Light Up The Night

“You’re looking better today, James,” Dr. Jones said.

Bucky fought the urge to laugh, having no doubt that it would be borderline hysterical. Dr. Jones was right, to a degree. Bucky had been in a particularly bad place when he’d dragged himself in for a session the previous week. Unsurprisingly, that session had primarily focused on the recent events with Pietro while also not to disclosing too much. It was stupid, since Dr. Jones couldn’t disclose any information Bucky shared with him that didn’t involve Bucky intending to kill himself or someone else – and that definitely wasn’t the case – or anything involving abuse. Pietro was an adult, so that couldn’t happen either. Still, sharing everything made him uneasy, so Bucky had been as vague as he thought he could get away with.

The rest of that session had focused on alternating between Dr. Jones working on grounding techniques with him and Bucky sharing his fears about potentially hurting Steve after nearly taking a swing at him. Dr. Jones had reinforced the fact that Bucky had been able to stop himself before attacking Steve. While Bucky was unable to move beyond the fear that if Winter hadn’t been there with him then he would have gone through with it, it helped to hear that his own doctor didn’t consider him to be a risk to Steve.

So, in light of all of that, Bucky did have to admit that he was doing better today than he had been. It was just that better still wasn’t that great. Sleep was still hard to come by and he was the most on edge he’d been in longer than he could remember. Plus the migraine he’d been fighting off since that night with Pietro had decided to hit the previous day. The several hours of drugged unconsciousness hadn’t done much to replenish the energy he’d lost. While he had showered and shaved and gone through all of those others activities to take care of himself, that had just exhausted him more and while he might have looked more put together as a result, he definitely wasn’t.

“In some ways yes, in others not so much,” he finally settled on as his answer. “It’s the morning after a migraine, I’m supposed to be back on the clock with an appointment today and I’m not sure I can even handle doing one piercing job. I feel like all of this is a major one step forward, two steps back thing. I’d been doing so well – I’d been working and not completely destroying a relationship and I was managing it – and now… now I’m just one step away from breaking.”

“What would breaking look like?” Dr. Jones inquired.

Bucky tried so hard not to assume what his doctor might have been getting at – would breaking look like another suicide attempt, for instance? Yet that was the only place his mind would go. Of course that was what his doctor was worried about because that made him a liability. So that thought, that belief in what his doctor was implying, was what he responded to.

“It definitely wouldn’t look like overdosing on another bottle of pills,” Bucky all but snapped. “I’m not that far gone yet.”

“I figured as much,” Dr. Jones said calmly. “I had no thoughts it might look like that but it sounds as though you were wondering if that was my reason for asking that question.”

All at once, Bucky felt ridiculously ashamed for snapping. “Sorry, doc,” he said, forcing the words out. “Seems I’m a little overly sensitive today. I know you don’t think that way, I don’t know why I reacted like that. Anyways, to answer your question, I’m not entirely sure what it would look like. Maybe going back to the way things were a couple of months back when my life was spent staying in the townhouse and going to these appointments and everything made me anxious and I had panic attacks every day and dissociated most days too. I guess that’s what it would look like. I mean, hell, I’m not even working a regular schedule, so that’s already a pretty major step back. Feels super fucked up seeing as the only other time I wasn’t working, I wanted to work but wasn’t allowed to.”

“What I hear you saying is that you feel as though this is worse than when your license was under investigation?” Dr. Jones inquired.

Bucky knew he’d trapped himself.

“Obviously not,” he said, with a sigh. “That was a mess in its own right and I wouldn’t want to go back there. But somehow not being allowed to work – although it was because of my actions and what I’d done – doesn’t feel quite as awful as being allowed to work but feeling too unstable to be working like usual.”

“James, as we talked about last time, I think it’s important to keep in mind that it’s not as though you’re quitting your job. Think of this more as taking a short-term reduced schedule in order to focus on working on yourself so that when you come back to work full-time, you’ll be in a better place. It’s not that you’re unstable or incapable of working. As of right now, you’ve agreed with Steve to take the past few days off and slowly increase your workload over the next two weeks or so. That’s not an incredibly long time. Once those two weeks are up, you’ll reevaluate whether you feel ready to go back to work full-time. Just based on how things seem from the last time we met, only a few days ago, to this time, I’m pretty sure you’ll be feeling well enough to increase your workload, even if it’s still less than the schedule you worked when you were full-time. Regardless, it sounds like you’ll be supported in whichever choice you make.”

“I shouldn’t have to take time off to begin with though,” Bucky snapped. “And before you remind me that using the word ‘should’ and other words like it doesn’t do anything helpful for me, I already know that.”

“What does it mean to you that you have to take time off?” Dr. Jones asked, as calm and collected as always despite Bucky’s inability to control his temper.

“You already know what it means. You know what everything always comes down to. That I’m broken and damaged. That I’m not going to get better.”

“James, we’ve worked a lot on those thoughts over the past year,” Dr. Jones said. “I know you know how to challenge that, to find the evidence both for and against it. You’ve already given me information for that belief. What are some things that discount it though?”

In all his times in therapy with Dr. Jones, Bucky wasn’t certain he’d ever been truly angry with his psychologist. Frustrated, maybe, particularly when he was being challenged to do things that brought up anxiety; disappointed and angry in himself at times, definitely. But he’d never wanted to scream or to grab the little sand garden that always sat on the desk, just in reach, and throw it at the wall.

His expression must have given something away because Dr. Jones quickly backtracked. “I can tell that something I said made you angry. What’s going through your mind right now?”

“That I don’t feel like you’re listening to me,” Bucky said, not even needing to pause to think about the answer. “That I’m telling you how I feel and why I hate myself and how this feels like such a huge fucking step backwards and you’re trying to get me to tell you how that’s not true, how my thoughts aren’t completely balanced and accurate, or whatever, and I know you’re probably right and I have no doubt that thinking this way probably isn’t doing me any favors but I just… I don’t have another place to talk about how I feel and what I’m thinking. I can’t talk to Steve or Nat or Sam because most of them have their own shit going on right now or it would just make them feel bad to hear how much I’m beating myself up and I don’t want to put that burden on them. I just… I just want to be heard, I guess, and I’m not feeling heard right now.”

“I apologize,” Dr. Jones said, surprising Bucky, who hadn’t expected a psychologist to apologize. “You’re right. I jumped straight into challenging your thoughts, rather than acknowledging the thoughts themselves and how they’re affecting you. I think my reason for that is a personal one, in that I don’t like hearing you say those types of things about yourself when that doesn’t match up with the man I see sitting in front of me.”

“How do you see me?” Bucky asked quietly, and could see immediately that he’d thrown his psychologist off by asking the question.

“I see you as strong and determined,” he said after a moment. “I see you as someone who encounters challenges that most people couldn’t imagine, and you encounter them on a daily basis and keep moving forward despite all of that. I see someone with a lot of courage, to be able to do the things you do.”

