USAgent, Hawkeye, and Mockingbird in…

IF I HAD ONLY KNOWN…

By Clayton Tooley

Then…

He moved quietly through the upper floors of the headquarters, eventually moving into the room Captain America had installed to mimic the room of Avengers Mansion that was designed to honor those comrades who had fallen in battle. He moved past old friends and allies until he came to the picture that haunted his mind, body and soul. He stood before her, his eyes tracing every line of her face tenderly as he fought to control his emotions. She had been so beautiful…

He reached one gloved hand out and lightly brushed her lips, tracing the line of her chin as he had done so long ago. He pulled his mask back from his face and took a few deep breaths, centering himself for the task that awaited him below, the mission he was about to take part in. After he felt he was in control again, he slipped his mask back up over his face and backed away from her picture. With one last look at her face, he turned and marched out of the hall and toward the nearest staircase.

In the darkness that remained in his wake, another figure stepped from the shadows and looked at the picture of the woman wearing the black and white costume with the golden hair spilling down her shoulders. He read the placard below her name:

Barbara Morse Barton a.k.a. Mockingbird
Beloved Wife and Avenger

“Fascinating,” the figure said, then leaving silently.

Now…

He sat at the table tugging uncomfortably at the too-tight necktie on the suit he was wearing. His discomfort was magnified by his surroundings, a French restaurant he could neither pronounce nor afford. Yet here he sat, waiting for what seemed like an eternity, around people who had no clear idea who he was and, what was worse, could not have cared less. He ran a hand through his blond hair, trying to stop sweating or at least taking deep breaths, anything to keep his shirt from cutting any deeper into his neck and underarms.

“Dammit, Bobbi, why’d you drag me out like this,” he mumbled under his breath as he fidgeted, nervous about the whole situation. It wasn’t being out with Bobbi that upset him, far from it. It was the circumstances and the consequences, and the embarrassing painfulness of what would happen if things did not go as he prayed they would.

It was certainly a tight-rope he was walking, but it wasn’t as if he weren’t used to that. After all, he wasn’t the Avenger known as …

“Well, hello lover,” Barbara Barton said as she glided into his view like an angel in white. Her dress was tight and right all at the same time, her blond hair arranged beautifully around her face to show off her intoxicating eyes, her perfect lips and the way her hips were bouncing made it clear to him that all was right with the world as far as she was concerned. He felt his spirits rise as he stood, reaching out for her hand.

Maybe this time everything would work out right…

They lay together on the bed, her face buried in his shoulder, sobbing lightly but steadily. She clung to him tightly, holding on for dear life as he softly stroked her hair, whispering reassurances he couldn’t justify to her over and over, the weight of her pain and sorrow only adding to his own. This situation they were in…it was difficult and amorphous, with no clear good or bad, just lots and lots of wrong.

He looked down at her, laying in the crook of his arm, molding to the muscles of his side perfectly, as if she had been built to be a part of him, an extension that he’d spent his life so far without. Her legs, bare from the thighs down in her new costume, curled around his, her toes tucking under the floppy tops of his boots. Their weapons lay on the floor near the bed along with the dinner neither of them had felt like eating when they’d brought it up from the kitchen upon returning to the Compound.

The lights were low, causing their dark costumes to blend into the shadows of the room, only their golden hair and pale skin reflecting any of the moonlight streaming in from the window over the bed. She lifted her head from his chest, wiping futilely at the tears on her face. “You probably think I’m some sort of basket case,” she said, sniffling. “Some Avenger, huh?”

“You don’t have to apologize to me, Bobbi, you never have,” he said, smiling at her as he brushed the hair out of her eyes. His hand lingered on her cheek for a moment and she reached up for it, taking it and pushing it back down onto the bed. “I’m sorry,” he started to apologize.

“Don’t,” she said, leaning forward and pecking him on the cheek. “I understand. You don’t have to apologize to me, either.” She then settled back down on his chest and sighed as her eyes watered up again. “Do you think he’s going to make it?” she asked for the hundredth time.

“I’m certain he will,” Jack Daniels said as he rested his hand once again on the shoulder of Bobbi Barton, estranged wife of Clint Barton, the Avenger known as Hawkeye, who had just hours earlier been shot more than a dozen times in an ambush in an alleyway by a gang he had been attempting to take down. “I have no doubt Clint’s going to pull through,” Jack continued, trying to ignore the part of his heart that prayed he wouldn’t.

They lay together in the bed but did not touch. If they could have been farther apart, they would have had to have been in separate rooms, as he hung off of one side and she the other. Years of love and laughs had been shared by them, but intermixed had been horrible fights, betrayals, petty disagreements and sometimes outright disgust. Yet through it all they had tried again and again, and at the core they loved each other more than anything else in the world.

Yet sometimes that wasn’t enough, even to the most committed marriages. Bobbi Barton lay awake on her side of the bed which she had recently enjoyed nights of indescribable passion as she and her husband, Clint Barton, had reunited and reaffirmed their love for one another. Now, as so many times in the past, the gulf between them seemed insurmountable.

Bobbi knew her own secret desires played a part in Clint’s suspicions and her own inability to forgive and forget, but she couldn’t help the longings of her heart, so often abused and unfulfilled by her husband, regardless of his intents. Since she had first been introduced to the Avenger known as USAgent she had felt an undesired yet undeniable attraction to him on a basic level, one which she thought would be no problem to keep wraps on at the time.

The failings in her marriage and her abuse at the hands of the Phantom Rider led her to seek comfort in John Walker’s, the recently discovered real name of Jack Daniels, arms a while ago when Clint had been severely injured in a gang shooting. Nothing had happened but they had spent a chaste night together huddled in his room, neither sleeping much but taking as much strength form each other as possible, helping them get past this shocking moment. It was more needed for her emotionally than for John, but she knew without a doubt he had the same attraction for her that she had for him, but his sense of duty and respect for Clint kept John from being more obvious in his feelings, but Bobbi was not fooled.

Neither was Clint, who lay curled on the other side of the mattress, his hands balled into fists beneath his pillow as he fought his rage, a rage that was built on unfounded suspicions that was only reigned in because of the love he felt for his wife and his lack of proof. If he blew his top, made a scene in front of Bobbi, Agent and the Avengers over what he perceived to be going on and he was wrong, what example of leadership would that portray? He was already fighting tooth and nail to keep Wanda and Tony and the Pyms from taking complete control of the team and he could just feel the control and importance of the team waning as time went on.

Plus, here in the darkness and safety of his own bedroom and thoughts he could admit it: he was intimidated by the USAgent. Maybe it had a lot to do with the similarity of the guy’s costume to Cap’s, or the fact that the guy had BEEN Captain America for a while, but a lot of it stemmed from a sense of impendency he felt around the guy, especially the way the Agent had tossed him across the foyer of the Avengers West Coast compound within an hour of arriving, like Clint wasn’t nothing more than a purple smock wearing Girl Scout.

