Warnings: just language…I think?

Thanks to my beta, irite, for keeping me on track when I do things like, I don't know, randomly start writing a completely different story in the middle of this one…

I do not own the Avengers.

It was another early morning in the lab. Bruce knew their plan was to head to SHIELD around 8:00, and he had some things he wanted to finish before then.

Depending on how badly today went, he thought he might not get another opportunity to work on this today.

Bruce walked over to the printer and pulled out the page he hadn't even bothered to look at the previous night. He brought it over to one of the tables, taking a swig of decaf coffee. Tony believed adamantly that coffee without caffeine was not only completely pointless, but an affront to God himself. Bruce disagreed; he found that the act of drinking something hot in the morning had a positive effect on his cognitive abilities. And if this thing said what he expected it to, his cognitive abilities were going to need all the help they could get.

Bruce settled onto one of the stools and peered at the printout in front of him. It took less than five minutes for him to determine two things. First, he'd been more-or-less correct in his suspicions about the identity of the substance he had isolated from Thompson's urine.

Second, there was something really fucking strange going on.

Well, if he got a chance, he'd have to bring this up with Fury. Because, seriously...what the hell?

Clint woke up a few minutes before 7:00 and immediately wished he hadn't.

Rather, Natasha woke him up a few minutes before 7:00 and he immediately wished that she would just fuck off and die a painful death.

It amounted to the same thing.

Because he felt like complete shit. No, worse, like shit that had been ingested, re-digested, and shit out again. And then maybe run over by a semi-truck.

His head was throbbing, the muscles in his neck and back had apparently declared war on him, and his shoulder had evidently gotten roped into the battle as well.

"Did I get run over?" he mumbled into his pillow, unwilling to move even enough so that he wasn't lying face down and in immediate danger of suffocation.

"No, Barton, you did not get run over," came Natasha's voice, clipped and irritated. God, she was a peach in the morning. She was usually pretty good about hiding it, but she was about as much of a morning person as he was. Which was to say, she hated mornings with every fiber of her being.

Clint heard a 'click,' and his wrist fell onto the bed next to him. It didn't occur to him to consider why his arm had apparently been dangling, suspended in the air. He was just relieved that the tension in his shoulder had been released.

He rolled onto his back and then wondered how the fuck he was supposed to actually get up, when even that small movement had been nearly insurmountable.

"Ow! Hey!" he yelped as Natasha unexpectedly yanked on his arm. She fiddled with something on his wrist, something metallic. What the fuck?

Oh. That. He remembered now. And was...mortified. Because how fucking crazy do you have to be, if the only way you can sleep is if you've been physically restrained?

But then, Clint thought, is this really the most embarrassing thing that's happened in the last two days?

The answer was an unequivocal 'no.' He wasn't even sure if this ranked in the top five. So he could deal with this. Right? This wasn't so bad.

"Shower, Barton," Natasha prodded him, terse. She tossed the cuffs to the other side of the bed, looking like the act of touching them at all made her feel dirty.

That seemed a little unnecessary. But he wasn't going to risk saying anything. Not with that tone.

With deference to 'The Plan' for the day, Clint made a concerted effort to spend less than an hour in the shower. He really did. Still, the hot water on his aching shoulders was something he was unwilling to rush. Combined with his general poor concentration (and the subsequent way he kept forgetting what, exactly, he was doing and why), it certainly wasn't a hurried affair. They can goddamn wait for me, for Christ's sake, he thought. It's not like this was my stupid fucking idea anyway.

So maybe it wasn't that much of an effort to hurry. But he was definitely making an effort.

He still couldn't believe he had agreed to this. In fact, he wasn't entirely sure that he had agreed to this (does it matter if you did?). One minute, it had been Steve's hesitant suggestion and the next it had been a done deal. Okay, it hadn't been quite that fast; there had been at least fifteen minutes in between the idea's conception and its approval. He'd just been too busy having a panic attack for that particular span of time to really matter.

Anyway, everyone (except maybe Clint, he honestly couldn't remember and isn't that pretty fucking weird?) had agreed that coming clean to SHIELD was the best course of action. The policy was pretty clear that by doing so, Clint could not be fired, unless he then refused to take the actions that SHIELD required of him. Which Natasha had assured him was not going to happen.

Clint fondly remembered a time when he got to make his own choices, but that had apparently gone out the window (probably about the time you called Tasha crying like a little bitch baby, Barton) and it wasn't like he had the energy or even the will to argue with her about anything, anyway.

So, that all seemed well and good, except for the one inconvenient fact that Clint wasn't too clear on what, exactly, 'coming clean' was going to entail. To him, there was a huge difference between admitting the drug use (which was going to be fucking hard—how stupid are you, really?) and admitting the issues that had precluded it.

