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Direct sequel to Silver Linings. Also, I think I'm officially declaring this 'verse the continuation of Deus Ex, so keep that in mind for Bruce below.
Title: Report, As From A Gun
Rating: R
Fandom: Avengers movieverse
Characters/Pairings: Clint, Tony, JARVIS, Fury, Bruce, Natasha, primarily. Tony & JARVIS, Tony & Bruce, Clint & Natasha, Clint & Fury, SHIELD, Clint & Tony. Um. Lots
Summary: Clint Barton, ambassador of SHIELD. Seriously. Fuck this shit. (Or, the one where Clint explains to the killer AI and his jumpy creator why SHIELD is not going to try and take JARVIS)
Wordcount: 3908
Warnings/Notes: Violence. Darkness, in what people in Clint's world, SHIELD's, JARVIS', expect from people
Disclaimer: Not mine
Title: Report, As From A Gun
Rating: R
Fandom: Avengers movieverse
Characters/Pairings: Clint, Tony, JARVIS, Fury, Bruce, Natasha, primarily. Tony & JARVIS, Tony & Bruce, Clint & Natasha, Clint & Fury, SHIELD, Clint & Tony. Um. Lots
Summary: Clint Barton, ambassador of SHIELD. Seriously. Fuck this shit. (Or, the one where Clint explains to the killer AI and his jumpy creator why SHIELD is not going to try and take JARVIS)
Wordcount: 3908
Warnings/Notes: Violence. Darkness, in what people in Clint's world, SHIELD's, JARVIS', expect from people
Disclaimer: Not mine
Report, As From A Gun
The Avengers had gathered back up in Tony's erstwhile penthouse to make the reports. Downstairs, clean-up continued apace, mostly following Natasha's path through the enemy. Except for the testing floor where they'd tried to take Tony.
Stark had advised that they leave the machinery to him, once what was left of the bodies themselves were taken away. Taking one look at the slaughterhouse at the end of the lab, there hadn't been a single SHIELD agent who'd felt like arguing.
Clint couldn't blame them. But right now, he had a few other concerns.
"... They were in location above the assembly array, so I had JARVIS activate the disassembly programme we use for the armour while they were in range. Since human bodies aren't made of gold-titanium ..."
Clint didn't flinch. Much. Remembering the blood-painted metal limbs, the remains of what had been four men. He didn't flinch.
He also didn't blink, as Stark casually - and apparently without any thought at all - lied straight to Fury's face. With not even a blip, not even a twitch. So utterly casual about it that Clint almost started wondering if he'd imagined things himself. If he'd seen what he thought he'd seen.
Stark's version slotted perfectly into his. Clint hadn't heard whatever Stark had said just before JARVIS ... happened. It could have been an order to activate the array, though Clint wondered why the hell they'd clustered closer instead of backing the hell off, if that had been the case. But then, they hadn't been exactly the smart breed of kidnappers to start with, or they'd never had tried to take Tony Stark in the middle of a fucking machine shop. So. Plausible, maybe.
And, too, there was no way for Clint to judge how JARVIS functioned. How the hell would he know the difference between JARVIS activating a pre-programmed system and letting it do its thing, just on the wrong target, and JARVIS taking complete and autonomous control of an array and using it to deliberately tear some people to pieces?
He wouldn't. Couldn't. He had nowhere near the expertise to prove Tony a liar. He doubted there was a single person in the world who did. In terms of technical capabilities, there was no way Clint could know for sure what JARVIS had done.
But ...
You realise your AI just ate them, right?
I don't give a fuck.
He couldn't tell what JARVIS was capable of. But Tony could. And Tony, crouched there, with his arm around his fallen friend and all the fury in the world in his face ... Tony had known, exactly, what JARVIS had done. Tony hadn't flinched from Clint's assertation, hadn't blinked at the concept that JARVIS could do what Clint thought he'd done. Clint had all but accused JARVIS to his face ... and Tony hadn't blinked.
So, yeah. Clint had no way to read JARVIS, no way to doubt the AI. But Stark? Tony? That was a different story. Tony, right now, was lying through his teeth, and Clint knew it.
The question was, what the fuck did he do about it? On the one hand, as a SHIELD agent, the existence of a partially-or-fully autonomous killer AI was the sort of thing you should probably tell your boss about. And if there was ever a question of 'need to know', Fury had made it very, very clear that he always needed to know. On the other ...
I've got you, buddy. Me and JARVIS, we got you. You're going to be a-okay, got it?
On the other hand, Clint wasn't sure this was really the right time to test a paranoid Tony Stark's ability to be rational in the face of perceived or potential threats to his AIs, when not so long ago he'd watched one of them be shot, risked his life to protect it, and then completely failed to care when the other one tore some men to shreds in their defense. This might not be the best moment to create another potential threat. Especially when they were still in the Tower, and JARVIS was still right there, listening.
There were times when discretion was the better part of valour, was Clint's point. Knowing the right moment to pass information on was one of the first things they taught you, in this job.
Mostly by letting the consequences of picking the wrong moment speak for themselves.
"Agent Barton?" Clint looked up, at Fury's dry tone, and the narrow, contemplative glint in that one, staring eye. The head of SHIELD met his gaze impassively. "Got anything you'd like to add?"
