Chapter Text
*** Barton ***
Monday mornings, Clint had come to believe, were best spent beside the pool whenever possible.
He had come to this belief lately in his life; only, in fact, once he’d allowed himself to be seduced over to White Star’s side of the playing field, and more to the point, the really nice pool out back of Howard Stark’s place. It wasn’t actually Clint’s fault, when you came right down to it, because Howard himself had been the one to set up most of his Monday mornings around work that could be done beside the pool in his dressing robe. And if his protection detail included staying nearby, on a pool lounger, in his swim trunks, well who was Clint to argue?
It was a tough job, but he was up to the challenge. Even after the protection detail had shifted from Stark to Rogers, Clint had done whatever he could to maintain his weekly devotions to the Saints of towel, oil, and lounge chair. Especially when there was a shitstorm brewing over at headquarters, and nothing he could add to the atmosphere besides another butt available for the chewing. He figured if anybody needed a slice of his particular butt, they’d know where to find him, so it was best he should stay put and make some good use of sunscreen while everyone else panicked.
And so it was that he happened to be the only Agent on the grounds when it counted. Because of course he was.
The tablet beside his lounger buzzed twice, not the gentle suggestion of a text or e mail, but the angry hornet rattle that dared you to ignore it and get stung for your neglect. He was tempted anyway, until the second buzz came in the company of a not-so-distant car horn beeping.
“The hell?” he grumbled, turning his tablet away from the glare and squinting at the completely unfamiliar hippie-clown-car that sat idling in the driveway just outside the manor’s gates. He tapped the intercom function on and signed. “No thanks, we’ve got all the Krishna we need.”
“Mr. Barton?” The immediate reply shook off the last of Clint’s sunbaked doze, and shocked him upright as Captain Steve Rogers leaned out of the window and squinted grinning up at the gate camera. “Sorry to bother you, but could you buzz me in? I need to drop something off before I head uptown.”
“Where the hell did you get that car, and didn’t they have one in your size?” Clint blurted, jamming his feet into flip flops as he hit the gate release.
“It’s a loaner,” came the reply. “Is. Uh. Is James up there at the house right now?”
“No, he’s out looking for you, like everybody else!”
But by then the gate had finished opening, and Clint’s only reply was an engine whine and a crunch of itty bitty tires on the gravel drive. He grabbed his gun and his phone and took off around the house at a run.
One thumb press brought up Tasha’s phone, ringing to voicemail at once, like it always did. “He’s here,” Clint reported as soon as the beep stopped, “He’s alone, and uninjured far as I can tell, and ... well hell, that’s the same suit he wore outta here last Friday,” he added as he came around the hedges and caught sight of Rogers unfolding himself from that ridiculous toy car and trying to smooth his clothes down before he reached into the back seat and drew out... a kicking, swearing rucksack.
“Uh...” Clint dithered, completely unprepared for this turn of events. “Maybe you better page James, okay? Or Fury maybe. Or... y’know, maybe everyone.”
“Hi Clint,” Rogers waved, slinging his thrashing luggage over one shoulder and brandishing a waxed paper bag in the other hand. “I brought bagels if you want one.”
“Uh, sure,” Clint shrugged, because hey -- bagels. “You get any sesame?”
Rogers grinned in reply, and lobbed the bag Clint’s way. “Yeah, they’re my favorite too. Hey, can you get the door for me? I don’t want her to whack her head on the way through.”
“Who is ‘her,’ by the way, and is there some reason she can’t walk on her own?” Clint asked, jogging up the front steps and muscling the big formal doors open. His hearing aids picked up a muffled grunting that sounded a lot like it wanted to be furious cursing, but was having trouble enunciating around something thick and fluffy stuffed in the curser’s mouth.
“Well, I’m sure she thinks she could,” Rogers grinned, all bright teeth and wholesome innocence, except for the glint in his eyes that gave away how much damned fun he was having at everyone else’s expense. “but truth be known, she took a pretty bad fall before we came over from Brooklyn. I don’t feek safe letting her walk on her own just until we have one of our people take a look at her.”
“Oh yeah, sure,” Clint picked up the thread of his reasoning at once, “You know most accidents do happen in the home, right? We’ll definitely need to have our people check her over and make sure she’s okay.” He nudged the kitchen door open with his foot and held it back while Rogers edged the bag -- thrashing madly now, and all but squealing with outrage -- through.
