here's the latest! if you didn't see the news on my other stories, i am slowly updating new versions. I've gotten as far as Romanov's Roulette with plans to do the rest hopefully before the summer is out.
Chapter 7
Clint shifted in his bed. The cast on his arm itched horribly. He rubbed the outside as if it would somehow dull the ache but it wasn't much use. He felt as if he hadn't slept in three weeks, but he knew he'd actually been sedated for the better part of five or six days. All of his muscles ached, which he couldn't quite understand. It wasn't as if he had a chance to run five miles in the desert carrying a hundred pound pack. He was surprised when he first woke up that no one stood around him. He had expected to see Tony at the least. Even Steve. But there was no one. He tried to sit up in bed, but a belt across his chest prevented it.
Well crap.
Clint looked around again. Everything had the appearance of a SHIELD medical facility, from the emblems on the wall, to the equipment he'd seen his fair share of. One glass wall had been smashed through and replaced with a white tape X. There were no nurses, no doctors, and no Avengers. He knew better than to trust his surroundings. He'd been strapped down, again, and he was not about to stay there and wait for some guy in a lab coat to come by and pump him full of drugs. Apparently, whoever did the tie job this time didn't know him well enough to make sure his hands didn't touch. This would be a simple escape. The straps on his wrists came off first, followed closely by his chest. Before he reached his first ankle, an unfamiliar figure entered the room holding a medical file.
"Stay back! Stay back or I swear I will put you through a wall!" Clint snarled at him.
The startled man's hands flew skyward. "You're awake!" he exclaimed.
"Yeah, I am." He finished with his ankles and tore his way out of bed through the ever present, ever painful catheters in his arms and hands. He stood, approaching the man and grabbed him by the throat in a tight headlock. The stunned nurse didn't even think to run.
Clint had a few options now that he woke. Either he was back in the nightmare, a world where Steve Rogers murdered everyone that he loved and enjoy it, or he was still being held hostage by the Gatsby gang. A third possibility remained that SHIELD and the Avengers found him after the hostage crisis. Why it took this long, he couldn't say, but at least he was safe. To discover which reality he currently resided in, he had to track down some answers.
"You have a cell phone?" Clint demanded, squeezing the nurse's trachea.
"Yes, sir, I do." He said. He attempted to fish it from the pocket of his white coat, but Clint squeezed his neck sideways and he stopped.
Clint reached down himself and took the phone out. He forced the man's unlock code out of him and punched in Tony Stark's cell phone number. The digits were very important. He remembered Bruce's strange canceled number and the California area code that replaced it. Clint shoved the man forward down the hall, keeping the phone on speaker to have his hands free. The place definitely looked like the Helicarrier, but Clint was not about to trust that yet. If he reached the bridge and Director Fury stood there, then he had more of a chance at believing it all. He reflexively felt for the wedding ring on his left hand. It was missing. Wasn't that right? He wasn't supposed to have one, was he?
Tony's cell phone rang four times before someone answered. The voice came through groggily. "Who's this? I want to know the name of the guy who is going to die."
"Tony, it's Clint." The archer explained hurriedly.
Tony didn't respond at first. Instead, Clint was surprised a second time over when the infirmary room door ahead of them slid open and Thor came into the hall. Tony Stark shoved the Asgardian out of the way.
"Clint, what are you doing?!" Tony exclaimed, hanging up his phone. "Geez, let the poor nurse go! What did he try to do? Give you an enema? Just let him go."
Clint looked at the nurse who could not look back. Thor took a few steps toward Clint, but with the archer's swift backpedal, he stopped. His grip tightened on the nurse, a bold refusal to ever let go.
"OK, let's just all relax for a second." Tony said. He looked into the infirmary room at someone, made a motion for them to stay put, and returned his attention to Clint.
"Who's in there?" Clint commanded.
Tony waved the comment off, walking half a step toward him. "It's nothing. Take a yoga breath. Are you with me right now? Look at me, Clint, focus on me, OK?"
The archer struggled to do just that.
Thor asked. "Do you believe the Captain has murdered your guiltless, fictitious offspring, my brother?"
"Right now, Thor, I'll admit I'm a little confused." Clint felt for his wedding ring again, already knowing it wasn't there. He took another step away from them to make up for the step Tony gained. He darted a glance backward, but so far no one came up on him from behind.
"Should we explain some things to you?" Tony asked.
"You better start saying something."
Tony again glanced at the man in the infirmary and made a curt motion with his hand.
Barton's eyes shifted toward the open door. "Who is in there?!"
