Kate – the name meant nothing to him, but the hesitance in her voice made it clear that it should. Bishop he recognized in that vaguely-famous sort of way, the sort of name that was on business cards and buildings. But that last one. Hawkeye.
He was just a kid when his parents died. When he and Barney were shipped off to that group home, where they refused to admit that Clint had a hearing problem and instead just called him a ‘problem.’ (When they weren’t calling him stupid.) Two kids that ran away and joined the circus, and surprisingly, had a little bit of talent. He still remembered, how it felt the first time the ring leader told him he’d get his own act. You need a name, Kid. Something that’ll draw in the crowds and make ‘em listen!
It was Barney who came up with Hawkeye in the end. After Clint spent two days agonizing. The Incredible Hawkeye, the man who never missed. He took the name with him when he left everything else, it was a part of him. A part he buried for too long, a part that maybe he didn’t deserve anymore. All this time, he had thought this universe was his second chance to get it right, but maybe this universe had already given up on him.
“A lot,” he murmured, gaze faltering for a moment. He couldn’t keep eye contact with her. “I think… I think you should come inside,” he said softly, stepping back to open up the door further. “It’s – we have a lot to talk about.”
He didn’t know her. All that worrying, the years they’d spent together, the months of radio silence, and he didn’t know her. She might have been an amateur private investigator, but she was good enough to know the hollow look of a stranger who really had no idea who you were. Kate knew Clint well enough, or so she’d thought she had, to know that he couldn’t fake this, and that he wouldn’t lie about something like this even if he could. He was stupid and reckless, but he wasn’t cruel.
Which meant that the Clint Barton who had taken her on, who had been her mentor, her partner, her best friend, was really gone. This man was a stranger wearing his face.
Wordlessly, Kate nodded and pushed her way inside. She hadn’t been in this apartment in--how long? Months, at least. Since before she’d moved. It was surreal to be standing inside of it now, when it seemed so very much the same but everything was so very different. She used to spend much too much time here. Days flopped on the couch restringing bows to the tune of Kate, you drank all the coffee again and don’t you have your own place, Katie? You’re rich, right? It had felt so much more like home than the glossy Upper East Side apartment she’d grown up in. At least Clint’s place didn’t have her father and his ghosts lurking around the corners. It had had an awful lot of old takeout containers and overflowing trash cans, but it had also had an endless supply of bandages and frozen peas, one very good dog, and one very good man. She couldn’t have asked for much more.
Without looking back at him, she tossed her bow on the kitchen counter. From somewhere in the loft, Lucky barked, and, suddenly, he was in front of her, tail wagging, single eye wide. Kate grinned and knelt down to smoosh her face into his. “Hey, buddy,” she said, muffled in his fur, before sitting back, cross-legged, dog in her arms. “You remember me, don’t you?”
It wasn’t pointed, necessarily, but it also wasn’t not pointed. Without letting go of Lucky, Kate finally looked up at Clint. “You better have a futzing good explanation for this, Barton, or I’m stealing your dog and moving back to California.”
