okay, this looks bad.

Wow, somebody else who shared Steph’s crappy luck. This was either a miracle, or a calamity just waiting to happen. “What’d you do?” She couldn’t help asking, placing him after some thought—Hawkeye. She brightened in recognition. If they got out of this alive, she was so telling him that he was her favorite Avenger. Like, the color scheme? Genius.

“Eight gangs?” She repeated, doubtfully, slouching a little further down after a bullet whizzed over her hood. Note to self, sew that rip up. “I mean, I guess I believe it,” she mused. “I pissed off a lot of ‘em in Gotham once. Turns out they don’t like it when you meddle in their business and Scooby Doo the shit out of their plans. Weird, right?”

She peeked over the wall. The goons were reloading and laughing about it. Shit. “Any ideas on how to Houdini out of here, H? I’ve got this baton and no inspiration,” Steph admitted.

People who said luck didn’t exist had probably never met Clint Barton. He was living proof that some people got bad luck all the time, breathing evidence that fortune didn’t always favor the bold. “I don’t know,” he sighed, shrugging helplessly. “I just --- I just go about my life, mindin’ my own business, then there’s a gang after me!” Not strictly true, but close enough, right?

“Eight gangs,” he confirmed, ducking another shot. He had his bow hanging loosely over his shoulder, quiver loaded up with not nearly enough trick arrows to distribute them evenly among the shooters. Luckily, Clint had never needed to reserve one arrow per enemy. “Y’know, the New York gangs don’t like that much, either. Also not big on you stealin’ from ‘em. Buildings, dogs, cash... They pretty much get pissed about all of it.”

He shifted when she did, looking at the goons with a sigh. This looked bad. Swinging his bow around, Clint reached behind his back for an arrow. “You wanna run, I can cover you,” he offered. “You wanna stay, you can help me out. Can you distract ‘em without getting shot?”

Steve was used to being seen as an idea. A symbol. In the beginning, that’s all he was, just a morale booster for tired troops more interested in the girls dancing behind him. But being here and now, with people like Clint beside him – Steve got to be a real person. Complicated and messy, capable of making mistakes. He knew he’d made more than a few, but his team stood by him still. The trust they had in each other, it was bone-deep, unshakable. Even if it had been strained for a few months last summer – just another reminder of how quickly things could changed.

He laughed, toyed with the glass in his hand. “I’m not actually that old, you know,” he said, smirking at Clint. It was a hard argument to stand on when he had literally turned 100 years old earlier in the month. His eyes flicked up to meet Clint’s, and something serious flashed through them. “Always feels good, knowing we’re not alone,” he said quietly, a soft smile on his face.

A good soldier kept his emotions in check, but Steve could feel a righteous anger flowing through his veins now. It was contagious, everyone seemed to feel it. But the targets they chose were vastly different. “We’ll find him,” Steve promised, nodding to Clint. He started to move forward, only to find a finger pressed to his chest. 

“Captain America,” the man growled. He was older, grey-haired in the way Steve should’ve been, yellowed teeth clenched tightly. “Some soldier. You’re not even on that list, I thought protecting us was your job?” They didn’t have time to waste on this, Doom was already lost in the crowd, but Steve was at a loss for words. 

“You’re old, dude,” Clint argued with a grin, clapping Steve on the back. “Embrace it. I wish I was old. You know what I’d give to go to bed at seven p.m. and yell at kids to get off my lawn?” Honestly, with the life Clint lead, he knew he wasn’t going to make it to old age. He was going to die with blood filling up his lungs, gasping and sputtering and watching the sky fade to black as his vision gave out. He’d done it once already, after all, in a field miles from anyone who cared. All he could hope for was that, the next time it happened, he wouldn’t be alone. He hoped the next time he died, it was with someone he loved holding his hand. (He also hoped the next time he died would be the last time, that no one would bring him back again, but he wasn’t sure that was possible. His friends had always been all about giving people second, third, fourth chances they didn’t necessarily deserve. It was what got Clint to where he was to begin with.)

At the serious expression in Steve’s eyes, Clint’s gaze sharpened. “You’re not alone,” he promised quietly, hoping his tone sold the sentiment he didn’t quite know how to put into words. So long as Clint was around, Steve was never going to be alone. None of the Avengers would. He might not have had superpowers or training as kick ass as half the team, but he was good at digging his heels in and refusing to leave. He could give them that, at least.

Anger was a sensation Clint was intimately familiar with. He’d learned it from his father, had the lessons drilled into him in the form of bottles shattering against the wall beside his head and punches landing on every surface of his body. Anger was one thing Clint knew well and right now, he was angry. “Yeah we will,” he agreed in a low voice, turning to follow Steve and stopping at the sight of a red-faced, angry man.

Thor was in the privileged position of having over fifteen times the lifespan that most humans would ever manage, and that meant that in his time he had learned many lessons. This past decade they had been almost exclusively about himself, but before that he had travelled the Nine Realms, had fought to keep them in order, and learned about their culture and people as he went. He had more experience with other dimensions and planets, therefore, than most, yet here he was, utterly baffled as to how Midgard could have been displaced so thoroughly. The motivations, as well, seemed vague to him, but few of the Avengers’ villains truly made sense to him. “So you admit it was you who did that to Stark’s car!” Thor said, with something like glee. “I knew it was not me! I had only three glasses of mead!”

Thor snorted into his drink, but didn’t manage any more laughter after that point. Doom continued to speak, and people broke into chaos. “I am glad to see a good mob mentality exists on Midgard as well!” Thor announced, unsure whether he was enthused about a similarity between this planet and his own homeworld, or disappointed. “Do not fear, Clinton,” Thor said, stepping up to his friend. “I will protect your small, fragile body from these angry people. If I did not, Natasha would be very angry at me, and that is truly more terrifying than even the Goddess of Death herself.”

