Chapter Text
Empty apartments can be two things: the blank page for a new beginning, fresh and waiting to be filled with memories, about to be made a home, or the sad full stop behind the last sentence in a chapter of someone’s life. In this case, it’s the latter.
Eli left the apartment spotless and clean, almost clinically so, Kate’s things neatly staked in a corner of their former living room. There’s not much there; she had taken the essentials and some clothes when she left, and most of her more precious possessions she’s always kept at the range in the facility. In hindsight, she’s not sure they ever managed to make this place a home at all. Maybe it has never been more than a hideaway from reality, where they could be Kate and Eli rather than Patriot and Hawkeye, but rarely succeeded.
When Kate is thirty-one, she’s a hero and a national icon, and she’s grabbing the pen next to the divorce papers Eli left for her on the kitchen counter and signs them.
She married Eli on a whim during their first year as Avengers, a decade ago, brought it up to him one Monday morning after a particularly hellish weekend that was equal parts fighting, having words with SHIELD agents trying to take over, and arguing amongst each other about how best to proceed. She just wanted some peace, something that's hers and that can be a constant in a life that's so inconsistent and dangerous. It was one of those terrible ideas that look deceptively logical and great when you first have them.
They were having breakfast in bed at 11 AM, because fuck you, that's why, and she had stopped chewing her toast with jam, considered him with her head cocked to the side, and there it was: the idea. She had said his name. He had looked up from his bowl of cereal and hefted an eyebrow at her in question.
And she had asked him to marry her.
As soon as it was out, she had expected him to laugh, or get angry, anything but agreement. She had felt silly and small and strangely giddy. His next spoonful got parked midair in front of his face for an almost comical moment, then carefully set down. He had narrowed his eyes, asked her if she was serious.
Kate had put down her toast as well and crossed her heart, assured him that she hadn’t been more serious about anything else in her life. The fact that he fell for that should probably have been her first hint towards just how gigantic a mistake she was about to make, but she didn’t see it that way at the time. They exchanged vows the same evening, with passersby as witnesses, him in a borrowed suit and her in a dress from the mall. The following week, they moved in together. That's what you do, being spouses, isn't it?
Ten years later, and things have finally fallen apart. At the end of the day, not much has changed; she still loves him – always has, always will – and they’ll see each other on the job, remain on the same team. But for the past decade, Kate had a companion, strained as their marriage had been at times. Now she doesn’t, and the whole world is watching as she scrambles to pick up the pieces.
Her cell phone rings, and the only reason she bothers to answer is that it’s Cassie’s assigned ring tone. “Yeah?”
“I figured I’d ask if you want me to come over and help get your things,” Cassie says. “So you can turn me down, mope for a bit, and then I’d swing by to whisk you away to the nearest bar anyway, and we get to stare at grainy pap photos of ourselves in the papers tomorrow morning.”
When Kate is thirty-one, being a superhero has lost some of its shine, but there are things that will never change, and she smiles to herself. She might be down a husband, but she’s still got her companion. “How could I ever say no to that?”
***
Kate doesn’t fuck around when it comes to drowning her sorrows, and so when she wakes the next morning in her quarter at the facility, her head is about the size of New Jersey and just one whispered word away from exploding. That is, naturally, when Tommy bursts into the room, half-dressed in his suit, the other half of it dangling from his hips, shouting her name.
“Kate,” he yells – or maybe he’s not yelling, exactly, but it resonates in her head like he’s got a megaphone to her ear, so, same difference. “Kate. There’s dinosaurs in Manhattan. Fucking dinosaurs.”
It doesn’t surprise her in the least to find more evidence in support of her theory that Tommy never mentally progressed past the age of twelve, but she’s sitting up now, and gets acutely distracted by the bile climbing up her throat at the change in altitude.
She swallows it down, makes a face, and groans. “Dinosaurs? You’re shitting me.”
Helpful as can be, Tommy marches over to the sink, gets a glass out of the cupboard, and fills it with tap water. He brings it over to the bed, hands it to her and sits down. “I’m not. It’s on TV already, I can turn – “
Kate would really rather he didn’t, shakes her head as she takes a careful sip. “No need, I believe you.”
He squints at her, but refrains from commenting further. Instead, he stands up, grinning at her fondly, no doubt enjoying the shit out of the fact that this time, for a change, she’s the one with the hangover. “Eli has already given out the order, we’re leaving as soon as everyone’s good to go.”
Which, really, is a polite way of saying that they’ve all sprang out of bed battle-ready, and now they’re waiting on her and Cassie to get their shit together. Kate can take a hint; she bends to retrieve a package of painkillers from her nightstand and downs two of them with the last of her water.
“Tell him I’ll be up at the flight deck in ten,” she says, and Tommy grimaces in sympathy, but he leaves, and Kate boxes up her aching head and her broken heart and her wounded pride to shove them all aside. Saving the world doesn’t come with sick days or vacation time; superheroes don’t get to have bad days.
She empties her stomach into the toilet bowl, speed-showers, puts on her suit, and grabs her gear. Time to face the music.
***
There really are actual dinosaurs in Manhattan.
And see, Kate has fought aliens and sewer monsters and an impressive array of humans with superpowers straight from a wacky scifi novel, she’s seen some shit, but chasing velociraptors thorough the streets is still an entirely different level of surreal. She tries to recall the faux-archaeology lessons Jurassic Park imparted on her entire generation, but about the only thing she remember is that they hunt in packs and that they’re wicked little assholes. Her, Cassie and Tommy have so far managed to evade an attack, and dispatched a few of these fuckers, but they keep coming. Billy and Teddy are out there on Times Square, trying to take out the obligatory T-Rex, Eli’s with the military rounding up a herd of triceratops that might not be predatory, per se, but still puts the best demolition squads to shame.
Even for an Avenger, this isn’t quite a regular Tuesday, is her point, and part of her continues to wonder if she’s still drunk or dreaming or hallucinating, because, seriously. Dinosaurs.
