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Clint runs further into the darkness. Regular steps, regular steps, he thinks to himself like a mantra, because if he should stumble on the tracks, chances are he will step on the third rail that carries about a thousand volt and that’ll be it. The suit is still after him - Clint can’t hear him with his fucking hearing aids busted, but the cone of the flashlight dances between his feets in equally regular waves - but Clint has a chance, maybe, because the guy isn’t catching up, even falling behind step by step.
So he runs, pumps his legs, concentrates on regular steps and prays to whatever deity might decide that having a fuckup like him around might simply be fun to watch, that, at half past three in the morning, the subway traffic is sparse enough that he will make it.
They have been after him for a while, probably - word on the street was that his latest contracts always came with a trail of suits investigating the scene afterwards. They were never quick enough to interfere, still always a few steps behind, but it gave him a bad rep and demand had slowed down considerably already. Not that Clint’s books were ever really full to begin with, thank fuck, because he was picky himself and few enough people even in the shady business wanted anything to do with an ex-carnie mercenary who worked with bow and arrow part-time. But still.
Maybe that was why he had even taken this contract in the first place - his funds running drier than dry, and it was close to his current location and seemed like a straightforward enough in and out. But then the mark had turned out to be some harmless woman - part time sex worker, part time small scale dealer, and why on earth would anyone pay him big bucks to shoot her, and why couldn’t the assholes from this latest track suit mafia not take care of their own shit, and Clint had dropped the contract then and there.
Only to turn around and come face to face with a guy in a suit in the middle of sneaking up on him. In the ensuing tussle, Clint had given as good as he got, perhaps even better, because he got away. Had gotten out of the building, down the road, down the subway entrance and onto the rails - quick, but not quick enough to lose the suit. Shit fucking dammit. He hadn’t expected him to follow Clint into the darkness. Brave but stupid, with the live conductor rail and the increasing likelihood of getting pancaked by an oncoming train.
And Clint can feel it with every step - small vibrations in the ground. There is a railroad switch ahead, this tunnel merging with one from the right, and...
A blinding light comes around the far bend and rushes off towards the other tunnel, the noise loud enough to transfer through to Clint’s brain even unaided.
… and traffic was still running. The bobbing light at Clint’s feet has jumped off towards the side, spook spooked by the train ahead. This is his chance. Clint tries to pick up speed, a last burst, lungs burning. And stops dead when a loud piercing whistle comes from up ahead, loud and shrill enough that he doesn’t need to hear it but feels it in his teeth. The tunnel up ahead brightens again.
Shit fuck shit.
A second whistle, even more urgent now. This one will come straight ahead and down their tunnel, Clint is dead certain. The last safety nook for railroad workers is somewhere behind him. But behind is also Suit Guy. And he won’t make it to the second tunnel in time.
Shit fuck SHIT.
But when push comes to shove, Clint has a chance to stop one man. He has zero chance to stop a train.
He turns on the spot, and starts to run again, regular steps, regular steps. The flashlight blinks up in front of him, but already the tunnel around them gets brighter and brighter, and the vibrations under Clint’s feet are strong enough to make him scared for his footing. The next sharp whistle makes every bone in his body vibrate.
He could make it.
He won’t make it.
He can’t make out the safety nook, everything is sharp angles of bright light and dark shadow. He’s lost. Doesn’t know if he should go back or forth. It won’t matter anyway, one more second and he’ll be dead.
A hand grabs his sleeve and yanks him towards the side and into the nook. Clint stumbles with the new direction, on gravel, on stone, hands scrambling against grimy bricks and then the world is just noise and flashing lights. Clint twists where he stands, gets his back against the wall, and the suit is fucking in front of him, shielding him, holding him back as if Clint would be idiotic enough to walk under a speeding train. Barely a second later, the train is past and they are back in the darkness. Breathing hard, ears ringing. And Clint has his knife pressed into the guy's side, right where his kidney would be under that fancy suit. Suit Guy stills.
He says something - Clint can feel it, even if he doesn't understand a word.
“Shut up. Do as I say or it’s over for you,” Clint snarls, and doesn’t know if he is too loud or too quiet - volume modulation is a bitch without the feedback from his ears. He presses the knife a little harder into the guy's side to make his point. Suit Guy shuts up.
Clint quickly runs his free hand around his sides and sure enough, the guy is carrying - well, not any longer. Clint wrestles the gun from the shoulder holster, pushing and pulling hard enough to make Suit Guy stumble back onto the tracks. If he takes a wrong step, he won’t be a problem anymore. If he has more weapons, it doesn’t matter. Clint has the gun now. And a knife.
