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."
Clint slides onto one of the chairs and sets down his mostly empty can of beer. The coffee smells amazing, but he thinks he’s made his choice for the night. He takes a moment to figure out what to tell Daisy. She might not believe him, but hopefully she still trusts him after this.
“Yeah, I called Nat,” he tells her. “No news on her end. I didn’t tell her who gave me the intel. I know that everything thinks the two of us are tight, and we are, but we both know how to keep secrets from each other.” There was a time that they didn’t, that he would tell Nat everything but their relationship has changed since the snap. There are a lot of things about Clint’s life currently that he doesn’t think he can admit to, not to someone that’s working so hard to do right.
“And it’s not your fault. He kept his secret for whatever reason, don’t take on the responsibility for his actions.” He pauses to finish his beer and then looks over at Daisy. “What do you mean, before things went bad?”
She's grateful he didn't tell Natasha about her. Of all the people in the world, she knows Romanoff can be trusted to keep a secret, but it's good to know that Clint can too. Well, she'd known that before, but now she knows it.
Sighing heavily, Daisy takes a seat across from him. She sips at her coffee for a moment, contemplating how to explain everything that's happened in the years since he last saw Phil Coulson. Where does she even start?
"It's all... complicated." When isn't it with SHIELD? "First there was HYDRA — the Avengers weren't the only ones hunting them down, you know. But then... There were side effects to what was done to bring Coulson back, and they all connected to me in a way, and..."
She groans quietly, rubbing a hand over her eyes. "It's all so damn complicated. Alien cities and genetically encoded homing beacons. Fighting my slightly unhinged murder-happy dad and my even more unhinged mom who wanted to wage war against SHIELD. Letting loose into the ecosystem the chemical compound that triggers terrigenesis in Inhumans. Dealing with the ATCU while they were hunting Inhumans. Dealing with Ward, and then Hive..."
Not that Clint is likely to understand even half of that.
Clint listens, not really understanding much of what Daisy is saying. As an Avenger with no powers, he’s never had to worry about anything triggering in himself, but he has seen the effect that being enhanced has had on his colleagues. Steve was monitored relentlessly by SHIELD and other organizations that Clint doesn’t want to think about. He’d seen how controlled Bruce’s movements were when he was working with them. He’d been there when Thor had first come to earth. He can’t say that he gets it on a personal note, but he can see how it would grate on someone.
He listens because it seems like Daisy needs to talk about it, and he’s a non-involved party. He doesn’t know these names, and he doesn’t know anything about SHIELD after the big Hydra reveal. All he knows is that Cap has a partially brainwashed super assassin best friend now, and he’s never even considered going back to an organisation that he can’t trust.
“Okay, and where does that leave you?” he asks. “You’re enhanced, you’re going after the guys that are trying to kill people like you. And now you work with me. And I’m a former Avenger that can’t ever go back from this.”
"Would you want to?" The words slip out before she can even really think about them. It's a question she truly wants to know the answer to because she couldn't answer herself if asked, but she doesn't give him time to reply before she forges ahead. Maybe she wants to know that answer, but maybe she's also scared of it.
"There was an Inhuman who could control other Inhumans. Hive. He put people under his sway and made them want to make him happy, whatever it took." Her voice falls flat as she speaks as if the only way she can talk about this is with an amount of emotional distance. "It was only a couple of weeks for me, but the things I did..."
Taking a shuddering breath, she adjusts her grip on the mug, looking down at the dark liquid inside instead of the man sitting across from her. "Hive wanted to sway the entire world, and he had a way to do it because of me. My boyfriend sacrificed himself to stop Hive, and to save me from doing it myself. So I don't think I can go back to the life I had before, not when I have so much to atone for."
Not much from her Catholic orphanage upbringing has stuck with her into adulthood, but apparently paying penance and atoning for one's sins have made the very short list.
Clint continues to let her talk it out, bearing witness because that seems to be what she needs. When she pauses, he just shrugs. “Going back for me means Thanos never happened. It means that my friends weren’t dusted, that my family wasn’t, because of me. My ex-wife and our kids were all taken in the snap, and it’s my fault. We didn’t stop him when we could, and now it’s all fucked up.”
He takes a breath and bites his lip. “So I would go back, but it’s different for me than it seems like it is for you.”
He’s not sure what else to say. Except… “Look, I’m sure as a SHIELD agent you heard what happened with me and Loki. I did shitty things too, under his control. They’re not something I want to revisit, but you just have to remind yourself that it wasn’t you. Hell, Cap’s buddy Bucky was brainwashed by Hydra for years - he killed Tony’s parents. It wasn’t him. Whatever you think you have to atone for because of this Hive, you don’t. It wasn’t you.”
His kids. It's like a gut punch for Daisy, hearing just how much he's lost, and it makes her feel so much more guilty for not being there to stop it. Some part of her wants to beg for his forgiveness, but something tells her he'd brush it aside just like the situation with Hive. She hadn't known, it wasn't her fault... But she had known. They'd heard the warning and made a choice to turn down the alliance because of what it would have cost humanity. They hadn't understood it would've been the lesser evil.
"I'm sorry for all you've lost," she says after a long moment, choosing to focus on him because she can't bear to think of Hive anymore. She can't talk about how her body craved the chemical addiction of his sway, or the way she'd begged him to take her back.
