Chapter title from I'm Ready by Jack's Mannequin.

Clint knocks on the door and shuffles uncomfortably before Coulson's voice says, "Come in."

"Hey," he says when he goes in, closing the door behind him and slumping into one of the chairs against the wall.

"Barton?" Coulson frowns. "What are you doing here?"

"Hanging out with you."

"Why?"

"Because I want to, and you never come to the common room, so this is where it's gonna have to happen."

Coulson doesn't look impressed. "Do you expect me to entertain you?"

Clint sighs and shakes his head. "No, don't worry. I just want to chill out for a bit. Get away from everyone else. You'll be in here all afternoon, right?"

"I will."

"Can I stay?"

Coulson levels a look at him from behind his computer screen. They stare at each other for a long moment before he nods. "Fine. But if you distract me, you're out. Keep quiet, entertain yourself. Clear?"

"Thanks, Phil." Clint slides down lower in the chair and pulls his mp3 player out of his pocket, untangling the headphones with deft fingers. Coulson watches him for a minute before he goes back to his work. Clint slides his headphones in, turns up the volume, and relaxes.

Natasha's on a mission, he's waiting to be debriefed from his next one, and Barney called him last night. They spoke for about three hours straight, and now Clint misses the circus fiercely. He closes his eyes and listens to the music that puts him back there, walking between caravans and tents, driving for hours with the radio turned onto rock or country stations. Barney once took him outside in the early hours of the morning and pulled him up onto the top of one of the big loading trucks. They'd stretched out on the cold metal and gazed up at the stars, clear enough to see the Milky Way.

Live and Learn by the Cardigans, Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen, Sir Duke by Stevie Wonder. Clint keeps his thumb over the buttons and keeps his eyes closed. He ignores it when people occasionally come in to give Coulson files or ask him questions. He gets coffee for both of them when Coulson asks him to, and he pulls a book off one of the shelves in the office. It has a tiger on the front cover, and he can't help thinking of Jerry, the old Bengal tiger who had been the star attraction when he joined Carson's Carnival. He traces the title – Life of Pi – and smiles distantly. Jerry's keepers, a pair of Japanese brothers called Koichi and Jiro, had let him and Barney stroke Jerry once.

He looks up just as Coulson leans back in his chair and sighs, looking tired. He looks over when he feels Clint's eyes on him and raises his eyebrows. "Life of Pi?"

"It has a tiger on the front," Clint explains. When Coulson raises his eyebrows and doesn't go back to his work, Clint smiles. "When Barney and I joined Carson's there was a tiger called Jerry. He died three or four years later, but he was a great performer. He jumped through flaming hoops and roared on command. He really pulled in the crowds."

"Did you have other animals?"

"Oh sure," Clint waves a hand and snorts, "you can't have a decent circus without some good animal acts. Our riders were these girls called Lisa and Polly. They were practically sisters; grew up together from what I could tell. They taught themselves all their own tricks. They had four horses and four ponies at one point – really tiny little ones that were the same colours as the horses. They came up with this trick where they'd run the ponies round the back of the ring and they'd come out on a horse the same colour. It was so smooth it looked like the pony had just grown up in about two seconds flat. Simple, y'know, but people ate it up." He looks over at Coulson, who's leaning back in his chair with the smallest hint of a smile on his face. "You ever go to a circus when you were a kid, Phil?"

Coulson nods slowly. "Once. I can't remember what it was called, but there was an elephant. And a couple who danced on these silk ropes. I had to buy my own popcorn."

Clint laughs. "How old were you?"

Coulson thinks. "No older than twelve."

"I was already part of the show when I was twelve," Clint grins.

"You never wanted to go back to normal life?" Coulson asks, sounding almost curious.

Clint shrugs and shakes his head. "There wasn't anything for me to go back to, really. Carson's was better than anything else I'd had so far. I mean, it wasn't always great – the generators would cut out sometimes, we wouldn't always have that much food or clean water – the animals had priority over us, you see – and I basically wore rags in the summer. I don't think I had a pair of my own shoes for about five years." He laughs and looks up at the ceiling. "It was worth it. Even in winter. Even when the activists would attack us."

"Activists?" Coulson sounds genuinely interested.

"Animal rights, you know. Thought we were exploiting exotic animals, mistreating them for profit, that sort of thing. Like they didn't get taken care of better than we did half the time." He rolls his eyes. "They drove us out of town a few times. Doesn't help ticket sales when you've got a dozen angry idiots waving signs outside the booth. Delilah punched one of them in the face once – she got very tetchy if anyone implied she didn't take good care of her chimps."

