Chapter Text
1.
“Cap,” Clint shouted into his comm, “up top!”
Far below, on the street, Rogers ducked beneath his shield. Luckily, the weird-ass shell rocketing towards him didn’t send off much shrapnel when it hit; the explosion wasn’t even as loud as the sound of it bouncing harmlessly off Cap’s vibranium.
The robot responsible was already locking on for another shot, but Clint nailed it in its turbine before it could fire again. Even his explosive arrows didn’t do enough to take these things down easily, but this one was damaged enough to dip into a tailspin when he ignited the arrowhead.
As it careened towards the street, Cap’s shield went flying into its cannon, detaching it cleanly from the main body and fully neutralizing the threat.
“Thanks for the heads-up, Hawkeye,” he said, catching his shield with one hand and clicking his radio on with the other.
“Another on your three o’clock,” Clint responded, and they both returned to the battle.
It had only been about twenty minutes since they got the call to assemble, and they’d dispatched about half of the robots whirring around Midtown by now. That meant this was gearing up to be the quickest they’d ever dispatched of any Avengers-level threat. Honestly, the robots currently swarming around the Tower barely qualified.
They didn’t seem to be seeking out civilians; whoever had built them had clearly programmed them to target the Avengers exclusively. The odd rounds they were shooting—not quite bullets or cannonballs, but something in between—weren’t doing much damage to the nearby buildings, either. The only noteworthy thing about them was their endurance.
Better than having them be easy to destroy but highly destructive. At least this meant the currently-evacuating civilians were safe, and the nonstandard ammunition would save Coulson (and, subsequently, Clint) an earful about collateral.
Still, Clint wished these things would go down a little easier. It felt odd wasting so many arrows on such incompetent foes.
A slow-moving, short-range explosive was still an explosive, though, and wasted arrows would be the least of his worries if one of those things fired at him point-blank (or, God forbid, caught a civilian in the crossfire). Clint shook his head and refocused on the battle.
Most of the robots were hovering low enough to become targets for Nat and Cap, and Thor and Stark had the high-fliers handled. Perched as he was on a towering building, Clint zeroed in on the ones in between those two altitudes. Nocking another explosive arrow—and noting with some annoyance that he was running low—he aimed for the nearest bot’s turbine.
This one was in better shape than his previous target and only tottered for a moment, almost unfazed by the blast. Clint pressed his advantage with two more arrows, both directed at the same exact spot; he managed a huge dent in the bot’s tough outer shell, and the engine beneath started sputtering.
Clint paused long enough to survey the battlefield again and fire off a quick handful of directions. “Nat, one more coming in on your six; Stark, Thor’s getting swarmed.”
It spoke volumes to how much their teamwork had progressed that Thor didn’t protest the aid—and, conversely, that the ever-chivalrous Cap stuck to his own battles rather than booking it for Nat’s location.
One thing never changed, though, and that was Stark’s ego. “If they’re going to attack my tower, the least they could do is keep their eyes on me,” he said with mock-offense as he zipped overhead, blasting the bots surrounding Thor with lasers from both palms. “What does Thunderpants have that I don’t?”
Thor’s booming “Ha!” was audible even without his comm being on.
Rolling his eyes, Clint turned back to his own opponent, already drawing back another arrow. Not a moment too soon, either; it had swiveled to face him, struggling to stay aloft yet still determined to take him down with it. Beneath it, a second robot was accelerating sharply upwards to take its place once it fell.
That would’ve been very unfortunate, if not for the fact that it gave him a clean shot directly into the robot’s insides. His arrow flew true as ever, slid neatly down the barrel of the robot’s cannon, and detonated inside.
Their carapaces were tough, but their inner mechanisms were apparently less so; instantly, the bot began to drop. It crashed into its twin from above with enough force to send them both spiraling down towards the street.
For a split second, Clint smirked.
Then the smoking bots tilted sharply towards him, and it took him a moment to realize just where their momentum was carrying them.
“Hawkeye!” Thor shouted from above, his voice sharp and alarmed.
There was really no time to think about it. Clint leaped off the roof right as the robots crashed into it, nocking a grapple arrow and firing it at the adjacent building in one smooth motion.