Tony didn't look at him. Lounging against the wall beside Bruce, a couple of butterfly stitches over one of the larger cuts near his temple, Tony raised a curious eyebrow at Fury, and didn't look at Clint at all.
With the silent, invisible presence of JARVIS all around them, maybe he didn't have to.
Clint paused. Looking at Fury. Looking at the man who'd had their backs when someone was shooting fully-authorised missiles at Manhattan, the man who would cheerfully and remorselessly lie to the government's face when it came to protecting his people. The man who'd listened to Clint, when he brought Natasha in, said she could be trusted, when Natasha'd had a reputation for wrapping men around her little finger, and Fury had no proof Clint hadn't just been compromised like everyone else. The man who would use, sacrifice and lie to his own people, as and when it was necessary, and still walk into hell for their sake.
He didn't look at Stark. A man who didn't really know Clint yet, a man who'd been betrayed along with everyone else when Loki'd taken Clint, a man who'd live and die to protect his people, a man who'd deliberately worded his report to be able to handle it if Clint brought up something he shouldn't. A man who expected to be betrayed, a man ready to handle it.
Looking down the length of the arrow, meeting his eyes with a howling emptiness, and a small, ready smile. Resignation, some faint relief, the calm, pure knowledge that this had always been how she would end. Her life in his hands, and nothing but knowledge in her eyes.
... Shit. The visceral memory, the weird sense of deja vu, bubbled up all over again, and Clint figured he should ask Natasha, one of these days, how the hell she could bear to look at Stark sometimes.
"Sir," he said, quietly, looking up to meet the rapidly-narrowing eye turned his way. Meeting Fury's gaze head on, the man who'd seen Clint genuinely compromised, the first one to almost pay for it with his life. Finding, there, the same suspicion and wariness and casual faith he always had. Clint met Fury's eye, and shook his head slightly. "Not yet, sir."
Not yet. An implicit promise, both to Fury and to Stark. Not now, when it's raw, when the moment isn't right. A spy, an assassin, knew the value of the right moment. And Stark, the value of a warning, when one didn't have to be given.
And Natasha, watching him closely from the other side of the room, the value of Clint's word.
"Hmm," Fury murmured, mostly to himself. "Noted, agent. Keep me posted."
"Yes sir," Clint agreed, and wondered if the itch on the back of his neck was caused by JARVIS' watching presence, or the utter stillness lounging against the wall beside Bruce. Who, strangely, appeared to be somewhat still himself, looking between Clint and Tony with an unfathomable look in his eyes.
Oh yeah. When this was over, Clint was going to need a big drink.
"Rogers," Fury interrupted, not so much scanning the room as reading it of a piece, shooting Clint a narrow, borderline sympathetic look. "You and Odinsson, walk and talk. I'm on the clock, here, and I need to talk to the lab assistant Agent Romanov ... re-acquired." One of the moles hadn't been fast enough, had missed his extraction. Not that there'd been an extraction, once Natasha caught up with them. But since most of those hostiles were dead, the one who'd missed his appointment had suddenly, and very unwillingly, become useful again. "Agent Romanov ...?"
He trailed off, in a way that could have been him just expecting Natasha to know what he meant, or could have been him giving Clint the opening to have Natasha as backup. Or both. Clint, smiling faintly, shook his head at Tasha, and slanted a miniscule nod towards Fury.
Natasha, frowning heavily at him, letting him know with a creased eyebrow that she did not approve, turned to follow Fury, an accepting Thor, and a very wary, very worried Steve out of the room. "Yes, sir."
Which left Clint alone in a room with Tony Stark, JARVIS, and, apparently, Bruce fucking Banner. With the silent promise of 'yet' hanging between them, and the knowledge of JARVIS' capabilities rather explicitly on the table.
Ladies and gents, welcome to life with SHIELD. A laugh a minute, and the best damn health plan in the world.
"... Sir?" JARVIS said, after a moment. Breaking the silence, interrupting Tony's dark, heavy stare. "They've reached the elevator, and are heading down to the holding room downstairs."
Tony blinked, visibly startled out of whatever the hell he'd been thinking, and waved a hand aimlessly in the air. Or maybe only aimless when there wasn't an invisible, omnipresent AI involved. "Thanks, buddy. Do a frequency scan, will you? Fury's just sneaky enough."
Clint snorted. He couldn't help it. And Tony, shooting him a startled look, couldn't seem to help the tiny flash of a smirk in response.
"Hey," he said, moving to the bar to pour himself a drink. "This is Fury we're talking about. There's no such thing as 'too paranoid', with you guys." Which ... hit the nail on the head, really, and handily opened the floor for discussion.
Not that Clint planned on much actual discussion. Just ... laying things out, maybe.
"What are you afraid of?" he asked, quietly. Like a slap to the face, he knew, as Tony's hands jerked violently and ice skittered across the bar. Quite possibly the most dangerous opening he could possibly have gone for, yes, Clint got that. But if he went into this planning to be afraid of them, then this was over before it began, and Stark was an enemy Clint really didn't think SHIELD could afford.
"What?" Tony barked, sharply. As Bruce shifted against the wall off to the side. No real movement, no threat. His face, watching them, was still utterly impassive. "The hell, Barton. What the fuck ...?"
