Chapter 11: Levelling Out

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SHIELD records had this location listed as a storage facility, mainly for reserve transports like SUVs, motorcycles, a few helicopters and planes. Sneaking in the side door of the small hangar wasn't difficult, and as expected the vehicles stood in mass silent sentry, illuminated by minimal light. It was supposed to be manned by fifteen people: twelve guards, two mechanics, and a supervisor.

The hangar wasn't overly large, and there were four guards actively patrolling it in shifts. They were far more alert than she would have expected them to be so early in the morning, this deep in the deserted lands of Nevada, especially as Sitwell's quinjet had not triggered any of the facilities proximity alarms. Natasha removed the security men from their posts quickly and quietly, then activated her radio as she moved like a shadow to the back of the facility.

"Clear," she said softly as she examined the back wall. On close inspection, it was pretty obvious that there was a large, camouflaged, bay door right in the center, and a regular sized door to its side. She stopped beside it and kept her back to the wall to wait. It was only moments before Thor, Rogers, and Rhodes joined her. They weren't particularly quiet in their approach, which is why she had insisted on heading in alone. Bruce and Sitwell were remaining in the jet for now.

"Doors are double-paned, at least four inches thick, and swing out. There's a bio-reader installed for identification." She gestured at the hand and eye scanner set in the wall. It looked like an oddly modern water fountain. "Cameras are imbedded just above its frame and it has sensitivity sensors built into the surface. We also need a code to access it."

"So basically," Rhodes said, "there's no way to make a silent approach."

"Not beyond this room," she agreed. She hadn't left any guards awake to get the access code from, and they might not even know it as an extra security precaution. Beside Rhodes, Rogers looked at the nearly camouflaged door, looked at Natasha and then indicated that they should clear the space around it.

"Sitwell," he spoke, "we're going in hot."

"Understood," Sitwell's tone was predictably bored. "Just make sure they're actually the bad guys before you start taking names." The look Rogers gave the door was not a pleasant one.

"It would only be polite," he agreed. "Thor, if you would knock for us please."

"With pleasure, Captain," Thor agreed, and stepped to the door. Natasha pulled her first gun from her thigh holster, not bothering to check that her widow's bite was charged; they always were.

Thor introduced Mjolnir to the door with a force built from anger and impatience. Hinges on the outside or not, the thick obstruction caved into the room beyond with an immense boom, taking a good portion of the wall surrounding it along for the ride. The ground trembled as it slid and bounced across the floor beyond. There wasn't a lot of dust to conceal their entrance into the room beyond, but with that introduction she figured flashbangs and a full scale blackout would fail to conceal them.

The space beyond was massive. Easily ten stories high, perhaps closer to fifteen, it was framed with a complicated web of crisscrossing metal beams that rounded over to meet in the middle far above them. It was deep enough that it housed entire buildings running along its sides and looked to end, in the considerable distance, with a series of white pod like structures. She would say it was an old airship hangar, but the construction was obviously far too new. She glanced back at the rounded structures in the far distance.

Instinct and experience told her that was her target.

Fifteen feet before them three armed men stared in alarm. A fourth lay on the ground beside the door, groaning. Judging by the looks on their face, they weren't going to be friendly. Based on the information she'd pried from Mr. Samuels earlier she had been anticipating that.

"Good Evening," Rhodes spoke into the tense quiet that had fallen amongst the debris, his synthesized voice echoed loudly in the cavernous space. "We're looking for some friends of ours. Perhaps you've seen them."

The guards pulled up their weapons. They didn't get a chance to use them as Rogers threw his shield and they were left unmoving on the ground. A red light began flashing high overhead, large enough to cover the place with a faint pulsing glow. The intruder alarms were louder than she had expected. Natasha didn't bother looking to Rogers for instruction to break away from their little party. It had been decided that her specific objective was to find Clint and Tony; her team's objective was to subdue and distract.

She wasn't concerned with the armed guards that started to pour out of the buildings along the hangar's sides, like a swarm of ants drawn from their nest. One fired a weapon that pulsed yellow, and the beam that hit Thor sent him flying backwards through the maw he had just created.

