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This is where somebody else might've said you don't need the silverware, Clint, all gentle, thinking they were helping. If it had been Frank, he'd have said you don't have the first goddamn clue what I need so how about you shut your fucking mouth.

He almost says it was the piano for me, would've broken Maria's heart if she knew he stopped playing after she died. She'd have been all broken up about it, about music, about how much she loved hearing him play and so did the kids, and he ought to take the piano at least. But he couldn't move the piano by himself, and he didn't have anywhere to put it, so he felt too guilty to even touch the keys the last time he went home.

"Tell you what," he says instead. "Everything you need for work, you put in those duffel bags. Everything else you wanna take for safekeeping... I brought the van. We box it up, stick it in the back, I'll hang onto it."

Until what? Until when? Until she comes back, or until Clint's ready to see all the literal baggage, sort through it, deal with it, decide what to keep for real and what to get rid of.

"We got some time. I'll help you do it. Make a list."

He's going to feel so damned stupid later. Because he knows a thing or two about trauma responses. People get stupid. People get hyperfocused on the wrong things. He's worked hard to not get too stupid when shit happens, but this is...this is something else.

A list. He can do a list. Separate the need from the don't need now but maybe later. His shoulders ease, sagging in on himself. Thankful now to have Frank here. Understanding, because of course, of all people, he would understand. Better than anyone. "Photos." Easy place to start. "Albums. There's a couple in frames that should come, but there's a couple albums. Laura's perfume." Feels more for him than for safekeeping. Can he be selfish? He can be selfish. A little bit. "Rubble, we gotta grab Rubble, that stupid stuffed toy, that's Nate's favorite Paw Patrol dog. He's gonna want--"

It catches in his throat, stings at his eyes, doubles over himself, feels like collapsing. His little boy's favorite stuffed animal. Is that what's going to do it? To topple him over? Pull it the fuck together. What the fuck is he doing, collecting things like they're gone for good, like he's never going to come back, they don't know that, they don't know anything, but all he knows is that they're gone right now and with no idea if they're dead or just vanished or...

If he keeps moving, he doesn't have to let it catch up to him.

Sure has never backfired on him in the past or anything. His therapist would be appalled. He pushes back from the counter, nearly stumbling as he scrubs his face again with both hands, then up into his hair, making it stick up every which way. "I'll make a list. I'll make you a list. I gotta finish packing. You can--jesus," and he half turns, not quite looking at Frank but not turned completely away anymore, "you're still here. What about the others? Karen?"

How selfish and self-absorbed, not to even stop and think to ask about Karen until now.

Photos, albums — yeah, yes, things he both wishes he'd taken, and that he's glad he hadn't. He'd get lost in them, he knows. They'd consume him, every waking moment. He wouldn't be able to stop looking at them, thinking about them, mourning. He couldn't. Laura's perfume... smart, that's smart, too. He can't remember what Maria smelled like anymore, it's just-- gone. Scent's supposed to be the strongest sense tied to memory, but the exact smell, the exact smell, that's gone, his mind can't recreate it.

When Clint nearly doubles over with that sweeping rush of feeling, it takes everything in him not to reach out again. He wants to; he wants to drag the guy into an embrace, wants to give him something he's not even remotely ready to accept yet, something that won't do anything, won't fix anything.

Maybe they've still got those, uh- Christmas totes upstairs, those ones with all the tangled strings of lights that are a bitch and a half to untangle and hang every year, but every year they do it anyway. He could dump 'em out, use that to store some things. The lights themselves'll be fine on the floor.

He gets about halfway across the kitchen before Clint stops him with a name.

He'd been doing the same goddamn thing Clint has, except he's been better at it because he can channel his whole mind to a task that hasn't ended, one constant thread of an objective in taking care of his friend, it's been easier to block out. And now it's gone.

He left her purse on the ground. Left the handgun spilled out onto the rug. Locked the door behind him, so maybe nobody'll break in — except Murdock, if he's still alive, Frank doesn't know. He didn't check. He went to Karen first, she was closer, and then he drove straight here. Can't pretend to give enough of a shit about Red to even think about checking on him.

But Karen-

A muscle in his jaw twitches, flexes. He brings a hand up to chew on a thumbnail, absent, distracted. It might be bleeding, or maybe he just always tastes blood.

And he says, "She wasn't home."

That gets his attention. It's a distraction. But damn it, he latches onto it.

She wasn't home. That sounds like bullshit Frank talk for gone. Her not being home doesn't mean a damn thing when he would've leveled all of New York to find her. If there was anything of her to find. So she's...gone. Which means Frank's in the same place all over again. Everything's gone. Everyone's gone. But they've got each other.

