Chapter 6
Tony doesn't really explain what his outburst had been about, concentrating instead on how he'd undone a change--even if it was only the specifics of Clint's dump site--and how some minor discrepancy had snowballed into causing it in the first place. On Steve finding the file twice, but only changing that outcome once. Some small difference in Tony's choice of comments, maybe, changing the timing of Steve's mission of nosiness or what he might have said to Clint.
There's no way to make any of that into useful knowledge, and not terrifying randomness made worse by the backstabbing suspicions he's now having. Which is, really, the only part he can do anything about, so the first thing Tony asks when he gets back to his proper place in time is, "Did SHIELD recover any more bodies?" and, "Did SHIELD look for any more bodies?"
Or survivors. He's not in a generous enough mood to want there to be survivors.
"What?"
He's probably been acting strange all missing-week long, judging by the look Natasha's giving him. "Did I ask this before?" he checks, just in case, "Did you already dig something up?"
"No and no. What's going on, Tony?"
"That question is starting to be like some kind of water torture. The psychological one, not the waterboarding one."
If there's one thing they're getting used to, maybe, it's him not making sense. He's been digging that particular hole deeper with every go-round. It's a good thing they know about what he's done with the wormhole maker now, or they'd probably be worrying about him for entirely different reasons.
"Clint was in Germany with a 'we'. So why didn't find a them?" Natasha's eyes narrow. Tony adds, "In the underpass," for clarity. "Or anywhere else. You hear anything?"
Her silence is enough.
"Okay. Great. You run this by Bruce. I have to go."
He's nearly out the door when Natasha calls, "I could come with you."
"Can't. I already sent you to Europe."
-----
He climbs into his lab of the relatively recent past with a plan. Or at least, a general course of action, and the first step of it is to find Steve and fill him in, starting with re-introducing him to Clint's post-mortem.
Which isn't in its hiding place.
That's not a problem. He'd spent a few hours trying to run down some hunches and making sure his changes were still coming out as expected. Maybe's he's past that point and the tell-all he's already set down has taken.
"JARVIS. Get me Steve."
"Captain Rogers is not in the building."
That's a bit weird, considering how this day is supposed to go. Tony looks out the window. Frowns at the sight of the still lit sky. It's not late enough for Steve and Nat to have left yet, if they're on schedule. "What time is it?"
"It's five o'clock, sir. PM."
Earlier than he'd left the future, and by hours. Steve should be around. Should have just finished talking with current him. Should be reading Clint's file, which would explain it missing from the lab.
"How about Natasha?"
"Agent Romanov--"
"Is not in the building. Got it," Tony says. His stomach is sinking. "JARVIS, where are Rogers and Romanov?"
"They're still en route, sir. Their estimated time of arrival in Germany is--"
He's lost a day. "I lost a day?"
He's not ready for it. He should have a good week in the future, before he runs out of time, and he'd counted on being able to expand that into months, slipping multiple past weeks into a day.
Without an actual tesseract to power it, his machine is running out of charge. Another easy, logical prediction he hadn't made.
-----
The first, most obvious solution to that is to get Bruce in on it. On the ground level.
"You what?" is Bruce's response.
"Built a time machine. Ideally, Steve would be telling you this, or at least nodding along, and it would come off a lot more convincing, but--" he shrugs. Bruce gives him a suspicious look, but the circuit he treads around the machine is at a distance. He's been at least partially briefed, and Tony's pretty sure he's seen the file. He can see Bruce having questions he doesn't actually come out and ask.
Eventually he settles on, "This thing works?"
"Yep. I'm in the here and the now, aren't I?"
Bruce considers him. Carefully and from head to toe, then flicks his attention to the portal splashed across the ceiling, and back. "Is that how you trashed that sweater so fast?" he asks, following it a second later with, "So where's now Tony?"
"I'm now Tony. But, for now. It sort of makes sense. I exist in the future, anyway, so I assume I survive this. Also," he says, holding out his hands to show the way the burnt patches in the cuffs of Clint's sweater have mostly frayed into actual holes, and a bleached-out splatter pattern is crawling up the inside of one arm, "it took me weeks to do this."
"He'll be thrilled," Bruce says.
"He'll be dead. Think about time machine problems. In two weeks I'll want your thoughts. Now I'm going to go upstairs. I'm waiting for a call."
