Chapter 10
The place is small and not awful looking. Even at night, it seems welcoming enough. Just a little, non-descript house set off by itself near a canal, satellite TV receiver on the roof, ordinary car in the drive, with Steve and Natasha's horrible orange number parked to block it and a more understated sedan that was probably Bruce's stopped half on a flower bed. Out front--or out back, it's hard to decide with how the house is situated--is a short wooden dock, and off that, a small barge with a large, rectangular bulk set on top of it.
Or maybe a standard size barge. Tony's not really that up to speed on the comparative scale of canal boats.
He comes in too fast. Lands too heavily. The thump of it is loud, leaves dual indents in the dirt, and jars his teeth and bones. He'd like to speed, repulsor-driven, onto the barge, but doesn't. Instead, he powers down and takes stock, trying to stay alert and focused just in case there's anyone around still trying to get the jump on them. Trying to not fuck everything up, now that they're so close and on--literally--borrowed time.
The place is quiet enough that Tony can't really hear anything other than the blood rushing in his ears. There's no sign or sound of a fight, and no lights on but one bulb on a post, illuminating the end of the dock. It's spooky, more than anything, and the robotic sounds his armor makes when it moves isn't doing much to help.
"Are you guys here?" he asks the comms, in a whisper. It takes a moment for anyone to answer, and when someone does, it's not in his ear, but in the form of Thor stepping out of the metal box--blue it turns out, that bit of forensics proving uselessly true--and onto the flat deck of the barge, nodding solemnly at him in greeting. Maybe in acknowledgement, or maybe in confirmation of something that Tony's not on the same wavelength about.
"Oh god," Tony says, mostly in reaction to Thor's silence and set expression, "He's not supposed to be--We were supposed to be in time."
"You missed the fight," Thor tells him, then adds, "It was disappointing," in a mollifying tone. Probably, that's meant to make him feel better, but it's not really the fight Tony had wanted. Just vindictive, ugly payback. A chance to put to use every gristly trick he's learned, starting in Afghanistan, and finally make his mental recordings work for him.
That's not likely to happen now, with Steve and Bruce on scene. Natasha, he thinks, would have let him have at it.
"And Clint?"
Thor looks solemn. Shifts his weight. Tony's really too keyed up to have any patience for it. "Tell me. Just tell me."
"It's--" Thor stops, picking his words carefully. It's an unbearably long time before he finishes with, "bad."
"But alive? He's alive?" Everything is a backwards mess. Now he's dealing with Avengers who've been spared losing Clint. Who think injury is a bad outcome. Who think injury is anything less than a miracle. Who probably won't understand Tony's sudden attack of shakes. Not really. "Thor?"
"Yes. He's alive, but--"
"Oh god. Oh my god. I--We. We did it. I'm going to come over there and kiss your face, stupid beard and all, and I don't want you to read too much into it, okay?"
Thor smiles, bemused, but steers him away by his shoulders when Tony flips his faceplate up and tries to make good on the promise, warning him, "Aid is coming, but Bruce says he shouldn't be moved until then."
"Okay. I know. He's hours away from--I know. I can do that." He's babbling. Letting Thor hand him over to Bruce, who holds on to his arm as he steps from dock to barge to container, then keeps on holding. Guiding him because even though he can't see in the sudden transition to even further darkness, he also can't seem to stop walking. His feet are loud on the metal floor, muffled only by the remains of rotted wooden pallets. The weight of the armor is enough to make the barge bob a little in the water.
"Steve?"
"Here." His voice is low. Steve's bedside manner voice. Going for calm and friendly and coming off kind of freaky, because it always makes Steve sound uncertain and a little scared, which isn't really the most comforting version of Steve.
"Thor said he's okay?"
"'Okay' might be a bit strong."
When Tony's eyes adjust, he can see what Steve means. Clint doesn't look much better than he had--would. Would have-- under the overpass, other than that he's alive. In the cool light of Tony's arc reactor, and the emergency light Bruce has hung, he looks grayed out. Pale in way that's too reminiscent of death, and still. Slumped bonelessly against Steve. His legs are still fastened to the chair he's in, but his arms have been freed and his hands moved to rest more comfortably in his lap, zip ties, and not rope, in pieces on the floor. Even in the bad lighting and through shifting shadows--moving with his own movements and those of the boat--Tony can see that Clint's hands are a mess. Swollen and misshapen. Broken fingers that Tony hadn't been able to focus on all the times before. Now, they're distracting him enough that his brain is fuzzing out the rest of it, blurring the details of burns and contusions and the fact that Clint is--like all the times they'd found him dead--stripped down to t-shirt and the briefs he'd packed from Tony's dresser.
