A/N: This is my first ever Avengers fic. Hawkeye is my favorite character, and I think there is so much potential in the Avengers universe that I would very much like to play with all of it while I'm pining away waiting for the second Avengers movie to come out because I'm a baby and haven't learned how to wait.

For those of you following my Lifetime series, this, yes, this is the reason I was late updating this week. You'll also notice that holy cow the chapters are soooo much longer than Lifetime chapters because every chapter is going to be a single mission, and I'll only break up the super-long important missions (like the eventual tackling of Clint/Natasha meeting).

Disclaimer: I don't own Avengers or Baha Men or Blink 182 or Village People (and yes, you will see why I have to make such disclaimers later) or Star Trek or anything else in this fic that I might have mentioned for cheap pop culture referencing and timelining ;)

...

Mission One: We Need Fluffier Socks

Clint had been in the shooting range for a long time, but nobody had noticed him there. He was good at that—being overlooked. Just look like you belong there, and then look busy.

The junior agents had arrived. New recruits. And Clint was trying to decide how best to put an arrow through the egos of some of the snottier kids. A few of them seemed to think that their experience in the Army, in the field, wherever else Coulson and Sitwell had pulled them, made them top-of-the-class material.

There was a girl named Sharon, fifth from the last, good shot without being loud about it, who was top-of-the-class material, and no one seemed to notice her.

Coulson had. Clint knew that. Head brass was pretty good at seeing past blustering. But junior agents? They thought talk was important.

Second from the right. Big mouth. Muscles crammed into a shirt too small on purpose. Eyed every girl in the room like he was staking a claim. That was the one.

Clint stood up, grabbed his bow, and crossed the room. He was good at not making a sound. Sniper, thief, agent—same training, really. So he made it all the way to the kid's spot, almost inches away from him, before he noticed.

Muscles tensed, breath came in, and the kid spun on his heels. Clint made a show of ducking away from the gun the kid was still holding. Remind the kid he was still armed—it wasn't a good thing to forget.

Clint looked at the kid's target. Decent aim. Pulled to the right. Too many chest shots. Clint called up a new target sheet and turned to the kid.

He held out his hand. Waited.

"Sir?" Kid sounded unsure. Stick an authority figure in front of him and he lost the swagger.

He plucked the gun out of the kid's hands and fired—three shots. Head, two chest shots. He picked up the bow. Same pattern, just took a little longer. Shafts passed right through the holes he'd already made.

And he'd known the kid would rise to the bait—that was why he'd picked him. Because the kid looked at him, at the bow, at the quiver, and started to laugh. "What's the point of that thing if you can't—"

Clint held up a hand. He didn't say anything, just pushed the button that moved the hanging target even farther back down the shooting range. Further, further, until it was almost at the wall. Didn't have to go all the way, just far enough . . . there. Purple feathered ends sticking out the middle of three bullet holes.

The kid stopped talking, just turned and stared. Dramatic reaction, but not unexpected.

The rest of the shooting range was quieter now. Ah, so they'd noticed Clint was there. One of the kids must have noticed arrows. Or maybe it was just that the kid standing in front of Clint had stopped being a pretentious upstart for so long that they wanted to know what had finally shut him up.

And there, yep, there was the staring. Didn't bother him, not really, but it was still staring.

"You're never as good as the next guy that comes along. Don't get comfy," he said brusquely to the kid whose gun he'd taken. He packed up his bow and left the shooting range.

He grinned. Well, that was fun.

But he stopped grinning pretty fast when he saw who was waiting for him outside the shooting range. Coulson.

"Terrorize any junior agents today?" Coulson asked. "Make any of them cry this time?"

Clint grinned. One time. You make a kid cry one time and you never get to live it down. "Only five this time. I'm slipping."

"Barton . . . ." Coulson shook his head like he couldn't believe he was having this conversation with one of his best agents.

Clint grinned. He'd been more than pleased about being asked to join SHIELD. Threw himself in, gave them his loyalty, and he loved it here (not that he'd tell Coulson that). But he was also not much of a team player, and he knew as well as everyone else that he was practically always on probation around here. Like they were just waiting for him to screw up.

