CHAPTER 1

Time is an abstract concept as Clint drifts, vaguely aware of sounds and lurching, nauseating movement. The cocoon of fuzziness around him is warm and seductive, and he really doesn't feel the need to do anything but stay right where he is. But good things never lasts, and eventually everything starts coming closer. Noise. Nausea. Pain. His head hurts, god, his head hurts. He realizes he's felt it for a while, but it's been distant, inconsequential until now. Not so any longer. His nervous system is cranking up the volume.

It takes an embarrassingly long time to process the fact that he's face down and that his hands are tied behind his back. He blames the floaty, oddly disconnected feel that goes with certain kinds of drugs. On top of everything, he's got a bag over his head.

Drugs. Tied up. Bag.

Aw, shit.

He blinks against the fabric of the bag and tries to get his bearings. His surroundings are either pitch black or the bag is made from some kind of black-out material, because it doesn't let even a hint of light through. A feeling of creeping unease settles in his stomach. It's a straight-up reaction to his helplessness and imposed blindness, and he knows that letting it run loose will only play right into the hands of today's baddies, so he acknowledges it and then stows it away.

There's a strong smell of diesel exhausts. That together with the fact that his whole body vibrates to the tune of an engine tells him he's in a vehicle. Since there's enough space for him to lie down, he's most likely in the back of a truck. The engine isn't firing quite right on all cylinders, and it whines and growls in protest as the driver grinds the gears and revs it like it's a race car. Not a great vehicle. Definitely not a great driver. The first could be good to know, the latter… he doesn't know how that tidbit might be helpful, but he files it away nonetheless.

The truck shakes and bounces, climbs and descends, and it does nothing for Clint's headache. At least the condition of the road tells him they're not in the city any longer. He figures they're somewhere to the east or north east. There's nothing but flat farmland in the other directions, and this road is anything but flat. The awkward position of his arms behind his back and the bite of his restraints are far from enjoyable, but trying to find a way to hold his hands that will lessen the discomfort will alert anyone around him to the fact that he's awake, and he's not about to give up that advantage before he has to. But he has to take inventory of his injuries. His left shoulder aches and his back twinges sharply when he furtively shifts a little, his motions disguised under the jarring motion of the vehicle. He's sore, but it doesn't feel like he's been shot or stabbed or otherwise pierced. He's not in optimal shape, but all in all it's not too bad.

Mission. It suddenly comes to him. They'd been on a mission. He digs around for the details he knows always go with a mission, but they're frustratingly slippery. It takes a while before he gets a good grip on the whole story. Well, most of the story; time kinda skips a few frames here and there. But he remembers the brief with Coulson, the task they'd been given: get a hold of documents with information about a new group of Plutonium black-marketeers so S.H.I.E.L.D. could do something about them. In and out. No bells and whistles. Him and Natasha.

Natasha.

Fuck. His chest goes tight for a moment and he has to remind himself that she's good, real good, so she probably got away. Hopefully she got away.

Hopefully she's still alive.

A boot pushes at his tied arms. "I think sleeping beauty number one here is awake."

Number one. That kills any hope Clint had that Natasha got away. Who the hell are these guys? They must be good in order to get the drop on her. But at least he knows she's still alive. And hopefully she's somewhere close. The two of them stand a much better chance of getting away if they can work together.

He's manhandled from the floor, to his knees and then to his feet. "Careful!" he grinds out. No use playing possum now.

The bag over his head, his tied hands, the uneven ride - they all make balance a precarious thing, and he stumbles when he's pushed backwards. This is when he discovers another little thing. Shackles around his ankles. It's like stepping on your own shoelaces and there's just nothing Clint can do, he falls backwards. Then there's a bench at the back of his knees and he lands on his ass. His head hits something hard behind him. His poor rattled brain doesn't appreciate that and makes it abundantly clear. Skull-crushed-in-vise clear.

"Get that bitch up, too," he hears, and despite the pain it makes him grin a little, because it means she's right there and that she probably got a few good ones in.

The dead weight of Natasha is deposited next to him on the bench. He props her up with his shoulder. Since he can't see anything, it could technically be someone else pressed up against him, but she feels right. Her build feels right. Her hair feels right where it presses against a patch of exposed skin on his neck. She smells right, too. No scented shampoo, no perfume. That's for other kinds of outings. This close he can hear her breathing, and he's been on enough missions with her, sat through enough nights with her sleeping on the bed (on the floor, on the ground, in the car) next to him, so he knows how she breathes. This is Natasha, without a doubt.

He elbows her in the side lightly. She doesn't react, and he has to remind himself that Natasha slumped against his side like this tells him absolutely nothing about her status. It can be one of three things, he figures. He was drugged, so the odds that she's been dosed, too, are pretty good. A TKO is another possibility. Or she might be faking it. He sincerely hopes she's faking it, because that would be the absolute best-case scenario here. Clint's second choice would be chemical la-la-land, because the third one would be that TKO. And it feels like quite some time has gone by and if she's been unconscious for a significant length of time, that's… not good. Natasha with a bad head injury isn't something he needs right now.

Natasha with a bad head injury isn't something he needs, period.

He flexes his toes on the freezing floor. Removing their boots and socks. Solid move. It's what he would've done. Makes it less likely they'll be able to move any significant distance very fast, should they get away. Escape Prevention 101. He appreciates the fact that their captors haven't taken something sharp or something hot to the soles of their feet. That would be Escape Prevention 102. He hunches his shoulders a little, tries to project an air of 'tense with a pinch of fearful'. Tries to lull them into thinking he's not a threat. He spends some time trying to get their guards talking, asking questions like who are they, what do they want, the kind expected of a someone who's been nabbed during an attempted B & E and fitted with a bag over his head. He's not so much interested in what they say as he's in figuring out how many they are, and where in the truck they're located. When he fails to get any answers whatsoever, he starts baiting them. That little exercise gives him the location of two guys and a couple of more bruises.