She was a bit surprised by the number of people present; the resistance was admittedly more than Natasha had been expecting. More than any of them had been expecting, but she had a lot of anger to work through. A few days' worth actually, so when she moved in on her first target, the smile on her face was perhaps more feral than she generally liked to display.

She was getting her partner and Tony back, and these bodies were in her way.

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It was an entire base of well-trained and well-armed mercenaries with a few scientist-looking types in mechanized outfits. It was simple for Steve to spot where the armour had been influenced by Tony's suit, and they were destructive in a variety of ways. It was more like a mini-army really, in an absolutely massive hangar that might have hosted a squadron of blimps back in his day. How they couldn't see this structure from the outside was boggling, but not a concern. For now he was concentrating on not being overwhelmed by the flood of defenders. With Thor and Rhodes at his back they were doing well, though some of the weapon's sure packed a wallop, as he could attest to from where one powerful pulse had just slammed him into the ground.

Steve pushed up off the floor, and took a steadying breath as the ribs and muscles in his torso burned. His body quickly knit itself back together as he took in the distance he had been thrown by the weapons blast. He just avoided another volley from the weapon's yellow beam, and scanned the area to see where they were coming from.

"War Machine, they have snipers on the walls," he called out, and heard more than saw Rhodes take to the air from a distance behind him.

"Got it," the soldier's clipped voice carried through their comm, and Steve nodded to himself, looking for his next target to parry and subdue. A bullet whizzed by his ear, not close enough to burn but definitely close enough to be a serious threat. He whipped around to see a guard aiming at him and threw up his shield as he fired. The beam hit the shield and ricocheted right back at the soldier, taking him out of the battle. Usually, in a fight like this, Steve wouldn't have had to worry about someone sneaking up on him. Usually one of his two missing teammates would have already removed the threat or warned him about it. Steve was getting sloppy.

Also, he was tired of this fight. He wanted his friends back and to know they were okay.

They had better be okay. Clint was just a kid right now and if they hurt him-

A loud boom shattered the air. Thor flew by him in a blur, crashing through one of the corrugated buildings that lined the long walls. Steve looked back to where Thor had been moments before, and took note of the three large black tanks that had been introduced to the fight. Thor stumbled out of the building, blood dripping from his nose.

"For that you shall taste my fury!" he cried, his hammer picking up speed as he twirled it.

At the far end of the room, Hulk roared.

That was unexpected, as Banner and Sitwell were supposed to be the back-up and not a part of the actual fight. He guessed Hulk disagreed with that plan.

All the remaining enemies that Steve could see, however, seemed to lose interest in anything but running away. In the distance Steve watched three men scramble from one of the tanks, while the two remaining machines' black turrets were twisting around to try and get a bead on Hulk. Those men should have run too, if the thundering footsteps Steve could feel vibrating through the ground were anything to go by. In the distance Thor stopped twirling his hammer.

"WHERE IS BIRDIE!" Hulk roared, and leapt into the air as the first tank fired.

A massive explosion from the closest building at his back stole his attention. He was close enough that the heat and concussive force knocked him back a few steps. Something sharp sliced into his thigh. Like a shadow Natasha appeared through the smoke, her arm pointed at Steve and she fired a bite from the weapon wrapped around her wrist. Steve heard someone fall behind him. He did a quick check to make sure the guard was staying down, before he ran to join her among the smoldering ruin of a wall.

There was a cough from inside, followed by a few more, and then Tony himself stumbled through the missing wall, wild eyed and covered in smoke residue. The genius spotted Natasha instantly, and then Steve, and he didn't look at all surprised to see them.

"And that, lady and gentleman, is what you get when you think invisible keypads will stop me!" He jabbed a finger at the domed structure that was continuing to crack along the ceiling and began crumbling slowly inwards.

"WHERE!" Hulk bellowed in the distance and Tony was momentarily ignored as they turned to watch Hulk pick up an entire tank like it was a big rock. He hoisted it over his head and smashed it on top of the one remaining tank. "IS!" He lifted the now malformed vehicle over his head and slammed it back down. "BIRDIE!" He moved to pick it up again, but the second tank had become entangled with the first, making it awkward to lift. Hulk bellowed and changed tactics. With an immense twist, he swung them both to the side instead, hurling them through the air like an Olympic hammer throw.

