Chapter Text
He was lying on something soft
Movement. Busy, hurried. A beeping—too loud. The air smelled clean, all chemicals and fabric softener, mixed in with worn leather and strawberry body wash.
Home.
“Tasha?”
“Sh, I’m here. We got you out. You’re safe now.”
Out?
“Where—”
“You’re in the med bay. A little messed up, but you’re going to be fine.”
A little messed up?
He was always a little messed up, from a mission or training exercise or from old injuries that never quite faded. A twinge in the knee. A pop in his ankle. This wasn’t that. “I don’t remember...”
“You were unconscious when we found you, hooked up to some machine. Tony’s pulling it apart now. He’ll figure it how it works—he always does.”
Tony…
“Can you open your eyes?”
Tony. Falling.
“Clint?”
A purple cup.
“Look at me.”
Cooper’s corpse. Steve caving his skull in. Natasha’s gun to his head.
“You’re safe now.”
Budapest.
He forced his eyes open, wincing at the bright lights overhead, only to have them blocked out by a familiar face. “Hi.”
“Hi.” His voice was a stranger’s, low and hoarse. He tried to blink away the fog in his head, wincing at the dull ache behind his eyes that only intensified as he tried and failed to sit up.
“Here.” Natasha leaned around him, propping him up against the pillows as someone touched his wrist. He flinched away. “It’s okay,” Natasha reassured him. “It’s just Dr. Hara. You remember Ali, don’t you?”
Clint titled his head sideways as the doctor’s face came into focus, assessing him with a warm smile. “Agent Barton. I’d say nice to see you again, but I think we have the kind of relationship where the less we see of each other, the better.”
Another jolt of discomfort through his skull. Then another. He winced, pressing his hand to his forehead as though he could force the pain back inside and lock it away.
“That should stop soon,” Hara assured him. “We’re mostly keeping you here for monitoring. Once we get some fluids in you, you should be fine. Agent Romanoff okayed the first round of painkillers and I recommend you continue them, but you can choose if you want the second dosage in an hour or so.”
Natasha was on his left, still half-dressed in mission clothes that clashed with the bandages around her head and jaw that had been a mainstay since the Tower fire.
“She’s meant to be on bed rest,” Hara interjected when they saw what Clint was looking at, but there was no real disapproval in the reproach.
Natasha shrugged them off, still focussed on Clint. “You didn’t really think I wouldn’t come get you, did you?”
Clint didn’t respond, taking in the rest of the room instead. Natasha to his left. Hara to his right. A nurse hovered near the base of the bed, busying himself with a clipboard of notes.
Hara gestured to the nurse. “You remember Fahd?”
Fahd looked up with a smile. “It’s okay if you don’t. Ali’s the memorable one in this relationship.”
Hara gave him a good-natured smack on the arm. “Don’t sell yourself short. Is it okay if I take your blood pressure now, Agent Barton?”
Clint looked from them, to Fahd, to the door. “Maybe first…” He looked back at Natasha. “Thirsty?”
“You can give him that.” Fahd gestured to the water cup behind Clint’s bed, but Natasha responded with a knowing smile.
“Vanilla coke or cherry?”
“Cherry.”
“You’re disgusting,” she replied, as per their usual bedside ritual. The words came with a reassuring smile and a squeeze. A reward for behaving. “And now you owe me a Fanta.”
Clint counted her steps away from the bed as Hara held up the cuff. “Okay?”
Five steps. Ten steps. Fifteen…
“Agent Barton?”
Natasha left the room, shutting the door behind her. Clint let out the breath he’d been holding. He was sure they’d just sent her back in, but having her out of the room to begin with would give him a headstart.
Clint turned back to Hara. “You didn’t really think I would fall for this, would you?” Then he lunged for them.
Hara was unmoving on the ground before they had registered what Clint was doing. Fahd wasn’t so lucky, eyes going huge as he tried to scramble away from Clint, slamming a button on the wall a split second before Clint’s hands were twisting his throat too.
Two down. Footsteps in the hallway. Many more to go.
Plan. He needed a plan.
Overload the machine.
Right. That was the plan.
He was expecting them to throw his teammates at him again—falsified versions of friends that grew increasingly uncanny with every new simulation—to kill or be killed by. So he was thrown when three security guards burst through the door instead. At least they hadn’t given them faces he knew, and that was going to make this easier.
His captors hadn’t been in the habit of easier. If they were still trying to convince him this was real, he wasn’t going to let them. He wasn’t going to entertain that doubt again, not for a second.
The guards came at him with stun guns which he dodged, brain catching up to the movement as more necks broke. These were simulations. They could have given them better weapons than this. He congratulated them for their commitment to the bit.
He grabbed the last guard, reaching for his stun gun. Screw trying to get them to map out the whole Compound. He’d find a car, he’d go into the city, because there was no way whoever had grabbed him had the processing power to simulate all of New York. That, or they’d reboot him and he’d do this all again, and again and again until he beat them.
He was going to break the machine. He was going to get out. He was going to go home.
It was the last coherent idea in his head as an electrical shock gripped him from behind. His final thought before he collapsed into unconsciousness was that, for a simulation, Natasha’s Widow Bite felt very, very real.
There were hands on him.
“Sh, it’s okay. You’re going to be okay.”
Comforting words that were never a comfort.
Clint strained against the straps holding him down as he tried to spit out the ring that kept words from forming. The hand swept over his forehead, too large, too warm, not so much wiping dirt and sweat away as pushing it from skin to hair. “It only hurts in the beginning.”
Liar. It hurt all the way through, every second of it.
He must have sensed Clint’s resistance because the hand in his hair tightened, pulling him back against the bed until he cried out from the pain of it. The sound ejected a gob of drool down his chin he couldn’t wipe away.
Duquesne tsked at him as he withdrew a handkerchief from his pocket to clean him up. “Messy.”
Clint moaned and squirmed under the restraints until he felt a strong hand around his chin jerking his head to the side, making him look into the man’s face as he said, “Just think of it like a game, okay? Boys your age like games, Clinton. And when you learn to behave, we won’t have to make you behave.”
Pain in his arm. A needle. Cold, dark, then—
There were hands on him.
Rough, clinical, urgent hands; too many, too foreign. He went to bat them away, only to be met with a firm resistance as his arms jerked but didn’t move. Sensation was flooding back, putting his brain in a meat tenderizer and making him aware of the leather straps covering him from head to toe.
He jerked on them, snarling when he felt the prick of a needle in his arm and feeling as he did so the sensation of metal on teeth, keeping them open. He shoved his tongue against it on instinct, trying to force the intrusion out of his mouth, but it was stuck fast so he spat and struggled and writhed instead as a heaviness pressed down on him and—
There were hands on him. Not gentle. Nails digging into skin.
“Clint.”
(Voice known. Safe.)
“Clint. Please, I don’t have long.”
(Voice…scared? Incorrect. Shouldn’t be—)
“Just one more minute.”
Other voices.
(Angry. Unknown. Not safe.)
“I have to go away for a while.”
(Don’t go.)
“But I’ll come back. I’ll always come for you.”
Worn leather. Strawberries.
(Last chance.)
“Budapest. Nat, tell me…”
“Our joke. Just for us. And for Phil. A game no one could play but us.”
(Anger. Impatience. Getting closer.)
“I need to go now.”
(Falling?)
“But I’ll come for you. I need you to believe me. I’ll come.”
(Falling.)
“Barney—”
“Don’t.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Be grateful. They look after us. And that doesn’t come free. No one is ever going to help either of us without something in return.”
“Don’t go! Come back, Barney, please, come—”
(Voices. People. Movement.)
“You can’t be in here.”
(Unknown voice.)
“And you can’t do this.”
