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Avengers - In Visibility [2/2]
Title: In Visibility
Genre: Gen, Team
Rating: PG-13
Length: ~14,000 words
Warnings: Violence, Language
Synopsis: He was used to slinking in shadows, hidden from sight. This was just ridiculous, really.
Author's Notes: For the "invisibility" square for![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
hc_bingo. I'm still trying to figure out how it got this long.
Disclaimer: I do now own these characters and am making no profit from this.
Part One on LJ | Part One on Dreamwidth | Entire Story on AO3
There were enough agents milling about various sections of the tower on a given day that it was easy enough to slip away and sneak a ride without much of a fuss. He left a note for Tasha because he wasn't stupid, and made sure it was a hard copy placed some place that she'd actually have to look for it because, again, not stupid and she couldn't stop him if he was already gone.
Getting past the security protocols within SHIELD was scarily easy. Mind, he had experience doing most of it to start with, but he even walked right past an armed squad without a single one having the faintest idea that he was anywhere nearby. It was enough to boost his confidence so that he was tempted to do something insanely dumb. Of course, he had worked for a major spy organization long enough to trust absolutely nothing, and so he didn't do anything rash like take a suicide mission under false presences after a few guards were perhaps instructed to look the other way in order to convince him of a certain feeling of invincibility.
His meeting with Fury was scheduled for 1530 and so he was there at 1400 to snoop around. This meant that he happened to be in an ideal position to listen in on something he clearly was supposed to know nothing about. He followed the Director into the nifty little room where he held all his private conferences with the WSC. Shadowed figures hunched menacingly from dimly lit monitors and he rolled his eyes at the ridiculousness of it all. It took a hell of a lot of willpower to stay still and listen and in no way mess with the controls and hack to see exactly who was where and how they thought they were hidden.
He heard them detail their want of, surprisingly enough, him. They wanted him tracked and tagged and damn near dissected to find out how he turned invisible and how they could turn an army to the same. Fury pointed out the futility of tagging an invisible soldier as, eventually, someone would figure out the signal and leave the men and/or women both exposed and overconfident. He talked them into sending Clint on a milk run mission first, just to see how effective the cloaking truly was. They agreed, but with the caveat that the extraction team was not SHIELD standard, and that Clint was to physically and not just verbally report to them upon completion, at which time they would then subdue him to take him in for examination.
Fury agreed, and even managed to sound reluctant about doing so. The screens blinked off and he hit a button to cut his own feed. He stood there a moment, fists clenching and unclenching before he took a deep breath and stated to the room in general, "Barton, if you're where I think you are right now? Run."
Clint raised his eyebrows and said, "Yes, sir."
He had to give Fury credit for barely flinching. Instead, the Director unlocked and opened the door to the main hallway, taking his own sweet time to walk through it, giving Clint plenty of opportunity to exit. He did, but stuck close to Fury himself instead of making a dash for it. This proved prudent when said hallway was suddenly damned near crawling with armed guards, all of whom stepped back and stood at attention when they saw their very pissed off supposed leader stomp on by. "He's due in an hour. This is Barton who was practically born late. Be ready," he ordered.
They nodded as one and fanned out, blocking damn near every exit. Fury just continued to stomp around until he got to his very own office. Sitwell was waiting at the door and asked, "Want me to call Stark?"
"You want that headache, you go right ahead," Fury snorted. "He comes through that doorway and every guard will be on him, assuming he's there to defend Barton and preventing us from getting our hands on him. You want that press, because there will be press with that little AI of his, by all means be my guest."
Sitwell nodded and seemed to consider that for a moment before he asked, "Can I assume Barton is already in the building?"
Fury pushed open his door and leveled the senior agent a glare, which served to give Clint time to slip inside one of the most secure areas in the building. "We assume nothing," Fury eventually declared. "The Council claims they want to see him in action before they make any final decision. If Barton is brought in, we render him no aid - is that understood?"
Sitwell tilted his head slightly to the side and agreed, "Perfectly, sir."
Clint was touched, really. The phrase "render no aid" was a code very few knew, and essentially meant "help in any and every way possible that will not leave any evidence that can be traced back to us behind." Fury was worried. More concerning, Fury was worried about him.
Sitwell closed the door behind him and the Director stormed over to his desk and ripped open a drawer. An old model Gameboy appeared in his hand, which he immediately flicked over to the couch on the far side of the room. He continued to dig and toss things about and muttered under his breath, "Sound off, or so help me..."
Clint smiled, but knew better than to comment. Instead, he picked up the toy, pleased to see Tetris already loaded, and huddled down in the space between the couch and the wall on the off chance someone came in and chose to sit on top of him. He stretched out his leg to take at least some of the pressure off of his injury, and settled in for the long haul.
Two hours later, and Clint had moved on to a Pokemon game that had been dropped nearby, and Fury still worked steadily away at something probably below his pay grade, but at least wasn't above Clint's own. A knock on the door revealed Sitwell again, and Jasper was trying hard to look annoyed. "No sign of Barton yet, sir," he reported. An armed guard paused slightly outside the door, but eventually moved on.
"Considering he's currently invisible, I'd be more surprised if there was," Fury retorted. He leaned back in his chair and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Something scared him off. It could be a rumor or the damned Avengers talking him out of it. If he was here, we'd know it by now because the man would not be able to resist pulling pranks in his current state."
Sitwell smiled in a way that Clint took to mean he had found the surprise left in his desk drawer earlier. "I'm going for coffee, would you like one, sir?"
"This dreck?" Fury asked snidely, hefting a mug that had long ago gone cold.
"No way," Jasper agreed with a face that expressed his lack of love for the sludge usually served in the break room. "I missed lunch and am grabbing some from that place on Third. I'll pick you up a cup on the way back."
"It'll be much appreciated," Fury sighed. "I have a feeling it's going to be a long night."
Clint knew a cue when he was given one. He slid the games and controller under the couch for a plausible location to find them later, and walked silently up behind his newfound guard dog. The two men talked a little more, door still open and guards still blocking the way while trying to seem like they weren't listening in. A few more minutes of nothingness, and Sitwell left with a promise of premium caffeine and one invisible archer right on his heels.
There were a few close calls, with random people randomly finding a reason to swing an arm this way or that in both an obvious attempt to check the area around the wandering agent and in ways that Clint had to dodge more than once, but they escaped the building easily enough and soon were in line at Cafe Mode, the smell of dark roast filling the air. "You're very good at shadowing," Jasper said, apropos of nothing.
"Thank you, sir," their tail said, clearly beaming. "Want me to get this one for you?"
Clint slid a twenty into his friend and occasional handler's pocket, who then immediate removed it to say, "Nah, I'm good. Besides, the Director is picky about his lattes, just don't tell him I said that."
"Of course, sir," the man laughed in a way that Clint assumed meant it was going word for word into a report.
He stepped away then, not needing to be anywhere near Jasper while the asshole of a tail did the poking thing again and tried to cover it with expansive gestures and shifting feet. The smell of coffee was driving him nuts and he would have loved one for himself, but was not low enough to steal from a random person needing their fix on a late lunch break. That said, when the barista called tail-guy's low-fat fancy something-or-other order and he was still trying to suck up and take down Sitwell at the same time, Clint may have, possibly, added about five packets of sugar to it because, really, he was low enough for that.
He made it back to the tower about an hour later, only to find it crawling with agents. The subtlety was less than subtle, and rather pissed him off. The private elevator to the residential levels was clearly under watch, as were the doors to the stairwells. He ducked around the corner towards the public restrooms where, remarkably, no one thought to look, and whispered, "Come on, J-man, help a guy out?"
The sconce next to the door to the men's room flickered for the briefest of moments, and then righted itself and shone just fine. The emergency lighting near the floor then flashed in a quick one-two pattern that damn near pointed back to the main lobby. Clint got with the program and went back out to face the crowds. He dodged two agents and headed towards the elevators on a hunch, not at all surprised to see the doors to the private one open and spit out one Captain Steve Rogers.
There was no way he could make it in time, not without the doors hanging open suspiciously while they had already attracted the attention of half the floor, but it turned out not to matter. Steve snapped his fingers and turned in a quick circle before he headed right back where he came from.
"Something wrong, Cap?" Reynolds asked, clearly suspecting something was up.
"Cell phone," Steve sighed. "I've been told I'm not allowed to go anywhere without it." He shrugged apologetically, all apple pie and honesty and totally playing up his image and every rumor about him, a point driven home when he even went so far as to add, "Some day I'll get used to carrying that dang thing around."
He stepped back into the elevator, and Clint slid right in with him. The doors slid shut and Steve lost the dopey smile and snapped, "Please say you're in here, Barton."
"I'm here and whole, unlike how the WSC wants me," he promised.
