Hawkeye: The Arrow Home

The Nest, aka Home

***Barton Farmhouse | Winterset, Iowa***

Early in the morning, just before the rooster crows, there's a certain peace in the air. The sky turning from black to a faint blue hue, the light sound of crickets chirping.

At this hour, no one in the Barton Household were awake. Well, almost no one.

In the upstairs of the house, a pair of socked feet tiptoed across the hall to the bathroom. That was Nathaniel Pietro Barton, or Nate for short. The youngest of the Barton clan.

He had always been something of an early bird. Some mornings, he'd be up watching cartoons, drawing something, or playing games on his tablet. But not this morning.

After taking care of the regular morning call of nature, instead of heading back to his room, Nate looked to another bedroom with the door closed and walked over to it. This was the room of his big brother and most days, he would go in and wake him up. And sometimes, it would be the reverse. But not today!

Opening the door as quietly as he could, Nate poked his head in and looked around the room which was covered in a faint light from the window and the brightening sky outside. This allowed Nate to see that the room was empty as far as who he was looking for. The bed had definitely been slept in, but was now empty.

This made him think. His brother wasn't here, and he definitely wasn't in the bathroom as he himself had just come from there and no one had passed him. So where could he be?

Then it came to him.

Running back to his room, quietly as he could, Nate put on some shoes and a jacket and went downstairs and out the front door.

As fast as his legs could go, Nate darted across the property over to the barn and the large doors which made the entrance. Pulling them open, he stepped inside before closing them behind him. As he stepped in, the light from outside shined through the hayloft doors on the second level, illuminating the room with faint blue light. And that's exactly where he needed to go.

With a smile on his face, Little Nate walked over to a stairway ramp and ran up it to the second floor before walking over to the open hayloft doors. As he did, he saw a sleeping bed on the floor. It had definitely been laid on within the past hour, but was now empty.

Which left the question...where was the person who laid in it?

"Well, well, well," A voice said from the shadows, causing Nate to jump up and turn around swiftly, "look what crawled into my nest."

Though it did surprise him, Nate wasn't frightened as he knew who the voice belonged to. In fact, he even smiled.

"Fate whispers to the warrior..." He said confidently.

"A storm is coming," the voice replied.

"And the warrior whispers back..."

The sound of footsteps approaching were heard before a young man with blond hair stepped into the light. And who was that young man?

Francis "Frankie" Barton. "I am the storm."

Nate's smiled widened before he ran up to his older brother and hugged him, to which the older next Hawkeye hugged him back. The lines they had said back to each other were from a movie the two had seen two nights ago; Mission: Impossible 6 - Fallout, and it obviously had become a favorite of theirs.