Clint "Hawkeye" Barton ⇢

"Daddy?"

"What is it, Coop?" Clint asked, not looking up from the legal pad on the table in front of him as he jotted down numbers and made quick sketches, deep in the last stages of planning that porch renovation he'd been promising Laura he'd get to for a year.

"Is Auntie Nat really my aunt?"

The unexpected question made Clint pause mid-seven and look up, meeting his six-year-old son's gaze as the boy watched him with those big dark eyes, so much like his mother's, his expression more troubled than he was used to seeing. If trends at this age held for the rest of their lives, then Lila was well on her way to being the more energetic, outgoing kid, while Cooper was quieter, more reflective, and probably more sensitive. Since Lila was just exiting the toddler stage it wasn't a guarantee that those designations would stick, but Clint had a feeling they would - which meant that Cooper would likely notice a lot of things without speaking about them, just like he was doing now. "What makes you ask that?"

His son blinked at him, not moving his gaze away and looking quietly solemn. "Micah's father saw her when she took me to school and asked. He says she doesn't look anything like you."

Setting down his pen, Clint turned to his son, all attention focused on an important subject but also not entirely sure how to handle this talk, not when Cooper was this young. "People don't have to look like each other to be related, Coop. You don't look like me and I'm your dad."

"I look like Mommy. And Lila looks like you. We both look like one of you, and you say I have your nose, and Lila has Mommy's mouth."

It was true. Clint sighed, sitting back in his chair a little, reaching up to rub his face with his hand as he tried to parse this situation. Laura was much better at dealing with this kind of thing, being able to find the right words to handle all the emotional things. Clint was very good at noticing and cataloging all the pieces, but he didn't always know how to put them together - Laura still teased him, over a decade later, about the fact that they'd gone on something close to a dozen dates before he'd even realized they were dates. She'd had to clue him in to it, too. But Laura wasn't here, so it was up to him to figure this out. "Come here, buddy."

Without hesitation, Cooper crossed the living room and climbed into his lap, even though he was getting too big for it, and Clint put his arms around his son to hold him there so he wouldn't fall off. The question about his family had clearly disturbed him, and Clint stifled a momentary wish to shake the man that had disturbed his son. "Okay. So. You know not everyone has a whole family, remember?" Cooper nodded, remaining silent for the time being. "Like me. My parents died when I wasn't much older than you."

"How?"

"They were driving home late at night, in a storm, and there was a crash." There'd also been a lot more to it than that, but Clint wasn't about to go into all the complicated feelings his parents invoked in him, not when his son was only six.

Cooper tilted his head up at his father, watching him closely in an uncanny imitation of his mother. "Is that why you and Mommy are always so careful driving and make us wear seat belts?"

"That's part of it. But that means until me and your mom got married, I didn't have any family. And I lived with a lot of other kids who didn't have family, too. So we were kind of like a family."

"And Auntie Nat was there?"

"No, she came later. But she also didn't have a family. They got separated when she was really young, and she doesn't remember their names." Clint paused, glancing around the kitchen for some sort of inspiration - and his eyes snagged on one of Lila's toys that had been left out, a plush doll of Jessie from the Toy Story movies, and his brain made about six instantaneous leaps from one thing to another in a lightning flash to the thing that might just help Cooper to understand. "You remember us watching Lilo & Stitch a couple months ago?"

Cooper nodded, looking so solemnly focused that it almost made him laugh. "Uh-huh. Lilo and her sister wanted a bigger family, so they went and got Stitch, so then they ended up with all of them as family."

"That's right, Coop. And you remember what Stitch said when the space people were trying to take him away at the end?"

His face scrunched up as he thought about it, but it was a losing battle from the start, even for a very smart kid. "...Ohana means family?"