And Nat's on her way with the others in tow. That's not nothing.

"It was blink of an eye." He might be looking at Frank, actually and genuinely, but his voice sounds far and away. Is that a comfort to know, or does he need to shut his fucking mouth? "Literally, just, I turned my back for a second and-- I was teaching Lila archery. The boys were playing catch, and Laura was cooking, and I swear to god in the span of a blink, I was just turning my head and they all..."

Was it painless? Are they dead, or were they magicked away somewhere or reduced in size or simply not here right now? Are they waiting for rescue, millions and millions and billions of people?

He saw other people go. He hadn't been alone when it went down, he'd been working. Construction, as a matter of fact, not... his kind of work, not the murder kind. Just knocking down walls, just building new things like any normal jackass. And then the guy to his right disappeared, and the guy to his left, a slow scattering of dust and ashes, gone.

One by one, half the crew. Half the pedestrians. Half of everyone, and the chaos started, and-

He can see it in his mind's eye. Karen's blonde hair dissolving at the tips, her slender fingers reaching out for him, for help, her lips parted and then her face ashes, her handbag falling through them to hit the ground. He can imagine it.

And then he can imagine the kids, and Laura, wisps in the wind, one after another, people he loves, gone again, again, and it hits almost as hard because at a certain point they'd stopped being Clint's family and started being his too.

He's on duty. He's got a mission, a goal here, this isn't about him. As long as it's not about him, he can keep it together.

Don't go far from me isn't just about being there for Clint when those pieces need to be picked up. It's a little selfish, too. Something inevitable is headed for him eventually, but he's done this before, he can hold out longer.

"It's everywhere," He says instead of tripping and falling down that road, chin tipped toward his shoulder so he can just make out Clint in his peripheral. One hand grounds him against the kitchen threshold archway molding. "It's like the goddamn apocalypse out there. People are tearing each other apart in the streets."

Millions and millions and billions and trillions and quadrillions and he has to snap himself out of this shit. "It's everywhere," he echoes. But what he means is: "S'posed to be the whole damn universe."

But Frank doesn't need to care about half of the whole damn universe. He's not part of that bigger reality. Earth, down on the streets, New York, that's his reality. And a quaint home on the range in Iowa, too. Clint recognizes that he doesn't need to say it, but he's present enough to say it anyway. "Thanks. For being here."

He takes a breath, and then he moves. He's mostly packed anyway already. Knows how to pack for longer trips away. It's just the small details that keep tripping him up. It's the static in his head where all his feelings want to overwhelm him. It's the skipping record stuck on the god damn silverware.

The list goes a little something like: yes, okay, fine, the god damn silverware, because if someone does get stupid enough to raid the house, that shit's still worth a pretty penny, and it shuts up the record scratch; family photo albums and a couple but not all the framed pictures, takes them out of frames and tucks them into the covers of the albums; Laura's perfume gets wrapped up in leftover tissue paper from Christmases past; a stuffed bulldog in a bright yellow vest and hard hat that's definitely seen rough play and several washes and a couple bouts of emergency stitching that happens when a toy is that kind of beloved; Lila's favorite hoodie, which is hilariously Nat's least favorite hoodie, because it's Black Widow themed and worn to the point where the symbol's most of the way worn off; Cooper's wallet, not for any of the money in it, not for any of the cards to local shops, but for the driving permit tucked prominently on display.

There are other things that he vaguely recognizes would make sense to care about and bring, like laptops, but they would just sit uselessly since he's not going to break into his kids' personal computers like that. (And the silverware, what's that going to do but sit uselessly? Shut up.) If he wanted to list every single thing he wanted to bring with him, well, shit, that'd just be the whole damn house, wouldn't it? He'd dig out Laura's wedding dress, make sure Cooper's first and only Gundam build was wrapped up safely, store Lila's notebooks away from sunlight damage, bring more toys and probably half of Nate's closet. He'd take jewelry and books and movies and the fine damn china. He'd grab his tools. He'd take and take and take and then he'd be right back where he started. At home. In this house. Want to take every nail and floorboard because it's all precious.

At least hearing Frank shuffle around does something to settle some high pitched alarm in his head. The one saying it's too quiet it's too quiet check on the kids run around the yard again one more time to look just look one more time!

The weapons are the last packed. Bow and quiver of arrows get their own special case. Couple guns. Not all the guns, but there are more in the panic room he and Laura built several years ago and thankfully have never needed to use. Some knives. In case.

