Melinda May - Early March 1990
“So, you're saying this guy just vanished?”
Looking around her, the senior agent met Fury's gaze. The meeting had been called in as soon as news about their young target had reached them: he'd disappeared into thin air. They had been tailing him, this young orphaned boy from Iowa, ever since he'd started getting in with the wrong crowd, and now he had seemingly disappeared from their radar. Just like that.
SHIELD had sent Coulson in to assess the situation, a couple of years ago, but he hadn't established contact with the boy at the time. He had been deemed 'too young' to be taken in. That, and probably 'too wild'. Sure, he would have made an incredible asset, but with a background like his...
There had been talks that he might be so hostile to any sort of government agency because of his background in Orphan Homes and the system, that it was a dead end to go after him.
“His tail, Agent Tyler made contact at oh-eight hundred hours this morning, saying that the asset has disappeared from the premises.”
Melinda raised her eyebrow, unimpressed by the development. They had been tailing young Clinton Francis Barton ever since he had shot his own brother, Charles Bernard Barton, in the shoulder. There had been the technicality of his mentor, circus artist Buck Chisholm, who'd shot Clint back. They weren't sure about the motive or the why (as far as they had known, Charles – also known as Barney – had gone over to the right side by joining the army and the Federal Bureau of Investigation). It had probably got something to do with the blood bond between the two orphans.
Hearing Coulson shuffle the file they had all been given two weeks prior, Melinda shifted her gaze towards Agent Maria Hill. She was Fury's right hand and the one to call most of the shots when the Director was out. The file had been deemed for their eyes only, and any and all agents of SHIELD who had needed to be included in on the case – like Agent Tyler – had only been briefed on the strict necessary: highly skilled young archer, orphan, comes from the circus, has been missing since they were teenagers and ran away from their orphan home.
“Anyone made contact with the brother yet?” Hill asked, as she pulled the file on Barney out from beneath Clint's. 5 years older, more rough, more angry, it seemed, but one hell of an efficient agent. Of course, the FBI had bared its teeth when SHIELD had asked for the file (why were they investigating one of their agents?), but they had complied when they'd told them what they already knew.
Coulson, Melinda knew, had gone to the Orphan's home, and talked to some of the other kids he had managed to track down from there. They all had the same story to tell, that Clint had an amazing ability to aim and throw, and that him and his brother had been inseperable. He'd asked around town in Waverly, Iowa, to get a feeling as to what had chased the children away from it, but when he'd come home with a tale of a drunk father and a very much in love mother, they had all understood.
Melinda was only a couple of years older than Clint, and she could sort of understand the struggles he had gone through as a child. (Not even mentioning his medical file, which showed that he had almost lost his hearing during one of his father's beating sessions. Thankfully, it seemed that he had gotten his hearing back naturally.)
“No, Barney's getting his ass covered by his bosses, we can't talk to him unless he agrees to a private conversation. He knows we've already been after his brother, probably someone at the Bureau who's monitoring SHIELD activity too,” Fury replied, his brow furrowed. Melinda frowned at this new development.
“Shouldn't we be able to contact him without making it obvious we're after his brother? Some sort of inter-agency deal should be possible, right?” she asked, trying to catch Fury's gaze, which he averted by looking straight at Coulson.
“This kid has just turned 19 years old, and he's got a bad shoulder because of an arrow. I want him found as soon as possible, and I want him brought in. He can become a major asset to this organisation if we can just get him convinced of the good he would do.” When Fury used that voice, it meant he was dead serious about the subject. Melinda didn't know – maybe it was a bad idea. The kid had never finished any sort of high school, he didn't even have his G.E.Ds like his brother, she didn't even know if he was able to read. Period. (Though, she doubted it with all the intel they'd gathered this far. But he seemed to be wild and unable to tame from what she had heard too, with a tendency to throw punches before asking the questions).
“Sir, with respect, do you think it's a good idea to bring him in?” she interjected, as she saw Maria nod. “We don't know the kid's abilities other than his incredible physical skillset, and we don't even know if he would be inclined positively to work with us. Are you sure this isn't a dead end?”
Maria frowned, as she closed Barney's file with a smack on the table, and raised her eyes towards her. “Agent May's got a point, sir. We don't know what his intellectual skillset is, except knowing where to aim and how hard to pull the string. How do we know he'll be able to call the shots if it comes down to it?”
Melinda saw Fury and Coulson exchange a glance, before Fury shifted around and turned on a screen behind him. They grey snow like picture slowly pixelized into an image of Buck Chisholm, Clint's previous mentor turned crook and murder suspect.
