Avengers (2012): "Shot in the Dark" (5/6) (Clint/Natasha)

[cybermathwitch]

Title: Shot in the Dark (5/6)
Author/Artist: Koren M. (cybermathwitch)
Disclaimer: Not mine. If they were, there'd already be a Black Widow/Hawkeye movie.
Pairing: Pre- Clint/Natasha (UST)
Rating: R (mostly for violent themes and language)
Warnings: language and some violence
Spoilers: None
Type: Completed
Word Count: 2,743
Summary: In her life there comes a

Comments

[cybermathwitch]

your take on fury and the council is fabulous. (hee! cowboy mentions. oh, does fury know his people or what!)

The whole cowboy comment comes as much from a meeting we had a work where my manager was bitching about the "cowboys" in the chain of command who would decide on some bright new "idea" about how to run things and then change it without thinking things through or knowing how that would totally fuck the rest of our processes up. (It certainly doesn't hurt that there are so many Cowboy!Clint feels running around, either! :) )

and these freaking arrogant council people thinking they can control things and NOT get their hands dirty. that they can sin without impunity! rawr! i hate them. but they really are the lesser of two evils. and maybe they were founded on noble intentions (howard stark!!! *shakes fist*) but how quickly those intentions get lost or crushed by politics and pride. oh, all these wider feels brought on by competent story telling and plot! I LOVE THIS ORIGIN STORY!

:D

I'm not 100% sure where/how the Council comes about in all of this. I don't think that (at least initially) the Council was a direct result of the formation of SHIELD, but I don't know if they wormed their way in afterwards, or if it's some kind of backing that Howard had during WWII - actually, come to think of it that's an idea, if the Council was formed during/because of WWII (that would include Russia, England, and America which matches (ish) the accents we get in the movie) and was helping to fund Howard's projects/the formation of SHIELD? It could've been all "yay free world" and altruism at the time, but turned bad/corrupt post WWII and Cold War and all when the Council decided that they were more powerful and above the individual nations that comprised it. So they become a shadow group that operates above and outside any actual nation, on another level entirely, and *still* has SHIELD and the Red Room (which I sort of see as a Russian equivalent to SHIELD, or was at one time (not so much now with the fall of the Soviet Union and etc.). And maybe they even kind of deliberately keep SHIELD and RR and whatever else at odds to keep control of them?

embedded within all humans is a need to have other people. regardless of preference or method of interaction, human nature is wired to intrinsically seek others out, to crave a certain degree of contact and connection. so when natasha and clint share in this ancient communal ritual of breaking bread and getting to know each other with a shared bottle between them, it's not hard to see from this point onward how loyalty to each other would outweigh any sense of fidelity to an institution.

One reason I deliberately had Clint be with SHIELD for so short a time (besides that being about the only way the ages would work) was so that he wouldn't have some kind of huge overriding loyalty to them already built in. The two of them placing each other first, last, and always is SO CRUCIAL to how I see Them. Which is why much later in this 'verse I have Clint make it clear to Steve "this is where our line is, this is what our loyalties are, I'm warning you now." (Not in so many words, but I think Steve gets the memo.)

reminds of pink floyd's wish you were here: we're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl year after year. and until they're brought together by circumstance and are two atoms colliding head on into each other do they grasp the sense of true belonging and cohesion. they are their own brand new creation made from old. all their past experiences were building them up to this point because no other before could have matched the highs AND the lows so completely. oh, kids!

DING DING DING DING DING!!! Have I mentioned you win all the internets? Because you totally do.