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Carol remembers bits and pieces; fragments that litter the recesses of her brain like bomb shards: warm summer nights mixed with the smell of brownies and perfume; rain storms combined with water-logged hair and grape-pruney fingers that belonged to the ocean, soft rock and roll mingling with even softer classical while the house was dark with shadows and secrets.
Fury offers her a place to stay, a couch in his one bedroom apartment outside of Alexandria, with two cats that climb all over the furniture and her legs. She declines politely, but leaves Goose with some new friends, and does take him up on an offer of new clothes from a nearby Sears to replace most of her borrowed wardrobe. She quietly steals a truck from a nearby junkyard and uses her powers to get it running, figuring if she can get it far enough she can pay someone to fix it up better.
“And here I thought you had it all figured out,” Fury says, handing her a thick pager. “Sure you don’t want to stay? Finding yourself might take awhile.”
Carol salutes. “I’m counting on it.”
She doesn’t remember all of it, but she remembers enough: a kiss under the stars in the cockpit of a shiny new bird, a hard toasting with shot glasses in a loud room, a letter crumpled and folded and creased in the pocket of her flight suit, the words nearly faded and nonexistent except for the part she knows by heart: you, my darling, were meant to reach the stars.
So when Fury says, “I know a renegade soldier when I see one,” Carol remembers her life in flashes. She remembers a man spitting out the words in spiteful distaste: “I know a renegade soldier when I see one.” She remembers a girl with swaggering confidence, a best friend with a crooked smile: “I know a renegade soldier when I see one.” She remembers a boy with chocolate skin and an impish grin trying to hide the flush on his face after a kiss: “I know a renegade soldier when I see one.”
And when she picks up a lanky boy with long hair and an overgrown beard on the side of the highway, she takes one look at the bow strapped across his back, leans forward in the driver’s seat as she slows to a stop, and invites him in. He gives her a wary look as he opens the door and slides in next to her.
“Why are you doing this?”
“Well, no offense,” says Carol, glancing over at him, “but I didn’t know if you were walking the highway just for kicks or because you needed to find a shower.”
“Yeah, that’s the whole story,” the boy says sardonically, adjusting his worn trucker hat that says BARNEY’S PAWN SHOP across the front. “What’s your deal, anyway?”
“My deal?” Carol raises an eyebrow at the road. “What makes you think I have some sort of deal?”
“I dunno,” the boy says with a careless shrug. He rolls down the window, letting cold breeze snake through the stale, musty air. “But I know a renegade soldier when I see one.”
***
His name is Clint, Clinton Francis, no, wait, Clinton Francis Barton, he finally admits when they stop at a gas station. “But just call me Clint. And don’t judge me about the name, I know it sucks.” Clint picks up a three packets of beef jerky, an oversized bag of tortilla chips, and six Hershey bars.
“I’m Carol,” she says, watching him fill his styrofoam coffee cup to the absolute brim, licking the stray caffeine from his fingers.
“Carol’s a nice name.” He pulls some crumpled bills out of his pocket, along with a handful of pennies, and demolishes the candy before they get back to the truck.
She asks where he’s from, he says, “nowhere special.” He asks why she’s traveling alone like this, she says, “just trying to find myself.” He tells her, “I know how that goes,” but then stays quiet, and Carol doesn’t press him for more. Instead, she watches him out of the corner of her eye as they drive; she pays attention to the way his long fingers tap out a series of beats against his jeans, each one perfectly matching the rhythm of the bumpy car as if he’s playing along to a silent symphony of rock ballads.
“Are you running?” she asks after another long stretch of silence, because she can’t help herself.
Clint looks over at her and shakes his head. “Not that kind of running...at least, not as far as I know.”
They stop after another half an hour or so, pulling off the highway when she needs a break from staring at the road. Clint gets out of the truck and reaches into his pocket, removing a half-filled pack of cigarettes. He shakes one out and hands it to her, but Carol waves him off.
