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Kate's no stranger to flashbacks. Her memory ambushes her at the worst times, guerilla warfare tactics, even when there's nothing around to trigger it, so it should come as no surprise that right now she's distracted.
The first time she met Clint Barton had been traumatizing, and he had been so intimidating – she'd thought he was dead, after all, but there he was, very much alive, while she stood there, feeling very much unworthy of the name she'd been given. He had seemed larger than life, the embodiment of some ideal she was trying to live up to. Which, yeah, seems laughable in retrospect. Sure, she'd always been a little bit intimidated by him, a little bit nervous around him, and the tiniest bit in need of his approval, but it was Hawkeye that did that to her. Clint Barton she could handle, no problem.
Back in the here-and-now, though, Kate's not the sixteen-year-old with a hell of a lot to prove anymore. Back then, quit had been a dirty word, until she'd realized that sometimes moving on was the better option.
Moving on. Certainly a euphemistic phrase. Really, though, she doesn't regret it. Not too often.
Anyway, Clint Barton is sitting on Kate's couch, and considering she hasn't seen or spoken to him in at least three years, it's more than slightly unexpected. And awkward. He keeps looking at her like he's puzzling over her face. She looks older, she knows. He looks exactly the same.
There are a thousand questions Kate wants to ask, one of which, burning somewhere behind her eyes, isn't so much a question for Clint as it is a question for the universe at large and it is something like how come he's the only one who's looked for me? And that's not fair, it's not. It's her fault as much as it is theirs, the rest of her old teammates.
Kate doesn't ask that question.
Another question Kate can't shake is if he wanted to see me, why'd it take so goddamn long? She has no intention of saying that out loud, but her mouth apparently doesn't get the memo and the question comes spilling out before she has a chance to swallow it back down. She grimaces. Can't just go saying things like that, Katie, not out loud, makes you look all broken up inside. She isn't. She's okay. She wonders if Clint would believe her.
Clint takes a second to respond and the words he chooses are, "Maybe you're a hard girl to find."
Kate can't help but laugh at that, except it's less of a laugh and more of a scoff, no mirth in it. She is feeling altogether bitterer than she expected. "Not exactly in deep cover here."
And Clint just smiles and shrugs and makes the question evaporate. "You been keeping up with your old friends?" he asks, and he knows the answer, Kate is sure he does.
The truth is this: Kate hasn't spoken to any of the former Young Avengers, not one, in years. It wasn't immediate, it took a few months for them to fall apart, but the group was so fractured and fragmented Kate couldn't help but see the holes. The missing pieces. The ones that remained weren't enough to cover up the ones that didn't. It hurt knowing that she'd be the only one who was really alone – Billy, Teddy, Tommy, they couldn't avoid each other, at the very least because they all lived under one roof. But soon enough, Kate went off to college, and it never got easy but it was easier with a little bit of distance between them.
So, no, Kate doesn't keep up with them, not by talking, but she does scour the internet looking for them more frequently than she'd like to admit, and no, it wasn't surprising that Tommy was the one who couldn't give up the uniform. Sometimes she sees pictures of him cheesing for the camera and he's a hero and she's – she's proud of him. Something like that. If you'd have asked her way back when, she probably wouldn't have guessed that if it came down to one of them still wearing spandex and fighting the good fight, it'd be Tommy. A little later, maybe, it would have seemed pretty obvious. He always needed it in ways the rest of them didn't.
Kate doesn't answer him in paragraphs. She shakes her head a little, says, "No. Not really."
There's a pause, Clint nods and leans back into the couch, very casual, very relaxed, but Kate can see the tension in his jaw.
Kate speaks again before he gets a chance. "You're not here to try to pull me out of retirement, are you?"
"Nah," he says. Then he looks at her and tilts his head. "Uh, not really."
Kate groans and drops her head back. "No." She knew it. She fucking knew it. Nobody would ever come talk to her as Kate Bishop, no, they all just want their mini-Hawkeye back. "No, no, no," she repeats.
"Kate, you haven't listened to me yet."
"You haven't said anything."
