Recruitment pt 4/7
Title: Recruitment
Author: slynn6776
Rating: T for language/theme/implied abuse in later parts
Fandom: Avengers Movieverse
Character(s): Clint Barton, Ensemble
Spoilers: Takes place after the movie
Beta: tripp3235
Disclaimer: None of these characters are mine. I'm only borrowing them.
Summary: Tony decides that before he can move forward with his plans, first he'll need some answers, whether Clint wants to provide them or not.
It was the way he'd said it that gave them all pause and Tony, in particular, began to feel a little guilty.
"I'm going to get another drink now," Tony said, getting up and heading to the bar after a lengthy silence. "Show of hands?"
Everybody except Bruce raised a hand, and within a few minutes Tony returned with a tray of drinks.
"I want to believe you," Tony said after he'd finished half of the contents of his glass. "I really do, but..."
"You think I'm a spy and that this is an act and... whatever."
"Basically," Tony admitted.
"Why should we believe you?" Steve asked.
"Because I am telling you the truth," Clint answered. "And, I haven't lied to any of you..."
"You just kept us from the real story," Steve finished for him.
"I still work for SHIELD," Clint shrugged. "I avoided what I could and kept my mouth shut when I had to, but I didn't lie. Who hasn't done that?"
"Steve," Tony answered to the Captain's annoyance.
"Okay," Clint conceded, "but if we're all going to be held up to those kinds of standards then I shouldn't be the only one on trial here."
"No one's on trial," Bruce said with a sigh.
"That's not what it feels like," Clint argued. "I mean, did Tony ambush the rest of you like this when I wasn't around? Did I miss that day?"
"That wasn't my intent," Tony said, earning a glare for his trouble. "Okay, it was kind of my intent, but with what we want to do here --"
"Stop," Clint said sharply. "Tony, I can't hear that. Do you not get what I was saying? I have gone out of my way not to hear that sort of talk. Don't you understand?"
"Understand what I am saying," Tony said. "Fury may have brought us together, but he doesn't control us. SHIELD doesn't control us."
"I still work for SHIELD," Clint repeated, wanting to add that Natasha did as well, but not willing to bring her into this mess. The more and more he'd explained his reluctance and misgivings with what they were being asked to do by SHIELD, the quieter she'd become. Clint was still trying to decide where he stood, and for the first time in a very long time he'd lost sight of where she stood.
"Which you do, why?" Steve asked. "Instead of prison?" And while Clint had hoped to avoid the issue, part of him knew Steve was going to be forever hung up on it.
"Something like that."
"Why steal in the first place?" Steve persisted. It bothered him more than he wanted to admit, because he had trusted Clint, and this was another rude reminder that he really didn't know any of them and that the world he'd lived in had drastically changed.
"I didn't set out to be a thief," Clint sighed, shaking his head at the thought of having to justify any of this after so long. "I was just trying to survive," he finished, and to his surprise Bruce nodded slightly in agreement.
"Bank robbery isn't exactly stealing a loaf of bread to ward off starvation," Tony said, and Clint could feel the scant amount of goodwill he may have earned evaporate around him.
"You're right," Clint admitted. "It's not."
"So why did you do it?" Steve asked, not willing to let it drop.
"What else could I do?" Clint asked, seriously wishing the man would just give him an answer. Nothing he'd told him so far had seemed to satisfy the guy in the least and all Clint wanted was to get out of this interrogation room. "I had no family, no friends, no money. Buck was the only one who stood by me. I was..."
"Obligated?" the man with the eye-patch asked. He still hadn't told Clint his name, despite the fact that they'd been talking for well over an hour.
"Yeah," Clint agreed. "I owed him."
"Owed him enough to steal for him?"
"I guess so."
"You guess?" the man repeated, starring at Clint and waiting for more.
"It's like I said, I had no one else to rely on and I wasn't in any kind of shape to help myself."
"Because of the accident?" the other man asked, pulling out a hospital report and sliding it across the table to Clint. "Admission sheet says you fell from the bleachers."
"Yeah," Clint answered, eyes down but unable to look at the photos.
"Broke both your legs," the man pressed. "That's quite a fall. Might even say you got off lucky."
"You might," Clint returned, his tone in disagreement with the words he'd spoken.