Then one of them squeaks mere inches from her, and yeah okay, nope. They’re real alright. She swivels around, nocks and shoots in one fluid motion, and with another squeak the thing falls down next to her. Its noises have caught the attention of a few of its friends, though, and as she looks up Kate sees herself faced with three more raptors all staring in her direction, heads cocked, making little clicking noises. Were they human attackers, Kate wouldn’t doubt her ability to pick them off in quick succession, but they’re not. They’re prehistoric killing machines with deadly, lightning-fast reflexes. And despite the adrenaline that is keeping her upright and in the game, her head is pounding with the remnants of a bad hangover and her stomach is cramping with the need to heave up more bile. She blinks and rubs her temples, freezes when the eyes of all three raptors follow the movement of her hands. Without moving another muscle otherwise, she looks around, checking for her teammates.
Tommy is on the other end of the street, playing catch with two of these beasts. Cassie is the size of a house and just stepping off the neck of a lifeless raptor, two more strewn around her. Their eyes meet, and Cassie nods, shrinking already so she can advance unnoticed. Kate reaches for her quiver and readies the next arrow, both to be prepared and to keep their attention on herself, and it seems to be working. They simultaneously take step forward, moving as one, but then there’s another clicking noise and all three turn to Cassie, heading off before Kate has a chance to so much as shout a warning. She can see Cassie try and grow taller, but it’s all happening too quickly; one of them runs into her head on, making her lose her balance and stumble. Kate aims and releases, but that only deters one of the raptors. The two others descend on Cassie, blocking Kate’s view. She sucks in a breath, and a fresh wave of pain buzzes through her nervous system, making her screw her eyes shut. She opens them again to seeing one of the raptors lifts its claws, and whatever it does has Cassie screaming out in pain. Kate nocks and aims again, but the moment she lets fly, Kate knows she’s going to miss. Her hands are shaking, now, with fear and something else, something far more mundane, and it takes her a few tries to nock the next arrow.
It’s time Cassie doesn’t have. The second raptor jumps on her back and drives its teeth into her neck, blood spattering its scales, and for a second Kate thinks this is the end. This is how she’ll lose her best friend, and it will be her fault. Then she hears gunshots and the raptors fall away like to mechanic dolls that had their power supply cut off. She turns and sees Eli advancing surrounded by a good dozen soldiers, all of them armed with sniper riffles.
Kate puts her bow away and runs over. She falls to her knees next to Cassie’s lifeless form and presses to fingers to her neck. The momentary relief about the fact that she finds her still breathing, her pulse beating rapidly, doesn’t last when she sees the torn up mess that is Cassie’s back and neck, the wound in her side that’s also oozing blood way too fast.
She hears sirens in the distance already, and she’s dimly aware that Eli’s caught up with them, a hand on her shoulder, talking to her, but she can’t bring herself to try and make out the words.
***
The rest of the team treks to the hospital at least once a day. Kate doesn’t join them. She went out on the first night to get an assortment of cheap booze from the nearest gas station, but she hasn’t touched any of it. That’s how she got into this mess in the first time; she doesn’t consider herself an alcoholic, and making herself one isn’t going to solve anything. It’s only going to make things worse. Besides – she wants to feel this. She deserves to feel it, all of it, no escape routes.
And so she spends the first week of Cassie’s recovery in her quarters, having staring matches with her bottles. Billy and Teddy come looking for her, shouting at her through the closed door. Tommy does, America, even Eli. She doesn’t open for any of them.
Week two finds her bent over her laptop, looking at the rental offers. At the end of week three, she’s moved out of the facility and into a loft-like apartment downtown, her bloody and ruined suit the only thing she’s left behind. She almost left her bow too, but she couldn’t, turned around to go back for it before she’d even reached the end of the hallway.
She already stopped being a hero. She’s not sure she can ever stop being Hawkeye.
***
Reading about her team’s heroics in the paper or hearing about them on the radio or on TV isn’t as hard as she thought it would be. Plenty weird, yes. But not difficult. The urge to grab her bow and run into the fray has lessened to the point of a dull ache, and it’s numbed further by the memory of Cassie, all but lifeless, due the fact that Kate wasn’t on top of her game.
But there’s no point in replaying that mental picture stream over and over. It happened. It cannot be changed retroactively. Kate drew her conclusions and and took the appropriate steps, specifically so she could stop feeling terrible all the fucking time. No more moping. She takes the front page of the newspaper – the one with the headline about a monster in the sewer and how her friends took it out – scrunches it up and throws it in the trash bin across the room in a neat bow. Her eye catches an ad on page five, boxed in between a restaurant review and an article about roadwork in downtown Manhattan. It announces the stay of a circus at the outskirts of the city for the next three weeks, telling her about wild animals and daring acts and funny clowns, and Kate makes a decision.
Her mother used to take her to every circus that came through the city, when she was little, showed her the animals in their cages, bought her candyfloss and toffee apples. Thinking back to that stings, but then again, maybe that’s exactly what Kate needs right now – a distraction, bittersweet as it’s bound to be.
She folds the newspaper and glances over at the bags with clothes she has yet to unpack. Time to root through them for something nice: she’s going out tonight.
***
There’s a lot of things she’d expected to encounter in the circus. Running into herself wasn’t among them.
Well, a cheap male ripoff at least. The kid is tall and lean, wearing a costume that has little in common with hers except for the color – shirtless, pointy mask, mini skirt – and he’s announced as the amazing Hawkeye. She should probably be offended, but she’s not. She’s amused, hardly manages to suppress a fit of laughter as she watches him shoot apples off a volunteer’s head, do a few acrobatic shoots from the back of a galloping horse, the works. He’s not too bad, aces every shot, and so she decides she’s got nothing against letting him keep the name to make a living of sorts.
Kate sits through the rest of the acts with a grin on her face, glad she’s allowed herself the distraction. The paparazzi and the sensationalist headlines make it easy to forget, sometimes, the impact they can have. Superheroes. The hero part of that can get lost, and she wonders if she’d been the reason why he picked up a bow in the first place, or if it’s just been a clever marketing choice he made when opportunity struck.
She lingers around the tent afterwards, reluctant to leave, return to the reality of her life, the friend in a hospital bed and the public divorce, when a voice tears her from her thought.