He takes on and hacks through the ankle monitor still wrapped around him, tosses it in the trash. Pretty sure everyone's gonna be too busy to come worrying after him. Should check on Scott, and his family. Should try to track down Yelena. He hasn't been able to get through to Laura's parents and doesn't know if that means they're also gone or if the phones are just dead or busy.

But his brother is here, and his sister is coming to bring him back to his superhero family. Whatever's left of them. Fuck.

The last thing he does is leave Laura's phone on the counter, plugged in to charge. Just in case. And then his work for the immediate moment is done, and he doesn't know what the fuck else to do.

"Shut up, where else would I be?" It's a mild, scoffed retort — lacking any real heat, or playfulness, or anything it would normally carry. It's a failed attempt at levity, and 'attempt' is a strong word.

The photo albums go in the Christmas lights tote; the perfume, the stuffed toy, the wallet, the silverware, they go into a tote. If he stops in the kids' rooms for a little too damn long during his pass around the house, if he braces a hand against the wall and nearly has a god damn panic attack himself, all that matters is that Clint isn't in the room at the time to see it. It's the same thing again, it's the same thing all over again, and good Christ he won't say it out loud but if Clint had gone too he'd just sit down and eat a bullet to catch up with the rest of them.

But he's still here. So they're packing. Hoodies and bows and arrows and guns, clothes and the basics for necessary hygiene. He sees toys spilled out over a rug and he imagines a piano against a wall that has never held a piano, and he sees four kids dancing because the fifth was just a little too young, and every other adult in the room wanted to choke Frank to death because he just kept playing Baby Shark on repeat until that earworm drove them all fucking insane, and he's never laughed so hard in his damn life.

And he sees Karen's gun. Her purse. Her dust. The floor.

The tote goes in the back of the van. The logistics on travel are placed on hold until Nat gets here sometime in the next couple of hours, but the sun's already setting and they're running out of things to do in the meantime.

Frank cleans up the picnic remains before the spoiled food can attract any more insects or animals. He leaves the bow and the ball where they fell.

And then he posts up on the front porch steps, staring out over an empty yard blue-cast by the sun sinking beyond the horizon line, and not a single bird flying overhead. Too few cicadas chirping. Everything's too quiet, everything's too still, and there's nothing for Clint to do now either, so he's waiting too. Frank's bracing himself for that to be a bad thing, because he's not optimistic enough to hope for the alternative, but maybe he'll hold out. Stillness is a haunting echo playing on a loop.

He sits. For once. He sits heavy on one of the porch chairs and melts. His eyes scan the skies for a jet. It's a long flight, and they couldn't just up and leave the Wakandans right after, but he hasn't gotten any calls or texts and isn't sure if it's possible right now. The others probably don't even have phones on them, given a bunch of them were supposed to go dark, have been on the run ever since getting busted out of the Raft. Plus, hard to make sure your phone doesn't break in the middle of a war zone. He gets it. Getting in touch with Nat had been a miracle, really. He wishes he had appreciated getting to hear her voice again.

It's hard to appreciate anything right now.

His legs ache, his chest hurts, his stomach is protesting a lack of care. He's shaking a little. That's not supposed to happen. Even in the worst conditions, his hands don't shake.

"Help yourself to whatever's in the kitchen." Is what he eventually says to Frank, distantly. Because. It'll go to waste otherwise, right? And Frank deserves a break. Is just as bad as Clint, doesn't take breaks, doesn't appreciate them like most people do either, but he deserves it.

And here already is where the truth of things lies: if it were just him, he wouldn't bother. Not tonight, maybe not tomorrow either. Not until something broke through the autopilot mechanics on his system and he forced himself through the motions, threw together something out of a can or a package, forced it down his throat. If it were just him, he'd keep sitting here on this porch step until the damn sun came back up again, maybe.

But it's not just him. It's Clint, too, who has it worse, and so Frank has a reason to slowly peel himself up from the stairs. He's got a reason to turn, and thud his way across the floorboards toward the kitchen.

Because, as he goes, he says, "If I cook, you're gonna eat."

And that's an order, Second Lieutenant. If you can't do for you, you do for your men, that's how it works. You have two families; one in the corp, one at home. Just so happens Frank's has some overlap.

He goes through the kitchen. Most things are still well and good, it hasn't been that long. He can put together something decent, something packed with the calories they're gonna need to manage. Something with protein, something with carbs, something with vegetables. He's Italian, this is how he shows love: by force-feeding pasta down someone's throat and complaining that the store-bought kind isn't as good as the kind his mother used to make.

