She absolutely could have fingerprinted him... if she'd felt the need. If he wasn't apparently on her side, she might have done so while he was out, but he's not a Watchdog and so he's welcome to keep his secrets. Maybe one day he'll reveal himself if they do see more of each other in the future. Then again, maybe he won't.
"Sorry, they're probably locked up in evidence by now," she says with an actual apology in her voice. Hauling him out before the authorities showed up had been her priority and she hadn't even thought to retrieve his weapons from the bodies. That sort of thing has never been a concern for her.
"Come on, I'll get you as close as we can without drawing attention." Grabbing the bag of first aid supplies, she makes for the door. There's nothing of hers left in the room; she probably won't be back tonight.
She opens the door and steps outside, glancing back over her shoulder as she moves toward her van. "How's the head, by the way? Any blurred vision or nausea?"
“Damn,” Clint says, making a face beneath his mask. He’s going to have to try and find a weapons cache and lift some. Good thing he’s pretty good at taking bad guys out. “Runnin’ low.” It’s the one problem with essentially being in the wind. He can’t rely on any of his old contacts to hook him up with weaponry because then he’ll give himself away. He knows that the Ronin is known in certain circles, and if someone like Natasha were to link him with his new identity, he knows that there will be hell to pay.
He limps after her as they leave the hotel room, climbing up into the other side of the van. “Thanks for this, eh?” he says. Daisy is really doing him a solid by dropping him off closer to his safe house. If he trusted her more, he’d get her to drop him off there, maybe even offer her a place to stay with him. He’s getting ahead of himself though. There’s no way for him to know if this potential partnership will even work out.
Turning toward her when she asks about his head, Clint jokes, “never had any complaints,” but then sobers. “It’s probably not a concussion. I’ve had enough of them to know.”
She gives him a once-over as he walks, not able to tell much about him but definitely noticing that limp. Since nothing's broken, her guess is some deep bruising from the sudden collision with the concrete floor. It's the sort of injury she's all too familiar with, so she knows he'll be stiff as hell tomorrow.
"Oh, you have bad guys fall on you often?" she jokes in return, tossing the bag over the seat into the back of the van. There are a few other bags back there, along with a monitor and keyboard setup and a rolled-up sleeping bag. This is usually where she stays — living in her van just like before she'd joined SHIELD.
Pulling out of the hotel parking lot, she keeps her eyes on the road but directs a serious order his way. "Just make sure to ice everything to help with the swelling." A beat, and then she adds, "I can stop somewhere if you need me to grab stuff to help with that."
“You’d be surprised,” Clint admits. He looks out the window as they leave the hotel, trying to place their location. He doubts that Daisy is going to return here again, not now that he knows the location. As much as he can’t trust her yet, she can’t trust him either. It’s okay. It’s for the best for both of them. It’s better that they have more secrets than not between them.
“Got some stuff where I’m staying. Gotta take care of myself you know? No powers.” While that admission might be a clue to his identity, he figures it will lead her further away from it. If she thought that he was enhanced in any way, she might associate him with the Avengers, or SHIELD, and neither of those are things that he wants. The more of a mystery he is, the better.
“You get really good at dressing your own wounds when you have a job like ours,” he adds with a self deprecating chuckle. “How about you? You got any magic healing abilities? Do they work on others? You wanna share?”
No powers. Good to have that confirmed, not that it does much to narrow down what his affiliations might be. What it does do is make her slightly more inclined to trust him, given how he's fighting the Watchdogs even though he doesn't really have any skin in the game. Inhumans and other Enhanced are the latest Most Hated groups around, and their public allies have been few and far between.
"I wish," she answers with a scoff. "I can manipulate vibrations, and if there's a way to use that to heal people instead of hurt them, I sure haven't figured it out."
She's a walking weapon and in the wrong hands... Her grip tightens on the steering wheel, her jaw clenching. What happened with Hive still hurts; she has a feeling it always will.
“No shit?” Clint asks. He’s never met anyone that can do something like that before, but it does explain what he’d Sean before getting fallen on. “I mean it worked out for you, chasing bad guys and all,” he makes sure to add. He doesn’t know anything about her really, but there’s always a reason for people to be out here alone, hunting those who hurt them.
