Chapter title from Colorblind by Counting Crows.

Natasha takes care of him for those first few horrific days. He's incapable of anything more than sleeping or staring blankly into space. He thinks he cries too, when he's alone, but he doesn't remember. He has no desire to move from the bed unless he absolutely needs to. His mind is stuck in a constant loop. If he had been better, he thinks, if he hadn't gotten himself compromised, if he had avoided Loki and stayed hidden…if he had been a smarter, faster agent he could have avoided being brainwashed. He could have been on the Helicarrier with Coulson. He could have backed him up. If Clint had been there, Loki wouldn't have been able to sneak up on Coulson like that. His mind sticks on ifs, and he dreams of an endless ocean of shimmering blue that rises up and carries him under with no resistance. On the fourth day, Natasha wakes him up by plugging her iPod into her speakers and blasting Carry On Wayward Son at full volume. "Get up!" she barks at him from the door. When he just hunches further into the cocoon of blankets, she throws her shoe at him. It hits him in the back of the head, and the pain is sharp. He sits up and glares at her.

"What the hell?

She pulls off her other shoe and glares right back at him. "Get up," she growls, and throws it. He only just catches it, and she looks around for something else to throw.

"You're just gonna chuck stuff at me till I move?" he snaps. She grabs a hairbrush and an empty picture frame.

"If that's what it takes," she throws them. He deflects the hairbrush, but the sharp corner of the picture frame hits his shoulder and he hisses. "Get up," Natasha says threateningly, and he flings back the covers, suddenly burning with anger. As soon as he comes close, she punches him in the stomach, and he staggers back, shocked.

"What the fuck?" he gasps, doubling over slightly. Natasha's punches are not a laughing matter.

"I need you!" she shouts at him, angrier than he's ever seen her. "I need you to get it together! He was my friend too!" she launches another punch at him, but he smacks it aside. She keeps coming, and when he tries to dodge and duck instead of retaliating, she kicks him in the face.

"Masquerading as a man with a reason," sing the speakers, "my charade is the event of the season."

"Fine!" he snarls, and starts fighting back. She's not on her best form, but neither is he. He picks her up and drops her on top of a chest of drawers that breaks under the weight. She picks up one of the pieces of wood and smashes it over his shoulders, and they proceed to break everything in the room.

"You," she grunts, absorbing a punch to the chest and picking up a small vase to throw at him, "are not," it smashes against his back as he runs into the kitchen and grabs a chair to keep her at bay with, "the only one," she grabs it when he thrusts it at her, and between the two of them it breaks up into pieces, "who's lost someone!"

"I know!" he bellows, dropping her to the floor with a well-aimed kick that takes her legs out from under her.

She launches herself at him and the tackle drives him into the table, which collapses under him with a splintering sound and a bang. She crawls up till she's on eye level with him and punches him in the face, just hard enough to snap his head around with the force. "Then start acting like it," she hisses.

They stop, both breathing heavily. For a moment Clint thinks she's about to kiss him, but then she pushes herself away and offers him a hand. He lets her pull him up, and shudders when she hugs him. She's right – he's been selfish, too wrapped up in his own misery to accept that Natasha's hurting as well. She's better than he is. "I'm sorry," he manages to say into her hair. "Nat, I'm sorry." She's so much stronger than anyone else.

She squeezes him tight and then lets go. "Get dressed," she tells him shortly, but her eyes aren't hard like they were a moment ago. "We're going out."

"Where?" he asks as she brushes herself down and picks her way through the wreckage to the door.

"Just out," she replies.

They walk down the road. Natasha laces her arm through his and steers him, which he's grateful for. Everything seems so sharp and crisp. He does a double take when he sees a page of newspaper in the gutter with the ruined Stark Tower on the front. The world knows what happened in New York. A person walks past on the other side of the street, and Clint stares at him and thinks of Coulson. None of the people reading the headline stories about New York would know about Coulson. They wouldn't know that he had ever existed, let alone that he had died.

"Keep it together," Natasha murmurs. They make it to a pond, where she sits him down on a bench and sits next to him, pressed up along his side so that he knows she's there even when he closes his eyes.

"Natasha?"

"Yes?"

"When Loki was on the Helicarrier, did anyone talk to him?"

"Fury spoke to him after we brought him on board. I approached him later to get information."

"Did you get it?"

"I did."

He smiles, and the action feels strange and out of place on his lips. There's no humour or happiness in it. It's just a reaction. "How did the exchange go?"

"You want me to tell you everything?"

"Yes, please."

