All Inclusive

It had been a couple of weeks since his birthday. God he was old.

Well, not really, he supposed; he was in peak physical condition. Being scrawny as a kid did that to you; after he hit puberty, all he wanted was to be big and strong. He got over it eventually, but he kept himself in the peak of health for the sake of his job and his own survival. But emotionally, he felt worn down, and it wasn't pleasant.

Natasha, for a woman who disliked something so acceptable as Christmas, had deemed his birthday worthy of celebration. That was one of the cute things about her, normally hidden underneath the very thick layer that was prowling seductress and living weapon, and he was grateful to have her around. He didn't see what was so important about a birthday and he had more or less grown out of it after he'd turned twenty-one and could legally drink. Even though it had been strange for him, he'd celebrated with her. It was the least he could do.

Forty-two years old. Good lord. He should be older, technically, since Natasha was in the future; did his age, right then in the hotel, even really matter? Things were getting mixed up, so he did his best to ignore it and just continue on as if nothing weird was happening. He'd worked out in the gym for a good hour before showering it off and then wandering outside. There was some sort of carnival going on, which he wasn't hugely interested in; but parts of the lawn were nice and chilly, and good to cool down in. Also good to cool down the piping hot pizza he'd ordered. He didn't work out to lose weight, so the idea of not eating terrible food only occurred to him when he considered heart health (and, to be frank, he never survived longer than a week on vegetables).

He sat on the edge of a part of the lawn that had a cool, chilly breeze on one side and a sultry heat on the other - it was pretty cool how strange the weather was here - and relaxed, enjoying the fact he got to lounge around beside an entire pizza and not feel like he ought to be doing something else. It was weird being jobless, but not unpleasant. It was also kind of nice to not have the pressure of the fate of the world hovering over his head; he just had to worry whether or not Natasha was glum, and as far as he knew she was in high spirits these days.

Roughly three hours ago, Clint had been skillfully monkeying his way down the side of a building, the grips sewn in the palms of his gloves helping him to twist and turn his way through a fire escape that had, long ago, become nothing more than a tilting mass of rusted metal leaning haphazardly against a wall of brick. Roughly three hours ago, he'd been burning with a purpose, the heady sensation of a job completed but with the bitter caution of knowing he was not yet out of danger. Landing silently on his feet in the alleyway, he had kept to the shadows. Three blocks over he heard sirens, but of course it was too late.

The room he had torched had been filled with hardware containing information on several SHIELD operatives, including their alternate identities. It had already been copied, placed under safe keeping, but the originals had to be wiped clean. When it came to fires, Clint often volunteered; too often when the spark was set by a rookie it spread and harmed civilians. Besides, there was really no place quite like southeast Asia to disappear to for a bit when you wanted to clear your head of things.

At the next building down, at the opposite end of the alley, he had made quick work of the lock. But upon going through he was not in an abandoned service hallway for an insurance firm. Even if there hadn't been windows full of sunlight when he knew it had to be the dead of night, the very air told him that he had experienced something very, very odd.

It took some time to ascertain he had not had a stroke, was not going insane, and really was in what appeared to be a pretty nice hotel, far nicer than the ones he usually stayed in. Dimensional doorways weren't completely out of his grasp, of course, but the ones he knew about required a bit more pomp, circumstance, and energy fields than the single, quiet door he had walked through.

Since a few tries had told him that returning was not an option, he ended up going immediately into what he called 'airport mode' - when waiting for a flight, train, or similar, it was always best to procure three things: book, coffee, and a sandwich. Even if you didn't even want those items. So there he was in the Bistro, a third of the way through a book he had found in the gift shop, wondering how long it was going to take before he could either a) get back home or b) panic. At least his gear was more or less subtle, and he had his compound bow and quiver on the floor and tucked along the side of his leg, mostly out of sight.