Phil had been keeping tags on what Clint was up to. The archer might think him dead, but that didn’t mean that the agent couldn’t play guardian angel from a distance. So every time Hawkeye went out on a mission - whether it was with the Avengers, just with Natasha or on his own - Nick sent him the files, the footage that had been shot. The director of Shield didn’t agree that Phil should be able to see that, but he knew that it would be the best if he wanted the man to stay in hiding. It was about three months after he started his new team - he didn’t have as much time to check Clint’s moves out as he used to - when he got a simple message from Fury. ‘Hawkeye is down.’ That was all it said and it drove Coulson crazy. He needed to know what had happened, so he kept bugging Fury and everybody who knew he was alive, just to get footage of his lover as he went down. Nick gave in, eventually, and sent Phil the footage. He also sent a psychiatrist to Coulson’s office, to make sure the agent wouldn’t make any stupid moves. He had given the man too much to let him die now. When Phil got the tapes, he sat down in his office, locked everybody out, and pressed play. Slowly, the mission and its background was explained to him. * Clint hated going to briefings when Phil wasn’t the one to hold them. He hated listening to someone who was simply talking monotonely, not even listening to anything he had to say. He hated going on missions without Phil ecause there was nobody there to tease or to flirt with during the long wait between shots. He hated not having someone to protect, even if it happened subconsciously. But most of all, Clint hated coming home after an adrenaline filled fight to an empty home. He hated himself that he hadn’t cleared the agent’s stuff out yet, that he felt like he was never going to either. So often, after a mission with Natasha or with the other Avengers, he’d simply crash at their places, avoiding it to be home, where everything was too painful, where everything brought up memories. He could function during the day, when he was busy doing stuff. But he had it all crammed up in his chest and one tiny thing - his favorite coffee mug at HQ, his wedding ring on his finger, a bookmark in the last book Phil had read - could make him collapse. So when on that one mission - the mission that was supposed to be simple and easy and not at all dangerous - he got shot, the first thought that went through his head was ‘thank god. I get to join him.’ Little did he know that the man was still around. He didn’t even register that he was falling face forwards to the ground as the world around him went black. * The footage started like all Clint’s missions. He was there, on a roof of some sorts, shooting his arrows and taking down bad gys, doing what he does best. Once he ran out of arrows, he rushed down to assist Natasha in hand-to-hand combat. Natasha spotted the sniper right before the man released his first shot. She was about to raise her arm so she could shoot him with her own gun, but Clint gasped next to her. Phil held his breath as he spotted the small, dark red spot between Clint’s shoulder blades. He started to bite his lip as he watched it get bigger every second, Natasha for a moment too shocked to react. “No.” Phil explaimed. “Clint, he can’t… Fury needs to…” Tears welled up in the agent’s eyes as he stared at the screen in disbelief. “No.” He didn’t realize his legs were shaking until they gave out under him and he burried his face in them. “Clint can’t be dead.” He whispered to himself, repeating it like a mantra. * Clint woke up a few hours later in a hospital all alone. The doctors had kicked Natasha out - a small miracle indeed - and the nurses had found another patient to bother. He pushed himself up, groaning as a soaring pain hit him between his shoulders. What the hell happened? He thought. It took a second before he remembered that he had been shot, that he had thought himself dead. He was slightly disappointed that he wasn't, to be honest. Soon a doctor came in and started to explain what was wrong with him in a strange language - maybe Italian - and he replied in a broken sentence that he didn't understand a single word the man was saying. The doctor nodded and switched to English, hoping that that would work better. He told the archer that he was in an Italian restaurant near Rome, that his sister had brought him in and that they had barely been able to save him. And Clint felt sadness wave over him as he found himself wishing he was dead. * Phil took hours to come back out from under his desk, where he had eventually decided to hide for a while as he tried to make sense of this Clint-less world. By that time, Skye had come and gone, her voice filled with worry as she asked what was wrong with him, why he was taken so long. Simmons had also come round, bringing him coffee, which he completely ignored because the many memories he had of coffee and Clint. Eventually it was May who got inside the office and wrapped her arms around him in support. It was a silent agreement between the two of them that the other would always support the other as much as they deemed it necessairy. She was the only one with a high enough level to actually see the footage. Phil cried that day, wheeping for the lover - although he had been lost already - had now slipped out of his hands forever. * Clint couldn't bare to live without Coulson, so he tried all different types of ways to get into contact with him. He tried people who claimed they could speak to the dead, he tried hypnosis, he tried everything. Nobody had been successful, up to now. He had actually made contact with something that he called Coulson's spirit - even though that was technically impossible with the agent still being in his body and all - and since this was all happening during an outer body experience, he refused to come back. He didn't care that his body fell in a coma, or even died. He had his Phil back and that was all that mattered. * That was when Nick realized that keeping the two agents apart had been one of his worst ideas. So he sent Coulson a text, letting him know about Clint's position and condition. After a few minutes of hesitating, he pushed his pride out of the window and he asked the man for help. Phil had no idea how quick to get to the hospital. Withing five minutes, he had gotten ready, gotten into his car and driven the ten minute drive over there. He rushed over to the room as quick as he could and as soon as he was inside, he grabbed Hawkeye's hand. "Clint, wake up. Please love, I'm here, I'm still alive. It's time to wake up and... I don't know but please, my love, come back to me." Phil spent hours sitting there, alternating between begging for Clint to wake up and threatening the man with all sorts of horrible things to do at Shield. It took the archer three days to wake up. When he did, he took one look at Phil and he smiled sweetly. "I must be in heaven." "Yes my love, that you are." Phil whispered softly. "Your personal heaven on Earth."