Steve let out a slow breath and seemed to actually slouch for a moment. "I'm not going to lecture you because there's a line waiting upstairs to do just that. I will tell you that we were all worried and that I expect to be filled in about your little adventure when I return," he warned.
"Return?" Clint asked, confused.
The doors opened to reveal a crowd of teammates as predicted, one of which held out the missing cell phone. "He's all yours," Steve announced. He took the phone and stepped back into the elevator. "I'm going for a run, anything anyone needs?"
"Just for you to know you're going to be followed," Natasha replied.
"Kind of figured that," Steve shrugged. His white tee shirt slid up and down with the action, and Clint finally noticed that his friend was dressed in his usual exercise gear, or at least close enough to pass a rough inspection.
"And for you to know you can't kick any of their asses based on principle," Tony added while Rogers made no move to pocket the phone. He probably planned on keeping it readily visible when he returned to the masses downstairs.
Steve frowned, complete with a hint of a mock pout, which told Clint that they had spent far too much time together if the team had already corrupted an American icon. He turned to leave and Natasha nodded to Thor and Clint cursed himself for not seeing it coming when the big guy latched on to his arm with his usual unbreakable grasp and said with absolutely no sympathy, "My apologies, but we must ensure you do not venture off again."
Natasha reached out and the back of her hand smacked against Clint's shoulder before she figured out exactly where he was. Her hand darted upwards and her fingers latched on to his chin, yanking it to the side to face her as she leaned close and threatened, "Do not do that again." Her gaze was still five degrees off of where it should be but, considering she was apparently looking into nothingness, still unnerving in its accuracy.
"Hey, I figured out several important pieces of data with this little adventure," he protested.
"Such as?" Bruce prompted. Clint knew he was in trouble when Mr. Mellow looked pissed.
"Sitwell is an excellent liar, Fury still has the Gameboy I gave him for Christmas like six years ago, and the World Security Council wants to carve me up like a lab rat," he recited. He considered it an accomplishment that he was able to get any words out at all the way Nat still held him in place, fingertips carving into his skin.
Tony leaned back against the nearby counter and mused, "We figured out some stuff while you were out too, wanna know what?" He didn't wait for a response before he ticked off on his fingers, "One, you're an asshole. Two, the field around you is shrinking. Three, the World Security Council wants to carve you up like a lab rat, or possibly a frog because I doubt they've made it past sixth grade Biology, let's be honest here."
Clint took the first as his due, and the third as the obvious, but latched on to the second and asked, "Shrinking?"
"We can see Natasha's arm up to almost her wrist," Bruce explained.
"Whereas before there was a good eighteen to twenty inches around you, though it could still be different with the touching versus not touching versus living versus inorganic aspects," Tony continued. He motioned to Natasha and said, "I know you like manhandling him, but could you release him so we can do a visual check?"
She released him after a brief, warning squeeze, and took several slow steps back. The way she swore, low and harsh and not in English, was telling enough as to her mindset as far as Clint was concerned.
There were tests, plural, all thankfully noninvasive, that followed. Stark and his machines ran scan after scan and various objects of various makeups were either tossed or handed to him. He took maybe a little too much pleasure in tossing them back, especially when none of the people gathered knew who he was going to aim until it was already flying at them. The most worrisome of the findings was that, when held outstretched in proper form, the tips of his bow were already visible. Well, that, and Tony wasn't sure if the fatigue was related to the injury or a biology issue or not.
"Hey, here's an idea," Clint yawned after what he felt was a reasonable time of playing test monkey. "How about I finally fucking eat because I've had nothing since lunch and then I take a nap or sleep or something to see if I feel any better?"
They called Steve back for dinner. Clint really wanted pizza but they weren't sure that they could trust any delivery not to be switched either with or by an agent not loyal to Fury, and no one wanted to have to test every piece before digging in. Bruce made something involving a lot of chopped vegetables and a decent amount of meat considering who he would be feeding. Tasha made a huge pot of couscous to go along with it, and Clint reluctantly admitted it was good as he finished his third bowl.
He knew sleeping alone in his own bed was not going to happen after the stunt he pulled, but was lucky enough to have only Natasha curl up next to him and Thor sit on the couch and watch bad cartoons with the sound turned low. He couldn't quite get comfortable no matter how much he tried, and was in no way surprised when she sat up and huffed, "Just how bad is the leg anyway."
"It's not like I'm going to lose it or anything," he answered less than straightforwardly and possibly more than a little petulantly.
She got up and shuffled over to his bathroom, rummaged around, and came back with a glass of water and some painkillers. When he didn't immediately reach for them, she said, "Don't be a baby and don't play the poor me routine. Take the damned drugs and get some sleep."
He did as directed because he knew better than to fight her, even if she couldn't actually see him to hold him down and force them down his throat this time. "I'd kinda like to actually be conscious for my last few hours before the field collapses and eats away at my skin the way it ate away at Tony's suit," he grumbled.
"Two things," Tasha said as she settled back down beside him. "First, I'd prefer not to have to listen to you whine and lie and pretend you're fine when you're obviously not. Second, the field collapsing has Stark completely confused because it's giving off exactly none of the radiation his suit did when it disintegrated."
"Well, that's worrisome," he mused. He punched his pillow into place while he laid down to thing about that.
"Or possibly helpful," she corrected. Her hand found his arm and her fingers curled lightly around his bicep, both keeping him in place and letting him know she was there. "This could be something completely different than what hit the suit or, like he said, have a completely different effect on organic versus inorganic material. As it stands, you haven't melted or burned away yet, and that can only be a good thing, right?"
He nodded even though he knew she couldn't see him, appreciating her version of a pep talk even though it wasn't exactly reassuring. If it wasn't the same thing, then what was it? If it was, what would it do to his clothing or any gear around him when it shrank further? And what would that in turn do to any skin it happened to be touching at the time? He thought about these and more troubling thoughts as he slowly drifted off to the sounds of Thor's chortling at Tom and Jerry and what he was definitely not dumb enough to call Natasha's snores, the painkillers of course being more than painkillers because Tasha was just as devious as he was, if not more.
He woke up the next morning not because the sun was coming in or Thor was really liking Sponge Bob, but because the annoying red emergency lights were flashing and JARVIS was calmly and efficiently telling them to get their asses out of bed. He really wished Tasha hadn't forced the sleeping issue because he still felt a little lethargic, but it wasn't enough to really slow him down when there was an actual emergency at hand, so he knew better than to bitch about it.
"What's up, J?" he asked as he rolled out of bed and found his stuff. Nat had already done the same, both giving him room and grabbing for the spare gear she stored in one of the closets.
"The tower has been infiltrated," the AI said crisply, clearly displeased. "The assailants have been confined to the lower levels, but are attempting to work their way to the residential suits."
"WSC?" Natasha asked at the same time he did.
"I believe not as the assailants targeted the questionable agents prior to attempting to expand their attack."
"Visual," she demanded, turning to the wall that doubled as a display when needed or wanted. "Let's see what we're dealing with."
"I am unable to comply at this time," JARVIS said apologetically. "Had my sensors not recently been calibrated to recognize Master Barton, I would have been unable to detect them at all. I can show you the aftermath, and the current locations of the heat signatures, but nothing more."
"Well, that's problematic," Clint said unnecessarily. "Tell Stark to get the suit, Thor and I will investigate," he ordered.
"I'm coming with," Natasha interjected.
"You can't see them," he protested. He reached for his bow and she handed him his quiver even as they continued to bicker.
"And you can?" she countered. Two more guns were tucked about her person and he opened a drawer so she could help herself to some of his many blades.
He paused only slightly at that. "I can see myself, which stands to reason I can see whatever spectrum they're in. If I can't, that means they can't see me either. Thor and Stark can call the shots and I can assist."
A glare was her only response to that. She led the way out the door to where Thor was waiting. "Call out the visuals and don't let this idiot get killed," she ordered.
Thor was wise enough a man not to try to stop her, but he did warn, "If the enemy has taken the state of our friend, there may be an additional danger to yourself."
She checked her gear one last time and shrugged, "Tell me something I don't know."
"The Lady Sif once bested Fandral in such a way that he had the armorer create her a matching sword to commemorate the event," Thor replied with a hint of a smile.
That smile was matched by Natasha and Clint felt the message was clear: don't underestimate her. Ever. And that went for Sif as well.
They took the elevator because they figured they were screwed enough anyway and they had already ordered the stairwells locked down as far as they could. The doors opened and Nat didn't even have to be told to duck as Thor swung outward and there was the resounding sound of a body bouncing off the opposite wall. Clint took a moment to appreciate two things: one was how well the team knew each other, and the other was that he could see the fuckers and attack.
He fired off shot after shot before they even knew what hit them. One lunged at Natasha who grappled with him while she shouted, "Get the others, I at least know where this one is."
