I Never Miss

He must have tripped a sensor, for as soon as he made it to the shed to confirm he’d followed the scent trail correctly, he could hear movement from the cabin adjacent to where he was.

Seemed his hunch had been correct, that the one he’d been hunting for would live away from a population. The scent matched the scrap of cloth given to him when he was at the drop zone; this was the one. Reed had his jaws open, attempting to get a clearer bead on the smells of the homestead when he was shot; this time with a projectile moving at a significantly faster speed than buckshot from a short barrelled shot-gun.

The arrow tip was clearly not made of scrap or milled steel, as it tore though his elastic flesh like a focused laser scalpel. Reed howled in pain, ivory teeth flashing brightly in the dim light of dusk.

The arrow had penetrated deeply into his side, just under the crux of his shoulder and ripped through his right lung before lodging firmly into his floating clavicle. Reed swayed briefly, ichor-like blood dripping from his lower jaw before steadying himself, hands flexing in barely contained violence.

Already his mutated body was knitting itself back together, the torrent of blood pouring from his shredded lung slowing to a trickle, while the arrow itself remained lodged in position, the fletching and a portion of the shaft the only thing visible.

A deep, rattling gurgle rumbled out of Reed’s throat, hot and angry.

Muscles coiling in anticipation, Reed leaped the short distance from the shed to the railing surrounding the front deck of the house, claws biting into the timber and scattering wood chips everywhere. The movement jarred the arrow lodged into him, slicing freshly healed sinew and viscera. With a roar, Reed swiped at the window, glass shattering into a thousand pieces, some burying deep into the purple black flesh of his hands. The blood that ran between his clawed fingers seemed to burn white-hot in comparison to the cold, bitter air.

The heat boiling inside him, that same burning ache he’d had since he’d lost everything but his name, reached its critical point. Pain blurred everything into a red haze, the entirely of his self, his very being balancing on a precipice that heralded change. He rushed towards that edge, towards the unknown, seizing on the thin chance his nightmare, the one that started all those years ago, might end. 

Through the broken fragments of the window, Reed thrust one arm though, claws hooking into cloth and flesh before pulling back, jaws tensing, a pained hiss slipping past glittering teeth. He choked on his words, his body too twisted and knotted to form anything but inhuman gurgles and snarls.

The growing part of him that was slowly clawing its way through the dense tangle of anger, pain and mutagens wanted to reason, to ask what the other man knew about the ones that held both of them in bondage, if he knew why he was being hunted.

But he was held back, yoked by the terrible experiments that had twisted him into this walking, nightmarish apparition of teeth and claws. The words would not come, no matter how hard he tried to force them out.

“Ss..top. Caaant. Ssstop.”

“H….” 

Shooting it clearly was a mistake. 

Clint had carefully aimed the shot with hopes of it being a clean and quick kill, to put... whatever it was out of its misery while keeping himself safe in turn. But when the beast stopped bleeding its eyes locked on him in a way that had Clint’s instincts scream to run. 

Bravado didn’t win against instinct when a wolf-bear-monstrosity was hurtling toward you at full pelt sounding like something from hell itself. 

Clint was quick on his feet, stealth no longer required meant his footfalls were heavy and raucous as he fled into his cabin to put some measure of barrier between himself and the beast. Every reinforced joint of the cabin seemed to groan in protest when its body slammed into it, a limb ripping through the glass faster than he could anticipate. 

Claws latched onto his right arm, biting through his layered clothes into skin while forcefully snapping him back toward the now-open window as he yelped in pain. Adrenaline and stress made his chest heave, his bow forgotten as he grasped at the hand — paw? — in desperation to get it out of him. He was too close and there were way too many teeth involved, the creature’s maw gnashing as its twisted sounds became more defined.

A cry for help.

Clint balled up his left fist and punched down on the joints of its fingers,  dropping like a sack as the claws pulled free of his arm. Glass be damned, he scrabbled across the floor, hissing in pain as he grappled for a specialised arrow in his quiver.

“C’mon man can’t help you if you’re tryin’ to eat me,” he mused aloud, his internal logic chastising him for attempting to engage in conversation with a would-be killer.  

“Get out of my house.” 

There it was. Clint grasped the textured fletch of an infrasonic arrow; his hearing was already damaged but this still wouldn’t do much good for it — but it might be enough to stun the creature. 