"Just before that circus was with shut down for good. Financial problems. Lot of money went missing."
"I wasn't involved in that," Clint said angrily.
"But you were questioned."
"In the hospital," Clint said. "Yes, I was. And I was cleared. I didn't steal from them. They'd been the only family I had and they'd been good to me."
"But you knew who would and they got to you first to make certain you didn't talk."
Clint shook his head slowly. Even after four years the thought of that night made his legs ache. It was the most pain he'd ever experienced in his life, in a lot of ways more than physical.
"The circus split up," the man continued. "Jacques Duquesne, your knife throwing buddy, skipped town. Your brother joined the Army."
"Like I said, Buck was the only one who stuck by me. I owed him."
"So, it took quite a few months to recover, correct?" the man pressed, continuing only after Clint nodded in agreement. "A couple more months to talk you into that first hit. Nothing major. Small bank, minimal security and no injuries. Clean and easy."
Clint shifted in his seat, a nervous habit he still, at twenty-four, had yet to outgrow.
"Let me ask you this?" the man continued, tapping his index finger on the table in front of him. "How long did it take? How long until you became suspicious?"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"You do," the man insisted. "It had to have been before your falling out. Before whatever it was that happened that made you leave. You're smart. You had to have had your doubts that a man, who you thought was a good person, an honest person, was so quick to turn to crime."
Clint hesitated, embarrassed to admit how long it had taken. He had been naive and vulnerable; things he hated to confess to, even now when it was beyond obvious.
"How long did it take for you to realize that Buck Chisholm had been the one embezzling money from the circus, not Jacques Duquesne? That he'd been the one to order that beating that nearly killed you?"
"Over a year," Clint finally said in a low voice. "Year and a half."
"And by then, you were in too deep. What were you, twenty? Twenty-one? Broken, betrayed and abandoned by all the friends and family you ever knew. I almost feel sorry for you."
"Don't."
"Don't worry," the man said, almost cracking a smile. "I won't, because even then, you stayed. You got used to the lifestyle. Maybe thought it was exciting. Thought you were tough. So, I have to wonder, if knowing who this man really was didn't make you leave, what did?"
"We had a disagreement."
"About what?"
"You seem to have all the answers," Clint said, shaking his head. "Why don't you tell me?"
"Okay, I will," the man with eye-patch said, leaning forward as he spoke. "I think you were told to do something you didn't want to do and you finally reached your limit. I think that you could justify everything you'd done in your head as being victimless because of who you were robbing and why, until he asked you to kill."
Clint said nothing, just balled his hands up into tight fists and rested them on the table.
"I don't imagine he took it well when you said no."
"You could say that."
"I just did," the man returned.
Clint was quick to his feet. Quick enough, he noted, that the silent, average guy by the door flinched in surprise, but not the other one. The man at the table with him hadn't even blinked the one good eye he had. Once on his feet, Clint lifted his shirt and tugged down his pants just enough to show him the scar. It was a small, circular mound of flesh about an inch in diameter, just above his right hip that, even two years later, was still very visible.
"That looks serious," was the only remark made.
"Want to see the other side?" Clint asked as he took his seat.
"So, you gave him his answer, he gave you a parting gift," the man said, indicating the scar with his hand, "and that was that."
"That was that," Clint repeated.
"So, you never killed a man?"
Clint blinked several times, momentarily unsure of how to answer that question.
"I've killed several," Clint finally admitted, because it would be stupid to deny it. They all knew what he did for SHIELD. They all knew what had happened with Loki and the Tesseract. "Men. Women. Never if I didn't have to but... enough."
"I was actually talking about before your career as an assassin began," Tony clarified. "There are eight counts here," he said, helpfully holding up the page and all but waving it in the air. "Eight people, murdered, that they were blaming you for."
"I didn't kill any of them."
"SHIELD made you a killer," Bruce said.
"Nobody made me anything," Clint countered.
"But they forced you to kill," Bruce persisted.
"I guess that depends on whether or not you think there are people in this world that need to be killed," Clint replied.
"And that's for SHIELD to decide," Tony said.
"Someone has to. Can't always just sit around and wait for those sort of people to die on their own, can we?"