“What’s with the bow?” she asks as he lights up with the help of a flimsy pack of matches that she’d watched him swipe from the gas station. Clint stares at her for a moment and then laughs through a cloud of smoke.
“I can’t believe that wasn’t your first question.”
Carol shrugs, trying to fend off uneasy feelings. “I’ve seen a lot.”
“Yeah, well. Clearly.” He pauses to take another drag. “Three guesses, and the first two don’t count.”
Carol sighs and hops up on the fence overlooking the open fields, straddling it easily. She squints at him, pursing her lips.
“Pin-up boy.”
Clint snorts, pulling up his shirt. “With this body?”
She’s about to respond in an equally biting manner but the words die in her throat when she sees his skin -- a fully toned torso with a burgeoning six-pack and some nicely defined love handles, but one that’s also riddled with scars and lacerations and what Carol thinks might even be burn marks. He drops his shirt, and Carol decides that if he doesn’t care about what she’s seen, she won’t either.
“Okay. Actor?”
“Jeez, you’re not even trying,” Clint says, rolling his eyes. “Circus.”
Carol can’t help the laughter that escapes from her mouth. “Shut the fuck up.”
“One hundred percent serious,” Clint says, reaching into the back of his jeans pocket. “Carson’s Carnival of Traveling Wonders. Betcha never heard of us.”
He holds out a photo and Carol takes it, studying the picture carefully. It’s a group photo with the man who she assumes is the ringleader at the center, standing spread-eagled on spindly legs with a top hat in one hand. There’s a short bearded lady, a few tigers flanking the side of the ring, a man holding a long snake -- and then there’s Clint in an absolutely terrible pointed cowl, wearing a purple outfit that looks straight out of what Carol might have at one point remembered as belonging to Ancient Rome, posing with his bow and arrow. Carol frowns as she looks up, trying to reconcile the smiling showman in the photo with the grungy, long-haired, bearded hitchhiker in front of her.
“So what are you, then? Some kind of performer?”
“I’m the Great Hawkeye,” Clint says proudly. “Wanna see?”
Carol’s not really sure but she knows she doesn’t have a choice, because Clint’s already snuffing out his cigarette with the heel of his boots and running back to the truck, taking his bow out and bringing it back. He nocks an arrow and lifts the bow easily.
“Started at Carson’s and then when things got rough, I ended up coming to the Coney Island Circus. That’s where I was before.” He lets the arrow fly and Carol doesn’t miss what he’s demonstrating; the shot itself is impressive enough but he’s making the shot while talking and not really concentrating. It’s a skill that she knows is more than just being talented.
“Coney Island,” Carol says as he nocks a second arrow, pulling it from his quiver. She tries to think for a moment, hoping she remembers correctly and that she’s retained all the right information. “That’s New York, right?”
“Last time I checked,” Clint says, giving her a strange look.
“So you walked here from New York?”
“Hell no,” Clint replies, shooting again. “Stole -- well, okay, borrowed a few valuables from an old friend and got enough to get some money for a bus. Took it to DC, got a ride with some veteran guy who lost his leg -- pretty good driver, though -- and he dropped me off at one of the gas stations. Then I just got lucky with you.”
He grins around the last word, his demeanor cheeky and confident and cocky, and there’s an air to his ribbing that feels familiar. Carol breathes in memories of the past, gunfire and oil and grilled asparagus in a trailer while a hand trails over her torso, strong fingers calming her soul and tired body.
“You know I could punch you if I needed to,” she says finally.
Clint snorts. “Yeah, okay Princess Sparklefists.”
She leaves him to his shooting and gets back in the car. He returns a few minutes later, humming a rock song under his breath. When they start to drive again, she realizes she finds him annoying as all hell. He won’t stop singing to himself, no matter how many times she asks him to stop, but Carol decides it’s not worth it to throw him out.
Besides, she figures if all else fails, she can punch the living daylights out of him and he’d never see it coming.
***
She knows he’s going to ask about her life. She knows she can’t avoid it. She just doesn’t know what she’s supposed to say.
