Beloved Companion

*

It’s probably an accident when Big Blue breaks Tony’s arm.

He likes hitting, kicking, and yelling while looming over them. Tossing them against the walls, shaking them hard enough to rattle teeth. But Big Blue doesn’t often draw blood or aim for tender areas, and it’s not out of any kindness toward them, but out of consideration for his mate. They’re her pets, after all.

And maybe Tony provoked him a little; he should know by now to stay out of the monster’s way, to not rise to the constant baiting.

It’s another battle of wills over the red food—it always comes back to that stuff, the toxic gift that just keeps on giving—Blue's smirking insistence that they eat it, Clint and Tony's stubborn refusal. The whole drama always goes down the same way, and this time is no different, at least until the bone snaps audibly.

Tony and Blue exchange a brief look of surprise until the larger creature kicks the bowl into the wall, sending food everywhere before storming outdoors.

Mama hovers anxiously, entreating Clint to make it better, fetching the strips of cloth and short rod he requests through halting language and exaggerated hand gestures. He splints and immobilizes Tony's arm as well as he can, not knowing where the break is. Tony just sits and lets them fuss over him, half in shock and barely even any pain yet, the sound of the snap echoing in his ears.

*

Later, when Mama’s cleaning up the mess, Tony nudges one of the red flakes out of sight before she can sweep it away. It leaves a faint pink smear across the floor that he scrubs carefully away with his big toe. Clint watches from his usual spot, chin resting upon his drawn up knees, his gaze skipping deliberately away when Tony tries to catch his eye.

*

It would be more than understandable if losing his hearing had taken the wind out of Barton’s sails, making him retreat further into a defeated passivity. But instead it has the opposite effect; he has an excess of restless energy, pacing and plotting and clenching his fists, glaring frequently at Tony’s injured arm. The sign language lessons have come to an abrupt end, though Tony has not given up on making increasingly annoying song requests.

“If I could get something sharp, I could do some damage,” Clint insists. “I know I could.” His words get more slurred every day, most of the inflection in his voice gone.

“I need some Styx to break up the monotony,” Tony says, ignoring the words, which he’s heard a hundred times at least, wishing the archer would sit down and stop moving for five minutes strung together. “Let’s see you do ‘I’m sailing awaaaaay…set an open course for the open seeeeeeea’!”

He grins and Clint rolls his eyes before turning on his heel to stalk in the opposite direction, Tony’s smile immediately dropping away. “I’m going to get us out of here,” he promises quietly to his friend’s retreating back. “I’m going to see something I didn’t before and it’s all going to come together. Everything’s going to make sense and I’ll know the way out for us.”

Clint whirls back around, having heard none of it, still caught up in his own thoughts. “I’m pretty sure the major vessels run like this—” He draws a fingernail along one scrawny arm and then down his leg “—and this. And then through the torso to the heart, approximately here.” He indicates an area low on his own chest, opens and closes his fingers in an approximation of a heartbeat.

“So that’s a no for ‘Come Sail Away’? How about some Ronnie James Dio, then? ‘Holy Diver’?” Tony hums a few bars as Clint glares. “Come on, it’s dripping with nuance and subtext!”

Clint has been making observations of his own. With every hug, every touch, he’s gathering data from Mama and hoping it extrapolates to include Big Blue—how tough her skin feels, where there are pulse points close to the skin, how often the heart beats. Scrutinizing both aliens, looking for patterns, watching for habits. Staring endlessly at the weapons hung opposite them on the far wall.

“I think their organs surround the heart. Like a wr—like a wr-r-r—” he stutters over the word, trying to form his lips around a sound he cannot hear. Panic flickers in his eyes, almost too quick to be noticed. “Like a wreath,” he spits out finally, furious and triumphant. “A h-h-oliday wreath.”

“How about you just do the chorus of ‘Hey Jude’? And you’d damned well better fingerspell every single ‘na na na’, because I’ll be counting.”

Clint sighs and sits down heavily, pressing his hands into his eyes. “Shut up.”

“I’m going to get us out of here,” Tony promises again, and it doesn’t matter if he sounds weak if Clint can’t hear it. Without reading lips he'll only know that Tony spoke at all because of the vibrations coming through the floor.

“Shut up,” Clint says again, not looking up.

