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Walsh’s incoherent yell sent Natasha spinning with her back to the nearest wall.
“Status,” she snapped.
“Your sensors picked up Barton’s comm signal. It’s active.”
To anyone else, Coulson sounded like his normal, unflappable self. Only Natasha heard the achingly hopeful note beneath the calm and it resounded in her heart. The pragmatic part of her mind cautioned that finding Barton’s comm wasn’t a guarantee they’d find Barton. Or that he was alive when they did. She accepted that, but she still clung to hope as fiercely as Phil Coulson did. The bond the three of them shared was undeniable. They were family. And Natasha had always believed that she would know if either man was taken from her.
She moved from the shelter of the wall and continued clearing room after room to a background of Phil’s voice trying to rouse the archer from wherever he had hidden himself. She’d reached the ground floor and was closing in on the locked door Cecily had pointed out to her when Clint finally responded.
Her steps faltered for but a moment at the thread of sound, then she doubled her speed.
Wherever Clint was being held, he was struggling to breathe. By his own admission, he couldn’t move. And she’d only once heard him sound so ... out of it. Clint had perfected the automatic snarky comeback whatever the situation. When he was serious and thought about his responses, his silences didn’t sound like they did right now: as if he had to remember how to actually use words. Clint clearly wasn’t in a good place. And the sooner she found him the better.
The locked door didn’t remain locked for long once Natasha reached it, though the simple code, so easy a six-year-old could have broken it, made her frown and grip her gun a little tighter.
“Stairs,” she reported. “Lock disabled. Door wedged open. Going down.”
“Copy that,” Coulson replied. “Watch your back.”
She didn’t acknowledge his words, but they lit a spark of warmth in the darkness of her mind. Clint and Coulson had trusted her from the moment they met. She appreciated that and returned their trust as she worked to build a new life for herself at SHIELD. Accepting that both men truly cared for her, not just as an asset but as a person, had taken more time. Natasha no longer questioned either the sentiment or its validity, but she felt every manifestation like a caress to her soul. Right now, Phil Coulson was worried about Clint, and yet, he took the time to look out for her, remind her to take care, ensure she was safe.
She followed the stairs into the building’s basement. Her eyes narrowed in suspicion as the light grew dimmer the further she descended. And still there was no sign or sound of any other human soul. When she reached the bottom of the stairs, the blue glow from an LED outlining the light switch was the only illumination and Natasha shook her head in disgust.
“Someone thinks we’re stupid,” she opined caustically once she’d reported her findings.
“Or they’re trying to rattle your cage.”
“Possible.” She fished a glow stick from the pocket on her thigh and held it up. What she saw made her gasp. And swear. On comms and in Russian.
“Tasha! Status. Now.”
“I’m fine,” she replied immediately. “Some moron’s playing with us. He has a filthy sense of humour.”
“Explain.”
Natasha couldn’t find words that didn’t sound morbid or creepy. Blood and carnage she could deal with. Random attacks and violence she could handle. But this... this quiet horror sent ice into her blood and stirred memories she didn’t want to recall. Ever. And knowing Clint might be somewhere in this room was just...
“Tasha!”
“Sorry, sir,” she replied, voice very small. “It’s just that... I’m standing in cellar full of ... coffins.”
“Interesting.”
“What?!”
“You’re entirely right. Someone’s playing with us. Someone who knows us well.” Coulson’s voice changed from vaguely amused to focussed and serious. “Find Barton. He’s bound to be somewhere in that mess.”
As soon as the logic of Coulson’s voice cut through the horror, Natasha was moving. She dismantled the light switch, found it free of any traps and turned on the overhead lights.
“Bozshe moi,” she grumbled. “I’m not that damaged, you moron. Vampires don’t scare me.”
She ignored the black walls, the icons and carved crosses put up for decoration, tuned out the smell of incense and the sight of tall, unlit pillar candles. When the black velvet drapes that covered each casket got in her way, she tore them down without compunction or hesitation. There were close to a hundred black-draped coffins in the small space, some leaning upright against the walls, other stacked three high. Natasha methodically inspected every single one, starting at the far end of the room and working her way forwards towards the staircase. To her immense relief, many of the coffins appeared to be empty.
The first casket that didn’t sound hollow when tapped had her freeze in place for a heartbeat. She repeated the check, found that she was right, then pulled out her heaviest knife and started to pry the lid off the box. It came easily, and Natasha swore some more when she came face to face with a dressed-up resuscitation dummy.
“I’m so gonna kill you. Slowly,” she threatened her invisible enemy and moved on, her heart and mind now armoured against the macabre theatrics. Logic dictated that Barton had to be alive for his captor to have gone through all this rigmarole. Clint was a means to an end. Her heart continued to jump every time she came across a filled casket, but it no longer slowed her down.
She had only a dozen or so coffins left to check when she found Clint Barton – barely conscious, barely breathing and covered in blood.
ooO xXx ooO
Natasha’s face was the most wonderful sight Clint Barton had ever seen. He squinted against the glare, the halo of Natasha’s bright hair easy to make out. A warm palm briefly cupped his cheek and brushed through his hair, before she bent to cut his bonds.
“Can you sit up?”
