(no subject)
the avengers | when i am king you will be first against the wall
clint barton, phil coulson | pg13 | ~3.8k
[contains: mental health issues, graphic depictions of violence, character death]
It dawns on Clint at three in the morning while he's making coffee for himself and Stark: it's not Coulson. There's something walking around in SHIELD headquarters, with access to just about everything, wearing Coulson's face, and claiming to be him, and something is very wrong. (In which Clint is suffering from Capgras Syndrome.)
Also on AO3
It’s raining the day the Avengers go to their weekly meeting with Fury and find Coulson sitting in the chair that has been abandoned for the better part of three months. Later Clint won’t remember anything about what was said at the meeting, but he’ll remember that. The rain thundering against the windows, the coffee ring stain on the table, the click-clack of Fury’s assistant typing outside the door.
It’s a normal day.
//
Fury says, “You needed the push.”
Fury says, “We needed heroes.”
Fury says, “It was entirely Agent Coulson’s idea.”
Of course it was, because Coulson was the sort of guy who joined SHIELD because growing up he played at being Captain America and the Howling Commandos with his friends, because Coulson was the guy who wanted to save the world quietly, without the fuss that the Avengers would have.
Fury doesn’t say, “Sorry for making you think that the closest thing you have to a family was dead for three months.”
//
The thing is, Clint remembers weeks of being stuck in a really shitty country with no running water and no nice food and nowhere to practise archery. Weeks of sitting and looking at his bow, holding it, and doing nothing, until Coulson pulled him to his feet and threw the first punch.
Clint had stared at him, bewildered. Handlers typically didn’t punch assets in the face. He was sure there was a rule against it, and Coulson was a stickler for following the book. He probably knew the SHIELD handbook by heart, had probably committed it to memory within his first year.
“You need to do something,” Coulson had said mildly. “Better this than staring at a wall,” and threw another punch. Clint had blocked, hit back, and laughed.
There are two people in the world who would have noticed that and acted on it, and one of them wouldn’t have spared his dignity by letting him win.
//
The thing is, Coulson no longer joins in with his commentary when he’s watching people on the cameras.
The thing is, Coulson keeps watching him instead, like he’s going to snap at any minute, like Clint is something that deserves every bit of his attention.
The thing is, Coulson is - different.
//
The Avengers have lived together in the tower for around a month, still in the awkward stage of getting to know everybody’s habits, and getting used to sharing the same space with people who they barely know - as much as it can be counted as ‘sharing the same space’ when you’re living in Stark Tower, Jesus what even. Clint doesn’t even know how that happened. He got drunk with Natasha and vowed to never drink with her again (for the seventh time since New Year’s, which they do not speak about, ever) and had woken up in an unfamiliar room with an invisible person in the ceiling talking to him.
He’d never really left after that. Mostly, the company wasn’t too bad, and the bed was a hell of a lot more comfortable than the one in his quarters at SHIELD.
The day Coulson comes back, he goes to the tower, because it’s still just the tower, it’s not home yet - and does nothing and does nothing the day after that and the day after that.
A week after Coulson comes back, he goes back to the tower and gets quietly wasted.
He has a vague thought about having come full circle, which is rudely interrupted when Rogers pulls him to his feet and takes the bottle from him, saying “I think you’ve had enough now, Clint,” because he does that, the first names thing. It’s weird because it took Natasha a year and several near-deaths to call him Clint and he’s only Clint to Coulson after work hours.
Rogers is odd like that, thinking that by trying to create familiarity he’s going to create a good team, but they’re not, they’re a mess, they don’t even know how to handle each other after this. Clint makes a grab for the half empty glass on the table and downs the rest of his drink in one go before he’s guided out of the room and down the hall. Cap’s hands are steady and firm, holding him up as he stumbles towards his room; Coulson used to do the same thing, but with more complaining about how SHIELD wasn’t paying him to be a babysitter, or to look after him at two in the morning.
“Is this about Agent Coulson?” Steve asks.
Clint twists and Rogers’ hands drop. “Do you think he’s been acting weird? No, you wouldn’t, of course you wouldn’t, you didn’t know him. Don’t. You don’t know him. Because he’s back, so it’s present tense. Right?”
A frown. That’s normal for Rogers, who seems to be permanently confused or annoyed by him. “He seems fine, Clint. Are you okay? Do you want some water?”
Clint scowls and pushes him away. He’s fine.
//
He remembers training sessions in the gym after nearly everyone had left, just the two of them and their anger and their loneliness and their fists.
Clint lost.
Clint lost again. And again and again.
“I was a Ranger,” Coulson said.
“I’m the eldest of seven,” he said.
“I don’t lose,” he said, and knocked Clint down again.
