Chapter Text
Chapter 1: Clint has a bad day, then it gets worse.
Warnings: depictions of kidnapping, torture, and captivity
The rain drummed steadily against the windshield, smearing the brake lights ahead of them into a kaleidoscope of red. Phil’s face was absolutely expressionless, but the slow whitening of his knuckles around the steering wheel gave him away.
“You know what’s way more awesome than the Packers?” Clint watched carefully but didn’t pick up a reaction. “A shitty motel off the freeway.”
Nothing. He tried again. “We’ll have a sleepover, just you and me. Well, unless the Packers wanna join in.”
A slight twitch of his lips, and Clint had him. He piled it on, just because he could: “We’ll build a pillow fort, have some crazy sex, order in pizza, get even shittier diner food the next morning,” The grip on the wheel was relaxing. “Then we’ll drive home and tell everyone about our awesome and super expensive romantic weekend getaway. Sound good?”
It was hard to say. Phil had been planning their weekend for months in advance—he’d had to, since lately his boss had taken to calling him in at any hour or day Phil didn’t explicitly request off. At least once a week he was dragged off from Iowa (and that was a new one on Clint, who knew that financial consultants had to deal with cross-continental travel?), but he’d managed to pull some strings so that they could spend their first anniversary together. So Clint had gone all in, cancelling his Friday night bartending shift and taking advantage of the break before his 16-week EMS training started.
Of course, then they’d hit traffic an hour out of the city, and Phil’s 12-point itinerary had slipped out of his fingers.
Phil had a far-away look in his eyes. Clint trailed off, letting the silence drift in, edged by the slightly metallic tapping of water on the car roof. Instead of talking, he watched the slow flicker of shadows over Phil’s face—slightly clenched jaw, furrowed brow. Classic Phil when he was feeling stubborn: that was how he always looked when he was making up his mind. Once he did, there was no turning back.
Then Phil turned towards him.
“I have a better idea.”
The next Monday Clint strolled in for check-in at the station, a brand new ring on his hand.
He liked telling the story, though it didn’t seem to surprise anyone who knew Clint longer than five minutes that he’d gotten hitched in an off-ramp casino with a drugstore ring. What was surprising was that it was Phil’s idea—hopelessly straight-laced, organized, responsible Phil, tying the knot with a former circus act and felon. Of course, Clint didn’t usually share that part of the story, preferring to let people fill in the blanks—or what Phil had told him the next morning when Clint had asked, giddy and full of hot air, like his feet were about to lift off the ground.
“You make me feel impulsive,” he’d said, eyes crinkling at the corners where his crow’s feet would form later.
Clint would remember those words for a long time.
Beep.
“Clint, this is Phil. Some problems came up, so I’ll be in Atlanta for a few more days. If you need to reach me you can call the hotel number—I left it on the frid-beep.”
Clint ended the voice mail and stowed his cellphone back into his pocket. He tapped his fingers against his desk, ignoring the blank monitor, then pulled it out again.
R u still mad about last week?
When Phil didn’t respond after 1, 2 minutes, Clint forced himself to put the phone away. He glanced over the next few desks, gaze finally landing on the corner office. The frosted glass kept him from getting a good view, but he couldn’t see any person-shaped shadows inside. His boss must have left early then.
“Hey, Barton—you get the copy of Commissioner’s report? From May?” Brock Rumlow leaned into Clint’s cubicle, setting down a coffee mug right onto said copy. “Can you believe that shit?”
Clint rolled his eyes. Detective Rumlow was always pissed about something, but this one had been a constant rage-filled rant for the past three months. Still, the guy had a point. “T’s the way things are going. I heard they cut down funding for West coast departments when the Fantastic 4 debuted.”
“Yeah, cause a buncha West coast liberals liked having blondies in spandex instead of real cops protecting their shit. But this is the NYPD—who the hell is getting their panties all wet about the Avengers?”
Try everyone, Clint thought. You couldn’t get anywhere downtown without seeing at least three kiosks selling their merchandise. Not that Tony Stark’s face wasn’t already plastered onto anything and everything; but now every Avenger had their own T-shirt line. It was ridiculous—and bad for the NYPD, judging from the report’s detailing of a five-year-funding plan that included cutting their force to half the current number of officers. Apparently the Avengers would pick up the slack.
But Clint wasn’t in the mood to play along. “Well, let’s see how the Avengers like handling parking tickets.” Clint said, playing it casual. “It’ll blow over.”