Clint’s out here because it was his job, the Avengers’ job, to stop Thanos and they’d failed horrifically, so it’s his fault now that the less savoury individuals are having an easier time of it. No one else is going to do it, so it’s gotta be him.
“Probably best to keep that under wraps though. Don’t want the wrong people finding out.”
She glances over at the chasing bad guys part, offering an amused half-smile. Yeah, it's worked out for her. Not that she wouldn't still be out here if she'd been gifted a more passive power, but being able to send her opponents flying off their feet certainly helps.
His next words wipe the smile from her face, though, and she keeps her eyes firmly on the road.
"Yeah, I kinda figured that out a while ago," she says, her voice quieter and a little strained. A while ago as in when she'd learned her mom had been dissected because of her powers; a HYDRA scientist cut her to pieces and left her body in a ditch like a pile of garbage. The monster probably would have tried to do the same to Daisy if he'd lived to see what she'd become after Terrigenesis, but Coulson hadn't given him the chance.
Clint hears the pain in her voice and decides not to comment on it. Instead, he looks out the window, taking note of their location. He hasn’t been in the city long, having been tipped off about the WatchDogs only a few days ago. He needs to know his way around if he’ll be here for a bit.
When they arrive near the warehouse, Clint opens the van door and hops out. “I’ll be in contact if I hear anything. You can do the same.”
He doesn’t want to give too much away, but if they are going to work together, they should practice, make sure they can compliment each others’ fighting styles in a fight. “Where I come from, I’m used to working with other people. If you want, I know a place we can practice together, maybe figure out how to be most effective, if you want to keep working together. You don’t have to be a lone wolf.” And neither does he echoes in Clint’s brain. He’s been on his own by choice since Thanos, and now here he is, trying to recruit this poor woman that just wanted to help him out. Old habits die hard.
No, she doesn't have to be, but she deserves to be, doesn't she? It's that guilt gnawing away at her, digging its claws into every part of her life in some shape or form. Some days, she can't even brush her teeth without feeling guilty — which is, of course, ridiculous, but since when does her mind ever make sense?
Her hands adjust on the wheel as she looks over at him, that proverbial hand offering to pull her out of this darkness she's swimming in, whether or not that's the intention. But she can't just... She just can't.
"Everyone who gets close to me ends up dying," she tells him, feeling like the warning is more than justified. No one should wander into her life without knowing what they're getting into. "You don't really want to get pulled into that."
“With all due respect Daisy, you aren’t the first one that’s said that to me. Besides, I can say the same about myself. You and I are doing dangerous things out here, might be nice to have someone watching your back. You don’t want it, that’s fine. But it won’t stop me from showing up places you might already be.” He doesn’t really give her the chance to respond, preoccupied now with thinking about everyone he let down, that he let die when Thanos snapped his fingers.
He pulls his hood further forward and disappears into the darkness. He isn’t hard to track from here, but since she seems adamant that they not continue their acquaintance, he doesn’t think she’ll follow.
Clint gets back to his safehouse, checks in with Nat, and plans his next move.
Three days later, he sends Daisy a short list of coordinates and a time along with the message: dogs next strike. I won’t get knocked out this time, I hope.
There's no one for Daisy to check in with. She's cut herself off entirely from everyone she knew and loved, her lone contact only receiving the occasional message whenever she needs something. SHIELD is looking for her and it would be so easy to just go home and step back into her old life... but she can't take the easy road.
Her nights are spent sitting in grimy diners drinking too much coffee and using free wifi to research her prey; her days are spent sleeping in her van on the edge of the city. There's nowhere else she feels safe or comfortable enough to let her guard down. That's probably the hardest part of this new life — she'd gotten used to feeling safe.
She'd gotten used to having a home.
The masked stranger has been firmly pushed from her mind until she gets the message that can only be from him. She stares at the alert on her phone for a long while, sipping at the mug of old, burnt coffee in her hand until she makes her decision. And then she's packing up and heading out, unwilling to lose this opportunity even if it means she'll have to risk someone else.