Clint let a smile cross his face as he resettled his hold on Cooper's shoulders. "Well they said that, and that's a really good line, but that's not what I meant. That's okay, I'll tell you." He had something of a ridiculous knack for remembering specific phrases and lines people said, and at least right now it was coming in handy. "Ready? He said: This is my family. I found it, all on my own. Is little, and broken, but still good. Yeah, still good. And he'd changed by being in that family and coming to love them. And when your Auntie Nat and I met, it was like that - she was alone and didn't really know how to handle a lot of people, so I started spending time with her to help her out. And the more time we spent together, the more we realized how much we were alike and how well we got along. So we hung out more. And it just got bigger from there."

"So she's our auntie because... you chose her?"

"We chose each other. And it's one of the best decisions I ever made, right up there with marrying your mom."

"And we're really family?"

He nodded, once, firmly. "Uh-huh. She's our little blue space gremlin." One second too late, he realized that that had been the wrong thing to say, because Cooper would undoubtedly repeat it to Nat and then she would retaliate against him. Ah, crap. At least she'd probably be amused over it before she whacked him in the head. "Or not really a blue space gremlin, but it's the same idea. You can choose your family, and don't ever let anyone tell you otherwise. And the family you choose can be even more important to you than your 'real' one."

"But what if you like your real one?" Cooper asked, looking troubled.

"Then you can have both." Clint made his voice as firm as he could to reassure his son, and he was relieved to see some of the worry disappear. "A family is the people who love you and help you and do fun things together with you, blood or no blood. And if anyone ever tells you different, tell me and I'll have a talk with them."

"Okay, Daddy." Cooper nodded, shifting a little in his hold, and Clint released his grip to let Cooper slide to the floor. The boy gave him a quick hug which he returned, then walked off towards the stairs, but stopped and turned back before he could exist the living room. "Daddy?"

"Mmm?"

"...Can we watch it again tonight?"

Clint didn't try to hold back his smile at the question. "Sure, buddy."





















"We got everything?"

"I counted fourteen bags at the end of the checkout, and we've got fourteen bags in the car. I think we're ready to roll." Clint shoved the rear door of the Armada closed, glancing around as he did so out of habit to make sure that nothing had fallen out of the cart or been tossed out by an energetic four-month-old baby. Sure enough, one of Nate's rattles was on the asphalt, and he bent down to pick it up as Laura focused on buckling him into his car seat and Lila ran the cart to the return corral. "You sure we don't need to stop anywhere else on the way home?"

"I'm sure," came Laura's voice, slightly muffled from being inside the car. "And I'm not stopping anywhere else when we have ice cream in the car. I refuse to clean up a puddle of Moose Tracks."

Clint grinned at Cooper, winking at him while Laura couldn't see. "We could just eat it off the carpet."

"Don't even think about giving your children ideas, Clint."

Cooper's face was a little redder as he rolled his eyes and half-turned away. "Dad, you're weird. That's unsanitary."

"What's unsanitary?" Lila asked, running back to the car and her family.

"Don't ask, Lila, you'll just provoke him." Nate securely buckled into his seat, Laura extracted herself from the Armada and waved at the older children. "Come on, everyone in! Let's get home before that puddle is real."

Cooper and Lila followed her directions, Lila climbing in the door Laura had left open while Cooper opened the one behind the driver's seat and pulled himself into his own seat. "Can we listen to something else on the way home, please?"

"What, you don't like Bon Jovi?" Clint asked as he paused in shutting Cooper's door.

His son gave a long-suffering, half-muffled sigh and groan. "That's, like, all you listen to, Dad. That and other stuff that's even more embarrassing."

Clint snorted at his son's phrasing. "Hey, don't go knocking Bon Jovi, kid. They're anything BUT embarrassing, they're immortal."

"Dad, they wore snake skin."

"I wanna wear snake skin!" Lila chimed in.

"No one's wearing snake skin," Laura interrupted, eying her husband and children through the car. "Come on, we need to get this show on the road. Moose Tracks puddle. Not something we need."