The tanks smashed through the structure's wall a good twenty meters up, and the light of dawn beamed through the hole that was left. The silence left in the wake of such violence was disconcerting. Hulk huffed angrily and looked around for his next target.

"Where is Clint?" Natasha asked, no inflection in her tone and Steve looked back to find Tony's eyes widening in something that was awfully close to panic for the generally calm man.

"The asshole ran away," he hissed and twisted to gaze at the building he had just blasted out of, tracking a path Steve couldn't follow with his eyes. "He locked me in and ran."

"Why would he try-" Steve started and Tony flapped an impatient hand at him, tilting his face to scan the ceiling struts.

"It's a long story," he growled. "Cliff notes: he's an adult now and doesn't think coming back with us is a party he should receive an invitation to. I think he's climbing the beams, can you see him? We need to find him, now."

"Is he injured?" Natasha asked as she scanned the distant ceiling intently and Steve kept an eye on the ground in case one of the enemy combatants hadn't retreated at the sight of Hulk.

"Yes," Tony responded curtly. "He's having some major growing pains. Like, 'full body spasm loss of grip on the very high beams he's probably climbing' pains. That's on top of possible injuries from fighting. Also, did I mention what a little shit he is, yet? Because that needs to be noted."

"We have Stark." Steve tapped his comm system to give the update. "He's fine. Barton is AWOL in the rafters. Be advised he is currently injured, defensive, and most likely armed. We need his location."

"Acknowledged, scanning. Might take a minute, is there an area to focus on?" Rhodes asked as Hulk let out a frustrated yell and settled his angry green gaze on them, clearly awaiting instruction.

"How long has he been climbing?" Natasha asked.

"Five minutes max, and that timeframe includes getting to the wall," Tony urgently supplied, anxiety leaking into his words.

"He'll be approaching the center of the structure," she supplied, and Steve looked up to the distant center in surprise.

"In five minutes?" Rhodes asked skeptically, "that's a hell of a distance to cover with potential injuries."

"Yes," Natasha agreed, her words clipped, and began running on light feet back towards the middle of the building. Steve followed and heard Tony scrambling to keep up with them. He couldn't normally, but Steve adjusted his pace to run beside Tony, because he was still unclear how injured Tony was having spotted the bandage on his forehead, and the last thing Steve wanted was to leave him alone. Thor appeared on Tony's other side, his cape billowing out behind him as he ran. His eyes scanned the ceiling with no concern for the debris that lay in his path, which didn't seem to hinder the god's movement.

"Got him," Rhodes declared abruptly and he flashed in the distance as he began to approach Clint, his suit pulsing red under the emergency lights. Something uneasy flared in Steve's gut.

"Do not approach!" Natasha snapped from ahead of them, but the sharp crack of a gun once, twice, chased her words and Rhodes swore loudly. In the distance Steve could see something smoking on his suit, and he was losing altitude.

"What's happening?" Tony demanded and picked up the pace, flat out sprinting now towards the middle of the hangar. Another thirty seconds at this pace and they should be there.

"What's happening is that your sniper just shot me!" Rhodes yelled over his radio, but while he could clearly hear Tony even from this distance, Tony couldn't hear him.

"Are you hurt?" Steve demanded.

"Just my pride, and my suit. Navigation is fried, I can't maintain flight like this. I'm going to land."

"Shit shit shit!" Tony yelled sharply beside Steve, and he felt cold with alarm as he looked up to see what had captured Tony's attention. In white clothes, Clint was easy to spot dangling from one of the crisscrossing metal beams over the massive space.

"Thor!" Steve snapped sharply. Thor was already prepared to launch, the whine of Mjolinor whirled in the air. They were close to the middle of the hangar, but closer to the opposite wall-

Clint lost his grip, and his body seemed to clench in on itself despite the gravity pulling at him. He fell as Thor took off.

Hulk bellowed.

His roar was loud enough to shake the air around them, and Steve watched as his teammate's massive green bulk wrapped around Clint three stories from the ground. Thor just managed to swerve out of the way from where he'd been about to catch Clint himself, but the mid air twist sent him crashing into what used to be a structure and was now a pile of collapsed metal walls and crumbled beams.