Clint is standing there, in his full Ronin get up, waiting for things to get started when he sees Daisy out of the corner of his eye. Not wanting things to go down the same way as they did the last time, he steps out of the shadows for a moment to motion her forward. This time, since they both know that each other is there, the battle goes a little bit better - at least it does for Clint. He doesn’t end up passed out., waking up in a strange hotel room with a strange woman.
It goes well enough that he contacts her again for his next hit, and then again for the one after.
After the tenth time that they effectively take out a group of Dogs, Clint turns toward her. “Look, I know you’ve been living pretty rough. I can’t give you luxury, but I can offer a hot shower and a meal. Come back with me. I haven’t died yet, so I think I’ll be safe for a couple hours.
He’s currently staying at one of the nicer safehouses he knows about, so he feels okay about offering some small luxuries. If she wants to stay, he thinks he’d be open to that part too. Who knows, it might be good for the both of them. “You coming?”
It's dangerous to get used to having someone around. Daisy reminds herself of this every time she receives a message from the strange; each time she shares a tip she's received; when they're fighting side by side; as he says goodbye and walks away. Counting on people and expecting them to be there is how she's gotten hurt too many times before — the exception to which has and always will be SHIELD, the family she's turned her back on. And yet she keeps working with him, this man whose face she's never once seen, and slowly she starts to feel a little less lonely whenever he's around.
Maybe that's why when he makes her this out-of-the-blue offer, she doesn't immediately turn him down. It would be nice to have a shower without having to pay for a hotel room, even if half the time it isn't her money she's paying with. (A perk of being one of the world's best hackers.) And for a little while, she might feel—
Nope, not going there.
"Yeah, okay," she finally agrees, still not sure it's the best idea but forging forward anyway. "Thanks."
It’s not necessarily a good idea for him. He was an Avenger, and the Avengers failed everyone. And now, now he’s the one not only taking care of the bad guys but also killing them. The Avengers already had a bad rap for unintentionally hurting people, and now he’s out here doing it on purpose.
But the offer has been made, and Daisy’s agreed, so now he can’t go back on it.
He follows her back to the van and directs her to his current safehouse. It’s not exactly in town, being a little ways off, but still has running water, hydro and it looks abandoned enough that no one should think anyone is there. “Come on,” he urges, “van around back. We don’t want to get caught.” Once they’ve parked and headed in, Clint starts dropping his weapons and taking off his uniform.
Right before taking off the mask he turns toward Daisy and says, “now don’t freak out.” She has nothing to fear from him, but it still might be shocking. He pulls off the mask carefully, bring his hand up to try to smooth over his blond hair. “So uh hey. I’m Clint.”
There's comfort in being outside of the main part of the city. Before she'd gone through Terrigenesis, she would have found solace in being lost in the center of a bustling town, shrouding herself in the anonymity populated areas offer. Now, though, she has to worry about someone recognizing her, or a rogue quake in her sleep. Risking the lives of hateful, murderous assholes is one thing; she refuses to put innocents in harm's way.
She doesn't let the shock show on her face as the not-quite-a-stranger-anymore starts removing the uniform he's never once been without in the time she's known him. He trusts her this much now? It's surprising, to say the least, but in a good way.
Don't freak out. The words haven't even begun to fully process in her mind before her stomach bottoms out and the world falls away beneath her. The man standing before her isn't a stranger at all, not really, and suddenly her fight or flight instincts are screaming at her to run run run as she struggles to match the man she's worked with these past weeks to the hero she's admired for years.
"You—" Her voice cracks and she clings to the strap of the duffel on her shoulder like it's a goddamn lifeline. The shock is plain as day on her face now, with hints of panic creeping in at the edges. "Did... Did Coulson send you? Is that why— all of this?"
She wants to fling herself out that door and never look back, but she wants answers just a little bit more.
It was necessary to reveal his identity to Daisy once she stepped food in the safehouse. Indicators of who he is are strewn across nearly every surface: there’s a bow on top of the desk with an arrow quill beside it, a purple shirt with a target on the front hanging from a doorknob. There’s an espresso maker on the stove along with a StarkTech laptop with a few extra screens monitoring some pretty secret stuff. If someone were to know him, or at least, know of him a little more than the general public, it would be very obvious that he’s Clint Barton, the Avenger formerly known as Hawkeye. He’d invited her back knowing that fact.
