Chapter Text
November 22nd, 2004
Budapest
Loki enters the coordinates that Barton indicates, then follows him from the bleak desolation of 2050 Alabama into the bustling late afternoon of 2004 Budapest.
The sun is just beginning to set, and Loki conjures a warmer jacket for himself in response to the sudden change in temperature.
A large river lies to their left, lined with boats and a small dock, contrasted by a sprawling city to their right, architecture distinctly European, railway public transport, and–
“Look out!”
There's a very loud, highly unpleasant sound, and Barton yanks on his newly fashioned jacket and drags him hard to their right. An irritated man displays his middle finger as he drives past.
“Watch where you’re going. Next time, I won’t pull you out of the way. Come on,” Barton snaps, jogging across the road and hopping over a concrete barrier that separates the road from the railway.
Loki glares at him but follows, narrowly avoiding the yellow rail car only to emerge onto a street with even heavier traffic as Barton chooses a route that is most definitely not made for pedestrians, before at last they reach the safety of the opposite side of the street.
While Barton’s dull, listless apathy has taken a momentary backseat, Loki is under no delusion that Barton now considers him to be trustworthy, but his hesitant hope is evident in his reckless stride and impatient backward glances.
He barely even spares the street a glance before barreling across.
“May I remind you that it is in both our best interests to remain alive right now?”
Barton waves him off. “I know this city like the back of my hand. Just try to keep up.”
Loki jogs briefly to catch up as Barton turns abruptly to the right down a narrow, cobblestone road lined on both sides with parallel-parked cars and tall, intricately designed architecture.
By the Allfather does Loki hope they find Romanoff here. Nothing else will earn Barton’s trust. Loki is quite sure about that. But they will have to be very, very careful.
“Take care not to do anything that could alter the flow of time. It will instantly alert Sylvie to our whereabouts, and Kang as well.”
Barton nods absentmindedly, brushing a palm briefly against a building as he walks, glancing fondly at surroundings he has obviously walked before.
They pass a barber shop, a clothing store, and a bubble tea cafe. He’s trying to be subtle about it, but Loki sees how Barton’s eyes never rest in one place for long. They jump from street to street, building to building, scanning the face of everyone they pass.
Looking for Romanoff.
Why here? Why this city, on this particular date? Clearly, it carries some great sentimental meaning to Barton, and presumably to Romanoff.
The pedestrian walkway narrows even further as both sides of the street accommodate lines of parked cars, and Barton walks so close to the buildings that his shoulder almost scrapes the edge. Barton skids to a stop when a red-headed woman emerges from a building, cutting into the street without a care for whose path she may cross. Loki can see the subtle play of emotions. Hope, excitement, disappointment—and then his face returns to stone.
Loki pretends not to notice. If Sylvie were to appear in front of them suddenly, he knows he would react similarly.
Barton clears his throat, then pulls his hood over his head. "Hide your face," he mumbles, before continuing forward.
‘From who?’ he refrains from asking. Confirming they are unobserved, he changes his jacket into a full-body coat, obscuring his face in shadow.
Barton retreats further into himself the more they walk, and after several blocks he slows, stopping just before the street dead-ends into a T-shaped intersection before them. He tucks into a small nook in the building, his eyes moving up to stare across the street. He says nothing, but his eyes scan every detail of the building on the corner.
When Loki lifts his head to look too, Barton hisses at him to keep his face hidden. His tone is so demanding that Loki complies automatically.
“What? What is it?”
Barton doesn’t respond, and after a minute, ducks his head and turns down the right side of the road, passing several buildings before ducking inside one with the ease of thorough familiarity. He navigates them up winding staircases and back doors, picking two different sets of locks, and then they emerge onto the roof. Barton crouches low, scurrying across the roof before settling into a space between a heat vent and the safety half-wall.
“What now?” Loki asks.
“Now, we wait.”
“For what? Why are we here? What is today?”
Barton’s smile is bittersweet, and his voice is like gravel. "The day everything changed.”
“Which is… what, exactly?”
Barton nods his head to the side. “Take a look for yourself. Three rooftops north. Just keep out of sight.”
Loki casts an invisibility spell on himself and levitates to get a better view. But of what, he still doesn’t know. "What am I looking for?"
“Northeast corner.”
Even with the explicit directions, it’s hard to spot the figure hidden in the shadows of the setting sun, but Loki can just make out the outline of a bow.
“Is that…?”
“Yep.”
The pieces come together.
“Then this is…?”
Barton nods.
Well well.
Loki has heard an account of this day from both parties, and would be lying to say he isn’t intrigued to see it play out with his own eyes. "So where…?"
"Building on the corner. North side. Fourth floor."
Loki finds it quickly, despite the distance. An off-yellow building on the corner of the street they passed through only minutes prior. Tall, with rounded windows and long, wispy drapes that conceal most of the interior of the building.
