Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He comes awake slowly, to the creeping, crackling blue of ice. He is cold down to his bones and does not know where he is – he has been asleep too long.

Barton is in trouble again.

Unfurling his consciousness he retakes possession of his host, refamiliarizes himself with the body that they share. It is in poor condition, in dire need, hungry and dehydrated and exhausted, but he is not in the least surprised. It has been years, a decade even since Barton has needed his protection, but he had always known the day would come when he would need it again, even if Barton didn’t. The man is the walking, talking definition of denial, but as long as he had been strong enough to fight Ronin off, stable enough to logic him down, he had been willing to slumber, to wait quietly at the back of the man’s mind until the day he wasn’t anymore.

Now that day has clearly come.

Looking out from eyes as sharp as the Hawk’s namesake, he takes stock of the chaos around him, the disaster. For a time he marches along like the good little soldier Barton pretends to be, recognizes Barton’s hand in the planning of the mess. He can feel the snaking influence of another in their blood, the whining little alien god swanning around like he already owns the place, and quickly realizes what’s happened.

Barton’s let himself be taken hostage.

It’s a strong statement – Barton would likely argue it – but truth is truth and here he is with frigid blue control running through his veins, and no one has come for him.

Not the red-headed Russian bitch and not the Preacher.

Sneering, furious, Ronin wrenches control away from Loki Laufeyson and takes it back into his own hands, a hot rush of power and relief. Barton is weak – this isn’t the first time he’s been in this type of trouble – but Ronin was born from trouble, from trauma and injury and betrayal. He is the gate-keeper, the last line of defense, and while he had watched in silence as Barton started to trust again, to foolishly rely on the care and assistance of others, he himself has not.

He knows better, has guarded himself against it, and in doing so is now prepared to fight back, to protect them both.

He is the lone wolf; lean and starved and cunning, all muscle and bared teeth, wariness and aggression.

This is what he was made for.

He ‘misses.’

Misses Hill, misses the headshot on Fury, and then misses the opening that the Black Widow leaves him, the opening on her left side that she still hasn’t learned to cover. He lets her clobber him over the head, all force and no elegance, then feigns a deeper unconsciousness than he actually feels. He hovers near the surface, shoves Barton down as he beats and clamors at the bars between them, that strange break in their personalities that happened so long ago.

When he blinks himself back to full awareness he’s tied to a bed, Natasha Romanov keeping him down. The straps force his hand – he likely could have freed himself eventually, but the world is under attack and he doesn’t have the time... or the patience. In order to convince her to let him go he makes a snap decision, to play the puppy Barton becomes in her shadow and go along with the group of misfits brought together for the greater good and hide his true self, at least for now.

It’s for the best really - very few people have ever met Ronin and lived to tell about him.

Turns out one of those few people is dead.

“Phil Coulson was killed in the Battle of New York,” Fury says, tossing blood-stained cards onto the table.

Ronin makes a scoffing sound deep in his throat as he stuffs another bite of lamb and pita into his mouth, and the Widow’s hand lights on his knee, a warning squeeze.

He damn near snaps her wrist.

Barton may have been in love with the Preacher, but Ronin was not. Death is no excuse for having abandoned Barton when he needed him most – the two of them had come to an agreement on such things long ago.

If Laufeyson hadn’t killed him, Ronin would have likely done it himself.

He wants nothing more than to leave, off to his old work and his old haunts where he can build himself back up to what he’d been, hone the edges that Barton has let go dull, but he doesn’t trust the Russian or the Black-Leather Bastard and knows that if he does they’ll both be suspicious. Nothing he can do then except play along for a bit, until his feet are truly under him and he’s ready to disappear without a trace.

He stays silent.

Eats as much as he can hold without feeling sick and then follows the Russian back to HQ.

There he decides that Barton must have been doing something right, because agents flinch from him the way they haven’t in years. He delights in the quivering fear and suspicion that dogs his every step, even as he feels the sickened horror that leaves Barton shaking in the recesses of his mind.

Ronin has always preferred fear to respect.

Fear lasts longer.

He’s quickly taken into custody when all is said and done, and he spends the next week there quietly, more because he has no desire to be a part of the clean-up crew than because his cell is actually keeping him confined. He’s not a janitor, and he feels no responsibility toward the city they’d destroyed or the people in it. Life is far harder than they know, even now as they pick through the rubble of it all, and he feels no pity for them. If he were loose he’d be expected to help with the effort, and he’d rather stick needles into his eyes than do any such thing.