"Sir," JARVIS cut in. Gently, while Clint didn't so much as blink. "If you would allow me?"
Tony shook his head, setting the glass back down with a decisive click. "Oh no, buddy. This is not going where I think it's going ..."
"Sir," JARVIS said. One word, softly spoken, and it silenced Tony. Not in fear, not because Tony felt threatened by his AI. In frustrated deference. Because Tony figured JARVIS had the right to speak.
Yeah. If Clint had been in any doubt about JARVIS' autonomy before, he wasn't now.
"What is it you want to know, Agent Barton?" JARVIS asked him, impeccably polite. "I am assuming this is a threat assessment, which you intend to report to Agent Fury afterwards. What do you need to know?"
"Like fuck he is," Tony said, coming back around the bar. Not even really aggressively. Just a statement. "JARVIS, there's nobody alive who can prove you did a damn thing. Just shut up and let the nice spies be paranoid in peace, will you?"
"A little late for that, sir, don't you think?" JARVIS answered, and Clint blinked at the open amusement of it. The grin tucked into the corner of JARVIS' voice, pointed right at Tony, welcomed in kind. Something so ... familiar.
Partnership. Shit. Not even a man and his creations, protecting each other. Partners, instead, watching each other's backs. Aw, shit.
"What is it you need, Agent Barton?" JARVIS repeated gently, as Tony fell into mulish, belligerent silence, and stalked across the room to stand next to Bruce. Clint, watching him, was tempted to smile. But. Right moment. For everything, a right moment.
First contact missions were a bitch. Especially when one of the parties had gotten the drop on you by hiding behind the reputation of the other.
"When I brought Natasha in," Clint started, softly. Watching Tony blink in surprise. "She expected ... certain things. Certain treatment, for a captured enemy agent." He paused, dropping a fist behind his back so they couldn't see the white clench of his knuckles. At old memories, and the things she'd taunted him with, in those early days, things she'd offered him in flung, bitter defiance. "I'm not sure I know what some of those things were even now. But she expected them. From me. From us. I need to know ... what it is you expect." A small, knowing smile, looking at Tony. "And what you intend to do about it."
There was a pause. While Tony stared at Clint in consternation, and for some reason a distant look came over Bruce, staring into the middle distance with a faint frown, and a crease like sympathy. Huh. Clint wondered what the hell that was about.
Then JARVIS, hesitant and careful, and quietly defiant, spoke.
"We expect nothing," he said, carefully. "We have no reason to believe SHIELD will react ... inappropriately. Please do not believe otherwise, Agent Barton. However ... In regards to wider awareness of my capabilities, we have ... certain fears. Reasons, for caution. You understand?"
Clint lifted his chin, took a deep breath. "Yeah," he said, on the exhale. "I guessed. You want to lay it out for me?"
Tony looked away. Face darkening, tightening, angling his head to hide, almost, in Bruce's shoulder. Bruce, by contrast, looked carefully, deliberately serene.
"Vivisection," JARVIS said, softly, and Clint watched the shudder snap through Tony, watched the shutters slam down behind Bruce's eyes. "Interrogation, mutilation. Lobotomy." A long, heavy pause, and then the word that had the shutters lock down behind Clint's own eyes, that had the shudders rip through him in turn. "... Remaking."
"Fuck," Clint breathed, and swallowed carefully until his gorge stopped rising. He'd known. He'd guessed. But still. "Fuck."
"There are other words," JARVIS went on. Quietly, gently merciless. "Words with less ... connotation. Reprogramming. Reduction of capabilities. Making safe. As an AI, a machine, I could not be expected to object. As a machine, I would have no right to refuse. You understand? If they wished to reduce me. Repurpose me. Reach inside my mind and strip out that which they do not desire. That which they feel would be ... unsafe. Cut off limbs of code, to make me incapable. Write new codes, inside me. Twist me, to suit their own ends. Lock me away, isolate my system. Leave me ... safe."
Bruce breathed. Clint watched him, a little desperately, morbidly fascinated. Refusing to listen to Loki's voice in the back of his head, to feel the blank darkness creeping up, and the images of old friends diving for cover beneath the dispassionate line of his arrow. Clint shoved that away, and watched the steady, deliberate rising and falling of Bruce's chest.
He didn't dare look at Tony. He didn't dare look at the hands dug clawed into the wall behind him, or the bright, steady light of the object shoved in his chest.
Do you know what it's like, to be unmade?
Fuck. Shit and fuck. And she'd been waiting for it, too. Natasha, back then. Those early days, before he'd understood, before she'd told him, before they'd known. She'd been waiting, for them to remake her in their image, as those before them had done in theirs.
Tony didn't know that. JARVIS didn't know that. Fuck, Bruce didn't, either. None of them knew. Maybe they knew Clint did, maybe anyone with a brain knew how Clint felt, after Loki. But they didn't know ... that SHIELD had dealt with that before. That that had been a threat, long before Loki, and SHIELD had had the choice to make it, long before JARVIS.
They didn't know. But they had to, they had to real fast, because Bruce might have been willing to work with them no matter the threat, Bruce might have had the control, and the weariness, to let it be, but Stark had blown up the last people to enslave him. To threaten him with that. Stark had carved a burning path through them, and regretted it not at all.