*

It’s the beginning of the pattern, the buildup to Big Blue leaving again, tension layered thick beneath every interaction, but it still seems like just another day at first, indistinguishable from all the others. Shouting. Shoving. The sound of a fist hitting flesh, the sound of a body hitting the floor—it always goes the same way.

But this time Clint’s head hits the stone floor hard and he doesn’t get up again.

Both Mama and Blue gape at the sight of Clint’s too-still form before she throws her head back in a bloodcurdling wail. She swoops him up into her arms, but for once she’s not crying.

She’s angry.

Big Blue, on the other hand, is somehow diminished in the face of her fury, his eyes wide, his face stricken. All the terrible things he has done, and he’s never looked regretful before this moment. He reaches out to touch Clint’s face with tentative fingers.

They aren’t Avengers and haven't had Tony’s years of experience watching Clint get knocked out repeatedly. His immediate assumption is that Clint is just unconscious, but both aliens inexplicably and obviously jump to the conclusion that he is dead. It means something. The unprecedented contrition. Her uncharacteristic anger. The clothes, the dressing, the bathing, the books read aloud. Her constant weeping. Clint saying “He hurt her somehow”. Everything snaps into focus at the same moment Clint’s eyes blink sluggishly open.

Big Blue draws away quickly, concern giving way to irritation as Mama sags in relief. He stomps away to the back bedrooms as she coos over Clint and beckons Tony over, intent to have them both in her arms.

*

Tony points to the door, to himself and Clint, widens the gesture to include her, then points back to the door. “Let’s go.” She’s also a prisoner in this house—in all the time they’ve been here she’s never left it once—and as much a victim of Blue’s mercurial moods as they are.  “Clint. Tony. Mama.” And Bruce, he doesn’t add. She’s afraid of the Hulk, refuses to do more than throw food out the door for him when her mate is gone. “All of us. Let’s go. You can come with us. Forget about Big Blue, let’s just go.”

Mama looks resolutely away.

“Just leave her alone.” Clint’s speech is worse than ever, still concussed and trying to form words around several newly loosened teeth. “Just stop.”

But Tony can’t stop, has never been able to stop. “He’s gonna kill us,” he warns, and Mama’s eyes jerk back at the solemnity in his tone. “One day he’s going to hit too hard, or one of us is going to bleed too much. Then we’ll be gone, and you’ll be alone. You’ll be alone again.”

“I said to leave her alone!” Clint snarls, shoving both hands hard against Tony’s chest, sending him staggering backwards. “I swear to God, you never fucking listen!” He steps closer and Tony does also, and it might come to blows but Mama's hand slices through the air in sudden, silent warning, and the two men stop short, all three pairs of eyes trained down the hallway.

They watch warily as Big Blue stumbles out one of the doors and scrubs sleepily at his face, ignoring them as he heads for the kitchen area. Mama glances down at Tony and Clint before jumping up to follow.

*

He schools his expression and forces his lungs to breathe normally, but no amount of willpower can stop the sweat from dripping down his forehead or his limbs from shaking slightly. Clint’s being as gentle as he can, but the bone hasn’t fully healed, and the whole process is a study in prolonged ache and discomfort.

“Sorry, sorry,” Clint soothes as he finally draws the metal rod out carefully through the bindings of the sling. “Okay, now I'll rewrap it.” But once in his hand the assassin can’t quite will himself to let the rod go, trying and failing to set it down on the floor in a series of aborted gestures. He finally tucks it up under his own arm as he examines Tony’s, concern warring with poorly concealed excitement on his face.

“Will it be enough?” Tony asks, but Clint’s too busy gloating to bother reading his lips. Tony wraps his good hand around the rod, sighing when Clint jerks it reflexively away with a possessive glare. “You won’t be able to sharpen it,” he warns, overenunciating slightly. It looks to be the same metal as the chain, which has been resistant to all their efforts to alter it. Back home Clint could easily beat another human to death with such a blunt instrument, but here he’s weakened and constantly concussed and Blue is strong. “Is it going to be enough to hurt him?”

“I’ll make it be enough.” Clint arcs it through the air in a couple short swings, his face alight with determined anticipation.

It’s a bad plan, no better or likely than any of Tony’s other plans, weapon or no. Even if Clint manages to overtake Big Blue they’ll still be chained to the wall, they’ll be no closer to that open doorway or to Bruce. The plan is to attack until one of the aliens gives in and frees them, which is both a long shot and a fool’s hope.