So he'd screw up plenty. Terrorize new recruits, find his way into restricted areas. Get in a couple fights just because he could. Stick arrows in places they didn't belong. They expected him to be a problem, so that's what he'd be. At least then he'd be meeting their expectations. Fit in too well and he'd get kicked out for being too suspicious.

Drove Coulson nuts, especially after the strings he'd pulled with Fury. (Clint didn't believe half the things Coulson said about Fury, though. He'd met the guy. They got along, if that phrase could be applied to someone like Fury. And Fury seemed to be on board with Coulson's whole "second chances" bit. Not like it was the first time a crazy kid with a shady past joined SHIELD's ranks. In fact, Clint was pretty sure that was SHIELD's whole history right there.)

"You got a mission for me, sir?" Clint asked before Coulson could give a lecture. He was good at those, and despite the fact that it was painfully obvious Clint didn't listen to a word the guy said, they kept coming.

Probably because he knew Clint wasn't listening. Maybe Coulson thought he'd teach Clint by pure osmosis, if nothing else.

Sometimes Clint could see it in Coulson's eyes: "Why'd I let this idiot follow me home?"

Yep, there it was. That was the look.

"It's a simple recon mission," Coulson said, handing off the file. "Small town in Canada. Nothing big."

Clint nodded. Same story. Nothing big. Keep the leash tight.

Coulson raised both eyebrows but didn't say anything. The look meant, "Stop whining, Barton. Baby steps."

He opened the file with an exaggerated sigh. There was the usual stuff. Three to four agents recommended—meant he'd have partners. Great. Layout of the land. Something about a weird energy signature, almost unearthly. Energy readings, weather reports . . . .

He looked up at Coulson and held up the file. "Who're you sending?" he asked.

"You."

"And?"

"And you."

Clint blinked at Coulson and pretended he wasn't grinning like an idiot. "Yeah?"

"Unless you want me to send you with a babysitter. I know you hate being alone—"

"Shut up." Clint laughed anyway. "You sure, sir? I mean, you didn't just swipe a mission from someone else and give it to me to make me feel useful?"

"Barton, if I didn't want you to be actually useful, I'd leave you to stick around here and terrorize more of the new recruits."

"Speaking of—"

"I know. You think we don't screen before we recruit? We always take a few who need taking down a notch. Why do you think we even still let you out of your cage when the new recruits arrive?"

Clint laughed. "Glad to help."

"You're a menace."

He grinned lopsidedly. "You love me anyway," he said.

"Uh-huh." Unflappable, that was Coulson. Smiling, yes, but unflappable.

Clint made his way back to his quarters, found one of those SHIELD winter uniforms, and packed three quivers and two bows. Also food and water. And an iPod. Not the new one; he hadn't put any songs on it yet.

He checked out a plane and promised to bring it back in one piece no less than three times before the girl in the garage believed him. He was a good pilot; he didn't destroy SHIELD property until he was on the ground and being shot at!

Preflight checks, ground clearance, and another empty promise to bring everything back in one piece later, he was in the air.

Solo mission.

Clint grinned. 'Course, it wouldn't be a solo mission for very long. There'd been two SHIELD agents down for the first recon, and they'd gone silent. And three days was a pretty long time to go silent. But until he found them—or possibly what was left of them—he was running a field op.

Running. Running the field op.

Clint set the controls to auto pilot and leaned back in his chair, his hands behind his head. Solo mission. Huh.

….

The cold bit into his hands as soon as he stepped out of the plane.

He'd put her down somewhere quiet, covered in trees and snow, and far from civilization. Far from a hot cup of coffee and a warm bed, but then, if Clint really needed those things then he was going soft.

Snow was recent enough to crunch when Clint stepped in it. Hard for stealth, but these were the coordinates, so he just would have to deal with what he had. No problem.

Find a tree, make a perch, observe.

