If anyone asked Clint if he was worried about Kate going back to New York to finish college, he would have told them no because he knew how capable she was. However, everyone knew deep down that he was lying to everyone, including himself.

He couldn't help himself from looking for a text from Kate at least once a day, trying to hope that she could tell that he wanted to hear from her aside from the weekly zoom call that included the entire family so she could catch up on everything at once.

It wasn't until March, just two months before her graduation, that she finally sent him a text: unfortunately, it wasn't what he had been hoping for and it immediately had him trying to find a flight to New York and cursing internally that his worries hadn't been unfounded.

'Tracksuit Mafia. They're probably gonna take my phone. Address is 4652 Drive, Brooklyn.'

…

When Kate regained consciousness, she knew that she had screwed up, big time. She had been tracking down the Tracksuits for the last few days after multiple arson reports near her college`campus had their signature style all over it.

She had managed to send a message to Clint before she was grabbed, thrown in the back of one of their trucks and tased till she fell unconscious on the night where she had finally tracked them down.

Leading her to where she was now, sitting on the cold stone floor in a warehouse with her hands tied above her head, her head pounding from hitting the side of the truck and her vision spinning. But she could feel her phone still in her pocket, so it wasn't all bad despite the throbbing.

'That's definitely a concussion,' she thought as she tried to peer into the darkness to try and feel for a way to free her hands, 'what I wouldn't give to have a knife on me.'

That's when she heard the groan in the darkness, making her spine go ridged because that had to be a person. A person trapped just like her, but a person.

"W-who's there?" She asked, trying to keep her voice steady despite her fear as she strained her eyes to try and make out the silhouette of who else was in her situation.

"Spider-Man," the voice responded weakly, weaker than hers which indicated that they had been here longer than she had, "who are you?"

"Kate. Kate Bishop," she stopped to swallow nervously, her mouth dry, "how long have you been here."

"Not long. I saw them robbing some jewelry store and when I went to stop them, they threw me in the back of their truck. I tried to escape and…" the voice trailed off, but Kate managed to get a quick glimpse that indicated that there was a long stab wound in their abdomen, staining their suit and gloved fingers with the burgundy shaded blood.

"Oh my god." She gasped, trying to pull her hands out of her ties, wincing as the metal cut into her wrists.

"Stop, stop," they told her, reaching a free hand towards her in a way to try and calm her, "it's slowed down a lot. I heal fast, okay?"

"O-okay," she nodded as she stopped pulling at her binding before forcing herself to take a deep breath so she could focus on finding something to cut herself free, "are you tied up?"

"My ankle's chained to the floor."

"Damn it," Kate muttered softly before turning back to the person who was completely shrouded in darkness, "is anyone gonna track your phone here?"

"No," Spider-Man's voice sounded like sadness as they lamented, "no one's coming for me."

"Good news is, as long as they don't destroy my phone, I have an Avenger coming for me," She insisted, trying to bring back Spider-Man's hopes, "but you have to hang in there so we can get you out too."

The makeshift prison was quiet for a moment aside from the labored sound of their breathing filling the room until finally, they spoke, their voice slightly less solemn.

"I can try."

Kate couldn't help but smile briefly before returning back to hoping that Clint was indeed tracking her phone.

…

Clint groaned with annoyance and worry as he stood directly at the address that Kate had sent him. He wasn't shocked that she wasn't there, but more so discouraged by the fact that it hadn't been her current address that he had been sent.

'Thank goodness she convinced me to get an upgrade,' he thought to himself as he pulled his IPhone out of his pocket and spoke.

"Hey, Siri? Find Kate Bishop's phone."

Sure enough, the AI flicked open the Find My Friends app and a purple beacon started to blink twenty miles away, making him grin as he spoke aloud.

"Found you."

…

"Kate?" Spider-Man's voice sounded weaker as they continued to sit and wait for whatever the Tracksuits wanted from them, "I-I think I'm getting worse."

She knew that she had to get them out of there soon, or otherwise she was going to have to explain what they had done to them to Clint when he arrived. She already knew she had to do that, but if they were more than a bloodless body, it'd probably go down easier.

So, she did what she had to do and started to yell towards the locked door.

