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Chapter Text

Day One

Let’s Hang Out Sometime

Waking Up Restrained  |  Shackled  |  Hanging

“How’s it hanging?”

Clint groaned to himself before he was even conscious enough to register any physical pain. He wasn’t completely sure what was going on, but somehow he could sense that there was a terrible pun at work.

“Wakey, wakey, Hawkass.”

Clint snorted. “Original,” he rasped sarcastically as the world began to fade away again.

And then his world exploded.

The world violently tore into his consciousness as every nerve in his body screamed with agony, like he had been set on fire. He heaved air into his lungs and his gaze darted around the small, concrete room as it rolled in and out of focus. It took him a long moment of blinking water out of his eyes and seeing one of the men in front of him putting down a bucket before it dawned on him that it hadn’t been fire, but rather ice water that had been thrown at him.

As soon as he registered the situation, his mind jumped into overdrive, taking in everything he could in this small room in the matter of seconds. One heavy metal door that was closed, no visible windows, a strong smell of sour mold, two men standing in front of him -- one wearing something similar to military fatigues, the other in a finely tailored, black suit. As Clint shifted slightly, a sharp spasm of pain ran from his elbows down his spine. He glanced up to see that his hands were shackled together and attached to chains that hung from the ceiling, pulling his hands to an uncomfortable height over his head. His bare feet only barely reached the cold, concrete floor, forcing him to balance awkwardly on the balls of his feet.

“So nice of you to finally join us,” the man in the suit said with a cruel smirk and a heavy accent that Clint couldn’t quite concentrate long enough to place.

“Well…” Clint mumbled, coughing and then heaving in a breath. “You know my schedule is usually such a mess…” He shifted a bit, subtly testing to see if his chains had any slack at all. Another painful spasm tore through his muscles and he had to swallow a groan before he could speak again. “Any chance we could reschedule?”

The man’s smirk stretched into an unnervingly sadistic grin. He reached out one hand palm up, his cold eyes remaining pinned to Clint as his henchman handed him a large, viciously serrated knife.

“I’m afraid not,” he said, stepping closer. “I’ve done my waiting. You will tell me what I want to know now.”

Clint wasn’t sure how long he had been unconscious, but his leg muscles were already burning dully and he was starting to gasp for breath. He carefully flexed his fingers, relieved that though they felt sluggish, he was still able to move them at all after he had been likely hanging from them for a period of time before he had awoken.

“You got the wrong guy if you’re lookin’ for information,” Clint said with a smile that was akin to a wolf baring its teeth. “I’m just the pretty face on the team.”

Just then, a crash echoed from somewhere outside of the room, large enough that Clint could feel it vibrate through the concrete under his feet. The man turned a quizzical look to his henchman, who looked just as confused as he was. Everything was still for a long minute as everyone strained to hear anything else… but there was only silence. That seemed to relax the man a bit, but he still jerked his head toward the door, indicating that his henchman should go investigate.

When they were alone in the room again, the man turned his attention back to Clint and took another step closer, spinning the knife expertly in one hand. That dashed any of Clint’s hopes that he might be bluffing. This man clearly knew what he was doing.

“Perhaps I should go ahead and take one of your ears as a trophy,” he practically hissed. Then his eyes went up to the shackles, and Clint immediately stopped moving his fingers, hoping the man wouldn’t take too much notice of their activity. “Better yet, taking a couple fingers from an archer might be more appropriate.”

Clint shifted his balance, stumbling in the small circle of slack that the chains allowed him and bringing the man’s attention back down to Clint himself.

“What is it you want?” Clint asked, allowing a slight tremor into his voice.

“I think I’ll have the finger first,” the man said wickedly as he took the final step forward to bring himself face to face with Clint. “And then, if you tell me what I want to know, I’ll consider allowing you to keep the rest.” He raised the knife to brush up against Clint’s cheek, and Clint made a show of trying to lean away from the blade in order to mask the motion when he lifted himself up onto his toes so that he could work his fingers up to thread into the links of the chains above him. “Tell me, archer. How many fingers would you need to lose before you couldn’t fire that bow of yours ever again?”

It happened in a split second, so fast the man didn’t even have time to scream. Clint gathered what little strength he had left and yanked himself up off the ground. He used the momentum to swing his legs up and around the man’s neck, viciously twisting and cleanly snapping the man’s neck, leaving him to fall into a boneless heap, dead before he even hit the ground.

Clint let his head hang, gasping for breath as his abused muscles rioted against him. At some point during the attack, he must have snagged his wrist on the shackle, as he now had a stream of blood running down his arm.

“Not off the clock yet, Barton,” Clint huffed to himself after a long minute as he struggled to muster any remaining energy from deep within himself. “Still gotta get the hell outta here.”

Just then, the door flew open with a loud CLANG and Clint immediately snapped his head back up, his muscles tensing in anticipation of the next fight… until he saw who stood in the doorway. Steve Rogers was crouched in a fighting stance with his shield poised to attack. For a moment everything was still as Steve looked down at the body at Clint’s feet, up to Clint himself standing with his wrists shackled above his head, and then back down to the body as he seemed to struggle to process what he was seeing.

“Looks like we’re clear,” Steve said as he put a hand to his earpiece and straightened up, looking at Clint with an edge of exasperation. “I’ve got Clint, meet us at the RV point once you’ve cleared your areas.”

“‘Bout time, Cap,” Clint said, his breath still coming in small gasps.

“I mean, did you even need us?” Steve asked with a snort and a smirk as he approached and motioned to the body at Clint’s feet.

“Well, it certainly saves time when I don’t have to get out of the cuffs myself,” Clint said mildly.

“Glad you left me something to do then,” Steve said as he reached up and yanked apart Clint’s shackles.

As soon as Clint’s full weight shifted onto his legs, they seized up and he could hardly bite back the yelp of pain. Thankfully, Steve was able to get an arm around Clint’s midsection in order to keep him from crashing down to the floor. For a moment they stayed just like that, Clint now heavily gasping for breath as he rode out the waves of pain that washed over him as his circulation struggled to return to normal.

“You okay?” Steve asked after giving Clint a minute to compose himself, his tone much more serious than it had been before. Clint swallowed thickly as he slowly nodded his head. Steve carefully took Clint’s arm and slung it over his shoulders so that he could better support him. “C’mon. Let’s get you out of here.”

Clint took a couple stumbling steps as he leaned heavily on Steve. He took a deep breath as they left the cold, dark cell and Clint blinked painfully against the bright fluorescent light in the corridor beyond.

“Thanks, Steve,” Clint murmured sincerely as they slowly but surely left the nightmare behind them.

Chapter Text

Day Two

In the Hands of the Enemy

“Pick Who Dies” | Collars | Kidnapped

Three shots. It had taken Clint Barton, world’s greatest marksman, three shots from his sidearm to take down the incoming hostile. The first had missed completely, the second caught the man in the shoulder to slow him down before the third finally struck him in the chest. He tried to put it out of his mind as he attempted to focus on the next target, but it hung over him like a weight, playing with his focus on the current situation and it still took him two shots to take out the next target. It was getting more and more difficult to ignore the truth of the situation: he was compromised.

“Barton,” Natasha said, shooting him a concerned look between shots. 

He couldn’t lie to her. Not at a time like this when the two of them were in the middle of storming this compound without SHIELD approval. Because SHIELD did not mount rescue missions. They had no backup and no one to rely on other than each other in order to get through this. 

“You take lead,” Clint said. “I’ve got your back.”

Natasha gave one curt nod, acknowledging what Clint couldn’t say out loud. He was compromised; but he was still in this.  

They moved as one through the compound, taking out waves of the enemy army as they came. They scoured every corridor, broke down every door, took down everyone in their path, but the further they moved into the facility, the heavier the rock in Clint’s stomach felt. They should have found him by now. That is, if there was anything left to find. 

They were midway down a corridor lined with locked doors, Natasha providing cover fire while Clint funneled all his rage, desperation, and terror into breaking down each door. A few of the rooms were offices, and then a few more looked like research labs of some sort. Each one was empty of human beings. Until one finally wasn’t.

A figure sat slumped against the far wall of the empty room. He had lost weight since Clint had last seen him weeks ago before his disappearance. He was more pale than Clint had even seen a human being before and he didn’t move with the door crashed open, not so much as a twitch. 

Phil…

It wasn’t supposed to be Phil. It was never supposed to be Phil. Phil Coulson was supposed to be safe on a SHIELD base or in a safehouse, the voice behind his earpiece, the one tethered to a computer to feed them intel. He was never supposed to be the one that got targeted, the one that was in danger, the one that needed rescue…

The one that could die. 

For the first time in his professional career, Clint completely froze. He could still hear gunfire as Natasha covered his back and somewhere in his subconscious he knew that he should be moving, but it was like his body had completely separated from his mind. There was so much blood. It was on the walls, it was on the floor… it was gathering in a pool underneath where Phil was slumped over. 

Was he still breathing? Was he still alive? 

And then, Phil’s head rolled from one side to hang down in front of him, a groan barely clawing its way up his windpipe. That was all Clint needed to snap him out of his stupor, sending him stumbling fully into the room. He crossed the space between them in a matter of seconds and crashed to his knees next to his mentor -- the man who had saved his life when he had recruited him into SHIELD, the closest thing he had to family before Natasha came along. His hand was shaking as he reached for Phil’s neck to check his pulse, slipping in the blood that had spilled down from a nasty head wound. 

“C… C… ‘int?”

His voice was soft and raw, like someone lightly brushing sandpaper over tree bark. Clint looked up to see that Phil’s eyes were squinting open, bloodshot and heavy with exhaustion. 

“Goddamnit, Phil,” Clint huffed on what felt like the first unhindered breath he had taken in three weeks. He let his head drop, touching his forehead to Phil’s and for a moment just revealed in the fact that Phil was still breathing. “I thought I lost you.” Clint’s voice shook and cracked as he finally admitted what he couldn’t before this moment. 

“S’okay,” Phil breathed, reaching up a shaky hand to latch onto Clint’s arm. “Knew you’d come f’r me.”

“Clint?” Clint turned at the sound of Natasha’s voice, seeing that though her shoulders were still angled toward the door, her gun was down in a passive position. “I think we’re clear. Let’s get him home.”

Clint couldn’t help the small smile. He ducked under Phil’s arm and helped leverage him up to his feet, his mentor leaning on him heavily. 

“C’mon, Phil. Let’s go home.”

Chapter Text

Day Three
My Way or the Highway
Manhandled | Forced to their Knees | Held at Gunpoint

“Natasha,” Clint said slowly and carefully. “Just take it easy. You’re okay. Everything’s okay.”

Damnit. They had been so careful. They had spent the better part of two years tracking down and taking out these people, they had been so sure that they had gotten them all. They had been so sure that they had taken care of this and that they were past having to worry about this.

And yet, here they were, Natasha’s gun trained unwaveringly on him.

“Clint,” Steve said unsurely from where he and Tony stood frozen behind Clint.

“It’s okay, Cap,” Clint said as evenly as he could. “I got this, just stay where you are.”

“This has happened before?” Tony asked.

“Yeah.”

“And you can talk her down?” Tony pressed.

“Usually.”

“Usually?” Steve echoed in surprise.

“She’s only shot me twice.” Clint ignored the surprised gasp and quiet cursing behind him and refocused on Natasha. Even though her eyes were pinned on him, they had a hauntingly vacant look behind them. “Nat, it’s me, it’s Clint. I’m not going to hurt you. See?” He put out his empty hand while he slowly lowered his bow down to the ground at his feet.

“Стоп!” Natasha spat. “Стоп, не двигайся!” [Stop! Stop, don’t move!]

“It’s okay, it’s okay, take it easy,” Clint said quickly, putting both his empty hands out in front of him placatingly as he slowly straightened up. “Natasha, you’re safe here, you’re with friends. We can help you, but you need to fight this.”

The Red Room where Natasha had been raised and trained had been a cruel, sadistic place. Physically getting her away from that place had only been the first step in her rescue. Not only was there trauma that was ingrained deep within Natasha, but there was a level of brainwashing that even SHIELD had never encountered before. The right code words said in the right order turned her back into that mindless, ruthless killing machine that the Red Room had tried to make her. When the scientist at SHIELD failed to be able to clean that brainwashing from her mind, the only choice became to track down and eliminate anyone who was privy to those words that would unravel Natasha’s entire being. Almost ten years without incident and they really thought they had got them all.

Apparently they hadn’t.

“You’re stronger than this,” Clint implored, taking a carefully half step forward.

“Не надо!” Natasha shouted, jamming her gun at him for emphasis. “Не подходи ближе, или я пристрелю тебя, Мудак!” [Don’t! Don't come any closer or I will shoot you, shithead!]

“She doesn’t sound happy, Legolas,” Tony said uneasily.

“This isn’t you, Natasha,” Clint said, keeping his focus firmly on Natasha. He understood Russian, but he knew it wouldn’t help him break through her conditioning. “You’re not the person that they tried to break you down into. You can beat this, I know you can.”

There was just the slightest waver in the aim of Natasha’s sidearm. She blinked once… again… and then seemed to refocus on him with some confusion, like she wasn’t quite sure what was going on.

“That’s it,” Clint encouraged. “You can do it, come back to us.”

When she didn’t move, Clint took a risk. He took a full step forward and for one long moment she just stared at him, her eyes wide and searching, as if trying to remember a dream. And then, suddenly her gaze sharpened and her grip tightened on her gun, and Clint’s heart stopped in his chest.

“Иди на хуй!” she shouted savagely. [Go fuck yourself!]

“Whoa, whoa!” Steve shouted from behind Clint as he saw the situation escalating at the same time that Clint heard whirring from Tony’s suit as he powered back up.

“Отойди, или я убью всех до единого, придурки,” Natasha growled so viciously it hardly sounds like she was still speaking with her own voice as she swung her gun around to point at the other two men before it settled back on Clint, who was still the closest to her. [Stay back, or I'll kill every last one of you shitheads.]

“Wait, wait!” Clint snapped, throwing out a hand to stop Steve and Tony from advancing into the situation. When they froze, he struggled to even out his voice again as he went on. “It’s okay. It’s okay, right Natasha?” He turned back to meet Natasha’s eerily empty eyes. “You wouldn’t hurt me, right?” Holding both empty hands out to his sides, he took a shaky breath before he stepped forward again.

“Clint,” Steve said in a low voice, hating every moment that gun was pointed at Clint, who remained unarmed.

“It’s okay,” Clint insisted calmly as he took another step forward, his eyes still carefully trained on Natasha. “Nat, you’re not going to hurt me, right?”

Another step. Once again, Natasha’s gaze shifted ever so slightly, unsettled by Clint’s passive actions while her gun was still trained on him.

“Because you’re still in there, I know you are.”

Another step forward. Natasha drifted back half a step, her gun dropping marginally.

“You are so much stronger than you used to be. You’re not going to let them win… right?”

Another step. He could almost reach out and touch her, but he didn’t dare just yet. She blinked and tilted her head slightly, her elbows folding back toward her stomach in a gesture of defense.

“Tasha… you know me. Who am I?”

Natasha swallowed thickly. She opened her mouth and then closed it again. She blinked and shook her head slightly.

“Natasha, look at me.” This time his tone was firm and her eyes snapped to him… and there was a spark of something burning just beyond the void. “Who am I?”

The silence hung heavily over them. It stretched out seconds… a minute… two… Clint felt his gut twisting as he watched the war that waged behind Natasha’s eyes. He felt so helpless as all that was left to do was to see if Natasha really could overcome the sickness that was in her own mind. Until finally…

“Clint?”

Her voice was small and timid, like the child that she never got to be. Clint felt the weight lifting off them all as he finally took that last step, reaching out one hand to gently grasp Natasha’s bicep, while putting his other hand on the barrel of the gun and shifting it away from him just in case.

The moment he touched her, he could feel Natasha’s muscles slowly start to melt. She let go of the gun without any kind of protest, and Clint blindly held it out to one side for Steve to take while he wound his other arm around Natasha to help brace her as her muscles began to give out. Together they sunk carefully down to the ground and it was only because of Clint’s support that she was able to remain upright.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” Natasha whimpered as the weight of what had just happened finally fell on her. “I… I could have…”

“It’s okay,” Clint assured her as he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her into him protectively as her whole body began to tremble. “It’s okay. You did great. You did so great, Nat. You won, you came back to us, that’s all that matters now.”

Chapter Text

Day Four
Running Out of Time
Caged | Buried Alive | Collapsed Building

The warehouse had been cleared and all the hostiles were either captured or eliminated. Tony’s scanners had confirmed that there was no life left within the enemy compound.

The Avengers had won for all intents and purposes. All that was left was tying up a few loose ends. They were still trying to track down the blueprints that had been stolen from Stark Industries months ago, which in the wrong hands could be disastrous. They had split up to do one last sweep to see if they could find anything.

Simple, right?

“Anybody find anything?” Steve asked over the comms.

Various versions of “no” or “nothing” floated over the line. Clint was clicking on his flashlight and moving into a dark office as he articulated his own confirmation that he hadn’t come across anything interesting. He swung the light around as he took stock of what was in the room.

“I think if there was anything to find, we would have found it by now,” Natasha pointed out.

“I think you’re right,” Steve agreed. “Let’s finish up the area you’re currently in, and then I think we can head home.”

“That sounds good,” Clint agreed as he shifted through the papers on the desk in the room.

It had been a long day and Clint hadn’t been too enthusiastic when after a hard fought battle, Steve insisted that they do this extra sweep when there was no evidence that the blueprints were ever here. Grudgingly, Clint did realize it was the right call, but after an hour of fruitless searching that thought wasn’t terribly comforting to his aching feet and sore muscles at the moment.

Clint was turning and heading back out of the room, when suddenly he stumbled. For a split second he thought that maybe he had been more tired than he thought and his legs were giving out. But then there was another sudden jolt as the floor shifted under his feet.

“Did anyone else feel that?” Clint asked uneasily into this comm.

“Tony, can your sensors pick up any kind of booby traps in the compound?” Steve asked quickly.

“Sensors are all still quiet,” Tony said unsurely just as Clint felt the ground shifting again, this time a little more insistently. “But hold on… I’m picking up some seismic act--”

Anything else Tony was going to say was lost as suddenly the floor jerked violently, sending Clint flying off his feet and smashing hard onto the floor.

“Earthquake!” Clint yelled on instinct, unsure if anyone could hear him over the sudden roar of the ground rearranging itself.

A quick scan of the room told Clint that he was in the worst possible spot, near a large floor to ceiling cabinet with glass doors. He went scrambling across the room just as the cabinet tipped, only barely able to throw himself out of the way to avoid getting pinned. His instincts wanted him to get to the desk in order to shelter under it, but the tremors were so violent that it went sliding across the floor toward the shattered cabinet. Clint needed something, anything to hold onto in order to stabilize himself, but everything in the room was shifting violently. There was a loud crash as a tree smashed through a large nearby window, sending razor sharp shards raining down on him as Clint ducked and covered his head as best he could. Among the deafening crashing, Clint could have sworn he heard someone cry out in pain, his head automatically jerking in the direction of the noise…

And then suddenly the floor underneath him dipped sharply inward, sending Clint careening downward toward the middle of the building. Clint scrambled desperately trying to slow his descent, knowing that moving further inward was the worst possible scenario, but debris was raining down on him, pushing him deeper into the chaos. Then what started off as an uncontrollable slide, suddenly turned into a free fall and then…

Nothing.

Blackness. Silence. Stillness. Like the world had suddenly blinked out of existence.

Clint had no idea how much time had passed before the pain began to bring him back around. It felt like he had been put through a meat grinder, and for a long moment he couldn’t pinpoint any part of himself that felt any worse than the rest. He heaved in thick air that burned down his throat and into his lungs, which spasmed painfully at the intrusion. As he blinked his eyes open, trying to get a sense of his surroundings, he pulled the collar of his shirt up and over his nose and mouth in an attempt to filter out at least the larger debris in the air as he continued to wheeze desperately for precious oxygen.

By some stroke of luck, Clint realized that his heavy duty flashlight had followed his descent, and though it was cracked, by some miracle it was still shining brightly just a few feet away. He went to reach out for it… and screamed in pain as it felt as if a white hot poker had been jammed and then twisted viciously into his shoulder.

He gasped and coughed painfully as he struggled through the pain, thankful when it dulled as he remained still. Very carefully, he shifted to get a look at his shoulder, fully expecting to see something horribly grotesque. He was confused when he didn’t immediately see a reason for the pain outside of the cuts that covered the rest of his body as well. Then he realized his shoulder was sitting lower than it should. It was dislocated. He let out a shaky breath, feeling relief wash over him. It was bad, but it was fixable.

Of course, that was assuming that he was able to make it out of here.

He methodically took stock of himself before he attempted to move again. All the glass that was around him seemed to have done the bulk of the damage, all his exposed skin had been practically cut to ribbons. Thankfully it didn’t seem like the cuts were very deep… until he found the deep gash where something had sliced through his thick uniform just above his hip. Blood was already beginning to pool underneath him.

He reached out his good hand and as he stretched out painfully, he was just able to reach his fingertips to the flashlight and roll it closer to him so that he could grab it. He took a shaky breath as he shined the light around in order to get an idea of his surroundings. The building had obviously collapsed in on itself during the earthquake, and Clint was beyond lucky to have landed in a small gap between slabs of what used to be either a floor or ceiling, it was hard to tell.

“Can any…” he had to pause to cough and wheeze, “...’nyone hear me?”

He wasn’t surprised when there was nothing but silence from his comm. He couldn’t bank on being rescued. They had all still been in the building when the earthquake had hit and there was no guarantee that any of the others had made it out. He shined the flashlight around the space, trying to see if there were any gaps he might be able to climb through…

“S’anyone ‘ere?”

Clint’s eyes snapped to the sound. It hadn’t come from his comm., but rather seemed to float to him from somewhere beyond his little space. Had he really heard it though? Or was his desperate mind imagining things?

“Hello?” Clint tried, coughing hard at the effort it took to raise his voice.

He strained his ears when he heard some kind of muffled response. He couldn’t make out what was being said, but it was undeniable that there was another person down here with him. He shined his light in the general direction he had heard the voice. There was a small gap in that direction that he might just barely be able to fit through. With an effort and several groans of pain, Clint used the forearm of his good arm -- good being a relative term at this point -- in order to drag himself toward the gap.

“Hey,” Clint gasped as he moved. “Can you--” cough cough, “...you ‘ere me?” More muffled mumbling. Clint finally got close enough to shine his light through the gap, having to squint when it glared off something metallic. It took him a beat longer than it should have for him to realize what he was looking at. “Tony!”

Tony was still mostly in his Iron-Man suit; the faceplate had been removed and lay to one side. The suit, along with Tony, was pinned from the chest down under a large slab on concrete. Clint felt adrenaline honing his senses as he focused on the way that Tony’s features were pulled in pain, in the way that he gasped weakly… and finally saw that the midsection of Tony’s metal suit was bent inward.

“Shit, Tony,” Clint mumbled, suddenly realizing how serious the situation was.

The gap between the area where Clint had been and where Tony lay was a tight squeeze for Clint to drag his broken body through, gritting his teeth so hard he wouldn’t be surprised if they cracked. But once he got through he found that this area was at least bigger and gave him more room to work with.

“Hang on, jus--” cough, cough, wheeze, cough, wheeze, “h’ng on.”

In the larger space he was able to get up on his knees and crawl his way over to Tony. The man was pale and his breath came in quiet, raspy gasps. His eyes locked on Clint as he approached, wide and terrified but also relieved that he had been found. Clint eyed the predicament, feeling a sinking in his chest. There wasn’t going to be a good way to do this, but judging by Tony’s inability to breath well enough to even try to speak at this point, they didn’t have any time to waste.

Stoically ignoring his own protesting injuries, Clint shifted himself next to where Tony lay and carefully positioned himself so that his intact shoulder was wedged under the piece of concrete.

“Ge’ ready,” Clint warned as he wheezed in a few steadying breaths.

Looking back, he honestly wouldn’t be able to really understand how he did it. All the laws of physics were against him. Later, Tony would tease him about being like one of those mothers with a baby trapped under a car. All Clint knew was that despite everything, as he strained every single muscle in his beaten body, little by little that slab of concrete began to move. Somehow he managed to lift it just far enough that there were a few precious centimeters between the slab and Tony’s suit, giving him just barely enough space to pull himself out from under it.

As Clint let the slab crash back into the ground he let out a raw cry of pain as his injuries screamed at him for being ignored. He slumped over, his limbs shaking and his throat raw and burning with every breath. He knew the task was only half done though.

He blinked away the dark patches at the edges of his vision as he pushed himself over to where Tony now lay. The mechanic was scrabbling at the side of his armor, but his fingers were too bulky and uncoordinated with the suit dead in the water like it clearly was. Clint was suddenly glad they had drilled this so many times as he was easily able to find the small hatch in the side of the armor, reaching in and pulling a small lever that served as an emergency release for Tony’s suit in case of just this kind of situation.

Tony gasped desperately as he clawed the now loose pieces of armor laying on his chest. Clint let out a sigh, letting himself slump over once again against the concrete slab, thankful that Tony was able to shed his own armor.

“Shi’...” Tony breathed between coughing and wheezing as he rolled off of the pieces of his suit that were underneath him. He gasped and yelped at the motion, and Clint imagined that he had to have some severely bruised ribs, possibly even some broken ones.

He should be moving toward Tony. He should be checking him over, seeing if he was really okay. But for some reason, his muscles would not move. He felt heavy and suddenly everything around him had a strange floating quality to it.

“Barton?”

Was the air around him getting thicker? Was Tony suddenly further away? No, as Clint blinked he saw that Tony had actually crawled closer to him. So why did he suddenly sound further away?

“Clint?”

Clint suddenly noticed the blood that covered the ground, a thick trail of it smeared across the ground leading back to where he had come from. Even so, he was slow to realize that that blood was coming from him. He had been bleeding… from where? He suddenly couldn’t remember as large, black splotches suddenly moved across his vision.

“Hold on, Clint. I think I c--” cough, “c’n rig a beacon. You just gotta--” cough, cough, cough, “you gotta…”

That’s all Clint would remember. He would wake up in the hospital several days later. He woke in a panic, only able to calm down when Steve left and came back pushing Tony in a wheelchair from his own recovery room. Tony had managed to hook up a small part of his suit directly to the arc reactor in his chest in order to send out a distress signal. Bruce -- who had been saved from being trapped in that building by the Hulk -- had been scanning for signals using the Quinjet. As soon as he found the signal he was able to direct Steve, Natasha and Thor -- who had been on the other side of the building that hadn’t sustained as much damage, leaving them relatively unscathed -- to where Tony and Clint had been trapped.