“I knew it was you,” he says, his tone quippy rather than awestruck, and that’s probably a point towards marketing strategy, not hero worship. “Saw you in the audience.”
Kate swings around on her heels. “I could sue your scrawny ass for the name, you know that, right? I’ve been licensed.”
He shrugs, unfazed. “Can’t take away the bow, though. The name’s not what matters.”
With that, he steps into the light of the lantern shining down form a tent pole. He’s switched the flashy costume for jeans and a t-shirt, and upon seeing his face she knows what the mask is for: there’s a bandaid over his eyebrow, and the skin around one of his eyes is discolored, green and yellow, a fading bruise. The patronizing rejoinder she’d intended to give dies in her throat.
“Who did that to you?” she asks, even though she doesn’t think he’s the kind of person to share his troubles with a total stranger. “What happened?”
“I ran into a door. It wasn’t too pleased.” He juts out his chin and spits at the ground by his feet – automatic response to adults who think they know better, she assumes, and tries not to take it personally. “That what you wanted to hear? What’s it to you?”
And he’s right about one thing: it’s none of her business. Saving people may be her day job, but she’s terrible at it, and he should stay as far away from her as possible. A week or two, three at most, and he’ll have moved on to the next city anyway.
“You can keep the name,” she says, and turns to leave. “As long as you don’t start missing your shots.”
“Don’t you worry about that,” he calls after her, voice drenched in cocksure defiance. “Never gonna happen.”
As she walks away, Kate is certain that’s the last she’ll see of him. As per usual, she’s spectacularly wrong.
***
For some reason, staying up half the night and sleeping past noon, as a grown woman no less, makes her feel even more pathetic without the excuse of a hangover. Kate never finished her education – avengering doesn’t do well arranging itself around classes and homework and essays – but she figured this must be what it would’ve felt like to be a senior student. Kinda still trying, kinda beyond giving much of a fuck anymore.
She’d already been awake for more than an hour, during which Eli had called three times. Kate hadn’t answered any of these calls. Now the phone’s ringing a fourth time, and her brain is finally cooperative enough to remember that Eli wouldn’t be calling if it wasn’t important. The niggling voice that kept whispering about how he’d be rubbing it in and/or tearing her a new one for letting herself go like this was wrong. That’s not him. He wouldn’t do that.
Kate stretches out to lean over the edge of the bed, fish around for her cellphone, hidden somewhere in yesterday’s pile of clothes, judging from where the sound originated. She doesn’t quite make it; it stops ringing just when she finally spots it, so she has to call him back.
“I thought you weren’t going to talk to me,” he says by the way of greeting. There’s no vitriol in it, no reproach. He’s merely stating a fact.
“Couldn’t find my phone,” Kate lies. She knows he'll know she’s lying. She also knows he won’t call her on it, so that’s okay. “What happened?”
“I got a call from one of my friends with the police.” Eli clears his throat. He has friends everywhere, so that’s not much of a surprise, or even a novelty. “They picked up a boy. Shoplifting, they said. Trying to stop a robbery, he said. With a bow and an arrow, and a costume that looks like half a circus getup.”
“That’s because it probably is half a circus costume.” Kate pinches the bridge of her nose. “Goddammit.”
“Wait, so you know this clown?” Eli sounds surprised. Eli never sounds surprised.
She grins to herself, somehow warmed by the knowledge that she can still throw him curve balls, however unintentional. “That’d be overstating it. We’ve met.”
But because it’s Eli, he reins himself back in quickly, tone even and professional when he says, “Well, either way, my friend suggested you might want to talk to the kid, before he goes in front of a judge. From avenging archer to bootleg wannabe avenging archer, or something. Maybe it’ll help.”
Kate flops back down onto the bed, the arm that’s not holding the phone thrown ever her head. She sighs. “Sure. I’m on my way.”
***
They keep him at a simple holding cell in the back of the police station, which Kate knows is a far cry from actual prison, but she’s already got a shiver running down her back as she walks through the corridor with a handful of barred cells on each side. Eli’s friend showed her the kid’s rap sheet, and it’s quite the list; she can’t quite blame them for being on the fence about his intentions. Petty theft, short cons, a few brawls – he’s been around. Clinton Francis Barton is also orphaned, hasn’t had a steady address since he was eleven, and the other side of his public record lists too many hospital stays to be purely coincidental.
He’s sitting on the cot in his cell, clad in jeans and a prison overshirt, because they confiscated his costume. He’s got one leg folded underneath himself, literally twiddling his thumbs, looks up only briefly when she’s let in and sits down on the empty cot opposite from him.
“And so we meet again,” says Kate, and he snorts. “Clint, right? Can I call you Clint?”
“You here to salvage your brand name?” His fingers stop moving, but he still doesn’t look up.
In the bright, unforgiving light of the cell his face looks even more haggard, shaggy mop of blond hair falling into his face, the angle of the overhead lamp painting shadows onto his cheekbones. He’s built as any archer would be, muscled torso and arms; the rest of him is slender and wiry. The faded bruise from last time is replaced by another one on the other side and a cut on his chin. Her mind wants to wander, figure out if he got all that out on the street or back at home, but if she does she won’t make it through this conversation.
She shakes her head, both to answer his question and to clear her thoughts. “I’m here to help.”
Slowly, he looks up. “I don’t need your fucking help.”
“Are you sure about that?” Kate indicates the bars around them with her thumb. “Listen, I’m not here to lecture you. I don’t know shit about your life. But I know a thing or two about running around in costumes trying to – “
“Why’d you quit, then?” he interrupts, glaring at her, accusation spelled out clearly in his eyes. “If you know so much about it? If you’re so good at it?”
That stops her short. Somehow she didn’t expect him to care, assumed the similarities would end with the weapon choice and the name. She’s got an answer to that, a reason, but she’s not sure she can bring it past her lips. “That’s none of your business.”
He inclines his head with a sour grin. “No? Well, then I’d say what I’m doing is none of your business either.”
