A gift-fic for Arsenicjade.
This is an outtake from shared indulgent chatfic verse, and should be taken as such. For the context, Clint is a much abused slave bought from his terrible owner by rich, eccentric and dangerous Lord Stark on a whim some time earlier, and Lord Stark might or might not be dabbling in intrigues above his station.
Thanks to somebraveapollo for truly invaluable help in making this story happen, harborshore for the last minute brainstorming save and sailorstkwrning for strict and wonderful beta. All remaining mistakes are mine.
Warnings for: mentions of past non-con and torture, institutionalized slavery and all it entails, roughly canon-level violence.
"Don't open your eyes yet," Mistress Pepper said, her voice full of warmth.
Clint obeyed, ignoring the flutter of apprehension in his chest. For the four months he'd been there, none of the surprises he'd received had been unpleasant. There was no reason to think nasty practical jokes - or punishments - were about to start now.
"Okay," she said, letting go of his shoulder. "Now."
He blinked against the sunlight, then blinked again. There was a brown pony in front of him, swishing its tail and staring right back at Clint.
"Her name is Bree," Mistress Pepper said. "Tony got her as a joke from Lord Rhodes, and we sort of kept her around. She's the sweetest thing. I - we thought maybe you'd like to have her."
She handed Clint a small decorated box of sugar cubes.
"There," she said, "give her one. She doesn't bite."
Clint was surprised, but for once he remembered his manners. He bowed a courtier's bow, not a slave's, as Mistress Pepper preferred.
"Thank you, Mistress. I'm not - I've never had a pet before."
He had adopted a sparrow when he was nine, but it had not ended well.
"It will be your job to feed her and clean up after her. Do you think you could do that? And we can find someone to teach you to ride."
Clint had used to ride, before everything. Beautiful white circus horses and beautiful blonde circus girls and boys. And him on a black stallion, shooting at targets and making the crowd go wild.
Mistress Pepper didn't want to hear about that.
"Thank you, ma'am," he said, bowing again. "I'll try not to disappoint you."
She smiled and left him with Bree, who really was sweet, and nuzzled his palm as he fed her the sugar cubes. She let him caress her well-brushed mane. He wondered if he should mount her - he wasn't sure ponies should carry adults, but he was still underfed, and the Mistress must have checked in advance. The idea still felt wrong, though, like clinging to a part of his old life.
It felt good to have a clear-cut job, even if it was obviously designed as indulgence. The menial jobs on the estate were carried out by automata, and Clint knew his letters but was not nearly literate enough to carry out secretarial duties for Mistress or, Heavens preserve, Master. He rather thought they'd demand the obvious, but Mistress made it clear his services were not needed in this regard. Perhaps they were repulsed by his limp and scarring, perhaps considered it to be a breach of marriage bonds, however weird it was - Clint couldn't say, but he was relieved and anxious at once, because a useless slave was, always, a slave sold away.
He found grooming equipment in the stables and took Bree down to the creek. The sunlight warmed and relaxed him, and he luxuriated in the feeling of freely touching another being. Bree drank peacefully, and he started washing her back.
He didn't even notice when he started talking to the pony - about unimportant (safe) things. He told her about dinner last night, and about the book he started reading in the library. He told her about his circus troupe, but only the fun parts, like how the owner had tried to pass off a large dog as an "enchanted werewolf" but the villagers saw through the ruse and demanded their money back.
He was telling her about the geography of the Stark estate - he was good at remembering where things were - when someone coughed behind him. He turned to see his Master, staring in an amused kind of way. Clint bowed, lower than he should have, suddenly aware of how he'd got his nice clothes all wet.
"Glad to see you're getting along," Master Stark said.
Clint nodded, tongue-tied. This was the point where a proper slave would thank his Master for the indulgence of a pet.
"Tried riding her yet?"
"N-no, sir."
"You should. She used to be a carnival horse - carried all those fat spoiled children, without ever kicking them in the head. She wasn't very well-kept, I think, so that's why Rhodey bought her. I mean, he'd say it was just to prank me, but he's a softie really."
