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When he ripped off the third seal, I heard the third Animal cry, “Come out!” I looked. A black horse this time. Its rider carried a set of scales in his hand. I heard a message (it seemed to issue from the Four Animals): “A quart of wheat for a day’s wages, or three quarts of barley, but all the oil and wine you want.”
Revelation 6:5-6 (The Message)
Sometimes, Mick Jagger assures us, you get what you need; for me, it took dying to do it .
That’s overly dramatic, I suppose, but it’s the truth of the matter. Before Loki shoved that damn scepter through my chest, the backstabbing son-of-a-bitch, I’d done little more than tread water, unaware of the depths beneath my feet. The reality stone slicing into my heart opened my eyes. Literally.
It wasn’t that being Phil Coulson, S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, ex-Army Ranger, asset wrangler, and Captain America fanboy, was a bad lot. Aside from the bullying in elementary and middle school before I got a little height on me and discovered I could run the football pretty well, I had a good childhood. Got along with my two sisters -- that incident with their Barbie dolls notwithstanding -- and, after they grew up and got married, could tolerate my brothers-in-law. Used an ROTC scholarship to pay for college, managed to not get shot up much during my tours of active duty, and landed a spot in the premiere top-secret alphabet agency right after I mustered out. I was damn good at my job, if I do say so myself. Took two guys out with a bag of flour one time and corralled Tony Stark into behaving … mostly. Met a Norse god, a gamma-irradiated scientist, and a Red Room operative. Even got to see Captain America thawed out and in his suit, alive and breathing.
Working with Nick Fury, I learned to walk the line between being ruthless and showing mercy, to do more with less, to fade into the shadows. He’d always been larger-than-life; not even losing his eye could stop him from completing a rescue mission in the Afghani mountains. Didn’t always agree with his decisions; I thought there were too many bodies left in his wake; in time, I came to understand why he made the choices he did.
But the thing I’d been most proud of was Strike Team Delta. The two best S.H.I.E.L.D. specialists and me, kicking ass and taking names all over the world. Clint Barton and Natasha Romanoff. Yin and Yang. I could see through the bravado, the death stares, the facade of anger and indifference. Natasha’s yearning to be more than a dealer of death, her absurd sense of humor, and the way she cared about those she called friends. Clint’s brilliant strategic mind, the deep capacity to love, and stubborn refusal to leave anyone behind. All the others bought the act; I knew from the first time I met them that they were like hobbits, two people who had known such deprivation in their lives that they now enjoyed whatever bounty they could find.
I’m a Tolkien nerd. Sue me.
Oh, it had taken time to win their trust. With Natasha, it helped that Clint was already at S.H.I.E.L.D. She would never have come into the fold without him betting his life on her. But Clint, well, he was like one of those feral dogs who’d been left to fend for himself too long; he had to be coaxed with infinite patience, one small bit of trust at a time while I waited for him to come to me. That was … and is … one of my greatest assets, that I can dole things out in the tiniest morsels if the situation calls for it. Emotional Intelligence, they call it, the ability to deny myself today if it means something better tomorrow. Eventually, by following up praise with giving him enough space to do what he did best, I managed it. One day, I walked into my office to find Clint asleep on my couch, the ultimate sign I’d won him over.
To say we worked well together would be a misnomer. We were fucking fantastic. The other handlers assumed I was in charge, the man behind the curtain, but the truth was we were all three equal partners. Clint, firing a rain of arrows, calling the plays from up high. Natasha, dancing as bullets flew, intuiting the actions of the enemy. And me, balancing the devil in the details, fighting at their backs. With Nick pointing us in the right direction, we were a force to be reckoned with. If I occasionally wondered about why they were so good, thought about the comics I read as a kid and all the origin stories, I rarely had time to dwell on the existential questions because another crisis du jour was bound to pop up and demand our attention.
No, I had very few bad things in that life. Really, only one: my unacceptable and awkward attraction to a close friend. Years of denial of my feelings for Clint was better training on how to endure torture than any seminar S.H.I.E.L.D. could offer. Standing right beside him, sleeping in the same room, sharing a couch; I was a starving man in a storehouse of food. Nick used to say the Clint shaped hole in my heart made me leaner, hungrier, a better agent. I took that as the compliment he meant it as and grew used to the constant ache of losing what I never had
The strategy worked … I could make do with next to nothing, had been used to it my entire life … until Budapest.
Everything changed after Budapest.
It was a simple meet-and-greet, a mid-level accountant who said she had access to the money trail of some seriously bad people. Easy in and out, a first contact type of op, not usually Clint’s style but he was close and it was six hours tops -- land, check out the story, come home. He radioed he was in position and then … nothing. LIke they never existed, both contact and agent were gone, not a trace on security video or sighting from a witness on the street.
While the bureaucratic wheels turned slowly, I did what I did best. There was always a trail, even if it was crumbs of crumbs. Took patience, but I had wells of that, years of filling out reams of repetitive paperwork, checking budgets line by line for the smallest of mistakes. So I poured over every detail, every shred of information; Nick said not to worry, that he had a feeling things would be fine, but I couldn’t leave it alone. Not when it was Clint. When I found it, the buried clue, I had no qualms of commandeering a jet and hightailing it over there.
