Love Is For Children (a clintasha fanfiction)

Chapter Five

Barton's face lights up, and I'm surprised. I managed to blow my entire emotional wall apart and make someone happy within ten minutes. What is SHIELD doing to me?

"I need a minute." My walls are still down, and I need time to pull them back up; shame slips into my tone, and I sound rather guilty and small. Barton just nods.

"Yeah, I guess all the emotional trauma of feeling emotions is getting to you, huh?"

Count on Barton to make a sarcastic comment when you're actually struggling with something. I should have known.

I don't react, though, even though I feel so exposed; I just slide down the wall to the floor and slowly begin pulling up my walls. Happiness? No. Guilt? No. Rage? No. Sadness? No. I tick through the emotions, rebuilding my fortress brick by brick. I don't know how much time passes, but I sit there on the floor for a long time, just trying to recuperate and pull myself together.

Emotionless. I feel nothing. I feel nothing.

Finally I stand up and look Barton straight in the eye. "Where is the training room from here?" My voice is hard, cold, and flat again, and I almost let a little relief slip in, but I don't. No. I feel nothing.

Barton looks disappointed, almost, but I guess that makes sense if he wanted to get a friend out of this. He won't. I'm just his partner, maybe, and I am nothing near a friend. I never will be. I am a void and he needs someone who can actually feel things if he's going to survive any friendships at all.

Wow, that was deep.

"We are supposed to be doing paperwork, so we'll have to go around the back corner. No one's ever there except for Coulson, and he - oh, crap." He smacks his hand to his forehead, clearly disappointed in himself. What did that idiot do? Am I leaving after all?

He simply continues to stand there with his palm against his forehead, sighing and shaking his head slightly. Is he not going to tell me?

He's not going to tell me.

"What did you do?"

He looks up, surprised. Is he surprised that I had to ask, or is he surprised that I said anything at all? Is something off about my voice? No, not as far as I can tell.

"Coulson is probably waiting for us in that stupid paperwork room. He was supposed to give us the papers. He's not going to let us off the hook. He'll come find us."

"Then we go to the training room or whatever, and we work out, and we hide. It's not that hard, Barton. Please tell me you're at least a half-decent BSer."

"Honestly? No, I'm crap at it. We'll have to go do the paperwork, I guess." With a huff, he puts his and up to the door. I smack his arm, hard enough to make it glow slightly red. He recoils in shock.

"Nope. I'm not doing paperwork right now. We're going to go train, like you said. Come on. Where's the training room? And what can this Coulson guy do against to professionally trained murderers?"

He glares over at me. "I'm not a murderer. I'm fighting for the greater good."

"Don't try to sugarcoat it, Barton. It's murder. It's what we do. Now which way is it to the training room? We'd better hurry before this Coulson guy starts looking."

"He won't start looking for a while. He'll think that I'll go back to the room when I realize that he's supposed to be there."

"And you won't. Come on. Move. Go ahead and open the door, but walk to the training room, not that stupid room of paperwork. Come on. Do tell me that you remember the way, because I've never been here and you can't expect me to know it."