"She had chimps?" Coulson raises his eyebrows.

"Two, yeah. Sisters called Annie and Lovely. They lived with her in her caravan. They were basically her children."

"What kind of act was it?"

"Comedy, really. Pretty basic slapstick – the clowns played a big part – but she'd let them show off their climbing on the trapeze and stuff at the end. Leave it on a big bang, y'know?"

"It must have been pretty spectacular."

"It was," Clint grins and laces his hands behind his head. "Especially when I was a kid. It got worse as ticket sales dropped. Delilah left because she wasn't getting paid enough. Jerry died. Polly and Lisa got arrested for robbing houses, and Trickshot and the Swordsman both left. Well. The Swordsman was asked to leave – he had a drinking problem." Clint's mouth twists unhappily.

"And your brother left when you were fifteen?"

"Yeah. And now I'm all nostalgic," he smiles and looks over at Coulson. "What about Phil Coulson then? Bet you can't beat me for an exciting childhood."

"I certainly wasn't part of a circus," Coulson shakes his head. "Nothing quite so interesting. I attended school, received excellent grades –"

"Of course," Clint nods.

"– and I applied for the SHIELD recruitment program. And here I am."

"Here you are," Clint agrees. "I'm glad you are here."

"I'm so pleased that I have the Hawkeye stamp of approval," Coulson tells him dryly, and Clint grins.

"Treasure it. You've earned it."

Coulson opens his mouth to reply, but his phone goes off instead. He answers it without missing a bear. "Coulson." Clint watches, smile fading as Coulson's face grows quiet and still. He hangs up with a, "Yes, sir," and gets up quickly. "Barton, with me."

"What's happened?" Clint asks, following Coulson as he walks briskly out of the room. "Is it Natasha?"

"The Black Widow has completed her mission, but the car we dispatched to retrieve her was destroyed en route."

"A trap?" Clint's voice holds none of the lightness it had only a minute before.

"She has been notified, but we need an agent on the ground, looking from the outside. Someone with good observation skills."

"When do I leave?"

"At a guess, I'd say half an hour. We're being briefed by Fury on the bridge in three minutes."

Natasha's in London, so at least Clint doesn't have to brush up on any foreign languages before he leaves. Coulson comes with him to act as his handler, and Clint is fully aware that he didn't have to do so, and he is stupidly grateful that he did anyway. They sit next to each other on the flight over, and Coulson lets him press their shoulders together as he checks his arrows over and over. He knows Natasha's fine. It's just going to be finding her at the same time as minimising the damage already done that will be the problem.

He lands and has no trouble finding the warehouse where the smugglers Natasha was watching meets. He watches them and listens. None of them seem to be aware of the SHIELD car that was destroyed, but there are a few Clint is getting vibes from. He lets them all leave unscathed and waits for Coulson to tell him what to do next. It's difficult, but he trusts Coulson to make the right call.

"Follow the one with the beard," he says over Clint's earpiece. "Natasha had a few things to say about him, apparently."

"Can I scare him?"

"You may."

Clint leaps from roof to roof, following the man with the beard. He likes London's low, haphazard buildings. They're easy to traverse along for someone like him, and he keeps a close eye on his target until he walks down a long alley. Clint smiles grimly and fires an arrow. It hits the ground in front of the man and sparks, a tiny flare effect. The man jumps and looks around. "Hello?" he says loudly. "Anyone there? Who the fuck –?" he bends down and picks it up, turning it over and frowning at it. While he's preoccupied, Clint drops silently to the cobbles behind him and waits for the man to turn around. When he does, he cries out in shock, and fumbles in his pocket. Clint tilts his head curiously and realises what it is when the man brandishes his hand and the light catches the edge of a long blade.

"Cute," he says flatly, and moves. He disarms the man in seconds, and picks the knife up with a sigh before folding it and putting it in his pocket. "Now, I want to ask you a few things. Mind helping me out here?"

"Fuck off," the man snarls, and spits. Clint takes a step to the left and lets the saliva fly past him.

"Manners cost nothing," he says, and slams a heavy fist into the man's stomach. "Let's try again."

The man knows nothing, so Clint knocks him out, slides the knife back into his jacket, and moves onto the next suspicious character at the meeting.

The next man is the one. Clint knows it the moment he arrives at the block of flats where he lives. A group of boys on bikes with their hoods up heckle him as he walks in, but he ignores them and continues. The man opens the door on a chain when Clint knocks politely. "What?"