She takes a deep breath and pushes against him firmly before she starts. "You were my angle. I told Loki that I didn't care if he won – I just wanted to know what he was going to do with you. He asked if we were in love. I told him I owed you a debt. He asked me to explain, so I told him that you had been sent to kill me, and you recruited me instead, by extension saving my life. He was…amused that I was bargaining for one man when the stakes were so much higher. He made a pretty speech. Told me he'd make you kill me nice and slow, and that he'd release your mind at the end so that you would know what you had done. And only then would he kill you. I turned my back, told him he was a monster. He told me we'd brought the monster."

"Bruce," Clint says automatically, and she nods.

"I thanked him for his co-operation, and then I left. That's it."

That's it. Clint thinks of how it could have gone, and feels his stomach churn. He only has time to turn away before he's retching up the bread and ham Natasha forced him to eat the night before. The knowledge runs through his head, sure as anything he's ever known. He was only useful to Loki while he was working against the odds. Had he succeeded and conquered the world, he would have had ample time to dispose of him in whatever way he deemed fit. Clint has no doubt that Loki would have made him kill Natasha. He would have had to cripple her himself first, because she had shown already that she could beat him while he was under Loki's control, but once she was down…

Clint heaves again, and Natasha's hand presses against his spine, solid and reassuring. He would have killed her, he thinks, and squeezes his eyes shut as his stomach twists over and over. He would have held her down, eyes clouded in blue, and cut her into ribbons. He would have loosed arrows at her limbs and burned off the rest of her hair for Loki's amusement. He would have put out her eyes and flogged her to death. God, he thinks, he would have raped her if Loki had ordered him to. His throat burns and he feels a tear roll down his cheek.

"Clint," she whispers behind him, and he shudders. "Here." She presses a bottle of water to his knee, and he takes it without looking at her. He drains it dry, spitting half of it out onto the grass. When he sits up again, a thin sheen of sweat on his face, she runs a hand gently through his hair. "You didn't hurt me," she tells him, and he exhales heavily and leans forward, hiding his face. "Clint, listen," she puts a hand on his cheek and turns his face so that he looks at her. She meets his gaze steadily, as calm as if they were discussing knife throwing or different types of coffee. "You didn't hurt me. What do you remember about our fight? When I knocked you out?"

He shakes his head. "Nothing," he manages to say. "It's just a blur. I don't remember anything clearly."

She smiles slightly. "I came up behind you, the way Woo likes to do, matching your steps. You heard me, obviously. You shot at me with your bow. And again a second later. You missed both times." He opens his mouth, uncomprehending for a moment, and her smile widens. "What's special about you, Clint? What's practically your catchphrase?"

"I never miss," he whispers, and she kisses his cheek.

"You never miss," she agrees. "But you missed me twice. And Fury told me you shot him down, but you didn't hit him. You could have put a bullet in his head, but you put it in his vest instead. You missed Agent Hill as well when you were getting out of the Pegasus facility. Clint, when I was…" she hesitates and frowns slightly, the way she does when she talks about her past, "when I was under other people's control, I never deviated from their plans. Not at all. Your mind wasn't your own, and you still stopped yourself from killing me. I don't think I've ever met anyone as stubborn as you."

He laughs, a humourless, broken sound, and she hugs him tight, letting him bury his face in her shoulder. She doesn't tell him to move forward, and for that he will love her unconditionally for as long as he lives.

x

His bow is back in New York, but Clint can't think about shooting or keeping in shape. Natasha still works out every day and does yoga in the evenings, and after a week she persuades him to come running with her. It feels good, the air in his face and the steady rhythm of his feet on the sidewalk. It turns out that in the destruction they wrought while they were fighting on the fourth day, his ancient mp3 player was broken – he thinks it was in the chest of drawers he threw Natasha on, but he isn't sure, and either way, he sees it as an excuse to buy an iPod. While Natasha salutes the sun in the living room, he sits cross-legged on the couch and plays with his music library.

One night he hears noises in the kitchen, and when he goes to look he sees Natasha singing along to Roosterspur Bridgewhile she brews herself some tea, because Tori Amos is still her favourite, and he knows that she knows he's there, and she ignores him and keeps singing anyway.

He listens to the radio and gets Video Games stuck in his head for three days straight. May comes to an end before he knows it, and he listens to Zac Brown and Jesse Clegg and tries not to think about the yawning hole in his life. A Coulson-shaped hole that gapes wide and ragged. He occasionally tries to put him down as just another life, one more body on his book because he could miss when he fired at Natasha, but apparently not when he fired at an engine, and dozens died because of that one arrow. Coulson's just another SHIELD agent who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. That technique works about as well as expected, which is to say it doesn't work at all.