Hulk landed hard on his back. Steve watched with his heart in his throat, the scene bringing forth the visceral memory of Hulk catching Tony the same way during the Chitauri invasion. Hulk didn't slide far though. The cement ground gave way to his massive bulk with a heaving crack and an eruption of dust. In the distance Steve could see Thor climbing from his pile of wreckage, and beside him Tony was wheezing and far paler than Steve was comfortable with.

Natasha had nearly been crushed herself by their falling teammates, and now she stood with her feet braced and fists clenched, peering through the dust that shrouded her. She thrust an arm out as they joined her, swinging it into Tony's chest and preventing him from tripping over the uneven ground.

"I need a sitrep, Captain," Sitwell, until now their silent back-up, requested calmly. Right.

"Stark is secure, Hulk has Barton; we're waiting for confirmation on his status. No direct threats present, remaining hostiles have evacuated. Stand by."

"Acknowledged."

The clunking of Rhodes' suit became louder as he jogged towards them, and when Thor landed beside Steve he radiated heat like a furnace. Steve could see Hulk sitting up, but they were looking at him from the side and he was hunched over protectively.

They waited a moment, and another, and when there was still no movement-

"Hulk?" Tony asked, out of breath from his run. Hulk snorted and turned his head to them, nose scrunched in momentary displeasure, before he turned his body to follow.

"Bird needs to learn to fly," he growled, and Clint, with his back pressed to Hulk's chest like a stuffed toy, squirmed. He had one arm free and he was doing his best to use it to dislodge himself from the unrelenting grip.

"Put me- down," he choked out and kicked with his legs wildly. Hulk looked highly unimpressed by the maneuver, but Natasha darted forward, quick as a whip, and snatched something from Clint's ankle. The ankle he had been reaching for in the guise of his useless struggles.

She stepped back, tucked the blade under her belt, and watched dispassionately as Clint's struggles ceased. Clint wrapped his free arm over Hulk's forearm and held on. His face was pale, his cheeks bright red from his struggles, blood smeared across his hairline and by his ear.

"Let me go," Clint demanded again, his tone much calmer now, but his eyes were wild. He tried to look above him at Hulk only to have his head knock into his green chin, and he shifted his gaze to take in his surroundings instead. "Please?" he pleaded, looking weary and so young. He sounded tired and… kind of pathetic actually, which hit a person right in the gut. Steve noticed Hulk waver with indecision a moment, and he began to loosen his grip.

"No," Natasha interrupted. Hulk looked at her with annoyance, but apparently decided that today he'd follow her request. He tightened his grip once more and snorted heavily into Clint's dust-riddled hair. Clint recoiled, and in the blink of an eye his tired, innocent look morphed into a frigid glare. One that seemed to promise pain and doom, if Steve was reading it correctly.

"Oh, yeah, like I haven't seen that particular look enough today," Tony muttered darkly beside Steve, but didn't seem concerned with being overheard. The short billionaire did step up beside Natasha though, moving carefully over the damaged floor. He narrowed tired eyes at Clint. "Remember us, Cliffhanger?" he asked. "Avengers? Friends? A short while ago we were cellmates? Ring a bell?" he asked. Clint cut his gaze to Tony before shifting to Natasha, accusation and mistrust clear in every line of his body.

"Should have known you'd double cross me," he said, voice low and rough, and Natasha cocked her head to the side a moment as she considered his words. Steve felt a driving urge to speak up, but he wasn't one hundred percent certain what was going on here. While he assumed it had something to do with the rate of Clint's aging and memory retrieval, he couldn't be sure. He didn't want to risk making it worse.

"Marseille?" she asked softly, which seemed to mean something, because Clint squinted at her accusingly, before he gave a confused shake of his head. He took in their surroundings once again, stared at her, and then his gaze shifted back to Tony.

"Cellmates," he repeated Tony's earlier explanation, and his gaze sharpened. "Are we still in that fucking lab?" he snarled, frustration edging into his words, and Tony glared back at him heatedly.

"No, we're not. The lab is now a non-issue after I had to blow a hole in the wall to get out because you left me in there. Alone. To die." he declared, a bit too dramatically.