Thor was a good guy. Clint had known it the first time he saw him, up in his sniper’s nest with his bow drawn back and ready to fire. Thor fought his way through all of Fury’s men, and Clint found himself hoping Coulson wouldn’t give the order to take him out. Disobeying direct orders always lead to something of a headache, usually because Fury yelled at him until his head felt like it was gonna explode. That never stopped Clint from calling his own shots, though. He hadn’t regretted it once. Except, okay, maybe in this instant, with Thor yelling accusations. The arrow wouldn’t have even hurt him! It just would’ve given Clint some pre-revenge for this moment. “That was not me! Don’t even suggest that to Tony. You hit it with your big Asgardian hammer. ‘Oh, this puny car can’t withstand the wrath of Thor, God of Thunder!’ I told you to stop, man.” His Thor impression was predictably terrible, and so was the lie that went along with it. Clint, several beers in, had decidedly not told Thor to stop. In his defense, he was a little curious what an alien hammer would do to an ‘indestructible’ car. Who could blame him?

For someone who was as much a perfectionist as Carol was, she had made a lot of mistakes. In fact, if she was asked to write a summary describing herself, she would put ‘giant fucking mess’ right above ‘hero’ in her description. She had been trying valiantly to change that order, strove towards it on a daily basis, but some things were in the blood. The only thing that separated her from other human messes was the fact that she could hide it relatively well. She had been practicing for over thirty years, after all! She should be an expert at it by now, as she attempted to be in everything she faced.

Unfortunately, messes seemed to be drawn together, and Carol found herself actually enjoying Clint’s company somewhat. She would never admit that out loud, out of loyalty or something else, but it was definitely there, lingering in the back of her mind. Now that Starbucks had thoroughly insulted her, Carol was even more confident in saying that she would never totally warm up to Clint Barton. She would keep finding petty reasons until the day they died!

“They thought you were Rhodes?” Carol repeated, lifting an eyebrow as she looked over Clint appraisingly. “You don’t have the … Rhodes.” She had been going for abs, but tragically, Clint did in fact have abs of his own. “Maybe being in another dimension is cutting off the air supply to some people’s brains?” Carol suggested, unsure of another explanation. It was possible! Her powers meant she could survive in space where others could not. “They thought – oh my God, you just managed to add to the shit pile of insults that I’ve already received in the last five minutes. You’re going to need to come up with a creative way to get back into my good graces in the next ten seconds. Ten, nine …”

Being a pro at screwing up didn’t come with many great advantages. It kept people’s expectations of you low, which Clint guessed could be an advantage of sorts from time to time. When you hated disappointing people as much as he did, it helped if they sort of expected to be disappointed. It made things easier on them, softened the blow. Of course, it did sort of hurt when he did something right and caught that split second of surprise in their expression before they schooled it away. That surprise always stung, always made his throat tighten up and his teeth clench tight. When you messed up, the idea that people had been expecting it almost made it easier, but when you didn’t? When you didn’t, it sucked.

Carol, he figured, was always expecting him to mess up. It was fair, after the way he’d royally fucked up with Jess, but it still sucked a little. She was his teammate, she was supposed to trust him and Clint couldn’t even fault her for hesitating. It was, like most of his problems, his own damn fault. The coffee mix-up, however, was not his fault, and it was a little sad how rare that feeling was. Clint Barton didn’t often grapple with issues he hadn’t caused himself.

“Their mistake,” Kate shot back, sharing a knowing smirk with him. A Hawkeye that could talk was a Hawkeye that could think. Even before all this superhero stuff, Kate didn’t do well in silence. She blasted music while she studied, or more often had someone over just to talk to. Once, out of desperation while she was stuck in study hall, she struck up a very one-sided conversation with a chipmunk on the other side of the window. She didn’t trust the quiet, didn’t like how it could sneak up and surround you, sudden and smothering. It was one of the many, many reasons she was glad deafness wasn’t a shared Hawkeye quality. Sometimes she wondered if Clint talked so much because he knew exactly how overwhelming silence felt. 

I do the best with what I got. That was the two of them in a nutshell. They didn’t have superpowers, they couldn’t fly or teleport, or read minds, or burst into flames. They couldn’t super-speed away or lift a car over their heads. They had to work twice as hard just to keep up, just to stay at pace with their friends and teammates. But they did the best with what they had, worked a little bit smarter, a little bit harder, a little bit more. “Maybe determination is a superpower in and of itself,” she mused, head tilted a little. “I like to think so anyway.”

She had grown up with everything, Clint had grown up with nothing. Logically, neither of them should be here now. She was supposed to be a socialite, looking for husbands, gossiping about who was wearing last season’s shoes. And from what he’d told her (not nearly as much as she would’ve liked to know), no one expected Clint to be very important either. But determination, hard work, and a little bit (a lot) of dumb luck, had gotten them here. Heroes, protecting their city, saving lives, helping their friends. She knew, without a shred of doubt, that none of it would’ve been possible without him. “Nope,” she chirped, staring right at him. The smile on her face almost hid the ferocity in her gaze. “There’s no one better. I’ve checked, run the numbers, the whole bit. You’re it, Hawkguy.” Her gaze softened with the sincerity of the sentiment.

His laugh always drew hers out, despite the macabre subject of their jokes. (Though certainly – it’d been worse before. A lot futzing worse.) She glanced up at the sky now, the stars that weren’t really their stars, and shrugged. “At least we don’t have to worry about them right now,” she said. “I mean, as much as I’d love round two of kicking their butts – hard to get at us in this place. Maybe there’s some perks to being stuck in Futzworld.” 

