Chapter 2
*
He should be happy. He should be thrilled, delirious with relief, brimming with gratitude. No matter that it’s the homestead again, the low-rent Little House on the Prairie fucking nightmare, the most powerful attack in what feels like a multifaceted, long term plan to bore Clint Barton to death; he should be happy.
He knows nothing about farming, but that doesn't matter in the slightest; he can follow the horse and use the plow to spell out giant words in the soil and tiny, perfect plants will invariably pop up in neat rows. All that matters is that he carry out his role in the idyllic farm scenario that Calvin has envisioned, going out every day and replanting the crops he’d planted the day before, and the day before that, and the day before that. The silent, grinding repetition of the farm is akin to driving nails directly into Clint’s soul, but he should be happy today, because he can see. He should be happy, he should be overjoyed, and he should be drinking in every goddamned color that a Mindfucker paints with—green plants, brown earth, yellow sun—because when this dream ends Clint likely won’t be seeing anything.
The world will almost certainly be dark when he opens his eyes again, in the real world. But it's not dark here.
“Let’s go,” Clint tells the boys.
There’s only three of them today. The number of kids keeps changing—sometimes there are as many as seven milling around, sometimes as few as four—appearing and disappearing as the situation demands, an inconsistent ratio of sons and daughters. Clint's pale, expressionless wife had been called Emily at first, but her name changed to Emma at some unspecified point, probably because Calvin liked the sound of it better. She stands waving from the doorway as Clint and the boys head toward the fields, her hand moving back and forth mechanically like a human metronome. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Clint throws her a hasty wave in return.
His farm family is never more than this, never more than silent, shadowy figures with empty doll eyes, because this world isn’t meant for Clint. Calvin has never made an appearance; he’s too busy off fucking around with Steve, the star of this particular shitshow. Steve lives as the town minister in a clapboard house and has a wife with fertility problems that will undoubtedly be miraculously resolved, just when things seem most fraught. Until then, the heartache and drama of the whole thing has kept Calvin endlessly entertained and occupied.
There’s none of that excitement left over for Clint, stuck here on the sidelines, exiled away from the main story. The homestead fields go on forever, like that endless beach, and usually Clint just walks in one direction until he gets bored and starts working. Today he doesn’t make it more than few hundred feet, the boys following him like a silent line of towheaded ducklings, before he stops. It’s not a conscious decision to quit walking, he just stops. Folds down to the ground and stays there.
The horse stands motionlessly beside its dropped lead while the boys form a mindless orbit around Clint, unable to cease carrying out the chores they exist only to do. He's close enough that the farmhouse is in full view and Emma is still standing in the doorway, stuck on repeat, her hand tick-tocking back and forth.
Clint leans back on his elbows, and even though his head rolls oddly on his shoulders, hanging back too far, stuck looking mostly at the sky, it’s fine. He's out of breath and oddly shaky, simultaneously too hot and cold, but he certainly isn’t laying on the ground in exhaustion and defeat. No, this is a choice. This is reclining, this is resting, this is refusing to work like he’s supposed to, refusing to play along with Calvin’s stupid fantasies. His eyes want to slide closed, but he keeps them open, forces his head back down again, determined to take everything in, determined not to lose the colors. He can't lose them yet. Not when everything is going to be so dark later.
Bright green plants are already sprouting around him, an inch tall at least, and Clint digs his fingers into the soil and tosses a handful at them. “You’re such a lazy Mindfucker, Calvin. The absolute fucking worst.”
The boys keep walking in their circle. Emma keeps waving. Clint keeps sitting, panting, struggling to remain semi-upright.
Maybe out there, in the real world, his body is giving out. Maybe this is what dying feels like.
*
“Barton.”
Calvin must be asleep, because Cap’s voice is pitched low, quiet, meant not to startle.
Clint stirs enough to let Steve know that he’s heard, that he’s rousing. The movement also awakens the impulse to tear the bandage away from his eyes—both to free himself of the restrictive pressure and to discover what they’ve done to him, determine how bad it really is. He curls his hands into fists instead and drives them into his thighs, hard enough to bruise. No touching allowed. The bandages have to stay put. This place is a cesspool of germs and the last thing Clint needs is a staph infection exploding out of both eye sockets.
“Barton.” Louder this time, with a commanding note that could penetrate any degree of unconsciousness. “Can you hear me? Barton. Wake up.”
Clint just needs another minute to center himself, and then he can go back to feeding Steve the bullshit he needs—that everything is fine, that Clint has suffered far worse than this. That he can handle more if necessary, that he’ll somehow be raring to go when their escape begins and the fighting finally starts. He’ll say all those things in a minute. Just one more—
“Barton. Come on, wake up.”