It was still light, despite instinct suggesting it was late into the evening. While Reed has not found the target he was looking for, the faint scent had led him to a small settlement of Tonsina. There, the scent was muddied by overlapping trails of smells, the light crust of snow and ice compacted down by constant use.

Reed glanced down at his elongated hands, claws sheathed so as to pad softly though the town. Strange, that the chilled soil was not causing him any trouble, the oily warm black tips of his fingers still flush with warm blood. That wasn’t the kind of thing he noticed anymore, but that little observation stuck in his mind. Had it always been like that? 

The pale light did little to hide his inky form, as he followed a trail of oily residue, base reasoning planting the idea that his target, his prey would not be within the township itself. His prey was not just prey, but a hunter himself. He would be wary. And wise to the idea he would be hunted as well.

“What the fuck is that?”

 Reed snapped his head around to the frightened shout, head twisting as if on a swivel. A man stood by the steps of the Tonsina general store, shotgun in hand, the sawn off barrel wavering in the air.

A echoing crack split the air, and steaming blood splattered to the ground, oily and dark.

Reeds hands flexed and clawed at the ground, before roaring, jaws splayed out and teeth jutting outward. Heat boiled in him, making him twist and shiver; he wanted to bite, to rend, to gnaw and devour. But he also didn’t. That urge was strongest, it stayed his need to satiate himself. Fortunately for the man, he took heed of that single warning, running for his life, away from the monstrosity that Reed was.

How strange, it hadn’t been that strong before, that desire to fight his baser instincts. Normally the heat, the light, sound, everything drove him to madness. Normally he would only awake when the world was painted red.

This time…was different. Reed snarled to himself quietly, hot breath fogging in the crisp evening air, the bleeding pockmarks made by the buckshot sealing closed within minutes. He had to stay focused. He had clawed back some measure of awareness, he would not surrender to anger or hunger. With a rattling hiss, Reed lunged forward, long, galloping strides eating up the distance until he approached a knot of valleys and hills that lay beyond the lake, a thin crust of permafrost still clinging to the shore. The smells of civilisation were sparse here, thin enough for him to pick up the scent of gasoline.

Reed slowed his pace, elongated nose and jaws pressed close to the ground, not stopping to rest as the sun arced across the pale sky and set low again. The scent led him to a glade, old trees curled together in a thick, clustered knot. Yet his keen eyes spotted signs of activity, human activity. Growling, Reed slunk closer, nose picking up the faint tang of sweat, steel and combustible powder. 

However attuned his senses were, they missed the small photoelectric sensor, the darkened, gnarled back of his left hand providing enough of a contrast to trigger the sensor.

As the day melted away into the evening despite the ever-present light, Clint wearily settled in by the hearth to tuck into a light meal before retiring – he’d spent most of his day on the road with his snowmobile trading the fish he’d mooched in the early morning for dairy and bread with his closest neighbours who just lived outside of Tonsina. 

He was shit at baking, let alone milling for his flours, so fresh leavened bread was a luxury. Milk doubled up for a few things – a well shaken warmed bottle gave him butter and buttermilk, and fresh bread with fresh butter bulked out his options from his parlour considerably. 

He was no less than two bites in when the monitor flickered. 

The sensor reading; something had crossed his perimeter. 

Clint’s entire body coiled and tensed, the immediate hit of adrenaline bringing a sucker punch of cortisol along with it. Sure, it was probably a bear, and Moira had said Lucas over at the general store had seen a huge  supposed-bear eat a buckshot like it was nothing a day prior, but the tick of his heart under his jaw and the roiling mess that was his gut said otherwise. 

His motions that followed were well practiced and silent. His first weapon within reach was his bow and its quiver, and the weight of the recurve helped abate the anxious tinge he otherwise felt. He dared to glance out the window as he slunk towards his back door and found himself pausing mid-routine:

— the fuck was that thing? 

Muscles that rippled as if coated in oil, a thick hide and back, a snout more akin to a horrible combination of a crocodile with a wild cat. 

Not a bear. 

Something way, way worse. 

Hungry animals didn’t obsessively sniff around snowmobiles and his shed expecting a meal when the pantry was just a few metres to the right. Every part of his instincts screamed that it was not just dangerous, but very much after him.

Clint slung his quiver and willed his chest to loosen so he could keep his breaths quiet, his weight easing his back door open as he nocked an arrow and crept to the edge of his cabin to get a visual once again. 