Then Clint got busy with the bagels while Rogers secured his ahem-guest to one of the barstools, and finally unzipped the duffel to reveal her flushed, rumpled, and furious face, and, “Holy shit, is that Flowers?” he blurted.
“Oh, you know her then?” Rogers asked, tipping the stool precariously onto its back legs when Flowers got a look at Clint and immediately started thrashing again.
“Know her?” Clint laughed, and slipped the bagels into the toaster oven. “Hell, man, I’ve shot her twice, this year alone! How the hell did you corner her alive?”
“I let her corner me,” Rogers shrugged back, a satisfied smile tickling the corner of his mouth as he balanced the back of her barstool in one big hand. “But if she’s that slippery, maybe we’d better secure her someplace more-”
“Oh, don’t worry about that. The Widow’s on her way,” Clint said, and as though summoned by the power of her handle alone, Natasha appeared at the kitchen door with three operatives and an analyst behind her. “She’ll take care of the interrogation, and you and me can take care of breakfast.” Clint didn’t tell Rogers that breakfast was also going to be a debriefing, but from the knowing look in that blue eye, he figured he wouldn’t have to.
“Hawkeye,” Natasha said as she came into the room, but her eyes were all for the Captain.
“Heya, Widow,” he grinned back, “Looks like Cap brought us Flowers as a peace offering.”
Okay, it was cheap, but at least it made Rogers laugh. And it made Natasha freeze, her eyes narrowing as she took in the captive’s face, furious and defiant, and then scared when the satisfied smile spread across the Widow’s face.
“Apology accepted,” she said, flicking a glance toward Rogers before making a tentative gesture at his captive. “May I?”
“Be my guest.” Rogers nodded graciously and tipped the stool upright, stepping away from the island, the captive, and the operatives who were even now crowding into the kitchen like kids on Christmas morning. “I’ll just leave you to it then,” he said, catching Clint’s eye and tipping a nod toward the back door and the pool deck beyond. Clint nodded, then turned back to watch the bagels toast as Captain America slipped away.
There was cream cheese in the bag, so Clint put that on one of the bagels, buttered the other one, and grabbed the coffeepot and a mug for Rogers, more or less ignoring the impromptu interrogation being set up behind him. Until he turned to go, and found Natasha directly behind him, hands braced on her hips, and eyes fiercely calculating. “You stay on Rogers,” she warned. “If this is just a distraction...”
He leaned in and dropped a kiss on her nose -- or rather he leaned in and smooched the air when she evaded him, but it had the intended effect of cutting off her threat regardless. “It isn’t,” he told her, “Rogers didn’t have to come back here at all. He coulda left Flowers outside the Manhattan office with a bow on her ass, but it’s just like you called it --” and here, he boosted the plate of bagels in his hand by way of proof. “His point’s been made. Now you get to figure out what the fuck Flowers’ deal is, while I debrief the Raccoon Whisperer. And when Barnes turns up, we get to finally find out what happens when those two relics actually talk.” Then he ducked out the door, neatly evading her grab for his bagel, and not even feeling bad about it -- he’d seen two pumpernickels in the bag, after all, so she wouldn’t even have to share hers with Barnes.
Rogers was waiting for him in the late spring sunshine, rolling his sleeves up over his forearms, with his jacket and vest folded neatly over one of the loungers, and an unfamiliar green tie over the lot. “Thanks, Barton,” he said, taking the plate when Clint thrust it at him and turned to pour a cup out of the pot. “Which one’s yours?”
“Whichever you don’t want,” Clint said, beaming as he offered the cup, “I like em both ways.”
Rogers’ lip twitched as if he got the joke, but the wicked glint was gone almost before Clint had seen it. “One of each then,” he said, setting the plate down and waving the coffee away. “Say, you know the access code for the garage, right?”
“Yeaaaahhh,”Clint answered dubiously.
Rogers shrugged one shoulder, and rubbed a bashful hand over the back of his neck. “Well, I know you’re probably supposed to find out where I’ve been and all,” he admitted, “it’s just I was thinking maybe we should move her car out of the driveway first. Just in case someone sees it from the street, and recognizes it.”
