Chapter 9
SHIELD Agent, Titanium Class
Clint Barton pressed his back into a large stone column. His head turned sideways just enough to allow one eye to look into the pit below. A horse-shoe shaped stone cavern lay below, like the end of a subway line beneath abandoned Manhattan streets. A massive wall directly across from them kept the entire bay from flooding right through the tunnel line. With the massive pile of C4 currently adhered to said wall, Clint assumed that barrier wasn't going to last very long.
Tracking the secret agents was easy for him. Any blind, deaf, and dumb beat cop couldn't have missed the breadcrumbs the Captain had left along the way. A demolished street sign, a car flipped on its side, and one unconscious guy hanging from a pole was a rather useful trail to follow. After that came the blood trail. Possibly Tony's, Steve's even but the dew drop splatter was enough to follow, even intermittently.
Beside the archer, Bruce sunk down to his haunches. It was obvious the place had been abandoned for a while, at least since the sub lines had been rerouted three or four years ago. There was an upper access way framed in red brick that circled over the end-of-the-line tunnel like a massive loft. The loft gave a perfect vantage point to the scene below them. Not to mention it was a great place for the three snipers sharing the space just to their left. The forth sniper passed out in the stairwell a few steps away with the introduction of Clint's P30 to his skull. Clint upgraded to the unconscious goon's gun.
. "So, what's going on?" Bruce asked quietly, lowering down again. He still wore the mask of calm that kept the big guy from tearing the place apart.
. "I don't know. They've got Cap strung up in something. He can't get out, which is impressive, and apparently he's the one the blood came from." Clint turned and whispered into his ear
Bruce stiffened a little, but with a quick inhale-exhale calmed again. "Ok, not too big a deal. He heals quick."
Clint agreed, but for didn't decide to share the fact that Steve Rogers had been shot about eight times. The captain gasped and dangled like a lifeless puppet as seven men stood by. At this point, Clint was not about to share those intimate details. He wanted enough time to assess the situation without Hulk smashing everything.
"What about Thor?" Banner whispered.
Clint checked the scene again, and then turned to report back. "That's another weird one. They've got him on something that looks like a massive magnet. He's not even trying to get up. His eyes are opened. I've never seen him like this."
"Asgardian tech?"
"But how is that possible? Loki's in Asgard Jail. Who else would have it out for him?"
Banner's face twisted a little, surprised. His scientific mind was reeled with possible physics answers for the strange occurrence. For now he showed a little self-restraint and asked about Stark.
Clint didn't even need to look. The first person he looked for was Tony though he never mentioned it. The only one down there he cared about as a physical brother was Stark and the state Clint found him in caused his own heart to skip a beat.
"Don't freak out." Clint whispered.
Bruce flashed green, his hands turned to fists. But despite these outward appearances of rage he remained relatively calm. "Bruce Banner, Hulk, Avenger, scientist . . ." he began to mouth to himself.
Clint waited for him to speak. Bruce taught him a similar technique to help him through the months following Loki's possession to keep his own mind from shattering to pieces.
"Say it." Bruce commanded. His voice deepened with a growl behind it.
"Are you sure you want me to say it?"
Bruce's eyes snapped open. They progressed from the simple clarity to a hard and deathly black. Clint decided to hide the intimate details temporarily, so he kept it simple to hold the Hulk in a little longer. The situation required tact. Careful planning. Spy work. It did not need the Hulk to go barreling through that Hell hole below them.
"They're running him under a faucet." He half lied. In actuality, the unknown men down there had Tony on his back with a soaked towel over his face as they let all of New York Bay pour over his mouth and nose. Besides being shot through another interdimensional portal, that was Stark's worst fear.
"They're water boarding him?" Bruce didn't glaze over facts.
Clint swallowed. His Adam's apple bobbed as he weighed what the result of his answer might be. No use in keeping it from the guy when he could just stand up and look for himself. "Uh, yes they ARE—"
His final word rose from the whisper he first intended on to an exclamation of fear. If there was one guy the secret agents should have nabbed first, it was Bruce Banner. Clint could be knocked out, Natasha locked up, Tony water boarded, the Captain shot (a few thousand times), and Thor . . . well whatever they did to him Clint didn't have a name for.
None of that shined a light to what these unknown agents should have done to Bruce Banner. Or, more importantly, what they should have done to the Incredible Hulk. Clint didn't want the part-time doctor going green so quick. Barton wanted the opportunity to snipe a few guys first and even the odds a little, or maybe get a better idea of what they were up against. But the Hulk knew one thing and one thing alone.
