The images in Tony's mind wouldn't go away. Jackson alive. Then Jackson dead. Then Clint on his knees with a gun in his mouth.

Tony hadn't heard a gunshot. He clung to that, but he knew he was at the other end of this huge building, and he had no idea how thick the walls were between him and Clint. For all he knew Clint may be lying dead on the floor back there, his blood and brains mixing with Jackson's. Tony rubbed at his eyes. No. Stop. He hadn't heard a gunshot, and until he saw Clint's body, he wasn't going to entertain that nightmarish idea.

But it was hard to convince his overactive brain of that, because the dull sound of Jackson hitting the ground was still so clear, and his head kept playing what-if reels of Clint's body doing the same.

He leaned the back of his head against the wall and stared at the cracked ceiling. It was plain and gray, but so much better than looking at Jackson's blanket covered body. The man had already been sprawled out in the middle of the room when they shoved Tony in here. Tony had knelt next to him, hoping futilely that the man would somehow magically still be alive. His hands had shaken when he reached out to feel for a pulse. Jackson's skin had still been warm, but there had been no beat of a heart under his fingers. Tony knew it had been a stupid thing to hope for, the ruined back of Jackson's head should have been enough to know that, but he couldn't not make sure.

He had dragged Jackson from the middle of the room to one of the walls, and tried to arrange him in a position that looked somewhat comfortable. Not that it mattered one bit to the man in question, but it made Tony uncomfortable to see him with his limp limbs awkwardly angled. Then he had taken the single blanket from the cot at the other wall and draped it over Jackson, before retreating back to the cot. He had buried his head in his hands for a few minutes, then decided he needed to get his shit together, because he had to get them the fuck out of here. This wasn't like that time he had been snatched by that pimply Spin Doctor wannabe all those years ago. Tony blamed Happy for dropping the ball on that one, but in the end it hadn't mattered much, because not ten minutes after said wannabe had shoved Tony into his stinky basement apartment he had lit up a massive roach and said a temporary goodbye to most of his brain. Tony had been back home within the hour. And this also wasn't like the time when this batty old bint had her daughter lure Tony into a freaking storage container. It had looked bad there for a while. Hacksaw and power drill bad. But that kidnapping had ended well, too. With crumpets and tea in dainty thin-walled china cups when the old lady had decided that Tony was too nice a young man to cut body parts off. Batshit crazy, that one. Her kitty litter-for-brains offspring, too.

No, this was very much not like those two times, so after a few minutes on the cot, Tony had gotten to his feet and examined the room for ways out, and when that failed, for material he could use to make a way out. But there had been nothing. The room had the cot, bolted to the floor, a plastic bucket in the corner and the blanket that now covered Jackson. Nothing else. No gas pipes, no electrical outlets, no parts that could be pried loose and used for weapons. Nothing.

He rubbed at the spot on the side of his neck where they had pressed the jet injector. He had already been disoriented by the concussion grenade that had gone off, and it had taken no more than a few seconds before Tony's brain couldn't tell up from down. He had heard the sound of gunshots, but the world around him had already been demoted to something fairly unimportant by the drugs, and he can't remember what happened next. Not until he had come to sitting on the floor next to Clint and Jackson, listening to that mad man going on and on and on about the evils of materialism and the despicable concentration of riches belonging to a few equally despicable men who were pretty much the devil in disguise.

There had been some weird mix of old testament wrath and Marxist-Leninist preaching in this guy's spiel, which had amused Tony's drug-addled brain a little, because hello, he apparently didn't know enough about his chosen ideology to know that religion didn't really mesh with it. Tony had taken a lot of pleasure in pointing out all the contradictory aspects of his speech, albeit a little slurred and probably not quite as witty and cutting as usual because of the drugs, but it had been fun. Clint hadn't looked all that amused, though. Neither had Jackson. Then Tony had gone on to inform Lenin-in-training that he would get no money, none whatsoever, and things had gone to hell in a bad way. Jackson had been dragged to his knees, and without any other comment Lenin's lead thug had put a bullet through his head. Tony's world had come into sharp, horrible focus at the sound of the gun. Jackson's body had been dragged out, and Lenin, who's name apparently was Cortes, had told Tony to think about his answer. The man had then bid his adieu, but not before something wordless had been communicated between him and the murderous lead thug.

The door had barely closed when Clint had been grabbed and shoved to his knees in the middle of the room. Tony's heart had stuttered when the guy put the gun against Clint's forehead. He thinks he might have gotten loud at that point, because he had been unceremoniously gagged with duct tape and his hands had been taped together behind his back. His heartbeat had been going crazy as he had been forced to watch the gun slide down Clint's face before it came to a stop against his lips. Clint's face didn't betray much, but his hands were clenched into fists behind his back, and the tension in his body made him look like he was made from stone. He hadn't even glanced at Tony, not once, instead he had turned every ounce of focus on the thug, radiating waves of closely controlled rage and defiance.

