![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
caitriTitle: You Know These Words (Like an Old Country Song)
Author: caitri
Rating: PG
Pairings: Clint/Natasha, Steve/Tony
Word Count: 4,833
Summary: Movieverse. The one where Clint Barton used to be a Hunter. A crossover of sorts with Supernatural.
Disclaimer: I know this may come as a shock, but I am not, amazing as it may seem, Joss Whedon, Stan Lee, Eric Kripke, or Marvel Pictures. Just so you know.
There are some things from his old life he can’t leave behind.
No one says anything about the lighter he keeps in his pocket, though everyone knows he doesn’t smoke. The silver cross on the chain around his neck? It’s more of a family thing than a sign of actual faith. (The others have no idea how true that really is.) Similarly, the warding tattoo on his collarbone, hidden by his uniform: wearing personal symbols on your skin is common enough among those in his line of work.
Stark was the one who asked about the rock salt.
Clint hasn’t needed any in a long time—he hasn’t run that kind of job in a while, and not since he joined the Avengers, but growing up the way he did, he gets twitchy when there isn’t enough to at least make a circle if he needs one. On a good day he goes on a little shopping trip, picks up the salt and some news from the locals, and when he gets back to the Tower, everyone just happens to be hanging around.
“It’s June,” Tony says, eyes still on the bag before flicking to Clint’s face. “Is there a Snowpacalypse I didn’t hear about?”
“Can it, Stark,” Clint answers, and goes to his room.
When they all moved in, they got to request certain things if they wanted them, and what Clint wanted was a proper armory for his bows. When opened up, it’s mostly for display, like the things there are his trophies—and some of them are. He’s long since traded in his first circus bow for one that’s deadlier and more utilitarian, but it’s in here—garishly painted, still smelling (he thinks) of grease, sand, and popcorn. There’s a replica Scythian bow he built himself out of bone and sinew, just to see if he could (he could), and a small golden bow that was a prize for a contest when he was seventeen (that one got him on someone’s radar at SHIELD, he knows, but isn’t sure who).
There are shelves and drawers for other things, too, and the bag of rock salt goes into one of them, along with a beaten up mortar and pestle that hasn’t been used in a while and a few old books. (One of the reasons SHIELD had recruited him was his language proficiency—unusually high for a kid with a GED and a give ‘em hell attitude.) Some small bags of herbs, ones he hasn’t used in a decade at least, that he should replace—except he hasn’t needed them, and doesn’t want Stark or anyone else asking more questions than necessary.
He doesn’t like it when people ask questions about his past. He doesn’t like not telling them the truth, but at the same time, the truth is something he feels he can’t quite share.
‘Tasha is the one who understands best, though they’ve never talked about it outright. They both grew up missing more than they had. She likes sharpening her knives by hand, the same way he insists on reworking the fletching of his arrows. Their rooms are side by side, so after a mission they can usually be found together, working in companionable silence. The quiet says more than words can, anyway.
And then there’s the mission at one of Tony’s factories.
~
It’s an old one near the docks; it had been one of Howard Stark’s first, back in the day. Tony was putting it back into use, doing his part to keep the City green both environmentally and financially. The renovation gets behind schedule, the workers are unhappy, people say they see weird things like funny lights and feel cold spots.
“Okay, I’ve dealt with this sort of thing in China before,” Tony grumps, “but this is New York!” He heaves a put-upon sigh. “I miss the West Coast.”
“I doubt the coast has anything to do with it,” Steve says, nettled, because this is his city in a way it isn’t for the rest of them. “We should check it out.”
“Just like the Real Ghostfacers,” Clint snarks. “Should we bring our special infrared cameras too?”
“I like that show,” Bruce says mildly. “I’m in.” He gives them one of his rare small smiles. “I’ll rig some camera equipment up too, if you want?”
Tony beams at him. “Do want,” he agrees, and the pair of them happily devolve into nerdspeak.
“I hate it when they talk in Internet memes,” ‘Tasha says.
Clint shrugs. “Just be glad Thor’s still on Asgard. Otherwise this would get real messy.”
They go at night, because Bruce and Tony weren’t kidding about the new camera equipment and all of its requisite bells, whistles, and ghost detectors. JARVIS is even remoted into the comm system so they don’t miss any unusual readings and what not. Clint thinks of the homemade EMF Reader and hex bags he and Barney used back home, when things were—simpler.
“This is intrusive as hell,” he remarks. “Just sayin’.”
I do apologize, sir, the AI says, and damned if it doesn’t actually sound sincere.
“C’mon, Barton,” Tony says with far too much cheerfulness, “you’re having fun and you know it.”
Okay, maybe Clint is, just a little. Doesn’t mean he has to like it, though.
“Focus, people,” Steve commands, and they do.
The place is a mess, walls knocked out and only partially rebuilt; piles of building materials dot the area here and there in some system that undoubtedly made sense only to the contractors.
“I want to take pictures of this,” Bruce says after a while. “Timestamped, just to show it was this way when we got here.”
“Relax, big guy, you know I’d never—”
“What was that?” ‘Tasha interrupts Tony, the beam of her flashlight cutting through the dark at—something.
Environmental radius sensors detect temperature anomalies ten meters ahead, JARVIS reports.
“Cause, JARVIS?” Tony prompts, and that’s when a woman appears and screams. The pitch of it is high enough to be painful, and ‘Tasha gets an instinctive round off—that of course does nothing—before she disappears again. “The hell—?!”
“—was that?!” Steve completes the thought, sounding shaken.
“Rusalka,” ‘Tasha breathes, almost too quiet to be heard. It’s a kind of Russian ghost; Clint’s spent enough time over there to know that much. Louder she says, “I don’t like this. We should go.” Clint can hear the real fear in her voice; he suspects he’s the only one who does or even can. It makes sense, he thinks; of all of them, they are the only two who have reason to truly fear the dead.
“I agree,” he says immediately, and he can read the gratefulness in the tilt of her neck, though her face shows nothing. “We need more information here, Stark.”
