Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

Clint swings the gate closed behind them and locks it.

Jamie looks up at the words formed in iron arching above their heads. He can read most Cyrillic languages pretty well and he translates it as, “If you don’t like what I built with my money, you can build your own with your money”. His lips twitch at what appears to be a big ‘fuck you’ to the neighbors.

He turns back to Clint, who grins and starts them walking up an unpaved, winding road through the woods. “The neighbors weren’t so impressed when the original owner was building the house. Apparently they complained a lot.”

“What’s wrong with it?” Jamie asks, because the house still isn’t in sight.

Clint shrugs. “Nothing really. But I guess it doesn’t exactly match the local architecture. Looks more like it belongs in the Mediterranean or something.”

Jamie eyes skim along the wrought-iron fence that disappeared into the woods. “How big is this place?”

“Ten hectares. The house sits in the middle of it. Closest neighbor is two kilometers down the road.”

Jamie nods appreciatively, though he’s wondering how the neighbors ever even saw the place well enough to complain. Jamie has a lot of questions but knows better than to hurl them all at Clint because that's rarely effective. Besides, most of them will probably be answered if he just waits, so he keeps walking patiently.

A few minutes later, Jamie starts to see glimpses of what looks like a large, pink house through the gaps in the foliage. Another 100 meters and the road straightens and brings the house into sight. Ah. Clint wasn’t kidding. It… really doesn’t look like it belongs in Czechia.

The house is substantial at two-and-a-half stories, but by no means a mansion. It’s square, and has a shaped parapet that reminds him more of a Spanish Mission than an Eastern European house. And it’s a salmon-colored stucco. He can see why the neighbors didn’t embrace it.

And he can see why it appealed to Clint. The house sits on a rise so that you can probably see for many kilometers from the upper stories, and it’s got decorative wrought-iron grills over all of the windows, the openings in the metalwork far too small for any person to slip through. The guy who built it was either seriously paranoid, or his neighbors really hated him. Regardless, the grillwork fits the architecture and it has the upside of providing extra security.

The house is situated in the middle of what’s probably a half a hectare of manicured grass that looks like it couldn’t have been cut more than a week ago. Jamie furrows his brow and stops walking. “Why is the lawn mown?” he asks, automatically scanning the area for threats.

Clint keeps going, flicking a glance at Jamie over his shoulder. “I’m not here very often. I have a local guy who mows it into the fall.”

Jamie thinks about that for a few seconds, then catches up with Clint. “Do you trust him?”

“Enough to mow the lawn once a month. Relax. I have security systems in place that I can monitor remotely. I was checking them from Wakanda. Josef would have come by a couple days ago. It’s alright. We’re good.”

They approach the house and Clint moves them around to the side where a one-story room projects from the main body of the house.

“Go around to the front. I’ll let you in in a minute,” he tells Jamie, then quickly scales the side of the house with handholds that Jamie can’t see and alights onto the flat roof of the room.

Jamie steps back and watches as Clint moves over to a window and reveals a hidden panel with a biometric lock. The mechanism scans Clint’s eye and the metal grillwork swings to the side as the window rotates out from its frame. Clint slips easily through the small opening. Jamie sees it close firmly behind him, so he walks around to the front of the house. Not long after, he hears a series of locks being released and a moment later, the front door swings inward.

Jamie enters the front hall of the house and immediately scans the visible rooms. When he turns back around, he sees that in addition to two sturdy deadbolts, the door has a barricade bar and a surface slide-bolt that can only be released from the inside. Apparently the only way to get into the locked house is through the window that Clint climbed through a few moments ago.

After he scans the rooms again, he finally looks back at Clint, who’s been giving him space to take it all in.

“I checked all the systems. No one’s been inside the house since I was here last November. Everything’s secure.”

Jamie nods and some of his apprehensions disappear.

“I need to turn on the water and the main power. Go ahead and look around,” Clint tells him with a knowing look. “Open the curtains if you want,” he calls as he goes.

Clint disappears toward the back of the house leaving Jamie alone in the entry foyer. Straight ahead is a wide, wooden staircase to the second floor with heavy newel posts and balustrade. To the left of it is a passage to the back of the house. The room on the right is the dining room and it has a large, old looking table set, with massive, ornately carved chairs that have tall backs and sturdy arms. Jamie wonders if it came with the house because it looks like it belongs here and it’s kind of hard to envision Clint specifically choosing it, though admittedly, he has no idea what kind of furniture the guy might favor.

Jamie moves into the room on the left and crosses to the window, pulling open the heavy curtain; light floods into the room. His eyes skim the opening and he sees an obvious security system in place. Then he looks more closely and sees the low-tech measures that Clint has added: the finest thread affixed to a corner of the sash, designed to break if the window is opened. As he continues through the house and draws open more drapes he sees that they’re very good; well disguised and barely visible, and on a different spot on each window. Probably only someone like him – someone who’s looking for it and is trained to find it – would ever notice them. Jamie feels a little more of the hyper-vigilant tension seep out of him.

The first room is obviously a living room or parlor, but the only thing in it is an oriental rug and an uncomfortable looking antique couch. Jamie walks through it to the doors on the far wall which must be the room that Clint scaled in order to get to the window above. He opens the curtained French doors to discover that it’s a sun room, with banks of windows on the three projecting sides. There’s well-worn, wicker furniture inside. As Jamie opens the interior shutters, he finds himself looking forward to spending time in here.

He walks back into the living room and approaches another closed door that must lead to a room on the back half of the house. He opens it and feels around for the light switch, and when he flips it on, the room is suddenly awash in bright light. Jamie blinks and lets his eyes adjust, then looks around and grins. It’s a library, complete with floor-to-ceiling shelves on every piece of wall that isn’t occupied by a window or door. They’re not all full – far from it – but there are definitely hundreds of books in the room. The space is filled with comfortable-looking contemporary furniture, clearly recent additions to the house. Jamie has the feeling that this room gets a lot of use.

He wanders over to one of the full shelves and he peruses the titles. Some he’s heard of; most he hasn’t. They seem to run the gamut from classic literature, to modern fiction, to academic looking treatises on physics and biology, to DIY guides. He’s still skimming through titles when he hears Clint enter the room.

“You like to read, huh?” Clint asks from behind him.

“Feel like I have a lot to catch up on,” he says, pulling a volume by Ernest Hemingway off the shelf. He recognizes the name – possibly from before the war - but this book is unfamiliar. “Looks like you like to read, too,” he observes, slotting the volume back on the shelf and turning around to face Clint.

Clint wanders over to stand next to him and scans the shelves, apparently looking for a particular book. “My previous job left me a lot of time to sit around. I used to go out of my mind with boredom until someone finally shoved a book into my hands.”

“You didn’t think of it yourself?”

Clint hesitates, then looks at Jamie and shrugs a little. “I had what you might call an unconventional childhood. Reading wasn’t something I was much exposed to when I was young.”

“You mean you couldn’t read?” Jamie asks carefully, trying to read between the lines.

“I could read,” Clint huffs out, a little defensively. “It just never occurred to me to do it for pleasure until someone pointed out the possibilities.” Clint pulls a slim volume off the shelf and opens it with something approaching reverence. “I’ve been doing a lot of catching up, too.”

Jamie watches Clint handle the book with obvious affection. His interest in learning more about his travelling companion has been growing since Milan; unfortunately, the man is frustratingly reticent about talking about his past or revealing much about himself. But his curiosity is piqued by the way Clint’s staring at the book so he decides to take the direct route and simply asks, “Who was it?”

“What?” Clint answers distractedly, leafing carefully through the pages.

“Who got you interested in books?” Jamie asks, peering over to see the title of the volume Clint’s holding. The Bridge of San Luis Rey. Jamie doesn’t know it.

Clint’s hands still for a moment. No, Clint’s entire body has stilled, and Jamie freezes too, waiting to see if Clint will reveal a little piece of himself.

Clint takes a deep breath. “Uh, his name was Phil,” he says with obviously-forced lightness as he slips the book back onto the shelf. “He was my handler for a lot of years. He figured out pretty quickly that he better find me a distraction or every shitty safe house or hotel room he ever stashed me in was going to end up with holes in the walls and it was going to cost SHIELD a small fortune.” Clint turns and gives Jamie a mild smile but his eyes look more sad than anything else. “If you want to read any of these, go ahead. You don’t need to ask.” With that, Clint turns around and heads toward the other door in the room. “Come on, I’ll show you the rest of the place.”

Clint has a way of ending conversations that tells Jamie that this one is over, so he makes note of the book’s location on the shelf to come back to later, and follows Clint through a door that leads them into a back hallway.

“Bathroom,” Clint says, pushing open a door for Jamie to see as he walks by. “Basement stairs,” Clint points to another door across the hall that must access the space under the house’s main stairs. At the end of the short hall, Clint pushes open a swinging door into a large, bright kitchen. Jamie can tell immediately that it’s a place where Clint spends a lot of time.

The heart of the room is clearly the large, AGA cooker that’s seen a lot of use over the years. Pots and pans hang from the ceiling nearby. A small wooden table with drop-leaves and two chairs occupy the middle of the room. Directly across the kitchen is a wooden door (also with a barricade bar and surface slide) with a window through which Jamie can see a barn in the distance, tucked up against the woods. To the right is another swinging door that he assumes must lead back into the dining room.

“I’ll go into town in a little while and get some fresh food,” Clint tells him. “If you want anything in the meantime, there’s a decent supply of non-perishables in the pantry.” Clint points at a door in the corner.

Jamie hums in acknowledgment, eyes still taking in all the details. He notes the magnetic knife-bar mounted next to the stove, and makes a quick inventory: there’s a butcher knife, two chef’s knives, a boning knife, a bread knife, and two paring knives. In a pinch, any of them except maybe the bread knife with it’s squared-off end, would make serviceable weapons. When he turns, Clint’s watching him. Jamie shrugs and doesn’t make excuses; if anyone understands, it’s someone like Clint.

Clint pushes the door into the dining room and Jamie follows. They make their way through to the front hall, having completed a circuit of the first floor. The circular flow and multiple points of access to the front and back doors are a trade-off; they make the house harder to defend, but easier to escape if it comes to that. Jamie’s mind reflexively makes contingency plans for either scenario.

Clint leads them up the stairs. The fourth one creaks when Jamie steps on it.

“Took me a few days to get that in there,” Clint says, sounding pleased with himself. “This place is amazingly solid.”

“Why didn’t it creak when you stepped on it?” Jamie queries, and Clint just throws a smirk over his shoulder.

The stairs reverse on themselves and at the top they end up on a large, open landing and Clint stops to let Jamie look around. Immediately to the left, the stairs continue up to what Jamie assumes would be an attic. There are also five doors that open off the space, and Clint walks to each in turn, pushing it open and waiting in the hall as Jamie investigates. Jamie works his way through each one, checking all the closets and peering out all the windows. One of the rooms has another, smaller room off it that holds the window that Clint had climbed through to get into the house; there’s a high-tech security panel in that closet.

One of the doors in the hall leads to a large bathroom with a clawfoot tub and double-sink vanity and linen closet. Clint pauses at the last door, then opens it and steps aside for Jamie to pass. It’s obviously Clint’s bedroom since all the other bedrooms had been empty and this one is furnished, though sparsely. It’s got a bed and a nightstand, and a dresser, and that’s all. Jamie pokes his head into the closet and finds, not surprisingly, that this one has clothes in it. He closes the closet door and steps back into the hall.

“Come on, give me a hand,” Clint jerks his head toward the stairs that go up to the next level. “There’s some furniture in the attic, including another bed and dresser. You can take whichever room you want.”

Jamie is hit with a small measure of disappointment. He and Clint have been sharing close quarters – though never a bed – for two weeks and the thought of that ending is surprisingly disagreeable. But Clint’s already headed up the next flight of stairs, so Jamie follows.

At the top, another door opens to a single, large, room with sloping walls. There’s a window on each of the four sides that let in enough light that Jamie can see the store of furniture and boxes tucked to one side. He walks to one of the windows to orient himself; it has a perfect view down the road that leads to the house, and they’re high enough up that he can see other buildings in the far distance. At the window straight across, a crossbow is leaning against the wall, preloaded with a sturdy bolt with a long curl of line attached. Jamie raises his eyebrows at Clint.

He shrugs. “Good for a quick exit.”

They haul a bedframe and mattress down the stairs and Jamie chooses the big, bright bedroom next to the bathroom. Once it’s set up, they retrieve a bulky dresser as well. It’s ridiculously large for the meager amount of clothing that Jamie owns right now. While Jamie’s making up the bed with sheets from the bathroom closet, Clint brings down a small table and places it next to the bed.

“I’ll pick up a reading lamp when I go into town,” Clint says after they settle the room. Then, “Come on, I have a couple more things I want to show you.”

Jamie follows Clint down and into the back hall where he opens the door to the basement stairs. When they get to the bottom, Jamie looks around. It’s poured concrete, but otherwise unfinished and unremarkable. Along one wall is a furnace, and washer and dryer. Clint walks past them and stops next to a shelf that holds paint cans and other miscellaneous items. He reaches under one of the lower shelves and does something that makes the whole thing slide silently to the side, exposing a vault door. Clint turns and grins at him before cocking his head so that a biometric scanner can glide over his eye; the door opens.

Before Jamie can follow Clint through the door, he’s hit with a flash of a room, men in white lab coats, another biometric lock. He startles and stops, waiting to see if more will materialize. He hates it when the Soldier’s thoughts intrude but he also knows that he can’t deny them. He owes that, at the very least, to the people he killed.

“You okay?” Clint asks quietly, suddenly beside him, and Jamie shakes himself away from his thoughts.

“Yeah, fine, just… a memory,” he answers without elaborating.

“Bad?”

“Neutral. Something from the Soldier, but…” he shrugs. Clint’s eying him closely, though, so he adds, “It was just a room. I wasn’t killing anyone.” He flashes a weak smile, trying to reassure, and then to put the subject to rest, he steps closer to peer into the darkness beyond. He looks at Clint quizzically.

Clint hesitates, then smiles and flips a switch, illuminating a long concrete tunnel.

Jamie follows Clint into it and they walk for what he estimates is about fifty meters before they come to another vault door. It opens after scanning Clint’s eye again, and the two of them step into a small cellar, and when he follows Clint up a ladder, they are in a barn, presumably the one he could see from the kitchen. Jamie whistles appreciatively at the well-hidden exit route. Clint grins proudly.

