A/N: I had this urge to beat up on Clint. Don't know why, I just did. Poor boy's probably pretty used to being whumped. Probably need a warnings list here, so…
Warnings: Kinda dark. Not for the extra-squeamish, although it's no more bloody than the movie. Usage of hallucinogens and implied off-screen physical torture. In short, mean people being mean, and Clint ain't winning any kindness awards either.
The first time, it's Natasha.
She slinks into the room with her normal catlike grace. Clint watches her, watches how she moves, studies her. He smiles, because he's been expecting her.
"Hey Tasha," he croaks, trying not to wince at the sound of his own voice. His mouth is full of tacky-dry blood from his split lower lip. He bites at it occasionally, reopens the wound, because it bleeds quite a bit and it's all the liquid he's gotten since he's been here.
"Hey Clint," she shoots back, and Clint's smile grows. She turns on the spot, searching the room, then tucks her gun away and heads over to him. He drops his head, chin tucked against his chest, as she looks him over and hisses in displeasure.
She unties him with quick, sure movements, maintaining a professional silence. He watches her as best he can- the room is dark- and pushes himself to his feet as soon as he's free, staggering badly as cramped muscles stretch and pull. Natasha catches him before he can go right over onto his face.
"The others here?" he asks, leaning on her shoulder. She props him up as best she can.
"Sure," she says, voice pitched low. "Surprised you didn't hear us arriving. We weren't exactly quiet."
"Huh," Clint says, then pulls the knife from the small of her back and drives it between her ribs.
It's a small knife and a badly angled blow, but it does the job. He isn't completely faking the weakness and stumbles sideways until he hits the wall when she collapses. The gun he'd lifted from her as she fell he tosses aside with a snort- he doesn't even need to check, he can tell it's not loaded from the weight alone- and he waits patiently as the men with the big, and presumably loaded, guns flood the room. A flashlight beam catches him across the face, blinding him, and he flinches away and doesn't quite manage to cry out before something slams into his temple hard enough to drop him to his knees, then to the floor beyond.
When he swims back to consciousness, he's back in the chair and alone in the room. He bites his lip and swallows the blood and smiles.
The Natasha look-alike comes in sometime later. She's pale and moving stiffly, carefully measuring her breaths , but she's alive. Showing her off, Clint knows- showing him he didn't kill her, showing him how much he's slipping. He forgives himself missing the killing blow, this time. Extenuating circumstances and all that.
"You ever hear of Loki?" he asks her. "What he did to me in ten seconds, you couldn't do in ten years. You're nothing next to him."
She looks at him dispassionately and undoes his bindings, one arm at a time, yanking them around behind his back. He doesn't bother fighting her as she ties his wrists, even though from his current position he could break her neck in under ten seconds, because he knows she has backup in the shadows and any sudden movements will only reacquaint his skull with the butt of a gun. Instead he waits until she moves away to twists his hands, tugging and pulling and testing the knots.
"Sorry," the look-alike says. "We're not Loki. But we make do with what we've got."
He looks up at the sound of rubber wheels squeaking over rough concrete, watches as they wheel in an IV stand. He looks away again when he feels the cold tip of the needle against his skin and sets his jaw as it pushes in.
She pats him on the cheek as she moves past him. Clint watches her go and doesn't say anything.
The second time, it's a dead man.
"Psst. Barton."
Clint blinks, frowns a little at his fuzzy vision, then remembers. He lifts his head just enough to see the man crouching in front of him.
"Hardy?" he whispers harshly. He blinks away the sweat in his eyes and looks up a little more as the man stands.
"That's Lieutenant Hardy to you, Private," the man says, and grins, a big toothy unfriendly grin. Clint's seen it in his nightmares, although not so much recently. He has so much new fodder these days the old favorites don't get nearly the same airtime. "Thought maybe you wouldn't recognize me. Last you saw me, I looked a little different."
"Getting shot in the head does that," Clint agrees. He wonders if this is the drugs, knowing as he thinks it that it is. Hardy had a grin like a shark's; no mere look-alike could manage that.
"You let me get shot," Hardy counters, still grinning, but it's taken on an angry edge. "You were supposed to be covering us, and instead you were dicking around back on base."
Clint barks out a laugh, short and sharp and murder on his throat. "Yeah, that's me. Unfocused and impatient."
"Got nothing to say for yourself?" the dead man asks, and when Clint looks at him again, the left side of his face is a bloody pulpy mess where it isn't just plain gone.
"I made my peace with that a long time ago," he says. He's not even lying, not really- only three men had died that day, two of them from a land mine that Clint couldn't have done anything about if he had been there, and he'd never liked Hardy. Interesting how the human mind can rationalize most anything, especially when aided by personal dislike.
"What are you waiting for, Barton?" Hardy asks. He grins again, only this time it's a death-head's grin, because the flesh has peeled away from his bones and all that's left is a skeleton in desert camo rags. "No one's coming. Not for you."
"Just waiting," Clint says. " 'S what I'm good at."