There were only so many ways she could explain what Clint meant to her – the words to truly encompass it just didn’t exist. She’d probably spend the rest of her life trying to make up words to describe him, their friendship (which was a word that totally undersold it, honestly). He wasn’t perfect. Neither was she. But he was strong in ways she could never be, and she could sometimes temper those flaws that held him back. Being here, so close to home but so far away at the same time, it threw her. Knocked her off-balance. But she’d always have Clint to steady herself on, and as long as they could fight side by side, they’d find some way to make it. “Always,” she whispered, her head still on his shoulder. “And forever.” Normally, she would’ve added something like, you’re stuck with me, but right now, the moment was a little too fragile, the feeling in her chest a little too much.

“They are,” she said, nodding once. “They’re just a bunch of stars that somebody somewhere decided to make stories of. But I mean, that’s what people are. Just a bunch of humans thrown together, telling each other stories. And making their own,” she added, a sentiment that was important to both of them. No one got to choose their destiny. Not their pasts, not their ghosts, not the villains that couldn’t seem to stay away from their home. Not even each other – but they’d decided a long time ago to be a part of each other’s stories, and that wasn’t going to change anytime soon. “I will,” she promised, a soft smile slipping onto her face. “I’ll show you everything. There’s an archer constellation, Sagittarius. It’s easiest to see in August, maybe we’ll back in time to catch it.” 

“Sometimes it bites me in the ass, too,” Clint admitted, because he had a bad habit of talking himself into corners. It was almost a reflex, talking. He’d go on and on and on until someone stopped him somehow, talk about nothing in particular just to fill the silence. Silence, in his experience, lead nowhere good. It always reminded him of his worst moments, of being a little kid laying on the kitchen floor catching kick after kick to the head, or bursting into a stairwell just in time to see Barney on the floor in a puddle of blood before the world erupted into pain as he took an arrow to each ear. (That static image of his brother just laying there stuck with him no matter how much time he put between him and the incident. Even knowing Barney had survived to be a dick another day didn’t quite ease his mind.) He wondered if it was the same for Kate, if the silence brought back bad memories of all the times Clint had refused to speak to her or anyone else. He hated thinking that, hated wondering if she had a static image of him somewhere in her head the same way he had one of Barney. She’d always deserved better than that.

He snorted at her assessment, shrugging a shoulder. If determination was a superpower, it was probably one Team Hawkeye shared. They had to be determined, had to fight like hell for every little thing in their lives. They weren’t like the kids at Xavier’s who were born to be powerful, weren’t like Steve or Tony who’d fought for their power. Clint and Kate didn’t have super soldier serum or crazy tech suits backing them up. They had a bow a piece and a quiver full of trick arrows that was mostly shared between them. “Well, we kick ass at that, then,” he told her after a beat, offering her a smile.

Some people were predisposed to be heroes. They had this overwhelming sense of good in them, the kind that meant they’d always find a way. They didn’t always end up on teams like the Avengers or the Justice League; sometimes they went on to become doctors, firefighters, soldiers. They became heroes in their ordinary sort of way, but it was still in them. It was still who they were. As far as Clint was concerned, Kate was one of those. She was always going to end up great, always going to help the people around her in any way she could. It was why she hadn’t faltered at the call, had jumped headfirst into the superhero life despite having an abundance of other options. Kate was always going to be a hero, but Clint? Clint was pretty sure he’d only become one because somewhere down the line, someone messed up. If fate was a thing, he’d somehow managed to have his swapped with someone else. Selfishly, he was glad for it. Heroism might not have been his calling, but he wouldn’t have traded it or Kate for anything else in the world. “I always knew you sucked at math, but this is something else,” he snorted, ducking his head. It meant a lot, having Kate look up to him like this. It was scary, but it meant a lot.

He followed her gaze up to the sky. He’d had trouble looking at the stars since Loki, had a hard time thinking of space without thinking of the light touch of the scepter against his chest, the haze of blue swimming into his vision, the way he could feel himself being plucked out of his own head. The Skrulls made that worse, intensified it. “You really think that? You think we could get that lucky?” Who was to say they hadn’t found themselves thrown into some sector of space where something worse than the Skrulls was waiting on them? It wasn’t like Earth had ever been particularly lucky with this shit.

Moments like this, Clint remembered what Kate had said to him in the limo after Grills’s funeral. You and me, together? Together, Clint, I think you and me are the person we both wish we could be. He’d shut his eyes then, he’d pretended to be asleep, and he wasn’t sure if she knew he’d heard her even now, but he had. He hadn’t known how to deal with it then, hadn’t known how to tell Kate that she didn’t need him to be a good person. Kate had never needed Clint at all, had proven as much when she’d run off to LA and had her own life while his fell apart in New York without her. Kate didn’t need Clint, but Clint needed her. She was what made him the person he needed to be. If he affected who she was at all, he worried it was only to drag her down, to make her worse. He swallowed, didn’t reply as her head fell onto his shoulder. A braver man would’ve told her then that she was  better off without him, but bravery wasn’t among Clint’s superpowers.

Steve always felt better with his team nearby. So when he heard Clint reply beside him, he breathed a sigh of relief. A lot of people assumed, especially now, that he was a solo-act. Solitary when he fought, like other people would slow him down, but the exact opposite was the truth. Steve was, first and foremost, a soldier. Trained to work with the people around him. A lone soldier could fight, but it took numbers to fight battles, armies to win wars. And whatever Registration had done or threatened to do, Clint was and always would be someone Steve could count on. He’d pick the archer every day of the week.