"Got a message," Clint doesn't bother trying to put on an English accent – he knows he can't do one.

The man narrows his eyes and opens his mouth, and Clint takes a step back and kicks the door open. Instinct makes him flatten himself against the wall next to the door, and he's just in time – the man swings a gun up and shoots blindly into the hallway. Clint waits until he stops after four shots, and then nocks an arrow and ducks down to shoot the man's thigh.

He screams, and Clint ducks back around the doorway as he fires the gun again. No one comes to their doors to get an eyeful, and Clint mentally praises the survival instincts of the residents. The man stops shooting and Clint hears him move backwards, moaning softly.

He peeks around the corner of the doorframe for a second and draws back just before a bullet bites the wood where his head had just been. "Guy's got good aim," he mutters.

"Any civilian interference?" Coulson asks.

"No." He pulls a pocket mirror from his back pocket and angles it on the floor. The man has just turned the corner out of sight. Clint gets to his feet and walks in, closing the door behind him. "I'd appreciate it if you'd stop shooting at me now, sir. I just want to talk to you."

There's a nasty slick sound and the man makes a pained, drawn-out grunt. "Go fuck yourself," he says, and laughs. Clint walks to the corner and looks around. The man has lowered himself onto a stained couch and pulled out his arrow, but the gun is still in his hand, and he brings it up with a snarl. "One of Tommy's, are you?"

"Not quite," Clint says slowly, eyes on the gun. "Feel like talking, mister?"

"Nope," the man grins nastily and squints at him. "You're not from here. You're SHIELD."

"Good call," Clint doesn't move a muscle. "Seen any other SHIELD personnel recently?"

"She'll be dead by now," the man snorts, and the hand not holding the gun plunges down under the cushions.

"I wouldn't count her out so fast," Clint warns him, and takes a small step forward. The man brandishes the gun immediately.

"You keep your distance, cowboy. The big boys are playing here."

"Yeah, you look real big, bleeding out all over your cheap couch there."

The man laughs and pulls the trigger. It grazes his arm as Clint leaps back behind the corner, and he exhales heavily to let Coulson know he's okay. "Widow's status?" he murmurs.

"Confirmed. She's hiding – avoided a clumsy attempt on her life an hour ago. She's fine."

Clint nods and peers around the edge of the wall again. What he sees makes his blood run cold. The man has pulled what is clearly a home-made bomb from under the cushions, and he's just finished setting it up. He catches Clint's eye and grins, and before Clint can stop him, he puts the nozzle of the gun under his chin and blows his brains out over the wall behind him.

"Shit!" Clint swears, jumping forward to look at the bomb. There's a device that looks like a butchered digital alarm clock wired into a taped-together line of white bricks. He recognises C4 when he sees it. "C, emergency," he breathes, hand hovering over the timer, which is reading a countdown of 1:48, and lowering. "Target killed himself. I've got a situation here – explosives rigged to go." He pulls his phone out as he speaks and takes two photographs for the logistics team.

"How much time do you have?" Coulson's voice is tight.

"Under two minutes."

"Get out."

"Yes, sir," Clint says. He runs out and finds a fire alarm. He smashes it and then runs back inside and goes through the dead man's pockets. He takes his wallet and phone, and manages to find his laptop as well. By the time he gets out, there's only one minute left on the clock. People are only just opening their doors, and Clint pulls his gun out as he sprints to the stairwell and fires two shots into the concrete of the stairs above. "Bomb!" he bellows. "Everyone run!"

The reaction is instantaneous. Clint nearly falls as screaming people flood down the stairs. He knows even as he runs that not everyone is going to make it. Innocent people are going to die tonight. He's on the first floor when the building shakes with the blast, and while other people stumble and slow, he pushes through them and keeps running, laptop held steady under his arm.

"Report," Coulson barks in his ear.

"Safe," Clint gasps, clearing the crowd and sprinting away into the warren of streets. He barely notices where he's running. "The Widow?"

"Still grounded."

"Orders?"

"Stay low, make sure you're alone."

"Right." Clint swerves down a dead-end next to a pub and leans heavily against the wall. The adrenaline won't wear off for another minute or so, and he pants heavily while he waits for his heart to stop beating a frantic tattoo against his ribs. "Orders?" he asks once he's got his breath back.

"The explosion appears to have served as some sort of signal," Coulson says distractedly. "Black Widow is holed up in an abandoned building in Deptford."

"Where am I?"

