2
“You’re doing what now!?” James doesn’t mean to yell, but he really can’t help it.
“You heard me, Honey-Bear,” Tony responds, voice soft over the line, but resolute.
“Humor me,” James huffs, dragging his hand over his face as he tosses the newest copy of the Accords across the bed. There’s no way he’s getting through it tonight.
At least the hotel room is nice, an upscale suite in Vienna where the Accords Council has chosen to convene for this next round of talks. It’s just what he expected when he found out that Tony was involved in organizing his trip, unnecessary and extra, but still accommodating and thoughtful. This particular hotel was easily wheelchair accessible, for when James’ back couldn’t quite bear the braces.There was an herbal hot tub out on the balcony that he’d snickered at when he first saw it but then quickly changed his tune when he used it the first night. Tony had even set James up with a physical therapist in the hotel’s gym every morning and night.
His best friend. His extra best friend. His extra best friend who still somehow managed to be one of the most thoughtful and sweet people that James has ever met. The same best friend that’s extending that kindness to someone who very much doesn’t deserve it.
“I’m going to bring Barton back to the States,” Tony says again.
“Yeah,” James sighs heavily, “that’s what I thought you said.”
Tony says nothing, giving James a second to collect his thoughts. Which is nice, because damn, does James have a lot of thoughts.
The first thing he thinks is No, not again. Not Tony, not them, not again.
Those fuckers ruined Tony, and his best friend has been doing so much better these past few months, and they’re going to ruin him again.
“Tones,” James says tiredly, “Tones, why?”
Because Tony doesn’t need to do this. James has never been too keen on how that so-called team operated, and he was even less keen to hear just how badly they treated his friend in the wake of that whole Ultron fiasco, no matter how culpable they believed him to be. And now Tony is finally free of them, finally has a chance to build a new team and support system from the ground up, and he still wants to help them?
“Rhodey…”
“I mean, come one man,” James says, hating how desperate he sounds, how desperate he feels. “You’re really gonna invite that dumpster fire back into your life again?”
“That dumpster fire is my life,” Tony says with a dry chuckle. James hates the sound of that laugh. “You and I both knew that we couldn’t just turn a blind eye on them forever.”
“Not dealing with them when they’re not our responsibility is not turning a blind eye, Tony.” James states firmly, “It’s just us going about our lives and doing what’s best for us.”
“Oh Honey-Bear…” his best friend says solemnly, “You know we can’t just do what’s best for us now, anymore.”
And James knows that. Hell he understands that better than most. He definitely understands better than those assholes. What he doesn’t understand though.
“I don’t see how that makes you responsible to do what’s best for them,” James states plainly. “Tones, those people are toxic. You could be done with them, you’re allowed to be done with them.”
There’s nothing quite like the feeling of failure that come with James not being able to protect Tony. He couldn’t protect him from the Ten Rings, from Stane, from AIM, from the Chitauri, from Ultron. Hell, James couldn’t even protect Tony from himself sometimes. He’d never thought a day would come when he had to protect Tony from the other Avengers though. Sure, James didn’t like how they got their start, he didn’t always like how the team treated Tones, and he’s more than once wished that his friend would just go solo again (because at the end of the day, there’s nothing more powerful than a Tony Stark who’s decided that enough is enough), but he’d always been cautiously optimistic that they would have his friends back.
Of course they stabbed him in it.
“I am done with them,” Tony responds seriously, which gives James pause. Because he friend sounds legit right now. “I...if I never have to see any of their faces again, it’d be too soon.”
“Then why are you going out of your way to help Barton?”
“Because I’m worried that him and I are more alike than I realized,” his friend responds, “and I can’t sit by while he puts his family through what I put Pepper through. He can’t make amends if no one gives him a chance, and you and I both know that no one is going to give him a chance if not me.”
James bites his lip.
Tony is nothing like Barton. They’re cut from completely different clothes, and even though under different circumstances, James thinks that the two could have been very close, the fact remains that Barton is just like the others now. Which means Tony doesn’t need to have anything more to do with him.
