29 – Interrogation – June 23th, 2012

Aspen was sad to leave the City of Lights behind as the jet took off. She watched the Eifel Tower disappear and turned to Steve who sat beside her. SHIELD had sent a private jet to take them back to New York and they had orders to come in the following day. Aspen was eager to talk to Clint and see what was happening. She knew Fury would be angry over Clint's impromptu mission, especially since she'd been wounded, and she knew both parties could be stubborn. She'd texted Clint asking what was happening in New York, but he'd only replied that she should relax and not worry about it.

It was a long flight, and Aspen was both antsy and tired by the end of it. When the SHIELD car dropped them off at Steve's apartment, they both made their way wearily up. Aspen dropped onto the couch, groaning at her cramped legs.

"I'll order pizza," Steve said, pulling out his phone.

"Order two. I feel like I could eat a whole one."

"You got it." While he ordered the pizza, Aspen contemplated whether or not she wanted to simply fall asleep on the couch after eating the pizza or drag herself into the bedroom. Right now the couch was feeling very comfortable. She hadn't realized she'd dozed off until there was a knock on the door. Steve accepted the pizza, and the smell of it gave Aspen her second wind.

"Do you think Fury will be mad at us?" she asked Steve as they sat down at the table to eat.

"Why would he be mad at us?" Steve asked.

"We went along with this mission."

"We didn't know Clint hadn't cleared it. Not right away."

"But we probably should have reported it."

"Don't worry about it," Steve said. "None of this is your fault. You did well on the mission. I can vouch for you."

"Thanks. Somehow the bullet in my side made me think I'd failed miserably."

"That wasn't your fault." Steve's tone deepened, and she knew he was feeling angry toward Barney for shooting her.

"It wasn't his fault either. Barney. He didn't know what he was doing."

"Yeah, he did. He doesn't remember that he's Clint's brother. Clint put us both in a lot of danger because of that."

"He just wants his brother back."

"It didn't mean he had to put you in that kind of danger." Steve refused to meet her eyes, and Aspen saw some underlying anger she hadn't seen before.

"You're pissed at Clint, aren't you?" she asked. He glanced up at her and the look in his eyes and the furrow in his brow told her she was right. "Steve-"

"He almost got you killed."

"But I'm fine. A little sore, but fine. Clint would never put me in harm's way. Not on purpose."

"I know he didn't do it on purpose, but he still did it. It was an ill-conceived mission that hadn't been planned. It didn't even work. Barney got away, and you got a bullet in your side."

"In my side. He wasn't aiming to kill. He needed a distraction so he could get away. He knew both you and Clint would stay and help me."

"Is that supposed to be a comfort?"

"Yeah, it is. It means Barney isn't just a cold-blooded killer."

"I never said he was."

"Look, I'm still a little mad at Clint too, but I'm not going to hold it against him." Steve said nothing, looking down at his plate. He'd hardly touched the pizza. "What happened after I passed out?" Aspen asked. "Something happened, didn't it?"

"After you passed out, I carried you into the village. It looked like you were going to bleed out. We found a doctor's office-"

"That's not what I meant, Steve. What happened between you and Clint?"

He frowned. "I confronted him when we were waiting to see if you were going to make it," he said. "I told him you were possibly dying because of him. He blamed himself too."

Aspen wasn't sure how to mend this. "He's going to blame himself for a long time. I know him. He doesn't let things go very easily. He might hide it well, but he's still messed up over New York. We all make mistakes. At least he was trying to save his brother. This wasn't just some foolhardy mission trying to recover artifacts."

Steve was silent, then he looked up at her, and she could see that some of the anger had faded. "I just need some time," he said. "Right now I'm still angry with him, but I know how much he cares about you. I know he'd never put you in danger on purpose."

"I'll talk to him tomorrow and see how he's doing," Aspen said. "I'm sure he's beating himself up over it." Steve gave a nod. He didn't look so angry, but she had a feeling it would be awhile before he and Clint were on good terms again.

…

"Take a seat." Nick Fury sat down in his leather chair and waited for Aspen and Steve to sit as well. Clint was nowhere to be seen. "Glad to see you on your own two feet, Tolvar," Fury said.

"Thank you, sir."

"Either of you want to tell me how this mission went?"

Aspen and Steve exchanged a glance. "Well," Aspen started. "It's hard to say. We – Steve – killed Zemo and we reclaimed all the artifacts from his castle. Barney Barton got away but not before he shot me. I'd say it's fifty/fifty. I don't think I'll be getting a promotion over it." She saw a twitch in the corner of his lip and realized he was trying not to smile. "Where's Clint?"

"He's fine. Shooting some arrows downstairs after his cleanup mission."

"Sir?"