Two hours. Three. Four. Snow started to fall again. Reduced visibility, but Clint had seen through worse.

These were the last coordinates of the missing team. They must have left something behind. Some clue. Something Clint could spot.

Snowing harder. Clint sighed. He'd seen a cabin on his flight over, old and falling apart and probably never used since whatever storm had caved in the chimney, but it would be good shelter, and it was closer than the plane.

He did an unnecessary backflip out of his perch, just to keep in practice, and headed, grumbling, through the snow to the cabin. First solo mission since he joined SHIELD and he was freezing his tail off looking for clues that weren't there and chasing an energy reading that was no longer registering on any of the tech Coulson had sent along with him.

"Coulson, when I get back, we're going to have words," Clint muttered under his breath.

…

Clint took out his bag of sunflower seeds. It'd started as a joke. The Hawkeye thing. Perching, nesting, living in trees. But he liked the bird jokes—it meant they were paying enough attention at least to know who he was. Get noticed for talent, for skill, not for being a security threat—that was a good way to keep Coulson from changing his mind and throwing Clint back to the criminal justice system.

That and the fact that Coulson was convinced Clint would escape two seconds after they locked the door. Which was, of course, true.

But he embraced the jokes. Started eating sunflower seeds. Gummy worms. Problem was he was now pretty much addicted to sunflower seeds.

He took out a handful and popped them in his mouth and settled himself down in the cabin. He'd been right. It was pretty abandoned. Fireplace was totally collapsed, which made the whole place basically useless as a winter retreat. There was a layer of about an inch worth of dust everywhere. Five cockroaches so far. Three spiders. One bat that Clint was no longer on speaking terms with.

Wind was picking up. The picture outside the cabin's window was pretty much just a blanket of white falling down hard and fast. Wouldn't last too much longer, though. Clint had seen the clouds on the way over, and they were heavy, carried lots of snow, but they were moving fast. It'd pass this area and move on to some other, more populated and better prepared area sooner or later.

He popped another handful of seeds in his mouth and checked his equipment again. Same readings. Nothing new.

Snow. No readings. Sunflower seeds. Snow. No readings. Sunflower seeds. Snow. No readings—was the bag empty? Of course it was.

Snow. No readings. Snow. No readings. Snow was letting up now.

Clint sighed and rubbed his hands together. The friction-generated heat helped, and so did the long underwear. Still, he was going to have another word with Coulson when he got back about SHIELD winter gear being actually, you know, warm. That wasn't a huge request, right?

Snow was light enough now that he could go back out. Would've changed the landscape, so he'd need to readjust his bearings.

He got up and shook the feeling back into his toes. Number two on the list of Coulson complaints: standard-issue shoes.

Clint had some fluffy Christmas socks from whoever had been his Secret Santa this year. He'd start wearing those on snow-bound missions from now on. Probably against regulations. He'd add that to the list of infractions. (He really should have been officially reprimanded by now. Although maybe Coulson's lectures counted . . . .)

And then he heard it. Slight scuffle sound. Like feet on a doorstep.

Clint sighed long and loud, because he knew the best place to hide.

He pointed at the bat, as if it could understand him. "You bite me or give me away, I'm taking you back to the lab. They could always use a flying lab rat, I'm sure."

The bat just stared at him. Shifty little thing. Like Clint didn't know it was evil.

"Hello?"

Okay, most bad guys didn't announce themselves at your doorstep. Still, best to be careful. Clint fitted an arrow. "Yeah?"

There was a pause, and then, "Who's there?"

"Uh-uh," Clint said. "I'm inside the house. Guests do the introducing. It's traditional."

"Mind if I come in first?"

"I'm armed."

"I'm not surprised to hear that."

Clint thought about it for a minute and figured it couldn't hurt. "Door's not locked."

The young woman opened the door with both hands up in a gesture of peace. He recognized her from somewhere but couldn't quite . . . .

"You're that guy," she said.

"Uh-huh."

"The one that terrorized my class when we started training," she said and frowned disapprovingly. "You made Terry cry."

