Warnings: language, drug use, mention of attempted suicide.

Thanks to my beta, irite, for reminding me that people tend to eat their cereal with milk, and for other general awesomeness.

I do not own the Avengers.

Slowly, the group dispersed towards their beds. Bruce went first, muttering something about having an early morning. Steve left next. Natasha was last, and it was only with great reluctance and ten minutes worth of reassurances from Tony (though neither would admit that's what it had been) that she made her way back to her room.

Before she left, she quietly slipped Tony a pair of pills and said, her voice low (but not low enough—Clint heard every word), "Give these to him at exactly 6 AM. Not one minute earlier, for any reason. Got it?"

Tony nodded.

So, within half an hour, Tony and Clint were alone, sitting at opposite ends of the couch, pointedly staring at a blank television screen instead of each other.

Tony had no idea what he should be doing. He considered asking JARVIS for input, but then figured that might be insensitive, what with Clint sitting right next to him and all. Congratulating himself on his tact, he instead asked, "You tired?"

"No."

Well, Tony could have predicted that. But a guy could hope. Out of curiosity, though, "Would it really matter if you were?"

"...No."

Tony finally shot a quick glance at Clint. He was sitting stiffly yet slumped over, a juxtaposition of postures that should not have been possible and looked remarkably uncomfortable. The marksman was rubbing small circles above his right eyebrow with one hand and was slowly clenching and unclenching the other, his fingernails leaving deep crescent moon indentations in his palm. Otherwise, though, he was motionless, a sudden and unexpected study in fatigue.

"Headache, Barton?" Tony asked, never one to give up an opportunity to point out the obvious.

The glare Clint shot at Tony was venomous, but he didn't say anything.

Tony knew he should probably stop prodding. But he had some kind of pathological aversion to silence that often manifested itself as inane rambling. Instead of lapsing into awkward silence, he lapsed into awkward conversation. "So, you're not going to try and off yourself again, right? Romanoff would kill me if I let you die."

"I'm not planning on it," Clint replied, his words clipped, his whole demeanor screaming how badly he wished the billionaire would just stop talking. "You don't have to do this, you know. Go to bed or something. Whatever it is you do all night."

"I didn't really get the impression you'd been planning it before. Kinda thought it was a spur of the moment thing." Tony said, ignoring both Clint's obvious irritation and the second half of his statement.

"Yeah. It was."

"Then it's not really comforting that you're not planning on it. Sudden bad decisions happen all the time. Fuck, I know all about that. Sorry, Barton, you're stuck with me 'til six o'clock, at least."

Clint marveled momentarily how the entirety of his existence seemed to come to a focal point at six o'clock. What happened afterwards was irrelevant. Getting there was all that mattered.

He gritted his teeth, attempting to resist the urge to check his watch for the 6th time in 34 minutes. He failed.

Tony decided it was time for a distraction. "You hungry?"

"No," Clint answered automatically. Then, the billionaire's question actually registered in his mind. "Wait. Yeah."

"Great. You want Lucky Charms?"

Clint nodded. He did want Lucky Charms. Desperately.

As Tony poured out two bowls, Clint tapped his fingers impatiently on the countertop. He tried to ignore the thoughts that, even in his current state, he could pinpoint as completely irrational. For example, he doubted very much that Tony was trying to poison him, despite how loudly that particular idea was banging against the inside of his skull.

With most of his efforts aimed at suppressing that background noise, he found it harder to ignore the idea that Tony was deliberately screwing him out of the marshmallows. "The fuck, Stark? You hoarding the fucking marshmallows?"

Actually, Tony had been. Caught in the act, he quickly shook a few more out of the box and into Clint's bowl. "Better?"

Clint nodded. Tony added some milk to both bowls, and then held one out to Clint. He took the offered bowl silently, and stared into it, clearly torn for some reason about eating the cereal.

Joking, Tony said, "It's not poisoned, Barton. At least not any more than anything else containing this much high fructose corn syrup."

The intense way Clint had looked up at him at that comment, and the calculating look that had followed, had been surprising. Damn, Tony thought. Did he really think I was going to poison him?

Tony realized then that he had no idea what kind of shit was currently flying around in Clint's mind. Outwardly, the marksman looked more-or-less composed. There were no overt signs of anything amiss. He was just sitting there and quietly examining his Lucky Charms, looking exhausted and honestly, ill.

