Clint held Coulson cradled against his chest as he walked the SHIELD corridors to medical. After a couple of tries, he had found a comfortable position with one arm wrapped around Coulson's small frame, with that hand supporting his legs. That left his other hand free for doors, badges, fending off the curious, and foot maintenance. Coulson's adult clothes, excepting his shirt and tie, had been exchanged for a shock blanket, and Clint had to keep tucking Coulson's tiny bare feet back under the blanket each time they wiggled loose into the brisk air of headquarters. The conflicting desires to run toward a solution and to move with the smoothest gait possible to avoid jostling the child had finally sorted themselves out. He used what he called Natasha's Predator Stalk – least extraneous movement, least noise, least jostling of possible injuries.
"It'll be OK, sir," Clint murmured into Coulson's hair, free hand patting his arm. Clint's hand now easily spanned the distance from Coulson's elbow to shoulder. "Don't worry."
Coulson raised his head from where it had been tucked under Clint's chin. "Not worried," he said. He blinked owlishly up at Clint, his familiar eyes heavy, as if with sleep. His lips twitched briefly, and Clint thought for a moment that he might smile, but then he yawned with a complete lack of self-consciousness and settled his head back into the crook of Clint's neck with a small hum. The lack of input or opinion on his situation was so un-Coulson-like that Clint nearly broke stride. Instead, he quickened his pace to the infirmary.
The first doc in medical who reached for Coulson got an "are you kidding me?" look from Clint in response. "I've got him. We'll just wait here," Clint said, striding into a windowed exam room and settling the two of them on an exam table. He kept Coulson curled against his chest, bringing his small bare feet up to rest on Clint's thigh so Coulson's knees were tight to his chest. To support that position, Clint wrapped his previously free arm in front of Coulson's shins and rested his hand on Coulson's waist.
"Who've we got that's closest to a pediatrician?" Clint asked the lanky doctor dogging his steps. "And who's on for the weird-science-of-the-day shift?"
"Uh." The man seemed nonplussed by Clint's reaction. "Martinez is newest. That means she did a rotation in peds most recently, I guess."
"Great," Clint answered. "Grab her, and send me..." Clint glanced out the exam room window to the nursing station to find a friendly face. "Send me Joanne. We're going to need some help in a bit. Who's weird stuff?"
"That's me," the doc answered, extending his hand. "Josephs."
"Hawkeye," Clint said. He shifted Coulson closer so he could take Josephs' hand and watched the doctor's medium-brown face blanch as he realized who was sitting in medical with him. "Nice to meetcha, Doc. We've got a Level 7 security, sierra-niner-niner-x-ray incident here."
At Dr. Josephs' nod, Clint continued. "Here's what we're going to do. Call Director Fury. He's going to want to be down here for this. While you're getting him, send me Martinez and Joanne. By the time you get back here, I'll have Stark on the horn to fill you in on whatever he knows about what happened today. I'm guessing about four minutes into that conversation, Stark himself will arrive."
Josephs nodded. "We'll be as ready as we can be," he joked weakly.
"This guy," Clint continued, indicating the quiet child in his arms with a tilt of his head, "is never alone. One of the Avengers, Hill, or Fury is with him at all times. Any and all medical tests and procedures will be discussed with and authorized in advance by his medical proxy. That's me."
The doctor held up one brown, fine-boned hand to request a pause. "Agent Barton," he asked, "who is this?"
Clint looked somewhat sheepish. "Sorry, Doc, thought they called ahead to notify you all." He turned slightly so Dr. Josephs could meet Coulson's sleepy eyes. "Dr. Josephs, this is Agent Phil Coulson, SHIELD liaison to the Avengers."
Josephs had blanched before, but now he went positively ashen. "This is Agent Coulson?" he asked in a strangled tone. Clint gave him extra points for retaining his professional mien when most of the blood had drained from his head. The doctor took two quick steps to the door. "I'll just call Director Fury," he said, closing the door behind him.
Clint chuckled. "How 'bout that, sir," he said. "You're just a little guy, and they're still more scared of you than of having Hawkeye in medical. Who knew?" Coulson — Clint might have to start referring to him as Phil if he stayed a kid much longer — just tipped his head back to meet Clint's eyes and then snuggled back into his shoulder, and, yeah, not exactly typical SHIELD Level 7 Legendary Agent behavior.