Clint shrugged. It wasn’t a very likely scenario, given the curvature of the drive and distance from the gate, but smart money would have a metric fucktonne more cars converging on the Stark mansion from every point of the city soon, and they were going to need every inch of driveway space they could get before all was said and sifted. So, “Sure. You wanna bring it around?”
That won a grimace and a headshake by way of reply, and Rogers dug the keychain out of his pocket and passed it over. “If you wouldn’t mind? I get a crick in my neck just trying to get into that tiny thing.”
Clint looked at the keys dangling in the sunshine, then gave Rogers another once-over, and set the coffeepot down. “Or you could just ask me to open up Stark’s workshop for you,” he offered. “I mean, it’s kinda yours anyway, so it’s not like I’m particularly invested in keeping you out of it or anything.” Rogers gave him back a deeply skeptical eyebrow, and Clint shrugged. “What? It’s not like you ever asked before!”
“And if I did ask you to do that, you’d feel bound to go along with me and make sure I didn’t touch anything dangerous too, wouldn’t you?” Rogers’ voice held a deeply bitter note, but he still took up the plate and led the way across the lawn, as if he didn’t have a doubt in the world that Clint would fall in behind him. Either that, or he was fed up enough to just kick his way into the garage and find the secret door to the underground workshop on his own.
“Well,” Clint caught up the coffeepot and jogged after, “either that, or you could tell me what you’re looking for, and I’ll help you find it, and that’ll keep us both outta trouble for awhile.” Again with the skeptical face, but this time Clint met it with a grin. “What? Call it a bilateral show of trust if you wanna, but we got to start somewhere, right Cap?”
That won him a glance, sharp and blue over one shoulder, the eyebrow above in a challenging arc. “About damn time,” he said, drawing up to the garage and turning beside its keypad lock. “Get us inside, and we’ll talk.”
***
Text from: Ghostface -- Where r u?
From: TheLastOf -- Workshop. U back? How was Jersey?
From: Ghostface -- Disgusting as usual. Is he with U?
Clint leaned out over the handrail and scanned the floor below to be sure Rogers was still down there going through Howard’s desk and files. Then he settled back against the big robot arm he’d found up here in the graveyard of half-finished ideas, and replied to the question James hadn’t asked as well.
From TheLastOf -- Y. He’s fine. Fury with U?
From Ghostface -- Comin in hot.
Clint sighed, slipped his phone into his tac suit pocket, and leaned back over the ledge. “Hey Cap?” he called.
“It’s Steve,” the man answered, not looking up from the folder he had splayed across the desk blotter.
“Right, Steve, sorry. I’m gonna go back up to the Garage for a little, and, uh...”
That won him a glance, and a chilly little smile. “You don’t need to run interference with Fury for me, Clint. It’s fine if he knows we’re down here.”
He blinked. “Well, that’s good, because he’s, uh-”
That was when the phone rang -- not Clint’s, but the one on Howard Stark’s desk. Rogers put up one finger to Clint, and plucked it out of the cradle. “Rogers. Oh, hello, Ms Arbogast. Bambi, of course. Sorry.”
Huh. Bambi? Since when was Rogers on a first name basis with the fearsome shadow-dictator/admin assistant over at SI? Last Clint had known, Arbogast didn’t let anyone from the White Star end of things get cosy with her. Rogers was turning out to be an intriguing exception all around.
“You did?” Rogers grinned as Clint clambered along an I beam so he could drop to the workshop level at the base of the stairs. “That’s great. Would you arrange a meeting with her for me? Casual setting if possible. Yes, I know she’s a journalist, that’s kind of why I want to talk to her. Well, from what I can see Everhardt was the only one actually doing any digging at all at the time, and I think she might know some more beyond what she was allowed to put in her stories.”
Clint grimaced, trying not to imagine everything that could go wrong with letting Steve Rogers talk to a reporter about anything at all, let alone a bulldog like Everhardt. But while that might be arguably his monkey if, say, Everhardt were to try and kill him during the interview, it definitely was NOT his circus. The Ringmaster himself was coming down the stairs, leather coat flapping like bat wings, and hell to pay in his eye. Barnes was three steps behind Fury, sniperface firmly in place, but cracking just a bit around the eyes to show a simmering combination of anger and relief.