It wasn’t just getting cold cocked that bothered Clint, Lord knows that happened fairly regularly. It was the complete dismissal not only of him as a man, as a physical threat, but as a leader, a teammate and an experienced Avenger who’d saved the world dozens of times in the past. The lack of respect or of even acknowledgement burned deep into the soul of Clint Barton and had been simmering there for months, even when he and Bobbi had taken a leave of absence to work with the Great Lakes Avengers he hadn’t gotten over it.

Now that they were back and Clint had recovered from his recent injuries, he and Bobbi were trying to get their marriage back on track but now the Agent reared his head again, even if only in Clint’s overactive imagination, seeming to have intentions on his wife that Clint couldn’t convince himself were completely unfounded. They had leaned on one another to get over Clint’s injuries, which no amount of convincing would make Clint believe it had been anything more than a play for Bobbi on Walker’s part.

He knew Bobbi well enough to trust that nothing had happened…yet.

Bobbi lay on her side knowing she knew herself well enough to know nothing would happen between her and John…yet.

The future continued to look more complicated, painful and unsure as the long sleepless night stretched on…

She hadn’t intended to do anything this afternoon except relax by the pool at the Avengers West Coast compound and try to take her mind off of all the recent Ultron and his ‘bride’ nonsense, especially the fact that it was she herself who had been an unwilling model for the brain engrams of War Toy, much like the Wasp had been the unwilling base for the creation of Jocasta many years before. For Bobbi Barton, it was a complicated circle of life that was too stressful to think about right now.

Today she was alone at the Compound, aside from the staff, and had the pleasure of stretching out in her bathing suit and just forgetting the world for a while. She stretched and felt the golden sun caressing her aching muscles and was almost asleep when she felt the shadow fall across her. “Damnit, Clint, I thought we discussed this thing called ‘space’…” she began before opening her eyes behind her sunglasses and catching her breath in her throat.

Standing above her was John Walker, her teammate known as USAgent, but something wasn’t right. His costume was filthy, covered with mud and grass and who knows what else, and he held onto his shield with only the tips of his fingers, the 25+ pound metal disk swaying in the wind. “Jack? Agent? Is something wrong?” Bobbi asked, covering her forehead with her hand to block out the streaming sun.

Jack reached up and pulled his mask back, exposing the only clean patches of skin on his face, as well as the tear streaks in the grime. He raised his right hand, the one not holding his shield, and started to say something, then let the hand fall, no words crossing his lips. He turned from the vision of her on the chair, which she felt slightly snubbed about given how often she caught him staring at her when she was wearing much more, and walked toward a nearby chair with all of the speed of a dying sloth. He turned and plopped down in the chair when he got to it, his shield finally falling free and rocking to the ground like a penny flicked onto a table.

Bobbi got up off of her chair and picked up her towel, draping herself in it and walking toward her friend. “John, what is it, hon?” she asked, taking a seat in the chair next to him, taking his large left hand into both of hers. Her hair was plastered back on her head from her earlier dive into the pool, and her blue eyes seemed to plead with him to open up to her. John looked at her and felt his spirits rise a little; she always had that reaction. Nodding, he began his story.

He told her about his attempts to make up for some of the things in his past that he had only recently remembered even doing, and how that had led him to checking up on his friends, Battlestar and the Left and Right Winger, the later two whom he had beaten severely and shackled to an exploding oil rig for their inadvertent involvement in the death of his parents at the hands of the Watchdogs. “They had third degree burns over 95% of their bodies,” he said, his voice barely a whisper. “The skin they did manage to regrow had to be scrubbed off every day just to prevent against infection…it had to be excruciatingly painful. The only thing keeping them alive was the enhancements given to us by the Power Broker, but that was a blessing in disguise because their muscles were so strong, every movement so powerful, that they did incredible damage to themselves with every movement.”

“Finally…finally they couldn’t take it any more and committed suicide together. When we were in Limbo and they attacked us with the other reanimated dead people, I thought Immortus was just screwing with us, and I killed them again. I thought it was a joke, a video game brought to life. But I…I’m a monster, Bobbi; a murdering, unfeeling monster.”

“You can hardly describe yourself as unfeeling when you’re sitting here with such overwhelming guilt radiating off of you,” Bobbi pointed out. “And you aren’t a monster, John, not at all. What you did, what the outcomes were, well, it’s ok to feel bad about that, it was all a bad situation from the beginning, but you had no way to know that the Red Skull was pulling your strings from the beginning any more than Steve did. At some point you have to forgive yourself, John.”

“How can I forgive myself with my past won’t let me?” John said. “When Cap and Hawkeye and everyone else can’t forgive me.”

“Now hold on,” Bobbi said. “If Cap hadn’t forgiven you, you can damned well believe you wouldn’t be in that costume in that chair on this Compound; that’s a given. As for Clint, well, it’s you he doesn’t like, not your past. Hell, he started out as a criminal and fought Iron Man before becoming an Avenger, and Pietro and Wanda, and Simon, were out and out villains with the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants and the Masters of Evil, respectively. And those groups proudly called themselves EVIL, for God’s sake!”

John shrugged. “S’different, they didn’t kill anyone. They didn’t LIKE killing anyone.”

“Well, ok, you’ve got me there,” Bobbi said, blowing a frustrated breath out through her full lips. “But does that make you proud?”

“NO!” John shouted, his eyes bugging out.

“Are you likely to go and do something like that again, now that you have your memories back?”

“Hell no!” John replied.

“Then shut the hell up, you broody bastard!” Bobbi said, smiling and squeezing his hand. “If you don’t forgive yourself, John, then no one will.”

“Do you forgive me?” John asked, leaning closer.

“For what?” Bobbi asked, just as John tugged on her arm, pulling her close enough to him to lean in for a kiss. Their lips touched, tentatively at first, then, just for a moment, they both leaned into it, the kiss stretching longer and deeper than either had intended, until finally they separated, both leaning back in their chairs, hearts beating like jackhammers as they tried to come to grips with what they had just done…and how much they liked it.

“I…I…yes,” Bobbi said, standing and moving quickly to the pool. “But…don’t…not any more; I’m married.” She turned, taking a quick look around the pool area and then back at John. “I mean it, Jack,” she said, stressing that name to signify that she was serious; John was the name of her friend, Jack was the name of the arrogant ass that needed put in his place often.

She turned then and dropped her towel before diving into the pool, the cool water having a calming, centering affect on her nerves and her flushed skin. John Walker sat back in his chair, a new kind of guilt flooding his senses but at the same time the image of Bobbi standing on the pool’s edge, not diving in as quickly as someone trying to get away would have, making sure that he got a good, long look before she dove in, something to remember her by, perhaps, or maybe just an unintended subconscious tease. Either way, he wasn’t complaining…about that, anyway.

The word ‘married’ still caused him some complaints.

