Disclaimer: I do not own the Avengers or any of the characters affiliated with them. If I did, there would totally be a Hawkeye/Black Widow movie in the works.
Author's Note: While I embrace constructive criticism, remember this old saying if you choose to leave a review "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all"
Thanks to those who reviewed Chapter Seven: NoLongerHidden, Saffygirl, Viviannafox, JRBarton, Qweb, Melissa, BatmanOtaku, CyanB, Sandy-wmd, VioletBrock, awkwardhawk, kimbee, FourHorses, Reteka Hyuuga, R1dDL3M37h15, GremlinX, Kait-Win3, Kiiimberly, bookworm1517, BlackMorningGlory314, tpt player 5701, weemcg33, DBhawkguy30, YukinaKid, Eringo94, Divergirl, JennyBunny65, thababes, Shazrolane, Kylen, ladybug114, penguincrazy, neelie415, patty cake rocks, TheNaggingCube, Anon, JaymieCaitlyn, Lollypops101, Brandi Golightly, horselover28, rose, sbfisher, coastalcajun, isi7140, jaguarspot, Sam Mayer, silvershadowrebel, Sara, hawkeyeforever, truefairytales, Mirabilem Electo, discordchick, and Aurora Abbot
Shout out to those who figured out the song this time around: Divergirl, Anon
To BatmanOtaku: I'll reveal what the next story will be at the end of this one :) And, yes, I have started preliminary work on it :)
To Kait-WIN3 and weemcg33 :I'm glad you picked up on the parallelism between Williams and Fourie. That was definitely on purpose, because that shows you how Fury knew EXACTLY how Clint would react in The Heart Bleeds when he came to tell him about Natasha. Fury counted on that reaction.
To Jaymie Caitlyn: Yes! That WAS a Dean Winchester quote a few chapters back lol. I'm a huge Supernatural fan and couldn't resist throwing that in there :)
Thank you to Kylen for her beta-ing :) She is responsible for Dan's words in this chapter :) as I'm sure you've come to expect lol
This story is dedicated to Kylen
On to Chapter Eight...
Life and death matters, yes. And the question of how to behave in this world, how to go in the face of everything. Time is short and the water is rising.
Raymond Carver
Fury slid his cell phone – a private line that a very select few actually knew the number to – back into his pocket. He crossed his arms over his chest and glared through the two-way mirror separating him from his target.
The mercenary looked unconcerned – about both his confinement and the length of time he'd been left to wait. He sat, literally shackled to a simple metal chair, in the middle of the room. There was no table, no bright light to shine in the man's eyes. No – just open space surrounding him. Space Fury would use.
You could intimidate a lot more effectively if you were right up in a man's personal space than if you had a table separating you. And you could play with someone's mental stability a whole lot better if you could circle them, stand behind them, and let their imagination get the best of them.
Fury blew out a breath.
Barton hadn't killed Williams on sight.
That was good.
It was also more of a relief than it should have been, but Fury couldn't find it in himself to even be irritated with the kid. Not when Barton was the goddamned victim in all of this. Not when the kid had apparently been the victim for seven goddamned years.
It had started with the Andes. Fury should have known then that something was off. Barton may have been the cream of the fucking crop, but he had been nothing but a kid. Williams pushing for the archer to get handed the Orion mission should have been a red flag. The council member had played up Barton's apparent talents, had insisted that the opportunity couldn't be wasted, not when they had such a unique asset available to them.
And then the kid had nearly died.
Fury shook his head.
Williams probably would have been tickled pink if that had happened. But Williams hadn't accounted for Phil, for how attached he'd gotten to the sarcastic little smart ass, for how far he'd been willing to go to keep Barton alive.
None of them had.
And that had been back in the beginning. So much had happened since the Andes. Barton wasn't just an asset to Phil – hadn't been since the day he'd marched the surly, broken teenager into SHIELD and decided to fix him. But after the Andes, something had shifted. Barton was suddenly the most important thing in Phil's world. Barton was his brother, his best friend, his son in every way that mattered. Fury had seen it – had watched it happen, watched it build. He should have stopped it, maybe he would have if Cairo hadn't gone down the way it had.
To say Phil had been devastated didn't even begin to cover it. When Barton's transmission had gone out with the sound of an explosion and the media had reported a body in black combat gear with what seemed to be blonde hair, Fury had been sure Phil was going to turn in his resignation. If Barton hadn't turned out to be very much alive when it all shook out, he probably would have.
A stray thought struck Fury then.
How many missions had gone disastrously sideways on Barton? How many times had the kid been nearly killed? Too many – that's what Phil would say.
How many of those had been because of Mathew Williams?
Fury felt an emotion dangerously close to rage bubble in him. There had been nearly seven years between the Andes and the disaster that was Budapest.
Seven goddamned years.
Mission code names flashed through his mind, and he was left wondering if at the end of this more than one of those disasters would be tied to Williams.
He should have noticed. Somebody should have noticed. It didn't matter how careful Williams had been, how effectively he'd covered his tracks. They were SHIELD – counter intelligence was supposed to be their forte.