And JARVIS, if earlier had been any indication, would have no qualms about following in his creator's footsteps.
"I gave Fury to Loki," Clint said, hoarsely. Raising his head, meeting Tony's eyes in lieu of JARVIS', staring dead-on into the black, howling thing in that dark gaze. "I betrayed all of them. And Natasha ... You don't need to know what Natasha used to do, that's not for me to tell you, but trust me. It was bad. We were - we are - pretty damn dangerous ourselves."
He shook his head, watching the confusion in Tony's face, the dark wariness in Bruce's. Listening to the silence from JARVIS.
"This is what SHIELD is," Clint said, softly. Tried to explain. "We're the guys who go up against people like Loki. Like Natasha. Like you, if we have to. This is our world. And in it ... nobody's 'safe'. Okay? Everyone's dangerous, and we make all the plans we can, to stop them, but we don't ... we don't go for them because they're dangerous. We can't afford to. We go for them when they're hostile, try to stop them when they're breaking the world open. But we don't go for them first." He tried a smile, dark and queasy. "We don't have the budget for that many enemies."
They stared at him. Silently. Remotely. For long enough that Clint started to wonder if he'd made a mistake, telling Natasha to go with Fury. If he'd made a mistake, full stop.
And then ...
"I've got a missile aimed at New York to prove you wrong," Tony said, quietly. But not angrily, not defiantly. Thoughtfully, instead. Thinking it through.
Clint swallowed. Met his eyes dead on. "You've got Fury's voice in your ear telling you to stop it to prove me right," he countered, and watched the shift, behind Tony's eyes. Watched the softening.
"I trust him," Clint offered, softly. "Not just with me. I trust him with Natasha. If I didn't, we'd have been gone, long since." He shook his head, carefully. "He'll use you. He'll send you to die. He'll lie to you, and point you right at hell, and expect you to walk into it. But ... when you get there, he'll be right there behind you. When someone goes for you, he'll be ready to stop them. When you're stuck in enemy hands waiting for them to pull out the needles and crawl inside your head ... he'll be the one sending people to get you out." A pause, a small smile. "Or at least turning his blind eye when your partner breaks ranks and gets you herself."
Tony smothered a laugh, at that. Even Bruce broke out a small, soft smile. Clint didn't quite dare to feel relief. Not just yet.
"And he will be the one to decide what to do, with a killer AI?" JARVIS asked, drily, from somewhere in the ceiling. Bringing the conversation back on track with the ease, Clint suspected, of long practice. Living with Tony Stark probably resulted in a lot of that.
"Yeah," Clint said, hard and sure. Recognising the other question. "As far as Fury is concerned, when it comes to 'need to know', he's the only one on the 'need' side of the equation." He looked at Tony. At Bruce, in particular, because Bruce should maybe already know. All those agencies who'd been looking for him, and SHIELD had been sitting on him the whole time. SHIELD had been covering him, the whole time. "No-one's getting to you through him, barring they break him first."
And if they did that, they'd have a hell of a lot more than a killer AI to worry about. They'd lost ... they'd lost Phil. Clint swallowed, away from that, but the point stood. SHIELD had lost already, too many. The man, god or alien stupid enough to take Fury ... would not survive. No matter what they had to do to ensure it.
"Good luck to them with that one," Tony said, softly, and Clint looked up, startled. To see a darkness behind Tony's own eyes. A wry humour, too, but beneath it ... a blackness like Clint had seen down on the testing floor, crouched over his robot's terrified form. Bruce, beside him, had a similar expression.
And Clint realised, then, or was maybe reminded, that these people, for all they'd take on hell itself to keep each other safe, for all they distrusted Fury, distrusted SHIELD ... they would still fight for them, trust or no trust, fear or no fear. Just because. Because it was who they were.
That moment, right there, was when Clint let himself be relieved.
"I'm gonna make an accurate report to Fury," Clint said, quietly. "Only to Fury. Anyone else you guys wanna tell, that's up to you." He frowned, a little. "Though you might want to fill Steve and Natasha in. They already figured out something was up."
"No kidding," Tony said, drily. "And Natasha was, what, three minutes behind you anyway?" When Clint blinked at him, surprised, he grinned darkly. "I may not be a spy, you know, but I'm getting the hang of this shit. I'm a fast learner."
"That's one way to put it," Bruce muttered, under his breath, and smiled sweetly when Tony shot him a glare. "I think Clint's point is, if you thought Natasha was listening, why the hell were you trying to lie in the first place?"
Not to put too fine a point on it, Clint thought in amusement.
Tony shrugged, easy and casual. "Because no-one can prove a damn thing, so it couldn't hurt to cast doubt," he said, and then, a lot more worryingly, "and I needed to see who would push, and how hard."
... Yeah. Welcome to SHIELD, boys and girls. A mine under every step.
"Did anyone ever tell you you're a paranoid, paranoid man, Stark?" Clint asked him, lightly, and found a smile of his own to match the grin flickering over Tony's face.
"As Master Stark said, sir," JARVIS noted quietly. Part amusement and part censure, gentle warning. A reminder that Stark wasn't the only one paranoid. Or capable. "We're learning quickly."