It didn't take long for the roughly dozen hooded men to realize Clint could see them which, really, if they were already invisible he felt the ninja gear was a bit overkill. Needless to say, he soon became a primary target. Thor and Iron Man did what they could, but they were working with less than optimal visuals. Cap and Banner stayed up top; Banner because they did not need Hulk-sized damage to the tower, and Cap to make sure they did not receive Hulk-sized damage to the tower when Bruce inevitably lost it anyway.
Clint dodged and ducked and shot and hit and unfortunately took a few hits of his own. He didn't know if it was from the interaction of whatever fields were around each of them or not, but there was the sensation of a sort of electrical charge every time one landed. Not extreme, and more like an annoying static discharge than anything else; definitely not debilitating in any way despite its distraction. Eventually, JARVIS announced, "The remainder of the assailants have fled."
"Remainder? How many are there?" Clint panted. He leaned against a wall to try to catch his breath before he realized a scrape down his forearm meant he was going to leave a mark that would need an explanation. He scrubbed it with the bottom of the tee shirt he wore and hoped any remaining smears would be attributed to the bad guys.
"Eighteen men remained," JARVIS replied. "Of concern, agents on the entry level seem to have cornered one, and Sir is following the others aerially to confirm their point of origin."
"I've got the loser downstairs before the WSC tries to replicate this," Clint sighed. With luck, they would think it was one of the attackers freeing their cohort versus a visible Avenger breaking them out. "Try to contain these guys until we can figure out what to do with them."
It turned out that the figuring was remarkably easy, as in scarily so. They confined them all to a holding room after stripping them of weapons and cuffing them in place. Tony was already back and stripped out of the suit by the time the first unconscious body turned visible, and Clint was surreptitiously nursing an ice pack by the time the next three faded into sight.
They kept the audio on within the cell, and listened in as one complained that they should have used a higher dose and another pointed out that it wouldn't have made any difference because they were caught anyway.
"So this?" Clint prompted.
"Was intentional, yes," Tony confirmed. He sipped from a tumbler of amber liquid and asked, "So, like, after that last mission - not the one with the lasers but the one before that - did you happen to skulk off? And take the route on Sixth past that new fancy private gym?"
"A gym that's a cover for an illegal operation?" Steve guessed.
"The one and the same," Tony confirmed. "I wasn't able to get any real readings, but our little assailants both match the energy readings I've been getting from Errol here, and they all neatly filed in through a back entrance and then disappeared behind some shielding that blurred anything useful from that point on."
"They are going to report that we have their men," Steve pointed out.
"They are going to report that Barton can see them," Natasha said instead.
Clint knew where she was going with that, and didn't like it. She would try to get him off any sort of infiltration team just the way he had tried to get her off of the counterattack team earlier. They would know to target him first, and had already seen how Stark was iffy with his own attacks, which meant they would only have to deal with Thor, who was a sizable obstacle, but not if they could separate and do as much damage as possible before he came into play. It also meant that they may try to refine whatever technique they were using on their men to eliminate the weaknesses they had just exploited.
"If we go now, we have a chance at stopping them before they upgrade," he said.
"We'd be going in blind, pun not intended," Steve reasoned. He shook his head. "We don't know anything about the facility, how many people it holds, or what equipment they have. We could be outmanned and outgunned and completely vulnerable."
Thankfully, Thor at least was on Clint's side. "They attacked with limited weaponry, relying upon their stealth. It is unlikely they have developed additional methods when their focus was on infiltration. Perhaps they know the limits to the range of their cloaking abilities, or that such additional weaponry would leave them exposed."
"We're talking about their potential base of operations here though," Natasha argued. "SHIELD may send a spy in for a covert op, but would still be able to neutralize a threat outright if needed." She crossed her arms in front if her, one of the few outward tells of her aggravation with the current situation. Limited intel on a limited timeline was never a good thing to work with. Mix that with all the other crap that was going on in the background, and Clint was surprised she wasn't methodically cleaning her knives by now and daring someone to become a target for her.
Tony pulled up a schematic of what he had been able to see of the building in question. He also pulled up the original blueprints and any pictures of the area at the time of construction to see if there were hints of additional levels or even rooms hidden outright. Given that it was built downtown, where space was a premium and cost was exorbitant, it at least appeared that there was nothing hidden outward as the existing buildings on either side were still standing and in use by their original owners, but the possibility of hidden levels was troublesome.
Something keyed a memory in Clint's mind and he said, "Oh, hey, I remember that place..."
Stark was still scrolling through the various images and barely paused to point out that they had a fully equipped gym right here in the tower, with state of the art facilities and many things that were not and should not be made available to the public. Tasha, who knew him possibly better than anyone else gathered around the table, asked, "Which hole in the wall food place is near by?"
"Petey's Calzones," Clint replied, and tried not to lick his lips in memory of their awesome sauce. Then again, the only one who would have been able to see him was Thor who likely would have agreed had he tried such a creation, so he had no idea why he held himself back. "Except he wasn't there. I overheard Junior from Junior's Dogs say that he had a heart attack about two weeks back and they closed up shop while he recovered."
Bruce's head snapped up at that. "Why do I have a feeling that 'Petey' didn't just have issues with his cholesterol?" he asked, almost resignedly.
Tony set a hack into private medical records as if it were nothing, which it probably was for him. He then ran and reran the energy readings for a three block radius of the suspected stronghold. Bruce, meanwhile, simply searched for news articles on Petey's possible return to see if there was anything public about his condition. It was him who hit paydirt first.
"Pietro Algonza is suspected to make a full recovery once his new pacemaker is fitted," he summarized the findings. "Of note, his family has no record of his whereabouts for forty-eight hours prior to the attack and he claims he never left and never will as his shop is his life. His family hopes any residual confusion is temporary and a result of the illness and promises it will in no way change how the business is run." He took off his glasses and stared roughly in Clint's direction pointedly, the implications speaking for themselves.
"Petey got hit, didn't he?" Clint sighed.
Stark still had half a dozen screens lit and scrolling information, but paused long enough to say, "Good news is that it doesn't appear what hit the suit is what hit you. Better news is that it looks like it's survivable. Not so good news is the heart attack part of it."
"So I didn't get hit by Energy Weapon Number One, I got hit by Energy Weapon Number Two?" Clint confirmed.
Tony nodded. "What can I say? Manhattan is full of assholes. Though it looks like they improved the shielding and the process as a whole since then to prevent accidental exposure of others, so there's that."
Steve held up a finger, always a sign he was going to interrupt with something important and possibly less than fun. "Are we ignoring the part where Petey nearly died from this?"
"Yes, yes we are," Clint said, hoping his tone did the whole stop the argument before it started thing but knowing he was never that lucky. "I'm not an eighty year old man and we have a lead and a chance to attack now. We need to take it before we lose the lead and any possible advantage we might have." He slammed the ice pack down to make his point, then regretted it when he remembered no one other than Thor really knew he had one in the first place.
"Because taking an injured, invisible, and possible tachycardiac agent into a potential combat situation is always the best choice," Tasha said dryly.
Bruce, of course, pointed out, "Pietro wasn't eighty, he was more like forty-five..."
"The guys we caught-" Clint started, ignoring Bruce's panache for the facts, but was cut off.
"The guys we caught were already unconscious when the effects wore off, and still flinched like it hurt like hell," Tony said, almost even smoothly for him. He snapped his fingers and added, "Sit down before I have JARVIS lock the place down on you."
Clint reluctantly sank back into his chair, but didn't let go of his bow.
"How did you know?" Bruce asked.
"Because it's Barton and if there's a dumb way of doing something, that's going to be his preferred plan of attack," Stark said. He rolled his eyes and Clint thought that, maybe, it was telling that he didn't even have a counter-argument to that. Instead, he listened while Tony continued, "There's a smarter way and it won't take much longer. Give me twenty more minutes and the fabrication units should have modified goggles for those of you who are not Iron Man, a god, or a moron. We hit the place, take down the bad guys, and save their tech and records in hopes of keeping Barton's ticker ticking so that we can bitch at him for his stupidity and point out that none of this would have happened to him if he had just joined the press conference with the rest of us."
"And then we wipe any and all records before the WSC can attempt to replicate the project," Steve added. It wasn't a suggestion and nobody treated it as such. Also, nobody objected to his addition, likely because they had all been thinking it and just figured they'd have to go about it covertly and not blatantly tell the others they were going to do it.
The twenty minute wait was more than enough time for SHIELD agents to storm the bottom of the tower and block the main entrances while they cared for their fallen comrades that never should have been there in the first place. This meant that the team used the secondary exits and damn near walked right past the very people who would have tried to stop them, had they been able to see through a single wall.
"You look funny with glasses," Clint said apropos of nothing while they waited for the signal to attack.
They were less glasses and more slightly colorized goggles with all sorts of hidden tech involved and he could see one elegantly curved eyebrow when Natasha raised it and countered, "And you look funny as a vibrating heat signature that's clearly favoring his left side."