Fury shifted his stance slightly, the rage flowing away as quickly as it had come only to be replaced with a feeling of such guilt that he surprised himself.
He should have noticed.
He was the goddamned director of the most elite covert organization in the world. Of everyone, he should have been able to protect Barton, especially within the walls of his own base. But he hadn't – hadn't even realized there was a problem. Had written off the Council's hatred of the archer as Barton's propensity to piss off any authority figure he came across. Had written off the sideways missions as Barton's bad luck, because the kid had that in spades.
Had written off the hatred he saw in Matthew Williams' eyes as a product of what Barton was. For as much as the Council liked to use Barton and now Romanoff to do their dirty work, they made no attempt to hide their disgust for what the two assassins did.
Fury uncrossed his arms and stood up straighter. He couldn't change the past, but he could damn well make sure that this is where it all ended.
He moved to the door separating him from the mercenary, leaving the nearly-empty observation room behind him. Bryan and Hill had both stepped away from their duties to be here for this, both now seemed to be lost in their own thoughts.
Fury closed the door behind him and strode casually towards the mercenary. To his credit, the man maintained his unaffected manner. He merely shifted his eyes to track Fury's progress, and met his eye unflinchingly as Fury circled in front of him. He continued to hold his gaze as Fury moved, finally forced to break it as Fury circled behind him.
Fury stopped, standing directly behind the mercenary, as silent as death. It took a moment, but finally the man swallowed and shifted very slightly in his chair. Fury remained stoically silent, waiting. A full three minutes passed in silence before the man shifted in his chair again and blew out a frustrated breath.
"Just ask your damn questions."
Fury tilted his head and remained silent. The accent was faint, but it was definitely something Eastern European. Fury waited.
"Look, I'm willing to deal. Just tell me what you want."
"I'm not in the habit of making deals with terrorists."
It was exactly what he intended to do, but the merc didn't know that. And Fury did not intend to be the one begging to make nice.
"Terrorists?" The man actually sounded insulted. "I'm not a terrorist."
Fury circled back around to meet the man's eyes.
"You attacked a United States Military installation without provocation."
The man blinked, genuine surprise filtering through his expression before he hid it away.
Fury nodded slightly.
"He didn't tell you."
The merc frowned.
"I'm not talking until there's a deal."
"Then have a nice lifetime in Guantanamo Bay."
Fury turned away and headed for the door.
"Wait." The man sounded resigned.
Fury didn't allow himself an outward reaction, but inside, felt a warm rush of triumph. He turned back slowly and waited.
"I'm a business man," the merc stated with a sigh. "It's bad business to give up information on my clients. If it gets out…"
Fury hardened his glare.
"I don't think you're in a position to worry about your reputation."
The merc clenched his jaw and glared back.
"I want to walk away. I'll tell you everything I know if I have a guarantee that I can walk out of here."
Fury was in the man's face in two strides, his hands wrapped around the arms of the metal chair and his nose inches from the merc's.
"For all I know, you don't know enough to earn a drink of water. So if you want to deal, you better stop negotiating and start talking. Then, and only then, we can talk about what your information buys you."
The merc's jaw clenched tightly and he blew out a sharp breath through his nose, clearly intimidated by Fury's looming presence but unwilling to show it.
"That offer expires in the next breath you take, so you better make your choice."
The merc's eyes widened.
"There were playing cards."
Fury withdrew from the man's personal space and reached into his pocket, pulling the hit cards out and tossing them in the man's lap.
The merc shifted his handcuffed hands and picked the cards up from his lap, shifting them so the ace – Barton – was on top.
"This was the main target. Everybody was showed this guy's picture. Our orders were to do whatever it took to find and eliminate him."
Fury crossed his arms over his chest and waited.
"The other two," the merc shifted through Phil and Romanoff's cards, "they were secondary. The orders were to eliminate them on sight, but they weren't the priority." The man shook his head. "We were told to expect resistance but we had no idea we were tangling with military-trained personnel." The man offered Fury a wry look. "Imagine our surprise when our teams started dropping."
Fury wasn't about to feel sympathetic to their losses. The merc didn't seem to expect him to either.
"Who hired you?"
"I don't know."
Fury turned to the door and reached for the handle.
"I don't know!" The merc insisted. "We never met face to face – only over the phone. The payments were transferred online."
Fury regarded the man seriously but could find no signs of deception.
"Give me the account number."
The merc balked.
"That's my living. No way I'm handing it over."
Fury shrugged as if he were unconcerned.
"Your choice. But so far you haven't told me anything I didn't already know. So your chances of ever seeing that money again are growing slimmer by the moment."
The merc shook his head.
"You won't be able to back trace the payments. I've tried. The money came from a fresh account tied to a random alias that was opened by a cash deposit."
Fury arched an eyebrow.
"It's smart to know who's paying you. It's the best way to ensure that you get paid." The merc shrugged like that was just part of the business.
The lengths the merc's mysterious benefactor had gone to in order to stay anonymous just further pointed to Williams as far as Fury was concerned.
