A/N: Hello my darlings. Sorry for the wait.
It'll probably be a while until the next update, too, so sorry about the cliffhanger. I'm very busy with various sporting arrangements at the moment, and all my time has gone.
Many thanks to katiebug0410, Minecraft Guardiansaiyan, Wolfsdrache, and to the Guest, who all took the time to leave reviews. Thanks also to the followers and to those who added this story to their favourites list.
Enjoy and please review!
Thanks!
Ten days later
"I'm going running," Clint shouts at five in the morning, effectively waking up the whole house.
"Want breakfast?" Natasha yells back. Evidently this is some sort of routine. Tony hates routines. And people. And waking up. Who gets up at five in the morning to go running?
"Save me something," he calls, thundering down the stairs. When the front door slams, there is a collective sigh of relief. Silence.
It lasts for all of ten seconds, when Thor suddenly decides to get up as well, and movement from Bruce and Steve's room suggests it might be time for some early morning painkillers.
Well, shit.
If this ends up happening every morning, Tony will be gone by the end of the week, bomb threat to his life or not. (And he's ninety-seven percent sure he is the target - who else is it going to be?) He buries his head under the pillow and sleeps for fifteen more minutes, by which time the bathroom next door to him is in full use. "Fuck all of you," he grunts, dragging himself out of bed and ending up in a collapsed heap on the floor.
By the time he has managed to pick himself up and stagger into the kitchen, Bruce has made him a cup of coffee. He accepts it without any thanks, instead taking a sizeable gulp. "What the hell, Bruce!" he yelps, slamming the offensive mug on the table with more force than strictly necessary, scalding his own hand in the process. Muttering obscenities under his breath, he makes his way to the sink to run it under cold water. "What the hell did you put in there?!"
"Boiling water," says Bruce, quite calmly, barely suppressing his laughter.
"Most people find it hot," Natasha adds with a grin.
Thor comes down next. "Well, this is early," he says. "What's for breakfast?"
"Whatever you make," Natasha retorts.
"I'll cook," says a voice from the doorway. They all turn.
"Steve!" Bruce says, jumping up and offering the man his chair. "You could have called for help!"
"Yeah, I didn't want to sound like an old guy. I'm good."
He certainly looks better. His cheeks have colour in them, and his eyes are brighter than when Tony last saw him - though this was, admittedly, four days ago. He sits easily. "Where's Clint?"
"Running," Natasha says. "Didn't you hear him this morning?"
"It's been an hour."
"He normally takes a while when he has something on his mind. Once he ran seventeen miles with no endurance training. He was in bed all of the next day, but he did manage to find a way to convict a serial killer."
"Great," Tony says. "Wow. Amazing."
"Do I detect sarcasm?" Bruce grins. "Or is it jealousy?"
Tony splutters. "I'm Tony Stark. Why the hell would I have any reason to be jealous of a guy like him?"
"And there we have a fine specimen of the I'm too fabulous for all you peasants people. They're one of my favourites," Steve cuts in briskly.
Tony's eyes flash. He knows that sometimes he oversteps the line, but these people are supposed to be his friends - or at least allies in all of this. While he made a fleeting joke, that clearly nobody takes seriously anyway, some of the remarks he always seems to get back are more than icy.
"I'm going back to bed," he groans, closing his eyes. He has an idea for a new type of tranquilliser gun brewing in his mind, and he needs peace and quiet to think.
Four hours later, he has it. Sheets of paper are thrown at various places around the room (he made a target with Clint's face on it, revenge for his rude awakening) around the room, and he's just crumpling up another one when he realises that it has the right formula on it. Slowly, slowly, not daring to breathe, he unfolds it. "Yes!" he shrieks, at a pitch he was previously unaware he was capable of. His phone, where's his phone ...
Crap. No external communications.
He finds a pot of pins and tacks the paper to his bedroom wall none the less. He'll do the specs for the gun itself later, but first, breakfast. It's now almost ten in the morning. His stomach is practically caving in.
He ambles back downstairs.
"Why the long faces?" he asks. They are sat around the kitchen table silently, drinking coffee with grim expressions.
"Clint," Natasha says, by way of explanation.
"Still not back?"
"Oh, yes, he's just in the shower," she snaps sarcastically.
"I'm sure he'll be fine, you said so yourself - "
"I'm going looking for him." She stands up.
"Natasha, don't," Thor says. "It's cold and we don't know he's in trouble."
