research on Williams, maybe look into his history in military prison. He needed to do something, anything, to escape the awful waiting game they were all trapped in.

He didn't notice anyone else in the room until he was already through the door. He froze, staring at Clint's back, trying to decide if he should leave or stay. Then he notice what was playing across the screens Clint was staring at.

The archer's infiltration of the helicarrier.

He watched as Clint watched for several minutes. He jumped when the archer addressed him.

"They look at me like I'm going to snap and start shooting people now."

Bruce didn't have to ask who he was talking about. They'd all noticed Clint had barely stepped foot in the SHIELD base for the past five months. When Fury had a mission the two assassins, he contacted them at the tower.

"It's a natural human response." Bruce pointed out, taking the conversation as permission to come closer.

"But none of you do, why?" Barton demanded.

"Maybe it's because we had personal contact with Loki most of them didn't…we understand better than they could what happened to you."

Bruce glanced at the screen when Clint paused it suddenly. It was focused on his face and his ice blue eyes as he shot an arrow through the throat of a fellow SHIELD agent.

"I thought you'd gotten passed this, Barton..." Bruce hedged carefully. There had been marked improvment in Clint's attitude. He'd been doing so much better since the package from Coulson.

"I had...I am...I just..." Clint sighed, staring at his own face on the screen. "I know it was Loki...I know it in my head, but...I remember all of it…how can I claim it was out of my control if I remember everything I did?"

Bruce remained silent thinking. He rarely remembered much when he "hulked out" as the team had come to call it. Even then all he remembered were the green monster's feelings, usually anger, as he fought. Bruce straightened. That was it. He finally knew how to help.

"So you remember everything you did?" He asked for clarification.

Clint nodded once.

"Do you remember how you felt?"

Clint turned to stare at him.

"What?"

"How you felt…when you did all those things…what were you feeling? Anger? Hatred? Joy? Regret?"

"Nothing…I didn't feel anything…" Clint answered, his brow furrowing in confusion. "What are you getting at Banner?"

"When you are you and you shoot someone…what do you feel?"

"Depends on why I'm shooting them." Clint arched an eyebrow.

"Fair enough…say you're on a mission, an assignment to eliminate a threat…"

"Assassination…just call it what it is, Doc." Clint smirked a little. It amused him how they all danced around what he and Natasha did.

"Fine…what do you feel when you take out the target?"

"Accomplishment."

"What else?"

"Nothing else…"

"Come on, Barton, you're not a robot, you feel something every time you kill, now what is it?"

"Nothing." Clint denied, his expression hardening by the moment.

"Stop lying." Bruce snapped, his eyes flashing neon green for barely a second. Clint didn't even flinch. He stared at the doctor for a long moment, his grey blue eyes flinty.

"Anger."

"At who?"

"The target."

"Why?"

"For being evil."

"Good…now what about before SHIELD..."

"When I was a merc?" Clint sat back in his seat.

Bruce nodded.

"Anger." He said again.

"At the target?"

"No."

"The guy who hired you?"

"No." Clint knew he wasn't being helpful, but he didn't care.

"At who?" Bruce pressed, unwilling to stop now that he was finally making progress.

For several moments it didn't seem like Clint was going to keep cooperating. Then he did.

"Myself."

Bruce blinked, his own heart aching for the kid in front of him.

"Why?" He asked quietly.

"For being too weak to find another way."

"Another way to what?"

"Survive."

Bruce had to look away from that hard grey blue gaze. He cleared his throat.

"Don't ask the questions if you don't want the answers." Clint advised, his tone hard enough to shatter stone.

"Now what about the Army?"

"What about it?"

Bruce gave him an annoyed look and Clint sighed, knowing he was being difficult.

"Pride." He answered the unasked question.

"For what?"

"Doing my duty."

"Okay…and what about now? What about when you shoot as an Avenger?"

Clint blinked, some of the ice leaving his expression.

"Fear." He admitted quietly, his gaze growing distant.

"Of what?" Bruce asked, intrigued. It hadn't been the answer he'd expected.

"That one day I'll miss."

Bruce's breath caught in his throat. He'd never even considered the pressure the archer must be under, acting as their protector in the skies. To hear him say, if only by inference, that he held the weight of their lives every time he fired, was a little horrifying.

It was a talk for another day, though, so Bruce forced himself to stay focused.

"Now what about when you killed for Loki?"

Clint's gaze snapped back to awareness and zeroed in on him.

"I already told you."

"Right…you felt nothing…no fear, no anger, no pride…you felt nothing."

Clint stared at him and Bruce could see the comprehension dawning. He drove it home.

"If you were you, you would have felt something…but you didn't feel anything, Barton…it wasn't you. It was Loki."

He saw something break behind the stormy gaze.

"Those people at SHIELD can go to hell, because they can't ever even come close to understanding everything that happened with that situation. They don't matter, Barton." Bruce stated, standing to leave the archer in peace to process.

"Banner."

He turned back at the door. Clint had turned to look at him.

"Call me Clint."

"Only if you call me Bruce."

Clint's mouth turned up into a small, but genuine smile.

"I think I can handle that."

Bruce was slightly terrified when Natasha corned him on the way to breakfast the next morning.

"Only Natasha. No derivatives, only Clint gets to do that."

"What?" He gasped, still afraid he was about to be murdered.

"I don't know what you said to him, but nobody except Phil Coulson has ever been able to get through to him so effectively, not even me…Thank you." She stated the final words so fiercely that Bruce finally started to understand the intensity of the relationship between the two assassins.

"You're welcome." He replied sincerely.