And right there, Bucky’s anger faded. It wasn’t that he agreed with Dr. Jones – definitely not in the slightest, although maybe, just maybe, there was a tiny sliver of something – it was that he could tell his psychologist was being sincere. Even if Bucky didn’t see any of that in himself, Dr. Jones saw it in him and for the time being, that was something. He wasn’t sure he could see himself any differently at this point, even with attempting to challenge his thoughts, but someone whose opinion he valued didn’t see him that way. Maybe he could get to a point where he wasn’t quite as stuck in his own thoughts.

He exhaled slowly, shakily, and then attempted a small smile. “That means a lot to me, Dr. Jones. So… what were you saying about trying to challenge those thoughts?”

-~-

There were few things Pietro hated more than not being able to move and at least half of those were things that would directly or indirectly lead to him being unable to move. Things like, y’know, getting shot or having his bones broken. Now, as his body recovered, he found himself in an infuriating position where he was functional enough to be fully aware of every mind-numbing second he spent in the hospital bed but not functional enough to be anywhere else.

The more time he had for the heavy-duty drugs to leave his system, the more memories resurfaced. The first few days in the hospital had been awful in their own right – disorienting, confusing, and painful - with him never being awake for more than a few minutes at a time. He could remember trying to talk with Wanda and Darcy, to have them suggest watching a movie or something like that, and to agree and then have no memory of any part of the film. Worse than that, he’d slip into unconsciousness and wake up somewhere in the middle of the movie, with no memory of what they were even watching or conception of how long he’d been out.

But now, that didn’t happen. When he was lucky, the next hit of morphine or Dilaudid or whatever the hell they were giving him, took the edge off of the raw ache in his stomach and made him feel less hollow and poorly pieced together, all at the same time. It didn’t disconnect him from his emotions though. The first time a recollection from that night hit him, he was still too fucked up from the trauma and surgery and everything else to have much of a response. The second time an image of that night flashed into his mind, his heart rate spiked on the monitors, scaring the hell out of Wanda and Darcy and, hell, Pietro himself. He’d been gasping and choking for breath for minutes before the doctor or one of the nurses added some sort of sedative into his cocktail of meds. That made things just floaty enough to decrease those physiological responses.

It didn’t stop the boredom or flashes of memory. It made it so that when they hit, he didn’t completely lose his shit or put his body through more hell than it was already going through. It helped as the pieces of the events of that night formed a relatively solid picture. Or maybe that wasn’t the right description. Because he still had no idea exactly what had happened, just fragments that he thought were more or less in chronological order.

He remembered walking down the street, his breath ghosting in the cold air, eager to meet up with Darcy. Then things became confusing and jumbled and he tasted iron in his mouth as he fought to get up from the ground – which he couldn’t understand because he’d been on his feet just a few moments before – and then tried to protect his head and ribs from the kicks and blows that were raining down on him. When he tried to reach out, to grab one of his attackers, a booted foot smashed down on his hand.

Then he was in a chair and someone was wrapping ropes around his wrists. In the back of his mind, he remembered tricks he’d learned way back when Talbot used to restrain him, and tensed all of his muscles. He waited for as long as he could before relaxing the muscles and feeling the rope loosen, not much, but enough that he was pretty sure he could slip free if he had enough time to work his hands loose. Time must have passed, that was all he could gather, since then there was no one around him – although he could still hear them talking quietly to one another, which meant they weren’t far. He took the opportunity to maneuver his wrists through the loosened restraints. He could feel the friction burning into his skin but didn’t let that stop him.

“Is it worth it to call Talbot now, before we have the girl?” one of the men asked.

The other replied, “We should wait. The boy’s not going anywhere and having him might be the perfect way to reel her in.”

Then the words faded away and he could no longer feel the rope around his wrists. Pietro stumbled upright, on legs that felt barely strong enough to keep him upright and moving. Despite that, he ran, pushing forward even when one leg buckled and he felt his knee hit the pavement as he nearly went down. There were yells and shouts from behind him, some in a language he wasn’t quite familiar with.

Then he stumbled again, almost going down, and somewhere in the midst of that, he stopped thinking and instead started reacting. Amidst the sound of yelling and screaming, he heard a sound he’d previously only heard in the movies – the click that came along with the safety on a gun being removed – and instead of every logical option he’d had plenty of time to think about in the hospital afterwards, like running forward or trying a zigzag pattern in the hopes of not being hit, he turned back to face them.

He didn’t remember the gun going off, just feeling like he’d been punched in the stomach, except this was worse than any hit he’d ever taken because none of those blows ever ripped through skin and muscle and maybe organs. He couldn’t bring in air, he couldn’t think, and yet his body had absolutely no problem going completely onto autopilot and spinning back around, trying to run despite the pain.

And that was where the memory fell apart again. One moment he was running, the next his legs collapsed completely beneath him and despite his mind screaming at him to keep moving, he couldn’t react. Then his mind stopped screaming at him and went silent and still and calm and he found that he no longer cared about running because it made perfect sense to lay there. Some time must have passed; there was no other option, because the next thing he remembered, someone was carrying him. Then, impossibly, he was in Shield, with Sam and Bucky trying to piece his stomach together while Wanda sat beside him. He could remember the sensation of his heart beating unevenly before it lurched in his chest and he wondered, as the world became hazier and hazier, whether this would be the last time he ever saw his sister.

The increased beeping of the heart monitor brought him back to the present again, before he realized he’d even slipped entirely back into the memory, as did Wanda rather frantically saying his name.

“I’m okay,” he managed to choke out. “I’m fine.”

He didn’t have the chance to say much more. A moment later, there was a nurse beside him, injecting something into his IV before he could protest, and he could feel it slipping through his veins, cold and heavy - or maybe that was his body getting heavy – and then it seemed strange that his heart had been pounding in his chest because now it was slowing down, his muscles were unwinding, and he felt completely calm.

Wanda glared at the nurse and snapped, “He said he was fine.”

Before the nurse could respond, he murmured, “Wanda, it’s okay.” When she gave him a look, he managed to twist his lips in what he hoped was a smile. “Really. It helped.”

“As long as you’re sure,” Wanda said, eyeing the nurse warily.

“I am.”

The nurse quickly determined that her presence in the room wasn’t helping anything, particularly as Wanda moved closer to her brother, the look in her eyes protective – and wasn’t that an interesting change from how things usually were between the two of them; not that she had never been protective of him, as she had been on multiple times when Talbot hurt him, but it always seemed he was the one protecting her – and smoothed his hair back.

“I’m okay, Wanda,” he repeated softly, once the nurse had stepped out. “I’m sorry. I just got lost in thought. Bad thoughts.”

“Thoughts about that night,” she said, and it wasn’t a question. He nodded and she sighed. “You want to talk about it?”

“Definitely not,” he said and there was an odd twitch in his muscles along with that, something that might have been a shudder if he hadn’t been drugged. “Trust me, Wanda, that’s not going to help either one of us.”

She frowned in response to that. “Maybe I could help.”

“The only thing I could imagine helping would be everything that happened that night being erased from my memory. But I think for now I’d rather just talk about anything else. Like how much longer I’m gonna be stuck in this fucking place.”

Wanda exhaled raggedly. “It’ll be a few more days at least. The doctor says there’s still concerns of potential infection, so they want to keep an eye on you until that risk is gone.”

Pietro reached for her hand, squeezing it, before he asked, “And then? Where will we go?”

