Author's Note: Okay, I'm cheating a little bit with this one! In an attempt to catch up, I pilfered this scene from a half written fic I have about my interpretation of how Clint loses his hearing and becomes deaf. It's a combination of how it happens in the comics, mixed with MCU headcanon of Clint and Phil working closely together at SHIELD.

THE SETUP: Clint and Phil have been captured by Crossfire who is testing a new ultrasonic brainwashing technology on them, forcing them to fight each other. This scene begins as Crossfire has just turned off the machine in order to force Clint and Phil to see what they've done to each other.

Day 24

You're Not Making Any Sense

Forced Mutism | Blindfolded | Sensory Deprivation

Clint blinked the blood from his eyes, bringing the scene in front of him into sharp focus. That's when the horrible realization crashed down onto him.

He was winning.

Phil was braced on his hands and knees, wheezing and coughing. He hardly seemed aware that the mind control had been paused, apparently too focused on trying desperately to get oxygen into his system. Safe bet that he had broken ribs, possibly a collapsed lung. If that was the case, they were fucked.

From experience, Clint knew without a doubt that Phil wouldn't survive another bout. He had to do something right now to stop this.

His eyes went to his surroundings, looking for something he could use to incapacitate himself so that he couldn't hurt Phil any more than he already had. That's when he saw it. His sonic arrow was still laying on the ground, mere feet away. He had no time to think or deliberate, there was no telling how long the machine would be left off. He made a show of stumbling, like he was trying to get to Phil to check him over when in reality he wanted to be as far away from the man as possible.

"Phil," he gasped, trying to make a good show of it. This was what Crossfire wanted after all. He purposefully threw himself off balance as he was pretending to try to cross the space between them, pitching to the ground and allowing himself to hit the floor hard. This had to look real.

"Not so fast, Hawkeye," came the laughing voice from the other side of the room. "We're not done yet."

He had to work fast. He dropped himself down onto his side to block what he was doing from Crossfire. Using one hand, he leveraged the arrow down into the floor until the arrowhead snapped off. In order to activate the arrowhead, he needed pressure. And he needed this to do the maximum amount of damage.

With those two thoughts, he put the arrowhead into his mouth.

"Ready for round three, boys?" came Crossfire's voice, accompanied by the digital beeping of the machine being started up again. "Looks to me like it'll be the final round."

The high-pitched noise just reached his ears when Clint bit down as hard as he could, his molars crashing into the arrowhead, activating the sonic blast.

For a split second, he was convinced he had mistaken the arrow for one of his explosive ones and blown his head off. The pain was far more intense than he had been anticipating. His vision screamed pure white as a guttural shout of raw pain clawed its way up this throat, muffled by his clenched jaw. But despite the feeling of a dull knife viciously carving its way through his brain, one thing was undeniably apparent… he was still moving and thinking of his own accord.

It had worked.

He had no time to dwell on this small victory though. While he had avoided the mind control, Phil wouldn't have. As he spat out the arrowhead, he blindly threw himself backward and away from where he last knew Phil to be as he blinked rapidly, desperately attempting to bring the world back into focus.

If Phil killed him, this would all be for nothing.

His vision cleared just in time for him to see the knife arching down toward his face. He threw out his arm, taking the blade to the forearm being better than taking it to the face. He felt an odd detachment from the situation as he watched Phil's knife glance off the outside of his forearm, tearing a long gash in the process and sending a flood of blood up his arm. It was a deep gash, but there was no time to worry about it.

Remaining on the floor, he threw himself to one side to give him the angle to kick out at Phil's ankle, knocking one into the other. He winced slightly as his handler went down hard.

Sorry, Phil, he thought to himself as he quickly ran through his options to incapacitate the man without making his injuries worse.

His torso was already beat to hell and he couldn't risk putting a rib into his lung. The throat was too risky, especially since he was already struggling to take in air. That left his head as Clint's best terrible option. He scrambled to his feet while Phil was still trying to scramble to his. A swift, solid downward kick to the temple and Phil collapsed back to the ground like a ton of bricks.

You better just be knocked out, Clint thought desperately to himself as he tossed his gaze around the room, trying to get his bearings now that he seemed to be out of immediate danger.

He spotted Crossfire. The man was smiling. His lips were moving, but he was too far away and Clint was still too disoriented to read them. As Clint watched the silent display for a moment, the reality of the situation threatened to overwhelm him. But he forcefully pushed it away, knowing that he had to finish this before he could deal with the implications of what just happened.

Clearly Crossfire had no idea that Clint wasn't still under his control. Clint had to take advantage of that while he could. He turned his back to the man, reaching for the knife that had fallen from Phil's hand. He flipped it in his right hand – his left feeling unsteady from the still gushing wound – like he was going to stab down… but at the last moment he spun on his heel and without needing to even take a breath to aim, he let the knife fly.

He blamed the sudden blood loss and likely concussion for the fact that the knife landed in the man's shoulder and not dead center in his face.