A grin split his face as Clint watched his son shrink in on himself a little. Cooper had started on his early-puberty growth spurt a couple months before and had shot up almost four inches in that time, but he was still as thin as he had been a year before, so it was kind of like watching a beanpole collapse on itself. He was well aware that his son wasn't trying to insult him and was just trying to find his own interests outside his parents' that he absorbed by proximity, but at the same time he couldn't resist giving him a hard time for this. And he knew exactly how to do it. "If you don't want Bon Jovi, I've got a Journey disc in the book."

Lila stared at him half in fascination and half in shock as Cooper actually moaned and raised both hands to cover his face. He knew what that meant. "Dad, no."

"Come on, Journey's always fun! You know how it is - you hear that piano and it's just...."

"Clint." Laura's voice was like a beacon to him and he looked up to grin at her over their children's heads, then threw his head back and launched right into the song. At the top of his lungs.

"JUST A SMALL TOWN GIRL, LIVIN' IN A LONELY WORLD~"

Cooper shrank even more into his seat, hands still over his face and knees curling up in an instinctive defensive posture. Lila had that same mixture of fascination and shock on her face as she watched him, mouth open, as he kept singing; Laura had a very similar look on her face, but that smile he loved so much was threatening to overtake her face even as she blushed. He didn't sing much when they were around people not family, and so almost no one knew that he was actually very talented, but she'd always loved to hear him sing - though admittedly, this time was more like shouting than singing, and it was hard to hear any nuance in his voice.

And, he knew, she'd been fielding more of Cooper's early rebellions than him, so she was probably enjoying seeing his reaction here more than she'd admit.

"SHE TOOK THE MIDNIGHT TRAIN GOING ANYWHERE~ Come on, babe!"

Laura burst into embarrassed laughter, face completely flushed but also not trying to run away from him. "Oh god, Clint, really?"

"That's not the words! JUST A CITY BOY, BORN AND RAISED IN SOUTH DETROIT~ HE TOOK THE MIDNIGHT TRAIN GOING ANYWHERE~" Not bothering to shut Cooper's door, Clint jogged around the back of the Armada as he "sang," running right up to Laura and pulling her into a full-body embrace with his arms going easily around her waist. She was still laughing and buried her face in his shoulder for a moment as two women crossed behind the car, looking to the right to see the crazy man screaming cheesy eighties song lyrics in the parking lot of a Missouri WalMart. "Come on, Lala, sing along with me."

"That is not singing, Clint." But she looked up at him again, grinning, raising her arms to hook around his neck and willingly taking up the thread. At a lower volume. "A singer in a smokey room, the smell of wine and cheap perfume-"

To be fair, and not cause her her own case of deafness, Clint lowered his volume to match hers and grinned at her as he backed up just enough to be able to spin them both in a circle that caused her to break into another laugh, this one more delighted than before. "For a smile they can share the night, it goes on, and on, and on, and on~"

"Strangers-"

"Waiting-"

"Up and down the boulevard~"

"Their shadows-"

"Searching-"

"In the nii-iight~"

As they moved towards the driving lane at the back of the parking space, Lila spilled out of the car once more, staring at her parents as something that might have been a grin started to bloom across her face. Cooper, by this point, was completely invisible behind his seat back. Clint continued steering them into the open space, and he did not care at all that every single head in the parking lot was staring at them as they acted like a pair of goofy lovesick teenagers.

Laura's flush deepened as she realized that everyone could see them much more easily now that they weren't hidden by cars, but she also gave her husband a bit of a wicked grin and raised his arm above her head for her to spin under it in an impressive bit of impromptu choreography. "Streetlights-"

Clint pulled her into his side at the end of her spin, grinning at her widely before spinning her out again. "People-"

"Living just to find emotion~" She ducked under his arm again, then leaned into him before pushing off and kicking her heel up behind her, making her long skirt flare.

"Hidin' somewhere in the nii-iight~"

"DON'T STOP BELIEVING!" The new voice caused them both to turn in surprise as Lila launched herself at her father. Clint barely let go of Laura's hand quick enough to catch her, but managed to turn the near-fumble into a swing up and under his arm, making her laugh happily as he started spinning around in a circle to make them both dizzy. "HOLD ON TO THE FEELING!"