“I’ve talked to Clint and Natasha. Both of them are willing to have us back in the townhouse. I don’t know how much freedom we’d be getting though or how much we’d want and I don’t know how to navigate that.”

“I know. They’ve already been through enough because of us. I don’t want to put them in danger.”

“But they’ve also offered to help,” Wanda gently countered. “And then there’s Tony…”

“But you don’t trust him.”

Wanda sighed and leaned back in her chair, looking anywhere but at him. “I don’t but I also think it might be worth finding out more about what he was offering. Technically he didn’t say that we’d have to leave town. I was the one who made that leap.”

“So we ask him. Make him tell us what it was that he was offering. Then…”

He trailed off, frowning as his thoughts muddled again. For all of his periods of lucidity, it didn’t seem to take much to throw him off.

“Then we can decide,” Wanda murmured. “We’ll look at all of our options and figure out which one is best.”

Pietro lapsed into silence at that point. The problem with quiet was that it was hard for him to focus. It didn’t take long before he found himself on the verge of drifting again. He tightened his grip on Wanda’s hand, in the hopes of keeping himself as focused as he could be with the drugs in his system. Thinking was too hard, so he settled on saying the first thing that came into his mind.

“I don’t know what to do about Darcy.”

The look Wanda gave him was almost pitying. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, shit, Wanda, I just got shot. If I stay with Darcy…” He trailed off once more, though this time it had nothing to do with hazy thoughts.

“If you stay with Darcy, she might get hurt,” Wanda finished. “You’ve known that all along, Pietro. We’d been lucky so far that nothing like this had happened but we always knew it was a possibility. That didn’t stop you then.”

“But now…” he stopped, then started. “I mean, I knew there was something up with those Irish guys.”

At that, Wanda froze. “What did you say?”

The blood in Pietro’s veins felt almost as cold as it had when the doctors dosed him with the latest batch of meds, although this time it was all over, not just in his arm. “I said the Irish. They were the ones who jumped me. I… I hadn’t said that before?”

“No, Pietro, you hadn’t,” Wanda said, a definite edge to her voice. “It was them? Ryan and his cousin?”

At that, he hesitated. “I don’t remember seeing Ryan or his cousin there but I didn’t get a clear look at anyone, at least not from what I can remember. Still, you have to admit it’s suspicious as fuck, Wanda.”

“It is but that doesn’t necessarily mean it means that,” she said slowly. “But I’ll keep that in mind if I hear anything from Ryan.”

“Have you?” he asked sharply.

“No, I haven’t. Which either speaks to his innocence or guilt, I’m not quite sure which one. I mean, I don’t want to be paranoid, but…”

There was an awful knotting sensation in his stomach, uncomfortably close to where the bullet ripped through his skin. While the logical part of his mind tried to attribute that to the emotions he was feeling, the less rational part informed him that he must have been dying, his wound tearing open or something equally as horrific. He glanced down, tugging the sheets back the slightest bit, and thankfully seeing no blood seeping through the front of the hospital gown.

So it wasn’t his injuries getting worse. It was just fear; the fear of something like this happening to his sister, of something worse. Particularly now that he wasn’t able to protect her and wouldn’t be for as long as he was in the hospital bed. While he’d been horrified when he realized that he hadn’t told her about the people who had kidnapped him, he also hadn’t considered what she might do with that piece of information.

“Be careful, Wanda,” he finally said, when he realized he’d been far too quiet. “Don’t take matters into your own hands. Not now. Not until we know more. It’s not worth it.”

“It will always be worth it for you,” Wanda said, her voice hard. “But no, if you’re wondering if I’m thinking of doing something stupid right now, I’m not. I would at least want to be prepared before taking a step like that.” Her expression softened the slightest bit and she leaned in to kiss his forehead. “I’m not going to leave you, Pietro.”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” he said quietly. “I can’t promise that any more than you can.”

“And you shouldn’t talk like that! If I say I’m not leaving you, I mean it.”

Pietro held back on everything he wanted to say in response to that. After his experiences, including the most recent one, of nearly dying, he wasn’t prepared to make a promise that he might not be able to keep. That if his sister had ever come as close as he had to that edge, she might understand that sometimes promises like that could not be kept.

Instead he just squeezed her hand and murmured, “Alright” because that was easier than discussing the matter any further.

“This probably isn’t the best time to be saying this but I’m actually going to be going out with Clint and Sam for awhile this morning,” Wanda said.

Immediately, his blood ran cold. Wanda hadn’t left his side for any length of time since he’d woken up in the hospital. The thought of having her out of his sight left him terrified. There were too many things that could happen if he wasn’t there to protect her, not that he was any state to be protecting her now.

“It’s only going to be for a few hours,” she promised. “And they’re not going to leave me alone. We can trust them to keep us safe.”

He didn’t bother to comment that while she was gone and he was alone here, something could always happen. Despite the fact that everyone promised he would be safe, he didn’t know that for certain and he wasn’t in any shape to be able to protect himself either.

Almost as though she had read his mind and every unspoken statement he’d held back, she said, “Don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere until Darcy gets back.”

He tried, he really did, so very hard to not feel resentful over the fact that he was almost being treated like a child, passed back and forth between them.

“That’s kind of you,” he said, not bothering to hide the sarcasm that entered his voice.

“Don’t be like that. I’m sorry, Pietro, but I have to do this. I’ll be with the others and I can promise they won’t let anything happen to me.”

“Just like they didn’t let anything happen to me?” he asked sharply.

“That’s not fair! They weren’t with you the night this happened. You’d asked to go alone. If it weren’t for Clint finding you…”

She swallowed hard rather than finish that sentence and he tried hard not to drown in guilt.

“You’re right,” he said reluctantly. “Just be careful. I mean it.”

“I will be. You don’t have to worry so much, Pietro. I’m doing this to protect you. To protect us.”

“That doesn’t make me any less nervous.”

Before he could follow that up before asking where she was planning on even going, Darcy walked into the room. His heart dropped – or at least it felt like it did, although there was no change from the rhythm on the monitor - which wasn’t fair at all. Darcy had been nothing but supportive and willing to overlook all of the fucked up shit going on in his life. It was just hard to have her here now when he wasn’t sure what would happen next. Despite his insistence that he wasn’t about to go anywhere and he was done with running, the fact remained that having her with him was dangerous, maybe even a liability if he were to utterly selfish. She could be caught in the crossfire just as easily as everyone else.

“Hey, Silver Blaze,” she greeted him, placing what appeared to be a small pizza box on the bedside table. “I wasn’t sure if the doctors were letting you expand your diet at all but I was hoping they might be willing to let you nibble on a piece of pizza, if nothing else.”

“I’m still pretty much on fluids,” he said, making a face, although grateful for the distraction. “But supposedly there’s no ruptures or tears in my intestines, so that’s a positive, I guess.”

“That’s something,” she agreed. “I can hold onto the pizza until that’s part of your approved diet.”

Wanda pressed a final kiss to his forehead and murmured, “I’ll be back soon and I have my phone on me. You can always call if you need anything.”

When she went to pull away, he tightened his grip on her hand. “Be careful and I’ll see you soon.”