“Used to be the biggest thing going in my day,” Steve replied, turning to wards Clint. He always tried to look at him when they were speaking, because of how often the aids would break or go ‘missing.’ But this was precisely why he’d always choose Clint – his intuition was as sharp as any of his arrows. “I thought he was strange , too,” Steve admitted quietly, h is eyes on Clint. When the lights changed, and the man of the house stepped forward, Steve held his breath.

Then everything happened at once. The crowded needed a moment to process the speech and the list of names above their heads, but Steve could feel the frenzy about to happen. “Where’d he go?” he asked suddenly, glancing around. “Doom’s gone,” he realized, turning to Clint. His eyes steeled with determination. “Wanna see if he’s got anything to say after that stunt?” 

As a kid, Clint had loved Captain America. The idea of a little guy getting superpowers and standing up to bullies had really appealed to him, especially when he’d been too little to do much of anything himself. Over time, the admiration had faded a little, partly due to Barney’s influence. Captain America, his brother had told him adamantly, wasn’t real. In real life, nobody saved you. You had to save yourself, had to fight for yourself. Clint learned how to do that, fought with everything in him for himself, for Barney, for everyone else.

And then, of course, Captain America turned out to be real after all. Not only that, but he was the sort of guy who’d turn to look at you every time he spoke because he knew you couldn’t always hear everything going on around you, the kind of guy who looked out for everyone and anyone and expected nothing in return. There were times when Steve made Clint feel a little inadequate, but even then, he couldn’t dislike him for it. Steve Rogers wasn’t the kind of guy you could dislike. He was, however, the kind of guy you could mess with. “Well, that’s probably ‘cause it was brand new,” he teased. “That long ago, they were just inventing instruments! Everybody likes the hip new thing.” He nodded as Steve agreed, glancing briefly across the room as if hoping to catch a glance of the man. “I’m glad I’m not the only one.”

@hcwkguys

Carol wasn’t exactly sure how this was supposed to work. She wasn’t even entirely convinced that she knew what had happened between Jess and Clint. There was definitely an element of awkwardness there, but then again, there was an element of awkwardness between Clint and the grand majority of SHIELD at one point. Hawkeye seemed incapable of keeping it in his pants, and she wasn’t talking about his firearm.

She had settled, very maturely, on not speaking to him even when they were being shot at, or chased by mutant dinosaurs. When it became abundantly clear that wasn’t working, Carol had punched him in the face during sparring, and that had relieved enough tension that they could definitely work together. Today, though, that progress immediately stalled. Hell, it might even have gone backwards.

“I just … don’t understand,” Carol said as she walked down the street, blinking a few times. She felt numb, honestly. Empty in a way that she hadn’t since Mar-Vell’s death. “How can Starbucks take your Avengers ID card as excuse for a discount but not mine? I’m Captain Marvel! I’m with you! Why would someone with an Avenger lie about being an Avenger? How does this make any sense?!”

Throughout his life, Clint had messed up a lot. He couldn’t exactly deny that, particularly not when the phrase most people associated with him was some variation of ‘this looks bad.’ Screwing up was what Hawkeye did best, and Clint was intimately aware of the fact. Some things, though, he screwed up worse than others. Whatever he’d had with Jess -- he still wasn’t sure what to call it, wasn’t sure how they’d both had such incredibly different definitions of what it was -- he’d screwed up especially well and, unfortunately, that meant Carol hadn’t exactly been his biggest fan, either.

Usually, Clint could deal with that. He knew he’d been in the wrong, and he wasn’t going to fault someone for refusing to speak to him due to that fact. But he was a nervous talker, and he chatted during battles even when the other person obviously wasn’t in the mood for conversation. Not talking him apparently hadn’t done the trick for Carol, but punching him in the face seemed to do wonders! He’d heard from various sources that it was a very therapeutic thing, and he was glad Carol seemed to agree. Unfortunately, it was looking like he might have to let her punch him again.

@hcwkguys

“I can’t believe I’m stuck with you,” Jessica groaned. There were moments when she genuinely hated the Avengers, like when they made stupid mistakes such as oh, only creating Ultron and when they paired her with Clint Barton. It wasn’t a difficult mission by any means, all they had to do was clear out a demon nest. According to recent scans, there were roughly forty of them — highly trained. Difficult or not, she was still stuck with Barton, and Barton would most likely be distracted, separated from the people he normally worked with like Romanoff and Bishop. He was professional, but his best work was done when he wasn’t concerned about the people he cared about most. Jessica had realized that a long time ago. Maybe she should start leading the Avengers, she could keep Stark in line and make easy decisions like not pairing Hawkeye with anyone else… especially her!

She sounded petty. Jessica could live with that.

“I’ll lead with a blast, take out all of the demons that I can, you follow up with an explosive arrow. That should clear about half,” Jessica suggested, trying to keep the resentment from her tone. She wasn’t confident that it worked, but at least she was proposing ideas instead of complaining about his company. “Unless you can think of something better,” Jessica added.

“Yeah, you mentioned that,” Clint replied mildly. He never quite knew how to act with Jess, never knew how to respond. He’d fucked up with her, and while he was man enough to admit that, she hadn’t exactly been receptive to his attempts at apology, either. Some of the stuff she’d said to him had been, in his opinion, a little harsh. It’d knocked him off his feet, brought him down a peg, made him doubt himself even more than he usually did. It was hard to know what to say to someone after that, hard to know how to speak to someone you still cared for deeply after they’d let you know just how fucked you really were. It wasn’t as if he’d wanted to be paired up with her, either. Clint would much rather work alongside Natasha or Wanda if he was running an Avengers mission, or have Kate watching his back when he was doing something less official. Things with Jess were strained to say the least, and while he knew she wasn’t about to let him get killed, it would be nice to work alongside someone who didn’t look at him like she was seriously considering leaving him with his pants down in the middle of Time’s Square.

