sixthiterationlogs | some [moose] love stories need a little help

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some [moose] love stories need a little help

WHO: Claire Temple
WHERE: Mostly in the forest
WHEN: November 1st
OPEN TO: Clint Barton
WARNINGS: Probably some minor cursing, otherwise amusing levels of d'aww for being moose matchmakers

After the week Claire had, she was pretty sure things around the village couldn't get any weirder. It had been two days and shaking off the whole being invisible thing was easier said than done. So, the nurse tried to do normal things. Or, rather normal for where she was which was to find firewood given the snow had already started and likely wouldn't be stopping any time soon.

So, she put on some extra layers and headed out to gather firewood. Only it was a job she wasn't going to be able to do herself so Claire would need to commandeer someone's help. But who? So, she headed towards the inn where there always seemed to be someone looking bored out of their mind.

However, the familiar face up a ways hopefully would agree to help without her having go to the inn and waiting until she was close enough Claire gave a smile in greeting.

"Hey, it's Clint, right?" she asked, stopping a few feet in front of him. "You busy? I could use some help."

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Almost nothing can take him by surprise, but Claire's not trying to be stealthy as she approaches him. Clint turns to look at her when she speaks, since at that point it's clear that she's wanting to talk to him and not just passing by; he's got one of the bows he made and a makeshift quiver of arrows over his shoulder, not something she'd be surprised by since she knows - more or less - who he is. Winter's coming on, hunting season at home is probably in full swing, so Clint's got it in mind to try and bring down a couple of young bucks, which will provide a lot of meat for the village.

Still, it's nothing that can't wait long enough for him to find out what Claire's got in mind. Arado is with Wanda for the day, so he doesn't have to keep an eye on him as he responds. "Might be able to - what is it?"

"I'm looking to bring a bunch of wood over to burn in my fireplace so I don't freeze to death in the middle of the night." she said, playing it up maybe a little bit. "And I could really use a hand if you can spare some time."

Claire isn't like most of the people she knows where asking for help is against the law. She asks when she has to and this was one such occasion.

"I promise it won't take too long." she added, gesturing to his bow in hand to acknowledge that he was off to do something with the weapon.

That was definitely something that made sense to him, considering she was from New York. It was ...very unlikely she'd ever had to deal with a wood-burning furnace before - not that it was something he'd been an expert in, before coming here, but it was something he'd done on some missions and a couple times at home, and he'd had a lot of experience with regular fires in fireplaces. And it was even more unlikely she'd ever had to chop wood before she'd come here, considering you could just buy a bag of firewood at a lot of grocery stores if you did want to burn it. Nurses had to be good at what they did, but that didn't automatically make them strong. And the stack of "community" firewood was probably getting low, or just gone altogether considering a fair number of the ones who'd done a lot of the gathering had vanished.

Sure, he could spare the time. Probably get some for his own house, too.

"It's okay, I'll just bring it with me." Clint could easily just hold the bow in one hand and the axe in another, he was more than good enough at what he did to drop the axe and have an arrow on the string in less than a second if he had to. "I was gonna hunt - I can still do that if the chopping doesn't scare off all the game." Which, okay, it probably would, but if he shot before they started chopping... and even then, he'd still want it for defense, which she'd probably understand. "I don't really want to go unarmed." His knives were at his belt, but he clearly didn't consider that sufficiently "armed." "You get the axe yet?"

Clint would be accurate on pretty much all of it and as much as she prided herself on being adaptable and resilient, there was a certain realism that came with those traits: they both required time. At least longer than the three or so months she'd been in the village by that point. So when he agrees to help her, Claire gives a smile and nods in understanding at wanting to carry it with him. She wasn't a hunter, but there was logic where it came to forest type places where wild animals were.

"I think I prefer you taking it along, too." Claire said, nodding.

She'd heard the various range of animals that existed in the woods near where they all stayed. It definitely kept her eyes open during the evenings and she wouldn't hesitate to say the prospect of spotting a wild animal freaked her out more than it amazed her.

