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It’s been two days. Two days since they learned the truth about Skye, since Hunter vanished in the night without a word, since Fitz and Simmons began to avoid each other again. Tensions have soared to a new high, trust is thin on the ground, and the lack of conversation is starting to make Bobbi edgy. Even Mack’s been communicating mostly in grunts, barely two or three words strung together, so it’s a surprise when he interrupts her morning workout to say the director has asked to see her.
She knows a summons when she hears one. Toweling off quickly, she heads straight up to Coulson’s office. Weak sunlight filters in through the tall tinted windows, illuminating the gadgets collecting dust on the shelves behind the desk. Coulson hunches over his laptop, fingers flying across the keys as she enters.
“You asked to see me, boss?”
He nods once, but his attention remains focused on whatever he’s doing.
“If this is about Hunter, I still haven’t heard anything.”
Coulson’s typing slows as he scans the screen, then he pushes back in his chair and looks at her. “This isn’t about Hunter. At least not directly. I need you to bring someone in for me.”
“Did we get another lead? Have we heard more on Raina?”
“Not that sort of someone. An asset.”
Bobbi feels her eyebrows climbing. “I didn’t realize we had any assets left to bring…” She stops abruptly as Coulson tilts his head to one side, his expression telling. “No.”
“Yes.”
“Are you trying to collect all my exes?”
“Believe it or not, Agent Morse, your love life has very little to do with my staffing needs.”
“So you just happen to be asking me to go find him?”
“Who do you suggest I send? We’re down Trip and now Hunter, Skye’s put herself in isolation, and Mack is a reluctant field agent at best.”
“What about May?”
“I have another assignment for May. I need people I can trust, Bobbi, and I am running out of options. I wouldn’t be asking you – hell, I wouldn’t be asking him – if I had any alternatives.”
“I don’t know where he is,” she says, and the admission burns. “He pulled up stakes a few months after he cleared his psych evals following New York. He certainly didn’t let me know where he was heading.”
Coulson picks up a slim packet of papers and holds them out across the desk. Without even reaching for them, Bobbi sighs. “But you know, don’t you? Of course you do.”
He shrugs and tosses the papers down in front of her. “You’ve got a flight out in two hours, rental car waiting for you at the other end. Better get a move on.”
“Does he even know about you? About any of this?”
“In theory, no, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything.”
She swears quietly under her breath, not caring in the least if it’s inappropriate. “What am I supposed to tell him?”
“That his vacation is over. Beyond that, it’s your call. Please send Agent May up on your way out.”
~*~
By mid-afternoon, she’s driving a relatively new Jeep Wrangler down a long, straight road through the middle of nowhere, fields of pristine white reaching endlessly to either side. It’s been at least a day since the last snow fall and the plows have done their job well enough, so she’s making good time near as she can tell based on what the GPS has to say. Despite the grey sky, she seems to have lucked into a lull between blizzards, or maybe it’s not luck at all. Maybe Coulson had Lady Sif put a word in with Thor. Can Thor even control the weather beyond thunder storms?
Eventually she begins to spot signs of life. There’s the occasional house set well back from the road, a church, a strip of tiny businesses that might generously be called a town, a mud-splattered pick up heading in the opposite direction. Then the automated GPS lady tells her to take a right, and she bounces down an uneven lane that winds through sparse trees and over a small stone bridge that may or may not have a stream frozen under the lumpy layers of snow beneath it.
The directions deliver her to a pale yellow farm house with a broad porch running across the front and one side, smoke curling up from the chimney, and a couple of barn-like structures in the distance. Someone’s cleaned off the white mailbox at the edge of the road, and the fencing looks like it might be new where it’s visible under piles of shoveled snow. She turns into the recently sanded drive and makes her way slowly up toward the house, rolling to a stop when she reaches the path that’s been cleared to the side porch steps.
She doesn’t notice him until she climbs out and shuts the car door – which says more about his stealth than her situational awareness – a dark, solid figure standing in the shadow of the porch support, rifle braced against his shoulder. She holds still, waiting and watching, until he moves down onto the steps and she can see past the weapon held in bare hands. His hair’s longer than she remembers but as disheveled as ever, sticking up at all angles like he hasn’t bothered with a comb in a week. He’s wearing a red plaid flannel shirt pulled over a grey henley, worn jeans, and half-laced boots. His eyes, always piercing, are cold and unforgiving, and for a moment she wonders if this was a very bad idea.
