a/n: added a little bit to this one, not much. having a little perspective shift over the next couple chapters!

Thank you to:::

BoomerCat, Lillehafrue, khaitosfren, Hamato Alexa, Batghost, comicsans-spideydehaanfan, all my guests!, discordchick, Ms. Hawkeye, BecauseImBatman108, IWriteSinsOrTragedies, shadowhuntingdauntlessdemigod, NorthernMage, Qweb, TheNaggingCube, JRBarton

jensmit75 (I absolutely loved writing about him ordering a cheeseburger while sitting on the cutting board.)

Akane Izo (aw thank you! I really love how that chapter came out too!)

Friends Check for Bullet Wounds

Chapter 8

Day One Post-Op, 10:25am

Clint rolled over in his bed, or tried to. He smelled that familiar, aseptic scent and instantly his brain cylinders started pumping on high alert. His hand clamped hold of something. It was hard but movable. A weapon, maybe, if he needed it. The room was dark. The men who took him liked to keep it dark, thinking the disorientation would keep him calm and complacent. Those words meant nothing to Clint. He had one purpose, one goal, one steady repetition in his life and that was the ever present need to get out. He would escape in a hail of gunfire, take a dozen chest shots if he had to, but he was going to get out either walking or in a body bag.

"Easy, slugger, that's my arm." It was another unfamiliar voice in the sea of comers and goers. At first there was only one man. A typical torture technique. He began to hate that individual he never had a name for. He was the object of all of Clint's rage as Barton endured the constant, unending suffering under that man's ministrations. He called him Carver for what he'd done to Tomslin. It felt like weeks before that agent died attached to Clint's arm. He could still feel the nails digging into his flesh before the agent's fingers were taken away. He could still hear Carver's words echoing in his brain in the darkness of the hospital room.

"You're next."

"Not long now, Barton."

"Your time's coming."

"Only one leg left Barton, when Tomslin's gone, you're next."

"Tomslin's dead, Clint."

"I'm coming back. We're starting on you tomorrow."

Clint pulled harder at that potential weapon, only to find it pulling back. Someone was holding him. Carver must have come back. It was his turn. His time. He would start with his fingers, snapping them off one at a time before moving to Barton's toes. He could scream and shout, beg and cry, but nothing would stop what he knew was coming. His life was over. His eyes flicked open and he lunged all at once. Sternum met palm, and Clint never made it more than an inch off the mattress. He wanted to fight, he threw a punch, tried to kick. If these guys weren't going to kill him outright he would find a reason to make them. At this point he couldn't be picky. SHIELD wasn't coming for him, and even if they did, he'd be half dead by then. He refused to live the rest of his life as nothing but a torso.

Over him the voices kept talking. He tried to focus on their faces but it was difficult in the darkness.

Someone asked, "What did Tony say? Oh, the ties. No, don't tie him, I've got it. He's coming around. Clint, it's Steve. It's the Captain."

"You're doing it wrong. You have to pretend like he's back there and bring him around that way."

A strong body was holding him down and Clint wanted desperately to slam a knuckle into the man's face. Two people were talking now and he tried to get his eyes to zero in on them. He didn't care if there were two or a hundred. He was getting out and he was getting what remained of Tomslin out with him.

"Agent Barton, you can stop fighting now. You're back in our hands. The mission is over. I need you to do me a favor, Agent Barton. I need you to let go of Captain Roger's arm. It's in your left hand. Can you open your hand for me?"

The automatic quality of that tone brought Clint to an abrupt stop. Didn't he recognize that voice?

"Agent Barton, open your left hand."

"I don't mind if he grabs me, Bruce, it's not like he can hurt me."

"The next time he grabs someone it might be me, or Tony, or Pepper. We're trying to break fifteen years of bad habits, here, not inspire them to continue."

Clint considered those voices arguing back and forth in concerned whispers. Now that he thought about it, they did sound the slightest bit familiar. Clint blinked the world into some kind of focus again. The room was still dark, but it didn't have the same black out quality he'd been used to for so long. He adjusted his wrist a little. He couldn't hear the jingle of the metal handcuffs. He moved his right hand a measure and there was no resistance of Tomslin's dead weight dragging against his. The soft voice continued to ask him something. To open his left hand. Eventually Clint complied. A face materialized in the dark.

"Bruce?" he asked.

The hand on Clint's chest retracted.

"That's right." Bruce applauded. He sounded exhausted.

