Name: Clinton Francis "Clint" Barton
Alias: codename "Hawkeye", various aliases
Source: Combination of Movie-verse and Ultimates-verse
Age: 36
Place of Birth: Waverly, Iowa
Date of Birth: [ something ]
Affiliation: Avengers, Ultimates, S.H.I.E.L.D.
Known Associates: Natasha Romanoff, AKA "Black Widow"; Charlie McGee; Tony Stark, AKA "Iron Man"; Peter Parker AKA "Spider-Man"; Bruce Banner AKA "The Hulk"; Thor; Nick Fury; Phil Coulson; Maria Hill
Known Relatives: Harold Barton (father - deceased); Edith Barton (mother - deceased); Charles Bernard "Barney" Barton (brother - presumed deceased); [ pending final decision ] Laura Barton (wife - deceased); Callum and Lewis Barton (sons - deceased); Nicole Barton (daughter - deceased)

Abilities/Powers: Clint is a World Class archer and marksman, with above-average reflexes and hand-eye co-ordination. He's trained on just about every throwing implement known to man, and is a more than capable opponent in unarmed combat thanks to rigorous training with Captain America. A childhood spent in a travelling circus has made him a very competent acrobat and aerialist. While exceedingly reckless, he nevertheless has showed a talent for leadership and a taste for combat strategy. Furthermore, he is quite capable at weapons design, specifically related to variations on basic traditional weaponry like arrows, knives, and other projectile weapons.

Unlike most of the Avengers, Clint's not a Meta; he's garden-variety human, there's nothing particularly special about him from a genetic standpoint.  He does have his own little quirks though, namely that he's virtually colorblind; he's got a few more rods than everyone else, meaning he's got a little bit better visual contrast and depth perception, and moderately better nightvision, but his cones are virtually nil, meaning much like a dog he really only registers really bright colors.  ...Unlike Ultimates, however, it doesn't make him superhuman (it's not like he has MILLIONS, just a few extra thousand), he's just fractionally better than your average joe.

[straight-up Ultimates version: above general quirks (disproportionately large number of rods, very few cones, meaning above average average contrast/depth perception/night vision but not much in the way of color detection) to start, except with the addition of "bionic eyes" courtesy of SHIELD, which pumps it up even further; it adds in telescoping vision, meaning he can actually adjust the curve of his corneas to increase his vision to crazy far/20 as needed.]

Personality: Clint is a jokester by nature. He approaches the world with a grin and a clever quip, to all appearances lighthearted and carefree, unable to take anything seriously for long. He mocks his teammates, his enemies, those he holds close and those he hates, and the only difference between them is content, how cutting he intends them to be. He's honest about everything but himself, more than happy to provide his opinion whether or not it's wanted, and sometimes that's precisely WHY he gives it. Because somebody has to say the things nobody else wants to, and mostly as long as he hides it in a good-natured ribbing, he gets away with it.

He's cocky, arrogant, confident in his own abilities to the point where it's almost obnoxious, although he never overstates. He knows how good he is, and he doesn't brag outright; if he says he never misses it's because his accuracy is so good that statistically speaking, he doesn't. But he likes to give the impression that he's got everything under control, that he can handle the job he's given, even if he really doesn't; it's a matter of pride, and when you're one of the few pure humans in a group of people with abilities above and beyond the norm, well sometimes you need to make yourself feel like you can keep up with the metas. PROVE that you can. He hates losing; he'll eat humble pie if he absolutely has to, but he does his damnedest to avoid it as much as he can.

But all the outward self-confidence, the snark and the witticisms and the arrogance, they're all defense mechanisms; it's how he copes. His life up to getting recruited to SHIELD wasn't the smoothest, filled with bumps and potholes and roadblocks, and in general the only way he knows how to deal with it is to make light of it, act like it DOESN'T get to him. It's a leftover from the circus, the constant mentality of needing to continue on regardless of what happens, the need to keep smiling and laughing as if nothing happened, for the sake of the crowd. By now it's so complete that it'll take a HELL of a lot to get him to admit otherwise, and even then he'll be incredibly defensive and do his best to shake it off as if there isn't a problem. Regardless of the situation.

The other major thing the circus left him with is an almost rabid loyalty. To the point where it's actually potentially dangerous to his own well-being; he learned young that loyalty is everything, that you don't rat out your family or act against them pretty much or else (...having both your legs broken as a direct result of threatening to bring dirty laundry to light tends to do that), so consequently he'll do just about anything for his team -- take a bullet, undergo just about any kind of torture, put himself through hell and back, JUST because they're his team and he can't NOT have their back. If he counts you as a friend you get the same treatment, and you damn well better return the favor; it's not a thing he throws around lightly. He has many acquaintances but comparatively few ACTUAL friends; despite his overwhelmingly friendly demeanor he tends not to trust people on principle, another holdover from his less chivalrous days. He couldn't afford real friends, not when family was so important, you never knew what they would ask for or what kind of trouble they would get you into, whether they were really who they said they were, and consequently he holds the world at arm's length until its proven itself. But once you've made the list, you have a friend for life; he'll never betray you, never act to cause you harm (well. unless he's possessed by Loki, anyway...), and anything he does that results in those kinds of things? He'll feel guilty for for a good long time; the Loki thing still eats at him, because he feels like he should have fought it off better, should have been able to avoid it, or re-direct it, and no amount of reassurance that there wasn't anything he could have done will ever be likely to ease that permanently. He still feels guilty for trying to kill his brother, after all, even though he hadn't known it was him until after.