"If you're going to stay like this much longer, sir, I'll need to change. My tac vest is gonna be he– heck on your tender skin." The only response he got was a gusty sigh that seemed too large for the lungs it came from.
"Sir, you OK?" Clint peered down at Coulson's face — all baby-fine hair, button nose, and tiny mouth (that was currently drooling slightly on his vest, but, hey, that vest had seen worse, right?) — in some concern. "You haven't said much since..." he made a rolling gesture with the hand not currently anchoring Coulson to him, "you know."
Coulson heaved another yawn. "Tired," he mumbled into Clint's chest. "Wake me for the debrief." Clint felt the tension gradually seep out of Coulson's body until every limb was limp against him. His head, tucked under Clint's chin, grew warmer and became sweaty as he fell completely asleep.
Clint should probably put Coulson down. They were in SHIELD medical after all; theoretically, it was one of the safest places to be. The resident mad scientists were quarantined down in R&D, and the walls and floors here were reinforced in case of disaster (natural or otherwise). Security was high, the ventilation could be cut off from the rest of the building and circulated on its own system, and there were backup generators for power. Clint's arms would probably start to fall asleep in the near future, compromising his ability to hold Coulson, even at his current small size. His legs would probably go first, though. Clint was used to lying on his belly for hours on end, not having something rest on his thighs.
But.
This wasn't just a matter of having Coulson's six in the field, standing over his handler until he could get his feet under him again. This was a child, a civilian. And this was somehow not Coulson but Phil, small and vulnerable. This was somehow a younger Clint, with all of his harrowing childhood and youth ahead of him and possibly avoidable, and somehow a tiny Natasha, who had never had a childhood at all — all his to protect.
It was irrational, and he knew it, even as he reached for his phone to call Stark. He would sit and wait, and exercise every sniper trick he had ever used to stay alert and ready until he was relieved by someone who could do the job better. That left the field pretty open, of course; with his history, probably anyone could care for a child better than him.
"Stark? What's your 20?" he asked when the call connected.
"Barton, you sweet talker with the SHIELD lingo again?" Iron Man laughed in his ear. "We're inbound. Containment took a bit longer than expected, even without Sir Senescence monologuing our ears off. How's Coulson?"
"Alive. Asleep. Younger," Clint replied tersely.
"Good to hear." Stark did in fact sound relieved.
"Got a doctor here ready to discuss what you learned, name of Josephs," Clint informed him. "Take it easy on him. This looks like his first freakstorm-of-the-week."
"Got it," Stark acknowledged. "Don't break the doc, until further notice."
"Call him when we're done? For now, though, I need to talk with JARVIS. Can you arrange that?"
"Can I? Can I have my glorious AI, who is capable of carrying on multiple conversations while piloting the armor and running the tower" Stark sounded offended on his AI's behalf, "contact you through the pedestrian means of mere cell phone circuits? Gee, let me think."
"Tony," Clint said seriously, "I need him. I need to set some things in motion for Coulson."
"JARVIS, you hear that?" Tony's tone changed instantly. "Soon as I'm done with you, you call Clint, 'K?"
"I hear and obey, Master Stark," JARVIS intoned, his snide comment just barely audible through Stark's call to Clint.
Stark laughed in response. "I think he's a bit peeved with one of us, Legolas. Don't worry; he'll call you in a few," he concluded. "Oh, and you'll want to see the little baby tree we're bringing in, too."
"Tree? Tony, what–" But the engineer was gone.
A knock on the exam room door heralded the arrival of Joanne, one of the RNs more likely to smile rather than cringe whenever Clint was forced into medical. Her honey-blonde hair was pulled back into a ponytail at the nape of her neck, brushing the top of her scrub top, which today was patterned with poison-dart frogs. He grinned at the sight of her. Joanne had kids and now grandkids of her own, and often coaxed him to sit still in medical with a lollipop.
She shut the door behind her and began disinfecting her hands from the dispenser by the entrance. "Hey, Clint," she greeted him in the soft not-whisper that experienced parents used around sleeping kids. "Who've we got here?"
"Joanne, I believe you know Agent Coulson?" He tipped his head slightly toward the drowsing child in his lap. "In his slightly larger form?"
He blue eyes went wide with comprehension. "Oh. Wow." Yeah, Clint had chosen his victim well. Joanne could rival Coulson in unflappability. "So, weird stuff."
"Weird stuff," he agreed somberly.