Clint was breathing in deep, ragged gasps, desperate for air that hadn’t been in and out of his lungs gazillion times already. Very, very slowly his vision cleared, and his mind could focus on more than just the brightness of Tasha’s hair or the warmth of her hands. He didn’t have enough air to speak and not enough energy to even move his head, so Natasha slipped an arm under his neck and slowly pulled him upright.
“Lean on me,” she said, running her hands all over his head, back, chest and arms, looking for injuries. She took his hands into hers and held them tight as she spoke into the comms. “I’ve got him. Send the medical team.”
“How is he, Agent Romanoff?”
The voice in his ear was familiar, but that was all Clint could have said about it. Fortunately, Natasha didn’t have the same problem. She responded immediately.
“No major wounds. No broken bones. Dehydrated. Possibly hypothermic. Pulse shallow and thready. Breathing in rapid short gasps. Cyanosis in lips and fingers of both hands. Needle marks in both arms. Badly discoloured needle mark near carotid artery. Contusion over left temple. Cuts, bruises and abrasions – various.”
She’d barely finished her recital when four men in SHIELD blues came clattering down the stairs.
“Oh my god,” the first man through the doorway breathed when he saw the makeshift crypt and Clint, sitting in a ...box, covered in blood. “You said he had no major wounds, Agent Romanoff.”
“I don’t... “ A cough tore up Clint’s lungs, painful enough make him double over. The racking spasms went on and on until Clint saw stars and tears streamed down his face. He was only vaguely aware of Natasha’s arm around his shoulders, her warm hands rubbing soothing circles on his back. He barely noticed when the doctor sprayed a fine mist of ... something... right in front of his face before asking him to breathe as deeply as he could manage. Eventually the cough subsided. The first unimpeded breath tasted sweet and minty and like heaven. And Clint was so wrung out that he would have collapsed back into the ... box, had Tasha and the doctor not held him upright.
After that, events blurred together.
Blood rushed through his head, loud enough to drown out everything else.
Someone placed a mask over his face and he tore it off in a panic. He needed to breathe. He needed air and he needed to tell Nat...
Coulson bent over him, his eyes warm and welcoming. The man’s lips moved, but the disjointed sounds Clint caught made no sense. He tried to say so, but the darkness was faster.
Cecily and Nat sat beside him. Nat ran fingers through his hair and Cecily gave him water at intervals. Someone had cleaned most of the blood off him and he was pathetically grateful to be rid of the constant itching.
He tried to speak, warn Nat, warn Coulson, but every time he tried the darkness dragged him down.
It was endlessly frustrating.
ooO xXx Ooo
Natasha hadn’t moved from Clint’s side ever since she'd found him. Having watched Coulson watch Barton for several months now, she was a little surprised not to see the man at the head of the medical team. On second thoughts, she decided that she really should have known better. So she kept up a running commentary for Coulson’s benefit while the doctor eased Clint’s coughing fit, moved him to a gurney and got him readied for transport.
She didn’t hold anything back. Not her concerns about Clint’s blue lips and fingernails or the breathing problems, nor the fact that Clint desperately tried to communicate something, but was unable to do so. Coulson took it all in, keeping calm for the team’s sake, and if he looked a little shaken when he laid eyes on Clint, gasping for breath and unable to understand anything said to him, Natasha made sure nobody else was aware of it.
“Tell me what we’re dealing with,” Coulson asked as soon as Vince Hamilton entered the small, screened-off area on the plane they had turned into a makeshift hospital room for Clint.
“Nothing we’ve seen before.” The blond doctor frowned down at the latest batch of test results. “We’re still running tests, but here’s what I know right now: the antibiotics aren’t making any difference. His temperature is still erratic and every time he exerts himself in even the mildest way, his blood oxygen levels drop so low he passes out.”
“What about all this blood he was covered in?” Cecily’s voice held the horror of seeing Clint look as if he’d been slaughtered. To her credit, she had kept it together, made every effort to help and focussed on the problem at hand. Natasha made a mental note to tell Clint about it later, sure he would be pleased.
The medic shrugged. “My best guess? They gave him a transfusion and he fought them. The blood wasn’t his, but it was a match. My working hypothesis is that there’s something in that blood that causes Agent Barton’s symptoms.”
“He keeps talking about carrots,” Cecily threw in.
“That makes no sense.”
“It’s carats,” Walsh interjected from the doorway. “We were sent after diamond smugglers.”
“No,” Natasha said suddenly. She looked up and found Coulson’s eyes, glad to see he was right there with her. Evidence lined up and started to make sense. “No,” she said again and the babble of voices cut out and everyone turned to look at her.
“Carrots,” she said. “A lure.” She ran her fingers through Clint’s sweaty hair, nails scraping gently over his scalp the way he liked. “He’s trying to tell us that this is a trap.”
Before anyone could comment, the equipment monitoring Clint’s condition went crazy. Alarms wailed, monitors bleeped and Clint arched up on the bed as if he’d been shocked. Once, twice he jerked while Natasha and Coulson held him tightly and then his body went limp. The heart rate monitor went from frantic beeping to emitting one, long endless tone.
“Shit! We’re losing him.”