Chapter Text
“Fury!” Clint roared, storming into the conference room the Avengers had gathered in, Wanda close on his heels. Before Fury could respond, Clint’s hand was gripped tight around his arm, face close enough to feel each furious breath.
“You will get your hands off me right now, Barton,” Fury responded calmly, though his eyes were sharp.
“As you wish,” Clint ground out, throwing Fury against the nearest wall as he let go. He smiled as the man let out a pained huff on impact.
Steve stepped in, raising a hand placatingly. “Clint, what is this about?”
Clint ignored him, stepping closer to Fury once more. “Stop going after Spider-Man, Nicholas.”
“Or what?”
“Or we quit,” Wanda spoke up, turning to the others. “And you should too.”
Clint expected all of them to immediately deny the suggestion but Steve and Nat just exchanged a curious look, and Sam and Rhodey already looked ready to hand in their resignation without a second thought.
Bruce and Bucky were notably missing, and he wondered for a moment where they had run off to, but given that Bruce was the one to let the boy leave and Bucky never put much effort into the mission in the first place, he couldn’t bring himself to care, as long as they weren’t following Fury’s orders.
“Did something happen?” Steve asked carefully, trying to get a handle on the situation as Clint and Fury glared at each other, looking just about ready to rip each other’s throats out.
“It shouldn’t have had to. We should’ve never been chasing that k- that vigilante in the first place, especially not like we were! We were stupid, blindly following this asshole’s orders without question and didn’t stop to think about what we were doing. I know it’s our job, but this isn’t a job worth having if we have to hurt an innocent hero. So I quit, unless you stop going after him.” Clint jammed a finger harshly into Fury’s chest, spitting his words with venom.
“And you expect me to believe that? We are the ones protecting your family. Without us, they won’t have a security detail and you won’t have a secure way to get to them.”
“Bastard!” Clint cried, lunging at him. His fist slammed into Fury’s bad eye before a firm hand pulled him back.
“Don’t make this any worse,” Natasha murmured into his ear, waiting for Clint’s reluctant nod before letting go.
When he turned around, ready to storm out the door in a rage, he stilled seeing that everyone was standing and staring at him. He expected them to be defensive, angry, to scold him and demand an explanation. But they simply met his eyes, firm determination meeting his own, and nodded in support. There was still a burning curiosity, but they all seemed to push it aside. He wondered if they’d had doubts from the beginning, like Bruce, but just didn’t voice them. They all should have voiced them, but it was too late to change that now. Now, they had to pick up the pieces of the mess they created, starting here.
“I agree with Clint. This mission isn’t right, I want no part in it.” Sam said, voice firm and even with resolve.
“You will want a part of whatever I tell you to want a part of,” Fury bit back, irritation and a hint of laced through his words.
Steve stiffened at his words, horror settling over his features as Fury’s warped view sank in. Beside him, a flash of recognition flickered over Natasha’s face, sentiment ringing all too familiar to her past.
“Wow you really don’t hear yourself, do you? We aren’t your puppets, we aren’t going to blindly follow you anymore. We should be trying to make up for the damage we caused, not make it worse. We’re done,” Clint spat.
He didn’t give Fury a chance to respond before storming out of the door, his lips twitching up into a satisfied smirk as he heard several footsteps behind him leaving seething breaths alone in the room as the door slammed shut.
As they made their way down the hallway, Clint’s confident stride faltered. He had no plan, absolutely no idea what was actually going on with this kid, and no clue what to do from here. They weren’t supposed to go after the kid, but that left them to… what? Just sit around? Unless Fury sent a different team after the kid, in which case they’d have to help him. But they needed to know where he was to help defend him and how do they find that out without tracking him down again, reverting to the very thing they just refused to do?
Clint was about to whirl around and desperately demand someone come up with a plan when Bucky came around the corner, jaw set in the way he always did when something affected him and he was focused on keeping a neutral expression.
“You need to come with me,” he ordered before turning back in the direction he came without a word.