Every time he returned to awareness, a little bit of humanity chipped and flaked off, like gilded rot. Ironic, considering before he wound up in his current situation, he was stretching the definition of ‘human’. And ‘normal’ for that matter. Reed Richards had never been on the median curve but this?

This was a hell of his own choosing. And given the choice, he would make it again and again, because he owed his family this. If he could endure so they didn’t have to, and he would endure until he was ground to dust. It was his cross to bear, not Johnny or Ben or anyone else for what happened in Germany, Russia and Shanghai.

People had died. People with power, with rank and connections and strings that could be pulled to drive someone to ruination.

Not that Reed had cared. Sue was dead and he was empty, nothing but gnawing grief and rage that the world had been saved but he had lost all of his. So it was easy to hand himself over to the World Security Council, who bayed for reparations and repentance over the death of General Haige and wanted a name to place the blame on.

His was as good as any, and his stipulation of amnesty for Johnny Storm and Ben Grimm was quickly accepted, a wild glint in the directors eye, almost matching the brightly polished pin on his lapel. 

Maybe at some point, early on, he might have wondered if his family missed him. It didn’t matter, their lives depended on him cutting every tie with the outside world and surrendering all of him, mind, body and the nebulous concept of soul to the WSC.

And they took every. Single. Drop.

He was an idiot to assume they wanted his scientific genius. It would have been impossible to tighten a leash on a mind that saw infinite possibilities, at least by conventional means. Reed’s altered DNA was a much easier target to mould and shape.

Months slid by in a red hazed blur. Reeds existence scaled down to a bright, sterile room, where time was only measured in pained gasps and inhuman shrieks of agony as they pulled him apart, piece by piece. From the sharp rasp of radiation against his nerves, thousands of times the lethal dose to an unaltered being to the brutal, clinical pain of being vivisected, his body was pushed to the limit and his ID, his self, pushed beyond that.

He couldn’t care less that he was just one in a long line of experiments to reproduce the Super Soldier serum. He’d stopped caring about the whys and hows, only when it would end.

Each test, each experiment, his body twisted and adapted, Reed unwillingly witnessing himself being distorted from any semblance of autonomy. They’d managed to amputate a hand at one point, only for it to grow back, muscles ridged, gristly and almost an inky black from excess blood vessels and hyper pigmentation. It wasn’t the hand of a kindly, gentle man, but that of a primordial beast. In a daze of  vague horror, he flexed his fingers, the nail beds automatically curving to a brutal point.

He could stretch it back to the way it should have been. For a while, then it cramped and hurt and sprang back to that wicked shape like memory foam. The colour remained, like he’d spilled an inkwell over his hand.

Soon enough, his other hand matched.

It all came to a head when, during a post-irradiation session, he’d snapped like a brittle rubber band, teeth, claws and coils of hyper dense muscle twisted him into a nightmarish apparition. The lab tech didn’t stand a chance, instantly torn in two. The two guards didn’t fare much better. The airtight seals held against his unconscious rage. 

Just. 

Huge gouges in the metal marked his feverish attempt at escape. Red splattered against the walls, interspersed with the darker, purplish blue hue of his own blood.

Reed felt a vague sort of horror at what he’d done but more troubling was the hollow numbness of not caring he’d killed people. It was complete antithesis to what he was, or what had been. The taste of blood and visera sat heavy on his tongue.

Just like on that first, terrible day, he wouldn’t forget that terrible glint in the WSC Directors eyes as he surveyed the carnage. The small pin on his lapel glittered in the harsh light, whorls surrounded by a skull. It disturbed Reed, nearly as much as the gore dripping from his hands.

That wouldn’t be the last time he would taste someone else’s blood on his tongue.

Just the last time he would remember it with any sort of clarity.

It was hardly a promotion from Petri dish to attack dog, all semblance of his name dropped from his file. INDIGO. That was what he was now. To them. For him, he grasped his first name like a life line.

He’d swapped the pain for emptiness, restrained, yoked and chained until they’d set him loose on whoever was in his way. Months would pass as he was kept in a dark, quiet room, pinned to the floor on all fours with a feeding tube wedged in between his nose and the heavy bit that seemed as dense as plutonium, weighing down the twitching, elastic muscles that could now rend and tear through steel plating, nails and teeth, as well as the hands and jaw that bore them razor sharp.