“Like what?” Tony wants to know, right before a mass of building brick slams into him from behind. Luckily he’s in his armor; he staggers under the force of the impact, which cracks the concrete and spews dust and rubble on the rest of them. “Augh!”
“Tony!” Steve flanks him, shield raised upward to ward off any more attacks.
“’M alright,” Tony says, but he flicks his face-plate up to cough. He’s bent uneasily, but he shakes off Steve’s solicitous arm. “I’m alright.” He doesn’t sound it, though.
“I’m recommending a strategic retreat, Captain.” Clint has an arrow nocked to string, ready just in case. “Now would be good.”
“I don’t understand what’s happening,” Bruce says, and the woman appears right behind him. Clint looses his arrow, and she disperses into white mist just as the scientist turns around. “What—?!”
Clint’s nocking up another arrow. “Salt,” he says shortly. “I’m not kidding, we’re not ready for this. Let’s go.”
They do.
~
Back at the Tower, they nurse hot cups of coffee or tea (or beer, in Clint’s case) in the debriefing room. JARVIS routes the recorded footage to one of the vid screens, pausing at the captured image of the woman. Clint’s not much of an expert, but her dress is old—early twentieth century at least.
“We’re going to want to look at the historical files,” he says. “Newspapers, obituaries. Microfilm, probably, unless they’ve been digitized somewhere.”
“Microfilm,” Tony mouths silently with what Clint is pretty sure is genuine horror. He holds onto a cup of coffee (he’d poured himself a tumblr of Scotch that Steve had deftly whisked out of his grasp, and he hadn’t even complained) that he subsequently downs in one swallow.
“How do you know about all this?” Steve asks Clint. Bruce nods; he’s examining one of the modified arrows, the head casing of which contains some of his trusty rock salt. ‘Tasha says nothing, just nurses her tea in silence.
Clint considers all the possible answers he can give. This isn’t something he’s ever brought up with SHIELD, not even with Coulson, who had been his handler for a decade. In his experience, most people don’t like dealing with the truth of the world. On the other hand, the Avengers possibly deal with more truths than anyone else on the planet. “What do you know about me?” he asks at last. “About how I was—raised?”
Steve’s gaze meets his own, light blue and honest. “Your file says you grew up in Iowa. Your parents died in a car crash when you were six, and you and your brother were placed in an orphanage. A few years after that you both ran away and joined the circus.” His lips quirk upwards with something like amusement, before thinning into seriousness once more. “You had an archery act, and when you were eighteen you went into the service.”
Clint pauses, thinking that over. He’s read his own file before; Phil had been the one to—edit—it into something like respectability. “You’re—not wrong. But there’s a bit more to it than that.”
“Tell us,” Steve says, but it’s an order really; he may not be in full uniform but he’s all Cap right now.
“Steve—” ‘Tasha protests, but Clint glances at her and she subsides.
“It’s okay,” he tells her, and he means it. The two of them have always looked after each other’s secrets, even without knowing what’s behind them, but this is probably not one that’s all that important. To the others, he says, “I’m a Hunter.”
There’s silence around the table.
“So do you decorate with a lot of antlers?” Tony pulls a face as he talks in his too-fast way. “Because I gotta say, Barton, I’m pretty sure that there are psychology grad students who could get papers out of that.”
“Tony,” Steve says in reproof, and Stark subsides.
“Not a hunter, a Hunter,” Clint says, and okay, yeah, he’s not sure even he hears the difference. “We don’t hunt animals. We hunt—other things.”
“What other things?” Bruce has put his tea cup down, his arms folded on the table like he’s not sure he’s buying this. He’s in full-on Science Mode, ready to apply physics and, well, probably more physics after that.
“Just—other things. Ghosts, demons, whatever.” They all look at Clint dubiously, even ‘Tasha, and that hurts in a way he hadn’t expected. “Oh come on, people, we fought friggin’ aliens together like six months ago!”
Mister Barton has a point, JARVIS contributes. Further, there are no alternative explanations for the events witnessed and recorded previously. There’s a brief pause, followed by an almost hesitant, When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
“And it’s stupidity rather than courage to refuse to recognize danger, yada yada, and Martin Freeman won a BAFTA. Okay, point made.” Stark doesn’t sound happy about it though. “At least tell me the truth, Barton. Have you ever killed a vampire?”
“Yes.” Clint looks them all in the eyes, and they are all quiet again, uncomfortably so. To fill the silence, he says, “And let me just say, it’s not like on Buffy or anything, okay, they don’t just go poof! There’s bodies and—stuff,” he concludes rather more lamely than he would have liked.
“You said ‘we’ earlier. Who else—hunts?” Steve says the word like it leaves a funny taste in his mouth.
“We’re a fairly loose community. Some people take the work on for hire, like bounty hunters, but most don’t. Some people are in it for revenge because someone they cared about was killed and—well.” Clint shrugs. “A lot are born into it, like I was. My parents were Hunters—and our line going way back as far as anyone knows. They were killed by a demon, though, and my brother and I wanted revenge. We didn’t have any other family living or that wanted to take us on, so we had to wait. And then that circus was in town and one of the guys let something slip, and we worked out a deal.” He shrugs again, and takes a sip from his beer.
“Vengeance.” ‘Tasha makes it a question and confirmation all at once.
“Got it in one.” Clint taps his beer to her tea cup and they both take another drink together. “We had to train though—both of us, for years. We helped with the Hunts the others went on, and when we were old enough got to take a few on for ourselves. When I was seventeen, we finally tracked down the demon. Took care of him, salted and burned the earth. Barney went his way, and I went mine.”
“Helluva story.” Steve lets out a long breath, facing him with that expression he has that weighs and measures the worth of a man. Clint has seen than look before, though it’s the first time it’s ever been placed on him. It’s—not a good feeling. (If you had asked him before, about what he felt about working with Captain America, he would have cocked his head and said it wasn’t any different than working with any other agent. After that—not so much.)
“It’s the truth,” is all Clint can say.
“I know.” Steve gives him a grin, and it’s not the first time Steve’s given him a surprise—and he doubts it’ll be the last. Cap looks around at all of them together before focusing on Clint once more. “Alright, Hawkeye, you take the lead on this one. What do we need to do here?”