He scowled, and almost wished she could see it. She had assigned herself to his team or, more specifically, him. On the off chance the goggles worked less than perfect, they were each teamed up with someone who could at least shout a warning for them to get the hell out of there. Tony had Steve, Thor had Bruce who insisted on coming from a medical standpoint, and he had her. It was like the buddy system, but with artillery and a crap ton of skill capable of a crap ton of violence.
It turned out that the signal was a lot less covert than originally anticipated and a lot more of Stark yelling, "Incoming!" when they were spotted pretty much as soon as they got next to the building.
Clint put himself in front of Nat, not because he didn't trust Stark's tech, but more because he had the chance to take out threats before they got close enough to need to more directly engage them. She was less than pleased with the scenario, to say the least. He had managed four shots before she tossed him down with a warning of, "Duck!" followed with a reminder of, "If you can see them, they can see you."
It was kind of odd, really, after so many days of people misjudging where he was and what he was doing, for someone to be able to spot his tell and see his obvious wounds and go after those as weak points. They were unsuccessful, of course, because Clint was actually trained and had had far worse in the past, but it was enough to keep him on his toes if nothing else.
One of the ninja wannabes managed to actually land a punch and the weird static discharge hit again, only this time the feeling did not immediately dissipate. Of course, that could have been related to the fact that he had grabbed the guy, spun him around, and held him up against a wall long enough to disable him - or, in other words, had prolonged contact with him. Whatever the reason, Clint resisted the urge to twitch even while he watched the guy collapse to the floor and convulse for thankfully only about ten seconds before his body remembered it was unconscious and it wasn't worth the effort.
He whipped around when he heard a far too familiar grunt, and saw Natasha get knocked from behind while she dealt with one of the guys in front of her. Possibly more troubling than the way her eyes flickered and rolled as she hit the floor was the way the men themselves flickered.
His skin felt as though it was on fire, every nerve ending lit up at once and he needed to consciously both force his muscles into action and force himself not to hurl. The men were fading fast and with the weird lights and shadows of the building he was going to lose them quickly, too quick to be able to stop them if he didn't do something now. So he shot one so that he'd at least leave a blood trail, and whacked the other with his bow far enough back from Nat to steal her glasses with a huffed, "Sorry, but apparently I need these now," before his world was filled with the weird technicolor of heat signatures.
She groaned in response which at least meant she was on her way to consciousness already if she had actually fully left at all, but he didn't have time to check on her fully as the guy he hit was both back and had brought a friend. The guy he hit was shaking his hands and cracking his neck like he felt the charge as well, but his friend had no such limitations and outright attacked. At least both men still had that whole ninja-obsession thing going on, and their dark clothing served as a contrast against the technicolor for it to show up all nice and bright like for however long it lasted.
Clint blocked a blade with his bow and returned it to its owner with interest, estimating where it would end up based upon its launch point more than anything else. He then had to toss said bow to the side when the sharpened edge nicked the string enough for him to know he was screwed and would get one shot, maybe, before it snapped completely and that thing hurt when the alloy tore through your skin. The bullet was harder to block, though the barrel of the gun now glowed bright with the heat of the shot and he could track that easier as well. This was good as the black fabric was already turning to an opaque gray and he was cursing the timing of the change back even as his mind assumed the interactions of the fields must have been making the difference.
That in mind, he decided to use the weapon he currently at his disposal that the rest of his team did not and charged the one that was not currently bleeding out on the floor. He wrestled the gun away, pointing the barrel outward to avoid a pointblank shot to the chest when his opponent managed to get his finger on the trigger and then immediately tried for a sleeper hold. Even if the hold itself wasn't successful in knocking the asshole out, it should have been enough to short out the field around the guy and make him at least partially visible again. The downside of this was, of course, that it hurt like a son of a bitch to do so, and Clint tried to guide his seizing muscles into at least tightening the hold versus giving it up completely.
He finally gave up with a strangled yell, collapsing to the floor while the man still struggled to suck in a single gurgled breath. He could see him though, in that strange sort of semi-phased kind of way. This was good as he had lost the glasses around the time he dodged a broken nose, so now he could watch as the man flailed and his muscles betrayed him even as Clint's own did the same.
He'd say he couldn't move, but that wouldn't be accurate. He was moving, arms shaking and legs kicking fitfully, just not in a coherent manner or one that was in any way under his control. He had to admit it rather scared the crap out of him - his teeth ground together and his muscles tightened enough that he feared his bones would break beneath them and his heart wasn't pounding but he figured that was because it was doing its damnedest to try to curl in on itself and give up the ghost.
He heard his name and forced his head to turn to the side to see Natasha use one of her many knives to stab the idiot he shot before he could strangle her, and then flip over and drive that same blade into the one Clint had thought was out for the count but was actually only pausing to rearm himself. It was doubtful the shot would have hit its target the way the guy was still convulsing, but he would have tried really hard and possibly managed to either wing him or hit someone with the ricochet. Clint knew his luck enough to know that someone would probably have been him.
Natasha crawled over to him now, even as she called for medical assistance. She slid her hand beneath his skull, providing a cushion between the bone and the concrete floor, but in no other way tried to restrain him, her other hand occupied with weaponry anyway. Instead, she looked at him, as in really looked at him, met his eyes and everything before she zeroed in on each and every wound he could no longer hide, and sighed, "Idiot."
He figured that was fair and also figured that, given the sounds coming from the comm he still wore, the worst of the fight was over, at least until the WSC found them and fucked it all up again. Tasha was there though, and Cap was helping Stark both download and destroy the records on how the whole invisibility thing was done in the first place, and Hulk and Thor were just destroying things based on principle at this point. He closed his eyes to speed up the way his vision was darkening around the edges anyway, and gave in to the overwhelming urge to let go of consciousness, knowing he was in the safest hands he could be.
Epilogue
Recovery sucked. He wasn't exactly bedridden, but he wasn't exactly extremely mobile either. There wasn't exactly a treatment because there wasn't exactly a case just like his, even in the files and records Stark stole. So he had to deal with each annoyance as it came up, knowing the damned AI was filing away everything he wasn't saying into the appropriate database to be picked at and probably yelled at about at a later date.
Petey had gotten hit with one of the prototypes while the bad guys were still in the testing stage and before they had fully shielded the facility. It wasn't quite a raw energy blast, and they had cleaned it up quite a bit by the time Clint had been hit with a stray happenstance of his own, which explained why his symptoms weren't quite in the "needs a pacemaker" range. The attackers, the ninja wannabes, had both a pre-treatment and a far more refined delivery system, as well as knew approximately how long the effects would last for each exposure. They suffered minor discomfort from the field dissipating each time, but nothing like what Clint or Pietro had gone through, and nothing like what happened when Clint's rogue field came in contact with their controlled own and shorted the whole thing to bits.
Stark was, of course, poking at the process with a giant stick to see what he could get out of it. Stark was, of course, also vehemently denying having any evidence whatsoever as to what had happened, and was verbally lamenting the baddies' stupidity and strongly implying that it was the energy fields that they had created themselves that had backfired and destroyed all the data and a fair portion of the facility itself. It was remarkable how focused the damage was, if one knew what to look for.
Thankfully, the WSC were idiots and did not.
Meanwhile, Clint still tired easily and randomly felt like his fingertips and toes were being stabbed with pins and needles and randomly felt like his heart wanted to crap out and give up the ghost. These detriments were, in truth, a godsend however. The WSC saw them as a liability, not enough to make their interest in the process wane, but enough that they settled for a single vial of his blood versus whatever the hell they were doing to those exposed to the more refined process. His guess was that they would still try to duplicate what he had been capable of, even knowing the cost and even knowing that the Avengers and anything Stark-related had a way around it, for single usage missions. The possibility of something better and bigger and shinier meant that he was pushed to the side like a broken toy for the moment though and he really could not have lucked out any more than he had.
For now at least, he played bad video games and watched worse movies and ate the heart-healthy crap Bruce cooked up for him while he snuck the junk food from everyone else. His bow was returned to him restrung and clean even though he wasn't sure he was up to using it quite yet, and he poked at a tablet to design prototypes of new and ridiculous arrowheads that Tony would either laugh outright at or get a speculative look in his eyes over. At night Thor would come by for illicit booze and chocolate, and in the morning he would wake to Natasha's tousled curls and bland face as she would shrug and deadpan, "Just checking."
After his first mission upon his return to the field, he readily walked up to the flashing lights and cameras and watched more than a single teammate quirk a relieved smile in return. When they returned to the tower, he stripped down and washed up and joined the others where they just happened to order his favorite takeout for the victory feast. He felt five sets of eyes upon him while he used his chopsticks to steal an egg roll, and knew all was right in his crazy little corner of the world.
