Chapter Text
Then
Another day, another evil lair filled with evil minions. The intel reports had been filled with vague rumours about some big bad weapon that this week’s new psychopath wanted to unleash upon New York. Clint honestly couldn’t understand who would want to take out the eastern seaboard and with it New York pizza and bagels, and pizza bagels.
With light steps, Clint made his way through the hallways of the laboratory, taking down and securing the only two armed guards he could find. It seemed this building had been evacuated prior to their arrival. The chatter from the rest of the team indicated that this was not the case with every other building in the sprawling complex and he had obviously drawn the short straw. He’d already sent Wanda away to help Natasha who was pinned down in a server room three warehouses over.
On his left he heard the distinct sound of footsteps running quickly towards him. Clint drew his bow and slowly poked a head out. An older gentleman in a labcoat raced towards the elevator, looking back over his shoulder – scared. Fuck. Clint raised his drawn weapon and stepped out. The man stuttered to a stop and looked Clint in the eyes briefly before flicking his glaze at the exit and then back down to where he’d come from.
“Leave. We must leave now.” The man said with a heavy Eastern European accent.
“What’s back there?” Clint asked.
“We don’t know. We never knew. It’s…It’s not right.” Panicked and huffing from exhaustion, the man struggled to get out his words. When Clint gave him a blank stare, the man shook his head in frustration and with his hands mimed an explosion.
“Is the base rigged?” Clint demanded.
“No. Not bomb. It. I have – kill me or it kill me. Dead either way” The man eyed the exit and then dashed for it. Clint let him go; he wasn't armed and he wasn't going to get very far between the other Avengers and SHIELD.
“I think there are labs here and potentially something that might need containment.” Clint called in. Cap was of course the first to respond.
“Do you need backup Hawkeye?”
“No. The place is cleared out and it doesn’t sound like you have someone to spare even if I needed my hand held. I’m going to set up a video feed to Stark. You cool with that Tin Man?”
“Cool with doing four things at once? You are lucky I am this talented.”
“Set up the video feed and relay it to Iron Man and back to the Tower so Banner can look at it too.” Cap ordered.
“Copied and out.” A brief moment later and there was a small static burst and Bucky’s voice came over on the private comms channel they’d set up.
“I’m ten minutes out if you want to rethink the –" There was a grunt and the tell-tale sounds of hand-to-hand combat. “Back –up,” Bucky finished with a distant thud.
“Seriously, this is a ghost town. I’m on reconnaissance and you obviously aren’t.” Clint reassured as he pushed past the large metal containment doors. A small spark of foreboding nestled in his chest, but Clint shook it off. His instincts were usually right but also prone to being deeply unhelpful in his line of work.
“Don’t be an idiot, Barton.” Bucky commanded with a scowl Clint could see through the comms and it almost made him smile.
“Well that’s impossible, I was born an idiot.” Clint quipped back. “I’ll come back you up when I’m finished up here. Out” The hallway past the door was long and at the far end the lights were flickering with a loud buzzing sound. Under that buzz though, it was quiet. The sort of quiet that made every squeak of rubber on linoleum and every soft breath sound infinitely louder. The temperature cooled drastically enough as he got further down the hall to make his skin break out in goosebumps.
The far door was taking on that matted sheen that indicated it was below freezing temperature. Clint took out the glasses from his suit, small and compact, and unfolded them. He initiated the video link and put them on. The door handle was so cold it bit his hands as he pushed it open and went through.
The lights on the other side of the door flickered as well. The hallway looked ordinary enough, even as it flickered from lit to fully dark every few seconds. There were two labs, empty except for basic equipment. Clint’s breath hung in the air in front of him.
“That’s creepy as fuck” Tony’s voice crackled through, sounding incredibly distant. The unexpected noise almost caught Clint off guard.
“Empty though. I think up ahead is the main lab.”
“How many more of these assholes are there? Where do they even find these guys? Craigslist?” Stark lamented.
“Iron Man, your 6 and your 10 and fuck, your 4 as well.” Sam’s voice came through a bit clearer than Iron Man’s but whatever was down here was obviously affecting electronics. Clint just needed to finish this and then get out there where he’d be actually helpful.