“Hawk,” she says by way of greeting.
“Birdie,” he returns with a nod, rifle still aloft.
“You planning to shoot me?”
He huffs a small laugh. “I’d say that depends on you.”
“I’m not Hydra.”
“Didn’t actually think you were. Front-door approach isn’t generally their style.”
“So why the gun, then?”
“You don’t have to be Hydra to be dangerous, or do you not recall throwing those damn batons at me last time we were alone in a room together?”
“I remember missing.”
“I remember ducking.”
“Point.” She shrugs. “That was a long time ago, Clint.”
“How’d you find me, Morse?”
She flinches at the use of her last name, glances away. “GPS, though I gotta say, this isn’t quite what I was expecting. Pretty far from Bed-Stuy.”
The sound of him chambering a round echoes through the peaceful yard. Must be an old rifle. “How did you know where I was?” he demands.
“A mutual friend told me.”
“I’m running a bit low on friends these days. Most of the ones you’d have known are dead, and Natasha wouldn’t give you the time of day, let alone my address. Who sent you?”
She lets herself look at him again. He’s still got her dead in his sight line, but his stance lacks his usual fluid confidence, tension evident in his arms and the way he’s clenching his teeth. It’s anticipatory, suspicious, and she remembers Coulson’s comment about theory versus reality.
“The new director,” she says.
Silence reigns for a long, taut moment. He doesn’t ask her the director of what, or for a name. He just holds his position for another few seconds, then slowly lowers the rifle and clicks the safety into place.
“You better come inside.” He turns and clumps back up the steps and disappears through the front door.
~*~
Inside, the house is warm and cozy, if a bit cluttered, and looks nothing like a place where Clint Barton would live. An oversized couch, its slipcover a medley of fat pink cabbage roses and pale green leaves, dominates the living room, flanked at either end by a pair of stiff beige wing chairs. The brick fireplace with its glowing embers boasts a rough wooden mantel laden with mismatched candlesticks holding half-melted candles, along with an honest-to-god pink porcelain tea pot. Wooden bookshelves line the space beneath the lace-lined windows, crammed with ancient hardcovers, dust jackets long gone, and the occasional paperback. Dark outlines on the walls indicate where art or photos once hung, and beautiful, worn carpets cover the scuffed wood floors, their patterns a mixture of faded wine, greens, and gold. A familiar hand-knit purple blanket tossed over one arm of the couch and a stack of well-thumbed science fiction novels on the coffee table next to an abandoned bull’s-eye coffee mug – not to mention the rifle now propped in the corner – are the only indications that she hasn’t wandered into the home of someone’s English grandmother.
Bobbi leaves her boots on the mat near the door and hangs her coat on the rack right above them, then follows the sounds coming from the back of the house. She finds Clint in the kitchen, chopping onions on a wooden cutting board. He doesn’t look up, but he nods toward the coffee maker on the far counter.
“Help yourself. Mugs in the first cupboard.”
“Thanks.” She finds a blue mug with a Mets logo and pours herself a healthy serving. Taking a cautious sip, she lets out an involuntary moan. “I forgot what good coffee you make.”
The chopping pauses briefly. “Yeah, well.” The knife starts moving again, the sound rhythmic.
She leans back against the counter and watches him, cradling the warmth of her drink to her chest. Over the course of their brief marriage, he’d always done the cooking, big pots of food they’d end up eating for days, even after he put up a bunch in the freezer for nights they came in late off a mission and hadn’t had time to shop or the energy to fix something. Circus-style cooking, he’d called it. Soups, casseroles, big vats of pasta sauce. Nothing fancy, but always good.
He tosses the chopped onion into a pot already heating on the stove, setting it sizzling. Next he adds garlic and salt, grinds some pepper. He pulls a covered dish from the refrigerator and slides a mound of ground beef into the mix, stirring it all with a wooden spoon, then sets to chopping a couple of red peppers. Chili, then.
There’s no point talking to him yet. He might appear focused on his task, but she knows his mind is off and running, formulating theories and questions. She leaves him to it.
