The Hedgehog and the Fox - Beginnings

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Clint walks in on Jennie receiving some very bad news. He decides to be helpful, and Jennie reluctantly agrees.




Wiping sweat from his face with the bottom of his shirt, Clint looked back at the obstacle course in the Danger Room and shook his head wonderingly. The technology was amazing - he was jealous. He wanted one of his very own. He would not hold it and cuddle it and call it Bob, but it would be his and that would be totally satisfying.

He hooked his bow over one shoulder, quiver poking up over the other, and gave Scott a small salute as he headed for the exit. He'd made it most of the way back to his suite, planning on showering before making himself the biggest breakfast he possibly could with whatever he could scrounge up in the kitchenette, when he caught sight of Jennie. "Hey," he said, giving her a smile.

Jennie didn't pay Clint any attention, she was absorbed in a tablet. It was playing a news broadcast in Danish, and Jennie had a small translator running plugged into her ear.

Brows rising a little, Clint paused mid-stride. It wasn't like Jennie to just completely ignore him. She should've at least made some comment about him being all sweaty and gross. Catching sight of the headline across the top of the tablet, he frowned. He didn't speak a lot of Danish - just enough to get himself where he needed to go and, subsequently, into a lot of trouble. He could, however, see the pictures as well, and they... did not bode well. "J," he said, stepping closer to her.

"Serial killer strikes again," Jennie said, not looking up at Clint. "Fourth one in two months. Victims gutted and displayed the same way." It was a coincidence, it had to be. And yet. "Ever hear of the Croydon killer?"

"No?" Clint said, eyebrows rising. "But Croydon's in London, right? Not exactly my area of expertise. Obviously means something to you, though."

Jennie looked up at Clint. She'd begun to ease back into her life. It had been quiet, and with the passing of time and the fact that her friends lived and complained about boredom, meant that she had started to let go of the old hurt. To heal. To be herself again. But this was coming close to that dark place in herself that she never wanted to see again. But knew that eventually, she would have to.

"I lived in Croyden when I was in the Royal London Ballet. Or, rather, lived there after I broke my foot and was trying to rehab it so I could dance again. And there was... a killer on the loose. I'm not surprised you didn't hear of it. He mostly went after immigrants. Or other undesirables. Only the people in the area really knew about him and what he was doing. But he had a specific style." She stopped the video, and called up some files.

"The one on the right is a Croydon victim, the other was found outside of Copenhagen last week."

Taking the tablet, Clint shrugged his shoulder to make sure his bow wasn't about to fall off, then looked at the pictures. "Shit," he murmured. "That's brutal. The guy in Croydon wasn't caught, so he moved house?"

"He was, funnily enough. By a bunch of meddling kids. Or a dancer with a broken foot, and two untrained mutants who were going to haul off an do something stupid if she didn't help them," Jennie tapped some more, and called up two personnel files. "Meet Winston Alleyne, who at the age of 15 got a bee up his butt to do some 'proper suphero-ing'" Jennie affected a south London accent. "And his drunk Irish enabler--" the second picture was a face very familiar to both of them. Donal McGrath.

"Aw, hell," Clint said, raising his free hand to rub at his forehead. "Damn. Okay." He looked from the tablet and the picture of the man he'd known only as Fian to Jennie. "Okay, so. What're we doing about this?"

"Is there going to be a part where you reassure me that it's all just a coincidence and I'm just being paranoid?" Jennie asked dryly.

"I don't believe in coincidences," Clint said, expression serious. "And it's only paranoia if you're wrong." He looked down at the tablet again, regretting what happened to the man in the picture. He'd been a nice guy, competent and fun to work with - but bad shit happened to good people all the time. "Are you wrong?"

"I don't know. I hope that I am. But there's ...this." Jennie handed over a list of victims, with similarities circled. They were all dancers. And the last three on the list looked very much alike.

The last one could have been Jennie's sister.

The superficial similarities were all there, all easy to spot - light eyes, dark hair, general build. But Clint picked up the facial features, the slant of each woman's eyes, their cheekbones, the same curve to their lips. Each subsequent victim looked more and more like the woman standing in front of him. "Okay, so. This is definitely not a coincidence. Their goddamn noses turn up at the same angle, J."

"It's a message, and I have to answer it. Just me, not the team. Not XF. It's not that I don't trust them, but he wants me. If they show up, he's going to put two and two together and then nothing will keep them safe." Jennie rubbed her face. "And don't do something stupid like try to stop me."

"Pssh," Clint said, handing her back the tablet. He pointed to his forehead. "Remember, special operative? I'm not trying to stop you. But I am going with you. Not quite disavowed, myself, but I've got outside connections to the mansion and I've got the training you'll need for backup. Also, I can handle things long range."

"And if he gets you and guts you like a fish? What do I tell your redheads?"

"The stabby one - you promise her she's allowed in on whatever op you run that eventually brings him down. She'll do it herself, even if you don't want her involved, so don't try to shut her out. The burny one... I dunno." Clint quirked an eyebrow. "But how about for now you give a guy some credit and only worry about that if he actually gets me and guts me like a fish. I know it's hard to believe, but I'm actually pretty capable when it comes to not dying."

Jennie looked at Clint, and the full of force of her grief hit her again. "That's what he used to say."

Reaching out, Clint placed a hand on her shoulder and looked her square in the eye. "J. I'm not letting you go on your own. I don't know what you taught him or how long he'd been doing what he was doing, but I've been training on the bow since I was seven and hand-to-hand since I was eleven. For reference, I turn thirty-one this December. At the very least, I can hold him off until you get to wherever we are if he corners me."

"No," said Jennie. "This is mine. This is between me and him. I've been training for this since I got here. You can come with me, but you promise me one thing. It's me that takes him. Me and me alone."

Clint narrowed his eyes a little. "I won't purposefully engage him, but if he gets to me rather than going for you, I'll do what I have to do. I might shoot him full of arrows if it looks like he's getting the upper hand against you. But I'm along purely to make sure you get back mostly in one piece. This isn't my fight. I'm not going to take it from you."

Jennie shook her head. "Fine. Why are there so many men that get a hair up their ass about being heroic and giving me a headache," she turned to the table and gathered her things. "Start packing, we leave tomorrow. And I'm in charge, you follow me, and maybe we'll come back in one piece."