-----
"Hey, Tony."
Tony exhales. Scrubs at his face with the edge of his wrecked sleeve. "Clint."
"Listen. I'm in a bit of trouble. I can't talk--"
"You're in Germany."
There's a beat of silence. He can almost see Clint giving his comm a suspicious look. "You're good, Tony Stark."
"Are you alone?"
This time the silence is full of stupid Clint humor. Tony's not sure how he's picking up on that, but it makes him want to laugh and, simultaneously, slide to the floor and maybe throw up a little bit. "I'm serious, Barton."
"Okay. Yeah. Okay. I know. I'm alone. What's up?"
Tony takes a breath. Another. Swallows hard. With his time running out in a more permanent way than had been the case up to this point, this might be the last time he gets to talk to Clint. The only chance to make any change on Clint's side of the equation, and if he fucks up, he very likely won't get a chance to undo it. His jaw hurts. Tony very consciously unclenches it and says, "Clint, this is going to sound crazy, but you need to believe me."
"What else is new?" Clint says, but follows with, "I don't have a lot of time. My cover's--"
"Blown. I know. Steve and Natasha are on their way. You have to get out of there. Just disappear. Lay low and--"
"We're safe. We just--"
"You're not. You're--" Tony takes a breath. Holds it. Says, slowly and clearly, "Clint, you're going to die, and I think someone in SHIELD is going to be responsible. You have a leak, or a mole, or someone on your team is out to get you."
Silence. Again. "Barton? Still there?"
"That's stupid. I've worked with--"
"Then don't kill them. Split up. Go stealthily your own ways until whatever mess you're in blows over or we find you."
"What's going on, Tony?"
"I know the future."
"Tony."
"It involved a little bit of tesseract. I can tell you about it later." The mention of tesseract is enough to get Clint to simmer down. Tony hopes the lack of protest is a result of Clint listening and not Clint silently freaking out. "It's okay," he says, just in case.
"You saw me die on an alien magic vision quest, and you're telling me it's okay?"
There's sound on the other end. Clint moving. Evading whatever had caused him to sign off in a hurry last time which means he believes Tony enough to risk buying more time on comms.
"It'll involve a train," Tony tells him. "There'll be fibers in your--" he has to stop and make himself not see how Clint will look when they find him, blood smeared and filthy. "In your hair. Blue and yellow, mostly. I think it's from crappy commuter car upholstery."
"This is the most exact fortune telling I've ever seen," Clint remarks. "And trust me. I've seen a bunch." There's a bit of a laugh in it, but not enough to mean Clint's stopped taking him seriously. There's a thump and a clatter across the line, and Clint breathing a little heavily, and then he says, "Someone's not tracing your trace, are they?"
Tony's not running a trace, but starts one to check anyway. "No. You're still showing up in France."
"Okay. So take cabs, is your advice, then?"
"My advice is get out of there, and if you see yellow, blue and gray polyester, get the hell out of dodge. And don't get in any shipping containers."
Clint takes a breath. Huffs it out. "Jesus," he says, "They--In a shipping container?"
"I'm sorry. I tried to get you. I tried to--"
"Hey. Hey, I'm still okay, right? Don't get all weird on me. Tesseract bad dreams are supposed to be my thing."
Tony wishes it were a dream. Just his mind substituting one dark horrible place for another while it works through his issues and the new issues he has, that involve mostly the same fears but also Clint. "Just get out of there. Clint. Please. Don't go to the safehouse. Find Cap."
"I can't, Tony. Stroud's down. I can't leave him."
"Clint--"
There's scuffling. A bang, sounding more like a door than a gunshot. And then the hurried, "I have to go, Tony," and then silence
-----
Tony's stomach is in knots all the way to Europe, but at least this time he's flying with Bruce and Thor and an engaged auto-pilot, and that lets him focus most of his attention on all the ways his decision to warn Clint might end up with Clint dumped in a sewer, or someplace else where they might never find the body, much less enough clues to get to him before the clock runs out. Before this, they'd at least narrowed his locations down to Germany, and his movements to the time-feasible radius of him ending up dead on Friday, and dumped in Belgium sometime Saturday morning.