"IT GOES ON AND ON AND ON AND ON~" he yelled in response as he came to a halt, grinning and dizzy out of his mind. The lyrics had gotten mulched by Lila's sudden introduction, but Clint also didn't care, and he knew neither did Laura. This was just about them, and even if Cooper was more embarrassed by them than he'd ever been, it was still a fantastic, silly memory to hang on to.

YOU
Player name: Tai
Contact: otteratplay @ plurk, Tai#6426 @ discord
Referral: the giant dinosaur in the sky, who else
Current characters: Ven on reserve

THEM
Character Name: Clinton "Clint" Francis Barton, aka "Hawkeye" and a few other things
Character Age: Forty-seven
Canon: Marvel Cinematic Universe (Marvel verse-199999 SHUT UP MYSTERIO)
Canon Point: Morning of the Snappening (look, if you want him mentally stable, this is the latest you can get him)

History/World: Have a wiki. I also have an extensive history written out for him based on clues from canon and reasonable conjecture I can link you to, if you want. I have Learned not to inflict that upon people unless they ask for it, but it exists.

Personality: Clint is one of those guys where it's kind of amazing to look at him and see him for exactly what he is and exactly what he isn't at the same time. There's two very distinct sides to Clint Barton, but unlike a lot of other people (and a lot of his friends), Clint has managed to reconcile the two and has few to no doubts about having two entirely separate lives. In a contrast to most spies, his "normal" life is actually a closely guarded secret, while his "covert" life is much more well-known, especially after the events of the Battle of New York. While the two are very different, Clint manages to be more or less the same person across both.

While Steve is very "all American" in a 1940s-war-effort way, and very deservedly so, Clint is actually very like Steve in a lot of ways, just in a modern version and, admittedly, much better at hiding his secrets. Clint is friendly, relaxed, and very casual in most situations, even in lethal danger. He hasn't exactly cultivated a facade, but he's naturally one of those people that's just good to have around because it lifts people's spirits. It's not something that anyone openly acknowledges, probably because they aren't entirely aware of it themselves, but Clint is by far the most stable of the Avengers, having no "dramatic backstory" nor any war between what he wants and what he's doing. He's accepted himself for who he is and had unconsciously taken on the roll of being the team's "every man," and it's kind of amazing how much the team needs someone like that. He's the guy you ask to borrow a lawnmower from, or the one who goes out to the sports bar for some wings and a game. He makes sarcastic and joking remarks almost as much as Tony, even during major fights or when he's getting his body repaired by a machine. His snarking is less "jab"-like than Tony's, being more general comments that are just off-the-cuff and kind of silly. The others make obviously-not-serious jokes about him being annoying or useless, but it's clear they value having him around even if they can't place their fingers on why. He laughs, he makes bad jokes (and some good ones), and he's the only Avenger that doesn't have conflict with anyone in the group before the Civil War. What with Tony and Cap butting heads all the time, Thor's sometimes not-Earth-appropriate mannerisms, Nat and her programming, and Bruce and his self-doubt, it's important to have someone around to be the "glue" of the group. He took up Coulson's position after his friend's "death," and so far he seems to be doing pretty good at it, to the extent of Pietro deciding to sacrifice himself to save Clint in Sokovia.

