Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He wasn’t sure what he had expected when he joined SHIELD, but it certainly wasn’t what he’d found.

Within a little over an hour of appearing in Coulson’s office, right in the heart of SHIELD Headquarters, one Clinton Francis Barton was officially signed up as the newest recruit to SHIELD. Coulson had first take him to Director Fury’s office, apparently so that he could collect on a wager, if the twenty bucks that Fury had reluctantly handed over was anything to go by, as well as for Barton to offer his terms of employment. As Coulson had expected, Fury had agreed without complaint. Explaining in a rather blunt manner that he didn’t want anyone else to know about his history either, so it was something that he would gladly keep between the three of them.

Fury had then immediately demanded that he explain just how he’d managed to get into Coulson’s office without being detected. Barton replied that he only wanted to explain this once, and so Fury called in the Head of Security, so that Barton could launch into a detailed explanation of exactly where the holes in his security set up were and exactly how he should go about fixing them. Agent Thomas had not taken this ‘advice’ well, but considering that after all was said and done, Barton was still employed, and Thomas wasn’t, he wasn’t losing any sleep over it.

Coulson had offered to set him up with a room on base, but hadn’t even blinked when he’d filled in the paperwork with the details for a small apartment nearby that he’d already signed a lease on two days prior.

All of this was not to say that they immediately let him loose within SHIELD. They certainly watched him, and kept his security clearance low enough so he couldn’t get into the more… interesting parts of the agency, but in this at least, they had lived up to his expectations.

He spent a fair amount of time with the most recent intake of junior agents in briefings on SHIELD and the kind of operations they undertook, which he enjoyed if only for the look of disbelief on some of the cadet’s faces when the trainers explained the more… obscure things that fell under their remit.

Alongside this, he spent a great deal of time in training sessions on weapons and tactics. Some of the time this saw him working with the rest of the cadets in order to evaluate how he worked as part of a team, but much of it was spent under the watchful eye of Agent Maria Hill, who took him through every weapon they had in their arsenal, and a few he was sure that R&D had cooked up just to see what he’d do with them.

When he wasn’t doing that, he’d been locked in seemingly endless debriefings with Agent Coulson, who had slowly and skilfully prised out of him all of the skills that he possessed, and then had systematically worked this in to the training sessions, testing him on each and every one.

Half the time, he didn’t know if he wanted to praise the man or punch him for it.

Coulson and the rest of SHIELD’s senior agents and trainers never took anything he told them at face value, pushing him always to prove himself, and he found himself responding to that, much to his own irritation.

Plus, he enjoyed surprising the agents- Coulson especially, and made a game of seeing how many times he could get his right eyelid to twitch, which seemed to be his only tell.

So far, the best reaction had been when he’d backed up the ridiculous claim that he was the world’s best archer as he proved his skills with a bow.

At the same time, and despite spending some of the time with the other cadets, he’d been largely isolated from other agents, and the fact that he was being dealt with directly by the senior agents, particularly Coulson, who reported only to Director Fury himself, rather than by one of the more junior handlers like everyone else, made the rest of his peers within SHIELD more than a little standoffish.

Not that he really cared what they thought. He’d been reliant on himself for longer than any of them could even conceive of, and had long since passed caring about other people’s opinions of him… although he couldn’t explain, even to himself, why Coulson seemed to be the exception to that.

Eventually, they had taken to sending him out on small operations, mostly with just a handler, but a few with a team. All of them on US soil, and all relatively simple jobs, at least up until this one.

Now he found himself in the middle of Northern Africa, in the middle of a bombed out and supposedly abandoned industrial zone pocked with burnt out buildings and bomb craters, not far outside of Tripoli. Surveying the scene below him from his position on top of one of the few remaining intact buildings, he frowned. He could see the SHIELD strike team carefully making their way to the suspected Hydra facility, but something wasn’t sitting right. He cast his gaze around the area, looking for the sentries that the briefing had told them would be there. The briefing had said there would be eight pairs, but he could only see four. He thought for a moment before pressing his hand to his comm.

“Alpha Leader, this is Hawkeye,” he called softly.

“This is Alpha leader, go ahead Hawkeye,” came the immediate reply from Coulson, who was leading the op from the jet.

“I’m in position sir, but I only have a visual on four sets of sentries on the perimeter,” he informed him.

“Maybe they’ve just changed their pattern,” another voice broke into the conversation. Barton frowned as he recognized it as Williamson, the leader of the tactical squad on the ground.