The amusing thing about his involvement with the Avenger Initiative and SHIELD in general, however, lies largely in the fact that Barton has enormous problems with authority. He hates taking orders, hates having to report to someone, hates having someone who's got that kind of power over him, so consequently when he DOES end up in those positions? He challenges authority like nobody's business, tests the limits and tries to take them further just to see what he can get away with. He respects Fury, sure, and Coulson, but Coulson's his handler, he's practically a friend at this point, and Fury....well. Fury's Fury. It's only out of loyalty, gratitude stemming from the fact that he let him join the group at all, that keeps him as in line as he is. He OWES Fury.

...which leads us to the last aspect of Barton, and this is perhaps the largest, the one that directs him the most. Clint has an almost compulsive preoccupation with debts and redemption and whatnot. He's spent a good long while proving his worth as a Good Guy and trying to break away from his criminal past, even though the record's been expunged and it's technically a non-issue, and to a degree he's STILL trying to prove himself worthy of the costume; he grades himself on a much tougher curve, expects a LOT more of himself, and really he's his own worst critic, constantly second-guessing if he's doing the best he can, if he's really worthy of being in SHIELD, let alone part of the Avengers Initiative. He hates having unpaid depts, hates OWING people, so consequently he'll either try to shrug things off as non-issues so he won't have that obligation or almost immediately tries to reciprocate so he doesn't. The only exception is Fury; he owes Fury so much (from his perspective, anyway), that he'll be trying to repay that for years.

History: Clint was born in Waverly, Iowa to parents who probably weren't the most prepared for either son. He was the second of two, and his early childhood was a mess of arguments and abuse, both physical and verbal, at the hands of a man wasn't the most pleasant of individuals when drunk, and tended to spend more time than not in that state.

At twelve, everything kind of came to a head, and through a combination of a series of less than desirable events, the Barton household exploded in a cacophony of sound and lights that ended with Edith in the hospital and the Barton kids carted off to a place for kids in their particular situation. Edith didn't make it, but they did, would, and Harold spent the rest of his life behind bars.

All ten years of it.

Things got much better for the pair after that, or as well as it could have gone. They left the place as soon as they came of age, jumped into the real world feet-first and, in the way that more of these situations seem to go than not, found themselves steeped in the world that most readily accepted them.

Clint fell in with a group of thugs and thieves and sometime-poachers, taught to shoot and fight and most of all survive. To follow orders, no matter what, and if the methods weren't the most pleasant, at least he learned quickly. He quickly gained a record for himself, in and out of jail cells so often he could practically call the cops by name, but never any serious time, never more than a couple years in a stretch.

And that was the first time Nick Fury came to hear of him.

The olympics rolled around, and on a lark (and with the promise of no small amount of cash for the trouble), he found himself at the qualifying rounds with a bow in his hand and a few shots in his bloodstream. He'd never shot a bow before in his life, although he was a good shot with just about anything else, but he picked it up, took his shots, and nailed every one of them. Bullseyes, or close enough. And then he walked away, never to be seen again.

An armed robber by trade, a petty thief for fun, dumb muscle when he needed to be, but one day the job went wrong. Just by a little bit, but it was enough, and he found himself in an interrogation room, being asked all kinds of questions. And then the door opened, the cop was shooed out, and Fury walked in.

He knew his whole story, practically his whole life, and gave him a choice. Keep going this route, end up in jail, or leave in his custody, join a group he'd never even heard of before, a covert, government-run operation. Get a few upgrades, his own natural strengths enhanced, and a pretty paycheck besides. A fresh start, his record expunged.

So he took it.

The group didn't have a name yet, just a black ops label and a downright ridiculous budget. The enhancements were more of a bitch than he'd expected, but the minute they put that bow back in his hands and he saw what it did, he wasn't about to complain.

He couldn't miss. It was practically a physical impossibility.

Years later, and the group finally got a name, or at least the bigger organization it operated under did. The Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division. Better known as S.H.I.E.L.D. His specific group was called the Ultimates; the best of the best of the best, and all that implied; a collection of soldiers, spies, and various Unmentionables from various departments, all collected together to operate under the radar, do the missions those who had to show their faces in public couldn't. And Barton, with some training, was a damn good operative.

Along the road, he was sent to take out a Russian spy, KGB (or the modern equivalent anyway, but nobody was under any illusions), by the name of Natasha Romanoff, code name "Black Widow" because of her reputation. He was sent to take her out, only he didn't; their stories were too similar, and he couldn't take the shot. Wouldn't take it. He phoned Fury back at base and told him, and instead was told to recruit her if he couldn't do what he was supposed to, but whatever happened was on his head.

Somehow, he managed it, and a month later he had himself a partner. In just about every way; Clint was impulsive, given to rash decision-making even under the best of circumstances, the fact that he was firmly, thoroughly, attached to her, emotionally, at that, inside of a month, really wasn't a surprise given his track record.

But they couldn't operate in the dark forever. Not when Loki crawled out from the depths of the universe and tried to turn the entire world upside down. Barton was provided a more...socially acceptable background, one where his skills were explained by a lifetime as a carnival act, and it didn't really sound feasible, or at all practical, but Fury said it was what they'd come up with, so that's what he went with. And like that, he was an Avenger, part of this whole Initiative Fury had been planning for when the world was ready. For when the world needed it.

[and then somehow we work in Family and How They Died...if that ends up being a Thing. Worry about this Later]