A new, fierce warmth rose in Clint. That explained the kinship between them. Both of them were carnival-fare, abused and saved, harmless. He gripped her mane and looked for something to say, but Master Stark just half-smiled and wandered off.
"Somehow, I don't think he likes me much," Clint whispered to Bree, and resumed grooming.
Twice a day, Clint went out to take care of Bree. He rode her a few times, to make Mistress Pepper smile, but he mostly just took her for walks. She liked staying by the river most, and he'd lie down near her and just breathe.
As evidenced by his single disastrous outing in town proper, open spaces and other people weren't something he could handle now. But open fields of the estate, with Bree breathing quietly to the side, feel safe, closed in, somehow.
She stirred him awake one crisp afternoon. She was bristling nervously, and he tried to soothe her - but heard an unexpected gallop in the distance.
A rider arrived, on a beautiful chestnut. She wore black and seemed to be in haste, but she halted when she saw Clint and called his name. He bowed for her, recognition coming a moment later.
"Lady Natalia," he croaked out.
"Is Anthony in the house?" she asked.
"Yes, ma'am."
"This is Udova. Please take care of her, she's hungry." Without waiting for him to react - always so slow - Lady Natalia dismounted and ran to the manor.
Clint fed and watered the chestnut mare, and then took care of the sweat running down her hunches. She did not seem tired, just restless, as though she was used to longer runs. Bree had followed them to the stable but did not seem interested in bonding with the newcomer.
"Come on," Clint said. "Go for a run, your lady won't mind."
Udova didn't move though. There was a stillness about her that seemed strange to him - not like the calm he felt in Bree.
"I have a really bad idea," he told the horses. "It's going to end really badly." And he mounted Udova, who reared and took off.
He could not remember the last time he'd felt exhilaration with no fear. His spine had straightened automatically, and he let Udova take him where she wanted, though he stopped when they reached the end of his Master's estate. They jumped across the creek once, twice, three times, and he's not sure she ever would have stopped without a clear, harsh whistle sounding from the stables.
His old fear gripped him as they returned, and he was too petrified to even dismount. He was looking down at Lady Natalia, who had her arms crossed on her chest.
"Does Tony know you can ride like that?" she ask. Her voice was as cold as ever, but there was something new strange her expression, which reminded him of the fever dreams when he arrived.
Clint shook his head and tried to find words to apologise.
"You need to tell him, he might need trustworthy riders soon." She touched Udova's nose, and smiled. "Don't wear her out completely. We rise early tomorrow."
She left briskly. Trusting him, apparently.
Udova bristled and he let her carry him on a gallop as his heart slowed back to its regular pace. He rehearsed, in his head, what he was going to say to Master Stark. He couldn't think of anything that didn't sound presumptuous. He would just go in and say it - and accept if his Master laughed.
When he took Udova to her stall at last, he went in - it was quite late but his Master was always up well into the night, so Clint had time to change out of his sweat-stained clothes. As he passed the lounge, he heard his Mistress - her tone was tenser than usual - say "So you're really getting rid of him?"
There was nothing stupider a slave could do than get caught eavesdropping on his owners' conversation. Clint really hoped he wouldn't be caught.
"I'm not getting rid of him. I'm sending him away, with Bruce for an escort."
"It will be a dangerous journey, Tony, and you know how he's with leaving the house."
"Think I don't know that? But we can find themselves at open war in any minute, one that he has no part in, and what would he do, then?"
"He could prove useful!"
"Yeah, if they break through our defences, he'll throw up on them."
"Don't be cruel."
"I'm not being cruel, I'm being prudent. He'll be a hindrance at best, a victim again at worst."
"He'll keep out of the way."
