Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Clint’s pretty sure that today’s the day his dumbassery is going to be the end of him. 

Really, it’s been a long time coming. 

And on any given day it could be any number of things: it could be his tendency to eat whatever food’s been put in front of him, regardless of how many times Nat’s slapped him over the head for not first checking for poison, or ‘ seriously, you dumbass’, at least an expiration date. It could be how he always manages to end up near ledges or cliff faces or rooftops on missions — or really, most days of the week, even when he coulda sworn he’d planned on doing nothing more than marathoning Dog Cops for eight hours straight. It could also be the fact that he runs his mouth so much his brain has to work double time to keep up and prevent him from offending someone important, though shit, his brain, like the rest of him, is a tired motherfucker without caffeine and as such, often fails in that department. 

Lately, it could also be his horribly stupid, ill-advised, raging obsession with the recently discovered  — and even more recently refrozen  — super soldier who Clint was idiot enough to get drunk and make out with only a week into their stay in Wakanda. 

Today, however, Clint’s pretty sure his dumbassery is probably going to result in his death because he’s in the middle of an ultra high tech lab and he’s pretty sure he’s going to trip over something important and that scary Dora Milaje guard in the corner is going to stab him for his sheer incompetence. 

Whatever the reason, things are not looking good for Clint Barton’s prospects. 

“I said, don’t touch anything .” Shuri’s voice whips out over their heads and Scott yanks his hand back from where it’s drifting dangerously close to a scary looking machine in the middle of the workshop. Clint raises his eyebrows and takes two careful steps away from the table he’d been close to himself, lest he be noticed and risk the wrath of the tiny Wakandan princess. Or worse, her equally terrifying, if traditionally more intimidating bodyguard, who’s been hovering about disapprovingly for the past ten minutes. 

Across the workshop, Scott stammers out an apology and puts his hands behind his back. “Like a five year old, got it. I can do this. I’ve been to museums before.” 

At Shuri’s glare, indicating that she views Scott as perhaps less intelligent than the kindergartener he’s attempting to copy, Clint reevaluates his assessment. Her wrath is probably equally terrible as the menacing Dora Milaje guard, giant spear thing included. Clint doesn’t know what kind of tricks Shuri has up her sleeve, and with the way every single piece of technology has blown his mind since they walked in, he’s sure she’s got something deadly concealed somewhere. 

Or everywhere. 

Who knows? 

Those beads around her wrist could be bombs, for all Clint knows. 

Or maybe there’s laser shooters in Shuri’s shoes, a forcefield in her braids, fuck if Clint knows. He’s spent enough time around geniuses and spies to know better than to assume that he’s able to detect all dangerous objects. And he’s long since learned to never underestimate people based on the appearance they choose to present to the world. Nat whacked that idea out of him years ago, and Clint’s learned to lean into his own deceptively puppy-dog appearance to get what he wants from people. 

Clint would be an idiot to assume Shuri isn’t as whip-smart, calculating, and deadly as the rest of the Wakandans they’ve met since showing up two weeks ago after Steve and James got them out of the Raft.

The Dora Milaje raises her spear in Scott’s general direction, and Scott flinches, backing away. In his haste, he doesn’t notice the bench behind him and he trips, clattering to the floor as his arms fail to unlatch from behind his back in time to catch him. 

Clint winces in sympathy. 

Wanda’s face twists in pitying exasperation. 

Sam attempts to restrain his snort.

Steve puts his hand over his face, and Clint can hear his sigh from all the way across the room. 

Shuri and her guard exchange looks, then burst into laughter. 

“Okay, you have convinced me,” Shuri wheezes, one hand on the counter next to her, the other clasped against her stomach. “We should invite outsiders to Wakanda more often.”

Clint knows he’s incredibly lucky — for a lot of things, really, recently, but especially for getting to be here in Wakanda. He hardly knew it existed three weeks ago, though he’s not sure now whether to blame his middle school level education or the country’s mission to remain underestimated and mostly undetected for his lack of knowledge. They’ve been in Wakanda for two weeks now, and when Clint isn’t trapped in discussions with the other Avengers, accidentally pining after James, or wallowing in all of the idiotic decisions that got him to this point, he’s been absolutely blown away by the vibrant technology and culture that Wakanda is rich with. 

And goddamn rich it is. Even the lab he’s in right now makes his mind blue screen a little bit if he thinks about it too hard. The design of everything is something out of a sci-fi movie, except in those films if you poke too hard at the backdrop, both the science and the flimsy plywood topple over. If he gets close to anything here, there’s logic and explanations and just fucking reality to support things that he’d never imagined he’d get to see. And he’s spent years in Tony Stark’s lab, over a decade running ops for SHIELD, and frankly too much time around Asgardian gods and all their magic. He shouldn’t be able to be surprised by technology any more, he really shouldn’t. 

And yet, here he is, in the middle of a lab that’s so futuristic he’s afraid a misstep might end with an explosion, or at the very least, a supremely pissed off Dora Milaje ready to bear down on him for disrupting some sorta science experiment that’s connected to state secrets or something. 

He takes another step closer to the center of the room. Man, he probably should’ve stayed near the door, it’s a minefield in here for someone with his track record for inopportune clumsiness. 

He eyes the path he might take to start getting closer to safety. Yeah, he can probably make it while everyone’s too busy laughing at Scott’s antics to notice his extra cautious tip-toeing through the lab space. 

“What’s this?” Wanda draws everyone’s attention to another machine in the corner, and Clint freezes as Shuri motions everyone closer. He picks his way around several tables. 

“This is one of our works in progress, led by M’tolla and her team. In layman’s terms, it’s essentially a time machine.” Shuri stands a few feet away from the hunk of metal, her distance creating a clear barrier that none of the Avengers dare pass. “We haven’t done much besides send back inanimate objects and most recently, traceable bacteria. There is still much to be done before it is ready to be used for its intended purpose.” 

“Which is what?” Steve asks, leaning forward to peer as close as he dares. Clint knows that for all the shit he and Tony have put themselves through lately, Steve really misses the guy, and figures it’s probably hard for Steve to be here in this science-filled space that reminds him so much of the man he betrayed. Steve pretends to be all grumpy about modern inventions, but Clint’s seen him light up at innovation, heard the wonder in his voice whenever he thanked Stark for new stealth suits or mission tech. It’s an appreciation, apparently, that he got from James, who Clint had been surprised to find out is quite in love with all things futuristic. 

Clint performs a mental flick on the nose to distract himself. He’s not here to think about James right now. He focuses back in on what Shuri is saying. 

“….the chosen event, ultimately preventing it from ever occurring. The ramifications haven’t been ironed out yet, and the most pressing malfunction that we’re working on is that it sends back multiple copies of the object, effectively creating minutely different alternate dimensions, where the timelines will never again intersect.” She looks at the counter beside the machine, where several Petri dishes are carefully stacked and labeled. “It hasn’t been an issue for us so far with what we’ve sent, but the ripple effect of sending back a person would be immense.” 

Steve nods his understanding, and Clint lets himself imagine what it’d be like to be sent back in time. It’d be real nice to get a do-over for some of his mistakes, but to be honest, he’d probably just screw things up in a different way. He cringes at the thought of having to relive his slap-dash marriage with Bobbi, and his heart tries again , the dumb, back-stabbing thing, to make him think about James and how that could’ve gone differently. Abort, abort, he reprimands his brain, and in his haste to flee from feelings, falls right into thinking about all of the mistakes he’s made as an Avenger and SHIELD agent. 

Because of course he’s completely ready to think about Loki right now on a weekday afternoon in Wakanda. That missed shot over Stark’s shoulders and the tumbling of the airport parking garage flashes through next, followed by the flight of an arrow into a political target he now knows Hydra wanted gone, and behind Phil’s crumpled body in the helicarrier, the form of that aerialist from the circus lays atop a veritable mountain of innocent SHIELD agents and New York citizens that only grows taller and taller and taller. 

Yeah, he has no desire to even begin to wrap his mind around trying to fix all that. 

He’s made some really, truly, terrible mistakes in his life, but he is firmly of the opinion that the best thing he can do is keep working to improve the future, rather than dwell on the past. Natasha’s worked hard to beat that into him. 

That’s what he’d been trying to do when Steve came calling, a message sent to Clint’s farmhouse in Iowa, asking for help in protecting his best friend, preventing unjust oversight, and saving the world from global hegemony (yeah, Steve gets a little self-righteous at times, the socialist bastard). Clint hadn’t been retired, exactly — he’s 33, Jesus, not dead — but he’d been taking a break after nearly dying a time or two or seven in the unending pursuit to uproot the vestiges of Hydra for the past two years. He can’t erase the red in his ledger, but he’s willing to work hard to balance the books as best he can.

He’d been willing to pick up his bow for Steve and his mission, if for nothing else other than the knowledge that Steve had a moral code at least 17 times more strict and well-thought out than Clint’s, so if his Captain said it was the right thing to do, Clint was hardly going to argue otherwise. 

And so, yeah, he’d tried. 

All it had gotten him was more guilt, a short-lived but horrific stay in the supermax prison to end all supermax prisons, a global warrant for his arrest, and a midnight, immediately regretted kiss with a former fellow brainwashed assassin who decided he’d rather suspend himself in perpetual frozen solitude than face, well, anything. 

Oh, right, it also got him here in Wakanda. He squints his eyes and tells his brain it’s totally acceptable to shove everything down and concentrate on the tour of the lab. Feelings, guilt, attraction, nah, Clint’s not gonna deal with that today. 

Clint refocuses on his surroundings and finds himself the only one still looking at the time machine, everyone else having moved on to the next miracle of vibranium technology. The Dora Milaje is watching him from the doorway, her expression dipping down into a frown that he’s not sure is any different from the frown she’s had leveled on her face the whole time they’ve been in the lab. It doesn’t surprise Clint, actually, kinda the opposite: he’d been shocked to discover how willing T’Challa had been to let the Avengers, who were essentially perfect paragons of American interventionism, into Wakanda, to let them crash into their space with all their sloppy, “first-world”, white-people ways. 

Yeah, Clint’s treading carefully here for a lot of reasons.  

But see, the thing is, sometimes when you think too hard about being careful, the opposite happens. Clint should know this; he knows he’s best when he lets his mind do its job on a mission, when he doesn’t get caught up in things, when he just lets his body flow with the pull and release of arrows, the tension of the moment propelling him through to competence and sometimes even excellence. 

So he should really, really know better than to fixate on being careful. 

But Clint’s an idiot, so he overthinks things. 

And then he trips. 

Oh, fuck me, his brain helpfully narrates as his arms pinwheel through the air, and his legs catch on the corner of a bench. 

This is exactly what you thought would happen , his brain adds when Clint tries to steady himself and instead crashes into a work table, then overcompensates when he tries to right himself, steps on a sheet of paper, and slips several feet to the left. 

Ah, yes, this feels familiar , it sympathizes when Clint careens directly into the time machine, his hands clenching tight wherever they fall in effort to keep himself from landing on the ground, the gasps of his entire remaining team loud behind him. 

“It’s cool, guys,” Clint squeezes out over the beating of his heart, which assures him that this is decidedly uncool, if not entirely unexpected. “Nothing bad happened. I’ll just —  I’ll go wait out in the hallway.” 

He painstakingly unclenches his hands from the machine, unbending at the waist. He pats the machine like he would a dog, which he immediately cringes internally for, and turns to face the group. “See, no harm to anything but my ego.” 

The faces he sees when he turns around let him know that either his ego is much more frightening than he anticipated, or that he was very wrong in his assessment of the damage he’d done. 

“Right?” 

There’s a hum that grows from a tiny, tinny tickle to a crescendo in the space of 2.4 seconds, then Clint is enveloped by a sucking sensation from the tips of his toes to the top of his head that feels a little bit like he’s back in the mouth of that octopus monster the Avengers fought a couple of years ago. It wasn’t pleasant then, and it’s maybe even worse now. 

Definitely worse , his brain confirms as the sensation starts to slide into something that feels like he’s disintegrating into a million tiny shards of glass. 

He’s minuscule, microscopic, broken and whole, enormous and completely, utterly, nonexistent. 

Until he isn’t. 

There’s a rush all around him, and Clint can just make out the bodies of his team and the Wakandans surging towards him through a shimmer of red haze, his own face reflecting back alongside theirs in dazed confusion. 

Then the shimmer snaps, solidifies, burns and brightens, shifting from glowing red to shining silver, and he can’t see his team anymore, can’t see Wakanda, and can only see himself. 

And he’s falling, he thinks. End over end is what his reflection is telling him, bright lights that pulse red flashing in front of him, around him, in him. He can see his body, see it multiply, expand, break apart and reform as he floats, falls and flies through exactly what, he’s not sure. 

He clenches his eyes shut but the images scorch through his eyelids and he sees himself moving in a way that the reflection in the mirror isn’t supposed to, in that it’s moving differently than Clint can feel his own body move, arms wheeling in a diverging pattern, scared eyes widening as they recognize the dissonance between them. 

It’s like he’s in a funhouse from the circus, mirrors lining the unending space around him, twisting and contorting his reflection, and Clint really hopes Bob the creepy clown isn’t waiting around the edge to scare him like he used to, but it’s only him, and the other him, and an unending spiral. 

Clint falls, or they fall, if falling is actually what’s happening, and more and more copies of him appear at his side, each spinning out into existence in fear, some flickering momentarily before vanishing, others sticking around long enough to freak the fuck out, much like Clint is doing. 

They fall. 

And fall. 

And — 

And then Clint lands, breath knocked out of him, wheezing, head pounding, hands trembling. 

He’s in an air duct, dust puffing up around him, pipes jabbing into his hip. 

But he’s also in the middle of an empty, sunset-sleepy street, a winter breeze blowing over his back, concrete cold under his cheek. 

And he’s also laying on his couch in Iowa, feet kicked up on the arm of his worn sofa, the captions of a muted baseball game letting him know that the Dodgers are likely not going to recover from their current run deficit. 

“What,” Clint says, with feeling, “the fuck?”

Chapter Text

Clint stares at his television set for a moment longer. He’s been here before, in this exact spot, just over three weeks ago, all ready for another lazy night after a month of lazy nights on his family’s decrepit old farm where he spent the evenings ignoring the spring chill that pushed its way under the door, and the days basking uncomfortably in that weird space between feeling content and at peace and feeling guilty for not doing the things that he would be doing if he was still on active duty. 

As the Astros hit another lowball into left field right between the second and third basemen, the captions remind Clint that the Dodgers probably aren’t going to make it out of this one on top. 

Clint sits up. He remembers this game; the Dodgers do not, in fact, make it out on top. 

He scrambles to find his phone, rooting through the couch cushions while his mind does a little scrambling of its own. He’s been sent back in time by three and a half weeks: he’s not in Wakanda, in fact, the world at large still thinks of Wakanda as just another impoverished African nation, a weak link at international gatherings, since there’s been no opportunity for T’Challa to whip out his vibranium-enforced, bullet-proof, Winter-Soldier resistant, frankly sexy-as-hell cat suit. 

There are no Accords, not yet, no inciting incident of mismanaged magic in South Africa to send the World Security Council hounding after the Avengers, no death-via self-immolation by Brock douchebag Rumlow, no Tony Stark guilt-induced signing away of rights, no unfair prison sentence, no fission between the Avengers, no — holy shit — no Winter Soldier set up, or hell, discovery. 

The couch is flipped over and all of the cushions are on the floor and he’s contemplating unzipping their covers just in case his phone managed to find its way in there when he remembers that he left it upstairs charging on the one outlet in the house that works, besides the one permanently reserved for the coffee machine. 

“Right,” he tells the Dodgers, whose fans are practically in tears by this point. “Upstairs.” 

He sprints up the rickety stairs, sidestepping the one that if he was a little less lazy, he’d definitely have fixed because it is A Hazard , skids down the hallway, slides into the room he’s taken up residence in and flops across the bed, scrabbling for his phone. 

He dials one of the eleven numbers he’s got memorized for Natasha, praying it’s the right one. She doesn’t let him save her numbers in a phone he might lose anymore, not since that time in Singapore. 

She picks up just as he’s beginning to think that he called the wrong one, or worse, forgot a digit again. 

“We’re three miles outside of Johannesburg, Hawkeye, why are you calling?” 

He has to pause at that, because what exactly is he supposed to say here? 

“Clint?”

“I’m from the future and Rumlow is about to explode himself and Wanda is going to get blamed and be really sad about it and Steve knows that Bucky killed Tony’s parents and Tony’s gonna find out and the UN is going to be bombed and also Wakanda is not what you think it is. Oh and I know where Bucky is, though I guess call him James cause that’s what he prefers, but you can’t tell Steve.” 

He pants into the phone and waits for her to respond; that covers it, right? 

She lets out a very familiar string of Russian curses. 

“Okay, durak, tell me what I need to know right now that will help me get through the next 24 hours.” 

So he does.

The reason why infiltration through the air vents never works, Clint reasons while trying to reconcile whatever the hell it was that just happened with the fact that he’s apparently stuck in an air vent, but is otherwise alive and well, is that duct systems are dirty, uncomfortable as fuck and honestly not at all constructed to hold an entire human. Especially not a 6’3, broad-shouldered archer, as his currently cramping thighs and twisted torso are not hesitating to shout at him. 

Clint tries to drag a hand up towards his face, shifting around until it pops free from where it’d been pinned under his chest, and wipes the dust out of his eyes. 

His brain attempts to remind him that he’s been in at least two situations just like this before he shuts that down; he doesn’t need his own mind telling him what an idiot he is, no thanks. 

Just ahead there’s a faint spill of light coming through the grill of a vent, and Clint can make out a few pipes in between himself and the vent that he might be able to use to heave himself in that direction. 

He tries to do so, but it’s slow going, his feet flailing out behind him in vain with nothing to push off of, shirt snagging and tearing on chinks in the metal siding, sweat dripping down into his eyes at the strain of attempting to remain as quiet as possible while hauling his body through a space it is very much not meant to fit. 

Clint grew up in the circus, sure, but he was never a fucking contortionist. 

It takes a solid seven minutes of sheer willpower and sweat before he’s able to get to the vent, and he rests against it, panting lightly, face pressed into the grill in a way that’s probably going to leave lines dug into his cheek for a while. 

It’s not just that he’s resting, he thinks as he regains the ability to breathe and attempts to resist coughing up all of the dust he’s just inhaled, but that staying put for a bit is the smart thing to do. He can watch from this point, figure out where he is and what’s going on. If Natasha were here, she’d tell him to hold down the fort and to lie in wait like she does, poised to take action in an instant after gathering as much information as she can. 

Besides, he’s pretty sure he just went through a time machine, so he should be allowed a little break to breathe and, you know, not have a panic attack in the middle of who-the-fuck-knows-when in who-the-fuck-knows-where. 

He tries to steady his breathing, drawing in through his nose like that one sherpa in the Andes back in 2007 told him would help get more oxygen into his brain, and promptly finds himself fighting to contain a massive sneeze as dust swoops up through his nostrils like each particle is on a kamikaze mission to betray his presence in the air duct. 

He’s there with his eyes streaming, nose twitching, and brain running a litany of aw no, hold it, hold it, hold it in when he sees movement out of the corner of his eyes down the hallway. It’s close enough that Clint knows he would’ve been able to hear what was happening if his hearing aids were working properly, so as the step of a foot into his vision turns into a leg that’s followed by a black tactical suited body, Clint also knows that whatever else happened in his journey via time machine, it screwed up the aids. 

Which is fine, all things considered; he’d spent years without any kind of hearing aids after his dad first knocked something loose up there, and it’s only recently that he’s had time to get used to these nice ones from Stark. 

Still, it’d be nice if one thing could go in his favor today. 

The person in the tactical apparel is shadowed by two more, each with heavy SIGs strapped to their waists, menacing and ominous. As they get closer, Clint strains to hear, and thinks he can just make out some words in distinctly not English. His ears work better with low tones, and he can hear the gruff edges of the words that signify something Slavic, or Germanic maybe, and by the time they’re 15 feet away he latches on to enough words to recognize pure German. The angle is awkward for him to read their lips, but he tries his best as they march down the hallway. 

“….successful capture in Afghanistan….” he can just make out from one tall guard to another, who tilts his head before responding so Clint misses pieces of it. 

“…would have been…..messy….if the asset….utilized…Commander’s recommendation…” 

The one in the lead has a manila folder open, and when they pass below the vent, Clint runs his eyes across the page as quickly as he can, thankful for his ability to translate as he goes, though his brain stalls out when he sees the phrases ‘put back into cryofreeze’ and ‘Stark taken by Ten Rings’ just two lines apart. 

There’s a buzz in his mind that prevents him from listening any more as the trio keeps walking, and he closes his eyes against the grate. Well, that answers that. 

Clint’s back in 2009 in a goddamn German Hydra base, Tony’s just been captured by the Ten Rings, and somewhere nearby is a cryogenically frozen super soldier with no recollection of Clint, Steve or his life as a real human.

Clint lets himself rest against the ground for a moment, briefly contemplates never standing up, and breathes deep as his heart slowly stops pounding. He cracks his eyes open and stares into the storm drain that’s gaping dark and smelly a few inches from his nose. Say what you will for the sewage system, he thinks, but there’s nothing quite like it to ground you in reality. Only the real world could smell this rank.

There’s low buzz underneath him, and he wonders momentarily if the time machine isn’t done with him yet, before the buzz grows stronger and his brain abruptly kickstarts and he rolls to the side because he’s in the middle of the goddamn street, and that’s not a time machine but a car rumbling towards him. 

He bangs up against the curb, one arm slipping into the offensive drain, right as the wheels of a Volkswagen hatchback tear past him, breeze rippling his clothes as it passes. 

So much for calming his heart down. 

He removes his arm from the drain and sits up, deciding that the Natasha on his shoulder (never clearly a devil or an angel) would definitely smack him on the arm for letting himself get caught unawares like this. The tiny Clint that always talks back to her tells him that getting run over by a car after being sent through a teleportation-time-travel machine would be a classic Barton move. 

Damn, if he’s personifying himself and his best friend in his head, that time machine thing must’ve really done a number on him. 

He pulls himself up into a seated position on the curb, scooting back a few steps for good measure, and takes stock of his surroundings. He’s in the downtown area of a city he doesn’t recognize, golden sunset darkening the edges of several mid-level high-rises, cherry-red brownstones at their bases already dipping darker in the shadows of the taller buildings. There’s a few church spires and a hill in the distance that’s crested with the dark red, orange and brown hues of early winter that tell Clint all of nothing about his location, other than that he’s probably in the American northeast somewhere, land of Protestant heritage and damn good fall road trip scenery. 

He stands and brushes his clothes off, taking note of the cars that line the street, and tries not to let the combination of their old models and shiny finishes send a shiver down his spine that has nothing to do with the chill in the air. Cars aren’t supposed to look that boxy anymore, and the square framing of the front lights on the sedan parked just up the road reminds him of his childhood. 

Not the time to freak out about outdated cars, he reminds himself, we’ve already covered that you went through a time machine. You can freak out once you’ve verified where you actually are. Maybe this town just really valued vintage? 

He nods decisively to precisely no-one, then starts working his way down the sidewalk towards where he can see the awning of a mini-mart stretching in faded green a few blocks away. 

By the time he gets to it, he’s passed a woman in the same kind of patchwork vest his mom wore when he was growing up, two girls with their hair in puffed out side ponytails on top of their overalls, and a middle-aged man with some kind of plaid monstrosity buttoned up to his chin, the party part of his greasy mullet brushing up against his collar. 

Yeah, time travel. That's a thing Clint’s done now. 

He walks into the mini-mart, the tinkling bell over his head jarring him slightly from his thoughts. He’d felt like he was in a vacuum in the trance-like way he’d walked down the street, but it’s good to know that at least his hearing aids are still working. Along the wall he can see a line of refrigerators stocked full with things familiar and long forgotten. Slice sodas and Jolt Cola bubble mockingly at him. 

In the corner of the store, the shop owner has a basketball game playing on the TV, and Michael motherfucking Jordan goes for a lay up in his Chicago Bulls uniform. Clint blinks. 

“Hey, man, you got a newspaper?” 

The clerk looks at him, eyes flicking up and down his body, frowns, then makes a dismissive gesture towards the doorway, where Clint had walked right past two newspaper stands. 

“Sorry,” Clint says out of force of habit, because despite what some people think, customer service workers are owed at least three times the amount of apologies they actually get, then grabs a paper from the stack out of the stand not marked ‘ New York Times ’, hoping for something local. He breathes in deep, then reads the title and date. 

‘Lancaster New Era’ tells him his location, and ‘December 16 th , 1991’ tells him it’s just about time that he can give himself permission to start freaking the fuck out. 

Because he knows exactly where he is, when he is, and what’s about to happen. 

He throws the paper back onto the stand, shouts another apology over his shoulder, and bursts out into the street, looking for the sign to a certain steakhouse Tony once told him was host to his parents’ final meals.

It would seem his Barton luck isn’t completely out to get him because he finds the steakhouse only ten minutes later, and can see through the window that both of the Starks are sitting inside, safe and accounted for, remarkably alive and not assassinated. They’ve each got a salad in front of them, and Clint doubts that any Howard Stark that raised Tony would eat a salad as an entree; Tony’s got that classic ate-too-much-red-meat-in-my-youth schtick going on, downing wheatgrass shots like nobody’s business. Clint calculates he’s got at least thirty minutes before the Starks finish their dinner. 

Even better, he’s able to quickly steal the keys to the car that he’d seen in the footage from the assassination from the valet station. All it took was pointing out that one of the Jeeps parked on the hill seemed to have been left in neutral and was about to roll backwards  — surely the valet should go run and take care of that? 

Clint spares the Starks another glance through the window. Howard’s got his head thrown back in a laugh, oversized tie flashing silver under his light grey suit jacket. Maria has her hand against the side of her face and is shaking her head with an embarrassed expression, but Clint can read the fondness in the wrinkles around her eyes, the love in the ease of the way she leans forward towards her husband. 

It’s not the picture of the parents Tony’s mentioned to them before, not the picture he tells the press, nor the one he pours out over nights where he’s struck with that poignant mixture of too much whiskey, post-battle adrenaline and the weight of a lifetime rich in a lack of confidants and real friends. 

Clint wonders how much of Tony’s mental picture is distorted by his memories, by his loss, and how much of this scene in front of  Clint is just something Tony never got to see. Clint’s parents were kinda like that, one way to each other, another way to the kids. 

Though Clint doesn’t think his mom ever really looked at his dad with any kind of fond embarrassment. Or fondness at all, really.

Keys in hand, Clint makes his way over to the Stark’s car, ready to perform a routine sweep before slashing their tires. He’s watched Ashton Kutcher’s excellent performance in The Butterfly Effect , he knows that something small is enough to change the course of things, so any small delay he can force on them should be enough to prevent the assassination from happening tonight. 

After quickly snatching and pulling on a thick winter jacket from the back seat, he doesn’t find anything useful besides a small handgun in the glove box, which he pockets, but when he gets to the trunk, he whistles low. 

There’s a small black case that looks a little like a protective firearm travel case, except for how it’s silver and stamped with the SHIELD insignia. Clint squints at it for a second before very quickly remembering what’s inside. 

“One murdery brainwashed soldier is enough for the world, thank you,” he says, and jimmies the case open. He does have a variety of skills, after all, and not all of them were earned in honorable ways. 

He snaps the case back closed after removing the vials and nestles it right where he found it in between the Starks’ overnight bags, then slashes the tires of their car and four more around it to try and make things look like one of those ‘I-hate-rich-people’ acts of nonsensical vandalism. He’s sure Stark will check the trunk asap, but this ought to buy Clint a little more time, especially if one of the owners of the other cars comes out first. 

He walks a couple blocks away until he finds a nondescript, unlocked burgundy station wagon that he’s able to hot wire, even with his cold hands, then he’s off to see if he can find a local sporting goods store. This may be a city, this may be the nineties, but surely he’ll be able to find something he can point and aim at the Hydra goons he’s gotta go take down in the next hour or so. 

When the ignition starts, the radio blares loudly, and R.E.M’s “ Losing My Religion ” over the cough of the engine puts him in a good mood. There’s probably some kind of sporting goods store in the suburbs, right?  He’s gotta drive through those first to get to where the Winter Soldier is lying in wait on deserted roads just outside of town. He thumps his hand on the steering wheel in time with the music, willing the heater to kick on quicker. He’ll get another weapon, scope out the scene, and figure out how the fuck to take down the Winter Soldier without hurting him. 

Easy. 

It’ll be fine.

Thirty minutes later, Clint has not found a sporting goods store. There’s only one street lamp along the highway every fifty meters, and he’s inching towards the point where he needs to get off the road now if he has any hope of surprising the Soldier and the squadron of Hydra guards that get sent out with him on most missions. 

He sighs, lets the last lingering notes of Michael Bolton’s “ When a Man Loves a Woman ” fade into the night, pulls over to the side of the road and turns the car off.  Paula Abdul is up next, but come on, priorities , Clint! 

He abandons his trusty steed and starts sneaking through the dark woods that line the road, circling a quarter mile west in order to approach the group from the rear.

His breath puffs out in white clouds as he tiptoes over the uneven terrain, his hands in his pockets to keep his fingers as warm as possible. He’ll need them functional once he reaches his target.  

He sees them first through a gap in the trees, three men in night-friendly all-black stealth suits, two standing close to the Soldier, who is shaking his head in disagreement with what they have to say, his hand resting on the handlebars of a wicked looking motorcycle. They’ve got a van for the rest of the crew, and Clint can just make out the glint of keys hooked onto one man’s waist that mark him as the driver. 

Three trained Hydra men and a potentially violent supersoldier versus a woman’s delicate concealed carry handgun with hopefully a full six shots? No big deal. Clint’s been at worse odds, surely. 

Okay, maybe not. 

But Clint Barton’s nothing if not reckless in the face of doing the right thing, so. 

Clint waits in the shadows for another minute to see if any other Hydra goons come out from the van, before quickly marking a trajectory, inhaling, and sprinting forward. 

He makes two clean headshots to the men closest to the Soldier before the other man and the Soldier pick out his location enough to get off shots of their own, but Clint’s got enough of a heads up on them that he’s able to duck around a tree and slide to the other side of the van, crouching down as small as he can make his lanky frame behind one of its rear tires. 

“I’m not here to hurt you, Bucky Barnes!” he shouts, as though some random stranger saying his long-forgotten name in the middle of a gun fight will somehow jog James’ memories. “I’d just really like to kill the dudes holding you prisoner cause they’re kinda assholes and you’re kinda not, at least when you’re not trying to kill me or running away from your feelings!” 

He hazards a glance under the van and whips his head right back up as he sees the last guard’s finger close around the trigger of his gun, and the shot blows past his bent knee. 

“I’m just saying it’d be super fucking dope if you didn’t try to kill me and instead tried to kill this dude that’s a part of the group that’s been holding you captive for the past forty years!” 

Clint calculates his options quickly and leaps to the front of the van, trying to bring his legs up as high as he can to clear space underneath the running boards in case the guard is still watching, and rips the passenger side door open right as the Winter Soldier barrels around the front, metal fist colliding with the flung door in a clang that echoes through the night air. 

Clint scrambles up into the passenger seat and shouts a little more. “Really, really promise I’m not here to hurt you, man!” 

He tumbles backwards over the center console as the Soldier lunges for him, and loses a shoe in the clench of one terrifying metal grip. “Hydra sucks, you’re Bucky Barnes, as in James Buchanan, as in Steve Roger’s best friend!” 

He slides back through the back of the van, bumping his head along various containers and the sharp edge of a seat frame, but all scrapes and bruises feel like nothing compared to the fear that’s buzzing high in his throat as the Soldier heaves his way into the front seat and swipes at his legs again. Clint is really fucking grateful they’d only armed the guy with a long range gun for this mission, because the rifle is too long for the Soldier to have carried it into the car with him.

Clint keeps backpedaling like some sort of scrambling, 6 foot 3 inch crab, and starts yelling everything he can to jog the Soldier’s memory. They’re not all great words, but then, Clint is sorta panicking for his life. “Rebecca! Winifred! The Great Depression! Barbasol! Nazis — oh, damn, probably shouldn’t mention those — Little Stevie with newspaper in his shoes, your fucking ride or die, the Howling Commandos!” 

Nothing seems to be getting through, and Clint’s brain decides to chime in and remind him that this I’m about to die feeling is actually a very familiar one. 

The rear doors of the van are yanked open just over Clint’s left shoulder, and he aims blindly over his head and takes a shot. 

There’s a thunk as the final guard falls face-first into the rear bumper an inch away from Clint’s outstretched arm. 

“I’m your friend, Bucky! James, I promise, I promise, please don’t do this,” Clint urges, kicking his legs up against the Soldier’s arms like a kid throwing a tantrum. 

The Soldier moves to maneuver his body over the console and Clint attempts to take advantage of the moment to do a backwards somersault, which he somehow manages, but the distance is too short and he ends up falling clean out of the back of the van, his fall unfortunately not hampered by the body of the last Hydra guard, which had collapsed inconveniently a foot to the right. 

In an instant, the Soldier is there, his heavy feet on either side of Clint’s hips, his expression worlds away from the one Clint had last seen on James’ face in Wakanda. Even though that disappointment and despondency back in 2016 was less than pleasant to be on the receiving end of, Clint would give anything to see that instead of the utter lack of humanity that’s staring down at him now. 

“I won’t hurt you, Bucky,” Clint babbles, hastily throwing the gun away, because what good’s a peashooter up against this? “I just want you to be safe and to protect the Starks. You don’t deserve this and you do deserve good things and I promise I can get you away, protect you from your handlers. You don’t have to do this anymore, please. Barnes, James, Bucky, please.” 

The Soldier crouches over his body, face and chest close enough to send Clint’s breath high in his throat. His heart is racing a mile a minute and though a week ago he would’ve given a lot to be this close to James, this death glare is not the expression he wants twisting James’ gorgeous, gorgeous features.

“I think I know those names,” the Soldier whispers, reaching out his metal hand to clasp Clint’s throat. “I don’t know how you know them.” 

Clint’s pulse thrums against the metal, and he feels trapped in a way he never has before. He tries to think before he speaks, but the pressure growing around his windpipe lets him know he doesn’t really have time to plan this out. “I know your friends, I am your friend, James.” Clint can see the Soldier’s eyes narrow underneath the hair that’s fallen forward in front of his face, so he backtracks. “I know that’s hard to believe, but I promise, I promise. I know it’s hard to trust people, and why would you when you’ve been hurt for years by everyone you’ve been around? But you can trust me — I’ll get you out of here, I hate Hydra just as much as you do.” 

At the slight twitch of fingers around his neck, he amends that statement. “Maybe not quite as much, but James, they’re some real evil fuckers and nobody deserves to be used like you have, okay? If you can’t trust that I’m on your side, can’t you at least trust that I’m not on theirs?” 

He pauses with bated breath, not daring away to look away from the Soldier’s eyes, as encased in shadows as they are. They look so different from the world-weary, tired eyes James turned his way during those two weeks in Wakanda. The ones he’d caught laughing over a brunch table at Steve’s reenactment of when he met Tony for the first time. The ones he’d met across a balcony at sunrise. The ones he’d stared deep into after their ill-advised kiss — hardly more than a brush of the lips, really — two nights before James had decided to commit to cryo until the Wakandan scientists cracked the code to break his trigger words. 

The eyes staring down at him now are different, marked by different tragedies, some yet to happen, some that now never will. But these are eyes that belong to the same man. 

The Soldier releases his hand from around Clint’s throat and straightens, stepping his left foot across Clint’s body. 

Dark trees frame the night sky behind him as Clint stares up from the ground, a roiling mix of anticipation, fear, and the tiniest sliver of hope preventing him from moving.

The Soldier looks down and extends a hand. “I don’t know about trusting you. But I’ve been looking for a reason to blow this fucking popsicle stand before you showed up, so I’ll take whatever help I can get.” 

Clint takes his hand, his heart buzzing, his head dizzy. Admittedly, this could be from him having just nearly passed out, or the simple fact that he’s now holding hands with the man he never thought he’d get to again — even if the Soldier is just using the hand hold to yank him up, and even though he drops Clint’s hand before he’s even steady on his feet. Clint grins and lets his giddiness shatter his already nearly nonexistent filter. 

“Perfect,” he says. “As a time traveler from the future, I am uniquely qualified to give you that help.”

Chapter Text

Natasha meets him in an abandoned field just outside of Bucharest, Romania in one of SHIELD’s Quinjets, and Clint steps on board still sticky from his three-layover economy class flight from Iowa. 

“You really couldn’t have gotten SHIELD to send a quinjet my way? Or picked me up at the farm instead of meeting me here?” He sits down with a groan in the copilot’s seat, stretching his legs in the roomy space in front of him, his arms high over head. “Flying economy is not what it was, Tash, I am fucking spoiled.” 

She rolls her eyes at him as she opens the bag he’d brought with him. “You know I couldn’t make a trip back to the States without raising suspicion, and you were the one who told me you wanted to do this without SHIELD interference, Mr. I’m-from-the-future.” 

Clint takes offense at her tone. “Hey, was I wrong? You only get to make fun of me if I’m wrong.” 

“Bold of you to try and dictate when I can and cannot make fun of you, durak, ” Natasha says, pulling out a heavy black hard drive from the bag. “This has the current draft of the Sokovia Accords on it?” 

“Yup,” Clint says, leaning forward. “As well as the blueprints for the Raft prison, Secretary Ross’ complicity in the inhumane imprisonment of people who don’t sign, and a clear electronic trail that shows plans to force the UN into an emergency voting process that violates their own protocols as well as the most recent global human rights policies that most of the nations who end up signing the Accords have agreed to enact in their own nations.” 

Natasha weighs the hard drive in her hands for a moment, then tucks it carefully into a hidden compartment under the baseboard of the quinjet. 

“Status update on Zemo?” Clint asks as she straightens. 

“I’ve got Sharon Carter on him, actually,” Natasha responds. “She’s competent and trustworthy, proved it back during the fall of the Triskelion.” 

Clint nods. He’d hated not being there when all that shit when down, and nearly dying at the hands of the backstabbing double agent he’d been on a mission with at the time in Tibet had been unpleasant to say the least, but he’s been thankful to have had the opportunity to vet the rest of the people who still worked adjacent to the Avengers, and he knows Sharon is one of the good ones. 

“She’ll call me in as soon as Zemo tries to make any of the moves you mentioned, and she understands that it’s important to restrain him for the next week without alerting the CIA,” Natasha continues, then reaches behind her seat to pull out a duffle of her own. “Here’s the trigger word book that I got from the Russian Zemo was planning on attacking. I’ll keep it on me until we’re able to get into Wakanda. I tried to hack into their security system like you suggested, and I think they’ve just got a complete dummy system set up; everything I found looked exactly like you’d expect any other sub saharan country to report, but there wasn’t enough on the illegal vibranium to connect the dots. I don’t think anyone else would pick up on it if they weren’t looking.” 

“We see what we wanna see,” Clint confirms, taking the book from her and shifting it in his hands. “It really sucks we can’t just burn this. You make that other stop on the way?” 

Natasha sighs, then nods, looking as haunted as he’d ever seen her. “One Siberian bunker infiltrated, five frozen super soldiers killed in their sleep, seventy years of Bucky Barnes torture data extracted and uploaded onto a secure server.” She looks at him, and puts her hand out to stop him from trembling. “It was bad, Clint. I don’t…I don’t know that anyone needs to see that footage.” 

Clint blinks up at the ceiling and turns to face out the window, where James is waiting in downtown Bucharest, unaware of their presence, living according to his own choices for the first time since, hell, when did he join the army again? 

“You don’t understand, Nat,” he says, steeling his voice. “Tony’s gonna lose his fucking mind. You know how much it’s gonna hurt him to find out Steve kept the fact that Barnes killed his parents from him. People do crazy shit when they feel betrayed like that. We’ve gotta get him to empathize with Barnes. Everything will fall apart if we don’t.” 

“I figured you’d say that.” Nat squeezes the hand she’s still got between her own. “You ready to go get Steve’s boy?” 

Clint frowns, because there are multiple things wrong with that statement. “He’s not Steve’s boy, he’s his own person. Plus — ” he turns back to her and scans her expression. “Can I tell you a secret from the future?” 

“Isn’t that what you’ve been doing for the past three days?” Natasha asks. 

“Yeah, but this is a dumb one,” he qualifies. 

She squeezes his hand again, and he’s so grateful for her. For all that she calls him an idiot on a daily basis, he knows she values him for all he brings to the table, and that her brand of idiot is always said with love, and never an actual dig at his intelligence. 

“In the previous timeline, that yeah, I get will never happen, me and James were totally into each other.” 

She arches a single disbelieving eyebrow. 

“Okay, I dunno about totally into each other, but like, we kissed. And okay, he may have chosen two days later to freeze himself and avoid talking to me about literally anything, but there was definitely some attraction there, Nat.” As her other brow moves up to join the first and her eyes start to crinkle at the edges, he throws his hands up. “It was a two way street, Natasha! I didn’t just throw my mouth on the first super hot super soldier I could find! He fucking consented!”

She snorts, and he flicks her in the knee.  

“He was into it. Just, you know, not into me. Least not enough to stick around. That’s how it goes with me though, right?” He sees her mouth begin to open, doubtless to call him out for his lack of self-esteem again , so he heads her off with a cocky grin. “But hey! I get a do-over this time. I gonna fucking wow this guy, okay?”

They find James at an outdoor market three blocks away from the same apartment he’d been staying at when Steve hunted him down after the bombing in Vienna. Clint and Nat watch for a few minutes, and it makes Clint’s heart ache to see him interact with the vendors, his low, lilting Romanian delivered with an ease that suggests the kind of comfort that James deserves, not the kind he’d ended up with in the original timeline. 

Well, fuck that. Clint’s gonna do his damndest to make sure that this James gets everything the other version always wanted. And he’s gonna make it happen without inciting an international manhunt, thank you very much. 

James makes them at a cafe fifteen minutes later, and Clint sees him freeze, shopping bag full of produce in hand, before he makes the choice to move towards them. He drops into the seat they’d left empty between them, setting the bag on the floor underneath the table. It tips over and a plum rolls out. Clint carefully stops it with his foot, then brings it up, offering it to James. 

He takes it. 

“What are you here for? I’m not — I don’t want to go back.” 

Clint frowns, not sure what he means. To Hydra? New York? To Steve? He glances at Natasha and sees her waiting for him, head tilted. Oh, right, he’s the one with all the information. He thinks he can probably do a better job with this than how he’d told Nat. 

“I was sent back in time by a Wakandan time machine, we’ve spent the past couple days trying to prevent an epic hurt-feelings fest between Steve and Tony that brought the entire Avengers to their knees in the original timeline, got you back all Winter Soldier-y and under arrest by the fucking United Nations, and eventually missing your arm again, and a bunch of people dead. Because bombs. And Sokovian grudges. You know, normal shitty stuff.” 

The hand over Natasha’s face tells him he didn’t do a much better job than last time. 

Clint crooks a hesitant smile. “You know what I mean?” 

James looks like he thinks Clint’s off his rocker, which is fair, but at Natasha’s genuine nod, he sighs. “Ignoring the, well, most of that  —  you’re here to…prevent me from becoming the Winter Soldier again?” He looks resigned, crossing his arms over his chest as he leans back in the chair. “I guess it’s better that you guys take me out than a government organization get their hands on me again.” 

Clint shakes his head rapidly, because that’s so far from what he means. “No, no, I said it all wrong. We’re not going to take you out, we’re trying to protect you from getting falsely accused for shit you didn’t do, for being the person you aren’t anymore. Nat, can you help? I’m fucking things up again.” 

Natasha leans forward, resting her hand on Clint’s, which he didn’t realize he’d raised in alarm. “Barnes, what my… colleague is trying to say is that we want to help. In the timeline he lived through, someone falsely accused you of setting off a bomb at the UN International Center in Vienna, which inspired a global manhunt where you were ultimately apprehended and brought back under your Hydra programming. Tensions were already running high within the interpersonal relationships of the Avengers, for reasons we can tell you about later, and Tony Stark discovered that the Winter Soldier assassinated his parents, causing an even greater rift to form between us. Clint is here to prevent all of that from happening again.” 

“Yeah,” Clint chimes in usefully. “What she said.” 

James looks at Clint doubtfully, then turns to Natasha. “You’ve verified that what he says is true?” 

Clint definitely isn’t hurt by that question. Not at all, not even a little. He’d probably doubt his claims, too. 

Natasha nods, sighing, as though giving Clint credit for being right takes a lot of effort. “I have. Everything he’s predicted, barring our own interference, has come true.” 

“The thing is,” Clint says, “even though we’ve stopped most of the shitty stuff from happening, we don’t think it’s entirely safe for you on your own, and Tony’s gonna have to find out sooner or later about the whole you slash your Winter Soldier possessed body killing his parents, and we’d like to make that as smooth a thing as possible.” 

James looks down at the plum in his hands, turning it gently between gloved fingers. They’re fingers that had once trailed softly across Clint’s cheekbones, and Clint hopes he’s doing enough to get them there again someday. “I can’t imagine that there’s any way to deliver that information smoothly.” 

“It will be difficult no matter what,” Natasha agrees, “but we think we’ve devised a way for it to be as safe for everyone as it can be.” 

“We need your consent, though,” Clint adds, and James looks up, a faint frown furrowing his brow. Clint meets his gaze, apologetic. “I know you haven’t really had a lot of opportunities to consent to things in the past, so I figured it was important we give you that chance now.” 

James shrugs a shoulder, and Clint hopes they’ve made the right moves. “We extracted files from an old Hydra base in Siberia where you were held, and,” he falters, steels himself, soldiering on, “tortured. The whole brainwashing thing, the chair — we’ve got pdf versions of the paper files all the way back to the fifties that detail the medical processes they forced you to go through, video footage as well.” 

The only change in James’ expression is that his frown has gotten deeper. Clint looks up at the ceiling because this fucking sucks . “We think our best bet is to send all of the information we can to Tony and the Wakandans to get them to understand what you’ve gone through. We think they have the best chance of removing your trigger words, since they were working on it in the other timeline.” 

James passes the plum between his hands, eyes still trained on the fruit. “So you want to use my pain to get sympathy, prevent your team from fucking itself up?” 

Clint winces. 

“It would be for your benefit, James,” Natasha says, snapping out an agile hand to catch the plum on a pass between his fingers. “We’re doing this for you. You deserve better than having to hide out here in constant fear that the Avengers or Hydra or the next evil organization who knows about the Soldier will find you and turn you back into the machine you were never meant to be.” 

James scoffs. “I can buy that from you, little spider. What about this one?” He turns to Clint, and the frustration Clint reads in his gaze makes him want to shrink through the chair into the floor.  He holds his hand out for the plum without breaking eye contact with Clint. “Why do you care about helping me? Why not just take me out, find another way to protect your little family?” 

Clint thinks it’s probably not the best idea to reveal his overwhelmingly unrequited crush on the original version of James. He’s in a new world now; he owes this James the opportunity to learn about Clint for himself. Clint has the chance to be a different person this time around, one that James will want enough to stick around. He can choose how he presents himself, put his best self forward, prevent himself from showing his true idiotic colors until James has the chance to see the good parts first. 

“I mean you’re real fucking hot,” is what comes out of his mouth, instead. 

“And once upon a time an asshole took over my mind, too,” is what his tongue attempts to fix it with. 

“We’re also kinda sniper bros and I wanna give you the privilege of a chance to prove you’re a better shot than me,” is how his traitor of a brain decides to round out the shitshow. 

Even Natasha doesn’t manage to hold back how impressed she is by his dazzling ability to show off how classy and refined he is. 

The plum squirts a line of juice onto Clint’s shoulder as James’ metal hand squeezes too tightly and the skin bursts. 

“Aw, fruity goodness, no,” Clint says mournfully, watching the soft purple flesh slide between the fingers of James’ leather glove. He’s scared to look at James’ face, so he squints one eye closed in case that helps. “I didn’t mean to pop your plum. Or get your fingers wet. I hate making things sticky.” 

Natasha snorts a laugh and claps them both on the shoulder. “I know you don’t know Barton yet, James, but I promise I vouch for him. He’s got redeeming qualities.” 

James looks incredulously between Natasha, the remnants of the plum, and Clint. 

Clint grins. 

James frowns. 

Natasha stands up to grab a bunch of napkins from a nearby counter. When she returns, she hands them to James and makes no move to sit back down. 

“Aw, Nat, do you have to leave already?” Clint knows he’s gotta sound somewhere between terrified and needy, but fuck him if he doesn’t try to hold on to Nat’s competence for as long as he can. Clint is fundamentally unprepared to handle trying to make a good impression on his own. 

“You’re leaving him here?” The outraged tone of James’ voice is probably justified, implying the addition of with me? And maybe also: Are you fucking kidding? Have you gone insane? Do you really feel I deserve a punishment so terrible ?

“You’re in good hands, Soldier.” Natasha swings her bag over her shoulder, and pats Clint on the head like someone would a cute, dumb puppy. He’d begrudge her the action if he didn’t know what awesome head scratches she gives. “Well, you’re in hands, anyway. And they’re good at some things.” 

She winks and Clint can’t hold back his incoherent noise of outrage, because she’s supposed to be his best friend. 

He and James both watch Natasha leave, and she’s been out of sight for a good forty five seconds before James looks back at Clint, resigned. 

Clint grins and gives him jazz hands. 

Might as well lean into it.

Clint waits for thirty more minutes in the duct before a single Hydra operative walks through the hallway alone and he’s able to drop down just behind the operative and use the unscrewed vent grate to knock the guy out. He thanks genetics for his height and the circus for his quick clothing change abilities as he slips on the man’s uniform and shoves his unconscious body up into the duct, not feeling all that bad about the bumps and bruises the guy’s gonna wake up with from all the pipes and jagged metal edges up there. 

Clint thanks his genetics again when he passes by two more operatives a moment later, because while his white ass and blonde hair may have given him a hell of a lot of guilt in Wakanda, it sure as fuck helps him blend in in the German branch of Neo-Nazi new world Hydra. 

He circles his way through the base for a while, carefully noting all of the signs and patterns he’s seen before during his, Steve, Sam, and Natasha’s non-stop dismantlement of all the Hydra bases they’d been able to find after the fall of the Triskelion. They hadn’t made it to this one, Clint doesn’t think, though maybe it had been abandoned some time in the years between 2009 and 2016. 

As Clint rounds the corner towards where he thinks the medical room will be located, he shrugs. Future abandonment planned or not, there’s no reason for the base to remain standing when he and the hopefully compliant Winter Soldier walk out of here soon. 

A white-coated doctor looks up when he walks into the room, and Clint focuses on the shape of her mouth, twisted around German words. 

“Can I help you? I do not have an appointment this morning.” 

Clint’s lip reading is pretty great, what with his whole superior eyesight thing, but he still takes care anytime he starts to speak when his aids are out, hoping he’s not yelling. He spreads his hands wide with a sheepish grin, then taps his grin with a finger.  “I need a new capsule. Got in a fight and knocked this one loose, you know how it is.” 

The doctor rolls her eyes, which Clint imagines probably has something to do with that eternal conflict between scientists and the heathen fighters they think are below them, and she turns towards the back of the room, saying something that Clint doesn’t quite catch. 

He talks over her so that he doesn’t miss anything that would betray him as he moves closer, sweeping the room for things he might be able to use. 

“I know, I know, you probably hate when we all come in here, but it was for a good reason. The guy was bad mouthing the Commander, can you believe it? Insubordination, damn near treason, not the kind of attitude we need around here.” He pauses just behind her as she opens a cabinet, and spots his target, a bottle of pills marked ‘cyanide’. He leans against the wall next to her as she brings it out, shaking one into her hand. 

“Defending the mission is worth getting a little knocked around and needing to stop by medical, I figure,” he says as she turns to him with her palm extended, mouth moving, her voice a little too high to be in tone range for him to pick it up clearly. “What was that? I was distracted by your beauty.” 

She frowns at him, and honestly, he’s more than a little bit ashamed of the line, too, then repeats herself impatiently. “I said, when can I expect to see the other guy?”

“You know, sweetheart, I’m not sure.” At the further narrowing of her eyes, he winces internally. See, this is why Nat never lets him do honeypot missions. He’s terrible at any kind of romantic subterfuge. “I think some of the officers need to have a talk with him first.” 

Her eyes flick to his shoulder, then down to his chest, and she frowns. “Which officers would talk to him, Captain?”

He looks at his own shoulders and sighs when he recognizes the red bars that signify a captain’s rank, then looks at the patch on his chest pocket, the abbreviation before the name ‘Muller’ probably also signifying the rank of the dude he’d shoved in the air duct. 

“Yes,” he says. “Exactly.” 

She takes a step backwards. 

He sighs again, then throws the bottle of cyanide capsules directly at her face at point blank range. 

Miraculously, as the doctor starts to crumple to the ground, presumably groaning, the bottle doesn’t burst open, and Clint catches it as it bounces backwards off her forehead. He kneels down beside her and has his knee on her windpipe, a hand over her mouth almost as quickly as she touches the ground, and he leans in close. 

“Really sorry about this. I mean, you are Hydra, so I don’t feel too bad, but it wasn’t my intention to have to knock you out when I showed up here.” Her hands slap at his legs, and her eyes bug out in outrage and fear. “It’s not even about gender, promise. A Hydra dickwad is a dickwad with any gender, whether or not an actual dick is involved at all.” 

Clint spares a moment to think of that German fortune teller back in the circus who’d been the one to teach him the essentials of the language, which for a 13-year-old, started and ended with different ways to combine the word dick with anything insulting. 

The scientist’s struggles come to a stop and her hands slowly slip to the sides, flopping palms up against the ground. 

Clint stands and pulls her off to the side, where there’s a locker that looks just about body sized waiting for one dickwad doctor to be shoved inside. He unceremoniously empties the contents of the locker, dumping everything onto a nearby countertop, stuffs the woman inside, and administers a few milligrams of a sedative he finds a couple minutes later into the crook of her elbow as a precaution to keep her under. 

He stuffs whatever he can find that might be useful into a duffle bag, pockets the cyanide pills, and makes his way towards the kitchens.

Ah, the convenience of poison. 

An hour later, a good 30 Hydra members are groaning in death throes in the middle of the cafeteria, the signal to the outside world has been jammed, there’s two explosive traps laid at the entrances, and Clint is staring at the face of one James Buchanan Barnes through the frosted glass of his cryotube. 

“Start the defrosting process,” he growls at the quaking technician next to him, who hastens to start flicking switches at the control panel, hands trembling. “No funny business. Defrost as fast as you can safely, and I won’t kill you. Might not even knock you out for too long if you’re lucky.” 

As the technician sets his orders into action, Clint circles the room, looking for anything that he might need to know or take with him to help James recover from however he’s going to pop out of the freezer feeling. He finds a few folders with notes dating all the way back to the fifties, recording different tactics to restrain the Winter Soldier, and eventually unearths the most recent folder, which details how upon thawing, ‘the Asset’ needed to be immediately confined, often spending up to 48 hours lacking recognition of any mental stimulation outside of orders, be they related to Hydra or his own past. Failure to restrain or confine ended poorly for anyone nearby. 

Cool, cool, cool, so no matter who Clint is to him, James is gonna come out swinging. Doesn’t seem like Clint will have the opportunity to try and convince him of who he is. 

Clint bites his lip, considering. He can’t exactly hang around here. Not only is a nearby base bound to get suspicious before too long, it isn’t like he’s gonna confine the Soldier in the chair in the back of the lab. He wouldn’t, ever, but especially not when James confessed, one of those late nights in Wakanda, to the chair being the most prominent feature in his nightmares. 

Clint exhales with his hands on his hips, and eyes the other thing he found in his search. 

A small red book, so innocent looking, a friendly little star depressed on the cover. A book that holds the power to contort the Soldier to the will of his handler, repress the man inside, steal his autonomy, leave him banging on the prison of his own body. 

Fuck. 

Clint opens the book to find the list of trigger words, and the door to the lab bangs open against the wall, a Hydra member stumbling inside, his steps sloppy. 

Clint catalogues his movements quickly, figures the guy’s got another ten minutes, tops, before he keels over, and levels his gun at him. 

The man’s eyes widen. “You…you’re not supposed to be here…Budapest….” He wavers, blinking, and a hand fumbles at his waist for his gun. 

