So... I'm a huge Avengers fan, and I've been working on this for a bit now. If you like, please review. I love reviews. : )

"You sure about this, Coulson?"

Phil Coulson glanced over at Director Fury and nodded. "Of course, sir." As the prison alarms started blaring, Coulson shrugged, leaning back in his chair. "Mostly."

They'd been sitting in the room designed for conjugal visits for about fifteen minutes, waiting for Prisoner 112909 to be brought in. The Attica Correctional Facility was a super-max, meaning super maximum security, one of the most notorious, and brutal prisons in the US.

"How old did you say this kid was?" Fury asked, looking at the bed in disgust.

"Twenty one, sir."

"And…"

"And… I think he could be one of the best field agents we've ever seen. His IQ is off the charts, his vision is closer to that of a of an eagle than human, and his marksmanship skills are the best we've seen. At first, our best marksmen couldn't believe he'd pulled off the shots he had."

"Which leads into…"

Phil sighed. "He currently has twelve confirmed hits to his name, suspected of at least fourteen more. Including six high ranking government officials in…" He glanced down at the folder in his lap. "Russia, India, China, and three here in the states. Seems to have issues with bureaucrats."

"Well, that makes me like him a bit better, I suppose. How 'bout his psych evals?"

As Phil opened his mouth to respond, there was a crisp, sharp knock on the door, and without waiting for a response, it swung open, revealing four armed guards, and the man they'd come to see.

Phil had to admit, he was almost a little disappointed. The… well, boy is what he looked like, was nothing unique. Nothing stood out about him. Dirty blond hair that hung over into his face a bit, a bit shorter than average, with broad shoulders, and the well-defined prison muscles wouldn't have separated him from any of the other inmates.

But his cold blue eyes were filled with more violence than men twice his age, Phil thought idly, watching the guards attach the shackles to the table. At their questioning glance, Phil nodded, waving towards the door.

"Thank you, gentlemen. We can take it from here."

One of the guards stepped forward. "Firstly sir, we must reiterate the rules. No physical contact with the prisoner; do not hand him anything, including pens, pencils, or paper. His chains are not to be removed except by myself, or the warden. Do you understand, and agree, to these rules?"

Fury glared, and started to speak, when Phil cut him off quickly. "Of course, gentlemen. No problem. We'll call when we're finished."

With that, the guards left, and Phil scooted his chair closer to the table.

"Clint Barton?"

The young man nodded lazily, bringing his hand up to his face to wipe off a bit of blood by the side of his lip. "That'd be me."

"What happened?"

Barton shrugged. "Man got too close. I made sure he won't make that mistake again. What do you and chuckles over there want?"

Phil smiled pleasantly. "My name is Phil Coulson, and this is Director Fury. We work for an organization called –"

"Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division. Yeah. I've heard of you before. Almost got me in Beirut back in '89."

"And in Tehran the year before that," Phil said amiably, a small smile on his face.

Barton leaned forward, that cocksure grin still on his face. "You were nowhere near me in Tehran. I knew exactly where your agents were. Which, for the most part involved them stumbling around the market trying to blend in. Next time, don't try to pass a Korean as an Arab wearing a burkha." Leaning back, he shrugged again. "Hell, I was half drunk most of that op, and your guys still couldn't get close. It was a little insulting, to tell you the truth."

"We were still testing the waters, so to speak. You'd just blipped on our radar, and we only sent a grade D team after you. But we rectified that in Beirut. How did you survive that fall, by the way?"

"Trade secret. If it makes you feel any better, I ended up with seven different pins, three in my arm, and four in my leg."

"I'll be sure to let Agents May and Kowalski know. They'll appreciate that you didn't get away unscathed."

"I'm sure they will. The chick there… she was good. Her fighting style will always lose against mine, but it was close. I'll give her that much. So. You here to finish what you started there? Angry that the CIA got me first?"

Phil shook his head. "Of course not. As professional courtesy though… just how the hell did a bunch of untrained, bumbling monkeys like the CIA get you?"

Barton chuckled. "Sheer numbers. I was camping out in a cabin in Virginia. Caught me while I was sleeping, surrounded me with thirty six men, twelve riot dogs, and a helicopter."

"Still… seems sloppy for you," Phil said, trying to keep his voice neutral as he watched the look of interest on the director's face as the large man moved to the side of the table, in what must have been just inside Barton's peripheral vision. "That can't look good on your resume."

"You can't hear me, can you, Barton?" Fury asked in slightly lower than normal voice. "You little shit, you're deaf, aren't you?"

"Yeah, well, my resume will be greatly improved once I escape the inescapable Attica."

"Amazing. All that work. Evading our best agents, and some of the best killers in the damn world… And you're deaf as a post," Fury muttered, motioning for Phil to keep talking.