As soon as I told Natasha, well … Natasha went to war.
She burned a swath through the city, every drop of information I dug up adding to the fire. Called in debts and left bodies scattered behind her. The traffickers thought it was the drug cartels, the cartels went after the crime lords, the crime lords believed the gangs had mobilized to take them down. The streets exploded into a battle zone.
Then I woke up tied to a chair. I didn’t care about me, I just wanted to know where Clint was, what they’d done with him. A man with the knife told me I would die the death of a thousand cuts, and I laughed because being near Clint without being able to touch him was worse than anything he could do. Everything else paled in comparison.
Hours, maybe days later, they came for me like I knew they would.
Natasha drove through the warehouse doors, red convertible smashing bodies and boxes, her guns blazing over the windshield. With a sweep of the tail, she cleared the way for Clint who roared up and over on a white motorcycle, using it as a battering ram as he let go mid-arc, shot a barrage of lethal arrows, and rolled to a stop beside me. He was splattered with blood, shirt slashed in numerous places, his knuckles battered and bare arm livid purple from bowstring bruises. Like avenging angels, they killed them all, not a single soul pardoned from their brutal justice.
After, however, Clint wasn’t the same. Oh, he still played practical jokes and talked on the comms and drank coffee straight from the pot, but there was a well of reserve around him that hadn’t been there before. It didn’t affect his job performance; if anything, he was better, more focused, a hair faster on the trigger, and he still never missed. It was more the tiny bit of distance between us on the couch, the writing that grew straighter and more descriptive on his after-action reports, more command in his voice when he gave his opinion. If anything, he was sexier than before, and I wanted that hardened stare turned my way more often.
Then that damn portal opened and Loki crashed through.
I shouldered part of the blame -- I’d made the shift rotation, had kept Clint on babysitting despite his grumbling and half-hearted protests -- and watching the video of the spear touching his chest, the icy blue bleed into his eyes, over and over again, didn’t help my state of mind. I called Natasha and she came because Black Widow and Hawkeye were two sides of a dichotomy, dark to light, death to life. Me, I went full bore for Stark; I knew exactly how to get under his skin, to circle around his insecurities and stir the bone-deep desire he had to belong. A team … a family …. Tony Stark was starved for one. So I offered them up on a platter, a motley collection of heroes and monsters and even my own left and right hands if that’s what it took.
I knew Clint would lead the attack. I knew he’d take down the carrier; any plan he made sure to succeed. Others might not see it, but I did and Loki certainly had. He’d put Clint in charge and Clint had kicked all of our asses, storming the carrier and putting the best military minds S.H.I.E.L.D. had to offer on the defensive. Even if we were about to fall out of the sky, I was damn proud of his success. Still, there were a lot of people on the ship, so when Natasha needed the time to stop Clint, get him back in his right mind, I could give her that. A big gun, a momentary distraction -- I didn’t count on dying, but saving Clint was more important and I didn’t care what the cost. So I went and Loki did the spear thing and Nick was there and I was dying.
"I'm sorry, boss. The god rabbited." I could feel the cold seeping in as life drained out.
“Just stay awake. Eyes on me." He stared down at me, his face awash in shadows, all darkness and sharp relief.
"No. I'm clocked out here." In the end, I’d waited for nothing, days and years of denial only to come to this.
"Not an option." A flicker in those depths … I thought … Nick’s voice … something …
"It's okay, boss. This was never going to work... if they didn't have something... to..."
I exhaled.
My vision went black
My heart stopped
…
“... next time not to …”
“... come up with an explanation that satisfies …”
“... that son-of-a-bitch gets what he …”
…
Warmth.
A comforting weight.
Fingers wrapped around mine.
...
I cracked my eyes open to the sight of a metal ceiling, industrial steel walls, dim light from a lamp on the table. The steady thrum of the engines … slightly off pitch, with an unusual hesitation ... and the distant whir of ventilation told me where I was.
A mop of dark hair, lank and dirty, smell of battle clinging his skin -- Clint was curled in the bed with me, his cheek on my chest, pressed over my …
“Oh.”
Memories floated into place, long suppressed and now released.
Mortality. It’s overrated. I forget that every damn time I do it.
“Hey.” Clint tilted his head up and those impossibly blue-grey eyes opened.
“Hey.” I smiled and squeezed his hand.
“You back?” He brushed his lips on the curve of my neck, my body remembering his touch seconds before my brain filled in the last of the gaps.
“Home again, home again, jiggity jig.” I buried my nose in his hair, breathed in the familiar odor of ash and sweat and blood. “I missed you.”
“So fucking much, Phil. So fucking much.” He gave me a lopsided grin. “I hate it when I can’t be with you.”
His kiss was perfection, the taste so familiar; I sank into it and cared about nothing else until a voice interrupted us.
“Okay, okay, I get it. Next time you can be together.” Nick came in; Natasha shut the door behind him. “Save me from true love and all that bullshit.”
