Fractured

Clint shivered in his cell. He had come to only a few moments ago after getting hit with whatever was in that vial. Clint knew this feeling all to well. Lately after every medical visit to “make sure you’re healing” Clint felt like utter shit afterwards. The chills, profound sweating, even the random bouts of nausea that, thankfully, were just feelings of vomiting and not the act itself. They were giving him something, although he had no idea what it was. He just assumed it was some sort of drug to keep him slow and his reflexes dull. But having experienced many inhibiting drugs in his past, this one at least came without the hazy fog that most of the others seemed to have had and saved him from hallucinating. He didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Good thing because he could still be very conscious of what was going on around him. Bad thing because he didn’t know exactly what it was they were pumping into his system.

Although that was the last thing he really cared about in that moment.

Tony had made a deal with the devil. Even after Clint had asked him not to. Had Tony warned him that he couldn’t stand by like he requested? Yeah, sure, but Clint would think that Tony, of all people, would understand that working on a chemical agent that AIM had created for the sole purpose of making more super soldiers for Zemo was not a promising idea in any universe. Clint was not worth that. Between doing work for psychopaths like Zemo and letting Clint take the brunt of whatever it was they would do to him, it should be a no brainer. They were Avengers. They had to make the hard choices to keep the world safe and God knows what Zemo would do if he had a working Extremis in his grasp.

He shivered again and pulled the thin blanket tighter around his shoulders just as the door to the hallway opened. At first he prepared himself for the return of Tony and how best to approach the fact that Clint knew about what Tony was doing for him. However the lone person was definitely not Tony. Or Zemo, for that matter. It was an older man that reminded Clint of the old sciencey guys at SHIELD, mainly the doctors that he actively avoided during his routine physicals. The guy even had the thick beard and smart guy spectacles balanced on the tip of his nose and leaned heavily on his cane. “Guten tag, Agent Barton. I am Doctor Johann Fennhoff. Do you mind if I have a little chat with you?”

Fennhoff…Fennhoff…he knew that name. He wasn’t exactly sure how he knew that name (he blamed the drugs in his system), but he did. He just couldn’t quite place it. “I’d much rather not,” Clint replied.

Fennhoff just smirked as he pulled up a chair to the glass divider between them and sat down. “Zemo wished for me to do an evaluation following your treatment this week. I am sure you are aware of the drug in your system.”

“Really? I had no idea,” Clint replied sardonically as another shiver ran through his body. Fennhoff just seemed amused by Clint’s retort and pulled out a notepad and pen from his jacket pocket. “Why don’t we start with something simple. How do you feel, Agent Barton?”

With that question, Clint laughed in disbelief and shook his head. Really? This was the game they were now playing? “I feel like a bucket of sunshine and daisies, Doc. Can’t you tell?”

Yeah, no, Clint was not going to play ball with a doctor. Fennhoff just nodded as he took down a couple notes in his notebook. “Have you always used sarcasm to avoid answering questions?”

“No,” Clint replied slowly, his tone dripping with sarcasm, “Seriously, what the hell is this?”

“Sarcasm and changing the topic…interesting…”

Clint’s brow furrowed as he watched how Fennhoff kept making notes in his notebook. “Why do you think you use these techniques when answering questions?”

And there it was. Clint let out another laugh, this one in more annoyance than anything before turning his gaze turned to the camera in the room watching him and he called out to Zemo, “Nice try, asshole. You’re gonna have to do better than that.”

“Better than what?” Fennhoff asked, pulling Clint’s attention away from the camera and back to him. Clint just rolled his neck as he fought back the urge to vomit on the floor from the movement. Great, nausea. “You really don’t think I know what’s going on? First, Zemo invites me in for a chat to talk about me and now he’s got a doctor here who’s trying to psychoanalyze me? I may be stupid, but I’m not an idiot.”

Clint wasn’t sure what kind of reaction he was going to get from Fennhoff, but he was sure that it wasn’t going to be a smirk like the one he was giving him now. Fennhoff tucked his pen away and pulled off his glasses as he leaned forward. “Do you know what kind of doctor I am, Agent Barton?”

