Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

it’s Tony who asks first, unsurprisingly.

“So, ‘Tasha,” he says, and Clint barely lifts his head to give him the customary glare for him calling her Clint’s ultra special nickname. Sue him, he’s nursing both a hangover and a concussion. “What’s the whole deal with Budapest?”

“I don’t know, Stark.” Natasha fishes a bottle of water out of the fridge, uncapping it with her teeth and spitting it into the garbage can. “What is the deal with Budapest?”

“I mean, you and Birdbrain here—”

“Hey!”

“—Have most definitely got a story or two about it. I mean, It’s like some inside joke! And I want in.”

Natasha raises an eyebrow at Clint in a silent question. He puts his head back down on the table, ignoring the Gatorade Nat slips his way, and waves his hand in a go-ahead.

“This is still classified,” Natasha says seriously, leaning on the table. Tony grins, leaning back and raising his glass. “I’m serious, Stark. Don’t even tell Coulson we told you. He’d kill us, and I’d like the organs I do still have intact.”

Tony raises his hands in surrender, rolling his eyes. “Fine, fine, I won’t tell.”

“Good,” Nat says, and glances over at Clint. “Budapest was Clint’s famous mission where he found me.”

—

At the absolute moment, the only thing running through Barton’s head is, eloquently, shit.

“Shit, shitshitshit–” Jesus fuck! In-and-out mission, Barton! See if the Widow girl is holed up in here, report back to Coulson, make the next move as planned, yada-yada-yada he really superly needs to stop zoning out during briefings—

And now he’s trapped in a warehouse, arrowless, being shot at by a probably barely-nineteen-year-old girl and how much fucking ammunition does she have, Oh my God! It’s like her guns are magic or something—

—

“Wait, do you actually have magic guns, Nat?”

“No, Tony, I don’t.”

“Aw, man.

—

This is a horrible day for Natalia.

She hadn’t planned to stay in the warehouse for more than two days, max. But then the men and women with the bird on their jackets came into town, and she was forced to stay. At least they’re tracking her with what looks to be some amatuer kid. He can’t be all that much older than her, at least, and anyone that isn’t her she can win against.

Seriously. A bow and arrow? Pathetic.

He doesn’t miss his shots, though. Or maybe he does. She can’t tell if he’s aiming to kill or not, but the issue is that if he’s not, she is. She doesn’t know who these people are, if they’re a faction under HYDRA or the Red Room or Weapon X or anything else, but they want her, and she’s not exactly about to let that happen. So she shoots at the now dreadfully-lacking-of-arrows boy huddled behind boxes in the upper corners of the warehouse, and ignores the feeling in the back of her mind that if this is someone like HYDRA, this boy doesn’t want to be here either.

—

Barton does not want to be here.

Out of arrows. Being gunned down by a child assassin. This is, like, his third-ever mission. Coulson is basically screaming in his ear over the comms, and it (along with probably several other factors) is making his head pound.

“Barton, get out of there! Leave the girl. She knows where we are, it’s too late, just figure a way out!”

Barton listens. He does! Really! Later in his life, Coulson will say that Clint didn’t listen to him, but he really seriously did. He just made a different choice.

He throws his bow out from behind the boxes. Winces as it splinters on the ground below, but the bullets stop. He hesitantly raises his hands, poking his head out from behind the makeshift wall. “Truce!”

He has no clue if this girl speaks English, actually. “Um.” Come on, language-basics-class, don’t fail him now. “Перемирие?”

Thankfully, the bullets don’t start up again. The girl stares at him with the brightest green eyes he’s ever seen, but holsters the gun.

”Agent Clint Barton!”

He yanks the comm out of his ear and steps on it.

—

Tony starts laughing hysterically, nearly tipping backwards. “You did not!”

“He did,” Nat confirms, the hint of a grin twisting her mouth. “Oddest thing I’ve ever seen. Also, your Russian was horrible.”

—

“Твой русский ужасен,” Natalia informs the blond boy, and he blinks wide brown eyes at her like he’s absolutely flabbergasted. She sighs, and switches to English. “Your Russian is horrible.”