"If I wanted you dead you'd be dead," Clint snapped back. "You were safe," he concluded, and rubbed briefly at his forehead. He took a breath and focused on Natasha once more, which left Tony bristling from beside Steve but at least he held back any further interruptions. "You trust them?" he asked, and Natasha nodded, which confirmed that whatever age he was now he at least knew Natasha. "You trust me?"

"I trust that you remember us from those few weeks when you were young. I trust that you will not harm them. I do not trust that you won't try to run again."

"That's what I like about you, Tasha," he grinned, suddenly charming and pleased, "you say it like it could be true."

"It is what we will make of it." They assessed each other.

"It is messed up that I trust you guys." Clint looked between them, but frowned at Rhodes, clearly not including him in his declaration. "I barely know you." He repeated his frustrated headshake, and seemed to be finished.

"I would have your word," Natasha requested softly, and Clint's sudden humour disappeared. "You will not run."

"Like my word means anything," he snarled.

"It means everything. Stop being insulting."

He held her look for a long moment, tension heavy in the air, before he closed his eyes and took several long breaths. Hulk was looking at something in the distance. Rhodes shifted his right arm up, pointed it in the same direction and fired. A moment later Steve saw a man fall from where he had been hiding on top of a large stack of crates. A rifle tumbled down after. They were too far away to hear his landing.

"You have my word. Will you let me go now? Seriously, I am not a teddy bear," Clint wriggled to make his point and Hulk, apparently having had enough, unceremoniously dropped him. The archer stumbled a few steps, but Tony was beside him in an instant, hand on his arm to steady him and apparently not even thinking twice about physically approaching a confused, world-renowned assassin. Even Steve took precautions when approaching Clint in times of stress.

"Learn how to walk," Tony grumped, and ignored the tensing of Clint's entire posture at the contact. Everyone watched quietly as Tony visually inspected Clint.

Then he yanked him into a hug.

Natasha dropped back on one foot, prepared to dive in to prevent what was bound to be Tony's death. Rhodes made a startled sound from beside her, a bewildered look on his exposed features. Clint…was clearly startled, but after a moment and some words from Tony that Steve couldn't hear, he relaxed and hesitantly returned the embrace, clapping Tony on the back. It didn't last long and Tony broke away first, looking slightly awkward but not enough to stop his next course of action; which was to very deliberately wipe the dust off Clint's shoulders. Clint's lips pressed together and he looked hard at Tony, but clearly didn't know what to say. Tony seemed happy to not elaborate. The archer's brow was furrowed, and he shifted his focus to meet Natasha's stare.

Steve didn't think anyone was prepared for how his face contorted into a grimace of agony as his knees buckled beneath him. Except Tony, who grabbed him and controlled his collapse to the unforgiving ground. Clint didn't say anything, but he curled in on himself and breathed harshly through his nose, nostrils flaring like a bull's. Tony filled the silence for him with a lot of words too vulgar to repeat.

"What is this?" Natasha demanded, body tensed and her gaze darted around for the threat they might have missed. Steve was alert as well, but he couldn't spot the incoming attack.

"Growing pains," Tony explained darkly from where he hunched over Clint, unconcerned for their peripheral safety. "The fuckers did some kind of procedure on him and now he's suffering rapid onset regrowth." Steve stopped searching the surrounding area and tried to determine how he could help. The archer recovered before Steve could move to act, batting Tony's hand away, though he did it slowly and with care. He took a couple steadying breaths and looked up at them again, the pain lines around his eyes and mouth still easy for Steve to spot on his dust covered skin.

"SHIELD," Clint uttered with a familiar caution that Steve recognized from both the assassin's adolescent and adult self. The one that was untrusting and hopefully optimistic, but trying not to let others see it.

"Yes," Sitwell agreed from behind them as Clint pushed to his feet, slightly shaky but not letting Tony support him anymore. Steve turned to find their liaison in his familiar black suit, well armed and as visibly pleased as he ever seemed. Sitwell looked pointedly around them at the mostly demolished structures that now littered the place. He glanced at the unmoving or too injured to leave mercenaries and scientists, up at the ceiling that looked so far away, to the hole in the distant wall, and ending at the single remaining tank…that had been pounded about three feet deep in the concrete and was slightly U shaped.