"Fair enough. You wanna get straight to the point, I can do that."
Kate's still got her head leaning on the back of the couch, she just lets it roll to the side, gives Clint this look that she hopes says I'm listening, but nothing you can say will sway me.
"Tommy Shepherd," Clint says, "In his infinite wisdom, may have gotten himself captured by some very dangerous people."
Kate's mouth forms a little o.
"Yeah, I figured you'd want to know about that."
Kate's hand goes to her forehead, she is – she is considering, which is more than she planned to allow herself. "He's –"
"He's alive, far as we know."
Clint is studying her face again, and Kate can just tell he's feeling inappropriately proud of himself. Now is not the time, she wants to tell him. This is just one huge terrible idea, she knows that. They don't really need her. Let other people rescue him. "Yeah," Kate says, despite herself. "Whatever. I'm in."
-
The Tommy Shepherd Rescue Squad consists of Kate and Clint and Teddy Altman, which Kate is only mildly surprised about and then, once she thinks about it, she's more surprised that he's there alone. So she asks him, and Teddy replies, "Billy's not – he doesn't really trust himself to do magic anymore. Said he didn't need the temptation and he had the utmost faith in whoever was sent to rescue his brother, then he huffed and puffed at me for deciding to go but –" He shrugs. "You know."
"Doesn't sound like him," Kate says.
"Yeah. Well." Teddy's only just gone full Hulkling, and he's rolling his shoulders, cracking his knuckles, looking altogether uncomfortable in the form, which is just one of many things that reminds Kate how very different things are now. In the past, Teddy seemed to spend just as much time shifted as not. "None of us are really ourselves anymore, huh?"
Teddy could make things awkward for Kate, but, bless his heart, he doesn't. It's really not so bad, it gets almost comfortable again, and they smile and joke and it's just like old times except the ways it isn't.
Clint's a strange addition, but Kate thinks she understands. He'd always seemed to believe in them, at least since he showed up not-dead, and whatever, someone's got to save Tommy's stupid ass, it might as well be Clint. Of course, he's probably still convinced that a little bit of hero work is going to get them back in spandex in no time flat.
Kate hates to disappoint him, but she's not going to make firing arrows into the sunset (or Doombots, or alien invaders) a regular thing again, no matter how charming the bastard is. Clint is a grown man, Kate's pretty sure he can deal with disappointment.
Clint had promised the mission would be straightforward, and it is. They don't have to do much besides shoot and punch and kick and they're through. Kate wonders who these people are and what they want and then decides she doesn't care, she just wants to get Tommy and get out before she gets too used to the feeling of the bow in her hand again.
They find Tommy unconscious, drugged to the gills, and half-naked, but by that point there's pretty much no one else conscious to stop them from taking him.
-
Billy and Teddy have an apartment, Kate learns. Tommy has his own. They're in the former because it's cleaner and nobody really wants to leave Tommy alone. He keeps insisting he's fine, but he's at the very least exhausted and hungrier than usual, moving slower than Kate's ever seen.
Kate could leave, but it's summer and she has no real excuse, and it's much less uncomfortable than it could be. Billy's a little prickly, but Kate knows he'll get over it. In truth, she missed them. It feels good, being around them, not like it felt when the wounds were still fresh, like so many things were missing.
Tommy tries to sleep on the floor, but Kate refuses and they end up sharing the pull-out couch, at which point Tommy wiggles his eyebrows and Kate punches him in the arm and asks Teddy if they have enough extra pillows to build a suitable wall in between them.
Tommy falls asleep early and wakes up later than Kate does. Once he's actually awake, she grins at him, says, "I figured you'd had enough rest."
Tommy says, "I wasn't unconscious the whole time."
"Why didn't you –"
"Power dampeners," he says. He's drumming his fingers on his thigh, tapping his feet. He gets up and walks to the kitchen, Kate hears cabinets opening and food being shuffled around and cabinets closing again and Tommy doesn't come back into the living room. Kate sighs. Stupid, she tells herself. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
It should be easier, she thinks, remembering how everyone ticks, how to make them smile. Tommy should be so simple, but she barely knows him anymore. She's going to fix it. She has to.