//
Coulson doesn’t lose because he’s not afraid of them, of Clint and Natasha - he’s not afraid of the gaps in them, where their happy childhood memories should be, where in a normal person, a completely sane person, a whole person, a good moral compass should be; not afraid of the places that only he’s seen them in. The nightmares. Them after a mission gone wrong.
Coulson doesn’t lose because he trusts Clint to be able to hit the guy holding a gun to his head from three buildings away, trusts Natasha not to snap and kill everyone in the break room while other agents eye her warily over their coffee.
“Just be sure not to do any permanent damage,” he says when she announces that she is going to go and beat up some ex-Marines with necks thicker than her thigh. “They can be useful.”
Coulson trusts them, and yet.
And yet he felt that he needed to die to give them the motivation to work together as a team.
"It doesn't make sense," he says as Natasha throws him to the ground for the fifth time in as many minutes. "Coulson wouldn't do that; he knows us, he knows we would have done it."
Natasha looks at him. "Do you want to spar or complain about Coulson not treating you like a dainty little princess?”
He blinks. "Sorry, I guess I'm just distracted." He’s not really sorry and she knows that, because neither of them are ever sorry, and he’s still not paying attention. His ribs hurt and his back hurts and he wants to go and lie down and think, but this is work. This is important.
Clint gets in a few good punches before Natasha tires of him and sends him away, choosing a new agents to pick on. Fresh blood makes for a better sacrifice, and all that.
//
Coulson smiles at him more now. It's unsettling; Coulson doesn't smile at SHIELD. It's just not done. It's one of the laws of the universe. Coulson doesn't ask him for paperwork as much as he used to. He clicks his pen during meetings, and is generally un-Coulson like.
Clint has made a science out of studying Coulson’s facial expressions over the years; he needs something to do on long boring jobs, and there’s nothing more interesting than someone whose job it is to give nothing away. It’s infinitely better than listening to Stark try to explain fluid mechanics and how his Iron Man suit works.
He doesn’t make a secret out of his Coulson-watching now, keeping track of Coulson’s little movements as he determinedly ignored Barton lounging on the couch in the corner.
Every day at one, Coulson looks up, tells him to get out, says that he won’t be responsible for Clint passing out from hunger when he’s meant to be on the job.
In the week after that rainy first day back, Clint sees Coulson smile more than he has in the past two years.
“What’s up with that?” he asks Natasha over drinks that night. “Like, seriously, is there something on my face?”
Natasha smiles, takes a drink, and says nothing. He hates that smile, the one that says “I know something you don’t” when they’re not Agents Romanova and Barton, when they’re just Tasha and Clint
“Good luck,” Coulson says before the team heads out to stop another person is a stupid costume from destroying and/or trying to take over New York. It’s not a big deal; Coulson always wished Clint and Natasha luck when they were going without him. It’s missing the “try not to die” that usually accompanies it, but Clint can see him bite it back. It’s too soon.
Clint thinks it will always be too soon. He and Natasha have never actually died. He and Natasha have never been dead for two and a half months.
“Thanks, sir. We’ll be back before you know it,” he says. “I wouldn’t want to miss tonight’s Supernanny.”
He visits when Clint ends up in medical, and his silence is the same as it always was.
//
It dawns on Clint at three in the morning while he's making coffee for himself and Stark: it's not Coulson. There's something walking around in SHIELD headquarters, with access to just about everything, wearing Coulson's face, and claiming to be him, and something is very wrong.
Fury and Natasha don’t seem worried, so clearly it’s not the beginning of another invasion. Which means that it must be SHIELD tech.
It’s SHIELD technology.
It makes sense, when he thinks about it; SHIELD has access to the best technology in the world. And SHIELD would fall apart if any of the top players were out of the game. So they, what? Buried his friend somewhere where he wasn’t invited and then built a robot? Hid his death, didn’t acknowledge it? Disgust curls around his spine and seeps into his veins, runs through him hot and fast.
Stark wanders into the kitchen, eyes glued to the tablet in his hands. He narrowly misses walking into the table, and sits, asks Clint “Coffee?” like it’s going to magically appear in front of him as he says it, and doesn’t once look up from his work. It’s normal. It’s comforting.
And what does it say about his life that Tony Stark’s dumb habits are comforting, anyway?
//
It’s SHIELD tech. This Coulson, this imposter, this forgery, is impeccable. It has Coulson’s mannerisms and speech patterns and memories. R&D must have had a field day with it - getting everything just right, getting everything as perfect as they could.
Of course it’s brilliant - it’s SHIELD tech. Which means that it’s Stark tech.
//
Tony built a robotic version of Coulson, and didn’t tell them.
//
Tony drinks his coffee, and says nothing about Coulson. That seems to be a theme with them. Rogers didn’t say anything, just sat and stared at Coulson, while Thor boomed merrily his thanks at seeing the Son of Coul well recovered from his injury.