The billionaire raised a hand toward him again to calm Clint's agitation. "It's Steve. Ok? That's who it is. It's Steve. You managed to crack his ribs earlier and split my skull, so forgive me, Clint, if I'm a little slow on the uptake. You broke Thor's nose too."
The archer looked from one to the other. They definitely appeared worse for wear. He didn't remember doing any of it and, faced with the evidence, had a hard time deciding what he believed. He remembered being angry, throwing something. And he remembered the birthday party painted in red. It was Steve's fault. As Clint memories intensified, he squeezed the nurse tighter.
A flurry of footsteps came behind him with Bruce's voice letting out a string of uncharacteristic curses. Clint pressed his back against the wall to watch either side.
"Stay back!" Clint ordered. "Come any closer and I'll cut this man down, I swear I will."
Bruce's hands flew up in supplication. There were men with him. Men Clint didn't know, wearing white lab coats with no doubt objects in their pockets with which to silence him. One of them was bald, another wore glasses. He couldn't decide if they were the same captors from before but slowly pieces dropped in the disagreeable column. They pulled up short of reaching him.
With the distraction of their approach, Thor took his own silent steps forward until Clint caught him. He was now playing a game of red light green light on two sides. The archer twisted the nurse's head in his grasp and produced a satisfied yelp from the man. That got everyone to stop.
Tony reclaimed his sole attention "Bruce, stick back. Hawk, look at me now. I told you I would explain myself and I am. You've been on drugs for five days. Heavy drugs. On top of that, Steve said you mentioned something about nano tech. You haven't been stable enough for us to look into that. You've been delusional and literally insane. Does any of this ring a bell now?"
Subtly, the archer nodded.
"We got you back on board four hours ago. Some idiot screwed up your meds and you went PCP crazy. We sedated you until you came out of it. Looks like you're out of it."
"I want my bow." Clint said.
"Your arm is broken in not just two places, but three. You can't—"
"DON'T TELL ME I CAN'T!" As Clint shouted, both fronts converged on him but were repelled by the scream of a male nurse whose head was slowly being removed from the rest of his body. The line of men pushed back again. Up the hall from them Steve carefully poked his head into the hall. He hated having to wait, doing nothing as the others tried to talk Clint down.
"You want this man returned to you alive, then I want a bow. One bow, one arrow, one shot. If you want me to believe all of this is real, that's what I want." Clint's eyes begged Tony's. The desperation flickered like the light of a dying candle. "I need this, Tony. Please. It's the one thing I can hold to."
"Hawk – "
Clint's head spun toward Bruce.
The doctor held his hands out as, one small step at a time, he approached. "Hawk, listen to me. You've been through a lot. I get it, but believe me when I say I can't let you do that. You physically – "
Having nothing else on him, nothing left in him, Clint tossed the technician's cell phone toward the gaggle of doctors. They spread out to avoid the flying parts. "Don't tell me that, Bruce! Not that! I can and I will. One shot, it's all I want. Please. I'm begging now, please!"
Bruce's eyes turned to Tony and Thor. Steve stepped out of the doorway a little more. They were at a stalemate. Either they were going to dart Clint down like a water buffalo, or they were going to hand him his most skilled weapon and see what happened.
"One shot." Tony agreed.
Clint nodded. "Just one. If this is real, if all of this is real, then I'll cooperate. I swear to that. If not, then you better run because I will not stop until you kill me or I take this Helicarrier out of the sky."
Tony tapped Thor's arm, indicating he should go past Clint and join Bruce's side of the standoff. "You don't need to do that. We're going first. You can walk behind us. One shot. If you want to shoot with your cast on, I'm not going to stop you. None of us are going to stop you. Steve, get out here and get over with Bruce."
Eager to do anything, Steve removed from the doorway. He walked with his chest slightly hunched as if Clint's thank you gift of broken ribs actually happened. Clint watched him with a deadly glare. If this was still the dream world, Steve was the first man he planned to take out, even if he had to drop the entire Helicarrier on top of him.
Tony took up the back of the pack. Once he was a sufficient distance away, Clint marched his kidnap victim forward. If the layout of this Helicarrier was the same as the real one, Clint expected to go down one level and walk to the right rear shooting range. It was dual purpose for archery and weaponry, SHIELD didn't have separate ranges given the limited number of archers the organization employed.
Faceless workers passed them occasionally. The forward group acted like a huddle of bouncers, clearing the way to prevent Clint being overtaken by mistake. It was obvious the doctors didn't approve of his request to fire a weapon only a few hours after they reset his bone, but their opinion held little weight at this point. Before Clint knew it, they were standing in the weapons range. Twelve agents were kicked off the firing line to make room for Clint and his sole hostage, but this time they did not leave. Weapons drew on all sides. If he decided that this world was not part of reality, he wouldn't have the chance to injure anyone before the agents gunned him down where he stood.
