PENDULUM ~ WATERCOLOUR
…
"Hawkeye!" Natasha put her hand to her ear as she ran through the complicated and narrow hallways. She had to get to the lab and get a sample before everything went to shit.
Barton sounded somewhere between shocked and worried. "Natasha? Weren't we supposed to go dark…?"
"Listen to me! I just watched Mnambi infect himself with god-knows-what ten seconds ago! We have to get the hell out of dodge! Now!"
The COM link was silent for a moment. "Copy that. I'll come find you."
"No, you idiot, follow the plan! Rendezvous at the check point!" Natasha slipped into the observation room, catching sight of the chaos in the lab on the other side of the window. Men in lab coats were crowded around a doctor's table, desperately trying to stabilize the thrashing man.
Now Barton sounded humorously irritated. "You'd better be there in three minutes or less, Romanoff, or I'll be coming out there just to strangle you with your own webbing!"
"Promises, promises."
"No one calls Hawkeye an idiot, Black Widow."
Natasha tore her eyes from the scene unfolding before her and hurriedly snatched up a vile of yellowish liquid, stashing it in a protective pouch on her belt. She gave the files on the desk a cursory glance… and then she froze, her heart stopping cold. Frantic, she snatched up a paper and tried to read it more carefully.
A deafening roar suddenly shook the floor.
Natasha's head whipped around. No.
"…what was that?" Barton's question was slow and apprehensive.
Natasha couldn't answer as she watched the body on the table begin to grow… morphing and twisting. Her breathing grew erratic and she clutched at the back of a chair, stumbling.
Barton's static-covered voice was panicked in her ear. "Talk to me, Tasha! What's going on?!"
Chaos broke out in the observation room, bodies and equipment becoming airborne. Something flew through the window, catching her midriff and throwing her against the opposite wall in a snowstorm of glass. Her head cracked against metal and she slumped to the ground, dazed for a second.
Adrenaline and irrational fear flooding through her, she tossed the dead scientist off of her and quickly stood, her head spinning.
The roar sounded again, louder and more guttural.
Natasha turned and ran, half-crashing into the doorjamb in her haste. Confusing, terrifying images were playing with her mind and she couldn't stop them from suffocating every rational thought in her head, her lungs burning and her body quaking.
She didn't know where she was running other than away.
She could hear the animalistic breathing right behind her.
She could feel the hands scrabbling at her heels.
She could see the twisted forms in the corner of her eye whenever she turned her head.
.
there was no way to fight
.
there was nowhere to hide
.
all she could do was run
.
and run
.
and run
.
and run
.
and run
.
Something caught her arm, nearly yanking it out of her socket when she didn't stop running; she couldn't stop running. A loud sound was blurting nearby, distorted and frantic, as a pair of clamps encircled her upper arms and lifted her running feet off the ground.
She can't stop running. It would catch up if she did.
She twisted and thrashed, trying to break the clamps, but they were too flexible and strong, and then she was being completely surrounded by thick bars of iron that pinned her against something solid. The sounds were louder now and vibrated against her cheek, warm air accompanying it.
…confused, she froze, her heart in her throat…
"Na...dash…ada…nga…on… goddamn it, Natasha! What's happening?!"
It was as if the water in her ears had drained away and she could suddenly understand which way was up again. The world stopped spinning all at once, which made her eyes go unfocused.
Breathing as if she'd never get another chance to inhale, she fisted her hands in the front of Barton's uniform like he was a lifeline. She was drenched in cold sweat, her muscles limp and soggy with exhaustion. Her cheeks were wet with hot tears. Monsters kept trying to flood her consciousness, but she stared at the man holding her in his arms, his blue eyes intense enough to ground her.
It was either suck it up or go down with the ship, and the Black Widow didn't like water. "I'm ok," she finally breathed, pushing him away. "I'm ok." She wasn't nearly as ok as she should be, but there wasn't much of a choice.
"What happened, Natasha?" Barton asked insistently. He looked shaken, watching her face carefully. Looking down, she saw that his forearm was bleeding freely from four, long parallel scratches; she had smudges of red under her nails.
No one had ever held her in spite of the pain she caused them… stupid thoughts… don't think about that… get away…
"We have to get out of here. Now," she said, trying to ignore everything other than the need to get off this blasted floating laboratory.
"I said 'what happened?'" Barton repeated as she turned to jog down the hallway. "What triggered you?"
Natasha felt her hackles rise at the word 'trigger,' but she answered him. "Coulson didn't mention that Mnambi had Red Room Intel." She paused at a fork in the hallway, quickly made the decision, and turned.
Barton was right behind her. "Ok, but what does that mean?"