What he doesn’t expect are the words that come out of her mouth as soon as he takes off his mask. “What?” he asks, a little bit thrown at her accusation. “Why would a dead man send me after you?” He knows that Coulson is dead. He has to be dead. They’d all heard what Loki did to him. Besides, wouldn’t he have reached out to him, to Nat if he wasn’t dead?
“No one sent me. Our meeting wasn’t planned.” He can’t say that it was random because two people working toward the same end and going after the same people were bound to cross paths. “Honestly, I don’t even know who you are.” He can infer now that she has something to do with SHIELD, which is more than he’d known a moment ago. “How do you know Coulson?”
A dead man. He doesn't know. Is this seriously just a coincidence? Of all the people left in the world, they somehow just happened to cross paths? She feels like the universe is trolling her and laughing up a fucking storm.
"He recruited me," she answers quietly, the need for flight slowly leeching out of her and leaving behind a feeling of emptiness. What is she supposed to do? She can't lie to him about this. "A year after New York."
Her shoulders hunch slightly as if she's trying to make herself small as she elaborates, "After SHIELD brought him back."
“After New York,” Clint repeats. Maybe if she’d been recruited before the Chitauri this would make sense, but she’s trying to say that Coulson is still alive. “Are we talking about the same Coulson? Phil?” he asks, trying to make sense of this. Why didn’t he reach out? Even fucking Fury had made it known he was still alive.
“It doesn’t make sense. Is he alive now? Is that why you asked if he sent me?” He must have had his reasons to have lived after New York and not contacted he and Nat about it, but to have lived through Thanos and not given them that closure? It doesn’t make sense.
Daisy runs a hand over her face, rubbing at her eyes even though it'll smudge the heavy eye makeup she wears daily now. Suddenly, she's so tired she nearly aches with it, the exhaustion of the past year weighing her down and making every feel so incredibly heavy. This isn't her story to tell, but she's not about to call up AC and get him to do it.
"There was a procedure," she explains slowly, looking anywhere but at Clint, "to revive a fallen Avenger. Fury made the call to bring him back and to keep it secret. And after HYDRA, Coulson became director and made the call to keep not telling anyone. Everything was complicated and..."
Taking a deep breath, she shrugs with her hands, the fingertips of her left now covered in a grey sheen of eyeshadow. "I don't know why he hasn't reached out since all of this happened. I left SHIELD right before Thanos, but I know Coulson's still alive."
Clint brings his head down to his hands, struggling to comprehend what he’s hearing. He takes a moment, shakes himself out of it then stands. “Well, I guess he must have his reasons,” Clint states, even though whatever reasons they are, they can’t be as important as letting him and Nat know that he’s alive. He can’t understand how anything could be more important than that.
“Why did you leave?” he asks. He’s met Bucky Barnes, Hydra’s Fist, he’d seen what they’d done to him. But she didn’t leave then. She waited longer.
“Why are you fighting the WatchDogs?” Clint asks finally. He needs to know, now, her true reasons. The things they’re sharing will build trust between them, but he needs to know.
Why are these the questions he has to ask? She hunches in a bit further, crossing her arms and feeling sick with anxiety and exhaustion. He deserves the truth after trusting her like this and she needs to tell him, but she still wants to just run straight out the door. Staying and dealing with the hard stuff is something she's never been very good at, especially when the risk of rejection is so high.
"I'm fighting the Watchdogs because they're going after Inhumans," she answers simply, even if it isn't really a simple answer. "They're killing people like me and someone has to stop them."
As for the other question... She takes a deep, shaking breath and turns away from Clint. A few steps are all she takes, managing to stop herself before she does actually head for the door, but she feels the slightest bit better for having more distance between them. "I left SHIELD because I lost someone. It was my fault, and I... He paid for my mistakes, and I couldn't stay."