The air was hot, sticky and nearly too damned humid to breathe. The stench was of rotten vomit over spoiled eggs simmering in a frying pan on HI coated in brackish milk. The ground was the color of blood and just as slippery, and when they were all knocked down they slid, sharp rocks and hot sand digging into their bodies, the coppery taste of blood, their own and others, assaulting their mouths. They pushed to their feet, still running for the portal back to life with all they had, unsure if they were going to make it or not. John Walker ran for his life, pushing Spider-Woman and War Machine along before him, praying that Hawkeye, Mockingbird and the Scarlet Witch were keeping up with them.

It had all gone to hell between them, the Hangman, his cursed souls and Mephisto, and they only had one chance left at life and it was a dwindling portal that Wanda was fighting to maintain for them…but it was going to be close. They finally reached the escape point and they all leapt as one, stretching for freedom and hoping one of the hellfire bolts being fired by Mephisto didn’t hit them.

Then it was over and Jack was falling, tumbling back into the world on the sunny edge of the severely damaged Avegners West Coast Compound’s back yard, and he slammed into the grass and dirt just inches from where a badly damaged War Machine and exhausted Spider-Woman lay resting, happy to be alive. They’d made it!

Then he heard the scream, the soul-searing sound of a man who had all but lost his grip on reality and Jack turned, knowing the last time he’d heard a scream like that had been in a barn in Georgia, the day his parents had been murdered. He saw Hawkeye kneeling on the ground next to a collapsed Scarlet Witch, cradling and rocking something in his arms. Jack took a step toward him and started to call out to him, but the name died on his lips when he saw…

They stood over the grave, looking at the fresh letters carved into the marble stone, surrounded by the dozens of friends and family who had come to honor the loss of one of their own. Clint Barton was inconsolable, as the perturbed faces of some of the Avengers, most notably Natasha Romanov and Steve Rogers, both of whom had been rebuffed by the desolate man. No one had attempted to approach him as he stood next to the grave in well over half an hour when John Walker had finally gotten the courage up to walk up and just stand next to him, staring at the grave.

Neither said anything for the longest time, their memories replaying every moment, every second they had shared with this angel of life over the years, and the moment the light died in her eyes on that sunny day not so long ago, really, when she had sacrificed herself to allow them to escape from hell. Finally, Jack noticed the crowd dispersing, leaving only the current West Coast and East Coast Avengers teams, too good of friends to give Clint Barton the one thing he wanted more than anything, yet needed worst of all, and that was time alone.

“Clint, it looks like everyone’s heading off,” Jack said, uncomfortable in both the location and the suit he was wearing, which he’d borrowed from Simon. It fit for the most part except for the pant legs, which were too tight on him. I swear that B-Grade movie star is built like a top, tiny ass little legs… Jack was thinking and not listening, so he missed the response he got from Clint. “I’m sorry, what did you say?” he asked.

“I said, ‘go rot in hell, you bastard’,” Clint rasped, never taking his eyes or his clenched jaw off of the grave of his wife. “Why are you even here?”

“I…” Jack fought to keep his cool, aware of the respectful place he stood. “I came because I care, Clint. For you, for Bobbi…”

“You weren’t supposed to care for her,” Clint hissed, his voice low and harsh. “She was mine to care for, you understand that? She was MINE!”

His voice was low but it was clear from the reaction of some of the Avengers that they had heard it. Captain America took a step toward the two but a furry hand clamped onto his elbow, drawing his attention. “Steve,” Greer Nelson, the Avenger known as Tigra said as she held one of Wonder Man’s hands in her other. “Don’t, not now. You don’t understand.”

“Understand what, Greer?” Cap asked as he looked back at Clint and Jack, who were now looking at each other for the first time, both of their faces turning dark red.

“The complicated road of love,” Simon Williams said, turning his red ionic eyes from Clint and Jack to where Wanda Maximoff stood, conversing lowly with his ‘brother’ the Vision. “It’s best to stay out of it, believe me.”

Jack’s face turned red from Clint’s statement and he moved around to stand in front of Clint, between him and the grave so Clint would have to look up at him. “You think I didn’t know that, Barton?! Nothing happened!”

“And I’ll bet you’re so sorry about that, aren’t you?” Clint said, his own face darkening. “You couldn’t have been more obvious if you tried, you son of a bitch. You wanted my wife from the moment you walked in the front door, and you couldn’t stand that she wanted me over you!”

“Did she?” Jack said and instantly regretted it as he saw Clint snap and take a swing. Jack didn’t turn, taking the full brunt of Clint’s powerful blow, rocking back on his knees to absorb the blow, but not moving. “You’re right, Clint, and I deserved that one. But what I want and what I do are two entirely separate things, same with Bobbi. So you can blame me all you want for the guilt you feel inside, bow boy, but it wasn’t me that torpedoed your marriage. You were screwing that up long before I came along.”

“You bastard!” Clint said, trying to punch Jack again, but this time the Agent evaded the blow and, as gently as a man who could juggle a car could, he pushed Clint away from him. The shove was still strong enough to send Clint pinwheeling back until he slipped and fell onto the ground, where he just sat there, mouth agape, eyes tearing over.

The crowd of Avengers rushed over, ready to leap in and break up the fight. Jack stepped back, raising his hands up in surrender, wanting no part of this. “Whoa, easy everyone, it’s just…”

“He’s right,” Clint suddenly said, tears streaming openly down his face now. He got unsteadily to his feet and swayed for a minute, looking around at some of the closest friends he’d ever had, and he felt like a stranger among them. “It was all my fault,” he choked out, then turned and walked away. Overhead, sky cracked once loudly with lighting and a hard, cold rain began to fall. The assembled Avengers watched Clint, some considering following him but none did, finally paying heed to his wishes. They looked instead toward John Walker, who was still standing with his hands up in the air, a flummoxed look on his face.

“Nice job, Agent,” Tony Stark said, one arm around a trembling, rage-filled Black Widow, who was staring daggers at Jack. “You’re a pro.” Steering the distraught woman away, Tony led a parade of Avengers away, mainly the East Coast branch, but only a few moments passed before most of the West Coast branch left also, no one saying a word. Finally it was just Steve Rogers and John Walker standing by the grave of Barbara Barton in the rain, silent as death.

Finally, Steve reached up and pulled his cowl back, now that they were alone and his ID was safe from the few in the crowd who hadn’t known it before. “Were you having an affair with Bobbi?” he asked.

“NO!” Jack said, throwing his arms up in despair again. “We…she…” He wiped his hands down his face, as if he could find a way to force his mouth to say something right for the first time. “She didn’t judge me, Steve, not like the others, like you did when I was the Super Patriot and your replacement, and certainly not like I deserved to be judged. She got it, do you understand?” Steve didn’t move, but his forehead creased, trying to see what Jack was saying.