Anger coils in her belly – who the hell does he think he is, judging her from news headlines and a quick scroll through her Wikipedia page – but it fades as quickly as it surged. It occurs to her that she didn’t even think to ask him whether he was in that store to rob it or to stop someone else from doing so, and she finds she doesn’t need to have that question answered. She already knows. Looking at him is almost like looking at a funhouse mirror: they’re polar opposites on first glance, and but she can spot the similarities beyond the surface. Memories of the idealistic young woman she used to be, ready to take on the world no matter the consequences simply because it was the right thing to do, make her chest constrict painfully.
That’s why she leans in and meets his gaze head on – a challenge, a dare, however he wants to interpret it – and recites the suggestion Eli’s friend had made barely fifteen minutes ago. At the time, it seemed like an absurd suggestion, but now... “Here’s the deal. The shop owner isn’t talking. The thug you pinned says he saw you go for the register. You can tell me to go fuck myself and face a judge in the morning, and, with your priors, most likely go to jail for at least a couple of months.”
“Or?” Clint asks, suddenly much calmer. Reasonable. Interested. Listening. He’s proud and cocky, but he’s not dumb.
“Or you can come with me,” Kate explains. “The officer on the case promised me to arrange a deal that has you released into my custody. A month for starters, then we’ll see. House arrest, if you will, at my place. I’ll be responsible for you. You screw up again, and it’s both our asses against the wall.”
He blinks at her, nonplussed. “Why would you do that?”
And Kate smiles. “Maybe I’m not quite done saving people after all.”
***
There's no way left to convince herself she hasn't fallen that far, Kate realizes, when a kid who grew up in a circus trailer scrunches his nose at her place the very moment she opens the door. He doesn't say anything, but his face conveys more than a thousands words.
“It's temporary,” she says, and he marches past her into the apartment.
“Hey, it's still the nicest place I ever stayed.” He drops his bag by the couch and flops down on it, running his hands over the upholstery. “This looks comfy, at least.”
And nope, if he thinks he'll get to sleep on the couch, with easy access to the front door, he's mistaken.
“Don't worry about the couch, you're sleeping upstairs.” Kate pauses, considering, and frowns. “Nineteen, so you're not technically a minor, right? So CPS isn't gonna show and chew me out because I don't have a second bedroom?”
His eyebrows shoot up. “I can see you thought this through.”
“Making it up as I go,” she says. “I didn't wake up this morning with the dire urge to adopt a male mini-me, you know. I'm rolling with the punches.”
Clint's eyes go wide at adopt and then wider at mini-me, but he doesn't protest. He has, in fact, not said much since they finished up the red tape at the police station and went to collect his things at the circus. She'd heard yelling, and he's been favoring his left side since he marched out of the trailer that had doubled as the circus's office. She hasn't asked him about it. Whatever happened, he's safe now.
She sits down on the other end of the couch, careful to distance herself enough that she doesn't infringe on his personal space. “Okay, house rules.”
“All ears.” He stares at her, expectantly, a little bit wary.
“First of all, I'm not your mother, nor am I your private maid. You make a mess, you clear it up.” She waits until he rolls his eyes, but nods. “Second, no alcohol, no drugs, no nothing.” That doesn't seem to be an issue; he accepts it with a shrug. “Third, and most importantly: you don't slip out on me.” Now that produces a reaction; he inhales and opens his mouth to argue, but Kate holds up a hand. “I'm not saying I'll keep you locked in here. But you don't go anywhere without telling me first, and I'll reserve the right to demand that I'll join you. Got it?”
“Fine,” he says, and the glare he sends her way doesn't leave any room for interpretation. “Got it.”
She picks up his bag and heads upstairs, looking over her shoulder until he mouths a barely intelligible string of expletives and follows.
***
The apartment isn’t tiny per se, it’s actually quite roomy and spacious, but it’s still all open planes and only one bedroom, and, as Kate has to concede to herself while she prepares said bedroom for her new cohabitant, very much a single residence. Plus, she’s ill-equipped to accommodate someone who won’t share bed and board with her. The thought of someone new in her personal space makes her skin crawl, even though she doesn’t consider him a threat.
Having to knock on her own bathroom door before she enters is also a new one, and that’s how Kate gets an eyeful both of them probably prefer she hadn’t.
Clint’s standing in front of the sink, in nothing but boxers. That alone wouldn’t scandalize her, and she suspects it wouldn’t bother him too much either, if it weren’t for the mosaic of colorful bruises that wind their way along his torso. Some of them are older, sickly yellow and about to fade. The ones on his left rib cage are fresh, only just starting to bloom in red and purple.
He drops the toothbrush he’d been holding back into the glass and turns around. “C’mon, ask.”
Kate lowers her eyes, deliberately looking away. Her brain flashes back to a police station near Central Park, the friendly face of an older, female officer who’d gently asked her to tell her everything she remembered. Fingers balling into fists by her side, she shakes her head.
“I won’t,” she says, glancing back up so he can see she means it. “That’s yours. If you want to talk, I’m here. But I’m not going to pry.” He merely blinks, and she clears her throat. “Anyway, I just wanted to tell you that I put new linen on the bed and moved some of my stuff downstairs, so you can use the drawers in the bedside table. We’ll sort the wardrobe space situation out tomorrow.”
He watches her, silently, something like kinship dawning on his face for the first time since they met. All of a sudden Kate feels transparent, laid out bare under his gaze. She clears her throat again, gives him a strained smile, and closes the door behind herself.
***
Within less then a day, Kate decides it’s a rather good thing Eli and her never procreated.
Not like Clint’s terrible company – he says please and thank you one hell of a lot more often than she expected, he puts his dishes into the washer without having to be told, and he’s guarded, careful and quiet, and fades into the background so much she sometimes forgets he’s there – but she doesn’t have a clue how to impart some guidance onto him. Shit, she’s done a bang-up job of caring for herself lately. All things considered, she’s never excelled at that, and parenting a teenager with a shady, painful past and an overblown sense of justice and duty is miles beyond any skill set she might have. For the first time in her life, she actually sort of pities her own father.
She suspects that if he was a brat, loud and abrasive and drowning her place in chaos, she’d find it easier to try and set him on track. If that were the case, she could yell, and put up some more rules, enforce them with additional yelling. Which, okay, might not have gotten her the foster-parent-of-the-year- award either, but that, she could wrap her head around. Kate can do loud. She doesn’t know how to deal with quiet.