He hit his target. As always. The rope snapped taut, catching him before he could plummet to his probable death, but it didn’t slow his descent so much as redirect it. Bracing himself, Clint swung forward, crashed through a window, and rolled to a stop on the floor of some kind of office.
“That move again?” Stark’s voice buzzed obnoxiously in his ear. “Aren’t you getting a little old for those kinds of stunts?”
He’d been too old for them since before he’d ever pulled one, to be completely honest. Seriously, ouch.
Hissing through his teeth, Clint gingerly pushed himself to his feet, glass shards crunching beneath his boots. He raised a hand to his earpiece. “Oh, can it, Stark, before I—”
Idly, he looked out the shattered window and glanced at the building he’d just jumped off of. The roof had crumbled completely, dropping the two robots onto the floor beneath, level with Clint.
To the naked eye, they had been reduced to nothing more than a smoking pile of scrap metal—but one of them was evidently still functional enough to point its cannon in his direction.
He hit the floor. A split-second later, he heard the cannonball impact with the wall not five feet in front of him.
The ceiling fell.
Clint blacked out―probably just for a second, but it was hard to tell. When he came back to his senses, he was sprawled out on the ground, his ears ringing and his whole body screaming at him. When he peeled his eyes open, the air around him was thick with dust and almost pitch-black.
“―in,” Cap was saying sternly into his ear, his voice crackling with interference. “Repeat: Hawkeye, come in!”
Clint let out a long, melodramatic groan that, thankfully, no one but him could hear. Then he pressed a finger to his comm and croaked, “Still alive.”
By some miracle, this was true; despite the fact that the whole floor had been leveled, he hadn’t gotten himself squished flat. Once his eyes adjusted to the low light, he saw that the ceiling had fallen mostly in one large piece and was now propped up on some fallen support beams a few feet thick, saving him from a pancake-adjacent demise.
In fact, he was about as uninjured as a guy could hope for after getting flung through a window and then having a whole floor collapse atop him. A low-level full-body ache; a pounding in his head; scrapes and bruises along his right side where he’d landed―the most notable of his injuries was a sharp pain in his left ankle. Not broken, he didn’t think, but maybe sprained.
When he didn’t immediately elaborate, Nat jumped on him. “Clint. Are you injured?” Her tone was clipped.
Clint shifted minutely, then winced and lay still again. “Been better.”
“Not helpful,” Rogers said.
Banner cut in before the frankly terrifying Rogers-Romanoff duo could dogpile him. “Do you need medical attention? I could be there in maybe ten minutes. Unless, y’know, Cap calls a Code Green.”
With a grimace, Clint eyed the precarious arrangement of broken cement chunks that was currently keeping him alive. “Thanks, but I’ll live. And I dunno if a half-collapsed building is a good place for you to be right now. No offense.”
“None taken.” Bruce made no attempt to hide his relief.
“Hawkeye,” Steve said sharply, and Clint snapped back to attention. “Should I count you out of this fight or not? We still have at least seven robots in the air.”
Ugh. “Gimme a sec,” Clint replied, and then he shook his head to clear away the cobwebs and examined his surroundings more critically.
His back was pressed against a block of concrete that had once been part of the stairwell. The only easy way he could see out was a gap in the rubble maybe ten, fifteen feet away, right by the window he’d crashed through. If he could crawl his way over there, then he’d be home free.
Unfortunately, the ceiling angled down in that direction, so it would be a bit of a tight squeeze, and army-crawling was going to be hell on his injured ankle. But he could probably make it.
As long as he took it slow. Didn’t wanna jostle something and bring the ceiling down on his head. Again.
Bracing himself, Clint placed a palm flat against the floor and tried to roll onto his stomach, only for his leg to twist awkwardly, stuck at an awkward angle. He hastily propped himself back up on his side with a pained hiss.
Craning his head to the side, he peered down at the leg in question, only to grimace when he caught sight of the problem. His boot was loosely sandwiched between two pieces of debris.
If he had full room to maneuver, he could have wriggled it loose, but his sprained ankle refused to cooperate; every attempt to extricate himself ended in a spasm that threatened to dislodge something and bring even more rubble down onto his foot.
Shit.
“Hawkeye?”
Clint eyed his leg grimly. “Yeah, I’m pinned down here. You’ll have to finish this one without me, Cap.”