That gives them three days, and by Tony's calculations, if Clint hasn't already rendezvoused with Steve and Nat--and he hasn't--then things have already gone wrong and he isn't going to. And this time, when they shove Clint into the container they're going to torture him to death in, he'll know he won't be walking out. Tony shouldn't have given him the details. Should have explained the time machine in clearer terms, and told him hang on, hang on as long as you can, even if we don't make it this round, I need the time.
Should have told him I'm coming.
Hopes to fucking death that what he's told Clint doesn't undermine any of the stubbornness that's so far gotten him through to Friday.
Three, four days to die. They might be torturing him already.
"Tony?" Bruce sounds far away but not so far that Tony can't drag his attention back.
"They're going to kill him. We won't make it in time."
"Then you'll try again. Right?"
"I already I tried again. I don't even know what try we're on, and I don't know how many tries I have left, and--You think SHIELD would give us some tesseract? You think they have just a little left-over corner? That I can have an hour with to power the machine?"
More likely they'd confiscate the thing. SHIELD's attitude to wormholes hasn't really tended to the adventurous. Maybe, after enough research and documented theorizing, they'd let him try, under supervision and after it's much too late.
He knows he sounds bitter. Angry. He'd been blaming himself for not warning Clint that first time, but Clint is a stubborn, immoveable asshole. Warnings don't do any good with him. Tony's not sure why he'd thought they would.
Still, when they find him this time, with old brick at his back and disuse all around, Tony feels panic claw up his throat. This time, it's Steve that follows him away from the body--from Clint--to stand a distance away while he gets a grip.
"I'm sorry, Tony," he says, after a while, voice soft.
It's his job to make that apology. Another useless, pointless break in the pattern. "Not your fault."
Steve heaves a breath. Says, "It's not yours either."
"You figure, do you?" he snorts. He's still mad at Clint. It's probably a sign that he's losing his grip, when Clint's more than paid for being an obnoxious fuck-up.
"Tony." Steve's misreading his anger, if the gentle tone to his voice is anything to go by. Tony doesn't bother straightening him out.
"SHIELD here yet?"
Steve looks away, back to where Natasha and Bruce and Thor are standing. The scene is familiar, but shuffled. Roles shifting, but the script essentially staying the same. It's incomprehensible how some small thing said or not said could change important specifics of Clint's death, but the whole mess Tony had dumped on him had done almost nothing, except maybe terrify Clint with foresights and expectations.
"A few minutes out," Steve says. "You holding up?"
"He knew he wasn't getting out, this time," Tony says, as an answer. Steve can figure out the relevance on his own. "Probably as soon as he saw where they were taking him."
"It's over now."
He wants to torture Steve a little more. Say, knew he was going to die in the dark, just to get it off his chest. Spread the crushing, suffocating weight around a little, but he manages to tamp it down until the swell of emotion is just a dense pain somewhere in his chest, under the arc reactor. Packed hard and tight and small enough to mostly ignore.
"I know," he says, "Come on. Bruce is going to want to take him home, and I want to find out who the fuck Stroud is."
-----
"Or was," Tony adds, once they're back at Avengers Tower and he has full unmitigated access to JARVIS and the rest of his toys. "Search for everything that has him and Barton and Germany and-or neighboring European countries involved, in any combination."
Natasha looks at him. Her mouth a solemn, flat line.
"I need a mole," Tony tells her. "If there was anything to find in their hackable systems, I'd have it by now."
"You want me to double time SHIELD for you?"
"Double double time. Turn around's fair play. Everyone knows that."
Natasha sighs. Kicks at his desk to spin her chair a little one way, then hooks her foot around its leg to pull her back around. He's not as sympathetic to her fidgeting as he used to be.
Or to the babysitting. He's fairly certain that's what she's mostly here for.
"Do you know a Stroud? Worked with one, maybe? Clint said him, so dames--as Steve would say--are right out."
"You know there's an investigation already started, right?" Natasha tells him, kicking at the table again. She looks puffy and like she's trying to hide it. No matter how much the Avengers believe him--and Tony's not really sure they entirely do, or if it's even possible to--they haven't lived through the repeats of Clint's death. The whole I can undo this plan is just theory to them, no matter what evidence he can present them with.
"Sure, and what part of government agency screams 'expedient results' to you?"
"Your battery problem," Natasha recalls. "Right."
"Among other things. Now. Stroud?"