"Axe is leaning against my porch." she said, turning to walk back towards her house which wasn't but a few yards away.

More than even being a superhero, secret agent, and a Special Forces-trained survivalist, Clint was a native of a town in the middle of Cornfield Land Nowhere, so he was a lot more familiar with the idea of all this physical labor to survive than anyone from a city, and he still did a lot of it at home day to day from chopping wood to hunting his own game. He was okay with that, totally fine with helping people who weren't so good at this kind of thing keep alive. At least it gave him some way to keep busy and distracted in this place he didn't want to be.

"I haven't seen any kind of wolves yet, but I've heard some stories. And I can check on the blind I set up to see if anything came by." Without salt, he couldn't really set up a proper lure for deer, but it was at least vaguely sufficient for the job. As Claire turned off to go, Clint disappeared briefly into the inn, but emerged quickly with a coil of rope and one of the ridiculously common Snuggies slung over a shoulder, ready to be pressed into use doing... whatever needed doing. He was going to have tools to help gather firewood, and they didn't exactly have a sled. It didn't take long to catch up to Claire as they made their way to her house.

That was another animal she had no desire to meet. She was glad she'd found him before he headed out, if only because that Special Forces trained survivalist would have her feeling far more safe than if she would be doing this with someone that was.. less trained. Or, like her.

Grabbing the axe, she glanced out first into the trees deliberating before looking back at Clint, and point with her free hand. "Head over there?" she half questioned. That's where the forest seemed to start, so it made sense.

"Nah - over there," Clint responded, turning to the right somewhat and pointing out over the fields where the village crops had been growing until just a few weeks ago, ground that was now lying mostly fallow save for some late fall or winter vegetables such as squash now covered in downed leaves. "It's a little farther to walk but not all that much, but the ground'll be flatter. The more wood we take out along the edges there, the more room we'll have to plant things next year."

Not that he wanted to be there next year, obviously. None of them did. But he'd been there long enough to know that going home wasn't happening save for some whim of the assholes in charge, at least not until they had more information, and that army and S.H.I.E.L.D. training in him said to be prepared for any outcome. Even if, by some miracle, he left, he could still make it easier for anyone who was stuck here after him.

Starting to walk off the way he pointed, he shrugged the rope further up his shoulder, eyes scanning the horizon in an unconscious pattern of "watch." "I need to get back to making that cart, it'll make getting firewood back to town a lot easier."

Falling in stride, her eyes scanned the field and she remembered what Mark and his list of people there in the village and their talk about the food grown in that field. Seeing it put it all into perspective now and she found herself wondering..

"Would definitely come in handy for more than just firewood, especially if they can grow more." Claire said, looking ahead and then down where she was walking. "Anyone worried that growing more is a gamble though?"

She thinks so, but more out of concern that food would go bad.

"No one. You weren't here - shit happened over the spring and summer that lost us a lot of the crops. We've got enough for everyone, barely and with very careful portioning, and that's not good if something else goes wrong over winter." Hail storm. Hail storm. He was still not sure how much of their food was lost over that time, but it'd been a good chunk. "But I was working on the cart, then I had to switch over to the smokehouse and making bows - we lost some of the people who knew how to hunt, so we've gotta train people to do it again." Clint was definitely not the only one in the village who knew archery, definitely wasn't the only one who was good at it, but the fact still stood that there were many fewer people in the village that could shoot a bow than had never touched one. It was more worrying to him that it seemed like even fewer than that knew how to really build anything or repair structures. The sheer fact of the matter was that, if he let himself work on everything, he'd literally never get to sleep or eat and so he had to prioritize. It was why he hadn't helped out with the harvest, because he'd been doing other things that were useful.

The trip across the fields was easy - there just weren't that many fields, after all - but when they got into the trees, Clint had to look around with a frown. "We'd need more than we've got to get a lot of this down." A lot of the "smaller" branches had already been removed from the trees near the edge, and for anything large he wanted a saw rather than trying to repeatedly swing an axe above his head. Waaaay too many things that could go wrong with that plan. Laura would rightfully kill him. "Farther on there should be some trees we can strip, and it's not a bad walk."

