Titanium Hawkeye
Chapter 3 Laughing Gas
Natasha stood by grinning while her hand held the surgical mask over Clint's mouth and nose. Just as Steve suggested, they had indeed located a bottle of nitrous oxide hidden under a shelf of Van Gogh paintings on the third level of RnD. Bruce resurrected the paintings to send to Pepper while Tony worked through a textbook on anesthesiology. Within an hour he declared himself an expert, fabricated an anesthetic machine, and stuck Clint in a chair. With limited options at his disposal, Clint left his life in the hands of the men around him.
He only died for five minutes.
Tony miscalculated his gas-to-oxygen ratio and Clint stopped breathing. Steve and Bruce took turns bringing him back from the cliff of death and, with only oxygen flowing through his mask now; they worked to perform an ultrasound before he came fully conscious again.
"Oh my God, this is great. Did you know this is great? Have you smelled this? I mean, it is like . . . butterflies on clouds or something. I swear it's awesome. Does possum rhyme with awesome? Possum's are weird."
"No thanks, I'm good." Natasha told him, replacing the oxygen mask back over Clint's face when he again tried to hand it over.
"You're missing out." Clint said with a whimsical smile.
"I sure am."
Beside them, Banner and Stark scrutinized the media integrated ultrasound unit. The floating head of a holographic Dr. Stephen Strange, a new acquaintance of Dr. Banner, worked as a real-time consult on their findings. In the meantime, Bruce attempted to remember everything the third world medical core taught him about ultrasonography. He knew the white glaring parts were probably gas pockets in the bowels, the dark flat looking parts belonged either to the spleen or the liver and too much black flowing stuff was fluid, therefore not good.
"How you hanging in there, Clint?" Tony asked.
"Did you know that I was in a circus?" Clint retorted with.
Tony gave him a surprised look, and then gave the same on to Natasha.
Her shoulders went up and down a little. "It's true. Far as I know."
"I was—I was the best trick shooter in the place. I didn't tell you that. Did I tell you that? Had to do something, you know, I was like, only twelve. And twelve year people can't, like, have jobs or crap or anything. I like hippos."
Tony tried to steer the conversation into a helpful area of possible dirty little secrets. If Natasha didn't approve, she didn't say anything. Instead, she too seemed a little intrigued. If Clint didn't watch himself he may just reveal some of those deep-seated memories he refused to reveal when sober.
"Sure, yeah, hippos, cool. What about this circus thing? Tell me more about that." Tony asked.
"They could eat guys. Tommy Two Fingers? Guess why he had two fingers?"
"I'm guessing because the hippo ate the others?"
"No! 'Cause he was born like that."
Despite the smile he attempted to hide, Bruce interrupted the heated investigation. He had no doubt in Clint's ability to hide any information he truly wished to keep private. It wasn't long ago Bruce stood over him while he recovered from a leg injury, and the doctor considered asking the same sort of leading questions then, but when Clint's defenses were challenged he sobered immediately.
"I'm sure you're breaking some sort of medical law right now." The doctor said.
"He was a mean guy. He smelled like ralph." Clint pulled his mask off again, just so he could watch as Natasha put it back on. Then he took it off again. "I like circuses. Tigers are cool."
Tony started to understand the strange train of thought now. "Oh, did you worked in the menagerie? With the animals?"
Bruce looked up at Stark, an eyebrow arched.
"I watched Water for Elephants, I'm practically an expert."
Natasha rolled her eyes.
"I love elephants!" Clint said. He pulled off his mask again but this time wound up to throw it on the floor.
Natasha caught it in midair and nearly crammed it over his nose. "God, Clint, if you take this thing off one more time I swear I will pick up a staple gun and nail it to your face, get me?"
Clint paused for a second, and then burst out laughing. The laughter was infectious. In half a minute Tony bent at the waist and Bruce chuckled in his sleeve while simultaneously fussing with the uncooperative ultrasound probe. Dr. Strange's hologram remained as impassive as a statue.
"Hey, hey, hey, what happened . . . what ever happened with your . . . you know. That thing?" Clint asked, suddenly seeming very serious. He focused on Tony, who in some ways had a hard time looking at him. Seeing Clint like this reminded him a little too clearly of their time spent in the wrecked plane.
"Wow, I can't tell at all what you're saying. Let's talk about monkeys now."
The archer flinched and moved some as Banner passed over a particularly painful spot. Steve adjusted his grip behind Clint's chair and rested his hands on the agent's shoulders. The gas stopped flowing five minutes ago, soon Barton would regain his senses.