Clint wakes up from nightmares where Loki makes him kill Coulson, take the sceptre and drive it through Coulson's gut or pluck an arrow from his quiver and stab it into his heart, close enough to feel it jump under his hand and see Coulson's expression as he sinks to the floor and dies in Clint's arms. He wakes screaming and shaking, and Natasha will come to him and put a glass of water next to his bed and stay with him if he asks her to. She doesn't owe him anything, he thinks, not after this. She's saving his life just as much as he saved hers, because when he thinks about leaving the safe house and re-joining SHIELD as an active agent without Coulson, it feels like he's being ripped open. He thinks of walking past Coulson's office door and not being able to walk in and pull books off the shelf, of going on missions without even a chance of hearing Coulson's voice in his ear, calm and steady, and can't take it. When he thinks of July eighth, he feels like crumpling to the floor and screaming, because he'd said he'd find Captain America bunting and a damn cake, and Coulson won't ever have that now.

Natasha tells him that Fury smeared blood on Coulson's vintage (still unsigned) Captain America trading cards to give Tony and Steve that final push, and Clint can't bring himself to speak for the rest of the evening.

He dreams of Coulson dying, expression calm even then, and cries himself back to sleep. Sometimes he thinks it will be okay, like when he's watching Natasha bend herself into impossible shapes, or when he goes to the shops and doesn't want to scream at everyone because they're not missing Coulson like he is. Sometimes, when he's jogging with his headphones in, steady feet on the sidewalk, he breathes deep and thinks he'll be able to move forward. But then it will blindside him out of nowhere – Coulson will never direct him in the field again, he never did get round to making Coulson watch Men In Black, Coulson won't be there for the next New Year's party on the Helicarrier – and he doesn't want to live in a world where he'll never be able to call Coulson Phil to his face again.

One night in early June, he kisses Natasha, and they get as far as stripping to their underwear before he can't take it and rolls away, dropping his head in his hands and sitting on the edge of the bed. "I'm sorry," he mutters, "I thought…but I…I can't, I just can't."

"It's fine," she says quietly, small hand on his shoulder. She's always got his back, he thinks, and he feels like the lowest piece of shit.

"I'm sorry," he says again, because he doesn't know what else he can say, and she comes to sit next to him. Words sit heavy on his tongue, but he's scared of saying them, even though he feels the truth of what he wants to say in everything he's felt since Natasha told him Coulson had died. "I think," he starts, so quiet he can barely hear himself, "I think I –"

"I know," she says softly, sadly, and he lifts his head to look at her.

"You know?"

She raises an eyebrow, but her smile softens the effect. "Of course I know."

He stares at his knees and thinks of the New Year's party where he and Coulson had just watched the others kissing and not made any move to join the crowd. "Fuck," he says, and his voice shakes. "Fuck."

There's no point in saying it out loud, he knows. Not if Natasha already knows, and it's not like he'll ever be able to tell Coulson now anyway. Coulson's gone, and Clint will never be able to tell him anything ever again.

x

When Fury gives them the choice, Clint's the first to vote for the team to stick together. His reasons are mixed up in his head, but when he says they shouldn't split up, he means it. Their first official mission is working with Dr Foster and Darcy Lewis to contact Asgard, but everyone knows that it's really a mission for Tony and Bruce. They end up all moving into Stark Tower anyway, which is mostly fixed up now apart from the letters on the front. Only the 'A' remains, and if it hasn't been fixed yet, Clint doubts that it will be. "Intentional?" he nudges Natasha and looks up at it as they approach.

She shrugs. "Perhaps."

Clint watches Tony as he shows them around (with no small amount of bragging involved), and watches Steve and Bruce as well, who have already spent a lot of time there. He can tell by the way they move that they're already comfortable in the environment, especially Bruce, who had been so tense and skittish in the SHIELD base, but is relaxed and at ease here. Clint thinks of where Natasha found him, hiding in a shack in India, and thinks Laugh, I Nearly Died. Steve laughs at Tony, and Bruce shoots him fond looks, and Clint begins to think that for all his 'go it alone' bluster, Tony Stark actually craves company.

When Tony shows them the underground firing range, already outfitted with archery-friendly targets and an impressive array of knives and guns for Natasha, his suspicions are confirmed. He looks at Tony, leaning against the entrance and looking outwardly smug and confident, and sees the way Tony tracks their movements, judging their responses to his efforts. Their eyes meet, and Clint can't help grinning, and Tony grins back, pleased as punch.

"You didn't mention he was needy," he tells Natasha later as they walk to their new bedrooms (which are bigger than any bedrooms Clint has ever slept in in his life).

She shrugs and smirks. "I thought I'd let you figure it out for yourself."

"He really wants this to work, doesn't he?"

She kisses his cheek and leaves him at his door. "Don't you?"