“Like hell. The F4 have been out for years, and who gives a shit about cops in California now? Nobody—everybody wants a damn superhero.”
Clint felt a buzz and reflexively checked his phone. The screen was black, making Clint feel like an idiot. He didn’t need all this shit about his job being replaced on top of Phil, again, being, being…
“I’m heading off early. Got some stuff to pick up.” Clint turned off his computer. “You hanging around here?”
“Got the late shift.” Rumlow checked his watch. “I’m on ‘till 11—want to get a beer after?”
He’d been hanging out with Rumlow and some other guys after work for the past few months, surprised to find that though the guy had seemed like an asshole when they’d first met two years ago, he’d grown on Clint. It was nice to have a cop to talk to—Clint had always been a little quiet, preferring the company of the few people (one person) he trusted over going out to bars with a bunch of dudes. But it had been nice, talking with someone who really got it, could really understand the stress of police work.
But then he imagined how it would play out: watching the guys hit on bar chicks while he sipped on shitty beer, hanging around until Rumlow bailed out with a random barfly, then heading back in the dark to an empty house. His other option was to skip right ahead to that last step, but then at least he wouldn’t have to watch someone else get lucky.
Clint sighed. “Nah, got stuff to do. Next week?”
Once Rumlow took off, finding Wilson and immediately laying into him about the report, Clint pulled out his phone and typed in his code. There still weren’t any messages. He kept staring until the screen finally went black again, apparently less patient than him.
Whatever. Clint threw the rest of the papers into his bag, ignoring the slight tearing noise when he forced it closed. He took a moment to take a deep breath, ignoring the twinge that always gave him on the right side.
The house was quiet when he got back. Out of habit he glanced down the hall, which ended in Phil’s office. If Phil was home then he’d sometimes leave the door open, though Clint rarely ventured inside unless he needed some stamps or shit.
The door was closed. As it had been for the last two weeks. Idiot.
He’d only been home for a few minutes when the doorbell rang.
“Huh.” He turned and looked out the window to see some guy, slouching in a bad suit with a heavy briefcase, on the porch. Too underdressed to be a missionary, but that didn’t rule out the other religious freaks Clint sometimes saw patrolling the neighborhood. They always came by at least once a week, though Phil usually handled them since Clint’s method of slamming the door in their faces wasn’t ‘neighborhood-friendly’, apparently.
He was still in uniform, but whatever. He swung open the door, hoping that his face looked unfriendly enough to scare the guy off. “What?”
“Hey, man.” The guy smiled wide, white teeth gleaming. Salesman. “We’re offering free carpet shampoos, honest to god free, to show off our new product line.” A briefcase popped up and Clint clumsily took the business card and pamphlet. “Would you be interested? It’ll be fifteen minutes tops, just a way to get our name out there.”
“Uh…I’m a little busy right now.” He waved vaguely back into the house, letting the salesman fill in the blanks.
“Is anyone else home, then, who would be interested? It really wouldn’t take long.”
Clint shrugged noncommittally, noting the van, white, Ford model X, parked a little into his driveway that probably belonged to this guy. Behind Clint his cellphone started ringing on the table. He glanced quickly at the screen—Phil’s cell number. He turned back to the man. “I gotta run, but best of luck.” Clint turned back into the house, moving to pull the door closed behind him.
A click, and his right side exploded in pain.
“Fuck—!” A set of arms caught him on his way to the floor, knees buckling when all the muscles in his legs seized. He forced himself forwards, away from his attackers (and there were three now, what the hell), but they followed him in and pinned him down. The metal points of the taser were still digging into his skin, forcing his body into a rictus of pain.
Hands on his shoulders, forcing his arms back. A ziptie bit into his wrists. Finally, the taser was removed and Clint sucked in a deep breath. He tried not to vomit, tried to make out the faces through the black spots that he couldn’t blink away, but before he could get his feet under himself the biggest guy hauled him up and forced him into a chokehold.
Clint struggled hard, but the black spots grew bigger, and bigger, until finally everything was black and deep. The last thing he saw was a hand picking up his cellphone.
God, he was fucking tired.
Must have had a late shift the night before, for him to feel like this: like he had one foot in the grave, ready to sink down into the bed and sleep like the dead. It didn't last, of course; not with Phil jabbing at him, elbow going deep into his side and digging in.
"That hurts, dammnit--"
The elbow kept digging. Then Phil's voice: "It's time to wake up, Clint."
He woke up when someone kicked him in the leg.
