capitalh | I'm coming home

Entry tags:

I'm coming home

Who: Clint Barton and YOU
Where: Alpha Force Tower, later Trailblazer dorms
When: TODAY. ...yeah, whatever today is.
What: Clint's back from his leave and is clueless about the things he missed. Like half his team disappearing.
Warnings: none (yet)

Alpha Force Tower

Clint could use a haircut and a shave, but all in all he doesn't look too worse for wear when he clomps into the residential area of Alpha Force tower, bow on his back and dufflebag slung over his shoulder. He's fiddling with one of his hearing aids, since he'd gotten kind of used to not wearing them most of the time so it's like getting used to them all over again, but otherwise he mostly looks way more relaxed and less likely to flip out than he did in the immediate aftermath of Mockingbird and Captain Victory's deaths.

"Hey, anyone home?" he calls out. "Fi, I brought you a souvenir!"

Trailblazer Dorms

In the wake of finding out that half of his team has disappeared without a trace, Clint wasn't really sure what to do with himself. "Disappeared" doesn't mean "dead", which is a blessing, but that doesn't make him feel that much better. A shower and a shave later, he's still pretty scruffy, but he feels like he should be doing... something.

And that something, he figures, is he should check on the Trailblazer kids. He always tried to keep an eye on them, even outside of the official mentoring or training, and now he's been gone for more than half a year. If nothing else, he knows there's new kids that he hasn't met yet, and he should do that. He shows up at the dorms and just hangs out in the living area, waiting to say hi to whoever comes by.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Okay, mountain man."

Damn it. This isn't fair. This should be someone else. Legion could do this. Legion wouldn't give a shit.

"So... a few months ago, Druid, Fissure and Zoom kind of... vanished. And haven't been seen or heard from again."

The shock and dismay Clint's feeling plays pretty openly across his face, despite his best efforts to stay calm. He'd known Zoom from Trailblazers even before he joined up, right around the time Clint skipped town. He and Druid had been teammates, he and Fi had been friends.

But vanished isn't killed.

"They... okay, but we don't know they're dead, or anything," he says, clinging to the thread of hope. "Fearless Leader's trying to find them, right?"

"Not technically," she says flatly. Optimism is not Jessica's strong suit. Optimism has never gotten her anywhere, and usually just ends up hurting more.

"I don't know. I haven't... The most I know is that it was something about a sinkhole, and it's probably supernatural. Or interdimensional, which is maybe the same thing? The point is, there's not really anywhere to look."

"Shit," Clint sighs, rubbing his face. "Man, we had just got Zeke from the Trailblazers, too, he's a fuckin' kid."

Conveniently forgetting that Zeke was only 3 years younger than him. Still, he'd always been kind of protective of the Trailblazers and sidekicks, even when he was too young, technically, to have graduated from the Trailblazers, if he'd been officially a hero.

Still. His life was already shit when he got caught up with heroing, and you saw a lot more shit in CONDOR than you did in the Trailblazers, generally speaking. He felt so much older than them, sometimes.

He sighs again, and flashes Jess a crooked smile. "Well, I'm glad it wasn't everybody. Me being the senior Alpha Force member would just be a disaster."

She snorts softly. "Well now I feel better. At least it's not just you and me. That would be terrifying."

Also the most pathetic superhero team in existence. The Trailblazers are more put-together than the two of them.

Her coffee's finished brewing, and she slides off the counter so she can grab a mug and ingest some as quickly as possible. She is not awake enough for this conversation. (She would never be awake enough for this conversation.)

"Tron's still here. And this new... robot... person. Persons. Legion. So there's five of us now."

"Jesus."

Jess you had better share that coffee, because he definitely needs some.

"I really hope we can find some muscle to flesh us out until we get them back, I don't like the idea of us going up against something big with only five of us." Sigh. "Not that three people I'm not used to working with is much more comforting, but I am a squishy baseline human and I like having a lot of superpowered meat shields between me and the things I'm shooting at."

Which is totally untrue, because he's always in the thick of things even when it would probably be better for him to keep some distance. That's how he ends up with broken ribs so often.

She barely splashes enough cream in the first mug to make it palatable before downing it as quickly as humanly possible. Once she's had a chance to pour a second mug, he's welcome to steal the rest of the pot.

"You can hide behind me, Hawkeye," she says dryly. "I'm pretty durable... and I'd hate to see your face take any more of a beating than it already has." They really could use a little more muscle, though. The team they have now... It'd make a great strike team, but sometimes you just need a heavy hitter or three.

Edited 2014-04-05 04:06 (UTC)

"You're all heart, Drew," he drawls, and snags the pot after she's done pouring her second mug. He doesn't bother with sugar or cream. Or, honestly, a mug. Coffee.

"Seriously, though. Unless our new robot's packing a serious punch, we are down a lot of muscle. Gives anybody attacking with brute force too much of an edge."

