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“Guys. Guys, come on, we've gotta go.” Klaue's men would be recovering soon, and though they were no match for any of the team individually, with most of the Avengers out of commission, a zerg rush could be devastating. Clint pulled Natasha's arm over his shoulder, walking with her towards the exit, kicking a guy in the face who tried to grab them as they passed by a hallway and knocking him back into the riveted steel wall as he moved.
“Barton, get them out of there and meet me in the city, I've got Banner turned off for right now.” Tony's voice came over his earpiece, a little scratchy due to the distance, but it was easy to hear the strain and exhaustion he tried to hide there. Even with Veronica, subduing the Hulk in a berserker rage had been almost more than he was capable of if the constant yells, screeches, and crashes over the comm had been any indication.
“Already on it. Cap! Thor! I can't haul you guys by myself and still be able to shoot things if I need to!” All right, it was doubtful he could haul either of them period, given Asgardian and super soldier physiology... but both of them would respond to a voice that sounded like it knew what it was talking about and was expected to be obeyed. And as the only fully functioning member of the team still with the team, that put him in command.
Joy.
Cap, now minus his helmet and still with a dazed look in his eye, met them at the exit and stumbled along after Clint and Natasha to the Quinjet. There was no sign of the twins on the short trip as far as Clint could tell and he briefly, violently wished he could make sure it stayed that way, because if there was any time another attack could completely break them, it was now. Nat was still lost in her mind, pale and shivering and shaking, and he also wished he could have both twins in front of him right then so he could make them pay for what they'd done to his best friend, one of the strongest people he knew, someone who was absolutely paranoid about showing weakness. Weakness made you a target. Weakness got you killed. Weakness got others around you killed. Having weakness was unavoidable. Showing weakness was suicidal.
It was a lesson he knew all too well himself.
Thor staggered through the Quin's open bay door as Cap shakily lowered himself into one of the chairs, dropping the shield on the floor next to him with a metallic clang. Clint spared exactly half a second's glance to make sure Thor could actually make it up the ramp as he buckled Natasha into her seat before sprinting to the pilot's chair, activating the power up sequence and waking the jet from the “sleep” mode he'd left it in before they moved into the old tanker. “You have thirty seconds to get that hammer in here or it's chasing us back home!”
The thunder god blinked, his eyes clearing a little, and glanced down to see that he had indeed arrived at the jet empty-handed. It took him a moment more to put the pieces together, but then he held his hand out behind him, pointing towards the tanker, and his gaze cleared even more as he started to concentrate. Clint turned away, hitting more buttons and finally gripping the take off/landing thrusters, ramping them up slower than normal so no one fell over. A weird, echo-like vibration of air blasted through the cabin as Mjolnir arrived and he closed the bay door behind it, turning the Quin in the northeast direction of Johannesburg.
It was absolute chaos when they arrived. The dust was still billowing from what was clearly a recently-demolished skyscraper, there were dozens of car wrecks all over the roads, parts of inhabited buildings were destroyed, glass and wood and clothes and fruit spread everywhere in about a mile-long swath of destruction. The containment pod that had temporarily neutralized the Hulk had been split open and warped like melted plastic in the middle of a major thoroughfare, and police were surrounding the area, escorting civilians away, trying to clear the destruction, a few even trying to get to Stark in the Hulkbuster armor standing guard over the unconscious Big Guy. It was impossible to tell if anyone had been killed, but if they hadn't been, it would be a miracle. In the short time it took the Quin to get there, Thor had recovered enough to head outside and help Stark pull the Hulk into the jet, still giant and green and unconscious but according to Tony no longer in permanent destructo-mode. Hopefully Banner would revert back automatically or Natasha would be recovered enough to do a lullaby when he woke up, otherwise this really would be the worst - and last - Avengers field trip on record. But getting out of there was the priority, bandaging wounds and recovering from a massive hit, and as soon as Stark had stepped out of the Hulkbuster armor and followed Thor into the jet, Clint spun the craft around and streaked off northwest. He could see the pieces of Veronica that could still fly spiraling away to the south, ready to discard themselves in a deep ocean trench so they couldn't hurt anyone.