"I honestly can't imagine what you've been through. I... didn't grow up with a family. SHIELD is the closest thing I've ever had to one, but I didn't lose them." She'd made the choice to walk away.
Clint just shakes his head. They’ve both lost people and they’re both coping with it in the best way that they can. He doesn’t mind listening to what Daisy has to say, but he doesn’t want to think about his own shit right now. He can’t think about Lila, Cooper and Nathaniel. He can’t picture their faces in his mind. It’s too much, too hard. He can’t let himself remember.
Even Laura. They’d been divorced, but they’d still been pretty effective at co-parenting the kids together. He’d still spent his off time at the farm, in the barn which he’d converted into a studio apartment so that he could still be close to the kids. He and Laura hadn’t worked out romantically, and he gets it, he does, but they’d still made a hell of a parenting team.
But they’re all gone now, and there’s nothing that he can do to fix it.
“Well, we may not be family, but I’ve got your back out there, if you want me to.” It’s not much, but in their line of work, having someone you trust at your back is something at least.
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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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“Yeah, I called Nat,” he tells her. “No news on her end. I didn’t tell her who gave me the intel. I know that everything thinks the two of us are tight, and we are, but we both know how to keep secrets from each other.” There was a time that they didn’t, that he would tell Nat everything but their relationship has changed since the snap. There are a lot of things about Clint’s life currently that he doesn’t think he can admit to, not to someone that’s working so hard to do right.
“And it’s not your fault. He kept his secret for whatever reason, don’t take on the responsibility for his actions.” He pauses to finish his beer and then looks over at Daisy. “What do you mean, before things went bad?”
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Sighing heavily, Daisy takes a seat across from him. She sips at her coffee for a moment, contemplating how to explain everything that's happened in the years since he last saw Phil Coulson. Where does she even start?
"It's all... complicated." When isn't it with SHIELD? "First there was HYDRA — the Avengers weren't the only ones hunting them down, you know. But then... There were side effects to what was done to bring Coulson back, and they all connected to me in a way, and..."
She groans quietly, rubbing a hand over her eyes. "It's all so damn complicated. Alien cities and genetically encoded homing beacons. Fighting my slightly unhinged murder-happy dad and my even more unhinged mom who wanted to wage war against SHIELD. Letting loose into the ecosystem the chemical compound that triggers terrigenesis in Inhumans. Dealing with the ATCU while they were hunting Inhumans. Dealing with Ward, and then Hive..."
Not that Clint is likely to understand even half of that.
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He listens because it seems like Daisy needs to talk about it, and he’s a non-involved party. He doesn’t know these names, and he doesn’t know anything about SHIELD after the big Hydra reveal. All he knows is that Cap has a partially brainwashed super assassin best friend now, and he’s never even considered going back to an organisation that he can’t trust.
“Okay, and where does that leave you?” he asks. “You’re enhanced, you’re going after the guys that are trying to kill people like you. And now you work with me. And I’m a former Avenger that can’t ever go back from this.”
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"There was an Inhuman who could control other Inhumans. Hive. He put people under his sway and made them want to make him happy, whatever it took." Her voice falls flat as she speaks as if the only way she can talk about this is with an amount of emotional distance. "It was only a couple of weeks for me, but the things I did..."
Taking a shuddering breath, she adjusts her grip on the mug, looking down at the dark liquid inside instead of the man sitting across from her. "Hive wanted to sway the entire world, and he had a way to do it because of me. My boyfriend sacrificed himself to stop Hive, and to save me from doing it myself. So I don't think I can go back to the life I had before, not when I have so much to atone for."
Not much from her Catholic orphanage upbringing has stuck with her into adulthood, but apparently paying penance and atoning for one's sins have made the very short list.
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He takes a breath and bites his lip. “So I would go back, but it’s different for me than it seems like it is for you.”
He’s not sure what else to say. Except… “Look, I’m sure as a SHIELD agent you heard what happened with me and Loki. I did shitty things too, under his control. They’re not something I want to revisit, but you just have to remind yourself that it wasn’t you. Hell, Cap’s buddy Bucky was brainwashed by Hydra for years - he killed Tony’s parents. It wasn’t him. Whatever you think you have to atone for because of this Hive, you don’t. It wasn’t you.”
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"I'm sorry for all you've lost," she says after a long moment, choosing to focus on him because she can't bear to think of Hive anymore. She can't talk about how her body craved the chemical addiction of his sway, or the way she'd begged him to take her back.
"I honestly can't imagine what you've been through. I... didn't grow up with a family. SHIELD is the closest thing I've ever had to one, but I didn't lose them." She'd made the choice to walk away.
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Even Laura. They’d been divorced, but they’d still been pretty effective at co-parenting the kids together. He’d still spent his off time at the farm, in the barn which he’d converted into a studio apartment so that he could still be close to the kids. He and Laura hadn’t worked out romantically, and he gets it, he does, but they’d still made a hell of a parenting team.
But they’re all gone now, and there’s nothing that he can do to fix it.
“Well, we may not be family, but I’ve got your back out there, if you want me to.” It’s not much, but in their line of work, having someone you trust at your back is something at least.
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If you want him to call her something else, lmk! I'll change it.
it works!
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