“Sorry about that. I tend to show up where nobody wants me,” Clint says, wondering how the guy knows about Budapest, before deciding that with all the crazy he’s been exposed to lately, he really shouldn’t be surprised about Hydra being involved in that clusterfuck. 

“But this morning….you and the Widow…Trinity Square…” the man’s hand slips from his waist, and he slumps to the ground. 

Clint takes pity on the dude and fires a single shot, checking on the scientist after he does so. The white coat is still hunched over the control panel, witnessing Clint in action apparently enough to keep him in line. 

Clint frowns, turning back to face the cryotube. If he was in Budapest earlier today — he checks the clock on the wall — that showdown outside the subway had happened at 10am, which was right around the time Clint was commandeering the captain’s uniform here. 

Alright, cool, so there’s another, slightly younger, slightly less jaded Clint Barton running around in 2009, still fucking shit up as per regular scheduled programing. That may complicate things a little bit. 

Half an hour later, there’s a loud hiss as pressure is released from the top of the cryotube, and the technician hesitantly turns towards him. 

“The Asset will wake up soon, sir. Would you like me to get the restraints ready?” 

Clint wrinkles his nose. “Nah, you’re done. I’ll take it from here.”

The technician’s eyes skitter over to the door. “So can I leave then, sir?” 

“You know what? Sure,” Clint says magnanimously. The technician makes it about ten steps before a small tool tray nails him in the back of the head and he falls forward on the ground, out cold. 

Clint turns back to the tube as the glass slides down, and finds a slow blinking Winter Soldier trying to make sense of the scene before him. His arms and legs are tied down by rough leather straps, and he’s got that god-awful gas mask covering his mouth and nose. 

Clint steps forward and sees the haze in the Soldier’s eyes begin to clear, his gaze sharpening on the red book in Clint’s hands. 

“Listen, man, I’m really fucking sorry, okay?” Clint says as the Soldier begins to move slowly in his bonds. Clint’s close enough that he can see the confusion transition into fear, and his gut clenches. This really fucking sucks. 

He starts to read the words. 

The Soldier’s movements grow stronger, the whole tube shaking with the force of his efforts by the time Clint gets through the first three words. 

He’s got his metal arm out and is ripping at the other restraints, his body a weird juxtaposition of post frozen sluggishness and fear-driven adrenaline by the time Clint gets halfway through.

James is screaming, animalistic and raw, his body collapsed over the edge of the tube, by the time Clint gets to the last word. 

Then there’s silence, and Clint doesn’t know which word he was on when he started crying for the destruction of the man in front of him. 

Clint slides to his knees, and the Soldier looks up at him with fear, rage, and hopelessness warring in his stormy eyes over the mask. 

“I’m so sorry, James, Bucky, I’m so, so sorry,” Clint sniffs, and his heart aches at the expression the Soldier keeps trained on him. 

For the first time in his life, Clint thanks his father for his inability to hear the Soldier’s promise of compliance.

Clint and the Soldier make it out of the Hydra bunker without too much fanfare after that, a stolen Volkswagen their quick getaway. And Clint only has to set off one of the explosions! All in all, a very successful escape and rescue. He’s ignoring, of course, the guilt that’s building up in his chest whenever he makes eye contact with the Soldier, who has yet to say a single word to him since leaving. Clint had asked him to take off the mask, too, so he didn’t miss the chance to read his lips just in case. 

Clint doesn’t blame him, though. He’s been taken prisoner before, and though his default is usually to talk the ears off of his captors until they either shut him up or get sloppy enough for him to escape, he gets that pulling the silent card is also a completely reasonable response. 

Besides, why would you try to make nice or talk to the person who forced you into service the same way you’d been forced for the past sixty years? 

Clint drums his fingers on the steering wheel as they meander through the city streets of Prague a few hours after leaving Germany, on their way to a safehouse that should be empty for the next several months. If he’s right on the timeline, and what he did at the German Hydra base doesn’t screw things up too badly, the other Clint that’s out there right now, the 2009 Clint, will be holed up in Budapest playing tic tac toe for another week, and then he and Natasha will be forced to flee west, so the safehouse he’s got in mind in northwestern Romania should be clear from both Hydra’s reach and any potential ‘oh, it’s my time traveling double’ reality confrontations that might occur. World explosions, people erased out of existence, etc.

Clint’s not really sure about this part to be honest, but that’s what all the sci-fi movies say, so he figures it’s probably a good idea to stay out of his double’s path. 

His eyes flick over to the Soldier, who is sitting ram-rod straight in the seat next to him, staring out of the window with carefully calculating eyes. He hasn’t moved an inch in the past three hours, not even on some of the more winding mountain roads. Clint can’t help but think of the core strength the guy has gotta have to maintain that kind of posture, but even that thought is enough to send another wave of guilt through him, cause the last thing he needs to do after essentially taking the Soldier captive is objectify the guy. He feels sleazy. 

Shit, it’d be nice if he could contact Natasha for this. Clint is fundamentally unprepared to handle the rehabilitation of the Winter Soldier. 

“Hey, man, do you need to stop for anything? We’ve been in the car awhile, the body’s got needs, right?” Clint glances back and forth between the Soldier and the road for a minute, before trying again. “You’re gonna need to say something, my hearing’s off, so if you’re nodding or shaking your head, I might miss it.” 

The silence continues, and Clint catches the barest furrowing of brows before the Soldier smooths out his expression. 

“Okay, no worries. I was thinking we stop in twenty minutes to get gas, you can take care of whatever you need to take care of at that point, too.” He sighs, then fills the space a little more, because hazy muted Czech pop music through his fucked up ears is just not doing it for him right now. “I’ve got hearing aids, but they’re not working at the moment. And I know you probably think it’s real dumb for me to be telling you about my weaknesses, but nobody ever said I was smart. In fact, most people are pretty convinced of the opposite.” 

The Soldier doesn’t respond, so Clint continues. “I meant it when I said I was sorry about all this. I’m gonna try and figure out how to get rid of your trigger words, and I really do feel like shit for having to use them on you at all.” 

He turns the car towards the highway that will lead them southeast of Prague. “I know you don’t trust me, I wouldn’t if I was in your position, but I’m gonna do whatever I can to prove myself to you. And if that means telling you all my weaknesses, well, so be it. I’ll just have to hope that the James in there works his way out before you decide to murder me.” 

He catches an expression that looks like something that could be called incredulity if it was on anyone else’s face, and snorts. “Yeah, I know. Again, not the smartest guy around; I’m just pretty decent at hitting targets, shooting people, and tripping over myself. Somehow I ended up here, and damn if my guilt complex won’t let me just fuck off to a Caribbean island or something. I could, too, you know. Just snatch up a cash stash from one of Hydra’s outposts, steal a private jet or two, and live in peace for the rest of this fucking timeline.” 

He doesn’t even bother checking to see what the Soldier makes of his statements this time; he probably sounds like a lunatic to the poor guy. “But instead of a lifetime of piña coladas and an early death due to excessive sun exposure or falling asleep drunk and drowning in the high tide, I’m probably gonna die because I’ve put my dumbass self in the way of a guy who’s got every right to lash out at the world.” 

Clint pauses, tilts his head to the side, and merges onto the highway, noting the sign for an exit with a gas station just 15 km away. “Or I could run into 2009 Clint and time as we know it will cease to exist, hey?” 

The corner of the Soldier’s mouth twitches, and Clint decides to pretend it’s humor and instead of exasperation or frustration. It reminds him of Natasha in their early days working together, when he’d been so bad at reading her that it took nearly six months before he was able to identify which particular quirk of the lips meant he could continue cracking jokes and not get knocked in the head for them. 

He’d gotten knocked in the head a lot in those first six months. 

He imagines the learning process will take longer with the Soldier.

Chapter Text

They arrive at the safehouse in Romania late the next evening. The sun is just peeking over the rolling foothills of the Apuseni mountains, and the soft light only illuminates how terrible Clint’s feeling. 

It’s not that he’s upset about the safehouse. It’s as good as any, an old farmhouse, renovated recently enough so that it’s comfortable, tucked away in a village half an hour away from the nearest city with an international airport. There’s acres of wooded land between the house and its closest neighbors, and the views are fucking picturesque. It’s well stocked due to the Clint who belongs in this timeline and Natasha having stayed here just before going into the op in Budapest. The tech is good, the weapons locker maintained and equipped, and they’ve even got surveillance throughout the plot of land that’ll alert Clint if anyone shows up in a three mile radius. 

So it’s not the safehouse causing the shitty feelings. The safehouse is good. 

It’s just the fucking everything else. 

It’d been a long day and a half of driving, and the Soldier hasn’t so much as said a single word to Clint that wasn’t directly prompted by an order. Clint knows logically that this is how it’s gonna be, that he can’t expect this version of James to suddenly break his programming, forgive Clint, and become the man he’d spent years trying to regain back in 2016. Clint knows all of this, but it still really, really sucks. 

He also knows that he’s kinda a lot to handle, and Natasha’s told him a time or two that she wouldn’t wish being stuck in a car with him for 24 hours on their worst enemies. 

Jesus, but he misses Natasha. 

So it’s not the safehouse, and it’s not that he can’t rely on his platonic better half, and it’s not that he’s stuck with a version of his crush that hates his guts, but it’s definitely some combination of all of that — and on top of it all, nearly 48 hours of no sleep in an alternate timeline and a sense of encroaching despair just really fucking sucks. 

Plus, the last gas station they’d stopped at after crossing the border into Romania was out of coffee. 

Clint eyes the warm plaster walls in the main room critically. He studies the faint crack along the wall that edges up to the kitchen, a faded floral couch parked in front of it, a braided rug stretched out on the floor. The curtains flow inwards from the window, spring breeze pushing in crisp mountain air. There’s a little bit of dust sparking in the sunlight. Books in the low shelves across from the kitchen have Cyrillic running up and down the spines. A fan twists lazily overhead, pushing around the occasional air current. Clint imagines that if his hearing aids were working, he’d be hearing birdsong, little crickets, and all sorts of Disney Princess shit.

Fuck, he can’t avoid looking at the Soldier forever. 

The Soldier — Clint can’t think of him as anything else, not yet — is standing just behind him, seemingly content to just follow Clint wherever unless he’s expressly ordered otherwise. 

Clint gestures towards the sofa. “Would you just sit or something? It’s freaky.” 

He grimaces at his own words, which are ruder than he’d like them to be, but he’s fucking exhausted. But shit, he’s a circus brat. He should know better than to let his exhaustion move him to insults and slurs. “Sorry.” 

The Soldier moves towards the sofa silently, seating himself with a rigid back. He watches Clint, eyes trained on his every movement. His gaze has mellowed out from the clear rage, disgust and loathing that he’d leveled at Clint when he activated the trigger words, but the cold, calculating look he’s giving now isn’t much better.

Clint paces, turning on his heel as he reaches the boundaries of the rug. He stops in front of the Soldier, hands out, then shakes his head and resumes his circuit. 

He starts and stops several more times before he decides to steel the fuck up because as hard as this shit is, his explanations aren’t going to get anymore coherent the longer he is away from either sleep or caffeine. 

“Okay, look. Here’s the thing. I know that right now, you probably want nothing more than to kill me and everyone who has ever used those words against you. And I get that. I would too. I was brainwashed once, and it was years before I had any other goal than to kill the fucker.” He steadies his hands on his hips, wondering if his shaking is from what he’s saying or the fact that his eyes have been open for two days straight. 

“I don’t want to die, but more than that, I don’t want you to live as a mindless killing machine — you got every right to wanna kill the whole world, but you also deserve the right as a human to make the decision to not just kill people ‘cause that’s what you’ve spent the last sixty years doing.” 

The Soldier’s expression hasn’t changed a bit. 

Clint looks at the ceiling and keeps talking. “I think that you can break out of your programming, and I want to help you do that. That’s why we’re here. We’re gonna stay here until you start to figure out who you are and why it is that you’re so goddamn angry at everyone. Until you believe it for yourself, and it’s not just me telling you. I really hope you don’t decide to kill me before then — actually, okay, can you tell me how long it normally takes before your, fuck, words, programming, I don’t know, wears off and you start to regain control of yourself?” 

The Soldier doesn’t respond, and Clint sighs. 

“Come on , would you work with me here? Soldier, tell me how long it normally takes before your handlers’ control over you breaks and they require you to be reprogrammed.” He feels sick. 

The Soldier’s voice is raspy and undeniably angry. “Reprogramming is required on a biweekly basis for effective functioning.” 

Clint squints back up at the ceiling. The fan blades turn slowly above him as though to say you’re so screwed, dude . How dare they? He shuts his eyes and tries to dive into the blackness that’s swimming behind his eyelids in a desperate search for composure. He’s got just under two weeks to convince the Soldier that Clint’s on his side before having to use the trigger sequence again, and it’d be dope if he could remind him that he was a real live human by then, too. He’s self-containing them in bumfuck Romania, he can’t make contact with Nat, this timeline’s SHIELD is still infested with Hydra, and he’s got a ticking time bomb of a 1940’s super soldier in his clumsy, clumsy hands. 

Well, he’s not a contortionist, no, but he did learn how to do a little juggling back in the circus. He sets his jaw and looks back at the Soldier. 

“Okay. Ground rules. You are not allowed to leave the perimeter of this house without me. You are not allowed to attempt in any way to contact your former handlers. You are required to take care of your bodily functions and stay at optimal — not functional — optimal capacity regarding sleeping and eating and all that. Do what you need to do to take care of that. You are required to tell me if you need something to help you with it.” Clint searches his tired brain for anything else that will help the Soldier without adding unnecessary restraints on his freedoms. 

“I can’t require you to trust me, or to even give me the benefit of a doubt, but I’d like to think that before long you’ll at least be able to ask me questions. You can do that, I want you to. Ask me questions — about anything. I’m an open book.” It’s a wager, but he’s hoping that by encouraging the Soldier to ask questions, if he answers honestly, eventually the guy will trust that he’s telling the truth. 

“Anything you want to know, I want to tell you. You’ve lived too long being told what to do without your consent, it’s high time you be allowed control over what you do and what’s done to you. I don’t want to give you orders, James — Barnes, Bucky, whoever you are. I will if that’s what you need, but I want you to know I don’t want to.” 

He scrubs at his eyes, gritty with lack of sleep. 

“I need to sleep. You probably do too, but I won’t make you, so long as you remember the order that you need to remain at optimal capacity, which probably means sleep soon.” The Soldier gives a nod in confirmation, and if Clint weren’t about to fall asleep on his feet, he might have jumped for joy at the acknowledgment. “I won’t hurt you while you sleep. I won’t wake you up, I won’t be in the same room, I won’t try to — ”  his stomach twists at the sudden thought, “I won’t try to do anything to you while you sleep.” 

He and the Soldier stare at each other for a long moment, and Clint starts to back out of the room. 

“Feel free to explore the place, get a handle on your surroundings. I’ll be in the room down the hall, dead to the world once my head hits the pillow. There’s plenty of rooms, beds to crash in, couches to collapse on, floors to lay on if that’s more your style.” He runs a hand through his hair and thinks vaguely that he’ll need to shower when he wakes up. “Tomorrow we can talk more.” 

The Soldier watches him as he retreats from the main room, and Clint’s mind is a mess of guilt and anxieties. He goes down on the bed like a brick, but he’s awake for too long after. He wonders how far along Tony is in his imprisonment because it’d be nice to have a reformed, helpful Ironman to break down SHIELD and start working on something to remove the trigger words. He wonders if running into the current copy of himself really would wreck the universe, because he knows there’s no way to get Natasha’s help without involving himself. He wonders if he isn’t making a colossal mistake. He wonders if he’s going to wake up at all, or if this version of Clint is doomed to die in a safehouse in Romania with the hand of the man he’s trying to save clenched tight around his neck. 

Shut the fuck up, brain. He pulls a pillow over his head and wills his thoughts to just stop.

The Soldier takes to the idea of time travel and Clint knowing him in the future surprisingly well. What he doesn’t take well to the idea of is leaving his motorcycle behind and taking Clint’s perfectly reasonable, subtle, stolen station wagon instead.  

The Hydra van is dismissed immediately by both of them, what with the bullet holes that now run up and down its sides, the fist shaped indent in the passenger door, and the blood spatter against the rear bumper. The Soldier squints when Clint makes all of these incredibly valid points, then shrugs, conceding that Clint might be right, but that he’s gonna be the one driving the motorcycle. 

Clint spends the next nine and a half minutes informing him what an idiotic decision it would be to take a motorcycle instead of the family-friendly, low-profile station wagon he’s got parked just up the way, though every single time he attempts to interrupt the Soldier’s stomping around the camp gathering materials, he wonders if it’ll be the point that sends his chance at saving James in this timeline down the drain because the Soldier will kill him out of frustration. He can’t help it, though, he’s a talker. Plus, he knows he’s right. 

“You know I’m right, man!” 

The Soldier doesn’t dignify this with a response, slinging several full magazines into a duffle bag, then stalking over to search the corpse behind the van for useful items. 

“You think we can make it all the way upstate on a fucking motorcycle and not get noticed? You with a metal arm — sure, that’ll be real subtle — us two giant dudes trying to fit onto a solo bike? No big deal, super casual, I’m sure the local Hell’s Angels chapter will welcome us with open arms!” 

He doesn’t mention that the thought of riding a motorcycle through the night in the middle of winter makes him shiver preemptively, nor that the thought of straddling behind  — or in front of  — the Soldier is offering him his best source of warmth right now, all curling and heavy in his gut, but he definitely thinks it. 

The Soldier rifles through the corpse’s pockets, then shoves a few items and several bills into his own. 

“Oh look, mom, some innocent little child at a gas station will say, those two men look totally safe and please can we get closer because that one’s got a pretty, shiny arm!” 

The Soldier slings his rifle over his shoulder, straps two SIGs to his waist, and tosses a third to Clint. “Can you shoot this?” 

Clint pauses in his tirade, affronted. “Can I shoot this? Can I shoot this? Do you not know me at all? ” 

The Soldier stares at him for a moment, then turns to the front of the van, reaching into the center console. Which, fair. Clint’s an idiot. 

“Okay, you don’t know me at all. Let’s cover our bases. I’m Clint Barton, call-sign Hawkeye and certified dumbass, tried and true, but when it comes to shooting shit, I’m the best marksman in the world. I can hit anything, with anything.” 

He can just hear the Soldier’s disbelieving snort from where he’s got his upper body in the car, and Clint rolls his eyes. This bastard. 

“Just you wait, Bucky fucking Barnes, you’ll see. To answer your question, yes, I can shoot this. To answer my question, yes, we’ll be taking the station wagon to upstate New York.” 

The Soldier emerges from the van and tosses a bulletproof vest in Clint’s direction. “You didn’t ask a question.” 

Clint catches the vest and slips it on under his stolen jacket. By the time his head is through the neck, the Soldier is striding away from the camp in the direction Clint came from, brittle branches cracking under his heavy boots. 

Clint stares after him. 

“Wait, we’re taking the car?” 

The Soldier calls back over his shoulder as he weaves his way through the trees. “I thought that was the answer to your question!” 

Clint blinks, then hightails it after him. This sassy fucking bastard .

By the time they make it an hour out of Lancaster, Clint is just about convinced that it wasn’t a time machine he stumbled through, but some sort of multidimensional portal because this version of James Buchanan Barnes is unlike anything he’d ever imagined. 

Clint’s got his arms crossed over his chest in the passenger seat, chin tucked into the neck of his jacket, casually tapping a handgun against his bicep. There had been a scuffle to decide the driver, until the Soldier had suggested that he’d probably be better off in the passenger seat than Clint anyways, just in case Hydra came after them and someone was actually required to hit a moving target in the dark. Clint glowers at the dashboard; he’d fallen for the jab at his ego like a fucking punk. 

The Soldier has the side window down because he is a sadistic fucker who’s immune to the cold, his left arm resting against the door frame. Light from the occasional street lamp glints along the metal. He’d been firmly against Clint turning the Top Pop 100’s radio station back on, though apparently flaunting his cybernetic arm for all the world to see is just fine and dandy. 

“I don’t get it,” Clint finally says, breaking the silence he’d put up between them in the fifteen minutes that had passed since he realized how easily he’d been handled and that the Soldier wasn’t kidding about keeping the window rolled down. “I thought you were gonna be all Terminator-y and memory loss-y and shit. When you hit the helicarriers in 2014 you were practically Schwarzenegger’s doppelgänger.” 

The Soldier frowns, and Clint berates himself for making a pop culture reference. It’s not like Hydra would’ve let the guy out to go see a movie, no matter how creepily similar he is to the anti-hero. 

“It’s just a surprise, is all, that you’re so… so human, I guess. I thought the mental fuckery chair would’ve wiped you completely clean. That’s what you told me they did every time you started to show any hint of memories or suggestion of a personality.” 

The Soldier’s frown deepens at his mention of the chair, which okay, maybe Clint could have approached with a little more tact, before shrugging. “I’ve been out for a while. Hydra loans me out sometimes to other organizations, and it’s been a couple months since recalibration. Tonight was my first mission back with my normal handlers, and I was due back to base tomorrow morning.” 

Clint’s breath catches at the implications. One of Tony’s defining characteristics was his orphaned at 21 turned too young business owner status, and here the Soldier had been, inches away from breaking free from his programming and resisting the order to kill the Starks. His brain whines at him as he tries to imagine what Tony would’ve been like without that character trait before realizing with a smack that that’s essentially what he’s just caused. 

He studies the Soldier for a minute. “So where have you been in the months since your last,” his tongue trips over the word that’s supposed to describe machines, not people, and he tries to recover, “recalibration? Assassinate anyone of note lately? Topple any democracies?” 

The Soldier snorts. “No, I’ve been training other assassins. Apparently I’m experienced.” 

“Bro, I’m pretty sure you killed JFK,” Clint agrees. “And maybe Lincoln too? I’m not so great at history, though, so maybe that would’ve been a little before your time.” 

He gets something like a real grin for that one, the Soldier’s lips tilting up in a way that makes Clint need to tell his heart to calm the fuck down. It’s downright devastating. 

“You’re the time traveller, Barton, not me. Maybe you killed Lincoln.” 

Clint barks out a laugh and looks away from him, because the last thing he needs to do is develop feelings for the Soldier before he’s even got a chance to reclaim his own goddamn name. Don’t get him wrong, if he’s stuck in the nineties with an extra sassy James, or Bucky, or whoever the Soldier decides he’s gonna be, Clint’s gonna be all over that ass, but he knows how to keep his chill, totally. He can resist the pull of that sweet, sweet, sexy competence wrapped up in all this extra attitude, no big deal. 

The memory of that night in Wakanda floats to the top of his mind, and Clint wonders if this version of James would walk away from him like the other had. He glares down at the handgun he’s still tapping against his arm, as if it has the answers. You don’t know , he tells it, I can be smooth this time around. Patient. I can be the guy that this James wants . 

The handgun doesn’t deign to respond to his thoughts, and Clint tucks it into the door handle in retaliation. 

“You seem really cool with the fact that I’m from the future,” he tells the Soldier. “I assumed you’d have a hard time believing me.” 

“Seems like you made a lot of assumptions about me,” the Soldier responds. “But think about it — if what you’re telling me about myself is true, I was born in 1918 even though I look like I’m in my twenties, and my best friend from childhood, who I barely remember as a sickly, 100 pounds when wet little shit, got turned into a superhuman brick house and fought Nazis in World War II. Plus, my name is allegedly Bucky , which is some godforsaken nickname for James Buchanan , because apparently my parents were assholes.” 

He looks over at Clint, eyebrows raised. “If I believe all that, then why the fuck shouldn’t I believe that you’re from the future?” 

Clint has to grant him the argument with that solid show of logic. 

“You good with being Bucky, then?” 

The Soldier places his right hand on the top of the steering wheel, shrugs. “Better than being the Asset, I guess.” 

“Not James?” 

Bucky scoffs at him. “If you’re gonna call me anything, it might as well be Bucky.”

Clint nods as they turn north towards the Pennsylvania-New York border. Bucky, he can deal with Bucky.

Clint and Bucky try to knock. They try to go about this the right way, really, they do. 

But when no-one comes to the door of the scarily giant Stark mansion after a full three minutes, what choice is there other than to break in?

Clint shifts on his feet, and Bucky uncrosses his arms, quirks his brow up at Clint from where he’s been leaning up against one of the massive stone pillars. Clint imagines each pillar costs roughly the sum of his entire salary for the past 10 years with SHIELD. 

Steve forced them all to go to some architecture museum once after a mission in Greece, and there had been this video talking about the most expensive stone used for house exteriors. Clint had never known how fucking expensive fucking rocks could be when sourced from such and such quarry in so and so country. He doesn’t remember a single detail about the stones from the video, but he’s betting the one Bucky’s leaning against woulda made the cut to be included. How the fuck are Tony’s parents even more ostentatious that Tony? 

“So what do you think, the window?” 

Bucky tilts his head and shrugs. “That or just the door, you got decent lock-picking skills?” 

“Boy howdy, do I ever,” Clint says, gesturing for the gear bags they’d confiscated from the Hydra crew. He roots around for a minute to see what he can make of the mix of materials while Bucky hovers behind him. 

“And you’re sure this is the right way to do this? You said you know this guy, that you think he’ll help us, even though I was supposed to kill his parents last night?” 

Clint holds up a garrote wire and a lighter, then takes out his credit card, which he’d discovered at a gas station on the way up was totally useless. Thanks, time travel. “Yeah, me and Stark are good buds. I guess he might be a little different now, younger and less of an asshole maybe? Funny guy that thinks he’s funnier than he is, smart as fuck but you won’t hear me telling him that.” 

Bucky watches him work at the door for a moment. “He much like his dad, then?” 

Clint shrugs, tossing the lighter over his shoulder. He doesn’t hear it, but he knows it’s landed right back where it was in the bag. “Don’t know. In my timeline you killed the guy, remember? It’s 1991 now, the current version of me would be eight, maybe nine. Oh, hey.” He looks up at Bucky, hands him the garrote wire now that he’s done with it. “Do you think there’s another version of me in this timeline, or did I just replace the one that belongs here?”

Bucky puts the wire back and picks up the bags. “You ask a lot of questions that I have no way of knowing the answers to.” 

Clint pushes the door open and gets up off his knees. It’s a weird thought. Clint at eight would’ve just gotten to the circus with Barney; they’d be running around as backyard boys right about now, fetching people’s stuff, offering an extra hand when needed, Clint lending narrow, nimble fingers to the costumers while Barney pulls his weight with the heavier tasks at his puberty ridden thirteen years of age. They wouldn’t be in deep with the circus, not yet. 

Clint and Bucky step together into the entranceway of the mansion and fuck if the stone that lines the floor in here isn’t even fancier than the stuff outside. The house is lit only by morning light shining through the windows, and their steps echo as they move inside. There’s an enormous chandelier overhead that’s marred only by faint lines of cobwebs in the uppermost arms and down through the little dangly things. The heat is off, and Clint regrets having to leave Howard’s jacket in the car to prevent Tony from getting suspicious.

Bucky’s studying the area just like he is. “You sure Stark is here right now?” 

“Should be,” Clint says. “According to many a night spent drowning our sorrows in whiskey, he spent a lot of his time here after college, mostly just to spite his dad by not getting fully invested in the family business. He was always real bitter about his parents not being home around the holidays.” 

The first room they go into is dark, heavy sheets lying over most of the furniture in what might be a parlor. Ornate shelves line the walls, various pieces of glassware and artwork tastefully displayed. Clint runs his fingers along the edge of a sofa, and a line of white appears through a layer of dust. He frowns. 

“Maybe the butler is out? Or he’s gone somewhere for an early Christmas vacation?” 

Bucky hums his agreement, turning over what looks like a vase shaped like a bird of prey.

Clint makes grabby hands for it, catching the vase when Bucky tosses it to him. It’s an eagle maybe? An osprey? He really only knows it’s not a hawk. “We can do a full sweep of the place before making any decisions, but this is probably as good a place as any to bunk down until Tony shows up.” 

“ There will be no bunking down . ” A tinny voice filters in around them, and Clint almost drops the vase, catching it by its tiny, tiny beak. 

Bucky has both hands poised over the duffle where Clint knows he can draw out a gun in an instant. 

Clint sets the vase down on an end table and scans the room for the camera, spotting it in one of the corners. Tony Stark may be the one behind this technology, but it is still 1991, so it’s not like it’s nanotech. He walks over to it, waves. 

“Hey, Tony, good to hear you. We’re just here to talk to you, we’ve got some information you might wanna know.” 

The scoff through the speakers is distorted. “ Sure, okay, some information . I’ll give you some information, instead. The alarm to alert the local precinct will go off in five minutes, and you’ve got less than half of that to convince me to cancel it .” 

Clint bites down his grin at Tony’s amateur tactics. “Always so trigger happy, Tony! You’re almost as bad as this guy.” He jerks his hand over at Bucky, who grunts in response. “You’ve got all the power right now, you can keep us here all day if you want.” 

“ Three minutes and counting. ” 

Clint glances out of the parlor room. He can just see what looks like an electrical switch box in the hallway, tastefully covered with a thin layer of wood panelling. Rich people. 

“Whaddaya say, Buck, should I go for broke?” 

Bucky makes a noncommittal noise behind him, and Clint picks up a lamp from beside where he’d set the vase down. “Okay, tin man — aw, damn, that nickname doesn’t work for you in this timeline — okay, Tones, here’s the thing. I’m here with Bucky Barnes, yeah, like Captain America’s best friend, like right out of the forties, fuck-em-up-Nazis Bucky Barnes, and I just fell through a time machine in 2016 to get back here and save your parents’ sorry asses from assassination.” 

He hefts the lamp from hand to hand, testing its weight while waiting for Tony to process his words. He coughs at the dust it dislodges. 

“ What the fuck? Why the — why would that be what you chose to say? ” 

“Well probably because it’s the truth, of course,” Clint points out. “I can prove it, too, if you want. Let’s see, what can I tell you — James Rhodes is your best friend, even though you think he’s an idiot for enlisting.” 

“Half of the country disagrees with the military after Desert Storm, you’ll need to do better than that.” 

Clint maneuvers until he’s got the perfect sightline for the panel. Bucky’s watching him, smirking slightly. “Okay, fair. In your freshman year at MIT, which you technically completed within the first semester, you acted as a sorority’s mascot during pledging and got hammered on Greek Row every night for two weeks.” 

“ Anyone in Greek Life or the gossip rags knows about that. Thirty seconds.”  

Clint calculates the projection. “You really, really hate your dad. More than most kids hate their fathers, not just for stupid reasons like not getting the allowance you wanted, or him being too strict. No, you hate your dad because you think he’s never going to be proud of you and recognize the person you are and are capable of becoming.” 

There’s silence over the speaker. 

“How about you come down here and join us, hey?” 

“ Now, I — ”  

Clint throws the lamp at the electrical panel, and the speaker cuts off mid sentence.

Bucky’s got his eyebrows raised. 

Clint shrugs. “Old houses like this, everything electrical is connected. That should keep things shut down for a bit, figure I got Tony’s attention and he’ll come wandering in here on his own. The guy’s a genius, but he’s also so, so dumb. He’s got enough curiosity to kill 17 cats, the self-preservation instincts of a Pomeranian, and an ego fit for a king. He’ll be here.” 

Clint lifts one of the sheets off of a sofa, careful to hold his breath this time as dust spins through the air. He flops down, shifting on the uncomfortable cushions, the wooden armrest digging into his back. Fucking rich people. He tries moving some throw pillows under his shoulders. The pillows are fabric covered rocks. 

Four minutes later, Clint’s off of the sofa again, thumbing idly through a giant book in French on one of the side tables, Bucky is looking out the window in boredom, and Tony finally shows up, slinking around the doorway with a gun in one trembling hand. 

He’s dressed in a plain white tee-shirt with grease stains on the chest, his hair wild, ripped jeans hanging loose over his converse. He’s got a funny combination of emotions warring over his face, curiosity fighting with fear, both throwing fists against frustration.

Clint knew logically that Tony would be younger in this timeline, but Jesus, he didn’t expect him to be a literal fucking teenager. 

Tony gapes, flush rising to his cheeks. “I’m not a fucking teenager — I turned 21 six months ago!”

Clint grins, because while he hadn’t meant to say that loud, it isn’t inaccurate. “Buddy, any time someone starts listing the months since their last birthday, you know they’re still hot off the press baby-faced and green.” 

Tony splutters, the gun in his hand wavering. “I am not green ! I’ve been designing cutting edge technology since I was four . I’m the head of Stark Industries R&D division and I don’t even have to go into the office! I graduated from MIT at 20 with a masters — ”  

“In electrical engineering and physics,” Clint chimes along with him, rolling his eyes at the familiar reminder. “Yeah, I know.” 

“What are you, some kind of fan boy?” Tony accuses, eyes narrow. “Come to try and steal my designs? Well, I won’t let you. Security will be here in minutes, and you just try and test me, I’ll shoot this, I will.” 

Bucky glances at Clint, a question in his eyes. 

Clint nods. 

Then drops to the floor out of the line of the gun. 

Bucky’s a blur of motion across the living room and has the gun out of Tony’s hands and in his own in a matter of seconds. 

Tony’s on the ground, wheezing, eyes wide. 

Clint rolls up onto his feet, walks across the room, and extends his hand to Tony. “Baby-faced and green as grass. We all gotta start somewhere man, it’s alright.” 

Bucky tucks the gun into the back of his waistband and takes a few steps back, dusting his hands off. Tony’s gaze darts back and forth between the two of them for a minute before snorting a chuckle and letting Clint pull him to his feet. 

“You’re from the future?” Tony’s eyes pass over him, lighting on the only discernible piece of advanced tech, Clint’s over-the-ears hearing aids. He turns to Bucky next. “And you — you’re what, from the past?” 

Bucky scoffs. “Sure, something like that.” 

“Well fuck me,” Tony says. “And here I thought the most exciting thing about my Wednesday was going to be getting the code to DUM-E’s new movement programming figured out.” 

Clint smiles winningly at him. “We’re better than your robots any night of the week, baby.” 

Tony and Bucky both snort, then look askance at having reacted the same. 

Visibly disgruntled, Tony frowns, turning to Clint and cocking his head. “So, you said something about assassinating my parents?” 

Clint points an accusatory finger at Bucky. “Not me, him. I was the one who prevented it from happening.” 

Bucky’s sigh is the equivalent of anyone else throwing up their hands in exasperation. It’s perfect. Clint’s gonna make him sigh exasperatedly so fucking much .

Chapter Text

It only takes three days after the Wakandans receives all of the files about the Sokovia Accords, James’ imprisonment and torture, and the murder of the Starks before they reply to Natasha’s carefully coded message allowing James to come to Wakanda to seek asylum and receive medical attention. They’re grateful enough for the tip about the bombing that would have killed their monarch that they allow Clint to tag along, too. 

Clint glances over at James now, where he’s standing in the middle of the lab talking to two of the scientists about potential procedures they think they might be able to use to remove his Winter Soldier programming. Everyone’s feeling a lot more optimistic about it this go round, since Clint and Natasha had made sure to send the scientists all the information they could before James arrived. Plus, it helps that James hadn’t been forced back into Winter Soldier mode after two years of freedom, his mind manipulated into attacking the Avengers and a shit ton of civilians. 

Clint’s really hoping this means he won’t decide to go into cryostasis again, at least not as quickly as he did the last time. 

He’d really like to get a chance to make whatever might be between them work this time.

It hadn’t been uncomfortable between them in the few days they’d spent in Nat’s Bucharest safehouse together. James trusted Natasha’s judgement, and after a few classic Barton fuck-ups, one very memorably involving the loss of half a chair, a burst kitchen sink pipe, and a pigeon, he’d even laughed at Clint a few times. Clint’s yet to make James laugh with him, but most of his friendships and relationships involve at least some jokes at his expense, so it’s promising so far. 

James is smiling at the scientists, extending his arm for them to study. It’s an ugly piece of Soviet tech, entrenched in a bloody past, but at least it’s fucking attached to him this time. 

“Mr. Barton,” the scientist in front of him says sharply, drawing his eyes back to her. “I need you to repeat the explanation of your experience when you went through the time machine, with more detail this time.” 

Clint rubs his hand against the back of his neck sheepishly. “Sorry, Dr. M'tolla. It’s hard to focus sometimes.” She nods, then points at the holograph in front of her to remind him again. “You mean to tell me ‘glowy red pulsing while falling and seeing copies of myself appear and disappear’ isn’t descriptive enough?” 

She sighs, and Clint remembers how flat all of his jokes had fallen with the Wakandans in the original timeline, too. “You are a government agent, Mr. Barton, are you not? Surely you complete field reports, yes? They must be more involved than what you’ve given me now.” 

“I complete them,” he grumbles. “Doesn’t mean they’re any good.” 

She blinks slowly at him, and it’s almost as terrifying as cracking jokes at Natasha when she’s trying to get him to focus. 

Clint hunches in on himself, suitably chastened. 

“Perhaps it will help if you break it down into different moments, or different sensations. Can you describe what happened first?” 

Clint nods. “I mean, I’m not sure what all I pressed, I was kinda in the middle of trying not to hurt anything. My hands landed on some of the buttons,” he gestures at the machine next to him, where his hands might have been, “then I took them off, and then patted the top right here. Then I got, I dunno, sucked in?” 

Dr. M'tolla furrows her brow a little bit. “Sucked in?” 

Clint nods emphatically. “Like being stuck in a giant octopus monster. Which, since I guess most people haven’t had that experience, feels like you’ve got suction cups all over your body, pulling at your skin all at once. Like I would’ve gotten a full-body hickey if it had gone on any longer.” 

Dr. M'tolla adds that to her floating notes as if Clint’s making perfect sense. 

“The suction stopped all at once, though, and that’s when I felt like I was, I guess, like a mirror, shattering into a million pieces. That’s when the red glow started, too.” 

“How would you describe the red glow? Warm? What kind of red?” 

Clint scratches the back of his neck again. “I don’t know, red? Not like an Elmo, more like Daredevil kinda red?” 

Dr. M'tolla tilts her head. 

“Shoot. Not bright? More dark? Um.” He searches around the room for something that will work to compare it to, when he finds something close. “Oh, just like that.” He points at the bottom of the machine, which has a faint red glow emanating from it.  

Dr. M'tolla’s eyes widen, and she backs up from the machine hastily, calling over her shoulder at some of her team members throughout the room. 

Aw, time machine, no , Clint thinks before the glow swells up around him. 

The pressure isn’t so bad this time, and he has to unclench his eyes when he realizes from the silence around him that he’s stuck, but not falling through time and space again. 

He turns his head and can see the Wakandans and James behind him, moving around like they’re trying to figure out what to do to make it stop. In front of him, there’s a shine that’s glowing brighter and brighter, metallic silver, wavering like a mirage in the middle of a desert. 

Faint shapes form and stretch in front of him, and suddenly he’s looking at a copy of himself, standing next to a — what the fuck is that — a teenage Tony Stark? His copy is staring right back at him, mouth moving in words that the image is a little too blurry for Clint to make out, and two seconds before it all blinks out of existence, a Bucky Barnes in a motherfucking Metallica shirt and ripped jeans walks into the frame with a box of donuts in his hand like he’s ready to use them as a weapon on Clint floating in midair. 

The red glow vanishes, and Clint collapses against the closest table, heart pounding. 

“Okay, what,” he gets out between heavy pants, “the fuck? Why is there another version of me shacking up with baby Stark and metalhead Barnes? And why the fuck did I just see it? Is that supposed to happen?” 

One of Dr. M'tolla’s assistants speaks up. “We do not know. We haven’t sent back a person before, nothing more sentient than bacteria. You might be overloading the machine’s capacity.” 

Dr. M'tolla strides over to the machine, which is sitting there pretending to be all sweet and harmless, the lying bastard . She hooks up a few cords to a nearby computer, Clint assumes to get a read out on what just happened. 

“Should that happen? Should I be able to interact with the other copies that went back in time? ‘Cause that Clint knew I was there. He saw me.” 

Dr. M'tolla barely glances away from the computer to look at him, frowning slightly. “I don’t think so, no.” 

“Cool, cool, cool,” Clint says, which Nat would know is Clint code for trying-not-to-freak-the-fuck-out. “I’m just gonna go ahead and leave for now, then, yeah? You don’t need me for a while, right?” 

Dr. M'tolla waves him away with a distracted hand, and James meets him at the door on his way out. 

“Are you okay?” 

Clint glances at him, caught off guard. “I think so.” James nods, hands in his pockets as they walk through the hallway together. “Thanks.” 

“Sure.” 

There’s a few minutes of silence while Clint tries to calm his racing heart, then James speaks again. 

“You said you saw a different version of me, too?” 

Clint snorts. “Yeah, dude, I saw another one of you. And other you looked fucking rad. You got a thing for heavy metal music?” 

“I…don’t know.” 

Clint smirks, a vague plan taking shape in his mind. “Guess we gotta figure that out then. Do you think Wakanda has access to eighties and nineties angry American music?” 

James shrugs beside him. “I think Wakanda has access to everything we could ever want.” 

“Careful there, old-timer, you’re gonna sound like a real grandpa, impressed by all this new-fangled technology.” Clint studiously ignores how impressed he himself is on a daily basis by everything Wakanda has to offer. 

James shoves him lightly on the shoulder and Clint’s traitorous heart beats in hope. “Fuck off, Barton.”  

Clint tries not to dwell on the fact that that’s the first casual contact James has initiated with him, but the way his mind is fixating on the point on his shoulder James had touched, which might be on fire for how warm it feels right now, does not bode well for his ability to keep his chill.

Clint has decided that he really, really hates Metallica. And ACDC. And Guns N’ Roses. And every single band that Tony is intent on blasting in his workshop. The worst part is, Bucky seems to actually enjoy the over the top, screamingly loud shit. 

Clint’s just glad he can turn his hearing aids off. 

Right now he and Tony are in Tony’s lab in the converted pool house behind the main house, which he’d apparently been forced into after an explosion at age 11 that caused irreparable damage to yada yada something something priceless. Tony’s words, not Clint’s. 

It’s been almost two days since they arrived, and Tony’s decided that they’re probably not there to kill him or steal his inventions, though he’s still a little disbelieving of the whole time travel thing. 

Tony points a wrench in Clint’s general direction, and the movement is clear enough that Clint takes care to pay attention to Tony’s mouth to read his lips, since something terribly metal is still blasting at top volume throughout the room. Clint really didn’t remember nineties sound systems being so… impressively annoying. 

“So these Wakandans — citizens of that teeny tiny nation, home to goats and grass and defunct vibranium mines — are actually advanced enough to create a device that’s able to span time and space alike, with directive enough to send you right back to a point in your past where you would be able to prevent something bad from happening in the future?” 

Clint nods. He’s said as much to Tony at least six times already.

Tony frowns at the automobile part he’s fiddling with, having mumbled something earlier about how even though flying cars are such an outdated futuristic concept, he still needed to do it just to prove he could. Clint shifts to keep his mouth in sight. “I don’t buy it. Not the Wakanda being advanced thing, though after an hour spent pulling strings this morning didn’t turn up squat, and that’s either a point against your honesty or a blow to my ego, but the sending you to a point in your past part.” 

Clint idly messes with a tool he doesn’t recognize, spinning it between his thumb and forefinger, trying to find its balance. “No?” 

“No. If this was all centered on you, you’d’ve ended up back wherever you were in this year in your own life. I think it’s all centered around Bucky Barnes — sorry, can’t help but say his whole name because what the hell — so he must’ve been a part of the solution to whatever the problem was back in your original timeline. Was he a part of all that? You wanna tell me any more about whatever shit went down back then?” He pauses, tilts his head. “Oh, and where would you have ended up if you went back to where you were in 1991? You’d’ve been a baby, right?” 

Clint spins the tool a little bit, fixating on it instead of on the idea that the time machine had decided to send him back to Bucky instead of to his own past. He’s been thinking this whole time that the problem the machine was trying to fix was the whole Tony vs. Steve, Avengers vs. Avengers, Sokovia Accords fuck up catastrophe, but what if the machine just latched on to his dumbass pining? 

Fuck, but that’d be embarrassing. 

He ignores the first few of Tony’s questions — he’d found out with his original Stark that as long as you responded to him at least a little, he wouldn’t get too butthurt about 70% of his chatter being pushed to the side — and answers the last. 

“I wasn’t a baby, I was eight. And you’d have found me in a circus, actually, just arrived, fresh out of foster care. I was a backyard boy for years before I started training for my own act.” 

Tony sits up, eyebrows raised, and Clint wonders if he’s going to be weird about the foster care thing when — “A circus? With a big top and everything? Did you happen to be in a circus in upstate New York in November of 1991?”

Clint shrugs. “Mighta been, I dunno. I wasn’t so clear on the locations of everything back then — everything’s all a blur when you’re on the road, especially to a little kid. Plus, that was nearly 25 years ago for me.” 

“Well it wasn’t for me.” Tony stands up and walks over to a television that’s hooked up to some sort of computing device that looks at least 15 years more modern than what Clint remembers from the nineties, but then, it’s Tony, and also, Clint was a poor as hell orphan who lived in a circus. 

Tony turns the music off as he fiddles with the devices for a minute, and Clint reflexively turns his hearing aids back on, knowing that Tony will keep talking. “I was at a circus a couple weeks ago, can’t remember the name, maybe ‘cause I was near black out drunk for most of it, but I took a drone I’ve been working on and it took some video footage.” 

“A drone?” 

“Yeah, the Air Force wants some new Starktech drones; I’ve been fiddling around with a few lately.” 

Clint forgets that this Tony is yet to become disillusioned with his role in American military-industrial complex. Then his brain reminds him that there were weirder things than Tony still supplying the military in what he’d just said. “Wait, why were you at the circus?” 

Tony shrugs as slips a floppy disc on steroids into a slot somewhere. “Dunno. Saw a poster with a hot dude on it, it was fall break for the local colleges, there was probably alcohol involved. Maybe some marijuana. Parents weren’t in town because fuck family holidays, right? Plus, I’ve always liked  the idea of a bearded lady.” The television flicks on, grainy footage swimming into focus to show the underside of a set of grandstands. “Don’t worry too much about it.” 

Clint steps up beside him as the drone’s camera shakes, then rises from the ground, buzzing around under the grandstands for a few seconds before gliding out through a back entrance. It’s in black and white, but he’d recognize that set of trailers on the screen anywhere. “Well, fuck me,” he breathes. 

Tony lifts an eyebrow. “Maybe later.” 

Clint scoffs, a little of his tension leaving. In the span of 48 hours Tony’s tried to hit on both him and Bucky despite still kind of fearing for his life, and they’d both firmly rebuked him. Bucky’d cited the nearly 50 year age gap and likelihood of turning back into a mindless killing machine, which, you know, fair. Clint had quickly defaulted to it being too weird after knowing real-adult Tony Stark, in addition to being very not into people 12 years his junior. He’d also very intentionally not mentioned how his interest was very much already captured by funny as fuck, sassy as sin, hot as hell Bucky fucking Barnes. 

“Never gonna happen, you asshole,” he tells Tony, then leans forward and points at the screen. “That’s definitely Carson’s, my circus. These are the trailers we traveled in, me and Barney bunked up with a pair of aerialists for the first few years.” The drone sweeps between trailers, zooming around Clint’s past like it belongs there. 

“What the fuck, what a coincidence,” Tony says, hands on his hips. “I just wanted to see the behind the scenes —”  

Clint cuts him off with a hand to the arm. “Go back a second.” 

Because he just saw his eight year old self run across a television screen in the Starks’ upstate New York Mansion, and he’d really like for the world to stop throwing him for loops. 

Tony rewinds the footage in slow motion, and Clint watches his tiny self dip between two trailers, a wad of canvas nearly as big as him in his arms, threatening to send him toppling over. 

He voices a concern he realizes has been growing in the back of his mind for the past several minutes since Tony started talking about the logistics of time travel again. “Do you think that other version of me is still out there?” 

Tony pauses the footage with tiny Clint still on the screen. “My guess is yes, since you didn’t show up where he was in this timeline. You didn’t replace him — you’re a copy here, a redundancy maybe, like something extra.” 

Clint makes a valiant effort to side step being called a copy, a redundancy , which he’s most familiar with from mission reports where there’d been one too many operatives involved, excess all around, someone a waste of space, and when his attempt to not feel bad about that doesn’t pan out, he resolves to at least squash it down for the time being because —

“Fuck, there’s a tiny me out there.” 

And tiny him is only eight now, and life in the first couple years at the circus was okay, sure, but before too long, it would get real bad, real fast. Besides, he never managed to get Barney to talk about when he started working behind the scenes for extra cash; for all Clint knows, at 13 Barney was already mixed up in the less legal side of Carson’s. 

“Fuck,” he repeats. “We need to go save mini me.” 

“What?” Tony asks. 

“What?” Bucky echos from where he’s standing in the doorway with the box of donuts he’d been sent to the main house to fetch. “Are you talking about your dick like it’s another entity, Barton?” 

Clint splutters, and then there’s a compressive whomp that sweeps through the room, and a glowing, reflective red window blurs into existence in front of him. 

The edges are sharpening into clear lines, and he can see a different version of himself through the image, and it looks like he’s back in that cursed lab in Wakanda. 

“What the hell is that?” Bucky growls on his way in, donut box held high.

“That’s the original — I didn’t know — ” Clint tries to say, and he knows his eyes are huge. “I didn’t know this would happen, that’s Wakanda, that’s me — ” 

The other Clint makes eye contact with him and looks like he’s freaking out, and Clint sees his eyes widen when Bucky steps next to him. 

Bucky throws the donut box at the glowing window right as it vanishes into thin air. 

The box lands on the other side of the workshop, sliding along the floor until it bumps into the far wall. 

“Not the donuts,” Clint says mournfully. 

Nobody moves for thirty seconds, and then Clint goes to pick up the donut box. It hadn’t fallen open, but everything’s smushed, all the different glazes mixed together. This is upsetting. 

He sits down at the closest table and starts to pick through the disaster of donuts, and Bucky sits next to him, snatching a nearly clean plain glazed right out of his fingers. 

Tony makes an outraged snort, then strides over and grabs the box of donuts from under Clint’s hands right as he goes to pick up another one. “What the fuck , Clint? You’re going to sit here and be sad about damaged donuts when the original version of you just broke the time space continuum, you just told me you want to go rescue the tiny version of yourself, and oh, all of this is beside the fact that you’ve only been here in this timeline for five days and you’ve already teamed up with me and a formerly brainwashed murder machine?!” 

“I mean, yeah. We can figure out anything as long as we’ve got proper sustenance. Which this definitely counts as.” Clint makes grabby hands for the donut box, tilting his head as he does. “Oh, and don’t forget how you’re gonna help me figure out how to de-program this guy’s brain and also take down the secret neo-nazi branch of the shady government organization your dad works for. And also maybe find a different frozen super soldier in the Arctic. That’s important.” 

Bucky eats the rest of his donut in one bite and shoots the finger guns Clint taught him the night before at them both. 

Tony stares between the pair of them, then passes the box of donuts over. He collapses onto the stool next to Clint. “Well, when you say it like that.” 

Clint picks up two donuts, and when he turns to Bucky, torn on which to eat first, Bucky shrugs, then smirks, and Clint nods in agreement. He sandwiches them together and takes a big enough bite that Tony makes a disgusted noise beside him. 

Bucky, though, Bucky snorts, and Clint has to work not to spray sugar and dough everywhere.

It takes a few days for them to figure out where Carson’s Circus is going to be, enough so that Christmas and New Years pass without fanfare, but Clint’s able to pull a few names to call from the dredges of his memories — really, it’s impressive, with all the concussions he’s had — and they locate Carson’s route with a show planned just outside of Cleveland, only a few states over. 

Bucky’s hesitant to go at first, unwilling to put himself around children when he’s still got the threat of trigger word activation hanging over his head, not to mention the potential pursuit of Hydra lurking around every shadowy corner. Tony’s able to come up with a solution for the first concern, at least. 

Bucky and Clint are in one of the three media rooms watching television, Clint utterly disappointed to have found out that Dog Cops is still nearly twenty years from existence, but happy enough to show Bucky all of the dumb Nickelodeon shows from his childhood, when Tony shows up after a solid 17 hour stint in his work room. 

He steps in front of them, hands behind his back, a manic glint in his eyes. 

“Hey, man,” Clint complains, “you’re blocking Clarissa Explains It All .” 

Tony ignores him. “I think I’ve got it.” 

Bucky looks up from the bowl of cheese puffs he’s been entranced with for the past thirty minutes, his Winter Soldier conditioning having a really hard time reconciling the neon orange melt-in-your-mouth puffs as nutrition. “Got what?” 

“Ear Plugs.” 

“It’s a really good part and we’re gonna miss it!” Clint says, which is obviously more important than whatever Tony is going on about. 

Tony rolls his eyes, marching over to the television to turn it off. He looks over his shoulder at them. “Ear plugs!” 

Clint sighs, because it’s just his luck that for all the incredible things that Tony’s got around to inventing, TiVo isn’t one of them. “Ear plugs?” 

“It’s the perfect solution to Buckaroo’s problem. It’s so simple, I hate myself a little bit. I’ve been staring at the ceiling for the past hour trying to convince myself it was too simple, but no, the answer is ear plugs.” He proffers a pair up, and Bucky sets aside the bowl of offensively orange fat bombs to lean forward. 

“These are for your ears? What do they do?” Bucky turns them in his hands, squeezing the foam. 

“They block sound — and that’s it, right, your triggers? I can fancy up a pair, make sure they won’t fall out, check to make sure the decibel blocking is strong enough, and you’ll be golden, Ponyboy.” Tony snorts. “Ponyboy. Bucking Bronco, goddamnit, I’m delirious. Ear plugs .” 

Clint wonders what reference he’s missing, and whether Tony’s brain is a little broken. This Tony doesn’t have a Pepper to keep him in line, and he hasn’t yet invented his sentient, omnipresent AI to watch out for him. 

“These are just foam, see,” he tells Bucky, pausing to let him put one of the earplugs in his palm. Bucky’s still not great about being touched without notice, so Clint’s trying his best to put the ball in his court as much as possible. He depresses the foam, showing Bucky how it can be spun into a point. “You put it in your ear, the foam expands, blocking out sound. What do you think?” 

Bucky studies the one in between his metal fingers, shrugs. “As far as I know it’s just hearing the trigger words that does it. So I guess it’ll work until we have a more permanent solution?” 

He goes to try to put the one in his ear, and Clint lunges forward, knocking it out of his hand. Bucky flinches back, affronted. 

Clint points at his metal hand, and at his nod, pulls it towards his chest. “Important real person life lesson, Buck. One must always lick the fingers or wash the hands after consuming cheese puffs. That earplug was fucking covered in fake cheese shit. Please, please, if you’re going to be a real human, be a clean one.” 

Tony laughs from where he’s walking out of the room. “You’re one to talk, Barton! Pretty sure I saw you get that gash in your arm yesterday morning when you tripped into the counter, and you didn’t even bother to clean it up until the evening.” 

Clint looks down at the insulting gash, which he’d grudgingly wrapped with gauze after several hours of Bucky’s incessant nagging. “Yeah, but that’s just blood.” 

Tony narrows his eyes, then turns on his heel and stalks out. “Just blood, he says. Just ear plugs — what is my fucking life?” 

Bucky looks at Clint, an adorable furrow between his eyebrows Clint refuses to let himself think about. “I don’t get what the big deal is — outside of the obvious risk of infection and contamination of the area — it was just blood, right?” 

Clint moves his hand forward, telegraphing his motions, before knocking Bucky in the shoulder in solidarity. “That’s what I’m saying! I’m so glad you get it.” 

Bucky smirks back, bumps his shoulder against Clint’s. He picks up the remote after wiping his cheese-coated fingers in an exaggerated motion along the sofa cushion, because Bucky Barnes has regained nothing if not his ability to be a sassy little shit , and clicks the television back on. He settles back against the sofa and offers Clint the puffs, letting the bowl rest comfortably across where both of their thighs are pressed together. 

Clint grins and settles in. They’ll wait for Tony to develop a better set of ear plugs and go get the Baby Bartons tomorrow. For today, well, for today he’ll let himself enjoy this.

Tony sees them off the next day in one of his cars, apparently too offended at the mere thought of the Volkswagen being seen leaving his property to allow them to take it. Now that he thinks about it, Clint hasn’t seen it since they arrived, actually. 