Clint pushed forward, ignoring the dread weighing down his feet; he was only 70 percent sure this was going to end with him in SHIELD quarantine. The final set of doors would normally require a security pass but whatever was fucking with the lights and the comms was causing the security lock to glitch between unlocked and locked. Clint waited for the second that the light flickered green and jerked the door open. The door led almost directly to a short perpendicular hallway with windows all along the far wall that looked into a huge lab build around a solid black cube suspended in the air. Every couple of seconds it pulsed with a deep purple light that flared between the small cracks Clint could only see when it pulsed. Ice frosted along the edges of the observation windows.
“Alien technology, appears contained but I’m unsure for how long. I believe it is causing a number of electrical disruptions.”
“Calling…containment…” The comms buzzed, breaking up with each pulse. Clint took a step towards the window and started to look around the lab. Clint had no idea what he was looking for but Bruce and Tony would need data. Best to give them the full picture. It was hard to concentrate on ensuring they got a full view of the lab though because his eyes kept getting dragged back to the cube. It was truly beautiful. Clint reached out a hand to touch it, fingers bumping into the cold glass, hissing as the cold burned his fingertips sharply.
He just needed to get a bit closer. Clint walked towards the entrance to the lab and pushed the containment doors open. There were hazmat suits there but the cube wasn’t dangerous. It wasn’t going to hurt him. Clint braced his shoulder against the door and gave a good shove, once and then twice more before the door gave way and he could enter the lab.
“Hawk – bzzt – Stop – bzzt – eye” It sounded like Tony but distorted as if he were speaking through a thick pane of glass.
“Clint – do – please –“ Bucky. B. He sounded so scared but there was no reason to be. Clint walked slowly up to the cube. Why did aliens love cubes? Why were all alien artefacts cubes? Clint could feel the pulse now, it reverberated in his chest, stuttered his heart in a way that sent waves of tingles down to his fingertips – like standing too close to an amplifier at a concert.
“Bucky, it’s so beautiful.”
“Bzzt – Out! – – please! – soon.” Bucky was speaking but it was all too loud. Everything was too loud. Clint took out the comms and put them on the table and after a second, he placed his bow down too. The metal of the bow was growing uncomfortably cold against his hands and when he looked down at his palm, he could see an angry red stripe down the its’ centre.
The pulsing was increasing in speed and intensity. Clint could feel it building in his chest along, with a growing sense of anticipation and then, the first crack of wrong. This wasn’t right – this was becoming quickly very much super not right. Clint wrested his eyes from the cube and picked back up the comms.
“Something’s wrong.” Clint yelled and he had no idea if they could hear him, the line was just a loud buzzing now. Clint stumbled backwards, tripping over and toppling a metal table. The pulsing had turned into a constant rattling whine. “Clear out. Clear out now!” Clint shouted into the comms as he finally fully snapped out of the trance he’d been in. It was too late for him but maybe the others... Clint booked it towards the doors, or rather tried to but his legs were numb and uncooperative causing him to stumble, falling down onto his hands and knees. Then it hit him, a blinding white light that turned everything white, so white, his vision turned black. Clint screamed as his whole body felt like it was pulled apart, every nerve ending blindingly on fire as they ripped to shreds. Then – nothing.
Now
Bucky sat on sofa and stopped himself watching the video again for the one thousandth time. It had been another one of those nights where his dreams were filled with Clint’s voice begging for help and that scream. That scream was what haunted him still after all these months. There had been nothing left of Clint to bury. Stark at tried to explain how certain explosions evaporated bodies but neither of them had really wanted to talk that in depth about it. Stark had seen it happen live – the rest of them had just heard it.
He had wanted to believe so badly that maybe no body had meant that Clint had survived. Wanda hadn’t been able to find him and that had been even more damning than any of Stark’s science. That cube hadn’t done or reacted to anything since. It had just sat there like an over-sized paperweight.
The lab notes lifted from the facility had shown that they had been studying the phenomenon for decades trying to make an even deadlier bomb. The artefact created a localised explosion every few years that took out the nearest subject. The notes had provided no answers as to what had happened or even what had set it off. The cube had just started its countdown hours before they had arrived. The Avengers’ timing had simply been typically terrible.
Bucky shut his eyes and ran a hand through his hair. He needed a shower. He needed to sleep. He needed his goddamn boyfriend. Two out of three of those were possible – well the shower at least was. Sleep hadn’t been a guarantee even before all this. Three months and Bucky still felt like he was skating the edge between functionality and a chasm of overwhelming grief.
Bucky looked over at the clock – 4:43. Steve would be here in an hour and two minutes for a morning run and his smothering form of worry which required action and progress and tangible results. Three months. Three months and Bucky was still faking being functional and not even very well. Bucky hit his head against the back of the couch and let it loll to the side.
Only decades of conditioning stopped him from jumping out of his skin. Clint was curled up on the couch next to him, watching him with such sad eyes. God, he had only ever looked like a few times usually as he was trying to wake Bucky up from the nightmares that had him screaming and weeping in equal measure.
Bucky reached out a hand, fingers brushing against the ice cold skin of Clint’s cheek. Clint’s eyes widened comically. Bucky blinked and Clint was gone. The couch empty. Bucky blinked again and stared at the empty space that Clint had been preoccupying. No, not preoccupying. This was just like those months after escaping Hydra. He needed sleep or the hallucinations and seconds-long dreams that distorted all reality would just get worse.
Bucky got up and laid down on the bed and forced his mind to drift.
He was standing in a dull yellow cornfield under a purple-grey sky. The wind that swept through his hair was neither warm nor cold and with it brought the distant sounds of children laughing and screaming. Bucky could hear wind chimes and the sound of a screen door opening and slamming shut with the breeze. He couldn’t see over the corn and the few steps he took were disorientating. He wasn’t sure where the house was but knew in his bones it was there, on the other side of the corn. The noise and wind ceased suddenly, their absence felt like a vacuum sucking all the air away with it. Bucky found it hard to breathe, the air too thin. For a few long seconds nothing moved and nothing made a single sound.
The creak of the screen door opening and the subsequent of crack of it slamming shut shattered the silence. It sounded so much louder than before. It creaked and cracked again, and then again, speeding up and somehow getting even louder. Bucky clutched his head in pain. He awoke with a jolt, sitting up and coughing, taking deep gulping breaths.
“-if you don’t open or respond in the next five seconds I am breaking this door down.” Steve. Running.
“I’m up, you punk.” Bucky muttered, knowing Steve could hear it through the door. “Give me five fucking seconds.”
Bucky threw his legs over the side of the bed and ran a hand through his hair. Bad sleeping habits bred bad dreams. This one at least got points for being original.
He looked over at the dresser and bit back the sigh. His jogging shorts were four steps away but it required standing and pulling open a drawer and that was just to get them in his hands. He still would have to put them on. All these steps added up until even the small act of getting dressed felt overwhelming.
“Bucky – can I come in?” Steve and his kid fucking gloves. The annoyance spurred him forward. Up – four steps – drawer – one leg – second leg – done.
Bucky flung the door open and gave Steve a flat look.
“I just need a hair tie. Or some scissors and be done with it.” Bucky rolled his eyes as he shoved it his hair behind his ears only to have it flop forward immediately afterward.
“Bucky…” Steve started and tapered off – clearly unsure.
“Don’t. We are running and then you are buying me the biggest, greasiest breakfast. And we are not talking about feelings. Period.” Bucky raised one eyebrow and crossed his arms, jutting his chin out challengingly.
“Deal. There’s a team meeting this afternoon.” Steve continued casually as Bucky rummaged around the top drawer of his nightstand. There was a mostly full pack on the other side of the bed in the other nightstand but Bucky wasn’t prepared to open it – not this morning – not after that dream on the couch. Finally, some fucking luck, Bucky pulled out a well-used hair tie, elastic loose and huge. It would do.
“And?”
“New team member selection. We are looking at adding a few members to the roster.” It was a punch in the gut. Bucky knew – objectively – that it was necessary. They were a man down and Clint had been their eyes and ears on most mission. They’d been making due but with Bruce sidelined, Thor off planet, Wanda god-knew-where and Clint...well the roster was thin. The less rational part of him felt like it was the final nail in the coffin. The final thread being cut. Clint Barton was officially dead and everyone else was accepting that and moving on.
“I would like you to be there to give your opinion but I understand if you don’t want to. It might help though.”