It was a miracle that they had all made it out alive. This time it wasn’t a conscious enemy that almost got them, but a natural disaster that didn’t care who’s side you were on.

Chapter Text

Day Five
Where Do You Think You’re Going?
On the Run | Failed Escape | Rescue

His legs screamed in protest. The humid air pushed in heavily around him, threatening to strangle him. A hidden root in the underbrush sent him crashing to the ground, something that should have rocked him to his bones, but he barely registered it as he shoved himself back up to his feet.

If he stopped, he’d be dead. So, Clint desperately sprinted on.

There was no plan. Any sense of a plan had gone to complete shit hours ago. Right now the only thing that Clint could do was try and survive and hope the right people found him before the wrong people caught up. He was out of arrows and his bow had been lost. All he had left was his sidearm that had six bullets left in it.

“Shit,” Clint hissed as bullets tore through the trees around him. He didn’t dare take his eyes off the terrain in front of him -- another fall could be the end of him -- as he pointed his sidearm over his shoulder and squeezed off three shots.

Three bullets left.

The shots from behind him paused, as he had hopefully gained a little ground with his cover fire. He ran deeper into the jungle, the trees pushing in thicker around him. As he struggled to heave in humid air, he tried to concentrate more on his surroundings, trying to evaluate if he would be able to find a viable hiding place. Because he knew he couldn’t keep up this pace forever. But even if he did find a hiding spot, he needed enough space between him and the pursuing troops to be able to pull off an effective disappearing act.

His attention was wrenched away from the task as bullets began flying away. Clint spent two more bullets before he felt white hot pain tearing across his side where a bullet clipped him. He stumbled slightly, but pushed forward on what was likely pure adrenaline at this point.

One bullet left.

He was running out of options and rapidly running out of time. He needed something -- anything -- to go his way if he wanted any kind of chance of coming out of this thing alive.

However, that day it seemed like the universe was just out to spite him. He tore through a particularly thick line of trees and came out into what he thought was a clearing… until he suddenly came to a screeching halt on the edge of a sharp cliff, his arms windmilling frantically as he threw his weight backward to avoid tumbling over the edge.

He had seconds to make a decision. He had glimpsed a river far down in the canyon below, but he had no idea the conditions of it. There was a pretty good chance the jump would kill him. But if he stayed where he was, there was a one hundred percent chance that the incoming hostile army would kill him. It really wasn’t much of a choice, especially when the bullets began tearing out of the jungle in his direction.

Clint turned toward the bullets just as the first couple men started to appear at the treeline. As he took several steps toward them, Clint fired his last bullet, making damn sure it hit a fatal mark, and then mostly just for shits he threw the empty sidearm at another hostile, striking him perfectly in the forehead with what Clint hoped was legal force. That unexpected attack gave him the few precious seconds he needed to get several steps away from the cliff.

Then he sent up a prayer and ran full tilt, flinging himself out into empty air with no clue if this was going to be a survivable fall.

Clint of course was trained in cliff diving. As the wind roared passed his ears he pinned his feet together and crossed his arms over his chest, controlling his fall into a classic pencil dive, which would hopefully give himself the highest chance of survival.

The second his feet hit the water, it was like a hand grabbed him by the ankles and yanked him violently downcurrent, causing one arm to fling out at the abuse, tearing a yelp from him that sent water surging into his lungs as he went under. He wasn’t sure how long he was ripped around in the current of the whitewater, bouncing off of submerged rocks and trees as he desperately tried to claw his way to a surface that he wasn’t completely sure was still above him.

Then suddenly without warning, Clint felt his hand break the surface into the precious air that still hung above him. Using the very last of his energy, he kicked desperately until suddenly he was gasping blessed oxygen into lungs that felt like they had been lit on fire. He coughed and wheezed, finding that the only reason he had been able to find the surface was because the current had slowed.

The river had decided to spare him.

The next order of business was getting the hell out of the river before a jungle predator decided to finish what the river itself had started. But as Clint tried to maneuver his arms through the water, a horrific pain shot up his right arm.

“Shit, sonofabitch,” Clint gasped, coughing on more water.

He had to rely on his legs as he slowly kicked his way to one side of the river. He had come out at an area where the river bank slowly sloped up in order to form a mostly flat beach area. There was still about an inch of water lapping underneath him when Clint collapsed onto his back. For a long time all he could do was lay there and focus on dragging sweet air into his lung as he continued to cough up water.

As his breathing evened out marginally, he attempted to take stock of himself. Something was definitely broken in his right arm, likely from when he had entered the water at a bad angle because of the current. The bullet wound on his side was still bleeding freely, and he spotted another open bullet wound on his left leg that he hadn’t even felt before now.

He knew he needed to get up and get completely clear of the water. He needed to address his wounds and at least try to stem the bleeding. He needed to take stock of his surroundings and figure out what he needed to do in order to survive the night.

But… he was so tired. Maybe he had finally found his limit.

His grasp on consciousness was slipping. His surroundings faded out and back in several times and he wasn’t sure if enough time had passed that the sun was going down or if his vision was dimming. A strange whirring noise crescendoed in his ears before fading again. He blinked heavily, hardly able to pull his eyes back open when the noise returned, this time remaining more consistent instead of fading away. The wind had picked up, disturbing the water underneath him and causing his still soaked body to begin to tremble.

“Clint! Sonofabitch, Clint!”

Clint blinked with confusion, slow to process what was happening and where that voice was coming from. Suddenly, Steve’s face appeared over him, looking haggard and terrified.

“Cap?” Clint mumbled, confused.

Steve let out a sigh of relief. “Damnit, Clint, you scared the shit out of us. When Natasha tracked you to that cliff we thought...” He sighed again as he ran a hand through his hair.

“Though’ it wasa… was a good day f’r a swim,” Clint murmured hoarsely.

Steve let out a noise halfway between a laugh and a groan. “C’mon. Let’s get you the hell out of here.”

Steve leaned down and slid a hand behind Clint’s back as he carefully pulled him up into a sitting position, Clint hissing in the renewed pain the movement caused. He glanced around and finally spotted what he was missing before. The whirring noise and the sudden wind wasn’t a figment of his growing blood loss or a product of the jungle surrounding him. The Quinjet hovered above them, a gurney already being lowered from it.

They had found him. They were getting him out of here. Despite everything, he had survived yet again. And with that knowledge, he couldn’t help the smile that tug at his lips. His own will may have run out, but his team’s hadn’t.

The Avengers would always come through for each other.

Chapter Text

Day 6
“Please…”
“Get it out” | No More | “Stop, please”

“No, no, no, shit, stop, please stop, stop, stop, stop.”

Despite her begging, blood continued to steadily seep between her fingers. Natasha pushed down harder, shifting her entire weight onto the gunshot wound on Clint’s thigh, her hands clasped so tightly that they were almost as pale as Clint. Clint cried out and bucked against the renewed pain that she knew she was causing.

“Clint, Clint, look at me,” Natasha demanded. Clint's clouded gaze drifted vaguely in her direction as he gasped for breath. “I need you to stay still and I need to keep pressure.” She shifted her attention to the comm. in her ear. “Guys, Clint needs med evac now, what’s taking so long?”

“I’m here, I’m here!” Natasha turned to see Steve running up behind her. “Tony and Bruce are bringing the Quinjet around. How bad is it?”

“It’s bad,” Natasha said bluntly, her voice wavering at the admission. “I think the bullet might have hit an artery.” As she met Steve’s gaze, her eyes said what she couldn’t. He might not make it. “I can’t move my hands. There are bandages in the pouch on my right hip, we need a tourniquet.”

“Okay,” Steve said, quickly springing into action.

Natasha shifted her attention back to Clint. He was no longer fighting her, had slumped back down to the ground and his head was lolling listlessly, having no reaction to Steve’s appearance on the scene. His eyes were still open, but they were unfocused and his breaths were fast and shallow.

“Don’t you dare,” Natasha growled softly. “Clinton Francis Barton, don’t you dare die on me.” She took in an unsteady breath, her voice losing it’s bite as she murmured, “Please…”

“Stark, what’s your position?” Steve asked tersely into his comm. as he tightly wound the bandages around Clint’s upper thigh.

“Two minutes out,” Tony reported.

“Make it faster,” Natasha snapped.

“We’re all restricted to the laws of physics, Romanoff,” Tony quipped, but there was an anxious tone just below the surface.

Steve firmly tied off the makeshift tourniquet. “Let’s elevate his leg,” he said as he shifted. “Keep pressure.”

Natasha nodded as Steve carefully leveraged Clint’s leg up and folded his own leg underneath it so that it was easier for Natasha to keep steady pressure on the wound. Natasha watched Clint’s features closely, noticing the way that he winced and groaned lightly at the movement. It was a little comforting that Clint still seemed vaguely aware of what was going on, but the fact that he didn’t have a bigger response when his wound was handled scared her.

Finally, the whirr of the Quinjet screeched over them. Tony landed the jet just a short ways away, and Bruce was hurrying out with a gurney before the ramp even fully lowered.

“How is he?” Bruce asked, slightly breathless.

“Not good,” Steve admitted.

It only took a glance for Bruce to really assess how dire Clint’s situation was, he himself paling at the sight. “We’ve got his blood transfusion set up in the jet. Steve, help me get him up on the gurney. Natasha, don’t let up pressure.”

Without wasting any time, they rushed Clint to the jet. Everything around Natasha seemed to blur as she focused on Clint’s face as they moved him. It seemed that he finally lost consciousness, and for a moment she panicked, thinking that he had stopped breathing. But when they got him into the jet and Bruce checked his vitals, he reported they were weak but still there. Then he quickly got to work setting up Clint’s blood transfusion.

“Okay, you can let go now, Natasha.”

Bruce’s words came to her through a thick fog, and though she knew that Bruce could do more than she could, she still couldn’t will herself to take her hands off the wound.

“It’s okay,” Steve assured her quietly as he reached over and moved Natasha’s hands himself. “Let’s let Bruce work.”

As Bruce began quickly packing the wound, Natasha’s gaze snagged on her hands. Her palms and fingers were completely covered in red and without a job to do, they began to tremble. She felt like she was walking through a dream -- or rather a nightmare -- as Steve led her away from Clint and carefully helped her clean up. He spoke to her in low comforting tones, but she couldn’t grasp the meaning of any of his words. She just kept picturing the blood that had come pouring out of Clint’s body.

Please, stop. Please, stop. Please, stop!

It was such a close call. The doctors who performed his surgery would tell them that if he had gotten there any later, they very likely would have lost him. Even when he came out of surgery and was stabilized, Natasha still felt like there was a hand around her windpipe. Her hands would randomly start shaking and she would rub them uncomfortably on her legs, as if still trying to wipe off the blood that was no longer there.

It wasn’t until Clint finally came back around and reached for her hand that she felt like she could breathe easy again. It was such a close call. But every close call that ended with everyone still alive was a win.

Chapter Text

Day 7
I’ve Got You
Support | Carrying | Enemy to Caretaker

The military grade jeep came out of nowhere. Clint had managed to sneak up on a group of hostels in the forest outside of the compound, quietly taking them out with well placed arrows. Despite the battle the other Avengers were waging, Clint was managing to stay under the radar.

Until now.

The jeep came crashing through a thicket of trees just as Clint was taking out the last two hostels that he had snuck up on. He cursed loudly as he tried to throw himself out of the way… but didn’t quite make it. The front corner of the vehicle slammed solidly into Clint’s right side, sending him hurtling into a nearby tree before collapsing into a heap on the ground.

There was no time to even really process what had happened when the jeep roared toward him again, trying to crush him into the tree this time. Without thinking, he keyed in a specialty arrow, drew and nocked the arrow and snapped off a shallow shot in the span of a breath. The arrow sunk into the tire of the jeep, sending it careening off course while Clint was able to launch himself in the opposite direction, covering his head as his explosive arrow detonated, sending debris from the vehicle flying.

Clint hit the ground and rolled before he came up on his knees, gasping painfully even though his brain hadn’t really caught up to his physical condition. As three hostels jumped from the now disabled jeep, Clint reached to grab another arrow from his quiver… and could not stifle the yelp of pain and tore from his throat as his side screamed in protest.

“Shit!” Clint groaned as he clenched his jaw painfully.

Even though it suddenly felt like his body was being torn apart, his hands moved on pure instinct alone as he grabbed two arrows, nocked them one after the other as he snapped off two sloppy shots that still managed to bury in the chests of the two closest hostels. Then, with a swift motion he unclasped the strap to his quiver, letting it fall to the ground and scatter arrows around him. He had just enough time to swipe an arrow from the ground, nock it and snap off another shallow shot into the final hostile that had been in the jeep.

“Clint?”

Now that his brain had a moment to catch up with the sudden turn of events in the last two minutes, the pain in Clint’s side skyrocketed. He hunched over himself, putting a hand to his damaged side, but the pain pulsed even more painful with every shallow breath he managed to suck in. He tried to take stock of the injury, When he moved his hand away, he didn’t see any blood, so the damage must be internal.

“Clint!” Natasha snapped when he didn’t answer her. “Status!”

“Took a hit,” Clint gasped, grimacing. “Think I’m okay though.”

“Took a hit… from what?” Natasha asked suspiciously.

A rustling from the trees sharply drew Clint’s attention. He realized belatedly that the explosion likely wasn’t good for his ‘stay under the radar’ strategy.

“Clint, took a hit from what?” Natasha demanded.

“A military jeep.”

There was a long pause over the comms. As he waited for a response, Clint slowly reached down for an arrow, keeping his gaze steadily on where he had heard the noise.

“Barton, are you trying to tell us you got hit by a car?” Steve finally asked, a note of disbelief in his voice.

Gunshots tore through the trees. Clint blindly fired off a shot in the general direction of the shots as he scrambled around the tree behind him in a desperate move for cover.

“Shit, shit, shit,” Clint breathed, struggling to pull air into his lungs.

“That would be Clint’s way of requesting backup,” Natasha commented with an exasperated sigh, and Clint could practically hear her roll her eyes.

“I got him,” Tony announced.

“I’m fine,” Clint protested. He tried to reach out to snag one of his arrows still on the ground and yelped as the pain tore at his side.

“You know, just for fun, I think I’ll drop by, Feathers,” Tony drawled.

Clint leaned his head back against the tree behind him as he heard Tony’s repulsor blasts taking out the nearby hostiles. Clint struggled to suck in air, as if he could fix himself with sheer force of will.

“Fancy seeing you here.”

Clint glared up at the Iron-Man suit as Tony walked around the tree that Clint had been using for cover. “I’m fine.”

“Clearly,” Tony said dryly as he flipped his faceplate up. “How about a footrace?”

“Don’t you need to be--” He was cut off by a sharp stab on pain. He sucked in a breath. “Don’t you need to be somewhere?”

“Really, what’s the plan, Barton?” Tony demanded. “You just gonna sit here and wait for more baddies to come along and shoot your stubborn ass?”

“You need to focus on the mission, Stark,” Clint shot back. “The others need your airsupport. I’ll be fine.”

Tony sighed. “We can stand here and debate where my services are needed most for hours, or you can suck up your damn pride and let me get you to the Quinjet so Bruce can patch you up.”

He knew Tony was right. The Avengers were still a relatively new formation, and Clint had to keep reminding himself that the weight of every mission didn’t rest on just two people anymore. Being part of this bigger team meant that he was allowed to ask for help.

“Yeah, okay,” Clint relented with a pained sigh.

“Alight, princess,” Tony said briskly as his faceplate fell back into place. “Since you’ve likely got broken ribs, we’re going to need to do this bridal style.” He leaned down and as carefully as he could scooped Clint up into his arms. Clint could help the yelp of pain at the movement. “Sorry,” Tony said, a sincere apology in his tone. “Let’s get you the hell out of here.”

And with that, he took off.

Chapter Text

Day 8
Where Did Everybody Go?
“Don’t Say Goodbye” | Abandoned | Isolation

Clint would never take physical touch for granted again.

Being sick was bad enough. Getting doused with a dangerous bioweapon in the middle of a mission was worse. Being confined to complete isolation on the medical floor of Avengers Tower was just plain miserable.

Clint had been dangerously sick for the first five days after his exposure. He honestly didn’t remember much of those days, having spent the majority of his time either unconscious or in a fevered delirium. Tony and Bruce had finally been able to synthesize an antidote of sorts, and Clint was finally on the mend, though it was still too risky to expose any of the other Avengers to the manufactured virus.

Clint still felt rundown with a nasty cough -- mostly he felt like he had a bad strain of the flu at this point -- but being stuck alone in this painfully sterile hospital room was starting to get to him. It honestly took a few days to figure out why he was feeling so restless. He had a television that Tony had hooked up with basically any movie or tv show he could ever watch. He had a StarkPad loaded up with games. Every Avenger had donated a handful of books for him to read. The rest of the team would also drop by usually once a day or so to stand on the other side of the large window that took up most of one wall of Clint’s isolation room and chat with him for a bit, though it was difficult to keep up significant conversations with his persistent cough. He had plenty he could do to fill his time, in theory he should be well occupied.

But as the days went on, he became more and more focused on the thick paine of glass between him and the rest of the world.

Doctors and nurses came into his room periodically to check his vitals and administer medications, but every person had to put on a biohazard suit and go through a decontamination chamber before and after entering the room. It only added to Clint’s feeling of disconnect from the world.

It was a week and three days after Clint’s initial infection. Clint was curled up on the bed in a nest on blankets that Natasha had brought him when out of the corner of his eye he saw a group entering the decontamination chamber attached to his room. This wasn’t anything out of the ordinary and he didn’t pay the group much attention as they entered the room.

Because of the biohazard suits, it took Clint until he was practically leaning over him to recognize the familiar face.

“Hey Clint,” Bruce said with a warm smile.

Clint felt the corners of his mouth tugging up weakly. “Hey, Doc,” he rasped, his voice especially rough from disuse. He curled in further on himself as he coughed hard.

Bruce gave him a sympathetic look. “How are you feeling?”

“Okay, I guess,” Clint mumbled with a small shrug as he automatically held out an arm to the doctor and nurse who had come in with Bruce so that they could take their usual blood sample.

Bruce frowned though. He glanced over at the television in the room, which was off. “Have you watched anything good recently?”

Clint glanced over at the tv as if to confirm that it was still there. “Hm. Not really.” He coughed, wheezing in a labored breath. “Nothing really good on tv I guess.”

Bruce nodded, though he looked unconvinced. He watched quietly for a minute as the doctor continued to take Clint’s vitals, Clint moving along mechanically, used to the routine.

“Are you reading anything?” Bruce asked, eyeing the books that were still stacked neatly next to Clint’s bed.

Clint stared blankly at the stack for a moment. He swallowed thickly. “I started that… that James Patterson book Steve brought,” he mumbled, waving a hand vaguely as he coughed weakly. “Couldn’t really get into it though.”

“Yeah,” Bruce said distractedly. “Is there anything else you need? Anything I can bring you?”

“No, I’m fine,” Clint mumbled. Because what he wanted was to get out of this room and be able to interact normally with other people again. And he knew that Bruce couldn’t help with that.

“Your vitals have dipped a little bit since yesterday,” the doctor reported, concerned. “Your fever went up a few degrees, your blood pressure dropped a bit.”

Clint blinked as he tried to absorb that information. “I’m getting worse?” he asked, his voice small.

“It’s probably just a minor setback,” the doctor said briskly, though Clint couldn’t help but notice the uneasy tone in his voice. “We’ll reevaluate your medication and will likely just have to make an adjustment to get you back on track.”

Clint nodded vaguely, though his heart twisted in his chest. He had at least thought that he was getting better. But this news meant that he might have to have an even longer isolation that they had originally thought. Clint blamed his fever for the fact that he couldn’t stop tears from gathering at the corners of his eyes.

“It’ll be okay, Clint,” Bruce assured him. “Tony and I will take another look at the antidote, see if there’s anything we can do to strengthen it, maybe be able to focus it to be more effective.”

“Yeah,” Clint murmured hoarsely, barely listening to Bruce at this point.

He had every faith in Bruce and Tony’s ability to cure the virus. But the thought of spending any more time secluded in this room clawed at Clint’s sanity.

“I’m going to check in with Tony,” Bruce went on. “But how about I come back and visit again in a little bit?”

At that, Clint’s gaze finally shifted to look directly at Bruce for the first time since he had first recognized him. “Yeah, I’d like that.”

“Okay. I’ll see you soon then.” Bruce reached out with a thickly gloved hand and gently patted Clint on the shoulder, giving him an encouraging smile before he turned and headed back out of the room.

Clint watched him go, staring at the empty decontamination chamber for a long time. He must have dozed off at some point, because when he woke up something was different. He was painfully aware of every detail of the room after spending so much time staring at these walls, so it didn’t take much for him to notice when something was different. But even if he hadn’t, it’d be difficult to miss the overstuffed armchair that was now pushed up in the cover next to the large window that looked out into the hallway.

Clint stared at the chair in confusion for a long time. Then, movement outside of the window caught his eye. Bruce walked into view, smiling and waving in at Clint before he reached over and activated the intercom into the room.

“Hey,” Bruce said. “How are you feeling?”

“‘Bout the same,” Clint rasped.

Bruce nodded, looking at him sympathetically. “Tony is taking another look at the antidote that we create. In the meantime, I thought I might have something else that could help. Do you feel up to moving over to the chair?”

Intrigued, Clint nodded and he carefully sat pushed himself over to the edge of the bed, wrapping a blanket around himself more securely. It took an unusual amount of concentration from Clint to coordinate his movements with dragging the IV stand he was hooked up to, but he managed to cross the few steps to the chair.

When he finally got himself situated, he looked up to find that Bruce had been arranging something in the hallway next to his window. There was now a chair and a small table sitting just on the other side of the glass.

On the table, Bruce was setting up a chess board.

“Do you feel up to a game?” Bruce asked.

Clint felt the first honest to goodness smile since he had gotten sick crossing his lips. “Yeah. You might actually have a chance of winning with me off my game.”

“That’s what I’m hoping for,” Bruce said with a broad smile as he settled himself into his own chair. “White has the first move.” He indicated the white pieces that were on Clint’s side of the board.

“Pawn to d-4,” Clint directed. Bruce reached out and made the move on the board. He paused and then moved his knight. Clint quirked an eyebrow. “Bold move.”

“I’m feeling lucky,” Bruce said with a grin.

Clint coughed as he thought over his strategy, his mind much more sluggish than usual. “Pawn to c-4.”

Clint lost the first game, immediately demanding a rematch. He won the second, but he suspected that Bruce had gone easier on him. He demanded a best out of three. The third game dragged on much longer than usual, with the two remaining neck and neck most of the time until finally Clint was finally able to corner Bruce’s king.

This quickly became a routine. Bruce came back at least three times a day in order to play chess with Clint. Natasha and Steve quickly started joining in the gameplay as well, and even Tony got in on it after a full day in his lab working on the antidote. They soon had a continuous tournament going on that only took breaks for Clint to sleep. And as the games continued, the glass between them started to seem thinner and thinner. And soon Clint found that despite the fact that he was still isolated, he was finally beginning to feel connected with the world again.

Two days after Bruce started the chess games, Clint fever finally broke. Three days and his vitals were almost back to normal. Five days and the door to his room opened to allow Bruce, Tony, Natasha and Streve to walk into his room without biohazard suits.

Clint eyes widened at the sight, momentarily panicked that his friends were risking getting sick.

“Good news!” Bruce said quickly. “With your vitals improving, it seems like the original antidote was able to finally clear out the rest of the virus. It’ll still likely be a few more days until you feel fully recovered, but as of right now we’ve confirmed that you’re no longer contagious. We can officially end the isolation.”

Clint grinned widely. “Really? I can really finally leave this damn room?”

“Yes,” Natasha confirmed, smiling. “We figured you’d want to get out of here as soon as possible, so we’ll help you pack up and move back to your room while you finish your recovery.”

“Thank you,” Clint said sincerely, glancing around at all his friends but then focusing on Bruce. “Thank you for bringing the chess set here.”

“Sometimes our own mind can be our worst enemy,” Bruce said soberly. “I could tell you felt depressed, and it could be the reason your vitals weren’t improving. I’ve always thought that when your mind is in a better place, your body is able to heal easier.”

Clint reflected on that. He had initially improved a lot when he had finally gotten an antidote, but then he had seemed to level off. It was only when Bruce had brought the chess set that he had finally started to improve again.

Everyone was busying themselves with gathering all of Clint’s things that he made their way into the room over the last two weeks. Bruce was helping Clint up out of bed, since he was still a little unsteady mostly due to lack of moving around the last couple weeks. And feeling Bruce’s bare hands helping to support Clint, it finally hit him.

It was over.

“Thank you, Bruce,” Clint said quietly, leaning into his friends, just reveling in the first real physical contact in weeks. “Thanks for everything.”

Chapter Text

Day 9
For the Greater Good
“Take Me Instead” | “Run!” | Ritual Sacrifice

“Target down,” Clint reported into his comm.

“Wait, do you hear that?” Natasha asked from beside him.

Clint listened for a moment. “I don’t…” He trailed off when he heard a quiet beep. He furrowed his brow as he stepped further into the mob boss’s office, listening harder. Just when he was convinced that the beep had just been a fluke… he heard another one. He raised his bow as he moved into the room, eyeing the dead man that was slumped over at his desk.

“Clint, I think we should go,” Natasha said uneasily. “Something doesn’t feel right.”

But another beep had Clint moving closer to investigate. The beeping seemed to be increasing in frequency. He came around the desk and his sharp gaze took in everything at once. The button resting next to the dead mob boss’ limp hand… the device nestled under the desk… the digital display that beeped every time the letters flashed across the screen. ARMED…… ARMED…… ARMED….. ARMED….

“Run!” Clint yelled as he turned and sprinted back toward the door.

Thankfully Natasha knew better than to question the seriousness of a sudden command like that, already leading the way, sprinting down the hallway in the direction that would take them out of the compound as quickly as possible.

They weren’t going to make it though. It wasn’t even close.

Clint heard the explosion and reacted on instinct alone, moving without conscious thought. He reached forward and grabbed Natasha, causing her to yelp in surprise. He had just enough time to fold his body around her before the force of the blast from the bomb hit his back, flinging him forward down the hallway. They were quickly consumed by fire and smoke, thrown violently and battered with debris.