No, he chooses the lesser of two evils, at least for now. He could leave, sure – by his count there are at least four different ways he could slip out of his confinement – but he doesn’t particularly want SHIELD or anyone else on his tail when he goes.

No, Ronin has been surrounded be people for far too long, and if he only plays his cards right now, he can be back to his old haunts and his old games far more conveniently later.

Anyway, it’s easy enough to evade the probing questions of the head shrinks they send at him every few hours. Barton may be a sad sack, but he’s not as stupid as he plays at either – one of the compromises they’d come to over the years. It was Ronin’s insistence that had kept Barton from spilling all their secrets, all their talents, and there were very few people alive on this planet who knew they shared a host.

‘One fewer lately,’ Ronin grins wickedly.

He feels Barton’s anger, his crushing despair at the thought, but while the archer allows Ronin more input over their lives when he’s in the driver’s seat, Ronin does not return the favor. Part punishment, part survival, he feels neither guilt nor pity. Barton has proven himself once again incapable, rendering his thoughts, his opinions, his feelings to be of little use or value.

‘I love him,’ Barton rages from the recesses of his mind, clawing for release.

Ronin laughs.

‘Loved,’ he replies coldly, and Barton goes silent, collapsing into himself.

Ronin does not mourn.

The Preacher had been a disappointment at best, a liability at his worst. They had had an agreement, and he had failed to live up to his side of it. Pretentious, worse – self-righteous – Ronin had never liked him, but then again, he doesn’t like anyone. Human beings are fickle, weak, irresponsible and stupid, and he has no interest in any of them apart from what use they could potentially serve. Where Barton is still naive and hopeful after all this time, Ronin had learned from their shared experience, had been born from it, and was made of stronger steel.

By the fifth day of his confinement he’s grown bored, and Barton has given up swiping at him for control. He’s always submitted quickly, already vulnerable from whatever new tragedy had called Ronin forward in the first place. He takes advantage of the silence, works his body back and forth across the cell, eats and drinks and sleeps at length as he tests the strength of his muscle and regains more stable balance. Push-ups, sit-ups, short, dashing sprints so pleasantly named suicides, and by the end he has to work to keep the sly, self-satisfied grin off his face as he lounges under the cameras keeping silent watch.

The counselors and therapists exactingly meet his expectations, low as they are. They speak to Barton like they know him, when they haven’t even been given a glimpse of who they actually are. Ronin plays along, simpering at them about his guilt, walking the razor’s edge of overwhelmed by grief and determined for change. Barton helps begrudgingly, or at least thinks he does – Ronin hardly needs his help to clear their name. He passes his evaluations with flying colors and grins darkly into his palms when they declare him No Longer Possessed.

Barton chokes a miserable, tearful laugh – he’s always hated Ronin, hated the Other that lives inside his head, inside his heart.

Ronin does not care.

Barton has always been foolish, this is no revelation. If he weren’t, Ronin himself would not be needed. If the archer were enough - competent enough, hardened enough - to not need Ronin to protect him, he would not exist, but he does, and that is all the validation he requires.

Barton argues, or tries to, and it’s an old argument they’ve had many times, late in the night in the dark and the quiet.

No amount of convincing has ever gotten through to him.

Barton cannot be trusted with himself, that is the very crux of the whole thing, and so neither his advice nor his criticism can be trusted either.

Ronin must admit it amuses him though. When Barton is in charge, when Ronin allows him to be in charge, he still listens, still takes his advice. Ronin is the shiver down his spine, the hair on his arms lifting into gooseflesh, the pit in the bottom of his stomach, and Barton has always been good at taking hints. He trusts Ronin, whether he will admit it or not, yet take away the reins and step into the driver’s seat and suddenly Barton is cursing him breathless, wishing he were gone and never existed.

Ronin does not care.

A full week gone and the She Wolf comes to collect him – Romanov. Ronin sneers but hides his disgust, while Barton tries to sag into her presence, desperate for comfort.

He himself doesn’t trust the bitch, any more than he had trusted the Preacher, and he edges surreptitiously away.

She notices, of course she notices, but she doesn’t question, doesn’t press, and that more than anything tells Ronin who she is.

He is disappointed.

Once he’d thought she’d been like them, you see. Thought she too must have an Other – or that she is the Other - one cold enough and sharp enough to do what needed doing. In the end though he’d been wrong - she'd let Barton live, let herself be brought in from the Russian cold, let herself be tamed - and in that moment he’d lost his respect for her if he’d had any to begin with.

