Phil Coulson’s team had been trailing Hawkeye since the day his file had been dropped on Coulson’s desk.
That was two years ago.
They’d managed to keep track of him for the first month or so, but once Hawkeye realized he was being followed, he’d disappeared, only for them to receive another report of an assassination by arrows.
Last year, before he’d fallen off their radar, they’d almost caught him in Bulgaria. But he’d ducked into a crowd and was there one moment, gone the next.
Only after reviewing security footage from all possible angles and multiple rewinds, did they seem him step into a shop and come out moments later, taking on the appearance of one of the many college students flooding the square.
They still hadn’t figured out how he’d dyed his hair so fast.
Then, he’d dropped off the grid entirely. Not one report or contract taken that coincided with Hawkeye.
Now, after nearly eight months of wondering if he’d just been gutted and dropped into a river somewhere, they were getting almost constant sightings of a man shooting people down with a weapon from the Paleolithic age.
The only problem was the change in his targets.
Hawkeye was known in SHIELD to take down the bad guys before they were even a blip on their radar.
And now he was assassinating civilians in broad daylight.
SHIELD sent out an order to take down Hawkeye and bring him in for interrogation and possible termination, instead of recruitment, as they’d been attempting before.
The organization knew there was a reason why the archer’s morals had taken such a drastic turn. It was Coulson’s job to find out why.
And he was damn good at his job.
Clint used to see the world in color. Bright blues lighting up the sky, hot pink and purple on a passing kid’s hair.
That was then.
Everything is grey now. Grey and red.
The heavy weight of the metal collar that had been locked around his throat is unrelenting and he almost begins to pull at it.
He reaches up, fingertips brushing the collar- shocks rippling down his spine as a woman begged for mercy-Clint was thrashing on the ground as they upped the voltage-needle after needle being pushed into him, pure fire filling his veins-his torturer smiled at him as he lay crumpled on the floor- he snatches his hands back.
There is a gaping hole inside him, it feels like. He isn’t sure when it had first appeared, maybe after his first civilian kill, maybe when he first got taken.
He can still remember the look on the girl’s face when the gun had been held to her temple. Clint had dropped his bow immediately at the threat of her death, and then had flinched when her body hit the floor.
That had been eight months ago. He’d given up soon after.
“Coulson!”
Phil’s head snaps up, the sight of Melinda May striding down the hallway with a frown on her face jerking him out of his thoughts.
She pauses a few feet from him, a file in hand. “A few new reports came in...and you are going to want to see this.”
He follows May down the halls to the team’s debriefing room, where he can see a hologram is already moving, Fitz and Simmons off to the side with Ward next to them, looking through what seemed to be security footage and audio recordings on another screen.
“Oh!” Simmons spins around at the entrance of Coulson. “You’re here! Good. Fitz and I might’ve just found what could explain Hawkeye’s odd patterns.”
Phil raises an eyebrow and gestures for her to continue.
“Well, right before he went bad, there’s a few different encounters between Hawkeye and AIM that match up. You see-”
Fitz interrupts, excitement filling his face. “What if Hawkeye never went dark side, and instead he’s just being controlled?”
What? Coulson had never considered that as a possibility, but he knows he should have. It was a mistake to not have reviewed every possible reason that the assassin might have gone rogue, and he knows it was his fault they hadn’t. “Is there any solid evidence that this might be the case?”
“Well…” Simmons winces. “Not exactly...But! If he really isn’t doing this of his own free will, that means that stopping him will be a whole lot easier than we thought it’d be.”
Ward steps forward, arms folded and face set in a scowl. “We can’t just go rushing in there with the hope that he’s just going to let us take him in.”
May nods. “And we won’t,” she replies, a determined expression on her face. “We’ll find all the information we can and then we’ll go in ready for him to go down fighting.”
The older man nods. “Ward, find Skye and have her narrow down all his appearances since the change in targets, and find a perimeter of where his base is.” The agent gives a brief dip of his head. “Fitz and Simmons, I want you both reviewing any footage before his change that might prove him being controlled. If you need access to the Pentagon, just ask.” The two scientists nod in agreement.
