Chapter 9
Yet again, Clint found himself wondering where he went wrong in life. Right now, he could be home on the farm, with his beautiful wife and kids, watching terrible Christmas movies and eating gingerbread.
But no, Clint was an idiot who made terrible life decisions, so instead, here he was in New York, being hunted by a Russian gang, hiding out in an apartment which now contained three unconscious tied up bodies. One of which was a super-soldier and the former Captain America’s best friend, but Clint was trying very hard not to think about that part. (Although was he a little proud that he managed to take out Barnes single handed? Maybe.)
At least this third body was unconscious, not deceased as Kate had originally lead him to believe. Apparently Kate had opened the closet and what she’d assumed to be a corpse had just fallen right out on top of her. Hence the thud, and the shrieks, and the bursting into the living room arrows blazing.
“Well of course there was a guy tied up in the closet this whole time.” Clint said, as he nudged the dog out of the way to check the pulse of the new third body lying face down on the bedroom floor. “What a perfectly normal thing to happen in my perfectly normal life. He’s breathing, you can relax.”
The dog licked his hand, like a job well done. They really needed to figure out a name for him. Or Kate did. Kate’s dog, not their dog, he reminded himself.
Kate breathed a sigh of relief at the confirmation that this was not a dead body. He wanted to still be mad at her, his bruised (broken?) ribs were very much blaming her for starting a fight he had to finish, but given the circumstances, sympathy was winning out.
“What now?”, she croaked out, and yeah, sympathy was definitely winning. The kid just nearly had the life squeezed out of her by the Winter Soldier. A guy he told her they’d be safe with. He could save the lecture for later.
“Well my usual strategy for dealing with unconscious people I find tied up in closets is to call 911”, Clint started, “But given that two out of three of the unconscious tied up people in this apartment were knocked out and tied up by us, I’m thinking maybe we should hold off on that.” He paused thinking for a minute. After taking down Barnes (and yeah, he was putting that on his resume), his gut instinct was just to get the hell out of there and figure out the details later. But now...they couldn’t exactly just leave this guy here, and there was no way of moving him inconspicuously. They were still trying to keep a low profile, and above all, he was trying to keep Kate safe from his old problems, not create more problems by re-kidnapping a stranger.
“Here, help me get him up on the bed at least,”, Clint said, making a decision. “We can at least check him out for any serious injuries. He looks okay, then maybe best thing we can do is wait for him to wake up & see what he has to say for himself”.
Kate nodded back at him, and Clint knew he didn’t need to explain himself any further. As sure as he was that Kate wanted nothing more than to get out of this apartment right now, she was too good of a person to just leave someone in trouble like this, even a total stranger. Together they hauled the guy up on to the bed, turned him over onto his back.
It was at that point that Clint realised this guy wasn’t a total stranger after all. He squinted at the face for a second. “Holy shit”.
As if this day couldn’t get any worse, lying in front of him on the Winter Soldier’s bed, looking as peaceful as anything with his hands and feet tied, was former Shield agent and secret Hydra operative Jack Rollins.