There’s a battered, dark blue pickup truck parked just inside the sliding barn doors and he steps past it and over to a window where he can spot the salmon-colored house up the rise. “Did you build the tunnel?” he asks, turning back to Clint.

Clint shakes his head. “Nope. The guy who built the house put it in. I have no idea why. It’s what sold me on the place, though. I added the hidden vault doors and security.”

Jamie nods, impressed by it all.

“Wait, it gets better,” Clint says, and then leads Jamie back down the ladder into the lower level.

Once there, Clint reveals another camouflaged door, which he also opens biometrically with a sort of ‘ta-da’ flourish of his arm. “I put this in,” he tells Jamie.

Jamie steps inside and his jaw nearly drops. The 20’x20’ room is arsenal and security center, wrapped into one. A bank of monitors on one wall reveals closed-circuit security views of the entire place, starting with the gate and along the road, up to and inside the house. The other three walls are reserved for weapons: one holds multiple guns – pistols, automatic rifles, a couple of sniper rifles; one has a variety of different bows, eight in all; and a third holds dozens of cylindrical tubes, containing what can only be hundreds and hundreds of arrows. A work table in the middle doubles as ammunition storage, with a multitude of small drawers. He turns to Clint, eyes wide.

“SHIELD always had really great tech,” he answers, his eye dancing happily.

Jamie walks over to the wall of guns, admiring them all.

“You’re welcome to use any of these but I’d appreciate it if you’d leave the bows.”

Jamie snorts. He’s never picked up a bow in his life. If the shit hits the fan, he’s going for the AK-15. Or the SIG Sauer M17 if he needs a pistol.

As though reading his mind, Clint grabs the SIG Sauer from its mount, checks the chamber and the safety, then hands it to Jamie. “To replace the one you had to throw in the bay,” he says, passing him two clips of ammunitions from one of the drawers.

“Thanks,” Jamie answers, loading one of the clips into the weapon, and slipping the other into his pocket. He reaches behind him and tucks the gun into his waistband just as Clint is reaching for a SIG Sauer P229.

Jamie’s only ever seen Clint shoot a bow. “You any good with guns?”

“Yep,” Clint answers dispassionately, sliding a clip of ammunition into it and then making sure the safety is on before tucking it into the back of his jeans.

Jamie cocks an eyebrow at him.

The corners of Clint’s mouth tip upward. “I’m really, really good.”

“Then why the bow?”

Clint pauses and thinks about it for a moment. “A gun is just a tool,” he finally says. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s a useful tool. But my bow… my bow is who I am.”

That answer is cryptic and Jamie wants to pursue it, more curious than ever about how someone becomes as proficient as Clint is with the archaic weapon, but the other man is on the move again, crossing the room to a second vault door. It scans Clint’s eye and releases with a hiss.

“This way,” he says, his eyes gleaming happily.

The door has revealed another tunnel, lower and narrower, but big enough for them to walk – or run – easily. This tunnel has a pronounced downward slope, but it’s shorter and they walk only about 30 yards before coming to another door. When this one clicks open, they step through into a vertical chamber with metal rungs up the wall. They climb about 12 feet and Clint presses a thumb against a small box near the top rung before Jamie hears a heavy click and is blinded by bright sunlight that pours in from above. Clint moves up and out and Jamie follows.

They’re in the woods behind the barn and the house isn’t even visible – nor would they be visible from the house. Jamie is scanning the woods when Clint drops the ‘door’ and Jamie sees that it’s actually a tree stump. Closed and in place, no one would be able to tell that it was anything other than that. Jamie is absorbing the cleverness of it when he sees Clint stick his finger into what looks like a crack in the old bark. He hears another click and the stump springs open, revealing the tunnel once more.

“Impressive,” Jamie says with approval at Clint who is grinning like a mad man. “How long did it take you to build?”

“Including the vault under the barn, five months,” Clint answers, closing the ‘door’ once again. “I’ll program the biometrics so you can access everything.”

Jamie looks at him with questioning surprise. Clint shrugs. “We may be here for a while and it won’t be much of an escape route if you can’t access any of this.”

“I thought no one knew you had this place.”

“No one does. I don’t think. Still,” he shrugs, “hope for the best, plan for the worst.”

Jamie nods again, acknowledging the soundness of that policy. “Does your groundskeeper know about this?”

“Josef?” Clint shakes his head. “No.”

“Are you sure?”

“As sure as I can be. He doesn’t have access to the inside of the house or the barn. There’s no real reason for him to come into the woods, but even if he did, I doubt he’d think this was anything other than a stump.” Clint begins to walk them back to the house through the woods so Jamie can see how to find it from that direction. As they walk through the front door, Clint looks at his watch. “I’m going to take a quick shower, and then run into town to get some supplies and let Josef know I’m here. Get settled in. Make yourself at home.”

While Clint showers, Jamie unloads his meager possessions from his pack and then makes a more thorough investigation of the rooms on the first floor, this time looking more than cursorily in every closet, and opening every drawer and cabinet in the kitchen. It’s well stocked. The pantry is large and packed with shelf-stable foods; enough to feed Clint for six months or more. Something about it makes Jamie frown. It seems incongruous with the austerity of the rest of the house. His stomach rumbles so he grabs a protein bar from an open box before he backs out of the space and closes the door.

He feels a small sense of unease as he continues his search, but the need to know what potential problems – or weapons – every inch of the house holds is stronger than the guilt he feels at invading Clint’s privacy. Besides, he assumes Clint expects him to do it. Nonetheless, he waits until he sees the pickup disappear down the lane before moving upstairs and into Clint’s bedroom.

He finds a predictable number of weapons cached around the room before he moves to the bedside table. The only thing in the small drawer is a framed photograph of Clint, grinning, his expression open and relaxed, as he sits in between two other people, his arms hugging each of them close. He recognizes the Black Widow on one side but not the man on the other. He’s nice looking and wearing a suit, the tie around his neck loosened and the top button of his shirt undone. He looks to be a little older than Clint, based on the slightly receding hairline and the lines around his eyes. But he’s looking at Clint with a warm smile, and he has a hand resting proprietarily on Clint’s leg.

Jamie knits his brows together as he studies the photo. He doesn’t know what to make of it. He’s never seen that particular smile on Clint’s face, and something about it makes his stomach flip a little and then churn. It’s pretty clear from the photo that there’s something between the two men – is he out there somewhere waiting for Clint? If so, it seems likely he wouldn’t appreciate how he and Clint have been ‘relieving their stress’. Jamie tucks the photo out of sight with a sense of unease.

After he completes his search of the rest of the second story, the attic, and the basement, he takes a quick shower, and then digs through Clint’s dresser to find some clean clothes. He grabs some sweatpants (because Clint is slimmer than Jamie, and he doesn’t think he’ll fit into the jeans), a blue Henley (snug but workable), and some wool socks. Then he gathers his dirty clothes, rifles through Clint’s pack to get his, and takes it all down to the basement and stuffs it in the washing machine. That done, he puts his boots back on and goes outside to explore the property.

It feels safe here, like no place has since he came out of his Soldier’s fugue after the fight in Washington, D.C. Hell, probably like no place has since he left Brooklyn to go to war. He finds himself hoping that they’ll be able to stay here for a while, secure in this out-of-the-way corner of the world where no one knows them, and no one wants to kill them. He’s tired of running, tired of hiding. He’s just plain tired, and he wouldn’t mind pretending to be normal person for a while.

He’s found a surprising ease with Clint that he didn’t really think he’d ever have with another person again, but one that has the hyper-alert tension that Jamie’s been carrying around for the last two years giving way to a comfortable stasis. It’s an ease that he knows he had with Steve once, in a different lifetime. He remembers enough about Steve and Brooklyn and the War to know that they were as close as brothers. Closer, maybe. But after Steve found him in Bucharest, he’d watched Jamie with such hungry hopefulness that all he could feel was guilt for not being the Bucky Barnes that Steve knew, and who he knows he can't ever be again.

He knows all the Avengers had read the Winter Soldier files and know exactly the kind of monster Bucky Barnes had become. Steve had looked at him with pity, and like he wanted to ask a million questions but was just managing to hold back. Sam had watched him with suspicion, and Romanov from a wary distance, with a tiny edge of disguised fear. He didn’t blame any of them. Clint, though, doesn’t seem bothered by any of it; he’s not apprehensive in Jamie’s presence, or distrustful, or scared. He looks at Jamie with no expectations, but more significantly, with understanding and simple acceptance. Like he can see into Jamie’s soul but doesn’t see the monster Jamie knows he is. It’s incredibly palliative.

But as much as Clint doesn’t ask anything of him, he doesn’t give anything either. The man is still a mystery and Jamie aches to know more. The house had, frustratingly, yielded no ready answers, and the photo only left him with more questions. And yet for all he doesn’t know about Clint, he’s still drawn to him. He’s smart and competent, and there’s something about his quiet capabilities that pull Jamie into his orbit. And his arms. Jamie couldn’t say how many times his eyes have traced the veins on Clint’s arms from his hand up to his shoulder. He wants to do it with his fingers. And his mouth. But that feels more intimate than anything Clint wants, so Jamie never does.

Jamie pushes those distracting thoughts away and tries again to remember what he’d read or seen about Hawkeye when he’d been researching Steve and the Avengers after they had fought in DC. He should have paid more attention, but at the time his primary – hell, only - interest had been Steve, and Hawkeye hadn’t even been in DC. Jamie frowns and wonders why.

As he’s mulling all of this over, he's completed a full circuit of the property, so he wanders back to the house and into the library. He pulls the slim volume Clint had held earlier and sits down to read, curious to know what about it had so entranced Clint, and if it might reveal something about the man. It’s a quick read, and by the time Clint returns a few hours later, he’s skimmed through the whole thing. It’s about fate and love, and Jamie still doesn’t have any answers, but it’s a thought-provoking book and he intends to return to it for a closer read another time.

The bed of the pickup is loaded with supplies. Jamie helps him carry the food into the kitchen before Clint drives the truck to the barn to unload what looked like building supplies. Jamie’s just finishing putting the food away when Clint walks back into the kitchen, washes his hands and starts pulling things out.

“Stew okay for dinner?” he asks, setting an onion on a cutting board.

Jamie startles and his knee bangs the table leg when he gets a vivid flash of his ma doing the same thing. “Uh, yeah, sure,” he answers, feeling suddenly adrift, here in Czechia in the present, but thousands of miles away in Brooklyn and eighty years ago, at the same time. He swallows hard.

“You okay?” Clint asks lightly. He always asks when he can tell Jamie remembers something, but never pushes, just listens.

For his part, Jamie finds putting words to them helps to coax more of the good memories out. He can’t really say why he also feels compelled to talk about the bad memories, too, except maybe because he feels like he has to; it’s like confession, and the ensuing guilt, like penance. “Yeah, I’m good. There wasn’t much there, just my ma and an onion,” he shrugs; he doesn’t have anything else to say about it. “Anything I can do to help?” he offers.

Clint looks over at him and Jamie can tell he’s assessing. “Nah,” Clint answers eventually. “Cooking’s kind of my zen thing,” he says as he starts to chop, clearly skilled with a knife.

Jamie furrows his brow, not understanding the reference.

A second later, Clint glances over at him. “Uh, it’s, you know, how I relax.”

“I thought fucking was how you relaxed,” Jamie says, the words escaping before he can even think about it. He feels his face flush.

Clint barks out a laugh and then looks over with a gleam in his eye, apparently not bothered. “Well, cooking’s one of the ways I relax,” he amends.

Jamie wants to ask if he ‘relaxes’ with the man in the photo, but something tells him it wouldn’t be well received.

“This’ll be about an hour,” Clint tells him, releasing him to leave if he wants.

But Jamie doesn’t want to leave. He’d rather sit here and watch Clint’s fluid movements as he works, and wait to see if any more memories come to him. He settles into one of the wooden chairs at the table. Clint gives him a bemused look but then shrugs and keeps working.

He’s careful about food, Jamie notes. He peels and trims the vegetables with awareness, not wasting even a tiny sliver. That means something. Jamie has another flash, this time of his ma’s tiny hands skillfully working vegetables the same way. He knows he grew up during the Depression when food was scarce and every bite precious, but Clint didn’t. It’s clear the man’s known hunger, though. Jamie’s brow draws together at the realization.

“Oh, hang on,” Clint says, as he wipes his hands on a towel. He walks over to the door and reaches into a bag he had carried with him back from the barn and set on the floor just inside. “Thought you might want this,” he says, and tosses a small box over to Jamie.

Jamie catches it and turns it over in his hand. Hair dye. He grins up at Clint, who smiles knowingly and goes back to chopping. Okay, this is maybe the one thing he’d rather do than sit and watch Clint cook. Jamie gets up immediately and heads for the bathroom upstairs. Behind him as he goes, he can hear the rapid-fire sound of the knife on the cutting board.

***

Clint focuses on chopping the vegetables. He does love this. Partly because it’s relaxing and it gives him time to think, and partly because he never ceases to be amazed at what he’s able to create with his own hands. When he’d been younger, after Phil had introduced him to books, he’d also introduced him to cooking by way of a gift of a cookbook.

Clint had stared bewildered up at Phil. “I can’t cook,” he’d said when he’d unwrapped The Joy of Cooking on his twenty-fourth birthday.

“Can you read?” Phil had asked.

Clint had just given him a look. Phil knew he could read. Knew he had already plowed through dozens of books sitting in shitty safe houses waiting for the action to start or for an exfil.

“Then you can cook,” Phil said. Simple as that.

And it was, really. It had taken practice and some trial and error, and he’d had to learn all kinds of new terminology. But, in the end, it wasn’t any more difficult than learning to strip a weapon and put it back together, and it was a hell of a lot less difficult than learning to fly a helicopter – which he had done fairly readily. Phil had been right; he can read, so he can cook.

Clint works by rote and gets lost in his memories of Phil for a while before his thoughts make a hairpin turn and he finds himself thinking about Jamie – something that’s been happening more and more. Since they started fucking (well, not exactly fucking), Clint’s been watching Jamie closely, looking for any signs of reluctance or discomfort. He hasn’t seen any but the more he watches – and the more they mess around - the more he’s drawn to the other man, even as he tries to resist it. Jamie’s smart and has a sly sense of humor and he hasn’t blinked at anything Clint’s thrown at him, like some sort of kindred spirit or something. But Clint knows better than to give in to thoughts like that. He constantly reminds himself that what they have – no, what they’re doing – is stress release, and nothing more. A way to relax.