That last part doesn't apply tonight, but the first does. Clint's getting a bowl of something shoved under his nose whether he's got the appetite for it or not.

Clint can recognize an order when it's given, even if their military days are behind them. Knows Frank's tone when he means something as an order. There's a quiet, reflexive "Yessir" out of him.

Even if the very thought of eating turns his stomach. He can survive on very little. Granola bar, or protein shake, or shit-ass rations meant to survive for years in the worst conditions.

It doesn't take too long for Clint to follow Frank into the kitchen. Because if he sits too long he might never get back up. The sounds of whipping up some grub isn't enough. He's old school enough to have a radio on the sill, something that would play whatever while cooking or while washing dishes. Something with a nice beat coming on, pulling Laura into a little spin of a dance in spite of soapy hands or a dripping stirring spoon. It's not right without more sound. Because it's too fucking quiet that out here, where neighbors are a drive away instead of a walk, and it feels like the world's gone dead.

He has to scroll through station after station, between panic-voiced news updates, static, dead air, the emergency broadcast system, shit that makes his heart start hammering out a salsa beat all its own. Until he finds a station that's still playing music. Old classic country. Someone probably set their board up to just play through anything and everything they've got, because there's no announcements, no commercials, no DJ voice between songs.

Stays on his feet until Frank's shoving something at him, and he takes it and stares at it. He's waiting for the break. He's waiting for the breaking point when everything collapses and he can't hold back. But he keeps on holding. Maybe because he has this idea that this can be fixed. And then he doesn't get to do any breaking. He doesn't get to go as bad as Frank got to be. He's not the only one that's ever lost everything. Wanda would kick his entire ass about it. If he wallowed.

Maria used to love to dance. That's part of why she liked that he played, he thinks — because she couldn't help herself. Doesn't matter what was on, or where, doesn't matter if it was the damn Girl From Ipanema playing on an elevator, she'd start swaying and moving. He used to watch her, transfixed, until she caught him staring. She'd sing along, too, though only if they were alone. Her and Laura, they got along on that. Fed off each other's energies, he thinks, until they let themselves get carried away in a way Frank never could quite inspire her into the same way. The girls had their own thing, their own dynamic — probably spent a good bit of time railing about their husbands, who probably deserved it at the time, or at least he did.

It was hard to live with Maria gone. It feels downright wrong now for it to be both of them. It's on the tip of his tongue to ask Clint over the soulful strumming of Hello Darlin', right there on his lips to ask, how could it be both of them and not us? They were the ones in the damn field, they were the ones throwing their bodies in front of bullets, how is it that things could possibly play out like this? Where'd they go wrong?

But that's not the kind of shit to put on the man, at least not sober and on the first night, and so he says nothing. Instead, posts himself up over a bowl of his own with his elbows planted on either side, fingers threaded together, head bent as though in prayer, spending more time staring at the contents than actually eating them. Circling it around, over and over in his head — how do you protect people from something like this? How do you do it, when you don't have that super soldier serum or radiation poisoning and you're not a god, and you weren't trained by the goddamn KGB or whatever. How do you do it?

Karen's purse; Karen's gun; how was he supposed to protect her from that?

Look up, darlin', let me kiss you
Just for old time's sake
Let me hold you in my arms one more time-

He gets up and shuts off the radio, and the only reason he doesn't do it by flinging it off the counter in one sharp sweep is because it isn't his and this isn't his house and he's keeping his shit together for someone else.

Edited 2025-02-27 17:59 (UTC)

Frank moving and shutting off the music makes Clint flinch, but it brings him out of the reverie of staring into food and looking for all the world like a pathetic statue. Huffs out a small breath. "If you hate Conway Twitty that much--" He has a second half to that sentence, something snarky, something jokey, but he can't bring himself to finish it. It's like it slips away. Like water through his fingers. Some traitorous part of his brain starts humming along about all we are is dust in the wind and he has to shut that down before he starts laughing with genuine hysterics.

He sets the bowl down on on the table harder than he should. Doesn't break, but it's a sharp sound that's damn near to dropping it. He was given an order, and he knows he should eat, but what's the point? It feels so far away.

"I don't understand." And he hates how lost his voice is. "I don't--" His hand slams down a few times on the table, and the sting of it is actually kind of nice. Makes him feel something. "--fucking understand what's happening, Frank."

The bowl hits the table, and Frank's pretty sure he sees it — the first cracks. The first hints of it, like foreshadowing. It took hours, and that's impressive — Frank woke up from a coma fucking pissed off immediately. Grabbed the scrubs of the nurse hovering over him and demanded to be taken home to see his family, only he found an empty house, and he started splintering in--

Well, truth be told, he doesn't know exactly how long it took. His memories are blurry, both from the grief and the still-healing bullet to the brain, but it couldn't have been a full day before he broke down.