It's stated once that most agents have to choose between having a "normal" life, with a family and a house and two and a half cars and a dog and a fish, or devoting themselves to S.H.I.E.L.D. and becoming a lifer. Clint actually refused to do so, earning Fury's respect and his help. To all but one of his colleagues, Clint's a lifer and totally devoted to S.H.I.E.L.D, even frequently sent on secret, private missions - but those missions are often to his own home and family, to his wife Laura and his children Cooper, Lila, and Nathaniel. He would only join if Fury promised to protect his family (just Laura at the time), and so Fury wiped the records and Clint officially lives at headquarters. His family are aware of his job as a spy, though probably not what missions he's sent on, and they support him in it and understand when he's gone for long periods. He's a wonderful dad and deeply loves his wife in a slightly dorky way, telling her that he only listens to her and snuggling up to her whenever he can. Ironically, he seems to not be as romantically perceptive as he is in other areas, since he didn't notice anything going on between Nat and Bruce and his wife had to clue him in on that. But he's a genuinely very caring person. As much as the other Avengers can exasperate him sometimes, he's basically adopted them at this point; he and Laura have brought Nat so much into their family that their children call her "Auntie Nat" and they name their third child for her (or at least intend to), and the others are only the third through sixth people to even know about his farm, much less meet his family. In the end it even extends to the Maximoffs, despite them starting as enemies, especially Wanda who's the more easily freaked out sibling. He doesn't coddle her and his "get it together" speech is entirely pragmatic, but it's also not at all cruel and amazingly understanding: he simply tells her that if she can't stop beating herself up, he'll find a way to get her out of there, but there are some things that just need to be done and he's going to go do them because it's his job, and if she wants to make up for setting it all in motion she can join him in kicking ass but she has to commit to it fully. He and Pietro have a constant bickering thing going on, like they really are brothers who just get on each others' nerves a lot, but Pietro sacrifices himself to save Clint and Clint immediately tries to revive him, refusing to let him die. When it doesn't work, he and Cap take Pietro's body onto the Helicarrier's lifeboat, completely unwilling to leave him behind, and he obviously has trouble processing and believing what just happened. He ends up using "Pietro" as his new son's middle name in Quicksilver's honor. He will fight - and die, if necessary - to protect what's important to him, and there's a lot more that's important than you'd know just by looking at him.

Clint is loyal. Clint is so damn loyal he's nearly died a few times, and been mind controlled in a horrible way once. Moving to protect Fury and the Cube is what drew Loki's attention to him and got him scepter'd, leading to by far the worst experience of his entire life, where he killed or helped to kill a significant number of fellow agents. He still doesn't know the exact number, and still feels guilt over it, even though there was nothing he could have done. Part of the reason he joined the Avengers was to, well, avenge his fallen friends, make Loki pay for what he'd done to them. He also nearly got strafed in Sokovia, when he went back for a child that had hidden in a stairwell and Ultron hijacked the Quinjet - and its gatling gun. He had no way of knowing that Ultron was going to do that, but when the Quinjet showed up spraying bullets, his immediate action was to turn and shield the boy he was carrying with his own body, because he could not let a child be killed if he could help it. He also nearly blew the mission to recover Ultron's cradle in Seoul because he wouldn't leave without Nat; it took Steve directly ordering him away multiple times for him to fly off, and even then he was ready to kill something in anger. The first thing he does when reaching Avengers Tower is to get on the spy networks and track her. Once you're part of his "flock," there is literally nothing he won't do for you if he is capable of it.

In a similar vein, Clint feels his loyalty so deeply that someone breaking theirs to him is about the worst thing that could happen and he finds it very hard to trust someone again after that without a lot of work involved. He takes time out of the battle at the Leipzig airport to talk to Nat and she wants to make sure they're still friends; until Wanda intervenes, they'd been fighting evenly as they were both pulling their blows, not wanting to hurt each other. Clint knew what he was getting into when he came out of retirement to help Steve, Sam, and Bucky, and even during the airport battle he doesn't seem to be holding anything against anyone, chatting with Tony (and okay, taunting him a little) and trying to introduce himself to T'Challa. But after he and the rest of Team Cap are arrested, at the Raft, he's very, very dismissive of Tony, irritated with everything he's done that's lead them to the point where four of the world's good guys are sitting in a maximum security prison, and obviously not impressed with Tony's responses. Even then, he doesn't get angry until Tony mentions his family - the family no one else knows about, certainly not Ross or the government, and when the implications of Tony's statement sink in his reaction is the first genuinely pissed-off reaction we see him make to anyone other than Loki. Maybe in time he'll forgive Tony, but he brought the team to the farm and opened his life to them as a gesture of trust in a desperate time, and Tony just threw all of that into the air because he couldn't think before he spoke and thought admonishing Clint was more important than just talking.

