Chapter 3
*
He awakens, or half awakens, to the real world and snippets of conversation.
Steve’s voice is thin and distressed but somehow still louder than all the others. “You’re wrong,” he insists, his bare feet slapping against the cement floor as he paces anxiously back and forth. “Wrong. Clint. Wake up. Get up!"
Someone—no, several someones—are standing over Clint; he can feel their shins brushing against his shoulders and the toes of their shoes digging into his side. Roll him over, one says while another crabs back I am and another says God, shut up—probably referring to Steve, who’s still alternating between shouting at them and shouting for Clint, unsure of whose attention he wants more. Most of the voices aren’t familiar at all, but Clint recognizes the one that says Let me through, the one that makes all the others fall silent. It’s the lead doctor, and that’s pretty damned concerning. The scientists never come back here.
Clint can’t stop whatever they plan to do. Can’t fight. The cold from the cement floor has seeped into his bones and his limbs weigh a hundred pounds each, gravity tethering him to the floor in four perfect points of contact. He can’t even protest; his vocal cords as uninterested in cooperating as the rest of him.
Mom. Barney. Phil. Natasha.
Clint flips through the names like a deck of cards—he’s cried out for all of them at one time or another—trying to figure out the one who’s going to come and save him this time. Whenever Clint can’t save himself his next impulse has always been to select a person to threaten the monster with.
My mother will come looking.
My brother will stop you.
My handler will find me.
My Natasha will kill you.
None of those people are around now to help him; most of them are dead. Only Steve is here, and he’s trapped on the other side of iron bars.
Fingers push at Clint’s neck, rooting for a pulse. The doctor is chewing gum—Big Red, judging by the overwhelming cinnamon exhalations—and his jaw clicks softly every time his teeth come together, his chewing as methodical and measured as everything else he does. He’s touching, touching too much, just like Steve had, hands everywhere, but when the doctor’s fingers dance near the bandage around his eyes Clint finally finds the strength to grab at one meaty wrist.
“Get off.”
He’s got no volume and no vowels—the words come out as all hissed consonants, but the doctor seems to understand anyway, sighing out a giant waft of Big Red air into Clint’s face. He plucks the hand from his wrist with embarrassing ease, then pats it gently before draping it back over Clint’s stomach.
“Well,” the doctor says, and it’s the voice of conclusion, of decision, of proclamation. “Well.” It’s also the voice of dismissal as he stands, brushing his hands against his pants in a brisk shh shh shh of sound, dusting away at every bit of fabric that came in contact with Clint. “Calvin’s right, as usual.”
Steve immediately insists, “He isn’t. He isn’t.”
There isn’t any time to wonder what the hell they’re talking before the real world vanishes.
*
It almost sounds like a joke: playing football with the Football Family. Clint and the two kids are roughhousing in their perfectly manicured and spacious backyard while Georgia watches and laughs. Little Maggie really shouldn’t be playing contact sports—they’ve already spent too much money perfecting her teeth to risk them—but Clint lets her anyway, too enchanted by a miniature giggling Natasha clone to deny her anything. The boy, the fake son, looks like a combination of teenaged Barney and Clint, but confident and happy in a way they never were—a Barton boy that’s finally thriving, and right now Clint doesn’t care that none of this is real, because it’s all such an improbable and welcome sight.
And he feels so goddamned good.
Strong, with none of the pain and fatigue from the outside world creeping into this inner one. Clint should wonder how Calvin is suddenly managing that—lately all Clint’s been able to do in the dreamworlds is lay around like a useless potato—but instead he pushes the thought quickly away. He doesn't care; it doesn’t matter how Calvin is doing it, because Clint can run here. He can do anything. He can see again.
It’s the best day ever and that night Clint crawls into bed with Georgia and goes to sleep happily, a dream within a dream.
*
He’s a little surprised to wake up in the same place, to another day with the Football Family, then again the next day, and the next.