“You know I will,” she promised. Then she turned her attention to Darcy. “Don’t let him do anything stupid while I’m gone.”

“I’ll try but no promises,” Darcy said. “Have fun.”

With that, she was gone, leaving him alone with Darcy and with no idea what to say. Darcy settled down in the chair Wanda had just abandoned and stretched out.

“How’re you feeling?” she asked, when Pietro didn’t offer any of his own commentary.

That wasn’t exactly an easy question to answer these days, so he went with the first response that popped into his head.

“Heavily medicated, so it could be worse. Mostly just ready to be out of here. Walking the length of the hallway a couple of times a day isn’t my idea of freedom.”

“Any word on when we might get a jail break?”

“Nothing definite. I’m managing fluids. They’re keeping the IV for now because there were some signs of infection, enough that they wanted to pop some heavy-duty antibiotics into me. But I’ve been eating – if you can call drinking broth and other clear liquids eating. The nurses keep swearing that everything’s going well so I’m just hoping they’re right at this point.”

“And when you’re discharged… have you thought any more about where you’re going to go?” she asked.

He wanted to avert his gaze and half-hoped Darcy would, to spare him the trouble of making that decision. Naturally though, that was the last thing she was about to do. Her eyes remained locked on his and he didn’t have it in him to ensure he controlled his facial expressions. He couldn’t quite determine his own emotions but she must have seen something she didn’t like because her expression darkened and a moment later she slowly exhaled and nodded.

“Alright. So, what aren’t you telling me? I can see something’s on your mind. Is it about going somewhere else? Leaving the city?”

He shook his head. “No. I don’t think we’re going to leave. But I’m not sure what’s going to happen if we stay.”

“You mean you don’t know what’s going to happen between us if you stay.”

He couldn’t deny it and so after a long moment, he simply nodded. “It’s not that I don’t like you,” he tried to explain.

Before he could manage more than that, she cut him off. “I know that, Pietro. It’s that you’re afraid of something happening to me. I figured as much. So… do I get a say in any of this or will this be a decision that you make and I have to live with? Cause I’d kinda like to be involved in this process.”

That wasn’t quite what he’d expected. He knew Darcy enough to doubt that an emotional display would occur as a result of his words. She was far too together for that. Still, he hadn’t anticipated that question or what his answer might be.

“You get a say in it,” he said after a long moment. “Or at least I think you do. I’m not entirely sure. But you’re right. This is a decision that impacts you as well as me.”

“I have a suggestion, in that case,” she said, her tone conversational and easy, as though they were discussing something as simple as what they wanted for dinner. “You said you’re not planning on leaving the city. So, in that case, it says to me that you don’t need to be making this decision quite yet. Because I can promise I’m not keeping my distance until you’re at least out of the hospital. So once you’re out, then and only then will we discuss where things are between us. Fair deal?”

“Fair deal,” he agreed, only a bit grudgingly.

A strange feeling, one he thought might have been the after effects of his latest dose of medicine, although that made no sense, came over him. An unclenching of the muscles, as though a stone had been lifted from off his chest. A feeling almost like relief.

“Good,” Darcy said cheerfully. “In that case, what do you want to do to pass the time? Watch a movie? Read a book? Play on the DS I brought for you?”

“Let’s start with that one,” he said, grateful to have an activity to focus his attention on.

“I figured you’d say that,” Darcy said, pulling it out of her purse. “I’ve got plenty of options for games whenever you get bored.”

Somehow hearing her say that made that prior feeling of relief disappear. Despite the fact that the two of them had only known each other for a relatively short period of time, she knew him and she knew him well. That wasn’t something he’d ever expected to find.

Instead of saying anything, he offered her a smile that for all he knew looked more like a grimace. “Thanks, Darcy.”

Maybe things were on the verge of ending but he wasn’t about to let that decrease his enjoyment of the immediate moment. Especially when there wasn’t a whole lot to enjoy given his current condition.

-~-

Returning to the townhouse was strange after days of not being there. Somehow it simultaneously felt like coming home and arriving somewhere completely new, like one of the abandoned buildings she and her brother used to stay in. A place that was home but only for a temporary period of time. Maybe that was just her knowing that her entire life here was temporary, not permanent, the way it had started to feel to her. Not knowing whether she and her brother would return once he was released from the hospital, it didn’t feel safe to think of it as home. Because when you thought of a home, when you allowed yourself to feel safe, it could be taken away from you, just like that. There was no use in getting attached to something you were bound to lose eventually.

“You wanna sit on the couch while I make something to eat?” Sam offered. “Toss on a movie or something like that?”

She nodded automatically, going through the motions of grabbing the remote, sitting down, and flipping through the channels until she found something that looked halfway interesting, not that she could have identified what she was watching or what the plot might have been. But having something on the TV would make Sam worry less. He was already worried enough about Clint, who they’d just dropped off, and what might be happening over at Shield right at this moment.

Her head remained filled with the terms Sam had explained to her while they were at the shooting range earlier. Words like muzzle, clip, grip, firing pin, and the different between the front sight and the rear sight. He’d insisted on having her disassemble and reassemble the gun several times, naming all of the parts as she did so, to demonstrate an understanding of how the weapon worked. Once she’d finished with that, he finally let her hold the gun – the Glock, she reminded herself, trying to use all of the words and titles and terms she’d learned – insisting that she needed to get used to the weight before he’d even teach her how to aim and shoot.

By that time, she’d already felt sick. Granted, the shooting range hadn’t quite fit the image she’d in her head of what the inside of one would look like. She’d imagined a dimly lit, basement-level room with multiple rows with targets at the end. Which had been basically what she’d found once they made it to the range but the building itself looked more like a mansion or a country club, although that seemed in line with the developments they passed around it. She hadn’t known quite where she was, except that they’d driven far enough that they were no longer in DC.

Things had made a bit more sense when Clint mentioned on the drive over that Tony Stark – and wasn’t Wanda sick of him being involved in every part of her life? – had set up this location for them, bought it out for the day, and ensured that the only people working the desk were the ones he trusted. The first several minutes spent there involved Wanda trying to comprehend how much money a person could possibility spend on luxury accommodations at a shooting range. The furniture, with the richly textured cloth and plush seating, definitely cost more than she could imagine – and that was saying something, given the house she’d grown up in. There appeared to be a bar, with bottles reflected back in the mirror behind her, and a full restaurant in there as well. Somehow the mixture of alcohol and guns seemed a poor decision. She hoped that during usual business hours no one was allowed to drink before going to the range.

She’d almost expected that the range itself would have floors made of diamonds and targets made of gold. In actuality, the range was the only place that looked like what she’d expected, with floors of cement that curved upwards in the back – Sam explained that was a requirement of all shooting ranges, although she didn’t quite understand his explanation of the reason why. There were reinforced stations with some type of material like bulletproof glass to prevent anyone from being accidentally injured. From the moment Sam opened the case he’d been carrying, Wanda’s chest had tightened, making it hard to breathe, a bit of a problem since in addition to Sam’s lesson, Clint kept explaining that breathing was an important part of learning how to fire a gun. The moment she caught sight of the gun inside the case, all she’d been able to imagine was a bullet from a gun just like this one tearing through her brother’s flesh, ripping through muscle and internal organs.