End.
Feedback is always welcomed.
Genre: Gen, Team
Rating: PG-13
Length: ~14,000 words
Warnings: Violence, Language
Synopsis: He was used to slinking in shadows, hidden from sight. This was just ridiculous, really.
Author's Notes: For the "invisibility" square for
hc_bingo. I'm still trying to figure out how it got this long.Disclaimer: I do now own these characters and am making no profit from this.
Part One on LJ | Part One on Dreamwidth | Entire Story on AO3
There were enough agents milling about various sections of the tower on a given day that it was easy enough to slip away and sneak a ride without much of a fuss. He left a note for Tasha because he wasn't stupid, and made sure it was a hard copy placed some place that she'd actually have to look for it because, again, not stupid and she couldn't stop him if he was already gone.
Getting past the security protocols within SHIELD was scarily easy. Mind, he had experience doing most of it to start with, but he even walked right past an armed squad without a single one having the faintest idea that he was anywhere nearby. It was enough to boost his confidence so that he was tempted to do something insanely dumb. Of course, he had worked for a major spy organization long enough to trust absolutely nothing, and so he didn't do anything rash like take a suicide mission under false presences after a few guards were perhaps instructed to look the other way in order to convince him of a certain feeling of invincibility.
His meeting with Fury was scheduled for 1530 and so he was there at 1400 to snoop around. This meant that he happened to be in an ideal position to listen in on something he clearly was supposed to know nothing about. He followed the Director into the nifty little room where he held all his private conferences with the WSC. Shadowed figures hunched menacingly from dimly lit monitors and he rolled his eyes at the ridiculousness of it all. It took a hell of a lot of willpower to stay still and listen and in no way mess with the controls and hack to see exactly who was where and how they thought they were hidden.
He heard them detail their want of, surprisingly enough, him. They wanted him tracked and tagged and damn near dissected to find out how he turned invisible and how they could turn an army to the same. Fury pointed out the futility of tagging an invisible soldier as, eventually, someone would figure out the signal and leave the men and/or women both exposed and overconfident. He talked them into sending Clint on a milk run mission first, just to see how effective the cloaking truly was. They agreed, but with the caveat that the extraction team was not SHIELD standard, and that Clint was to physically and not just verbally report to them upon completion, at which time they would then subdue him to take him in for examination.
Fury agreed, and even managed to sound reluctant about doing so. The screens blinked off and he hit a button to cut his own feed. He stood there a moment, fists clenching and unclenching before he took a deep breath and stated to the room in general, "Barton, if you're where I think you are right now? Run."
Clint raised his eyebrows and said, "Yes, sir."
He had to give Fury credit for barely flinching. Instead, the Director unlocked and opened the door to the main hallway, taking his own sweet time to walk through it, giving Clint plenty of opportunity to exit. He did, but stuck close to Fury himself instead of making a dash for it. This proved prudent when said hallway was suddenly damned near crawling with armed guards, all of whom stepped back and stood at attention when they saw their very pissed off supposed leader stomp on by. "He's due in an hour. This is Barton who was practically born late. Be ready," he ordered.
They nodded as one and fanned out, blocking damn near every exit. Fury just continued to stomp around until he got to his very own office. Sitwell was waiting at the door and asked, "Want me to call Stark?"
"You want that headache, you go right ahead," Fury snorted. "He comes through that doorway and every guard will be on him, assuming he's there to defend Barton and preventing us from getting our hands on him. You want that press, because there will be press with that little AI of his, by all means be my guest."
Sitwell nodded and seemed to consider that for a moment before he asked, "Can I assume Barton is already in the building?"
Fury pushed open his door and leveled the senior agent a glare, which served to give Clint time to slip inside one of the most secure areas in the building. "We assume nothing," Fury eventually declared. "The Council claims they want to see him in action before they make any final decision. If Barton is brought in, we render him no aid - is that understood?"
Sitwell tilted his head slightly to the side and agreed, "Perfectly, sir."
Clint was touched, really. The phrase "render no aid" was a code very few knew, and essentially meant "help in any and every way possible that will not leave any evidence that can be traced back to us behind." Fury was worried. More concerning, Fury was worried about him.
Sitwell closed the door behind him and the Director stormed over to his desk and ripped open a drawer. An old model Gameboy appeared in his hand, which he immediately flicked over to the couch on the far side of the room. He continued to dig and toss things about and muttered under his breath, "Sound off, or so help me..."
Clint smiled, but knew better than to comment. Instead, he picked up the toy, pleased to see Tetris already loaded, and huddled down in the space between the couch and the wall on the off chance someone came in and chose to sit on top of him. He stretched out his leg to take at least some of the pressure off of his injury, and settled in for the long haul.
Two hours later, and Clint had moved on to a Pokemon game that had been dropped nearby, and Fury still worked steadily away at something probably below his pay grade, but at least wasn't above Clint's own. A knock on the door revealed Sitwell again, and Jasper was trying hard to look annoyed. "No sign of Barton yet, sir," he reported. An armed guard paused slightly outside the door, but eventually moved on.
"Considering he's currently invisible, I'd be more surprised if there was," Fury retorted. He leaned back in his chair and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Something scared him off. It could be a rumor or the damned Avengers talking him out of it. If he was here, we'd know it by now because the man would not be able to resist pulling pranks in his current state."
Sitwell smiled in a way that Clint took to mean he had found the surprise left in his desk drawer earlier. "I'm going for coffee, would you like one, sir?"
"This dreck?" Fury asked snidely, hefting a mug that had long ago gone cold.
"No way," Jasper agreed with a face that expressed his lack of love for the sludge usually served in the break room. "I missed lunch and am grabbing some from that place on Third. I'll pick you up a cup on the way back."
"It'll be much appreciated," Fury sighed. "I have a feeling it's going to be a long night."
Clint knew a cue when he was given one. He slid the games and controller under the couch for a plausible location to find them later, and walked silently up behind his newfound guard dog. The two men talked a little more, door still open and guards still blocking the way while trying to seem like they weren't listening in. A few more minutes of nothingness, and Sitwell left with a promise of premium caffeine and one invisible archer right on his heels.
There were a few close calls, with random people randomly finding a reason to swing an arm this way or that in both an obvious attempt to check the area around the wandering agent and in ways that Clint had to dodge more than once, but they escaped the building easily enough and soon were in line at Cafe Mode, the smell of dark roast filling the air. "You're very good at shadowing," Jasper said, apropos of nothing.
"Thank you, sir," their tail said, clearly beaming. "Want me to get this one for you?"
Clint slid a twenty into his friend and occasional handler's pocket, who then immediate removed it to say, "Nah, I'm good. Besides, the Director is picky about his lattes, just don't tell him I said that."
"Of course, sir," the man laughed in a way that Clint assumed meant it was going word for word into a report.
He stepped away then, not needing to be anywhere near Jasper while the asshole of a tail did the poking thing again and tried to cover it with expansive gestures and shifting feet. The smell of coffee was driving him nuts and he would have loved one for himself, but was not low enough to steal from a random person needing their fix on a late lunch break. That said, when the barista called tail-guy's low-fat fancy something-or-other order and he was still trying to suck up and take down Sitwell at the same time, Clint may have, possibly, added about five packets of sugar to it because, really, he was low enough for that.
He made it back to the tower about an hour later, only to find it crawling with agents. The subtlety was less than subtle, and rather pissed him off. The private elevator to the residential levels was clearly under watch, as were the doors to the stairwells. He ducked around the corner towards the public restrooms where, remarkably, no one thought to look, and whispered, "Come on, J-man, help a guy out?"
The sconce next to the door to the men's room flickered for the briefest of moments, and then righted itself and shone just fine. The emergency lighting near the floor then flashed in a quick one-two pattern that damn near pointed back to the main lobby. Clint got with the program and went back out to face the crowds. He dodged two agents and headed towards the elevators on a hunch, not at all surprised to see the doors to the private one open and spit out one Captain Steve Rogers.
There was no way he could make it in time, not without the doors hanging open suspiciously while they had already attracted the attention of half the floor, but it turned out not to matter. Steve snapped his fingers and turned in a quick circle before he headed right back where he came from.
"Something wrong, Cap?" Reynolds asked, clearly suspecting something was up.
"Cell phone," Steve sighed. "I've been told I'm not allowed to go anywhere without it." He shrugged apologetically, all apple pie and honesty and totally playing up his image and every rumor about him, a point driven home when he even went so far as to add, "Some day I'll get used to carrying that dang thing around."
He stepped back into the elevator, and Clint slid right in with him. The doors slid shut and Steve lost the dopey smile and snapped, "Please say you're in here, Barton."
"I'm here and whole, unlike how the WSC wants me," he promised.