His head is resting against Steve's hip, and even though it's bowed, Tony can see there’s a trickle of red welling at the corner of his mouth and on his lip, then getting blown away on the exhale. His breathing sounds wet, and Tony's not a good enough medic to know that that means, but he's sure it's not good.
"Steve?" he asks, again. They're supposed to lose Clint in the morning, and it's late. Tony's sure Clint's already started dying.
"I don't want to move him," Steve says, face calm and bland, but still in that low, shaken tone. "I think he has broken ribs. It's not going to help anything if we puncture a lung." If that hasn't already happened. Tony could have JARVIS call up symptoms, but he's afraid to. It's not like there's anything they could do about it anyway. Not with nothing but the field kit Natasha probably has in the car, and Bruce's malaria-curing expertise.
"It was an accident." He doesn't mean to say it out loud. He's just sort of used to narrating his thought processes for JARVIS and the robots. Steve gives him a puzzled look.
"They were incompetent," Tony explains, "They weren't ready to kill Clint. He didn't give them what they wanted yet. They were trying to move him to a train." He lets the armor go, making sure to keep it quiet this time, and pads up. Hesitant. He's not sure if he should try to touch Clint, or where. The way the light's shifting is making everything feel surreal. The room--container--smells. Like all kinds of things, most of which Tony doesn't want to think about too much, but it's adding to his lightheaded, dizzy feeling. "Oh my god, Clint"
"I'd give him to you," Steve says, "but--"
"Don't want to move him. I know." Steve's hand is on Clint's back. Fingers splayed like he's trying to hold him together, or like pieces might fall off if he doesn't get as wide a grip as possible. The other is on Clint's shoulder, to keep him from slumping out of the chair, and contact with him has left dark streaks of grime on Steve's belly, ruining his tourist-trap t-shirt.
"Are we sure we can we trust whoever's coming?" Tony asks, going to a crouch to free Clint's legs. Gently easing the sharp plastic of the zip ties from where they'd cut into Clint's skin, then stays there gently holding Clint's foot, just to have contact. His bare feet are cold.
"Called it in via Fury, so I hope so," Steve says. His hand moves a little. Clint still hasn't made a sound other than to rasp for air.
"Okay." It's a good thing Steve's the one holding him, because Tony would grab on, and probably kill him without meaning to. "You hear that? Help's on the way, Clint."
"It won't be long," Steve says, "Don't worry." It's easy for him to say, when Tony's overcome by how miserable Clint's last night had been, multiple times. Every time Tony had failed to keep him from dying in a dark, stinking, metal box. It had probably baked him by day, but now he's clammy and too cold, and his eyes are flickering under his closed lids. Tony's not sure what that means, or if it even means anything other than that Clint's dreaming.
He hopes it's just dreams. That it's been dreams, and Clint hadn't been aware of anything, all those time that wouldn't happen now.
That he'd unhappened.
Then he hears engines overhead, and Bruce saying, "Let's get him home," and then it's Monday.
-----
It happens suddenly. There's a sense of distance, and he's in his lab, a little disoriented and recent time a blank. For a minute or so, he's overwhelmed with the feeling that he'd come in for something and forgot, then can't remember where he'd come in from, or what he'd been doing before, or before that, and then the alarm fades and he starts pulling himself together. Gets his bearings as he rubs at his face with both sleeves.
He's not wearing Clint's sweater anymore, but a soft, gray shirt with buttons at the collar. He doesn't recognize it, but that could mean anything or nothing. He might have picked it up during whatever came after finding Clint, if they'd stayed in Europe long enough for him to need a change of clothes, or just reached the bottom of a drawer here in New York.
The lab is dim--lit by heads-up displays and not much else. His ceiling is dark. No shining hole to the past being beamed from the floor and splashed across it. That might explain how little time he'd had in the past, this time. His sudden return. "JARVIS, what happened to my portal?"
"There was a malfunction, sir. With the power addition. Dr. Banner can explain it again, if you'd like me to call him?"