By the time she’d handled the gun several times and taken several deep breaths to keep herself calm, she’d been able to remind herself that she had to follow through with her plan. Giving up and panicking wasn’t a possibility. She needed to do this for her brother’s sake and her own. She’d thought she was okay, after so many times of lining up the shot and listening to Sam and Clint’s instructions, until they finally allowed her to pull the trigger. She didn’t know if it was the ear protection Clint and Sam insisted she wear, blocking out all noise while also protecting her hearing. Maybe that just heightened everything, but the moment she pulled the trigger for the first time, she’d nearly thrown up.

Still, she’d swallowed it back and kept going until the muscles in her hands and arms ached. Then she’d disappeared into the bathroom to throw up. Being the lone female in the group meant she was left alone, although she could tell by Sam and Clint’s expressions when she returned that they had no doubt of what had just happened.

But none of that mattered. She’d learned how to shoot. Despite his reservations about her using a gun, Sam had promised to bring her back to the range to help her continue to practice and learn.

Then maybe she and Pietro wouldn’t have to leave. If she could keep them safe, they might be able to stay. She still regretted the fact that already everyone in the townhouse – not to mention at Shield – had been dragged into this mess but if she were able to protect herself, her brother, and everyone else in the townhouse if necessary, she wouldn’t have to worry quite as much about the effects on the others.

And then, at least, if they did decide to leave, it would be their choice. Leaving if it was their choice wasn’t quite as bad as leaving because she felt as though there was no other option.

The smell of something burning brought her out of her thoughts and sent her heart hammering in her chest. Where there was smoke, there were flames and that meant danger and death. Immediately, she leapt to her feet, running to the kitchen where she found Sam tossing a fire-covered pan into the sink. Moving on autopilot, she turned on the water before looking back to the stove, ensuring that there were no other potential threats there.

She found nothing, so it must have been the smoke because suddenly she couldn’t seem to force any air into her lungs and her vision seemed wavy. If the smoke was that bad, that meant she had to make it to the nearest window or door. But before that, she needed to find Pietro. She couldn’t leave him in here. She hadn’t last time and she wouldn’t this time. Maybe this time, no one else would get hurt. After all, there was no reason for someone to go back for them if they were already outside.

Not that their mother had known that they were safe. Not that –

Her thoughts derailed when a hand closed on her shoulder and Sam’s familiar voice said her name. She blinked several times, realizing that it wasn’t the smoke that was impeding her vision but the fact that she wasn’t breathing properly. Sam’s voice was calm and reassuring. When she finally managed to take in a deep breath, there was still too much smoke in the kitchen. It burned her throat until she coughed.

“Easy, kid,” Sam murmured, glancing once more at the sink where the flames had subsided and then at the open kitchen window. “C’mon, it’s a bit of a mess in here. Let’s go into the living room, huh?”

She nodded, unsure of whether trying to speak would lead to her inhaling more smoke, and followed him into the other room, blessedly free of smoke. Sam’s dark eyes studied her worriedly as he gently guided her onto the couch. She tensed, prepared for his inevitable questions about what had just happened with her.

Instead, he exhaled raggedly. “I’m sorry about that. I got lost in thought, just wasn’t paying attention to what was going on.”

“It’s okay,” she said, finding it easier to speak now that the air was clear and she wasn’t answering questions about herself. “What were you thinking about?”

“What else? Clint and his stupid plan to see those Irish bastards. It’s happening right now and for all I know, he’s in danger and I’m not there. I’m just so sick and tired of the people I care about being hurt and me being unable to do anything to stop it.”

“You could go over there now,” she offered, a bit hesitantly, because staying in the townhouse alone meant more time away from her brother. But she had no reason to think he wasn’t safe, given that he had Darcy with him.

Sam frowned but she could see that he liked the sound of that idea. “Are you sure? I don’t want to leave you alone.”

“I’ll be fine. You don’t have to worry about me.”

“Somehow I don’t think that’s possible.” Sam chewed on his lower lip for a moment before nodding. “Alright. I’ll have my phone on me. Give me a call if you need anything. That is… if you’re sure you’re alright now.”

His gaze was so intense that it made her feel scrutinized, as though he could see everything she wasn’t saying. It was the kind of gaze that made her know exactly where the belief started that those in the mental health field could read minds. She felt as though that was exactly what he was doing in this moment, that he could see right through to the images of firefighters fighting the flames while she and her brother huddled together on the nearby grass, of the paramedics wheeling out the covered body, and of Talbot’s ice cold fury when he found out what had happened and who had been responsible for the start of the fire.

“I’m a little shaken up but I can handle it,” she said after a beat, aiming for an answer that was in the middle ground, not quite the truth but also not quite a lie. “Look, you know I have your number and I promise I’ll call if anything comes up. Otherwise, I’m mostly planning on heating up something in the microwave…” - which was a lie because she was pretty sure if she tried to eat she’d get sick again - “… and continuing to watch TV.”

He squeezed her shoulder before stepping back. “Alright. I’m holding you to your promise.”

It wasn’t until the door shut and locked behind him that Wanda felt as though she could fully breathe again. Then, after checking that all of the flames were out in the kitchen and closing the window and making sure it was secure, she headed upstairs, into the room she and her brother shared. The bedding was tangled, barely having been tugged back into a semblance of order before they’d left the morning everything changed for them.

She tugged the blankets into place as she slid beneath them, curling up and wrapping them around her body. She shifted onto her brother’s side of the bed, smelling the mint and eucalyptus scent of his shampoo still there. If she closed her eyes, she could almost imagine that he was there, right beside her, and all of those events hadn’t actually happened.

Except that they had and nothing could ever change that.

-~-

If Clint heard “I don’t think this is a good idea” from Sam, Natasha, or Bucky one more time, he was going to lose his shit.

It wasn’t that he didn’t get it. Of course he got it. They were worried about something happening to him, probably with damn good reason for that after everything else. Seriously, he got that this was a stupid decision to make but what else could he do? The Irish were coming after him – either they’d heard through the word on the street that he’d been involved that night or they’d seen him – but they also had information he needed. If they wanted to fuck with him, he might as well let it happen on his home turf at the shop, rather than in a back alley brawl, and see what information he could get out of them before they kicked his ass.

The atmosphere in the shop would have been tense all morning, except for the fact that Clint hadn’t shown up until later after spending the morning with Wanda and Sam at the shooting range. Everyone there was slammed with appointments when he’d arrived - save for Bucky who was only doing an appointment a day and otherwise was mostly running the front desk in Darcy’s absence. Clint tried to catch up with the work he’d missed by taking Wanda out that morning in an effort to distract himself.

Still, despite how busy everyone had been, Steve had made certain that he would be around at the time of the appointment, rather than at class, and arranged for both himself and Bucky to not have anyone scheduled at that time, just in case. Clint honestly wasn’t thrilled with Bucky’s presence given the state he’d been in the past few weeks or days or whatever it had been at this point, although his eyes were less shadowed and the tension in his jaw wasn’t quite as pronounced.