"I told him he needed to fix what he'd messed up."

"You sent him after Barney?"

"Barney found him. We've got him in custody now."

"You do? Have you talked to him? Has Clint talked to him?"

"Right now Agent Barton is keeping his distance until I decide he's ready to interrogate his brother. Until then Barney Barton is being treated just like any other enemy of SHIELD."

"Clint's the best chance we have at getting Barney back."

"I know that, but he nearly compromised himself and put you and Rogers in a lot of danger. If you hadn't been there, Cap, I hate to think what Zemo would have done to Agent Tolvar and Barton."

"But he was there, and he dealt with Zemo quickly," Aspen insisted. "If you won't let Clint speak with him, then let me."

Fury sighed. "What makes you think you can get more out of him?" he asked.

"I'm nonthreatening. I might be able to get him to talk. Send your burly agents down there, and he's going to clam up."

Fury seemed to be considering it. "You have my permission to try."

"Thank you, sir."

"Barton believes there's a higher order out there," Fury said after a moment.

"Higher than Zemo?" Steve asked, leaning forward in his chair.

"So if Zemo was pulling Barney Barton's strings, who was pulling Zemo's?" Aspen asked.

"That's what you need to find out," Fury told her. "That will be your mission for now. After that you and Rogers will be training with one of the trainers from the Academy."

"Sir, Clint wasn't-"

"This isn't punishment, he's needed elsewhere," Fury cut in. "You and Rogers will not be joining the other agents in the Academy, but you will continue your training. We'll see about assigning you duo missions and raising your SHIELD level. After you recover, of course."

"Yes, sir."

"Report back your findings," he said, turning back to his work. Aspen nodded, and she and Steve got up to leave the office.

"Do you want me to come down with you?" Steve asked in the hallway.

Aspen shook her head. "I'm going to speak to Clint first, but I think Barney might react better if it was just me. I know you, but he doesn't. He might find you a little…intimidating." He folded his arms self-consciously over his chest.

"Right. Be careful."

"I will."

"I'm going to go down to the gym for a little while. Meet you back home?"

"Sounds good." She kissed his cheek and headed down to where Clint would be shooting. Clint's shooting range wasn't with the others in the training gym. It was more private so that he could concentrate. Aspen was the only one who ever came down to see him there.

When she entered the training room, she found Clint shooting off arrow after arrow. The process was so smooth and so quick, that Aspen could hardly follow the arrows as they left the quiver, were notched to the bowstring, and flew through the air. The center of the human-shaped target was bristling with arrows.

"Are you still beating yourself up for what happened to me?" Aspen asked Clint when he had shot his last arrow.

He turned to look at her, blue eyes pained. "I nearly got you killed," he said.

"It's part of the job. It could have happened on any mission."

"I never told you this before," Clint said, setting down his bow. "I don't kill if I can help it. Not since, well, shortly after I started working for SHIELD. Call it a lifestyle choice. With the Chitauri…somehow that was different, but when I woke up from Loki's control…after I realized how many lives I had taken…"

"But that wasn't you, Clint. That was Loki."

"But I still released the arrows. It's taken me a long time to come to terms with that."

"I didn't realize. I mean I knew it was difficult, of course it was, but if you'd made the choice not to kill…"

"I told you when you decided to become a full agent that you'd have to do things that made you uncomfortable. Kill even." Aspen nodded. "I told you that not because I want you to kill but because I didn't want to give you any illusions. I didn't want you to think that you'd never be put in a situation where you had to either pull the trigger or die. Just because I don't like to kill doesn't mean I'm not sometimes put in a situation where I have no choice. It's a part of being SHIELD. But not a part of you or me. We're not killers but sometimes we don't have control over that."

"You didn't have control."

"No, I didn't. And that's what's scary. When you don't have a choice. I don't want to ever see you have to pull that trigger, Aspen, but I also don't want to see you get shot again."

"It wasn't so bad."

"Don't you see though? Sometimes it's not just a matter of do I shoot or don't I, it's do I let someone I care about be shot or stop it from happening? I hesitated."

"He's your brother, Clint. You weren't going to shoot him."

"I have before. I should have treated him just like I would have anyone else. But I didn't, and you got shot."

"Have you spoken with him yet?" Aspen asked. "I mean, I know Fury doesn't want you to interrogate him, but when you caught him. Did he recognize you at all?"

Clint shook his head. "He didn't recognize me at all. It was…painful. He looked straight at me like I was his worst enemy."

"I'm sorry," Aspen said softly. "Fury gave me permission to talk to him."

Clint looked at her sharply. "You don't have to do that, Pen."

"I want to help."

Clint let out a breath, and his shoulders sagged. He looked exhausted, and Aspen wondered when he'd last slept. She went over and pulled him into a hug. He didn't fight it, but put his arms around her and held her close.