Once they were over the Atlantic Clint locked on the autopilot and ditched his seat to look after the rest of the team. Tony was storing his Iron Man suit in the locker he'd installed for it, frazzled and weary but physically all right except for a few scrapes and minor cuts. Thor had lain Mjolnir on the Hulk's chest to keep him pinned down in case he woke and was sitting on the floor next to the big green guy, face in his hands and completely uncharacteristically still. Steve seemed to be waking up, slowly shaking his head and running both hands through his hair, but his pupils still had an unfocused quality that Clint didn't like but didn't know what to do about it except let it run its course. Natasha... she hadn't moved. She was still strapped in her chair, head tilted completely down against her chest, eyes open but entirely void of her, and he took the chair next to her, cradling her face in his hands and tilting her head so he could see her eyes, almost begging her to respond. “Tasha... Tasha, please, come on.”
“Where are we headed?” Tony asked over his shoulder, much quieter than he normally would be.
“Back to the States, we're on lock for the Tower for right now. We need to figure out what to do and see about getting them some help.” It suddenly seemed really, really stupid that for all of Tony's money that he was willing to pour into the team, they hadn't built smaller bases around the world they could camp at for awhile on missions... or after disasters. Once they'd gotten Ultron and those punks sorted out, that was gonna be the first suggestion Clint stuck in the box.
There was a heavy sigh behind him, and even though he couldn't see the other man, Clint knew Tony was shaking his head and rubbing his face. “Yeah... we need a plan. I need to take care of something else first, though.” His footsteps turned away, headed for the computer set up on the port side of the jet.
“Go for it.” As egotistical and occasionally annoying as Tony could be, he had a good heart in the right place, and Clint knew he was going to start sending help to Johannesburg before he'd do anything else since Clint was willing to take care of their teammates. Clint had no problem with that idea – maybe they hadn't meant to attack a city, but it had happened, and those people deserved to live their lives in peace. Whatever reparations they could give, it would be deserved. For his part, he stood from the chair next to Nat's, moving to the small refrigerator and food locker built into the Quin, grabbing several bottles of Gatorade and some of the granola bars with lots of nuts in them. The post-mission protein binge had become both a tradition and something of a joke among them after the Battle of New York, but at that moment he could only hope that loading up on energy-producing foods and electrolytes would help to bring his teammates back to themselves. Cap took his bottle and bar still dazed, moving automatically but at least acting without prompting, drinking and eating methodically. Clint had to peel one of Thor's hands away from his face to physically shove the edibles at him, and the Asgardian gave him a silent, grave nod of thanks before opening his bottle and draining it in one go. He threw Tony's at him across the cabin, landing the granola bar in his lap as he typed away and the Gatorade in the hand he held up, before settling down next to Natasha again. Eating was obviously out of the question, but he was able to tilt her head back enough to get some liquid in her, going in small sips. It seemed to help a little as she blinked and her pupils started to focus only to waver out again, and he split the bottle between them, taking a drink before coaxing her to swallow more herself as he stroked his thumb over her cheekbone. Come on, Tasha... Come on, you're stronger than this, I know you are. He'd seen her overcome her programming from the Red Room, watched her become a genuinely confident, amazing, capable person – to see her laid so low was killing him.
Steve was improving when Clint went back to the pilot's chair an hour later, still sluggish and more quiet than he normally was but significantly more himself, more like he'd been as he'd been drugged up in the hospital after the HYDRA helicarrier fight. Bruce had finally reverted, though was still unconscious, and between them Tony and Thor had managed to stuff him into some new pants and wrap a blanket around him, sticking the pillow from the stretcher under his head to try and make him more comfortable. Nat's eyes had briefly focused, but she was mostly still lost, and Clint couldn't put off making a decision anymore. While he'd originally aimed for the Tower, that had always just been a temporary measure; until they had a plan to capture the people - thing - responsible for causing all this to happen, they couldn't show their faces in public. A seemingly random Hulk-out would be cause for Banner to be taken, maybe all of them, and if they were tied up in the legal system Ultron would be free to enact whatever horrible plan he'd devised. Clint disengaged the autopilot but didn't immediately change course, staring through the glass of the cockpit as he went over the options in his head.