He can’t give in to thoughts of making this something more - won’t give away that piece of himself – because he knows how crippling it is when it’s taken away. Besides, as much as he might want to tell himself otherwise, this guy in his house isn’t really Jamie. He’s not some kindred spirit. He’s Bucky Barnes. Steve’s best friend. Whom Steve entrusted to his care. All Clint’s doing is babysitting, and he’s not dumb enough to think that this little game they’re playing together doesn’t end the minute they get an all-clear text from Steve.

He’s just adding the fresh parsley to the pot when Jamie saunters back into the kitchen with a damp mop of dark hair. He grins when Clint looks over at him and Clint’s mouth goes instantly dry. With his hair back to its natural dark shade, his blue eyes stand out in striking contrast. Clint’s blue Henley only brightens them more. He’s beautiful, but more importantly, he looks happy and there’s a lightness about him. Something in Clint’s chest flutters before he clamps down on it viciously, reminding himself that Jamie isn’t his for the taking and even if he were, he can’t risk that again. He swallows and gives a weak smile before turning away. “Looks better,” Clint says casually.

“Feels better,” Jamie agrees.

“You know how to make a salad?” Clint asks, with a quick glance over his shoulder.

Jamie scoffs quietly and goes for the refrigerator. As they work side by side, Jamie asks Clint how he came to own the property, and Clint tells him the story of how he’d stumbled upon it a few years before, and how the locals believe him to be Canadian, of Czech descent.

Ten minutes later, Clint scoops a quarter of what’s in the pot into a large bowl for Jamie, who hardly takes a breath before he begins to shovel the food into his mouth, groaning with pleasure. Clint didn’t realize how much he’d missed this – the satisfaction of a meal you’ve cooked yourself and sharing it with someone who appreciates it. He starts to wonder what Hydra fed Jamie all those years, then forces the thoughts away; he should focus on the Jamie that’s here – the one who’s healthy; seemingly happy; and somehow, beyond all reason, apparently sane.

“It’s good,” Jamie says in between bites, then stops suddenly and stares down at his bowl for a moment. “I think my ma used to make something like this,” Jamie says cautiously after swallowing.

Clint flicks his gaze up at Jamie. “Yeah?” he says mildly, not wanting to seem like he’s pressuring Jamie to share. As they’d travelled, every couple of days Clint would sense that something had come back to him. Something would catch Jamie’s eye and he’d cock his head a bit, as though searching for something, and Clint would say something neutral, leaving room for Jamie to share or not. They were small memories, mostly. The sound of a bell reminding him of a church near his apartment growing up; a skinny boy in galoshes bringing a memory of Steve. It hadn’t taken Clint long to understand that when Jamie’s face turned to a scowl, the memories were of a different time. Clint didn’t prompt him about those at first, but Jamie told him anyway, like he wanted to get it off his chest. It takes Clint’s breath away how fucking brave Jamie is to confront his memories of the Winter Soldier without flinching, welcoming rather than suppressing them, trying to make sense of what he did. Clint wishes he had half that courage.

Jamie nods. “I remember watching her cook. Being so hungry and wanting to eat, but she always made me scrub under my fingernails and say a prayer of thanks before she’d give me my plate.”

“Sounds nice,” Clint observes.

“Yeah,” Jamie agrees wistfully, as Clint digs the tomatoes out of his stew and drops them into Jamie’s bowl. He can see Jamie studying him with bemusement.  “Why do you even put them in?” Jamie nods at the small pile of tomatoes that are now sitting atop his stew.

Clint shrugs. “You like them.” He used to do the same thing with Phil and mushrooms.

There’s a beat, and then a quiet, “Thanks.”

Clint looks up at Jamie and sees that his mouth is curved into a shy smile. Clint’s stomach does a flip. “It’s no big thing. They’re easy to eat around,” he says, focusing on his bowl as he spoons a large bite into his mouth.

A moment later, Jamie clears his throat a little. “So, did your mom teach you to cook?”

When Clint looks back up, Jamie is watching him with hungry interest.

“No,” Clint says and doesn’t elaborate, because there are only two ways to expand on that: an explanation of why his mom didn’t teach him to cook; or, an explanation of who did. Clint doesn’t particularly want to walk with Jamie down either of those memory lanes.

“So who did?” he asks, outright ignoring Clint’s obvious reticence.

Clint closes his eyes for a second, trying to decide how to respond. He doesn’t talk about Phil, not even to Natasha. His gut had clenched earlier in the day when Jamie had probed him about who started him reading. All the roads of his past seem to lead back to Phil today, but that road is littered with landmines. He’s somehow managed in the last four years to move beyond missing Phil every moment of every day, and missing him in his bed every night. Time and distance will do that. But he’ll never get past the fact that the reason Phil isn’t here is because of him. He doesn’t want to get past it; he doesn’t deserve to. He’s not sure how much of himself he can put out there without his carefully constructed mental retaining walls crumbling, but when he opens his eyes again, Jamie is just watching him patiently and Clint can’t deny him.

He sucks in a breath. “Phil,” he says, but he’s suddenly agitated and needs to move, so he stands and leans against the counter. “The guy in the photo in the bedside drawer,” he adds, because he’s not naïve enough to believe that Jamie didn’t spend the time Clint was away scouring every inch of the house and grounds.

“Are you…?” Jamie leaves the question hanging.

Clint sets his jaw. “We were,” he says tightly.

“And now?” Jamie keeps probing.

Clint tries to ignore the guilt and sorrow that are ripping open the long-formed scab for the millionth time. “Dead,” he answers, keeping his voice surprisingly flat and neutral, before he grabs his bowl and dumps the last of his dinner into the garbage can, his appetite gone.

“I’m sorry,” Jamie says quietly from behind him.

“Yeah. Me, too,” Clint says, pouring what’s left of the stew from the pot into a bowl that he puts in the refrigerator.

“You want to talk about it?”

The gentleness in Jamie’s voice scrapes something raw inside of Clint, because he knows he doesn’t deserve it. Clint drops the pot into the sink with a clatter. “No, I don’t wanna talk about it,” he snaps, turning back around and glaring a bit as he leans against the counter.

“Sorry.” Jamie puts his hands up in a placating gesture.

Clint wraps one arm around his body and wipes a rough hand down his face before crossing both arms. He stares at the floor, trying to rein in his control. Here’s Jamie, brainwashed for 70 years, sharing memories with Clint, painful as they might be; and here’s Clint snapping at him for casually asking a question as they share a meal. He lifts his eye back to Jamie who’s watching him warily. Goddammit. He can’t escape the feeling that he somehow owes Jamie an answer - like he needs to balance the ledger - and that just makes him angry. Still, it’s a debt owed.

Clint takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “He was killed in the Chitauri invasion. You hear about that?” Jamie nods grimly. “A lot of people died that day. A lot of good people. Phil was one of them.”

“I’m sorry,” Jamie says again.

“Yeah,” Clint says, turning his head to look out the window into the dark. “Yeah,” he says again, nodding vaguely. He feels a sudden need to be out of the kitchen; out of the house; out from under Jamie’s scrutiny. “I’m gonna take a walk,” he tells him, taking pains to remove the irritation from his voice, then grabs the closest jacket - the ‘I [heart] Cyprus’ hoodie that Jamie must have washed and hung on the hook by the door - and walks out before the other man can say anything else.

When he comes back a couple hours later, the kitchen is squared away. Jamie is nowhere in sight, but Clint easily finds him sprawled on the couch in the library, reading Remains of the Day, of all things. Clint grabs a random book off the shelf and sits across from him in the overstuffed chair, pushing the ottoman out of the way before slumping down and kicking his legs out in front of him. He cracks open the book but his mind wanders quickly, still distracted by the upheaval of old memories.

He stares out the window, watching a tawny owl circle its prey in the night sky. The only sound in the room is their soft breathing and the rustling of paper as Jamie turns a page every few minutes. It’s nice, the quiet. The lack of a need to fill the silence. Clint had found it exhausting, living at the Tower for those few months after Loki. Tony was wecoming, but his need to fill every silence as though that would help fill the hole in his soul, had frayed Clint’s nerves sometimes. The knowledge that every move he made was monitored by Jarvis, even if he – it – made efforts not to be invasive. The team dinners that Steve insisted on and that always included laughter but only had the effect of emotionally gutting Clint, because Phil… Phil would have loved having dinner with a smiling, laughing Captain America.

Clint thoughts turn to where they always do when he’s thinking of Phil: trying to figure out what he could have done differently to stop Loki from taking him, or from killing Phil. He’s come up with 27 different reasonably viable ways in the last four years (and rejected dozens of others), and he’s analyzing the practicality of a 28th (whether he still had enough control in the very beginning to intentionally crash the Humvee – it wouldn’t have necessarily broken the connection with Loki, but it could possibly have broken his arm or something, and changed the course of events just enough…) when his thoughts are interrupted by a shadow falling across his face. He looks up and sees Jamie watching him with a small, tentative smile before his tongue darts out and wets his bottom lip and then his teeth catch there, holding for a second before his lip slides free. Clint has come to know that expression in the last couple of weeks, and he sets his book aside. Because, what the hell, sex can be a great distraction from self-loathing.

Jamie drops to his knees and Clint’s pulse quickens with anticipation. He wants to surge forward, to take Jamie’s mouth with his own, nip and tug at that wet lower lip with his teeth, then push his tongue in to find Jamie’s. But he doesn’t. Because that would tilt them over into something this isn’t, something that isn’t just stress relief - and something he can’t have - so he stays where he is.

Jamie settles into a more comfortable position and starts to reach his left arm toward Clint’s pants, then catches himself and aborts the movement, reaching with his right hand instead.

Clint stops Jamie’s hand. “I don’t mind,” he murmurs quietly and Jamie snaps his head up.

But Jamie’s clearly reluctant, so Clint releases his grip and opens his pants himself, lifting his hips and sliding them down to his thighs. When Jamie still hesitates, Clint takes Jamie’s surprisingly warm metal hand in his own and wraps it around his thickening cock. If he’s honest, Clint has fantasized about this a lot over the last couple of weeks – thought more than just a little bit about what it would feel like to have Jamie jerk him off with it.

But Jamie still hasn’t moved and he’s scrutinizing Clint, conflicted, so Clint makes a point of taking his hands away and settling both on the arms of the chair as he leans back. “Do it,” he urges, his voice rough with arousal already.

Jamie stares at him for another beat, then lowers his eyes to his hand. A second later, he grips fractionally tighter and starts stroking up and down. Clint’s breath catches in his throat as his hips reflexively judder upward into Jamie’s fist. It feel smooth (not like the calloused grip of Jamie’s right hand) and unyielding. It feels… dangerous. It probably says something about how completely fucked in the head Clint is that the thought makes his cock twitch in the metal grip, and pre-come bead at the head. He tips his head back and lets himself go.

***

Longing, rusted, seventeen, daybreak, furnace, nine, benign, homecoming…

Jamie eyes snap open and he bolts upright, heart pounding and breath coming fast. The last trigger word lingers (homecoming, homecoming, homecoming...) and he squeezes his eyes tightly shut, trying to shake it away. When it’s just the faintest echo in his head he opens his eyes and looks around. He’s disoriented and nothing looks familiar and the adrenaline spikes again before he remembers he’s in Czechia. With Clint.

He flops backward on the bed again and stares at the ceiling, his breath finally slowing. He’s had the dream one other time since they left Wakanda, and that time, like this, he woke before the entire sequence was completed. He considers whether he should tell Clint, but his head feels clear and not at all like it did that night they fled the palace compound, so for now he decides there’s nothing really to tell. Still, it’s disconcerting.

He looks at his watch; he slept four hours. Jamie knows that’s all he’s likely to sleep for the night, so he gets up and quickly dresses, then slips quietly down the stairs, careful not to step on the creaky fourth step on his way out of the house. He makes his way across the yard to the barn and flips on the lights. The day before, he’d seen that Clint had some basic exercise equipment set up at the far end, including a chin-up bar set about seven feet off the ground. It’s cold and he can see his breath, but Jamie strips off his shirt anyway and jumps up to grab the bar, bending his knees and crossing his ankles. He starts with two hands to get a rhythm going, then drops the left because it doesn’t need to be worked. He does 100 one-handed pull-ups before dropping down and settling on the inverted sit-up bench. Five hundred sit-ups later, he’s broken a light sweat and his pulse is slightly elevated. The sky is finally getting light, so he grabs his shirt and heads outside to run the perimeter of the property. He does five laps, memorizing all the lines and landmarks, then goes back into the barn to do more pull-ups and sit-ups because it’s been a really long time since he had any active exercise and he needs to get back into shape. After he finishes another round, he climbs into the back of the pickup and stares through the barn window at the salmon-colored house.

Clint remains a puzzle; one that Jamie wishes he could piece together. A few things had slotted into place the night before. Clint had told Jamie the story of how he found this house, and the timing of it explained why he hadn’t been with Sam and Black Widow when they were with Steve in Washington, D.C. Though it still seems strange that Clint would just be traveling aimlessly around Europe – on some kind of sabbatical – when big things were happening back in the U.S. with the rest of the Avengers.

There’s damage there. Jamie recognizes the haunted look in Clint’s eyes, having seen the same expression staring back at him in the mirror. But what haunts him, Jamie doesn’t know. It could be the years at SHIELD - killing people on command – God knows that would do it. But something tells Jamie that that isn’t it. He suspects it has something to do with ‘Phil’, but barring Clint telling him what it is – which doesn’t seem likely – Jamie has no idea how to unlock the mystery. Jamie has shared a few of the memories that have been coming back to him - about Steve, Brooklyn, even the Winter Soldier - but mostly all Clint’s given in return are insignificant anecdotes that Jamie’s come to realize carefully reveal little of substance.

It’s been so long since Jamie connected with another human being, and though he can’t really remember for sure, he doesn’t think he’s ever wanted to connect with someone the way he wants to with Clint. And Clint is… Clint is right here, but, frustratingly, he’s holding himself just out of Jamie’s reach. Asking direct questions the night before had garnered a little more information, but had not ended well, with Clint bolting from the house and staying scarce for a couple of hours. He’s determined to breach the divide between them, though, so he decides on a new strategy: tell Clint everything he remembers – every memory that comes to him - and maybe, eventually, he’ll start to reciprocate. He can play the long game if he has to.

