Voluntary Procedure

*

Fury makes it seem like a choice, but it isn’t. Not really.

*

Clint and Natasha are crammed in the back of a truck with the two soldiers they’d been paired with for this op, the four of them uncomfortably close, feet touching and knees knocking any time anyone moves. Clint wants to be unhappy about it, wants to bitch about the temperature of too many bodies in too small a space, about how Breen reeks of body odor, or the way Hadley chews piece after piece of gum like a cow working cud.

Clint wants to be irritated because it would feel good to reach for something familiar, it would be better than this anticipation, this dread, because he and Natasha are going to be wiped today. And Hadley and Breen are both going to die today, though neither of them knows it.

Breen is spending the last few hours of his life playing a video game on his phone, and that seems insane, that seems like injustice, and Clint wants to urge him to put that phone down and spend his last moments doing literally anything else. Contemplating the beauty of the sun or the fragility of the human condition. Composing an emotional goodbye letter, or even reminiscing about his childhood dog. Something. Anything.

Instead Clint says nothing, because it won’t do any good; these two soldiers are going to die and to warn them, to frighten them, would be needlessly cruel when there’s nothing to be done about it.

Natasha says nothing either, just smiles and accepts the stick of gum that Hadley offers. Clint takes one too, even though he hates cinnamon flavoring.

Hadley sticks the wrapper in his pocket. “It’s getting to be a bad habit,” he says gesturing to his mouth, “but I’m trying to give up smoking, which is a worse habit.”

Clint and Natasha make polite noises of agreement, though Hadley may as well have smoked like a fiend and enjoyed every goddamned puff, because he’s never going to die of cancer.

 “There’s a pill,” Clint says out of nowhere, surprising even himself, “that helps you stop smoking. A guy I know took it, said it works.”

“I’ll have to look into that,” Hadley says.

“Or you could try the patch.” He shouldn’t be doing this, shouldn’t engage either soldier in any way. It’s foolish to connect, to humanize them even further, to weaving thoughts of a future for a man who has none.

Natasha yawns and stretches as if bored, all just a cover to plant a sharp elbow in her partner’s side, finding a tender spot unerringly and implausibly through a tangle of arms, clothing, and equipment. Quit it.

“I’ve thought about the patch, too,” Hadley says. “I don’t care how I quit smoking, as long as it happens before the baby comes.”

*

Clint gives not one shit about the mission with General Ross—he would’ve forgotten that on his own, put it aside the same way he does all unpleasantness with SHIELD—but he wants to remember this. Fury and Natasha look away but Clint makes himself watch, because Breen and Hadley deserve that. They aren’t bad men and the four of them had been a team, of sorts. The least he can do is bear proper witness to their deaths, and try to remember. The whole thing might not be in vain if he can tell their families about it later.

When he finally understands what is happening, Breen panics, and his flailing arm diverts the gunshot just enough to ensure Hadley a painful death instead of a quick one. Breen makes a terrified dash for freedom as Hadley writhes on the ground, half his face gone, screaming “I can’t see! I can’t open my eyes! I can’t see!”

Clint makes an automatic move toward him—to staunch the blood pouring from Hadley's skull, to scrape up the brains all over his boots and push them back in, to make it all stop even though it has already happened. Clint has no clear idea of what he actually intends to do, but he doesn’t get farther than that single step before Natasha winds a finger through his belt loop. Just enough to pull him back, not physically, but to pull him out of reactive behavior and back to the reality.

There’s no more than that one aborted movement forward. There’s nothing to be done about any of it.

*

Clint Barton will forever be famous amongst the nurses for two things—receiving the one and only tonsillectomy ever performed in SHIELD Medical and dating Dr. Day. No matter if he’s there to get his annual flu shot or to have a sucking chest wound packed, someone, at some point, will bring up his colorful romantic history.

No one mentions Dr. Day today. It’s quiet and efficient in the operating room, no distracting chit chat, everything as sterile as an alcohol wipe. Maybe they’re worried Clint will flip out and try to fight, or maybe they don’t like what they’re about to do.

Or maybe it’s because Nick Fury has just walked in.

“I’m sorry,” Fury tells him, and Clint immediately answers, “It’s okay.”  

Because that’s how it goes—someone sneezes and is offered a Bless you. If the question is How are you? then answer is always fine, and when someone says I’m sorry the other person is supposed to say It’s okay, even if it isn’t.

Fury does look sorry. Maybe he actually is.

Clint gets onto the table willingly enough, deliberately not looking at the straps dangling off the sides, and trying instead to think of Hadley, hoping that if he tries hard enough he can hold onto him. It’d be good to have a nice thing to say to the young widow—either something safe and innocuous like He was a good guy or something professional like He was a good soldier. Even something stupid like He gave me a piece of gum once would be better than nothing.

“It’ll be alright,” Fury promises, and grips his wrist lightly. It’s so close to handholding that Clint has a moment of pure delight, thinking can’t wait to tell Natasha about this, immediately chased by the realization that he won’t be able to, because won’t remember it. “It doesn’t hurt.”

The nurse injects something into the IV line and whatever it is burns as it travels up Clint’s hand as he  thinks Hadley Hadley Hadley.

*

Then there’s nothing.

Hadley’s gone, Breen is gone, the mission, the prep, everything up till the moment where Steve stopped Clint and Natasha in the elevator at the Tower and said Well, good luck. Do you know when you’ll be—

There’s nothing else, just flashes of what may be memories or half remembered dreams.

