“You have a family, right, Barton?”
Clint spits. His nose is broken, he heard the crunch when the fist impacted it. He can feel the blood dripping through, tickling the insides of his nose as it moves further down, and when he grimaces to get rid of the sensation, it pulls in all of his facial muscles. It hurts. God, he thinks, he hates broken noses. They’re horrible. He doesn’t say anything.
“Got a wife, Laura Eleonora, née Bishop, very impressive,” Thaddeus Ross continues, as he ignores Clint’s stoic glare. “Three kids, hah, three! That’s impressive too, for a guy who barely had any family of his own” he says, as he turns a page, and Clint feels his heart skip a beat.
The headache that’s coming on burns his mind completely through, and the migraine- got, the migraine. Those are the fucking worst, he thinks. Light, sound, it hurts. All of it. “Oldest one, Cooper Charles Barton. Godfather, Nicholas Fury. I didn’t know you could name SHIELD agents as godparents to a child that supposedly doesn’t exist-”
Another fist collides with Clint’s temple, as he moves slightly forward, opening his mouth to spit some insult at Ross again. “Second one, Lila Edith Barton. Cute little girl, isn’t she? Looks just like her mom. Godmother, Melinda May, another SHIELD agent! And, look, the godfather was Phil Coulson. Shame he died, really. He was an efficient agent,” he trails on, as he turns the last page.
Clint’s jaws tighten, as he pulls on the handcuffs on the back of his hands.
“Nathaniel Pietro Barton,” Ross laughs, looking up from the file and straight at Clint. “You name all of your kids after other people, didn’t you? Your brother for one, your mother for the other, and then, you decide to name your last one after a freak?”
Frowning, Clint spits again. He gathers enough spit at the back of his throat, makes a sound, and spits as far as he can.
It hits Ross on his shirt, and he barely acknowledges it.
“Godmother, Natasha Romanoff. Bet you regret naming her the godmother to your last child after she stabbed you in the back, Barton.” Clint still doesn’t say anything, but he can feel his nose tickling again. He inhales sharply.
“It’s funny, actually,” Ross continues, “because I’ve got some blood work here, and let me say, it’s actually incredible.” Ross lifts the paperwork slightly, and Clint recognizes numbers, but doesn’t have the time to interpret them. “Some genetic markers on the fifteenth chromosome are very similar to Wanda Maximoff’s,” he says, and Clint’s heart stops. He tries not to drop his facade, but he can’t. What did Ross just say?
“Thought it’d make you listen. Your kid, as it turns out, has a mutation in his genes that looks terribly like the one both of the Maximoff kids had. It’s funny- it’s funny, when you think about it. All this time, I was going after the Maximoff kid. Going after Banner- the Hulk- because I thought that they- that they’d be the key to unlocking the Manhattan project. Or reviving it. What those kids could do, man-”
“You did things to Blonsky too,” Clint finally quips, as he tries to get Ross’ attention. “Had to freeze him down in Burrows, Alaska, hide him from the world, didn’t ya’?”
“That’s where you’re wrong too,” Ross adds, pointing a finger down at the floor. Clint’s mind goes through the possibilities immediately, and his face drops. “Got the Abomination right here where I want him.”
Ross smiles. “Your kid got some enhanced genes, and our best theory is that he got them through you. He was born a little over 9 months after New York, right? Nine months- was it- oh, was it celebratory sex? When you reunited with your wife, after an Asgardian mind controlled you?”
Pause.
“Now, the real question is- where are they?”
Clint watches Ross’ eyes carefully, and when he realizes that Ross truly, really, definitely doesn’t know where his family is, he laughs. He laughs so loud, throwing his head back, feeling his nose and brain and mind screaming at the effort, and before he knows it, another fist breaks through the skin at his temple. He doesn’t care. He’s seen worse. He’s lived through worse.
“You don’t- you’ve got- hah, you have no fucking clue, do you?”
He spits again, as he laughs a bit more. “You ain’t ever gonna find ‘em, Ross, cuz I take care of my family.” He pauses, and spits again, as one of the soldiers hold his head up, preparing for another shot. “Maybe you should’ve taken care of yours too!”
The fist that collides with his temple hits him harder than the others. Or maybe he’s getting sloppy. Or, perhaps, the concussion he was suspecting finally kicked in. He passes out, before he can even mention Betty Ross. That he knows where she is, who she’s with.
While he dreams, he dreams of space. Of magic stones and Asgard. He dreams of Ice giants, and Loki. Blue skin and red eyes. He hears a baby crying, and when he jolts awake in his cell, Clint feels the warm and intrusive presence of Wanda’s powers in his mind.
He locks her out when he gathers enough strength.