Clint "Hawkeye" Barton ⇢

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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