Author's Note: Hello Avengers fandom! This is my first Avenger story, so please be kind! I was inspired by Aggie2011's Vantage Point Saga, which is based around Clint Barton, starting from when he was first recruited and covers up through and after the first Avengers movie. If you have not read any of those stories: DO IT! They are amazing, by far my favorite stories on this site!

So, this is my own take on how Clint Barton could have been recruited by Phil Coulson. I kind of pieced together elements from the MCU, Matt Fraction's Hawkeye comic books and also took some bits and pieces from his character background on the Marvel Universe Wiki, as well as took my own liberties. So hopefully this is a version that hasn't been done to death!

Also note that the majority of this (if not all of this, I actually haven't quite decided yet…) will be from Phil Coulson's perspective. I started off bouncing between his and Clint's perspective, but then decided it would be more fun if the audience learns about my version of Clint at the same time as Phil! If there's enough interest, I may post some separate one shots with Clint's perspective of certain scenes after they are posted.

Okay, with all that out of the way, let's get on with this! Hope you enjoy!

Out of the Ashes

Chapter One

Slowly and carefully, Phil eased the door open, listening to the hinges groaning painfully from disuse. He led with his gun, knowing that there very well might still be at least one hostile still in the area. He carefully swept the room looking for any sign of life, his eyes following the line of sight from his gun in a well-practiced move.

Honestly, he almost completely overlooked the figure in the otherwise empty room. It wasn't until he stepped fully into the room and was able to look past the open door that he spotted him. He immediately recognized him and as he did he flicked his gun in his hand ninety degrees, holding it out and up as he rotated the barrel to face straight up while clearly showing his finger was nowhere near the trigger. It was a small motion that he hoped the figure would take as a sign that he meant no harm.

"Barton?" he called, weary of the response he was going to get. "It's just me, it's Coulson. I'm here to help you."

He took a cautious step forward… and froze as an arrow tore through the air, passing close enough to his temple that he felt the weapon skim his skin.

"Next one won't miss, Coulson," came a low voice burning with barely contained anger.

Phil swallowed as his eyes adjusted to the dim light and he was finally able to make out Barton's features. He was sitting pressed defensively in the far corner of the room with his left knee up and his right leg stretched out in front of him. His bow was up and surprisingly steady given the circumstances, an arrow nocked and pointed directly at him. He was pale and sheen of sweat had settled across his brow, but his eyes were what really caught Phil's attention. Despite his sickly appearance, his gaze was razor sharp and for the first time since they had met his eyes showed the emotions that he normally kept hidden. Anger, fear and betrayal all battled to be heard in a blue-gray storm.

His eyes were what cut Phil the deepest.

Then Phil's gaze fell and in the dim light he could just make out something dark and wet soaking the lower right side of Barton's t-shirt. As the clouds outside shifted, letting a ray of sunlight in through the window behind him, Phil could also spot a small puddle shinning up from the floor where Barton sat.

Blood.

Four and a Half Months Earlier

"What exactly happened out there." Nick Fury didn't phrase it as a question, rather speaking each word as if it were its own individual statement. He leveled a steel cold stare from behind his desk at the man standing in front of him.

"We aren't completely sure, sir," Phil Coulson hedged. "We're looking into it."

"Looking into it?" Fury repeated, his eye narrowing. "What the hell does that mean?"

"It means that there's still more information that needs to be obtained," Phil explained patiently. "We really can't draw any conclusions until we know all the facts."

He was spouting a bunch of bullshit. And by the look in Fury's eye, the man knew it.

"Like who the hell that Robin Hood wannabe was who outshot my agents using only a couple sticks and a string from the goddamn Dark Ages?" Fury demanded.

"Among other things," Phil allowed with a shrug. "With all due respect, sir, this isn't exactly a botched mission. We did get our man, after all."

"Like hell we did," Fury barked. "Getting our man insinuates that my agents either captured and brought him in or eliminated the threat. My agents were made to look like idiot children, out gunned by some nobody with a damn bow and arrow."

"Yes, but the target was, in fact, eliminated," Phil pointed out, though there wasn't much force behind his tone. He knew he was fighting a losing battle.

"Coulson," Fury snapped. "Cut the crap. I want an ID on our goddamn William Tell. I want to know who he is, where his alliances lay, I want to know the name of his damn childhood goldfish. A guy who can make our agents look like fools is one of two things. He's either an asset or a threat. I need to know which it is."

"Yes, sir. I'm on it," he assured Fury.