(Voice known. Voice safe?)
“Escort yourself from the premises or you will be escorted.”
“It’s my goddamn building.”
“And it was my goddamn staff! Five people, Stark.”
(Loud)
“He didn’t mean to—”
“No one accidentally kills—”
“And stop shoving that shit into his blood before—”
(Loud Loud LOUD)
(Quiet)
The room was white.
He wasn’t in the med bay.
He recognized the place all the same.
There were no hands on him.
There was something in his arm. He went to fumble for it, only to be met with resistance. Cuffs. Wrists, ankles. A strap across his chest. He yanked on them, some part of his brain noting that they were soft inside, not rough. Not Duquesne.
But restraints he knew nonetheless.
Something brushed his arm. He jerked away instinctively, making the touch vanish in the same breath, willing the world to come into focus. “It’s just me.”
(Voice known).
“Do you want to sit up?”
Yeah, that sounded great right about now. He tugged on the cuffs as a ‘yes.’
“I can’t take those off.”
(Guilt. Not anger. Safe.)
“But here, I can…”
Clint shut his eyes again as the bed jolted, fighting nausea as the top half folded upright, propping him into a sitting position.
“Are you going to throw up?”
(Assessing.)
“Clint? Are you going to vomit? You’re on…um, you’re some pretty heavy mediation. They said you might.”
(Assessed.)
“No.” His tongue felt like cotton.
“Okay. But I have a bowl here if you need one.”
Clint pulled on the cuffs again in answer. “Off.”
“I can’t.”
“I’m not crazy.”
(False? Unsure.)
“I’m sorry.”
Clint forced his eyes open, ignoring the pain the bright lights ignited in his head. “Get me out.”
He had never seen Steve look so tired. “I can’t—”
“You can.”
(Can’t stay here. Unsafe.)
He pulled on the cuffs. “Off. Off, now, I’m done, let me out—”
(Movement. New people? Unsafe.)
A comforting touch that was knocked away. “You’re going to be okay. Just hold on. You’re going to be okay.”
(False.)
“Lighten the medication. This isn’t necessary.”
“We are treating a dangerous patient, Dr. Banner. It’s our right to protect ourselves by sedating him”
“He’s not dangerous. He was just disorientated, and you can hardly blame him for—“
“Disorientated people don’t just kill five people. The medication stays as it is.”
Five people.
Tony was next. Tony Stark wore guilt like a king’s cape if you knew to look for it. It weighed him down in the visitor's chair as he fussed with Clint’s charts.
“I threw you off a roof,” Clint told him.
He was already falling back into sleep, and was only half-sure he heard Tony’s reply of, “Yeah, I probably deserve about that.”
“It’s just a game, Clinton. Remember? The less you struggle the less it hurts. You work for me now."
A bus leaving in the rain, taking the poor excuse for a family he’d known with it. He’d chased it anyway. Sometimes he hoped Barney had seen.
But Barney was gone.
“Give in, Clinton. No one is coming for you.”
Budapest.
Our joke. Just for us. And for Phil. A game no one could play but us.
His head was clear.
He blinked his eyes open, the lights a little less harsh than before, the smells less invasive.
A blurry form on his left turned into Bruce. The physicist put aside the tablet he had been pouring over, hastily readjusting his glasses. “You’re awake.”
Clint gave an experimental tug. The cuffs hadn’t vanished along with the fog that had been clouding his mind for… “How long?”
“Six days.”
Clint gave another tug. “Can you—”
“I’m sorry. We have to play by the rules for now. They’re going to make it worse if we don’t.”
He grimaced, sinking back into the pillows.
“How are you feeling?”
Clint assessed. “Clear,” he settled on, before realizing that didn’t make sense. “Like my brain is…active. Or...”
“That’s good,” Bruce rescued him. “You’ve been on some pretty heavy stuff, but the psychologists decided you were coming back to yourself enough to lighten your dosage. Or it might be more accurate to say that I may have implied a Hulk-out would happen if they didn’t. Don’t tell anyone.”
Clint ignored him, focusing in on the IV drip inserted into his arm instead. “What’s in that?”
Bruce winced. “I convinced them to let up a bit, but they’re not up for taking you off the sedative altogether. I’m sorry, I know drugs aren’t your favorite. Or hospitals. But you did...you know.”
“Yeah,” Clint muttered, remembering the last time he’d been tied to a bed, having his side stitched up by—
There was a clatter as Bruce’s tablet hit the floor, the scientist lunging for a basin. The spray of vomit was followed quickly by a second, Bruce awkwardly craning his arm around Clint’s shoulders to keep him bent forward as his stomach upended itself.
They stayed like that for some time, Clint half aware of Bruce murmuring a, “It’s fine, I’ve got it” which he didn’t think was aimed at him. Finally, long after there was anything to bring up, his guts decided to call it quits and Bruce was free to step back from the bed, adjusting the angle so Clint could sit upright.
He was a mess and he knew it, giving the cuffs a half-hearted pull as he closed his eyes. They would come off. They had to come off.
“Hara,” he croaked. “God, Bruce, I didn’t mean—”
That was as far as he got before something cold and metal was being pressed against his lips.
Clint flinched away with a hiss, getting nothing but a dull ache in his limbs in return.
“It’s water,” Bruce said quickly. “To help you, um, rinse out your mouth a bit.”
“Can’t you just...just one hand, even?”
He already knew the answer, long before Bruce said it. “It’s better to just behave for now, alright? All of us. You need to prove to them you can. Do you understand?”
“I —”
“Five people are dead, Clint.” The words weren’t harsh. Just sad.
It took him a second, but finally he nodded and let Bruce guide a metal straw between his lips before running a towel over his mouth. The nurse who had been in the room must have taken away the basin because when he dared to breathe again, the smell of vomit wasn’t as strong as he was expecting.
“I thought I was still in there,” he got out, before realizing that Bruce probably had no idea what he was talking about. “They kept making me think it was real. They—”
“We know,” Bruce said quickly. “Tony pulled that machine apart and then some for the defense Maria and Pepper are going to present to the Committee.”
“Defence?”
“He’s been working non-stop to get you both out, we all are. It’s just going to take some patience."
To get you both out.
“Bruce. Where’s Nat?”
Bruce winced as he placed the towel aside. “No one who matters is saying anything was her fault.”
Clint tensed in the cuffs. “She stopped me. She didn’t have anything to do with it.”
“We know that, but...”
“What did they do to her?”
“But the Committee thinks she could have acted faster. That she could have stopped…that she could have prevented more of the damage.”
“Where is she?”
“The Raft. They took her to the Raft.”
He wished they would turn out the lights.
“Agent Barton, can you describe your environment for me?”
“SHIELD psych ward.”
“Very good. And do you believe this psych ward is real or simulated?”
Pepper Potts did not belong in a padded room.
His head was finally close to being something like normal, even though there was still something being pumped into him via the IV that he couldn’t remove. The drugs were giving the CEO of Stark Industries a haze-halo as she consulted him over a Starkpad.
“I’m just getting your side of the story,” she had told him. “Are you okay if I record it?”
“What for?”
“The lawyers. We have the whole team working on this. We’re going to get you and Natasha out."
Out. He wanted out so badly.
“It wasn’t her fault.”
“No, it wasn’t,” Pepper agreed. “Or yours. The play is to plead temporary insanity.”
“I’m not insane.”
Her reply was gentle. “They’re still not sure if you think the environment you’re in is real or not.”
Budapest.
“I know what’s real.”
Pepper fiddled with her tablet. “I need as many details from you as we can. You said they put you through multiple simulations? Do you remember how many?”
“No. But a lot.”
“And they’d restart them? When?”
“When I figured out it was a simulation.”