But apparently he'd been worried that Tony was going to poison him. What else was he thinking?

Vowing to be more vigilant (because as much as he joked about Romanoff killing him if he let Clint come to any harm, he was terrified that something was going to happen), Tony settled in to watch his charge. And he silently added 'paranoia' to the ever-growing list of withdrawal-related issues he'd been compiling.

After several seconds, Clint noticed Tony's careful attention.

"You must really think I'm pathetic," he mused aloud, tapping his spoon erratically against the edge of his bowl. He still hadn't taken a bite.

"You're not the first person to be wary of my cooking, Barton," Tony said, joking, trying to turn the conversation down a different path.

It wasn't to be, though. "I mean, what do you think I'm going to do?" Clint continued, as if Tony had not spoken at all. "Choke myself with a spoon? Cut my wrists with a carving knife?"

He began tapping his spoon on the counter, alternating between that and the edge of the bowl. Combined with the way he was kicking his feet against the legs of the stool, Tony thought he was well on his way to becoming the drummer for some crappy indie band.

Tony wondered briefly if the constant mood swings between exhaustion and agitation were as draining to experience as they were to watch.

"I don't think you're going to do anything," Tony said, cautiously. "We went over this, right?"

"Right. So then what the fuck are you staring at?" Jesus Christ, calm down, Barton, don't do this.

Do what? He's the one who's staring. Laughing. He's on some power trip 'cause Tasha gave him your pills. He wants you to beg. Rage boiled up within him, so hot and unexpected that it nearly took his breath away.

But it was extinguished, completely vanished with his next thought. What the fuck? That's...crazy. He's not even laughing. He looks...worried.

He should be worried. You're dangerous.

No. No, I'm not. Stop saying that.

You're the one saying it, psycho. And you are. You're weak, Barton. So willing to be controlled. If it's not Loki, it's these fucking pills. What would you do for one pill, right now?

Like it had been waiting for an invitation, his mind vomited up a variety of scenarios; bright, vibrant, violent, bloody. Nausea rolled in his stomach, and he shut his eyes against the awful creativity of his own sickened, drug-deprived psyche. What wouldn't I do for one pill right now?

Through all of that, Tony just sat there, silently. He wasn't sure what to say that would defuse the situation and what would get him punched in the face again. So he waited and watched the different emotions flit across Clint's face. The assassin had once been able to carefully school his expression, but that ability had apparently been stripped from him, lost somewhere between his crushing anxiety and his shrieking nerves.

First, Tony saw, came anger. Then confusion. That was followed by a small shake of the head—denial, maybe? Last was longing. Pure, unadulterated, and visceral.

Of them all, that had been the hardest to watch.

After a moment, Clint shook his head again and muttered, "Pathetic."

It seemed this particular episode was ending.

Tony said, "I don't think you're pathetic, Barton. No one does."

With a self-deprecating chuckle, Clint replied, "I don't see how you don't. Think that, I mean." His mind was telling him to shut up, to stop talking, but listening to himself had really done a fat lot of fucking good lately. So he ignored that impulse and continued, "I'm afraid to go to sleep. I managed to become addicted to drugs despite knowing exactlyhow fucking stupid that is. And I didn't even make it through 36 hours of withdrawal before I tried to kill myself. Less than two days, Stark. And I was asleep for most of that. If that's not pathetic, I don't know what is."

Tony gave him a long look. When he spoke again, it was in a tone that Clint had never heard him use before. "When I got back from Afghanistan...I couldn't handle water. 'Cause of, uh..." he trailed off, unsure if he really wanted to continue.

"Waterboarding," Clint supplied. He'd read the file.

Oh, fuck it, Tony thought, he'd gotten this far. He nodded. "Yeah, that. So baths and swimming pools were completely out. I couldn't even take a shower without having a panic attack. So you know what I did?"

Clint shook his head.

Tony smirked. "I started drinking. More, I mean. I already drank a lot before. But the only way I could get in the fucking shower in the morning was if I'd had a drink or two first. Or three. Or four. Sometimes I was completely fucking wasted before I got out of bed. Because I was afraid I was going to drown in the fucking shower. I knew it was completely illogical, irrational, but I still couldn't do it." He paused. "If that's not pathetic," he echoed Clint's words, looking the marksman in the eye, "I don't know what is."

Clint narrowed his eyes. "Is this supposed to make me feel better? What's your point? That other people have stupid, irrational fears, too?"