“All we need is for one of us to get out the door,” he says, cradling his throbbing arm, and Clint nods. It’s doubtful that the archer actually believes the Heimdall can’t see indoors theory today any more than he had yesterday, but he’s a lot more receptive to the idea now that he has a weapon in his hands. “It doesn’t matter how we get there. Or in what condition.”

*

It almost works.

It’s rare for Clint to show this side of himself, the snarling, primal creature that lurks beneath his usually affable and lovable exterior armor. Natasha knows it well, but Tony has only seen flashes of it over the years—something dark that comes out to play during the most terrible of missions, when Hawkeye and the Black Widow make the decisions that the rest of them can’t allow themselves. One minute Clint is smiling contentedly in Mama’s arms and the next moment launching himself out of them directly into Big Blue’s face, the sappy grin replaced by a feral snarl, the rod pulled from his sleeve and glinting in firelight as he strikes the monster across the eyes in rapid succession.

 “Stark!”

He manages to catch the rod as Clint tosses it to him, taking advantage of Blue’s stunned state to loop the slack of the chain around his neck. Then Clint does what he’s practiced so many times before and scales the chain nimbly almost all the way to its tether, pulling it tightly behind him. Big Blue struggles in choked surprise, still half blinded and reeling, trying instinctively to pull away while Tony attacks with the rod, driving the tapered end into the tender areas of Blue’s abdomen.

It’s almost perfect. It almost works. It’s almost a fitting revenge for all the abuse they’ve suffered, all the days and nights of torment at this creature’s hands. But it’s another pair of hands that ruin everything as Mama grabs Tony around the thigh and flings him backwards, then reaches up to release Clint’s collar from the chain in one fluid motion. He and Blue both crash to the floor with the chain piled around them, Blue gasping for air and Clint looking almost comically surprised by the turn of events.

Tony Stark has been in pain many times since becoming Iron Man, even more so after ending up here in this cold, otherworldly hellhole. His life has turned into an endless parade of aches and bruises, but they’re all a fond memory compared to his. His leg is dislocated—how he knows that he isn’t sure, because he really has no frame of reference—but he’s certain it’s dislocated; that in her haste and fear Mama has ripped it right out of the socket.

But even through the pain he sees that chain coiled on the floor, the unbound collar around Clint’s neck, the opportunity that it was worth risking everything for. “Get out, go go go!” he screams, even as Clint is already springing up from his hands and knees and sprinting toward the doorway.

In the end, however, Big Blue is faster and stronger, snaking one long arm around Clint’s waist and yanking him backward. His face is dripping blood and almost purple with rage as shakes Clint like a ragdoll, knocking Mama away effortlessly as she pulls at his arms, pleading.

“Don’t. Leave him alone; it was my idea,” Tony tries, trying and failing to push himself up off the floor, his arms shaking uselessly with the effort. He crashes back down and rolls to his back with a cry, jagged spikes of pain shooting through his hip. Big Blue looms over him, Clint clutched motionless under one arm, and reaches down to tear the metal rod from Tony’s hand. He’d forgotten it was even there. He can’t do anything besides gasp in pain and think This is it. He’s finally going to kill us.

Mama throws herself over his body, huddling protectively, shielding Tony with her body, both of them trembling, bracing themselves for the retaliation that never comes. There’s the sound of retreating footsteps as the monster stomps away to the back rooms, taking Clint with him.

*

There’s no Clint around to help her this time. She tries to fix it, aghast at her own part in Tony’s pain and desperate to make it right, but she either doesn’t understand how because her own joints are nothing like a human’s, or she just lacks the ability. She grinds his hip into his body, trying for the socket and missing again and again as Tony screams behind clenched teeth until she finally gives up.

She lays down beside him and weeps—loud, wracking sobs that shake them both. She runs her hand over his hair endlessly, until his scalp is raw and he thinks he’s going to go crazy from it.

“Where’s Clint?” he manages finally, his voice a shaking, broken thing. Maybe this had been the last straw for Big Blue, deciding that these pets are more trouble than they were worth, no matter how much his mate doted on them. “Clint,” he repeats, and she makes a wounded sound. “Clint. Clint. Bring him back. It was my idea. Don’t let him be hurt. Go get him and bring him back.”

Mama just sobs harder and pulls Tony close, and the subsequent flare of agony from his leg sends Tony into darkness.

