The Lone Wolf (Clint Barton)

Chapter 50: Holiday Cheer

Jackie POV:

"Why is this where I had to track you down to?" I asked once I opened the door to a mini shop in the back of a small apartment building. Raising a brow at the setup that Clint and Kate had going on, I waited for an answer to my now silent question.

"Well, you see-"

"We're making more trick arrows." Clint interrupted the younger female, having seen the inquisitive look I had about the odd way he was doing things.

"So instead of calling Tony and get them easily, this is what you decide to do." I observed. "God, why did I have to marry such a difficult man?"

"Because you're nearly the same exact way." Clint hummed, making me roll my eyes but not comment on it. What could I say? He was telling the truth. Wordlessly going over to the worktable, I pressed a kiss to his cheek before observing the scene. "Can you work on this slime one?" He asked.

"Please don't tell me you're still scarred from the incident in '97." I deadpanned.

"It was traumatizing, alright?" Clint defended, making me roll my eyes and sigh before taking the three arrows.

"Wait, what happened in '97?" Kate asked, very confused. Before I could answer, Clint stopped his humiliation.

"Kate, have you seen that pepper spray?" He asked the young female.

"Yeah, I've got it here." Kate answered, handing it to him.

"All right." Clint smiled.

"What is this one?" Kate questioned, going back to her job of labeling arrows.

"Way too dangerous." I answered, interrupting Clint for payback of stopping me from telling the story. It was a fond memory for me, but embarrassing for him, although I find that it was way with a lot of things from our past. He raised a brow before continuing to work on an explosive arrow.

"Too dangerous." Kate mumbled, writing down the tag.

"So, this, uh, this holiday party tonight, is it a fancy thing?" Clint asked.

"Yeah. Formal." Kate nodded. "You know, you don't have to do this."

"It's part of the job." Clint shrugged. "It's always inconvenient. It's lonely. You will get hurt. Heroes have to make some tough decisions. So, if you're gonna do this...I just wanna know you're ready."

"When I was younger, aliens invaded." Kate started her own story, finally going to give us some clue about what had happened that made her such a fan of Clint. "And I was alone. And I was terrified. But then I saw you, fighting aliens with a stick and a string. I saw you jump from that building even though you can't fly, even though you don't have superpowers. And I thought, 'If he could do that, then I didn't have to be scared.' You showed me that being a hero isn't just for people who can fly or shoot lasers out of their hands, it's for anyone, who's brave enough to do what's right, no matter the cost." She took a deep breath before continuing. "I'm ready."

"Good." I spoke up. "Well, I'm finished with the arrows that you don't want to put together, so I'm going to go grab a suit for you and a dress for me."

"The purple one?" Clint asked, taking the arrows from me.

"No, we have business to take care of, not that." I scolded, waving bye to Kate before heading out the door. Immediately starting towards an out-of-the-way neighborhood, I soon found myself in what was considered a 'ghost town'. There had been an alleged gas leak that somehow turned over half the occupants into zombies, something we had to take care of in 2011. I had bought a pretty ruined apartment building off of one of the landlords and remodeled it in my free time. I rented out most of the apartments out, but used one of them to store stuff that I didn't trust Ed with.