Nihil

Natasha, ignoring the crumpled bodies on the floor surrounding her, looked around her for any further trace of life. The ‘room’ before her was surprisingly well lit considering that it was better labelled as a glorified hole in the rock rather than a room. The roughly-hewn walls were filled with crevices and cracks, far too small to hide in, it was a vivid contrast to the cold metallic walls from the rooms and stairways in the upper floors of this base. It was little more than a cave, really.

Its contents were… Well, they would have been intimidating to most. Poles, pipes, cuffs…Something that looked like a cattle prod, knives that gleamed in the harsh, unnatural light and other tools that she did not have time to examine beyond a brief, assessing glance. This was definitely not a room designed for comfort. And the stench Piss and shit. Sweat… Natasha allowed her lip to curl in distaste whilst her stomach churned in disgust as she checked the downed forms around her for signs of life. She had no wish to receive a knife in the back today, thank you.

“Clear,” she called to her partner before moving to stand before the only figure still moving in the room. This figure. Part of her hoped that it was Tony. A large part of her. But… This weak, pitiful figure that was whimpering, attempting to put itself upright. This should not be Tony. Could not. Tony should not be lying there, naked, covered in burns and bruises. Cuts and gashes. Swathed in a black, rubber-like hood wrapped around his entire head presumably to prevent any sight or sound. There must be breathing holes in there, but it was clear there weren’t many judging by how muffled his whimpers were. It couldn’t be Tony. This man was trying to curl into himself as though he wanted to shrink from existence. Disappear from the torment that his world clearly held.

“Widow?” came the low, safe voice of her partner as he entered the room, bow at the ready despite her reassurance. “Status?” A low thread of concern was audible, though probably only to her, as he spoke. It was not common for her to just stand still in a situation where her team-mates were wreaking havoc on a Hydra base.

“There’s a prisoner here,” she muttered, her voice as tight as Clint’s bowstring as she slipped to one side, allowing him to see the maltreated figure she was examining. “He’s…,” Yes, it was definitely a he – the man wore no other clothes so it was easy to figure that out. “He’s not in a good shape.” And wasn’t that an understatement? The man before her was skin and bone; skin stretched so tightly over the bone beneath so as to be grotesque. So pale that it appeared translucent in places. And littered with burns, bruises, cuts… It was a stereotype to say that there wasn’t an inch unmarked, but she truly could not spot one that didn’t have some form of blemish on it. It was impossible to spot any defining marks, and she certainly looked.

Clint, thank…whoever, was not frozen the way she seemed to be. With a muttered curse, he slung his bow over his shoulder, trusting his partner to keep an eye out. “Hey, man.” He moved toward the battered figure, stepping far heavier than usual in an attempt to send vibrations through the uneven ground. “You can’t hear me at all, I’m guessing.” His tone was taut, like Natasha’s, despite his attempts to make it soothing. He too felt the confusing hope but not hope that this was their missing teammate, friend. “How can we get to you without making you freak out, hm? You don’t look like you can handle much in the way of freaking out.”

He crouched down barely a meter away from the figure, head tilted slightly in consideration as all his attention zeroed in on this man, looking for any defining features that could help identify him. But the man was too shrunken, too scarred…It was too hard to work it out without seeing his face. Well. It wasn’t like they were going to leave him here if it wasn’t Tony!

“What do you reckon, Tash?” he called over his shoulder, refusing to take his eyes off the mewling creature before him. “Should I try and get that hood off? Or wait until we get out?”

Natasha, given something to focus her thoughts on rather than unidentifiable emotions, took a further look around the room trying to identify a way to dim the harsh, buzzing light. But there seemed to be little in the room other than torture implements. She turned back to her partner still crouching steadily on the floor, “I think so. He’ll be blinded by the light, but hopefully his hearing will be able to tune in quickly.” She growled at herself internally, this uncertainty was unlike her. “Do it. We need to move soon.”

The reminder of their location settled Clint’s resolve as he slowly reached one calloused hand out to the man’s slightly extended, evidently broken, leg. He rested it gently on the man’s foot, fingers pressing down slightly so as to lessen the effect of any jerk or flinch that might occur that could exacerbate the injury further. The full body flinch was expected. The fist to the face? Less so.

HEAT.

CONTACT.

Something had touched him. Somebody had touched him.

He didn’t think. He was nothing. He had nothing left in him to think.

He acted.

One arm flailed in the direction that the heat was coming from, dislocated and possibly broken fingers curled into the best approximation of a fist that he could manage. The contact made him shriek in furious pain even as the rest of his body went slack, too broken to even shiver in response. His fist fell to the rocky ground tearing scabs of partially healed wounds as it made contact with the rough surface causing yet another spurt of blood to wind it’s way to the stained floor. Any strength he had gained from the sudden influx of adrenaline drained from him faster than the blood which made tracks down his skin.