As Jamie settles on his plan of action, his eye catches some movement through the window of Clint’s bedroom, so he climbs out of the truck and heads to the house to start some coffee brewing.

***

Their days fall into a pattern. Jamie wakes early (if he sleeps at all) and works out, then takes a shower and settles in to read until Clint wakes. Jamie makes a pot of coffee while Clint showers, then Clint goes into Rakovnik to buy a few newspapers, and fresh croissants if he can find them. He goes to different shops every day, and, when he resupplies their food, he always stops at a few around town to avert any suspicion that he’s not alone at the house. Once he’s back they drink more coffee and eat breakfast in companionable quiet as they scan the newspapers for any word about what might be happening in Wakanda, or with any of the Avengers, or Ross.

He’s got a laptop at the house and wifi, but he only ever uses it to find recipes and DIY tips, because people may think Clint’s got a healthy dose of paranoia, but he’s pretty sure that those who wish them harm have crawlers monitoring internet searches for very specific terms. Instead, every few days or so, he makes the longer trip to Prague to pick up anything he can’t get in the smaller town, and while he’s there he finds a spot with free wifi (a different one each time) and uses the tablet he bought in Cyprus to do a more thorough news search. He’s always careful about the words he plugs into a search engine, finding articles and stories in indirect, roundabout, or oblique ways. There’s been no news about any of the Avengers at all that Clint can find. He always powers off the tablet before he leaves Prague and leaves it that way until the next time he returns.

The only word from Steve is an occasional “stay put”; he can’t decide if that’s good or bad. He wants the situation resolved, for everyone’s sake, especially Lang, who has a daughter back home. But a part of him that he doesn’t want to admit to also wants to hide away here with Jamie indefinitely. He knows it’s stupid and dangerous thinking, but that doesn’t stop the thoughts from coming.

After breakfast, Clint putters around the property because there’s always something to do or repair. So far, he’s patched the barn roof, and gotten the baling wire out and shored up the fence around the unused corral. Most recently he’s been working on putting in a French drain around the barn to keep the moisture away. Most days Jamie helps with whatever project Clint’s got going on, but some days he sits in the sunroom and reads, instead. He seems to prefer that room during the day, with the bright light and warmth pouring in, despite the increasingly cold temperatures. But at night they both prefer the coziness of the library and more often than not, one of them builds a fire in the fireplace and they share the space companionably with few words passing between them. Most nights end with mutual hand jobs on the couch, panting into each other’s neck (Jamie’s become masterful at switching between his human and metal hands and driving Clint crazy with the changing sensations) or one of them on their knees for the other. Afterward, they always go to their separate bedrooms.

Jamie makes sandwiches for lunch; Clint cooks dinner. At first Jamie just watches with keen interest, but eventually he picks up a knife and starts helping. Working side by side with Jamie only makes Clint hungrier, but in different way that Clint persistently tamps down.

From the first, being in the kitchen spurs Jamie’s early memories, and since he seems to like those, Clint starts to asks questions, trying to prod his brain into loosening up and revealing more of its secrets. Jamie remembers that his favorite food when he was a kid was roasted chicken and mashed potatoes, so the next day, Clint buys a hen and potatoes. Jamie’s eyes shine as he eats it and more memories spill forth: his ma taking the banged-up black roasting pan from the oven; standing on a chair and mashing the potatoes at the counter; Steve, sitting across the table while his ma clucks at him to eat because he’s too skinny. Every time Jamie remembers something his mom made, or that he used to like, Clint makes sure to find it the next day when he’s in town, and cooks it up that night. It’s like opening a floodgate; more than anything else, the foods bring the memories.

But the bad memories come too, more randomly and without warning. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to when they might appear, and no way to control it. One evening, nearly a month after they arrive in Czechia, Jamie’s mincing garlic at the counter when Clint reaches across him to snatch a chef’s knife from the magnetic bar and, before he can step back, Jamie’s metal hand snaps forward and grabs his wrist, squeezing hard. Clint freezes.

“Jamie?” he asks calmly, carefully not wincing at the vice grip Jamie’s got on him.

Jamie lifts his head and looks at Clint, then drops his eyes down to where they are connected. An instant later, he sucks in a sharp breath and drops Clint’s hand like it’s burned him, then takes several steps backward.

Clint fights his instinct to look at his wrist, even though he knows that bruises must already be rising there and he’s not 100% certain he doesn’t have a broken bone. “You okay?”

Jamie’s breathing rapidly, staring wide-eyed at Clint’s arm, guilt written all over his face. A second later he bolts from the room. Clint calls after him but he doesn’t stop, just clatters down the basement stairs.

Clint swears and tosses the knife onto the counter, then finally looks at his wrist. He works it carefully back and forth and flexes his fingers before deciding that nothing’s broken. He’s thankful for that for Jamie’s sake. He wasn’t wrong, though, the damage is visible already; his wrist is red and swelling, and black and blue finger marks are already starting to appear. “Shit,” Clint mumbles, knowing it will be several days before they fade and every time Jamie sees them he’s going to wear it like a stone around his neck.

He gets an ice pack from the freezer, hoping to stop the swelling and minimize the bruising, then stands watching out the kitchen door for any sign of him. As he expected, the light clicks on in the barn a few seconds later and Clint knows that he’s down there working out like a fiend, like he does whenever something’s bothering him. He sighs and goes back to making dinner.

Twenty minutes later he shoves the meatloaf into the oven and slams the door harder than necessary. He has to stop himself from seeking Jamie out because he knows what it’s like to need to work things through in your head and understands that sometimes that means time alone. Clint’s been there. Instead, he goes to the library, picks up the book he’s been working on and starts to read, knowing that none of the words will stick and he’ll undoubtedly need to go back and read it again.

Fifty minutes later the timer dings. Clint goes back to the kitchen and turns off the oven but leaves the dish where it is. He grabs the ridiculous, long-sleeved ‘I ❤️ Cyprus’ hoodie from the hook by the door where whichever one of them wears it last always leaves it, and throws it on before walking across the dark yard to the barn.

He’s not one bit surprised to see Jamie doing pull-ups on the bar Clint had installed for exactly that purpose when he bought the place. He’s a little surprised to see him doing them one-handed with his human arm. He’s sweating and his t-shirt is clinging to his back, accentuating the definition of his muscles as they bunch and flex. Clint swallows hard and shoves both hands into his jeans’ pockets.

“Food’s ready,” he says evenly.

Jamie drops down from the bar and turns around, stepping toward Clint. “Let me see,” he demands. There’s sweat on his face and his hair is lank with it but he’s not breathing particularly hard.

Clint huffs. “It’s fine.”

Jamie doesn’t respond, just firms his mouth and narrows his eyes.

Clint hesitates for a second and then pulls his hand from his pocket and extends it toward Jamie.

He steps closer and gently takes Clint’s hand in his human hand and uses his metal one to carefully tug the sleeve of the hoodie up far enough so that the injury is plainly visible. Clint’s honestly surprised that Jamie’s touching him with it. He’d expected Jamie’s guilt to drive him to keep his distance and probably never touch him again. But Jamie’s courage surprises him yet again.

Jamie stares at Clint’s wrist for a long moment then blinks and raises his eyes to Clint’s. “You should ice it,” he says hollowly.

“Already did,” Clint answers, pulling his arm back and casually tucking his hand back into his pocket.

Jamie turns and grabs the grey flannel shirt from where he had cast it onto the floor and uses it to wipe his face and neck, then slides his arms into it.

“So,” Clint says.

“So,” Jamie responds, staring at his hands as he buttons his shirt. “I had a flash… Something… I’m not sure. I think I killed someone once with a kitchen knife. I don’t think I was supposed to, but—” Jamie shakes his head, frustration visible. “I think maybe he cut me before I took the knife away and used it to kill him.” He glances up at Clint, waiting for a reaction.

Clint has noticed that when Jamie talks about Winter Soldier memories, he always qualifies them, using words like ‘I think’ and ‘maybe’, and ‘I’m not sure’. When other memories come to him, of his mom or of Steve, he doesn’t do that; he’s direct and sure. Clint doesn’t know if he’s genuinely not sure – if the memories are that sketchy – or if it’s a defense mechanism.

Clint shrugs. “Well, I reached across you for a knife. It’s understandable.”

“Don’t excuse what I did!” Jamie snaps.

“Don’t blow this out of proportion—”

“I’m not!” he yells.

“You are!” Clint argues back. “Look, I’m standing right here. You didn’t kill me with the knife. You didn’t even make a move to try. You had a flash of a memory, that’s all. You reacted in the moment but it was gone in two seconds. Don’t make it into something it’s not.”

“You’re an idiot to ignore this,” Jamie growls. “Just because you’re a danger junkie that gets off on this… thing,” he gestures to his Wakandan arm, “touching you, doesn’t mean it won’t kill you in the end.”

Clint’s nostrils flare and an instant later he punches Jamie in the throat then jerks his human arm around and up his back at the same time that he kicks Jamie’s legs out from under him. The attack takes Jamie by surprise and he grunts when he lands on his front. Clint drops with him, a knee in his back and his arms wrapped solidly around Jamie’s head, twisting his neck to a severe angle.

He bends low and hisses into Jamie’s ear, “I don’t need you to protect me. I can take care of myself.”

Jamie makes an annoyed sound, then grimaces when Clint torks his neck a little further, stopping a hair’s breadth short of snapping it. A second later he releases Jamie and stands up. “Like I said. Food’s ready. Why don’t you go take a shower and I’ll get it on the table.”

Jamie stays where he is on the ground and Clint leaves him to go back to the house the way he came. A few minutes after he gets to the kitchen, Jamie walks up the basement steps and keeps going up to the second floor.

Clint takes his time making a salad, unsure whether Jamie’s actually going to come back down or not. By the time he gets the plates and food set out, though, Jamie has quietly materialized and is sitting at the table. They eat in silence, the issue still hovering uncomfortably between them. Clint catches Jamie shooting brooding glances at Clint’s wrist, but he ignores them.

They’re just about finished eating when Jamie finally looks fully at Clint. “I need you to promise me something.”

Clint sets down his fork and sits back, crossing his arms. “What?”

“If something happens, and I become the Winter Soldier for some reason, I need you to promise me that if you have the chance, you’ll kill him  No hesitating.”

Clint’s still turning that over in his mind when Jamie continues.

“You know what I did - how many people I killed. You can’t let that happen again.” His face expresses fierce determination.

“That wasn’t you,” Clint grits out.

“I get what you’re saying. Alright? I do. But he’s dangerous and if he comes back, he needs to be stopped. I don’t want him out there hurting people,” Jamie says, then huffs out a loud breath and looks away for a second before returning his gaze to Clint. “I don’t want him hurting you,” he adds quietly.

There’s a loaded silence while they stare at each other before Clint blinks and shakes his head a little. “Look, you had a flash of a memory and you reacted instinctively. That’s all it was. There’s no reason to think that the Winter Soldier is just going to reappear and take over your brain.”

Jamie’s eyes dart nervously.

Clint’s heart skips a beat. “Is there?”

“You mean besides the fact that I almost crushed your wrist a couple hours ago?”

“Yeah, besides that.”

Jamie looks uneasily down at his plate of food. “I’ve been having dreams,” he admits.

“Of…?”

“The trigger sequence.”

Clint tenses then forces himself to relax and contemplates that for a moment. “Does it finish? The entire sequence?”

“No, not yet. It stops where it stopped in Wakanda. But who knows what might happen tonight, or tomorrow night, or next week.”

“They’re just dreams. If they always stop where it stopped in Wakanda, you’re probably just processing those memories,” he posits.

Jamie’s shaking his head before Clint finishes. “You don’t know that,” he argues, leaning forward.

“Look, you’re your own best proof. You’re nothing like you were those first few days after we left Wakanda, when you actually were half-triggered. They’re just dreams.”

“Fine, they’re just dreams. Then you have nothing to lose by promising me that if something happens, you’ll do what you did back there in the barn, but next time, you’ll finish it.”

Clint considers for a moment. He’s seen video of the Winter Solder; he knows he was programmed to be a killing machine. He’s also seen the video of himself under Loki’s control, raining down death and destruction on the helicarrier.

And he’s had this exact conversation with Natasha.

“Okay,” he finally concedes, closing his eyes and nodding slowly, just like Nat had. “Okay.”

Jamie drops his head and lets out a relieved breath. When he lifts it again a moment later, he is noticeably calmer. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me for agreeing to kill you,” Clint answers flatly.

“Clint—” Jamie says with soft conciliation.

But Clint cuts him off when he stands abruptly. “I’m gonna turn in early tonight,” he says, setting his dishes on the counter and turning to go.

“Clint,” Jamie says again, causing him to stop and turn back, because ignoring the plea in Jamie’s voice would be a dick move and Clint generally tries not to be a dick to people he cares about.

Jamie stands and steps close. “I know you can’t really understand, but, I… I can’t trust my own mind,” he says, almost choking on the words.

He’s wrong. Clint does understand; he has Loki to thank for it. But the idea of explaining makes his skin crawl so he swallows a denial, leaving without another word.

Chapter Text

Clint’s up early the next morning but Jamie’s bedroom door is closed when he passes, which is unusual because he’s generally up well before Clint. It’s kind of a relief since he’s not sure where they stand with each other at the moment. His wrist is swollen and the imprint of Jamie’s metal fingers are clearly delineated in black and blue. Clint flexes it back and forth and grimaces at how tender it is. He knows he needs to wrap it because the tendons and ligaments are inflamed as well, but he dreads Jamie’s expression when he sees a compression bandage there. He can’t mess around with any part of his arms or hands, though, so Clint grabs one out of the first aid kit in the bathroom closet and carefully wraps his wrist.

There’s no doubt that Jamie’s prosthetic arm is a highly dangerous weapon – his injury is proof of that. And the irony isn’t lost on him that not long ago, Clint had been angry that Jamie hadn’t told him he was halfway triggered when they began their journey, and now he’s dismissing Jamie’s real fears that the Winter Soldier could return. Clint doesn’t want to think about why he’s so quick to ignore the threat, but he knows it’s for no reason that’s smart.

