Chapter 12
The desert heat clings to Clint’s skin, even as night settles in. The mission is simple on paper — eliminate a rogue faction hoarding stolen nuclear materials before they can sell them off to the highest bidder. But things are never simple in the field.
He’s perched on a rooftop, rifle steadied against the crumbling ledge of an old warehouse. Below, the compound sprawls in the dark, dimly lit by the flickering floodlights mounted on rusting poles. The op was supposed to be surgical — neutralize targets, secure intel, get out. But now Ramirez is in his ear, voice cold and firm.
“They’re loose ends, Hawkeye. All of them.”
Clint’s scope is trained on a target standing just outside a shack near the center of the compound. A kid — no older than ten — clutching something in his hands. A tattered stuffed bear, barely holding together.
He keeps his finger off the trigger. “Negative. He’s unarmed.”
“He’s in the compound. That’s all that matters,” Ramirez counters. “Take the shot.”
Clint’s pulse thrums in his ears. He’s always known this line existed — the one separating soldier from murderer. And now, Ramirez is asking him to cross it.
He doesn’t.
“I won’t,” Clint says again, voice steady.
There’s a heavy pause. Then Ramirez exhales sharply. “Fine.”
The shot cracks through the night, echoing like a thunderclap. The boy crumples.
Clint’s breath catches, a sick twist pulling at his stomach. His hands grip the rifle so tightly his knuckles go white.
“Target down,” Ramirez reports, his voice devoid of anything resembling remorse. “Move in.”
The op continues. Clint moves like a ghost through the compound, doing his job, taking out the actual threats. But every time his finger pulls the trigger, or slits a throat, all he can see is that kid dropping to the ground.
Back at base, Clint storms into Ramirez’s quarters without knocking, slamming the door behind him. “What the hell was that?”
Ramirez doesn’t even flinch. He’s sitting on the edge of his cot, cleaning his sidearm like it’s just another night. “That was the job.”
“No,” Clint growls. “That was murder.”
Ramirez finally looks up, his gaze unreadable. “That was necessity.”
Clint clenches his jaw, fists curling at his sides. “There’s no way in hell that kid was a threat.”
Ramirez sighs, placing his pistol aside. “You don’t get it, do you? Loose ends get people killed. If we start making exceptions, we put ourselves and our unit at risk.”
Clint shakes his head, stepping closer. “That’s bullshit.”
Ramirez watches him carefully before his lips curl into something that’s not quite a smile. “You’re real high and mighty for someone who shouldn’t even be here.”
Clint freezes.
Ramirez leans back, crossing his arms. “You really thought no one would find out? Fake name, fake papers — you’re a damn good shot, Hawkeye, but you’re not as untouchable as you think.”
The air turns suffocating. Clint forces himself to stay composed. “You gonna report me?”
Ramirez tilts his head, considering. “Depends.”
Clint narrows his eyes. “On what?”
“On whether you’re gonna keep causing problems.”
A challenge. A warning.
Clint exhales slowly, a bitter smirk tugging at his lips. “You know, you’re not as untouchable as you think either.”
Ramirez lifts a brow.
Clint steps closer, lowering his voice. “You killed a civilian. An unarmed child. You wanna report me? Go ahead. But that report’s gonna include how you pulled the trigger on an innocent. You have a rank and a reputation here, it’d be real cute to see how all of that crumbles down into nothing in a second.”
A tense silence settles between them.
Then Ramirez lets out a quiet chuckle, shaking his head. “You’re a real pain in the ass, you know that?”
Clint doesn’t move. “I’ve been told.”
Another long pause. Then Ramirez picks up his pistol again, resuming his cleaning. “Get out of my room, Hawkeye.”
Clint lingers for a moment before turning on his heel, walking out without another word.
But as the door clicks shut behind him, he knows one thing for sure — his time here is running out.
It’s a good thing he came light, then.
Clint knew it was only a matter of time.
He’s not stupid — Ramirez had the rank and the connections to make Clint’s life hell if he wanted to. But Clint had something Ramirez didn’t: the truth. And neither of them were about to let the other walk away clean.
The fallout happens fast.
Ramirez files his report first, citing Clint as an underage soldier who falsified his enlistment documents. Within twenty-four hours, Clint is pulled from deployment, hauled back to base under guard.
But Clint? He fires back.
His own report — detailing the unauthorized killing of an unarmed civilian — sets off a chain reaction. Higher-ups can brush a lot of things under the rug, but an execution? That’s a mess they can’t ignore.
Ramirez is yanked from the field the next day.
By the time Clint is shoved into a military transport, wrists zip-tied, he catches a glimpse of Ramirez being loaded into another vehicle. Their eyes meet for a split second across the tarmac.
No words are exchanged. They don’t need to be.
