Disclaimer: I don't own Marvel comics or characters or movies, and am making no money off of this fic.
AN: Written for the October 14th Whumptober prompt: torture.
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In Her Eyes by luvsanime02
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Most people assume that they know what torture feels like. It's a particular kind of arrogance that comes from a lifetime of movies and TV and other media. Everyone's read those sort of books a thousand times, watched actors scream on-screen, and so they feel like they know the experience. That they'd know what to expect. That they understand the pain.
As Clint Barton watches his third fingernail be slowly, slowly peeled away from his skin, and the blood well up underneath and then run down the end of his finger, he wants to find every single one of those ignorant people, grab their faces between his hands, and tell them solemnly that no, they don't understand. They know nothing of torture.
Most of the time, Clint can convince himself that this is a good thing. Most of the time, he isn't being forced to watch someone rip off his fingernails. It's painful. Extremely. Clint was raised in an environment of pain, and he would go back to that in a second if given the choice right now.
That's not the worst part of this whole experience, though. Not that Clint got captured, either, or that he's being asked for information on his team that he has no intention of ever giving. It's not that he's already bruised and bleeding from dozens of other places on his body, and would feel light-headed from his injuries if not for the excruciating pain that he's currently in.
It's not the anticipation of another fingernail being ripped off. That's the part that might drive Clint insane, he knows, though he wishes his interrogators luck with that. Clint's been broken his whole life. He just sometimes functions really well while being made up of nothing but cracks and chips and empty spaces.
The worst part of being tortured isn't the helplessness. Normally, that would be what Clint hates the most, yes, but not this time. No, the pain, the waiting, the feeling of failure, all of those are old acquaintances to Clint.
The worst part of being in his current situation is watching the agony in Nat's eyes, though she shows it nowhere else on her face, as she slowly peels back another of Clint's fingernails. It's the knowledge that neither of them can give away exactly who she is, because if his captors find out that Nat is the undercover informant, she'll be tortured even worse than this, and Clint can't let that happen.
They're testing her by making Nat be the one who tortures him, and Clint could almost laugh at how effective a tactic this is, only they don't even realize it. They don't know that Nat hates this, and hates them, and wishes that she could kill them all right now. How she hates herself most of all.
She will kill them eventually, but not just yet. No, for now, Nat has more peeling to do, and her other hand is so gentle where it's gripping his wrist that Clint lets out a sob that he doesn't mean to, and something tightens even more in Nat's expression, and this, this is the worst. There's nothing worse than knowing that you're being used to break your best friend.
Still, the two of them have no choice but to perform their respective roles right now, and so they break each other open, over and over, and just hope that they can both put themselves back together again later. Well, as much as it's possible to anymore.