Silently, Invisibly
Chapter Twenty-one
Clint exchanged nods with Sitwell as the agent came out of the house to relieve him on watch.
"All quiet?" Sitwell asked.
"Yep."
"Good. Today the big day?"
"Yeah." Clint rolled his shoulders and neck, trying to work out the lingering tension. "How's Stark?"
"Still flinching a little every time he sees the Widow. I don't blame him."
Clint smiled. "That the first time you've ever seen her pissed off?"
"Yeah. Brother, I don't envy you. Not at all."
"There are compensations."
"I don't doubt it. But I like a quiet life."
Clint snorted. "Yeah. That's why you joined SHIELD and then volunteered to work with Stark."
Sitwell grinned his choirboy grin. "The brochure was misleading."
Clint clapped him on the shoulder. "Well, at least we get dental."
Sitwell nodded. "And the fruit basket at Christmas is nice. Good luck."
"You too."
Clint took a bathroom break, grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge, and flopped down on the living room floor with his arms outstretched and his legs up on the wall in a 'V'. He closed his eyes.
"Barton, are you stretching or sleeping?" asked Tasha.
"Both," he said without opening his eyes. "Also picking stocks, planning next week's menu, and achieving enlightenment any minute now. I am a master of multitasking."
"Well, quit. We need to talk."
Clint brought his feet together and rocked them back over his head into a plow position, then levered up into a handstand, then brought his feet down and stood up.
Tasha was not impressed.
"Stark says he'll be ready in half an hour," she said. "Banner started tapering the sedatives a couple hours ago; the Soldier should be waking up soon. We need everyone in place in thirty."
"Okay. Rogers going to be there?"
She didn't answer at first. "What do you think?" she said after a while.
He shrugged. "Pros and cons," he said. "If you and Rogers are both there, you keep the tension going between Barnes and the Soldier. If Rogers is there without you, the Soldier's more likely to try to pull something, and that could get messy; but on the other hand he might loosen up and let something slip. If it's just you, you can put more pressure on him, but Rogers may suspect you of torture or brainwashing."
"Do you think Sitwell can handle the perimeter by himself? Because we need Banner for medical monitoring, and Stark for the prosthesis. So if we need another person outside, that's you or me. Steve's vision is improving, but it's still not good enough for him to keep watch."
Clint thought about that. "I think as long as visibility's this good, Sitwell's okay," he said, "but if it starts raining later, and I think it might, we'll need two for better coverage."
"All right," she said. "Me, you, Rogers, Banner, and Stark inside; Sitwell outside, but you stay on headset with him."
"Can do," he said. "In the meantime, what do you need from me?"
"Just stay alert," she said. "Don't engage with him, just be ready in case he tries to jump one of us."
"Worried about Banner?"
"Not especially. When he's in doctor-mode he's pretty resistant to being tweaked. Tony had to really work hard at it to set him off, and it didn't last long."
"That's good to know."
"All right. Get back to your meditation or whatever. See you in a few."
"Ma'am, yes ma'am."
She flipped him a bird and left. Clint did a few more stretches and then just lay quietly with his eyes closed for a few minutes. Nat looked pretty solid; she'd apparently gotten some sleep while the Soldier was down. He hadn't seen Stark yet that morning, but if he could stand up to Nat and have nothing to show for it but a little twitchiness, he'd be fine. Nat's assessment of Banner was good enough for him. That left Sitwell (good rep, and Coulson had always liked him) and himself (pretty steady now, actually, starting to feel like himself again). If SHIELD or their evil twins would stay out of their hair long enough to get this thing with the arm done, they could grab one of Stark's jets and have the Soldier across the Atlantic before midnight. Which would be more than fine with him. Nat's flare of temper the day before had betrayed how much the assassin had gotten under her skin. He didn't know if it was old debts, or bad memories, or simply that she was still in love with the man (not that Nat would ever admit being in love). At any rate, there was obviously too much at stake for her, and that unsettled him. It would be a relief when both of them could put their full attention on the task of cleaning out SHIELD and getting the team repaired and re-focused.
He got up, drank some water, checked in with Sitwell, and headed down to the treatment room to confer with Stark and Banner.
Stark was tinkering with the arm. It was the first Clint had seen of it; it was the same color as the Soldier's skin, but smooth and featureless: no hair, wrinkles, veins or fingernails, which gave it a creepy mannequin-like vibe. Clint was about to make a comment to that effect, but a closer look at Stark decided him against it. For once Stark didn't have a flippant greeting for him; he was focused on his work, occasionally tossing a comment or question at Banner. Banner seemed equally preoccupied, his attention divided between his motionless patient and a bank of medical readouts. Clint glanced at the Soldier; other than the still-swollen broken nose, now strapped with a couple of strips of adhesive tape, he looked reasonably healthy.