Clint nods as she answers his questions, lets her take her time and really think about what she wants to say. He doesn’t expect to hear her full story, but what she says rings true. “We’ve all lost people,” he says. He’d lost so, so much because of his inability to stop Thanos. He doesn’t think he can ever face how many lives he’s responsible for. Not now, at least, and probably not ever.
“You’re right, they do need to be stopped.” He gets up then and passes Daisy a bottle of water. “Take your shower. You’re welcome to stay a s long as you want.”
He needs some time to decompress now, needs to think about what she’s told him. He needs to check in with Nat. He may… need to get in a fight, kill some bad guys just so he can know that he’s still trying to do right. He needs to get drunk.
There’s only a few of those things he can do at the moment, so he grabs a six pack and heads to his tiny control room. It’s time he made a call to an old friend.
The hot water holds out longer than Daisy expects, though she pushes it to its limit. Everything in her is numb until it isn't, and then it all just... hurts. For the first time in a long while, she cries, the heavy sobs tearing themselves from her throat with such force that she's grateful for the steady drum of water to cover up the sound. But still, she goes through the motions, soap and shampoo washing away the day but doing nothing for the pain inside.
By the time she's finished, she's numb again and so very tired. Black jeans, black t-shirt, black socks as she carries her black boots out of the bathroom. Only the dark smudges around her eyes are gone, the makeup scrubbed away to leave her looking younger and older at the same time. But while her face is clear, her now bare arms are covered in dark splotchy bruises in various hues of healing, the left arm significantly worse than the right.
Clint — fuck, it's so weird to have that name associated to the person she's fought beside for weeks — had mentioned a meal but she isn't hungry, so she sets about making coffee instead. The hour's late but that's never stopped her before, and frankly, sleep is overrated these days.
The thing about Natasha is that nowadays, she’s kind of always available. Thanos’ victory had affected them all in different ways, and Natasha is now obsessive about monitoring movements, studying everything and anything that could possibly reverse the snap. It also means that she answers right away when Clint calls.
“No news on Thanos,” Clint tells her immediately. “But I have other intel that you might wanna hear.” Before he says anything about it, he cracks open a can of beer and drinks half of it. “I ran into someone, former SHIELD, no, I can’t tell you who she is,” he insists. He and Daisy have only just started trusting each other, and he’s not going to betray that trust at the first possible opportunity. He drains the rest of his beer before continuing.
He tells Nat about Coulson being alive, stressing that he trusts his source but that he can’t reveal her, not even to Nat. Together, they wonder why he hadn’t been in contact with them and Clint makes his way through three more cans. “I don’t know Nat. But at least now we can track him down.”
Soon after that, Natasha needs to hang up so that she can answer a hail from the Guardians and Clint is left to his own devices once again. He picks up the rest of the case and goes to the kitchen, where Daisy is making coffee.
“There’s a spare room if you want it,” he says. “Spare beer too.”
Daisy can feel Clint approaching, the vibrations of his steps echoing through the otherwise silent house, so she doesn't look over until he speaks. Her still-wet hair has left damp spots on her shirt, and it falls heavily on her shoulder as she glances at him.
"Thank you," she says automatically, though she's still not sure she'll take him up on the offer. Why would he even want her here when she'll just be a walking reminder of how Coulson hurt him with his giant secret?
Cupping her hands around the warm mug of coffee, she ignores the offer of beer, though it is appreciated. Alcohol will only help to dull the pain — she deserves to feel every inch of it as it tears its way through her. If not for the news she's delivered to him, then for everything else she's done.
"I'm guessing you talked with Romanoff?" From what Coulson always said, they were always a pair with unshakable loyalty to one another. "I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad good news. If it means anything, I know he's missed you both. He used to talk about you guys all the time before things... got bad."
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"Sorry, they're probably locked up in evidence by now," she says with an actual apology in her voice. Hauling him out before the authorities showed up had been her priority and she hadn't even thought to retrieve his weapons from the bodies. That sort of thing has never been a concern for her.
"Come on, I'll get you as close as we can without drawing attention." Grabbing the bag of first aid supplies, she makes for the door. There's nothing of hers left in the room; she probably won't be back tonight.