Clint has been glad to have his friend back, the third part to their messed up dysfunctional little family. Clint-and-Natasha are Clint-and-Natasha-and-Coulson and that’s good, that’s how it is supposed to be.
Clint-and-Natasha-and-Coulson is Chinese in Coulson’s apartment and old episodes of Supernanny, and terrible old horror movies, and the easy silence of three people so used to each other that they don’t need to talk. Clint-and-Natasha-and-Coulson is familiar.
Clint-and-Natasha sounds unfinished, like there’s something missing, like half a sentence that lingers in the air, a question that is never answered.
Clint-and-Natasha-and-Coulson is being twisted. Clint-and-Natasha-and-Coulson is being manipulated.
Clint doesn’t like it.
//
“Are you sure it’s really him?” he asks, and Natasha looks at him, and in that look it’s Budapest all over again. Clint could never stand it when he was being questioned - his ability, his stability; he’s the best, and still people question him.
She frowns at him. “Are you alright?” and he hates being asked that, he really hates it after being asked every day by shrinks and teammates, and hearing the other agents whisper when they thought he couldn’t hear them.
“I’m fine,” he grinds out. He shifts from foot to foot, and relaxes. “I just want to know if you’ve noticed anything - anything odd.”
“Odd how?”
“Just odd,” he says. “Unusual. Off.”
Natasha shrugs and shakes her head no. “I don’t know what you want to know, Barton. There’s nothing wrong with Coulson.”
//
Everyone has the same response. Coulson’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with Coulson. Are you okay, Clint? Are you okay, Barton? Are you okay?
Are you okay?
Clint hoists himself up through the air vents and sits there, breathing in and out, in and out. Fear settles itself deep in his stomach, anxiety works its way up his throat, and he swallows it down, sure of what it is that he has to do.
He is good with proof, he is good at recon. He is good at his job because he’s the goddamn best there is at what he does and he will show them. They’ll believe him.
//
Sometimes Clint thinks that Coulson got an apartment on the eighth floor just so Clint could practise climbing trees. He pulls himself up easily; it's repetitive, a habit long ingrained in him. The branches narrow and thin out, and he balances himself carefully as he works his way around. It'd be dumb to fall and break a leg for a robot.
The window opens easily. A snap, the branch is breaking. His hand shoots out, grabs the ledge and he holds back a laugh.
It's the same as it always it -- he just misses hitting his head on the bookcase, almost catches his leg on the table. The room is in darkness, but it’s okay because he knows this as well as he knows Natasha’s flat, as well as he knows his room in the tower, or his room at SHIELD. He knows that if he takes three steps to his left, he’ll knock the television over. Five to his right and one ahead is a cabinet, with pictures of his brothers and sisters, a couple of pictures of the three of them. A glass figurine that someone smuggled in that he didn’t bother to get rid of. Things that normal people have.
The kitchen is twelve steps directly ahead. He wonders if the robot remembers cooking dinner for one, for two, for three. He wonders if it remembers that Coulson would always play jazz while cooking - said it reminded him of his childhood, his mom always did it, and his dad did too, after she died.
Here is the drawer where he kept the first aid kit, which saw more use than it should have. Here is the fridge, with food that none of them eat. Here is the cupboard where he kept the coffee. It's almost empty now, he and Natasha drank most of it with vodka the week after he died. They fell asleep on the couch, and nobody woke them in the morning with breakfast and a frown.
The knives glint as he take them out, evaluates them and puts one, two, three back. Clint gently runs the edge of the bread knife over his palm; the serrated edge tickles slightly.
There is nothing between the kitchen and the bedroom. It's sleeping in Coulson's room, where he kept his neatly pressed shirts and shiny shoes and where he would let them sleep with him sometimes to remind them that it was okay to trust people.
Clint had trusted him.
Clint trusted him because he gave him reasons to trust him, because he saw him as more than just another asset. Clint trusted him before Coulson trusted him.
And now Coulson's gone.
And now Coulson's dead.
And now Clint has nobody to trust because Natasha didn't believe him, and Natasha should have believed him because Natasha was supposed to believe him.
//
There's a creaky floorboard a foot away from Coulson's bedroom door; he can never remember which one it is.
Do robots dream of electric sheep? Do they dream of the electricity in them, wish for blood, wish for real synapses and neurons? Do they wish to be real? Are they just some programmes and some circuits?
Stark would be able to tell him, but Stark is the one who built this, Stark is the one who kept this from him. Stark is the one whose hands have built weapons that make Hitler look like a school yard bully. Clint’s seen them in action, he knows what they’re like.
The door squeaks as it opens. The room is the same. The bed, the wardrobe, the bedside table. There are pictures on the wall.
