Cruel Vengeance

Stark Tower

May 2011

“We need a meeting,” Tony announced.

Clint glanced up. “Hey, man. Nice to see you without bags under your eyes.”

“Darcy attacked him with a makeup brush,” Maria said. “Something about how it’s terrible PR for the media to keep slinging these pictures around of him looking like a meth addict.”

“I have never looked like a meth addict,” Tony said.

Clint silently pulled up a photograph on his phone and showed it to Tony, who winced. “Okay, that’s bad. Meeting. Now.”

“Are we seriously having a meeting because you had bedhead for two weeks? Is Pepper better? Is that what’s going on?” Clint asked. He had training to do this morning before he hopped a copter back to HQ.

“No, we’re having a meeting because Tony needs a life raft and he named it the Avengers,” Darcy said, walking into the training room. “You seen the scary one?”

“Which scary one?” Clint asked.

Darcy pointed at him. “I like you. The spidery scary one with red hair.”

Clint felt his face darken. “On a mission for Fury. He’s got her undercover somewhere. She’s coming in for a report next week. I’ll see her then.”

“Okiedoke,” Darcy said agreeably. “Come on, old guy, we’ve got a meeting.”

Clint followed after her, shouting, “I am not old!”

Tony’s laughter chased Clint down the hallway.

It sounded almost normal - almost like the Tony Stark that Clint had seen on occasion when he was consulting for Fury. But Clint also suspected that Darcy was right. Tony was covering his grief and worry by throwing himself into other things: first his inventing, now this.

Clint walked into the penthouse, which had been sort of an unofficial common room for the lot of them while they helped clean up the aftermath of New York. He wasn’t really sure what was going to happen now that that job was winding down. Bruce, Jane, Darcy, and obviously Stark all had reason to stay here, and Steve wasn’t precisely a SHIELD agent, but Clint knew he and Maria would be recalled to base within a week at least. And then…

Then he would be back out on field ops, and Maria’d be stuck back at Fury’s side again.

Clint found himself wishing this didn’t have to end.

“Okay,” Steve said, and sat down at the table’s head. Tony paused and stared at him for a second before sitting at the table’s opposite end. “Now that we’re all here…”

Clint sat down next to Maria, who shot him a quicksilver smile. Jane, Darcy, and Bruce were sitting on the other side, Darcy looking nonchalant as always. At least this time she wasn’t on her phone.

“...we have a decision to make,” Steve said. “About the fact that we were assembled to be a team, and now the threat we faced is gone.”

“The world needs this,” Tony said. “Us. There are things out there the normal military isn’t equipped to face.”

“We’ll lose three people to SHIELD here soon,” Steve countered. “Four, if Fury has more field missions for me.”

“That doesn’t mean we can’t come back together,” Tony said. “I’m not going anywhere, and I assume Bruce and Jane haven’t got anywhere better to be.”

Jane glanced up at her name. “What?”

“We’re discussing whether or not this little merry band of men is gonna dis band,” Darcy said. “Do you have any gum?”

Tony tossed her a piece. “And we’d be lost without our press liaison.”

Darcy shrugged. “You give me hazard pay, so I’m not going anywhere.”

“Why would I leave?” Jane asked, still looking confused.

“Exactly,” Darcy said with satisfaction.

Jane stared at her for a second, then dismissed it. “Okay. Tony, do you have a laser ablation solid-particle beam apparatus? The one I had shipped up here from Colorado is falling apart.”

“JARVIS, order a laser ablation apparatus whatever-she-just-called-it,” Tony said. “Send Jane the specs so she can approve the order. Does that work, Foster?”

“Thanks,” Jane said.

“Yes, sir,” JARVIS said.

Jane asked, “I have the HRTEM running and it’s supposed to finish in… three minutes, so is there anything else you need me for?”

“Nope,” Darcy said.

Jane patted her friend’s shoulder awkwardly and stood up.

“Enjoy your science,” Steve said.

“Ask Darcy,” Jane said absently, and left the room at a brisk walk.

Clint realized he was smiling. He liked these people.

Too much.

“Okay, so we’re the Avengers, we fight evil people, blah blah blah,” Darcy said. “We can find each other again next time a genocidal maniac from outer space tries to take over the planet.”

Steve shook his head. “I think we could focus on Earth problems, too. There was a militant group in Russia three months ago who raped and pillaged their way for four weeks through the countryside before the UN passed a vote to send in troops and stop them. Even then, it’s estimated that less than half of the perpetrators were arrested for human rights violations or killed when they resisted - the others are still out there. We could’ve gone in and stopped them at the beginning. Saved hundreds of lives.”

Darcy blinked at him. “You want to keep doing this. Like, for a while.”

“Why not?” Steve asked.

“No oversight?” Tony said.

Bruce glanced around. “I’m not sure who I trust as oversight. Not Fury, not the United Nations, and definitely not the United States government.”

“Why not the US?” Clint asked. Distrust of Fury, he’d expected, and he understood where Bruce was coming from on the UN - they were notoriously slow to decide anything, and many crises could only be effectively averted within their early stages. Waiting for a vote would be excruciating. But the U.S. government?

Bruce opened his mouth and paused.

