Author's notes: First of all, to everyone who reviewed…thank you for sticking with me and the writer's block that was chapter seven. Eight is done quickly because I knew what had to be done here. Seven was an issue because while I had a rough plan, I couldn't see the situation playing out – and I had to wait for the idea to get past the real-life struggles I was encountering. Your patience, and the reviews I got in response, were much appreciated. I hope you all enjoy this chapter as well. It is … very dear to me.

Also, a shout-out to Aggie2011 and Nonyvole, without whom, this chapter would not have gotten beta-ed and approved. Their support has been invaluable as well. Also, GreenLoki? You are a riot, as always – thanks for that "message truncated due to length" review I've grown to love.

"Hold on, Barton. C'mon. Look at me. I didn't hike all the way back in here to carry out a dead body."

Phil Coulson could literally see the relief ghost across Barton's face when the sniper realized what had just happened – that Coulson had, for all intents and purposes, put his own life on the line to save him, and to hell the bullshit Barton had spewed in an attempt to get left behind.

Get left behind to die, Phil amended to himself. And if he didn't get to work, that might still be the outcome. The line was starting to get pretty blurred.

"Barton, I need you to listen to me." Phil already had the medic pack shrugged off his back, pulling the zipper to open it even as he lowered it to the ground. As his hand went to the back of the pack for the oxygen and the corresponding mask, he realized Barton had opened his eyes and was staring at him – fear and pain and, of all things, trust all mixed into that unwavering stare.

"You're listening. Good." Phil ripped the plastic covering off the non-rebreather mask, and quickly uncoiled the tubing. As he attached it to the small tank and adjusted the flow, he started talking.

Diarrhea of the mouth. Best piece of advice he'd ever gotten in medic training, and with any luck, Barton would listen, too. Phil lifted the kid's head, sliding the mask over his face and the strap behind his head.

"I need you to trust me for a few minutes here. Going to see what we can do to help you breathe, first." Seeing a slight mist grow inside the mask, Phil nodded, content that the mask was doing what it could. If he was right, the oxygen would only do so much good.

"Kevlar's coming off, Barton." Phil didn't even give the sniper a chance to respond, pulling the Velcro tabs off and away, and hesitating only a moment before pulling Barton up and forward with one hand, pulling the vest off with the other, careful not to pull off the oxygen mask. He lowered the sniper back to the ground in almost the same movement, but not before a cry escaped him, the little bit of air Barton had been pulling into his lungs dissolving into a weak cough.

"…can…can't…bre…"

"Breathe, Barton. I doubt that it's easy or that it feels particularly nice right now, but you're managing." Phil grabbed a pair of scissors from the pack and made quick work of the right side Barton's shirt, exposing exactly what he'd expected to see – or at the least, some semblance of it.

Frankly, he'd figured Barton had a bullet in his lung. The small knife wound somehow seemed anti-climactic as a result, as well as the lack of blood. But everything else Phil could now see – the hyper-expanded chest, the way Barton bucked and heaved under his touch – forced his lips upward in a grim smirk.

Right. Needle decompression. He could do this.

"Barton, can you hear me?" Phil's hands closed first around a pressure bandage, but then shifted to the occlusive dressings he knew were in there. He didn't think the dressing would resolve the trapped air and blood enough to help, but it wouldn't hurt.

He had it ripped open in the next breath.

"This is going to hurt, and I'm sorry, but I'm going to need your help." Without any other warning, Phil had the bandage on Barton's chest. The sniper's eyes opened wide with the pressure, and Phil nodded in response and grabbed Barton's left arm, pulled it across his chest, and slid his own hand off as he slapped Barton's down on top.

"Hold that, and don't move." Phil didn't want to take the time to tape it down yet, not with the way Barton was breathing. All he did was make sure that one corner of the dressing stayed clear of the grip Barton had clamped on with.

"Cou…sn…" The word barely made it through the plastic of mask, but Phil heard it and turned back.