“She empathized with what I had been through, all the crap I did and had done to me in the past. She accepted it and still wanted to help me anyway. She helped me through so much, and I tried to return it when she needed it, which most of the time involved her and Hawkeye’s problems, and I’m not talking only about when he got shot. We could talk to each other and it didn’t have to be anything more than that,” Jack said.

“But it was, wasn’t it, John,” Steve said, walking closer to him. “Instinctively, without conscious effort on either of your parts, you grew closer. You have to be able to see how that affected Clint, how it’s going to affect him for a long time.” They stood there, side by side, two completely opposite sides of a coin, staring at a lost friend and thinking of another friend who had lost something neither of them were likely to ever find…a wife, a partner…a soul mate.

“Did you love her?” Steve finally asked.

“Yes,” Jack said honestly, hanging his head. “But I don’t think…I don’t think I was in love with her, ya know.”

“I know, John,” Steve said, clapping his right hand on Jack’s right shoulder, squeezing his troubled friend in support. “We all loved her in our own way, but Clint loved her in every way.”

They stood together for a moment longer then turned to head inside out of the rain. As they walked, Steve looked off in the distance where Clint had disappeared. “He may never be able to forgive what he thinks happened, even if you could prove it to him, but give him time. I’ve met and known more men in my lifetime than anyone else alive and I have to say I’ve never met a better man in my life…nor a bigger pain in the ass hardhead. It’ll all work out eventually.”

“Thanks Cap, I appreciate it.”

“Ugh,” the man on the patchwork sled said as his body was assaulted by a sudden unforeseen dip in the floor of the forest, even that light impact rattling his poorly bandaged wounds and making it feel as if he had been stabbed in the stomach…or shot by another arrow. “Barton, you’re killing me,” USAgent mumbled as he squeezed his eyes shut tighter and held on for dear life, his blood-covered arms wrapped around his stomach, holding his guts in beneath the blood-soaked bandages.

“I’m sorry, Jack,” the exhausted voice of Clint Barton said as he paused just long enough to make sure that his friend wasn’t in danger of falling off of the sled and then turned and tried to make his tired legs move faster. They’d been moving for almost five hours if his internal clock hadn’t run down yet, and he had no real good way of determining how much further they would have to go for help. He didn’t know how much further he would be able to pull Jack before it turned into him pulling Jack’s body.

He took a closer look at Jack as he turned and used both hands and his knees to lower Jack over a drop and cringed. The larger man was pale as a ghost from the lost blood, the stomach of his costume torn open to reveal something out of a horror movie. Lodged in Jack’s stomach was the solid steel broad head of the arrows Clint had brought with him into the woods to practice with and to protect against predators. They had unscrewed the arrow from the head, but there was no way to pull the razor-sharp arrowhead out without eviscerating John Walker.

“Goddamnit, I’m sorry,” Clint said, hanging his head. He’d been surprised by Jack the night before, through no fault of Jack’s, and he’d shot at the noise on reflex and hit his friend. Clint cursed himself as he picked up the straps to the sled and continued onward, damning himself for his lack of focus and clarity and for not looking before he shot. When you were shooting a boxing glove arrow, or a boomerang arrow, shooting before you look is perfectly acceptable, and sometimes necessary. But when you’re firing kill shots, you had better make damned sure of what you’re aiming at.

Jack had told him as Clint worked on his stomach that he’d come because everyone in Force Works and the Avengers were worried about him, but no one wanted to impose on his wishes to check on him…except for Jack, who’d been tracking him for weeks. Clint hadn’t known whether to be happy or pissed, but considering what he’d done he settled for somewhere in the middle and fought instead to save his friend’s life.

Friend? he asked himself. It was true that he hadn’t seen Jack since Bobbi’s funeral and really hadn’t wanted to, but he’d also done some thinking up here and while he hadn’t made up his mind for certain before this, he was sure now that he did not blame Jack for what had happened between him and his wife; the big dumb idiot had just been a good place to lay the blame. It was time to forgive and forget and get on with life; if nothing else Bobbi would want that; so for her he could live, and maybe someday he’d find a reason within himself to enjoy it.

“…sorry…wanted…to know…no intentions…”

Clint hadn’t realized Jack’s mumblings had actually been directed towards him. He stopped and knelt next to his friend, the new red, white and blue costume he’d adopted when Stark formed Force Works didn’t really suit him, in Clint’s opinion, but it didn’t take away from the presence of the USAgent. Clint opened their one remaining water bottle and poured some on Jack’s lips. “Try not to talk, Jack. I think we’re getting close, but without our communicards we…”

“…don’t…matter…only…” Jack licked his lips and cleared a very fluid-filled throat, then looked at Clint with clear eyes for a moment. “I’m sorry, Clint, for everything I thought and did to you and Bobbi. I never wanted to hurt either of you. I had mental problems, emotional needs, I…”

“Jack,” Clint said, taking one of his friend’s hands. “Stop, enough. I understand, honest. What you went through was rough, I really do understand. I had a rough patch of my own a few years before we met where I thought my life was over and I very nearly let myself be drawn away because of it, just like I was doing here in these woods. In my darkest day back then, a gift was given to me in the form of a mysterious woman named Mockingbird, who became not only my savior but my everything. She had a way of recognizing those in need and helping them, and it was all she cared about more than anything, even on that last day when she stepped in front of that hellfire bolt for me.”

“You see, Jack, this whole time I’ve been up here I’ve been blaming you for responding to the same qualities that I responded to all those years ago when she came to me, when she saved me. I know I’ve been focused on what my jealousy over some of your abilities had convinced my mind would make her love me less and you more, but I realize now that it wasn’t what I thought it was all that time. Regardless of anything that might have happened, what I know is that she helped you the same as she helped me, and if she deemed you as someone worth helping, as someone she wanted as a friend, then I’d be a damned fool to do any less.”

“When I lost her, I lost my way for a time, but what Bobbi gave me is too precious to waste here in the woods, alone,” Clint said, smiling. “You showed me that by coming here…it was just what she would have done. And for that I thank you with all my soul, my friend, and I swear to God if you die on me I’ll kill your ass!”

“Heh,” Jack laughed, his chest heaving painfully, a little blood gathering at the corners of his mouth.

“Don’t talk,” Clint said as he started to get up, but a powerful grip held him down.

“She saved my life, Hawk,” Jack said, his blue eyes wide. “I know for a fact I’d be dead today if it hadn’t been for her caring. It didn’t make her love you less, though…you were her strength, her other half. Even an angel needs a source of strength.”

Jack’s eyelids drooped and his head sagged back. Clint knelt quickly and cradled his friend gently back to the hard sled. “Then I hope she’s up there now looking out for both of us, buddy,” Clint said as he picked up the straps and took off again. “God knows we need a miracle now.”

The room was quiet and sullen, the large gathering of heroes not really in the mood to socialize but none of them wished to be alone, either. Scattered around the expansive living room in Avengers Mansion were a few dozen of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, each of whom were engaged in a number of activities from talking, to drinking and even a couple just staring at the pictures on the wall in sadness.

