A/N: So, you might have seen one of my personal notes on one of my other stories, but I'm putting them everywhere when I get around to updating in case y'all are just here for my Clint nonsense. (And I wouldn't blame you one little bit. I, too, love Clint nonsense.) I've been even more sporadic with my updates than usual lately because we got a little girl over the summer that we're in the process of adopting. And then we found out in the fall that we're pregnant. So... I'm kind of RIDICULOUSLY busy and tired all the time with having a little girl and also being pregnant. Which is why I'm not updating much. I don't know when the pace will pick up, either, because, well, life.

I haven't forgotten these stories, though, and I DO work on them when I get the chance, I promise!

Mission Sixteen: Fury's Playing His Own Games

"Stark's trying to get himself killed again."

"It's a state of being with him." Natasha said it without even looking up from the file she was reading, and Clint had to laugh at her automatic response. They were both waiting for Fury to be done with whatever meeting he had ahead of them, and the news was playing on one of the screens in the hallway, but Natasha still managed to juggle the file, the news, and Clint's need to fill silences.

He was actually pretty good at being quiet and staying out of sight when it mattered, but he could never quite manage it once he was close to someone.

And Natasha didn't smile nearly as often as he thought she should outside of the privacy of his apartment—which, he didn't point out for the sake of her own pride, she stayed in more often than she stayed in her own place. But she always seemed to wear her game face everywhere else, and he wanted to see her relax. He wanted her to be Natasha, not the Black Widow.

He didn't think she was even aware she was doing it. He could actually see the difference in the way she held herself when she left the apartment in the morning. It was like watching her put on armor. Even the little smiles that she gave out during the day were strategic—either crooked smiles before she nailed someone for being an idiot or encouraging ones for new recruits that didn't feel like they quite fit in yet.

At any rate, Clint liked to see her smile, and he was always amazed by how she could keep track of his inane mutterings when she had so much else going on at any given time.

Besides, Clint figured she'd at least have half an ear on what was going on with Stark. She'd been assigned to him before, and as much as he knew she'd never admit it, Natasha did care what happened to Tony Stark.

In fact, Clint couldn't help but wonder if that's what this next meeting was about: setting Stark up with another babysitter. If it had been something else, like another meeting with Charles Xavier, they would have been directed to Coulson's office instead.

Clint smirked at the thought. It hadn't been that long since he and Natasha had learned that Coulson was alive—they were the only "Avengers" allowed to know, because they were part of SHIELD, Coulson was their handler, and they could actually be trusted to keep a secret. But it still took his breath away sometimes knowing that one of the best friends he had in the world was alive and walking around and okay.

…..

He hadn't even been doing anything special. At least, he hadn't thought it was any different from any other day. Fury had called him in to talk about something or other, and Clint was sure it was to chew him out for mistreating his therapist.

To be fair, Clint thought he had been perfectly reasonable, up until the session actually started and she had started to get a little too personal. And then, he hadn't even done anything to her. He'd left via the window. Nothing wrong with that, right?

But yeah, Clint knew that he had to actually go to those sessions if he wanted to stick with SHIELD. It wasn't just about his mental health. The therapist was supposed to watch him for any signs that he was more influenced by Loki's manipulations than he was letting on. This was for everyone's security, and he knew it.

But yeah, Clint thought he was going to get yet another dressing down from Fury and a reminder that he could get back to more active duty if he would play nice.

He had a witty retort all primed and ready to go, too—but that died on his lips the second he walked through the doors and saw that Fury wasn't the one sitting behind the desk.

"Phil."

In his mind, Clint had already rushed forward to clap his old friend in a hug and pull him off his feet, but his body wasn't responding to his imagination. Instead, he was simply standing there in shock, his mouth slightly parted, one foot in the doorway and the other one in the hall.

"Close the door, Clint; you're going to draw attention," Coulson said.

Clint didn't know what else to do, so he did what Coulson asked.

Once the door was closed, Coulson's eyes started to twinkle with a smile, and that was what finally got Clint to break out of his haze. In just a few steps, he had rushed over, lifting Coulson out of his chair in a spinning hug.

He had never done that before. He'd never shown Coulson how much he meant to him, how much he relied on him. Coulson had been the guy to pull him out of his life of crime and to believe in him when no one else would, and losing him had been a body blow—so things like self-restraint didn't seem all that important when compared with making sure Phil Coulson knew that he had been missed.

It was as close to admitting that he loved the guy that he would get. He wasn't very good at that. Sure, he was good at saying it to Natasha, but that was easy. That was romance. That was very different from the kind of love that felt like home, the kind that grounded you.