She opens the door and steps outside, glancing back over her shoulder as she moves toward her van. "How's the head, by the way? Any blurred vision or nausea?"
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He limps after her as they leave the hotel room, climbing up into the other side of the van. “Thanks for this, eh?” he says. Daisy is really doing him a solid by dropping him off closer to his safe house. If he trusted her more, he’d get her to drop him off there, maybe even offer her a place to stay with him. He’s getting ahead of himself though. There’s no way for him to know if this potential partnership will even work out.
Turning toward her when she asks about his head, Clint jokes, “never had any complaints,” but then sobers. “It’s probably not a concussion. I’ve had enough of them to know.”
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"Oh, you have bad guys fall on you often?" she jokes in return, tossing the bag over the seat into the back of the van. There are a few other bags back there, along with a monitor and keyboard setup and a rolled-up sleeping bag. This is usually where she stays — living in her van just like before she'd joined SHIELD.
Pulling out of the hotel parking lot, she keeps her eyes on the road but directs a serious order his way. "Just make sure to ice everything to help with the swelling." A beat, and then she adds, "I can stop somewhere if you need me to grab stuff to help with that."
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“Got some stuff where I’m staying. Gotta take care of myself you know? No powers.” While that admission might be a clue to his identity, he figures it will lead her further away from it. If she thought that he was enhanced in any way, she might associate him with the Avengers, or SHIELD, and neither of those are things that he wants. The more of a mystery he is, the better.
“You get really good at dressing your own wounds when you have a job like ours,” he adds with a self deprecating chuckle. “How about you? You got any magic healing abilities? Do they work on others? You wanna share?”
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"I wish," she answers with a scoff. "I can manipulate vibrations, and if there's a way to use that to heal people instead of hurt them, I sure haven't figured it out."
She's a walking weapon and in the wrong hands... Her grip tightens on the steering wheel, her jaw clenching. What happened with Hive still hurts; she has a feeling it always will.
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Clint’s out here because it was his job, the Avengers’ job, to stop Thanos and they’d failed horrifically, so it’s his fault now that the less savoury individuals are having an easier time of it. No one else is going to do it, so it’s gotta be him.
“Probably best to keep that under wraps though. Don’t want the wrong people finding out.”
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His next words wipe the smile from her face, though, and she keeps her eyes firmly on the road.
"Yeah, I kinda figured that out a while ago," she says, her voice quieter and a little strained. A while ago as in when she'd learned her mom had been dissected because of her powers; a HYDRA scientist cut her to pieces and left her body in a ditch like a pile of garbage. The monster probably would have tried to do the same to Daisy if he'd lived to see what she'd become after Terrigenesis, but Coulson hadn't given him the chance.
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When they arrive near the warehouse, Clint opens the van door and hops out. “I’ll be in contact if I hear anything. You can do the same.”
He doesn’t want to give too much away, but if they are going to work together, they should practice, make sure they can compliment each others’ fighting styles in a fight. “Where I come from, I’m used to working with other people. If you want, I know a place we can practice together, maybe figure out how to be most effective, if you want to keep working together. You don’t have to be a lone wolf.” And neither does he echoes in Clint’s brain. He’s been on his own by choice since Thanos, and now here he is, trying to recruit this poor woman that just wanted to help him out. Old habits die hard.
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Her hands adjust on the wheel as she looks over at him, that proverbial hand offering to pull her out of this darkness she's swimming in, whether or not that's the intention. But she can't just... She just can't.
"Everyone who gets close to me ends up dying," she tells him, feeling like the warning is more than justified. No one should wander into her life without knowing what they're getting into. "You don't really want to get pulled into that."
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He pulls his hood further forward and disappears into the darkness. He isn’t hard to track from here, but since she seems adamant that they not continue their acquaintance, he doesn’t think she’ll follow.
Clint gets back to his safehouse, checks in with Nat, and plans his next move.
Three days later, he sends Daisy a short list of coordinates and a time along with the message: dogs next strike. I won’t get knocked out this time, I hope.
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Her nights are spent sitting in grimy diners drinking too much coffee and using free wifi to research her prey; her days are spent sleeping in her van on the edge of the city. There's nowhere else she feels safe or comfortable enough to let her guard down. That's probably the hardest part of this new life — she'd gotten used to feeling safe.
