Clinton Barton

This page is about the Phase 2 incarnation of the character. For other uses, see Clinton Barton (disambiguation) or Hawkeye (disambiguation).

PHASE 2

Clinton Barton
Portrayed by Charlie Hunnam
Codename:	Hawkeye
Affiliations:	eXcalibur
Birthdate:	December 6, 1983
Journal:	xp_hawkeye
Player:	Cai

It’s what SWORD wants to be doing. I think the end goal got lost after M-Day, but finding and fixing these sorts of things. It’s good work. It’s worth doing. And it’s rewarding in that ‘fuck yeah, we accomplished something epic’ sort of way.

Former Agent of SHIELD, former Agent of SWORD, nosy in-the-closet mutant scientist with a white knight complex.

Details

Character Journal: Cause I Love How It Feels When I Break The Chains

Real Name: Clinton Francis Barton

Codename: Hawkeye

Aliases: Clint, Barton

First Appearance: February 1, 2015

Date of Birth: December 6, 1983

Place of Birth: Poughkeepsie, NY

Citizenship: US

Relatives: Parents were Harold and Edith Barton, paternal grandparents were Clinton and Margaret Barton, all are now deceased. Has an older brother, Bernard (nicknamed Barney), that he keeps in touch with fairly regularly. Adoptive parents are Andre and Steve Kimura-Murdock, who currently live in Manhattan. Adoptive brother is Matt Murdock, Andre's biological nephew.

Education: Graduated high school from Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School. Attended MIT and received a BS in Nuclear Science & Engineering as well as a BS in Physics (double major for undergrad, his minors were Biology and Computer Science), an MS in Nuclear Science & Engineering with a focus in applied plasma physics, and a PhD in Computational & Systems Biology. Because of the number of advanced/college level courses Clint crammed into his high school years as well as his various high school and college summer courses, he managed his undergrad double majors in three years rather than the typical four. His MS and PhD both took two years.

Relationship Status: Single

Occupation: Formerly an Agent of SHIELD, formerly an Agent of SWORD. Currently unemployed.

Team Affiliation: eXcalibur

Biography

Childhood

Clint was born the second son of a normal middle class family, his parents both hardworking and loving. Unfortunately, his mother passed away shortly after giving birth to him due to complications with the delivery. His brother, Bernard, was six years old at the time and, with the help of his grandparents, Clint and Barney managed to stay with their father while he worked two jobs to ensure they were adequately supported. However, when Clint was four, his father died in a car crash.

Shortly before his father’s death, Clint was diagnosed with colorblindness, though it didn't run in his family on either his mother or father’s side. Clint was too young to understand what was going on at the time and then his father was gone. His grandparents assumed custody of both the Barton boys and concerns about the cause of Clint's colorblindness shifted to the back burner as getting them moved into their grandparents' home and ready for school too precedence. Sadly, his grandfather passed away when Clint was six and his grandmother followed a year later. With no other family to take them in, Barney (aged 13) decided that it would be better for them to run away than be placed in foster care and potentially separated.

While making their way to New York City, the boys found a small traveling circus and Barney begged for work there rather than continuing to the city. Given his age, there wasn't much Barney could do, so both he and Clint worked as roustabouts. Shortly after their arrival it became apparent that both boys had an uncanny ability to hit whatever they happened to aim at with a variety of thrown objects. The boys quickly found themselves apprenticed to Jacques Duquesne (Swordsman) and Buck Chisholm (Trick Shot). In exchange for doing menial tasks and eventually assisting with their stage shows, the performers trained Barney in hand-to-hand fighting (which came in handy for tumbling as well as self defense) and archery.

Barney passed on some of the skills he learned to Clint, who took to archery like a fish to water and almost never missed a shot. Jacques and Buck were essentially good men, though they did take advantage of the free labor the boys provided and tended toward anger when drinking. Barney took the brunt of whatever violence the men directed toward them while intoxicated. As he got older, Clint began taking part more in the stage shows and also started learning directly from Buck, who actually gave him a battered bow and quiver for his tenth birthday.