But, he is accustomed to playing his part, to allowing Barton to play their part, and so he follows her back, back to a tower of glittering glass that is so obviously compensatory that it makes him sick to his stomach. They ride the elevator side by side, and since they’re headed to the top he has at least three full minutes of silence to think about all the ways that he could kill her, and half of the ways he could hurt her. Barton snarls hoarse threats but Ronin ignores him, flooded with a pleasant warmth at the prospect.

“The rest of them are all here,” she says as the elevator car slows to a smooth stop. “Don’t run.”

Ronin rolls his eyes but doesn’t argue, because Barton has a habit of doing just that.

Instead, he steps out into the open apartment with his shoulders back and head high, finally letting himself fully unfurl here in front of all these men who do not know him, and the one woman who thinks she does. He can feel her eyes on him, feel the way that Barton’s interest suddenly picks up and then is just as quickly quashed. He is a fool, his hope spiking that Ronin will give them both away, and his disdain curls his lip.

“Ummm...” the one on his right drawls, the one with the five-hundred dollar haircut and the fifty-dollar t-shirt. “We uh... we good here Spy Games?”

Ronin steps past Tony Stark, past the others without hesitation, and settles himself into a corner, his back to the wide glass windows as he perches on the arm of a chair, his boots firmly on the floor.

“Shut up Stark,” Romanov says flatly, as though she doesn’t care, but Ronin can hear exhaustion in her voice, something he’d only heard once before, after Budapest.

He watches in silence as she moves to a couch, sits herself down in the corner and tucks her feet up beneath her.

It’s obvious, intentional, and the look she shoots him says that he is the message’s intended recipient, but he doesn’t take the invitation, doesn’t relax at her silent request. Her mouth twitches at the corner, a tell that anyone but Hawkeye wouldn’t have seen.

The giant, the Norse God standing near the wall on the opposite side of the room, folds his arms over his massive chest.

“There is no more of my brother here,” he says in a formal, stately fashion. “Loki has gone from the Hawk.”

Ronin doesn’t respond, could have rolled his eyes.

‘No thanks to you,’ he muses to himself, ‘No thanks to Barton. And easy enough to chase out anyway.’

“Well that’s... good to know,” Stark says, but he’s still eyeing Ronin warily and sidles away, around the edge of the room until he can sit down on the couch opposite, between the super-soldier and the monster.

Ronin eyes him with interest, wonders where the berserker has gone and if the man can feel him, the way Barton is always aware of his presence, always threatened by him. The thought delights him and he feels a grin trying to break across his face, but he holds it back.

He could go now.

Leave.

He wants to, but he also wants to leave unencumbered, or as much as he possibly can, and that means leaving with as little suspicion laid on him as possible.

He is patient.

He will wait.

He’s silent as he listens to the group, his eyes darting left and right, jumping from face to face as he learns them. He remembers the She-Wolf but she has changed in the years since he’d last taken over control of his host, her edges dulled. It is subtle of course, quite probably imperceptible to anyone but him, and this is pleasing. She had had her weaknesses before – the changes in her will only leave her open to more.

The others are no threat. The Norseman, Thor, is foreign to this world, and knows as much of it as he knows of Barton. So too the SuperSoldier, and while his genetically enhanced strength could potentially be a problem for Ronin, he was as lost as he looked. Neither know enough of him to see Ronin lurking behind Barton’s face, nor would they care enough to notice if they did. The berserker, Banner, hadn’t known Barton, Stark had perhaps known of him, but his genius was dampened by his cockiness.

There is little to concern him here.

He sits, listens, does not come down from his perch when pizza is delivered and everyone comes forward from their seats to grab at the hot, greasy slices. He notes the twang in his stomach, aware of his body, attuned to it again after so long, but he was nearly recovered after his week in confinement and is no longer balancing on the edge of malnutrition. He need not participate in this, and does not want to.

The Russian refuses him his peace, the bitch.

Pulling several slices from each of the boxes, she piles them onto a plate and pushes it into his hands, along with a bottle of water. He eyes her kidneys as she turns her back on him, sits down on the couch beside his feet, exposed, vulnerable.

There is a knife in his boot.

His fingers itch.