Something in Clint’s gut, a tension he had never really known was there until today, eases. “You trust me on this, Cap?”
“Goes without saying,” Steve answers, just as Tony gives a put-upon sigh and mutters, “We’re doomed.” Steve punches Tony in the shoulder and Tony punches him back, and Bruce rolls his eyes and ‘Tasha shakes her head like she can’t believe these people are her life now, and Clint wants to laugh because sometimes, neither can he.
~
Clint never really liked the research part. He’s glad he doesn’t have to do all of it himself these days.
Her name was Elizabeth Warren, JARVIS reports. The image of the ghost taken earlier that night is contrasted with the sepia-colored page of a newspaper article, dated 1904. There was a factory fire that killed thirty-two women workers who were boarders at the time. A series of other clippings fill a wall of vid screens, including one dated 1967 that refers to the closing of one of Howard Stark’s auto manufacturing plants. All of them mention sightings of a ghost, odd happenings, unfortunate accidents. She has lingered quite a long time, it seems.
“Okay, so we know who she is. What are we going to do about it?” Tony asks. He’s building something as they speak, small computer bits and pieces littered across the table in front of him. DUM-E makes an inquisitive little whistle and hands him a tiny screwdriver that Tony takes with a hum of acknowledgement. This interchange should be kind of disturbing, how seamlessly the man works with machines, but at this point it’s just normal.
“JARVIS, do you know where she’s buried?” Clint sure hopes this will be something the AI can find as easily as it was able to find the other stuff. If he gets out of spending some quality time in the more depressing parts of the local libraries and county records centers, he’s going to call his life a win.
“Why do we need to know this?” Bruce asks him just as JARVIS pulls up a map of Mount Hebron Cemetery. He sounds uneasy. “Steve, why do we need to know this?”
Steve rests a comforting hand on Bruce’s shoulder, but Clint is the one who answers him.
“We’re going to have to burn her bones—unless we can find something else that she was extremely attached to, that she might have latched onto. But after all this time—bones are easier.” Clint can tell the others aren’t a fan of this solution, but then again, neither is he.
“What’s this we?” ‘Tasha asks lightly, and he gives her one of old devil-may-care grins. He may not have done this in a while, and he isn’t happy about doing it now, but he at least knows she’s in, no matter what she says.
“You don’t have to come if you don’t want to,” he tells the rest of the group, meaning it. “It’s a two person job, really.”
“Is it legal?” Steve’s brow is furrowed in that way he has when he suspects that they are up to no good. (He wears that look more than he should have to, honestly.)
“So long as we don’t get caught, sure.” And that was too cheerful by half, he can tell, but—he’s starting to remember what it was like, going on a Hunt. It’s different than the missions he does for SHIELD now—well, the ones he used to, anyway. Come to think of it, the best thing about being a member of the Avengers is how much it reminds him of Hunting—the surety of fighting the good fight, of saving people.
Steve is less than pleased with this response. “JARVIS, please get Hill on the line. We need some emergency permissions here.”
“Or—yeah, sure, we can make it legal, why not.” Sometimes Clint forgets they can do that. ‘Tasha rolls her eyes at him.
An hour later they have the permits in hand (well, on all of their SHIELD-issue StarkPhones ) and are on their way to the cemetery. Clint and ‘Tasha share the Quinjet with Bruce, who rides in the back, while Cap flies with Iron Man.
“You ever wonder if Steve gets, like, wind-burn from doing that?” Clint asks idly.
“You ever wonder why Stark built actual hand-holds into his armor?” ‘Tasha responds.
Clint pauses for a second. “What if I built hand-holds onto my—”
“No.” ‘Tasha doesn’t let him finish (of course not), but she smiles when she says it.
“Worth a shot.”
“And I thought you were the best marksman there is.” She’s definitely laughing at him now, but not in a bad way.
“Yep,” he agrees. Sometime they’re going to have to talk about this thing they have, but apparently not today.
“God, it’s like I’m the only one who sat through that sexual harassment seminar we had to take, I swear,” Bruce grumbles somewhere behind them.
“If there’s a no-no touch, you just let us say, big guy,” Clint calls back to him while ‘Tasha shakes her head.
~
Mount Hebron Cemetery is quiet and respectable looking. Also, largely Yiddish.
“Sooo,” Tony says when they get to Warren’s plot, voice filtered through his armor, “I don’t want to get all Young Frankenstein here, but what do we do with Jewish ghosts?”
“You’re thinking of Dracula, Dead and Loving It, Tony,” Bruce says. He looks around at the gravestones diffidently. “I should maybe leave? Taking care of one dead person is one thing, but letting the other guy out here—”
“Relax, snickerdoodle.” Tony flips his face-plate up, giving the scientist a reassuring beam. “You’ve got this. You know you do.”
“Mmm.” Bruce gives Tony a short nod in return, but doesn’t seem quite convinced.
“Look at it this way,” Clint offers with more bravado than he feels, “however angry you get, our ghost is probably angrier.”
“That’s not that reassuring,” Bruce starts, just as Steve asks, “Is it just me or is it really cold all of a sudden?”
There’s a thick mist building around them, and Clint remembers why he didn’t always like Hunting, because arrows? Not always that helpful with insubstantial beings.
“She’s here,” he tells the others. “We’ve gotta hurry!”
“On it!” Tony says, and sticks a small device in the dirt. With a metallic hum it starts to burrow into the ground, soil displaced with surprising neatness.
“That was what you were working on earlier?!” Clint isn’t sure if he’s admiring or bewildered.
“A shovel too much for you, Stark?” ‘Tasha asks, leaping out of the way of a spray of dirt with typical gymnastic aplomb.
“Behind you!” Steve shouts just as their ghost reappears near Bruce, mouth opened to scream. Bruce whirls, growing taller and skin turning the color of grass, fist punching through the specter’s pale figure. She disappears with an ugly sound like shattering glass.
“Don’t like ghosts,” the Hulk says with contempt.
