arrowpocalypse (arrowpocalypse) wrote in knowhereic, @ 2017-07-11 19:41:00 |
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To say that Francis Barton was...well to say he was anything would have been difficult because that would have required Francis to actually think about what he was and that was the very last thing he wanted to be doing right now. It was why he was in the Hovel in the first place, covered in a light sheen of sweat, working his knuckles over and over again into the practice dummy. He didn’t care that they’d be swollen and sore in the morning, didn’t care that it wasn’t the same as it was when he used the sticks. Right now, at least the thing that he was trying to tell himself, was that didn’t care about anything at all. The truth of it, the thing Francis wouldn’t even admit to himself, was that it was the exact opposite. He felt like his life was in ruins, felt like his team was in shambles, and his friends were gone. There had been word that Torunn was staying with Natalia -- Nancy -- whatever the fuck James’ Mom wanted to go by. Francis hadn’t been sure what to make of that news, hadn’t said much of anything more than ’Good to know’ about it. Torunn was at least somewhere, even if it wasn’t with him, and he could...he didn’t deserve that anyway. It had been enough of a relief to know where she was and that had allowed...whatever he was feeling...to finally start coming to the surface. It was a mixture of anxious and frustration and anger, all directed inward because he genuinely believed this mess was all his fault. He’d never had any place being a leader. Even with the Scavengers, he’d only fallen into the role because he’d had no choice. They needed someone and, probably just because of what his Dad had been, they’d chosen him. If only they knew, if only Francis hadn’t been so… Knuckles hit home hard and the strike was off kilter enough that it sent a sharp spike through his wrist. “Motherfucker.” Francis muttered under his breath, still not quite sure why that phrase was considered ‘harsh language’ but at least reveling in the privacy of being able to say it without drawing looks. He’d been working on doing less of it, at least with everyone but Bobbi -- His Mom -- Whatever she wanted to be -- fuck. He hit the dummy again, off center in just the same way and this time it just made it worse. Now he’d need to ice it and tape it and there were probably going to be questions and… The next thirty seconds were just a flurry of formless kicks and punches. He wasn’t using technique, he wasn’t trying to practice or train his muscles to remember how to hit. This was a full on release of pent up emotions that Francis just...he didn’t know how to have. When it was over, his chest heaving under his white T-shirt, his boots digging into the floor in a vain attempt to keep him upright, Francis just…yelled at it. Screamed at it might have been a better word, albeit a bit more intense than what actually happened. It ended in a long series of grunts before he just...sat down. Right where he’d been standing. He just curled his legs up underneath him and dropped to the floor. Left hand would come to rub at his right wrist and Francis just… “Fuck.” It wasn’t anger and wasn’t pain in the tone of that word, but resignation. This was just one more thing he’d done wrong lately. One more thing that hurt. “You going to stop before you break your wrist?” Clint Barton sat down beside his son--it didn’t matter to him that Francis was from another universe--and gently took his injured arm. “Let me have a look. While I’m at it, you can tell me what the training dummy did to you to warrant being beaten to sawdust.” He hadn’t been watching long. Natasha had made a good point when she’d said that parenting might not be what the kids needed right now. Clint was giving Francis space as best he could. He couldn’t leave him to his own devices entirely, though. The kid deserved a family, damn it, and Clint was going to give him one. He should have expected it, he really fucking should have. Clint Barton, one of the two here, was his Father and...that was confusing as hell by itself. As confusing as that was, to have both men be reflections of the man he knew, one in looks and the other, the one who sat beside him now, in personality? As confusing and maddening and impossible to imagine as it was, there was at least some small, and very private, part of him that was grateful for it. It was why, despite everything in his gut telling him to clam up and say nothing, he let out a soft sigh and just held his wrist out to Clint. He wouldn’t turn his gaze, he wouldn’t look at him, but he would offer the wound a chance be looked at. “Should just need tape and ice.” He’d even offer, skimming past the question about why he needed to beat the thing so bloody. Or, at least that had been his plan for a minute. This Clint, historically speaking, hadn’t let him slide on half answers and… “Don’t know.” He lied and then… “Figured it was better than taking it out on a person.” And at least that was a piece of what was afoot. “Should,” Clint allowed, “but better I look at it now than you wake up in the morning with your wrist the size of a football and me explaining to the medics why I let you run around with serious soft tissue damage or a broken wrist.” The older Barton palpated the wrist with a practiced touch. You took care of your own in SHIELD. He’d lost count of how many times he’d done checks like this for other agents. He’d even had to do it for Lila and Cooper a few times--thankfully in the more innocent