Brackett is the enemy. Brackett works for SHIELD. SHIELD did this. They took Clint and broke him. They tried to kill the team.
Tony sensed Bruce move away from him as the gauntlets flew off the table and reconnected to the suit. He didn't really care that he was making Bruce nervous, he was feeling murderous and he could only guess how he looked right now as the visor snapped down over his face.
"Someone better start explaining this to me or we are going to have a problem."
Coulson was still staring at the image as he pulled out his phone.
Tony raised his hands, targeting the phone, ready to blast it to oblivion, but held off when Steve grabbed the agent's wrist.
"What are you doing?" Steve asked, his voice commanding.
Coulson blinked, clearly not expecting to be stopped by Steve. "SHIELD needs to know about Brackett. Everything he's ever done within SHIELD needs to be gone over immediately."
"Sounds great," Tony scoffed, "Let's just tell the ones responsible for what happened to Clint that we're on to them. Or, you know, we could not."
"Is that what we're thinking?" Bruce asked "That we're dealing with SHIELD?"
Coulson pulled his wrist out of Steve's grip, with only a bit of resistance. "SHIELD has obviously been infiltrated, they would never-"
"Lie to us?" Tony cut in. "Keep things from us? Hell, Steve's probably the only one naive enough, when it comes to SHIELD, not to realize they have a contingency plan for every member of this team. Looks like they had one up on us, I never would have thought they would do this to Clint to get it done."
"They didn't-"
"Were you part of it Agent?"
Coulson actually took a step back, disbelief across his face. "Are you being serious?"
"Tony…" Steve tried, but Tony ignored him.
"Is that what finally broke Clint, knowing you were a part of it?" The repulsors began to charge. "You dying almost broke him, you being alive and lying to him was somehow worse, if you had-"
Steve stepped between the two men. "Tony, that's enough!"
Natasha stepped next to Phil, who couldn't seem to cover his shaken reaction fast enough. "You need to stop talking, Tony, and take a moment, before you say anything else you're going to regret later."
Tony looked at the 3D image. JARVIS had paused the feed. Brackett was cupping Clint's face.
Brackett.
Spade.
He was a sniper. He could have been the sniper they had been looking for, the one that shot Clint. He was on the team. Tony felt the bile rise in his throat. Working beside them for months. He had laughed at some of Tony's jokes. Steve had told him 'good job' once. Clint's killer. Clint captor. Torture? Rapist? Between missions with the team, had he gone back to Clint to hurt him, to… to… Was Clint's blood still under his nails when he shook Steve's hand?
Tony barely recognized the agonized yell as his own when it erupted from him and he turned, firing at the wall, again and again; tearing off chunks with his hands, if only to have something in his grasp to destroy. "Son of a bitch!" Another piece of wall went flying. "You trusting, gullible bastard!"
Tony Stark didn't trust anyone, before Pepper, before the Avengers, before Clint. Hadn't trusted anyone in years and yet he didn't even look into the background of the snipers SHIELD sent them. He did for the first few but then he trusted… he trusted them! How could he?
Sir, please calm down, JARVIS pled from the suit.
Tony tried to take a gasping breath. There was no air. He couldn't breathe. The suit locked up as the back opened and he stumbled backward out of it and into Steve's arms.
"He's a sniper," Tony gasped, his eyes moving back to the frozen image of Spade. "He's a damn sniper," he snarled, pushing away from Steve and moving back to the table. "I was looking for him and he was right here!" His fingers flew and the footage resumed.
There was no sound, the video wasn't good enough for them to lip read with much reliability. But what Tony saw was enough to make him clench his jaw so tightlty, he wondered if his teeth would crack.
Clint must have told Brackett about the tracker, because he handed Clint a knife and watched him cut it out himself, tossing it into the bushes. Spade gripped the back of Clint's neck and Clint lowered his head.