Coulson, I am going to kill you. You did this on purpose, I just know it. "You make one agent cry one time and no one ever lets you live it down," he said with a heavy sigh.

But now she was smiling and had put her hands down. "They send you after me?" she asked quietly.

"Well, when you stop checking in for three days and the energy signature disappears from our scanners, we like to check on things just to be sure."

"Coulson's like a mother hen."

"Try saying that out loud when he's around," Clint laughed. He put his bow away. "Barton," he said, sticking out his hand.

"Fielding," she said, taking his hand.

"You got an explanation for what's been going on here, Fielding? Because I spent hours looking for any sign of you and your partner at your last known position—which is where, by the way, any good agent would know the search party would start—and got snowed into a cabin in the middle of nowhere and ate all my sunflower seeds out of sheer boredom."

"You really do eat those? I thought—"

"Let's start with the missing partner."

Fielding blinked at him once, then twice. "Partner?"

"Yeah, you know? Annoying human being you get stuck with on missions whose job it is to make sure you don't, you know, disappear from SHIELD's radar or something?"

And then he heard it. Carried on the last of the snowstorm's gusting winds. The very loud, very hard to miss, "Who let the dogs out?" It was the burglar alarm he'd rigged for his plane. Unorthodox, but it never failed. After all, he had promised not to lose a plane this time.

Hawkeye had his bow strung in a second. Fielding had her pistol out, too.

"Bet I'm a better shot than you," he said.

"Bet it doesn't matter," she shot back.

They stared hard at each other, over bow and over pistol, the only sound in this god-forsaken place the echoing "who, who, who, who" of Baha Men.

"You want to tell me why your partner's hijacking my plane? I'd've taken you back all on my own, and I'm a pretty fair pilot, even in the snow."

"Put the bow down, Barton."

Clint grinned a wide, manic grin. "Uh-huh." He threw it aside.

And that stupid, demon bat came barreling at them like a bat out of, well, yeah.

It was a perfect distraction. She paused just long enough to try and fight off that rodent, long enough for Clint to pull his sidearm, shoot Fielding's hand and the hell bat (in that order), and then plug the gun right between her ribs.

"We're going to try this again," he said to her as she held her bleeding hand to her chest and looked at him like she couldn't believe he'd actually shot her. "Your partner is trying to steal my plane. And you're not that great of an actress, so please stop lying to me."

"Well," she said through gritted teeth, "if you're going to be polite enough to say please . . . ."

"That's me. I'm all manners. Even housebroken. Want to grab my bow, Fielding? I'm attached."

"You get it."

"I have a problem with being shot in the back. Sure you do, too, but better you than me," he said.

She nodded grimly and crossed the little cabin to pick up her bow.

"I think I remember you from that class," Clint said. Keep talking. Look for an exit. Kill Coulson when this is over.

"Yeah?"

"I told Coulson you were a better shot than you thought you were, but you kept comparing yourself to the other agents," he said.

"How sweet."

"I speak only the truth."

"That's a lie."

"Yeah, that's a lie."

They'd almost made it to the front door when Clint was distracted. In his defense, it was a very distracting distraction—the floor started to hum and then move!

She'd known. She'd known it was going to happen, because she was holding on to the door handle with her one good hand. She kicked his feet out from under him while he was still tipping dangerously to one side.

He didn't land flat on his back, though. Steadied himself with one hand and took a very good chance at a swipe with his bow that also doubled as a way to recover his balance. She ducked, and he sighed. Close combat. He was much better at ranged, but he'd do what he could.

Coulson was always bugging him to go to training, but Clint was always there for this part of it, the fighting part. How to take a punch and roll with it. How to dodge, deflect, keep an opponent on her toes.

Didn't say anything in the manual about moving houses, though. That was a new one.

Clint felt the floor move again and made a grab for her shoulder at the same time she made a grab for his hair. They met each other in a closed-fisted block, and then she tried to fight dirty with her knees. He spun to the left, towards her wounded hand, so she would have to turn to fight him, and in the few seconds of that turn, he had his hand on the door handle and yanked it open.