Coulson turns to May. “I want you on surveillance. Scan any and all existing comms, reports, anything that is on the internet in one way or another, and find his communications.”
“And you?” Agent May asks, raising an eyebrow.
“I’m going to contact SHIELD and let them know about the opportunity we might have to bring Hawkeye in alive.”
Clint had been sent on a mission yesterday, which meant he has about three days left until they started trying to find him.
The wealthy businessman he’d been set on was just like all the rest of his targets since they’d gotten him.
Innocent.
Marc DeLourec is standing in the way of AIM’s attempts to supply certain sponsors, all by staying on top of his purchases and interactions with others.
He lives in a little villa on the edges of Vienna, with separate bedrooms for each of his three children. His wife is named Christine and she had been born in London before moving to Italy to study in one of the country’s finest colleges.
Clint was told to take out all possible witnesses.
The faces of a little boy and his grandma were burned into his mind from the last time he’d been sent with the command to take out witnesses.
He can’t do it again.
He can’t.
There was a hotel only a few blocks from his target’s property, close enough that his handler would think he was scoping out vantage points and routes, but far enough that it would take a several minutes for Clint to get to the villa.
He had been supplied with several guns, different makes and producers, which all lay scattered across his bed. The bow they had let him bring was nothing compared to the one they had locked up in whatever base they’d first brought him to, if it was even still there, but he’d make do.
They’d been smart enough to give him civilian clothes that stuck out just enough that they could locate him in a crowd. Fortunately, Clint had quickly figured out how uninformed they were of his methods of disguise.
He knows someone else had to be trying to track him. Before he’d been taken in, he’d had several close calls with a man who looked like a knock-off from Men In Black and his team of trigger-happy agents. The closest they’d ever come was as he’d been taking a contract Sofia, Bulgaria.
The woman had come close enough to touch him and she hadn’t even known it.
He’d give anything for one of them to have caught him and given him a quick bullet to the head, if only because he wouldn’t be hiding out in the bathroom of a motel room, swearing under his breath as he digs a knife into his forearm.
The comm in his ear- wired to his goddamn hearing aid, those bastards -is chattering, his ‘SO’ asking what’s happening.
“Yeah uh-” Clint lets out a grunt as the knife misses its target, again . “We’re good here, just figuring some stuff out.” The end of his sentence trails off, his jaw clenching when the blade finally slips under what he was going for.
“Asset 32,” the voice in his ear says. “Explain the situation or expect punishment upon arrival.”
Images, memories flicker of the last time he’d try to go dark. - -electric buzzing as the rod was jabbed into his stomach, again and again and aga-- “Just...you know…” Clint lets himself trail off again, as if hiding embarrassment. “Giving the right hand a go before I head out.”
There’s a moment of hesitation, just static fuzzing in his ear, then- “Pull yourself together, Asset. You’ve got three days until extraction.”
A click signals that whatever underling who’d been manning his mic has just turned their end off. They’re getting cocky.
Idiots.
Clint turns his attention back to the matter at hand.
At hand. Heh.
The painkillers must’ve just kicked in.
He gives a final flick of his wrist, and with a sick pop the tiny thing that had been lodged beneath his skin slips out, dropping onto the towel he’d laid out on the counter. The bit of metal winks up at him innocently, as if it wasn’t the thing that had been controlling him for the past year.
Clint grins down at the tracker, the thing that had sent electric pulses up his spine and had tried to rip memories from his head- thank god they hadn’t succeeded with that one -and had made him think himself dead when he finally had collapsed to the floor of whatever new ‘training’ room they’d dragged him to.
Then he scoops up the gun he’d been keeping by the sink and pulls the trigger, leaving the tracker obliterated and a new bullet lodged in the fake marble beneath it.
It’s like a weight lifts from his shoulders and he doesn’t hesitate when he leaves the bathroom and closes the door behind him.
They’ve barely made it to Vienna before Hawkeye takes off. Skye was still in the Bus, scouring every source of information she could get her hands on, and even with it locked down and alerts on, there was still that itch in the back of Phil’s mind that whispered, it’s not safe enough, you’re leaving Fitznsimmons and Skye unprotected.