Normally, Clint would pick a fight, especially after just yelling about following orders blindly, but curiosity and panic pushed him forward and he fell into step behind the man, relieved when everyone else followed suit.
Clint realized they were heading back to the med bay and couldn’t help the worry rising in his chest. What if they found out Spider-Man was here? What if Fury found out? He had no way of protecting the kid from Fury and far less resources to find him. Fury was possibly the most paranoid man on the planet, there was no doubt he had resources in place to find anyone he wanted to find. How Spider-Man had managed to evade his radar for so many years was a mystery, he just hoped the kid could keep it up.
When they walked past the room he had been staying in, however, he realized Bucky wasn’t focused on Spider-Man’s earlier stay — if he knew about that at all, though, given his skillset, he almost definitely somehow did — but on the room the boy had left from, the room that the two vigilantes had come out of, the kid crying and bleeding in their arms as he held something tight to his chest.
Clint hadn’t gotten a good look, but it looked like some sort of plush toy, like the stuffed rabbit his daughter still slept with even though she pretended she didn’t because ‘stuffed animals are for babies’. In the moment, it had been enough for Clint to try to shove Bruce off of him and risk fighting the hulk because that was someone’s kid, a kid in the arms of a brutal vigilante, being tailed by the ruthless mercenary who nearly killed him. And they were taking him. Away from safety, away from any sort of protection or supervision or help that Clitn could offer, and he was helpless to stop them. But the Hulk was stronger, of course. He always would be. Clint was just a man, a highly trained man, but a man nonetheless, and he hated being reminded so painfully of how helpless that could make him.
In the heat of the moment, he had been so terrified for the boy and furious at Bruce and overwhelmed by everything that he hadn’t given a second thought to the room itself. He had always looked past it, anytime he was in the med bay, assuming it was just another recovery room or janitor’s closet or something. But now, Bucky was leading them directly to it, a hint of agonizing confusion shining through the determination in his eyes.
When they reached the door, Bucky paused, metal hand resting on the handle. He stared at it, throat bobbing as if he was fishing for words but failed to bring any to the surface.
Steve finally, cautiously, broke the tense silence. “Buck? What is this about?”
When Bucky looked up, his expression was haunted, eyes flicking around as if he was trying to fight off the pain of memories with the view of the present.
“You know I have… experience, with memory issues, right? I know what it’s like for specific things to be erased.” Clint cringed as he thought back to what he had heard of Bucky’s time in HYDRA.
“I told you looking at Spider-Man felt like looking at Steve back at the triskelion. So, I’ve been trying to figure out why. When your memories are erased, the trick is to notice what you don’t notice. Look for things that seem too ordinary and unquestioned, until you pry at them. Those are normally the things that are being written over.”
Everyone nodded slowly, trying to catch on to what he was saying, even though it didn’t make much sense as to how erased memories would apply to all of them.
“So, you’re saying…” Clint prompted, trailing off as he eyed the door.
Without a word, Bucky turned the handle and pushed the door in, gesturing for everyone to enter.
As they did, the confusion turned to intrigue as they took in the cozy, decorated recovery room. It had clearly been popular to stay there, but it was personalized, even though Tony had never let anyone personalize a room and call it their own.
‘You shouldn’t be in here enough to need one, and I’m not having my med bay contaminated by your horrible taste in decorations’ he had sniffed, earning an annoyed huff from Clint as he sat back down on the bed.
And yet, this room was decorated and personalized to the max, so much shoved into the room that Tony must have not only approved it, but helped. The others looked curious at the development, but Clint just felt a little petty towards his late friend. Hypocritical bastard.
The petty annoyance drained from him in a moment, though, replaced by utter bewilderment as he took in the wall of photos and saw himself, saw all of them, in what seemed to be fond memories with Spider-Man.
This was Spider-Man’s room. This was the kid’s room, and he wasn’t just ‘the kid’. They knew him.
“What the hell?”