Issue 16 YEAR THREE DECEMBER Author: Lonni Holland

HAWKEYE Armed with a high-tech arsenal and the surpassing skill to use it, Clint Barton dons the familiar purple costume and fires justice from his bow.

Known Variables

cover art by Kevin Newburn

"Bobbi!!"

Damn! I am finally straight with Bobbi's death, I've put it behind me. I love her but I am going on. Still, nights like this are when I wake up yelling my wife's name. I was sweating and tangled in the sheets, my heart was pounding and I was gasping for breath. I'd had the same damned dream five times tonight, and each time I had awakened at the same point screaming for Bobbi to hold me, comfort me. She wasn't there so I just hugged a pillow instead, and went back to sleep.

* see AWC 112 and 113 for all the details

That could wait too. I came out of the shower wrapped in my towel and started scrounging around looking for a clean uniform. Man, I really have to learn to pick my things up I guess. Jarvis isn't here to care for us and, while we do have domestic help, I still need to keep track of my dirty stuff to put out for cleaning. I rummaged through the crap in my duffel bag and ended up finding the time travel pocket watch that YJ made for me. * Better do something with that one before someone finds it and mucks things up. I wouldn't want to wake up and find out I wasn't here cause someone went back and offed my granddad or something.

* see the Good Old Days - Hawkeye 12-15

I managed to find a clean uniform but wasn't too happy when the waist band felt a bit tight. Too much running around saving the world, not enough time for training... I made a mental note to get back into the weight room again. I normally worked out for at least a couple of hours each day, and not all of it was shooting, but since I had come out to the west coast there just never seemed to be time. Well, I'd make time. Hell, I was the AWC chairman, if I couldn't squeeze a few hours of practice in between saving the universe and the timeline then who could? Uhhh... Cap could. Have to give the old war-horse a call one of these days.

Speaking of calls, I grabbed some toast and coffee and headed to my office and the phone started going. Jack had been taking care of regular business (blast him, anyway) but I had a stack of personal messages waiting and the damned thing rang as soon as my butt hit the chair.

"AWC HQ, Hawkeye here."

"Hawkeye, this is Blake Thomas from Associated Press. Can we get a statement from you about..."

I cut him off. "Look, we'll be issuing a formal statement later in the day. * You're just going to have to wait until them."

* indeed they will but not the way Hawk thinks - see AWC 113 for details

"But this is breaking news now." I started flipping through some of the messages while he droned on but then something caught my attention. "....have been allegations that the Avengers are covering something up and we thought you'd like to tell your side of the story."

"Allegations of what?!? Look Mr. Thomas, the Avengers have always been on the up and up. Remember us? We're the guys in the white hats. Now I really don't have time for this. The press will be notified when our statement is ready, Associated Press included. Until then I have nothing else to say."

I hung up as he was in mid rebuttal. Allegations my ass! He just figured he could bait me into giving a statement early, although I was gonna have to deal with the press eventually I guessed. Bah, back to the business at hand. Okay, message from Marcy, she and the carney were playing in San Bernadino and wanted to know if I could pop up to see her. I smiled, yeah, that would be fun, besides I really had an obligation to make sure that the Brothers Grimm weren't giving her any trouble and were going straight like they promised. *

* back in Hawkeye 11

More messages: a couple more news stringers, my bank (right, VISA bill, have to set up an automatic debit for that since, in this biz, I never know if I'll be away when it should be paid), the Palos Verde Ratepayers Association (likely bitching cause we were away and NOT making noise this time), so far it looked like the same old stuff. I was nearing the bottom of the pile when the phone rang again.

"AWC HQ, Hawkeye here."

"You stood me up, hero. You better have an explanation."

"Gayle? Oh geez, it's Tuesday isn't it and we were supposed to have dinner on Monday. I'm sorry but we were uhhh... away on business."

There was total silence on the other end. Come on lady, speak. You know it isn't my fault I stood you up. Oh brother, I screwed up another relationship that hadn't even gotten started, didn't I? Then I heard a deep, throaty chuckle.

"You know, for a man who thinks he's funny, you have no sense of humor at all. Don't worry Hawk, I'm in a business where it's hard to keep personal commitments too. I knew it just meant you were busy. So, now that you are back, how about tonight?"

Nope, that wouldn't work. Too much happening here and besides I wanted to go see Marcy while she was still in the area. Also, it'd be pretty tacky to turn down talking to an AP guy then head out for dinner with a chick from SCN, even if we had made the date before anything started hitting the fan. I stalled her and hung up. No sense of humor my arse. I rummaged through the last of the messages but I knew I had to answer the last one, it was from the Variable. *

* remember him? he tried out for the team but then left back in AWC 107

I dialed the number right away. A sleepy voice answered. I stopped and thought about it; it was early wasn't it? Whoops. "Variable, Hawkeye here. Sorry I didn't get back to you right away but you know how it goes, one galactic crisis after another."