*

When he blinks awake she is lifting him up into the air, careful of his leg but every movement still a torment. Clint’s gone and Tony’s hurt, and she can’t bear to see him suffer. She’s taking him out the open doorway, taking him to Bruce, taking him outside.

*

But it’s not outside. There’s no sky, just more of the same ceiling, a bland grey with seashell-like patterns, and Tony sags in her arms in despair, knowing that they’ve been beaten at last. They’re in the outer ring of a larger building—all that time he and Clint had spent staring at the open doorway and it hadn’t led outside at all. Heimdall won’t see them. Thor won’t be coming. The Avengers won’t be coming. They're no closer to being home.

The Hulk is there, tethered and naked; his chain far thicker than theirs had been and looks impossibly heavy and strong. He glowers at Mama until he catches sight of Tony in her arms. He gives a half cry, half roar of desperate hurt coming to the length of his chain, arms extended in want.

Mama gets as close as she dares before depositing Tony gently on the ground, faced twisted in worried apology as she makes shooing motions to urge him forward.

The Hulk whimpers in helpless frustration as he watches Tony drag himself painfully closer.

“I’m…so happy…to see you,” Tony gasps, tears streaming down his face from a combination of disappointment, pain, and relief. He’s sobbing and shaking himself apart and beyond fucking caring what anyone thinks of it. “Hulk, we were…so worried.” His leg catches on a bit of uneven ground and he forces a scream back down into an anguished groan, his head dropping forward alongside his one good arm.

The Hulk echoes the sound, his hands spread, reaching for Tony, beckoning. Closer. Come a little closer. Tony moves as well as he can, lurching forward in fits and stops, panting with the effort. But as he gets closer the hands seem to retreat and diminish, becoming less substantial. And then Tony has to move even farther, but it’s worth it, because now it’s Bruce Banner there, almost doubled over from the weight of a chain meant for a Hulk, but his arms still reaching out.

“Tony.”

Bruce’s hands work open and closed in involuntary grasping motions until Tony is near enough for him to pull carefully over the rest of the way. Tony has been pawed at and bathed and dressed and cuddled almost into madness over the last few months—to the point where even inadvertent contact with Clint makes him want to scream—but there’s nowhere he’d rather be in this moment than wrapped in Bruce’s arms, filthy as they are and emaciated into frailty.

“You’re alive,” Bruce breathes raggedly. “Thank God you’re alive.” He draws back to arm’s length to take in Tony’s face briefly, then immediately resumes the embrace.

Mama makes an impatient warning sound, points at Bruce, says something sharply. When he doesn’t respond she snaps her fingers, obviously terrified but still trying for an air of authority.

“My hip,” Tony says finally. “It’s—I think it’s out.”

Bruce pulls back reluctantly, and with one hand still fisted possessively in Tony’s shirt runs the other over Tony’s leg, jerking his fingers away immediately when even the lightest touch elicits a groan of pain. “Sorry, sorry.” He sits back on his heels and helps Tony ease toward the ground. “I can fix it,” he promises. “Just be still; I can fix this.”

It’s quick, though maybe not as quick as either of them would prefer, and the pain is lessened substantially, if not entirely. Bruce’s arms wrap around Tony immediately again, so obviously desperate for human contact that Tony clings back in spite of himself. He and Clint may have suffered but they’ve been together at least; Bruce has been alone this whole time, with only Big Blue for company, not knowing if his friends were dead or alive. Tony’s fingers reach up to trace carefully against Bruce’s collar—it’s the same metal as his own but of linked rings woven in such a way as to expand to accommodate the Hulk, then relax back into a heavier weight when Bruce is just himself.

“Clint?” Bruce asks hesitantly, fearful of the answer.

“He’s alive. But for who knows how long. Big Blue is probably hurting him bad.” Tony shakes his head into Bruce’s shoulder. “We tried to escape.  It was my plan and it fell apart and—”

“And nothing,” Bruce insists. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Of course you tried to get away. Anyone would.”

Mama says something softly, calling Tony back. Bruce’s grip tightens at the sound of her voice and Tony shakes his head. “I can’t imagine how it’s been for you, all this time.”

“I’ve mostly been the Hulk. That’s what the big one likes—to bait and fight the Hulk. He thinks it’s hilarious. He doesn’t like me to be me, but then again, neither does the Hulk. He’s been taking all the damage for us both.” Bruce grins, lips pulling away from his teeth sickly. “Saving me…just like always.”