For as much as she might remember and might not remember, she knows what she is -- who she is. She knows she’s a Kree, and she knows how she was raised. She knows a life with a purpose, with mandates of kill and fight and wear your nobility with pride, not the things Clint seems to know, like when it’s the best time to pull over to watch a sunset or how to fix a flat tire with nothing except an easy smile and a few lame jokes. She wants to think she’s known things like this, and things that she sees him write in his falling-apart journal when they stop at motels for the night: warm hugs and apple pie, sweet lullabies and laughing in blanket forts under the stars. But when she tries to wrap her mind around those memories, none of them feel familiar. What feels more real to her are hard punches and blazing bolts of fire through her veins.
“Who’s the girl?” Carol asks curiously while braiding her own hair, watching him from the twin bed she’s sitting cross-legged on. Clint immediately closes the journal he’s writing in.
“How did you --”
“Well, your handwriting isn’t very discreet,” Carol points out. “And this room isn’t very big. And you could be writing about a guy, but I don’t think you swing that way. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.”
Clint sighs and picks up the journal again, flipping through the pages slowly.
“No girl,” he says finally. “Just a person who isn’t here anymore.”
Carol doesn’t know why she’s drawn to him. She doesn’t know why someone like her -- someone who would rather be alone with only the company of the open road and endless sky -- wants to be with someone like him, who laughs too loudly and slurps his coffee instead of sipping it. But Clint, Clint with his easygoing nature and his if the shoe fits attitude intrigues her. Kree people didn’t give much thought in the way of feelings or emotions towards others and Carol still doesn’t have many memories of the person she knows she supposedly was; meanwhile the memories that are there are the ones that make her feel more alien than human.
Clint, on the other hand, was so human, it practically hurt.
When the memories do come, they come all at once, like a lightning storm that touches down suddenly and refuses to abate. There are good ones -- blonde haired boys, Stevie, don’t you dare touch that lobster, sunlight in a field of green. There are bad ones, too -- a fist to the face, broken bottles on the floor, terrified voices screaming her name as metal falls from underneath her and the position of her body goes from horizontal to vertical.
“Hey, hey!”
She wakes up with a start, having not even realized she’s fallen asleep or zoned out, opening her eyes to a field of destruction. Her covers have been thrown to the floor of the motel room, there’s a lamp that’s been knocked over with a broken bulb, and half the bed frame is splintered. Clint’s staring at her wide-eyed and open-mouthed, the shirt she presumes he was supposed to put on when he finished his shower hanging limply from his left hand.
They stay locked into each other’s eyes for far too long, not speaking, until Carol finally decides to move. She gets out of bed slowly and gathers up the covers she’s discarded in her nightmare state.
“Sorry,” she says cryptically and quietly, hair falling in front of her face as she bends down. She tenses, waiting for his response.
“You’ve got some weird fucking anger issues,” is all he says when he finally replies, turning and walking back into the bathroom. Carol sighs and sinks down onto the bed, feeling thankful Clint apparently hadn’t seen the hole in the floor near the side of the bed, where she must have slammed her fist into the carpet and wood.
***
In the absence of not knowing anything about her own history -- at least, not well -- Carol learns about others. She gets a story from the sleepy teenager behind the motel desk in Virginia, talks shop with a burly tattooed man gassing up his truck next to her at another station, makes conversation with a couple who are walking their dog outside of a restaurant. She finds herself caring about everyone, from the shop owner who is selling tchotchkes on the side of a North Carolina road to the woman who serves them coffee at a roadside diner in Georgia, the one who winks at Clint while flipping her dark hair over one shoulder.
“You got a crush?” Carol asks, leaning back in the booth and flinging her arms around the soft, chipping vinyl.
Clint flushes. “What -- what? No.”
“Mmmm.” Carol grins, slouching more, stretching her legs under the table. “But you like her. I can tell. You get nervous every time she comes over, and you always make sure to smile when she asks about our order.”
“She’s a waitress,” Clint returns automatically, reaching for his fork and stabbing squares of breakfast potatoes.