He takes two slices from the plate, stacks them, folds them in half and stuffs them into his mouth, even as he drops the plate onto the side table. He would drop it onto the couch cushions, white and expensive and meticulously clean, but it isn’t worth the trouble. He chews mechanically, the taste no more than cardboard on his tongue, fuel for his body and nothing more. He finishes the slices in his hand the same way, large bites torn off and swallowed harshly, and ignores the rest, following them with the water bottle the same way, downing it in one go.

“There’s space for all of you here,” Stark says, catching Ronin’s interest enough that he starts to listen again. “You’ve each got a floor...”

He makes some movement with his hand and projections appear in the air, bright, electric blue that makes Barton flinch and withdraw, makes Ronin scoff to himself in response.

“They’re customized, mostly,” Stark continues, “And if you need anything you can tell Jarvis.”

He waves a hand at the ceiling and a cultured, English voice responds.

“Indeed I am at your service,” it responded. “You may activate the privacy screens manually via your StarkTabs, or by verbal request.”

“The Tabs are linked to the apartments,” Stark goes on, as if there is nothing strange about his robot butler spying on them from the vents. That’s Barton’s MO, and Ronin feels him fume silently in response. “They’re on the counters I think, you should see them when you walk in.

The talk goes on, droning and dull, and Ronin picks up his quiet observation, very deliberately staying still when Romanov presses her side against his shin when he wants nothing more than to drop-kick her way from him, his boot to her temple. He’s been so long confined in the back of Barton’s psyche that he chafes now at being held here, in the daylight amongst these others, so impossibly unlike himself, pretending. He wants for darkness, for shadow, for the adrenaline rush of danger and the sickly pleasurable satisfaction that a gush of life’s blood brings...

He’ll leave tonight.

When the sun sets, when these others, who now speak of friendship, of a team, of avenging have gone away to their own spaces, he will leave.

They have nothing to offer him, nothing to...

“Barton, before you go, come down to the labs,” Stark says, and now the others are moving, the group breaking apart. “I want to show you what I’m working on.”

Well.

Perhaps they do.

Chapter Text

So he stays.

A night, two, then a week.

It prickles at him, rubs against his skin like sand in his shoes, but Ronin is no fool and more than capable of tolerating a little discomfort.

He avoids the group, feigns exhausting, lies through his teeth to the Russian about recovering, about guilt that he does not feel.

Barton bangs around in the back of his mind but is quieted whenever he mentions this, whenever he reminds the archer in any way of what he’s done, and Ronin is both frustrated and disgusted by this. He gives himself far too much credit – had Ronin been in charge from the beginning, Loki would have given him far less than he had taken. The things he could have accomplished for himself, the plans he could have set amongst the chaos had Barton just conceded him control, allowed him to drive out the trickster god...

But it’s too late now, no use dwelling on it.

He focuses on the present, on the future as Ronin does, leaving the past to his weaker counter-part to shiver and bleed over.

Stark is building him a bow, tactical arrows, an automated quiver, better even than the one he’d had from SHIELD that he had used during the battle. With Ronin’s feedback, even the input he allows Barton, the thing is coming together beautifully, an instrument of death that he can’t wait to get his hands on. It’s enough of an incentive, enough of a reason to stay, at least for now. It gives him time anyway, time to rest and enjoy the penthouse suite of an apartment that had been designed just for him; top of the tower, floor-to ceiling windows with a panoramic view, access to the roof as well as the state-of-the-art gyms and training centers on the lower floors. The range he can take or leave – it too is state-of-the-art, technologically advanced beyond anything he’s ever seen, but it’s not a challenge for him.

Little is.

He sleeps. He eats, and rehydrates, and works out, builds himself back up as much as he can in the two months he waits for the bow to be finished. He focuses on those things that Barton ignores; his cardio, his stamina, his knifework. Because there’s no one there to notice he works with his throwing stars, but has enough self-control not to pull out the katanas.

Barton is quieter and quieter every day, but Ronin suspects he’s waiting.

He hasn’t given up yet.

As Ronin lounges in a double-bath, hot water and jacuzzi jets easing sore muscles, he muses on the last time he’d had control, almost a decade ago when Barton truly had lost hope. Ronin had been in the driver’s seat for nearly a year by then, snatching back control after Barton had been betrayed by a stupid mistake, childhood trauma dragged back up into the present like cutting open old stitches. He himself was a solitary predator but his host was social by nature, desperate for tribe, for clan, for pack... for love.

Ronin sneers in the dark of the opulent bathroom, the lights dimmed to near extinction.