“Is this live?” Melinda asked, as she rose from her seat, to get a closer look at the image.
“Yes,” Fury started, before turning back to face them all. “We caught Chisholm yesterday night, and he's had some very interesting things to tell us, after we figured out which buttons to push.”
Coulson seemed to have known about this all along, and right now, Melinda secretly hated him for it. However, she kept that for herself, as she watched the feed. Fury pushed another button, and started speaking – she deduced it was to a microphone inside the room.
“Mister Chisholm, please tell us what you know about your previous circus recruit. Same as you told me earlier today.”
She saw the man raise his eyes to where the sound was coming from, and she realized he looked more tired than he had before, in some of the pictures they had snapped of him and Clint preparing their coup on the mansion where things had gone wrong. He looked like he had lost a couple of pounds.
“Clint's a good kid, sir,” he started, and she was surprised to hear his voice, tinted with that typical accent she knew folk from the Midwest shared. “He's cleverer than he looks, even Barney didn't know that – he's got skills. Maths, physics, he understands everything.” He paused, and Melinda frowned, her gaze moving towards Fury before moving back to the screen. The former circus artist continued.
“He doesn't know the formulas they teach in school, but his logic, sir. That kid's unbeatable if he sets his mind to it.” Then, he cracked a smile, as if he knew all too well that they were looking for Clint, and Melinda understood that he knew too, why he was here. “You lost 'im, didn't you?”
Fury pressed on one button again, and the screen went black. He eyed them all – Hill, Coulson and herself – somberly, before looking down. “This kid, right here, is more than just a weapon if we can get our hands on him. All the intel we have shows us that he is as capable, if not more, than all the Agents graduating from the Academy.”
Melinda felt herself relieved and excited at the same time. This was different. Instead of going through all the recent graduates, going headhunting – almost literally – felt like something new and something she wanted to be a part of. She guessed Fury had sensed it when he had asked her to join in on the Hawkeye Project, as it was being called, a silly hint to his performing name.
“Clint Barton might not have any degree to put on his CV, but he's got enough skills to put any of us back several years in marksmanship and tactical planning. Chisholm up there,” Fury motioned to the screen which had turned dark again, “knows this and he's accepted to cooperate with us if we give him the medical attention he needs.”
Coulson's head jerked upright, and this time it was Hill that seemed unsurprised by the new development – Fury had the habit to only tell certain things to certain Agents, so that nobody except himself knew all of the details of a mission. It was a clever strategy, she had to give him that.
“Buck Chisholm's been diagnosed with cancer, and he needs the help as fast as he can,” Hill started, and Melinda arched her eyebrow. Ah, now she got why the former thief and carnival artist had decided to cooperate. They get better healthcare in jail than they do under the circus tent. “He's agreed to help us find his former pupil in exchange for our services. If we can get Barney Barton's attention and his good graces, we might be able to pin down Clint's location, although it's probably he's made it out of the country somehow.”
Lowering her head, Melinda turned one of the pages on Clint's file, before speaking up, reading from the file as she remembered it: “Can't we ask this Jacques DuQuesne for assistance too?” she asked, and she saw Hill shake her head as Fury said no.
“He's been in the wind for too long, and for all we know he's gone back to Europe where he came from originally. Our contacts at MI-6 lost his track when he crossed into the Shenghen zone with the help of fellow Frenchman Georges Batroc, and disappeared from there.”
Nodding, Melinda sighed. “So we have no clue where a 19 year old kid with a shoulder injury is hiding.”
Shaking his head, Coulson agreed. “He's learnt the circus tricks well in his time there, and we think that he may be hiding with another circus than Carson's or the Circus of Crime. Carnies are very protective of each other, and if he's found some contact or some former friends or allies to lay low with, we might not know until he's moved on to another circus.”
“But isn't his act supposed to be archery and knife throwing? I thought we had a word out to any new performing archers or knife throwers in the circus world,” Hill stated, but was immediately shot down by Coulson.
“He can work in the shadows of the circus without performing, or he might take on the costume of someone else to hide himself. He knows how to raise the tent and he knows how to mimic others perfectly, I've seen him do it myself.” Coulson paused, before looking up at Fury who acquiesced. “That's why we're so interested in him, he possesses skills we could never imagine of teaching a recruit from the Academy. He would be an incredible asset, not only because of his, as we've pointed out before, physical abilities, but also because of his knowledge and his acting capacities.”
“So what can we do next?”
That hadn't exactly been what she had in mind. Going from circus to circus, to try and see if any of the artists or other carnie folk would be willing to give up one of their own, that hadn't been what she had meant.
