Their new place to put her was a barren room, small and dark and empty. She lost count of the hours quickly, once the blood splattered on her arm dried and the ache in her ribs dulled a bit. Mostly, she just sat slumped in one corner and thought about Ruby. There wasn't much else to do.

She couldn't shake the thought of it, that Ruby was dead. Or the guilt. It was her fault that the girl had died, her plan that had trapped them in a room with no way out. Why had she let Ruby convince her that they had to go there and delete everything? Why hadn't they left and come back later? She knew the Avengers; Clint's whole job was dealing with stuff like this! And Tony Stark could have probably done everything they had achieved without even entering the building.

She was just stupid, thinking she could do this on her own. She'd never been able to do anything right; why would this work out any different? And now Ruby was dead, a girl who, as far as she could tell, was innocent of all of this conflict between SHIELD and HYDRA and INTEL's rise to the power it had seized. And that was Imogen's fault, completely.

She sighed and rested her head back against the wall. She wasn't even worried anymore if Clint was going to come and find her. Maybe she deserved to stay here for a while.

ooooo

"This is it?"

"Are you questioning my ability to navigate?"

Clint rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. "No, I'm questioning the very weird email that you think is a lead."

"Well think again, Birdboy, because not only is that email real, but there's a whole rabbit warren right underneath our feet," Tony replied smugly. "I take payments in cash, card, and everlasting gratitude."

Clint shrugged, not in the mood for an argument. Stark had baited him the entire way here, but nothing was biting, not if Clint had anything to say about it. Now, they stood outside a clothing store, and he was eyeing a display of Avenger's merchandise in the front window sceptically. It was a first, as far as he knew, for an enemy to have a small Avengers shrine in their front window. Most just tried to shoot them.

It being the middle of the night, the store was closed – it only took Tony and Clint a minute to hack security and pick the lock respectively. "You sure this isn't a trap?" Clint asked as they got in way too easily for his liking.

"What, you want to go home?"

The archer huffed a sigh and led the way, stepping softly out of habit. He didn't know why he was even bothering – Tony's steps in the suit were heavy and echoed loudly in the large store, alerting everyone around that there was an intruder (if there even was anyone around, seeing as they'd made it to the back of the store without seeing one sign of life).

"So I guess we start looking for a secret door now?" Tony asked. Clint nodded, and they separated, Tony to the left and Clint to the right.

It was Jarvis who found the door in the end, his heat sensors picking up the man guarding it. By the time Clint joined them, the man was on the floor, the fight over with barely a sound. "Am I going to get any of the action?" he joked as they passed into an elevator, adjusting the arrow he already had nocked as the doors closed.

"Let me take you out to a bar or something, you can get all the action you want." Clint wasn't sure if he was joking or not. Probably both. Tony Stark would never refuse a good night out.

The elevator asked for their identities. A moment later, Stark was in and down they went. It was an old lift, creaky and slow, jerking to a halt and taking several long, tense seconds to open. The loud wailing of alarms bled through the doors – their presence had not gone unnoticed.

Finally, the doors opened, revealing a small army of soldiers. Clint fired as soon as he had a shot, then shot again and again, falling into his usual, quick rhythm, snapping off as many shots as he could before it came to close quarters. Iron Man stepped in front of him, shielding him from bullets as he continued to shoot around the armour, picking them off one by one. It didn't take long for the soldiers to abandon their guns, realising bullets weren't doing anything, and approach.

The two Avengers stood firm.

ooooo

The sound of the alarms was muffled through the door, but she could hear them just the same, blaring urgently from one end of the building to the other. Closer to her small prison cell, she could hear people yelling, and occasionally footsteps running past her room, loud and heavy as they rushed off to whatever the emergency was.

Though it was useless to do so, Imogen scrambled to her feet and went to the door, pressing her ear up against it and straining to hear what was going on. There was the faint echo of yelling still, and the sound of distant gunfire, but nothing useful. She stayed for several minutes anyway, hoping that she might just catch something to give her a clue about what was going on.

The gunfire grew less, and then ceased, Several minutes later, the alarm cut out too, and eerie silence fell over INTEL base. Imogen let out a shaky breath and stepped away from the door. Everything must be over, and she'd never find out now what had caused it. The silence was deafening as she leant back against one wall and tried to swallow the disappointment that made tears well in her eyes. There was no point crying about it.

