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Entry tags:
Avengers - Lies
Title: Lies
Genre: Gen, Team
Rating: R
Length: ~4,800 words
Warnings: implied character death, language
Synopsis: Clint Barton died the day the building crumbled beneath his feet.
Author's Notes: For the "therapy" square at![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
hc_bingo.
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters and am making no profit from this.
Also available at AO3.
“Fuck. I’ve been… Fuck!”
Rewind. Repeat.
“Fuck. I’ve been… Fuck!”
Rewind. Repeat.
“Fuck. I’ve been… F-”
Tony let the audio recording cycle through in the background as he tried to pull up any and all video feeds from the scene. Only one had survived. It showed Clint, not on his perch atop the brick and mortar building, but in his decent. His bow was shattered, the grip still held in hand while the other pieces rained down beside him, no hope of miracle plays or trick arrows saving the day.
He winced involuntarily at the sight of the body hitting the stationary cab, of it rolling to the hard cement and out of view. It took the medics nearly five whole minutes to get there, another twenty seconds to announce that there was no pulse and no respiration. They continued to work though, right up until a shot hit the tank of the cab and the thing exploded in a ball of fire, right up until the majority of the bricks and mortar cascaded down upon them.
They knew what to expect when Fury called them to his office without even giving them time to wash or change or think. It didn’t mean they had to accept it.
He was cold. At least he thought he was. He ached everywhere, pinpricks of pain in a circlet around his forehead, something sharper, deeper, elsewhere.
He tried to move and was met with resistance.
He tried to open his eyes and was met with blinding light.
“He’s waking!” a voice called. Either that one or a different one ordered, “Put him back under.”
A warm pressure pressed at his veins, flowed through him, turned the world off once more.
The memorial service was in two days. Tony had hacked the feed to Medical and immediately wished he hadn’t. The charred lump covered with a pale sheet was not Clint. He refused to let it be.
“Widow’s gone off grid,” Steve announced. He sounded worried, actually concerned. His newfound family was coming apart at the seams, destroyed bit by bit until only dust remained.
“She’ll be back for the service, right?” Bruce asked, hopeful.
Steve nodded because he was expected to. He looked out the window towards the city below because he had to.
The man who had shot Clint was already dead, his organization had gone up in more than figurative flames only the day before. No one asked who had done such a thing. No one needed to.
Natasha did not come back for the service.
“Anything?” Steve asked, a little too hopeful.
Tony shook his head. “She’s offline. Any tracker SHIELD had on her or any of her stuff is toast,” he confirmed. They thought they had a hit on her the night before. There had been a flash and then nothing. They ran out, the shambled remains of their team, ran to an alleyway and searched through a bin of truly and utterly disgusting things only to find a single transponder busted beyond all hope and stained an iron-red.
“We’ll find her,” Steve said, more to himself than the others.
The coldness was back, as was the light. He was smart enough not to open his eyes this time as that had keyed them off before. He heard a pause though, the room growing an odd sort of quiet.
“What’s wrong?” a voice asked.
“His heart rate changed slightly,” a second one replied.
“Maybe it’s working?” the first one guessed. There was a shifting of fabric, followed by, “No response to skin test.”
“You were expecting him to feel that? Try higher,” the second one directed.
He readied himself, felt nothing. Now that was worrisome.
“See, he’s fine,” one of them said. He no longer cared which. Maybe it would be better if he let them know his true status, let them drug him away from thinking far too much about something he knew far too little about. He didn't. There was a chance he would need to fool them again in the future; there was no need for them to know his tells so early in the game.
“He’s awake,” a new voice said. It was hours or days later, he didn’t know which.
There was movement, quick and harsh, followed by, “You shouldn't be in here,” overlapped with, “There’s no way he can be.”
There was a shuffle and thud and a shuffle and another thud and then a voice, painfully familiar, sounded right next to his ear, “Open your eyes.”
His body had been trained to respond to that voice in any and all circumstances. He followed his training.
“How?” he asked when able to. They removed the tube that had been helping him breathe and he was not certain if he missed it or not. Air was harsh and fleeting and took almost more effort than it was worth.
Almost.
“Do you mean me or you?” the voice asked. He still refused to believe it was who the voice claimed to be. It couldn’t be. It simply couldn’t. He could not yet move his head, turn it to the side to see for himself, locked as it was in a brace, the pinpricks from before metal screws against his skin. There was a shadow though, a hint, and he was so very tempted to trust his instincts on this one. But that person who he refused to give name to shouldn't be here, not here of all places, not where Clint himself may or may not be being held against his will, a subject of tests that were either harmful or helpful - he wasn't sure which anymore than he was sure they were actually happening.
“Either. Both,” he replied.
“Mine is a story for another day,” the voice told him. “Yours comes down to this: It worked once, so he tried it again. That, and: never forget that Fury is an asshole.”
He wanted to chuckle; it hurt so much to do so. “You going to get in trouble?” he asked, not that it mattered, not that any of this was real. It couldn't be. That's what he told himself to stay sane.
He could almost hear the shrug before the response of, “Already have, and it’s nothing compared to what’s coming.”
“What do you make of it?” Steve asked. He leaned in close over Tony’s shoulder as if there was more than the single line of data to be had.