"Let me do this for you." She said into his shoulder. "You need to go home and get some sleep."

"My apartment kind of got…wrecked. When I was apprehending my brother," Clint said as Aspen pulled away.

"What on earth was he doing there?"

"Coming to get the moonstones."

"And what were they doing there?" Aspen asked. "They belong in SHIELD custody."

"I may have borrowed them to lure my brother to me. I returned them."

"How did you know he'd come for them? Zemo's dead."

"This proves that he's working for someone even higher up than Zemo," Clint told her, his brow furrowing in thought.

"Or he just wanted them for himself. He is a super-thief after all."

"He's programed to take orders though. And who healed him and rebooted his mind anyway? There are too many missing pieces."

"Okay, so there's someone higher on the chain of command than Zemo. We need to find out who then. You do understand that SHIELD will extract that information from Barney using any means necessary. If there's someone out there worse than Zemo then we have something to fear."

"I know that." Clint ran a hand through his short hair, ruffling the spiked ends. "Hell I thought about keeping him myself to see what I could get out of him…if I could make him remember me, but I figured that wasn't the best idea."

"Yeah, take it from me," Aspen said. "That never works out so well."

"If you can get through to him…"

"I'll try. I can prep him, but you're going to have to be the one to really get through to him. You know that, right? Fury knows that even if he won't let you near Barney just yet."

"I know."

Aspen put a hand on his arm for a moment. "We'll get him back. Why don't you crash at my place until your apartment gets repaired? I'm staying with Steve anyway."

"Okay thanks."

"Of course." She moved to leave.

"Pen," Clint called out. She turned back. "Good luck."

…

Clint's brother was being held in the prison block, and Aspen took the elevator down, using her SHIELD access card to get in. Her photo appeared on the screen along with her name and Level 4. Two guards greeted her as she passed through the doors. She nodded at them before continuing down to Barney's cell. He was sitting stock still on his cot dressed in the regulation black shirt and pants SHIELD had given him. His grey eyes rose to meet hers as she entered his cell, using her scan card again to gain access. They were so like Clint's and yet so cold and unfriendly. Aspen took a seat in the chair across from his cot, crossing her arms and meeting his gaze.

"I'm a friend of your brother," she said, gaging his reaction. He blinked but gave away no emotion. "What's your name?" He watched her but didn't answer. "I understand that you don't want to give anything away. You have your instructions, you have your boss, you have no reason to share any of this with me. Actually you have a very good reason not to since I work for SHIELD. But right now I'm not interested in any of that. I'm not interested in who you work for or what you were doing in Austria." She thought she saw a flicker of response in his eyes, but it vanished a moment later. "What I care about is the fact that you are Barney Barton, older brother to my friend Clint. You were separated when you joined the Army and lost contact. You worked for the FBI and were working a job as a bodyguard for a man named Marko. During the job you were shot by an archer. There was a man named Trickshot who trained you and your brother to shoot. Eventually you took over his role. He was the one heading the robbery. Do you remember any of this? You nearly died. We aren't sure what happened after that. Clint went back for you, but you were gone. He thought you were dead all these years."

Barney's gaze was cold as ever. "You're wasting your time," he said, speaking for the first time. "I'm not that man."

"But you were. It's likely that whoever healed you erased your memories. Well, repressed them. They'll all still be there somewhere, but it's going to take some effort to reclaim them." He didn't respond. "I'm not trying to trick you," Aspen said. "Do you really believe it's impossible that you're Barney Barton?"

"He said you would try to convince me I was someone else."

"Who? Zemo?" He didn't reply. "He's dead."

Barney blinked slowly, and Aspen couldn't tell if he had known this or not. "You're a little young to be an agent, aren't you?" he asked.

Aspen glared at him for a moment and then realized how similar he sounded to Clint with the serious snark. "Well, you know, they start us young so if we get shot on the job, they have plenty more to choose from." The corner of his lip lifted, and she thought she saw a spark of amusement in his eyes. "Well, we're getting somewhere," she said with a sigh.

"We're getting somewhere? That's news to me."

"I got you to talk, didn't I?"

He cocked his head to the side. "Fair point."

"What more can I learn about you? You never told me your name. Surely you don't just go by Trickshot."

"Why would that be a problem?" There was something behind his tone though, an uncertainty that Aspen hadn't picked up on before.

"You don't remember, do you? All they ever called you was Trickshot. You have no memory of a name." Barney didn't confirm nor deny this but stayed silent. "Isn't it a little odd? I mean, don't most people remember what their name is? I bet there are other memories you don't have. A childhood? Parents? A place of birth? I bet you can't even remember your childhood pet's name." His stare was turning into a glare, and Aspen knew she was right. She leaned forward a little, resting her elbows on her knees. "Look, I'm trying to help you believe it or not. Clint really wants his brother back, and I want to help him. Can you at least try?"