The room is the same, and it is being invaded. Blood boils red-hot in Clint’s veins at the thought of something pretending to be Coulson even in his own home. It twitches in its sleep as Clint walks closer. The tics, the mannerisms; a lot of effort was put into this. Anybody who wasn’t paying attention wouldn’t notice the difference.
He can almost hear the clicks and whirs of the gears turning in the machine, in its mechanic brain, the oil pumping through its mechanical heart. How long did it take to make it appear real?
“Barton?” it mutters, sitting up. “What?”
Coulson couldn’t function properly without at least two cups of coffee in the morning; he was reduced to monosyllables and upon occasion walked into things. The realism reaches into Clint’s chest and wraps around it like a fist, tight and unrelenting and as unforgivable as an unprovoked attack.
“Hey, sir,” Clint says easily. There is a knife hidden under his coat. The handle is growing warm but the blade is still cool.
When he was younger, Clint was fascinated with knives. He had explained this to Natasha and Coulson once - the paradox of the cold blade and the hot blood, and the satisfaction of knowing that it had been you, the twist in your chest you get when you hear their stuttering breath on you, the way their hands reach for you, automatic and instinctive.
Natasha had understood. Coulson had always preferred the impartiality of bullets from a distance to the thrill of being up close and personal.
There are eight steps from the door to the bed.
“What?” it says, again.
When you are working, when there is a job that must be done, you cannot deviate from the task unless you absolutely must, unless there is nothing else you can do.
Clint has never stopped in the middle of a job.
//
The sheets are slippery against his legs as he straddles the robot. It breathes, halting and unsure, and such a very good imitation of Coulson that Clint is impressed. He can count on one hand the number of people who have seen Coulson vulnerable, have seen him question himself and his decisions, even as he was told that it was the best course of action. He thinks of Paris, he thinks of a little town in Russia. He thinks of blood on his face and bodies around him and telling Natasha and Coulson that family matters.
“Clint?”
It is quiet. It makes bile rise in Clint’s throat and it reaches for him, as a hand touches his shoulder.
He pushes it back down to the bed, and doesn’t miss the way its hands hover for a moment before settling on his hips. Its thumbs absently stroke circles into his bones, digging a grave for itself in every movement.
“I don’t -” it starts, and Clint doesn’t want to listen to it talk anymore with that voice, with Coulson’s voice, with Phil’s voice, because it’s wrong and it’s sick, and makes him want to break something, so he presses his hand down and its eyes widen and its hands flail out, grasping at Clint’s hand, pulling. It twists beneath him, trying to get free, but Clint was always stronger than Coulson physically, even if he wasn’t as fast, or as underhand.
“Shh.” Clint’s never been one for being soothing, for being comforting, and it shows in the awkwardness of the murmur, the held-back laugh rattling around in his chest. The knife slips from the pocket, and it kicks wildly, fighting more and more. Stark and his perfectionism - he probably would have preferred to jump off a cliff rather than not give his robots the programming for survival.
The knife slides between where ribs should be, and it jerks, a scream muffled behind Clint’s hand. Pull it down; a sob. Clint knows what people sound like when they die like this. Stark is a perfectionist. What sort of research would he have done?
There are tears damp on his hand. There is blood on his shirt, on the knife, and there is bone beneath the flesh. Stark’s perfectionism is messy. Stark’s perfectionism is art on the sheets, is magnificent in its skill.
Clint thinks he would probably appreciate it more if he understood the genius of the engineering behind it, but he has listened to Stark talk about his work and understood about one word in thirty.
It is still under his hands as he pulls the ribs apart, pushes his hands into the cavity. It is soft and warm as he searches for the slippery wires, no doubt warm by the heat of the robot. He will find them, he will remove them, and he will hold them, show them to SHIELD and say, “This is what Coulson was, this is what you trusted,” and will say, “This is what you refused to believe.”
His fingers slide against bone and tissue and he thinks that if he were more like Stark or Banner he would think that something like this should be put in an exhibition to be admired; the paradoxical fragility and strength of the creation, the thought that must have gone into it.
With something like this, Stark would have wanted to prove his ability more than he already had. He would have wanted to shove it in their faces and say I am better than you because that is what Stark does. He wouldn’t have been content to just build a normal robot, to build a spectacular robot. The wiring probably runs through the skin, embedded in the thick flesh like a web, growing and growing until they are twisting and weaving their way through every inch. It’s extraordinary.
//
The buzz of a phone interrupts his contemplation of the red oil on his hands, the sticky red mess on the sheets and pants.
Clint hits answer and before he can say anything, Stark is talking.