Clint’s at the wheel this time, decidedly not going to be fooled into riding shotgun this time around, and Tony leans in through the passenger window, a pair of Ray-Bans pushed up in his hair. It’s early enough in the winter morning that the sun is still behind the trees on the horizon, which only serves as confirmation that Tony’s ever present sunglasses are really just the dumbass style choice Clint’s always thought they were. 

“Are you sure I can’t get a kiss from my soldier boys, heading off to war? I mean, this is what it must’ve felt like, right? Off on a mission, timeframe unsure, obstacles possible, who knows when I’ll see you again?” He blinks his eyes at them beguilingly. “I’ll be here, all alone, for so long! Something to remember you by, at least?” 

Bucky looks at Clint, head tilted slightly towards Tony, eyebrows raised in question. Clint smirks and nods his agreement. 

Bucky flashes the briefest of grins, then uses the flat of his palm to forcibly push Tony off and away from the car. Tony stumbles backwards a few feet, tripping over the snow-covered steps leading up to the entrance to land seated on his ass. 

“You can remember us by that, yeah?” Clint yells from over Bucky’s lap. “We’ve told you we’re too old for you, ya freaking weirdo.” 

“Besides,” Bucky says, his waving hand turning to a middle finger as Tony’s face flutters between outraged and amused, “I’ve got a thing for big blonde idiots.” 

Clint nods to confirm this. “You’ve seen the Captain America posters and film, right? Our boy Buck’s got a type.” 

And aren’t you exactly that type ? his brain, the interfering bastard that it is, asks him as though it’s intent on jeopardizing his tentative grasp on keeping things at least somewhat professional. 

He tightens his grip on the steering wheel and frowns at it since he can’t actually glare at his brain. 

“Be safe, you fucking assholes.” Tony stands up, checking the back of his pants like the rich boy he is anytime he’s not lost in the haze of his work flow, when grease can easily cover half his face without him noticing.

“Aren’t I always?” Clint asks. 

Bucky frowns. “You did try to apprehend the Winter Soldier and three Hydra soldiers alone with a ladies handgun — ”  

Tony chimes in, gleeful, “There was yesterday with the blowtorch — ” 

“And then this morning you jumped off the roof of the workshop instead of using the ladder — ”  Bucky’s got his metal hand on his chin, considering. 

“Not to mention the fact that you got here by not practicing proper lab safety and tripping into a time machine,” Tony points out, hands spread.

Clint growls in frustration and throws the gear shift into first, wheels spinning out along the driveway as the RPMs jump. This isn’t fair. They’ve known him for less than a month , they shouldn’t know him like this.  

There’s the faint smell of burning rubber in the air as the car lurches forward, twisting and curling with Tony’s trailing laughter. Clint rolls his eyes and catches Bucky’s smirk as he does, so natural in how it belongs on his face, this Bucky with just 25 years less of trauma, some ridiculous combination of chance landing him in Clint’s lap so much more able to regain who he is. It’s a smirk that’s snarky and sweet, attractive as all get out, and it sends a spike of warmth straight through Clint, something that feels like comfort, like fondness, like family, like maybe, maybe, maybe, his brain isn’t totally misleading him. 

The feeling lasts until Bucky turns on the stereo, fiddles with the cassette player for a moment, and the intro riff of Metallica's “Enter Sandman” starts blasting through the speakers.

Chapter Text

The first morning Clint wakes up in the Romanian safehouse, he forgets where and when he is. He’s woken up in enough safehouses over the years that it’s not unusual for him to not question things as he ambles into the kitchen, reaching up to scratch at his head and getting a whiff of what tells him he is well past due a shower. That’ll come later. Coffee first. 

He rifles through the cabinets in the kitchen, thanking his lucky stars that Natasha’s organized enough for the both of them and always puts the coffee in the same place — whatever cabinet or drawer is closest to the door. It’s more for her than for him, really; she accepts him as he is, but needs her partner in a functioning capacity as soon as possible. 

Five minutes later, the coffee pot is brewing, blessed steam slowly bringing him back to life, when Clint gets a faint prickling sensation in between his shoulder blades. His mind is instantly on alert, calculating the threat, and it’s as he’s spinning around, a spatula already flying from his fingertips, that he remembers that he’s playing house with the Winter Soldier. 

Who bats the spatula out of the air like he’s King Kong on the top of the Empire State Building knocking down airplanes that have dared enter his airspace. 

Clint tenses for potential retaliation, but none is forthcoming.

He exhales out a little of the adrenaline coursing through his body — only a little, because he’s still in a timeline not his own with a deadly assassin four feet away — and turns back to the coffee pot, at least sixteen times more awake than he’d been when he walked into the kitchen. 

It’s good to know that at least one of his orders has been followed from the night before, if the Soldier is still in the house with him. He opens up the pantry while drinking his first mug to see if another has, and finds only 28 protein bars on a shelf where he and Nat would normally leave their stock of 30. He turns to face the Soldier, who’s standing stock still in the doorway. 

He looks tired, if the circles under his eyes are anything to go by. Clint supposes he can’t really demand that the Soldier sleep, though; he knows enough about nightmares to ignorantly think that the guy could just drop and sleep on command. 

“Did you get any sleep?” 

The Soldier doesn’t reply. 

Right. 

Clint pours himself another mug of coffee, hesitates, then gets down another cup to pour for the Soldier. “There’s some creamer in the pantry, that’s what Nat always uses, sugar too.” 

The Soldier’s eyes flick towards the mug Clint’s got extended, then go back to his face. Clint sets the mug down on the counter. “No worries, then.” 

They watch each other across the yellowing linoleum floor, and Clint debates what to do. He’s going to have to talk to the Soldier, and for all that he knows he can fill a lake with the amount of empty words he’s able to spill at the drop of a hat, he doubts the Soldier much cares for Clint’s bullshitting. 

He’s going to actually have to be open with the guy. Be honest . Say what he’s actually thinking . Clint squeezes his eyes shut tightly enough to hurt, and when he blinks them open and the black fades from the corners of his vision, the Soldier’s still standing there like he’s waiting for orders. 

Yeah, Clint’s going to have to be a fuck ton more emotionally vulnerable than he’d like, but damn, he knows he needs to. Honesty and transparency had been the only thing that worked when Nat helped Clint find himself again after Loki. Well, that and being offered choice, being shown that he had autonomy over his own actions again. Learning how to trust his body and mind again, all that jazz. He can do that for the Soldier, can’t he? 

Clint cocks his head, then chugs the rest of his coffee. 

“I’d like to explain to you what we’re doing here. What my hopes are for all of this, why I took you from Hydra, besides of course the fact that they’re obviously a bunch of evil fuckers.” The Soldier is watching him impassively. “But I’m not gonna force you to listen to me if you don’t want to. I won’t make you stay here and listen to me, and I’m not gonna follow you if you leave. I’m not creepy like that.” 

The Soldier moves, then, and Clint tamps down the urge to respond. All he does is take the extra mug Clint had put down earlier, holding it between his hands. 

“You wanna fuck off during these next few days, I get it. You don’t wanna be around me, dude, even if I hadn’t used your trigger words against you, I’d get that. My whole team thinks I’m annoying to be around. But you — you haven’t got a lot of choices lately, so if you want to choose to not be near me, fuck if that’s the least thing I can do for you.” 

The Soldier’s still watching him, waiting. “As long as you don’t leave here, because no matter what, my bottom line is that you stay safe. For as long as these trigger words hold and hopefully after, once I convince you I’m on your side, that means that you stay here and away from Hydra. Okay? Confirm?” 

The Soldier nods. 

“Good. Well, then, I guess — I guess I can explain things now, if you want, or you can leave?” 

The Soldier takes two steps back towards the hallway, then, eye contact sustained with Clint, slowly tilts the mug of coffee upside down. Coffee pours out, splattering across the ground between them.

Clint flinches at the sad, sad waste, but lets him do it. 

The Soldier drops the mug, and it shatters, ceramic shooting across the kitchen. 

Clint forces a smile, chokes out a “that’s fine, too” and the Soldier’s eyes narrow before he backs out of the room. 

Clint sighs up at the ceiling before turning around to get a towel. He’s not about to go back on what he’d said, and really, the Soldier testing boundaries and leaving is a good thing because it shows a deliberate choice, but damn. Clint just wants to stop feeling so guilty all the time. 

He doesn’t see the Soldier for the rest of the day, though there are several points where he thinks he can sense his presence over his shoulder in the living room, in the kitchen, when he goes to the front yard to pick a few apples from the trees along the road. He never looks to check, even though it makes the spy in him, hell, the foster kid in him, tense and twitch at the feeling of being watched. But the Soldier’s gotta know that Clint trusts him with his back. 

When he makes rice and beans that night for dinner, he leaves the pots on the stove half full, and an unopened poison testing kit from the gear stash on the counter. He makes sure the apples are on display, the core of the one he’d eaten sitting on top of the trash can, then retires to the same room he’d slept in the night before.

When Clint wakes up the next morning, he remembers where and when he is before he leaves the bed, opting this time to groan into a pillow for three minutes before forcing himself to get up. 

When he gets into the kitchen, the pots from dinner are clean, an apple is missing, and the poison testing kit is sitting open on the counter, the used tab and ripped package a clear message to him that says: I don’t trust you, but I do trust science . Or maybe it says fuck you for ordering me to eat, I’ll do it on my terms. Or, alternatively, it says you can’t fool me even with these fake tests, I’ll try to trick you right back by making you think I ate the shit you made.

Either way, Clint smiles. 

The Soldier comes back into the kitchen when the coffee is halfway done brewing, and his stance seems a little bit looser. 

Clint pours two cups as soon as the brewing is done this time, and when he extends the second one to the Soldier, he takes it. 

Clint leans back against the countertop and sips from his mug, watching the Soldier watch him back. “Will you stick around and let me try to explain things to you this morning?” 

The Soldier nods. 

Clint doesn’t quite manage to hold back his grin, but he tries to hide it in his coffee. 

The Soldier doesn’t respond to anything Clint says for the next fifteen minutes with anything more than fleeting furrowed brows and slight nods and shakes of his head, but he stays in the room as Clint describes the time travel and the Avengers and Steve and who Hydra is and who Clint thinks the Soldier is and how Clint is willing to do just about anything to help the Soldier gain back his memories and his sense of self. 

When Clint’s rambling tapers off in a fit of “and I think that’s all — yeah, no wait, no, yep that’s it — I think, but maybe I forgot — okay it’s probably good for now,” because prattler extraordinaire he may be, fifteen minutes is a long time to pour your heart out into absolute silence, the Soldier nods once, then leaves the kitchen. 

Clint lays his head on the table, cheek flat against the checked tablecloth, and exhales deeply. 

It’s progress.

The first time the Soldier asks for something, Clint’s in the middle of making rice and beans for the fourth night in a row  — when the fuck else was he expected to learn how to cook, while being on the run from SHIELD? While on nonstop covert ops missions in his twenties? While coping with an alien god scrambling his brain? — and Clint’s pretty sure it’s another test. 

“Can I boil the water?” 

Clint nearly jumps out of his skin as the Soldier leans up against the kitchen counter to ask him, and realizes he might’ve asked already a few times. He’s a pretty observant guy though, so he probably knows not to say things where Clint can’t see and expect him to hear. 

Clint realizes he’s holding the can opener he’d just used to open the beans like a defensive weapon and places it gently down on the countertop. “The water?” 

The Soldier gives a brusque nod, eyes scanning Clint’s. 

Clint steps back and waves his hand towards the pot on the drying rack from yesterday. “Sure, man, it’s all yours. What, was I not boiling water the right way?” 

“No.” 

Clint lets out a burst of laughter that quells instantly when the Soldier tenses at the harsh noise and shoots him a glare. 

The Soldier turns the sink on to fill the pot and very slowly and intentionally turns his back to Clint as he does, and Clint can tell how uncomfortable he is, practically vibrating as the water inches up the sides. Clint retreats a few steps further towards the doorway. When the pot is full, the Soldier moves to the stove, then opens a cabinet overhead, taking out a container of salt. He opens a drawer, then pointedly looks at Clint as he measures salt into a teaspoon before putting it in the water. He turns the flames on. 

“Rice with no salt is bland.” 

Clint can’t help another involuntary laugh from breaking free, because apparently he’s a shitty enough cook to inspire the Soldier to break his personal vow of silence. 

The Soldier looks offended as Clint doubles over in the middle of the kitchen, and by the time he straightens, wiping moisture away from the corner of his eyes because what is his life, the Soldier’s vacated the premise and he’s left to finish the rice and beans on his own. 

He comes back when Clint shouts that the food is ready, though, and Clint would swear that the expression on the Soldier’s face as they eat is something like vindication.

Another day passes, bringing them to somewhere around seven days since Clint was forced to use the trigger sequence on the Soldier. The Soldier now lets himself be seen watching Clint, often drifting in and out of rooms, staying for a few minutes, studying what Clint’s doing before wandering off again. 

Clint’s pretty sure he never goes far, but he appreciates the illusion of privacy. 

On the bright side, he’s got his hearing aids mostly working again. He’s no Tony Stark, but he knows his way around his own aids, and a couple of days of tinkering later, they at least turn on, even if the volume sensitivity isn’t quite where it should be. But it’s nice to hear things again. 

It makes it easier to respond when the Soldier asks him questions, which is another thing he’s started doing more frequently. 

Sometimes they’re about where they are, why they’re there. 

“Why Romania?” 

“Why this town?”

“Who else knows that this is here? Are you sure they won’t be here? How can you be sure?” 

Sometimes they’re about the Soldier, though Clint thinks he takes all of Clint’s answers with a grain of salt, or more like a bucket of it. 

“How do you know that I’m who you say I am?” 

“How would it be possible for me to be alive if I was really born in 1918 and the year today is 2009?” 

“Do you know anything about Brooklyn?” 

That last one, though — Clint hasn’t said anything about Brooklyn to him, so whatever the Soldier is thinking about is coming directly from his own memories.  

Sometimes the questions are about Clint himself, as though the Soldier is testing him against an answer key he doesn’t have. Clint’s honest, though, every time, even when the questions drag raw across him. 

“Why are you all alone here? Isn’t there someone you can contact?” 

“Why me? Why do you care about me? I don’t know you.” 

“What did you mean about being brainwashed before?” 

Clint’s just finished putting his hearing aids back in after trying to adjust the volume again on the left one when the Soldier approaches from behind, another question on his tongue. 

“If you’re not going to kill me, and I don’t kill you, what happens next?” 

Clint sighs at the bluntness, but it’s a good question, isn’t it? Promising, suggesting the idea that things might end up okay. He turns to the Soldier. “We gotta wait here for a bit, wait for you to figure out who you are, before we make any definitive plans.” 

The Soldier raises a challenging eyebrow, unsatisfied with Clint’s answer. 

“Once that happens, I’ve got a friend — Tony Stark — that I want to go see. He should be able to help us with your trigger words. We’re a little out of date, but the Tony Stark in my timeline was working on a machine that could help adapt bad memories, so I’m thinking that could help you.” 

“He would do that? Help me?” 

Clint shrugs. “I think so. He’s a bit of an egomaniac, but he’s good people. He’s currently going through some crazy shit of his own right now that should help him become a better person. I think he’ll be willing to help.” 

“What else?” 

Clint fiddles with his hearing aids, but it’s the volume that’s messed up, not the tone. That disbelief, challenge, and accusation is all natural Soldier right now. “Well, I guess we gotta work some on taking down Hydra, now that we know where they are. I bet you could really help with that, if you’re able to remember where some of the bases are, who some of the higher-ups are.” 

“And?” 

Clint spreads his hands wide. “That’s a lot, isn’t it?” 

The Soldier frowns. “What about your team? The Avengers. You said they were family to you. What are you going to do about them?” 

Clint looks down. “I’m not sure. I don’t know if I’m able to interact with some of them in this timeline, it might mess things up. I’ll need to talk to Tony about it.” 

The Soldier huffs. “What about Steve?” 

“Steve?” 

“Steve,” the Soldier confirms. “You said he was in the Arctic. You said he was family. Don’t you want to save him?” 

Clint nods, wide-eyed. “I do — I just, I dunno how. I don’t have the resources to do that right now. There’s lots of my family out there that I can’t save.” Clint thinks of Steve, set to be frozen for another three years, and he thinks of Bruce, wandering somewhere in the Indian subcontinent, hiding from himself. He thinks of Wanda, and Pietro, who — he sits up straight. 

The Soldier cocks his head, gaze intense. 

Clint calculates distance in his mind, squints his eyes at edges, crinkles his nose trying to connect timelines and what Wanda had told him in the middle of the night after Ultron, when the memories of her brother weighed on both of them. 

He glances at the Soldier, then around the room, does some more calculations. 

“How do you feel about teenagers?”

They’ve been in Wakanda for almost a week, and it’s been…nice. Pleasant. James had been hesitant around, well, everyone at first, but he started to settle in more and more as it became clear that the scientists here are nothing like the ones who treated him like an inhuman test subject for the past seventy years. 

Clint’s been treated well, too, as well as can be expected with the constant trips and stumbles he manages to make just about everywhere he goes. He’s only said something unintentionally offensive a few times, that he knows of, and he’s been hasty to rectify his mistakes. The Wakandans and James have been quick to forgive his blunders. 

For all their growing comfort in Wakanda, though, Clint and James are still outsiders, still some of the only Westerners who the Wakandans have allowed access to their private sanctuaries in this timeline. And so, their comfort and sense of welcomeness ebbs and flows as it would anywhere where they don’t share a culture with their hosts, where they both feel like they’re an imposition to the people trying to fix their problems. Clint’s lived a life of feeling like that everywhere he goes, so the feeling is familiar, if as unpleasant as ever.

That’s why it's only natural for him and James to drift together during their down time. They’d only spent a few days together before King T’Chaka granted them entry, most of that time spent with Clint trying not to annoy James in his Romanian apartment too much, but here in Wakanda, they’re the closest thing to familiar either of them have. 

They each have their own small set of rooms made available to them, but more often than not Clint finds himself knocking on James’ door to see if he wants the company, and just as frequently, there’s a look of gratitude in James’ eyes that Clint knows well, even if James doesn’t quite articulate it when lets him in and says, “Sure, Barton, nothing better than having to listen to your sorry ass talk for hours on end.” 

James spends a few hours each day in the labs with various scientists and doctors, and Clint sometimes goes with him, though he makes sure to stay the fuck away from the time machine if he’s ever in that particular lab. He’s worked with Dr. M’tolla a few times since, but she and her team seem to be concentrating on running diagnostics on the machine, which doesn’t require Clint’s presence. 

Still, he and James have a lot of downtime, and after formal introductions to the royal family and outside of scheduling for their time at the labs, they’re left pretty much to their own devices. Steve will be here soon, finally having talked things through with Stark to the point that they’re both calm enough to plan on coming together in a few days' time once they finish settling the Accords situation with Natasha. 

James hasn’t said he’s nervous about it, but Clint knows that this will be the first time he’ll see his best friend in this timeline, and that in the original one, the meeting had been...less than ideal. Plus, there’s the whole hey-I-killed-your-parents-but-I-was-brainwashed thing he’s gotta be worried about with Stark. 

Either of those could be why Clint runs into him in the middle of the night on an open air patio, a haunted look on his face that Clint’s sure matches his own. 

Clint turns down his hearing aids, having turned them up to hear the low thrum of night time insects in a fit of nostalgia for backcountry Iowa. He speaks low to get James’ attention without startling him. “Hey, fancy meeting you here.” 

James tenses for a moment before relaxing, then walks over to join Clint on the couch he’s sprawled across. He picks up both of Clint’s feet and sets them unceremoniously on the ground, the shadow of a grin flitting across his face at Clint’s disgruntled snort. 

“Hey, Barton.” 

Clint looks at him, studying the faint bags under his eyes, the way his hair is swept back into a messy bun — an actually messy one, not those practiced kinds — a few chunks of hair dropping out along his neck, across his forehead. The man is exhausted. Doesn’t make him any less fucking hot, though. “Hey yourself.” 

James grins, and Clint feels stupid for it. “You already said that. What are you doing out here? Don’t you know it’s late? Don’t you have better places to be?” 

Clint gestures between them a few times, then extends his hand. “I didn’t realize that along with figuring out who you wanted to be, you’d decide to change your last name to Pot. Nice to meet you, I’m Mr. Kettle.” 

James gives him a genuine laugh this time, then swats his hand away. “I’ve just got a lot on my mind lately.” 

Clint hums in solidarity, then kicks his feet back up onto the couch, shoving both into James’ lap. It’s a dumb move for Clint’s poor, pining heart, but James seems like he could use all the comfort he can get right now. “Are you worried about Steve and Tony? It sounds like they’ve got things worked out between them, and Steve wouldn’t let Tony come if he wasn’t convinced he could behave himself around you.” 

James shrugs, then picks up one of Clint’s legs like he’s going to move it again, before simply readjusting it across his lap. He leaves his metal hand on Clint’s shin. “I’m worried about them, sure. And me, and the trigger sequence, and this life, and just — ” the look he shoots at Clint, for all the time Clint spends tracing the lines of his face, is undecipherable, “a lot of things. You know?” 

Clint nods. He does know. “It’ll be okay, I think.”

“Says the man who is wide awake at 2 a.m. with a person he himself called a murder-robot only two days ago.” 

“Hey, it was a compliment! I was just saying your accuracy on the Dora Milaje’s range was too good to be true!” 

James raises his eyebrows as though he has the audacity to not believe Clint’s words.

“I was!” 

James chuckles, then looks down at his hand, which Clint’s heart jolts to realize is moving in slow circles on his calf. 

His mouth is suddenly dry, and he tries to resist the instinctual urge to pull his feet away. James must feel his leg twitch, though, because his hand stops, and Clint can see the corner of his mouth slowly tilt back down from the smile that’d been there before. 

“James, I — ”  Clint starts, stops. 

James shakes his head, looking away with a grimace. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what I thought I was do — I don’t know what I thought. My hand, it’s, um, and then there’s me, and I — I don’t know what I thought.” 

Clint’s heart seizes, because that’s so far from what he means, and he realizes at the same time that this feels suspiciously like deja vu. He pushes up onto his elbows, drawing his legs off of James’ lap. “No, James, don’t do that.” 

James doesn’t look at him, but Clint can hear the self-deprecation in his voice. “Yeah, I know, I’m sorry, I — ” 

“No, no, stop. Don’t blame yourself for this — it’s not you it’s — wow, fuck, I’m in a bad romcom — it’s me. Look. I gotta tell you something. Would you look at me?” 

James does, the corners of his eyes crinkled in an anticipatory flinch. 

Clint sighs. “Okay, here’s the thing. I’m like, super fucking into you.” At James’ shocked expression, he sighs again and continues. “In the other timeline, the fucked up one, the other version of you and me…I don’t know. We had…something. Some chemistry? The other you... was too…lost, I think, and I shouldn’t have tried to start anything.” 

James frowns, studying Clint’s face in the dim light from inside. “But you did?” 

“Or he did, I don’t know. It was late — actually, it was a night kind of like this, ‘cept I’d been drinking cause things were just so, so screwed up. We were both up with nightmares, talking about shit, and one thing led to another and, um,” he coughs, suddenly feeling like a 15 year old, “and we kissed.” 

“And, what, was it so bad you don’t ever want to do it again?” James asks, in an almost accusatory tone. 

“Fuck, no,” Clint is hasty to correct. “As fucking if. The other James just...that’s when he decided to go into cryostasis. Two days after, anyways. And I know it probably wasn’t all me, but it damn sure did feel like it at the time.” 

James’ frown changes, deepens. “So...you don’t want to get hurt again? By him? By me?” 

Clint reaches out a hand, hesitating a half second before forcing himself into the bravery he needs to rest it on James’ thigh. “First, maybe a little bit. Second, you’re not him. You’re you. And you deserve someone who wants you for you, not that I want you for him, but I had to be clear about what happened in the past, too. Third,” his hands tightens, and he finds he doesn’t want to let go.  “Third, James, you deserve better than an emotion-filled, drunken kiss in the middle of the night when you’re already fucked up about everything else going on. I can’t do that to you, to any version of you, again.”  

James looks down at Clint’s hand on his thigh, and Clint wonders if he can feel the honesty that’s oozing out through his grip. He meets Clint’s eyes, evaluating. “I guess I can appreciate that.” 

Clint smiles. “But don’t you ever for a second think I’ve got something against that metal arm, James Buchanan Barnes. That thing is fucking hot.” 

James smirks, then looks away. Clint leans back down along the couch, kicks one of his feet out until James rests his hand back on top of his legs. 

The hum of crickets and African insects Clint’s not sure he wants to know the name of fills the space between them.

“We don’t have stars like this in Brooklyn,” James says softly, gazing up at the sky above.

Clint looks up, and everything is magnified, stars brighter in the way that can only happen outside of cities, gossamer streams of purple and pink streaking between constellations. “That’s not true. Everywhere’s got the same stars. Brooklyn just has a bunch of fog and light pollution that prevents us from seeing them most of the time.” 

James makes a noncommittal noise, and Clint shifts, craning his neck just in time to catch James’ frown, the way he’s worrying at his lip. He settles in, tries something. “Same stars, burning just as bright, just as pure, only there’s a bunch of polluted shit in the way. But they’re still there, and always will be.” 

He watches James’ eyes wander through the sky, an entire universe reflected in his gaze. “You think so?” 

Clint huffs a low laugh. “I may not know a lot about science, but that’s just facts, man. I promise.” 

James turns to look at him, a soft smile tilting the corners of his lips. Clint smiles back, then raises his eyebrows. “Y’know, they’ve got this crazy technology now that can clear away all that polluted crap? Just wipe it out, send the fog and the smog and all the garbage away? Help people see the sky and stars and everything that’s been hiding underneath the whole time?” 

“Oh, do they?” 

Clint nods, and James meets his eyes like he knows exactly what Clint’s really trying to say. “They do. That’s what they did in China for the 2008 Olympics,  y’know. Turned on some magic machines and poof , everything gone, skies were blue, oceans were clear, marathoners could breathe again.” 

James’ smile grows, and he laughs gently at Clint’s exaggerated tone. He reaches out and takes Clint’s hand in his before looking back up at the Wakandan night sky. “I think I’d like to see what kind of stars all that science can bring out.” 

Clint is warm from the tip of his nose to the ends of his toes. He grips James’ hand tighter, and smiles into the dark. “Yeah, me too. I know they’re gonna be beautiful.” 

They sit in silence together for a few minutes, and the heat in Clint grows and swells and settles in his bones. 

James breaks the silence, and Clint can feel the yearning in his voice like it’s a whisper of his own. “What if they can’t get rid of all of the pollution? What if it’s always there, tainting everything? What if the stars are never as bright as they could be? As they used to be?” 

Clint hesitates a little before answering, because they’ve entered a deep level of this metaphor that his middle school level education did not prepare him for. Clint Barton, wordsmith he is not. “It doesn’t really matter how much fog there is in front of them, James. The stars are perfect exactly how they are, and anyone who loves — who cares about — the night sky will be able to see that. No fog, no haze, no shitty past will be able to dim who that star really is.” 

James hums and it’s the kind of hum that sounds like maybe Clint’s said something right. 

“You really believe that?” 

Clint readjusts his hand in James’, interlacing their fingers together. “I really do.”

Chapter Text

The Stark retrofitted quinjet circles above them, propulsors jetting out as it prepares to touch down on the landing pad. Clint looks at James, watching the way his hair, left down after a shower, moves in the wind from the incoming thrusters. James’ face is a mix of emotions, nerves battling with excitement, with fear and anticipation. Clint steps a little closer to him, resting his hand briefly on James’ lower back. James shoots him a quick quirk of lips, gratitude clear, and Clink winks. 

James rolls his eyes. 

It’s a good look. 

The quinjet lands a moment later, and there’s a faint hum of the engines that matches the hum of anticipation in the air as James prepares to see his best friend for the first time since nearly killing him, then turning around and saving him from the Potomac in a fit of confusion over two years ago. Plus, there’s also the other guy that’ll be disembarking in a few minutes, one with every right to hold a grudge against James and all the pain he’d caused. 

The ramp slowly lowers, and Steve, the fucking golden retriever, is so eager that he doesn’t even wait until it’s touched the ground before he’s vaulted over the edge, rushing towards them like, well, an overeager golden ball of fluff who’s been forced to wait for its owner to get home from work for an entire day. 

Clint swears he sees Steve Scooby-Doo run in place on the tarmac, limbs flailing so fast he’s not going anywhere for a second, before jolting towards the pair of them. 

And then Steve is right there, his arms wrapped around James, who’s gingerly patting him on the back, expression alternating between genuine joy and a clear plea for help that he shoots at Clint over Steve’s heaving shoulders. 

Steve is murmuring something into James’ chest that Clint thinks he’d probably have no chance of understanding even if he had perfect hearing, and Clint can see his arms flex alarmingly tight, James’ hands jerking outward, so he reaches over and gently taps at Steve’s right shoulder. “Hey, buddy, he’s glad to see you, too, but it’d be really unfortunate if you get your friend back only to asphyxiate him yourself not a minute later, yeah?” 

Steve lets out a watery chuckle and steps backwards a little, his hands twitching like he wants to keep one on James at all times. Which Clint can understand; it’s a different situation here, but Clint wouldn’t mind having James in arms reach at all times, either. 

Steve wipes at his eyes, sniffing. “I’m sorry, Buck, it’s just so good to see you.” 

James gives him a tight smile. “I know.” 

Steve looks up and down his body, finding reason enough to smile. “You look real good, Buck. You doing okay?”

James nods reassuringly. It makes Clint a little uncomfortable to think that Steve is the one needing reassurance right now, but that’s how it goes, isn’t it? “I’m doin’ good. I’ve gotten a lot of help.” 

“Yeah?” Steve’s question is hopeful. “The doctors treating you good here, getting you the help you need?” 

James glances at Clint with a smile that Steve doesn’t quite catch the meaning of. It’s simultaneously teasing and sincere, warm and real, fleeting and burned into the back of Clint’s mind all at the same time. “Yeah, the doctors and everyone else have been real good to me,” James says.  

Steve can’t hold himself back, running a hand up James’ arm as though to assure himself he’s still real. “That’s…that’s so good to hear.” He turns to Clint, and the gratitude shining in his overly honest eyes is enough to make Clint step backwards in discomfort. “Thank you so much for everything you’ve done for him. I can’t imagine the terrible things we would’ve gone through without you.” 

Clint raises his hands, shaking his head. Clint doesn’t do gratitude , gross. “No worries there, Cap. Blame my clumsiness and inability to let sleeping dogs lie.” 

Steve swamps him with a hug, and even though Clint’s taller than him, he feels like he’s absolutely drowning. It could be the tears he can feel in the crook of his neck, but it’s more likely the 240 pounds of pure-bred American science that’s wrapped like an octopus around him. 

James snorts a laugh, and it’s then that Tony arrives, having walked much more sedately over from the quinjet. 

“Really, Rogers, this is Clint we’re talking about. Guy is more likely to trip his way into springing a trap than to actually do something right on purpose. If projectiles aren’t involved, he’s got a 50/50 chance of hitting the target for success on any given day.” He flips his sunglasses into his hair, turning to James. “Hi, murder machine that killed my parents. It’s good to meet you when you’re not trying to blow up the United Nations and leave me stranded for dead in Siberia.” 

James flinches, and Steve unlatches himself from around Clint with an aggravated sigh. “Come on, Tony, you said you weren’t gonna be a jerk about this. Besides, we know that Bucky wasn’t the one who was going to blow up the UN, and in the alternate timeline, I also abandoned you.” 

Tony sniffs haughtily. “Yes, well, you’ve gotta let me be irrationally upset about a future that could’ve been for at least a little bit longer. Pepper can tell you, I’m really good at holding grudges for hypotheticals. I’m still pissed at you, too, Steve-o. You should be grateful, really, now I’m able to spread the pissiness around. Share the wealth, if you will.” 

Well, Tony never pretended he wasn’t self-aware. 

Clint sidles up to James, bumps him in the shoulder. “Tony really isn’t so bad. He’s a dick at times, but it’s really all a front for his own insecurities.” 

Tony points his glasses at Clint. “I resemble that remark. Doesn't mean you’re allowed to call me on it though, Hawkguy.” At Steve’s pointed look, Tony sighs, and puts the glasses back on his face. “Yeah, yeah, okay. I know you were all brainwashed and not in control of your own mind when you killed my parents, yada yada, you’re a good person, wanna change, blah blah, I’m here to help. Forgive and forget, make the team happy, do the right thing, save the Soviet super soldier, save the world, etcetera etcetera.” 

James looks at Clint. “That’s his way of apologizing?” 

Clint nods sagely. “Honestly, you’re lucky you got that much.” 

Steve crosses his arms. “…And?” 

Tony sighs. “And yeah, birdbrain, thanks for falling through time and preventing a massive fuckup for everyone. Whether you did it intentionally or not, I’m quite fond of not accidentally sending my friends into supermax island prisons or fighting Capsicle and his war buddy near to death.”  

“Was that as painful as it sounded?” 

Tony glares at Clint, though the effect is a little lost through the glasses. “I don’t like you. We’re leaving here, aren’t we? Isn’t there some royalty to meet? Some tech to make me feel bad about my entire life’s work? I’m ready for the pain, let’s go.” 

Clint gestures towards the entrance into the building behind them, where an emissary of King T’Chaka is waiting to take them inside to be welcomed by the royal family. Tony immediately begins striding in that direction, Steve only a step behind, ever ready to be Tony’s appropriately respectful counterpart. 

James begins to follow, then pauses, waiting for Clint to catch up. 

“Was Steve this excitable when he found me on the first go round?” 

“Oh man, you’ve no idea. Once we arrived in Wakanda and things were mostly safe for you, I swear we had to use a crowbar to peel him off of you. Man’s got some serious separation issues. You see why we didn’t bring him with us to Bucharest when we came to get you?” 

James snorts, letting their swinging arms brush up against each other. “Guess this time around things are better enough that he can let me out of his sight, at least.” 

At that moment, Steve reappears in the doorway he’d followed Tony through. “Bucky? You coming?” 

“God, I spoke too soon.” 

Clint laughs. It feels right.

A few hours later, they’re back in the labs, Tony and a team of Wakandan scientists comparing theories, analyzing the code for B.A.R.F, Tony’s beta memory altering machine. Tony’s bluster lasted for all of 30 seconds before he broke down to absolutely geek the fuck out with his fellow science nerds, and they’ve been arguing excitedly for nearly an hour.

Clint’s seated in a very safe location far away from the time travel machine, explaining their time in Wakanda, James occasionally chiming in to add details or perspectives of his own. They’re in the middle of describing the different tribes that make up the kingdom, and how the lowland group who are mostly farmers have offered to lend James his own hut and plot of land, complete with its own herd of goats, when Clint feels the tell-tale sucking sensation of the time machine. 

“I’m not even near it this time!” is all he’s able to get out before he’s surrounded by an unfortunately familiar red glow. 

There’s more pressure this time; he feels like he’s being squeezed through a strainer, his body compressed down until it’s paper thin, then the weight releases with a pop, and he’s looking at another version of himself.  There’s still a metallic sheen in between himself and his other self, but it’s less opaque this time, like he’s able to see the correct hues of the colors of his other self’s world. 

“Clint?” his copy asks, a shattered mug of coffee spilling across the ground at his feet. “Original Clint?” 

“Yeah, I guess — I’m in 2016 at least,” Clint says after a half second pause, because it’s totally normal to speak to a clone of himself in a different timeline. He looks around the room and is able to recognize the location; it’s a safehouse near the Romanian-Hungarian border that he last stayed in before the disaster that was Budapest. “When are you?” 

The other Clint makes a face, then does a slashing movement at ear height, the signal he’s used since he was a kid, before he’d learned any kind of real sign, to say his ears aren’t catching things properly. Clint nods, then repeats himself face on, where he knows the other version of himself will be able to read his lips more clearly. 

 “2009, probably about three weeks into Budapest.” 

“Then what the hell are you doing there? Did you leave Nat there by herself?”

“No, I’m just a copy here, this timeline’s original Clint is still with her. You know me, I would never.” 

“Then what are you doing there?” 

“Well, see — ”  Other Clint’s explanation is cut off by a knife that comes speeding through the air towards Clint’s face, bouncing harmlessly off of the shimmering wall in front of him. A second later, the goddamn Winter Soldier dives through the doorway, popping out of a roll in front of Other Clint, a gun in either hand. 

Clint flinches backwards as fast as the soupy glow around him allows, then collapses to the ground as the window into the other timeline vanishes, dropping him like a marionette with his strings cut. 

James pulls him to his feet as the rest of the room's inhabitants rush over, concerned hands warm as they skate up his arms and down his sides. 

“Okay, back me up on this one,” Clint says shakily, patting James’ hand over his hip. “But I swear I didn’t do anything this time. I wasn’t even near it, I wasn’t even looking at it. I don’t think I was thinking about it? Oh shit, was I thinking about it? Is that enough?” 

Dr. M’tolla isn’t there, but Shuri is, as one of the lead researchers on the removal of James’ trigger sequence. Her eyebrows are raised high into her forehead, and she’s snapping out orders to assistants, directing some over to the machine, another to Clint. “That was longer this time — what other differences did you observe?” 

Steve’s got his whole concerned team leader expression on, arms folded over his chest, though he keeps looking at where James is holding onto Clint. Clint is very selfishly not going to let that stop him from taking the comfort James is offering. He leans a little heavier against him. “We could communicate this time. Me and the other Clint. Things were brighter, like I was closer to being there. It’s, um, 2009.”  

Tony, over at the machine with several of the other scientists, makes a noise at that. “2009? If that Clint is playing his cards right, that’s primo time for the arrival of the first Avenger.” 

Steve looks away from Clint and James. “I wasn’t defrosted until 2012, Tony.” 

“You don’t count, I’m talking about me. I was busy saving people long before they de-thawed your frozen ass.” 

“Which explains why Fury kept you as a consultant for so long, right?” Clint asks, grateful for the familiar banter. One of the lab assistants is running some kind of scanner over his body while Shuri records Clint’s observations into their files, and the scanner makes periodic beeping noises that he neither understands nor thinks he wants to. 

“Shut your trap, caveman.” 

“It’s Paleolithicman, I’ve told you,” Clint replies, finally feeling steady enough on his feet to be able to step away from James. He doesn’t go far, and James doesn’t seem to mind, keeping a hand outstretched on the countertop behind Clint like he’s willing to instantly be a tether if Clint needs one. 

The scanner makes a particularly loud beep. Clint meets the eyes of the assistant. “Is that a bad thing?” 

They shrug. “This measures for wavelengths that we think indicate time spent outside of this, hmm, for lack of a better term, reality.” 

Clint lets that marinate for a minute, but James narrows his eyes. “You’re saying he wasn’t here anymore? He left our reality?” 

The assistant shrugs again, moving to take their scanner over to a computer. “We’re not sure. But,” they trail off as the scanner hooks up, and lines of coding appear in the air in front of them, “but it seems like the wall between our timeline and the ones Mr. Barton created is weakening.” 

“Cool, cool, cool,” Clint says. “And that means what?” 

The assistant shrugs again, which is getting really fucking annoying , and keeps their gaze trained on the data in front of them. “We don’t have answers to that yet.” 

“Well that, that’s just,” Clint stutters out, “that’s just great. Let’s just let all of the walls break down and meet all of the different Clints and Jameses from everywhere, every time.” 

James tightens his grip on Clint’s hand, which Clint is startled to realize he’d grabbed in support.  

Shuri comes over to them, her eyes apologetic. “We’re working on it, Clint.” 

Steve’s over with Tony now, listening closely as he describes what the scientists are looking for as they examine the machine, worlds away from the animosity that’d been brewing between them at this point in the previous timeline. Nat’s busy working on ironing all of the Sokovia Accords shit out, there’s a James Rhodes in the world with fully functioning legs, an airport in Germany without millions of dollars in legal fees against the Avengers, and the entire country of South Africa doesn’t hate Wanda. He’s holding hands with James fucking Buchanan Barnes, and they’ve talked about things. James is happy to be here, happy to be around him, happy to be with people. 

Clint should’ve known this was all too good to be true.

After Natasha kicked Loki out of Clint’s mind, it was months before he felt like he had control over it again. Months before he could wake up each morning without a haze of blue, or the illusion of it, haunting the edge of his vision, flickering phantasmic at the corner of his eyes if he dared go too long without remembering that he belonged under the god’s control. Months before he wasn’t woken up in a cold sweat each night, hands clenched at the shirt over his chest, a ringing laughter in his ears. 

Months, more importantly, before he felt completely in control of himself — like he could trust himself and his actions, or his thoughts to be his own. 

And see, Clint’s been an independent guy his whole life. Good at taking care of himself, at doing what needs to get done. That’s what you do as an orphan, right? That’s how you get by in foster care. That’s what it’s like as the younger sibling of a brother who always wants recognition, but never quite gets enough of it. That’s what’s required of carnies in a world where traveling circuses and sideshow attractions don’t attract quite the same crowds like they used to, as in-home and fast-paced, more accessible entertainment take center stage. That’s just how things have to be as an undereducated, out-of-left-field agent with only one defining characteristic in a field of individuals who are all just so, so much more than you. 

So having his independence taken away — his ability to trust his decisions, his mind, his actions, his very thoughts — was just about the worst thing that could’ve happened to Clint Barton. 

Regaining his autonomy was what reminded Clint who he was. Who he had the capability to be. 

That’s why he knows how important it is to provide the Soldier with the opportunity to find out what autonomy means for himself. 

As the days tick by, closer to that two week mark that the Soldier said would mean the trigger sequence would begin to wear off, giving him the ability to counteract Clint’s orders, Clint does what he can to give the Soldier as much autonomy as he can. 

He starts with choices, always explicitly outlined. “Do you want to stay and listen to me? You don’t have to. You can leave.” 

The Soldier stays, sometimes. He lets Clint talk at him, responds occasionally, and is sometimes gone in the middle of a story that Clint once heard Steve tell about the Howling Commandos, or his own about the Maximoff twins, or whatever the fuck Clint finds in his head to ramble on about. Talking’s good, he thinks, no matter what it’s about. He figures the Soldier’s only heard orders, discussions about his pain tolerance, or mission reports for the past sixty fucking years, so even Clint’s dumbass chatter has gotta be better than that. Clint’s nothing if not undeniably human, and he thinks the Soldier needs a little reminder of humanity, even if it comes in idiot Clint form. 

Clint doesn’t mind when the Soldier leaves. He reminds himself every time that it’s a choice, and he wants the Soldier making those. 

He eventually moves on to tasks — not orders, not required — just mentioned, in passing, as though it might be nice to have some help with things. They’re shared in the middle of Clint’s nonstop monologuing, sidenotes about dinner, or how they’d need to pick all the apples soon, before those goddamn fucking crows get to them first. Clint’s never kept a place he’s stayed so clean in his entire life , but he figures that with so little to keep them occupied,  playing house with the Soldier is a way to invent shit to do out of thin air. He feels a little bit like a housewife from the sixties, actually, ironing the goddamn curtains, dusting the fucking fan blades , sweeping under rugs, mopping the floors . 

He thinks Natasha would laugh herself silly if she could see him at it, but hey. 

He wakes up one morning and finds the towels he put in the dryer the night before folded in the laundry room. 

The next day, the entire bookshelf is reorganized by color, then reorganized two days later by height and genre. 

Somewhere in the middle of all of Clint’s mindless chatter,  especially once the Soldier started to ask questions — about Steve, about Clint’s plans, about everything — Clint realizes that another step in the process towards the Soldier feeling in control of himself, of his life, is that he be included in that planning process. 

He’d asked — “If we don’t kill each other, what’s next?”— and though Clint told him the tentative ideas, including his realization that he’ll do everything in his power to prevent the Maximoffs from ever volunteering for Hydra experimentation, it seems important that the Soldier gets to be a part of choosing what happens next. 

So in between circus stories and other autobiographical anecdotes, mixed up with dramatic, one-sided reenactments of arguments around the Avenger’s dinner table and one memorable, three hour-long monologue about the exacting process of on-the-run wilderness-style fletching and bow-making, Clint talks about plans. 

He talks about what he thinks is happening to Tony right now in Afghanistan, his hopes for getting to him quickly when he breaks free in a few months. He talks about how it’ll be hard to convince him about the Soldier’s past, but if done delicately enough, he thinks it can work. 

He talks about Sokovia, how much Wanda means to him, how much the memory of Pietro does, how important it will be to save their innocence from the twisting, corruptive hands of Hydra. He talks about Ultron, the regret felt by all parties involved, the ego, the pride, and the fall. He talks about how so many ideas start out pure, and end up the exact opposite. 

He talks about what he’s doing with the Soldier, why he’s doing it, how he thinks it will help. He talks about his own fucked up mind, how Nat knocked sense into him, both literally to end Loki’s control of him, then figuratively when she’d dragged his ass back to the range he’d avoided in fear for nearly two months. He talks about autonomy, as much as he can make heads or tails of it, cause he’s pretty shit at words sometimes. But he says things like freedom, choice, and control, and drops one liners that he figures belong on those little bus stop advertisements that nonprofits sometimes rent out to raise awareness about mental health. Or the low-end version of that, anyway. Like the kind a high school group will make for a class project. Clint bets his words are worth at least that much inspiration.

He talks about SHIELD and how it might be useful to the pair of them, and how they’ll have to be careful about its Hydra infestation. It’s probably a good thing that Clint’s got another version of himself running around right now working for SHIELD, because he’d be fired so fucking fast if anyone ever found out how many secrets he spills to the Soldier. 

But see, he can’t afford to keep secrets. He’s gotta be honest. Clint’s an idiot about a lot of things, but even he’s not dumb enough to think he can get away with lying to the Soldier and expecting anything good to come of it. It’s hard enough to convince him of all of the fantastical truths, he doesn’t need to jeopardize the Soldier’s tentative willingness to believe him just because Clint’s a little uncomfortable being open. 

So he talks his fucking mouth off, goddamn hoarse at the end of each day and eventually, the Soldier responds. 

At first it’s just more questions  — for clarification, for more information, then eventually, for what Clint quickly realizes are tests. Questions about topics Clint’s already covered, as though the Soldier is trying to catch Clint slipping. Questions about things Clint has no way of knowing, like the Soldier is trying to test to see how far the bounds of Clint’s honesty will stretch. 

He tests Clint in other ways, too, in little, petty ways, like he’s trying to fucking annoy Clint into going back on his word. 

Eight days into their stay, only an hour after Clint finishes mopping the floors, he comes back into the house to discover to combat boot prints marching through every single room in the house in a muddy brown line. 

Clint sighs, and gets the mop back out. 

Nine days into their stay, Clint wakes up in the morning to the piercing scream of the smoke alarm, the safehouse’s entire stash of rice and beans a flaming pile in the center of the living room. 

Clint douses it in a sleepy, boxer-covered daze and makes plans to go to the market later. 

Most of the Soldier’s test are exactly the kinds of progress towards autonomy Clint likes to see him making, even if he’s left with literal piles of sheep shit to deal with, which is the result of a test on the tenth day of their stay, when the Soldier somehow manages to get the entire 34 count flock from their neighbor’s pasture into the safehouse. 

It’s all fine, Clint tells himself, because it’s autonomy. It’s the ghost of James, or Bucky, rearing its head to remind Clint that whoever he becomes, he’ll always be some kind of little shit.

Some of the Soldier’s tests, though, are a little less ‘Soldier being a shit’ and more just...shitty. 

Eleven days into their stay, Clint’s awoken by the looming figure of the Soldier over his bed, a knife at his throat. 

Fear shudders through him as the sharp blade presses up under his chin and his breath lodges in his chest. 

The Soldier leans closer, unwashed hair tilting into Clint’s face, and Clint scrabbles for a second before he realizes that the shaking he feels isn’t just his own. 

His fear takes a backseat as stupid guilt and sadness rush to the front of his emotional capacity, because his own panic is mirrored back tenfold in the eyes of the Soldier, his despair a horrible partner to the tremors that wrack the Soldier’s shoulders. 

Clint knows exactly what the aftereffects of a nightmare looks like, and he knows what being pushed to the limits of sanity feels like. 

Clint doesn’t know what’s going on. He doesn’t know if the Soldier’s programming broke early, if he’ll actually be able to kill Clint right now, or if this is just a really good fucking test that Clint can’t afford to fail. 

The Soldier’s eyes dart past Clint’s face, over to the window, to the door, back to the window, before he settles his gaze back on Clint. 

There’s dread in his expression, a wince wearing in the wrench of his mouth when he shifts his grip on the knife, like he can’t remember if the enemy from his nightmare is the one lying on the bed beneath him.

Clint’s stomach twists uncomfortably. 

This isn’t feigned. Every movement the Soldier makes is honest and scared, and broken programming or not, Clint knows he needs to meet the Soldier’s fear with the same sincerity he’s been trying to convince him of since day one. 

He tries to relax, to release the tension, to remind himself that he’s already resigned to whatever repercussions come with sheltering this particular shell-shocked, fucking trauma victim. 

And if that means the end of his stint in this particular timeline comes in the dark of the night in goddamn Romania? 

Well. At least he got the Soldier away from Hydra for a little bit. 

If the knife biting into his throat presses a little deeper, and the metal hand on his chest is the last hand he’ll ever feel in this life? At least he’ll go out knowing that that same hand once touched him with affection, and has learned over the past week and a half how it can be used for more than fulfilling the bidding of some evil Nazi fucks. 

He attempts a weak smile, and hopes the moonlight filtering in through the curtains is enough to illuminate his face. “Hey man, it’s okay.” 

Nat would probably call him an idiot for following the path his mind is winding down, but Nat’s not here right now, and as loud as her reprimands can be in his head sometimes, his own resignation is much louder, and has found fine company in the darkness of the room, the lateness of the hour, the world-weary way the Soldier’s expression burns into his own. 

“I mean, you really don’t gotta do this, but it’s cool if you do. I won’t stop you,” he says, and the words sound crazy even to his own ears. 

It’s enough to confuse the Soldier, too, because the pressure lessens against Clint’s throat, and the Soldier’s eyebrows raise, dark lines of uncertainty that slash through his fear. 

“You won’t stop me,” he repeats, pauses. “You won’t stop me?” 

Clint feels his attempt of a smile falter at the corner. “I told you I’d help you, however you needed. And if this, if this is what you think you need, what you think will help, well,” he chuckles ruefully, would shake his head if it didn’t mean rubbing his neck across a blade, “well I can hardly fault you for wanting to kill me. I’m just another asshole who used trigger words to control you.” 

The Soldier eases back, and Clint can’t help the sharp inhale he takes as the knife leaves his throat. “You’re nothing like them.” 

Clint shrugs. “I’ve been trying to show you that.” 

A gamut of emotions run across the Soldier’s face, but he makes no move to restrain Clint again. They watch each other, the breeze from the open window pushing at the sheets pooled around Clint’s waist. Slowly, slowly, the tightness across the Soldier’s shoulders softens, and without a word, he leaves. 

Clint exhales into the room and wonders just how easily he could have fucked up that test. 

The next morning, after three hours of terrible sleep, when Clint greets the Soldier with access codes to the weapons locker and a cup of coffee, the Soldier takes both with a new tone of acceptance, like maybe, just maybe, he finally understands that there’s not much point in questioning Clint’s sanity. 

  He still does anyway, though. “Why would you give me the access codes to the weapons locker? Why do you trust me?”

Clint shrugs, then starts systematically showing the Soldier all of the other hidey-holes around the safehouse, though Clint’s sure he’s already found most of them on his own. He gives him the numbers to Natasha’s burner cells that day, too, as well as all of his own personal SHIELD identification information, and everything he knows that the Soldier might be able to use in a bid for freedom, should he ultimately decide that that’s what he wants, if he doesn’t want to find it alongside Clint. 

Clint likes to think that the Soldier won’t decide to kill him as soon as the trigger sequence wears off, but if he does, and if he ends up alone, trying to figure out who he is and where he belongs, Clint’ll be damn sure the guy stands a fighting chance against the rest of the world. 

And maybe he’ll be fighting alone but he’s going to do it with every single advantage Clint can think to give him. Word by word, story by story, test by test, Clint has been trying for the last two weeks to give the soldier something the alternate James Barnes wouldn’t get for another few years. Autonomy.

Clint wakes up on the two week mark and is pleased to be waking up at all. 

One last coffee for the road, the ultimate Clint Francis Barton final meal? his brain asks, the pessimist little asshole that it is.

He stumbles into the kitchen like the slave to caffeine he is, because his brain does know him well, and waits with bated breath as the coffee brews. He’s got his hearing aids in, though the left one is still sketching out, but doesn’t hear anything besides the gurgle of the machine in front of him.  

He pours a cup, takes his first sip, and settles back against the counter, because it sure would be a shame if he doesn’t at least get to finish one final cup before venturing off to find the Soldier and his own potential demise, when a goddamn motherfucking portal rips open in the middle of the kitchen, a red and silver spinning disk that stretches wider and wider until it nearly covers the width of the room. 

Well, this wasn’t how you thought it was going to end , his brain logically points out, and Clint nods to concede the point. 

Clint looks down at the ground to mourn the loss of what would’ve been his last coffee in this life, now shattered ceramic at his feet, and when he looks up, his own face is staring back at him from the lab in Wakanda. 

“Clint?” He asks, just able to make out James in the background…and is that Tony? “Original Clint?” 

“Yeah…” the Original Clint’s head swings around the room, clearly taking stock of Clint’s surroundings, and the distortion between them is too much for Clint’s faulty hearing aids to pick up what he’s saying. Clint does that stupid sign he used to use with Barney to let him know he couldn’t hear well whenever their dad was yelling at them, and Original Clint nods in understanding. 

“I think I’m the original. I’m in 2016, at least. When are you?” 

“2009,” Clint says, scratching his head to figure out how to narrow it down for his double. “Probably about three weeks into Budapest.” 

Original Clint’s eyes narrow. “Then what the hell are you doing there? Did you leave Nat there by herself?”

Clint scoffs. He may not be the original anymore, but he’s still the same goddamn person. “No, I’m just a copy here, this timeline’s original Clint is still with her. You know me, I would never.” 

“Then what are you doing there?”

Clint puts his hands on his hips, thinking about how to explain, but just as he starts to, the Soldier dives through the kitchen doorway, one of the throwing knives from the weapons locker downstairs already flying through the air at Original Clint. 

Whatever glimmering barrier lies between them is enough to deflect the knife, and before Clint has a full second to process all of the movement happening around him, the Soldier is in front of him, two guns in hand, a clear defense between Clint and the perceived threat. 

“No, don’t — ”  is all Clint’s able to choke out before the other timeline vanishes, and he and the Soldier are left alone in the kitchen. 

Clint takes a minute to breathe, his heart pounding. 

The Soldier takes a minute to lower his weapons, then strides rapidly from the room in a manner that Clint knows means he’s going to check the rest of the safehouse for breaches. 

Clint steps gingerly around the shattered pieces of his mug, heading to the cabinet with the cleaning supplies, which he still can’t quite believe he knows the location of. 

The kitchen is clean, the coffee pot brewing a second pot, Clint’s heartbeat mostly steady, when the Soldier returns. 

Clint pours two mugs, hands one to him. 

“So, decided you’re not going to kill me now that you can?” 

The Soldier takes a sip, raising a solitary eyebrow. “I have questions. You have answers for me. I think...I think I trust them.” 

Clint tries his best to tamp down his grin, but he can’t fucking help it. He’s not ever gonna take anyone’s shit for over-the-comm chatter again. His willingness to talk nonstop for the past two weeks straight not only convinced the Winter Soldier not to kill him, but to fucking defend him. From an alternate version of himself . 

He snorts into his mug, drinks deep. His taste buds lost their heat sensitivity a decade ago. “Alright, Soldier, so we’re doing this?” 

The Soldier shakes his head. “Not Soldier.” 

Clint tilts his head in question. He’s been hesitant to call the Soldier anything else, though he’s mentioned all the names the Soldier’s gone by at different points in his life when telling stories, when explaining Steve’s relationship, and when describing what James had told him about his time with Hydra in Wakanda. Names are important. Clint wants the Soldier to figure out who he wants to be on his own. 

The Soldier proffers his empty mug forward, apparently as desensitized to heat as Clint is. Clint pours him another, and he holds it in his hands, gentle. “Not Soldier. Barnes is okay though, I think.” 

The grin that spreads across Clint’s face is even bigger than the one before, because that right there? That’s choice. That’s free will. That, right there, is Barnes exercising his well-deserved autonomy.