Jess makes a little face at him drinking straight out of the pot. Gross, Barton. Gross.

"I don't know about his strength, but he's kind of scrawny. But unless you know someone you can talk into maybe taking a few bullets for us, that's not a problem I know how to fix. We can't exactly put out wanted ads."

He wrinkles his nose and takes another swig of coffee.

"Forrest could've filled in for a while," he says quietly. "Asshole. Kicking out right before we could really use him."

She frowns, tilting her head as she tries to remember. She doesn't know many heroes outside of LA or San Francisco, and remembering their names instead of their monikers is right out most of the time.

"Forrest? Who's... Oh, right, Captain Victory." She really only remembers that because Clint talks about him sometimes. "Captain Victory retired?"

...leave her alone, she was in Madripoor when it happened.

A range of expressions flicker across Clint's face. Disbelief that she'd somehow missed it, even in Madripoor. Anger because she should care even though that's silly, she'd only met him a couple of times tops. And hurt, because let's face it, that wound is still as raw as losing Bobbi.

"No, he-- He died. Few weeks after Bobbi." Clint takes another, too-long drink of coffee to give himself a chance to try to loosen the knot in his chest.

It explains, a little, why it took him so long to skip town after Bobbi's death. Forrest's was just the last emotional straw.

Oh. Crap. Jessica shrinks a little, biting her lip.

"I'm sorry, I didn't... It didn't make the news. In Madripoor. And it wasn't relevant to my mission, so no one in CONDOR told me..."

She needs to not talk to humans, since she's apparently incapable of doing so without screwing it up.

The heat of the coffee helps. Or maybe it's the faint scalding of his esophagus. Or maybe it's just the fact that she clearly didn't mean to push any buttons and feels bad about it.

He doesn't know Jess well, but he knows enough about her background to know that she's not exactly the most well-socialized person. She's like a puppy who never learned to speak dog. (Sometimes, he knows how that feels. You learn a very very specific dialect of human interaction in an abusive home, in an orphanage, or in a shady circus. That dialect isn't really spoken by many people who haven't grown up with it.)

"It's okay," he says. "I mean, I managed to miss three of my teammates disappearing like six months ago just because I was in Canada."

"Yeah," she blows out in a sigh, flicking a glance back at him to try and tell if he's still upset. She likes Clint, and the last thing he wants is to piss him off by being... her. "Maybe we should stop dropping off the grid. Apparently nothing good can come of it."

He laughs, and sticks the (now-empty) coffee pot in the sink. "Yeah, seems to be the cause of bad things happening. Let's just stick around for a while and see if that helps."

Nah, Jess. You'd have to actually work to piss Clint off in a real impactful way.

"Sure," she sayss, false-cheerful. "The worst that happens is we get to be the next ones to disappear, right?"

"Hey, we're pretty great CONDOR agents, but I'm not sure they'd be tactically crippled if we dropped off the map."

He bumps his shoulder into hers and smiles crookedly.

"Hey, everything else aside, it really is good to see you again. We never really did much hero-wise together, hopefully we can kick some baddie ass and kiss some babies before anything goes to shit."

"I'm honestly less worried about how they'd manage than I am about me." She cares about them and all, but... not more than herself.

Jess pulls a little face at that, holding up a hand. "You can kiss the babies, Hawkeye. I'll stick to venomblasting those who deserve it."

"Well, that's also a valid concern. I prefer not to think about that concern and the fact that if we get disarmed by aliens or whatever, they'll probably take my ears, too."

Yeah, that's not terrifying or anything.

"Aw, what, you don't like kids?" tease tease. "Come on, they're so... cute and giggly! It's not like you have to change their diapers, you're a fuckin' superhero."

"No, I really don't. They're tiny and breakable and I have superstrength and..." She takes in a breath, shakes her head. "Dogs don't like me, Barton. You shove a kid at me and it'd probably start crying. Not a great photo-op."

"I bet I could find a dog that likes you," he declares. He probably could, too.

"Anyway, you don't have to hold the babies when you kiss them. Most moms actually prefer to keep them, you just, y'know, smile for a photo and move on. The kissing is purely metaphorical unless you wanna drop one on their cute little heads."

Someone stop Clint before he steals a baby. We know you wanna be a dad, Barton, but you have to supply your own baby for that.

"I seriously doubt it." Jess rolls her eyes. "It's the pheromones. Freaks them right out."

And now she's side-eyeing him. That is way too much enthusiasm about babies, Clint. It's freaking her out.

"Okay, it's official, my new challenge is to find a dog that likes you."

At least it's not babies? SHUT UP HE WANTED TO BE A DAD. Before the woman of his dreams got herself killed to save him. He still thinks she made the wrong choice.

Jess purses her lips, shifting uncomfortably. "It's... really fine. I'm probably not really a dog person anyway."

(no subject)

makethatwork - 2014-04-13 07:01 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

teamsad - 2014-04-13 07:10 (UTC) - Expand

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only