Chapter 2
Natasha tells him, "This is a bad idea," but she sounds more doubtful than like she's actually done the math, so Tony just grunts in response, up to his elbows in space-time continuum and Bruce's more informed cautionary tales.
At least Natasha's not getting in his way, and not making any comments about the breaks he has to take to hyperventilate in the bathroom, or the dark purple hoodie he's been wearing for the last two days and steadily ruining with grease and burns. She's not giving him disapproving looks over his wrecking of Clint's things, so she gets to stay and sip the scotch he's poured but won't touch while attempting to play cat's cradle with the laws of the universe.
There's not a lot of juice to power his abomination of physics, and he doesn't have the time to sit around and contemplate the potential outcomes. The longer it takes to repurpose Loki's little intergalactic world domination toy, the longer a jump he's going to need it to make.
"Why do you even have that thing?" Natasha asks, spinning his desk chair one way about half a turn, then back the other way. She's pale and blotchy and her hair is a frizzed cloud around her face. It's nice that someone looks as fucked up as Tony feels. "I thought SHIELD took it."
"Took, requested and received previous test builds under false identities," Tony shrugs. "Removed key parts for study. Those things are all so similar. Who can pin one down?"
Natasha smiles. Half hearted and tired, and lets him work for a while, then asks, "Do you want to pick a day, Tony?"
"What are you talking about? We're not even dating."
It doesn't get a laugh. Not even a fake one. Instead, Natasha makes a suspicious sounding damp noise, that ends disguised as a cough. "To--for Clint," she says, avoiding the word funeral. Just the hint of it hiding under the implication makes his heart thump in what almost feels like panic and it's a good thing that he's working with bright blue glow, because otherwise he'd be seeing injury and Clint's pale, cracked lips behind his lids. Instead, his eyes just burn from the glare.
"I know you don't want to think about--" she starts, then stops, is silent for a minute, and ends with, "I don't like him being in a drawer in SHIELD for so long." Tony looks up in time to see her smile, and when she catches his gaze, she snorts. The sound hollow and self-mocking. "I don't want him to think we forgot he's there."
"I'm not forgetting," Tony snaps, and has to wipe his face on the sleeve of Clint's hoodie, because his vision suddenly blurs. One of them is making childish hiccuping noises, like trying to choke back more desperate sounds, and it's probably not Natasha. "I'm getting him. I promised I'd get him."
"Tony--"
"No. No. If you're worried, go talk to his drawer like Steve. You can tell him I'm gonna fucking fix this."
Natasha heaves a breath. Says, "We need to say goodbye, Tony."
"Not if I have any say about it, we don't."
-----
He fires the machine up in the middle of the night, to get it going as soon as possible and take advantage of every second he can possibly rewind, and because the team might take failure as a good excuse to stage an intervention.
It hums softly, so low that it's only a vibration under his hand. Barely there, almost as quiet as the arc reactor, and then it shoots out a beam of light. Upwards and against the ceiling, because reorienting the machine hadn't occurred to him. Tipping it over seems like an option, but it's heavy, and he doesn't want it to accidentally fall and be damaged. He doesn't have the fucking time for that.
Instead he gets one of the suit dressing arms to give him a boost, and climbs up through his ceiling and out of his floor, into what should be roughly two weeks ago.
It only occurs to him after he's through and the bright doorway's collapsed behind him that he could have flown up in the suit.
-----
There is no Tony in the past. Or rather, he's the Tony in the past, so that's weird and nothing at all like Bruce's dire, probably sci-fi inspired warnings about meeting himself and possibly collapsing reality.
What is in the past, is Clint, looking at him with a kind of lopsided, tilted head expression, chewing and carrying most of a sandwich in his hand. Taking another bite while Tony forgets how to breathe and swallows convulsively until his throat loosens enough to let him wheeze in a breath. Clint's head tilts a little more. Kind of suspiciously, or like a confused dog. "You okay?" he asks, trying to get a look at Tony's face. "What are you doing?"
"Clint," Tony manages, then laughs.