Natasha still doesn't move.

After some painful twisting and some pretty awkward finger maneuvers he manages to count three separate zip ties around his wrists. Damn. A single nylon zip tie would be easy enough for him to get out of, even behind his back. Two ties, probably not. Three? Not a chance. The truck lurches and Clint plants his feet as wide as he can on the gritty floor, trying to maintain some balance. It's hard, because the shackles are short. They'll allow him enough mobility to shuffle, but not much else.

His own breath is uncomfortably warm and moist against his face and his head still pounds in time with his pulse. Most of his injuries stem from when he was unceremoniously pulled down from a fire ladder by his boots. For the record, he'd been on his way down per their not-so-polite request. Fuckers. Sure, he hadn't been very high up, just a couple of rungs, but he's not immune to gravity and someone holding on to your legs means you're left with your arms and face to break the fall. It was a spectacular face plant. He runs his tongue over his front teeth, along the sharp edges that shouldn't be there. Yep. 10 out of 10.

After that the drugs must have come into play, because it a blank from then till he woke up just now. What the hell happened? How were they able to pin him down on the roof like that? What did he miss? He runs through what he can recall of the op, and then one more time, but there's nothing. Nothing had felt out of the ordinary. He almost falls off the bench when the truck hits something that feels like the Grand Canyon, and he hears someone towards the rear grumble out a curse. Three, he thinks. That's at least three people here in the back.

There could be several more both back here and in the front with the driver, so Clint bides his time.

Then Nat's awake.

He doesn't know how he knows it. Absolutely nothing has changed; she hasn't moved, hasn't made a sound, her breathing and muscle tone stay the same, but from one moment to the next, he just knows she's awake. He hums quietly, not a sound as much as a vibration that he hopes she'll feel where she's crumpled against him. He gets nothing back. That's okay, he didn't really expect it, either.

Just a few minutes later the truck comes to a jarring halt. There's slamming and shouting, and then Natasha is wrenched from his side. She makes a pained, confused sound, like she's barely conscious. But Clint knows for a fact that's not how Ms. Romanoff sounds when she's in distress. He hears a thud, a huff of breath escaping her, and another one of those noises (just to let him know where she is, he suspects).

Someone says 'No, him first', and Clint's dragged from the bench. He has time to hope that they'll let him sit down on the edge and slide down to the ground, but alas, no such luck. He's shoved over the edge and tries his best to twist, tries to spare his face this time. He kind of manages, but his hands are still cuffed behind his back and he can't see the ground to steel himself, so the impact is brutal times ten. He lands on his already sore left side and the wind is knocked right out of him. He lies there, mouth open against the rough fabric of the bag, ice cold water seeping through it in no time. He's not getting any air. None. It's a temporary muscle glitch, intellectually he knows that, but he wishes like hell that someone could remind the lizard part of his brain of that, because it sends him into DEFCON 1.

Without warning, he's grabbed by the scruff of his jacket and dragged to his feet, and at that moment he's kind of thankful he can't draw breath to make any noise, because it's feels like his spine has been broken in more than one place and like his shoulder has gone supernova. He staggers and barely stays on his feet when the hands lets go of his jacket, and finally, finally, his diaphragm decides to rejoin the race and he can suck in a shallow, ragged breath. Then the hood is pulled off.

It's still dark, early-morning dark. The air is cold against his face, and he squints and blinks at the light rain and the glaring floodlights. And old farm house sits in the middle of a complex of what looks like old stables and sheds. A rusty, sad-looking tractor stands between two of the buildings. There's even a small paddock pressed up against the side of the house. But that's where the farm illusion ends. Clint counts eleven armed guards stationed around the area. They're all in grungy-looking civvies, carrying AK47s and side arms. Most of the semi-automatics are pointed right at him. From somewhere out of sight, he hears dogs barking, and by the sound of it they're no Chihuahuas. He scans the guards without being obvious about it. Some of them look like the real deal, like they know what they're doing (ex-special forces from some country or another, retired soldiers from a paramilitary group, maybe), but at least three of them have no idea how to even hold their weapon properly. A mix of new and old hands, then. At the edge of the property he can see two HF antennas, but the piercing light means he can't see a single thing beyond them. He gets the feeling, however, that even if he could see into the pitch darkness that there would be nothing there, that they're in the middle of nowhere.

He glances back just in time to see Natasha being pulled towards the back of the truck. Her hair clings to her face and she too blinks owlishly at the lights. Her hands are tied behind her back. No shackles, though. He watches them push her down to sit on the edge and they haul her out of the truck. He's glad to see she is spared the flight.

One of the armed guards nods towards the house. "Move." The order is dispassionate, spoken with authority but not with aggression.

Someone behind Clint apparently doesn't believe in calm and composed, and he gets a shove in the back. Pain shoots up his spine again, and it feels like someone stabbed a screwdriver through it. He goes to his knees in the mud. He knows he makes a sound of pain but he really doesn't care, because it hurts. When he can see straight again he's already being pulled to his feet. "Easy on the merchandise, buddy," he wheezes. He glares at the asshole behind him. The same one who made him take a nosedive from the ladder. The same one, he bets, who pushed him out of the truck. The answer is a rifle butt to his shoulder and Clint decides that right now it's in his best interest to get with the program.

But make no mistake, when they're getting out of here, he's going to find this asshole and hurt him.