Steve let out a slow breath and seemed to actually slouch for a moment. "I'm not going to lecture you because there's a line waiting upstairs to do just that. I will tell you that we were all worried and that I expect to be filled in about your little adventure when I return," he warned.
"Return?" Clint asked, confused.
The doors opened to reveal a crowd of teammates as predicted, one of which held out the missing cell phone. "He's all yours," Steve announced. He took the phone and stepped back into the elevator. "I'm going for a run, anything anyone needs?"
"Just for you to know you're going to be followed," Natasha replied.
"Kind of figured that," Steve shrugged. His white tee shirt slid up and down with the action, and Clint finally noticed that his friend was dressed in his usual exercise gear, or at least close enough to pass a rough inspection.
"And for you to know you can't kick any of their asses based on principle," Tony added while Rogers made no move to pocket the phone. He probably planned on keeping it readily visible when he returned to the masses downstairs.
Steve frowned, complete with a hint of a mock pout, which told Clint that they had spent far too much time together if the team had already corrupted an American icon. He turned to leave and Natasha nodded to Thor and Clint cursed himself for not seeing it coming when the big guy latched on to his arm with his usual unbreakable grasp and said with absolutely no sympathy, "My apologies, but we must ensure you do not venture off again."
Natasha reached out and the back of her hand smacked against Clint's shoulder before she figured out exactly where he was. Her hand darted upwards and her fingers latched on to his chin, yanking it to the side to face her as she leaned close and threatened, "Do not do that again." Her gaze was still five degrees off of where it should be but, considering she was apparently looking into nothingness, still unnerving in its accuracy.
"Hey, I figured out several important pieces of data with this little adventure," he protested.
"Such as?" Bruce prompted. Clint knew he was in trouble when Mr. Mellow looked pissed.
"Sitwell is an excellent liar, Fury still has the Gameboy I gave him for Christmas like six years ago, and the World Security Council wants to carve me up like a lab rat," he recited. He considered it an accomplishment that he was able to get any words out at all the way Nat still held him in place, fingertips carving into his skin.
Tony leaned back against the nearby counter and mused, "We figured out some stuff while you were out too, wanna know what?" He didn't wait for a response before he ticked off on his fingers, "One, you're an asshole. Two, the field around you is shrinking. Three, the World Security Council wants to carve you up like a lab rat, or possibly a frog because I doubt they've made it past sixth grade Biology, let's be honest here."
Clint took the first as his due, and the third as the obvious, but latched on to the second and asked, "Shrinking?"
"We can see Natasha's arm up to almost her wrist," Bruce explained.
"Whereas before there was a good eighteen to twenty inches around you, though it could still be different with the touching versus not touching versus living versus inorganic aspects," Tony continued. He motioned to Natasha and said, "I know you like manhandling him, but could you release him so we can do a visual check?"
She released him after a brief, warning squeeze, and took several slow steps back. The way she swore, low and harsh and not in English, was telling enough as to her mindset as far as Clint was concerned.
There were tests, plural, all thankfully noninvasive, that followed. Stark and his machines ran scan after scan and various objects of various makeups were either tossed or handed to him. He took maybe a little too much pleasure in tossing them back, especially when none of the people gathered knew who he was going to aim until it was already flying at them. The most worrisome of the findings was that, when held outstretched in proper form, the tips of his bow were already visible. Well, that, and Tony wasn't sure if the fatigue was related to the injury or a biology issue or not.
"Hey, here's an idea," Clint yawned after what he felt was a reasonable time of playing test monkey. "How about I finally fucking eat because I've had nothing since lunch and then I take a nap or sleep or something to see if I feel any better?"
They called Steve back for dinner. Clint really wanted pizza but they weren't sure that they could trust any delivery not to be switched either with or by an agent not loyal to Fury, and no one wanted to have to test every piece before digging in. Bruce made something involving a lot of chopped vegetables and a decent amount of meat considering who he would be feeding. Tasha made a huge pot of couscous to go along with it, and Clint reluctantly admitted it was good as he finished his third bowl.
He knew sleeping alone in his own bed was not going to happen after the stunt he pulled, but was lucky enough to have only Natasha curl up next to him and Thor sit on the couch and watch bad cartoons with the sound turned low. He couldn't quite get comfortable no matter how much he tried, and was in no way surprised when she sat up and huffed, "Just how bad is the leg anyway."
"It's not like I'm going to lose it or anything," he answered less than straightforwardly and possibly more than a little petulantly.
She got up and shuffled over to his bathroom, rummaged around, and came back with a glass of water and some painkillers. When he didn't immediately reach for them, she said, "Don't be a baby and don't play the poor me routine. Take the damned drugs and get some sleep."
He did as directed because he knew better than to fight her, even if she couldn't actually see him to hold him down and force them down his throat this time. "I'd kinda like to actually be conscious for my last few hours before the field collapses and eats away at my skin the way it ate away at Tony's suit," he grumbled.
"Two things," Tasha said as she settled back down beside him. "First, I'd prefer not to have to listen to you whine and lie and pretend you're fine when you're obviously not. Second, the field collapsing has Stark completely confused because it's giving off exactly none of the radiation his suit did when it disintegrated."
"Well, that's worrisome," he mused. He punched his pillow into place while he laid down to thing about that.
"Or possibly helpful," she corrected. Her hand found his arm and her fingers curled lightly around his bicep, both keeping him in place and letting him know she was there. "This could be something completely different than what hit the suit or, like he said, have a completely different effect on organic versus inorganic material. As it stands, you haven't melted or burned away yet, and that can only be a good thing, right?"
He nodded even though he knew she couldn't see him, appreciating her version of a pep talk even though it wasn't exactly reassuring. If it wasn't the same thing, then what was it? If it was, what would it do to his clothing or any gear around him when it shrank further? And what would that in turn do to any skin it happened to be touching at the time? He thought about these and more troubling thoughts as he slowly drifted off to the sounds of Thor's chortling at Tom and Jerry and what he was definitely not dumb enough to call Natasha's snores, the painkillers of course being more than painkillers because Tasha was just as devious as he was, if not more.
He woke up the next morning not because the sun was coming in or Thor was really liking Sponge Bob, but because the annoying red emergency lights were flashing and JARVIS was calmly and efficiently telling them to get their asses out of bed. He really wished Tasha hadn't forced the sleeping issue because he still felt a little lethargic, but it wasn't enough to really slow him down when there was an actual emergency at hand, so he knew better than to bitch about it.
"What's up, J?" he asked as he rolled out of bed and found his stuff. Nat had already done the same, both giving him room and grabbing for the spare gear she stored in one of the closets.
"The tower has been infiltrated," the AI said crisply, clearly displeased. "The assailants have been confined to the lower levels, but are attempting to work their way to the residential suits."
"WSC?" Natasha asked at the same time he did.
"I believe not as the assailants targeted the questionable agents prior to attempting to expand their attack."
"Visual," she demanded, turning to the wall that doubled as a display when needed or wanted. "Let's see what we're dealing with."
"I am unable to comply at this time," JARVIS said apologetically. "Had my sensors not recently been calibrated to recognize Master Barton, I would have been unable to detect them at all. I can show you the aftermath, and the current locations of the heat signatures, but nothing more."
"Well, that's problematic," Clint said unnecessarily. "Tell Stark to get the suit, Thor and I will investigate," he ordered.
"I'm coming with," Natasha interjected.
"You can't see them," he protested. He reached for his bow and she handed him his quiver even as they continued to bicker.
"And you can?" she countered. Two more guns were tucked about her person and he opened a drawer so she could help herself to some of his many blades.
He paused only slightly at that. "I can see myself, which stands to reason I can see whatever spectrum they're in. If I can't, that means they can't see me either. Thor and Stark can call the shots and I can assist."
A glare was her only response to that. She led the way out the door to where Thor was waiting. "Call out the visuals and don't let this idiot get killed," she ordered.
Thor was wise enough a man not to try to stop her, but he did warn, "If the enemy has taken the state of our friend, there may be an additional danger to yourself."
She checked her gear one last time and shrugged, "Tell me something I don't know."
"The Lady Sif once bested Fandral in such a way that he had the armorer create her a matching sword to commemorate the event," Thor replied with a hint of a smile.
That smile was matched by Natasha and Clint felt the message was clear: don't underestimate her. Ever. And that went for Sif as well.
They took the elevator because they figured they were screwed enough anyway and they had already ordered the stairwells locked down as far as they could. The doors opened and Nat didn't even have to be told to duck as Thor swung outward and there was the resounding sound of a body bouncing off the opposite wall. Clint took a moment to appreciate two things: one was how well the team knew each other, and the other was that he could see the fuckers and attack.
He fired off shot after shot before they even knew what hit them. One lunged at Natasha who grappled with him while she shouted, "Get the others, I at least know where this one is."