"Toxic fumes are not a go," Clint reminds, taking another bite of his sandwich. "Is your ventilation on? You look like shit." He stops, looks around. "Is it safe to be in here?"
Tony's mouth moves. He means to say yeah, but it sticks in his throat and comes out as a croak. And then he's got his arms wrapped around Clint, and he probably smells like sweat and stale booze and is probably weirding Clint out on top of it all, but he can't let go. Clint is warm and making a sort of worried, awkward laughing sound, one hand reflexively coming up to pat Tony's back, while the other moves to protect his sandwich. Clint has no idea what's coming. Relaxed and easy and trying to tease answers out of him, and Tony sort of remembers this. Hanging out in the lab, Clint coming in eating crappy peanut butter and jelly on crappy made-from-sponges bread and getting in the way.
Cheerful, and a pain the ass, and without any idea that in about a week, someone would be taking him to literal pieces, and the idiot might still be mostly involved in his sandwich, but Tony can't help but clutch at him. Take his head between his hands, so he can look at Clint's face. At his unbruised eyes, his unsplit lips, and try to unsee the way he'd looked when Tony had found him and cleaned him up, too late to do any good.
"Hi there," Clint grins, misreading the whole thing, and why shouldn't he? Then his brow furrows. He says, "What the hell did you do to my sweater?"
-----
Clint won't let the sweater thing go, which isn't weird, because Clint's always been a little over protective of his things. A little hoardy, maybe, sometimes, but it's surreal as hell to be getting into an argument over something so petty when the last time he'd seen Clint he'd been a lifeless wreck. It's bizarre that he's getting a little annoyed at Clint, even though he's also so happy to see Clint, and listen to Clint's bitching, that he could puke.
Possibly, it's annoying because he's so happy to see Clint that he could puke. Mostly, he wants to tell Clint to shut the hell up about the fucking hoodie, and then grab onto him, and possibly, maybe, cry into his chest a little bit.
But he can't, or he'd have to explain what the hell was wrong with him, and then he'd have to tell Clint that he'd promised him a rescue and failed to make good on it. And then he'd maybe have to tell Clint exactly how he ends up, roughly a week from now.
He doesn't want to think about that. There's a bit of time before he has to say anything. For now, he slips the hoodie off and tosses it. It's strange how it's lost so much of its importance, with Clint standing right there in his bedroom, looking disgruntled and maybe a little offended.
"Oh yeah. Throw my things," Clint grouches, but stops as Tony keeps stripping. Letting himself be distracted, even though Tony's purpose is mostly to get into the shower so he can stop smelling like slept-in clothes and grief, and like the version of himself whose Clint is in a morgue.
But whose hair is at least not full of smoke and Clint's blood. He's sure he'd put his hands to his face. Torn at his own scalp. But he's also pretty sure that Steve or maybe Bruce had shoved him under a shower at some point during the last half week, and he's grateful, because not only would he stink worse than he does, but because it would be kind of creepy to be pulling Clint in with him to wash Clint off him.
But that hasn't happened yet.
He's wearing the same clothes he had been, and he smells like too long in the lab, but Clint's not looking at him like he's that concerned. Definitely not the way he'd be looking if Tony was wearing signs of drinking and barfing and not sleeping for the best part of five days. Instead, Clint just looks a little confused and irritated. The way he does when he can't follow exactly what Tony's up to, or if he gets talked at with too much rapid-fire jargon. Like he's figured out that something's a bit off, but not what it is.
There's no real clues on Tony. Nothing but the way he keeps expecting Clint to be gone, then starts when he finds him right there in sick reversal of the last few days of expecting Clint, and finding him gone.
"What the hell is wrong with you?" Clint asks, forgetting about his mistreated property around the third time Tony jumps at his presence and has to touch his face and chest and mouth to make sure he's real. "You're acting kinda--Are you okay?"
Tony chucks his t-shirt. The lines he'd accidentally scratched into his arms, holding himself together, are gone and when he pulls Clint's shirt away, there's nothing but old, pale scars. No burns or cuts, and nothing has happened yet. Even his horror and grief hasn't happened yet, except in his head.