"Wow," Tony said after a minute of silence. "You really have been drinking the kool-aid."
"Just to be clear," Bruce asked, "what sort of people are we talking about?"
"The worst sort."
"And you always know," Tony pressed. "You really know that they're as bad as SHIELD says they are?"
"How are you sure?" Steve asked, Thor nodding along with the question. Of the four of them, Steve and Thor almost seemed as if they agreed with Clint on this issue. Almost.
"I make sure. I make sure I see it for myself," Clint answered.
"And SHIELD lets you decide that, do they?" Tony asked, his tone doubtful. "Because that philosophy doesn't jive with what I know of them."
"Coulson does," Clint said, before quickly correcting himself. "Did. He did. He trusted me to make the right call."
"Tony," Bruce said, shaking his head as he got to his feet, "I need a break. I... I seriously need a break from this."
As soon as Tony nodded in agreement, Steve and Bruce both took off on separate walks around the building. Tony meandered into the kitchen leaving Clint and Thor alone. Once they were gone, Clint shut his eyes and threw his head back against the chair.
After several long minutes of silence, Thor surprised him by saying, "I believe you." Clint opened his eyes, sure he'd been mistaken. His face must have betrayed his doubt, because Thor repeated his statement, saying, "I believe you are telling the truth."
"Well," Clint sighed, with a weary smile. "One down. Three to go, I guess."
"They will come to see it for themselves soon enough," Thor assured him.
"I really hope you're right."
"I am. They will see that, throughout all of these tales, one trait of yours shows through again and again."
"Stupidity?" Clint guessed.
"Loyalty."
"Might as well call it stupidity," Clint said with a brutal shake of his head.
"I may also call the sun the moon, but that does not make them the same."
Clint let that answer sink in. "You think I'm loyal?"
"I do," Thor answered. "Time and again, from your own telling, you have stayed with those who have helped you in some way. I cannot say if that loyalty was always well placed, but it has been consistent."
"I've been called a lot of things but loyal... that's new."
"I do not see why."
"Because," Clint said, and left it at that.
"Because is not an argument my friend," Thor said with an almost laugh.
Clint stood up, suddenly unsure what to do with himself, and began to walk around the room aimlessly. Before he could decide what to do next, Steve returned. He came in without a word and took a seat on the couch. A few minutes later, Bruce was back, but instead of joining them in the living room he went straight to the kitchen to talk with Tony.
Clint excused himself and made a beeline for the bathroom, his nerves completely shot. It wasn't just the prospect of having to continue on with these conversations, but the idea of what he had the potential to lose. Never in his life had Clint courted anyone's good opinion, and it was frightening to find that he wanted that; he wanted these people to like and respect him and he was blowing it.
"Where'd he go?" Tony asked as he and Bruce returned.
Steve gestured off to the hallway and for several long minutes they waited.
"You don't think he busted the window and made a break for it," Tony said, jokingly at first. "Do you?"
As one, they each turned their heads in the direction Clint had left in, and realized that could actually be the case.
But it wasn't. Another few minutes passed and Clint finally emerged, looking calmer than he had when he'd left, if perhaps a little paler.
"Sorry," he said, retaking his seat. "Didn't mean to keep anyone waiting. Let's finish this thing."
"This isn't an interrogation," Bruce said, shaking his head and obviously having second thoughts about proceeding at all, in any fashion.
"No," Clint agreed. "It isn't. I've been interrogated before. Several times. This is way worse."
"Look," Tony said, throwing his hands up, "this has gone far beyond what I ever wanted it to be. All I wanted to know was what SHIELD wanted from us. They started this. This was their idea."
"Yes, Tony," Clint said, shaking his head. "It was. And when they were in control of it, it seemed like a good idea. But they're not now and they know it."
"Do you think they'd try and stop us?" Steve asked, and it was as close of an admission as Clint had heard from him that he was as involved in separating this thing from SHIELD as Bruce and Tony were.
"No," was Clint's honest answer. "Not as long as Fury is the director."
"But they let you and Natasha stay to keep tabs on what we were doing," Bruce said, more resigned than angry.
"So, I guess the question is..." Tony said, drawing it out not for dramatic purposes, but because he really wanted to make sure he meant it when he said it, "...what do we do about this?"
