Chapter 1
Hydra. Of course it was fucking Hydra.
Sweat stings Clint's eyes, but he ignores it and delivers a left jab to the training dummy, follows it up with a sharp roundhouse kick to its head. He returns to a neutral stance and shakes out his arms. He's been at it for close to two hours and he's starting to feel it. He's not ready to quit, though, the corrosive frustration still simmers dangerously in him. He could ask to spar with Natasha, working out with her usually helps, but right now company is not what he needs.
What he needs is to kick the everloving shit out of this training dummy.
Breathe. Right jab, low side-kick, back to neutral. Breathe. Attack again.
The door to the gym swooshes open behind him. The reflection in the glass wall shows Natasha making her slow way across the floor towards him. He can just about hear her footsteps against the floor, but he does hear them, and that means she's deliberately making noise. His jaw starts to ache and he realizes he's clenching his teeth. He forces himself to relax, shakes his shoulders out, but God, that chafes. He's not some damn head case that will flip his shit at the smallest thing. He attacks again, rounds it up up by getting in close and personal and rams a knee into the side of the dummy before retreating out of range.
His water bottle appears in front of him. He snatches it from her hand, takes a drink, then tosses it back to the floor and focuses on the dummy again. He really has no interest in engaging with her right now. She rounds him, visibly unimpressed with his mood, and settles into a fighting stance. Her body language clearly tells him it isn't an invitation, so he lowers his guard and takes a step back to give her space. She slowly goes through his last combo. She stops smoothly in mid-motion, perfectly balanced, and angles her raised knee exaggeratedly to the right.
"Yeah, yeah, my form is shit, I know," he huffs. Frustration has a way to let force overshadow technique and discipline.
Natasha fetches his towel and nods curtly towards the locker rooms. Time to quit, apparently. Well, tough luck, Clint is a big boy, he can decide on his own when he's had enough. He angles his body away from her and gets back into his neutral stance again. She puts her hand on his arm. He shakes it off. Why the hell does everyone think he needs to be told what to do? He hits the dummy with a fast one-two jab. She blows out an exasperated noise and he sees out of the corner of his eye how she retreats to the wall and sits down on the floor. Apparently she's staying. He shrugs mentally. If she wants to waste her time, it's her choice.
He hears the door open again, and this time the tread is heavier. Steve. Clint hears him say something to Natasha and she answers. She sounds frustrated. Walk a mile in my shoes, he thinks darkly, then you'll know true frustration.
Steve circles him, waves his hand as if trying to get Clint's attention.
Oh, for fuck sake.
"You know, I can hear you coming," he snaps.
Steve winces, then he takes a deliberately deep breath and starts to speak.
It's gibberish.
Record-played-backwards gibberish. With a side of nails on blackboard.
Clint grits his teeth at the sound. He can hear from the pitch that it's a question, and it doesn't take a genius to figure out what it is. It's the question every single person has asked him every single day for the past eight days. Do you understand me?
He looks away, shakes his head curtly. No. He still can't understand a word Steve says. The same way he can't understand Natasha. Or Tony. Or JARVIS. Or Fury. Or anyone.
Clint had woken up in the back of the jet after a raid on what had turned out to be a Hydra lab, and the team had all been speaking nonsense. Total nonsense. When he'd demanded they stop fooling around because the noises they were making were hurting his head, they'd all gone suddenly quiet and stared at him. The confusion on their faces had quickly segued into alarm, and he had realized that okay, something was very wrong.
Yes. Something had indeed been very wrong. Not only didn't he understand them, they didn't understand him. Cue emergency transport to the nearest hospital. He had been CAT-scanned, MRI-scanned, MEG-scanned, and subjected to every other scan and test known to man. He'd been lying there, trying to not panic at the sheer number of medical staff that buzzed around him, at the look of tightly tamped down urgency in their eyes – the kind he associates with life threatening injuries, his own or others'. Stroke? Brain tumor? Maybe Loki's mind control had left lasting damage.
Natasha, bless her, had stared down the medical staff when they attempted to make her leave. At least that was what he assumed they had been trying to do. She'd only left the room when they were actively scanning him. It had been so overwhelming that he's pretty sure that had she not been there, he would have bolted at the first opportunity. Even at the time he had realized the impulse to get away was irrational, he needed to stay where he was, but it had been so intense, had pressed against every cell in his body. He knows Natasha had seen it.
The urge to run is still there, but it's manageable. Not that the situation is any less terrifying, because after days and days of tests and scans medical experts still have nothing. For all intents and purposes, his ability to process and formulate words has just vanished. And it hadn't taken him long to realize that it wasn't just spoken words.
It was written words, too. And signed words. And numbers. And…
Yeah.
He goes back to kicking the crap out of the dummy.
'* '* '*
Clint looks up when Natasha knocks on the open door. He hasn't showered or changed after his workout yet, he's exhausted. She makes the universal gesture for 'eat', followed by a question mark in the form of a raised eyebrow. He gives her a thin smile. She's not prone to mother henning, but here she is, and it just drives home what he already knows. This is bad.