"Well," their handler looked at Clint briefly, and then at Steve. "This place wasn't on the original blueprints." No, it hadn't been. Nor had it been visible from the outside, which meant there was probably some kind of cloaking doohickey outside that Tony would want to look at later. "We have crews tracking down the last of the groups that fled. They still have some pretty hefty weapons. Support would be appreciated." Steve nodded, feeling a little uneasy leaving his teammates after trying to find them for so long, but even more uneasy with the thought of an agent getting hit with one of those weapons. Sitwell seemed satisfied with his response. "Hold off on pursuit until we're back on the quinjet first. I'm not taking any more chances now that we have these two back." Sitwell eyed Clint. "Barton, you functional?"

"I'm fine, Agent," he confirmed gruffly, but from where Steve was standing he looked washed out in his odd white clothes, sickly and thinner than Steve had expected to see him in his young twenties. Unsteady. Sitwell, always sharp on the uptake, caught on to the fact that Barton wasn't…fully recovered yet, and narrowed his eyes.

"You going to give us problems?" he asked, a hint of dark amusement in his tone, alongside expectation. Clint smirked, and rolled his shoulders.

"SHIELD, maybe," he agreed, "but not this group in general. At least not right now."

"Touching," Tony muttered, rubbing at his head. His eyes were scrunched in that way that meant he probably had a doozy of a headache.

"What can I say, repetitive forced interaction over the years hasn't made me want to maim you on sight," Clint assured dryly.

"A rarity, I'm sure," Sitwell acknowledged while Natasha continued to study Clint until he looked at her and his shoulders relaxed an inch. She frowned with a little less intensity after that.

"We shall escort you, and then aid in the apprehension of these vile people," Thor announced, unnecessarily, but it got the ball rolling and Steve was more than ready to get his team back behind secure walls so they could figure out what the hell had been done to them now. With the way Tony kept looking over Clint, trying to appear unconcerned, and with Clint suddenly not being a teenager anymore, there was bound to be more trauma to add to both their life experiences.

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After Tony had been assured that Happy was not only alive but also okay, and ensuring that Pepper was safe back at the tower, Tony finally started to relax. Bruce had come back to them as the quinjet (which had been flown through the hole Hulk had made) had landed. He was dressed in his spare slacks and button up, and was trying to give Clint a physical assessment as they flew back to the Tower. Clint wasn't being a bad patient per se, but he wasn't very interested in having other people's hands on him at the moment. It was a development that raised the tension in everyone present, but not enough to foul the general relief Tony felt. It was probably a good thing Steve and Thor had remained behind for clean up, because the jet was already feeling a little closed in with their small remaining group.

"Rhodey," Tony looked his oldest friend over as Rhodey slowly removed the suit from his body, casual as you please, in the back of the jet. He wasn't surprised to see Rhodey had put himself on the rescue team, and he certainly wouldn't admit that it was comforting to see him, even if he was giving Tony a mild stink-eye at the moment. "Thought I told you to take better care of your suit," Tony groused as he leaned back on his bench seat. The stiff cushion at his back felt like a plush downy mattress after the last few days of accommodation.

"Funny," Rhodey pulled his second leg from the silver boot, "I thought you told me bullets couldn't damage it."

"Shouldn't be able to," Tony corrected, "except for one spot-" he trailed off and frowned, and then looked at Clint who was letting Bruce take blood from an outstretched arm. Clint was pretending that he wasn't paying attention to everything going on around him, including Natasha running solo in the pilot seat. "Barton, how the hell did you know where to shoot Rhodey to knock him out of the sky?" So Tony was a little slow on the uptake right now, he was tired.

Clint rolled his head in faux-laziness to eye Tony.

"Lucky shot." His smirk bordered on a sneer, and Tony couldn't help snapping his fingers and pointing at the archer with irritation.

"Yeah, I've pretty much seen you try to bullshit your way through life since you were ten, that is not going to work on me anymore," he narrowed his eyes and Clint shrugged. Bruce huffed at him and carefully removed the needle from the archer's arm, pressing a cotton swab onto it.

"I'm sorry," Bruce shook his head sincerely, "but I can't give you anything for the pain until we can confirm what's in your system."

"Sure," Clint agreed and then answered Tony's question, like being denied relief was par for the course. "You were going over the schematics for upgrades on his suit while I was in the lab with you," Clint explained. "Not my problem if you didn't think I was listening," he said, going for snappish and coming across as uneasy.

