DD events happen earlier than in canon. Nothing significant, just wanted the timelines to match up a certain way.
Fury places a very, very thin file on his desk in front of Clint.
"I need you to look into this vigilante who's popped up in Hell's Kitchen," Fury says.
"Absolutely not," Clint immediately responds. "It may not seem like it, but I do have some self-preservation."
Fury squints at him. "So you've heard of him."
"Well, we can't assume that they're a him..." Fury's glare deepens. "Yes, I have," Clint amends quickly. He's got enough ears on the ground, and the masked vigilante guy's made enough of an impression, that he's well aware of what happens to the vigilante's victims.
He wonders if this is punishment for putting glitter in Fury's shampoo last month.
To be fair, the whole reason he'd targeted the shampoo bottle was because he hadn't expected Fury to actually use it. (He still doesn't know what Fury does with it and he hasn't received discipline yet, so he's currently too afraid to ask.)
"This makes you the perfect agent for the job," Fury says, leaning back in his seat and crossing his arms in front of his chest with an air of satisfaction. Oh, he definitely figured out Clint had been the one to put glitter in his shampoo. Dang, Clint had been this close to thinking he'd gotten away with it. "Most of SHIELD hasn't heard of the new vigilante on the block. This person may be doing good now, but who knows? I want us on top of this."
Nat would definitely be the better agent for the job if she weren't currently in Bulgaria.
Clint shrugs. "Sure! Why not? I definitely don't have a death wish or anything..."
"I trust your discretion," Fury says at last, before dismissing him.
Clint leaves Fury's office and looks down at the perilously thin file in his hand. Well, he's worked with less.
The file is only filled with a few witness statements and varied descriptions of the vigilante, ranging from terrifying to humorous to confusing. He's six feet tall, or he's nine feet tall and cowering over them; he has red eyes or green eyes or regular 'ol brown; his teeth are perpetually stained by blood, either due to getting hit in the face one too many times or being a vampire.
One thing's for certain, though: If you're making trouble in Hell's Kitchen, he will find you.
Clint slumps in his seat and knocks his forehead against his desk.
He has most certainly not worked with less.
Clint's first order of business in Hell's Kitchen is to get a drink, because he can't do this sober (in his report, he'll write that it was to blend in, which isn't entirely untrue). He keeps his gun, and stashes his bow and arrows on a rooftop close to the center of Hell's Kitchen. While he's nursing his drink, he considers starting a bar fight to get the vigilante's attention, but then he might end up in the hospital, which would not be good for Clint or the other guy.
You see, Clint doesn't exactly want to get the vigilante or himself in trouble. The guy's doing good, as far as he can tell. While his methods are pretty heavy-handed, Clint appreciates someone who can do the legwork, and he can't say for sure whether or not his arrows are more bloody and brutal than just getting beat up.
He's a few streets away from the bar, contemplating retrieving his primary weapon, when he just manages to spot the glint of a gun in an alley across the street.
He sneaks up silently and finds a lady being mugged.
Is it bad that he was hoping for the vigilante?
Anyways, he can't exactly not do anything, so he jumps in, sweeps the mugger's feet out from underneath him, and wrestles him for the gun.
The lady screams and runs away. Clint more feels than hears someone show up behind him.
He's a bit busy at the moment, but he's like 90% sure he knows who it is.
Sure enough, Clint secures the gun and tucks it into his belt, and as soon as the mugger spots whoever is behind Clint, his eyes bug out and he starts begging for his life. "Please," he says. "Please, I'm sorry—"
"What are you sorry for?" the Man in the Mask growls out. Clint suppresses a shiver. Damn, he wishes he had this kinda effect on people. Sometimes.
He takes a closer look at the vigilante who had found him and not the other way around. His first thought, stupidly, is that the guy is only like an inch taller than Clint. So height is definitely not the intimidation factor.
His second thought is that this guy needs better protection. He's literally just...wearing a shirt, and pants, and a weird sweaty hat thing. The only sort of protection he has are his hand wraps, which are literally dripping in blood. That's probably the intimidation factor.
"Please, I won't do it again," the mugger says desperately. "I won't do it again, I promise."
The vigilante guy leans in close and literally snarls at him. "See to it that you don't," he says at last. "I'll know if you do."
And then he lets the mugger scamper off.
Honestly, a lot more lenient than Clint was expecting. First time offense, maybe?
Wait, why would a vigilante care about something like that?
He sighs and turns toward Clint. Clint feels like he's being dissected, and he doesn't like it. At least when Nat mentally dissects him, she lets him know about it.
"Who the hell are you?" the guy asks.
"Hey, just...your average New York resident, hanging around, getting a drink," Clint rambles. Damn. Definitely not his best work.
The guy takes a step toward him. "Who are you?" he says, voice dropping a bit.
"Woah woah woah," Clint says, taking a step back and mentally mapping out escape routes, though this guy definitely knows Hell's Kitchen better than him. "We're on the same side here, man, and I'd appreciate it if you didn't kill me. People are just wondering who you are." He decides to go with more of the truth than he normally does with people he scopes out. He trusts his gut on this, and Fury himself can kick his ass if this backfires.
