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Demo Post: Cloudline
Nov. 21st, 2013 05:43 pm*Clinton Francis Barton shut his eyes and breathed fresh, cold air. The breeze rippled and feathered his short hair, drying the last of the water from his shower and fluffing it into soft clumps. His skin prickled all over, scrubbed with near scalding water and harsh soap left him pink and raw in some places but it felt good.
It'd been a shower long time coming, Hell it felt like he'd been needing that shower for years, not just the last week or so, since he'd been mentally pulled away from his own body and stuffed into a far corner of his mind while Loki used him like a clockwork toy. It felt good to wash it all way, just for a moment, the sweat and blood, caked up dust and grit and the fine layer of ash and cement dust. It felt like it had been weighing him down and now it was gone. At least for a little while.
He let the moment linger, letting his past and present roll together.
He thought of his mother and father, pulled lifeless from a car crash when he was barely six. He though of his little brother Barney, who'd he tried desperately to keep at his side as they were skipped from foster home to foster home until a sweet suburban couple decided they liked chubby cheeked and bright blue eyed Barney but not the sullen and quiet Clint and they were pulled apart. He smiled slightly at his first runaway attempt and all the others afterwards, short avdentures camped out under rusted train cars or curled up in the branches of trees or on roofs. He hummed over his years with the circus, 'Carson Carnival of Traveling Wonders', performing as an acrobat, daredevil aerialist and finally 'The World's Greatest Marksman'. He remembers the rainy day that Carson folded up tent for the last time, being tossed onto the back-roads of Oklahoma and stumbling on in a confused daze, unsure where to go or how to survive until he was given a lift from an Army detail heading for Tulsa. There had been no room for his quiver and recurve in the military but the Army Rangers had made a sniper out of him, a soldier instead of a back alley scrapper.
That was how he ended up on S.H.I.E.L.D.'s radar. A near perfect kill record, highly decorated, absolutely lethal in action... and repeat marks on his jacket for insubordination and reckless behavior. S.H.I.E.L.D. wanted him and the Rangers were quick to turn him over, glad they didn't have to discharge one of their best specialists for 'bad behavior'. With Fury dictating from a distance and Coulson taking his Handler duties above and beyond, acting as Clint's own personal Jiminy Cricket he'd finally started to round out around the rough edges, come into his own and he felt like he'd found his place. And they gave him his bow back. He could do what he was trained to do, act independently, make his own judgement calls and Fury trusted him enough to turn him loose with no more than the expectation of the occasional check in.
He sighed, it sent a small ache through his chest, thinking about that hard earned trust was now cracked and flaking. And even more so the guilt that churned constantly in his gut. They told him over and over that it wasn't his doing, he was acting under the control of another but he remembered every action and reaction keenly, it bit and gnawed at him. The destruction he'd wrought on the Helicarrier, the innocent lives he took, the way his actions had cut deep into other members of the team, the keen loss of his first and only Handler... it all ached and burned toxic in his stomach. He'd fought himself to exhaustion to make up for it but it still didn't feel like enough, even after New York.
He shook his head sharply, trying to throw it off. There wasn't anything he could do about that now. He was on medical and psychiatric leave, they were waiting to see what happened to him, in times of stress and relaxation. See if he 'relapsed'. It was all a waiting game and he was banned from the range and from going on mission work. At least for now. It couldn't last much longer, at least he hoped not.
Sighing he looked out on golden hued clouds and far below the limitless black sheet of the ocean below. The sweet scent of sea air, fresh and clean, soothed the darker thoughts away and he shut his eyes again, feeling the rush of air and around him as the Helicarrier hummed along through the base of the cloudline. Clint shifted forwards a bit, resecuring his perch on the base of one of the towers and swung his legs down, he stretched a bit, wriggling bare toes and feet in the dying sunlight as he kicked them idly over the edge of a seven story vertical drop to the deck of the Helicarrier. Fearless of the height and danger, or ignorant of it, he relaxed back against the conning tower base behind him, hands tucked into the pocket of his hooded sweatshirt and eyes half lidded, he was going to wait until the sun had finally gone all the way down and the last of the heat he could steal from it had faded before giving up his perch and heading back inside, back to facing the weight of reality and fate.*
It'd been a shower long time coming, Hell it felt like he'd been needing that shower for years, not just the last week or so, since he'd been mentally pulled away from his own body and stuffed into a far corner of his mind while Loki used him like a clockwork toy. It felt good to wash it all way, just for a moment, the sweat and blood, caked up dust and grit and the fine layer of ash and cement dust. It felt like it had been weighing him down and now it was gone. At least for a little while.