At least she seemed sort of willing to work with him for the moment, though. Not long ago, even that might have been a pipe dream, but it turned out having the city torn away from Earth made people a lot more receptive to their ex sort-of-boyfriends! Small victories, he guessed.

“Why not lead with the explosives? That might take ‘em out quicker.” It was sort of a risk, offering an alternative to her plan, but Clint had always been one to test the waters. If she was willing to work with him, maybe she’d be willing to let him lead! It seemed far fetched, but worth a shot. Either way, it’d let him know where they were without having to ask, and that certainly seemed worth the gamble.

Thor deeply enjoyed attending the various parties that were thrown at Avengers Tower, if only because they were infinitely closer to the gatherings that he took part in often back in Asgard. Home was home, after all, no matter how close Thor felt to the inhabitants of this planet, or how intensely fond he was of them. Parties on his home planet often followed great victories, but tonight felt more like a farewell party, or at least the tone did. Some were having fun, but there was an air hanging over the partygoers that could not be ignored, no matter how many cheese platters Thor devoured. They were partying so hard, having so much fun, because they knew it might be the last chance they had, and that was rather putting a damper on things.

Clint Barton, though, ensured that things were never entirely bleak.  “Of course,” Thor said with a smile, patting Clint on the shoulder with about a quarter of his usual gusto. The last thing he wanted to do was break a teammate! (Again.) “That was stupid of me. I thought I heard someone mentioning a dent in the cheese supply, now that I think of it.” Thor raised an eyebrow as Clint continued to speak. “Your voice sounds like you have been bitten by one of those Moloids,” Thor informed him, “but I can overlook it if it means this party becomes more enjoyable. Doom looks –” Thor trailed off as the man hovered around the stage, stony faced. “Constipated,” Thor settled on. “Emotionally, I mean. Maybe physically as well, I don’t know him, but definitely emotionally.”

There was an air of uncertainty hanging over the party, like everyone in the city was holding their breath. It was understandable, he figured, with everything going on. People weren’t sure what to expect, weren’t sure if the demons were going to attack the party or if some other terrible thing was going to come out of the wasteland or if everything was going to go fine and entirely without a hitch. (Clint was pretty sure the last one was impossible.) Thor, at least, seemed cheerful, and Clint was glad for that. The guy was always a riot, always fun to be around, and Clint was sort of relieved he’d found him here. “Yeah, that’s probably on me,” he admitted with a laugh. “If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s makin’ a dent.” He snorted at the comment, shaking his head. “Maybe I was bitten by a Moloid. Those things are mean as hell.”

The mention of Doom had him looking around until he’d caught sight of the President, hovering at the edge of the stage and clearly planning something. “I’d say he looks physically constipated, too,” Clint commented, raising a brow as the man in question took stage. “Maybe that’s what he’s gonna announce!” It wasn’t, of course, what he announced. It would’ve been too easy for Doom to show up on stage to ask if anyone in the crowd had a laxative, and the lives of New Yorkers didn’t seem to be compatible with ‘easy.’ “Well,” Clint observed as someone shoved passed him, causing his plate of cheese to fall to the floor, “this blows.”

“He is exactly the sort of man my mother keeps our home secret for fear of,” Diana said firmly. And, moreover, exactly the sort that she thought her mother had feared her encountering. That, she didn’t say out loud, because it still made her feel small inside, like she was a child who knew nothing instead of an adult with a century more experience with the way the world was now than her mother had. When she encountered, even from a distance, a man like Doom, she began to think that perhaps her mother had the right of it after all.

She shook her head. That was the part of it that seemed most silly to her - that there were heroes like Clint, or like Bruce and his sons, with no powers at all other than the intense desire to do good, that were still being asked to list abilities that they didn’t have. That any of them were being asked to do so at all irked her, really. “I can only see this making many people’s work harder,” she said solemnly. “To let the world know what of my abilities is inborn, and what is learned skill, and what is simply a gift from the gods that can be taken from me…I do not like the idea of it.” She didn’t know if she deserved secrecy, any more than anyone else did, but they all deserved to be safe.

“He’s the sort of guy people are talking about when they talk about how shitty humanity is,” he agreed. Men like Doom were the kind of people who made it hard to remember what he was fighting for, the kind of guys that made him consider hanging up his bow. He’d never do it, of course, not as long as there were people like the tenants in his building or the old lady who’d firmly insisted on paying for his drink at the convenience store, but the fact that Doom made the thought cross his mind for even a second made him hate the man all the more.

The fear rampant in New York City was completely understandable. Wanda and Clint were superheroes, burdened by figurative the world on their shoulders, but they were also privileged with the knowledge that they could survive and fight any threat, allowing them freedom. For an average citizen, sitting in the park, exposed to the demons, and surrounded by them would be a death wish. For Clint and Wanda, it was a casual meeting. Clint was armed with a bow case beside him, Wanda had her hexes at the ready, and they were able to enjoy their lives momentarily without fear. It was a relief, and one that few people would have until they returned to Earth. Wanda pitied them, but unfortunately, there was no way she could realistically unburden New Yorkers.