'Shit happening' was a general blanket term that Claire understood without needing it to be elaborated on any further. Still, it was hard not to surmise that it wasn't one thing in particular given it happened over two seasons and cost them a lot of food. But could she say that surprised her? Not really. Not when strange things were happening to her personally.

While she listened Claire couldn't help but lift her chin in understanding. "Ahh," she drew out, glancing at him briefly before minding where she was walking. "So still being a superhero, huh?"

Matt and Luke did the same thing when they weren't actively saving Hell's Kitchen from the scum that came out after the sun went down. Claire supposed this was a default to keep busy and while she could understand it happening, she sometimes wanted to grab them by the shoulders and shake them into seeing that taking care of others wasn't possible if they couldn't take care of themselves.

Without much acknowledgement, she followed Clint and headed deeper into the trees.

It was still weird to him that someone from home had turned up that knew of him, even if she hadn't known him before... this whole mess. He'd deliberately kept a low profile, staying away from as much of the reporting and cameras as he could, a decision backed by Fury's endorsement and then the sudden collapse of S.H.I.E.L.D. Even after that, the Avengers just weren't easy to get a photo op on, since most of their missions happened in remote areas and involved people who really didn't want to be documented. Hearing Claire call him a superhero was a surreal experience.

Clint snorted, continuing to walk further into the forest. "I've never been a superhero. I'm just a guy with a bow and a talent for not falling out of moving vehicles." Well, truth. He was just also damn determined to not give up whenever the shit hit the fan. "I just don't like sitting around - I've never been good at it. Might as well do something that's gonna help people if I'm gonna be doing something anyway, right?"

"If I had a quarter for every time I heard that." Claire confirmed, finding it incredibly hard not let out more of a laugh while thinking of the people she committed herself to helping back home. All of them, at some point, told her the exact same thing. Even she was guilty of saying it.

After the laugh trailed off she shook her head and turned her head to give Clint a mock look of suspicion.

"And are you always this modest because you know hanging out with the shield guy and Iron Man sort of says otherwise."

"You'd be richer than Tony." It wasn't a line he believed, but Clint recognized the sentiment behind it. Given her job and location of said job, Claire probably saw a lot of bad but also a lot of good, people saving others, law enforcement and first responders injured and brought in, and those people were frequently called "superheroes" for their brave actions. She'd probably seen a lot of people use that line in her life - and just as many people saying or doing the opposite.

"I wasn't supposed to be doing that - Cap needed a pilot, I needed to shoot Loki in the eye. It was only gonna be a one-time thing." Well, clearly it hadn't stopped after one time, even if they only got things together again over two years later. But even though he was part of the team, Clint still instinctively didn't think they needed him, no matter what Laura said.

Being that rich would be really nice, if you asked her. But only insofar as being able to afford a nice place to live and maybe a trip, or two to somewhere warm and beautiful..

Nah, she'd be happy with a paying job again.

When Claire looks at him again, her brow is raised in show of disbelief. "Just a pilot? That's it?"

Before Clint can reply to that, the nurse is speaking again. "Somehow wanting to shoot a god in the eye sounds awfully personal, especially for a guy who was only meant to be the pilot."

"If it can fly, I can pilot it." Why yes Claire, that is a magnificent side-stepping of your question there, you are so right about that. Clint's face is entirely blank as he answers the question, but there's... something... in his eyes that overshadows their normal expression. Normally very good at hiding everything behind a mask of regular guy, right now his eyes are dark, hard... haunted. Keeping his focus straight ahead, he keeps walking through the trees, his entire "image" shut off for the moment.

But they have a job to do, and once they're out there, he'll stop and look around, selecting a tree for the job. "Okay - that one, there. It's got some good branches, it should work for you for a day or so. We really need to get some people together and rig some log harnesses." He's actually hoping that one day he'll come across one of the large pine giants that had fallen naturally, but so far that's a pipe dream. "We need to-"

And his speech cuts off as he catches something out of the corner of his eye.

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some [moose] love stories need a little help

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