It just keeps going, the farce lasting much longer than usual, but at first Clint thinks that it’s just another of the Mindfucker’s games, the same old whirlwind, but such an easy, comfortable one that Clint plays along gamely enough, the way Steve has always wanted him to. This dream is overly long, sure, but soon enough one of the guards in the real world will come with dinner and wake them all up. Or Calvin will eventually get bored and move them along to something else, the way he always has before.
It will end, Clint keeps thinking. It will end soon enough.
*
But it doesn’t.
Days turn to weeks and no part of it is fun anymore, and it doesn’t matter that he can run and how great he feels it isn’t a relief in any sense of the word, because Clint can’t find the seams. He can’t see the cracks in the world where Calvin got lazy and stopped building—mistakes like the crops growing too fast, electronics that work while unplugged, court procedures that mean nothing. Clint can’t spot the telltale fraying thread of reality and Georgia and the kids are more animated, more solid than they ever were before. They’re beginning to feel disconcertingly like real people while the Mindfucker doesn’t appear to be anywhere.
*
Clint is staring at the stupid seashell pattern on the ceiling while Georgia flits around their bedroom, blathering on about how she grew too many cucumbers in the garden last year and everyone got tired of them, how maybe this year she’ll plant cherry tomatoes, that maybe she’ll plant some flowers, too, does Clint think they need to fertilize the soil, and blah and blah and fucking blah. Clint is only half listening, horrified and amazed for such endless banality to pour from Natasha Romanov’s mouth, and it isn’t until she suggests that Clint build some raised garden beds that it really hits him—Georgia's planning for the spring, months away, a spring that will include him. In four months’ time Clint will still be here and he’ll be making those garden beds, because this dream isn't ever going to end.
Maybe something has gone wrong in the real world. Maybe Calvin has cracked and gone insane and can’t pull them back out. Or maybe he’s just fine and doing this on purpose—a vindictive Mindfucker happily paying Clint back for every eyeroll and snarky comment, enjoying the rare opportunity to hurt someone the way he himself has been hurt. But whatever the reason, this dream is going to last forever, or at least it will be forever for Clint, and it will go on so long and be so immersive that the real world will start to feel like the dream. Growing up in a circus, being a spy, becoming a superhero—those things will sound ridiculous when stacked against the daily drudgery of work and family life. It will become absurd to believe that Clint ever worked on a flying aircraft carrier, that his best friend was killed by an alien demi-God, that arc reactors and AI butlers are things that can actually exist. This will last forever, so long that Clint will have no recourse but to embrace it, to let some Mindfucker’s dreams replace his own.
“No,” Clint says, and Georgia is startled out of her gardening monologue, a look of confusion playing across her features. “I’m not staying here.”
“Not sleepy, hon? You shouldn’t have had that extra cup of coffee. You know how that—"
“I’m not staying here.” Clint throws his hand up vaguely, indicating the room, the house, the world. “I want out, Calvin. You fucker. Mindfucker.”
If Clint can’t find the seams in the world then he’ll create some of his own—with his fingernails, with his teeth, with every piece left of him that’s able to fight. Clint stares at Georgia, who capers about wearing his dearest friend’s face, but isn’t Natasha, not at all, and knows he’ll have to kill her. He’ll kill Georgia and then the kids—and God, he doesn’t want to do the kids, even if they’re fake kids, he’s always hated any part of violence that includes kids on any level. But he’ll kill them if that’s what it takes, because Calvin, lover of all G-rated, family friendly content won’t be able to tolerate that.
Maybe Calvin recognizes something in Clint’s expression, or maybe he just plucks the thought from his brain, the way he’s taken everything else. In the end it doesn’t matter, because it’s enough. It’s finally enough.
“All right. We need to talk.”
*
Then it isn’t Georgia and finally not Phil Coulson, but Calvin himself. An idealized Calvin, one with a strong voice instead of the broken, papery rasp that is his reality, with full cheeks and dark curls instead of harshly shorn hair and skeleton face. It’s a Calvin that Clint has never met, the Calvin that came before this hellhole—just a typical American Mindfucker that wanted to be left alone to bingewatch courtroom dramas and wholesome TV shows in peace.
