Oooh, this is interested. I'd like to see the cliche that Clint had trouble after being brainwashed subverted.

oh lemme discuss this. It seems like a lot of fics talk about all the mental stress he goes through but Kevin Feige said he didn't really have much issue since he is such a trained agent. I just find this interesting. Although I suppose it would be difficult writing a story about it unless everyone is trying to make him feel better and he is like "am I supposed to feel bad?" And then he might just seem like a sociopath lol

I like the story idea, but I use it as just that. My headcanon is based on behind-the-scenes chatter, that he put it aside, dealt with it, and stayed an active agent. I think it affected him yeah, but in much the same way all the stuff in his life and work did/do, kind of like a torture experience. He's in a work where it wasn't something he was "trained for" but it is something he can find a parallel he was.

That said, I'd love to tackle this fic, but give me a couple days to post. ( :shushes all the promptathon fics waiting to be finished: )

This would be amazing!!

Ah Feige, always spoiling our fun. XD

/unqualified comment from the third row

Oh man I love this and I'd LOVE to tackle it if I can get my head around it. For myself, I tend to write a lot more angst, which is why I personally like exploring the idea of Clint's psyche post Avengers. Because I do think that there was definitely something lingering there, and it's liberating to explore those emotions with Natasha. But, I also love the idea that Clint is, you know, actually mostly fine - with some emotional damage, but not as much as people think - and I think it would be an interesting challenge for a fic.

(not entirely the same thing, but! irnan just did a really long and awesome post Cap2 team!fic that included Clint, and it was basically competent!Clint after all these big events of Avengers/Cap2 and I really enjoyed seeing Clint written like that.)

I love seeing competent Clint! I actually feel bad in fics when people refer to him as "idiot" or whatever, b/c he just seems so smart and capable to me? But then I also think MCU Clint isn't exactly comic-book Clint. But we will see.

Yeah, I've come to realize that there's a fine line between writing Clint as the lovable normal human disaster and also someone who is competent and adjusted. I think a lot of fandom (or at least, from what I see on Tumblr) has fallen into the Fraction-verse of human disaster Clint and while I really do love that to an extent (and have it as part of my own headcanon), it does get taken to an extreme level sometimes. I also think that with so little of MCU!Clint to go off of, it makes it easier to impart comic canon like that without thinking about it.

Maybe not quite what you had in mind, but the best I could come up with on short notice ...



" Are you okay?"

"Whaddya mean, am I okay."

Natasha carefully brushes a handful of rubble off Clint's torn and filthy tac vest. He almost recoils at her touch.

"And you can cut the mother hen routine, too. It's a bit scary, actually."

Her hand pauses over his chest.

"Excuse me?"

"I'm more comfortable when you try to kill me."

She scans his face, trying to find a lie, but all she sees is Clint.

“Still wallowing? Want someone to hit you to make you feel better?”

He frowns, and it’s clear that he’s actually thinking about the answer. Coming from Mr. In-the-Moment, that’s almost evolutionary; in what direction remains to be seen.

"Nah. Remember that time in Medellin?"

How could she not? She'd found him two hours after he'd been taken by the cartel, and the goons hadn't wasted a minute. Seeing what had been done to him, not knowing whether there was still life under all that blood, had been the first time she'd realized that ...

"Yes. I wish I didn't."

"Well, this ... Loki ... this wasn’t like that. No cigarette burns and bike chains, for starters. No time to think about what'd be coming next, whether I’d break, whether I’d see you again, hoping I wouldn’t because that might mean they had you, too. Took me months to get that shit out of my head.“

He shakes his head as if to clear out the memory before it gets the chance to take root.

“And this time?”

Maybe she shouldn’t press, but if there’s another thing she remembers from Medellin, it’s this: That he didn’t stop being silent and withdrawn one moment, exploding the next … not Clint … until he’d started talking.

“This time ... There weren’t any thoughts. None that were mine, anyway. Everything was his. My brain was a fucking blank, with just bits of me trying to fight a way out, like a hamster trying to run out from under a wet blanket."