"No! No, I mean the person lady. The trip. Amsterdam." Clint replied stubbornly.
Tony made an "O" with his mouth as it all began to click. "Don't worry about that. Pushed the date for the defense summit just for little ole me. Now Steve and Thor are invited too. Nice huh? Just a quick video conference in the morning and the world is suddenly a better place."
"That's nice. You know, I don't think I ever want to see Amsterdam again."
"At least our friend does not suffer." Thor said from the lab doorway. He looked around at the strange scene that had been set. Clint reclined in a metal chair that was probably more appropriate for dental work then medical use. Tony bent over a table, laughing his head off, and Bruce and Natasha were both working on Clint staying still enough for the image to quit jumping around.
"I half wish he did feel it to keep him from fussing so much." Banner complained, but somewhere in his tone Thor could tell the guy wasn't really mad. He'd seen mad, and this was not it.
"I assume the fuzzy probe has revealed no maladies?" Thor replied. He walked in, avoiding the majority of the insanity that seemed to roll around in Tony Stark's life by not getting too close to the scene.
When Banner didn't reply right away, Thor's concern spiked.
"Do you see this, doctor?" Bruce asked.
Doctor Strange's image leaned forward as he scrutinized his screen. "It appears to be a pocket. Is it dorsal?"
"Yes."
"I would advise sampling it."
"Hey, Tony, hand me that hypo, would you?" Bruce instructed.
Natasha leaned forward in a split second and covered Clint's ears as if he was a three-year-old. The look she gave to Banner could have killed on impact. "What the Hell! He said no needles! We agreed!"
Banner held up one hand as if to prove he was unarmed, the other held the probe steady near Clint's back. "Look, I'm not a medic like I keep saying. But there is something collecting under his skin here, see it?" Bruce indicated the place on screen. "I just want to see if its blood. That's all."
"But he doesn't like needles." Natasha whisper-growled, a peculiar tone all her own when it came to being angry and quiet all at once.
Clint stopped laughing now. He seemed to realize, even in his haze, that something bad was being discussed over him. Then a random thought crossed his mind and he couldn't help sharing it.
"Budapest wasn't fun. But I liked you. Even though you tortured me for like twelve days, I liked you. You were kinda cute. In like a homicidal, psycho Russian-wacko sort of way." He announced as his eyes fell on Natasha.
Natasha chewed her lip and looked around to see if anyone else noticed what he said. If they did, no one said a word. Tony was closest, and he just handed the needle over discreetly. Bruce popped the cap off and poised it over the spot he noticed on the ultrasound.
"Use the image as a guide. You will see the needle on the visual." Dr. Strange advised.
"Hey, whazzat?" Clint asked. Some terrified part of his mind wanted desperately to freak out, throw a tantrum, or stab someone but his haze nullified it. He felt Steve's grip tighten. The room tensed. He held it together long enough to get stabbed in the side.
The dull pain not completely shadowed by the former flow of gas, bothered him less. In fact, he'd gotten rather used to it. Something else really bothered him about what they were doing. As if it was wrong somehow and Natasha stood there, letting it happen.
Just like that day in Budapest.
She leaned in for his face. He'd pulled the mask off again, but this time it he resisted putting it back. Her pupils widened. Steve leaned forward at Natasha's serious look and attempted to clamp Clint into the chair if necessary.
Needle . . . needle . . . NEEDLE!
Clint analyzed his enemy almost at the same moment his fog cleared. Banner hit the floor with a boot-print attempting to bruise the Hulk he was turning into. Steve and Tony had both moved Natasha to the side and grabbed Clint before he rolled off the chair and hit the floor. The angry Russian pulled out the needle that still poked from Clint's chest and flung it at the Hulk.
The green monster roared at her. He smashed an angry hand right through the hood of Tony's new suit.
"Hey! If you're going to be angry at anything, then take it out on Butter-Finger's baby because that thing, it's sad honestly." Stark exclaimed.
The Hulk must have been taking lessons from Natasha because Tony swore those two had the same dagger looks in their arsenal. But then again, the Hulk did end up taking Tony's advice. He picked up the AI and hurled it through four walls until the street became visible. Four car accidents may or may not have been caused by a yellow automated arm flying through the south end of Manhattan according to the mid-morning news.
"I'm not going to be mad about that." Tony told him resolutely.
"Get off!" Clint roared.
Steve and Tony both let go at once.