"You've got to be kidding me," Clint said. "Where did the ground go?"

Hundreds. They had to be hundreds of feet up.

She grabbed his hair and pulled, and he went tumbling back inside, crashing against the far wall. "Spaceship?" he asked and hoped he sounded like this was just a normal thing for him.

"Programmed an entire wing to look like an Earth dwelling," Fielding said, nodding.

"So. Not human?" he asked.

"No."

"But you look like one of ours."

"Isn't that interesting."

Clint frowned. Yeah, okay, he'd deal with this weird later when he'd dealt with the weird he was standing in. "If you've got this ship, why steal my plane?"

"We can't fly this thing back to SHIELD."

She shot at him. Aiming for the shoulder, the feet, the knees. Wasn't trying to kill him, now wasn't that interesting. "Uh-huh. So the flying saucer show is for my benefit?"

"From what Fielding remembers, you're much more dangerous far away than in close quarters. I'd like to keep you in one place."

"And not out there going for my plane, yeah, got that," Clint said as he worked his way back towards the door. "Just one problem."

"Oh?"

He flashed her a grin. "The door doesn't lock."

Clint let gravity catch him as he fell, turning with the fall so that he was looking right at the white powder below him. Took two bullets in the back, but that was what the Kevlar was for. That and keeping warm. Keeping warm was mostly why he brought it. But he was going to be sore.

He took out his arrow and hoped those eggheads at SHIELD knew what they were doing when they made this stuff, because he was about to trust them with his life.

Splat went the arrow into the snow, splat went Clint into the goo it had, in fact, formed on contact with water (or snow, in this case).

He'd kiss the girl back at R&D as soon as he saw her, he swore before he passed out.

…..

He woke up with a start. Not good. He wasn't supposed to pass out. Not good.

Something—no, make that someone—heavy was sitting on top of him and talking to her partner. "Yeah, idiot jumped out of our ship. Doesn't seem to have hurt himself too badly, though.

I'm almost impressed."

"I hate this," Clint muttered into the snow.

"Hush now," she said with all the sweetness of a snake and pushed a gun into his temple.

"Yeah, see, that's scary if I really think you're gonna kill me, but I don't think you are, so you can stop pretending. I think sitting on me is just fine to keep me here," he said.

"I can think of a few other creative places to put this bullet if you don't stop talking."

"Point taken."

His bow was lying just barely out of reach, but he had a few arrowheads he could try. Not the explosive one, not unless he was sure blowing himself up was going to help, too. And it wouldn't be helpful, since he knew about the other one out there somewhere.

So he took the sharpest arrowhead he could find and jabbed it just between her ribs. She bled, and he imagined explaining this one to the SHIELD laundry staff as he rolled out from underneath her. He grabbed his bow, and she was up and running, heading across the tundra . . . .

"Stop!" he called out to her. He saw the cracks, and he could see them criss-crossing his way, too.

She had her hand to her ear and was saying something to her partner.

He sighed. No one ever listened to Clint Barton. Well, fine, if she was determined to take him down . . . ! He fitted the explosive arrow and fired.

The explosion threw him backwards, but he twisted and fired a grappling arrow onto the nearest tree. The thing had to have roots in real ground and not iced-over lakes.

And two seconds later, he was hanging over a ravine and letting the line reel him in, watching over his shoulder as Fielding fell. She looked almost . . . green.

She hit the lake, and she wasn't moving. He fired a tracer arrow right through her, just to be sure, once he reached the top of the ravine, and watched her sink to the bottom.

Coulson was gonna kill him. That was extra-terrestrial, and he wasn't bringing it home. But Clint was definitely not jumping in that water. There was a tracer on the woman; they could start with that.

The latest song on his "Really Loud and Obnoxious Songs for My Alarm" playlist started up. With trumpets. YMCA.

It sounded close.

Clint climbed the tree easily, and he could see, just on the horizon, his black SHIELD plane. First time he'd been glad to fly a black plane into a tundra.