"Good," Fury said with a nod. "Get it done." Then he turned and Phil took that as a dismissal as he too turned and strode from the room.

The crowds in the hallways parted like the Red Sea as Phil stormed through the New York SHEILD base. The light heartedness he had clung to in his meeting with Director Nick Fury had melted away, leaving a hard look that left even seasoned agents scrambling to get out of his way.

Last night's mission had been a complete disaster.

They had been pursuing the leader of this national drug cartel, Malcolm Bates, for months. Tracking his moves carefully, plotting just the right moment to take him down. It had been planned so carefully with back-up plans upon back-up plans, primed to go off without a hitch. They thought they had Bates cornered, but after one of the agents accidentally tipped off one of the bodyguards outside, an unexpected firefight ensued. It was then that they found out the hard way that there had been a tertiary escape route out of Bates' hideout in Brooklyn, one that they hadn't anticipated.

They were at risk of losing him, losing all the work they had done for months, if he got the chance to go to ground. They had quickly split up into three groups of three agents each to canvas the area. Phil – who had been overseeing the mission with the surveillance and support team in a nearby building – had joined one of the teams to even out the numbers.

In the end, it had been his team to catch up with their man.

They tracked him to an old, abandoned building just a few streets over from the hideout. Agents Johnson and Geller had beaten Phil up to the roof, who had stopped to clear an extra room he had found on the top floor. By the time he had gotten up to the roof, Bates was down… with an arrow sticking out of his chest. He hardly had time to register that as his attention was drawn to a figure that was crouched up on the ledge on the far side of the roof, a bow held loosely in one hand as both his agents' guns were leveled on him from where they were both kneeling in the middle of the roof. The guy was wearing a grey hooded sweatshirt with the hood pulled down low to hide most of his face… except for a smirk that quirked his lips. He used two fingers of his free hand to give a lazy salute before he disappeared over the ledge.

It was only after the fact that Phil realized both his agents were injured. Agent Johnson had taken a bullet to the hip while Agent Geller had gotten creased on his arm and taken a bullet to his shin. Both had to be med evac'ed out due to heavy bleeding. Later that night they would report that they had fired several shots upon cornering Bates on the roof, but none of them landed as they had been inhibited by the lack of visibility on the cloudy night as well as the numerous shadows on the roof.

In contrast, after the Bates' final shot had landed and as he was preparing for kill shots while the two agents struggled to reload their own weapons, two arrows had torn across the roof only seconds apart, so close together that the agents weren't convinced that there weren't two shooters. The first arrow knocked the gun out of Bates' hand – Geller admitting that probably saved his life – and the second had buried itself in the target's chest, killing him instantly.

This mystery guy had done with two arrows what his agents hadn't accomplished with almost a dozen bullets between them.

Phil entered one of the base's computer labs, a busy place with a flurry of activity since he had left them last night to track down their affectionately nicknamed 'Shit Starter.'

"How'd it go, sir?" one of the senior techs, James Bradbury, asked as Phil approached his work station.

"Pretty much as expected," Phil said with a weary sigh. "He wants an ID on our third player on his desk by yesterday at the absolutely latest." His eyes wandered to the computer screen. "How we looking?"

Bradbury sighed. "Not good," he admitted as he turned back to his console, typing hurriedly. "We just don't have much to go on. All we really have is a partial facial photo from one of the on-site agent's vest cam. I've been running it through systems in New York, but so far there's been no match."

"Really?" Phil said, perplexed.

That was odd. New York City was a well photographed area. For someone to be within the city limits and yet not appear on any security footage? That was suspicious. It spoke of someone who wanted to stay under the radar. Someone with something to hide. And somebody who was dangerously good at it.

"What about the arrows?" Phil asked.

"No identifiably markings," Bradbury told him shortly without breaking keystroke. "Untraceable, possibly homemade."

"Widen the search to include all surrounding airports and bus stations," Phil instructed. "Maybe he hasn't been in town long." He paused, thoughtful. "Also run a search for reports of bow and arrows. Headlines, police reports, social media posts, anything you can find. I want any and all reports sent directly to me, I'll filter through them myself."

"Yes, sir," Bradbury agreed, his keystrokes increasing in frequency.

Phil stepped back, crossing his arms over his chest. As the tech entered the new parameters for the search, the information they had went up on the main screen at the front of the room. The guy's photo appeared front and center. The hood of the sweatshirt he was wearing cast harsh shadows over his face. The only thing that was really visible was the lower part of his face, a smirk on his lips and about half his nose. Not much to go on indeed.

