“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.
He doesn't want to talk about it, and she doesn't blame him. Losing them all like that... It's a wonder he's still standing. She understands now why he's thrown himself into this new self-assigned mission with such ruthlessness. When a person is at their lowest, they'll cling to anything they can to stay afloat. Just look at what she's done with the broken bits of her life.
"Yeah, you know, I guess I could go for having a sidekick," she says with the ghost of mischief in her tone and expression. He might be older than her, but she is the one wearing the superhero pants around here.
Clint’s been a sidekick for most of his professional career, his only real claim to fame being how good of a marksman he is. Nat’s always been better than him at the spy stuff, and as an Avenger he’d been the least effective. He doesn’t mind, really. He knows that he’s excellent at what he does, and it’s done him well to recognize the limitations of his abilities. So he smirks at her a little, glad she’d decided to lighten the mood. “Sidekick at your service.”
He fishes another can of beer from the case; they’re verging on warm now, but he doesn’t actually care. “When we’re in the field though, you have to call me Ronin. No one can know it’s me.”
It's strange to be working with someone again like this. The past few weeks, she's been able to tell herself it was only temporary, just until they wrapped things up with this particular cell of Watchdogs. But this feels different. With everything they've shared and the trust they're building, this feels more permanent. After the Secret Warriors fell apart because of Hive, she'd been certain she'd never work with anyone else like this again. But here she is. Here they are.
Her brow furrows at the codename he gives. Not because of needing a codename, that she completely gets, but the name itself is... a choice. She knows better than anyone that sometimes these things are out of your hands, though.
"Ronin?" she asks skeptically over the rim of her coffee mug before she takes another sip. "Did you come up with that or did the press stick you with it? Because I sure as hell didn't choose Quake for myself."
Clint just shrugs and drinks his beer, a sip this time. He’s not planning to get shit faced in front of a woman that he’s only just met. Sometimes he gets weepy and that would be embarrassing after everything they’ve talked about tonight. He’ll stop after this one, and then maybe they can make plans for their next strike in the morning.
“Not the first person to wear the suit,” he states. “It was named before me, so it’s not like I had a choice. Folks use it when they need to do things as someone else. I can’t be Hawkeye right now, maybe not ever again, but I still need to help. This is the only way I could make that happen.”
Despite the fracturing of the Avengers after the snap, Clint knows that most of them wouldn’t approve of how he’s chosen to live his life. The only person that might forgive him is Natasha, but he still can’t bring himself to tell her. This is his burden to bear, and now it’s Daisy’s too.
Huh. Interesting. She'd never heard of a Ronin or seen the suit before Clint inserted himself into her mission, but now she's curious. And luckily, even without SHIELD's resources, she's still got plenty of ways to do her own research and sate her curiosity without having to bother Clint for the information.
"I wonder if that'll happen with the heroes," she muses, steering the conversation to yet another subject. "People have to retire eventually, right? If nothing else, this job's hard on the body." Not that she can picture someone like May ever retiring, but she has heard Coulson complain about his knees once or twice. "Maybe there'll be another Captain America after Rogers. Probably not an Iron Man after Stark, though — from what I've heard, I don't think his ego could stand it."
Clint shrugs at her, glad for the change in subject. “Well I’m not gonna last forever, but Rogers is a super soldier, so who knows how long he’s gonna stay in shape for. Bruce seems pretty indestructible and Tony’s gonna have to be dead before he stops putting that suit on.” It feels good, being able to talk about his friends in a way that’s not painful. “But maybe they should think about training up some new ones. Before the snap, Tony had this baby science kid, and there was Wanda and Vis… we were growing in ranks.”
Despite them not always getting along, things with the Avengers had been good overall. Cap and Tony got into over Cap’s weird murder boyfriend, but Clint is sure they’ve made up by now. Too much has happened since then for them to keep holding their grudges.
Wanda. Vision. She's pretty sure the science kid was probably the Spider-Man who had been causing the good kind of mischief in Queens for a while. And now they're all gone. Their mention brings on another wave of guilt over the part she played in failing to stop Thanos, and Daisy scrambles to pull herself back from that line of thought before she spirals too deeply into it.
"The Accords fucked things up for a while too, didn't they." It's not a question; she remembers the way the news had gone nuts over it all. "I always thought SHIELD's Index was a bad idea, but the Accords are so much worse. If the wrong person gets hold of that list..."
Not every gifted individual wants the rest of the world to know who they are and what they can do, not when human beings aren't exactly known for being kind to those who are deemed different.
“Yeah, the Accords. Who’s bright idea was that?” Ultimately, Clint had decided to retire once the Accords came into play. It was the coming out of retirement part that had been the ultimate catalyst to his divorce. Laura hadn’t wanted him to go back out into the field, but he hadn’t listened. Within a month, he was being served with papers.
He doesn’t need to be thinking about that. Even if he wanted a second chance with Laura, which he doesn’t, she’s gone now.
“All the Accords would have done was leash the Avengers and expose Inhumans and Mutants who were just minding their own business. How many of them would have wanted retribution for us ruining their lives? It’s better to let people live the way they choose if they aren’t hurting anyone.”