And then, very suddenly, the world stopped… but the pain grew to a truly agonizing level.

“Sonofabitch, Clint you stupid, self-sacrificing idiot.”

The words floated to him slowly through a fog of pain but he couldn’t even begin to comprehend the meaning behind them through the agony that consumed his entire being. God, the pain was eating him alive, he was dying, this was it, please just let it end…

It felt like an eternity had passed before the pain finally began to ebb. He might have thought that the torture had finally killed him if it weren’t for the fact that his lungs were spasming agonizingly as they desperately tried to heave in precious oxygen. He coughed and choked on thick air that pushed in heavily around him as he attempted to squint his eyes open, trying to figure out what was going on.

“Clint? Can you hear me?”

Clint's eyes burned as he blinked hard, his vision slowly clearing until he could just make out a blur of red hair and pale skin hovering anxiously over him. It took him a moment to get his bearings, propped up on his side in the midst of smoking debris.

“Don’t move,” Natasha commanded when Clint tried to shift, her hands firmly bracing his shoulder and side in order to keep him still. “Your back got burned pretty good before I could put the fire out.”

“How bad?” Clint rasped.

Natasha glanced toward his back. “Well. Let’s just say you won’t need a haircut anytime soon.” The forced levity in her voice couldn’t cover up the grim dread. It was really bad. When she went on, her tone had softened. “I sent out a distress beacon. Help will be here soon. Just stay still, okay?”

Clint coughed painfully. “Are you okay?”

“Besides being bruised to hell from where you landed on me, I’ll be fine.” Then she let go of his shoulder just for a moment in order to give him a light smack upside the head. “You’re an idiot, you shouldn’t have done that.”

Clint snorted. “No use both of us catchin’ fire. Then where’d we be?”

Natasha rolled her eyes. “You’re still an idiot,” she said stubbornly.

Despite the pain still clawing at his back, Clint felt the corners of his mouth twitch upward. “I’m okay with that.”

Chapter Text

Day 10
They Look So Pretty When They Bleed
Blood Loss | Internal Bleeding | Trail of Blood

“Clint? Clint, you better still be alive, goddamnit!”

Pain. There was so much goddamn pain that the words that floated to him through the fog seemed laughably insignificant. Holy shit, he just wanted it to stop, anything to make it stop.

“Wake up, c’mon buddy, don’t do this to me, please wake up!”

It happened fast. One second he was floating somewhere in some kind of purgatory… the next second the conscious world came crashing back over him like a wave of salt water over an open wound. He gasped and yelped as the pain increased tenfold, every nerve in his body screaming in agony as his eyes darted around, trying to make sense of surroundings that seemed to shift and spin around him.

“I’m sorry, Clint, but I need you to focus. C’mon, look at me.”

Clint blinked blearily for a moment before the figure next to him finally floating into some kind of focus. Tony was looking down at him, his face pale and his eyes wide with terror. It was the pure, unfiltered panic in his features that had Clint clawing the rest of the way to full consciousness.

“Wha’?” he murmured as he struggled to take in their surroundings.

And it finally came back to him. The fight. While Steve, Bruce and Natasha fought a battle on land, Clint and Tony battled enemy jets in the air. Tony’s suit was critically damaged and Clint had to fly the Quinjet to him for a mid-air rescue, executing a dangerous barrel roll to pull off a nearly impossible catch with an open hatch. But there had been no time to celebrate the death-defying rescue. The enemy jets turned all their focus on the Quinjet… they hadn’t stood a chance.

Clint glanced around the wreckage from their crash landing. He was still harnessed securely in the pilot’s seat surrounded by broken glass and twisted metal, the smell of smoke heavily permeating the air, causing him to cough painfully.

“C’mon, Clint, we gotta get out of here,” Tony said frantically, reaching over with shaking hands and unhooking Clint’s harness.

Tony seemed to have fared pretty well during the crash, a cut on his forehead sending blood down his face looking like the worst of the damage. He was no longer wearing his Iron-Man suit, apparently it had been too damaged to be of any help at this point and he had chosen it was best to simply abandon it.

Suddenly, an explosion rocked the jet, sending even more broken glass raining down over them. “They’re firing down at up, and one of these times the bastards aren’t going to miss.”

Clint’s focus finally snapped into overdrive. As Tony pushed the harness out of the way, Clint immediately went to push himself up and out of the seat, only to have his vision white out with agony, almost sending himself back into oblivion.

“Whoa, careful, tough guy,” Tony gasped. “We need to go, but I’m also gonna need you conscious, okay?”

Clint gasped for breath as he blinked his vision back into focus and finally looked down, taking real stock of himself for the first time. His mind reeled at the sight. His entire left side was a bloody mess as he had apparently impacted the now mangled metal wall of the Quinjet.

“Shit,” Clint mumbled.

“Agreed, but there’s no time to deal with that right now,” Tony said quickly as another explosion rocked through the jet.

Tony reached over and helped Clint to shift sideways in the seat -- Clint hissing and gasping through the pain -- until he was facing Tony. Then Tony ducked down under Clint’s right arm and carefully hoisted him up. Clint gripped the back of Tony’s shirt hard with his right hand, desperately trying to hold on to consciousness as the two stumbled to the back of the Quinjet.

“Grab a go-bag,” Clint murmured, nodding toward where the emergency bags were kept under each seat of the Quinjet.

When Tony leaned down to grab the bag, Clint shifted so suddenly that he almost sent them both toppling. Thankfully, Tony was able to brace himself on one knee while bracing Clint on his other side, swiping a bag and slinging it over his shoulder before he quickly straightened up -- almost sending them toppling in the other direction this time, with Clint yelping in pain and furiously blinking back black spots at the edges of his vision -- and stumbled toward the open hatch.

Another explosion rocked the Quinjet, this time close enough to shift the floor under their feet and they both went crashing to the floor. Clint wouldn’t stop the cry of agony that tore it’s way out of his throat at the violent impact.

“Fuck!” Tony cursed as he quickly scrambled back up to his hands and knees. “Sorry Clint, there isn’t going to be any way to do this that’s not gonna suck.”

That was the only warning Clint got. Tony seized Clint’s closest arm and threw them both out of the open hatch of the jet. Thankfully, the drop couldn’t have been more than five feet, but the impact was still horribly painful.

Clint must have blacked out for a short amount of time, because the next thing he knew he had his right arm slung over Tony’s shoulders again and then two of them were staggering away from the smoking wreckage of the jet and into a thick line of trees.

“Still with me, Barton?” Tony asked breathlessly.

“Yeah,” Clint mumbled as he did his best to limp along as best he could through the searing pain.

“We need to get some distance from the wreckage,” Tony panted. “That smoke is a damn flashing neon sign for those bastards. Once we get some distance, we should be able to find somewhere to lay low until the others hopefully find us.”

Clint grunted in an attempt at agreement, but he also suspected that Tony’s rambling was an anxious coping mechanism and that he wasn’t actually looking for a response.

Clint gasped for breath, his feet feeling more and more uncoordinated underneath him as the minutes dragged by. His head lolled on his shoulders because it just took too much energy to hold it up right now.

“Stop,” Clint finally rasped. “Tony, gotta stop.”

Tony came to a screeching halt, and Clint’s legs immediately failed him, buckling and forcing Tony to lower both of them down to the forest floor.

“What, what is it?” Tony asked, panic threatening to overwhelm him.

Clint looked down at his blood side. “We gotta…” He had to pause to breath. “Gotta stem the bleedin’.” He glanced back behind them and motioned. “No use if we… if we lead ‘em right… to us.”

Tony looked back, paling when he saw that Clint had indicated. Clint was leaving a gruesome trail of blood along their path. If the enemy decided to land and try to track them from the crash site, it would be laughably easy for them to follow the trail.

“Oh shit,” Tony said, running an anxious hand through his hair.

“There should… should be bandages…” Clint wheezed. “... in the… go-bag…”

Tony helped Clint to shift so that he could lean up against a tree before frantically digging around in the backpack. Clint blinked heavily while he waited. It was so tired, the fatigue like weights hanging off each of his limbs. Maybe he could just close his eyes and rest… just for a minute.

“C’mon, Clint, stay with me, okay?”

Clint snapped his head back up as Tony firmly patted his cheek. Clint took in an unsteady breath, taking a moment to remind himself what was going on when he saw the roll of bandages in Tony’s hands. Hands that trembled with barely contained panic.

“Wrap it… tight as you, as you can,” Clint instructed. Tony nodded and quickly went to work, winding the bandages around Clint’s midsection. “Tighter,” Clint urged ridgely after two passes.

As Tony pulled on the bandage firmly, Clint had to bite back a groan that tried to claw its way out of his raw throat. Tony sent him an anxious look, but for once didn’t have a comment as he focused back down on his work.

“You’ve lost a lot of blood,” Tony finally said quietly a few minutes later when he was securing the bandage into place. He sounded detached, as if the thought had only just occurred to him. And maybe, with all the chaos, it had.

Clint swallowed thickly. “We gotta… gotta get outta… sight.”

Tony ran a hand across his forehead as he glanced around, oblivious to the fact that he was smearing Clint’s blood across his face. Clint decided it was best not to mention that right now.

“Well, all these damn trees look the same,” Tony finally announced as he threw the rest of the bandages into the backpack and slung it back over his shoulder. “Guess we’ll just have to pick a direction and hope we get lucky.”

Clint coughed a laugh at the thought of luck ever being on his side as Tony leveraged him back to his feet. The world spun violently around him and for a moment he was convinced he was going to vomit. But thankfully it evened out after a long minute, and then they were stumbling through the thick forest once again.

Even though they had stemmed the bleeding, Clint still found himself fighting for consciousness, a battle that he was starting to lose. His feet felt heavier and he was struggling more and more to keep up with Tony. He could feel his heart pounding hard against his ribcage as he gasped shallowing for breath. He was pretty sure he was losing time too. He was vaguely aware of the sound of rushing water in the distance, and then next thing he knew they were wading through a creek. They staggered along the far bank of the creek for a while and then Clint blinked and it was gone.

The most jarring moment was when one minute they were stumbling through the thick forest and then next Clint was sitting on the ground, leaning up against a hard rock wall. He blinked around, confused as he slowly took in the shallow cave that he suddenly found himself in. He squinted up toward the front of the cave, spotting Tony crouching in the opening looking out. Was it getting dark out?

He shivered, the movement sending a spike of pain shooting through him. A groan clawed up his throat, drawing Tony’s attention, who turned and gave him a strained smile.

“Just hang in there, okay buddy?” Tony said quietly. “Help is gonna be here any minute now.”

But Tony couldn’t muster up any kind sincerity in his grim tone, and Clint wasn’t so easily fooled.

By the time Steve and Natasha finally tracked them down, the sun had long ago set. Tony was huddled in the small cave with a blanket from the go-bag wrapped around him and Clint, who had long ago lost complete consciousness. Tony couldn’t even muster up the energy to be happy when Steve and Natasha finally appeared… because when Clint had stopped shivering and his pulse had dropped so low that it was barely detectable, he was terrified that they were too late.

Steve took Clint in his arms and ran through the forest back to where they had left the new Quinjet, where Bruce was waiting with medical supplies. Natasha and Tony followed more slowly, Tony exhausted and sore with whiplash from the crash. By the time they made it to the jet, Bruce already had Clint hooked up to a blood transfusion and was addressing the largest of the gashes in his side.

It was a dangerously close one. It was one that none of them would soon forget. Clint had lost a critical amount of blood, and if Steve and Natasha had found them even just ten minutes later, it was likely that Clint would have been beyond saving.

For as unlucky as Clint felt most of the time… luck remained with him when it really mattered.

Chapter Text

Day 11
Psych 101
Defiance | Struggling | Crying

Clint came awake with a gasp and a cry of pain, sitting bolt upright. He threw up his hands protectively as he scrambled backward until his back slammed into something solid. Then he froze, gasping and trembling, attempting to brace himself for the next attack…

Which never came.

Carefully, Clint squinted his eyes open, blinking hard as he struggled to take in his surroundings. The room was dark, pushing heavily in around him as he gasped desperately for breath. He listened hard for any kind of threat. Because there was a threat, it was out there, looming just out of sight, waiting for the right moment to attack him. He couldn’t let down his guard, not even for a second, or else that was it for him…

Everything around him remained still. Agonizingly slowly he began to regain control over his breath. Once he was able to stop fighting for oxygen, his mind slowly began to catch up with what was going on.

Which was nothing.

Clint took in an unsteady breath as he focused on the soft surface underneath him. A mattress. Something thin and flexible tangled around his ankles, that fell away as he shifted his feet. Blankets. He sighed heavily as he leaned his head back against the wall behind him.

“JARVIS? Can you turn on the lights? Slowly.”

“Of course, Agent Barton,” JARVIS’ voice floated over him as Clint’s bedroom slowly lightened around him.

Clint concentrated on his breathing, slowly inhaling through his nose and then carefully exhaling through his mouth. He flexed his fingers, trying to work out the tingling feeling and then scrubbed his hands over his sweaty face.

Damnit. This never got easier.

Clint was no stranger to nightmares that bled over after he woke up. He had suffered from night terrors ever since he was a kid. And these days, in his line of work, post-traumatic stress was a constant companion when he wasn’t on mission. He dealt with it better these days, but after an especially difficult mission he would still have bad nights.

Bad nights like tonight.

Clint had spent almost two weeks in captivity before the Avengers had rescued him during their last mission. He had spent another week on the hospital floor of the Avengers Tower and he had finally convinced the doctors to release him just two days ago. Physically, he was healed. But apparently, mentally he still had a little ways to go.

Finally, Clint mechanically pushed himself out of his bed. He paused, making sure that he felt steady before he tried to move. He ended up shucking off his shirt, which was drenched through with sweat, and pulling on a clean one. Then he headed out of the bedroom and into the main part of the apartment.

After the battle in New York, Tony had converted Stark Tower into Avengers Tower and had built it out so that each member of the team got their own floor to call home. Clint still felt like his space was unnecessarily large, but he was slowly getting used to it.

He shuffled into the kitchen and with movements that were slowly becoming familiar, he found the cabinet with the drinking glasses on the first try and then moved to the sink to fill it. He braced one hand on the side of the sink as he sipped the water, letting it ground him firmly back into reality.

He downed two glasses of water before he started to feel more stable. He glanced around the apartment. He was still too anxious to go back to bed. He ran a hand that was still trembling slightly through his hair. He needed to get out some of this energy before he had any chance of getting any more sleep tonight.

He turned and headed toward the front door of the living space, padding along in his socked feet. The other half of his floor in the tower was an elaborate and high tech shooting range. It was by far his favorite space in the entire tower. He had spent many nights in the range when he wasn’t able to sleep. Shooting his bow and arrow has always been therapeutic for him. But as he stood outside the door he found himself feeling… nothing. He stared blankly at the door as if he had never seen it before. The thought of going in there and practicing suddenly didn’t appeal to him at all.

Clint sighed heavily as he ran a hand over his face, frustrated. It was like his mind was finally mounting a final rebellion against him, bent on anything he used to find enjoyable away from him.

Without a solid idea of what he was going to do, he suddenly found himself making his way down the hallway to the elevator. He entered the elevator and without a conscious thought, he hit the button for the Avenger’s shared common floor. He shifted unsteadily as the elevator smoothly descended. When the elevator doors opened, he automatically stepped out.

“Well, look who decided to join the party.”

Clint looked up in surprise, glancing around the floor. Tony had spoken to him from where he stood behind the bar on one side of the room, leaning over heavily on one elbow as he sipped brown liquid from a glass. Steve turned to look over the back of the couch at the elevator. Natasha paused her pacing in front of the couch in order to look over at him.

“Are you okay?” Natasha asked, concerned.

“Um, yeah,” Clint mumbled, through off balance by the turn of events. “I just couldn’t… um…”

“Couldn’t sleep?” Steve supplied. Clint nodded and Steve gave him a sympathetic smile as he patted the couch. “Join the club.”

As Clint carefully crossed the room, he looked critically at his teammates. They all had mirrored bags under their eyes, haunted and tired looks behind their gazes. Clint took a seat on the couch and not five minutes later Bruce turned up, that haunted look to him. Even Thor eventually showed up.

The group chatted about nothing in particular. They watched random sitcom reruns on tv. They shared snacks and drinks. And finally, just before four in the morning, one by one they each drifted off as they were draped lazily over the various couches and overstuffed chairs in the living room.

The demons that Clint carried from doing the work that he did would never really leave him. But that night showed him that he wasn’t the only one who carried a heavy burden. And, with that knowledge, the burden suddenly didn’t seem as heavy as it used to.

Chapter Text

Day 12
I Think I’ve Broken Something
Broken Down | Broken Bones | Broken Trust

“Does anyone have eyes on Barton?”

“No, I can’t see him.”

“Barton, are you there, can you hear us?”

“Can someone get to him? Get to his last known location?”

“I can get to him,” Bucky announced as he hoisted his sniper rifle up off the perch and then leveraged himself to his feet. “Watch your backs while I’m gone.”

It was supposed to be an easy mission. But the phrase “easy mission” rarely lived up to expectations. They needed to take the leader of this weapons trafficking organization alive, because they needed information from him. The plan was for Steve, Tony and Thor to draw out the defenses, while Natasha and Clint snuck into the compound in order to capture the target. The first setback when Clint had found a way in, but Natasha had been spotted before she could follow. She was forced to retreat and leave Clint to go in alone. She had eventually come back around to the front of the compound to lend support to Steve and the others.

Bucky was there for backup, the plan was for him to perch above the action with his sniper rifle and provide an aerial perspective on the situation. They were pretty sure they had cleared Hydra’s conditioning out of his brain, but until they could know for sure, Bucky preferred to stay away from the action.

So much for that, Bucky thought dully as he ran through the woods.

Clint had announced that he had the target and was exiting the compound… right before a yell -- of surprise or pain, it was hard to tell -- and then his comm. had cut out. Bucky figured he’d head to the back of the compound where Clint had initially entered and then go from there.

As it turned out, it wasn’t difficult to find Clint. As soon as Bucky came around the back of the compound, he immediately saw the group of henchmen at the edge of the woods that surrounded the compound. Bucky dropped to a knee in order to brace his rifle, taking three hostiles out with three well placed shots. The group turned, forcing Bucky to run perpendicular to the group in order to dodge a flurry of bullets.

As Bucky took cover behind some nearby trees, he was able to get a better look at what was going on. Clint was couched a few feet away from the group of hostiles, using another group of trees for his own cover. Something was wrong though. Bucky spotted Clint’s bow laying abandoned back near the compound. As Bucky’s eyes darted back toward where Clint was crouched, he was confused when he still saw arrows flying. If Clint didn’t have his bow then how…

Then he saw it. Clint would lean out from behind his cover in order to fling arrows like a knife-thrower, hitting his target with the same deadly accuracy that he did when he fired his bow. For a moment, Bucky could only blink and stare in amazement. But then he remembered himself, raising his rifle and picking off the hostiles one by one as Clint did the same.

It was over in a matter of minutes. But as Bucky left his cover, he still kept his guard up, his rifle at the ready as he moved across the open space, keeping one eye on the building in case any other henchmen appeared. Thankfully, he was able to cross the space without incident as he ducked behind the trees where Clint was sheltering.

“What happened?” Bucky asked before he really got a look at the scene he had come in on. His eyes widened. “Holy shit.”

The first thing he saw was the startling amount of blood that soaked Clint’s left arm, which he held protectively across his chest, an arrow still held defensively in his right hand. His eyes were wide and he was panting for breath as he leaned his right shoulder up against a tree for support.

Bucky was so distracted by Clint’s state, it took him a long minute to realize the second important thing… their target was tied up and unconscious just behind Clint.

“Sorry, lost my comm. in the…” Clint waved the hand holding the arrow absently, “in the chaos.”

Bucky blinked. Did he really think the lost communication unit was the most concerning thing as he was sitting there dripping blood into the dirt underneath him?

“Okay,” Bucky said slowly. “What happened to your arm?”

Clint glanced down as if he had forgotten about the injury and winced when he glimpsed it. “Didn’t quite make it out clean. I think it’s broken.”

Bucky sighed, quickly decided he wasn’t going to get anything more helpful from Clint right now. He put his hand up to his comm. “I found Barton and we’ve got the target.”

“Is Clint okay?” Natasha demanded.

Bucky weighed his answer for a moment. “More or less,” he finally said.

He heard Natasha’s sigh of exasperation over the line.

“We’ve got the militia’s attention, so if any of us come to you guys they’ll likely follow,” Steve said, sounding a little short of breath. “Can you and Barton get to the RV point with the target?”

“Clint, think you can make it to the RV?” Bucky asked as he eyed him skeptically.

“Yeah, just help me wrap this up,” Clint panted.

Bucky wasn’t convinced, but it didn’t seem like they had any other choice. “We’ll meet you at the RV,” he said into his comm.

Clint reached back and pulled out a roll of bandages that he kept in his quiver, holding it out to Bucky. Bucky glanced over his shoulder uneasily, not liking having to put his gun down and leave himself vulnerable.

“Don’t worry… I’ve got your six,” Clint said with a smirk.

Even with the assurance, Bucky felt uneasy as he set down his rifle and reached out and took the bandages. With his good hand free, Clint picked up the arrow again, his gaze shifted to look over Bucky’s shoulder.

First aid wasn’t Bucky’s strong suit. This metal arm certainly wasn’t built for helping people. He carefully took Clint’s arm with his right hand -- the flesh and blood hand -- and didn’t miss the way that Clint grimaced.

“Sorry,” Bucky murmured.

“Not your fault,” Clint assured him with a pained smirk.

As carefully as he could, Bucky wrapped the bandage around Clint’s left hand. He knew the bone would have to be reset later, for now they were just trying to stem the bleeding from the gashes.

“Okay, now bandage the arm to my chest to keep it still,” Clint instructed.

Clint hissed in pain as Bucky slowly bent his arm at the elbow so that his forearm could rest diagonally up across his chest. Then he used the rest of the roll of bandages to wrap around Clint’s entire torso in order to keep the arm in place.

“You sure you can make it?” Bucky pressed. Clint seemed to have paled significantly in the last couple minutes. “I can get you back to the RV and then come back for this bastard.” He inclined his head toward the unconscious target.

“No,” Clint said immediately. “We can’t leave him here, we don’t know that more of those assholes won’t come out this way and find him. If anything, you should take him and then come back for me.”

“I’m not leaving you here like this,” Bucky snapped.

Clint took an unsteady breath. “Looks like we’re all heading to the RV together then.”

Bucky paused for another long moment, but he couldn’t think of any other options. “Yeah, okay. C’mon, let’s get the hell out of here.”

Bucky shifted over to their unconscious prisoner, reaching down and unceremoniously slinging the man over his shoulder. He stood up and then reached down with his right hand for Clint to grab and leverage himself up with. Clint groaned and swayed unsteady, and Bucky braced himself, ready to toss the man on his shoulder to the ground in order to catch Clint if he fell. But after a few uneasy breaths and then seemed to mentally steady himself.

“You good?” Bucky asked a little unsurely.

Clint nodded… which would have been more believable if the motion hadn’t caused him to sway and Bucky had to reach out and steady him. Bucky shot him an incredulous look.

“I’m fine,” Clint insisted. “C’mon, let’s go.”

They headed deeper into the woods, Clint falling in a step behind Bucky. Bucky mindfully kept his pace slower than what he would like, knowing that as much as he wanted to get as far away from this compound as quickly as he could, going too quickly was only going to wear Clint out more quickly.

“Stop it.”

Bucky sent Clint a surprised look at his sudden outburst a few minutes into their hike. “Stop what?”

“Stop looking at me like I’m gonna… gonna drop dead at any moment,” Clint said, having to pause to gasp in a breath.

Bucky rolled his eyes. “Then stop looking like you’re doing to drop dead at any moment.”

Clint opened his mouth to say something else, but then tripped and stumbled. Bucky flung out his hand in order to catch Clint, but unfortunately there wasn’t a way to do that without jarring Clint’s broken arm, causing Clint to cry out in pain.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Bucky said quickly.

“Stop it, please stop apologizing,” Clint rasped even as he closed his eyes and braced himself against Bucky’s arm. “You’re helping me, not hurting me. Remember?”

Bucky snorted a laugh. “Guess I’m not used to being on this side of the moral line.”

“You’re doin’ fine, Buck,” Clint said with a smile.

Bucky was taken back for a moment. “Thanks,” he said quietly.

“Now, c’mon. Let’s get to the RV before… before I do drop dead.”

Thankfully, the rendezvous point wasn’t too much farther. They had left the Quinjet in a far clearing, Bruce hanging back in the jet as a last resort in case things went really south. It was a minor victory that it hadn’t gotten that bad.

“Clint, what the hell did you do?” Bruce asked with exasperation as the group ascended the ramp up into the jet.

“If it makes you feel any better, Doc…” Clint paused to take in a breath, swaying unsteadily as Bruce came and placed a hand on his back, carefully leading him over to the medical set up in the jet, “I don’t think I’m dying this time.”

“Miracle of miracles,” Bruce laughed. He glanced over at Bucky as he secured their prisoner. “Thanks for getting him back here in one piece.”

For a moment, Bucky wasn’t sure how to react. He wasn’t used to this kind of gratitude, or even used to his presence making a situation better rather than worse. But finally, a small smile found its way to the former assassins lips.

“You’re welcome.”

Chapter Text

Day 13
Breathe in, Breathe Out
Delayed Drowning | Chemical Pneumonia | Oxygen Mask

“Is everyone out, did everyone make it out?” Steve demanded as he ran up to the jet, desperately taking stock of his team.

Tony, Thor, Bruce, Natasha…

“Clint!” Natasha gasped as they all seemed to come to realization of who was missing at the same time.

Steve spun around, feeling the blood drain from his face as he looked at the warehouse, smoke pouring out of every visible window and door.

“Clint? Clint, can you hear me?” Steve tried over the comms., even though he knew in the pit of his stomach it wouldn’t do any good. There was a long moment of silence over the line, followed by a burst of static.

And then Steve was running.

He barely paused as he slammed his shoulder into the nearest door, bursting into the warehouse. He paused, squinting through the smoke. The air clung hot and heavy to his skin, indicating how difficult it would be to breathe if it weren’t for the Super Soldier Serum.