"The phone?" Fury asked.
"You already have it. They took it off me before I was trussed up in here." The merc volunteered. "I doubt you'll be able to tie it to anyone, though. All the calls were made from a burn phone."
Fury kept his expression impassive, but he was marginally impressed. The merc had certainly done his homework. Burn phone or not, his techs should be able to find out who the phone belonged to – eventually. It was something.
"How did you get on the base?"
"We were given gate codes. Once we took out the guards at the gate, it was practically like we were invited."
Fury nodded. They'd expected that already.
"Was this an isolated attack?"
The merc nodded immediately.
"As far as our part went in it, yes. It's over."
Fury wished that were true. Who knew if Williams had contracted anyone else to make trouble? Until they knew for sure, they'd have to keep their defenses bolstered.
Fury titled his head slightly, regarding the merc.
"We'll continue to hold you for now, as I'm sure understand."
The merc nodded in resignation.
"But when it is clear that the threat has passed, we'll address your…situation…and whether or not I'm willing to rectify it."
The merc frowned, opening his mouth to protest.
Fury stepped closer and leaned into the man's personal space again, taking back the playing cards.
"You broke into my base – killed my people – and you think I'm just going to let you walk?"
The pure rage and danger Fury hoped to communicate through his eye must have come across clearly because the mercenary looked momentarily terrified. He covered it quickly and forced himself to speak.
"I gave you what you wanted."
"Yes." Fury didn't let his glare waver. "You did."
Fury turned to the door without another word, leaving the man to protest uselessly – demanding a deal, demanding promises of his release. Fury ignored him and pulled the door open.
Hill was already digging through the mercenary's personal effects when he came back into the observation room.
"Find that phone and get it to the techs. I want to know who this guy's been in contact with."
Hill held the phone up triumphantly and all but ran out of the room. Fury leaned out of the door and looked at the guards stationed outside the interrogation room door.
"Move him to an isolated cell, remove the restraints and give him something to eat and drink."
The guards nodded and Fury moved back into the room to regard its other occupant.
Bryan's arms were crossed and he was staring darkly at the merc through the two-way mirror as the man was approached by the guards.
"If that phone comes up empty, we've got nothing."
Fury moved to stand with Bryan, looking back at the merc as he stood and was shuffled towards the door. The man didn't look nearly as unconcerned as he had last time he'd stood in this position. Fury had clearly put the man on edge.
Good.
"The techs will find something." Fury knew they'd at least find who was making the calls to the merc. Whether that name would be associated with Williams was another matter.
Bryan looked at him, his gaze heavy.
"And if they don't?"
"Then we better pray Barton keeps his cool long enough to get a confession."
Bryan shook his head.
"We better pray Phil survives because if he doesn't, Williams is dead – confession or not."
Clint stood, arms crossed, expression stormy, in the doorway of the bathroom. He waited. Williams was stirring and Clint wanted the first thing the man saw to be him. He wanted Williams to feel the weight of Clint's dangerous and deadly disposition.
He was intensely satisfied when Williams flinched bodily at the sight of him and tried to back away, managing only to hit his head on the sink. It only took a moment for the man to forget his fear and remember his hatred.
The physical change was fascinating. The man went from cowering against the wall beneath the sink to sitting forward, hate making his expression hard. He looked for all the world like he wanted to reach across the space between them and strangle Clint with his bare hands.
Clint wondered if people were as fascinated by him when he flipped the switch from playful sarcasm to deadly assassin.
"Is there a reason I'm not dead?" Williams asked, his tone almost terrifyingly level.
Clint stared down at him and remained silent. Silence could be a powerful weapon in interrogation. It set people on edge – it made them question their own words. It frustrated them and pushed them closer to losing their cool than any words ever could.
Clint was good at silence – had become an expert at it. So he waited.
"You can kill people every day but now you don't have the nerve? Now you hold yourself in check?"
Clint barely blinked as he held Williams' hate-filled gaze with his own stormy eyes.
"He must not be dead yet." Williams tilted his head slightly. "Pity."
Clint felt his teeth grind painfully together as his jaw clenched, but he gave no outward reaction to Williams' words. Neither of them needed the clarification about who he was talking about.
"I'd hoped that you would go down in the attack. You always did have a propensity to run toward gunfire instead of away. I'd been counting on that recklessness."
Clint's jaw ticked.
"But again you refuse to die properly. You always come back." Williams sneered angrily. "Like a cockroach."
Clint couldn't help the amused arch in his eyebrow. It was meant to be insulting, he was sure, but he'd been called worse – by Natasha.
His amusement seemed to feed Williams' anger.
"All these years, I've pulled strings, I've done everything I could to end you – all the while staying safely behind the curtain. Finally, finally, I have the perfect plan. An attack on the base." Williams was practically crowing, he was so proud of himself. "I was certain even you would be overwhelmed by the sheer number of men I hired. And yet…" Williams gestured angrily at him, "I'm again disappointed."
Clint smirked darkly.