The archer pushed himself up, wobbled when he realized his legs felt like lead weights, and decided to stay where he was. Within a minute he headed out of the room, grabbing his shirt off the back of the chair before the Hulk could relax his way back into Bruce Banner.
"Well, not sure what kind of success that constitutes, but your patient just walked out in the middle of his own exam." Steve turned to the Hulk, as if he would find some answers there.
Dr. Strange smiled for the first time as he leaned into the image generator. "You guys are fun. Invite me over for the next powwow."
:(:):(:):
No more playing games. No more pretending to be on house arrest. Clint Barton was getting out of Stark Tower if he had to carve himself a hole in the wall of his room to do it. How could anyone expect him to stick in Stark Tower for the next ten weeks without so much as a breath of fresh air? He wanted dinner at a dive to enjoy the possibility of overcoming a salmonella infection or at least eat something not hermetically sealed in a freezer box. First he needed to get his room to grab whatever money he could scrape together and then somehow he was getting out.
What did the team want from him? Every chance they got, one of them drilled him for information about his past. He didn't share. SHIELD knew him as the one guy on a team with a background no one could quite nail down. The only man who cracked an iota of his previous life was Phil Coulson, and his surrogate father took those secrets to the grave. Natasha fell second best on the contest for his inner secrets. Bobbi Morse placed third.
How could she not? He'd married Bobbi once, albeit briefly. He was young and dumb then. He thought the entire world could be held up by his shoulders alone. That didn't change until someone threatened to split her body in half unless Clint left her. He did what he could to protect her, but that wasn't enough to keep her out of a hospital bed. Bobbi could never know the truth. For her own safety he kept it from her. Eight months after their marriage, she divorced him on Valentine's Day.
Boy howdy.
After a thorough search of everything in his room, Clint realized something very important. He already knew most of his clothes did not make it to the Tower from his bunk on the Heli-carrier. What he did not expect was the lack of his wallet as well. Before now he never needed it. He'd been restricted to quarters for longer than he liked and that meant no driving, flying, or using his own cash. Not only did he have no money to speak of, he didn't even have an ID to drive with if he wanted to.
"Fine." Clint growled to himself. He lived in hitchhike city and a little thing like a missing wallet wasn't about to stop him.
He grabbed his leather jacket from beside his bed and pulled on his shoes. In the few minutes it would have taken the others to calm Bruce down and go in search of their wayward Hawkeye, he was already moving to find his escape route. He'd kept the top of the Tower in the back of his mind the whole time. As long as they kept his repelling arrowheads out of reach, the others figured they were safe from worrying whether or not he would do a Spiderman from building to building. Oh how wrong they could be. Honestly, he was a master assassin. A little ability to find escape routes encompassed his world.
Before he had a chance to leave his room, someone began to walk in. He heard them coming, fussing with something just outside the entryway. They took long enough for him to decide a secondary exit strategy, cash in pocket or not. He was halfway to the interior wall with a decision to cut his way straight through when a burst of laughter caught him up short.
"Mr. Barton, you are funny. What do you plan to do?"
The last person Clint expected to see was Elsa, but then it did make total sense. She was paid to keep the place organized and with the mess he made of (everything) in his room it was no surprise she waited until now to get to it. Clint placed himself in an awkward position. Getting caught in the wrecked bedroom resembled destroying a hotel room in Las Vegas then waking up to the cleaning lady standing over his bed with a look of murder. Clint felt more fear in that moment with Elsa standing across from him than the last two months working with the Avengers.
"You planning on running off and leaving me with the clean-up?" Elsa asked. She pushed her cleaning cart into the room, the doorway hung open behind her as an open invitation for escape.
"You know, just getting a little cage-happy. Don't even have a window in here. Tony's not exactly that great of a host if he sticks a hawk in the only windowless room in the Tower." Clint gave her a lop-sided grin, as if his Caucasian charm could win over her Indian-American roots
"I believe he thought you may try and jump out it."
"Wasn't so wrong." Clint replied. He moved toward the doorway. In another step he'd be bolting through it like a deer.
"And you are planning to run off now? Is that it? And you have nothing to get cab with in Manhattan? I think you will not get very far, Mr. Barton." Elsa pulled out various items of her cleaning arsenal. Clint stopped moving for the door.
The woman had highlighted the one part of his plan he had been struggling with all along. If the others were still collected in Tony's lab he would simply steal a car and life would be easy. But how far could he make it on foot?