The deaths of the last year, starting with Simon Williams and ending just yesterday with the death of the elder Tony Stark at the hands of his time-tossed younger counterpart, had taken their toll on this team, dragging even the stoutest of their ranks to the lowest points in their lives. No one was certain of anything any longer, not even their confidence in each other. Not after living through something as horrible as the Crossing.

Seated at a large round table, six men tried vainly to keep their minds occupied. They were an eclectic assortment of colorful individuals made even more absurd by the stacks of colorful chips rising before them, none more so than the two men who sat opposite each other, locked in a game of obstinate willpower that both had plenty of to spare.

Clint Barton threw his pair of 7s to the table in disgust as the smiling face of John Walker pulled the chips in the center to his side of the table, where his matching 8s lay. The specially designed cards were quickly collected and passed by Ben Grimm to Hercules, who shuffled them angrily, nearly snapping the super-strong cards in his powerful hands as he furiously considered the shrinking pile of chips before him. Across from him, Thor sat in his new bare-chested look and kept a keen eye on the shifting, seemingly very bored Quicksilver sitting next to him, as he had all night.

Pietro noticed and threw his hands up in exasperation. “Thor, I swear, I am NOT cheating! If I were spying on the cards at superspeed, would I really be this far down in the hole?”

“`Tis a very coy game you play tonight, Quicksilver, that is indeed not in question,” Thor said, squinting his eyes. “But nay shall the Son of Odin be once again a pawn for thy amusement in such games of chance.”

“That was just one game a long time ago!” Pietro said, drumming his fingers on the table at superspeed. “It’s not my fault you people play so slowly. Do you know how many different things I have to think about between hands to keep myself from exploding? Hundreds! It’s exhausting! Besides, you and Hercules wouldn’t trust Captain America not to cheat you, much less me.”

“’Sides,” Ben Grimm, the so-brief-blink-and-you’ll-miss-it one-time West Coast Avenger and founding member of the Fantastic Four, began, “don’t think Speedy there’s got anything going on tonight. These two jokers, though…” he said, gesturing between Hawkeye and USAgent, “Í dunno, they make me feel like I’m on Yancy Street with my pants down.”

“That hurts from you, Grimm,” Jack said, hitching a thumb toward the Thing. “Of all the guys who couldn’t cut it on that West Coast team of Hawk’s, who let anyone in, see Darkhawk and Living Lightning, nuff said, this guy lasted less time than those guys AND Moon Knight AND the Shroud. Hell, I decked ol’ Purple Puss over there my first day and I lasted years.”

“Keep it up,” the Thing said, taking his cards and looking at them. “You’re new little Cap Jr.-colored costume may be tough, and those lightshows you call shields may protect you from most things, but you ain’t never been on the receiving end of a good ‘Clobberin’ Time’ neither.”

“Ohhh, scary,” Agent said, taking his own cards. “Give me a little orange tar and a steamroller and I’ll fix that pot hole on Yancy Street with your…”

“I always thought it’d be you,” Hawkeye said suddenly from the far end of the table, where he tapped his cards thoughtfully against the table as he looked at Jack.

Thrown off, Jack cocked his head to the side as he tossed down three cards for replacements, which Hercules attended to while listening to the conversation. “Excuse me?”

“What you just said, about hitting me, it got me thinking. All this ‘Crossing’ stuff with Tony and Kang and Mantis and all the betrayals and everything, well, to be quite honest, I always thought if we had to watch our backs from someone, it’d be you,” Hawkeye said, bluntly.

The table was dead quiet for a second as everyone took in that statement, then four heads turned to pierce Jack with questioning eyes and by doing so, they missed the slight break in Hawkeye’s expression, but Jack didn’t. Responding accordingly, he folded his cards down onto the table gently, clasped his hands together and leaned forward. “Really? Let’s take a poll, shall we? Who at this table was once a criminal who fought the Avenger known as Iron Man?”

Four heads swiveled back to Clint. “Point, but who’s killed over a dozen men here?”

Only two head swiveled back this time, as Hercules and Thor found something else to look at suddenly. Clint made a show of taking that in and then held up a hand, “Ok, point for you, thanks guys, always good to know you can count on your ‘gods’ to help you out in an argument.” Hercules and Thor both just shrugged.

“Life to those such as us is…very long,” Hercules said, twiddling his thumbs.

“War is common, well, moreso in ages ago, but when honor demands…” Thor began.

“…or the braggart deserves it…` Hercules broke in.

“…yea, or that, then what is one to do but strike for honor, for Glory, For As—!”

“Yeah, yeah, Asgard and Odin, we got it,” Agent said, smiling cockily. “Besides, don’t lump all the crimes of the past on the three of us, what about Lightfoot here,” he said, nodding toward Quicksilver without taking his eyes off of Hawkeye. “How long ago was it he and the Zodiac tried to kill both teams?”

“Now, just wait a damned minute!” Quicksilver said as all their heads turned toward him, as well as many in the room who had taken interest in the conversation. “I wasn’t myself, I had problems that are corrected, I…why are you looking at me?! I did nothing worse than Pym has done! I mean, where did that Ultron robot get to anyway? It was just here a moment ago…”

“I’m not blaming you or trying to dredge up faults of the past,” Jack said, raising a reassuring hand to both Pietro and Hank Pym, whose face was flushed red as a beat. “I’m just trying to say, nobody’s perfect, not even in this bunch. Even the sexy hulking sidewalk here’s been known to snap and go a little crazy every now and then…”

“That’s Mr. Sexy Hulking Sidewalk to you, punk,” the Thing said, uninterested in most of this conversation. “I just came over to play cards…”

“Yeah, yeah, we’ll get to that,” Clint said, waving him off. “Ok, I see your point, Jack; I mean, hell, I was manipulated by a Russian spy/expatriot back before I became and Avenger, and now she’s bossing us around, so I can buy your ‘people can change’ riff.” He smiled at the Black Widow, who just floated him a little gesture to express her gratitude. “I mean, hey, didn’t the Witchie try to take out the West Coasters a few years back with your pop and you, Quickie?”

“That’s a well documented…” Pietro began to say, his frustration growing.

“Ah, he’s just pulling your chain, Pietro, trying to keep that mind busy,” Jack said, waving him off. “But now that you’ve brought this all up, Clint, I’ll say it: I always thought it’d be you, too, but I wasn’t that worried. I mean, you really are the weakest of us all, with just a bow and arrow…are you listening to me?” Jack asked suddenly, confused that Clint had wandered off. “Clint?”

“Oh, sorry, yeah, I always thought it’d be you, Cap Jr,” he said, taking his cards up again, shaking off an intense sense of deja vu. “But I guess we’ve established that some of us here have things in our pasts that might color us in a suspicious light, and some of us don’t, but that doesn’t always mean anything, does it?”