“Christ, Steve, I am awake.”
It doesn’t come out quite as forcefully as he intends, more weary than ill-tempered. Clint rolls to his side and pushes up slightly, pausing at the way the pressure on his eyes increases when his head hangs briefly. The pain has seeped into his whole body, into his joints and bones, and picking himself off this cement floor is going to be an exercise in agony, but Steve’s relieved intake of breath is motivation enough to keep going. Clint makes it to a seated position on his knees, and there he fully intends to remain, panting slightly, head swimming from the sudden change in position.
“Come here.”
It’s another order thinly veiled as a request, and Clint knows that tone. Steve wants to look him over, needs to look him over, and that tone means that Steve’s not going to stop insisting until Clint complies. Later Steve will feel guilty, but right now he wants to look his teammate over and doesn’t give a good goddamn how hard it is for Clint to drag himself there as long as it happens.
“Clint. Come here.”
Clint sighs and gets a foot under himself, reaches down to push against the ground. Both hands land in something wet—he tells himself not to think about it, not to wonder what it is—before he finally grasps a thread of equilibrium and clings to it for all he’s worth, making it to his feet at last. He’s sightless and dangerously unsteady and it’s stupid to attempt to walk like this, but he's not going to crawl over to Captain America on his fucking knees.
The fingertips of his outstretched hand brush the cold bars and Steve’s hand suddenly winds through the fabric of Clint’s shirt and pulls him gently forward the rest of the way. Pulls him to the bars and against the bars, and then some more, as if Steve fully intends to squeeze the archer right through the gap and into the same cell.
“There. You’re okay. You are, aren’t you? You’re still okay.” Steve’s talking to himself more than anything, running one big hand over Clint’s forehead and through his hair. “What did they do? Was it bad?”
Clint will never recount, under any circumstances, the way his body wrenched itself into painful contortions against its bonds. The way he simultaneously attempted to keep still, desperate not to move and make things worse. How it felt when those doctors were peeling his eyes apart layer by layer, how he finally went ahead and let himself scream because Steve's cell was far enough away that he wouldn't hear. Clint will never confide any of those things to a well meaning shrink, will never write them in a SHIELD report or whisper them to Natasha. So he’ll certainly never tell them to Captain America, especially not now, when it will do no good at all.
“Nah. It was just more of the same.” Then Clint clears his throat and amends, “A lot more of more of the same” because a dash of honesty always makes a lie more believable.
Steve traces lightly around the edge of the bandage around Clint’s eyes. “I really ought to—Would you mind if I—"
He doesn't wait for an answer, already fumbling for the end of the gauze before Clint reaches up to push his hand away—Steve may know a lot about field medicine but he knows nothing about eye trauma, and there have been enough fingers fumbling near Clint's eyes already. “Steve. Calvin’s asleep.”
It’s the only time he’s vulnerable. The only time he can’t send them to Lalaland before they take two steps in his direction.
“Shhh, try not to talk.” Steve’s voice is soothing, but once again there’s that commanding note laced behind it. A thread of warning.
“He’s asleep and now’s the perfect time. Please. Please do it.”
The hand drifts back to Clint’s forehead, Steve checking first with the palm of his hand and then with the back of his fingers, as if maybe he'll feel a difference. “God, you’re absolutely burning up. Here, let’s sit you back down. You should be sleeping; you need to rest.”
Clint huffs a tired laugh because he had been sitting down, had even been sleeping, and Steve was the one that insisted he get up and drag himself over here. But instead of sliding down to the floor as ordered, as he wants to, Clint stays standing. It doesn’t matter that he has to grip both of Steve’s wrists in order to stay up. He’s up. That’s all that matters. He’s standing.
“Steve. Steve. You have to kill Calvin.”
“You’re hurt and sick. You don’t know what you’re saying.” This time it’s Steve that tries to push Clint’s hands away and Clint that refuses to be dislodged.
“I know you don’t want to and I know it feels wrong, but you have got to kill that Mindfucker. Now, while he’s asleep. While we’re still strong enough to have a chance to make it out of here.”
“He’s a prisoner, too,” Steve insists. The old argument, the same endless refrain. “He’s been horribly mistreated. They kidnapped him, tortured him. Locked him up and told him—”
“Then let me do it.” Clint walks his fingers up Steve’s arm and up toward his neck, feeling the pulse under his skin. A rapid heartbeat, far too fast for Steve. “This would be close enough. Bring him over to me, close just like this, and I'll do it.”