“How long before she returns?"
Barton's voice is quiet. "Not long."
Loki settles in to wait. He pretends to watch the apartment, but Barton occupies the majority of his attention.
His gaze is restless, darting in every direction at regular intervals. To the apartment window, his past counterpart, and down to the T-intersection visible from their viewpoint. Searching for Romanoff—from either time, presumably.
Loki stays alert for signs of her as well. Although locating Romanoff is critical for restoring Barton’s trust in him, Loki is not particularly looking forward to coming face to face with the redhead again. For himself, at least, it has not been long since their little chat on the helicarrier, and the conversation has still left him with the after-effects of sizzling blood.
“Thank you, for your cooperation.”
She had been slippery and clever in a way that he had underestimated, willing to let Loki see just enough of her real fear—and dedication to Barton—to use it against him. Using what Loki had considered a weakness to her advantage.
It is a weakness, Loki reminds himself. Love is for fools. Trust is for fools.
Barton shifts. Clears his throat. His eyes never stop moving. Window. His past counterpart. Street corner. His gaze grows more urgent with each passing minute, and mutters “Where are you?” unconsciously under his breath.
What if she doesn't show? What if Barton guessed wrong, or something has happened to her? The file was clear that Romanoff was in fact alive and searching for Barton somewhere on the timeline, but what if the page cut off before she encountered some terrible fate?
“While I admit it is a significant day for you both," Loki remarks casually, "Are you certain that this is the exact point in time that Romanoff would choose?”
“Yes.”
“How can you be certain? With a history as extensive as what the two of you share, surely there are many important moments that one could fixate on.”
“I know Natasha. If you’re telling the truth and she’s alive and looking for me, with all of space and time to choose from, she’ll be here.”
“But how do you know?”
Barton takes a moment to respond. “Gut feeling.”
Loki doesn’t push. He doesn’t want to doubt Barton’s instincts, but he dreads the hellfire he will find himself subject to should Romanoff not, in fact, appear.
They wait. It feels interminable to Loki, but in reality it is no more than a quarter of an hour later when Barton’s spine abruptly goes ramrod straight, his eyes sticking like glue to the street corner. Following his line of vision, Loki spots her walking toward them from the north.
Natasha Romanoff.
Not the Romanoff that they are seeking, but the Romanoff of this time, in gray jeans and a white t-shirt, black leather jacket over top to keep away the November chill. Her eyes are hidden behind dark sunglasses, and red, copper waves cascade down her shoulders.
Barton is now crouched on his toes, positively stiff from tension trembling through his body. He takes care to remain out of sight while ensuring a clear view. His gaze is cemented to her, expression shifting from anxious searching to an unmistakable tenderness that stirs a deep pity even within Loki.
“Is this love, Agent Romanoff?”
He had been certain of the answer when he had asked it of Romanoff in 2012. He is no less certain now.
“She’s beautiful,” Loki comments softly.
The softness in Barton's eyes sparks into flame as he turns to glare at Loki.
Loki holds his hands up. “I am merely verbalizing what is written quite clearly all over your face.”
Some of the fire fades from Barton's gaze, and his eyes fall back to Romanoff. “Not this again,” he mumbles.
“Do you disagree?”
“Of course not. But that’s not…” Barton sighs, giving a slight shake of his head. “I just…miss her is all.”
And Loki considers. The look in Barton’s eyes is indeed different from that of Thor when speaking of his Earth woman, or of his mother when thinking of Odin. And yet, no less fierce.
Romanoff disappears briefly from their sight as she enters the apartment complex, appearing a short time later through the window Barton indicated, just barely visible through the tiniest sliver in the drapes of the large window.
“Was she aware that you were watching her?”
Barton shakes his head. “No. There’s a decent chance I’d be dead if she had. They didn’t want to take any chances, so I was under explicit orders to maintain a distance of at least 50 feet at all times. Coulson was very clear about that. Until this day, I had never even laid eyes on her unless it was through a scope.”
“I got on SHIELD's radar in a bad way. Agent Barton was sent to kill me. He made a different call.”
Loki cannot help but be curious. "Why was she here?"
"The Red Room was a Soviet creation that outlived the Soviet Union. The Hungarian vice president was very much not a fan of Russia and its lingering Soviet ideals, and he was gaining too much influence and support in the eyes of the KGB. Natasha was deployed to ‘take care’ of him and a few of his associates. She was stationed here for months. I profiled her for three weeks before I made my move. Today."
He makes a broad gesture at their surroundings. "I considered many of these buildings. This one had the best view, but that made it too obvious, so I chose the roof that you see me on now. She was smart and kept the curtains drawn, but today there was just enough of a gap for me to get a sight line. An impossible shot for anyone else."