If admitting that he had gotten addicted to drugs was going to be hard, then admitting that he had also gone completely fucking insane was going to be impossible.

They can't fire you for being an addict, but can they fire you for being crazy? For being weak? Pathetic? Dangerous...?

It seemed likely that they could. His position had been tenuous after the whole Loki incident. It had come down to Fury's vouching for him that had saved his career, and had very likely saved him from prison (or worse) as well. There were still some people—some very powerful people—who thought that Clint's continued affiliation with SHIELD was not only ill-advised, but stupidly dangerous. They thought he was a huge potential liability, likely to become compromised at any moment, either through being re-taken by Loki's mind control or by succumbing to the trauma of what had happened to him

This wasn't exactly going to be doing a whole lot to prove them wrong.

Clint wondered if it was too late to back the fuck out of this. Because now, after sleeping on it—really sleeping, too—he was having doubts. And 'doubts' was kind of an understatement.

'Soul-crushing anxiety' was a better description.

Which was fucking annoying and badly timed and inconvenient and Oh God, I think I'm dying I am actually going to die Jesus Christ.

Was there ever really a convenient time for this kind of thing?

Natasha became concerned after exactly twenty-nine minutes and fifty-seven seconds. Even though the bathroom door was open, and it didn't sound like anything had gone horribly awry, and what she could see of the bathroom by peering cautiously around the door looked normal, something wasn't right.

Because she had told Clint to 'Hurry the fuck up, Barton,' and this definitely did not qualify as hurrying.

And while he could be stupid and obstinate, made a habit of it, really, he wasn't stupid enough to disobey her before noon.

So, bracing herself (For what, exactly? Do you even know?) she stuck her head into the bathroom and yelled, "Hey! Are you okay?"

Which wasn't the most subtle course of action she could have taken, but there was a time and place for subtlety. It definitely wasn't now.

She was answered with silence, except for the constant rushing of water from the shower.

"Clint?"

Nothing.

"Barton!"

But he still didn't answer.

Fuck.

Natasha slowly entered the bathroom. It was, like most other things in Stark Tower, excessively large and opulent. The room was L-shaped, and the shower was at the end of the room that wasn't visible from the door. Because of that, she had about three seconds to conjure up a few worst-case scenarios (Razor? Could he have hung himself in there?) and one really awkward scenario (Maybe he's...? No, there's no way he's up for that) before she could actually see what was going on.

Which wasn't much, as far as she could tell. Thankfully. Because dealing with attempted suicide and/or morning 'self-love' were both on her list of 'things I am not doing before coffee.'

No, Clint was just...standing there. Leaning forward, resting his forehead against the wall.

What the hell? Maybe he just couldn't hear me?

Natasha strode across the room to the shower door. It was frosted glass, and did a reasonably good job of ensuring the privacy of the occupant. Furthermore, it wasn't like she hadn't seen him in various states of undress before (although now that she thought about it, he'd always been wearing something although on more than one occasion it had only been socks), so she had no qualms about getting right up in Clint's business.

"Barton!" she barked.

But he still didn't answer. And there was no way he couldn't hear her, Christ, she was right there.

She had begun debating with herself pretty vigorously about just opening the damn door and dragging him out when she heard a stifled sob, something soft enough that the pounding rush of water would have easily covered it from a distance of more than a few feet.

Well, what the fuck was the appropriate response for this? Someone needs to write a manual, Natasha mused. 'How to Deal With Your Drug-Addicted, Withdrawing, Mid-Nervous-Breakdown and Otherwise Mentally Unstable Friends and Co-Workers.'

She figured she'd have enough experience soon to write the damn thing herself.

Lacking any guidance, though, she was going to have to wing this. Like she'd been winging it for days. And she'd just have to hope she didn't fuck up too badly.

"Clint," she said loudly enough to be heard over the water, but softly enough that (she hoped) she was comforting. Or at the very least non-threatening. "Clint, can you hear me?"

Of course he could. But he gave no indication either way. And that was annoying.

Pushing her impatience and irritation aside, though, she tried again. "If you don't talk to me, I'll never know what's wrong. And I...we won't be able to fix it."

Another sob. Or a sickened, desperate laugh. It was hard to tell.

Natasha figured her time frame for how this morning was going to go had been pretty much shot to pieces. That was okay; she was flexible. And the others would wait. But she would really prefer not to be doing this in the bathroom. One of them was naked, and even for mature adults that could make things a little awkward. "Can you...get out of the shower?"

Several more seconds of silence passed by, and Natasha was about to ask again when he choked out, "Can I get a little privacy here?"

Her immediate reaction was to think 'No, you damn well cannot get a little privacy,' but she beat that down and instead replied, "Sure." She could give him two or three minutes. Maybe even five.

She heard the water turn off as she left the bathroom.