He feels tiny in the massive bed, but he has a spectacular view. Tony has the top floor, but he and Natasha are only a floor below. The detail doesn't escape him – Tony knows he likes to have eyes up high, and he knows that Clint and Natasha like to stick close to each other. He gazes out over the New York skyline and thinks of the view from the Helicarrier windows. He thinks of Coulson, and how he'll never see Captain America in the field, or Clint and Natasha work with a whole team, not just each other.

The bed is huge, and Clint feels like he's drowning in it.

x

He memorises the layout of the tower, where they can go and where they're not meant to. They aren't supposed to go down to the offices while Stark's employees are there, but Clint does anyway, dressing in a neat shirt and pants, scoping out the area. Tony bitches at him, but when Clint challenges him to find evidence of him being down there – without Jarvis helping him with facial recognition – he scowls, and Clint laughs because needling Tony is becoming something of a game. He carves out a few hiding spaces where no one will find him (except maybe Natasha), and spends most of his time training. It's been over a month since he shot his bow, and he makes up for it by spending at least six hours a day on the range.

He finds the wires for the speakers that are in every room in the house (he leaves those alone, because Tony is very firm about Jarvis being able to speak to everyone if the need arises) during his explorations of the air vents and crawlspaces. He finds out what time Tony goes to the gym and smiles as he fixes the system to play Primadonna at full volume. Tony yells at the walls for about thirty seconds before he just throws his hands up and goes with it. Clint sees him start to adjust his rhythm subconsciously to the lyrics and laughs silently. "And I'm sad to the core core core, every day is a chore chore chore. When you give, I want more more more, I wanna be adored. 'Cause I'm a primadonna girl…"

He tries not to think about Coulson too much, but it's so much harder than he'd thought it could ever be. It's like his brain is wired to connect everything to Coulson, and sometimes he wakes up from the nightmares that have becomes so much more frequent (he used to get very few for someone in a job like his) and feels like he's spinning off into space. He can never get back to sleep afterwards, so he usually goes to the kitchen, and then down to the range, no matter how early it is.

He disables the cameras in his bedroom, shrugging it off when Tony complains about his tech being tampered with. He's still getting used to Jarvis, and he is definitely uncomfortable with the possibility of Tony being able to check up on him whenever he likes. It might be his tower, but Clint enjoys finding Jarvis' blind spots. It becomes another sort of game for him, because Tony's made the tower with plenty of little hiding spaces and secret routes in and out. Clint supposes it's because Tony's always had to think about people trying to kill or kidnap him. It must be second nature by now, he reasons as he crawls through the ceiling beneath the floor of his own bedroom. Bruce and Steve have the floor below him and Natasha, and he knows that Bruce spends most of his time in the lab he and Tony practically live in these days.

Steve's more intriguing. Clint can't help being reminded of Coulson whenever Steve is there, and he watches him a little more intently than he does the others. He catches himself making mental notes about the captain for Coulson, and tries to convince himself he's not cracking up by trying to notice the same things about the others as well.

Steve loves fruit, especially the ones he can crunch. He grins whenever he's about to take the first bite of an apple, and he enjoys eating pears when they're barely ripe. He checks up on them whenever he thinks they're not looking, and makes it a point to know where everyone is at any given time. He likes interacting with Jarvis more than anyone except Tony, and he adores movies. He keeps a notebook with an elastic band around it that he draws in. Clint thinks he writes in it as well, but he isn't sure. He could have sneaked into Steve's room to read it a dozen times over (the guy hardly ever locks his door), but he can't quite bring himself to do it. It's not that Steve's technically the team leader, or even the fact that he's Captain America, the country's most beloved superhero. It's just that he's so damn likeable. Clint knows he would feel guilty about going through his personal belongings like that.

It's so different to the life he's become used to. There are no solo missions anymore. According to Agent Thompson, their temporary liaison with SHIELD, they will be given missions in the future, but for now their role is purely as a response team and advisors. Clint honestly has no idea what to make of that (he wishes Coulson could explain it to him), but it's nothing like any role he's ever had before. He doesn't know what he's training for anymore, so he trains harder in case they get another situation like the Chitauri. Having a team of superhumans ready seems like tempting fate to him, and he knows he has something to prove.

Natasha belongs. She fits in anywhere she wants to, and she's proved herself more than capable. She's also got abilities no other person does – Clint knows she had enhancing drugs pumped into her at a young age; steroids and the like. She can move her body in impossible ways, and her other skills are too numerous to fit into the allotted space on a SHIELD cover file. Steve is Captain America. Enough said. Thor is a god, and even though he isn't there, they speak of him often. Tony is rich beyond imagining, and built a suit with the most advanced weaponry in the world in it. Bruce is the most normal person on the team, but then he also keeps the Hulk under his skin, and he understands everything that comes out of Tony's mouth.