He jumped down from the tree and took off running.

…..

This new SHIELD agent lookalike was a big guy. Bigger than Clint.

But Clint had the element of surprise. And Blink 182.

The SHIELD guy was looking around desperately for Clint's hidden iPod—he knew he couldn't take off in the plane if it was broadcasting music on alert like that. Distracted, annoyed, and not expecting company. Clint's favorite type of bad guy.

He fitted an arrow and took a deep breath. Coulson was going to kill him for this.

He let the arrow fly, and the acid ate right the door lock. Another grappling arrow, and he was able to hang from the side of the plane and jimmy the pilot door open just wide enough for one more arrow.

Poof. The gas exploded in every direction, and Clint shut the door again and plugged the acid-made hole with one useless, snow-wet sock.

He heard coughing and stumbling around inside, and Clint didn't block the door as the alien tried it. The guy swung open the door, gasping in breaths, and then Clint tagged him with a tranquilizer tip, and the guy dropped, totally unconscious.

Clint waited until the gas had dispersed before he slipped inside and put down the loading platform so he could drag the alien into his hold.

He went for his communications system. "Coulson?"

The silence stretched on for a long time before, finally, there was a response. "Barton, do you know what time it is on this side of the continent?"

"Coffee's on me, then. Listen, I got a situation down here."

There was the long-suffering sigh of a guy who'd had to put up with all Clint's screw-ups since the beginning. "What happened?"

"You know that energy signature? The one we didn't think was earthly? Yeah, it's not. And I've got another unearthly surprise in my cargo hold right now. Trussed him up good and tight, early Christmas present for you, but it'd be nice if I could get him off my hands."

"What kind of Christmas present?"

"Green and with pointy ears," Clint said.

Coulson groaned. "Barton, I swear, if you're playing a prank on me—"

"I wouldn't ask if it wasn't important." He paused. "We lost those two agents," he said. He didn't know how to explain that they were never lost in the first place, that they might have been aliens the whole time, or that they very possibly had been killed and replaced with alien doubles.

"How?"

"I'm not sure. They were gone when I got here." He took a deep breath. "I only saw the things that got 'em, not the actual agent-nabbing."

"Is there a chance they're still out there?"

Clint had already taken off to see if the cabin was there, but it wasn't. It was probably long gone, or else it had disguised itself as something new, and that weird energy signature was gone again. Not that it would do them any good. Clint had been in the actual ship and still hadn't picked up anything weird. Which was a big deal, for him. He could usually pick up on just about anything. Should have picked up on the eerie stillness of the place, the perfections even in the imperfections, the too-evenly spaced patterns in the wood. He was better than this, shouldn't have let them catch him off guard. "If they are, they're not here anymore. At least not in any way I can find them." He paused. "I can keep looking, sir. I've lost my lead, the thing took off into the sky and I couldn't get a good fix on it, but I can retrace, see if I can—"

"You've got an unknown entity in your cargo hold?"

"Yeah."

Coulson paused for a long time. Clint kept flying in a search pattern, thinking maybe either he'd find the disguised ship or it would find him—either way, he'd leave a tracer behind for Coulson to follow, and they might have a shot at finding their people. He relayed his plan in so many words to Coulson, but the guy had already made up his mind. "We're not losing a third man out there. You stay put until backup arrives."

"I can find these guys. If anyone can spot 'em, you know it's me."

"Clint . . . ."

Clint sighed. Yeah, he was in big trouble if they were first-naming each other now. "Fine, yeah. Stay put. Wait for backup. Keep an eye on the alien," he muttered.

"Clint, I'm telling you you're not authorized to go after these unknowns on your own." A long pause. "I'm telling you this over an open frequency."

Clint grinned. "Yes, sir."

…..

He'd been outside the plane for hours, but he'd rigged up a pretty clever setup back in the cargo hold in case his prisoner woke up. Involving knockout gas and a direct alert to his phone.