When the bell above the door chimed, it sounded like a warning. The two men who stepped inside immediately set all of Clint’s internal warning signs off in a way reserved for crooks or cops, depending on exactly which one of those might cause him more damage in the moment. He’d studied them intently, just in case it might have been someone he had seen before but there was nothing familiar about either of the men, aside from the whole thing where he’d already seen one of the guys on the security footage Steve shared with him. That he could handle; he wasn’t quite certain what he would have done if it were someone he recognized from the street, especially if it had been someone he’d tangled with before.

While he recognized one of them, Cyril, the one the appointment was for, the dark-haired man with him looked similar enough that Clint had to assume they were siblings of some sort, maybe even twins. The thing that set off some alarm bells in Clint’s head – moreso than the ones already going off – was the identical Celtic knot-work on the side of their necks. Maybe it was irrational but seeing the two of them with matching tattoos just reinforced his theories as to their particular affiliation.

He forced himself to breathe normally, calmly, in and out, and fixed a grin on his face, praying it did not look as fake as it felt. “Hey there. You must be Cyril and Cyril’s friend.”

“I’m Aiden, his brother,” his companion offered. “I hope it’s alright that I came along for moral support.”

“Of course,” Clint said easily. “Although I wasn’t expecting the need for moral support seeing as this is just a consult. Nothing requiring being supportive unless sketching out ideas causes you some distress.”

“It’s more of a family tradition,” Cyril explained. “We’ve gotten the majority of our ink together so I asked him to come along today. You’re still cool with that?”

“Definitely,” Clint said. “Who am I to challenge a family tradition?”

Clint expected his nose to grow in response to that lie, as he definitely wasn’t okay with that in the slightest. This wasn’t a simple consult to discuss a back piece. This was going to be some sort of shakedown. He just hoped he could play the game well enough that it didn’t end disastrously.

“We can hold off on the paperwork until after we discuss the design,” he suggested. “That way you can finish it when you go to put down the deposit.”

He looked to Bucky and Steve, both who gave him almost imperceptible nods that he might have missed if he wasn’t looking for them. They were ready, which meant the only thing left to do was to walk the two visitors back to the office. As he walked back, he attempted to manage some small talk.

“So, I’d meant to ask. Steve mentioned you were only here visiting and that you’re looking for a rather large back piece to be completed. That might take a couple of sessions. Is that going to work for the length of your visit? Since I know Steve told you that I’m a student and all of that, so I’m not always working here. It can sometimes be a little hard scheduling multiple appointments.”

“We don’t have an end date exactly,” Cyril responded, matching Clint’s conversational tone perfectly. “But I’m guessing I’ll be here long enough for you to finish up the work.”

“No end date, huh?” Clint inquired. “Must be nice to not have to worry about getting back from a visit. No job that’s gonna wonder where you ran off to or want you back at a certain point? Are you just independently wealthy?”

“Not exactly. I’m self-employed,” came the response, which, again, only increased Clint’s belief that his theories were correct and this was going to very potentially end disastrously.

Clint opened the door to his office, gesturing for each of them to take a seat before he kicked the door shut behind him. Neither one of them took a seat in the two chairs he’d pulled up in front of his desk. He debated whether he should continue to play it cool and take his own seat, particularly when that would mean he’d be the furthest one away from the door and the two of them would be blocking his exit. He’d never had an issue with the position of the desk before – it wasn’t as though he frequently was concerned about a client assaulting him – but now it seemed like a deathtrap.

Clint walked over to the desk and reached for his sketchbook. Arming himself with a pencil wasn’t much but it was better than nothing. You could do a lot of damage with a pencil or pen if you knew where to use it and he did. You could also do plenty of damage with the slightly uncoiled metal spring on sketchbook if you were the type of person who regularly thought about ways of hurting others.

Cyril and his brother continued to wander around the office, as though they were inspecting his equipment. He gave them a few moments before breaking the uneasy silence.

“Alright, uh, what exactly are you looking for in a design? You wanting something similar to the work I can already see on you, something celebrating your Irish heritage, or were you thinking of something completely different?”

Cyril looked over at Aiden and said something in a language Clint had to assume was Gaelic because what the fuck else would the Irishmen be speaking? He didn’t recognize it either, not that he was great with identifying languages but he had some familiarity with Spanish and French from high school and college classes, not to mention Russian and now Romani after his time spent with Natasha and the twins. From the basis of his admittedly shit hearing, it didn’t line up with any of those.

Aiden responded in kind and Clint tightened his fingers around the pencil.

“We are not here to speak about a tattoo,” Cyril finally said. “We are here to talk about the boy.”

Clint all but had his vision go red in response to that – these were the ones who’d hurt Pietro, who’d almost killed him, they had to be - but he did his best to keep his breathing calm, steady, and play dumb. Thankfully that had always been one of his talents.

“What boy? I’ve gotta say, I’m a little confused about what’s going on here right now.”

“You’re lying,” Cyril said bluntly. “We know you took him.”

“Again, I don’t know what you’re talking about. What boy? Why the hell would I abduct a kid?”

The two exchanged another look and switched away from English once again. Clint stared at the distance between himself and the door. Both of them were closer than he was but if they weren’t ready for him to suddenly bolt, maybe he’d get there first.

Not that he was about to bolt because fuck that. These two had something to do with what happened to Pietro. He wasn’t going anywhere.

Then everything exploded into movement. Cyril and Aiden came at him, crossing the room in a matter of strides and making him hesitate for just a moment, just an instant, as he considered which one of them was the greater threat. It wasn’t easy to determine since they were the same height, same weight, and neither one looked necessarily stronger or more dangerous than the other.

The hesitation cost him. The moment he swung the pencil at Aiden’s eye, Cyril caught his wrist, and when he pivoted, intending to drive the heel of his hand into Cyril’s nose, Aiden caught his other wrist.

His shoulder muscles immediately protested with waves of agonizing pain the moment Cyril twisted his arm and applied pressure until his fingers released their grip on the pencil and it fell too the ground. Aiden was equally as rough with his left arm but the muscles of that shoulder didn’t scream and lock up and threaten to tear in a way that made his knees weaken and his vision fill with black spots.

“What the fuck?” he choked out.

“Shut up,” Aiden said shortly. “Now, you can do this the easy way or the hard way.”

He could practically see the crossroads in his mind. It would have been so easy to keep playing dumb and insist that he had no idea what they were talking about, to threaten them with calling for Steve to alert the police.

A flash of memory, of the rasping of Pietro’s labored breaths, of the blood staining everything from Pietro’s clothes, to the floor, to Clint’s own hands, hit and hit hard, weakening his knees as much as the physical pain.

“Fuck you, I’m not telling you shit,” were the words that ended up leaving his lips and he didn’t regret them, even when Aiden landed a hard punch to his unprotected ribs. “You think that’s gonna make me talk? No. Fuck you both. You can threaten me and hurt me and for all I fucking care you can kill me but I’m pretty sure if you do the last one, you’re gonna be fucked because Steve’s going to call the cops, so unless you want to kill everyone here, that’s not a good option.”

“You seem to think we wouldn’t be willing to hurt someone else if necessary,” Cyril said in a tone that was far too conversational, as though they were discussing something simple and unnecessary rather than matters of life and death. “We just want information.”