Smash.
"Really?! I say take it easy and you go green! Nice job!" Clint shouted at the green back as it crushed through the brick column and leaped down into the subway tunnel below them.
Obviously the Hulk heard him complaining because the next thing Clint found himself dodging was the flying body of a black-clad goon. The guy hit the wall as Clint just managed to duck down in time to avoid catching the body in his face. He considered shooting the Hulk in the back, not because he thought it would hurt the guy, but he was pretty frustrating when he wanted to be. Instead of handling Hulk issues, Clint had much more pressing matters . . . like the fact that three other snipers were changing aim from the Avengers helpless below them to the one Avenger with the rifle. Barton had the time to think the word crap, before he lifted his stolen gun and took out the sniper farthest away. The other two converged their fire and the mortar just in front of Clint erupted in a hail of shrapnel.
He hit the floor on his stomach with his hands over his head. The Hulk had left little more than a two-inch lip for him to hide behind. If he didn't get moving, he was going to be sniper bait.
"Hulk! I'm gonna kill you, you big stupid ogre!" he screamed.
:(:):(:):
The Hulk went for Tony first. The black-clad men holding him down had already abandoned their charge in order to pull their side arms and start shooting. It was almost laughable, really. Four of them fit nicely in Hulk's left hand while three others fit in his right. Without much ceremony he picked them up and hurled them at the stone loft directly in front of him. There were still two shooters up there making little nuisances of themselves and he had gotten tired of hearing Clint yelling at him about them. The men in his left hand pummeled flat the one sniper. The men in his right hand took out the second. Hulk doubted that the survivors would be much trouble.
With them out of the way, the rest of the room of cronies was left to him. There were probably another forty-five on the short side. An apparent leader stood beside the Captain with an air of superiority rivaled only by Natasha Romanov. Corn silk hair mixed with crystalline eyes and the hidden ferocity of a pit viper. She held an oversized hand gun formed from an unfamiliar tech. She trained it on the Captain's temple.
A familiar voice spoke beside the Hulk's massive right fist.
"Great." Clint said.
The Hulk looked down, having paused for a moment to decide who he was going to demolish first. Somehow Clint had gotten himself the thirty feet down from the upper loft to the ground level. He stood by the Hulk's foot as the archer stared the woman down. The Hulk for a little while measured the distance up and down with his eyes, as if trying to figure out how, short of flying, Clint had managed to scramble down relatively unnoticed and unscathed. Even as Clint started talking, the Hulk continued bobbing his head up and down, up and down as if trying to make it all out.
"We've been invaded by the Playboy mansion. Cap, really? Germans? I thought we talked you through this war already." Clint said.
Steve's head tucked down against his chest. He attempted to raise it, lifting only his eyes before he gave up. Clint satisfied himself with just imagining Steve's smile instead.
The woman turned the gun and focused it instead on Clint which was exactly how he wanted his move to play.
"Look," Clint went on. "Don't know who you are. Don't really care either to be positively honest. So here's the bargain. Step off now, or I'm gonna let the big guy here do what he does best and turn your face inside out."
The Hulk took some offense at Clint presuming to be able to order him at all. So he leaned down and roared in the archer's ear. Then he straightened up again and waited to see what would happen. He really did want to rip the woman in half, but if Clint thought they could avoid that, he supposed it was a good thing.
Clint did not appreciate being screamed at, but he tried to look unaffected like it happened all the time. Obviously it made the woman, whoever she was, think twice. Her hand still held the gun toward him but now it vibrated with a tremor she couldn't quite hide.
"You do not know us." She spoke with an unfamiliar accent. It reminded him of a mix of German, Russian, and a dash of French.
"Uh, if that was a question, then the answer is no." Clint replied, matching her dead pan with his own.
"Come any closer, your men we will kill. There is nothing now you can do to stop what we plan within the city. In twenty minutes we will wire this place entirely to explode and the sea will swallow all of New York."
"Yeah, see, that's not gonna happen. And I'll give you one reason why." Clint pointed a finger at the tree-sized leg beside him. "That's a mighty big elephant in the room. Twenty minutes, really? We were driving around following you for like an hour and a half. If you couldn't get it done by then, it's just not happening"
"You cannot stop us, Clint Barton. You and your freaks may try, but we are a vast network. You cannot stop what we have in motion. You may win this round. But Hydra never loses the war." She snarled.
