Chapter 21
Born ready, Clint texts Steve, staring at the screen for a moment before locking the phone and zipping it into an innermost pocket. Wanda and Pietro are talking, tension in their shoulders. “Try to relax,” Clint says, feeling the same tension in his own frame. “This is one of the largest and most well planned apps SHIELD has ever planned.”
“I am relaxed,” Pietro says, the picture of nervous energy. His finger taps out an erratic rhythm on his leg, which is bouncing incessantly. At least Wanda looks the part, legs crossed and hands folded in her lap.
“Try to hold still,” Wanda tells him, “and we might believe you.”
“It’s pre-mission wiggles,” Pietro shoots back. “Everyone gets them.”
Wanda rolls her eyes long-sufferingly. “Your ‘pre-mission jiggles’ are shaking the entire bench.”
“Pietro’s actually not to blame for that one,” Clint corrects her. “The ship is landing.”
They sneak up to the various exits and entrances to the underground maze, spending an inordinate amount of time being careful not to trigger any perimeter alarms. Once each door is open, they send the bots Stark had gifted them in. Sonic paralyzer bots that have been programmed to know the layout. They’ll each go in a set path through the maze, emitting the paralyzing frequency. The SHIELD agents all have industrial ear coverings. Clint leaves his hearing aids on the ship, putting the ear covers on as well, just to be safe.
“This is a sweep,” he says into his comm. “We are leaving no stone unturned, no door unopened. We aren’t exactly sure what we’ll find once we’re in there, but the control room is going to be crucial in getting access. Any questions?” The other team leaders are having a similar conversation at the other entrances. Wanda and Pietro shake their heads, faces set. Clint clicks his glasses, gifted by Stark, on, and a live feed of what’s being said appears on his right side. He’ll be able to see everything that every member of his team says on the comm, as well as what the other team leads are saying. Every head suddenly turns, and Clint turns to see what they’re looking at. Probably something that made noise, and he catches sight of a red-suited figure approaching. Deadpool must have wanted in. He makes Clint as the leader of the massive group immediately and Clint sees his mouth moving below the mask, although nothing comes out. “I’m deaf,” he says. “You can come but be discreet. We’re trying not to set off any alarms we don’t have to.” He reaches into his belt and pulls out two more of the ear covers, holding them out. “You’ll need these.” As soon as they’re situated, A stream of chatter appears in Clint’s periphery. He doesn’t bother to read any of it. “Don’t clutter up the comm,” he says, then switches to the frequency for the other team leads. They’re ready to go, and he adds his agreement, reaching down and switching on his three sonic paralyzer bots. He feels the soundwaves in his gut, but doesn’t manage to go down. The bots roll through the door, beginning their journey.
Fury’s back at SHIELD with the rest of the support team, watching the satellite views. He’s in the comm with the other team leads, and lets them know that the paralyzers are working, but to give it a few minutes. It’s a tense few minutes, and Clint uses them to remove Deadpool’s words from his glasses. The mercenary talks way too much, and he can’t risk missing something actually important. Finally, they get the go ahead and file through the door. The alarms begin immediately, lights flashing red at a regular interval. The paralyzed guards laying on the floor are being cuffed and stripped of their weapons and masks. There are a couple hundred in the entire facility, but Clint’s agents are quick at the processing, and he knows the others are too. Hopefully most of those arrested will flip to avoid jail time. They don’t encounter a single conscious guard for the first hour, and the ones that they do are barely conscious. They’re arrested just like their coworkers, although the more lucid ones get their miranda rights read to them.
It takes thirty more minutes for them to encounter the first cell. It’s a metal door in a concrete wall. Clint asks if anyone’s close to the control room and gets a lot of negative replies. They leave a marker on the wall next to the cell, and on the wall next to every cell they encounter. It’s less than they’d thought, and Clint realizes with a sinking feeling that a lot of the mutants are probably imprisoned privately. They are owned by their managers after all. He convinces himself that won’t be the case with Peter and continues.
Finally, someone reaches the control room. The lights go back to normal. Turns out, the higher ups were in the control room, and now they’ve got access passes for the cells. Clint goes ahead to pick a few up, then doubles back to his team, distributing them. They start freeing those in the cells. It’s horrifying. Some of them are heavily injured, most are fine. They’re all mutants, and they’ve all got a blank tension in their faces. A few make a break for it, slipping their SHIELD escorts and barrelling into the woods. Clint doesn’t waste manpower going after them. It’s difficult to stay hidden as a mutant, and there are plenty of mutants. Clint glances to his comm, where the other team leads are discussing. He’d taken the longer portion of the maze, so he’ll be meeting up with them shortly, but they’re talking about one of the rooms they’d cleaned.