She'd gotten used to having a home.
The masked stranger has been firmly pushed from her mind until she gets the message that can only be from him. She stares at the alert on her phone for a long while, sipping at the mug of old, burnt coffee in her hand until she makes her decision. And then she's packing up and heading out, unwilling to lose this opportunity even if it means she'll have to risk someone else.
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It goes well enough that he contacts her again for his next hit, and then again for the one after.
After the tenth time that they effectively take out a group of Dogs, Clint turns toward her. “Look, I know you’ve been living pretty rough. I can’t give you luxury, but I can offer a hot shower and a meal. Come back with me. I haven’t died yet, so I think I’ll be safe for a couple hours.
He’s currently staying at one of the nicer safehouses he knows about, so he feels okay about offering some small luxuries. If she wants to stay, he thinks he’d be open to that part too. Who knows, it might be good for the both of them. “You coming?”
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Maybe that's why when he makes her this out-of-the-blue offer, she doesn't immediately turn him down. It would be nice to have a shower without having to pay for a hotel room, even if half the time it isn't her money she's paying with. (A perk of being one of the world's best hackers.) And for a little while, she might feel—
Nope, not going there.
"Yeah, okay," she finally agrees, still not sure it's the best idea but forging forward anyway. "Thanks."
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But the offer has been made, and Daisy’s agreed, so now he can’t go back on it.
He follows her back to the van and directs her to his current safehouse. It’s not exactly in town, being a little ways off, but still has running water, hydro and it looks abandoned enough that no one should think anyone is there. “Come on,” he urges, “van around back. We don’t want to get caught.” Once they’ve parked and headed in, Clint starts dropping his weapons and taking off his uniform.
Right before taking off the mask he turns toward Daisy and says, “now don’t freak out.” She has nothing to fear from him, but it still might be shocking. He pulls off the mask carefully, bring his hand up to try to smooth over his blond hair. “So uh hey. I’m Clint.”
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She doesn't let the shock show on her face as the not-quite-a-stranger-anymore starts removing the uniform he's never once been without in the time she's known him. He trusts her this much now? It's surprising, to say the least, but in a good way.
Don't freak out. The words haven't even begun to fully process in her mind before her stomach bottoms out and the world falls away beneath her. The man standing before her isn't a stranger at all, not really, and suddenly her fight or flight instincts are screaming at her to run run run as she struggles to match the man she's worked with these past weeks to the hero she's admired for years.
"You—" Her voice cracks and she clings to the strap of the duffel on her shoulder like it's a goddamn lifeline. The shock is plain as day on her face now, with hints of panic creeping in at the edges. "Did... Did Coulson send you? Is that why— all of this?"
She wants to fling herself out that door and never look back, but she wants answers just a little bit more.
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What he doesn’t expect are the words that come out of her mouth as soon as he takes off his mask. “What?” he asks, a little bit thrown at her accusation. “Why would a dead man send me after you?” He knows that Coulson is dead. He has to be dead. They’d all heard what Loki did to him. Besides, wouldn’t he have reached out to him, to Nat if he wasn’t dead?
“No one sent me. Our meeting wasn’t planned.” He can’t say that it was random because two people working toward the same end and going after the same people were bound to cross paths. “Honestly, I don’t even know who you are.” He can infer now that she has something to do with SHIELD, which is more than he’d known a moment ago. “How do you know Coulson?”
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"He recruited me," she answers quietly, the need for flight slowly leeching out of her and leaving behind a feeling of emptiness. What is she supposed to do? She can't lie to him about this. "A year after New York."
Her shoulders hunch slightly as if she's trying to make herself small as she elaborates, "After SHIELD brought him back."
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“It doesn’t make sense. Is he alive now? Is that why you asked if he sent me?” He must have had his reasons to have lived after New York and not contacted he and Nat about it, but to have lived through Thanos and not given them that closure? It doesn’t make sense.
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"There was a procedure," she explains slowly, looking anywhere but at Clint, "to revive a fallen Avenger. Fury made the call to bring him back and to keep it secret. And after HYDRA, Coulson became director and made the call to keep not telling anyone. Everything was complicated and..."