"Hate to break it to you, but Hydra did lose the war. Like, eighty years ago and the last time I checked they were as extinct as the triceratops Steven Spielberg shot."
At his insult, the woman allowed her flare of anger to overtake her. She squeezed the trigger and the bullet flew toward Clint's eye socket. The Hulk reached out and snatched the round of metal from the air like he may catch a wayward nickel.
"Ok then. Hulk, smash."
The room erupted in movement. The now identified members of Hydra shot towards the Hulk without any real way of stopping him. As efficiently as they took down the three Avengers in their grasp, they were completely inefficient against the unstoppable Hulk coming against them. They were sadly unprepared.
Clint resigned himself to covering the other three. Tony was most susceptible to cover fire. Without his iron suit, he reverted to just another mere mortal waiting to take a ricochet. Clint stood beside him in a second, working frantically at the handcuffs that had him bolted across two rails ties. He looked like a maiden in distress about to be ravaged by Snidely Whiplash but then again that would make Clint Dudley Do-Right.
"Come on, Secret Squirrel, your hero's come to save you." Clint said with a grin plastered across his face. He pulled the towel off Tony's head and now that he was free, Clint expected all the felicitations that the billionaire would like to bestow. He did not expect the sudden fury with which Tony went launching into the air. Stark's hand clamped around Clint's throat, threw him against the train rail, and proceeded to squeeze until the archer's vision blurred.
An explosion of pain shot through the archer's side. Stars clouded his view. The dull ache he had lived with all day long in his attempt to ignore what was likely (at this point) an inconsequential little liver bruising had now become an issue. A big issue. Desperately Barton grabbed at Tony's hand, barking his name in cries of terror as he tried to get the man to let him go.
"Stark!" He screamed. His voice barely audible as his larynx collapsed into his cervical spine. He had to admit, Tony was stronger than he looked. More often than not the guy seemed like a waif of a human whose sole power resided in his mechanical tinkering. People took him for granted because of that and often forgot the hours of defense training he put in with Clint nightly.
"Stark!" he tried again, beating Tony's hand with his fist. "I—s . . . me! It's . . . Hawk! Stark!"
Tony kept pressing him down, his whole body resting on the one hand that squeezed the life out of his friend. Tony's eyes were unfocused with a disturbing faraway look. The man had no idea what he was doing and, petrified beyond reason, had no plan of stopping until Clint lay dead in his hands. The water boarding threw him right of insanity cliff and he fell like a rock to the very bottom of reality.
All Clint saw as his vision folded into blackness was the bloodshot eyes of his cohort in crime slowly strangling him into oblivion.
The Hulk roared and suddenly the weight lifted off his chest. For a few precious minutes Clint could do nothing but cough and heave and puke against the rusty rail ties. A few feet away was Tony Stark, right where the Hulk had plopped him down. The big guy did it gently at least and Tony didn't look any worse for wear, even if he was still terrified out of his mind.
Hulk stood between them. Looking first at Clint and then at Tony as if wondering what to do with them. The shooting had stopped. Most of the Hydra members were either littering the tunnel like discarded Ken dolls or they had taken off through some strange underwater tunnel. Either way, the Hulk had not decided to follow them. It was an unusual decision for a monster that was not typically known for making decisions at all.
"Thanks . . . He's hhh—all right. Think I . . . I sphhh—ooked him." Clint coughed, rubbing his throat to remove the roughness.
The Hulk looked at him, unconvinced.
"Go get Thor off that whatever-it-is
The dark eyes turned from Tony to the Asgardian who had yet to move from his curled up position on the giant silver dish a few meters away.
"And don't hurt him! I know you don't like him, but be nice, all right. I've got enough issues." Clint clarified.
The Hulk gave him an annoyed snort. "Keep saying rules. Hulk hate rules."
"Oh, stop being a mean Joe! Just go and pick him up or something. I don't know. Or do you want to go break out the Captain?" Clint stuck his tongue out at him in a stray show of absolute bravado. One day he would look back and wonder if he had been just a little bit tipsy to cause himself to stand there and pick a fight with the Hulk.
The Hulk looked over at Captain America. He swayed by his arms. His shirt was relatively nonexistent except for the shreds his blood kept plastered to his chest.
"Too messy." The Hulk concluded.
"Fine. I'll get messy, you be nice to Thor. And if you throw him through a wall or something, then so help me . . ." Clint trailed off, not coming up with an effective threat right off the top of his head.
The Hulk stood there, waiting for him to come up with something.
"I won't talk to you for a week. So there. How's them apples? Go help Thor."