He knows the two scientists were far better trained then they had been a few months ago, and Skye with her training from Ward would be able to protect herself easily, but he is never going to get used to leaving half of his team alone.
Currently, Ward, May and Coulson are across from a squat looking motel, eyes fixed on the moving figure in the lit-up window. They’d already gotten eyes on him entering, even though his haircut had been altered and his jawline somehow softened, and knew exactly what room he was in.
“He’s moving.” The quiet call from May is just loud enough for the other two to hear, and Coulson doesn’t move an inch as they watch Hawkeye carefully pull aside a curtain and eye the street before he slides it open.
Hawkeye is dead silent as he inches his way out the window, and Coulson can tell he’s been trained, not just in assassination, but gymnastics of a sort. They have never managed to find footage of his fighting style, but from the reports of his close-up kills, he is just as competent on foot as he is with a bow and arrows.
The mercenary only takes a moment to glance at the wall of the building before he is swinging himself out and up, hands latching onto the roof before the SHIELD agents have time to react.
He’s sprinting across the rooftop and leaping to the next seconds later and May swears, taking off after him. She climbs a nearby fire escape, taking it two stories at a time, Ward and Coulson following on the street below.
Hawkeye is faster than they expected, not hesitating as he jumps from building to building, but May is gaining with each stride.
It’s on the rooftop of a dilapidated warehouse when it happens.
May is just an arms-length from the mercenary.
There’s a flash of color in Coulson’s peripheral and he opens his mouth to shout a warning--then five yellow-suited people are busting their way through the crumbling rooftop-access door.
Hawkeye freezes for a moment, eyes locked on the fast approaching AIM agents, and Coulson can hear his heart pounding in his ears. For all he knows for sure, Hawkeye has been working for AIM for the past year and the new arrivals are reinforcements, here to take down the SHIELD agents before they can get to their mercenary.
Hawkeye hesitates for only another second, and then in a move that both sends the closest AIM agents flying and clears his path to the edge of the building, he takes off, moving faster than they’d ever seen before.
Ward lets out a wordless shout at the sight of their target flinging himself off the edge of a six-story drop, certain that the man will clear the gap easily and be gone in an instant, leaving them with no chance of ever tracking him down again.
The AIM agents are still fighting to get close to Hawkeye, and as the mercenary leaps, one of them raises his gun and fires.
It’s like time froze for a moment. Coulson knows he’ll be able to look back on this exact second and remember every detail perfectly. Because who wouldn’t?
Hawkeye is arcing gracefully through the air, arms thrown forward to give himself as much momentum as possible, and the AIM agent hasn’t moved, his grip unshakable as he focuses and pulls the trigger.
There’s a splash of blood and a strangled shout, and before Coulson can move, Hawkeye is falling, hands reaching uselessly as though he can grab onto the edge of the building and stop himself from hitting the ground. His graceful leap is gone and in its place is an uncoordinated flailing that only serves to hurt him more.
Coulson is sprinting forward, ready to take the impact of the other man instead of him hitting the ground, but Hawkeye manages to twist in the air, obviously aiming to land on the fire escape, instead hitting the railing with another bit-off scream, and continuing down, his fall only slowed by each time he glanced off the rusted metal staircase.
A quick glance up confirmed that the AIM agents hadn’t lasted against May, each in various states of pain, with one halfway off the roof, blood dripping steadily from what was most likely a shattered nose.
The mercenary is only a few feet away when the two SHIELD agents slow to a stop. Ward shares a look with Coulson before slowly continuing forward, gun unholstered and safety off. The suit-clad man takes the lead and steps into the mercenary’s view, a bland smile on his face.
He can see Hawkeye’s eyes scanning him, pausing on the bulge of his gun under his suit and the hilts of throwing knives hidden on his belt. Finally his glassy eyes slid to Coulson’s face. Couslon can hear approaching footsteps, May, his mind supplies, as Hawkeye watches him.
The mercenary glances to Ward and the glock in his hand, to May standing behind him, most likely also holding one, and then back at Coulson.
“Well…” Hawkeye’s voice is raspy and his lips crack, beginning to bleed as he talks. “Get on with it th-then.”