“I’m assuming you’re a shrink by the questions you’re asking,”

“You would be correct in your assumption.” Clint watched how Fennhoff seemed to lean forward in his chair and smile at him. There was something off-putting about that smile that made the hairs on his arms stand on end. Either that or the chill that had just ran through his body again had done that. “I specialize in individuals with a lot of trauma in their lives. I uncover it and use it to help my patients move forward. Now, normally here I would be asking for your consent to proceed, but given the circumstances, I think we both know that asking would be pointless. So…”

Clint didn’t know where this was going but every instinct in him told him that was not going to end well at all. Fennhoff stood up and looked at the camera in Clint’s room and what he said next confirmed Clint’s suspicions.

“Verabreichen Sie das Gas.”

Shit. The first thing Clint heard was the hiss of a machine turning on followed by the white smoke that trailed through the various air vents in his cell. With nowhere to go or to escape the mysterious gas that was now entering the room, Clint felt a slight twinge of panic. He didn’t know what this gas was or what it did, let alone the side effects it would have on his already weakened state. But as he climbed up on his cot, trying to prolong the inevitable, everything finally clicked in his head. Psychiatrist. Fennhoff. Gas…

His steel grey eyes cast warning daggers at the doctor on the other side of the glass who just stood smiling triumphantly. “Faustus…”