Instead of replying, Barney lay down on his cot, turning his eyes up to the ceiling and effectively ignoring her. Aspen knew she'd struck a cord with him, but she could also see she wasn't going to get any further with him right then. "Alright. I'll be back later. Try to remember. This will go a lot easier for you if you do."

She stood and left the cell. The door locked behind her, echoing loudly in the prison block. She had started to walk away when another voice called her back.

"What, Miss America doesn't have time for me?" Aspen shut her eyes, the Austrian accent taking her back to the castle. She turned around to see Wagner standing at the front of his cell two down from Barney's. She'd been told that though his sarcasm knew no bounds, he had not revealed anything important during the initial interrogations. She didn't have permission from Fury to speak to Wagner, but she didn't see the harm in it. Maybe she could get something out of him that the other agents couldn't. She walked over to his cell, standing in front of the glass. Wagner looked disheveled in his prisoner clothes, his once neat hair ruffled and clean-shaven face fuzzy.

"Don't call me that," she said.

"That's right it's Lady America. Captain America's pretty sidekick."

"I'm not a sidekick, and I don't appreciate you insinuating that I'm only around because I'm pretty," she said. "I'm pretty handy with a gun in my hand."

"You think I'm afraid of you? Any of you? You are all merely roadblocks on an interstate. Easily bowled down."

"By whom? You?" She lifted an eyebrow.

"You think Zemo was the worst there was?"

"So there is someone else. Who was he working for?"

Wagner chuckled. "You'll find out soon enough. He's eager to meet you." His eyes flitted to the cuff on Aspen's wrist. "You're just the kind of specimen he likes to study."

Aspen clenched her fist. "I am not a specimen," she said. "You know about my parents' work I take it."

"Who doesn't? They were careless. So young. I hear your father is dead. Probably better. He wouldn't want to see what is coming."

"And what is coming?" Aspen prompted.

Wagner grinned rather madly, and Aspen wondered if he was sane or suffering from the same delusions she seemed to see in her enemies lately. "A war. One that no one will be able to stop. Not even your precious Avengers."

"And who will start it?"

"That is to be seen. Nothing any of you have seen before."

"Why did Zemo trust you anyway?" Aspen asked. "Seems to me you can't keep your mouth shut. You're so eager to talk, I'm surprised you haven't given everything away."

Wagner frowned. "Your taunting won't do any good," he said stiffly.

"Whatever, I don't have time for you." Aspen made to leave.

Wagner chuckled behind her. "No patience." He clucked his tongue disapprovingly. "You won't make a very good agent."

"No?" She turned back. "Well you will make a very nice corpse if you don't start cooperating soon. I'm not sure SHIELD has any more patience than I do." She left him to think on that.

Her side gave a twinge as she entered the elevator. She knew she should be at home resting, so she headed to her car. It was already dark when she left SHIELD headquarters. She hadn't realized she'd spent so much time there but they had arrived midday.

Steve's motorcycle wasn't parked outside of his apartment, and she realized he must still be working out in the SHIELD gym. She parked her car and cut the engine and lights throwing the street into darkness. As she got out of the car, she realized that the streetlight above her was out. For some reason the lack of light was disconcerting tonight, and she hurried toward the door. Her instincts kicked in too late as someone grabbed her from behind, pulling her into the alley next to the apartment building. Aspen shoved her elbow back as hard as she could and heard a sharp intake of breath behind her as her elbow met with the man's gut. She kicked back as hard as she could, making contact with his knee. His grip loosened on her, and she tore out of it, spinning on the spot and facing him. In the dark she could only see his vague outline, but it was enough. She struck out with her fist, making contact with the side of his face, but he was fast and grabbed her wrist, throwing her against the wall. It knocked the wind out of her and before she could recover, he had his hand around her throat and was lifting her clear off the ground. She tried to kick out, but the pressure on her throat was building so that she was gasping for air.

"I have a message for SHIELD's prisoners," the man said. She caught the strain of a German accent hidden behind an American one. "If they speak so much as one word of intel, they will be swiftly ended along with the agents who interrogate them. Are we clear?"

Aspen glared down at the man though he couldn't see her expression in the dark. She gagged, trying to breathe, but he kept the pressure on her throat. Her hands scrabbled at his. Suddenly they were illuminated by a single ray of light as a motorcycle pulled into the alley. The man threw Aspen on the ground, and stars in burst in front of her eyes as her injured side made contact with the ground. She heard the sound of running feet, and someone knelt beside her.