Through the slit in the drapes, Romanoff appears and disappears from view as she wanders the apartment. Unholstering weapons. Putting groceries away. Opening mail. Her guard down. Believing herself to be unobserved. Safe.
"It was going to be a kill shot. Clean. Instant," Barton says quietly, as if to himself.
“Why did you decide to spare her?”
Barton has no immediate answer to this. “I just had this feeling that…that she wanted to escape from a terrible world, one that was likely all she had ever known. That she wanted out.” Barton shakes his head, as if he still can’t quite believe what transpired on that day. “I remember having her in my sights. All I had to do was let go of that shaft. I had never hesitated with anyone else before, but… I just couldn't do it.”
How curious. And intriguing.
For whatever reason, Loki thinks of Sylvie. Of her desire to escape the control that had been all she had ever known. To be free. A deep sadness hiding behind an angry and apathetic persona.
All Loki wanted was to help free her from that pain, but she pushed him away. Led him to believe she felt the same way as he did, only to make him drop his guard and get him out of her way. He had been nothing more than a means to an end for her. Just like he had always thought of everyone in his life. All of Asgard. Selvig. His parents. Barton.
Thor.
And yet…
Barton and Romanoff also started out as enemies.
"There," Barton says softly, and Loki spots just a glimpse of the dark, agile figure that is a young Agent Barton as he shifts into position, readying himself for an assassination.
"God, I had no idea. No idea…"
Romanoff sits at a table, her head propped in her hand. Her expression is…despondent. Behind her eyes is the same deep sadness. The same desire to be free.
"What the hell?"
Barton suddenly sits up, his head jerking toward somewhere to their left, directly west of them. His eyes go impossibly narrow and his right hand clenches tightly around his bow. "Do you see that?” he hisses, redirecting his gaze and pointing to his past self.
At first glance, Loki has no idea what has alarmed him.
“A laser sight!” Barton whispers furiously, loading an arrow into his bow.
It’s then that Loki spots it. A tiny, red dot of light, slowly sliding up the arm of Barton’s past counterpart.
“A sniper—there! Four rooftops west—in the shadows!”
Loki sees him too. A dark figure, crouched low, sniper's rifle peaking just over the edge of the roof.
The red dot sweeps up past-Barton’s neck, rising slowly until it reaches his temple.
“Shit shit shit.”
It’s too late, Loki is sure of it, and can feel himself panicking with the sheer hopelessness of preventing what he knows is about to happen.
Barton reacts seemingly on pure reflex and instinct.
He kneels.
Draws an arrow.
And sets it in flight.
The next few milliseconds last an eternity. Loki holds his breath as the arrow flies through the air, guided as if by some invisible force directly toward the barrel of the rifle that is moments away from releasing a deadly projectile into the unsuspecting archer just a few rooftops away.
Closer, closer, even as the sniper’s finger begins to tighten around the trigger…
Loki squeezes his eyes shut.
But the sound that follows is not that of a rifle releasing a bullet, but of one colliding with yet another projectile.
Loki's eyes fly open just in time to witness the rifle fly out of the grip of the unsuspecting sniper, careening in spectacular fashion down to the street below.
A quick glance back at Barton’s part counterpart shows him to still be entirely unaware of them, his entire focus on the woman in the apartment down the street.
"Shit. Shit shit shit."
The sniper stands slowly, turning toward their location and staring for a moment before stepping out of the shadows and into the amber glow of the setting sun. The lower half of his face is concealed by a black mask, the only visible feature a set of piercing blue eyes heavily lined with black that glare at them through a curtain of long, dark hair.
“Oh. Shit.”
A naked, unmistakable fear in Barton’s voice causes Loki's pulse to quicken. “What? Who is it?”
Barton appears frozen in place, unable to break eye contact with the sniper before them.
“Barton!”
Barton snaps back to life, releasing three more arrows in quick succession.
The sniper blocks the first two with alarming reflex speed with an arm that appears to be…metal?
The third, he catches in mid-air.
Just who in darkest shadows of Midgard is this?
Barton slowly rises to his feet, and in a voice tinted with terror says, “Run.”
“But–” Loki starts, but Barton has already drawn a grappling arrow and leaped for the next rooftop south, in the opposite direction of both the sniper and his and Romanoff's past counterparts.
Loki’s stomach drops as he glances back toward the sniper's rooftop to find it empty. A glance at Barton’s past counterpart finds that rooftop also vacant, and Loki experiences a sharp moment of panic before spotting him perched outside Romanoff’s window.
At the very least, it appears that there have been no significant changes to the timeline—yet.
Loki turns on his heel and dashes after Barton.
-
It is not without some trepidation that Natasha takes her first step through the orange portal that Richards has somehow manufactured out of thin air, but the transition from Chronopolis to Budapest is infinitely smoother than the time-space GPS can ever hope to be, and her poor abused body is proportionately grateful. If Tony had ever gotten a look at that device on Richards’s wrist, he’d be positively salivating.