“You can speak English!” The boy sighs in evident relief. “I do not remember enough Russian from that class Hill made me take, I can tell you that. Um. Truce?”

“Who are you?”

His mouth presses into a line. Glances away, back, eyes narrowing just barely. “Call me Barton.”

She considers him for a moment. “Romanov.”

He smiles, and it looks so amazingly genuine Natalia’s almost jealous. She doesn’t try to copy it. Somehow, she knows, this boy will know the difference between fake and real. “Hi, Romanov. Thanks for not shooting me to death.”

“That’s still on the table.”

His smile doesn’t falter. “Figured as much. Look, do you know who we are?”

“No.” Natalia isn’t sure she wants to know. This boy speaks English like his first and Russian like it’s off Google Translate, so he’s obviously not some trained child agent, but that could be a farce too.

“I’m with SHIELD. We’re an American organization. It’s, um… Security Homeland Itelligence something-something. They want me to kill you, and I’m not going to do that.”

He doesn’t, admittedly, sound like he’s lying. He holds out a hand– scarred, pale, slim– like an offering. “See, I’m a big believer in second chances. You’re not all bad, are you?”

His eyes search hers, looking for something she’s not sure she has anymore. But Natalia is cold. Probably getting sick. She is almost out of ammo, and food, and has almost no more money left to buy more.

She takes Barton’s hand, and his face melts from that serious look into another grin. “I’ll take you to Coulson. Here’s praying he doesn’t actually murder me for this one.”

—

Tony has his head in his hands, wheezing faintly. Clint sighs, banging his head on the table once.

“Clint!” Tony gasps. “This is, what, your first mission–”

“Second.”

”Second mission—”

Clint turns dead eyes at Nat. She sighs. “Get over it, Stark.”

“Fine, fine.” he giggles, wiping tears from his eyes. “Oh my god. Please, continue.”

—

”Clint Barton, what the hell goes on inside your brain?”

Clint is standing, almost at attention, in Coulson’s makeshift office in the safehouse they’re staying at. Natalia– he’s learned, over the course of the walk— stands almost behind him, duffel bag slung over her shoulder. He’s pretty sure it’s full of guns, but decided not to actually ask.

“I made–”

“The dumbest mistake I’ve ever seen–”

“An… educated guess?” he tries. Natalia snorts, and covers her mouth. Coulson glances at her, and she returns to blank-faced zoning out, looking to all the world like a brainwashed assassin kid. Coulson rubs the bridge of his nose, and then his temples, pressing his mouth shut.

“Agent Barton,” he hisses, “You went against direct SHIELD orders for this. You brought a Black Widow into a SHIELD safehouse. This is insane.”

“She’s not bad,” Barton argues, shoulders stiffening. “She’s–”

“A Black Widow!”

“Coulson!” Barton argues. “Come on. Fury said he believes in second chances. He let me join. Why won’t you give her a chance now?”

Coulson stares. Frowns. Rubs at his forehead, hisses out a swear. “Fine. Okay. We’ll take her back in. You talk to Fury and Hill about it. And you do what they say. They say she goes, she goes. End of story.”

Clint glances at Natalia. She shrugs, faking nonchalance with her hand white-knuckled around the strap of her bag.

“Fine.”

—

Tony stares at both of them with a dumbfounded expression. “Both of you are insane.”

“Yeah,” Clint says, sitting up more to take another sip of his Gatorade. “I know.”

“Why we’re agents,” Natasha agrees, tossing her water bottle in the trash. “But, y’know. You’ve got the story. Happy?”

“Yes.”

“It’s classified,” Clint reminds, idly fiddling with his necklace. “So remember— what happens in Budapest…”

Tony sighs. “Stays in Budapest.”

Chapter Text

When Clint comes home with the Winter Soldier, he thinks Steve’s going to suffocate him and Fury’s going to kill him.

Standing in Fury’s office with yet another brainwashed Russian assassin reminds him very keenly of being nineteen and terrified of getting kicked out of SHIELD. Hey, Nat’s even here too. She’s just lounging on Fury’s old and cracked leather couch instead of standing uncomfortably behind him. Instead, one Bucky Barnes is standing awkwardly behind him, the plates of his arm rhythmically opening up and closing in some sort of anxious tic. Steve is sitting with his head in his hands, fingers pressed into the corners of his eyes.