"Deptford. Are you recovered?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then follow my directions exactly."

Clint runs, and stashes the laptop under a bush before he reaches the street the building is on. There are several dark shapes moving around the place, and he narrows his eyes and pulls an arrow from his quiver. "Permission to kill?"

"Authorised."

There are several gunshots from the large house, on one of the top floors, and Clint moves. Three men are dead before the others realise what's going on, and Clint takes the others out easily enough. He circles the perimeter before entering the building, following the sound of the gunshots. He kills five other men on the way up to the attic, and as he finishes climbing the last flight of stairs, a door on the top corridor slams to the ground, a dark-clothed man on top of it, and Natasha on top of him. She has a knife buried in his neck, and she moves to the side as blood spurts out. Clint rushes forward and grabs his left hand, which is holding a gun, before he can point it at Natasha. He shoots the ceiling instead, and gargles unpleasantly before he dies.

Natasha has blood on her face, and her hair is down around her shoulders. "Hey," she says, flicking a strand out of her eyes. "You took your time."

"Almost got blown up," he shrugs, standing up and nocking another arrow just in case something else happens.

"Cry me a river," she straightens as well, pulling her knife out of the dead man's throat with a sick sucking sound and flicking blood off it before wiping it on the man's front. "I just survived two assassination attempts."

"How many men in the one before this?"

"Five."

Clint snorts and jerks his head towards the stairs. "That's not an assassination attempt. That's a joke. For you anyway."

"True," she smirks and follows him.

"Hawkeye," Coulson says in his ear, "report."

"Black Widow located, enemies down. We're on our way out. Orders?"

"There's a car on its way to your location. I want you to follow my directions. Go out the back way, through the kitchen. Go through the garden and through the gate at the end. There's a footpath there. Go right."

"Yes, sir." Clint looks over his shoulder at Natasha, and she nods for him to take the lead. They leave the bodies where they are – SHIELD will deal with the mess. Their job is to get out without being detected. Fortunately, they're both excellent at their job. Clint makes a detour of about two minutes to retrieve the laptop, and when he tells Natasha where he got it, she raises her eyebrows.

"I can't wait to hear you explain that to Coulson."

"What d'you mean?"

"He told you to get out of a building that was about to explode, and you stayed an extra minute to get this guy's personal belongings? He's going to give you the dressing down of your life."

"I knew I could get out in time," Clint argues. "And we need this. The guy knew I was SHIELD. He wasn't just a smuggler. He was involved in something bigger, I can tell."

"Like what?" she sounds sceptical.

"I don't know. But I bet his phone and laptop will reveal plenty."

She shakes her head and falls silent as they make their way to the corner Coulson's directing them to. It's perfectly timed – a black car with tinted windows pulls up and barely slows down as they jump in. They drive out of London to a private air strip where Coulson's waiting for them. He frowns as soon as he sees the laptop. "Hawkeye, tell me you did not disobey a direct order in getting those."

"I didn't," Clint says honestly as he walks on after Natasha. "I did get out. I had time. I –"

"No." Coulson takes the laptop from him and hands it to Natasha, who wisely retreats to the front of the plane as the door closes and they begin to move. No one tells them to sit down and fasten their seatbelts, and Coulson narrows his eyes and leans close so that only Clint can hear him over the roar of the engines. "If you ever pull something like that again, I will have you put on probation. I don't care if this turns out to be valuable, or if you were following your instincts – you endanger your life wilfully like that again, and so help me, Barton, I will make sure you're grounded for months."

Clint's stomach twists unpleasantly, but he sees past Coulson's tightly controlled anger and sees the edge of worry and fear below it. "I'm sorry," he says so that only Coulson will hear.

Coulson's anger retreats slightly, but he gives Clint a serious look. "Then prove it – don't ever do that again."

"I won't." He means it, and he doesn't miss the knowing smirk Natasha gives him as he goes to sit down opposite her and next to Coulson. He doesn't care – the twisted feeling in his belly is gone, and they're all safe again. Everything will be fine now.

x

Eighteen people died in the explosion in the apartment block. Thirty-five people were injured. Two of them later died from complications in hospital. Clint reads the news reports on his laptop on the Helicarrier and feels numb.