"Pepper, stop - you told me he's my responsibility, and this is me being responsible for him, don't you see? He will be safe and protected, at Xavier's, and not implicated in whatever will befall us, should worse come to pass. I know it won't be an easy trip - but we'll get a closed coach for him, and if he agrees, Bruce can make him a sleeping draught for the journey. I can't have him underfoot for what's to come. And, believe it or not, I want what's best for him, too."
"I believe you. I also believe you're being influenced by what happened to Yinsen."
"Never said I wasn't."
"Alright, Tony. I'll go tell him to pack tomorrow morning."
"Thank you. I mean that, thanks."
As their conversation melted into endearments, Clint crept away and fled to his room.
Tomorrow, when Mistress Pepper came to tell him, he'd act surprised - so surprised - and he'd tell her, in passing, about the horse thing, though clearly that wasn't going to be of much help, now. It was weird how he actually believed Master about being unharmed wherever he'll be sent away to. And equally weird how... disappointed he felt at the thought of being sent away like a sickly pet. He should be glad: whatever future dangers they talked about, Clint was sure he didn't want to be caught in them. His wishes didn't matter, anyway, either disappointment or desire for safety. He would do as told.
He still couldn't fall asleep for a long time this night.
The house was quiet next morning, almost deserted. Master disappeared into the basement forbidden to Clint again, and Mistress closed herself in her suite, writing endless letters. Clint groomed Udova and took her for a final slow ride around the estate, trying to take everything in as they made their stately progress. It was ridiculous to get so familiar with his surrounding, to start loving them; to start thinking of them as 'home'. Ridiculous and wishful, and he'd be angry with himself if he had this leisure.
When they made it back to the stables, Lady Natalia and the Doctor were standing next to it, talking quietly. Doctor looked up at their approach and smiled at him, not unkindly, and Clint tried to smile back. He liked the Doctor, mild-mannered and self-effacing, with his voice gentle and hands impersonal when he had mended Clint's body back at his first month in the Manor.
Doctor was fiddling with something in his hands as they talked - a box - and as Clint came close enough he heard him saying to Lady Natalia, "This was delivered today, the last medicines I've ordered..." as he popped the lid open.
Then there was a flash of red light - a smell of sulphur - and Doctor's eyes went startlingly green, no pupils or whites visible, and then his body rippled and expanded, skin going ugly mottled green, clothes rippling, human body gone, leaving a giant monster in it's wake. The monster roared, and Udova bucked under Clint sharply and whinnied in abject terror. He clung hard, too stunned to think further than that, deafened by the monster's bellow, and when he could look there again, the stable was half destroyed and Lady Natalia pinned under the debris, trying to drag herself away.
The monster reached for her, and Clint reacted before he could think, sending Udova forward. They plowed into the monster from behind, and the giant green hand, instead of crushing Lady Natalia's skull as intended, swatted at him instead. For an endless, nauseating moment he was afloat, before crashing to the ground headfirst in a helpless heap. Bright fireworks went on before his eyes and something in his shoulder cracked with a sharp, howling pain, and world went grey and soft for a while. When it came back into focus, it did so with Lady Natalia's hands hauling him up and away, and her voice shouting "Run! Run!"
He stumbled blindly in her wake, ground shaking beneath them, and monster hard on their heels, and then they were inside the house - back entrance, servants' hall, kitchen - and he recovered enough to tug Lady Natalia after himself instead, into the little hidden nook he discovered under one of the staircases, one nobody seemed to know about. They piled into it, pressed together into the dark, and Clint tried to catch his breath as the monster's terrible booming steps boomed past. There was blood in Clint's eyes, and churning nausea in his gut, and nothing in past twenty minutes made any sense.
Then Lady Natalia said his name, urgently, and he realized it wasn't the first time she did. He said, "here", and then she told him, "You need to go to the basement and get Anthony."
Clint would've recoiled from her if the space allowed it; as it was, he shook his head hard, which made it explode with pain. He bit into his tongue to keep the mewling groan inside, terrified of what will happen if the monster heard it and returned. It was the only place forbidden to him in this too kind house! The basement with the machines ready to devour him!