Then Tony had been dismissed and forcefully removed from the room. He had managed to catch Clint's eyes for just a moment before the door closed, and they had betrayed no fear, just a hardness that Tony had only seen on a few occasions when shit hit the fan in a big way and Clint pulled out his Shield persona, the one who had spent years and years doing things that Tony didn't even want to think about. The one he had a hard time consolidating with the Clint Barton he knew. If Jackson being shot in the head hadn't told Tony something about the depth of shit they were in, then the sight of Barton in that mode would have made it clear all on its own.

Tony flexed his hands, ran his fingers over the raw knuckles. He had pounded at the door periodically, shouting and raging, but no one had acknowledged him. Without his watch he didn't know exactly how much time had passed since he was put in this room, but he was pretty good at judging the passage of time, and he guessed about an hour had passed when he heard sounds outside the door again.

He got to his feet and steeled himself.

The door opened. It was the man who had shot Jackson, who had pushed the gun to Clint's mouth. The colorless one. Behind him, further down the hallway, two other men dragged Clint between them. He was bent over in their grips, half-dragged every few steps when he couldn't keep up with their preferred pace.

Thank god. Thank god. Thank god.

When they came to a stop, Clint raised his head a fraction, squinting. Blood had run from his nose and his mouth. One side of his face was darkening with bruises and swelling.

The colorless guy motioned towards the small procession behind him, just outside the door. "Is this yours?" He pointed at Clint with a nightstick.

They dropped Clint to his knees and he fell forward with a groan. His hands were still cuffed behind his back. Tony took a step forward, but reconsidered when the nightstick was raised over Clint's head.

"This yours? Your whore?" the guy asked again.

What the fuck?

Tony glared at him. A second later the nightstick came down on Clint's back. Clint twitched away with a low, sharp sound of pain. It struck again.

"Stop!" Tony shouted as the nightstick went high again. "Don't."

"Is. He. Your. Whore?"

"He sure took it like one," one of the other guys said with a smirk. "Spread so prettily, opened right up. And he made these cute little noises, too, like..." he made a high-pitched, whimpering sound at the back of his throat. His companion snickered.

"You utter fucking bastards," Tony ground out.

"You sure he's not one of yours?" the door guy asked again. "You keep a few rentals around at all times, right?"

Despite the ice in his gut, Tony managed a roll of his eyes. "Piece of advice, buddy? Put down the gossip rags and pick up a brain. I don't keep a fucking harem stashed away in the laundry room."

"So, the answer is no?"

"Damn right it's a no! He's a better man than you could ever hope to be. And he's not mine or anyone else's. He's not a piece of property."

"You sure?"

"Are you stupid as well as ugly?" Tony snapped, and belatedly bit his tongue. He didn't want Clint to be beaten with that nasty-looking stick again.

But the guy just shrugged casually, like 'your loss', then looked over his shoulder at the other two. "Take him away."

Clint groaned as they grabbed his still cuffed arms and dragged him back down the corridor, not bothering to get him to his feet.

"No! Wait." Tony took two steps after them, but Clrless grabbed him and swung him around. Tony's face hit the wall with enough force to make the world blink out for a moment. The next thing he knew, he was on the floor and the door closed with a heavy bang. He blinked at the ceiling a few times as the room came back into focus. Shit. They took him away again.

He rolled gracelessly to his feet and stumbled to the door. "Wait!" He pounded his fists against it. "He's mine! He's mine. There, I said it. Now bring him back, you assholes!"

He got no reply.

He kept yelling, but got no reply. Eventually he sagged against the locked door. Fuck, fuck, fuck. What did he just do? Jesus. What did he do? He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to control the panic that was growing. He had given them a reason to take Clint away again, to maybe continue to do horrible, painful, degrading things to him, and all because Tony wouldn't say he was a whore, wouldn't say he was Tony's whore. What the hell was wrong with him? They were just words, for god's sake. He slumped down onto the floor and covered his face with his hands.

But self-hatred never helped anyone escape sadistic dickheads, so after a few minutes he made himself get to his feet. He did another round of the room, avoiding the stretch of wall where Jackson lay, but he didn't find anything useful this time either. With nothing else to do, he returned to the cot and waited.

No gunshots were heard, and he clung to that.

'* '* '*

They returned later. Much later. Just like last time, the door was unlocked and Clint was dragged to the threshold. Tony clenched his teeth hard at how much worse he looked this time. He was paler, hardly holding any of his own weight, dripping wet and shivering in their grip. He looked like hell, but what scared Tony the most was the way that dark, dangerous flatness in his eyes had lost two very important components. The dark and the dangerous. Left behind was only a different kind of flatness that carried an exhausted note, an 'I'm not really here, please call back later' quality that made Tony's skin tingle with wrongness. Then Clint's head lolled forwards as they jostled him, and Tony couldn't see his eyes anymore.