Heat curled around his fist as he lay there, panting harshly against the broken ribs. He closed his eyes against the anticipation of the heat squeezing his battered bones and piling yet more pain upon his already agony-wrought frame. His vocal chords vibrated as some sound must have slithered out of his mouth. Hell knows what. His brain had definitely disengaged enough to not be able to decide on words. At least, one tattered side of his mind thought ruefully, he felt some heat. Contact. It had been so long…

His head. Fuck, his head. Could you feel the world swimming when you were lying down, blind and deaf? Apparently. He tried. Tried so hard to tug his hand back, keep it safe. No, no, no. Don’t break it. Please? But the warmth encasing it was…circling? Moving? Rubbing. That was the word. Rubbing.

A shudder swept over him, despite himself.

Surely it was the precursor to something bad happening… but it felt so good. He’d been frozen for so long…

The warmth slowly tracked its way up his arm, up past his… thing. His shoulder. That thing. Then it disappeared. The renewed chill forcing him to violently start once more.

Clint cursed and swiftly placed his hand back on the man’s shoulder, renewing the contact whilst his other hand fiddled with removing the mask. Stupid. That hand was letting this man know precisely where he was, and then he pulled it away… Idiot archer. Clint continued to watch what he was doing carefully, blocking out the muffled voice streaming threats and mewls of pain or fear. To some, the repeated, hushed words of ‘kill you, kill you’ would have caused pause. But Clint never did have the best sense of self preservation.

He risked taking his eyes off the volatile man in front of him to take a quick glance at his partner in crime. To his complete of lack of surprise, she’d bullied her way past whatever had held her in place earlier, and had gone to stand by the door, murmuring into their comms periodically as she kept guard to ensure no one could sneak up on them.

With a quiet crow of triumph, he found the buckles that were holding the hood closed – so simple when you had eyes and working digits - and began trying to unbuckle them. “All right, man, and you really have to be Tony. I’m going to start getting this off now.” He tapped the shoulder gently beneath his left hand to try and give him some warning that a change was about to occur. Then he slowly began undoing the buckles, wincing as they got caught in the few tufts of matted, blood-stiffened brown hair that were poking through.

“Sorry, sorry…” he murmured as the figure tensed and twisted beneath him clearly trying to escape. What a FUBAR situation. He couldn’t, wouldn’t, restrain this man in the slightest. Using Clint’s own body to press the other man into the ground would undoubtedly hurt him as well as potentially worsen any of his already severe injuries. Clint let out another curse as the man threw his head backwards. He only just avoided smashing it into the wall due to Clint’s quick reflexes and cushioning the blow with his own hand. “Fuck….” He hissed between his teeth, wincing. That had hurt damnit. Bloody hard wall...

He shot another glance towards Nat, hoping she could do something to help here. Yes, the victim’s movements were weak and easy to control, but they were desperate and making it hard to undo the buckles. Nat’s calm voice came through, audible through both his hearing aids and the comm that he was wearing. “Cap. Can you make your way down here?” A double click of acknowledgement was the response, and Clint’s lips curved upwards into a slight smile. In their mission planning stage, they’d worked out that Rogers would be their closest contact, a runner of sorts, keeping himself as free as possible if they needed him while Thor and Hulk did the heavy work on the floor above them.

With the knowledge that another pair of eyes was moments away, Nat peeled herself away from guard duty and migrated to Clint’s side to offer an extra pair of hands. With a firm grip, she took hold of both the person’s shoulders, wincing at the muffled angry shriek the movement caused, and pulled the upper torso as gently as possible despite the writing movements. Soon he was leaning as far away from the wall as possible, which allowed Clint to slip in behind him.

Both spies winced at the renewed volume of noises that this action generated. The attempted head butts, punches, kicks… All of his movements were hindered by the circular cuffs wrapped around his joints and neck. But it was safer for him, really. If he’d been slamming himself into the wall with this force… Well. Clint could already see the front of his uniform dampening with blood from the man’s back. It was not a pleasant thought to think of that splattering over the wall behind him.

With Natasha’s help to keep the man somewhat steady, Clint made fast work of the buckles keeping the mask closed. That was when he hit a snag.

“Fucking fuckers who fuck…What the actual fucking hell? Every. Fucking. Time!

“Clint.” Natasha’s voice brought the tirade to a sharp end, glancing at Steve who had just arrived and rapidly took in the situation at a glance, chest not even lightly panting despite the fact he’d been sprinting.

“The … The fuckers have stapled it. Into his head.” Clint’s eyes slipped closed for just a moment as he breathed through a moment of nausea. He could never understand the casual cruelty that Hydra seemed far too capable of just bandying around.