“And how did they know that?”
“They’d know.”
“And what would happen then?”
“They’d kill me. And when they didn’t, and I’d want out, before they could get to me I’d kill someone in the room. To prove that I knew.”
Tony. Falling.
“Once they were sure they couldn’t convince me it was real anymore, we’d go right back to the beginning. And I’d try again. I thought, maybe, if I got through enough of them, I’d get out for good.”
Pepper laid a gentle hand on his. “You did get through enough of them. You’re out now.”
Clint’s answer was to pull on the cuffs.
The ceiling had 587 holes in it. Clint had counted them forty-three times.
I’ll come for you.
But Natasha wasn’t coming. And he was done waiting.
He was getting out of this damn bed.
Coming off the heavier medication meant he could have more regular visitors, and Clint tore apart every opening they gave him.
Tony treated the visits like any other hangout they had had back in his workshop, teasing and needling and trying to make Clint join in, even though he couldn’t stop his eyes flashing every so often to the restraints. Every time he did, Clint would drop the role of surly patient and bring out pleading captive instead. He aimed right for every sensitive and sore spot he knew Tony had, including the fresh wound of Tony’s tech landing him and Natasha in this position in the first place. Tony would eventually make his excuses to leave the room, his visits turning from infrequent to non-existent.
Bruce’s immunity to his tricks was stronger, but Clint played him anyway. Bruce knew better than any of them what it was like to fear captivity, to fear helplessness, to have your body at the mercy of someone else. At least Bruce didn’t duck the subject; just ran through the long list of Clint’s symptoms, of recommended treatments, and promised that this wasn’t permanent.
He quickly figured out that Sam was a no-go. Whenever he’d try, the pararescue would slip into his VA persona, ignoring all of Clint’s sneering at his attempts at therapizing him. Sam tried to replace that approach with their usual banter, but that only served to irritate Clint further. With nowhere else for Sam to turn their conversation, every visit ended with them lapsing into awkward silence.
Steve tried to read to him. He was three sentences into the first book when Clint hurled every expletive he knew and then some his way. Steve didn’t try it again.
Rhodey was bulletproof to any and all of Clint’s pleas or demands, but also turned out to the visitor that Clint could tolerate the longest. The colonel at least acknowledged Clint’s situation, and answered his questions, and did it all without an ounce of pity. It took Clint longer than he’d admit to pick up that the attitude was most likely constructed from years of handling a teenage Tony Stark through moods and hangovers and every self-destructive tendency in the handbook. His goodwill towards his most tolerable visitor crumbled with that revelation. After that, there was nothing Rhodey could do to coax him out of a silent sulk whenever he stepped in the room.
Bucky didn’t come at all, and Clint didn’t know if he was hurt or relieved until he remembered that Bucky was almost as much a prisoner as he was. It wouldn’t make sense for him to be here. And the more days and visiting hours passed, the more Clint sunk into the knowledge that he might not see Bucky again for a long, long time.
“Agent Barton, can you describe your environment for me?”
“White.”
“And?”
“More white. Jesus, get a plant in here or something.”
“Do you think your environment is real or simulated?”
“I think you can bite me.”
“Well, at least we’re not starting from the beginning every time now,” Pepper assured him. “Only forward from here.”
“Sure.” He shuffled as best he could on the bed.
“We’re making progress,” she pressed. “The Committee will come around, if only to prevent another three-hour Tony-lecture about the technology they used on you.”
“The mindfucker machine.”
Pepper allowed herself a small smile. “Sure. The mindfucker machine.”
He snorted a little at hearing the expletive in her mouth, but didn’t have the heart to snap at her for humoring him.
“Could you see any of it?” he asked her, then clarified. “What they were putting in my head. When Tony tore apart the machine, could he see…”
Pepper shook her head. “No. He couldn’t.”
“I knew it was real.” He didn’t know why he was bothering, except the need to justify out loud why he threw the most important person in Pepper Potts’s life off a roof. Even if it hadn’t been real. It had known it wasn’t really Tony. He had.
“We know,” Pepper said softly. “At least, we know that you didn’t give them anything important.”
You have a secret farmhouse that no one but us—
“They wanted Tony’s tech,” Clint clarified.
“Yes,” Pepper answered. “But you didn’t give it to them, and they’re in custody now. It’s in the past.”
“Is anyone going to tell me who they are?”
Pepper pursed her lips. “The legal team say the less you know the better. But you don’t need to worry about them anymore, alright? And for the record, Tony is sorry, even if he hasn’t told you directly.”
“He doesn’t need to,” Clint mumbled, trying to shuffle down the bed. The straps weren’t tight or uncomfortable, but there were times he felt like they had spread around his throat, cutting off air. “I knew it was real,” he insisted again. “Even in the last one.”
Pepper frowned a little. “The last one?”
“They put more details in the last one. Pulled out all the stops to convince me. But I knew.”
“How?”
“Natasha. I knew.” He pulled on the cuffs when he said her name. It had become a reflex.
Pepper started to fold away the Starkpad. “I’d stay longer, but I’m meeting with the legal team in ten minutes and making sure those very expensive noses are staying to their grindstones. We have the best there is, Clint. They’re going to get you out.”
He almost didn’t want to ask the next part, knowing it was going to sound desperate however he phrased it, but he needed to know. “How much longer?”
Her answer was to lean over him and plant a kiss against his cheek. The action should have been strange, because she was Tony’s Laura, but it wasn't. And they were the same age, so it shouldn’t have felt motherly, but it did. “It might be a while, but hang on. We’re doing everything we can think of.”
He couldn’t sleep with the lights blaring at him. It made it hard to keep track of time, but he thought it might have been two weeks now.
I’ll come. I’ll always come for you.
Words a small part of him still wanted to believe. Words he could no longer afford to trust. He was on his own.
If he could just get the cuffs off, even for a second…
He could get them off. He had to get them off. He just needed to up his game.
“This is your fault.”
He threw the accusation out of nowhere, aiming for maximum damage.
Tony didn’t even rise to it. “Yep.”
“You always cared about your stupid tech more than your team.”
Tony glared at him, but there was no heat in it. “I develop my tech to protect this team. Even if it doesn’t always…” He ran a hand through his hair. Strands of gray were starting to show. “I’m going to fix this. Just, soon. I will.”
Clint bit down on his lip. Right. Tony: long game. Wrong target.
“You rebelled against the whole fucking government for your old army buddy and it got our asses landed in prison.”
Steve almost dropped the book he had been reading. Clint had been lying in deliberate silence since the visit had begun, sharpening his tongue for the blow.
“And we did that gladly. For him. For you.”
Steve slowly closed the book, laying it to one side. “Clint—”
“So repay the favor and get me out of here, Cap.”
“I can’t. I’m so sorry, I really am. But it’s better if we do this legally.”
“I don’t want apologies,” Clint snapped back at him. Clint had been vocal about hating Steve’s visits the most. He didn’t know if that was true. Sometimes it just felt good to lash out at someone. “And you were fine not doing a single thing by the book when it was him, but when it’s any of your so-called new friends—”
“You are my friend.”
“Then take the cuffs off.”
“I can’t,” Steve repeated, desperation creeping into his tone. “They’ll make things worse for you if I do. Natasha as well. It’s complicated.”
“It’s not,” Clint snapped back at him.
“Five people are dead,” was Steve’s answer, his voice low.
Clint ignored him. “If you cared, you’d get me out. But you don’t.”
He went to war with the cuffs again, causing Steve to throw himself forward and put his hands on Clint’s shoulders, holding him back. “Clint, stop, you’ll hurt yourself.”
“Get off me!”
“Stop or I’ll have to call someone in here.”