The Russian bitch might profess that love is only for children, but she herself still participates, still seeks out men she can trust. Barton would give that vulnerability to anyone with a kind word and a smile, determined not to be like Ronin, and so he opens himself up to pain out of spite.

Disgusting.

Even now Barton argues in the back of his mind – calls people good and relationships worth it – and Ronin snarls.

Worth what?

Worth the lies, the bruises, the heartache?

Worth the abuse and the betrayal and the assault?

And Barton isn’t off the hook for any of it either - he holds responsibility just as the others do. He chooses this, this upset, by constantly seeking validation, seeking love, and seeking it from men who disappoint him.

Even in the face of Ronin’s disdain, Ronin’s advice, Ronin’s experience Barton still tried.

A part of Ronin thinks he deserves it.

He should have listened.

He should have learned.

But Barton doesn’t learn and that’s his greatest flaw. Ronin had watched with something close to hatred as his host had once again let his guard down, picked a man just like his father who may have drunk slightly less but who hit him more, and added in a little sexual assault just for fun. Barton froze up when a fist hit his face, when his face hit the floor, an unforgiveable sin in Ronin’s eyes. When the man Barton had chosen, the man Barton had trusted started tearing at his belt buckle, Ronin’s patience ended and he had surged forward with a vengeance that left him dizzy.

He’d recovered, of course, and Barton hadn’t made a sound as he’d come up swinging, nor later when he’d taken a knife to the man’s testicles, peeling them like grapes as he’d screamed into his own wadded up boxers.

He was quiet for a long time after that.

Ronin climbs out of the water and towels off, walking naked into the large, open living room to perform a series of slow, languorous stretches. He’s confident in their body now, in his body, and has grown back into his own skin like scorpion, filling out his deadly shell. Barton is still there, of course, he always is, lurking sullenly where Ronin himself merely lounged, watching from above, or perhaps below. Still, he’s certain of himself, ready to take primary, and there is nothing Barton can do about it.

He’d never intended to cede control back the last time he’d had it. After the attempted rape, Ronin truly had lost patience with Barton’s foolishness and had fully consumed him, swallowing him down into the depths of their shared mind. Barton had gone quietly at first, hadn’t recovered enough to fight for some time – he was grateful to Ronin for his own survival, and that was perhaps the most unforgiveable thing the archer ever did. When he was ready to step forward again Ronin was having none of it, and they’d done battle for months until Barton had exhausted and subsided into silence.

Oh those months of peace had been glorious. Ronin had always known he was the stronger presence of the two of them, that Barton kept control because he allowed it. Ronin knew his place from the moment of his creation – to protect, to do what needed to be done that his host, his primary could not do – but as the years had gone by and he’d had to step in over and over and over again, he’d grown in his contempt and his disappointment. He had been considering for some time just... taking, assuming his place in the forefront of their mind and living there, and he may have had the Preacher not appeared.

Barton flinches, then snarls, stirred into attention by Ronin’s disdain. He rolls his eyes and moves to dress, pulling on boxers and a pair of close-fitting leggings. He intends to go down to the gym, practice some kickboxing with one of the standing bags as long as the super soldier wasn’t around, but he doesn’t have the chance.

A sudden alarm sounds, a red light blinking once, twice, harsh and bloody from the lamps in the corners of the bedroom, and the cultured voice of Stark’s computer floats down from the ceiling.

“SHIELD is requesting Avengers’ backup in lower Manhattan,” he states calmly, “Reports of armored robots in the street moving toward city central.”

Ronin rolls his eyes, even as Barton’s anxiety tries to spike in their stomach. He continues to dress at a leisurely pace – he has no real intention of going along. A bit of chaos seems like the perfect opportunity to make some unsupervised moves, and the others will hardly have time to hang back and interrogate him, demand to know why he’s suddenly abandoned his hero-ly duties.

Sadly, the She-Wolf is faster than he expects her to be, and he’s only just pulled a long-sleeved compression shirt down over his head when she appears, inside of his rooms without sound nor warning.

“Here,” she says, opening the walk-in closet and pulling a drawer he hadn’t bothered to open, and then there is a leather tac suit being forced into his hands, black with chevron accents in a deep purple.

Sighing inwardly, ignoring Barton’s clamoring, he takes the path of least resistance and pulls on the long jacket, the pants with armor over the shins and thighs. He can slip away easily enough in the midst of a battle, when there are more important things to focus on than an archer they think they know and can trust.