“You just can’t stop yourself, can you? You can’t just go along and let something be nice.”
The Football Family is gone and the two of them are suddenly standing on that endless beach. And now that the deep dream is over the pain comes barreling back, taking Clint by surprise; it hadn’t been long that Calvin had made it disappear, just a few weeks, but Clint had forgotten how bad it was, how engulfing. Now he falls to his knees and braces himself against the sand, riding out the waves, trying to get a hold on it. He can bear anything if he’s in the right headspace, if he’s ready for it. He just needs a minute first. Just a minute.
“I’ve never met anyone like you,” Calvin continues indignantly, pacing in irritation, his footsteps kicking up small puffs of sand. “The most contrary person on the entire planet. It’s like you don’t even want to be happy. Like you want to live in a world of crap!”
“I do,” Clint gasps as soon as his breath returns. When he forces his face up toward Calvin the sun behind him blinds Clint’s screaming eyes even further, but it doesn’t matter, he doesn’t care. “I do if it’s the real one.”
“Ridiculous. You’re ridiculous,” Calvin sputters, alternately shaking his head at Clint or out toward the ocean. “I’m trying to do the right thing and you just keep—"
“Oh, shut up, you manip—” Clint’s voice catches on the word, but he’s almost got a handle on the pain now, forcing it into confines that he can control. “You. You manipulative shitstick,” he forces out finally, the corners of his own mouth lifting as Calvin’s turn down. “I’m the last person on earth you wanna argue morality with.”
“You always complain, say I do everything wrong. And I do miss the little things sometimes—I know that, I do—but I showed you, didn’t I? Showed you how I can do it, and you saw, saw how I can make all of it right when I concentrate hard enough. The others were all grateful. They let it happen, let themselves enjoy it.”
Clint and Steve always suspected that there’d been other prisoners before them and would be more afterward; Calvin and the guards were always too much in sync to be anything but practiced. And even though he wants to keep sitting there so much, so goddamned much, Clint forces himself to stand, this time shielding his eyes against the sun, needing to look the Mindfucker in the face.
“Yeah, well, I’m a whole different thing. I’m the one who’s never going to play along. Not ever.”
“But you could. You could stop complaining.” Calvin’s face goes solemn. “You could stop pushing. You could go along and let yourself enjoy it, and let it be nice at the end.”
“At the end.” Clint doesn’t bother making it a question.
“You’re dying. I’m in your cell with you right now, holding your hand. You aren’t alone.” Clint can feel it suddenly, a gently reassuring pressure against his palm, both here and somewhere else, somewhere real. “The scientists don’t care but they aren’t heartless. It’s the deal we made—I keep people calm while the doctors do their tests, and then I get to take care of things at the end. And I’m so good. I make it so nice.”
“Nice,” Clint echoes. Calvin’s idealized, fuller face has dimples when he smiles, goddamned dimples, and Clint suddenly can’t take his eyes off them.
“I’ll take care of Steve, too, when his time comes. He likes the homestead the best. He’ll live a big long life there; his wife will have a baby and their lives will be good. Years will go by and one day he’ll die an old man—it can feel like a hundred years there when it’s really just a moment, while I’m holding his hand in the real world.”
“Jesus,” Clint breathes. “Jesus.”
“The red haired woman has so many different faces and voices in your head; she’s hard to get right, but I’ve gotten close. You’ve already seen where you’ll live, and you already know you can be happy there.”
The Football Family.
It all makes sense suddenly—Calvin rooting around in his brain, feeling for Natasha and Phil and the Avengers and weaving them into the dreams, gauging the reactions to them, adjusting, changing. Sometimes Calvin had just been entertaining himself with the medical and legal dramas he loved so much, but the other dreams had been all about Steve and Clint. Steve’s enjoyment of a simple life, surrounded by nature and family and fruits from hard, honest labor. Clint’s wish for a normal family and life, an idle fantasy reserved for long flights and boring missions, imagining the what-ifs—if he’d had a child, if he’d had a normal job. Something Clint had kept secret even from Natasha, embarrassed for his go-to daydream to be comprised of such mundane events.