"What're you doing, chuckles?" Barton asked suddenly, turning his head to put Fury directly in his line of sight. "What's the hand signs for?"

"Proving somethin'," Fury said, giving the young man a grin of his own before sliding down into the extra chair, and pulling it closer to Barton. "So how'd you do it? Becoming one of the best marksmen in the world… Developing a name for yourself at nineteen as a trained killer… All while deaf as a doornail?"

Barton froze, the smile sliding off his face as Fury continued speaking.

"Probably hearing aids. Maybe pay a doc to give you better than the average. Not like you didn't have the money for it. You made, what… A mil and a half for that job in Moscow? Wouldn't have been hard. But you gotta take the aids out sometime. That's how they got you. You took 'em out, figuring you were safe in your backwater little cabin. Didn't even hear half the freakin' army knockin' on your front door. What's it at… sixty percent loss?"

"Eighty," Barton said through gritted teeth. "What gave it away?"

"Your story, for one. You were either drunk, high, or deaf to have missed that many CIA assholes marchin' along. Ruled out drugs fairly quickly, you're too sharp for that. Drunk was a possibility, but you just kept starin' at Coulson's face. Plus, I read your history here. A lot of these guards noted that you ignore 'em when they talk to you. Other ones seem to not have had any problem. Granted, you could have just been a stubborn little shit, but add it altogether…"

"Congratulations, Chuckles. Get to the fuckin' point, or get out."

Phil studied the young man intently. Gone was the devil-may-care attitude of before. This new man sitting across from him radiated violence, ready to be unleashed. He was taut as a bow string, seemingly ready to snap.

"We want to offer you a job, Mr. Barton," Phil said quickly, careful not to change his tone in any way as the young man looked back at him. No reason to add insult to injury.

"Don't call me that. It's Barton. Period. And why the fuck would you offer me a damn job?" He demanded, putting his fists on the table.

"Because. You're good. Possibly one of the best."

Barton scoffed, waving his hand in the air dismissively. "So's a lot of people. People who aren't servin' time on death row."

"S.H.I.E.L.D. has resources ninety-nine percent of other agencies don't have, Barton. So we were able to dig a little deeper. As soon as you escaped Beirut, I started building a file on you. Everything I could find –which wasn't much, by the way. Your hacker must be good; couldn't find any trace of 'Clinton Barton' in the system. So everything I had came from your assassin days. And what I found there, when I dug below the surface… Well, it piqued my interest.

"You've been offered good money to perform a lot of jobs. You turn down most of them. At first, I couldn't see the pattern. You've worked for the good guys, done some freelancing, and worked for the not-so-good guys. So whatever was drawing you in, it wasn't money, and it wasn't principles like working for scum bags. So I started digging into your targets a bit more. And finally… I found what I was looking for.

"That priest in the Ukraine was what tipped me off. After doing a little research into what was going on at the same period, I found that over twenty five kidnapped children had magically returned home within a few weeks of the murder. All they knew was that the cages they were being held in were unlocked, and a path of dead bodies were pointing them towards the exit. I had to actually go to Ukraine to connect everything. The good Father was the last person anyone would have suspected. Outstanding citizen, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, giving alms to the poor… The man traveled the country helping out those in need.

"I used some facial recognition software on the pictures of the kids. You don't wanna know how much… filth… I had to wade through until I finally noticed it. It was the one with the little red-haired girl. Couldn't have been much older than six. Maybe seven."

"She was eight," Barton said roughly, staring down at the table for a moment. "Small for her age. Her name was Vasylnya."

"That video though… That was when I noticed something interesting. The man in the video with her… He had a surgical scar on his right hip. Old, not very well stitched. So I pulled up the autopsy photos of the priest. He had the exact same scar, in the exact same area.

"Once I knew what I was looking for, it all fell into place fairly quickly. Every single person on your credit was involved in some nasty stuff. Kiddie porn, genocide, rape, torture… Like I said, none of it was obvious… Everything was ten layers below the surface."

"Figured I'd leave the obvious ones to you assholes," Barton said roughly. "So what's the conditions?"

Director Fury leaned forward on the table, waiting patiently until Barton looked at him again. "Simple. For the six months, you wear a monitoring chip; you don't ever leave S.H.I.E.L.D. grounds. You undergo eight weeks of physical, and psychological testing, along with some scholastic tests. You pass everything, you start your training. As soon as your training is complete –with passing marks from your handler, and myself –and you become a certified agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. We start sending you out on ops. You don't give us a reason to doubt you, and after a year, we remove the chip. Your record gets wiped clean, and Clinton Barton gets to exist again."

"What're the ops?"

"Nothing you'd be opposed to. We handle some very nasty people that the law can't touch. Some of them haven't become major threats… yet. But they will. I will promise you this much: you will never be given orders to kill innocent civilians. Sound fair?"