Clint awakens briefly to a freezing room and a hissing noise right behind his ear, chewing on what feels like the bowl of a spoon. Metal against his teeth as he bites and bites uselessly.

“Now, stop that,” someone scolds, but he can’t.

*

Then he wakes up properly in different room and it doesn’t feel like he was asleep so much as gone, a lightbulb turned off and then back on. He recognizes SHIELD Medical but has no idea how he got from the Tower elevator to here—maybe they’d been attacked, or maybe Bruce had Hulked out and torn the building down around them. Maybe one of the labs blew up, the way Pepper always insists that they will. Clint could be here for a lot of reasons; the life of an Avenger is one of chaos.

It feels almost like he’s been shot again—and in the head this time. It feels like everything above his eyes must be a raw, open wound and Clint reaches up to feel before his hand is stopped short by the IV line. A blood pressure cuff grips his upper arm and there are sensor pads that pull at the skin on his chest. There’s something wound around his lower legs, too, things that inflate and deflate constantly in an obnoxious whistle of air.  

It sounds like a sigh, and in between mechanical exhalations Clint has a vague recollection of Fury saying I’m sorry, followed by his own voice answering It’s okay.

A nurse is seated in the chair next to him—the chair where Coulson always sat, then Natasha, then an Avenger; the chair where a friend should be—fiddling around with a tablet. She smiles and begins asking questions faster than Clint can possibly answer; he’s still puzzling out the words to one when another comes

Do you rememberwhat—

Can you tell me about—

Do you know why—

None of her questions matter because he doesn’t remember anything and doesn’t care to—the answer to every single question she has is no. But the nurse just keeps going, unbothered that Clint can’t form his mouth and lips and tongue into creating distinguishable words. Blissfully unaware that her barrage of questions is increasing the pressure in his forehead exponentially, not caring that Clint Barton’s skull is about to split apart right in front of her.

I’m sorry. It might have been Fury that said it. Or maybe Steve. Either way Clint hears someone’s voice murmur I’m sorry, and immediately thinks It’s okay.

 “I don’t feel so good.”

Maybe the words don’t come out right, probably they don’t, because the nurse pauses for a moment and studies him, eyebrows raised. Beneath the flimsy blanket the cuffs on his legs inflate and deflate again with another defeated sigh and Clint grits his teeth at the sound, the pain in his head ratcheting impossibly higher.

I’m sorry, he hears, and It doesn’t hurt.

He might be dying—actually dying this time, not like all those others times—and has the vague idea to try and hold his head together before it breaks. To push the brains back in, to staunch the bloodflow. The IV line falls down between the mattress and the guardrail and gets caught on something, tethering his hand on an even shorter leash, but Clint doesn’t care, lets the catheter in his hand pull painfully as he forces both hands to his head, driving his fingers into his skull.

“Don’t do that,” the nurse scolds sharply, and she’s reaching for Clint’s wrists when she stops and turns toward the door, listening to what sounds like yelling out in the hallway.

I’m sorry, someone says, but they’re not here anymore. Clint groans behind his teeth and thinks It’s okay, even though it isn’t.

 “I’m gonna throw up,” Clint tries this time, only realizing that the threat is actually true as he’s saying it aloud, his stomach giving a painful, cramping lurch. His hands are too insubstantial to put as much pressure on his head as he wants, so he folds his upper body down to them, pushing in two directions. The skin will surely give way soon, then the skull beneath.  His head is either going to collapse or explode, and he doesn’t much care which it is, as long as the pain ends. “Gonna puke. Really. I really am gonna. My head—”

The nurse frowns at him, hesitating in front of the door. “I better go see what’s going on out there.”

He’s about to beg her to hand him a pan or a cup or something even remotely useful before the door bursts open dramatically. People are yelling and someone is crying and Clint doesn’t care about any of it—he’s too busy trying holding his brains in. He’s led an adventurous life, a dangerous life, a largely terrible life, and yet this seems to be how the whole thing is going to end for Clint Barton—tangled up in IV tubing and covered in his own vomit, wearing a hospital gown and the stupid fucking inflating leg thingies.

Tony Stark’s nose and eyes are suddenly only inches away. Clint groans and pushes at him; doesn’t want Tony so close, wants him away, but his hands and arms feel boneless and weak while Tony feels oddly immovable.

There was something he wanted to tell them, something important that he was supposed to do or remember—maybe the thing that someone was sorry about—but it’s elusive and dreamlike and gone; Clint’s brain is on fire and he might be screaming as Bruce’s face replaces Tony’s. Everything degenerates further into a flurry of shouts and hands and beeping monitors, and it isn’t much of a surprise that SHIELD Medical seems to have turned out to actually be Hell.

Bruce reaches out but the Hulk is the one that lifts Clint from the bed, freeing him of all the things that bound him to it.

I’m sorry, the voice says again, and this time Clint grits out a “Fuck you”, not caring that it’s to the wrong person, or that it’s the wrong answer to an apology, because everything is pretty fucking far from okay.

A giant green hand cradles the back of Clint’s head and pulls him close, all but crushing his forehead against the Hulk’s chest, and for the space of one blissful moment the pressure is finally enough to counter the pain and allow Clint to lose consciousness again.  

And the last thought that skitters through Clint Barton’s mind before everything falls silent—coming from nowhere, from a void, seemingly apropos of nothing—is to think that Fury was wrong, that he lied again, that it had hurt.