"Stupid threat." The Hulk rolled his eyes, but went off toward the Asgardian anyway.
"Yeah, I don't care right now." Clint yelled back.
He hobbled toward the Captain with a hand holding the hot pain radiating through his back. It wasn't a good sign. Neither was the fact that all his brain seemed to want was to make his vision fuzzy. He tensed his muscles, willing away another horrid wrack of familiar agony before he overcame himself enough to get to Steve. He walked stiffly up the short high rise to the heavy metal cuffs that completely clamped over the Captain's hands and feet. The guy looked like a scene out of the cartoon they were watching that morning. Was it really only that morning? It seemed like years ago.
"Hey, Cap, how's it shaking? Are you still alive in there?" Clint asked, using his hands to lift his commanding officer's head.
As Steve's head lifted up it held a hard grimace. The guy could feel pain and suffer injuries like any mortal man. Whether or not he could ever die remained to be seen.
"Ow." He managed.
"That all you got to say for yourself? Ow?" Clint smirked. "You gonna help me get you out of these sci-fi cuffs or am I on my own here?"
"Sorry." Steve replied, his eyes closing again.
"Didn't think so." Clint grabbed his trusty piece of random electrical wire and started on the cuffs over Steve's feet first. Hard as they were, popping the locks was relatively simple when he found out exactly where the mechanism was located. As he started on the handcuffs, he glanced over at the Hulk's progress.
He'd dragged Thor off of the metal disk by his boot, but it didn't seem to help matters any. The Asgardian remained just as lifeless looking as before. At least now Clint could see him breathing. He counted that in the bonus column. What detracted a little from that small victory was the look the Hulk gave him. Clint began to doubt that "Hulk Smash" was finished.
"Hey, big guy! What did I say? No. Smash. Thor." Clint ordered.
With his the first hand free, Steve collapsed. One arm dangled over his head as his body gave up on him. Clint struggled to hold him in one hand as a pain of his own threatened to knock him off his feet.
"Crap, crap, crap." He growled under his breath. "Hey, green, if you're done with alien-guy get over here and help me with the Captain. Or do me one better and give be Banner back so he can go all medical."
The Hulk mumbled disapprovingly but he stomped over. With two ginger fingers he pinched the captain by the chest and back. When Steve cried out in shock of the sudden pain of his multiple separate injuries, the Hulk unceremoniously dropped him again. Clint had just finished with the last handcuff. In the end both tumbled to the brick floor in a pile of limp agony.
"Hulk! That was the complete opposite of helpful!" Clint snarled.
In response, the Hulk could say nothing. He looked disturbingly at his blood covered fingers, with a feeling he could only describe as regret eking into his mind. But that made no real sense. He never felt that. Only anger and disgust and utter hatred. Right now, Clint Barton was being a little more than a nuisance. He was actually insulting! Why then did he feel bad about letting the guy down? He was not about to say he was sorry. But he wasn't sure what he should do. So he leaned forward with his two bloody fingers and smeared them down Clint's back. At least that made him feel a little better.
Clint kicked his hand away.
"Really? You know what? Get out. Just get out! I'll handle this; you just go find an ambulance or something, ok? If you're not going to be helpful and turn back into Bruce, then go get me someone who can be useful!" Clint leaped to his feet and physically pushed the Hulk toward the tunnel entrance he could hardly fit down.
The Hulk tried to turn, he even opened his mouth as if to say something in response, or growl, or just pick up the little archer and hurl him against a wall, but instead he found himself tossing a helpless hand into the air and doing just what Clint said. Along the way he might just figure out why he was listening at all!
Clint turned away from the retreating green monster. He rubbed a hand into the steady stab in his back. Mentally he slammed a fist against the back of Tony's head.
Tony. Yeah, that was something else he had to deal with.
"How you holding up, Cap?" Clint asked. Figured the guy who bled most needed the most urgent attention. Steve lay still prone on the subway floor. His breathing was thready and erratic. He looked like a train had run him over then backed up and hit him again. Stopping the bleeding was the most important thing at the moment, but it became hard to tell with Steve's unique physiology if that would help him or hurt him.
"Hey, you ok? Captain, I wouldn't mind you saying something. Steve? Hey, Steve?" Clint wasn't sure what he could do. By the second Steve looked more and more like a fading candle wick. Suddenly Clint wished the Hulk had stayed around, at least until he could coax Banner back out of him.
Clint looked over to Tony. Any help at this point was better than none. But Stark wedged himself against the far wall. He rocked back and forth, his body shook all over as he coughed intermittently in a sickening way.