Barton's eyes were half-closed now, and Phil could see the start of purple and blue creeping into the sniper's lips. Dammitall. Without even stopping to think, Phil reached out with his free hand and slapped Barton's cheek – hard enough to get his attention, not enough to hurt.

The response was immediate and gratifying. Barton's eyes flew back open, and then that stare locked onto Phil once again – fear and pain being quickly replaced by not a little awe.

"Better. Listen to me, Barton. I can fix this." Phil knew he could. He'd done it before. "I need two minutes. That's it. You can give me two minutes."

"How…do you…kn…"

"Because you're still here, and you're fighting too damned hard to stay here." Convinced Barton had gotten the point, Phil started rifling through the pack again, talking even as he found what he needed.

"Keep breathing, Barton." A 14-gauge IV catheter, and a syringe. Check. "Focus on that." A pair of gloves, and an alcohol wipe. Phil looked briefly at the drug box, then turned away.

Barton didn't have the time for a painkiller to kick in. Behind him, Phil heard the wheezing note in Barton's lungs grow worse, even as the breaths themselves grew weaker. He turned around, and saw the sniper's eyes had drifted shut.

"Barton." No response.

"Clint." Still no answer.

Fuck. This time, the sniper was out. For a moment, Phil wondered just what the hell else was going on in the kid's body, and then he forced the thought out of his head. It wouldn't matter what else was broken if Phil didn't fix the first item on the priority list.

Pulling a glove quickly onto one hand, he picked up the scissors and cut the thumb off the other, then slid the catheter needle into the latex. Phil sent a quick look toward the sky, and focused on the needle in his hand – hoping the hell what he was about to do would actually work.

Warm.

Clint Barton woke slowly, savoring the warmth around him and pulling a clear, deep breath into his lungs. It had to still be early, or Carson would have rousted them all out of the bunk area. Hell, he would've dumped Clint out first and reminded him that cutting classes as a senior in high school wouldn't look good on his Army application – or make it any easier to take the ASVAB.

To hell with school right now, and to hell with the ASVAB. He was WARM, dammit, and he never woke up warm – not with where Jacques insisted on setting the thermostat. Even with three blankets and a corner bunk, Clint never felt truly warm.

Or for that matter, safe. Too many years on the street – and before that, in a foster home – being forced to sleep lightly in case someone came up on him and decided he'd be better off someplace else.

Four years later, months short of his 18th birthday, Clint wondered if that tiny corner of his mind would ever quit screaming out. Even when he slept, his nights were fractured – fragments of memory, twisted with time, working their way out in his sleep.

Under the pillow, Clint's hand closed silently on the small switchblade he always held close. He wouldn't need it, but it helped simply to know it was there.

In the darkness, he heard a low voice humming a familiar tune. Familiar, but … Clint groaned softly. He didn't want to play 'Guess That Tune' at some ungodly hour of the day. He wanted to sleep.

He swiped his hand at the blanket on his face, pulling it away.

"Kno…kn…" He tried raising his voice, but all that came out was a hoarse cough.

"Kno…i'off."

Next to him, the humming came to a stop.

"About time you decided to rejoin the land of the living, Barton." Clint's hand came to rest not on a blanket, but plastic. His fingers tapped at it, his mind trying to reconcile something there that shouldn't be.

A hand closed over his, and pulled it away.

"Leave it alone, Barton. I'm pretty sure you still need the oxygen, at least for the moment."

Oxygen. An oxygen mask. Clint's hazy mind made the connection, just about the time he realized he really was actually warm – and not hurting, not like he had before, just a dull ache on his right side. He let himself drift on that realization for a moment, and then came another.

"I can breathe." The words came out at that same whisper as before, his voice weak and hoarse. But as he spoke, Clint didn't feel his chest tighten, hungry for air. He didn't need to work for the air now, not like he had before.

Next to him, the voice came back again.

"You say that like it's a surprise." The heavy note of dry wit in the voice clicked another piece of the puzzle home for Clint, and he turned his head slightly to the side, opening his eyes.

