crack_van | Just Another Guy with A Bow by myrmidryad (R)

Fandom: AVENGERS
Pairing: Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov, Clint Barton/Phil Coulson
Length: 94,000 words
Author on LJ:

myrmidryad
Author Website: Author's AO3 Page
Why this must be read:

The author's summary begins this way: "Clint's life is a steady progression from point A to point B, but it's everything that happens between those points that make the story interesting." All true. This is a wonderfully long, smart and often touching look at Clint Barton's life from childhood on, which incorporates many elements from both comics and movie canons, and still succeeds in feeling original.

If you'd like to read a bit from Clint's early days at S.H.I.E.L.D.:

He goes anywhere they send him, and does whatever is in the order briefing. It’s not always killing. Several of his targets just need to be warned that someone’s keeping an eye on them. A mission in Singapore involves breaking up a meeting by panicking the participants. In the panic that ensues when he shoots a few smoke bomb arrows into the house, Clint knocks several of them out and steals the contents of a briefcase from a thin brown-skinned woman wearing a choker of rubies. The papers are in a language he doesn’t read, some form of Russian, but he folds them and stashes them in his bag and leaves enough sheets of blank paper in the woman’s briefcase that she won’t immediately notice the difference when she wakes.

Some of his missions fail. Just a few, and usually because the target alters their pattern or brings in a factor SHIELD hadn’t accounted for. Those missions usually turn into waiting games where Clint stays very still and watches very quietly while his window of opportunity shrinks smaller and smaller, and when it vanishes, he leaves. It’s disappointing, but it’s never marked against him as long as the target never knows Clint was there. And all the time, Coulson’s voice is calm and ever-present in his ear, keeping him up to date, helping him do his job, and making sure Clint is alert and unharmed. Coulson becomes synonymous with his work, and when he’s given a mission with another handler because Coulson’s busy on something else, Clint doesn’t like it.

He’s a professional, so he doesn’t say a word when the name in the briefing isn’t Agent P. Coulson. He just frowns.

“Problem?” Coulson asks.

“Who’s Agent Tenner?” Clint looks over the folder at Coulson, who sighs and keeps signing papers that need signing.

“He’s a handler like me. He’s perfectly competent, Barton.”

“You getting tired of me, Coulson?” Clint pulls a sad face, and though Coulson doesn’t look up, he smiles faintly.

“Contrary to what you might believe, Barton, I do have other responsibilities besides you.”

“I don’t believe you,” Clint pouts, “I’m the centre of your universe.”

“Your lack of close friends baffles me.”

“Aw, that’s just mean. I’m too busy to make close friends! Besides, aren’t you my close friend, Coulson?”

“I’m busier than you are, Barton. Agent Tenner is your handler for this mission. Deal with it.”

**

Clint sleeps on the flight over to Papua New Guinea. Tenner is a tall man with hair so pale it’s almost white. His cheeks are red and sallow, and Clint doesn’t like him very much. But he wants to prove that he can actually work with handlers who aren’t Coulson, so he doesn’t protest, and falls asleep to avoid making awkward conversation.
The mission goes horribly wrong the way only assassinations can.

The characterizations in this story are excellent, the action sequences work extremely well...basically, this is just a really engaging, long read.

A small warning note, which you can ignore if you - like me - would rather encounter the story with no particular foreknowledge: while there's a fair bit of canon-expected violence and 'peril,' the thing that had the most emotional impact on me as a reader was Clint and Natasha's grief over what they believe is Phil's death. It lasts...a while, and I cried more than once during that time. He returns though, which is a relief.

Just Another Guy With A Bow