"Where am I? What am I doing here?" Clint asked. He considered sitting up again, but the hand returned to press him down. It belonged to Steve. Just behind him, Natasha was perched on a cabinet with a doctor standing in front of her face, sewing something back together. She smiled at him.

"Clint, you were in a knife fight. You lost. You were in surgery for fourteen hours. Do you remember waking up?" Bruce asked.

"Wasn't Stark here?" Clint asked, trying to work through his disorientation.

"For a little while he was. I sent him to bed. He's been awake for the past twenty-eight hours."

Clint looked up at Steve. "Where'd you come from?"

"Finland." Steve said with a smile.

"Finland? My Finland? My note for Thor, Finland?" Clint asked. He tried to look around Steve at Natasha. When did she show up?

"Yeah. That was real clever of you telling Balfore that Thor was hiding out in probably the most remote area of that country. Made it a little easier for us to take him down. Natasha made a pit stop in DC on her way back from Atlanta and stole a jet to take us out. Seems like you got her right when she sat down for her flight home." Steve replied.

"Should have seen the flight attendants face when I forced her to taxi us back." Natasha said.

"Yeah, well, I thought it was a pretty clever idea too. That's why I did it." Clint reached up and rubbed his face. He wanted to see Natasha a little better, but Steve was in the way, and she wasn't coming closer. There was an oxygen mask strapped over his nose again, something that he always detested. He wanted to get up, get out of this horrid smelling place and go back home. Then again, he didn't exactly have a home anymore. Thor dropped a Chitauri monster on it months back. He wanted to do anything besides sit in his bed.

But, despite all the things Barton might have wanted to do, he simply couldn't. His body required rest and it was going to get it whether he agreed or not. Steve's hand slipped against his palm as the Captain leaned a little closer.

"It's all right, Clint. We've got you."

He tried to say something witty or sarcastic but the words flew away under the heavy shades of sleep stealing in.

:(:):(:):

Second Day Post-Op 1:43am

"Is that him?" Natasha asked, sitting forward in her chair.

Bruce groaned from his spot on the floor. He rolled over, dragging the blanket he'd grabbed from his room onto his shoulders. Natasha called his name to try and rouse the doctors, though Bruce continued to stuff his head under his pillow. Giving up, Natasha let him sleep.

This had been an occurrence every hour or so with Clint struggling out of his cat naps to fight the world of demons he saw around him. Over time, though, Bruce's gentle coaxing seemed to be making an impact. He was strangely attentive, determined to take over Clint's primary care like a surgical resident muscling into a heart transplant. Pepper stopped by for a few hours to force some lunch into him, but for the most part Bruce and his procured chair were a single entity. Clint would shuffle awake, Bruce got to his feet, and he'd go on coaxing Barton into a sane state. Clint had to ask for his cuffs to come off, and once he did, Bruce followed through and took them off. Positive reinforcement, he called it. When Clint was in his normal senses again, Natasha planned to ask just what he thought about being trained like a Papillion. The results couldn't be argued with. In the past, Barton never stayed more than twelve minutes on his back without trying to strangle someone. Doctor's hated working his cases. His medical file even contained a "sedate and strap on entry" tag. The only other time she'd ever seen that on a file was for the—

Natasha ended her line of thought with a glance at Bruce on the floor. Ok, now things were beginning to fall into place. Clint in a hospital could very well be compared to a Hulk. She'd never thought of it that way. Bruce was keenly familiar with attempts to talk people out of explosive reactions. This might be the first time he tried it on someone beside himself. He stopped tying Clint down seven hours before. That was a world record.

She scooted her chair closer to Clint's side and draped her hand against the back of his. He jerked away automatically but didn't immediately snap her fingers back. Small improvements were beautiful to see.

"Don't worry, I'm not here to steal your kidneys." She whispered to him. She neglected to say what she really thought, that Tomslin was dead. He'd been dead for over a decade whether Clint's muddled brain wanted to figure that out or not. She knew what he'd gone through in that old chop shop, and not because Clint told her. She'd been curious enough to go digging up a non-redacted file about the incident. Took her three months to track the information down. Fury was mad, which she expected. He'd taken special care of burying Clint's history. The gory details were well worth the trouble taken to keep them out of general knowledge.

Clint struggled a little more as she continued to whisper to him. By this point she'd repeated the words enough times to make it worth her while to cut an mp3. They'd call it "Hawkeye's Wake Up Hits". He might smile at that when he actually woke up.