Coulson. The agent sat there calmly, his eyes moving with Clint, a half-smirk creasing his face. Clint closed his eyes, not wanting to see the bastard look quite so … satisfied. His mind continued to clear, though, and bits and pieces of the last few hours started to fall back into place.

He'd told Coulson to leave. To leave him behind and not look back. He'd been…he was…

"Wh' d'ya –" What had been a small tickle at the back of Clint's throat erupted into a full-fledged cough. Instinctively, Clint tried to curl in on himself, trying to ward off the pain he knew was coming. Before he could, though, one hand pushed him back to the ground – and the other braced his right side.

The expected spike of pain never materialized. The spasm passed with Coulson's grip firm against his side, and then the pressure let up. Clint turned his head, more awake now than he'd felt since he'd first gotten jumped.

"Wha t' hell, C'lson?" Clint frowned as his words slurred slightly.

The agent reached over and tapped lightly on his right side.

"Occlusive dressing there," and then a second tap, further up and more toward Clint's middle. "Makeshift chest tube there." Clint started to sit up, wanting to see what Coulson had described, but the agent's hand landed on his sternum, pushing him back to the ground.

"No. Nothing you need to have eyes on. Trust me when I say they're there, and that you don't want to move any more than you have to right now." Clint turned his head to look at the agent, and caught the frown on the older man's face as the two locked gazes.

"I'm going to assume for now you didn't know that a knife had actually stabbed you." Clint felt his eyes widen. Stabbed? Fuck, he thought the knife had slid through the opening in the Kevlar and gashed open his side.

Coulson nodded, whatever he'd been thinking apparently confirmed.

"The stab wound created a leak – air into your chest cavity, and a fair bit of blood as well." Coulson continued talking, but Clint saw him reach for something – a small rectangle with a cord trailing off it. "Tension pneumo…well, with the blood, hemo, too." Coulson looked to be reading a display, a soft red glow illuminating his face. Whatever he saw must have satisfied him, because he placed the display back on the ground, and again locked his gaze with Clint.

"Your right lung collapsed, Barton. And that's only part of the damage." Coulson frowned. "You weren't going anywhere, not without a hand up and out. So why were you hell-bent on convincing me you were in some magical state of bliss?"

Clint blinked at Coulson, not following. He'd told the agent to leave him behind, not to risk…not to come back for him. The injuries didn't matter, not now.

"Wh'y'd…come back…" Clint tried shaking his head, and got rewarded with a fresh spike of pain. By way of response, Coulson grabbed his chin, and forced him to look back at him.

The frown had disappeared, but the heat in Coulson's eyes burned.

"If I hadn't come back, you would be dead, Barton. You would have stopped breathing. You almost did anyhow. And that's not all." Coulson grabbed at something, and Clint realized his was his right hand when the agent raised it so Clint could see. His camouflage kerchief was gone, replaced by layers of gauze that already had blood seeping through.

"You have a quarter-inch deep gash from the base of your thumb down into the wrist. It's red and it's swollen, and I can only do so much with saline and antibiotic ointment. It's infected." Coulson lowered Clint's hand, resting it on Clint's chest, and tapped his side again. "I'm reasonably certain you at least cracked a couple of ribs, judging by the bruising, and that knife wound is as swollen and red as your hand."

Coulson continued the inventory in rapid-fire fashion, lifting Clint's left hand so he could see the tubing taped down there, the IV…IV? Clint blinked again, trying to track where the tubing was connected, and ... just how long had he been out, anyhow?

"Three hours, Barton. You were out for THREE hours. That's the last bag of fluids I have in the pack." Coulson stopped for a moment, taking a deep breath. When he continued, his voice had dropped to a deadly soft pitch.

"I flew halfway around the world to attempt a rescue for two people who I couldn't even confirm were still alive, Barton. You can't tell me you wouldn't have done the same thing, because you came out here with me. So why, WHY," and Coulson reached out and tapped Clint's chest, "would you think I would just leave you behind?"

Clint didn't even have to think. The words were out of his mouth almost before the agent had finished talking, and he forced them out as clear as he could manage them.