Plus, he'd given the guy an extra dose of tranquilizer before he left.

He was walking out in the open, away from any trees, a very obvious target. He scanned the skylines, looking for the slightest movement. A whisper, a glimmer.

There it was.

He fired, and it didn't dent the ship at all, but it bounced off of the thing pretending to be a cloud, so Clint knew where to place his next arrow. Explosive tipped.

This was why he'd taken three quivers.

The ship wavered into view, very big and very brown, and took a nosedive into a nearby drift of snow. It was smoking, and Clint imagined things were pretty hectic inside trying to put out fires, so he could easily just slip through and take a quick peek at their brig, just to be sure there weren't any agents left behind. Right?

About ten of those aliens poured out of an opening. Five went right for Clint, and five for the plane.

Clint sighed. Could they at least make it a challenge?

The five headed to the plane went down no problem. Guess they thought he'd be more concerned with the ones running for him and would take a little longer before he shot 'em in the back.

The five headed right for him were also easy. They were shooting at him, sure, but this was not his first high-tech snowball fight. He'd found a nice embankment to settle down on and pick them off one or two at a time.

He crawled out of his sniper position after the five aliens were down and there didn't seem to be any sign of more of them. This was almost definitely a trap, but, well, he didn't have anything else going on today, so why not?

Took off at a full run, then fired twice—first a gas arrow and then EMP. This trick only worked once, so as he tumbled into hallways that looked like something out of Star Trek, he kept the air mask close to his nose and mouth and thanked whatever lucky stars were still his to thank that he had thought to wear tinted glasses; they kept his eyes from watering too badly.

Turn right. Look for a way to go down.

The ship wasn't that big once he was inside it, but it was filled with aliens. The crew must've been about fifty, and while Clint was good at hiding in the shadows, the smoke bomb had given away his position. He looked for anything like an air duct, an access tunnel, and climbed inside.

His internal clock was ticking down. Ten minutes.

He found a way to go down in the service tunnels or whatever they were, and when he figured he'd gone down enough, he went sideways until he finally spotted something that looked like a human-colored hand.

It was deep, it was dark, and this was almost definitely a holding cell, so Clint was glad he'd let the EMP arrow go first and disrupt their systems so they would hopefully not be monitoring this one as closely.

"Fielding?" he called out.

"Who's there?"

Clint grinned. Okay, so alien replacements then. One theory confirmed. At least the human version was still alive. "You see the access tunnel to your right? Just about ankle height?"

There was a slight scuffling sound. "Yeah."

"I'm going to come through there in a second. You stay out of my way, just right beside it, and cover your eyes, got it?"

"Are you here for retrieval, sir?"

Clint laughed at being called "sir" and said, "Yeah, I was sent to find out why you'd gone silent for three days."

"Has it really only been three?"

"We may be creeping up on four. I've been here a while. You ready?"

"Yeah."

Clint grinned and pushed the grate open just wide enough so he could throw the little pebble-shaped objects he had in his hand. And then bang, flash, the light show was blinding to anyone who might be around except for the SHIELD agents scurrying back along the access tunnels—one with her eyes tightly closed and one with shaded lenses who'd known when not to look.

"Your partner?"

"Dead," she said hollowly. "If you didn't see him when you came here, he must have frozen to death out there."

"He get out?"

She nodded. "I took the fall for the escape attempt," she said heavily. "Let myself get caught, but put up enough of a fight that he could . . . jump for it."

Clint winced. "Tried that. Didn't go so well for my head."

"He said he could make it. And there's only one holding area; the ship isn't that big. I'd have known if he came back."

Clint nodded but made a mental note to tell Coulson to have his men sweep the area in case there was one very determined SHIELD agent stuck in a snowdrift somewhere.

"What's your name?" Fielding asked as she scuffled along behind him.

"Barton," he said. "And you're Fielding. I already met the other you."

Clint caught Fielding making a face in the reflection of the metal they were crawling in.