The first thing she does, in the morning after she took him in, because Kate is a doer and sitting idle while trying to analyze a situation goes against every fiber in her body, is going grocery shopping. She loads her cart full of healthy things, fresh fruits and frozen vegetables and full-wheat noodles and dark bread and low fat yogurts. On her way to the counter, she also grabs a few cooking magazines, and then she marches back home with two large paper bags in her arms for the first time since... she can’t even remember. Before she moved into her apartment, for sure.
Upon her return, Clint, who’s sat on the couch in front of one of those dull reality shows, turns around while she putters around in the kitchen to throw out the army of instant noodles and moldy cereal that’s accumulated in her cupboards and put the new food away. He watches her with a raised eyebrow and an amused quirk to his lips, arms crossed over the back of the couch and chin rested on them.
“Can you even cook?” he asks eventually, his tone unmistakably mocking.
Kate pauses and takes the time to glare at him. “I’ve been feeding myself for at least half as long as you’ve been alive, so, please, shut up.”
That’s not the whole truth; the cook in their marriage had been Eli, and left to her own devices Kate would be liable to just thumb through a few takeout menus or, well, yes, instant noodles, but she’s not about to tell him that. Besides, there’s no need, the dubious expression on his face assures her he assumed as much.
She sighs and sets the pack of noodles she was about to sort away back down, opens her freezer instead and fishes out a half-empty box of chocolate chip ice cream, holds it up over her head for approval. “Two spoons okay, or would you like me to find out if I own ice cream bowls?”
“Nah,” Clint says, grinning. “I’m a little bit afraid of what else you might find if you go looking. What are the chances something’s alive in there?”
Kate chooses to be the adult here – she is, goddammit, she is – and ignore that last part while she flops down next to him on the couch, the box balanced on her thigh, holding out a spoon between two fingers for him to take.
***
He manages to stick to the no-running-out rule for a full forty-eight hours. Shortly after 1 AM the third night, Kate is woken up by movement on the stairs, the old metal construction creaking loud enough to rise her from sleep. She's up and got the lights on before he's even all the way down, greets him with both hands braced on her hips, trying not to feel like an overzealous nanny.
“You promised me you wouldn’t slip out,” she says, not the least bit surprised to find he’s got his bow swung over his shoulders and a quiver at his hip, even though he forewent the costume.
“Well, apparently, I lied.” He stops an inch from her, holds her eyes. The set of his jaw is defiant, provocative. “And also, someone has to do it.”
The jab doesn’t miss its mark. Kate takes a steadying breath, reminds herself that she didn’t get out of the superhero business to take a vacation and catch up on a few sleepless nights. “You have no clue why I decided – “
“Then explain it to me,” he says, one eyebrow quirked. “You can help people. You’ve done it for a decade. What changed?”
In his tone swings the insinuation that can, in this context, doesn’t really imply a choice. The way it doubles with the mindset she herself used to have at his age – if you have the means and ability help someone and don’t, then what are you good for? – halts whatever explanation she would’ve have given, the words stuck in her throat. She turns, pushes past him, up the stairs.
He stares after her, expression puzzled. “What are you doing?”
Kate postpones her answer until she’s retrieved her bow and arrows from the corner in the bedroom she’s relegated them to, holding them up over the railing of the upper floor. “I’m coming with you.”
The look on his face swerves from slight confusion to outright bafflement. She’d bet half her father’s inheritance that this is pretty far south of how he imagined his nighttime activities to pan out. But he recovers quickly, back to setting his jaw and looking at her with a clear, unmistakable challenge. He’s expecting disappointment, for her to back down or flip out and lose her temper, she realizes. Because it’s his default; that’s what he’s come to expect from everyone.
It makes her next words come out gentler than she intended. “Unless I chain you to the radiator, I can’t really keep you from wandering off, right? But I can join you and make sure you don’t get caught again, or worse.”
He stares some more in a silent standoff that she has no intention to back down from, before he huffs and starts to make for the door. “Sure. Whatever.”
***
Turns out he’s got an illegal police radio – she probably should have frisked his stuff a little more thoroughly – and not just aimlessly running through dark alleys in search of people to save. They hear about a couple of distress calls from a apartment building down in Brooklyn which is a) just a few block from her place and b) not a particularly high priority for anyone else. Sure, the cops will show; the question is when. From the sound of it, multiple attackers spread out over the same building in an area that’s been getting circled by real estate developers for a while now, someone might’ve even paid handsomely to ensure the police will take their time.
The door to the hallway is hanging ajar, lock broken. Inside, the first thing Kate sees is a stroller, kicked to the side, baby blankets and and toys strewn across the floor. She looks away from the mess at a clattering noise up state, glances to Clint, and they both nock a the same time. Kate takes point, which, to her surprise, he doesn’t protest. He stays in her shadow, one step behind her, as if that’s where he’s always been.
They hear screams when they reach the base of the stair case, followed by the noise of something sturdy and heavy being pushed down from one or two floors up. They jump aside as one, just so evading a drawer sliding towards them, and the laughter coming from above makes her stomach turn. Their opponents tonight are the kind of people who genuinely enjoy terrorizing others, and that’s something Kate never managed to wrap her head around. It also raises her heels, makes her blood boil, and if she’d needed any further motivation to raise a little hell tonight, this would have been it.
The voices and laughter grow quieter, not because the assholes upstairs are calming down but because they’re moving on, away from the stairs, and Kate weighs their options. They could follow them, but she doesn’t like chases like that; it means they’ll be forced to react, rather than act according to a plan of their own, and Kate has never been a fan of that approach.
She turns to Clint. “I think I saw a fire ladder outside. Let’s see if it gets us to the roof, and we’ll cut them off as they move further up through the building?”
“Definitely,” Clint says, nodding enthusiastically.
The fire ladder is past its prime and a little rusty, but still intact. Bows at their backs, they ascend the small metal stairs in a few minutes. Clint unearths a lock pick from his jacket and breaks the entrance into the stair case inside within seconds. Kate chooses not to ask where he got that, or learned how to use it. Back home, she’ll decide whether there’ll have to be a little conversation about keeping thievery equipment at her place, but right now, they have more immediate concerns.