He could practically hear Rogers shift into full Captain America mode. “Copy that. Iron Man, get over to where Hawkeye was and make sure he doesn’t get dogpiled. Thor, corral these things further away from the evacuation zone. Widow, I’m headed your way with two more, so be ready. And Banner… stand by. So far, we’ve been able to keep these things mostly away from civilians and buildings. The other guy might do more damage than the bots are.”
He was met with a chorus of affirmatives from the three on the ground and a wry “Works for me,” from Banner.
Huffing in frustration, Clint settled in for the long haul, adjusting his quiver on his shoulder so that it wouldn’t jostle anything or dig into his back. He didn’t doubt that the team would manage without him, given that they’d already taken out over half of these things, but he always got antsy when he could hear the battle nearby but wasn’t able to participate himself.
Hopefully Cap wouldn’t need another heads-up. For that matter, hopefully none of those damn machines decided to take potshots at Nat from high up now that Stark wouldn’t be stuck to her side anymore.
And hopefully nothing happened to disturb the debris around him while he was pinned, like another explosion, or a strong enough impact against Cap’s shield, or a particularly effusive lightning bolt from Thor, or—
A familiar mechanical whir snapped him out of his reverie. Clint blinked away the fog in his eyes, then squinted through the dust.
The gaudy red-and-gold Iron Man helmet stared back at him from the very same gap in the rubble he’d been eyeing as a possible escape route, peeking through the hole in the wall where Clint’s window had been before the robot fired into it.
“Got eyes on Barton,” Stark said, helmet swiveling to take in the extent of the damage. His voice came first through the suit’s external speakers, then through Clint’s earpiece with a very disorienting delay. “You guys alright without me for a sec?”
“More than alright, without your sorry attempts at humor. Actually, can you both just stay there for a while?” Nat replied instantly.
Banner huffed a laugh. “Maybe then the comms will be clear for a couple minutes.”
“I shall keep watch while you mount your daring rescue,” Thor promised, as earnest as ever.
“Great. Always a dream of mine to be a knight in shining armor.”
Without waiting for confirmation from their actual commander, Stark disengaged his thrusters and landed heavily in front of Clint’s escape route. That would probably get them both called into the proverbial principal’s office after this, but Clint would take what he could get.
“If you’re the knight in shining armor,” he called, his voice echoing oddly in the tight space, “then does that make me the princess? Am I at least the prettiest in all the land?”
“You’ll have to fight Romanoff and Thor both for that title,” Stark shot back easily, kneeling low until he could peer through the gap. The stiff-jointed suit made his squat look awkward and unstable. “Looks like you’re home free from where I’m standing. What’s the problem, Legolas?”
With a roll of his eyes, Clint wiggled his pinned leg for emphasis. “Foot’s caught. And I sprained my ankle, so I can’t twist right to get it loose. Definitely can’t move the shit that’s pinning it.”
Stark snorted. “Yeah, let’s try not to bring the ceiling down on our heads. Again.” Flattening himself onto his chestplate, he inched forward into the tiny space between the ceiling and floor. “Think another pair of hands would solve it?”
For just a moment, Clint hesitated―the Iron Man suit was way too bulky to safely navigate this mess―but the distant sound of another explosion made his mind up for him.
“Sure. Get in here,” he said decisively, shimmying back to make a little more room for Stark to squeeze in. “If you get my foot unstuck, I can manage the rest.”
To Stark’s credit, he didn’t gloat, although Clint was sure he would be in for some pretty unbearable ribbing once the life-or-death situation was over. For now, though, Stark just silently placed his metal hands against the floor and began to shimmy forward.
It didn’t take long for the suit to no longer fit. Metal scraped against cement, loud and grating, and Stark pulled himself back out of the hole instantly. “Yeah, this isn’t gonna work.”
He boosted himself back to his feet with his repulsors. Then, before Clint could snark at him for giving up too quickly, the Iron Man suit retracted with a metal creak, and Stark stepped out of it as casually as one shrugged off a raincoat.
Forgetting all about his planned quip, Clint squinted at the Iron Man suit, which was now standing silent and still by the remains of the window. “It can do that?” he found himself asking, recalling the Battle of New York, where Cap had ended up dragging a metal-encrusted, half-conscious Stark back to the Tower so a machine could peel him out of the thing.
