"No." Clint growled fiercely. Natasha narrowed her eyes and crossed her arms.
"Stop being a baby Barton and just get it over with." Coulson sighed, rubbing his forehead.
"No." Clint repeated, voice breaking almost inaudibly with the fear he was trying to disguise as stubbornness. Phil's nostrils flared and he took a deep breath before stepping into Clint's personal space so that his immediate vision was full of Phil Coulson's glare.
"You are going to that appointment. It is mandatory and unless you want to be put on probation I suggest you put up and shut up." Phil's voice was menacingly quiet and every authoritative which of course only prompted Barton to build up his defenses even higher.
"My eyesight is perfect Coulson. You know that, I know that, Tasha knows it so who cares what SHIELD thinks." Clint argued, crossing his arms and pointedly ignoring the burning glare coming from his partner.
"You should." Coulson argued back, temper hanging on by a thread. "Because they are sending Natasha on that mission with or without you and if you do not go to that appointment they will send her to Russia without you, Barton." Barton tensed up fast enough to give his handler whiplash and shoved past him into the hallway. Natasha stood still, waiting for Coulson's go ahead before following him. Phil nodded at her and brought his hand up to rub his forehead.
Natasha spun on the heel of her boot and followed after her partner, making her way back to his bunkroom. She scanned the (technically illegal) card she had to his room against the scanner and pushed her way into his quarters, unsurprised to see him nowhere on the ground. Natasha sighed impatiently and slid out the window, twisting on the sill to hook her hands on the overhang. She scaled the side of the building, admittedly slower than Barton would've, and crawled onto the restricted access roof that Barton wasn't supposed to be on. And yet there he was, seated on the ledge, feet dangling over the agents below. Natasha took her seat beside him, folding her hands in her lap.
"You're afraid." She stated after half a second. Clint barked a short laugh and dropped his head.
"No…" he protested sarcastically, all without looking up from the far away ground. "Why ever would I be pissed about getting my eyes poked and poisoned by SHIELD doctors who aren't exactly careful."
"Clint," she warned quietly, twisting her head to look at him. His shoulders slumped and his hands came to his forehead.
"They put yellow dye in my eyes, Tasha. It burns and I can't see. I can't fricking see." He muttered. "It numbs my eyes too. I can't feel my eyes for half an hour. And I know he's touching them. And there's that twenty minute period when I don't know if he damaged them because I can't feel my eyes. I know I'm blinking but I can't feel it." He took a deep breath while he waited for her reply, only to have her straddling him in the next second. His heart stutters when he realizes he is the only thing keeping her from falling from the edge of SHIELD HQ. His hands tightened on her hips and he dropped his eyes to stare at her shoulder. "They're making me choose between my worst fear and you." He chuckled darkly, stiffening when he felt Natasha's cold hands on either side of his face.
"Don't go." Natasha shrugged simply. Clint's head shot up to look at her indifferent expression. "I can go to Kharbarovsk alone, Barton." Clint shook his head definitively and dug his fingers into her hips.
"Like hell." He snarled. Natasha snaked her hands up to grip the blonde hair at the nape of his neck.
"Then suck it up, and go to the appointment." She murmured, leaning closer to him. Clint took a shuddering breath and leaned his forehead against hers. He was stiff then, lips suddenly pursed. He gripped her waist a little tighter and his chest was rising and falling a little quicker.
"You'll stay." It was more of a statement then a request and Natasha couldn't help the automatic defensive arch to her eyebrow that his order incurred. It was the slight tremor of his body under her hands the cooled her off before she could respond with something less then nice. He was honest to god scared. "Phil too." He said under his breath. Natasha didn't move, only stayed still while he stared into their laps, her legs wrapped around his waist while his dangled above the far below ground, foreheads pressed together, entwined in every sense. "Okay." He relented finally, sucking a steady breath in through his mouth. Natasha shifted her hips then and kicked her legs out over the ledge, pushing to her feet with as-always-impressive grace. She crossed her arms under her chest and watched as the hawk got off the ledge and started to the stairwell access door. Natasha watched, a slightly amused smirk quirking her mouth as Clint dropped into a crouch and disabled the keypad without batting an eyelash. Alarms sounded when the door swung open and Phil Coulson was waiting at the bottom of the first set of stairs, arms crossed and a thoroughly bemused look on his face when his agents strutted towards him like they hadn't a care in the world.
"Med bay. Now." He snapped, lips drawn into a tight line. Clint flipped him a mock salute and followed after Natasha in the general direction of Medical.