Arrows at the ready, they slowly walk downstairs. The hallways are empty, and up here it’s perfectly quiet, like the whole building is holding its breath. It takes them three more floors until they hear the ruckus cause by the attackers working their way through yet another apartment, giving yet another tenant the scare of their lives. There’s a child crying, from the sound of it no older than two or three, and that obnoxious laugh from before echoes through the staircase.
The actual confrontation doesn’t take much time; there are only three men, all of them backing but none of them having expected actual resistance, guns tucked away at in halters and at their hips. They’re out in the hallway while their victims hover near the door, half inside the apartment, and so both Clint and Kate have a clear shot. He gets one of them in the leg, and Kate puts an arrow through another one’s hand. The third is still fumbling to get his gun out of a holster loosely dangling from his shoulder when Kate marches up to him and aims an arrow straight at his carotid artery.
The cops arrive ten minutes later to a neatly wrapped package, and Kate is flying so high on adrenaline and triumph that she wants to dance across the rooftops. She settles for burgers at one of those diners that stay open basically all night, and basks in the replay of events her and Clint are giving each other, describing the other’s shots back at them in great detail. By the time they’re heading home, the sun’s already rising over city’s silhouette.
***
The next morning – okay, fine, the next noon – Kate wakes to food smells so delicious she has to check her surrounding to make sure she didn’t accidentally move back in with her ex. Or hooked up with him and stayed the night, which, well, knowing her, is not completely impossible. But no, she’s lying on her sofa, where she’s spent the last couple of nights, she reminds herself, while Clint has slept in her bed.
Clint, who she finds standing in her kitchen when she peers around the couch, a steaming pot and a sizzling pan on the hob in front of him. He’s immersed in his task, humming quietly while he stirs and rakes, and Kate rubs her eyes in disbelief. Then she clears her throat, loudly, so he’ll notice she’s awake.
He spins around, caught, and puts the spatula he’d held down onto a plate next to the hob. “I, uh. I woke up early and got bored, and I thought, well, you brought all that fancy food stuff and – “
“Don’t worry,” Kate says, before the wheels in his brain can supply him with a reason why this might be a misstep and could have gotten her pissed. “That smells great, what is it?”
“Ah, fried veggies and pasta, nothing special.” He picks the spatula back up and smiles, beckoning her with it, and Kate gets off the sofa and scuffs into the kitchen area to peer over his shoulder.
She sniffs, mouth watering, and he fishes a piece of carrot out of the pot an offers it to her for a taste. In order to accept, she has to slide up even closer to him, half wrapped around his torso, but the proximity doesn’t occur to her until she’s chewing and moaning her approval. Kate steps back and wipes her hands on her sweatpants.
“Tastes great,” she says, and from the way his face falls it’s not very convincing, even thought it’s true. The food’s not the problem here. She tugs at her pajama top and announces that she’s going to go upstairs and change, feels his gaze on her back until she’s out of his sight. Upstairs, she pulls on jeans and a fresh T-shirt, pees and brushes her teeth, and gives herself a good long look in the mirror.
He’s nineteen. Kate’s responsible for him. No matter what he might think, there’s only one adult in this constellation. That makes it her job to set up boundaries and see to it they’re kept. It freaks her out, the way being physically close to him made her heart beat faster and a trail of goosebumps travel down her spine, just now. He’s nineteen.
She pulls on a hoodie over her shirt and zips it all the way up before she walks back down and into the kitchen, setting the table while he finishes cooking. All the while, he steals glances at her, forehead in creases like he’s sensing her upset and tries to read the cause for that on her face, in the line of her body. She has no doubt that he must have gotten quite good at that, trying to gauge the mood of the person currently in charge of him.
And that’s just another reason why she needs to make sure there’s a clear line in the sand, between them, and that neither of them is going to overstep it.
***
Kate’s never been in it for the adrenaline, when it comes to this whole hero gig. A nice side effect sure, but not the reason she got up in the morning. She grew up never having to worry about making a living, and, just like her mother, doing something good with the time she was given on this earth just made sense to her. Which, well, isn’t actually past tense. It still feels good.
Two weeks have passed since Clint and her first went out onto the streets together, and they’ve been doing it almost every other night since. They’re both going incognito, head to toe black, but it’s due to Kate and that the whole avengening archer thing has become something people notice. The papers are full with speculation – is Hawkeye back, is she being copied, why is she hiding and where did she go in the first place – and that’s still her least favorite part about being an Avenger, officially or not. The Bishops have always made headlines. Kate’s already had enough of it before she ever picked up a bow.
The upside of it all is that she feels alive in a way she hasn’t in years, and she gets to do it in good company. For all his showmanship, Clint is actually a damn good shot, there are some other handy tricks he learned in the circus – Kate didn’t know the human body could bend that way – and they make a pretty great team. Out on the streets, but also by the light of day; since he’s found his respect for Kate out there, he’s also warmed up to her in their daily life, the routine they settled into, still new but getting comfortable.
Which is, of course, when Kate screws it all up.
Once the newspapers picked up on her recent nighttime activities, it becomes impossible for the Avengers to ignore, and sure enough, her phone starts ringing with calls from Eli and Billy and Teddy the day after the first article is published. Kate lets them all go to voicemail. Clint raises an eyebrow at her every time she lets her phone play out its ringtone without so much as acknowledging the noise, and Kate just shrugs at him in reply. He wouldn’t understand. There’s roundabout ten years of experience in this job that separate him from having an idea about the difference between what they’re doing now and what she left behind.
They spent the night down in Brooklyn, hunting down a mugger and delivering him to the police, and Kate called first shower the moment they walked through the door to her building. She’s not twenty anymore, and she feels the little aches and pains from a decade of torn ligaments and broken bones more fiercely than ever. The hot water is gift from the gods, and she allows herself to bask in it until she remembers that there’s someone else in line, waiting for the same thing. She walks out of the bathroom and down the stairs with a towel wrapped around herself, and returns to find Clint with her phone at his ear, listening to whatever’s being said on the other end of the line.