"Well, they're waiting too," the empty skull tells him. "Waiting for the drugs to soften you up." Those bony hands grip the arms of the chair and the skull looms up in front of him. Clint pushes himself as far back as he can go, turning his face away when he can retreat no more.
"They're not coming," Hardy says, only it's not Hardy talking anymore. The lieutenant's sandpaper voice has smoothed out, gained a bit of culture and a faint accent, and Clint squeezes his eyes shut. "They're not coming for you, little hawk. You let yourself be captured, just like last time, when you let me take over your mind, and they're tired of it. They'll show up for your funeral but that's the only time they'll come for you."
Clint opens his eyes again, looks straight ahead and counts his breaths. The demigod smiling at him is not real, and he won't respond to it.
"And I thought you were strong," Loki says.
He stays for four hundred and thirty-eight breaths.
They come in a good while later, when the IV bag is half-empty, and start the questions.
Clint is twitching and fidgeting in the chair, his skin crawling like an army of ants is marching over him. He wants to get up and move, to pace and wander, to run, and he figures that's the drugs. He wants to talk, wants to answer all their questions and keep on going until he's shared every piece of information in his head, and he figures that's the drugs too. When the questions start he gives nonsense answers, retelling a Russian fairy tale Natasha had once told him, then sharing some of Thor's war stories. By the time he's down to reciting Stark's sexist jokes his interrogator has given up. Clint's on a roll, though, and keeps babbling long after he's been left alone again.
Once he manages to shut himself up he focuses on getting that damned IV out. They'll be back, he knows, probably with something even more powerful than whatever-it-is they've got him on now. He needs his wits about him if he's going to survive this, and that means getting that poison drip out of him.
He twists his arms and shifts in the chair and finally manages to snag the tube between the ring and middle fingers of his left hand. One firm yank doesn't do the trick, so he pulls on it, long and steady, and feels the needle slide out centimeter by centimeter.
When it finally comes free, it does so with a swell of warm blood that winds its way down his arm and pools in his palm, overfilling and dripping onto the floor. Too much, too fast. He's bleeding out and can't stop it.
It occurs to him that he may have just made a serious tactical error.
He doesn't remember passing out, but when he wakes up next, he's tied to a cot rather than the chair. The IV bag over his head is filled with something dark and thick and Clint figures he's good for a while. Pumping unknown, powerful drugs into a man via a blood transfusion is a quick way to kill off your information source.
"That was incredibly stupid," a voice says, and Clint looks over. He's still in the same room, so it's too dark to see much of his face, but by the voice he'd guess his bedside watcher is the man who tried to interrogate him earlier.
Clint doesn't bother to answer. He figures the bastard's heard enough from him for one day.
When he wakes up again, he's back in the chair. He can feel the IV again, held tightly in place by what feels like about four pounds of gauze and tape, although when he cranes his neck as far as he can he finds the drip disconnected. They haven't hooked him up yet.
He closes his eyes and sits back as best he can, enjoying the reprieve while it lasts.
The captain is third.
Clint looks up from his apathetic inspection of the floor when he hears the familiar whong of someone's face being rudely introduced to a certain shield. He sits up, feels the IV tug and grimaces as he remembers- they'd come in and hooked it up some time ago. This could all well be another hallucination. Except none of his hallucinations so far- Loki again twice and three people he'd killed, at some point or another in his long and bloody career- have bothered to use the door.
When the door opens now, he allows himself a solid second or two of hope.
"Captain," he says carefully. The odds are not on his side, and he's not getting his hopes up, because he isn't sure he can take it if this is just another mind-fuck.
"Barton," the captain responds, and Clint hesitates, feels himself turn cold. As a part of his Getting To Know Each Other campaign, Rogers had started calling everyone by their first names, because between titles and ranks and all that, they all answer to approximately five different things and it can get confusing. It hasn't caught on with Clint, but Rogers is stubborn, and only calls him only by his first name and Hawkeye out in the field.
"Either you're not you or you're not real," he says, trying to keep his voice level. He fumbles over the last part, though, because that one or two seconds of hope had obviously been too much.
They're winning, he thinks, and smiles sadly. He's starting to crack around the edges. It's only a matter of time now.
When he looks up again, the person in the doorway is not Captain America. It's just some guy, looking extremely confused and regarding Clint like he's some potentially rabid dog. He's holding another IV bag.
"You know how to make this end?" he says as he's hooking it up, and Clint can't look at him because he somehow became Rogers again.
"Not interested," he mutters, sinking into the chair. Somewhere along the way, they'd stopped tying his ankles to the legs of the chair. He tucks his feet behind the legs and considers this.
"You're either really brave or really stupid," the not-Captain snorts.
"I can be both at once," Clint says. " 'M awesome like that."
The new drugs kick in not long after that and he finds himself floating away.
He comes back to Earth in the middle of a conversation.
"Forget the Avengers, then," the man sitting opposite him says. He's speaking softly, gently, as if to a scared child. Clint feels something like heavy fog in his brain, clouding his thoughts, and mentally swears a blue streak. Drugs, fucking drugs, they've got him on something new now and this is not fair. He's been trained to handle this sort of interrogation but there's only so much you can do to counter a drug that reduces you to the mental capacity of a lapdog.