Clint stopped, breathing hard, leaving them locked in a kind of weird embrace on the bed. “You don’t care. None of you do.”
Steve looked visually pained as he denied it and Clint remembered that, yeah, he did hate Steve’s visits the most after all.
“This is real.”
He couldn’t remember the name of the doctor sitting to his right. He was holding a clipboard, asking questions that Clint wasn’t listening to. There was only one answer they wanted to hear.
“This is real. I’m real. I’m not in a simulation.” He jerked the cuffs. For all his fighting them, he hadn’t gained a millimeter of give since his first day.
The doctor didn’t even glance up. “I don’t believe you, Agent Barton.”
“Why?”
“And if I don’t believe you, how do I know you’re not going to kill someone else the second we let you out of that bed?”
Three weeks.
“I just want to walk around the room. You know what that's like. ”
It was the dirtiest play he’d tried so far, and he was beyond caring, even if he didn’t really expect Rhodey to rise to it. “We’re doing everything we can.”
“You’re not,” Clint snarled at him. “You’re not, or I wouldn’t be stuck in here.”
“We are,” Rhodey insisted. “Everyone is doing everything they can to—”
“You’re not,” Clint emphasized. “I’m not asking to climb the Empire State Building. I just want to move around the room, to feed myself, to piss somewhere that isn’t my bed. Is that so much to ask? Or does it make you feel better to watch someone else finally have it worse off than you?”
The frustration from that was real, even if the venom wasn’t. He couldn’t move, couldn’t eat, couldn’t wash himself, couldn’t do anything without their assistance. They’d infantilized him.
Mistake.
He’d make them pay in the end.
He planned.
“What if I confessed?”
Maria’s head snapped up from the reports she’d been pouring over. “Confessed?”
“I murdered five people. There, confession.”
“It’s more complicated than that and you know it.”
“I did it,” he snapped. “I did it, I killed them. So send me to the Raft, whatever, just let me out of the bed.”
Maria set the reports to one side, drawing the chair closer. “If you do that, they’re going to send you there for good. Right now, temporary insanity is still your best defense.”
“And what’s Nat’s best defense? She didn’t even do anything.”
“We know that.” The calm tone of voice was more maddening than if she had snapped. “And you giving up is not what’s best for her. Or your family—the Raft doesn’t exactly have visiting hours.”
“Stop.” The defiance turned to pleading in a single word. If he thought about them, he wasn’t getting through this. He’d been able to compartmentalize father from agent the second Laura had suggested their firstborn be named Cooper. The two never mixed, the Ultron stopover being the closest. He couldn’t have one identity taint the other without both of them imploding. He didn’t know what would be left of him if that happened.
“Okay,” Maria agreed. “We won’t talk about them. And I can’t...I can’t guarantee that there aren’t going to be some long-term consequences. But, Clint? We’re going to figure this out. I promise.”
“This is real.”
“Lying won’t get you out of here any sooner, Agent Barton.”
He was faking sleep.
He was surprised they hadn’t acknowledged it. Steve at least should have been able to hear his heart jackhammer when he woke to find he was no longer alone. Tony was speaking in a low whisper, running through words so fast that it took Clint’s exhausted brain a moment to catch up.
“—can’t just leave him in here forever.”
“We’re trying everything, Tony.” Bruce. That was Bruce. “The Committee will come around, they have to.”
“You didn’t see him the other day,” Rhodey added. “His sanity isn’t going to last forever.”
“Are we sure he isn’t already…” Sam as well. It was a whole party that he wasn’t invited to. “You know.”
“He’s not.” Steve’s hand took his wrist and he forced himself not to flinch. Reassurance. You didn’t give sleeping people reassurance. “We’re going to figure this out. We’re a team, and we don’t abandon people. We’re going to fix this.”
I’m coming for you.
Clint had never felt more abandoned in his life.
“I have it!”
Tony didn’t bother announcing himself further as he let himself into Clint’s room, Maria close on his tail.
Wait, no. Not his room, never his room.
The genius looked more animated than Clint had seen him in...weeks? He wasn’t sure anymore. The goddamn hellish lights.
Tony ignored the protests of a squawking nurse as he dropped into the vacated visitor’s chair, ushering her from the room. “We’re getting you out.”
Clint’s heart leaped so hard it hurt, head whipping down to the cuffs only to catch Tony’s horrified look as he realized his mistake.
“Not today,” Tony amended, wincing. “Not my best choice of words there. But I do have a new plan.”
Clint closed his eyes, willing the crushed hope to fade faster. “You always have a plan.”
“You bet I do, baby bird.” Clint flinched at the word baby.
Maria shot him a look that, to the New SHIELD Director’s credit, stopped Tony in his tracks. She turned her attention to Clint. “So you know we’re not only negotiating for you, but for Natasha.”
A pull on the cuffs. “She didn’t do anything.” He’d lost count of how many times he’d said it.
“We know,” Maria assured him.
“Yeah,” Tony cut in. “And the Committee damn well knows it too.”
Clint narrowed his eyes at him. “What does that mean?”
“They’re saying she’s under arrest because of the incident in the med bay,” Maria said before Tony could. Clint snorted at the word ‘incident’. The clinical terminology wasn’t fooling anyone. “But we actually think they’re holding her there as leverage.”
Clint looked between them, suspicion growing. “What would they need leverage for?”
Maria and Tony shared a look before Tony took the lead. “You know why they’re keeping you here, right?”
“Yeah,” Clint replied dryly. “Five people.”
“Well, okay, yes,” Tony admitted. “But more so because they don’t believe that all those marbles are in that attic. For the record, I think you’re as sane as the rest of us. Although, that’s hardly a comfort, come to think of it.”
“Get on with it, Stark.”
“Long story short: they’re saying they need proof that you know you are on this frankly shitty plane of reality, and therefore you’re not going to do it again.”
“I’ve told them I know this is real. They don’t believe me.”
“They don’t believe you, no. But there is someone they are saying they would believe.”
Clint glared at him. “I think I’m past the point of caring about well-timed reveals.”
Maria took over, trying to diffuse the tension. “They’re saying they would believe Wanda Maximoff.”
It was the last name Clint expected to hear, and Tony spoke up before it had had a chance to sink in. “They know all about her witchy little mind powers. And considering they’re not so thrilled about what’s going on in that head—” He went as though to tap Clint on the forehead, only to hastily back off at the glare Clint sent his way. “They’re saying that if she were to come in and prove everything is hunky-dory in there, then we can get you out of here. And get Nat back home while we’re at it.”
Clint let out a laugh, unable to help himself. It sounded manic even to him. “That’s not seriously the best you can come up with?”
“We didn’t come up with it,” Maria reminded him. “And yes, for the record, I think it’s total bullshit.”
“So what,” Clint demanded. “You bring Wanda in, she messes around in my head, and then we’re all peachy?”
“Not exactly,” Maria said quietly. “There were still...victims. With families. They deserve some kind of justice.”
“But you wouldn’t be in here.” Tony gestured around the white room. “And my lawyers could almost definitely swing you house arrest. Um, eventually, anyway. There will probably be some time they'll want to be served. But maybe even that could be avoided if you helped us—”
“Stark.” Maria cut him off with a glare, Clint sensed cutting off a conversation that had already happened.
“What?” he demanded.
Maria didn’t take her eyes off Tony as she said, “Clint, I’m telling you this because I want to keep you in the loop. But that doesn’t mean I expect you to do this. I know what Wanda means to you.”
“Maximoff would be fine,” Tony argued. “Steve already cut a deal for her with Harding if she came in quietly.” He thrust a hand at Clint. “You just said it—they mean a lot to each other. That goes both ways. Are you seriously saying she wouldn’t want to help if she could?”