The Southern Mojave base- no, that got blown up. Roswell? Maybe. Really the only places they could go at this point were old S.H.I.E.L.D. installations that hadn't been completely cleaned out, where they could finds beds, showers, maybe some food, and possibly some computer equipment they could use to monitor the situation, though the Quinjet's own tech should be enough for that. Clint ran through a list of all the old bases, research stations, and safe houses he could think of that would be able to hold – or at least hide – a Quin, which limited the options more than he liked. Elizabethtown or Greenville, if there's nowhere better-
“Clint,” Steve's voice came next to his ear, making him up look up in surprise that he hadn't heard the soldier coming. He still looked like he'd had a really rough night and needed a few dozen migraine pills, but overall he'd pulled out of the well the Maximoff girl had thrown him into. “She's speaking, but it's all in Russian and we-”
“I've got it, you keep her pointed the way she is,” Clint said, throwing himself out of the chair again and in Nat's direction, Steve sliding into the chair after him. After he'd recruited her, they'd traded lessons in languages (Russian for him, ASL for her) until his accent and fluency exactly matched hers, but no one else on the team spoke it except for JARVIS, who was no longer with them. It made a nice way to have private conversations in front of the whole team, sharing jokes and plotting ideas, but it was also a small clue to something being wrong with Nat even at times when she hadn't been mind blasted. She spoke several languages, all of them perfectly and without a trace of an accent, but Russian was still her native tongue – and the one she abhorred the most for its connotations, a useful tool but not a thing to use on a regular basis, even more so than Latin. When she slipped into it outside of necessary times for work and plotting with him, it was usually not of her own free will, her subconscious reverting back to base state in the face of some trauma. While her speaking at all was an improvement, using Russian meant it wasn't as much of one as it could be.
“Tasha? Come on, Tasha, speak to me,” he said as he slid into the seat next to her again, reaching for her hands.
She tried to pull them away, and the weakness of the gesture and the ease he resisted it were horrible indications of how far gone she still was. “I... where am I, I don't...”
“We're in the jet, Tasha, we're in the jet and we got out of there. We're all okay, you're okay.”
“I don't want to go, don't send me in there-”
“Tasha. Tasha. What is it, what did you see?”
She didn't answer for a few moments, struggling weakly against him which he refused to give into, especially since he didn't think she could even stand yet. Clint wasn't entirely sure she knew what was going on, or where she was, and if she tried to escape now – Thor could catch her, but it could potentially be bad for everyone.
“Natasha, look at me, look,” he continued, managing to trap her hands in the bends of his elbows as he reached up to take her face in his own hands again, watching her eyes. They were fighting to focus, trying to come back from wherever she'd been thrown, and he had a good idea of exactly where that had been. When he caught that girl... “Look and listen, okay? Look and listen. I'm going to count back from thirty. Focus on my voice, just my voice. Watch my mouth move. You can fight this, you're stronger than this. I've seen you fight it in the past and you can do it now. Okay? You're not handcuffed to anything, you're your own person, Natasha Romanoff, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. You can fight this and you will fight this. I'm going to start counting now, ready? Here we go. Thirty... twenty-nine... twenty-eight...”
It was impossible to block out the motions, the attention from their other teammates as he worked to settle her, to bring her out of the personal hell she'd found herself in. Clint knew more about her history than anyone and for her to be reacting this badly, whatever she'd seen had a lot – or everything – to do with the Red Room. The only thing he could be grateful for was that none of the other Avengers would hold this over her; everyone understood just how much something like this could affect a person, and Nat, normally so in control of her personal image, being reduced to this sort of wreck made it horribly real. Tony, Thor, and Steve were paying close attention not out of any sort of malicious intent but a real desire to see her back to her normal self. It meant he had backup – and she had people other than him she could be entirely honest with.
As he counted, her trembling slowed, her pupils contracted, her feeble protests slowed and eventually stopped. When he reached ten she mostly wasn't shaking anymore; at five, her eyes focused on his for the first time since he'd found her on that stair. He slowed his counting for the last few numbers, dropping the volume of his voice to make her concentrate harder to hear him, and after he finished, he paused for a few moments before asking, “Are you back?”
“I...I think so,” she responded quietly, and she blinked, eyes widening as more sense came back to her slowly. “Clint?”
He released her, taking her hands in his once more and rubbing the backs of them with his thumbs. “Yeah, Tasha. It's me – I'm here. We're out of there, we got away, you're safe.”