He makes his way downstairs to the kitchen and starts some coffee brewing then throws open the door to do a quick check of the property before he makes his run into town. He’s hit with an icy blast and Clint’s whole body shrinks back away from the door, a full-body shiver convulsing through him. Shit. It’s cold for early October in Czechia. Usually the lows would be in the mid-40s, but it feels below freezing.  He’s always hated the cold. As a kid, they never had enough money to run the furnace high enough for him to be truly warm in winter so he and Barney would huddle together under what blankets they could find. In the circus, the ramshackle trailer he and Barney lived in for so many years had no heat at all. They’d shared their space and blankets there, too, for a couple of years, until another carney kid made fun of them for sleeping together; after that, Barney stuck to his own bunk and Clint was left to shiver alone.  

Worst of all, though, Loki was an Ice Giant, and when he had control of Clint, it was like being frozen from the inside out. For the three days he was under Loki’s icy thrall, and several days afterward, he felt like he was going to shake apart from it.

Clint reaches behind the door to the coat rack, bypassing the hoodie that one or the other of them is often wearing these days, for a thicker, down jacket. When he opens the door again, he notices the spider web in the corner of where the small protective overhang connects with the wall; it’s frosted over so that the fine threads of the construction are thick and jagged with crystals, and the weight of it has caused the previously perfect creation to sag and tear in multiple places. There’s something at once terrible and beautiful about it.

He’d come downstairs a couple of weeks ago to find Jamie staring out the door and when Clint asked what was up, Jamie had pointed to the web, in just its beginning stages. They had both watched then, mesmerized, as a spider had constructed its trap, spinning its fine threads into a beautiful and intricate pattern.

“It’s incredible,” Jamie had murmured, “I don’t remember ever seeing a spider actually spin its web before.” And when Clint had turned and looked at his profile, his heart had skipped a beat at the bare expression of amazement on his face. They had stood there for nearly half an hour, Jamie’s eyes sparkling and dancing as he watched the spider, and Clint having to tear his eyes away repeatedly as he found them lingering on Jamie for long moments.  

At first, Clint couldn’t help thinking of Natasha; wondering where she was, if she was okay, if he’d ever see her again. But once the web was finished, the spider seemed to spend most of its time sitting content and motionless in the one sunlit corner of it, soaking up the warmth, and Clint huffed, coining it ‘little Jamie’ in his head, because it reminded him of how Jamie would sometimes lie on the whicker chaise in the sunroom for hours, not moving except to turn the page of his book every few minutes.

By unspoken agreement, they’d started using either the front door or the tunnel passage to the barn to get in and out of the house so they didn’t disturb it. And when Clint went into town one day, he stopped at a book store and ordered a copy of Charlotte’s Web, in English, telling the clerk it was for his niece. He dropped it along with the croissants on the kitchen table in front of Jamie a few days later, a warmth surging through him when Jamie grinned as he read the back cover.

A couple of days ago, though, while Jamie had been reading in the sunroom and Clint was starting to get dinner together, the tiniest movement registered in Clint’s periphery and he walked over to look out the glass of the door. He saw immediately that a fly had become ensnared in the web and ‘little Jamie’ was scuttling quickly toward it. As soon as it reached the insect, the spider pounced, and Clint watched with growing disquiet as it worked to kill its struggling prey. He’d had to turn away before the fly was even dead, unable to watch the tableau play out to its inevitable conclusion.

He’d stopped avoiding the door after that and, though Jamie had looked at him curiously, he’d never asked why, and soon enough, he was using the door again, too. It was stupid that it bothered Clint so much - it was, after all, the natural order of things. But it felt like a bad omen, reminding him that even in this idyll that he and Jamie were pretending at, death was always lurking.

This cold morning, though, the spider is nowhere to be seen, its home in ruins. Staring at the crystalized remains of the web, Clint shudders with a worse sense of foreboding than when he’d watched the spider eat the fly. He impulsively reaches up and slices his hand through the remnants of the web, sending the pieces shattering to the ground. A violent shiver racks through him, despite the warm jacket, and yeah, he fucking hates the cold. He’s an idiot for not finding a safe house in the Mediterranean.

***

The trigger dream wakes Jamie and he’s surprised to see that the sun is high in the sky already. He looks at his watch. 0840. Its disorienting to wake so late and he stares at the ceiling, trying to clear his head.

After their – what? disagreement? – the previous night, Clint had bolted for his bedroom early and Jamie had cleaned the kitchen and settled into the library to finish reading For Whom the Bell Tolls. It hasn’t been one of his favorites, as Hemingway’s chillingly graphic depiction of war hit too close to home for Jamie’s liking, but he’s always hated to leave a book unfinished. A couple hours later, he slid the completed work back onto the shelf and then gone to his room, hoping to sleep away some of the lingering agitation. He should have known better. Forget the fact that his body just didn’t need the sleep, his head was still humming with worry about Clint’s injury (and annoyance at his stupidly cavalier attitude), and fear that the Winter Soldier would return. He’d tossed and turned for a couple hours before creeping downstairs to get another book. As he scanned the shelves, his eyes fell on The Bridge of San Luis Rey and he plucked it off the shelf again, then taken it back upstairs.

He read it through slowly the second time, absorbing all the details and nuance and trying to understand what about it seemed to so enthrall Clint. He’d been bleary-eyed when he’d finally finished just before dawn, and he still wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. He’d finally drifted off while trying to puzzle through its meaning.

He’s still trying to piece together his thoughts about the themes of love and destiny when he hears Clint’s light tread on the stairs. He must be back from town already and probably going to shower. But Jamie’s surprised a moment later when he hears a soft rapping on his door.

“Yeah,” he says, but it comes out more like a hoarse croak, so he clears his throat and says it again as he sits up.

Clint opens the door but doesn’t step into the room; they never enter each other’s room. “Hey. You okay?” he asks, and there’s a hint of concern in his eyes and he looks like he didn’t sleep much more than Jamie did.

“Fine,” he answers. “Just… was up most of the night. Fell asleep a couple hours ago.”

“Okay,” Clint says, and Jamie sees his eyes dart to the bedside table and land on the book. There’s a beat before Clint looks back. “Got coffee made and some pastries downstairs if you want them.”

Jamie runs his fingers through his hair, trying to tame what he knows must be a mess of bedhead. “Yeah, thanks. I’ll be down in a minute.”

Clint lingers for a second, his eyes shifting to the book again, but then disappears down the stairs.

When Jamie goes downstairs a few minutes later, he stops in the library first, slipping the book back onto its place on the shelf.

Clint’s at the table in the kitchen eating some granola and yogurt and it looks like he’s already made his way through one newspaper and is well into the second. He glances up and acknowledges Jamie with a wordless noise.

Jamie pours himself a cup of coffee, tops Clint’s off, and grabs the bag that he knows is for him, pulling out a flakey croissant before sitting down.  

They read and eat in silence, which is a little unusual, but there’s clearly lingering tension from the night before that he doesn’t know how to get past, so Jamie just sighs to himself and concentrates on the paper.

Thirty minutes later the silence is starting to get to him and he’s just about to say something, when Clint reaches over and opens a drawer, pulling out a pen.

“Eight-letter word for ‘overly suspicious’,” he says a few seconds later.

Early on, Clint had started throwing crossword clues at him and they do their best to work through at least one newspaper’s puzzle every day. Clint’s been doing them for years and he’s good at them, though he lets Jamie give a guess first before he makes his own suggestion. But the serum in his blood enhanced his mind as well as his body, and Jamie’s quickly become nearly as adept at them as Clint. It's been a good way to help build his contemporary knowledge, except for the pop culture references – those he still rarely understands.

“Paranoid,” Jamie says immediately, snorting at how simple it is; the Guardian puzzle is usually more challenging than that.

Clint hums acknowledgment and a moment later says, “Six-letter word for canonized mortal.”

“Martyr,” Jamie says distractedly, skimming an article about the melting polar ice caps in the Czech newspaper, Pravo.

“Nine-letter word for ‘losing one’s sense of proportion’.”

Jamie thinks for three seconds. “Overreact,” he says. Three seconds after that he lifts his head and narrows his eyes at Clint as he begins to see what he’s is doing.

“Five-letter word for ‘over protective’,” Clint says, his head bent low over the paper. “Hmm… starts with ‘J’…” He scratches his head as though thinking hard. “Any ideas?” he asks, finally looking up.

“Oh, fuck you, Barton,” Jamie huffs, sitting back and crossing his arms.

But it’s done the trick and dissipated the tension from the room. Clint just smirks at him.

Jamie’s eyes flick to Clint’s bandaged wrist. “Can I see?” he asks.

Clint hesitates, then gives him a frustrated grunt, but does unwrap his wrist. “I’m fine. I only wrapped it as a precaution.”

Jamie can’t stop himself from frowning when he sees the dark purple finger marks curling around Clint’s wrist, but at least the swelling has gone down from where it was last night. “You sure nothing’s broken?” he asks, reaching for Clint’s hand and gently turning the injured arm.

Clint flexes his fingers and wrist. “Positive. Barely hurts.”

“Liar,” Jamie retorts.

Clint doesn’t answer but watches as Jamie inspects every inch of his wrist. And maybe Jamie takes the opportunity to press a little on the most prominent vein that runs from there up his forearm, taking care to make it seem incidental. When he looks up, Clint is eyeing him thoughtfully. Jamie casually retracts his arms and picks up his coffee cup.

“My turn,” Clint says, extending his uninjured arm toward Jamie.

He knows immediately what Clint is talking about and his eyes dart unconsciously to his Wakandan appendage. He hesitates for a few second but then sets down his cup and reluctantly pushes it forward.

Clint takes the metal hand in his own and begins to carefully study it, leaning in to look closely. “Does it feel the same?” he asks, glancing up.   “When you touch things? Or use it?”

Jamie shrugs. “Mostly. A little different. This one’s closer to real than the one Hydra stuck on me. That made everything feel more… hollow, if that makes sense.”

Clint scowls at that, but he returns to his scrutiny, his fingers skimming lightly over the smooth surface. It tickles a little but Jamie stays still, not wanting Clint to stop; this touch feels more intimate than anything they’ve done while having sex. Jamie holds his breath and can hear his heartbeat pound in his ears.

“Why doesn’t it bother you?” he finally asks, breaking the long silence since it seems that Clint’s about done with his examination.

Clint gives a last glance at the arm, then releases it and sits back. He shrugs. “It’s part of you,” Clint answers simply, then gets up and takes his dishes to the sink. When he turns around, he grabs the compression bandage to rewrap his wrist.

Jamie knows Clint is perfectly capable of doing it himself, but he stands and puts his hand out. “Let me.”

Clint makes a show of rolling his eyes but hands it over and Jamie carefully winds the bandage around the injured wrist. His hands work without thought, which is good, because all he can think about are the veins on Clint’s arm, and when he’s done, he can’t resist skimming his human fingers across a couple of them again. When his brain finally catches up with him, he freezes, then releases Clint’s arm and looks up, feeling a creeping warmth on his face. Clint’s staring at him with an unreadable expression and he feels his face get even warmer. He ducks his head and quickly moves to clear his things from the table.

“Thanks,” Clint says, rolling his sleeve down over the bandage. “Uh. I’m gonna go work on the French drain. If you don’t mind giving me a hand, I think we might be able to finish today.”

“Sure,” says Jamie, too quickly, his back still to Clint.

A second later, he hears the door open and close and when he looks out the window, he can see Clint striding toward the barn, wearing the shared Cyprus hoodie. Jamie lets out a loud breath and shakes his head at himself for being so idiotically blatant about his attraction. He gives himself a minute to collect himself, watching until Clint gets all the way to the barn before opening the door and following.

***

They work all day, talking and joking much of the time. It’s comfortable and companionable, and Jamie’s almost disappointed when they finish, except that it’s nearly dark and Clint’s obviously exhausted and they’re both filthy and frozen. Clint’s shivering from the cold so Jamie tells him to take the first shower to warm up while Jamie starts to reheat yesterday’s leftover meatloaf. Then Clint puts together a simple salad while Jamie takes his turn.

There’s not a lot of conversation over dinner, but that’s mostly because they’re tired – the tension from the last 24 hours seemingly completely gone. Despite the quiet, Jamie feels at ease. If he’s honest, he has to admit that when he told Clint about the dreams, he’d been worried that Clint would call Steve and tell him that whatever he owed the man, he’d paid in full and he was done. He wouldn’t have blamed Clint if he had; the possibility of the Winter Soldier returning is Jamie’s worst nightmare.

Jamie still thinks Clint is foolish for not taking his concerns about the dreams seriously, but it seems significant that rather than pushing him away, Clint seems have pulled him in closer. There’s been a minute shift between them and Jamie wants to test the bounds of it. He waits until Clint pushes his plate away with a tired sigh.

“I’m sorry about the book,” he says.

Clint tilts his head as he reaches over and drops another huge spoonful of potatoes on Jamie’s plate. “What book?”

“The Bridge of San Luis Rey.”

Clint brows draw together. “What are you sorry for?”

“I got the sense you didn’t like me having it.”

Clint shakes his head. “No, that’s not… It’s fine. I told you, you’re welcome to read any of the books.”

“It does mean something to you, though,” Jamie observes, the question implicit.

There’s a significant pause before Clint answers. “Phil gave it to me before we started seeing each other. I knew he was trying to tell me something, but I was young and stupid at the time and didn’t really get it. I just thought it was a good story. It wasn’t til after—" there’s a noticeable beat, “--he died, that I read it again and got what he was saying to me.” Clint gives him a sad smile and shrugs. “Could be I’m reading too much into it, though.”

“What do you think he was trying to say?” Jamie asks cautiously.

Surprisingly, Clint doesn’t duck back into his protective shell; instead, he picks up his fork and pokes at the small crumbs on his plate and starts talking. “I had kind of a rough go when I was young. People I trusted or should have been able to trust - pretty much every last one of them - let me down. And I guess that made me a bit of a dick by the time SHIELD pulled me in. They overlooked it because of my skills, but I didn’t trust them. I didn’t trust anyone. Phil got the unhappy task of trying to civilize me and convince me that there are people out there you can put your faith in.”  

Clint gets a nostalgic look and seems lost in his thoughts for a moment before continuing.  Jamie likes the way his eyes crease; it makes him look younger and less guarded. 

“Anyway, I think it’s a book about love, and I think Wilder, and Phil, were saying that we create meaning in our lives through our connections with other people. Through our love for them,” Clint’s eyes flick up to Jamie’s and then back to his plate. A moment later, Clint sits back and levels a steady gaze at him. “But, you know, there’s no one meaning to a book like that and we all take something different from it. That was just my interpretation.”