Kate follows after her with wide eyes and a bravely upraised chin, badly contained excitement losing its filter entirely as the portal vanishes behind them.
“That. Was. Crazy! That city had like, a billion years of history arranged into neighborhoods! That guy—Richards—he had all of time in his backyard! Did you see the pyramids?!”
She continues like that for some time. Her excitement, while understandable, is far too high for Natasha to meet in her condition, and despite the plethora of her own questions she has about Richards, his domain, and his motivations…
Her first priority has not changed.
“We’ll discuss Richards later. For now, we will assume that he was telling the truth, and that Clint is here somewhere.”
“And just where is ‘here,’ exactly? Where are we?”
Natasha casts a fond gaze over the river. The tram. The nostalgic sound of Hungarian. The distinct flavor of the architecture. Her voice almost catches as she answers.
“Budapest, Hungary. 2004.“
Kate rolls her eyes. “Well, that tells me absolutely nothing. Why here? What makes this place so special?”
“You’ll see soon enough.”
“Tell meeeee! Tell me tell me tell me!”
This girl is worse than Clint.
Natasha does not bother to hide irritation in her sigh. “Today is the day Clint and I… met. And you’re just going to have to be satisfied with that for now.”
Kate’s eyes go wide, the pitch of her voice going high. “You mean… the day he…?“ She draws back an imaginary arrow.
Natasha cannot quite hide her surprise. “He told you about that?”
Kate drops her arms and squares her shoulders. “Well, yeah. I’m his partner.”
Partner. The word sparks something not unlike annoyance. Not that she has any issue with Clint taking on an apprentice, and a certain level of closeness is to be expected in a mentor/mentee relationship, but… Natasha finds it extremely uncharacteristic of Clint to open up about anything to anyone other than her or Laura.
The ‘how we met’ story had been a popular story among close friends when she was alive, but she doesn’t need to be his best friend to know that after her death, the same story would inspire all the joviality of a vomit-soaked sock. She cannot understand why Clint would open up about that of all stories with Kate, nor can she understand how she feels about it.
“I see,” Natasha says, continuing down the cobblestone street.
Kate hurries to catch up. “Not that I’m implying that we’re equals or anything. Of course he’s the boss, but I–”
Natasha stops. “Why didn’t you keep quiet like I told you?”
Kate stares blankly. “What?”
“In Richards’s office. I signed to you several times to shut up.”
Kate blinks at her. “Well how was I supposed to know that?”
Natasha frowns. “You’re Clint’s partner, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, but I haven’t had time to learn sign language yet! Even Clint doesn’t really know it.”
Natasha physically cannot hold back a laugh. “Clint most definitely knows ASL. We used it for years in the field, long before he had hearing issues.”
Kate shakes her head confidently. “We encountered a deaf woman working for Kingpin last December. He needed an interpreter.”
“Then Clint was faking.”
Kate smiles. “I really don’t think so.”
Natasha resists the urge to roll her eyes and continues walking.
“Clearly you know Clint better than I.”
Kate blinks, her smile fading as she hurries to catch up. “But why would he do that?”
“That’s one of Clint’s go-to moves. Feign ignorance and then use that knowledge against your opponent. Clint is fluent in several languages, and pretending to be clueless in them has gotten us a lot of easy intel over the years.”
Kate’s mouth drops open.
“I don’t know any details of the situation, but I assume he was either gathering intel, stalling for time, or plotting an escape.”
Kate’s open mouth closes abruptly, and Natasha barely refrains from displaying the smuggest of grins.
“But… Why wouldn’t he tell me? I’m his partner!”
“It’s a go-to move. Pretend to not know anything while knowing more than anyone else in the room. Make yourself seem stupid when you are actually smart. It helps in this profession. Maybe this is a trait you can learn from Clint, as you seem to have a tendency to do the opposite.”
Kate goes very quiet beside her.
Maybe that was a bit harsh.
“Yeah. Yeah, maybe,” Kate murmurs. “But, just for the sake of the mission, that would have been extremely useful information to have. And it definitely would have been useful when Clint’s hearing aid was smashed. Communication was exhausting.”
Natasha skids to a stop. “Hearing aid?”
Their sudden stop causes a woman behind them to nearly collide directly into them, and she glares in response to Natasha’s overly loud exclamation, murmuring something unflattering about tourists as she passes.
Natasha swallows hard and motions for Kate to come closer. Her stomach tenses in foreboding as she asks at a noticeably softer decibel, “Has Clint gone deaf?”
“Yeah. Well, ‘hard of hearing,’ not totally deaf.” She scratches the back of her head. “You didn’t know?”
Natasha shakes her head, trying to process the fact that yet another of Clint’s greatest fears had come true.
“What if I lose it completely, Nat? What if I can’t even hear my own children’s voices one day?”
