Numbers and Rescues
4 hours 38 minutes: That's how long the screams lasted, although he probably couldn't really call them screams by the end, Pietro's voice having given out somewhere around the three hour marker, the remaining 1 hour 38 minutes filled with a gasping, broken wheeze that was almost harder for Clint to bear. Any hope he'd had about HYDRA's need for two prisoners was wiped out after that.
7 hours 17 minutes: That's how long Clint waited by the vent, desperately needing to hear something, anything, to let him know that Pietro was alive.
1 second: That's how long it took Clint to snap after hearing the broken sob that he thought he'd been waiting for, the broken sob that he would kill never to hear again.
4 days: That's how long it took to formulate his rescue plan and put it into action. Four agonising days when all he wanted to do was hold the damn kid and offer him comfort, four days of despair and pain and whispered words of comfort through a rusty, faceless vent.
7 times: That's how many torture sessions he'd been forced to listen to while he waited for his chance, each one like an arrow to his soul.
13 minutes: That's how long it took to break out of his cell and break into Pietro's. Unlucky thirteen, Clint refused to see it as an omen.
27 HYDRA agents: That's how many he took out after seeing what they had done to Pietro.
1 hour 32 minutes: That's how long it took to walk the short distance out of the compound, Pietro a dead weight in his arms, barely conscious and barely coherent.
1 'I love you': whispered into russet-stained hair, a plea to hold on and a promise for the future all at the same time.
2 hours 56 minutes: That's how long it took the Avengers to reach them after Clint called for help, Almost three hours of lying in a cold, damp field, watching the uneven rise and fall of Pietro's chest like the proverbial hawk, silently begging the universe not to take him away.
32 broken bones, 28 lacerations, 112 stitches, 1 severe concussion, 1 coma.
3 weeks, 4 days, 16 hours, 18 minutes: That's how long it took Pietro to wake up, that's how long Clint waited by the hospital bed, leaving only for minutes at a time.
The rest of his life: That's how long Clint promised to look out for Pietro, to make sure that he never got hurt like this again.
20 years, 9 months, 18 days, 6 hours, 47 minutes: That's how long it took for Clint to fulfil his promise.