The gas obstructed his view of the mad doctor as it entered his lungs and he coughed and choked until eventually everything went black.

~~~

Clint’s eyes shot open wide as he sat upright in a moment. He fully expected to see himself inside one of the medical bays that he had been drawn to every day that week on some gurney with Fennhoff standing over him but that was not the sight that greeted him. In fact, what he saw was much more confusing. If he didn’t know any better, he would have thought that he was in his living room at his farmhouse. But no, that couldn’t be the case at all. He very much recalled where he had been and unless there had been some rescue mission he had missed after the crazed doctor had gassed him, there was no way this was real. He slowly got to his feet and moved to the mantle over the fireplace. Normally there would be pictures of him and his family lining the wooden beam but instead there was nothing. Just empty picture frames. It was then that he figured out where he was. A place he had wished he could forget.

A prison that he was subjected to years ago. It was only missing one thing.

“Greetings, Agent Barton.”

Right on cue.

Clint didn’t turn around. Instead, he reached under the mantle and pulled free the shotgun that he had in his real farmhouse. “Did you miss me?”

In a swift motion Clint leveled the gun and fired at the God of Mischief. He knew that in this dreamscape that it wouldn’t do much in the form of hurting him but at least he could enjoy the sight of watching the buckshot spray as it hit. Unfortunately for him Loki blinked away, only to reappear a few inches to the right. “Please…have you not learned by now that you cannot hurt me in this place yet? And besides, is that any way to greet an old friend?”

“We are not friends,” Clint growled as he lowered the shotgun. This may be a figment of his imagination, but it didn’t mean that the sight of Loki didn’t dredge up old memories and feelings of guilt he wished he could bury. “I thought I told you to stay out of my head.”

“Oh, but I am merely a figment of your subconscious,” Loki replied, his arms outstretched to the side in his showboating ways, “You were the one to conjure me. I wonder why that may be.”

He grumbled yet again as he began to walk towards the back door. “And just where do you think you are going, Agent Barton?”

“Finding a way to wake myself up from this nightmare.” Maybe it was just his way of thinking out loud and producing a means of escaping the memories that were forced back to the front of his mind. He grabbed the handle to the door and pulled, only to be met by a brick wall. “Ah yes, I do recall you trying this the last time you were here. Such good memories, were they not?”

Clint slammed the door and turned back to Loki. “There were no good memories and you know it. You made sure of it, didn’t you?”

“I know not of what you mean.”

“Oh, don’t pretend like you don’t know what I’m talking about. You made sure I remembered every dark, twisted deed that you forced me to do.”

Loki tsked his tongue against the roof of his mouth as he shook his head. “Really, Barton, you know very well that it was not I who made you do those things. I never forced you to do anything. Your actions and your deeds were your own. The only thing I did was expand your mind and unleash what was truly lying inside of you this whole time. I never told you to give me the resources I needed. I never asked for the mercenaries you found or ever asked you to kill anyone. All those plans, all those choices to kill those agents of SHIELD were all your own choices.”

Clint shook his head. “You’re a liar, Loki. You and I both know I would have never done any of that if you hadn’t put me here.”

Loki’s head cocked to the side as he smirked. “Perhaps you need a reminder of what you chose to do.”

Clint really didn’t. He had forced so many of those memories away for a reason and yet, here was his subconscious really trying to bring them back. But with a snap of Loki’s fingers the farmhouse faded away and Clint found himself now standing in the base Loki had brought him and Selvig to right after he took control of their minds. All the mercenaries were moving about them, seemingly oblivious to the arrival of the newcomers. “What is this?” Clint asked, feeling how his stomach seemed to drop.

“Just wait and see,” Loki smiled as he nodded at the space behind Clint. He didn’t want to turn around but when he heard his own voice, he found himself turning to watch. He was with Loki and even from where he stood he could see the icy swirl of blue tendrils in his irises. “You have done well, Agent Barton,” the memory version of Loki spoke, “you have accumulated quite the base of operations here. I am impressed.”

“We won’t be able to stay here long, I’m afraid. This will work for the time being but if we want to ensure that SHIELD won’t find us, we’ll have to remain on the move.”

“Very well.” Clint watched how the memory version of himself walked with memory-Loki towards a man in a SHIELD uniform, bound and seated on a stool while a hood covered his face. “Remind me again why you insisted we bring this man back with us,” memory-Loki asked as they approached the bound man.

“Fury never shares everything with those he surrounds himself with. He gives different pieces of his plan to separate individuals so that way if there’s a mole in his midst’s, he can figure out where the leak is based on what piece of his plan was given out. If you want to know what Fury is up to, you need to piece it together. I only know so much. I know with a high-level threat like yourself he’s going to start up the Avengers initiative, but I don’t know everyone he has on that list.”

The memory version of himself pulled off the hood and Clint instantly recognized the agent. “Agent Harmon worked directly under Fury for seven years. He’ll know more about the initiative.”

“You believe you can get him to talk.”

Clint felt his stomach drop as he saw the sinister grin on his own face when he turned to look at Loki. “It will be my pleasure.”

