Chapter 3
Tony wakes up the next morning, on Thursday.
The next week's Thursday. His Thursday, where--when--Clint's been dead a week, and he's been alternating drinking with staring at his walls with not listening to his phonecalls until they turn to static buzzing in his ear, and then hanging up mid-conversation so he can repeat the process.
This Thursday he's still engaged in all that, but also in a bitter fight with Steve, which he discovers when he drags himself out from the lab and up to the penthouse and finds Steve hunched at his bar, glaring at a drink and wearing rumpled clothes.
"It was a dump site," Tony tells him, not sure yet how much Steve remembers of which circumstance. His throat feels raw again, and he's still wearing Clint's stupid sweatshirt. He probably needs a wash as badly Steve does.
"Don't start." Steve sounds about as rough. Not the grieving but solid pillar he'd been before Tony decided to play do-over. Tony smiles a little, wry and humorless. He'd predicted this. "I said, call in the team. I said to fill me in. I don't--"
"You're blaming me?" This part--this part he hadn't foreseen.
Steve knocks back his ineffectual drink, and slams the glass down--not hard enough to break glass or bar--and looks up to glare. His eyes aren't red rimmed, but they are shadowed in a way Tony hasn't been familiar with, even from the aftermath of Clint's previous death.
"You knew something was wrong. You knew before it happened. Before Clint knew."
"What are you getting at?"
This fight is a week old and a week in. Tony doesn't remember any of it. It's a fucking awful trade-off for getting a complete second version of finding Clint and calling SHIELD and telling Natasha I'm so sorry to go with the original go-round.
Steve opens his mouth, then closes it. Narrows his eyes. Tony's probably asked him that before. It's probably a question better suited to earlier in the week. It seems like they've moved on from the questions part of the argument into the sullen anger part, but whatever Steve and the alternate him Steve remembers had been throwing back and forth up until this point means close to nothing to now-Tony.
"Whatever it is you think I'm up to, Steve," he says, smirking more out of habit and muscle memory than any kind of amusement, "Trust me. You don't have a clue." Because if he and Steve had been busy pointing angry fingers, then Steve probably hadn't played babysitter while Tony drank himself numb, and they hadn't sat at the bar in miserable shared grief, and Tony had probably not announced his intentions to put his last bit of tesseract charge to use, and Steve had probably not come to check up on him in the lab while he was busy putting his plan into action.
Steve looks away instead of answering, and the evasion is unlike him and awful. Tony can only just see the corner of his mouth twitch as he ducks his head and his face turns into shadows. His breathing is audible, just a little too loud, and then he brings a hand up to press it to his face and stays like that.
"I should have gone with you," he says, eventually, voice rougher all of a sudden than it had been. "You said he was in trouble, why didn't you--"
"Coulda, shouda," Tony says, too fast. Too flippant. Off enough that it makes Steve jerk, maybe interpreting it as an attack. Whatever fighting they'd been doing this last week, it must have been vicious.
"What happened to--" he has to stop, and in spite of his panic and the rush he's in, has to drop his voice to a whisper to manage, "Clint?"
That makes Steve look back up. Raising his head like it weighs a ton, and turning to look at Tony. "What's wrong with you?" he asks, half offense and half like he thinks Tony might actually be going off the deep end. "What the hell is--?"
"Steve. I'm sorry. I'm sorry for not--for everything, but I need to know--"
"You were there." It's not loud, or snapped, but it is angry. In a low, tired, slow burn way that Tony doesn't associate with Steve at all.
"I don't remember," he says, still standing more or less in the middle of his own penthouse. Run out of steam, and not sure where he'd been heading anyway. "It--A lot of it's a blur."
Steve doesn't say anything and it's not clear what he's thinking, or how he's taking that, so Tony says, "I want to see him."
-----
It's not that he's ghoulish, or perverse, or trying to torture himself, although Natasha probably thinks he might be one or all of those things, escorting him with more than a little hesitation to one of the hospitals SHIELD uses and then down empty, horribly lit hallways, ugly linoleum squeaking under their feet.
He wishes Bruce were there. Bruce would be more useful than Natasha, who looks frayed herself, and worried, watching him out of the corner of her eye like she thinks he's going to crack. He isn't. He's still got juice in his tesseract machine. He can try again to save Clint, if he can just gather enough information. Retrace Hawkeye's steps and work out his mission, and figure something out beyond the main landmarks of Clint's death.
The now defunct landmarks of Clint's death, if the do-over of his do-over starts with the changes already in place.
There's no way to tell if that will be the case, but he has to be ready. Can't be distracted this time by relief and terror and Clint, or Clint might die. Again. And even if Clint won't remember any of it later, Tony might not be able to handle finding his body too many more times.