>Maria Hill: It was disgusting. They were torturing the prisoners and calling it science. I wish I could burn the records
>Phil Coulson: Please don’t. I’m sure they have at least some important information.
>Maria Hill: Hang on, we’re finding something. Oh my God.
>Sharon Carter: What is it?
>Maria Hill: We just found… I’m not sure. A lot of prisoners. Clint, they have Sam, Bucky, and Natasha. Does anyone know if he’s on the channel?
“I’m here,” Clint says, “That’s incredible to hear.” He feels like an immense weight is off his chest, leaving him floating. He’d thought his best friend was dead for the better part of a year. The chat is rejoicing, and a moment later:
Maria Hill: This is Nat. They’ve got cuffs on everyone. They’re magnetic, and you need a remote to deactivate them. There might be some kind of master kill switch in the control room, I’m not sure.
Sharon Carter: You sound terrible, Nat. Are you alright?
Clint wonders how Nat sounds, tries not to imagine what could have been done to her in her over eight months in captivity.
Maria Hill: I’m great, now.
Phil Coulson: Good to have you back.
Clint switches back to his team’s frequency. “We need to find a remote,” he announces. “That’s what gets the cuffs off the walls. They’re trying to find the kill switch, but there should be a remote that controls it.”
Wanda finds a remote first, and Clint sees a string of expletives cross the screen..
>Wanda Maximoff: Careful, they’ll electrocute the prisoners if you bump the dial.
>Pietro Maximoff: Well, which is the right button?
>Wanda Maximoff: Obviously I don’t know. Hang on. It’s the one on the very bottom. Thanks.
>Pietro Maximoff: You’re welcome?
>Wanda Maximoff: I wasn’t thanking you. One of the prisoners knew.
>Brock Rumlow: Quadrant two is all clear. Seventy-eight paralyzed guards, arrested, ten mutants freed, two escaped into the tree line, eight on their way to the helicarrier for medical to take a look at them.
“Good job,” Clint tells him. “Quadrants one and three are also clear. Four’s been experiencing a bit of trouble because their sonic paralyzers were taken out, but they’re nearly there.”
Most of the agents double back, dragging the guards to the helicarrier’s prison bay, so there are very few people left. Clint meets up with Hill, who has Sam, Bucky, and Nat with her.
As soon as Clint sees them, he breathes a sigh of relief. Bucky’s got a black eye and a split lip, but Sam and Nat look fine. He pulls Nat in for a hug, wishing he could hear her voice. She hugs him fiercely, and Clint takes a moment to turn on the captioning mode on his glasses. “I’m– it’s good to have you back,” He says, vaguely aware that he’d said something similar over the comms. “I missed you.” Nat starts to fumble through some signs, but he shakes his head. “You can talk.”
Nat’s words appear along the bottom of his glasses. Took you long enough. I nearly died of old age here. Did Fury give you that stupid letter?
“That stupid letter was the only reason I came looking for your sorry selves,” Clint says. “Steve’s been helping out like crazy, and so has Stark.”
That’s nice of them, Nat says, looking a little puzzled.
Clint realizes she doesn’t know. “Shit, you don’t know,” he says. “Peter was kidnapped about two weeks after the three of you went missing. He’s been here.” The blood drains out of Nat’s face. She opens her mouth as if to speak, but no words appear on Clint’s glasses. “What is it?” He asks.
I saw him, Nat replies, “oh God, he looked bad, Clint. He had… the kind of injuries you don’t recover from. Have you found him?”
Not yet,” Clint says softly. The densest block for cells was in the last quadrant, which is supposedly clear of guards. They’re still letting people out of their cells. “I was about to check for him,” He says.
We’re coming, Nat tells him, and Clint raises his hands in surrender. They make their way through the empty maze, opening door after door. They’re at a dead end, the last door in the hallway, when they find him. “Peter, thank God,” Clint says, rushing through the door. The kid looks rough. Clint had seen his fights, watched him spit out teeth and be dragged off stage by guards, had seen his blood scrubbed off the stage between matches. But it’s nothing like seeing him up close. There’s a noticeable scar across his cheek, below the cheekbone, and he’s got the same blank look. He doesn’t even react to Clint’s presence, his gaze shifting to stare down at his hands. He’s wearing a black bodysuit, covering him from neck to wrist to ankle, beneath which Clint knows there must be a few more scars hiding.