In all other ways, his reset button's worked. He hasn't walked into the past. He is the past. Or his past self. Or inserted himself into the timeline, somehow.
He's getting the do over.
It could really work.
"What's going on, Tony?" Clint asks, taking him by the wrists to tug his hands loose from Clint's shirt. Pushing him back by the shoulders to look him over from face to feet and back. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing," Tony says, sick with joy, and dread and Clint's voice. "Nothing yet."
Nothing he can't fix.
-----
He watches Clint pack for about two and two-thirds minutes, and then he can't stand to see him digging through the fourth drawer down in Tony's dresser for the gray SHIELD t-shirt he'll leave in, and the pair of stolen-from-Tony dark briefs he'll be tortured to death in.
In a different, obsolete future. Tony has no intention of letting that happen again. Of letting that happen at all.
For now, though, he pulls Clint's bag away and throws it, scattering clothing and gear across the floor, and, when Clint looks away from the mess to fix him with non-plussed
irritation, Tony grabs him and pulls him into a kiss.
Clint mmph-s in protest, but his hands come up to settle on Tony's sides, light. Not pushing him away, but not holding on either. Clint--this handful-of-days-ago, unhurt, cheerful Clint--has no reason to hold on. Not like Tony does.
Tony grabs and manhandles and kisses all over Clint's stupid face, pushing into his space until they both topple over onto the bed. Clint with a laugh, and him with a choking noise that might pass as a laugh, and he should probably be using the precious hours of his second chance on something more constructively useful than warm breathing heart beating and Clint Clint Clint, but he'd run too many if I had one more day, hour, fifteen minutes scenarios in his head to not try for just one of them.
For the best of them, which mostly involves looking down at Clint, touching and kissing and hearing him laugh again. Breathless and goofy, his own hands light enough on Tony's ribs to be ticklish, even though his hips buck up a little as he says, "Tony, Tony," in an un-Clint-like soothing way. "C'mon. You're freaking me out here."
"Sorry," Tony says back, in a similar tone. Just harsher and rougher and like all the drunken not-sobbing he'd done with Steve is caught in his throat. "It's okay. It's gonna be okay."
Clint rolls, tipping him off, and wriggling close to put them face-to-face. "What," he says, forming the words carefully, "is wrong with you?"
"Don't go on the mission," Tony blurts. "That's the best way. Just don't go."
Clint puffs, relaxing as his breath leaves him. "Oh. That." He starts to sit up. Tony pull him back down. They both ignore the way he's gripping hard enough that one of his nails scratches when his hand slips, leaving a score on Clint's arm.
"If I don't go, someone else has to, Tony," he says, reasonable. He rolls onto his back, hands going into his own hair, so that Tony's view of his face is momentarily blocked, but then he drops his elbow and turns his head. Grins. "And I'm Hawkeye," he says, and adds, "The Amazing," as if he thinks Tony might have missed that or forgotten.
"Yeah, yeah." It's reflex. He's not really in any mood to play braggart one-upmanship games. It's taking his breath away to be falling back into familiar, worn banter. To be hearing and saying things he'd thought were gone.
He swallows. Puts a hand on Clint's face, to keep him from breaking eye contact. "Clint," he says again, "Don't go."
"Geez," Clint laughs, "Miss me a bit, huh?"
"You have no idea."
"I'll make you a deal," he says. "Stop losing your mind, and I promise not to get blown up in a humvee or die in a cave, or whatever it is you're imagining."
"You have no idea what I'm imagining."
"Inter-dimensional portal?" Clint smiles, rolling back onto his side, pillowing his head on his still-folded arm. "I can pretty much promise--"
"Don't promise," Tony says, even though he knows space and rips in the sky won't be involved.
"I promise," Clint says anyway, and with determination, and ducks in to kiss him. Gets up on an elbow to lean over him, and kiss him some more, and Tony wants to tell him to skip the fucking mission again, or maybe knock him out and lock him in the Hulk-out saferoom until the whole thing becomes a moot point. But Clint's not wearing anything aside from boxers and one of Tony's t-shirts, and he's only going to be in his jeans for maybe another half minute, with the way Clint's jerking his fly open and tugging the denim down, fingers hooked in Tony's pockets for purchase.