"You can't save me, Coulson." Clint closed his eyes, suddenly too tired to care. "I don't deserve to be saved."

For a long moment, Coulson let his gaze rest on the rise and fall of Barton's chest, content just to see it moving normally while he tried to comprehend what the young man had just told him. The weak sunlight starting to work its way into the small alcove Barton had somehow stumbled into gave him enough light to see by.

"Barton…you're injured. And you're sick." Both truths, and both more than sufficient reasons for the sniper to be emotionally unstable right now. "I refuse to take the word of a 21-year-old with a 102-degree fever and more holes than a pincushion over my own evaluation."

Behind the oxygen mask, Barton coughed slightly – or scoffed. Coulson really wasn't sure which.

"You should." Barton's voice carried through the mask clearly now, and Coulson recognized that the oxygen and fluids had done enough to revive the sniper far enough to argue. "Before you end up on the list."

Coulson raised an eyebrow in response.

"A list? Do tell."

"Too many…too many people." Barton closed his eyes again, wheezing out a sigh. "Died because of me."

"Barton, I've seen your file. I know about your parents, and how they died." Coulson had done his reading on the jet, as sick as it had made him. He winced slightly and continued. "I've also seen your psych exams, and your intelligence tests, and you dealt with it." Actually, he'd more than dealt with it. Barton could have gone any number of infinitely bad directions after leaving the foster system, but he hadn't. He was here. "Unconventionally, but you dealt with it. You wouldn't be here, serving in the Rangers, if you hadn't."

"Not…not them."

"Then who are you talking about?" Clint's face closed off again, and Phil let out a long, low sigh. No one ever should have had the childhood Barton had – multiple foster homes, the last of which he'd run from, apparently because of abuse, and then life in the goddamned circus. And yet, he'd come through it stronger. He'd survived all that – and now he wanted to give up? It made no sense. He could let this go, haul Barton the hell out of the desert, and let SHIELD's shrinks have a field day. If he did that, though, Barton would be headshrunk out of all possible usefulness – and probably rejected out of hand.

He'd promised Barton a future. He'd meant it as a job, but now it had taken on more meaning. He needed Barton to believe in an immediate future, the next minute, the next 10 minutes, the next hour and each and every hour after that. He needed Barton to fight, and instead, all he wanted to do was quit.

A cold stirring of anger began to rise in Phil's gut. He could not – would not – leave Barton behind, not now – and certainly not for whatever shit reasons Barton couldn't reconcile himself with. He looked down at the sniper again, and saw Barton staring at the entrance to the cave, ignoring Coulson, lost in whatever thoughts were going through his half-baked mind.

No, Phil wouldn't leave him. But until he got behind the why of matter, he couldn't convince Barton of that.

So, Phil would do what he did best. He grabbed Barton's chin, and turned his face back toward Phil's, making sure Barton could see the bastard smirk and the cold, ruthless determination on his face.

"We've got a little time until that IV finishes, Barton. You get that long to explain this to me, to convince me to leave you here." Barton tried to pull away, but Phil tightened his grip.

"You want to convince me you're not worth it, you're going to start talking, Barton." Coulson let the smile drift a touch higher, just enough to make it seem like a grin.

This time, Barton didn't fight him. Under his grip, the sniper pulled in a few shallow breaths, and his eyes widened when he realized Phil wasn't going to back off. For a moment, another emotion dwelled there – pain, raw disbelief that Coulson had decided to let him prove his case.

Phil almost broke at that look, but before he could, Barton closed his eyes, and huffed out a breath, fogging the oxygen mask.

"Fine." Barton's tone grew bitter. "You wanna know, you'll know. Then it's over."

"No…nononono!"

Even as the heat of the explosion rolled over him, singeing his eyebrows and what little beard had grown in 24 hours, Clint scrambled to his feet. They were the only group out here – the small forward base that could, McDermid had dubbed them – and unless some fuckhead terrorists had run over their OWN BOMB, that meant those were his people down there.

His people, burning.