“She’s probably single,” Carol argues, watching him eat. “Want me to find out?”
“Hell no,” Clint says quickly through a mouthful of scrambled eggs. “Besides, I can’t just walk into a diner in the middle of nowhere and ask some random girl out.”
“Why not?” Carol asks bluntly. She means to ask the question as another stab at keeping the argument going but as she says the words, she realizes she’s truly curious. “What have you got going on that you need to get back to or away from? I mean, nothing you’ve told me so far has given me any indication that you’ve got some sort of life somewhere you need to care about. You’re not even with this circus anymore.”
It’s harsh, it’s frank, but Carol feels like it’s the truth, and if there’s one thing she’s learned about Clint Barton in the time they’ve traveled together, it’s that he actually seems to be into the idea of wandering around. He was easygoing, carefree; he didn’t seem to be constantly plagued by inner demons that centered on finding a sense of belonging -- or if he did, he hid his demons well, so well that she hasn’t been able to pick up on them.
Clint looks slightly affronted, but the hurt that passes through his hazel eyes clears before it can settle there. “Forget it,” he says, grabbing for the rim of his trucker cap and shoving it down further over his forehead. “It’s fine.”
Carol watches as his gaze flicks to the right, where the pretty waitress (she is pretty, Carol decides, youthful and young and smiling like she actually enjoys working at a roadside diner where her most frequent interactions are probably with drunks or truck drivers) is leaning over to pour coffee, laughing at a customer’s conversation.
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Carol mutters, getting up and leaving her breakfast half-eaten on the table. She follows the waitress back to the front of the diner and leans over the counter, clearing her throat as the girl places the carafe of coffee back under the machine.
“Yes?” The girl turns around and now Carol can see her name tag, which before had been mostly obscured by her hair and quick movements.
“Hi,” Carol says with a smile. “Laura? You’re our waitress over there.”
“Oh.” Laura looks back, where Clint is still slouched down, picking at his food. “Yes, is there something you need?”
“No, we’re okay,” Carol responds, leaning on her elbows. “But the guy I’m with wanted to know if you’d ever be interested in dinner, and not at the place where you work.”
Laura blinks quickly, clearly caught off guard. She leans over the counter a little more to get a better view of Clint, and then straightens up. “I guess…” She pauses, then shrugs. “Sure. If he likes coffee and is in the area, why not?”
“Great,” Carol confirms, pushing herself up. “You want him to just call the place and ask for you?”
She can see the hesitation in Laura’s eyes, the quick argument taking place in her brain as she tries to decide how forthcoming she should be to a random stranger. Finally, Laura reaches into her apron slowly, removing a pen.
“That’s my pager,” she says, writing a number on the back of the diner’s business card and handing it over. “It’s always on me. What’s his name?”
“Clint.” Carol smiles again. “He’s a talker and kind of a sloppy eater, but he’s nice.”
Laura smiles back and then turns back to the kitchen window, readying some plates that have appeared. Carol turns on her heel, walking back to their booth.
“Her name’s Laura, that’s her pager number, and you should call her if you decide to not go be a hobo somewhere,” Carol says as she slides back into the booth, throwing the card in his direction. Clint balks, his head snapping up from where he’s been playing with a sugar packet, clearly bored and nervous.
“What the hell, Carol! Why’d you do that?”
Carol shrugs. “Look, I don’t know. We’re both kinda...floating right now, right? And one of us deserves something nice. Besides, she’s probably got a story.”
“You don’t know that,” Clint responds.
“Yes I do,” Carol says matter-of-factly. “Everyone has a story, Clint. Don’t you want to know hers?”
Clint picks up the card and stares at the writing, looking up again. Carol notices the small grin on his face as he most likely catches Laura’s eye, and when Laura comes over to bring the check, she tucks a piece of hair behind her ear with a cute little flourish, and the check has a smiley face written on top that Carol is pretty sure isn’t for her.
***
“Everyone has a story,” Clint says after they leave the diner.
