#heavy bones warning. serious threads for balance and drafts.

[mastcrmarksman]

@overclocks gets this since we talked, i mentioned/pitched it, so its time.

Coming back to New York was not easy. There's a lot of swallowed down pride paired with surfacing shame when he finally came back. The last few months had been eye opening, experiences he hadn't wanted to talk about. Bitterness and guilt gnaw at him. Upset that no one had come for him, but then when he was in the hospital being sobered up from a motorcycle crash and a trespassing charge in Ohio; he had requested no one be called for him.

Running away wasn't doing him any good, he knows that. Clint's had plenty of pitiful night staring up from whatever smoky flattened matress that's definitely has a dead coakroach in between the sheets, to think about it. He thought about a lot of things and one of things he kept circling back to was the bottle always accompanying his left hand. It's weight common and familiar, the taste he knew on his tongue at the startling relization it was at all hours of the day.

He couldn't keep doing what he had done doing, couldn't keep becoming this. Screw up, after bad call, after not listening, and hurting everyone by proxy of being in his life when he decides he's too angry not to something rash. All of that after screwing up again and a beer buzz to solve the guilt, the shame, the frustations.

Things needed to change, he needed to feel like him again, like Hawkeye, and not seeing his father in the mirror. This sorry state of human was anything other than Clint or Hawkeye. He wanted to come back to him. With some advice from one of the nurses, he had to try something, he'd do anything, and start somewhere.

Clint had, did that. Four sober months in and a new job putting on the gear again, being Hawkeye with the NYC Thunderbolts. Yet that didn't feel right; he still didn't feel right, didn't know who the hell or what the hell. Clint didn't like this place he was at, and well, slipping was the eaisest thing he had done since coming back.

It's not going welll... I... I want to run away. So why don't you? You're good at that. Because I promised myself I wasn't going to do that anymore.

Call someone she says. He had called her, she had helped but they both knew there were other someones who'd know what he's going through. Support system, not support person. He's got to stop trying to go it alone, like he does. Intoxicated, tear filled voice admitting he wants to be an Avenger again; that's who he had been, that's who Hawkeye was. There's someone he could definitely call, or show up to beg for an umpteenth chance; for help, guidance, if it was any of this was worth it.

It takes him two bordering on three weeks to summon up the courage to call. That does not pan out and he's not one for... This doesn't feel like a phone conversation. Hopefully, Tony will forgive him for the ambush. He still has one of the tracking devices that the man puts in suits. Deactivated, but it wouldn't take much to reactivate it and ping it a bunch of times until Tony shows up.

It's a very old one too and Clint's out sitting on a bench, in Owl's Head Park with a coffee and pinging until Iron Man shows up; or Tony on foot and when he does show up. Always could count on the man's suit paranoia.

❝ Wait, wait, wait! ❞ He holds out the device toward Tony, to give it back. It's severed its purpose, now he just needs him to hear him out. ❝ Don't go. Sit. Please. I need your hel- advice. ❞