Clint’s sprawled out across the sofa in the sitting room of the suite the Wakandans have been letting him stay in for the past few weeks, an arrow balanced upright on his fingertip, arm wavering slightly as he nears nearly three minutes without dropping it, when a knock comes at the door. It’s a hesitant, gentle tapping, but it’s still enough to startle Clint into losing focus on the arrow. 

Balancing arrows, trick shots with various projectiles, hyper fixation on tiny details — Clint’s spent years figuring out how to best distract himself from his problems, and tonight is no different. He’s been here in the dark for over an hour, trying to find that calm, that centeredness, that ability to just not think about things for a while. And he’d nearly had it this time, so close to pushing thoughts about what they’d learned about the time machine over the week since Tony had arrived from his mind, so close to shoving all of his concerns for James’ trigger deactivation attempt tomorrow clean out of his brain. 

The shaft of the arrow sways dangerously from side to side before clattering to the ground beside him. He frowns up at the ceiling before the knock comes again, louder this time, as though the person at the door has remembered that Clint is hard of hearing, or else like they’d finally got their nerve up enough to ask for entry with more conviction. 

Clint opens the door, and James is on the other side, fist raised as though he’s preparing to knock again. “Hey, man, what’s up? I thought you and everyone were hanging out tonight before the big day?” When he’d left dinner earlier, there’d been a whole group of people in the common room of the guest wing, Shuri and her older brother T’Challa, a few of other scientists, and Steve and Tony had been all caught in a debate about the costs and benefits of humanitarian outreach in subsaharan Africa, and Clint had noped the fuck out of there once the words started reaching quadruple syllables. 

James shrugs, shifting on his feet. “I didn’t want to be around people any longer. You know how it is.”   

Clint calmly tells his heart to stop it’s fucking fluttering as it shouts that James doesn’t mind being around him , does he? “Yeah, I get that.” 

He steps back from the door and James follows in a half second later, door swinging shut behind him. 

And then it’s just the two of them standing in the fucking dark because Clint is a goddamn idiot who didn’t turn any lights on. 

He lets out a nervous chuckle and spins to find the light panel, but finds the corner of a chair with his knee instead. He hisses sharply and jerks forward, his hand skirting up the wall to clip the edge of the panel. This accomplishes his goal of turning the lights on. It also accomplishes his distinct non-goal of blinding them both as the lights flash to full, midday desert sun brightness. 

“Wrong light,” Clint says, smoothly. He feels along the panel with his eyes only open a crack. It’s an inelegant process, but he eventually finds the slider that slowly lowers the lights of the room until it’s at a comfortable evening glow. 

James is still by the door, biting at his lip like he’s not sure whether he should laugh at Clint’s inescapable inability to complete simple tasks like turning on lights without hurting himself. Clint rolls his eyes at him, and the tension between them eases just a bit as James snorts, walking over to the couch. He picks up the fallen arrow on the way, tossing it between his hands as he sits. 

Clint suddenly finds his brain really, really struggling to think about the smooth way James is handling his arrow and all the other things he’d like James to handle with that metal arm. 

“What were you doing, trying to overstay your welcome? I don’t think they’re gonna let you stick around if you start adding holes to the walls, Barton.” 

Clint shakes his head, stepping into the attached kitchen. “I’m not that dumb, rude. Besides, you act like you never get your knives out to clean them, and we both know you treat those things like babies, like they’ll start crying if you leave them unattended for too long. You want anything?” 

“I’m alright, thanks.” 

Clint doesn’t really want anything, either, but he’s more concerned with having empty hands because empty hands are dangerous around James, so he grabs one of the Nigerian beers that’s been sitting in the fridge ever since he discovered he hates African lagers just as much as any other kind. 

He returns back to the sitting room, tossing the bottle cap at James, who snatches it out of the air. He sits tentatively down at the other end of the sofa, which is long enough to keep space between them. It’s weird, he’s being weird, he knows it, but fucking fuck he feels weird and James might accidentally get his brain erased or some shit tomorrow and Clint’s got two copies of himself running around in alternate timelines and they haven’t really been able to be alone together since Steve and Tony showed up and —

James huffs and scoots closer to Clint, grabbing his hand. 

Aw, fuck, Clint had forgotten how only one hand could be occupied by the beer at any given point. He knew he was a shit planner. He despairs in the general direction of the bottle, which sends a drop of condensation rolling down its neck in commiseration. 

“I think tomorrow is going to go fine,” James says, his hand shifting so that the metal fingers are resting against the pulse in Clint’s wrist. “Is that what you’re so worried about?” 

Clint looks at him quickly. A small furrow is forming between his stormy greys, and thick lashes blink in a way that is really fucking distracting. “I’m not worried. I mean,” he stumbles over his words, cause he doesn’t want to sound insensitive, “of course I’m worried. But I’m not, because they’ll be fine. You’ll be fine. Science?” 

The corner of James’ mouth hitches up and goddamnit yes, Clint knows he’s a dumbass, James’ every expression doesn’t need to spell it out to him. “You did trust them enough to want to bring me back here when you were given a second chance, after all.” 

Clint shakes his head, denying his role in the process. “Nah, if I’d had to come up with a solution for anything on my own, then it all woulda gone to shit. I came here because the other you trusted them, so I figured getting you back here was the least I could do.” 

James grins, disbelief written in the way his eyebrows scrunch together. “Man, you’ve really got the most ridiculous combination of ego and total lack of self-worth in the world, you know that?” 

Clint’s not sure how to interpret that, so he takes a sip of the lager, and nearly dribbles it back into the bottle once it hits his tongue because shit, he really hates this stuff. He makes a very attractive slurping sound to prevent looking like a toddler that can’t hold their own spit in their mouth, ends up sounding like one anyways, and wants to throw himself out the window. Damn Wakanda and their truly shatterproof glass. 

James grins a little bit more at the disgusted expression on Clint’s face, then tilts his head, considering. “It’s kind of funny how the only two copies of yourself that ended up in their own alternate timelines also found their way back to a version of me, isn’t it?” 

This morning Dr. M’tolla and her team had been able to say with certainty that the only copies of Clint that settled into a timeline were the two he’d already interacted with, the one in 2009 and the other, which they’d theorized is somewhere in the late eighties or early nineties. 

Clint nods. He’s been trying not to think too hard about how it seems like every version of himself has found his way to James, and what that means. It’s like he’s a homing pigeon, the amazing homing Hawkeye, and somehow, James fucking Buchanan Barnes is the magnet that drew him back over the expanse of fucking time itself. 

“And you said you were just trying to fix all of the stuff between the Avengers; kind of funny how it looks like that also means finding me wherever you go. I didn’t realize how important I was to the Avengers.” 

“You are, though,” Clint says. “Important, I mean.” 

James raises his eyebrows and Clint can read the opportunity there, and his heart beats high in his throat as he pushes himself to grab hold of it. 

“To me.” And then because he’s Clint and is only brave when facing down actual death, not potential emotional castration, he adds, “And the Avengers. And Steve and stuff. You’re kinda a big deal, James.” 

Clint knows that he probably should think about why the time machine decided to send him back to James every time, but if he lets himself think about it, he gets all caught up in wondering — what if he wasn’t sent back to fix the Avengers fuck up, but had actually been sent back to fix his stupid fucking pining problem after James decided to go into cryofreeze? What if all of this mess is just because Clint’s a fuck-up who doesn’t know how to deal with his own romantic problems? Does James — this version or any other — deserve to be saddled with Clint’s sorry ass, lusting after him across time and space itself? 

On the other hand, Clint’s probably just making this all about himself, and it really is about James — about what an important role he played in the downfall of the team bonds within the Avengers, the pivotal place he’d taken up in Zemo’s plans, the way he’d been the fulcrum everything by which everything went to shit. And Clint thinking it’s about himself, instead, is just his stupid hopeful heart talking; that stupid, stupid romantic thing he’d thought had been beat out of him at age six, when he’d watched his dad turn on his mom, then brother, then him after finishing a bottle; that idiotic, optimistic thing which should’ve been crushed when Bobbi told him his lifestyle wasn’t worth it; that fucking terrible, trusting, undying thing that should’ve stopped beating at any time over Clint’s past 33 years of being let down again and again and again. 

And yet it’s that same heart that’s telling him that James is here tonight for a reason. It’s that same heart that’s telling him James is choosing to be here the night before his procedure to, what, comfort Clint ? It’s that same heart that’s forcing his eyes down to the way James is running his hand up Clint’s arm right now. It’s the same heart that’s yelling at Clint to take a risk again and recognize that whatever reason he and his copies all got sent back to a version of James, they all need to buck up and take fucking advantage of the opportunity to show James how important he is. 

To Clint. 

And yeah, sure, everything else too.

But to Clint especially. 

“Kind of a big deal, huh?” 

“Yeah,” Clint breathes. “The biggest.” 

James smirks at him, hand stilling where it’s somehow teleported all the fucking way to the dip between Clint’s collarbone and neck, and Clint’s not misreading this, is he? “I don’t know about the biggest , but we can always check later.” 

Clint’s definitely not misreading this. 

He feels heat like James’ metal hand is conducting it straight through his shoulder, a propulsor blast from the Iron Man suit shooting all the way through his body, warming him from the inside out, a tickling, his blush a burning heat that’s escaping in a fire through his face. 

James’ eyes are tracing his face, following the bright pink heat burning on Clint’s cheeks with a mix of incredulous concern and affection and amusement, and Clint’s a fucking coward, so he just nods and hopes that James is able to make the jump in understanding because if Clint opens his mouth right now, he’s really not sure what will come falling out. 

But James is, y’know, a decent human being, not to mention one who lived nearly 70 years under the control of a bunch of evil fuckers, so he cares about things like consent and communication and fucking torturing Clint, apparently, so he raises his eyebrows and smirks a little more, a clear goddamn dare, a challenge, a if we’re doing this, you’ve gotta commit to doing this . 

So Clint opens his mouth, and his brain shoves out, “Yeah we can definitely check sizes later, I’m super into that idea, but maybe we can do the kissing thing now first?” 

And somehow, for some other reason Clint can’t begin to wrap his mind around, that’s enough to turn James’ smirk into a smile, for that hot as hell, flaming metal hand to shift to the back of Clint’s neck and pull him in, for that goddamn 1940’s pin up smile to press against Clint’s, for Clint’s resilient as fuck heart to sit back and smugly say, yeah, I told you so.  

James’ lips move against Clint’s like he knows Clint’s a sure thing, which he is , but more importantly like James is sure of this choice, like this is where he wants to be. It’s so different from the rushed accident that was James and him drunk in the dark in the original timeline, and as Clint tilts his head and shifts closer to show James just how sure he is, he realizes that somehow, despite his track record and despite his very disastrous existence as a person, he’d managed to do exactly what he’d told Nat he would. 

He’d gotten a do-over, and he’d fucking wowed this guy. 

Because this, right here, as he tentatively moves one hand up to run through James’ hair, won’t end in James running away and avoiding him. Tomorrow James will go to the lab so that the scientists can try and remove his trigger sequence, and Clint will be there the whole time. Then, after, whatever happens, Clint’s pretty sure James will still want him around. 

Clint can feel the corner of James’ mouth curl up against his when Clint’s hand catches in the back of his hair, and he brings up his other to pull James impossibly closer. 

Of course, he’s still holding the lager, so instead, he dumps really shitty, cold beer all over the both of them as the bottle collides with James’ shoulder. 

And yet, somehow, as James leans away, hissing slightly at the cold, he’s laughing like he expected nothing less, like he doesn’t mind the minefield he’s walking through every time he’s in Clint’s general vicinity. 

“Sorry,” Clint says reflexively, watching James bite at his lower lip to try to contain the snorts bubbling from him. 

James turns his bright eyes to him, still smiling, and Clint actually believes him when he chuckles and says, “It’s okay,” before grabbing his shirt and pulling him across the sofa, sticky beer seeping through their shirts as their chests press together. 

And yeah, Clint really thinks it might be.

Chapter Text

They didn’t steal the children. 

Really. 

It isn’t kidnapping if it’s an alternate version of yourself, is it? 

“This doesn’t count as kidnapping, right?” Clint leans over to whisper in Bucky’s ear as they sit in the diner booth somewhere off of Highway 81 being stared at by two tiny, tiny Bartons, equally ferocious glares on their perfectly squishable faces. Fuck, but Clint had been cute as a kid. 

Bucky shrugs, jostling Clint’s shoulder with his own. It really is a tiny booth. He gestures across the table. “They’re kids. We dragged them into the car when no-one was around. I’m the one that’s been a brainwashed machine for the past forty years, you tell me. Is it kidnapping?” 

Barney, tiny, microscopic, thirteen-year-old, angry, angry Barney, frowns even deeper. “This is definitely kidnapping.” 

Clint stares at him and wonders how on earth he could have ever been afraid of him. Then he looks at the younger version of himself and is astounded all over again at how small and squeezable he looks. Bright blue eyes are hidden behind a shaggy head of tow blonde hair that pokes up out of a threadbare scarf. The glare across his face is such a facade, a mere imitation of the one across his brother’s, which is itself but an echo of the expressions that had marred their dad’s face throughout their entire childhood. Tiny Clint is tiny, breakable, so fragile and so pure. 

That glare is a lie, though. Clint bets he can break it. 

Clint leans forward, resting his face on his hands, a grin making its way to his lips. “Nah, I don’t think so. I think the fact that me and lil’ Clint junior right here are the same person means it’s impossible to kidnap him. You can’t kidnap yourself. That wouldn’t hold up in a court of law.” 

The younger version of himself — Clint — god, they’re gonna have to come up with a name for this kid — shrinks back in his seat, glower tempering into something more subdued, more fearful. Barney leans right into Clint’s face, chin jutting out in challenge. “You’re gonna try and bring the courts into this? You can’t, you shouldn’t — if you were really him, you’d know — the courts don’t do nothin’ good for us Bartons.” 

Clint winces, because that is the fucking truth. It’s been 25 years for him since he and Barney ran away from the second foster home they’d been placed in, though using the word ‘home’ to describe the place was to do injustice to the word. “You’re right, you’re right. No courts involved. I remember the Thompsons.” 

Barney settles back, slightly appeased, though he’s still got a divot the size of the Mississippi running between his eyebrows. “Coulda looked that up.” 

Clint squints his eyes, trying to find a scrap of a memory that’ll serve as proof without forcing the boys to think about the worst of it. “Can’t look up the way that water in the bathroom sink never really got hot,” he says, then glances at his miniature version, “or how much the bed shook every time Barney moved around in the top bunk, the fatso.” 

He sees the smallest twitch of Tiny Clint’s — god dammit he needs a name for the kid — mouth before he manages to control his expression, baby blues narrowed under his fringe. 

“Don’t call me fatso, fatso,” Barney says, then looks shocked at the words, eyes going wide in his heavily freckled face. 

“And, there it is ,” Clint says, shooting a solitary finger gun in Barney’s direction with an exaggerated wink, much to his outrage. “You can’t resist the temptation, can you? Never could.” He looks at his younger self. “He can’t ever resist, and we’ve known that since forever, right?” 

And that’s enough to get the frown to fade for real. “Yeah, it’s real fun to call him names, he gets so mad .” 

Clint leans forward. “But we know he’ll never actually do anything about it, will he? He’s a big fatso jerkface idiot, but he’s your brother when it counts, isn’t he?” 

Barney splutters, inarticulate, and Tiny Clint’s gap tooth grin is about as adorable as a fucking kitten tripping over its own feet into a puddle of more kittens. 

Clint reclines back into the seat, definitely not noticing how Bucky’s arm has to shift down from where it’d been stretched across the top of the booth, their torsos readjusting together so that their arms now press together from shoulder to forearm, respective hands lying just inches away from each other under the table. 

Clint grabs the menu with his other hand, flips it to the breakfast section. “So what’ll it be, Clinton? What are you feeling like eating today, Mini-Me? I could always go for waffles.” 

“Clinton?” 

“That’s your name, innit?” Clint blithely turns the menu in his hand, ignoring the storm that’s brewing on Tiny Clint’s face. 

“That is not my name.” 

“Oh, hmm, coulda sworn that’s what the birth certificate said. Hey, they’ve got blueberries here, too, does that sound good, Clint Jr.? CJ? I guess we could go with Frankie, short for Francis.” 

A gloved hand probably half the size of Clint’s reaches over the top of the menu to push it down, flat against the table, and there’s a tiny flame of righteous fury running in a flush across freckled cheekbones. “Those are not my names.” 

Clint shrugs, fighting a smile because this kid, man. He gets why the aerialists had been so quick to take them in and the costumers so willing to let Clint help them, with a face that fucking cute. “Yeah, but we gotta find something to call you, short-round. We can’t have two Clints running around, and I clearly have first dibs.” 

“Oh yeah, why?” 

Bucky’s smirking next to them, eyes flicking between the boys and Clint. “Yeah, why’s that, Barton?” 

Clint sighs as though it’s a chore to have to spell it out, then opens his eyes wide to explain in an over dramatic fashion. “I’m the older one, obviously. I’ve been around longer, been Clint longer. The little guy’s only been Clint for what, eight years?” 

Tiny Clint’s scowl hasn’t lessened. “Eight and a half .” 

“Exactly. You agree with me, Barney? Wanna help me come up with a different name for your little brother?” 

Clint knows a second before he speaks exactly what the spark that lights in Barney’s eyes means. “I mean, I always said he looked like a Francis.” 

Tiny Clint’s indignant “No way ,” is said in perfect harmony with Clint’s “Not on my watch,” and Clint looks at him in time to see a full body shudder shake down his younger self that mirrors his own.  

“Not the first time you said it, not now, not ever ,” Clint adds on with disgust. 

“Yeah, not ever ,” the boy sitting across from him says, and they turn identical condescending glares at Barney, arms crossed. 

Barney’s eyes are wide, and he gulps. “That was weird, dude.” 

Next to Clint, Bucky’s body starts shaking, and two seconds later he can’t contain his laughter, snorts ripping past his lips and tripping into full fledged guffaws. 

It’s a sound that warms Clint down to the bone, immediately easing the tension that he’s felt building up since they first parked the car in the lot behind the circus trailers earlier that day.  

Clint had sat stock still, arms locked straight between his shoulders and his hands, fingers whitening around the steering wheel, warm air puffing out of the car’s vents. Bucky noticed, of course, inclined his head in that way that said he wasn’t sure how to go about asking what Clint needed. 

Clint exhaled all at once, eyes closing, head tilted back against the headrest. He counted to ten, then lolled his head to the side to look at Bucky. “Man, I am fundamentally unprepared for this.” 

Bucky tilted his head even further like a fucking puppy hearing a high pitched noise, and if Clint hadn’t been so tightly wound, that look alone might’ve been enough to undo him. “Fundamentally unprepared for what? Seeing your younger self? Your little older brother? Or, what, the circus you grew up in? Or is it taking the boys with us, taking them home?” 

Clint felt the widening of his eyes, and he’d gestured vaguely around the car in a way he hoped conveyed something like yes that, fucking, all of that and then some goddamn fucking more because what the fuck shit fuck . 

Bucky smiled. “You’ll be fine. It’s the right thing to do. You seem to care about that.” 

That had been enough to startle a nervous bark of laughter out of Clint, which had been enough to force him to release the steering wheel from his grip and launch himself out of the car. 

That tension hadn’t actually gone anywhere, however, and now in the diner, every angry look from the boys, every flinch of fear or drop of distrust, has racheted on new layers to the tension, compounding it higher and higher. 

Bucky’s laughter though, and the way it’s soon echoed by both of the boys, tentative at first, then growing in volume and authenticity as they notice each other and give into that utterly human, completely inescapable draw that is your best friend laughing — that’s what finally snaps Clint’s tension, breaking it down in joyful bubbles and bursts of glee. 

Clint joins in as something that feels like comfort and rightness settles into his stomach, and it’s at least a straight minute before their booth is quiet and the waitress has stopped looking at them in concern. 

“Okay, we’re gonna pretend a certain middle name doesn’t exist, Clint sucks to make up nicknames for, and it’d be weird to call you Barton when there’s three of us around,” Clint says as the boys settle down. “But we really gotta figure out something to call you, micro me.” 

“CJ’s not that bad, I guess,” his younger self responds, though he looks pretty put out about it. 

Clint scrunches his nose. It’s not his favorite either, but the kid is a smaller version of himself, a junior version. 

“Could always go the initials route,” Bucky offers, expression tentative like he’s not sure if he should be involved in the discussion. “That’s what we always did, growing up, off to war and stuff. Monograms. Dog tags. J. B. Barnes. You could go with CFB, or just CB if you wanted.” 

Clint looks across the booth, and Tiny Clint’s got his brow furrowed, considering. His mouth moves to repeat the letters, and Clint sees the moment he decides to go with it, expression clearing. 

“Yeah, CB is good, I think.” 

Clint smiles, then turns a wicked arched brow in Barney’s direction. “So we gotta go with BB for you, yeah?” 

Barney’s vehemently shouted “ No ,” is enough to get the waitress to their table, which honestly, is about goddamn time. Once she’s sure that all is well, she asks for their order. 

Clint grins at CB, then gives the waitress his most charming smile. “Two of the blueberry waffles and,” he glances back at CB, “bacon on the side of both of those.” 

CB’s smile is wide, his nod eager, and Clint winks, then adds the finishing touch. “And make it extra crispy if you could.” 

Yeah, this might work out okay.

Clint is laying on one of Stark’s patio sofas under a heating lamp, a house phone pressed to his chest, when Tony storms out of his workshop, self-righteous fury written all over his face. 

“How? How?!” he yells, nearly tripping over a chair left in the middle of the snowy yard. He pauses, clearly weighing the potential side effects of trying to kick it in anger. “How do they keep getting into my workshop? It doesn’t make sense! They don’t have the codes, you’re not letting them in, Barnes sure as fuck better not be letting them in, there is no feasible way for them to keep getting into my FUCKING workshop!” 

Clint rolls his head to the side to watch Tony stalk angrily around more displaced furniture, tracking a line of grassy anger through the snow. The Barton boys have been at the Stark mansion, and they’ve managed to work themselves thoroughly into Tony’s ire by breaking into his workshop at least once a day, in addition to acting like, well, kids. It’s probably worse that Clint and Tony don’t act much like adults themselves. The boys suddenly have free reign over a massive mansion without much supervision and no clear expectations or rules, despite how Bucky keeps telling Clint that some need to be implemented. 

There’s a shriek from somewhere deep inside the house. Clint tilts his head and calculates. It didn’t sound like pain…another follows a moment later, and he squints before nodding. It’s probably fine. 

Tony comes to a stop in front of him, shaking a Nerf Bow and Arrow in Clint’s face. Little drops of melted snow fling onto his cheeks. Gross. “This was stuck inside the engine I was working on. Inside the engine , Clint. Inside . It wasn’t there this morning, it wasn’t there when Bucky forced me to take a lunch break, and as far as I know, the doors to the shop weren’t open at all. How do they do it? Are they magic? Did your time travel bleed into them and now CB can jump through space and teleport into my workshop? Is this a circus thing? Are they actual demons? Is this all a dream, no, a nightmare, that has been sent to torment me and make me appreciate all I hold dear? December is over, I shouldn’t be experiencing this Christmas Carol shit!” 

Clint shrugs, then proffers the phone. “I ordered pizza?” 

Bucky’s started making a face every time Clint goes for the phone around six each night, but it’s keeping CB and Barney happy, so what the fuck else does he expect him to do? 

Tony stares down at him, then makes an inarticulate noise and drops the Nerf toy onto Clint’s face before turning back across the yard with his hands in the air. 

This time he does kick the offending chair, and Clint wonders what made him decide the pain in his foot was worth the satisfaction of kicking the inanimate object. 

There’s another shout from inside the house, and Clint closes his eyes. Bucky’s got them. 

It’s weird. 

Good. 

But weird. 

Bucky’s ridiculously good with the boys. Like really, really ridiculously good with them. He’s the one who’s forced Clint into going to the grocery store with an actual list , including real food that isn’t just frozen and even more than one green thing . He’s also the one that forces the boys to go to sleep each night at a specific time, his menacing scowl and whirring metal arm apparently enough to frighten them into submission. Although , yesterday Clint did see CB stalking around the house with tinfoil wrapped around his left arm and a sawed off mop end draped across his head like long hair, so he’s really not sure how long the fear factor is going to last. 

Bucky’s the one who wakes them up most mornings, and the only one who is brave enough to talk to them about starting to go to the local public school again in the fall. Clint’s good when it comes to watching them during the day — most of the time, anyways, even if he sometimes forgets he’s supposed to be keeping them safe, not feeding into their low impulse control and desire to do dangerous things — and he’s good at keeping them entertained, but Bucky, man, he knows what he’s doing. Plus, it’s like he’s got some kind of sixth sense for where they are and what they’re up to at all times. 

Clint’s absurdly appreciative. 

The man of the hour — or the week, or the year, whatever, Clint’s in awe regardless — opens the French doors behind Clint and takes a seat near the foot of the sofa. “Have you ordered dinner yet?” 

Clint opens his eyes to appreciate Bucky from this perspective, too. His hair is pulled back to keep it out of his face while running after the boys, and he’s taken off any outer layers, only wearing another of Tony’s too-large band shirts, this one from an AC/DC concert. A lock of escaped hair drifts across his cheekbone, and Clint resists the urge to sweep it back for him, content for the time being to watch Bucky push it behind his ear. 

“Clint?” 

Clint startles, because he’s an adult, damnit, even if Bucky is infinitely better at it than him, and he’s not getting caught staring at the guy like he’s in high school all over again. Though if he was, who could blame him? Bucky’s been a heartthrob since before they started making comics with his face in them, he’s the most competent human to basically ever walk the earth, he dishes out enough sass each day to keep Clint entertained for a lifetime, and god dammit he’s apparently a motherfucking child whisperer. Clint waves the phone before it gets too painfully obvious how obsessed he is. “Yeah, just ordered. Boys are good?” 

Bucky nods, a teasing glint in his eyes like he knows what Clint was just thinking. “They’re fine. They’re in the attic.” 

“The attic?” 

Bucky nods again. “Don’t worry, I checked it out first, removed any hazards, and the Starks had an inspection recently enough it should be clear from any contaminants. Worst they can do is get a few splinters.” 

Because of course he checked things out first. Clint’s a sniper, a secret agent, a freaking Avenger: he knows all about scoping out the scene and making the best plan of action before striking, but it would never have occurred to him to check out a new play area before allowing children in. Bucky, though, Bucky’s a goddamn genius . An absurdly attractive one. Holy fuck, Clint stands no chance.  

“That’s good.” 

Bucky grins at Clint’s intelligent response. “It is. How long do we have until dinner?” 

Clint thinks about the timeliness of the past few nights, then factors in that it’s a Saturday. “About 20 minutes?” 

“I’d better get the boys ready, then,” Bucky says, standing. He pats Clint on the leg as he does, his touch lingering. 

And see, that’s another thing about having the boys around. In the space of just a week, Bucky’s aversion to touch and skittishness has decreased a lot. It’s hard to jump at every single quick movement when there’s an eight year old and thirteen year old careening around corners and dashing through hallways at breakneck speeds 24/7. It’s also hard to be scared by your own Soviet-style murder prosthetic when actual children treat it like a jungle gym, swinging around an extra sturdy elbow for leverage to kick their brother in the face. It had taken all of two days of Bucky trying to avoid touching the boys with it before he’d given it up as a lost cause. 

Clint’s really grateful for it, honestly. Especially since Bucky’s change of heart means he’s not as worried about the metal arm around Clint, either, a fact which Clint had gleefully taken advantage of the night before by forcing Bucky to put his arm across Clint’s shoulders while they were all crammed onto one of the couches in one of the movie rooms, both boys sprawled across their laps, CB dangling upside down with his feet near Clint’s face. It had been a good excuse to capitalize on Bucky’s newfound acceptance of closeness. 

There’s a clatter directly above their heads, and Bucky frowns minutely before stepping out from under the patio overhang, arms extended. A second later, there’s a flash of blonde and purple, and CB tumbles directly into his arms, a bright yellow, snow-covered Nerf arrow clutched in his hand. 

He’s all energy and excitement as Bucky sets him down, apparently completely unaware that he’d literally just slipped and fallen off the roof. “I told Barney he’d gotten an arrow on the roof! I told him and I was right! And look, look, I found a ball, too!” He raises his other hand to show off a tennis ball, covered in what looks like at least three years worth of dirt showing through the snow. 

Clint doesn’t know whether to gape or be proud. Bucky’s got the rest of it covered, though, crouching next to CB and scanning his arms and legs for scrapes. Because of course the little idiot isn’t wearing anything suited for being outside, no long sleeves that would double up as both warmth and protection from childhood shenanigans. 

Loud pounding sounds from inside the house, and Barney bursts through the doors, looking only slightly contrite. Bucky levels him with a glare. 

“You let CB out onto the roof?” 

Barney has the nerve to look surprised. “We didn’t know the window would open?” he tries. 

Bucky looks back and forth between the boys, and both shuffle their feet a little under his scrutiny. 

“I didn’t mean to fall?” 

Bucky flattens his gaze, and CB shrinks, scuffing his shoe on the porch.

“It was an accident?” 

That gets an eye roll, and Barney quails. 

“We won't do it again?” 

Eyebrows raise, asking for more. 

“If you let us go back into the attic, we won’t try any of the windows to get on the roof again?” 

A head tilt, pushing a little bit further. 

“And we won’t try to get on the roof another way?” 

This earns a nod, and Bucky smiles, ruffling CB’s hair, who huffs and pushes his hand away. Bucky stands, hand on his hips. “We’ve got 20 minutes until food. That’s enough time to wash up and either pick up the furniture out here or hunt down the rest of the Nerf arrows. Which will it be?” 

Barney looks at CB, and they engage in the kind of siblings-only conversation told through eyebrows and head shakes and lip twists alone, before Barney responds. “We’ll get the arrows.” 

“And then?” Bucky asks, looking at CB. 

CB hands him the first arrow. “And then wash up.” 

Bucky nods, and both boys dash off. 

Clint doesn’t know how the fuck he does it. 

“Do you think they’re ever gonna realize how easy you handle them?” 

Bucky smiles at him, and it’s a smile of amusement, fondness and pride, and that, well, there’s something inside Clint that rejoices at the idea that Bucky’s found something to be proud of. “Nah, not for a while at least. And by then hopefully they’ll be in the habit of doing what needs to be done.” 

Clint shakes his head, amazed. “I don’t know how you do it.” 

Bucky takes out his hair band, twisting his hair back up again, too much of it having fallen out when catching CB. Clint watches every movement avidly. “I was the oldest, growing up. Three sisters, I think. Plus Stevie, I was always looking out for him.” 

Bucky’s memory isn’t all there, not yet; there are days when he says he can as good as see everyone’s faces, and days when he can hardly remember having a family at all. He’s not too worried about it, pacified by the knowledge that it’s at least always improving, even with bad days here and there. He’d told Clint when he first found him that he’d been away from Hydra’s memory recalibration machine for awhile, out of cryo freeze for nearly six months, but still — it really makes Clint wonder how much worse things got between 1991 and 2016. What kind of additional torture had the original James had gone through to become the tired, worn husk of a person he was when he was picked up by the CIA in Bucharest? 

“Plus,” Bucky adds, “I got all of that experience with the girls in assassin training right before I got called back into Hydra for the hit on the Starks.” 

Clint’s brain stalls out as Bucky keeps talking, describing the ages of girls he’d worked with, the kind of physical training regiments he’d run them through, the strict structure and routines they’d been kept to, the various methods instructors used to keep them in line, the ballet they’d all done for hours each day to increase their grace and deadliness alike. 

Clint’s a fucking idiot . 

Bucky was working for the Red Room.  

He panics, flails, and throws the phone at Bucky, who side steps so that it clatters to the ground behind him. 

Clint sits upright. “Was there a little girl there, with red hair?” He racks his brain for how James had referred to Nat in Wakanda. “Natalia? She’d be, I dunno, 7 or 8? Really tiny, delicate, but probably already terrifyingly terrifying?” 

Bucky narrows his eyes before nodding. “I remember a girl like that…yes, Natalia. She hadn’t been there for long, but was the top of her class.”

Clint’s gut clenches because he really is a complete idiot. 

Bucky was working for the Red Room . 

Which means that somewhere in Russia, in the very place that would turn her into one of the most feared assassins in the world, that would steal her autonomy and freedom, that would eventually drench her ledger in red for over a decade, at this very moment, is a tiny Natasha.

“I just don’t want you to think that you have to stay here.” Steve’s eyes are beseeching, a golden retriever begging for table scraps if there ever was one, his tone one that would make the stingiest shrew serve him an extra helping at the dinner table. 

James’ eyes flick to Clint’s, and Clint can read the amusement there before he steels his expression and nods understandingly at Steve. “I know, Stevie. I’ve told you already: it’s not that I’m afraid to go back — I know Natasha has been working hard to clear my name, and I know that the Avengers Compound you and Stark have set up would be perfectly safe for me. I’m staying here because I want to. That’s it. That’s the only reason.” 

Tony punches Steve in the arm as he chews around a mouthful of food. “Let the man live, Cap. If he says he wants to stay here in subpar, sub saharan, subequatorial, substandard living Wakanda, let him. If he says he wants to avoid American capitalism and all of us self-righteous assholes for the rest of time, let him choose that life.” 

Steve frowns. “That’s not exactly fair, Tony.” 

“Don’t worry,” Clint adds. “That sounds like his ego talking, Steve. Tony knows that living here is infinitely better than anything he could offer us. He’s just a really sore loser.” 

“He’s just having trouble coming to grips with the idea that someone would choose goats over golf courses,” James puts out. 

Tony levels a fork across the table and arches an eyebrow. “Watch it, Winter Wonderland. You don’t know me like that.” 

Clint smirks. “I think it’s clear that he definitely knows you like that.” 

“Or maybe,” Steve says as he leans forward, apparently content to join in with the joking and leave off trying to convince James that he doesn’t need to stay in Wakanda now that they’ve broken his trigger sequence, “you’re just that transparent, Tony — that even Bucky can figure you out in just a week’s time.” 

“You’re all very wrong,” Tony says, “but James is definitely an idiot for choosing goats over golf courses.” 

Tony and Steve are set to leave tomorrow, the first attempt at removing James’ trigger sequence the day before a resounding success. It’d been a quick process, in and out in under thirty minutes, and before Clint had known it, they’d been walking out of the lab with a smile across James’ face that spoke of a seventy-year weight lifted from his shoulders. 

While Wakanda has been kind enough to extend their hospitality to them for as long as is needed, both Tony and Steve need to get back to the rest of the world to help Natasha finish ironing out the Sokovia Accords fiasco. She’s got a panel of Avengers set to appear before the remaining members of the UN who are still convinced of the necessity of international oversight. Nat’s convinced it’ll be a walk in the park after all the work she’s been doing for the past month, especially once the Wakandan representative, Prince T’Challa, comes forth to speak about their country’s role in the rehabilitation of James Barnes. 

Not to mention that exposing the world to the wonder that is Wakanda will hopefully be enough distraction to get everyone’s focus away from the Avengers for a while. 

Clint and James, however, are both planning on staying for a while yet. Clint is required to — Dr. M’tolla and her crew don’t know enough yet about why or how Clint has bled into the other timelines, and they’re not sure if they can prevent it from happening again, or even if they should. They’ve asked that Clint stay in the country until it’s figured out, as they might end up needing him there during the process. Plus, Clint’s not exactly a superstitious guy…but when it comes to time travel and the fear he’d felt being sucked into the void, he can admit he’s at least a little ‘stitious. 

And James, well, he just wants to stay. For all the shit Tony’s giving him, he’s got a lot of reasons to not want to leave Wakanda. Outside in the rest of the world there are opportunities galore, sure, but also billions of people with questions, a history he can’t escape, a best friend who struggles to call him by the right name, and honestly, as he told Clint earlier today, just so fucking much of everything . Wakanda isn’t simple by any means, but it’s definitely smaller, quieter, and less stressful. 

Plus, Clint likes to think that part of why James wants to stay is the same reason he’s sitting next to Clint right now, their chairs closer together than they need to be, their arms occasionally bumping up against each other as they move food around their plates. 

“Tony,” Clint says. “You’re literally the only one at this table that would choose golf courses over goats.” He looks at Steve, then grins. “Right? I heard golf courses were the source of all evil.” 

“That’s true,” Steve points out, brightening, puppy dog eyes latching onto the segue like a squirrel dashing across the backyard. “I’ve never touched a goat, and I don’t really want to, but have you ever done a cost analysis of the upkeep of most major golf courses in the United States? Do you know the percentage of water that’s used in arid environments like Arizona to keep golf courses green? Do you know how much land could be repurp — ” 

Tony interrupts him with a hand over his mouth. “Don’t you start with this shit again, you socialist punk.” 

James leans over to whisper in Clint’s ear as Steve rips Tony’s hand away from his face to launch further into his tirade. His breath brushes along Clint’s neck, and Clint tightens his grip on his fork reflexively. “Impressive deflection. Think this’ll last them the rest of dinner?” 

Clint turns to him, their faces only an inch apart, gaze flicking down to the smirk on James’ lips. “You know, I am a trained spy. I do know how to read a room and create diversions.” 

James tracks Clint’s eyes, and his smirk grows. “That true? Think you can come up with one to keep them occupied for — ”  

Clint’s sucked out of the room in an instant, his vision flashing red, then silver, suction compressing his body then releasing it a second later. There’s a roaring in his ears like a million panes of glass shattering at once, an explosion in a room full of mirrors, then it’s silent. 

Until he blinks, opens his eyes in a dark green room, and hears the laughter of children from behind him. 

He spins, then ducks as a shoe flies through the air towards his face. 

“You’re not supposed to come out until Bucky finishes counting, dummy,” a small blonde blur yells out as it races past him in pursuit of the shoe, picking it up before hurtling out of the room. Its voice trails off as it rounds the corner like a rocket. “And don’t hide in here, this is where I found you last time! You’re just asking for Barney to find you!” 

Clint’s standing there with his mouth gaping wide, because he’s pretty sure that was a younger version of himself, when someone taps him on the shoulder. He spins, fists flailing like the trained operative he is, and catches another version of himself in the temple. 

His copy steps back, a hand to his head. The curtain he’d emerged from behind is still fluttering. “Shoulda known better than to do that.” 

“What the fuck?” Clint asks, looking back and forth between his copy and the mini version that just dashed through the doorway. “What the fuck ?” 

“That’s CB — he’s me, okay, well, us, from 1991. Or 1992 now, since it’s January,” his copy says with a grin, as if he isn’t blowing Clint’s goddamn mind. “Are you the original? Or is there another?” 

“There’s another,” Clint says, and tries to bring his eyebrows down off the ceiling while his brain shouts error codes throughout his skull. “But I’m the original. Wait, that was a Clint? You’re interacting with the other version of us that’s here, and he’s a kid?” 

The copy — the 1992 copy, Clint guesses, nods. “Yeah, real fucking weird, I thought I’d replaced this timeline’s version, but nope. Caught him and Barney fresh at Carson’s. Bucky convinced me it was worth trying to save them.” He pauses as Clint clearly has to take a second to let that sink in. “There’s a mini Nat out here somewhere, too. We’re trying to figure out how to get her next.” 

Clint decides he needs to sit the fuck down. Or at least, his knees make that decision for him, as he finds himself a moment later ass flat on the ground. 

“Nat?” 

“Nat.” 

“Fuck.” 

“Exactly,” 1992 Clint says, then cocks his head. “Last time you were only able to see me. This time you’re…here. Do you know what’s going on?” 

Clint laughs at the fucking riot that is his life. Their life. Lives? He’s got no idea. “Got no fucking clue, man. It’s just you and one other. That one’s in 2009, around Budapest time. He’s got a James, too, but like…full on Winter Soldier mode. I saw yours last time for a second, he didn’t seem so…”

“Robotic?” 1992 Clint supplies. 

Clint grimaces. Robotic is slightly better than the adjective he was going to use. “Yeah.” 

1992 Clint smiles, and Clint swears it looks like he’s almost blushing as he shuffles his feet. “My James — he goes by Bucky — he’s far from robotic. I’da never fucking guessed it, but dude’s a freaking kid magnet. CB and Barney love him. It’s insane. He like…knows things. Responsible things. It’s hella impressive.” 

“What the fuck, really?” 

1992 Clint nods, his eyes lighting up. “Yeah man, like yesterday Tony nearly decapitated CB with a — ”  

The room compresses, and Clint’s sucked back through the silver and red vortex.  

He falls flat on the middle of the dining table in Wakanda, dinner plates shattering underneath him. 

“What the fuck, Clint,” James exclaims, dragging him off of the table and setting him on his feet, both hands on his shoulders, eyes scanning Clint’s body. 

“Y’all,” Clint says, breathing deeply, knees weak. “1992 Clint’s got a mini-me and a Bucky that likes kids.” 

James pauses in his scanning. 

Tony snorts. 

Steve’s desire to grin wars with his natural inclination to be concerned at the sudden reappearance of a teammate. 

James sighs, then shoves Clint back into his seat. He turns to the other pair, hands on his hips. “Now do you see why I can’t leave him here by himself?”

Chapter Text

“Plums or oranges?” Barnes holds both in his hands, slightly extended towards Clint. 

It’s a tiny market that’s buzzing around them, hardly more than a collection of villagers out on an early Sunday morning, but Clint can see Barnes’ eyes flick over his shoulder repeatedly like he can’t help but check on the movement behind him. 

Clint shrugs. “I like ‘em both. You pick.” 

Barnes looks down at the fruit in his hands, then frowns up at Clint. “I know what you’re doing.” 

“Good,” Clint says. He grins. “You pick.” 

Barnes rolls his eyes, and Clint considers pumping a fist in the air. It might be overkill though, or Barnes might think it’s some sort of military signal or something, so he resists, but only just. 

Clint’s got a lot to be grateful for this morning. When Barnes had come to him a few days ago, he’d at first expressed interest in leaving the safehouse to go into town without Clint. Clint had warily agreed that Barnes could do whatever the fuck he’d wanted, but Barnes had spiraled later that evening into a paralyzing fear of getting caught by Hydra, or forgetting his way back to the safehouse, or going full Winter Soldier on innocent civilians, and had told Clint in a panic that there was no way he could leave the house. 

Clint had acted as the voice of reason — which, wow, since when was that his job? — explaining the low likelihood of any of that happening, and presenting him with alternatives. Barnes had shown up like a wraith in the middle of the night the next evening, haunting Clint’s bedroom door to tell him that he’d done his research and had decided that he did in fact want to leave the house, that this morning was the best time, and that Clint would be going with him.  

So Clint’s pretty proud of him. 

Barnes glares at Clint, then puts the orange down and turns to the vendor, asking in quiet Romanian that Clint can hardly hear through his sketchy hearing aids for the price of the plums. Clint sidles up to him and puts two oranges up on the ledge as well, because he’s a contrary bastard, and the normal, human frustration that Barnes shoots at him in his next glare is 100% worth it. 

Clint’s also really grateful to be out in the market today because lately he’s been feeling like he’s juggling about a thousand flaming swords. Or cats, maybe. Or, alternatively, sharks. Something sharp and terrifying and definitely on fire. And possibly trying to eat him. 

He’s been a SHIELD agent for over a decade now. He’s run hundreds of delicate, sensitive operations, but he’s never been stretched quite so thin, nor been expected to do so much on his own. 

You’re not completely alone , his brain reprimands him, sounding vaguely reminiscent of Steve at his most disappointed. 

And that’s true, Clint supposes, watching Barnes hand over the money and tuck the fruit away into his bag. It’s just hard not to feel alone when the only help you have is one of the flaming monsters that’s possibly trying to eat you while you juggle it. 

Clint feels like the head of his own spy network, which is really not a role he ever wanted to sign up for. He’s conducting a slow, under the radar infiltration of all of his own SHIELD files to track the version of himself that’s with Nat in Budapest, and very, very cautiously weaving together digital traces of evidence that will ensnare Obadiah Stane so that as soon as Clint delivers the other information he’s compiling to James Rhodes about Tony’s location and how best to infiltrate the Ten Rings operation without compromising Tony’s Ironman-ification, Obadiah will be locked up and away without ever having the chance to attempt to kill Tony back in California. 

He’s also spent time tracking down the Maximoffs to their state run orphanage, though both are set to age out within a few weeks after turning sixteen. It gives him a tight timeline to get them before they’re out on the streets and on their way into Hydra’s clutches. Hydra, the beast, who Clint is also working with Barnes to take to the trusted members of SHIELD before the snafu that was Project Insight ever gets the chance to take off. Hydra, the assholes, who also spent the past sixty years brainwashing Barnes, leaving Clint with a final, flaming, giant Megalodon-sized shark of a juggling prop that’s also somehow helping keep everything else in the air. 

Clint glowers at a nearby rock. Maybe his metaphor is getting a little mixed up. 

He feels, if nothing else, like he’s trying to recreate that one Charlie conspiracy wall meme from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia , even if he doesn’t have an actual evidence board to stand in front of with crazy eyes and red string. Instead, it’s all a mess in his poor, poor, overworked brain. 

“I want to get better soap.” Barnes interrupts his self-pitying mental wallowing with the quick sentence, and Clint is surprised to find that he’s shifted the produce bag onto his metal arm, and has placed his other hand, feather light, on Clint’s forearm. 

Clint shakes his head, smiles. He must’ve been really out of it if Barnes’ had thought it necessary to get his attention that way. Clint’s doing a great job at showing Barnes how trustworthy he is. “Sounds good — wait, soap?” 

Barnes nods. “What you have isn’t good.” He runs his hand further up Clint’s bare forearm, and Clint only just resists shivering. “It dries out the skin. There is a woman here with lanolin products.” 

Clint tilts his head in question, though he can’t take his eyes off where Barnes’ hand is still on his arm.  

“It’s a sheep by-product. A coating for wool. Very moisturizing.” 

Clint nods dumbly, and that’s enough for Barnes, because his hand is gone in an instant and he’s striding across the market towards a friendly looking woman with an array of bottles on the table in front of her. 

Clint follows behind like he’s on a tether, trying to kickstart his mind into the kind of focus he needs to have in order to properly watch Barnes’ back. His heart and brain, however, have other plans. 

That was the first time he touched you by choice, wasn’t it? His brain asks, cautiously unsure. 

His heart confirms with a smile. And that was definitely a non-essential touch. He didn’t have to do that. He wanted to do that.

Clint scowls at the both of them, because now is really, really not the time for his ill-advised crush on Barnes to rear its ugly, flaming head and jump back into the juggling orbit.

Clint’s standing in the middle of James’ new field, waiting for James to meet him from checking out the hut the lowland tribe is offering, when the next bleed happens, sucking him through the vortex in the space of a single second. 

He stumbles out of the flash of red and silver into the Romanian safehouse, and the 2009 version of himself lurches up from where he’s seated on a sofa in the living room, stacks of paper strewn around him, a laptop and a tablet on the table in front of him, a wild look in his eyes that Clint’s not sure is entirely due to the reappearance of his clone from an alternate dimension. His hair is standing straight up in tufts that tell Clint he’s either just woken up or has been driven to frustration for hours on end. The bags under his eyes tell him it’s the latter. 

Clint grins and gives an aborted wave. “You doing okay?” 

2009 Clint flops back down with a sigh, adjusting his hearing aids as he does. “Bro, who decided it was a good idea to send me back in time to try and fix things?” 

Clint glances around the room. Apart from the explosion of shit around where his copy is collapsed on the sofa, the area seems to be in order — he can see dishes drying in the rack through the window into the kitchen, and fuck even the bookshelf is organized, spines color coded and straight in a line. Since when did he keep things clean and orderly? “Where’s your, uh, James?” 

The last time Clint had popped in here, a very clearly still slightly feral Winter Soldier had tried to impale him with a knife.   

The Clint on the couch uncovers his face, sitting up slightly. “Barnes is out at the market picking up some things.” 

“You let him do that?” 

2009 Clint nods, looking almost defensive, which is weird because Clint knows himself — he’d make sure to keep a dangerous Winter Soldier away from innocent civilians. “It’s his first time going out by himself. He’ll only be gone for a little bit longer.” 

Clint looks at his copy, reading the caution in the hunch of his shoulders, the protectiveness in the tone of his voice, the barest hint of pride in the way his chin juts out. “He’s doing better then?” 

A wide smile instantly plasters across 2009 Clint’s face, and that hint of pride blossoms as his back straightens. “So much better. He, uh, he actually suggested we spar sometime soon.” 

“That’s a good thing, isn't it?” 

“Yeah,” 2009 Clint says, and that note of pride bleeds deeper, drifting towards affection. “It means he’s not scared of hurting me with the arm.” 

And yeah, that is big. Clint’s James is still uncomfortable with it, even after nearly two years of time to come to grips with his arm, and Clint’s now constant reassurances that really, the thing is super fucking hot.

“That’s really good. You must be doing something right. Can’t have our boy ashamed or scared of any part of himself, can we?” He tells his copy, who nods, still smiling, a faint flush on his cheeks. 

And oh , it’s like that here too, is it? 

2009 Clint’s got a glazed look on his face, his smile a little bit frozen, and Clint’s about to tease him about it when he remembers the bags under his eyes, and reevaluates the chaos around him. He’ll take pity on the guy, he’s probably still in denial. 

“If your — Barnes, was it? — isn’t what’s bothering you, what is? What’s all of this?” He gestures vaguely. 

The smile drops right off of his copy’s face. “There’s just so much to try and deal with. It’s 2009, and you know what that means. Budapest and the fall out will last another few months, I’ve gotta get Tony out, deal with SHIELD, deal with Stane, probably figure out how to get Steve out of the fucking arctic by my fucking self, all undercover and shit with garbage fucking hearing aids.” He flings a hand at the computer. “I’m trying to figure out how to get the Maximoffs too.” 

And that just about punches Clint in the gut. “You’re gonna try and save Pietro?” 

“And Wanda,” his copy confirms, face grim. “Hydra won’t ever get their filthy fucking paws on them.” 

The silence of the room beats around them before the irony strikes Clint, and he laughs. “How did you both end up with kids? There’s another copy of us, in 1992, and he rescued the younger version of us, and Barney, straight out of the circus. Get this, too — his Bucky is apparently really good with kids. And,” he adds at his copy’s incredulous look, “they’re trying to figure out how to rescue baby Natasha from the Red Room.” 

“No shit.” 

“That’s what I’m saying.” 

“Baby Nat?” 

“Baby Nat.” 

His copy frowns, calculating. “She’ll be, what, seven or so?” 

Clint nods. “They’ll get her before she ever kills anyone. She’ll probably still be terrifying, though.” 

“Definitely.” 

Clint glances around the room again. This is lasting longer than any of the other bleeds. “I dunno if I can do anything for you, but,” he notices his copy is fiddling with one of his aids again. “Here, take mine. I’ll just get the Wakandans to make me a better pair anyways.” 

2009 Clint reaches across the space between them, and as Clint drops his aids into his copy’s hand, he feels the now unfortunately familiar pull of the time machine, yanking at his back. 

He crashes directly on top of James this time when the machine spits him back up in 2016. 

He sits up, elbowing James in the side as he does. James looks up at him, eyes worried, one hand resting on Clint’s side, the other reaching out to grab him by the weaponized elbow, as though he doesn’t want to let Clint get all the way up. 

“You were gone for longer this time,” James says. “Where’d you go?” 

Clint looks down at him, and fuck it, he’s got a concerned partner underneath him. He’s got someone who worries about him when he vanishes through time and space, who would’ve thought? He leans down to kiss the concern off James’ lips, and when he sits up, James’ mouth is twisted wryly. James slides his hand from Clint’s elbow to his shoulder, squeezing gently.

“Where’d you go, Clint?” 

“2009.” He flops down on James’ chest, wondering if he can get away with blaming the time travel for his bonelessness. “Both copies of me are going to end up with kids, it turns out.” 

“Yeah?” James has got a hand running up Clint’s spine, humoring him, Clint thinks, though his heart wants him to believe it’s because James wants to assure himself that Clint’s there with him. 

“Yeah.” Clint presses his forehead into James’ neck, voice muffled. “They’re doing good things. Saving the kids — the baby Bartons, little Nat, now 2009’s off to get himself a pair of Maximoffs.”  

James hums low, hand still moving up and down Clint’s back. Clint’s told him how much the Maximoffs mean to him, how one of the worst things about being in Wakanda now is not being able to check up on Wanda. 

“Every pair of Clint and James are getting kids but us,” Clint snickers to change the tone of things, because he can’t let himself sit in this sappiness forever, it goes against his very rigid code of not deserving nice things. “That’s probably a good thing.” 

James pushes him off then sits up. He looks around the field, then back at Clint, a dangerous glint in his eyes. 

“You know what this field is for, right?” 

Clint frowns. “Goats, right?” 

A wicked smile unfurls on James’ face. “Baby goats, Clint. Kids.” 

Clint groans at the unsympathetic sunset sky that stretches above them. “Fuck.”

James’ laughter is unapologetic, but the hand he offers Clint to pull him to his feet a moment later is kind, and the arm he swings around Clint’s shoulders a minute later as they walk back towards the guest quarters is sheltering, a comforting reminder that they’ll figure all of this out together.

Clint stares up at the sky, a friendly, fluffy cloud floating by, and wonders just how hard he’s been hit. They’re in the cleared out space in the woods behind the safehouse, Clint suggesting that this afternoon as a good time to make good on Barnes’ idea to spar in order to feel better about the control he’s regaining over his own body. He’d mentioned it to the Original Clint that had popped in the day before, and he’s been really looking forward to it. It had seemed the perfect opportunity to take a break from all of the planning that’s been threatening to make Clint’s mind explode. 

He squints up at a tree swaying in his vision, and thinks he’s probably still glad to have taken Barnes up on his offer, despite the ache that he’s sure will be fast developing in his lower back.

Barnes’ hand crosses into his view, and Clint lolls his head to the side to look up at him. 

Barnes’ eyebrows are pressed together, and he looks like he’s not sure if he’s allowed to smile at having flipped Clint over his shoulder only seconds before. Clint huffs; he can’t have that . 

He reaches his hand up to take Barnes’, and only marvels a tiny bit at how effortlessly Barnes hefts him into the air, as if the 30 pounds and five inch discrepancy Clint has on him means nothing. 

“Yeah, yeah, whatever, we know you’re the tough guy, so competent, so capable, so — ”  Clint lunges, though if he’d actually expected to surprise Barnes, he’d be the one in for a surprise. Barnes deftly sidesteps his attack, turning smoothly on his outside heel so that Clint rushes past him, air whiffling the fabric of Barnes’ shirt. 

Clint chuckles, turning to face Barnes, whose smile is more sure now, more confident in view of Clint’s willingness to keep sparring and act the fool in the process. 

Clint adopts an old-school boxer pose, both hands up and at the ready, throwing in a few poor form jabs and uppercuts into the space between them like he’s on the set of some shittily-researched eighties action movie. “Oh, you think you’re real good, do you? Real fast, real smooth? Better watch it, Bub.” 

He wonders for a split second if he’s gone overboard, if acting stupid during this isn’t what Barnes wants, but his worries are set to the side as Barnes shakes his head, then bats one of his loosely curled fists out of the air. 

“That’s real shitty form. SHIELD really let you out into the field with that kind of training?” 

And, be still Clint’s ever beating heart, is that a joke?  

Clint gives an affronted gasp. “Why I never . You know, you’ve got American training in you too. Don’t hate on me too much, that’s your own country you’re shitting on.” 

Barnes gives a teasingly dubious twist to his mouth, then moves a hand out in front of him, palm up to the sky. And he’s not, Clint wildly thinks, he’s not — he folds his fingers back into his palm twice in quick succession in the all too familiar ‘ come fight me ’ taunt known across school yards and C-list karate films far and wide. 

Oh, boy, Clint’s heart is not prepared for this, no sir.

In a daze, Clint tries to keep up with Barnes’ movements as they descend into legitimate sparring, because he doesn’t want Barnes to think he’s actually incompetent. 

But it’s hard, it’s really hard, to stay focused on dodging blows and avoiding Barnes’ swipes when his brain and heart are clamoring together that Clint was a goddamn fucking idiot for trying to think that he could avoid developing feelings for Barnes. 

Clint ducks low under Barnes’ right arm as it swings towards his face, throwing up his own forearm to deflect the blow, as his brain takes on a frankly patronizing tone to inform Clint that you really never stood a chance, don’t deny it.