He's thankful she doesn't speak to him. She had tried at first, but every time he had heard her usually smooth and even voice being transformed into harsh, unrecognizable noises, his stomach had gone nauseatingly tight. Natasha had obviously picked up on his discomfort and had stopped almost immediately.
It's so damn frustrating. To his ears he's speaking perfectly understandable English. They, on the other hand, sound like they're doing their best to impersonate a rusty saw on metal while speaking in tongues. He thinks he probably doesn't sound like that to them, because none of them wince when he forgets and talks to them. Well, Steve winces, but Clint's pretty sure it's not because his voice hurts Steve's ears. It's a dejected and unhappy thing and it makes Clint want to punch him. The whys of that particular reaction are still a little foggy. Bruce doesn't wince, but his eyes flicker to the side for a split second. He thinks Bruce is probably not even aware of the reaction, but he sure is. And Tony, well, Tony frowns at Clint like he's personally affronted by his situation, and then usually disappears. Natasha is the only one who doesn't bat an eye.
She waits while he showers and changes. When he comes out from the bathroom she sits cross-legged on his unmade bed, flipping through one of the magazines that litter the floor. He catches a glimpse of a smiling, blond model on the glossy cover. Natasha smirks as he snatches the magazine from her hands and tosses it into the corner. He does not read Vouge. It had been mixed in with the issues of Digital Photography he'd lifted from the common area a few weeks ago.
She's still smirking as they ride the elevator down to the garage, and Clint folds his arms over his chest. "You're such an ass," he grumbles. Natasha laughs and tosses him the car keys as the doors open. She points at one of Tony's more modest cars, a dark sedan with tinted windows. He gets behind the wheel. The engine growls to life and he hums in satisfaction. Modest, but not without claws and fangs.
Clint pulls out and follows her silent directions through the post-lunch traffic and out of the city. They're somewhere south of Newark when Natasha taps him on the arm and points at the exit coming up. She directs him onto smaller and smaller roads, and they end up at a strip mall where a steakhouse is crammed in between a nail salon and what tries to pass as a legal office. Looks more like a front for a business that operates just a bit south of legal.
The restaurant is small but cozy, and the waitress shows them to a booth in the back. She hands them laminated menus and he hears Natasha rattle something off. Ordering them both drinks, no doubt. Clint feels ridiculously relieved when the waitress walks away.
He scans the room. They've missed the lunch rush, so only a few tables are occupied. The volume of the music that is playing is blessedly low. Another thing all fucked up. Melodies are fine, but the vocals all sound atonal and weirdly wrong-paced. Clint isn't much into instrumental music, so his playlists have been sitting untouched since the day of the incident.
He studies the menu intently and tries to figure out where the burger section is. Not that knowing where to look would make any difference at all. He sighs and rubs at his eyes. He's pretty sure he won't be able to finish a full meal, but if he's going to try he wants a burger with ridiculous amounts of cheese and bacon. He gives up on the menu and puts it down. He mimes eating a burger with his hands and Natasha nods.
Charades are pretty much the only thing they have at their disposal right now. Obviously he's tried every single language he speaks - even the ones he only knows enough of to order a beer, swear, and ask directions to the train station – in the hope that somehow it would only be his English that's affected. But that would be way too easy, wouldn't it? He looks up when Natasha's fingers tap the menu he's scowling at. She slides her phone over the table and he takes it, unsure of what she wants him to do with it. She reaches over and taps the screen and a clip starts playing.
It's a kitten clip and Clint snorts. Subtle, Romanoff. Real subtle. But okay, he will try to lay off the moping for a while. When she tries to take her phone back he pulls it out of reach and watches the entire clip, and the one that's cued up after it. He keeps his attention on the screen when the waitress comes back with their drinks and tries to concentrate on the soundtrack someone has added to the clip (how the hell he knows the melody is from Sponge Bob Square Pants is anyone's guess) while Natasha places their orders.
The burgers are good, the cheese and bacon are plentiful, and the clip actually lifted his mood a little. They eat in comfortable silence, and Clint relaxes. He watches the young man and woman across the room. They're winding up for a real fight, he can see. Both of them getting tense and frustrated, and as he chews on his burger the volume of their discussion grows and the woman's hand gestures get progressively wider and sharper.
"Ah, young love," he grins. "Wouldn't surprise me if that guy spends the night on the couch tonight."
He sees movement in the corner of his eyes and the waitress is there. Her smile doesn't falter, but it's in Clint's job description to be observant, so he sees the way her eyes flicker, the flash of discomfort. He has comes to suspect that his words won't pass for a foreign language, and her reaction verifies it. He looks away but not before seeing the look she gives Natasha, and he almost hears her thoughts. Poor woman, having to babysit someone who's obviously not right in the head. It's easy to put his face and body language into neutral, and he locks his eyes on the backrest behind Natasha. The waitress starts to speak, probably asking Natasha if everything tastes okay, if they need something, but Natasha cuts her off, her voice flat and cold. The waitress freezes for a moment, then hurries away.
Natasha scowls after her, then reaches across the table, but stops before she can touch him and pulls her hand back. Clint glares at the wall and tries to find the anger that's been close to the surface ever since this whole fucked up thing started.
He can't. He just sits there feeling claustrophobic and stupid and broken.