-
Kate figures there's no harm in staying in New York for the summer.
She takes up temporary residence on Tommy's couch, and she wakes up every time he comes in exhausted from patrol but high on adrenaline. More than once she has to pin him down so she can tend to his wounds, and he says, "Well, if you'd go on patrol with me, you could keep me safe," smiling his asshole's smile.
She glares at him and pokes him in a particularly nasty bruise.
Clint calls her and asks her to come shoot with him a few times, and she says no every time, but eventually she goes anyway. She's out of practice and it's obvious, but Clint doesn't really say anything about it beyond laughing a little when she makes a particularly egregious error. Which she guesses is nice of him.
"It's like you never left," he says, grinning. Kate scowls at him. So much for being nice.
Still, it's nice. She doesn't associate him with her past as strongly as the others – he wasn't always there, not enough to make it hurt now and just enough to be comfortable.
She can't help it. She asked the question once, but she has to ask again. "Why didn't you come find me sooner?"
Clint freezes. "Didn't we already have this talk?"
"Not really."
"You want the truth?"
Kate gives him a pointed look.
He shrugs. "I was pissed off."
"You were… pissed off."
Clint lowers his arm and turns toward her. "Can we not –"
Kate has already put her bow down and folded her arms across her chest. She needs to hear it; she asked the question. "Clint."
He sets his bow down too and pushes his fingers through his hair. "Okay, Kate, fine. I was pissed off. I thought you were better than that."
Kate feels something burning in the pit of her stomach. It might be anger. She doesn't speak.
"You just quit. Fuckin' quit. And I'd been so sure you weren't like that. I let you keep my bow. My name. Because I knew you weren't just – just some kid, a decent fighter, pretending to be a superhero while it was easy. So when you quit, I thought I had been wrong."
Clint is talking to her shoes. Kate is seething.
"That's what I thought, Kate. At first. It was stupid. I got past it."
"You got past it?"
"Stop repeating everything I–"
"Jesus, Clint, if you got past it, why didn't you visit me?" Kate wants to move, standing still is killing her, but there's nowhere she can go except away and she's not done with this, not yet. So she's pacing back and forth, clenching and unclenching her fists. "If you cared enough to be mad in the first place, you should have come. I was lonely, Clint. It would have been fucking nice to see a familiar face."
"Yeah, well." He rubs the bridge of his nose, then gestures at her. "That was all you, wasn't it?"
She bites her lip almost hard enough to break the thin skin. "Don't."
Clint sighs. "That was – I didn't mean. I mean. I –"
"That's not even the point." She's closer to him now, but she backs up again. Don't freeze, Kate, speak. "You're trying to bring me back now, drag me back into it, because you think you know what's good for me better than I do."
"No. Kate, Katie, that's not it."
"You never once thought that maybe I knew what I needed. That I quit because I thought I'd be better off – you were pissed at me because I proved your judgment wrong."
"Kate." He takes a step forward. She takes one more step back. "Can you just let me –"
"No." Kate knows she should stop, cool down, and listen, but she's listened enough and she hasn't let herself be angry in so long and she's tired of people thinking they know her better than she does. "I don't know why it's so important to you, but I –" She glances at her bow. It felt so good in her hand just a minute ago. "I can't. Okay? I'm not sure what kind of a person you think I am, but I'm not."
Clint is leaning against the wall, pretty much deflated. He looks at the floor, at Kate's face, back at the floor. He doesn't speak. It's unsettling, so she leaves.
-
When Kate gets back to Tommy's apartment, he's suited up for patrol. Kate is still a little impressed that his suit is the same it's always been, even though he's definitely had to get new ones – he's grown since sixteen. And yet. The same suit. Same name. She figures there are just some things you have to hold onto.
He's about to leave when she walks in, but he frowns when he sees the look on her face. "Hey, I thought you were with –"
She cuts him off with a glare and collapses on the couch. Tommy chews on the inside of his cheek and glances back and forth from Kate to the door, shrugs, and plops himself down on the couch beside her. "You know, I've got a kitchen full of illegally obtained liquor, an Xbox, and Netflix. I'd make other suggestions, but I'm still a little bit terrified of you."