"A power--" Tony's heart thuds. He can remember finding Clint, and Steve talking in low tones. Thor, solemn. He can't remember anything after, or if medical had come in time, or what diagnoses they'd made. "Why am I in New York? Is everyone here? What happened to Clint? Is that thing fixable?"
JARVIS starts to answer, taking the questions in order, but Tony's not listening. Already on his feet and heading for the elevators. Bangs the door until it opens, then mashes buttons until he can slow down enough to ask, "Take me where there's someone useful, J."
"Captain Rogers is--"
"Okay. Yes. Good enough. Elevator, to Steve."
The elevator takes him downwards, which isn't the direction Tony had been expecting. He'd expected Steve to be in a communal area, or the gym, or his apartment, but JARVIS is taking him away from those places, stopping halfway to the semi-public, security-clearanced only SI floors. Then the doors slide open and ping meaningfully at him.
"Thanks, JARVIS." Tony knows this floor better than he'd like and he's sure he'll find Avengers somewhere close by, hanging around like they don't live right upstairs and fifteen seconds away.
"Steve?" He tries, calling from right in front of the elevator, even though he's sure JARVIS could give him a more accurate location. "Steve!"
"Tony." At the end of the hall, Steve pokes his head out of a door and makes a weird waving gesture at him, somehow managing to convey keep it down and over here at the same time. Steve might have a talent for something. Interpretive dance, maybe, or mime. Tony would suggest it if his mouth wasn't so dry.
"Hey. Hi. Do I need to tell you about how I forget things or are you filled in? I know we got Clint, or found Clint, anyway, but--"
Steve's face goes serious. It could mean anything. Tony keeps going.
"And JARVIS says Bruce broke my machine." He can hear his voice going tight and stops. Tries to sound more flippant as he goes on with, "Well, not broke. Let's go with 'caused a setback'."
Steve's serious look softens a little, which means that he's mostly concerned about Tony's frantic behavior. Maybe he'd been stable all week up to this point, and this is looking like a relapse to Steve. A slide back to when Tony was reinserting himself into Steve's linear timeline every few hours, and babbling what probably had sounded like panicked nonsense.
"I didn't do anything. Go any...when, I guess. I just. There's a big mystery spot blank space in my head. I have theories about it, but they're a bit complicated."
"Well," Steve says, "if they're complicated."
That he has it in him to be a joker means Clint's still alive. Tony had figured out that much already just based on finding Steve on the medical floor, but relief washes through him at the confirmation, leaving him feeling warm and drained. It's both a surprise and not that they aren't at SHIELD, considering. Tony might not be awash in medical tech and personnel, but at least his building isn't full of turncoat spies and kidnappers.
"How is he?"
Steve's little smile goes lopsided. He looks over his shoulder into the room, then back at Tony and asks, "You want to come in?"
"Yeah. Yeah, okay."
It makes no sense to be dragging his feet, but he's hesitant to enter the room. Has to push down the image of brick and gravel that his mind throws up at him when he steps carefully past Steve and sees Clint's lying on his side in a familiar way. Body curled loosely, with one arm thrown out. Eyes closed.
But his face has color. A bit of fever flush instead of waxy paleness. Muddy green and yellow at the borders of bruises that hadn't had a chance to start healing, every time that Tony had seen him before. "Oh my god."
"I know he looks bad," Steve starts. Tony laughs.
Repeats, "Oh my god." It feels like he should be crumbling, or giddy, or having a reaction beyond standing there like an idiot and watching Clint breathe. He can hear Steve still talking at him, giving a more detailed damage report, but it's just a background buzz. New details are embedding themselves in his brain, replacing the images he's been carrying. The dark clothes they'd been finding Clint in are gone, switched out for pale hospital blue--visible where the blanket's shifted off his shoulder--and Clint's hair is soft and fluffy looking. Clean instead of gummed with sweat and blood. His visible hand wrapped in bulky, crisp bandages. Clear plastic tubing snakes over Clint's cheek and threads under his nose. It feels like a monitor should be beeping somewhere, but the room is quiet.
“We got him. Oh god, we got him."
He can almost feel Steve being pleased about it. Steve has no idea what they've dodged. Not really. Steve--this Steve, the Steve that gets to be permanent--hasn't drank to Clint's memory, or gone to stand vigil by a drawer at SHIELD. To this Steve, this was a close call, well, if narrowly, averted.