“Clint?” Steve called as he looked around frantically, but he couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of him because of smoke that was only getting thicker by the moment.

He heard him before he saw him. In the end all he had to do was follow the sound of the hacking cough before he finally came across Clint, slumped over on the floor as he had tried to get underneath the smoke that was now pressing almost to the floor. He had ripped off the bottom of his pant leg and was holding it over his nose and mouth, in an attempt to filter some of the air he was breathing, but it was painfully clear the damage had already been done. As Steve dropped to a knee next to him, Clint looked up at him, blinking through bloodshot eyes as he desperately wheezed in one labored breath after another.

“It’s okay, it’s okay, I got you,” Steve assured him as he leaned down and ducked under one of Clint’s arms and leveraged him up to his feet.

Clint thankfully had enough awareness to keep the piece of fabric pressed to his nose and mouth as he stumbled along next to Steve. Steve moved them as quickly as he could back toward the exit, finally bursting back out into the fresh air. They made it a good twenty feet from the burning warehouse before Clint’s legs finally gave out, sending them both toppling to the ground.

“Clint! Clint, are you okay?”

Steve looked up to see Natasha running over to them, dropping to her knees next to Clint. He was hunched over with one hand braced on the ground while the other was still pressing the cloth to his face as he coughed and wheezed, every breath sounding horribly painful.

Suddenly, the load roar of an explosion tore through the air around them. On instinct, Steve threw his arms up and used his body to cover the two more vulnerable teammates, blocking the heat and debris. Once the wave passed, Steve looked over his shoulder to see that half the warehouse had collapsed. More than that… it was the portion where Clint had been stranded just a few minutes ago.

Damnit, that was lucky.

“The fire must have hit something explosive,” Steve panted as he stared at the wreckage, knowing full well he was pointing out the obvious.

“Steve, we need to get Clint back to the jet,” Natasha said urgently. “Now!”

Steve turned back quickly, surprised by the panic that laced Natasha’s voice. He looked down at Clint, who was still coughing but didn’t seem any worse off than he had been just a minute ago. Then Steve saw it. Clint had dropped his hand away from his mouth, letting the piece of fabric fall to the ground. It was hard to tell, since the fabric was black, the stains could have just been saliva. But when Steve saw Clint’s hand, it was painfully clear what those stains really were.

Blood. Clint was coughing up blood.

“Here, I got him,” Steve said, moving forward.

It said something that Clint didn’t even have it in him to protest as Steve scooped him up in his arms. Instead, Clint seemed to spasm in on himself as he continued to choke and wheeze desperately for oxygen.

Steve and Natasha ran back to the Quinjet, finding the rest of the team waiting anxiously for them.

“Is he alright?” Thor asked.

“Tony, get the jet powered up, we need a hospital,” Steve ordered, letting the statement answer the question.

“On it,” Tony said as he ran up the ramp into the jet.

“What’s the situation?” Bruce asked worriedly as they approached.

“He hasn’t stopped coughing and there’s blood coming up,” Natasha said briskly as they made their way up the ramp, Bruce and Thor falling into step behind them.

“Okay, put him down over there, but keep him sitting up,” Bruce ordered as he hurried over to the medical supplies.

Natasha stepped in front of Steve and quickly pushed one of the medical cots over so that it was up against the wall of the jet. Then Steve set Clint down, carefully situating him so that his back was to the wall, though he still remained hunched over and coughing into his hands. For a long moment, Steve could only stare helplessly as it felt like they were watching him slowly suffocate right in front of them.

“Here, hold this to his face,” Bruce said, shoving an oxygen mask into Steve’s hands. “Don’t put the strap over his head, just hold it, you’ll need to move it when he coughs so the blood doesn’t pool in it.”

Steve folded his leg underneath him as he shifted more fully onto the cot. “Easy, Clint,” Steve said, trying to draw Clint’s attention to him. Clint’s gaze drifted vaguely in his direction. “This is going to help,” He said as he held up the mask while Bruce set the oxygen tank that it was hooked up to to run wide open.

Steve slipped one hand behind Clint’s head to help brace him as he used the other to hold the mask up over Clint’s nose and mouth, an action that Clint was aware enough not to fight as he dropped his shaking, blood stained hands into his lap. Natasha sat on Clint’s other side to keep him from tipping over. Holding the mask was easier said than done since Clint seemed to be coughing more than he was breathing, but Steve quickly found a rhythm.

“Will he be alright?” Thor asked, shifted uneasily from foot to food nearby.

“It’s hard to say,” Bruce admitted as he went back to rummaging through medical supplies. “The blood could just be from a relatively minor lesion in his trachea caused by the coughing. Or… it could be coming from his lungs. Which would be really bad. Especially since we’re a decent ways out from a real hospital out here.”

There was a heavy silence following the statement, broken only by the sound of the Quinjet rumbling to life.

“Clint, I’m going to hook you up to an IV, hopefully I’m just being overly cautious though,” Bruce narrated as he set up the equipment.

Bruce took Clint’s hand and had to scrub with three different alcohol wipes before it was clean enough to place the IV. Clint watched with what seemed like a detached interest. But the coughing was finally starting to slow down a bit and Steve felt like he was holding the mask up to Clint’s face for longer than he initially was.

“Clint, can you try talking at all?” Bruce asked as he took out a stethoscope.

Clint wheezed in a couple labored breaths before he managed to rasp out, “Hurts.”

“I know,” Bruce said sympathetically as he listened to Clint’s chest. “I need you to stay upright and conscious for me though. If the blood is in your lungs, we don’t want it pooling there.”

“Can you tell if it is in his lungs?” Natasha questioned as they watched Bruce listen carefully to his stethoscope.

“I can’t say for sure,” Bruce said grimly as he straightened up. “There’s definitely some fluid, but he also very likely has chemical pneumonia due to all the chemicals in that warehouse he likely inhaled while they burned up. In any case, I don’t have the equipment to really be able to deal with it here. All we can really do is keep him going until we can get him to the hospital.”

“We can do that,” Steve said with what he hoped sounded like more conviction than he felt.

It was perhaps the longest plane ride any of them had endured. Even as Clint’s coughing became less severe, his breathing remained terribly shallow as he fought to pull in each breath. His coughs also went from painfully dry to thick and wet, which was perhaps even more concerning.

It took almost two hours for them to reach a hospital that had a landing pad where they could land. Tony had alerted the medical team, who were ready to rush onto the jet the moment the jet lowered. Bruce stuck with the team as they loaded Clint onto a gurney and took him into the hospital, rattling off his decompensating vitals. And if they were being honest, Bruce was there to help but also to look after Clint, since the Avengers couldn’t necessarily trust random hospitals to be free of anyone who held a grudge against them.

Once again, Clint had gotten lucky. The smoke inhalation had caused a pulmonary embolism that had been severe enough to need removal, but the doctors were able to perform the procedure without any complications. After that, they were able to stabilize him enough that the next day the Avengers were able to transport him home in order to be under the care of their own trusted medical staff.

Another crisis averted and just another day in the life of the Avengers.

Chapter Text

Day 14
Is Something Burning?
Branding | Heat Exhaustion | Fire

There were times when Steve suddenly found that he was outside himself looking in and realizing that as much of a gift as the Super Soldier Serum was, it was also very much a curse. That much was the most painfully obvious when he was forced to watch his teammates suffer through hardships that didn’t affect him as much.

Steve, Bucky, Tony, Natasha and Clint had been stranded in this desert two days ago. No one knew where they were. It was extremely likely no one was coming for them. Their only option was to try and walk their way out. Steve and Bucky had a good chance of making it… but the longer they went without finding any signs of civilization, the more obvious it became that the others might not.

Steve and Bucky were not completely immune to things like heat exhaustion, it was just something that affected them at a much slower rate than it did the others. So, Steve and Bucky’s priority was to keep the others going as long as they could.

They traveled at night and rested during the day when the heat was the most brutal. They had been lucky enough to have a decent supply of water and a limited amount of survival gear - all of which were carried by Steve and Bucky - but they also knew that their water would run out eventually and they had no idea how far out from civilization they were.

“Steve,” Bucky called up to him. While they were on the move, Steve would walk in the front of the group while Bucky would take up the rear, leaving Tony, Clint and Natasha to meander in between. Steve glanced over his shoulder at the sound of Bucky’s voice. “Let’s find a place to stop and rest soon.”

Steve’s weary gaze drifted to take in the rest of his teammates. Tony and Clint still seemed to be keeping up with his slow, measured pace, but Natasha had dropped back, Bucky keeping pace with her to make sure she could keep going. Her gaze was glazed and unfocused and she stumbled several times as she trudged along.

“Yeah, okay,” Steve agreed.

But as he turned back he couldn’t help but eye the sun hovering just over the horizon, barely warming the earth yet. It was much earlier than they had stopped the day before. Their pace was slowing significantly.

The group stumbled along a little longer until Steve spotted a small grouping of shrubbery a little off to their left. It wasn’t the best spot they had found, but it would have to do.

“Just a little further,” Steve urged, glancing over his shoulder to find that Clint and Tony were falling back as well. His heart twisted. What he wouldn’t give to be able to share his manufactured strength right now.

They finally made it to the rest point. It was a grouping of plants that had gathered in a small ditch that likely had water a few weeks ago. It was very apparent that it had been without any water for a while though, as the plants were all brown and drooping. It wouldn’t provide them with anything other than a spot to hunker down for the heat of the day, but it was better than nothing.

“When we get back…” Tony panted as he abruptly dropped down to sit on the ground. “We’re taking a vacation. Somewhere… cold. Alaska. Iceland. Antarctica.”

“I hear Antarctica is nice this time of year,” Clint murmured as he carefully squatted down next to Tony. He seemed to be the one holding up this best, but even he was starting to sway unsteadily. His eyes wandered, confused for a moment. “Where’s Nat?”

“She’s coming, Bucky’s got her,” Steve assured him, nodding toward where the two where just approaching their resting point.

Bucky had one hand on Natasha’s back, guiding her as she stumbled along. She was still a few steps away from where Steve stood over Tony and Clint when her legs suddenly buckled out from under her. On instinct, Clint lunged toward her, but Bucky had obviously been ready for her to collapse at any moment and managed to grab her and carefully lower her to sit on the ground.

“Nat!” Clint gasped as he crawled over to her.

She was still conscious, but seemingly only barely. Her head lolled on her shoulders as if she no longer had the strength to hold it up and her breathing was rapid and shallow. Clint reached up and placed his hands on her cheeks, and then moved one hand up to her forehead. After a long moment he moved his hand again, this time placing two fingers up against her throat to check her pulse. He frowned.

“Skin’s dry, pulse is rapid,” Clint mumbled worriedly. He put his hands back gently on Natasha’s cheeks, trying to get her to focus on him. “Nat? Talk to me. Do you know where you are?”

There was a long moment of silence before Natasha finally opened her mouth and murmured, “Hell.”

“Can’t argue with that,” Tony pointed out as the rest of the snorted half hearted laughs.

“Here, get her to drink some water,” Steve said as he took a few bottles of their precious liquid out of his pack and handed them over to Clint to distribute. “Buck and I will work on the shelter before the sun gets too high.”

Aside from the water, the most invaluable piece of survival gear they had was a large tarp they could use to create a shelter. Steve and Bucky worked together to drape the tarp over the small trees and then went about securing it as best they could with rocks. They moved at an even pace, which was frustrating when Steve just wanted to get his friends out of the sun as quickly as possible. But even though he and Bucky fared better than the others, they weren’t immune to exhaustion and still had to ration their energy.

“How’s she doing?” Steve asked after they finished and he went back to where Clint, Natasha and Tony were sitting in a circle, each with a bottle of water they were carefully sipping on.

“Better,” Clint said. “She just needs some more water and some sleep and she’ll be alright.”

For now. The unsaid statement hung heavily in the air between them.

“She also put in her vote for a nice, relaxing Antarctic vacation when we get the hell out of here,” Tony said.

Steve laughed lightly. “Sounds like we’ve got a consensus.” He crouched down next to Natasha, reaching out to place a hand lightly on her back. “How are you feeling, Natasha?”

“Like shit,” Natasha murmured. She lifted the water bottle to her lips and took a long sip, at least seeming steadier and more aware than she had even just ten minutes before.

Steve gave her a sympathetic smile. “The shelter is up when you guys are ready for it. Take a few more minutes to rest and hydrate though.”

“Are you and Bucky hydrating too?” Clint asked, sending him a pointed look.

“Yeah, we’ll take stock and ration some water out for ourselves,” Steve assured half heartedly.

“Remember, we don’t know how far that Super Duper Serum is gonna take you guys,” Tony pointed out. “And if either of you go down, we will be well and truly fucked.”

“I know, don’t worry,” Steve said. He stood up and walked back over to where Bucky was crouched near the shelter they had created, both backpacks out in front of him as he carefully took stock of their supplies. “How we looking?” Steve asked lowly so that his voice hopefully wouldn’t carry.

Bucky sighed heavily, running a hand through his hair. “Not good. If you and I stick to just finishing this bottle tonight,” he held up a bottle that was a little less than half full, waving it so the water sloshed around for emphasis, “I think we’ll have enough to keep the others going for another day. Maybe.”

“Damnit,” Steve mumbled as he scrubbed a hand over his mouth. He had been hoping they had at least two days left.

“Steve, we’re going to have to start thinking about other options,” Bucky implored as he stood up, sending an uneasy glance over to where the others sat. “They can’t keep going like this. And I know you’re starting to feel the effects of the heat just like I am.”

“What do you suggest?” Steve asked.

“I could go out on my own,” Bucky said. “I’ll be able to move quicker without them and will hopefully be able to find help to bring back here.”

But Steve was already shaking his head. “There’s no guarantee you’ll find anything out there. It would make sense if we knew where we were going, but sending you out to wander the desert by yourself is too dangerous. You said so yourself, we’re not immune to this heat.”

“You know what else is dangerous? Continuing to push them past their limits with this death march.”

Steve sighed as he rubbed his eyes. “In any case, we both need rest. Let’s give it a few hours and see how well Natasha bounces back. If they can make it one more night of walking, we should probably take the opportunity to gain some more ground at least.”

Bucky didn’t look terribly convinced, but he nodded anyway.

After they had each finished their ration of water for the time being, they took bathroom breaks at a designated spot behind the tarp. Clint had to help Natasha, and she could be heard complaining about how easy guys had it when it came to relieving themselves out in nature like this. Then they each ducked under the tarp just as the sun was beginning to warm the ground, hoping to get some much needed rest.

Steve felt restless, tossing and turning, feeling too conflicted to be able to turn his brain off. What was the right thing to do? Keep them all together? Send Bucky off on his own? The pros and cons seemed so even that he might as well toss a coin.

In the end, it didn’t matter.

It was midday, when the sun was highest in the sky when they were all startled by a loud crash outside, followed by an ominous rumbling. Bucky was immediately on his feet -- obviously not able to get any sleep either -- and Steve was close behind. The others had a much more groggy reaction to an event that would normally have them jumping out of their skin. Steve tried not to think about that as adrenaline surged through his veins.

“Stay here,” he ordered as he quickly followed Bucky in ducking out of the makeshift shelter, his heart pounding as he wondered what kind of fresh hell had been sent to them…

“I found them!”

Steve stood there and blinked stupidly for a long moment, his brain slow to catch up to what he was seeing. It wasn’t until the blonde man walked up and firmly clasped his shoulder that he realized his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him.

“Thor?” Steve gasped. “But what… how…?”

“When you could not be found, Banner called for aid,” Thor said with a wide smile. He tapped his ear, where there was a comm. unit. “He is on his way.” His eyes shifted from Steve to Bucky and then to the makeshift shelter… which no one else had appeared from. He frowned. “Are the others with you?”

“Yeah,” Steve confirmed. “Clint and Tony are doing okay, but Natasha has some pretty bad heat stroke. She’ll need medical attention. They all probably will. The heat took a lot out of them and we’ve had to ration the water so much...” He was babbling. He stopped and stared at Thor for another long moment… and then he hugged him. “You got here just in time.”

“It is what I do, Captain,” Thor said with a laugh.

Chapter Text

Day 15
Into The Unknown
Possession | Magical Healing | Science Gone Wrong

“Just a couple more adjustments and I think we’ll be able to give it a try,” Bruce said as he and Tony worked on their machine.

Clint glanced over at Bucky to see his reaction. He was sitting on a table a few steps away, Steve hovering next to him. Bucky had his hands braced on the edge of the table on either side of him, his features carefully blank as he stared straight ahead.

“We don’t have to do this right now if you don’t want to,” Steve said quietly, turning his back to Bruce and Tony so that he was fully facing Bucky. “There’s no rush.”

Bucky stared at Steve for a moment. Then his gaze darted over to Clint. Clint was leaning against the wall with one shoulder, his arms crossed over his chest. He met Bucky’s gaze evenly, silently sending his support for what he knew his answer would be.

“I want to do it now,” Bucky finally said as he turned back to Steve. His tone was carefully even though, betraying how nervous he really was.

Clint understood. He had spent only a few days under Loki’s mind control, forced to do horrible things against his will. Bucky had been used on and off for fifty years, his brain scrambled repeatedly until Bucky barely knew who he really was anymore. It was so much worse than a nightmare, because there were real life consequences. So, Clint understood the desperation to clear out any residual brainwashing to make sure nothing like that could ever possibly happen again. It was why Bucky had asked him to be here to offer support during this experiment.

That, and because Steve and Clint might be needed to contain Bucky if this experiment failed.

“Okay, I think we’re ready to give this a shot,” Bruce finally said.

“Step right up, big boy,” Tony said briskly, indicating the chair in front of the machines they had been working on.

Everything in the lab went deadly still. Clint watched Bucky carefully, noticing how he was breathing heavier than he had just a minute ago. After another tense minute passed, Bucky gave up pretense as he leaned over and gasped in several deep breaths.

Steve reached out and placed a hand on Bucky’s shoulder, looking pained. “Are you sure--”

“Just give him a minute,” Clint spoke up firmly.

Bucky sent him a furtive, thankful look. He ran his hand over his face, took a couple more deep breaths, rolled his shoulders and then resolutely pushed himself up off the table and strode across the room.

“We just need you to sit here,” Bruce instructed as he waved a hand toward the chair. “And try to relax.”

Bucky eyed the chair and then shifted to look at the machine behind it, where Bruce and Tony stood. Clint saw the anxiety mounting in Bucky’s gaze and was already moving when Bucky glanced over at him. Clint situated himself to one side of the machine, still within Bucky’s sight, but also close enough to be able to get to Bruce and Tony if anything went wrong.

Because that was what it all came down to. Bucky desperately just didn’t want to hurt anyone ever again.

Bucky gave him a small nod of appreciation. Then he took a steadying breath and sat in the chair, his back rigid as he gripped the armrests, the left armrest bending under his metal fingers. Tony came around the machine and started placing sensors on Bucky’s temples, on his forehead, on his bare chest. As he worked, Steve came over to stand beside Bucky, watching stoically.

“How sure are you that this is going to work?” Steve asked.

“This is uncharted territory, Cap,” Tony pointed out. “We can’t know anything for sure, especially without viable experiments on record.”

“It’s a sound theory,” Bruce said as he adjusted a few dials on his end. “And it’s benign enough that if it doesn’t work, there shouldn’t be any permanent damage. But in all honesty, it’s probably going to take us a few tries to get this right.”

“You’re sure?” Steve pressed anxiously.

“As sure as we can be,” Bruce hedged with a sympathetic look.

“Let’s just get this over with,” Bucky mumbled.

“That’s the spirit!” Tony exclaimed. “Okay, I just need to get this in place and then we’re ready to rock and roll.”

Tony reached behind Bucky to a rod that was attached to the machine. It was on an adjustable arm that Tony rotated around. At the end of the rod was a metal circle that Tony brought down and adjusted to go around Bucky’s forehead like a halo, about a half inch between the metal and Bucky’s skin. He tweaked a few pieces of the halo and then clapped his hands, causing Bucky to flinch slightly.

“Alright, let’s do this thing!” Tony said as he moved around the machine to take his place next to Bruce.

“Try to relax,” Bruce urged again. “You’ll feel a little discomfort, but let us know if it gets too bad. We can stop at any time.” He paused, looking at the back of Bucky’s head unsurely. “Are you ready?”

“Yeah,” Bucky said, his tone clipped.

“Steve, I need you to take a couple steps back,” Bruce said, and Steve reluctantly complied, taking two generous steps back.

Clint didn’t pay much attention to what Bruce and Tony were doing behind the console. Instead he focused on Bucky, noting every shift in his features and every twitch of his muscles as the machine whirred to life. For a minute, it didn’t look like much was happening. Then, a metallic buzzing came from the halo around Bucky’s head. Bucky was breathing harder and he winced.

“Buck?” Steve said. “You okay?”

Bucky swallowed thickly as his eyes darted around anxiously. “Uh. Yeah.”

“We’re going to up the power a little,” Bruce reported.

The hum from the machine shifted up a pitch and increased in frequency. It was enough to bother even Clint’s ears as he squinted slightly against the uncomfortable feeling in his own head. Bucky’s features tightened as he clenched his jaw. His eyes squeezed shut and his head leaned forward a bit…

The second Bucky’s forehead touched the metal loop, there was a loud crack as sparks flew and Bucky let out a raw scream.

Everyone was moving. Steve ran toward Bucky. Bruce stepped back from the machine, eyes wide. On instinct Tony started to come out from behind the machine, but Clint threw out an arm to stop him.

“No, no, get Bruce and get out,” Clint commanded loudly.

“But--” Tony started, only to be cut off by the shout of rage as Bucky reached up with his metal hand and ripped away the halo.

Clint grabbed Tony by the sleeve and shoved him toward the door as he moved toward where Bruce was frozen in place, grabbing him by the shoulders and physically moving him.

“C’mon, Bruce, go, go, go,” Clint said urgently, keeping his body squarely between Bruce and Bucky as he pushed him to the door where Tony was waiting for them.

Because a Hulk in the small enclosed space with the Winter Soldier would be catastrophic.

“I’m sorry, I--” Bruce started.

“Tony, get Bruce far away from here,” Clint ordered as he pushed Bruce into Tony. Both ducked out the door and Clint yanked it shut. “JARVIS, lockdown protocol.”

As the emergency alarms sounded and metal emergency doors slid into place, Clint whirled back around to the situation at hand. Bucky had ripped away all the equipment that had been attached to him and was now on his feet. Clint would never get used to the way that the Winter Soldier presented as a completely different person than Bucky Barnes. There were no physical changes when he made the switch, but the Winter Soldier held himself with an aggressive menace that Bucky never would. His shoulders were hunched and his arms were out and coiled to attack.

“Bucky,” Steve said, putting his hands out as if trying to calm a wild animal. Which was essentially what was happening. “It’s me, it’s Steve. You know me, right?”

And then Bucky lunged.

Steve would always have a weakness when it came to Bucky Barnes. And that wouldn’t change even when he was the Winter Soldier. So, when Bucky lunged at him, Steve was immediately knocked off balance, unsteadily blocking two blows before a roundhouse kick landed firmly on his side and sent him sprawling to the ground.

Clint sprinted forward as Bucky pounced on Steve, winding up with his metal arm to deliver a devastating blow. Clint threw himself forward, wrapping both hands around the metal arm and using his momentum to yank it to the side, sending Bucky sprawling with it. The Winter Soldier was never down for long though. Clint immediately rolled away, but Bucky was already lunging for him with a growel. Clint spun around, frantically ducking a swing from the metal arm and diving toward Bucky’s legs to throw him off balance again. While Bucky was stumbling, Clint came up behind him and pushed his advantage, grabbing Bucky’s real arm and twisting it up behind his back. But Bucky spun with the movement and Clint was forced to let go and drop to the ground to avoid getting beheaded by Bucky’s metal arm.

“Bucky!” Steve shouted as he had come up behind them and hit Bucky at a full sprint, pinning him into the nearby wall. Bucky yelled and struggled as Steve held him. “Stop, please, stop!”

“You gotta put him down, Cap!” Clint yelled as he pulled a syringe from his pocket, filled with a specially formulated sedative strong enough to take down the Winter Soldier. He bit off the safety cap with his teeth and tossed it to Steve, who easily reached out and caught it.

Unfortunately, the second Steve removed one of his hands, the Winter Soldier sensed the advanged and jumped on it. He pushed out viciously, sending Steve sprawling to the floor again, then he spun around and stomped hard on Steve’s chest.

“Shit,” Clint hissed as he sprung to Steve’s aid again.

But this time, the Winter Soldier was expecting him. He threw out his metal arm in an arm bar, firmly hitting Clint across the chest and sending him flying a good six feet, colliding hard with the machine in the room. Clint let out a cry of pain as he slumped down to the floor. He took a moment to clear his vision and get his bearings, and by then the Winter Soldier was looming over him. He reached down his metal arm and seized Clint around the throat, and it felt like a vice had clamped on his windpipe. Clint choked and kicked his feet, but without being able to get a breath in before Bucky had grabbed him, his vision was already starting to tunnel.

“Stop!”

And suddenly Clint was on the floor, coughing and wheezing desperately for breath. His hands went to his throat, which already felt like it was bruised and swollen.

“Clint? Clint are you alright?”

Clint squinted up at Steve’s terrified face above him. He glanced around, spotting Bucky laying deathly still behind Steve, the used syringe discarded on the floor next to him. Relief washed over Clint as he realized the danger had passed.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have hesitated,” Steve said. “It’s just…” He sent a pained look over his shoulder at Bucky.

“I know…” Clint rasped.

Clint and Bucky were both transported to the medical floor of Avengers Tower. Bucky was given his own, secured room to sleep off the sedative that would hopefully reset him back to his normal self. Clint was checked out extensively by the doctors in his own room. Thankfully, his trachea wasn’t damaged in the attack, and though his throat would be sore for a few days, it would heal on its own. He did end up needing a few stitches in his lower back from where he had hit the console and a few pieces of metal sliced him pretty good. He hadn’t even noticed it at the time. He was also diagnosed with a mild concussion.

All in all though, he had come out the other side of a fight with the Winter Soldier in better shape than he thought he would.

Clint had redressed and was getting ready to head back to his own room in order to rest. He looked up and started as there was a silent figure standing in the doorway.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky murmured, his gaze immediately falling down to the floor.

“Bucky,” Clint said, surprised to see him up and around so soon. And there was no doubt which person he was looking at. Bucky’s hands were shoved deep in his pockets, his shoulders sagging and he wasn’t able to meet Clint’s gaze. “Are you okay?”

