Infinity War Saga

Paying Penance

He retires.

He retires, and Clint means to stick with that, even if he's a little bored. Part of him misses it, the fighting, the adrenaline, the throbbing in his fingers as he lets loose arrow after arrow, but most of him doesn't. Most of him is fine right here, with cooking slightly burnt pancakes in the morning so Laura has the chance to sleep in for once in her life, with the kids crawling over him and the oldest just learning how to be a bit of a brat, going to from fighting bad guys to attending PTG meetings and helping with math homework, and he loves it. He really, really loves it- loves his kids and his wife and the old farm house, and if he sneaks out at night to target shoot in the woods just in case, just to stay sharp, well, no one needs to know about it.

Everybody has secrets, after all.

The Barton family just has more than most.

But then Cap calls.

"I have to go." He doesn't know why he's bothering to argue. The kids are in bed, and it is only him and Laura, her watching him from the kitchen table with her arms crossed, looking more tired than he had ever seen her. But he didn't have to fight her. She wouldn't ask him to stay. She knows better. Knows that he would always end up leaving, but she trusts that he's always going to come back. "It's Steve."

Laura isn't impressed. Hasn't been with any of his Shield colleagues, other than Natasha, and other than a grudging acceptance that now Stark would pop in sometimes for coffee and to offer some ridiculous scholarship for the kids. Clint can't quite figure out how to break it to Tony that his kids aren't smart.

"I know." She looks like she might cry. It doesn't happen often, but Clint knows how to tell- the way she looks up at the ceiling instead of him, how she bites at the inside of her cheek, the fact that she is dipping her fingers into her scalding hot coffee just to be distracted by the pain. He thinks that she cries every time he leaves, but he just isn't here to see it. "It's just that-," It's just that you promised me you were done. It's just that you almost died and it was only a fluke that you didn't, only because of a human lab rat with a heart that you're here now. It's just that you said that you had to take the kids skiing tomorrow, they went to bed early for it, can't you tell the world no just this one time? It's just that you spent so long taking care of the entire universe, when are you going to start taking care of us? "I know you have to go."

He wants to say more, but doesn't have time. Clint already has his duffel bag swung over his shoulder, and maybe that's why she never asks him to stay, because he already makes up his mind before he goes to ask permission. The fact that he had a go bag packed and ready in the attic maybe should have been his first clue that he wasn't really retired.

"Don't worry. It's just this mess with Steve." Later he would try to fool himself into thinking that he wasn't really lying, that that was what he really thought it was. Just a fight between buddies. Just a mess with the team. Not a bombing at the UN and an international scandal with Wakanda waiting to happen and the freeing of a fugitive. "I'll be back soon."

He wasn't back soon.

They get caught instead. Rounded up, taken to the raft, and Clint doesn't want to think about the actual arrest, the wreckage around them- all those agents from SHIELD ringing around them with their guns pointed, Stark begging to them to take it easy, that Spider kid curled up on the ground and clutching at his ribs, making a little whimpering sound every time he breathes, the airplanes and cargo trucks all around them, smashed open like some toddler had thrown a tantrum, and maybe that's exactly what they had done, maybe they were wrong, after all, so Clint lays down his bow and doesn't cry out when the first agent knocks him to the ground so hard that his shoulder is wrenched out of place.