Who the hell are you? Phil thought to himself.

In the end, it had been a stroke of luck that brought him to the small police station in a tiny town in the backwoods of Virginia.

Phil had spent the last seventy-two hours sifting through a mind-numbing amount of police reports and news headlines involving bow and arrows. With the recent release of a movie called The Hunger Games, there had been a severe uptick in the number of drunk idiots doing stupid stuff with bow and arrows.

It was a gut instinct that sent him to Arrington, Virginia. The report that caught his eye stated that a John Doe was booked into a holding cell after a bar fight. No identification was found on the guy and he was refusing to give a name. The only personal effects the guy had on him when he had been arrested was a bow and a quiver containing half a dozen arrows.

Phil knew it was a long shot, especially after the fruitless trip to New Jersey under similar circumstances the day before. But with Fury on his back constantly looking for results while he was at base, he figured it couldn't hurt to take the trip while the techs continued looking for more leads.

A phone call ahead and some strategic paper work sent over ensured that there were no questions upon his arrival.

"Don't know why the government's interested in this one," the cop drawled as he led Phil back to the holding cells. "Pretty cut and dry bar fight situation here."

"I noticed you didn't take any fingerprints or try to identify this guy," Phil pointed out conversationally.

Half the reason he had decided to take the trip was because the locals didn't seem to feel the need to run the guy through the system. That wasn't terribly unusual for these small-town cops who didn't see much more than their own locals, but it still felt a little too convenient for this mystery man.

"He's not being charged with anything," the cop said with a shrug. "Everyone's pointing fingers but no one wants to press charges. Pretty standard for this kinda situation. We just keep them twenty-four hours as a cooling off period. Not to mention, it seems like this guy is just passing through." He paused as if something were just occurring to him. "Is he wanted for something?"

"Not sure yet," Phil said honestly.

The man shot him a strange look, but decided not to comment.

As they entered the jail, the first thing that Phil noticed was that most of the guys in lock up were in cells close to the front of the long hallway, with three to four people per cell. That was pretty standard practice, so he didn't think much of it at first. His eyes were already searching the faces as they made their way down the corridor. But the officer didn't slow his pace, passing all the occupied cells without so much as a glance. They passed about half a dozen empty cells before the man came to a stop in front of the last cell in the row.

Phil looked in the cell, taking in the lone figure laying on the cot, then looked at the officer, cocking an eyebrow in question.

"He... made the other guys nervous," the officer hedged. "We figured it'd be best to keep some extra space between them."

"Uh huh," Phil hummed, glancing back at where the rest of the contained men were held. Extra space would have been an empty cell or two between them. This seemed a bit excessive. "And how many of those guys did this guy fight?"

"Kid took on six of them," the officer told him.

"Six?" Phil repeated as he turned back to the cell. "Impressive." There was an awkward pause. Phil glanced back at the officer. "You gonna let me in?"

"You sure?" the officer asked in surprise. "You know we can put him in an interrogation room with cuffs on if you want."

"Not necessary," Phil assured him easily.

"Okay," the officer said skeptically as he took the keys from his belt and unlocked the door. "Just shout when you're ready to come out."

"Will do," Phil said as he stepped into the cell. He heard the door close behind him and lock. Then they were alone.

Through the entire exchange, the figure had not moved. The cot was pushed up against the left wall of the cell and the figure was sprawled out with his head on the end closest to the door. His fingers were laced behind his head and his eyes were closed. For a moment, Phil thought he might be asleep. But as he approached, he noticed the way the guy's muscles tensed, as if preparing for some kind of attack. Still, though, he didn't open his eyes.

Phil took the opportunity to simply study him for a minute. The first thing he noticed was that there was definite evidence of the recent bar fight. At a glance, he could see that he had a black eye and a split lip. The second thing he noticed was that the term 'kid' that the officer had used earlier had been more accurate than Phil had thought it'd be. The guy couldn't be much more than in his late teens.

Phil was tempted to dismiss him based on that fact alone. But then his gaze took in the sweatshirt he was wearing. It was the same grey, hooded sweatshirt that their mystery man from the other night had been wearing, down to the faded, unidentifiable logo on the front.

Could this kid really be the one who had shown up several top SHEILD agents?

Finally, the kid shifted and opened his eyes. Blue grey eyes focused in on him immediately with a startling amount of intensity. For a moment, they were both completely still.

"I didn't ask for a lawyer," the kid finally said conversationally as he looked him up and down from where he lay.

"I'm not a lawyer," Phil said simply.