Natasha swallowed hard, clenching her fists, and finally found the stairs. "Mnambi just injected himself with Red Room-grade muscle-enhancing chemicals. He modified it slightly, but judging by the reaction, it has the same effect as it did for Red Room." Exactly the same…
Clint grabbed a hold of her arm and stopped her mid-step, making her look at him. "I've seen you around Red Room spin-offs before Tasha, and they didn't even make you blink." He watched her green eyes go black with fear. "Were you injected, Natasha?" he asked fiercely, his jaw clenched.
Natasha swallowed and it looked like she might start crying again. "No. No, it wasn't me," she shook her head. Clint wasn't sure whether that should make him feel better or not.
Another bone-rattling roar echoed somewhere nearby. The sounds of destruction he'd noticed before were getting louder.
Natasha yanked her arm out of his grasp. "We don't have time for this!" She began running up the stairs again, Clint a half step behind her.
What the hell were they dealing with here?
When they were two floors from the deck, everything began to shake, right down to the light fixtures and handrails. And then a something exploded out of the wall a floor down from their position.
Natasha fell forward onto the stairs, a small gasp of panic escaping her.
Clint's instincts had him trying to get a glimpse of something so dangerous that it made his dangerous partner panic. He moved to the handrail and leaned over it to look down the stairwell. All he could see was a moving gray mass, smashing and crunching and burrowing through everything in its path.
The hair on the back of his neck prickled. Was that Mnambi?
Whatever-the-gray-thing-was suddenly dove into the wall directly under them. The entire boat seemed to shake and then the stairs under Clint's feet detached from the wall. He jumped forward out of harm, landing with his feet on either side of the trembling Natasha.
"Get up! Move!" he yelled, grabbing her under her arms and pulling her up.
They'd run maybe ten more feet before the world shook again, loosening support beams and walls. Clint saw the careening board flying toward him, but wasn't fast enough to dodge it. It hit his shoulder, throwing him against the stair rail and over it. Everything happened too fast for him to grab anything.
Before he could fall very far though, a small hand seized his arm. He instantly twisted to grab the arm attached to that hand. Natasha cried out as she was jerked against the stair railing.
Sparks and smoke from destroyed machinery filled the air around them in the ten-story stairwell. Whatever-it-was-that-had-made-the-mess moved further into the ship, the crashing sounds getting slightly quieter. The ship was groaning in distress.
Natasha growled low in her throat, a sound of defiance against the obvious pain she had to be in.
Clint looked up at his grimacing partner as he swung, suspended from her arm. He could see the ankle she had hooked around an exposed support beam; the bone had nearly broken when she stopped his fall. The pain on her face told him her shoulder had nearly been dislocated as well; at the very least, she'd torn a muscle. With him swinging back and forth like this, she wouldn't be able to hold on much longer.
Clint turned his eyes down, a desperate plan forming in his mind. "On 'three,' let go!" he yelled, looking back up at her grimly.
Natasha's eyes flickered over to the gigantic hole ripped out of the wall and she nodded; the effort of not letting him fall made it impossible for her to talk.
"One," Clint counted, his eyes glued to his intended landing spot. He felt the momentum of the swing, trying to gauge how hard he'd have to push off from Natasha's arm.
"Two."
He hoped she had enough strength to give him something, anything, in the way of trajectory; otherwise, he had an embarrassment of a death lined up. He really would've preferred to go out as something other than a pancake.
"Three!"
Clint dropped. He didn't have nearly enough forward motion to make it. He hit the wall with his toes first, his hands next, and began to slide...
His saving grace was the small twisted metal girder sticking out from the lower part of the hole in the wall. His fingers landed on it, instinctively gripping the sharp metal tightly, even though it tore the flesh of his hand to pieces.
Grunting with effort, he was able to pull himself up to safety, breathing heavily. He remained sitting for a second, assessing the damage done to his hand. Shit, that hurt!
"Barton?" Natasha called from the stairs.
"I'm good," he called back, getting to his feet. He couldn't see her. "I'll see if I can find another set of stairs. I'll meet you up top."
If Natasha had an answer for Clint, he didn't hear it.
One brief flash of heat and flame later, all he could think about was the burning in his eyes.
Some kind of freak combination of laboratory chemical emissions and exposed electrical wiring caused the air to combust, unnatural fire swirling like a mini hurricane through the entire room around him.
Clint threw his hands to his face, screaming wordlessly as he fell to his knees. He furiously scrubbed at his watering, searing eyes, trying frantically to rid himself of what felt like the acid under his eyelids.
It seemed to him like he was suffering for hours; any effort of reducing the pain was done in vain.
He knew he needed to fight it though. He needed to open his eyes. His deadly accurate vision was his most valuable asset on the field and with a mutated General Mnambi running around, he'd need it now more than ever. Especially since his partner was nearly handicapped at the thought of the beast.
When he finally felt like he might be able to bear it, he tried opening his eyes, slowly peeling his eyelids apart…
…and was greeted with complete darkness…
"no."
Clint rubbed his hands over his eyes, squeezing out a few more cleansing tears, and then tried again.
Black.