They’d wait for him to descend into mania, then let him out into the bright light, where every sound and smell, taste and touch burned, driving him into a frenzy, which few survived.

They’d then wrestle him back into submission and wait. Again. And again. Each time whittling away a piece of his self. He’d hate it, if he could remember that once, his world existed outside the dark box he’d been placed into.

It was all he could do to chant brokenly to himself the promise he’d made until the words themselves had no meaning. But that feeling, that warm, gentle feeling remained in his heart. Faint and obscured but he held onto it like his life depended on it.

It probably did, if he could remember why. It shouldn’t have mattered. They’d pulled Reed Richards apart and remoulded him into a weapon. This was his life, all he had known. Or was it? Did a part of old Reed survive?

Maybe it did, because he was not tamed or subdued, not nearly as much as his owners would like. Something, some voice told him to fight. That the symbol on their uniforms was bad and wrong.

Maybe that was why he was being sent to Alaska, dropped hundreds of miles from civilisation. Maybe that’s why his usual ‘handlers’ weren’t in the drop zone.

Maybe…they didn’t expect him to come back.

The sudden break of years of conditioning and routine opened up a crack. A tiny, insignificant crack. Hurt pushed through, small warbles of distress breaking the serene calm of the thicket he’d wandered into.

Then clarity. Anger. The desire for answers. The only lead was the person he’d been sent to kill.

This far out in the crisp Alaskan wilderness, there was little signs of technology, the faint buzzing of radio waves and the isolated drone of copper wiring tiredly pushing data strings.

Thing is, he rarely relied on technology, even when he had access to it during his indentured time with the WSC. Instead, he had senses and a body that had all its potential unlocked and only just beginning to be explored. He pawed open the thin satchel that had been dropped with him, along with a meagre supply of rations.

Definately not business as usual. Mostly he was treated as one would handle a sniffer dog, the handler doing the guiding. There was no margin or error or deviation allowed. It seemed far fetched this wasn’t intentional. Reed let out a thin whine, confused and irritated by the sudden emptiness that this apparent freedom gave.

All he had to go on was what he’d been moulded to do. He could remember little else.

Discarding the paper, as its text was near unreadable to him anymore, language and reading skills atrophied from years of zero stimuli. Instead he aimed for the sealed pouch containing a scrap of a tee shirt, one edge crusted with dried blood.

It had preserved its owners scent well, even after months had passed. Widening his maxillary sinuses, which in turn triggered a cascade of microscopic changes, heightening the receptors that could sift through the smells and scents of the world around him. 

There was of course the metallic tang of dried hemoglobin and the underlying scent of body odour, possibly identifying his target as a man. Nothing to suggest any powers or otherworldly abilities.

It was faint, but enough to go off. 

Reed glanced over at the small pile of supplies left to him and snarled in disgust, kicking a spray of snow over them, only taking the scrap of cloth, clamped tight in his jaw. Then headed towards the faint scent of smoke and oil.

Isolated or not, his target wouldn’t live more than a days journey from other people. He’d have to careful not to be spotted by others; he hardly resembled any facsimile of a human as it was and he was not prepared to expend the extra energy to stretch his form so he could blend in. It hurt, deep inside when he would see his reflection; face thin and gaunt, teeth poking over chapped lips and a thick, ungainly mane of dark brown and silver hair that reached past his knees. Spindly, long fingers and board shoulders, laden with too much muscle and no fat.

No, he’d rather take the risk of if he was seen, he’d be regarded as some sort of bogeyman or cryptid.

It had almost been a year since he’d gotten the hell out of dodge. 

Time had been hard to ignore for Clint Barton, his every movement carefully planned around it in the months leading up to and thereafter escaping a high-security compound under the control of the World Security Council. S.H.I.E.L.D. had a bit more than just puppets amidst them from the council – what memories he’d scarcely held on to during his incarceration were of a wholly different engine powering the agency ahead into the future, driven by a need for knowledge of Loki’s sceptre from his time under its influence, and it’s relation to device they called the ‘Tesseract.’ 

It was supposedly for advanced warfare, but not to deal with the threat of knowing there were indeed advanced alien lifeforms beyond their own stars. Oh no, that would be too pure and good. Instead their targets were the very people on Earth; not even other countries – just the genocide of Americans who wouldn’t bend to their newfound power.