“Barton.”

“Fury.”

“Romanov,” Nat offers, stretching her arms above her head. “And Barnes.”

Barnes glances at her, head shifting just a little to look at her before focusing back on Fury. Clint does his best not to grin, biting firmly at the inside of his mouth and stuffing his hands in his pockets.

Fury presses his thumb and pointer to the bridge of his nose.

“Fury,” Clint tries, before Fury can actually say anything. “Just hear me out, okay–”

“Hear you out?”

Clint winces.

“Clint.” Fury sounds disappointed, tired, faintly angry, and he leans his hands on his desk. “The Winter Soldier? Seriously?”

“He–” Clint tries. Sighs. Rubs at his forehead, glances behind him at Barnes. “Just listen, Fury, please?”

—

Fury really needs to stop sending Hawkeye on killing-assassin missions. He should have learned his lesson by now, really, after how many years working with him? A lot. That’s all. A lot.

He’s also just one human guy. He isn’t a supersoldier, and chasing the Winter Soldier through the streets of Budapest (hey, isn’t that familiar), is getting tiring. His legs are screaming. His stomach is cramping. He’s been picking up arrows as he shoots them, but he’s definitely lost a few, and now he’s losing the Soldier too. Coulson’s talking calmly in his ear, and the rhythmic click of the keyboard over the comms is soothing, but still. He can’t chase forever.

“I’m sending out the Widow,” Coulson tells him, and Hawkeye gasps out something that’s probably an affirmative. Seconds later, Natasha’s line clicks into the comm, and he can hear the roar of her motorcycle underneath her voice.

“I’m below you. Hop on.”

Hawkeye doesn’t give himself time to think, time to plan. The edge of the next building is coming up fast, but still too slow for his comfort, and as the ledge comes up he switches tactics and tosses himself off the building into freefall.

Wind whistles past him sharp enough to whine at his hearing aids, but he can’t get his hand up far enough to turn them down. He rotates himself in the air as much as he can and

ow

He’s landed on Nat’s bike. Which is still moving. She reaches a hand back to hold on to him until he can get situated, and he wraps his arms around her stomach thankfully. “I love you.”

“Save it for when we’re home, buddy.”

The Soldier’s still ahead of them, but with Nat, Hawkeye can catch his breath and they can still get close. He rests his forehead on his partner’s shoulder and inhales deep, breathes out slow.

—

The mission is compromised, and the Soldier is swearing frantically under his breath as he runs.

The new roar of a motorcycle only serves to heighten his adrenaline, and he’d recognize that red hair anywhere, and the arrow still in his good arm is incredibly conspicuous as he ducks through a doorway.

He needs to get to the safehouse. He needs to get away. The man in purple is the one that stole Natalia and he has kill-on-sight orders and he doesn’t want to kill Natalia.

What if he didn’t?

The thought stops him in his tracks, for half a second, and that half-second is enough for Natalia and her friend to spot him. “Пиздец,” he mutters, and starts running again.

—

Natalia remembers the safehouse James is heading to as if from a different life. She can’t believe it’s still in rotation, really, after what Clint did.

They’ve gotten sloppy after all these years, she muses. Lost their best Widow, and now the Fist of HYDRA is on the loose. Maybe it’s something to do with Clint. Trouble magnet.

She doesn’t need to think about where she’s going, through these streets, even now. Can imagine Clint back when he was nothing more than a nameless, faceless enemy agent, chasing her on foot through the streets. Now the warmth of his body is pressed against her back, the gasp of his breath in her ear, balanced on the back of her bike.

She stops the bike in front of the apartment complex she knows James has to be in, and doesn’t check to see if Clint follows behind. Climbs the stairs, waits for Clint, and as soon as his bow is ready and loaded, she fires the gun under the lock and shoves the door to the safehouse open.

Nobody’s in there. She scans the room once, twice, and then Clint makes a choked little wheeze, and she curses in her mind.