“Wake up, Mr. Barton.” Something thick and hard jabbed him in the shin—probably a boot, though Clint didn’t open his eyes. His forehead was throbbing like crazy, as if he was dehydrated, and he knew that it would only get worse if there was any light.
A pause, then the speaker kicked him, hard, in the calf. Clint snapped forward, eyes opening, only to jerk to a stop when his arms caught against the restraints pinning him to a chair. He struggled against them, but both his arms and legs were clamped down, giving him only a few inches of wiggle room.
“What the hell?” Clint looked around the tiny room, maybe 20 feet square and empty except for him, the jerk kicking him, and some other guy standing a few feet back behind a cheap foldout table. There was some kind of metal box on the table, with long, curled wires connecting it to his chair. He swallowed hard, coughing against the dryness of his mouth and throat. How long had he been out?
The jerk snapped his fingers, dragging Clint’s gaze back to him. “We apologize for the rough treatment, Mr. Barton, but concussions tend to make the mind wander—and I would like to have your absolute attention.” He smiled, and Clint took the opportunity to look the guy over. No mask, so either he didn’t care that a police officer knew his face, or he didn’t think Clint would be leaving this place alive.
“You are currently in the custody of AIM,” He paused, gaze lingering on Clint’s face. Apparently he didn’t find what he was looking for, so he continued. “You have been brought here because we have reason to believe that you have necessary information.”
Clint had been trained for shit like this. He didn’t work a lot of high profile cases after that fuck-up a few years ago, but information was always worth something to somebody, and there was something about crime that made people desperate, desperate enough to kidnap a police officer. Whatever the hell AIM was (or even if that was their real name), he’d been trained in a standard response.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Clint shifted, felt a sharp pain from his side. He remembered now, the taser when he’d opened the door, the van. He’d been taken somewhere.
“Oh, but I think you do.” There was a clicking sound to Clint’s left, where the other guy was. He was tapping on that machine.
A final tap, and the room began to fill with a buzzing noise, slowly but steadily increasing in intensity. Clint shifted again, anticipation building in his gut as the noise became louder and louder.
“We want everything you have on SHIELD.”
Huh?
The buzz built to a shriek. Clint braced himself, but the sudden shock rolling through his limbs, emanating from every metal restraint, caused his body to clench and jerk, spasming as wave after wave of electricity rolled through him. He tried to scream but couldn’t get a breath in: his throat was closing, diaphragm clenching down so hard he thought his ribs might break.
Just as suddenly as it started, it stopped. Clint slumped against the restraints and gasped for air, ignoring the blood leaking from his nose. His fingers kept jerking absently, tapping away against the chair’s armrests, fingernails scraping the metal.
“I am not a cruel man, Mr. Barton. There’s no need to repeat that, as long as you cooperate. Tell me what you know about SHIELD.”
“I—I don’t know anything about them. I don’t work for them.” Frantically, Clint raced through everything he knew about them—but he was drawing a blank. There wasn’t anything to know about them, except what any civilian would know. And that wasn’t what these guys—AIM?—were looking for.
But Clint gave it a shot anyway, because the longer he talked, the less time they’d spend shocking him, he hoped. “Just—they’re behind the Avengers initiative. International, but probably based in the US. Separate from the CIA or FBI—they go after world-threatening emergencies, not the domestic stuff.”
His torturer looked unimpressed. He gestured to the other man, and the clicking started again.
“How is that useful for me, Mr. Barton? Give me something I can use—mission reports, identities, locations. What are their ties to the New York Police Department?”
Clint’s gaze flicked around the room, looking for what he didn’t know. He had no idea what the guy was talking about—SHIELD didn’t have any official ties to Clint, barely even to the NYPD. Nothing made sense—why would they think Clint knew anything? Who the hell were these guys?
The clicking grew into the buzz, and the buzz into a roar.
And oh god, it hurt, it hurt, it hurt--he ground his teeth until he tasted blood, but it didn’t stop. The man in the white coat just kept his fingers on the dial, calmly waiting for Clint’s answer.
“I DON’T FUCKING KNOW!” He finally screamed, hoping that that would just make it end, for the love of god, and there must have been a fucking miracle because the pain suddenly ended. He slumped bonelessly deeper into the chair, gasping for breath.
“How do you know Phillip Coulson?”
And just like that, he forgot the pain.
“What?”
“Phillip J. Coulson, Mr. Barton.” The interrogator smiled thinly, apparently encouraged by Clint’s response. “Agent of SHIELD.”