Once she’s finished her coffee, she washes out her mug and places it in the dish rack, then goes in search of silverware to set the table. A laptop and stacks of mail cover the one out in the dining room, so she settles for the one in the kitchen, though Clint likely eats on the couch when he doesn’t just stand over the sink.
“Needs to cook awhile,” he says once he’s finished adding ingredients. He dials the flame down low and angles a lid over the pot, then tops off his own coffee – in an Iron Man mug of all things – and heads back toward the living room without so much as a glance her way. She follows, knowing better than to expect an invitation.
Bobbi takes a seat on one end of the couch, curling into the corner while Clint adds a fat log to the fire and pokes at it until the flames stir to life. He plops down on the opposite end leaving a full cushion between them, retrieves his coffee from the table and clutches the mug in both hands like some sort of security blanket.
“Why now?” he asks on a long, weary sigh, gaze fixed straight ahead. “You’re not here to explain; we’re way past that. What does he want?”
“You already knew about him.”
“That he’s director? No. But it makes sense. No one else would have cared enough to pick up the pieces. That he’s alive? For a while now.”
“How?”
He shrugs down deeper into the couch and sips his coffee before he answers. “When Nat dumped SHIELD’s servers out onto the ‘net, all that information went public. Records for the mobile team, redacted copies of AARs with his sign-off still visible. Someone followed up after the fact, wiped a lot of the data, but not before Stark got his hands on it.”
“And Stark told you.”
“Yeah, Stark called and told me. Thought I might want to know,” he bites out.
“You’re angry,” she says. “Clint, you know how Fury…”
“Yeah, yeah, Fury and his protocols. I get it, I do. It’s not the first time an agent’s died only to pop up somewhere else on some covert op. I know how the game is played. But this isn’t the same.”
“Because you’re the one in the dark this time?”
“Because I got him killed, Morse!” He slams his mug down as he surges to his feet, sending coffee sloshing over the table. “He was my handler for nine fucking years, the reason I didn’t get booted from SHIELD a dozen times over, and he got stabbed through the back during an attack I led.”
“That wasn’t your fault.”
“Semantics,” he snaps, pacing over to the fireplace and bracing his fists against the edge of the mantel. He stares down into the flames. “Yeah, fine, I wasn’t in my head, but it was still my hand on the bow, my plan that nearly took the helicarrier down and let Loki close enough to skewer him with his spear. Would have been nice to know he survived after all.”
“The information was classified.”
“To level seven. Funny how I didn’t get the memo. Not a word. He was back in the field for two months before I walked.” He glances over his shoulder. “So I’ll repeat the question. What does he want?”
“He needs you to come in.”
Clint snorts and turns to face her fully, shaking his head. “Yeah, that’s not gonna happen. I don’t answer to him anymore.”
“He said to tell you vacation’s over. You’re still an agent of SHIELD.”
“No, this isn’t a vacation, and I’m an ex-agent of SHIELD. When I left, I turned in my resignation. Not my problem if Fury refused to accept it.” His eyes catch on the spilled coffee and he frowns. “Crap.” He moves the paperbacks farther from the spill, grabs his mug and heads back toward the kitchen, returning a minute later with a refill and some paper towels.
“Look,” he says as he mops up the table, “as far as I’m concerned, SHIELD is done. It was done the minute Hydra started crawling out of the woodwork, and I was done with them months before that.”
“SHIELD isn’t done,” she says, rising to her feet. “Revealing the existence of Hydra hasn’t made the world any safer. If anything, it’s worse. Crazy things have been going down, Clint, don’t tell me you haven’t noticed. The world needs SHIELD. There may not be a lot of us left, but we’re doing the best we can, and we need your help.”
He takes a long swallow of coffee and meets her pleading gaze with dull eyes. “Sorry, Morse. I’m out.”
She shakes her head in disbelief. “So that’s it? You’re really calling it quits? The World’s Greatest Marksman turned farmer?”
“I’m still an Avenger. The team knows I’ll come if they call.”
“Oh, right, well, that’s a relief. Good to know you’ll show up if aliens attack. But if it’s anything less serious than a global emergency, you’ll just sit it out and, what? Milk your cow? What the hell are you doing here, anyway?”