“Yeah,” Jamie nods. “I can see that.” And he can, sort of.   But he thinks he wants to reread the book, to try to see what Clint saw when he read the words.

Clint sighs heavily and stands up grabbing both their plates from the table. Jamie stands too and takes the serving dishes, and they orbit around each other as they clean up the kitchen, content in the familiar silence. When they finish, Clint looks like he’s about to collapse and Jamie shoves him toward the stairs and tells him to go to bed, then he wanders back to the library, pulls the book from the shelf, and settles in to read it again.

***

Clint wakes while it’s still dark with a familiar itch under his skin. It’s been a month since he’s held a bow in his hand.

Since they had arrived in Czechia, he hasn’t had much urge to put his hands on a bow, instead he’s been content to largely leave them in the bunker and pretend at being someone else for a while. In the nearly three months since the skirmish in Wakanda, the most he’s done is set up a target in the barn a half-dozen times when Jamie’s been securely settled in the sun room reading for the afternoon. He’d shoot for half an hour or so, emptying his mind and refamiliarizing himself with the pleasant burn of muscles well-worked. But he’s kept quiet about it because in his experience, when people see him shoot at targets, they start to ask questions.  

But Jamie’s begun to ask more and more questions anyway, and the previous night over dinner he had asked how he’d come to use a bow. Clint had hesitate at the question. He’d told Jamie once before that his bow isn’t just a weapon, it’s who he is. For Clint, his bow is an extension of himself and one he doesn’t share easily, because that would entail explaining about the mess that was his early life; his abusive father, his parents’ death, the orphanage and foster homes, landing at the circus where Buck worked him every day until he nearly collapsed, and punished him when he was less than perfect.

How did he even begin to tell Jamie about his love/hate relationship with this inextricable part of him? How for years, all he heard when he shot his bow was Buck, telling him he wasn’t good enough. That he knew he let it define too much of his self-worth, but Phil’s calm and encouraging voice had eventually supplanted Buck’s vicious whispering in the back of his mind and had made him believe that he had more value than just his skill as an asset. How Clint had finally learned to love the reassuring nock-draw-release, the deep, but not unpleasant burn it generated in his muscles, the near-hypnotic state he could find while shooting, how it could sooth his agitated mind.

Until Loki, when his bow became the tool of destruction that effectively took his life from him, and then Sokovia, when it had been worthless to save Pietro.

Besides being something Clint’s not particularly eager to share (it had taken him years before he’d revealed the whole story of his youth to Phil) it all sounds trivial when held up in comparison to a guy who grew up in the depression, saw the horrors of WWII, then spent 70 years as a brainwashed tool for Hydra. There was no good way to describe to Jamie how he ended up being known as the ‘World’s Greatest Marksman’ without it sounding like a bullshit, self-pitying sob story.

Jamie must have seen something in his expression, and to Clint’s relief, he’d quickly changed the subject. The relief was short-lived though because instead Jamie began conveying a story of his own; a horrific memory of Hydra training the Winter Soldier on the Russian rifles and the difficulties he had at first mastering them with his new arm. His captors had been less than understanding and had used some particularly unpleasant techniques to ‘encourage’ him to do better. Techniques that sounded eerily similar to those that Buck had used on him. Jamie's story was relayed easily, carrying little emotion as those memories generally did, while Clint’s dinner had made a valiant effort to return uninvited.    

It wasn’t much of a surprise then, that he’d fallen asleep the previous night thinking about things he generally preferred not to, earning him a tumultuous night’s sleep. Or that he’d awoken early, sweaty from a nightmare that was a tangled mess of Buck and Loki, Phil and Pietro.

He lies in bed waiting for the sun to come up because the bone-deep itch he’s feeling today won’t be satisfied by a bit of target practice in the barn. It’s been two weeks since Jamie inadvertently injured him – a month since he last shot his bow – and that’s too long. He flexes his wrist. There’s a bit of residual discomfort, but he decides it’s healed enough and it’s not the kind of pain that would be dangerous to push through.

As the first rays of sunlight peek over the horizon, Clint bolts from his bed and throws on some clothes, sneaking past Jamie’s dark and quiet bedroom and then makes his way to the weapons bunker under the barn. He bypasses the recurve and the compound and grabs the traditional bow and then loads a few hundred arrows into the flatbed hand truck he’d specially modified to hold his storage quivers. He takes them outside behind the barn where there’s plenty of room, then goes back in for the targets and sets up five of them, every five meters from 40 to 60 meters out. He starts shooting without hesitating. A few minute later he hears Jamie walk up behind him, but he ignores it and keeps firing, finding his rhythm and tuning everything else out.

***

Jamie jerks awake with the trigger sequence in his head again. He gasps a deep breath and then lets it out slowly, coaxing his heart rate back down nearer to his normal resting rate. It’s light out already, which means he slept for several hours again. The last few weeks he’s been sleeping more, which he attributes to feeling more comfortable and settled than he has for as long as he can remember. It’s a double-edged sword, though; more sleep means more opportunities for the dream to plague him.

The sun is just up and Jamie stills while he listens, trying to pinpoint where Clint is in the house. More often than not, Jamie can hear the soft sounds of Clint sleeping when he wakes up, or on a couple rare occasions, he’s heard Clint already downstairs, and smelled coffee brewing. This time there’s nothing and Jamie frowns, quickly getting up and pulling on some pants. He pads down the hall and peers in Clint’s bedroom, finding it empty. He stops and listens again for a moment but hears nothing, so he goes back into his room and grabs the gun from under his pillow before creeping downstairs.

The truck keys are on their hook by the door and there’s still no sign of Clint, and Jamie’s just starting to get really concerned when he looks out the kitchen window and sees a bunch of birds flap frantically away from behind the barn. Jamie grabs his boots from beside the door and shoves his feet in them, then grabs the ugly tourist hoodie from Cyprus and bolts across the yard.

When he gets to the barn, he slinks carefully around toward the back, gun raised and ready, prepared for anything. A moment later he rounds the corner, and rather than trouble, he finds Clint, shooting a bow and arrow. It’s the first time he’s seen Clint with a bow since he threw his in the waters off of Cyprus. Jamie doesn’t know a damn thing about archery but the bow Clint’s using looks sort of old fashioned to him; not like the one Clint was carrying in Germany or Wakanda. Standing within arm’s reach is a hand trolley with what looks like must be half the arrows from the bunker. There are five targets set up across the yard at varying distances and Clint is firing at them, completely focused on what he’s doing. Jamie relaxes and stands back, staying quiet and just watching.

He seems to be shooting randomly, mostly hitting a different target each time. Not every shot is hitting the bullseye – they’re all over the rings, really – a far cry from the skill he remembers Clint showing in Germany and Wakanda. Maybe it’s the bow. After just a few seconds, though, Jamie stops watching where the arrows are landing and focuses on Clint; his movement is fluid and unbelievably beautiful to watch. He moves with the grace of a dancer, loosing an arrow, pulling another from the bunch, nocking and drawing simultaneously, and loosing it, all in one smooth, continuous motion. Pull, nock, draw, loose; pull, nock, draw, loose; pull, nock, draw, loose. He doesn’t seem to be in a hurry – his movements aren’t rushed like they would be in a fight – but he’s completely focused, as though meditating.

When he finally stops, Jamie can see his chest heaving a little as he breathes a bit heavier than normal, and his face, neck, and arms are covered in a thin sheen of sweat. There’s something about that that has Jamie’s pulse quickening.

“My parents died when I was six,” Clint says without preamble; he’s staring down at the targets. Jamie stays quiet and still, recognizing that this is Clint giving a little piece of himself. “My brother and I were bounced around for a while and then we ran away to the circus when I was eight. Turned out I had some natural talent so they found a way to use me in the show. I had to practice with my bow for hours every day.” He squints at the target in the distance. “Been a while,” he adds and shakes his head a little.

Jamie’s trying to wrap his head around the fact that Clint apparently grew up in a circus, when his mind catches up and he realizes that Clint is disappointed in something on the targets. When Jamie finally looks down the yard at them, his eyes go wide with surprise. Arrows pack the targets, but not randomly as Jamie had thought at first. In fact, they are imbedded in each of the targets starting with a tight cluster of five at the middle, then growing outward in five perfect rings, twelve arrows in each ring, like the numbers on a clock. To his eye, all five of the targets look exactly the same. But it’s obvious that Clint’s not pleased with something.

“What do you see?” Jamie asks, and Clint finally turns and looks at him. “Down there,” he gestures at the targets with his chin, but keeps his eyes on Clint, watching closely. “What about that bothers you?”

Clint turns and glances back at the targets, then looks down at his arm as he takes off the guard. “The fourth ring on the 55-yard target. The arrow at eight o’clock. And the first ring on the 50-yard target. Two o’clock.”

Jamie squints down at the target. “What about them?” he asks with a frown, because he can barely pick out the specific arrows Clint’s talking about, even with his enhanced vision, much less see anything unusual about them.

“They’re at least a half inch off target,” Clint says, bending down to pick up a couple stray arrows that had fallen to the ground as he grabbed others too quickly.

Jamie snorts because the circles all look perfect to him. “You can’t be serious,” he says. Clint just flicks a quick glance at him and the look in his eyes tells him that Clint is definitely serious. Jamie shakes his head. “Come on, Clint.”

“You hear about Sokovia?” Clint asks, looking back at the targets.

Of course he has. He’d been monitoring the news obsessively during that time, looking for any word about Steve. Jamie pauses, mind scanning what he knows, but he can’t think of anything that would be relevant to this conversation. “Yeah, I read about it. And Steve mentioned it. He said you retired right after that.” Clint nods, staring down at the arrow in his hand as he fiddles with the fletching. “Did something happen there?” Jamie asks.

Clint nods again, shifting his gaze down toward the targets now. Jamie just waits him out because if there’s one thing he’s learned about Clint in the last few months, it’s that the guy will reveal what he wants when he wants to, and not before.

Clint sighs and seems to shake himself out of his thoughts, then turns to Jamie and stands straight, looking him in the eye. “I missed. During the fight. I missed a couple of my targets.” Clint sounds like he’s admitting guilt or confessing his sins.

Jamie wants to laugh but he doesn’t because it’s clear that this is serious to Clint. Instead he asks, “How many arrows did you shoot that day?”

Clint shrugs. “Hundreds.”

“And you missed a couple of your targets?”  

Clint understands what Jamie’s saying and shakes his head. “It’s not good enough.”

“For what?” Jamie asks incredulously. “Jesus, Clint, it was the middle of a fight. No one hits a target 100% of the time!”

“I do!” Clint yells vehemently. “Because when I don’t, people die!” Clint stops and looks away, face betraying the same levels of anguish as his words.

“People die in war, Clint. You can’t save everybody,” Jamie tries to reason with him.

Clint glares furiously at him. “I know that better than you ever will!” he yells.

“I don’t think you do,” Jamie grits out through clenched teeth, trying to restrain his own growing anger.

Clint seems to realize what he’s said and he closes his eyes for a moment. “I’m sorry,” he says when he opens them again.

The apology dissipates much of Jamie’s ire but they’re both still glowering at each other.

“So is this why you retired?” Jamie scoffs with lingering sharpness. “Because you were a half inch off on a few targets?”

Clint doesn’t say anything, just drops his bow on the trolley with little care and makes like he’s going to head toward the targets. When Jamie realizes his sarcastic question hit the mark, he grabs Clint’s arm and tugs him around to face him again. “Please tell me that’s not why you retired,” he says, with less heat and more surprise.

Clint jerks his arm from Jamie’s grip. “Look, Barnes,” he snaps, and Jamie flinches, because Clint’s never called him Barnes – had refused to, even when Jamie suggested it. “I’m not super powered and I can’t fly, or any of that other shit. All I’m good for is my aim; it’s all I’ve got. It’s my job to be up high and protect people. If I’m missing shots, I’m not even any good for that.”

Jamie stares wide-eyed at Clint. “That’s messed up,” he says eventually, but Clint starts to walk away and Jamie grabs his arm again. “Clint, even at your worst you’re probably fifty times better than the next best guy. A hundred times. If you’re worried about protecting your team, you gotta know that there’s no way they aren’t better off with you out there with them.”

“And when do I stop? Huh?” Clint retorts angrily, pulling his arm sharply from Jamie’s grip. “When I miss five shots? Ten? Where’s the line? When I get my team killed?” he yells. “I’ve already done that. I’m not going to do it again!”

Jamie’s brows knit together in confusion. “What’re you talking about?”

Clint snaps his mouth shut and shakes his head and then turns, pushing the trolley toward the targets.

“Then why did you even come when Steve called?” Jamie shouts after him, increasingly impatient with Clint’s irrational obstinance. “If you think you’re so useless, why did you come?”

Clint sighs harshly and turns back. “I told you, I owed him,” Clint snarls with a hard expression. “And if you owe someone and they call to collect, then you go. Besides, we all know I wasn’t actually trying to hit anyone in Germany.” Clint turns his back again and starts the cart toward the targets again. “I’m going into Prague in a little while. Let me know if you want anything,” he throws over his shoulder, making it clear that he’s done with the conversation.

Jamie’s sure there’s more to the story – that there’s something Clint isn’t telling him – and he’s fucking tired of all the secrets and mystery. So he waits until the battered blue truck is rolling down the drive, and goes immediately to the cupboard in the kitchen where Clint stashes the laptop when he’s not using it. He opens it and turns it on, and then begins to search.

At first, he focuses on Sokovia, finding every article and piece of video he can that might shed some light. Most of the video is of Steve or Iron Man or the Hulk and he’s seen most of it before. There are a few more clips of the Scarlet Witch – or Wanda, as he knows her now – and only a couple fleeting glimpses of Black Widow or Hawkeye. After more than an hour of searching, he’s pretty sure he’s found all he’s going to from Sokovia that might enlighten him about whatever Clint’s issues are – and that’s very little. He doesn’t see Clint miss any targets he was shooting at in the total of 23 seconds of video he finds of Hawkeye. He huffs a frustrated breath and sits back to think about where to look next.