Rogers hadn't put in an appearance yet. Clint took up a position in a corner that gave him clear sightlines to the door and to the chair set up for the Soldier, and waited.
When Cap came in, he was walking with a cane, wearing a protective boot on the injured leg, and he was obviously able to see well enough to navigate around obstacles.
"Hey Cap. Glad to see you up and around," Clint said.
"Glad to be that way," said Rogers. "Hopefully I'll be able to be some use before much longer." He looked over at Banner and Stark, standing with their heads together adjusting something on the arm. "How's it coming, gentlemen?"
"Almost ready," said Banner.
"For a given value of 'almost' and 'ready'," Stark grumbled. "If I had my workshop..."
"It doesn't have to be perfect, Tony," said Banner. "Just better than what he had before. And considering that what he had before is pretty much a melted blob of solder—"
"Yes, right, I know, primitive conditions, yadda yadda, I did have to work in a cave that one time, whatever," said Stark. "I just hate turning out substandard work, is all."
"Can we try it out so I can strangle him with it?" slurred the Soldier, his eyes still closed, but the familiar sardonic tilt to his eyebrows.
"In a minute, Red Dawn," said Stark. "Wait till you can sit up without falling over."
Dr. Banner moved over to the Soldier's side and began removing some devices—the IV, the blood pressure cuff—and adding others: an array of small electrodes on his scalp plus a couple on his chest and upper back.
"What now?" the Soldier asked. "Electroshock therapy?"
"Don't tempt me," said Nat, who had entered without even Clint noticing, much less the others.
"I'm just monitoring your response to feedback from the arm, so we can adjust it as necessary," Banner said. "Okay, Tony, ready for Part One."
"Ready here too," Stark said. "Can you sit up yet, Alexander Nevsky, or do you need a minute?"
"I can sit up," said the Soldier. "Give me five minutes and I'll take you apart without either arm."
"If I didn't have a project ongoing, I'd be glad to take that bet," said Stark. "But not today. Okay, let's rock and roll."
Nat and Banner helped the Soldier over to the chair and strapped him to it, waist and legs, leaving his upper body free.
"Okay, first order of business is to reconstruct the interface and then try to match the new motor control mechanisms to your existing systems," Stark said. "We'll keep the arm detached for this part. Those burns are nowhere near healed, and I don't want to do any more damage to the skin than I absolutely have to. With your permission?" He held up a palm-sized, complicated-looking disc, and asked the Soldier, "May I attach this to your socket?"
The Soldier nodded. "Go ahead."
Stark bent and carefully touched the disc to the metal stub on the Soldier's body, and it clicked, whirred, and attached itself smoothly. The Soldier raised an eyebrow but made no comment.
"Any pain with that?" Banner asked.
"No," said the Soldier.
Stark attached several delicate wires and cables to the disc. He brought the arm, which lay cradled in a frame on a rolling table, close enough to attach the other ends of the leads to it.
"Now. Your old prosthesis had haptic feedback, right?"
"I don't know the technical terms in English," the Soldier said.
"Pressure sensitivity? So you could tell how much force you were exerting, pick up things without breaking them?"
"Yes," said the Soldier.
"Any sensors for temperature, vibration, tactile sensation?"
The Soldier shook his head. "No. It conducted heat, so I could feel it if the proximal end got particularly hot or cold." (He shot a dirty look at Clint, who shrugged.) "But no, no direct sensation except pressure."
"All right," said Stark. "Basic motor control first." He finished connecting leads. "Make a fist."
The Soldier glanced skeptically at the arm. Its fingers and thumb closed smoothly into a fist. He raised his eyebrows. "Not bad," he admitted.
"Rotate your hand, palm up. Now palm down." The first movement was smooth, the second hesitant and jerky. "Relax for a second," said Stark, and made some adjustments. "Try palm down again."
This time the movement was smooth and easy.
"Open your fist, one finger at a time, starting with the thumb."
The hand opened. The movement was not only mechanically smooth, it was...coordinated. Graceful. Skilled. Clint shivered a little.
Stark continued to put the arm through its paces, having the Soldier flex and extend the wrist, cock it toward the thumb side and little-finger side, bend and straighten the elbow.
"Okay, let's try attaching it for the rest of the tests," he said, and detached the leads. Banner came over to help and the two first arranged what looked like a gel cushion around the socket, covering the burned part of the chest wall, then attached a harness over the Soldier's shoulders and chest to take part of the weight of the arm. The arm itself didn't seem especially heavy; knowing Stark, it probably weighed exactly what the real one did, within a tenth of a gram. The Soldier flinched just slightly as they attached the arm.