Lady Natalia made a move as if to shake him but checked herself and continued with an astonishing calm, given the crumbling world around them, the roars shaking the timbers of the house: "I'm faster then you, and I will distract him so you can go past, but Clint: Lady Virginia is in the house. The workshop is protected from sounds; Tony will come out of and see his wife murdered by his best friend. You must warn him".
Clint tried not to, but he couldn't help but see it, Mistress' body torn apart by the abomination, destroyed - Master's eyes - the blood - and she was so kind to him. So kind.
He whispered, "I will", and lady nodded in the darkness once, sharply, and slipped out of their hiding place, no more words spent. He heard her shout something, indistinct, and then the terrible steps bound past his place again, and then Clint made himself crawl out too, limbs laden with terror, and make slow, shaky way down to the basement steps.
His head swimming, the pain in it and shoulder blinding, unrelenting, Cling thought irrelevantly about how stupid it was to get so used to the absence of pain in such a short while. Everything was slightly unreal, wavering around him, and he was in the stocks in the courtyard of his previous household again, on that last night, icy rain washing blood off his torn back, and his Master's furious, poisonous whisper slithering into his ear.
"I can't say no to Stark so I'll have to give you over, my toy, but oh, you shouldn't be glad: you will wish to be left with me when he feeds you to his machines, your body and blood and soul; oh, how you would howl then! How I wish I could hear that!"
He lied, he lied, Clint told himself while he stumbled along the corridors suddenly unfamiliar, one foot in front of another, hallways stretching and dancing around him, they've been nothing but good to me - but the basement was forbidden, forbidden. He knew the Bluebeard tale, knew what happens to ones who disobey their orders - but oh, Mistress Pepper's soft smile, her gentleness. He couldn't, he couldn't, he will have to, he will.
The door was in front of him, suddenly, and Clint could feel the sharp warning sting of wards, the way it made hairs on his arms rise.
He pushed it open before he could stop himself, and half-fell down the high stairs.
The space between the manor was cavernous, dark, the noise - music, he realized suddenly, discordant and howling - deafening. There were splashes of red light coming from the giant forge at the back, and there was Master Stark in front of it, striking the heavy hammer at something on the anvil, looking dangerous and alien here, in this place with sinister, gigantic shadows hemming Clint in. The frantic, uneven beat of his clockwork heart pulsed in tact with the music, and this, for some reason, was the scariest thing of them all.
The wards caught him mercilessly then, squeezing the breath out of his lungs, and Clint managed one strangled scream before Master looked up at him, hissing a startled, foul curse. The terrible pressure disappeared as suddenly as it came, and Clint dropped to his knees bonelessly, heaving.
"What the hell is going on here? Why the hell are you down here?", Master roared, and Clint almost let himself pass out - he could, he could, he was just a slave, he couldn't be expected to be more - to disobey - he'd pass out and when he comes back again, they will punish him or be kind to him, but he won't have to think, to -
- Mistress Pepper, torn apart on the beautiful marble floor of her sunlit rooms; Lady Natalia with her head bashed in, dark eyes unseeing; Master Stark, lost -
He made himself breathe, find his voice, said: "Doctor turned into a great green monster and rages in the house", and only threw up after that.
The howling music cut out suddenly, and in the silence Master's whispered "Hell and damnation" was startlingly loud. Then he shouted, "Jarvis!", and the answering voice - the one Clint's never heard before - seemed to have swelled from the walls themselves. "Jarvis, my armor!".
"Ready, sir", said the Voice, and Clint stared, forgetting even his nausea and terror, at the golden and copper whirlwind surrounding his master. When it died down there was as a statue in place of a man, a living metal armor, and before Clint's astonished eyes it rose in the air and shot out of the basement, leaving broken and splintered doors in it's wake.
Clint sagged down and tried very hard not to pass out.
Some immeasurable time later the Voice said: "Mr. Clint?".