“You’re a hopeless romantic, Nick,” I replied. “Orpheus? That kid on the Titanic? We all know you’re a softy when it comes down to it.”
“Don’t start.” Nick raised an eyebrow. “Sacrificing yourself for this idiot. Do you know how hard it’s going to be to convince Stark and the others that you didn’t die? I fucking called it and everything.”
“We’ll play up the lying-liar-who-lies angle.” Natasha perched on the end of the bed. “That will help unite the team even more.”
“He smeared blood on your trading cards and tossed them on the table in front of Steve and Tony,” Clint added. “Worked like a charm.”
“My cards?” I looked up at Nick and he had the good grace to look away.
“They still needed a push,.”
“And this is why I can’t have nice things,” I said.
Fury’s communicator beeped; he tapped it so they could all hear the conversation.
“Sir? Thor is demanding he take Loki back to Asgard and the World Security Council is convening again in twenty minutes,” Maria Hill said. “I also have the report from the ground clean up teams and the mayor of New York is trying to contact you.”
“Tell Thor we need a day to plan the feast,” Clint suggested. “We have to celebrate our conquest over the Chitauri.”
“The Council will be looking for scapegoats,” Natasha said. “They lost the battle and want to change the field of play to their advantage.”
“Send the Mayor to the public affairs officer,” I told him. “She’ll have to talk to me to get a statement from you.”
“You’re officially dead,” Nick reminded me.
“Exactly. Makes it harder for the Mayor to get upset if the answer includes a dead hero. We can manage at least a two weeks delay to plan the memorial service before they get more aggressive.”
“God, you’re sexy when you talk about bureaucratic run-around.” Clint hugged me tighter. “I'm going to give you the best blow job ever as soon as we’re alone.”
“Be nice.” Natasha swatted Clint’s leg. “We all missed him, not just you.”
“Tell Thor we’re planning a feast for tomorrow night, have the Mayor contact public affairs, and put the Council on hold while we tote up the death toll,” Fury told Maria. “I’ll be on the bridge in ten.”
“So what story are we going with?” I asked. “Life Model Decoy? Magic? Alien technology?”
“The glow spear of destiny killed you then brought you back. We’ve got it in storage,” Natasha explained. “We’ll let you two star-crossed lovers come up with the details of how you finally admitted to your years of pining for each other.”
“Good. I was getting sick of all the unrequited sexual tension. We’re not doing that on the next cycle; being mortal is bad enough without watching the anguished puppy dog eyes,” Nick said. His comm beeped again. “Damn it, this thing never stops. Take a couple of hours, Cheese, then I need you to start the paperwork; I’ve got a backlog of souls ready to ferry into the afterlife, and S.H.I.E.L.D. 's pretty much ground to a halt without you. I’ll send your tablet down so you can get started. “
His coat swirled behind him as he left the room; I really did like it much better than the traditional hooded cloak he used to wear. Black leather was a better look.
“No rest for the weary.” Natasha jumped off. “I’ll leave you alone for a bit so Clint can get it out of his system; he’s never satisfied until he’s on top.”
“Excuse you,” Clint protested. “I like delayed gratification as much as the next guy. There’s more than one way to win.”
When Natasha smiled, the Universe trembled; for me, her look was fond. “Have fun, boys. Tomorrow we go back to work.”
“So, where were we before we were so rudely interrupted?” Clint nipped at my ear and slipped his leg between mine.
It was a heady feeling, knowing that I was the one he chose. All these centuries and my love for him was as solid as the day I first saw him, bloodied and battered in battle, astride his white horse, bow in hand. Clint falling for me, well, it made no sense, but I’d taken his heart and never looked back..
“Budapest, eh?” I stroked my thumb over his rough knuckles. “That’s when.”
“Sniper took me out,” he admitted. “The irony, right? World’s best marksman and a bullet ends it. Nat found where they dumped me in the river. I was pissed; I lost those cool tac glasses you had R & D make me. It was hell after that, not jumping your bones on a daily basis; denial is your thing, not mine. Those suits, Phil. God, you are the sexiest thing in pinstripes. I have fantasies, a lot of ‘em, and time to make up starting now.”
I had no problem letting Clint win that point.
Being one of the Four Horsemen … excuse me, the Four … is the kind of job where you live your work.
There’s no way to make death friendly, so Nick doesn’t bother to try; he’s Fate and he’s a realist who understands that everyone’s number comes up and there’s nothing equal or fair about it.
Natasha is Struggle. She knows the balance between belief and fanaticism, when war is just and when it’s an ego trip; she protects as often as she fights.
No one who met Clint would call him a conqueror, but he is Triumph, the survivor who keeps going no matter how bad things get. And he does it all with a sense of humor and killer smile.
Me, well, everyone says I’m famine or pestilence, but I’m really the king of paperwork and details. Armies live and die by their supply chain, and I know the difference between too little and sufficient. Not disease or starvation … I hate that interpretation … I am Fortitude, the value of persistence, stamina, and strength.
But all that could wait; I had what I needed, Clint in my arms.
And that was enough.