“Coulson, Coulson, listen - you have to be careful,” and Stark is panicking, actually panicking about Coulson. “There’s something wrong with Barton. Clint’s - Clint’s lost it, Natasha thinks he’s going to do something -”
Clint ends the call.
clint barton, phil coulson | pg13 | ~3.8k
[contains: mental health issues, graphic depictions of violence, character death]
It dawns on Clint at three in the morning while he's making coffee for himself and Stark: it's not Coulson. There's something walking around in SHIELD headquarters, with access to just about everything, wearing Coulson's face, and claiming to be him, and something is very wrong. (In which Clint is suffering from Capgras Syndrome.)
Also on AO3
It’s raining the day the Avengers go to their weekly meeting with Fury and find Coulson sitting in the chair that has been abandoned for the better part of three months. Later Clint won’t remember anything about what was said at the meeting, but he’ll remember that. The rain thundering against the windows, the coffee ring stain on the table, the click-clack of Fury’s assistant typing outside the door.
It’s a normal day.
//
Fury says, “You needed the push.”
Fury says, “We needed heroes.”
Fury says, “It was entirely Agent Coulson’s idea.”
Of course it was, because Coulson was the sort of guy who joined SHIELD because growing up he played at being Captain America and the Howling Commandos with his friends, because Coulson was the guy who wanted to save the world quietly, without the fuss that the Avengers would have.
Fury doesn’t say, “Sorry for making you think that the closest thing you have to a family was dead for three months.”
//
The thing is, Clint remembers weeks of being stuck in a really shitty country with no running water and no nice food and nowhere to practise archery. Weeks of sitting and looking at his bow, holding it, and doing nothing, until Coulson pulled him to his feet and threw the first punch.
Clint had stared at him, bewildered. Handlers typically didn’t punch assets in the face. He was sure there was a rule against it, and Coulson was a stickler for following the book. He probably knew the SHIELD handbook by heart, had probably committed it to memory within his first year.
“You need to do something,” Coulson had said mildly. “Better this than staring at a wall,” and threw another punch. Clint had blocked, hit back, and laughed.
There are two people in the world who would have noticed that and acted on it, and one of them wouldn’t have spared his dignity by letting him win.
//
The thing is, Coulson no longer joins in with his commentary when he’s watching people on the cameras.
The thing is, Coulson keeps watching him instead, like he’s going to snap at any minute, like Clint is something that deserves every bit of his attention.
The thing is, Coulson is - different.
//
The Avengers have lived together in the tower for around a month, still in the awkward stage of getting to know everybody’s habits, and getting used to sharing the same space with people who they barely know - as much as it can be counted as ‘sharing the same space’ when you’re living in Stark Tower, Jesus what even. Clint doesn’t even know how that happened. He got drunk with Natasha and vowed to never drink with her again (for the seventh time since New Year’s, which they do not speak about, ever) and had woken up in an unfamiliar room with an invisible person in the ceiling talking to him.
He’d never really left after that. Mostly, the company wasn’t too bad, and the bed was a hell of a lot more comfortable than the one in his quarters at SHIELD.
The day Coulson comes back, he goes to the tower, because it’s still just the tower, it’s not home yet - and does nothing and does nothing the day after that and the day after that.
A week after Coulson comes back, he goes back to the tower and gets quietly wasted.
He has a vague thought about having come full circle, which is rudely interrupted when Rogers pulls him to his feet and takes the bottle from him, saying “I think you’ve had enough now, Clint,” because he does that, the first names thing. It’s weird because it took Natasha a year and several near-deaths to call him Clint and he’s only Clint to Coulson after work hours.
Rogers is odd like that, thinking that by trying to create familiarity he’s going to create a good team, but they’re not, they’re a mess, they don’t even know how to handle each other after this. Clint makes a grab for the half empty glass on the table and downs the rest of his drink in one go before he’s guided out of the room and down the hall. Cap’s hands are steady and firm, holding him up as he stumbles towards his room; Coulson used to do the same thing, but with more complaining about how SHIELD wasn’t paying him to be a babysitter, or to look after him at two in the morning.
“Is this about Agent Coulson?” Steve asks.
Clint twists and Rogers’ hands drop. “Do you think he’s been acting weird? No, you wouldn’t, of course you wouldn’t, you didn’t know him. Don’t. You don’t know him. Because he’s back, so it’s present tense. Right?”
A frown. That’s normal for Rogers, who seems to be permanently confused or annoyed by him. “He seems fine, Clint. Are you okay? Do you want some water?”
Clint scowls and pushes him away. He’s fine.
//
He remembers training sessions in the gym after nearly everyone had left, just the two of them and their anger and their loneliness and their fists.
Clint lost.
Clint lost again. And again and again.
“I was a Ranger,” Coulson said.
“I’m the eldest of seven,” he said.
“I don’t lose,” he said, and knocked Clint down again.