Mentally, he's very strong, deceptively intelligent, and perceptive. Clint doesn't have an off-the-charts IQ, but he's far from stupid and possesses an amazing amount of common sense and intuitive thinking. Cap's the main tactician of the group, but Clint's actually second to him out of all of them, the result of his being able to recognize and analyze patterns in combat, being able to apply that knowledge immediately when he figures it out, and practical experience of working with several dozen agents over the course of his career and having to adapt to changing situations in the field in the blink of an eye. Cap gives the orders in the Battle of New York and he's more than willing to listen to him because Steve is just that good, but it's notably Hawkeye that takes over directing the individual skirmishes and figuring out a few of the Chitauri weaknesses, such as not being able to turn easily. He's the first one to realize that the Tesseract is opening a door from the other side, even before scientists like Dr. Selvig, and while he can't hold off Loki's mind control, it's hardly his fault since Loki's basically a god and he's using the Mind Gem to do it. He is, however, strong enough to fight from the inside and resist killing Fury when Loki orders him to, shooting him in the heart - right where his bulletproof vest is reinforced with metal plates - rather than in the head, which would have been instantly fatal. Loki also comments that he "has heart," making him the only one he makes such a remark to, and picks him to lead his mercenary troops and military operations. It can easily be reasoned that all the military maneuvers Loki's mercenaries perform were planned by him since Loki isn't familiar with the world or the technology they have available (Asgardian tech is different and in a lot of cases more advanced than Earth's), he definitely found the men who wanted to work against S.H.I.E.L.D. in less than a day, and he's shown undoubtedly commanding those forces in both Stuttgard and the raid on the Helicarrier. None of the others, Nat included, were able to sense Wanda sneaking up on them to mindscrew them, much less disable her, but he did. He also does all the remodeling to his house on his own or with his kids, which means he has a familiarity with construction and architecture. He also busts Wanda out of the compound during the Civil War through the use of a diversion and clever strategy (even if it did involve him getting nearly strangled), gets the two of them and Scott to Germany to meet up with Steve, Sam, and Bucky, and arranges transportation to Siberia without anyone on Team Stark immediately knowing about it. The thing, though, is that he doesn't mind appearing less intelligent than he is because it's just fun to see people react to him coming out with something great with kind of slack-jawed looks on their faces. Of course most of the people he spends time around know that trait by now, so it's lost a lot of its shock value, but hey it's still fun to do and just who he is.

Where things get really interesting is where Agent Barton intersects with Clint, because there's really very little difference between the two. He's done some absolutely amoral things while working for S.H.I.E.L.D. - as Tony notes to Loki, he's a master assassin, was sent after Natasha in the past, and the two of them are practically living legends within the agency - but he seems to have no moral qualms about it. He lives his life by the one solitary principle that S.H.I.E.L.D stands for, in Fury's eye: protection. The world has some bad things in it and he's never worn the rose-colored glasses that others have, even though he's just an average guy with no dark and broody past, and he knows he's keeping it safe for his kids and their future kids. He figures that if people aren't willing to do drastic things when they're necessary, they don't really deserve the world they're living in. He tries not to kill if he can help it (such as when he recruited Natasha, or held off on shooting Thor, though Coulson was calling the shots there), but he also doesn't hesitate to do so and doesn't lose any sleep over it. He's protecting the innocent, end of story. Better one (or two, or ten) bad men than a city full of civilians. This reasoning is also why he allows himself to be talked into coming out of retirement when Steve calls, because he knows Steve wouldn't exaggerate about a threat to the world and he's seen what the Winter Soldier can do. With Tony, Ross, and pretty much everyone convinced Bucky was the bomber at the UN, despite how the pieces didn't quite line up (the task force's orders should not have been shoot to kill even for someone considered an international terrorist), no one's willing to help them or even believe there's another threat that needs to be stopped. He trusts Steve enough to throw his lot in with him to stop this disaster before it can happen, though he intends to go right back home afterwards (which obviously doesn't happen, but that was the intention).