“I make that she’s on to something,” Tony shrugged. Natasha had used her Natalie Rushman alias to access the Stark servers and, from there, at least three satellite feeds. It was an obvious tell, both that she was alive and that she would share whatever she found when she deemed the findings ready to be shared. He added a line of coding to track her searches anyway and then granted her access to anything that wouldn’t shut down the company or the country. It was a lot of leeway. He would have given her more and might still, if her queries looked interesting.
“You don’t think she’s turned?” Steve asked, voice only slightly unsure.
Tony shook his head. “No, and neither do you.” He leaned back in his chair and typed a secondary tracer beyond the one she would find, just in case they needed a starting point to get to her sooner rather than later. “This is a vengeance run and I, for one, am not going to try to stop her.”
He noted the good Captain America voiced no objections to that plan.
“How long?” he asked.
“Since you flatlined?” the voice clarified. “Three weeks, two days, sixteen hours, and thirty-four minutes.”
He found that less than reassuring. He was still not certain whether or not he was dreaming, alive and having this conversation, or in some sort of purgatory-like limbo while his sins were weighed against his saves. The timeline did nothing to help sort out that matter. He had a lot of sins. He had nearly as many saves.
“How long until...?”
“Until they know if the treatment worked?” the voice guessed. There was a sigh, barely audible. “The most recent round was completed three days ago. It may take more; a lot more. You’ll know if it works. It won’t be instantaneous, but you will know.”
He made a face, or at least thought he did. “I’m just tired of staying in one place for so long. The pain aspect of it all kinda sucks as well.”
“The pain is a good sign,” the voice insisted, sounding almost surprised that he felt it. He wondered if he should mention how much he did and didn’t feel, decided it wasn’t worth the chance of getting maudlin over. There was a scrape of a chair and he knew the visit was over. “You never were good at sitting still, at least not without a scope in your hands,” came the parting remark.
Okay, the pain was new. There was pain before, but this? This was beyond that, beyond anything he had felt before. White hot, sharp, burning, every nerve ending firing at once.
He was not proud, not for this. He screamed. His voice turned raw, he could barely utter a whimper, and yet he still screamed in silent agony.
The voice was back and, remarkably, a hand. There was a hand on his arm, stumbling downwards to his own hand with a shouted instruction to just squeeze, an instruction that was gritted out again and again as he tried to do so with everything he was worth.
Surprisingly enough, he thought he may have actually succeeded.
Long after, as he lay drugged to the gills, shivering and panting and willing his body to be still as much as he willed it to move again just to show that it could, he remembered the ghost of the contact. It had been his first human touch in three weeks, four days, thirteen hours, and twenty-six minutes.
“I found something. You’re going to want to see this.”
Tony was man enough to admit he jumped at her words, mainly because he hadn’t known she had returned to the Tower. His last trace placed her three hours outside of the city. To be fair, that was four hours ago but, after being AWOL for so long, he really hadn’t expected her sudden return.
That was his story and he was sticking to it.
“All of us?” he asked, proud that his voice barely cracked.
She raised an eyebrow, clearly not fooled. “Bring a suit, this might get messy,” was all she said in return.
They were met with as much resistance as would be expected when faced with a known assassin, an alien sort-of-god, a super soldier, a man who could potentially take the facility down in a fit of rage, and a man in an armed and armored suit. That was to say, only a few foolhardy idiots tried to stop them and the rest cleared the way.
"Is this a SHIELD facility?” Bruce asked. He kept looking around nervously, not that Tony blamed him. His history with government-sponsored laboratories wasn’t exactly stellar, which is why they closed in around him, protective and watchful, both of him and whatever it was that Natasha might be on to.
"It is," she confirmed. She glared at one of the obvious cameras, as if daring whoever ran the place to send more people to try to block their path.
“Where to?” Steve asked, shield at the ready. He hadn’t actually needed it yet, but there was always still the chance.
She cocked her head to the side and Tony could almost physically see her visualizing the same schematic JARVIS had pulled up for him. None of the rooms on his were labeled, but he was willing to bet Natasha knew what each and every one of them held, or at least the ones she deemed important. "This way," she ordered, and strode down the corridor to their left.
She took a winding path that involved several hard turns and even a couple of flights of stairs hidden behind seemingly innocuous doors. Whatever it was she was after, someone most definitely did not want it found, at least not easily.
They dutifully followed, around every curve and through every passageway, right up until she came to a dead stop, hand hesitating over a knob of yet another unmarked bit of wood and metal in a corridor full of such things. Tony figured they had reached their destination, even as he figured it was probably the only time any of them would be witness to any sign of weakness or insecurity by the infamous Black Widow. She took a breath though, and a blade appeared in her hand a split second before the door was thrown back to reveal a room empty save for a bed and a single white-coated man gathering data from far too many machines and monitors.
The man was in her grasp even before anyone else crossed the threshold, blade at his throat and eyes wide and terrified as he took in the group. "Where is he?" Natasha growled.
"Who?" the man tried, and that was a bad idea, someone really should have told him it was a bad idea.
Instead, Natasha's knife drew just the tiniest prick of blood, and she repeated, "Where is he?"
"Room five, sub-basement seven," the man managed, all in a rush.
Natasha must have believed him as she released him and turned on her heel to stalk out of the room. Perhaps release was not quite the right word though, as his head bounced off the metal railing of the bed and he collapsed to the floor before any of them could ask just who "he" was. Most notably, no one stayed around to do just that.
Another series of turns and another flight of stairs later, and they stood outside a door nearly identical to the first, the only difference being that it was set just the tiniest bit apart from the others. This time, there was no hesitation, no deep breath, just a door flung open to reveal what lie behind it.