Clint’s heart hums in commiseration as he attempts to land a punch of his own to Barnes’ lower back while the other man spins away from him, what looks like pure joy written across his face. 

And see, this is dangerous , this comfort, this freedom that Barnes is finding as he discovers himself more and more each day they stay in the safehouse. 

You should trust your feelings, I wouldn’t lead you wrong , Clint’s heart suggests helpfully, as if it hasn’t done exactly that time and time again throughout his life. 

Clint narrowly avoids Barnes’ next attempt at a grapple, contorting his body into a slightly embarrassing backbend, twisting at the waist, one hand dropping to the forest floor to give him the balance he needs to maintain his footing. But even that’s not enough, too slow, and Barnes’ leg comes out to sweep under Clint’s and Clint finds himself tumbling backwards, landing on the ground for the second time in as many minutes. 

He huffs out a breath, and Barnes’ laughter rings out through the clearing, damning Clint’s stupid stupid heart even further. 

When Original Clint burst into the safehouse the day before, Clint never imagined that the sparring session would go quite like this. He groans at the sky, mourning his ability to keep his emotions detached, and Barnes’ chuckles continue, though he probably thinks Clint’s just being dramatic. Clint glares up at the clouds, still floating by, friendly as hell, the little fuckers, and is angrily amazed by how easy it was for Barnes to disarm him in every way possible.

Clint’s head, he’s convinced, is an inch away from spontaneously combusting due to excessive need for planning and caution and a bunch of other shit he usually lets Nat handle when Barnes walks into the room, shuts the computer in front of him, sits down, and levels Clint with a single steady look. 

“I got the spare bedroom ready for the twins. We can go get them now.” 

Clint blinks. 

“What?” 

“The spare bedroom is ready. I aired out the sheets on both beds, stocked the bathroom with supplies they will need, cleared out any extraneous items that were leftover from your use of the room as storage.” 

Clint stares.

Barnes shifts on the couch across from Clint, uncomfortable at Clint’s lack of response. “Everything is organized as you had it. I put the weather safe materials into the shed or the weapons locker, depending on their sensitivity, and found space for the rest of it in the attic. I also picked up a video game console from the village this morning and have moved the television from my room into theirs in preparation.” 

“We have an attic?” 

Barnes frowns. “You showed me the attic.” 

When Original Clint told him that there was a Bucky out there in the nineties who was good with kids, Clint didn’t realize that also meant that his version would know what to do with them or how to prepare for their arrival. But Clint’s getting ahead of himself. 

“I didn’t realize you were getting things ready — or that you were ready to go get them. You’re ready to go get them? We don’t,” Clint’s voice rises in tone a bit, for all he wills it to stay down, “we don’t have a clear plan yet. We don’t have an in with the orphanage, we haven’t talked contingencies, we don’t — ”  

Barnes shakes his head, then reaches over to cover Clint’s mouth. “I’m ready to go get them.” 

If Clint wasn’t panicking before, he sure as fuck is now as he resists the urge to lick Barnes’ hand because he isn’t a child, but how else is he going to get his hand off of him so that Clint can stop obsessing? He holds his breath and freezes.

Barnes seems to be able to tell that Clint’s not going to say anything else. He moves his hand, and Clint releases a giant exhale. 

“You’re really ready? Even without a solid plan, and your trigger sequence still in place?” 

Barnes shrugs. “They’re the priority.” 

Fuck, but the dude is too selfless for his own damn good. “I know they’re important, but I don’t want to do anything you’re not comfortable with.” 

The corners of Barnes’ mouth tilts upwards. “I know. But if we wait until I’m comfortable, you and I are going to be old and gray and raising a flock of sheep like the lady down the road before I’m ready to do anything.” 

Clint tells himself furiously that that’s not an option, dammit. 

Barnes leans forward, his grey blue eyes expressive, open. “They’re the priority. We’ve figured out that they probably only have a few weeks left before they leave the orphanage, and I’m not about to let Hydra get their hands on them.” His brow furrows, expression hardening. “These kids mean the world to you, and even if they didn’t — they’re kids, Barton. They don’t deserve the life that Hydra will force on them. Nobody does.” 

Clint nods, because he’s not about to disagree with that. But still, shouldn’t they have a plan in place before heading in? “You don’t think we need to wait until we’ve got a better plan, or hell, any plan?” 

Barnes’ lips twitch and he gestures to the laptop, which Clint’s been pouring over for the past seven hours. “I don’t think planning is your strong suit.” 

Clint opens his mouth to ready a retort before snapping it shut and sinking back into the sofa. “You’re not wrong.” 

Barnes reaches out a hand, tapping Clint on the knee. “I’m not saying that you’re bad at everything, you know. Because you’re not — you’re clearly good at some things. You’re good at saving people, at doing the right thing, at proving to them that they matter to you.” His hand is electric where it rests on Clint’s knee. “So maybe let's stick to that. The Maximoffs need someone to save them. They need to be shown how to do the right thing.” 

He brings his hand up, leans closer, hesitates, then brushes it through Clint’s hair. “You need to show them how much they matter to you. And you’ve shown me how good you are at that.”

And Clint has no idea what the fuck Barnes means because as far as he knows he just talked a lot in his general direction and treated him like a human, but he’ll take it. He nods. “Okay. We can do that.” 

A slow smile spreads across Barnes’ face, and he squeezes Clint’s neck slightly before lowering his hand. “We’ll leave tomorrow morning?” 

“Tomorrow morning.” 

Barnes winks , then stands. “I’ll get our gear ready. You finish whatever you were doing on the computer.” 

“I’ll finish whatever I was doing on the computer,” Clint echoes faintly. 

Clint spends a solid two minutes staring into space after Barnes walks out of the room before frowning in contemplation. He’s okay with being insulted like that, right? He’s okay with Barnes completely taking over the mission to get the Maximoffs? He’s okay with Barnes suddenly being okay touching him in a somewhat intimate way, right?

His heart and his brain give him a resounding yes, you fucking idiot. 

And yeah, he really is.

Chapter Text

It’s only after the boys are in bed that Tony, Clint and Bucky are able to meet together to plan how to infiltrate the Red Room. Tony’s looking a little frazzled, his time stretched between figuring out a more permanent solution for Bucky’s trigger words than earplugs, hacking into his father’s files at SHIELD, and keeping up with the regular innovations he needs to churn out for Stark Industries. The frazzle looks familiar, though, and at least this Tony is only 21. Clint figures the 30 hour shifts he’s pulling are a lot safer for him in this timeline than the original one. 

Clint taps his feet against the workbench he’s sitting on, flipping through some of the paperwork Tony’s managed to get from SHIELD’s servers, trying to remember what Nat had been willing to share with him about her time in training.

Bucky walks through the door a moment later, stretching both arms over his head. Clint very carefully doesn’t look at the strip of skin exposed from under his sweater, though seriously, when they’d gone shopping right after Christmas, what had possessed the guy to buy things that Clint swears are two sizes too small? Clint would think it was intentional, but  Bucky’s a trained assassin , right, of the murder murder kill kill variety — not the honeypot variety? 

Bucky takes a seat next to Clint, grabbing the sheaf of paper out of his hands. “What do we got?” 

“Location, we think,” Clint says, reaching over to thumb to the correct page with the map he’d spent time meticulously marking earlier. “Based on the data that SHIELD’s got, this empty space without surveillance on the western side of Golyanovo District seems likely.” 

Bucky nods, his brow furrowing. “That sounds right. I remember being near a nature area for specific training.” 

Now that they have a location, they shouldn’t be too far off from being ready to go in. Clint’s been calling around Moscow the past few evenings while Bucky took bedtime duty, checking out various orphanages that he thinks might be up to take some of the younger girls if they’re able to liberate them from the Red Room. 

He’d been able to tell the Original Clint about getting Nat, but the guy had been sucked back to Wakanda before Clint had been able to explain the rest of their plans. They’re going to do their best to free all of the girls that are being held captive by the Red Room, at least the ones young enough to not want to go down fighting, as they expect most of the older ones will.

From what Nat has told him, and what Bucky remembers from his time there, several of the youngest girls actually still have extended families in Russia and its satellite states, and they figure that they’ll be able to work the rest into state-run orphanages (the one Clint’s vetted for corruption and proper treatment, of course) once they take down the operation. 

“The national park will be a good place for an extraction point,” Clint points out, and Bucky nods in agreement. 

Tony sits next to Clint with a thump, pushing all three of their bodies way closer together on the bench than they need to be. As Clint’s thigh bumps against Bucky’s, and Bucky reaches out a steadying hand with a laugh, Clint decides he’s not going to complain about it. Tony leans forward. “And speaking of extraction, I got us a jet for that.” He slaps a picture of a C-17 Globemaster III across the papers, grinning widely. “Asked pops for access to one of these babies for some new Air Force tech experimentation, and I’ve already got the coding we’ll use for shielding all figured out.” 

Tony at any age is a bit of a cocky bastard, but Clint finds he doesn’t mind having a cocky bastard on his team. 

“Hmm,” Bucky hums, pulling the picture towards him. “Yeah, I think I can fly this.” 

“Hey now,” Clint says, leaning back to get a good look at him. “I’m gonna be the one flying that. I thought we went over this.” 

Bucky tilts his head and grins. “Went over what, that you need me on the guns since you’re so bad at hitting targets while moving, and that’s why you need to drive, or in this case, pilot?” 

Clint feels Tony’s breath on his neck as he snorts out a laugh. 

A cocky bastard? Acceptable. Two cocky bastards, and one irrepressibly sassy? Less acceptable. 

“We are not doing this again, Bucky. I do not need to prove to you how good I am with a gun.” 

“I’m just saying, I haven’t seen any evidence of all this ‘World’s Greatest Marksman’ stuff you keep talking about.” 

Bucky’s eyes are twinkling, his grin charming, and Clint wants to bite it. 

He shoves Tony off the back of the bench, instead, then scoots away, out of dangerous biting range. 

Yeah, but I bet he wouldn’t mind you practicing your aim on his lips , Clint’s brain points out. 

As Tony sits up and starts squawking at the injustice, Clint rubs his eyes and tries to scrub that mental image away. “Update on the memory machine?” 

Bucky’s smirking now, like he knows exactly how tempting the twist of his lips is. He takes pity on Clint and jerks a thumb over his shoulder at a large metal and plastic contraption in the corner that looks a little bit like an MRI machine. “Tony thinks it’ll be ready to go as soon as tomorrow.” 

Clint looks dubiously towards the device, debating whether or not he wants to pry into it too much. If he does, he’ll likely just confuse himself further. “It’s safe?” is what he goes with, directing the question at Tony, who’s moved himself across to a table, with his back pointedly turned to the pair. 

Tony waits for a moment, then turns dramatically towards them, one hand clutched to his chest in surprise. “Oh, was that directed at me?” 

Clint rolls his eyes. If only Fury had had the chance to meet 21 year old Tony; he’d have signed the 40 year old version on to the Avengers in a heartbeat if only because the alternative is this somehow infinitely more annoying, immature version. 

“Me, the brains behind this entire operation? Me, who is providing all of the resources you need, including the house you dwell in, the food you eat, and the space for your tiny clone to zoom around and break things in?” Tony’s eyebrows are raised, his affronted expression spoiled by a large black grease streak striping his face from one cheekbone to the opposite temple. “Am I the one you’re asking? After pushing me off of my own bench, in my own workshop?”

Bucky catches Clint’s eyes, and Clint can’t help it. He bursts into laughter, and Bucky joins soon after. 

Tony splutters. “You two are unacceptable in a room together. I’m the youngest here, it shouldn’t be my responsibility to remind you of decent human manners. My father, if we ever decide to tell him, is going to be so impressed by me — and that is not the kind of pressure I need, you know, I was content to be the lazy layabout and — oh, hello, small creature.”

Clint tries to reign in his laughter as Tony’s tone shifts. “Barton, baby you has arrived.” 

Clint twists to look, and sure enough, CB is standing in the doorway, one hand on the door he’s just pushed inwards. 

“Coulda sworn I locked that on my way in,” Bucky mutters before standing. “What’s up, CB? You should be in bed.” 

CB looks down at the ground, his socked feet wet from the damp grass between the house and the workshop. “Couldn’t sleep, and Barney said to leave him alone. I wanted to come see you.” He fiddles with one of the new hearing aids they got for him a few days ago. Tony’s added a few customizations, but a fully custom pair will have to wait until after the mission. 

Bucky strides over to him, crouching down in front of him. He extends a hand, lifting CB’s chin. “Did you have a nightmare?” 

CB shrugs, embarrassed, and tugs down the edge of his sleep shirt. It’s part of a matching set, one of the items they’d all gone to the mall for recently, after realizing as January started to roll by that they’d completely forgotten about Christmas. They hadn’t technically picked the boys up from the circus until after the holiday, but Clint knows from experience they’re well past due all the affection they can get, even if that means leaning into capitalistic holidays. He spares a mental apology to still-frozen Steve, who he knows is offended by all things materialistic. 

Bucky sighs, and pulls CB close before standing, hefting him onto his hip. CB’s a little old to be picked up, but he leans into Bucky’s embrace like he’s years younger, and Clint’s heart aches at the sight. 

It’s only partially because he knows exactly how much CB’s missed out on the physical affection that his parents should have been giving him. 

It’s also partially because of the picture he and Bucky make, one tousled blonde head pressed into a metal shoulder, Bucky’s other hand running soothingly up and down his back, CB’s legs dangling, complete trust in the way he’s content to rely on Bucky for everything. 

It’s mostly because of the way Bucky’s looking at Clint, soft and gentle, no trace of teasing in his gaze, like he knows exactly what Clint’s thinking. 

“You wanna come over here before I take him back up?” 

Clint nods, and a few seconds later, finds himself pressed between CB’s back and Bucky’s arm, which tightens around his shoulders. Clint breathes in, wrapping his arms around them both, and CB’s hair tickles his nose. He snorts, chuckling. “Good thing you showered tonight, mini-me. I wouldn’t wanna get this close with how sweaty you were this afternoon.” 

“Jerk face,” CB mumbles, but he knows Clint’s kidding, judging by the small smile that slips onto his face, which is turned out from Bucky’s shoulder so Clint can just see his profile. 

“I’m not as mean as Barney,” Clint whispers, and CB nods sleepily. “Not as mean as Bucky, who’s gonna make you go back to bed now.” 

“Hey,” Bucky says. “United front, remember?” 

“That’s right,” Clint says, winking at CB and stepping back. He picks up the scarf he’d worn in an hour ago, wrapping it snuggly around CB’s neck. The walk from the workshop to the house isn’t far, but it’s not like the extra warmth is going to hurt. “I’m also gonna make you go back to bed. Bucky’s just gonna be the one to take you, okay? I gotta stay down here and keep working with Tony.”

“Okay.” CB’s voice is soft and slow, like he’s already drifting. “‘Night Clint. ‘Night Tony.”

Clint hesitates, then leans forward to press a kiss to the top of CB’s head. “‘Night, little hawk.” 

“Goodnight, micro monster,” Tony says cheerily, and Clint catches Bucky’s head shake as he turns out through the doorway, CB’s hand waving behind his back. 

Clint watches them cross the yard, Bucky delicately stepping around the minefield of snowmen and furniture, which have been set up again as a massive obstacle course, complete with just about every tool and piece of landscaping equipment the boys could find in the various Stark garages. His heart feels bruised, somehow, aching gently as Bucky steps onto the porch.

He turns when they enter the house, and finds Tony staring at him, a gleam in his eyes. He snorts and shakes his head. “Damn, I wouldn’t have guessed domesticity would be what did it for you.” 

And Clint doesn’t know how to respond to that, because Tony’s really hit the nail on the head, hasn’t he? He takes a second to close the door behind him, inhales, then stomps back across the workshop. “Don’t make me push you off another bench, Stark.” 

Tony laughs, knowing he’s won, and in a remarkable show of restraint, lets Clint off the hook. Mostly, at least. He gestures back at the papers spread across the workshop. “Wanna get this organized before loverboy gets back from putting your kid to sleep?”

When Clint and James walk into the lab a few days after the fourth bleed, both Dr. M’tolla and Shuri are waiting for them, seated silently instead of darting about the lab, which is how Clint knows that what they have to say isn’t good. 

There aren’t any assistants in the room, either, and both women’s faces are closed off, though Shuri is nibbling at the corner of her mouth, anxiously tapping at a screen in front of her. 

He doesn’t realize he’s frozen in the doorway until James tugs at his hand, unsticking his feet from the ground. 

Clint sits down across from them, shooting a solitary finger gun twice, unwilling to let go of the grounding sensation he gets from holding onto James. 

“Dr. Boss lady,” he says, pointing at M’tolla. He nods at Shuri. “Dr. Princess.” 

Neither crack a grin, when usually they at least try to humor him. Clint tries to quell the fear he feels rising in his chest. At his side, James has begun to rub circles, soft and gentle, along his forearm, smoothing gently over where he must be able to feel the flutter of Clint’s pulse.  

“Thanks for coming,” Dr. M’tolla says, opening up a holograph in front of them. A diagram of the time machine opens up, a glowing red outline framing the metal, and equations are scribbled out on either side of it. 

“Did you figure out why the bleeds are happening? How to make them stop?” Clint knows they’ve got answers for him; that’s why they called him in today. 

The women exchange glances, and M’tolla nods deferentially to Shuri, who turns to Clint. “We told you before that the machine was unstable, yes? We’ve confirmed that theory, and it’s clear now that the instability is only increasing in severity, which is why the ‘bleeds’ you’ve experienced have been growing in frequency, duration, and tangibility.” 

Clint hasn’t let himself dwell on that word since the assistant told him, back when Steve and Tony had just arrived. Unstable . That’s the kind of word used to describe governments before they fall, the kind of derogatory phrase someone uses to write off someone with neural divergences, the way Clint would have described his own mind in the months after Loki. Unstable is how you describe bridges that are closed off to cars — unstable is the cousin of unsafe, the brother of failing, the twin of insecure and weak. 

An unstable timeline is… not good. But maybe they don’t mean that bad…? 

“How unstable do you mean? Like I’m gonna keep popping over there into the other timelines?” There’s a pressure in his chest, building quickly. “Like the other Clints are gonna start popping over here? Or pop into each others’ realities?”

Dr. M’tolla and Shuri exchange another glance, and yeah, Clint bets they don’t have to often work on their bedside manner in the lab; they’re not those kinds of doctors. But shit, that single look alone tells him to expect the worst.

Shuri breathes deep, choosing her words carefully. “Unstable like they’re going to collapse, Clint.” 

And Clint had thought he knew how much her words were going to hurt before she said them. 

He blinks at her, and has to confirm. “Collapse, like gone? Wiped out?” 

She nods hesitantly. “We’re working to see if we can find a solution, but right now we just don’t know enough about how it worked for you, which component in the metal — some of it’s repurposed, you see, from salvaged materials — was the one that allowed it to work at all, or whether it’s the size of the organism sent back causing the disturbance, or — ”  

Clint interrupts her with a shake of his head. He can hardly feel James’ hand in his own right now, and he doesn’t dare look at his face. There’s a buzz in his ears that’s not from his aids. “Do you know how long? Is our own timeline safe?” 

Dr. M’tolla takes pity on Shuri, stepping in. “We’re not sure about the length of time before total collapse, but we hope to have an answer for you soon. As far as we can tell, the timeline we’re in now is stable. You’re the original Clint, so the universe you inhabit is what the machine recognizes as truth.” 

“But the other two, they’ll be,” he swallows, searching for a way to say it that isn’t wiped out of existence as if they never existed in the first place , “they’ll be gone?” 

Both scientists nod. 

“We’re working to find a solution,” Shuri says again, but Clint knows placation when he hears it. It’s the same tone of voice his mom used when there wasn’t enough money for gifts at Christmas, the same caution used by wary handlers giving him the shittiest job on a mission, the same shrug of shoulders that Barney had given him when abandoning him with arrows through his shoulders at seventeen. Sorry, but this is just how it is. Wish it could be different, but you gotta face reality. 

The scientists aren’t feeling optimistic about figuring this out. 

Clint should know by now that he shouldn’t get his hopes up, either.

It’s just… it’s hard not to, not when he thinks about what the other timelines have going on. 

And see, Clint’s made regular reports back to the team at the lab after every bleed. For all that Clint’s an expert in giving mission reports, he’s never been good at separating out his emotions into the dry, quickly delivered drone that Nat’s perfected over the years. His debriefs always take longer, his opinions infusing the conversation with color, much to the chagrin of his mission partners who are always ready for the debrief to end already. 

So he’s been unable to keep the humor from his voice when describing the miniature version of himself his clone had found in 1991, how absurd it was to see a 21 year old Tony and the ridiculousness that is a Bucky taking care of kids and throwing donuts at a vortex. He’s been unable to filter himself, filter out the pride he feels for a 2009 Clint, doing his best to bring his Barnes back towards finding autonomy, the concern he has for him working so hard on his own to do the right thing. 

He’s been unable to resist telling the scientists how grateful he was that both of those other Jameses were being helped, that somewhere in the multiverse was a tiny Clint Barton who’d never be trained by Trickshot, a Natasha who’d never know red in her ledger, a slightly less jaded Tony with both parents living, and a pair of Sokovian twins who would never know torture under Hydra’s hands. 

So M’tolla and Shuri know exactly how much the idea of all of that ceasing to exist hurts. 

James does too. 

Clint stands shakily, the hand not held by James grasping for stability at the edge of the table. 

“Thank you,” he says, because that’s what you say when someone gives you answers, even if they’re not the ones you want to hear. 

Shuri gives him the ghost of a smile, because that’s what you do when someone thanks you for telling them something terrible. 

James slides his arm from Clint’s hand to around his waist, firm and secure, because that’s what you do when your significant other is inches away from breaking down in public.

When James closes the door to his new living space that evening, the low hum of crickets fading away with a click, it’s gratitude that causes Clint to pull him towards the bedroom. 

When James pauses at the foot of the bed, shirt half off, eyes cautious and questioning, it’s relief that makes Clint nod and shuffle along the blankets to help pull his shirt the rest of the way off. 

Sadness wars with pure joy as Clint traces the planes of James’ body, nimble fingers pressing firm to remind Clint that this is real, this is his, and he gets to keep it. 

Clint can feel James’ care and compassion manifest physically in the way James presses soft lips down his spine, up and under his jawline, ghosting tender and delicate from his chest to his thighs. Every touch urges Clint to remember that he’s accepted exactly as he is, that he’s wanted, that James isn’t going anywhere. 

The blankets wrap them in warmth and comfort and desperation alike, twisting them ever closer together, collaborating with James to push Clint out of his mind, away from his fears and his sorrow and the tears that threaten to shake free. 

Clint lets himself get lost in the pleasure, in the affection James’ gaze washes over him, in the sensations that send sunshine shivers through his body as James moves above him, around him, in him. 

When the haze clears, James’ body holding Clint’s tight to his own, sweat slick skin not deterrent enough to keep him from providing Clint with the grounding he knows he needs, it’s not regret that Clint feels, because this was an inevitability. 

Minutes pass before James shifts beside him, warm metal fingers drawing lines down his arm. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Clint shrugs, worried that if he opens his mouth he won’t be happy with what his brain pushes out. 

James huffs softly beside him, and Clint forces himself to look at him. Stormy grey eyes meet his, asking for honesty, pushing for vulnerability. Clint hates how much he wants to give him that. 

“Why do you care so much about saving the other timelines? They won’t suffer, they won’t know — you don’t need to tell them.”   

Clint nearly laughs at the question, because it feels absurd to him; of course he cares.

At the same time, a part of him wants to rear back at James’ words, so callous and cold sounding —  that he could possibly question Clint’s compassion for the other realities, and act like he himself doesn’t care —  but Clint knows James’ words come from a place of fear, from a desire for security, from the need to protect the Clint he knows and the life he has here. 

James hasn’t seen the other timelines, hasn’t seen the ways in which those Clints and Bucky and Barnes are equally deserving of the chance at happiness that he and James have here. 

He hasn’t seen how Barnes and Bucky care just as much about their Clint as James does about his. 

And that’s exactly why Clint has to fix this. 

James can read the incredulity in his face, and he cocks his head, his hand coming up to run through Clint’s hair. “Why are you so invested?” 

Clint chokes out a laugh, bringing his own hand to clasp James’ to his face. James’ metal hand, that thing James has been so scared of, has hated so much, that represents years of torture and pain and suffering and that he uses now, carefully, gently, unashamedly, to comfort Clint. 

He thinks of the pride in 2009 Clint’s face as he spoke of the emotional growth his Barnes is going through, the simple joy in seeing him willing to venture to a village market by himself. He thinks of the dopey grin that had spread across 1992 Clint’s face when describing his amazement at his Bucky’s ability to work with kids. He thinks of how every single version of James deserves a version of Clint who will be proud and amazed, joyful and accepting. 

“Because you never deserved any of this. No version of you ever did, James. What you deserve is to be loved as you are every time you are, fuck, and we, I, fuck — I always will, okay?” 

He looks away from James then, the words pouring out of him, his brain and his heart for once in agreement with what he lets himself say. “At least I think it’s love, whatever the hell that is.” He gestures wildly up at the ceiling, his heart beating its truth through every word. “It’s that every version of you deserves to feel valid, to feel like they’ve got someone in their corner no matter what, to feel respected, to know that who they are is perfect, and that they’ll always have someone who sees them as they are and doesn’t want them to be anything more than that.” 

James is watching him, eyes wide. Clint squeezes his eyes shut, and James’ expression is burned into his eyelids, searching, pressing, intense and unrelenting. 

“Every version of you deserves that, and so much more. And shit if I’m being sappy I don’t care, because fuck, it kills me to think about what you’ve been through.” Clint settles his fingers in the divot of his throat, where he can feel the ghost of James’ kisses like they’re branded into his skin. “And I’ve never been one to dwell on the past, because that just makes regret and regret doesn’t make progress, but dammit, James, if I could go back I’d save you from ever experiencing any kind of pain. I’d save you from falling off the goddamn train.” 

He swallows, eyes still closed tight. “And so if a version of me can save a version of you, we gotta try to make sure they get to keep their world. They deserve it.” He trails off, unsure where to go as the train wreck that is his unfiltered brain loses steam. “You deserve it.”

Clint can feel a flush stretching down his neck, hot and uncomfortable. He doesn’t dare look at James. 

A moment later, James sighs deeply, shuffling away a little. He taps Clint lightly on the wrist, an admonition to stop hiding. When Clint opens an eye, James is propped up on his shoulder, grinning, his eyes dancing. “Oh, so you love me?” 

“Well fuck me,” Clint says, and he doesn’t even realize he’s said it aloud until James inclines his head like he’s about to say something like didn’t I just , but Clint barrels on because in for a penny, in for a pound, right? “I guess I fucking do, you asshole.”

James shifts forward, and Clint can tell he’s debating whether he wants to keep giving Clint shit, which admittedly, would continue to dispel the tension that’s been building for hours now, or be genuine in his own words. He settles for a compromise. He leans in to kiss Clint, deep and slow, then tucks his nose into Clint’s collarbone. 

Clint wonders if he can hear how his heartbeat is finally settling. 

“You know,” James says quietly, consideringly, “there’s gotta be a reason why every version of me sticks around your sorry ass, too.”

And it’s not a confession, not really, but Clint still feels like he’s flying all the same.

He smooths his hand down James’ hair and is grateful James can’t see what must be a truly idiotic grin. 

“There’s gotta be a reason for all of this, yeah.” 

Chapter Text

“So we should probably be going then?” 

Staring up at Clint with absolute disdain in her eyes is a microscopic, irritated, crossed-armed, arched-browed, seven-year-old Natasha Romanoff. 

Her only response is a slight narrowing of her eyes, and then she’s dashing for the door. Clint’s left with no choice but to follow her, which really, if he thinks about it, is probably what he should’ve expected. He’ll end up following Nat wherever, in any timeline, age difference or not. 

Bucky left the room only moments after explaining to Natasha who Clint was, and why she should trust and follow him out of the long corridors of the Red Room. If Clint wasn’t already used to seeing how good Bucky was with kids, he’d have been bowled over by the way the tiny redhead had acquiesced to Bucky’s gentle suggestions without a fight, all of the spitfire leaving her body as soon as he’d stepped into her room. 

Used to it or not, Clint has to admit it’d been pretty fucking adorable to see her expression melt, her hand opening to drop the knife she’d been ready to throw at Clint when he’d been the first one in. A few reassurances later, and Bucky had been ready to go back to finish the rest of his job in infiltrating the Red Room, leaving Clint and Natasha to stare untrustingly at each other. 

Damn, and Clint had foolishly thought he had picked the easy job. All he had to do was get Natasha out, leaving everything else to Bucky, which included taking down all the other trainers and older students that they hadn’t yet gotten to, setting the remaining charges, rounding up the rest of the young girls to drop them off with the orphanage liaison who was waiting outside, and sending out an encoded dispatch to the local SHIELD branch. Really, from an outsider's perspective, Clint should’ve had a much easier job.

Tiny Nat’s swooshing braid, disappearing down the hallway, lets him know that he was really dumb to think anything to do with her would be “easy”. 

“Natasha!” Clint whisper yells after her as she rounds the corner, jogging to keep up. “Natasha!” 

He turns around the corner and nearly runs into her back, stopping himself just in time. The quick glare she shoots at him from about the height of his knee almost makes him laugh because of how familiar it is, even on such a young face, but he manages to restrain himself, because they are in hostile territory, after all. 

“Which way?” she asks, as though it pains her to have to question him. 

“Out through the kitchen,” Clint responds, “so down this way, through the trainer’s quarters.” 

He takes off in that direction, listening cautiously for the sound of any approaching footsteps, but they’d done a good job drawing people out of the residential area of the compound, and Bucky’s apparently real good at keeping them occupied with his fists and the numerous traps they’d laid upon entry. Clint makes it to the end of the corridor, then crouches down to pick the locked door that leads into the rooms set aside for the three trainers and the matriarch.

He pulls out his tools, fitting a short hook and jagged snake rake into the knob. He jimmies them together for a few seconds, waiting for the telltale click. 

It doesn’t come. 

He pulls back the short hook, reinserting a long hook, instead, and adjusts his hand positioning a little. Still, there’s no click, no signal of success. 

The back of his neck prickles as he rattles the knob, the weight of a judgemental seven-year-old’s gaze almost as heavy as the threat of falling victim to the charges Bucky’s setting if they don’t get out quick enough. 

He frowns, glancing around the door frame. Maybe this is a special door knob, some kind of late stage, secret Soviet handle that only looks like a regular one. 

Natasha shoves him out of the way, then turns the knob. “It was open already ,” she hisses, then begins muttering about idiots and trusting boys to do anything in grumbly Russian that sounds just as terrifying in a child’s voice as it does in the husky low grown-up voice that Clint is used to hearing. 

“Hey now, how was I supposed to know?” Clint asks in Russian of his own. 

If Tiny Nat — Tiny Tasha? — is surprised to hear that he can speak Russian, too, she doesn’t show it, pushing the door open for him to enter first. She’s short enough the doorknob is level with her chin. “You could have tried to open the door first, obviously.” 

Well, she’s not wrong. 

Clint pushes his lockpick set back into his back pocket and enters the trainers quarters with his bow up, an arrow nocked and ready. It feels good to have a bow back under his hands, one that isn’t of the Nerf variety, even if it’s just a simple compound he’d picked up and hadn’t had time to modify yet. He’s got a couple trick arrows, though. 

The corridor is dim, though light shines in triangles onto the floor from two open doorways. Clint guesses that they had each been left open as their inhabitants dashed out once he and Bucky blew the first detonation in the ballet room earlier. He swings into both doorways quickly to check anyways. 

Just as he’s swinging back into the hallway, the door at the end creaks open, and Natasha lunges to the side, pushing him back through into the trainer’s room. Clint lurches as her tiny body hits his, but he’s facing the hallway so he’s able to see the knife that goes whistling past, right where he would’ve been standing had Natasha not intervened. 

They plaster themselves along the wall, and Clint looks down at her. 

Natasha’s eyes are wide, fearful. 

“Is that the matriarch?” 

She nods. 

Clint thinks about it, then grabs one of his trick arrows out of his quiver. 

“I know I’m kinda useless,” he whispers to Natasha, then rolls forward, spinning on his heel to fire at an angle through the doorway, down the hall. There’s a ping, then a gurgle. “But I’m also kinda decent at certain things.” 

She cocks her head, and Clint mimes covering her ears. She does, because even if she doesn’t completely trust him, anyone who’s spent time in any kind of weapons training recognizes a signal like that. 

As the explosion shakes the room, Natasha stumbles into him and Clint wraps an arm around her, flicking the switch on his aids just in time to prevent as much extra damage as he can.

When the dust starts to settle, he pokes his head out into the hallway, and there’s enough to identify the body as the matriarch of the Red Room from the photographs Tony had been able to procure from SHIELD servers. He looks back at Natasha, gesturing her forward and turning his aids back on. “She’s out. Let’s go.” 

He thinks for a moment that he should maybe be more tactful in his announcement of the death of the woman who had run Natasha’s home for the past three years, but Natasha’s expression looks more like relief than anything else. She peers around Clint’s leg into the hallway, then looks up at him. “Acceptable.” 

Clint fights his eye roll as she moves off towards the set of stairs that will lead down into the kitchen, which they’ll escape through before heading to the rendezvous point in the forest, where the jet is waiting. It had taken Clint years to earn more than an ‘acceptable’ from his Nat; he’d really been hoping it wouldn’t be so hard to impress a seven year old.

Bucky meets them at the jet half an hour later, his hair only slightly completely matted with blood. Clint graciously hands him a towel to wipe down with and tells himself there is absolutely nothing attractive about physical evidence of Bucky’s staggering competence. 

Wow. Your ability to lie to yourself grows worse every day , his brain scoffs dryly as Clint’s eyes trace every movement of Bucky’s hands along the sides of his face.

Clint needs to say something before he makes an even bigger fool of himself in front of tiny Natasha. “Everything good on your end?” 

Bucky blinks down at the once white, now brownish red towel in his hand, then over at tiny Tasha, who’s seated prim and proper in the chair just behind the cockpit, as though she hadn’t spent the past 15 minutes refusing to believe that Clint could pilot the jet better than she could. “All good.” 

“Girls delivered to the orphanage rep?” 

“Girls delivered, 16 of them.” 

“Dispatch sent to the local SHIELD branch?” 

“Sent,” Bucky confirms, dumping a bottle of water over his head. 

Clint magnanimously offers his jacket to Bucky since the towel is no longer usable. The fact that he pulls off his shirt in the process is purely incidental.

He waits until Bucky’s face is clear to ask another question. It’s only partially due to his inability to unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth as rivulets of water run down Bucky’s throat. “And the dispatch said what I told you to say, right?”

Bucky nods, a perplexed grin on his face. “Yeah, though I’m still not sure why you wanted it to say ‘Blame Coulson for the intel, and then give him a promotion,’ in addition to the report about the girls and potential Hydra connections.” 

Clint smirks at the window of the jet in front of him, flicking on the windshield wipers to clear snow from his vision, then keys in the information for take off. Poor Phil. He’d hardly been prepared to deal with Clint and Natasha when he became the handler for Team Delta back in 2005. Poor guy’s got no idea what’s coming for him now. 

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll explain later.” 

Bucky gives him a look like he’s deliberately choosing to allow Clint to get away with what he knows is probably something stupid. He slicks his hair back, twisting it up into a knot. Even with the remnants of bloodstains on the edges of his face, Clint can’t help but stare at his cheekbones. “Let’s go home.” 

Clint glances back at Natasha, whose expression looks cautiously hopeful at Bucky’s words. She’s clearly an open book around her mentor, her willingness to manifest real emotions not yet trained out of her. It makes Clint smile, in a bittersweet kind of way. He flips the last few switches to initiate flight. “Yeah, alright. Home it is.”

“The young Master Stark mentioned we would be joined by someone else shortly. He did not describe the state you would be in.” 

Clint stares back at the, what the fuck , stately-ass, silver-haired, goddamn gentleman in a suit standing in the doorway of the Stark mansion, looking down at their bedraggled group on the front steps. Clint looks over at Bucky. “How come nobody told me Howard Stark was British?” 

Bucky shakes his head with a frown, pulling Nat behind his legs. “This isn’t Howard.” 

“Right you are,” the man says, intelligent eyes noting the movement and the way Bucky’s eyes are now scanning over his shoulder. “My name is Edwin Jarvis, I work for the Starks. Young Master Anthony requested my help earlier this week. I now see it was more dire than I had been led to believe.” 

Clint shifts. Tony’s a dumbass, but he wouldn’t do anything too stupid, right? “You’ve been helping him with the boys?” 

“That I have,” Jarvis replies. “Master Anthony informed me that there would be an older brother of the young Bartons coming along, but he didn’t say anything about twins.” 

“Oh, right.” Clint looks to his left, where Original Clint is standing, looking uncomfortable. He’d shown up in the middle of the flight back from Russia, nearly lost a finger for appearing in thin air and startling tiny Natasha, and hasn’t disappeared back to his own reality just yet. “This is…Francis. He’s here sometimes too.” 

Original Clint gives an awkward wave, then not so subtly flicks Clint in the back of the neck. Damn, but Francis is the worst name ever. Clearly Clint’s parents were determined to make his life rough from the start by giving him such a terrible middle name.

“Hmm.” Jarvis eyes them speculatively for another moment before stepping back to allow them in. “You’ll find sir in the workshop, and the boys are in the kitchen. Dinner will be served shortly.” 

It’s the ‘sir’ that does it — this is the man that in another lifetime, had been Tony’s de facto parental figure after the Winter Soldier assassinated Howard and Maria. Clint’s an idiot not to have recognized his voice sooner. He’s instantly infinitely calmer: Tony in the original timeline trusted just about no-one as much as he’d trusted the family butler. 

Original Clint apparently has the realization at the same time. “It’s Jarvis, like JARVIS ,” he whispers loudly into Clint’s ear. “Like the A.I. from the Tower. Man, this is kinda creepy.” 

Clint nods, eyes wide. “Stark’s daddy issues become more clear every day I’m here, I swear.” 

Bucky’s glare tells them both that they suck at whispering.

They shuffle past in a line, Natasha only a hair's breadth away from the back of Bucky’s shins. Clint leans out to clasp him on the shoulder once they get into the foyer. “Maybe go clean up before you see the boys?” He glances up and down Bucky’s body meaningfully. “They’re not exactly used to the whole Carrie prom scene look. Or, I mean, y’know, the blood.” 

Bucky frowns, glancing towards the kitchen. 

“Don’t worry, I’ll tell them you’ll be down in a minute,” Clint says, because he knows how much Bucky’s been chomping at the bit to get back to them. “And I’ll be sure that their introduction to little Russian Red goes smoothly. We can handle that, right?” 

Original Clint puts his hands up in poorly disguised terror. “Don’t look at me.” 

Natasha glares when Clint looks at her, instead. 

Jarvis arches a single eyebrow that tells Clint the butler is quite looking forward to seeing how Clint manages all of this alone. 

“See?” Clint asks Bucky, who’s begun to smirk at the two new additions to Team Give Clint Shit. “I got this. Everything’s gonna be fine. You go wash up, no need to traumatize any more small children today.”

And he wasn’t wrong, okay? 

“This is what you call fine?” Bucky asks from the doorway to the kitchen, his metal fingers tapping his bicep, both arms crossed as he tilts his head. “We need to talk about what that word means.” 

Clint shoots a glare his way, then focuses his attention back on Natasha, who’s still poised and ready to leap towards the boys again. “Yes, fine! I’m handling things!” 

He’s the only adult in the room now, Jarvis off to get Tony from the workshop, Original Clint having vanished only moments before shit hit the fan.

CB and Barney are cowering underneath a table, and Clint’s at an impasse with Natasha, his arms raised in preparation. 

“I will show you what it means to handle things in Soviet Russia,” Natasha murmurs. She makes a feint towards Clint’s left. She’s small and fast, sure, but she’s still only been training for the past three years, so Clint’s able to read her movements. He grabs her by the shoulder as she attempts to duck around his other side, swings her up in front of him, back to his chest, then crosses his arms around her, pinning her arms to her side. She kicks, struggling  — 

Then bites his hand. 

He drops her with a curse, and she takes advantage of the release to flatten to the floor and slide between his legs towards the table.

Clint recovers and grabs her ankle before she gets to the boys. It’s sloppy and unbalanced, so he manages to fall backwards onto his ass in the process. Natasha is already kicking by the time he hits the ground, and it’s all Clint can do to protect his fingers from her flailing feet. 

“ Natalia ,” Bucky bites out, and she stills instantly. Clint breathes a sigh of relief then freezes when Bucky turns the same tone of voice on him.“ Clint. Care to explain?” 

Clint releases Natasha’s leg and gingerly stands. “Well, see, we Bartons are idiots.” 

“This is not news.” 

“And Barney said — actually, Barney, would you care to explain?”

Both of the boys have popped their heads up and are now peering over the table. Barney’s face is white and he’s glancing between the girl who’d been trying to kill him only moments before and the man with the scary metal arm and an equally scary disappointed look on his face. 

He shakes his head. 

Clint sighs, because apparently it’s up to him to be the mature one, again . “Barney said something about girls not being very tough and,” he spares a pitying glance for the poor fool, “how Natasha was so small and weak looking.” 

“It was only logical for me to prove him wrong,” Natasha says, eyeing him as though she’s still planning on it. “He is lucky that you have not yet shown me where the knives are located in this kitchen.” 

“And with that attitude,” Bucky says, offering a hand to pull her up, “we won’t for quite some time. We’re gonna need to talk about appropriate responses to idiocy around this family. It’ll take some time to adjust, but I promise you’ll get there. I had to figure things out too.” 

Natasha sniffs, looking grumpy about the admonishment. 

“She punched me!” Barney exclaims, a bit of bravery entering his voice as he looks to Bucky for support. 

“And it sounds like you deserved it,” Bucky counters quickly, then squints. “Well, you deserved something. Was it a bad punch?”

“It was amazing ,” CB says, awe in his voice. “So fast, you should’ve heard how he screamed. He sounded like a little — ,” he cuts himself off, eyes flicking to Natasha, “like a little kid. A baby.” 

Well at least CB knows how to not be a complete idiot. 

Natasha’s glare says she doubts the integrity of his compliment.

Bucky pats Natasha on the shoulder. “We’ll talk about when it’s okay to punch the Bartons later, okay? Jury’s still out on whether it was okay this time, it depends on how hard — Barney, do you need ice?” 

Barney raises his head from where he’s got his arm around CB’s neck, one hand poised to pull his younger brother into his armpit as punishment for complimenting his new sworn enemy. He looks torn, and Clint knows exactly what he’s thinking. If he says no, he’ll effectively be admitting that he’d overreacted earlier. If he says yes, he’ll be proving that he was wrong and that Natasha really is a force to be reckoned with. He scowls. “….No.”  

“Perfect,” Bucky says, stepping next to Clint. He leans his head on Clint’s shoulder, and Clint does his best not to react. “Jarvis said something about dinner soon?” 

“Aw, dinner, no,” CB sighs sadly, turning his big blue puppy dog eyes to Clint and Bucky. “I thought that since you were back we’d have pizza tonight.” 

“It’s been terrible,” Barney agrees. “Jarvis keeps making us eat vegetables .” 

“Only ungrateful fools complain about what kind of food they are given,” Natasha criticizes. 

Clint laughs. “Maybe tomorrow.” He looks down at Bucky. “Whaddaya say, can we ask Jarvis for pizza tomorrow night?” 

Bucky smiles and slides his arm around Clint’s waist before looking at the kids. “Yeah, tomorrow we can do a celebration pizza night. Boys, you get to introduce Natasha to pizza.” 

CB trips over a chair in his excitement.

Clint briefly contemplates setting the orphanage on fire before deciding that that would perhaps be an overreaction. It’s not the orphanage’s fault, really, not the building that did anything wrong, not the rest of the kids inside who are to blame, just a fucking messed up fucking system and idiotic asshole workers who somehow managed to misplace two entire goddamn teenagers . 

But he probably shouldn’t resort to arson to deal with his frustration. 

Clint is logical like that. 

Barnes is still inside the lobby of the orphanage trying to talk to the woman at the front desk, weasel out more information than what they had been able to get earlier. Paperwork or something, maybe proof of the last time the Maximoffs were in the building. But Clint hadn’t been able to handle the way the woman had cocked her head, eyes confused, and repeated, “They’re not here anymore” like a goddamn broken record. 

And that’s not even mentioning the nasty expression that had worked its way onto her face when Clint first brought up the twins, the one Clint recognized from years in the circus, when a quick stop into town had been met with judgement and prejudice towards traveling groups of people. Clint had been hackles up immediately, because Jesus, if he didn’t want to protect Wanda and Pietro enough already, knowing that they’d faced casual discrimination because of their heritage at the place they were supposed to feel safe would’ve been enough to send him hunting them down in Sokovia all over again. 

Fuck Sokovia and fuck screwed up orphan care systems and fuck people who think less of Romanis and traveling performers and anyone else. 

Barnes had apparently noticed the way Clint’s hands had tightened their grip on the counter, and as their questions showed an increasing inability to get information, he’d rested his hand on top of Clint’s to prevent any potential drastic measures from taking place. 

A final refrain of “No…they’re not here anymore,” from the woman had caused Clint to nearly lunge across the counter, Barnes catching him just in time, spinning him around to the doorway. Clint had stalked out, fists clenched.  

Clint casts his eyes around the street now, sitting on the stoop just outside the orphanage, trying to get his bearings and his calm back. All down the street are newspaper covered windows, dusty sills, and laundry flapping in the breeze on clotheslines strung between buildings. Slapped across the nearby bodega is a mix of Cyrillic and Sokovian graffiti, and he can just make out enough to know it’s disparaging of the government. Everything looks about typical for what he knows to expect about 2009 Sokovia, only a few years into the decade-long massive political upheaval that landed a Stark-tech bomb in the middle of the Maximoff’s kitchen. 

It woulda been cool if Clint could’ve been sent back in time far enough to prevent that from happening, Clint thinks absentmindedly as he watches a couple of kids passing a soccer ball up and down the sidewalk, but he’s not dumb enough to think that he could’ve prevented conflict on that scale. Hell, he’s not sure he can prevent conflict on any scale. 

He’s kept Barnes safe so far, he guesses, and the way Barnes had known him well enough to help him keep his cool inside was definitely something. The way Barnes had pulled him to the side before they went in earlier, one metal and one flesh hand across Clint’s shoulders bracingly, steely eyes boring into Clint’s until Clint had nodded and released the nervous breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding; that was definitely something too. 

The fancy Starktech hearing aids from Original Clint’s last visit pick up on a laugh from inside through the open door, one Clint’s only been privileged enough to hear a few times as Barnes has slowly recovered. It’s gruff, a little fake, but it still shows miles more of social awareness and comfort than Barnes had had when Clint forced him to leave the Hydra bunker over a month ago. The laugh, even though it’s not quite real, is enough to warm Clint, ease him away from the anger and frustration, at least a little. 

Clint narrows his eyes. Maybe he’s able to prevent some conflict after all. 

He sighs and tries to force the tension out of his body, think more logically for a bit; getting angry at things won’t help anyone. The soccer ball rolls to a stop in front of him, and he picks it up before tossing it back to the kids who are standing a few feet away, hesitant to get too close. He thinks back to the woman inside and how she’d repeated basically the same sentence over and over again about the Maximoffs no longer being at the orphanage. 

It was weird. 

Clint frowns, leaning back with his forearms flat against the steps behind him. 

It was really weird. 

Clint and Barney weren’t in a group home for long before they ran away to the circus, but even then, back in the early nineties, he’s sure their foster parents were aware of when they left. And it’s not like this is a huge orphanage; kids don’t just vanish like that, no matter how close to the edge of war the country is teetering on. And no matter how casually discriminatory the worker was, most people in public service positions like that care at least a little about their charges, enough to notice when they fucking disappear . 

Clint picks up on Barnes’ heavy footsteps coming through the entryway, and a few moments later, Barnes sits down beside him. “She couldn’t seem to find their paperwork in the computers.” 

Clint wrinkles his nose. “That’s suspicious as hell.” 

Barnes nods, watching the kids play down the sidewalk. “It is.” 

“Could she ever tell you more than that they aren’t here anymore?” 

Barnes shakes his head. 

“Fucking suspicious.” 

“Yeah,” Barnes says. “But I don’t think she was trying to hide anything. She seemed like she genuinely didn’t know, like she couldn’t remember.” 

And that’s exactly what Clint had been thinking. Barnes is frowning at the sidewalk now, looking uncomfortable. Which makes sense, of course, what with his own memory being messed up and messed with, just like Clint’s mind had been messed with by Loki and just like how when they first went after the twins before Ultron and —

oh . 

“They’re still here.” 

Barnes looks at him, frown changing from concern into confusion. 

“It’s Wanda,” Clint says, standing excitedly. What a fucking way to find out, but, “it’s Wanda. She’s,” he waves a hand around his head, “doing something to make the employees think they’ve left.” 

Barnes stands, his hand resting hesitantly on the rail along the steps. “Doing something?” 

Clint grins. “Yeah man. I mean I totally thought it was all the Tesseract — that’s the alien stone thing Hydra had to experiment on them with, and also what that alien fucker used to control me with — but she must have some innate powers or something. She does mind stuff, I’ve told you about it.” He waggles his fingers. “You know, magic.” 

Barnes looks a little disconcerted. And that’s not Clint’s fault, really — he’s definitely mentioned Wanda’s powers to him before. And it’s doubly not Clint’s fault that he thought it was all the Tesseract that caused the twins to gain powers. He’s just an archer, man, how is he supposed to know how all this magic shit works? He very intentionally ignores how he’d zoned out of any conversation in his old life that mentioned magic, lest he start thinking too hard about blue flashes and loss of control and the deaths of hundreds of SHIELD agents. 

“I guess,” Barnes says slowly, glancing through the doorway. “Didn’t realize that’s what it would look like.” 

“This is good news!” Clint crows, jumping off the bottom step, yanking Barnes behind him. “I mean not great that she’s maybe kinda mind controlling a bunch of people or whatever, but they’re here, Barnes, they’re here!” 

Barnes jerks forward off of the steps, an unwilling glare of a smile rising to his face at Clint’s antics. “Do you want to go back inside? See if we can get past the front desk?” 

“Nah, we can go around the side, check for a fire escape or something. I don’t feel like dealing with that lady again.” 

Clint pulls Barnes forward and is ten skips down towards the alleyway when he realizes he’s still holding Barnes’ hand. He only stumbles a tiny bit in shock, and it’s Barnes’ metal grasp and quick thinking that prevent him from completely face planting into the knees of someone walking the other direction. 

“Sorry!” Clint exclaims in hasty Russian, which is the closest he’s got to Sokovian. He reaches his spare hand out to pat apologetically at the shoulder of the person he’d almost taken down in excitement. 

The person he’s almost bulldozed has a baseball cap pulled low over bleach blonde hair, a bulky jacket covering lanky arms, and, no shit, a stringy false mustache playing dead caterpillar over frowning lips. Everything about his posture reads as a really shitty intimidation tactic. 

“You are looking for the Maximoffs? What do you want with them?” It’s asked in heavily accented English, the tone about two octaves lower than a kid in the middle of puberty can maintain for long. 

And see, if Clint was just some random guy off the street, a police officer, or someone from the Sokovian version of CPS, whatever, Pietro’s attempt at subterfuge might have worked. But Clint’s not, and once upon a lifetime, Pietro died in Clint’s arms. 

And therefore while Clint may not be a random dude, a cop, or a CPS worker, he is Clint, so he reacts the only way he can. “What the fuck, Pietro, what the hell kinda mafia movies have you been watching that makes you think it’s a good idea to approach someone like that? You cruisin’ for a bruisin’, getting all up close like this?”  

Bright blue eyes snap to his, instantly one part shit , another part who the hell and a final part the fuck?  

Clint grimaces. He should probably try to figure out a way to smooth things over. 

Instead, his brain opens his mouth and says, “Cruising for a bruising is an English idiom. It’s like, uh, looking to get hurt. ‘Cause damn, kid, I know you’re fast and all — maybe even without the whole Hydra experimentation thing — but you gotta know better than to get within arms reach. Come on, bro.” 

Pietro’s backed away a little, head turning quickly over his shoulder. Clint peers, too, but doesn’t see Wanda anywhere. “I know what cruising for a bruising means. I have seen Grease. Fast as lightning,” Pietro mutters, then frowns at his own response. He moves a little bit, crossing his arms in attempt to take back up that tough guy mantle. “What I do not know is who you are, and why you are looking for the Maximoffs. Who I am not. One of. I am not one of the Maximoffs.” 

Clint grins. He can’t help it. He and Barnes had talked about how they should pitch this — Barnes knows Clint isn’t good at planning, but after being subjected to two weeks straight of nonstop Clint babble, he was willing to admit that Clint should probably be the one to explain the situation to the Maximoffs.  

“I’m from the future and here to take you and your sister away from Sokovia before you get scooped up by some evil Nazi scientists and tortured and turned into weapons that try to take down the entire world alongside a sentient cyborg that ultimately sends half of Sokovia to fucking space.”

Barnes sighs. 

Clint will admit, this is not what they discussed.

Pietro looks like he’s considering running away. “Are you crazy?” 

“Nah,” Clint says. “Just a time-traveling ex-carnie sharpshooter who moonlights as a super soldier rehabilitator with a vested interest in keeping you two safe.” 

This appears to not have done anything to soothe Pietro’s concerns of Clint’s insanity. 

“I think you should leave,” Pietro says, backing slowly away. 

“Okay, this looks bad,” Clint admits, releasing Barnes’ hand to raise both of his up. “But I’m not lying? I’m from the future?” Pietro looks like he’s an inch away from dashing to safety, and if Wanda’s already got her powers, Clint’s willing to bet Pietro’s already a fast little dude too. 

He’s starting to feel like it’s a lost cause when there’s movement from behind Pietro, then appearing seemingly out of fucking nowhere is Wanda. She steps next to her brother, arms crossed. 

“He’s supposed to be the speedy one, not you, what the hell, Wanda?” 

Wanda’s frown deepens, and she runs a quick glance over her brother as though to assure herself of his well-being before turning her frown to Clint. “I do not know how you know us, but you do, don’t you?” 

Clint shrugs, both hands still raised in the air as though the Maximoffs are skittish cats he’s scared of running off and somehow having his hands above his head will help. 

“But you, you do not know us.” Wanda directs her statement at Barnes, who Clint looks back to see nod. “And yet you want to be here, and you care for us already.” 

Clint whips his head back and forth between them, trying to catch all three of their expressions. Barnes looks uncomfortable, forced into confessing emotions or risking jeopardizing the twins’ trust, Wanda is a confusing mix of tentative hope and defiance, and Pietro looks torn between defending his sister and wanting to laugh at Barnes’ discomfort. 

Barnes nods jerkily, jaw clenched. 

Clint snorts, and both the twins look at him. “I told you, I’m from the future. He cares about you because I care about you, and because if we don’t get you to safety, the same people who fucked him up for the past sixty years are gonna try and do the same thing to you.” 

“This man is not sixty,” Pietro scoffs, and Wanda elbows him in the side, turning her piercing gaze to Clint. 

“And why do you care about us?” 

Clint smiles, a little lopsided. “‘Cause in my past, your future, I saw what happened to you after. I mentioned torture, Nazis, and evil robots — I wasn’t kidding. You don’t deserve any of that.” 

Wanda stares at him a little longer, and Clint feels a little bit like a bug under a microscope. 

Pietro tilts his head down to whisper in Wanda’s ear, and even with the new hearing aids, his shitty ears don’t stand a chance at picking up whatever they’re saying. It’s probably in Sokovian, too, which Clint doesn’t speak. 

While they deliberate, Barnes steps forward, leaning into Clint’s space. 

“You can probably lower your hands now.” 

Oh, hey, Clint’s shoulders were starting to feel a little funny. 

“Also, I may be wrong, I have been a robot for the past couple decades, but I don’t think you need to raise them up above your head — maybe just in front of you?” Barnes lifts his own in front of his chest in a move that Clint recognizes as definitely what he should’ve been doing this whole time. 

Damn. 

“It’s the ASL,” he mutters, even as he feels the back of his neck burning. “It fucks up my moves.” 

Barnes snorts. 