With four long strides, she’s made her way across the room and rudely takes it from his hand, throws it across the kitchen for extra dramatic effect.
Clint’s mouth opens and closes. He inhales, tries again. “He said that Cassie – “
Her best friend’s name a sends a hot wave of guilt down Kate’s spine and she steps even closer to him, gets in his face, ignores the way his eyes widen in shock. “That’s none of your fucking business. You had no right to answer that call for me.”
He stares at her, fear warring with defiance, and she knows she’s messing this up. She’s destroying two weeks of slowly gaining his respect, his trust, of letting actions speak louder than words since she sucks at those anyway. He’s afraid of her. No, that’s not right – her behavior invokes unpleasant memories in him, and that’s making him afraid. Kate knows this. She’s been there, recalls the nights where Eli, or the boys who came before him, made a wrong move and suddenly she was back in that park, held immobile, biting her lips bloody to keep from screaming.
Everything in her deflates. She leans against the counter, gripping it with both hands to avoiding sliding to her knees like a bad cliche. The anger that seemed so rightful and appropriate a few seconds ago evaporates. “I’m so sorry.”
Clint shakes his head, gives her a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. His posture is rigid; Kate’s pretty sure he has to pull himself together so he doesn’t step back, away from her. “No, it’s fine. You’re right. I shouldn’t have answered it. None of my business. I’m the one who’s sorry.”
When she doesn’t reply he turns on his heels and heads upstairs. Kate hears the shower going minutes later, but he doesn’t come down until late in the afternoon, and even then it’s only to make himself a sandwich and march back up.
***
That night, no one goes roaming the streets with a bow and a quiver, and Kate sets out to get really really drunk. That doesn’t quite come to pass – apparently she’s indeed lost her taste for it after Cassie’s accident. But she gets enough of a buzz going to get brave and stupid when he comes back down for another snack.
“You have no idea what it’s like,” she throws at him from the couch while he’s walking past, plate in hand. “Being an actual Avenger. Being responsible for people’s lives. And screwing that up.”
He sets the plate down on the counter and sighs, rounds the couch and sits down next to her. He’s not afraid this time; he looks resigned and tired. “I’ve read the articles. Cassie. I know what happened.”
Not quite done being stupid, Kate puts a finger to his lips and shifts closer, rests her head on his shoulder. The proximity is nice – she’s been so lonely, before he showed up. It’s good to have him around, and here is, warm and solid, comforting. He even puts an arm around her, albeit with another sigh, and begins to draw soothing little circles between her shoulder blades. Kate looks up, wanting to let him know, tell him how grateful she is that he’s here, that he’s making her go back out there. Do what she was born to do, even if it is unofficially and under the shroud of darkness.
She doesn’t expect him to lean down and press his lips to hers, and she doesn’t quite expect herself to recoil like she’s been hit, starring at him, no doubt gaping like a fish on dry land.
“You can’t do that,” she says, instantly sober. “We can’t do that.”
Clint sits back, bringing even more distance between them. His face hardens in front of her eyes, making him look years older. He squints at her, and it’s slightly down his nose, judging her, maybe even a little disgusted. And hey, if she somehow led him to believe this was her intention, then she deserves all of that.
“What else do you want?” The from me goes unsaid, but Kate hears it loud and clear, has a hard time not flinching away from the words. “Why am I here? You gotta want something, everyone does.”
All he’s ever known is having to offer something of himself in order to get any sort of kindness in return, and Kate isn’t going to do that to him. She’s not going to be that person.
“I just wanted to help,” she says, softly, and of course it’s the wrong response.
The quick, hollow laugh he gives in return before he gets up and very calmly walks upstairs without another word rings in her head for hours.
***
In the morning, Kate wakes early and with a medium-sized headache. Funny how that works; moderate amounts of alcohol, and your head just kinda feels like it might explode if rattled too much. The apartment is still dark and quiet, and she sits up, flooded with sudden panic that it’s too quiet. She pads up the stairs, trying to make as little noise as possible, and yet expects to find the bed empty. That he’ll have run away.
She’s a little stunned to see that he didn’t.
He’s still lying in her bed, wrapped in her comforter, either indeed sleeping peacefully or convincingly faking it. Whatever it is that keeps him from running away from her, right then and there, as she’s watching him, Kate finds herself bound to an unspoken pact: she doesn’t let him down again and he’ll stay. She says it out loud, makes it a vow, and walks downstairs to try and fall back asleep.
***
The message Clint tried to relay reaches her a few days later. Or rather, in fact, it shows up at Kate’s front door and refuses to be ignored.
“I know you’re in there,” Cassie shouts, while Kate paces a trail around the sofa and Clint books it upstairs. Smart kid. She wouldn’t want to be in the middle of this reunion either, except she kinda has to be. “This is ridiculous, Bishop, let me in.”
And well, Cassie’s not wrong. This is ridiculous. Kate is thirty-one years old, she’s been married, she’s been an Avenger for ten years, she can fucking talk to her best friend. She takes a deep breath, straightens her ratty jeans and days-old t-shirt, and opens the door.
Cassie looks amazing. She looks healthy and whole and she’s frowning but there are laugh lines around her eyes that betray how glad she is to see her, when Kate’s pretty sure she should be pissed. Kate almost got her killed. She just spent weeks in a hospital bed, some of them unconscious, because Kate is a screwup and can’t do her job properly, can’t even keep the people she cares about the most save.
Shaking her head slowly, Cassie steps through the doorway and right into Kate’s arms. Hauls her into a hug, complete with pressing Kate’s head into her collarbone and carding her fingers through her hair. “It’s okay. I’m okay. I’m alive, and I’m not angry. I get it. I was so worried about you.”
“You,” Kate says, muffled against Cassie’s shirt. “You were worried about me?”
Cassie pulls back and holds Kate’s jaw with both hands, trapping her so she has to look her best friend in the eye. “Of course I was. You were hurting and you didn’t let me help.” She lets go and looks around the apartment – it’s in a much better state than it was before Clint moved in, but still somewhat... cluttered – then glances upstairs where Clint retreats further into the bedroom. Her eyebrows go up, and Kate shrugs. “But now I’m back, so enough moping. We’re going out, and we’re going to talk. We’re going to fix this.”