Author: slynn6776
Rating: T for language/theme/implied abuse in later parts
Fandom: Avengers Movieverse
Character(s): Clint Barton, Ensemble
Spoilers: Takes place after the movie
Beta: tripp3235
Disclaimer: None of these characters are mine. I'm only borrowing them.
Summary: Tony decides that before he can move forward with his plans, first he'll need some answers, whether Clint wants to provide them or not.
It was the way he'd said it that gave them all pause and Tony, in particular, began to feel a little guilty.
"I'm going to get another drink now," Tony said, getting up and heading to the bar after a lengthy silence. "Show of hands?"
Everybody except Bruce raised a hand, and within a few minutes Tony returned with a tray of drinks.
"I want to believe you," Tony said after he'd finished half of the contents of his glass. "I really do, but..."
"You think I'm a spy and that this is an act and... whatever."
"Basically," Tony admitted.
"Why should we believe you?" Steve asked.
"Because I am telling you the truth," Clint answered. "And, I haven't lied to any of you..."
"You just kept us from the real story," Steve finished for him.
"I still work for SHIELD," Clint shrugged. "I avoided what I could and kept my mouth shut when I had to, but I didn't lie. Who hasn't done that?"
"Steve," Tony answered to the Captain's annoyance.
"Okay," Clint conceded, "but if we're all going to be held up to those kinds of standards then I shouldn't be the only one on trial here."
"No one's on trial," Bruce said with a sigh.
"That's not what it feels like," Clint argued. "I mean, did Tony ambush the rest of you like this when I wasn't around? Did I miss that day?"
"That wasn't my intent," Tony said, earning a glare for his trouble. "Okay, it was kind of my intent, but with what we want to do here --"
"Stop," Clint said sharply. "Tony, I can't hear that. Do you not get what I was saying? I have gone out of my way not to hear that sort of talk. Don't you understand?"
"Understand what I am saying," Tony said. "Fury may have brought us together, but he doesn't control us. SHIELD doesn't control us."
"I still work for SHIELD," Clint repeated, wanting to add that Natasha did as well, but not willing to bring her into this mess. The more and more he'd explained his reluctance and misgivings with what they were being asked to do by SHIELD, the quieter she'd become. Clint was still trying to decide where he stood, and for the first time in a very long time he'd lost sight of where she stood.
"Which you do, why?" Steve asked. "Instead of prison?" And while Clint had hoped to avoid the issue, part of him knew Steve was going to be forever hung up on it.
"Something like that."
"Why steal in the first place?" Steve persisted. It bothered him more than he wanted to admit, because he had trusted Clint, and this was another rude reminder that he really didn't know any of them and that the world he'd lived in had drastically changed.
"I didn't set out to be a thief," Clint sighed, shaking his head at the thought of having to justify any of this after so long. "I was just trying to survive," he finished, and to his surprise Bruce nodded slightly in agreement.
"Bank robbery isn't exactly stealing a loaf of bread to ward off starvation," Tony said, and Clint could feel the scant amount of goodwill he may have earned evaporate around him.
"You're right," Clint admitted. "It's not."
"So why did you do it?" Steve asked, not willing to let it drop.
"What else could I do?" Clint asked, seriously wishing the man would just give him an answer. Nothing he'd told him so far had seemed to satisfy the guy in the least and all Clint wanted was to get out of this interrogation room. "I had no family, no friends, no money. Buck was the only one who stood by me. I was..."
"Obligated?" the man with the eye-patch asked. He still hadn't told Clint his name, despite the fact that they'd been talking for well over an hour.
"Yeah," Clint agreed. "I owed him."
"Owed him enough to steal for him?"
"I guess so."
"You guess?" the man repeated, starring at Clint and waiting for more.
"It's like I said, I had no one else to rely on and I wasn't in any kind of shape to help myself."
"Because of the accident?" the other man asked, pulling out a hospital report and sliding it across the table to Clint. "Admission sheet says you fell from the bleachers."
"Yeah," Clint answered, eyes down but unable to look at the photos.
"Broke both your legs," the man pressed. "That's quite a fall. Might even say you got off lucky."
"You might," Clint returned, his tone in disagreement with the words he'd spoken.