“Yes,” Carol says, tying her Nine Inch Nails World Tour shirt into a knot above her stomach before she climbs into the truck. “They do.”
“So, are you going to tell me yours?”
Carol ignores him as she turns on the ignition. “No,” she decides, backing the truck up. “Are you going to tell me yours?”
Clint hesitates. “No,” he says after a beat.
Carol nods. “So that makes us even.”
At the Florida border, they stop at a dive bar emblazoned with a neon sign that proclaims they’ve arrived at DOUG’S HIDEAWAY, with green and yellow Bud Light signs hanging in front of the dark windows like a beacon.
“Thank god,” Clint says as they pull into the packed parking lot. “I’m starving.”
“Sorry it’s not more a upscale place,” Carol says, leaning forward in the truck to get a good look at the exteriors of the bar. “But we are on the road.”
“Hey, if you think I care, you’re sorely mistaken,” Clint says as he unbuckles his seatbelt. “We ate on the road in the circus all the time. Slept on the grounds. I’m used to slumming it.”
Carol rolls her eyes. “So glad I don’t have to impress a random hitchhiker,” she replies as she gets out of the truck.
Clint manages to find them a space at the crowded bar and they squeeze in between a scantily-clad blonde with three inch platforms and a loud man with a colorful mohawk. He orders a Corona and a shot of vodka; when he asks Carol what she wants, she orders the same out of habit.
“To roadtrips, or something,” Clint says, raising his glass and downing the vodka. Carol reaches for her own shot but before she can pick it up, something pushes itself to the forefront of her mind -- a man yelling, a pain in her side, a bitter taste on her tongue. She withdraws her hand, suddenly uncomfortable, and Clint frowns at her movement.
“What’s the matter?” He wipes excess alcohol away from his lips. “Not a fan of vodka?”
“It’s fine,” Carol replies quickly. “Just realized I’m not in the mood tonight.”
Clint eyes her. “You feeling okay? You’re not gonna, like, go super sonic haywire on me like in that motel room, right?”
“No,” Carol says, trying to tell herself it’s a coincidence that Clint had used those words, since he obviously didn’t seem to suspect that she wasn’t exactly ordinary. She thinks fast, trying to figure out how to change the subject. “So you were coming from New York. And you were in the circus. What are you going to do now?”
“Something,” Clint says evasively. Carol watches him take a long gulp of beer.
“That’s not very specific.”
Clint swallows. “No, really. I don’t have any kind of plan. I kind of just struck out on my own. I left a place I wasn’t happy with and figured whatever came next couldn’t be as bad as things were before, right?” He pauses, and Carol instantly thinks of the marks on his body. “Anyway, I’m kinda just seeing what comes at me, you know?”
Carol nods slowly, because she does know. And she doesn’t know why, but she actually gets it. She gets how it feels to not know what you want, except that you want something more than this, something different than this, and you don’t know how to get it. Clint’s doing the same thing she is -- running, hiding, attempting to figure out who the hell he is. The difference is, Carol thinks, he probably doesn’t have to look so hard to find the answer. And unless she’s way off the mark, he has definitely never known anything except a life on Earth.
“Sure you don’t want some?” Clint asks, holding out his beer and breaking into her thoughts. She looks up at him; the bar is dark and there’s way too much commotion inherent a dive bar in backwater Florida, but his eyes are soft and understanding and calm.
“Yes,” Carol answers. She nudges his elbow, which is resting on the bar. “Tell me something about yourself.”
“You first,” Clint answers with a small smirk. “I already told you some stuff about me.”
He’s right, Carol realizes, internally kicking herself. She owed him something, even if it was small. She starts to think; she knows she can’t tell him a lot of things because he wouldn’t believe her and also because she doesn’t trust her memories. But it didn’t mean she couldn’t tell him anything.
“I have a cat,” she says, which sounds like the lamest, dumbest admission in the world. Then again, she was talking to someone who shot a bow and arrow for a living.
Clint gives her a skeptical look. “You don’t exactly strike me as a cat person.”
“I’m not…technically,” she replies. “Goose is...special. Different.”
