Avengers (2012): "Waking Up (3/6)" (Gen, Pre-Clint/Natasha)
Title: Waking Up (3/6)
Author/Artist: Koren M. (cybermathwitch)
Disclaimer: Not mine. If they were, there'd already be a Black Widow/Hawkeye movie.
Pairing: Gen (pre-Clint/Natasha)
Rating: R
Warnings: adult themes, violence, language, assassins are not always nice people
Spoilers: none
Type: Completed
Word Count: 341
Summary: Everyone starts somewhere. Everyone has a beginning. Everyone is made up of their experiences. Everyone wakes up. Part of "The Weight of Us": the moments leading up to "Shot in the Dark".
Author's Notes:
Many many thanks to kadollan for the beta on the final version of this thing, and thanks to lar_laughs, SidheRa, and anuna_81 for looking over earlier versions of this material.
Oh, who am I kidding. Three of the last four are extremely short, I'm just going to go ahead and post them all tonight. (Also, I'm impatient.)
RE: WARNINGS - PLEASE READ: These are moments from Clint and Natasha's past, the early memories (or lack there-of) that lead up to Shot in the Dark. As you can imagine, bad things happened. Nothing is terribly graphic (no more graphic than things that happened in Shot in the Dark, anyway, I don't think) - but please use your best judgement when reading. If you have any questions about the warnings, please leave me a comment or shoot me an email (I'm cybermathwitch(at)gmail(dot)com) and I'll do my best to answer them.
Warnings are specific to the chapter they're listed on, and while each chapter is a piece of the puzzle, there's not a linear narrative, so each chapter makes sense on it's own if you feel you need or want to skip one.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
TIME AND LOCATION: UNKNOWN
Once he decided to kill a man to watch him die.
He'd killed before, knew he'd kill again - but he wondered about the enjoyment he took in his job. He wondered where his own lines were.
Did he enjoy the hunt? Did he enjoy still being alive after the threat was dead? Or did he enjoy the act of killing, in and of itself?
Yes, to the first. Absolutely to the second. The third... he didn't know.
So he tested the theory.
The man had drifted through the bar in the back end of nowhere some seventy miles from the hellhole he was currently stationed in, looking lost and in search of oblivion in the bottom of a bottle. Not even remotely a threat, and that was an important piece of the puzzle, that he not be a threat. He was no one Clint had ever seen before, or would likely see again, and that was also important. It distilled the act down to simple life or death. Mercy or murder. Could he pull the trigger? Would he want to?
When the man stumbled outside, Clint followed him. With a gun, rather than his bow, because he wanted this to be up close.
He wanted to see. He wanted to know.
He stood over the man, collapsed in the alleyway, shaking and pleading for his life and thought long and hard about pulling the trigger.
And then he ran up against a wall that until that moment he hadn't been entirely sure he possessed. This man wasn't a threat, he wasn't a target, wasn't someone he could pull out a file full of sins to pin against him. He was no one and nothing to Clint, but he was still someone: a non-combatant, an innocent.
Unless he was given more reason, more provocation, he had no desire to pull the trigger. In fact, he had an aversion to it.
So the man lived. And Clint learned.
Author/Artist: Koren M. (cybermathwitch)
Disclaimer: Not mine. If they were, there'd already be a Black Widow/Hawkeye movie.
Pairing: Gen (pre-Clint/Natasha)
Rating: R
Warnings: adult themes, violence, language, assassins are not always nice people
Spoilers: none
Type: Completed
Word Count: 341
Summary: Everyone starts somewhere. Everyone has a beginning. Everyone is made up of their experiences. Everyone wakes up. Part of "The Weight of Us": the moments leading up to "Shot in the Dark".
Author's Notes:
Many many thanks to kadollan for the beta on the final version of this thing, and thanks to lar_laughs, SidheRa, and anuna_81 for looking over earlier versions of this material.
Oh, who am I kidding. Three of the last four are extremely short, I'm just going to go ahead and post them all tonight. (Also, I'm impatient.)
RE: WARNINGS - PLEASE READ: These are moments from Clint and Natasha's past, the early memories (or lack there-of) that lead up to Shot in the Dark. As you can imagine, bad things happened. Nothing is terribly graphic (no more graphic than things that happened in Shot in the Dark, anyway, I don't think) - but please use your best judgement when reading. If you have any questions about the warnings, please leave me a comment or shoot me an email (I'm cybermathwitch(at)gmail(dot)com) and I'll do my best to answer them.
Warnings are specific to the chapter they're listed on, and while each chapter is a piece of the puzzle, there's not a linear narrative, so each chapter makes sense on it's own if you feel you need or want to skip one.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
TIME AND LOCATION: UNKNOWN
Once he decided to kill a man to watch him die.
He'd killed before, knew he'd kill again - but he wondered about the enjoyment he took in his job. He wondered where his own lines were.
Did he enjoy the hunt? Did he enjoy still being alive after the threat was dead? Or did he enjoy the act of killing, in and of itself?
Yes, to the first. Absolutely to the second. The third... he didn't know.
So he tested the theory.
The man had drifted through the bar in the back end of nowhere some seventy miles from the hellhole he was currently stationed in, looking lost and in search of oblivion in the bottom of a bottle. Not even remotely a threat, and that was an important piece of the puzzle, that he not be a threat. He was no one Clint had ever seen before, or would likely see again, and that was also important. It distilled the act down to simple life or death. Mercy or murder. Could he pull the trigger? Would he want to?
When the man stumbled outside, Clint followed him. With a gun, rather than his bow, because he wanted this to be up close.
He wanted to see. He wanted to know.
He stood over the man, collapsed in the alleyway, shaking and pleading for his life and thought long and hard about pulling the trigger.
And then he ran up against a wall that until that moment he hadn't been entirely sure he possessed. This man wasn't a threat, he wasn't a target, wasn't someone he could pull out a file full of sins to pin against him. He was no one and nothing to Clint, but he was still someone: a non-combatant, an innocent.
Unless he was given more reason, more provocation, he had no desire to pull the trigger. In fact, he had an aversion to it.
So the man lived. And Clint learned.