In a sudden moment of curiosity, he types “Phil” and “SHIELD” into the search engine. He’s hoping that thanks to the SHIELD files the Black Widow dumped onto the internet a few years back, he might find some answers. The search is too broad though and it generates a lot of nothing, so he adds “Hawkeye” into the mix since Clint had said that Phil was his handler. With that search, Jamie quickly learns that “Phil” is Philip J. Coulson, and that he was Hawkeye and Black Widow’s handler on Strike Team Delta for several years. It doesn’t take long to find that Coulson had tried to stop Loki on the helicarrier and been killed in the process; that must have been devastating for Clint. Jamie reads his obituary and his personnel file and his AARs, gaining insight and a certain appreciation for the man.

But that’s all background noise so he loses patience and quickly moves on to searching for anything about Clint. He finds a huge file with Clint’s AARs and scans them greedily. From what he can tell, he was a highly valued asset, and highly respected agent. He finds a file that details the explosion that peppered Clint’s back with shrapnel scars, and another that makes him sick as it describes the torture he’d suffered in Budapest, leaving him with the angry crescent-shaped scar on his back that Jamie has glimpsed a few times.

The reading is dense and time-consuming, so after a while he begins a search for video from the Chitauri invasion since he knows there were a lot of cameras out that day and he hopes maybe he’ll get a fuller view of Hawkeye in action. He doesn’t have much luck, just some brief shaky iPhone videos of Clint, up high on a building, firing arrow after arrow and knocking the alien invaders out of the sky, one after another. He winces as a brief clip catches Hawkeye swinging wide around a building and crashing through a window.

The alien invasion generated a lot of news, much of which Jamie has read in the past, though at the time, he was looking for information about Steve. This time he looks more closely for any mention of Clint and finds one that alludes to the fact that he joined the fray later than the rest of the Avengers - after the attack on the helicarrier - though nothing tells him where he was up to that point. He goes back to Clint’s AARs and looks for the one related to the battle, and eventually finds it in a larger folder with several other files in it, including medical and psychological reports, and, oddly, one labeled “Corroborating Statements”. Inside are files labeled with each of the Avengers’ names - including Steve. A thick sense of foreboding settles over Jamie and he hesitates, beginning to fear what he’s going to find. In the end though, his need to know is stronger than his reluctance. He clicks on Steve’s statement first and reads his formal but emphatic words - a strong endorsement of the archer and how he’d been integral to the defeat of the Chitauri. He’s too impatient to read through all of them, so he closes out of that folder.

He opens Clint’s medical report next and skims it. It details the myriad pieces of glass embedded in his arms and face, a couple broken ribs, and a concussion. None of it terribly surprising given just the brief clips he’d seen and he could have sustained all of those injuries just going through the window. But it also describes severe dehydration, short-term malnutrition, and near collapse from exhaustion. The doctor’s notes convey a severity out of scale with what he expects Clint would have sustained during a single battle. Jamie’s brows knit together when he finds multiple brain scans in the file, apparently taken over the course of several days following the invasion but notes for each of them report that nothing out of the ordinary was found.

Jamie’s finger hesitates over the link to a large file that contains Clint’s post-invasion psychological evaluation. That feels somehow too invasive, though, so he doesn’t click it open, moving past it to what he’d started looking for in the first place: Clint’s AAR from the incident. It’s a large document – larger than any of the others Jamie had read – but he supposes that something like an alien invasion warrants more description than a typical mission. He squints at the screen, eyes skipping greedily over the words there: Project Pegasus… Tesseract… portal… Dr. Selvig… Director Fury… … Loki… compulsion… …mind control.

Jamie’s heart pounds in his chest as he reads Clint’s account, and when he finishes, he goes back to the beginning. He reads more slowly the second time through, hoping – praying – that he’d somehow misunderstood, but he knows he hasn’t. He’s so absorbed in the document, reading it through for a third time, that he never hears the pickup return, or the barn door close. And he doesn’t notice Clint walking across the yard.

***

By the time he’s back from Prague, Clint has cooled down completely. He’d known when he’d set up the targets that Jamie was likely to find him and he’d started shooting with the unexpected realization that he didn’t mind the idea of telling Jamie about the circus; that he was ready to share that part of himself. But the conversation had quickly diverted into areas that Clint hadn’t been prepared for and he’d reacted badly.

It had always been Phil who kept him in check before, reaffirming his value and keeping his expectations realistic. After Loki, without Phil’s steadying voice in his ear, Clint’s insecurities had spiraled. It only got worse after Sokovia. Surprisingly, though, by the time Clint’s driving back from Prague, it’s not Buck, or Loki, or even Phil’s words playing on a loop in his head. It’s Jamie’s quiet scoff at Clint’s ridiculous self-expectations that’s settled easily into his mind. The words feel comfortable there, next to his memory of Phil’s similar exhortations.

Clint glimpses Jamie through the window as he approaches the house and he feels an agreeable warmth wash over him. He opens the kitchen door with the intention of apologizing, but when Jamie hears him and turns, he’s gaping at Clint, his face a complex mix of emotions.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Jamie asks, practically choking on the words.

Clint freezes. “Tell you what?”

“About Loki?” Jamie hisses, and Clint belatedly notices the powered-up laptop sitting in front of him.

“What the hell are you doing?” he yells, rushing over and slamming the laptop closed. “Are you crazy?” He pulls the computer apart and yanks the battery away from the body. “What sites were you on?” Panic is rising in Clint because if any of Ross’ or Stark’s tech is looking, their safehouse could be burned.

Jamie ignores Clint’s question, still staring at him with wide, hurt eyes. It quickly shifts to anger. “Answer me! Why didn’t you tell me about Loki?”

Clint tosses the disassembled laptop back onto the table. “What about Loki?” Clint asks, sounding much more calm than he feels.

“You know what I’m talking about! It’s all out there on the internet. He fucking mind controlled you?” Jamie yells.

“So what?” Clint answers, standing stiffly.

“So what?” Jamie stands suddenly, his chair actually falling backward this time. “You didn’t think maybe you should share that little piece of information?”

“No, I didn’t, because It’s none of your goddamned business!”

Jamie flinches at Clint’s words, and then stalks across the kitchen. “Fuck you,” he says coldly over his shoulder as he slams out the door into the yard.

“Shit,” Clint hisses and then picks up a coffee mug and throws it across the room so it shatters into a million pieces.

And then because that was an incredibly immature thing to do, he gets the broom and dustpan and immediately cleans up his mess.

He goes to the refrigerator and takes out some vegetables, then starts chopping blindly. He doesn’t have any idea what he’s going to cook but it feels good to focus his frustration and self-loathing on the massacre of onions and celery. He stews for a while, swinging wildly between guilt and resentment and regret and trying to figure out where he should ultimately settle. Five minutes later he settles on regret and tosses the knife aside before storming out of the house after Jamie. He finds him doing push-ups behind the garage where Clint had been shooting his bow earlier. He doesn’t acknowledge Clint when he approaches.

“Look, I’m sorry,” he starts, because an apology is usually the best way to begin when you’ve fucked up so badly. “It’s not that I was intentionally keeping it from you.” Jamie scoffs and then stands up and glares at him but doesn’t say anything. Clint can’t bring himself to look Jamie in the eye, instead stares over Jamie’s shoulder. “It’s just… It’s not that I didn’t want to tell you. I knew I should. I just… I try not to even think about it, much less talk about it.”

“That’s convenient,” Jamie retorts bitterly.

“I’m sorry.” Clint doesn’t know what else to say.

Jamie glares at him for another moment and then his face shutters. “Sure,” he says, his voice flat and his eyes suddenly devoid of anything.

Jamie’s expression makes something in Clint run cold and he closes his eyes to steel himself to tell Jamie the things he never said to Fury, or to Psych, or even to Natasha. Something is probably irreparably broken between them, but he knows he owes Jamie at least this much. Clint sucks in a breath and closes his eyes for a moment, then digs deep to find a small reserve of calm, and starts to talk.

“Loki had me under his control for three days. And every minute of that time, I was in there, screaming and fighting to break free. I tried to resist him. I tried so hard,” Clint’s voice breaks a little and he stops and gathers himself. “In the end, not even counting the people down on the streets, I caused the deaths of 34 people,” he says, his voice shaky. “Most of them people I knew and worked with. People I liked. People with husbands and wives and kids that I knew, too. People like Phi--” Clint stops abruptly as bile rises up in his throat and he swallows it down, looking away into the woods. He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly before turning back to Jamie. “I killed Phil. I loved him, and I killed him. And I’m sorry. I should have told you because… because you thought you were alone but you never were. And it was so fucking selfish of me not to tell you, but I couldn’t— I can’t—" Clint fights to keep it together as everything he’s been holding inside for the last four years threatens to break free. “I’m sorry,” he chokes out again, then turns and walks back to the house, his breath catching and vision blurred.

When he gets to the kitchen and picks up the knife again, his hand is shaking, and it hits Clint like a truck that this pain and turmoil is only a little about Phil and mostly about Jamie. About knowing he’d hurt Jamie and that he could lose this… whatever it is that they have here. He’d been denying his feelings for a long time but he can’t lie to himself anymore. Jamie could leave and Clint might lose him too and if he does— Clint drops the knife and leans his hands against the counter, dropping his head and breathing fast as panic wells inside him.

A few seconds later, the door bursts open and Clint startles and stands upright as Jamie moves quickly toward him, an unrecognizable expression on his face. He grabs Clint at the shoulders and pushes him hard against the wall.

“Wha—” Clint starts, but before he can get the word out, Jamie is on him, crashing their mouths together. He opens his mouth to Jamie’s tongue by instinct, but the signals in Clint’s brain are misfiring a little as he struggles to keep up with Jamie’s desperate attack, hands and tongue seemingly everywhere at once.

A moment later, Jamie rips his mouth away and ducks his face into Clint’s neck, hands still and fisted in the front of Clint’s shirt. “I’m sorry,” he whispers unsteadily. “I’m so sorry that happened to you.”

Clint barks out a harsh laugh. “Don’t,” he insists, squeezing his eyes shut and shaking his head. “Don’t even say shit like that after what you’ve been through.”

“Its not the same,” Jamie denies, shaking his head as well. “I didn’t love any of them. It’s not the same.”

Clint tries to respond but instead of words, a gut-wrenching sob escapes from his chest. Jamie releases his shirt and wraps his arms around Clint and Clint does the same and a second later his legs give out. They end up sitting on the floor, Clint’s head cradled against Jamie’s chest as he finally lets go for the first time since Phil died. It’s horrifying and humiliating but he can’t stop and part of him doesn’t want to. He sobs for what feels like an eternity, until he’s wrung out, exhausted and shaky, but still held close in Jamie’s unyielding arms.

When there are no more tears – what feels like a lifetime later - Clint’s shivering uncontrollably and Jamie relaxes his hold, gently coaxing Clint up onto his feet. “Come on,” he says, and Clint follows obediently. Jamie leads him upstairs to Clint’s bedroom, strips him down to his t-shirt and underwear, and tucks him into the bed like a child before leaving the room. Something in Clint’s chest sinks as he watches Jamie go and he closes his eyes against the debilitating sight. His body shudders with a cold that has creeped into his bones so deep that it feels like it will never go away. A moment later, Clint startles when he feels a warm cloth wiping his face.

“Shh,” Jamie says softly, even though Clint hasn’t said anything. “It’s okay,” he croons as he finishes cleaning the tears and snot and sweat off of Clint’s face. Jamie tosses the washcloth on the floor, then stands and quickly strips out of his clothes and slips into the bed, spooning up behind him. A massive shudder wracks Clint’s body and Jamie pulls him in close, letting his warmth seep into Clint. “I’ve got you,” Jamie murmurs. “It’s okay.”

Clint falls asleep to the steady repeat of Jamie’s soothing words.

***

When Clint wakes the next morning, Jamie is still in the bed with him, relaxed, but eyes watching with wary concern. Clint shifts and cradles his face with one hand, stroking his thumb over Jamie’s cheek twice before leaning in and kissing him, slow and easy at first, but Jamie quickly turns it deeper and a little desperate. The kiss breaks when Jamie tugs at him, spreading his legs as Clint rolls and settles in between. He cages Jamie’s head with his arms and drops his mouth back down.

Jamie never goes back to the other room.

***

Clint pushes the last bite of chicken into his mouth and stands, taking his plate to the sink before circling to the pantry to grab the cell phone off the top shelf. He used to have to stop himself from checking it multiple times a day. Now four months into their sojourn in Czechia, he sometimes goes two or three days before remembering to check it at all.

When he powers it on, he expects to see either a blank screen or a short message telling them to stay where they are. Today’s message is different.

<Progress>

Something twists in Clint’s gut and he stares at the phone for a long moment before he powers it down and snaps it closed.

But Jamie’s noticed. “Clint?”

Clint forces his mouth into a smile before he turns back around. “Steve says he’s making progress.”

Something undefinable flickers across Jamie’s face. “What does that mean?”

“I have no idea.” Clint puts the phone back in its spot in the corner on the top shelf, then gets another beer from the refrigerator and sets it in front of Jamie before sitting down again. “But if we’re lucky, it means we can get out of here soon.” He hopes the smile he flashes looks sincere.

“Mmhmm,” Jamie hums, picking at the label on the bottle.

“Look, Steve’s not going to let you down.”

Jamie sits back and takes a long drink of the beer. When he sets the bottle down, he looks out the window for a moment before turning back to Clint. “There’s nothing he can do to help me.”

“Of course, there is. Rogers is like a dog with a bone - he’s not gonna let go. He searched for you for two years. You gotta know that he’s doing everything he can to make it safe for you to go back.”

“Go back to what?” Jamie asks.

Clint blinks. For the first time he considers that what Jamie would go ‘back’ to is a cryochamber. He feels a dull bank of nausea at the thought. “Look, you… you don’t have to go back into stasis. That was your choice and you don’t have to choose it again.”

Jamie scoffs lightly.

“Steve will make sure you’re safe.” The words sound hollow, even to his own ear.

“It feels safe here,” Jamie says quietly, staring at his beer bottle.

“Jamie…” Clint starts then stops, unsure what he means to say.

When Jamie looks up at him, his eyes are searching. “Would it be so bad? Just staying here?”

It’s terrifying how ‘not bad’ that would be. Clint swallows hard. “You’re not mine to keep hidden away in some safe house Czechia,” he says softly.

“Right,” Jamie answers flatly before looking away.