Tony blinked at him as Clint rose, still far too pale and unsteady for anyone's taste, and slunk away to the co-pilot's seat. As soon as he collapsed into it he began flipping through controls and poking at buttons that Tony was pretty sure he wasn't trained on yet. Since Natasha didn't break his hand or ask him to cease and desist. Tony tentatively concluded that they weren't going to crash and burn as a spectacular encore to the last few weeks. Tony shared an incredulous look with Bruce, who gazed back with his patented 'I'm thinking profound and shrewd thoughts' face.

"What am I missing?" Rhodey asked, more subtle than usual and Tony looked back to see that he'd donned his street clothes and was sliding onto the cushions beside him.

"Technically," Tony drawled, "Clint was in the room when I was going through a stress assessment on your suit." He looked back at Bruce, because Bruce would get this. He would totally get why this was a big deal. "But he was around fourteen years old at the time, and while it was less than a week ago for us-"

"It must be about ten years ago for Clint, physically and mentally if I'm understanding how his body and mind are adapting to his regrowth correctly," Bruce finished.

"Remembering a brief detail like that after all this time, let alone comprehending it in the first place… at that age…he has been holding out on us, that little shit!" Tony exclaimed and glared up at the front, where Clint was or was not paying attention to them while he probably tried to orchestrate a crash landing to try and run away again. Or something.

"Octa-roomba spies," Bruce agreed solicitously, and Tony sighed. He'd thought the cleaning bots had been getting underfoot a little too much lately, and now he'd need to get the whole story from Bruce later. They'd always known Clint was smart, because he had to have a higher than average intelligence to pull off some of the operations he had and utilize the technology he needed. Also, he was a part of their team. This, though, this was something else entirely and Tony was beginning to get that maybe he and Bruce were going to have to have a sit down with Clint and figure out exactly how much he knew. Or saw. Or learned and comprehended by listening to and watching Tony work.

"ETA twenty minutes," Natasha announced and Tony nodded. His head hurt too much to think about this now. Clint was safe, he was safe, the quinjet's generally uninviting bench seats felt like a slice of heaven beneath his exhausted, aching body, and Rhodey was sitting close enough that Tony was getting a small hit of residual body heat. There was nothing to worry about.

"Wake me when we land, honey," he smirked at his friend. He leaned his head against the wall and closed his eyes.

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Clint silently sat next to Natasha in the cockpit on the last stretch of the flight home, or back to the Tower, or whatever the place was supposed to be to him. His body felt…it felt everything. He felt like his bones were being jammed together and his muscles were stretched too loose over them, hanging and sloppy. He struggled for his fingers to bend, his joints to remember that they weren't spurred bits of stone that grated with every movement instead of the easy slide he knew it should be.

It was fucked up and it hurt and he was trying, very hard, to not come apart at the seams. He refused to have a breakdown in front of Natasha. In front of these people he had distant memories of, that he knew so much about but hadn't spent much time with. It was a near thing though, and he suspected that Tasha had an inkling of what he was suffering through, otherwise she would have probably made him stop poking at the jet controls. She was quick enough to compensate for anything he set off, and she didn't point out how slowly he was moving.

It was fucking surreal.

He stared out the window, at the bright blue that surrounded them and the puffy white clouds that cast patchy shade on the ground below.

He remembered his first time flying, when he had been eighteen and leaving the States. His legs had barely healed from some bad breaks. He'd ached from sitting and standing and moving and resting all the time. The economy seats made him feel penned in. The woman who sat next to him kept casting concerned looks at him but never asked if he was okay. He had plastic knives tucked into his ankle holsters, and a contact for weapons he had already arranged when he landed. His first job overseas. He hadn't been sure if he would ever come back to the North American continent.

He remembered his first time flying, when he had been fourteen and SHIELD didn't know what they wanted to do with him yet; on a ship that was more like a small town, that carried planes and people and had more than one spot where you could go and get free food any time you wanted. Where everyone seemed to carry guns or computers or tools, and wore uniforms or suits or pocket protectors, and didn't try to hurt him.