His FRIENDS – who had probably come out looking for him when he didn't check in. Fear, pure and unadulterated, fueled Clint's sprint down the remainder of the hill and into the road. He didn't even bother watching his footing now. If the bad guys had buried another IED, so be it.

He got within 10 yards of the flaming wreckage of the Humvee before the heat forced him to pull up short, every exposed surface of his skin feeling like it had caught fire. He turned away, sobbing and dropping to his knees.

"No…God, please…HELP!" Clint wanted to turn back, come at it from another angle, but something in the wreckage shifted with an audible "pop," and Clint flattened himself to the ground again as an explosion rocked the vehicle a second time.

God, who was in there when it blew?

Fuel tank, thought Clint uselessly, panting in the heat as he pulled himself along the packed dirt, away from the heat, aiming for the slight culvert that ran alongside the road. He finally reached it and pulled himself over and down, cool air and damp ground rushing up to meet him.

"Fun…funny meetin' …y'here…" The voice made Clint jump, and the hand that touched his arm a fraction of a second later made him jump further. But he knew that voice, and even as he turned, a rush of relief flooded his system.

"Collins." Clint had his backpack shrugged off in less than a second, searching for his small flashlight, wanting to see his friend in something other than the first gray hints of dawn. "Jesus, I thought everyone was dead."

Next to him, Collins coughed.

"Everyone … everyone else…" Collins coughed again, weaker this time. And as Clint's hand finally closed around the light and thumbed on the switch, his brain refused to process what he was seeing – even as Collins continued to talk.

"McDermid and I … thought you were…" Clint's eyes landed on the blood first, blood that seemed to paint the ground around his friend. "Leave it … t'you…shit duty run…and you can't…" Then Clint started really seeing Collins. His face, pale – God, almost white. His chest, panting with exertion. "Two others…they were…they…hit a bump…in the…road." Clint ran the light down the rest of Collins' body, and stopped at what remained Collins' right leg.

"Wha…what happened…" Collins tried to turn, looked where Clint was looking, then collapsed back to the ground. Clint swished the light back up to Collins' face.

"No, Collins, you don't get to do this." In his terror, Clint gave up all pretense of digging for his medical supplies and instead just unzipped his pack and dumped it upside down. Using his flashlight, he grabbed first package of clotting factor, ripping it open and dumping it on the mangled stump of Collins' right leg. Then his hands closed on the pressure bandage. He ripped it open, and looked at the wad of material.

Pressure bandage were meant for wounds. How the hell did you wrap it around something that just didn't exist anymore?

Fuck it. Clint grabbed the whole thing and shoved it against the stump. Collins squirmed weakly, gagging with pain.

"B'rtn, stop." Collins' hands flailed uselessly against Clint's grip, trying to push him away but more like uselessly slapping weakly against Clint's wrists. "No…not…gonna…help –"

"Yes, it will." Even as he said it, Collins' word sunk into his brain. His leg was gone. Clint kept the pressure on the leg, and reached for his pack, wanting the radio. They needed a medic. The camp would've heard the explosion, would be scrambling a team, but he needed to radio for a …

"The radio's dead." Clint dropped the flashlight and turned back to Collins, looking down even as he reflexively clamped tighter on the leg wound. "That's why you couldn't reach me…the damned thing died."

Collins coughed again, weaker.

"F'gures." Collins tried to reach out with a hand, but couldn't even lift his fingers off the ground now. Quickly, Clint slid his free hand into his friend's, gripping his hand and wrist in a tight grip, wanting to reassure.

Wanting to anchor his friend in the here and now.

"Just…hold on." Clint rejected the logical side of his brain starting to talk to him. He had pressure on the leg wound. All he needed to do was keep pressure. "Collins, they're coming. You know they are."

"Not…not soon enough." The sky had been growing incrementally brighter, and Clint could see his friend's face clearer now. Collins' eyes were still open somehow, and those eyes locked with Clint's with a single-minded purpose.