She bends to pick a few items of clothing from the pile by the sofa, sniffing each experimentally and scowling at most until she’s found a low-cut shirt and a flowery skirt that she deems wearable. She shoves both at Kate, along with a bra, and shoos her off into the corner of the kitchen, where Clint won’t be able to catch an eyeful while she changes. After that, she shoos Kate upstairs to do her hair and put on some makeup; Kate catches her involuntary roommate snickering as she rushes in and throwing her a mocking thumbs-up on the way out, but opts to ignore him both times.
Fifteen minutes later, her and Cassie are sitting in a cafe a few blocks from the apartment, sipping iced coffee through fancy straws and circling a conversation Kate has been dreading since she ran from the tower.
“All of us were so young when we started,” Cassie says between sips, apropos of nothing. “Carrying the weight of the world on our shoulders at an age when other people worry about college grades or their first place away from home. It was only a question of time until that’d catch up with either one of us.”
It’s such a typical Cassie-thing to say; she’s always been smarter than the rest of them, wiser than her age. “And yet I’m the only one who slipped.”
Cassie quirks any eyebrow. “You’ve met Tommy, right?”
“Tommy doesn’t count.” Kate rolls her eyes. “He never figured out how to be a functional adult in the first place.”
“And yet he’s always been an Avenger,” Cassie points out, smiling gently. “By the way, he really misses you. We all do.”
Kate stays silent. She hears the question in there, but doesn’t have the the words to answer it yet.
“I’ve been reading the news,” Cassie continues after a moment. Her smile grows wider, more knowing.
“It was his idea,” Kate says, not to assign blame, but to explain. “I’m just going with to keep him from getting into too much trouble.”
“Kate,” Cassie says, and she’s always had a million different ways to say Kate’s name, each with a different meaning. This one stands for I don’t buy your shit, so don’t even try. “You know that’s not the whole truth. I get what you stepped out, and I can’t make you come back against your will, no matter how much I want you to come home. But I think you’re ready, and I think you know that too.”
“Maybe,” Kate allows. The thought of putting her uniform back on, going out there in full spotlight and with her team instead of Clint, still terrifies her. Besides... yeah, Clint. This isn’t just about her anymore, and whether he was awake to hear it or not, she made him a promise. “But what about him? I can’t just send him away. It wouldn’t be fair.”
Cassie inclines her head. “I’m sure we could find an arrangement for him. A halfway house, a place somewhere. You could visit.”
And Kate has to smile, because no one who spent more than five minutes with Clint Barton could possibly imagine him in a home somewhere. He’d be out of there faster than it’d take anyone else to unpack. Actually, Kate assumes, that must have happened in the past, landing him in the circus to begin with. But Cassie is right about one thing; Kate’s an adult, and it’s time she goes back to acting like one. “Okay, fine. I return to the job, but I stay with him. I’ll keep the apartment, or find a better one, and I’ll come into missions on call until he figures out what he wants to do next.”
The expression on Cassie’s face lies somewhere between disbelief and being impressed, when she smiles back, and Kate’s rather sure she doesn’t get it. She might sympathize with it it, because she’s a good person and helping people comes naturally to her, but she doesn’t understand. And there’s no need. Kate does, now, and that’s what matters.
***
Near the end of the first month, Kate receives an official-looking letter from the court with a date for Clint’s hearing. Their hearing, to be precise; the court date on which a judge is supposed to decide whether his placement with her will be permanent.
In the interim, the letter stays on the coffee table in the living room, to be glanced at by both of them whenever they pass it. Neither of them sorts it away, though; it stays right there, as a reminder. There’s decisions to be made. Decisions they should make together, but Kate can’t quite bring herself to start that conversation. She knows what she wants, if she’s done her job so far even a little bit well so does Clint, and she wouldn’t want to sway his decision. Chances are she couldn’t, anyway.
On the day of the court date, they get ready side by side, rushing in and out of the bathroom; he elbows her out of the way to shave and ruins her eyeliner, she retaliates by shoving him to the side when he tries to comb his hair into something vaguely approaching presentable. They went and bought him a suit the day after the letter arrives, and she picks and tucks at it in between changing in and out of half the formal wear she owns. He bats her hands away each time, muttering to himself, but holds still when she rights his tie and puts stays into his collar, and then they’re off.
The court is crowded, groups of defendants and lawyers, social workers and parents with teenagers waiting for their turn. They’re a little early, and they sit waiting on a bench across from the cop that arrested Clint. He’s smiling at them warmly and Kate’s confident that he, at least, hasn’t changed his mind. Clint doesn’t seem to have quite as much trust in that; he sits with his hands in his lap, posture more demure than she’s ever seen him, and plays with the sleeve of his suit until they’re called in.
They’re lead to their seats opposite a district attorney roundabout Kate’s age and the judge, an elderly woman, studies the file in front of her silently for a moment before she gestures for them to sit down. She reads the official agreement aloud – no charges are pressed as long as Clint stays with her and keeps his nose clean. Upon her request, the district attorney confirms the state still feels bound to the agreement. The cop confirms that Clint didn’t attract further negative attention.
At last, the judge turns towards Kate and Clint, giving them both a thorough once-over, and folds her hands in front of herself. “Mrs. Bishop, are you still willing to house and monitor Mr. Barton for the duration of what would otherwise be his court-ordered sentence?”
Kate nods curtly and resists the temptation to glance over at him, reach out and squeeze his hand, something. “Yes, your honor. I am.”
“Good.” She scribbles something into her file and turns her attention to Clint. “And you, Mr. Barton, I assume you still prefer staying with Mrs. Bishop over other corrective measures?”
Clint does glance over; Kate feels his gaze on her before he also nods. “Yes, m’am, uh. Your honor. I do.”
***
It doesn’t occur to Kate until way later, when they’re back home and racing each other for the bathroom again, this time to change out of suit and blouse and skirt respectively, that neither of them ever asked just how long his court-ordered sentence would have been.
Kate finds she doesn’t care, and evidently, neither does Clint.