He thought of Phil. Phil, whose favorite color is beige and has five coffee mugs in that color. Phil used a different one for each day of the week, always sitting at the upper righthand corner of the placemat Phil rested the newspaper on. Phil had titanium-framed reading glasses for the newspaper, and a separate pair for long hours in front of the computer when he doesn’t want to wear his progressives. Phil, who he hadn’t seen since their fucking awful fight a week ago, and Clint hadn’t said goodbye, and his chest is squeezing so tight that his mouth fills with bile.
“We know that you’re connected to him,” the interrogator pressed, snapping Clint out of it. “Your name is listed as being under his surveillance. Curious how unprotected you were, then. Just tell us, how are you connected to him?”
They’re married. They’ve been together for over 10 years.
Lying—he’s lying, trying to get at something. Clint didn’t know what, but it didn’t matter, nothing mattered compared to the sinking feeling in his stomach.
They’re gonna come after Phil.
He imagined Phil, in pain. Clint wanted to throw up.
“He’s…he’s someone I knew once,” Clint invented wildly, trying to come up with something that the interrogator would believe. He was still stuck on the ‘agent of SHIELD’ part, but if that’s what the interrogator thought, then…“From the police academy.”
“You’re lying.” Another shock down his arm and into his spine. He rocked backward, feeling his limbs alternating being rigid and spastic. Fuckfuckfuck
“I’m not—fuck, stop that! He’s just some guy from the academy, I don’t know what he has to do with SHIELD!” Words spilling out of him, anything but the truth—that Phil is his husband, that by getting at him they can get to Clint, that he’d tell them anything if they brought Phil here. The electricity cut off again and Clint sucked in deep, greedy breaths. The interrogator was frowning now, unsatisfied with Clint’s answer.
“Pathetic. Why would a SHIELD agent be in a municipal police academy? And why would a distant acquaintance be under the surveillance of a Level 6 SHIELD agent?” Clint didn’t know what level 6 meant—there had to be a mistake. He didn’t know—he’d thought, they wanted something from Clint, something to do with an old case. He didn’t understand why they kept bringing up SHIELD. He didn’t know—he couldn’t think, not with his brain getting fried every few minutes. He needed time to figure this out.
“Unless he wanted to recruit you.” Judgmental eyes turned down at him, assessing and finding him wanting. “But you have no special skills that SHIELD could use.”
Clint had heard worse. But their attention was back on him. “Well, fuck if I know.” Another sharp shock, enough to make his heart beat wildly in his throat before subsiding. After the machine cut off all he could hear was his own panting…then, a slow ringing in his ears.
“I think that you’re lying.” The interrogator nodded to himself. “Withholding information at the very least.” Another thoughtful pause and glance at the machine. “A pity that prolonging this session any further will cause your heart to fail.”
Then, just like that, Clint was dismissed. “Take him back to his cell.” The guard snapped to attention and moved toward Clint. “We can deal with him again tomorrow.” He turned once more to Clint. “And in the meantime, you can consider whether protecting Coulson’s secrets is worth your life.”
Clint could barely feel the hands touching his arms, pulling the electrodes off and the needle out of his arm. He recognized the symptoms of shock setting in: numbing of the skin, shallow breathing, sweat beading up all along his back. He didn’t protest as he was dragged to an empty cell, almost comforting in comparison to the room he’d just left, and when he was finally left alone (but not really alone, of course) he slumped into a corner.
They left him alone for hours, hours that Clint spent carefully breathing in and out, resting as much as he could. But that gave him too much time to think—to think about why the hell they thought he was linked to SHIELD, and what it had to do with Phil.
Two years into Clint’s time as a junior officer in the NYPD, a drug dealer shot him in the chest.
Getting shot wasn’t really a rite of passage for police officers, despite what most laypeople Clint knows seem to believe. People weren’t slapping him on the back afterwards like he’d passed the rookie test; from what he can remember, everyone was a mess of paperwork (so, so much paperwork), angry calls between the insurance companies, news reporters, Phil’s hands steadying him, and so, so many questions about whether he’d fired his gun, who’d fired first, what did the suspects say beforehand, could he remember anything that happened afterward. Even that had been drowned out by the punched-out sound of bullets fired, the sharp whistle through air before Ramirez had fallen; he began to sleep with pillows over his head to cover the sound.
Phil’s quiet breathing was the only thing that helped him sleep.