context of sore wrists sustained in soccer practice or a fall from a swing. “You’re not wrong,” he added. “About the dummy, I mean. Better to throw that kind of frustration at something that doesn’t feel and doesn’t fight back. But I gotta wonder if maybe there’s a way to work through this that wouldn’t involve so much property destruction.” “It’s not broken.” The words were spoken with a cold and calculated sort of knowledge, the one that came from knowing exactly how it felt to have bones break. Francis had been in enough fights, taken enough falls, and limped himself back to the security of home base enough times to know. At the same time however, he couldn’t stop his fingers from flexing or his eyes from dialing in on the way it felt to have his wrist turned over in the other man's. “Well we just fuc--.” Francis caught the word before it came out of his mouth. He was mad at himself for being sloppy and hurting his hand. He was mad at the situation that had fallen into his life. He was mad at...a lot of things, but he wasn’t mad at Clint. He didn’t need to hit him with that biting attitude and personality. He didn’t deserve it. Also, as much as it was Francis’ default to keep people at a distance, to put so much energy into seemingly he just didn’t care or wouldn’t let anyone closer than arm’s length, the simple fact of the matter was he was too tired for that right now. “...Can’t take it out on a person. Can’t take it out on a thing. That runs me fresh out of ideas.” “Hmm,” Clint mused. He turned Francis’s wrist one last time, then guided him through the motions to flex the joint to check its mobility. “There’s this wonderful invention. You might have heard of it. It’s called words.” Clint looked up, and smiled to take the edge off of his own sometimes biting sarcasm. It was a character trait he played up for his audience in the world that had no idea he was a dad, but it never truly went away. Lila thought it was hilarious. “I’m not knocking the physical component of working out your anger. Lord knows I do the same more than I admit. But it doesn’t work that great by itself.” Clint released his son’s wrist and moved on to check the range of motion through his fingers at each knuckle. Hands were delicate things. Sometimes, there was no telling what messing up one part would do to the rest. “I get that you haven’t had the luxury of talking through things for a long time, but now that you do, you could start. I’ll listen.” There was a moment where Francis let out a sarcastic sort of huff. In fact, there was nothing sort of about it. It was a defensive reflex, a desire to keep distance between what he saw as someone trying to open up a bond with him. No matter how much he wanted it, which was something he still wasn’t going to admit even in his thoughts, he couldn’t fight the conditioning that those kind of things were...they were…dangerous. If nothing else they made him weak and vulnerable, two things he hadn’t been allowed to be in so long that he’d honestly forgotten how. It was bad enough that Clint had obviously seen him rail against the dummy, bad enough the man obviously wanted to….to be his Dad...and that Francis was having such a hard time resisting that because…. Because he missed his Father so damn much it left almost no room for any other feeling in his chest. It made everything tight, made him want to pull back his wrist and just shut this whole thing down...but he couldn’t. James had torn open a scar in Francis, he’d plunged a knife deep into a wound the younger Barton had long forced himself to ignore. He didn’t think James had done it on purpose but that was what had happened all the same. It had triggered the reflex to slam shut every door, to put up every wall, to get so far back from everything that….that nothing hurt anymore...and he just… He couldn’t do it. Not to Clint. Not to his Dad. “I know how words work.” He half scoffed at the suggestion, mirroring that sarcasm with a reflexive smile he was annoyed had even come to the surface. “What do you want me to say?” He was clearly scrambling to get some distance between that feeling and the question was entirely genuine. Whatever Clint wanted him to say, honest or not, he would. He had a feeling, a twisting knife in his gut, that wasn’t how this was going to work, but...well. He was Francis Barton and this was who he was. The trouble was, Clint wasn’t Francis’s father, not the one he’d grown up with, anyway. He’d missed all the moments that a father relied on to get to know his children. All Clint had to work with was a rough sketch of his son’s life before Knowhere. That sketch inspired an awful lot of guilt on his part for actions he’d never committed, might not ever be in a position to carry out (God, he hoped so), but most of all, it inspired worry. None of the arrivals from Francis’s world had been given the childhood their parents probably wanted for them. They’d coped remarkably well, but the damage was still there to see. Clint inhaled a long breath, held it, let it out. The exercise worked as well for him as a father as it did for him as an archer, helping him to relax and be patient. “What do you want to say? That’s what’s important here. It’s not about me, kiddo. I’m just along for the ride. You’re the driver.” There was a brief glance that Francis passed his otherworldly Father, the man who had kids that weren’t him but seemed to be trying harder than he ever remembered his own actual Father trying. Which...that was a strange and guilt ridden feeling. Most of the memories he had about actually being