He's still standing by the radio through it, and he turns, hips pressing back into the counter lip, fingers curling around the edges, elbows jutting out behind him. Bent, just a little, like he's bearing weight that isn't there.

"I know," he says softly, in agreement. "I know, man. I know you don't."

Nobody understands what's happening. Not a single human left on this fucking planet does, he thinks. Even if they know, they don't understand.

Starting to wish he'd swept that radio off the counter so hard it crashed into the wall, bet it'd feel real satisfying about now. He wonders, absently, if that's gonna be roughly the fate of Clint's bowl, the way he keeps slamming his hand down. Nobody can hold themselves this rigidly for long; the shoe's gnona drop. Frank doesn't so much as flinch through the sound; passive, externally calm in a way he doesn't feel, in a way that's one more wrong thing happening away from snapping entirely.

He'd like to drive his fists into something, and he'd like to bleed, and maybe ten he'd feel some sense of control over something since it happened. Hell, at this point he wouldn't even mind if Clint threw a punch, it'd probably do 'em both good. Whatever happens, it's gotta be something. Something needs to happen. The tension's been winding tighter and tighter every hour since before he got here, even if they pretend like it hasn't been.

He can't even be mad at Frank. Frank's not pitying him; he's not that kind of guy. He understands. "How can they just be gone?" He whirls on his brother and looks like he's got half a mind to throw the bowl at his head. "How in the hell did you keep going?"

By being too fucking pissed off to let anyone involved get away with it. By showing up on Clint's doorstep and getting his face punched in before getting pulled into a bear hug. By making plans. By working.

"I don't even get a fucking bullet in my skull for it, not unless I put it there myself! There aren't even any bodies to b--god," and he regrets the words as they come pouring out, because it makes him feel sick. Frank's whole family got buried. There's something there that says they were there. There's no bodies. They're just gone. If there's a funeral, it'd be with empty graves, and that's not fucking right. His fists beat at his own chest. "If any stupid fuck deserves it, it's me! I'm supposed to protect them, man. I'm supposed to make this world a safer place. Instead I've been here retired and on house arrest when maybe I could've been out there doing something about all this!"

How can they just be gone? And brother, if that doesn't echo every thought he's woken up with since it happened, every goddamn day for years. How can they just be gone? How can something so integral to him, his life, his heart, his beating fucking heart, his reason for breathing his time on earth — how can it just be gone, and how in the hell can he keep on standing here like he isn't gone, too? Wishes he had the answer, but he couldn't tell you how he survived this any more than he could tell you how he survived the bullet to his head.

And yeah, here it is. Here it comes. They're different, him and Clint, but in so many ways they're the same — these thoughts, these things coming outta his mouth, Frank could be sitting in the same chair, could be under his skin saying the same goddamn things. He remembers saying the same goddamn things, raging about it to nobody and then raging about it again to Clint and then raging about it to Curt and then raging about it to Karen, and on, and on, and on, it never stops, he never really stopped raging. It's just further between now, and a little quieter when he breaks all over again.

He paces across the kitchen, drags a chair up toward Clint's side of the table, posted up by the corner, close enough to touch. Close enough that his elbow nudges Clint's when he plants them on the table's surface.

"Listen to me, look- listen to me. This is gonna make it feel worse right now, but it's the truth, and you need to hear it: there's nothing you could've done. This is not your fault. You couldn't protect them from this," and that's not comforting. He knows that's not comforting, not right now, maybe it will be in a year or two, but it's fact. The cold, hard truth of it is gonna rip away any sense of control Clint might be deluding himself into thinking he had here, but it's also gonna kneecap some of the guilt before it can eat away at his soul the way it did Frank's — at least a little, maybe, if he's lucky. "You were exactly where you were supposed to be. Only thing that would've changed is you wouldn't have been here with 'em when it happened. You'd wonder, you'd spend every minute of every damn day wondering, what were they doing when it happened? Were they in the kitchen, were they in the yard, were they cooking dinner or fighting or sleeping, you wouldn't know. You wouldn't know."

And wouldn't that be worse? Somehow, impossibly, wouldn't that be worse? It would be for him.

Why did Karen have her gun out?

At least Clint doesn't pull himself away this time like Frank's made of fire. It makes every inch of his body stiffen up like he's ready to fight, but there's nothing to fight. It's just Frank. And he could hit Frank, sure. But in this case, at long last, he doesn't deserve it.