In his five months with SHIELD, Barton had worked with the man and his team once before, and found Williamson to be a bull-headed, arrogant former marine, who thought he and his team were the best, and didn’t need any help from someone like him. He especially didn’t like the perceived ‘special treatment’ that Barton got. As a result, he had made a point of being an ass to him.

On his first mission working with Williamson’s team, he hadn’t been required to fire a single shot, and the man took great pleasure in reminding everyone of that fact, calling him dead weight, and questioning during the briefing for this mission as to why he was even being brought along.

Coulson had just raised an eyebrow at him before continuing with the briefing as if he hadn’t even spoken.

Barton had watched the exchange silently, carefully keeping any reaction to Williamson’s words from showing on his own face. He didn’t give a damn about the man, and his barbed words meant less than nothing to him, he was much more interested in the inscrutable Agent Coulson.

The man wore his unassuming nature and affability like a second skin, and many agents seemed to think that Coulson was nothing more than the ultimate bureaucrat. He personally had decided that without exception, those agents were all complete idiots. Having worn many identities in his life, he knew better than to take anyone at face value, and after working with him, he knew for certain that Coulson was anything but a paper pusher.

Despite himself, he had to admit he almost liked the man.

“Strike leader, can you confirm visual on the hostiles?” Coulson asked.

There was a flurry of chatter as Williamson verified the position of his men and confirmed their visual, before he reported back to Coulson.

“Four pairs confirmed,” Williamson agreed grudgingly. “Orders?”

There was a click on the line as Coulson switched to a private comm channel. “What’s your read Hawkeye?” he asked.

“You’re asking me?” he replied, surprised.

“You have the best view, and good instincts,” Coulson replied calmly.

Clint sighed heavily, looking over the operation area below him, searching for what he was sure he was missing. “I don’t see anything that justifies aborting the mission,” he admitted.

“But?” Coulson prompted.

“But I don’t like it, something’s not right here,” Clint finished.

“Okay,” Coulson agreed simply, and there was a click as he switched back to the main comm.

“Strike Leader, you are authorized to proceed with extreme caution,” Coulson ordered. “Hawkeye, if you spot anything amiss, call it.”

“Affirmative Alpha Leader,” Clint acknowledged, listening as Williamson did the same and watching as they moved out.

His eyes roamed the area, searching for anything that seemed out of place. Everything was quiet… too quiet.

He watched as the strike team moved in on the facility, working in pairs as they advanced on the building and avoided the patrols. Every step they took towards the building made the feeling of wrongness grow inside him, screaming at him that something was wrong, he was missing something.

As the last of the team cleared the final pair of sentries and took up their positions to guard the entrance point, he let out a heavy breath. Maybe he was just being paranoid and was letting his nerves get in the way.

He took a second deep breath and let it out, settling his scope on the two sentries, tracing their path around the perimeter, and saw as one of the men glanced back over his shoulder, looking directly at the SHIELD team’s position. He nodded at his colleague, and raised a radio to his mouth as they picked up their pace a little and altered their path to one that took them directly out of the area.

“Abort, abort, abort!” he called into the comm. “It’s a trap; get the hell out of there!”

“Wha…” Williamson’s answer was cut off as the entire building exploded, sending debris and a thick cloud of smoke up into the air, and shrouding the whole area under a grey cloud.

“Report,” Coulson’s voice came over the comm immediately, and Clint bit back his panic.

“The target building just exploded,” he relayed, sounding calmer than he really was.

“Strike team?” Coulson asked; his voice tense.

“Unable to get a confirmed visual. Too much smoke.”

“Strike team, report,” Coulson ordered.

Clint peered through the dust and smoke at the ground, searching for any sign of the strike team. He breathed a sigh of relief as he heard Williamson’s voice cut in on the comm.

“This is Strike leader; I have men down, request immediate extraction.”

“Confirmed. Fall back to extraction point delta,” Coulson replied immediately. “What is your status?”

“Two seriously wounded, two walking wounded,” Williamson answered briskly. “We can make it to the extraction point, request medics on arrival.”

“Roger that,” Coulson replied. Clint caught sight of the team through the smoke as they moved, and sighed at the sight of one man being carried by two of his colleagues, and the others supporting each other as the two uninjured men, who had been providing cover and weren’t as close to the building when it went up, took up point and led them towards the extraction point to the west.

Movement to the east drew his attention, and he looked over, swearing as he Hydra soldiers moving in on the team.

“Armed hostiles sighted, coming in from the north and east,” he warned, spotting a second group coming in from behind the now burning building.

Clint opened his mouth to request permission to fire, but Coulson beat him to it. “Slow them down Hawkeye,” he ordered.