parented came from his Mother, the one who’d insisted Francis have some semblance of a life that was less Hawkeye. His Father, on the other hand, had been the more practical one. He’d insisted Francis learn how to shoot, how to make arrows, and how to keep himself in shape. He’d even been the one that had taught Francis how to be stealthy, how to move around Ultron’s fortress undetected, and, perhaps most importantly of all? He taught Francis what it meant to be someone who had to be relied upon. “Don’t know.” He answered honestly, feeling his guts twist up all over again. “...I said it all before and you didn’t want to hear it.” Which was about as close to revisiting the conversation he’d had with Clint on the tablet regarding is failure as Francis wanted to get -- even if he was almost positive the man wouldn’t leave alone at that. It was enough for him to flex his hand as Clint worked at it before finally pulling it back out of his touch. Francis had never liked to be touched and now that things were tensing emotionally that was just too much. “Unless you just want me to repeat all that again, might be a good idea to give some pointers or some sh--ctuff.” He shrugged. “That’s what you’re supposed to do anyway right? Nice lecture about how none of this is my fault and I sit here and say you’re right and then you can walk away feeling good?” It was harsher than he’d meant by miles and it was plain to see -- especially with the way Francis sighed and deflated immediately after -- that he wished he hadn’t said it at once…. But he’d be damned if he knew what to do. To be honest, Clint was probably being nicer to Francis than he should be. Too much parenting, or not enough? Maybe, he thought, the wrong kind. Would be let Cooper get away with some of the things Francis had pulled? Not in a million years. He’d let Tony upgrade his toaster with FRIDAY’s OS before he gave Cooper a pass on drinking himself into a stupor or destroying a practice range. But he also had no intention of ever letting Cooper follow in his footsteps. Clint couldn’t treat Francis like one of his kids back home, and it broke his heart just a little more over a world that wasn’t his own. He left Francis draw back. Acting as though it were nothing, Clint dusted off his hands and stood. “I’ll get a wrap and some ice. You stay here and think. About what you want to say or don’t want to say. Where you want to be in two hours or two weeks or two years. And I don’t mean a place. I mean with the people around you. Teams are built on trust, kid. I’m not telling you that as Clint Barton. I’m telling you as an agent. So you’d better figure out how to trust yourself if you want to get anywhere with your friends.” That said, Clint disappeared into the office, such as it was, to grab the first aid supplies. He’d be disappointed, but not surprised, if Francis took the opportunity to disappear before Clint came back. There was a very serious moment where Francis did debate just get up and walking out. He couldn’t make any sense of what all this was, what he was supposed to say or do. It was honestly that, the lack of knowing, the lack of even and idea of what to do, that had him sit there while Clint -- his Dad -- the guy who just -- and then there was -- and Francis just sat there and sighed. He flexed his fingers, he rolled his wrist. He focused on something he could understand, something he could work his way into making sense of, it was going to swell and be sore, but it’d pass and he’d be fine He tried to focus on that, to apply that same kind of thought to what was going on here, to what Clint had said. Francis had barely ever been able to think about where he would be in two hours. Weeks? Years? These things were so far outside of his scope that he didn’t know. It was largely why he was so reactive to what was right in front of him. It was the only thing that made any kind of sense, the only thing he could reasonably see and plot a course through. Now Clint was talking about teams, something Francis didn’t even think he had right now and just...all he could do was sigh again. He wasn’t going to ditch the only person who was really trying right now, he wasn’t going to yell at him like he might everyone else, because the truth was…. Well it was something Francis didn’t really want to admit, not even to himself. When Clint came back, the only movement Francis had really made was to clean up the area he’d been working in, wiping down some of his sweat and making sure whoever came in after him wouldn’t have anything to do but settle into work. Normally he wouldn’t have cared but, well, thinking about who was in charge of the place? That was enough for Francis to go outside his norms, just like Clint Barton was reason enough to stay right where he was rather than walk away like he might have with ninety-nine percent of other people in the Universe. “It’s not going to swell too bad.” His voice was a little quiet and resigned, focusing on the wrist more than what Clint had said. “Ice and a wrap and it’ll be fine in a couple days.” Which would see the confidence return to his voice as he spoke, picking his head up to see what supplies the other man had grabbed. “Thanks though. For getting the stuff.” That wasn’t the response Clint had hoped for, but it was about what he’d expected if Francis stuck around after Clint’s ultimatum. Clint sighed and shook his head. “You gotta stop doing this to yourself, kid.” He didn’t specify whether he meant the wrist or Francis’s emotional tangle. “Let me wrap it up. It’ll be easier with two working