Both twins look over at them. 

“Old Man,” Pietro says, then smirks. “And extra old Old Man. What is it that you want us to do? Where would we go? If we believe you.” 

“To Romania, for now,” Clint answers honestly. “We’ve got some shit to take care of. But eventually to the United States. Home of Grease , and Greased Lightening. And burgers. And greasy burgers, if that’s what you’re into.” 

Pietro looks slightly infuriated by this statement, as though he’s regretting his accidental confession all over again. 

Wanda brushes her hair behind her ear, smiling slightly before turning her piercing gaze back to Clint. “You came all the way here for us. To Sokovia, and perhaps through time. Because you care?” 

“More because I’m clumsy and kinda can’t be trusted around dangerous things,” Clint says, deciding to go all-in honest. “But yeah, something like that. I don’t really know why I ended up here, but I do know that I have to do the right thing now that I am here. And part of that right thing is making sure that what happened to my Wanda and Pietro never happens to you.” 

Wanda tilts her head, evaluating. “That is honest, I think. I can feel your affection. For me, for my brother,” she nods at Barnes, “for him. Though maybe that is a different kind of affection.” 

Clint glances at Barnes, who only shrugs in response. 

Oh please , his brain snickers, like he doesn’t already know how fucked up you are over him . 

“Protection,” Wanda continues. “Empathy. Fear. Sorrow. Love. Family. These are the things I feel from you. And I have not felt things like this from anyone in a very long time.” 

When Clint showed up to Sokovia today he didn’t anticipate being emotionally splayed open like this, but whatever, it’s cool. This is the new Clint Barton. He talks about his fucking feelings, he overshares like a goddamn Olympic champion, he’s prepared to lay his heart out on the coals of his own funeral pyre if it means keeping the people he cares about safe. He nods. “Yeah, all of that.” 

Wanda turns to Barnes. “And you…” Clint can feel Barnes tense beside him. “You do not mean us harm, and you will go where he does. Your emotions are…harder to see. But there is trust, yes?” 

Clint can’t not watch Barnes’ response to that, and he sees Barnes frown, eyes flicking to Clint’s, before he sighs and nods. “I trust him, yes.” 

And Clint probably knew that, because why the hell else would Barnes be here with him, when he still doesn’t have total control over his mind and Hydra could be haunting around any corner to re-Soldier-i-fy him, but still. It’s nice for that to be confirmed. There’s a swell of warmth in his chest that grows when he turns back to the twins and sees a genuine smile on Wanda’s face. 

“I think my brother will very much enjoy these greasy burgers you speak of. He is a little greasy himself.” 

Pietro reels back from his sister, affronted, and Clint laughs. “I always figured that was part of why he was so fast — all that grease lets him just slip through the air. Like an eel, or a slug, if slugs were fast.” 

Pietro squawks, and the warmth in Clint’s chest surges up as he launches into a tirade about sibling loyalty and hypocrites because can’t Wanda see how gross the extra old man’s hair is?! 

Clint looks back at Barnes, finds him smiling softly at the twins’ antics, and Clint has to look away, suddenly wondering if his body is capable of spontaneous combustion due to emotional overload. Because fuck, man, this feels right.

Chapter Text

They’ve only been at the Romanian safehouse for two days when the Maximoffs find out that going “to America” also involves meeting and possibly staying with one Anthony Edward Stark. 

It hadn’t taken them long to get back to the safehouse, moving as quickly as they could while still trying to give the twins a slightly more comfortable journey than either Barnes or Clint would’ve minded. Clint’s got Barnes to thank for not running them ragged — Barnes had been the one to suggest actually staying overnight at a hotel, for example, when Clint had paused near midnight at a gas station, ready to fuel up both the car and his caffeination levels. Apparently teenagers need sleep or something ridiculous like that. 

Clint and Barnes are in the middle of the living room, discussing how best to send Rhodey and Pepper the information on the Ten Rings and Stane without alerting them to who Clint and Barnes are, when a glass shatters in the kitchen. 

Clint jerks his head up at the sound, and Barnes is already on his feet as Wanda moves into the doorway, her eyes wide, fearful and accusatory. “Stark? You are trying to help Tony Stark ?” 

Clint winces. They probably should’ve thought of a plan for this before getting the twins. 

Pietro zooms into the room a moment later. “Did you say Stark?” He’s not as fast as he’d been once enhanced by the Tesseract, but he’s still able to dash around Barnes to snatch up the open laptop before either of them can grab him. He scans it quickly. “This says Stark!” 

Clint squeezes his eyes closed as hard as he can and inhales deeply. They really, really , should have come up with a plan for this. 

“He’s not such a bad guy when you get to know him?” And that’s only kind of a lie. Stark’s pretty damn annoying. 

“Clint.” It’s Wanda’s tone of voice, so young and hurt, that makes Clint open his eyes. “What is the meaning of this? You know who we are — you know who killed our parents. How could you not tell us this?” 

He’s saved from answering by a tearing sound from the middle of the room, a rip of red and shining, metallic silver appearing out of nowhere, because apparently today is also the day when the twins find out that sometimes an alternate version of Clint comes for a visit. 

Original Clint stumbles to a halt directly in front of Clint, a metal pail in his hand. “Hey, Clint.” 

Clint gives him a head tilt in greeting. “What’s in the bucket?” 

Original Clint looks down before letting out an explosive sigh. “Goat’s milk. Damn, James is gonna kill me if I don’t get back in time to finish. He trusted me to do this on my own today.” He looks over at Barnes. “Hey, robocop.”

Barnes scowls at him, crossing his metal arm over the flesh one. He’s still leery of Original Clint. 

“How are things going? Last time I stopped by you were halfway to Sokovia — does that mean —  shit, you’re back here already, what happened?” 

Clint gestures with his chin towards the kitchen, and Original Clint spins around, dropping the milk pail onto the floor with a muted clatter at the sight of the twins in the doorway. 

Both of whom look absolutely terrified. 

Clint had mentioned the whole time traveling clone thing, hadn’t he? 

“We probably should’ve told them about the whole asshole clone thing,” Barnes says as the milk starts to ooze into the carpet. 

Whoops.

Clint only gets knocked in the head by a measly two books thrown through the air by telekinetic powers that Wanda hadn’t realized she had, the milk only mostly gets forgotten about for an hour, Barnes only almost stalks out of the room twice, and Original Clint only gapes like a shocked fish at the twins for half the conversation before things are calm enough to get back to the topic at hand. 

They’re all seated in a tentative truce in the living room, though both Barnes and Pietro look equally like flight risks. 

“So, Stark.” Wanda says the name like a challenge, though the way she’s twisting her long auburn braid in her hand displays how anxious she really is. 

Original Clint breaks his gaze from where he’d been staring at Pietro like the kid was a mirage too good to be true, perking up at the name. “Tony? You guys gonna go rescue him next?” 

“Rescue?” Pietro asks in disbelief. “You want to rescue the man who is responsible for the death of our parents?” 

“Oh, it’s like that, is it?” Original Clint grimaces, sucking air through his teeth, and Clint pats his knee in commiseration. Original Clint looks at him accusingly. “Come on, don’t tell me you didn’t tell them that helping Tony was part of the plan? Did we learn nothing from Siberia?”

Clint scoffs. “You try figuring out how to break that news!” 

Original Clint shakes his head with a sigh. “We’re supposed to be smarter than Captain ‘I don’t wanna hurt anyone’s feelings’ and ‘My suit may be iron by my heart is a fragile piece of glass’ man.”

Clint glowers. 

Barnes elbows him in the side. 

Right. Upset teenagers. 

“Okay, look,” Clint says, spreading his hands in front of himself. “We didn’t mean to not tell you about helping Tony. He’s a part of our future — and in that future, or in my past, or however the hell this time travel shit works — the two of you forgive him because he knows that creating and selling weapons to the US military and basically the rest of the world was kinda not cool.” 

“Yeah, it only took your teaming up with one of his robots gone wrong and trying to take over the world for you to figure that out,” Original Clint points out. 

“Not helping,” Clint says, which he doesn’t even need Wanda’s flattened stare to tell him. He shifts. “Right now Tony is held captive by a group of terrorists who are trying to get him to replicate one of the missiles he created for the military, and he was actually betrayed by one of the assholes who runs his company for him, who has also been the one responsible for why so much Stark-tech has been traded illegally throughout the world.” 

“I do not care if someone else is involved,” Pietro growls. “He is still the one making the weapons. He is still the one responsible.” 

Clint nods to concede the point. “You’re not wrong. And I’m not saying Tony isn’t an asshole himself who has made a shit ton of terrible mistakes over the course of his lifetime. Before he got taken captive, I know he had an ego the size of Eastern Europe and a really bad case of turning a blind eye to the messes his own inventions caused. And also a terrible amount of privilege and basically no desire to check it — ”  

“Not helping,” Original Clint points out, helpfully, and Clint can, in fact, see the frowns on both Maximoff’s faces growing deeper. 

“ Before he was captured, I said.” Clint spares a glare for his clone, then raises his eyebrows with a weak smile at the twins. “What he’s going through right now will really change him for the better. After this, he’s a lot more cautious about what happens to the weapons he makes, and he’ll spend the rest of his life making amends for the suffering he caused.” 

“You say these things,” Wanda murmurs quietly, fingertips tapping against the armrest with anxiety, “and you expect us to just forgive him? In an instant?” 

“You must be more crazy than I thought if you expect us to forget ,”  Pietro sneers, though Clint can see through his posturing to the fear underneath. Pietro is in the doorway now, straddling the line between giving them the benefit of the doubt and giving into his gut instinct to trust no-one but his sister. 

The thing is, Clint knows he’s asking a lot of them. They’re fucking teenagers, for chrissakes, orphans in poverty, an oppressed minority, in a foreign country away from everything familiar. They shouldn’t have to forgive a grown-ass man. Stark should be the one apologizing to them. This situation is really, really shitty. Clint hangs his head, an argument escaping him.

Barnes moves on the couch next to him, then leans forward to speak. “It’s not fair for us to ask you to forgive him. You don’t have to forgive the people who hurt you. Nobody does.” He glances at both Clints, not even frowning at Original Clint. “But I think we can ask you to trust that we won’t do anything to hurt you.” 

Original Clint is watching Barnes with wide eyes, the tilt of a wistful smile at the corner of his lips. 

Barnes continues. “Wanda, you can feel our intentions. You know we mean no harm. You can tell that Clint means what he says about Stark trying to make amends.” He looks down at his left arm, twisting his fist so that the metal plates whir quietly. “I know that I can’t ask for forgiveness, but I think you can feel that I want nothing more than to do what I can to fix things. If Stark wants that even half as bad as I do… I trust Clint to help me, and I trust him to help Stark, too.” 

He shrugs uncomfortably and settles back into the couch, curling in on himself. 

And if that isn’t a fuck load of pressure, Clint doesn’t know what is. He stares at Barnes for a moment longer, overwhelmed, the silence in the room a heavy weight on his shoulders. 

“I’m sorry for not telling you immediately,” Clint tells the twins. “That was my mistake. I’ll try to be better about it from here on out, share our plans with you, explain our logic, all of that. Trust is earned, I know that. I don’t want to ever do anything that will make you doubt that I have your best interests at heart.” 

“And you…you really believe that helping Stark, and us meeting him, is in our best interests?” Wanda asks slowly, though it’s more like testing the waters than accusing him. 

Clint huffs a laugh in sync with his clone. Wanda’s a heavy hitter. “It sounds ridiculous, I know. But yeah, I do.” 

Wanda studies each of them intently, Pietro’s glare beside her unwavering as he leans against her protectively. 

“Okay,” she says a few moments later, standing. 

“Okay?” Clint asks, hopeful. 

“Okay?” Original Clint parrots in disbelief. 

No fucking way it was that easy . Clint’s brain is unconvinced. 

“Okay, we will trust you for now,” she qualifies, walking towards the back of the safehouse where the bedrooms are. 

Pietro stands as she leaves through the door, then levels the men with another accusatory glare. “Okay, we will trust you for now . And we will judge Stark for ourselves.” With that slightly ominous threat, he leaves the room at a sedate pace for him, which looks like a sprint for anyone else. 

Clint bumps elbows with Original Clint as they both collapse backwards into the couch cushions. 

“Fuck, man, and here I was thinking 1992 Clint had it tough with the circus boys and the pint-size assassin,” Original Clint breathes. “But teenagers with a grudge? That’s a whole new level of terrible.” 

Clint nods and feels Barnes lean into his shoulder, a comforting warmth at his side, a support he never knew he’d get to have.

Every time that Clint gets sent to one of the timelines he finds a new reason to avoid bringing up the time machine snafu with the 1991 and 2009 Clints, which he guiltily has to explain to James every time he gets back to 2016. 

“Tiny Tasha , James, and a flesh and blood Jarvis . How was I supposed to disappoint Jarvis?!” 

“It was already a tense moment with the Maximoffs, I didn’t need to drop another bombshell!” 

“There were cookies involved! And a game of capture the flag! I can’t go interrupting that kind of competition with a casual ‘oh, hey, your world is about to vanish, sorry about it’, y’know?” 

“2009 Clint and Barnes were totally having a moment. I spent the entire time I was there hiding in a bathroom, I’m not even kidding.” 

“Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was on, James, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.”  

James has so far been sympathetic with Clint, though he’s gotta admit, it helps that he’s able to distract James with kisses and stories about how the other versions of himself are each flourishing with their Clint. They’re both suckers for each other’s happiness, it would seem. And kisses. They’re both super into those.

It’s harder to wiggle his way out of his conscience when Natasha shows up in Wakanda, though. 

“And then Tony, who I swear is somehow even more manic in his early twenties, ate all of the Brussels sprouts on his plate like he was trying to prove something to the kids, but all it caused was him to throw up two seconds later — you should have seen the look on Jarvis’ face. And Bucky was laughing the whole time, not even upset about it a little, and then when Tony got back from the bathroom — ” 

“Clint.” Natasha interrupts him with a gentle shake of her head and a hand across his lips. “You’re just looking for reasons not to tell them now.” 

The two of them are in the guest wing Clint and James had been staying in until they both moved into the hut down in the lowlands a few weeks ago. Natasha arrived two days ago, her work with dismantling the Sokovia Accords, getting James pardoned, and forcing Thaddeus Ross’ removal from office finally finished. 

 Clint dodges the accusation like the professional adult he is. “And then the next thing I knew, CB was throwing each of his sprouts at Barney with little Tasha critiquing his form, and — ”

“Yastreb.” And that’s a voice he learned years ago to never ignore, and a name that speaks of months spent on missions, of trust hard earned but carefully protected, of affection given when neither felt deserving of it. 

He sighs. “It seems wrong to ruin their happiness. I don’t see what’s wrong with it — they can’t do anything about the time machine, so why should I spoil what they have?” 

Natasha’s green eyes are warm, containing a sympathy that’s always there if you know how to look for it. “Wouldn’t you want to know if it was you? If it was your world that you were about to lose?” 

Clint waves his hand in the air from side to side. “Honestly, I’m not sure. ‘Ignorance is bliss’ is a saying for a reason. What they have is so…tentative, Nat, so precious. Those Clints and those Jameses are experiencing things that I never coulda imagined — living lives that seem to really bring them happiness. I just…what good is knowing about it gonna do?” 

Nat stretches out along the sofa like a cat, then pulls his head down into her lap. She begins to run her hands through his hair, nails scratching gently against his scalp. “Do you think they would change anything about how they’re living if they knew?” 

Clint thinks about it. “Probably not. They each have a specific mission there — save the kids, save the Tony, root out Hydra, all that — and I can’t see myself giving up those missions just because I found out that it might not last, you know?” 

Natasha hums. “You do tend to stick things out if it’s for a good reason, don’t you?” 

Clint chuckles. “Careful, that sounded almost like a compliment.” He can feel her faint huff of laughter in the way her stomach tenses against his head. 

“We can’t have that, can we? What does James think of your idiotic plan to keep your copies in the dark about the very fabric of their realities?” 

James is back at the hut today with the goats. He stayed in the city with Clint for the first two days after Natasha arrived, but left this morning to get back to his herd. From the expression he’d worn when he glanced over Clint’s shoulder after hugging him, Clint’s pretty sure he’s also just trying to give him some alone time with his best friend. 

Besides, they’d filled the water trough before they left, and the goats eat fucking grass — no matter how oddly overattentive James is of them, they’d be fine on their own for a week at least. 

Nat and James have been fine together, all things considering. Natasha is hardly one to hold grudges, especially not for being unwillingly used to cause harm. She’d already forgiven James for his former life when she agreed to help Steve and Sam search for him after the fall of SHIELD, and if nothing else, she trusts Clint’s judgement of the type of man James is. Clint’s not really sure what he’s done to deserve her trust, but somehow over the past decade and some change, he’s earned it, and is grateful that it means his best friend and his boyfriend (which fuck, is that what they are?), get along alright. 

“He gets where I’m coming from,” Clint answers after reveling for a few seconds in the warmth that is the thought of the two most important people in his life getting along. And the head scratches. Those are really nice, too. 

“Does he? He doesn’t have a problem with you keeping information from Barnes and Bucky? He doesn’t think that’s an abuse of power?” 

Clint shifts uncomfortably. “We think it’d be different if they could do anything about it. But Shuri and M’tolla confirmed that the copies have no influence over the time travel, and it's not like they’re in any position in 1992 or 2009 to have the technology or connections to come up with something on their own. Neither can reach out to their Wakanda, 2009 Tony is still captured by Ten Rings, and 1992 doesn’t even have fucking touch screens yet.” 

“So it’s nothing to do with your bleeding heart, then.” She tugs at his hair and he opens his eyes to make a face at her.

“I mean, sure, that’s part of it. I’d bet even someone as practical and cold-hearted as you would melt at the sight of tiny Tasha commanding two baby Bartons around an obstacle course made of patio furniture and garden tools like she was running an op through a full fucking tactical course at the Tower.” 

Natasha’s silent for a moment, though her hand keeps carding through Clint’s hair. “I can’t believe that Clint and Bucky went to save her.” 

Clint reaches up to stop her hand, causing her to look down at him. “Of course they did, Nat. There’s no fucking way I’d let what happened to you happen if I could prevent it. Surely you know that, right?” 

She smiles faintly. “I should, shouldn’t I?” He nods emphatically, hurt that she’d even doubt it for a second. “And she…she’s doing well? In a house full of idiots with only a butler to commiserate with?” 

Clint cracks a grin at the thought. “She’s doing so great. Bucky was telling me about how she’s trying to whip CB into shape — apparently he’s a ‘weakling with no skills’, but he absolutely adores her and will do anything she tells him to, even if that means launching an all out sabotage war on Barney. They’re cute together, all of them.” 

Natasha’s smile is twisted slightly at the end. Clint reaches his hand up to poke her in the cheek, and she rolls her eyes, mouth quirking a little more naturally. “I saw her hug CB after the Brussels sprouts incident, y’know. And she lets Bucky carry her around like he’s her dad or something, and will let 1992 Clint give her piggy back rides. It’s sweet.” 

If he didn’t know any better, he would almost think that the glisten at the corner of her eyes was something like tears. Natasha clears her throat, looking away from him. “That does sound nice.” 

Clint looks up at the tightening of her jaw, and imagines what she could be thinking. Tiny Tasha is getting a chance at a real childhood, one where she’s allowed to seek comfort. One where she’s allowed to have friends, where kindness is met with affection, where being good doesn’t mean being the most lethal. 

His Nat never got any of that. 

“It’s really nice. I’ve missed you, Nat.” He breaks the movement of her hand to twine his fingers with hers. “It’s been hard without you here.” 

She squeezes his hand and gently uses a fingertip to run under her eyes, then his, finding a dampness he hadn’t realized was there. “You’ve had James.” 

“James isn’t you, Nat.” 

She chuckles. “True.” 

“It’s dumb that the world needed you so much. I bet if you had been here this whole time we would’ve figured out what was wrong with the time machine at the very beginning.” 

Natasha arches a disapproving eyebrow. “Now you’re just full of shit, Barton. There’s no way I can do anything to help the Wakandans figure that out. I’m here for moral support only.” She flicks him in the forehead, then smoothes over the same spot gently. “But even though I did need to deal with the Sokovia Accords and everything else, I’m sorry I couldn’t be here for you.” 

They’ve been each other’s support network for too long now — he bets she missed him out there just as much as he missed her here. Does she need him like he needs her? Probably not. But he knows that he’s been her touchstone like she’s been his in a world of uncertainty; when they had no-one else, could trust no-one, not even their own minds, they always had each other. 

“It’s okay. The Avengers needed you. The world did. I was in good hands here.” 

She smirks. “Yeah, I may have heard the effects of those good hands last night after you went to bed…” 

Clint rolls his eyes, refusing to rise to her bait because he is an adult, dammit. “The team is really relying on you, huh? I’da thought they’d demand Cap or Stark or someone for those trials, but you really showed ‘em what’s what, didn’t you?” He meets her gaze with a smile. “Guess you’re kinda like the real deal leader of us, aren’t you? You’re basically our public face, now, the first one people call —  you’re removing government officials from office, representing the Avengers, not taking anybody’s shit, running the goddamn world, huh?”

If his best friend was anyone else, they might’ve blushed. But Clint’s best friend is Natasha Alinova Romanov, so she just nods and says, “It’s been a long time since I’ve taken anybody’s shit, Clint.” 

He laughs outright at that, twisting on his side to hug her torso awkwardly. “Fair.” 

Her laughter shakes his body and he wallows in the comfort of it for a minute. He’s so lucky to have her, always has been. If he didn’t…he doesn’t even wanna think about that. She’ll probably have to go back to the real world before long, resume all of her new responsibilities; she’s too important, too wonderful, too influential and good at everything she does to stay here forever with him and James. But at least when she does have to leave, he knows she’ll only be a phone call away. His timeline copies, however —  

“Neither of the other Clints get to have you,” he mumbles into her side. “They’ve got their Jameses, but they don’t have their Nats.” 

He rolls back up to meet her eyes again, which are apologetic. “1992 Clint has Tiny Tasha.” 

“Yeah,” he concedes, “but he doesn’t have you . When things get tough, he won’t have you for help. I mean fuck, Nat, the first thing I did when I was sent back here was call you. That wasn’t even an option for them. 2009 Clint’s gonna probably run into 2009 Nat eventually, but this whole time he’s been alone. He was so overwhelmed before they got the Maximoffs — you know planning isn’t my strong suit, poor dude was up a fucking creek without you to rely on.” 

She scrunches her nose in sympathy, then her eyebrows move together slightly, her head cocking. “Maybe that’s a good thing for them.” 

“To be without you? In what world is that a good thing?” 

“Perhaps those Clints are learning how to manage without me to rely on. Maybe it’s a good thing.” 

“What the fuck, Nat?” He pushes out of her lap, sitting up to look at her on an even level. “I like having you to rely on. And we’ve said for years that relying on each other isn’t a sign of weakness. I know that I can do things without you, I just prefer it when I don’t have to.” 

She sighs. “I know. And I prefer having you around, too, you know that. But I’ve also always known that you’re more capable than you give yourself credit for — I don’t run around choosing idiots for my partners. Those Clints will be okay without me, even though they probably doubt it, just like you doubt that you’d be okay without me now.”  

Clint frowns at her. “But I’m always better with you.” 

She shrugs. “Who knows, Clint. Maybe me not being there is allowing those Clints to build new support networks. Maybe those Clints will finally realize how capable they actually are.” 

“Fat chance,” he says grumpily, though if he thinks about it, the 1992 and 2009 Clints really are doing a fantastic fucking job figuring things out on their own. And he’s no expert in introspection, but he knows himself well enough to bet that they’re probably realizing that they’re doing well by their Jameses and respective rescuees. 

Nat smiles at his very mature response, then leans into his side, pulling an arm over her shoulders. “I like how well trained you are. Used to, you’d keep arguing for at least five points past when you knew I was right.” 

He squeezes tight, bending his neck to press his cheek against the top of her head. Fuck, but it’s good to have her here. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I still think you’re very very wrong here.” 

They sit together for a minute, just the two of them, just like it’s been for so long. Clint’s got James down in the lowlands waiting for him, and Nat’s got a whole world at her fingertips, but for now, like always, they have each other. 

“We’re gonna figure this out, right? Gonna save the other timelines?” 

She meets his question with the same honesty she always does — the honesty he’s never going to take for granted again. “I hope so. If not, I’ll be here for you.”

Clint remembers the stolen super soldier serum in the middle of a movie night. 

CB is pressed tight to Bucky, gently doodling on his metal arm while Tasha is halfway overturned in a yoga pose, never content to be as lazy and child-like as Clint wishes she would be; she’d acquiesced to a watching a movie, sure, but she wasn’t going to just sit there. Barney had started the movie with them before CB accidentally kicked him in the face — he’d left not long after, followed by Tony, who was outraged at the suggestion of a crab with vocal chords. Now, halfway through the soul switching scene with the evil octopus lady in The Little Mermaid, Ariel ignoring absolutely all of the fine print in her contract, Tasha kicks up into a full inversion, and Clint suddenly remembers the serum. 

Naturally, he falls off the couch. 

Bucky jerks and CB’s marker goes skidding off his arm and onto the couch cushions, then over the pounding of his heart and the sea witch’s demonic cackling, three voices in varying levels of concern and anger say, “Clint?” 

“You’re not supposed to move that fast ,” CB says accusingly. 

“No sudden and unexpected movements without due cause,” Tasha reprimands from upside down as though reciting from a rulebook. “It’s rude and nobody likes to be startled.” 

Clint scrambles up, face contorting into what he hopes conveys apology while he starts to back towards the door. When Tasha arrived, Clint and Bucky had needed to institute a few new policies to help prevent any accidental — or intentional — stabbings or hurt feelings. To help get Tasha on board, Clint explained that she wasn’t the only one who would benefit from rules against surprise jump scares, door slamming, or pranks that involved actual deadly materials. All it took after that was one instance where she saw how Bucky flinched when CB burst into a room screaming bloody murder, Barney hot on his heels, and she was convinced. 

Somehow, and Clint’s really not sure how, it’s morphed into a massive Protect Bucky Initiative, and now all of the kids are like tiny little peacekeepers, policing each other’s — and Clint and Tony’s — every action to make sure Bucky is as comfortable as possible. It’s definitely helping, but if Tasha tries to get him to take the peanuts out of the trail mix one more time just because Bucky doesn’t like them, Clint might just explode. 

“Everything okay?” Bucky asks, clearly not anywhere near disturbed enough to warrant the daggers both CB and Tasha are glaring at Clint. 

“Totally. Yes, fine, completely, just — popcorn?” Clint stutters out as his feet take him backwards. “Realized we needed some. Help?” He pastes what is undoubtedly a very believable smile on his face. “We’ll be right back, you guys keep watching. Bucky?” 

Opening the door, he steps through and to the side, pressing his forehead against the wall in the hallway. 

How the fuck did he manage to forget the super soldier serum? 

Stealing it from Howard Stark’s car was like…the first fucking thing he did in this timeline! He’d thrown the case containing the vials under one of the guest bathroom sinks when they’d first arrived at the Stark mansion and apparently immediately pushed it from his brain. His stupid, stupid brain. 

Hey now, don’t blame me, I’m not the one getting distracted by Bucky Barnes, Winter Dad ^tm , his brain reprimands him. 

What, huh? His heart asks as Bucky comes out of the movie room, a charming crinkle at the corner of his eyes as he blows a kiss at the kids inside. It’s the cutest fucking thing in the whole fucking world. Me? Distracted? 

Goddammit. 

“Bucky.” Clint clenches his jaw as he hiss whispers through his teeth. “I forgot about the serum!” 

“The what?” 

“The super soldier serum!” 

Bucky looks confused, a slight furrow between his brows that Clint has to physically restrain himself from smoothing out immediately. “What about the serum? Me having it? I don’t…really see why that’s relevant right now.” 

Aw, man, had he also forgotten to tell Bucky about it? 

“No, not that serum — the stuff you were supposed to steal from the Starks when you were sent to take them out.” 

According to Bucky’s expression, which is shifting rapidly from confusion to concern, Clint had not, in fact, remembered to tell him about the serum. 

“Well see, I took it cause I didn’t want Hydra to get their hands on it, and honestly it wasn’t good in Howard’s hands anymore either, you know, cause of how Hydra is a part of SHIELD probably and all that.” 

The expression that’s quickly overtaking Bucky’s face sends a shiver down Clint’s spine, and he is suddenly reminded that it’s really only been a few months since Bucky was under Hydra’s control, and that this is likely very, very far from good news. 

“You have the serum. Here, in this house. Where we have three curious to the point of dangerous children running around, getting into shit that they shouldn’t on a daily basis,” Bucky says quietly. “Where Howard Stark’s son, an overgrown child himself, lives and works. And you’re only telling me this now? Where is it?” 

Clint can see very clearly now: he may have fucked up. 

“It should be up in the bathroom of the fourth guest bedroom on the third floor in the west wing, under the sink. That’s where I put it when we first got here, and as far as I know no one’s had any reason to go there since.” 

Bucky’s expression hardens even further. “Children don’t need a reason to go places they don’t belong, Clint.” 

Clint scrubs a hand across his face. “I know, I’m sorry — I just forgot about it, that’s all! We’ve been busy!” 

The last thing they fucking need is one of the boys or Tasha ingesting a serum meant to turn full grown adults into super soldiers, thinking it’s a sort of neon blue candy or some shit. They’d totally dare each other to do it, too — though Tasha’s spent the majority of her few years on this earth training to be a bite-sized assassin, she’s not yet achieved adult Natasha’s perfect emotional control, as proven by her current inability to stand down from any challenge Barney faces her with, no matter how dumb it is. Just last night Barney had been inspired by Clint’s tales of perfect aim as Hawkeye and had challenged Tasha to try and dodge all of Jarvis’ kitchen knives as he shoved them into CB’s hands. Bucky had arrived just in time for that one.  

“Fuck,” Clint whispers after a beat, hardly daring to look Bucky in the eye. “I really screwed up. I can’t believe I forgot about something that dangerous where the kids could get at it.” There’s silence for a moment and Clint wishes he could melt into the ground and disappear forever. Words pour out of him in effort to fill the gap. “They might’ve found it, or Tony, or — fuck. I should’ve told you about it ages ago. Destroying it should’ve been a priority.” 

Bucky sighs, then pulls Clint in close in a move so unanticipated that Clint trips directly into his chest, his foot catching on the hallway carpet. He thumps against Bucky’s neck, halfway frozen. “It should’ve. I know you didn’t mean to forget, but shit, Clint, this is important. I’ll get it after the movie and we can deal with it then, take it to Tony, or,” and there are more words coming out of his mouth, but Clint’s paralyzed by Bucky’s arms wrapped around him. Clint can tell the movement is stiffer than it might be otherwise, but the metal arm that pats rigidly against his back is still kind enough that it sends electric shocks sparking through Clint, a buzz that zooms from his back to the tips of his fingers and out of his ears and erases Clint’s ability to process anything else. 

Bucky’s hand drags up along his spine like he’s tracing a line of fire from Clint’s waist to his neck, and the warmth of his chest surrounds Clint in fiery heat — not like the bad kind of fire, but like the kind that a family might sit in front of during the winter, curled up together in comfort, in peace, in love and affection. Bucky’s hair, left down after a shower, whispers against Clint’s forehead where he’s pressed into Bucky’s neck, a sensation that should tickle, but Clint’s not bothered, not even a little. He sighs a little and can’t help but slump forward into the embrace. 

His brain makes an inarticulate noise, and his heart whines in response. 

“Sorry, what?” 

And then Bucky’s pulling back from him, hands held steady around Clint’s biceps, blue gray eyes concerned for an entirely different reason. 

Because apparently it was real life Clint that made those noises. 

Clint squeezes his eyes shut and counts to ten. 

His heart and brain are sprinting around in a panic inside his chest and head respectively, alarms clanging, a clamor of ‘mission abort’ ‘what did I just do’ ‘fleeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! ’ and ‘mayday, mayday!’   rising within him.  

When he opens his eyes, Bucky’s still there, and there’s a hitch at the corner of his mouth that tells Clint that not only did those noises come out of his mouth, but Bucky knows exactly what they meant. 

“Clint,” he says, lips quirking into what could be considered a grin under normal circumstances, though there’s still more than a little of his Winter Soldier persona haunting the corners of his eyes, “go get the popcorn you promised. I’ll stay with CB and Tasha, and we’ll deal with the serum after the movie.” 

“Yeah, okay,” Clint manages, diligently ignoring how strained his voice sounds. 

Bucky releases him to turn back to the door to the movie room. “Hurry up, we’re going to miss the kiss if we don’t get back in there.” 

Clint’s lucky he was standing near a wall, or else his trip at that comment would’ve ended up with him face planting the floor instead of just catching his shoulder on the doorway.  

Even worried about an incredibly dangerous substance falling into the hands of his pseudo children, even having to deal with Clint the complete fuckup who managed to forget the existence of said substance for months , Bucky Barnes still manages to be a little shit .

Clint makes it back in just before Ursula is revealed, in plenty of time for Eric and Ariel to kiss, CB to burrow his face into Bucky’s stomach in disgust, one hand fisted in Clint’s shirt, and Natasha to announce that the Prince was an idiot the entire time for not recognizing Ariel from when she saved him.

Clint passes the popcorn bowl to Bucky and tries to ignore the way his eyes have hardened again, a thin veneer of ice creeping across his face. 

The movie will finish, they’ll find the serum exactly where Clint left it, and everything will be fine. 

Everything will be fine, the kids will be safe, Bucky will warm up again, and Clint will feel a little less like garbage. 

Fish are dancing in joy on the screen, and things will be fine.

Clint is stepping out from the boys’ room after putting them to bed, pulling the door carefully closed behind him when Bucky meets him in the hallway, striding quick and efficient with militaristic precision. “You said the third floor, right?” 

“Yeah, fourth bathroom, although now that I think about it, it may have been the third bathroom — ”  

Bucky cuts him off. “I checked all of them.” 

There’s a swooping sensation as Clint’s heart drops into the pit of his stomach. 

He knows what Bucky’s saying, but he asks anyway. “And you couldn’t find it?”

“Nowhere — fuck, Clint, what if Tony found it? What if the kids, or Hydra — ” Bucky’s looking around like there are enemies in every corner, cold eyes darting down the hallway. “We gotta wake them up, or search their rooms, and are you sure it was the fourth floor?” He turns his head towards the stairs, then back to Clint. More words rush out of his mouth, low and tight like orders. “I will go check all the other bathrooms now. You handle the boys’ room. We will do Natalia’s together, she might try to stab us if we don’t knock politely. If it — ” 

“That is not necessary.” 

Tasha steps lightly around the corner, the giant shirt of Clint’s she’s taken to wearing to bed billowing around her like some kind of overly adorable Russian doll with the capacity to maim someone through sheer cuteness. 

Bucky visibly tries to temper his face, several expressions flickering across it until a frankly sickly smile settles there. “What? Natalia, sweetheart, what’s not necessary?” 

Tasha scrunches her nose and walks down the hallway towards them, her feet absolutely silent along the carpet. She stops in front of the boys’ door and taps three times, gesturing to Clint and Bucky to wait. 

Clint can hardly breathe, and Bucky doesn’t look much better. 

Ten seconds later, three knocks echo back in the same pattern, then CB opens the door, his expression much too alert for a kid who Clint could’ve sworn was inches away falling asleep when he’d tucked him into bed only minutes before. 

“The response code is short, short, long .” Tasha models the proper knock against the door in reprimand, and CB nods guiltily before they turn to face the adults. 

Tasha adopts a soldier’s at ease stance, both hands behind her back, and after glancing up and down her frame, CB sloppily copies her, and they both jut their chins out fiercely. 

“We took care of the — ”  she stumbles a little over the word, “serum for you.” 

Clint doesn’t know whether to laugh or burst into tears.   

“You did what?” 

“After you told us to brush our teeth, we went to the bathroom and found the box with the stuff you were talking about,” Tasha begins, then nudges CB. 

He glances at her, then up at Clint, before finally looking at Bucky, who Clint’s not surprised is the one they feel the need to explain themselves to. “Tasha broke into the box and we dumped it down the toilet.” At Bucky’s widened eyes and Clint’s strangled noise he adds, “Don’t worry though, we were really careful.” 

Tasha nods sagely. “I made him wear some of the gloves we sto— borrowed from Tony’s workshop, and we both wore goggles.” 

“We flushed three times just to be sure it was really gone.” 

“How did you even — how did you know?” Clint asks, since it looks like Bucky’s completely lost for words at the thought of his — no, the —  kids touching such dangerous material. 

Tasha levels him with a glare that Clint’s been facing for over a decade that tells him he’s a fucking idiot . “You’re not exactly subtle, you know. It was very obvious that you and Bucky were talking about something you didn’t want us to hear. So, naturally, we listened at the door.” 

“— naturally!” Clint chokes out, but Bucky’s nodding like this makes perfect sense. 

“Yeah,” CB adds, growing brave as Tasha’s attitude bolsters his own. “I thought you said you were supposed to be a big time spy or something, huh?” 

Clint splutters a little. “I — I — ”  

Bucky’s laughter interrupts him, and Clint looks to the side just as Bucky leans forward, scooping both Tasha and CB into his arms. “You — CB, Tasha — oh my god, you can’t scare me like that.” 

Tasha wiggles in his arms, clearly discomforted by the arrangement, but Bucky’s got his cybernetic arm around her waist and she soon recognizes there’s not much she can do, so she slumps with a sigh. CB’s already grinning, his own limbs wrapped tight around Bucky’s torso like a goddamn blonde koala. 

“We did what needed to be done,” Tasha says, as petulant as she ever gets. “And we were very careful about it, so you can’t be mad at us.” 

Clint steps closer, bringing his hand over Bucky’s shoulder to run it through Tasha’s red curls. “We’re not mad, Tasha, we were just worried about you — what you were dealing with was really dangerous.” 

She twitches away from his hand and in doing so rests her cheek up against Bucky’s, who squeezes her even tighter. She rolls her eyes but doesn’t move. 

CB peeks up from around Bucky’s neck. “We did good though, right? You promise you’re not mad?” His blue eyes are soft at the edges, brows pulled tight together, and Clint knows from experience that it’s real fear that underlies his question, just like it was real fear and concern that prompted Tasha’s statement. 

Both of these kids need a lifetime worth of reminders that they’re loved and appreciated for who they are, let alone for what they try to do to help. 

Bucky responds before Clint can. “Of course we’re not mad, baby.” He pulls back just enough to make brief eye contact with Clint before pressing his forehead up against CB’s, grey blue and bright blue eyes wide open, inches away from each other. “We’d never be mad at you for trying to help.” 

“Promise,” Clint says, then steps around Bucky so that he can form a kid sandwich. He wraps his hands around Bucky’s waist, clasping his fingers together as his arms strain around all three of them. Tasha tenses for a moment before relaxing, tentatively bringing her left arm up and over Clint’s neck, her tiny hand hesitant on his shoulder. He leans into her embrace, and her grip tightens, reassured. 

After a moment, Clint cracks his eyes open and whispers conspiratorially, “Oh no, you guys, you didn’t think about the turtles!” 

Bucky blinks, and CB and Tasha adjust so that they can look at Clint, confused. 

“The what?” CB asks as if he’s concerned he’s asking something dumb. 

Clint waggles his eyebrows. “The turtles . In the sewers .” 

He sees the moment Bucky realizes what he’s talking about, eyes lighting up. “Yeah, Clint’s right — the serum — it’s kind of like magic, see, kind of radioactive . That’s why we were so worried, you know, thought it might get on you and make you start to mutate. ” 

CB gasps. 

Tasha’s not quite there yet, which makes sense; she’d only been interested in their viewing of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles last week because of the fight scenes, which she’d criticized mercilessly. 

“Guess we better go tell Tony he’s gotta be on the lookout for some mutant turtles in his sewers,” Clint says teasingly. “Or giant, blind, ninja master rats.” 

Tasha’s eyes widen, and she looks over at CB, who’s got both hands over his mouth. “But — no, they’re not real — it was just a movie!” 

“I dunno,” Clint says. “Maybe it was based on real life!” 

“ No. ” CB’s whisper is hushed and horrified. “We didn’t mean to hurt the turtles. ” 

Clint’s mouth twists as he tries to maintain his facade, but Bucky breaks before he does, the big softie. “No, CB, Clint’s just joking. The serum doesn’t work like that, and the movie was just a movie — you didn’t cause any mutation for any turtles.” 

“Oh.” CB looks relieved, then he frowns at Clint. “That wasn’t very nice, you big jerk.” 

Clint grins and ruffles his hair before stepping back. “You’re right, I’m sorry, yastreb. C’mon, let’s get you back to bed.” 

Bucky squeezes them tight before lowering them to the ground. “Go on, CB, Tasha. We’ll be there in a minute.” As CB moves into his room and Tasha starts walking down the hallway, he looks up at Clint. “I’ll do CB, you go tuck Tasha in?” 

“Sure,” Clint says, then shakes his head with a chuckle. “These fucking kids.” 

“I know.” Bucky smiles affectionately. He leans in then, and before Clint can process what’s happening, he’s pressed a kiss to Clint’s cheek and is stepping back. “This fucking family.” 

“I — yeah.” 

Bucky’s smile widens, the last of his Winter Soldier ice finally melting, and he opens the door to CB and Barney’s room without looking back, then slips through and closes it quietly behind him. 

“Yeah,” Clint repeats, then kicks himself into motion, down the hall towards the tiny, imperious queen of a child that’s waiting for him to kiss her goodnight and tuck her in.

Chapter Text

“So what you’re telling me,” Stark says, glancing back and forth between Clint and Barnes from his tense position on the edge of the couch, “is that he killed my parents, I killed their parents,” he jerks a thumb towards the Maximoffs in the corner, “and you — you’re a clone from an alternate dimension who is responsible for uncovering the corruption of my longest business partner as well as breaking me free from the Ten Rings before I had to bust myself out and lose my only friend in the process?” 

Clint shrugs, splaying his hands wide in a gesture he hopes is pacifying. That about covers it. 

Tony lets out a gust of breath, flopping back into the couch cushions with a wince, one hand coming up to press against where Clint knows the arc reactor is humming faintly under his shirt. The other hand holds his whiskey glass, which he’d calmly poured himself when Clint, Barnes and the twins had entered his living room half an hour before, Clint greeting an incapacitated JARVIS like an old friend. He tosses back the last inch and sighs. “What the fuck?” 

It was only a matter of days after the Maximoffs discovered their plan to help Tony before everything came to a head and Clint was able to release the necessary information to Pepper and Rhodey. He sent the details about Stane’s corruption to Pepper first, along with casually hacking into Stane’s accounts at Stark Industries as well as his communications with the Ten Rings, cracking them wide open for Pepper’s perusal. Clint tracked Pepper’s actions online for the next few hours, and as soon as she reached out to Rhodey, which Clint knew she would, he’d sent everything else he had about Tony’s location and the status of the Afghanistan base to them both. 

It only took another 24 hours, an easily infiltrated Serbian Hydra base, a quickly commandeered Bulgarian jet which Clint had to learn how to pilot on the fly (get it, Pietro, on the FLY? ), a couple of dismantled security protocols surrounding Stark’s Malibu mansion, and here they are, hopefully at least halfway through the process of getting Tony to accept their story, accept their help, and, fingers crossed, accept their presence in his life for the foreseeable future. 

Since, after all, there’s that whole trigger sequence thing that Barnes still has going on, not to mention a Hydra-infested SHIELD running rampant in the world, and a certain frozen super soldier waiting somewhere in the Arctic.

So getting Tony on their side would be nice, to say the least. 

Tony narrows his eyes towards his empty glass. “This might be a hallucination. I don’t remember a transition to torture, but maybe…” he glances back at Clint. “Nah. Even my brain isn’t crazy enough to invent all of this. Plus, hallucinating me would have thought to restock the top shelf stuff instead of this shit, and Pepper would probably be here. And someone would be naked.” At Pietro’s burst of laughter, he winces. “And there wouldn’t be any fucking teenagers, what the hell ?” 

Clint grins at Barnes, who allows his mouth to twitch in acknowledgement of the humor of the situation. He’s still tense, though, looking about an inch away from either grabbing one of his guns or sprinting the fuck as far away as he can from the person he’d orphaned nearly two decades ago. 

And Clint — Clint’s not really sure what to do here, but he knows what he’d want if he was the one freaking the fuck out. So he steps a little closer to Barnes, and when he sees Barnes’ eyes flick towards him, he lets his hand run down his forearm. Just once, lightly, before he knocks his fist gently against Barnes’ thigh. Grounding, he hopes. A reminder that Barnes isn’t alone, that Clint’s there for him just as much as he’s been since he found him in that Hydra bunker months ago. 

Barnes maintains eye contact with him for a moment longer, the smallest upturning of lips showing a release of tension. He squares his shoulders and turns to face Tony, resolute. 

Clint grins. “The teenagers aren’t so bad, Stark, promise. Once Pietro decides you’re not a complete asshole, you guys’ll get on like a house on fire. Gonna be annoying the shit out of everyone before we know it.” 

“It is my job to annoy the shit out of everyone,” Pietro grumbles from behind him. 

Tony frowns. “This whole acting like you know me thing is distinctly unnerving.” 

“Oh, but I do ,” Clint says a bit maniacally, the pressure in his chest finally starting to release as both Tony and Pietro ease more into their natural state of being. “I know all about that time with that intern at Stark Tower, and then after your birthday with the — wait, shit, no, those were all after the Battle of New York, god dammit.”

Tony shakes his head with a shudder. “Time travel? I mean,” he looks at Barnes, “I’ve seen enough of dad’s old war shit to recognize you, plus I can always have J — hey, JARVIS, now that you’re back online, can you run a scan on these two to confirm their identities?” 

JARVIS’s cool voice — slightly creepier now that Clint knows there’s another version of himself living with a human JARVIS — floats down from the ceiling. “Already done, sir. Sergeant Barnes is who he claims to be. There was no exact match in the system for Mr. Barton, but the closest identification is for an agent of SHIELD, Clint Barton, aged 26.” 

“Hey.” Clint perks up. “I don’t think SHIELD knows you’ve got access to their data like that.” 

A holograph of Clint’s face appears above the glass coffee table in the center of the room, bright eyed and smirking, hair scuffed up into that stupid faux hawk he’d worn for most of his twenties. 

Tony looks between the image and Clint. “Fucking time travel, seriously?” 

“Yep — how else could I have gotten so good looking?” Clint smirks, flexing his biceps. “Better with age, baby.” 

He ignores Wanda’s sigh, Pietro’s exasperated scoff, and only spares a fleeting look at Barnes — just long enough to spot a faint flush of color rising on his cheeks. 

Tony snorts. “Sure, we’ll go with that.” He glances around the room one more time, his gaze lightening. “Okay, operating on the assumption that what you’ve told me is true, and yeah, so far all the evidence points to that — tell me more about this future where I’m a superhero, I work on a team with that guy who ravaged Harlem last year, some assassins, a witch, an android and a super soldier — a different one, also from the forties, apparently — , and there’s a secret African nation with tech that you somehow expect me to believe is more advanced than mine. And oh yeah, where you run around shooting things with a string and some sticks.” 

Clint opens his mouth to correct Stark’s flippant tone about the importance of his ‘string and sticks’, but doesn’t get far because it’s then that one of the time machine vortexes decides to open up and deposit one very naked, flailing Original Clint in the middle of the room. 

Barnes reacts the quickest, grabbing Original Clint by the arm and shoving him behind Tony’s sofa, hissing something that Clint’s aids don’t quite pick up. Wanda’s got her hand splayed across the middle of her face, halfway between covering a gasp and covering her eyes, and Pietro is bent over in stitches. 

Tony stretches up to poke his head over the back of the couch, stares for a moment, then stands and walks back over to the whiskey cabinet. 

He glances at the shelves again before pouring another glass over the soundtrack of the twins’ ill-contained laughter and Original Clint’s awkward apologies, then turns to face the room. “Okay, we’ve got a naked person now. Just missing the good liquor and Pepper.” 

Clint looks at Barnes, who’s glaring at Original Clint behind the couch to stay put , then shrugs at Stark. “Time travel, man.”

“Jesus, James.” Clint exhales loudly as he tries to shepherd his thoughts into some kind of order, sober up his mind which is still a little more than slightly fuck drunk. They’d skipped dinner with Nat to return back to the lowlands early in the afternoon, and much as he loves having Natasha here to help, Clint’s also really fucking grateful he and James have a whole different place to escape alone together. 

One that is very nice.

And very isolated. 

Where no one but the goats can hear them. 

Goddammit, why is Clint thinking about the goats right now? 

“And Joseph,” James says quietly from beside him, patting him on the stomach. 

Clint frowns up at the ceiling, tries to parse through what James could possibly be saying, but, nope, his brain is still entirely incapable of picking up what James is putting down. “What?” 

“Jesus, James and Joseph, instead of Jesus, Mary and Joseph — the saying sounds better that way. All that alliteration.” 

Clint blinks, then rolls onto his side to stare at James. “What the fuck?” 

“I mean, with all the ‘oh gods’ and ‘holy fucks’ you were saying, I thought you were going for a theme here,” James responds with a grin, his eyes twinkling in a way that suggests he’s entirely too alert for the amount of energy they just expended. 

“I can’t believe you — fuck — you — you fucker,” Clint settles on before admitting defeat, leaning forward to kiss that stupidly smug expression off of James’ face. 

It’s not exactly going to help his own brain turn back online, but maybe if he works hard enough, he can get James’ brain to meet his halfway. 

A few minutes later, he pulls back, and James’ eyes are hooded, the curve of his smile sweet, and Clint reaches down between them again to see how else he can affect that expression when the time machine sucks him up and spits him out in the middle of Tony Stark’s Malibu mansion. 

It’s admittedly not the first time Clint’s been publicly naked in one of Tony’s residences, but it is the first time he’s done so while being thrust through time and space after mind-blowing sex with his boyfriend only to land in front of said boyfriend’s significantly grumpier, easy-to-spook, still-slightly-brainwashed clone. 

Who’s now shoving Clint bodily behind a couch and hissing, “There are fucking teenagers present, you asshole!”

Clint scrambles into a seated position, trying to shield as much of his body as he can from Barnes, whose bright red face contains a terrible mix of anger and embarrassment. He can hear the Maximoffs laughing together, and 2009 Clint is saying something to Tony, who Clint had had just enough time to see before being shoved behind the couch. 

“Fuck,” he says, uncomfortable for about a million reasons. He should’ve known a bleed would happen when he and James were in bed. “Sorry, just — can you get me some pants or something?” 

Barnes looks like he’s going to deny him on the basis of just how much he dislikes Clint, but he glances towards the Maximoffs, then his Clint, and nods. “Yeah. Wait here. We just arrived, didn’t exactly bring in all the luggage. Stay here,” he repeats before striding away, and Clint watches over the couch as he grabs both Maximoffs by the arm to drag them out of the room. 

Clint presses his forehead to the back of the couch and sighs. This time travel shit is getting real old.   

By the time the machine deigns to send him back to 2016, it’s been nearly half a day and Clint wants to cry from how stupid sweet it is to see Pietro and Wanda act like dumb teenagers together. 

He lands on his feet in the middle of the hut he and James have been staying in, startling James out of his pacing, which, from the looks of it, he’s been doing since Clint left. James’ eyes scan him quickly as he catalogues the change in attire, Clint in a set of perfectly fitting clothes that 2009 Clint had been willing to give him. He reaches out once he’s verified that Clint is unharmed, pulling Clint to his chest, one hand moving behind his head to bring Clint’s forehead down against his shoulder. 

“Fuck, Clint. That was a long one.” 

Clint inhales, James’ warmth and familiar scent comforting. “Yeah. 2009. Malibu. They’ve got Tony on their side now. Sort of, anyways. Working on it.” 

James tightens his arms around him, the hand behind his head twisting in the short strands of hair at his nape. “Barnes okay?” They both know what it means for Barnes to be in California with Tony, as well as, “The Maximoffs? Everyone handling things?” 

“Far as I can tell,” Clint confirms, relaxing into the sensation that’s sending pleasant shivers down his back. “Apparently dropping a naked dude in the middle of a room is enough evidence for Stark, and my idiocy was enough to break the tension that the twins felt about being there. Barnes still wants to kill me though, I think.” 

James makes a disagreeing noise. “You’re just not his Clint, is all. I’d struggle to trust a different you, too. And I’ve got a couple extra years of ownership of my mind to help me out.” 

Clint lifts his head to look at James. “I’m a real lucky fucker, you know that? Can’t believe there’s three of you willing to put up with my dumb ass.” 

James quirks a brow, then leans up to kiss him, quick and comfortable, a grin tucked in the corner of his lips. “There are perks.” 

Clint feels a little more tension drain out of him, though he’s still got a low current of concern thrumming through him. They really need to figure this shit out. What he’s got here is so, so good, and though he wouldn’t trade places with either of the other Clints, they’ve both got something special — something important — going for them, too. 

He studies James for a moment longer. “Yeah, I can buy that.” It’s still dark outside, but the faint sound of chickens through the window signifies that dawn is approaching. “Come on. You’ve clearly been up all night worrying — let’s go to bed. Deal with things in the morning. Or afternoon.” 

James chuckles, following behind him out of the living area. “The perks in the bedroom aren’t the only ones I’m talking about, you know.” 

Clint pulls 2009 Clint’s shirt over his head, slinging it in the vague direction of the closet before collapsing face first into bed. “Sweetheart,” he mumbles into the pillow, lifting an arm up as James slides in close, “you’ve been up all night, and I just spent ten hours in fucking California trying not to break down at the thought of a world with both Maximoffs disappearing, all the while your murder twin glared daggers at me for daring to exist in my birthday suit. You better not be expecting any ‘bedroom perks’.”

He can feel the stretch of James’ smile against his neck. They lie still for a moment, James’ breath puffing warm across Clint’s throat and down his chest, lulling him closer to sleep. “Dunno,” Clint hears James say softly before slipping his hearing aids out for him. “Think I’m getting a pretty nice perk right now.”

It’s only a day and a half later that he gets sucked back into the time machine again, right in the middle of another fruitless conversation with the Wakandan scientists. Natasha and James both lunge forward as if to stop him, their hands grasping at thin air as Clint is propelled through the reflective, shimmering red haze. 

He’s only in 1992 for only a couple hours, trying not to get in the way of the family dynamic that is clearly blossoming along the lawns of the upstate Stark manor. Bucky isn’t so wary of him as Barnes is, but Clint still feels like a bit of an intruder, watching the way 1992 Clint and Bucky interact with the kids, playing off each other’s strengths to keep them entertained. The way they move in sync to anticipate the kids’ needs, prevent disaster, and bring a feeling of family to a gang of fucking former assassins, circus brats, and a gangling Tony Stark …it’s truly fucking beautiful, and Clint can’t fucking handle it. 

When he falls back through the vortex, Natasha and James are waiting for him in the goat field down in the lowlands, equal expressions of worry on their faces. Clint wants to laugh, he wants to cry, but most of all he wants to find a solution for all of this. 

“We’ve gotta figure this shit out,” he whines from the ground, his position the same he’d been in in 1992, where he’d been playing freeze tag with the kids, CB frozen just above him in his attempt to rescue Clint before Tiny Tasha had tagged him out, too. “I can’t handle this for much longer.” 

Natasha and James exchange looks before James offers his hand, pulling Clint to his feet, then brushing grass off his back. One of the goats comes up, butting Clint in the back of the leg. 

Natasha reaches a hand out, soothing it over Clint’s shoulder. “We could try getting Stark back on board?” 

Clint reaches behind him to let the goat nibble on the tips of his fingers. He shrugs. Tony hadn’t been able to do much for them before leaving to reassume SI and Avengers duties, acknowledging defeat in the face of the Wakandans’ superior technology, at least as far as time travel went. But maybe, now…? “Yeah, okay. I think I’m desperate enough for that.”

Bucky kisses Clint — like a real kiss, not a drunken one that Clint has doubts about, not one where Clint’s left wondering if it was meant for him, what it means, or about Bucky’s intentions — in the middle of a Sunday afternoon, soap suds up to his elbows, the lingering scent of burnt and thankfully less burnt chocolate chip cookies swirling through the air around them. 

The kids have just left the kitchen after doing their part to gather up the various bowls, trays, and other utensils. They’d also made a half-hearted attempt to sweep up the honest-to-god piles of flour and sugar which had somehow managed to cover half of the fucking horizontal surfaces in the room. 