Clint had never had a family, so he didn't know how to react to loving someone like family.

At any rate, because he'd never said any of those things to Coulson, it was plainly obvious that Coulson wasn't expecting to be picked up and flung around in a hug when he was reunited with Clint—not that he looked like he hated it, either. In fact, once he realized what was going on, he returned the hug just as tightly, surprising both of them when they ended up hanging onto each other once Coulson's feet were back on the ground.

They didn't say anything for a long time after that, but when the silence finally broke, it was because Clint had started whispering, "I'm sorry," over and over again, like a reflex he couldn't stop.

And he was sorry. Sorry that he'd let Loki get to him. Sorry for almost crashing the helicarrier. Sorry for giving the bad guys everything they needed and the keys to the place, more or less, on the way to the attack that had killed Coulson.

Sorry for getting Coulson killed.

He couldn't even find the words to say everything he was sorry for, but that didn't seem to matter to Coulson, because the guy was already shaking his head at Clint.

"You don't have to apologize."

"I do," Clint insisted, stepping back from the hug because, well, Coulson was arguing with him, and he wasn't going to hug a guy who was disagreeing with him. He hadn't meant to hug him in the first place. He'd never done that before, not even when Coulson had been the one guy who believed in him and Clint had been a scared kid. "Phil, I got you killed."

"I was there when it happened," Coulson deadpanned. "I'm pretty sure I know who to blame."

"I helped him—"

"Shut up, Barton."

The response was sharp enough that Clint immediately shut his mouth and straightened up, but it also carried enough warmth that Clint knew Coulson wasn't mad—just trying to get a word in edgewise. "Sir?"

"I wasn't dead that long," Coulson explained. "SHIELD's doctors brought me back from the brink, and I even got a tropical vacation out of it. As far as I'm concerned, you and I are fine." He emphasized that last word with a sharp look, almost daring Clint to argue.

So, of course, Clint rose to the challenge. "I showed him exactly how to get in—"

"Clint." Coulson shook his head, looking suddenly tired. "I don't hold that against you. No one does. You weren't in your right mind."

"That doesn't matter," Clint insisted, suddenly and loudly—enough so that he was glad that Fury was paranoid enough to soundproof his office. At least no one else could hear Clint having a severely emotional reaction to the whole thing.

(Was there a way to have anything but a severely emotional reaction to one of the only friends you had in the world coming back from the dead?)

"Clint—"

"You got hurt, Phil. You died," Clint insisted, talking over Coulson before he could get going. "It doesn't matter whether I did it on purpose. It's my fault. My responsibility. My intel that Loki used to get in. If I hadn't been there—"

"Like I don't know you were fighting him," Coulson cut in, raising his voice to talk over Clint. He rarely raised his voice, but apparently, he thought being right in this situation called for it. Coming back from the dead must have really done a number on him. "I've seen you do infiltrations before, Barton. You can't tell me that was your best work."

"It was—"

"Sure, some of the early stuff was good. But you're forgetting that I have fought against you when we were on opposite sides. And let me tell you: your teenage thief self was harder to stop." Coulson shook his head. "If you wanted to crash the helicarrier, you could have. If you'd wanted to kill the Avengers, you could have. If you'd wanted to kill any of us, if you'd wanted to break Loki out, if you'd wanted to really give us a headache, you wouldn't have done it just by disabling the engines. You'd have destroyed them—and everything else you could get your hands on to make sure we went down hard."

Clint blinked a few times.

"So don't give me this crap, Barton. You work with an actual ex-brainwashed Russian asset. You know better than this."

Clint continued to stare at Coulson for a long time before, finally, he broke into a crooked smile. "Been holding that in long, sir?" he asked.

"Oh, shut up," Coulson said—and this time, he was the one to surprise Clint by initiating another hug.

…

The door to Fury's office opened, and Clint and Natasha came in, closing the door behind them. It wasn't until they were seated that Fury said anything to either of them—but that was pretty typical. Fury, Clint was convinced, was actually a drama queen.

"Let me guess," Clint said, since he had always liked trying to steal Fury's thunder just to mess with the guy, "you need one of us to look after the idiot in armor."

"The idiot in armor already has a babysitter in Rhodes," Fury said simply. "And the colonel has more than proved he's able to keep up with whatever Stark can throw at him."

Natasha smirked quietly, and Clint knew she had about a thousand different quips that she could have thrown at Fury. "Mm," she said, and Fury turned her way.

"Don't you start," he said, and Clint swore he could have seen an almost-smirk on the guy's face.