“Then you guys are dumber than you look,” Clint snarled.

“I’d drop the act and fast if I were you. Once we have the chance to go elsewhere and have a bit more privacy, you’ll be wishing you had,” Aiden said, with none of the conversational nature of Cyril’s response.

“And how do you expect to get me out of here? Huh? I’m not going to come along quietly.” He gritted his teeth, forcing back a cry of pain when another blow hit his already sore ribs. “Seriously, you’re willing to turn a kid over to an abusive asshole just for some money? That’s so fucked up.”

There was a far too meaningful look shared between the siblings. Clint tried to figure out exactly where his plan went off book. He had expected this type of situation to unfold and yet he was completely unprepared. He wasn’t playing them anymore, not now when he was having to worry about what might happen to everyone else in the shop, furthermore with what could happen to him. In another minute, they were going to pull out a gun or a knife or something else to hurt him badly with and he couldn’t do a goddamned thing because he wasn’t going to put Bucky or Steve in jeopardy.

Then the door to the office flew open, crashing against the wall. Clint saw both Cyril and Aiden tense and turn their attention to the door – for an instant, Cyril’s free hand went towards his pocket and Clint’s heart jumped into his throat. But then a metal hand closed around Cyril’s arm, yanking him away from Clint. His grip on Clint didn’t quite loosen enough. For an instant the muscles protested the increased tension all the more before being followed by the sickening sensation of his bone yanking free from the socket for the second time in a matter of weeks.

Clint knew shoulders weren’t meant to dislocate so easily. Given that, it made sense to consider the fact that at some point one of the parts that usually held his shoulder together must have been damaged or torn. Which was so much easier to think about than the fact that his legs felt like they couldn’t support his weight and for a piece of his body that no longer felt connected to him, his shoulder was causing a surprising amount of pain.

Cyril, meanwhile, backed off immediately, his eyes fixed on Bucky’s metal arm, or more appropriately the hand now closed in a fist. Aiden had stepped back as well, leaving Clint standing alone, holding his right arm protectively to his chest and trying to breathe through the pain.

“Give me one reason not to beat the shit out of you,” Bucky snarled, his voice low and dangerous in a way Clint had only heard once before.

This time had nothing on the time they’d found Steve in the alley and he’d seen Bucky ready to tear anyone apart who might have been responsible for Steve’s condition. This was even different from when he’d walked in and found Bucky attempting to murder Rumlow because by then Bucky was more wounded animal than predator. This time though, Clint could see it wouldn’t take much to allow the rage to take over.

“Because you don’t want an assault charge,” Cyril said, his tone placating for a man who’d been threatening Clint less than a minute ago.

“You want to charge him, you’ll be looking at a counter charge from our end,” Steve said, his voice startling Clint who managed to raise his head enough to see Steve standing in the doorway. “From what I can see, this wouldn’t be a matter of assault but a matter of defense by one of my employees. Speaking of which, you just hurt one of my tattoo artists. A man I need to be able to work and someone who I value quite a bit, both as his boss and as a friend. I don’t take kindly to people hurting those I care about.”

“You injured him,” Aiden argued, looking accusingly at Bucky. “I saw the whole thing. You were the one who caused my brother to hurt him.”

“Great argument from the person who was threatening him,” Steve snapped before Bucky could respond himself. “You know what, fuck it, I’m calling the cops.”

That was not the direction Clint wanted this entire fucked up situation take. If the cops were called on Aiden and Cyril, Clint had no evidence as to their involvement with the whole Pietro situation.

“That’s not necessary,” he interrupted. “It was just a misunderstanding. Right, guys?”

Both Steve and Bucky shot him incredulous looks that he studiously ignored. As much as Clint wanted to see Aiden and Cyril – or, as he preferred to categorize them, these two assholes – brought to justice, now wasn’t the time. He didn’t have enough dirt on them to justify the potential of adding pissing off the Irish mob moreso than he already had to his growing list of enemies and problems. Better to play the game and attack when he actually had ammunition, so to speak.

Cyril and Aiden exchanged a look. Then Aiden said, “Right. It was just a misunderstanding.”

“Bullshit, you’re just gonna let them get away with this?” Steve said. “They fucked up your arm! You think they’re going to stop there?”

“Steve,” Clint said, his voice tense. “Leave it. I know what I’m doing.”

Steve was quiet for several seconds, his eyes narrowed. He curled his hands into fists, but only stepped away from the door. “You two have ten seconds to get the fuck out of my shop.”

Bucky and Steve exchanged a look as Cyril and Aiden walked towards the doorway. Some sort of telepathic communication must have taken place because Bucky followed the duo out while Steve remained in the doorway, watching from a distance. Clint, meanwhile, turned his attention to his injured arm, trying to remember all of the methods he’d been taught to pop a dislocated shoulder back into place without assistance.

“Are you okay?” Steve asked, finally moving away from the door and over to where Clint leaned against his desk. “Stupid question. It’s your shoulder again, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, how could you tell?” Clint snarked back.

“Shit. Alright. Uh. I don’t know how to fix that,” Steve admitted. “Should I call someone? Take you to the ER?”

“I don’t have the fucking money to go to the ER again,” Clint said. “I can probably get it back in myself. It’ll just take me a minute. Or two.” When Steve didn’t look away he added, “At least it would take that long if I weren’t getting stared at.”

Steve turned his back towards him at that. Clint tried to remember the tips his brother taught him well over a decade ago to pop limbs back into place. The ones for basics, like a dislocated thumb, came back quickly enough. The shoulder came a bit more slowly, with plenty of reminders regarding the risks associated with trying to relocate a shoulder without proper medical support. At least he’d had Sam there last time, who had medic training.

After a few half-hearted attempts to contort his arm in ways he felt fairly certain were meant to pop a shoulder back into place and plenty of sounds of pain as a result, he finally abandoned it.

“I can’t do it myself,” he said grudgingly.

“Then what do you want me to do?” Steve asked, turning back towards him. “You said the hospital is out. What about urgent care or something like that?”

“Or I could just make a sling or something and wait until I see Sam. I don’t think that’s waiting too long to get this fixed.”

The thought of being poked and prodded in a medical setting was up there with the least of the things he was willing to do at the moment. After all, it wasn’t that bad. He could live with a dislocated shoulder for a couple of hours. That wasn’t going to kill him.

Steve gave him a slightly annoyed look but didn’t argue. Good thing for him, seeing as Clint had plenty of examples of Steve’s own lack of self-care and he had no reason not to throw all of that directly into Steve’s face if necessary.

At that moment, Clint heard a familiar voice in the hallway – and maybe he’d been hurt a lot worse than he thought he’d been, seeing as he must have been hallucinating – because right before there came a light knock on the doorframe, he heard Sam’s voice in the hallway.

“Speak of the devil,” Steve said lightly, as Sam stepped into Clint’s office, giving him a rather dark, unhappy look.

“I’d ask what happened but Barnes clued me into some of it and I’m pretty sure I can fill in the rest. I thought you said this wouldn’t be dangerous, Clint.”