Williams shook his head in frustration.
"You never should have walked away from the Orion mission. Coulson should have left you to rot, whether you allowed your own capture or not. It was protocol!"
Clint had always suspected the Orion mission in the Andes Mountains had been an attempt to get rid of him. To hear it confirmed was more satisfying than concerning. The official report was that he'd allowed his own capture to gain access to the base. Coulson had been a little…liberal…with the details there. Either way, Phil should have left him there. But he hadn't, had broken protocol like it was his job and had pulled Clint out of that cell instead.
"I accepted it as a fluke – a rash attempt to get my justice that nearly drew too much attention. I was more careful after that."
Clint arched an eyebrow.
"Justice? Why don't you own up and call this what it is."
Williams looked momentarily startled by his interruption. Clint took advantage and continued.
"Revenge."
The councilman's face went nearly purple in rage.
"It's justice – for the life you stole from my daughter!"
Clint forced himself to appear unaffected when in reality just the mention of Brianna Williams nearly gutted him.
"Attacking a SHIELD base is justice? You gonna try and sell that? I think all the dead SHIELD personnel would disagree."
Williams shrugged.
"Collateral damage is an acceptable sacrifice for the greater good."
Clint forced himself to keep his temper in check, felt his hands clench into fists where they were hidden under his arms. He could leave it there – he had his confession. He hadn't even had to do any real interrogating. Williams had been proud as a peach to claim ownership over what he'd done.
Collateral damage.
That's all the SHIELD personnel were to Williams. But Phil wasn't collateral damage – he'd had his face on a playing card right along with Clint.
"Why'd you target Phil and Natasha?"
Williams blinked, caught off guard by the abrupt question.
"You wanted me dead – I get that. Why Phil and Natasha?"
Williams' lips pulled back into an ugly smile.
"Because for some reason they seem to care about you. I knew they'd never stop digging if you died. I couldn't afford for Coulson to dig any farther than he already had. That email he uncovered…" Williams shook his head, "was unfortunate."
Clint felt his finger nails dig into his palms.
"One mistake in seven years and the man found it. Granted, at the time, I'd been certain Moreno would kill you both."
Budapest. He had nearly died – Natasha had nearly died. The man spoke about it like it was a business deal that had gone unfortunately wrong.
"Romanoff was just a bonus. She's a murdering sociopath, just like you. She needs to be put down. All the sweeter because she means so much to you."
Clint forced himself to turn away – knew that if he didn't, he'd do something rash. He couldn't keep looking at the hot hatred in the man's eyes, couldn't listen to him coolly talk about killing Natasha and Phil.
"You should have been dead that day in Uzbekistan." The hate filled words were spat at his back and Clint stopped.
Uzbekistan. He still had nightmares about those hours he'd been tortured – about dying only to be pulled back from the edge by Phil.
"I knew, the moment we were told that you'd gone against orders for Romanoff, that they'd be making you scarce for a while. Fury – for all his blustering – has gone soft when it comes to you. You should have gotten a bullet in the head for what you pulled, but even I knew Fury would never do that. A few encrypted and untraceable phone calls and I had a team of mercenaries waiting for you."
Clint turned back slowly.
"I had you then and the victory was so sweet."
Clint felt his breathing speed almost imperceptibly. All the questions about that day. Years of wondering why they hadn't just killed him – why they'd tortured him without apparent purpose instead. He never thought he'd know the answers.
"I couldn't resist the need to see you suffer."
A shiver went down Clint's spine and he barely managed not to let it show. He'd never had someone hate him that much – even Barney had been content just to see him dead.
"Fury never told us that Coulson and Bryan went after you until it was already over. If I'd known, I'd have had them put a bullet in your head from the start. Coulson's devotion to you," Williams shook his head in derision, as if the thought was disgusting to him, "I never understood it. Why a man like that would risk so much for someone like you, was always a mystery. I only hope that at least that annoyance will soon be rectified."
Clint didn't remember deciding to move – he was just suddenly holding Williams against the wall. The man's wrists were pulling painfully against the cuffs, his arms bent awkwardly under the sink as Clint forced the man's body higher with a hand around his neck.
He put his mouth next to the suddenly shaking man's ear, his voice coming out in a dark, low hiss that was almost foreign to his own ears. He hadn't heard that tone since he was seventeen.
"The only reason you're still breathing is because of him. Phil would kick my ass if I killed you without the order." He tightened his hand on the man's neck, watching the man's face turn purple. "But if he dies," he dug his fingers into the side of Williams' neck, "you won't survive the ten seconds that follow. Orders or no orders."
Williams made a choking, gurgling sound, but Clint didn't loosen his hand – found himself tightening his grip instead without conscious thought.
Strong hands were suddenly on his arm, tightening to the point of pain and forcing his attention away from Williams bulging eyes.
Natasha.
"…ook at me, Clint!"
He dropped Williams suddenly – like the man's skin was on fire. Williams dropped like a brick to the ground, gasping and grabbing at his bruised throat with his shackled hands.