It didn't take long for the roughly dozen hooded men to realize Clint could see them which, really, if they were already invisible he felt the ninja gear was a bit overkill. Needless to say, he soon became a primary target. Thor and Iron Man did what they could, but they were working with less than optimal visuals. Cap and Banner stayed up top; Banner because they did not need Hulk-sized damage to the tower, and Cap to make sure they did not receive Hulk-sized damage to the tower when Bruce inevitably lost it anyway.
Clint dodged and ducked and shot and hit and unfortunately took a few hits of his own. He didn't know if it was from the interaction of whatever fields were around each of them or not, but there was the sensation of a sort of electrical charge every time one landed. Not extreme, and more like an annoying static discharge than anything else; definitely not debilitating in any way despite its distraction. Eventually, JARVIS announced, "The remainder of the assailants have fled."
"Remainder? How many are there?" Clint panted. He leaned against a wall to try to catch his breath before he realized a scrape down his forearm meant he was going to leave a mark that would need an explanation. He scrubbed it with the bottom of the tee shirt he wore and hoped any remaining smears would be attributed to the bad guys.
"Eighteen men remained," JARVIS replied. "Of concern, agents on the entry level seem to have cornered one, and Sir is following the others aerially to confirm their point of origin."
"I've got the loser downstairs before the WSC tries to replicate this," Clint sighed. With luck, they would think it was one of the attackers freeing their cohort versus a visible Avenger breaking them out. "Try to contain these guys until we can figure out what to do with them."
It turned out that the figuring was remarkably easy, as in scarily so. They confined them all to a holding room after stripping them of weapons and cuffing them in place. Tony was already back and stripped out of the suit by the time the first unconscious body turned visible, and Clint was surreptitiously nursing an ice pack by the time the next three faded into sight.
They kept the audio on within the cell, and listened in as one complained that they should have used a higher dose and another pointed out that it wouldn't have made any difference because they were caught anyway.
"So this?" Clint prompted.
"Was intentional, yes," Tony confirmed. He sipped from a tumbler of amber liquid and asked, "So, like, after that last mission - not the one with the lasers but the one before that - did you happen to skulk off? And take the route on Sixth past that new fancy private gym?"
"A gym that's a cover for an illegal operation?" Steve guessed.
"The one and the same," Tony confirmed. "I wasn't able to get any real readings, but our little assailants both match the energy readings I've been getting from Errol here, and they all neatly filed in through a back entrance and then disappeared behind some shielding that blurred anything useful from that point on."
"They are going to report that we have their men," Steve pointed out.
"They are going to report that Barton can see them," Natasha said instead.
Clint knew where she was going with that, and didn't like it. She would try to get him off any sort of infiltration team just the way he had tried to get her off of the counterattack team earlier. They would know to target him first, and had already seen how Stark was iffy with his own attacks, which meant they would only have to deal with Thor, who was a sizable obstacle, but not if they could separate and do as much damage as possible before he came into play. It also meant that they may try to refine whatever technique they were using on their men to eliminate the weaknesses they had just exploited.
"If we go now, we have a chance at stopping them before they upgrade," he said.
"We'd be going in blind, pun not intended," Steve reasoned. He shook his head. "We don't know anything about the facility, how many people it holds, or what equipment they have. We could be outmanned and outgunned and completely vulnerable."
Thankfully, Thor at least was on Clint's side. "They attacked with limited weaponry, relying upon their stealth. It is unlikely they have developed additional methods when their focus was on infiltration. Perhaps they know the limits to the range of their cloaking abilities, or that such additional weaponry would leave them exposed."
"We're talking about their potential base of operations here though," Natasha argued. "SHIELD may send a spy in for a covert op, but would still be able to neutralize a threat outright if needed." She crossed her arms in front if her, one of the few outward tells of her aggravation with the current situation. Limited intel on a limited timeline was never a good thing to work with. Mix that with all the other crap that was going on in the background, and Clint was surprised she wasn't methodically cleaning her knives by now and daring someone to become a target for her.
Tony pulled up a schematic of what he had been able to see of the building in question. He also pulled up the original blueprints and any pictures of the area at the time of construction to see if there were hints of additional levels or even rooms hidden outright. Given that it was built downtown, where space was a premium and cost was exorbitant, it at least appeared that there was nothing hidden outward as the existing buildings on either side were still standing and in use by their original owners, but the possibility of hidden levels was troublesome.
Something keyed a memory in Clint's mind and he said, "Oh, hey, I remember that place..."
Stark was still scrolling through the various images and barely paused to point out that they had a fully equipped gym right here in the tower, with state of the art facilities and many things that were not and should not be made available to the public. Tasha, who knew him possibly better than anyone else gathered around the table, asked, "Which hole in the wall food place is near by?"
"Petey's Calzones," Clint replied, and tried not to lick his lips in memory of their awesome sauce. Then again, the only one who would have been able to see him was Thor who likely would have agreed had he tried such a creation, so he had no idea why he held himself back. "Except he wasn't there. I overheard Junior from Junior's Dogs say that he had a heart attack about two weeks back and they closed up shop while he recovered."
Bruce's head snapped up at that. "Why do I have a feeling that 'Petey' didn't just have issues with his cholesterol?" he asked, almost resignedly.
Tony set a hack into private medical records as if it were nothing, which it probably was for him. He then ran and reran the energy readings for a three block radius of the suspected stronghold. Bruce, meanwhile, simply searched for news articles on Petey's possible return to see if there was anything public about his condition. It was him who hit paydirt first.
"Pietro Algonza is suspected to make a full recovery once his new pacemaker is fitted," he summarized the findings. "Of note, his family has no record of his whereabouts for forty-eight hours prior to the attack and he claims he never left and never will as his shop is his life. His family hopes any residual confusion is temporary and a result of the illness and promises it will in no way change how the business is run." He took off his glasses and stared roughly in Clint's direction pointedly, the implications speaking for themselves.
"Petey got hit, didn't he?" Clint sighed.
Stark still had half a dozen screens lit and scrolling information, but paused long enough to say, "Good news is that it doesn't appear what hit the suit is what hit you. Better news is that it looks like it's survivable. Not so good news is the heart attack part of it."
"So I didn't get hit by Energy Weapon Number One, I got hit by Energy Weapon Number Two?" Clint confirmed.
Tony nodded. "What can I say? Manhattan is full of assholes. Though it looks like they improved the shielding and the process as a whole since then to prevent accidental exposure of others, so there's that."
Steve held up a finger, always a sign he was going to interrupt with something important and possibly less than fun. "Are we ignoring the part where Petey nearly died from this?"
"Yes, yes we are," Clint said, hoping his tone did the whole stop the argument before it started thing but knowing he was never that lucky. "I'm not an eighty year old man and we have a lead and a chance to attack now. We need to take it before we lose the lead and any possible advantage we might have." He slammed the ice pack down to make his point, then regretted it when he remembered no one other than Thor really knew he had one in the first place.
"Because taking an injured, invisible, and possible tachycardiac agent into a potential combat situation is always the best choice," Tasha said dryly.
Bruce, of course, pointed out, "Pietro wasn't eighty, he was more like forty-five..."
"The guys we caught-" Clint started, ignoring Bruce's panache for the facts, but was cut off.
"The guys we caught were already unconscious when the effects wore off, and still flinched like it hurt like hell," Tony said, almost even smoothly for him. He snapped his fingers and added, "Sit down before I have JARVIS lock the place down on you."
Clint reluctantly sank back into his chair, but didn't let go of his bow.
"How did you know?" Bruce asked.
"Because it's Barton and if there's a dumb way of doing something, that's going to be his preferred plan of attack," Stark said. He rolled his eyes and Clint thought that, maybe, it was telling that he didn't even have a counter-argument to that. Instead, he listened while Tony continued, "There's a smarter way and it won't take much longer. Give me twenty more minutes and the fabrication units should have modified goggles for those of you who are not Iron Man, a god, or a moron. We hit the place, take down the bad guys, and save their tech and records in hopes of keeping Barton's ticker ticking so that we can bitch at him for his stupidity and point out that none of this would have happened to him if he had just joined the press conference with the rest of us."
"And then we wipe any and all records before the WSC can attempt to replicate the project," Steve added. It wasn't a suggestion and nobody treated it as such. Also, nobody objected to his addition, likely because they had all been thinking it and just figured they'd have to go about it covertly and not blatantly tell the others they were going to do it.
The twenty minute wait was more than enough time for SHIELD agents to storm the bottom of the tower and block the main entrances while they cared for their fallen comrades that never should have been there in the first place. This meant that the team used the secondary exits and damn near walked right past the very people who would have tried to stop them, had they been able to see through a single wall.
"You look funny with glasses," Clint said apropos of nothing while they waited for the signal to attack.
They were less glasses and more slightly colorized goggles with all sorts of hidden tech involved and he could see one elegantly curved eyebrow when Natasha raised it and countered, "And you look funny as a vibrating heat signature that's clearly favoring his left side."