Clint sighs, and his face scrunches in discomfort, then relaxes again. His bandaged fingers jump a little, and then it's over and he's still again. Tony starts to let his breath out, but it comes out as a helpless, uneven laugh. Clint's drugged and exhausted and unlikely to wake up, but Tony kind of wants to shake him until he shows another sign of life. Wants to see his eyes open, or hear him say something snippy and over confident.
And then Steve's telling him, "Sit down, Tony. You don't look that great. Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," Tony tells him, "I'm just gonna stay here for a bit. Tell me if SHIELD self-destructs, but otherwise I might spend the rest of the day just--I'm not sure yet. Crying into my hands or breathing into a paper bag. Probably one of those."
Steve chuckles. Steve has no idea how serious he is.
"But I wouldn't turn down some coffee," Tony adds, not really kidding about that either.
-----
It's weird to wake up and have it be Tuesday, then Wednesday, then Thursday--an all new Tuesday, then Wednesday, then Thursday. Somewhere along the way, Tony had gotten used to the idea of living in a rerun that evolved, but essentially hit the same marks. Not having any idea what's coming feels strange, and uncertain, and there's not much to do in the brand new, non-second-hand, non-retrying-Wednesday-one-more-time world, other than keep an ear open for calls from Fury or Hill and occasionally provide low-key backup. It leaves Tony free to watch Clint wake up for increasingly longer stretches of time and with increasing levels of awareness, moved, at least, from the medical floor back to the comforts of his own bedroom.
The first time, he wakes up long enough to complain about being tired, in a raspy, un-Clint-like whine, before going under again, leaving Tony on the edge of his chair, waiting for him to properly come to and talk again.
Except that when he does, and manages to properly focus, the first thing he says is, "We've got a problem. With SHIELD." He has to stop in the middle to swallow and take a breath, which makes Tony think of the blood that had been at Clint's mouth, where the once-familiar split is gone and never happened, and of the wet sound of his breathing, when they'd finally found him. Clint makes a gross throat-noise and swallows again. "Fury's gotta--"
"Fury knows," Tony says, not quite believing how exasperated he feels, all of a sudden. He'd made a lot of promises when Clint was first dead, a lot of if-only deals about being nicer and more patient and a better man, but Tony sort of suspects they're going to prove hard to keep. "He's already got New York and the Helicarrier in the clear." And probably Maine too, considering, but that's not going to mean anything to Clint just yet. Tony doubts he knows what's there and what it houses, and if SHIELD hadn't been on the verge of hostile internal takeover, Tony bets none of the rest of them would ever know either.
"I told you not to go." It's not fair. Clint dying had been the loose string they had tugged to unravel everything else. "I told you to run."
Clint heaves a breath. Arguing with him is a lot easier when he's still mostly stoned. He doesn't look like he's really following Tony's logic. Not putting two and two together fast enough to ask questions. Not putting two and two together at all, probably, because his only response is to say, "I'm okay, Tony," in an obnoxiously reassuring tone, because he has no goddamn clue.
"Yeah," Tony says, and adds, "It was close."
Clint smirks and shifts, getting more comfortable, then flops an arm out. His hand is still wrapped and splinted, waiting on SHIELD to make sure medical is really secure before they get their fancy toys out and fix him up properly. Tony frowns, not sure if he's supposed to take it, because it's palm-down on the blankets. "Not that close," Clint says, "We've done closer."
"Sure. Like how Steve was frozen for a hundred years, you mean?" It's not the same. Not the same kind of return from the dead. Or maybe it's close. He might ask Steve, while Steve's still in the habit of being patient with strange behavior, except that this Steve won't have the memories Tony does, and this Clint's never died. "He could have used those mittens."
Clint snorts and pulls his bandaged hand back. Scrubs at his chin with the back of it. He looks hazy and mussed, and Tony tries not to focus too much on the parts about him dying tied to a chair or Tony letting it happen, at least twice. "Fine," he says, slouching in his chair, "Natasha would want me to be nice to you anyway."
"I think I saw Natasha. She didn't say nice things at all." She's not the Natasha Tony means, not the one who had sniffled in his lab or wanted proper goodbyes, but Clint's looking really entertained with himself, and even if that's probably mostly the drugs, Tony can't help but grin at it. "And I'm fine. You got me."
"Well," Tony goes on, "I wasn't about to let you die in a box."