"Hey, Spider-Man is bleeding to death down here! And I highly doubt Kingpin, who I'm assuming is still your boss, is gonna be excited to hide a body!" She stopped to rattle her restraints as loudly as she could, "so you need to untie me and let me help them! And I'm gonna need a first aid kit to do it!"

"Kate, don't," they pleaded as they reached their free hand out to stop her, "it's not worth it."

"You're going to bleed to death, and I can't let that happen if I can do something about it."

"Kate-"

"Please," she resorted to begging, making their back go obviously ridged in shock by the tone of her voice, "you need help or you're gonna die which would be really bad."

"No one is coming for me!" They shouted, making her jump back from the sheer volume of the yell as well as the fact that despite the mask covering their face, she could see the defeat that racked their body.

The room was scarily silent for a few moments aside from both of their breathing ricocheting on the walls until finally, Kate found the strength to speak again.

"Spider-Man, I don't know what you've dealt with, okay? But I've lost people too and I know how hopeless it can feel," she could have been hallucinating due to the odd dripping noise, but she could have sworn that tears were falling to the ground on their side of the room, "but I do know that you'll find new people who love you and care for you. Even if it feels dark right now, you'll find them."

They stayed silent for a while, seemingly trying to process what exactly she had said to them in the lone, dark, dripping, cold room until it got worrying but finally, they spoke with a single, quiet, breathless word.

"Okay."

"Okay," she said back before offering him a quick smile, "mind if I start shouting again?"

She heard what sounded like hollow laughter in response and she couldn't help but smile before she started shouting yet again, her binds digging into her wrists as she extended her body forward.

Despite how she was just smiling a moment before, her stomach turned at the thought of the Tracksuit Mafia just ignoring her and letting Spider-Man die.

'Hopefully Clint gets here really soon.'

…

Clint winced as he crawled into the vent system; his bones were on the older side and they ached with anything other than normal movement, so between that and his hearing aids alerting him that it was going to die soon with just how odd the sound was hitting his ears.

But, he could still hear footsteps, so it would be fine.

At least, that's what he assured himself of as he looked at the Find My Friends app to see the beacon under him. At first, he was confused as he knew that what was under him was a hallway, but it clicked quickly.

'Basement.'

It threw a small wrench into his plans to simply use the vents to find Kate, but he wasn't too thrown by it. He just had to wait till he heard a singular set of footsteps and force the unfortunate member of the Tracksuits to take him to the basement.

He had done that a long time ago back when he was with SHIELD, so it would have to work again, for both his and Kate's sake.

So, he managed to adjust so he wasn't propped on his particularly achy knee before forcing himself to wait and hoping that his hearing aids would last long enough for him to hear the lone tracksuit.

Sure enough, only a few minutes passed before the sound of two boots all alone and he made the jump. He jumped out of the vent and grabbed the man over the mouth before he could call out for help.

"You are going to take me to the basement where I know you have Kate Bishop. You will avoid all of your other members as we do so however necessary. If you try to deceive me, I have a quiver full of explosive arrows and I have a perfect track record when it comes to hitting my target. Do you understand?"

The man in the yellow tracksuit who couldn't be much older than Kate nodded under his grasp and he let him go, allowing him to catch his breath for a quick moment before grabbing a normal arrow and drawing his bow, but keeping the arrow head towards the ground.

"Lead the way, big guy."

…

Spider-Man had passed out from blood loss by the time Kate's voice had gone hoarse from screaming and pleading for help from the tracksuits. She could still hear his breaths from her side of the room but they were scarily shallow and she just knew that he was running out of time, fast.

"Spider-Man?" She called out, knowing that even if he had been conscious, that her voice was practically gone from yelling, "I'm so sorry that I couldn't get help for you."

Just as tears for someone she hardly knew started to well up in her eyes, that's when she heard the soft click of a key in the large door. She couldn't help but tense up and hold her breath at the idea that it was a member of the Tracksuit Mafia or someone worse like Maya or Kingpin.

But when the door swung open and she was practically engulfed by Clint by the time she registered that he had actually come for her, she couldn't help but let the sobs free out of pure relief.