“Not many do,” Clint says, pouring rock salt in a circle around them just to be on the safe side. He casts it wide, hoping Tony’s digger won’t break it.
“Almost there,” Tony says when he’s almost finished.
“What do we do next?” Steve peers into the hole, ready for action.
Clint empties out the last of the salt. “We’re going to have to open up the coffin. ‘Tasha, do you have the gas?”
Steve and the Hulk jump into the newly opened grave. With Steve’s help, the worn box inside is opened rather than crushed, and the whoosh of century old air and the scent of rot assaults them all.
“Augh. I think I’m going to be sick,” Tony says roughly, face-plate slamming back into place.
“Then you probably don’t want your face-plate up,” Clint points out. “Just saying.”
Tony grunts in response but doesn’t say anything else as Tasha empties the jug of gas onto the ragged bits of cloth and the stained bones that make up the remnants of Elizabeth Warren, while Steve and Hulk climb out. “Now what?” he asks just as Clint flicks open his lighter and drops it in. “Oh.”
The ghost appears one last time just outside the circle, howling with rage as she is dispersed in flame. With a final ear-splitting cry, she forces a wind that is strong enough to push ‘Tasha over the edge of the hole and into the fire. The sound she makes as she falls is like nothing else he’s ever heard from the Black Widow: wild, horrified, afraid.
“’Tasha!” He doesn’t know that he’s jumped in after her himself until he has her in his arms, heat licking at his skin. He pulls her into a protective embrace and the pair of them are hauled up seconds later by the giant (and surprisingly gentle) hands of the Hulk. Clint is patting out the sparks and tiny blazes that dart across her body—luckily most of their SHIELD-issue gear is flame-retardant—and he’s only vaguely aware of one of the others (probably Steve) doing the same to him. “You okay?”
She’s still, her expression frozen and her eyes wide. Whatever she sees, it’s hardly in the here and now. Clint taps her cheeks carefully, not wanting to slap her outright but knowing he will have to if she doesn’t snap out of it soon. Their faces are close enough to touch.
If he wanted to kiss her, he wouldn’t even have to move.
“’Tasha, c’mon, look at me, I’m right here, it’s okay.” This isn’t the scariest thing that’s ever happened to them. He knows this. But again—that look on her face, the open terror of it, cuts him to the bone. “C’mon! ’Tasha!”
‘Tasha’s eyes widen as she comes to herself, eyes fixed on Clint in a way that makes his heart clench before flicking across them all. Clint. Her lips form his name, but she doesn’t say it out loud.
“Welcome back to the party,” Tony says, voice colored with relief. Clint freezes, because he had forgotten the others were there.
“I still don’t understand your definition of a party,” ‘Tasha answers Tony, unfazed, and Clint sits back so they can stand together. She’s all business once again, and he is too, because he has to be. “You should work on that.”
“Steve disagrees with that,” Tony says.
“I bet,” Clint says, forcing a smirk into place.
“Hey now,” Steve says fondly, clapping both of them on the back. “Let’s clean this up and get back home, shall we?”
~
She finds him in the hour just before dawn. The others have gone to bed, or at least their separate ways: few things calm the Hulk like the Food Network of all things, so he’s comfortably ensconced in the Rec Room, while Steve and Tony have gone to spar to relax. (At least, they say they’re sparring, and everyone else pretends they believe them.) Clint checks the fletches of his arrows, making new ones if he has too, and filling some extra head casings with salt. It seems like he actually needs these more than he used to think he did.
“Hi,” ‘Tasha says, voice low but carrying to where he sits on the floor, legs stretched out before him. “Mind some company?”
“Nah,” he says. “Could do with some.” He wants to look at her, to check her over again to make sure she’s okay, that the pink in her cheeks is from health and not burn blisters, to take in the deep red of her hair and the green of her eyes, dark enough to be almost black in low light. He doesn’t let himself. Instead, he can feel her sit down next to him, close enough that he can feel her warmth. “Too weird?”
He tells himself he’s asking about the ghost.
“Not the weirdest.” Her inflection gives no indication of what she means, so he nods, and keeps his eyes on his work. Then she coughs. “Clint?” He looks up, and—he doesn’t have the words to describe how she looks at him right now. Beautiful, of course. Brave, also true. Vulnerable is a word that shouldn’t come to mind, but right now, it’s true. “You wanted to talk about, uh—”
“Yeah,” he says with a voice that isn’t quite his, and then his hands are in her hair and her lips are warm, and God, he’s wanted this, always this, for so long it’s not even a memory of wanting.
“This doesn’t change anything,” she tells him, after. She’s stretched out on him, warm and lithe as a cat. “You know that right?”
“What’s that mean?” He pulls back to look at her, and she meets his gaze dead on.
“I’m not quitting the Avengers, or SHIELD.” Her jaw is set in a way that can only be described as stubborn. “I’m still going to have my missions, and you’ll have yours.”
“Yeah,” he says, not following. “Obviously.” He massages one of her shoulders in sensual affection, but also to prevent her from trying to run away. (He knows she would try, and succeed, if he let her.) “How else did you think this would go?”
She relaxes into his touch, into his body that thrums with tiredness and contentment. “I thought you would try to get me to quit,” she mutters into his collarbone, breath warm on his tattoo. “That what male agents do when they—”
“Not me,” he says firmly, and kisses her knuckles. “However you want to roll, that’s good enough. Takes two to tango, sweetheart.”
“Is that what they call it?” She laughs, and he rolls them over.
“They do in Iowa,” he answers, and kisses her again.
~
There are some things from his old life he can’t leave behind. Scars (the one on his neck from a close call with a vamp, the one across his shoulderblades from an angry witch, the ones on the back of his legs from that time with the sycorax). Stories (Steve doesn’t believe the one about the wendigo, but then, who would?). Salt.
There are things from his new life, though, he will never leave behind. Doing a job right (even if the government does it’s damnedest to interfere sometimes). His friends (even if Tony never shuts up and Steve’s attempts at irony and Bruce’s unnatural affection for Rachel Ray). And most of all, ‘Tasha. He’s never, ever leaving her. No matter what.
THE END.