He also has an amazing amount of focus. Focus is definitely necessary in his line of work, since any sort of sniper needs to be able to eliminate movement and make their aim as steady as possible, but for as twitchy as he is when just being "himself" he can go as still as an iceberg when he wants to. Whether taking an impossible shot, simply being ready to fire, or keeping his eyes on something he's supposed to be guarding, little short of an earthquake will make him move or distract him from his target. That same focus will also lead to him finishing an assignment in as little time possible, as he simply won't stop unless he absolutely has to before completing a job. It's notable in that of the two assignments shown (both guard duty), even if he isn't the overall commander he's the agent with the most independence and the most likely to act on his own intuition. That focus and drive when paired with a partner he trusts more than anything (Nat) has lead to them being semi-mythical even within S.H.I.E.L.D. and eventually to places on the Avengers. He's fully confident in his ability to get the job done, and will not walk away before it's over, as he made very clear to Wanda even though he was feeling vastly outgunned at the time. He's even able to put aside thoughts of his family and commit himself to making the sacrifice play at Leipzig to allow Steve and Bucky to get away from the Avengers fight with no hesitation, because better that he's arrested and his family's still alive than he's free and the world is crumbling around them all, though that decision is obviously hurting him later. Best of the bad choices doesn't mean good, after all.

The one major place that he does have doubt about himself is in his place as an Avenger, since he joined the team more for revenge than anything and frankly isn't the heavy hitter that two-thirds of the team are. It's unclear which of them between he and Nat is the "weakest" on the team, but it probably comes down to whatever job needs doing at the moment. Both of them know they can't pack the punch that Thor, Cap, and Iron Man can, so their jobs in whatever battles they get into usually involve them taking care of mooks or sneaking around trying to get into places and disable things. Clint's trick arrows can pack an amazing punch, making him a genuine threat in a fight, but they're a finite resource unlike Stark's repulsor blasts or Thor's hammer swings and he's much more likely to be hurt since while he's at peak physical condition, he doesn't have enhancements or high tech armor. Enemies know this as well, since Strucker deliberately targeted him and Nat during their raid on his compound in Sokovia, and based on a few comments he seems to be injured the most on their little excursions. All of this adds up to him not being sure he truly has a place on the team, but no one else really seems to think he's a burden or suggests he quit, and he manages to pull their fat out of the fire in a few tough situations. Even with his doubts, though, he's accepted that these guys are "his mess," and he's not about to walk away from them when they and the world are in need. The doubts and experience in Sokovia with the Maximoffs, though, do lead him to walk away afterwards. He knows he can always come back if he wants to, and that he will come back if they need him for something major, but after watching a young man die for him he needs the time to heal himself. It ends up lasting about a year before he's pulled back in, and while knowing the whole story he knows that it probably would have been better if he hadn't come out of retirement, based on the knowledge he had at the time he knows he couldn't have done differently.

He's an active person, almost never sitting still except when he has a job to focus on like guarding the Tesseract or he's in sniper mode. At the after party at the Tower after retrieving the scepter, he's the first one to call the "only the worthy can lift the hammer" thing into question, and he's not quiet about it either, all the while twirling a pair of drumsticks. He's also the first one to take up the challenge (and fail). One of the first things he does when he gets home after the debacle in Africa is change his clothes and recruit his son to help him install posts on the porch banister. Laura even obviously (and rightly) disbelieves his statement that he's through fixing up their house despite his promise that it's his last project, and Nat shows no surprise when he later tells her he wants to alter the dining room. He's a mover, he's a doer, he always has at least one project in progress at all times, and that tendency to not sit still and wait has saved his life more than once. He finds accomplishing things fun, but it's never enough to satisfy him for long, which was why S.H.I.E.L.D. was a good career choice for him: every time something wraps up, they always have another place they need him to be, and ninety percent of the time it's a very interesting job, even if he does run the risk of losing a limb more often than most of his colleagues.