Clint let Natasha push him back, out of the bathroom and away from Williams. The further he got, the more the rage bled away.
"Look at me!"
His eyes snapped to Natasha's. He expected anger, disappointment that he'd lost control. All he saw was concern. It was then that he realized her hand was still on his forearm, the grip bruising. The pain of her grip, pressing so firmly into the fresh cuts and scrapes on his arms from the glass, brought him crashing back to reality.
"Don't let him do that to you. Don't let him change who you are, you understand me?"
Her voice was low, but there was a barely hidden note of fear. But not fear of him – fear for him.
"You chose to be better. You chose not to be the man that killed his daughter. Don't let him take that from you."
Clint nodded shakily, feeling a subtle trembling start in his hands. He pulled his arm from Natasha's grip, fisting his hands to hide the shaking. Adrenaline highs like that always led to an equally abrupt crash.
"It's over, Clint."
Natasha held up her cell phone. Clint had known she was recording, remembered that had been part of the plan. The council could call Clint a liar all they wanted, but they couldn't argue with Williams himself as he claimed responsibility for the attack.
He'd forgotten about that recording around the time the man had started talking about Phil.
"I edited out the part where you tried to kill him."
"I wasn't gonna kill him." Clint defended suddenly. He frowned. At least he didn't think he was going to. He was trying to scare him, to drive home how close Williams was to that fate.
Natasha looked doubtful. Clint couldn't blame her. He didn't even remember deciding to move on Williams, much less deciding to put his hand around the man's throat. He'd practically blacked out in his rage over the man's flippancy about Phil's survival.
The memory of the man's words nearly brought that rage right back to the surface. Natasha seemed to sense that and steered him further into the room, out of Williams' line of sight.
"I'm going to send this in. Just…just stay over here. Sit down before you fall down."
Clint nodded but didn't sit. He watched her move away, dialing her phone and bringing it to her ear. He barely noticed when his feet started moving, carrying him five paces to his left, pivot, five paces back to the right. Repeat.
The order would come now. It was just a matter of time. Even if the Council had their heads up their asses about this, Fury would force them to see reason. He had to.
Clint clenched his shaking hands as he paced and was suddenly terrified of what he'd do if Fury failed.
Natasha leaned forward, bracing her elbows against her knees as she sat and watched Clint pace. He was practically prowling like a caged animal, waiting for a break in the defenses so he could attack. Right now those defenses were the invisible line between killing on orders and murder. It was a thin line and getting thinner the longer they waited for the okay to end this.
She'd gotten off the phone with Agent Hill less than twenty minutes ago. She'd tried, unsuccessfully, to get Clint to sit down, to just take a breath. He'd refused with more fervor than she'd expected. He wouldn't even let her check him over.
That fall through the skylights had to have hurt. He had cuts and scrapes on his forearms from where he'd pushed himself up – some of them deep enough that they were still sluggishly bleeding. He was holding himself stiffly, his back nearly ramrod straight and his shoulders bunched with so much tension that she had to fight the urge to force him into a chair to massage it out. There were rips in his t-shirt, most of them practically glued to his body now with small dried patches of blood.
Glass tended to cause a lot of little wounds, especially when you used your body to break it.
He pivoted and started his five paces back to the left.
She sighed.
She'd managed to keep him from killing Williams, but that was about the extent of her ability to get through to him. His worry for Phil practically radiated from him and she didn't know what else to say. Maybe there was nothing to say.
Either Phil lived or he didn't. Natasha was ready to stay by Clint's side no matter which way this ended. She wouldn't leave him alone, even if that meant letting him kill Williams without the order.
Letting him.
She almost scoffed.
If Phil died, she knew she wouldn't be able to stop him even she wanted to. She'd barely been able to break through his haze of black rage when Williams had merely mentioned his hope for Phil's death.
She'd seen Clint pushed to his breaking point before – or she thought she had. She'd been the one trapped with him a month ago in Budapest. She'd watched him spiral further and further away from reality and into his hallucinations.
She'd thought watching him brokenly beg his hallucinated brother not to kill him had been the lowest she'd ever see him. That had been worse than holding him for the first time after the tragedy in Vietnam while he silently mourned the deaths of all of those children.
But this was worse. The fear, the pain, it was palpable, surrounding him like a cloud. And Phil was still alive, as far as they knew, at least. If he died…
She shook her head. If Phil died, she'd let Clint do what he needed to do and they'd leave. Simple as that. Even if the kill order came through, she knew that without Phil they wouldn't be going back to SHIELD.
The sudden ringing of a phone startled them both. Clint finally paused his endless pacing and fished the phone out of his pocket, frowning at the name on the caller ID, and then answering it.
"Wilson?"
There was so much fear, hope, and sheer exhaustion mixed up in the simple greeting that Natasha practically leapt out of her chair and to Clint's side.
Clint clenched his hand around his phone so tightly his fingers hurt.
"Barton…" Wilson sounded exhausted, and beyond weary. Almost…
Defeated?