This mostly satisfactory, school-less life came to an end when Clint was eleven. The circus attracted the attention of the authorities near New York City for allegedly cheating patrons as well as gambling and selling drugs. When the police raided the circus and found the young boys, they snapped the brothers up and placed them in Child Protective Custody before moving Clint into foster care.

Movin' On Up

Placed with Steve and Andre Kimura-Murdock in Manhattan, Clint found himself enrolled in school for the first time in four years and woefully behind. He kept in close touch with Barney, who went to a group home after aging out of foster care, then back on the road with the circus. Clint worked hard in school, focusing on studying rather than the fact that he seemed to be the odd one out because of his remedial courses. Steve and Andre enrolled him in a self-defense classes as well as deciding to let him continue with his archery training.

Aside from the fact that he attended summer school each year, middle school was uneventful for Clint socially, though it allowed him to figure out which subjects he particularly enjoyed and he excelled in Math and Science. Social Studies bored him and he could get through Language Arts, but it wasn't his favorite class. While his colorblindness didn't automatically exclude him from art related classes (in fact, he took a sculpting class purely for the credit requirement), it did make art more difficult for him.

It had essentially no impact on his participation in PE, though. He did well, particularly enjoying games like dodge ball, since he almost never missed hitting people on the opposing team. He also wound up holding the record for rope climbing every year and, though it wasn't allowed, could more often than not be found in one of the trees in the courtyard where the kids could eat lunch if the kids were given free time outside. Since he usually read rather than causing trouble and he never encouraged others to follow him up into the branches, his teachers didn't see any particular reason to scold him – he never fell.

When he was fourteen, Andre was notified that his younger brother, Jonathon Murdock, had been killed. CPS asked if he and his partner would take in his nephew, Matthew. They quickly agreed and Clint found himself with a younger brother.

Gettin' that Education

His high school years were also uneventful, for the most part. Having received high scores on his testing in middle school, Clint was allowed to take more advanced math and science classes. He eventually took all the courses in those subjects available at his high school and began taking college level classes at Columbia.

Upon graduating high school as class Valedictorian, Clint attended MIT for both undergrad and graduate studies. He received his PhD in 2009 and was quickly recruited by SHIELD, who'd been monitoring his academic progress. During the screening process prior to being officially admitted to the basic training program, one of the doctors discovered Clint possessed the x-gene. Further testing determined that it was not dormant and, in fact, Clint's extreme visual acuity as well as his reflexes and spatial awareness/exteroception were linked to his genetic mutation.

Duckin' into the Closet

The doctor informed Clint of her discovery and reported her findings to Supervisory Special Agent Coulson, who took the information to Director Fury. Between the two of them they decided that Clint's abilities and skill set made him a valuable asset and, rather than flagging him as a mutant, they allowed him to continue with SHIELD basic training. Upon completion of the program, he began work as a field agent specializing in ranged defense and containment/study of 0-8-4's. He worked with SSA Coulson regularly until late 2013, when he met Dr. Jane Foster and requested a transfer to SWORD so he could work more closely with her as she attempted to figure out (scientifically) how the Bifrost Bridge was possible and how it functioned. He even got to meet Thor, finding the demigod to be generally a nice guy and an excellent drinking buddy.

After the events of January 2015 and M-Day, Clint watched the tension in his team increase dramatically. People he typically got along with began to irritate him as they spouted anti-mutant sentiments with more and more frequency. The vitriol got worse the longer he stayed and he became dissatisfied with his work environment and began to worry that his status as a mutant might somehow be revealed.

Leavin' It All Behind

After an altercation with his partner at SWORD and attempting to convince the mysterious vigilante behind a series of 'accidents' that befell various anti-mutant groups and people to stop, Clint got shipped to Barrow, Alaska to inventory and guard a SHIELD/SWORD storage facility. While there, he discovered a mysterious tube, seemingly self-powered, that had been stored there for over a decade. Interest piqued, he began studying it in his spare time.

