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Clint Barton is clinically dead for two minutes and forty-seven seconds.
Now, here's the thing about near-death experiences that are technically more like death experiences: It's supposed to be all bullshit. This isn't the first time that he's come close to biting it (and he's sure it won't be the last) but it's always just been blackness followed by waking up to Natasha ripping him a new asshole for being such a reckless moron - no white light at the end of an inconvenient tunnel, no fluffy clouds or choirs of angels singing, no pearly gates behind St. Peter at the lectern, looking as bored as the bouncer of the universe's most exclusive nightclub. Clint's about as atheist as atheism gets, and he knows all the science behind out of body experiences, how the hallucinations are caused by oxygen deprivation to the higher functions of the brain -
Point is, he doesn't believe in any of that crap. He's a soldier and an assassin, an archer when people are being tactful and a sniper when they're not. He kills people for a living, oftentimes in very painful, creative ways, ways that require imagination - so where do you suppose there's room for being a good Christian in that tangled-up ball of neuroses? Where is there room to believe in God and Jesus Christ and all that jazz? There isn't. Clint believes that when he dies (not if, when, because he is a soldier and he's come to grips with this a long time ago) it'll just be a black empty void, that he will simply cease to exist and everything he is, was and would ever be will just vanish off the face of creation. It'll be peaceful and it'll be quiet, and he'll never have to listen to Loki's voice in the back of his head again, whispering lies and twisting his dreams into nightmares, or see the ghostly faces of the people he's murdered at SHIELD's command floating behind his eyelids.
It'll be good, and Agent Barton has learned not to hope for anything more.
So no one's more surprised than Clint is when he finds himself being hauled upright by a hand clothed in a suspiciously familiar cut of suit, rising to his feet in a place that looks remarkably like a hotel lobby tiled completely in white marble. A quick sweep of the place with his sharp gaze, so habitual that he doesn't realize he's looking for threats and potential escape routes till after he does it, shows lines of receptionists behind long counters against the walls, slowly chewing through a mass of trickling souls, and in the center is a great big forties-style elevator, the kind with no solid door, just the locking gates that you pull across and latch in the center -
And then he laughs in startlement, because the elevator's gates? They're pearly. Well, fuck him running.
"I'd appreciate it if you watched your mouth here, Agent," smiles the suit at his shoulder, and Clint turns and is arrested by the sight: Phil Coulson, large as life and twice as mischievous, grinning like the cat that ate the biggest canary ever known to mankind. He's got the suit on, of course (even death can't take away the suit, it's part of who Coulson is, part of the residual image left in the minds of everyone around him) but it's pure white from head to toe now, and Clint can't decide if he looks more like a bridegroom or a gigolo, but it looks good on him. Of course, there's a few additions to the ensemble - Clint really can't fail to miss the shiny white wings, every feather so precisely aligned that you could calibrate a T-square off of them, or the decidedly steely-looking halo. It's not the kind of halo you see in cartoons and kids' books, this fucker is sharp, this is the kind of halo that Xena the Warrior Princess would weep in respect and gratitude to be allowed to throw around as her chakram.
Agent Coulson looks like a modern-day archangel, a creature of both battle and gravity, and it fits like he was always meant to be that way. Clint can't help but grin and haul the man close for a bear-hug, and if he can't resist messing up the clean lines of those feathers while he's as it, well fuck he's dead, who's going to give the first damn?
"You look great," he says, grinning so hard his face hurts (dimly, he feels the burn of the bullet in the back of his ribcage, but the pain is faint and far away) and he steps back to re-appraise this latest incarnation of Phil Coulson. The former agent himself tilts his head a bit, studies Clint from head to toe.
"You've been better," says Phil in that deceptively mild tone, the one that Clint heard all the time when some punk-ass mook had landed a blow or two and meant that said mook had better hope that Coulson wasn't the one doing their interrogation. Natasha had, one time in Venice when they were drunk as hell on potato vodka on a rare night of leave, compared Coulson laughingly to a swan guarding cygnets, brooding over his agents like a mother hen with her chicks; that Phil now has the bright, clean wings to match this mental image nearly has Clint bursting out into hysterical laughter, despite the slow ache in his chest and the tears in his uniform.
(The attack had been sudden, a gunman flanking their position in a quadrant they'd thought they already cleared; Clint had seen sunlight flashing off the rifle's muzzle just in time to make a choice, interpose or counterattack; he threw himself at Natasha with no thought to his own safety or even for sound tactical judgment, acting on instinct and nothing more. He remembered the bullet hitting his back, remembered hitting the ground with Tasha beneath him, remembered the blood roaring in his ears and the bellowing of his teammates, rising all around him like the wrath of kings -
The whud-whud-whud of chopper blades, not the sound of them precisely, but the percussion of their force landing in his flesh like blows, and someone was yelling at him and he was sure it was very important that he pay attention, but somehow he just - couldn't focus -)
Barton shrugs, the motion feeling surprisingly stiff on a frame accustomed to movements that flow like water. "I'm sure the others got 'em. Now, what I want to know is -" and he gestures grandly, encompassing the whole of the lobby of the Heavenly Arms Hotel, "what the fuck am I doing here?"
"Clint," says Phil mildly, one brow quirked at the archer's choice of language, but there isn't enough reproach in his tone to merit an apology, so Clint doesn't even try one.
"I don't believe in any of this, you know that. I know you did, but -" But Coulson wasn't a field agent in the same sense that Hawkeye was; he didn't spend days on end sixty stories in the air only to shoot some poor bastard in the throat for poking his head for a cigarette after pissing off the wrong sort of people. The most strenuous thing Coulson had done in his daily career was mediate for Director Fury - which, while that would probably have induced PTSD in a lesser agent than Coulson, was admittedly a little less traumatizing than the blood spatter and quiet killings that were Clint's everyday existence. There's room in Phil's brain for hope and faith and all the good things in human existence.