It was a good ten minutes before she heard anything else. The first indication that anyone was outside was a set of footsteps moving fast down the hall; only it wasn't the heavy boots from earlier but a lighter, sharper step, shoes clicking loudly in the empty hallway. Her stomach filled with dread; she had an inkling of who this frantic step could belong to, and she wanted nothing to do with them.

A key turned in the lock to the door. Imogen backed up, until her back was flat against the wall. Without needing to be summoned, ice crept fast up her fingers, and she felt her whole body grow colder than she'd thought she could be.

Just like she'd thought, Lena stepped into the room, leaving the door ajar behind her.

"You stupid girl," the woman snarled, advancing. "You think you can just come here, and ruin my work, and then walk on out with the Avengers? You think there won't be any consequences for your actions?"

"You think you don't deserve any consequences for what you've done?" Imogen spat back, trying to edge around her and escape. Lena's hand shot out, wrapping tight around her upper arm. Her thumb pressed into the bullet wound on Imogen's upper arm, still relatively fresh. She flinched at the sharp pain that shot through her arm.

"What I've done?" Lena said, eyes wide like those of a madman. "I've tried to protect the world! To keep people safe!"

"All you've done is spy on people and kill them!" Imogen accused, trying to wrench her arm out of Lena's grip. The sharp movement wrung pain out of her ribs, and she gasped and almost doubled over at the suddenness of it. Seeing her chance, Lena wrapped her fingers around Imogen's neck and squeezed, pinning her to the wall.

"You'll never understand," she claimed boldly. Imogen stuttered and gagged and clawed at her hands desperately, trying to breathe. "But you don't need to understand. You just need to be dead."

The feeling of freezing got worse and worse, starting in Imogen's core and stretching out through her body until she could barely feel the desperate pain of her ribs, or Lena's fingers bearing down on her windpipe. She could barely feel her own fingers; they were numb with cold, like being out too long on a frost-ridden winter morning. The feeling of it sent a shot of anger roiling through her; if the cold could affect her like this, why the hell wouldn't it do something useful?

As if she'd read Imogen's thoughts, Lena screeched and shot backwards releasing Imogen. She held her hands palm-up in front of her, staring at them in shock. Imogen stared too.

The skin on Lena's hands looked like she had stuck them straight into a furnace; the flesh was bright red and angry, like the worst kind of burns Imogen had ever seen. Ice burns, she thought between breaths, as she realised that she'd been the one to do that.

"You-you-" Lena stuttered, staring at her hands like she just couldn't believe it. Slowly, her eyes rose to Imogen, blazing with fury. "I'll kill you!" she snarled, and leapt at the smaller girl, teeth bared.

Imogen didn't even think, just reached out and pressed her cold hands to Lena's face.

The woman's scream was inhuman, loud and ear-piercing, more like the sound a wounded animal would make than that of a person. She flinched away from Imogen's hands, and then fell to the ground, clutching at her face with hands that were just as burnt. Imogen didn't stay to see what exactly had happened to her face; she just ran, as hard and as fast as she could bear to.

Body racked with stabbing pains and unable to breathe, as hard and fast didn't get her very far. Not two hallways over, she found herself leant against a wall, clutching gingerly at her ribs and gasping for breath. She couldn't seem to inhale enough oxygen to ever satisfy her lungs, couldn't force herself to breathe anything deeper than short, shallow gasps that did nothing for her. For several minutes, the hallway spun in front of her eyes, never settling in one place. It was a sheer miracle that no INTEL agents stumbled upon her, standing there trying really hard not to pass out.

As the world slowly started to settle around her, a blessedly familiar voice called her name, so unexpected that at first she thought she'd imagined it.

But then it came again. "Imogen!" he yelled through the halls, the sound of it echoing down to her. It was Clint, of all people, and he was close by; finally, he'd found her, come to help her. She'd never been so glad to hear someone's voice before in her life, not even back in the days when her brother had bailed her out of all manner of trouble.

She gathered all the breath she had gained. "Clint!" she called desperately. "Over here! Clint!" The effort of it left her breathless all over again; all she could do was pant and wait for him to find her.

His footsteps preceded him, running down the halls. And then he came around the corner and into full view, right in front of her, bow in hand and dressed exactly like the Hawkeye she remembered watching in footage from the Battle of New York, however many years ago.

"You alright?" he asked, brow furrowed in concern at her current condition. She didn't even hesitate, just stumbled away from the wall and wrapped her arms around him, hugging him tightly.