For all his protest at being coddled, he doesn’t seem to mind being helped out of his tac vest. His back is one large bruise, still pale but bound to be a spectacular purple tomorrow. He could sure use a shower (as can she) but seeing him like this, dirt, scars and all, she can’t help but bury her face in the crook of his neck and breathing him in. Clint responds by pulling her close and putting his chin on top of her head, no doubt to stare off into the distance somewhere.

“You were right when you said that wasn’t me who did all that shit. That was someone else and he’s fading. Not my memories. Yes, I feel like crap about the things he made me do. But the thoughts themselves? They don’t burn.”

He repays the favour and starts pulling down the zippers of her suit, peeling it off her shoulders with sure, strong fingers. (No one who thinks leather cat suits are cool has ever tried to take one off when it’s damp with sweat and blood, and every muscle in your body screams for a hot jacuzzi.)

“Holy shit, Tash. That’s one hell of bruise on your hip. Where’d you get that?”

She scrunches her lips a little as she tries to remember – the fight with him on that catwalk? jump off that Chitauri sled? The memory comes back in a roar of green, and she shudders involuntarily. Clint must have felt something, and circles her waist with his arms, pulling her closer again. The feeling of skin on skin is oddly calming, and Natasha puts her cheek on his chest, feeling for the beat of his heart.

“The Hulk,” she whispers. “On the carrier. Before Banner managed to … sort of control him.” Saying the names out loud almost is a bit like shining a light into a dark corner – maybe there was a ghost there, but now there’s nothing. And so she adds, “I don’t think I’ve ever been so scared in my life. I even forgot the first rule of running, don’t look back.”

She steps back out of his embrace as he starts to chuckle.

“It’s really been a shit few days, hasn’t it?”

It has, it absolutely has. She grins back at him.

“Yeah. But, like Cap said, we won.”

“That we did.”

Clint seems to be becoming aware of something else, something … He lifts his shooting arm, inhales, and grimaces.

“Race you to the shower.”


Edited 2014-09-13 08:33 pm (UTC)

Awwwwww!!!!! This was lovely and painful and perfect. And I love the end lol.

Thank you! :-)

Awwwww!

Love this!

Ah, this is fabulous. Love, love, love it!

:) Thanks!

Such a little gem, so many good bits in this, but these are my favorites:

She scans his face, trying to find a lie, but all she sees is Clint. -- And well, if there's someone who'd know the difference... :D

He could sure use a shower (as can she) but seeing him like this, dirt, scars and all, she can’t help but bury her face in the crook of his neck and breathing him in. -- OMG SWOON

Thank you! *hugs*

They talk about guilt, like they know a single thing about him, and Clint hears them. Oh, how does he hear them. He knows if the Council had their way, they would put him in their scope as easily as they'd ordered him to put Natasha in his once upon a time.

Clint never had much time for self-recrimination. It's a nasty business. Blood happens.

Psych clears him, though he hasn't been precisely 'cooperating,' and if Coulson could see the circles under his eyes he's been hiding behind sunglasses, his handler would bench him in a hot minute, but it's not from denied guilt eating away at his undersides any more than the Black Widow had looked up at him through that perfect sightline with any guilt for the blood on her hands of killing a man who needed killing.

---

"How many?" he'd asked Natasha.

"Don't do that to yourself."

She knew he didn't need the sudden shock of grief to carry into battle, knew she didn't need to focus on the men down, the friends lost, or Coulson bleeding out in that Hulk-proof holding cell because he went and got reckless without Clint to do it for him. It wasn't grief he needed; it was that tight, hard coil of anger he wore after he'd been tortured or used, that battle-ready fury focused into killing what needed killing, not mourning who needed mourning.

---

"If you ever need to talk," Steve offers once, hand gripping the railing tightly at the Avengers Tower.

Clint nods, soldier to soldier. He's been in the trenches; he's fought in wars. Unlike Natasha, being a spy never really was his thing. He respects the Captain enough to silently acknowledge the offer without telling him that blood was on Loki's gloating fingertips and gushing from the Jotunn's ledger and there were people like Clint and Natasha and Fury to hold it against him.