At that, Bucky looked up, though he still couldn’t quite meet Clint’s gaze as he blinked in confusion. “Am I…?” He trailed off and started again. “I attacked you,” he said as if he thought maybe Clint had somehow forgotten.

“That wasn’t you,” Clint said firmly. “You wouldn’t have done anything like that on your own free will.”

“Yeah, but you got hurt,” Bucky insisted.

Clint smirked. “Barely.” He stood up, only swaying slightly. “See? I’m fine.”

“I’m still sorry,” Bucky insisted.

“That’s your prerogative,” Clint said with a shrug as he walked up to where Bucky stood. He paused and then placed a hand on Bucky’s shoulder. “Look at me.” He waited until Bucky finally met his gaze. “You are not the Winter Soldier. You are not responsible for the things that he’s done. Tony and Bruce are already back to work on their anti-brainwashing machine, and if anyone is gonna be able to get it to work, it’s the two of them. So, we’ll try again. And again. And again. Until the Winter Soldier is finally gone for good. Alright, Buck?”

Bucky nodded and a small smile tugged at his lips. “Thanks, Clint.”

Chapter Text

Day 16
A Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
Forced to Beg | Hallucinations | Shoot the Hostage

Steve trudged along, carefully following his footprints in the snow back the way that he had come. It was slow going as with every step he sunk down into the fresh snow almost up to his knees. He kept at a slow but steady pace, not wanting to expend more energy than he had too.

He hated the damn cold.

The cold and snow had never particularly bothered him before, but ever since he had been frozen in a block of ice for fifty years, he had a strong aversion to the cold. He didn’t consciously remember his time in the ice or even when he had been thawed, but obviously some subconscious part of his mind remembered and liked to remind him of it whenever there was so much of a nip in the air. And this was so much worse than a small nip.

He saw the smoke and quickened his pace slightly, anxious to get out of the damn snow. They had been so lucky to find the cave and it was likely why they were all still alive. It had a small entrance that angled upward, just barely wide enough for Steve to fit through, but plenty wide to let out smoke from their fire. There was a small, downward shaft that connected the entrance to a pretty good sized cavern under the snow, just big enough for three people, the fire and their limited supplies.

Between the shelter, their easy access to water by melting snow, and Steve’s ability to travel to the nearest shore every few days and stock up on fresh fish, their needs were fairly well covered. In theory, they would be able to comfortably survive for several weeks as they waited and hoped for rescue. As terrible as it was that they were stranded, their situation was almost ideal.

Almost.

“How is he?” Steve asked immediately as he entered the cave.

“No change,” Natasha said flatly. She sighed heavily. “The only thing I can say is he’s at least not getting any worse.” She glanced over at Steve wearily. “How was your day?”

“Productive,” Steve said with a strained smile as he produced the six large fish he had caught that day.

“That’s something, at least,” Natasha said with a strained smile of her own as he reached down into the bowl of water sitting in front of her, pulling out a wet rag. She rang out the rag and then turned and carefully laid it out across Clint’s forehead.

During their escape, Clint had been clipped by a bullet. All in all, it hadn’t been a terribly severe wound, it was a fairly shallow crease in his bicept. They had bound it and the bleeding had clotted pretty quickly. Two days into their hiding though, Clint had begun to develop a fever. When they unwrapped his wound in order to check it, their worst fears were realized. Clint had a severe infection. And they were stranded in the middle of nowhere with no means to be able to find any kind of civilization.

And so, over the past couple days, Steve and Natasha had been forced to sit by and watch as Clint slowly declined as the illness completely took over. At this point he spent most of his time sleeping restlessly, and even when he was awake the fever had disoriented him enough that he wasn’t aware of what was going on around him.

Clint’s outlook was bleak. And Steve wasn’t sure how much longer he could just sit and watch his friend deteriorate.

“Do you want to get some rest?” Steve offered as he eyed Natasha critically. There were bags under her eyes and she blinked heavily as she looked down at Clint. It looked like she was only holding on by a thread. “I can sit with him for a while.”

“Not yet, but thanks,” Natasha said.

“You’re sure?” Steve pressed. At the first sign of her nodding her head, Steve went on. “Natasha, you look exhausted. You have to sleep at some point and…” He trailed off, not wanting to admit it out loud.

There isn’t anything more we can do for him.

“I know, I know, I just…” Her voice wavered and cracked, and for a moment Steve was convinced he was about to see the mighty Black Window burst into tears. She dropped her head into her hands as her shoulders sagged in complete defeat.

Steve shifted so he could sit next to her and placed his hand on her shoulder, the only thing he could think to do to show support.

“Barney…”

Steve’s gaze snapped down to Clint at the sound of his whispered voice. Clint’s eyes were half open and glazed over, lolling listlessly from one side to the other.

“Clint?” Natasha said lowly as she leaned forward and put the back of her hand on his cheek.

“No… Barney…”

“Sh, he’s not here, Clint,” Natasha soothed and then shot an anxious look at Steve. “I think his fever is spiking.”

“I’ll get some more water,” Steve said as he picked up the bowl that was now only tepid water. “We should probably see if we can get him to drink some.”

Natasha nodded distractedly, her worried gaze remaining pinned on Clint as Steve shifted back to the front of the cave. He didn’t need to go far. He dumped the water just outside the cave and then used the bowl to scoop up some clean snow. Then he headed back into the cave.

“Clint, it’s okay, you’re okay,” Natasha was saying quietly as Steve settled back in next to her, placing the bowl down and gathering the pieces of fabric they had made last time Clint’s fever had spiked.

Clint was shifting restlessly on the ground, groaning lightly. “No… no… please, I won’t… no…”

Steve quietly began packing the snow onto the fabric and then folding the fabric to create makeshift ice packs. He started tucking them under Clint’s neck and shoulders, but Clint restlessly kept rolling off of them.

“Clint, please, we need you to stay still,” Natasha pleaded, placing her hands on either side of Clint’s face. “Look at me, you’re okay. I promise, you’re okay.”

Clint gasped, his back arching off the ground as he swatted a weak hand at Natasha. “Barney… no… please… I’m sorry…”

Natasha sat back on her heels, looking on helplessly as Clint struggled against an attacker that wasn’t there. Steve’s heart twisting at the sight, wondering who could possibly have struck such fear in their archer.

“Clint, you need to drink something,” Steve said once the water in the bowl had melted a bit. He had calmed down marginally, but was still gazing around blearily. He sent Natasha a wary look before he carefully threaded his arm behind Clint’s head, leveraging him up a bit. “Here, drink some, you’ll feel better.”

Clint instinctively leaned toward the bowl and Steve tipped some water into his mouth. Somewhere in Clint’s fevered mind, he must have realized how thirsty he was, because then he began to drink greedily, even putting a hand up to the bowl to keep it in place. Steve was beginning to feel relief creeping over him…

And then Clint coughed on the water, which seemed to trigger a panic. As he continued coughing he flung out a hand and sent the bowl skidding across the cave.

“No…” cough cough. “No, please Barney… d-don’t…” cough cough cough. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…” cough cough.

“Clint…” Natasha said, pain clear in her voice. She looked absolutely gutted by Clint’s words. Finally, she moved forward and wrapped her arms around Clint’s still struggling form, holding him close to her. “He can’t hurt you anymore, Clint. I promise. Please believe me. I will never let him hurt you ever again.”

Clint was gasping for breath, but seemed comforted in Natasha’s embrace. He struggled a little for a few moments, but then finally gave in and leaned into her. Steve suddenly felt uncomfortable, like he was intruding on a very private and personal moment. To busy himself, he retrieved the bowl and then headed back outside to refill it.

By the time he came back, Natasha had settled Clint back down onto the ground and it seemed like he had faded back into unconsciousness. Natasha held one of Clint’s hands cupped between both of her hands with her head bowed over them as if she were deep in prayer. Steve silently knelt down next to Natasha and started rearranging the ice packs that Clint had knocked away. Then he picked up another rag and wet it in the snow, carefully placing it back on Clint’s forehead.

“Who’s Barney?” Steve finally ventured quietly.

Natasha was quiet for a long time. When she did finally speak, she didn’t look up. “His brother.”

Steve started at that. “His brother?” The way that Clint spoke his name with such fear, Steve never would have guessed there was such a close family connection.

Natasha sighed heavily as she finally looked up at Steve. “Barney… isn’t a good person. Never really had been, but it took Clint a long time to really see that. And when he finally saw it… it almost cost Clint his life.”

Steve stared down at Clint in shock. He had known Clint Barton for two years now and had no idea that he had been through anything like that. His heart twisted at the idea that Clint had been so betrayed by his own brother… and also in awe of how despite that Clint still strived to do good everywhere he went.

Their rescue almost came too late. When Tony, Bruce and Thor finally tracked them down the next day, Clint’s fever was so high that they had taken to just piling snow on top of him. It would be a long recovery process for Clint, and he never would remember exactly what had happened or what he had revealed to Steve. And Steve never brought it up. But he did find himself drifting closer to Clint when they were out in a crowd. Shooting suspicious glances at any men that got too close. It was always in the back of his mind that Clint’s brother, who had almost killed him, was still out there.

And one thing Steve knew for sure was that Natasha was right. Barney would never hurt Clint again. Steve would make sure of that.

Chapter Text

Day 17
Alternate Prompt 12
Water

“Clint’s in the water! He was knocked off the bridge, he’s in the water and he’s not resurfacing!”

“Stark, Thor, one of you needs to get to Barton!” Steve commanded as he started running toward the bridge.

“Point Break, you take care of the rest of the baddies, I’ve got Barton!” Tony announced.

Steve made it to the bridge, sprinting to where Natasha was leaning over the railing -- zig zagging around the corpses of the hostiles that she and Clint had been battling -- and looking down at the river below. Far below. Too far below. Was that fall even survivable for Clint?

There was a flash of red as Iron Man flew in and immediately dove into the water. The moments ticked by agnozingingly slowly.

“Banner,” Steve said into the comm. “We’re going to need medical support in the field. We’re at the bridge over the river in the northeast quadrant of the compound. Get here as fast as you can.”

Because there was no way that Clint wasn’t going to need medical attention.

“On my way,” Bruce confirmed.

“What’s taking so long?” Natasha said anxiously as her eyes desperately searched the water below.

“Tony will find him,” Steve said, hoping he sounded more confident than he felt.

“Has Barton been found?”

They both turned as Thor landed on the bridge.

“Not yet,” Natasha said quietly.

“Maybe you should --” Steve started, but his suggestion that Thor should join the search was rendered moot as just then Iron-Man came exploding out of the water a good forty feet downriver.

Steve felt a wave of relief wash over him, before the reality of the situation kicked back in. They weren’t out of the woods yet. Tony flew over to the bridge and landed just behind them, Clint’s soaking form cradled in his arms.

A form that didn’t move as Tony carefully laid him out on the ground.

“Get the Kevlar off him,” Natasha commanded as she hurried over and dropped to her knees next to the archer, Steve quickly following suit. Steve tore at the velcro straps of Clint’s Kevlar vest as Natasha placed two fingers on Clint’s neck. “No pulse.”

“How long was he down?” Bruce had finally made it to the bridge and wasted no time getting down to business, obviously having listened to their exchanges over the open comm. line. He dropped to his knees on the other side of Clint, shrugging a medical bag off his shoulder.

“Three minutes, maybe four,” Natasha said anxiously.

“Steve, you’re on chest compressions, thirty at a time,” Bruce said as he dug into the medical bag. Steve was already leaping into action. “Natasha, you’re on breaths, two breaths for every thirty compressions.”

“...three one-thousand, four one-thousand, five one thousand…” Steve breathed as he firmly pressed the heel of his palm down on Clint’s sternum.

He leaned back as he made it to thirty compressions at the same time that Natasha leaned forward, pinched his nose and tilted his chin up so that she could blow two breaths into his mouth, his chest rising and falling mechanically with each borrowed breath. Then Steve leaned over again, restarting chest compressions.

“One one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand, four one-thousand…”

They repeated the round three times, checking for a pulse between each round and finding none.

We’re too late, he’s not gonna make it…

“Okay, stop,” Bruce said.

Steve almost protested, not wanting to give up, before he saw that Bruce had set up a small, portable AED next to Clint’s prone form. In one quick motion, Bruce used a pair of medical scissors to slice open the middle of Clint’s shirt so that his chest was bare. He took a small towel and wiped away the water still clinging to Clint’s skin and then quickly pressed the AED pads to Clint’s upper right shoulder and lower left side.

“Keep clear,” Bruce said as he glanced at Steve and Natasha to make sure they weren’t touching Clint.

Bruce hit the button on the AED and Clint’s body jolted upward… and then fell listlessly back down to the ground. Bruce reached up to check Clint’s pulse before shaking his head.

No, no, no, this couldn’t be happening, no…

Steve immediately went back to work on chest compressions. Tony stood at Clint’s feet, his faceplate retracted as he stared dismally down at the archer. Thor went down on one knee at Clint’s head, bracing his arms across his knee and bowing his head as if he were in prayer.

Natasha and Steve went through another three rounds of CPR as the rest of the world seemed to fade away. Nothing else outside of this circle of heroes -- this circle of friends who had found family in each out -- mattered.

“Okay, clear,” Bruce said.

They paused the CPR and stared with bated breath as Bruce hit the shock button on the AED. And once again, Clint’s body jolted upward… and then fell deadly still.

“Clint, please don’t do this to us,” Natasha quietly pleaded as Bruce checked Clint’s pulse again.

“No pulse,” Bruce reported flatly.

Statistically, there was very little hope. Clint had to have been under for almost six minutes now, which was the longest a person could go without oxygen. If he wasn’t beyond saving, he should be back by now. He should have come back with the first defibrillator shock and they should be transporting him to the hospital by now. Instead, they were staring Clint lying unmoving on the ground, his skin pale and his lips beginning to turn blue.

But Steve didn’t give up that easily. He placed the heel of his hand covered by his other hand on Clint’s ice cold sternum. Then he pressed down. And he pressed again. And again. And again.

He would do this forever if there was even the slightest chance of bringing Clint back to them.

“Okay, clear,” Bruce said this time after only two round of CPR.

They leaned back as Bruce hit the button on the AED with more force than necessary. Clint’s body once again jolted upward… and then suddenly Clint sucked in a horribly painful breath, wheezing it back out before attempting to suck in another as his entire body seemed to spasm. It was a terrifying display…

But he was alive. And just that fact threatened to crush Steve under the weight of the relief that washed over him.

“Clint!” Natasha gasped almost hysterically as she lunged forward and put her hands on either side of Clint’s face, as if needing the tactile reassurance that he was still here with them.

“Get him on his side,” Bruce said urgently as Clint continued to gag and choke. He and Natasha just managed to get Clint over on his side before bile projected from his mouth and onto the ground. “That’s it, get it all up, buddy,” Bruce encouraged and he reached over and firmly patted Clint’s back.

Finally, the gagging subsided and Clint’s breathing settled into an unsteady rhythm.

“Holy shit,” Tony breathed, the relief clear in his tone.

“We need to get him back to the jet,” Bruce said.

“Will he be alright?” Thor asked anxiously.

“I think so,” Bruce said with a light smile. “If Clint can come back from that, I think it’s safe to say he’ll fight through anything else he needs to.

Steve leaned over and carefully lifted Clint up into his arms, listening carefully to his labored breaths and the group trooped back to the Quinjet. Clint fought for every breath, dragging it in painfully before letting it go again. It was painful to listen to, but at the same time it spoke to Clint’s practically inhuman resiliency.

“Keep fighting, Clint,” Steve said quietly. “Always keep fighting.”

Chapter Text

Day 18
Panic! At The Disco
Panic Attacks | Phobias | Paranoia

His hands were shaking.

He flexed each of his fingers one at a time. Shook out his hands. Rolled his fingers into fists and squeezed as hard as he could before releasing. Then he held them out and stared down at them.

They were still shaking.

“Sonofabitch,” Clint hissed to himself. Then he let out a cry of frustration as he threw his hands back down to his side as he anxiously paced up and down the range, as if he could walk off the impending panic attack.

It had been two months since Loki had taken over Clint’s mind and had been forced to kill innocent people. The Avengers had moved into the newly renovated and converted Stark Tower and taken some well deserved downtime. But they were getting restless and Steve was now in talks with Nick Fury about how to build a working partnership with SHIELD. With any luck, within the next few weeks they could be deployed back in the field.

And Clint hadn’t touched his bow since the Battle of New York.

Clint took in a deep breath as he determinedly marched back to the table where his bow case lay. He had managed to open the case before his hands had begun shaking and his heart had begun racing this time. But as he stared down at the bow it was suddenly like the air around him thinned and found himself gasping for breath.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Clint growled to himself as he spun away from the bow again.

He had first fired a bow and arrow when he was nine years old. It had never felt anything but natural in his hands. It had been the one constant in his life, the one thing that he could always rely on. He aimed an arrow at the target and it hit the damn target. Every single time. When life felt like it was spinning out of control around him, he could always pick up that bow and fire arrow after arrow into a target. And while he was firing that bow, it felt like the world was calm and quiet around him. For a short amount of time he felt in control.

And Loki had ripped that away from him.

“You don’t have to rush it, you know.”

Clint snorted derisively, not bothering to turn around at the sound of Natasha’s voice. “It’s been two months. I’d hardly say I’m trying to rush it.”

“There’s no timetable for how long it takes to heal from having an alien take over your brain,” Natasha pointed out.

Clint shook his head. It shouldn’t be this difficult to just pick up his bow. He sighed heavily as he scrubbed his hand over his face and then up into his hair, grabbing a fistful and tugging in an attempt to ground himself. It didn’t help. A tingling feeling ran down his arms to his hands and he suddenly felt unsteady on his feet.

“Clint?” Natasha said slowly, sounding a little unsure.

Clint finally spun back around, stalking determinedly toward his bow case, brushing past Natasha. He ignored all his screaming instincts as he seized the bow from the case…

And was immediately assaulted with images of people in SHIELD uniforms falling with arrows sticking out of their chests. People… coworkers… people that he knew were dead because of him.

“Clint! Clint, look at me!”

Clint gasped for breath as he blinked around, confused. When had Natasha approached him? Why was he sitting on the floor? Where had his bow gone?

“What...?” Clint breathed, putting a hand to his suddenly pounding head.

Natasha reached out and put a comforting hand on the side of his head. “You had a panic attack and collapsed. Just take a deep breath.”

Clint hung his head as he sucked in a labored breath and held it for a moment before he let it go. He repeated the action several more times, finally feeling the tingling feeling in his arms begin to dull.

“That’s it,” Natasha soothed. “How about we head to the kitchen and get some water?”

“It shouldn’t be this hard,” Clint murmured, his voice cracking. “This is supposed to be the one goddamn thing that I can do on a team full of super soldiers, geniuses and an actual god.”

“Clint, you are an amazing archer, but you are more than just your bow and arrows,” Natasha insisted fiercely. “You bring so much more to this team than just shooting arrows at bad guys, I promise.”

“Yeah,” Clint said flatly, though he wasn’t sure he fully believed that. “But it’s more than that…” His eyes darted over to where his bow now lay on the floor a few feet away. “That bow has been the one constant in my life since I was nine years old. It’s the one thing I’m supposed to be able to control.”

“I know,” Natasha said. “And I hate that Loki took that from you. But you just need to give it some more time. And you know what else might help? If you forgive yourself.” Clint’s eyes snapped to Natasha in surprise. “I know you, Clint. And I know you haven’t really forgiven yourself for what Loki made you do.”

It was like Natasha had stolen the air straight from his lungs.

“Um… I…” Clint stuttered.

“It’s okay to take your time with this,” Natasha said gently. “It’s okay for it to take more time for you to really process what happened. What it’s all going to come down to is for you to place the blame with the person who truly deserves it. It was Loki, and Loki alone who did those things. Not you.”

Clint took in an unsteady breath. Damn it all if Natasha didn’t know him too well.

“So, how about we head to the common floor and get some water,” Natasha went on with a soft smile. “And we can try this again another time.”

“Thanks, Nat,” he said quietly as she helped him back up to his feet.

As they headed out of the range, Clint sent one last glance back at his bow that was still lying abandoned on the floor. He would heal. In time, he would be able to pick up that bow again without reliving the atrocities that Loki made him commit. He would take back control of his life.

But for now, it was okay to take it slow.

Chapter Text

Day 19
Alternate Prompt #1
Punctured

“Clint, report! Are you okay?!” There was a note of panic in Steve’s tone over the comm.

“I’m okay, I’m okay,” Clint gasped. “Not the first time I’ve been thrown through a window. Just give me a minute.”

“You know that you don’t build up an immunity the more you get thrown through windows, right Barton?” Tony asked dryly.

Clint snorted, but didn’t bother answering. He lay his head back carefully and took several deep breaths. His whole body hurt and he glanced down at a few shallow cuts from the broken glass, but they weren’t too severe. He had managed to protect his head, so though the wind was knocked out of him he seemed to have avoided a concussion. All in all, it looked like he had gotten lucky when that hostile had thrown him through that window.

He placed one hand on the ground and went to push himself back up into a sitting position… and a raw cry of agony tore it’s way up this throat. It happened so suddenly that it took Clint’s brain a long moment to really comprehend what was happening, the pain actually hitting him a moment after the involuntary scream.

“Clint?” Natasha demanded.

“On second thought…” Clint ground out as he twisted to look down at his side. His stomach clenched as he spotted the jagged piece of glass roughly the width of his hand buried who knew how deep into his side just above his hip. “Maybe I could… use some help…”

“I’m on my way,” Natasha said immediately.

Clint swallowed thickly as he rode out the waves of pain that were now ripping through him. He sucked in air, but it seemed like it was never enough and soon he was panting and sweating as his vision swam around him.

Was this what dying felt like?

“Clint!” Natasha gasped as she finally appeared in his field of vision, dropping carefully to her knees next to him as her gaze swept over him, looking desperately for what was wrong.

“My side,” Clint murmured, his hand going to where the shard of glass was sticking out of his body.

Natasha visibly paled at the sight. That wasn’t comforting. Natasha had a strong stomach and wasn’t easily scared. But for just a moment before she seemed to remember herself and blank her features… she looked absolutely terrified.

“We need med evac, right now,” Natasha said tensely into her comm., her hands hovering unsurely over the wound. “Bruce, can you pinpoint our position and bring the Quinjet around?”

“Um, Natasha, flying this thing is not my strong suit…” Bruce pointed out slowly.

“I can fly Legolas to the jet,” Tony pointed out.

“No!” Natasha snapped. As Clint looked at her, he wondered why her hair looked so much brighter all of a sudden. And her face kept blurring in and out of focus. “We need to move him as little as possible.”

“I’ll get to the jet and fly it over,” Steve said. “How bad is it?”

Natasha’s eyes shifted up to Clint’s face. He was sucking in labored breaths, but he suddenly felt so tired. He blinked heavily as a shiver ran through his body. Why was it so cold? And why was it getting so dark?

He was fading away. It felt like he was floating outside of his body, leaving the pain and panic behind. Just before he lost all consciousness though, he heard Natasha’s voice floating to him as if from a great distance.

“It’s bad.”

The first thing he was aware of was the annoying beeping of a heart monitor. He winced as the noise seemed to drill into his skull.

“You with us, Clint?”

Clint squinted his eyes open, grimacing at the painfully bright light of the hospital room. He glanced around. The entire team was packed into the small room, all staring down at him. It felt a bit strange, but also comforting to have his team here with him.

“Wha’ ‘appened?” Clint rasped through an oxygen mask.

“You scared the shit out of us, that’s what happened,” Natasha said with a small, strained laugh from where she sat perched on his bedside.

“My bad,” Clint murmured with a light laugh, his eyes already feeling heavy again.

“Get some rest, Clint.” He wasn’t completely sure who said it as he was fading away again.

They would never admit to him how close he had come to dying that day. They would never tell him about the desperate favors that Tony had called in, about the dangerously experimental procedures they had performed in order to bring him back from the brink. They would never tell him that under normal circumstances there was no way that he would have survived.

But the Avengers would never let him go that easily.

Chapter Text

Day 20
Toto, I Have A Feeling We’re Not In Kansas Anymore
Lost | Field Medicine | Medieval

It was supposed to be a routine mission. But really, when did that ever work out? Tony and Clint were sent out to do some reconnaissance at a potential Hydra location. Everything had gone fine, they had gathered the information that they needed and had left before anyone even knew they had been there.

Or so they had thought.

They were flying over the Atlantic Ocean with no land in sight when the alarms in the Quinjet suddenly started wailing as the jet started to dip out of the sky. It soon became painfully clear that the jet had been found and tampered with, and there was no fixing it before they fell out of the sky. It was a miracle that Clint was able to point them toward a small speck of land in the middle of the vast, empty ocean. He took the jet down in the water near the island, knowing that a water landing was better than a solid ground landing… but the crash was still brutal. At the last second, the engine on the left side completely failed, sending the jet careening to the left and hitting the water so hard that the metal dented in far enough to shove Clint’s pilot seat out of place.

Clint had pulled the emergency hatch on top of the jet so they could escape before the craft sunk into the water… but as he began to move he cried out in pain, his entire left side on fire. He barely made it out of the jet and into the water, at which point Tony had to get an arm around him and pull him through the water to the nearby island, dragging him up onto the shore.

Tony leaned over Clint, his hands hovering over him, panic barely contained behind his wide-eyed gaze. “What’s hurt?”

Clint took in a shuddering breath. “My shoulder,” he said, hating the way his voice shook. His entire body was in pain, but he could clearly tell that his shoulder was the worst of it.

“What can I do?” Tony asked urgently.

“Hopefully it’s only dislocated,” Clint said. “You gotta check for broken bones and then you gotta set it for me.”

Tony bit his lip as his eyes moved to his injured shoulder. “I’ve never set a dislocated shoulder before,” he admitted.

At this, Clint cracked a pained smile. “There’s a first time for everything.”

Tony rolled his eyes. “That’s not as comforting as you might think,” he muttered sarcastically.

He reached out with both hands and with his first and second fingers he found where Clint’s collar bone began at the base of his neck. Using firm pressure, he walked his fingers up the bone, testing for any unnatural movement. The closer he got to Clint’s shoulder, the more the pain pulsated up and down his arm and up through this chest. Clint gritted his teeth and did his best to deal with the pain silently, but couldn’t help a few moans escaping his throat. Tony’s eyes darted toward him, but for once seemed like he couldn’t think of anything to say.