“I’m dying,” Clint repeats, rolling the words around in his mouth, the idea around in his head. “I’m dying.”
It doesn’t scare him as much as it probably should. Maybe because he doesn’t believe it. It doesn’t feel like his time. Clint has more than a passing acquaintance with death and found himself on the receiving end a few times, even delivering some heartfelt goodbyes and declarations of love that Calvin, lover of all angsty theatrics, would swoon over.
He’s certainly enjoying this, taking Clint’s hand tenderly between both of his. Calvin the benevolent. Calvin the hero. “Yes. And I can make it not hurt, if you’ll just let me.”
It’s not true—he’s not dying, he isn’t, he isn’t—but Clint still knows a decent offer when he hears one. He’s always known he was fated for a premature and horrible death, so the idea of a long quiet life in suburbia alongside a faux-Natasha is a far sweeter swan song than Clint Barton could ever really hope to ask for. So it’s a good offer, and he’s tempted for the span of a moment, because parts of that dream had been nice, had been wonderful, even. But even the best dream becomes a hell when there’s no way out of it, and Clint will always choose to be blind and bleeding in the real world instead of forced to live someone else’s life.
“I can’t.” He pulls his hand out from between Calvin’s. “I won’t.”
“My way is so much better,” Calvin tries again, but Clint’s pain is already doubling, tripling, and growing unbearable as beach fades and the real world replaces it. “It’s so much nicer.”
“Yeah,” Clint sighs, “it probably is.”
*
“Oh, shit,” Steve says, and if Clint didn’t already know things were bad, that word alone would seal the deal. Steve’s voice sounds raw and sick, but also righteously pissed. That’s good. They’ll need a little extra of that Captain America verve to balance out the fact that Hawkeye doesn’t have much. “You said he was dying. You said you’d...” Steve’s anger is palpable, and angry is even better than pissed. “You said.”
“He didn’t want me to.” Calvin’s voice is back to its splintered rasp. He is indeed holding Clint’s hand; holding Clint’s entire upper body, in fact, cradled in his lap. “I tried, but he said no.”
“Bring him to me.”
And there it is, the Captain America voice, the one that Steve does so well. The voice of the leader that wants his teammate and won’t be denied, one that even Calvin, who never was a soldier, is helpless to resist.
Of course he has a hard time with it; Calvin is scrawny and weak from years in this place, and mental exertion is the only kind he’s used to. Even if he were so inclined Clint isn’t strong enough to make getting over to Steve any easier—instead he feels every bone from Calvin’s knobby knees and shoulders as his body is pushed and nudged, every part of Clint not covered in clothing rubbing and dragging painfully against the cement. It feels like half his skin is scraped away on this fucking floor, but Calvin’s slowly moving him closer, closer to Steve. And Clint doesn’t need eyes to know that Steve is standing and waiting at the bars of their adjoining cells, his spine straight and his expression brave, serious, and oh-so-all-American.
“Bring him to me,” Steve orders again, but there’s that anger again, a less familiar note beneath that Captain America voice. “Closer, Calvin. Bring him here.”
There’s one last painful push before a hand floats through the gap in the bars. Questing fingertips brushing Clint’s shoulder and then grip the fabric of his shirt as Steve drags Clint to the bars, taking Calvin along for the ride, all of them wrapped up together. They’re all so close that Clint can feel the heat from Steve’s fever and the anger that’s pouring from him in waves, and he realizes that Steve’s going to do it at last. He’s finally going to snap this Mindfucker’s goddamned neck, because in the end Steve will also choose his team first, and he’s willing to tear away at his own conscience in service of a friend.