Clint had enough blood on his hands, he was not adding to that tally with civilians.

His guard of the last few months though?  Fair game.

In his escape he’d ensured he grabbed his augmented bow but he didn’t like his chances of keeping  a low profile by touting it loud and proud. A handful of munitions for self defence – a Beretta 9M frisked from his former guard, a combat knife, and enough clips and bullets to give him more incognito security as he touted the uniform and passes of his keeper to make his break for it. 

Evading the Hunters after leaving the compound however had taken weeks, with Clint operating on very little sleep. Spec-ops, faces unfamiliar to him even though they wore S.H.I.E.L.D.’s uniforms, who kept on his heels at every turn. Clint mostly stuck to rural areas where it was easier to be out of sight and mind of security surveillance, and either hopped state-lines as stowed cargo or by buying his way with private pilots. 

He purposefully avoided Iowa, though he itched to get his hands on some things in storage he had there as his home state was too big of a danger zone; someone at the WSC would pin-point it as a potential go-to. 

So he instead worked northwest, his goal set on the remote seclusion that only one of two places the North American continent could provide: Alaska. Setting foot in Anchorage caused him relief for the first time in months; the hunt was still on, but he was getting the advantage – the deeper into the wilderness he went the harder it was to follow.

Clint kept on the move until he hit the remote town of Tonsina, population of 78. He kept his head low and bartered for goods with services for weeks under the moniker of Ethan Hunt, forever watching and waiting for something – for someone – to be nipping at his heels once more.

It didn’t come. 

As the months of darkness lifted from a harsh winter with still no signs of his former would-be hunters showing up, Clint felt less inclined to keep on the move. He used his connections in the town to gather goods to build his own subsistence property just over the lake still in Tonsina territory, rather than holing up and relying on others to provide shelter. He scouted prospective spots closer to town but instead opted for a small defensible glade that was about two day’s trek from the township itself. 

In a matter of days his homestead was built and rigged with essentials, and as days bloomed into weeks in the wake of the Alaskan summer, he stockpiled his property with anything he needed: a well, a fully wired enclosure for chickens and other fowl, polytunnels to grow much needed food, a trapping line, and a drying shack and smoker.

Fortification came afterward – he still had the pistol he’d stolen months prior, but the wilds themselves called for heavier duty weaponry as a Beretta was more likely just going to piss a bear off rather than kill it. His bow was essential in his self defence and now doubled for hunting, but a trek up to Willow Creek had seen him get his hands on a couple of rifles and even a Derringer 22-calibre pistol that was small enough to keep on him concealed at all times. 

It would put a rather sizeable hole in anyone stupid enough to cross paths with him. 

Cameras or anything relying on digital signals were 100% a no-go; the last thing he needed was a GPS signal being hacked to reveal where he was. Good old-fashioned junkpole fencing helped him set a stable boundary in his glade out to the tree-line. Sound traps were of little use when his hearing was sub-par at best, and would more often than not simply startle game that was brazen enough to come near his homestead, but a photoelectric sensor system MacGuyver’ed to run off of solar and visually alert him of something breaching his barrier was more up his alley. It took him time to rack up the cash to get his supplier in Willow Creek to order some in, but when they arrived he quickly integrated them and camouflaged them.

The first time it tripped the adrenaline rush momentarily bled into panic until he visually confirmed it was just a scraggly, sickly lone-wolf attempting to get into his chicken coop. An arrow through its eye-socket saw it quickly and quietly taken down.

Time didn’t have much context or point for the two fugitives hiding out in the abandoned farm, literally out in the middle of nowhere, Alaska. The barn was dry, if not musty and very little interrupted the cycle of sleep, eat, check lures and snares and more sleep.

Neither Clint or Reed were thinking beyond the next meal or when they’d doze off. Clint’s injuries from the SHEILD ambush had caught up with him and moving was a chore, one that had to be done. He’d condense everything into one go; painfully climbing down the ladder, wandering to the outside of the barn to take a piss before making a circuit around the sparse trees that surrounded their temporary bolthole, collecting rabbits and the occasional grouse that snared themselves in the primitive but effective traps Clint had set up.