Tony kind of wished he had taken the breath.
There was no hideous lab or mad scientist with some horrific scheme, no blood or death or gore or mighty villain that only the Avengers as a whole could defeat. Instead, there was a room painted entirely white save for one side that appeared to be a video screen of some sort, projecting a mockery of the world outside, complete with trees and gently blowing grass. There were machines along the side, but they were weight machines and resistance machines and frankly looked like a toned down version of their own personal gym at the Tower.
In the center of it all, hands braced on a set of of parallel metal bars, arms shaking with exhaustion, face dripping with sweat, was one Clinton Francis Barton.
"Hi, guys," he greeted them with a grunt. He shifted his hands ever so slightly and dragged what appeared to be a very reluctant foot an inch or two forward, body lurching as his balance shifted and nearly failed. He righted himself and tried again, face set into an expression of determination and teeth set firmly into his bottom lip. When he had managed what he must have determined counted as success, he added a clearly strained, "Look what I can do?"
He shifted again, took another of the tiniest of steps, and then collapsed forward, forearms barely catching on the metal bars to support himself. He tried to right himself, to push himself upwards again, but started to slide down to the floor, arms giving out on him just as his legs had. It didn't matter though, not at all, as Thor was there, squeezing into that tiny space and lifting him and holding him and the action could have been seen as setting him back on his feet again if Thor had dared to let go.
Steve was there too, and Bruce, and Tony wanted to be but feared his suit would cause more harm than good and so he turned to where Natasha stood so deathly still beside him and said, "You found him. This... this is why you went off the grid?"
She didn't answer though, just stood there and stared didn't move and looked as though she had seen a ghost.
"You didn't know, did you?" Tony guessed.
She opened her mouth ever so slightly only to close it again. A breath and she appeared as composed as ever, if you ignored the haunted look around her eyes. "I wasn't certain, not completely. The resources and security pointed to something of this nature, that Barton... The information I found indicated he may well be alive, but did not elaborate as to his current status."
"Whoa," Clint said, sudden and harsh from the midst of the near puppy-pile of teammates. He shifted again but it was clear he was done, that he simply could not support himself anymore. That was okay though, as Bruce had found a wheelchair, taken it from the lax hands of a truly terrified physical therapist, and the combined powers of a super soldier and possibly mythical god lowered their teammate gently to its padded seat.
Once he was situated and had a bottle of electrolyte-enhanced water in his shaking hands, he dared to talk again. "I thought, well, I thought you knew but they were keeping you away," he said. His voice was dry, raw, either from his recent exertion or from the recent revelation. "I never thought that..."
"That Fury would tell us that you were dead? That he'd even hold a memorial service, flowers and all that just for you?" Tony asked and, wow, his voice sounded bitter.
The answering silence was punctuated by the opening and closing of a heavy metal door on the other side of the room. It was darker there, oddly shadowed, and Tony was tempted to lower his visor for a full threat assessment, especially when he saw the expressions on the faces of those around him with enhanced perception. He found he didn't need it though, not when a voice, a painfully familiar and sorely missed voice, said, "Always remember that Fury lies."
And Tony could see him now, just barely. The suit was a little looser, and the cane was new, but yeah, yeah it was him, he was sure of it. "Agent?" he asked anyway, his brain needing the clarification, the certification and classification of the vast amounts of unexpected data the day had provided.
Beside him, Natasha swore low and deep and in a language that was probably Russian, Tony wasn't certain to be honest. JARVIS helpfully translated though, matched her expression of disbelief with the words, "This I did not know."
And Agent, Phil, stepped forward, relying a little too much on the cane for anyone's liking, but he walked at a slow and steady pace, each step accentuated by the thud of plastic and metal against the tile floor. He stopped beside the bars, beside Clint, and looked almost jealous of the rest he had been granted. Instead of commenting on that though, or even elaborating upon his earlier announcement, he turned to the man in the chair and gently chided, "You are thirty-two minutes past your prescribed rehabilitation time."
"I thought I could do more," Clint said without shame. "Do better, get out of here faster, and they really didn't know, did they?"
Coulson shook his head, likely as much at Clint already breaking protocol as much as in reply. "Remember what I said earlier about trouble coming?"
Clint grinned, wide and proud as he took in his friends and teammates, his former handler now walking amongst them. "Shit going to hit the fan, sir?"
Coulson opened his mouth, likely to agree, but never got the chance. The screen at the end of the room flickered and changed and no longer showed the fake outdoors, but instead revealed the visage of a truly pissed off Director Fury, tucked away in some command center somewhere, monitors flickering in the background, but wisely out of reach for the time being.
"Good to see that security protocols and clearance levels mean nothing to the people assigned to protect this country," he said by way of greeting.
"Good to see that you have proven yourself completely untrustworthy and that you will lie to our faces if given the chance," Tony said by way of reply.
Fury fumed, and then said, "The situation-"
He didn't get much further than that before he was cut off by a rather ticked off Captain America. "The situation is abundantly clear, sir," he said in a calm, controlled way that Tony almost envied. He knew the man well enough by now though to know it was an act, a cover to prevent himself from giving into his anger and causing quite a good deal of damage to the world around him. "You told us that our colleagues, our friends, were killed in action when, in truth, you had locked them away."
"They were dead," Fury insisted. "Both of them. Their deaths were verified by medical professionals, with all the forms and paperwork to go along with them. That was not a lie."