He shakes his head through the whole little speech, but he's listening. He swears he's listening. And the place where his logic's all hogtied, that bit of brain agrees. What the hell could he have done? He doesn't know. He wasn't there. And he's got no powers, nothing but insane aim and some funky arrows, and he probably would've gotten hit once and been taken out of the fight, and then he wouldn't be here.

These past two years have been some of the best of his life. Getting to be with them, every single day. And now that's gone. But he knows where they were, what they were doing. They were all happy.

"Doesn't mean a damn thing." Doesn't it?

Yeah, you shake that head, shake it all you want, man, you know he's right. You know he's right, and for the first time since all this began, a little bit of his own heat begins to creep through that empathy and that patience he's had so firmly at the forefront.

"Yeah it does, yeah it does," He says, a quick double-dip, an echo to really grind it in there because- "Frankie and Lisa, you know they didn't die fast. Did I ever tell you? They had time. Minutes. Minutes."

Angry and confrontational as he's starting to sound, the fact that his eyes are starting to go red at the edges proves it isn't really anger he's feeling, he's just from New York, that's just his default, because it's easier. It hurts like a god damn knife that he's twisting in himself, and sometimes the only thing you can do when something feels that bad is to keep on twisting it.

"I wonder- I wonder all the time what they were thinking, what was going through their heads. If they were trying to get to me, or if they were asking why, but I was out, I was out like a fuckin' light. So yeah, it means somethin'. You got to see 'em happy, and you got to see 'em go fast, and that's one less thing you have to live with. That's what it all comes down to from now on, is finding ways to live with it."

It's a comfort to Frank at the very least, to know that Clint knows how they went. So he doesn't have to wonder about them, too.

"I'll live with it the way you did." Clint snaps it harsher than maybe he should. Pushing past that horror of the kids lingering, bleeding out. The reminder that for as much as this hurts, Frank arguably had it worse. "You didn't want me going anywhere, but fuck that. I get picked up, get settled in with my people, then I'm gonna get to work. That's what you did. You worked."

And it was bloody, awful, horrible work. But it was work, and it kept Frank going. If he doesn't have work, then what in god's name does he actually have? Himself and his horrible growing emptiness. He can at least pretend to fill it. Put a rug over it. He might step on it one day and go plummeting, but he can cover it up for now.

"I'm gonna work, and I'm gonna help fix this, and you can bring Karen over, cuz Laura would love to meet her, okay? And this'll all be a stupid nightmare to haunt us for a couple years."

"I didn't say I didn't want you goin' anywhere. I do. You can't stay in this house, you'll lose your goddamn mind- I said the compound-" he snaps back while Clint's still going, so the two of them are talking over one another. He leans back, tipping the kitchen chair absently, rocking it up onto two legs as his heels plant themselves onto the tile. Braced for something, an argument, an escalation. Louder and louder, grappling voices, "I'm saying the type- the type of work they want you to do-"

And then he says Karen's name, and Frank's hand is the one that slams down onto the table, cutting himself off abruptly with a sound that reverberates around the kitchen and through his own mind and up his wrist.

"God damn it! Don't-"

Don't bring her up, don't bring her into this, don't bring up the fact that he never let them go there no matter how much she argued with him about it, because- because, because, because. The words flow out swiftly, with momentum, with rising tempo and octave, "It's a joke. It's a fucking joke, the whole thing's a god damn joke. I stay out of her way, I stay clear, I give her a wide god damn berth, I never brought her around, I never- so the shit that follows me didn't wind up gettig her killed, and what happens after years, years is some random bullshit act of god that I couldn't even-"

He stands up abruptly to pace away from the table. The chair tips the rest of the way backward, banging off the tile. When he paces back, there's a little more level control in his tone;

"You wanna work, great. Work. But don't expect that the kinda work they're gonna have you doing is gonna satisfy you for more than a week."

Because there's nobody to fight, you can't fight an army that doesn't exist. And the stuff they'll have him do, Frank bets dollars that it won't contribute to that fixing things concept he's so adamant about. It's gonna be crowd control, it's gonna be relief aid, it's gonna be anything and everything to care for the people just as lost and sad and fucked up as Clint is.

But hell, maybe he's wrong. He doesn't know that team well enough, he's just a guy. Maybe they do have some magical recipe for un-fucking the universe, maybe there's a twelve-step plan and they've got the whole thing completely under control, and all they need to pull it off is a retired father of three and some kickass arrows.

If that's the case, though, if they knew that much, if they were capable of it, he doubts it ever would have gotten this far in the first place.