"So…only Natasha, nothing else." She repeated before spinning away and continuing to breakfast. It took an extra moment for it to click. But when it did, he smiled.

When Steve entered the kitchen for breakfast, he couldn't help but smile bemusedly.

Clint was cooking.

Natasha was sitting on the counter next to him occasionally stealing tastes of what he was making. When Tony tried the same thing, he got threatened with a wicked looking kitchen knife. Bruce was reading a paper at the bar, drinking a glass of juice. Thor was watching in fascination as Clint flipped something high into the air off a pan and caught it again. Steve's eyes widened. He knew that smell.

"Are those pancakes?" He asked with a wide smile.

"And bacon." Bruce smiled, leaning around his paper to check the progress of his breakfast.

"You can cook?" Steve asked Clint in shock.

"He's an excellent cook." Natasha answered for him.

"He's been holding out on us." Tony grumbled. "Where does an assassin learn to cook anyways?"

"Madrid." Clint answered simply.

"Mission?" Steve asked.

Clint nodded, flipping a pancake high again and catching it flawlessly in the pan. He nodded to Natasha, who obediently used thongs to flip the bacon on the skillet next to her.

"I must say, Clint Barton, that I admire your ability to throw the cake of the pan so high and still catch it in that cooking device." Thor complemented seriously, laughing loudly and clapping his hands together when Clint did it again, almost like he was trying to please the Asgardian.

"How much longer?" Tony whined, trying to steal a piece of cooling bacon from the plate near Natasha. One glare from her sent him back several paces.

"It's ready." Clint announced, flipping the pancake up and catching it on a plate already stacked high, instead of the pan. They gathered around the table and immediately started serving themselves. Thor smiled in pleasure when he took his first bite.

"I like this cake of the pan! What do you call this brown sticky substance?" He asked, tipping the syrup bottle upside down as he inspected it. Tony quickly righted it before the contents could spill out.

"Syrup." Tony supplied.

"This is really good, Barton." Steve complimented genuinely. The archer shrugged one shoulder and kept his eyes on his plate.

"So, can we talk about the huge elephant in the room?" Tony questioned suddenly.

Thor's eyes widened and he jumped from his chair, searching the room and holding out his hand as if to call for something.

"Wait!" Steve jumped up. "There isn't actually anything in the room, Thor…it's an expression."

Thor looked annoyed.

"The people of your realm have the strangest way of speaking."

"This coming from Shakespeare in the park." Tony rolled his eyes. "Anyway…it's been almost three weeks and not a word from Mr. Bell Tower…what the hell is he waiting for?"

Steve watched Clint pause for the briefest of moments before going back to spearing his food with his fork.

"Maybe he's waiting for another crisis, so we'll be distracted…like the robots and the wreck." Bruce offered logically.

"He created the situation with the robots." Clint interjected abruptly. They all stared at him. He shrugged going back to his food, "Why else would there be crosshairs on the breastplates?"

"Either way…you might be right." Steve agreed.

"So we just have to keep waiting for another disaster…awesome." Tony muttered. "I hate waiting."

"Trust me Tony, we know." Steve sighed.

Clint was wandering the halls at 2 am when it happened. Natasha was sleeping in his room and as far as he knew everyone else was tucked in as well. But something was eating at him. For once it wasn't anything to do with Loki. He felt antsy, and he never felt antsy. He was, by the nature of his profession, a very patient man. But tonight, sleep was evading him.

His cell phone ringing broke the silence of the night so sharply; Clint thought it was sure to wake the whole tower. He arched his eyebrow at the blocked number, and slid his thumb across the touch screen to answer.

"Barton." He greeted.

"Hello, Clint."

Clint's expression iced over, even though there was no one there to see. He turned to his left, facing the wall.

"Williams."

"You know they say this is the city that never sleeps…makes sense now…there are so many people out and about at this time of night."

"The point, Williams."

"It's time to settle this."

"No shit, asshole, I'm right here."

"Time's Square…think you can here fast enough to stop me?"

"You're not going to hurt anyone else." Clint stated it with such calm assurance, that Williams paused on his end of the phone.

"Oh no?"

"No."

"Why's that?" Williams laughed.

"Because I'll kill you if you do."

"You've tried that, and I put six bullets in your chest."

"This time you won't get that opening."

"We'll see…come alone."

"Doesn't work that way anymore, Williams…I'm an Avenger, we work as a team."

"Ha…you're no more an Avenger than I am…Come alone or the next bullet will be through your girlfriend's forehead not her shoulder."

"That was a mistake, Williams."

"How's that."

"You just signed your death warrant…now I'm going to put an arrow through your heart."

Clint hung up before Williams could respond.

He stared at the wall, looking straight into Jarvis's camera. He shouldn't go alone. He shouldn't. Natasha would kick his ass if he did. Thor's advice from the rooftop floated through his head. Only a foolish man in search of glory would face an enemy alone, when he has his trusted men waiting to join him. But if he waited, if he got the team up and waited to go after Williams, he knew without a doubt that people would die. He closed his eyes, thinking.

"Jarvis," He called out.

"Yes, Agent Barton?"

"I need your help."

End of Chapter 8

I've decided to post this chapter now (obviously) and post BOTH the final two chapters at the same time this afternoon. Lucky you guys!

Reviews make me happy!

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"You spent 10 years in prison because you're insane." Clint countered, shifting silently in the shadows.

"Stop stalling, Barton! I know your close by!"

"Fine." Clint jumped, landing several feet behind Williams and tossing his blue tooth away. "I'm done talking anyway."