"Here is for you." She walked up to him and pulled a handful of dollars out of her pocket. This she deposited into his hand (even though she had to forcibly extract his hand from behind his back to do it).
"You go on. Have some fun."
"I can't take your money, Miss Two Trees." Clint objected, trying to push it back.
"You take! Go have fun. Pay me back when you can. That is all. Now go."
Elsa Two Trees rushed away to the first scene-of-the-crime. Clint's mattress was on the floor. The rough box spring remained the only thing containing the sheet he used for a blanket and the bundle of clothes wrapped in a pillowcase. After the first few days of putting the mattress back again, again, and again she gave up and left it on the floor. She just cleaned around it.
Clint stood in the doorway with his heart full of guilt. Half of him wanted to take off now while he still had the chance, but watching Elsa trying to put back together the ruin his life created caused him more than a short pause. He looked at the money in his hand, and half stepped forward to do something to help her.
"Oh, get out of here before I do put you to work." Elsa said. She looked up from arranging the sheet on his bed. She was still smiling. "Besides, I need you out so I can do a better job. Go on!"
Clint made a mental note to buy the woman some flowers or chocolates or something a chick would like. With cash in hand, he shot down the hallway, his escape plan one step closer to completion. Now all he had to do was convince JARVIS to let him onto the roof. He took Tony's private elevator up, pretending that all he planned to do was take a dip in the pool for his physical therapy's sake.
Initially he hadn't really thought of how he planned to get down once he was on the roof. Climbing seemed like a last resort. Another option was to stick out his thumb and try to hitch a ride on the closest slow moving chopper. At least four went by every few minutes on hero-searches. The Avengers were Manhattan's hottest celebrities. Six more-than-fit guys and one all-too alluring woman was all anyone needed to pay a thousand dollars for a Stark Tower helicopter tour. Well, Clint would give them something to wave for at least.
He jumped on the building ledge overlooking the iconic Stark sign and weighed his options. He briefly considered giving Thor a buzz for piggy-back ride. As far as being judgmental, Thor wasn't. If Clint wanted to throw himself in front of a moving train Thor would probably ride shot gun with the conductor. It was impossible to know if the others had tainted him already with the all-out search for Clint, though.
"Elsa said you were up here—"
If Barton had any idea someone could get the drop on him, he probably wouldn't have perched himself so close to the edge of the building. The minute he heard his name, he jumped sky high and teetered for balance on the two inches of space afforded to him on the building's roof.
"Oh-my-gosh!" Pepper rushed forward to grab the back of his shirt, but tripped halfway and pushed him rather than helped him. Clint twisted like a cat in mid-air, grabbing whatever handhold he could find to stop his thrust over the side of the building. Unfortunately, the hold he found ended up being Pepper's offered hand. Pepper flew forward as the two of them fell.
"Crap, crap, crap. CRAP!" Clint grabbed for the arrows that he knew were not there. Steve had yet to decide he deserved them back. That meant no grappling lines, no percussions bombs, nothing at all.
Well, nothing besides Pepper.
Clint leaned sideways, pulling at her arm until she angled close enough to him for Clint to pull her into an embrace. She screamed, which was a natural response to falling through the air with no hope of escape but to do one massive splat another forty stories down.
This would be a good time for one of the flying members of this team to come and save us! Clint had a moment to think as he watched the ground rushing up at them.
For some reason he wasn't worried, even with Pepper screaming bloody murder in his ears. Maybe it was just the internal bleeding, or the fact that this was the most interesting thing to happen in the last month besides a plane crash. If Pepper wasn't there, he may actually have enjoyed the fresh air.
He expected the sudden jarring stop, but that didn't mean it didn't still hurt. Afterward came the plate glass window, the rolling stop, the desk, a computer screen thrown off a shelf, and part of a wall crushed inward that aided to their break down their speed. All in all, suddenly much less fun then he planned.
"Holy Crap, what the Hell were you thinking? I heard some woman screaming, and JARVIS barely had the time to get my thrusters out before you took a concrete nap."
Hawkeye didn't have to clear the drywall dust out of his eyes to know it was Tony.
"Glad Pepper made a racket then."
Tony grinned. "It was not Miss Potts to whom I was referring."
Clint pointed a finger at him as if it was loaded. "Hey, keep picking on me and I will shove an arrow up you're a—"
"Be nice."
"Loved the whole throw the guy through a wall idea. Really affective. Where's Pepper?"