More than anything, though, what he knows is this: the people Frank loses, he doesn't get back. Maybe Clint'll have a different script with a different set of rules. Here's hoping, but he's not holding his breath.

They're arguing and they're reaching a boiling point and then--Frank's hand slams down and feels like it gives a definitive ending to things for a hot second. Apparently bringing up Karen and Frank's god damn obvious affections for her was like poking a bear with a stick.

And Clint can't say that that feels bad, actually.

The logic trapped under the floorboards gets what Frank's saying about the kind of work it'll be. Any disaster relief work. He knows what it's like. But he doesn't know anything and doesn't know if anyone else knows anything and maybe there's a plan or maybe there's going to be a plan. Somewhere between Stark's genius and Rogers's bullheaded determination, there will be a plan.

He stares at the chair toppled over on the floor and feels a bubbling anger. Keep poking the bear. He stands, his own chair screeching back but not falling. "What do you want me to do? I don't have anyone to start blasting right now, damn it. You don't want me to go with them, you don't want me to stay, you want me to work but not that work, what, what the fuck do you want me to do? You've been through it, and how'd that work out for you?"

All things considered, it could've worked out a hell of a lot worse. But the killings, the gang wars, the prison stint, the prison escape, it could've worked out better. "You kept her at arms length like the idiot you always are, and now she's gone, too. Does it feel better, huh? Does it feel not as bad for the fact that you gave her a wide berth?" He breathes out hard. "Pick up the chair."

-how'd that work out for you?

Clint doesn't even get to finish the whole question before Frank answers sharply, "It didn't!"

Nothing worked, because nothing will ever work, there's no fixing it or erasing it, he's not better, he's just better at pushing it down, and pushing, and pushing, and pushing, but with the right kind of pressure, the right exertion of force, all that compact density will spiral out and explode like the big bang all over again because nothing worked, you poor dumb son of a bitch.

But any of that, any of it, that he might want to throw out is lost beneath that assault on the obvious truth that is Frank's tragedy of a relationship with Karen. Relationship, lack thereof. Friendship with benefits if the benefits mean pain and stringing each other a long and never getting to move on because the love is real, but also never letting it happen because the love is real.

Pick up the chair.

Oh, he recognizes this moment for what it is. It's one of those. They've had more than a handful of them — truth be told, he's half-convinced that one of these moments is what cemented them in the first place. Way, way back at the start, when war was new and trenches were new and IEDs were new. When the stress mounted and one of them shoved the other, he can't even remember which, just that by the end they were both bleeding into the dirt and slowly picking each other back up again. Somebody had a broken nose — probably himself.

Sometimes he backs down from these moments, when they're not right. They both know he knows how to navigate them when he wants to. Compromise. Pick up the chair, and the moment goes away.

"I'll pick it up as soon as you wake the fuck up from your head-in-the-ass fantasy land about how all this is gonna end! Wake up!"

He does not pick up the chair.

Try me, asshole.

There might be part of him that recognizes the moment, part of him that sees the escalation as deliberate on both their ends. It's to get something to break, something to snap, and he won't hit Frank without a reason to. The reasons don't have to be good ones, but there needs to be a reason.

What Clint wants to do is break something that isn't Frank's face, the fucking chair or a cabinet or kick out some rails of the porch, but he knows he'll regret it in an instant if he does. What Clint wants to do is break someone that isn't Frank, and Frank's not going to stand for that shit.

So Frank makes there be a reason, they both make there be a reason, and Clint takes that moment in a stranglehold. He needs to wake up from the dream that it'll work out fine, that he won't be Frank, but it's the one thing he's got that's keeping him going right now. Therefore:

He launches himself at Frank.

It's not as neat and tidy as a punch. That's too simple. Uses too few muscles. He puts his whole body into tackling his wartime brother with a yell that would sound more in place in a zoo or a circus, some vicious lion roar. Something inhuman, deep and guttural. He doesn't feel exactly human anymore anyway, so it fits.

That is, perhaps, how it's clear to the both of them that these moments aren't real. They both know how to fight. They both have years of it, years of it beneath them, with technical skill and competency, and none of that technical skill involves wantonly tackling your opponent to the ground, particularly when you know exactly how strong their ground game is. Frank's got a couple inches of height and a few pounds of muscle on him, the strategic play would involve some range.

It's not about that. It's not about any of that. It's about the visceral outlet of an outward explosion of energy, it's about the satisfaction of hitting something and the pain of being hit, and it's just- something else.