“We're not safe, none of us are safe.” She swung back into Russian, and Clint mentally adjusted his base language to fit hers once more until she was prepared to go back to English. “We will... will be forced to perform, forced to break each other, break ourselves-”
“No we won't. We're out. We're okay. We don't have to fight each other. You don't have to fight me again, or any of us. We're all with you here.”
"...Safe?"
"Yeah. Safe." For now. Until she was more in her right mind, more able to process things as she normally did, telling her they were now technically on the run and in hiding so the world governments couldn't stop them from fixing the mess they'd made would only make her panic again. The lie was easily told, completely believable, and it settled her a little more. She'd forgive him that one later. "We're going somewhere you can recover."
"Home?"
The word took him completely off-guard, and for a moment Clint did the absolute dumbest thing a spy could do: sit there in shock and not react, not able to move a muscle. Great way to get yourself killed. But "home" had exactly one connotation for the two of them, and he was insanely glad for the moment that none of the other Avengers spoke Russian, or they would instantly know something was... different.
Because it was true, his first reaction was to take Nat home. Not to the apartment she kept in DC, that had once belonged to him; not to the Tower, which was very comfortable but was definitely Stark's, a very nicely appointed base but not a home for either of them. No, home for them meant somewhere their teammates could never have guessed at. A long, lonely stretch of road off the narrowest, bumpiest highway that could ever be imagined, a few swaths of trees over low hills, power poles planted square in the middle of fields like giant crops they could gather in at the end of September. Fields allowed to go fallow and be overrun with exceptionally tall grass that liked to wave and scatter seed in the harsh breeze of summer. A rickety-sturdy house, constantly under repair, desperately needing a new coat of paint and a ramshackle, cobbled-together, puzzle-pieced barn made from scrap salvaged around the area some time back in the 1950s. Rocking chairs on the porch, plants in pots trailing draping vines over the banisters, the large garden tended by hand and growing the best tomatoes and squash he'd ever tasted.
It was a transformative place, a hidden place, a place where people like them could shed the secrets they wore like clothes, the protective instincts, the watchfulness, and simply be themselves. Clint was always at least a little on guard, even if he didn't look it, no matter where he was, be it the Tower, any S.H.I.E.L.D. location, or especially on assignment. He'd been highly trained to expect a knife in the ribs at any time, the sudden chill on the back of his neck from knowing he was a target of someone nearby, the whistle of air from an incoming projectile. The only place that watchfulness ever dropped, for him and Nat both, was at the farm.
He'd taken her there before, after Odessa, after the medicos had stitched her back together and pumped her with donated blood and watched over her for a week to make sure she didn't crash on them. She'd taken him there after he'd stupidly broken his leg jumping off that building in Queenstown, the lesser of two evils considering the other option was catching his own hail of gunfire. She'd done it again after New York, after the weeks of isolation, medical tests, and committee meetings that determined if he was a threat that should face trial by peer (or boss, in Fury's case) and execution. And, most recently, they'd both come home to roost after the fall of HYDRA, hiding at the farm while waiting for the furor to die down, letting the world calm again and slowly forget their names and faces as much as was possible. It was the only true safe space both of them had, the only place where they could just be Clint and Nat and not spies or assassins or Avengers or goddamn toy models. Which meant that after something like this, it was the only place he could take her.
But still he hesitated, concern for his partner, best friend, sister warring with his protective instincts. It wasn't the place itself that made the farm home, but the people in it, that accepted the comings and goings of these two members of the family as matter of course. Lila, a bundle of energy that ran or danced everywhere she went, adored Nat almost more than her own parents, loved peanut butter and banana sandwiches and giant glasses of lemonade every day of the week, and was showing a creative streak more and more lately that had ended with him needing to paint her walls twice in the last year. Cooper, quieter, less boisterous, but no less enthusiastic in what he liked and didn't like, dinosaurs and old machines and stars in the sky and the cycles of the natural world, giant mint milkshakes with Oreos and mashed potatoes with lots of butter and pepper, just starting to learn to shoot with the bright green child's bow they'd picked out for his last birthday. And holding everything together, centering them all, calming things to a normal dull roar, the best woman he'd ever known... the only one who would put up with the bullshit that was his professional life, that anyone sane would have jumped ship on long ago. But she kept insisting that she'd known what she'd signed up for when she chose him, her deep brown eyes sparkling at him, caressing the corner of his mouth with her thumb before leaning up to kiss him...