People always had trouble lying to Steve, or at least keeping up the facade once called on it. They never seemed to have such issues when a Stark was involved. Perhaps that's why Tony gripped onto Steve's shiny American coattails and abused Fury's newfound insistence to snark, "And yet you forgot to mention the part where you brought them both back from the dead."
Fury made a face approximating a grimace, but said nothing.
It was Bruce that spoke next, quiet, nervous, fingers twitching in a way that usually boded ill for everything around him. "Were you ever going to tell us?" he asked, slowly looking up from his hands to the monitor that spread out across the wall. "Or were you going to reprogram them? Make them forget us or convince them they served a higher purpose away from their team?"
"There's been no reprogramming," Barton insisted. He paused, fiddled with the water bottle in his hands, and amended that to, "Yet." He pushed the bottle to the side of the chair and ran his shaking fingers through his sweaty hair before he said, "Look, as far as I know, I woke up here in a shit-ton of pain except for the parts I couldn't feel at all. A couple of mystical, magical treatments and a fuck-load of even more pain that they are jokingly calling 'therapy' later, and I'm almost mobile again."
"And you don't think the 'magical machine' did anything to your head?" Tony asked, doubtingly.
Clint opened his mouth to respond, likely with more profanity, but Coulson beat him to it. "I wouldn't let them do that to him, not after..." He cleared his throat and, with the usual Coulson Calmness, amended whatever he was going to say to, "Why should they waste the resources before they knew if he was field-worthy again?"
"Not reassuring, sir," Barton sighed, but was, for the most part, ignored.
"And you?" Tony asked, gesturing towards the upright if slightly less than hale agent.
Coulson smirked in response, the action far more comforting than his words of, "I know far too much about far too many things for them to risk wiping that out."
"Ain't that the fucking truth," Fury muttered, which served to draw attention back to the screen. He either ignored the plethora of faces glaring at him, or was no longer bothered by them. "Agent Barton has several more sessions to undergo before he will be deemed fit to be released to his own recognizance to ignore further medical instruction. Seeing how you lot now know about said therapy and the location of this supposedly secure facility, I am assuming that one or more of you will wish to be present during these sessions to ensure we do not, what was the phrase, 'reprogram' him into a blind killer?"
"I'm already a killer, sir," Clint piped up, unapologetically. He downed he last of his water bottle and tossed it away from him, the plastic reverberating as it landed at the feet of his supposed therapist before he added, "It's just what side you're on that determines if I'm the good kind of killer or the bad kind."
"You're not helping, Barton," Coulson chided, but didn't actually seem upset by the words.
"Not if I can help it, sir," Clint grinned.
For a moment, it was easy to think everything was back to normal again. Tony had his Agent back and his pain in the ass archer back all in one fell swoop. But then he saw the cracks in the facade, the lines of exhaustion and slouch of shoulders, the tightness around the eyes that spoke of lingering pain as well as frustration at now long the recovery had taken so far, let alone how far there still was to go. And it wasn't just Barton who was hurting; Coulson looked like standing was as tiring as running a marathon, or maybe that was just from having to deal with the six of them against Fury again. Regardless, things were not fine and they were definitely far from normal.
Fury blathered on about this and that and some other thing, but Tony only listened with a fraction of his attention. The rest of his energy was spent figuring out how many doctors and nurses and PT specialists would be needed, and arranging for rooms for them all at the Tower because like hell was he keeping his friends in SHIELD's tender graces when they had already proved less than competent and less than forthcoming about the truth of this and a cadre of other matters.
It was Bruce that drew him from his thoughts though. He wasn't sure if Fury had still been rambling and covering his ass, but there had been noise and then silence, and his brain rewound to hear a single word: "When?"
"Excuse me, Doctor Banner?" Fury clarified. Tony caught the tell though, the subtle hint of surprise that he of all people talked back to him.
Bruce stood up a little straighter and pushed his glasses back up his nose and repeated, "When? When will be taking them home?"
Them, not him. Tony grinned. When the quietest, most docile member of their group talked back, you knew you were fucked.
"I can't walk yet, not on my own, not completely - you've seen that much," Clint sighed, open and honest and far too tired. "As much as I hate to admit it, I'm going to need a lot of therapy to get that far."
"So will we; you're just getting the sweaty type," Tony quipped because he couldn't stop himself from doing so. He then turned to the giant screen and the oddly quiet Director Fury and pointed out, "I believe our resident giant rage monster asked you a question. You might want to get on answering that since Big and Green isn't exactly known for his patience."
Four months, three days, and fourteen hours from that fateful mission, Clint found himself right back in the fray again. A monster down, a madman ranting, and henchmen coming at him from all sides.
"I need an exit strategy," he called, firing away.
"You have six to choose from," Coulson replied, voice tainted with the hint of static through the comm, the beep of the security feeds from the van where he was safely stationed.
Clint could hear the whine of Stark's repulsors and the roar of the Hulk making his presence known. He could feel the vibration of the pavement crumbling beneath the Big Guy's feet as he approached and the way the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end with the electric charge to the air that could only be Thor's presence nearby. A blur of red, white, and blue knocking six of the henchmen on their asses and the whizz of bullets making it an even dozen signaled Cap and Widow's locations. The security van screeched to a halt five stories below him and each and every person called out their positions and promises that they had his back.
He nocked another arrow and smiled at the truth of it all.
