Day 21

I Don't Feel So Well

Chronic Pain | Hypothermia | Infection

Damnit, it was cold.

You would think that after being captured and thrown in a cell, the weather would be the last thing on Clint mind. There were so many more things he should be more worried about, including but not limited to if these men intended to torture and/or kill him. But as the hours dragged on, Clint's eyes kept going to that small, barred opening up near the ceiling of his concrete cell. He had already climbed up there and searched for weaknesses, finding none. It seemed like the purpose of the opening was simply to let cold air from outside into his empty cell.

It wasn't too bad at first. Isolation made him antsy, so he took to pacing around the cell to work off anxious energy at the same time as he worked up some body heat to stave off the nip in the air. He was given water and even a minimal amount of food once a day, though the guards who brought it to him virtually ignored him, no matter how he tried to goad them.

Three days passed without much incident and Clint couldn't complain about much other than boredom. And then, on the fourth night of his captivity the temperature very suddenly plummeted.

Clint blinked with confusion, unsure what had awoken him at first. As he had every other night, he had wedged himself sitting up in the corner of the cell in order to sleep. The cell slowly came into focus and it looked as if nothing had changed.

And then a shiver wracked through his body. He blew out a lungful of air, and watched the light mist that accompanied the exhale.

"Shit," Clint murmured as he glared up at the opening above his head.

This was bad.

He quickly pushed himself up off the floor and began to pace quickly around the cell, rubbing his arms. He was fortunate that when they had searched him, they had taken his jacket but left him with the fairly insulated long sleeve shirt and pants, along with his boots. It would protect him from fairly cold weather, but there was no telling how much the temperature would continue to drop. If it got down too low he would be in really serious trouble.

"C'mon, don't do this to me," Clint pleaded with the window, as if it had any say over how much cold air it let into the small room.

Clint continued walking around the room, periodically flexing his fingers and blowing hot air into his hands and even down his shirt. He even did squats and push ups in order to pass the time. He continually assured himself that he wasn't in trouble yet. The weather should warm up in the morning when the sun comes up, and his captors were feeding him daily which helped him keep up his energy. He could sleep during the day while the sun was up and move around at night in order to keep up his body heat. This was still a survivable situation.

And then, the next day when the guard approached his cell, he placed a cup of water between the bars and walked away. Clint could only stare at the solitary cup of water dismally as his heart sunk in his chest. He knew without a doubt that it wasn't a coincidence that the moment the temperature outside dropped they stopped bringing him food.

So, they had planned to torture him. They just needed to wait for the weather to cooperate. The big question now was did they want something from him, or would they just watch him slowly die in here?

Clint regulated the small portion of water throughout the day as he did his best to rest and get some sleep. It was still cold throughout the day, but not as much as it had been the night before. But even though Clint couldn't see anything through the high window, he could sense the temperature dropping again as the sun slowly set.

He had never loathed the night so much before in his life.

Having now eaten anything that day, Clint noticed a significant difference in his energy level as he pushed himself up to his feet. His vision swam for a moment before he stabilized. He walked around the perimeter of the room, keeping one hand on the wall for balance. For the first couple hours he was able to keep up a fairly consistent amount of activity to keep his body heat up as much as he could. But as the night grew deeper, the temperature continued to drop until finally Clint's tired eyes wandered up to the window just as he noticed snow drifting down around him.

"Sonofabitch," Clint groaned.

He was in trouble.

The cold wrapped around him like an icy weight. His breathing slowly became shallower and he noticed with a vague interest that he was beginning to pant for breath, even though he had kept his activity level to the bare minimum in an attempt to preserve enough energy to make it through the night. During a pass around the small cell he suddenly tripped and almost fell, even though there wasn't a square inch of this floor that he hadn't walked a thousand times.

"Damnit," Clint muttered to himself as he braced himself against the ice cold wall of the cell.

Yeah. He was really in trouble. As in, may not survive the night kind of trouble.

"No… it can't end like this… it doesn't end like this," Clint murmured as he squeezed his eyes shut. After everything he had been through, it just seemed so anticlimactic for what finally did him in was cold weather.

Determinedly, he pushed himself off the wall and stumbled around the cell for another two laps. He was blinking hard, trying desperately to fight off the exhaustion that was suddenly pressing in, and wasn't paying attention to just how much snow was blowing in the window and now coating the floor under his feet. He turned a corner a little too quickly and suddenly his feet went out from under him, sending him crashing hard to the concrete floor.

"Shit, shit, shit," Clint breathed as he stared down at the snow on the floor, now dotted with red from where he had busted open his elbow from the fall. "C'mon, Barton, get up, get up."

His entire body trembled violently as he tried in vain to push himself back up to his feet. But every time he got his feet under him, they slipped out on the icy floor as soon as he tried to put any weight on them. After several tries, he heaved out a sigh of defeat, finally acknowledging that he was just wasting energy.

He blinked heavily as he pushed himself across the floor to the nearest corner. He pulled his shirtsleeve down over his hand and used it to sweep the snow away from the corner before he curled up into it, so that at least he wouldn't be sitting in the snow.

He glared up again at that goddamn window. It was just big enough to let in a light dusting of snow, which was especially frustrating since if he had enough snow he'd be able to insulate himself against the cold. As it were, he only had enough snow to mock him and remind him just how screwed he was.

"Fuck you," he mumbled up at the window as he carefully pulled his knees up and tucked his hands between his thighs and his stomach.

The minutes dragged on into hours. Clint noticed that he was beginning to shiver less, and somewhere in the back of his mind a quiet voice whispered that that was a bad thing, but he couldn't remember why. I mean, the damn shivering was what was keeping him awake, right? Maybe if he stopped, then he could finally get some sleep. Because that's all he wanted at this point. He was just so tired…

"Clint!"

The voice came to him from a great distance. He blinked his eyes, blurry images moving around him, but he didn't have it in him to try to figure out what was going on or even to really comprehend what the words swirling around him meant.

"He's still breathing, but it's really shallow. His pulse is also dangerously low."

"Clint? Clint, can you hear me?"

"Holy shit, he looks like an icicle. What, did the bastards just want to watch him freeze to death!"

"He's severely hypothermic. Thor, give me your cape."

"Will he be alright?"

"We need to get him out of here right now."

Clint was vaguely aware of being picked up and carried, but he couldn't bring himself to care. He drifted in and out of consciousness. The next thing he was clearly aware of was laying on a cot in the back of the Quinjet, wrapped tightly in a thick, red fabric with another weight blanket on top of him, an IV tube snaking its way underneath the blankets and into the back of his hand.

"Clint?"

Clint squinted up at the figure sitting next to him. "Tasha? Wha'…"

"Sh, it's okay now," Natasha soothed with a soft smile. "We got you out. We're going home."

It took Clint a long minute to really comprehend the words. Then, his lips quirked a small smirk.

"Can we… make a pitstop in… in the Caribbean? Or the… Sa-Sahara Desert?"

Everyone laughed and Clint burrowed down deeper into his nest of blankets. He would never take warmth for granted ever again.