Chapter Text
[AUTHOR'S NOTE: I challenged myself to write something short and sweet over a single weekend. I know this is an obscure pairing, but they make me happy. Please let me know what you think in the comments. Best wishes.]
Clint was getting too old for this shit.
His knees were killing him as he closed the door to what might as well have been a hotel room for how clean and boring it was, finally able to hobble the rest of the way to the bed and sink face first into the pristine, down comforter with a groan. He was supposed to be retired. Clint had only come as a personal favor to Bruce – it was supposed to be a one-day job. In and out.
But things never worked out that way.
Additionally, no one seemed to remember that he wasn’t in some way augmented with super strength or freaky healing abilities like many of his former teammates. He was only human. When the wooden balcony he had been perched on – bow at the ready – had been ripped from its supports and tumbled to the ground two stories below, it took Clint with it. He had landed hard, just not hard enough to break bone.
Clint was good at pushing down the pain, setting it aside until the mission was complete. He never let anyone see him limp or hear him cry out in agony.
He only ever complained when he was back at the farmhouse with Laura, safe behind closed doors. She would listen patiently and then remind him that he had already decided he was done, that he didn’t need to keep doing this to himself. And he would nod in agreement, promising them both that he really meant it this time – until the next call came.
The Avengers were nothing like they had been before, what with half the original members dead and gone now. But the mantle of Earth’s Greatest Heroes lived on in other brave men and women – most still too green to know to be cautious. They hadn’t been dealt a real loss yet.
Maybe that was why Clint always went back – to try and keep that from happening.
…
He groaned again, rolled onto his back and looked up at the bland, white ceiling.
They would be sending him home in the morning. Laura would wrap bags of frozen peas in a towel for his knees to help reduce the swelling and numb the pain. But she wouldn’t call him out on breaking his word. She never did. And their kids wouldn’t ask questions – they would just know that dad had overdone it at work again and go back to staring at their phones like the teenagers they were.
Clint loved them all so much.
So he had to stop.
He couldn’t keep doing this.
…
Eventually, he pulled himself up off the bed and made his way into the small on suite to wash the grime away and soothe his aching muscles under a spray of warm water.
He expected to see his reflection in the mirror – the wrinkles on his brow and around his eyes more pronounced, a subtle reminder that he wasn’t getting any younger.
But there was no mirror.
Instead, in its place there was a wide rectangle of deep, red glass.
And in its depths he could just make something out – a pattern maybe. It started small, shifting the longer he stood there gawking. The center of the glass was folding in on itself, and with each fold it grew larger – an impossibility, unnatural and otherworldly. Within mere seconds, the folding had reached the edges of the glass, only for the next fold to begin outside the frame, washing the room in an ominous red light.
Clint should have run away. He should have called for help.
But it had happened so fast – so unexpectedly.
The red light grew stronger, blinding him. The glass was folding in on itself again – fully engulfing the room until there was nothing left but a crimson void.
Clint screamed, only to find he no longer had a body to scream with.
It had disappeared along with everything else.
…
…
…
A pain in his head was enough for him to know that it must have been a dream – even before he opened his eyes. He groggily looked up from where he lay sprawled rather ungracefully on hard, cold tiles. But that only made the pain worse.
He wasn’t in a small, sterile bathroom with no windows anymore. There were no expertly folded beige towels hanging on a nearby rack or a faux marble sink. Natural sunlight streamed in from a glass wall twelve feet high, the outlines of a bustling city glistening far below.
Stark Tower.
Or… somewhere that looked and felt an awful lot like Stark Tower, the headquarters of the Avengers – for a time. A place that didn't exist anymore.
He tried to sit up but was spooked by a hand on his shoulder, he hadn’t realized he wasn’t alone. It was a woman, and her hand trembled as she touched him. Clint had to squint to make out her face through the pain in his head.
It was Wanda.
Suddenly the red light from earlier didn’t seem so much like a dream. Red was kind of her thing. But why had she summoned him here of all places? What was she after? Last he had known, she was doing her best to fall off the map. But he was retired – supposed to be retired anyway. She might have resurfaced and returned to her old life as one of the team, or perhaps she was in trouble.
It was only after he saw her lips move that he realized he couldn’t hear.
The room was perfectly silent – and not in the way a room was quiet when no one wanted to bring up the elephant in the room. There was no sound at all.
Clint pushed Wanda’s hand away and sat up, still dizzy from the pain but pushing through it. The rustle of his clothes didn’t register. The almost imperceptible hum of electronics and air circulating vents was absent. He tried to speak.
“Wha… What’s going on?” He felt his throat vibrate. The words had come out – he just couldn’t hear himself talk.
He had been too close to the explosive blasts of his arrows before. He knew what it was like to lose his ability to hear temporarily. This felt different.
