(This was supposed to be longer, and eventually will be. But brilliant mind that I am, I managed to fracture my dominant index finger, and I can't type very well with it splinted. Instead of making y'all wait, I'm posting the section I managed to get completed, while I very painstakingly keep plucking away with a hand basically out of commission. Enjoy! :))

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Clint has suspected he's hellbound for quite some time.

It isn't all the blood on his hands. It isn't the red in his ledger. It isn't the dubious missions he's undertaken as an agent of SHIELD, going where he's told and doing what he's told for years. It isn't the failed marriage or the countless lies he's told or the cons he pulled as part of the circus.

It isn't even that he ended up under Loki's mindfuck device, slavishly devoted to the Asgardian equivalent of a disgruntled Hot Topic employee with a library of daddy issues and an obvious, raging boner for his boisterous, blond and muscled adopted brother. He knows it's not his fault. Mind control is a bitch. There wasn't anything he could do. He's forgiven himself for it.

(Except for Phil. He still can't really forgive himself for Phil. Logically, he knows he isn't at fault for all those deaths on the Helicarrier. He isn't responsible for Phil's death. SHIELD has deprogramming protocols and top-notch therapy for hostile mental influence, and he's availed of them often enough that he's mostly through the horrible guilt and shame. But logic goes off the rails when it comes to Phil. Logic doesn't even have a hand on the wheel when it comes to Phil. Guilt is driving that fuck-train to Faultville. Clint can't do anything but ride along.)

Clint Barton will end up in hell for one singular reason.

Because he's a sadistic little shit-disturber.

His sins are myriad. He's Naired Ward's shaving cream. He's short-sheeted Sitwell's bed. He's fed Tony generic-brand decaf and sworn it was French roast straight from Columbia. He rigged Banner's cherished vanilla Coke with a Menthos-primed cap (then lurked in the vents to witness the fruits of his labour). He even once managed to get into Fury's personal cell phone and changed the ringtone to "The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything" from that stupid show with the talking vegetables.

But really, no sin is so heinous as the one he just accrued telling poor, sweet, innocent, trusting Steve Rogers with his giant doe eyes that he'd better make sure Tony knew Steve wasn't coming onto him. Because everyone knows Tony Stark's reputation as a manwhore, even though he's monogamous these days, and well, gosh darn it, Cap, if you crawl naked into bed with someone, you better let them know that you have no designs on their virtue, or the next thing you know, you're you're up to your eyeballs in sexcapades and then you end up in divorce court arguing over the cat and you won't quite know how you got there.

It's mean and it's cruel, but Clint is tired and bitter and angry, and it's either do shit like this, or go psychotically off his fucking rocker eighteen times a day. It doesn't even matter in the long run, and he knows it. He was fairly certain Stark had a wicked sense of humor beforehand, and this morning's snark-fest only confirmed that, so he'll just think it's goddamn hilarious. And Steve Rogers is far too good a man to hold grudges. The most Clint will have to face is his disappointed expression, and he's pretty sure even Captain America's disappointed expression can't hold a candle to Coulson's.

(Coulson would be disappointed, and that's where the guilt and anger comes screaming back. But fuck Phil anyway, since he decided to up and die on Clint. Who fucking needs him?)

(Clint does. Fuck.)

He's coping. He is. He might not be doing it particularly well from time to time, but he's muddling through as best he can, and he's fine with it. And anyone who says differently can eat a great big heaping helping of frosted fuck-offs from a rusty spoon.

If he's being honest with himself, though, it wouldn't really take much to tip him right over the edge into supervillainy. His anchor got cut, and now he's adrift in a sea of misplaced anger and repressed grief, no matter how many counselling sessions he goes to. He internalizes too much, he knows that. The Clint Barton walking down this shitty two-lane road towards a town that's barely a dot on the map isn't the same Clint Barton that laughed in golden sunlight on a beach in Tahiti and traced the planes of his partner's chest with his tongue. He's colder, smaller, vicious like a cornered honey badger, with deadly aim and a repressible moral compass.