‘I’ll still be right here,’ she remembers signing back to him.
And it had turned out to be a lie.
Oh, Clint. I’m so sorry.
“Clint’s hearing has been growing worse for years,” Natasha says softly. “Regular exams and treatments have kept him from needing an aid.”
Until now.
Kate nods, noticeably more solemn.
Also her fault.
Kate, while a bit much sometimes, is a good kid. Clearly devoted to Clint, and stuck by his side when he couldn’t even hear her. And if Clint trusted her enough to watch his back and open up about his pain, then Natasha owes her the same courtesy.
“Don’t feel disappointed,” Natasha says softly, spurring Kate to look up. “That he didn’t tell you about the sign language. He may not have gotten around to explaining a strategy that comes as naturally as instinct to him, but if he shared Budapest with you, then he clearly trusted you.”
A lot.
Kate makes a sheepish face. “Yeah, well. I kind of forced it out of him, if I’m honest,” Kate says, sounding almost embarrassed. “Last Christmas, when he was already in a vulnerable place. He didn’t want to talk about it, but… I think he needed to. He didn’t need to say so for it to be obvious, but… He really missed you. There was always this… deep sadness behind his eyes. Even when he smiled.”
Natasha’s eyes flutter closed.
She can picture it. Her brilliant idiot friend holding all of his pain inside so it wouldn’t injure anyone else. Forcing himself to smile even when a part of him was in so much pain…
She can remember the last time she saw Clint smile. On the Benetaur, bound for Vormir, grinning at her with childlike wonder.
“We’re a long way from Budapest.”
In that moment, he had come close, so close, to being the real Clint Barton that she had once known. The loss he had suffered never allowed that man to come back fully, but…
Timelines. The multiverse. Reformed madmen with unfathomable power. It doesn’t matter.
Whatever it takes, she wants the real Clint Barton back.
“Come on. Let’s find Clint. Between the two of us, I think we can get a real smile out of him. What do you say?”
Kate grins broadly. “Hell yeah!”
They turn the corner onto a street that Natasha could walk blindfolded. And there, mere meters away, is the old safe house where everything changed for her.
For both of them.
Taking a step forward, sudden, blinding pain shoots through her left leg, and her hands barely catch her from colliding face-first into the cobblestone pavement.
“Natasha? What’s wrong?”
Her calf muscle screams in agony, and the rest of her quickly follows suit. She glances back, expecting to find a sharp, foreign object buried deep in muscle tissue and a trail of blood, but there is nothing.
“Holy shit, what do I do? Natasha?!”
Response is impossible. Her head pounds—heavy and hard—as though an iron pendulum has been released inside her skull, mercilessly hammering at every surface.
“…Natasha!”
Kate’s voice is growing fainter.
Tired. She’s so tired. It hurts so much.
“…asha!”
When will it ever stop hurting.
…Tasha…
Clint?
Where…are you? Help…me…
No sounds.
No light.
Just pain. Exhaustion.
Until that, too, is gone.
-
Shit shit shit shit shit.
It's the only thought Clint finds himself capable of as he grapples from rooftop to rooftop at maximum speed.
Not fast enough. He knows it's not fast enough.
The Winter Soldier. The brainwashed, relentless, fist-of-Hydra bloody Winter Soldier is here.
You have got to be shitting me!
The jump to the next rooftop has him landing on his ankle wrong, causing him to stumble to the ground. It proves to be his saving grace as a bullet pings past, missing him by a hair.
"Shit!"
"Barton!" Loki's voice from behind him.
Clint chances a look back and immediately regrets it when he sees just how much the Soldier has gained on him. "We can't outrun him!" he gasps. "Do something!"
The Soldier raises a handgun.
Clint rolls to buy a few seconds of time, maneuvering up into a kneeling position and releasing a tranquilizer arrow before the trigger is pulled. Another. Another.
The Soldier’s reflexes are too quick. His left arm snaps to attention and either blocks or snatches each arrow out of thin air. His pace toward Clint does not slow.
Shit! If he could just get one arrow to hit its mark…
And where the hell is Loki?
The demigod chooses that moment to finally make himself useful and catches the Soldier in a net of green magic, both his and the Soldier's eyes growing wide with surprise at the other's strength.
Clint struggles to his feet as he tries to catch his breath. "Please tell me… you can handle him."
"Of course," Loki says, sounding almost insulted, and hoisting the now furious Soldier up into the air, moving toward the edge of the roof, and–
"No!" Barton yells, but not quickly enough.
Loki forcibly hurls the Soldier down, hard, toward the street below, then straightens, casting an irritated glance back at Barton over his shoulder. "What? You said handle it!"
"He's a super soldier! You just did the equivalent of a slap on the wrist!”
Loki frowns, and together they peer over the edge of the roof.
The street is empty.