Despite their best efforts, Clint expects they’ll be tracking trails of white throughout the house for the foreseeable future. 

They’d eaten their fill along the way, which is the proper way to eat cookies, as Clint had happily informed Bucky while taking careful aim at CB’s mouth across the room with another chocolate chip. asha tried her best to uphold Bucky’s insistence that they needed to wait until the cookies were actually baked to eat them, carefully guarding the dough with a wooden spoon, ready to smack any daring hands, but the Barton boys (all three of them) worked as a united front to distract her. 

“Damn, she got me good.” Clint rolls his wrist to the side to examine the red welt on the back of his hand as he takes another clean plate from Bucky to dry. “But I think she was careful enough; I didn’t see anything lasting on CB or Barney.” 

“Serves you right.” Bucky reaches over to pull the baking sheets into the sink to soak. He submerges the larger of the two, then flicks his wet hands at Clint with a grin. “What kinda crap are you trying to teach them, letting them get into the dough before it’s baked? Gotta think of the eggs, Barton, the eggs . Just because Gaston eats a million raw every day and CB wants to grow up to be as big as him doesn’t mean he actually needs to consume any. ” 

Clint grins right back, trying to ignore the way his heart is pounding in his chest over being teased about fucking cookie dough. But it’s hard to ignore, what with the way Bucky’s lips are tilted upwards, the way the corners of his dusky blue eyes crinkle, and the way the spring sunshine sparkles through the window, lighting across his eyelashes like bits of glitter left over from the ballerina costume Tasha demanded they buy for her last week. 

But he does try to ignore it. “Just trying to teach them how to have fun. Live a little, ya know.” At Bucky’s quirked eyebrow, which raises both a challenge and a stupid fondess in Clint’s chest that he’s feeling less and less like tamping down, he changes angles. “Besides, we gotta build up their resistance somehow; a little raw egg here, some dirt and germs there, coupla bruises once in a while — they’ll be better off for it.” 

“Resistance,” Bucky repeats drily, his grin tilting into smirk territory. “You’re trying to tell me that the disaster you made of Jarvis’ kitchen — which, Jesus, you are so lucky he wasn’t here today — was because you’re trying to build up the kids’ tolerances to, what, toxic materials?” 

Clint really is lucky Jarvis is in New York City to help the Starks host a spring gala this weekend. Screw formerly brainwashed assassins, it’s the butler with an iron will, disappointed eyebrows, and a dirty kitchen that Clint’s most scared of. He’s convinced Jarvis is more than he appears. Possibly a robot. Equally possibly, a spy. “Yeah, Nat used to do it to me, slip me low dose poisons to build up my immunity. Not — not that I’d ever , no Bucky, come on — I wouldn’t dare suggest we poison the kids, that’s not what I’m saying .” 

Bucky’s face is suddenly impassive, and Clint scrambles to fix it. “You know that’s not what I mean, and some egg and dirt do not poison make, Bucky, please, I’d never .” He raises the dish cloth he’s been drying with into the air like it’s some kind of white flag, or an offering, or maybe more like he just doesn’t know what the fuck to do with his hands. 

Bucky cracks a moment later, his laughter bubbling out of his chest as he tilts forward, both hands coming to rest, damp and dripping, on Clint’s front. His laugh is beautiful, rich, and, Clint realizes with sudden clarity, familiar. Bucky’s laughter isn’t new to him, isn’t novel, isn’t out of the ordinary. And that’s really, really fucking amazing. 

Clint lowers his own hands cautiously around Bucky before grasping tight, letting his own happiness at the realization — that Bucky’s laughter is familiar because somehow, here in this mansion, with Clint, a snarky Tony, and three kids running around, Bucky’s found happiness and joy of his own — turn into deep chuckles that reverberate up and down his spine. Whatever the fuck Clint did to deserve this, he’s not really sure, but thank god for his clumsy ass and a Wakandan time machine.

A moment passes, just the two of them pressed together in a still slightly flour-whitened kitchen, sunshine and laughter and the scent of chocolate chip cookies swirling in the air around them. Clint tilts his head down onto Bucky’s, reveling in the existence of this goddamn perfect life that somehow belongs to them. 

Bucky’s laughter slowly tapers off, dwindling into quiet snickers that eventually subside into the occasional snort. He pushes back from Clint’s chest, just enough for him to meet Clint’s eyes, smile still wide. Clint doesn’t let go of him, loosening his arms just enough to let them slide down to rest at Bucky’s waist. At the movement, Bucky’s eyes soften, his smile changing into something smaller, something gentle. “I know you’d never do anything to hurt them.” 

And — and somehow, Clint thinks Bucky could say just about anything right now and he’d have a hard time doing anything but nodding in agreement. 

Bucky’s eyes crinkle up again — because he fucking knows how dumb you get around him , Clint’s brain points out — then flick to Clint’s mouth. And that, that’s a sign Clint knows and, well, maybe Bucky’s also noticed how Clint’s been watching his lips all day, fuck, ever since he fell through that goddamn vortex. 

And maybe Bucky’s okay with it. 

And maybe, just maybe, he’s been watching Clint’s lips this whole time, too. 

Clint’s breath catches in his throat, and Bucky must hear it, or feel it, because he grins again, nods, then reaches one still soapy hand up behind Clint’s neck, tugging lightly until Clint gets with the fucking program and leans down to press their lips together. 

Clint’s hesitant at first, tentative, chaste and unsure, until he realizes that the tightness he feels in Bucky’s lips is because Bucky’s still grinning at him, still happy, still exactly where he wants to be. So Clint smiles into it himself, tightens his grip around Bucky’s waist with one hand and slides the other up to the base of Bucky’s neck to twist in the hair there. 

He lets himself sink into it more, into the feeling of Bucky under his hands and against his lips, into the feeling of rightness and inevitability, into a heat that feels like a cross between comfort and longing and home . Bucky’s lips soften, grin sliding away as the fingers of his hand behind Clint’s neck flex and tighten, deepening the kiss with a sigh. 

And it’d probably have gone on for a lot longer, Clint thinks, if CB hadn’t chosen that moment to sprint into the kitchen, bumping blindly into Bucky’s hip as he slides through the doorway, jerking him back from Clint. 

“Tasha says you said we need to take cookies out to Tony!” CB yells, skidding forward on his socks, nearly slamming into a cabinet before he’s able to bring himself to a stop. 

Clint coughs, chokes, and Bucky steps away from him with a laugh, patting at his chest before he turns. “You were the one to put them away, hawk-lite. They’re in the pantry right where you left them.” 

“Oh yeah, right.” CB’s eyes light up at the realization and he flings open the pantry door, emerging a half second later with one of the bags of cookies. “Thanks Bucky,” he says, shooting a quick smile at the both of them before dashing right back through the doorway. 

Clint stares after him for a beat, blinks, then turns back to face Bucky. 

Bucky, who’s leaning up against the sink, arms crossed over his chest, watching Clint with soft eyes. 

Bucky, who Clint’s done so little to deserve, who’s choosing to stick around for some unfathomable reason. 

Bucky, who’d helped Clint rescue the remnants of his only remaining family, and who’s made that family into something stronger, filled with more love and affection than Clint could have ever dreamed. 

Bucky, who Clint knows is a different version of the James he knew in Wakanda, but who Clint would never have dared imagine would feel the way about him that James does about Original Clint. 

Bucky, who’s rolling his eyes with exasperated fondness, striding across the kitchen, and yanking Clint’s head down again. 

Clint meets his kiss this time with zero doubts about anything. Whatever they’ve got ahead of them, they can manage. There’s Hydra to deal with, a frozen super soldier they can probably get around to finding now, and SHIELD that they should probably do something about, but Clint’s pretty fucking sure they’ll manage it all just fine. 

For now, Clint’s got three kids running through the backyard to drop off cookies to an over-caffeinated Tony, who’s probably going to shriek at them for breaking in again. He’s got a kitchen full of dishes he’s finding he really doesn’t mind doing, and a Bucky Barnes whose lips are moving against his own. And goddamn, he’s got a heart that’s doing fucking cartwheels.

Chapter Text

“I don’t know what to tell you; I already looked over it when I was there, and unless they have new information about the materials it’s made from, or have identified the necessary equations, I don’t think there’s anything I can offer to the situation.” Tony looks somewhat apologetic about his denial, a pair of welding goggles pushed up into his hair, though his hands are still moving rapidly in front of him, fiddling with a spare gauntlet. Now Clint knows that Tony’s mind moves a mile a minute, but it’s hard not to be frustrated that he doesn’t have his complete attention. 

As if he can sense Clint’s frustration, James’s grip on his hand tightens, and Clint is glad for the reminder. Leaning against the wall next to the hologram video display, Nat’s presence is equally grounding as she meets Clint’s eyes with an exasperated look that says something like yeah, I know. We all know he gets like this, just put up with it for a little longer. 

“Would you consider coming back to spend some more time on it, though? Or maybe conference with Dr. M’tolla and Shuri again? I know you’re busy, but — ”  

Tony cuts him off with a shake of the head, lifting the gauntlet up in front of him. “No can do, hawkguy. I’m booked out the wazoo for the next couple weeks; honestly I’m lucky to squeeze in time during required maintenance for this call. It’s not easy with the team down half a roster, plus trying to liaise with the peons over at the WSC has been a nightmare, you know. Wakanda was all fun and games and a necessary break, but not everyone can afford to spend all their time playing with goats and trying to fix mistakes that don’t need fixing.”  

James’ grip on Clint’s hand is almost a restraint this time as Clint makes an aborted lunge towards the image of Tony’s workshop, floating in the middle of Natasha’s apartment in Wakanda. An inarticulate noise works its way out of his mouth, causing Tony to look up. 

“What?” 

Clint doesn’t quite know where to start. He has to clear his throat before he can respond. “Mistakes that don’t need fixing?” 

Tony nods, brow furrowed. “The Wakandans said it’s not going to affect this timeline, right? The only side effects are increasing bleeds into the other realities for a while, until the collapse happens, then everything will be peachy keen again. I don’t see what it is that you’re so worried about.” 

“But the other timelines — ” Clint starts, looking at James for help. He just can’t with Tony sometimes. He honestly doesn’t know how 1992 Clint does it on the daily.

“As Clint told you earlier, we’re trying to fix the machine in order to save the other versions of ourselves and everyone, Stark,” James says, his tone tempered by the discomfort Clint knows he still feels when talking to Tony. “Including the other versions of you. We think they deserve to exist just as much as we do.” 

Tony’s back to looking at his work, a soldering gun in one hand, goggles flipped back down in front of his eyes. “Seems a little bit like you’re letting your emotions get in the way. The way I see it, they’re getting a chance at something they never knew they wanted — so long as you don’t ruin it for them, what’s the harm in it suddenly vanishing one day? Those timelines weren’t meant to exist, so it makes sense for nature to run its course eventually, anyways.” Bright light erupts from the end of the soldering gun. “It’s all about efficiency, you know. Nature eliminates redundancies like the market does — if it’s not needed, it won’t exist anymore.” 

“Redundancies?” Clint asks incredulously. 

Tony doesn’t bother to pause in his soldering as he responds. “Yeah — like extras; copies — things that aren’t needed.” 

“I know what redundancies are,” Clint says bitingly, defensive and offended for too many reasons to count. “I just don’t know why you’re calling them that.” 

Tony seems to catch his tone this time. He sets the soldering gun down, focusing through the hologram. “That’s what they are, aren’t they? They’re not needed . You’ve fixed what you went back to fix in this timeline, so the other solutions are just that — redundant and excessive.” 

“Anthony Edward Stark.” Natasha moves in front of the screen, one hand settled threateningly on her hip, her voice deceptively calm. “We know that empathy and emotional intelligence are not your strong suits, but surely you are not trying to argue that the lives of the other Clints and Jameses and Tonys and Natashas and literal billions of people are worthy of being wiped out because it’s inconvenient for you to try and find a solution.” 

“Now I didn’t say that — ” Tony backpedals hastily. 

“I guess I didn’t realize how much more important politicking is than the existence of entire realities,” James interjects, expression wide and innocent. “Thought it was only Nazis who didn’t mind entire groups of people being wiped out. Guess as long as it doesn’t affect us, we shouldn’t mind too much.” 

Clint wrinkles his nose as he bites back a smile. It’s a low blow that Tony doesn’t really deserve, but damn if James isn’t as vicious with his words as he can be with that damn fine metal arm of his. 

“Hey now,” Tony says, hands up. “I see what you mean. I’m not trying to say — ”  

“Didn’t we tell you, James? Genocide is acceptable as long as it doesn’t interfere with corporate functionality.” Natasha turns to Clint and James, her back to the hologram. 

Tony sighs from behind her. “Come on, guys, you know that’s not what I meant.” When Natasha raises her eyebrows at him over her shoulder, he steps away from his work table, directly in front of the camera. “Look, I wasn’t trying to brush you off when I said I was busy — I’m running on fumes here. I also wasn’t kidding when I said that I don’t think there’s anything I can do unless M’tolla and Shuri have new information for me.” 

He directs his gaze at Clint. “You’ve described the other timelines as that — timelines — but you’ve also said realities, versions, copies, universes. Have you thought about reaching out to Thor? As much as I hate to admit it, the way you jump through realities sounds more like magic than science, and that’s more up his alley than mine. Some Asgardian shit.” 

And that — well, no, Clint hasn’t thought about contacting Thor yet. “Is he back from off world yet?” 

Natasha nods. “He stopped by New York last week before heading to Sweden to spend time with Jane, who’s conducting research there. As far as I know he’s still on Earth.” 

Clint looks at James, who presses a kiss to his shoulder before saying, “Don’t know much about Asgardians or magic or Thor, but seems like as good an option as any.” 

Clint blows out a breath. “You’re probably right.” He glances at Natasha, who nods her support, then looks back to the hologram. “Well thanks for not being a completely useless asshole, Tony.” 

Tony grimaces with a wry chuckle, spreading his hands wide. “Hey, I mean really, would I be me if I wasn’t an insensitive douchebag for at least a little bit?” 

Well he isn’t wrong .

As the spring brings warmth to New York and Tasha settles fully into her place as both sister and regent of the Barton boys, the pseudo adults of the Stark residence turn their attention to collecting one final missing piece of the family. 

Incredibly, it only takes a few days for Tony to science up a device that’s able to locate the Valkyrie underneath the Arctic Circle. Clint hadn’t remembered much from the reports — he’d been spending most of his time out on Team Delta missions when SHIELD had retrieved Steve from the ice back in 2012 — but he’d remembered enough to point Tony in the right direction. 

And before Clint knows it, there is a defrosting super soldier in the back of Tony’s workshop, doors carefully locked against young, prying eyes, though Clint doubts the new systems Tony’d installed will hold up for long against the terror team that is Tiny Tasha and CB on an infiltration mission. 

Currently Bucky is pacing back and forth in front of the industrial sized heater that they have set up wafting warm waves over Steve’s unconscious body, which is stretched out over a padded worktable, Tony’s workshop lacking an actual hospital bed. 

“Are you sure I shouldn’t be getting worried yet?” 

Tony looks up from one of the 57 medical journals he’d read through during the day that Clint and Bucky were gone to retrieve Steve, and shakes his head. “No, I told you, you fucking mother hen, he shouldn’t wake up for another hour at the minimum, depending on how fast his regeneration works. I’ve checked Dad’s notes and the dude’s a fucking tank — if he made it the first time like Clint senior says, he’ll be fine this time too. I did all the research needed.” 

They’d thought about bringing in a certified doctor for this, but until they uproot Hydra in SHIELD, they’re all a little leery of letting strangers into the house. Bucky looks like he’s regretting their decision to exclude professionals at the moment. 

Bucky’s eyes narrow a little, but Tony’s already turned back to the journal he was on, and Clint lays a hand on Bucky’s wrist as he goes to pace by again. After all, the guy had asked Tony a version of the same question once every ten minutes for the past three hours. Bucky may be proving to be a surprisingly incredible parental figure to the kids, but slap his best friend on defrost and suddenly he’s a six year old in the car asking if they were there yet. 

Bucky startles at Clint’s touch, then shrugs apologetically, turning his hand up to slide their fingers together. “Just worried, you know. Doesn’t feel real.” 

“Steve’s a tough asshole, you know that.” Clint pulls him closer to where he’s sitting on top of the table nearest where Steve’s laid out, settling Bucky between his thighs, his unoccupied hand tangling with Bucky’s metal one. “How many times did the guy get some disease that shoulda knocked him out flat? Pneumonia? Whooping Cough? Scarlet Fever? He dived on how many grenades? Got into how many fights that he shouldn’ta come out of?” 

Bucky sighs, leaning forward to press his forehead against Clint’s shoulder. “I know, I know.” 

“And that was before the serum shot him up with near-invincibility, man. He’s gonna be fine.” 

Bucky makes a funny grumbling hum kind of noise, like he knows Clint is right but is too stubborn to actually admit it.  His breath is warm against Clint’s neck, tickling, and Clint shivers, shifting to press a kiss against his hair. “Probably pretty crazy to finally see him again though.”

Bucky huffs out a breath of a laugh. “Yeah. Never can escape taking care of the punk.” 

Clint knows what that’s like. He and Nat hadn’t grown up attached at the hip like Steve and Bucky, but he gets it. Their bond started the moment he brought her in instead of complying with the orders from SHIELD, back when he’d seen the way she looked at him through the scope, accepting of the fate she’d had forced on her, and he’d recognized her expression as one he’d seen in the mirror too many times to count. Clint likes to think their bond is just as important, just as deep as what the Brooklyn boys shared. 

He’s tried not to think too hard about his Nat. Having Tiny Tasha is nothing short of amazing, and he’d save her time and time again to prevent her from ever knowing the pain and suffering that his Nat had known, but fuck if he didn’t miss his Natasha like a piece of himself is missing. 

He can see hints of his Nat in Tasha, in her expressions, in her dedication to excellence, in the way she bosses CB and Barney around like she knows what’s best for them, which is usually pretty accurate. She’s got some of Nat’s mannerisms, like the way she’ll flick her hair over her shoulder, a tell of annoyance Nat had never quite managed to hide from Clint. Tasha’s also got Nat’s heart — guarded as all get out, sure, but full of compassion, empathy, and a genuine desire to do good. 

Clint really hopes Original Clint remembers how fucking lucky he is to have Nat in his life, even now that he’s got James. 

Clint moves his arms backwards to settle Bucky’s hands around his waist, then hugs him close. “I know a thing or two about taking care of punks. And being the punk that needs some taking care of.” 

Bucky’s chuckle is dark. “Don’t get me started on how much you need to be taken care of, you asshole.” 

Clint smirks over his shoulder. It wasn’t really his fault that he’d fallen through the ice when they landed somewhere near the North Pole at the location of the Valkyrie. The ice had been thin, is all. And okay, maybe he could’ve checked where he was going to make sure he wasn’t getting too close to the excavation site, but it was windy! And Bucky had looked really adorable, all grumpily wrapped up in his snowsuit and those sub zero shoes Clint had been delighted to discover were called bunny boots. There was a grumpy snow bunny Bucky to look at, how the fuck was Clint supposed to concentrate on where he was walking? 

Bucky’s grip tightens like he can feel Clint about to respond with something stupid, which is probably fair. Plus, since Clint’s trying not to be a terrible person all the time, he recognizes that now maybe isn’t the greatest opportunity to joke around. “Think Steve’ll mind having to share you and your caring?” 

Bucky’s response is immediate. “He’s gonna have to be okay with it.” 

“And you think he will be?” Clint asks. He hasn’t voiced it since they decided to go find Steve, but he’s been concerned since he first started to realize just how important Bucky was to him. Which was maybe, he realizes with a start, way back in December when he first conned Clint into riding shotgun in that sedan after taking down his Hydra escort. “Think he’ll mind that you’ve got a new best guy and a coupla kids that he’s gonna have to share you with?” 

There’s a beat, then Bucky pulls back, hands coming to rest on the flat of Clint’s thighs. His eyebrows are furrowed, and shit, Clint’s clearly garbage at trying to hide how nervous he is about Bucky’s answer. “Of course he won’t mind. Even if he did, I’d just have to show him real quick how dumb he was being.” There’s a faint smile teasing at the corner of his lips, and he grabs one of Clint’s hands, bringing them together to rest on his own chest. “Besides, Steve wasn’t ever my best guy, not like you are, sweetheart. There’s room in here for him, room Nat and CB and Barney, and room for you. No competition.” 

Clint can feel the slow, steady beating of Bucky’s heart underneath his fingers, and thinks his own might just about explode. Because if that isn’t the sappiest, fucking sweetest shit he’s ever heard in his whole goddamn life, he doesn’t know what is. He doesn’t even try to fight the smile that’s working its way across his face. Damn, he’s completely, one hundred percent, stupidly in love with this fucking bastard. 

“Yeah, okay.” 

“Yeah, okay is right.” Bucky leans forward to press a quick kiss to Clint’s lips. “Steve’s as stubborn as a mule, but ain’t nobody that gets to tell me who I care about.” 

“You’re both disgusting and terrible role models for your children,” Tony, who Clint had definitely not forgotten was in the room with them, says with a loud sigh. 

“Shut it, Stark,” Bucky retorts, then winks at Clint. “So do you think I should start worrying about how long this is taking yet?” 

Tony’s groan is loud as he slams the medical journal he’d been reading onto the table in front of him. “I brought you into my home — ” 

“We kinda broke in, actually,” Clint points out. 

“Offered you shelter and support — ” 

“Definitely coulda supported ourselves with the different Hydra stashes I know the locations of,” Bucky counters. 

“Built you a de-brainwashing machine, helped you break into an evil Soviet assassin training program, built a device to find your frozen best friend — ”

“Right, because you get nothing out of being the one to invent all of that.” Clint rolls his eyes. 

“Allowed your tiny, irritating, little monkey menaces to invade my inner sanctum — ”

“He fucking loves it,” Clint tells Bucky, who grins and nods. 

“And this — this is how you repay me? With all of this attitude?” 

“I repeat,” Clint says, twisting around to look at Stark. “You fucking love it.” 

Tony makes a noise somewhere between a shriek and a snort, his eye twitching, then all three of them jump as the air cracks. There’s a split second flash of silver-red, and Original Clint stumbles out of the vortex. 

“Hey, guys,” Original Clint says, taking stock of the room quickly. His visits are getting so frequent lately, he’s pretty up to date with what’s been going on. “Hey, it’s a Steve!” 

Bucky eases away from Clint to walk toward Original Clint, a half smile of greeting on his face, though Clint knows he’s also going over because his caution makes him need to move between the visitor and Steve. He’s got an ever present drive to protect his people, even from someone who is arguably, also sort of his person. Kind of. 

Clint’s really not sure how all of this works. 

Original Clint grins at Bucky. “Aw, man, my Steve — I mean, ew, gross, not my Steve, not like that, but the Steve back home, man, he’s gonna be so excited to hear about this. He’s always been so jealous of the nineties.” 

As Bucky pulls Original Clint over to show him how the defrosting is going, Clint watches Original Clint carefully. He’s a little worried about the guy. The past few times he’s been shot through the time machine, he’s looked… tired. And Clint’s nothing if not an expert at his own dumbass ways of trying to hide things, so he can tell that something’s up. He hasn’t quite been able to pin Original Clint down to answering though, something always getting in the way. 

The first time it was an insatiable CB and Natasha, demanding to play freeze tag, that first time that Original Clint had arrived with bags under his eyes and a grin that didn’t quite meet them. 

The next time it was an unintentionally homicidal Barney on a riding lawn mower, when Original Clint had flinched away from Clint’s questions, looking for all the world like he wanted the earth to swallow him before he’d answer. 

Then two days ago, they’d been on a flight up to the Arctic Circle and Original Clint had appeared without his hearing aids and had the audacity to claim exhaustion, opting to close his goddamn eyes and feign sleep instead of answering Clint’s questions. 

Something is clearly up. 

Clint’s seen how Original Clint watches them, him and Bucky, Bucky and the kids, all with a hint of a bittersweet smile, but he doesn’t think that’s what’s on his mind. Original Clint is happy for Clint — himself and the one in 2009 — but he’s told Clint that he’s happy with his own timeline, with his own James. So it’s not jealousy, or even sadness, and Clint’s only really noticed it for the past few weeks, ever since Original Clint’s visits started getting more and more frequent. 

“Hey, Buckaroni,” Tony calls, gesturing at Bucky with one of the journals. “I’ve got something to ease your nerves about the recovery process. Come read.” 

Original Clint is left standing near Steve as Bucky just about sprints over to Tony, so Clint makes his move, hopping down off the tabletop to stand next to his clone. 

He lowers his voice, leaning in close. “Got your hearing aids this time, Bucky’s distracted, no kids, no excuses. What the fuck is up, dude?” 

Original Clint winces, drumming his fingers along the table next to Steve’s arm. “It’s nothing for you to worry about. I’ve got it under control.” 

Clint scoffs because he knows that lie like he knows the back of his hand. “Yeah, okay.” He flicks Original Clint in the elbow, earning a glare. “Tell me, you asshole. I’m already worried about it. Is it James? Natasha? Did Steve and Tony find something else to fight about instead of the whole Accords slash Winter Soldier thing?” 

Original Clint rolls his eyes, shaking his head. “No, they’re all good. It’s just,” he starts, then shakes his head again. “It isn’t anything you can do anything about.” 

Clint rolls his eyes right back, idly aware that they’re a pair of identical, eye rolling idiots. “Just because I can’t do anything about it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t tell me. Bartons gotta support Bartons, or something like that.” 

Original Clint’s mouth twists, so Clint adds more. “You sure it’s nothing about James? You guys are doing okay?” Clint’s more than perfectly content with his own Bucky, his ill-advised crush on James a thing of the distant fucking past, but that doesn’t mean he’s stopped caring about the guy who’d sparked his interest to begin with, or about his relationship with Original Clint. 

“We’re fine, completely,” Original Clint says, finally meeting Clint’s eyes with something that feels honest. “Better than, even.” He pauses, then nods as though confirming something to himself. “It’s to do with the time machine, why I keep getting sent back here and to 2009.” 

Clint’s not sure what to do with that. Sure, he’d noticed the visits getting closer and closer together, but he’s had so much on his own plate he hadn’t had the time to think too much about why it was happening. “Are you not supposed to be?” He thinks back to the original timeline and can recall Shuri saying something about how the machine wasn’t complete yet, and maybe something about timelines not intersecting?

Original Clint shrugs. “No,” he says shortly. “They’re figuring it out though. Fixing things. We’re calling in the big guns.” 

Clint cocks an eyebrow. 

“Getting some outside help. Looking at the situation from different perspectives.” 

Clint narrows his eyes at that bullshit, PR ready response. He flicks Original Clint again to show his displeasure.

“Thor’s supposed to show up soon.” 

“But what would Thor know about a time machine?” Clint asks, real concern starting to well in his chest. Thor’s not a science guy, for all he’s been dating an insanely smart scientist since arriving on Earth several years ago. Thor’s more about freaking space alien magic than he is about science, so if the Wakandans are calling in Thor to talk about science , then something must be seriously fucked up. 

Original Clint jerks his head and shrugs, apparently at the end of his honesty rope. 

“Dude,” Clint tries, “come on.” 

“I — I just,” Original Clint responds weakly, and if Clint can just press him a little further —

There’s movement on the table in front of them, a shift that knocks one of the devices tracking Steve’s vitals right off the edge and onto the floor. 

Bucky’s shoving in between Clint and Original Clint three seconds later, his hands hovering over Steve’s shoulders like a butterfly, too nervous to actually touch him. 

Steve’s eyes crack open after a moment, blinking slowly. “Bucky?” 

Clint puts a steadying hand on Bucky’s back as he leans forward, nodding. “Hey there, punk.” 

“Bucky,” Steve repeats, gaze sharpening at a speed Clint guesses only a super soldier can achieve, because the dude definitely should’ve still been asleep for another half hour. “Bucky…you’re dating a time traveler?” His eyes move between the Clints, then settle back on Bucky. “And your boyfriend is a twin? And you... have children?” 

“Tony,” Clint calls. “I think your calculations were off. Apparently this asshole’s been sort of awake and listening to us for a while now.” 

He’s not listening as Tony snarks back, watching instead as Bucky’s mouth spreads into a dazzlingly warm smile. 

Bucky leans forward to hug Steve, Steve’s arms moving slowly up around him. “Yeah, I’m dating a time traveler. He’s got a clone, not a twin, and there’s another one, but younger, that you’ll meet here in a little bit. He’s one of the kids we’re taking care of.”

“Bucky,” Steve says again, wonderingly. “I think maybe I’m dreaming. You’ve got a metal arm. Also,” he pauses and shakes his head as if to clear it. “You’re alive?” 

Bucky snorts and leans back. “Not dreaming, Stevie. But welcome to the nineteen nineties. We’ve got metal arms, time travel and Howard’s asshole of a son.”

Clint leans over the workbench in the workshop on the basement level of Stark’s Malibu mansion, poking idly at a few scraps he thinks he might be able to incorporate into a new set of trick arrows. They’ve been in California for almost a week now, and Tony’s got enough on his plate that Clint’s decided he’ll wait for a bit before asking him to move on to important things — i.e., arrows. Right now Tony and Barnes are standing next to each other across the room discussing the different components of a machine Tony’s started to work on to remove Barnes’ trigger words, and scrolling constantly along the wall is a feed of the Arctic scanner Tony had gotten up and running in a day to find the location of the Valkyrie. 

There’s a low pressure boom, then a faint “All good here!” comes from the military grade, shatterproof glass encased chamber that Tony had equipped for the twins to test out their powers. Clint spares a glance in their direction, but looks away when he sees the blur that is Pietro spinning grey around Wanda, who’s standing with her hands on her hips, head shaking in exasperation at the sprinklers that have descended from the ceiling to shower them preemptively. It’s all good in there. 

It’d taken a couple days for the twins to warm up to Tony, but Clint had been right in his prediction that fresh out of Afghanistan, the guilt of the impact of his weapons still heavy on his mind, Tony’s been practically tripping over himself to do whatever he can to do right by the Maximoffs. Wanda had eased up first, able to feel Tony’s genuine desire to do good, and though it had taken him a little longer, Pietro is now on to the part where he’s milking the situation for absolutely everything he can. 

Hence the newly retrofitted experimental chamber. 

And the daily fast food deliveries. 

And the new helicopter outside, though Barnes had been quick to dismantle the rotor blades before Pietro could get his fingers on the console. 

Clint looks back at Tony and Barnes, the former who is swiping madly through the air to move between formulas and mock-ups, the latter who is glancing back at the chamber, clearly not as trusting as Clint is that the twins are actually okay. Clint tilts his head — Barnes is also leaning slightly away from Tony, a sign that he’s about reached his limit for Stark interaction for a while. 

Barnes is an extreme example, of course, but Jesus, everyone needs a break from Stark once in a while. 

Clint stands and catches Barnes’ eye, then walks their way, shoving himself between them in order to give Barnes the ability to take a step back as Clint presses into Tony’s space. 

“So, how are things going with Wakanda?” 

Tony breaks off mid sentence to shoot a glare at Clint. “I’m starting to think you may be telling the truth about them,” he admits, pulling his hand through the air to open a new hologram screen. “I’ve had JARVIS running diagnoses on trade patterns and communications in and out of the nation, and something’s just not adding up.” He turns his glare to the screen, and Clint can feel Barnes slide just a little further away. 

“But you can’t get into anything, can you?” Clint raises his eyebrows, egging Tony on. “Bet they’ve got everything looking so outdated and nondescript that the inconsistencies aren’t even pinging on anyone’s radars.” 

Tony grunts noncommittally, unwilling to admit that it’s possible that anyone’s got technology capable of evading his detection. He scans the screens for a moment. “I’ll get something on them soon. They can’t avoid me forever.” 

There’s a snort behind Clint, and he glances back to see that Barnes is now halfway across the room, which, nice, score one for Clint’s ability to distract. They make eye contact and Barnes says, just loud enough Clint knows he means for Tony to hear it, “Like father like son.” 

Tony whips around with an indignant squawk, and Clint chuckles and swings his arm over his shoulder. “Hey now, we need persistent, egotistical bastards in our lives sometimes, y’know.” Tony shoves at his arm, so Clint just tightens it further. “They’re annoying as hell, but they get us where we need to go, don’t they.” 

“I resent that statement. And possibly resemble that remark.” Tony succeeds in elbowing Clint’s arm off as Barnes grins, not quite a laugh, but genuine all the same. “But on that note,” Tony continues, “I did hear back from Nick Fury.” 

“Oh?” Clint asks. Because of the circumstances of Tony’s rescue in this new timeline, he hadn’t done the whole ‘I am Ironman’ press conference to out himself to the world, but he had shut down Stark Industries weapons operations and his current working model of his Ironman suit, created using the schematics he’d salvaged when the US Airforce got him out of the Ten Rings base, is standing in the corner, fresh off its first test flight last night. 

Last night Clint, Barnes and the twins had watched Tony zoom up and down the coast before he’d taken off to circle around the nearby Los Angeles military bases in order to show his face (well, his suit, anyways) and get on the radar of the military and all possible alphabet agencies, including SHIELD. 

“Another old man who thinks he is really cool,” Pietro had said grumpily, watching Tony turn donuts above the bay. 

Wanda rolled her eyes and punched him in the arm. “Right, because you do not like to show off when you run very fast.” 

Clint grinned, letting a knowing seep into his voice. “Pietro just doesn’t like to admit he’s jealous, that’s all.” 

“Maybe if someone let me fly my helicopter,” Pietro grumbled as Tony sped off towards LA proper. 

“Not gonna happen, Speedy Gonzales,” Clint responded, when it became clear Barnes was content with ignoring him. It might’ve been because Pietro had run through the mansion hiding all of Barnes’ clothes earlier that day, though it could also have been how Pietro had insulted Clint at lunch for his lack of superpowers. Barnes had been downright territorial in his defense of Clint, his thorough tongue lashing of the teenager succeeding in evoking an apology and an extra fast cleaning of all the dishes. “Someone’s gotta look out for you, since you’ve clearly got a death wish.” 

Tony returned to the mansion half an hour later, a couple scorch marks marring the chest plate of the suit, his eyes and hair wild, exuberant in his mostly successful evasion of anything the bases had attempted to throw at him. 

“Yeah,” Tony says now. “Fury says he’ll send someone to meet with ‘the alleged Ironman’” He shakes his head as he adds air quotes to Fury’s correspondence. “Don’t know what the fuck he’s talking about, ‘ alleged’ . Who the hell else is capable of coming up with a suit like this? Hammer? The CIA? Literally anyone except me? Come on.” 

“And did he say anything about what you told him about Hydra?” Clint presses. He and Barnes had spent a while discussing the best course of action before deciding that Fury was just paranoid enough to be willing to investigate Hydra infestation allegations without alerting anyone beyond the essential staff. 

Tony shrugs. “Not much. Real chatty, this Fury guy. I’m guessing we’ll get along great .” He looks askance for a moment, frowning. “Can’t believe he’s known about me my whole life and never bothered to introduce himself.” He rolls his eyes and turns back to the hologram. “Fucking Howard and all his secrets.” 

Clint agrees silently. It’s nice to know that somewhere in another universe a different version of himself had managed to stop the Winter Soldier from killing Howard and Maria, but Clint’s in no position to begrudge Tony his grievances about shitty fathers. 

A moment later, almost in sync with the doors to the twins’ testing chamber sliding open, Wanda emerging while wringing water out of her clothes, JARVIS interrupts their introspection. “Sir, Ms. Potts will be arriving momentarily with the notary from legal.” 

Both Clint and Barnes turn quickly to Tony, who notices their sudden movement and jerks back. “Oh, don’t worry, just gotta get some things signed over to Pepper. Pepper already knows that I’ve got you,” he narrows his eyes at the lie they’d settled on, “as my house guests , and it’s just someone from legal. No need to get your guard up. SI will have vetted whoever it is thoroughly.” 

Clint shares a glance with Barnes — they’re already in the habit of taking everything Tony says with a grain of salt — and racks his brain, trying to remember if this is something Tony had done in the original timeline. “Sign things over? What kind of things?” 

“J, cover up the suit, will you? Go ahead and initiate a recalibration process.” JARVIS obliges, the walls nearest the suit opening, the platform with the suit on it sliding backwards and out of sight. “Just Stark Industries. Decided this morning that I wanna focus more on this superhero business. Pepper’s been doing most of my job at SI for years anyways.” 

Only Tony Stark could so casually decide to give up ownership of his family’ legacy. Granted, Clint shouldn’t be surprised; it took him a couple years and a lot of publicity the first time around, but Tony eventually signed his company over to Pepper in the original timeline. 

That’s when he and Nat first spent time around the guy, actually. Clint infiltrated Happy Hogan’s security team, while Nat had gotten a lot closer to SHIELD’s target, forging a new identity as Natalie Rushman, a part of SI’s legal team and eventual assistant to Pepper. 

Oh, fuck. 

Please tell me you’re not surprised by this, Clint’s brain sighs. Did you really not expect this to happen? 

The doors to the lab slide open, and Pepper’s heels clack into the room, a second pair of lighter feet following right after. 

“The notary’s here, can you please come sign the transfer paper work?” 

Clint spins towards the door and has just enough wherewithal to duck and yell at Barnes to get down as his best friend, the one and only Natasha Romanoff, sends a pair of throwing knives spinning in both of their directions. 

“Jesus fuck!” Tony shouts. “Scrap that plan, J, uncover the suit. Uncover the suit!” 

“Nat, Nat it’s fine!” Clint grabs Barnes by the arm and shakes his head quickly to prevent him from launching himself over the obstacles between them and the door. “Tony, it’s fine, everybody, it’s fucking fine!” 

“What is happening ?” Pepper asks in a panic. Clint can see her reflection in the paneling of the cabinets behind him as she stumbles away from Natasha.  

“The SUIT, J, the suit!” 

“The Mark II is currently unable to be removed from the storage unit, sir, per recalibration instructions.” 

“It’s fine!” Clint repeats as he pulls Barnes behind him and tries to figure out what the fuck he can possibly do to make this fine. 

“Clint?” Wanda asks, her hands frozen where she’s been wringing out her shirt. Pietro’s next to her, clearly torn about what to do. 

“Clint! Why is this unnecessarily attractive notary attempting to kill you? And what the fuck Jarvis, now is not the time for you to have been so goddamn efficient.” 

“Clint?” Barnes’ gaze is steady on Clint’s as though for some goddamn reason, Barnes actually trusts him to have a solution.

And wouldn’t it be real fucking cool if he did?

Clint glances around the worktable he and Barnes are behind and jerks back just in time to avoid a knife to the face. That’s three, which means Nat’s probably got only one more on her person, if she’s in her civvies. Though of course, once that one is gone, there will still be, y’know, Nat herself to contend with. 

“Nat, it’s me, we’re fine, Tony, this is Natasha, she’s SHIELD, she’s also fine and Jesus I’m saying fine a lot but really, guys, it is!” 

“Who do you think you are?” Natasha’s voice cuts through the room in Russian, and Barnes tenses in Clint’s grasp. 

Clint shakes his head again at Barnes and squeezes the hand he’s got wrapped around Barnes’ forearm gently; they’ve spent months now tracking 2009 Clint and Natasha, so Barnes is well familiar with Nat’s face and knows who she is to Clint. Even so, paired with the whole attacking thing, the Russian’s gotta be doing something to his head.  

“You know who I am, Nat — ”

“I know who you look like. And I know that who you look like is currently upstairs.” 

“Yeah, but, I’m also him, just a different version.” 

Barnes’ eyes widen in alarm and he shoots his metal arm forward, blocking Clint’s chest as the last of Natasha’s throwing knives ricochets off a chair leg just behind Clint, spinning end over end towards him. It’s a move that Nat’s been working on, ever since Clint showed her the true value of a boomerang projectile. The knife clangs against Barnes’ arm and clatters to the floor. 

“I also know that you are here with the Winter Soldier.” 

“Yeah, but he’s cool too, I know it’s hard to believe, but he’s kinda been brainwashed for like, the past sixty years and is a good guy now so maybe you can stop trying to kill us and I can explain?” 

There’s no answer, but Clint sees Pietro tense and knows Nat’s making a move. Jesus, the last thing he needs is one of the kids trying to get involved here. 

He grins weakly, and there’s just a moment of comprehension in Barnes’ eyes, enough for him to frown in concern, then Clint launches himself backwards into a diving roll just as Natasha dashes across the room. 

“No, Pietro, Barnes, don’t — ” he gets out, twisting up to reach for Natasha’s ankle. 

She spins, avoiding his grasp and pivoting around on one leg to face him, vaulting over a bench in the process. There’s enough time for him to stumble behind a conveniently placed rolling cart, and he hunches behind it. 

“Nat, please, I promise. Just give me a second.” 

“If you knew me,” Natasha says softly, and shit, that’s her fuck the bad guys up and send them crying home to their mamas voice. “You’d know I would never give an enemy the opportunity.” 

You done fucked up not reaching out to her first, you idiot, his brain decides to inform him. 

Well, ain’t that the truth. 

A second later, the box of tools on top of the cart goes flying as Natasha kicks out. 

“Okay, so we’re doing this,” Clint sighs, lunging around the cart to meet her. “Don’t get involved, you guys,” he warns, parrying her next attack. “Nat, we really don’t need to do this.” 

Natasha is fierce in her fury, red curls whipping through the air as she launches herself at him. “I think we do .” 

Clint flings his forearm in front of his face to block a knee, and the words come tumbling out. “Aw, c’mon, of course you do — it’s just like that time when we got back from Ethiopia all banged up,” he ducks her next kick, “and you made me train the next morning, like a fucking drill sergeant.” 

There’s one swing, followed by a second, and he just manages to avoid getting clipped on the cheek bone. “Or like when you found out I drank all of the vodka you’d been saving and replaced it with water.” He stumbles over a box and rolls to the side, her foot an inch from his face. 

Clint scrambles around another work bench, sparing a second for a glance around the room as he does. Barnes looks an inch away from breaking towards them and getting involved. The twins have moved closer, Wanda physically holding Pietro back. Tony’s fumbling with something at a table, and Pepper’s nowhere Clint can see, probably busy being the smart one and getting the fuck away. 

Natasha stalks forward, her face determined. “Come on,” Clint whines, stepping backwards quickly. “None of that works?”

He grabs a few things, fuck if he knows what they are, off the table and lobs them in her general direction. “You call me durak when you’re annoyed with me, but also when you think I’m funny because you hate admitting that I’ve got jokes.” She bats the third item — what looks like a self-made Ironman action figure, Clint notes — out of the air, sending sparks flying. 

Clint scrabbles his hand along the table, but he’s already cleared everything from it. He quick steps backwards, putting it between her and him. “It’s 2009, okay, I know you just got back from Budapest — and Nat, hot stuff, we promised we’d never tell anyone what happened there, so I can’t exactly go spilling secrets about tic-tac-toe, goulash, and subway vent systems, can I?” 

That makes her next step stutter, then her gaze hardens and she shakes her head, continuing on. She places one arm on the table and slides across it, and it’s an easy enough move to avoid, unless, of course, you’re Clint Barton. 

Who trips over his own feet while stepping backwards. 

It was good while it lasted , his brain laments as he falls, Nat on top of him in an instant. At least you got the kids out of Sokovia. Tony’s probably going to still help them and Barnes. That’s if this doesn’t all go tits up after you die.

Clint lands on his back, breath expelled with a huff, which is really fucking inconvenient because Nat’s now attempting to choke him, her right arm pressing against his windpipe. 

One more try, he thinks. You can fucking do this, Barton. 

“You thought I was such an idiot for taking you in instead of taking you out,” he squeezes out, trying to work his hand under her forearm, “when SHIELD sent you after me,” he twists, legs kicking. “But you were just a kid, and a kid just like me, so how could I?” 

There’s a little bit of black at the edge of his vision. 

“But you still let me buy you pizza on the way back to the States.”  He meets her gaze, going completely limp. He can barely make out what sounds like Barnes approaching over the sound of blood rushing in his ears, and wouldn’t that be perfect — his best friend showing up, killing him, then getting killed by his romantic interest. 

“It was the first time you’d had it.” 

Her eyes widen, barely, nearly imperceptible, but the pressure eases.  

“And I know you fucking hate pizza, even if you humor me and eat it whenever I order it.” 

They stare at each other, Nat’s eyes searching his. 

He smiles, strained. Hoping.  

Then he shouts as a beam of blue light forces Natasha to roll off of him, blasting a hole in the table she’d jumped over. 

“Shit, Tony,” Clint groans, and suddenly Barnes is there, crouched protectively over him. “I think you singed all my leg hair off.” 

“What the fuck did you expect me to do? Sit back and let you die? Body disposal is not something I feel like explaining to Happy, no thanks.” 

Clint reaches one hand up to his throat, wincing, then rests the other on Barnes’ leg, which happens to be the closest appendage to him. Barnes looks down at him, eyes worried. 

“Dying after only just getting us here is not allowed, Clint,” Wanda says, stepping next to them a moment later.

There’s an accompanying whoosh as Pietro halts in front of them, apparently feeling the need to display his own powers. “Not allowed to leave us here with the Extra Old Man and Stark the Mass Murderer, Old Man.” 

And it’s crazy, but somehow, Clint’s got an entire group of people around him, defending him. They let him make the first moves — trusted his fucking judgment, the hell? — but they care enough to step in and keep him safe. He looks between them all, seeing the symbolism in how they’re all standing in between him and Natasha, and holy shit, what the hell has he done to earn this kind of loyalty? 

He looks at Natasha, who’s moved further back, watching their interactions with guarded calculation. She’s still poised on the balls of her feet, which god, this woman, she’s still in heels, ready for action, but Clint knows that expression. Most people wouldn’t recognize it, not on the face the Red Room tried to beat emotions out of, but Clint knows what he’s seeing. 

It’s hope. 

“Nah,” Clint says, then coughs. He tries again, sitting up on his elbows. “Nah, sorry Pietro, even I don’t hate you enough to abandon you with Stark. I promise, no dying here today. Right, Nat?” 

She meets his gaze, then her whole body shifts into something relaxed, shoulders settling, hands falling to her sides, a lazy smile twisting the corner of her lips up. “Right, durak.” 

Clint grins, then shifts his hand up Barnes’ leg, tapping at his knee, gesturing to be pulled to his feet. 

He knows there’s a long conversation coming his way, full of disbelief, a lot of apologies, and a shit ton of reprimands. 

But fuck. 

He’s got Nat back.

Chapter Text

Thor and his entourage arrive in Wakanda only a few days after talking to Tony, though Clint learns very quickly that he’s an idiot to think of the two women who accompany Thor as the entourage for anyone but themselves. 

Dr. Jane Foster, fresh off a Nobel Prize win for her research on interspace and dimensional travel, is nearly as terrifying with all of her big, fancy words as Natasha is with her knives and murder stalk. Meanwhile, Darcy Lewis, Jane’s assistant slash PhD student slash taker of nobody’s shit, just about makes the ground tremble beneath her with her attitude like Thor does when he does that whole explode-from-the-ground-and-blast-into-space-with-his-hammer thing. 

Clint has been thrust back into the other realities five times in the days since he convinced Thor to come and check things out, and every time it’s getting harder and harder to keep the truth of the situation from the alternate Clints. It’s not that he wants to tell them anymore than he did before, but it’s becoming difficult to hide his concerns, and while Clint isn’t exactly the most observant dude, he knows himself at the very least. 

1992 Clint had asked what was wrong, only letting up when he’d had to go save CB from jumping into the path of the riding lawn mower, which Barney was weaving lines of dirt through the Stark’s manicured lawn with, daring CB and Tiny Tasha to avoid him. 

The last time he’d seen 2009 Clint, the guy had been in the middle of navigating a new relationship with the Natasha and Clint from that timeline, so he’d been unable to question Clint, but his concern had been clear in the way his eyes had narrowed at Clint’s lack of engagement. 

Clint’s not sure if he’s going to be able to keep things from them for much longer. 

Which is to say, he really fucking hopes that Thor, or Jane, or Darcy can come up with a solution for this mess. 

They’re in the Wakandan labs now, James and Natasha at Clint’s side, equally steading presences as he explains his experiences to the new arrivals. 

“So it’s like you’re going through a mirror, but with a red tinge?” Jane takes note in a journal. 

“Don’t forget the suction,” Darcy says, eyebrows raising as she taps on Jane’s notebook. “He was really clear about the sucking sensation.” 

“Yes, like the octopus creature from several years ago,” Thor adds jovially. “That was quite the battle, was it not, Barton? As I recall, both you and our dear Antonio spent several minutes within the throat of the beast before we slayed it.” 

Clint winces at the memory, regretting bringing it up, no matter how accurate it is to the sensation of being sucked through the time machine vortex. “Yeah, it took awhile to get out of there.” 

James looks at Clint, a question in his eyes. Clint’s not quite sure if it’s ‘ want me to shut them up?’ or ‘ is this something we need to talk about later?’ , but either way, he shakes his head in response. 

“Hmm,” Jane intones, flicking her pen against Darcy’s knuckles, making her withdraw her hand with a pained shake. “The red is what’s really sticking out to me.” She glances around, locking eyes first with Shuri, then Dr. M’tolla. “I think that’s enough of the descriptions. If it’s alright with you, I’m ready to see the machine itself.” 

M’tolla nods her consent, turning towards the corner of the lab where the time machine sits. Clint and James follow behind the quartet of women with more intelligence between them than should rightfully be contained in any four people, and Thor and Natasha trail behind, catching up on news from outside of Wakanda. 

“It’s gonna be fine,” James says, and Clint looks down to realize he’s grasping his hand with his metal one, the metal cool and familiar. “This is the best lead we’ve had in awhile. It might take a bit, but they’ll figure it out.” 

Clint tries to smile at the reassurance but he can tell his attempt falls flat as James sighs and shifts his arm around Clint’s waist instead. “Don’t count out options before they’ve even been explored, doll. You’re usually more optimistic than that.” 

Clint rests his hand over where James’ is a comforting weight against his hip as they stop a few steps back from the machine, Clint’s hesitant to get any closer for fear it will vacuum him right back to the nineties again. “I know, I’m trying to be, I just — I just don’t know that we have time ,” he says softly into James’ ear. “It was less than 24 hours between the last two, if we don’t get it figured out soon — ”  

He’s cut off by an outburst from Darcy, who’s peering over the side of the time machine. 

“Hey, that’s from that barrier we used back in Greenwich,” she says, her tone slightly accusatory. At Jane’s frown, she gestures at one of the pieces of metal that’s jutting out from the side of the machine. “See look, it’s from those pointy things we had to stab into the ground to set up a perimeter, zap those alien assholes off to Timbuktu.” 

Jane steps forward, tilts her head, then her mouth drops open in surprise. “You’re right.” She spins around, eyes narrowing. “Where did you get this?”

Dr. M’tolla looks at the offending piece of metal. “Oh, yes, that’s some of the unidentified scraps that our collectors found a few years ago. We often send our people to sites of inexplicable significance to see what can be salvaged and brought back to Wakanda. It was mislabeled in the transport, so by the time it got back here, its origins were unknown.” She looks slightly guilty at the admission, then squares her shoulders. “However, I identified it as having a particularly strong astral readout. We used it in the construction of the machine due to those properties.” 

Jane looks a step away from blowing a gasket at the mismanagement of scientific evidence before Darcy stops her with a hand up, speaking frankly. “So that’s it, right? That’s the cause of all these extra realities? You steal our tools, slap ‘em together into this, then boom, we’ve got extra Robin Hoods popping up all over time and space?” 

Dr. M’tolla cocks her head. “Why would this piece of equipment be so pivotal in the creation of multiple realities?” 

Clint finds this a valid question. Clint also finds this whole conversation a little mind blowing. 

It’s Thor who responds, crossing his arms in front of his chest, frowning down at the machine. “Because of the Reality Stone.” 

“The what?” 

“The Aether,” Thor clarifies. 

Shockingly, this is not at all clarifying. 

“I’m sorry, could you expand more on that, please?” Shuri looks a little out of her depth, though Clint imagines he looks like he’s drowning in comparison. 

“One of the Infinity Stones, like the Tesseract,” Jane explains, glancing at Clint briefly.  At the mention, James leans a little closer to him, tightening his grip around Clint’s waist as though that will save him from any Loki flashbacks. “It’s what was fought over in Greenwich in 2013. It has the power to rewrite and change reality.” 

“And how did it come to affect the scrap pieces we have here?” M’tolla asks, her gaze inquisitive — not disbelieving, but seeking information. 

Darcy’s eyes brighten. “The Aether is this creepy little symbiotic thing.” She moves her hands in front of her to demonstrate, though to Clint it looks more like an interpretive dance about jellyfish. “It took over our Janie, so why can’t it take over pieces of metal, huh?” 

Jane tears her eyes away from Darcy, then shrugs. “Logically that makes sense. The Aether has the ability to inhabit sentient lifeforms, so maybe at some point when we were closing the portals and sealing reality, some remnant of it became attached to the device.” 

Thor frowns. “An echo, perhaps, dear Jane. The Aether is contained, and cannot be separated from itself. But a residue of power… in the way that a wet fish leaves an imprint on a rock when flung from a river, the Aether might leave behind the residue of its influence.” 

They all stare at the time machine for a few seconds before Clint breaks the silence. 

“So what you mean to tell me,” he says, stepping away from James, head swiveling back and forth between Thor and Jane and Darcy and both Wakandan scientists like he’s in the fucking Exorcist, “is that I’ve been fucked over by not one, but two of these goddamn, motherfucking, shitty ass Infinity Stones?!” 

M’tolla opens her hands towards him in a clear denial of culpability. 

“It would appear — ”  Thor starts.  

“According to the evidence — ”  Jane begins.

“Damn straight that’s what we’re saying,” Darcy interjects with a grin, stepping right the fuck over any kind of tact. “But at least this time around you found true love, eh, Marty McFly?” 

“Well — ”  Clint says, “I mean — ”  he glances around, floundering. James is smiling, and his traitor of a best friend has her eyebrows raised in challenge, a dare he knows better than to stand down from. “I mean yeah, okay, kinda three times or whatever, but still, what the fuck, man?”

Clint speaks his fears into existence in the middle of the night, one of James’ arms under his neck, the other and a leg thrown across Clint’s chest and thighs. He’s really hoping he doesn’t get pulled away again in the middle of the night, but at least this time he’s got clothes on. Not being able to sleep in the nude has been an annoying but entirely necessary adjustment. He’s already scarred two Sokovian teenagers, he doesn’t need to add any other casualties to his count.  

He stares up at the ceiling, twisting James’ hair idly in between his fingers. He’s so lucky to have this, and the other Clints are so lucky to have what they have…and as soon as Thor shows up, it could all be over. It could all be over at any time, really, Clint doesn’t fucking know, but now it feels like there’s an actual deadline.

“What if Thor gets here and this Aether stuff just fucks it all up even more?” 

James, who has definitely been drifting towards sleep himself, shifts before speaking. “What do you mean?” 

“Like what if the second it gets close to the machine they just… react. Boom. Explosion. Goodbye other realities,” Clint says, softly. He feels dumb saying it out loud. “M’tolla and Shuri don’t know, Jane doesn’t know — it’s a fucking immortal rock from space , nobody knows what’s gonna happen when it’s next to the time machine. Could be goodbye to our reality, no matter what the scientists think.” 

James adjusts, resting his chin on Clint’s shoulder. “That could happen. But it’s worth trying, isn’t it?” 

Clint looks down at him. He’s so goddamn grateful for what he’s got, but those other realities…any chance of fixing them and keeping them safe, Clint’s gotta take it. And he knows that, knows that that’s what they’ll ultimately do, but right now, looking down at the man he loves? The fear of losing this? It makes him regret ever wanting to do the right thing. 

“I don’t want to lose you. Just the thought of that happening — even the smallest possibility — ”  

James’ lips tilt up in a rueful smile, and the metal arm across Clint’s chest squeezes tighter. “I know. But we gotta.” 

Clint breathes in deep, then exhales explosively. “Yeah.” 

“Actually,” James breaks the silence after a few minutes, “even if the Aether fucks everything up, and we lose this, something tells me we’d still end up in a reality where we found each other again.” 

“You think?” 