"How's Phil?" Clint barely noticed he'd stopped breathing as he asked – didn't hear the bone-deep exhaustion in his own tone – the shake in it. The fear that made his free hand clench into a bloodless fist at his side and his voice tremble.
"Shit, kid. Maybe you should sit down."
No.
Clint barely felt the phone slide from his hand, didn't hear it clatter to the floor over the sudden ringing in his ears.
Phil was dead.
Sudden pain in his knees was the only indication he had that his legs had stopped supporting him, had left him to crash down until his knee caps hit the floor hard.
Williams had killed him.
The rage came back so suddenly it overwhelmed him – overwhelmed any physical pain he was feeling. He practically exploded to his feet, shaking off the foreign hand on his shoulder and making it to the bathroom door in four long strides.
He barely registered the shock on Williams' face when he suddenly appeared in the doorway. The man spoke almost immediately, a smug smile on his face – victory in his eyes.
"He's dead, isn't he?"
Most people saw red when rage overtook them.
Clint saw black. He thought it was fitting – it matched his soul.
He was on Williams in the next breath, bare fists slamming into the smug face. He jerked the man up by his shirt, ignoring – barely hearing – the shout of pain as one of Williams' wrists broke under the sudden pressure of the handcuffs.
He slammed him hard back into the wall, the plaster behind him cracking. As the body started to fall, Clint didn't let it. He slammed a sharp left uppercut into Williams' jaw and followed it with a sharp flurry of hits to the man's soft belly. A knee to the chest as the man fell set his back cracking sharply into the wall again and Clint swung his right elbow sharply into his jaw.
He felt his hard uppercut into Williams' ribs break bone – maybe both in his hand and in the man's body. Williams screamed.
Clint didn't. He couldn't feel anything.
Hands suddenly clawed into his shoulders pulling him sharply back and allowing Williams to fall into a bloody heap on the ground.
Williams laughed.
Clint shook the hands off and tried to advance again, but the hands were suddenly on his chest, pushing hard against him.
Clint saw red.
His vision filled with it suddenly and then a familiar voice penetrated the ringing in his ears.
"…ot dead, damn it! Clint! Listen to me!" Her hands slammed hard against his chest, driving the air out of his lungs and sending him back a step. "HE'S NOT DEAD!"
He's not dead.
"Phil's not dead!"
Clint could only stare at her in disbelief. It wasn't true. Wilson had said…
Except Wilson hadn't said anything yet. Clint had heard it in the man's voice, had heard the weariness, the defeat. He'd told Clint to sit down. Nobody said that unless it was bad news.
"Damn it, Clint! Breathe!"
A sharp shake had him drawing in a painful breath and it was only then that he realized his lungs were burning, his head pounding. The spots he hadn't noticed invade his vision faded away.
Natasha's face swam into focus. She had a hand on either side of his face where she knelt in front of him. Clint didn't remember going to the ground, but that's where he was, his legs folded awkwardly beneath him with his butt on the floor.
"Phil's not dead, Clint." Natasha assured again, some of the terror in her eyes fading away when Clint blinked.
"Phil's not dead." Clint repeated the words quietly – trying, forcing himself to process them.
Phil's not dead.
"You sounded like death warmed over. Wilson wanted you to sit down because you sounded like you were about to fall down."
"Phil's not dead."
She blew out a breath, seeming to be attempting to get her own emotions under control.
"No. Phil's not dead."
Clint drew in another breath, letting that thought resonate through every part of his being.
Phil's not dead.
Another voice – this quieter and more distant seeped into his brain. He watched Natasha lift a phone – his phone – to her ear.
"Yeah, I stopped him." She paused, her sharp green eyes searching Clint's gaze with heavy intensity. "Yeah, I told him and he seems to believe me." She paused again and sighed. "Let me get him into a chair."
She stood and held out her hand.
Clint stared at it for a long moment as her words caught up with him. He reached to take her hand with his left, suddenly horrified when he saw his hand shaking violently.
Natasha's grip caught his almost abruptly, tightening to the point of pain. It was warm and comforting and he squeezed back.
Before he knew what was happening she was pulling him up.
The wave of dizziness that hit him when he was vertical was so strong it almost sent him right back down. Natasha was ready though and gripped his arm tightly, keeping her hand wrapped in his as she steered him to a chair.
He all but dropped into it, pain spiking through his back at the jarring landing.
Damn skylight.
She held the phone out to him suddenly.
Clint reached for it and brought it to his ear.
"Wilson…what the hell?!"
"I've got about three pages of notes, Barton, and you sounded beat to shit and back!" Wilson sounded dangerously close to losing it himself – and as close to wits' end as Clint had ever heard him. "Though if I'm interrupting you, feel free to go back in and kill the bastard. You certainly have my permission."
Clint ignored the angry response. It didn't matter right now. Williams didn't matter right now– only one thing mattered.
"Wilson!" He snapped. "PHIL!" he reminded sharply.
Phil wasn't dead. Phil wasn't dead. He repeated it to himself in a mantra, waiting for Wilson to assure him it was true.