Author: caitri
Rating: PG
Pairings: Clint/Natasha, Steve/Tony
Word Count: 4,833
Summary: Movieverse. The one where Clint Barton used to be a Hunter. A crossover of sorts with Supernatural.
Disclaimer: I know this may come as a shock, but I am not, amazing as it may seem, Joss Whedon, Stan Lee, Eric Kripke, or Marvel Pictures. Just so you know.
There are some things from his old life he can’t leave behind.
No one says anything about the lighter he keeps in his pocket, though everyone knows he doesn’t smoke. The silver cross on the chain around his neck? It’s more of a family thing than a sign of actual faith. (The others have no idea how true that really is.) Similarly, the warding tattoo on his collarbone, hidden by his uniform: wearing personal symbols on your skin is common enough among those in his line of work.
Stark was the one who asked about the rock salt.
Clint hasn’t needed any in a long time—he hasn’t run that kind of job in a while, and not since he joined the Avengers, but growing up the way he did, he gets twitchy when there isn’t enough to at least make a circle if he needs one. On a good day he goes on a little shopping trip, picks up the salt and some news from the locals, and when he gets back to the Tower, everyone just happens to be hanging around.
“It’s June,” Tony says, eyes still on the bag before flicking to Clint’s face. “Is there a Snowpacalypse I didn’t hear about?”
“Can it, Stark,” Clint answers, and goes to his room.
When they all moved in, they got to request certain things if they wanted them, and what Clint wanted was a proper armory for his bows. When opened up, it’s mostly for display, like the things there are his trophies—and some of them are. He’s long since traded in his first circus bow for one that’s deadlier and more utilitarian, but it’s in here—garishly painted, still smelling (he thinks) of grease, sand, and popcorn. There’s a replica Scythian bow he built himself out of bone and sinew, just to see if he could (he could), and a small golden bow that was a prize for a contest when he was seventeen (that one got him on someone’s radar at SHIELD, he knows, but isn’t sure who).
There are shelves and drawers for other things, too, and the bag of rock salt goes into one of them, along with a beaten up mortar and pestle that hasn’t been used in a while and a few old books. (One of the reasons SHIELD had recruited him was his language proficiency—unusually high for a kid with a GED and a give ‘em hell attitude.) Some small bags of herbs, ones he hasn’t used in a decade at least, that he should replace—except he hasn’t needed them, and doesn’t want Stark or anyone else asking more questions than necessary.
He doesn’t like it when people ask questions about his past. He doesn’t like not telling them the truth, but at the same time, the truth is something he feels he can’t quite share.
‘Tasha is the one who understands best, though they’ve never talked about it outright. They both grew up missing more than they had. She likes sharpening her knives by hand, the same way he insists on reworking the fletching of his arrows. Their rooms are side by side, so after a mission they can usually be found together, working in companionable silence. The quiet says more than words can, anyway.
And then there’s the mission at one of Tony’s factories.
~
It’s an old one near the docks; it had been one of Howard Stark’s first, back in the day. Tony was putting it back into use, doing his part to keep the City green both environmentally and financially. The renovation gets behind schedule, the workers are unhappy, people say they see weird things like funny lights and feel cold spots.
“Okay, I’ve dealt with this sort of thing in China before,” Tony grumps, “but this is New York!” He heaves a put-upon sigh. “I miss the West Coast.”
“I doubt the coast has anything to do with it,” Steve says, nettled, because this is his city in a way it isn’t for the rest of them. “We should check it out.”
“Just like the Real Ghostfacers,” Clint snarks. “Should we bring our special infrared cameras too?”
“I like that show,” Bruce says mildly. “I’m in.” He gives them one of his rare small smiles. “I’ll rig some camera equipment up too, if you want?”
Tony beams at him. “Do want,” he agrees, and the pair of them happily devolve into nerdspeak.
“I hate it when they talk in Internet memes,” ‘Tasha says.
Clint shrugs. “Just be glad Thor’s still on Asgard. Otherwise this would get real messy.”
They go at night, because Bruce and Tony weren’t kidding about the new camera equipment and all of its requisite bells, whistles, and ghost detectors. JARVIS is even remoted into the comm system so they don’t miss any unusual readings and what not. Clint thinks of the homemade EMF Reader and hex bags he and Barney used back home, when things were—simpler.
“This is intrusive as hell,” he remarks. “Just sayin’.”
I do apologize, sir, the AI says, and damned if it doesn’t actually sound sincere.
“C’mon, Barton,” Tony says with far too much cheerfulness, “you’re having fun and you know it.”
Okay, maybe Clint is, just a little. Doesn’t mean he has to like it, though.
“Focus, people,” Steve commands, and they do.
The place is a mess, walls knocked out and only partially rebuilt; piles of building materials dot the area here and there in some system that undoubtedly made sense only to the contractors.
“I want to take pictures of this,” Bruce says after a while. “Timestamped, just to show it was this way when we got here.”
“Relax, big guy, you know I’d never—”
“What was that?” ‘Tasha interrupts Tony, the beam of her flashlight cutting through the dark at—something.
Environmental radius sensors detect temperature anomalies ten meters ahead, JARVIS reports.
“Cause, JARVIS?” Tony prompts, and that’s when a woman appears and screams. The pitch of it is high enough to be painful, and ‘Tasha gets an instinctive round off—that of course does nothing—before she disappears again. “The hell—?!”
“—was that?!” Steve completes the thought, sounding shaken.
“Rusalka,” ‘Tasha breathes, almost too quiet to be heard. It’s a kind of Russian ghost; Clint’s spent enough time over there to know that much. Louder she says, “I don’t like this. We should go.” Clint can hear the real fear in her voice; he suspects he’s the only one who does or even can. It makes sense, he thinks; of all of them, they are the only two who have reason to truly fear the dead.
“I agree,” he says immediately, and he can read the gratefulness in the tilt of her neck, though her face shows nothing. “We need more information here, Stark.”
“Like what?” Tony wants to know, right before a mass of building brick slams into him from behind. Luckily he’s in his armor; he staggers under the force of the impact, which cracks the concrete and spews dust and rubble on the rest of them. “Augh!”