Although it had been judged the most appropriate response. Melinda had stated that it might spook Clint even further – if word reached him that different State Agents were looking for him, he might disappear even further into the world of Carnivals and Circuses, but SHIELD was running low on ressources to catch him. And moreso, it was the pride of the agency that had been hurt: being eluded by a 19 year old kid with no educational degree was bad enough. They needed him found.
She'd gone through two circuses already, and she'd understood that they wouldn't give up one of their own. Of course, all of them had heard of the Amazing Hawkeye – who hadn't? - but none of them knew if he was nearby, or if he was far away. Someone had even thought that he was dead, last he'd heard of him, and that it was a real shame because 'that kid could do such amazing things when given the opportunity to.'
Melinda had sat the man down – Bryan was his name, and he was now working with an equestrian show, but he had been a part of Carson's Carnival of Travelling Wonders for a long time.
“Clint's a good kid, you know,” he'd said, as she had invited him for coffee in town. Get him isolated from the other carnies, it might make him open up easier. “He came into the circus when he was just a little kid, and he just impressed all of us by throwing a stone into the night like it was nothing. DuQuesne was furious at first, but then he saw the opportunity.”
Bryan had nodded, before going on, as Melinda wrote it down. In cyrillic. Just in case someone was looking over her shoulder somehow.
“The kid's got scars all over his body from Jack's teaching, and Buck wasn't too kind with him either, but man, was it worth it. You ever see anyone hit a bullseye from over a hundred feet away?” As she nodded, he smiled back at her.
“You see anyone hit a bullseye from over a hundred feet away while blindfolded?” He laughed, before going on for a little while, but none of his ramblings – although representing new intel on Clint – gave any sort of clue as to where he was hiding.
Clint had gone into hiding, and it seemed like he wouldn't come out of it until he wanted to be found. And, as she knew, the strange world of freaks and carnies would let it be known that he was ready to come out.
SHIELD had appointed a team of researchers to look into the social circles and constructions in circus life, and it had turned out that they could get word across the country faster than official courriers could. All carnivals knew what was going on and who was the hottest act in this or that field. But, as soon as she or Coulson mentioned the Barton name, none of them knew anything of value. Not even the so called psychics or fortune tellers she asked and poked at.
Melinda had gone back to HQ empty handed, and found Coulson as empty handed as her. It felt like a personal failure as much as a team failure, and she knew that they were going to have to figure out some sort of new way to get a hold of the kid. How long would he be able to hide? Not indefinitely, right?
Hill hadn't found anything new, and they'd decided to bring in some more agents to help with the search – maybe young heads like Barbara Morse would have more success than her and Coulson.
She could hide herself better. Blend into the crowd. If she went with some friends or even on her own, pretending to have a good time, and started asking around, they thought that maybe she would be able to get some information out of the artists. They all knew that the power of the flesh was stronger than the power of the mind when it came to certain things.
“You gotta find any new trail, any fresh prints he left on his way out,” Coulson had briefed her. Melinda had been there to oversee the briefing, in case Coulson missed anything, but as always, he'd been spotless. “This kid is barely two years younger than you, but he is ten times as resourceful. And he's got an entire society of artists with him, so for the love of everything you like, do not spook him or break from your cover. They've got me and Agent May pinned down – most of them knew exactly who we were before we even started asking questions – so don't let them get on your tracks.”
She'd watched young Barbara go through the file with a curious look on her eyes. “So why do we want the kid anyway?” she'd asked, and Melinda had been more than happy to find the video they'd managed to get from a Californian family's holiday through Iowa, of a certain Clint Barton's performance with Carson. He had been fifteen years old at the time.
Melinda had seen the tape before. Many times. If she didn't know the origins of the tape and knew that it hadn't been tampered with, she wouldn't really have believed it. So, she watched the young agent's face as she watched too, and realized that the man they were after could turn out to be incredibly dangerous, should he choose to stop hiding and take action against her.
“If you find anything regarding the target, you are requested to report back immediately. If you find the target and manage to pin him down in one location, you are requested to report back immediately. If you do not find anything regarding the target, you are also requested to report back immediately. Are we understood?” Melinda would have smiled at Coulson using his dad voice – he often did that when dealing with newly graduated agents. But it worked quite well on them, and the young Agent nodded.
“Yes sir,” she said as she stood up, to exit the room and go out into the world to find this elusive creature of the underworld.
Melinda walked up to Coulson and crossed her arms against her chest. “How long you think she'll hold before she makes contact to tell us she can't find him?” she asked, and Coulson took a deep breath, before rubbing his temple.
