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Nobody’s seen Clint Barton since the Chitauri invasion. Steve keeps asking Nat if she’s heard from him, but she just shakes her head and touches her necklace, and after a bit, Steve stops asking. Tony's got every satellite he owns (or can hack) looking for him, Bruce is doing what he can to keep morale up, and even Thor is doing his best to assist.
1
It’s Tony who finds him, blasting around the new-and-improved Avengers tower in his suit - yeah he destroyed the old ones but, c’mon, the world needs Iron Man - just for the thrill of it. The tower’s looking cherry, spruced up and running on pure Stark tech. It’s a thing of beauty, really, and don’t tell anyone, but his favorite part is the huge glowing A on the side. He pauses to hover near it, a small smile on his face, when J.A.R.V.I.S. gives a ping, alerting him to a heat signature inside the A. "What the hell..." he mutters, flying closer so he can see inside the arch of the A. "Jesus Christ!" He flips up his face plate. "Barton!"
The man looks up from where he's perched, calm as can be in one of the tallest sky scrapers in the city. "Yeah?"
"How- Where have you been? No, wait, I'm going with the first question. How the hell did you get up here?" There isn't any access to letter short of a window-washer rig, which Tony knows for a fact hasn't been on the building since the last time he flew past the letter. Tony supposes someone with a hell of a grip and balance might be able to reach from the terrace to the top of the A but the space is so small there's no way someone could balance that well.
Clint just raises an eyebrow and reaches for the top of the A and pulls himself atop the letter with ease, quiver and bow slung over his back. Tony flies closer, knowing he can catch him when the dork inevitably falls. But Clint balances along the thin stretch of metal until he reaches the line of rebar around the terrace and pulls himself over onto the terrace, where he lands on his feet. "I was a circus brat, Stark, remember?" he says. Then he strolls into the building, casual as you please, while Tony hovers, trying to figure out what just happened.
2
Steve finds him next, in the training room Stark built for them when they all moved in, shortly after he and Sam and Nat managed to track down Bucky outside of Boulder. He spends a lot of time in the training room, working out the stress of a slowly-remembering friend by trying to break Stark's new 'super-soldier-proof' punching bags. So far, it hasn't worked. But he's mid-workout when he happens to glance up. He deliberately doesn't jump, and instead keeps up his rhythm on the bag.
"Evening, Barton," he says between punches. "What're you doin' up there?"
He does jump when Barton drops from the beams, hanging by just one leg so his face is parallel to Steve's. "Just... hanging around." He drops, and Steve moves to catch him, but Clint does a backflip midair and lands calmly, legs bending to absorb the shock. Steve just stares. "Your face'll freeze that way, Cap," Barton jokes.
"It was just an impressive flip," Steve said. "Took me ages to manage that from the ground." Nat had taught him flips like that, but he wasn't good enough to manage it from the air, or as gracefully as Barton had.
Barton grins and does another neat flip, hands never brushing the ground. "I'm just full of surprises, Cap," Barton says, Steve snorts and goes back to punching the bag while Barton cartwheels out of the room.
Showoff.
3
All Sam really wants is to make some ridiculously large amount of food and tempt Steve out of the training room and Bucky out from the lab where he and Bruce keep running tests on Bucky's system and arm for Tony to analyze. So when he goes into the kitchen and sees a dude with a full-on assault bow and a quiver full of arrows making a sandwich, he's gotta pause.
"Uh, who the hell are you?" he asks, reaching into the fridge and pulling out milk, cheese, and two dozen eggs to make really plain, really big omelettes. Whoever this dude is, he's gotta be okay, otherwise Jarvis would've let the whole tower know it.
The dude smirks a little. "Clint Barton, aka Hawkeye, aka the original bird-themed superhero," he says holding out a hand for Sam to shake.
"Mockingbird might say otherwise," Sam replies with a grin, shaking the man's hand. He's read Clint's file, knows their history, and this is a nice way of letting him know without putting Clint on the spot.
Clint winces. "You got a point, but to be fair, we got the names about the same time, so it's hard to tell who came first. Besides, I get way more press coverage," he says, taking a huge bite of the PB&J in his hands.