He scowled, and almost wished she could see it. She had assigned herself to his team or, more specifically, him. On the off chance the goggles worked less than perfect, they were each teamed up with someone who could at least shout a warning for them to get the hell out of there. Tony had Steve, Thor had Bruce who insisted on coming from a medical standpoint, and he had her. It was like the buddy system, but with artillery and a crap ton of skill capable of a crap ton of violence.
It turned out that the signal was a lot less covert than originally anticipated and a lot more of Stark yelling, "Incoming!" when they were spotted pretty much as soon as they got next to the building.
Clint put himself in front of Nat, not because he didn't trust Stark's tech, but more because he had the chance to take out threats before they got close enough to need to more directly engage them. She was less than pleased with the scenario, to say the least. He had managed four shots before she tossed him down with a warning of, "Duck!" followed with a reminder of, "If you can see them, they can see you."
It was kind of odd, really, after so many days of people misjudging where he was and what he was doing, for someone to be able to spot his tell and see his obvious wounds and go after those as weak points. They were unsuccessful, of course, because Clint was actually trained and had had far worse in the past, but it was enough to keep him on his toes if nothing else.
One of the ninja wannabes managed to actually land a punch and the weird static discharge hit again, only this time the feeling did not immediately dissipate. Of course, that could have been related to the fact that he had grabbed the guy, spun him around, and held him up against a wall long enough to disable him - or, in other words, had prolonged contact with him. Whatever the reason, Clint resisted the urge to twitch even while he watched the guy collapse to the floor and convulse for thankfully only about ten seconds before his body remembered it was unconscious and it wasn't worth the effort.
He whipped around when he heard a far too familiar grunt, and saw Natasha get knocked from behind while she dealt with one of the guys in front of her. Possibly more troubling than the way her eyes flickered and rolled as she hit the floor was the way the men themselves flickered.
His skin felt as though it was on fire, every nerve ending lit up at once and he needed to consciously both force his muscles into action and force himself not to hurl. The men were fading fast and with the weird lights and shadows of the building he was going to lose them quickly, too quick to be able to stop them if he didn't do something now. So he shot one so that he'd at least leave a blood trail, and whacked the other with his bow far enough back from Nat to steal her glasses with a huffed, "Sorry, but apparently I need these now," before his world was filled with the weird technicolor of heat signatures.
She groaned in response which at least meant she was on her way to consciousness already if she had actually fully left at all, but he didn't have time to check on her fully as the guy he hit was both back and had brought a friend. The guy he hit was shaking his hands and cracking his neck like he felt the charge as well, but his friend had no such limitations and outright attacked. At least both men still had that whole ninja-obsession thing going on, and their dark clothing served as a contrast against the technicolor for it to show up all nice and bright like for however long it lasted.
Clint blocked a blade with his bow and returned it to its owner with interest, estimating where it would end up based upon its launch point more than anything else. He then had to toss said bow to the side when the sharpened edge nicked the string enough for him to know he was screwed and would get one shot, maybe, before it snapped completely and that thing hurt when the alloy tore through your skin. The bullet was harder to block, though the barrel of the gun now glowed bright with the heat of the shot and he could track that easier as well. This was good as the black fabric was already turning to an opaque gray and he was cursing the timing of the change back even as his mind assumed the interactions of the fields must have been making the difference.
That in mind, he decided to use the weapon he currently at his disposal that the rest of his team did not and charged the one that was not currently bleeding out on the floor. He wrestled the gun away, pointing the barrel outward to avoid a pointblank shot to the chest when his opponent managed to get his finger on the trigger and then immediately tried for a sleeper hold. Even if the hold itself wasn't successful in knocking the asshole out, it should have been enough to short out the field around the guy and make him at least partially visible again. The downside of this was, of course, that it hurt like a son of a bitch to do so, and Clint tried to guide his seizing muscles into at least tightening the hold versus giving it up completely.
He finally gave up with a strangled yell, collapsing to the floor while the man still struggled to suck in a single gurgled breath. He could see him though, in that strange sort of semi-phased kind of way. This was good as he had lost the glasses around the time he dodged a broken nose, so now he could watch as the man flailed and his muscles betrayed him even as Clint's own did the same.
He'd say he couldn't move, but that wouldn't be accurate. He was moving, arms shaking and legs kicking fitfully, just not in a coherent manner or one that was in any way under his control. He had to admit it rather scared the crap out of him - his teeth ground together and his muscles tightened enough that he feared his bones would break beneath them and his heart wasn't pounding but he figured that was because it was doing its damnedest to try to curl in on itself and give up the ghost.
He heard his name and forced his head to turn to the side to see Natasha use one of her many knives to stab the idiot he shot before he could strangle her, and then flip over and drive that same blade into the one Clint had thought was out for the count but was actually only pausing to rearm himself. It was doubtful the shot would have hit its target the way the guy was still convulsing, but he would have tried really hard and possibly managed to either wing him or hit someone with the ricochet. Clint knew his luck enough to know that someone would probably have been him.
Natasha crawled over to him now, even as she called for medical assistance. She slid her hand beneath his skull, providing a cushion between the bone and the concrete floor, but in no other way tried to restrain him, her other hand occupied with weaponry anyway. Instead, she looked at him, as in really looked at him, met his eyes and everything before she zeroed in on each and every wound he could no longer hide, and sighed, "Idiot."
He figured that was fair and also figured that, given the sounds coming from the comm he still wore, the worst of the fight was over, at least until the WSC found them and fucked it all up again. Tasha was there though, and Cap was helping Stark both download and destroy the records on how the whole invisibility thing was done in the first place, and Hulk and Thor were just destroying things based on principle at this point. He closed his eyes to speed up the way his vision was darkening around the edges anyway, and gave in to the overwhelming urge to let go of consciousness, knowing he was in the safest hands he could be.
Epilogue
Recovery sucked. He wasn't exactly bedridden, but he wasn't exactly extremely mobile either. There wasn't exactly a treatment because there wasn't exactly a case just like his, even in the files and records Stark stole. So he had to deal with each annoyance as it came up, knowing the damned AI was filing away everything he wasn't saying into the appropriate database to be picked at and probably yelled at about at a later date.
Petey had gotten hit with one of the prototypes while the bad guys were still in the testing stage and before they had fully shielded the facility. It wasn't quite a raw energy blast, and they had cleaned it up quite a bit by the time Clint had been hit with a stray happenstance of his own, which explained why his symptoms weren't quite in the "needs a pacemaker" range. The attackers, the ninja wannabes, had both a pre-treatment and a far more refined delivery system, as well as knew approximately how long the effects would last for each exposure. They suffered minor discomfort from the field dissipating each time, but nothing like what Clint or Pietro had gone through, and nothing like what happened when Clint's rogue field came in contact with their controlled own and shorted the whole thing to bits.
Stark was, of course, poking at the process with a giant stick to see what he could get out of it. Stark was, of course, also vehemently denying having any evidence whatsoever as to what had happened, and was verbally lamenting the baddies' stupidity and strongly implying that it was the energy fields that they had created themselves that had backfired and destroyed all the data and a fair portion of the facility itself. It was remarkable how focused the damage was, if one knew what to look for.
Thankfully, the WSC were idiots and did not.
Meanwhile, Clint still tired easily and randomly felt like his fingertips and toes were being stabbed with pins and needles and randomly felt like his heart wanted to crap out and give up the ghost. These detriments were, in truth, a godsend however. The WSC saw them as a liability, not enough to make their interest in the process wane, but enough that they settled for a single vial of his blood versus whatever the hell they were doing to those exposed to the more refined process. His guess was that they would still try to duplicate what he had been capable of, even knowing the cost and even knowing that the Avengers and anything Stark-related had a way around it, for single usage missions. The possibility of something better and bigger and shinier meant that he was pushed to the side like a broken toy for the moment though and he really could not have lucked out any more than he had.
For now at least, he played bad video games and watched worse movies and ate the heart-healthy crap Bruce cooked up for him while he snuck the junk food from everyone else. His bow was returned to him restrung and clean even though he wasn't sure he was up to using it quite yet, and he poked at a tablet to design prototypes of new and ridiculous arrowheads that Tony would either laugh outright at or get a speculative look in his eyes over. At night Thor would come by for illicit booze and chocolate, and in the morning he would wake to Natasha's tousled curls and bland face as she would shrug and deadpan, "Just checking."
After his first mission upon his return to the field, he readily walked up to the flashing lights and cameras and watched more than a single teammate quirk a relieved smile in return. When they returned to the tower, he stripped down and washed up and joined the others where they just happened to order his favorite takeout for the victory feast. He felt five sets of eyes upon him while he used his chopsticks to steal an egg roll, and knew all was right in his crazy little corner of the world.
End.
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