He could practically hear Wilson's responding eye roll. The man had never been cowed by Clint's bouts of temper. It was one of the first steps to the doctor earning his respect.
"What part of THREE PAGES OF NOTES did you not get?" This time it was Wilson's tone that snapped. His patience was apparently worn as thin as Clint's was. "He's alive, okay? He probably shouldn't be, but he is, okay? So take a goddamned breath, calm the hell down and let me give you the damn report!"
Clint blinked at the sharp tone, remembering all at once that he wasn't the only one trapped in this nightmare. He cleared his throat and forced his free hand to unclench, retracting the fire from his tone at the same time.
Without the fire though, all he felt was shaken.
"Just…is he…" he blew out a shaky breath and internally ordered himself to pull it the hell together. "How is he?" He finally managed with a sigh.
He heard Wilson blow out a breath on the other end of the line.
"He's in the ICU, and it's going to be another 12 hours before we know anything for sure, but I think he's going to make it." Dan's voice still sounded world-weary, but Clint could hear the pride as well. "The head wound was just a nasty crease. It skidded along the outside of the skull, and Phil's gonna have one hell of a headache, but we're watching to make sure there's no pressure building inside of the skull. So far, so good."
Clint nodded – more for his own sake than Wilson's. The man couldn't see him after all. He licked his suddenly dry lips and cleared his throat again. He knew there was more, but he wasn't sure he was ready to hear it. He had a sudden vision of his hands – covered in Phil's blood.
He wiped his free palm against his pant leg.
"What else?"
"That leg wound was a real bitch." Dan sighed again. "The sheer loss of blood volume would have been a problem in and of itself, but the bullet shredded an offshoot of the great saphenous vein. Another two inches, we wouldn't be having this conversation. The bullet would have hit the femoral artery, and he would've bled out before you ever got to the jet."
Clint felt a sharp shudder shoot down his spine, igniting a sharp pain that he pushed away. It had been too close. Too damn close. He braced his right elbow on his knee and dropped his head into his hand, he barely felt a pain shoot through his middle finger before ignoring it.
"We got in there and repaired the damage, and it looks like the work is gonna hold. His blood pressure almost bottomed out a couple of times, but we managed." Now the pride in Dan's voice was unmistakable. "Did a damned nice job on that, and another surgeon handled the chest wound. Miracle of miracles, that was almost a total through-and-through. Didn't bust a damned thing."
Clint fisted his right hand in his hair, another pain in his finger clamoring for attention that he didn't give. Apparently where his luck with bullets was shit, Phil's was heaven sent. A leg wound that missed the femoral artery, a head wound that hadn't caused pressure build up, and a chest wound that hadn't busted a damned thing.
Clint would take that yin to his yang any day.
"Barton?" Wilson's voice drew him back, "you still there?"
"Two inches, Wilson? With the way Phil's luck shook out on this it might as well have been a mile, huh?"
God, Phil had gotten so damn lucky. Clint had been on the other side of that – where it had been so bad, the luck wasn't that the injuries were less severe than they could have been…it was that he even still alive at all.
"For all the luck you've had, some of it must've transferred over." There was a tightness in Wilson's voice now. "You hear me, kid? I'm not sure how, but you guys beat the fucking odds here."
Clint sighed and scrubbed his hand tiredly down his face.
"Luck, Wilson? Have you looked at my file lately? I've practically got 'shoot me' written on my forehead. " He rubbed his hand back up into his hair. "If anything that's what I transferred to Phil."
"Barton…he's alive. You take that as a win. You hear me?"
"Is that what you always tell Phil? To take it as a win…does that work?"
'Cuz it sure as hell didn't feel like enough to him.
This time, there was no mistaking the tightness in Wilson's voice.
"Always has up until now, kid."
Clint's eyebrows drew together as he frowned down at the ground.
"You tell me he's gonna be okay…I'll believe you." Clint swallowed thickly. "So just tell me that, okay?"
Even if it's a lie.
Because it was only a matter of time before Fury called and gave him the green light to kill Williams. And when that time came it couldn't be about Phil – it couldn't be about revenge. Clint couldn't let himself go there. If he did, he'd carry it for the rest of his life.
It had to be about justice.
Because like he'd told Williams, there was a difference. And Clint had enough black marks on his soul. He didn't need another one.
"That's what I'm telling you, kid." Dan's voice grew firmer. "I don't lie about this shit. It might take some time, but he'll be okay."
Clint nodded mostly to himself.
"When will he wake up?"
Dan chuckled.
"Now that's a question I don't know. Why don't you take care of business, and then you can sit there and find out for yourself?"
Clint smirked slightly.
"You sure you want me camping out in the infirmary? You might be asking for trouble with that."
"Just finish what you went there to do, Barton, and get your ass home in one piece. I don't need or want any more fucking surprises today."
Clint huffed a slight laugh.
"Fair enough." He sobered and tiredly straightened in the chair. "You'll call me if he comes around?"
"I will, but I'm betting you'll be back before then."
Clint tilted his head slightly. Maybe. Phil was a stubborn bastard though…he might surprise them.