“I’m glad,” Tony says fervently, hoping that the Hulk can hear him somehow. “Thank you, Big Guy. Thank you for helping Bruce. Thank you both for helping me.”

Mama calls again in a mishmash of nonsense words, a little more forcefully this time, but Tony deliberately looks away. “She won’t help us. She won’t even say my name.”

“You should probably go back,” Bruce advises, but his grip on Tony’s arm doesn’t loosen at all. “You have to help Clint.” He stares at his own fingers until they open with effort, releasing Tony back into a crouch on the ground.

“I’ve got another plan,” Tony tells him. “It’s not a good plan. Actually, it’s a terrible plan, but it’s also the last plan.  The one what works. Just…stay you as much as you can. Be ready, but as Bruce Banner. Okay? Can you do that?”

Mama calls again, sharply now, casting worried looks back toward the doorway that leads back inside. She narrows her eyes at Bruce, as if sure Tony’s sudden disobedience is his doing.

“I can.”

Tony starts the long shift and slide away, his leg still throbbing too much to bear weight. Just as her arms close around him again Tony looks back to Bruce, who stands with arms still raised and reaching into empty air, unable to make himself to lower them again.

*

When they return, Clint is back on the nest of blankets, one flung over him haphazardly.

Big Blue nowhere to be seen. His is armor gone.  His weapons are gone.

*

She’s in brighter spirits after taking Clint away to clean him up, alternating between doting on them and doing her atonal equivalent of singing, rattling around, fixing food. Clint lays for a long time unmoving and unresponsive, staring at nothing, and the life doesn’t bleed back into him so much as the eerie remoteness thaws, bit by bit, as if he’s coming back from far away, until his eyes finally meet Tony’s again.

“Are you okay?”

 “No.” Clint’s voice is raspy. “Something is broken. Maybe a bunch of somethings.  I don’t know.”

“Shit.” Tony takes a deep breath before plucking at the bottom of Clint’s shirt. “I’m gonna take a quick look, alright?”

“Don’t.”

“I want to make sure that—” Tony lifts the shirt just high enough to make out a large bite mark above Clint’s hip, deep red gouges surrounded by black bruising, before the archer wrenches his body away, choking back a cry of pain.

 “I said don’t! Fuck!” He resettles to the floor stiffly, covering his face with his hands, his body tensed with pain until he relaxes all at once, his face settled back into careful neutrality when he pulls his hands away again. “Just…leave it, Tony.  It’s done. It’s over.”

*

Mama covers them with a blanket and retreats to her room, and they stare up at nothing for hours, unable and unwilling to sleep.

“I saw Bruce,” Tony says quietly, nudging Clint’s arm carefully with his elbow. “He’s…well, he’s in piss poor shape, but he’s alive.”

Clint sighs and fumbles slowly for Tony’s hand, squeezes it.

“I told him that I have a plan. And I do. But it’s a bad one. A really awful one.”

He waits for Clint to ask, but he doesn’t, just continues to lay there with his jaw clenched, staring at the ceiling as if there’s an answer written there, something he can find if he looks hard enough.

“Did you know—” Tony’s voice cracks unexpectedly and he swallows hard, his voice stronger the second attempt. “Did you know that even if their tools failed, ancient sailors could still find their way? They’d look up at the stars and use their hands to plot the lines, like—” He raises his own hand, blocking the view of the ceiling beyond it, his hand taking up his whole focus, the whole world. “They’d use their hands to measure the stars; navigate their ships by how far the North Star was from the horizon.”

When he was a child he’d read that in a book about sailors and ships, his younger self enthralled, in love with the imagery and exotic words like “wayfinding”. He’d longed to share it with someone, his parents disinterested and Jarvis too busy. He couldn’t know it would be more than thirty years before he would share that hoarded knowledge, laying beside a master assassin on an alien planet. He’s not even sure what brings it to mind now, except to think that Clint might like it, that he might feel a kinship for people who navigated a dangerous world while armed with so little—just a ship, the stars, and their wits.

Tony turns his hand at the wrist, imagining himself lining up the Big Dipper with the edge of his fingers. “And whenever a storm rose up they would—”

“You know that I can’t hear anything you’re saying, right?” Clint all but sighs the words.