hands. Then I’ll let you get out of here.” “It’s not like I do it on purpose.” Francis’ words were slightly more clipped than he intended. He wanted to argue that he could do it himself, that he’d wrapped his wrist and tended his own wounds for so long that he didn’t need any help but, rather annoyingly, Clint had a very good point. Trying to wrap a wrist one handed was easier when you had two hands to work on it. So it was that, begrudgingly, Francis let him. He’d let him work and wind the bandage, averting his gaze away from the work at hand. “Looked pretty on purpose to me.” Clint nodded to the training area damage to show that he meant the physical toll. He didn’t need Francis thinking he was at fault for his own feelings. “I get it, kid. I really do. Not growing up with the world falling down around your ears, maybe, but feeling like you screwed up, like you should have been the one to keep things from getting so bad. Like you’ve got to save everybody. You’ve got to be perfect with all those lives hanging over your head. But you can’t be perfect all the time. You’ve got to let yourself fail on the days you can afford to fail, or you’ll wear yourself to nothing.” Francis’ drew his lips into a pensive line at Clint’s response. He wasn’t wrong. Francis had lost his temper and lashed out at the thing fully intending to do some damage to it. The fact that he’d ended up doing damage to himself, really, had only made it worse, but that didn’t change the fact that Clint was right or that Francis didn’t want him to be right. If it had been anyone else standing there, he probably would have snapped at them. Maybe not Bobbi, but even Torunn would have gotten some biting remark about all that. As it was, Francis just...he shut up. He listened to what Clint had to say, despite the fact that he wanted to reject every single word the man said if only because he was saying it -- and that was tied to a whole other mess of emotions Francis didn’t know how to handle. Being called ’kid’ made him bristle, but he stuffed that down and kept it to himself. Instead he let out a resigned sigh. He couldn’t even argue that Clint was wrong. He’d done that for most of his life. He’d put everyone and everything ahead of himself, he’d done that for years because that’s what the scavengers had needed him to do after….after the man standing right in front of him wasn’t around anymore because he’d put Francis first. It was why he’d bristled, even Francis knew that, and that just annoyed him all the more at himself. Clint was just trying to help and here he was being Francis -- as Torunn would say -- at him. That wasn’t fair. “Yeah.” It was dismissive, more than he’d meant it to be and there was another sigh. “It wasn’t even supposed to be my job.” James and Torunn had more experience. As soon as he’d stepped in to try and fix whatever had happened was just….it was a stupid idea. “Well I don’t really have a choice.” He did, he just didn’t see it and his tone betrayed that. He wasn’t mad, he wasn’t even short with Clint, he just honestly didn’t see himself as having a choice. He just lifted his eyes to Clint and, as much as he’d kick himself for asking it later… “What would you do then?” “Start letting people in.” Clint smiled and patted Francis’s shoulder. “I know it’s weird. And you’re definitely going to screw up along the way. People aren’t that different from archery. Take a deep breath, hold it, then let it out before you loose the arrow. Or in this case, before you act. And your aim’s going to be terrible for a little while. It takes practice. But you’ve got to learn if you’re going to have people in your life.” The sentiment Clint had, that Francis needed to start ‘letting people in’? It drew a long quiet from the younger Barton. He hadn’t done that in...a long time. Even James and Torunn, arguably his closest friends, weren’t people he let in. It simply just….wasn’t safe. Not in a world like theirs. When people got close, it made them, and him do stupid things. It made people emotional when they needed to be focused, it distracted people, and it got them killed. Even if sometimes he thought about it, even on the nights James’ god awful moonshine had gotten the better of him and he’d briefly dipped into some nostalgic story before realizing what he was doing, Francis knew better. He’d never forget what that kind of thing did to people. But that didn’t change the fact Clint was probably...maybe...a little bit...right. He didn’t like the idea any, but Knowhere wasn’t some wasteland world with only a handful of people in it and dangers at every turn. It was a chance to do something different, a chance to have pieces of his life, his childhood, come back to him. Of course that also meant everything tied to those memories came back too and… “This isn’t like shooting an arrow. That’s a bullseye, something you can aim at and make damn sure you hit. People are just…” Francis shrugged, a case-in-point example of him turning himself off. It was, though probably not in the way Clint had meant, how Francis took a breath. He just did it by shutting up. “Whatever. People get hungry. You wanna go get something to eat?” Because if nothing else? Francis was a master at dodging things. You had to be when you didn’t have any super powers and hung out with Gods who liked to shove you for being a jerk a lot. Clint rolled his eyes, but let Francis get away with it. “Starlin’s. I feel like letting someone else do the cooking today. But let’s finish cleaning up, first. Your mom’s going to rip us a new one if we leave a mess behind.” |