"Shit!"
"Why didn’t you say so earlier?!”
"Just run! We have to lure him away from civilians. This way!”
Clint heads in the direction of the river, leaping from rooftop to rooftop and every sense on high alert.
They're being followed, he knows they are, but not knowing where the Soldier is has him running on pure adrenaline.
Finally he runs out of rooftops and drops to the ground, ducking into an alley to get his bearings. Loki is close behind, smart enough to let Clint lead the way. There are still way too many civilians.
He fumbles furiously with a tranquilizer arrowhead. If he can just land a shot without being blocked…
A soft landing on the pavement a few feet behind him signals Loki’s arrival.
"We have to get to… Loki?"
Clint spins around, but it isn’t the Asgardian that awaits him, but the icy, empty stare of the Winter Soldier. He moves in a steady plod toward Clint.
No no no no shit!
Instinct and reflexes permit the release of five arrows. Two make it through the titanium blockade.
The Soldier does not slow.
Another arrow.
Back away.
Another.
Back away back away damn it all to hell with these damn super soldiers!
Clint draws his sword and goes on the offensive, but each blow is expertly blocked by a titanium arm and damn it does that hurt—vibrations of impact ripple through his wrist as if he were trying to stab a pillar of steel. Growling with frustration and barely-repressed terror, Clint thrusts his katana at the Soldier and turns to run, but the collar of his jacket is caught and held fast in the vice of a metal fist. Another fist connects hard with his skull with the force of a metal baseball bat and the world blinks out to black.
…
…
…what…
…What... happened?
There is… warmth.
Soft light.
The muffled but unmistakable gentle trickle of water.
Where is he?
Clint tries to open his eyes, but gets nothing but pain and a blurry smorgasbord of colors. His hearing is distorted, what little sound he can hear very faint, but what he does hear almost sounds like…
“…int?”
…Tasha?
He tries to move, and is rewarded with what feels like a knife through his skull.
“Clint!”
Tasha!
It’s muffled, but there’s no doubt in his mind.
That’s her.
Get up, Barton!
He summons every last iota of willpower in him and forces himself to sit up, crying out in agony as he does so.
Natasha…
“Barton!”
Not Natasha’s voice, but Loki’s. Clear and free of distortion. Forcing his eyes open, he squints at unfocused images of buildings. Cars. Brick.
“Barton, get up!”
The urgency in Loki’s voice pushes Clint to attempt to stand. His vision finally focuses on the image of Loki locked in mortal combat with a very angry Winter Soldier.
Clint holds his throbbing head and squints at the scene. What is he doing? Why won’t he use his powers?
“Take him out!”
“I can’t!” Loki gasps, gesturing to pedestrian traffic as they pass the narrow street. “Not without risking an extremely suspicious new branch!”
Shit.
Clint keeps one hand to his head and scrambles for his bow with the other. He digs through his gear, rushing to manufacture a tranquilizer arrowhead that could quickly bring down an elephant.
“Barton! Hurry!”
A glance at Loki shows him desperately trying to avoid a violent knife to the ribs.
Ironic.
“Barton!”
Yeah yeah.
He loads his bow. Not trusting enough of the arrowhead contents to make it through the armor, Clint puts the arrow just shy of the carotid artery.
At this range, the shock of impact is enough to knock the Soldier off balance, and the rapid effects of the sedative are just enough to knock him off his feet. He falls flat on his back in a daze that quickly morphs into a calm rage that makes Clint shiver.
“Barton…?”
“Back up. Give it a second.”
The Soldier attempts to stand. Gets one leg under himself before stumbling back into a crouch, then holds palms out flat on the pavement. His metabolism must be just as fast as Rogers’s, because it takes only seconds for the tranquilizer to diffuse through his system. He collapses face-first into the pavement, succumbing completely to unconsciousness, almost as if the mind inside, underneath the blind, relentless drive to kill, is utterly exhausted.
Loki regards the unconscious form warily, poking him with a foot.
“He won’t be moving for hours,” Clint says, crouching down beside the fallen man and rolling him onto his back. He removes the mask and brushes hair out of his face.
Barnes. No doubt about it.
It is then Clint notices faint bruising on his left cheek. The tiniest remnants of what looks like… electrical burns. For the marks to still be visible, they must have been inflicted very, very recently.
Clint goes hot with anger. Despite not knowing Barnes very well, he can’t help but feel rage and sympathy for an innocent man having his autonomy ripped from him. Stripping him of his free will, and his humanity.
He slides his arms under Barnes’s back and legs and—not without a struggle because shit he is unexpectedly heavy—lifts him up. “Help me find somewhere safe to put him.”
“Somewhere safe? You do realize this man just attempted to violently murder us, do you not?”