Innocent people have died before as a result of his actions. The maid in Papua New Guinea wasn't the first – there are always civilian casualties in war. Sometimes Clint has had to kill them to protect himself, sometimes they've simply died because they were too close to the conflict. On one occasion, his target held his own wife hostage. He killed her before Clint could stop him. He knows this is his life, and he knows that this is something he will always have to do, but sometimes it's hard. Just sometimes, he wishes he'd never enlisted and SHIELD had never found him. Sometimes he wishes he'd never run away with Lori and never known what it felt like to drive a knife into another man's body. But he does know, and whenever he feels himself sinking, he pushes past it and swims up until his position is secure again. Both feet on the ground, bow in hand. His job isn't the cleanest, but someone has to do it. It might as well be him.

Regina Spektor tells him that everyone must breathe until their dying breath, and he sleeps a little better at night.

Almost three weeks after returning from the mission, he's ordered to attend a debriefing concerning the contents of the laptop and phone he stole from his target. It turns out that he was right all along – from what the techies and hackers have been able to salvage, the man was an agent of AIM, and suddenly Clint's being congratulated on his call because this is the first solid lead they've had on AIM for almost ten years. It's kind of depressing that their best lead is a name that might not be real and the shaky evidence Clint's findings reveals, but it's definitely better than nothing.

In fact, Clint soon understands, they can trace this. And with Natasha's area of expertise elsewhere and other agents at their clearance either on other missions or out of commission, he's the most qualified to take on the project. Coulson explains it to him slowly after the debrief, just the two of them in his office. This is going to be a huge undertaking, probably long-term and slow. He'll be mostly on his own, without the backup of a consistent handler. He'll be removed from SHIELD's immediate influence and protection. He'll be essentially cut off and removed from their system. He'll have to rely completely on himself and his own judgement. It's going to be the hardest thing he's ever done.

Clint thinks about the number of people killed by the explosion the man set off because he was there and agrees to do it. Coulson makes him think about it for a week before he lets him sign himself into the deal, but he has to let him sign in the end.

Before he leaves, he gets permission to see Barney. They meet in a bar in civilian clothes, and Clint buys him a drink. They only leave when the bar closes, alcohol buzzing in his blood and a warm feeling thrumming under his skin. They hug before they part ways, and they tell each other to take care. Clint watches Barney hail a cab and pulls his mp3 player out while he waits for another to show up. He listens to Joni Mitchell and tries to fix the night in his mind forever.

Natasha hugs him on his last night. She won't see him off in the morning – she doesn't like goodbyes. They know it will be months at least before they see each other again. Coulson's there when Clint arrives on the bridge for his final briefing with Fury. He stands unobtrusively in the background while Fury goes over the emergency protocols one more time, and hands Clint the name and number of the person to contact when he gets on the ground. He already has a bank account set up to deal with his day to day expenses. He shakes Fury's hand, and Coulson walks by his side as he leaves.

They're on the water at the moment, and the sun has only just risen, so the light outside is pale, the breeze barely there. It's a beautiful morning. "Gonna miss me, Phil?" he quips as they step outside.

"I'll be getting too much paperwork concerning this project to miss you," Coulson replies dryly, but he puts a hand on Clint's shoulder to stop him before he walks over to the waiting plane. "I'd appreciate it if you made a concentrated effort to return in one piece."

"Concerned for my wellbeing?" Clint grins.

"Saves on medical bills," Coulson shrugs, and squeezes his shoulder slightly before letting go and stepping away. "I'll be keeping tabs on you. Don't get in over your head."

"I'll miss you too," Clint hefts his bag higher on his shoulder and smiles. "See you soon."

"Stay safe."

"Stay busy."

Clint looks over his shoulder before he boards the plane. Coulson's standing still with his hands clasped in front of him, waiting for him to leave. The early sun casts him in shadow, and Clint takes that image with him as the door closes and he straps himself in. He won't be back for a long time. He hopes it's worth it.

x

Clint spends the next two years feeling out Advanced Idea Mechanics. The stress is more intense than anything else he has ever known – he's on a constant knife edge, dancing one step ahead of his pursuers and playing the game as deftly as he can. He has to cover his trail at all times, think his actions out three times over before he actually acts on them, keep moving ahead. He forges connections and learns more than he ever wanted to know about the shadowy world that lies below the surface. It's awful, and he nearly gets killed more times than he cares to count, but he keeps pushing himself forward, leaping just beyond the jaws of his enemies.

