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If it weren’t for the minutae, this would just be boring. SHIELD’s on the prowl again, word of a recently thawed out contractor, but Clint’s job won’t be important until they get word from Black Widow as to where this man is.
“What was he contracted for?” he asks Coulson, thumbing through the papers on his desk. “Anything interesting, or just the standard labor and intellect contract?” You can call it buying rights, paying for services rendered, but just because they ain’t chattel doesn’t mean they aren’t slaves. Bond slavery has been around for centuries, but now they just call it contracting.
It’s shit, that’s what it is. Buy the rights to a persons education, training or future work and make them pay it off to you, it’s utter shit. SHIELD doesn’t usually handle these cases, not that trafficking isn’t important, but there’s other organizations working to ban the practice. SHIELD, though, acquires and frees, like a rolling jubilee, contracts, and is well known to open up their safehouses to those who walk away.
Like Clint did, like he convinced Natasha too, like Coulson once was. Everyone’s got stories. Some they tell you, Clint will tell everyone his, sugar coated childhood and mercenary as he grew older. Natasha’s is almost public knowledge around SHIELD and no one feels pity. Clint doesn’t even know Coulson’s story. Probably only Fury knows Coulson’s and if there is anyone less willing to break confidence, well, Clint’s never met ‘em.
“We’re going with interesting,” Coulson murmurs, handing over the file he’s reading to Clint, “very interesting.” The photos are of a young man, American, with an obvious prothesis. Medical debt. Now that’s heinous, but the file — the file doesn’t read that at all. The photos are of the same man, decade after decade, not aging in anything but his haircut and his clothes.
“You weren’t…you weren’t joking when you said thawed out, were you?” he questions, which is really kind of stupid. He knows cryogenics exist, but they are uncommon and moreso since the cold war more or less collided with global warming. Coulson shakes his head in response, “He doesn’t have the same owners does he? Who bought his contract? Does he even know he has a contract?”
The file is marked Winter Soldier, and here is where SHIELD’s interests come together in fascinating ways. Criminals love the contracts. They love moving pawns back and forth to each other, no loyalty, no muss or fuss.
“We think he’s a product of the Red Room, but American and reprogrammed.”
“And very shiny.” Clint adds, “When did he get a contract?”
“We can track his being sold to about three years ago, moving from a forged initial contact, only listed as James, 25, various skillsets, debt related to the loss of his arm. The person who bought the contract is a relative nobody, no criminal record, no known associations.” Coulson explains while Clint skims the file.
“So you don’t think the person who bought the contract exists?” Clint runs his fingers down the the side of the file folder. He was once just a collection of paper like this too, a talented blip on the radar that stayed.
Coulson breaks implacability for just a moment, because now he’s just mocking Clint, “Only on paper. What we don’t know is who has him now, or for what end. Natasha says that he can be reprogrammed to for any purpose…”
“Which leads me to my next question, sir.” Clint sometimes forgets just how much Coulson hates being called sir, and how often it still slips out of his mouth out of conditioned habit. He grimaces in apology, it’ll be years before they both work through this issue. “Why isn’t Natasha on this one, seems to me that she’d be the prime candidate to bring him back. He might recognize her.”
And then as soon as it’s out of his mouth, he understands why. Winter Soldier, James, whatever he’s being called, might recognize her, and the response cannot be accounted for, cannot be measured an contained. A tranq arrow, however, is an even and measured response.
“She’ll be handling him when we get him into a safehouse and deprogramming.” Coulson hands him another set of files, mission briefings, support documents, everything related to the casework possible for him to study up on.
“Coulson…” he whines. Phil knows better than to hand him all the words. He’s a fucking runaway, contracted as a child, bare minimum age, and not schooled past that point by the circus that bought him up. You don’t need school when muscle memory will do. Mission files are a fucking pain in his ass, and Coulson knows it.
Coulson also is that one that reminds him that he’s smarter than his record lets on, and weak reading skills isn’t the end of the world. “We don’t start until we get word of where he is. I’ll be by tonight and we can go through it all together.”
Well, this evening is taking a turn for the better, at the very least. He palms the set of folders into his left hand and glances around to check for anyone that didn’t understand that a little pda was necessary for, ahem, unit cohesion. They aren’t demonstrative, just a couple of ex-contracts being physical, and for all of SHIELD’s well meaning, there’s a bit of that good old “well everyone knows how contracts really work” stereotype that hangs around. There’s no where that’s really safe for people like them, but at least they are treated like people most of the time. And Clint knows how to get back at those who are more egregious in their prejudices.
They use that stereotype to their advantage, and Clint lets just the stray touch down Coulson’s arm speak for itself. Coulson though, his fingers tangle just a few moments longer than strictly needed.
They make a good team, him and Coulson. Natasha. Maybe they’ll get lucky and when this James guy gets his choice, he’ll work with them too.