So this was gonna be fun.
“Ok, good. And can I have a couple of hours with you sometime this week? I’d like to go over some of Stark Industries’ charitable donations with you -- get an idea of where we’re throwing our weight these days.” Rogers glanced up as Fury and Barnes came down the stairs, flashed them both a smile and the same ‘hang on a minute’ finger he’d shown Clint, then returned his attention to the phone. “Tomorrow at ten. Got it. Thanks so much, Bambi. I’ll see you then.”
Fury huffed to a stop on the workshop floor, turned to Clint, and with a glance demanded to know whether he’d maybe fallen on his head a few too many times in his infancy. Clint grinned, and with a shrug allowed as how maybe he had been, but what was he gonna do about it now? Safely behind Fury’s shoulder, Barnes rolled his eyes and allowed a tickle of a smile to break the ice away from his scowl.
Who? Barnes signed, with a meaning glance toward Rogers.
SI Dragon Mom, Clint signed back, then added I think he’s gonna come out. Reporter.
Fuck’s sake! Fury signed as Rogers and Arbogast finished with the pleasantries and ended the call.
“Colonel Fury,” Rogers cut in, a note of amusement in his voice. “Good to see you. I was about to ask Clint if he could track you down.”
“Well, I’m not all that hard to find,” Fury replied, helping himself to one of the workshop chairs. “Just look for the idiot making the biggest pile of trouble, and I’ll generally be there kicking his ass for it.”
“Sounds exhausting,” Rogers came back with a smile like butter wouldn’t melt off it. Barnes made a noise of strangled humor in his throat, and that made Rogers’ smile turned just a little more genuine. “You should let me help you out with that.”
“Help me,” was what Fury’s words said, but what his face said was more like You had better not be funnin’ me son, or I will snatch you bald so help me God.
Rogers kept that smile on though, and folded his hands on the desk in front of him. “Well, if I’m going to be held publicly accountable for what White Star does,” he said in a far-too-reasonable voice, “then I figure I ought to know what White Star is actually up to. He can tell you I’m no good at making up lies on the fly,” Rogers tipped a nod to Barnes. “But give me a bit of fair warning, and I can make you think a house fire’s a candle in the wind.”
“Or pneumonia’s a little springtime cold,” Barnes agreed, pure threat in his voice, which Clint worked hard not to find adorable, on account of metal elbows were sharp.
“It was always the plan to put me in front of the public,” Rogers went on, a glance too quick, and too loaded to be read scraping over Barnes before he fixed his attention back on Fury. “That’s what you’ve been telling me since I woke up here; the fancy clothes, the history lessons, the business and public speaking coaching; all that’s really no different from the old USO act, just with fewer chorus girls. And frankly Colonel, I think we both know that’s a waste of the serum’s potential.”
Fury did that thing where he stared at you and waited for you to get the jitters, but Rogers didn’t seem like he was sweating at all, and finally, it was Fury who blinked. “The last thing I need is a loose cannon in my executive crew,” he growled.
Rogers’ smile only deepened. “Then I guess you’d better not treat me like a weapon and only pull me out when you want to point me at someone,” he came back sharply, then let his smirk fade into a heavy earnestness that looked bulletproof. “I’m not a figurehead, I’m a leader,” he said. “So you need to figure out how to let me lead from the front. There’s too much at stake right now to have the two of us at odds over this.”
“Steve,” Barnes began, only to pull up short when Fury put up a silencing hand.
“You don’t know the field,” Fury said. “It’s a different war, a different game from the one you played in Europe.”
“Then teach it to me,” Rogers chinned up to the challenge without a moment’s hesitation. “I’m a quick study.”
“We’re a private company, not the US Army. You won’t have the weight of the Government behind you if you screw up.”
Rogers grinned again, meaner this time. “Colonel Phillips told us Howling Commandos on our second mission out that we were officially off the books, and if we got killed or captured in the field it was officially not his problem.” Rogers’ jaw bunched at the end of the word, flattening that smile just enought to tell what a strain it was for him not to glance Barnes’ way. “I’m used to running without a safety net, Colonel.”