"He'll die of exposure if he's stopped for too long," she says. "And we don't know he's not in trouble, either."
This, as far as Tony can see, is a fairly valid point; he's out there with no phone or other way of communication, and the landscape is so monotonous that it would be all too easy to get lost. On the other hand, seventeen miles is a long way to go, and it's entirely plausible that he may still be out there without a care in the world.
"Give it another half hour," Bruce soothes. "I'm sure he's fine."
"Right." Her expression is unreadable.
"Seriously, though," Steve says uneasily. "What if he's broken his ankle or something? We should at least fan out for a mile or so and try to spot him."
"You shouldn't be doing anything, Captain," frowns Thor. "Not with an injury like that."
"As if you're one to talk." Tony is quick on the uptake. "Mr. I don't need a crutch for my injured leg."
"Guys," Bruce says, dangerously close to what can only be an attack.
They all calm down slightly, for his sake. Tony is not prepared for a full scale freak out.
"Let's just go," Natasha says, somewhat irritated, but at that moment the front door creaks open.
Clint wakes up with a pounding headache. It is not an average headache, that's for sure; it comes only to people who have seen and done to much to ever be able to think openly and innocently again. He knows Natasha gets them too, because you have to be driven by something terrible to do a circuit fitness session so intense it could probably kill someone less fit. Steve, too, from the state of their makeshift punching bag set up in the living room.
He prefers to run.
Something good always seems to come from the steady pounding of footsteps on the ground, something pure and whole. After a few miles one's body starts to work for itself, flying along, harsh breaths barely felt. The runner is left entirely to his or her own thoughts, or - if they prefer not to be - it is one of the rare occasions when they really can think nothing at all, focusing on breathing or strides or pain or not stopping ... he's always found it beautiful.
Just not quite as beautiful as the subsequent rush of endorphins that miraculously cure him every single time.
When he registers that it is early, but that the sun barely sets in the Alaskan summers, he decides to go now and save himself from the endless voice and words and memories that plague his worst days.
They knew what they were getting themselves into when they signed their respective contracts. They'd lost count of the agencies they'd worked for, and that this new one was a sort of jumble of several different ones was of little consequence. They called it the SHIELD program. A group of highly specified individuals: assassins, technicians, scientists ... it was estimated that there were about sixty of them in total.
But every job like Clint and Natasha's is going to have psychological drawbacks. In the films, they're always fine, the heroes or the super spies or whatever. But things like that don't just go away. In this line of business, right and wrong is a grey area. One doesn't look down the sights of one's gun at a man with his child and think, this is wrong. One looks and thinks, I'm here for a reason. The government does not like this man. One also often thinks, if I don't do this I'll lose my job, only I know so many national secrets that I'm probably a threat to global security, so as soon as I'm out they'll have me partner put me down.
There are so many regrets and bad decisions and good decisions that are still bad and decisions Clint has never actually made that some days he can't deal with it. Of course, he has regular counselling - it's mandatory with this program - but it is largely a waste of time. There's little you can do but work around it, so that's what Clint does.
The fresh air is bracing, if not downright Baltic, so he sets off at a fairly moderate pace, music blaring in his headphones, into the distance. He has no idea where he is going, but if he keeps running in a straight enough line he won't get lost. His call sign is Hawkeye. (Natasha begs to differ; she prefers to affectionately call him Pigeon from time to time.)
By the time he's run six miles, he's ready to turn back.
He slows, then stops, ready to catch a small breather before heading back to the house. His eyes are slightly hard to focus, and he feels a little dizzy. It's natural, but he sits down, just to be safe. The grass is pleasantly cool, in the same way that a freezer is until you get cold.
There is a sharp prick at the back of his neck. "Shit!" he yells, jumping upright, but everything is spinning. The ground tilts and he slams into it.
How could he have not noticed? He's trained for this sort of thing!
Anger pulsates through him; he manages to drag himself into a slumped sitting position; he is grabbed roughly from behind; he swings a sluggish fist at his assailant, but it is slow, too slow ...
Clint is not fully aware of either losing or in fact regaining consciousness, but when his eyes refocus he is taped to a chair in a tent, shirtless and shoeless. A tent. Presumably his captors are in the middle of a financial crisis, and though this makes it a lot less difficult for him to escape, he almost regrets it, because he is freezing. As in, colder than being able to shiver. His hands and feet are numb.