He let the moment linger, letting his past and present roll together.
He thought of his mother and father, pulled lifeless from a car crash when he was barely six. He though of his little brother Barney, who'd he tried desperately to keep at his side as they were skipped from foster home to foster home until a sweet suburban couple decided they liked chubby cheeked and bright blue eyed Barney but not the sullen and quiet Clint and they were pulled apart. He smiled slightly at his first runaway attempt and all the others afterwards, short avdentures camped out under rusted train cars or curled up in the branches of trees or on roofs. He hummed over his years with the circus, 'Carson Carnival of Traveling Wonders', performing as an acrobat, daredevil aerialist and finally 'The World's Greatest Marksman'. He remembers the rainy day that Carson folded up tent for the last time, being tossed onto the back-roads of Oklahoma and stumbling on in a confused daze, unsure where to go or how to survive until he was given a lift from an Army detail heading for Tulsa. There had been no room for his quiver and recurve in the military but the Army Rangers had made a sniper out of him, a soldier instead of a back alley scrapper.
That was how he ended up on S.H.I.E.L.D.'s radar. A near perfect kill record, highly decorated, absolutely lethal in action... and repeat marks on his jacket for insubordination and reckless behavior. S.H.I.E.L.D. wanted him and the Rangers were quick to turn him over, glad they didn't have to discharge one of their best specialists for 'bad behavior'. With Fury dictating from a distance and Coulson taking his Handler duties above and beyond, acting as Clint's own personal Jiminy Cricket he'd finally started to round out around the rough edges, come into his own and he felt like he'd found his place. And they gave him his bow back. He could do what he was trained to do, act independently, make his own judgement calls and Fury trusted him enough to turn him loose with no more than the expectation of the occasional check in.
He sighed, it sent a small ache through his chest, thinking about that hard earned trust was now cracked and flaking. And even more so the guilt that churned constantly in his gut. They told him over and over that it wasn't his doing, he was acting under the control of another but he remembered every action and reaction keenly, it bit and gnawed at him. The destruction he'd wrought on the Helicarrier, the innocent lives he took, the way his actions had cut deep into other members of the team, the keen loss of his first and only Handler... it all ached and burned toxic in his stomach. He'd fought himself to exhaustion to make up for it but it still didn't feel like enough, even after New York.
He shook his head sharply, trying to throw it off. There wasn't anything he could do about that now. He was on medical and psychiatric leave, they were waiting to see what happened to him, in times of stress and relaxation. See if he 'relapsed'. It was all a waiting game and he was banned from the range and from going on mission work. At least for now. It couldn't last much longer, at least he hoped not.
Sighing he looked out on golden hued clouds and far below the limitless black sheet of the ocean below. The sweet scent of sea air, fresh and clean, soothed the darker thoughts away and he shut his eyes again, feeling the rush of air and around him as the Helicarrier hummed along through the base of the cloudline. Clint shifted forwards a bit, resecuring his perch on the base of one of the towers and swung his legs down, he stretched a bit, wriggling bare toes and feet in the dying sunlight as he kicked them idly over the edge of a seven story vertical drop to the deck of the Helicarrier. Fearless of the height and danger, or ignorant of it, he relaxed back against the conning tower base behind him, hands tucked into the pocket of his hooded sweatshirt and eyes half lidded, he was going to wait until the sun had finally gone all the way down and the last of the heat he could steal from it had faded before giving up his perch and heading back inside, back to facing the weight of reality and fate.*