End.
Feedback is always welcomed.
Genre: Gen, Team
Rating: R
Length: ~4,800 words
Warnings: implied character death, language
Synopsis: Clint Barton died the day the building crumbled beneath his feet.
Author's Notes: For the "therapy" square at
hc_bingo.Disclaimer: I do not own these characters and am making no profit from this.
Also available at AO3.
“Fuck. I’ve been… Fuck!”
Rewind. Repeat.
“Fuck. I’ve been… Fuck!”
Rewind. Repeat.
“Fuck. I’ve been… F-”
Tony let the audio recording cycle through in the background as he tried to pull up any and all video feeds from the scene. Only one had survived. It showed Clint, not on his perch atop the brick and mortar building, but in his decent. His bow was shattered, the grip still held in hand while the other pieces rained down beside him, no hope of miracle plays or trick arrows saving the day.
He winced involuntarily at the sight of the body hitting the stationary cab, of it rolling to the hard cement and out of view. It took the medics nearly five whole minutes to get there, another twenty seconds to announce that there was no pulse and no respiration. They continued to work though, right up until a shot hit the tank of the cab and the thing exploded in a ball of fire, right up until the majority of the bricks and mortar cascaded down upon them.
They knew what to expect when Fury called them to his office without even giving them time to wash or change or think. It didn’t mean they had to accept it.
He was cold. At least he thought he was. He ached everywhere, pinpricks of pain in a circlet around his forehead, something sharper, deeper, elsewhere.
He tried to move and was met with resistance.
He tried to open his eyes and was met with blinding light.
“He’s waking!” a voice called. Either that one or a different one ordered, “Put him back under.”
A warm pressure pressed at his veins, flowed through him, turned the world off once more.
The memorial service was in two days. Tony had hacked the feed to Medical and immediately wished he hadn’t. The charred lump covered with a pale sheet was not Clint. He refused to let it be.
“Widow’s gone off grid,” Steve announced. He sounded worried, actually concerned. His newfound family was coming apart at the seams, destroyed bit by bit until only dust remained.
“She’ll be back for the service, right?” Bruce asked, hopeful.
Steve nodded because he was expected to. He looked out the window towards the city below because he had to.
The man who had shot Clint was already dead, his organization had gone up in more than figurative flames only the day before. No one asked who had done such a thing. No one needed to.
Natasha did not come back for the service.
“Anything?” Steve asked, a little too hopeful.
Tony shook his head. “She’s offline. Any tracker SHIELD had on her or any of her stuff is toast,” he confirmed. They thought they had a hit on her the night before. There had been a flash and then nothing. They ran out, the shambled remains of their team, ran to an alleyway and searched through a bin of truly and utterly disgusting things only to find a single transponder busted beyond all hope and stained an iron-red.
“We’ll find her,” Steve said, more to himself than the others.
The coldness was back, as was the light. He was smart enough not to open his eyes this time as that had keyed them off before. He heard a pause though, the room growing an odd sort of quiet.
“What’s wrong?” a voice asked.
“His heart rate changed slightly,” a second one replied.
“Maybe it’s working?” the first one guessed. There was a shifting of fabric, followed by, “No response to skin test.”
“You were expecting him to feel that? Try higher,” the second one directed.
He readied himself, felt nothing. Now that was worrisome.
“See, he’s fine,” one of them said. He no longer cared which. Maybe it would be better if he let them know his true status, let them drug him away from thinking far too much about something he knew far too little about. He didn't. There was a chance he would need to fool them again in the future; there was no need for them to know his tells so early in the game.
“He’s awake,” a new voice said. It was hours or days later, he didn’t know which.
There was movement, quick and harsh, followed by, “You shouldn't be in here,” overlapped with, “There’s no way he can be.”
There was a shuffle and thud and a shuffle and another thud and then a voice, painfully familiar, sounded right next to his ear, “Open your eyes.”
His body had been trained to respond to that voice in any and all circumstances. He followed his training.
“How?” he asked when able to. They removed the tube that had been helping him breathe and he was not certain if he missed it or not. Air was harsh and fleeting and took almost more effort than it was worth.
Almost.
“Do you mean me or you?” the voice asked. He still refused to believe it was who the voice claimed to be. It couldn’t be. It simply couldn’t. He could not yet move his head, turn it to the side to see for himself, locked as it was in a brace, the pinpricks from before metal screws against his skin. There was a shadow though, a hint, and he was so very tempted to trust his instincts on this one. But that person who he refused to give name to shouldn't be here, not here of all places, not where Clint himself may or may not be being held against his will, a subject of tests that were either harmful or helpful - he wasn't sure which anymore than he was sure they were actually happening.
“Either. Both,” he replied.
“Mine is a story for another day,” the voice told him. “Yours comes down to this: It worked once, so he tried it again. That, and: never forget that Fury is an asshole.”
He wanted to chuckle; it hurt so much to do so. “You going to get in trouble?” he asked, not that it mattered, not that any of this was real. It couldn't be. That's what he told himself to stay sane.
He could almost hear the shrug before the response of, “Already have, and it’s nothing compared to what’s coming.”
“What do you make of it?” Steve asked. He leaned in close over Tony’s shoulder as if there was more than the single line of data to be had.