"Agreed," she says with a nod, looking back down at the coffee she's still cradling in her hands. "Inhumans have existed for thousands of years and no one knew about them. They took care of their own, and if there was a problem, they dealt with it themselves. But now that people know, they think we're dangerous and it'll be our goal to..."
She lifts a hand in something like an exasperated shrug. There's a feeling of frustration and helplessness welling up inside of her because she is, in part, responsible for this. Daisy and Jiaying had both made mistakes and now their people (what's left of them) are suffering for it.
"I guess I'm not exactly proving them wrong. But I can't just sit around and let the Watchdogs hurt innocent people."
Clint just shrugs. He's made a lot of mistakes since putting on the Ronin suit, but they aren't actions he necessarily regrets. "Like you said, you gotta protect your own," he says softly. Clint has no powers himself, but the thought of that Spider Kid, or even Daisy being forced to register feels like some shit straight out of Nazi Germany, which he knows is why Cap wouldn't sign. A registration for mutants and inhumans and enhanced isn't something that could ever be seen as a good thing.
Especially not when revealing themselves could have them end up in a lab, being tested on for the rest of their lives. Clint had met Bucky Barnes before the snap; he'd seen first hand the results of the horrible acts doctors commit in the name of science.
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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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"Yeah, you know, I guess I could go for having a sidekick," she says with the ghost of mischief in her tone and expression. He might be older than her, but she is the one wearing the superhero pants around here.
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He fishes another can of beer from the case; they’re verging on warm now, but he doesn’t actually care. “When we’re in the field though, you have to call me Ronin. No one can know it’s me.”
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Her brow furrows at the codename he gives. Not because of needing a codename, that she completely gets, but the name itself is... a choice. She knows better than anyone that sometimes these things are out of your hands, though.
"Ronin?" she asks skeptically over the rim of her coffee mug before she takes another sip. "Did you come up with that or did the press stick you with it? Because I sure as hell didn't choose Quake for myself."
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“Not the first person to wear the suit,” he states. “It was named before me, so it’s not like I had a choice. Folks use it when they need to do things as someone else. I can’t be Hawkeye right now, maybe not ever again, but I still need to help. This is the only way I could make that happen.”
Despite the fracturing of the Avengers after the snap, Clint knows that most of them wouldn’t approve of how he’s chosen to live his life. The only person that might forgive him is Natasha, but he still can’t bring himself to tell her. This is his burden to bear, and now it’s Daisy’s too.
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"I wonder if that'll happen with the heroes," she muses, steering the conversation to yet another subject. "People have to retire eventually, right? If nothing else, this job's hard on the body." Not that she can picture someone like May ever retiring, but she has heard Coulson complain about his knees once or twice. "Maybe there'll be another Captain America after Rogers. Probably not an Iron Man after Stark, though — from what I've heard, I don't think his ego could stand it."
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Clint shrugs at her, glad for the change in subject. “Well I’m not gonna last forever, but Rogers is a super soldier, so who knows how long he’s gonna stay in shape for. Bruce seems pretty indestructible and Tony’s gonna have to be dead before he stops putting that suit on.” It feels good, being able to talk about his friends in a way that’s not painful. “But maybe they should think about training up some new ones. Before the snap, Tony had this baby science kid, and there was Wanda and Vis… we were growing in ranks.”
Despite them not always getting along, things with the Avengers had been good overall. Cap and Tony got into over Cap’s weird murder boyfriend, but Clint is sure they’ve made up by now. Too much has happened since then for them to keep holding their grudges.
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"The Accords fucked things up for a while too, didn't they." It's not a question; she remembers the way the news had gone nuts over it all. "I always thought SHIELD's Index was a bad idea, but the Accords are so much worse. If the wrong person gets hold of that list..."
Not every gifted individual wants the rest of the world to know who they are and what they can do, not when human beings aren't exactly known for being kind to those who are deemed different.
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“Yeah, the Accords. Who’s bright idea was that?” Ultimately, Clint had decided to retire once the Accords came into play. It was the coming out of retirement part that had been the ultimate catalyst to his divorce. Laura hadn’t wanted him to go back out into the field, but he hadn’t listened. Within a month, he was being served with papers.
He doesn’t need to be thinking about that. Even if he wanted a second chance with Laura, which he doesn’t, she’s gone now.
“All the Accords would have done was leash the Avengers and expose Inhumans and Mutants who were just minding their own business. How many of them would have wanted retribution for us ruining their lives? It’s better to let people live the way they choose if they aren’t hurting anyone.”
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She lifts a hand in something like an exasperated shrug. There's a feeling of frustration and helplessness welling up inside of her because she is, in part, responsible for this. Daisy and Jiaying had both made mistakes and now their people (what's left of them) are suffering for it.
"I guess I'm not exactly proving them wrong. But I can't just sit around and let the Watchdogs hurt innocent people."
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Especially not when revealing themselves could have them end up in a lab, being tested on for the rest of their lives. Clint had met Bucky Barnes before the snap; he'd seen first hand the results of the horrible acts doctors commit in the name of science.
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If you want him to call her something else, lmk! I'll change it.
it works!
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