He remembered his second time flying when he was barely nineteen. He'd been sent to collect a boy: eight years old, the son of a disgustingly rich politician who wanted the child back before authorities knew he was missing. The father did not care how many people, innocent or not, that Clint had to kill to get his son back. A stray bullet had nicked his pilot as Clint had dragged the boy, kicking and crying, onto the helicopter. The gruff pilot had sat in the co-pilot chair and directed Clint step by step on what to do. Clint learned how to fly a UH-72A Lakota light utility helicopter. He never lost the skill, even though he never flew another one like it.

He remembered his second time flying, when Natasha had found him on SHIELD's helicarrier and the Avengers had taken him off that crowded ship without permission. The jet had been so small, and it had been so cool. He had watched Captain America fly it, he had asked questions and learned. By the time they landed Clint had been pretty confident he could figure out how to fly it if he needed to. Clint had been an idiot as a kid.

He had too many first times in his head now.

He had two timelines now.

He had a life with these people who called themselves his friends. His teammates. Who apparently cared about his general well being more than as a means to an end; more than as a tool. These people he remembered so clearly as a kid. The ones who fed him, gave him an actual bed to sleep on (an entire room), and clothes that had been too new. The ones that never raised a hand to hurt him, or even threaten to hurt him no matter what he did to test them. They gave, and they never took.

And he had the timeline where he didn't have them. Where he didn't have anyone once his brother was gone.

He leaned back in his seat and resisted pulling his knees into his chest. Usually it was as easy to do as breathing, but right now he didn't know if he could even get one foot on the seat he was in. He pretended not to watch Natasha out of the corner of his eye. He knew her. He knew her now from both his lives. From all his lives? How many did he even have anymore? It had been so easy to keep things straight when he was a kid, to keep his realities separate and defined. Was that last week or this week?

He remembered her from his childhood; reading with him on the tall window ledge at Tony's Tower, and exercising in the massive gym, and how she'd practiced throwing knives with him. He remembered her patience, and her silence, and her generally dangerous aura. It took a while not to fear her (to fear any of them), but he had started believing that maybe he never had to in the first place. But when he'd met her as an adult, which he knew was technically the first time he'd really met her (he knew that, damn it), he had not known her. He had not known her and they had fought. They had fought like enemies, because they had been, and it had been bad. And then they had had to run and fight together to survive their other enemies, and in the end they just didn't want to kill each other anymore. They had been so tired.

Her hair had been brown when they had first met. But it had been scarlet when they first met.

Fuck.

"It will level out," her voice cut through the silence that had remained unbroken since he'd sat, and he rolled his head to stare at her. She'd given him permission to stare at her now, he thinks. He couldn't figure out how to respond, and she turned away from the horizon that stretched out before them, stretched wide like his flesh, and looked him over. His eyes might fall out if wasn't careful. He needed to remember to blink and hold them in. He needed his eyes.

He couldn't help that his breathing was a bit choppy, but he was trying to control it. He was always trying to control it.

"You're in overload," she said softly and he focused on her words, because they were here in the now, and that's where he wanted to be. "Your mind is trying to process too many years in too short a time. You will get better."

"Not sure that was ever an option, Tasha," he managed to push the words out, and they sounded far calmer than he felt. They sounded far too rational and unbroken and too cynical.

"It's always an option, if you let it be," she replied, and looked back to her controls. She had red and she had brown hair. He knew about SHIELD because he had worked for them when he had been a kid, which was when he should have been grown, and because they had hunted him and recruited him not too long ago. But it had been long ago.

He knew Phil. Because Phil had convinced Natasha and Clint to join SHIELD together. He should be here now. He had been in a picture when Clint had been a kid; Clint remembered finding it in his room (the room he owned now and didn't have yet). Phil had been dead then, and he was dead now, but he should be alive because Clint had spoken with him two hours ago. His two realities were being crushed together, the edges were too blurry.

Clint stared at the horizon and refused to forget how to breathe.

"It will level out," he muttered, lowly and desperately and to himself. Natasha reached out and wrapped strong fingers around his wrist. He couldn't convince his hand to let go of the armrest to hold onto her in return.

He kind of wanted to go back to Tony and curl up beside him. Right now he knew Natasha best, but he felt like he had known Tony all his life.

Jesus.

It will level out.