She rested her hand on his shoulder and held his arm down. The IV tubing was dancing through the air as he struggled to free himself from it. Since it was the one feeding him morphine, she figured preventing its removal was the best course of action.

"Tash?" Clint asked, noticing her after some time.

She smiled, propping her elbow beside his hand and dropping her chin into its palm. "Didn't have to say it in Russian."

He moaned, trying to turn over, though the pain and exhaustion stopped him. "Russian?"

"You called me. I don't know if you remember. I saved the message. Avenge you. You actually said you wanted me to avenge you. I thought it was funny until you said goodbye." She picked at an invisible piece of lint on the sheet. "You never said that before."

"You need to change your voicemail." He replied. He could clearly see her at his arm. He imagined if she was comfortable enough to share her private thoughts, they must also be alone. Someone was snoring though and he couldn't see who that might be.

Natasha considered him for a moment. "Why? What does it say? It's not like I call my own phone."

"You were mad at me. Apparently you won't call me back unless I'm dead."

She stifled a laugh. "Did that injure your keen sensibilities?"

"No, it made me think I was going to die."

Natasha stopped picking at the blanket. Her eyes rested on him. There was a struggle hiding there under the cooling blue. "You were worried."

He tried to shrug. His face tightened in a grimace. She wanted to say something to end the tension between them, but Clint beat her to it. "What happened to your head?"

Natasha sat back against her chair and tucked her hands behind her head. Red frizz escaped her ponytail and showed off the five stitches. A circular bruise formed around them. "I'm going to blame you on that one. The directions were good. I blew by here for a bit and picked up Thor and Steve along the way. Glad I grabbed the muscle. I'm not sure what was SHIELD's deal on this one. They really botched your handling. When I told Fury I was going in whether he wanted me to or not, he didn't even put up an argument. I think he was mad at himself over it. You should call him when you feel better. Clint?"

She straightened a little. "Clint?"

He wore himself out after a few seconds of listening and right back to sleep he'd gone. Natasha smiled, slipping her hand into his while he slept. He would always be her pain. She owed him that much for all he'd done to prove her character when SHIELD just wanted to shoot her first and decide her true allegiances later. Clint made a different call, Fury supported him. Case closed. The least she could do for him was to sit at his side and help banish his inner demons back into the shadows. They could always keep her own demons comfortable there.

:(:):(:):

Second Day Post-Op 7:12pm

"I want a cheeseburger." Clint groaned into his arm. He'd yanked the oxygen mask off again, determined to not spend one more moment under its cool air currents. He rubbed against the long strip of white bandages over his chest, moaning again.

"You're on full liquid diet still. As for edibles, you have two options. Pudding or jello." Tony said, combing through a copy of Forbes magazine beside him. He glanced up over the splayed open book. "You feeling ok? You're doing an awful lot of writhing over there."

Clint kept his head under his free arm and tried to stop complaining. It didn't work. " 's fine." He muttered depressingly.

Tony snapped the magazine closed. "You're supposed to be on pain drugs. Are they not working?"

"Mmm." Clint hummed, trying to find a good way to lie. In the end he blatantly gave up. "Nope. They're not. I feel like someone snapped my rib in half. Why do I still have a tube in my chest?"

Tony reached forward and stopped Clint's hand as the archer made to pull the offending article out. "Oh, no you don't. You yank that, they stick another in. And you didn't exactly want the first one." He raised his voice to carry into the hall where Bruce stood discussing patient follow-up care with Dr. Jackson. "Can we get some drugs in here? A little crack with a side of downers maybe?"

Clint snorted, attempting to laugh but inhaled sharply when the move sent an electric current of pain through him. Tony noticed it too and he squeezed Clint's shoulder gently. The door opened and Dr. Jackson leaned inside. "Something up, Mr. Stark?"

"Yeah an empty happy cocktail bag. The Hawk's squirming around like something's pulling his guts out."

Clint groaned. "Oh, don't say that."

"Why not? I think it's fitting."

Clint's head suddenly appeared from under his arm. He grabbed the side rail on the bed and tried to lean right over toward the floor. "No, guts. Sick. Think I'm about to lose it."

Jackson strode in with Bruce and they set to checking Clint's IV access. Tony scrambled to grab the trash bin and held it up to Clint's face. Half a second later, all the meals Clint missed came back up in a liquid form. Tony arched his head back and buried his nose in his shirt to avoid the sights and smells coming out of the archer now. Clint collapsed back into his bed and Tony shoved the bin into the hallway.