//
Coulson doesn’t lose because he’s not afraid of them, of Clint and Natasha - he’s not afraid of the gaps in them, where their happy childhood memories should be, where in a normal person, a completely sane person, a whole person, a good moral compass should be; not afraid of the places that only he’s seen them in. The nightmares. Them after a mission gone wrong.
Coulson doesn’t lose because he trusts Clint to be able to hit the guy holding a gun to his head from three buildings away, trusts Natasha not to snap and kill everyone in the break room while other agents eye her warily over their coffee.
“Just be sure not to do any permanent damage,” he says when she announces that she is going to go and beat up some ex-Marines with necks thicker than her thigh. “They can be useful.”
Coulson trusts them, and yet.
And yet he felt that he needed to die to give them the motivation to work together as a team.
"It doesn't make sense," he says as Natasha throws him to the ground for the fifth time in as many minutes. "Coulson wouldn't do that; he knows us, he knows we would have done it."
Natasha looks at him. "Do you want to spar or complain about Coulson not treating you like a dainty little princess?”
He blinks. "Sorry, I guess I'm just distracted." He’s not really sorry and she knows that, because neither of them are ever sorry, and he’s still not paying attention. His ribs hurt and his back hurts and he wants to go and lie down and think, but this is work. This is important.
Clint gets in a few good punches before Natasha tires of him and sends him away, choosing a new agents to pick on. Fresh blood makes for a better sacrifice, and all that.
//
Coulson smiles at him more now. It's unsettling; Coulson doesn't smile at SHIELD. It's just not done. It's one of the laws of the universe. Coulson doesn't ask him for paperwork as much as he used to. He clicks his pen during meetings, and is generally un-Coulson like.
Clint has made a science out of studying Coulson’s facial expressions over the years; he needs something to do on long boring jobs, and there’s nothing more interesting than someone whose job it is to give nothing away. It’s infinitely better than listening to Stark try to explain fluid mechanics and how his Iron Man suit works.
He doesn’t make a secret out of his Coulson-watching now, keeping track of Coulson’s little movements as he determinedly ignored Barton lounging on the couch in the corner.
Every day at one, Coulson looks up, tells him to get out, says that he won’t be responsible for Clint passing out from hunger when he’s meant to be on the job.
In the week after that rainy first day back, Clint sees Coulson smile more than he has in the past two years.
“What’s up with that?” he asks Natasha over drinks that night. “Like, seriously, is there something on my face?”
Natasha smiles, takes a drink, and says nothing. He hates that smile, the one that says “I know something you don’t” when they’re not Agents Romanova and Barton, when they’re just Tasha and Clint
“Good luck,” Coulson says before the team heads out to stop another person is a stupid costume from destroying and/or trying to take over New York. It’s not a big deal; Coulson always wished Clint and Natasha luck when they were going without him. It’s missing the “try not to die” that usually accompanies it, but Clint can see him bite it back. It’s too soon.
Clint thinks it will always be too soon. He and Natasha have never actually died. He and Natasha have never been dead for two and a half months.
“Thanks, sir. We’ll be back before you know it,” he says. “I wouldn’t want to miss tonight’s Supernanny.”
He visits when Clint ends up in medical, and his silence is the same as it always was.
//
It dawns on Clint at three in the morning while he's making coffee for himself and Stark: it's not Coulson. There's something walking around in SHIELD headquarters, with access to just about everything, wearing Coulson's face, and claiming to be him, and something is very wrong.
Fury and Natasha don’t seem worried, so clearly it’s not the beginning of another invasion. Which means that it must be SHIELD tech.
It’s SHIELD technology.
It makes sense, when he thinks about it; SHIELD has access to the best technology in the world. And SHIELD would fall apart if any of the top players were out of the game. So they, what? Buried his friend somewhere where he wasn’t invited and then built a robot? Hid his death, didn’t acknowledge it? Disgust curls around his spine and seeps into his veins, runs through him hot and fast.
Stark wanders into the kitchen, eyes glued to the tablet in his hands. He narrowly misses walking into the table, and sits, asks Clint “Coffee?” like it’s going to magically appear in front of him as he says it, and doesn’t once look up from his work. It’s normal. It’s comforting.
And what does it say about his life that Tony Stark’s dumb habits are comforting, anyway?
//
It’s SHIELD tech. This Coulson, this imposter, this forgery, is impeccable. It has Coulson’s mannerisms and speech patterns and memories. R&D must have had a field day with it - getting everything just right, getting everything as perfect as they could.
Of course it’s brilliant - it’s SHIELD tech. Which means that it’s Stark tech.
//
Tony built a robotic version of Coulson, and didn’t tell them.
//
Tony drinks his coffee, and says nothing about Coulson. That seems to be a theme with them. Rogers didn’t say anything, just sat and stared at Coulson, while Thor boomed merrily his thanks at seeing the Son of Coul well recovered from his injury.