"Any idea how long he'll..." she made a vague, rolling hand gesture, "be with us like this?"
"Not a clue," he assured her cheerfully, but he felt his normal grin fraying at the edges. "That's what I wanted you for. SHIELD isn't exactly child-friendly. I'm betting I can get authorized to get everything he'll need for his stay here — at least for the short term. First, though, I'm going to need your parent-brain to tell us what to get."
As if the words were a summoning charm, Clint's phone rang. "Barton," he answered.
"Agent Barton, Mr. Stark has given me to understand that you require assistance," JARVIS responded.
"JARVIS, thank you. It's not so much me as it's Agent Coulson," Clint responded. "He's been changed into a munchkin–" He broke off, shaking his head. "Shi– shoot, I shouldn't even joke about that. It might happen for real some day. JARVIS, he's a kid, maybe three or four?" He looked to Joanne for confirmation.
"Possibly four," she agreed. "We'll have a better guess after an exam."
"He's maybe four years old. Right now, Phil Coulson has a shirt, a tie, and a shock blanket to his name here in SHIELD HQ," Clint continued. "I need you to hook me up with whatever voodoo you do to get Stark and Pepper's requests filled so fast, and I'm going to let this lovely lady, name of Joanne, fill you in on everything a kid's going to need."
He extended the phone to Joanne, only to snatch it back at the last moment. "And JARVIS? I have a special request of my own to make, too."
Doctor Martinez arrived, her short burgundy-brown hair tucked behind her ears. "So, we think we've got an accidental de-aging?"
Clint nodded. "Crazy scientist with a ray gun. I had eyes on Coulson at the time. Unless he was teleported away and replaced with this child faster than my eyes can see, this is Agent Coulson." He tipped his torso backward, angling Coulson's face toward the doc. Martinez had only a few inches on Natasha, so her eyes were about level with Coulson's, though his were closed.
"All right," she agreed. "So that'll be our working theory, and we'll angle our tests to confirm or disprove." She stepped closer to the table, looking at Coulson's slack baby face. "And we need to get started. Agent Barton, can you set him down for a bit?"
"Uh, no?" he replied tentatively. "He said he was tired and he just fell asleep. How much can you do with him like this?"
She smiled at Clint. "A lot. We can certainly get started. Let me listen to his heart first," she said, putting her stethoscope to her ears.
Coulson must have been more tired than Clint thought, because he slept through most of the examination, even after Clint laid him down on the table, and woke only when the doc insisted they needed to draw blood and called in the technician. Martinez distracted Coulson somewhat with a range of questions designed to determine his identity, memory retention, and awareness of his situation, but Coulson's phlegmatic reaction to having vial after vial after vial of blood drawn convinced Clint even further (if that was possible) that this was in fact Coulson they were dealing with and not some random four-year-old lookalike. He didn't think there was a true four-year-old child alive who wouldn't scream at least a little at having a large-gauge needle in their arm, let alone for so long. Instead, Coulson's eyes just got teary.
The phlebotomist finally left, a rainbow of rubber-capped tubes in his tray. Doctor Martinez had almost finished listing the tests they were about to run on Coulson's DNA, RNA, blood, hair, skin, spit, and breath for all Clint knew when Director Fury arrived in a dramatic swirl of black leather.
"Agent Barton!" he barked.
"Sir," Clint acknowledged from his seat beside Coulson.
"Agent Coulson?" he asked.
"Sir," Coulson piped, blue eyes fixed on Fury's impassive face.
"Dammit, Phil." Fury put one hand to his forehead and proceeded to massage his scalp as if he could scrub the image of the de-aged Phil directly out of his brain.
Registering that Fury had nothing more to add at the moment, Coulson turned his attention back to Martinez. "How soon do you think we'll see results from the brain stan— scans, Doctor?" he asked.
Another knock at the open door heralded the arrival of lunch. Clint eyed the tray with suspicion even as he absently registered Martinez informing Fury how soon to expect the test results. It looked like some sort of stir-fry, and maybe even pho. It reminded Clint of when Coulson first introduced him to the dish, and suddenly the room seemed too small, with too many people breathing too little air. The prospect of watching the man who had taught Clint to use chopsticks struggle to use them himself made the situation all too real. Now that Coulson was safely being watched over by Fury, Clint excused himself to check on the Avengers' progress — and JARVIS' — and left the room at a near run.