Clint knew that didn't matter. He'd already been killed once in this dreamscape by Steve. Dying again by this way wouldn't bother him in the least. There were no training bows here. He never needed them. Tony was kind enough to place his arrow on the booth in front of him. His quiver remained in Stark's hands. Despite being best friends, Tony knew better than to trust the archer not to change his standard tip out for an explosive one.
For the first time, Clint released his captive. At his instruction, the nurse sat Indian style nearly on top of Clint's feet. There were still fifty three ways the trained assassin could kill him, and none of them required the use of a weapon.
With the room full of gun-drawn agents, the four Avengers, doctors, and nurses all watching closely, Clint summoned his bow to his left hand. He tested flexing his right arm back without the string being pulled. He didn't have very good motion range with the cast covering his hand and arm. He couldn't use a finger tab. He had to do this straight by the bare fingers.
Giving himself at least some handicap, he slipped a finger sling over his left bow hand. He took the arrow, set it on the nocking point, and closed his left eye as he took aim on the target. He started high, pointing the sight at the top of the ceiling, before dropping the sight and bow down in a single fluid motion. He pulled the string back, squeezed his shoulders together, and inhaled. The world held its breath with him.
As he dropped the bow into the target sight, he paused. Pulling the string hurt. If his friends were to be believed, that he had actually broken three bones in his arms, then the level of pain matched that exactly. It felt different than the pain before. He could only imagine that there was not someone standing over him this time with a cattle prod. To be sure, he had to take the shot.
With the string beneath his chin and his bare fingers held beside the arrow, Clint slowly released. He wasn't wearing his arm guards. The string grazed the inside of his elbow as it went by. He knew it would bruise. The arrow launched forward. It rocketed through the air and a satisfying thwap echoed in the arena. The black silhouette man had an arrow sticking perfectly out of the center of his forehead. Clint dropped his bow in the booth. He was shaking again, but this time in relief. He tapped the nurse's back with his cast.
"Go on, get out of here." Clint whispered.
The nurse took Hawkeye's advice and ran for it.
Tony could tell the danger passed. He handed Clint's quiver to Steve and slowly approached his friend. The agents slowly lowered their weapons. Stark set a hand on the back of his friend's arm and leaned in so he wasn't overheard.
"It's us. I give you my word on that."
Clint swallowed. His legs began to feel stiff. "Yeah – I..."
Tony grabbed Clint by his arm and waist when his teammate tried to fall right over. "Hey, hang on! Grab on to me. Baywatch, get over here!"
Clint allowed Tony to force him upright. He was so relieved he couldn't be bothered with trying to walk for himself. Gently, though cautiously, Thor approached and took over Tony's spot.
"Find out what you needed?" Bruce asked. He looked both angry and relieved.
"Couldn't shoot. I missed." Clint tried to explain. "I never miss. Not in real life. Only in my nightmares do I ever miss."
"Mind if we get you back into bed now?" Bruce asked. It wasn't really a question. Thor intended to drag Clint there, whether he wanted to go or not. Clint looked up at his Asgardian friend's mangled nose and the rims of black beneath both eyes. Apparently a few hours weren't enough for his healing factors to fix the malady.
"I'm sorry."
"Fear not, my friend. All will be well with time." Thor assured him.
Clint said. "It's been a confusing few days."
Bruce rolled his eyes. "No crap."
"Don't sedate me again."
"You sure? I think right now the doctors are drawing straws as to who exactly gets to do that."
Clint reached out, grabbing Bruce's shoulder with his good hand. "Look, every time I wake up, I don't know where I am. I don't know if it's real or not. I know this is real now. You knock me out and I'm just going to have to go through this all over again."
Bruce had slowed down to listen. At Clint's genuine plea, he agreed to the conditions. "You behave yourself, then fine. We won't sedate you. But Clint, you've got to stop pulling out your catheters. It took us an hour just to place in one, then you ripped it out on us. Twice. Pretty soon you're going to have track marks like a twelve year heroin addict."
"Deal."
They returned to Clint's infirmary. The archer managed to stay on his feet, leaning on Thor while the technicians removed his bed straps. He'd had enough of being tied up lately. If he continued to behave, he wouldn't need them.
Clint indicated the shattered window. "Was that my fault?"
"Your mind was full of demons." Thor told him. "Their hauntings forced you to perform in a way that was unaccustomed to your character."