And then there's Clint, and Clint has done things and there's not very many of them that he's proud of - even fewer that some almighty father figure might look down upon with approval.
But Phil's already shaking his head, smiling in that infuriating way that means he knows a secret that you don't. "Self-sacrifice is practically a Get Out Of Jail Free card, up here. That's just how it works; I ought to know," and the smile turns self-deprecating, which only makes Clint's chest hurt more. He rubs at it with the heel of his palm, but the ache doesn't go away, or even ease.
"So, that's it for me, then." He doesn't move, staring at the gates on the old-fashioned elevator, slowly realizing that he can't feel his own heartbeat under his fingers, and the realization is like icewater down his back. Coulson, smiling, claps a hand to Barton's shoulder, gestures for the elevator.
"Pretty much, Agent. You can go on up whenever you're ready." There's a certain cadence in the way that Phil says it that has Clint's eyes sliding sideways to study the older man's face; Coulson's expression hasn't changed, but there's a twinkle in those damn eyes, and Clint's seen that look before, knows what it portends.
"You're testing me," he accuses, staring at the dead Agent with disbelief. "Here and now, of all places -"
Coulson doesn't answer, but he doesn't have to, because Clint's busy remembering what it was that he was supposed to be paying attention to, in the chopper.
("Clinton Barton, you stupid son of a bitch, you listen to me, you do not have my permission to die -")
"What about Natasha?" It falls from his lips like rain in the desert, suddenly and without warning, and Coulson's smile widens just a fraction at the corners and Clint knows that it's the right question to be asking. What Clint has mentally dubbed the Arch-Agent takes a breath and lets it out, puts his hands in the pockets of his suit jacket; he's not looking at Clint anymore when he answers, but there's no doubt about who it's addressed to.
"What about her? She's safe and sound, back in the real world, if that's what you're worried about -"
"You know it isn't," and Clint can't help but growl it out, and the burning is worsening in his chest, makes him press both of his palms over the spot where it hurts the most. "Does she get to go up the shiny white elevator too? Or am I going to spend the rest of eternity in a bar in Heaven waiting for her to show up?" Coulson just stands there in silence, doesn't even look at the archer, and Clint knows the answer without having to ask for it again. Clint snarls wordlessly, spins on the balls of his feet to put his back to elevator and angel both. "Some fucking reward that is, Phil! It isn't Heaven if Tasha's not welcome in it. I think I'd rather go to the other place, if I've got a damn choice."
And as soon as he says it he feels Coulson's hand on his shoulder again, looks up to see the Agent smiling that I-know-all-your-secrets smile again, flicking his wings behind him as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
"You know, Clint, I had a feeling you might say that."
xxxxx
When he woke up, it was in a clean white bed in a clean white room tucked under clean white sheets, and Natasha was dozing in the chair at his bedside, still in her suit, her hands wrapped around one of his and her hair looking like she'd been caught up in a tornado. Outside, through the open door, Clint could see Steve in plainclothes, pacing in the corridor; Tony and Bruce were shoulder to shoulder in their own civilian outfits, seated on the plastic chairs bolted against the wall, a StarkPad shared between them and arguing quietly over something that was doubtlessly science-y and so far over Clint's head that he'd need a ladder to even read most of the terminology in one go. The monitors around him were beeping softly in time with his heartbeat, and the whole damn room stank like bleach and disinfectant.
Bless the SHIELD-employed doctors, though - they must have had him on some serious painkillers, because he didn't feel a thing, other than goofy.
"Hey," and he didn't even recognize his own voice when he said it, he sounded like a bullfrog caught on the wrong side of a pickup truck, but the reaction was immediate - Natasha's head shot up from where it lolled against the chair, Steve stopped pacing in the hall, Tony and Bruce stopped their science-bros thing they had going on long enough to stare at him in a mixture of surprise and relief.
"Don't you 'hey' me," said Natasha, imperious and stern, and Clint knew he would get his standard-issue ass chewing later, because right that second Nat was doing everything in her power not to cry. It made his heart rate spike with alarm, enough that Bruce had to waylay the nurse and reassure her, no, the Agent in the room wasn't in danger of immediate cardiac complications. Steve had made himself a living wall in the room's doorway, arguing with Tony in gradually rising voices about giving the Agents a few moments before bursting in on them to congratulate Hawkeye on cheating Death yet again. Clint didn't care about it enough to eavesdrop. "We thought we'd lost you there, for a minute," she noted, a frail smile on her face, and what she really meant was I thought I'd lost you and he really can't argue with that one.
"For a minute there, you did," he smirked lopsidedly up at her, and she was already rolling her eyes at the movie reference when Stark and Steve started yelling at each other in the doorway, while Bruce was alternating between calming down the hospital staff and calming down his teammates, and then Clint could hear Thor booming a little ways down the corridor about the wondrous glass boxes that dispensed snack foods and hot beverage upon command, and Clint started laughing and couldn't stop, even though the magic thing that got through the armor of his painkillers was, apparently, hysterical giggling.
"Are you alright?" Nat asked, looking at him with a brow-fret mixture of worry and confusion; Clint, wheezing helplessly, shook his head and relaxed into the pillows, heedless of the cacophony in the hallway behind Natasha. It would all work itself out; he couldn't quite muster faith for God and angels and all that crock, even now, but he had faith enough in the ridiculous people that made up their ridiculous team.
And that was enough, for now.
"Just another day in Paradise," he grinned, squeezing her fingers with his own. "Phil says hi."