Clint wished very acutely that he'd braved the hallways with the monster instead of staying here, with the walls that talked to him and machines that surrounded him. But since it was too late for that now, he decided that politeness was his best bet. "Yes?"
"I'm trying to read the wards above, and it seems to me that Mr. Banner fell a victim to a spell bringing the Other One other and enraging him, and it means he won't come back to himself of his own volition."
"I don't understand."
"I'm trying to say that sir won't be able to subdue him, and Mr. Banner won't stop unless he's stopped. And the best way to stop him would be to make him sleep, except that sir doesn't have the correct tools for it with him."
"And you... have?"
"I've took a liberty to prepare the solution, yes."
Something metallic and small bumped into Clint's good leg, and he'd have screamed in terror if he dared. But it turned out to be only a small, round automata with a clutching arm, looking incogruously innocent for this dark place. It chirped inquisitively at him, and clutched in its claw was a stoppered vial of clear liquid. Clint took it, and the little messenger dissolved back into the shadows.
"It needs to be administered very closely, Mr. Clint, as close to the face as possible. Ideally the Other One should drink it, but I doubt it would be possible."
Clint climbed to his feet numbly, vial clutched in the nerveless fingers of his good hand, and stumbled to the stairs out, giving uncertain "Thanks" to the Voice (Jarvis?).
"Good luck, Mr. Clint", it answered calmly, and then the basement wards spit Clint back into the house.
Clint didn't even realize he was actually hoping that Master Stark dealt with the problem by himself while he was talking to Jarvis downstairs, until this hope broke in his hands and stabbed him. The ground was shaking under his feet, the roar and whine of fire magic in the distance deafening. Clint made himself limp towards the noise, skirting the piles of debris.
He found them in the main hall, Master and monster (the Other One, Jarvis called him) locked in a desperate struggle, and Lady Natalia covering Mistress Pepper behind an overturned table in one of the corners with a wicked-looking knife in her hand, blood marring the front of her black blouse. They both looked scared but intent, watchful; and Clint could easily find the reasons for their fear, because even for his untrained eye it looked like the Other One was winning.
Master's golden armor looked tarnished and dented, despite what little time passed since Clint had seen it polished and new, but there wasn't a scratch on the monster's green hide, and he didn't seem to be tiring or slowing down. Just as he watched, the Other One seized Master's armored shoulder and shook him like a kid's discarded toy, throwing him away to slam into the wall and slide down.
Time seemed to have stopped, stretched. Clint could see everything at once, as if from the great distance: the monster turning to the ladies behind their flimsy barricade, the Master trying futilely to stand, himself with the vial clutched uselessly in his hand. Himself, throwing himself forward; himself, crushed in the giant fist mercilessly, his ribs wailing in pain; himself, smashing a vial into the monster's enraged mouth. Green melting away to uncover the Doctor's anguished face.
For some reason it was the pain of glass shards cutting his hand, not anything else, that finally sent him spiraling down into the darkness.
He spent a lot of time floating down below, mercifully separated from the pain by the thick lassitude of Doctor's sleeping draughts, while sure hands moved him and turned him and tended to him. Voices filtered in and out, but he couldn't make himself rise to meet them.
Voices said:
"Will throw up on them, was it what you said?" - "Rub it in, would you, dearest? I've been known to be mistaken and admit it."
And:
"I'm asking you to let me leave; please give me the courtesy of not repeating the obvious reasons."
"No I shall not, because I fail to see even one that makes any sense. You've been compelled by a spell; what's here to discuss?"
"The danger I brought - Pepper - Natalia - "
"Did any of them ask you to leave? Because I know for sure that they did not."
"I could've killed all of you. I almost killed Clint, in any case: should he suffer seeing me again?"
"Ask it of him when he wakes up; he might surprise you yet. He sure surprised me."
