Disclaimer: My original plan to blackmail Joss Whedon failed. I still don't own it.
Andrewthegreat1: I LOVED your idea! And HISHE is awesome, but I haven't seen the Avengers one until now for some reason. Just watched it -made me laugh :D
kimbee: Definitely going to use your idea (chapter seven review) but I might tweak it a bit cause Clint already has his sight back. Thanks for the great feedback!
Previous chapter:
Clint didn't respond. The Captain sighed. "I'm fine, Clint. Really. Don't beat yourself up about it."
Again, there was no answer.
"Clint. We have to move. Your gun is on the ground to your left, and -"
"I know." There was something odd in Clint's voice, and Steve frowned, perplexed by the archer's answer until his next words struck.
"I can see it."
A moment of stunned silence followed Clint's words as Steve gaped at the archer, who looked up at him and defiantly met his gaze. There were mixed expressions flitting across Clint's features as he struggled to contain his emotions.
"What do you mean, 'you can see it?'" Steve echoed eventually, his mind seemingly unable to process Clint's words. "Just like that?"
Clint shrugged. He seemed remarkably calm. "Just like that," he agreed. "I should get hit in the head more often -seems to work every time." His eyes darted to the door as they heard the ding of the elevator door opening. A stampede of footsteps thundered down the hallway -they maybe had ten seconds until the reinforcements arrived.
"Quick!" Clint hissed pointing to the air duct above them. He sprang off his feet and his fingertips caught the edge of the duct. Hauling himself up, he offered a hand to Steve, who grasped it, wincing at the strain put on his hurt shoulder. His feet disappeared into the ceiling not a moment too soon; the second they had, the door burst open and three pairs of footsteps entered the room.
"They're not here," a voice reported as Clint tensed beside him. His face was shadowed and his eyes were tightly shut as if the faint light hurt his eyes.
"That's Vlacic," the archer murmured softly. "I remember him."
"Then find them!" The answer was harsh and fuzzy; it came from a comm device.
"Look over the video feed -see where they went," someone ordered as footsteps passed right underneath them. Steve held his breath in an effort not to give them away.
"We have to get out of here," Steve whispered, beginning to move, but Clint held up a finger.
"Wait."
"...In the lab -Stark's already starting to override our hack," Vlacic continued.
"What about the woman?" Another voice asked.
"She's not going anywhere. We've got her cornered."
Clint turned back to Steve. "Bingo," he grinned, and then held a finger up to his lips until the men dispersed.
"I'm going after Natasha. You get Stark," Clint decided, but Steve was already shaking his head.
"The only way to get to Stark is through the ducts. And..." He shrugged as his cheeks colored slightly, "air ducts and I don't really mix."
Clint considered Steve's words before coming to the conclusion that the soldier was right. He huffed, defeated. "All right. You go after Natasha, but contact SHIELD first. There's a cell phone in my bedroom -it's behind the outlet in the wall next to the door." He paused, looking uncertain. "You know how to use a phone?"
Steve gave him a dirty look. "We had phones in the forties, you know."
Clint grinned. "Right." He quickly gave Steve directions to the archer's room. Steve tried to remember them as they separated and he was left to face the vast maze alone.
Right, left, left, right, straight, second turn on the left...
I hope he knows what he's doing, Clint thought doubtfully once they had parted ways. He was crawling on his hands and knees through the ducts, silently following his mental map of Avengers Tower -if it was accurate, Tony's lab was just around the corner to the right. Reaching the turn, he looked to see soft light spilling from the folds of the grate.
Moving forward, he felt around the cool metal floor of the duct for the grate and pushed it aside, dropping to the ground of the lab.
He found the barrel of a gun shoved in his face.
The gun waved uncertainly as the hand gripping it trembled. Bruce's surprised expression was absurdly comical as he realized who he was aiming at.
"Sorry!" He apologized hastily, removing the gun from his friend's face and letting it hang loosely at his side. He looked embarrassed.
"It's fine," Clint waved offhandedly, and looked over Bruce's shoulder to see Tony sitting at the desk. The billionaire's fingers rested on the keyboard of a laptop.
"Clint...you could see my gun, couldn't you?" Bruce realized after a moment of silence. There was a note of astonishment in his voice.
Right. "Long story," he said shortly. "I'll explain later.
"You'd better," Tony muttered, and glanced up at the grate that Clint had just emerged from. "We forgot about the air ducts. Would've been a hell of a lot easier than trying to mess with all the computer shit," he stated tonelessly, and Bruce looked up. His mouth dropped open a fraction of a centimeter as he followed the scientist's gaze.
"I feel like an idiot," Bruce muttered, but Clint interrupted before Tony could respond.
"Do you guys have another gun around here, or just that one?" Clint asked, nodding towards the weapon that Bruce held. Clint hadn't had time to retrieve the extra gun that Grigorev had been carrying, and he'd given Steve Natasha's. All he carried with him was the knife, but it would only go so far against guns -bringing a knife to a gunfight rarely ended in victory.
"I have better, actually," Tony grinned. "We've got a bow." He pushed his chair back with a nerve-grating scraping and stood to retrieve the weapon for the archer.
"A bow? Since when did you keep bows down here?" Clint asked, raising an inquisitive eyebrow.
"Since your mission in Morocco when yours snapped. We modified it -this one's sturdier." Tony turned back with a recurve and quiver in his arms. It looked exactly like the one he already had.
"Thanks," Clint murmured in awe, taking the quiver and slinging it around his back. He gently lifted the bow from Tony and ran his fingers up the fiberglass, checking for flaws. There were none.