“Stop right there,” he growls. “You don’t get to pull that. You have no right to descend out of nowhere and judge me or my life, not anymore. You haven’t the slightest idea what I’ve gone through or what I’ve been doing.”
She takes in his clenched jaw and furrowed brow, and her eyes narrow. “What is this really about? It’s not SHIELD. Sure, you were probably pissed at Fury, but you’ve never been a do-or-die company man. Loyal, yeah, but you’re acting like you’ve been betrayed. What makes this so personal?”
“What…?” He starts to laugh, but the sound is low and gravely, painful. “If you don’t get it, I can’t explain it to you,” he says, rubbing a hand over his face. He takes another slug of coffee. “You’ve got my answer. I’m going to go check on dinner.”
She drops back down on the couch as he vanishes into the kitchen, replaying their conversation in her mind. She’s never found him easy to read. Even when they were together, she had to work to interpret his more cryptic comments, which she probably should have taken less as a challenge and more as a sign the relationship was doomed. His body language was generally more obvious, at least when he wasn’t working, but the things he said required careful deciphering. Occasionally she used to get a flash of insight, but as a rule she had to weigh each sentence and sift through what little she knew about his past and his experiences in order to decide what he was thinking or, even more difficult, feeling.
Something about his last statement rings false – his claim that he can’t explain if she doesn’t understand. Won’t explain, more like. That she does remember from their marriage. Half their frustrations came from an inability to communicate. She, at least, would try to explain her position, but Clint rarely would, and then only if she pushed. He expected her to understand him, through and through, and if she didn’t, well, it wasn’t his fault or his responsibility.
She tried, for a while, but eventually she got tired of coaxing him to open up, to let her into his head. It was easier to admit they’d made a mistake and to walk away, especially once it became clear that he still had feelings for Natasha. He’d played dumb then, too, during that last big blow up – the one where she’d hurled her batons at him, knowing they’d never hit but for a split second wanting nothing more than to make him hurt. “You just don’t get it,” he’d yelled at her. “If you don’t see, what’s the point in me telling you?”
“I’m your wife!” she’d screamed back. “You’re supposed to share things with me, to tell me how you feel.”
“Wouldn’t you know?” he demanded, a line in the sand. “If you can’t figure me out without a map, doesn’t that say something about our marriage?”
That had been the end, of the argument and of them. He’d packed his bags and gone, predictably, to stay with Natasha, and Bobbi had understood that their marriage had been a hasty error in judgment, borne of end-of-mission adrenaline and really good sex and the misguided notion that their connection went beyond the physical. She had never really seen past his surface, at least not well enough for them to build a life together. She doesn’t think Clint’s ever had that level of connection with anyone other than Natasha and Coulson.
And suddenly Bobbi feels like a complete idiot.
“It was never Romanoff, was it?” she says, storming into the kitchen.
Clint looks up from where he’s sliding a square baking pan into the oven. “What?” He pulls back and closes the oven door, then reaches up to set the microwave timer.
“Before we split, I accused you of still wanting Natasha,” Bobbi says. “But it wasn’t about her. It’s never been about her, has it?” It’s like locking in the final piece of a puzzle that’s remained incomplete for far too many years.
He props a hip against the counter and crosses his arms over his chest. “I love Nat, but I was never in love with her. Not even the couple of months we were fucking. And I never cheated on you. I told you that back then.”
“I know, and I believed you weren’t cheating, not physically, but you still had feelings for someone other than me,” Bobbi says. “I just assumed it was Romanoff, but I can see now I was wrong. It was Coulson.”
“Yeah, well, only took you five years to figure it out,” he says, averting his eyes.
She ignores the barb, having acknowledged long ago that she hadn’t know him as well as she should have. “Did you ever tell him?”
He twitches, but he glances up and meets her gaze, holding it for a long beat as if he’s searching for something. “No,” he admits finally. “Didn’t seem to be much point. He was my boss.”
“You wouldn’t have been the first SHIELD agent to ignore frat regs.”
“It was more than that. He never showed any sign of being interested. Plus that last year he was dating Audrey.” He shrugs. “It was enough to work with him, to have his friendship.”
Bobbi winces, understanding. “Until he died.”