“I make that she’s on to something,” Tony shrugged. Natasha had used her Natalie Rushman alias to access the Stark servers and, from there, at least three satellite feeds. It was an obvious tell, both that she was alive and that she would share whatever she found when she deemed the findings ready to be shared. He added a line of coding to track her searches anyway and then granted her access to anything that wouldn’t shut down the company or the country. It was a lot of leeway. He would have given her more and might still, if her queries looked interesting.
“You don’t think she’s turned?” Steve asked, voice only slightly unsure.
Tony shook his head. “No, and neither do you.” He leaned back in his chair and typed a secondary tracer beyond the one she would find, just in case they needed a starting point to get to her sooner rather than later. “This is a vengeance run and I, for one, am not going to try to stop her.”
He noted the good Captain America voiced no objections to that plan.
“How long?” he asked.
“Since you flatlined?” the voice clarified. “Three weeks, two days, sixteen hours, and thirty-four minutes.”
He found that less than reassuring. He was still not certain whether or not he was dreaming, alive and having this conversation, or in some sort of purgatory-like limbo while his sins were weighed against his saves. The timeline did nothing to help sort out that matter. He had a lot of sins. He had nearly as many saves.
“How long until...?”
“Until they know if the treatment worked?” the voice guessed. There was a sigh, barely audible. “The most recent round was completed three days ago. It may take more; a lot more. You’ll know if it works. It won’t be instantaneous, but you will know.”
He made a face, or at least thought he did. “I’m just tired of staying in one place for so long. The pain aspect of it all kinda sucks as well.”
“The pain is a good sign,” the voice insisted, sounding almost surprised that he felt it. He wondered if he should mention how much he did and didn’t feel, decided it wasn’t worth the chance of getting maudlin over. There was a scrape of a chair and he knew the visit was over. “You never were good at sitting still, at least not without a scope in your hands,” came the parting remark.
Okay, the pain was new. There was pain before, but this? This was beyond that, beyond anything he had felt before. White hot, sharp, burning, every nerve ending firing at once.
He was not proud, not for this. He screamed. His voice turned raw, he could barely utter a whimper, and yet he still screamed in silent agony.
The voice was back and, remarkably, a hand. There was a hand on his arm, stumbling downwards to his own hand with a shouted instruction to just squeeze, an instruction that was gritted out again and again as he tried to do so with everything he was worth.
Surprisingly enough, he thought he may have actually succeeded.
Long after, as he lay drugged to the gills, shivering and panting and willing his body to be still as much as he willed it to move again just to show that it could, he remembered the ghost of the contact. It had been his first human touch in three weeks, four days, thirteen hours, and twenty-six minutes.
“I found something. You’re going to want to see this.”
Tony was man enough to admit he jumped at her words, mainly because he hadn’t known she had returned to the Tower. His last trace placed her three hours outside of the city. To be fair, that was four hours ago but, after being AWOL for so long, he really hadn’t expected her sudden return.
That was his story and he was sticking to it.
“All of us?” he asked, proud that his voice barely cracked.
She raised an eyebrow, clearly not fooled. “Bring a suit, this might get messy,” was all she said in return.
They were met with as much resistance as would be expected when faced with a known assassin, an alien sort-of-god, a super soldier, a man who could potentially take the facility down in a fit of rage, and a man in an armed and armored suit. That was to say, only a few foolhardy idiots tried to stop them and the rest cleared the way.
"Is this a SHIELD facility?” Bruce asked. He kept looking around nervously, not that Tony blamed him. His history with government-sponsored laboratories wasn’t exactly stellar, which is why they closed in around him, protective and watchful, both of him and whatever it was that Natasha might be on to.
"It is," she confirmed. She glared at one of the obvious cameras, as if daring whoever ran the place to send more people to try to block their path.
“Where to?” Steve asked, shield at the ready. He hadn’t actually needed it yet, but there was always still the chance.
She cocked her head to the side and Tony could almost physically see her visualizing the same schematic JARVIS had pulled up for him. None of the rooms on his were labeled, but he was willing to bet Natasha knew what each and every one of them held, or at least the ones she deemed important. "This way," she ordered, and strode down the corridor to their left.
She took a winding path that involved several hard turns and even a couple of flights of stairs hidden behind seemingly innocuous doors. Whatever it was she was after, someone most definitely did not want it found, at least not easily.
They dutifully followed, around every curve and through every passageway, right up until she came to a dead stop, hand hesitating over a knob of yet another unmarked bit of wood and metal in a corridor full of such things. Tony figured they had reached their destination, even as he figured it was probably the only time any of them would be witness to any sign of weakness or insecurity by the infamous Black Widow. She took a breath though, and a blade appeared in her hand a split second before the door was thrown back to reveal a room empty save for a bed and a single white-coated man gathering data from far too many machines and monitors.
The man was in her grasp even before anyone else crossed the threshold, blade at his throat and eyes wide and terrified as he took in the group. "Where is he?" Natasha growled.
"Who?" the man tried, and that was a bad idea, someone really should have told him it was a bad idea.
Instead, Natasha's knife drew just the tiniest prick of blood, and she repeated, "Where is he?"
"Room five, sub-basement seven," the man managed, all in a rush.
Natasha must have believed him as she released him and turned on her heel to stalk out of the room. Perhaps release was not quite the right word though, as his head bounced off the metal railing of the bed and he collapsed to the floor before any of them could ask just who "he" was. Most notably, no one stayed around to do just that.
Another series of turns and another flight of stairs later, and they stood outside a door nearly identical to the first, the only difference being that it was set just the tiniest bit apart from the others. This time, there was no hesitation, no deep breath, just a door flung open to reveal what lie behind it.