His face is blank, only the furrow in his eyebrows and the hand clamped on his thigh showing his pain, but there is fear and despair in his eyes. And most devastatingly, acceptance in his words.
The agents are still as Coulson responds. “Hawkeye, what exactly do you think we are here to do?”
The man on the ground smiles grimly and bares his bloody teeth in the semblance of a smile. “What you do to everyone who kills the ones who don’t deserve it. You kill them. So,” He looks at the gun at Ward’s side again. “Get on with it.”
They don’t move.
“Just do it!” Hawkeye is snarling now, his face twisted with guilt and regret and hate , eyes locked on Ward. “Pull the goddamned trigger!”
The FBI wannabes have found him again. He isn’t sure how, they hadn’t managed to track him down the entirety of the time that AIM had him, but of course they have to find him the night he’s been planning for since the moment he was taken.
It had taken him two months into him being sent on missions for them to stop sending a squad of agents to watch his every move, and another three for his SO to stay on comms only. Bribing a doctor who had operated him had taken every last bit of dirt he’d collected on the head of AIM’s R&D Department, and he’d still had to promise the man to try to get him a raise- as if he had any influence, as if he was there voluntarily, as if the doctor hadn’t strapped him down and sedated him while Clint tried to rip the man’s throat out with his teeth -to find out where his tracker was.
A quick look out the window tells him all he needs to know, that the woman he’d seen take down three of AIM’s agents in one second flat is in the alley across the street, the strangely attractive muscle who proved to know exactly what he was doing is a step behind her, and the man who would look like he belonged at a desk if it wasn’t for the muscles shifting under his suit is a few feet beside her.
Clint scoops up the two guns he’d lifted from the agents who’d dropped him off and the knife set they’d provided him, and slips them into place, checking and double checking that nothing has a chance of jamming.
The bleeding on his forearm has slowed, and even with the bandage stained red, just looking at it made him feel lighter. AIM had used the tiny chip to send shock waves through his nervous system, numbing him or pulling him apart with a click of a button. It had been used to try to pull memories from his head, to make him a shell, leaving him only with his skills, but they quickly learned that his memories were what made him so dangerous.
The last time they had removed some, he’d forgotten that he was a mercenary, and proceeded to search for his brother.
It took them a week to track him down, he moved so fast.
And now, the one bit of light he’d had to look forward to was about to be taken away, all because some other agency thought he’d look better in their colors than AIMs.
Clint only takes a moment to open the curtain and survey the street, acting as if he couldn’t see the agents half hidden in the shadows, and yanks the window open, sending a silent apology to the sweet girl who had been manning the front desk. No doubt the bullet hole would be her problem.
With a move that would’ve sent crowds surging to their feet only a few years ago, Clint swings himself up and out of the window, the tiled roof providing an easy grip for him to haul himself up.
He knows that the agents must’ve seen him by now, and that at least one of them will follow him across rooftops. He hopes it’s the muscle, if only so that he gets the chance to see a capable and fairly badass hunk before he dies. It isn’t that the man is Clint’s type, it’s just that Clint knows he’d most likely make it quick, as long as Clint provokes him.
The tiles slide underneath Clint’s feet as he sprints, leaping off the edge and landing with a knee-cracking thud on the next building. He sees a flash of movement and looks, even as he prepares himself for the next jump.The woman is swinging herself up off the fire escape and Clint swears under his breath. There is no chance he can outrun her.
He’s on the roof of some crumbling warehouse when it happens.
The woman is just a few feet from him, a stun gun gripped in her hand.
The rooftop access door buckles and a squad of AIM’s infamous ‘retrieval agents’ come bursting through. Clint knows exactly what they carry on them. A stun gun, a cattle prod, three tasers that could rival Black Widows— Clint should know, he’s met her —and a glock.
He is intimately acquainted with all of them.
Panic takes hold of him and he can feel the urge in his trembling limbs to run, to run and never look back.
He’s read about this.
He’s felt this before.
Fight or flight instinct, he was told it’s called.
It’s always been fight.