"Hey, hey, I've got you," He insisted as he let her go, putting his bow on the floor, grabbing the key ring from his belt and starting to unlock her restraints, "let's get you out of here. Are you hurt?"

"My head hurts, they tased me, and my wrists are raw," she rattled off before locking eyes with him. "You have to get Spider-Man too," Kate insisted as she rubbed her raw wrist as soon as it was free, "I don't know how long they've been here, but they are really hurt."

As soon as he pulled her to her feet, the two of them made the short walk to Spide-Manr and she winced when she could see the jagged wound across their lower torso, clotted blood stuck to the edge of the wound.

"Good news, they're breathing still," Clint gave her a reassuring nod as he unlocked the restraint around their ankle and Kate let out another relieved sigh as she watched Clint drape the unconscious vigilante across his back piggy back style, "they definitely need some help though, but let's get you two out of here, okay? You still have your phone?"

She nodded and grabbed his bow off of the floor with the arrow still drawn just in case as they made their way out of the warehouse, her heart pounding heavily in her chest now that all she really had to worry about was Spider-Man's wellbeing.

…

Peter winced as pain slowly brought him back to consciousness, his body but especially his torso throbbed with ferocious hot flashes of pain if he breathed just a little too deeply, but what he was laying on, that was definitely soft at least.

'Wait,' he realized as memories began to return to their rightful place in his head, 'the tracksuits had me in that stone prison.'

But before he could even begin to come up with any sort of half baked escape plan, he felt a quick, sharp pain pin prick in his arm and a British accent cut through the sound of nothing he had been hearing.

"Go back to sleep, Spider-Man. You're safe now."

Maybe it was the drugs in his system or maybe he truly believed the words that he wouldn't have believed since everything that happened to May, but he allowed himself to give up on fighting whatever it was that had been injected into him and flutter back into a dark, painless sleep.

…

"It's going to take at least a few days for her concussion to clear up enough so that you can drive her home, but she's going to be just fine, Barton." Helen insisted with a million dollar smile that never failed to calm Clint's nerves.

'Kate's okay, you got her here in plenty of time. No need to worry.'

"What about Spider-Man?"

"Well, his stab wound was very ragged as well as on the verge of infection. Not to mention the fact that he nearly bled out in there, but we had enough of his blood on hand to get his levels up, so he should be fine as well." Helen explained as cool and collected as always, but something just sounded off to Clint. Something that he couldn't wrap his head around.

'But what?'

"Do you know who he is? Under the mask, I mean."

"You know, it's odd that you bring that up," Helen remarked, "I remember that he was one of my frequent flyers, especially when Tony was alive. He would usually hide things until he just couldn't any more. All of a sudden, my memories of who he was outside of Spider-Man are super foggy if not just completely gone and he stopped coming in. Almost like he just vanished."

The waiting area inside of the Avenger Compound was eerily silent as Clint pulled out his fully dead hearing aids to charge them, only to look back at Helen signing after he got the outlet situated.

"I will get you when you can see Kate."

That was enough of a reassurance for Clint to lean back in the fabric chair and let his eyes flutter closed, sleep stinging the corners as he fully cemented his thoughts in the back of his mind before drifting to sleep.

'I am definitely too old for this kind of thing.'

…

Kate's head pounded as she started to regain her bearings; her bones ached painfully and she could tell before she even opened her eyes that she was free from the Tracksuits.

It only took a few minutes for her to remember Clint rescuing both her and Spider-Man, but that's when the scary thought returned to the vigilante's well-being.

It was that thought that pried her eyes open despite the fact that the fluorescent lights made her head throb more as she continued to look up at them.

"Hey, look who's awake." Clint's voice was soft as he spoke which was nice since the lights were so strong; but even though her mouth was dry from being unconscious and the pounding in her head grew worse with every minute, she still managed to speak.

"How's Spider-Man?"

Clint sighed deeply as he went over to dim the lights and her heart sunk with worry. "Cho patched him up, but he has this accelerated healing. When his stab wound was healed, he left."

"Oh."

"But, he left this for you." Clint added as he passed her a piece of charting paper with a note scrawled on it in black pen; it hurt Kate's head to focus on the messy handwriting but she was able to make it out.

'Thanks for everything, I owe you one. Spider-Man.'