AIM is a sprawling empire of scientists and politicians, some interested in national domination, most interested in furthering their personal goals. The money involved is beyond comprehension, and funded by a myriad of different operations. Some are legal. Most are not. There's a huge market for slaves, a bigger one for narcotics, and the arms market doesn't bear thinking about. But Clint has to know about it, so he watches everything from behind a steely mask and reports back to SHIELD through various paths. It's always too risky to meet anyone in person, and phones and emails are out of the question where AIM is concerned – the top dogs employ hackers and technicians specifically to root out potential threats like Clint. He has to use old-fashioned ways, leaving notes in code for the right people to hide in places that are sometimes right out in the open and sometimes hidden where no one would think to look. On one memorable occasion, he has to buy a war documentary on DVD, remove the disc and replace it with one of his own, and replace it in the shop. He scratches a line diagonally across the cover and puts it at the back of a pile of kid cartoons. He gets a confirmation of the transaction in the form of a tick in green pen drawn in under the window of the shop. Every time he has to make a report, he gets a little edgier – he's putting his position on the line every time he contacts SHIELD.

It takes him months to establish contacts solid enough to partially rely on. He's on the job for almost a year by the time he cracks the first layer of AIM's shell. He plants recording devices in the places they use for their meetings, kills men and poses as them to get closer. On one occasion, he delivers a plump foreign woman dressed up in expensive clothes to the door of one of the men on AIM's payroll. He scouted out the hotel beforehand, and he hides in the room next door and slides his microphone through the tiny hole he drilled in the wall. He listens to the man rape her, listens to him smack her around, picks up nothing valuable, and goes back to his shitty motel room and tries not to think about the fate of the poor woman he handed over. Sometimes he hates his job. More often he hates himself for going along with it.

This mission is all about testing his limits. With no handler, he has to decide what he can and can't do, what he can manage and when he needs to quit while he's ahead. A year in, and he hits a block he can't evade – all of his findings lead to the same splinter group, but he can't get anywhere near them. They change their meeting places constantly, none of them have permanent residences, and they all move with the cautious slowness of people who know they're in a high-risk business. Clint finds himself thinking about the advice Natasha had given to him before he left, and the techniques she showed him.

Natasha's speciality is open infiltration – allowing the enemy to catch her and interrogate her in order to get the information she needs. She's the best anyone's ever seen, and Clint knows that it's because she's had a lifetime of practise. Natasha is small and beautiful, and when she wants, she can look weak. She can look fragile. And she can look like she's trying to hide that as well, which is one hell of a trick. Nine times out of ten, it's men who roll the operations, and Natasha slips in and looks like she'll be an easy nut to crack. She showed Clint how it works – a give and take game. Give away just enough information to make them keep going and take the pain they dish out in return. Leave everything open so that they end up filling in the blanks. It's all a trick. Every move calculated to make them reveal more.

The problem is, Natasha's an expert at that. Clint most certainly isn't. And he doesn't have her advantages either. He won't be able to play the sex card reliably, for one thing, and he's a bulky, hard-faced man, not a slim, delicate woman. But he's getting desperate, and he can't see any other way to get the information he needs to continue in his investigations.

Tied to metal pipes, his arms spread out across one at his shoulder height like Christ on a cross, he's never had to act so little in an interrogation. His fear is real, and the pain is definitely real. He's been electrically shocked, he's bleeding from various cuts, one of his eyes is swollen shut, and when a bulky man slams a fist into his stomach for the nth time, he doubles over as much as he can and groans. When the guy punches him in the side of the head, he pretends to pass out, and hopes that the bursts of colour behind his eyes will fade quickly. He aches all over, and he's struggling not to push himself up on his feet – hanging against the chain they've put around his waist to the pipes behind him hurts like hell. He really hopes it will be worth it, and he won't die down here, a failed agent on a failed mission.

"Weak," the punching guy slaps his face and grunts dismissively.

"Tank's standards are getting lower," one of the others snorts, and Clint logs that away for later.

"He's getting desperate, that's why," this voice is from the one in charge – an English man with blonde hair and narrow eyes. "He knows he didn't get the contract because he's not as good as us." He sighs and his shoes tap against the damp stone floor. "Wake him up."

"Sir." The puncher goes away, and Clint has to force himself not to tense in anticipation of a drenching, because he can hear the bucket of water in the man's hands the moment he picks it up. It's freezing, and he jerks and gasps and shakes against his restraints as the men chuckle.

"So," the blonde man paces the small space and runs a hand through his yellow hair, "let's continue where we left off, shall we? Who do you work for?"

"No one," Clint shakes his head and cries out when the puncher slams his boot down on his bare foot. He's pretty sure he hears one of his toes break. He can't risk saying he works for this Tank person in case they were just planting it, so he just concentrates on breathing. "I swear, I was just looking for some money, I didn't know it belonged to anyone important –" 'it' is a car he made sure he was caught trying to steal a laptop from. Dangerous, but it worked.