“Copy that,” he agreed, lining up his sights and taking out a man who was getting ready to fire on the team. “Strike leader, this is Hawkeye, your best option is to stay low and make for the cover to your south, then double back to the west. I’ll cover you.”

“Confirmed,” Williamson replied, and his team altered their path, staying behind cover as much as possible.

Two of the men dropped back to cover their rear, as another lead them out, protecting the more seriously injured men as much as possible.

Clint allowed his senses to take over, dropping into the zone that let him line up and fire, taking out the enemy one after the other. It didn’t take more than half a dozen shots before the enemy realized that they were being picked off by a sniper, and they took cover and started to return fire.

He hunkered down lower in his position, returning fire and ducking as a burst from an automatic sprayed above him, sending small chunks of concrete from the wall behind him raining down over him.

“Hawkeye, taking heavy fire,” he warned over his comm.

“Alpha leader this is strike,” Williamson broke in. “We’re pinned down.”

Clint swore and looked over at the strike team; they were pinned in what had once been another building, with only the remnants of a couple of the walls standing a few feet high. Hydra had men on both flanks, and any attempt to break cover would leave them vulnerable to the enemy. They were just thirty feet from the protection of a mostly intact building, but there was no way they would be able to get there unless Clint was able to draw the enemy’s fire long enough for them to make a break for it.

Problem was, in order to do that; he’d be opening his own position up to direct fire.

He took a deep breath before thumbing on his comm again.

“Strike leader this is Hawkeye. Get your men ready to head for the cover to your southwest on my mark.”

He saw Williamson glance up at the building he was positioned on, and then back at the Hydra positions.

“You’ll open yourself up to fire,” Williamson warned.

“I know,” he responded. “But if you stay there you’re sitting ducks.”

There was a click as Coulson broke into the line. “Hawkeye?”

“It’s the only option,” he informed him. “Unless you have another team to come in to aid the extraction.” It wasn’t a question; they both knew he didn’t.

“Be careful,” Coulson told him.

“Affirmative,” he smiled grimly. There was a click as Coulson closed down the private link, and he took a deep breath.

“You ready Strike leader?” he asked.

“Affirmative, Hawkeye,” Williamson replied, signalling to his men.

“On three,” he warned. “One,” he tightened his grip on the rifle, taking another deep breath. “Two,” he shifted his weight, before rolling a few feet to his left, hoping to give himself a window before the enemy realised he’d shifted position. “Three,” he finished, before rising up onto one knee and immediately opening fire, dropping three Hydra soldiers in quick succession.

Below him, Williamson and his men moved, laying down their own covering fire to send the enemy ducking for safety as they made a break for it. Clint kept firing, taking out as many as he could, or at least making them think twice about breaking their own cover long enough to fire at the team on the ground.

It only took the Hydra soldiers a few seconds before they pinpointed his new position, and the bullets rained down on him. He held his position and gritted his teeth, keeping up the covering fire for as long as he could.

A burst of gunfire finally caught him, and the force of the bullets impact spun him around, dropping him to his back. He swore at the pain that flooded through him, struggling to remain conscious. His entire chest and shoulder felt like they were on fire. He reached over with his left hand to grasp his shoulder, and even in the dim light, when he pulled his hand back, he could see it was coated with blood.

“Clear,” Williamson’s voice came over the comm. “Hawkeye, get out of there.”

Closing his eyes, Clint swallowed harshly, thumbing on his comm with his good hand.

“Copy that Strike leader. Bug out, I’m right behind you,” he promised.

He listened on the comm as Williamson and his team moved, ducking into a broken sewer tunnel and taking that route over to the backup extraction point. He attempted to roll over onto his side, trying to get to his feet, but the pain that shot through him almost dropped him straight into unconsciousness. He wasn’t going anywhere.

Pulling his sidearm and thumbing off the safety, as there was no way he’d be able to fire the rifle with one hand, he managed to scoot over enough so that his shoulders were propped slightly against the wall around the edge of the building, lifting him into a semi-upright position that gave him a view of the roof access door.

He’d secured it when he took up the position earlier, but he knew that sooner or later Hydra would investigate and find him up here.

He couldn’t hope to hold them off for long; he just refused to let them take him easily.

There was a click as someone switched to a private comm line, before Coulson’s calm voice spoke into his ear. “Hawkeye; report.”

“Hawkeye,” he replied, trying to keep the pain out of his voice. “I may be a little bit delayed,” he admitted.

“What’s your position?”