A half hysterical, half ashamed laugh escapes before Tony can stop it. Of course Clint hadn’t heard him; nor can he read lips from this angle, can’t do anything more than feel the vibrations from Tony’s shoulder to his. Clint’s broken and Tony had forgotten, because he’s breaking, too. He laughs again, and if it’s a little shrill, that’s alright. Clint can’t hear that either.

Tony turns abruptly and burrows his face into Clint’s shoulder, wincing sympathetically at the archer’s soft noise of surprise. “I’ll forge a hammer and break the chains,” he promises in a harsh whisper, “and then build us a spaceship with solar sails. I’ll launch it into the sky and send the three of us home, using the stars to find the way, like those sailors used to. Bruce can be the first mate, and you can keep watch at the top of the mast, up high, just the way you like.”

He rolls up to sit on his knees, his hip and leg screaming in pain. Something is still wrong there, muscles and tendons stretched beyond their limits, maybe something cracked, maybe something torn. Not that any of it matters now; they won’t need to fight this time.  Tony touches the side of Clint’s face until the gray eyes shift slowly over to watch his lips.

“I have a plan,” he says, and Clint huffs a silent, mirthless laugh.

“Of course you do.”

“She had you take care of my arm, right? When it was broken—she had you fix it because she couldn’t stand the pain. Then my leg was hurt but you weren’t here, so she took me to Bruce. Because, you see,  she can’t stand the pain. She can’t take the suffering. Mama’s the weak link.”

Clint raises his hand to flaps in a ‘neither here nor there’ gesture before dropping it woodenly back to the floor.

“With enough pressure she’ll give. She’ll make a mistake. All we need is for her to unchain Bruce and bring him inside to us.” That’s all it will take. The Hulk will take care of the rest. Blue isn’t here to stop him.

“She won’t do that. Not ever.” Clint scowls faintly, as if offended on her behalf. “She’s not stupid, Tony.”

“I know that. But she will,” Tony insists flatly. “She will if…if she’s more afraid of losing us than she is of Bruce.”

Clint is silent as he considers this and what it means for them. What it means for her. “Oh,” he says finally, reaching up to his collar, pulling it halfheartedly away from his throat. “How?”

Tony digs at the edge of the blankets and pulls out the red flakes he’d hidden away what seems like ages ago now, holding them high where Clint can see. Tony Stark is a man of ideas, both grand and simple, a man of plans layered with contingencies and options and failsafes. This plan hadn’t been a conscious thought when he squirreled these pieces away; he’d only seen a resource, an opportunity, and taken it without a second thought. An insurance policy, a last resort, in case things got worse.

That point has long since come and gone.

Clint looks at the food in Tony’s hand for a long time. “Yeah, okay,” he says dully. “Good plan. Really good plan.”

*

Tony wants to wait till morning, to make sure that Big Blue is truly gone and also to give one last reprieve before the sprint to the endgame, but Clint holds out an inpatient hand, snapping his fingers in an uncanny imitation of Mama when the food isn’t immediately handed over. Tony sets a large piece in his palm, doesn’t let go until Clint folds his fingers weakly over it.

“Just a bite or two,” Tony warns, and Clint’s gaze moves away from Tony’s mouth to meet his eyes briefly, then back down again. “Any more than that would probably kill you,” he adds gently. “Do…do you know that?”

It would be terrible and painful, but probably quick. It’s the only choice he can offer his friend at this point. It’s been so long since they’ve had any choices. The decision weighs only fleetingly in Clint’s eyes before he shakes his head resolutely, takes a large bite and hands it back.

“Home,” he says, grimacing as he swallows. “Natasha. Fresh air. Food. People. Sunshine.”

Tony examines the red thing in his hand, so unappealing, every instinct screaming not to do it even as his extends will to override his flesh. It’s the only way left. He wants to free Bruce. To see Pepper, JARVIS, the team. He wants a soft bed with warm blankets. To be able to fly away as high as he wants, whenever he wants. He wants no more chains, no more collars, no more hands that hurt.

“Home,” Tony agrees, and takes a large bite.

*

It doesn’t take long. Their immune systems are shot to hell and it happens faster than it had the first time, back when they’d been stronger and had eaten far less. It starts with vomiting and a rapidly climbing fever and by the time she finds them in the morning they’re both shaking and sweating and gasping for breath. It was meant to be bad, intended to scare her, but this is really bad, the kind of deterioration that would be frightening even in hospital bed with every medical resource within spitting distance.