God, he suddenly wanted to see her so badly.
Fortunately none of his teammates noticed the split-second look of longing that spread over his face, or they misinterpreted it if they did see it; really the only one who might have guessed what it was about, Steve, was still at the controls and not looking their way, though Clint knew he was listening hard. He chose his words carefully, no names, nothing to indicate what they were really speaking about or how close it was to his heart. "You want to go there? To the-" he lost the word he was looking for, found a synonym quickly enough, "-the small ones? And the barn, and the truck?"
Nat nodded, still a shaky movement, but a little more stable than she had been. Still disoriented, still outside herself, but slowly pulling together. "To the farm. Clint."
"...Do you think it's safe?"
She blinked at him, her gaze sharpening a touch more as she seemed to realize what exactly she was asking, what it would mean for the team - what it would mean for her and Clint. There were several moments of silence as she contemplated his question, her head lowering to rest on his shoulder, obviously still exhausted and shaken, and he didn't fight it but wrapped his arms around her shoulders, holding her and reassuring her as best he could. Normally Nat would kill him for allowing her to show such weakness in front of others, but the normal rules were out the window right then. "...Yes," she replied at last, her words somewhat muffled into the shoulder of his tac suit. "We can trust them. They won't hurt them. I'll make them regret it if they do anything."
Clint still had his own misgivings, buckets of them, but at times he trusted her judgement more than his, just as sometimes she trusted his more than her own. And he knew what she was saying was true - if anything from their world threatened his family, he wouldn't even have to lift a finger. Natasha would take care of any threats almost before the threats knew they were threats. And there were contingencies in place for if something happened... contingencies they'd never needed to use, but did, at least, exist. "...Okay. Okay, we can go there. We can go there and get you some iced tea and lasagna, sound good?" She nodded into his shoulder, and he gave her another squeeze before starting to slowly pull back from her. "I need to go back to the controls. Do you want me to get you a pill?"
The Quinjets all had a small medical supply in stock, various pills, liquids, and powders for pain relief, blood loss, and a myriad of other ailments that could hit them in the field; he himself had needed one of the saline drips after getting hit by that laser in Sokovia. Which had sucked a lot. But among their stock was a relatively large supply of a short-term sleeping pill, non-habit-forming, that Helen Cho and Banner had devised for them based on pills already in use in S.H.I.E.L.D. With the amount of time they spent on the Quin getting from one place to another, there was often no time for a proper sleep in a bed before a mission, and so Tony had designed the updated Quin with chairs that folded down into bunks, other bunks folded into the walls, medical stretchers they could pull out and set up on the floor itself for extra beds, and storage lockers for pillows and blankets. The pills knocked them all the way out for three to four hours, allowing them to get what was the best sleep they could devise in a somewhat crowded jet flying through the air, certainly better than anything on the airlines. Clint rarely used them, being used to having the weirdest sleep schedule ever with S.H.I.E.L.D. and everything he'd done for them over the years, but it was nice to have when there was a lot of globetrotting to be done.
Nat shook her head at the offer and he nodded in understanding, squeezing her shoulders as he stood once more - if she slept now, she'd likely fall back into the nightmares the Maximoff girl had invoked in her, trapped in the Red Room forever until the end of time. Not to mention, who knew what going to sleep in the condition she was in would do to her mind. He left her, hunched over in her chair, tapping Steve on the shoulder to indicate he was ready to switch back out, and watched Steve make his way back to the passenger chairs before taking his own seat, checking over the rest of the team as he did so. Tony was still at the computer terminal, hammering away at the keyboard, text scrolling past so fast that not even Clint could read it fully before it disappeared. Banner was starting to wake up, and Thor stood to fetch him something to eat, leaving it next to him on the floor before starting to pace, worrying at his hands and arms. Steve settled into his chair and just sat there, still as a statue and staring at the floor, which aside from Nat was the most concerning reaction to Clint. But at the moment he had a job to do, so he slid into the pilot's chair again, keying up the lat-long map and angling the jet in a more westerly direction than it had been traveling. He wouldn't put the farm's location in the guidance system for safety reasons - and after they'd left, he'd erase the travel backlog to destroy it entirely. Even Tony wouldn't be able to trace it then.