Taking a deep breath, she shrugs with her hands, the fingertips of her left now covered in a grey sheen of eyeshadow. "I don't know why he hasn't reached out since all of this happened. I left SHIELD right before Thanos, but I know Coulson's still alive."
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“Why did you leave?” he asks. He’s met Bucky Barnes, Hydra’s Fist, he’d seen what they’d done to him. But she didn’t leave then. She waited longer.
“Why are you fighting the WatchDogs?” Clint asks finally. He needs to know, now, her true reasons. The things they’re sharing will build trust between them, but he needs to know.
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"I'm fighting the Watchdogs because they're going after Inhumans," she answers simply, even if it isn't really a simple answer. "They're killing people like me and someone has to stop them."
As for the other question... She takes a deep, shaking breath and turns away from Clint. A few steps are all she takes, managing to stop herself before she does actually head for the door, but she feels the slightest bit better for having more distance between them. "I left SHIELD because I lost someone. It was my fault, and I... He paid for my mistakes, and I couldn't stay."
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Clint nods as she answers his questions, lets her take her time and really think about what she wants to say. He doesn’t expect to hear her full story, but what she says rings true. “We’ve all lost people,” he says. He’d lost so, so much because of his inability to stop Thanos. He doesn’t think he can ever face how many lives he’s responsible for. Not now, at least, and probably not ever.
“You’re right, they do need to be stopped.” He gets up then and passes Daisy a bottle of water. “Take your shower. You’re welcome to stay a s long as you want.”
He needs some time to decompress now, needs to think about what she’s told him. He needs to check in with Nat. He may… need to get in a fight, kill some bad guys just so he can know that he’s still trying to do right. He needs to get drunk.
There’s only a few of those things he can do at the moment, so he grabs a six pack and heads to his tiny control room. It’s time he made a call to an old friend.
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By the time she's finished, she's numb again and so very tired. Black jeans, black t-shirt, black socks as she carries her black boots out of the bathroom. Only the dark smudges around her eyes are gone, the makeup scrubbed away to leave her looking younger and older at the same time. But while her face is clear, her now bare arms are covered in dark splotchy bruises in various hues of healing, the left arm significantly worse than the right.
Clint — fuck, it's so weird to have that name associated to the person she's fought beside for weeks — had mentioned a meal but she isn't hungry, so she sets about making coffee instead. The hour's late but that's never stopped her before, and frankly, sleep is overrated these days.
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“No news on Thanos,” Clint tells her immediately. “But I have other intel that you might wanna hear.” Before he says anything about it, he cracks open a can of beer and drinks half of it. “I ran into someone, former SHIELD, no, I can’t tell you who she is,” he insists. He and Daisy have only just started trusting each other, and he’s not going to betray that trust at the first possible opportunity. He drains the rest of his beer before continuing.
He tells Nat about Coulson being alive, stressing that he trusts his source but that he can’t reveal her, not even to Nat. Together, they wonder why he hadn’t been in contact with them and Clint makes his way through three more cans. “I don’t know Nat. But at least now we can track him down.”
Soon after that, Natasha needs to hang up so that she can answer a hail from the Guardians and Clint is left to his own devices once again. He picks up the rest of the case and goes to the kitchen, where Daisy is making coffee.
“There’s a spare room if you want it,” he says. “Spare beer too.”
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"Thank you," she says automatically, though she's still not sure she'll take him up on the offer. Why would he even want her here when she'll just be a walking reminder of how Coulson hurt him with his giant secret?
Cupping her hands around the warm mug of coffee, she ignores the offer of beer, though it is appreciated. Alcohol will only help to dull the pain — she deserves to feel every inch of it as it tears its way through her. If not for the news she's delivered to him, then for everything else she's done.
"I'm guessing you talked with Romanoff?" From what Coulson always said, they were always a pair with unshakable loyalty to one another. "I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad good news. If it means anything, I know he's missed you both. He used to talk about you guys all the time before things... got bad."
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If you want him to call her something else, lmk! I'll change it.
it works!
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