“Tony!” Steve flanks him, shield raised upward to ward off any more attacks.
“’M alright,” Tony says, but he flicks his face-plate up to cough. He’s bent uneasily, but he shakes off Steve’s solicitous arm. “I’m alright.” He doesn’t sound it, though.
“I’m recommending a strategic retreat, Captain.” Clint has an arrow nocked to string, ready just in case. “Now would be good.”
“I don’t understand what’s happening,” Bruce says, and the woman appears right behind him. Clint looses his arrow, and she disperses into white mist just as the scientist turns around. “What—?!”
Clint’s nocking up another arrow. “Salt,” he says shortly. “I’m not kidding, we’re not ready for this. Let’s go.”
They do.
~
Back at the Tower, they nurse hot cups of coffee or tea (or beer, in Clint’s case) in the debriefing room. JARVIS routes the recorded footage to one of the vid screens, pausing at the captured image of the woman. Clint’s not much of an expert, but her dress is old—early twentieth century at least.
“We’re going to want to look at the historical files,” he says. “Newspapers, obituaries. Microfilm, probably, unless they’ve been digitized somewhere.”
“Microfilm,” Tony mouths silently with what Clint is pretty sure is genuine horror. He holds onto a cup of coffee (he’d poured himself a tumblr of Scotch that Steve had deftly whisked out of his grasp, and he hadn’t even complained) that he subsequently downs in one swallow.
“How do you know about all this?” Steve asks Clint. Bruce nods; he’s examining one of the modified arrows, the head casing of which contains some of his trusty rock salt. ‘Tasha says nothing, just nurses her tea in silence.
Clint considers all the possible answers he can give. This isn’t something he’s ever brought up with SHIELD, not even with Coulson, who had been his handler for a decade. In his experience, most people don’t like dealing with the truth of the world. On the other hand, the Avengers possibly deal with more truths than anyone else on the planet. “What do you know about me?” he asks at last. “About how I was—raised?”
Steve’s gaze meets his own, light blue and honest. “Your file says you grew up in Iowa. Your parents died in a car crash when you were six, and you and your brother were placed in an orphanage. A few years after that you both ran away and joined the circus.” His lips quirk upwards with something like amusement, before thinning into seriousness once more. “You had an archery act, and when you were eighteen you went into the service.”
Clint pauses, thinking that over. He’s read his own file before; Phil had been the one to—edit—it into something like respectability. “You’re—not wrong. But there’s a bit more to it than that.”
“Tell us,” Steve says, but it’s an order really; he may not be in full uniform but he’s all Cap right now.
“Steve—” ‘Tasha protests, but Clint glances at her and she subsides.
“It’s okay,” he tells her, and he means it. The two of them have always looked after each other’s secrets, even without knowing what’s behind them, but this is probably not one that’s all that important. To the others, he says, “I’m a Hunter.”
There’s silence around the table.
“So do you decorate with a lot of antlers?” Tony pulls a face as he talks in his too-fast way. “Because I gotta say, Barton, I’m pretty sure that there are psychology grad students who could get papers out of that.”
“Tony,” Steve says in reproof, and Stark subsides.
“Not a hunter, a Hunter,” Clint says, and okay, yeah, he’s not sure even he hears the difference. “We don’t hunt animals. We hunt—other things.”
“What other things?” Bruce has put his tea cup down, his arms folded on the table like he’s not sure he’s buying this. He’s in full-on Science Mode, ready to apply physics and, well, probably more physics after that.
“Just—other things. Ghosts, demons, whatever.” They all look at Clint dubiously, even ‘Tasha, and that hurts in a way he hadn’t expected. “Oh come on, people, we fought friggin’ aliens together like six months ago!”
Mister Barton has a point, JARVIS contributes. Further, there are no alternative explanations for the events witnessed and recorded previously. There’s a brief pause, followed by an almost hesitant, When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
“And it’s stupidity rather than courage to refuse to recognize danger, yada yada, and Martin Freeman won a BAFTA. Okay, point made.” Stark doesn’t sound happy about it though. “At least tell me the truth, Barton. Have you ever killed a vampire?”
“Yes.” Clint looks them all in the eyes, and they are all quiet again, uncomfortably so. To fill the silence, he says, “And let me just say, it’s not like on Buffy or anything, okay, they don’t just go poof! There’s bodies and—stuff,” he concludes rather more lamely than he would have liked.
“You said ‘we’ earlier. Who else—hunts?” Steve says the word like it leaves a funny taste in his mouth.
“We’re a fairly loose community. Some people take the work on for hire, like bounty hunters, but most don’t. Some people are in it for revenge because someone they cared about was killed and—well.” Clint shrugs. “A lot are born into it, like I was. My parents were Hunters—and our line going way back as far as anyone knows. They were killed by a demon, though, and my brother and I wanted revenge. We didn’t have any other family living or that wanted to take us on, so we had to wait. And then that circus was in town and one of the guys let something slip, and we worked out a deal.” He shrugs again, and takes a sip from his beer.
“Vengeance.” ‘Tasha makes it a question and confirmation all at once.
“Got it in one.” Clint taps his beer to her tea cup and they both take another drink together. “We had to train though—both of us, for years. We helped with the Hunts the others went on, and when we were old enough got to take a few on for ourselves. When I was seventeen, we finally tracked down the demon. Took care of him, salted and burned the earth. Barney went his way, and I went mine.”
“Helluva story.” Steve lets out a long breath, facing him with that expression he has that weighs and measures the worth of a man. Clint has seen than look before, though it’s the first time it’s ever been placed on him. It’s—not a good feeling. (If you had asked him before, about what he felt about working with Captain America, he would have cocked his head and said it wasn’t any different than working with any other agent. After that—not so much.)
“It’s the truth,” is all Clint can say.
“I know.” Steve gives him a grin, and it’s not the first time Steve’s given him a surprise—and he doubts it’ll be the last. Cap looks around at all of them together before focusing on Clint once more. “Alright, Hawkeye, you take the lead on this one. What do we need to do here?”