"Maybe you'll be willing to tell me something about Fury," the man says. Clint takes a moment to celebrate that loyalty to his team appears to have lasted out the drugs and the hallucinations. "He sent you out here to die, you know."
"He did?" Clint asks, when it becomes apparent his input is required.
"Of course he did," the man says, smooth and soothing, and Clint has never hated him more than in this moment. "We were expecting SHIELD to attempt to interfere, do you think we weren't? You were a surprise, I must admit, but we were ready for anything. Do you think Fury didn't know this? He knows everything, Clint, and he lies and uses people and throws people away when they're useful no more."
Clint blinks, rocks back in the chair with a soft moan. He tilts his head back and stares at the ceiling.
Then he pushes himself back that little bit more, so the chair is balanced on the two back legs, and plants the heel of his boot in the man's face. He feels something snap and give under the blow.
A moment later a hand lands on his shoulder, spinning the chair around. The first blow glances off his cheek, but the second is a perfect hit, and the third, and the fourth. After that he loses count.
The fourth time is no one. It's only Clint, in a dark empty room, tied to a chair.
He listens to the sound of running feet outside, people calling out to each other with soft hurried words. He hears the distant roar of a huge green rage monster. He feels the sky splitting with thunder, feels it rumbling in his chest. It's possible he's just imagining it or hallucinating again. They don't have the IV in anymore, but it will take a while to get the drugs out of his system.
He tries to lift his head but can't seem to keep it up. He tries to open his eyes but the lids feel like they weigh ten pounds each. He's tired. The complaints of however long, days probably, have winnowed down to that. Forget the thirst, the hunger, the beatings both physical and emotional. He's tired.
There's a noise by the door, a sound of shock, of mingled relief and concern, and a heavy stride approaches him. He opens his eyes as something thunks to the ground near him and someone kneels before him, his name flowing over him. Someone else, still back by the door, starts yelling into the hallway.
Clint blinks slowly as a hand gently cups his face, lifting his chin. After a moment his gaze meets that of a worried demigod, and a sob of relief locks up his throat. Thor is unmistakable, unimitatable, and the hallucinations were never strong enough for physical contact. This is real.
This is real.
"Th' hell took you so long?" he mutters, eyes drifting closed. He catches the beginning of Thor's smile, the wild relief in his eyes, and smiles a little himself.
This time, when the darkness beckons, Clint fights it. He doesn't win, but he tries.
Breaking free of Loki's control had been a lot harder than shaking off the drugs, but it hadn't taken nearly as long. Clint doesn't remember much, just the constant cocktail of hallucinations he can tell aren't real but can't make go away, an earnest conversation with Natasha to get him out of here, someone indulging in a shouting match in the hallway with the door half-closed and his name coming up every ten seconds or so. And his team, always around and constantly underfoot, to the doctors' annoyance, two of them in the room with him at all times. Most times Natasha is one of the two, although one time when she's not, Clint manages to have a semi-lucid conversation with Rogers and learns that the others are making her eat and get some sleep on a fairly regular basis.
He supposes that has to be good enough, at least for now.
Three days after they get him home Clint decides he's done with the bed rest order and goes wandering. He waits until the small hours of the morning, hoping to avoid the cluster of mother hens he's been saddled with, only to find one still awake.
"Hey, Steve," Clint says as he wanders into the kitchen, stumbling briefly over the man's name. He doesn't like the casual informality of it, probably never will, but it's worth it to see the look on Steve's face. He collapses at the counter, on the stool next to the captain, not really interested in food so much as glad to have made it this far.
"Clint," Steve greets him carefully, leaning over a little bit so he's prepared to catch him if Clint starts to fall. Clint's learning not to take such hovering as an insult.
He snitches Steve's cup of coffee and pulls a face at the sugar content but drinks it anyway, glad to finally be getting something with some actual flavor, while Steve rolls his eyes good-naturedly and goes to pour himself some more. Clint watches him.
Four days he was gone. Four days, and for the first two they hadn't even known he was missing. Fury had told them the second he knew for sure but that was still two whole days late. It will be a very long time, he thinks, before Fury lives this one down.
"Did we get them?" Clint asks as Steve is mixing in his normal approximate half-pound of sugar. He hasn't asked anyone else so far, doesn't know why he suddenly feels the need to ask now.
"Yes," Steve says, with a vindictive pleasure that no one honestly expects from Captain America, but Clint knows it's darker in the other man's mind than most people realize.
"Good." He pauses, sips at the coffee. "Thanks."
To his credit, Steve obviously realizes Clint is well out of his comfort zone, and endeavors to make this as painless as possible. "Sure. Just don't make a habit of it."
They sit together in contemplative silence, drinking their coffee-flavored sugar, thinking their own private thoughts.
Clint wakes up the next morning, still at the counter, still sitting next to Steve. Natasha's on his other side, and as he groggily sits up she pushes a cup of black coffee and a plate of slightly mangled toast towards him. He takes both without comment, and gets on with his morning and his life.
They don't talk about it, after that. There's nothing more that needs to be said.