His other hand joins the first, quickly, before Steve can pull away, because Clint may be weak and he may be blind but he’s still fast. His hands are on either side of Steve’s neck in an instant—one sharp movement and Steve Roger’s life would be over, super serum be damned—but Clint keeps his touch light. Nothing more than a token, barely-there weight, carefully non-threatening.
“See? It would be so easy. So quick. And I wouldn’t let him suffer, I promise.”
It's the truth. There’s no honor in killing a fellow prisoner, a ruined person, a tortured man—but the choice between sparing the life of a mindfucker Clint just met and saving the life of a friend is an easy one. If Clint had been the one sharing the cell with Calvin instead of Steve, he would have snapped the man's neck the instant he realized what he was, what he was capable of doing.
“You wouldn’t do that. No. You don't know what you're saying." Steve pries the hands carefully from his neck and this time Clint lets them be moved. “Calvin is innocent. Just a regular person who they’ve hurt, just like us. I can get through to him; I just need a little more time. We’ll be in a much stronger position getting out of here if we have his help.”
Clint’s suddenly glad for the bandages, glad that he can’t see Steve, glad that he isn’t forced to watch the dichotomy of a man fantasizing about stronger positions while dying in a prison cell. Steve’s voice sounds thin. Stretched. His voice sounds like Clint’s eyes feel. Steve’s fading fast, but he’s willing to die because he’s unwilling to hurt someone else.
*
“White male, early forties. Presents with fever, fatigue, and highly combative behavior.”
Clint doesn’t bother to suppress an eyeroll at the words, even though it hurts. In fact, he does it again, because it's worth every ounce of agony to see the pursed expression on Calvin's borrowed face.
It’s a bit of a departure from the usual medical scenario; instead of casting Steve or Clint as the lead doctor, the Mindfucker is playing the part himself, once again using Phil Coulson as a mask. Otherwise it’s the same old routine—the brash (but brilliant) lead doctor solves the medical mystery of the week while followed around by a group of naïve (but brilliant) medical students; young upstart cubs just waiting to be schooled by the older, superior lion. The Avengers team has been cast in the role of the students and Clint would laugh at the bright, overeager expressions so out of place on Natasha’s and Tony’s faces if he had the energy. If he weren’t so damned tired.
“All tests point to systemic infection,” Calvin barks. He’s strong here; this is his element, his world, where he's always right and always in charge.
“Don’t worry,” Clint stage whispers to the Bruce Banner student lookalike, who startles and blinks rapidly back. “I won't die. I’ll be miraculously cured ten minutes before the episode ends, just you wait and see. It’ll turn out to be something super exotic that no one’s ever heard of. Well, that or lupus.”
Calvin pretends to ignore him, but Clint had made a painstaking, multi-year study of everything about Phil Coulson’s face, and it’s impossible for him to miss the way the stolen eyes narrow minutely. “Patient has been largely unresponsive to standard treatment and is deteriorating rapidly."
“In fact, does anyone happen to have a book of rare diseases handy? You might as well start there and save yourself a shit-ton of time.”
"Despite our best efforts, prognosis is—”
“Hopefully all you kids will learn valuable life lessons from my suffering,” Clint adds grandly, then gestures toward the heartrate monitor standing sentry next to his bed, beeping steadily away. “I’ll even give you a freebie—hospitals don’t hook these up to everyone. They only use them on people that need their hearts, you know, monitored. If you’re going for realism—and I know you are—replace this with an IV that pinches and a blood pressure cuff that goes off every ten goddamned minutes."
"Prognosis is—"
"And don't forget one of the oxygen finger clip thingies!” Clint interrupts, waving his hand obnoxiously in front of Fake Phil's face, grinning as it’s batted away. “Doctors just love to put those finger clip thingies on people. Pass ‘em out like party favors!”
He really shouldn’t be antagonizing Calvin. He should be working him over nonstop, hitting him from all angles and in all worlds, real and otherwise. Weaving a tale about how great life could be and about a place at SHIELD, where his talents could be used to better the world. It’s a well-worn story that has worked on countless people over countless years, and Clint Barton spins that fairytale as well as anyone, and better than most, because Calvin isn’t the only mindfucker locked up here, not by a long shot. Clint’s always been able to see the best way to worm his way into people and then tear right out again, taking out as many pieces as he wants along the way.
He should be doing those things, doing all of them right and talking his way out of here, but he doesn't. He can't. He's too tired. So damned tired.
Calvin frowns down with his Phil Coulson face and then reaches down through the neck of the hospital gown, tearing the electrodes from Clint’s chest. The steady blip blip blip of the heart monitor is replaced by a high-pitched, screeching eeeeeee before Calvin punches it off. He fixes his eyes on Clint's, and this time there's something akin to pity in them.
“Prognosis is poor.”