Tony kind of wished he had taken the breath.
There was no hideous lab or mad scientist with some horrific scheme, no blood or death or gore or mighty villain that only the Avengers as a whole could defeat. Instead, there was a room painted entirely white save for one side that appeared to be a video screen of some sort, projecting a mockery of the world outside, complete with trees and gently blowing grass. There were machines along the side, but they were weight machines and resistance machines and frankly looked like a toned down version of their own personal gym at the Tower.
In the center of it all, hands braced on a set of of parallel metal bars, arms shaking with exhaustion, face dripping with sweat, was one Clinton Francis Barton.
"Hi, guys," he greeted them with a grunt. He shifted his hands ever so slightly and dragged what appeared to be a very reluctant foot an inch or two forward, body lurching as his balance shifted and nearly failed. He righted himself and tried again, face set into an expression of determination and teeth set firmly into his bottom lip. When he had managed what he must have determined counted as success, he added a clearly strained, "Look what I can do?"
He shifted again, took another of the tiniest of steps, and then collapsed forward, forearms barely catching on the metal bars to support himself. He tried to right himself, to push himself upwards again, but started to slide down to the floor, arms giving out on him just as his legs had. It didn't matter though, not at all, as Thor was there, squeezing into that tiny space and lifting him and holding him and the action could have been seen as setting him back on his feet again if Thor had dared to let go.
Steve was there too, and Bruce, and Tony wanted to be but feared his suit would cause more harm than good and so he turned to where Natasha stood so deathly still beside him and said, "You found him. This... this is why you went off the grid?"
She didn't answer though, just stood there and stared didn't move and looked as though she had seen a ghost.
"You didn't know, did you?" Tony guessed.
She opened her mouth ever so slightly only to close it again. A breath and she appeared as composed as ever, if you ignored the haunted look around her eyes. "I wasn't certain, not completely. The resources and security pointed to something of this nature, that Barton... The information I found indicated he may well be alive, but did not elaborate as to his current status."
"Whoa," Clint said, sudden and harsh from the midst of the near puppy-pile of teammates. He shifted again but it was clear he was done, that he simply could not support himself anymore. That was okay though, as Bruce had found a wheelchair, taken it from the lax hands of a truly terrified physical therapist, and the combined powers of a super soldier and possibly mythical god lowered their teammate gently to its padded seat.
Once he was situated and had a bottle of electrolyte-enhanced water in his shaking hands, he dared to talk again. "I thought, well, I thought you knew but they were keeping you away," he said. His voice was dry, raw, either from his recent exertion or from the recent revelation. "I never thought that..."
"That Fury would tell us that you were dead? That he'd even hold a memorial service, flowers and all that just for you?" Tony asked and, wow, his voice sounded bitter.
The answering silence was punctuated by the opening and closing of a heavy metal door on the other side of the room. It was darker there, oddly shadowed, and Tony was tempted to lower his visor for a full threat assessment, especially when he saw the expressions on the faces of those around him with enhanced perception. He found he didn't need it though, not when a voice, a painfully familiar and sorely missed voice, said, "Always remember that Fury lies."
And Tony could see him now, just barely. The suit was a little looser, and the cane was new, but yeah, yeah it was him, he was sure of it. "Agent?" he asked anyway, his brain needing the clarification, the certification and classification of the vast amounts of unexpected data the day had provided.
Beside him, Natasha swore low and deep and in a language that was probably Russian, Tony wasn't certain to be honest. JARVIS helpfully translated though, matched her expression of disbelief with the words, "This I did not know."
And Agent, Phil, stepped forward, relying a little too much on the cane for anyone's liking, but he walked at a slow and steady pace, each step accentuated by the thud of plastic and metal against the tile floor. He stopped beside the bars, beside Clint, and looked almost jealous of the rest he had been granted. Instead of commenting on that though, or even elaborating upon his earlier announcement, he turned to the man in the chair and gently chided, "You are thirty-two minutes past your prescribed rehabilitation time."
"I thought I could do more," Clint said without shame. "Do better, get out of here faster, and they really didn't know, did they?"
Coulson shook his head, likely as much at Clint already breaking protocol as much as in reply. "Remember what I said earlier about trouble coming?"
Clint grinned, wide and proud as he took in his friends and teammates, his former handler now walking amongst them. "Shit going to hit the fan, sir?"
Coulson opened his mouth, likely to agree, but never got the chance. The screen at the end of the room flickered and changed and no longer showed the fake outdoors, but instead revealed the visage of a truly pissed off Director Fury, tucked away in some command center somewhere, monitors flickering in the background, but wisely out of reach for the time being.
"Good to see that security protocols and clearance levels mean nothing to the people assigned to protect this country," he said by way of greeting.
"Good to see that you have proven yourself completely untrustworthy and that you will lie to our faces if given the chance," Tony said by way of reply.
Fury fumed, and then said, "The situation-"
He didn't get much further than that before he was cut off by a rather ticked off Captain America. "The situation is abundantly clear, sir," he said in a calm, controlled way that Tony almost envied. He knew the man well enough by now though to know it was an act, a cover to prevent himself from giving into his anger and causing quite a good deal of damage to the world around him. "You told us that our colleagues, our friends, were killed in action when, in truth, you had locked them away."
"They were dead," Fury insisted. "Both of them. Their deaths were verified by medical professionals, with all the forms and paperwork to go along with them. That was not a lie."