“Do you still believe that I was the one who forced your hand?” Loki’s voice whispered in his ear and he felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. “No…you…you demanded information…”

“And yet…” Loki’s voice trailed off as the screams from the agent echoed around them and Clint watched how he shattered the agent’s kneecap and was grinding it under his boot. “Should we continue to watch this play out? I forgot how much I enjoyed watching you work.”

Clint clenched his hand into a fist and turned to swing at Loki, only to hit empty air. The scene around them instantly changed back to his farmhouse as he turned and he was glad for it. He didn’t want to watch the rest of that memory. He glanced around the room, looking for Loki only to hear his laughter echoing about him. “Stop hiding and face me, you coward!”

“But why should I?” Clint’s face began to wrinkle as confusion etched itself on his face. It was Loki’s voice, only it wasn’t. It was like a mixture of Loki and Fennhoff. “Especially now that the show has seemingly just begun.”

Clint blinked and when he opened his eyes, he returned to the real world. He was in a lone, dark room, strapped down to a metal examination table with Fennhoff standing over him. “I wish to continue our session, but alas I have been informed that I must return you to your cell. I very much look forward to finding out more about the things that haunt you.”

A few guards entered his field of view and worked to unstrap him from the table before dragging his limp form back to the cell unit. There was little to no fight in Clint as they dragged him through the halls back to the containment unit. Having experienced what he just had had opened an old wound inside of him. One that couldn’t be stitched together and patched up nice and neatly with medical equipment. He remembered so much of what had happened while under Loki’s control but he could have always sworn that every action he had taken was at the will of the God. It had to have been. Because otherwise meant there was a truth about him that he wished to forget. One that he worked so hard to prove every day and every night that he wasn’t.

He was led through the door to the brightly white lit cells and he heard the unmistakable sound of one of the glass doors opening. Clint glanced up and saw Tony was already back and now his features seemed to harden as he spotted him. He breathed out a sigh. Clint was tired and Tony was for sure going to ask what had happened and honestly, Clint didn’t want to talk about it. Hell, he didn’t want to talk about what Zemo had shown him before his visit from Fennhoff, but at the same time, he knew that it needed to be addressed. The Hydra agents were actually gentle when they pushed him into his cell and promptly left. Now alone, Clint slowly and painfully stepped towards his cot. At this point he just wanted to get some rest but he could see Tony out of the corner of his eye and how he was watching how he moved. He was thoroughly surprised that Tony hadn’t said anything upon his arrival, but in all fairness, Tony looked tired and the way he clutched his chest was definitely concerning. “You good, man?” Clint asked, his voice shaking as he slowly lowered himself down onto his cot.

“I’ve seen better days,” Tony replied, his own voice pained as he gazed over at Clint. “Although I feel like I should be the one asking you that. What did they do to you?”

Clint chuckled, which Tony pondered whether he should find that reassuring or not. “You really don’t want to know.”

“Come on, Clint. I know you hate sharing, but I could use a distraction from this killer chest pain.”

Clint heaved a sigh as he rested his head against the wall behind him. “Just another doctor’s visit. I’d go into detail, but I don’t want our love studio audience to get any more ammunition than what they already have.”

That and he didn’t want to bring up what was already a painful memory that now played like a movie on replay in his head. Thankfully Tony didn’t seem eager to press the issue although judging by the way Tony was watching him, he knew that he wanted to. “Have I ever mentioned how much I hate being drugged?” Clint offered as a means to change the subject. Perhaps distract him from what was really going on with him and give Tony something else to latch on to. “I don’t know what it is they’re hitting me with but whatever drug they’re giving me has some nasty side effects.”

“What kind of side effects?” When Clint cast Tony a puzzled expression, Tony quickly followed up with, “I may not be a doctor like Bruce but you hang out around him enough to catch on to some things.”

“You do remember that Banner is a nuclear physicist, right?”

“Tomato, potato…. same thing.”

Clint laughed as he shook his head. “That is definitely not how the saying goes.”

He chanced a look up and saw how Tony was still studying him and waiting for an answer. Yeah, there was no getting out of talking. He heaved a heavy sigh and clutched the blanket to pull around his shoulders. “Drowsiness, sluggishness, my limbs feel like they’re filed with lead. Chills and nausea just started. You know, normal drug side effects.”

“What about a fever? Do you feel like you’re burning up?”

“Is that your sneaky way of trying to determine if they’re injecting me with Extremis?” The look on Tony’s face said it all as Clint chuckled hollowly to himself. Maybe if he pushed the focus onto Tony then at least he could avoid any further questions about his well-being. “Yeah, Tony, I know. Zemo told me all about the little deal you made with him. You work on a new version of Extremis and they don’t touch me.”

“Clint…”

“Don’t,” Clint cut off as he slowly pushed himself up into a standing position. “I told you not to do whatever he said. I told you I can take it.”

“You may be able to, but I can’t,” Tony replied, pushing himself up so he was standing as well. No way in hell was he going to be seated when trying to defend himself. “I’m not a secret spy like you or Natasha. I can’t just ignore the nagging guilt in my body when I see my friends hurt because of my actions, or lack thereof.”