"I feel like they're still in there." Clint sighed. He unashamedly laid his head on Thor's arm. He was feeling suddenly very tired.
"Then we shall set to remove these beasts and reclaim you as our own."
Clint returned to his bed, watching the doctors with a steely glare. He felt as if at any moment they may decide to pounce on him. Even with Bruce mad at him over the catheters, he preferred an angry Bruce Banner to those strangers any day.
Tony dragged a chair over from the next room and plopped down into it. He'd also managed to scare up an ice pack. Thor looked down at his friend's chair longingly while Steve remained just out of Clint's line of sight in the corner to his left. Bruce worked on Clint's left as well, feeling around what remained of the patient's veins. None of them were particularly promising. The skin had puffed up in leaking bruises and hematomas.
"You can tell Steve I won't kill him." Clint whispered to Bruce.
The scowl on Bruce's face broke for a moment. He had been bent over, staring intently through his glasses in his attempt to scare up a vein on the back of Clint's hand. He looked up a little. "What?"
Clint flicked his eyes to the corner where Steve hid from him. "I couldn't get past it. He killed... It wasn't him, I mean. When I passed out, I dreamed about all of us. We were at Belle's birthday party. You know what? It doesn't matter now." Clint turned away. Watching Bruce slide a needle under his skin turned his stomach.
Bruce missed the curling, miniscule vein on the first attempt. He removed the catheter and tried again. While he worked, he directed his voice behind him into the corner. "You can stop hiding, Steve, Clint promises not to break your face."
Steve edged out of his hiding place. "You sure, Clint?"
The archer raised his eyebrow. "Am I sure I'm not going to stab you in the eye with the –OW! Bruce, geez!—yes, I'm sure."
"Stop moving!" Bruce warned.
"Stop trying to skewer me!"
Bruce looked up over the brim of his glasses. His voice was low and even, a remarkable change from the rage no doubt boiling beneath his veneer exterior. "Do I need to strap you down again?"
Clint mumbled a, "No."
"Good."
Thor had left briefly on an apparent search for his own seat. When he returned, it seemed the search proved fruitless for a single chair, so instead he pushed an entire leather couch through the broken window into the infirmary room. Steve hurried over to help him. They set the couch down, to the utter chagrin of the medical staff. Tony snickered.
Bruce succeeded in getting the lines back attached. He took the fluid bag from the doctor and hooked it back to the crooked line tree Clint had thrown through the window only a few hours before. The archer slowly became more stable, and at least they had the opportunity to better direct his care by speaking to him.
"I want to ask you a few questions if you are willing right now." The head physician asked.
"I guess that depends. Who are you?" Clint shot back, surprisingly hostile.
Bruce let out an exacerbated sigh. He retreated to the procured couch and shoved himself between Thor and Steve. If Clint was going to turn up his I'm-the-worst-patient-you-will-have-ever-faced routine, Bruce was not going to stand and be the doctor's buffer.
The physician tried to smile, but the effort was forced at best. "My name is Dr. Elbert. I've been seeing to you since they brought you in. Now would you mind answering what I have to ask?"
Clint didn't offer a smart response. He considered it, but the small panging ring in his brain reminded him he wasn't 100% enough to really bust the guy's brass. This made it safe for Dr. Elbert to go on.
"You mentioned nano tech, do you know what that means?"
Clint closed his eyes, trying to remember what exactly the man he called Gutter said to him. He'd been surviving in a fog for so long now it was difficult to sort through it. His stiff legs began to bother him. If he didn't know any better it seemed to be getting worse, traveling higher up. "He said, 'the latest in nano tech. A fully computer integrated dream sequence'. Apparently created for someone with night terrors. Redesigned. I'm a Level Six agent. Normal interrogation procedures weren't effective."
Elbert looked over to the peanut gallery. "Does that make any sense to you, Mr. Stark?"
Tony tilted his head left and right as he thought. "There's a biochemical engineer by the name of Hank Pym. Bruce you know him, right?"
Bruce indicated he did. "The bug guy."
"He's re-purposed the diagnostic nanotechnology typically used for endoscopic exams, shrunk them to less than a quarter of the size, and retrofitted them with enhanced neurosystemic stimulators for kids with narcoleptic or epileptic disorders. One of his understudies was an oneirologist and multimodel domain building I'm sure isn't beyond that scope."
The archer moaned and rolled onto his side. He clenched his left hand, trying to ease the tension in his fingers. His stomach began to clench.
Steve cupped his chin in his palm. "Tony, would you mind sparing a little English for us laymen."