“It ain’t like that!” Barnes shoved forward, jittering inside his skin the way he sometimes did when the pre-war memories were winding him up, making him forget where he was and who he had become. “It ain’t runnin off on your lonesome so’s nobody knows where to find you! It ain’t jumpin outta a plane an kickin your way into a place without backup! It’s different! You can’t just-”
“Barnes,” Fury’s voice came down like a wall, though he didn’t ever once take his eye off Rogers. “Your point’s taken.” He squared his shoulders to the front again, and continued. “And so is yours, Cap. It’s about time you and me laid some cards out on the table. You wanna start with why you’re using Howard’s phone to set up dates with reporters?”
And there went Rogers’ Gosh-Who-Me smile again as he tapped at a corner of the desk blotter. “Because Howard wrote this reporter’s name and her number right here about two weeks before he died,” he said. “His handwriting’s pretty shaky, but I can make out ‘ask re Afghanistan.’ So I figure it had something to do with his son’s kidnapping. I want to know what they talked about.”
That kinda put the pin back in everyone’s grenade. Even Barnes was thrown by the curveball, though he was probably relying on his sniperface to cover the fact. Fury tilted his head to peer at the scribble, which Clint could just make out, along with the date and phone number, and ... “Christine Everhardt did several stories on Stark’s kid before he died, didn’t she?” Clint recalled. “I think she was playing up the whole Prodigal Son of the Merchant of Death angle. Pissed Howard right the fuck off was what it did.”
“So why did he leave himself a note to call her?” Rogers summed it all up with a knowing glance around the room.
“Because nobody knew his son was dead yet,” Clint went ahead and jumped through the hoop when a long beat of silence proved the others were just gonna stubborn it out.
“But if he ever thought his son was taken alive, why didn’t Howard put any White Star resources to work finding him?” Rogers asked, with the air of someone who couldn’t quite believe nobody had asked that question before.
This time, Fury took the hit. “We had a lot of other things on our plate when Howard’s son went missing.” he said, and he was probably aiming for patience in his tone, but it was hitting closer to defensive. “Between Hydra finding you, SHIELD nearly capturing Barnes, and the COO of Stark Industries disappearing under suspicion of illegal arms dealing, we didn’t have the spare resources to go chasing after ghosts just for fun.”
Rogers gave him an unimpressed look and asked, “So there was no White Star action taken on the kidnapping?”
“It was a hot zone. State Department and Military CID were already digging the place up looking, and we were already stretched too thin on this side of the Atlantic, as the attack on Carter proved to us.” Clint was impressed at how Fury could say that without his voice shaking in rage at having been so terribly blindsided. But that was probably why he was in charge, not Clint. Well, that and the paperwork too, probably.
“By the time we caught any slack,” Fury went on, “they were already digging out the terrorist camp and naming the dead hostages by their dental records and finger prints. It was over, and we were just too late.”
“So you all thought he was dead?” Rogers asked, fiddling with a file folder.
“Howard thought he was dead,” Fury corrected. “Or close enough to it that he rewrote his will to cut his son out of it.”
Rogers flipped the folder open then, spun it in place, and shoved it to Fury’s side of the desk. “No he didn’t. If he’d thought his son was dead, the will wouldn’t have given three years to show up and claim the whole kit and kabootle, pending a psychiatry exam and a DNA test.” He leaned his elbows on the cluttered blotter, and pinned them all, one by one, with a piercing blue stare. “Howard thought his son was compromised, not dead. This will was supposed to be a clue, telling us to find him, in case Howard couldn’t.”
Clint took a deep breath, blinking as the data points started to line up in a whole new way. Over by the desk, he saw Barnes narrow his eyes, clearly thinking just as hard. Fury just took a breath, laced his fingers together, and regarded Rogers over them. “Go on...”
“Well, it seems to me,” Rogers said, taking a measuring glance at each of them, but letting it rest on Barnes just a little longer. “Seems to me that there’s a lot of people who don’t come back from experiences like kidnapping and ransom exchanges, but there’s a lot more who do. And in a war zone with more factions than one or two in play, there’s a whole lot of ways that things can turn out.”
Rogers sat back in the seat and folded his own hands over the desk. “I met someone this weekend who probably shouldn’t have survived what he did, and it got me thinking about all of us,” he waved a hand to take in more than just the four men in the workshop. “If any of our people went missing, we’d be damned sure we had a body before we wrote them off.”