Behind him, the clattering of the keyboard stopped; there was silence for a few seconds, and then Stark's voice shattered it. "All right, I've covered our tracks until we're ready to surface again. Gonna try and raise Hill on conferencing, hopefully she's ready..." That wouldn't be a worry; Maria Hill was the most professional agent Clint had ever known before S.H.I.E.L.D. had fallen. After a rout like Johannesburg, even if she'd been asleep one of the many personal assistants Tony had watching over Stark Industries and the Avengers' collective shit would have dragged her out of bed and she'd be showered and dressed and ready to run. Clint checked to make sure the cloaking was fully engaged as he sent the jet into a gentle turn that would take them out of the way but confuse anyone following them, and as he settled out of the bank the computer pinged with a video link being established.
What Hill had to say wasn't encouraging - initial estimates of damage, numbers of civilian casualties (though not fatalities, and as not-religious as he was Clint still had to give a silent prayer of thanks for that), international response to the incident. No one was happy about it, but no one seemed to know what to do, especially since it was the Hulk and they'd already seen that when on full blast, nothing could stop him. The world seemed to remember when the Avengers had saved it before and trying to find some sort of leeway, some reason for why it had happened that didn't cast the blame on one of its heroes (which, ironically, was actually the truth) so it didn't have to arrest him, but there was a lot of anger so there were definite talks about it and without the twins in custody there was nothing to prove their story except that - a story almost no one who hadn't seen what they could do would believe. Tony's people were already shipping in medical supplies, construction equipment and material, and very large checkbooks to take care of rebuilding, but there was literally nothing the team themselves could do. All around it was a depressing litany.
"Well, for now I'd stay in stealth mode... and stay away from here," Hill said from the screen, an unusual note of defeat in her voice.
Tony clearly heard it too and didn't like it either. "So, run and hide?"
"Until we can find Ultron, I don't have a lot else to offer."
Tony sighed, still quieter than he was almost any other day of the year. "Neither do we." There was a small blip as the call was cut, another sigh, movement - Tony trying to formulate a plan and, for the moment, coming up dry. Still, he pushed himself out of the computer chair, coming up behind the pilot's seat where Clint was perched and bracing himself against the bulkhead. "Hey, you wanna switch out?"
God, he was tired, they both were; even without having been mindwhammied, taking down the Hulk and taking care of their comrades had worn them out almost as much as the other four. Clint knew he looked like crap, Tony wasn't much better, but they were still in the best condition and so had to carry the rest. And given what was definitely coming, Clint had to shoulder more of the burden now so Tony would be in better shape to take on the murderbot he'd created later, because Clint knew he had less than zero chance against the thing. "No, I'm good." Not entirely a blatant lie, but still not exactly the truth. But like hell was he turning control of the jet over to Stark when he had this particular destination in mind. "If you wanna get some kip, now's a good time because we're still a few hours out."
This being Tony, Clint knew what the inevitable question would be. "Few hours from... where?"
Clint glanced up for a moment, seeing Tony's reflection in the bulletproof glass of the cockpit's canopy, keeping his expression unchanged. How could he describe what was coming? The place that centered him, grounded him, gave him something to fight for that wasn't just faceless patriotism or protective instinct like it had been in his youth? That it was a place almost untouched by technology, unlike anything Stark was familiar with, like Clint himself knew from his career as an agent? That place of quiet, and calm, and complete chaos all rolled into one, plastic dinosaurs on the floor and cut-out paper silhouettes on the walls and his father-in-law's inherited book collection piled haphazardly on the shelves and a sunroom with the floor half ripped up from where he'd been called away mid-project six days ago. The place they desperately needed to go, not just him, not just Nat, but all of them - because it was the one place he was sure they wouldn't be treated like heroes, or gods, or goddamn toy models, but just like people. People that had been through something horrible and needed relief from that terror, comfort and care, and how he didn't know of anywhere better to get it, or any people more likely to give it. A feeling of something they didn't get very often: peace.
His words were quiet when he answered, hiding a tired smile. "A safe house." Home. The place his heart always was, even when he couldn't be himself.