Honestly, Wanda couldn’t imagine her life without these moments of careless enjoyment. She would be overrun with stress and worry, as many people were, she imagined, but she and Clint had an entire city to defend. They weren’t singlehanded, but Wanda did have the advantage of reality bender, a potentially New York saving power. “How old is Lucky?” She asked curiously, watching as he halfheartedly chased Zasha and Spock around, motivated by gaining control over the stick. “He deserves to sleep,” she added, smiling at the sight. As Clint spoke, she couldn’t help but laugh. “I think older people are just amazing at what they do,” Wanda replied. She couldn’t imagine Clint doing anything but heroics, he was born for them, though he was modest. No one else compared with Hawkeye were aim was concerned. “Are there no good take out places in town?” She asked, furrowing her brow. New York was famed for its food, surely Lucky liked another place’s food. “Well, technically things are changing… we’re getting the resources that we need slowly,” Wanda pointed out. It was important to remember that they were winning to an extent. “I go out every few days,” Wanda admitted. “The demons aren’t much threat to me and I can bring lots into the city.”

Being a superhero put a hell of a target on your back. It was something Clint had learned early, something he became painfully familiar with time and time again. People were always going to come after you, always going to figure they’d be the one to get the drop on you, to take you out. Every villain wanted the bragging rights that came with killing an Avenger, and being one of the more vulnerable Avengers meant the target on Clint’s back was probably a little bigger than most. Fortunately, being a superhero also provided you with the tools you needed to fight back against the people looking to take aim at that target. Clint had the skills to go up against anyone who figured they ought to take a shot at him, and he knew Wanda was more than capable of taking care of herself, too. It made a day at the park a lot less stressful than it would’ve been for most, and he was grateful for that.

Their lives weren’t ones that came packed full of moments of relaxation. Moments like this were moments they had to steal, moments they had to fight for. It made them a lot more enjoyable when they came along. “Not sure,” he admitted, watching as Lucky flashed Zasha what could only be described as a look of utter annoyance. “Vet says he’s full-grown, but it’s hard to gauge his exact age. His old owners, ah, didn’t take great care of him, which makes it harder.” The tracksuits had deserved what they got, if not for the way they’d done everything in their power to take Clint out, then for the way they’d treated Lucky. “He does deserve to sleep! He works hard.” Clint couldn’t help but grin at Wanda’s laughter, shrugging a shoulder. “Older people do all right,” he allowed. At 34, he wasn’t exactly ancient, but considering he’d technically already lived passed his due date, he figured he could claim his position as an old man. Dying and coming back to life had to add, like, twenty years to your hypothetical age, right? “There’s plenty of decent ones in town, but our favorite is just outside of it.” He sounded mournful at the fact. Sure, the demons sucked, but the loss of his takeout was the real tragedy in this situation. “Slowly but surely,” he agreed. “Not going out on your own, are you? I wouldn’t underestimate these things.”

Clint was a magnet for bad luck, and Jane didn’t say that lightly. She’d never believed that people could be cursed with luck, never believed in luck at all, in fact, until she met Clint Barton. Perhaps that sounded dramatic, but after witnessing the man miraculously knock down several aisles by the sheer force of his own poor footing, anyone’s mind would change. That being said, Clint was also one of the kindest and most loving people Jane had ever met. Being burdened with something embarrassing was hardly a bother when she got the gift of his friendship in the process and thanks to her fondness for Clint, Jane tried to stifle his laughter. He didn’t look seriously injured, she was allowed to be amused by it. “The cans deserved better,” Jane agreed, bending over to pick up a dented can of tomatoes. “Well, I’m glad you’re okay,” she replied, speechless by the fact that this just ‘happened.’ “I don’t think they’ll make you buy all of it,” she said thoughtfully. Honestly, Jane wasn’t sure that there was a policy on quite literally destroying an aisle. “Should we speak to the manager just to be sure? Would you rather leave?” Jane paused before asking, “What do you normally do in these situations?”

Luck had never quite been on Clint’s side. That much was obvious in most things he did, but especially now. How many people could say they’d tripped over their own two feet and brought down most of a grocery store on multiple occasions? Clint sincerely hoped the number was low, if only for society’s sake. He shot Jane a half-hearted glare as she tried (poorly) to stifle her laughter. Maybe, from her point of view, he could see how it might be funny, but she was meant to be on his side here, dammit! She was supposed to have his back! That meant not laughing when he inevitably did something incredibly embarrassing! “Maybe the cans had it coming a little,” he offered, leaning down to inspect one. Looking back up to Jane, he offered her a lopsided smile. “Thanks.” That was a silver lining, at least. Knocking over a grocery store’s worth of canned goods was pretty bad, but if he’d ended up needing stitches or something after the fact, it would’ve just been embarrassing! “Let’s hope not! I’ve only got, like, eight bucks in my account.” Even that estimate might’ve been a generous one; Clint had never been great with money. “Uh, I’d feel bad just leaving it. Least I can do is clean it up, right?” The people working here deserved better than having to clean up his mess. “Normally I talk to ‘em, let ‘em know what happened. Sometimes play the Avengers card. They never believe me, though.” A guy who knocked over a bunch of shelves didn’t exactly scream superhero to most people, after all.

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At times, Steph wished vigilantes had some kind of a point system. Ten points for sticking a good landing. Five points for a well executed punch. Twenty for a great escape. That way, Steph could rack up just enough points to know if she could handle a gang full of arms’ runners. How these guys managed to find so much ammo was a mystery, but Steph’s curiosity over that fact was minimal.

At the moment, Steph’s immediate focus was getting out of here alive. Two hundred points, she decided, cape fluttering in her wake as she ran.

“All henchmen look the same,” Steph complained, diving behind a wall for cover. “Are they after me, or you?” She asked, downplaying her surprise after she saw she had company.