"No. My point is, you chose a bad way to deal with the fucked up shit in your head. But you're not the first person who's made that bad choice. It's not the end of the world."

"And maybe you think you've fucked up worse than anyone else," Tony went on, seeing he had Clint's attention, "But that's not true. We've all fucked up. There are people who've done things that make your mistakes look like fucking nothing. At least you're trying, right? That alone shows you deserve another chance."

Clearly, Clint disagreed. "I'm out of chances, Stark. They gave me my last one after I aided a megalomaniac in his bid for world domination. After I tried to kill my boss, my partner, and my team."

Tony thought he should point out that Clint hadn't actually done any of those things freely, that he carried no blame for what he had done under Loki's control. But that was a project for another night, something Romanoff and he would have to tackle together (did she know how deeply this guilt had wormed its way into her partner's mind? Into his very being? She had to. How could she not?). So instead, he just said, "Barton, you're not out of chances until every last person on the fucking planet has given up on you. And you're not there yet. You're not even close."

The way Clint checked his watch every four minutes made Tony painfully aware of the passing time. Still, the pair got on amicably, if more-or-less silently, for the next three hours.

By 5:47, though, Tony was about as anxious to give Clint his pills as Clint was to receive them. The assassin had begun checking his watch every two minutes, and he used the breaks in between to stare at Tony. Not in a particularly menacing or disturbing way. It was just very intense.

By 5:56, they were both about ready to crack. Clint had begun pacing like a caged tiger, turning violently on his heels at the end of each trek across the room. He was glaring at Tony with increasing hostility.

At 5:59, Tony decided he couldn't stand to watch that awful, frantic pacing anymore, and he didn't really figure Natasha would begrudge him one minute anyway. He reached into his pocket.

"I said six o'clock, Stark, and not a single minute earlier," Natasha said coldly from the doorway. "Was I not clear enough for you?"

Fuck. Turns out she would begrudge him a single minute.

Clint and Tony sent Natasha identical glares. Tony recovered his good will quickly, though. "Morning, Agent Romanoff!" he greeted her with excessive cheer. She rolled her eyes.

Clint was less friendly. "It's one fucking minute, Nat," he snarled. "Thirty seconds, now."

She was unyielding. "Thirty seconds that you're going to have to fucking wait, Barton."

They faced off, stiff and silent. At exactly six o'clock, Natasha said, "All right, Stark."

Tony reached into his pocket and pulled out the pills. He held them out to Clint, who snatched them out of his hand and swallowed them in a heartbeat.

The relief Clint felt was instantaneous and so intense that even the accompanying ache of shame and self-loathing could not diminish it.

Within half a minute, though, the anxiety and pain had begun to set in again.

Ten more hours, he thought to himself.

Bruce was back in the lab by seven o'clock in the morning. The courier from SHIELD was coming by at eight and he wanted to make sure he had his shit together by then.

He was boxing up the now non-biohazardous rats, and seriously considering releasing them (was SHIELD just going to have them euthanized? Because the poor little guys didn't deserve that) when the lab door slid open and Steve walked in.

Steve was a morning person. And a night owl. One of the changes that the supersoldier serum had wrought on his physique was that he required substantially less sleep than most people. Most nights, he averaged about four hours.

That suited him just fine. He'd had enough sleep to last a lifetime.

So he'd woken up at 6:45. Normally, he would have had breakfast and maybe watched the news, but Natasha and Clint had been sitting in the kitchen, glaring at each other in stormy silence. He hadn't wanted to intrude, so he'd grabbed his coffee and toast...and donuts...and yogurt...to go. He'd been at a loss as to what to do after that, until JARVIS had informed him that Dr. Banner was awake and working downstairs. Steve didn't spend much time in the labs (too much expensive stuff to break, too much technology flying around), but it sure beat the heck out of getting into the middle of whatever was going on with the SHIELD agents.

"Good morning, Steve," Bruce greeted him, trying his best to hide his confusion at the supersoldier's presence.

"Good morning. Don't worry, I won't touch anything," Steve said with a smile.

Bruce chuckled. "I wasn't too worried about that. What's up?"

Steve shrugged, setting his breakfast down. "Natasha and Clint were having a standoff in the kitchen. It seemed pretty intense, so I got out of the way. I'm just...not ready for that yet," he admitted.

"Fair enough. I don't think any of us are, though. So don't feel too bad about it."