He doesn't tell the Captain that this isn't the war they fought seventy years ago and that SHIELD doesn't deal in black and white. He doesn't explain that this is nothing compared to staring at your own brother's life bleeding out from a killshot arrow when you're in your right mind and he needed killing.

It's not exactly the kind of thing he figures Steve wants to hear.

---

"Now you sound like yourself," Natasha had said, that slight smile in her voice.

He did sleep better knowing that Loki's desire to break his mind, his will, and torture him with that same pain over again had been slapped back in a retort shaped like an arrow. Clint felt cold, hard satisfaction knowing that his hands held none of the blood or regrets Loki had tried to inflict and that Loki knew it. He knew he'd failed. He knew that if he tried it again, Clint's arrow would not miss.

---

"So you probably know more about what Barnes is going through than anyone else," someone points out while Clint is distracted by Natasha humming a Russian lullaby over breakfast-making. He won't eat a thing she cooks, but she is beautiful.

Then he realizes what was said and frowns. "Because of Tasha?" he wants to ask, but he catches himself. No one else really knows what his partner went through. He settles for rubbing the back of his neck and mumbling, "I guess," uncertainly.

"You know," Bruce prods. "Loki."

Clint's eyebrows come up at that. He's not slow on the uptake and he couldn't agree less. He shrugs. "Not the same." He cuts off the conversation by sliding up behind Natasha and stealing her spatula.

Loki played with his mind like a smug child, and Clint hasn't forgiven it, but HYDRA destroyed Bucky's mind and it's not the same thing at all.

Clint looks at Natasha, pausing as she snatches the spatua back, laughing. Clint knows now how it feels to be unraveled, but he never became the monster someone else fashioned him into. He just housed it for a while.

No one hears Hawkeye and trembles in their boots because he's still the monster someone else designed him to be.

---

"Doesn't it bother you," the psychologist had asked, skeptical at his denial of any symptoms worse than the usual in his line of work, "all those people you killed?"

Clint looked up at her and restrains a sigh of exasperation behind his usual working expression. All those people he killed. He had killed petty crooks on behalf of other crooks, he had killed terrorists for the army and worse for SHIELD. He'd killed his own brother with an arrow through the heart, and that is perhaps the only kill he truly regrets.

Loki killed Coulson. Loki used Clint's hands and bow to kill good men and women who had worked for SHIELD, who had been Clint's coworkers and some his friends. Clint didn't kill them. He didn't dream of their dead faces screaming at him at night.

He didn't tell psych that though. The woman hadn't earned the privilege.

He simply answered, "No."

Ooooh. I love this interpretation. The comparison to Bucky/The Winter Soldier rings very true to me (and on that note, poor Bucky! I have so many feels).

Thank you! I have many feels on all three of them.

Ahahaha, did you have to bring in Barney? ;__; Okay, seriously, I really like how... soberly you have him looking at things here, and it works.

It wasn't grief he needed; it was that tight, hard coil of anger he wore after he'd been tortured or used, that battle-ready fury focused into killing what needed killing, not mourning who needed mourning. -- Oh man, the thought that that's enough of a regular occurrence that she's mapped out a pattern in his reactions to it.

I'm harsh that way, alas. I do think they'd have a pattern for that kind of thing, even if it never fell in this category for him before. And it just felt like it needed to be a sober piece, you know? Even when you keep moving, this stuff does affect you, just in a different way after a while.

OMG, I almost missed this!! This was wonderful. Matter-of-fact Clint, never easy but always honest.

And in the midst of all the reflection, and Barney and Bucky, this: Clint is distracted by Natasha humming a Russian lullaby over breakfast-making. He won't eat a thing she cooks, but she is beautiful.

LOVE.

I'm so glad you didn't miss it. I was hoping for that Clint to come through, and I'm sooo glad you liked it.

That was my favorite snippet. :grins: