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When Clint wakes up, he kinda wishes that he hadn’t.
Everything hurts. Everything. And not the “everything hurts” he usually complains about after an unnecessarily rigorous sparring session with Cap. It’s not hyperbole this time. Everything fucking hurts.
He tries to catalogue his injuries, but the throbbing of his head makes his mind feel scattershot and unfocused. The chair he’s sitting on has industrial cuffs binding each of his wrists tightly, uncomfortably to the armrests, and he doesn’t think he can slip them without dislocating one - if not both - of his shoulders. The sound of his own breathing is rattly to his ears. The skin on his face feels heavy and stiff when he tries to blink or lower his jaw, and from the feel and the smell of it, he suspects he’s got a decent amount of dried blood caking his face.
His ears are fucked. One of his aids must have slipped out, because he’s getting nothing at all from the left ear, and the right one is giving him feedback and only letting bits of ambient noise through.
The room is dim, or maybe he just can’t open his eyes all the way. But he sees a few shadowy figures moving towards him, and there’s nothing he can fucking do except let them get closer, and his heart beats faster and faster, and he doesn’t know if he has enough blood left in his broken body to sustain that.
“--waking up,” he hears someone say. Something gets shoved in his mouth, and he gags on the metal bite-guard. He tries to spit it out, but he can’t.
The light in the room gets brighter, and he feels a slight pinch on his right arm. And then there’s a whirring noise and a feeling that the walls are closing in on him, and then nothing but pain, pain, pain, and he screams until he blacks out again.
➸➸➸
The next time that Clint wakes up, he doesn’t feel much of anything.
He’s flat on his back, looking up at a low, dingy ceiling. His limbs feel too heavy to move, and it takes an inordinate amount of effort to turn his head to the right. There’s an IV in his wrist, and he blinks at it a few times, considers his lack of pain.
Drugs.
He doesn’t...know where he is, or how he got here, or where he’s supposed to be. Not here, though. He knows he isn’t supposed to be here.
“Subject is regaining consciousness,” he hears from somewhere behind himself, but he can’t move his head enough to see who’s talking.
Another voice starts blandly speaking in Russian. He thinks he recognizes some of the words, but they don’t make any kind of goddamn sense as a sentence, so maybe he’s wrong.
“Can I have some water?” he croaks, wincing as the dry corners of his mouth protest the motion. If they’re gonna give him an IV, they could at least have the courtesy to pump him full of fluids alongside the drugs. How long has he been here?
How long are they going to keep him here?
“Trial eighteen is a failure,” the first voice says. He hears a clicking noise and feels a new cold liquid flowing through the IV into his veins, and he drifts off again.
➸➸➸
The next time Clint wakes up, he pretends he’s still asleep.
He keeps his eyes shut and his breathing steady, and he listens. He can just make out the faint noises of speech, but the voices sound far away, like they’re in a different room. He holds perfectly still, and he waits to hear any indication that someone else is near him, but it sounds like he’s alone.
He opens his eyes. He is staring at a wall, maybe eighteen inches away. He’s staring at it sideways, because he’s lying on a sad excuse for a mattress. He aches, but the feeling is tolerable, familiar.
The room, however, is unfamiliar. So he focuses his attention on the room.
He needs a better vantage point, so he risks rolling onto his back. His muscles protest the movement, and he ignores them.
The ceilings are low. There are no vents, no air circulation at all that he can see. The room is small and suffocating, and he realizes uncomfortably that he can smell himself. There is one door, which he assumes is locked. He thinks this is a cell.
His arms are cuffed to each other and also to the wall. He wonders idly if he can slip them.
Forty seconds later, he proves that he can.
He pushes himself carefully to a sitting position. He’s not going to try to escape, probably. He’s still feeling woozy from the drugs, and there are no windows or vents, and the door looks solid, and-
There is a man in here with him.
Clint scrambles backwards on the mattress, hunching defensively in the corner of the room. The man is standing perfectly still in the opposite corner, his eyes and mouth both covered by an opaque black mask. Clint can’t even see his chest moving to breathe, but he sees a multitude of weapons sheathed in various holsters on his legs, and this is...not great.
“I’m not gonna hurt you,” Clint says, which is stupid because, like...of course he’s not gonna hurt this guy, he’s half drugged out of his mind and he doesn’t have anything to fight with, and meanwhile this dude is decked out in head-to-toe body armor that’s decorated in more weapons than an NRA Christmas tree.
And is that a metal arm?
The man says nothing, but he raises his chin slightly, as if to indicate that he’s heard Clint. He doesn’t reach for any of his weapons, just stays there in the corner like some kind of creepy sentinel. His expression is unreadable behind the black goggles and muzzle. He could be anyone behind that mask, or no one. Disposable, like a Storm Trooper. Or intergalactically feared, like Darth Vader. He might not even be a person. Could be some kind of alien or robot for all he knows.
Fuck, Clint’s head hurts.
There’s a loud buzzing noise and a red flashing light, and then the door to his cell swings open. Three men stride into the room with stun batons in their hands, and through the tinted face masks on their riot helmets, Clint thinks that two of them look vaguely familiar.
“You shouldn’t be out of your restraints, Asset,” one of the men says to Clint, as if he’s supposed to know what that means.
“Oops,” Clint mutters. He eyes the cuffs idly. They’re chained to the wall, but they’re within his grasp. Not much of a weapon, but at least he can say he went down fighting.
But it’s three on one, and the men have a long reach with the stun batons, which they use liberally until Clint’s skin feels like it’s on fire and his teeth are rattling around in his skull. It’s fucking overkill, he never stood a chance in these circumstances, and all he can do is breathe and try not to swallow his tongue as he waits out the blistering, shocking pain.
When Clint must be deemed to be sufficiently subdued, the men approach him and slide each of his forearms in turn into some kind of metal tube. The tubes tighten around his wrists and then stick to each other so that he’s bound from elbow to fingertip.
“If you struggle,” one of the men says, and fuck, Clint should be able to recognize that voice, “this thing is rigged to blow your arms off.”
“Can always make new arms,” another man agrees. “Just make a whole new you out of whatever pieces we find lying around.”
“It’s your choice whether or not to cooperate,” says the third man, who seems to be the leader. He’d been the most liberal with the stun baton, and he’d seemed to enjoy it the most. Even now, there’s a smile cutting across his face, cruel and sharp like a dagger. “But it’s more fun for me if you don’t.”
Clint’s too tired and in too much pain to argue. The first two men each take him roughly by the arm and walk out of the room, Clint hanging limply between them, his bare feet dragging uncomfortably over the concrete floor.
As he’s passing through the door out into the hallway, he hears the leader say, “You never should have even let him get the cuffs off, Soldat,” and then a sharp electric crackle from the baton, the sound of someone falling to his knees. But if the man in black says anything or cries out, Clint doesn’t hear it.
They drag him into a room that looks like a laboratory, although not one that’s up to any OSHA standards Clint is aware of. He gets strapped into a chair, and a bite-guard is forced into his mouth, and then, like always, the pain. Somehow, no matter how much he hurts, there is always more pain possible, the only infinite resource in the universe. And he wonders where he’s supposed to be and how long he’s been gone, and he wonders if anyone is looking for him.
“What’s your name?” a man in glasses asks him.
“Eat shit,” Clint says, and he anticipates the backhand across his face, but it still stings.
“Again,” the man says, and the machine turns on again with a buzzing that gets louder and louder, and the pain ramps up until all he can hear is his own screams.
➸➸➸
When Clint wakes up, he’s back in his cell.
“Fuck,” he says to no one in particular. He opens his eyes for one nauseating moment before his lids slam shut again. The light is excruciating, but not being able to take in his surroundings is worse, so he sucks it up and lets his eyeballs sizzle until his pupils constrict.
The man in black is still standing in the corner. One of his goggle lenses is cracked, and there is a tear in his uniform. Through the gaping fabric, Clint sees bloody skin. So at least he knows that his companion is a person and not a robot.
Guard. Not a companion.
“Don’t worry,” Clint rasps, every word feeling like broken glass in his trachea. “I won’t slip the cuffs this time. They won’t punish you for it.”
He’s joking, he thinks, because of course he doesn’t care what happens to this man, this Soldat who is guarding him and holding him captive. Even if the other guards don’t like him, he’s still a bad guy. The enemy of my enemy still fucking sucks, and all that.
But the man nods jerkily, and even with one of his own eyes swollen shut, Clint can see the labor of the other man breathing, the way his chest rises asymmetrically, the way he’s listing slightly to one side. They really hurt him, it looks like.
“Thanks,” the man says, and his voice is low but oddly...gentle.
Which is fucking stupid. Clint hasn’t been here long enough to develop Stockholm Syndrome. He’s better than this.
But there’s nothing else to do, apparently, besides sit here and wait to be tortured again. No one’s offered him any food or yard time or conjugal visits, and he doesn’t think Soldat is gonna let him watch Dog Cops on his phone, so it’s either slowly go out of his mind with boredom or talk to the other man.
“So why didn’t you hit me when I slipped my cuffs?” Clint asks eventually.
“That wasn’t my mission,” Soldat says.
“Then what is your mission?”
“Watch you.” The man’s voice is so quiet that Clint has to strain to hear him.
“Can you even see me through those busted up goggles?”
The man hesitates, pausing with his hand raised halfway to his face.
“I’m just saying,” Clint says. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, but he knows sowing discord in the ranks might play to his benefit eventually, and besides, he’s fucking bored. “Can’t follow your mission if you can’t see me.”
“My mission is to watch the Hawkeye,” Soldat recites in a curious monotone. He straightens his shoulders, and then he removes his goggles with one determined hand.
Clint’s the actual biggest goddamn idiot in the entire world for even letting the thought cross his mind, but the Soldat has really pretty eyes.
“Well,” Clint says, rolling onto his side to face the wall, wincing as every single muscle in his body yells at the change in position. “Guess now you can watch me sleep.”
➸➸➸
The next time Clint wakes up, it’s because he feels hands shaking at his shoulders, and he’s disoriented and scared and he’s being touched, so he lashes out without thinking, without even opening his eyes.
It was the Soldat who was waking him, and it’s the Soldat who he’s just kicked in the sternum.
“Sorry,” Clint says automatically. Then he scowls, because fuck apologizing to kidnappers.
“I’m uninjured,” Soldat says. Clint can’t make out most of his expression, which is still hidden behind the mask, but his eyes look frantic, worried. Confused. Troubled.
“Why did you wake me up?” Clint grumbles. He’s more annoyed than anything else, weirdly not scared at all. Not by this guy, anyway. Clint’s been insubordinate as fuck and this dude still hasn’t so much as pulled a weapon on him.
“You were yelling in your sleep,” Soldat says. His eyes flicker from one spot to the next, like he’s tracking something that Clint can’t see. It’s unsettling. There’s something seriously wrong with this guy.
“Nightmare,” Clint says, declining to elaborate.
“It’s better to be quiet,” Soldat says uneasily. “They don’t like us to be noisy.”
“What do you mean us?” Clint asks. “You’re one of them.”
“No,” Soldat says, and his brow furrows. “You’re one of me. They’re trying to make you into one of me.”
“No fucking way,” Clint spits. No fucking way is he letting anyone fuck with his head again and turn him into some weird muzzled Robocop. “Not a fucking chance.”
“You should be quiet,” Soldat says, his tone almost pleading. “They’ll put you somewhere worse.”
“Sure,” Clint says with a snort. “Worse than this? I’d like to see them try.”
“Have you even been frozen alive?” Soldat asks in an emotionless monotone, and Clint shivers in spite of himself. “Just be quieter.”
➸➸➸
The hours and days blur together. Waking and sleeping are only loosely delineated. Clint’s in pain almost constantly, sometimes dull and in the background, sometimes sharp and all-consuming. He’s in the bed, or he’s in the chair, or he’s being dragged from one to the other. They shout words at him in English and in Russian. He tells them to get fucked. They give him pain as a byproduct of the experiments. They give him pain because he disobeys. They give him pain just because it pleases them to do so.
They ask him his name, over and over again. He’s Clint Barton, motherfuckers. They can’t convince him otherwise.
They give him pain because they are trying to break him. They give him more pain each time they realize they cannot.
Soldat never gives him any pain. Usually, Soldat stands in the corner and watches him. Sometimes Soldat leaves, for hours or days at a time. When he comes back, he’s unsettled and skittish at first, touching the walls like he doesn’t understand what they’re for. They’ve given him new goggles, and it usually takes a day or so for Clint to convince him to take them off again.
What? He’s gonna die in here anyway. He might as well get to ogle the man’s pretty eyes before they torture him to death.
➸➸➸
One time, when Clint wakes up, he’s being touched gently.
“What?” he mutters without opening his eyes. There are fingers stroking over his cheek, near his busted left ear.
“You’re hurt,” is Soldat’s reply, quiet as always.
“Of course I’m hurt,” Clint grumbles. “My whole fucking body hurts. That’s what happens when you torture someone for months.” Has it been months? Who even fucking knows. Feels like decades.
“There’s a sore,” Soldat insists. “From the machine. It’s infected.”
“Cool, I’ll just go seek some medical attention,” Clint says. “Do you know where the nearest urgent care is?”
“I can fix it,” Soldat says, but he doesn’t sound sure. Clint opens his eyes at the uncertainty in his voice.
“Will you get in trouble for touching me?” Clint asks. He doesn’t know why he cares, but Christ, no one’s been gentle to him in so fucking long that he’s forgotten what it feels like.
“I don’t know,” Soldat says, his eyes darting around like they do when Clint asks him something that confuses him. “My mission is to watch.”
“I won’t tell them,” Clint says, his eyes drifting shut again.
The fingers stay on his cheek for a minute longer, and Clint tries not to feel disappointed when they retreat.
Then, he feels a hesitant pressure near his hairline, and gentle fingers are combing through his too-long hair, brushing the unruly strands back from his sweaty forehead.
“You’re like me,” Clint hears as he drifts off to sleep, “and I’ll take care of you.”
✪✪✪
The Hawkeye is a constant; the Asset is always in flux.
The Asset goes on a mission, and then the Asset goes into the chair or into the cryotube. The Asset completes a mission. The Asset returns to the Hawkeye’s cell.
Watching the Hawkeye is the longest mission that the Asset has ever been assigned. The Asset does not understand the purpose of this mission, but it is not an Asset’s role to question orders. An Asset does as told.
Now, the Hawkeye is injured, and the Asset is the only one watching.
The Hawkeye is not like the other men that the Asset knows. The Hawkeye does not follow protocols. He is insubordinate, which is the worst thing that anyone can be.
He is kind, too, and that’s almost as bad.
The Hawkeye will not make a good soldier, but the Asset will try to help him anyway. Because the Hawkeye calls the Asset Soldat like it’s a name, and the Hawkeye looks into the Asset’s eyes like they belong to a person. Everyone knows that an Asset does not have a name and is not a person. An Asset is a soldier. An Asset is a tool of great change and revolution.
Everyone knows this except for the Hawkeye.
So when the Hawkeye is injured, the Asset will help. It is not the primary mission, but maybe it is a smaller one.
The Asset thinks of ways to help. Maybe a blood transfusion? The Asset has healing capabilities, and maybe these could be transmitted to the Hawkeye. But there are no tools for opening a vein, no way to convey the blood into the Hawkeye’s body. The Asset could use teeth, but the Hawkeye would not recover from that, would be injured worse. It’s not a good plan.
The Asset could request that the Hawkeye be taken to a doctor. This request would be denied, and the Asset would likely be ridiculed for making a foolish request. Perhaps the Asset would be humiliated or injured in retaliation. Perhaps the Hawkeye would be further injured as well. Besides, even if the Hawkeye was taken to a doctor, the Asset would not be permitted to accompany him, would not be permitted to watch, and then the mission would be a failure. It’s not a good plan.
The Asset could request that medical supplies be brought to the cell for the Asset to administer. This request would likely also be denied, but perhaps the retribution would be less for a smaller ask.
“Water,” the Asset finally says. The Asset stands up from the mattress and walks to the door, knocking on it with a metal fist.
“What?” asks the agent on the other side, sounding bored.
“Water,” the Asset repeats. “A glass of water.”
“For you or for your pet?” the voice sneers, and the Asset blinks uncertainly. The Hawkeye is not a pet. A pet is a small domesticated animal that a person cares for. A pet is dependent. The Hawkeye is neither small nor domesticated nor dependent.
“For me,” the Asset says eventually. There are shuffling and muttering noises on the other side of the door, and it is unclear if the request is going to be granted until the door is opening up and a plastic cup is being thrust into the Asset’s hand.
“Good luck drinking that through your mask, Soldat,” the agent says, and the Asset nods. It would indeed take a lot of good luck to drink through the mask. It is a helpful tip. The mask will be removed if the Asset decides to drink.
But first, the Asset will tend to the Hawkeye.
The Asset assesses the living quarters. There is no clean fabric to be found. The water will have to be poured directly onto the wound. The left metal arm has antibacterial properties. Touching the wound with the arm will be painful for the Hawkeye, so hopefully he will sleep through it while the Asset works.