"Careful," she warned as he went to hug her in return. "Cracked ribs." She took a breath that was a little too deep, and winced at the responding pain. "Maybe broken ribs," she amended.

"You've been busy, then," Clint observed, hugging her with due care. She hummed into his shoulder and then pulled away. "Sure your neck's not broken too? Or your face?"

Imogen touched the bruise on her jaw. "Hope not," she replied. "I like my face."

"What happened?"

"Um." She stared at the floor, trying to pick a place to start. "Kidnapping. Science experiments. Failed escape plans." Dead girls, she thought, but didn't add it to the list. Instead, she held up one hand, half-immersed in patchy ice. "I can do this now, apparently?"

"Huh." Clint frowned at her hand, but didn't ask further. "You beat any of them up as good as they beat you?"

"Yeah," she said, and almost smiled. Smiling hurt. Laughing would probably hurt too, she noted in an aside. Don't laugh. "Couple dead. Couple concussed."

"You wanna talk about it?" he asked.

"No," she answered, very definitely. "I really want to get out of here."

They walked in silence for several minutes through the quiet base. Everywhere they went, there was evidence of fighting; marks on the walls, or blood on the floor, or bodies lying unconscious on the ground. Some were strung up like trussed turkeys. Others didn't need to be. Imogen rubbed at her tired eyes and tried not to look at them too hard.

Eventually, in a big, open room somewhere far from her little prison, they found Stark, standing over a small cluster of men and women who all looked very disgruntled at the indignity of being tied to each other. "Pidgeon!" his voice greeted them through his Iron Man suit. "Nice summer holiday you've been on. Why didn't you invite us earlier?"

"Add me on Facebook and I'll bring you next time," Imogen quipped in reply.

She could almost see Stark's disgust through the suit. "Facebook?" he repeated incredulously, like she'd offered him a dead rat. "Do people still use Facebook? God, I need to fix that…" He trailed off, leaning down to pluck a knife out of a woman's hand from the group he was watching over. "Hey, by the way, Pidgeon," he added as he threw the knife away, to the dismay of his prisoners. "You seen their great and fearless leader around here anywhere?"

"Her name's Lena," Imogen told him.

"We know," he replied haughtily. "Lena Fischer. Did you know she's a millionaire?"

"Only a spoilt rich kid could cause this much trouble," Clint said with a lazy grin.

"You watch your mouth, slumlord," Stark shot back.

"Aw, Tony," Clint whined, his face falling. "That was one time."

"One time?" Tony said mockingly. "Don't you still own the building?"

"You own a building?" Imogen asked Clint, struggling to keep up with the conversation.

"Why do you sound so surprised?" Clint asked, feigning a hurt expression. "I can own a building. Lots of people own buildings."

From somewhere in the distance, the sound of wailing sirens became increasingly apparent. "Finally, the proper authorities," Tony said abruptly. "Time to go, kids. I am not sticking around to give out statements and listen to my rap sheet being read out like slam poetry." Imogen didn't even bother trying to comprehend that statement.

"Ready?" Clint asked her.

She nodded very definitely. "I sort of want to blow this place up before we go, but other than that, we're good."

"Kids these days and their bombs," Stark said and elbowed Clint on his way past. "Am I right?"

"Kid?" Imogen repeated as she trailed after them. She screwed up her nose. "I'm twenty one."

"You can drink?" Tony asked, and he sounded genuinely surprised. "Barton, I have a sudden urge to take the kid to a bar. You in?"

Clint thought about it. "Only if you'll bet me a billion dollars you can't beat me a pool," he challenged.

Tony scoffed. "And what happens when you lose, slumdog millionaire?"

"I never lose," Clint claimed proudly.

"You lost to a teenager five weeks ago," Tony pointed out.

"He was using geometry against me," Clint snapped back. "He was basically cheating."

On and on they went, back and forth, all the way to the small quinjet that uncloaked itself as they entered the parking lot outside. They didn't even stop then, just kept ribbing each other about some kind of bet they'd made with a teenager several weeks ago as they loaded up and took off, flying at a steady pace towards New York.

Imogen didn't make it much further than that. When she'd been up on her feet and moving around, still in the depths of INTEL, she'd felt perfectly awake. But now, slumped in a very comfortable seat and listening to the lull of the engines, the past few sleepless nights caught up with her and she felt her eyelids begin to drift shut. She fell asleep to the whisper and hum of the quinjet, and the cheerful noise of the two Avengers banter. She didn't wake up for anything; not even the landing in New York.