Yawn. "Yeah, well you told me to call you and stay in touch, so I did. Of course if I had know you'd call back at the crack of dawn I might not have."

"Uhh, yeah. Sorry about that but I'm just getting a chance to catch up on my paperwork right now. Look, you bolted on us pretty abruptly and I wanted to talk to you about it. My roster is pretty full now but I don't want to see you give up the hero game. You had a pretty decent power and good instincts, it'd be a shame for you to take all that potential off the supertights market, so to speak."

"Yeah, well I've got my reasons, and they're good ones. Now if you don't mind, since I am up so early I might as well grab a shower and some breakfast so if there's nothing else..."

Man, someone sure had a burr under his saddle. "Whoa there, partner. Let's talk about this a bit. Say, why don't you grab your shower and I'll head out to your place and bring breakfast. We can talk about it then." He grudgingly agreed and gave me his address. "Okay, so how do you feel about tacos for breakfast? No, huh? Okay, I'll grab the Egg McMuffins and be there in a couple. See you then."

I hustled my butt and headed out, leaving a note for the team on the off chance that any of them would be up and around looking for me this early. I'd be back in a couple of hours and most of them would likely just be rolling out of bed about then. I hopped on a skycycle and headed for McDonald's.

I found my mind wandering as I zipped down the coast to the Variable's place. Good thing there wasn't much traffic in the sky. I zipped into a drive thru and grabbed breakfast and tried hard not to laugh too hard at the look on the kid's face when I flew around to the next window on my skycycle to get the food.

I landed the skycycle at the address he gave me. Nice suburban home, neat lawn, white fence around it, two car garage, some flowers in neat arrangements at the front, looked like the American dream home. Funny, not quite what I had expected but... I knocked on the door and it opened.

He wasn't in costume but he still looked pretty much as I recalled, tall, slim, long blonde hair pulled into a pony tail at the nape of his neck. He didn't look overjoyed to see me however and I wondered why. He shut the front door behind him and said. "Look Hawk, how about moving that buggy of yours into the back yard. I don't really want to advertise your presence to my neighbors."

"Uhh sure, Variable, what ever you say."

"And don't call me that here."

As I herded my transportation behind the fence and into the backyard I snapped back "Exactly what should I call you, bud? You never did tell me your name, not that it's a requirement for joining the team or anything but it's that or hey you."

He shoved an errant hunk of hair back from his face and looked a bit embarrassed. "Yeah, you're right. Sorry. My real name is Scott but most people call me Scooter. Look, Hawk, let's try this again. You brought breakfast and I have a carafe of coffee on the back patio so let's talk there. Besides I don't want to wake up my wife. She's sleeping right now and since she is so close to term I'd like to let her get as much rest as she can. She's pretty big and finds it hard to get comfortable sometimes."

Now that took me a second, then I suddenly realized he was talking about her being pregnant. "Geez, I didn't even know you were married, let alone expecting a family. Congratulations, man." I was a bit thrown by that but I carried on. "Look Scooter, you left us pretty fast, and I have to wonder why. Don't you want to talk about it? If it's the fact that you are expecting a family, that shouldn't stop you. Lots of superheroes have kids. Well, maybe not lots but...."

"No, that's not it." He looked away, like he was trying to avoid my eyes. "I have my reasons, can't we just leave it at that?"

For a few minutes we just sat there in his suburban paradise, both of us on big green plastic patio chairs, sipping coffee and munching on Egg McMuffins and hash browns, him looked pointedly at his feet and me wondering what I was supposed to be saying. I had finally decided on a tack to take when my concentration was broken by a distant muffled boom, a sudden whistling sound followed by a sharp crack beside my head. I instinctively grabbed Variable and shoved him to the ground beneath me even as I felt the flying bits of concrete stinging my cheek just below my mask. That was a gunshot!

A few more rounds whipped past us. Blast it! My bow and quiver were clamped to the side of the skycycle. I shoved the kid where I figured he'd be safe and tried running to get them, keeping as low as I could, which isn't that easy when you are over six foot tall. I almost made it too, until our assailant switched to heavy artillery and tossed a small concussion grenade. Nothing hit me but the shockwave, and that was more than enough. The world fell away about then and I passed out beside a neatly trimmed rose bush.

"Hawk? Come on, man, wake up."

Huh? I hurt all over and someone was shaking my shoulder. I glimpsed a flash of blonde hair and instinctively tried to cover up and protect myself. Wait, that wasn't right. A flickering memory disappeared and was replaced by a pounding headache and the worried face of the Variable. He helped me up and I started to remember what had happened. My first concern was if we were still under attack. Scooter assured me we weren't then handed me a piece of paper that had been tied to a rock and tossed into the yard just after the grenade had knocked me for a loop and trashed half his garden. I uncrumpled it and read:

You stole my power, you tried to parlay it into a big name with the Avengers. Well, you can't hide from me. What you have should be mine, and I want it back.