Something in Clint’s gut, a tension he had never really known was there until today, eases. “You trust me on this, Cap?”
“Goes without saying,” Steve answers, just as Tony gives a put-upon sigh and mutters, “We’re doomed.” Steve punches Tony in the shoulder and Tony punches him back, and Bruce rolls his eyes and ‘Tasha shakes her head like she can’t believe these people are her life now, and Clint wants to laugh because sometimes, neither can he.
~
Clint never really liked the research part. He’s glad he doesn’t have to do all of it himself these days.
Her name was Elizabeth Warren, JARVIS reports. The image of the ghost taken earlier that night is contrasted with the sepia-colored page of a newspaper article, dated 1904. There was a factory fire that killed thirty-two women workers who were boarders at the time. A series of other clippings fill a wall of vid screens, including one dated 1967 that refers to the closing of one of Howard Stark’s auto manufacturing plants. All of them mention sightings of a ghost, odd happenings, unfortunate accidents. She has lingered quite a long time, it seems.
“Okay, so we know who she is. What are we going to do about it?” Tony asks. He’s building something as they speak, small computer bits and pieces littered across the table in front of him. DUM-E makes an inquisitive little whistle and hands him a tiny screwdriver that Tony takes with a hum of acknowledgement. This interchange should be kind of disturbing, how seamlessly the man works with machines, but at this point it’s just normal.
“JARVIS, do you know where she’s buried?” Clint sure hopes this will be something the AI can find as easily as it was able to find the other stuff. If he gets out of spending some quality time in the more depressing parts of the local libraries and county records centers, he’s going to call his life a win.
“Why do we need to know this?” Bruce asks him just as JARVIS pulls up a map of Mount Hebron Cemetery. He sounds uneasy. “Steve, why do we need to know this?”
Steve rests a comforting hand on Bruce’s shoulder, but Clint is the one who answers him.
“We’re going to have to burn her bones—unless we can find something else that she was extremely attached to, that she might have latched onto. But after all this time—bones are easier.” Clint can tell the others aren’t a fan of this solution, but then again, neither is he.
“What’s this we?” ‘Tasha asks lightly, and he gives her one of old devil-may-care grins. He may not have done this in a while, and he isn’t happy about doing it now, but he at least knows she’s in, no matter what she says.
“You don’t have to come if you don’t want to,” he tells the rest of the group, meaning it. “It’s a two person job, really.”
“Is it legal?” Steve’s brow is furrowed in that way he has when he suspects that they are up to no good. (He wears that look more than he should have to, honestly.)
“So long as we don’t get caught, sure.” And that was too cheerful by half, he can tell, but—he’s starting to remember what it was like, going on a Hunt. It’s different than the missions he does for SHIELD now—well, the ones he used to, anyway. Come to think of it, the best thing about being a member of the Avengers is how much it reminds him of Hunting—the surety of fighting the good fight, of saving people.
Steve is less than pleased with this response. “JARVIS, please get Hill on the line. We need some emergency permissions here.”
“Or—yeah, sure, we can make it legal, why not.” Sometimes Clint forgets they can do that. ‘Tasha rolls her eyes at him.
An hour later they have the permits in hand (well, on all of their SHIELD-issue StarkPhones ) and are on their way to the cemetery. Clint and ‘Tasha share the Quinjet with Bruce, who rides in the back, while Cap flies with Iron Man.
“You ever wonder if Steve gets, like, wind-burn from doing that?” Clint asks idly.
“You ever wonder why Stark built actual hand-holds into his armor?” ‘Tasha responds.
Clint pauses for a second. “What if I built hand-holds onto my—”
“No.” ‘Tasha doesn’t let him finish (of course not), but she smiles when she says it.
“Worth a shot.”
“And I thought you were the best marksman there is.” She’s definitely laughing at him now, but not in a bad way.
“Yep,” he agrees. Sometime they’re going to have to talk about this thing they have, but apparently not today.
“God, it’s like I’m the only one who sat through that sexual harassment seminar we had to take, I swear,” Bruce grumbles somewhere behind them.
“If there’s a no-no touch, you just let us say, big guy,” Clint calls back to him while ‘Tasha shakes her head.
~
Mount Hebron Cemetery is quiet and respectable looking. Also, largely Yiddish.
“Sooo,” Tony says when they get to Warren’s plot, voice filtered through his armor, “I don’t want to get all Young Frankenstein here, but what do we do with Jewish ghosts?”
“You’re thinking of Dracula, Dead and Loving It, Tony,” Bruce says. He looks around at the gravestones diffidently. “I should maybe leave? Taking care of one dead person is one thing, but letting the other guy out here—”
“Relax, snickerdoodle.” Tony flips his face-plate up, giving the scientist a reassuring beam. “You’ve got this. You know you do.”
“Mmm.” Bruce gives Tony a short nod in return, but doesn’t seem quite convinced.
“Look at it this way,” Clint offers with more bravado than he feels, “however angry you get, our ghost is probably angrier.”
“That’s not that reassuring,” Bruce starts, just as Steve asks, “Is it just me or is it really cold all of a sudden?”
There’s a thick mist building around them, and Clint remembers why he didn’t always like Hunting, because arrows? Not always that helpful with insubstantial beings.
“She’s here,” he tells the others. “We’ve gotta hurry!”
“On it!” Tony says, and sticks a small device in the dirt. With a metallic hum it starts to burrow into the ground, soil displaced with surprising neatness.
“That was what you were working on earlier?!” Clint isn’t sure if he’s admiring or bewildered.
“A shovel too much for you, Stark?” ‘Tasha asks, leaping out of the way of a spray of dirt with typical gymnastic aplomb.
“Behind you!” Steve shouts just as their ghost reappears near Bruce, mouth opened to scream. Bruce whirls, growing taller and skin turning the color of grass, fist punching through the specter’s pale figure. She disappears with an ugly sound like shattering glass.
“Don’t like ghosts,” the Hulk says with contempt.
“Not many do,” Clint says, pouring rock salt in a circle around them just to be on the safe side. He casts it wide, hoping Tony’s digger won’t break it.