"Ow," Tony complains, when Clint yanks, "Ow, ow."
"Baby." It's not an endearment, but Clint is laughing again. "Come on."
Tony lifts his hips, and there's a moment of tangled chaos as he tries to get Clint's shirt off and Clint tries to slide his jeans down his legs, followed by slightly more tactical maneuvering, as they try to sort themselves out, but mostly manage to get in each other's way.
"Okay," Clint says, breathing a little hard as he sits over Tony, face a little flushed, "Okay, regroup." But he stops his own efforts and ducks down so Tony can drag his shirt over his head and off, turning it inside-out as it slips free.
Tony throws it into the mess of Clint's things he's already strewn across the floor and pulls Clint's hands back to his waistband. "Your turn, Barton."
"I don't know," Clint says, "You keep throwing my stuff. I'm not sure how much I like you right now," but he's pulling Tony's jeans down. More gently now that he's not competing with Tony. Tugging the fabric down until he can pull it off Tony's legs, and pointedly throw the balled up lump against a wall.
"Eh," Tony shrugs. "It's just jeans."
Clint makes an exasperated noise, but the look on his face is fond. A silly half-grin that Tony hadn't thought he'd see again. It's making his chest hurt.
He covers by nodding at the boxers Clint's still got on. Looking away from Clint's face and settling his gaze a little lower, on the pool of shadow just under his sternum. It grows and shrinks with Clint's breath and Tony fixes on it. On that movement and sign of life, until Clint says, "Fine, if you aren't going to," and stupid-strip-teases his way out of his underwear. Extra awkward because he's on his knees at the end of the bed. Graceless and silly until he flops back down and kicks them away. "Ta dah."
"That ballet Nat's teaching you is really paying off," Tony says, grinning in spite of himself.
Clint gives him a look, but it's only mock-censure. Then he snakes an arm out to drag Tony closer, pressing their bodies together, fingers tracing ribs and spine and then cupping his butt. Settling their hips together. Tony lets him, pulling at Clint's hair and probably snagging an ear as he presses their mouths together.
It could be sexier. Or messier. Or both. The whole thing is just odd angles and rough breathing. Dicks caught between them and pressed against each other. Clint hard against him and rocking slowly. Like he's trying to be gentle, or like he's concentrating on kissing back, and distracted.
"Shh, shh," Tony breathes, and pulls back a little. Just enough to take Clint's lower lip between his own. Kissing carefully, making light contact. Soothing himself more than Clint. Maybe soothing future, other Clint. Murmuring comfort to the version that could still hear it.
The one that--miraculously--doesn't grumble or tease about the shushing, but tugs Tony closer to grind against him. Hands still on his ass. Gripping in a way that's more purposeful than sexy, rocking a little more insistently. Breathing a little faster.
Tony's more focused on that--on watching and listening to Clint and filing it all away-- than on the his own pleasure. Mostly, he's letting Clint set the pace and create the friction, stroking careful circles against Clint's temples with his thumbs and smoothing back bits of lightly sweated hair.
Clint rocks against him hard, once, twice, then stops and slows down. Waiting for him to catch up, maybe, or making this last, which Tony would definitely be on board with. "I'm here," he tells Clint, "It's okay."
Clint probably interprets that as, "I'm close" and "Go on," because he groans and jerks and comes against Tony's belly. Groans against his shoulder, hands gripping and loosening in turns before he gathers himself up enough to snake a hand between them and take Tony's cock in his hand. Stroking him off.
It's not what Tony'd meant at all.
-----
When he wakes up--when had he even fallen asleep?--Clint is gone. His clothing and gear and bag are gone from the floor, but it's only maybe six in the morning, and the last time it was today, he hadn't left the tower until closer to noon.
"Oh fuck," Tony gasps, bolting upright. "Oh fuck. Oh fuck, no."
The last time it had been today, they'd had dinner with the others, and bickered with Nat afterwards about something Tony couldn't even remember anymore, then turned in a little bit too late for a pre-mission night.