SHIELD and SWORD's vacation policies changed to use-it-or-lose-it, though, and so Clint returned to NYC to hang out with his brother, Matt. While there, he met Kitty Pryde in the city, found out he got along remarkably well with Warren Worthington, celebrated Easter with his family, met a girl, and managed to agree to supply better gear to Miles Morales and his Spider-Man counterpart. Fortuitously, he met Clarice Ferguson after a run, a fact that came in handy when, after actually giving the Spider-Men their gear, he was sent back to Alaska.

Due to some minor shift swapping, Clint was the agent at the warehouse in Barrow when Susan Storm broke in, intent on stealing the very tube that had captured Clint's interest. While they bickered, the power surges that had been occurring more and more frequently within the tube reached their peak and the tube disgorged a mysterious man. Violently aggressive, the man attacked both Clint and Sue, forcing them to defend themselves. Sue was knocked unconscious when the man broke through one of her force fields, leaving Clint to try to take him down on his own. Luckily, the man passed out before managing to do more than badly bruise Clint, so the agent called Clarice for an assist, cleaned up the warehouse as best he could, phoned in for a SHIELD clean-up crew, and quit his job at SWORD.

Settlin' In

After a somewhat suspicious reception, Clint began settling into the mansion. He met and made friends with a few residents, including Rachel Kinross-Dayspring, Kyle Gibney, Doug Ramsey, Laurie Collins, Gabriel Cohuelo, Namor, Kitty Pryde, Wanda Maximoff, Molly Hayes, Tyrone Johnson, Felicia Hardy, Warren Worthington, and Rogue. He touched base with an angry Quentin Quire after the young man's outburst and confrontation with other mansionites on the journals, offering some unconventional advice.

At the end of July, he hosted what would become the first of many Bad Science Movie/Drinking Game Marathons, which quickly devolved into drunken rambling on the journals. Later, he also hosted a game night, which amounted to the same thing. It then became something of a tradition, continuing with the Discovery Channel's Shweekend in late August.

August also saw Clint dealing with some unexpected technology after Kitty got an Atlantean artifact and gave it to Namor. After a couple of weeks of fruitless investigation with various friends, Clint was just about ready to throw in the towel. However, an impatient Namor hit the mechanism, which jostled something inside it just enough to create an unstable wormhole through which many deep sea fish began to fall. The group was further surprised when strange, green men followed the fish through the wormhole. Knocking the mechanism over managed to close the portal and the group quickly dealt with the green men Namor called Lemurians, securing them and then handing handing them over to SHIELD.

Following that, Clint was called on for a few favours - helping out a newly-outed friend, Darcy Lewis, providing backup when Jennie Stavros went after her former fiance, and then rescuing former SHIELD partner Natasha Romanoff. Out of all of this, Clint realised that he was doing something useful again, and that he enjoyed it, and a plan for expanding his options began to form.

Trouble, Trouble

Clint's penchant for getting into trouble continued into 2016, of course. In April he took a small team to Alaska on Coulson's request when his former partner disappeared, and in the course of the investigation was kidnapped and mind-controlled, and forced to fight against his team. They fixed his head, thankfully, but the incident left him a little turned around. The theme of being mentally manipulated continued in October when a mysterious staff was delivered to the mansion, and Clint was overtaken with rage when he touched it, leading him (and his brother) to destroy half the library. Clint ended up getting blasted out the window by Topaz, resulting in several broken bones and a bruised pride.