“Nope,” Jack said, taking up his cards and finishing off the main point he and Hawkeye had discussed before the game about making in front of everyone, hoping to spur a little soul searching and a faster recovery for them in light of the unfathomable betrayals they had recently endured. “It all comes down to faith and friendship and what being an Avenger is really about…protecting people from events beyond their control.”

“And unfortunately we aren’t immune to those same events,” Clint said, taking up his cards again also. “Thank God we’ve got each other to fall back on when the shit hits the fan.”

“Agreed,’ Jack said, laying down three-of-a-kind Queens. “But I really thought it’d be you.”

Everyone at the table threw their cards down in disgust except Hawkeye, who smiled as he lay down three-of-a-kind Kings, watching Agent’s face fall. “Right back at ya, Jacky. Now give us a hug!”

“Cap, is this really the next best move we can make here,” Hawkeye asked, his purple cloaks pulled tightly around his body, the hood pulled low over his face, his long-bow in his hands, the quiver full of arrows slapping softly against his backside as they strode across the rough dirt next to the man in the red, blue and gold armor, who was carrying a heavy metal shield in one hand, an elaborate sword attached to his hip, whispering through the air as they walked briskly. “I mean, yeah, he’ll probably come around, but shouldn’t we be going after someone with a bit more power here?”

“Clint, we’ve already gotten Ms. Marvel, She-Hulk and the Wasp free, and they’re each moving on to different, particular selections next, but we need everyone and we have to focus on those who are strong willed and who believe in being an Avenger more than any other.” Cap stopped, looking through the ridiculous helmet he had been forced into thanks to Morgan Le Fey’s mystical re-writing of the world. “And really, aside from you I’d have come to him next anyway, I just happened to run into the others first.”

“Yeah, I know, but he’s gonna be cranky,” Clint said, smirking. “He’s kind of a whiner when pulled into situations like this. I mean, hell, Mr. Immortal never bitched as…oh, hey, there he is now!”

They looked up to see the man they knew as John ‘Jack’ Walker heading toward them in his black armor, dressed similarly to how Cap was, but the man he was dragging behind him by the neck seemed much more afraid of Jack than Cap or Hawk. “You,” Jack said, gesturing to Cap, who according to Hawkeye’s fuzzy memory was supposed to be the leader of Le Fey’s little Avenger Army. “Take this man into custody.”

“Oh,” Cap said, catching the man as Jack hurled him toward the colorful Avenger. The man looked up at Cap with hope-filled eyes, and Hawkeye thought he saw that the man’s pupils were blazing red. “The charge?”

“He failed to pay his tithe,” Jack said dismissively. “As an Agent of the Queen, I must seek full punishment on Mr. Lebeau for his crimes.”

“Right, I’ll take care of him,” Cap said. “Clint, would you care to speak to the Agent here.”

“Sure, Cappy,” Hawk said. “Agent, can we talk?”

“Cappy? Agent? What are you talking about, bowman?” Jack said, his guards coming up.

“I’m talking about the Avengers, Jack, you know, Avengers Assemble and all that. Do you remember the Avengers, John Walker? Do you remember who you are, the USAgent?” He could see Jack’s eyes were still confused. “Do you remember the Watchdogs, your parents, Battlestar?”

Jack blinked, his forehead scrunching up as he felt the tugging at something in his mind, but he started to shake it off. “What are you…?”

“Enough of this,” Clint said, stepping forward and taking Jack’s upper arm. “Mockingbird, Jack, do you remember Bobbi? You were a teammate of hers…ours…on the Avengers West Coast.”

“Bobbi…?” Jack said, his eyes blanking out again as he turned inward for a moment. Then his eyes snapped open and Clint saw what he was looking for in those serious, suddenly clear blue eyes. “Clint. What the fuck’s going on? What did Le Fey do to us?”

“We don’t know,” Clint said, clapping his friend on the shoulder, the unspoken connection between them left unspoken again. “We need…”

“…to stop,” a voice beside them said and both men suddenly froze, each looking to the other for confirmation of what they had just heard. “You’ve both suffered enough here.”

“…it can’t be…” Clint Barton said as he turned to his right and saw her standing there. His legs went weak at the knees and he collapsed forward onto Jack, who just barely managed to hang on to his friend while going a little weak himself. “What is this?”

Standing next to them in the same sort of frilly gowns and hat that the other women in this medieval world wore, was Barbara Barton. Her robes were black and white, her golden hair piled high on her head around her pointed hat, the veil dangling from her hat and across her shoulders doing nothing to hide her perfect beauty. She smiled at them both, their hearts suddenly beating so forcefully they thought they would die. “Hello, Jack, you’re looking good, under the circumstances.”

“I…you…what…hi,” Jack said, a tear rolling down his face silently.

“Such a sweet talker,” Bobbi said, stepping toward them and reaching out for Clint. “But I’m afraid I have to speak to Clint.” She pulled him free from Jack’s grip and toward herself. “Hey lover, what have you gotten yourself into this time.”

“…this isn’t possible…,” Clint stammered. “What did Le Fey do…?”

“Le Fey is gone, Clint; the Avengers dealt with her months ago. This is all in your mind,” Bobbi said, gently stroking his tear-stained face with one hand, her beautiful face never stopped smiling at him. “You and Jack are involved in something else, something worse. But he’s cocky, Clint, he doesn’t know how Franklin healed you.” She pulled him in close, her lips drawing close to his ear. “He doesn’t know you can hear him.”

Then the sounds of the medieval city and of his own beating heart ceased to exist as other sounds infringed on his ears. He heard a lot of machines humming and beeping, and breathing, deep breathing. Then, just at the edge he heard talking. He strained as he stood there, feeling his arms still clinging tightly to this image of Bobbi and he listened.

“…heart rate, breathing and brain activity is spiking…” someone was saying.

“…of them seem to be fighting harder now. This is beyond my past experiences…so willful…” a second, almost melodic voice said.

Then the first voice was back. “Sir! What are you doing?” Then a door opened and the sounds that had been muffled was suddenly crystal clear. “You know what Malfric said: they can hear us if we speak! It could disrupt the…”

”I am well aware of what Malfric said,” a new, powerful voice said, one instantly recognizable to Hawkeye. “What he doesn’t know is that Barton is deaf and the scramblers in this room disrupt his hearing aids. He can’t hear me. He’s as weak as I always knew he was.” Then there were other footsteps and the door closed again.

But it had been enough. His body was shaking in Bobbi’s grasp as his clothing changed from his medieval garb into his more familiar costume. His face was beat red and suddenly his arms were free as Bobbi had vanished, much as the world around him vanished with the exception of Jack, who had also returned to his original costume.

