That one-eyed bitch.

Clint gave her a big smile. Of course she would’ve wanted to go get him. Their friendship ran back to their first days at SHIELD, it had taken Clint so little to go from not letting himself care for people, to completely decide he would be alright with dying for his friends. He had been glad it wasn’t Bekah knocking on his door, he didn’t think he could look her in the eyes after what happened. 

“You should say ‘that’s a super bitchin’ robot arm you’ve got there, Bek.’”  She offered, “Or something to that effect.  I mean, it’s totally up there with the boomerang arrow for acts of genius.”  She winked, “Plus you can’t accidentally shoot yourself in the thigh with this.  Yet.”  She had considered weapons, yes.  But she didn’t really think there was a call for them for her.  If she was to make one for another agent, yes, but she could deal with the average anti-mutant asshole with hand to hand combat easily.

He smiled back, elated by her reply. Cake’s eyes roamed over her face, writing every inch of it to his memory. His mother was beautiful and he wanted to remember this moment for the rest of his life.

“The facility you were in was blown to pieces, a little closer to the point of impact, and I don’t think there’s anything that could have been done.”  She said honestly, “I came across you on salvage,” on her scavenging missions, she was always accompanied by someone more willing and able to engage uninvited guests in a fight.  Most were of the former SHIELD agent persuasion, field guys who had no clue of the value of things she had come across.  That said, she had been a little more sneaky about acquiring Agents Cheesecake and Beefcake, even the most troglodytic jockstrap of SHIELD’s field agents would recognise broken androids.  Since everyone who went to SHIELD Academy knew about the Ultron incident in the 80s, there was a healthy level of fear of artificial intelligence among the agency.

Cake squeezed her hand lightly and leaned into her touch, smiling before he wrapped an arm around her and pulled her into a warm embrace, memorizing her heartbeat as he murmured, “Mom.” That was who this woman was to him, she brought him back to life, made him better, she was his mother. “I’m feeling fine, more then fine, actually. All systems are fully operational. The nanites are regulating my body temperature and my emotion regulator is working perfectly.”

As she embraced him she was flooded with emotions, the most prominent of which was love.  Because yes, she had begun with the desire to simply find out if she could actually rebuild an android, and create an AI of her own, but she had lovingly crafted Cake over months.  She had given him her knowledge, her values, while still creating something wholly unique.  And as he called her “Mom” she realised that that was what she had really done, created a child.  Her child. 

Only seconds after the progress bar had reached 100%, Cheesecakes eyes fluttered open only to be closed slightly into a squint as he adjusted to the light, which didn’t take that long. The android sat up, gathering his bearings and run a self diagnostic. Upon finding that he was fully functional and slightly altered, he looked around, taking in his surroundings.

“Well you never know, you could just be saying it to take pity on me. I am all broken right now,” he winked. His fingers trailed over her arm when she got comfortable. Everything was catching up to him now, he was sore and exhausted, wanting nothing more than to fall asleep right that moment.  “If you go easy on me we can see what kind of trouble we get into,” he knew of course she wouldn’t go for it, but what kind of person would he be if he didn’t joke.

She made a face at him, “Tempting, but I’m not all that great at going easy on you, am I?”  She teased, tracing the line of his jaw with her nose before nipping his neck with her fangs.  “I don’t think I should risk it.”  She kissed him again, slowly, lovingly, not really wanting to get up but knowing she had to go get the first aid kit.  

It was like a weight lifted off of his chest when she said it back, he couldn’t help but smile.  “You don’t have to say it just because I did,” he muttered, carefully taking her hand in his. 

“When have you known me to say anything I don’t mean?”  She quirked an eyebrow at him, wriggling on his lap.  She slowly arranged the way she laid down with him, so she wouldn’t put pressure on anything tender.  “Although, I did imagine that when I told you,” she leaned up and kissed his forehead, “I thought you would be a little less incapacitated.”  She smirked and kissed him slowly.  “But we can get to that later.”

Clint tried not to dwell in the fact that this was his first hug in four years. For someone like him, someone who spend his childhood building walls only to have them shatter as soon as he realized that being broken and having a past you’ll rather forget didn’t mean you couldn’t the future brighter. Someone who raced to hug his colleagues after a particular tough mission, Clint Barton, too emotional to be a spy, had been hard to be away from his friends. But it was also his friends the ones that gave him strength to stay away for so long, to keep them safe. “So they didn’t tell you I was coming back?” He held her tight and whispered a little sorry, but before he could properly answer her question, one he thought was more rhetorical than anything, he was taken aback by her arm. 

She shook her head, “If I had known they actually found you, I probably would have had them send me along.”  She imagined that she hadn’t been told because they weren’t sure if he would come back.  Neither Steve nor Tony would want to disappoint her like that.

His fingers trailed gently over her legs as he smiled.  “No concussion, just a broken nose.” He promised, although a little unnerved that that was her reply. What if he’d said it too soon? If she had a problem with it maybe he could blame it on the fact he’d almost died? Yeah, that would totally work. 

It really sank in that time.  She buried her face against his neck, her fingers sliding through his hair.  “I love you,” her voice was muffled by how close she wanted to be to him right now.

She let herself slide into his embrace, settling in his lap as she returned his kiss.  There was a slightly metallic taste that reminded her he had split his lip open.  She stroked her fingers along his spine as they held each other, and there was silence until he spoke.

Clint was trying his best to not let the overwhelming feelings of guilt take over him. All he had heard and read about since he came back to civilization, a running joke that seemed to be catching on as a way to make fun of him living on a farm with no communication, was how SHIELD had fallen. And as he learned more and more about it, he realized it had been both metaphorically and literally, as the images of the hellicarriers plummeting down to the Potomac danced around his brain. I should’ve been there, he told to himself over and over. He had devoted his life for SHIELD, just as Nat and Bobbi, he could not imagine what it was for them to experience this as it was happening. He could not imagine what Cap must have felt like, to learn that the thing that robbed him of so many years, of a life, was back. Not only back but it had embedded itself in the very institution that was supposed to help and protect. I should’ve been here. Now he was welcomed as a friend, as a colleague, why was no one screaming at him? Clint knew he deserved someone yelling at him, at least one person, he knew that leaving had been wrong, why was no one mad at him?

That certainly was a voice she didn’t expect to hear.  Bek turned to confirm what she had heard, and a wide smile spread over her scarred face.  The music automatically dropped to a volume they could talk over, and she seized the archer in a tight hug.  If he was paying close enough attention, he would be able to feel that her right arm was much harder than the left beneath the sleeves of her coat.  The arm she had picked out today was decorated in white enamel and pink painted roses, like a teacup you would expect to find at your grandmother’s house.  She pulled back from the hug and shoved his shoulder with her natural hand, “You made me worry, you butt!”

“And that’s just one of the very many reasons I keep you around, baby.” He smiled softly. She was honestly entirely too good to him.  His eyes slid shut as she kissed him, hand resting on her hip. And before he really knew what was happening he let out a grunt of pain as she set his nose. At least he wasn’t expecting it.

He opened his mouth to argue; he had quite a few meetings tomorrow and he was going to feel the unrelenting guilt of not going to them in the morning, but she was right. There was no way he would make it to them tomorrow. It was better this way.

“What can I say?  I just know what’s good for you.  And I know you won’t look after yourself.”  She teased, silently wondering when would be the best time to fix his nose.  It might be better if he wasn’t ready for it, he might start overthinking the pain.  She could see blood and grit disappearing down the drain, and she was so glad that she was with him to help him tonight.  She knew how much trouble he would have had if he had been made to go to the hospital, she wasn’t even sure that he would have gotten the care he needed for his chest.