Still, he can see where his friend is coming from. And of course he’s making this decision out of guilt. At least it’s not guilt towards the Rogues so much as guilt towards Pepper, but it’s guilt nonetheless. Well, guilt and sense of decency that James is convinced is lost on Rogers and his band of assholes.
“Tony,” James says.
“Please Honey-Bear,” Tony says quietly, “this sucks. But if I can do this, and it works out, then I’ll feel better. Things just feel...unfinished right now. I need to at least be able to say that I tried.”
His mind is made up, James realizes. He’s likely already sewn the seeds for whatever process he’s about to spin to get Barton back.
“You’re not like him,” James mutters, because he needs Tony to know. “And if you won’t accept that you’re better, then at least accept that you’re different. You and Clint Barton are not the same type of person. He left his family by his own choice, attacked Vision by his own choice, attacked us by his own choice, chose not to talk to someone who’s been nothing but a friend to him by his own choice. He pointed his bow at you instead.”
“Well, at least he didn’t use the bow that I made with him,” Tony says cheerfully, “used the arrows though.”
“Tones,” James sighs.
“I’ll be fine, Rhodey,” his friend states, bringing out his SI voice. It hurts James to hear that voice ever since Stane. “Besides,” his friend’s voice goes fond out of nowhere, “I’ve got a little stubborn bodyguard who also doubles as a surprisingly good moral compass.”
James snorts despite himself. Of course, the Spider-Kid. That’s one person that’s been nothing but good for Tony lately.
“And besides,” Tony’s voice goes quiet. Oh no.
“...What?” James asks warily.
“It’d be nice to see things work out for the Bartons,” Tony continues plaintively, “considering that I’m going to disappoint Pepper again soon enough.”
Wait what?
“Wait…” James says quickly.
“See ya soon Honey-Bear!”
“Tones, don’t you dare-”
Tony hangs up with an obnoxious “mwah!”
...
The general public doesn't seem to care very much about one Clint Barton, Tony finds quickly.
Case in point; FRIDAY finds 95,586 articles related to the Accords fallout in active circulation when Tony asks. Impressive, considering that’s been close to a year since the shitshow, but not exactly surprising the continued interest in the Accords revisions and the sightings of the Rogues. Of them, 72,322 are opinion pieces (most that originate from outside of America tend to condemn the Avengers as a whole for letting things escalate like they did, but still seem to look favorably on the Accords. The ones that are American in origin are split nearly halfway in support for the Rogues versus supporting the Accords), Tony doesn’t bother with them. Of the 23,264 left, he has FRIDAY drop any that don’t mention specific Avengers by name, shaving off a few thousand. He then directs her to search for any mentions Hawkeye and Ant-Man.
Lang, who’d pretty much become the face of the airport fight due to his suit, is mentioned by moniker in over a thousand recap articles, but his actual name is only mentioned in those that originate from American, South American, or German authors. Tony has FRIDAY create a separate file for them. Lang is going to be a difficult one, and Tony’s not even sure that he wants to undertake the uphill battle that rebuilding that idiot’s life will turn out to be.
(He thinks of the warrants being drafted for Hank Pym and Hope Van Dyne’s arrests in light of their recent decent to take responsibility for the use of the Ant-Man suit but denial to turn over the schematics of the tech to the Accords Council. Idiots. The entire lot of them.)
Only 94 articles mention the moniker “Hawkeye” however, but Tony is mildly surprised to see that not a single one of them mentions Clint Barton’s name directly.
“That shouldn’t be possible,” Tony murmurs, staring at the holo screens surrounding him.
“What shouldn’t be possible?” Peter asks curiously. Tony doesn’t look, but he knows that he has only has half of the kid’s attention considering the kid has been trying to discern why his left web shooter hasn’t been as responsive lately. Tony knows, having given the device a quick once-over himself, but he’d told Peter to find the problem himself. The kid’s chemistry skills are absurdly advanced, and his mechanical engineering abilities are nothing to scoff at either, but while Peter has all of the theoretical knowledge behind Tony’s latest design for the web-shooters, the kid has yet do physical maintenance on this version. Seeing as though it’s a Saturday night and Peter has already completed his stupid amount of homework for the weekend, Tony had provided the kid the tools and told him to go nuts.