“Still on the roof,” he finally responded.

“I can send the team back for support,” Coulson offered.

“No point,” Barton shook his head, forgetting Coulson wasn’t actually able to see him. “They’ve got injured to extract,” he replied, his voice starting to slur a little as the blood loss from his shoulder wound started to affect him.

“What’s your status Hawkeye?” Coulson asked; his voice sharp.

“Got ventilated Boss,” he slurred. “Think it hit something important.”

He heard Coulson take a deep breath at calling him ‘Boss’. In the time he’d been at SHIELD, he’d yet to refer to any of the SHIELD supervisory personnel with any term of authority, living up to his statement to Coulson during their first meeting in Los Angeles that it had to be earned. Coulson was now in a select group of one. It was a pity that he wasn’t going to be around long enough for anyone else to join that group. He’d have to tell Coulson that it made him special.

“Stay with me Hawkeye,” Coulson ordered, bringing his wandering mind back to the matter at hand.

“Trying,” he responded, trying to shift into a more comfortable position. The grating feeling in his collar bone, told him all he needed to know about what had happened. He wrapped his right arm across his chest and held it as still as he could.

“Talk to me Hawkeye,” Coulson prodded him again when he didn’t speak. “Where are you hit?”

“Shoulder,” he managed to respond, blinking at how wheezy he sounded, even to his own ears. “Think my clavicle’s busted. Bleeding a lot,” he admitted, taking another shallow breath.

“HAWKEYE,” Coulson’s voice blasted in his ear, making him jump a little and reopen eyes that he didn’t even realise he had closed.

“Here,” he rasped.

“Hold on. That’s an order,” Coulson barked.

“Yessir,” he slurred.

He could hear the worried intake of breath from Coulson on the comm before he cut it off, and sighed. Coulson was actually worried about him. It had been a while since he’d had that. Well, apart from Jim. He forced his mind away from that, before he could go any further. His friendship with Jim Street had been his first real experience of a true partnership, and he both hated the way it had ended, and missed it with a passion. Just one more regret to add to a million others.

A roaring sound filled his ears, as his grip faltered on his gun, his arm flopping uselessly to the ground. He opened his eyes, not sure when he’d shut them. It was getting harder to concentrate, and he knew that he was running out of time.
He felt his lip curl up a little at the thought- after all the lives he’d lived; he still hadn’t had enough time…

Chapter Text

Awareness came back to Clint slowly; one sense at a time.

The first to return was sound, as a rhythmic beeping noise drilled its way deep into his brain. It kept to a monotonous tone, but as he became more conscious of it, it picked up just a little bit, before settling down again.

Dimly, he realized that he was still alive, and struggled to piece together where he was. His last vaguely clear memory was of bleeding out on a rooftop, and he definitely wasn’t still there.

Awareness of his body returned more slowly, and when it finally did, it still didn’t quite feel entirely his own. He felt heavy and sluggish, even lying as motionless as he was. He dimly registered that he was heavily medicated; the pain lingering in the background, waiting to make itself known as soon as he finally surfaced to full consciousness, but tempered for now by whatever was in the IV needle he could now feel in the back of his hand.

His eyelids were like lead, and he gave up trying to open them, sliding back towards unconsciousness, until the sound of someone else moving nearby drew his attention. He struggled against the pull of sleep then, trying to move and force open his eyes, needing to know where he was, and who was with him. Had SHIELD come back for him? Surely Hydra hadn’t...

“Shhhh, you’re safe.” A voice broke through his rising panic, calming him automatically as he recognised the speaker, even as he felt the gentle restraining hand on his wrist, stopping him from pulling on the IV line he could now feel in the back of his hand.

“We’re back in SHIELD HQ, on Level 4 in Medical. It’s 6:45pm on the 18th, and you’re safe. Williamson and his entire team made it to the evac point, and they are all alive, if a bit banged up, thanks to you.”

Clint turned his head towards the voice, finally managing to crack his eyelids open a tiny bit. “Coulson?” he managed to ask, his voice sounding harsh and broken, even to his own ears.

“Yes Barton,” Coulson responded, squeezing his wrist briefly before he released him reached for a pitcher of water on the bedside table, filling an empty glass and putting a straw in it.

Clint blinked slowly and watched as Coulson looked him for a moment, obviously trying to work out the least painful way of moving him; before carefully wrapping one arm around his shoulders to help him to sit up a little. Once he was relatively upright, Coulson held the straw to his lips with his other hand, letting him sip the cool water.

“’M on the good drugs,” he told Coulson, his body still feeling heavy and not entirely under his own control.