More than anything else, that made Tony see red. Not the possessive holding or kiss, though that hurt; but the fact that Clint would make such submissive move. Clint bowed to no one, especially not after what Loki had done to him, and Tony would never think of putting Clint in a position or a scene where he would have to do that. But here Clint was, acting meek and cowed, and that wasn't him.
Steve's hand landed on his shoulder and squeezed reassuringly.
"It was a code," Natasha said, watching as Spade led Clint out of the park, holding his hand, moving his fingers up and down the archer's arm. "Brackett talked about finding out the color of the doors and Clint answered 'green'. I was worried that hearing Spade was upsetting him, so I didn't think too much about it, but it could have meant 'green' as in 'ready to go' or maybe 'green' for Central Park, giving a meeting location." She shook her head, "How did he even know we were talking to Sitwell?"
"Do you think… Sitwell?" Bruce asked.
Coulson shook his head. "It may be hard to trust anyone right now, but Sitwell would never… I trust him, with my life and with this team. If everyone can remain calm," he said, glancing at Tony, "I'm going to have him get some equipment and go over his office for bugs." He waited until Steve nodded his assent before bringing his phone up and moving to a corner to talk.
On the feed, Clint and Brackett were a block away from the park when Clint stumbled, making Natasha tense. He didn't fall but he began to lean against the other man, his steps more unsure.
Natasha's eyes were deadly, "He's been drugged."
"What?" Steve asked, looking more closely. "How?"
"I didn't see him do anything," Natasha said, "but he could have easily stuck Clint with something when they were going through the crowds."
Brackett held Clint close, his arm around Clint's torso, holding him up, and pulled out a phone, talking quickly into it. The man blinked and then looked up directly into one of the cameras. There was another beat, then he gave a small smile and winked at them before all the camera's for twenty blocks went dark.
88888888
"Who is he?" Tony demanded. "Who the hell is he, Coulson?"
Tony was seconds away from a breakdown or a freak out or something. The cameras were off for ten minutes. Too much time to be certain of anything. They could be hiding somewhere within that twenty block radius or they could have gotten into a car and been lost in the masses.
Tony had JARVIS going through the footage before the backout and tagging every car in the area to begin narrowing it down, if that was even possible. There were too many. Too many variables. Too many possibilities.
No. He couldn't lose Clint. Not again.
"Specialist Liam Brackett, if that is even his real name, isn't a SHIELD agent. He's called 'specialist' for a reason. He's… a consultant."
"A mercenary," Natasha clarified, not looking happy.
"Private security," Coulson sighed. "SHIELD tried recruiting him years ago, but he turned them down."
"What, their usual coercion didn't work?" Tony mocked.
"Apparently not. He is on the record as working in private security because he could never be linked to anything illegal. No records of family, friends, pets."
"A SHIELD sweep?" Natasha asked.
"It's a possibility, but if was done by SHIELD he would be in the hard files. His life was most likely wiped out before SHIELD even noticed him."
"He's a fair shot," Steve allowed, "But enough that SHIELD wanted him?"
"His file's light on any details. Six years ago he started accepting jobs from SHIELD; I'm not cleared to know about any of them. Sitwell checked through accounting and found payment dates for him, any missions with snipers have an agents name in them, so either the files were falsified, possibly his missions were never recorded officially and/or his real skills lie somewhere else."
"He's a lie," Natasha announced. "The way he moved with Clint, how he held himself," she shook her head, "that wasn't Brackett, that was someone else. I wouldn't be surprised if his handwriting was different."
"I'm… a little lost," Steve admitted. "What do you mean it wasn't him?"
"What I mean is that, if I'm right, Spade is a very dangerous person. He can switch between identities, become someone completely different than who we knew."
"It's called acting, Romanoff," Tony snipped, "not too hard."
"Could an actor pass a polygraph while in character?"
"Now you're just-"
"I can," Natasha said, not sounding at all boastful.
The other looked surprised at her admission.