"Well, Hawk, you wanted to know why I left. That's why. Just after my first battle with the team I got a message like that, except it was a bit more specific. It threatened me, it threatened my wife. I couldn't live if anything happened to Robyn, so I left. End of story."

I could see the tears in his eyes, and in the distance I could hear the scream of sirens as emergency crews responded to the earlier shots and explosion. Okay, so I was an Avenger and was supposed to take care of the regular folks right? I grabbed the note and shoved it in a pouch in my tunic. "We'll talk later, now just follow my lead and let me handle the authorities."

He looked puzzled but nodded. In moments we were surrounded by cops. I hurriedly told them how I had been attacked by an unknown assailant and had to land here in this poor unsuspecting citizen's backyard. Sorry, officers, no idea who it was but personal assaults seemed to come with the costume. They bought it all. Guess the Barton yarn spinning talent was holding up. So, why did I still feel like I had recently tried to feed someone a load of bull and failed?

An ambulance attendant flicked a light in my eyes and pronounced me at least able to hold my head up unassisted. Generous of him. Then he swiped at the cuts on my cheek with something that stung like the devil and advised me to get further medical treatment. I assured him that I would take care of it back at the compound but right now I just wanted to help out Scooter with fixing up his yard a bit since I had been responsible for his garden being wrecked. The police grudgingly took a few measurements and gauged the angle of a few of the shots then left.

Variable and I started to straighten things up in the backyard. His wife had come out while the police were there. She was a cute little thing, reddish brown hair cut short, a handful of freckles across her nose and obviously very pregnant. She barely came up to my chest and I almost felt like I was talking to a china doll. When the cops left she came up to me, took my arm firmly and asked me to take care of her Scooter. I assured her I would do my best and she pulled my head down, brushed my lips with hers then returned to the house and left the two of us to talk.

He started at the beginning, Seems he had been a night security guard at a lab somewhere while he worked on his degree in broadcast arts at UCLA. His grandfather had set him up with a small trust fund, nothing fancy but it was enough for him to afford this mini yuppie haven in the burbs. One night he had come across one of the scientists trying to sneak something out of the lab, They tussled, there was an accident and some liquid something or other got spilled on Scooter. The scientist made his escape, the big guys had hushed it up and Scooter found himself out of work but with a nice 'disability' pension from the company on the condition that he kept his mouth shut. His powers turned up about eight months later. At first he hadn't made the connection but when company busybodies kept checking up on him he finally decided that it had something to do with whatever was splashed on him.

This had been over a year ago. He had experimented with his newfound powers and discovered most of the extent of them, super speed or strength, flying, growing, shrinking, invisibility, teleportation, a whole range of psi powers like telepathy and telekinesis, shape shifting, laser bolts from his eyes and a few others that seemed pretty useless like color changing and bouncing,. What he hadn't been able to discover was how to control which one he would come up with next. There seemed to be no particular pattern to it, just random super powers. He finally decided that he should think about doing something to use his abilities about the time the bunch of us got into that supposedly fatal tussle with Onslaught (why did that send a chill down my spine?). He wasn't quite sure how to start then we all came back. The casting call I had for the Whacko's * provided him with the ideal opportunity, then the threats started.

* in AWC 104

I couldn't blame him for wanting to protect his wife but it burned me that the spandex biz was going to loose a contender to intimidation. I asked to use his phone, made a couple of calls, called in a few favors here and there, and arranged to have them moved to a safe house (courtesy of the ever generous Tony Stark) and guarded (courtesy of my old LA Police buddy Zamara). As soon as things at the compound were taken care of Scooter and I could get seriously into finding out who had tried to terrorize him. It could be the scientist he had caught and I had been up against enough mad scientists in my time, one more should be easy. Of course it could also have been the company he had worked for trying to hush things up. Well, I'd taken on big corporations before too * and even though it had cost me everything I had it'd been worth it.

* back in Hawkeye's first Limited Series.

I hoped on my skycycle and headed home. In spite of the aches and headache I had from that blast I felt good. This was something I could get my teeth into. No way was I going to let these kids be pushed around, especially when they were really just getting started. Things that had been bothering me about the team could be worked out, the press could be dealt with, I felt like a hero again and I liked that, a lot.

Now if I could just figure out what these weird feelings were that I kept getting whenever I woke up....

Next issue? More Variable, more strange dreams and maybe a confrontation with a team member.

Lonni Holland
July 4, 1999

lonni@paratime.ca