People always had trouble lying to Steve, or at least keeping up the facade once called on it. They never seemed to have such issues when a Stark was involved. Perhaps that's why Tony gripped onto Steve's shiny American coattails and abused Fury's newfound insistence to snark, "And yet you forgot to mention the part where you brought them both back from the dead."
Fury made a face approximating a grimace, but said nothing.
It was Bruce that spoke next, quiet, nervous, fingers twitching in a way that usually boded ill for everything around him. "Were you ever going to tell us?" he asked, slowly looking up from his hands to the monitor that spread out across the wall. "Or were you going to reprogram them? Make them forget us or convince them they served a higher purpose away from their team?"
"There's been no reprogramming," Barton insisted. He paused, fiddled with the water bottle in his hands, and amended that to, "Yet." He pushed the bottle to the side of the chair and ran his shaking fingers through his sweaty hair before he said, "Look, as far as I know, I woke up here in a shit-ton of pain except for the parts I couldn't feel at all. A couple of mystical, magical treatments and a fuck-load of even more pain that they are jokingly calling 'therapy' later, and I'm almost mobile again."
"And you don't think the 'magical machine' did anything to your head?" Tony asked, doubtingly.
Clint opened his mouth to respond, likely with more profanity, but Coulson beat him to it. "I wouldn't let them do that to him, not after..." He cleared his throat and, with the usual Coulson Calmness, amended whatever he was going to say to, "Why should they waste the resources before they knew if he was field-worthy again?"
"Not reassuring, sir," Barton sighed, but was, for the most part, ignored.
"And you?" Tony asked, gesturing towards the upright if slightly less than hale agent.
Coulson smirked in response, the action far more comforting than his words of, "I know far too much about far too many things for them to risk wiping that out."
"Ain't that the fucking truth," Fury muttered, which served to draw attention back to the screen. He either ignored the plethora of faces glaring at him, or was no longer bothered by them. "Agent Barton has several more sessions to undergo before he will be deemed fit to be released to his own recognizance to ignore further medical instruction. Seeing how you lot now know about said therapy and the location of this supposedly secure facility, I am assuming that one or more of you will wish to be present during these sessions to ensure we do not, what was the phrase, 'reprogram' him into a blind killer?"
"I'm already a killer, sir," Clint piped up, unapologetically. He downed he last of his water bottle and tossed it away from him, the plastic reverberating as it landed at the feet of his supposed therapist before he added, "It's just what side you're on that determines if I'm the good kind of killer or the bad kind."
"You're not helping, Barton," Coulson chided, but didn't actually seem upset by the words.
"Not if I can help it, sir," Clint grinned.
For a moment, it was easy to think everything was back to normal again. Tony had his Agent back and his pain in the ass archer back all in one fell swoop. But then he saw the cracks in the facade, the lines of exhaustion and slouch of shoulders, the tightness around the eyes that spoke of lingering pain as well as frustration at now long the recovery had taken so far, let alone how far there still was to go. And it wasn't just Barton who was hurting; Coulson looked like standing was as tiring as running a marathon, or maybe that was just from having to deal with the six of them against Fury again. Regardless, things were not fine and they were definitely far from normal.
Fury blathered on about this and that and some other thing, but Tony only listened with a fraction of his attention. The rest of his energy was spent figuring out how many doctors and nurses and PT specialists would be needed, and arranging for rooms for them all at the Tower because like hell was he keeping his friends in SHIELD's tender graces when they had already proved less than competent and less than forthcoming about the truth of this and a cadre of other matters.
It was Bruce that drew him from his thoughts though. He wasn't sure if Fury had still been rambling and covering his ass, but there had been noise and then silence, and his brain rewound to hear a single word: "When?"
"Excuse me, Doctor Banner?" Fury clarified. Tony caught the tell though, the subtle hint of surprise that he of all people talked back to him.
Bruce stood up a little straighter and pushed his glasses back up his nose and repeated, "When? When will be taking them home?"
Them, not him. Tony grinned. When the quietest, most docile member of their group talked back, you knew you were fucked.
"I can't walk yet, not on my own, not completely - you've seen that much," Clint sighed, open and honest and far too tired. "As much as I hate to admit it, I'm going to need a lot of therapy to get that far."
"So will we; you're just getting the sweaty type," Tony quipped because he couldn't stop himself from doing so. He then turned to the giant screen and the oddly quiet Director Fury and pointed out, "I believe our resident giant rage monster asked you a question. You might want to get on answering that since Big and Green isn't exactly known for his patience."
Four months, three days, and fourteen hours from that fateful mission, Clint found himself right back in the fray again. A monster down, a madman ranting, and henchmen coming at him from all sides.
"I need an exit strategy," he called, firing away.
"You have six to choose from," Coulson replied, voice tainted with the hint of static through the comm, the beep of the security feeds from the van where he was safely stationed.
Clint could hear the whine of Stark's repulsors and the roar of the Hulk making his presence known. He could feel the vibration of the pavement crumbling beneath the Big Guy's feet as he approached and the way the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end with the electric charge to the air that could only be Thor's presence nearby. A blur of red, white, and blue knocking six of the henchmen on their asses and the whizz of bullets making it an even dozen signaled Cap and Widow's locations. The security van screeched to a halt five stories below him and each and every person called out their positions and promises that they had his back.
He nocked another arrow and smiled at the truth of it all.
End.
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