Items: His clothes (jeans, work boots, t-shirt, flannel shirt), his wallet with driver's license/bank cards/pictures/normal stuff, some pocket change, small tape measure, knowing him a couple of nails and screws and hex nuts, and a very obvious ankle monitor strapped to his leg that he is perfectly capable of deactivating and just doesn't because he doesn't want to be in even more trouble.

Powers/skills: Canonically, across all Marvel universes, no matter what background he has, none of them involve Clint having actual superpowers. He has skills that allow him to keep up with the people with actual powers and in some 'verses will get tech that gives him superpowers, though the MCU isn't one of them (but he does get some nifty tech). He has an innate perception of the world around him that allow him to hit what he's aiming for every time he shoots or throws anything barring outside interference, even while not looking at his target. In the MCU, that perception extends to other things as well, with it being a long-running joke in the fandom that even with all the doctors and scientists on hand when the Tesseract was "behaving" in Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S., the head of the security detail was the first to realize that someone on the other side of the "door" was trying to open it and seemed to just take it as basic fact while others didn't even realize it was a possibility. He's also the only one to take out both Maximoff twins in the battles with Ultron, feeling Wanda sneaking up on him to mindwhammy him and shooting the glass out from under Pietro's feet. While he's able to stand alongside his powered teammates when shit goes down, everyone knows he's still not in the same class that Iron Man, Thor, or even Cap are, as shown when he (and Nat) are usually found taking down mooks of the big bad rather than facing the big bad themselves because they know they can't put a dent in them. He admits outright to Vision that he knows he can't beat him and it's never presented like he's doing anything more than inconveniencing him during their brief fight, but it's also very clear he was planning on Wanda doing it from the start if they got caught (which happens). Conversely, that makes Clint (and Nat) much better at sneaking around and infiltration thanks to their spy backgrounds as opposed to pretty much everyone but Cap who all go barreling in full-tilt. His training and lifestyle have also given him skills in flying/driving basically anything that only requires one operator, with him in the running for the title of "best pilot on Earth," expert hand-to-hand (and incredibly pragmatic) combat skills, experience with multiple weapons (he always has a wicked knife and seems to favor blunt force after that when not shooting things, as he carries a collapsible baton and his bow can fold into a staff for physical engagements, and he's an utter badass with a sword), infiltration, target spotting, tactical leadership ability, demolitions/explosives, and being able to blend into his surroundings and fade off the grid. And when finally shown facing off against normal human enemies up close and personal, Clint shows he can be an absolutely terrifying hurricane of destruction and death as he hunts down and butchers criminal organizations across the world in the wake of Thanos' Snap, never getting a mark on him while he kills dozens of men in succession. Some of that is undoubtedly because of his equipment (S.H.I.E.L.D. knew he was going to be shot at a lot, after all, so they tried to make his tac suits bulletproof), but a lot of it's also due to him being too strong, fast, stealthy, and determined to be hit, and his victims lacking the super-weapons to penetrate his defenses.

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Wanda returns to 6I

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This is the history I'm going for for Clint Barton as portrayed in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The base elements are obviously the movies and tie-in comics and what they give us as canon, but I've chosen to mix elements from the Earth-1610 (Ultimates) comics continuity as well as the Earth-616 line since those are the prime influences on the movie stories and characters. I've also chosen to just make shit up if I feel it fits better (because they are definitely doing that in the movies; see Bucky being Steve's older, protective, life-long best friend). His background won't be as "extreme" as either comic line because it feels like they did try to give the baseline humans a more "normal" level of existence before becoming superheroes and they don't have anywhere near as many characters to make stand out from each other. Influences abound, but I've tried to tie it up in a way that makes sense and follows a concrete timeline. This is, of course, subject to change as more is revealed in the movies to follow.

( Clinton Francis Barton: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D, Member of the Avengers Initiative )


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( Hawkeye Headcanons )