At some point in your life, you got pretty used to getting shot at. Clint figured he’d passed that point a long, long time ago, somewhere between the circus and SHIELD. Sometimes, he worried he wouldn’t know what to do with himself at all if there was no one looking to put a bullet in his head, to the point that, when they started flying, he usually responded with a sigh before he ducked behind the first available cover. 

Today, it was a wall. He’d only been crouching behind it for about a minute, juggling with his quiver, before someone joined him. It was a kid, because it was always a kid nowadays, and he snorted at her tone.

“I didn’t get a great look at them,” he admitted, “but they’re probably after me. They’re usually after me, anyways. I think I’ve pissed off, like, eight gangs this week. I don’t even know how anymore, it just --- It just kinda happens.”

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Every party hosted in New York City seemed to turn to chaos, Natasha wasn’t at all surprised that this one had ended similarly. Clint was a smart man, he had realized that Victor von Doom was not the benign leader that he had claimed to be. Natasha had trusted his opinion then, had realized alone that Doom had a lot to gain from their isolation. Ultimate power was at his fingertips, all he had to do was win over the public, and by persecuting superheroes, ones that many people feared, Doom was winning in the power department unfortunately. It went without saying that Natasha didn’t remotely approve of what their president was doing, Victor von Doom had betrayed countless superheroes. Clint, like Natasha, would feel exactly the same. They were dedicated to protecting the public and they were dedicated to protecting their friends, people who had become like their family, and Natasha intended to discover a way to continue to aid them.

Sat on their couch, Natasha absentmindedly flicked through pages on her book, paying attention to none of the words. “We need to find a way to change the public’s opinion… and we need to find a way to help the heroes that didn’t list,” she said quietly. Clint would be thinking exactly the same thing, especially with Wanda and Kate among those that hadn’t listed. They were like his children, he would do absolutely anything for them. “I’m not sure there’s many options at the moment, but if we explain things from their point of view, particularly with emphasis on impossible powers… some minds sway,” she said thoughtfully. “Appeals to emotion are great tools for persuasion.”

Next time there was some big party in New York with multiple super-people in attendance, Clint figured he’d just stay home. It seemed the safest bet, the only way to avoid the chaos that always seemed to come along with those things. Being proven (at least partially) right in his suspicions about Doom didn’t exactly leave Clint feeling vindicated the way it might have if he’d been valiantly insisting the actor on whatever movie they were watching was the same guy from the dish soap commercial. It was a terrible thing to be right about, a terrible fact to know before anyone else. He wanted to trust the people in charge, but he’d never quite been able to and this time, at least, he’d been right not to. Doom had leaked heroes’ abilities to the public, had poisoned people’s trust in the heroes who hadn’t listed theirs. It was a betrayal to all involved, and Clint knew Natasha shared in his anger.

Still, even the anger burning in his chest at what Doom had done seemed to calm in her presence. She had always had a way of making his usual wild emotions feel more bearable, making him able to sit calmly on the couch instead of making his way to Doom’s office to recklessly storm the building and get himself arrested. “Not gonna be easy,” he commented, swallowing as he thought of Kate and Wanda, neither of whom had put their names on that list. “Maybe that’ll help. It might be hard findin’ the right platform for it. The Bugle’s biased against us as is, they’ll spin anything we say and make it look awful.” Jameson was good at that, as they both knew. 

She gave him a look, but even he couldn’t say that with a straight face. “You occasionally are lucky enough to be gagged when you’re in trouble,” she teased, smirking at him. It was a trait they both shared, the inability to keep their mouths shut. Maybe it was a Hawkeye thing, but Kate saw it as a hero thing. Heroes shouldn’t be afraid to speak out when something felt wrong. Saving the world wasn’t always about hitting your mark – sometimes it was about standing your ground, too. She’d learned that from him. Everything worth knowing in life? She’d learned from Clint Barton, whether he believed it or not. “That was pretty quick thinking,” she admitted. “It does hurt like futz when you get in your eyes.” 

He was so nonchalant, his reply instant, his smile easy, and Kate actually believed him when he said it. She always did, she always knew it, but it always felt nice to hear it one more time. After all, you never knew how things could change in this world, in a split second the entire thing could come crashing down. There were so many things she’d never hear her mother say one more time. “And you’re my best friend. The best-best friend a girl could ask for,” she said, smiling so broadly at him it felt like she’d burst open any second, and they’d be covered in lovey-dovey friendship guts or something. 

She giggled, even though she probably shouldn’t, but hey neither of them had ever been entirely normal. That’s why they fit so well together. Apart, maybe they were human disasters, they made mistakes and never seemed to learn, they were impulsive and brash and loud – but together, it worked. Together they made one functional human being, and maybe that’s what a soulmate really was – more than some romantic cliche, but the honest to god other half of you, the person who fit you like a puzzle piece and made you stronger, made you better. She screwed up her face and let her voice go screechy and horrible. “Humans are pathetic! I’ll kill you all easi– aghh!” She clutched her chest and fell back in faux death-throes. She laughed again as she sat up. “Honestly, I won’t be surprised to find out their entire pop culture is just soap operas,” she said, grinning at him. Who needed therapy? Making bad jokes about almost dying with your best friend, that was the best coping mechanism out there. Along with putting several arrows through whatever was trying to kill you. 

I needed you. It was still hard to wrap her mind around sometimes. Yeah, he needed her to occasionally clear out the nearly-toxic-mess in his fridge, or to coax him into putting his aides in for a two-night marathon of Dog Cops, but he’d never needed her to be a hero. He was a hero long before she came along, But she needed Clint like crazy, needed him to be her guide post, the lighthouse in the distance as she tried to tread water. She hadn’t been half the hero she was today until he came into her life. There were so many shots she never would’ve taken without him – and right now, that meant believing that things would be okay. And she did, when he said it. “I’ve got you,” she said softly, squeezing his arm gently. “So yeah. Things are going to be okay.” As long as that stayed true, then they could face anything this crazy futzing world decide to throw at them. 