Clint's just an agent with a bow and above-average aim. So he practises until his arms ache and his fingers bleed, and then he practises some more. He walks silently and sneaks up on people, and he watches his teammates like a hawk (no pun intended) whenever they happen to come under his gaze. He gets to know their habits, their likes and dislikes, and he tries desperately to stop linking everything back to Coulson.

It doesn't work, and after waking up from yet another nightmare, he flings back the sheets of his gargantuan bed and changes into tracksuit bottoms and an old SHIELD t-shirt. When he goes downstairs, he realises immediately that he's not alone, but he doesn't know it's Steve until he's almost in the living room and he hears the sound of pencil on paper.

"Hey," he says as he goes in, and Steve looks around at him from the couch and raises his eyebrows.

"Hi. What're you doing up?"

Clint goes to the fridge and gets the cheese out. "Eating. You?"

"Nothing much."

Clint doesn't think Steve realises what pictures drawn by Captain America would be worth, and he doesn't want to tell him. "Mind company?"

"Not at all," Steve actually sounds quite pleased at the prospect, and Clint turns his back so that Steve won't have to see his poor attempt at a smile. He's not up to expressions of happiness so soon after a nightmare. "What're you making?"

"Grilled cheese sandwich. Want one?"

"If you're making three," Steve sounds hopeful, and Clint's lips twitch.

"Sure thing." One for him and two for Steve, who has double, triple, and quadruple helpings of everything because of his insane metabolism. He eats more than the rest of them combined, and still puts on no weight at all. He makes four, because he knows Steve will polish off three with no problems, and when he carries them over Steve lights up like a Christmas tree.

"Thank you."

"No problem," Clint shrugs and takes a bite of his sandwich as Steve tucks into his. "All we need now is the sun and a couple of beers."

"I'll stick to the soda," Steve smiles slightly, and Clint frowns.

"You teetotal?"

"Teetotal?"

"Yeah, you know – no alcohol."

"Oh," Steve takes a massive bite and chews quickly. "No," he says when he's swallowed. "But there wouldn't really be any point. I can't get drunk. I can still enjoy the taste, but the soda these days is real nice, so I'd probably stick to that."

"You can't get drunk?" Clint frowns and tries to remember if he's ever seen Steve with a beer when they watch movies together or just happen to be together in the same room in the evening. He can't recall Steve having anything but water, soda, or juice.

"No," Steve takes another huge bite. "Side-effect of the serum," he explains. "My metabolism's just too fast to soak anything up."

"Wow," Clint stares at the table. "That sucks."

"It's not that bad," Steve shrugs, and Clint raises an eyebrow at him.

"Seriously?"

Steve sighs and shakes his head. "No. It does…suck." He's still getting used to modern colloquiums. Clint finishes off his sandwich and leans back on the couch.

"I guess there're always things I can't pick up from watching people."

"What do you mean?" Steve looks at him curiously and Clint shrugs.

"I read people. Study them, y'know? Makes it easier to target someone if you understand them, so I observe the people around me pretty intensely. It's just a habit by now."

"How long have you needed to do that? I mean," Steve pauses and rephrases, "how long have you been working for SHIELD?"

"Since 2000, so about twelve years now. But I was already a sniper before that."

"In the army?"

"Yeah."

"I didn't know that." Steve looks forward and picks up his next sandwich with a sigh. "There's still so much I don't know. About everything, I mean, not just about you guys."

"Like what?"

"Oh, everything," Steve waves a hand at the floor-to-ceiling windows that give a magnificent view of Manhattan. "The modern world and all that. There's so much to take in. I have so much to remember. It gets a bit much sometimes, I guess."

"Do you miss your old life?" Clint asks bluntly, without thinking. He decides after he's said it not to be embarrassed about blurting out such a personal question. Steve doesn't seem to be offended or upset or anything, so he figures it's okay. The captain just keeps eating his sandwich.

"I miss my friends," he says after a while, soft and quiet. "I miss…I miss everything about it. This time is amazing, don't get me wrong. It's everything Howard used to ramble about and more, and I still have a hard time getting it through my head sometimes that Tony is his son. And you're all older than me. I know I'm technically over ninety, but I still feel twenty-six. It's strange, I guess. Exciting, sure, but still strange. I miss things the way they were." He sighs and finishes off his second sandwich, reaching for the next one. "Sorry to dump all that on you. You were probably looking for a shorter answer."

"Nah," Clint tilts his head back onto the cushions and stares at the ceiling. "It was a pretty loaded question. It's pretty impressive that you've dealt as well as you have, to be honest. Most people would've freaked out or killed themselves or something by now." He frowns and curses mentally. "That came out a bit blunter than I intended."

"It's fine," Steve says. "I appreciate the honesty."