Because the mission was supposed to be easy and none of them had known Clint was going off to die, slowly and brutally and over the course of three days. Because Tony hadn't acted weird and tense and they hadn't fucked in the evening and fallen asleep curled up together, and probably Clint had wanted to leave on a good note. Didn't want to wake up to Tony still going on at him and risk getting into a fight, the last thing before heading out.
"No. Oh, god, Clint, no," Tony babbles, fumbling for and into some pants, and bolting out his door without shoes or shirt. Sprinting for the elevators. "JARVIS. JARVIS, is Agent Barton in the building?"
"No, sir."
"Okay. Okay. When did he go? He can't be catching his flight until later, so he's probably still at SHIELD. He--I need Natasha."
-----
Natasha isn't in on Clint's mission plans. Or on the reasons for Tony's panic. She just gives him a bemused smile as he paces up and down the hall, yelling and pulling at his hair until Steve arrives on the scene and joins her.
"He'll call in," Natasha says, once he's calmed down a little and is mostly panting and glaring.
"I know he'll call in," Tony shouts.
"Then what's the problem?"
"The problem is I had everything planned around him leaving at noon." He's probably screaming. He's not sure. It feels like his throat's been raw and everything too loud for a while now. There's a background buzz that is probably his blood pressure shooting through the roof, and rushing in his ears.
"Are you alright?" Steve. Sounding muted and distant, but looking too-sharp around the edges. Adrenaline, Tony thinks. His post-New York propensity to freak the fuck out is doing no one any favors right now.
"Clint left early," Natasha says. Natasha thinks this is a boyfriends issue. That would explain the way she's kind of smiling. The spark in her eye. In about a week she's going to think this is a lot less funny. Maybe come and not-cry in his lab again and tell him that she needs to say a proper goodbye to Clint.
Tony drags in a breath. He has--a few hours. He should have a few hours. He'd been able to calculate with disturbing exactitude how long it had likely taken Clint to die--how long it was going to take Clint to die--but he can't seem to manage to figure out the difference between last time's time and today's.
"Last time he left at noon," Tony says, using his fingers to illustrate what should be simple math, "so how long until one could reasonably expect a SHIELD transport to leave after he reports in?"
Natasha and Steve exchange looks. "Are you going to storm SHIELD so you can ask to make-up for whatever it is you did?" she asks. "Do you even know where he's leaving from?"
Tony freezes. He'd assumed--
"Same place you usually leave from?" he tries. "No? JFK? Washington? Greyhound to the West Coast, then a secret air strip in wine country?"
"It's always classified," Natasha shrugs. "I don't know, Tony. He didn't tell me."
"Oh god. Oh my god. I should have--" done research. He'd been too deep into desperation and his brilliant idea of playing with magic and he should have listened to Bruce's theories about time lines and butterfly effects and sleeping enough to be clear headed. "I thought--I just--I had a half-assed plan."
"So the usual Thursday, then?" Steve jokes, dry.
Thursday.
They have a week.
"This is really not my day," Tony mumbles, mostly to himself, and swallows. Sets his jaw. He might not know where Clint is, or what SHIELD secret jet-launching hole he might be zooming to his death from, but he does know where Clint is going.
Where Clint will try to lie low to call for back-up.
Where he'll disappear from.
Where he'll die for three days, and where Tony will find him, a good day too late.
Those are all solid destinations. He knows them by heart, down to their GPS coordinates.
"JARVIS," he yells, already running back the way he'd come, down the hall and towards the elevators, "Get the suit ready."
-----
Steve follows him to the upper level, positioning himself between Tony and his access to the exits, eyeing him warily as he bolts food--it doesn't matter what, he needs the fuel. It's hours to Europe, and even with a head-start, he might need to move the second he hits the ground. Or, at any rate, he'll need to be ready to stake-out Clint's past-future known locations. There won't be time for a snack break. He's not running that risk.
"Tony," Steve says, "What's wrong with you?"
"Nothing. I have stuff to do. Important, busy stuff. I'd ask you to back me up, but you might decide to have me put away instead, so I'm just gonna ask you to trust me, okay?"