“Drop the gun, Natalia.”

She does so slowly, leaves her gun on the floor and rises back up with her hands behind her head. “There’s no need for this.”

“I’m not going back.”

“We don’t want you to go back to HY–” Clint gasps as the metal arm tightens around his neck, and Natasha winces. “We don’t want to hurt you!”

“Hawkeye, shut up.”

“I’d listen to the girl.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Clint snips, and Natasha can feel their chances of bringing James back to SHIELD deteriorating by the second. “Can we just talk? Please? I’ll– put the bow down and stuff.”

James glares at him. But drops his arm, and the gun, and Clint sets his bow on the side table along with his quiver.

—

The Soldier stays as far away from them in the room as he can. Nat looks nothing more than faintly anxious, and Clint seriously hopes his expression is more cool uncaring nonchalance than the absolute terror he’s feeling at the moment. It’s probably absolute terror. He’s bad at his job like that.

His leg bounces once, twice, and he jabs his thumb into the skin between his thumb and pointer to give himself something else to focus on. Nat and the Soldier are exchanging the same moody death glare and he feels a little bit left out.

“As fun as this mental communication is– wow, and I thought one Nat-glare was bad– it’s getting boring. Um– Barnes?” Use his real name. Better safe than sorry. “We don’t want to hurt you.”

“But you will if required.” he interrupts, and Clint feels like yanking his hair out.

“No. Nat and I– we just want to help. You’re on the run, we’ll– we can– we can help you.”

He knows Natasha knows where this is going and he’s gonna suffer as soon as she gets him alone, but right now that doesn’t matter.

“With your memories and the brainwashing and everything. We helped Nat! It’ll–”

The Soldier cranes his head to look at Nat, ice-blue eyes dead and empty, and she tilts his head at him in a weird Russian spy way that makes him feel extremely left out. The Soldier frowns, the plates of his arm rippling, the fingers of his flesh hand twitching like he wants to pick his gun back up. Nat tucks her hair back out of her face and Clint wishes she was closer, wishes he could fix her hair for her, at least hold her hand–

—

“TMI, Barton.”

“Sorry.”

—

Natasha tucks her hair out of her face and Clint doesn’t think a single thought about that, grey-green eyes glancing between Clint and the Soldier in a look that’s not quite sad, but worried.

“SHIELD is safe,” she says gently, lacing her fingers together. “I’m not saying they will protect you. Chances are they won’t. You are a wanted criminal.”

The Soldier huffs in a way that doesn’t feel like a laugh, but isn’t quite angry. “Your friend is convinced they will.”

“They helped me. And he’s an optimist.”

“Nothing wrong with a little optimism!”

“You are not amusing,” the Soldier tells him, crossing his arms and leaning his weight on to one leg. “HYDRA infiltrated SHIELD before.”

“We got rid of them,” Natasha insists, mouth pressing into a thin line. “Just— Hawkeye’s right. He protected me once, we can help you.”

“Probably,” Clint interjects, and winces at the immediate glare. “I want to be honest! Just because we fixed you–”

“Natalia does not need to be fixed,” the Soldier rumbles.

“Fine. Okay. Just— please?”

—

The Director is pacing the office and the Soldier hopes he looks at least slightly less anxious than he looks. He stands at attention, doing his best to ignore Natalia splayed out across the couch with her head in the lap of a sad-looking blond man, even Barton standing in front of him with his arms crossed, arguing with the Director in a loud and almost whiny tone.

“Just listen–”

“I quit listening to you the first time you brought a HYDRA agent home! A Widow was bad enough– sorry, Natasha– but the Fist of HYDRA? Are you out of your damn mind?”

“Fury, he’s fine! He’s– we talked, he wants help, he doesn’t want HYDRA–”

“Did he tell you that?”

“Yes!”

The Soldier tries not to look visibly worried about how loud the voices are getting, but it’s hard to ignore. He glances at Natalia, but her cool and detached expression does little to soothe him. So he decides to talk.

“I don’t want HYDRA,” he admits as soon as the Director pauses for a breath, and the air in the rooms seems to drop multiple degrees. “I ran. They’ll— I’ll be put out of commision if I go back. I would like to stay here.”