But there’s no need for that. It’s to spare Steve and because Clint’s not dying, not really—he’s down, sure, but he’s not out, not yet—that he’s able to capitalize on the rare proximity and Calvin’s distraction. It will be as easy as he’d promised; life is such a fragile thing that it’s not terribly hard to snuff out, to kill someone is but the work of a moment and Clint’s never enjoyed it, he’s always hated it, but he’s also never shied away from doing what needs to be done.
But then he thinks of Steve insisting He’s a prisoner too.
And of Calvin’s I’m holding your hand and you aren’t alone.
And of Georgia and homesteads, of medical dramas and idealized Barton boys, and Clint’s hands abandon their journey to Calvin’s neck and travel instead to his elbow and forearm, deftly rearranging the bones there with a tidy snap snap snap, everything accomplished in an economy of motion and effort. Clint’s arms fall back down against his chest while Calvin collapses in a heap on top of him, screaming in his strange, broken voice, large rises followed by dramatic falls in volume, and all of it directly in Clint’s face.
Steve wanted Calvin alive. He’d pitied him, and Clint had too, a little. Calvin won’t die of this injury, but neither will he be painting any of his pretty pictures now. No risk of him whisking them away to his personal playgrounds, no risk of him thinking of anything at all but how much he hurts.
Steve reaches through the bars enough to shove Calvin away—the Mindfucker’s howls climb in pitch as he tumbles onto his broken arm—and Clint takes a loud, gasping breath of relief at the release of pressure on his chest.
“Hey,” Steve is saying gently, too gently, only to replace it with a louder, dismayed, “Hey!” when Clint reaches up to tear the bandage away from his eyes. “No no no, don’t do that!”’
Clint’s fingers are stiff and uncoordinated and maybe he just scratches pathetically at the gauze instead of ripping it dramatically, but the bandage comes off and when it does—God, thank God—he can see. Everything is blurry and dark and the pain is overwhelming but his eyes work. He sees cell bars and a writhing, shrieking shape that is Calvin, and a larger, hulking one that is Steve. Close enough that Clint can just about make out his expression, stern and disappointed and so very Captain America-y.
“Sorry.”
Clint isn’t sorry, not at all. He’s smiling, maybe. It’s hard to tell. He’d reach up to feel his face to know one way or another, but this time he can't move, he has nothing left, pooled to a liquid, living heap on the floor. He took care of the hard part. Steve can take care of the rest.
*
EPILOGUE
Steve choked out the guard that came to investigate Calvin’s ceaseless screams—he hadn’t liked that but couldn’t exactly complain because, again, no one was dead—and then escape was as easy as plucking a cell phone out of the man’s pocket and calling Tony. No need, in the end, to grab a gun and take on the whole facility; Steve and Clint spent the rest of their escape listening to Calvin wail and waiting for the calvary to arrive. And as shitty as both of them felt, that was probably for the best.
Once in the arms of SHIELD Medical, Steve recovers completely over the course of a day—the lucky enhanced bastard—while Clint is stashed in the burn unit because the risk of infection is so high. His eyes are gooped with medicine and wrapped too tightly, the bed has a mattress made of cement and he’s tucked under the world’s worst blanket—every piece of skin it covers is roasting while every bit that sticks out is ice fucking cold.
But none of that matters, all of it is great at first, because they’re home. Natasha is a constant presence while Tony and Bruce skip in and out frequently, bringing jokes and distraction and junk food that the nurses confiscate immediately. A few days later Thor suddenly makes an appearance, arriving dramatically from God knows where, declaring that everyone should go home and rest. Surprisingly enough, the others comply, and Thor spends all night holding Clint’s hand, which is extremely weird but so well intended that Clint doesn’t bother shaking him off. He falls asleep during Thor’s winding Asgardian tale about love, friendship, and war and when he wakes up again hours later Thor is still there, still telling it.