“Will it help?” Bucky felt the anger surge through him, burning sharp and bright. “Tell me how exactly that’s going to do anything but make me feel like complete shit.”
“Bucky, he’s gone. There isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t hate that I sent him in there without backup. He’d want us to move on.”
“Save your fucking inspiring speeches for the rest of the team.”
“He’d be the first one –“ Steve stopped as Bucky raised a fist and then immediately dropped it to clench it at his side
“He didn’t die doing something heroic. He didn’t die saving lives. He died because he was a human man with some sticks and string and nothing but a thin layer of Kevlar between him and an alien nuke. He was the last person who should have been in that room.”
“Barton was one of the most resourceful and talented people I knew. He did something neither of us could have done without unethical human experimentation and a miracle serum. I won’t have you tainting that legacy – especially when none of us could have survived that explosion.” Steve said, squaring Bucky with that stubborn Rogers’ patented look.
Bucky turned away from Steve and punched the wall hard enough to send his fist through both sides of the dry wall with a shout of frustration. Bucky let out a few ragged breaths, in and out, before pulling his hand out and looking at Steve with searching eyes.
“I’m just so angry at everything and sometimes especially at him – for leaving me.” Bucky admitted, looking at Steve’s ear, unable to meet his eyes. Steve pulled Bucky in for a hug ignoring the token protests.
“I thought you said no feelings for this run.” Steve teased lightly and tentatively.
“Well it’s not the run yet is it?” Bucky shot back, feeling like his old self again if only for a second.
“Run some of that anger ragged?” Steve suggested.
“It’s going to take a lot of miles.”
“Good, I need to work up the appetite for the world’s biggest, greasiest breakfast.”
Then
For a long time, it was just complete darkness and pain. Layers upon layers of agony. Clint had screamed himself mute, curled up into a ball, suspended in the nothing. This was surely hell. Days – weeks – months – seconds – eternity? No, it was likely two days or three. On the first day Clint had scratched long gashes into his forearms during a particularly painful wave that had since scabbed over and no longer burned when touched. He couldn’t see them of course but he could feel them, running his fingers over them constantly. His body existed. He existed.
Clint curled even further into himself and scrunched his eyes closed. His mind would be the first thing to go. He was already becoming numb to the pain. It was present and hurt but a lifetime of experience with pain had taught him that at some point it all bleeds together. His mind though, that was certainly going to break first. He already sometimes thought he’d catch shadows which was crazy talk. Shadows couldn’t exist without light.
It caught him by surprise really when gravity seemed to reinstate itself. It took him far longer than it should have to realise the sensation he was trying to pinpoint was falling. Clint fell for long enough that know this was it.
His back hit a liquid surface – his whole body seized with pain like being stabbed with knives over the entirety of his body. It punched the air out of his lungs. Clint sunk beneath the surface that was thicker and far more viscous than water – in his mind he pictured oil. His limbs wouldn’t cooperate for a long minute as he sunk far below the surface. Panic overrode the shock. Clint’s arms felt too heavy as he tried to propel himself upwards. He involuntarily took a breath only for the cold liquid to rush down his throat and fill his lungs. It caused his chest to seize and his brain to spark, sending flashes of white and blobs of colour across his vision. Finally, was the last thing he thought.
**
Clint came to awareness slowly. First, there was so much light, it was blinding him through his eyelids. White like the lab before the darkness. It burned his eyes after all that time in the black. Then he realised that he could move his body - that his limbs worked and obeyed him as he rolled onto his front, burying his face into the crook of his arm. He was dry and below him the rich, earthly scent of dirt. With a sob, Clint dug his fingers into the soil and took deep steadying breaths. After a few minutes, Clint finally cracked his eyes open. Clint forcibly calmed his breathing as his eyes took a painfully long time to readjust. Below him grass came into sharp focus, though it looked duller than Clint remembered it.
Clint pushed himself up, ignoring the complaints it sent through his whole body, and looked around. He was in the middle of a field, one that seemed to stretch for miles. The sky above him was clouded over giving the whole landscape an odd purple green glow. In the distance was an old wooden fence and a large bur oak tree. In a heart-stopping instance, Clint knew exactly where he was; 10.3 miles outside of Waverly, Iowa.