"Oh, that was bad. That hurt. That really hurt." Clint groaned, pressing a palm to his forehead. His chest felt like it was on fire, not to mention what the rest of his organs were up to. The others continued to talk around him but he stopped paying them any attention. Ignoring the pain was more important.

"Agent Barton, it looks like all that tugging finally did your catheter in. It's plugged up. I'm going to move your pain medication to the opposite arm until I can replace it. Still feeling nauseous?"

Clint's head bobbed against his arm.

"Planning to throw up again?"

"Ugh, I sure hope not."

"I'll try and get something for that too. Just hang out for a bit."

The doctor exchanged the lines of hanging medications, adding the second line to Clint's right hand for the pain medication to start flowing again. While he worked to fix the immediate problem, Bruce removed Clint's first catheter. It had been hurriedly placed initially and Barton had spent the majority of his time trying to yank out of it.

"Clint, I'm using a different vein. This one's going on the side of your hand." Bruce told him.

The archer groaned again. "Awe come on . . . I hate the side."

"Sorry, that's the breaks. I'll use a smaller one, though. How's that sound?"

"Still like you're ramming a needle wrapped in plastic under my skin." One blue eye suddenly flipped open to stare at Tony. "Hey, you know what I just realized? Catheters have a lot in common with condoms."

Tony snorted. Clint hadn't spent more than half an hour fully conscious since his surgery and still he found a way to crack a joke. These were the longest conversations Tony had ever shared with Barton. Over time, he had grown to discover a few fascinating things. He had a sarcasm sharp enough to hone a blade by and he acted unlike any SHIELD agent Tony ever knew. Lying, conniving, stealing into people's lives were things that Tony knew SHIELD agents did well. Clint Barton was surprisingly plain for lack of a better word. If Tony didn't know something about him, it was because the billionaire simply didn't ask the right question. It might have taken a few of their small talks, but Tony decided that he rather liked the archer. Standing next to him, Tony could tell Clint was suffering but he still did everything he could to put everyone else at ease about it.

"I hate waking up in here. I want my couch back. When can I get you guys to leave so I can sneak off?"

The seriousness of Clint's tone gave Tony some pause. He leaned on the bed rail. "Really? What is it, the steel grey walls? The constant beep of your heart monitor in time with the inflation of your blood pressure cuff, which by the way, you have kept on for more than an hour."

Clint took his hand from where Bruce was attempting to apply a sterile scrub and pulled the Velcro off on his blood pressure cuff and threw it as far as its attachment would go. Bruce counted to three to avoid his edge of frustration at Clint's blatant outburst and took the hand back to start scrubbing all over again.

Tony looked down at the cuff on the floor. "Well, that was mature."

"I hate hospitals." Clint repeated. "Whether you built them or not. I want out of this place."

"That's not happening until the doctors clear you. In the meantime, are you planning to pass out again before I come back with your choice of raspberry Jello or banana pudding?" Tony asked.

The blue eye shut. "Are those really my only choices?"

"Until I find a way to create a cheeseburger flavored pudding, then yes. They are."

"Jello. And so help you, if there are floating chunks of berries in it, I'm throwing it up on your shoes."

Tony laughed again and retreated to the door. "Ok, ok. No fruit chunks, no shwarma, no calling you "agent", and no doctor/patient crap. Is there anything else, dearest?"

"Call me that again and I'll shoot you in the knee with a .38. If I wake up in this bed one more time, I'm aiming somewhere you care more about."

Bruce's eyebrow shot up in Tony's direction. Obviously he didn't think Clint was bluffing. From where he sat on the floor, Thor chuckled.

"Legolas, your wish is my reason to develop eyes in the back of my head." Tony slipped away.

By the time he returned Clint was out like a light. He leaned against the door jamb. Not one to waste boxed-Jello squares, he unearthed his spoon from his back pocket and speared himself a cube. The four hours of sleep he did catch gave him an added clarity when he cruised back down to the medical wing. All of the Avengers were there. Thor sat on the floor, his broken knee cap, nearly healed, and propped up on the chair Natasha temporarily abandoned. She'd just gone upstairs for something dinner related. Steve slept in a pile on the floor, a bag of ice clutched against the three broken ribs that hadn't quite set yet.

If they decided to meet like this every time one of them ended up in the infirmary, Tony was going to need to expand the rooms. Chewing down another piece of Jello, Tony thought a little more about whether he might like to keep Clint in the surgical suite, or if he'd like to keep his lower body intact for the remainder of his days.

2 chapters left!

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