Clint emerged a few moments later, more-or-less clean and fully dressed, but looking none the better for it.

"Are you okay?" Natasha asked, her mouth reacting to his haggard appearance before her brain had a chance to weigh in. Of course he's not okay, he hasn't been for days and I doubt anything magically started going better if what I just saw is any indication...

Of course, he didn't answer her. So she tried something else. "How did you sleep?"

"I...did." That this was monumental was not betrayed in any way by the flat, indifferent way he spoke.

Natasha had never before noticed how annoying it was when the person you were talking to refused to make eye contact.

Well, maybe she should just get to the point. Or at least, what she suspected the point was. Because there was really only one thing that could be causing that kind of reaction. "You don't have to do this, Clint, you know that, right? The thing with SHIELD?"

From the way he suddenly clenched his jaw, Natasha figured that she had guessed right.

"I don't really have a choice, do I?" he asked, his tone suddenly very bitter. It seemed like his mood was swinging back to anger again. Well, she wasn't quite ready for that, yet. He'd have to wait a moment to indulge his irrational rage.

But with the impending anger, she was on a tighter schedule now. "Of course you have a choice. I'm not going to make you do something that has you breaking down in the shower, Clint. If you can't handle it—"

That phrase did not go over well.

"I can fucking handle it just fine Nat!" he growled, taking an aggressive step towards her.

Not one to be easily intimidated, she held her ground. "Yeah, that's what it looked like. Look, you can talk to me. If you don't want to do this, then we won't."

Clint looked doubtful. Very doubtful.

Natasha suddenly had a revelation. "No one's going to...force you to do anything."

Because at the root of this, wasn't it about control? Controlling himself, his body, first and foremost, because he feared what he would do if he didn't. But when Loki had taken his free will, he took from him all capacity for choice and for independent action. Clint's quest for control was almost certainly going to extend beyond his dangerous mission to ruthlessly control his physical body. He was going to need to control everything, just to know that he could.

And so anything that they wanted Clint to do was going to have to be his choice, his decision. If they forced him, would they really be any better than Loki? They had to at least give him the chance to decide. They hadn't been doing a particularly good job of that, but then, who could blame them, really? His independent choices had led him to drugs, to the edge of the roof. It was such a delicate fucking balance between trying to keep him safe and returning the autonomy that Loki had taken. It was delicate, and it was getting fucked up.
They would need to do better.

"No."

That wasn't the response she'd been expecting. Actually, that didn't even make sense. "No? No, what?"

"No. I'm not backing out of this. Let's just get it the fuck over with." And maybe now it was too late to offer him the chance to decide on this.

"It's okay, really, we could even wait a—"

Clint stalked out of the room.

With a sigh, and feeling as if he had missed her point completely, Natasha followed him.

She had a strong suspicion that this was going to go very badly.

It didn't, actually. But it didn't go well, either.

The drive to SHIELD's headquarters had been very quiet. Natasha had taken the responsibility of driving onto herself (Tony had volunteered, but she didn't think he 'drove' so much as he 'attempted suicide and/or vehicular manslaughter').

Stark had been generous enough to suggest they take the largest SUV he owned.

Apparently, he'd been horrified at the idea of being wedged into the backseat with Steve, whose proportions made riding in small cars a truly uncomfortable experience.

Not that Tony Stark would ever ride in the backseat. He'd immediately called 'shotgun,' and then gloated over his superior seat for the entire first half of the drive.

Natasha felt more like the was driving a school bus full of middle schoolers than an SUV full of adults.

Bruce had been absorbed in some gigantic book the whole time and hadn't said a word. Which was a little strange. It wasn't that he was ever really talkative, but his distracted silence had seemed more complete than usual. Natasha made a mental note to talk to him later about that. Steve had made a valiant attempt at conversation, but had given up pretty quickly when it became apparent that no one else in the vehicle had his tolerance for mornings.

Relegated to the back seat, Clint had glared out the window and fidgeted, since he was deprived of having all the controls to play with.

When Stark actually uttered the phrase, "Are we there yet?" Natasha considered trying out the new knife she had strapped near her ankle. She figured she could stab him somewhere pretty safe, somewhere non-lethal. He might not even bleed that much. And it was his damn upholstery if he did.

Luckily, either because he accurately read Natasha's expression or because he got distracted by Angry Birds, Tony ceased being intentionally aggravating.

Unintentionally, though...was a different story. But, by some miracle, they all survived the drive, free of stab wounds.

Natasha had called Fury's secretary on the drive over, and she had been assured that the director would be more than happy to meet with them at 9:30.

Which was...odd. It was almost like Fury had been expecting them to show up this morning and had left an appointment slot open for the occasion.

Is that really that strange? Fuck no, it's not. He was expecting us to show up this morning.

