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The mood in the room is grim, to say the least.
It’s been barely twenty-four hours since the whole world watched SHIELD’s helicarriers fall from the sky. Since the image of Steve Rogers, American hero, held at gunpoint by a government strike team was plastered across every screen in the nation. Since every secret of a clandestine agency was released to the world.
It’s been barely twenty-four hours, which means the headlines about former SHIELD operations are only just popping up. Maria could wait. She could just sit back and answer the calls as they rolled in, as the Avengers learned everything the government has been hiding from them in real time. But that feels an awful lot like keeping secrets, and keeping secrets is what got them into this whole mess.
So now she’s standing at the head of a makeshift conference table in a formerly abandoned warehouse, every one of the locatable on-world Avengers staring expectantly back at her.
Natasha is to her right, arms folded and expression carefully neutral. Clint is beside her, tapping a pencil incessantly against the cheap plastic top of the table. Tony is across from him, looking at the pencil like he’s ready to snap it, and Bruce sits at Maria’s left, pretending like he isn’t deep into his breathing exercises. Sam is at the other end of the table, his jaw set and his eyes distant. Maria might be worried. Might think he couldn’t handle being put on the team, if she hadn’t seen him in DC.
She’s not sure exactly where to start. With HYDRA? With Pierce? The whole situation is a fucked up sort of spiral, impossible to tell quite yet where the root of it even began. She should probably start at the tangled center of it all. With the idea so crazy it sent Captain America on the run. She takes a deep breath.
“Bucky Barnes is the Winter Soldier."
Tony’s mouth falls open like a cartoon character, a choked sort of sound escaping. Bruce blinks like a flashlight’s just been shone in his face which, for Bruce, is a pretty intense reaction. Barton stops tapping the pencil, frowning contemplatively.
“I’m sorry, what?” Tony manages, finding his words just in time to be cut off by Clint’s “Oh, that makes sense.”
Every head at the table simultaneously swivels away from Maria and towards Clint, who shrinks under the sudden attention.
“Does it?” Natasha asks, her voice perfectly even. Clint flounders a little, leaning slightly away from whatever look is in her eyes.
“I mean, yeah.” He clasps his hands together, suddenly unsure of himself. “They look the same.”
“Clint,” Natasha says, voice the sort of steady that is only achieved through careful practice. “How do you know what he looks like?”
“I mean, c’mon.” Clint makes a vague gesture with one hand. “Like every high school history textbook doesn’t have at least three chapters on the Howling Commandos. How could you not remember a jawline like that?”
“Not Bucky Barnes, Clint,” Bruce sighs. “The Winter Soldier.”
“Oh.” Something dawns on Clint’s face then. He looks like a deer caught in headlights. “Um. SHIELD?”
“SHIELD never had any confirmed images of the Winter Soldier,” Maria says, frowning across the conference table. Clint squirms a little in his seat.
“They didn’t?” His voice is too high to be casual, and apparently it doesn’t take super spy training to notice, because Tony and Sam are now squinting at Clint suspiciously. Bruce has pressed his fingertips together contemplatively, which is basically his equivalent.
“Clint,” Natasha says again, and there’s the slightest waver in her voice that Maria thinks might be unnoticable without super spy training. “Did you ever see the Winter Soldier?”
Clint clears his throat, shoulders hunched. He can’t seem to meet anyone’s eyes.
“We. Um.” He rubs at the back of his neck. “We may have crossed paths.”
“You crossed paths? With the Winter Soldier?” Sam seems to have forgotten all expressions that aren’t incredulous blinks, looking at Maria like he’s about to hand in his resignation from the team.
“When?” Natasha says, and this time the crack in her voice is noticeable enough for Tony to shoot her a panicked look before focusing back on Clint, who looks like he wants to jump out a window. “Where?”
“Ninety-six? Madripoor. It was, um. Before SHIELD.”
Huh. That means Barton was going solo, picking up odd jobs of questionable morality. Maria frowns. That can’t be right. The Winter Soldier might have avoided government agents to help maintain his cover, but there was never anything keeping him from taking out a gun-for-hire.
“And you saw his face? Why didn’t you tell us?” Maria should probably be more focused on finishing the debriefing. The oversights of one agent are hardly big news now that SHIELD has burned to the ground, but something about the way Clint’s turning steadily pink and refusing to look anyone in the eyes tells her that this vein of interrogation needs to be followed.
“Didn’t seem exactly right, you know?” Clint shrugs helplessly. “An assassin that’s been active since the seventies, at least, turns out to look like Bucky Barnes age twenty-six, right down to the freckles?”
“You got close enough to find identifying marks, on the Winter Soldier, and didn’t tell anyone?” Sam’s voice is getting loud. Bruce scoots his chair out a little, as if preparing for a quick escape.
“More importantly, you lived to tell the tale?” Tony looks a little hysterical. “I know I don’t fall into the same intelligence circles, but from what I’ve heard, that’s an exception from the norm.” He looks ready to pull his hair out. “The norm of being dead, Barton.”
“Well, y’know.” Clint looks up at the ceiling, as if he’s willing it to collapse on him. “He’s a little trigger happy on a mission, sure. But the more time you spend with him, the more likely he is to let you go your own way.”
“Clint.” Natasha’s voice comes through gritted teeth. “How much time did you spend with him?”
Clint scrunches his nose up, switching his gaze from the ceiling tiles to his hands and studying his thumb with intensity.
“Uh. Maybe like. Seventy-two hours? Give or take.”
Sam slaps his hands against the conference table, half-standing from his seat.
“You spent three days with the deadliest assassin on earth? Doing what?”
Clint’s face goes red and Maria feels her stomach drop.
“No,” she manages. “Barton. You didn’t.
“Um.” Clint’s face scrunches up like he can wince his way out of the conversation. “I didn’t not.”
“I’m missing something,” Tony says, looking between Maria and Clint like he’s watching a tennis match. “What am I missing?”
“Clint,” Natasha says flatly. Maria mentally updates her tally of Avengers resignations to two. “Did you have sex with the Winter Soldier.”
Clint sucks in air through his teeth, sliding low in his chair, his next words more mumbled than anything.
“I. Um. I may have had a little bit of sex with him. Yes.”
“Oh my god,” Sam says faintly, dropping back into his chair. Bruce buries his face in his hands. Tony is frozen in place.
“Sure, like any of you wouldn’t.” Clint’s voice slips into defensive. “A guy who looks like Bucky Barnes right down to the smirk that dreams are made of offers you a night of wish-fulfillment, you don’t say no just because he had a gun in your face earlier.”
“You absolutely do say no,” Bruce says, head still pressed against the table. Tony gapes.
“A night? What happened to the other sixty hours?” he asks. Clint bites his lip.
“We lost track of time. It’s easy to do. The longer he spent without a gun in his hand, the happier the guy seemed, you know? There was a hell of a fight when his handlers showed up, though. Going to the casino might not have been the best idea.”
“Yeah,” Sam says weakly. “The casino was the bad call.” Clint gives them a sheepish shrug.
“When in Madripoor.”
Maria pinches the bridge of her nose. This. This is why SHIELD kept secrets.
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