With a grunt and an audible pop, Stark crouched down low. “It can now. Still working out the kinks.” Rolling his neck, he glanced disdainfully at the ground, which was littered with sharp pieces of debris and glass, then shrugged, slid forward onto his stomach, and squirmed back into the crawlspace.
“Alright,” he said, feigning nonchalance although his voice was strained. “I’m saving your sorry ass, so I will be accepting no jabs about me being slow or out of shape.”
“No promises,” Clint said instantly, but he wasn’t actually that much of an asshole, so he didn’t mention the way Stark’s joints cracked audibly as he army-crawled closer. Actually, for a guy who spent so much time in a metal suit that limited his range of motion, he was moving pretty fluidly.
Still, it might be prudent of them to enforce a little more out-of-suit training from here on out. At least then Stark wouldn’t be wincing as he dragged himself over to Clint’s pinned foot.
With them both crammed into the tiny crawlspace, Clint was no longer able to see the chunk of concrete pinning him, so the first brush of Stark’s fingers made him jump a bit. Luckily, Stark seemed not to notice, because he let it pass without comment, leaning against Clint’s leg a bit to get his hand around the sole of his boot.
“Alright, you gonna be okay if I twist your shoe a little?” he tossed over his shoulder.
“To the left or right?”
“Toe to your left, heel to your right.”
Clint angled his foot accordingly to minimize pressure on his throbbing ankle. “Yeah, go ahead.”
Just as Stark began to maneuver his boot, though, the distant sounds of Thor-on-robot combat rose to a crescendo, and a clap of thunder shook the building. Before Clint could so much as flinch, the largest slab of concrete above them slid minutely closer, and a bolt of pain shot from his toes up to his knee.
It wasn’t enough to make him shout, but it did get a grunt out of him. He dropped his head against the ground for a second, breathing through the instinctive panic.
“Barton?” Stark’s voice was sharp. “Alright?”
“Fine,” Clint said instantly, and only belatedly checked to see whether he meant that. There was only slightly more pressure than there had been before, so the rubble must’ve only shifted slightly; once again, he was spared the fate of a pancake.
Still, he could feel the bones in his foot grinding against one another, and it was not a pleasant sensation. His leg now being trapped in one twisted position wasn’t doing his ankle any favors, either.
It was distracting enough that, for a moment, he didn’t even realize that he still felt Stark’s hand pressed against the sole of his boot, too.
Clint grimaced. “You alright?”
With a huff, Stark shifted his weight, though he kept his shoulder carefully still. His fingers wiggled against Clint’s foot, but his wrist remained still as a statue.
“I’ll live. But now my arm’s pinned.”
“Oh, fantastic,” Clint said, his head falling limp against the floor. For a second, he just closed his eyes, despairing over all the laughs Natasha was going to have at his expense. But there could be another tremor at any moment, so he only let himself mope for as long as it took to mutter, “Now we both need a rescue.”
“Hold on a sec, there, Katniss—let’s not bring the cavalry thundering in just yet,” Stark cut in as Clint groped for his radio in the darkness. “Cap could maybe dig us out, but Thor would have to fly him over, and that might just make things worse.”
Right. With the Iron Man suit grounded—and its owner pinned beneath the debris just like Clint—there was no quick way to get Rogers up here without shaking the building. Thor wasn’t stupid; he knew to be careful—but he could only land with so much care when his method of flight was whirling a supernaturally-heavy hammer around.
Conceding the point, Clint let go of his comm and glanced at Stark. “So, what’s the plan, then?”
“I’m glad you asked. We’re still phoning a friend—just a more robotic one.” With his arm still pinned, Stark twisted to extend his other arm out awkwardly behind him. “J, gimme a hand.”
A gauntlet immediately detached from the Iron Man suit, flew into the crawlspace, and encased Stark’s outstretched arm.
“Huh,” Clint said, watching with mild interest as the machinery assembled itself. “Neat.”
“I like to think so.”
The added bulk made it even more difficult to maneuver in the small space, but Stark eventually managed to get both arms back in front of him. With a grunt, he wedged the gauntlet firmly between the rubble and the floor, its palm pressed flat against the concrete pinning Clint and its elbow joint scraping the tile.