Clint has been glad to have his friend back, the third part to their messed up dysfunctional little family. Clint-and-Natasha are Clint-and-Natasha-and-Coulson and that’s good, that’s how it is supposed to be.
Clint-and-Natasha-and-Coulson is Chinese in Coulson’s apartment and old episodes of Supernanny, and terrible old horror movies, and the easy silence of three people so used to each other that they don’t need to talk. Clint-and-Natasha-and-Coulson is familiar.
Clint-and-Natasha sounds unfinished, like there’s something missing, like half a sentence that lingers in the air, a question that is never answered.
Clint-and-Natasha-and-Coulson is being twisted. Clint-and-Natasha-and-Coulson is being manipulated.
Clint doesn’t like it.
//
“Are you sure it’s really him?” he asks, and Natasha looks at him, and in that look it’s Budapest all over again. Clint could never stand it when he was being questioned - his ability, his stability; he’s the best, and still people question him.
She frowns at him. “Are you alright?” and he hates being asked that, he really hates it after being asked every day by shrinks and teammates, and hearing the other agents whisper when they thought he couldn’t hear them.
“I’m fine,” he grinds out. He shifts from foot to foot, and relaxes. “I just want to know if you’ve noticed anything - anything odd.”
“Odd how?”
“Just odd,” he says. “Unusual. Off.”
Natasha shrugs and shakes her head no. “I don’t know what you want to know, Barton. There’s nothing wrong with Coulson.”
//
Everyone has the same response. Coulson’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with Coulson. Are you okay, Clint? Are you okay, Barton? Are you okay?
Are you okay?
Clint hoists himself up through the air vents and sits there, breathing in and out, in and out. Fear settles itself deep in his stomach, anxiety works its way up his throat, and he swallows it down, sure of what it is that he has to do.
He is good with proof, he is good at recon. He is good at his job because he’s the goddamn best there is at what he does and he will show them. They’ll believe him.
//
Sometimes Clint thinks that Coulson got an apartment on the eighth floor just so Clint could practise climbing trees. He pulls himself up easily; it's repetitive, a habit long ingrained in him. The branches narrow and thin out, and he balances himself carefully as he works his way around. It'd be dumb to fall and break a leg for a robot.
The window opens easily. A snap, the branch is breaking. His hand shoots out, grabs the ledge and he holds back a laugh.
It's the same as it always it -- he just misses hitting his head on the bookcase, almost catches his leg on the table. The room is in darkness, but it’s okay because he knows this as well as he knows Natasha’s flat, as well as he knows his room in the tower, or his room at SHIELD. He knows that if he takes three steps to his left, he’ll knock the television over. Five to his right and one ahead is a cabinet, with pictures of his brothers and sisters, a couple of pictures of the three of them. A glass figurine that someone smuggled in that he didn’t bother to get rid of. Things that normal people have.
The kitchen is twelve steps directly ahead. He wonders if the robot remembers cooking dinner for one, for two, for three. He wonders if it remembers that Coulson would always play jazz while cooking - said it reminded him of his childhood, his mom always did it, and his dad did too, after she died.
Here is the drawer where he kept the first aid kit, which saw more use than it should have. Here is the fridge, with food that none of them eat. Here is the cupboard where he kept the coffee. It's almost empty now, he and Natasha drank most of it with vodka the week after he died. They fell asleep on the couch, and nobody woke them in the morning with breakfast and a frown.
The knives glint as he take them out, evaluates them and puts one, two, three back. Clint gently runs the edge of the bread knife over his palm; the serrated edge tickles slightly.
There is nothing between the kitchen and the bedroom. It's sleeping in Coulson's room, where he kept his neatly pressed shirts and shiny shoes and where he would let them sleep with him sometimes to remind them that it was okay to trust people.
Clint had trusted him.
Clint trusted him because he gave him reasons to trust him, because he saw him as more than just another asset. Clint trusted him before Coulson trusted him.
And now Coulson's gone.
And now Coulson's dead.
And now Clint has nobody to trust because Natasha didn't believe him, and Natasha should have believed him because Natasha was supposed to believe him.
//
There's a creaky floorboard a foot away from Coulson's bedroom door; he can never remember which one it is.
Do robots dream of electric sheep? Do they dream of the electricity in them, wish for blood, wish for real synapses and neurons? Do they wish to be real? Are they just some programmes and some circuits?
Stark would be able to tell him, but Stark is the one who built this, Stark is the one who kept this from him. Stark is the one whose hands have built weapons that make Hitler look like a school yard bully. Clint’s seen them in action, he knows what they’re like.
The door squeaks as it opens. The room is the same. The bed, the wardrobe, the bedside table. There are pictures on the wall.