"Way more being a by-line while Captain Tiny Ass got headlines, right?" Sam jokes.
Clint laughs, using his free hand to flip the peanut butter jar straight into it's spot in the pantry.
From across the kitchen.
Sam cannot deal with this today. He just starts on the omelettes.
4
Bruce is taking scans of Bucky's arm - again. They do it almost every day, trying to study the interaction between the metal and Bucky's nervous system. It could revolutionize prosthetics, if Bruce and Tony can figure it out. Bucky likes to use the time to talk, to spill things to Bruce or Tony without worrying about actually being heard, since both of the scientists are usually so engrossed in their work that they don't hear anything that isn't J.A.R.V.I.S. revealing the latest results.
Well, that's true for Tony at least. Bruce is actually listening, but it makes Bucky more comfortable if he pretends not to hear. So Bucky's talking, he's now up to his memories of the Cold War - though he carefully avoided the Kennedy Assassination - and Bruce is calmly taking notes of his vitals. There's a loud clatter from one side of the lab. Bucky immediately tenses up, but he doesn't go for a weapon like he would have a few weeks ago - Bruce calls that progress. Bruce turns just in time to see Barton pushing himself out of a remarkably small air duct. The man stands up and brushes the dust from his uniform.
"Tell Stark to start cleaning in there, it's a mess. Can't be good for our lungs," Barton says. He crosses the lab and snags a chair, sitting in it backwards and facing Bucky and Bruce. "What's up, Doc?" he asks, grin on his face.
"Besides your ability to climb through the ventilation system specifically designed to have angles that nobody can scale? Nothing much," Bucky says. Tony briefed him on all security aspects of the Tower in the early days of his recovery, Bruce had thought it would help him feel safer here. It'd evidently worked, since Bucky was becoming more and more like his old self every day, or so Steve says.
Barton just grins, and Bruce pretends to not be surprised when a few minutes later, he does a running start and dives back down the vent he'd come in through.
5
Much about Midgard was strange, but nothing more stranger than the series of books Stark had gifted him. Thor spent many hours perusing these Books of World Records, and each feat listed was odder than the last. The jugglers in particular were of interest to Thor - he couldn't quite explain why, but it seemed an activity his brother would have enjoyed. When Barton appeared in the common room, Thor insisted on showing him the activity.
Barton appears confused for a moment, but soon gives a smile. "If you think the photos are cool, you're gonna love this," Barton says. He picks up several of the small trinkets Miss Potts filled the area with, balls of twine with no true purpose. He then begins to toss them in the air in a circular motion, so they are held aloft and no more than two are in his hands at any given moment.
Thor is instantly enchanted, and Barton laughs.
+1
Natasha is definitely pissed. She's shouting at Clint, and she isn't even sure what language she's speaking right now, but she's speaking it loudly that's for sure. Clint, of course, has his hearing aides turned off. Normally there's a small green light in each aide, letting her know that even if Clint isn't listening at least he can hear her. But with them off, he can't hear a damn thing she's saying. She's swearing now, definitely in Russian, and that just pisses her off more, that Clint's gotten her angry enoguh that she's reverted to her native tongue.
"You didn't check in with SHIELD for weeks Clint! It went down and I had no way to tell you!" she finally says. "I had no way to know you were alive, or to tell you that your safehouses were compromised, no way to tell you to go to ground!"
Clint rolls his eyes, even though he can't hear her. Natasha steps in front of him, making him look at her lips while she speaks, deadly quiet. "You could've been dead or compromised, Barton. Don't do it again."
"Tasha, I'm fine. I can take care of myself," Clint says, too loud when compared with the volume she'd used.
She makes sure he's still looking at her. "Just because you can, Clint, doesn't mean you should." She knows him, she knows how much he hates being on his own, how it used to terrify him, not knowing what act he'd be picked up for next, or whether the circus would leave him behind on nights he went wandering to try and find his brother. "Check in next time," she finally says and then she starts to walk away.
A hand catches her shoulder. She turns, and catches sight of a familiar green light winking at her. Clint pulls her into a hug and rests his head on her shoulder.
"Thanks, Tasha."