#sorry for the shit quality i have a headache and spent all my energy drawing viago on the first panel

[crows-of-buckets]

On one hand I think it's cute how many crow rooks are touched by Viago calling them a damn fine crow. However. There's something deeply wrong with Ena and any emotional topics make him very uncomfortable

Teia is done with both of their emotionally repressed asses

[shewhohangsoutincemeteries]

to ashes, lead me to you

Clint Barton x Reader

To Ashes, Chapter Two

Chapter Summary: you go through the files you took from clint’s house, hoping to find a lead as to where he’s gone.

Characters/Pairings: reader, eventual clint/reader

Warnings: angst, alcohol

Word Count: 1,253

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prologue - 1 - 2 -

Days Since the Decimation: Sixteen

“Clint, please. I need you to call me back, okay? I’m so sorry, Clint… I’m—”

Beep.

You’d leaned forward where you sat cross-legged on the bed, tapping your phone to skip the message as a lump formed in your throat. You’d never heard Natasha sound so vulnerable before, and you weren’t sure you were ready to now. Besides, that message wasn’t meant for you, and it wasn’t going to help you now. There was no need for you to hear this… it felt too much like reading her diary. And you’d suddenly realized that as much as you sometimes felt like an outsider, you weren’t ready to know Nat this intimately.

“Barton, it’s Steve. I know Nat’s been—”

Beep.

You’d been holed up in a room at a cheap motor inn on the outskirts of the town closest to the Barton farm for almost two days. One bed – the one you’d slept in – was a tangle of drawn back blankets and crappy pillows. The other was where you sat now, surrounded by anything you might find helpful. Your laptop was on the bedside table, email open. The box you’d taken from Barton’s was on the floor beside you; half the files were spread out over the comforter as you tried to make some sense, some connection to the Clint then and the Clint you needed to find.

“Clint—” Beep. You cut off the message as soon as you heard Nat’s voice. You’d charged his phone and had found a myriad of voicemails and text left behind in the last two weeks. The text messages had proved useless – most of them on the same thread as those you’d heard so far in his voicemail, scattered among a few government alerts attempting to find out who was left after the decimation.

You’d already been brought close to tears listening to them – the message from Laura’s mother, trying to find out where her daughter and grandchildren were had had you reaching for the cheap whiskey in the minibar and dumping half of it into your coke before she’d barely spoken a minute.

A couple of files had already been tossed back in the box, but a few you’d found some potential in. There were scribbles of contact’s names from old jobs for SHIELD, as well as a few unlabeled phone numbers or just some quickly scrawled coordinates. Each note led to a rabbit hole of online research. With most of SHIELD’s database gone with the fall of the organization, you were stuck struggling through back channels. When it came to tech-heads and weapons dealers you could find them in the Stark system, but otherwise, you were struggling. Most covert operatives and informants didn’t have a huge online presence.

Almost all of the notes led to dead ends – some literally, either over the last few years or lost in the snap – but you’d managed to find a few possible leads so far.

“Hey, Barton.”

You paused, coffee halfway to your mouth and your other hand hovering over a file.

That was your voice.

You’d completely forgotten you’d called him.

Six days. Six days after the snap of Thano’s fingers you’d called Clint, half-drunk and sleep deprived. You weren’t even completely sure why you had. The two of you weren’t exactly close before all this; he’d never stuck around New York long enough for you to socialize.

***

“Hey, Barton. I don’t know if you’re getting any of these calls…” you mumbled into the phone, curled up on the floor by the window of your room. The rolling lawns of the Avengers facility were lit along pathways in the dark; everyone else had long gone to bed as far as you were aware… there was a chance Rocket or Bruce were still in the lab, but you couldn’t be sure. There was an equal chance Rocket was as drunk as you were, but he tended to get violent or insulting after too many, so you’d avoided him.

You sighed, shaking your head, your forehead pressed against the glass. It was cool against your booze-warmed face, and while your bed was only a few feet away, you couldn’t find the energy to move over to it. “I don’t even know why I’m trying. If you’re not going to pick up for Nat… well, there’s no way you’d call back for me.”

You caught sight of your reflection in the window. There were bags under your eyes, and your hair was a mess on one side from where you’d been almost compulsively running your hand through it. With a groan, you turned away from it, drawing your knees up to your chest and wrapping your free arm around them. You took a steadying breath, but you couldn’t help the lump that formed in your throat, or the way your voice cracked as you spoke again. “I just… I’m drowning her, Clint. I don’t know what to do. But I think… I think I owe you an apology.”

You shook your head, teeth in your bottom lip. “No, I… I know I do. After everything that happened in… in Wakanda… I don’t know how much you’ve heard. But I tried, I really did, but I—”

***

You skipped the message, an uncomfortable pit forming in your stomach. You’d woken up right there on the floor of your suite the next morning, with a dry mouth and a pounding headache. The next hour had you alternating between gulping water and heaving into the toilet. The only one who’d been in worse shape than you that morning was Rocket. It was no wonder you hadn’t remembered the message until now.

Your eyes drifted to the minifridge in the corner. There probably wasn’t enough in there to get you so drunk you’d temporarily forget making that phone call, but you could maybe get a buzz out of all the mini bottles tucked away in there.

Sighing, you shook the thought out of your head. That wasn’t going to help you get through all this, especially not at two in the afternoon.

***

It wasn’t for another few hours – long after you’d worn out his message bank and finished off three cups of coffee – that you’d found something that made you straighten in your seat. Your legs were aching slightly; you’d barely moved out of your cross-legged position on the bed, save for a caffeine refill.

There was a dogeared business card that had been tucked away in a file from a couple of years ago. The wear on the corners suggested it had spent a long while in someone’s wallet before it had been stored away. The rest of the papers in the file were about some agents that had gone missing after the fall of SHIELD; potential double agents carrying state secrets. Clint had been charged with putting teams together tasked with tracking them all down.

You ran your finger over the text on the card; it was for a private investigation firm on West 46th Street, back in New York. Middle of Hell’s Kitchen. It wasn’t embossed, but the card was definitely made of quality cardstock. They weren’t a high society business, but they weren’t amateurs either. It was plain, black font on white card. They didn’t put on airs. Or, maybe they just didn’t give a shit about ‘style’.

Still, they might be a lead. And it didn't just give you the business. It gave you a name.

Alias Investigations.

Jessica Jones.

.

.

.

damn straight, i’m gonna try my hand at writing my girl jessica in the next chapter. just you wait :)

tags: @lovely-dreamer19 @spacesuitsforemergency @wittyforachange @wefracturedmotivation @january-echoes @glossyloner​ @lol-you-thought​ @ruderavenclaw​