“Huh.” Clint shrugs. “Well, hey -- I worked with a live snake for a living and he sometimes slept on my bed when he got bored of his trainer’s trailer, so I can’t make fun of you.” He winks at Carol, and she can’t help but laugh.
“Alright. Your turn now.”
“Mmm okay.” Clint grabs a menu from across the bar and peruses the options with his finger, dragging his crooked pointer down the listed items and letting it finally settle on the words nachos. “I’ve got a brother.”
“You do?” Carol asks in surprise, her voice rising an octave. Clint nods and points to the rim of his dirty hat.
“Yep. Barney. He’s my younger brother.”
“Oh.” Carol leans back on the barstool, carefully angling herself so that she doesn’t fall over or push someone close to her too strongly. “No offense, but why can’t you call him instead of hitchhiking around?”
“Eh.” Clint waves his hand around. “We’re not really those types of brothers. We went into the circus together, but he left way before I did. Had a hard time getting along as competitors. Either way, it’s probably better we went our separate ways.”
Carol chews on her tongue as he talks. She’s pretty sure that’s far from the whole story, carefree attitude be damned, but she also knows she has exactly zero room to talk when it comes to keeping secrets from strangers.
“I’m sorry,” she finds herself saying.
Clint blinks rapidly, his face twisting into confusion. “Why are you sorry?”
“Because…” Carol trails off, and suddenly, the memories are there again -- a tight hug, blood spurting from thin lines of a cut along her knee, someone whispering affirmations in her ear, strong hands on her back as she reaches for the highest branch of an oak tree. “Because no matter what you feel, I’m sure you miss him.”
Clint suddenly looks wistful. “A little,” he admits, tracing a finger around the rim of his beer glass. “For awhile, he was the only family I had. Our parents died when we were young. But, I mean, I found family at the circus. I think you can probably find family anywhere, if you really want to.” He clears his throat, pointing to the menu. “Hey, you eat nachos, right?”
Carol nods. Clint, seemingly satisfied, leans over the bar to place his order.
Carol watches him with a little bit of interest and a little bit of jealousy, and all she can think about is that it must be nice to be able to be able carry around the hope that you could find a future somewhere, go back to the person you were before -- or even become something better.
***
They make camp at another Days Inn for the night and Clint passes out easily, full of alcohol and fried food with too much grease.
Carol, on the other hand, can’t sleep at all.
She tosses and turns, worried that she’s going to wake him up. Whens she closes her eyes, she sees more memories -- bright lights, a world in shades of blue and green, stars that seem too shiny. She begins to wish that she had taken Clint up on his offer and had a drink, even though there had been a very firm albeit unknown feeling that had warned her to stay away.
She crawls out of bed quietly and manages to leave the room without issue. Once she’s safely outside, she makes sure no one else is around the deserted motel parking lot, then readies herself to fly.
Carol jumps, launching herself into the air, the cold night wind slapping her face as she climbs an invisible ladder towards the sky. Without the aid of a suit and in just her normal clothes, the chill feels colder than usual, especially as she flies higher into the atmosphere. She ignores the cold and the desire to stop and keeps climbing, determined to get far away from her thoughts.
Carol turns, angling up towards the darkened velvet expanse, and then swoops down quickly. She makes a beeline for the top of a roof and lands quietly, settling herself down, and folding her arms over her legs as she stares out into the quiet.
She closes her eyes.
Maybe there was something to be said about not being able to find yourself, or about taking time to find yourself. She had been upset that she couldn’t figure out who she was or what her memories meant, but she had also been doing just fine as Carol The Superhero. It would help if she knew who Carol The Human was, but maybe Fury could help her, if she asked nicely.
She had thought all she wanted was to be alone on this journey, but after meeting Clint, she thinks that maybe she does need someone to care about her after all.
A spark of light to her left causes her to turn her head curiously, her eyes alerting her to the house next door. With the twilight closing in and the small square of a bedroom window lit up, Carol has a mostly clear view of the scene unfolding in front of her: a girl sitting in bed, leaning over and talking to another girl. A sister, Carol theorizes as she watches, or maybe a friend.