“Change the plan,” came Captain America’s crisp order. “Getting him out is first priority.”

“He has no idea who we are. And we can’t be certain that it’s…” came Natasha’s reply, not a disagreement, just filling Cap in. “That and he’s badly injured, I’m not certain how badly, yet. Weak too. He’s been fighting us at any chance he gets despite the risk to himself.”

The blue-and-white cowled man nodded. “Understood, but we can’t stay here for much longer - Thor and Hulk are keeping things quiet at this end, but I met my fair share of grunts. We haven’t got the time to calm him down and we’ll need equipment to help him.”

Clint and Natasha nodded, the desire to try and make it clear to the poor man before them that he was in safe hands was so strong, but they really had no other choice.

“Gimme a sec.” Clint knelt upright, ensuring that he was still cushioning the man from the wall; he was definitely going to have some bruises on his back tomorrow. He swiftly removed his combat vest, and then tugged off the long-sleeved shirt he was wearing beneath it. Quickly, so as to try and retain as much of the body heat it held as possible, he wrapped it around the naked form before him, trying his best to keep the arms inside the encircling garment.

Then, he tied the sleeves behind the man’s back.

The action curdled his stomach, despite knowing he was right.

“That… that’ll hopefully stop him from flailing too much. And keep him warm.” He spoke over the renewed shriek. The man’s energy, and oxygen, had to have been running low – his struggling had definitely lessened over the past few minutes, but he seemed to have been rejuvenated once more upon having been further restrained. Clint hated himself. Just a little bit. He knew that a shirt wasn’t going to fully restrain the man, but still…

Maintaining his position between the wall and flailing man, (Tony, it had to be), Clint replaced his combat vest as he got his feet underneath himself so he was crouching, the mans back bracketed between his thighs. With Natasha’s help, he maneuvered the battered frame so that he could slip one arm around his lightly bound shoulders, and one over and around his twig-thin legs. Without allowing himself to think, he pushed himself upright, easily balancing himself against the negligible weight cradled within his arms.

He allowed both hands to gently start rubbing the most soothing circles he could manage in this position as the man howled anew as far too many broken bones shifted. “Stoppppppp,” came a whine that Clint did his best to tune out. It hurt to be treating anyone so callously, let alone a potential friend, but they just did not have enough time to do anything else.

“I’m sorry, so sorry,” he whispered as Nat tried to help the thrashing head so it could be cradled under Clint’s chin. Clint needed to use his own body as much as possible to restrain the man, not just to prevent him from hurting himself. Clint may well need to move fast. They had no clue what injuries were beneath that battered, stretched skin – well. They had some clues. The gauntness easily displayed cracks and rivets, several breaks even, within the ribs. His leg was obviously broken, his fingers… But they had no time to have a thorough look. Fast, jarring movements could easily cause further damage. Clint had no more fabric to swaddle the man in to protect him in, so he’d have to use himself as best he could.

“Let’s move,” came the cold-sounding words from Widow and the three exited the room, turning back the way they came.

Clint crept down the corridor with Steve in the front and Widow behind, hunched over to keep as much as the man covered as he could. His movements were mimicked by the other two Avengers with him.

Steve had his teeth gritted and shield out, every sense reaching out as far as he could extend it, listening for sound or an air current to reveal someone else’s presence other than the other three behind him.

The four stole their way down the corridor, the silence of their steps only interrupted by the moans coming from the prisoner’s throat. Clint winced at each sound; there was nothing at all he could do to suppress the noises man he bore made. Covering his mouth would be a disaster as the mask already limited his oxygen intake and he was already weak enough. If Clint dared to knock him unconscious he had no guarantee that the man would wake up again, plus the fucking mask would inhibit any way of doing CPR if that became necessary. There was no way he could be heard through that mask… and there was no way the man in his arms would be compos mentis enough to recognise Clint’s face by touching him. It might not even be Tony. All he could really do was continue to rub his hands in a circular movement and hope it was remotely soothing… He hated this encompassing feeling of uselessness. So, so much.

He watched as Cap raised his fist in the air and immediately sunk lower to the ground, taking care to cover his burden’s body with as much of his own as possible. The motion forced another groan out of the man, but Clint had no space for guilt right now. He hushed the man, despite knowing the futility of the action.

Cap paced silently forward a few steps until he reached a corner turning to the left. There, he halted, frame so still that Clint could barely see him even breath, every muscle taut with tension as he waited for some signal only he knew.
Then, he moved.

Faster than a snake one arm thrust its way around the corner. A bitten off cry came from around the bend as Cap dragged back somebody clad in a HYRDA uniform and straight into his shield that he had held out the ready and knocking them straight out cold. The whole attack had occurred in the time it took Clint to take two slow breaths. He never grew tired of seeing that. “Smooth Cap,” Clint whispered, quietly enough that only the supersoldier could have picked it up. The soldier didn’t acknowledge the remark, but Clint just knew that he’d be wearing that shit-eating grin he sometimes wore.