"It's contracts like your other one so it's easy to carry around," Bruce added, watching Clint's reaction. "Here." He moved forward and pressed a button on the top of the bow. The weapon folded over on itself and Bruce took it, fitting it into a slot on Clint's quiver with a click.
"Now, can we bust out of here?" Tony continued, but before anyone had the chance to answer, there was a beeping noise and the door to the lab slid open.
"Get down!" Clint hissed before they even saw who it was. He shoved the other two to the floor, expecting bullets to come whizzing over their heads. He tore his bow from the quiver violently and snapped it into place as he slid an arrow on to the string and aimed.
His target wasn't there.
"What the hell?" Bruce asked as he peered over the edge of the table.
Tony only crossed his arms and looked vaguely irritated. "About time," he called out loudly to the ceiling. Clint and Bruce looked at each other in confusion until the automated voice of Tony's AI responded.
"I've opened the door for you. My apologies for taking so long, but I seem to have been hacked." If Jarvis could portray emotions, he would have come across as extremely annoyed.
Tony snorted. "I realized. Remind me to work on securing that firewall once we get out of this mess."
"Noted, sir."
Tony glanced over to his array of encased suits. "I guess since we've got Jarvis back, I can suit up without the internal computers going haywire?" He asked rhetorically as he took a small remote from the grasp of one of his machines, pressing a button. The glass covering one of the suits slid up and the contraption flew off the stand to attach itself to Tony. Within seconds, Iron Man stood before them.
The visor slid up and the billionaire grinned at them. "Let's blow this joint, shall we?" He asked, but another voice responded from behind them before Clint could.
"No need to. SHIELD's already taken care of it." They turned to see Steve and Natasha standing in the doorframe. Both had cuts and bruises littering their bodies and Natasha leaned heavily against the soldier, only half-conscious.
"Tasha!" Clint asked immediately, moving forward. "Is she okay?"
Steve nodded. "She's fine -took a bad blow to the head. She's tough, she'll pull through."
"Are you hurt?" Bruce asked Steve, eyeing the blood on his shirt. The soldier shook his head.
Clint caught the lie. "Steve's shoulder's injured. I stabbed him."
Three surprised pairs of eyes turned to him. "You what?" Tony asked in amazement.
Steve shrugged. "We have a lot to catch up on."
"Apparently," Bruce snorted.
Clint suddenly stumbled as his head throbbed, and Tony reached out to catch him. "Clint!"
His vision was swirling, but it wasn't from dizziness.
Oh, no, he thought, beginning to panic. Not this again.
"Dammit," he swore, blinking heavily as if to clear the darkness from his eyes, but when he opened them only the black remained.
"Clint!" Tony repeated. "What's wrong?"
"Are you hurt?" Someone asked -it might have been Steve. He shook his head.
"No," he whispered, his voice suddenly hoarse. "'M fine. Except..."
And then abruptly as it had left, his sight was back as if someone had switched on the light. He looked into the anxious expressions of his teammates -even Natasha, who could barely stand.
"Except what?" Bruce prompted gently.
"Nothing. I just got tired for a second, that's all." The second his words left his mouth, he knew he had said the wrong thing.
"Bullshit," Tony saw through the fib. "Tell us the truth."
Clint opened his mouth, but was spared having to answer as they heard footsteps thundering down the steps. They turned and Clint's hand gripped his bow tighter.
Two SHIELD agents stepped in and the five of them relaxed. The agents -Valdez and Cornors, held guns out, but put them away when they saw the team. Corners turned and called over his shoulder. "All clear!"
Clint let out a breath that he didn't even know he had been holding at the sight of them.
A med team rushed in, followed by the Coulson with a familiar authoritative expression on his features. He saw the team and looked relieved.
"You guys okay?" He asked, and they looked at each other, unsure how to answer the question.
"For the most part," Steve finally supplied.
"Some of us need medical attention," Bruce disagreed, looking pointedly at Steve, Natasha and Clint. Tony nodded his assent.
"Let's get you guys back to headquarters." Coulson took Natasha from Steve, who rubbed his shoulder in relief. "It's over -you're safe."
He led them to the med team and Clint fell in pace beside him.
"What about -" Clint began, but Coulson cut him off.
"Not now. You don't need to stress yourself out." His handler gave him a warning look, but the archer stubbornly ignored it.
"Just tell me if you got them," he implored, and Coulson shook his head.
"Not yet. Some got away."
"Where?" Clint prompted, but only received an almost imperceptible frown.
"If I tell you, you'll go after them. I know you, Clint -and especially in your condition -"
"My condition is gone." Clint stared defiantly into the older man's gaze, and saw surprise flit across Coulson's features.
"You don't know if it's permanent," he replied after a moment of stunned silence. "If your vision goes out again when you're fighting, let's face it -you're screwed."
Clint opened his mouth to protest, but Coulson wasn't done.
"I know I can't sway you from doing something when you set your mind to it, but please, at least get checked by a doctor before you go doing something stupid. Please."
"Fine," Clint sighed in defeat.
But once I've done that, I'm going after them.
The unspoken words hung ominously in the air, and they both knew it -but for the moment, Clint was more or less content to be passed into the waiting hands of the medical team.
Zero cliffhanger this time. This chapter hates me, I swear. I revised it three times, so I hope the end result isn't too bad. Though DevinBourdain helped me out a ton, thankfully...I was SO stuck before!
Also, I was wondering...what time do you guys normally check FF? (alerts, browsing, etc.) I'm aware that the time differences make it different for everyone.
Thanks to lasts chapters reviewers: Hawaiichick, terrik33, m9ower, lederra, Bookdancer, kikizak, special agent Ali, Andrewthegreat1, kimbee, onfire99, Piper, horselover28, and firewordsparkler.
Ciao,
-aporia99