There were a few long moments of silence as the two sized each other up.

"Then who are you?" he finally asked.

"Phil Coulson," he said. He extended a hand. The kid just stared at it as if he had never encountered the gesture before. "And you are?" he prompted after an awkward moment of silence.

"Albert Einstein," he answered immediately with a smirk, still making no move to take Phil's hand.

It was that smirk that really tipped the scales for Phil. He had committed it to memory as he had studied the only photo of their Shit Starter that they had. It was the same exact smirk looking up at him from this jailcell cot as the one that had been flashed at him that night on the rooftop in New York City.

Phil kept the polite smile on his face as he dropped his hand back to his side. "Mr. Einstein," he greeted sincerely. "I'm a big fan of your work."

"Always nice to meet a fan," the kid said, shifting slightly. "But if you don't mind, I'm really very swamped right now."

"I can see that," Phil said with a nod and a glance around the empty cell. "So, I'll cut right to the chase. I'm looking for a guy I ran into a few days ago in New York City."

"New York City, huh?" the kid said, raising his eyebrows. "Quite a ways from here."

"Yes, it is," Phil agreed. "I'm starting to think this guy might like to move around a lot." He paused. "Still trying to figure out why though."

"Yeah, well, good luck with that," the kid said, shifting his gaze away to look straight up at the ceiling, clearly an attempt to indicate he was done with the conversation.

Phil was not so easily swayed.

"Pretty impressive how you made it so far in just three days," he said, crossing his arms and leaning back against the opposite wall of the cell. "Especially without showing your face to any security cameras between here and New York. Probably safe to rule out public transit?"

"No idea what you're talking about, Mr. Coulson," the kid said, his gaze unwavering as he studied the ceiling. "Never actually been to New York City."

"Really?" Phil said skeptically. "Perhaps you wouldn't mind donating some fingerprints then? We can compare them to the guy I'm looking for and clear up this little mix-up."

It was a bluff. They didn't have any fingerprints from the scene that they could compare to. Even the arrows they had recovered had been clean. But if he could run this kid through the system, find out who he really was and get a better idea of what kind of person he was dealing with, he hoped things would become clearer.

To his credit, the kid only hesitated a moment longer than he should have, a tell that only someone who knew what to look for would have noticed. Then he shrugged one shoulder.

"Sure," he said, apparently unconcerned. "Happy to help."

"Great," Phil said with a smile as he pushed off the wall and stepped forward. "Let's get started then."

His sudden movement got an immediate response. The kid was immediately sitting bolt upright and swinging his legs around so that he was properly facing Phil's approach. The movement was so sudden that Phil actually faltered for a moment, wondering if he should be expecting the kid to spring up and attack him. However, it wasn't an aggressive position that he settled into, but it seemed more like a defensive one. He would have been vulnerable had he let Phil approach while he had been laying down.

The sheer speed of the action spoke of a gut instinct that Phil usually only saw from agents who had been in the field for years.

After a slight pause he continued forward, but moved much more carefully and deliberately, mindful not to make any sudden movements and to not get any closer than he needed to. Clearly this kid was jumpy, and there was no reason to exacerbate that issue at the moment.

"It just so happens that I have a kit right here in my bag," Phil said as he carefully dug around in his bag for a moment.

"Well, isn't that handy," the kid replied dryly.

Phil ignored him as he set up his equipment. It was a high-tech device that would scan each fingerprint into the hard drive immediately, and then send the completed set off to his tech back at the base. He set up the scanner on the edge of the cot next to where Barton sat, and for a moment thought about perching on the edge of the cot himself with the device between him and Barton. He quickly decided that would be a bad idea though, given the way Barton had responded to his initial approach, and settled for dropping to one knee next to the cot.

"Isn't that fancy," the kid observed, suddenly sounding guarded as he watched Phil work. He shot Phil a suspicious look. "Where did you say you were from again?"

"Wisconsin originally," Phil said off-handedly, knowing full well that wasn't what he was asking. "Left hand first, please."

The kid hesitated before he slowly held out his left hand. Phil took it carefully and guided it to the scanner. Starting with his thumb, he firmly placed each digit to the surface to be scanned. The process took about thirty seconds per scan, and there was awkward silence as he worked. He would glance at the attached computer screen as he worked, which would show an image of the fingerprint as it was scanned. He scanned the pointer finger of the kid's left hand three times, thinking that there was a glitch, before the kid finally spoke up.

"That's not wrong," he pointed out calmly, nodding at the screen which showed almost nothing outside of the edge of a print. "That's what it looks like."