“Almost there,” Tony says when he’s almost finished.
“What do we do next?” Steve peers into the hole, ready for action.
Clint empties out the last of the salt. “We’re going to have to open up the coffin. ‘Tasha, do you have the gas?”
Steve and the Hulk jump into the newly opened grave. With Steve’s help, the worn box inside is opened rather than crushed, and the whoosh of century old air and the scent of rot assaults them all.
“Augh. I think I’m going to be sick,” Tony says roughly, face-plate slamming back into place.
“Then you probably don’t want your face-plate up,” Clint points out. “Just saying.”
Tony grunts in response but doesn’t say anything else as Tasha empties the jug of gas onto the ragged bits of cloth and the stained bones that make up the remnants of Elizabeth Warren, while Steve and Hulk climb out. “Now what?” he asks just as Clint flicks open his lighter and drops it in. “Oh.”
The ghost appears one last time just outside the circle, howling with rage as she is dispersed in flame. With a final ear-splitting cry, she forces a wind that is strong enough to push ‘Tasha over the edge of the hole and into the fire. The sound she makes as she falls is like nothing else he’s ever heard from the Black Widow: wild, horrified, afraid.
“’Tasha!” He doesn’t know that he’s jumped in after her himself until he has her in his arms, heat licking at his skin. He pulls her into a protective embrace and the pair of them are hauled up seconds later by the giant (and surprisingly gentle) hands of the Hulk. Clint is patting out the sparks and tiny blazes that dart across her body—luckily most of their SHIELD-issue gear is flame-retardant—and he’s only vaguely aware of one of the others (probably Steve) doing the same to him. “You okay?”
She’s still, her expression frozen and her eyes wide. Whatever she sees, it’s hardly in the here and now. Clint taps her cheeks carefully, not wanting to slap her outright but knowing he will have to if she doesn’t snap out of it soon. Their faces are close enough to touch.
If he wanted to kiss her, he wouldn’t even have to move.
“’Tasha, c’mon, look at me, I’m right here, it’s okay.” This isn’t the scariest thing that’s ever happened to them. He knows this. But again—that look on her face, the open terror of it, cuts him to the bone. “C’mon! ’Tasha!”
‘Tasha’s eyes widen as she comes to herself, eyes fixed on Clint in a way that makes his heart clench before flicking across them all. Clint. Her lips form his name, but she doesn’t say it out loud.
“Welcome back to the party,” Tony says, voice colored with relief. Clint freezes, because he had forgotten the others were there.
“I still don’t understand your definition of a party,” ‘Tasha answers Tony, unfazed, and Clint sits back so they can stand together. She’s all business once again, and he is too, because he has to be. “You should work on that.”
“Steve disagrees with that,” Tony says.
“I bet,” Clint says, forcing a smirk into place.
“Hey now,” Steve says fondly, clapping both of them on the back. “Let’s clean this up and get back home, shall we?”
~
She finds him in the hour just before dawn. The others have gone to bed, or at least their separate ways: few things calm the Hulk like the Food Network of all things, so he’s comfortably ensconced in the Rec Room, while Steve and Tony have gone to spar to relax. (At least, they say they’re sparring, and everyone else pretends they believe them.) Clint checks the fletches of his arrows, making new ones if he has too, and filling some extra head casings with salt. It seems like he actually needs these more than he used to think he did.
“Hi,” ‘Tasha says, voice low but carrying to where he sits on the floor, legs stretched out before him. “Mind some company?”
“Nah,” he says. “Could do with some.” He wants to look at her, to check her over again to make sure she’s okay, that the pink in her cheeks is from health and not burn blisters, to take in the deep red of her hair and the green of her eyes, dark enough to be almost black in low light. He doesn’t let himself. Instead, he can feel her sit down next to him, close enough that he can feel her warmth. “Too weird?”
He tells himself he’s asking about the ghost.
“Not the weirdest.” Her inflection gives no indication of what she means, so he nods, and keeps his eyes on his work. Then she coughs. “Clint?” He looks up, and—he doesn’t have the words to describe how she looks at him right now. Beautiful, of course. Brave, also true. Vulnerable is a word that shouldn’t come to mind, but right now, it’s true. “You wanted to talk about, uh—”
“Yeah,” he says with a voice that isn’t quite his, and then his hands are in her hair and her lips are warm, and God, he’s wanted this, always this, for so long it’s not even a memory of wanting.
“This doesn’t change anything,” she tells him, after. She’s stretched out on him, warm and lithe as a cat. “You know that right?”
“What’s that mean?” He pulls back to look at her, and she meets his gaze dead on.
“I’m not quitting the Avengers, or SHIELD.” Her jaw is set in a way that can only be described as stubborn. “I’m still going to have my missions, and you’ll have yours.”
“Yeah,” he says, not following. “Obviously.” He massages one of her shoulders in sensual affection, but also to prevent her from trying to run away. (He knows she would try, and succeed, if he let her.) “How else did you think this would go?”
She relaxes into his touch, into his body that thrums with tiredness and contentment. “I thought you would try to get me to quit,” she mutters into his collarbone, breath warm on his tattoo. “That what male agents do when they—”
“Not me,” he says firmly, and kisses her knuckles. “However you want to roll, that’s good enough. Takes two to tango, sweetheart.”
“Is that what they call it?” She laughs, and he rolls them over.
“They do in Iowa,” he answers, and kisses her again.
~
There are some things from his old life he can’t leave behind. Scars (the one on his neck from a close call with a vamp, the one across his shoulderblades from an angry witch, the ones on the back of his legs from that time with the sycorax). Stories (Steve doesn’t believe the one about the wendigo, but then, who would?). Salt.
There are things from his new life, though, he will never leave behind. Doing a job right (even if the government does it’s damnedest to interfere sometimes). His friends (even if Tony never shuts up and Steve’s attempts at irony and Bruce’s unnatural affection for Rachel Ray). And most of all, ‘Tasha. He’s never, ever leaving her. No matter what.
THE END.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-02 01:52 am (UTC)LMAO! Of course it is. How silly of me. :D