Chapter One
Chapter One
Clint indulged himself in running his hand through Nate’s hair. His youngest had gone down for his afternoon nap like he hadn’t slept for weeks. The murmur of Laura talking to Cooper outside underscored by the rhythmic swish-thunk of Lila at archery practice drifted through the open window on the warm breeze. Closing his eyes he tried to wrap himself in the simple contentment of the moment and ignore the ever present guilt at how close he had come to throwing all of this away that shackled him as surely as the security bracelet on his ankle did. Shaking the dark emotions off he bent and kissed Nate’s forehead and quietly left the room.
He was just turning from the bottom of the stairs to make for the back of the house when someone knocked at the door. Even a Stark installed security system (and hadn’t that been a kick in the teeth when he had finally gotten home and seen all the things Tony had done to take care of his family while Clint had been running after Cap and his boyfriend) didn’t stop him from reaching for a gun he wasn’t actually wearing. A patch of wallpaper revealed itself to be a screen showing a live image of their visitor. Rolling his eyes at his own paranoia he opened the door.
“Hi Mr B!” The girl grinned broadly.
“Bailey Wilcher, long time no see!” The granddaughter of their nearest neighbour and their first choice for babysitter for years had gotten accepted to some fancy school in New York around the time he had been locked in the Raft so he hadn’t seen her for about three years. He hadn’t been surprised when Laura had told him, Bailey was a talented dancer and singer and he fully expected to be sitting in the front row when she starred in her first Broadway show some day. She would be graduating this year if his math was correct. “How’s things?”
“Just fine. Me and Nanna are heading into town and wondered if you or Mrs B needed anything.”
“We’re good thanks.” He waved over her shoulder to Mrs Welcher in the truck. “You and your Nanna should come for dinner soon. The kids have missed you.”
“Sure.” She answered already on her way down the porch steps. “I’ll tell Nanna. Catch you later!”
With a grin and another wave Clint closed the door and carried on his way. Little Bailey Wilcher must be about 18 now. He would check with Laura, she would remember when Bailey’s birthday was. He stopped in the kitchen to wash the lunch dishes and put away the condiments. Mayo on Hotdogs, his eldest was a weirdo!
“Babe! You’ll never guess who was just at the door.” He called as he made his way out the door to the back yard. “Babe?”
He hadn’t registered the silence. Lila’s bow lay on the ground like she had dropped it without a care.
“Lila? Coop!” He ran over to the barn in case they were all in there for some reason, but it was empty save from the usual sundry items and equipment. He jogged to the picnic table, the book Laura had been reading was lying on the table, its pages rustling in the wind. Whistling loudly he scanned the surroundings frantic for a sign of his family. “Guys?!”
There was no answer. It was like they had just disappeared.
“Nate.” He breathed out in sudden terror before sprinting back into the house. “God! Please, please, not Nate!”
Bursting through the door to Nate’s room his foot caught on something and he went crashing down to the floor. Lying there he tried to gather the will to look up. Praying to a god he had never believed in that Nate would still be in their but dreading what he would see.
“Daddy? Did you fall down?” The sweetest voice pulled his head up like it was attached to a wire. Nate peered down at him from his bed still blinking drowsily.
“Nate! Nate, buddy!” Clint scrambled up and wrapped his son in his arms and peppering his confused face with kisses. “You’re OK buddy. You’re OK.”
“Tight, Daddy. Too tight!” Nate protested while tapping at his distraught fathers arms.
“Sorry, buddy.” He croaked and forced himself to loosen his grip.
-SOME TIME LATER-
Clint Frances Barton had decided that now was a good time to panic. Logically he had hit the panic button. There had been no response. Tony had given them a direct link to F.R.I.D.A.Y. but she hadn’t responded. He had tried again and again but had gotten nothing from her. Then he had grabbed Nate and his gun from the safe, House arrest be damned, and headed for town. He wasn’t sure what would be worse: getting to town and finding it as empty as his back yard had been; or finding everyone carrying about their day as normal.
