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They're in the shooting range. Clint still can't wrap his head around the trust the suit has put in him. Yes he took certain precautions against Clint going full on murder spree and escaping. All doors are shut with a clear instruction that if anything were to happen to Coulson they would not open again until Clint was compromised. He also has a shocking bracelet temporarily placed on him, one wrong move and he's gonna be writhing in agony on the floor. Making a shot, for him, is effortless. They must know how much harm he could cause before anyone had a chance to react. Yet still, he's here. Yet still, he doesn't. He investigates the gun he has been given, a standard issue Glock, and weighs it in his hand.
“Permission to proceed?” He asks, he is granted 5 shots. He lazily makes them. Putting the gun back. The same applies with the rest of the guns they want him to shoot. It's very simple and nothing he can get excited about. When they're done Coulson asks him to help him with the maintenance of the guns. He wants them ready for next people to use. Clint pops his ass on the ground with an already disassembled gun in front of him. Suit sits down on a chair nearby. Archer does his job without speaking, hoping that the man isn’t going to start a conversation.
“Walk me through your process.” His hopes get crushed.
“Sir?” Clint asks not understanding what his supervisor wants from him.
“Hypothetically,” Phil starts, “you’ve been given a target.” This perks up Clint’s interest. He’s not sure if it's in a good way. “What are your terms for accepting it?”
“If my master gives me a target I cannot deny the order sir.” Clint treads carefully. His movements become slower and more mechanical. He doesn’t get the angle Phil is playing at.
“As a free man. Not a slave. You have been on the run for many years. You lived off of taking assignments. You haven’t accepted every mark and were picky in your choices. I want to understand your decision process.”
“I don’t get the question, you tell me to jump off a cliff so I must jump off a cliff. Or else I will wish someone pushed me off of it with the punishment I’d be given!”
“Clint…”
“Don't ‘Clint’ me Coulson!” Archer looks at his supervisor challengingly. “I am… I was good at my job Phil. I am proud of my skill and you will not take it away from me. We can pretend that you will. I can say and do all the things you want me to but you will never succeed. So don’t ask me hypothetical questions and don’t undermine my decisions. You want me to work for Shield? It’s not like I have a choice! So don’t try to outsmart me!” He sharply ends the sentence, his back straight and proud. Not at all submissive. Phil sighs. Clint sees his displeasure and knows what awaits him. He doesn’t care. They’re not going to domesticize him. Not in this area. Not ever.
Phil slowly puts the guns he was holding onto the table, and gets up from the chair.
“Follow me.” He says sharply. Clint follows, too angry to feel fear.
A few weeks earlier he went to Phil’s office to confess breaking a rule. He got a standard twenty lashes with a cane to his buttocks and lower thighs. Phil clearly wanted him to struggle with sitting down. Additionally he received a GPS tracker locked onto his ankle. Supposedly temporary, until he gets trusted again. With a simple tune playing any time he gets closer to any free men's space. Like their offices or a dining hall. Damn, even toilet stalls. It’s been very humiliating and stopped him from being able to sneak up on people. Many still chuckled when hearing the unique tune associated with the device, all heads glancing in his direction.
So it was known. Clint eavesdropped on a private conversation. Clint knew they wanted to rent him out to Shield. And now Coulson was showing Clint how little choice he had in this regard. It was all very cruel.
Suit led him to another side of the shooting range, if they could still call it that. This side was darker and focused on more archaic weaponry. Equipped with anything and everything anyone could think of. Starting with axes, spears, swords, crossbows and, Clint’s favourite, bows... among other, less known tools. They’ve stopped in front of a longbow. Clint’s breath got caught in his lungs. Maybe he wouldn’t manage the punishment he was about to get. Seemed like Coulson knew all of his weaknesses.
“I didn’t take you here to punish you Clint.” Coulson claimed, appearing to have read Barton’s thoughts. Archer remained silent looking down at the floor, still reluctant to resume his slave persona.
“I know that bow is your choice of a weapon. I can only guess the reason. Shield took an interest in you for the artistry and efficiency of its use. Especially in your years as a fugitive. You became dangerous and unpredictable. Impossible to catch." Coulson walked away from the bow and led Clint to a sitting area nearby. He pointed at the chair, “sit”, he ordered. Clint didn’t want to listen at first, thinking of sitting on the floor just to defy him, but then he realised that this would be the opposite message to the one he was supposed to be giving. Not knowing what to do, he plopped his always bruised ass cheeks on a chair. Only… not the chair, Coulson was pointing at. He plopped himself on the next available chair just to spite his trainer, setting his feet on the table. Phil didn’t say anything, instead taking a seat in the chair originally prepared for Clint.
“You’ve heard the conversation I had with Stark.”
“Yes sir,” Clint hesitantly replied.
“You know we had a disagreement about renting you to Shield.”
“Yes sir,” the reluctance continued.
“You don’t know the reasons behind our disagreement. I am going to explain them to you now. And then I will tell you what I want from you.” Clint remained silent.