The guy tilts his head. Clint wonders if that's supposed to be another intimidation tactic (it's maybe working) or if there's something else to it. Hard to know. "What kind of people?"
"Like, official government organizations." Wrong thing to say, the guy looks ready to bolt now, even more than how ready Clint is to bolt. "No, shit. We just want to know more about you."
"Because I'm operating above the law," the guy says flatly, like he's had this conversation before, maybe with himself.
"Yeah, but also 'cause people think the unknown is dangerous, unpredictable." He gestures at the vigilante and thinks, Exhibit A. "I'm just doing my job here."
"What government organization are you from?"
"Yeah, doubt you've heard of it, we're relatively pretty shady."
The guy stares at him for a moment. Maybe, if Clint could see his eyes, he'd be squinting and furrowing his brows, probably thinking, What the hell is wrong with this guy? "I believe you," he says eventually.
"Okay," Clint says slowly. "I just- I guess I just need to know if you're a threat or not? Although I usually don't ask the subjects themselves when doing threat assessments." The only time he's ever done that was with Nat, back when he'd been assigned to take out the Black Widow.
The guy snorts. Okay, someone appreciates Clint's sense of humor and honesty. "I am a threat," he says frankly. "Stay on the right side and you won't have to worry about it."
And then he swiftly retreats. Clint doesn't chase after him, since he doesn't think he'd catch up, and also because he's too busy admiring the guy's admittedly fire parkour skills.
"How'd your mission go?" Fury asks the next day when Clint stops by his office to drop off the file.
It's almost as thin as it had been before.
"He's a threat, but not to us," Clint reports dutifully.
Fury frowns, sifting through the new info Clint had put into the file. "You didn't learn much."
"Nope," Clint says gleefully.
"Did you even find the vigilante?"
"Nope," Clint says again, since the vigilante had found him instead.
Fury narrows his one eye at Clint. Clint rolls his own eyes.
"You chose me for a reason," he says, all sing-song like. "That's all I got. Just trust me on this."
Fury sighs, closing the file and pinching the bridge of his nose. "The last time you said, 'just trust me, bro,' I got an effective agent in the form of Romanoff, so I guess you're off the hook this time."
"Hang on, I did not say—"
The second time Clint finds his way to Hell's Kitchen, he's actually there to take out a target.
Drug lord; pretty easy.
Or it would be if someone hadn't knocked his sniper rifle out of his hand and thrown it over the side of the building. "Hey," he hisses, "thought we were on the same side."
The vigilante shrugs. "I don't kill." That's reassuring? "That makes us not on the same side." Not reassuring.
"Look, can't you see this is the most efficient way to take this guy out? He's started distributing drugs to kids!"
"No, I can't see," the guy says with a smirk that Clint can't interpret. "Just because something's efficient doesn't mean it's right."
Clint groans, finally getting to his feet. He glances at the building across from them to check that the drug lord's still there. "I dunno if you're aware, but these drugs ain't normal, they've got weird radioactive shit in them."
"Which is the whole reason why you're here, isn't it? No reason for a government agent to get involved with something seemingly local and therefore inconsequential."
Clint squints at him. "You're mocking me, aren't you?" The guy nods unrepentantly. "Great. What do we do?"
He's suddenly tackled to the ground, just in time to see a bullet embed itself in the wall where his chest had been. He doesn't say head, because it hadn't been that good a shot.
The vigilante scrambles off of him while Clint scrambles for the hearing aids that had been knocked out of his ears. "They've spotted us," he's pretty sure the vigilante says.
"Obviously," Clint responds, shoving his hearing aids back in and reaching for his bow. "This less fatal enough for you?" he asks.
He turns, but the guy's no longer there.
"Shit," he mutters, rushing to get over to the other building and hoping for the best.
They manage to take down the drug lord and his lackies together, but not before Clint falls into a dumpster, because of course.
The Man in the Mask gets thrown into the dumpster with him, which is more surprising.
Clint groans and tries to figure out what's poking him in the back. What kinda weird trash do Hell's Kitchen people throw out? Oh. "My rifle!" he says in triumph, grabbing it and hugging it to his chest.
The other guy groans. "This fucking smells." This, in addition to the boxing moves Clint had seen, further confirms to him that the vigilante is just a regular guy trying to do good, not some supernatural figure from Hell like some people think. Clint respects that.
They embarrassingly help each other out of the dumpster. "Thanks for the save earlier, man," Clint says, holding a hand out that the other guy dutifully shakes. Clint needs to come up with a name for him; he can't keep calling him 'the other guy' in his head. "How'd you react so quickly?"
"I heard it," he responds simply.
Clint really needs to get his hearing aids tuned up if that's the case.
When he gets back to SHIELD base, he adds Does not kill people to the file. Paints the guy in a better light, at least.
I originally wrote this fic just to serve as a short precursor for Matt/Nat, but evidently it got out of hand. I got surprisingly invested in the Missing Senses Bros