“Not a single article accessed within the past 72 hours mentions Barton’s name,” Tony answers anyway. Because even though Peter is only half-listening, it helps them both to speak aloud sometimes anyway. “There’s a few that mention his field designation, but not a single one mentions the name ‘Clint’ or even his last name. At least none of the non-opinion pieces.”
“Isn’t that good?”
“It’s great,” Tony responds, “means that his reputation is salvageable and that Cint Barton can make an easy and quiet return without upsetting anything. But his name in connection with Hawkeye should have always been public domain information after the Chitauri invasion.” The man makes a few gestures to enlarge and scroll and begins scan through the articles as he speaks. “And definitely after the SHIELD info-dump. The fact that not a single recap nor academic essay uses his real name is quite frankly insane. He literally used exploding arrows in a public airport, someone from Germany must have put his name out there.”
“Maybe too much time has passed?”
“That would be plausible,” Tony admits, “if the band of Idiots didn’t get themselves photographed bringing down a building in Malaysia just last week.”
“Oh yeah,” there’s a click from Peter’s direction. He’s likely given up on finding and external reason for the web shooter’s lag, and is now digging into the hardware. Good, the kids on the right track. “Wasn’t it some human experimentation lab?”
“Yeah,” Tony pays special attention to an academic journal detailing the cost breakdown for each individual present during the airport tussle, “not home-grown most-likely, but it’s been a little difficult for authorities to determine where the fuckers were from since the Idiots set loose an extremely corrosive gas when they brought the building down. The bodies are borderline unidentifiable beyond potential nationality and race, and since the Idiots spirited away all of the captives that were present, there’s no witnesses to go off of.”
“What do you think they did with the people they saved?”
“It’s too early to say that they saved anybody, kid.” Tony says firmly, swiping the article about the cost breakdown into the “Use me” folder. “The substances recovered were highly volatile and extremely dangerous bioweapons with the intentions of using humans as carriers for them. Those people that they took out should have been quarantined and examined thoroughly, not just for their safety, but for the safety of anyone who’s going to be around them in the future.”
“Oh,” the tinkering sounds pause, and Tony figures that he now has the kid’s full attention for the moment.
“To answer your question though,” the elder responds as he looks through another article, “Wilson has advanced first aid training, and Lang has a Master’s in Electrical Engineering. Wilson will have likely performed a spot check once they got the captives far away enough to not worry about authorities getting to them, and if the Idiots had any modicum of sense, then they would have had Lang get into the place’s systems and download the relevant information. Barton and Romanov also have experience with both bioweapons and human experimentation cases from their time with SHIELD and before. There’s protocols for on the move observations that they’ll have used.”
“Romanov?” Peter questions, “As in the Black Widow?”
“Oh yeah, she’s totally with them at this point.” Tony responds easily, ignoring the sharp pang of betrayal. He shouldn’t still be upset over that. After all, a spy will do as a spy does. “There’s no way that they’re crossing borders undetected as easily as they are without her contact system. If they were still just moving through Africa, then I could believe that it was T’Challa making it happen for them, but they’ve been too spread out for him to risk using Wakandan resources to cover for them at this point.”
“Oh,” Peter mutters, “well that sucks.”
Tony snorts. “That it does, kid.”
“So the people that they...took,” Peter settles on, sounding uncomfortable. “They should be OK?”
Tony takes a moment before answering. He feels bad about doing this in front of Peter. Because watching the information flow of the Rogues means talking about the Rogues, and Tony can’t help but notice that the kid sounds a little less excited about the Ex-Avengers every time they go through hypotheticals like this. But the facts are there and indisputable. And the facts say that Rogers and his followers aren’t able to do what they do without making concessions due to the fact that they are all currently international war criminals. And those concessions are usually something like this, the Rogues being able to help in the moment but unable to stick around to make sure that their help actually made a difference. Quite honestly, the way the Idiots have to work now is dangerous, and Tony takes no pleasure in seeing Peter slowly come to realize that the so-called Earth’s Mightiest Defender’s have chosen this method instead of taking the time to fucking listen to the people of said Earth.