“Definitely,” James responds, then tilts Clint’s head down to press a warm kiss against his lips. He pulls back a moment later, and when he speaks next, even though his tone is joking, the sincerity in his words and expression makes Clint’s heart clench. “Clearly that’s what’s meant to be. Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence…not sure what three times is, sweetheart, but I think no matter what, there will be a version of me that ends up with a version of you.”

“You’re making us sound like some kinda soulmates or something, Barnes,” Clint says with a crooked grin that’s doing nothing to disguise how fucking romanced he feels. 

James shrugs. “Okay, think about it. You’ve fought aliens from space and fallen through a time machine. You’ve somehow survived being Natasha’s best friend for 15 years, have lived in Wakanda for the past six months, and you’ve got a witch on your team — and yet the idea of two people always finding each other across realities sounds unrealistic?” 

Clint barks out a laugh, sharp in the darkness of their room. “Well, when you put it like that...” 

“Exactly,” James says, his eyes crinkling. He rolls onto his back and reverses their positions by grabbing Clint’s arm as he does, pulling Clint across his chest. “No use in worrying about what’s gonna happen. I’m happy. You’re happy. Let’s give the Clints and Bucky and Barnes and everyone else their chance to be happy, too.”

“And I’ll find you again, even if it all goes wrong?” 

“You will,” James confirms. “Or who knows, maybe next time I’ll find you.” 

Thor arrives with the Aether one day and three dimensional bleeds later, an angry, roiling red presence that Clint can feel in his bones when the god passes by, even through its protective casing. 

He touches down just outside of the city center at a location Prince T’Challa had ever so politely requested he use instead of the landing strip, after he’d all but destroyed six meters of concrete when he’d used his hammer to take off last time. Stupid Asgardian powers. 

James and Clint meet him at the predetermined location, and Clint can feel the sick tension oozing out of the metal tube like it’s something physical. He’s not sure if it’s just him and the fact that his body is attuned to it now, but the way James has got a frown directed at the container tells him he’s not alone in sensing how fucking wrong it feels. 

“Is that gonna bite me?” 

Thor straightens up from his kneeled superhero landing, which is really kinda excessive, considering how he’s got alien knees and shit that don’t need the cushion a human would, and glances at the container in his hand. “The Aether does not have teeth. It cannot bite you.” 

“That’s not — ”  Clint shakes his head and motions to leave the area. He knows better than to explain Earth idioms to Thor. “That thing is vile. You sure it’s not gonna come out of there and ruin shit before we get it to the machine?” 

“It is contained by an Asgardian metal specifically designed to control the influence of the Infinity Stones,” Thor says, striding beside James. “For eons such designs have effectively controlled the forces of the Tesseract and Aether.” 

Clint decides not to bring up how Asgard seems to have a pretty terrible record lately with preventing the forces of their precious Infinity Stones from wreaking havoc across the universes. He thinks it’s mighty mature of him. 

M’tolla and Shuri meet them a few minutes later at the outskirts of the city, a sleek, opaque metallic box waiting between them, which Thor deposits the tube into without pause. Jane and Darcy, who had been working with the Wakandans and their team back in the lab to prepare things while James and Clint retrieved Thor, greet the returned deity with hugs. 

“Everything go okay, Mew Mew man?” Darcy asks when she steps back. 

Thor nods, brow slightly furrowed. “Indeed. The Collector seemed reluctant to release the Aether to me, despite the fact that Asgard had only requested he care for it temporarily.” He smiles ruefully down at Jane under his arm. “You may have been right, my beloved, about it being a mistake to trust him.” 

Darcy sighs, leaning over to Clint. “Man, I love the big guy, but Asgardians are a bunch of idiots. They seemed to think it was a good idea to give this thing with like, world-shattering power, to an uber rich uber elitist asshole who literally collects exclusive things from all across the galaxy and doesn’t let other people see them.” She nudges his shoulder with hers, then does the same to James. “Dude kept people in cages, the fuck? Can we say, human rights violations? Or alien rights, I guess?” She scoffs. “Definitely a trustworthy dude.” 

Clint wrinkles his nose in distaste and can see James giving Thor a reevaluating look. Calling him in was the right thing to do, wasn’t it? 

Thor kisses Jane on the forehead, then turns back to M’tolla and Shuri, who are carefully checking the seals on their box. “Princess, Doctor, should everything go according to plan, perhaps we can discuss an alternate storage solution for the Aether. It has come to my attention that it was not left in the... best location to ensure galactic safety.” 

“We can discuss things,” Shuri says with a smirk. She’d been close enough to hear Darcy’s words earlier. “But for now, we have a time machine to fix.” She looks at Clint. “Ready?” 

“No,” Clint’s brain speaks for him, and he shrugs, “but I do some of my best work without a plan, so we might as well get this show on the road.”

M’tolla and Shuri let out near identical exasperated chuckles, then M’tolla nods. “Then let us begin.” 

The two Wakandans turn towards the direction of the lab, Thor and Jane behind them, Darcy hustling to walk next to Shuri, throwing an arm across the princess’ shoulders. 

James slips his metal hand into Clint’s, twining their fingers together. “Shoulda been more honest with them, doll. I think you do all of your work without a plan.” 

Clint tries to glare down at him, but loses the fight to stay stern and grins instead. “Guess all of my work is my best work then.” 

“Not sure if that’s what that means,” James teases. He looks up at Clint for a beat, sobering slightly. “You’re really okay? I know you’re scared, I know this is hard. We can probably convince them to wait for a day if that’s what you need.” 

We’re really just the luckiest motherfucker on the planet , Clint’s brain informs him. 

Probably in the whole universe, actually , his heart amends, and Clint can’t find any room to disagree. 

“Nah, babe, you know me. If I wait too long, I’ll get antsy. We’re gonna do it, might as well do it now.” He tugs James by the metal hand and starts following the rest of the crew  — who just so happen to hold the fate of multiple universes in their hands. “Let’s get this shit done.”

Chapter Text

Barton, a stupid, smirking grin on his stupid, smirking 26-year-old face, laughs and gestures back down at the blueprints between them. “Come on, what are you trying to tell me here? I age a coupla years and am now afraid of entering a base through a vent system?” 

Clint’s eye twitches and he’s very suddenly hella fucking appreciative of Nat’s willingness to put up with him over the years. “No, you fucking idiot, I grew up and realized that vents are stupid and there’s usually a better way to infiltrate a target.” 

“Sounds to me like you’re scared, old man,” Barton says. He’s adopted Pietro’s nickname for Clint, which is somehow about 47 times more annoying when it comes out of his younger version’s mouth than out of the Sokovian teenager’s. And it’s already annoying as hell when Pietro says it. 

Clint opens his mouth, about to fire off another retort, when Barnes lays a steadying hand on top of his knee under the table. He turns towards him, eyebrows raised, but Barnes just raises his own eyebrows in response, mouth ticking up, which okay, yeah. 

Barton may technically be an adult, but Clint’s theoretically the real adult in this situation. 

Clint looks across the table at Natasha. “I’m so sorry for putting you through all of this. He’s so dumb. We’re so dumb. Please forgive me for all of my sins. And all of his.” 

Natasha grins. “I knew what I was signing up for.” At Barton’s outraged noise, she rolls her eyes. “Leave him alone, durak. They’re right — there’s another entrance through the roof on the east side of the complex that would situate you in the location that you need.” 

Clint smugly leans back in his seat as Barton glares at him. They’ve been working together for the past three days to systematically identify and flag all evidence of Hydra within SHIELD. Now that Stark has the machine ready to de-brainwash Barnes, they’re planning their first infiltration of a corrupt base, where they should be able to get incriminating information on Secretary Pierce. 

“No vents, no problem,” Clint says. “No need to get dirty and clang around in there, run into any mice or mouse shit, which is actually maybe worse than the — ” 

Tingling starts in the tips of his fingers, and in the space of two seconds, spreads up his arms and across his chest. 

The corners of his vision flash red. 

“Barnes — ” Clint gets out, jerking his head towards him, and there’s pressure all around his body, heavy and feather-light at the same time. 

Barnes is already standing, pushing Clint’s chair back from the table, expression in a panic, hands frantically reaching towards him. “No — ” 

“What’s happening?” 

“Clint?!” 

The pressure increases, building in an instant until Clint feels like he’s got the weight of the world around him on all sides. Silver flashes, then the room is painted in red. 

He’s not the one that’s supposed to be pulled through time. 

2009 vanishes, and he’s falling.

“Everyone good?” Bucky asks as Clint comes into the room, closing the door gently behind him. They’ve only just started sleeping through the night in each other’s rooms. Clint had been concerned about it at first, unsure about the message it would send to the kids. All it took was CB’s confused head tilt as he reminded them how Clint and Bucky napped together in the living room anyways, Tasha’s instant nonchalance at the announcement, and Barney’s ‘ wait, you’re trying to pretend like this is news to us? ’ for Clint to realize his worrying was pointless.

The kids know they’re together, and they only care about it to the extent that it makes their family stronger. Might as well lean into it.

“Golden,” Clint says, already slipping his shirt off. “Had to force Barney away from the Nintendo, which fuck Stark for getting those new games, but once I threatened to throw the cartridges away if he didn’t stop, he was pretty willing.” 

Bucky shakes his head, flipping back the covers as Clint walks over. “You can’t just threaten property damage every time Barney doesn’t listen to you, you know.” 

“Debatable. How did your chaperoning of Steve and Tony’s not-a-date, but also totally a date, go?” 

Apparently, since Steve wasn’t frozen and refrozen multiple times over the years like Bucky was, he still feels like the 26 he was when the Valkyrie went down. Which, apparently, is one hundred percent not an age gap that Tony “21-but-almost-22-besides-I-have-more-degrees-than-most-people-five-years-my-senior-do” Stark is worried about. He’s made his interest in the second in-house super soldier more than apparent, and Steve’s not sure what to do with it. 

More often than not, whenever Tony tries to invite him to do something, Clint can see the fear in Steve’s eyes as he grabs Bucky before agreeing. His semi-permanent blush and the way he watches Tony at work, though, have made it clear that if Tony would just learn to pump his brakes a little, Steve would probably be willing to meet him halfway.

Bucky snorts, putting his book down and pressing a kiss to Clint’s cheek as he slides into the bed. “They’re a pair of idiots.” 

“Can’t be worse than us, though, right?” 

“You’re a special kind of idiot,” Bucky concedes, “but Stevie’s a special kind of stubborn idiot. And Tony, well. He’s a class all unto himself.” 

Clint reaches across Bucky to switch the bedside lamp off. “I can’t believe you choose to surround yourself with us.” 

“Seems like I really can’t escape it, can I?” 

“Apparently not,” Clint says as he presses in close alongside Bucky, wrapping both arms around his torso, determined to surround him with as much idiot as possible. 

His plans are spoiled as the dark room brightens, a shimmering silver-red haze lighting the space. 

“Aw, time machine, no,” Clint groans as that godawful sucking sensation, one he hasn’t felt in months but he recognizes instantly, weighs down on him. 

“Clint?” There’s panic in Bucky’s voice, and Clint tries to hold him tighter, keep himself grounded, because he’s not the Clint that’s supposed to be pulled through time, so why is this happening, what did Original Clint not tell him?

1992 vanishes, and he’s falling.

Shuri doesn’t say ‘ here goes nothing ’, but that’s all Clint can read in her eyes as she keys in the sequence for the robot to open the final layer between the Aether and the time machine, a silver, finely worked metal ball that splits in the middle until a sick, red glow pours out. 

Everyone’s got protective gear on, and Clint’s standing in the testing chamber the Wakandans set up with only Thor and M’tolla beside him, both ready to do, well, whatever it is they’re gonna do to try and get the Aether to settle out and stabilize the three realities. 

Clint maybe should’ve paid more attention. 

But then again, as he glances out of the chamber to see James, who’s got one hand palm up against the glass, fear and concern and overwhelming love written in every line in his body and expression, why would he have spent any time thinking about anything that’s not James? Yeah, Clint knows he’s stupid for this guy, and he’s not about to apologize for it. 

Clint meets his eyes and smiles at him, as reassuringly as he can. M’tolla and Thor will figure this out. 

And if they don’t, well, James has already said it: they’ll find each other again. 

James has just enough time to smile back before that familiar sucking sensation begins to wash over his body, and Clint is engulfed in red and silver. 

And then he’s falling, 

falling, 

falling.

Clint is minuscule, microscopic, a giant that towers and balloons up, enormous and he is also no larger than a single atom. 

He’s broken and shattered into a million pieces, fracturing out; he’s everything all at once, his mind running a thousand steps per second, whole and complete. 

Clint exists, and he doesn’t, and he does, and there’s three of him, four of him, thirty-seven Clints spinning around, falling together, falling separate, and there’s only him, alone in a wash of silver threaded with red, pulsing, exploding, squeezing and driving him down deeper and deeper and deeper. 

Until he lands. 

And there’s three of him.

Clint’s lying on a plane of silver that spreads as far as he can see in all directions, and two other versions of himself lie nearby. 

Clint pushes himself up into a seated position as the other two look around to get their bearings. 

“2009?” 

The Clint on his left, dressed in regulation SHIELD gear, nods and sits up, then pulls his knees to his chest before looking at the final Clint. “Which means you must be 1992?” 

The third Clint sits up, rubbing at his bare arms. He’s shirtless, with only a pair of sweatpants on. “Yeah. What the fuck, Original Clint, why are we here? Where the fuck are we?” 

Clint runs a hand through his hair, debating how to go about this. There’s really not a good way to say this, is there? 

Just gotta bite the bullet, man, his brain advises him. 

“Well, see, we’re in the time machine. Or maybe some sort of pocket dimension, I’m not really sure,” Clint says, then shrugs and steamrolls through. “Turns out Shuri really wasn’t kidding when she told us the time machine wasn’t stable — that’s why I’ve been coming back to your timelines, actually, turns out it’s so unstable that your timelines were about to collapse. And it’s been happening because of another Infinity Stone that Thor got all messed up with last year which has the ability to erase realities, like kapoosh, boom, zooming out of existence, peace out world as we know it. It’s kinda been threatening to do that to yours, so y’know, trying to fix that. And so, here we are.” 

There’s a beat of silence, then — 

“Holy shit,” 2009 Clint breathes. “Is that how we always sound when we try to explain things? No wonder Natasha never lets us lead ops and makes us practice before debriefs.” 

Clint cracks a grin. “Yeah — ”  

“Hold the fucking phone ,” 1992 Clint says, rolling to his feet. “Our realities are about to be erased ?” He storms over to Clint, grabbing him by the arm. “This is what’s been going on, and you didn’t tell us?” 

Clint rises up, jostling a little so that 1992 Clint’s grip isn’t digging into his arm. “Yeah, I mean, we figured there wasn’t any point to letting you know.” 

“No point,” 1992 Clint repeats incredulously, staring at Clint. He lets out a harsh bark of laughter, looking over his shoulder at their clone. “Do you hear this guy? No point , he says, to telling us that our world’s about to end.” 

2009 Clint looks troubled, if a little calmer than their other clone. “Is there a reason you didn’t tell us? Don’t tell me it’s just another Barton cop out. You know it sucks to be lied to. We suck at emotions, but I doubt you actually wanted to lie.” 

Clint glances between the two of them and sighs. “Yeah, I know it does. C’mon, gimme a second to explain.” 

“If we’ve fucking got a second,” 1992 Clint grumbles, but reluctantly releases Clint’s arm and steps back. 

Clint winces. “They’re fixing it, I think. Probably, anyways.” At 2009 Clint’s expectant head tilt, he focuses in. He owes these guys honesty. “Okay, so the thing is, most importantly, there was nothing you could have done about it. All the Wakandans assured me that nothing done from your sides would affect the machine.” 

“Doesn’t mean we don’t deserve to know,” 1992 Clint points out, fingers tapping against his biceps in a show of barely-there restraint. 

2009 Clint shoots a finger gun in his direction. “He ain’t wrong.”  

“Yeah, I know, and I didn’t mean to deceive you,” Clint says.

“Even though you did, when I specifically asked you about it.” 1992 Clint is frowning, but behind his anger, Clint can see genuine fear building in his eyes, and his heart clenches. 

“Yeah, I did, but — ” Behind his shirtless clone, 2009 Clint is worrying his bottom lip between his teeth, glancing around the nebulous space they’re in like he’s looking for a way to escape and get back to Barnes, and shit, Clint’s gotta make them understand. “No, you didn’t deserve to be lied to, but you also didn’t deserve to have your lives ruined because of a problem you didn’t have a way to fix. What you deserved was to be able to live your life and be happy about it.” 

2009 Clint stops scanning around them, and 1992 Clint opens his mouth to respond, but Clint’s got more to say. 

“I couldn’t do it — call it a cop out, call it lying to you, but I couldn’t ruin your happiness. I’ve seen how happy you are, how much you’ve been able to get done in your worlds, and I couldn’t take that away from you.” He gestures erratically at 1992 Clint. “What the fuck was I supposed to do when I saw how much you love CB and Barney and Tiny Tasha? Steal all of that joy away from you? Make you second guess every interaction you had with them, wondering if it was going to be your last? Fucking sabotage the goddamn bliss you have with Bucky? Rip apart your family? I never, we never,” he chokes, “We never got that. And you — you deserve it, okay?” 

He turns to the quieter, more cautious version of himself, and rubs an arm across his eyes, the betraying bastards with their stupid functional tear ducts, ruining his ability to confess clearly. “And you — how could I do anything that might risk ruining the growth I saw between you and Barnes? I saw how proud you were of him, and goddammit, I was proud of you , you asshole, for managing to handle all of that on your own. And then you turn around and rescue Wanda? And Pietro ? And get them and Stark to cooperate? What the fuck kind of leadership and responsibility is that ? Since when can Clint fucking Barton do all of that?” He lets out a shuddering breath. “I couldn’t — I couldn’t take that away from you. From either of you.” 

2009 Clint rocks back on his hands, as though he’s surprised by Clint’s thoughts, like he hasn’t taken time to really process how much he’s changed since being sent back seven years. 

They’ve both changed so much. They’re so different from the Clint that fucked things up with James in the original timeline. Not only have they adapted to become the Clints that their Jameses needed, they’ve both become… stronger. More confident in who they are, more assured in how they fit in their own worlds. Neither of them is better or worse than the other, each simply more… self-realized, or some shit. 

Fuck, if Clint’s not careful, he’s gonna start thinking about how he’s grown into a stronger version of himself, too. 

“I —,” 1992 Clint starts, then shakes his head. “I don’t know, man.” 

Clint takes a deep breath. “Besides, even if I’ve done wrong by you, it’s about Bucky and Barnes, too.” 

“You’re saying they deserve to be lied to, even if we don’t?” 1992 Clint’s voice is confused, not accusatory. 

“No.” 2009 Clint answers before Clint can, and he leans forward, pressing up off the ground until the three of them are standing together, only inches apart. “He’s saying that Barnes and Bucky, above anyone, deserved to get to keep their happiness.” He looks at Clint. “Right?” 

“ Exactly ,” Clint agrees. “I couldn’t look James in the face every day, thankful beyond anything I ever could have imagined that he was spared the Zemo and Siberia shitshow, and not think about how goddamn much Barnes and Bucky deserved the lives you’ve worked together to make happen.” 

“Well, fuck,” 1992 Clint says with a rueful grin. “Bucky does deserve everything.” 

“So does Barnes,” 2009 Clint admits. “And fuck knows finding out about this woulda destroyed a shit ton of progress.” 

“Definitely woulda made it hard to focus on the good things,” 1992 Clint concedes. 

Clint nods. “So do you get it? Why I didn’t — couldn’t — tell you?” 

2009 Clint responds first. “Yeah. Still kind of shitty to find out like this, but I probably woulda done the same thing.” 

“Me too.” 1992 Clint chuckles, rueful grin spreading. “It’s like we’re the same person or something.” 

The world around them shakes, flashing red, and Clint’s rapidly reminded that they’re in the middle of an unstable time machine that’s controlled by a malevolent Infinity Stone. From the looks on their faces, the other Clints are remembering that as well. 

“So they’re fixing this, yeah?” 1992 Clint asks, shivering slightly, though that could also be from the lack of shirt. Clint’s just glad the guy isn’t completely naked — one Clint being thrust through time and space bare ass naked is more than enough. 

“Should be,” Clint answers. “Thor and M’tolla and her team think they have things figured out. They’re hoping to stabilize the realities, convince the machine and the Aether — that’s the fancy pants name for the Reality Stone — that each timeline can continue to exist on its own. Iron shit out, prevent me from popping back into your worlds again.” 

“If they figure this out, we’ll be safe?” 2009 Clint asks. 

“Yeah.” 

“And there won’t be any more double Clints,” 1992 Clint clarifies. 

“Besides CB and Barton, who already belong in your realities,” Clint confirms. “But no, no more of me.” 

“Hmm.” 2009 Clint narrows his eyes as another tremor shakes around them. “So no matter what happens, this’ll be goodbye for us.” 

“Yeah. That’s the only way to keep things safe and stable.” He’s put off thinking about it, but as the months have passed, it’s been nothing short of amazing to get to see these snapshots of the other Clints’ lives. It’ll suck to have to let them go. “But at least we’ll know that we’re all going back to good things.” 

1992 Clint smirks. “Yeah, you suckers are gonna know that I’ve got the best deal out of all three of us.” 

“You can’t be serious,” 2009 Clint objects. “I’ve clearly got the best situation — you couldn’t pay me to live through the nineties again, and besides, I’ve got the Maximoffs.” 

“Yeah, so? I’ve got the baby Bartons and a Tiny Natasha, not to mention I get to watch the slow motion train wreck that is 21-year-old Tony trying to get Steve to fall for him,” 1992 Clint shoots back. 

“I don’t have to deal with teenagers or children ,” Clint points out, “which clearly makes me the winner here.” 

Both Clints look at him and scoff in sync. It’s eerie in the best way possible.

“You wish you had kids,” 1992 Clint says. 

“And goats don’t actually count,” 2009 Clint tacks on. 

Red lightning cracks down around them, shattering the edges of their reality, fissures there for an instant, then gone the next. 

1992 Clint’s eyes flick around them, then he deliberately shrugs in a conscious decision to ignore what’s happening, which Clint figures is pretty par for the course. “Besides, I’ve got Bucky, and he’s better — ”  he stops, frowns. “He’s not better than James or Barnes. But he’s right for me, and I’m goddamn lucky to have him.” 

“Goddamn lucky to get to be with him, you mean,” 2009 Clint amends with his eyebrows raised in challenge. “I’m thankful as fuck for every single day that Barnes chooses to stay with me.” 

“Yeah, that,” 1992 Clint says, wide-eyed. “Definitely that.” 

And Clint knows exactly where they’re coming from. Clint’s lived a long life, it feels like sometimes, or at least one with a lot of experiences. And it feels like he’s spent a lot of that life fucking things up, trying to fix his mistakes, and figuring out how to be a better person than he is.

It’s bizarre for him to think that somehow, he’s a good enough person that James Buchanan Barnes has chosen to stay with him — to support him, to be with him, to love him, Clint , of all people. 

It’s only now, looking at mirroring expressions of disbelief and wonder across his copies’ faces, these copies who have worked their asses off to be who their Bucky and Barnes needed, who against all odds kept them safe and brought them peace, who each dove head first into doing whatever they could to make their realities a better place — it’s only now that Clint realizes that maybe he’s done the same thing. 

Maybe Natasha’s right, and Clint can do the things that scare him, even without support. 

Maybe James is right, and Clint, this version, just like all other versions, deserves good things. 

Maybe he always has. 

“We’re all a bunch of lucky motherfuckers, aren’t we?” 

Both of his copies’ faces split into identical, broad grins. 

“Yeah,” 1992 Clint agrees, right as the world around them starts to shake, shimmering red and silver. 

“The goddamn luckiest.” 2009 Clint nods in resolute agreement as cracks form under their feet, crawling rapidly in all directions, bright red light bursting through. 

The world explodes in a shattering of mirrors, and Clint falls.

And falls. 

And falls.

And then he lands, stumbling to the side, only for Thor to grasp him by the arms, big hands steady. 

“It is done, my friend.” 

Clint glances up, shaky, just as James rips open the door to the containment chamber, a smile of relief spread wide across his face. 

And then Clint lands, crashing through the middle of Stark’s coffee table, a shard of wood flinging to the side and nearly taking Barton’s eye out. 

“Ow,” he says faintly, and then Barnes is yanking him out of the destruction of the table, hauling him to his feet. 

“What the fuck,” he growls out. “You’re not allowed to do that to me.” 

His eyes scan Clint’s body at the same time his hands do, checking for injuries, turning him this way and that before he’s apparently satisfied that Clint has been returned back to him in one piece.  He rests his hands on Clint’s shoulders, meeting his eyes with a comfortably familiar intensity.

“Sorry,” Clint says, a little breathless, which is probably only partially due to the adrenaline still coursing through him. 

“Not again,” Barnes says firmly, then brings his left hand up to the side of Clint’s face. His voice falters, and he repeats himself. “Not again. You belong here.” 

Clint turns his head just slightly, his near-death experience lending him the bravery to press his lips gently against Barnes’ thumb. “I do.” 

Behind him, Barton groans. 

Clint meets Barnes’ eyes, noting the faint flush underneath them, spreading across his cheekbones. He grins. Everything is gonna be okay. “Besides, I wouldn’t leave you with this asshole version of myself.”

And then Clint lands in the middle of his bed, limbs sprawling, whacking Bucky in the face with an elbow. 

“Jesus Christ , Clint, what the fuck?” Bucky quickly shoves him off of his chest, then gathers him close immediately after. The light’s been turned back on since Clint vanished, and he can read the fear on Bucky’s face. 

“Hey, sweetheart,” Clint says, reaching out to caress the fear right off of it. His thumb smooths over Bucky’s cheek, and he smiles. “Sorry about that.” 

“Are you okay?” 

Clint takes a moment to think. He’s here, and despite the way his heart is still pounding in his chest, his own fear still running electric through his veins, he’s back where he belongs. 

You don’t need a fucking moment to think, dumbass, his brain reprimands him. Everything is exactly how it should be. 

He laughs, more a breath of air than anything, and leans forward, pulling Bucky’s face closer as he does.  “More than okay,” he says softly, and kisses him.

Chapter Text

“All I’m saying,” Clint says, a purple-fletched arrow pointing directly at Nick Fury’s chest, “is that you gotta let us explain things first. We’ve got a bug in the system but we don’t mean any harm, so if you could just chill the fuck out first and let us talk, it’ll all be fine.” He looks away from Fury and nods at Phil, who’s standing with his back pressed up against the glass walls. “’Sup, Coulson? Nice to see you with more hair.” 

There’s a moment of silence that’s beginning to stretch into discomfort, ‘cause fantastic marksman Clint is, it’s still him and his bow against four of SHIELD’s finest, which isn’t exactly his favorite kind of odds. It evens out a second later when Bucky steps into the frame of the conference room door. 

Awesome. He and Steve must be done securing the entire bottom three floors now.

Howard Stark’s jaw drops open, his dumb mustache twitching comically. “Bucky?” His gaze flits to Bucky’s arm, eyes widening, then back to his face. “ Bucky Barnes?”  

Bucky waves at him, then steps forward through the doorway. Steve’s broad shoulders press through a moment later. 

Director Carter gives a muted squeak, her hand twitching on the top of the table as though it's unsure whether or not it needs to hold onto something or pull out the gun at her side. 

“ Steve?” Howard’s apparently the only one at the table capable of forming real words. 

“Howard,” Steve responds, then smiles. “Peggy.” He turns to Fury. “And Nick, I’ve been told. I’m Steve Rogers. It’s a pleasure.” 

“Goddamn,” Fury breathes. 

“And Clint,” Clint provides with a wink to the room at large. “Clint Barton.” 

“You — you were the one in the Red Room —”  Phil blurts, then looks at Carter. “I think they were the ones who sent that message when the Red Room was taken down in the spring.” 

Clint suddenly wishes that finger guns were easier to give while holding a bow.  He attempts to snap his thumb and middle finger around the grip anyway. It’s less than effective. 

“And I’m Tony,” Tony says over the intercom, forever unwilling to be left out. All four of SHIELD members snap their heads up. “Hey dad, hey Aunt Peggy, hey previously unknown dudes whose intelligence I’ve been hacking into since December. Now that we’ve got introductions over, can we move on to the part where we tell you that your organization has been hacked — not me, though okay yeah, also by me — and we’d like to fix it?” 

“ Tony? ” Okay, scratch what Clint thought earlier. Howard Stark is actually only capable of saying people’s names in a half scandalized, half bewildered way. And here Clint thought he was supposed to be the smart one. 

“Yeah, yeah, it’s your son, and we’re his house guests — you know, the ones who have been running up an insane pizza bill at your upstate place for the past six months?” Howard makes a strangled noise, and Clint nods. “Yep. And we’re who we say we are. Yes, that means it’s your old war friends from the forties, fresh off the ice and slightly less fresh out of the brainwashing Nazi cryotube.”

“The ice?” Director Carter’s face is a picture of distress, though Clint can see that she’s moved both hands off the table now, one at her hip on her sidearm, the other under the table somewhere, possibly near a panic button. He smirks — he’d only met the woman once when he was new to SHIELD in the early 2000s, but she always had an ironclad reputation. It’s nice to see that even being surprised by her supposedly forty-plus years dead crush isn’t enough to shake her out of action. 

Steve’s eyes soften, and he moves to step towards her. 

Clint bulldozes over him — Tony’s probably dismantled whatever that panic button hooks up to, but no need to take chances. “That’s right, the ice. We found Steve here up in the Atlantic, not long after taking the Red Room down — you’re welcome for that, by the way — which was not long after I sorta prevented Bucky here, though you might also know him as the Winter Soldier, from assassinating your ass.” 

There’s a beat of silence, which Bucky fills with a sigh. 

Clint’s gotten so good at explaining things, and Bucky’s very proud of him. 

“Oh, and by the way,” Clint adds, because timing is another one of his highly refined skills, “I also kinda stole that super soldier serum you were working on.”

“And I’m the reason why all the files pertaining to that research are corrupt, daddy dearest,” Tony puts in over the intercom gleefully. “Don’t you know it’s in poor form to provide the bad guys with the good technology?” He pauses, coughs. “Sorry, Stevie baby, I don’t mean to imply that you’re technology.” 

Steve closes his eyes, face red. 

Well, if he hadn’t wanted to be outed to his former flame and potential future employer, he probably should have told Tony to tone down the flirting. 

Clint snorts as Peggy’s eyes widen as she makes the connection; who is Clint kidding? No matter how often Tony stumbles through faux pas or embarrasses the man he’s so desperately trying to date, he’s never gonna listen when someone tells him to keep his mouth shut. 

Howard’s face runs through a myriad of expressions, and Clint grins as he settles on a nice, tomato red, the clear picture of a father who’s never known quite what to make of his child’s antics. 

Coulson, clearly out of his depth in the presence of his superiors, looks like he doesn’t know whether to laugh, fall to his knees in awe of Steve’s mere existence, or keep a straight face out of respect. He’s failing at all three, regardless, and looks more manic than Clint’s ever seen him. 

It’s great. 

“So,” Bucky breaks the silence, stepping up to the table and pulling out a chair next to Fury. He kicks his feet up and sets his gun in front of him, then leans back, hands behind his head. “Now that we’ve covered the basics, can we go ahead and move on to the part where we address the fact that fuckin’ Hydra still exists when Cap here coulda sworn he took them down with that goddamn plane 47 goddamn years ago? We’ve kinda got a time limit.” 

Clint nods. “Yeah, we’ve learned it’s better not to leave the sitter with the kids for more than a 24 hour period. Things get dicey.” 

Tony’s voice is morbid over the speaker. “Dear god, even two hours is pushing it. Fuck, it has been quiet since I came on here. I should probably check soon to make sure Tasha hasn’t convinced CB to try and eat a whole carton of raw eggs again. Or that they’re not on the roof.” He makes an inarticulate groan, and his final sentence is a pained whisper. “They’re probably tunneling under the workshop as we speak, the little gremlins.” 

“Don’t be such a baby about it, Stark,” Bucky says affectionately. “Remember, Stevie’s impressed when you pretend to like them.” As Tony grumbles overhead, Bucky turns his smile back to the table, seemingly pleased by the looks of shock on everyone’s faces. “So, like we were saying — Hydra?” 

“Now, you’re sure we shouldn’t try to do anything else to ease him into the century?” Fury peers in through the bedroom door on the top floor of Stark’s mansion, where Steve is carefully hooked up to several monitors, his soon-to-be not comatose body stretched out on a comfortable bed that’s piled high with blankets. 

Clint barely restrains himself from punching him in the arm, but only because he can see the more legitimate anger forming in Barnes’ eyes at the suggestion. “Nah, man, I told you already. When SHIELD tried to do that shit back in 2012, Steve was able to tell in an instant. I mean, at least this time we’d be here to prevent you from fucking it completely up — last time you used the radio recording of a game he’d been to the year before, you idiots.” 

Barton looks gleeful at his older self calling his boss an idiot. Clint’s sort of got immunity right now, what with how he’d been able to prevent so many catastrophes and provide the information SHIELD needed to take down Hydra in the space of a single week. 

Fury narrows his eye at Clint. 

Clint smirks back. “Don’t you have somewhere to be? I think we’ve got this covered.” 

Fury maintains eye contact for another few seconds before shaking his head. “Lord help us, I’m taking suggestions from Clint Barton.” 

“I mean, c’mon,” Barton says, stepping behind Fury. “If President-of-the-Cap-fan-club Coulson can’t be here for this, why should you?” 

He winks at Clint as he ushers Fury up the stairs. He’d been beyond thrilled to discover his handler’s obsession with Steve Rogers, and hasn’t stopped making fun of him since finding out. Barton’s delight apparently extends to mocking Coulson in front of their boss, bureaucratic hierarchy be damned. 

Clint and Barnes watch them go, and as their heads vanish down the spiral staircase, Barnes turns to Clint, every line in his body softening once they’re alone in the hallway. “Thank you.” 

“For what?”

“For getting them out of here. Steve’s not going to want anyone around for this.” 

Clint smiles and bumps shoulders with him before taking Bucky’s hand. He can do that now — he thinks, actually, that Barnes might have been okay with him doing that for awhile now. “Of course. You ready to go in there? Stark said it would only be another ten minutes.” 

“Yeah.” Bucky tightens his grip around Clint’s fingers, looking down at them before up at Clint. Clint can read the fear there, mixed in with excitement and anticipation. Clint lets his smile widen, and raises his eyebrows. Bucky grins suddenly, and the fear dissipates. “Let’s go.” 

As they step into the bedroom, Clint frowns. “You’re good with me in here, too? Think Steve’ll be okay with that?” 

Barnes nods. “He’ll have to be. I’m here for him — you’re here for me.” 

Clint feels his heart stutter at that, and can’t help the grin that spreads across his face. “Careful with your words, Barnes, or else it’s gonna sound like you wanna keep me around after you get your Steve back.” 

Barnes pulls out one of the two chairs that’s been set up next to Steve’s bed, then the second, which he draws Clint down into with a steady hand. “Of course I’m going to want you around.” 

Clint shrugs, wondering if Barnes can read the genuine tension in his movement. “Figured you might not, that’s all.” 

“Y’know,” Barnes says contemplatively, looking at Clint like he might be the dumbest person in the world, “I’ve done absolutely nothing to make you think that. You’re letting your fears speak for me, sweetheart.” 

Clint squirms in his seat, the endearment sending heat flushing across his face like wildfire. “I just — I dunno, I figured, get Steve back, might not need me around so much. Best pals since forever, all that. I got you where you needed to go, got SHIELD to weed out Hydra, did what you needed me to do in order to keep you safe. Figured, I dunno, maybe you wouldn’t want me — here, I mean — after that.” 

Barnes stares at Clint, and Clint quails under his knowing gaze. A slow, steady smirk rises to his lips. “Like I told you when that time machine spat you out — you belong here. And that means with me. I’m not letting you go just because you’ve given me a best friend back.” 

“Well that’s — that’s good,” Clint stutters. 

Bucky sighs, then hunkers forward. “You got Natasha back — did that make you want to leave me?” 

“No, but — ”  

“You found your way through time and space and sequestered yourself in the middle of a Romanian forest with me, think I’m gonna forget that?” 

“No, but — ”  

“You’re the first person, the only person, I’ve known in 70 years who has consistently put my needs above their own and has never once lied to me; think all that’s just gonna go away because we’ve got my childhood best friend to take care of, too?” 

“No,” Clint says softly. 

“I’ve spent nearly every waking minute with you for the past six months. I’ve seen you bend over backwards to help me, to help the twins, to do the right thing. You think that’s done anything but make me want to keep you around longer?” 

Clint stares at him. It’s not like Bucky’s words don’t make sense, from a logical point of view. It’s just that Clint’s heart and mind have never been logical when it comes to understanding what makes people leave and what makes people stay. “I mean, I’ve made a lot of mistakes.” 

“None,” Barnes says with conviction, his grip on Clint’s hand almost bruising, “that would make me want you to ever be anywhere but with me.” 

And Clint doesn’t really understand it, but he’s learned a lot about being open since pulling Barnes out of that Hydra bunker, and he’s never had any reason to doubt Barnes’ sincerity before. “Okay,” he says after a moment. “Okay. I’ll stay then, for as long as you want me. Even after this punk wakes up. Guess I can be useful for him, too.” 

Barnes smiles, but rolls his eyes at Clint’s partial acceptance, which, man, he’s not going to let Clint get away with. “Nah, don’t go telling yourself that I’m keeping you around because you’re ‘useful’, doll, I’m keeping you around because I want you . Got it?” At Clint’s nod, which he gives a beat later, his heart fucking pounding in his chest, Barnes turns and looks down at Steve. “Besides, there’s a whole other Barton that can be useful for Steve.” 

“Aw, man, you’re really gonna set Barton loose on Steve?” Clint asks, feeling dumb with how big his smile feels stretching his cheeks. He doesn’t think he could stop smiling even if he wanted to. 

And he really doesn’t want to. 

“Mhm,” Barnes confirms, just as Steve’s vitals on the monitor next to him start to change. “Stevie can have that Clint.” He cuts a glance at Clint, eyes somehow soft, teasing and possessive all at the same time. “You’re all mine.” 

Goddamn, Barnes . Clint’s brain’s a little bit blown. 

Holy shit, his heart confirms. Holy motherfucking shit, we lucked out.  

Clint can only watch and agree as Barnes leans forward to greet his best friend, face gentling, hand not still holding Clint’s resting against Steve’s forearm. 

We really, really fucking did .

“I cannot believe they’re still making that game!” Steve slams through the doors to the workshop, Bucky trailing behind with a grin so wide it threatens to split his face.  

Clint catches Tony’s eyes over the table between them and shrugs his shoulders at Tony’s bewildered expression. Bucky and Steve have been entertaining the kids for the past few hours while Clint and Tony hammer out some of the finer details of the hearing aids Tony’s been working on for CB. The leading developers in the hearing aid industry in the early 90’s are still working with non fully digital aids, but Tony’s been using Clint’s Starktech ones from 2016 to come up with something much better for CB. 

The development of aids for CB had been put on the back burner while they found and de-iced Steve, then figured out how to alert SHIELD to the presence of Hydra in their ranks. Now that things have stabilized a bit, Tony’s been hard at work trying to come up with the best pair possible. The guy acts like he’s bothered by having the kids around, then turns around and spends hours testing and refining these, forcing Clint to stay in the workshop all day as a consultant. 

Tony thinks he’ll be done with them by tomorrow, just in time to coincide with the birthday celebration they’re planning for CB, though he’s adamant that the aids won’t be a birthday gift — he’d scoffed when Clint had asked if they would be, claiming that assistive technology should be a right , and not a gift for the privileged, which had prompted a set of raised, appreciative eyebrows from Steve. Instead, he’s got some other gift planned for CB which Clint is pretty nervous about, if the noises coming out of the workshop last night, paired with the maniacal glint in Tony’s eyes this morning, are anything to go by.  

Yeah, Tony’s a big softie when it comes to CB, Tasha, and Barney. 

Or maybe the kids are just really good at wrapping adults around their fingers. 

When Bucky and Steve left earlier, Steve was looking forward to teaching the Barton boys and Tasha how to play catch out in the backyard, something all three of their childhoods had lacked thus far. Clint watched them toss a baseball back and forth through the workshop window, Tasha’s expression at first incredibly dubious, but slowly melting into laughter that was mirrored on the boys’ faces. CB’s already showing Clint’s proficiency for accuracy, so rather than the slow, easy back and forth that Clint thinks Steve was expecting, the game had devolved into some sort of dodging and keep-away combination with multiple baseballs flying all at once. Bucky, meanwhile, worked in the periphery to keep everyone safe, his speed and knowledge of how the kids are most likely to get hurt saving Barney and CB from several facefuls of baseball. Steve’s joy throughout had been something to behold, and Clint can’t quite wrap his mind around how the hell all four of them have morphed into these oddly fitting parental-figure roles for the kids. 

Watching Steve storm in now, righteous indignation flushed high on his cheekbones, Clint has to wonder what the fuck has managed to happen since the morning. 

“The original design was created back in 1903 to criticize capitalism, not indoctrinate impressionable youths,” Steve spits, spinning a chair around and sitting down so hard Clint hears it crack underneath him. “It is actually ridiculous that this is pitched as a family game.” 

Clint looks to Bucky for any clue, but Bucky’s got both hands over his face, shoulders shaking with ill-contained laughter that bursts between his fingers in snorts. It’s adorable, but not at all useful. Tony’s no help either, when Clint looks back at him; he’s leaning forward like he can’t help it and his expression has shifted from confusion into that stupid, slightly glazed look that he turns on Steve whenever the blonde walks into the room. 

Apparently, even in a rage, Steve is attractive enough to restart Stark’s brain. 

Clint sighs, since it would seem that the questioning is up to him. “What happened?” 

“Well see, Steve — ” Bucky starts, then bursts into more unhelpful laughter. 

Steve glares up at him, then turns his baleful expression onto Clint. “All I wanted was for the kids to show me some board games, since CB was tired from outside, and I thought they’d been in front of the tv too long this morning — ”  

“ Steve ,” Bucky starts again, chortles under control as he slaps a hand over his friend’s mouth in effort to tell the story his way, “Steve here has discovered that people still play Monopoly.” 

Ah, yeah, Clint can see how that maybe didn’t go over so well. 

Tony, however, has only been exposed to a few of this Steve’s socialist rants, and wasn’t around for that December back in 2014 when Steve made national television with a group of protesters at the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree lighting ceremony, decrying both the Rockefeller family and the holiday’s emphasis on materialism. “What’s wrong with Monopoly?” 

Steve sends him a scathing glare. “ Everything. ” 

Tony glances back at Clint, checking for the right way to respond. It’s cute how much he wants to impress Steve. Clint raises his eyebrows meaningfully, then crooks his finger into an “x” that he ends with a point at Steve, one of the first signs he’d taught Stark. Tony’s not gonna learn anything if he doesn’t first learn how to ask. 

Tony sets down the hearing aids and walks around the table. “Well, can you tell me more besides ‘everything’?” 

As Tony sits down in front of Steve, a faint blush on his cheeks — probably a little bit from having to humble himself, but mostly from having to sit in front of Steve’s manspread around the back of the chair — Clint grins and meets Bucky’s eyes. 

Bucky leaves them to it and walks over to Clint. “It’s like watching our annoying little brother on a first date.” 

“He’s growing up so much,” Clint responds with a tearful quaver to his voice, even as he grins and slides his hand around Bucky’s waist. 

“Speaking of growing up,” Bucky says, leaning his head against Clint’s shoulder. His hair tickles across Clint’s throat, and Clint brushes it back, letting his fingers trail slowly behind Bucky’s ear. “Someone’s birthday is tomorrow.” 

“Yeah, I think CB’s really gonna like everything we have planned,” Clint says. Between the party they’ve got planned, the menu Jarvis isn’t looking forward to making, and the crowning glory of gifts — a yellow, one-eyed mutt Clint rescued on his last mission in New York City, set to be picked up from the vet in the morning — this will by far be the best birthday CB has ever had. Granted, the runner up from Clint’s childhood was the year he turned six and his mom stole enough money from his dad’s whiskey stash to bake him a cake. “Yeah,” Clint repeats softly, “he’s gonna really like everything we have planned.”

Bucky pinches his arm, and Clint jerks backwards. “What?” 

“You idiot,” Bucky says warmly, turning his face up to Clint’s. “I meant that it’s your birthday tomorrow. We’ve talked about you not wanting to overshadow CB,” and yeah, they had — that’s how they also decided to encourage Tasha to choose a different date for her own unknown birthday; even though she and CB had wanted to share a day, they’d been convinced once Bucky pointed out it meant spreading the celebration across months, and therefore more cake, “but you’re still worth celebrating, too, y’know. Gotta make sure my best guy knows how much he means to me.” 

Clint can feel the heat rush into his cheeks as he blushes, breaking eye contact with Bucky. Goddammit, stupid heart, pattering away in his chest. He’s supposed to be better at accepting affection now. “Well, I — I mean, yeah, sure, I guess.” 

Bucky laughs, then plants a hot kiss to his cheek. “I’ve got lots planned for you, doll.” He pulls back, a devious sparkle in his eyes, then shifts forward onto his toes, pressing up until his lips brush against Clint’s ear. “Got lots planned for you after everyone goes to bed, too.” 

Clint shivers, goosebumps pebbling on his skin even as the heat from his face spreads down his neck. He steps closer, bringing his hands up to Bucky’s shoulders, keeping him in place so that their lips meet. Bucky’s a devious, sassy bastard, he knows how sensitive Clint’s neck and ears are — 

“Aw, everyone’s being gross again.” CB’s voice is resigned. 

“Adults are the worst,” Barney adds, as if he’s not at the age where Bucky’s gonna have to give him The Talk before he starts school in the fall.  

Tasha sighs loudly, and Clint knows before he breaks away from Bucky that he’s gonna find her with her arms crossed, foot tapping in impatience. 

Tony spins away from Steve, both of them red-faced, and blusters, “Well, if you’d stop coming in here when it’s adults-only time, maybe you wouldn’t get so grossed out!” 

Clint squints at the implication that only ‘gross’ things happen in the workshop when all four of them are in there, and sees Steve’s blush deepen to a darker cherry red as he has the same thought.  

“No, Tony, that’s not — ” Steve starts, fumbling. 

“Yeah, yikes, that’s a great idea to plant in their minds.” Clint scratches at the back of his neck. 

“Oh, shit, I didn’t mean — ” Tony’s hand flies to his mouth, his eyes widening.  

Bucky, as always, saves their collective ass by preventing them from fucking things up further. “Did Jarvis send you to tell us dinner is ready?” 

Tasha stops scowling at Tony, though she still looks exasperated when she turns to Bucky, her nose tilted up and gaze disdainful. “Yes.” 

“Well come on then,” Bucky says, striding forward and lifting her off the ground and over his shoulder like a sack of rice. “We can’t keep Jarvis waiting, can we?” 

Tasha doesn’t shriek like another kid her age probably would, but she does squirm, fighting a grin. CB, never one to be left out, leaps up to grab a hold of Bucky’s metal arm. His fingers, still not quite dexterous at nearly nine, slip a little around Bucky’s bicep, but Bucky’s prepared, just like he always is, and is able to twist his arm down and catch CB’s waist before tossing him over the shoulder opposite Tasha. It’s a feat of both incredibly attractive strength, and equally attractive, fuck, domesticity , and Clint wants to sink into the ground with how much he loves him. 

“Let’s go, you hooligans, there are vegetables to force the Bartons to eat!” Bucky exclaims as he steps over the doorway. Barney is following behind him, attempting to flick CB and Tasha in the foreheads, though both are doing their best to stop him. 

“Not vegetables ,” CB whines, flailing to avoid Barney’s fingers and headbutting Bucky in the neck  in the process. Bucky doesn’t even falter in his steps, the fucking trooper. “It’s almost my birthday .” 

“And on your birthday, we won’t make you eat any vegetables,” Bucky responds. He stops and turns back towards the workshop, and Barney, reaching up for another flick at CB’s face, stumbles into his hip at the sudden change in motion, tripping to the grass with a windmill of arms and legs. He groans theatrically, and Bucky spares him a disbelieving raised eyebrow before looking into the workshop at Clint. “Vegetables for you, too, Clint senior. Don’t think you’re off the hook just because you’re an adult. All the Bartons need them.” 

“If you say so,” Clint agrees, walking forward. He smacks Tony across the top of the head as he goes by before Tony even has a chance to say anything about how Clint will do just about anything Bucky asks. 

But then, Clint doesn’t mind if people know how head over heels he is for Bucky. He’ll put up with Tony’s taunting, even though Tony’s hardly got room to talk, totally unable to draw the line against anything Steve wants. Clint will put up with groans from the kids, especially since he knows that for all their complaining, it soothes something in all of them to see a positive, loving relationship between the adults in their lives. He’s already put up with the confusion from the agents at SHIELD, and now they know better than to try and send Clint and Bucky out on the few missions they’re doing without each other. 

Clint follows Bucky and the kids across the backyard and into the house, Tony and Steve bickering behind him. He’s pretty damn sure that he’ll follow Bucky to the ends of the universe — or beyond, he guesses, should that time machine ever decide to fuck things up again — and he’s not at all bothered by that idea. 

He’s one goddamn lucky guy to get to follow Bucky. 

Clint wakes slowly, a pleasant heat all around him. The blankets on the bed are caught about him, and he shifts so that they slide down, exposing his chest to the cooler air that runs through the home he now permanently shares with James. James, who is lying next to him, still out to the world, hair a dark mess around his face, a faint shape Clint can only barely make out in the shadows of the room. 

It’s rare Clint wakes up before James, outside of the times when nightmares still shake him awake — but usually James wakes up soon after, as though some part of him can tell that Clint’s in distress. Or else, Clint speculates wryly as he sits up as cautiously as he can, it’s probably more likely that on those nights and early mornings, James is already closer to waking up because of Clint’s thrashing. Regardless, it’s rare for Clint to wake up first unless something bad is happening, and it does something to Clint’s heart to see James able to sleep in peace, sheltered warm and safe under their blankets. 

He quietly slides out from under the sheets, hand hovering over his aids before deciding he doesn’t need them, not for this morning. There’s a lot he’s found he doesn’t need quite so much anymore, now that they’ve decided to stay in Wakanda for the foreseeable future, though they’re both on call should the Avengers need a pair of snipers in some kind of apocalyptic event. Clint doesn’t keep his aids in all the time because he’s not as worried about missing something as he used to be. He doesn’t need the same, hyper-aware focus as he used to, either, nor does he need to be constantly on guard, always calculating potential threats. It’s taken time, a slow process since they got the time machine fixed, but Clint’s learning to trust in the constancy and the safety they’ve found here. 

Shuffling to the kitchen, Clint flicks on the coffee machine, checking the settings to make sure it’s on the quiet mode and won’t beep when it’s done. It doesn’t take long to brew, bless Wakanda and all their advancements, and soon he’s slipping out the front door to sit on the steps. 

In the distance, an orange glow has begun to fill the sky, the smallest strip of fiery red peeking over the horizon as the sun starts to rise. The light shines down across the valley, reflecting off of the towers and spires of the city, filling the fields in front of Clint with a warm brilliance as grass sways in the morning breeze. He’s at just the right angle where most of him is still in the shadows, but as the sun rises higher, his body will become painted in golds. If Clint had his aids in, he’d probably hear the goats starting to move around in their pen, bleating sleepy good mornings at each other. He lets the rest of his senses take in the morning instead, breathing in coffee and comfort alike. 

Wanda’s coming to visit at long last today, ready for a respite of her own. Natasha had defended Wanda’s rights to her powers valiantly, so she’d never been in danger of being taken prisoner to the Raft like she’d been in the original timeline. She’d been…distressed, to say the least, to hear about the original timeline’s accident in Lagos. Out of a combined sense of gratitude, responsibility and guilt Clint knew well, Wanda’s been working alongside Natasha to advocate for other enhanced people while continuing her own in-depth training so that she can feel more confident that she won’t make a mistake like that of her own.  

Clint can’t wait to tell her more about the Wanda and Pietro from 2009. 

He smiles into his cup as he takes another sip of coffee, the sun warm across his legs now. 

Natasha is back in the States, or at least out of Wakanda. Clint can hardly keep track of her movements, even though she updates him with video calls and stupid snarky messages constantly, determined to never again let him feel like she’s abandoned him. It’s just that she’s so busy running the Avengers, even though both Steve and Tony are there, too. They’ve wisened up now, able to see how her sheer versatility and excellence at, well, fucking everything, makes her the right choice to lead them. Steve’s got his military background, sure, and Stark’s got his brain and flying advantage to work with, but she’s the one that’s able to make the most out of that combination. She doesn’t butt heads with them like they used to do with each other, instead utilizing the skills of everyone as efficiently and effectively as possible, and everyone is better off with her in charge.

Clint’s so fucking proud of her that if he thinks too much about it he might burst. 

The sun has just reached the middle of his chest when a shadow overtakes him. Clint glances up. 

James looks down at him, backlit by the sunrise, and Clint’s not good at metaphors, but he thinks this might be the time when someone would compare the person they love to an angel. 

He smiles, then reaches out to take the aids James offers him. James sits beside him, nestling in close, their sides aligned, thighs pressed tight together. Clint fits both aids into his ears, then slips his arm behind and across James’ lower back so that their shoulders aren’t bumping awkwardly together. 

“Gonna watch the sunrise without me? What kind of boyfriend are you?” James’ words, for all they hold accusations, are delivered softly, teasing and sweet. 

“Just the kind that thinks you look real good curled up in bed,” Clint replies. “Figured we’ve got plenty of sunrises ahead of us, didn’t need to wake you for this one.” 

James hums into his own mug of coffee. “S’pose I can let you get away with that.” 

Clint smiles, letting them settle into silence to enjoy the moment together. It’s a little crazy to him to think that they can have moments like this now. It’s not even just that Clint’s no longer getting pulled into other timelines, though god it’s good not to have to worry about that anymore. It’s more that they’re allowed this peace at all, really. It’d been one thing when they’d arrived here at first, when they’d both had a purpose for staying: James to have his trigger words fixed, Clint unintentionally trapped by his own idiocy as the Wakandans worked to figure out the time machine. 

Through all of that time, even as they moved out here, adapting to a slower and safer life, Clint felt like it was something he couldn’t take for granted, something that was going to get snatched away from him if he tried to hold on too hard. And it could’ve been, he thinks, had the Aether fucked things up for them. He could’ve lost all of this. 

The sun stretches just high enough to reach Clint’s eyes, and he squints, looking away from the horizon, down to the land that stretches out in front of them. 

He didn’t lose all of this. 

Instead, he gets to wake up to this every morning. He gets to sleep in, woken up by a happy James some mornings, pushed out of bed to go feed the goats by a grumpy James other mornings, or shaken away by fears only to be comforted by a loving James on other mornings. He gets to trust this. 

A moment later, James breaks the silence with a contemplative noise. Clint looks at him. James' face is lit by the sun, still sleepy and warm, and Clint has a hard time not kissing the next words he speaks away from his lips. 

“Do you ever regret that you only got me?” 

Clint furrows his brow. “Only got you?” 

James nods, and Clint can tell by the openness on his face that James’ question isn’t born out of fear, but simple curiosity. “Yeah. All the other Clints ended up with kids. 2009’s got some kind of leadership role in SHIELD now and 1992’s basically got a whole family unit, not to mention how busy they’re going to be rooting out Hydra and helping lead a younger SHIELD. You...” he glances to the side, then smiles at Clint so that Clint knows he won’t be upset by the answer, “all you got was me.” 

Clint shakes his head immediately. He thinks of the goats behind them and the city before them. He thinks of the way he felt when he woke up this morning, and how he knows he can wake up in the arms of someone he loves every single day. He thinks of getting to see Wanda this afternoon, and of Natasha out running the world on her own terms. He thinks of Steve and Tony, reconciled and stronger for their brief glimpse into what could have been. He thinks of all the other Avengers who are safer now, like Rhodey who will never break his spine, and Sam who won’t be wracked with guilt over Rhodey’s fall, or even Scott, who won’t get thrown back into prison and kept away from his daughter. 

He thinks of the joy he knows the other versions of himself are experiencing, and he wishes them well, he really does — but he wouldn’t trade places with them for anything. 

Clint looks down at James, feeling his heart beat strong in his chest. “Only you?” He scoffs and then bends down to press a kiss to James’ forehead. “Sweetheart, I got everything. ”