It wasn't all doom and gloom, at least. Another old SHIELD friend, Everett Thomas, came to stay in the mansion after a mission gone wrong, and Clint added him to the list of people who needed help socializing (the only other person on the list, of course, being Natasha). Following the staff incident, he began looking into creating a new team for the mansion, starting with his first recruits: Kyle, Topaz, Everett, and Matt. Clint then went AWOL for the first part of 2017, reappearing in May with details on what he had been doing behind the scenes to help set up the as-yet-unnamed new team, and the news that he would continue to be absent from the mansion on occasion. In his absence, Kyle and Topaz took on the task of recruiting, approaching Laurie Collins as a potential member. He was absent from the mansion when members of the group were asked to assist in the mystery of a poisonous-to-mutants emerald and plans by the Sapien League to use it to murder mutants.

Clint returned to the mansion in December, revealing that he and Angelica Jones had broken up amicably in the interim. He disappeared again, returning in February and waking Matt in the middle of the night for a talk and Mythbusters marathon and helping Gabriel Cohuelo with his GED prep. April was extremely weird, with Clint and a number of others roped into a rescue mission which involved mind-control squid and being turned into mermaids. Clint's scientific curiosity upset a number of residents when he brought two of the mind-control squid back with him and installed them in a tank in the old Xavier chapel which had become "the team"'s headquarters. At the end of the month, he held a 'health and safety' meeting, during which it was decided that several of the students would be approached in the interest of becoming minions... er interns.

The Team of Awesome

Interest and activity in the new team - still without a name in May 2018 - picked up after the mermaid mission, with Topaz and Kyle named as co-leaders and the rest of the group setting themselves up more officially in the chapel. The suggestion of uniforms was less popular, leading Clint to retract it. Namor sought out Clint's help when his trident appeared to be malfunctioning (by demonstrating how it wasn't causing all the water to spurt out of Clint's body), with Clint later texting to his friend Natasha that he deserved all the gold stars for not freaking out.

Things got awkward between Clint, Ev and Wanda, with Ev accidentally walking in on Clint and Wanda 'the morning after' and realising he still had feelings for his old school friend Wanda. He left the mansion shortly afterwards on his continuing Janus search, not giving anyone a chance to talk things out. Clint himself went quiet, resurfacing in December to invite the mansion dwellers to a holiday decorating party at his fathers' house in New York.

The team had its first actual mission in February 2019, when the search for a dealer in stolen magical artifacts resulted in the death of their target in a mysterious dimensional pocket filled with magical items a an evil magician held in statis. The magician - later identified as Mordred - killed the dealer and escaped, leaving custody of the dimension in the hands of Topaz. One 'end' was secured to near the chapel, the other in England, and Topaz set about the task of inventorying the wealth of artifacts stored there, naming it "Avalon". The next month, a meeting was held, during which the name "Excalibur" was adopted.

Clint continued his solo missions, occasionally needing Natasha to help him out of trouble. In January 2020, he was recalled by SHIELD and sent on an extended mission of unknown nature and duration.

Physical Characteristics

Height: 6'4"

Weight: 230lbs

Eyes: Blue

Hair: Blond

Other Features: Several scars on his torso received during SHIELD and SWORD missions.

Powers

Enhanced Eyesight: Right, so. Clint’s eye parts. They [still] work better than yours. (Frito dared me to put those as the opening lines of his powers section, that is totally her fault.)

More specifically, he has enhanced fovea – his are more like a bird of prey’s, which means he can focus better, more clearly, and on smaller things. He has no blind spot – his optic disc connects from behind, like a squid’s. Clint’s eye muscles are also more advanced than your average human’s in that the outer ones are more efficient and unconnected, so he can move his eyes independently of one another, and the internal ones allow him to focus better.

In addition, the rods and cones in Clint’s eyes (the specialized cells responsible for normal vision) are very different from a baseline human’s. While a regular human has around 150 million rod cells in his/her retinas, Clint has over 400 million, vastly increasing his visual acuity. He also has fewer cones than the average human, causing him to see mostly in black and white, increasing his visual contrast, and allowing him to better see “what’s real and what’s not.” For instance, he can see through a two-way mirror.