“Alright,” he said. “Gonna have to move this thing again to get it braced.”
Clint eyed him warily. At this angle and with so little light, he didn’t have enough information to evaluate whether or not that was an acceptable risk, which meant he had to trust that Stark wasn’t jumping the gun. Which was a bit of a tall order.
Still, questionable impulse control aside, Stark wasn’t an idiot. Fury—and, more importantly, Coulson—wouldn’t have admitted him to the team if he’d shown himself incapable of basic risk assessment.
“Roger that,” Clint said at length, though he kept a hand pressed to his comm, ready to call for help if this backfired (not that he was likely to remain three-dimensional in that case).
With one decisive shove, Stark forced his gauntlet further beneath the concrete, propping it up. The debris shifted only slightly—just enough to take the pressure off Clint’s ankle and Stark’s wrist—but they both held their breath for a moment afterwards, bracing for another collapse.
When it didn’t come, one side of the gauntlet retracted and Stark contorted to shimmy his arm out from inside it, leaving it empty.
“Alright,” he said, shaking his wrist out with a wince. Shifting back onto his stomach, he tightened his hand around the sole of Clint’s boot. “Let’s give this another try.”
Once again, he began to carefully rotate Clint’s shoe to guide it out of the rubble, and, once again, Clint moved his foot along with it when he could and winced at the flashes of pain when he couldn’t. With no unexpected quakes this time, together they were able to eventually slide his foot free.
Ah, the sweet taste of freedom. With a satisfied huff, Clint stretched his leg out, careful not to kick Stark or any rubble in the process.
“You gonna need help from here?” Stark asked, rubbing his arm where it had been caught between the concrete and his boot.
After an investigative twist of his leg, Clint shook his head. “I can crawl fine if I’m careful. Go on ahead; I’ll be right behind you.” Then, because he couldn’t help himself: “Maybe with my ankle sprained, you’ll actually be able to outpace me for once.”
Even in the darkness, it was impossible to miss the dramatic roll of Stark’s eyes. “Remind me why I decided to help you, again?”
Clint batted his eyelashes. “Because I’m the third-prettiest princess in all the land?”
“Please. Fifth at best.”
Still, Stark began to shuffle backwards towards the exit without further comment. Clint followed close behind, pushing his injured leg a bit more than was really advisable. It took a lot of willpower not to needle Stark again, but Clint restrained himself in the name of professionalism (and also because Stark might stop moving to snipe back, and even that slight of a delay increased their risk of being unexpectedly crushed).
Before long, they emerged into the dust- and smoke-filled New York air. Pride already set aside, Clint let Stark help him to his feet, but his leg took enough of his weight that he could stand on his own power once he was up.
“Daring rescue successful,” he announced into his comm, rubbing his knee with his other hand. “And Stark thinks I’m the third-prettiest Avenger, by the way.”
Stark shot him a look. “Not even in the ballpark of what I actually said, Barton.”
“I assume I’m first,” Nat said at almost the same time. “Is second place Thor or Banner?”
“Thor.”
“I’m telling the other guy you said that,” Banner chimed in.
“Are both of you able to get back in the fight?” Rogers interrupted, all business.
Clint rolled his shoulder. “As long as Stark doesn’t mind giving me a lift. I can walk on my leg, but not run.”
“Got it. Stay on the sidelines, then.”
“Can do.”
“And I deserve that bronze.”
“Agree to disagree, Cap.”
As Clint quickly slipped his quiver off to check for damage, Stark held his arm out towards the rubble. “JARVIS?” he prompted.
The Iron Man gauntlet zipped out of the rubble with a soft scraping noise, and, an instant later, the whole pile groaned and collapsed in on itself, eliminating the crawlspace entirely.
“…Tell JARVIS I said thanks for not letting that be us,” Clint said, kicking the slab of concrete which now occupied the space they had been trapped in moments before.
Stark snorted. “I’ll pass the message along.”
“I’m sure you two are having fun,” Nat’s voice blared in their ears, “but, again, we still have robots in the air. In case you feel like helping at all.”
They shared a brief, long-suffering look. Then Clint shook out his bow and Stark stepped back into the suit, repulsors already charging up with an audible whine.