But two of the yellow-suites agents are getting closer and he can’t go back, he can’t, because if he does then he’ll kill more people. He’ll kill and kill until there’s nothing left inside him but a broken and scarred and USELESS little kid, and he WON’T let that happen again, he can’t-
Clint shoves one agent away from the flat of his palm, the man’s nose crunching beneath the force, and at the same time the agent drops Clint is dropping too, sweeping the second man’s legs out from underneath him and sending him toppling to the ground.
There’s a clear path away and Clint has never felt so free. He runs, moving faster than he’s ever before because this is his chance.
He throws himself off the edge, arms swinging forward as he puts everything into the jump-
BANG .
A shockwave goes up his body and Clint reflexively reaches to the source, a cry ripping its way out his mouth.
He’s falling, and he twists to reach for the fire escape, for a windowsill, anything-
- the rope snaps underneath him and Clint gapes at the Swordman for a moment, before he’s tumbling through the air-
-he slams into metal, ridges biting into his skin and a scream bursts from him-
-the car is swerving and his mom is pleading with Harold to pull over, Barney is gripping his hand in the backseat
Then they’re flipping and someone’s screaming and Clint realizes IT’S HIM-
-he hits the ground.
There’s an iron taste in his mouth- must’ve bit my lip -and one of his hands is clamped down on his leg, the other clenching and unclenching on the ground.
A roaring is filling his ears and at least one of his hearing aids are missing.
He doesn’t know for sure.
He can’t hear anything over his pulse pounding in his ears and the white noise that accompanies it.
The two agents who’d been on the ground skid to a stop in front of him and Clint eyes the gun in Muscles’ hand. Then Suit steps forward gracefully- predatorily - and his gaze snaps to the man’s bland face, before sliding down slowly, taking in the gun bulge and knife hilts, as well as the watch that undoubtedly holds a taser of a sort.
The woman steps around the corner and stops, weapons holstered but hands loose and positioned to fight.
He doesn’t want to fight.
Not anymore.
Clint’s been running for too long. First from his dad, then from foster parents, then to the circus. He’d run right into trouble and still can’t find his way out of it. Maybe if he stopped now, he could stop getting hurt.
He could stop hurting people.
The gun in Muscles’ hand was looking more welcoming by the second.
Clint looks back up, eyes meeting Suit’s. “Well?” It’s not like I’ve got any last wishes or anything. “Get on with it t-then.”
He almost winces at his stutter but keeps it below the surface. If he’s about to die, he doesn’t want to be scared.
“Hawkeye, what exactly do you think we are here to do?”
There’s genuine confusion in Suit’s voice and Clint can’t take it anymore. The hyper vigilance of the last few days and the stress of planning and hiding the information he’d slowly gathered over the past month or so is catching up to him.
“What you do to everyone who kills the ones who don’t deserve it.” The memory of the day AIM had taken him flickers in his mind. If I’d been there faster, if I’d let them get me sooner, she’d still be alive. “You kill them. So,” Clint looks at the glock in Muscles’ hand again. I just want it to be over . “Get on with it.”
They don’t move. Goddamn it. Why can’t they just end it? Don’t they GET IT?
There’s something akin to pity on Suit’s face and Clint doesn’t need that. Not on the face of the man who’d probably received a file with his face and the word ‘Terminate’ at the end.
He looks to Muscles, knows that he’ll do it if Clint can convince him to.
“Just do it!”
He needs them to kill him because he can’t do all of that again. If they take him then it’s over. He is already broken, he knows it. I just don’t want to shatter.
At least, when Clint is dead he’ll stop hearing his victim’s voices.
-The redhead who’d been about seven months pregnant. She’d begged him to not kill her, “for the baby.” -
-The young couple on their honeymoon, the husband standing in front of his wife. He’d gone down first and she’d still been screaming when Clint fired again. -
-A middle-aged man who’d just looked at the gun in his hand and- almost -smiled in acceptance. “Just make it quick. Please.” -
Clint grits his teeth and lets out a snarl. He’s desperate and he’s given up and the agents know it. “Pull the goddamned trigger!”
Their faces could be carved from stone for all Clint knows. Then there’s a flicker of movement and the woman raises her gun-
The last thing he hears as the fuzz on the edges of his vision blocks everything out is the Suit.
“Welcome to SHIELD, Hawkeye.”
No.