Stark and Banner stepped back out of reach. "Okay," said Stark, tapping on his tablet. "You've got control. See how it feels."
The Soldier looked down at the arm and wriggled his fingers, touched his thumb with the tip of each finger in turn. He raised his arm overhead and reached behind his back to touch his shoulder blade. He clasped his hands together and pulled, right arm against left. "Decent range of motion," he said. "Weak, though. I assume that's deliberate."
"It is. It's also adjustable. We'll do a little negotiating about what settings to leave you with. Catch."
Stark tossed a styrofoam cup to the Soldier. He caught it out of the air without denting it.
"Excellent," said Stark. "How's it feel at the interface? Secure? Any chafing or friction?"
"Not really," the Soldier said grudgingly. "I could live with it like it is now."
"Good," said Tasha, "because that's pretty much the plan."
"What?" the Soldier said.
"I'm going to fly you the hell out of here," she said, "and I'm going to give you a chute and a backpack of supplies, and I'm putting you in the wind. And if I see you again without prior arrangements, I will shoot you."
He studied her. "Why?" he said finally.
"I don't have the spare resources to deal with you," she said.
"Hang on, one more thing," Stark interrupted. "And this is between you and me; I haven't talked it over with Romanov because frankly I don't think it should be her call." He tapped on his tablet for a few seconds. "Do you prefer the arm like it is now," he asked, "or would you rather have it like this?" He clicked once on the tablet, then reached over and touched one finger to the back of the Soldier's left hand.
The Soldier flinched. He slowly turned his hand palm-up and ran the tips of his real fingers over his prosthetic palm. He stared up at Stark. "You—" He swallowed. "You can—"
"I don't like building crap," Stark said. "Without the rest of my equipment, I can't make it look like your other one. But this, I can do."
"Stark," Tasha growled, but the inventor held up a hand.
"Talk to the hand, Romanov," he said. "You hire me, you get my best work or nothing."
The Soldier cradled his left hand in his right and stared down at it.
"You win," he whispered. "I can't…don't…don't take this from me. Please. I'll—"
"Stop right there," said Stark. "This is not a fucking torture technique. You want sensation in the arm, you got it. Keep it. Take it home, play with it, hand it over to the FSB for all I care. I am not bargaining with you."
The Soldier closed his eyes, clutched his new arm to his chest like a broken favorite toy, and shuddered. "Please," he said again, very softly.
Rogers stood up from his chair, limped across the room without his cane, sank to one knee and put his arms around the Soldier. He whispered in the other man's ear and held him while Banner injected the sedative into the cannula, kept holding him until he went limp and Tasha unbuckled the restraints, picked him up and eased him onto the bed and refused to make eye contact with any of the others as they straightened the Soldier's body and restrained him again.
"I'll stay with him," Rogers said firmly.
"Me too," said Stark.
Tasha jerked her head towards the door and walked out. Banner stopped to pick up his tablet from the table and followed; Clint brought up the rear.
Clint was shaken. He'd seen men fall apart under interrogation; he'd seen the aftermath of imprisonment and torture; he'd broken a couple of times himself. But never like this. It was as if someone had pulled the entire earth from beneath the Soldier's feet.
"Natasha," Banner spoke up, "Look at this." He held out his tablet to her; on it was a diagram of a brain, with a flickering, ever-changing display of colored lights playing across its surface. "This is a recording of what happened when Tony turned on the sensory function of the arm. Look. His whole motor and sensory cortex is lighting up on the right side," said Banner, "and it's kindling activity in the amygdala and hippocampus."
"Which means…?" she asked.
"The touch sensation from the arm set off a cascade of reactions, especially in the parts of the brain that encode emotion and memory," Banner said. "And look at this." He scanned back a few minutes and restarted the recording. "See this green here? That's constant, low-grade activity in areas associated with chronic pain. Watch what happens to that signal when Tony switches the sensation on."
Clint watched over Tasha's shoulder as the green signal blinked out, replaced by the multicolored wash they'd seen before.
"What was that?" she asked.
"I think that was phantom limb pain. It's common after an upper limb amputation. It can be severe, and it can last for years. And it's caused by the brain trying to compensate for missing sensory input from the amputated limb."
"So when he put on the new arm and Tony switched it on so he could feel it…"
"The pain went away," said Banner. "Maybe for the first time since he lost the arm."
"Bozhe moi," said Tasha. "And he thought that was what we meant to do. A promise, for his cooperation."
Clint felt as sick as Tasha looked. "I think…" he said hesitantly, "I think Rogers might have thought the same thing."