"I don't know him. I don't know everyone in SHIELD, and me and Clint run--ran. Different kinds of ops, a lot of the time."
"So you're friends at camp, but not at school? Gotcha."
That gets a smile out of Nat. Small and almost private, and Tony's pretty sure he's stumbled onto an in-joke. The kind that Clint would smirk at her about over the table or in briefings.
"Don't cry. This is a no crying lab."
"Steve thinks you should slow down," Natasha says instead, without any change to her demeanor. Nothing to even slightly acknowledge how much of an asshole he's being. It should probably make him feel bad that she's trying so much harder than he is, even though without his time traveler's perspective, losing Clint has to be hitting her harder.
"Tony thinks you and Captain Part-Time Agent should to go to SHIELD and ask some questions," he returns, “Or do some quiet snooping and poking. I think you'll find Steve's surprisingly good at it."
Natasha opens her mouth, but then just says, "Okay," and shuts it again.
"It was supposed to be an easy mission," Tony says, "And now Clint's dead and we have a whole SHIELD team unaccounted for."
"That could be as small a unit as the two of them," Natasha says. "If this Stroud was already injured, it's possible he's dead, and there's your whole team accounted for."
"Maybe." It's doubtful. He'd have heard something by now, if that was the case. Alive in Europe somewhere is also iffy. That still leaves captured and turncoat, and it might be sick, but Tony's hoping for turncoat, because captured doesn't sound promising for clues. Treachery, though. That would almost definitely leave a trail of some kind.
"I'll look into it."
"Good," Tony says. "Great. While you're at it, I'm going to go research train lines."
-----
He doesn't need to research train lines. JARVIS can pull up any information he needs within seconds, and filter it for relevance just as fast. Instead, he sits with his time machine, and considers his portal. Weighs the risk of too much time passing while he waits against wasting charge. It's infuriating for a machine powered by magic to have such a mundane problem.
It's fucking stupid, and it's going to get Clint killed for good, and the next time he climbs up through his ceiling portal, there's a very good chance that he'll be too late to talk to Clint. That their last conversation will remain stuck at, you die in a shipping container.
He should have said something else. He can't get past the thought to get to any more useful mental processes, and finally ends up in the shared kitchen, and then Clint's apartment, where they didn't tend to spend as much time because Tony had kept the penthouse with its stunning views and full-length windows for himself instead of turning it into team space.
Killing time while being desperate for more time is a strange feeling, but there's not much for him to do other than chew his nails and watch Clint's ceiling and try to calculate how much juice he can likely wring out of a power source that doesn't follow the laws of physics anyway.
-----
When he gets back to the past, it's a Monday, and not quite two weeks ago. Tomorrow will be technical, real time week since his first arrival in the past. It's been a fucking long week.
"He's with a guy called Stroud," Tony tells Steve over the comm, because as expected, he's lost time again and his advance team's been wheels-down in Europe for at least twenty four hours. "You wouldn't happen to know him? Level five? Tall and slightly graying? Romanov got me a photo." There's noise on the other end of the line. Tony corrects, "Will get me a photo. I'm sending it to you."
"And they're in Germany?" Steve asks, echoing previous information, then something beeps and he answers, "I don't know him, Tony."
"And he's hurt, so if they're moving, they're probably moving slow." Clint had said they could get to France, and if he had any brains at all he was avoiding trains. "Or they have a car. I'll have JARVIS scan for stolen vehicle reports."
"He's not stupid enough to cross a border in a stolen car," Natasha scoffs, "While on the run."
"So my spy game's not up to par. What are you suggesting? They purchased a little Vespa scooter? Those are popular over there, right?"
"I'm thinking SHIELD vehicle," Natasha says. "Or something rented, depending."
On who Clint's trying to evade, and whether he thinks the threat is from an outside source, or believes Tony's from-within-SHIELD theory. Either way, Tony can trace it. "I love you," he tells Natasha, and spins in his desk chair to get to his keyboard. If SHIELD is satellite tracking their very inconspicuous big black vans, there's going be data to infiltrate, and between him and to JARVIS that might as well be a breadcrumb trail.
"But if he's renting on a secret alias, with secret credit cards, it's going to be harder," Tony says, because there could be thousands of tourists renting cars on any given day, and Clint's aliases tended to be carefully opaque.
For once it would help if he was just a little bit worse at his job.