The Asset cleans the wound efficiently and thoroughly, as the Asset does all things. The Hawkeye whimpers in his sleep, but he settles easily and does not fully wake. The Asset washes away the blood and the pus, probing at the skin to make sure every part of it is washed. This is not part of an Asset’s training. The Asset does not know where this skill was learned.
When the wound is clean, the Asset softly runs the right thumb over the Hawkeye’s furrowed brow. This is also an unfamiliar skill, but it feels correct, instinctive, and so the Asset continues.
And then the Asset watches as the Hawkeye sleeps, his face slack and peaceful. The Asset has been awake for days, just watching. Sleep is not peaceful for the Asset anyway. Watching is better.
There is water left over, so the Asset decides to drink. The guard was told the water was for the Asset to drink, so if the Asset drinks some of it, this was not a deception.
The Asset removes the mask and sets it onto the mattress.
The Hawkeye wakes up.
“Soldat,” he says blearily, blinking.
The Asset is frozen in place and does not know how to respond. The Asset was not explicitly forbidden from revealing the face to the Hawkeye, but it feels incorrect. The Asset is not supposed to be seen. The face is to be concealed. But...it was not forbidden.
“Wow,” the Hawkeye says softly, still half-asleep. “You’re a bit of a dreamboat, aren’t you?”
“No,” the Asset says, unsure.
But the Hawkeye reaches a hand up, touches curious fingers to the jaw, to the cheek, to the lips. To all the hidden pieces that do not belong to anyone, not even to the Asset. They are hidden and private and for no one. But the Hawkeye touches them, gentle, gentle. His fingers are a caress, and the Asset does not even remember the word caress until it’s happening to the face.
“You’re beautiful,” the Hawkeye murmurs, and it can’t be true, but the Asset does not know what the face looks like. So maybe he should trust the perception of the Hawkeye, who is looking directly at the face. His eyes are soft and yearning, and his fingers are caressing the back of the Asset’s neck, coaxing him closer.
The Asset leans closer without meaning to, and the Hawkeye smiles.
“I’m an idiot,” the Hawkeye mumbles, almost to himself, and before the Asset can agree with him, there are lips touching the lips.
The Hawkeye’s lips touch the Asset’s lips. The lips become the Asset’s lips again through Hawkeye touching them and reminding the Asset that the Asset has lips.
Gentle. One set of lips touching another set of lips is a gentle, gentle touch.
It’s a brief period of contact, just long enough for the Asset to gain the sensory knowledge of the softness and plushness and correctness of the Hawkeye’s mouth against the Asset’s. And then the Hawkeye sinks back down into the mattress, smiling goofily up at the Asset.
“You’re sweet, aren’t you?” the Hawkeye whispers. “They’re trying to make you cruel, but I know that you’re still sweet.”
The words don’t make sense, so the Asset disregards them.
And then the Asset hears a commotion in the hallway, far away but coming closer. It sounds like a fight, but there shouldn’t be any fighting. It it not scheduled. It is not a correct mission. This is agitating. It is incorrect.
If someone is coming to hurt them, then the Asset will protect the Hawkeye. Because the mission is to watch the Hawkeye, and the Asset has expanded the mission parameters to include taking care of the Hawkeye. The Hawkeye touched his lips to the Asset’s lips. The Asset will fight to keep the Hawkeye safe if necessary.
“Who’s coming?” the Hawkeye asks, and he doesn’t seem alarmed, just curious.
The Asset concentrates, tries to separate out talking noises from fighting noises.
Sam, a voice says. Sam, do you have eyes on Nat?
Got her, Cap, another voice says. We’ll take care of these jackasses. You just focus on finding Barton.
The Asset doesn’t know what any of that means, but if these intruders try to hurt the Hawkeye, the Asset will stop them.
“I won’t let them hurt you,” the Asset says, letting the Hawkeye know the new plan. “I will protect the Hawkeye.”
“Clint,” he murmurs, touching his fingers back to the jaw. A caress. “I’m Clint. My name is Clint.”
Clint.
“I will protect the Clint,” the Asset says uncertainly, and the H- Clint laughs, and it’s the nicest sound that the Asset has ever heard.
“I like that mission,” Clint says happily, and the Asset nods in agreement.
It’s a good plan.