Mama tries to help. She forces strange liquids down their throats, wipes them clean with wet towels and cradles them as lovingly as she can. None of it helps, and they burn and writhe until she’s out of ideas and reduced to a despairing vigil. Each hour sends the poison creeping further into their organs and the chance of recovery plummeting. Each hour brings Big Blue closer to returning.

*

Tony comes to a wobbly awareness in bed between Mama and Clint. The chains are gone but that’s useless now; they could no more attempt an escape than they could launch themselves into space and float home.

“Hey,” he says, and she startles at the noise, looking down at him with tenderness and a wild, unmistakable hope. “We’re sick. So sick.” He passes his fingers over Clint’s forehead and holds out the hand toward her, as if the fever clings his fingertips for her to see.  “We’re going to die.”

She pats him fretfully, making soothing noises.

“Mama. Listen to me. We’re so sick and need help.  Help.  Mama, help.”

He reaches up to stroke her face the way Blue always does when he leaves, up her jawline and swirling over one cheek. Maybe it means love. Maybe goodbye. Tony never had figured it out.

Either way, it means something to her, and she stills.

“I think I understand,” Tony says. It’s more talking than she usually allows, but she doesn’t stop him now, maybe knowing it’s important, the end of everything.  “You had a child, didn’t you? A little one. It died somehow—because of him—and it’s gone. We were supposed to make that better for you. But we can’t.  And now you’re gonna lose us too if you don’t bring the whole thing to an end. If you don’t get us help. Help, Mama.”

She makes a pained sound and spreads her hands in a surprisingly human gesture of helplessness. I don’t know what to do.

Tony puts all the confidence he doesn’t feel into his voice. “Bruce.” He points to the hallway, to the doorway beyond. “Bruce will help. Like he did with me.” He touches his hip, and her eyes dawn with realization. “Bruce will help. Bruce will help Clint and Tony. Please.”

Clint watches their exchange through slitted eyes, and either he’s cognizant enough to remember the plan or it’s just blind luck that he moans as she tries to lift him, his hands springing to his ribs, where her mate has broken something inside of him. Mama readjusts her grip to try again and he cries out a second time, trying to push her hands away. She whimpers again in desperation, looking at Clint, at Tony, and the fretful indecision slowly bleeds from her face to be replaced by an impassive determination.

She loves them, Tony is sure of that—the plan would never work otherwise. But she also hates Bruce, knowing what he can become and fearing it. Even so, she squares her shoulders with a careful dignity before she leaves the room, and Tony’s last good memory of Mama is that she’s sort of beautiful.

*

She leads a pliant Bruce in by his chain and collar and he takes in the scene with two long blinks—their pale faces, the smell of sickness in the room, Tony’s broken arm and useless leg, the bite marks littering Clint’s skin—and of course the inevitable happens.

A good plan, Clint called it, but it isn’t; it’s a terrible plan, an ugly play against her biggest weakness, of what she is at the core. She’s a mother, and as her surrogate children their health and safety are the only things they have left to threaten with. Blue may be able to hold his own against the Hulk, but not Mama; she’s not a fighter, not strong.

There’s no point trying to tell the Hulk that she isn’t cruel like Big Blue. He wouldn’t listen, and maybe she is guilty, a little. Not as much as her mate, certainly, but she knew they were thinking creatures and kept them all the same, chained them when they wanted to be free. Tony closes his eyes and tries to tell himself that she’s just collateral damage, tries to believe it, not sure when and how all the lines between love and survival and degrees of monstrosity have become so blurred.

It's loud—her howls, the Hulk’s rage filled roars. The chain still dangles from his neck—what she had gripped to lead Bruce in—but that doesn’t matter; it becomes a weapon in itself, swinging wildly as the Hulk tears the room apart. Mama screams, terrified and angry, then again in higher pitches of pain, fighting back with claws and snarling teeth.

“Don’t look,” Tony whispers, but Clint isn’t trying to, his face buried in the hollow of Tony’s throat. He might not even be conscious. Tony keeps his own eyes screwed tightly shut. “It’ll be over soon, and we’ll be on our way home. We’ll be out, just like I always promised.”

Finally the noises stop, and Tony hears heavy breathing and feels a tentative, trembling nudge against his back. He opens his eyes, hopeful to see Bruce, or even the Hulk, but it’s her.