And when he’s pushed into the place that holds his fate for the indefinite future, the cell is cold. Sterile. Everything in this place reeks of control — of making sure men like him don’t forget they’ve been stripped of their autonomy.
Clint leans against the cot, staring at the ceiling.
He wonders how long they’ll keep him here. He’s technically a criminal — lied to enlist, broke the law. But they can’t exactly sentence him like a regular soldier, because legally, he wasn’t supposed to be a soldier to begin with.
A ghost in the system.
Ramirez, though? His fate is probably worse. Executing an unarmed civilian, especially a child, is something the military can’t afford to publicize. They’ll bury it under bureaucracy, but they won’t let him walk away.
Clint closes his eyes. He should feel something — relief, maybe. Justice. But all he feels is exhaustion.
His time in the military is over. It was a short but long run. And he promised himself that he wouldn’t ask Buck to pull any more favors for him; Buck’s tired, Clint knows.
The question now is — what the hell does he do next?
He eyes the air vent up on the wall dejectedly. No, scratch that, angrily. He’s pissed — pissed at Ramirez for killing that kid, at himself for not being able to keep his mouth shut, at Barney and Duquesne for making him leave the circus, and most importantly, at his no longer relevant parents who abandoned him and Barney, dragging Clint into a rabbit hole of shit hitting the fan over, and over, and over again.
Clint slams his fist into the wall. The concrete gives under his punch, but it’s not satisfying. The pain in his hand is nothing compared to the ache in his chest, nothing compared to the rage that’s been brewing in him for years. The helplessness. The pointlessness. It’s always been a battle just to survive. But at what cost?
"Dammit," He mutters under his breath, shoving the frustration aside. He needs something to focus on, anything to distract him from the mess of emotions threatening to consume him. But the more he thinks, the more it all keeps circling back.
Ramirez had killed a kid. And Clint couldn’t stop him. He’d let it happen. He could’ve shot, could’ve stopped it — but he didn’t. His hands had been tied by his own moral code, and in the end, it wasn’t enough to keep him from falling into the same damn trap that always seemed to be waiting for him.
Maybe it was the kid that broke him. Or maybe it was everything else that had been building up inside him since he was a kid — since his parents abandoned him and Barney, since everything he’s done, every choice he’s made, has just spiraled out of control. He wonders how long it’s been since he felt like anything was in his grasp.
The circus. Buck. The military. All these things — nothing feels real anymore. They were supposed to be his way out. But the deeper he sinks into this new life, the more it feels like he’s just running from something that’s always going to catch up with him. That’s what life has been, hasn’t it? Just running. Trying to escape what he’s afraid of.
“Can’t outrun the past, Barton,” He sighs to himself, his voice bitter. It’s a phrase he’s heard a million times — spoken by people who don’t even understand what it means to be stuck in a loop, trying to survive.
He stares at the wall, hands shaking slightly as the rush of thoughts clouds his mind. His breath feels shallow, his chest tight. How did everything get so screwed up?
Barney’s gone. No one knows where he is — if he’s even alive. That’s the part that gnaws at Clint’s mind, eating away at him every waking moment. Did he make the right choice? Should he have stayed with Barney, tried to fix things between them? Or had he just left him to be swallowed whole by the same thing that had swallowed Clint’s life for so long — betrayal, anger, fear? Maybe he was the one who’d failed Barney. Maybe he couldn’t fix anything, because he could barely keep himself together.
But that wasn’t the whole truth, was it? Clint could’ve gone back to the circus. Could’ve walked away from all of this, from the lies, from the violence. But he didn’t. Instead, he kept marching forward, desperate for something else. A purpose. A place to belong. But now, that place didn’t feel like it fit anymore. He was a sniper in a system that had no place for someone like him, a system that had already written his future in the margins of fake papers and broken promises.
He squeezes his eyes shut, trying to block it all out, but the thoughts keep coming. And when he finally opens his eyes again, it’s like nothing’s changed. The world’s still the same — a mess. And Clint’s still stuck in the middle of it. The anger, the betrayal, the hurt — it’s all too much.
In the silence of the cell, Clint lets himself feel it. All of it. The weight of the mistakes, the choices he made, the people he lost, the things he’s done.
And then, a hard realization hits him like a punch to the gut. He’s been running from this — this feeling, this anger, this emptiness. He’s been so focused on surviving, on pushing forward, that he never stopped to think about what he was running toward. He never asked himself what he actually wanted. What he needed.
He doesn’t have an answer. He might never have an answer.
Clint turns his head, eyes fixed on the small air vent again. It feels like a symbol — an escape, a way out. But he knows that’s not the truth. No escape is coming. Not for him. Not for anyone.
He’s just got to keep moving. And for once, he’ll stop pretending he has any idea where the hell he’s going.
Quite literally speaking, it’s one hell of a birthday present he got himself.