Once he finished checking Clint’s collar bone, he moved down to his hand. He started down at Clint’s wrist, feeling each bone carefully. For a minute it was almost a relaxing feeling. But again, the closer he got to Clint’s shoulder, the more the pain worsened. By the time he made it up past Clint’s elbow, Clint could barely take it anymore. He cried out as his muscles spasmed painfully and Tony immediately stopped at the noise.

“Keep going,” Clint snapped a little more intensely than he had meant to. He just wanted to get it over with.

“Then stop screaming,” Tony snapped back, though there was a grim tension in his voice.

A strained bark of a laugh escaped Clint’s throat. “I was not screaming. It was a very manly yell.”

Tony shook his head. “Whatever you say,” he said as he started to check Clint’s bicep again, this time noticeably going more carefully. Still, Clint had to squeeze his eyes shut and clench his jaw to keep from crying out again.

“Nothing feels broken,” Tony finally informed him. Clint opened his eyes and saw that he was now sitting back on his heels, looking down at him unsurely. “But it’s pretty swollen up by the shoulder so it’s hard to tell. Plus there could be ligament or tendon damage or something. Without x-rays or MRIs it might not be safe to reset your shoulder.”

Clint sighed heavily. “Do you happen to have either of those machines on you?” Tony shook his head. “Then we have to do it this way.”

“But—“

“Look, we have no idea if or when help is going to get here,” Clint interrupted. “Until then, we’re on our own. And I’m not gonna last long in here with only one working arm.”

Tony sighed in defeat. “You’re right,” he admitted. “Okay. What do I do?”

“Bend my arm up at the elbow,” Clint instructed as calmly as he could. He waited for Tony to do as he was told. “Okay, now hold the elbow with both hands and rotate it out away from my torso.”

“Like this?” he asked as he carefully moved his elbow away from his body.

Suddenly, intense pain shot up through his arm. “Stopstopstop!” he gasped.

Tony immediately froze, looking down at him with wide eyes. “What’d I do wrong?”

Clint had to pause in an attempt to catch his breath, all his muscles tensing painfully. “My fault,” he panted. He squeezed his eyes shut as he tried to concentrate. “I tensed up. Move it back.” Tony carefully did as he was told and Clint focused on taking deep breaths and trying to relax his muscles. Then he laughed lightly to diffuse the tension in the air. “This is supposed to be the easy part.”

Tony rolled his eyes. “Great,” he said sarcastically. Then he paused as realization dawned on him. “Wait, supposed to be? You have done this before, haven’t you?”

Clint flashed him a guilty smile. “Well, I know the theory behind it…” he hedged.

“You’ve never even done this before?” Tony demanded angrily.

“I dislocated my shoulder once before, but I was unconscious when Phil set it for me,” he admitted. “He sedated me so it would be easier to do.” He paused, thoughtful. “If we can’t pop it back in this way you may have to knock me unconscious to do it.”

Tony rolled his eyes. “Don’t tempt me, Legolas,” he warned, clearly straining to keep his tone light.

Clint took one more deep breath. “Okay. Let’s try again.”

“You sure?” Tony asked skeptically.

Clint tried to nod, but even that was enough to send waves of pain though his body. “Yes,” he said flatly.

“Okay,” Tony said, sounding determined. “Take some deep breaths and we’ll go again on the count of three. One… two… three.”

Clint did his best to relax his muscles as Tony slowly and carefully shifted his dislocated joint. There was some dull pain as it moved, but thankfully nothing as bad as last time. Even so, Clint let his head fall to the side away from his injury, not wanting to witness the unnatural motions they were about to put his joint through.

“Still with me?” Tony asked, worry creeping into his tone.

“Yeah, still here,” Clint confirmed. His voice seemed to drag out of his throat. Exhaustion was clearly catching up with him. He took another deep breath as he fought for focus. “Move it a little further, it should be perpendicular to my body.”

“Like this?” Tony asked, shifting his arm a bit further.

Clint clamped down on a groan. “Yeah,” he said without looking, hoping he was right. He inhaled for a few long seconds before quickly exhaling. “Okay. You’re gonna rotate my arm up over my head, keeping my elbow bent. While you’re rotating, put some steady pressure outwards away from my body. Once my arm is up over my head, it should pop back into the socket.”

“Should?” Tony said, raising an eyebrow.

“If you feel resistance, stop and try again from a slightly different angle,” Clint went on. “Don’t force it or you could start breaking bones.”

“So, no pressure,” Tony said. “Great.” Clint heard Tony take a deep breath. “Okay. Ready?”

“I am if you are,” Clint said, trying to keep the tension out of his voice. He knew he needed to relax his muscles in order for this to work, but that was easier said than done.

Clint gasped as his muscles spasmed. He let out a strange humming noise as he tried to stifle a cry of pain. Tony paused, shifted a little bit and then moved again, pulling outward steadily…

POP!

Clint let out a relieved sigh as the joint returned to socket with an audible pop, the pain immediately dulling as the strain was finally taken off his shoulder.

“Thanks,” Clint breathed.

“No problem,” Tony said, leaning back and wiping a hand over his brow. “Now, never make me do that ever again.”

Chapter Text

Day 21
I Don’t Feel So Well
Chronic Pain | Hypothermia | Infection

Damnit, it was cold.

You would think that after being captured and thrown in a cell, the weather would be the last thing on Clint mind. There were so many more things he should be more worried about, including but not limited to if these men intended to torture and/or kill him. But as the hours dragged on, Clint’s eyes kept going to that small, barred opening up near the ceiling of his concrete cell. He had already climbed up there and searched for weaknesses, finding none. It seemed like the purpose of the opening was simply to let cold air from outside into his empty cell.

It wasn’t too bad at first. Isolation made him antsy, so he took to pacing around the cell to work off anxious energy at the same time as he worked up some body heat to stave off the nip in the air. He was given water and even a minimal amount of food once a day, though the guards who brought it to him virtually ignored him, no matter how he tried to goad them.

Three days passed without much incident and Clint couldn’t complain about much other than boredom. And then, on the fourth night of his captivity the temperature very suddenly plummeted.

Clint blinked with confusion, unsure what had awoken him at first. As he had every other night, he had wedged himself sitting up in the corner of the cell in order to sleep. The cell slowly came into focus and it looked as if nothing had changed.

And then a shiver wracked through his body. He blew out a lungful of air, and watched the light mist that accompanied the exhale.

“Shit,” Clint murmured as he glared up at the opening above his head.

This was bad.

He quickly pushed himself up off the floor and began to pace quickly around the cell, rubbing his arms. He was fortunate that when they had searched him, they had taken his jacket but left him with the fairly insulated long sleeve shirt and pants, along with his boots. It would protect him from fairly cold weather, but there was no telling how much the temperature would continue to drop. If it got down too low he would be in really serious trouble.

“C’mon, don’t do this to me,” Clint pleaded with the window, as if it had any say over how much cold air it let into the small room.

Clint continued walking around the room, periodically flexing his fingers and blowing hot air into his hands and even down his shirt. He even did squats and push ups in order to pass the time. He continually assured himself that he wasn’t in trouble yet. The weather should warm up in the morning when the sun comes up, and his captors were feeding him daily which helped him keep up his energy. He could sleep during the day while the sun was up and move around at night in order to keep up his body heat. This was still a survivable situation.

And then, the next day when the guard approached his cell, he placed a cup of water between the bars and walked away. Clint could only stare at the solitary cup of water dismally as his heart sunk in his chest. He knew without a doubt that it wasn’t a coincidence that the moment the temperature outside dropped they stopped bringing him food.

So, they had planned to torture him. They just needed to wait for the weather to cooperate. The big question now was did they want something from him, or would they just watch him slowly die in here?

Clint regulated the small portion of water throughout the day as he did his best to rest and get some sleep. It was still cold throughout the day, but not as much as it had been the night before. But even though Clint couldn’t see anything through the high window, he could sense the temperature dropping again as the sun slowly set.

He had never loathed the night so much before in his life.

Having now eaten anything that day, Clint noticed a significant difference in his energy level as he pushed himself up to his feet. His vision swam for a moment before he stabilized. He walked around the perimeter of the room, keeping one hand on the wall for balance. For the first couple hours he was able to keep up a fairly consistent amount of activity to keep his body heat up as much as he could. But as the night grew deeper, the temperature continued to drop until finally Clint’s tired eyes wandered up to the window just as he noticed snow drifting down around him.

“Sonofabitch,” Clint groaned.

He was in trouble.

The cold wrapped around him like an icy weight. His breathing slowly became shallower and he noticed with a vague interest that he was beginning to pant for breath, even though he had kept his activity level to the bare minimum in an attempt to preserve enough energy to make it through the night. During a pass around the small cell he suddenly tripped and almost fell, even though there wasn’t a square inch of this floor that he hadn’t walked a thousand times.

“Damnit,” Clint muttered to himself as he braced himself against the ice cold wall of the cell.

Yeah. He was really in trouble. As in, may not survive the night kind of trouble.

“No… it can’t end like this… it doesn’t end like this,” Clint murmured as he squeezed his eyes shut. After everything he had been through, it just seemed so anticlimactic for what finally did him in was cold weather.

Determinedly, he pushed himself off the wall and stumbled around the cell for another two laps. He was blinking hard, trying desperately to fight off the exhaustion that was suddenly pressing in, and wasn’t paying attention to just how much snow was blowing in the window and now coating the floor under his feet. He turned a corner a little too quickly and suddenly his feet went out from under him, sending him crashing hard to the concrete floor.

“Shit, shit, shit,” Clint breathed as he stared down at the snow on the floor, now dotted with red from where he had busted open his elbow from the fall. “C’mon, Barton, get up, get up.”

His entire body trembled violently as he tried in vain to push himself back up to his feet. But every time he got his feet under him, they slipped out on the icy floor as soon as he tried to put any weight on them. After several tries, he heaved out a sigh of defeat, finally acknowledging that he was just wasting energy.

He blinked heavily as he pushed himself across the floor to the nearest corner. He pulled his shirtsleeve down over his hand and used it to sweep the snow away from the corner before he curled up into it, so that at least he wouldn’t be sitting in the snow.

He glared up again at that goddamn window. It was just big enough to let in a light dusting of snow, which was especially frustrating since if he had enough snow he’d be able to insulate himself against the cold. As it were, he only had enough snow to mock him and remind him just how screwed he was.

“Fuck you,” he mumbled up at the window as he carefully pulled his knees up and tucked his hands between his thighs and his stomach.

The minutes dragged on into hours. Clint noticed that he was beginning to shiver less, and somewhere in the back of his mind a quiet voice whispered that that was a bad thing, but he couldn’t remember why. I mean, the damn shivering was what was keeping him awake, right? Maybe if he stopped, then he could finally get some sleep. Because that’s all he wanted at this point. He was just so tired…

“Clint!”

The voice came to him from a great distance. He blinked his eyes, blurry images moving around him, but he didn’t have it in him to try to figure out what was going on or even to really comprehend what the words swirling around him meant.

“He’s still breathing, but it’s really shallow. His pulse is also dangerously low.”

“Clint? Clint, can you hear me?”

“Holy shit, he looks like an icicle. What, did the bastards just want to watch him freeze to death!”

“He’s severely hypothermic. Thor, give me your cape.”

“Will he be alright?”

“We need to get him out of here right now.”

Clint was vaguely aware of being picked up and carried, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. He drifted in and out of consciousness. The next thing he was clearly aware of was laying on a cot in the back of the Quinjet, wrapped tightly in a thick, red fabric with another weight blanket on top of him, an IV tube snaking its way underneath the blankets and into the back of his hand.

“Clint?”

Clint squinted up at the figure sitting next to him. “Tasha? Wha’…”

“Sh, it’s okay now,” Natasha soothed with a soft smile. “We got you out. We’re going home.”

It took Clint a long minute to really comprehend the words. Then, his lips quirked a small smirk.

“Can we… make a pitstop in… in the Caribbean? Or the… Sa-Sahara Desert?”

Everyone laughed and Clint burrowed down deeper into his nest of blankets. He would never take warmth for granted ever again.

Chapter Text

Day 22
Do These Tacos Taste Funny To You?
Poisoned | Drugged | Withdrawal

“Alright, team, I think it’s safe to say this is a dead end,” Tony announced as he glanced around the empty room in the compound they had been searching. “What do you say, we call it a day?”

“I think Tony’s right,” Steve agreed into his comm. They had split off into two teams, with him and Tony searching one wing of the compound while Natasha and Clint searched the other. “This place has been abandoned for years. Looks like we got a bad lead. Meet back here and we can head out.”

“Sounds good,” Natasha agreed over the line.

“Roger, Rogers,” Clint said with a laugh. “Heading your way.”

A few minutes later, Natasha strode into the room where Steve and Tony were waiting from a door on their left.

“Where’s Clint?” Steve asked, confused.

“We split up to cover more ground,” Natasha said. “He should be here in a minute.”

“Any day now, Barton,” Tony said into the comm. “I’m getting hungry. I’m thinking we hit a drive-thru on the way home. You can fly the Quinjet through one of those, right?”

“Don’t tempt me, Stark,” Clint said with a laugh.

“Seriously, though, don’t tempt him,” Natasha said as she glared at Tony. “He’ll actually try it.”

“Killjoy,” Tony said, but everyone could hear the smirk in his voice behind his faceplate.

“Alright, I’m here,” Clint announced as he appeared just on the other side of a doorway over to their right, grinning mischievously, as if he were already thinking about how he could get a jet into a drive thru. “Let’s get--”

The moment that Clint passed through the doorway, an explosion of yellow tinted gas suddenly shot out of the doorframe, instantly filling the space. It happened so quickly, no one had time to really react, and it wasn’t until Clint was screaming that any of them understood what was happening.

“Clint!” Natasha yelled as she lunged forward, only to be caught around the middle by Steve and pushed back toward Tony.

“Get her out of here!” Steve roared at Tony. “I got Clint!”

Because poisonous gas triggered by a booby trap didn’t stay in one place. It spread.

As Tony’s suit whirred to life, grabbing Natasha and jetting to the nearest exit, Steve ran forward. He was much less affected than most when it came to things like poison, but even he could feel a stinging sensation prickling his skin as he leapt into the yellow tinted air still hanging in the doorway. Clint had dropped to his knees, jerking wildly as he yelled out in agony, completely oblivious to anything else going on around him.

Steve quickly scooped up Clint in his arms and then turned and ran as fast as he could, not stopping until they were back outside.

“Clint!” Natasha gasped as she and Tony ran over to where Steve had stopped and carefully lay Clint down in the grass in order to assess his condition.

“Stop, don’t touch him,” Steve warned, throwing out an arm to stop Natasha’s approach. “It’s some kind of nerve agent, he could still have residue on his skin and clothes.” He had seen this before back in the war. “Bruce--”

“He’s already on his way,” Tony said quickly.

Clint didn’t appear aware that they were there. He wheezed and coughed horribly as his body twitched and jerked on the ground. Even Steve was coughing on whatever poison they had been doused with, his skin still feeling itchy and uncomfortable. That spoke to how powerful the poison in the gas really was.

“Bruce, how far out are you?” Steve demanded over the comm.

“Two minutes, max,” Bruce panted over the line. “I’ve got my med bag, I’ve got something to counteract the nerve agent in it.”

“Okay, hurry,” Steve said anxiously as they were all forced to stare down at Clint, still in clear agony as he curled in on himself, wheezing desperately for breath.

If his airway was compromised…

“I’m here!” Bruce huffed only a minute later as he ran around the corner. He dropped to his knees about a foot away from Clint, swinging his med bag around and immediately digging around in it. “Here, inject this into his thigh,” Bruce said, thrusting and autoinjector to Steve, who followed the orders without question or hesitation, jamming it into Clint’s outer thigh. Clint barely seemed to notice as he continued to jerk and spasm painfully. “Now this one,” Bruce said, holding out another autoinjector.

This time, as Steve jammed it into Clint’s thigh, the arched suddenly jerked upward, heaving in the first deep breath since the gas had hit him. He felt back to the ground, his muscles still spasming, though not nearly as violently as before. He was still gasping for breath, but it didn’t sound nearly as painful or panicked as it did.

“Clint?” Steve said.

“Holy… shit…” Clint gasped breathlessly.

Steve let out a relieved sigh as he sat back on his heels. “Thank god.”

“What did you give him?” Tony asked.

“The first injection was atropine and the second was pralidoxime chloride,” Bruce said. “Both are needed to counteract any kind of nerve agent. Steve, I need you to carry him back to the Quinjet, since you’ve already been exposed. We’ll need to put you both through a decontamination protocol.” He eyed him as Steve let out a dry cough. “I might give you a dose back at the jet, just to be on the safe side.”

Steve nodded. “But Clint will be okay?”

“He may need another dose back at the jet… but yes, he should be okay,” Bruce assured them.

“Never a dull moment,” Tony said with a weary sigh.

Chapter Text

Day 23
What’s a Whumpee Gotta Do To Get Some Sleep Around Here?
Exhaustion | Narcolepsy | Sleep Deprivation

Sometimes Clint Barton felt like he was moving through life running on adrenaline alone.

He was always moving, always planning, always gearing up for the next mission. In his downtime he was always running drills, training, practicing his shooting, working on his bow and arrows. There was always something he needed to be doing, and it was difficult to turn his mind off most days. In fact, in his days at SHIELD with Phil Coulson as his handler, Phil was not above drugging him in order to force him to get some sleep during his downtime.

But now Phil was gone and Clint was working more than ever as an Avenger while also still doing some SHIELD work. He knew he was running himself ragged, he knew that he was only human, but every time he tried to sit still he was filled with the overwhelming feeling that there was something else he should be doing. His nightmares had become more frequent since Loki had violated his mind and murdered Phil, and he found himself most nights at the punching bag in the gym that Tony had set up in the Tower, as if he could simply punch his way out of his grief and trauma from what had happened.

All in all, it was only a matter of time before he just couldn’t keep it up any longer.

He was returning to Avengers Tower after completing a particularly tough SHIELD mission. It had been an assassination mission, and the survailance needed in order to take the shot had been two days longer than anticipated. Clint had gone in without backup - it was just too difficult to imagine being out in the field with anyone other than Phil right now - and had barely slept over the course of the three days. Then he had flown himself back to SHIELD - catch a few catnaps with the autopilots - and had been dragged into hours worth of debriefing.

All this after almost nonstop Avengers and SHIELD missions over the course of almost three weeks now.

As Clint finally left the SHIELD building, he was dragging his feet and blinking heavy. There was no way he’d be able to make the drive back to the Tower. He had countless options to call for a ride, but he really didn’t want to bother anyone.

So, with his bow case slung over one shoulder and a duffle bag full of knives and filthy clothes, the Avenger shuffled to the curb and put up a hand to hail a taxi cab.

“You know where Avengers Tower is?” Clint mumbled as he slid into the backseat.

The man driving the cab gave him a funny look in the rearview mirror. “Yeah, of course.”

“Drop me there,” Clint said as he leaned back heavily in the seat.

The driver stared at him quizzically for a moment, as if trying to place him. Clint was probably the least recognizable of all the Avengers, so he was used to the looks of people trying to figure out why he looked vaguely familiar. Finally the driver shook it off and pulled off the curb and into traffic.

“Sir? Excuse me… sir?”

Clint was suddenly blinking blearly, looking around confused. It took him a long moment to remember getting in the taxi cab. The driver was turned around in his seat and staring back at him with concern. Clint glanced around and realized they were outside of Avengers Tower. It should have been at least a twenty minute drive from the base, but he could have sworn he had just got in this cab.

“Uh, yeah, sorry,” Clint finally said as he realized that the driver was waiting for him to pay for the ride. He squinted at the fare box, but the numbers kept drifting out of focus. Finally, he pulled a wad of bills out of his wallet that he knew was likely way too much for the short ride, but he didn’t have it in him to care. “Thanks,” he mumbled as he grabbed his bags and slid out of the cab.

He shuffled across the sidewalk and went to shoulder his way into the building lobby… only to belatedly remember there was a handprint authorization process when the door didn’t budge. He sighed heavily, annoyed as he put down a bag in order to place his hand on the reader.

“Welcome home, Agent Barton.”

“Thanks, JARVIS,” Clint mumbled as he shouldered his way into the lobby. And it was only after the door sealed shut behind him he remembered he hadn’t picked his duffle bag back up. He turned around, glaring through the glass door at the bag still sitting on the sideway. “Shit, come on.” He put down his bow case and retraced his steps, pulling open the door again in order to retrieve the bag.

“Do you require any aid, Agent Barton?”

Was it his imagination, or did the voice of the computer system that ran the building sound concerned about him?

“No, just tired,” Clint said, suppressing a yawn as he headed back into the lobby of the building and started for the elevator. “Just need to make it up to my bed and I’ll be fine.”

He made it to the elevator and hit the up button… and then glanced down and realized that he was only holding one bag. He looked at his other hand, staring at it with confusion, wondering why it was empty… then he spun around and spotted his bow case still sitting on the floor next to the front door.

“Sonofabitch, seriously?” he sighed.

It was maybe ten feet away, but for a moment Clint could only stare dismally at those ten feet. When the elevator dinged behind him, he seriously considered just leaving the case there. But he knew that was a bad idea and reluctantly trudged back to the door, letting the elevator doors slide shut again. He stumbled a little bit as he leaned down and grabbed the case. Then he took a deep breath as he turned and shuffled back to the elevator. Without putting either bag down this time, he hit the elevator button with his knuckle… only to groan when the doors didn’t immediately open again. Apparently the elevator cab had already been called away to another floor and it would likely be several minutes before it made it back down to the lobby.

Clint glanced around, spotting a grouping of waiting room-like chairs off to one side. He shuffled over, decided that he might as well rest his feet while he waited for the elevator to come back. He fell heavily into the closest chair, unceremoniously dropping his bags at his feet. He leaned his head back, letting it hang in midair since this chair didn’t have much of a back to it. He was just gonna rest his eyes… just for a minute…….

“Clint? Clint?”

Clint felt like he was trying to crawl up out of a pool of molasses as he slowly blinked his eyes open. People stood around him. He glanced around, confused. Where was he? What was going on?

“Clint?”

Clint was finally able to focus on the figure that was kneeling in front of him.

“Steve?” Clint mumbled.

“Are you okay?” Steve asked.

“Umm,” Clint hummed, honestly having no idea how to answer the question. He glanced around again. “Where am I?” His words slurred together strangely.

“You’re sleeping in the lobby of my Tower like a hobo who wandered in off the streets,” Tony spoke up from where he stood behind Steve.

“Oh,” Clint said as the events of the day slowly came back to him. “Sorry.” Then he glanced around again, something donning on him slowly as he noticed that Bruce was also there, standing beside Tony. “How did you know I was down here?”

“JARVIS alerted Tony that you might need some assistance,” Bruce said. “I was in the lab with him at the time, and we ran into Steve in the elevator when we were heading down here.”

“Oh,” Clint said again. “Sorry.” He had just said that, hadn’t he? “I must have nodded off for a minute.”

“JARVIS said you’d been sitting here for twenty minutes,” Tony countered.

Clint glared at nothing in particular. “Snitch.”

“Clint, are you okay?” Steve asked again.

“I’m just a little tired, Cap,” Clint said waving off the concern as he slowly pushed himself up out of the chair, wavering slightly as he did so. “I just need to get some sleep and I’ll be fine.”

“Yeah, but have you been sleeping?” Steve pressed.

Clint blinked at him. “I just came off a surveillance mission for SHIELD.”

“We took the liberty of having JARVIS analyze your activities the last couple weeks,” Tony said. “According to him, you’re only in your apartment maybe four hours a night. And we can assume you don’t sleep those whole four hours.”

“You’re spying on me?” Clint suddenly demanded.

“I can’t see into your apartment, as I promised when you moved in,” Tony quickly amended, putting his hands up placatingly. “But JARVIS can monitor you outside of the apartment. He’s recorded your times in the range, in the gym… We know you’ve spent very little time in that apartment the last couple weeks.”

Clint sighed, running a hand over his face. His head was pounding and he was wavering on his feet. He was not in the mood to have this discussion.

“I just… don’t sleep well,” Clint finally hedged. “I never have. But ever since Loki…” He let the thought trail off as he squeezed his eyes shut.

“It’s okay to be struggling with this, Clint,” Steve said gently.

“Would you like me to give you something to help you sleep?” Bruce asked. “Something mild, just to take the edge off?”

Clint stared at Bruce for a long time, blinking back emotion that was threatening to overwhelm him in that moment. It was exactly the kind of thing that Phil would say at a time like this.

God, he missed Phil.

“Yeah,” Clint finally mumbled, dropping his gaze down. “That’d be… that’d be okay, I guess.”

“Okay,” Bruce said. “Let’s get you upstairs, okay?”

Clint only nodded. He felt Steve hand hovering just behind his back, guiding him as he shuffled back over to the elevator. The doors were already open, waiting for them, something Tony must have done. It was only when he was in the elevator that he suddenly remembered the bags he was supposed to be carrying.

“Wait--”

“I got the bags, Barton,” Tony said, holding up the two bags pinched in one hand.

Clint instantly relaxed, leaning heavily up against the wall behind him as the doors slid shut. Bruce hit two numbers on the keypad for two different floors.

“I’ll stop by the medical wing to get a sedative and meet you guys in Clint’s apartment,” Bruce said.

Clint was barely aware of Bruce stepping off the elevator just a minute later. Steve had to nudge him when they reached the floor where his apartment was located. Clint felt dizzy as he pushed himself off the wall, and Steve had to put a hand on his arm in order to steady him.

“I’m going to keep a closer eye on your mission schedule,” Steve told him quietly as they made their way down the hall. “Make sure you don’t get overworked like this again. Okay?”

“Hm,” Clint hummed, not completely comprehending what Steve was trying to tell him.

Next thing Clint knew, he was collapsing into his bed. Tony stored his bags away, Steve tugged the boots off his feet. Just a few minutes later, Bruce appeared and coaxed him to swallow two pills with a glass of water before he lay back and curled up on the bed. A blanket was pulled over him.

And at long last, Clint finally drifted off into a deep, restful sleep.

Chapter Text

THE SETUP: Clint and Phil have been captured by Crossfire who is testing a new ultrasonic brainwashing technology on them, forcing them to fight each other. This scene begins as Crossfire has just turned off the machine in order to force Clint and Phil to see what they’ve done to each other.