“I didn’t think it would be,” Clint returned, trying to keep his tone light and almost jovial. “Glad that you’re here though.”

“If you’re asking me to fix your shoulder, that’s not happening,” Sam said firmly. “We’re taking you to urgent care and don’t you dare give me shit about money. Your shoulder’s fucked up, Clint. I should’ve made sure you got that examined properly before now.”

“You know the doc there’s just gonna pop it back into place,” Clint argued. “It’s not gonna be a fix. Hell, I doubt they’ll even do scans.”

“Maybe, maybe not, but I’m not comfortable trying to reset it myself. You’re going with me or you’re being left with it like that.”

Seeing that there was no chance of Sam budging in his position, Clint finally sighed and said, “Fine. Alright. Let’s get this over with then.” He offered Steve a half-grin. “Sorry for making a mess of everything yet again.”

Steve shook his head. “Just take care of yourself and keep me updated on how you’re doing. I’ll cancel your clients for tomorrow and you can let me know when to put you back on the schedule.”

With Sam’s help, Clint managed to get one sleeve of his jacket on before giving up on the second one and simply draping it over his injured shoulder, hoping that would be enough to keep him warm once he stepped outside. He tried to focus on the immediate problem, which was explaining to a medical provider how exactly he injured his shoulder to begin with, rather than how he was letting Steve down or what implications there might be for Steve and Bucky getting involved in that situation today.

Hopefully it wouldn’t amount to anything. After all, it wasn’t as though they’d given any signs that they were involved with Clint outside of work.

But, then again, everything that was going on seemed to involve the shop and that was exactly where they were. Guilty by proximity and all of that.

For now, he was more interested in trying to avoid the lecture he was inevitably going to get from Sam once they stepped outside.

-~-

More than once over the course of several hours, Steve found his jaw aching and had to systematically convince his mouth to unclench and his teeth to cease grinding whenever his thoughts had time to wander. He’d had a few appointments in the afternoon and evening to concentrate on, which he was grateful for, but each time he walked a client out and saw Bucky sitting at the front desk, looking far too alert and prepared for action, he found his anger returning three-fold. When he finally had a chance to glance at his phone and discovered a text from Clint, simply stating, Got my shoulder fixed but I’m gonna be out for the rest of the week. Sorry, boss, his anger intensified.

When an unexpected text message arrived, simply stating, See you at closing, Rogers, with the name Tony Stark attached, anger wasn’t even the word for how he felt. Obviously Tony found something out, either far too late because the search was too difficult, far too late because he’d put it off for too long, or far too late because he’d found the information out sooner and just never gave Steve any of it until it was too late. It had been days since he’d shared the footage from the shop with Tony. Given that Tony was coming by now, he’d obviously found something out. If it turned out he’d known for a while, Steve wasn’t sure he’d be able to keep from punching him in the face.

About half an hour before closing time, with no clients – or surprise visits from Kate – occupying the building, Steve sent Bucky upstairs. It was fairly evident that the situation with the Irish sent his adrenaline skyrocketing and that gave him the energy to act in the way he did. By the end of the day, Steve could tell that he was pretty much collapsing on his feet. The fact that he didn’t even argue when Steve told him he was welcome to head upstairs spoke volumes. The last thing Steve needed was for Bucky to either fall apart physically or to lose his shit with Tony once he arrived.

Steve promised to finish up downstairs, handling everything Darcy typically handled, and it wasn’t until Bucky’s footsteps disappeared upstairs and he heard the apartment door open and shut that he realized he’d neglected to mention that Tony was coming by. He considered going upstairs or texting Bucky, just to let him know. He didn’t want to be accused of hiding anything. By the time he’d convinced himself to pick up his cell phone, the bell above the door jingled and Tony stepped inside.

The look on Steve’s face must have highlighted each and every emotion he was feeling in the moment, given that Tony nearly stepped back right outside. Steve couldn’t quite gauge Tony’s own emotional state, seeing as he had sunglasses on despite the fact that it was pretty much dark outside. He didn’t leave though, just hesitated for an instant before stepping the rest of the way inside and letting the door shut behind him. He pushed his sunglasses onto his head and gave Steve a searching look.

“Alright, what happened this time?”

“I’ll tell you what happened,” Steve said, trying to control his voice because the last thing Bucky needed to hear were raised voices from downstairs. “Two Irish guys showed up today, attacked Clint in his own office, and sent him off to urgent care to get patched up.”

“Shit,” Tony snapped. “Shit, I didn’t realize the appointment was scheduled for so soon.”

“I told you more than once,” Steve pointed out, trying to feign something as close to calmness as he could manage. “I’m guessing you got some of that information back. Let me guess… they’re with the Irish mob?”

“They’re with the Irish mob,” Tony confirmed. “I’ve got names, records, shit like that.”

“That’s great, Tony. That’s really, really great. That’s something we definitely could have used just a few hours earlier because maybe if we’d had some sort of clarification, we could’ve prepared better. You promised me you’d have that information before the scheduled appointment.”

Tony blatantly ignored the last part. “Yeah? How exactly would you have prepared yourselves? Would you have informed them that you knew who they were and who they worked for? Would you have put yourself even more in their crosshairs? I’m sorry that Clint got hurt but if I’d gotten back to you, it wouldn’t have changed anything except probably made things worse.”

“Oh yeah, great. So now you’re telling me that you purposely didn’t tell me the information you swore to me you’d have in time? That it wasn’t just you fucking up and forgetting to tell me because you were drunk or too busy or something else?” Tony’s expression hardened but Steve kept going. “I mean, you don’t seem too surprised by all of this. It took me until a week ago to find out that there was mob involvement and everything else. I mean, Jesus Chris, how much do you know that you haven’t told me? How long have you known?”

“To answer your first question, I know a fair amount. As for the second, I’ve known pretty much since I found out the twins were staying at Natasha’s place. Now, if you’re asking how long since I knew things could escalate like this, that’s only been since the kid got shot.”

“So a few weeks,” Steve asked, receiving his confirmation when Tony nodded. “And why didn’t you tell us then?”

“Because I didn’t know for certain. Alright? There were always whispers that Talbot was caught up in shady shit but I didn’t have any proof that he was actually involved with any of the branches of the mob. I know the Irish cased the store that one time but I figured they were just looking for evidence that the kid had been there that night. I knew they were coming back for the appointment with Clint but I didn’t think they’d be stupid enough to assault him in the store. Maybe threaten him – and I was hoping maybe we could catch something else on candid camera that would help incriminate them – but trust me when I say that the reason I didn’t tell you before now was because I thought the more you knew, the deeper you’d be in. That was me trying to keep you out of it as much as possible.”

All at once, Steve felt impossibly tired. The argument with Tony just kept going in circles, with Tony saying the same thing over and over again. It was clear that nothing Steve said would make any difference.

“You know, you’re a hard man to trust, Stark.” Then, turning away and heading towards the stairs - because there was no reason to talk any further - he said over his shoulder, “If you’ve got any files, leave ‘em in my office and I’ll look at them tomorrow. Otherwise, feel free to lock up. Goodnight, Tony.”

He didn’t look behind once as he headed up the stairs, though he felt Tony’s gaze on his back the entire time.