-----
Tony finds the car, and then Steve and Natasha find it in the real world before Tony even sets down in Europe, playing catch-up not only with them, but with Thor and Bruce.
It's empty, and abandoned off a small road near the border of France and Germany, and Tony tries to think about clues and not they have Clint right now. Or, he could still be close, oh god, oh god.
"SHIELD car," Natasha says, as soon as he flips his faceplate up, even though they'd known that and had already passed the information on to him.
Both front doors, and one back one, and the glove compartment are open. The trunk popped. Steve flips it up to look in, then bangs it shut again with a shrug. It's clean. A typical under-covermobile and a very nicely done agent snatching.
"So, inside job definitely," Tony says, and that means something bigger than Clint or this single, fucked over mission, but he can't widen his perspective enough at the moment to see more than the generality. He nods at the open doors, "And I'm thinking at least three people were in that car. Yes? No? Thoughts?"
"Looks like a controlled stop," Natasha says, hands on her hips, frowning at the scene. "No sign of a shoot out."
And if Clint had been taken by outside forces, there was sure as fuck going to be signs of a shoot out. And a high speed chase. Probably, something would have crashed. This quietly abandoned, empty car is all wrong.
"Inside inside job, then," Tony corrects, and asks Natasha, "Just what the fuck is going on in your house?"
-----
This time, they're all together when they find Clint, and Tony hadn't realized how awful a task that part is, until he has company and doesn't have to do it alone.
"Oh my god," Natasha breathes, coming to a full, stuttering halt. It's weird how shocked they still are. Surprising, until he remembers that this is their first try at it. That it's always their first try at it. "Oh god, Clint."
"Listen," Tony says, really inappropriately, "This is what you're going to do--"
"We're going to call SHIELD," Steve says, "and let them know we have him." His smile is twisted. Hanging on to Tony's story, even though it's gone to shit, or fronting like he still believes it. "It can't do any harm now, right?"
"Nothing about the--" Tony dips his head in the general direction of the French-German border, not saying the words, just in case the walls have ears. Or planted bugs. Or who knew. It's unlikely, but his anxiety is on its way to turning into jumping-at-shadows paranoia. "Or I could wake up to a way bigger mess than I want to deal with on top of--" On top of trying to save Clint, he almost says. Almost says save Clint's stupid ass, but he's probably upsetting them enough without insulting Clint, literally over his dead body. "This original mess," he finishes awkwardly.
He feels hyper. Wired with energy and with information he should be putting to a purpose, instead of pacing the gravel, waiting for this whole formula to play out again, and driving Steve and Natasha nuts while he does it. He can tell they really just want to be miserable in peace.
"What you're going to do," Tony says, stalking back to them, "is figure out who else was on Clint's team. And if anyone knows what happened to this Stroud agent. It won't be so weird if you're asking questions now that Clint's dead."
"Tony," Steve starts, and Tony sees his eyes slide to the side, indicating the body that wasn't Clint, was only right-now, temporary Clint.
"Yeah?"
"It's not the time."
"It has to be the time. I don't know if I'm going to get more time." Tony yells. Shouts. Maybe screams. He's not really sure. He'd felt full of purpose, but maybe what he'd thought was clear-eyed focus was actually the leading edge of hysteria. "What time, Steve, do you want me to use?"
"Clint just--"
"He's been dead for a day." That's not quite the right math anymore. Knowing where to look, more or less and random factor aside, has hurried the dump site search up a bit. "He didn't just anything."
Steve sets his teeth. Gritting them hard enough that his jaw bulges, but not saying anything. Not giving Tony any opening to scream in his face like he really, really wants to.
And then he looks away and says, "I'm sorry, Tony," and there's no way to respond to that other than to glare and pace and make himself calm down.
"Yeah, well." He's exhausted, suddenly. All that energy just gone. "We'll get him next time. We just need to--"
"Research the team," Steve cuts in, gentler than Tony's earned, "and his mission. I got it."
"And Nat needs to get the coroner report. I know that's kind of circular, and I don't think it really makes a difference anymore, but just in case."
"Okay."
"I already moved Clint from here--Well. Here-like places--a few times."
"We'll take care of it."
"Okay."
"Okay," Steve echoes, but he doesn't move away from Tony's side until they hear the hum of an approaching transport.