"Mr Vickers," the name on the cards in his wallet this month, "you are a liar. Do you know what happens to liars?" The blonde man takes a block of something out of his pocket and hands it to one of his henchmen, who grins and hands it to the puncher. Clint's eyes widen as the guy unwraps the paper to reveal a small block of cream-coloured soap.

"You've got to be kidding me," he mutters.

"Liars get their mouths washed out," the blonde man waves a hand, and the puncher beckons one of the other men forward to hold Clint's head still and help pry his mouth open. Clint can't think of anything worse he's had in his mouth, and that includes dirt, sand, and blood. He gags and heaves uncontrollably and for a moment thinks of what Coulson would have said about his decision to do this.

He certainly wouldn't have allowed him to do it without a back-up team on standby.

Clint spits suds at the man with the blonde hair, knowing exactly what kind of reaction it will get. He passes out for real at the end of the beating, and when he comes to he slumps and makes a show of trying not to cry. That part, at least, is all acting.

"Constanos," he whispers when they ask him who he works for again. "Constanos."

There's a ripple of surprise – he's named someone he knows is pretty low down on the food chain. "Constanos thought he could take me on?" the blonde man sneers. "Constanos thought he could take on Ricky Sax and come out on top? Jesus Christ, the nerve of some people. What kind of bum does he think I am? Who does he think collaborated with Lao on the MODOC plan? Who the hell does he think has the Scientist Supreme onspeed dial? What an arrogant asshat. What did he send you for?"

"To steal information," Clint whispers, repeating everything the idiot just gave away in his head to make sure he remembers it. Lao, MODOC plan, Scientist Supreme. He coughs hoarsely. "I…I have a message," he adds in a raspy voice.

"Oh yeah?" The blonde man laughs. "Do tell."

"Only for you."

"Big shock," the man grins. "I don't think so. Jack, again."

Puncher starts forward, and Clint twists and cries, "Wait! The message – it's about the dockside deal."

He made that up, but the blonde man frowns and holds up his hand. Puncher pauses, and Clint breaths out. "What dockside deal?" he asks suspiciously.

Yeah, what dockside deal, Clint asks himself sarcastically. Great. That'll teach him to improvise on the fly. "Only for you," he whispers, hamming up the croak in his voice. "Traitors everywhere." He thinks he sounds over-dramatic and trite, but it seems to strike a chord, because blondie shuffles forward a step.

"Exactly where is everywhere?" he asks menacingly.

"Message," Clint says, like a stuck CD, and coughs weakly. The blonde man steps closer, closer, and finally close enough.

"Hey," the man slaps his face, hard, and Clint lets his weight hang on the chain around his waist, slips his feet under him to press up against the wall, and pushes his body forward as hard as he can. The pipe the chain is wrapped around, rusty and ancient, breaks and falls to the floor with a clang, dark sludge oozing from the hole. Clint uses his momentum to swing his legs out and wrap them around the blonde man's chest. He drags him close, headbutts him, and gets a leg behind his knees to buckle them and topple him to the floor – a move Natasha had showed him. He kicks puncher in the chest as he runs forward, forcing him back, and kicks blondie in the face hard enough to stun him and keep him down, and Clint rests a heel on his throat to keep him still while he hooks a toe around the gun blondie was keeping in his pocket and pulls it out. One of the other men pulls out a knife, and Clint snorts as he checks the gun has the safety on before flicking it through the air. His aim is perfect, and his right hand closes around it without a snag.

"Nobody move," he says, hoarse voice dropped. He flicks the safety off and aims the gun at blondie, who stills and stares up at it in horror, the sludge from the broken pipe ruining his nice suit.

From there, it goes a lot better for him.

He doesn't celebrate his thirty-third or thirty-fourth birthdays. He doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving, and Christmas Eve 2009 finds him in a gunfight with five guards who detected his presence inside the perimeter of the compound he's trying to infiltrate. He can't use his bow – that's Hawkeye's calling card, and it would be monumentally stupid to let AIM know that SHIELD was getting close.

Because he is getting close. He leaves the compound – killing all the guards would leave far too bloody a trail – but he gets in a month later and copies enough data to make the first setback more than worthwhile. He hides his trail as best as he can, but he's far from a technical genius, and he's just dumped his car and left town when he hears about masked men killing the occupant of his room in the motel he just left.