Nat surges forward, wrapping Peter in a hug. He blinks and then lifts a hand, patting Nat’s back awkwardly. She doesn’t seem to mind, and eventually lets him go. When did you get so tall? Appears on his glasses. No reply from Peter. Clint wonders if he’s talking too quietly for the glasses to pick up, but his mouth isn’t moving. He’s staring at Bucky, specifically at Bucky’s lack of an arm.
I’ll get another one. These words are from Bucky. The kid has yet to say anything.
You must be Stark’s kid. Again, not Peter. It’s a pleasure. What follows is the strangest handshake Clint’s ever seen, and he’s seen Fury do his posturing handshakes with the board of directors. Those last for minutes on end, hands straining, eyes in fierce contact. This handshake is delayed. Peter spends a long time thinking about it before he raises his hand and grabs Sam’s. Nothing happens, and then Sam flexes his elbow, and the actual shaking occurs. Peter lets go in the middle, his gaze shifting to something further than any of them could comprehend. Clint pulls a safety blanket from his pack, gives it to Peter. He places a hand lightly at the kid’s back and the five of them make for the nearest exit. As soon as they’re out, and Clint has service again, he sends off a text to Steve.
Clint doesn’t see Banner’s medical exam. He crouches on the ground, switching the earplugs for his hearing aids, and the world snaps back into crushing noise. He isn’t in the mood to be hearing, but the glasses give him a gradual headache and he can’t be unreachable. How most people tolerate all the sounds in the world is insanity to him. Almost everything makes noise. People’s breathing, scuffing feet, and rustling clothes is enough to drive a person insane. Finally, the curtain is pulled back. Peter is wearing sweats and a massive shirt, still wrapped in the safety blanket. Clint steps aside with Banner, hating that he can hear his own sigh. “If you could write his parents a note, I’d appreciate that. SHIELD infirmary’s going to be at capacity. He’ll be going home, and I don’t want Steve and Stark unprepared.”
“Sure,” Banner says, pulling out a piece of paper. “I would recommend extensive medical evaluation. None of his wounds seem to be self inflicted, so at least there’s that.”
“What do you mean?” Clint asks.
Banner glances at the ceiling with the look of someone forced to shoulder something intolerably large. “A lot of the people I’ve seen today took the liberty of counting the days. Or the fights. Or the deaths. No pen and paper, though, so…” Banner trails off. He retrieves an inhaler from his jacket pocket, which Clint knows is full of a fast acting depressant to keep the hulk at bay, and uses it. “The things I’ve seen today are enough to bring the green guy out. And that’s not counting the things I can’t see. The invisible damage.”
Clint glances at Peter. “He’ll heal. He’s got quite the support system, and Tony can afford a nice therapist.”
Banner adds a few more things to the note and slips it into an envelope, which he leaves unsealed, and hands it to Clint. Then he has other patients, a short lineup of mutant, traumatized individuals and the SHIELD agents that pulled them from their cells. Clint leads Peter away, and tries to talk him through it.
“You’ll go home with your parents tonight,” Clint tells him, checking his watch. He’s got to meet for the mission debrief, and he’ll probably end up leaving Peter with Wanda and Pietro, if they’re available. He continues, “They’ll probably be waiting for you at the helicarier landing pad, to be perfectly honest.” While he says that, he sends a text to Wanda, asking if she and pietro can sit with Peter. “I’ve got to go to the debrief,” He explains, “so I’ll leave you with two of my friends, Wanda and Pietro.” Wanda responds in the affirmative and the quickly arrange to meet. He warns Wanda that Peter isn’t very talkative, and not to push him. There’s a fragility there that he can’t quite place, something in the way the kid holds himself or the way his eyes go blank. “I’ll try to reconnect before the helicarrier lands, but it might be–”
The kid grabs his arm, grip vise-tight, a desperate expression on his face, choking out, “I’m not.”
Clint tries to keep the bewilderment off his face, asking, “What?” When the kid doens’t respond, he ask again, “You’re not what?”
The invisible damage, trauma, is written all over Peter’s panicked face as he hoarsely finishes, “Who they think I am.” He clears his throat. “I’m not.”
It hits Clint, a wave of sympathy and understanding. He’d felt the same way walking into thanksgiving dinner after a particularly brutal mission. It was like there was a chasm between his regular, happy family and him. They’d been smiling and passing the gravy around while Clint watched the junior agent he’d been with rattle out his last breath over and over again. He says what he wish someone had thought to say to him sooner. “They don’t think you’re anyone, Peter. They’re your parents. They love you no matter what.”
Peter gives him a desperate look, and Clint can tell he wants to believe the words, which has to be enough for now. Once again, Clint is struck with the memories of watching the kid fight. Peter had been brutal. He’d only lost a few times, and they were bad losses. He’d been hacking up sand and blood after one of them, and Wanda had barely contained a gag beside Clint, who saw that his nails had carved tiny crescent cuts in his palms when he got home.