They fall silent. Clint bites his tongue and thinks of the question he wants desperately to ask, but doesn't know how to. He's fine with asking Steve about his old life, but he really doesn't want to bring up his own fragile mental state. But he figures that Steve's down here at half three in the morning eating grilled cheese sandwiches and scribbling in a notebook that he won't let anyone see, so maybe their leader isn't exactly a paragon of mental stability himself. He dances back and forth in his mind, not sure whether to open his mouth or not.

Steve finishes his last sandwich and looks at him. "Whatever it is you want to say, just say it. The tension is killing me."

Clint stares at him. "How do you know I want to say something?"

Steve shrugs with one shoulder. "Intuition? Whatever it is, you can just say it. It's fine."

Clint frowns and leans his elbows on his knees, looking at the table instead of Steve. He's quiet for a long moment before he actually gets up the guts to speak, and it isn't the question he wants to ask, but it's close. "Is it difficult? Living here in this time, I mean? When everyone you knew…"

"Is dead?" Steve finishes quietly for him, and Clint drops his head and sighs.

"Yeah."

Steve doesn't reply immediately, and when he does his words are slow and measured. "It's…it's impossibly difficult. It's the hardest thing I've ever done, but…" he sighs. "I can't go back. And I think sometimes that maybe, even if I could…I wouldn't. I don't know. Sometimes I can't stand it; sometimes I think that it's one of the best things that's ever happened to me. And I don't know which one is better. I mean…I died, or as good as, and the world went on. They didn't need me, not really. Everyone moved on. They lived. Full, long lives." He lapses into silence, and Clint stares at his hands, loosely clasped in front of him. He figures out exactly how to phrase his question before he asks it, and he can't look away from his fingers as he does so.

"Cap?" his voice comes out much smaller than he'd intended.

"Yeah?"

The hell with it. Spit it out, Clint. "You had a girl, right? Back then?"

Steve's voice is even quieter when he replies. "Yeah. Peggy."

"How do you deal with the fact that she's dead? That…that you'll never get to see her again?" Clint looks at Steve, who looks back, two lines between his eyes. Clint looks away first, blinking away the horrifying threat of tears.

"It was hard at first," Steve says, so quietly that Clint can barely hear him. "But I found out what happened to her as soon as I could, and that made it easier. She moved forward in her life. She was the strongest woman I ever knew, and I know she lived an incredible life." Clint hears him look at him and hears him sigh. "She wasn't…I mean, she meant so much to me, but…Bucky's…it's harder to think of Bucky."

Clint frowns and glances at him. He's never heard of this Bucky guy before. "Bucky?"

"My best friend," Steve doesn't look at him. "Sergeant James Barnes formerly of the one-oh-seventh, then of the Howling Commandos. He died." Clint knows who he's talking about now – he remembers Coulson talking about each of the Howling Commandos. Steve's talking faster now, like he thinks it'll hurt less, like pulling a band-aid off quickly. "Only a couple of days before I crashed the plane, we were on a mission to capture this scientist. We had to drop onto a moving train that was high up a mountain. There was an accident after we got in, and Bucky fell. I couldn't get there in time…and he died. That's harder." He rubs his eyes with his thumbs and then runs them through his hair with a sigh. "Peggy lived and went on and helped to found SHIELD. I was frozen and woke up sixty-seven years in the future. Bucky fell from a moving train hundreds of feet above the ground in 1945 and I'll never see him again. His life ended that day, and that's the hardest thing to deal with. I mean, I'll never see Peggy again either, or any of the others, but at least they survived. At least Peggy was okay."

"And at least she knew," Clint says without thinking, and forces himself not to flinch when Steve looks at him curiously. "I mean, you know," he mumbles, trying to dig himself out of this hole, "at least you told her, right?"

"Yeah," Steve nods, "she knew." He looks at Clint for a long moment. "Natasha told us not to tell you right away," he says softly. "About Coulson, I mean. I'm sorry. If, y'know, you would've rather known."

"No," Clint shakes his head, "she was right. I didn't take it well when she told me. She made the right decision."

"You were close?"

Clint rubs the back of his neck. "Yeah. I guess. He recruited me out of the army, and he put a lot of time into my career at SHIELD. He trusted my judgement." And I never told him, goes unspoken. He never knew. I always thought I'd have more time. Clint stands up and takes the plates back to the kitchen, leaving them in the sink for the morning. "You staying up?" he asks. Steve looks around and nods.

"I doubt I'll get back to sleep now."

"Want to spar?"

Steve cocks his head, interested. He's fought with Tony in his Iron Man suit, and Clint knows that Natasha's been testing him. If Thor was here, there's no doubt about who Steve's regular sparring partner would be, but he's never set himself against Clint before. "Sure," he says, smiling. "Now?"