“Damn straight,” Clint put in. “Especially knowing the kind of shit that HYDRA can pull.”
“So we need to go looking for Stark’s son,” Rogers went on, nodding to Clint’s point. “Even if he is dead, and we just recover his body, we need to be sure, because this,” he tapped the opened folder, “is an Achilles’ heel we really can’t afford to overlook.”
Barnes swore softly in Russian, and Clint was pretty sure all four of them were imagining having to turn over Stark Industries, the mansion, and all of White Star’s operating capital to a man who already had his reasons for hating his father, but might just be under HYDRA’s, thumb as well. Clint stole a glance at the acting Director, to see how he was handling the idea, but there were too many moving parts in that one-eyed scowl for him to make it out.
“You don’t think he’d have made a try for the inheritance by now, if he was still alive?” Fury asked after a moment, probing Rogers’ theory for cracks.
Rogers stared back without blinking. “I think it’d be stupid of us to leave that to chance. After all, no matter what his relationship with his father might have been, the kid was still a Stark, and he must have gotten more from Howard than just a lot of money. And I’ll tell you this for nothing -- Howard might’ve been more of a tinkerer than a fighter, but I still wouldn’t want anyone with his kinda smarts working against me.”
Barnes shook his head in emphatic agreement, and Fury sat back, giving up all pretense to resistance with a sigh. “All right, then this’ll be your case, Deputy Director Rogers,” he said, and acted like he didn’t see Rogers blink back from the WTF title like it had smacked him in the forehead. “Johnson and Romanoff are working on Flowers’ encryptions. I’ll have Klein get you the records we have on the kidnapping in the morning.”
“I’d like to see everything we have on the son,” Rogers put in, standing when Fury did, and flipping the folder closed as well. “If he got away from his kidnappers, I’ll need to know where he might have gone to heal up from whatever happened.”
“Have Klein get whatever you need, and work with Delta team for logistics,” Fury threw back as he headed for the stairs, either not seeing, or else ignoring the glare Barnes whipped in his direction.
“I think you’re forgetting the other half of our sharing moment,” Rogers called, his face set in a scowl that said plainly that he wasn’t gonna be bought off with some busywork and a wild goose chase.
With his foot on the step, Fury turned and smirked. “Oh, I haven’t forgotten. It’s just that I’m late for an interrogation report on your captive, and you’re late for a debriefing with Assistant Director Hill, so we’re gonna have to leave our quid pro quo for after the dust settles.”
Rogers put on the kind of face that Clint interpreted as ‘Aw, debriefing...’ but he nodded anyway, and bent to drop the will back into the file cabinet he’d jimmied earlier. “I’ll have Ms. Arbogast call your office to set up the meeting, shall I?”
Clint had to stifle a snicker at that, but he was glad he had when Fury glared back with a nod. “Fine. And while you’re busy with Hill, you can have Barnes and Barton go through some of the boxes in the attic.”
“What?” Barnes snapped.
“Aw, attic no,” Clint groaned.
Fury just let that mean smile of his. “Howard told me he had cleaners gather up all of his belongings and photographs after Maria died and Tony moved out,” he said, continuing his climb to the garage. “I figure most of it should still be up there now, waiting for you to get started.”
Barnes turned back to shoot Clint a glare, the plates on his arm whirring in annoyance. Clint backed away, both hands turned upward in a shrug to demonstrate his complete and utter innocence. “Not my fault,” he said, “I was minding my own business by the pool!”
“I didn’t say it was your fault,” Barnes glowered, stalking forward. “I’m gonna blame you anyways.”
Clint glanced toward Rogers, and the thin strand of hope he held out for a rescue from that quarter, but that one glance was enough to drop the play right out of his mind, and bring both feet solid to the floor. The man had gone bloodless white, so pale that tiny blond freckles stood out across his nose and cheeks. His blue eyes were wide, focused on the middle distance and flicking restlessly at nothing as he checked and rechecked some unseen tally in his mind.
Behind him, Clint heard Barnes take a sharp breath, and a hesitant step toward the desk. “Steve?” he asked, wary and worried.
“Did...” Rogers swallowed then, and dredged up a cheap plastic smile from somewhere as he blinked the two of them back into focus. “Did he say Howard’s son was named Tony?”