Clint leaves the letter with Wanda, instructing her to give it to Stark or Steve, and hurries to the debriefing. It takes far longer than it needs to, but there are a lot of logistics to discuss. They’d captured almost none of the higher ups, which was unexpected. As a result, they’d given up the element of surprise. Hydra now knows that SHIELD knows about them, which is a convoluted type of issue to have. The board of directors are thrilled for the good press the event will evoke, but annoyed at the expense of processing so many of the former guards through the justice system and figuring out where to put the rescued mutants. Hill volunteers to reach out to a few people, Charles Xavier and Reed Richards, to see if they can do anything to help. It’s a massive undertaking, and Clint gets the idea they’ve barely scratched the surface. Sharon had wiped every computer they could find and swiped every file, and she enlisted Coulson to help her with them. Fury congratulates Clint on the case, pulling him aside after the meeting.
“I need your help,” Fury says. “As soon as the ship lands, you need to secure all of your files. Everything relating to this operation needs to be protected at all costs, understand?”
“Sir,” Clint says, bone tired and just a little unwilling. “Do you really think that’s necessary?”
Fury rolls his eye. “I don’t think that it’s necessary, I know that it’s essential. This Hydra, their tentacles run deep. I’m putting together a picture and It isn’t pretty.”
It’s a testament to how tired Clint is that he takes so long to put it together. “You think they’re–” he begins.
“I think you need to secure the files,” Fury says. “I don’t want any of this data getting into the wrong hands, Barton.”
“I’ll secure the files,” Clint sighs. The helicarrier lands, and Clint makes a beeline for the SHIELD building. Fury’s words made him rightfully nervous, because they have truth to them. If Hyrda has a finger in every pie, why not SHIELD’s pie? Wanda texts him that she, Pietro, and Peter are waiting by the wheel. He replies, I’ve got to do something, but I’ll send Stark and Steve your way if I see them. He doesn’t see if Wanda replies, thinking of his files. There had been hard drives worth of notes and data on Hydra, backed up but irreplaceable. It would take months to get the information back, if they could even manage it without the anonymity of Hydra’s ignorance.
When he spots Tony and Steve heading through the crowd, desperately searching, he pauses, grabbing their arms. “Listen,” He says, then, seeing their wandering eyes, louder, “Listen. Steve. Tony. He’s– listen to me.” He finally has their attention, and he glances between them. “He’s fine. Just remember that. He’s healthy, but he’s been through a lot. We’re still trying to figure out how much. Just–” Clint purses his lips, thinking of the only words Peter had spoken to him. I’m not who they think I am. “He’s still Peter, okay?”
“Of course he’s still Peter,” Tony says, “He’s– I mean, he was tortured or god knows what, but he’s back. Now let me see my goddamned son.”
Clint’s exhausted, panicking, and so he just nods, more than a little stiff, dropping their arms. “I’m happy for you two,” he says, really meaning it, and Steve gives him a nod as Tony searches the crowd. Clint points. “He’s by the wheel over there.”
The two of them take off and Clint jogs through the crowd, through the double doors and into the SHIELD building. He passes mutants, agents, and former guards in cuffs. The elevator is torturously slow to come, and a group of four agents runs past, pushing a gurney with an injured mutant. Clint steps into the elevator, and it’s quiet for the first time since he put his hearing aids back on. The gentle whir of the elevator is all he hears, the beep as it passes each floor.
The doors slide open and Clint immediately smells smoke. It’s faint, but it gets stronger as he stumbles toward his office. Why didn’t the alarms go off? The door to his office is ajar, and he skids inside. The world is moving in slow motion as he sees ransacked drawers. His computer is completely dead, the screen frazzled and glitching. And on the desk, Clint’s nameplate is gone, replaced with the words ‘heil hydra’ burned into the wood. He falls into his chair, the ruins of months of work scattered around him. Fury finds him there, sitting at the ruined computer. He makes the sign for deaf when he sees the director walk in. His hearing aids are in their case, zipped into his pocket. Part of him wants to hurl them out the window and never come back to work again.
The time it will take to recover the lost data, if it can ever be recovered... Clint is too tired to make himself think about anything else, so he sits, stewing in bone crushing frustration. Hydra had only let them that close because they hadn't known SHIELD was interested or even looking into them. Suspected base locations, members, and other crucial details are gone.
Fury opens the few drawers that were left unopened, and then stands at the window. Clint joins him, watching the first streaks of light hit the night sky.