SHIELD land headquarters, New York City, February 1995.
"Do you want to explain this one to me, Agent Coulson?" barked Nick Fury, as Coulson anxiously watched the doctors place an oxygen mask over the boy's shivering body, prepping him for surgery.
Fury had just gotten off the phone with Obadiah Stane – something about that goddamn Tony Stark – and already was not in the best of moods when Maria Hill barged into his room with a frenzied "Sir. Coulson has a kid." He didn't say anything as he marched out his office, just in time to see Phil Coulson half-carrying a sopping wet, muddy preteen to the medical ward across the hall, ordering the nearest nurse to look at the boy's leg and get him a blanket.
Motherfucker, Fury thought.
"Coulson!" he barked again, when his second-in-command didn't answer.
"Look, sir, I found him pretty much dying –"
"Who." It sounded more like a threat than a question.
"His name is Clint. He's an archer."
"I don't care what he is. He's barely hit puberty."
Coulson ignored him.
"He shot a target from three hundred feet away."
Fury didn't look impressed.
"He's twelve," Coulson added.
Fury grunted.
"And what exactly do you expect us to do with a twelve-year old?" he demanded.
Coulson thought for a second.
"Train him," he said simply.
Fury snorted.
"I'm serious, sir. The boy is tough. When I found him, he was bruised and bloodied all over, and he fractured his tibia. Never showed an ounce of pain. And you have to admit – he puts most of our best agents to shame with a bow and arrow."
Fury glared.
"Sir," Coulson pressed on, "think about it – he's perfect for SHIELD. If we start training him now, just imagine what a sniper he'll be in five or six years."
He paused before going on.
"I bet he'll end up even better than y-"
"That's enough, agent," Fury snapped, still glaring at Coulson with one intimidating eye. "What do you mean, 'when we start training him?'" he asked. "Who's 'we' exactly?"
"I'll do it," Coulson offered immediately.
Fury harrumphed. He and Coulson stared each other down for a minute. Finally, Fury rolled his eye.
"Don't make me regret this," he said darkly, as he stalked back into his office.
"And this, Clint, is the training room."
Clint hobbled into the large room, gazing quizzically at the assortment of weapons lining the shelves and walls. He had just been discharged from the medical ward after being treated for dehydration, hypothermia, a snapped tibia, and miscellaneous deep cuts and bruises. The doctors had put him on crutches for a few weeks.
He leaned his crutches against a wall and limped over the nearest handgun.
"Careful with that," Phil warned, as Clint picked it up with a slightly mischievous grin on his face. "That's a-"
".15 caliber revolver," Clint finished for him. He looked up and smiled innocently. "I know. Classic. Simple, but dangerous."
He cocked the gun and aimed for the targets on the opposite side of the room, shooting four bullets into the middle ring fifty feet away. The fifth bullet missed by a centimeter.
Phil raised his eyebrows.
"Hmm," said Clint, frowning. "I'm rusty."
As Clint returned the gun to its shelf and began examining the bigger guns with interest, Phil smiled to himself. He made a mental note to tell Fury about this.
SHIELD had a new protégé.
"Coulson," an all-too familiar voice snapped.
"Yes sir?" Phil replied, not looking up from the small mountain of paperwork he had been slowly working his way through.
His one-eyed boss dropped another stack of papers onto what used to be an organized pile of field reports. Phil peered over his reading glasses to see what Fury wanted.
"What's this?" he asked.
"Paperwork," growled Fury, stating the obvious. "For the new kid. And I mean literally. The new kid," he added, as if he didn't make himself clear the first time.
"I'll deal with it after I'm finished reviewing the reports from Madrid," Phil sighed, absentmindedly flipping through the documents Fury unceremoniously dumped on his desk. Apparently SHIELD had done a customarily extensive background check on their new adolescent marksman.
"Where's the pubescent hawk right now anyway?" Fury snapped.
"In the training room. Sitwell's teaching him hand-to-hand. The kid's incredible from a distance, but he needs a little work fighting someone up close. He's great with a sword though."
There was a hint of pride in Coulson's voice.
"We've got Sitwell and Jones training him. They offered," Coulson added, when Fury narrowed his eye, as if he didn't particularly like the idea of two of his deadliest Level Six agents on babysitting duty.
He grunted and turned to leave.
"Get that annoying bird kid a uniform, Coulson."
Coulson looked up from his paperwork and beamed.
"Oh, and by the way," Fury added, turning around as he reached the door, "if he's going to be with SHIELD, he'll need a legal guardian to sign off for him."
That afternoon, Fury scowled and barked at his secretary to bring him some aspirin as he looked through Barton's new SHIELD profile. In stupid precise handwriting, "Phillip S. Coulson" was signed neatly beneath the line that read "parent/guardian signature if under 14."
A.N.: I imagined SHIELD begins recruiting agents at the age of 14, since that's when people begin to show the world their talents, and SHIELD seeks them out to train them. They had trained a few 13-year-old assassins before, whose parents were also in the business and gave them permission to be trained. Clint was the youngest agent in SHIELD history, so the agents doted on him. Fury begins giving Clint missions when he's 14, despite Phil's protests (most agents don't get put into missions until they're at least 16 with at least three years of training). But of course Clint does spectacularly, comes back with a bloodied lip, a few bruises, and a huge grin as he lightheartedly says to his guardian, "Don't worry, Phil. I did good."
Also, I'm not a weapons expert.
And yes. Phil's middle name is "Steve."