“What’s the sit-rep up there, Thor? Came Steve’s voice, barely above a whisper over the comms.

“These fiends are barely a challenge! It is like, what is the expression you Midgardians use… shooting fish in a barrel. The way out should be clear as should be the rest of the base. Friend Hulk is merely smashing machinery now and SHIELD is reporting the base clear. What about our friend, has there been any sign? Were reports correct this time?”

No one was fooled by the forced joviality and undercurrent of hope entrenched in Thor’s tone. The past year had been…tough. So many false alarms, so many innocents rescued who weren’t the innocent they were truly looking for. It was hard to maintain hope.

“…Unknown,” came Widow’s succinct reply. “We have one of their prisoners…but we don’t know who it is.”

“…Aye,” came the slightly more solemn reply. The hope that had barely been present already dissipated. “I will await you up here.”

“Acknowledged. Out.” the Widow replied as she tapped her comm to turn off the mic. Cap didn’t need prompting. Trusting his teammate’s words, he moved around the corner followed by Hawkeye, who took absolutely no care to step around the fallen Hydra soldier and instead took the short cut of walking over him instead with Widow at the rear, still keeping a sharp look out.

The pace was slightly faster than previously, but Clint didn’t dare try a jog, completely unwilling to risk knocking around his burden. He instead continued to make his stride as smooth, yet hurried, as possible. There was no doubt that whoever this poor bastard was, they certainly needed severe medical attention. Now the way out was reported clear? They could get him to it faster.

Time seemed to slip away from the three heroes as they emerged from the base, nodding to their teammate and handler standing beside him. It had taken some months for Clint to stop glaring at Coulson, and even more for him to stop pulling barely-excusable-as-pranks on Fury. The deception still cut deep when he thought about it, but…He could understand it. The team had needed a boost. And no one really imagined that Coulson would actually survive his wound. Fury had just…reported the news early. And Clint hated him for it. But understood it, as much as made him hate his logical agent mind. He didn’t really blame Coulson, he’d been busy fighting for his life at the time!

Coulson approached the heroes with a trolly for the man in Clint’s arms already by his side, two medics already approaching with hands out stretched.

“What’s his status?” came the quiet words from their Handler, attention lasered in on the body that could do little more than make barely-there sounds and twitches by this point.

Clint sighed, a catalogue of all that he’d observed coming to the forefront of his brain. “I don’t think he’s got a broken spine. But I wouldn’t be surprised if it had been the only thing not broken. He’s bad, Coulson. Bad as I’ve ever seen someone be and still be alive.” A part of Clint’s mind cursed himself, he knew he was running off too little sleep. Reports needed to be succinct, but he was just so damn tired… Think. First aid rules. Breathing, bleeding, bones. “He’s either really short of breath, or is struggling to breathe. I can’t figure out if that’s because of the mask or not. Bleeding from everywhere. Broken left leg, ribs, fingers. Probably elsewhere too. Burns everywhere. Just… everything, really. And thin. So thin. You don’t need an x-ray to see the broken bones. Can see every last bone within him. More cuts and bruises than skin…and then this fucking mask thing. Sensory deprivation stapled into the back of his head. He’s feisty too.”

A hand that felt surprisingly warm landed gently on his freezing shoulder. “Easy, Clint.” Huh. He hadn’t realised he was shaking. He looked to the blue eyes of the Captain, the owner of said hand, and twitched his shoulder in an irritation fashion as he moved to place the man on the ready stretcher.

“I’m fine,” came the bitten off words, anger underlying them, anger that was completely invisible with how gently he placed the figure on the bed. “Just tired.” Completely ignoring his teammates concerned glances, he stepped back and watched as the medics began to move around the man lying on the bed. There was nothing he could do at all now. He couldn’t try to reassure the clearly terrified man; he sure wouldn’t leave him alone, but there was absolutely fuck all he could do.

He just sat there and watched as the medics…medicked. And SHIELD…SHIELDed. Agents swarming in and out of the base, escorting prisoners and taking them into steel grey vans whilst the medics wrapped bandages around what they could as they prepped the man (Tony?) for transport. Everyone just ignoring the ragged words of confusion and pain that were barely understandable from the form on the bed. What could they do? Clint, found himself standing by the head of the man with a hand on his juddering shoulder once again, rubbing it as soothingly as he could.

To his complete and utter disbelief… the man calmed some under his touch. With effort that was clear from the way the tendons stood out, he turned his head so that it almost slammed into Clint’s hand, and managed to puff out the words, weaker than weak and just so full of pain “…B’rd brain?”

“…Tony!”