Maria met him head-on. “You know the Committee isn’t going to just let her be if she turns herself in—”
“No, but it would be better than—”
“It would not be better—”
“Clint,” Tony swung away from Maria, laying a hand on Clint’s wrist, just above the cuff. “They’re going to hold onto Nat until we do this. And I promise that Wanda would be fine.”
“Right, because you give a damn about Wanda,” Clint snapped at him, cutting him off. “Piss off, Stark. Maria’s right.”
Tony wasn’t backing down. “I know it sounds crazy, but so is half the shit we do weekly. I’m busting you out of here, Barton. You just have to trust me on this.”
“Trust you?” Clint spat at him, making Tony recoil. “You want to bust me out? Do it already.” And he yanked on the cuffs, not expecting a single change. Except, finally, there was give. Just not on the leather.
Clint stared blankly at his bleeding wrists, the split skin just visible below the cuff edges. Tony swore before diving out of the way of the nurse who sprinted back into the room to clean him up.
He didn’t even feel it. His mind was racing.
So. Wanda.
Huh.
“Tony and Hill told you what the Committee wants.”
They’d sent Sam this time. Clint was twisting his newly bandaged wrists in the blood-stained restraints. The nurses had made a token attempt to get it out, but he could still see the marks.
“Doesn’t matter,” Clint got out. “They’ve been looking for Wanda for months. They won’t find her.”
Sam bit his lip. “I know. But they think you know where she is.”
Clint glared at the ceiling. “So hand over Wanda or Natasha gets locked away in the Raft forever?”
Sam sighed. “That’s one way to look at it.”
“Like there’s any other way?”
Sam twisted his hands together. “I hate it,” he admitted. “It’s dirty, and it’s low, and it’s the exact reason we didn’t sign the Accords in the first place.”
Clint squinted at him. “So?”
“And I know Stark’s got every lawyer worth a damn on the case. And hey, they might pull off some hattrick that avoids all of this…
“But you think I should help them find Wanda anyway.”
“I’m just saying,” Sam pressed. “If the choice is between Wanda under house arrest in the Compound or Natasha under arrest in Raft and you committed to this place permanently...”
Clint forced his face to stay neutral at the word permanently.
“Then I don’t think it’s hard to see the lesser of those two evils.”
“Wanda blew up twenty-six people including eleven relief workers from Wakanda,” Clint reminded him.
“An accident. No one’s more been adamant about that than you.”
“The Committee doesn’t see it that way. They didn’t then, and they won’t now. You get her here, they’re locking her up, not listening to her defend a fellow murderer.”
“Clint.”
“I’m telling it how they’ll see it.”
Sam sighed. “I’m not saying you’re wrong. But Tony is convinced that he has half of the science down behind Wanda’s powers, and if he can figure out the rest and present that to the Committee—”
“Stark doesn’t give a damn about Wanda’s safety either. That’s been proved.”
Sam shuffled, uncomfortable. “I’m not saying I agreed to his reaction to Lagos either, but you know this deal is somehow going to need to extend to Vision as well—someone from Stark’s side of things, if that helps. And I’ve seen the proposals, and they’re not as terrible as you might think.”
Clint shifted on the bed. “It’s a moot point anyway,” he muttered. “I have no idea where she is.”
Sam rubbed his eyes, letting the tiredness show. “This is what we have. We’re backed into a corner, but we’re trying, Clint.”
Clint didn’t back down, letting the challenge show in his next words. “Yeah? Well, I’m not letting you bring Wanda here. So you’ll have to try harder.”
He was pretty sure it had been over a month now.
“We’ve been looking for Wanda.”
It was Steve’s first visit to him in a couple of weeks. Clint didn’t blame him. He wouldn’t want to visit himself either. They didn’t talk anyway, falling into the same routine of Steve thumbing through a book while Clint stared resentfully at the ceiling. 587 holes.
“I didn’t tell you to do that.”
“Clint, if she can help you—”
“They’ll just arrest her.”
“I worked out a deal with the Committee—”
“Fuck the committee.”
“Language.”
“And fuck you too.”
“Barton. Wake up.”
“Wasn’t sleeping.”
“Really? You looked dead. I was kind of freaked out for a moment there, except I trust my machines and they’re saying you’re alive.”
“I don’t feel alive.”
Hands. Worn but warm, covered with more scars and burns than met the eye. Clint had always liked Tony’s hands. The hands of a mechanic; not a billionaire. “Don’t be like that.”
Clint risked cracking an eye open. “Are you here to break me out?”
Tony grimaced. “I mean, you could say I am, in a way. You know the only thing stopping them from letting you go is convincing them you don’t think you’re in cuckoo land anymore.”
“Was that a bird joke?”
“And say if we knew someone with witchy, glowy mind powers who —”
“Steve’s already tried this today.”
“Oh.” Tony deflated. “Well, our lines of communication haven’t exactly been stellar as of late.”
“I don’t even know where Wanda is.”
Tony perked up a little. “So if we found her, you’d be willing to try?”
“You won’t find her.”
“No? She’s running around with the most advanced technology this planet has ever seen. I should know, I built him. Part of him. You really don’t think I won’t find them if it’s going to help you fly the coop?”
“Stop making bird puns.”
“Never.”
“You won’t find her.”
Tony hesitated. “Don’t get mad.”
Clint stared down at his restraints, then back at Tony. “Bit late for that. Isn’t that the whole reason we’re here? I went mad?”
“You’re not and the red Power Ranger is going to prove to that Committee otherwise.”
“Not if you don’t know where she is.”
“Here’s the thing…” Tony glanced over towards the door. “I don’t know where she is, sure. But I’d gamble my dad’s entire car collection that you do. Or at least, that you know how to find her.”
“I don’t.”
“Come off it. You think if Peter went on the run with an out-of-the-blue love interest I would let him drop off the grid entirely? No. I’d keep tabs.”
“Then you’d be an idiot.”
“My IQ tests and various degrees very much say otherwise. As does my gut and I know you haven’t lost contact entirely.”
“I don’t know where she is.”
“But if you know how to find her—”
“I’m tired.”
Tony pulled away, frustrated. “At least think about it? Because, Clint, honestly…I think this might be the only option.”
He thought about it. He thought about it a lot.
“I know it sounds unlikely, but we can make this work.”
Pepper was back, a PowerPoint-style hologram spread out in front of Clint’s bed. “Not everyone on the Committee is against you or the ‘rogues’.” Her tone put air quotes around the word. “This woman, for example.”
A dark-skinned woman with short hair flashed up on the screen. It took Clint a moment to recognize the woman who had opened the window for him during his Kilgrave takedown. “You’ve really done your research.”
“And Wanda’s powerful, but she’s young,” Pepper continued. “That counts in her favor. And bringing in Sergeant Barnes has gone about as well as it could have, so that sets a good precedent.” She went on another fifteen minutes or so, running through how she would present Clint’s case to the Committee. “Of course, none of that matters if we don’t know where Wanda is.”
“I can’t help you with that.”
Pepper closed the PowerPoint, taking up the now-worn visitor’s chair at Clint’s bedside. “If she comes in, we’ll protect her. Just like we’re trying to protect you.” She hesitated before adding, “And Natasha.”
Clint turned his hands over in the cuffs, feeling the bandages pull against the leather. “Yeah, right. I feel very protected.”
Two months.
“I know this is real. I know the people are real. I’m not going to attack anyone.”
“Saying the words we need to hear aren’t the same as believing them.”
“You could go home,” Steve was saying, keeping his low voice. “We want to have you back with us. We miss you.”
The ceiling was getting blurry. He felt Steve take his wrist and jerked his hand. He couldn’t move it away, but Steve took the hint and backed off.