Typical. Of course Fury and Natasha had the same sense of humor. Clint should have known that two of the most secretive and dramatic people he knew would get along so well.

"I didn't say anything," Natasha said, barely lifting both of her hands in what would have been a gesture of defense if she wasn't smiling.

Fury shook his head and let out a breath of a laugh. "Right," he said. "Romanoff, I'm reassigning you."

"What?" Clint was on his feet before he'd even thought about it. "You can't do that. We just got back together!"

"Yes, I'm well aware of that, Barton," Fury said, one eyebrow raised. "And if you two weren't as good as you were, I wouldn't have looked the other way."

"If this is about—"

"Barton, I couldn't care less if you and Romanoff want to chase each other. But I'm trying to get my Avengers Initiative off the ground, and I think if anyone can talk to my fish out of water in Rogers, it's your girlfriend."

Clint wasn't even sure where to start with that kind of statement hanging in the air. He had always sort of suspected that Fury knew what he and Natasha were up to simply because nothing got past Fury. And promising to look the other way was as close as Nick Fury would ever get to anything like approval, which, again, was something Clint didn't know how to deal with. He didn't even know which part of the team Fury was favoring with that kind of blind eye: Natasha and her sense of humor or Clint and his refusal to ever play by the SHIELD handbook while still getting results. Maybe both?

While Clint was working out the implications of Fury's approval, then, Natasha locked gazes with the Director of SHIELD, sizing him up then and there. In a single glance, she seemed to be measuring out his plans, his intentions, his turning wheels. Then, slowly, she smiled and nodded. "I can handle that," she said.

"Coulson's going to be jealous," Clint whispered to Natasha.

When she looked his way, her eyes were glittering with laughter. "Let me be the one to tell him," she said.

Clint burst into a laugh that he simply couldn't stop. "You just want to see him turn into a puddle!"

"Don't you?"

"Well, obviously," Clint said, still laughing. "I mean, Phil Puddles are the best kinds of puddles!"

Fury wasn't giving anything away with his expression, but when he spoke, Clint could swear he could hear the guy's version of suppressed laughter. "Coulson is on a mission with his new team—"

"Still can't believe you replaced us," Clint grumbled good-naturedly. "What, you don't think we make a good team?"

"Need I remind you that you have a new team, Barton?" Fury replied with one eyebrow raised.

"No offense, sir, but it's hard to feel like an Avenger when we haven't done much besides fighting aliens that one time—and I wasn't exactly part of that fight until the very end," Clint said without missing a beat. It was kind of a sore spot for him, and he wasn't going to let it roll off his shoulders, either. He didn't think he was part of the team, and even if he was, he didn't think much of the team in the first place, seeing as they weren't doing much, well, teamwork.

"You need a babysitting job to feel like part of the team?" Fury asked with one eyebrow raised. "I can always assign you the Hulk, seeing as Stark has Banner covered, and as far as we can tell, they seem to be very nearly two separate people."

"Thanks, Fury. Didn't know you had a death wish for me."

"Can't take a challenge, Barton?"

"I can, and that's the problem, sir. I have a problem backing down."

"So does the Hulk," Fury said without missing a beat.

Clint raised one eyebrow and then leaned over to Natasha. "I feel like I just got talked into being in charge of the Hulk. Am I reading too much into this?"

"No," Natasha said, straight-faced. "I think you just got talked into being in charge of the Hulk."

"See, that's not fair, because now I can't tell if you're joking or if you and Fury secretly conspired to do this to me," Clint said, throwing both hands up in a gesture of surrender. "Because this absolutely feels like something the two of you would do."

"I went to get him while you were compromised. It's your turn," Natasha said, still perfectly straight-faced.

Clint scrubbed a hand down his face and then tipped his head back to let out a long groan. "You're conspiring against me, Nat. I hate you."

"No, you don't."

"The point," Fury said, breaking into their back and forth and grabbing both of their attention with both hands, "is that Romanoff will be assigned to look out for Rogers. If you want to keep an eye on Banner, you can give Stark some assistance—"

"The only thing I'm assisting Stark with is plans for trick arrows," Clint said firmly, then smirked Natasha's way. "I know how he hits on his assistants."

"You're ridiculous, Barton," Natasha said, one leg crossed over the other as she looked over the file Fury gave her. "It's Steve you need to worry about on that front."

"Steve?" Clint turned her way. "First-naming already?" he teased.

"We're a team," Natasha said. "It's important to act like it, or the others will think we don't like them."