"It takes practice and it takes skill. Locking down emotions, creating false ones from nothing. I didn't notice anything from him, no break in character or slip ups, none of us did and apparently no one at SHIELD did either."
Tony felt his horror grow. Yes, if Natasha was right… this psycho had Clint for a year, god, what had he done to him? What had he done that made Clint so submissive in his hands?
"Why?"
The group turned to Steve.
"Why did Clint go with him? Why did he leave? Why did he even answer him? I don't… I just don't understand. He had a breakthrough with Tony didn't he?" Steve clenched his fists in frustration while the other looked to him with sympathy.
In the seventy years Steve had been in the ice there had so many changes, so much he still needed to catch up on. PTSD was still Shell Shock when he went under and soldiers were told to buck up and get over it. Stockholm Syndrome wasn't even coined and studied until the 1970's.
"He agreed to help us find Thor." Steve continued, "I refuse to believe that was a lie. Spade may be an expert at fooling everyone, but Clint's not like that, everyone has told me so and I've seen it myself. For crying out loud," Steve exclaimed, "I can out bluff him at poker!"
"They had him for more than a year, Steve," Bruce said, sadly. "We have taken clues and have guessed what happened to him, that's all. Maybe he did intend to help us, but you must have noticed his reaction to Spade's voice, it shut him down. We all assumed it was because Clint was angry, actually hearing from his supposed replacement, but he was switching back, separating himself from us again. Anything Spade said may have been to reinforce conditioning."
"Shut up." Tony said, shaking his head. "Just… everyone shut up. This isn't doing anything. We're not finding them and we need to find them." The cars, it would work, JARVIS would find Clint, Tony would find him, he had to, they didn't have anything else.
Tony left the room, muttering to himself, now oblivious to his worried teammates watching him go.
88888888
Seven hours.
Sitwell found surveillance equipment in his office. Coulson was almost in constant contact with Fury, after they all agreed that if any part of SHIELD was involved, it was without Fury's knowledge, the Avengers Initiative was his baby after all, so he needed to be told so it could be handled. Everyone was slowly losing their minds and Tony was monitoring it all from his lab. He watched Bruce go into Hulk's room and lock the door. Steve tore out and twisted the handrails on a level in the stairwell. Tony closed the feed when Steve collapsed onto the steps, his shoulders shaking.
He didn't know where Natasha was, though.
"J, turn on everyone's subdermal trackers."
Is that necessary, Sir? Reviewing past experience, Ms. Romanoff will show herself only when she is ready. The subdermal trackers were created-
"To find the team. We're finding the team. We can run tests if it'll make you feel better, J. Run scans, try and detect them on other frequencies, but pull them up on a map."
Very well, Sir, JARVIS sighed.
A map of the Tower sprang up. Steve was still in the stairwell. Bruce was in his own bedroom now. And Natasha… was in the vents above Clint's room. Huh. Tony felt his throat tighten.
I can. Become different people. Cover true emotions. Natasha did it so well, Tony had barely thought twice about how she was handling all of this. She had known Clint longer. He had saved her life. Given her a second chance. He would go so far as to say Clint was her best friend.
Sir.
"Yeah, yeah, I get it, invasion of privacy. You can turn the trackers off."
No, Sir. JARVIS said, forcefully, getting Tony's attention. I must apologise. When you released me from Clint's override, I did a system review, scanning all of the Tower, in case he left anything dangerous behind.
Tony nodded, "Yeah, sure." Tony couldn't enter the lab until it was finished, too many potentially hazardous things in here that Clint could have messed with.
JARVIS hesitated, and suddenly he had Tony's complete attention.
I neglected to scan for anything that he might have taken.
Before Tony could ask, the map zoomed out until it was showing the east half of the country. There was a bright red dot over New York where the team was, but then Tony noticed the other red dot, not as bright because there was only one, but it was still there, unmoving, near Toledo, Ohio.
Ohio.
Tony's gaze snapped to the work table where the trackers had been.
It was gone.