Phil took a moment to turn the kid's hand over in order to really look at his fingers. His middle three fingers on his left hand were so calloused that he virtually didn't have any fingerprints at all.

"I take it you're left handed?" Phil deduced as he went back to work, knowing that a bowstring was drawn with a person's dominant hand. He also remembered their mystery man holding the handle of the bow in his right hand. That would make sense for a lefty.

The kid only nodded vaguely. As he continued to work, Phil couldn't help but notice the degree that his fingers were calloused. Clearly, he wasn't just another nut on the retro weapons bandwagon, brought about by the recent popularity of post-apocalyptic and dystopian books and movies. He had to have been practicing archery for years to have developed callouses like these. Which begged Phil's next question.

"How old are you?" he ventured after a minute, his eyes still focused on the task at hand.

"Forty-six," the kid said with a smirk. Phil shot him a look that had made lesser men crumble. This kid simply chuckled. "No, really," he insisted. "You should see my kickass moisturizing regiment. Admit it, I don't look a day over thirty, do I?"

Phil rolled his eyes. "Honestly, you don't look a day over sixteen. Maybe I should make you call your parents."

The kid snorted derisively at that. "Fine. I'm nineteen," he admitted.

"Huh," Phil hummed as he switched to the kid's right hand. "The locals said you seemed to be just passing through. Nineteen is pretty young to be traveling around on your own."

The kid only shrugged one shoulder noncommittally.

Sensing that he was pushing his luck, Phil finished fingerprinting in silence.

"Well, I appreciate your cooperation," Phil said as he packed up his equipment.

"Sure, anytime," the kid said as he kicked back on the cot. "Good luck finding your guy."

Phil simply nodded noncommittedly as he crossed the cell and reached his hand through the bars, signaling to the officer at the other end of the hallway that he was finished. His gut told him he had already found his guy. But he needed more information before he could justify bringing him in.

"I've got some leads to check in with," Phil told the officer once they were back out in the lobby of the station. He stopped and turned, making sure he had the man's gaze as he continued. "Make sure you do not release that kid until you hear from me. I shouldn't be more than an hour or two."

"No worries," the officer assured him, unconcerned. "He's still got about six hours until we'd let him go anyway."

"I'll be back well before then," Phil assured firmly. "Keep him in that cell."

"Don't worry, that kid isn't going anywhere."

As Phil headed out of the station, he was already dialing his phone.

"Bradbury, it's Coulson," he said as the tech answered. "Listen, I just sent you prints on our John Doe in Virginia. I need you to run them immediately, get me anything and everything you can find on this guy. I want everything from his birth certificate to his school records to his overdue library books."

"Got it, boss," Bradbury said.

"I'll be back at the Quinjet in twenty," Phil said as he climbed into his car. "E-mail me as soon as you upload it to the server and I'll go through it on the computer in the jet."

"I need an hour minimum to run the nationwide search and catalogue all the information," Bradbury told him. "So, feel free to stop for a coffee or something."

Phil snorted a laugh at that. "Just keep me updated with your progress." Then he hung up.

Phil made it back to the Quinjet in record time. Then all he could do was pace impatiently. He alternated between checking his watch and checking his phone, knowing this kind of thing took time but still anxious to get the information. He was usually pretty good at reading people, but he couldn't help but feel like he hadn't even scratched the surface with this kid. He hadn't encountered a puzzle like this in a long time.

In what he initially thought to be an impressive feat on the part of his techs, it was just under forty-five minutes when he got the ping on his phone signaling an e-mail from Bradbury. He immediately sat down at the computer station set just behind the copilot's seat in the Quinjet, logging onto his server and downloading the files that had been collected.

Finally, he pulled up the first file, smiling to himself as he finally had a name to put to this face.

"Clinton Francis Barton," Phil muttered to himself as he began glancing over the file, trying to get a feel for what information was there before he started delving in too deep. "So, what's your story?"

It immediately became obvious how the techs had been able to gather the information so quickly. There simply wasn't a lot of information to be gathered.

The first thing Phil really took noticed of was the kid's birthdate, printed on a scanned copy of his birth certificate. He didn't think too much of it until he saw the year. He almost missed it, but then he did the math quickly in his head. He had to do the math three more times before he actually believed it.

"Damn kid is seventeen?" he couldn't help but exclaim out loud, his eyes widening in shock. He had been so distracted by the kid joking about his age, he had mistaken the final lie for an admittance.

Fury was going to shit kittens when he found out that not only were his agents outgunned by a guy with a bow and arrow, but the kid was still a minor.