It likely challenges everything that Peter believes about being a hero, but Tony has come to the harsh realization that those who can’t handle the scrutiny and deconstruction of their actions as a hero don’t deserve to hold that mantle. Better the kid learn from these mistakes now.
“I don’t doubt that they’ll everything in their power to help the people that they got out of there,” Tony settles on, because he does believe that the Idiots had good intentions.”Problem is,” he explains, “there’s not much power behind their actions anymore.”
…
“So why is it that you’re not focusing on public opinion pieces on Hawkeye?” Peter asks two hours later, munching on some horrifying mixture of lucky charms, chocolate milk and honey. Tony had very nearly gagged at the sight (“I have cravings Mr. Stark!”), resigning himself to one of DUM-E’s smoothies. “I mean, seems like that would be important if you’re going to bring him back.”
Peter’s been surprisingly hard to read regarding his opinion on Tony’s choice to make a pardon happen for Barton. He’s supportive in the sense that he’s sure that Tony can do it, but never answered when asked whether or not he thought it was a good idea. Tony thinks that the kid understands his reasons (namely the Barton family, Clint’s admittedly questionable emotional stability, the ultimate goal of keeping the Idiots from going around and making messes that are hard to clean up), but Peter had seemed oddly unsympathetic when Tony had compared himself to Barton (“I don’t think it’s fair to you, Mr. Stark.”).
“It would be important,” he answers, “Except there’s a few reasons why it’s not in regards to Barton in particular. One,” Tony holds up a finger, “Barton was only involved at Leipzig, as far as the world is concerned. Only the Accords council is aware of his part in busting the Witch out, and Vision doesn’t want to press charges for that.”
Peter hums noncommittally, taking another bite of his diabetes-in-a-bowl.
“Two, He actually did significantly less in total damages compared to everyone else, and between me and T’Challa, the damages are all pretty much paid for. Three, I’m not trying to bring him back as an Avenger.”
“You’re not?” Peter’s eyebrows rise.
“No,” Tony replies firmly, “I want nothing to do with him, to be perfectly honest.”
He hates how it hurts to say that aloud and find himself believing it. Because after Bruce, Barton had been the next one that Tony had warmed to. The archer was good company, made jokes and didn’t take himself or others too seriously. They’d worked together swimmingly on the field. Barton had always seemed to genuinely appreciate it when Tony would present him with a new arrowhead prototype or bow, and always had something insightful to add to the designs. And then Ultron happened, and Barton had gotten so close to the Witch, and distanced himself from Tony in those last moments before he retired to be with his family.
Tony’s not sure what he did, but all he knows that Barton’s time off had somehow twisted the guy into an angry and bitter version of himself that seemed to come out in full force around Tony for whatever reason.
“I’m bringing him back so that he can be in his kid’s life,” Tony says softly, “they don’t deserve to grow up with an international criminal as a dad. I don’t know what possessed him to leave them and Laura in the first place, but they shouldn’t suffer because Barton made the stupid decision to follow after Cap on his doomed crusade.”
“So he’ll retire if you bring him back?”
“Yep,” Tony slurps at the smoothie before continuing, “he’s not enhanced, and since I have no intention of inviting him back into the Avengers under the Accords, then he’ll either be brought back under the conditions that he retire immediately and stay out of the field and disassociate himself from the others. Or he’ll be contracted to work for the government for a time period as a sort of community service.”
“You mean like the New SHIELD?” Peter asks.
“Hopefully not,” Tony mutters, thinking back to the tense time immediately after the Chitauri invasion. “SHIELD has proven that they don’t have the best resources when it comes to preserving the mental and emotional state of their agents. They had Barton sit down with a shrink for a few weeks to make sure he wouldn’t choke in the field and then instantaneously started him on missions. They like to keep their assets useful and controlled, and that doesn;t always translate to doing what’s best for them outside of the job.”
Peter goes silent at that. In the way that tells Tony that he’s having some uncomfortable revelation. Shit. What did Tony say to disillusion him now?
“You said that the Black Widow only ever saw you as an asset,” Peter states before Tony has a chance to ask. Tony frowns, not because he doesn’t remember saying that, but because he’s not sure why Peter would be so out of sorts about it now.