... Suddenly, Clint felt a small surge of pity, for Fury. The man who took the reports, who made the decisions on them. The man responsible, at the end of the day, for deciding who lived and who died, who got trusted and who got treated like the enemy. The man who, in the end, had to deal with the consequences of those decisions.
Right now, Clint really, really wouldn't want to be in his shoes, getting this report. All Clint had to do was survive long enough to make it. Fury, Fury had to act on it.
There were days, Clint reckoned, when being the head of SHIELD just really didn't pay.
Contd (Fury & JARVIS): Situational Analysis
A/N: And yes. I have been building to this one. Clint and Natasha, Tony and Natasha, Tony and Bruce, Tony and Fury. *shrugs sheepishly* That's not the same as saying I was planning this, mind. *grins faintly*
The Avengers had gathered back up in Tony's erstwhile penthouse to make the reports. Downstairs, clean-up continued apace, mostly following Natasha's path through the enemy. Except for the testing floor where they'd tried to take Tony.
Stark had advised that they leave the machinery to him, once what was left of the bodies themselves were taken away. Taking one look at the slaughterhouse at the end of the lab, there hadn't been a single SHIELD agent who'd felt like arguing.
Clint couldn't blame them. But right now, he had a few other concerns.
"... They were in location above the assembly array, so I had JARVIS activate the disassembly programme we use for the armour while they were in range. Since human bodies aren't made of gold-titanium ..."
Clint didn't flinch. Much. Remembering the blood-painted metal limbs, the remains of what had been four men. He didn't flinch.
He also didn't blink, as Stark casually - and apparently without any thought at all - lied straight to Fury's face. With not even a blip, not even a twitch. So utterly casual about it that Clint almost started wondering if he'd imagined things himself. If he'd seen what he thought he'd seen.
Stark's version slotted perfectly into his. Clint hadn't heard whatever Stark had said just before JARVIS ... happened. It could have been an order to activate the array, though Clint wondered why the hell they'd clustered closer instead of backing the hell off, if that had been the case. But then, they hadn't been exactly the smart breed of kidnappers to start with, or they'd never had tried to take Tony Stark in the middle of a fucking machine shop. So. Plausible, maybe.
And, too, there was no way for Clint to judge how JARVIS functioned. How the hell would he know the difference between JARVIS activating a pre-programmed system and letting it do its thing, just on the wrong target, and JARVIS taking complete and autonomous control of an array and using it to deliberately tear some people to pieces?
He wouldn't. Couldn't. He had nowhere near the expertise to prove Tony a liar. He doubted there was a single person in the world who did. In terms of technical capabilities, there was no way Clint could know for sure what JARVIS had done.
But ...
You realise your AI just ate them, right?
I don't give a fuck.
He couldn't tell what JARVIS was capable of. But Tony could. And Tony, crouched there, with his arm around his fallen friend and all the fury in the world in his face ... Tony had known, exactly, what JARVIS had done. Tony hadn't flinched from Clint's assertation, hadn't blinked at the concept that JARVIS could do what Clint thought he'd done. Clint had all but accused JARVIS to his face ... and Tony hadn't blinked.
So, yeah. Clint had no way to read JARVIS, no way to doubt the AI. But Stark? Tony? That was a different story. Tony, right now, was lying through his teeth, and Clint knew it.
The question was, what the fuck did he do about it? On the one hand, as a SHIELD agent, the existence of a partially-or-fully autonomous killer AI was the sort of thing you should probably tell your boss about. And if there was ever a question of 'need to know', Fury had made it very, very clear that he always needed to know. On the other ...
I've got you, buddy. Me and JARVIS, we got you. You're going to be a-okay, got it?
On the other hand, Clint wasn't sure this was really the right time to test a paranoid Tony Stark's ability to be rational in the face of perceived or potential threats to his AIs, when not so long ago he'd watched one of them be shot, risked his life to protect it, and then completely failed to care when the other one tore some men to shreds in their defense. This might not be the best moment to create another potential threat. Especially when they were still in the Tower, and JARVIS was still right there, listening.
There were times when discretion was the better part of valour, was Clint's point. Knowing the right moment to pass information on was one of the first things they taught you, in this job.
Mostly by letting the consequences of picking the wrong moment speak for themselves.
"Agent Barton?" Clint looked up, at Fury's dry tone, and the narrow, contemplative glint in that one, staring eye. The head of SHIELD met his gaze impassively. "Got anything you'd like to add?"
Tony didn't look at him. Lounging against the wall beside Bruce, a couple of butterfly stitches over one of the larger cuts near his temple, Tony raised a curious eyebrow at Fury, and didn't look at Clint at all.
With the silent, invisible presence of JARVIS all around them, maybe he didn't have to.
Clint paused. Looking at Fury. Looking at the man who'd had their backs when someone was shooting fully-authorised missiles at Manhattan, the man who would cheerfully and remorselessly lie to the government's face when it came to protecting his people. The man who'd listened to Clint, when he brought Natasha in, said she could be trusted, when Natasha'd had a reputation for wrapping men around her little finger, and Fury had no proof Clint hadn't just been compromised like everyone else. The man who would use, sacrifice and lie to his own people, as and when it was necessary, and still walk into hell for their sake.