Clint tried to surface at that, if just to pay attention, but pain lurking at the edge of his consciousness scared him back under. The voice went on, with an edge to it:
"You gave an oath to me, and nowehere in it was said that you're allowed to run away and waste your life on pointless guilt. You'll stay, and we'll find the ones who dared this attack, and I will have their heads on spikes on my walls for this affront. I won't allow it to happen to you again."
The second one said something else, their anger and fear filtering down through the fog, and Clint moaned in fear, trying to escape futilely. Then cool, narrow hand soothed his forehead, and a calm voice told him: "Sleep, dear one", and he, finally, slept.
Clint's had familiar visitors in the tedious days of recovery that followed.
Mistress Pepper, who reassured him once again that the ban on entering the workshop was only for his safety, and that he was not in trouble, who thanked him again and again, and brought him invalid food and sweetened drinks, and kissed him on the forehead before leaving.
Lady Natalia, who came once and and squeezed his good shoulder firmly, and told him that Udova was unscatched in the ordeal.
Doctor didn't come to see him, which was understandable given what Clint heard: it brought disappointment and relief at once. Clint wasn't sure if he could look at the slight, kind man again and not see the monster roaring and tearing through the halls.
On the fifth day Master Stark came himself, waved a dismissing hand at Clint's attempts to sit up, and took a place at the head of Clint's bed. He stared at Clint intently, and it was a weird stare: for once not of a benevolent, absentminded owner looking at not a particularly bright pet, but as if he was actually seeing Clint, as if he was waiting for something from him.
Clint fidgeted under this bright, inquisitive gaze, unsure and afraid, and Master Stark abruptly stood back up and said:
"I have several thing to say to you, and I'd be grateful if you listened to me in full before answering."
Clint nodded, and Master continued.
"Firstly: I've had had plans to send you away for your own safety, before what happened happened. I wanted to send you away to an acquaintance of ours, Lord Xavier. He's a kind, respectable man with vast resources, and one not implicated in our current... difficulties. His household is quiet, well-established and well-protected, and you'd be treated with care and kindness, there, as long as needed. This offer still stands, and will stand regardless of what you decide right now, but here're I things I've wanted to tell you, first."
"My lady wife tells me - and she knows much more about people than I've ever did, and I'm happy to defer to her judgement, usually - my lady wife tells that because of the grievous harm done to you, and because of the power we hold over you, we're to take care of you as one would do with a child. To protect you, to make decisions for your benefit. And until recently I've been quite sure that she's right, and in some ways she isstill right - you're in our custody, regardless of your or our wishes, and we answer for your well-being and your safety, since the law won't leave you a recourse for either."
"But Clint, what you did on that day - for Natasha, for Pepper, for me, for this house - what you did despite being in pain, and terrified - was not an act of a child, or a slave. It was a choice befitting a free man. And while it's beyond my ken to give you back your freedom, I owe you, and I'm always serious about debts. So with this in mind: ask me for a boon. What is it that you want? Take your time answering."
Clint swallowed and nodded again, since this was - unexpected, and the flare of dread bursting in the pit of his stomach surprised even him. Because the choice was obvious - smart choice, slave's choice, the one you took to evade pain, to protect yourself, because who else would do it for you? He knew he should ask for the safety of Lord Xavier's house, for something to secure his place there, away from this war he didn't know anything about. Master talked about freedom he couldn't offer, but what was freedom if not a state where people could seize you, sell you, hurt you again and again and again? What was better than a protection promised, a place to live safely guaranteed?
And yet. And yet. Here he was, a slave bought out of pity, a step above an animal acquired on a charitable whim, a bedtoy so broken it couldn't even be used for it's original purpose - and yet if not for him, for his own choices and actions, this great House would've collapsed like a house of cards. There was power in it he couldn't comprehend yet, in a way Lady Natalia looked at him last, in a way Master Stark was waiting patiently on his answer now - and he was not ready to let it go.
He thought: I should at least ask who they are at war with.
He thought: I guess I'm going to find out what loyalty is.
He made himself raise his head and look Master - Lord Stark - directly in the eye, and said:
"I used to be good with a bow."