Clint focused hard on Wanda’s lips. She was still trying to talk to him. He was skilled enough at lipreading that he got the gist of it.
Are you alright? She was asking.
“I’m… okay. But I can’t hear you.” Clint knew the words came out right, but from the way Wanda flinched he wasn’t so sure on his volume. “Sorry.” He added lamely, trying to be softer.
Wanda’s next word seemed to be Friday and she called over her shoulder after that so he couldn’t read her lips. Friday was Stark’s A.I. – she had managed the Tower after Ultron… and Vision. But she was long gone, along with her master. There was no way he had interpreted Wanda correctly.
But the more he looked around at the room they were in, the less sure he was.
There was a broken glass decanter of expensive looking alcohol nearby forming a puddle on the gray floor. The shards looked very sharp. It had probably been accidentally knocked off the side table where an empty tumbler still sat. It was the same brown and black cubic side table from the Stark Lounge – all modern and hideous. The chairs were the same too.
Tony did tend to leave his things about.
Except… Tony was dead.
A door opened on the paneled wall in the distance. But the woman that emerged was just as impossible – and just as familiar as the setting Clint had awoken in. Even more so, actually. Her red hair was cut short, and her gaze was as hard as steel.
Clint launched himself up off the floor, almost slipping on the puddle of brandy and tried to put more distance between himself and the advancing imposter.
It couldn’t be her.
It couldn’t be.
He was probably yelling – but he couldn’t hear it.
Unfortunately, there was nowhere for him to go. Stark’s Lounge was only accessible via the elevator or the balcony. And the pain in his head was still so intense his balance was off, so he more or less stumbled into a corner, backing up until he had pushed himself flat against the wall. He held his arms out in front of him, trying desperately to keep these hallucinations at bay.
He must be drugged. That had to be it. Someone had surprised him back in his temporary quarters after a mission and this was all just his brain playing tricks on him.
Thankfully, what looked like Natasha stopped advancing. She looked so real.
Her lips moved and she said something like Barton? But then she turned to the other woman in the room, the person that looked like Wanda and asked, What did you do?
The Wanda look-alike began talking too fast for him to catch what she was saying. But she looked desperate – and scared. Clint would have been scared too if Natasha gave him that look.
The two women kept talking – much too quickly for his addled senses to follow. But now they looked like they were asking him questions.
He just shook his head.
Natasha signed with her hands. They had many code signs between them. He didn’t know these signs. This wasn’t Natasha.
Except, for just a second, she looked sad that he didn’t respond in kind. He rarely caught her mask slip, but he had seen it enough to know that this person had her act down well. Too well.
Clint hadn’t noticed that a few more people had come through the elevator entrance after the Natasha look-alike, and they were now crowding around – boxing him into his corner so that there was no escape. He could feel his breaths coming too rapidly, even if all he could do was keep his arms out in a vain attempt to keep them all away.
The woman who wore Natasha’s face slipped behind the newcomers and quickly left the room. Clint’s breathing calmed down a little after that. They hadn’t tried to hurt him yet. Maybe whatever had him tripping balls would wear off soon.
The faces before him were still vaguely familiar, but nothing like Natasha’s. But wait… wasn’t that Bruce? Or someone who looked uncannily similar anyway. Except he looked fully human, white lab coat and everything – no hint of green. The concern on his face looked genuine.
It wasn’t. It couldn’t be.
Clint slid down the wall and dropped his hands. If he was drugged, he should just ignore them. None of this was real anyway. They could talk all they wanted amongst themselves silently. He couldn’t follow their conversation with so many people involved, and it was frustrating only getting a few words here and there. All he could gather is that everyone seemed as surprised to see him as he was seeing them.
Everyone was rounding on Wanda, as if this was all her fault. And maybe it was – she did look rather guilty. She kept glancing back at him as if she was about to apologize, but people wouldn’t stop interrupting.
He wasn’t sure how long it was before the Natasha-imposter reemerged. She slowly offered a case out to him, telegraphing her movements so as not to spook him. He probably did look a bit like a wild animal in some kind of trap. He sure felt like one.
Clint took the case, checking it over for any kind of trick. A small smile briefly flickered over Natasha’s face at that, as if seeing him act so cautious meant something to her.
But it was just a plain, black leather hard shell case. He opened it gently, fully expecting it to be something dangerous.
It wasn’t.
An earpiece, not unlike the kind they would wear on missions, lay inside – nestled seamlessly inside a bed of foam. Or rather – a hearing-aid. It had a wire that would clip onto something.
Clint felt the side of his head. Under his hair he could feel a small metallic protrusion – something that shouldn’t be there. Maybe that was why his head hurt so much? Only… when he pulled his hand back there wasn’t any blood. And his scalp wasn’t tender. This wasn't new then.
How long had he been out?