"No…not your fault, Barton." In Clint's hand, Collins' gripped started to loosen slightly. "Ke..keep up…R'bin…od. Guys…th…they love it. Nel…Nelson's a …pri…" The words trailed off, all of Collins' effort spent on breathing now.

"No." Clint breathed out the word, his grip on his friend's hand now bruising. "Collins, stay with me, please. They're coming, do you hear me?"

Collins looked right at him. Clint would swear it later. His mouth opened, a little spray of blood coming out with an almost impreceptable cough.

And then those eyes…they went blank. And Collins' chest, mid-rise, stopped and pushed out a breath – and didn't take another.

"NO." Clint let go of the pressure bandage, moving up to his friend's chest. Both hands landed on the straps of Collins' flak vest, ripping open the Velcro and pulling the front half up and away. "Not letting you, Collins. Fucking not letting you."

Clint leaned over, placing two fingers on the carotid, feeling for a pulse at the same time he listened for a breath. He found neither.

He could do this. He had to do this. Adrenaline flew into Clint's blood stream. Keep Collins going until the medics got here. Clint found the sternum with his fingers, moved two fingers up. Placed his left hand, and then his right on top of it.

"Push hard. If you're doing CPR, you have to make sure the compressions do their job." The words of the instructor in basic came back to him. "Don't be afraid of hurting them, or if you hear or feeling things breaking. Ribs breaking are normal in CPR. You're keeping them alive."

Fifteen compressions, hard, compressing the chest. Making Collins' heart work for him. Then he stopped, made sure Collins' airway was open, and pinched the nose shut and delivered two breaths.

Then back to the chest.

He could do this.

He had to do this.

"They pulled me off'm." Clint's voice, now at the end of his tale, sounded dead to Phil. The slur had also started to creep back in. "Fought 'em, tried to ge'back. Medic took over, then…just stopped."

Phil looked down at Barton, trying to understand. He'd known all this. Well, not the reason Barton was out on the night surveillance, but it didn't surprise him – either the reason or the fact that McDermid had gone that route. Unofficial, off-the-record punishments ruled the day when you wanted to make a point but not screw up someone's career.

He raised an eyebrow at the sniper, who somehow managed to roll his eyes before they drifted shut.

"'Nother wound, back. CPR jus…ripped…heart, lung…somethin' like that. So…so intent on…trying to save him, didn' … see all the blood comin' out…under his back." Clint coughed again. "All…on me. Should've looked."

"Barton, you're not a medic. And I saw the report. Collins died of exsanguination. Blood loss, Barton. From the leg wound. The femoral artery was laid wide open. Nothing you could've done. Even the pressure bandage was like trying to stop a river with a paper cup."

"B'llsh." Barton didn't open his eyes, just muttered under the oxygen mask. "Coulda…not been there. Coulda…known the radio…shoulda…known…the roa …my fault. Killed Collins. Killed McDer…why t' fuck…those two…coulda sent…'nyone…they…cared."

Barton heaved in a shaky breath, then spat out the next words.

"Cared about me. Cared. I got them killed."

Phil closed his eyes against the sudden rush of emotion. That was it, wasn't it? Everyone – from his parents to his brother to that mentor in the circus who had died weeks before his high school graduation, Collins and McDermid – who had ever bothered to care about Barton had died. And when Barton had gone down here, he hadn't seen a way to keep anyone else from caring except to push them away.

This time, Phil hauled in the shaky breath. How the fuck did you refute reasoning like that? It hit too close to home. Barrett, Callahan…and everyone else Phil had lost over the years suddenly took up residence in his head. They haunted him every damned day, and he let them drive him – to push him to be the agent he not only wanted to be, but that everyone else thought he could be.

Who he had to be to survive.

And suddenly, with a flash of memory – the rapport of an Uzi, a last gasped breath, gunpowder and blood and the smell of death – Phil knew how he could get Clint to fight a little further.

"Maybe it's time you heard someone else's story, Barton."

Author's note: This chapter is dedicated to the men and women who have encountered the terrible weapon of war known as the IED – improved explosive device – and those who work to clear them and save others from the same fate.