“Yes, you are,” Coulson agreed amenably, putting the glass back down before easing him back down to lie flat once more. “You’re still pretty banged up, but they tell me you’ll heal.”

“Good. ‘f they’d fucked up my shoulder, woulda killed the bastards.”

“Don’t worry about them,” Coulson told him. “They were dealt with.”

Clint huffed in response, but felt himself drifting off again. He felt Coulson settle back down in the chair beside him once more, and roused himself long enough to say one last thing.

“Coulson?”

“Yes Barton?”

“Thanks for not leaving me behind.”

“I don’t leave people behind,” Coulson admonished him gently. “Get some rest Clint.”

“Yessir,” he slurred back, before obeying his order.

*.*

Clint resurfaced several times over the next few days, his periods of lucidity increasing as time passed, and the doctors slowly reduced the strength of the drugs in his IV.

By the time he finally was finally recovered to the point that his doctor decided he was well enough for the mission debrief, almost two weeks had passed. Coulson entered the room, files under his arm, and raised an eyebrow when he found Clint sitting up in the bed, eyeing the air vent cover in the other corner of the room.

“There’s a perfectly good door right here, Agent Barton,” he spoke, a touch of censure in his tone.

Clint huffed, but didn’t try and claim he wasn’t thinking about it.

“Here to spring me?” he asked hopefully, peering up through his lashes at Coulson, a coy look on his face.

“Not just yet. The doctor wants to keep you under his tender mercies for a few more days yet.”

“Seriously? I’m fine. They’re just being stubborn.”

“If anyone’s being stubborn, it’s you Barton,” Coulson responded. “And you’re argument would be more valid if you were able to stand up without almost passing out.”

“I’ve been worse, much worse,” Clint replied darkly, looking down at the blankets covering his legs.

Coulson didn’t respond to that, knowing that Clint was referring to his past, only some of which he knew, mostly bits and pieces that the other man had he shared with him in the beginning, trying to shock him with the vivid descriptions back when he was still testing him to see how far he could push. Some of the things he’d told him about his time with Angelus and Darla… Well, there wasn’t much he could say to that, especially here in Medical, where anyone could overhear.

Instead, he decided that distraction was preferable, and stepped over to the uncomfortable plastic chair at the side of the bed and sat down, setting the files down on his lap. He reached into his inside jacket pocket and pulled out a pen, twisting the cap off before opening the folder to expose the blank mission report within.

“The one good thing about your injuries; is that as they would make it difficult for you to complete the mission report yourself, we’ll do this the old fashioned way. Give me your report verbally and I will transcribe it for you. You can just check it over for accuracy and sign it.”

“Nice,” Clint grinned, his dark mood receding as quickly as it had come. “Going to be my own private secretary?”

“Barton,” Coulson replied, raising a single eyebrow.

Clint just smirked. After the hours of interrogations Coulson had put him through in the last few months, this was by now a familiar routine between them. Clint would try and get a rise out of Coulson, and Coulson just stared at him and pretended not to be affected. The familiarity was good, and they had settled into a strange kind of friendship; which had been something he had been missing since his partnership with Jim Street had ended.

He steered his mind away from that name, that particular nerve still a little too raw to expose. That was the trouble with being stuck in a hospital bed with nothing else to distract him; it brought his memories too close to the surface, which was the last thing that he needed.

Instead, he opened his mouth and started to give his report, detailing everything he could remember from the moment he stepped onto the ground, until he passed out from blood loss on the rooftop.

*.*

Two hours later and they were finally almost finished, Clint reading over Coulson’s flowing script before signing at the bottom, careful not to let the paper shift as he wasn’t able to hold it still with his injured arm, which was bound close to his chest to keep the newly reset bone from shifting.

He handed the report back to Coulson, who took it with a nod and placed it back in the folder, closing it and picking it up, before standing and heading for the door.

“Hey, wait a minute Coulson,” Clint spoke, causing Coulson to pause and turn back to him, one hand on the door handle.

“Yes?”

“How about filling me in on the rest of the mission? Like, how on earth you managed to get me off of the roof?”

Coulson looked at him, his bland inscrutable look on his face. “I told you before, SHIELD values its employees; and unlike others,” he stressed that word carefully, “we don’t just leave them behind, not if there’s anything we can do about it. I wasn’t about to make myself a liar on your first mission with me,” he responded, before nodding once and slipping out of the door, closing it before Clint could say anything else.

For his part, Clint could only blink in shock at the doorway, before huffing a little at how that didn’t even begin to answer his question.