Natasha follows him into the cold, sterile room, but stays by the door, leaning against the tiled wall while Tony makes his way past stainless steel tables and glass-doored cabinets. Past gurneys. In some ways the aesthetics aren't too different from some of his own workshops. He tries not to look at the ways that they differ. Thinks R&D lab and imagines his grungy armchair, with the stuffing poking out and doesn't turn to look at any of the visible equipment, but mentally substituting DUM-E only goes so far. There's nothing the wall of stainless steel drawers at the back of the room can be, other than cold storage.
He finds the door marked Barton, C without much trouble, and his hand closes around the handle, and stays there. He probably loses minutes, because he doesn't notice Natasha moving until her arm brushes his and she asks, "Why are we here?"
"I need to--" His throat closes. Natasha gives him a look. She doesn't want to be here or see any more than he does. "Process the body," Tony finishes.
"Jesus, Tony."
Tony looks at her, then back at his hand.
"We're leaving," Natasha says.
"It was a dump site. I thought I knew where it happened, but it was a dump site. Something--He changed the timeframe. He took an extra day to die."
"Tony,--"
"Maybe they didn't have time. Or they had to move. Or they were moving, and were just coincidentally in a different location when Clint--"
"We're going, Tony."
"When they killed him."
He doesn't mean to torture Natasha. It's just sort of happening automatically. The same way his arm jerks, then pulls, and the drawer slides out. Heavy, then smooth, with only the faintest hiss of rollers.
And then Natasha pushes it shut again and shoves him. Not hard, but enough that he has to take a stumbling step back to keep his balance.
"I have to know where he died."
"No, you don't."
"You don't--"
"SHIELD has a file. They've done the work. You can read that."
He has. Earlier, in a different version of this week. "He's just KIA. They don't care about the specifics."
"You don't need the damn specifics. It's over. He's gone, Tony. It's over."
They're shouting. Or at least, Natasha is. Tony wonders if his voice had sounded that thick, in the reality where Steve didn't think he'd withheld information that had caused Clint's death. If there'd been that same desperate, angry edge in his voice when he'd yelled at Steve over absently mixed cocktails.
"It's not over," he says, promising it the same way he'd promised a same-but-different Natasha, "I can fix this."
Her face softens. She looks the way she had when she'd come to check on him in the lab and humor him about the time machine. Probably the worse state she's in here is his and Steve's fault. Instead of rallying around Clint's loss, this team is fracturing along the faultlines of the secrets Tony had known and kept.
"I need to know where he died," Tony says, solemn, knowing Nat, if not Steve could understand being kept in the dark. Being given tasks and no explanation. "I need to know how he died."
Natasha keeps her hand on the drawer, moving her body between him and it, and he's not sure if she's still protecting Clint, even now, or protecting Tony from himself.
"I'll get someone on it," she says.
"What? I can't wait on--"
"I'll get someone on it."
It's clearly the end of the discussion. He's done nothing here but waste time. He glances back at the drawer. Natasha sets herself more firmly in front of it, and just like that, he's done. Wants nothing less than to see Clint, damaged and reduced to a shell. Not when he can still hear Clint griping about his sweater and feel him, warm and lazy, half asleep against him.
"Fast," he hears himself telling Nat. "Get them on it fast."
-----
When they get back to the tower, Tony throws Clint's sweater in the wash, showers, changes, eats--all mechanically and without thought--then turns his music up to repel Steve. If everything goes right, they won't need to talk. Everything will just be fixed. He just has to climb back up through his personal rift in time, find Clint, and prevent him from leaving.
Just focus and act. No room for distraction or to think about Clint, laughing and joking and grumbling, warm under his hands. He can't let himself get pulled into it, or let go, even for a second, of the Clint that's rightfully his, in a drawer at SHIELD, or he'll get derailed, and it will all be this, again.
Might be this, but worse.
"Get a grip, Stark," he tells his ceiling, clambering up, still not resorting to the practicality of his repulsor boots. Something about the precarious scramble from robot claw to the lip of the hole, to the awkwardly kicking himself up and through feels right. Makes everything a little less surreal, if he can turn the jump into something physical.
He wriggles out onto the floor of two weeks ago, and bounces up--just in case anyone's there to see--and brushes himself off. He's wearing a dark t-shirt and jeans. The same clothes he'd been wearing, while, half a month and one death into the future, Clint's sweater finishes tumbling through a wash-and-dry cycle.
He just needs to find Clint, and in two minutes this could be done, and he won't even need the research he's set Natasha on, if she's even still working on it--if he'll still have asked her the favor, by the time he gets back.
It's convoluted. And hopefully beside the point. He's willing to lock Clint up in the Hulk-out room or a closet or even an Iron Man suit until the whole thing is irrelevant, and then weather the consequences.
He bolts for the elevators, putting on the brakes just enough to not smack into the lab doors before they can slide open, and skidding through, sneakers squealing. The elevator takes a bit longer, even with a lot of button punching and swearing at JARVIS, and then is followed by an interminable ride up to the communal levels that Tony spends bouncing one leg and tapping his fingers against his thighs.