He figures he's in good company for that, though. The Avengers are all royally fucked up. Each and every single gloriously traumatized bundle of raw nerves and nightmare memories walks that razor's edge with him between doing what's right and succumbing to pain. He runs it down in his head, knowing just how fucking easy it would be to nudge them in succession, until they fall like dominos into the abyss.

Banner is one temper tantrum away from levelling a large swath of Manhattan; all he needs is a papercut on the wrong day or one too many nights of missed sleep. Banner's greatest strength is also his greatest weakness. His iron control of his anger is a constant thing, but when it slips, he can't wrestle it back. The Hulk is too strong. Clint can access any number of drugs and substances that blend undetectably with the herbal tea Banner likes so much, concoctions brewed to loosen inhibitions and send the heart racing. He could have the Hulk out in a snap, unleashed on an unprepared populace.

Nat's a former Soviet prodigy of the Red Room supersoldier project, and if Clint has blood on his hands, then there's a veritable fucking ocean on hers. He's never seen anyone with as much natural talent at infiltration, nor anyone as flexible and deadly acrobatic. Nat has mastered shutting down her emotions, letting the Widow take her. Clint knows her better than anyone. Her buttons are buried deep, but he knows her better than anyone still living on the planet, could find them if he really wanted to, nudge them around, bring the real Black Widow back out of the dark, dim recesses of Nat's subconscious.

Tony's mental state, by all half-assed observation, is increasingly delicate; poke him in the right spot, manipulate that genuine desire to make the world a better place, and his genius intellect, ability to instantaneously absorb new fields of expertise and nigh-supernatural ability to build whatever offensive armaments and weapons of mass destruction suit his fancy out of goddam scrap metal and fucking chicken wire guarantees a swift conquering of the entire earth if he desired it.

Thor, for all his geniality and good cheer, has some deep fucking shadows in his eyes; he's insecure about his worth to carry the hammer, probably has PTSD from whatever that freakshow metal man in New Mexico was, and the wells of his guilt over Loki's actions are fathomless. Out of all of the Avengers, Thor would be the most troublesome to tip over, but Clint knows he could do it.

And good old apple-pie and American-flag Steve Rogers has absolutely fucking zero connection to the world beyond the walls of Avengers Tower. He doesn't recognize the city he lives in; literally everything he knows is ancient history, and the vast majority of his generation are dust and ash. Steve drowns in the 21st century, though he does his best to hide it, struggling to keep his head up above the choppy water. Clint's pretty sure he could find the leverage to keep his head under just long enough that anything will feel like a relief to stop the nihilism from creeping back.

God fucking help the world if the Avengers ever fell to their shadows and inner demons. That's all he's going to say. They're the only thing keeping each other up. If one goes down, they all go down.

Sometimes, Clint scares himself. Because he knows how easy it would be. His code name isn't Hawkeye for nothing. He's a mouthy little shit, bristling with attitude and smarting off to whoever is in earshot half the time… but that just makes people forget how observant he is. They forget that, ninety percent of the time, they never see him. For all he's loud and obnoxious and attention-demanding, when he is working, he is one of the deadliest, elite assassins on the planet. No one sees him coming. Half the time, no one sees him at all. First rule of ground-dwelling species? They rarely look up, and that's where Clint spends the majority of his time. Ceiling vents, tree branches, rooftops. Anything with a clear line of sight and a rise of over twenty feet is safe ground for him.

He'd be unstoppable.

Are you with me, Barton?

Clint stops dead in the middle of the road, closes his eyes, and sucks in a deep breath. The cold air bites his nose, sears down his throat and chills his lungs, and for a second, it feels like there's a hand resting on the back of his neck. "Yeah, Phil," he mutters. "I'm with you." He opens his eyes and keeps moving.

It's dangerous, this game he plays with himself, but it's the only way he gets to hear Phil's voice anymore. He's gone down the rabbit hole a few times in his career, when thoughts were too dark and volatile, when bad memories overcrowded happy dreams. When crawling into a bottle seemed like a good idea, or running off on a suicide mission. Every time, Coulson was there to pull him out, with a quiet word and a gentle touch.

Every time, except every time that came after Loki.