The Death Of Hawkeye

Thomas Wolfe was right...you can't go home again. It's not that you don't want to. That you don't want to just step back into your old life and pick up where you left off, its just that too much has happened and you can't. Clint had tried. Tried to lay down the mantle of Ronin and be Hawkeye again. Be an Avenger. But it was a role that he no longer fit in. It no longer was a part of him.

He had discovered after the snap that nothing defines you, nothing. Because that excludes the possibility of change. He was defined by nothing and he believed in nothing. But he had ideas. Ideas were better than beliefs. Beliefs were dangerous things. People died for them, people killed for them. But you could always change an idea, just as you could always change yourself. And after the snap that is exactly what Clint had done. Changed. He had fallen from his role of an Avenger like an angel from grace. Lost, alone, not knowing what to do, where to turn.

Until one day it was as if lightening had struck his heart and he had become Ronin, laying down his bow and taking up his sword instead. He felt purpose again, felt alive.

And then Natasha had come for him and the holy sh*t storm that had followed. All of them had gone through hell and back again but finally the dust had settled. They had their normal back once more.

Clint had tried. Really tried to be Hawkeye again. But everything about it felt wrong. He felt wrong in his own skin. He couldn't handle it. So he had walked away. They had all tried to get him to stay, tried to talk him out of leaving but he wouldn't be swayed. He loved them all and always would but he didn't belong there anymore.

He wasn't Hawkeye.

He was Ronin.