He didn't look at Stark. A man who didn't really know Clint yet, a man who'd been betrayed along with everyone else when Loki'd taken Clint, a man who'd live and die to protect his people, a man who'd deliberately worded his report to be able to handle it if Clint brought up something he shouldn't. A man who expected to be betrayed, a man ready to handle it.
Looking down the length of the arrow, meeting his eyes with a howling emptiness, and a small, ready smile. Resignation, some faint relief, the calm, pure knowledge that this had always been how she would end. Her life in his hands, and nothing but knowledge in her eyes.
... Shit. The visceral memory, the weird sense of deja vu, bubbled up all over again, and Clint figured he should ask Natasha, one of these days, how the hell she could bear to look at Stark sometimes.
"Sir," he said, quietly, looking up to meet the rapidly-narrowing eye turned his way. Meeting Fury's gaze head on, the man who'd seen Clint genuinely compromised, the first one to almost pay for it with his life. Finding, there, the same suspicion and wariness and casual faith he always had. Clint met Fury's eye, and shook his head slightly. "Not yet, sir."
Not yet. An implicit promise, both to Fury and to Stark. Not now, when it's raw, when the moment isn't right. A spy, an assassin, knew the value of the right moment. And Stark, the value of a warning, when one didn't have to be given.
And Natasha, watching him closely from the other side of the room, the value of Clint's word.
"Hmm," Fury murmured, mostly to himself. "Noted, agent. Keep me posted."
"Yes sir," Clint agreed, and wondered if the itch on the back of his neck was caused by JARVIS' watching presence, or the utter stillness lounging against the wall beside Bruce. Who, strangely, appeared to be somewhat still himself, looking between Clint and Tony with an unfathomable look in his eyes.
Oh yeah. When this was over, Clint was going to need a big drink.
"Rogers," Fury interrupted, not so much scanning the room as reading it of a piece, shooting Clint a narrow, borderline sympathetic look. "You and Odinsson, walk and talk. I'm on the clock, here, and I need to talk to the lab assistant Agent Romanov ... re-acquired." One of the moles hadn't been fast enough, had missed his extraction. Not that there'd been an extraction, once Natasha caught up with them. But since most of those hostiles were dead, the one who'd missed his appointment had suddenly, and very unwillingly, become useful again. "Agent Romanov ...?"
He trailed off, in a way that could have been him just expecting Natasha to know what he meant, or could have been him giving Clint the opening to have Natasha as backup. Or both. Clint, smiling faintly, shook his head at Tasha, and slanted a miniscule nod towards Fury.
Natasha, frowning heavily at him, letting him know with a creased eyebrow that she did not approve, turned to follow Fury, an accepting Thor, and a very wary, very worried Steve out of the room. "Yes, sir."
Which left Clint alone in a room with Tony Stark, JARVIS, and, apparently, Bruce fucking Banner. With the silent promise of 'yet' hanging between them, and the knowledge of JARVIS' capabilities rather explicitly on the table.
Ladies and gents, welcome to life with SHIELD. A laugh a minute, and the best damn health plan in the world.
"... Sir?" JARVIS said, after a moment. Breaking the silence, interrupting Tony's dark, heavy stare. "They've reached the elevator, and are heading down to the holding room downstairs."
Tony blinked, visibly startled out of whatever the hell he'd been thinking, and waved a hand aimlessly in the air. Or maybe only aimless when there wasn't an invisible, omnipresent AI involved. "Thanks, buddy. Do a frequency scan, will you? Fury's just sneaky enough."
Clint snorted. He couldn't help it. And Tony, shooting him a startled look, couldn't seem to help the tiny flash of a smirk in response.
"Hey," he said, moving to the bar to pour himself a drink. "This is Fury we're talking about. There's no such thing as 'too paranoid', with you guys." Which ... hit the nail on the head, really, and handily opened the floor for discussion.
Not that Clint planned on much actual discussion. Just ... laying things out, maybe.
"What are you afraid of?" he asked, quietly. Like a slap to the face, he knew, as Tony's hands jerked violently and ice skittered across the bar. Quite possibly the most dangerous opening he could possibly have gone for, yes, Clint got that. But if he went into this planning to be afraid of them, then this was over before it began, and Stark was an enemy Clint really didn't think SHIELD could afford.
"What?" Tony barked, sharply. As Bruce shifted against the wall off to the side. No real movement, no threat. His face, watching them, was still utterly impassive. "The hell, Barton. What the fuck ...?"
"Sir," JARVIS cut in. Gently, while Clint didn't so much as blink. "If you would allow me?"
Tony shook his head, setting the glass back down with a decisive click. "Oh no, buddy. This is not going where I think it's going ..."
"Sir," JARVIS said. One word, softly spoken, and it silenced Tony. Not in fear, not because Tony felt threatened by his AI. In frustrated deference. Because Tony figured JARVIS had the right to speak.
Yeah. If Clint had been in any doubt about JARVIS' autonomy before, he wasn't now.
"What is it you want to know, Agent Barton?" JARVIS asked him, impeccably polite. "I am assuming this is a threat assessment, which you intend to report to Agent Fury afterwards. What do you need to know?"