"Just before that circus was with shut down for good. Financial problems. Lot of money went missing."
"I wasn't involved in that," Clint said angrily.
"But you were questioned."
"In the hospital," Clint said. "Yes, I was. And I was cleared. I didn't steal from them. They'd been the only family I had and they'd been good to me."
"But you knew who would and they got to you first to make certain you didn't talk."
Clint shook his head slowly. Even after four years the thought of that night made his legs ache. It was the most pain he'd ever experienced in his life, in a lot of ways more than physical.
"The circus split up," the man continued. "Jacques Duquesne, your knife throwing buddy, skipped town. Your brother joined the Army."
"Like I said, Buck was the only one who stuck by me. I owed him."
"So, it took quite a few months to recover, correct?" the man pressed, continuing only after Clint nodded in agreement. "A couple more months to talk you into that first hit. Nothing major. Small bank, minimal security and no injuries. Clean and easy."
Clint shifted in his seat, a nervous habit he still, at twenty-four, had yet to outgrow.
"Let me ask you this?" the man continued, tapping his index finger on the table in front of him. "How long did it take? How long until you became suspicious?"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"You do," the man insisted. "It had to have been before your falling out. Before whatever it was that happened that made you leave. You're smart. You had to have had your doubts that a man, who you thought was a good person, an honest person, was so quick to turn to crime."
Clint hesitated, embarrassed to admit how long it had taken. He had been naive and vulnerable; things he hated to confess to, even now when it was beyond obvious.
"How long did it take for you to realize that Buck Chisholm had been the one embezzling money from the circus, not Jacques Duquesne? That he'd been the one to order that beating that nearly killed you?"
"Over a year," Clint finally said in a low voice. "Year and a half."
"And by then, you were in too deep. What were you, twenty? Twenty-one? Broken, betrayed and abandoned by all the friends and family you ever knew. I almost feel sorry for you."
"Don't."
"Don't worry," the man said, almost cracking a smile. "I won't, because even then, you stayed. You got used to the lifestyle. Maybe thought it was exciting. Thought you were tough. So, I have to wonder, if knowing who this man really was didn't make you leave, what did?"
"We had a disagreement."
"About what?"
"You seem to have all the answers," Clint said, shaking his head. "Why don't you tell me?"
"Okay, I will," the man with eye-patch said, leaning forward as he spoke. "I think you were told to do something you didn't want to do and you finally reached your limit. I think that you could justify everything you'd done in your head as being victimless because of who you were robbing and why, until he asked you to kill."
Clint said nothing, just balled his hands up into tight fists and rested them on the table.
"I don't imagine he took it well when you said no."
"You could say that."
"I just did," the man returned.
Clint was quick to his feet. Quick enough, he noted, that the silent, average guy by the door flinched in surprise, but not the other one. The man at the table with him hadn't even blinked the one good eye he had. Once on his feet, Clint lifted his shirt and tugged down his pants just enough to show him the scar. It was a small, circular mound of flesh about an inch in diameter, just above his right hip that, even two years later, was still very visible.
"That looks serious," was the only remark made.
"Want to see the other side?" Clint asked as he took his seat.
"So, you gave him his answer, he gave you a parting gift," the man said, indicating the scar with his hand, "and that was that."
"That was that," Clint repeated.
"So, you never killed a man?"
Clint blinked several times, momentarily unsure of how to answer that question.
"I've killed several," Clint finally admitted, because it would be stupid to deny it. They all knew what he did for SHIELD. They all knew what had happened with Loki and the Tesseract. "Men. Women. Never if I didn't have to but... enough."
"I was actually talking about before your career as an assassin began," Tony clarified. "There are eight counts here," he said, helpfully holding up the page and all but waving it in the air. "Eight people, murdered, that they were blaming you for."
"I didn't kill any of them."
"SHIELD made you a killer," Bruce said.
"Nobody made me anything," Clint countered.
"But they forced you to kill," Bruce persisted.
"I guess that depends on whether or not you think there are people in this world that need to be killed," Clint replied.
"And that's for SHIELD to decide," Tony said.
"Someone has to. Can't always just sit around and wait for those sort of people to die on their own, can we?"