The fifteen minutes they had spent aggregated in the area outside Fury's office had been pretty terrible. For one thing, Clint looked to be on the verge of either fainting or making a run for it. His face was shiny with sweat and he was breathing far more rapidly than seemed necessary given his level of physical activity. Of course, he was pacing around the office, moving from chair to chair, at a rate that could constitute an intense cardiovascular workout, so maybe not.

They'd made a quick stop for coffee and donuts on the way in; Tony really hoped Clint wasn't going to puke again.

Five minutes into their wait, he did.

Clint's constant, agitated movement (and inability to hold his breakfast), combined with the generally tense countenance of his companions, apparently made the office workers nervous. Or maybe it was being in the same room with five out of six of the Avengers, who were known as a pretty volatile bunch. Equally as likely, it was being in the same room as Bruce Banner, who just tended to make strangers nervous. Whatever the reason, one of the office lackeys had called for extra security. The presence of armed guards amazingly did nothing to improve anyone's mood, and actually (to no one's surprise) made everyone more tense. This was not, in any way, helped by Tony's apparent inability to avoid antagonizing people with guns. Steve attempted to make peace, but then took issue with the way one of the guards was treating Bruce, and things just got progressively uglier.

By the time Fury called them in, they were seconds away from an epic battle with SHIELD's security force.

And it was too early for an epic battle.

Fury didn't bother standing up to greet them, just gestured at the furniture around the room with a vague, "Have a seat."

When they'd settled in, he took a moment to look them over. Very little escaped his notice, but he didn't comment on their generally worn out appearances, or how truly exhausted and sick Agent Barton in particular looked.

At least, he had meant not to comment. But he couldn't resist asking, "Stark, what the fuck happened to your face?"

Tony grinned (or grimaced) and shrugged. "You know how I can be, director."

An answer with about a thousand interpretations. Fury could appreciate the subtlety.

Aside from that, though, Fury didn't say anything. He wanted to see what they would tell him on their own, even though he knew damn well why they were there. When it became apparent that they had apparently taken some kind of vow of silence, Fury decided to prompt them, "To what do I owe this pleasure?"

Which had been too vague, if the continued resounding silence was anything to judge from.

Fury thought maybe he should try being a little more direct. "I know why you're here."

Still, no one said anything. But Barton shifted in his seat so that he was staring intently at the floor instead of at the wall. Stark shared a quick look with Romanoff, who shook her head almost imperceptibly at him. Rogers, who usually spoke for the group, seemed at a loss. Banner remained, predictably, silent.

This was going to be like pulling teeth, then. Okay. He could do that. "Does this have anything to do with your fucking dismal attempt at lying to me last night, Banner?"

Bruce, who was happiest when no one was noticing him, did not like being put on the spot. "Um...maybe?"

And then Tony couldn't take it anymore. "Jesus, Barton, we're here, you made it this far, just say whatever the fuck you need to say and get this shit over with!"

Clint swallowed. He wasn't a particular fan of being put on the spot, either, at least, not for this. Because he hadn't thought about this part, hadn't been able to think about this part, without panic seizing hold of his nervous system and turning it to overdrive.

Now this was apparently happening, though, whether he was prepared for it or not.

"I..." he battled down the sudden nausea and his almost overwhelming desire to run. He tried again. "I...am..."

With five pairs of eyes on him, though, the words would not come.

Time for his contingency plan, then. He bolted for the door.

Natasha was ready for this, though, had known that this was probably going to happen from the moment this whole idea had been conceived. Leaping up after him, she snagged his arm near the wrist, halting his escape. Leaning in close, so that only he could hear her, she breathed into his ear, "You can't do this, or you don't want to, Clint? Because if you can't, I can help you. We can. If you don't want to, this ends now. No one's forcing you."

He looked unsure, like he really didn't believe her. But she didn't try to make him move, just held him in place, giving him time to stop and think. To decide, he realized. This really was his choice. This was not Loki, this was not an instinctive reaction aimed at self-preservation. This was not something that he was being forced into. This was his, in a way that nothing had been, really, for months.

It was...terrifying. And liberating.

After an eternity, he replied, "Can't, Tasha." And he sounded so small and broken and unsure, that in that moment Natasha hated Loki with an intense, burning ferocity that she had never before felt for anything.

"Then let us help you," Natasha said. He nodded, albeit reluctantly. Under her fingers, she could feel his pulse quicken and she knew he was within inches of falling apart. Again. How many times can he do this before he can't put the pieces back together any more?

Turning to face Fury, Natasha said as calmly and clearly as she could (because she only wanted to say this once), "Agent Barton is addicted to amphetamines, director, and he's trying to get clean."

Halfway into his next panic attack, Clint marveled at how easily she had been able to say that.

Fury nodded. "I know. So let's talk."

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