He nods. “Until he died. And came back. And couldn’t be bothered to tell me he was okay.”
“But if he didn’t know…”
“He may not have known how I felt, but he at least knew I considered him a friend, and he sure as hell would have realized I blamed myself for his death,” he says quietly.
“Okay. I can see how that feels like a personal betrayal, Clint. I can. But are you really going to let that keep you here? Are you really going to turn your back on him, on all of us, because you’re angry at him?”
“You’re confusing two separate issues, Morse. Yes, I’m angry, but that’s not the reason why I won’t come back.”
“Really? You sure about that? Because I think you’re just afraid to face him,” she says. “Afraid you might have to explain why you’ve been hiding here on a farm for the last year while good men and women – your former co-workers – have been getting killed taking a stand. Never pegged you for a coward.”
“Get out of my house,” he says, voice low and dangerous, clenched hands dropping to his sides. “I mean it. Fly away home, Birdie, and tell him you failed. I want you gone. Now.” He takes a single step forward, menacing enough to send her shuffling back a few steps of her own.
“So that’s it? You’re done? That’s your entire explanation?”
“I don’t owe you more than that. I don’t owe you, or SHIELD, or him. Not anymore. And I’m not going to tell you again.”
“All right, I’ll go. But ask yourself this: How many chances do you get? Most people don’t get resurrected once, even at SHIELD. A second time seems pretty damn unlikely. What’ll you do if he goes down again because you weren’t there to watch his back?”
~*~
She misses the last flight out and spends a sleepless night at the airport, stretched across a row of worn seats, her coat bunched under her head as a pillow. When she’d called in to report, she’d expected Coulson to tell her to get a room and try again the next day, but he had been surprisingly accepting of her failure.
“I trust your judgment,” he’d told her. “Get back as soon as you can. You can give me the full brief in person.”
As much as she had dreaded the assignment, heading back without meeting her objective feels far worse. Her mind whirls for the whole trip, considering every angle of her confrontation with Clint, debating what she might have said to change his mind, but ultimately she keeps stalling out on the same point. No matter what Clint claims, his feelings for Coulson are tying him in knots. Bobbi can’t recall him even saying the man’s name while she was there. During the entire conversation, it was “he” or “him” whenever Clint referred to Coulson. She can’t imagine anything she might have said or done that would have got him past that mental wall.
She arrives back at HQ just past noon, red-eyed, exhausted, and in desperate need of a hot shower, to learn that in her absence Agent May had gone to fetch one Dr. Andrew Garner – her ex-husband – who is apparently in talking with Skye. May’s standard stoicism has developed a new layer of frost, and Bobbi thinks she might laugh at the entire situation if she wasn’t afraid it would evolve into complete hysterics.
“Talk to me, Agent Morse,” Coulson says when she goes up to his office. For once he’s not behind his desk. Instead he’s standing and staring out the window, arms folded across his chest, and something about his posture suggests he’s been there awhile. Even though she knows the tinted windows make him invisible to anyone outside, his vulnerable position makes her nervous.
The one thing Bobbi hasn’t been able to resolve during her flight back is how much to actually tell Coulson. At no point did Clint swear her to secrecy. He never even asked what she planned to report, likely assuming he had no control over her. It’s that very resignation, his willingness to allow her to do her worst, reveal all his closely guarded secrets, that has her treading carefully.
“As I said when I called in, he has no intention of returning to SHIELD, sir. He tendered his resignation to Director Fury before he left, and considers that to be final, regardless of Fury’s refusal to file the paperwork.”
Coulson nods slowly. “He’s made a new life for himself,” he says. “He deserves that. What else did he say?”
“Apparently Tony Stark learned of your status during the server dump last year, and he let Clint know. It’s probably safe to assume most if not all of the Avengers are aware you’re alive.”
He dismisses her comment with a wave of one hand. “I’d have been surprised if Stark hadn’t pounced on the intel, and there’s no longer a reason to keep my status classified from the team. I’m not worried about them knowing.”
“Sir, whatever his motivations for quitting SHIELD, Clint’s angry at you. He resents being kept in the dark about your recovery given the role he feels he played in your getting stabbed.”
Coulson closes his eyes on a sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Of course he does,” he mutters. “Damn Nick Fury and his endless lies.”