White knuckling the steering wheel, he kept glancing at Nate to reassure himself that his son was still there. He had no idea what he was supposed to tell Nate. The young boy didn’t seem to have noticed the absence of the rest of their family yet. He was humming softly and gazing out the window at the passing countryside. Clint turned his attention back to the road and saw the truck idling at the side of the road. The one that had been in his front yard just minutes ago. Drawing a bracing breath he pulled his own vehicle over behind it.
“Nate, buddy. Stay here and wait for Daddy, OK?”
“Where you going Daddy?” Nate chirped.
“I’m just going to see if Mrs Welcher needs help. I’ll be right back,”
He drew his gun from its holster after he alit from the truck and made his way over keeping it ready but not aimed at anything. The passenger door was ajar and the cab empty. Bailey was leant against the front of the truck and he wondered how he hadn’t noticed her standing there till now. There was some kind of dust all over her face and left arm. She didn’t acknowledge his presence at all.
“Bailey.” He kept his voice even and soft. “Are you OK?”
Nothing.
Moving so he was right in front of her he put his hand on her dust free arm. She looked through him. Holstering his gun he tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear absently noting she felt a bit feverish. “Bailey, honey, answer me. Where’s your Nanna? What is this dust?” He smeared his thumb over her cheek.
That got a reaction. Her eyes snapped into focus on his hand while own shakily raised to her face. She let out a wounded sound.
“Nooooo.” She moaned. Suddenly she was frantically scrubbing at her face. “Nonononono!”
“Bailey! What-“ He tried to grab her wrist when he saw one of her nails score a bleeding line. “Honey, stop!”
“I didn’t-NO-I didn’t mean-please! I had to grab the wheel. I had to grab the wheel! But I went through-Nonononono-Nanna. Nanna! NANNA!” She wailed and collapsed forward into his arms. Clint held her tightly and whispered soothing nonsense as she dissolved into weeping, broken repetition of the word Nanna all he could make out. That was how they stayed for a long moment before in a clearly herculean effort Bailey pulled herself together and straightened. Scrubbing her tears and the last of the mysterious dust away she met his eyes. He wondered if his own eyes looked as lost as hers.
“Mrs B and the kids?” She rasped stuffily.
“I don’t know.” He admitted, the words like barbed wire running over his tongue. “Nate is in the truck but I can’t find Laura or the other two.”
She wavered for a second like she was going to break down into tears again but visibly chocked the impulse down.
“What happened honey?” He asked again, even as he dreaded the answer.
“We were-uh-we were just driving. I was looking at her.” Her gaze had gone distant again, but in memory now rather than shock. “N-Nanna’s been having Mr Jacobs over nights while I’ve been gone. I was teasing her about having a booty call. She-she was laughing! Then....” Bailey bit her lip and tears started to fall once more. “She came apart.” She whispered like the words would birth fresh horror on the world. “I-I had to grab the wheel and pull the truck over. She just-I didn’t...... I think I got some in my mouth!”
“What?” He felt like he had been doused in ice. A screeching mantra starting up in the back of his mind. Not Laura. Not Coop and Lila. This didn’t happen to my family! Bailey pulled from his loosened hold and staggered several steps away to lean over and vomit. He stood frozen as she heaved for several moments before straightening and making her way to the truck with all the grace of a drunk after a two day bender. She switched off the engine and then pulled a rucksack from the foot well. Retrieving a bottle of water she swirled and spat twice before looking back to him.
“What do we do?” She asked him. The young women suddenly made into the little girl who had looked at him like he was a hero before the Avengers were even a wrinkle in Nick Fury’s eyepatch. For a moment he hated her for it. A dark, shameful part of him wanting to rage at her that he was no leader. The part that had birthed itself in the back of his mind after Loki had taken his mind and told him he made nothing but bad decisions. Hell, it would be super convenient if Coulson would just come back from the dead and competent all this awful shit away.
Fuck that! He remonstrated himself. He was Hawkeye! More to the point, he was Clint Barton: father of three! He could and would run this circus until the real Ringmaster (Laura) came back. Which she would. This could be fixed, it had to be. Squaring his shoulders he decided to break it down into manageable steps. Easy targets, impossible to miss.