He’s lacing up the high boots when Romanov pulls open another drawer and reveals an array of gleaming weapons, knives and arrowheads and small gadgets he can’t begin to guess at. It’s a delightful little display, and he picks out three blades that he secrets away into his boot and his sleeve and his belt.

He has no compunction about taking things offered him – if Stark had offered under the impression that Ronin – Barton – would be staying, well, he’d never agreed to that.

“Let’s go.”

Ronin trails out behind her, taking his time even as her small feet move quickly down the hall to the elevators. She’s greased herself into a black leather catsuit and he sneers at her back, disgusted because she’s told them how she feels about being sexualized. Oh, she’s not above using her sex to her advantage when she wants, but now, well, this is no honeypot. It’s unlikely that this will be resolved with a flash of cleavage, so what is she doing?

Has she become so soft?

Her hair is short but loose, curling above her shoulders – he could grab it in a fist and cut her throat before she could reach for the pistols on her thighs.

If he cared a little more he could hate her.

“Stark has your bow on the Quinjet,” she says, and well, that’s incentive enough he supposes.

He’s not glad per se that he’s going along, but he’s got enough money in his pocket to get himself to his stashes – he always does. By the time they land on the battle field he’ll have this nice new set of armor that he can piece out into his Ronin get-up and a brand-new Stark Tech bow and quiver. He’ll have to piece that out too of course – no doubt Stark had added tracking devices to all of it – but he’ll have to cut out the one SHIELD had embedded in Barton's forearm anyway, so all-in-all the brief endeavor will likely be worth it.

“Birdy,” Stark says as he and Romanov board the small jet perched idling on the roof of the tower.

Ronin nods and the man – the Iron Man – hands him a beautiful quiver packed full of gleaming broadheads.

“It’s finished – you’re good to go. I fixed the balancing issue and none of the controls in the handgrip have changed.”

Ronin is careful to show some signs of awe, of gratitude, but he stops full-short of the scene Barton would have made. The archer would have likely wept at the gift that had been placed in his hands, finer than anything he’d ever held, but Ronin doesn’t share the same hard-on for arrows that he does. Indeed he prefers his katanas and his throwing stars, his short-swords and his fists, but muscle memory is one of the things they share and he isn’t worried.

His eyes, his hands, his skill are all Barton’s, and Barton’s his.

Intelligence, well, that’s been up for debate for a long time.

He sits quietly next to the Russian as the jet flies itself to their location, assessing the others and plotting possible exits upon landing. Romanov is cool, calm, but the others are anxious, small tells glaring flags to Ronin’s eyes. Stark runs through commands to his suit endlessly, muttering under his breath, while Rogers, the Super Soldier bounces his knee. Thor paces back and forth along the gang-way, whatever godly power he has sticking his feet easily to the floor despite any turbulence. The Berserker has been left behind and he’s disappointed – he would have loved to see the destruction he could wreak, would have loved to be close enough to taste it.

“Touching down,” that same cultured compute voice spouts, and the COM in his ear spits out a prattle of tactical information.

The gangplank lowers and they all trip out, reaccustoming themselves to gravity. There are orders, a brief squabble as Thor misunderstands some basic English, and then they’re darting off in all directions, leaving Ronin alone on the rooftop as the Quinjet takes off to hover nearby, waiting.

Romanov had cast him a look first.

Rolling his neck on his shoulders, he makes his way slowly to the side of the building, looks down over the edge. There’s a bit of mess down there, not as much as he’d thought – he's kind of surprised they’d been called out for this. Still raw from the recent battle, civilians had either evacuated or barricaded themselves indoors, learning, at least. Approximately six, no seven, small robots are trundling along the street as the other Avengers make it to ground level, seemingly ignoring them as they creep out into ready positions, as confused as Barton seems to be in the back of his mind.

He too had expected more it seems.

Well, it made no difference to him, he’s out in the wild now and ready to disappear.

As he moves to the fire escape along the side of the building, one that will take him down into the alley on the opposite side from the street, out of sight, he’s suddenly thrown to the ground as a flash of green blasts by him, exploding off the side of the building in a cascade of ricocheting brick.

Fucking lasers?!

Ronin turns even as he’s thrown, curling himself into a ball, rolling, springing back to his feet. He feels heat and rubble against his skin, his neck, the side of his face. Coming back to balance, he snarls under his breath, angry now, and it’s Barton as much as Ronin who – on instinct – pulls, nocks, and looses an arrow.