"Yeah, then Phil can see how creepy it is to come to with someone watching you."
Creepy? Try outrageously comforting – but a man had to keep up appearances.
"Right." Wilson seemed to see right through that particular piece of bullshit. "Now…are you all right? Give me a list."
Clint barely stopped himself form doing a mental inventory. It wouldn't do him any good to acknowledge the aches and pains that were pushed to the back of his mind right now.
"I'm good."
Wilson snorted.
"You keep on believing that for however long you need to, Barton."
Clint intended to. Ignorance was bliss – or so someone had said once.
"You should go get some rest, Wilson. You should like shit."
"To quote a certain smartass we all know and love, Barton – I'm good. At least, I will be after checking in on Phil and getting my 15 minutes."
"What, you waiting for a written invitation? Go." Clint smirked. Biting sarcasm – it was his and Wilson's form of healthy communication. Clint hoped the doctor was up to hitting him back – giving him the normalcy he desperately needed right now.
"Not from you, Barton. I'll deliver autographed pictures when you get home, though."
Then the phone line clicked and Wilson was gone.
Clint couldn't help it. He smiled.
"All you have is conjecture and circumstantial evidence. Surely you know that this is not enough to merit issuing a kill order – especially not on a member of the Council."
Fury clenched his hands together where they were folded behind his back. How long had he been arguing with them? Twenty – thirty minutes now. It felt like years.
The bastards.
They were right, though. They didn't have enough to issue the kill order. No matter what Fury knew, this was about what he could prove.
"Are you presuming that a member of the Council is above the law? Is above wanting revenge?"
The Council member – a man who had stepped up as the quasi-leader in the absence of Williams – slammed his hand down on his desk.
"Do not put words in my mouth."
"It sounded to me like you were saying a Council member is above reproach – like it would take more than the normally required evidence to assure a Council member's guilt."
If all else failed, stall. Talk them in circles until he had what he needed. Barton didn't corner the market on that tactic.
"That's not what he was saying." A female council member spoke up sharply.
"Then enlighten me!" Fury snapped back.
He was pissing them off – he could see it in their faces. It felt good.
The door to the council chambers slammed open suddenly and Hill rushed in.
"Sir! Council members…" she held up a thumb drive, "you all need to hear this."
She moved to a computer consol and slid the thumb drive into place, bringing the audio file up on the screen.
"It took some time to confirm the voices." She glanced at Fury. "I wanted to be absolutely sure before I brought it in as evidence."
Hill was nothing if not thorough.
Quite suddenly Williams' voice filled the room – proudly claiming the attack on the base as a product of his own genius.
Fury felt a vindicated smile tug at his lips but he stamped it down. He nodded at Hill, who nodded back. Hill was also realistic. She'd known that that voice needed to be confirmed – the Council could have dismissed it otherwise. She may have even dismissed it herself. It had taken precious time, he knew, but it had paid off.
No matter what Hill believed personally, she was dogged in her pursuit of the truth. It was one of the reasons he had promoted her through the ranks so quickly. He wanted people like her in a position to play the devil's advocate – to speak the truth no matter what he wanted to hear.
He turned back to the Council, watching varying expression of shock and horror filter across their faces.
Finally, the recording ended, but not before they all heard Williams coldly wish Phil Coulson died today. He didn't want to know what Barton had done in response to that – and was glad the recording abruptly ended.
Fury lifted his chin.
"You were saying about Council members?"
They all just stared at him, still stuck in their shock.
"Your orders?" Fury asked, barely able to keep the ice out of his tone. If they didn't say what he wanted them to in the next few seconds, then to hell with them. He'd take the heat it brought – protect Barton best he could.
Williams was going to die today. He only wished he was there to pull the trigger himself.
The Council seemed to pull themselves together quite suddenly, with several clearing throats and thick swallows.
"Do it. Issue the order."
Fury met the man's eyes.
"And what order would that be?"
Maybe he was channeling Barton, but he wanted the bastard to say it.
"Issue the kill order on Matthew Williams."
End of Chapter Eight
Go Fury! And go Hill! See, she's not that bad...I figure Fury has her in that position BECAUSE she's not afraid to say what she really thinks. Every great leader needs someone like that by their side.
And all of you that were like "Williams be crazy!" yeah...he's lost in his hate and grief. He let it over take him to the point that nothing else mattered anymore.
Now...I know it's cruel and unusual to make you wait until tomorrow for then next chapter, but that's just the way it is. You don't want the story over too quickly do you? As it is, there are 12 chapters to this story and, as usual, the final chapter is SUPER long :D So you still have quite a bit to look forward to!
Now, if you value my sanity...please review. I'm a hopeless addict...HOPELESS I tell you! ;D
And the preview:
"What family? Coulson? Romanoff? That doctor and trainer that you are so fond of? You think they actually care about you? That you're anything to them but a tool?"
Clint firmly ordered himself not to let his own insecurities rear their ugly head.
"They treated you like any other abused animal – show it some human kindness and it'll do whatever you want."