Steve looks up from something he's studying on a tablet and smiles. Suddenly open-faced and friendly again. Or still open-faced and friendly, because Tony hasn't gone and played solo act and gotten Clint killed yet.
He's about to re-screw that right back up.
"Steve."
He must sound weird, because Steve straightens up a little and looks like he's considering getting up.
"Where's Clint?"
"What?" Steve asks, and frowns. He gets a confused little furrow in his brow. Tony's chest hurts. He rubs at it with the heel of one hand, scrubbing the ribs to one side of the arc reactor, like that might make the casing sit better.
"Are you okay?" Steve asks, tracking the movement. Tony drops his hand.
"Clint," he repeats, tilting his head to prompt Steve. Trying to not vibrate with impatience. "Where is he?"
Steve's eyes narrow. For a second Tony thinks his portal’s failed and he's still with the angry, betrayed Cap of the alternate future, but then Steve's face shifts into a perplexed, puzzled look. Mouth pulling up at one side, one eye squinching just a bit. It could almost be funny, if Tony wasn't already putting together the pieces and realizing what's happened.
"I though he left," Steve says slowly, sounding confused but cautious, "already."
"Oh, fuck."
"Tony?"
"Oh god, no."
"What's going on, Tony?"
Tony blinks. That's getting to be the soundbyte of his life, what's going on. "I have a set amount of power," he says, feeling tired, and resigned, and sick, "It's a day later." He swallows, and clarifies, uselessly, "Than last time. I spend too much time doing things."
Steve's on his feet now, peering at him and looking worried. Closing the space between them by careful inches. Tony snorts.
"Don't worry, Cap. I'm not going to blow."
"You sure about that?"
There's the hint of gentle teasing in it, under the worry. It's too bad Tony's about to set back in motion all the bits that will add up to them being--apparently--on barely speaking terms. He tries to smile the apology that won't make sense to say, and asks, "When did he leave?"
"This morning?" The rising inflection is more doubt than actual question. "Before five? I was heading out running." He still looks worried. Outside, it's getting dark. Maybe, Tony had already run around demanding where Clint had gone. Maybe he's supposed to be on his way to Europe. If this is, in fact, the last time it was today, he should be on his way to Europe by now.
He can't work out the physics or the logic. He needs Bruce. Or maybe Thor. Considering he's using tesseract power, it's probably not physics he needs to be figuring out. Maybe not logic, either.
At least he can piece together that he's working with the new, expedited time frame that somehow ends up with Clint dying on Friday, buying him another day. Maybe. There's no telling if any of the pieces of this jigsaw are static or even stable. If he can rely on what information he has and use it to manipulate outcomes, or if every go-round is going to be a fresh, random toss-up. All the events scrambled and hopelessly left to chance.
That's the first answer he needs. To figure out what he's dealing with here, and how, exactly, he can deal with it, and if the hole in his lab ceiling is taking him back exactly the same amount of time, then he doesn't have an unlimited number of tries. Eventually, real-time will move forward enough that do-over-time won't start far enough back. Eventually, his portal will lead back to a time after Clint's death, or to a time so close to it, that he'll be helpless to make any difference.
He has to consider this round a control test, then hit his reset button as soon as he's figured out how much of the events shift is his doing and how much of it just happens, all on its own, tied up somehow in the mechanism of whatever the fuck he's done to time and space and reality.
"JARVIS," he says, staying as close to script as he can, knowing what it will mean, at least for Clint. For this go-round of Clint. "Get the suit ready."
Steve follows him to the roof.
-----
Not saving Clint is immeasurably harder than even frantically rushing around and falling behind the clock. Tony sticks to his script--receives the mayday, notes how long it takes Clint to fall off grid, then dutifully makes his rounds of Clint previous-but-now-obsolete known locations, the same as he had before, just in case not doing that somehow changes something, and decidedly doesn't think about where Clint is and what's happening to him right now. Definitely doesn't think about the fact that not only is he going to fail at finding him, he isn't even looking.
He's almost glad that Clint also seems to be following the new timeline, and falls into off-the-grid silence after the initial mayday, because it keeps him from promising I'm coming when he isn't.
Clint probably believes he is, though. Clint's going to hold out until Friday on the strength of it.
Like before, no one shows up at the original dump site. It just gets dark and quiet and cold, and somewhere, Clint's down to maybe a few hours.
Tony takes a breath. Checks the time, then checks it again. It would be sensible to get some sleep, so he can hit the future running, and go again without losing a minute that he doesn't have to, but it's impossible.
Clint dies and Tony finds him right on schedule, which means that the changes are his doing. That he's the reason Clint's not here, and if he'd had more foresight, he'd have had this whole thing wrapped up that first time instead of wasting his chance having freaked out, mediocre sex.
Right on schedule, he tells Natasha, "I'm sorry," and tunes out Steve's questions, and lets SHIELD come and pack Clint away.