"I think I'm losing some brain cells here." Clint moaned. He attempted to rub his eyes with his casted right hand. He began to wonder if Bruce had fed something into his fluids . . . again. He swallowed, but a bitter taste remained in the back of his mouth. It tasted like a mouth full of pennies.
Bruce explained. "Dr. Pym was using nano tech to alter brain activity. A scientist working with him could very likely have altered the work to what Clint experienced."
Clint coughed, swallowed, and tried to keep up with conversation. "So you're saying my brain is infected with little metal bugs?" His eyes had taken on a vaguely glassy quality as the pupils expanded. "Fun."
Tony's head slouched toward Bruce. "Did you sedate him?"
"Actually I didn't, though I really wanted to. Doc?"
Elbert turned Clint's face toward himself. He tested a few of the archer's reflexes, all of which were delayed. "Dr. Banner I think we're seeing an early onset of that nano tech. We should get him into the brain scanner while we have the opportunity."
Bruce extracted from the couch. Knowing the occurrence from earlier, he double checked the fluid line again to be sure nothing untoward had been added to it when he wasn't looking. At Elbert's direction, he examined Clint for himself. The archer's mentation had dulled. The once fiery tempered Clint was reduced to a ghost of his former self. The contrast was so striking, Thor and Steve were driven to their feet.
Clint's breathing slowed as he had difficulty keeping his eyes open and head erect. Working together, Banner and Elbert managed to lay him down. Clint's arms slowly crossed his chest unconsciously. His left wristed folded back and stiffened as he breathed deeper and slower.
"Bruce?" Tony asked, leaning forward. "Why isn't he talking?"
Bruce ignored him, throwing a look over his shoulder at Steve. "Did you see this before?"
At the direction of Dr. Elbert, one of the extra men left to prep the brain scan. Bruce and Elbert began prepping Clint to move. Tony stood also.
Steve nodded. "I thought maybe it was the meds. He was brought back to the cell. He said they injected him with something but neither of us knew what that was. I was walking him around. After a while, whatever it was kicked in and he started to go down. His eyes looked the same then. He would go stiff, eyes rolled back, I think it was a seizure."
"His heart rate's dropping, Doc, do you want to intubate him?" Bruce asked. He reached into one of the side drawers for the emergency crash kit.
"His oxygen levels are stable for now. Set it next to him in case he crashes on the way."
Clint mumbled through his disorientation. "Not crash. Not. Hey, Tony?"
Tony approached on Clint's right side. "I'm right here. Keep talking, Hawk boy, you hear me?"
Clint reached up and grabbed Tony's shirt collar, dragging him down to his level. "You just gotta do it."
"Do what?"
"She's been there. You got a great little girl together. Just put a ring on the woman, would you?"
Tony's face reddened. Clint might have been talking crazy again, but when he wanted to hit the nail on the head, he still could. Tony was rescued from his awkward fumbling of an answer by Clint's sudden loss of consciousness. The agent's body arched, the heart monitor spiked and Tony was shoved away in Elbert's search through the crash kit. Bruce pulled Clint's pillow from beneath his head and kept him still while the archer seized.
"He's aspirating, we've got to roll him!" Bruce exclaimed.
Elbert and he worked in tandem to get Clint adjusted onto his side. The other three Avengers moved out of the way as the med staff worked. The technician returned, announcing the brain scan was prepped and ready.
"Bruce, Lorazepam. We can't scan him like this, he's stopped breathing."
"Can we get an airway?"
"His jaw's clenched tight. We need to stop the seizure or else I'm traching him. Nurse, get me a scalpel and sterile set."
"Pushing Lorazepam."
"All right, everyone just hang on and relax a second. Let the meds work."
"He's tachycardic."
"I see it. Lorazapam in?"
"In. Blood pressure's through the roof."
"It'll come back down. Get ready with that tube. The minute the Lorazapam hits him, he's going to stop breathing."
Unable to watch any longer, Tony slid out the door. He rubbed the back of his head where Clint had provided him with five new staples. He couldn't just stand there and watch the doctor's work. He was useless to do anything himself. He didn't see what use there was in torturing himself any longer. Steve and Thor followed out behind him.
"Tony?" Steve asked, attempting to catch up with him.
Stark continued to march, unwilling to be within hearing distance of the chaos of the exam room. "I'm not watching that. I'm going to the lab. I've got to figure out a way to get those things out of his head. I'm calling Hank."
coming up: what will the others do when they realize just what Clint had done to him?
Oh, technical note: Jeremy Renner as many know is a Left-handed archer, though I have written Hawkeye in his original comic form as right handed. Just a technicality some may have noticed, but I do it as it is the style i am most familiar with.
please review!