"Wow," Tony said after a minute of silence. "You really have been drinking the kool-aid."
"Just to be clear," Bruce asked, "what sort of people are we talking about?"
"The worst sort."
"And you always know," Tony pressed. "You really know that they're as bad as SHIELD says they are?"
"How are you sure?" Steve asked, Thor nodding along with the question. Of the four of them, Steve and Thor almost seemed as if they agreed with Clint on this issue. Almost.
"I make sure. I make sure I see it for myself," Clint answered.
"And SHIELD lets you decide that, do they?" Tony asked, his tone doubtful. "Because that philosophy doesn't jive with what I know of them."
"Coulson does," Clint said, before quickly correcting himself. "Did. He did. He trusted me to make the right call."
"Tony," Bruce said, shaking his head as he got to his feet, "I need a break. I... I seriously need a break from this."
As soon as Tony nodded in agreement, Steve and Bruce both took off on separate walks around the building. Tony meandered into the kitchen leaving Clint and Thor alone. Once they were gone, Clint shut his eyes and threw his head back against the chair.
After several long minutes of silence, Thor surprised him by saying, "I believe you." Clint opened his eyes, sure he'd been mistaken. His face must have betrayed his doubt, because Thor repeated his statement, saying, "I believe you are telling the truth."
"Well," Clint sighed, with a weary smile. "One down. Three to go, I guess."
"They will come to see it for themselves soon enough," Thor assured him.
"I really hope you're right."
"I am. They will see that, throughout all of these tales, one trait of yours shows through again and again."
"Stupidity?" Clint guessed.
"Loyalty."
"Might as well call it stupidity," Clint said with a brutal shake of his head.
"I may also call the sun the moon, but that does not make them the same."
Clint let that answer sink in. "You think I'm loyal?"
"I do," Thor answered. "Time and again, from your own telling, you have stayed with those who have helped you in some way. I cannot say if that loyalty was always well placed, but it has been consistent."
"I've been called a lot of things but loyal... that's new."
"I do not see why."
"Because," Clint said, and left it at that.
"Because is not an argument my friend," Thor said with an almost laugh.
Clint stood up, suddenly unsure what to do with himself, and began to walk around the room aimlessly. Before he could decide what to do next, Steve returned. He came in without a word and took a seat on the couch. A few minutes later, Bruce was back, but instead of joining them in the living room he went straight to the kitchen to talk with Tony.
Clint excused himself and made a beeline for the bathroom, his nerves completely shot. It wasn't just the prospect of having to continue on with these conversations, but the idea of what he had the potential to lose. Never in his life had Clint courted anyone's good opinion, and it was frightening to find that he wanted that; he wanted these people to like and respect him and he was blowing it.
"Where'd he go?" Tony asked as he and Bruce returned.
Steve gestured off to the hallway and for several long minutes they waited.
"You don't think he busted the window and made a break for it," Tony said, jokingly at first. "Do you?"
As one, they each turned their heads in the direction Clint had left in, and realized that could actually be the case.
But it wasn't. Another few minutes passed and Clint finally emerged, looking calmer than he had when he'd left, if perhaps a little paler.
"Sorry," he said, retaking his seat. "Didn't mean to keep anyone waiting. Let's finish this thing."
"This isn't an interrogation," Bruce said, shaking his head and obviously having second thoughts about proceeding at all, in any fashion.
"No," Clint agreed. "It isn't. I've been interrogated before. Several times. This is way worse."
"Look," Tony said, throwing his hands up, "this has gone far beyond what I ever wanted it to be. All I wanted to know was what SHIELD wanted from us. They started this. This was their idea."
"Yes, Tony," Clint said, shaking his head. "It was. And when they were in control of it, it seemed like a good idea. But they're not now and they know it."
"Do you think they'd try and stop us?" Steve asked, and it was as close of an admission as Clint had heard from him that he was as involved in separating this thing from SHIELD as Bruce and Tony were.
"No," was Clint's honest answer. "Not as long as Fury is the director."
"But they let you and Natasha stay to keep tabs on what we were doing," Bruce said, more resigned than angry.
"So, I guess the question is..." Tony said, drawing it out not for dramatic purposes, but because he really wanted to make sure he meant it when he said it, "...what do we do about this?"