Steve stood up and began wandering through the lab, idly looking around. It was easier to talk if he was moving. "Tony and Natasha seem like they're doing okay with it."

Bruce shook his head. "I don't think so. I think they're just as clueless as we are. They'd just never admit it." He bent over to lift a box of records, but then thought better of it and gestured to Steve, "Could you grab this?"

"What? Oh, sure." Steve lifted the box easily. "Where do you want it?"

"Last table by the door. By the stack of folders."

Steve set it down. As he was turning away, he noticed a single sheet of paper sitting on the table a few feet further down, near a filing cabinet. It was labeled, 'Barton, Clint.' He picked it up and walked back towards Bruce. "What's this?"

"What's what?" Steve handed him the paper. "Oh, this. It's the results of the blood test I ran on Clint a few days ago. Stick it back over there, would you? I'll file it later."

"Sure."

After that, Bruce finished getting organized, and Steve finished his breakfast.

It was almost eight o'clock when they heard something that sounded suspiciously like an explosion from the next lab.

"What the...it's too early for Tony to be up," Bruce said. "Especially if he went to bed at 6."

Steve nodded. "Think we should check it out?"

Bruce looked momentarily indecisive. "It's probably nothing. Things explode around here all the time. But...if we have to evacuate the building, it's probably better we do it sooner rather than later."

The pair headed for the door.

They bumped into the courier from SHIELD on the way out.

"Oh, hey," Bruce said, distracted. He noticed an odor like burning eggs and diesel exhaust lingering in the air. What the fuck had happened? "Everything's ready to go, just, uh, take the stuff on the last table," he gestured vaguely. "If anyone's got any questions, they know how to get in contact."

"Sure, Dr. Banner," the courier said. Steve and Bruce slipped into the lab next door. With a shrug, the courier set about gathering all of the materials onto his cart.

He was just about finished when he noticed a sheet of paper that seemed to have escaped from one of the many folders. He didn't look at it too closely (this stuff was way above his pay grade), just noted that it said, "Barton, Clint" at the top. He knew that Agent Barton had been involved with the Thompson case. So he shoved the document into the top folder. He figured the scientists at SHIELD would know where it was supposed to go.

When Bruce came back ten minutes later, the courier was long gone.

As it turned out, the unpleasant odor of burning eggs and diesel exhaust was actually burning eggs and diesel exhaust.

Tony had not gone to bed after being relieved of his baby sitting duties. He'd had an idea that he wanted to sketch out before he forgot about it. Two hours into his work, he'd decided he was hungry. In his sleep deprived, over-caffeinated state, he'd had the brilliant idea of using an extremely expensive piece of machinery to make fried eggs.

It hadn't worked, of course. The eggs had run everywhere, jamming the machinery. The buildup of pressure had caused it to explode. Nothing that the fire-suppressing robots couldn't handle. Despite that, Bruce was still (irrationally, Tony thought) upset.

"I don't get it, Tony. You had to go to the kitchen to get the eggs. Why the hell didn't you just cook them there?"

"My data was compiling. I didn't want to miss it!" He said that like it was perfectly normal.

Bruce's eyebrows drew together in a half-concerned, half-disturbed look. "I think you should go to bed."

Tony didn't see how that was relevant. When he expressed as much, Bruce replied, "Go to bed, or I will sedate you and Steve will carry you there. I'm already a chemist, a biologist, and a physicist. I might as well become a physician, too."

With an irritated huff (and some confusion—when had Bruce become a biologist? What had he done for his dissertation? Tony needed to know), Tony had headed to bed. Or, at least, to his penthouse. Bruce made a note to have JARVIS check to see that the billionaire was actually sleeping in a little while.

Steve had followed Tony upstairs, and so Bruce returned to his lab alone. He was just settling in for a long date with a microscope when something began nagging at him from the back of his mind.

The back of his mind was something he was accustomed to listening to very carefully. So he tuned in.

After a moment, it occurred to him that the table by the door had seemed conspicuously empty. Something was missing. Something should have been there. But what?

He walked over there slowly, thinking. He ran his hand over the bare surface of the table. Still drawing a blank, he sat down on top of one of the filing cabinets to think.

Filing cabinet. Filing. He was supposed to file something. Something that wasn't here.

Oh, fuck.

The results from Clint's blood test were missing.

Please review. They give me the strength to forge on through the vast wasteland of this meaningless existence.