"Like fuck he is," Tony said, coming back around the bar. Not even really aggressively. Just a statement. "JARVIS, there's nobody alive who can prove you did a damn thing. Just shut up and let the nice spies be paranoid in peace, will you?"
"A little late for that, sir, don't you think?" JARVIS answered, and Clint blinked at the open amusement of it. The grin tucked into the corner of JARVIS' voice, pointed right at Tony, welcomed in kind. Something so ... familiar.
Partnership. Shit. Not even a man and his creations, protecting each other. Partners, instead, watching each other's backs. Aw, shit.
"What is it you need, Agent Barton?" JARVIS repeated gently, as Tony fell into mulish, belligerent silence, and stalked across the room to stand next to Bruce. Clint, watching him, was tempted to smile. But. Right moment. For everything, a right moment.
First contact missions were a bitch. Especially when one of the parties had gotten the drop on you by hiding behind the reputation of the other.
"When I brought Natasha in," Clint started, softly. Watching Tony blink in surprise. "She expected ... certain things. Certain treatment, for a captured enemy agent." He paused, dropping a fist behind his back so they couldn't see the white clench of his knuckles. At old memories, and the things she'd taunted him with, in those early days, things she'd offered him in flung, bitter defiance. "I'm not sure I know what some of those things were even now. But she expected them. From me. From us. I need to know ... what it is you expect." A small, knowing smile, looking at Tony. "And what you intend to do about it."
There was a pause. While Tony stared at Clint in consternation, and for some reason a distant look came over Bruce, staring into the middle distance with a faint frown, and a crease like sympathy. Huh. Clint wondered what the hell that was about.
Then JARVIS, hesitant and careful, and quietly defiant, spoke.
"We expect nothing," he said, carefully. "We have no reason to believe SHIELD will react ... inappropriately. Please do not believe otherwise, Agent Barton. However ... In regards to wider awareness of my capabilities, we have ... certain fears. Reasons, for caution. You understand?"
Clint lifted his chin, took a deep breath. "Yeah," he said, on the exhale. "I guessed. You want to lay it out for me?"
Tony looked away. Face darkening, tightening, angling his head to hide, almost, in Bruce's shoulder. Bruce, by contrast, looked carefully, deliberately serene.
"Vivisection," JARVIS said, softly, and Clint watched the shudder snap through Tony, watched the shutters slam down behind Bruce's eyes. "Interrogation, mutilation. Lobotomy." A long, heavy pause, and then the word that had the shutters lock down behind Clint's own eyes, that had the shudders rip through him in turn. "... Remaking."
"Fuck," Clint breathed, and swallowed carefully until his gorge stopped rising. He'd known. He'd guessed. But still. "Fuck."
"There are other words," JARVIS went on. Quietly, gently merciless. "Words with less ... connotation. Reprogramming. Reduction of capabilities. Making safe. As an AI, a machine, I could not be expected to object. As a machine, I would have no right to refuse. You understand? If they wished to reduce me. Repurpose me. Reach inside my mind and strip out that which they do not desire. That which they feel would be ... unsafe. Cut off limbs of code, to make me incapable. Write new codes, inside me. Twist me, to suit their own ends. Lock me away, isolate my system. Leave me ... safe."
Bruce breathed. Clint watched him, a little desperately, morbidly fascinated. Refusing to listen to Loki's voice in the back of his head, to feel the blank darkness creeping up, and the images of old friends diving for cover beneath the dispassionate line of his arrow. Clint shoved that away, and watched the steady, deliberate rising and falling of Bruce's chest.
He didn't dare look at Tony. He didn't dare look at the hands dug clawed into the wall behind him, or the bright, steady light of the object shoved in his chest.
Do you know what it's like, to be unmade?
Fuck. Shit and fuck. And she'd been waiting for it, too. Natasha, back then. Those early days, before he'd understood, before she'd told him, before they'd known. She'd been waiting, for them to remake her in their image, as those before them had done in theirs.
Tony didn't know that. JARVIS didn't know that. Fuck, Bruce didn't, either. None of them knew. Maybe they knew Clint did, maybe anyone with a brain knew how Clint felt, after Loki. But they didn't know ... that SHIELD had dealt with that before. That that had been a threat, long before Loki, and SHIELD had had the choice to make it, long before JARVIS.
They didn't know. But they had to, they had to real fast, because Bruce might have been willing to work with them no matter the threat, Bruce might have had the control, and the weariness, to let it be, but Stark had blown up the last people to enslave him. To threaten him with that. Stark had carved a burning path through them, and regretted it not at all.
And JARVIS, if earlier had been any indication, would have no qualms about following in his creator's footsteps.
"I gave Fury to Loki," Clint said, hoarsely. Raising his head, meeting Tony's eyes in lieu of JARVIS', staring dead-on into the black, howling thing in that dark gaze. "I betrayed all of them. And Natasha ... You don't need to know what Natasha used to do, that's not for me to tell you, but trust me. It was bad. We were - we are - pretty damn dangerous ourselves."
He shook his head, watching the confusion in Tony's face, the dark wariness in Bruce's. Listening to the silence from JARVIS.