As much as Clint liked to bitch about Reed not doing anything, there really wasn’t much he could do, in his current state. He was confined to using only three of his four limbs, the hasty removal of his tracking chip making a mess of the rubbery muscles of his shoulder. He couldn’t run down deer or any large game and spent most of the first week sleeping off the heavy combination of exhaustion and pain. Teeth that could slice through bone weren’t much good for handling smaller game, unless Clint was in the mood for minced rabbit. So the regressed scientist was on space heater duty, encouraged to lay in piles of hay so then Clint had a warm nest to rug up in when the suns weak rays failed to warm anything up and the nights turned bitter cold.

The pair would then doze together in a tangled pile of limbs, sometimes peacefully, sometimes with thrashing and snarling, but it was a co-opted existence.

For a while, at least.

The problem was, even with Reed’s genius yoked by trauma and conditioning and a savage instinct brought forward by mutation, he could still think. Still brood. Only that mind now went in circles and drew patterns, not based on fact but on causality and observation.

Observation: SHIELD seemed to be able to follow him. The chip was gone but SHIELD was big and had a lot of resources.

Observation: Clint tended to get the shit kicked out of him when he was around.

Observation: They had to leave Clint’s cabin because of him.

Observation: SHIELD would hunt them. But they seemed to be able to hunt one at a time.

Observation: Reed didn’t want Clint to get hurt again.

Causality: Reed got Clint hurt too often.

So his regressed mind drew up a simple plan. Leave. Go the opposite way Clint wanted to go; find the hunters. And make them hunt him. Wear them out. Kill them until there was no one left or they considered his rubbery hide the trophy they wanted.

A word floated up into his mind; equivalence. Clint had risked everything to give him a chance, so now it was his turn.

Reed wiggled out from Clint’s prone, snoring body, making sure the rough blanket they’d kept was draped over his shoulders, keeping him warm until the sun rose again. His shoulder was mostly mended, enough he could run, move, fight until he had nothing left. With a silent leap, he jumped down from the loft, paws absorbing the shock and sound. His collarbone tingled but it was a minor pain. He started to leave, but was held back by something. Something very…Reed huffed.

He should leave a message. He still could not speak beyond growls, but shapes sprang into his mind, one front hand-paw dragging them into the dirt and dust to form one word.

Sorry.

Then all hesitation flew from him, as he lunged into action, running back towards the site of the ambush, back towards Palmer. Back to where it all started.

Hours passed, Reed scuffing his trail so Clint wouldn’t follow. The encampment where they had been attacked by SHIELD was iced over; what little human remains were left had been gnawed on by animals. Fresh packed snow covered the gory blood splatters and equipment. He paused for a while, stopping to sniff the ground; no fresh scent of people, only wolves, bears and foxes had been, eager to pick clean the carnage he had left.

So Reed left and headed along the river. For days he trotted along the bank of the river, an easy stride that a human couldn’t match, looking for signs, items, smells, anything to give him a bead on what he was looking for. For who he was looking for. The fat salmon along the banks kept him fed while he hunted.

There was a predator out here. He just had to find who it was.

Then again, the Soldier had done more with far, far less against more violent marks.

He took a steadying breath, slowing his heart-rate as he leveled the rifle again, aiming for a clean, quick kill. The thick black muzzle-mask kept his breath from fogging and disrupting his eyesight, the thick white winter gear from letting him be spotted, melting him into the woven backdrop of snowy branches of the canopy. The way his mark continued to scent the air made something like apprehension wisp through his thoughts. There was no way he could have been detected so soon, but, this wasn’t an ordinary target he was dealing with. He had only dim memories of the last time a mark had been so cautious and expecting; he remembered sand and heat and desert wind, a woman with hair as red as the blood that poured down her abdomen from a bullet-wound of his own dealing.

The Soldier had heard reports of the carnage that had befallen the prior retrieval team but he was not going to fail. He had never failed a mission, and he was not going to start now. Metal fingers softly brushed the trigger-guard as he once again leveled the heavy rifle, the prosthetic impervious to the cold. Even with his outward body language heavily restrained the cold that swirled around him settled in his core with unease; the whistling wind and softly falling snow conjured fragmented, fractured glimpses of a deep ravine and a bright flash of blue and falling, falling, falling from his hindbrain.

His gaze had gone unfocused, his body tense from the alien flashes of dream– memory?– before they dissipated. By the time he brought his eye to the scope again his mark had had ample time to survey his surroundings and had moved, putting a tree in the Soldier’s eyeline. He didn’t know if his cover had been compromised but he didn’t move, remaining as still as death on his perch, watching his target’s every move through the scope.