“At least let me ask her,” Steve pressed him. “This is her decision too. If you know where she is—”
“Stop it.”
“For the record,” Steve said gently. “I’m not meant to tell you, but I thought you should know.”
“Spit it out.”
“We had to tell Laura you’re in here.”
Clint’s breath caught.
“Clint?”
“Don’t say her name.” Steve’s face swam in front of him, and to his horror he felt liquid starting to drip towards his lip. He tried to sniff it back, but it caught in his throat instead, starting off a round of coughing that did nothing to stop his streaming nose.
“Here.” The bed was moved, the back lifting higher, and Clint gasped in oxygen as he was lifted into an easier breathing position. Steve gripped a box of tissues, hesitated as he took in the situation, then decided to go for it as he ripped a tissue from the packet and leaned over to wipe Clint’s nose. Just like Laura would do to Nate.
“Get off me, Rogers!”
Steve didn’t even flinch back, just calmly disposited the tissue in the trash can, even though his shoulders were rigid with tension.
“Steve.”
“Let me get you some water.”
“Take them off.”
“You know I can’t do that.”
“I wouldn’t be able to get past you.” He was begging, he was begging and so far beyond caring. “Please, please, just five minutes—just one minute. Just take them off, please, Steve.”
“If you let me get Wanda, then we can, okay? Not just for five minutes. For good.”
Clint slammed his head back into the pillows, trying to make it hurt. It didn’t.
“Just stop this.”
Tony again.
“Just help us find…Clint. Clint.”
“We can’t find her.”
Clint was sure the Director of New SHIELD had more important things to be doing than visiting psych patients, but he wasn’t about to point that out. “I never wanted you to. I thought you were on my side with this.”
Maria leaned back, hands tightly folded in her lap.
He knew what the expression on her face meant before she said it, so he said it first. “They’re not going to let me out.”
“We haven’t given up. I think the team was hanging a lot on having Wanda come in, but it doesn’t seem like that’s going to happen so…” She tried for a watery smile. “But I do have some good news.”
Of course she did.
“We managed to negotiate a plea for Natasha. She’s going to serve six months on the Raft, then she’ll be free to go.”
Nausea that had nothing to do with the drugs filled his stomach. He swallowed sickly. “Six months?”
“From her time of incarceration. It’s the best we could do without involving Wanda.”
“Then your best isn’t good enough. She didn’t even do anything.”
“We know,” Maria said softly. “But also…”
“Spit it out.”
“It’s a show of good faith. It’s not just you the Committee doesn’t trust; it’s the team. So they’re proving they can play by their rules, that they can take the punishments they deem fair.”
Clint gulped back bile. “So they’re just going to let Natasha rot there.”
“She agreed to it,” Maria explained. “She’s going to be model prisoner, and the rest of the team are going to be model—”
“Jailers?”
“Maybe that’s fair,” she allowed. “But they think that if Natasha serves her sentence without issue then they’ll have gained some ground to fight your case on. Without Wanda getting involved,” she repeated, then, softer. “That’s what you wanted, right?”
Clint shut his eyes, trying to fight the clawing panic rising in his chest. “Six months. So how long—”
“Four months and seven days from today.”
The cuffs became suffocatingly tight.
“I’ll be good.”
He didn’t know who he was pleading with. He’d gone completely feral for no other reason than pure animal terror and frustration caused by everything and nothing all at once, and then that metal thing was back between his teeth as they pumped sedatives into his veins. He was awake again, mouth free, unsure of who it was was trying to shush him.
“I’ll be good,” he repeated. “I won’t fight, I won’t leave the room, I’ll just…just…off. Off, please, just off.”
“I’ll be good.”
“That’s what you said last time. And were you good? No. So this is going in.”
He was trying to squirm away, but the ring just kept getting closer and there was nowhere for him to go. “I mean it this time.” He meant to say it, but it was cut off as metal forced his mouth open again.
“Maybe you do,” Duquesne said. “But it always pays to make sure.”
I’ll always come for you.
He had a new plan.
He stopped fighting. He stopped doing much of anything.
He didn’t acknowledge the visitors, or the nurses, or the doctors. They weren’t going to help. They weren’t the way out.
The psychologists had stopped coming to ask if he thought this was real or not.
He didn’t think that was a good sign.
587 ceiling holes. If he let his eyes go blurry, they doubled and became 1,174 and took twice as long to count.
He thought it had been four months now.
He wished he hadn’t yelled at Steve for trying to read to him. He wished he would now.
But Steve didn’t come to visit him anymore. None of them did.
Five months.
587.
Budapest.
He didn’t know how long it had been. How long he had been tied to this damn bed counting holes in a white ceiling. But it had been long enough for Natasha’s hair to grow from the stubble it had become after the Tower fire to well past her ears. It wasn’t sleek and shiny, or in the gorgeous red curls he had loved so much that she had chopped without a second thought. It was lank and scruffy, the burn scars along her jaw red and raw, as if they hadn’t healed properly.
She looked awful. She was thin and pale and worn and, after a half-year flipping between onslaughts of white coats prodding at him, and barren periods of no one but himself for company, she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
“You’re here.”
She sat in the visitor’s chair, running a hand over his. “I said I would come. Remember?”
He remembered.
“They’re not going to let me out.”
The hand on his paused. “No. They’re not.”
“Did they tell you about the deal? With Wanda?”
Natasha squeezed his hand. “They did.”
“I could have...I could have gotten you out sooner. I could have—”
“Hey,” she cut him off. “No. I would never want you to do that for me. Ever.”
“They looked for her anyway,” he murmured. “I told them not to, but—”
“They were trying to help you, Clint. They really did. Anything they thought might get you out of here, they tried.”
“Tried? Not trying?”
Natasha tensed. “We’re regrouping. Trying to figure out something else.”
He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter.”
“We’re not leaving you here.”
But you did leave me here. “They’re not going to let me out. They’re never going to let me out.”
“Don’t say that.”
Clint leaned against the pillows, trying not to tense. This was it. Four months and seven days from Maria’s announcement, he had been waiting for this. “They didn’t find Wanda.”
“No.”
“That means she and Vision are in a place that even Tony Stark and New SHIELD can’t track down. Even if they were looking as hard as they possibly could.”
Natasha’s hand tightened on his. “You told them you didn’t know where she is.”
“I lied,” Clint whispered. “She’s in a safe place. They’d never find it.” He didn’t want to look at Natasha. Not with what he was about to do. “I could get there. But I wouldn’t be able to get out of the building on my own.”
She understood immediately. “Then I’ll come with you.”
All 587 holes in the ceiling became blurred. “I’m sorry.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for. Not with me, never with me.”
“If we run, we’re breaking the Accords. We won’t be able to come back. We won’t be able to see the team again, not without getting them arrested. It’ll be goodbye for good.”
She moved from the chair to the side of the bed, tilting his chin up to make him look at her. “I love our team,” she said softly. “But I’ll always love you more.”
Then her hands started to undo the cuffs.
Six months ago he would have tried to blink back the tears, but he was long past caring as he felt cool air against his wrists, Natasha’s arms under his frame and she helped him out of the bed.
He was too uncoordinated, too desperate for freedom, and they both ended up on the floor. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t the bed, and his arms were free to wrap all the way around Natasha and pull her close. “Tell me about Budapest.”
“Always.” She leaned into him, all soft edges that she didn’t bring out around anyone else. “It’s a joke,” she whispered. “A stupid, stupid joke, but it was our joke. Our joke and Phil’s. Big bad Team Delta. If only we had done half the things they said we did. Then we’d be real superheroes. Or villains. Hard to tell the difference sometimes.”
He could feel himself shaking. “I can tell the difference.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Then, “Thank you,” he whispered, before pulling his arms tight and snapping her neck.