Kate looks at him for a moment. She almost says Christ, Tommy, are you being sincere? Do mine ears deceive me? Instead, she says, "You have Netflix?"
"Well, I don’t pay for it, but Teddy gave me the password, alright?" He smiles. "I'll watch whatever stupid shit you wanna watch. Won't ask you what the hell you're moping about. This is a one-time offer, Kate, get it while it's hot."
"Will you take the damn suit off?"
Tommy blinks, then looks down, pulling on the material. "Ah." He's gone and back in seconds, dressed in a t-shirt and pajama pants. "Better?"
"Yeah," Kate says. "I'm gonna change, you break out the libations."
"Yes ma'am," he says, disappearing into the kitchen with a salute. Kate breathes slowly. It's gonna be okay. She thinks it will, anyway. Friends. She has friends, and they don't hate her.
It's nice. For a while, she'd had trouble believing it.
-
Sometime in the middle of the night, more than a little bit drunk, Kate looks at Tommy and asks, "Am I a terrible person for quitting?"
And Tommy just looks back at her and studies her face for a second. "Nah," he replies, patting her on the shoulder. "You're a terrible person for talking during the movie."
She isn't sure what to do with that, so she just laughs.
-
Kate has a good week of calm (which she enforces by ignoring all of Clint's phone calls, which, to his credit, aren't that numerous). She knows it won't last. Besides, her anger has faded some and she'll have to suck it up and talk to him soon.
Of course, the decision on when doesn't get left up to her – it's one night when Tommy's out and there's a knock on the door. Kate squints to see through the peephole and then groans, cracks the door open and says, "You know, this isn't my apartment. It'd probably be rude of me to just let people in here while Tommy's not here."
"C'mon, Kate, I brought you something. Let me in?"
She narrows her eyes.
"Please?"
Sighing, Kate pulls the door open. Clint enters the room, smiling. He's holding – well, it's a pizza box.
Kate looks at him incredulously. "This is what you brought me?"
"It's a peace offering," he says.
"Wow." Kate lifts the box's lid. "Pepperoni. You really spared no expense, huh?"
Clint rolls his eyes a little more dramatically than necessary. "It's pizza. It's the international symbol for – I don't know. Something. Should I have spelled out an apology in sausage?"
Kate swallows a laugh. "Fine. This is your ticket into the apartment." She places her hands firmly on her hips. "As far as an apology goes, you might need to try a little harder."
Clint nods, sits down on the couch and pats the cushion beside him. Kate sits as far away from him as physically possible. "Oooookay," he says.
Kate folds her arms across her chest.
"I'm sorry," he begins. "The other day, I – I was talking out of my ass, I didn't say anything the way I meant to."
"Mhm. And what did you mean to say?"
"What I meant to say –" He looks her straight in the eyes. Kate can see sincerity there, somewhere in all the blue. "Is that I hate not seeing you out there, and it's not because I think I know what's good for you. It's 'cause I'm scared you only quit because you thought you didn't deserve it."
Kate swallows.
"I just can't stand the idea of you being less than you can be 'cause you don't think you're good enough."
She's staring at him, studying his face as he speaks, and God, she's pretty sure it's not bullshit. She's not sure what to do with that.
"Kate, you gotta stop looking at me like that and say something."
Instead, she flips the pizza box open and takes a slice.
"Dammit, Kate," Clint says. "What do you want me to do?"
"Nothing," she mumbles over the pizza slice. "I believe you."
"Uh." He watches her chew for a second. "Okay?"
Wiping her mouth off, Kate looks back at him. "I'm sorry I freaked out at you. I'm in a weird place right now."
"Yeah. It's okay. I deserved it."
Kate shakes her head. "I don't know why I quit – I can't remember anymore. I blamed myself for – for Cassie. I hated myself for that. It wasn't my fault, I know it wasn't. She made a choice. Making it all about me wasn't fair to her, to her memory. I can see that, looking back."