The snowfall was growing heavier, the brief icy touch of each flake stinging the Soldier’s exposed skin as it melted but he didn’t so much as dare to breathe too loud. His patience was endless; he had waited in his tree for hours before the mark had shown himself, and he would wait hours more if need be to wait for the perfect opportunity to take the shot. Time dragged on, and as it did he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being watched. He was unsure if it was from his mark or possibly from some other animal, but he refused to let it distract him. He was a weapon, and weapons did not get distracted.

When his mark finally did move the scant inches he needed to attempt the shot did the Soldier finally move. Silvered fingers slid the bolt as silently as possible, chambering the round with a soft clink of metal. It sounded deafening to his own ears but he hoped it wasn’t enough to betray his position.

Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.

The crosshairs of the scope leveled over the mark’s chest. Quick and painless.

Heart slowed, he waited for the lull in the beat before he took the shot.

Clint had outright said so in distraught misplaced anger when he’d arisen days earlier. In fact he’d yelled it, despite knowing it were futile and dumb and just broadcasted his location so nicely should any enterprising SHIELD bag n’ tag team be loitering, and proceeded to ragingly kick and scrape at the message in the dirt. 

Okay, so he was a little more than upset, but he was fucking stressed to the max. They’d been doing well after the last attack; the barn had provided a great shelter while they recouped from their collective injuries, and Clint had been making plans to go and scope out further east to make for the yukon border to get the out of Alaska.

Keyword: had. His new plans changed to go collect his had-been killer turned fellow fugitive, which meant he’d had very little time to waste. 

Logic told him that heading east was smart. East meant the yukon. Wilderness that was just as hazardous but just as prosperous. That had legal issues when it came to a militarised US unit just casually dropping teams in to go on a little manhunt. Clint knew, whether instinctually or just because it seemed very Reed-like, that his companion would’ve done anything but go in that direction because of that, which meant he began to retrace the hazardous path they’d taken to end up at the barn.

Something a little easier said than done when said asshole cat-man wasn’t making the trail nearly impossible to keep. 

So instead of directly following any trail, Clint fell back on his own logic: if Reed was indeed heading west, he’d be making toward their nearest populous landmark -- maybe to turn himself in for some reason or find his own way out -- which happened to be Palmer. A day trip out from his former wilderness residence, which meant a few days out from the progress they’d made overall to get away from there. 

And it had been a long, long trek solo. 

He’d began to keep a constant sideline with the Matanuska River, it’s water a vital resource along with it being the very same river that would eventually lead him directly to Palmer, and it eventually paid off. For how crap his hearing was, Clint’s sight made up for it tenfold, and he picked up a very distinctive shape slinking through the wilderness after searching for far too long.

Reed.

Sometimes gut instincts paid off in spades. 

But Clint’s gut was also telling him that things weren’t exactly right -- that he wasn’t the only one who had an eye on Reed. He was hardly going to just run up to the guy and risk being disembowelled for the surprise, so Clint took to higher ground to ascertain any dangers. Took to living up to his once-loved moniker of being the Hawk. 

That was when he saw it. 

There was zero hesitation on the archer’s behalf. Clint had a weighted arrow drawn as soon as he saw the glint of metal in his high-contrast vision, the fletch drawn back firm against his cheek as he tracked the trajectory mentally. 

The wind was low. Barely even a breeze. He’d hit the glinting metal dead on.

The arrow loosed. Clint didn’t even need to hear if he’d made his mark (not like he could anyway), the jerk of his target as the rifle he was shouldering fired came back to him in feedback, letting him know the grapple had well and truly anchored. 

“Get over here, you son’ova bitch,” Clint roared.

Both arms rippled with exertion despite injury as he yanked the reinforced chaining cord his bow was linked to. Hard. 

He’d never deny the satisfaction in seeing a look of sheer shock and awe cross the assassin’s face in the split second between the line tensing and then kinetic force doing it’s job to rip the other man right out of the goddamn tree. 

Because it was pretty goddamn satisfying. 

A press of a button on the specially modified riser and grip saw the chaining cord release from his bow (because being jerked into the permafrost himself wasn’t in the agenda today) before Clint hastily descended from his vantage, picking up the pace despite the slippery terrain to try and make it toward Reed, praying to whatever damn God would listen that his goddamn stupid runaway man-cat-friend was okay.