“I don't know what we're doing wrong. We've got everything out to find the kid, and we're supposed to be the leading intelligence agency in the world. How come we find world terrorists easier than a kid with a bow?” he asked, as he turned off the computer they had been working with during the briefing.
Cracking a smile, Melinda took the files the junior agent had left behind and went to put them through the file shredder. “Maybe it's easier to just let him come to us, if we get something he wants,” she stated, as she saw Coulson turn his head to look at her.
“We already have Chisholm-”
“I didn't mean him. I meant his brother Barney. I'm sure he knows where his kid brother is, he just doesn't want us to know. And the Bureau is covering for him, because he's a good Agent, just as SHIELD would cover for you if anything came up.” Melinda looked up from the paper shredder.
“We need to get a new piece into the game, or he's not going to come out from his rabbit hole. He's been raised to avoid agents, officers and other goverment forces, if he wants to hide for the rest of his life he will be able to.” She paused, as the last piece of paper fell into the metallic container beneath the shredder.
“I hardly see us walking around these offices in thirty years, thinking back to that time a barely twenty year old kid kept us from finding him,” she finished off, grabbing one of the matches on the side of the shredder and lighting it on the side of the metallic container, throwing it down into it. Burn all evidence. Shredded papers were too dangerous to have lying around, and ash was a much more resilient way to keep secrets secret.
“Get Fury to pull on some higher threads. We know the FBI will accept to hand over Barney if the heads of SHIELD gets involved,” Melinda muttered, as low as possible, so only Coulson could hear. Even though they were alone in the room.
“Are you mad? Fury'll never ask Carter or Pierce to get in on this case.” Coulson frowned, worrying lines appearing around his eyes.
“You might be mistaken about how much he wants this kid, Phil,” she said, as if hitting the nail one last final time, as she prepared to walk out of the room. “I'm sure that if he wants Hawkeye enough, he will get him. It's just a matter of time before he involves the right pieces on the chessboard.” She smiled back at him, turning around and taking her things, exiting the room, as she left Coulson behind.
Sitting on the chair, facing the wall she had minutiously created with threads and pictures, she took a deep breath. All of the threads led back to the same spot – a picture of young Clint Barton in his circus gear, topped with a question mark.
She had pinned down other key figures in the kid's life – his father, his mother, among other things – even Barney had his own colored threads, she had pinned down Chisholm's last actions, and she had created a timeline of the last two weeks before Clint's disappearance.
SHIELD had been supposed to make contact with him on his next-to-last day in the hospital after his shoulder injury, but he had decided to disappear earlier than that, leaving the hospital staff both worried and annoyed. Of course, SHIELD had stepped in to settle the medical bills. She had been looking at the timeline, day by day, to try and figure out who or what had spooked the kid.
Had there even been a reason? Or had he just decided to leave, because that always worked best? Barney had been taken in by the FBI almost as soon as he was able to walk again, covered by their own agents and security, and there had been a large gap in the few hours where Clint had disappeared. Had Barney helped him get out? If so, why was he covering his younger brother's tracks? (Not counting the murder charges pending on him if they pinned down the deaths of some of the security agents at the mansion).
As far as Melinda knew, this was a mess. It was a big mess, and SHIELD was currently rowing through the unknown, trying to get their hands on this potential asset – but also potential threat. She'd heard Fury and Hill talk about neutralizing Clint if he refused to join them, for if he decided to join another organized crime unit like the Circus of Crime, he would be able to do so much damage.
“Where are you hiding, kid?” she asked the wall, as if it would suddenly spit out the answer to her question. They had gone through some of the major circuses, but none of them had allowed them backstage, behind the curtains where everything interesting happened.
She knew, and SHIELD knew, that word had gone around the world of performing arts that Clint's head was dangling on the edge of a wanted poster. But, she had to admit, that the carnival folks knew how to keep themselves out of trouble and showed so much support to each other, that you would have thought they'd hate each other more.
But no. Clint remained a needle in a haystack, and he would remain that way until they found the magnet to pull him out. And, as far as she knew, Barney Barton would be the pressure point. They just needed to get their hands on him, and then Clint would accept to join them. Or at least grant them an interview.
All in all, she couldn't believe the kid was only 19 years old. It was almost as if he was a messy creature from the underground, infinitely precious and important to their future plans. Somewhere, the echo of the Black Widow program rung in her ears, something that she had read in the old SSR archives when she had first joined SHIELD. Young kids making better agents than they ever would.
It looked like Clint Barton would become one of those most wanted. Dead or alive, if things didn't develop into a better future for him.