"JARVIS?" He needed confirmation, he almost didn't dare hope. "Is that…"
Thor's tracker, Sir. It would seem that Clint took it with him.
"Call the others and get a suit fired up, J, we've got somewhere to be."
88888888
"There," Natasha said, pointing at the image, as the quinjet rocked with some turbulence. "When Clint put his arms around Spade's neck. He grips the shirt, moving it enough that he could plant the tracker on him without detection."
"So it will lead us straight to the bastard, good," Tony said, rolling his shoulders, listening to the suit move.
"Focus, Tony," Steve commanded, "Clint and Thor are the top priorities here. Can you tell us anything?"
"It's a closed system. Off the grid. I can't hack anything until I get in there."
"It's an old SHIELD facility," Coulson said, sending a file to Tony, who brought it up on the holo emitters, showing a blueprint of the facilities. "No longer in use."
"You're still believing that shit, Coulson?"
"It's no longer in use by SHIELD," Phil said, firmly, "that doesn't mean it couldn't have been misappropriated."
"That seem to be happening a lot," Tony snapped, "we should just call this 'Mission-appropriation'."
"Tony," Bruce sighed.
Tony sighed right back. He was tired of everyone trying to keep him calm. Is this what Bruce felt like all the time? Being touched with kiddy gloves, people waiting for him to explode?
To be fair, Tony had been acting like a dick to everyone since they got Clint back. He was going to have make them some nice stuff to apologise later.
88888888
"Ten minutes, Tony."
Tony paced the back of the Quinjet, in front of Coulson and Bruce. He hated waiting. It was a simple, straightforward plan. There were three buildings. They dropped Steve and Natasha far off and they would go in and take out the perimeter guards then move onto the two northernmost buildings.
Nine minutes.
That was when Tony moved onto the south building. That was where the red dot was, so that was where he was going; to make it a red stain. He was certain that Spade would stick with Clint. The way he had kept moving his hands over Clint's shoulders, his back, through his hair…
Tony pulled one of the seat buckles out of the wall.
"Eight minutes, Tony," Bruce calmed, "Keep it together."
"I should have gone in first, I've got more fire power."
"That's exactly why you're holding back here," Coulson reminded. "We need stealth in the beginning."
"I could have gone for the computers, the security system, made this easier."
"Everyone knows where you're going. You'd forget about everything the second you were out the back. Which we're going to have to use, letting you be a distraction so we can get Bruce to Steve."
Seven minutes.
Steve right. Steve was hitting the building that was most likely the medical wing and hopefully where Thor was being kept. They were running on radio silence until Tony hit his building. They couldn't chance any communication, in case the place was scanning for SHIELD frequencies. And with only an idea where their teammates might be, they couldn't afford to let Hulk out to level the place, either.
Later, though. Definitely later.
Six minutes.
I'm coming, Clint.
"Damn it!" Coulson cursed, looking at his phone.
"What?" Bruce asked. "What happened?"
"Word's gotten around SHIELD what's we're doing. Fury couldn't hold it off. Two strike teams nearby are about to be called in."
"Which means, with a "security breach"," Tony snarled, "this could be blown any second." The faceplate snapped down. "I'm going in now."
Coulson stepped in Tony's way as the back of the quinjet opened. "I know you've zeroed in on this guy, Tony, but you need to remember this; whoever this man is, he infiltrated SHIELD; well enough that he was temporarily assigned to assist the Avengers. Do. Not. Kill. Him. We need to bring him in for questioning so that we can figure out how severe this 'security breach' is."
Iron Man walked right passed him.
"Tony!"
Iron Man, stopped and looked back; the faceplate stayed down. "You saw."
He didn't elaborate. The video. The park. Clint in the man's arms, looking lost and broken.
"I saw. But we can't kill him, Tony."
Iron Man turned away. "Then you better hope I don't get to him first," he said, before leaping into the open air.
Where the Lonely Ones Roam by Digital Daggers