Day 24
You’re Not Making Any Sense
Forced Mutism | Blindfolded | Sensory Deprivation

Clint blinked the blood from his eyes, bringing the scene in front of him into sharp focus. That’s when the horrible realization crashed down onto him.

He was winning.

Phil was braced on his hands and knees, wheezing and coughing. He hardly seemed aware that the mind control had been paused, apparently too focused on trying desperately to get oxygen into his system. Safe bet that he had broken ribs, possibly a collapsed lung. If that was the case, they were fucked.

From experience, Clint knew without a doubt that Phil wouldn’t survive another bout. He had to do something right now to stop this.

His eyes went to his surroundings, looking for something he could use to incapacitate himself so that he couldn’t hurt Phil any more than he already had. That’s when he saw it. His sonic arrow was still laying on the ground, mere feet away. He had no time to think or deliberate, there was no telling how long the machine would be left off. He made a show of stumbling, like he was trying to get to Phil to check him over when in reality he wanted to be as far away from the man as possible.

“Phil,” he gasped, trying to make a good show of it. This was what Crossfire wanted after all. He purposefully threw himself off balance as he was pretending to try to cross the space between them, pitching to the ground and allowing himself to hit the floor hard. This had to look real.

“Not so fast, Hawkeye,” came the laughing voice from the other side of the room. “We’re not done yet.”

He had to work fast. He dropped himself down onto his side to block what he was doing from Crossfire. Using one hand, he leveraged the arrow down into the floor until the arrowhead snapped off. In order to activate the arrowhead, he needed pressure. And he needed this to do the maximum amount of damage.

With those two thoughts, he put the arrowhead into his mouth.

“Ready for round three, boys?” came Crossfire’s voice, accompanied by the digital beeping of the machine being started up again. “Looks to me like it’ll be the final round.”

The high-pitched noise just reached his ears when Clint bit down as hard as he could, his molars crashing into the arrowhead, activating the sonic blast.

For a split second, he was convinced he had mistaken the arrow for one of his explosive ones and blown his head off. The pain was far more intense than he had been anticipating. His vision screamed pure white as a guttural shout of raw pain clawed its way up this throat, muffled by his clenched jaw. But despite the feeling of a dull knife viciously carving its way through his brain, one thing was undeniably apparent… he was still moving and thinking of his own accord.

It had worked.

He had no time to dwell on this small victory though. While he had avoided the mind control, Phil wouldn’t have. As he spat out the arrowhead, he blindly threw himself backward and away from where he last knew Phil to be as he blinked rapidly, desperately attempting to bring the world back into focus.

If Phil killed him, this would all be for nothing.

His vision cleared just in time for him to see the knife arching down toward his face. He threw out his arm, taking the blade to the forearm being better than taking it to the face. He felt an odd detachment from the situation as he watched Phil’s knife glance off the outside of his forearm, tearing a long gash in the process and sending a flood of blood up his arm. It was a deep gash, but there was no time to worry about it.

Remaining on the floor, he threw himself to one side to give him the angle to kick out at Phil’s ankle, knocking one into the other. He winced slightly as his handler went down hard.

Sorry, Phil, he thought to himself as he quickly ran through his options to incapacitate the man without making his injuries worse.

His torso was already beat to hell and he couldn’t risk putting a rib into his lung. The throat was too risky, especially since he was already struggling to take in air. That left his head as Clint’s best terrible option. He scrambled to his feet while Phil was still trying to scramble to his. A swift, solid downward kick to the temple and Phil collapsed back to the ground like a ton of bricks.

You better just be knocked out, Clint thought desperately to himself as he tossed his gaze around the room, trying to get his bearings now that he seemed to be out of immediate danger.

He spotted Crossfire. The man was smiling. His lips were moving, but he was too far away and Clint was still too disoriented to read them. As Clint watched the silent display for a moment, the reality of the situation threatened to overwhelm him. But he forcefully pushed it away, knowing that he had to finish this before he could deal with the implications of what just happened.

Clearly Crossfire had no idea that Clint wasn’t still under his control. Clint had to take advantage of that while he could. He turned his back to the man, reaching for the knife that had fallen from Phil’s hand. He flipped it in his right hand – his left feeling unsteady from the still gushing wound – like he was going to stab down… but at the last moment he spun on his heel and without needing to even take a breath to aim, he let the knife fly.

He blamed the sudden blood loss and likely concussion for the fact that the knife landed in the man’s shoulder and not dead center in his face.

Chapter Text

Day 25
I Think I’ll Just Collapse Right Here, Thanks
Disorientation | Blurred Vision | Ringing Ears

“Incoming!” Steve shouted, raw panic cracking his tone at the sight of the missile that was arcing toward the Avengers who had converged on one spot in the forest in an attempt to regroup.

They weren’t given that chance.

Thor grabbed Natasha and took off, followed a second later by Tony. Steve turned to run… but where was Clint? Had Clint gotten away? Did Tony have him? There was no time, he needed to get out of here, before…

BOOM!

The world around Steve was violently torn apart. He was thrown off his feet as fire bit at his skin, debris exploding out with him. He hit something solid and collapsed to the ground. It took a lot to knock Captain American on his ass. And a missile hitting the ground five feet away was well within that capacity.

Steve coughed on the ash in the air as he blinked, desperately trying to make sense of his surroundings. Everything was drifting in and out of focus as pain radiated throughout his body. He slowly pushed himself up to his feet, using the tree he had smashed into for support.

“Can anyone…” Steve had to pause and cough. “...anyone hear me?”

He strained to hear anything from his comm. but all he could hear was a strange, high pitched tone. Was that coming over the comm. line? He looked around and stumbled as the world tilted under his feet. Wait, that wasn’t right…

The sound of yelling drew Steve’s wavering focus. He squinted, trying to make out what was going on. The blast had cleared out most of the trees in front of him, leaving a wide open space in the middle of the forest. So, Steve had a perfect view of the army of thugs as they emerged from the treeline on the other side of the blast zone, barrelling right toward him.

Steve blinked hard, trying desperately to focus, but the world seemed to keep shifting around him, throwing him off balance. He put up his fists, standing his ground even as bullets began to fly, ready to face down the impending surge even though the odds were stacked woefully against him. Because Captain America didn’t run from a fight.

But as the army reached about halfway across the clearing, a bolt over pure energy shot down from the sky, slicing through the ground in front of the advancing army and causing them to scramble to a stop, looking up for the new threat. A blur of red followed almost immediately by another blur of red dropped from the sky, landing in between Steve and the hostiles.

Steve was so focused on what was going on in front of him, that he just about jumped out of his skin when there was suddenly a figure beside him. He stared down, Natasha’s features slowly drifting in and out of focus. Her lips were moving, but he was keenly aware of that high pitched tone filling his ears and he couldn’t make out what she was saying. He stared at her in confusion until she seemed to get that he couldn’t hear her, and put up a flat palm and gave him a look that clearly demanded, Stay here. Her gaze shifted passed him, her lips moving, and then she was turning and hurrying out to where Tony and Thor were deeply entrenched in battle… and was followed by another figure.

Clint.

Clint hung back about halfway between Steve and the battle, firing arrows into the fray with deadly accuracy. It took Steve a long moment to realize he was hanging back in order to protect him.

For once, it was Captain America who was the liability.

Steve let out a labored breath as he leaned heavily against the tree behind him.

“Steve?” Steve jerked back up, glancing around in surprise. He must have lost time, because the enemy lay dead in the clearing while the rest of the Avengers were gathered around him. Natasha put a hand on Steve’s arm. “Are you okay?”

Her words were still a little muffled to his ears, but he was relieved to be able to hear her at all at this point.

“Yeah, I… think so,” Steve said, putting a hand to his head. “Guess I got my bell rung by that missile.”

“What the hell happened?” Tony demanded. “You were the one who saw the thing coming, how did you get caught in it?”

“I…” Steve’s eyes wandered, snagging on Clint -- whole and unharmed -- standing with the group, looking at him with concern. “I didn’t see Clint get away. I wanted to make sure he had gotten clear.”

“Cap, I’m an undercover agent, assassin and a spy… of course you didn’t see me get the hell out of there,” Clint said with exasperation. “I tread lightly on instinct.”

“Yeah, I know, I just…”

“You can’t only protect everyone else, Steve,” Clint went on, giving him a sympathetic look. “Sometimes you gotta protect yourself.”

Steve gave a small smirk. “Guess your right.”

“Alright, Mr. Super Soldier,” Natasha said briskly. “How about we get you back to the jet and to Bruce so he can check that hard head of yours.”

Steve snorted a laugh. “Yeah. Sounds good.”

Chapter Text

Day 26
If You Thought The Head Trauma Was Bad…
Migraine | Concussion | Blindness

Natasha reached blindly for the cell phone buzzing insistently on her bedside table. Muscle memory had her sliding her thumb across the screen in order to answer the call, even before she had fully come back to consciousness, rolling over onto her back as she brought the phone to her ear.

“This better be damn important,” Natasha murmured into the phone, her words slurring with exhaustion. She had just come off a particularly difficult mission and she couldn’t have been asleep for more than a few hours.

“Can you come get me?”

For a long moment, Natasha couldn’t get her only semi-awake brain to really comprehend what the words meant. She pulled the phone away from her eye and squinted into the annoyingly bright screen, blinking heavily until the caller ID came into focus.

“Clint?” she said as she put the phone back to her ear.

“Yeah.” There was something strange in his voice that Natasha couldn’t quite place. “Can you? Come get me?”

“Where are you?” Natasha asked, confused as she pushed herself up with one arm and glanced over at the digital clock on the bedside table. 2:46 am.

“Um. Out by… East Orange? I think?”

“East Orange?” Natasha said, suddenly feeling more awake. “In New Jersey?”

“Uh, yeah. I think.”

“Okay, what the fuck are you doing in New Jersey?” Natasha demanded as she pushed herself out of bed.

“I couldn’t… uh… you know…” There was a long pause and Natasha opened her mouth to ask if he was still there when he went on, “...sleep.”

“Are you okay?” Natasha asked, her tone softening significantly.

“Yeah. Can you come?”

“Of course I’m coming,” Natasha assured him. “Turn on the tracking on your phone and I’ll be there in about twenty minutes.”

“Okay. Thanks, Nat.”

“Hang tight. I’ll see you soon.”

Natasha pulled on the first clothes she could find, grabbed her keys and hurried out of her apartment in Avengers Tower. She hit the button for the elevator and waited impatiently for it to arrive on her floor. When the doors opened she went to stride in… only to stumble when she found that the elevator wasn’t empty like she assumed it would be at almost three in the morning.

“Natasha?”

“Steve?”

“What are you doing up?” they both said in unison.

“The serum doesn’t need eight hours of sleep,” Steve said. “I usually get up in the middle of the night for a work out. What about you?”

“I just got a call from Clint who needs me to pick him up at,” she looked down at her phone, “a Shell station in East Orange, New Jersey.”

As Steve stared blankly at her, she stepped fully into the elevator and hit the button for the parking garage. The elevator had already descended several floors before Steve finally found his voice.

“What the heck is Clint doing in Jersey?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Natasha sighed as she tapped her foot impatiently as she watched the floors countdown agonizingly slowly. The elevator stopped at the floor with the gym and Natasha sent Steve a questioning look when he didn’t immediately disembark. “Aren’t you going to the gym?”

“You want some company on the drive to Jersey?” Steve offered.

Natasha gave him an appreciative smile. “Yeah, that’d be good, I’m still pretty tired.”

Steve nodded as he reached out and hit the “close” button.

Just a few minutes later they were pulling out of the parking garage, Steve in the driver’s seat and Natasha in the passenger's seat, and heading toward New Jersey.

“Does he do this a lot?” Steve asked after they had been driving a good ten minutes.

“Huh?” Natasha hummed distractedly as she stared down at her phone, checking for the ump-teenth time that the little dot tracking his phone hadn’t moved.

“Does Clint do this a lot?” Steve repeated, then went on to clarify. “Disappear in the middle of the night?”

Natasha sighed as she dropped her phone back into her lap. “It happens from time to time. He’s had chronic night terrors ever since he was a kid and not that he’d ever admit it, but I think he rarely sleeps through the night. It gets worse after difficult missions. And when he’s up in the middle of the night he usually can’t sit still. So he’ll go to the range, go to the gym, or sometimes he’ll take his motorcycle out for a ride.”

“Has he ever called you to come get him like this?” Steve asked.

“Once before,” Natasha said flatly. “When he got in an accident and crashed his bike.”

Steve looked over at Natasha in surprise. “Do you think that’s what happened? Do you think he’s hurt?”

“He sounded… strange on the phone,” Natasha admitted. “He sounded kind of… unfocused and his words were slurring…”

“Maybe he’s had a few drinks?”

Natasha immediately shook her head. “Clint doesn’t drink. Never has. Something about having a violently abusive, alcoholic father has always put him off the idea of drinking.”

“Oh,” Steve said. “Sorry, I didn’t know that.”

“He doesn’t like to talk about it,” Natasha acknowledged.

“I don’t blame him.”

It took them just over twenty minutes to close the gap between their dots on the GPS tracker on Natasha’s phone.

“It should be up here on the right,” Natasha said as she studied her phone.

“Yeah… I think I have an inkling of where he is,” Steve said uneasily.

Natasha looked up and her stomach dropped. She spotted the flashing blue and red lights coming from multiple vehicles before she spotted the gas station where Clint was supposed to be.

“Shit,” Natasha breathed.

There wasn’t much extra room around the gas station, so Steve quickly pulled into the adjacent parking lot of the Taco Bell next door. Natasha was out of the car before he came to a complete stop, hurrying over to the gas station and squinting through the bright, flashing lights that disoriented her for a moment.

Finally, she spotted Clint sitting on the curb outside of the convenience store attached to the gas station, a police officer standing over him and jotting something down on a pad.

“Clint!” Natasha gasped as she ran up to them.

Clint looked up at the sound of her voice, but his gaze was hazy and slid past her for a moment. He gave her a strained smile.

“Hey, Nat.”

“What happened?” Natasha demanded as she dropped down to a knee next to Clint, looking him up and down for any sign of injury. At least at a glance he seemed to be in once piece.

“He was in the store when three guys went in to rob it,” the police officer said. “After they got the money, they were gonna shoot the attendant, but your boyfriend intervened. Saved the kid’s life and took down all three robbers.” The officer sounded impressed, obviously having no idea who he was talking to or about. “He did get a nasty bump on the back of his head from one of the guys’ guns during the altercation, though. I told him he should go to the hospital, but he’s refusing.”

“Are you okay?” Natasha asked, putting a hand to Clint’s cheek and tilting his head up so she could get a better look at his eyes. His gaze was a little glassy, but his pupils at least seemed to be dilating properly.

“‘M fine,” Clint mumbled. “I don’t need a… a...” he sighed tiredly as he waved a hand vaguely, “you know.”

“Well, I’m convinced,” Natasha said sarcastically. He looked up at the police officer. “Thank you, officer. I can take it from here.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the office said, nodding his head before walking away.

“C’mon,” Natasha said, standing up and reaching back down to pull Clint up to his feet. He swayed dangerously and Natasha wedged herself in next to him in order to keep him from falling over. “C’mon, let’s go,” she urged as she led them over to where Steve was hovering back by the car.

“Is he okay,” Steve asked with concern as he eyed the way that Clint was leaning on Natasha as they approached.

“Steve?” Clint said, confused.

“He got caught in a robbery attempt,” Natasha explained. “He subdued three guys, but apparently took a pretty good hit to the head. He’s likely got a concussion.”

Then, very suddenly, Clint tipped to the side that Natasha wasn’t supporting. She panicked for a moment, thinking he was about to collapse and she shifted quickly to try to catch him, Steve doing the same from Clint’s over side… until he leaned over, braced one hand on the car and heaved the contents of his stomach onto the pavement at his feet.

“Make that, he definitely has a concussion,” Natasha said flatly as he heaved again.

“I’ll call Bruce,” Steve said, pulling his phone from his pocket. “Have him meet us on the med floor of the Tower.”

“Thanks,” Natasha said appreciatively, wincing as Clint dry heaved a few times, having emptied his stomach.

As Steve stepped away to make the call, Natasha put a hand on Clint’s back, rubbing it gently in order to provide what little comfort that she could. The dry heaving episode seemed to pass after a few minutes, and Clint braced both his forearms on the car as he struggled to catch his breath. He winced and then spit, trying to get the rancid taste out of his mouth.

“C’mon,” Natasha urged. “I think there’s a bottle of water in the car.”

Clint blinked blearily at her, looking even more dazed than he had before. She opened the door of the car and gently guided him into the backseat, closing the door behind him.

“How is he?” Steve asked as he came back.

“I think he’s getting more disoriented,” Natasha said grimmly. “Let’s just get him home. We can come back for his bike tomorrow.”

“Good idea,” Steve agreed.

As Steve slid back into the passenger’s seat, Natasha rounded the car and got into the backseat on the other side so that she could monitor Clint on the ride back to the Tower. She had Steve locate a bottle of water that had been rolling around on the floor of the front passenger’s seat for a week weeks now, and as Steve pulled back out into traffic, Natasha managed to get Clint to take a few small sips. As he sipped, she leaned over to check the back of his head with the flashlight on her phone. There was no blood, but a large bump where the gun had made contact with his skull.

“I need you to stay away until Bruce checks you out,” Natasha told him when he leaned his head back and his eyes sagged.

“I jus’ need some sleep,” Clint slurred.

“Hey,” Natasha snapped, poking him in the side as his eyes were sliding shut. “No sleeping.”

“Mean,” Clint mumbled, though at least his eyes were open again.

“It’s what you get when you go off on your own in the middle of the night,” Natasha scolded.

“Sorry,” Clint said with a light smirk.

“You know, Clint, if you ever need a sparring buddy in the middle of the night, I’m usually up at all hours too,” Steve spoke up, glancing at them in the rearview mirror.

“Between Steve’s Super Soldier Serum, Tony being a workaholic, Bruce’s ability to completely lose track of time, and my own shitty sleep schedule, there’s always someone awake at all hours in that damn Tower,” Natasha added. “There’s no reason for you to go off on your own when you can’t sleep, Clint.”

Clint looked a little surprised, like he’d never thought about that before. “I guess. Yeah.”

“So, no more running around New Jersey of all places, playing one man vigilante?” Steve prompted pointedly. “I’ll drive to Jersey once to pick you up as a professional courtesy, but next time at least confine your escapades to New York. Okay?”

Clint snorted a laugh. “Yeah, whatever you say, Cap.”

Chapter Text

Day 27
Ok, Who Had Natural Disasters On Their 2020 Bingo Card?
Earthquake | Extreme Weather | Power Outage

The rain came down in torrential sheets. Lightning pierced the sky about once per minute, while thunder rolled through with almost a palpable force. The wind whipped around at a staggering force, already picking up debris.

“I think it’s about time to get the hell out of here,” Clint announced over the comms.

The five Earthbound Avengers were scattered throughout the area. Bruce had remained behind in the Quinjet, Natasha and Steve had infiltrated the compound and taken out their target, Clint had been posted in a tree on a hill to provide sniper support and Tony was flying overhead for aerial support.

And then the storm had rolled in.

Clint had eyed the dark clouds warily during the mission. He didn’t like the way that they look or how quickly they had been moving. He had Bruce check the weather radar from the jet, and he had reported that a storm was indeed heading their way, but there weren’t any significant warnings associated with it. But Clint couldn’t shake the ominous feeling in his gut. After all, he had grown up in Iowa, affectionately nicknamed Tornado Alley. He had learned early only to have a healthy vigilance when it came to thunderstorms.

“The storm’s coming at me from the other side of the Quinjet,” Tony said, tension lacing his tone. “I’m not going to be able to fly toward it, I’m gonna have to land and hoof it in.”

“Yeah, you’re going to want to get your ass out of the sky and ditch the metal suit before you get fried, Stark,” Clint said as he was climbing down out of the tree he had been perched in, blinking rain water out of his eyes.

The blur of red streaked out of the sky and landed heavily not far from Clint.

“Natasha and I are heading back to the jet to regroup with Bruce,” Steve said.

“You might want to have a more stable option ready, Cap,” Clint said as he squinted at the sky, noting how the lightning was flashing much more frequently than it was just a minute ago. The storm was progressing really quickly. “Bruce, any weather alerts?”

“A tornado watch was just issued for the area just a few minutes ago,” Bruce reported.

“I always forget, which is worse, the watch or the warning?” Tony asked, his tone unusually tense.

“Warning is worse,” Clint said -- vaguely aware of how he had to talk louder in order to be heard over the roaring wind -- as he started to hurry in the direction that Tony had landed. “We’re still in the ‘could happen’ territory and haven’t crossed into the ‘probably will happen’ arena. You get rid of that armor, Stark?”

“Yeah, the armor’s on an autopilot retreat,” Tony said. There was a bright flash that emanated from Tony’s location, causing Clint to skid to a halt for a moment. “And I’m very glad I’m not getting cooked in it right now.”

Clint started moving again, hurrying until he managed to spot Tony, who was heading toward Clint.

“We need to get to lower ground,” Clint said quickly, motioning Tony to follow him down the steeper side of the hill.

“The jet is that way,” Tony said, pointing in the opposite direction.

“The jet isn’t going to be any use if a tornado comes through and throws it like a ragdoll,” Clint said, quickly crossing the distance between them and grabbing Tony by the arm. “Right now, we need low ground.”

“But, Bruce said it was only a watch--”

“Clint, Tony, we’re back at the jet with Bruce and the tornado watch just got bumped up to a tornado warning,” Steve suddenly snapped over the line.

“Get out of the jet,” Clint ordered, tugging Tony after him as they headed down the hill, Tony now hurrying along and falling into step beside him.

“We’re out and looking for a safe place to hunker down,” Natasha assured him. “You and Stark need to do the same.”

“Working on it,” Clint confirmed.

The ground under their feet was losing it’s stability by the moment with the torrential downpour and they were half running, half sliding down it in their haste. Clint’s gaze darted around as they ran, looking for something -- anything -- that they could use for shelter. The lightning was now flashing nonstop, the thunder a continuous roar that vibrated down to Clint’s bones. There was also something else behind the drone, something higher pitch that sounded like…

A freight train.

“Go, go, go!” Clint shouted as he shoved Tony in front of him and toward a small rock outcropping he had just spotted. It was too small for both of them, but anything was better than nothing at this point. “Cover your head,” Clint yelled as Tony wedged into the outcropping, Clint wedging in as close behind him as possible.

Just in time for the world to be torn apart.

Clint squeezed his eyes shut and threw his hands over his head. And then all that they could do was huddle there and pray that the incoming tornado decided to spare them. Clint could feel debris striking his exposed back, some small impacts and others large enough to send jolts of pain through him. The wind was now a defining roar, drowning out even his voice to his own ears as he tried to yell at Tony to keep still when he felt him shifting -- later finding out he had just realized that Clint was still exposed and was trying to make more room for him.

Then, it was as if he had been grabbed around the middle and ripped him violently out of the outcropping, flying through the air for a brief few months before everything suddenly went black.

“Clint! Clint! Where are you!?”

“Clint! Can you hear us!”

“Clint!”

“Clint… Over here! I found him!”

Clint blinked blearily as a flurry of voices slowly made their way into his consciousness. Brown, green and red blurs drifted around him dizzyingly. His whole body ached with pain, and there was a strange sensation of something falling on him. Water?

“Clint? Can you hear me? Please?”

At the sound of Natasha’s voice, Clint’s head instinctively shifted in that direction. A gentle hand put pressure on his shoulder, another hand carefully weaving into his hair. Slowly, the world began to return to focus.

“Nat?” Clint rasped.

The relief that washed over Natasha’s face was enough to knock her back on her heels. “He’s alive!” she called over her shoulder. “Bring the Quinjet around!”

“Wha’...?” Clint murmured, still not understanding what was going on.

“You got your ass kicked by a tornado, Feathers.”

Clint’s eyes wandered up at the sound of a new voice. Tony. And then it all came rushing back to him so suddenly that it took his breath away. Clint eyed Tony critically. He had some visible cuts and bruises and he looked terribly disheveled, but he was still in one piece.

“You’re going to be okay,” Natasha assured him. “I don’t see anything too serious here. You must not have gotten pulled into the tornado, just thrown by some of the outer winds.”

“Is tha’ all?” Clint said as he huffed something between a laugh and a cough.

“Steve and Bruce are on their way with the jet,” Natasha said. “They’ll be here in a minute and then we’ll get you all nice and put back together. Okay?”

“Sounds good,” Clint sighed.

It was yet another reminder that no matter what evil the Avengers were fighting… Mother Nature was going to do whatever the hell she wanted.

Chapter Text

Day 28
Alternate Prompt #4
Stitches

“That’s definitely going to need stitches.”

Tony stared down blankly at the blood that covered the inside of his forearm. His whole arm was throbbing and his head was swimming dizzily. He was also trying to subtly swallow the urge to vomit.

It was supposed to be an easy mission. But when had that ever worked out? Steve, Natasha, Tony and Clint had gone on a mission just to gather information. But it had all gone to shit, leading to a hard fought battle that none of them had been prepared for. They had won, but it had been a difficult win. They had each taken pretty hard beatings, all of them sporting various cuts and bruises.

It seemed that Tony had gotten the worst of it, a hunting knife slicing open his arm while he had still been scrambling to call his armor.

“Tony? Did you hear me?” Tony blinked up at Natasha. They were back in the Quinjet now and heading home, but it would still be several hours. Tony was sitting sideways on a cot with his legs hanging over the edge, Natasha sitting on a chair in front of him and had undone the pressure bandage so she could check the wound. “We need to stitch this up to help stop the bleeding. And maybe get you a transfusion, just to be on the safe side.”

“How?” Tony mumbled. “Bruce isn’t here.”

“Clint?” Natasha suddenly called over her shoulder toward the cockpit where Clint was in the pilot’s seat. He glanced back at her at the sound of his name. “Do you feel up to doing some stitches?”

“Barton?” Tony found himself scoffing instinctually. The guy was a master sniper, but he wasn’t exactly who you thought of when it came to medical procedures.

“Sure,” Clint said, hitting a few buttons on the console before heavily pushing himself to hit feet. “Steve? Can you pilot?”

“Yeah, no problem,” Steve said, heading to take Clint’s place in the pilot seat.

“You’re kidding me, right?” Tony insisted, sitting up a bit as Clint headed toward them, a slight limp in his gait.