This is unfortunate because, while he is practically Houdini in his ability to untie himself from anything, it pays to have fingers that work. He tries to will the life back into them and simultaneously fights the urge to vomit, no doubt a less than helpful side effect of whatever hellish concoction they brewed up and stabbed into Clint's neck. He takes a few deep breaths and listens to what is going on around him. It is quiet; there is the soft crackle of a fire, but not much else.
He stands up as best he can and then slams himself down again. Nothing happens, so he does it again. And again. On the sixth try, his backside, legs, tailbone and head aching, it breaks. How Natasha can do it so easily is beside him.
He still has splintered pieces of wood taped to his arms and legs but tears out of the tent anyway. His captors have, of course, heard him by now, and there is a great deal of shouting and gunfire. One of them manges to grab his arm but he yanks it away, the sharp, rugged edge of the wood ripping the skin of his arm like a knife. Even with adrenaline on his side, it hurts like a bitch. He's dizzy again - from the drugs or the cut, he's not sure, but his bare feet are slamming into the ground with more force than they should be able to bear and he doesn't have a clue where he is. The satellite phone he brought with him for emergencies is gone.
Still, a lesson from his SHIELD Academy days rings through his head. Does anyone know what the best thing to do if you're compromised is? their instructor asked. The class was silent (humiliation was inevitable if ever somebody answered a question wrong). Well, then, Weatherby spat. You're all idiots. You knee them in the balls and run like fucking hell.
At least hell is hot. Clint could do with something to warm him up.
The men fall back, or so it seems, but he can hear things whistling past his ears, things that can only be more tranquilliser darts. Interesting. They evidently need him alive. But for what? They're in the middle of nowhere, on government-owned land ...
He runs.
At one point he turns. There is nobody behind him.
Some time later, he doubles over and vomits what is left of last night's dinner. This gives him an opportunity to catch a glimpse of his wounded arm, and it begins to sting. And then it begins to hurt like he has knives repeatedly stabbing it. He only feels more nauseous, and as the adrenaline wears off he gets up and runs further.
He runs two miles. Three.
Something is keeping him from from stopping.
Shit, is that the house?
He could laugh out loud for joy or confusion or the sheer serendipity of the situation, but he doesn't. He slows down to a walk and limos towards the door, his aching, rubbed raw feet ready to drop him where he is.
He practically falls on top of the door handle, pushing down with all the force he has left, and it creaks open agonisingly slowly. "Tasha," he calls, collapsing onto the carpet of the hallway. "Come help."
Then he passes out.
It's only for a few seconds, but it feels like a lifetime. He dreams of something, something he can't quite put his finger on, with dark shapes and strange colours swirling round him, and confusion and loss and dizziness until he hears his partner's voice and surfaces back into reality again, gasping for air.
"Shit," he hears Tony say unhelpfully from a way off.
He's on his back. Natasha and Dr. Banner are knelt over him and two pairs of concerned eyes stare into his.
"Space," Clint croaks, and Nat jumps into action, shooing the rest of the group away and putting one of his arms around her shoulders. She helps him into the living room and lays him down on a couch.
"What happened?" she asks. Bruce brings in a first aid kit; she takes and sends him away, shutting the door behind him.
"Someone drugged me ... I woke up in a tent."
She raises an eyebrow. He shrugs.
"Got out and ran. They cut me. I got back to the house. I don't know how."
"Okay."
She starts removing the tape from his arms and legs and throwing the pieces of wooden chair onto the firewood pile. Then she opens the first aid kit. The first thing she pulls out is a syringe, and she pauses. "You want painkillers or not?"
Since he doesn't know exactly what drugs are in his system, he shakes his head. She walks over to the drinks cabinet and pulls out a bottle of vodka. He takes a swig and then hands it back to her.
She hands him a wad of fabric.
He bites down on it.
She puts his forearm above a large bowl and rinses it with alcohol.
He bites harder.
She starts to pick splinters out of the cut with tweezers.
This routine is so familiar to them that they need not talk; he knows what is coming and she knows what to do. There is something relaxing in it, something reassuring in knowing that no matter what cuts him, she'll always be there to stitch him up, and he'll always be there for her. Their silence is one of absolute trust.
Natasha is just about to pick up the needle when she pauses and sticks the tweezers deeper underneath his skin. He groans and it starts to bleed more. "Almost there," she hisses through gritted teeth, and pulls out something else.
It isn't a splinter.
They both stare as she drops a tracking chip onto the plate, and Clint notices for the first time that something is in his pocket.
He pulls it out.
It is almost certainly a small bomb.