She tilted her head up, and pointed at one of the constellations. “That’s the big dipper right there,” she said. “See how those four make a sort of square? That’s the basin, and then those ones in a line are the handle. And the whole thing is part of Ursa Major, the big bear.” She traced the constellation with her fingers. “My mom used to take me and my sister out of the city so we could see it better, without all the lights. She liked the stars.” She bit her lip for a moment, a frown crossing her face. “But these aren’t the real stars, ya know? The real ones are back in our dimension. This is just… a painting. It’s not the same.” 

“Not as often as you’d think,” Clint replied, almost mournfully. Villains didn’t gag him nearly as often as they ought to and, really, that was on them. He talked when he was nervous, and getting knocked out by some dollar store crime lord was enough to get a guy’s nerves going sometimes! It wasn’t like Kate could talk. He’d seen her go on and on to just as many villains as he had. He wasn’t sure if it was because she’d learned it from him or because it was just who she was, but he thought it might’ve been a mixture of the two. “See? I do the best I can with what I got.” It was a lesson he’d learned young; how to make everything and anything into a weapon. He wasn’t sure what it said about him, wasn’t sure what it meant that he was the sort of man who walked into a room and figured out which household objects would be best suited to kill someone, but it had gotten him out of more than a few jams over the years, and that wasn’t nothing.

There was a lot in the world that Clint wasn’t sure of. The life they lived was a wholly uncertain one, and no one knew how the world might change from one instant to the next. There were shapeshifting aliens, gods with mind control abilities, robot invasions, a million different things that could go wrong. There weren’t a lot of absolutes in the lives they lead, but if there was one thing Clint was always certain of, it was Kate. No matter what awful shit he did or said, she’d always be there. Even when he pushed her away she came back, intent on saving his dumb ass whether he deserved it or not. He couldn’t have asked for a better protege, a better friend. “You could probably ask for a better one,” he snorted lightly, trying not to think of all the people he’d let down over the years, all the times she’d been one of them. She deserved better, but she stuck with him anyways. It was more than he could ever hope for.

Kate got him in a way no one else ever had. Maybe it was weird, considering the differences in their backgrounds, but it was the truth. She understood his humor, got how he felt about the heavy-hitters on his team, liked the same weird shows as him. On paper, he and Kate couldn’t be more different, but somehow they worked anyways. Somehow, they were two halves of the same whole. He laughed out loud at her rendition of a dying Skrull, nodding his head quickly. “That’s exactly what they sounded like! Ugh, they might’ve been more dramatic than soap operas, even.” There was no trauma in existence that Team Hawkeye couldn’t make terrible jokes about, it seemed.

Without the people around him, Clint wasn’t sure he’d be much of a hero. He’d never been much good at it on his own, had only managed to be a criminal before Coulson scooped him up off the concrete and slapped him with a pair of handcuffs and a second chance. Even then, with SHIELD behind him, he didn’t think he’d been very heroic. He’d followed their orders without question because ‘be a SHIELD agent or get stabbed with a toothbrush in a prison cell’ didn’t seem like much of a choice, and when it was revealed that he’d been doing HYDRA’s dirty work all along, he hadn’t even really been surprised. It was the Avengers that first gave him the chance to be a hero, the Avengers who’d tossed a bow and arrow at him after knocking Loki out of his head and gave him a second chance he hadn’t earned. Without them, he never would’ve been a hero to begin with. Without Kate, he didn’t think he would’ve kept it up. After his death, when he’d been lost and confused and angry at the world, Kate had reminded him of what he used to be, what he used to fight for. She inspired him to be a hero, to be better. Because of her, he wanted Hawkeye to mean something. If she was going to carry on his legacy, he wanted it to be one worth carrying. “Yeah,” he agreed, offering her a smile. “Yeah, you do.” She had his back. He’d never had any doubt about that.

@hcwkguys

Parties were meant for merriment, designed in order to celebrate after a great victory. In this case, however, it seemed as if the entire city was simply celebrating the fact that they were still alive, taking advantage of the extended curfew that night in order to have the most fun that they had been able to partake in since before it was revealed the city was in another dimension. Thor understood some of it, or at least attempted to, but truly the only reason that he had bothered to show up was because he knew that his teammates would be there. True to form, he found Clint at the banquet table, and Thor wordlessly joined him in picking up as many of the appetisers as he could and sampling each one.

“I’d try the cheese platter,” Thor said lowly, as if it was a highly guarded secret. Clint and Natasha often spoke like that, probably because of their professions and experience in espionage. It was a novel, truly, not to be the loudest person in the room. Thor enjoyed it in small amounts. “Have you just arrived?” he asked, glancing around the room, purposefully avoiding returning his gaze to Jane. “We have been here for about an hour now, and I have already seen someone get their tongue stuck to the ice sculpture. Why do Midgardians always want to kiss objects in photographs? It is quite amusing.”

At any party, Clint tended to make a beeline for the snacks. He’d always had a hell of an appetite, and if he was going to be forced to schmooze and rub elbows with people who probably carried signs of Hawkeye with x’s through his face, he wasn’t about to do it on an empty stomach. Most of the food available was a lot fancier than anything Clint would usually have access to, and while he wasn’t sure he’d enjoy it -- he didn’t exactly have refined tastes -- he was going to stuff his face all the same.