"Tony?" Clint tried. "Tony, you gotta help me. The Captain needs us, can you give me a hand? Tony? Come on, it's Clint. You're fine, so get over here and help me!"
Tony didn't even glance in his direction. He kept rocking and shaking all by himself.
Clint knew it was a lost cause, at least until after Pepper got a hold of him. Instead he looked imploringly at Thor. The guy's foot started to twitch. Clint made the decision to get up for only a moment. He rushed to Thor's side. Maybe there was some way he could rouse the Asgardian back to life a little quicker. But "rush" wasn't quite the word for what Clint actually did. He started out fast, launching up from his heels before a sick wave flipped his brain like an omelet. Clint staggered forward until he almost bounced his face off the floor. Hands, knees, and sheer determination carried him the remaining three feet until he perched over Thor. Firstly he slapped the Norse mythic in the face. Not hard, but just enough to send a message.
Thor's eyes focused in awareness. He could hear, even see, but whatever the Hydra fan club had done to him caused an acute paralytic. He was going to be just as useless as Tony, at least for a little while longer.
From his spot on the floor, Steve moaned. Just another addition to Clint's lengthening list of worries. He missed Banner. Even a mad Natasha was a fitting alternative at this point. Clint pulled out the cell phone Pepper had given him in order to at least give her a call. He realized quickly that his hope was dead before he could even dial. Pepper's phone had been smashed, most likely when Tony body-slammed him into the train track. Thor didn't have a phone. Tony did.
Clint dragged himself to his feet, slower and more mindful this time. After not making a swift return trip to the floor, he managed to get within two feet of Tony Stark. That's as close as he got. Without anyone to pull Stark off him again, Clint wasn't about to push his luck. So, defeated, he went back to Steve and sat over him with his hands working to stop the already slowing bleeding. If the Captain was supposed to start looking healthier, he wasn't. In fact, the death-white pallor resembled the original Captain America pulled from the ice four years before. Clint was on the verge of a nervous breakdown when at long last the Hulk made a dramatic reentrance.
Half the ceiling sheered up and out as one of three subsequent ambulances dropped through the fresh hole and hit the floor below. Clint had to hide his face temporarily as he watched them stack precariously around Thor's prone form. The Hulk and Thor never did get on the same page. Some days it was like they wanted to kill each other. Well, more the Hulk wanted to kill Thor then the other way around. The caped alien was really a good egg in the end, but something in his mind wanted to see which of the two could be the last man standing. That was all Hulk needed to be on a permanent grudge match.
Thank fully, today the Hulk did not drop an ambulance on Thor's head. But that did not mean Banner's alter ego was out of hot water either.
Clint threw his hands in the air as the Hulk fell through the hole, sending the ambulances bouncing on their wheels.
"What the Hell is this?" Clint shouted. "I was being sarcastic! I didn't want you to drag me an entire ambulance! Let alone three of them!"
There was that look again, the surprised dropped-jaw Hulk.
"Got help!" The Hulk defended himself.
Clint rubbed a hand over his eyes, forgetting the fact he was probably smearing the Captain's blood all over himself. "You know what, whatever. I don't care. Grab Thor and throw him in the back of one, all right?"
The Hulk grumbled a little, but acquiesced at last.
"And I don't mean literally throw him in!" Clint clarified.
The Hulk deflated.
Already the terrified paramedics tripped their way out of the safety of their locked front cabs to survey the scene they'd been thrust into. Behind them, the Hulk groaned in displeasure as he tore the door off the back of an ambulance and less-than-carefully plopped Thor half on a gurney.
Clint, unaffected by the chaos he was surrounded by acted only as the happy introducer. He waved and grinned at the medics, beckoning them closer.
"Hi! Yes, we are the Avengers. Captain America has been shot and needs critical care like, now. Tony Stark is suffering some PTSD. Just shoot him up with some lithium right now. Thor's coming around in the back of your bus already. Give us a few minutes and Bruce Banner's sure to turn up and require a little TLC too."
There were six paramedics. They sort of stood in a shocked cluster, looking around them at the improbable situation they had been dropped into. One, obviously a Manhattan attack veteran, stepped forward as if to take charge of the situation.
"And what's your story then?" he asked, already pointing the others in various directions.
Clint grinned. "Me? I'm Clint Barton, Hawkeye, straight up Titanium-class SHIELD agent, Avenger, and all around good guy. And I might be bleeding internally."