“Tony Stark owns Hulk and Captain America. This has got him in a lot of trouble with many powerful people. He acquired Bruce with the promise of using his…peculiarity in medical science. In order to maintain peace, and still remain in their good graces, Tony promised to give them updates on the relevant research that he claimed to undertake himself. He hasn’t sent them anything useful yet. So far managing to avoid the inevitable, but his luck is going to run out soon. Bruce was Tony’s acquaintance as a free man, they were rivals. Motivating each other to push harder and achieve more in their research. I don’t think that Tony could stand to see Bruce experimented on. He wanted him safe. Out of the hot fire. As you can imagine, the government wanted to get Banner themselves. They just couldn’t afford him.” Clint’s body shivered. He met Bruce and noticed that Tony had spent a lot of time with him. Mostly in the lab and during meetings. Bruce always seemed to break the slave’s boundaries without consequences when around Tony. It was quite common to see a slave having less strict rules when around people who knew them as a free person. Which is why such purchases were frowned upon. He took his feet off of the table.
“With Steve… it was different. He is, in fact, Captain America. If he is not going to work for the government, he is not going to be Capitan America. And he IS, Captain America. So when he was found, under the ice, Steve belonged to Stark from day one. It was Tony’s money that led to Steve. So Tony owned Steve, but didn’t own the symbol. In the end of a very long ownership battle Tony was allowed to share Steve with Shield. Star's journey of aggitating many powerful people continued.” Phil took a break. Testing Clint's obedience he sent him out to fetch Phil a glass of water. Clint listened.
“We have many slaves, many of them you have already met and somehow managed to piss off.” Phil and Clint both smiled at that. Clint couldn’t deal with bullshit and most slaves specialised in it. He wasn’t particularly friendly with them. He was an escaped slave, living on the run for years. He wasn’t surprised he scared the shit out of most of them too. “But as you probably noticed” Phil continued, “they are not extraordinary as Bruce or Steve” Phil took a sip of water. “They are not extraordinary like you are.”
Clint chuckled and eased down a bit on his posture. He felt like he could lean in on the table and place his chin on his hands. “Did you just put me in the same category as the symbol of America and an angry green monster?... Sir?” Clint looked at him questioningly, trying to point out a mistake his supervisor made without getting too much into trouble. He still felt like pushing some boundaries since he was allowed to sit on the chair and all, but decided to, again, tread carefully.
“Yes I did.” Phil replied with a straight face. “You never miss. You managed to avoid capture for years, despite being second on the most wanted list. You did not only avoid us…you did not only avoid Shield,'' Phil corrected himself, which Clint found interesting, “You mocked them in the process, predicting every one of Shield’s and every other chasing agency moves without a sweat. You have contacts with important people and you infiltrated many organisations as a spy. You are smart, intelligent and knowledgeable.”
“You flatter me sir, I’m going to blush in a second.”
“Shield really wanted you. Still, I’m not sure, whether they wanted you for your skills or to punish you for all the mocking you’ve done.” Clint’s cunning smile died on his lips. He didn’t believe everything the suit said but this scenario was very probable.
“You are a slave Clint, and you always will be” his supervisor stated. A ball of cotton grew in Clint's stomach.
“Gee, thanks for the reminder.”
“Stark liked you and brought you here. So for the third time in less than five years, he’s pissed some powerful people off. Again." Phil sounded very tired. "We need to soften the blow. I can see you don’t like being owned. You never go above and beyond in your tasks. You do the minimum work you are assigned and sneak out when you think you’ll get away with it. You are not here to be happy.” Archer doesn’t respond. Phil is casually spitting out offences Clint committed in this household. ‘Slave is always supposed to go above and beyond anticipating anything his master may need’ Barton remembers the training. But Phil is right. “ We need you on your top game very quickly if we don’t want to loose all of you. Three dangerous individuals all owned by Stark sound like a supervillain secret scheme. You need to work with Shield. To prove that Stark is not the villain of the story.” Trainer leans in towards Clint looking him in the eyes. “Think for a second if you’d rather be unhappy here or with Shield.” He ends his speech. Clint is rendered speechless. Someone has spent a lot of energy to explain the behind the scenes to him. This was not a usual slave procedure. Barton appreciated the effort. He knew about Shield enough to know he wouldn’t want to find himself in their clutches. He wouldn’t also want to be the person responsible for Steve and Bruce’s suffering. Being owned by a corporation would not be the worst thing in the world, if someone knows how to disappear and Clint was good at disappearing. The more bigger the company the better. But Stark wasn’t that bad so far. He’s been tolerable. The policies put in place, about slaves being given at least two meals a day and sleeping at least five hours a day were not only on paper. A human rights promoting bullshit. They were enforced rules. It’s not like he enjoyed the lack of freedom, constant punishments and nagging of his trainer. But he got used to them. It was still a more survivable environment than any other he’s been in, as a slave. To be fair sometimes he wasn’t this safe as a free man, always having to hide and run.
“The devil you know…” Clint mumbled under his nose in response. He’d play the ball for now. Phil put a hand next to his in response.
“I asked you about your strategy because I respect you. I am not going to break the rules for you because it would put my boss and people close to him in a lot of meaningless trouble. When I asked you to walk me through your process, it was because I wanted to make it easier for you. To complete assignments for Shield. Negotiate your contract with me, in the same way you would as the famous Hawkeye I know. I will represent Shield. I made you sit at the table because I want to discuss this with the mercenary I admire. At home we will stick to the existing protocol. Shield will have a separate one. Let’s sit down and agree on a set of rules for you as an agent. Now is your time to shine and be cocky. What are your terms and conditions?”