It’s Mama.

Despair washes through him but then sees the Hulk, too, standing a few paces behind her, head lowered and vibrating with anger, but just watching. She’s a bloody, broken mess, and there’s no honor in continuing to fight a beaten creature, not even for the Hulk, who so many have called a monster.

She’s collapsed in their direction and is trying to move closer, too injured to do so, just able to reach far enough to touch Tony, to touch Clint. Her silver eyes are pleading, but there are no tears this time. Not pleading for their help—she’s finished and she knows it—but wanting a last bit of contact. Maybe she’s worried that the green creature will kill them, too. Maybe she’s trying to say goodbye. Or ask forgiveness.

“I’m sorry,” Tony says as the Hulk moves between them, lifting Tony easily with one arm, Clint already held firmly in the other. “I’m so sorry, Mama.”

“Tony,” she whispers back, and then they’re gone.

*

The Hulk runs them far enough that the house disappears from sight, then a little further.

“Stop,” Tony calls, his voice weak, but the Hulk finally hears him. “Stop and let Heimdall look. He’ll see us now, I know he will.”

It’s an alien landscape of looming rocks and black water and things that might be trees, and in another time Tony would want to explore, to catalogue, to see everything and take it in. Now he wants only to close his eyes to all this strangeness and open them to green trees and city sidewalks, to blue skies and familiar faces.

“Hey, I’m outside,” he hears Clint marvel sleepily, and there’s an answering rumble from the Hulk.

Tony closes his eyes.

*

Strong arms lift him, and for a moment Tony struggles—someone larger and stronger is always pushing or pulling him places he doesn’t want to go—but there’s a voice along with the touch, a too-loud voice, well known and well loved, laced with worry.

“We’ve found you,” Thor promises.

*

EPILOGUE

It’s been a long road back, the world left behind in a blink of light but the memories a little harder to move away from. It’s been difficult, but they’re coming back, slowly. Some fixes were easy, like broken bones and ears, but some have been harder.

Clint spent weeks disappearing without warning, needing to know that he could, leaving abruptly in the middle of meals and conversations, and even once, very dramatically, in the middle of a psych appointment. Tony has struggled to work his way up to any touches beyond his friends’, even a business handshake setting his teeth on edge and his heart pounding, though he’s learning to accept it. Bruce vacillates between a desperate hunger for companionship, frantic not to be left alone, and other times pushing everyone away, claiming that the Hulk is company enough—their shared feelings of helplessness and protectiveness having led to a sort of détente between them.

But they’ve started to rally, to get their feet back under themselves. Now they lay up on the roof of the Tower, the night clear enough to see the stars, on their backs with their arms and shoulders touching, the way Tony wished it could have been for Bruce all those nights, that he could have been with Tony and Clint and never alone.

“Very pretty,” Bruce observes mildly, but twitches slightly at something red that flashes across the sky above, probably just an airplane.

“Did you know—” Tony raises his hand into the air, studying the sky beyond the familiar landscape of the lines and scars dotting his skin—“that even if their tools failed, ancient sailors could still find their way? They’d look up at the stars and use their hands to plot the lines. They’d measure the stars and navigate by how far the North Star was from the horizon.”

He’s said it all wrong but that doesn’t matter, and he clamps his jaws shut before he can do something stupid, like promise to build them a spaceship and sail them home. They’re the only people that he doesn’t have to explain it to—how it felt to have his plans come to nothing, the futility of dissecting an unfathomable language and the pointless examinations of chains made from alien metals. The time spent trying to gather a knowledge that was never there to find, to affect a confidence that didn’t exist. How it felt to be trapped and suffocated and terrified every single day.

Bruce raises his hand silently to hover beside Tony’s, and Clint does too, but brings up his other hand to join the first.

“They used their hands to measure stars,” he says slowly, translating, his fingers bobbing and weaving in and out of Tony’s eyeline before stopping abruptly. “I don’t know the sign for ‘navigate’.”

“Make it up,” Tony advises, blinking away unshed tears, and Bruce chuckles quietly. “We won’t know the difference.”

Clint hums thoughtfully and his hands move again, moving upward together and one fluttering, an approximation of a ship sailing away. “That’s close enough, I guess.”

“Close enough,” Tony agrees, echoing the sign, hands reaching toward the heavens.