And once Steve feels better and decides that Clint isn’t going to die he returns to fighting injustice full time—or what he perceives as injustice anyway. When informed that something in the facility walls had kept Calvin’s wiles contained SHIELD had immediately torn a bunch of them out and built a brand new cell, then stashed Calvin in it until they figure out what the hell to do with him. Steve spends all his time railing to anyone who will listen that Calvin was a mistreated prisoner, that he isn’t evil, that it isn’t right that he’s locked up right alongside his former captors. Captain America is on a personal crusade—he’s indignant and he’s righteously mad, and he doesn’t approve at all of how SHIELD is treating their new Mindfucker, not one little bit.
Clint feels pretty great about it.
*
But it’s the only thing that feels good when the doubt starts to creep in.
Everything feels wrapped up too neatly. Clint and Steve have lived to fight another day; they made it through a lengthy imprisonment and will have no lasting effects. Normally Natasha’s presence would be reassuring, but Calvin got in too deep and captured her too well—now Clint can’t let himself believe that she’s truly his Natasha. He can’t be certain that Calvin doesn’t have them still, that he isn’t dragging Clint’s dying mind through an Avengers version of a happy ending, because that’s the ultimate problem when it comes to Mindfuckers—one never really knows when they’re finished pulling at the threads that people are made of.
Bruce has stayed behind to wait with Clint, who tracks the sound of his footfalls as he fretfully pacing the confines of the hospital room and the minute clatter of objects as Bruce picks them up and sets them down again. The soft swish swish as he cleans his glasses repeatedly with the hem of his shirt the way his breath catches occasionally, like he intends to say something before thinking better of it.
Clint just waits.
He doesn’t know how’ll they do it, but just like Steve back in those cells, Clint doesn’t give a fuck how they’ll smuggle a bow past the SHIELD nurses—who have eyes like hawks and a longstanding zero tolerance policy for Barton-related bullshit—all that matters is that it arrives.
Bruce fidgets and Clint waits and finally finally finally the door opens with a weak, pneumatic sound, Bruce’s sigh of relief confirming that it’s not medical staff but Nat and Tony at last. Tony is complaining loudly about the continued need to wear a mask and gown and gloves, insisting that he feels like a walking prophylactic, but his grousing is all for show, to keep the nurses’ eyes rolling in irritation instead of focusing on this room, where Natasha sweeps in silently and presses something compact and cool into Clint’s waiting hands.
Archery is Clint Barton’s most beloved thing and yet there’d never been one bow in even that last, most perfect of dreams because while Calvin could pick any image or memory out of Clint’s head he could never hope to capture that feeling of drawing the bow, could never create something he didn’t know anything about. All his best gear is kept at Avengers Tower these days, but there are a few pieces still here in the armory, and Clint recognizes this collapsible bow from the old Strike Team Delta days, a weapon carried in countless Barton backpacks and Coulson briefcases, a perfect size for clandestine maneuvers like this one.
Clint opens the bow in one practiced motion—the IV and tape pull uncomfortably at the back of his hand and he probably looks pathetic. No, he probably looks ri-goddamned-diculous, clad in hospital gown and his head covered in bandages, but it doesn’t matter. Only Nat and Tony and Bruce are here to see and they’ll never bring it up later to tease; they’re just as anxious for a miracle cure as Clint is.
Every muscle burns and Clint’s eyes throb along with his heartbeat, but he pulls to a full draw and stops, caught in indecision until Tony stage whispers, “He still points his stupid elbow way up; that hasn’t changed” and the spell is broken. Clint laughs in a sudden release of tension, his arms relaxing in the same moment, hands suddenly pressing over his, easing the drawstring back to rest.
It’s real. The bow is real. Nat and Tony and Bruce are real and Calvin is locked away somewhere, with Captain America as his only champion. Everything’s okay again. It’s all okay. It’s okay to let go when the bow is plucked quickly from his grasp and okay not to wonder whose hand replaces it. Okay not to worry what dreams will come when he falls asleep, because whether they’re good or terrible or simply weird they’ll be his.
“Hawkeye, go to sleep,” Natasha says.
And Clint does.