The room is the same, and it is being invaded. Blood boils red-hot in Clint’s veins at the thought of something pretending to be Coulson even in his own home. It twitches in its sleep as Clint walks closer. The tics, the mannerisms; a lot of effort was put into this. Anybody who wasn’t paying attention wouldn’t notice the difference.
He can almost hear the clicks and whirs of the gears turning in the machine, in its mechanic brain, the oil pumping through its mechanical heart. How long did it take to make it appear real?
“Barton?” it mutters, sitting up. “What?”
Coulson couldn’t function properly without at least two cups of coffee in the morning; he was reduced to monosyllables and upon occasion walked into things. The realism reaches into Clint’s chest and wraps around it like a fist, tight and unrelenting and as unforgivable as an unprovoked attack.
“Hey, sir,” Clint says easily. There is a knife hidden under his coat. The handle is growing warm but the blade is still cool.
When he was younger, Clint was fascinated with knives. He had explained this to Natasha and Coulson once - the paradox of the cold blade and the hot blood, and the satisfaction of knowing that it had been you, the twist in your chest you get when you hear their stuttering breath on you, the way their hands reach for you, automatic and instinctive.
Natasha had understood. Coulson had always preferred the impartiality of bullets from a distance to the thrill of being up close and personal.
There are eight steps from the door to the bed.
“What?” it says, again.
When you are working, when there is a job that must be done, you cannot deviate from the task unless you absolutely must, unless there is nothing else you can do.
Clint has never stopped in the middle of a job.
//
The sheets are slippery against his legs as he straddles the robot. It breathes, halting and unsure, and such a very good imitation of Coulson that Clint is impressed. He can count on one hand the number of people who have seen Coulson vulnerable, have seen him question himself and his decisions, even as he was told that it was the best course of action. He thinks of Paris, he thinks of a little town in Russia. He thinks of blood on his face and bodies around him and telling Natasha and Coulson that family matters.
“Clint?”
It is quiet. It makes bile rise in Clint’s throat and it reaches for him, as a hand touches his shoulder.
He pushes it back down to the bed, and doesn’t miss the way its hands hover for a moment before settling on his hips. Its thumbs absently stroke circles into his bones, digging a grave for itself in every movement.
“I don’t -” it starts, and Clint doesn’t want to listen to it talk anymore with that voice, with Coulson’s voice, with Phil’s voice, because it’s wrong and it’s sick, and makes him want to break something, so he presses his hand down and its eyes widen and its hands flail out, grasping at Clint’s hand, pulling. It twists beneath him, trying to get free, but Clint was always stronger than Coulson physically, even if he wasn’t as fast, or as underhand.
“Shh.” Clint’s never been one for being soothing, for being comforting, and it shows in the awkwardness of the murmur, the held-back laugh rattling around in his chest. The knife slips from the pocket, and it kicks wildly, fighting more and more. Stark and his perfectionism - he probably would have preferred to jump off a cliff rather than not give his robots the programming for survival.
The knife slides between where ribs should be, and it jerks, a scream muffled behind Clint’s hand. Pull it down; a sob. Clint knows what people sound like when they die like this. Stark is a perfectionist. What sort of research would he have done?
There are tears damp on his hand. There is blood on his shirt, on the knife, and there is bone beneath the flesh. Stark’s perfectionism is messy. Stark’s perfectionism is art on the sheets, is magnificent in its skill.
Clint thinks he would probably appreciate it more if he understood the genius of the engineering behind it, but he has listened to Stark talk about his work and understood about one word in thirty.
It is still under his hands as he pulls the ribs apart, pushes his hands into the cavity. It is soft and warm as he searches for the slippery wires, no doubt warm by the heat of the robot. He will find them, he will remove them, and he will hold them, show them to SHIELD and say, “This is what Coulson was, this is what you trusted,” and will say, “This is what you refused to believe.”
His fingers slide against bone and tissue and he thinks that if he were more like Stark or Banner he would think that something like this should be put in an exhibition to be admired; the paradoxical fragility and strength of the creation, the thought that must have gone into it.
With something like this, Stark would have wanted to prove his ability more than he already had. He would have wanted to shove it in their faces and say I am better than you because that is what Stark does. He wouldn’t have been content to just build a normal robot, to build a spectacular robot. The wiring probably runs through the skin, embedded in the thick flesh like a web, growing and growing until they are twisting and weaving their way through every inch. It’s extraordinary.
//
The buzz of a phone interrupts his contemplation of the red oil on his hands, the sticky red mess on the sheets and pants.
Clint hits answer and before he can say anything, Stark is talking.
“Coulson, Coulson, listen - you have to be careful,” and Stark is panicking, actually panicking about Coulson. “There’s something wrong with Barton. Clint’s - Clint’s lost it, Natasha thinks he’s going to do something -”
Clint ends the call.