Clint’s pupils and irises react faster to light than a baseline human’s, meaning he doesn't get light dazzled nearly as much/easily as others – a flash bang grenade would do it, as would a laser pen shone directly into his eyes, but probably not much else. Last, but certainly not least, Clint’s eyes have nictitating membranes, so he doesn't have to blink nearly as often as others and he doesn't have to close his eyes when he’s under water. Clint’s eyesight is 20/2 – what most people can see clearly at 2 feet, he can see clearly at 20.

Increased Agility: Clint has enhanced reflexes, allowing him a much faster reaction time than most others. For instance, he couldn't dodge a bullet, but he could see someone turning a gun toward him and move before they fired the weapon much more quickly than your average person. These reflexes tie into his ability to fire arrows (or other objects, if necessary) in quick succession. He's able to utilize this facet of his mutation particularly well during hand-to-hand combat.

Exteroception: Clint has a very strong sense of proprioception – the perception of his own position and the ability to detect externally imposed passive motion (both angular and linear), as well as muscle memory and hand-eye coordination. This, along with his extreme visual acuity, also gives him an inhuman exteroceptive sense, or perception of the world beyond his own body. Like a bird of prey, he is exceptionally strong at detecting movement, even of very small things at a distance. This means that like others (Artie, Scott), he's off the charts on 'spatial awareness' tests. Thus, his aim with ranged weapons (either a bow or improvised projectiles) is more or less perfect unless impaired by some outside factor and hand-to-hand combat comes fairly naturally to him in a physical sense. He’s able to dodge things and block moves, for example, but he would need to study tactics and practice a great deal to build up true muscle memory. Given enough experiential data, he can even compensate for things such as magnetic fields or extreme gravitation imposed by other mutant powers.

Equipment

A composite bow that he's tinkered with and tweaked a lot since he first got it, a specially designed quiver, and personally designed arrows.

Trivia

General

• Loves black and white movies.
• Will eat Chinese no matter the time of day, day of the week, or month of the year.
• Designed the billy club Matt Murdock uses for his nighttime escapades and got him his body armor.
• Pulls some strings to get Miles Morales and his Spider-Man counterpart new suits/body armor.
• Tinkers with and engineers weapons, particularly arrows.
• Periodically goes out drinking with Thor.
• Was gifted a set of sexy pots and pans by Matt Murdock as a joke after Matt sent him an amusing definition of 'pansexual' which included the sentence, "Pansexuality does not include attraction towards pans, pots, any kind of kitchenware."

Clint's Ringtones for Friends & Family

• Phil Coulson: "Star-Spangled Man With A Plan"
• Natasha Romanoff: "Black Widow" by Iggy Azalea (feat. Rita Orta)

Clint's Flings & Relationships

• Angelica Jones (most recent official ex)
• Lisa
• Parakeet Greg
• Glitter & Cherry Lube Greg
• Restraining Order Elise
• Jordan & Ginny

Clint's Russian Nicknames For People

• Maya Lincoln-Lopez: малютка (malyutka: small, endearingly sweet child)
• Molly Hayes: девочка (devochka: girl)
• Rahne Sinclair: маленький волк (malen'kiy volk: little wolf)

External Links

xp_communication posts

xp_journal posts

xp_logs posts

xp_staff posts

xp_teams posts

Clint's Twitter

Plots

2015

The Nowhere King

It’s Greek To Me

Dial My Number

The Hedgehog and The Fox - event

Along Came A Spider

2016

Are We Ourselves

Staff of Five - event

2018

Poor Unfortunate Souls

2019

Isle of Glass

2021

Operation: Wideawake

2022

Reality 01: Proof of Concept

Reality 02: Clan Akkaba - Arrival

Meta

Player: Cai

E-mail:

Player Icon Base: Stephen Amell

Meta Trivia

Cai played Clint during XP's Phase 1, then decided to reapp him to make him a little closer to his canon history. She played him until January 2020 when she became a Player Emeritus due to RL demands. She rejoined the game and picked Clint back up again in October 2021. The picture used at the beginning of his page was created by Mackinzie.