He adds another body to the tally in his mind (approximate, inaccurate, but still slightly guilt-inducing if he lets himself think about it too much) and moves on.

He doesn't get far.

His break-in at the compound obviously left more of a trail than he'd expected, and Clint doesn't get more than a minute's warning when they come for him. He's in a new motel room, a new car outside, and he hears the motel owner's dog bark. It does that whenever it smells new people. There's no reason to believe it's anything but someone looking for a room, but Clint hasn't lived this long by assuming he's safe.

He turns out the lights, glances out of the window, and sees a black shape move in the bushes opposite. The fear runs through him like cold water and he drops to the floor as a bullet flies through the air where his head had just been, the cheap glass of the window shattering over him. He scrambles to the bed and flips it over, shoving it across the door and covering half of the window. More bullets fly overhead and he grabs his bag and pulls it across his back as his fingers scramble for the gun that fell to the floor when he flipped the bed. He runs into the bathroom and rips the shower curtain down. He rips off the toilet seat, wraps it up, and then ducks back into the main bedroom and throws it in front of the window. As they shoot at it, he uses the noise as cover to smash the tiny bathroom window. It opens into the courtyard at the back where the owner lives, and he drops the bag on the other side and shoves himself through the gap by what seems like strength of will alone. He hears them break down the door, and he clears the window in the time it takes them to run into the bathroom.

He's got cuts running the length of his body from the broken glass, but he drops to the concrete floor like a sack of flour, grabs his bag, and sprints along the wall to the gate before they can angle their guns out of the window at him. He takes the gate at a running jump and gets over it just before they start shooting at him. He's back round the front now, and there are three men outside his room. They see each other at the same time, and Clint kills one of them and gets another in the side as he runs for the cover of the cars. He doesn't realise they shot him in the arm until he's crouched behind a silver Chevy. Luckily, he can shoot just as well with his left hand, so he switches the gun over and waits until the idiots shoot out the windows before he peeks over the top and shoots back. They've got no chance at this range. He kills the others who come out in the same way, and pauses to catch his breath once they're all dead.

He can't go over and check without putting himself in danger, but he can't stay where he is. He knows for sure that the other people in the motel will be calling the cops if they haven't already. This is high-profile. There are too many dead bodies this time. This is a trail he can't cover up. He sighs and pulls his phone out to dial the number he's had memorised since the beginning.

Coulson picks up on the second ring. "Coulson."

"Phil, I need extracting."

"Hawkeye?"

"You know anyone else who calls you Phil?"

"Where are you?"

Clint gives him the location. "I need to move, man, I'm in the open here, the feds are en route."

"Then run. Call me back as soon as you're safe." Coulson trusts his ability to evade the police, and Clint allows a warmth to settle in his stomach at the familiar sound of Coulson's voice.

"Yes, sir."

He runs. He calls one of his contacts in the nearest town and gets her to drive out as fast as she can to pick him up. They don't get stopped by anyone on the way back in, and Clint gives the girl a crisp fifty dollar note. She grins and drops him by a bar. He goes in, trying to look as though he isn't shitting bricks, because the men sent to kill him would have been ordered to report back as soon as they finished the job, but now they'll never speak again, and whoever sent them will know that Clint's still breathing. He keeps a calm face on, buys a drink, and calls Coulson, adding in the part about his injury this time. He tries to ignore the part of him that's secretly overjoyed that this mission is almost certainly over, at least for the time being. He wants to go back to the Helicarrier. He wants to see Natasha and Coulson. He wants to have another drink with Barney. He wants to feel safe again, and stop sleeping so lightly that the creak of floorboards wakes him up.

Coulson tells him to wait, and he does. He waits for two hours, buying another drink and a bag of chips to occupy himself. He's chosen a table that can't be seen immediately from the front door, close to the toilets. He keeps his gun close at hand until Coulson calls and tells him to go outside. The door just swings shut behind him as a car pulls up with the window rolled down. He recognises the agent behind the wheel – Fielding, the man who drove the car when he first recruited Natasha.

"Good to see you," he says as he slides into the backseat, where a woman immediately gets to work on his bloodied arm.

"You too," Fielding meets his eyes in the rear-view mirror and smiles. "Ready to go home?"

Clint thinks of the Helicarrier, the impregnable fortress in the sky, and sighs, sinking into the seat. "You have no idea." The first thing he's going to do as soon as his arm is better is spend a whole day with his bow, he resolves. He's missed shooting like a physical ache, and after so long without it, he's really going to need the practise.