"What if we don't?" Clint asked. He still wasn't entirely convinced that the Avengers liked him, for one thing. He'd joined in the fight at the very end of things, after he'd been forced to fight against them. He wouldn't blame them if they felt weird around him. He didn't know what to do with them either.

But Natasha, as usual, wasn't going to listen to him if he brought up everything that had happened before the Battle of New York. "We do," she said simply.

"You know," Clint said dryly, "I think my life was simpler before we started dating."

"You brought that on yourself," Fury said, matching Clint's dry tone before he slid forward a file for Clint as well. "If you're not going to babysit the Hulk, I have a different assignment for you."

Clint raised an eyebrow but didn't say anything until he'd opened the folder to look through the intel on Janet Van Dyne and Hank Pym. "Looking to expand the initiative?" he asked.

"Maybe," Fury said. "That's what I want you to look into."

Clint frowned as he looked deeper into the file. Van Dyne and Pym had been split for over a decade, had an adult daughter who went into business with her father and made it clear it was to keep the business afloat while he got lost in his lab… Van Dyne was a fashion genius in addition to being her own scientific prodigy…

Yeah, Clint could see why Fury was interested. But he could also see why the guy was wary. The Avengers all had issues, and bringing family drama into it could take things to a whole new level.

Clint glanced over at Natasha and then smirked. "See you 'round, partner. Looks like we'll be plenty busy."

…..

The more Clint saw of the Pym-Van Dyne family, the more he was pretty sure Janet Van Dyne had the right idea about her ex-husband.

The guy was completely full of himself and his ideas, and he didn't seem to care about much of anything else. Their daughter, Hope, was obviously doing her best to try to pull her dad out of his obsessive research, but Clint could tell: when Pym was in a mood, interruptions were unacceptable. Clint had even seen the guy snap at his daughter, let alone any poor and unsuspecting intern who might try to bring him food or coffee.

Clint could see echoes of Stark in the guy, but he also trusted Natasha's description of Tony Stark that he was, at heart, a caring guy trying to pretend he didn't care. Clint wasn't entirely sure where Hank Pym stood. He seemed to get along alright with his ex-wife and daughter when he wasn't in the middle of a project, but when he was….

Well, Clint was starting to wonder if Fury had gotten the assignments wrong on this one. He didn't think he could give an unbiased account of the dynamics with the Pym-Van Dyne family because of his own family history. His father had been dead for twenty years, and Clint still flinched when he heard a raised voice that sounded too much like Harold Barton.

So, yeah, maybe Clint was a little bit sensitive to guys who raised their voices to their family members.

He was trying to look past that to see the potential that Fury saw in Pym, though. He thought he could see it. The guy was a genius, and what's more, he seemed to be a pacifist. Maybe that didn't fit what most people thought Fury wanted out of the Avengers, but the truth was, after that incident with Loki, Clint could absolutely see how it would be beneficial to have a voice in the room advocating against a fight if at all possible.

As much as Clint hated to admit it, there wasn't a voice like that in the room with the Avengers just yet. Even Natasha was more likely to act than to sit back and watch—but that was also because of her insane theory that she had to keep working, to keep going, to make up for everything she'd done in service of the Red Room. Natasha made sense; the rest of the Avengers came down to personality.

Still, even if Clint could sort of see what Fury wanted in Hank Pym, he was pretty sure his report was going to lean more toward inviting Janet and Hope than Hank. He'd get thrown in there out of family loyalty, probably, but that didn't mean he was Clint's first choice. Or second. Or third.

Yeah, Clint was definitely too biased for this assignment.

He sighed as he leaned back in his chair. At the moment, he was posing as one of the many faceless security guards at Pym's facility, and since half of them were competent and the other half were overconfident, he didn't have to try too hard to keep up that cover.

Or, well, maybe he should have tried harder, because the next thing he knew, Hope Van Dyne had come up to him with eyes flashing and slammed her hands down on the table, jolting him out of his thoughts. "What, exactly, is your game here?"

Clint held up both hands instinctively. Hope could be kind of intimidating when she wanted to be. "What?"

"Don't play dumb with me—"

"I can honestly assure you that my stupidity is not an act," Clint said without missing a beat—it was practically a rote response by that point.

Hope's eyes narrowed nearly to slits. "Cute," she said. "Now are you going to tell me why you're following my family around, or do I have to drag it out of you?"

Clint gestured to his badge. "Security."

"No." Hope shook her head, her eyes still narrowed. "That doesn't explain why I've seen you around my mother, too. And me. So you've got one chance before I throw you out on your—"

"Okay, okay," Clint said, once again holding his hands up in a gesture of defense. He sighed, then gestured with one hand toward his jacket. "If I reach for some ID, are you going to hit me? Because that would make explaining myself pretty hard."