“Come on, Tony, you’re the genius here. If Zemo wants a version of Extremis, why do you think that is? Do you really think he’s going to be using it to save humanity or anything good? No. He wants it for a reason that we can only assume is not anything good. So the decision to work on a volatile chemical agent for a sinister organization or watching me get kicked around should be fairly easy.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not going to do that,” Tony stated very matter-of-factly as he crossed his arms in front of him, “Because I know if the roles were reversed you would do the same thing.”

Clint ground his teeth together, knowing full well that Tony was right. If they wanted Clint to do something in order to keep them off of Tony he knew he would. Tony wasn’t Natasha. He couldn’t come back like him or his best friend could. He just wasn’t trained to do that. “See,” Tony stated, smirking a little at his small victory.

But Clint wasn’t going to let him have it that easy. “It doesn’t work that way, Tony. I’m a trained SHIELD agent. You’re not. I’ve had to watch Natasha go through things that made my skin crawl. And she had to watch me, too. It’s the job, Tony. We both didn’t want to and there were times that I wanted to just give in and tell them what they wanted to know just to make it stop but I couldn’t. It’s the job, Tony. We knew what we signed up for. I am not worth the kind of risk Extremis poses to the world. You and I both know that.”

“Jesus, Barton,” Tony sighed as he rubbed his chest, “I always knew you were the self-deprecating type but come on, man. This is….”

But Tony stopped as he groaned in pain and clutched his chest tighter. Clint was stepping towards the barrier quickly. “Tony, what’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing, I’m fine…”

“Tony.” There was a warning in Clint’s voice as Tony looked up at him. Despite how tired and haunted Clint looked, there was still that same glare that Tony knew all too well. One that Clint had mastered anytime Tony had been drunk. Despite how much pain he was in, he knew Clint wasn’t going to let up, so he sighed and muttered, “They’ve been hitting me with the Extremis virus. After each lab test so that way I have a new sample to study.”

“Damn it, Tony…” Clint was starting to pace and Tony could see that there was something even more going on in his head. “How long?”

“How long what?”

“How long have they been testing this out on you?”

Tony sighed. “Since we arrived.”

Something in him snapped. He wasn’t sure if it was because he was tired and drained or if because Tony was being reckless at Clint’s expense. Either way, Clint wasn’t happy about it at all. “And you didn’t think to say anything about it? You didn’t think I needed to know what you were trading?”

“Yeah, well, I wasn’t really in the mood for another Barton lecture, okay? This same lecture, actually, about how you’re the expendable one and I’m not. God, what is with this martyr complex, Barton? I mean really. You act as if everyone around you is so much more important than yourself that you’re willing to freeze yourself to death just to make sure they’re okay when I know you have a group of people back home that prove otherwise.”

Tony was careful not to mention that the group of people were, in fact, Clint’s family. And when Clint’s body posture seemed to stiffen, Tony knew that he was pushing it. “You think Natasha or Kate or Wanda…hell, even Pietro would be happy knowing that you risked your own damn self because of some need to protect everyone but yourself? You’re smarter than that. I don’t know why you think you need to be the hero, but for once could you put your ego aside and let someone else return that favor that you so desperately seem unwilling to accept?”

Clint did seem to relax a bit as Tony clarified, more for the sake of covering the real group he was referring to, the group of people but even then, Tony could see that Clint didn’t want to abide by his request. But Tony took his silence as a reply. “Look, I’m just trying to buy us some time for the cavalry to get here, okay? I just need you to trust me.”

Clint sighed heavily as he stared at Tony. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Tony, but he couldn’t help the nagging feeling in his gut that this was a bad idea. He didn’t trust any sort of crazy serum in the hands of any psychopath and Tony was doing just that. And for what? To protect him? He wasn’t worth it. He wasn’t worth the risk that a working version of Extremis held. “I do, Tony. I just don’t trust Zemo.”

“Neither do I, but in the meantime, what choice do we have?” Tony’s posture seemed to relax a little as he rolled out his neck. As Tony was rubbing his chest Clint glanced up at the camera in Tony’s room. He wasn’t lying – he did trust Tony, but he couldn’t sit there and let Tony continue to let them experiment on him with the Extremis virus. If Tony was going to make a deal behind Clint’s back, then maybe he could do the same. Tony’s going to be pissed, but he’ll understand. “You know, I should feel pretty insulted that you think I didn’t think through the deal I made with Zemo.”

“I mean, I’m sure you felt the same with Ultron and we all know how that ended….”

“I’m never going to live that down, am I?”

“Never.” There was a pause before the two men shared a laugh. But when Tony stopped to cough and grip his chest Clint glanced back at the camera. While Tony was distracted Clint raised his hand and pointed a single finger at it. He knew Zemo was watching and he wanted Zemo to see the message he was sending.

On the other side of the monitor, Zemo grinned as he watched how Clint glared at the camera and pointed to him. He wasn’t an idiot – he knew what Clint was saying with that single action. “Oh don’t worry, Agent Barton,” he muttered under his breath, “I look forward to our next chat.”

TBC…