“CROSSFIRE!” Hawkeye yelled in his mind and in the real world he sat up suddenly, his body snapping up like a whip, his eyes opening and the unfamiliar room around him sinking in. He could see he was in a sterile round room dressed in his costume with his mask on and he was strapped at the wrists and ankles to a table with an IV plugged into one arm and electrodes attached to his head. His blood was racing and his breath ragged in his chest as he snapped his head around and peered through the large glass window to his right. “You’re DEAD!” Clint snarled as he spied the object of his fury.

Michael Cross stumbled back from the control panel where his technician was working, his blood red costume bright in the dim room, the red cross over his eye patch bulging in surprise as much as his one remaining good eye. His mouth opened and he pointed toward the technician and Clint could hear him saying something about ‘gas’. Barely a second later a hissing sound began and Clint knew he only had seconds to act or he’d never wake up again.

He began thrashing around but found that the thick straps kept him pinned to the table. He looked to his left and saw Jack lying on the table next to him, his eyes open about half-way under his own mask, looking much more lost as to where he was and why than Clint was. “Jack! Wake up, Jack! I need your help!”

“Bobbi was here…” Jack said slurred, blinking, as if he was falling asleep.

“No, Jack, she wasn’t! It’s Crossfire! He’s trying to kill us! You have to get up!”

“No, Bobbi was right over…”

”She’s here, Agent!” Clint said, trying to hold his breath as he tore his own heart out to save their lives. “Crossfire has her! She’s in trouble, Jack, he’s killing her! Please, you have to help me save her!”

The Agent’s eyes seemed to focus on what Clint was saying and he tried to sit up, his body moving so slowly that Clint could barely stand it. Jack reached the end of his bonds and his face crunched up, his focus sharpening more, but still too slowly. Clint saw Crossfire smiling in the control room and his blood boiled. “Goddamnit, Jack! He’s going to KILL BOBBI!”

“NO!” Jack said suddenly, flexing his arms and legs at the same time, his super strong muscles not just breaking free of his bonds, but shattering the clamps that held him to the table. He spun off the table on Hawkeye’s side and stumbled to the floor, barely catching himself on Hawkeye’s bed, his IV and electrodes pulling painfully free as he fell. He pulled himself up and for the first time looked past Clint and into the control room. It was then that a look passed across his face that terrified Clint in its ferocity as he snarled and spun, jerking his own bed clear of the floor, turning and hurling it toward the glass.

The table hit the glass and shattered the window into a million pieces, the three men in the control room barely avoiding the out-of-control table and serious injury. Hawkeye breathed a sigh of relief as Jack’s powerful hands grasped his own bonds and snapped them, freeing Hawkeye to roll off the table and remove his own IV and electrodes. “C’mon, Agent, we’ve…”

“ugh,” Jack said, stumbling forward and collapsing on Hawkeye’s table, crumpling both it and himself to the floor.

“Jack, he’s getting away!” Hawkeye screamed.

“Go,” his friend responded. “I’ll be…ok in a minute. Get the son of a bitch.”

Clint gritted his teeth but ran to the window and leapt into the control room, but found only one person in the room, the technician who was lying on the floor, unconscious. Hawkeye saw his bow and the Agent’s still operating photonic shield laying in a heap next to his arrows and he quickly grabbed their gear, taking Jack’s shield with him, unsure of how it was still operating but grateful for the protection. He checked both sides of the hallway before he ventured down to the left, following the slight blood trail on the ceramic tile floor.

He held theshield out before him on the arm he also held his bow in, aware he had absolutely no idea where he was or what was coming. He quickened his pace as he heard an argument at the end of the hallway and he turned a blind corner without looking and ran smack into Crossfire, who was maybe 20 feet away, just stepping behind a dozen men armed with bats, whips, chains, clubs and other various forms of physical brutality.

“Kill him,” Crossfire hissed, pointing at his most hated adversary. “One million dollars to whoever brings me the head of Clint Barton,” he said coldly, pointing at Hawkeye.

For once in his life, Hawkeye didn’t say a word as he snapped his bow up, drawing a particular arrow from his quiver in what anyone in the room would have said had to have been random, and fired. The arrow tore through the only path through the bodies he could have fired and still reach Crossfire and hit Crossfire between the second and third fingers of the hand he was pointing with, the razor-sharp pointed tip of the arrowhead cutting through the man’s palm and wrist bones with ease, and the force of Hawkeye’s bow, 250 pounds each pull, drove the arrow straight up the double bones of the forearm, splitting the ulna and radius neatly apart before the arrowhead lodged securely and messily into Crossfire’s elbow.

Blood shot out around the feathers on the end of Hawkeye’s arrow, which rested up tight against Crossfire’s palm, no other wound open between the wrist and elbow, but the forearm immediately swelled to three-times its normal size and Crossfire collapsed to his knees in indescribable pain and shock before he finally began screaming, tears cascading out of his one good eye.

The dozen guards he’d primed to attack Hawkeye stood stunned silent, looking between the crippled mess that was until a second ago their boss, and the pissed off Avenger standing with three more arrows notched on his bow. “You’re move,” Hawkeye said, his voice as cold as death. A few of the guards got a firmer grip on their weapons, perhaps considering it still, but then a second voice got their attention from behind Hawkeye.

“Next guy that moves gets a pulverized pelvis,” USAgent stated firmly as he stepped up beside Hawkeye, holding a chunk of concrete from the wall of the room they had just broke free of. Agent held the concrete up in one hand, then brought his other hand slamming down, demolishing the hard concrete between his hands like chalk, then dusted his red gloves off. “Drop your weapons and assume the position,” he finished.

All of the men looked at the two Avengers, at their injured boss and at the concrete dust on the floor, and they wisely dropped their weapons and lay down on the floor. Smiling, feeling like himself again, Jack took a bundle of adjustable restraints from a pocket on his belt and began securing their prisoners while Hawkeye covered him. A few moments later they had the 12 men securely bound and against the wall as they approached the near-fainting Crossfire.

“Don’t…kill…me,” Crossfire managed to say between gasps for breath. “I’ll…I’ll talk!”

“Don’t care,” Hawkeye said, who had re-quivered his arrows but flexed his grip on his bow then stepped forward like a baseball player and hit Crossfire with a vicious diagonal slash, the flat part of his bow striking Crossfire on his lower right cheek bone, flipping him around to the left and onto the floor in a meaty lump, unconscious immediately.

Had he done that with Captain America or most other Avengers standing beside him, even after what they’d just been through, Hawkeye knew he would have had to deal with a load of crap. From USAgent, however, he got a firm pat on the shoulder and a smile. “Wanna hit him again? I can turn away if it’ll help.”

“No, I’m good,” Clint said, pulling his mask back. “What a day.”

”You are strong,” a voice behind them said and they spun, weapons drawn. “Very willful and direct.” The man standing behind them was roughly four feet tall and broad, his head a slightly nauseating orange color that didn’t sit well with their eyes. It was obvious that this was the other man in the control room with Crossfire…Malfric. “He underestimated you.”