They settle him in an alleyway, leaning against a dumpster as if he simply drank too much the night before. Clint stares at him for several seconds before kicking his foot hard into the dumpster and cursing at the unfairness of the situation. To leave him here, when he knows the horror of this man’s reality…
Damn it. For once, he actually wishes Rogers were here. To leave him to his torment is undeniably cruel, but then there’s all this ‘branches’ bullshit.
It’s not forever. Barnes will be free one day. Will even be reunited with Rogers…
…And then left behind.
Because of Clint.
He kicks the dumpster again.
“Barton?”
Damn it damn it damn it.
“You’re going to break your foot.“
Because that’s so much better. Who doesn’t want to live their recovery years after decades of trauma alone in a foreign time? When in some alternate reality where Clint died on Vormir—like he should have—Rogers stayed.
“You know him.”
Knows too much.
“Yeah.”
Clint turns away and leans his forehead on the alleyway wall.
Why was Barnes here? Did this happen in Clint's own past? Was the Winter Soldier deployed to take him out? By who? And why? Did his future self do what he just did? Just how many times has this happened?
Just how long has he been searching for Natasha?
God, Nat…
For a moment, a brief second in the bliss of unconsciousness, she was there. She was right there…
Maybe he is losing his mind.
Nat, where are you?
A sick feeling in his gut tells him he knows the answer. The same answer that everyone has been trying to tell him since this whole thing started.
“Barton?”
Clint swallows hard. “Did this create a new timeline?” he asks through a thick voice.
“I don’t believe so. This incident had no direct effect on your past self, as far as I can judge. Your counterpart remained completely oblivious the entire time.”
Clint nods. His counterpart acted exactly as he had. Gone as far as to draw and aim…
But Natasha, his Natasha, never showed.
His heart aches and his eyes burn with the bitter truth. “She isn’t here, is she?”
“What?”
Clint turns, and allows his despair to show through his every feature. “No more lies. Just be honest with me. Natasha is dead, isn’t she?”
“No. Barton, I swear–”
“She’s gone. And it’s all my fault.”
They’re all his fault. Barnes. Laura. Cooper. Nate. Lila. Yelena.
And Natasha.
All their pain. All. His. Fault.
“The truth hurts, doesn’t it, Barton?”
A woman’s voice, directly to his right, just past the dumpster Barnes is leaned against.
“Sylvie,” Loki exclaims, dismay and pain evident in his voice.
She isn’t alone. A clearly distraught Wanda follows her through the time door, eyes bloodshot and hair in disarray.
“How did you find us?” Loki demands.
“Oh, please. You think you two could step anywhere on the timeline without creating a branch that juts out at a nearly ninety degree angle?”
Loki frowns. “But–”
“Wanda,” Clint calls, reaching out, but she refuses to meet his eyes. “What’s wrong?”
“Leave her alone, Barton. She has just been confronted with the bitter origin of all the pain in her life, and surprise surprise, that reason is you.”
The words turn Clint’s blood to ice, and it must show, because Sylvie looks almost sorry for him.
“Why are you here, Sylvie?”
“You know very well why.”
“This isn’t right, Sylvie! You’re playing right into Kang’s hands!”
Sylvie scoffs. “Kang has manipulated Barton’s life and used it for his own purposes, which created terrible consequences for not only those he knows personally, but the multiverse as a whole, and he will continue to be used for such purposes unless something is done.”
Terrible… consequences.
“He cannot be allowed to live.”
“Sylvie, listen to yourself! Isn’t this exactly what you were fighting against?” Loki thrusts a hand toward Clint. “You’re telling him he doesn’t have a right to exist!”
“I am telling him he has a right to his own choices!” She looks at Clint. “Tell him, Barton. Tell him how things would have gone if you had had your own way on Vormir.”
His own choices.
“How would things have played out if you had had control of your own destiny?” she asks softly. “If you had been left alone to make your own decision, who would have died that day?”
“Sylvie,” Loki says in a deliberately calm tone. “Please. Listen to us.”
“You listen to me, Loki. He Who Remains’s ‘sacred timeline’ demanded that Barton survive Vormir. That survival has resulted in nothing but pain! Pain that Kang is using to manipulate the lives of not only people in Barton’s life, like Wanda here, but the entire multiverse. It’s not personal, it’s just the truth. Barton needs to die.“
“No,” Wanda objects through a shaky voice. “I can’t. I won’t allow it.”
“You’ve seen what his survival means, Wanda. For you, for Vision. For your children.”
“His death won’t bring them back!”
Wait… Vision? Wanda’s children?
Clint's heart turns to lead in his chest, a sense of horror seeping down to his cells.
“What is she talking about, Wanda?" he forces out even as his body makes preparations to violently dispel his intestines.
Wanda shakes her head, tears streaming down her face. Sylvie reaches out to put a hand on her shoulder, but she turns her back on all of them.
“What she means, is that in a world where you had died on Vormir, as you have in every other reality, Vision would have been restored to life."