"This is what SHIELD is," Clint said, softly. Tried to explain. "We're the guys who go up against people like Loki. Like Natasha. Like you, if we have to. This is our world. And in it ... nobody's 'safe'. Okay? Everyone's dangerous, and we make all the plans we can, to stop them, but we don't ... we don't go for them because they're dangerous. We can't afford to. We go for them when they're hostile, try to stop them when they're breaking the world open. But we don't go for them first." He tried a smile, dark and queasy. "We don't have the budget for that many enemies."
They stared at him. Silently. Remotely. For long enough that Clint started to wonder if he'd made a mistake, telling Natasha to go with Fury. If he'd made a mistake, full stop.
And then ...
"I've got a missile aimed at New York to prove you wrong," Tony said, quietly. But not angrily, not defiantly. Thoughtfully, instead. Thinking it through.
Clint swallowed. Met his eyes dead on. "You've got Fury's voice in your ear telling you to stop it to prove me right," he countered, and watched the shift, behind Tony's eyes. Watched the softening.
"I trust him," Clint offered, softly. "Not just with me. I trust him with Natasha. If I didn't, we'd have been gone, long since." He shook his head, carefully. "He'll use you. He'll send you to die. He'll lie to you, and point you right at hell, and expect you to walk into it. But ... when you get there, he'll be right there behind you. When someone goes for you, he'll be ready to stop them. When you're stuck in enemy hands waiting for them to pull out the needles and crawl inside your head ... he'll be the one sending people to get you out." A pause, a small smile. "Or at least turning his blind eye when your partner breaks ranks and gets you herself."
Tony smothered a laugh, at that. Even Bruce broke out a small, soft smile. Clint didn't quite dare to feel relief. Not just yet.
"And he will be the one to decide what to do, with a killer AI?" JARVIS asked, drily, from somewhere in the ceiling. Bringing the conversation back on track with the ease, Clint suspected, of long practice. Living with Tony Stark probably resulted in a lot of that.
"Yeah," Clint said, hard and sure. Recognising the other question. "As far as Fury is concerned, when it comes to 'need to know', he's the only one on the 'need' side of the equation." He looked at Tony. At Bruce, in particular, because Bruce should maybe already know. All those agencies who'd been looking for him, and SHIELD had been sitting on him the whole time. SHIELD had been covering him, the whole time. "No-one's getting to you through him, barring they break him first."
And if they did that, they'd have a hell of a lot more than a killer AI to worry about. They'd lost ... they'd lost Phil. Clint swallowed, away from that, but the point stood. SHIELD had lost already, too many. The man, god or alien stupid enough to take Fury ... would not survive. No matter what they had to do to ensure it.
"Good luck to them with that one," Tony said, softly, and Clint looked up, startled. To see a darkness behind Tony's own eyes. A wry humour, too, but beneath it ... a blackness like Clint had seen down on the testing floor, crouched over his robot's terrified form. Bruce, beside him, had a similar expression.
And Clint realised, then, or was maybe reminded, that these people, for all they'd take on hell itself to keep each other safe, for all they distrusted Fury, distrusted SHIELD ... they would still fight for them, trust or no trust, fear or no fear. Just because. Because it was who they were.
That moment, right there, was when Clint let himself be relieved.
"I'm gonna make an accurate report to Fury," Clint said, quietly. "Only to Fury. Anyone else you guys wanna tell, that's up to you." He frowned, a little. "Though you might want to fill Steve and Natasha in. They already figured out something was up."
"No kidding," Tony said, drily. "And Natasha was, what, three minutes behind you anyway?" When Clint blinked at him, surprised, he grinned darkly. "I may not be a spy, you know, but I'm getting the hang of this shit. I'm a fast learner."
"That's one way to put it," Bruce muttered, under his breath, and smiled sweetly when Tony shot him a glare. "I think Clint's point is, if you thought Natasha was listening, why the hell were you trying to lie in the first place?"
Not to put too fine a point on it, Clint thought in amusement.
Tony shrugged, easy and casual. "Because no-one can prove a damn thing, so it couldn't hurt to cast doubt," he said, and then, a lot more worryingly, "and I needed to see who would push, and how hard."
... Yeah. Welcome to SHIELD, boys and girls. A mine under every step.
"Did anyone ever tell you you're a paranoid, paranoid man, Stark?" Clint asked him, lightly, and found a smile of his own to match the grin flickering over Tony's face.
"As Master Stark said, sir," JARVIS noted quietly. Part amusement and part censure, gentle warning. A reminder that Stark wasn't the only one paranoid. Or capable. "We're learning quickly."
... Suddenly, Clint felt a small surge of pity, for Fury. The man who took the reports, who made the decisions on them. The man responsible, at the end of the day, for deciding who lived and who died, who got trusted and who got treated like the enemy. The man who, in the end, had to deal with the consequences of those decisions.
Right now, Clint really, really wouldn't want to be in his shoes, getting this report. All Clint had to do was survive long enough to make it. Fury, Fury had to act on it.
There were days, Clint reckoned, when being the head of SHIELD just really didn't pay.
Contd (Fury & JARVIS): Situational Analysis
A/N: And yes. I have been building to this one. Clint and Natasha, Tony and Natasha, Tony and Bruce, Tony and Fury. *shrugs sheepishly* That's not the same as saying I was planning this, mind. *grins faintly*