The maintenance lights flicker on around them, bathing everything into a harsh light that is simultaneously too bright and not bright enough. Suit guy still stands on the tracks, facing Clint. He looks serious, but calm, a little calculating and a little curious. He has a broad scrape on his right cheek and one side of his jaw starts to colour in from Clint’s uppercut earlier. One of the sleeves of the fancy suit has started to come off at the shoulder.
Clint stares at him, exhausted. He hates hostage situations. It never ends well for anyone involved. And he has never even been the one with the hostage.
Suit Guy says something, but Clint can’t understand him. He’s never been good at lip reading - it’s alright if he can get the sound, too, but just the movement could be anything.
Suit Guy gives him a curious look, and then, to Clint’s surprise, slowly lifts his hands and starts to sign. He clearly lacks practice and vocabulary, but he’s making an effort.
“Come in shield. Keep safe. No police, no worry.”
“Yeah, fuck off,” Clint says, too loud judging by the way the guy flinches just a little bit. “I want out. Tell your friends to let me go and they can have you back.” He doesn’t think it will work. There will be snipers and Clint has no armor and the subway only has so many exits. He won’t make it out alive. But before he takes this lying down, he will try.
“Help you. Me.” Suit guy signs again and Clint sneers.
“Nice try. But I’ve heard better lies before and didn’t believe those. You got a comm line there, don’t you? Call ahead. Tell everyone to fuck off.” He gestures at the coiled cable that snakes from the guy's collar up to his ear. Honestly. How clicheed.
Suit Guy nods, slowly raises his hand and starts to speak again. A few moments later, his hand drops away from his ear and he starts to sign again.
“Yes. Free exit. Trains stop. Electricity stop only light.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” Clint says and gestures at the fluorescent lights above them. “Now get walking.”
Clint has no idea how far it might be to the next stop, so backwards it is. Maybe they haven’t found his bike yet, then he might even have a chance. Once he manages to get back above ground, that is.
They march back, Suit Guy always one step ahead of Clint. He’s wearing actual suit shoes, for god’s sake, and for a moment Clint isn’t sure if he could have gotten away if the guy had gotten proper traction.
It takes nearly ten minutes to make it back to the station. It’s brightly illuminated, the white and pale yellow tiles reflecting where they are not covered in the usual layer of grime. The station is empty, and eerily silent.
Well, nearly empty - once they have made it up the narrow staircase on the side and up on the plattform, Clint immediately spots the other suit.
That one is a little more individual than the one Clint currently has his gun trained on - bald head, wire frame glasses. He sits on one of the benches along the wall, and seems to play a game on his tablet. He looks up when he hears the footsteps, but doesn’t move besides that.
“I said no one else,” Clint says, angry, and the guy on the bench raises his hands.
“I’m just sitting here, don’t mind me. I’m not doing anything.” he says and signs simultaneously. Far more fluent than his colleague.
Who uses the momentary distraction to whirl around, kick at Clint’s hand holding the knife, and jump away. The knife flies off to the side and clatters on the tiles. Clint whips up the gun and shoots and would have killed the guy if he hadn’t moved behind one of the pillars. The tiles shatter right where his head would have been.
Bald Guy has crouched down, arms up to cover his head, but comes back up almost immediately. Clint swivels the gun around to aim at him. Bald Guy curses. Loud enough that even Clint gets bits and pieces, and most amazingly, it is not directed at him. But at Suit Guy behind the pillar.
“Jesus motherfucking fuck, Phil, what the fuck was that. You colossal idiot, you dumb fucking fucker, do you want to get us fucking killed? I know Regs say to dissolve hostage situations as soon as possible, but maybe you could have held still for like thirty more seconds?! I haven’t crawled through half of the goddamn Bolivian jungle with you to die in a fucking London underground station,” Bald Guy rants, gesticulating wildly. Part of it is even sign language. Clint nearly grins.
From behind the pillar, first Suit Guy's hand appears, open, then his arm, then he pokes his head out carefully, looking at Clint. When Clint doesn’t shoot, he steps out, hands up in surrender.
Bald guy has dropped his tablet on the bench and has gotten up too, and now they stand there in this weird triangle standoff, Clint’s gun swinging back and forth between them.
No one says anything for a few long moments. Clint is tired, and hurt, and frustrated and hates everything about this. Suit Guy slowly lowers his hands again, and Clint lets him - he’s far away enough that he won’t be able to do anything. He says something, but Cint just shakes his head. Suit Guy looks over to his colleague, who rolls his eyes.
“Mr Barton,” Bald Guy says and signs, carefully spelling out Clint’s name, “or Hawkeye, if you prefer. My name is Jasper Sitwell and this is Agent Coulson.”
(He first spells out their names and then uses the sign for ‘crown’ and ‘bowling ball’ for himself and ‘cheese’ plus ‘tie’ for his colleague. These guys are dorks.)
“We are with SHIELD and we would like to bring you in.” He again spells out what is probably an acronym and adds the sign for “shield” behind.