“Yeah,” he confirms, “she and I had never been the closest. In fact, I’m sure that she mostly hated me at first. It’s nothing out of the ordinary though, I was always one of SHIELD’s strongest assets, and treating people like marks is how Natashalie rolls. Doesn’t really know how to interact with people without trying to read them and produce the most advantageous response. Except for the Bartons, I suppose.”
And Rogers, his mind supplies unhelpfully. Tony supposes that he was on his way to that with her, but apparently they’ve never been meant to be that close to one another. Too much mistrust and baggage there.
“That’s…” Peter shakes his head, “Mr. Stark, that’s terrible. Do you know how that sounds, from the outside?”
Tony is beginning to have a better idea of how it sounds, but gestures for Peter to continue anyway.
“You…” Peter swallows heavily, “You provided them with a home, and equipment, and resources, and you watched their back in the field...and you’re saying that she always tried to get the most advantageous reaction out of you? Mr. Stark, that’s shamelessly manipulative and wrong!”
The kid seems stressed over this, so Tony quickly crosses the kitchen to pat Peter on the shoulder firmly.
“I know, Underoos.” He says softly, “I know.”
“And you’re helping them!?”
“Well technically,” Tony gives a bitter smile, “I’m helping Barton, who I think genuinely liked me at one point.”
Peter huffs.
“And that’s not to say that Natashalie didn’t,” Tony continues on, throwing his arm over the kid’s shoulder. “I’m sure that she cares, in her own way. But I don’t make it easy to care about me, hence why I have like, two friends. I’m rude, moody, I ramble too much, and I never trusted her in the way that the rest of the team did. I think it rankled her a bit.”
Because that look she’d leveled at him when he’d called her out on her shit at the hospital hadn’t been all anger. Tony’s never been one to go out of his way to try and read Natasha, never really had an interest, but he’s always been able to hit people where it hurts when he really needs to. He’ll admit it, he doesn’t like spies, doesn’t like SHIELD Agents pretty much on principle, but he’d made an exception for Barton, Coulson and was on his way to making the same exception for Natasha. And he’s sure that she noticed. So when he’d rescinded that, basically brought them back to zero after all this time, he knew that it hurt. Tony tries to find it in himself to care.
He can’t.
“Any slight you feel that they paid me, kid,” Tony explains quietly, “it’s important to remember that I gave as good as I got.”
Peter takes a harsh bite of his demon food.
“The rules aren’t the same when you’re outnumbered, Mr. Stark.”
Tony opens his mouth, closes it.
There’s...nothing that he can say to that.
…
Tony’s plan is such.
If he makes his case to the Accords Council that it’s safer to have Clint Barton in the US as opposed to out and about with the Rogues, then there’s no reason that the UN won’t be able to help organize an agreement between Germany and the US so that the archer can return with minor reparations. It’ll be laughably easy, Tony and Fury had worked together to completely bury Barton’s mercenary/assassin past before SHIELD not too long after the team started taking on more public missions. And anything Barton had done under SHIELD could easily be linked and explained away via the National Security excuse (Tony knows, he and JARVIS had paid particular attention to Barton and Romanov’s files in the info-dump), which means that even if the promise to retire isn’t good enough for US, SI’s lawyers will be able to make a slam dunk case based on Barton’s years of service. The Accords Council only cares as much as getting Barton away from the Rogues and will likely be willing to defer to Tony on anything further. Germany will want the archer to stay out of the Country for a set amount of time, but that won’t be an issue.
All in all, helping Barton to return will be a piece of cake, logistically and legally.
Getting the Idiot to take the help, though.
“FRIDAY,” Tony calls, eyes on the monitor that displays where Wakanda should be, if not for their impressive cloaking tech.
“Yes, boss?”
“Get King Kitty on the line,” the man requests, “I think it’s time for him to pay some dues.”
“You got it.”
There’s a click, and then a hiss, and then Peter’s “Ohnonononononono-!”, which gets cut off by a splat and a high-pitched shriek.
Tony grins, affection blooming in his chest.
“So you figured out that the problem’s the canister’s pressure, eh?”