He rubs his palm once over his face and turns from the window. “I wanted to tell him. I knew how he’d react, knew he’d shoulder the blame despite being under Loki’s control throughout the attack on the helicarrier. But the director assured me he was fine, that he’d attended all his counseling sessions religiously, passed his final evaluations with flying colors and been fully reinstated at his previous clearance level. And I… I chose to believe it. It had been a year, he was back on active duty, and I was getting the new team up and running. So I let it go. I trusted the system,” he says with an uncharacteristically snide tone. “I followed orders. By the time I heard he’d left, things were heating up with Centipede and I couldn’t get clear to do anything about it. And,” he sighs again, “I suppose I felt if he really wanted to wash his hands of the agency, I couldn’t really blame him.”
Coulson walks back over to the desk, but instead of slipping behind it to take his chair, he stands in front of it and leans against the edge. “Do you believe that’s the reason he won’t come back to SHIELD, Bobbi? Is it because I let the lie continue?”
His expression is so earnest, so concerned. “He says it’s not,” she begins carefully, wanting to be honest without revealing too much. “And to be fair, when he first left, he believed you were dead, so he must have had another reason to walk away.”
“But?” he presses, brows arched.
She shrugs. “But I think he’s beyond angry. He’s hurt. He had no illusions about Fury or how he ran SHIELD, but he thought he understood you and how you dealt with him, and you shattered that by not finding some way to let him know you’d made it.”
He nods. “Thank you. I appreciate your insight.”
Bobbi takes in the furrowed brow, the sad eyes, and feels a wave of frustration rush through her. She pushed Clint hard; she owes it to him to be no less tough on Coulson. “Sir? If I may?”
“Go ahead.”
“Why send me to talk to him?”
“I told you before you left. I had another—”
“Yes, another assignment for May, we’re short handed, I get all that. But what I mean is, I understand wanting to capitalize on my personal history with Clint, but from the night we fell into bed together to the day we filed our divorce papers, we were barely together for eight months. You were Clint’s handler for nearly a decade, sir.”
He straightens slightly. “Your point?”
“My point is you know him better than any of us. If the idea was to smooth his feathers and talk him into joining the cause, you had a far better chance of success than I ever did. But instead you sent me out there, knowing I’d fail to bring him in, just so I’d report back and give you an idea of where he stands. Because you knew he’d be furious and you were too scared to face him yourself.”
“You’re out of line, Agent Morse.”
“Am I? I think I’m spot on, sir. Funny thing about this conversation: You haven’t once mentioned Clint by name. It’s like you’re trying to distance yourself.”
“I don’t know what you mean, Agent.”
She bites at her bottom lip and slowly shakes her head. “You can hide behind Director Fury and orders all you want, but the reality is you’re afraid that there’s no reason good enough to justify what you did, and Clint has every right to his anger. But he also has a right to an apology, face to face. Maybe he’ll forgive you and maybe he won’t, but you owe him the chance to make that decision. So with all due respect, Director? You want Hawkeye back on your team, I suggest you go and bring him in yourself.”
Without waiting for a response, or even a dismissal, Bobbi turns and strides out of the office, shutting the door behind her and hurrying down the stairs.
Turning the corner that leads to quarters, determined to finally get her shower, she nearly collides with Agent May.
“You coming from Coulson’s office?” May asks.
“Yeah,” she huffs.
May arches a brow. “I take it he wasn’t pleased that you returned empty handed.”
“More resigned,” she says. “I think he knew it was a long shot.”
“Give a yell if you need to vent. I know a little something about coaxing exes,” May says, rolling her eyes.
Bobbi laughs. “Maybe later. I kinda already vented all over Coulson.”
“Seriously?” May almost looks impressed.
“Yeah, for all the good it did. Look, I’m beat. I need to rack out.”
May nods knowingly. They’re each turning to go their separate ways when the sound of a door slamming open echoes through the base.
“May?” Coulson bellows. “Prep the Quinjet. I need wheels up in twenty.” The door slams closed again.
May’s steady gaze falls back on Bobbi, assessing. “Okay, now I really want to know what happened in there,” she says.
Bobbi just shrugs and smiles.
~*~
End