Hope's lips pressed into a thin line before she minutely nodded. "Fine."

Clint kept one hand up as, with the other, he reached into his jacket to pull out his wallet, flipping it open one-handed until he was able to dig out his SHIELD-issue ID and hold it up. "Ever heard of SHIELD?"

"No."

"But I have," said a new voice.

Clint looked up to see that Hank Pym had decided to join them, looking furious. Hope stepped back to give her father space as he went marching up to Clint, though that simple action had Clint squaring up for a fight. He didn't like men whose anger made a path through the women in their lives.

"Look," Clint said before Hank had even gotten to the desk, "I'm just here to observe. That's all. Don't make a big fuss that you'll regret later."

"I'll regret it?" Hank shot back—which was about when Clint realized that there was a line of ants trailing alone the edge of his desk and headed his way.

Clint took several measured steps back. "I told you: I'm just an observer. SHIELD wanted me to see if you'd—"

"I already told SHIELD that I wouldn't ever work for them again," Hank interrupted him. "Now get out of my building—unless you'd rather leave with my fire ants."

Clint took one look at the bright red ants swarming his desk and pulled a face. "Yeah, no thanks. I can see myself out," he said—taking the very roundabout way toward the door so he didn't risk any of the fire ants getting close enough to bite him.

He shook his head to himself, putting his hands in his back pockets as he closed the door with the heel of his foot. He was going to kill Fury when he got back to base; the least the man could have done was warn him that Pym had a background in SHIELD. That would have been good to know before he got chewed out and very nearly chewed on by those stupid ants.

But no, Fury had to keep secrets.

Clint just hoped Natasha was having better luck with her assignment than he was.

…

As it turned out, Natasha loved her assignment.

She had gotten along fairly well with Steve when they'd first been introduced. He had been a quick study, and she had been impressed not only with the way he kept his head in a battle but also with how well he was able to mesh with her style of doing things. It had been easy teamwork, so she had confidence she could work with him on another team, too.

She was right.

Steve had a sense of humor that was downright fun to play with, and she was glad to see it come out on occasion, because he also had a self-destructive streak a mile wide. She had seen it with Clint enough times to know what to call it, and she knew instantly why Fury had asked her to keep an eye on him. He wasn't as obvious about his depression and trauma as Tony had been when Natasha was assigned to him, but it was still there. And Fury needed eyes on the problem.

He also needed eyes on Brock Rumlow, who had been since the day he joined SHIELD a valuable asset and a ticking time bomb. Putting her, Rumlow, and Rogers all in one place was a gamble, but Natasha understood it.

They'd just finished up a mission when her phone buzzed, and she glanced down to see what Clint could possibly want—and she knew it was Clint, because the only other two people who had that number were Coulson and Fury, who both knew she was on a mission.

Turns out Fury sent me after an ex-asset with a grudge against SHIELD. So how was your day?

Natasha smirked when she read it. As much as she was enjoying her mission, she genuinely missed Clint.

"Who's that?" Steve asked, breaking into her thoughts and looking over her shoulder with a smirk.

Natasha looked up, pleasantly surprised to see that Steve had managed to sneak up on her. She knew everything she could from his file, but there were a few oversights. Though she supposed she shouldn't have been surprised. What she could find showed that he had a habit of getting around the rules, sneaking into places he shouldn't have been…. "He's a friend."

"Yeah?" Steve grinned a little wider. "Just a friend?"

Natasha raised an eyebrow without giving anything away with her expression. "He might be your type, but he's dating someone right now and knows better than to cheat or I'd destroy him. I'll let you know if that doesn't work out, if you're still interested."

Steve broke into a hearty laugh. "Oh, I see how it is. You can try to set me up with everyone you think might pass muster, but I ask about a 'friend' you're texting and it's not fair game?"

"Life's not fair. You're going to have to get used to it."

"I'm just saying: if you're going to smile like that every time he texts you…"

"Sure, Rogers," she said, smirking and shaking her head as she shouldered past him.

Just as she passed him, though, he asked, "Does Agent Barton know?"

It was only years of professionalism that kept her from bursting into a laugh right then and there. Steve had seen Clint only once, during the Battle of New York, and there he was acting like that single experience was enough to tell him the two of them were an item.

Maybe it was enough. Maybe she and Clint hadn't been as subtle as they thought they'd been.

If that was the case, Clint could never know. She'd never hear the end of it.