"No time like the present," Clint shrugs, and leads the way down to the gym.

"I should warn you," Steve says awkwardly as they warm up, "I, um, lose sight of my limits sometimes. I don't want to hurt you accidentally."

Clint nods slowly and thinks for a moment. "What's your full strength like? If you punched someone normal, like me, square in the chest, what would happen?"

Steve pulls a face and touches his toes. "I'd break ribs for sure."

"You ever tried?"

"Um, not on my friends."

"What about on Natasha?"

Steve laughs and straightens up. "I can barely touch her. She's damn fast, even for me."

"And she spars with me at full strength," Clint gives Steve a measuring look. "Try not to hold back so much, okay?"

"Are you sure?" Steve frowns.

"Yeah. Go for it. Let's see what you can do."

Clint's had the best training SHIELD can offer, and he's picked up plenty in his own travels. He's got speed, agility, flexibility, and he can throw a mean punch. Steve, however, is Captain America the super soldier. Clint dances backwards from him and lunges around him, getting the measure of his speed and reflexes, which are fast. Steve's bulk is very misleading in that respect, but Clint enjoys the challenge. It takes his mind off their conversation upstairs.

"Hit me," he taunts, dodging again and getting behind Steve to smack him in the back of the head. "Come on, man, I know you're faster than this."

Steve snorts and ducks Clint's next punch, his own fist whipping out almost too fast for Clint to counter it. The deflection makes his wrist ring, and he leaps back a couple of steps and waits for Steve to charge him. Steve is very forward-focused. It's definitely an army thing – he's aware of his surroundings, but he puts most of his focus on the enemy right in front of him. Clint's more used to splintering his gaze in lots of directions and accounting for every little detail in the environment. Anything can be a weapon, after all. Anything can become part of the battlefield. There are low rafters above their heads where the lights don't penetrate the shadows, and when Steve charges, Clint feigns to the side. Steve grabs, but Clint puts his hands on Steve's shoulders and brings his knees up to kick him down and away. While Steve stumbles, Clint leaps up into the rafters.

"Is that cheating?" Steve laughs, not even out of breath. Damn serum. Clint calms his breathing and stays absolutely still, daring Steve to come up and fight him here, out of his comfort zone. Steve's the kind of guy who likes to have his feet solidly on the ground. Clint's more at home on shifting sands. Adaption is one of his specialities, and he loves being up high. The rafters above the gym remind him of the circus tent, and he grins in the darkness, waiting for Steve to decide. "Alright," Steve says finally, jumping up to grab a rafter and hauling himself up into the shadows. "You asked for it."

Clint keeps absolutely still as Steve squints into the dark. He feels it when Steve sees him, and he jumps out of the way as Steve starts to come over. He's a little wobbly on the beams, and Clint's got the advantage on him. He runs at full speed over the metal and kicks Steve in the chest, swinging out of the way before Steve can retaliate.

"This is definitely cheating," Steve grins and steadies himself, getting his bearings.

"Nah," Clint hides behind a pillar. "This is me luring you out of your comfort zone. You want back into it, you'll have to get me down first."

"You're on," Steve tests the strength of the bar under him, and starts to run. He's adaptable too, Clint sees, but he's still not as fast as he was below. They fight in short bursts, hard and brutal. Clint will surprise Steve by swinging in from nowhere and taking out his feet or launching himself at Steve from behind, Steve will recover and fight back as hard as he can before Clint disappears again. "How come you're so good at this?" he asks, and Clint's glad to note that he's a little out of breath now.

"Rafters and rooftops, man," Clint swings up at Steve from below and almost kicks him back down into the gym. "Best place to spy from." He wheezes as one of Steve's punches connects, and he drops down and swings away to a safe distance. Getting hit by Steve is like getting hit by a sack of bricks. "Circus training probably didn't hurt either."

"You were in the circus?" Steve looks around, and Clint sees the edge of his delighted grin.

"Uh huh."

"You need to tell me about that some time."

"Sure thing."

Clint falls silent and skulks around behind Steve, spiralling closer and closer. He curses mentally when Steve decides to stop playing along and drops back onto the floor of the gym, sitting down comfortably and closing his eyes. Listening for him, Clint understands immediately. Well that's fine. He knows how to be silent. He creeps around up in the rafters for a few minutes, keeping a close eye on Steve to judge how much he can hear. Steve hears him only when Clint wants him to know where he is, even with his enhanced hearing. Clint smiles and inches closer until he's right over Steve's head. Suspending himself between two beams, he dangles his legs down into the open space and holds for a moment. When he's sure Steve's oblivious, he swings himself forward and tackles the captain legs-first. Steve yells in surprise, but reacts automatically, rolling Clint over and off him and bodyslamming him before he can get away again.