Vision…restored to life?
"Her children would have been born naturally."
Oh, dear God, no.
"And Wanda would not have had to suffer for the rest of her life. Alone.”
Not her. Not Wanda, too…
Dread shifts into heavy, rancid horror—too horrible to be processed by the human existence, and Clint can feel his body attempting to reject it because damn it he can't do this. Can’t physically bear this stress—this guilt. This deep, aching regret that so much pain is all his fault, and there is nothing he can do to change it.
“Let me show you,” Sylvie says, fiddling with a device on her wrist. A small holographic screen expands before them, and Clint’s legs struggle to hold his weight as he watches the scene before him.
Natasha.
With Rogers, and Wanda. A scene he has witnessed before, he realizes. From Nat’s file of the alternative timeline where she had lived.
They’re in an office with a man that looks vaguely familiar, but he can’t place.
“We know you have him,” Rogers says with crossed arms and an expression of deep disappointment.
“She deserves to say goodbye,” Natasha adds in a voice that allows no argument.
“You cannot expect me to release a billion dollars worth of machinery just to put it in the ground!” the man says with clear exasperation, slapping a hand on the desk.
“He deserves a funeral,” Wanda says. “I deserve it.”
“I don’t understand…” Clint says.
“In a reality where you died on Vormir, Romanoff and Rogers went into hyperdrive to right as many wrongs as they could. This started out by simply allowing Wanda to say goodbye to the love of her life. They didn’t allow her to go alone.”
Clint contrasts this with his own memories. The wreckage of the Compound. Emergency services and medical teams and chaos all around them. Tears of joy. Tears of mourning.
“Where is Vision? Where did they take him?”
Bruce had hugged her and pulled her aside to talk.
Clint had said nothing.
Sylvie flicks her wrist to a new scene—Rogers and Bruce engrossed in discussion over an immobile and clearly dead body of the Vision, Natasha in the corner with her arms over her chest, and Wanda looking anxious with her hands clasped in her lap.
“It might work,” Bruce says. “The Mind Stone is what triggered Wanda’s abilities to come out. If we can replace the Mind Stone with a suitable substitute, and if Wanda releases a sufficient level of power…”
Sylvie flicks her wrist once more. “They had the right technology.”
“This should work. Not as powerful as the Mind Stone, but it will serve the same function in the body…”
“And the determination to not give up.”
“It’s not working!” Wanda cries.
“I don’t care if it takes one hundred or one million tries. We’re not giving up.”
“He sacrificed everything for us,” Natasha says with an arm around Wanda. “We are going to give everything to get him back.”
“And all of that together managed to bring the Vision back to life.”
It’s a harrowing thing to witness. Scarlet, staticky energy and machines whirring with unfathomable power, and at the end of it, Vision. Alive.
Clint falls to his knees. Never in a million years would he have dreamed it possible to bring Vision back. The thought never even crossed his mind.
Clint had been too involved in his own grief to even be there for Wanda. Too entangled by his own unyielding certainty that it should have been him, that he didn’t even bother to consider that her grief was just as recent for her, even if it had been five years since Vision had died.
And he hadn’t. Even. Asked.
It’s then that he recognizes the man in the office. Director Hayward from SWORD. A vague memory of days after the Snap. Asking to be granted custody of the Vision’s body. Rhodes nodding solemnly and handling the paperwork.
Clint hadn’t looked up once.
“I’m sure you can see the differences that this resulted in your own reality,” Sylvie says.
Westview. Vision. All because of him.
“Killing Barton now won’t undo any of that!” Loki shouts.
“No, it won’t. But it will thwart whatever future plans Kang has for him. For whatever inexplicable reason, Barton is important, and therefore he cannot be allowed to live.”
A low, clear whistle breaks the tense silence that follows Sylvie’s declaration.
They all swerve violently around to observe the additional member that somehow infiltrated their midst without their notice.
A tall, muscular man, with dark skin and twin scars on either side of his face. He is dressed in what appears to be combat gear, but nothing like anything Clint has ever seen before. He grins at them as if he could not be more delighted to speak with them.
“Persuasive argument,” he says, clapping his hands and nodding as if impressed. “Gotta hand it to you, Sylvie. You think through every option.”
By the rage on Sylvie’s face, and the pallor on Loki’s, Clint can guess who this is.
“Speak of the devil,” Sylvie growls.
“How long have you been here?” Loki asks.
“Oh…ever since ‘I am granting him choice!’ or something like that. Not gonna lie. It’s been great. I am thoroughly enjoying this little drama you’ve got going on. It’s almost Shakespearean in its ill-fated tragedy.”
The man turns to regard Clint; and as he does so, Clint gets a sense that it both is, and is not, for the first time.
“Hello, Clint Barton. I must say, I have very much been looking forward to meeting you.”