“You mean arrest me,” Clint says, voice flat, and both men shake their heads.
“We have watched your work and we could use someone with your skill set,” Bald Guy - Sitwell’s signing seems almost polite in its clear and orderly fashion.
“My skill set. You mean killing people,” Clint echoes, the bitter taste in his mouth not only from the stale air and fumes down in the tunnels.
“Not only that, but all of you. We would like to bring you in.”
Clint laughs an ugly laugh. “You don’t want me. I’m a broken tool.”
Suit Guy - Coulson makes half a step forward. Clint aims back at him. Sitwell rolls his eyes again, apparently pissed off now, and when he next speaks and signs, it is far more forceful and expressive than before.
“Christ on a bicycle. Fuck off with that self-depreciaition nonsense. Ninety percent of what is wrong with you can be fixed with a hot bath.”
Clint gapes at him. “What just… you.. fucking asshole. I’m gonna kill you.”
“Well, that’s obviously bull crap,” Sitwell honest to god throws up his hands, before he continues on. “Put down that gun, you idiot, you need a sandwich. Meatball sub okay? We can talk about the five-year plan or whatever later.”
Before Clint can reply, his stomach growls loud enough that the other two can surely hear it.
Sitwell grins at him, and Clint slowly lowers the gun. Somehow, that the guy is not afraid of him gives him an odd sense of trust. Sitwell’s an asshole, sure, but he’s honest about it, and it doesn’t seem personal, not with the way he cussed out his colleague.
Clint looks over at the other guy - Coulson is just watching them, eyes flickering back and forth. He seems tense not in a nervous way, but in a spring-into-action-if-necessary-way. When he notices Clint watching him, he relaxes slightly, gives him an odd half-smile and shrugs as if to say “Sorry for my rude colleague.”
Sitwell meanwhile has turned his back to Clint, marched over to the bench, and now rummages around in a messenger bag on the floor. He pulls out a wrapped sandwich, a bottle of water and... a juice box. Puts everything down on the bench on an actual napkin and walks over to his colleague to get out of Clint’s way.
“If you look in the front pocket of the bag,” Sitwell signs, “there’s a box with replacement Behind The Ear hearing aids. If you want.”
“You take that out,” Clint says, and gestures with the gun. He doesn’t trust them yet to not have booby trapped everything. Sitwell shrugs, walks back, pulls a small black box from the bag and puts it down next to the food, lid flipped up to reveal two brand new hearing aids. Pulls each one out with an exaggerated flourish to demonstrate that they too aren’t rigged, puts them back down and walks back over to his colleague. Maybe he’s not that much of an asshole, actually. Just mouthy.
Clint hesitates, but the situation is so weird to begin with that he decides to not look a gift horse in the mouth. He’s hungry, and tired, and can’t see a way out anyway. If the sandwich is poisoned, then so be it. He gets over there, puts the gun down next to himself within easy reach, unwraps the food and the smell alone nearly brings tears to his eyes. It’s still warm, even.
While he eats, the two men stay where they are, and from the looks of it, bicker like an old married couple. Oddly, Sitwell even still signs along with what he’s saying, while Coulson’s replies are smooth in voice and stuttering in sign. They really seem big on getting him to trust them.
Only when they seem sufficiently distracted does Clint pause and carefully extract the broken hearing aid from one ear and replace it with the new temporary one. It’s on their far side, if they don’t pay a lot of attention, they won’t know that Clint can actually understand what they’re saying.
“-was not gonna spell out SHIELD, Jesus. We would’ve been here all day.”
“You don’t know if the acronym means anything to him.”
“Well, he can ask, if he’s curious.”
“You should-”
“I should?! You should have practiced your ASL. For shame, Coulson, for shame!”
Coulson glances over to Clint. “He can hear us again.”
So much for not paying attention. Clint goes for fake confidence, grins and waggles his fingers at the agent. Surprisingly, the man doesn’t frown, but half-smiles again, the corners of his eyes crinkling. Sitwell turns to look at Clint, too, eyebrows raised.
Clint raises his juice box in a silent toast. Sitwell gives him a dorky thumbs up. Coulson rolls his eyes.
Clint sucks up the rest of the juice with an obnoxiously loud slurp and Sitwell snorts. Clint can’t help it. He likes the guy. He can’t yet get a read on Coulson, but he too seems alright. Stick up his ass, maybe, but at least it’s a nice ass. Clint switches out the second hearing aid for a working one. If nothing else, he got new ears out of this, and a full meal.
He leans back and motions at them to start their spiel. Coulson and Sitwell come closer, but leave him plenty of space still. They exchange a look, and Coulson takes a deep breath, body language purposely open. His voice is nice, too. Clint listens.
Maybe, just maybe, these might actually be the good guys for once.