“We need to figure out what is going on.” He told her, using the voice he used to use on the rookies at SHIELD. “So, you’ll come with me and Nate into town and we’ll see how far this thing goes.” Bailey gave a shudder, presumably at the thought of this being more than an effect over the immediate area. He was personally constantly batting the implications of F.R.I.D.A.Y. not answering away from the forefront of his mind.
“OK.” Her posture straightened as the steel spine she had inherited from her Nanna came to the fore. “Into town. Scope out the situation and then decide next steps.”
“That’s right. We got this!”
They didn’t even make it all the way into town to find out that not only did they not have this, nobody else did either. The streets were in chaos. Clint had had to slow to a snails pace to navigate the abandoned vehicles and various collisions scattered all over the road. People wandered about in various states of shock. One of the dads of Coopers soccer team was hunched over a pushchair at one corner, clutching a tiny blanket and sobbing. A boy about Lila’s age kept opening and closing a shop door, calling for his mom each time.
“Daddy?” Nate’s voice was tremulous. “What’s happening?”
“I don’t know, buddy.” Clint ruffled his hair as Bailey wrapped her arm round his shoulders in a hug that was probably as much to comfort herself as Nate. “But we’re OK though. Promise.”
A cell phone alert breaks the quiet. Bailey startled before nearly tearing her bag open to get to the phone. She read the message and somehow managed to become even more tense.
“What’s ‘Code: Excelsior’ Bailey?” Nate asked. She was quiet long enough for Nate to start tugging on her shirt. “Bailey! What’s it mean?”
“It’s... It means the school has been compromised.” Her voice is still a gravely wreck from her sobbing storm and vomiting fit earlier. “We’ve to disperse and go to ground till the all clear.” She looked stunned, mystified even, that she was saying what she was. She even unlocked her cell and brought the message back up like that would somehow change what it said.
“The school. Your school? What the hell kind of school has that kind of alert?” Clint blurted.
She squinted at him like he was the odd one for asking. Then her eyes widened with realisation. “Mrs B didn’t tell you about the school?”
“Some drama school isn’t it? For the ‘talented’?”
“Gifted.” He thought that teenager dealing with obtuse adult tone was unnecessary. “Xavier’s School for Gifted Children.”
“The mutant school?!?” Clint practically stood on the brake at this revelation. “You’re a mutant?”
“Yes.” Bailey lifted her chin defiantly while Nate was giving him a look of ‘boy are you stupid’ that Laura always insisted he inherited from Clint.
“How did I not know this?”
“You were busy chasing nubile twenty year olds to Wakanda.” She retorted deadpan. He was taken aback at how calm she was, though he supposed they could only afford one adult, or near adult, freaking out at a time in their current situation.
“That is not what happened!”
“It’s how Mrs B described it.”
He had no response for that. Laura hadn’t actually thought...but then why wouldn’t she. Thumping his head against the steering wheel, he screwed his eyes shut and swore at himself internally. Laura had always been defensive about Wanda. They had argued about it a lot. How much time he spent with her either in person or on the phone. She had screamed at him once that his real family was right here and what had the Witch done to him to pull him away so easily. He remembered scoffing at her concerns and idly promising a family holiday to prove he was there with them. Then Cap had called saying Tony had imprisoned Wanda in the Compound. He had been out the door after only taking a moment to scribble an afterthought of a note.
Wanda needs me. Back soon.
God he was a moron!
“Right! New plan!” He told them without raising his head. “We’re going back to the farm for tonight. You” He pointed without looking. “will be catching me up on what I missed while I was in Wakanda with my team. Then tomorrow we’re gonna head to the Compound. If anyone knows what the hell is going on it’s going to be the Avengers.” Sitting up again he nodded decisively.
“Shouldn’t we...” Bailey waved vaguely at their surroundings.
He pondered that for a second, but what could they do that the local law enforcement wouldn’t be doing anyway? He needed a target and was desperate to get Nate somewhere secure and the Compound was the safest place he knew.
“No we’re going with Plan B.”