It took Phil several minutes until he was able to refocus on the information they had on Clinton Barton. He was born in Waverly, Iowa to Harold and Edith Barton, their second son after Charles Bernard Barton five years before. When he was six years old, the whole family had been in a car driven by his father when the vehicle had veered suddenly off the road, crashing into a tree. It was later revealed that despite the fact that it had been ten in the morning on a Tuesday, Harold Barton had been heavily intoxicated at the time of the accident. That fact alone told Phil a lot about what kind of person Harold Barton had been.

The collision killed both of Clinton's parents on impact and left him and his older brother recovering in the local children's hospital for several months. They had no relatives willing to take them in, so the two boys had been declared wards of the state and placed into the care of Iowa's Child Protective Services upon their release from the hospital. The two of them had been shipped between four different homes – two group homes, then to a foster family briefly before being placed in another group home – over the course of about three and a half years before both boys were reported as missing and then a short while later declared runaways. That was seven years ago when the younger Barton had been ten years old.

And that was basically it. The two brothers virtually fell off the map after that… until recently.

Phil scrolled to the last page of the document which had a summary of his criminal record. The first charge was a little over a year and a half ago when Barton was almost sixteen for breaking and entering and theft in Boston, Massachusetts. Charges had eventually been dropped and Barton had been placed in the care of a boys' home just outside of Boston… which he ran away from the very next day. After that he would resurface every few months, always in a large city – Detroit, Miami, Atlanta, Philadelphia… the kid got around – and always for a petty crime generally associated with homelessness. It was mostly small thefts and panhandling illegally, crimes small enough to only warrant an overnight stay in a holding cell. There were a few assault charges, though to be fair the assaults were all against men with worse criminal records than him, which was why charges were always dropped after a short stay in a holding cell.

Then, just two months ago, he was listed as a person of interest in connection with a series of murders in Chicago. Three people were found dead, all killed with an arrow to the chest. He was wanted for questioning but had apparently skipped town before the police were able to catch up with him. That didn't exactly scream innocence.

After taking all this in, Phil leaned back in his seat, pondering this information for a minute. The kid had led a hard life, that much was obvious. But he still felt like he was missing something. There were almost six whole years between the kid running away from the final boys' home until his first arrest. Where had he been all that time? What had changed that suddenly caused him to resurface in the past year and a half, seemingly unable to stay off police radar for any significant amount of time? Why, with the exception of his first arrest, had no one attempted to place this minor back in the care of Child Protective Services?

Why, after no significant charges, was this seventeen-year-old kid suddenly implicated in the murder of three people?

Something wasn't adding up. But that could be figured out later. For now, Phil had enough to justify bringing the kid in for further questioning. He packed up his things quickly, heading out of the Quinjet. He'd call Fury and update him once he had Barton in custody.

He was halfway back to the station before a thought occurred to him, a detail he had overlooked while distracted by the puzzle that was Clinton Francis Barton. While stopped at a red light, he pulled out his cell phone and dialed the direct number for his tech.

"Bradbury, its Coulson again," he said. "Can you pull anything you can find on the older brother? Charles Bernard Barton."

"Sure, boss," Bradbury said and Phil could hear him typing away on his computer in the background. "No problem."

"Send anything you find directly to me," Phil instructed. "And, also, get me any more info you can find on the younger Barton's recent criminal record."

"Got it."

"Thanks," Phil said as he hung up.

It was odd that up until they ran away from the boy's home, the two Barton boys had been presented as practically a set in the records, never one without the other. But now that Clinton Barton had resurfaced after six years off the map, he seemed for all intents and purposes to be on his own.

The more he found out about this kid, the more questions he had.

Author's Note: So…. Any good? Done to death? Terribly boring? I'd love to hear your thoughts! Constructive crit is always welcome! Please take a moment to leave a review!

Chapter Two Sneak Peak

"You interested in charity cases now, Phil?" Fury asked.

Phil rolled his eyes, running a hand over his face. "No, that's not what this is."

"Then what is it?" Fury demanded.

Phil glanced back at where Barton sat. His eyelids were drooping and he seemed to be conscious through only sheer force of will. The kid had been through hell, that much was obvious. But Fury posed a fair question. What was this about? Phil had to admit that even he wasn't completely sure yet. But there was this nagging feeling in his gut that said he shouldn't leave this kid here. It was a gut instinct that had served him well in the past, one that he was compelled not to ignore.

"I just… it's a feeling," Phil said vaguely.