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Clint (eyesintheback) wrote in avengers_logs, @ 2018-05-12 10:31:00

Who: Clint Barton, Natasha Romanoff & Nick Fury
What: It’s like a SHIELD reunion only with less food and hopefully less awkward
When: Sometime after this
Rating/Warnings: Green

Seeing Nick pop up on the network should have been a surprise but it really wasn’t, especially as they were all being pulled here to help fix the timeline and who better than Nick Fury for that? Now all they needed was for Maria to turn up and they’d have a close to perfect reunion of old SHIELD.

After both Clint and Nat had finished speaking with Nick they’d headed out of the apartment they now shared and made their way over to Nick’s place.Truth be told Clint was utterly fascinated as Nick had been nothing short of secretive about his personal life and now, well, now they were going to get a sneak peek at the man behind the curtain.

“Swanky,” Clint drawled as he came to a stop and tipped his head back to regard the looming building in front of them. “Course this is Fury so I wouldn’t expect anything less.” He hit the nearby intercom button and waited.

Nat rocked up onto her toes and looked at the door, smirking at Clint. “I’ve never been here before,” she told him. She had worked with Fury for years, along with Clint for the longest time he had been the closest thing Natasha had to a family and the thought a few years back that she had lost him had been a significant blow to her.

She pressed her lips together as Clint pressed the intercom and waited for Fury to let them in. At least they had called ahead to let him know that he would be getting visitors.

“Can’t believe his building managed to escape being destroyed by low-flying sharks,” she grumbled.

Punctuality was a virtue that Nick greatly cherished. At exactly the right time, he heard the buzzer. Letting them in, he unlocked his front door, and brushed a few non-existent crumbs from his coffee table. The end of his timestream was no excuse for being unprepared for guests -- on the table was an assortment of baked goods, along with a tea pot and a french press, eagerly waiting the coffee Clint had promised.

Hearing the door open, he called out. “In the living room, and take off your damn shoes. I just cleaned these floors.” He never could understand why people insisted on wearing their shoes inside. He had a pair of moccasins, gifted to him many years ago that he had broken in juuust right.

“I know, right?” Clint said to Nat with a snort before as the door opened he arched an eyebrow when they were told to take off their damn shoes. Hey, nice to know some things hadn’t changed. Nick was still Nick which meant he was grumpy as fuck and all kinds of direct.

Regardless he leaned down and started unlacing his boots and slipping his socked feet out of them.

“Nice to see you too,” he offered as he wandered into the apartment, which by the way, super sweet.

Nat laughed as she shut the door behind herself and leaned against it to pull off her boots, leaving them neatly against the wall beside the door. She checked that it was secure before she followed Clint out of the entrance hall and into the apartment, shrugging out of her leather jacket, more careful of her still-healing hidden wounds than Clint was.

Seeing Nick in the lounge made a knot that had been in Nat’s chest unravel and she let out a slow breath, folding her arms and coming to a halt not too far from where he was standing, hip cocked slightly. He had a spread out and that seemed hardly a surprise to her, but still it was welcomed. As was seeing him.

“Expecting a party, are we?” she asked, a smirk on her face but anyone who knew her could tell she was as close to overjoyed as she ever got to see him.

Nick was feeling the same way. It was one thing to see Stark, and hear from Strange -- it was another thing entirely to see his two oldest, closest agents, standing tall. Alive. And apparently together.

He had a sixth sense about these things.

“We have a lot to catch up.” He motioned to the table. “Sit. Fill me in. This is an...odd feeling, not knowing everything.” Fury raised a finger. “And I will never admit that ever again. Relish this moment.”

“Oh, I will,” Clint assured Nick with a grin that was nothing short of shit-eating, but it was good to see the other man. The three people in this room Clint would trust with his life and had done on more than one occasion and if they asked him he’d go to the ends of the earth for them.

He grabbed a seat and helped himself to a particularly tasty looking croissant. “I’m guessing you got the Strange greeting?” It was both a reference to the sheer oddity of their situation and the fact there was also one Dr Stephen Strange floating about.

His brain still felt boggled by that particular conversation and the less he thought about it the better

“Something like that,” Natasha responded as she sat beside Clint, pushing her hair behind her ear and crossing one leg over the other. “He’s... interesting.”

She blew out a breath and sank into the cushion. The couch was comfortable enough but she knew that it wasn’t as well used as it might have been had it belonged to someone other than the indomitable Nicholas Fury.

“You missed some fun, though,” she told him. “A tornado full of sharks, for one. Pretty sure that’ll be added as an exclusion clause in home insurance going forward. Covered under ‘acts of God’ or something.”

That got an eyebrow raise and a slight smirk. “A tornado full of sharks…” Nick gave a slow nod. “That almost sounds like a bad movie.” Stretching his arms out behind him, he crossed one leg, balancing his heel on his knee. This was as close to relaxing as Nick was willing to share with someone.

“So basically what you’re saying is that this timeline is as ridiculous, if not worse, than the previous one.” He gave a sharp nod. “Got it. And yes, I got the Strange greeting.” His tone implied it was more strange than a greeting. “We discussed a few things, and while slightly unexpected, not the worst thing I’ve heard. What I’m more concerned about is all these metahumans with no accountability.” Nick cocked an eyebrow. “I don’t think I have to spell out my reservations.”

Clint popped a piece of croissant into his mouth and chewed on it slowly as Natasha and Nick spoke though his brow drew together when the other man started talking about the “metahumans” and immediately his thoughts went to Wanda and Pietro.

Nick had been out of the game for a long time and Clint, well, he happened to be very protective and he didn’t much enjoy where this train of conversation was going.