"What the hell is wrong with you," he yelled. Every cell in his body wanted to cross the room and grab Clint, but there was no way in hell he was going to do anything that would make them take him away again. "What did you do to him?"

Colorless glanced down at Clint. "Cleaned him up a little. You should thank us, he was kinda disgusting."

"I'm going to kill you," Tony promised darkly, never taking his eyes off Clint, willing him to move, to make a sound, any sound. "And I will enjoy every goddamn second of it."

"Okay. Good luck with that." The guy seemed utterly indifferent to Tony's venom. "So, just to make sure I didn't misunderstand you last time, this isn't your whore?"

Tony knew he had to say it. It didn't mean a thing, it was just mind-fuckery, but his whole body resisted those words, resisted attaching them to Clint no matter how insincere they were.

"Guess I heard you right, then." The guy made a move as if to turn.

"No! Wait!" Tony raised his hand, his chest tight and cold. He couldn't let them take Clint away again. Couldn't let them hurt him again. "Okay, fine, he's my— He's mine."

"I'm sorry, he's your what?"

Fuckers.

"My whore," Tony said, and the word tasted foul in his mouth. In that moment he was grateful he couldn't see Clint's eyes.

Colorless grinned widely, clearly satisfied with the result. "Well, why didn't you say that right away? Would you like him back?" He made a sweeping gesture towards Clint.

"Yes."

"Ask for it properly."

Tony fisted his hands by his sides. "Please, can I have him back?"

"I don't think that's the right question," Colorless said and turned to his companions. "Do you think that's the right question?"

"No," one said.

"Nope," the other said.

Clint hung between them, knees almost touching the floor. He had gone limp and silent during the exchange. The only sound heard was the drops of water hitting the dirty floor under him. Tony took a steadying breath and tried to control the anger that burned white hot in him. He knew what this motherfucker wanted to hear, he wasn't stupid. Didn't make it any easier to say, though.

"Please, give me back my whore."

He hoped Clint was coherent enough to recognize the game they were making Tony play. Either that or incoherent enough to not register anything at all.

"You hear that?" one of them asked Clint. "Your boss wants his whore back."

"I'm gonna miss him," the other said, and Tony took a couple of extra mental snap shots of his face, because this shit was going to die, too. If he couldn't do it himself, he would let Natasha in on his plans and the reasons for them, and he knew she would disappear. She would come back a while later, a few days, a few weeks.

They wouldn't.

"Of course you can have your whore back," said the door guy.

He looked ever so pleased, and Tony wanted to remove that goddamn smirk from his face. With a blow torch. Or possibly by shoving it into a wood chipper. Something that involved a lot of screaming and bleeding. He took a break from planning their messy demises when they dumped Clint just inside the door and unlocked his cuffs.

Tony was on his knees next go Clint before the door closed behind them, his hands hovering uncertainly above Clint's back, not sure if he should touch, or if he should, if he should… if he should something. He didn't know what that something would be, but he couldn't just let Clint lie here and shiver. Then Clint moaned quietly and shifted a fraction. He crossed his arms tightly over his chest, squeezing his eyes closed. His teeth were chattering.

Tony hesitantly placed his hand on Clint's wet, cold arm, careful of the ugly bruising on his skin. "Hey, man," he said quietly. "Hey. You in there?"

Clint didn't answer, just kept trembling under Tony's hand.

Tony gave him a shake, just a tiny little one to try to get his attention. "Barton? Hello? Wakey, wakey. You're missing all the fun." He winced and closed his eyes with disgust. He was such an idiot. Clint probably had all the 'fun' he could take today.

Clint made no attempt to answer, and Tony checked him over quickly. No obviously deformed bones or compound fractures. There were plenty of bruising on just about every visible patch of skin, but most of the blood had been washed off, and only a few small cuts still seeped red. With Clint's wet, black clothes it was hard to see if there was any bleeding happening under them, and there may very well be if they… Shit. Tony rubbed at his eyes and prayed so very hard that the assholes had just been fucking around, been lying about hurting Clint like that just to scare him. That they hadn't put Clint through that.

He tried again.

"Listen, I get that you'd much rather lie there and never move again for the rest of your life, believe me, I get that, I felt the same when Stane put me through that bus, but I really, really need you to check in with me here, Barton. You're kinda freaking me out, and a freaked out me is never a good thing. Remember how the glow-in-the-dark badger incident ended? That was a freaked out me. Don't want a repeat of that, do we?"

Long seconds passed, then Clint cracked his eyes open just a fraction. "God forbid," he rasped, the quality of his quiet voice just as pale as his skin. He didn't move from his curled up position.

Tony released a breath of relief. Thank god. At least Clint was awake. He could work with that.