"Got you!" he grins. Clint stills, and Steve relaxes his grip slightly. Amateur mistake, he thinks, and smacks his head backwards into Steve's, who lets go of him with a howl. His nose is bleeding, but Clint only notes that distantly as he sweeps Steve's legs out from under him and jabs a knuckle into a nerve cluster at the base of Steve's back to keep him down a little longer. Steve shakes it off and punches Clint in the side of the head hard enough to make him see stars. Before he really knows what's happening, gravity shifts, and suddenly he's on his back with Steve lying over him, an arm over his neck and blood dripping down his face. "Ow?" he says, and frowns like that's not what he meant to say. Clint laughs and pulls a face as blood falls from Steve's nose onto his neck.

"Ow," he agrees, sitting up as Steve sits back. "Good recovery."

"Thanks," Steve tilts his head back and tries to stem the steady dripping. "Good silence. You really caught me by surprise there. That a SHIELD thing? You and Natasha are the only ones who can sneak up on me."

"It's part of our training," Clint nods. "Silent movement is kind of extremely necessary in our line of work."

"Spying?"

"And assassination." He raises his eyebrows at Steve's look of surprise. "What, no one told you we kill people?"

Steve shrugs and gets to his feet, a long red line down the front of his shirt. "Not really. I knew you had, but who here hasn't, you know? I didn't know it was actually your job."

"More espionage and intelligence gathering at the higher levels, I'll grant you," Clint says conversationally, leading the way to the showers so that he can get a proper look at Steve's nose (what would Coulson have said if he'd broken Captain America's nose?). "But sometimes people need to be taken out of the equation."

They leave the gym at twenty to five and find Bruce in the kitchen, cleaning up their plates from earlier. Clint smiles when Steve apologises and tries to take over, and Bruce firmly pushes him away and then sits him down on the couch to take a proper look at his nose. They end up watching an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer that's on TV. Bruce tells them that he's only seen some of it, but he's watched Firefly, and at some point they all need to watch that because apparently it's the best thing to happen since the discovery of penicillin or something. When Thor gets back, they agree.

They watch more Buffy (Jarvis can get anything they ask for) as the sky lightens, and Natasha wakes up and joins them in the middle of an episode, a bowl of fruit salad in her lap. She leans against Clint, and it's domestic and comfortable, and he snags a grape from her bowl and thinks that it's nothing like anything he's ever had before. The realisation hits him like one of Steve's punches, and he nearly groans out loud in front of everyone. It's as close as he can get to being back at SHIELD where he's always felt most comfortable, but of course he voted for this barely-functioning team instead, even though he's always been more of a solo player. Of course he did, because going back to his job at SHIELD without Coulson would be more painful than he would be able to cope with.

Natasha looks up at him, rolls her eyes (not unsympathetically), and gives him the rest of her fruit.

x

Clint leaves the tower on the eighth of July and doesn't come back until the next morning. No one asks him where he went or what he did, so he knows that Natasha told them not to bug him. He doesn't want to tell them that he walked until he was lost and then walked some more, trying in vain to stop feeling miserable. When he gets back he spends four hours solid shooting on the range. He breaks for a snack, and spends another four hours down there before Tony comes down to watch.

"I'm going to design a new course for you," he decides loudly so that Clint will hear him. Clint wipes sweat off his forehead and frowns, going to retrieve his arrows.

"What d'you mean?"

"I mean you're destroying this one," Tony gestures to the shredded targets, "so it's obviously too easy. It'll be a piece of cake to design something more challenging. Bruce can handle the Bifröst project for a few hours."

"That's all it'll take?"

Tony grins. "Sure. I'm a genius, remember? Might take a look at some new arrows too. You ever considered acid?"

"I asked R&D about it once," Clint comes back and starts shooting again. His arms and shoulders are killing him, but they don't shake. "They said it'd be too unstable."

Tony snorts. "SHIELD. Honestly. We'll fix you up with something cool."

"We?"

"Bruce is probably the go-to guy for acid," Tony explains, "but I've been thinking about electric shocks."

Clint hits every single target and lowers his bow before he smiles tiredly at Tony. "Sure. That sounds good."

"Great," Tony comes over and slaps his shoulder. "Come on. We're eating."

"We?"

"Steve's decided we need communal meals."

Clint goes to get his arrows. "Who cooked?"

"No idea. I'm not allowed in the kitchen."

"Do I want to know why?"

"You really don't. And by the way, I know you've been in the crawlspaces, and you need to stop doing that."

"Prove it."

"That's not the point!" Tony shouts, and Clint grins. "I know you've been in there, and it's creepy, and you need to stop, because if you drop down from the ceiling in front of Bruce and he Hulks out, you'll be paying for the damage."