Inside an examination room, Natasha stood ramrod straight, arms crossed under her chest beside Phil who was watching the Doctor closely. The redhead's eyes cut to her partner's hand when they tightened nearly invisibly on the armrests of the chair he was in.
It was taking every ounce of his strength to stay still while stinging, blinding dye was dripped into his single most important assets.
And Natasha knew that.
Phil knew that.
The doctor didn't know that.
His jerky, sharp and sudden movements were putting the archer even more on edge than he already was.
Natasha let her lips part slightly and forced her breaths to be more audible then was natural.
Audible enough for him to hear and for him to focus on.
His white knuckled, slightly trembling grip on the armrests loosened just barely as his chest started to rise and fall in time with Natasha's breathing.
Phil's close attention to the doctor's every movement provided slight comfort.
The blue light came closer to his face until he knew, though he couldn't feel it, it was probing his eyes. Shortly after that borderline nauseating aspect of the exam, a second set of drops were put into play and Hawkeye barely bit back the panic clawing its way up his throat.
Pain. Stinging pain. Blurring vision. Receding depth perception.
His teeth ground together with the effort of keeping quiet and still. The doctor didn't need to know what was going on in his head.
Natasha did though. As did Phil. And both knew the tells of Clint's losing it.
He was exhibiting almost every one.
When his pupils were sufficiently dilated, the doctor moved the large machine up and over Agent Barton's head, flipping on the lights without warning.
Every instinct in Clint's body was screaming at him to rub at his eyes, anything to expel the blinding white light that was all he could see.
Natasha was almost as tense as he was and Phil looked wary and worried, as per usual when it came to his charge.
The millisecond the doctor was done, the silence in the room was broken by a sharp, "Out." Snapped out by the only Russian in the room. The doctor looked at Coulson with an offended and slightly amused look on his face, as if he were mocking the girl in his office. Coulson blew out a weary-as-hell sigh at that, pinching the bridge of his nose in time for Natasha's gun to be level with the ignorant man's face.
The moment the doctor realized who she was obvious; eyes widening, breaths quickening, the frantic scramble to flee the room and the Black Widow. The door slammed shut in sync with the sudden gun shot that was echoed shortly by the shattering of the security camera in the corner of the room.
That was the only cue Clint needed.
His body curled forward and his palms pressed against his eyes.
"Damn it." He hissed, curling his fingers into his hair. "I can't see."
Natasha hovered by his chair, while Phil moved forward and crouched at the kid's knees, one hand on his shoulder and the other at the back of his neck.
"Breathe, Barton." Phil warned, grip tightening to a near point of pain on Clint's neck. "It'll fade." He reminded him. "Thirty minutes and you'll be able to see perfectly, exactly like before." He said calmly, voice even. Clint's panicky breathing started to slow and he nodded jerkily after a second, rolling his eyes skyward and blinking rapidly.
"Okay." Clint said, voice a little hoarse. "Yeah, I'm okay." Phil squeezed his shoulder and dropped his hand away from his neck before using Clint's chair as leverage to push himself up from the floor.
Even being unable to see more then general blurs, Clint knew that Natasha would be raising her eyebrow right about now, calling his bull.
Natasha watched him stiffen and angle his body towards her, just barely, lips set in a hard line. He was warning her to drop it until they were out of here. And she did.
"I'm going to go grab your results, get you cleared in time for wheels up." Phil called out briskly before throwing open the door and padding down the hallway.
By the time they were back at Clint's SHIELD bunkroom, he was starting to fall victim to his worst fear all over again. Natasha shoved him back against the couch and straddled him, knees on either side of his hips as she gripped his hair tight, forcing his eyes to be level with hers, even if they were squeezed shut against the blur of red, white and green that was his Russian partner's face.
"Breathe, сокол."
"You are worthless without your eyes little brother."
Barney's merciless voice cut into his thoughts and knocked out whatever breath was left in his lungs.
"The Amazing Hawkeye would be far less amazing blind, don't you think?" the knife traced along sixteen year old Clint's lower eyelid, leaving a thin trail of blood that would later crust in his eyelashes. The knife twitched across his cheek and narrowly avoided catching the corner of his eye. "Let's see you hit the bull's-eye without your eyes, huh?"
"Clint." Natasha snapped in a tone that suggested it wasn't the first time she had tried getting his attention. He shook his head slightly and let his head fall forward against her shoulder.
She didn't speak because there was nothing to say. It was true. Without his eyesight, he would be cut loose, blacklisted, probably killed. His eyesight was everything, was who he was. Saying otherwise would be a lie.
And she wasn't in the business of lying to the one man she trusted.
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