(Pain)
(PAIN)
(Nothing)
It was different this time.
The smells were sharper, rusted iron and bleach. The bed beneath him was hard and unyielding, cuffs around his wrists, pain racking his back, his legs, god his head—
Someone was moving behind him, yanking something hard and cold out his mouth as he tensed in the restraints, waiting for a fight when he smelt something else, something beyond the clawing scents of the stone room his eyes were finally adjusting enough to see.
Worn leather and strawberries and one more. The faint scent of fire.
His arms were around her throat the second the straps holding him down were gone, the move too sudden and unexpected for even Natasha to dodge.
“Tell me about Budapest.”
“Always.” They were so close that she could whisper the words in his ear. “I was still Red Room, running missions for the KGB. Fury sent you to kill me. You made a different call. So they came after me, through you. And I killed them all.” Natasha made no reaction to Clint’s hold tightening around her neck as she added, “But that’s not the real story.”
Clint paused, holding his breath, silently begging.
“They never got near you. I went back and killed them all myself. For me. Because I could.”
Clint could feel her heart beating, fast and in time with his.
“And when I told you what I’d done, you said to tell Fury that I’d done it for you. To prove that I could be loyal, that I’d done it for a reason other than vengeance. But I hadn’t. It was bloody and violent and pointless and I regret none of it. And only you and I know that.”
A moment passed. Then Clint let go.
Natasha didn’t. She pressed herself up next to him on the bed that had been his prison, warm and familiar and safe.
“It’s over,” Clint whispered. “This is real.”
“This is real,” Natasha confirmed. “I’m here.”
“They know about the farmhouse.”
They were the first words that had tumbled out of him the second he was sure his brain was back on dry land. Natasha had just nodded once, bundled him into the seat of what looked like one of Tony’s Audis, and made a phone call.
Now, Clint was curled in the passenger seat as Natasha sped back to the Compound. He was oscillating between watching the rolling landscapes out the car window and closing his eyes, the over-stimulation too much. The world felt too loud, too bright, tangy and sharp on his tongue.
“Hill’s going to bring Laura and the kids in,” Natasha assured him. “They’ll stay at the Compound under the guise of witness protection, and no one but the team will know who they really are. A jet’s headed their way right now.”
“They’re okay?”
Natasha reached across the gap between him to lay a hand on his knee. He tried not to flinch away, but the touch felt too raw, too much. He kept shifting in his seat, trying to adjust to the sticky leather against his back. He was dressed in clothes that weren’t his; loose sweatpants and a baggy t-shirt that had both retained the clawing iron and bleach smell. He didn’t remember being dressed in them. He didn’t remember anything between getting nabbed in the alley after Bucky had called and waking up in a simulated Compound.
Natasha removed her hand. “They’re okay.”
He didn’t want to think what that meant; that his captors had figured out the farmhouse’s location months ago and hadn’t acted on it. Maybe they had been so sure they’d break him that they hadn’t bothered. He hadn’t had the chance to ask—they had been long gone while Natasha had guided him to freedom.
“They had you hooked up to some machine.”
He heard the unspoken question. How did they hurt you?
When he didn’t answer, she back-pedaled to something easier. “How did they grab you?”
He resisted the urge to rub his temples. That felt like several lifetimes ago. “Some device thing.” He gestured to his ears. “Set off the aids, hard. Like a ringing. Blacked out.”
“And then?”
He recognized the push. The Be an agent and debrief me, because that’s your job and people die when we don’t do it right. A habit learned straight from Phil.
“And then…” He swallowed. His mouth tasted like metal. “I woke up in Tony’s workshop.” He half-laughed at the choice of words. “Actually, woke up isn’t...yeah, no.”
“They were making you see things.”
“Simulations,” he muttered. “A lot of them. Every time I figured out I was in one they’d reboot me. Easy to take information from someone if they don’t even know they’re giving it.”
And they had taken it—so much of it. Maybe not what they had been looking for, but enough. He ran through the last two simulations, when they had worked so hard to convince him that their warped worlds were his reality. The small details. The fractions that made up his life, stripped out of him piece by piece.
“I think…” He swallowed. “I think I was meant to figure it out, at least at first. I knew it was false so fast, it was always so obvious. The people would look so fake or they’d glitch or wouldn’t know something that they should have.”
Natasha nodded, prompting him to keep going.
“But I don’t think that was the point. I think the point was to run me through enough simulations that they could get enough out of me so that, when they cranked the dial to eleven, I’d buy into it.”
“And did you buy into it?”
There was no accusation in the words. He felt it anyway, but not from Natasha. “No,” he said quietly. “I knew.”
“Because of Budapest?”
“Because of Budapest.” He shuffled in his seat. What he wouldn’t give for a shower and a fresh change of clothes. Not that they were far off.
They had had him barely an hour’s drive away from the Compound. Quicker in a jet or an Iron Man suit. He’d been so close the whole time, so why hadn’t anyone on the team—
“Do you know what they wanted from you?”
A nod.
“Did they get it?”
A shake.
“Is it something we need to act on?”
Clint hesitated at the ‘we’. He knew at least that he had to tell Natasha everything, and soon, but there was so much to tell, and he was tired. So goddamn tired.
The place his captors had been keeping him in had looked like a mix between medieval dungeon and abandoned science lab. It wasn’t until Natasha had guided him towards a ladder on the side of the wall did he realize they were in an underground bunker with thick metal walls. He had scanned them on his way out, looking for something that would have evaded Tony’s technology, or hidden them from an above-ground search.
He couldn’t see a single thing. The bunker’s hatch wasn’t even well hidden
The place had been empty except for them when he woke up. No bodies, which he assumed meant they had run before Natasha could catch them, and she had seen him hooked up to that machine he hadn’t been strong enough to break himself out of and prioritized. He felt an irrational stab at anger at that, that she had let these people who he had given away Laura’s location to get away, before he reeled himself in. Natasha hadn’t known.
But she wouldn’t have needed to make that choice if she had brought backup.
“You came alone.”
“I did,” Natasha confirmed. “Figured it was easier to just come get you than to stand around and wait for the Committee’s permission.”
Clint landed on keeping his eyes closed. He shouldn’t have been upset that the others hadn’t come, not really, especially if it was going to mess with the Accords. He still hated the damn things, but he could appreciate the time and effort taken to wrangle them into something not quite so asinine. One missing team member wouldn’t have qualified for undoing months of work.
And six months was a long time. With rare exception, SHIELD had declared their agents dead or irretrievable within two weeks. Most of the world had given up on Tony Stark well before his three months in Afghanistan were up, and a billionaire weapons designer held a lot more sway than a former circus worker from Iowa. They had probably counted him for dead long ago.
“Was the funeral at least nice?”
Clint hadn’t opened his eyes, but he could feel the look Natasha shot his way, the way her eyes locked onto him. He didn’t respond. He didn’t want to look at her.
Blonde. Her hair was blonde. Still short, but like she had cropped it that way, not like it was still growing back from the fire. She looked good. Really good, bandages and scarring long gone. And he hated that he wanted her to look worse.
“Is there some empty grave with my name on it somewhere? Please say there is. And don’t you dare try to stop me from taking selfies with it.”
No response.
He could still feel her watching him. “Eyes on the road, Romanoff. I didn’t survive half a year in a mindfuck machine so you could bump me off as roadkill.”
The car screeched to a sudden halt as Clint was thrown forward in his seat, eyes flying open and swearing blue murder as the seatbelt locked against him. He wrenched it off, pushing open the door as his empty stomach tried to eject air, coming up with nothing but bile and saliva. He could feel Natasha’s hands-on him but shoved her off, roughly, unfairly, and he knew it was unfair but still—
Six months. Six months tied to a goddamn bed and she’d found time to dye her hair.