“No, he didn’t,” Hawkeye said, not lowering his bow. “He just didn’t know my ears got fixed when I and the rest of the Avengers returned from wherever we were for a year. He was cocky, didn’t even check for the hearing aids he believed were there; I was lucky. You, though, why would you help him? Who are you?”

“I did not help him…I coerced him,” the little man said, spreading his arms wide. “I needed to deliver a message.”

With that cryptic statement, the little man suddenly stretched at the waist, elongating like Reed Richards and touching the tips of his fingers to the uncovered forehead of Clint Barton. He had moved too quickly for either Avenger to respond, and before Jack could react to help his friend, the little man seemed to burst like a balloon, falling toward the ground like feathers but disappearing completely before ever touching the ground.

In lieu of this strange, eye-catching display, the Jack failed to see Clint’s eyes close or hear the ‘oh!’ escape his lips as his body dropped to its knees, then fell backwards. When Jack realized he was the only person in the room awake, he scratched his head and sighed. “Figures,” he said, pulling out his communicard and calling in help.

They lay once more in bed only this time they clung so tightly to one another that Clint Barton thought that if Bobbi squeezed his ribs any tighter they’d snap, yet he didn’t care because he was squeezing her just as hard. They hadn’t let go of one another for a split second since they had both appeared here who knows how long ago, neither asking any questions as they’d ran to each other and fell onto the bed.

Now they lay exhausted yet unfulfilled because while they hadn’t spoken of it to the other both were aware that their time together was not permanent, just a fleeting moment of connection in a realm well beyond the physical. Clint trailed his eyes over the bed behind them, the room an exact duplicate of their quarters at the Avengers West Coast compound all those years ago. He saw the sky begin to turn from pitch black to purple and knew that dawn would soon sweep across the sky and with it Bobbi would be swept back into the afterlife, trapped in Mephisto’s clutches, far beyond anything Clint could do for her.

“I’m sorry,” he said finally, tears seeping from the corners of his eyes and tracing lines down his face to his pillow. “I’m so sorry you died and I couldn’t save you. I’m so sorry that the T-bolts and I couldn’t get to you when Daimon Hellstrom sent us to retrieve Hellcat. I’m sorry for so very much…”

She picked her head up off of his chest, her own tears that she’d been crying for hours having made a pool on his chest, leaving the left side of her face damp. She kissed him and brushed her fingertips through his hair. “Stop, please. You couldn’t have done anything differently, Clint. You couldn’t have saved me even though I know how much you wanted to…wished you could have.” She closed her eyes and Clint could see something pass over her face that bothered him.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Do…do you…” Bobbi licked her lips, her throat dry and hot as hell. “Do you love…her…now?”

The question was direct and full of emotion and Clint felt his own heart constrict with guilt and pain. “I…don’t know, honestly,” he said simply, his confused feelings over Karla ‘Moonstone’ Sofen swelling within him. “I think I was, or could have, but she sided with Zemo over me, taking anything I thought we might have had and destroying it. I had…have…feelings for her, Bobbi, but I don’t love her. I don’t know if I’ll ever truly be able to love anyone ever again. I still love you so goddamned much it paralyzes me sometimes if I don’t keep busy.”

Fresh tears streamed down both of their faces as they embraced again, the truth of these moments too much for human emotions to cope with. They broke apart and she stroked his face. “What Jack told you…what you told him…I’m so proud of you both. Did I have feelings for Jack? Yes, yes I did. Did I ever want anyone but you? God no! I never in either my mortal life or…where I am now, never have I ever loved anyone but you, Clint. You must believe that.”

“I do,” he said.

“What the Phantom Rider did to me, though, and the difficulties we had since day one, well…it got overwhelming, Clint,” Bobbi said, drawing into his embrace as he pulled on her arms, wrapping his arms around her, his warmth suffusing her. “When Jack came onto the team and then discovered all his secrets about his prior life, he was so much like you, Clint, when I found you when Crossfire brought us together. I wanted to help him, no, I needed to help him, and thereby I helped myself, too. You have to have friends and victories outside of your married life, Clint, to keep life balanced.”

“Our problem was we did everything together and were damned suspicious of anything the other did that didn’t involve them,” Clint said. “Especially pig-headed me. I never considered what Jack had gone through until after your funeral, when I…shot him. He told me he didn’t think he’d be alive now if not for you, you know.”

“I know, and maybe I wouldn’t have without him, either, you know, before Mephisto…” Her voice trailed off as that day lived again in their minds. The sky outside was lightening quickly…they only had a few moments now.

“Do you remember the last night we spent in here before I died?” she asked.

“I remember we made love almost automatically, with no passion,” Clint said, disgust for himself apparent in his tone. “I’m ashamed. If I had only known it was the last night we would ever spend together, I would have spent it holding you, loving you, praying to any god who’d listen to stop time so that night would never have ended…so that I would have never lost you.”

“I would have looked you in the eyes,” Bobbi said, turning around in his arms and taking his face into her hands, “and made sure you knew how truly and deeply I loved you and how my love for you would go on forever…even in death.”

“If only,” Clint whispered, his voice hoarse as he felt his eyes well up again. “God I miss you, Bobbi Barton.”

“I miss you too, Clint Barton,” Bobbi said, smiling as their faces came together. They continued their embrace for an untold length of time and when next Clint Barton opened his eyes he looked not into the face of the love of his life. Instead, Jack Walker and Julia Carpenter looked back down at him, their faces concerned but relieved when his eyes focused on them. Julia was dabbling at his cheeks with a soft cloth, her own eyes looking ready to burst at any moment.

“Clint?” Jack asked, waving his hand in front of his friend’s eyes. “You in there, buddy?”

“Jack…Julia…where?” Clint asked, his mouth dry. “What?” Jack helped him rise into a sitting position and he found he was on a hospital bed in the headquarters inside of Captain America’s brownstone, wearing a hospital gown with a number of probes connected to his body. “How long?”

“Almost two days,” Jack answered, handing him a glass of water. “What’s been going on in there, Clint? You’ve been mumbling for hours, and the first clear thing you’ve said was just a moment ago, before you woke up. You…you said Bobbi’s name.”

A look of haunted loss and leftover guilt crossed Clint Barton’s face as he lowered himself back down onto the bed, his eyes suddenly heavy. Then the most true and wonderful smile since his wedding day split his face as he settled back into his pillow. “It’s all right, Jack. She’s still here,” he said, touching his forehead and his heart. “I saw her, I got to say good-bye. Everything is going to be all right, pal.”

He was asleep before either Jack or Julia knew what had happened. They looked at each other and Jack smiled. He had told Julia about what had happened and Crossfire had been taken care of. Whomever that orange midget had been, he hadn’t been seen since and Clint appeared to be ok, even better than that. They shrugged, turning the lights off over Clint’s bed and walking out in each other’s arms, leaving their friend to his dreams and memories of the best thing to ever happen to him.

~The End~