“You might wanna clarify who you mean,” Clint began slowly. “‘Cause there’s a couple metahumans that have done a lot for a lot of people.”

Natasha shifted subtly so that her foot was touching Clint’s, knowing how this conversation could end if the waters weren’t tested and navigated carefully. “You wanna clarify who you’re talking about, Nick?” she asked, “A lot’s happened not just since we all got shifted to this timeline. You gotta know about all the mess around the Accords.”

She leaned forward and picked up a cup, pouring herself a tea. “With the exception of Brandt, because I don’t know her,, the metahumans around us are not bad people.” It wasn’t that she couldn’t see both sides of the argument, because she could, she had more of a stake in one side than the other.

“I’m not saying they’re bad people,” Nick answered quickly, realizing he’d created tension where he hadn’t meant. “I haven’t been actively involved in this for a while, and I recognize that. I’m trying to get more information, and put pieces together so that I can do what I do best: organize.” He raised an eyebrow. “And you both have to admit -- no one can work behind the scenes like I can.”

Nick leaned back in his chair, and tapped his fingers together. “Maybe you should start by telling me who all is around.”

“You got me there,” Clint admitted as he exhaled past the tension he could feel settling across his shoulders and down the length of his back. Nobody did working behind the scenes like Fury, he was definitely skilled.

He broke off another piece of his croissant and popped it into his mouth to chew again, slower this time, just so he could take a moment to piece together his thoughts. Thankfully Nat had a way with calming down situations so Clint let her take the lead.

“Well for one we have the Maximoff siblings and a kid called Peter Parker, Spiderman to be exact.”

“Spiderman who is a sixteen year old kid,” Natasha added, glancing at Clint. She cleared her throat and rubbed a hand over her face. Nick would have known who the Maximoff twins were; she had no doubt that Hill had passed that information across to Fury when they worked out they were dealing with enhanced.

She leaned back. “But Peter’s a good kid. Naive and misguided, he’s following Tony like a puppy, but he’s a good kid. There’s also Ellen Brandt, but I don’t know much about her. Pretty sure she’s one of Killian’s that tried to kill Tony.” SHIELD’s file on Tony had been huge, and only grew bigger and bigger with each year that had passed, the more Tony kept turning over rocks and painting a target on himself.

“And somewhere, though he doesn’t seem to be here, is Vision.”

Fury nodded, taking this all in. Reaching down for a scone, he lightly tapped it on his plate before taking a generous bite. It was a lot to take in and process, but this is why he wanted to talk to Clint and Nat -- to get an idea of what was going on.

“And how would they all fit in, if another SHIELD like system formed?” Apart from Bobbi and Stark, he hadn’t really floated the idea out there, but as much as he would be fully in charge, he’d need his two top people by his side. “A teenager seems like a liability. “ So did the Maximoff twins, but he didn’t say that. It took a while for trust to be re-formed once broken, and the twins had trampled all over it. “Do you think that’s a process that could be useful here?”

Clint glanced at Nat for a moment before he looked back at Fury when the other man admitted that he was considering forming another SHIELD. The same institution that had been infected by HYDRA and Cap had put an end to in quite an elaborate fashion. Nothing quite said dead like crashing expensive helicarriers into the river, but then he knew that Fury had obtained enough SHIELD vessels to extract civilians from Sokovia.

“Well last I checked SHIELD was on the outs,” Clint pointed out as he picked up a nearby knife and proceed to flip it through his fingers. “You know what with the unfortunate incident with HYDRA and exposing everybody’s dirty secrets online for everybody to witness.”

And how much trust did the world really have in an institution like SHIELD after having watched its momentous implosion and at times literal explosion on every screen going.

Nat rolled her eyes a little. “Peter’s doing his best,” she said, “He tries to follow a little too closely in Tony’s footsteps, takes the man’s words as gospel but he’s doing his best.”

She leaned forward, eyes on Fury as he ate his scone, noting that he didn’t comment about the Maximoff twins, but also that he’d mentioned about SHIELD reforming. “You planning on resurrecting SHIELD, Nick? And where they’d fit would depend on how you’d handle them. Allies or threats?”

“This world has enough threats, Natasha. I don’t intend to add to that.” And Nick was genuine about that. There was enough happening in this strange timeline. “HYDRA doesn’t seem to be here, and I’m not planning on running a cloak-and-dagger operation this time. I’ve been talking to Tony, and he’ll be a backer. Pepper’s here to help run oversight. I think it could work.” His brows raised. “No way I can convince you two to join me again, huh?” He knew their loyalties, which still aligned with his, were with the Avengers now. Still. Didn’t hurt to ask.

Oh goody Tony was involved, that didn’t at all make Clint feel… uncomfortable. Nope. Not him. Granted him and Stark were trying to bury the hatchet but there was still a lot of work to be done, Clint didn’t exactly forgive easily or forget. The not forgetting was a big thing.

“Sorry, Nick, but now that I’m out of retirement I firmly have my Avenger pants on.” He finished off his baked good. “But doesn’t mean we won’t help out if you need us ‘cause Nat and I? We got long memories so if you need us we’ll be there but if you don’t we’ll be busy trying to save the world or whatever idea Cap’s got in his head for us to do.”

Nat just leaned forward and plucked a few grapes off their stem and offered Nick a familiar, enigmatic smile, deciding not to say anything at all. Nick already knew the answer - she knew he did - so his question wasn’t really one that he had been expecting an answer to.

“It’s good to have you here, though,” she said, in lieu of a response. “Y’know, for the end of the world.”