"No-no-no. No! This can't be happening. NO!" He dropped onto his hands, scrabbling around for… anything… something… he didn't know… But he knew deep down that there wasn't anything that could fix this…
Gravity started to spin.
The floor felt ethereal, fake.
The air felt too big to fit into his lungs.
.
His eyes were gone.
.
He was blind.
.
And now Hawkeye was dead. Hawkeye was gone and all he had now was Clinton Barton. The orphaned circus-freak with enormous, heavily repressed baggage.
Through his crumbling sanity, he heard running footsteps coming toward him.
In a flash, he'd nocked an arrow and aimed it at whoever it was. He'd been hitting bull's-eyes without looking since he was eight; he could still hit a target when he was blind… right?
The footsteps came to a crunching halt. "…Barton…?" He recognized the voice.
"Tasha," he lowered his bow.
He heard her step forward hesitantly.
"Tasha… I can't see," he admitted into the dark, and the solidity of those words seemed to dislodge his brain, his sanity fleeing it's ruined cage.
"Oh, God… I can't… see…"
And with that, he was broken. Despair made rational thoughts impossible and the only things in his mind were self-hatred and misery. He fell forward, barely catching himself on his hands as he urgently tried to keep breathing.
He was useless.
Natasha was trying to tell him something, her voice coming from right above his head. A part of him knew he should be listening, but it was being suffocated by the other, less sane part of him.
Clint Barton was useless.
Strong, delicate hands grabbed his burnt shoulders and roughly pulled him to a sitting position. She was shaking him and trying to talk to him, but it wasn't working. Nothing penetrated the cloud of senselessness around him.
BAM!
Pain exploded across his jaw and suddenly, English was making sense again.
"Think, you bastard! We have to get out of here now!" she was yelling, shaking him by the front of his burnt-smelling uniform.
"Wait, alright!" Clint gasped, holding his hands up in surrender. "Alright!" His heart seemed like it was made of stones though, grating painfully in his chest with every pump. He was useless.
Natasha stopped shaking him, taking his face in her hands. He could feel her breath on his skin. "Clint."
Clint froze, unsure what the hell he was supposed to think about this, not entirely sure that he wasn't hallucinating.
Her hands were tense but gentle on his face. "Listen to me… When we get back to headquarters, I swearthat I will not rest until you get your eyes back. You'll get your eyes back. I swear on my life."
Clint didn't know how he was still breathing.
"But first, we have to get out of here, alive," she continued, back to her I-take-no-bullshit tone. "Come on, give me your arm." She lifted one of his arms and put it over her shoulders, winding her own arm around his waist and heaving him to his feet.
One thing was for sure; Clint Barton was lucky to have Natasha Romanoff as an ally right now, blind circus-freak that he was.
It was hard to trust Natasha to be his eyes, especially when they were going at the speeds they were; he kept tripping and he never expected it when she changed directions. He missed his eyes. He tried not to complain though, because he knew she had her own shit to deal with.
Natasha stopped suddenly.
"What is it?" he asked, drawing his gun with his undamaged hand and holding it ready.
Natasha's hands quickly grabbed it from him. "Are you fucking crazy, Barton?!"
Clint frowned, "I've been shooting targets without a single look for years now, Natasha. I think I can hit one directly in front of me even though I can't see it."
"That's what I'm afraid of!"
"You think I can't distinguish between a fat-assed mutant and a skinny-assed girl like you just because I'm blind?"
Natasha stiffened slightly against his side. Clint couldn't be sure if this was a reaction to something he said or to something that he couldn't fucking see.
Damn, he missed his eyes. He was absolutely useless without them… don't think about it…
"What are we doing?" he asked impatiently when they still weren't moving.
He felt Natasha huff indecisively and then whisper tensely, "Following my plan."
Clint waited for her to continue. When she didn't, he asked, "And…?"
"We're staying out of sight," Natasha snapped.
At the tail end of her statement, a particularly threatening roar shook the boat and Natasha was suddenly moving backwards, dragging Clint with her. He felt a doorjamb clip his shoulder as they entered a room.
"Romanoff, you need to calm down…" he started to say and then his feet were swept out from under him and he landed hard on his back. At first, he didn't notice the cold, sharp edge pressed against his throat.
"If you think I'm above killing a man who can't see it coming, you're in for a fucking surprise," she growled from somewhere above him.
"Then why haven't you done it yet?!" Clint suddenly exploded, mindlessly yelling. "Goddamn it! Why are you still here?! Just …"
BAM!
Pain blossomed over his other cheek now, matching bruises.
"Son of a…" he hissed, pushing her away from him as best he could without knowing exactly where she was. Truly, he was glad that she'd stopped him from going hysterical again… lashing out at anything he could attribute his panic to… He just wished she wasn't so accurate a puncher.
"Do you want to talk about your feelings, Hawkeye, or get out of here?" Natasha didn't give him the chance to answer, yanking him to his feet again.