“Clint. Look at me.”
He didn’t want to. He didn’t want to see that perfect skin, the perfectly styled cut. He didn’t want to further fuel his need for her to look like a wreck, because that’s what he would be if she had been in enemy hands that long. Then again, he’d always needed Natasha more than she needed him.
“Look at me.” The voice tried stern and, seeing little effect, switched to soft. “Please.”
And, because it was Natasha, he did.
She didn’t try to touch him again, staying close without contact. Those green eyes were narrowed in calculation, finding her way to the end of the puzzle like she always did. Then her hands went to her hair and pushed.
He was still disorientated enough that seeing Natasha’s new blonde locks slide off her head like a shedding snake was a damn acid trip, and that was nothing compared to her sliding a finger behind her ear which made her whole face shimmer—
Clint was forced double again, even though there was nothing in his stomach left to throw up, brain not working fast enough to keep up with the distorted images his eyes were seeing. And if he couldn’t trust his eyes, then what good was he?
Small hands took his calloused ones, warm and familiar, giving him the strength to open his eyes again. There was a blonde wig on the ground next to a sliver of silver that he recognized as a SHIELD issue cloaking mask. “Can you look at me?”
It was the nervousness in her voice that gave him the strength to do it. His head weighed a hundred pounds but he forced his chin up.
He took it in. The short, uneven hair, barely beginning to grow back. The scarring over one cheek. On her nose. The melted skin that was once an ear.
He inhaled, short and sharp, because he knew the fire damage had been bad, but he’d never seen her without the bandages. He had thought she was getting better. He hadn’t realized the long term damage would be this bad.
“Hey.” A hand shifted to his chin instead as he tried to look away, and maybe it was the fact that it was just the two of them crouched on the side of an empty highway, or that she just didn’t have the energy, but she let the vulnerability of being seen this way etch into every feature of her face.
“Natasha—”
“No. We’re focusing on you right now.”
Clint swallowed again, trying to ignore the taste of vomit. No simulated Bruce to help him wash it out this time. “I thought they were making you better, that the damage wasn’t going to permanent—”
Then it hit. The truth struck like lightning, and then he was pitching forward with only Natasha’s frame to hold him up.
“How long? How long did they have me?”
“Total? About two hours.”
His breath hitched.
“Hooked up to that machine? According to their notes, forty-three minutes.”
Forty-three minutes.
His mind whited out as he remembered the endless repetitions in the workshop, running through simulation after simulation. The weeks that turned to months spent in that white room, counting fake holes in a fake ceiling. 587.
“I came after you the second Bucky called me,” Natasha was saying. “I would have called the others, but that might have involved the Committee and I figured you’d left the Compound to see—”
“Okay.” The word was flat, lifeless. “Okay.”
“Hey.” Then she was pushing him up, leaning him back against the car so she could place her hands on either side of his head. “Listen to me. Do you really think I’d ever leave you in enemy hands for a second longer than I could help it? Do you think any of us would?”
A lump formed in his throat. He leaned his head back as far as he could as though he could swallow it.
“Clint. Tell me you don’t think that.”
“I hurt them.”
“Who? Who did you hurt?”
“Everyone. Hara, Tony, you.”
“It was a simulation. You knew they weren’t real.”
“You can’t know that.”
“I do know that, because I know you. I know you.”
“Then you know hurting people isn’t exactly an issue for me.”
“When you’ve had to, sure. And you’ve had to a lot. That doesn’t mean—”
He was shaking his head at her. “It was the only way out. The only way out was to convince them that I knew it was fake, and I knew killing a friend would do that.” It was flooding out now. “So they put me somewhere where I couldn’t hurt anyone. And I thought if I could make them think that I knew it was real, then they’d untie me and I could prove it by killing whichever friend they put in front of me. That maybe that would finally overload their machine.” The laugh that followed was hollow. “It was such a small shot, but I took it anyway. I killed you.”
“It wasn’t real.”
He wasn’t finished. “I killed you because I gave up on you coming back for me.”
The silence that followed that statement rang out across the picturesque green fields, through the calm blue skies untainted by clouds. Because the world could look beautiful even though the people in it weren’t; because the air could taste fresh and clean even as he choked on acid and bile.
Natasha broke the silence. “Look at me.”
He shook his head at her.
“Clinton Francis Barton. Look at me.”
It seemed to take an age for him to peel his head away from the car to meet her eyes. “I don’t care what you do,” she said, her voice low. “You could hurt me. Or hurt our friends. You could burn down the Compound with everyone still inside. If you are in trouble, ever—I am coming for you.”
At some point her hands had slid around his shoulders. She was the only thing keeping him upright.
“Because I know you, inside and out, and because I know you’ve had to make some horrible decisions and that you’re going to make more in the future. I also know that you don’t make those kinds of decisions unless you’re backed into a corner, and that your life has been nothing but corners. And when that’s your reality, when your life is whittled down to just surviving, what seems like the worst thing in the world to someone else can be the best thing through your eyes. Your eyes, Clint. You see the world for it is, every decaying, rotten part of it, and you decide to fight for the good in it anyway. Because you’re the kind of man who was sent to end a mass murderer and instead saw not just an asset, but a friend. You saw that tiny spark left in me that they never quite managed to wipe away, even when no one else did. Even when I didn’t, even when I still don’t. And that is the kind of man this team needs and will fight for every second to make sure you’re safe.”
He wanted the words to wash it all away. Feeling Tony leave his arms on the roof, his arms breaking Natasha’s neck, the sense of knowing he was knowing he was a prisoner that no one was coming to save.
“And I know all that because I know you, but you want further proof? It worked. You broke that damn machine from the inside out.”
His whole body tensed at that. “Don’t lie to me.”
“I would never.”
He stared at her. “No, you…you broke me out. You found me and you broke me out.”
She shook her head. “They must have known I was coming, because they were gone before I got there. Only by a few minutes though, I think.” Her eyes went hard for a second as she reflected on the loss. “And you were on that bed. I was a few seconds from calling Tony and Bruce to ask what the hell I was supposed to do and then you just woke up. You woke up and the machine stopped. You broke it. They put you through hell and you broke out, because that’s who you are. And because that’s one of the many, many reasons I love you. So please hear me when I say this: I will always come for you. Every single damn time, no matter what. I will come for you.”
Clint wasn’t sure how long they stayed like that on the side of the road, not a single car passing them by. Finally, he let Natasha wipe his cheeks and help him back into the car, making the solitary drive back to the Compound.
“Nat,” he said finally, so quiet she was surprised she heard him.
“Ask me anything.”
“What does Mens et Manus mean?”
She didn’t question it. “It’s the MIT motto.”
Oh. So not an in-joke between Rhodey and Tony at all. Just more of them fucking with him. “Okay.”
She put her hand back on his knee, and this time he didn’t flinch away from the touch.
He let out a long breath as the Compound came into view, shooting a look at the car clock. It hadn’t even cracked noon yet. He’d only left this morning.
Natasha pulled the car into the garage, but made no move to get out. Instead, she slipped her wig and mask back on, melting back into the perfect agent. She looked ahead, giving him his fifteen seconds.
That's all he ever needed before a mission. Fifteen seconds to push back thoughts of the farmhouse—he hadn't even started to comprehend its loss—and the fact that they knew. Someone knew. It was no longer safe, and there was nothing he could do about that now. Guilt about giving it to them in the first place would have to wait.
Then his fifteen seconds were up, and there was work to do.
They had to talk to Hill, to the team, find out who had him, where they had gotten the machine, and where they were now.
And to find out why they had gone to so much effort to find Wanda Maximoff.