"I know." That's more solemn. Determined in the stubborn Clint way Tony had missed. That he's sure had kept Clint alive long enough to be found, and that he'd regretted, that first time, trying to drink all sense away under Steve's supervision.
"Not in the long run, I mean," he says. "There might have been a couple short term issues."
Clint blinks at him. Not following, or still thinking Tony's on some kind of bizarre spiral, the way he had that first, last night. Or second last night, maybe. Unlike the others, Clint's missed the entire future information updates segment of the whole thing. Probably, Tony should go and destroy any traces he'd brought with him, before Clint stumbles across his own post mortem, unless they, like the destruction of SHIELD and Clint's death, are now just an averted possibility. Gone from everywhere but Tony's awareness.
-----
In the end, it's Steve who tells Clint the story, and considering some of Steve's ideas about what exactly had been going on, and what pieces he was missing, it might have been an interesting conversation to listen in on and not help out with. Especially since Clint still looks like a half-out-of-it train wreck and isn't processing anything at a rate even approaching normal. He still picks up enough of it that when Tony comes to check on him, he pretends to be busy scratching ineffectually at an arm with his bandaged fingers
"Natasha could have filled you in," Tony tells him, "But I'm not entirely sure how it would have gone. She was pretty upset when you were--you know. Iced."
"Geez," Clint says, and glances up and then back down again. "Tony."
"Yep. You're lucky to have me."
Clint's face works, but Tony can't see what expressions he's making. Finally, he says, "Your fortune telling was bizarrely accurate," in a too tight voice. This time, when he looks up, he's frowning. "I wondered about the--how you knew."
About the container. Tony should never have told him about it and how he'd die inside it.
"But then," Clint goes on, gaze very intent on his fingers, "I figured you knew about it." He looks up. Grins, a little. "And you'd get there."
"I'm sorry," Tony says. Because he hadn't. At least, he'd failed enough times. Hadn't undone the thing at an early enough point to spare Clint the torture and the dark and the telling himself they were coming. Clint shrugs.
"When you came up here," he says, even though they're in his room and not Tony's, "before I left. I'd already--?"
"Bitten the dust? Yeah. Once. And the next time around you'd already fucked off under cover of pre-morning."
Clint stops rubbing at his arm and looks at Tony instead. His frown gets a little more serious, but he doesn't say anything for so long that Tony thinks he's maybe just having a drugs induced space-cadet moment. Then he says, "Sorry. Tony."
They're separate sentences. Tony's not sure how to parse it.
"On the bright side," Tony tells him, "You helped uncover a conspiracy."
"I'm sorry," Clint says again, even though, really, the whole thing has to be unreal to him. A weird, unlikely, story, and without the portal spilling across his ceiling, the time machine is just a chunk of unimpressive metal, sitting in the middle of his lab floor. Not the convincing center piece it had been.
"I promised I'd come back." Clint's frown turns into a wry, apologetic smile. "I guess I didn't. It's always the cushy jobs, huh?"
It feels like he's supposed to laugh. Instead, Tony gestures for Clint to shift over and settles down next to him to listen to him breathe. His heartbeat is a steady thump, his body warm against Tony's. He'd tell Clint to run next time, like he's told, and save his skin instead of nosing around, but it's not advice Clint is likely to take. "It's okay," he says, "I said I'd get you."
"I don't remember."
Tony doesn't entirely, either. The few weeks ago, proper time, seems impossibly distant to him. A lot of things are fading, now that the machine is off. Or maybe it's just that he's done recycling the same couple of weeks, now that he has Clint back, safe and alive and more or less himself.
Or maybe it's just too many potentialities to keep straight and make sense of. Even his missing week is starting to fill with ghosts of memories. Vague ideas Tony's sure he's making up, or building from the others' stories. Maybe he'll eventually forget the whole thing. Be reabsorbed into the new timeline as they move further away from whatever reality tangle he's created, all the pieces fitting themselves back together behind him, like the lab robots cleaning up in his wake. All the ripples smoothing out.
Next to him, Clint's quiet. Just a slight rasp or hitch in his breath, now and then. Tony feels him shift, hears the soft noise he makes when he stretches injured muscle. There's light spilling through the window, warm and late afternoon, and tomorrow Clint will still be there, and in the same bed, and in New York, and alive.
"It got erased," Tony says, "It doesn't matter anymore."