Clint didn’t remember much. It wasn’t until weeks later, well into the first round of physical therapy, that he’d allowed himself to really think about it. How his team had stormed into the building once the warrant had been issued for the small-time drug dealer who lived there. How they’d ended up surrounded on all sides by the drug dealer’s men (later, of course, he’d learned that they’d been fed bad information from the start of it all). How they’d fired first, or maybe it was Officer Ramirez who fired first, or Clint himself. Either way the ending was the same—everyone on his team dead and Clint well on the way, gasping through the blood pooling in his throat and pouring out his nose, knowing that he’d die of suffocation well before the bullet lodged deep beneath his collarbone could finish the job.
Everything after that was a complete blank.
He’d asked around, later. Apparently he was saved when back-up from a separate department arrived and forced their way in, subduing the dealer’s men and collecting Clint along with the bodies of three fellow officers. He’d tried to find out more about the men who’d come back for him, because even if it was just their job, it still meant…something. He needed to at least thank them.
But then it had come out—it was SHIELD. Not the first time the shadowy government organization had been heard of in New York, but the first (and not the last, definitely not the last) time it had directly intervened in a local police action. Everyone had questions for Clint after the news broke, from distant acquaintances to his own partners, people wondering why SHIELD was getting involved in police work, what it meant for their authority. Even his own chief had gotten in on it, asking Clint directly if he was working with SHIELD. That had hurt—men and women he’d known for years, asking if his loyalty was to some shadowy rumor instead of to his own flesh and blood people. It had finally died down once it became clear that Clint’s involvement was only a coincidence; in the next few months, SHIELD began to hook its claws into police departments in every state nationwide, buying off people and cutting out the guys with enough character to turn them down.
But the one thing Clint couldn’t stop thinking about was why SHIELD had gotten involved in that first incident. Low-level drug runners were never SHIELD’s jurisdiction, even now in their big brother mode. It was weird—no one was really asking questions except for Clint. It took months for him to finally drop the subject, sick to death of vague answers, Phil’s quiet discouragement, and everyone telling him to move on.
In the cold cell, a bright fluorescent light above buzzing like flies, feeling the old ache of the bullet wound beneath his collar bone somehow worse than everything else, Clint was finally thinking about it again. Because, if they were telling the truth, if Phil really was--
That's what they want you to think.
“Are you going to be more cooperative today, Mr. Barton?”
The interrogator smiled genially at him. Clint glared back.
“No? That is a pity.”
Another day, another round on the machine. Clint screamed, wailed, vomited on himself, but he didn’t say anything—not because he was brave or resilient, but because he didn’t have anything to say. The Sanchez case, detective addresses, names of judges—all the things he knew, they didn’t ask about. Instead, it was Phil, Phil, Phil, over and over again, with less patience and longer twists of the dial each time he failed to answer in the way his interrogators wanted. His interrogators had made a mistake, though, because Clint had nothing useful to tell them—and he was too tired, too in pain to lie.
And then back into the cell where Clint crouched in the corner to keep off the cold concrete, swaying as the lack of food and water dragged him down. He tried to sleep, but the overhead fluorescent lights illuminated every square inch of the cell, and he could have sworn that they got brighter every time he closed his eyes. The only thing good about the cell was that he was alone—because it was getting pretty obvious that these guys, AIM, they were after Phil.
I’m sorry, he kept thinking, over and over, I never meant to put you in danger.
That was a risk of his job—every cop worried about their family, about whether the enemies they made on the job might consider stepping things up. Clint had had it easier, since there was only Phil, but these guys knew his name, they could track him down, they could…
But the things they had said, the questions they had asked…everything sounded flipped, as if Phil was everything and Clint didn’t matter at all. He’d been taught to ignore information any interrogators gave him because when you were desperate it was so easy to hang onto every word, but it wasn’t just the questions, it was the way they treated him and the way they talked about Phil. As if Clint was some kind of simpleton, a child who still thought Santa was real, and Phil was the indulgent parent.
Or maybe it was just in Clint’s head, because his headache had been getting worse and worse over the past three days, along with the throbbing laceration in his side where a knife had gotten him earlier, and his hearing kept on fading out. Three days was a long time to go without medical treatment when you had these kinds of injuries, and he wasn’t being fed or watered, or sleeping, or—
Clint was knocked onto his side when the whole building rocked under him. The floor shuddered once, twice, then the furthest wall from him collapsed into a pile of rubble. He slowly pulled himself onto his feet, one hand against his side, blinking when bright LED lights filled the cell.
“Avengers, coming through—anybody order pizza?”