Clint looked down at his hands again, suddenly unsure if they belonged to him. But they were his – callouses from handling his bow and all. The same stubby nails. Same lines on his palms.
The hearing-aid was his.
…
He was deaf.
***
“You mean to tell me that after all of Dr. Strange’s warnings you went and used your powers to fix some broken glass?” There was a fake Captain America now to go along with all the rest of the imposters. Although he looked far too lifelike, just like the others. Every detail was perfect, from the color of his eyes to the stern set of his jaw.
Clint was still getting used to the way he could hear through the implant. The not-Nat had clipped it on for him. It wasn’t exactly like hearing through his ears, even if the receiver was tucked away behind one of them. Voices were harder to distinguish from one another, and if anyone spoke when his head was turned the wrong way he had trouble catching all their words.
“I was being careful, trying to maintain the balance just like he’s been teaching me. And it was only some of Tony’s brandy. It shouldn’t have… it was so small…” Protested Wanda.
“Well, it didn’t work.” Steve was angry. Thankfully, fewer people were gawking at Clint now and he felt a little better now that he was following along. The broken glass still littered the floor. “You said you wouldn’t use your powers.”
And that was just so like Steve – to get so worked up because someone had broken a promise.
These hallucinations were good.
“I said I wouldn’t use my powers for personal gain. There’s a difference.” Wanda said defensively, folding her arms tight to her chest. Getting raked over the coals by the Cap was shit.
Natasha pushed between them before they could argue further. “Cut it out. It’s done. Now we have to figure out what to do with… him.” She pointed at Clint.
“I’d really like to wake up now.” Clint said.
“What?” Bruce asked, still worried about Clint’s wellbeing – hovering a little too close. “You kept holding your head, are you in pain?”
The pain had lessened a great deal so Clint shook his head, but that made him wince so it wasn’t very convincing. “None of you are real.”
“That’s just great. You brought him back and now he’s crazy. Wanda—” Steve began.
“What drugs am I on?” Clint was tired of this whole charade.
Natasha looked at Wanda. “What’s wrong with him?”
But Wanda just shook her head. “Nothing. I didn’t do anything to him, I swear. I just… lost focus. I didn’t mean to…” But her words trailed off as her eyes began to fill with tears.
Bruce finally stopped hovering over Clint and went to Wanda’s side instead, offering her his shoulder. She took it gladly.
Clint had to hand it to these people, they had their acting down pat. Bleeding-heart Bruce was the most convincing yet. Except perhaps Natasha’s double.
“Stark Tower was destroyed. This isn’t real.” Clint stated factually. “None of this is real.”
“What are you talking about, Clint?” Steve didn’t look so angry anymore, just confused.
“He didn’t understand when I signed to him. He didn’t even know how to hook-up the hearing aid properly. That isn’t Clint.” Natasha pointed at him accusingly.
“And you can’t be Natasha. You can’t. I watched you die.” Clint heard himself babble. “So stop looking like her. Stop it. Just… stop it.”
…
That seemed to sober everyone up.
The room went so silent he began to think the battery had gone dead on his hearing aid.
“Wanda… who is that?” Steve asked, voice suddenly very cold. He was pointing at Clint now too.
Wanda emerged from Bruce’s shoulder. “It’s him. Of course, it’s him. He just might not be… exactly the same Clint. He couldn’t be ours because… because…”
“Was that a threat?” Steve was addressing Clint now, stepping forward to block Natasha. He was looking him up and down now as if he was dangerous.
Fake Natasha did not look pleased. Clint had seen her look at Steve like that once before – completely unflattered by his chivalry. It was uncanny to see it again.
Clint groaned and buried his face in his hands. “You’re dead too, Steve. So just stop. None of this is real.”
“I’m… what?” Steve sounded surprised.
“You got to grow old with Peggy. You passed your shield onto Sam. And I went to your funeral!” Clint bit out angrily as he uncovered his face. Even with the hearing-aid he still needed his eyes to better follow the flow of conversation.
But there was silence again at this revelation, as if it was all utterly fantastical.
Steve’s face had gone white.
“Clint… that’s impossible…” Bruce was obviously trying to sound soothing – but he was also looking at Clint as if he were crazy.
“Hey, guys. What did I miss?” A streak of white and gray, outlined in blue flame erupted from the elevator and stopped at Wanda’s side. Another ghost.
“God, not you too!” Clint looked at the new arrival in terror.
This had gone on long enough. If these people – these actors – were meant to break him, they were doing a fine job.
Clint’s hands covered his mouth. He needed to stop talking. It would be better if he ignored them.
But the young man beside Wanda was staring right back, eyes wide in equal shock.
It was Pietro. Or… Pietro as he should have looked, given the chance to grow up a little more.
Everyone seemed more uncomfortable upon his arrival.
…
“Wanda, call Dr. Strange. We need his help.” Steve finally spoke.