So he lets Clint cross that distance without even trying to shut him out, and he lets things connect, and he spins it into a grapple that leaves the two of them, digging fingers and fists into one another in a wild attempt to drag the other down to the ground, accompanied by one or two staggering blows because it's not not about that, either. There's just enough presence of mind, just enough of himself reserved beneath the feral growling he's doing himself, to know to steer this outside. Enough to shove him toward the door with every staggered footstep, until they go bursting out of it and spilling onto the front porch. There, things open up. The environment ceases to be a hindrance; there is no precious furniture to break, no glass, no dining room chairs the kids sat in.

Just hardwood, and steps, and the pain of sprawling down them, and eventually there's just grass and dirt and an elbow to the face and a sweep to the legs and someone grabs someone else in a chokehold only to get flung viciously over a shoulder.

It's chaos. Undignified, bloody, dirty chaos in exactly all the right ways.

Frank feels too careful at first. In a knock down drag out one on one, Frank's got him beat. Clint's no slouch, got speed and flexibility and a lower center of gravity on his side, got cleverness in spades. But this, this is something different than just them fighting for real. This is raw. This is a need to scratch and claw and bite and punch at anything that even remotely looks like a target. This is do something about it before the stillness becomes so much he has to break literally anything, himself included. Frank could take him out, stupid as he's being. Doesn't. Because Frank gets it.

The animal frenzy part of him doesn't even fully realize what Frank's doing, even when they take a tumble down the stairs and into the dirt. There's a familiarity, though, in this song and dance. If they wanted to maim, they could. As it is, bruises and split lips and busted noses are practically saying hi. Even the animal in Clint knows he's not gunning to rip open Frank's throat or go for the eyes. He just. needs. to put. the man. down. Or get put down himself.

There's blood in his teeth and red in his vision, grass tickling his ears and a fist in Frank's shirt. His chest is burning. Is that from the rage? It has to be. Because the alternative is the dam opening, the levee breaking. In all the sound of nothingness, suddenly somethingness. A low drone at first that quickly becomes a high whirl, the dust kicking up around and past them, lights of the quinjet as it touches down not far from the house. And he knows what that means, but he throws another punch anyway.

The engines haven't powered down yet when there's boots on the ground, and Rhodey's got one of his War Machine guns trained on the pair, and Steve looks ready to scruff them both and would be able to, and Natasha barrels out looking genuinely mad as all hell and ready to brawl.

"...Frank?"

Is the only reason there isn't an otherwise immediate jump into action. Heads whip to Natasha, who still looks mad as hell, but in a way where it's her looking disappointed in the fact that boys will be boys.

"You made good time. Get off."

Rhodey tips his head, eyebrows cocked. "So are we shooting him or are we not shooting him?"

"I think we'll let Barton decide that." And that sounds so oddly distant from Steve. Even Clint can recognize that. It's not sigh what are we gonna do with you tired, it's bone tired, it's don't want to be conscious tired, it's want to wake up from this tired, and god if Clint can't relate.

He's still got a fist in Frank's shirt. But the fight's leaving him. His other fist stays on the ground this time, and his teeth are clenched so hard they might break, and his chest is heaving from the explosion of action. But the red's going from his sight. Draining away.

He can't say he's a fan of most of Clint's coworkers. He likes Natasha, even if they have a perpetual game of one-upsmanship and occasionally annoy the everloving shit out of each other with slightly oppposing viewpoints on some key issues — the issues that matter, they're on the same page about. Namely, the Bartons. All of them. Clint, Laura, the kids, they see eye to eye on them, so they've got one permanent fixture keeping them tethered.

The rest? Iffy. He doesn't know Rhodey except for what he's seen on the news. Has a slight, begrudging respect for Steve soldier to soldier, even if he's a little resentful about the hypocrisy that separates the two of them. They star-spangle Frank up and he'd bet money he'd go from Punisher to Captain too. Unless they're pretending like those skulls Rogers bounces off of steel with all that super strength don't shatter like tissue paper half the time, like he's not out here killing bad guys just like Frank is, but with a flying disc instead of a gun.

He thinks they're not careful enough. That they take too much for granted with Clint. That they could be doing more to watch out for him. The whole mind control thing started them off on a bad foot, and they never really recovered in his eyes.

So yeah, no, he's got no burning urge to justify himself or redeem the skeptical reputation he seems to instantly have when they come bounding down their jet. All he does is spit blood into the grass beside them, and slowly haul himself to his feet, pointedly ignoring the guns trained on him — if you're gonna shoot me, pull the trigger already and shut the hell up — in favor of holding a hand out to Clint. An offer, obviously, to help haul him to his feet.

Because that's how it works. That's what you do after this.

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