Clint listens, his brow furrowed.
"I guess that's why I quit. But I don't remember. I started making up reasons afterward, I think. I wanted a normal life. It was bad for me. Because of Cassie, because of me, because of whatever. I don't know. I don't think it's important anymore, why I quit."
Clint asks, "What are you gonna do?"
"I don't know." Kate's hands are in her lap, holding the half-eaten pizza slice. "The whole thing, after being away from it for so long – I don't know how to make a new decision. Sticking with an old one is so much easier."
"It's your choice," he says. "Only yours. Whatever you do, I've got your back. I mean that – Kate, look at me."
She does.
"I mean it. Whatever you decide."
Kate bites her lip and nods. "Yeah. Yeah, okay."
"Wait, no –" Clint puts his hand on Kate's, pinning her pizza to her lap. "I forgot. The pizza, the apology – there's a condition."
Kate rolls her eyes. "You can't retract your apology, Clint, jeez."
"Sure I can." He smiles. "You gotta promise, whatever you do, you don't just cut all ties again. You gotta, I dunno, visit or something. I don't think your friends could take it."
"Uh-huh."
"Aaaand I might be a little upset." He shrugs. "Just a little."
Kate jerks her hand out from under his. "I promise," she says, and takes another bite.
-
"For the past few years, I haven't allowed myself the luxury of changing my mind," Kate says. "I don't know how to make a decision on this."
"So you called a conference?" Teddy's smiling at her over his ice cream.
"I just wanted to talk to you guys about it." Kate and the others are spread around Teddy and Billy's living room, and the guys are all looking at her. Waiting, she figures, for her to ask them a question, but she doesn't have a question to ask. She just wants to talk. Quietly, she says, "I don't know what I want."
"You wanna be Hawkeye," Teddy says matter-of-factly. He points his spoon at her. "If you didn't, you wouldn't even be considering it."
Kate sighs. Of course she wants to. She can't even deny it at this point – she misses the adrenaline rush, the feeling of accomplishment, the feeling that she was doing something that mattered. The question isn't whether she wants to, it's whether she should. And then, more than that – "I don't want to do it alone."
"Hey!" Tommy makes a face. "I'm still here."
"Tommy."
Billy groans. "So, is that what this is about? You wanna be back in costume, but you have to drag us back into it first?"
Teddy looks at him. "Billy, that's not –"
"Sorry." Billy pushes his hair off his forehead and casts his eyes downward. "I can't do it, Kate. Not like you 'can't do it', I really – I really can't."
"Billy." Teddy lifts Billy's chin, tilts his head toward him and says, "Billy, I trust you with my life, and I know they do too."
Kate nods solemnly. Tommy rolls his eyes, says, "Yeah, yeah." (He is too far from Kate for her to punch him.)
Billy's got his eyes closed. He says, "Well, I don't."
"Wait, Ted," Tommy pipes up. "What's your angle on this? Or are you just gonna go along with whatever –"
"Shut up, Tommy," Kate says, scowling at him.
"No, it's – it's fine." Teddy's back to his ice cream while Billy's got his knees pulled up to his chest, staring blankly at nothing in particular. Teddy keeps talking, he says, "I don't know. I miss it. I just can't imagine doing it without Billy, that's all. Doesn't feel right." He puts his hand on Billy's shoulder and squeezes. What Billy's face does might be the beginnings of a smile, but Kate can't say for sure. "Besides, Kate," Teddy says. "What about school?"
Kate had considered that, but it's been at the back of her mind since she really started thinking about all of this. "I dunno. I guess I'd transfer." It's probably immature of her, but at the moment, it seems unimportant.
"Hey, well, you guys know how I feel about this," Tommy says. "And if you dumbasses did get back in the game, I guess I wouldn't mind you tagging along with me."
Kate laughs, Teddy laughs. Billy smiles a little bit.
They have time. A decision can wait – all that Kate knows is that it feels right to be with them, her friends, not her former teammates. If she has them, whether or not they're dressed in costumes and fighting supervillains, it's okay, she thinks. It's enough.