"Don't worry; she's at the bottom of a lake right now. Stuck an arrow through her forehead. He fished in his pocket for his phone and showed her how he'd rerouted the tracking signal to send to his phone. "Figured I'd leave it up to Coulson to fish her out of there."

"They're more than just copies. They take our faces and our memories," she said.

"I noticed. Yours remembered me from basic training."

There was a long pause and then, "Hey! You're the only who made—"

"—made Kerry cry, yes I know. I'm famous around SHIELD," he said, cutting her off. He held a finger to his lips.

"What?"

"It's too quiet," he said simply just before the cover got yanked off of the access tunnels close to Fielding's feet and a green hand reached for her. "Move!"

They crawled until they reached the point Clint had first entered (and there was the other useless SHIELD sock to mark his place). He opened the panel and slid out, then offered Fielding a hand out (she didn't look too steady on her feet, and he wondered if they'd even been feeding her here).

He turned to lead her back to the original hole he'd blasted his way into, but then he realized she'd refused to let go of his hand.

He'd noticed. Back in tunnel when he said he'd put an arrow through the alien Fielding's forehead. The slight hesitation. Concern for a fallen comrade.

"Yeah, and before you go arresting me in the name of intergalactic SHIELD replacements," he said, because his mouth never stopped, "I would point out to you that you're standing really close to my wadded up old sock."

"Yes?"

Clint grinned. Five, four, three, two, one.

His internal timing was impeccable. The explosive arrowhead couldn't have detonated at a better time, and he was already firing the second-to-last of his grappling arrows so he'd get pulled out of the explosion before he caught too much of it.

Of course, he still caught a lot of it, but not too much.

He scrambled to his feet and took off running. He could hear aliens running after him, just behind him. Their ship was a smoldering wreck, not about to get off the ground anytime soon, and they knew exactly whose fault it was.

He took some gunfire. Things were breaking, probably. But he knew exactly where he was going. He was still wearing the breathing mask.

A normal person would have hesitated, but Clint just jumped right in the water. He wasn't an idiot, and he'd holed out some snow he could use to hide on top of the ice.

They'd think he'd gone under. Please let them think he'd gone under.

He was breathing heavily, but he'd finally stopped running, and it was time to take the throbbing in his shoulder into account. He would have been surprised when he saw the snow turning red if he hadn't been so cold.

….

"You're a menace."

"But you love me anyway, sir," he said as he came to.

Coulson sat by his bed with a clipboard and a "Why do I ever let you out ever" look on his face. But at least he was the only one there. If Fury'd come, it would've been worse. "You blew up all your evidence."

He sat up a little straighter. "The guy in my hold?"

"Gone."

"Girl with the tracker in her forehead?"

"Gone."

Clint sighed and leaned back against his padded seat. He didn't have to look around to know he was back in the medical wing, but he was kind of hoping he'd at least have something to prove for it.

"You're a menace, Barton."

"You said that, sir."

"What were you thinking jumping in a lake like that? You looking to get hypothermia?"

"I was wearing a wetsuit."

"Why the h—"

"Couldn't find my real long underwear."

"You could've got frostbite."

"I knew you were coming. And it's not like I'd ever let myself lose my fingers. Stuck 'em in that goo R&D came up with that expands in water."

"You have really screwed up priorities, Barton."

"Yes, sir."

"You didn't recover your targets."

"No, sir."

"You didn't come back with anything we could use."

Clint grinned. "To be fair, sir, there is some wreckage you could salvage."

Coulson gave him a look.

"Sorry, sir."

"I expect a full report."

"Yes, sir."

"And you're going to write the letters to the families of the agents you didn't save."

"Yes, sir." And the look he gave Coulson made it clear that was punishment enough.

"And Barton?"

"Yeah?"

Coulson grinned. "Good job."

"Sir?"

"You didn't die. You got us good intel, and you did everything but get yourself killed to bring back your agents." Coulson leaned back. "Better than any other man I could've sent in."

Clint grinned. "Yes, sir."

"I've got a few other ideas for ops I'd like you to take care of."

"Off the books?"

Coulson grinned.