"I--"
"Can't do that?" Tony gives him a crooked smirk. It would be easier to hold that against Steve, if he wasn't so aware of acting like a nutjob.
"Promised Clint I'd keep an eye on you," Steve finishes, sounding somewhere between worried and affronted.
"Oh? He thinks I'm the one who needs the eye keeping on, does he?" That's almost funny, that Clint thinks he's the one in danger here, but in a way that makes Tony's throat tight and the back of his mouth sour. He can hear his heart thumping. Imagines it's making the arc reactor feel too big for his sternum. There's a solid ache all the way around the casing.
"He said you were acting weird, and you're not exactly doing much to--"
"Clint's going to die."
"What?"
Tony rips open a protein bar. Shoves half into his mouth and chews just enough that he can swallow before shoving the rest in after. "Clint's gonna die," he repeats, around his full mouth, "if we don't do something."
Steve takes a breath. Lets it out. His face scrunches. He's thinking of something supportive to say that won't also be hypocritical or an empty platitude. Probably, he'll settle on something like, Clint knows the risks of his job, Tony, or He's one of the best, he can look after himself.
Except Clint doesn't know the risks of this particular job, and he can't look after himself. Not this time. This time, he'll end up in a damp concrete room, and then a cold drawer in SHIELD's morgue.
"Get out of my way, Steve. I have a plane to beat."
"You don't even know--"
"That's what you think." He knows way, way too much.
And even that might not be enough. He has no idea what Clint's doing, why he's doing it, who he's doing it to, or what for. Just locations and an idea of when certain things will happen that isn't even that exact. His excess of information is more along the lines of the sound Natasha will make when she's informed of Clint's death, and how many times Steve will ask if he's sure there's no pulse before his voice breaks on the question, and dissolves into static and comm feedback, and how Clint will look. Pale like he's been bled dry, except for the livid, surreal color of contusions and burns, standing out against--
"Get out of my way."
Steve doesn't. He holds his hands up placatingly, but instead of calming Tony down, it makes him want to break every one of Steve's fingers. "Just take it easy. Tell me what's going on. Are you having some kind of--"
"Mental break? Panic attack? Psychotic episode? What will make you feel better?" He's losing time, but he probably won't make it at all if he tries to dodge around Steve.
"None of those make me feel better," Steve says.
He's not budging. Tony makes the best of the delay, unwrapping another protein bar to put the time to use, considering and dismissing the option of fire extinguishing Steve out of way.
"Clint's in trouble. Going to be in trouble. I gotta--" He stumbles on find him, throat closing up, forcing the alternative, "get him back," to come out in a croak.
"He just left," Steve points out, and that's pretty much Tony's entire plan. To beat Clint there. To get there early instead of too late, and maybe even save Clint most of the beatings instead of just the miserable, brutal death.
"Try to stop me, Steve," Tony says, low. A threat. If Clint dies because of this, he won't forgive Steve. Won't be able to get past it. Will look at Steve and see Clint half-curled up on cold concrete, see the last glimpse of his hair disappearing into a dark SHIELD body bag. And unlike week-from-now Steve, this one will know he could, maybe, have stopped it from happening by just standing the hell down.
He's made a mess. Set up a potential greater disaster. This Clint could take the Avengers with him, when he goes. If he goes. If Steve lets him go.
"Just tell me what's going on," Steve says, "We can bring the team in on it, if it's--"
"If I play this right," Tony says, "There won't be anything to bring the team in on."
Steve doesn't step aside, but when Tony walks past him towards the sliding doors and the launch pad, he doesn't make a move to stop him either.
-----
He's not right.
He's not sure if Clint's making different calls this time around, or if the mission's whole timeline's shifted based only on Clint's earlier start, but his mayday doesn't come from where Tony expects, and there's no sign that he ever comes near his expected hidey hole. Tony's in Europe instead of en route this time, when Clint just falls off the map, with no comm chatter, and no check-ins after the initial call for help.
Even staking out the abandoned building where Clint's going to die comes to nothing, because he doesn't die there. No one ever shows up and the corner he'd found Clint thrown into stays empty.
This time, Clint dies on Friday.