“Clint’s got plenty of experience with stitches,” Natasha assured him. “And his hands are steadier than a surgeon’s.”

“I’m pretty sure I’m out of network for your insurance though,” Clint said with a cheeky smile as he pulled up a stool in front of Tony. “So be forewarned, I’m going to bill your HMO an arm and a leg.”

“I’ll be fine until we get home to Bruce,” Tony said as he eyed Clint warily.

“Tony, you’re still actively losing blood,” Natasha said, a note of scolding in her voice. “We need to get that under control before we can give you a transfusion. And judging by how pale you are, you need one.”

Tony’s gaze drifted back and forth between Natasha -- who was now setting up the equipment for stitches on the cot next to where he sat -- and Clint. “And where exactly did you two get your medical degree?”

“SHIELD University,” Clint said matter-of-factly, even though Tony knew there was no such thing. “We both got degrees in Don’t Die In The Field-ology.”

Tony didn’t laugh though as he stared at the wicked looking tools Natasha had laid out. It was a very little known fact that he hated any kind of medical procedure. Tony was a bit of a control freak -- blame his upbringing -- and anything that was taken out of his control made his heart race and his breath catch in his throat.

“But seriously,” Tony said, hating the way his voice sounded small and unsteady all of a sudden. His eyes were still pinned on the medical equipment. “You know what you’re doing?”

A gentle hand on his knee had Tony shifting his gaze back to Clint. Clint was looking at him with a soft sympathy in his eyes. “I promise you,” he said sincerely, “I know what I’m doing.”

Tony took a deep breath and finally nodded his consent.

Clint pulled on a pair of surgical gloves before he grabbed a wipe in order to clean the wound. Tony winced as the disinfecting alcohol stung. Then Clint sprayed the area with a localized numbing spray. It would help, even if it wouldn’t take away all the pain.

“Okay, I think we’re going to do four stitches,” Clint said briskly as he started to get his needle loaded into a pair of forceps. “Maybe five. We’ll see how it goes.” He looked up at Tony and met his eyes. Clint’s calm, blue gaze had a comforting affect, and Tony felt himself relax slightly. “Are you ready?”

Tony nodded stoically. “Let’s get this over with.”

“I like the enthusiasm,” Clint teased lightly. “You’re not gonna look down, okay, you’re gonna look at me or Natasha.” Tony nodded, focusing on the top of Clint’s head as he leaned over Tony’s arm. “Okay, here we go. Gonna feel some pressure and a poke.” Tony winced slightly as the needle pierced his skin. “And now another poke.” Tony winced and twitched a bit as this one stung a little more. “Now I’m gonna tie it. You’ll feel a tug. Okay, and another tie to make sure it stays in place. And another tug. Annnnnnd there we go! One down! Not so bad, right?”

Tony blinked in surprise. “That was fast.”

“I have some pretty good dexterity,” Clint said with a smile as she started to load the next piece of surgical thread into the needle. “Something about practicing archery for the last three decades I guess. Okay, ready for stitch number two?”

Clint continued to narrate his every move as he worked, and Tony found that it was like a balm to his frayed nerves. He ended up needing five stitches, but with how quickly that Clint worked it was finished in a matter of minutes.”

“And done!” Clint finally announced triumphantly.

Tony blinked in surprise. He finally risked a look down at his arm, spotting the five neat little stitches perfectly in a row.

“Wow,” Tony said, his eyebrow arching up in surprise.

“Not bad, right?” Clint said with a smile.

“No, it’s not,” Tony said. Then he tentatively returned the smile. “Maybe I’ll have you do my stitches from now on instead of Bruce.”

Clint chuckled. “Wait until you get my bill before you make that call. Alright, I’m going to make sure Steve’s not flying us into any icebergs.” He stood up and limped back up to the cockpit.

“I’ll get you set up with a transfusion,” Natasha said. “Thankfully, Bruce is very organized and keeps the jet well stocked with specific inventory for each of us. Sit tight, I’ll be right back.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Tony said as he let out a sigh and leaned back against the wall behind him.

It had been a long and terrible day. But any day that ended with the support of his friends was a win in Tony’s book.

Chapter Text

Day 29
I Think I Need A Doctor
Intubation | Emergency Room | Reluctant Bedrest

Bruce waited anxiously at the bottom of the ramp to the Quinjet, continuously scanning the area for any signs of movement. They said they were on their way, they said they’d be there in just a few minutes. If it were as bad as they said it was, they were going to need every second they could get…

“Bruce!”

Bruce’s heart leapt up into his throat as the group finally came staggering into view. He scanned them all, automatically looking for injuries. Everyone seemed to have fared surprisingly well. If Steve and Tony hadn’t been supporting Clint -- whose head was hanging on his shoulder as if he couldn’t hold it up -- between them, Bruce might have been able to pretend the mission had gone off without a hitch.

“Hurry, get him up into the jet,” Bruce urged as they approached. Tony and Steve stumbled up the ramp with Natasha behind them, Bruce falling into step beside her. “How is he?”

“There are no significant exterior injuries, but something is obviously very wrong,” Natasha reported breathlessly. “He seems like he’s barely getting enough air.”

Bruce nodded. “Get him up on the cot,” he instructed. Tony and Steve quickly did what they were told, carefully lifted Clint up and laid him out flat on the medical cot that Bruce had already set when he got the message that Clint needed medical attention. “We need to get the Kevlar off him.”

Natasha was already working on undoing the clasps of the vest and just a moment later Steve lifted Clint slightly so that Natasha could pull it off. The movement drew a pained gasp from Clint as he wheezed in labored breaths. Bruce had a pair of medical scissors and quickly cut up the middle of Clint’s shirt in order to get access to his chest. His right side was already purpling with painful bruising. Bruce grabbed his stethoscope from around his neck and put it into his ears, carefully placing the diaphragm onto Clint's chest. Everyone was silent and still as Bruce moved the diaphragm several times, listening carefully.

“He’s likely got broken ribs and a collapsed lung,” Bruce finally said as he straightened up. “Natasha, can you get the chest tube kit?” Natasha was already rushing away before he finished the sentence. Then Bruce turned to Clint, who was deathly pale -- did his skin already have a slight blue tinge to it? -- but his eyes were open and searching. “Clint can you hear me?” Clint eyes drifted over to Bruce, and Bruce took that to as close to an acknowledgement as he was going to get. “You’ve likely got a collapsed lung due to air or fluid in the pleural space. I’m going to place a chest tube to try to relieve the pressure. It’s going to hurt for just a minute, but then hopefully you’ll be able to breathe easier. Okay?”

As he continued to heave in horribly labored breath, Clint managed a very slight nod. That was more than Bruce had been expecting.

“Bruce,” Natasha said, directly Bruce’s attention to the small medical tray she had set up with the supplies he needed.

Not wasting any more time, Bruce pulled on a pair of surgical gloves. He grabbed the scalpel from the tray with one hand, locating the correct spot between Clint’s ribs with the other. Natasaha had moved up to Clint’s head, putting her hands on either side of his head for support. Bruce firmly sliced a three-centimeter incision into Clint’s chest, ignoring the way that Clint’s muscles tightened and spasmed against the pain that he knew he was inflicting. Next he grabbed the Kelly clamp and pushed it into the incision with some force, not acknowledging the choking groan that accompanied the popping feeling of the clamp entering the pleural space.

“Jesus,” Bruce could hear Tony mutter in shock as Bruce pushed his fingers into the wound to make sure there wasn’t anything to get in the way of the chest tube.

Then, Bruce was swiftly inserting the chest tube that was already hooked up to a collection bag. As soon as the tube entered the pleural space, air and blood came gushing out into the bag at the same time that Clint finally gasped in a deep lungful of air so suddenly that his back arched off the table.

“Thank fucking hell,” Natasha sighed as she dipped her head down to place her forehead against Clint’s. Tony and Steve also gave their own sighs of relief.

But Bruce knew they weren’t out of the woods just yet.

Now that Clint was able to more easily heave air into his lungs, a deep, wet hacking cough tore out of his throat. Bruce immediately had the stethoscope back in his ears and the diaphragm back on Clint’s chest, trying to listen through the noise.

“What’s going on?” Steve asked anxiously.

“The lung may have reflated, but there’s still obviously significant damage to his lungs and possibly some other organs around it,” Bruce said tensely. “We’ve bought him some time, but he needs a hospital as soon as possible.”

“There’s a SHIELD base not far away, they’ll have a med center,” Natasha said.

“I’ll pilot,” Steve said, already hurrying up to the cockpit.

“Natasha, I need you to call ahead to the base, tell them to be ready to intubate as soon as we get there,” Bruce said as he listened to Clint cough and wheeze weakly. “He’ll also need a CT scan to figure out exactly what’s going on and then he’ll likely need surgery.”

“Got it,” Natasha said as she hurried after Steve.

“Tony, get me the Ambu bag,” Bruce said.

“The what?” Tony asked blankly.

“The bag valve mask, the balloon looking thing with a mask attached,” Bruce said quickly, pointing. Tony scrambled over and grabbed the device just as the Quinjet was whirring to life. When he came back, Bruce carefully placed the mask part over Clint’s nose and mouth and then motioned for Tony to take the bag portion of it. “Squeeze it at regular intervals. No, too fast, make sure the bag fully deflates and then inflates again. Okay, good, just like that, keep going.”

After his initial coughing and gasping after reinflating his lung, Clint’s breathing had waned again as he struggled to take in precious oxygen. The Ambu bag seemed to help, but Clint was starting to blink tiredly. It could be that the whole situation was finally catching up to him… or it could be his brain not getting enough oxygen.

“I need you to hang in there, Clint,” Bruce pleaded as he grabbed a blood pressure cuff so that he could start taking vitals. He glanced up and for a moment was able to meet Clint’s gaze. “We’ve got you, but I need you to keep fighting until we can get you to the hospital. Okay?”

Bruce wasn’t sure if he imagined it or not, but he could have sworn he saw Clint nod ever so slightly.

Almost twenty minutes later, they finally landed at the SHIELD base, where the med team was thankfully waiting for them. Bruce and Steve rushed the gurney down the ramp, with Tony still working the Ambu bag.

“Dr. Banner, I am Dr. Scorborough,” the lead man said immediately. “What’s the situation?”

The med team took over the gurney, including the Ambu bag and as they trooped into the building Bruce quickly got Dr. Scorborough up to speed with Clint’s current condition.

“I’m going to need you to wait here,” Dr. Scorborough told the other Avengers before they moved deeper into the hospital.

At a glance, Bruce could see the pain felt by the other at having to leave Clint’s side.

“It’s okay, I’ll watch over him,” Bruce assured them quickly before he followed the rest of the team.

They had moved Clint into a private room stocked with what looked like ICU equipment. Doctor’s rushed around Clint, hooking him up to monitors and IVs and taking his vitals. Bruce managed to slip in and move to Clint’s side. Clint’s eyes were still open and darting around anxiously, clearly at least somewhat aware of what was going on. As his gaze landed on Bruce, his gaze finally relaxed somewhat.

“We need to secure his airway,” Dr. Scorborough said. “I need an intubation kit. Run succinylcholine and ketamine into the IV.”

Bruce knew that they were giving Clint both a paralytic and a general anesthetic in an attempt to make this process as easy as possible. But as Dr. Scorborough was already prepping the Laryngoscope because time was of the essence, Bruce also knew that they wouldn't kick in quite quickly enough to spare Clint the discomfort of this procedure.

“It’s okay, Clint,” Bruce said, putting his hand on Clint’s arm and drawing his attention as the staff got ready to intubate. “Try to relax and don’t fight it. It’ll be over before you know it.”

Bruce had to hand it to Dr. Scorborough. He inserted the Laryngoscope into Clint’s mouth quickly and smoothly, carefully threading the tube down Clint's throat and then expertly hooking up the tube to the portable ventilator. The whole thing took less than twenty seconds… but it was still painfully obvious the way Clint’s muscles tensed and spasmed even as he blinked heavily, gently pulled into unconsciousness by the ketamine.

“Okay,” Dr. Scorborough said with a sigh. “He’s under and we’ve secured the airway. We’ll get him to the CT so we can pinpoint exactly what’s wrong before we take him to the OR.” The doctor looked at Bruce. “Thank you for taking such good care of the patient, Dr. Banner. If you'd like to rejoin the others, we can take it from here. We’ll update you as soon as we know anything.”

“Thank you,” Bruce said sincerely.

He stood and watched as the team wheeled Clint away, disappearing through another set of doors. Even after they were gone, for a moment he just stood there and breathed. In his life before becoming the Hulk, Bruce Banner had never once considered becoming a physician of any sort. It wasn’t until his time in India that he started studying practical medicine. While he was hiding there, he felt like he was able to go good and also pay penance if he was able to help impoverished people with medical assistance. He had taken to it more easily than he thought he would.

His time with the Avengers had only furthered Bruce’s medical knowledge. When the Hulk wasn’t needed, Bruce had fallen into the role of field medic. It was never what he imagined he’d want to do with his life and it was never a path he had considered traveling before the Hulk incident.

But as he headed back out to the waiting room where the other Avengers were waiting, knowing that he had helped save Clint’s life that day, it was yet another reminder than he had ended up exactly where he needed to be.

Chapter Text

Day 30
Now Where Did That Come From?
Wound Reveal | Ignoring an Injury | Internal Organ Injury

“Is everyone okay?” Steve’s voice came floating over the comm. line, sounding a bit winded himself now that the mission was done.

Bucky took stock of himself. “I’m okay.”

“Still in one piece,” Tony reported.

“Nat took a hit,” Clint said, tension in his tone.

“How bad is it?” Steve asked, worry lacing his tone.

“It’s s’not bad,” Natasha protested, though her unsteady tone and slurred words weren’t terribly comforting.

“She hit her head pretty good,” Clint said. “I don’t think it’s too bad though, probably a mild concussion.”

“Okay, let’s all regroup back at the Quinjet,” Steve said. “Bruce can take a look at her while we get out of here.”

“Finally,” Tony sighed. It had been an especially long day for all of them, and it was clear everyone was just anxious to get home.

Bucky was able to make it to the Quinjet pretty quickly, the second to make it there after Tony and was closely followed by Steve. Bruce joined them at the bottom of the ramp as they all waited for Clint and Natasha.

“There they are,” Tony finally said as he spotted the two of them.

They were moving slowly, Natasha with her arm draped over Clint’s shoulders and leaning on him for stability as they staggered toward the Quinjet. There was a pretty good amount of blood staining the left side of Natasha’s face, but it looked like it had stopped bleeding already.

“Natasha, how do you feel?” Bruce asked as he hurried up to the pair.

“Just a little dizzy with a killer headache,” Natasha mumbled as she took back her arm and stood on her own, as if to prove that she could. She was still swaying slightly on her feet though.

“Okay, let me check you out first before we take off,” Bruce said, putting a gentle hand on her back and leading her up the ramp and into the jet.

Steve and Tony were deep in conversation about routes to take back home -- Steve trying to make a case to stop off at a nearby SHIELD base for a debrief -- as they too headed up into the jet, assumedly to start preparing for takeoff. Bucky was about to move to follow them… but then he noticed that Clint hadn’t moved.

“You okay?” Bucky asked, arching an eyebrow. Now that he was really looking at him, Clint looked a little on the pale side and seemed more out of breath than he should have been.

“I’m fine,” Clint said, waving a hand dismissively. “Just… need to catch my breath.”

Bucky nodded, but drifted closer to Clint, watching him critically. “You sure you’re okay?” Bucky pressed after another minute passed and Clint was still struggling to catch his breath.

“It’s just… been a long day,” Clint sighed.

“Yeah,” Bucky agreed, still watching Clint’s every move closely. “Why don’t we go into the jet so you can sit down.”

“Yeah,” Clint said, swiping the back of his hand across his forehead, leaving a streak of red in its wake. Did Clint have Natasha’s blood on his hands? And had he been sweating like that just a few minutes ago? “Prob’ly a good idea.”

“Okay, c’mon,” Bucky urged, feeling more and more sure that something was wrong.

Clint went to take a step… and suddenly his knees buckled out from under him. If Bucky hadn’t been watching him so carefully, he wouldn’t have made it in time, but luckily he was quick enough to get a hand around Clint’s midsection in order to catch him before his knees crashed into the ground. In one fluid motion, Bucky was able to scoop Clint up into his arms and then ran up the ramp into the jet.

“Need some help over here!” Bucky yelled.

Everyone turned to him in surprise, confused for a long moment before they seemed to comprehend what they were seeing and burst into action. Natasha was sitting on one of the cots in the med area, and would have jumped to her feet if Bruce hadn’t stopped her. Steve and Tony both came running out of the cockpit.

“What happened?” Steve demanded at the same time that Tony yelled, “What did you do?”

“I don’t know what happened,” Bucky snapped as he laid Clint out on the cot next to Natasha’s. “He just collapsed all of a sudden.”

“Steve, make sure Natasha stays put,” Bruce said as he crossed the space between the cots in order to focus on Clint. “Clint? Can you hear me?”

Clint blinked up at Bruce blearily. “Bruce?”

“Clint, do you know what happened?” Bruce asked quickly as he was already checking Clint over. “Does anything hurt?”

“My side hurts,” Clint finally admitted, his words beginning to slur as his breath became even more labored.

Bruce reached down and pulled up Clint’s shirt and they all gasped at what they saw. It had been hard to spot since the black shirt had masked the red tint, but now they all stared down at Clint’s side that was covered with blood. For a long moment, all anyone could do was stare.

“Clint… did you get shot?” Tony finally demanded.

Clint’s gaze wandered down, as if trying to see the wound for himself. “Di’nt think it was tha’ bad.”

“Getting shot is always bad, Clint,” Bruce said as he finally jumped into action. He checked to see that there was no exit wound before he quickly started packing the wound in order to stem the bleeding.

“Clint, why didn’t you say anything?” Natasha demanded, her eyes wide and adrenaline clearly helping her focus. She was now sitting on the very edge of the cot, Steve with one hand on her arm to make sure she didn’t topple over.

Clint tilted his head up so that he could look in her direction. “You were hurt.”

“I’d like to put it on the record that two people are allowed to be hurt at the same time,” Tony said. “We don’t put a cap on how many people get medical attention.”

“I’ll get him started on a transfusion and an IV with some fluids,” Bruce said. “Tony, can you get us to the nearest SHIELD base? It doesn’t look too bad, but I have no idea what kind of internal damage the bullet did, especially since it’s still in there.”

“On it,” Tony said as he disappeared up to the cockpit.

“Sorry,” Clint mumbled.

“It’s okay, Clint,” Bruce assured him with a small, comforting smile as he worked. “You’re gonna be okay. It’s just nice to get a heads up about these kinds of things so we don’t have to panic when you pass out. Okay”

Clint smirked wryly. “Yeah, okay.”

Chapter Text

Day 31
Alternate Prompt #11
Presumed Dead

It had been a long ass day. 

Clint had come off a rough mission a couple weeks ago and was still working on getting back up to physically fit to return to active status as a SHIELD Agent and an Avenger. He had spent the entire day at the SHIELD base upstate working out and running training exercises to make sure he would be well prepared for his assessment in just a few days. He was sick of sitting around Avengers Tower and he felt like he was more than ready to get back into the field. 

Clint could have stayed upstate on the SHIELD base, but over the last year and a half since the Avengers had moved into the Tower after the Loki incident, the Tower was finally feeling like home to Clint. And tonight Clint just wanted to be able to sleep in his own bed. So, he got in his car just after six o’clock in the evening and started the four hour drive back home. 

He was about halfway home when his phone rang, interrupting his blaring classic rock music. 

“Yeah?” Clint said as he answered the phone, not glancing at the caller ID. 

“Hey, Clint, just checking in,” came Natasha’s voice over the line. “How did it go on base today?”

“It went fine,” Clint assured her. “I was able to run a couple extra training exercises than I had planned on. I’m a little sore, but I feel good about taking the assessment in a couple days.”

“Does that mean you’ll take it easy for a few days?” Natasha asked pointedly. When Clint was benched from missions he tended to get obsessive about getting back to active status. 

“I think I can go back to just working out and training in the Tower if that’s what you mean,” Clint said cheekily, knowing that it wasn’t. 

Natasha sighed heavily and Clint just knew she was rolling her eyes. “Are you staying on base tonight?”

“No, I wanted to come home tonight,” Clint said. “I’m actually driving back now.” 

“How far out are you?”

Clint paused. There was something… off in Natasha’s voice. The question had come across just a shade too… demanding. 

“I’m probably about an hour and a half or so out,” Clint said carefully. “Is everything okay, Nat?”

“Yeah, everything’s fine,” Natasha assured him, and all traces of the strange tone were gone. Had Clint just imagined it? “Just attempting to keep tabs on you since you’re here, there and everywhere these days. I’ll see you when you get back.”

“Yeah, see you in a bit,” Clint agreed before he disconnected the call, the bluetooth immediately switching back over to his blaring music. 

Of the course of the next hour and a half, the odd conversation with Natasha slowly but surely slid to the back of Clint’s mind as he lost himself in the music. It was after ten o’clock at night when Clint was finally pulling into the parking garage underneath Avengers Tower. He gave a big yawn as he pulled his duffle bag out of the backseat and slung it over his shoulder. Then he trudged over to the elevator, blinking heavily as the exhaustion hit him hard now that he was no longer behind the wheel of a car. 

When he got into the elevator, he instinctively hit the button for his apartment floor. But as the doors were closing, he changed his mind and hit the button for the common floor. He had skipped dinner that night and figured there were probably some leftovers he could snag from the communal refrigerator. 

Clint stepped out onto the common floor to find that all the Avengers were gathered, and all looked at him when he entered. Clint hesitated, looking around warily at the serious faces that had all turned to him at the same time. The television wasn’t on, they had all apparently been just sitting around, which was odd for this time of night. 

And then Clint spotted Nick Fury standing on the other side of the room, arms crossed as he leaned back against the wall behind him. That’s when Clint really knew something was wrong. 

“What happened?” Clint asked as he let the bag slide off his shoulder and onto the floor. 

“Why don’t you come sit down,” Natasha invited, her voice solemn. 

Clint didn’t move, his eyes darting around the room once around. “Is this an intervention?” 

The comment at least got a half hearted chuckle from a few in the room. 

“It’s nothing like that,” Steve assured him, his tone light. “There’s just something we need to tell you, and we figured it’d be better if we were all together for it.”

“Okay,” Clint said slowly as he carefully started walking forward, completely baffled by the situation. What could possibly be going on that made everyone look at him like that? 

“It’s nothing bad, I promise you,” Natasha said as he sat on the couch next to her. 

“We’re just trying to find a way to do this that won’t immediately give you a stroke or a heart attack,” Tony input. 

“Okay, just tell me what’s going on,” Clint pleaded. 

“Nick,” Natasha prompted, looking over at Fury expectantly. 

Nick Fury sighed heavily before he pushed himself upright off of the wall. “I want you to know, I never wanted to put you through this, Barton. It was never my intention. It made sense in the big picture, but I knew what it would do to you in particular and I hated it. And it was always my intention to tell you what happened… but there isn’t exactly a protocol for how to break this kind of news.”

“Okay, we gotta pull the ripcord here at some point,” Tony said pointedly. 

“SHIELD had a program under Level 9 clearance called Project T.A.H.I.T.I.,” Fury went on. “Can’t imagine you’ve heard of it?” Clint only shook his head. “I cannot get into the details of the project, for obvious security reasons, but suffice it to say the goal of the project was to be able to heal wounds that otherwise would be fatal. It was designed to be able to save someone that would have otherwise been beyond saving. We’ve had mixed results from the project over the years, so when I called it into action a while ago, there was no guarantee that it would work. I didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up.”

Clint’s head was spinning. “Fury, I’m going to be honest with you, I am dead tired and I have no fucking clue where you’re going with all this or even what any of it means.”

“Clint… Phil Coulson is alive.” 

There was that ripcord that Tony had been talking about. It was like the world had fallen out from underneath Clint. His heart paused, twisted and then started pumping wildly and out of control. He suddenly felt like he wasn’t getting enough air and for some reason he couldn’t feel his hands. He was floating away, untethered to the earth any long as his reality was ripped apart. 

Clint found himself shaking his head. “No… no… no, Phil is… he’s dead . I… I saw it. I saw the security footage. I watched… Phil’s dead. We… we buried him.” Clint looked around wildly. This was some kind of sick joke. But no one was laughing. Then was everyone else losing their minds? “He died, Loki killed him!” 

“Clint,” Natasha said softly, placing a gentle hand on his shoulders. “I know how hard this is to get your mind around. I know how painful your mourning process was and how long it took for you to accept it. And I know that this completely destroys that entire process that you went through. But it’s true. Phil is alive. Fury managed to save him with Project T.A.H.I.T.I.”

“Phil Coulson was clinically dead when the med team arrived on the scene after Loki stabbed him,” Fury said, a little too clinically for Clint’s mental state at that point. “We were never completely sure that we would be able to bring him back. And even when we did, we were never completely sure we could successfully heal him. It was a day by day operation that lasted for months.”

Clint dropped his head into trembling hands. He shook his head. This wasn’t real. There was no way this was real. Maybe he was dreaming. Maybe this was another nightmare. He had spent months grieving the loss of his mentor and best friend. He had been completely shattered by Phil Coulson’s death. This man had taken him off the streets as a teenager and given him a purpose in life. He was the most stable person in Clint’s life, he was Clint’s anchor in the world. He was Clint’s family. Losing Phil had almost broken Clint. 

It couldn’t be that easy to get him back. Could it? 

“Clint?”

Clint head shot up so quickly that he just about pulled a muscle in his neck. He would know that voice anywhere. The figure had stepped in from an adjacent room and now stood there like a specter. Except he wasn’t. He was flesh and blood. He breathed and he smiled that comforting smile that Clint had always loved so much. 

Clint was on his feet one moment, and then across the room the next. He threw his arms around Phil with such force that he almost knocked them both over. But it was at that moment it finally hit him. This was real. 

Phil was alive.

“It’s okay, kid,” Phil soothed as hugged Clint back just as fiercely. “It’s okay.”

“You… you were… I thought you were…” Tears were now flowing freely down Clint’s face. 

“I know,” Phil said gently. “I know. I’m sorry I couldn’t get back to you sooner. I just… we didn’t know how to tell you.”

He didn’t care. He didn’t care about anything in that moment other than the feeling of Phil’s arms wrapped securely around him. 

He was home.