"What did you—why did you pull me over?" Pepper struggled to her feet. Her heels were missing and the two-piece suit was now more like five. At least she didn't seem physically harmed. Tony had made certain that Clint received the brunt of that landing.
"Didn't mean to. Just sort of happened. I didn't realize your feet weren't exactly planted. And besides, you snuck up on me!" Clint replied.
"You like some assassin double-0-something! I thought you could hear like mice tapping in walls or dogs barking three blocks away or something!" Pepper screamed, but both could tell she really wasn't mad. She was never mad when it came to Agent Barton. Tony couldn't quite figure out why that was, but he made it his secret mission to uncover the reason.
"Yeah, well, I'm called Hawkeye, not Elephant Ear, I'm not exactly up to snuff lately if you noticed. And if that admission leaves this present company I will throw both of you back out that window." Clint warned. He pushed himself up and brushed off his pant legs. "How far up are we?"
"Second floor." Tony answered.
Pepper sat on a vacant office desk and willed herself to stop shaking. Stark noticed her instantly and moved to do the gentlemanly thing and hold her, even if he was nothing but a metal tin can. She accepted the embrace willingly and suddenly the scene changed into Clint being the third wheel of a private moment. The changed bothered him little. He planned to leave and that plan did not change.
"Hey, wait, where are you going?" Pepper pushed away from Stark to follow after the retreating archer. He was already to the busted window, sizing up where he would have to climb to get to the ground level.
"Same as before, I need air. I'm going to get some. Stop me if you want but the minute I come to, I'm going to try it again." Clint said over his shoulder. He looked down to find a happy awning just waiting for him to smash through.
Perfect.
"Hey, whoa! You aren't going any place. I don't know if you missed that part during your little laughing gas happy time, but we all decided that you shouldn't be pushing yourself." Tony argued all the way, but Clint noticed at once he didn't try to stop him either.
"I've been on bed rest. I've been on so much bed rest I feel like Banner's going to start ordering me bed sore creams. I mean, you just called in a doctor who got his Ph'D in the 1930s to look at my ultrasound."
"I value is crazy, insightful, magic-y opinion."
Pepper blinked at them, apparently overcoming her intense shock. "Wait, what's going on? Is Clint ok?"
"Honey, talk to your son, he's being unruly again." Tony ordered.
Clint stepped out onto the ledge.
"Clint, wait!"
The assassin paused. Pepper's hand touched his arm in a stunning recreation of what had gotten them in so much trouble not long ago. But he waited for Pepper. He owed it to her. When he was down and out, and his mind overcome with all the horrid things his nightmares could throw at him, Pepper sat by him. Her hands combed through his hair as she told him everything would be all right. She was the kindest person he'd ever met. In some ways she reminded him of the memories of his mother, the same ones he spent so much of his life trying to burry.
"Are you ok?" She asked. Her eyes were pleading for the truth. How could he ever resist them?
He sighed. "Look, I'll be fine. I feel fine. I just need to get out of here before I lose my mind. I'll stick around the hospital, ok? Just in case." His eyes looked to Tony. "Come on, you promised not to give me a hard time."
"Sure I did, but when we had that little discussion about taking bullets for each other, I don't think the undertone was that one of us would be the shooter either." Stark retorted.
"Tony goes with you."
Both Clint and Stark focused on Pepper, their surprise readily apparent.
"That's the deal. You can go, but he has to go too. To keep an eye on you."
Clint moved to object, but she interrupted him before he could get the words out.
"No, not like that. I'm not sending him to be your guard dog, he's your friend. The two of you get into enough trouble as it is, but you always come out of it ok. As long as you're together. And here," Pepper pulled her cell phone out and handed it over. "If you see Stark Industries' inside number calling, you answer it! I don't care if you're drunk or half dead or in surgery. You answer it! Understand?"
Clint looked at the cell for a moment, but took it. He nodded his head understandingly. "Yeah, sure, Pepper."
"Do you have cash?" She asked.
Clint bit the inside of his lip. He didn't want to say that the cleaning lady had spotted him thirty bucks, but then again Pepper probably already knew that.
"Yeah," he said after a moment. "I'm good."
"Tony, get out of that thing and go have a good time." Pepper ordered. Tony didn't even give a witty retort. Up he went, blasting through the open window and to the top of the Stark Tower.
"Hey, Miss Potts?" Clint said as she fell into a chair again.
"Yes, Agent Barton?" Tired eyes looked at him. Clearly living with Iron Man and his crazy house mates took a toll on her.
"Thanks."