“Bruce’s good friend Thaddeus Ross is the Secretary of State,” Darcy said. When Clint looked at her, she was smirking. “And we all know how Ross feels about the Hulk.”

Bruce blew out a breath. “Yeah, there’s that.”

“So we work with Fury, but not under him,” Steve suggested. “SHIELD can provide good backup. Not to mention legitimacy.”

“And that means so much to you, does it?” Tony muttered.

Steve glared at him. “What would you suggest, vigilantism?”

“Sometimes vigilantes get stuff done,” Tony said. “Sometimes the law is more of a hindrance than a help. I’m not taking Fury’s orders.”

“And sometimes laws are laws for a reason,” Steve countered. “I’m not saying we follow SHIELD orders, I’m saying we work with them. We get backup, they get a strike team who can do things no one else on Earth can.”

Tony rolled his eyes. “Such a good little soldier. Captain America, golden boy-”

“I told you, that’s not who I am anymore,” Steve snapped.

Clint sat up straight at the sudden increase in tension.

Steve and Tony stared at each other.

Maria stepped in. “Stark, he’s not asking you to follow Fury’s orders, and he’s not planning on doing so himself,” she said quietly.

Tony relented. “If that’s what it takes.”

“So to clarify,” Clint said, “you want to stay as a team. Officially “The Avengers.” And keep doing… high-profile save-the-world type missions?”

“Well, statistically, events with the potential to literally end the world are quite rare,” Bruce said.

Steve rubbed his temple. Clint was noticing that the supersoldier often did that when frustrated, annoyed, or stressed. “I’m saying that we’re a team now. You don’t go through a battle like the one we fought two weeks ago and not come out as a unit, no matter how… diverse… our abilities might be. Teams should stick together. And I think we have the potential to do a lot of good.”

“Some missions will be lower-profile,” Tony said. He seemed to have accepted the compromise and moved on. Clint was slightly surprised, but then again, Tony seemed pretty invested in this plan. “Small insertions, limited scope - just a few people, those with the most applicable skill sets.”

Clint admitted to himself that it was tempting. To stop running all the time, to have a place to crash and people who knew him? That was a luxury Clint had not been afforded since SHIELD cleared him for field ops. He was a spy and an assassin; he had no illusions about himself, and this kind of life - he couldn’t stay tied down for long. It placed those around him at risk. He had had four people on the planet who knew him, who he (more or less) trusted: Maria, Tasha, Fury, and Coulson. That was down to three.

For a second, Clint saw a different life, in which he met someone who taught him to settle down. Who took him on another path, one where he grew into a person who could want domestic life, a settled family.

He wasn’t that person, because that had never happened. And the people he considered family would never be that. Clint loved them all the more for it.

Clint found himself wanting this. But he didn’t think he could be a SHIELD agent and an Avenger at the same time.

He glanced at Maria. She looked deep in thought as well, although he suspected no one else at the table would be able to tell. Maria had to be feeling just as conflicted here; she was Fury’s right hand now with Coulson gone, but this was a chance to do something that promised to be pretty damn interesting.

Not to mention the upcoming meeting with Tasha’s contact in Russia. Clint gripped his knees as he realized that Fury would have to send him after Tasha when she went rogue with her Soldier, as Clint knew she planned to do.

So he was done with SHIELD either way.

“Clint?”

Clint looked up and realized everyone at the table was staring at him.

“Sorry, what’d I miss?” he asked.

“What could you possibly have been thinking about more interesting than this conversation?” Tony said.

Clint leaned back. “Sandwiches.”

“Must have been one hell of a sandwich.”

“It tasted terrible. I think it had your sense of humor on it,” Clint fired back.

Steve, Darcy, and Tony laughed. Maria looked like she was repressing a smile and Bruce allowed himself a small chuckle.

“What’s your take on this idea?” Steve asked.

Clint glanced at Maria. “I’m in.”

“ Yes ,” Darcy said. “I won’t be the only normal person in this group.”

“What are Jane and I, your pets?” Tony asked.

“You and Jane both have at least like forty percent of your brain screws loose. I rest my case.”

Tony looked offended.

Clint met Maria’s eyes and raised his brows.

“I can’t just… quit SHIELD,” she said quietly. “And neither can you,” she added. “Not that easily. It’s not like flipping burgers. SHIELD isn’t something you just walk away from.”

“I’ll request a long-term reassignment,” Clint said.

“He can keep doing things for His Blindness,” Darcy agreed, and Clint snorted.

“Can I please tell Fury about that nickname?”

Darcy grinned. “Be my guest.”

“Do we have to decide now?” Maria asked.

Steve shook his head. “It’s just something to consider.”

Maria nodded, lips tight.

Darcy leaned forward slightly.

Alarm bells went off in Clint’s head: she was hiding something. He couldn’t have said how he knew that, but he did.

“Glad we cleared that up,” Darcy said. “Because I have something I have to tell you.”

Clint was clearly not the only one who’d picked up on the caginess. Steve was frowning, Tony was tapping his arc reactor the way he did when tense, and Bruce had sat up straighter, which is about all the reaction he would show. Even Maria had subtly focused in on Darcy.

The press liaison took a deep breath. “Loki didn’t kill Coulson. Thor did.”