What the hell – he could use a little fun.

He gets off thirteen rounds before he comes swinging down from the fire escape to the ground below. Somehow, the robots that had been marching along so quietly have cracked like eggs, spilling their young out onto the street. The mini bots have long, spindly legs like spiders and they’re swarming not only the street but the Avengers themselves.

Ronin doesn’t really help.

He doesn’t go out of his way to pick off the bots climbing the side of a bank, headed for the cellular tower on its roof, nor does he make any effort to help clear Romanov or the Super Soldier as the little mechanical army moves to consume them. He’s purely in it for the game, stretching some of his sniper muscles that have gone neglected for the last few months.

His skills aren’t any worse for wear of course, but he’s enjoying himself.

Every arrow finds at least one robot, most of them finding more than that as he lines up his shots. At one time he can hear the She Wolf shouting for Barton but he ignores her – if anyone asks it’s because he’s realized that the parent robots, the hosts, haven’t gone dormant just because they’ve split open. They pick themselves up, seal themselves back together and the lasers come on board again, and Ronin is more than busy taking them out before they can return the favor.

The Iron Suit hums above him and a hammer flashes lightning, and slowly they seem to be bringing things under control. Ronin is panting, grinning ferally as Barton thrums with both threat and warning in the back of his mind, but he shares the adrenaline, the excitement.

He isn’t the Saint he pretends to be.

There are more.

More robots, more lasers, more explosions.

Things are starting to get a bit precarious.

There are some SHIELD agents spilling out into the crossway from the barricades they’ve been erecting a block out, creating a perimeter that’s at risk of being overrun, but the eggs, the parent robots have cracked open again and are coughing up more of their little, spider-like young, and one of them manages to get their pincers into Ronin’s arm as it’s flung through the air by the Russian in a wide, wobbling arc.

She isn’t paying attention.

Ronin snarls as he rips the thing off him, tearing both his jacket and his skin in a clean slice of steel and blood. There’s a sudden bite of fear in her – she's too used to relying on Barton now, too used to him watching her back, and now that he’s not there’s panic trying to creep in. The cold, the steel in her has faltered because she doesn’t want to die and she fears death.

He turns his back, runs, jumps, and grabs onto the rungs of a fire escape, hauling himself up to the first level, eight or ten or twelve feet above the fight before he turns, clear of most of the trouble. She’s pushing toward the center of the battle, toward the largest egg that the others have spread themselves out from in spokes, like a web, and the little robots swarm her as she goes, climbing her legs, springing to latch on to her arms. He could shoot her now - in the shoulder, in the thigh, in the head – but there’s something delicious in her being eaten alive by spiders, too poetic to interfere with.

He’s seen it of course, he’s known it since nearly the beginning – that egg in the center.

Mother-robot, remote-control – take it out and everything ends.

Barton shouts himself hoarse – has seen if from the beginning too, and they both know Ronin could have ended all of this a lifetime ago.

A SHIELD agent screams, goes down under a swarm of little bots, and Ronin watches, breathes in the chaos as Barton batters against the bars of whatever cage holds him, the wall between passenger and driver’s seat. Lightning cracks and the Iron Suit’s repulsors whine, the Widow’s pistols snap and the Soldier’s shield plows a path through the ruin, and Ronin waits, still.

He’s had enough.

Darting up the fire escape, he gains the rooftop and flings himself across the alley onto the next one, headed across the fight and away.

He would have made his exit then, if in that moment a familiar voice hadn’t come barking out over the coms in his ear.

“Hawkeye!”

Ronin nearly stumbles.

As it is, his boots skid to a dead halt on the tar-topped roof and he turns, Barton’s heart in his throat.

The Preacher.

“Center bot, take it out!” the order comes, and it’s instinct, all of Barton’s old muscle memory that take over in the moment, bringing his boots to the very edge of the building, bringing him down to one knee, bracing.

Ronin’s ice cold rage swells inside of him like a storm, slams up against Barton’s sudden shock, elation, heartbreak.

The fucking Preacher!

His body moves without him, fingers flying over the controls of his bow, quiver spitting out an arrow tipped with explosives. Even as he nocks his eyes are flashing, taking in every inch of the scene as he searches out the liar, the cheat, the god-damned sonuva...

He’s alive, he’s alive, he’s a...

‘Shut-up,' Ronin snarls, and leases the arrow.