"I never asked for this!"
The mirror in front of him shattered, sent glass shards flying all across the room with a higher velocity than usual. Of course it did.
Clint's memory was cloudy, he remembered waking to the screaming pain wrecking his body, dulled over just ever so slightly by loads of pain killers. He had been in and out of consciousness for days until he was finally stable enough to come to the one important conclusion: He shouldn't have survived.
He was no superhuman, no god, no invincible Iron Man. He was Hawkeye, great with a bow but hopelessly squishy. Why in the seven hells was he here, alive, staring at the blank white wall of the hospital room he was in.
Except it wasn't a hospital, as he learnt soon after. The man that walked in to greet him looked familiar, of course he did. There was no mistaking that smug grin on that face. The doctors who accompanied him rang a bell aswell, weirdly enough. They were S.H.I.E.L.D men. Well, that was not entirely surprising, either. He himself was a S.H.I.E.L.D agent after all.
There was no way in hell, though, that Fury would let Stark wander around like he owned the place, not in his own facility. Not after everything that had happened. There had to be something else going on.
"How're you feeling?", Stark asked with little concern. The thing that laced his voice was scientific curiousity at best. Great.
Clint noticed he wasn't ready to vocalise what he thought of the question, so he didn't.
"Yeah, it will take some getting used to. You will, though. Eventually. It was a close call, believe me. If I hadn't helped they wouldn't have been able to keep you alive."
The doctor behind him snorted at that.
"You call that alive?"
Clint tried to move, tried to get his eyes to focus, but the pain that immediately shot throughout his whole body made him stop.
The focus thing worked, though. It felt different, fundamentally different. He blamed it on the meds at this point, he would think back on this moment later and cringe in horror.
His world went black seconds after anyway.
When he woke up the next time he was thirsty. There was a cup next to his bed, so he reached out to get it.
His arm was not in a cast, which was nice. He could have sworn it got crushed completely. Apparently it wasn't so bad.
As he reached out, though, he saw something that wasn't supposed to be there. His arm was covered in black, thick tendons and muscle fiber, like his skin had been stripped off. They looked mechanical, though.
"Maybe some other sort of cast?", his mind supplied helpfully, but the sight of his hand would not let any merciful deception get the upper hand in this.
His hand looked like it was purely made of wires, connected in several joints, similar to what a hand should normally look like, if it belonged to a robot.
This looked like a robot hand. What the fuck was that thing doing, dangling from his, HIS, arm like that?
He could move it effortlessly, which was the creepiest bit of it all.
So he decided to save the panic attack for later and get this cup of water. Drink first, panic later. Good plan.
His hand missed the cup by far, accidentally got hold of the iron fitting that held the tablet instead and crushed it with little to no effort.
Okay, time to panic was now.
He scrambled to get out of his bed, but his legs got tangled in the sheets and he ripped them to shreds. There was more black muscle gleaming through the destroyed fabric.
As he finally managed to rid himself of the last remnants of the bedding and his feet (where those his feet?) found solid ground, he ran, he wanted to run. He tried, and failed as his muscles all but propelled him into the next wall. His eyes alerted him to the imminent crash and shifted into focus with a soft whir. His shoulder caught his crash and the wall crumbled under the sheer force of his impact. The last thing he saw were numerous feet scrambling around him in some sort of hallway, people screamed and shouted and he heard fear all over those voices.
He looked down his body one last time and as he saw the mass off mechanical black muscle and strange apparatus he fainted.
Stark was with him when he woke up the next time.
"I'm sorry it had to be this way, you would have died if I hadn't-"
He stopped. Maybe he had expected Clint to interrupt, maybe he had hoped he would. He would not. He had nothing to say.
The skin was frayed where it met the horrible black substance, Clint still couldn't figure out what it was. It looked metallic, wiry, but the black colour put him off.
"Is there still meat inside? Bone maybe?", he asked instead and winced when Stark shook his head.
"Your body was crushed under that truck. It's a miracle you even survived this, there was no time to try and preserve anything. It was simpler this way. Does it hurt?"
"Why."
There was a genuine look of guilt on the genius' face right now.
"You would have died."
"So you decided to play god and make me into.. into THIS!"
"I saved your life, okay? I made you BETTER!"
Okay, that's different.
"You don't get to be angry at ME! I never asked for this!"
Stark turned away at this, facing the nurse that was busy adjusting something on his IV-drip.
"Give him something to calm down, will you?"
He must have realised the harshness he spoke with, so he quickly let his most charming smile follow and the girl hurried to obey the order. Clint wouldn't let her.
As he gripped her wrist to keep her from drowning him in pain killers again he realised his mistake instantly. It was too late, though, and the girl screamed as she watched her own blood and crushed meat seep through the horrid metal fingers that held her.
Clint pulled back at once, his whirring eyes constantly changed the focus between the destroyed arm the poor girl was cradling to her chest and his, no, THE hand, that had done this. Blood still clung to the dark metal and he couldn't stop shaking.
"I never asked for this.", he whispered, as cries of monsters and atrocities filled the room.