Carol stays still and transfixed, watching the girls pass something between them with a laugh. Pain spreads through her lungs as the memories hit her in trademark flashes -- a kiss before turning out the bedroom light, a flashlight under the covers, gentle waves as the soundtrack to a muggy summer’s night. She leans back on the roof, keeping her eyes trained on the scene before her, and watches until the lights fully go out. She stays stationary, thinking and allowing herself to take in the silence, until an owl starts to hoot in the distance, signaling that the sky is about to pull back the curtain on dawn.
Carol shoots back up into the sky, flying back towards the motel. When she gets within range, she carefully sets herself down a few blocks away and fixes her hair, rubbing color back into her cheeks so that she doesn’t look or feel quite as windblown. Walking back into the room, she’s surprised to find Clint awake, bending down near the door and in the middle of shoving clothes in his bag.
“Where did you go?”
Carol gestures towards the window. “Couldn’t sleep. Took a walk.” She eyes his bag and the way he’s folding a shirt carefully. “Sick of me already?”
Clint glances up guiltily. “Just thinking about our conversation last night,” he says. “I think you’ve dealt with me long enough. Besides, I’ve got my own things to work out. It’s not fair for me to keep burdening you.”
“You’re not burdening me,” Carol says, because it’s the truth, and because for as annoying as he is, she’s actually enjoyed being in his company. “Where will you go?”
Clint shrugs, but there’s a bashful look crawling across his face, and he pulls a card out of his pocket. “I dunno. Maybe...maybe I’ll head back to that diner and call that waitress.”
“Laura,” Carol says, hiding a smile. “Her name is Laura.”
“Laura,” Clint repeats, rubbing a hand over his chin. “Yeah. I think I’ll do that.”
“Well.” Carol puts her hands on her hips and surveys the room. “If you’re going to go chase love, the least I can do is drop you off somewhere a little closer to the diner than the Florida border.”
Clint laughs, picking up his bow. “Sure you don’t mind? That’s backtracking for you.”
Carol shakes her head. “Depends on how you look at it.”
“Yeah,” Clint agrees. “Well, yeah, okay. If you don’t mind. Another few hours in the car with you sure beats walking to another state.”
“That’s the nicest thing you’ve given me since I met you,” Carol chides. “I can go find some breakfast and then we can get on the road so we don’t waste too much time.”
“Sure,” Clint says easily, reaching for a handful of stray arrow and stuffing them back in his quiver. Carol picks up the bomber jacket that’s been lying across the bed and puts it on, allowing it to envelope her as she walks briskly across the motel parking lot. Crossing the street, she makes a beeline for the phone booth on the other side of the street, the one she’d noticed on her way back down from the sky. Closing herself inside, she takes out her pager and looks at the number written across the back on a piece of masking tape, then sticks a dime in the slot.
Fury picks up on the second ring.
“So, you found yourself.”
“Not exactly,” Carol says, leaning against the wall of the booth. “But I think I found someone to keep you busy while I finish searching.”
“Danvers, if you’re going to tell me you found another cat, Tabby will straight up claw my goddamn face off. She already feels needy with Goose around.”
“It’s not a cat. He’s not a cat,” she amends, and she can almost see Fury’s interested face on the other end of the line.
“He?”
“Clint Barton,” Carol says, her photographic memory firing snaps of information at her. “Aimless ex-carnie, probable petty criminal, but decent heart. Really sharp. Terrible sense of humor. Good with a bow and arrow -- extremely good. And fully human, right down to his coffee addiction.”
“Huh.” Fury sounds intrigued. “And you think this Clint Barton is SHIELD material.”
Carol shifts her gaze, staring up at the sky, remembering how it felt to soar across the clouds, light and free and hopeful. She thinks of Clint’s crooked smile, his arrows flying through the air with the same ease that she’d fly, and smiles.
“I know a renegade soldier when I see one.”