The Director stares. The blond man raises his head, an expression of sad hopefulness twisting his features.

The Director rubs at his forehead and swears under his breath. “Holy fuck, Barton. Talk to Tony. See if he’ll give this guy a room.”

—

Natalia knocks on the door to Tony’s house, James and Clint in tow, and waits with her arms crossed for the man to swing the door open and blink at her.

“11:30 at night,” he grouses, rubbing at his eyes. “eleven-thirty. Are you serious?”

“How do you feel about letting the Winter Soldier stay at Avengers Tower?”

Chapter Text

They say his name’s Bucky. James Buchanan Barnes. A child soldier in World War II meant to oppose the Hitler Youth.

Natalia says they took that from him, Clint says they can get it back. Captain America avoids him at every turn, just looking sad whenever he sees him.

Tony and Bruce in the lab tell him not to worry about that. “He’s weird,” Tony says, waving a hand as he focuses on reattaching the wires inside of his metal arm. Bucky tries to ignore how weird the deadened feeling is, all his nerves detached, and he watches Bruce swirl odd chemicals in triangular beakers on a burner. “He loved you. Missed you a lot.”

“What was I to him?” Memories are coming back, slowly but surely, but not everything is fully clear just yet. He needs to ask questions a lot.

“His… kid, I guess. He’s just sad. Blames himself for what happened to you.”

“It wasn’t his fault.”

Bruce snorts, leaning to the side to make notes in a green pen in a notebook. “Try to convince him of that.”

‘He’ll be fine,” Tony assures. “Just give it time. You need to heal too.”

—

Clint likes to talk. Most of the time. Sometimes he yanks out his hearing aids and tosses them across the couch and curls up in a corner, trying to stave off a headache or overstimulation or one of those other big words Bucky’s therapists tell him. Natalia sits by him sometimes, but Natalia’s not here right now and Clint looks tired.

Bucky sits next to him. Tries to remember the videos he’s been watching, how to do this properly. He waves his hand to get Clint’s attention.

YOU OKAY?

Clint stares, a little taken aback. But nods. I FINE, he returns, sitting up a little more. HEADACHE. WHERE YOU LEARN THAT?

ONLINE.

Clint’s mouth twitches into a little grin. He looks a mix between grateful and still, surprised, but he’s smiling. Bucky likes that. He wants to see Clint smile again.

ONLY NATASHA KNOW HOW DO THAT, he says, scanning the room for where he tossed his aids. THAT SWEET.

I WANT LEARN, Bucky tells him, getting up to retrieve his hearing aids from across the room. YOU-FOR.

Clint makes a confused sound, craning to look at Bucky’s hands while he’s facing away. Bucky realizes his mistake and turns around, sticking the aids in his pocket to repeat his last sentence. Clint smiles, staring down at his hands like he’s trying not to blush. YOU NOT HAVE-TO. HARD LEARN.

I WANT LEARN.

Bucky sits back down and offers the hearing aids to Clint, waiting patiently as he puts them back in and fine-tunes the volume. As soon as they’re on right, Clint moves fast and surprises Bucky, who makes a startled noise as Clint presses their lips together. He’s laughing as they separate.

“I’ve wanted to do that for ages.”

“Do what?” Natalia asks as she enters the apartment, putting her bag down on the table and closing the door behind her.

“Kiss him.”

Bucky’s heart is racing, a little faster than it probably should be. Natalia grins, faintly amused, as she comes over to the couch. “Don’t mind if I do.”

She kisses Bucky once, and then Clint, who grins into the kiss and tries to deepen it, only to get lightly hit as she pulls away with a laugh.

“I’m surprised it took you that long.”

“Me, too– is he okay?”

Bucky, face red and breathing uneven, stutters his way through a reassurance. “Um– yeah, I– could you–”

“Again?” Natalia smiles, and Bucky remembers a little Russian voice and even redder hair and a warm voice calling him James. “If you insist.”

She leans down again and Bucky dispels the memory, focusing on the Natalia here and now. And, as another body settles its weight onto Bucky’s lap, the Clint here and now.