“I just meant, you’re Steve’s—”

“I’m Steve’s obligation. Or at least he thinks I am. And I was his friend once, a long time ago, but I’m not that guy anymore and I never will be again, no matter how badly he wants me to be.” Jamie squints at Clint.  “What do you think’s gonna happen if he somehow figures out a way to guarantee the Winter Soldier can’t come back? Huh? You think I’ll just go following after Stevie like some little duckling following after its mom?”

That’s sort of exactly what Clint had thought, but now he feel his heartrate rising and his stomach is fluttering. He wills his body to remain still. “You really want to stay here?” he asks, his voice betraying nothing.

Jamie shifts, then shrugs. “Good a place as any,” he says, but doesn’t meet Clint’s eye. “I could mow the lawn for you after you leave so you wouldn’t have to pay the other guy. Make repairs. Stuff like that.” His blue eyes dart up and meet Clint’s and then skitter away quickly.

“Yeah.” Clint nods his head slowly, in stark contrast to the rapid staccato of his heartbeat. “Or maybe, if this shit is ever resolved, you could come with me.”

Jamie’s eyes snap to Clint’s. “What are you saying?”

Clint takes a deep, steadying breath and looks Jamie in the eye. “I’m saying, if things ever get resolved, you could come back home with me. I’m saying I want you to. If you want to.”

Jamie watches him closely for a moment. His face is still but his eyes are dancing. “What’s your other place like?” he asks, doing a piss-poor job of feigning indifference.

Clint’s lips quirk minutely. “It’s a hundred-year-old wreck of a farm. Needs a lot of work.”

Jamie sits back and crosses his arms. “So you’re looking for free labor, is what you’re saying.”

Clint scoffs. “Dude, you are seriously a long way from free. Do you have any idea how much you eat?” he asks, pointedly looking at the empty pan which had held six servings of chicken piccata when they sat down to eat. Clint ate two. He stands to clear it away to the sink but catches Jamie’s smirk before he turns his back.

“You got many books there?” Jamie asks from behind him.

“Some,” Clint answers. “Could get more,” he offers. “Amazon has an endless supply and free two-day delivery.”

Clint scrubs at the pan while Jamie pretends he’s thinking it over.

“Yeah, sure, I guess I could come help out if you need it.”

They both know there are still some pretty big ‘ifs’ hanging over them: if Steve can clean up the mess with the Accords; if they can resolve the situation with Stark; if they can figure out a way to keep the Winter Soldier away. But Clint doesn’t care because for the first time in a very long time, he’s looking forward to the future. He’s grinning to himself when suddenly Jamie is there in his space, turning him and pressing a kiss to his lips. It lingers but doesn’t turn heated.

When Clint pulls back a moment later he takes a steadying breath. “I gotta tell you,” he says around a small, wet laugh, “this is terrifying for me.”

Jamie huffs. “You and me both, pal,” he murmurs before dipping his head to kiss Clint again.

***

Jamie jerks beside him and Clint is instantly alert. It’s morning and light out, and given it’s December, that means they’ve both slept late again. That seems to be happening more and more lately.  

“Hey, you okay?” Cint asks, his voice sleep-rough. He turns and rests a hand on Jamie’s chest.

Jamie stares at the ceiling. “Trigger dream.” That’s not new; it usually happens a couple times a week. “A little foggy,” he adds after a few seconds.

Clint tenses. That is new. “Can I do anything?” He tries not to let the worry he’s feeling creep into his voice.

“Just, maybe, talk to me, will ya?” Jamie asks, then turns and gives him a tentative smile.

“About what?”

“I don’t know. The circus? What was it like?”

Clint’s been telling him stories about Carson’s and Jamie can’t get enough, though he seems to think that Clint’s making a lot of them up. But they make him smile and laugh and something about that hits Clint so deep in his chest that sometimes his breath catches at the sight. Jamie flips over onto his stomach and rests his head on his folded arms, watching Clint with anticipation. With a ready audience, Clint lies back and starts talking.

Ten minutes later, Jamie seems better and Clint’s relaxed considerably as he tells his story. Jamie’s propped up on his elbows now, head ducked and his shoulders shaking with quiet laughter.

“It was a train?” he asks around a snicker.

“Yeah. Well, not exactly. We didn’t use the tracks. It was more like a caravan on the road but a lot of them used old repurposed rail cars.”

“And the whole circus travelled like that?”

“Nah. Mostly just the ones who’d been around forever, and sometimes they’d get passed along to newer people when the old ones retired or died. Circus folks are superstitious, they don’t like change, so they just kept recycling the damn things.”

“I’ve been on a lot of freight trains—” Jamie stops mid-sentence and looks confused for a second.

“Jamie?”

He flicks his eyes up to Clint’s and his expression clears and he gives a faltering grin. “I’ve been on a lot of trains and for the most part, they’re pretty damned uncomfortable.”

Clint waits for a second to see if Jamie has anything to add. Sometimes he wants to talk about the memories that are now coming increasingly regularly, and sometimes he doesn’t; Clint lets him set the pace. Whatever that was, though, Jamie’s moved on, so Clint lets it go.

“Not the way these guys did it. Carson had an old luxury Pullman car that he hauled behind a semi-truck. Said it was more comfortable than anything modern. I’m telling you, these guys would trick them out like you wouldn’t believe. There was this one freight car, it was unbelievable—”

Next to him, Jamie goes noticeably rigid and Clint stops. “Jamie?”

“Ready to comply,” Jamie says flatly, his gaze turned straight ahead toward the wall.

“What?” Clint asks with a small puff of confused laughter. But his humor doesn’t last long because when Jamie turns his head and looks at Clint, his expression is completely blank, nothing like the animated face he’s been growing dangerously attached to over the last few months. “Hey, you okay?” he asks cautiously, his mind working frenetically to figure out what just happened.

Jamie’s eyes cut around the room before they land back on Clint, and when they narrow ominously, Clint instantly understands that Jamie is gone and he’s looking at the Winter Soldier. Clint’s made a career – a damn successful one – of reading people and he catches the micro-shift in Jamie’s expression that tells him he better fucking move - now.

The room erupts into motion as Clint rolls away from Jamie a split second before the metal fist pounds into the pillow exactly where Clint’s head was.

He bolts from the bed, going for his bow, but the Winter Soldier is right behind him and before he can grab his weapon, there’s a vicious grip on his arm and he’s spun around, wrenching his shoulder. Clint gasps and tries to throw a punch but the Soldier blocks it easily with his human arm. Clint catches a glimpse of dead eyes as a metal fist yanks him up off the ground by his neck and throws him ten feet across the room where he slams into the wall and crumples to the floor. Clint feels something give in a very bad way when he lands hard on his side. He rolls onto his back trying to gasp through the pain but sees the Soldier stalking toward him. He waits until the man is reaching for him before he puts everything he has into rearing both knees up toward his chest and thrusting out with a double-legged kick to the Solder’s chest, sending him tumbling backward.

Clint rolls sideways toward the corner and grabs the bow that’s leaning there and instinct and adrenaline have him back up with an arrow nocked and drawn before he can even register how excruciating the movement was. “STOP!” he barks, the arrow six inches from the Winter Soldier’s left eye. A flash of confusion flickers across the Soldier’s face, like he can’t believe that Clint somehow managed to get the jump on him this way. Well, fuck him, too.

The Soldier watches impassively as Clint’s arms begin to shake. There’s definitely something seriously wrong with his right side, but the whole quadrant is ablaze in pain so he’s not sure what the specific damage is. “Jamie,” his voice is a strangled whisper. “Jamie, please. Please don’t make me do this.” But even as he says it, he knows he can’t loose the arrow because the Winter Soldier may be standing in front of him but Jamie is in there somewhere.

And then his internal battle ends abruptly because in the blink of an eye, before Clint can react, the Soldier snatches the arrow from where it’s perched unmoving on the bow and swings it down in a blazing arc, driving it deep into Clint’s thigh. Clint screams and starts to go down, but the Soldier catches his neck with his metal hand and lifts him, pressing him hard into the wall behind. Clint drops his bow and scrabbles at the hand cutting off his oxygen, trying to break the grip on his throat.

The Soldier tips his head and almost looks curious. He could have easily crushed Clint’s throat by now – killed him instantly – but for some reason he hasn’t. It makes Clint think of a predator toying with its prey before they kill it and he wonders if Hydra trained the Winter Soldier to be cruel. Clint only has seconds before he loses consciousness, or more likely dies, and he wants to make them count for something. “It’s not your fault, Jamie,” he manages to get out, his voice a harsh rasp. He only hopes that when - if - Jamie wakes up from this, he’ll carry the memory of Clint’s words with him. He thinks maybe something flickers in the Soldier’s expression, but then his face hardens and the hand on his neck grips tighter. A second later, his vision starts to tunnel and then out of the corner of his eye, he sees the Soldier’s human fist the instant before it makes contact—

Chapter Text

The Soldier looks around. Everything is unfamiliar, including the man bleeding on the floor. He could have easily killed the man - probably should have - but he stopped himself just short of that without knowing why. He stares and tries to concentrate on what he should be doing, but his mission objective is unknown. He needs to contact his handlers. He needs mission objectives. He glances quickly around the room and then back at the man on the floor. The threat is neutralized for the moment but it needs to be contained. He quickly assesses that the man should be unconscious for long enough, then he slips out of the room to do a quick reconnaissance of his surroundings. When he returns a few minutes later, the man is still unconscious as expected, so he yanks the sheet from the bed and rips it apart, then grabs the man’s wrist and drags him out the door.  

***

Clint blinks his way into consciousness and lifts his head. Fuck. His entire body is screaming and he’s bound to one of the dining room chairs. His head is pounding and he has to concentrate for a moment to remember what the hell happened that he’s waking up like this. When he does, a wave of abject despair washes over him. One minute Clint had been talking to Jamie, making him laugh, and the next Jamie had become the Winter Soldier. He has no idea what had caused the sudden shift, but the only possible explanation is that it was something Clint had said or done.

There are more pressing things to think about at the moment though. He looks around and sees he’s alone but a second later he hears a thump from above. He shifts and cranes his neck to try to get a look at the stairs but stops abruptly and squeezes his eyes shut when pain engulfs him. He grits his teeth and holds back a groan as he carefully breathes through his nose, waiting for the pain to subside a bit. When it finally does, he opens his eyes to assess.

His head is pounding and his right eye is swollen nearly shut. He can feel the tight pull of dried blood crusted on his face and he can see a ribbon of still-tacky crimson painting his bare chest. (He spares a half-second to be thankful that he’d slipped on a pair of boxer briefs after he and Jamie had fucked, or he’d probably be sitting here stark naked.)

Further down, his neck is sore and feels tight – swollen – and Clint’s pretty sure if he had a mirror he’d be able to see distinct finger marks rising black and blue there, much like they had on his wrist all those weeks ago. It’ll probably hurt like hell to swallow. And now that he’s had that thought, he knows he has to test the hypothesis; Clint’s always had a need to face pain head-on. He swallows and the pain sparks from damage inside his throat as well. For a second, he worries that if the inflammation increases he could suffocate, but since there’s not a damn thing he could do about it if it did, he doesn’t bother to dwell on it.

Moving on. His right shoulder carries a deep, deep ache, that, when he tries to move a little, localizes into a sharp jagged pain that causes him to gasp and tells him he likely has a broken clavicle. Fuck. Broken bones are always bad, but the clavicle can be particularly problematic because there’s no good way to immobilize it. Things just keep getting better.

Clint takes a shallow, wheezing breath and finally turns his attention to the thing he’s been avoiding; the fucking arrow that is still sticking out of his leg. It was one of his custom 35” arrows, but it’s broken now with only a few inches still protruding from his leg. The wound is ragged, and combined with the smear of blood visible on the floor and the broken shaft, it all seems to add up to the fact that Clint was probably dragged downstairs.

He’s really fucking thankful he wasn’t conscious for that.

The wound looks to have bled a lot, though it doesn’t look like enough to suggest the arrow hit a major vessel, not to mention that he’d be long dead by now if it had. But still, his entire thigh is bloody and there’s a small pool of red on the chair between his legs. Clint shifts minutely to test the waters and the limited movement rockets fire from his hip to his knee. He hisses and grimaces and then concentrates on his controlled panting, pushing down his instinct to yell. When he manages to open his eyes again, he sees fresh rivulets of blood seeping out of the wound and down his leg, adding new dampness to the chair.

All in all, the situation pretty much sucks but he's faced worse.  

With an understanding of what his injuries and limitations are, Clint moves on from that since it’s the least relevant thing to him right now. More important is how the fuck he’s going to get out of this and how he can get Jamie back. Steve had hypothesized that much like with Clint and Loki, “cognitive recalibration” seemed to work to disengage the Winter Solder, possibly in combination with water, since it had been hard falls into rivers that had apparently broken Hydra’s hold on Bucky in D.C., and then again in Berlin. Clint closes his eyes and sighs. In his condition, there’s little chance that he’s going to be able to overpower the Winter Soldier, much less even get the chance to try. Right now, he wouldn’t give even odds that he’ll make it out of this alive.

Still, Clint’s not a quitter, so he shoves those thoughts aside. He needs to assess the big picture. He’s bound to one of the heavy dining room chairs with what appears to be strips of cloth torn from their bedroom sheets and twisted to reinforce them into a rope of sorts. His wrists and ankles are attached to arms and legs respectively. It’s makeshift at best and given time, he can easily get out of it. But time is probably one thing he doesn’t have much of because he can hear the Winter Soldier moving around upstairs.

The chair he’s tied to has been yanked away from the table and is at a haphazard angle so he’s mostly facing into the front hall and he can just see the bottom of the stairs. Nothing seems out of place in the hall or living room, that he can see. He glances out the window. Judging by the angle of the sun, he guesses he was out for no more than an hour.

He cranes his neck again to glimpse more of the stairs, and yep, there are streaks of blood on the steps as well as the smears on the floor between them and his chair. The Soldier definitely fucking dragged him down here from the bedroom. Nice. There are probably a whole mess of bruises rising on his body that he can’t see yet - and can’t feel over the din of the more acute injuries. Awesome.

He twists as much as he can - ignoring the screaming agony that defines his entire body - looking behind himself and freezing when he sees the cell phone Steve had pushed into his hand all those months ago sitting on the dining room table. It’s powered on.

For the first time since he woke up, the beginning of panic starts to set in. He’s pretty sure if the Winter Soldier tried to call someone it wasn’t Steve, and Clint knows for a fact that the WSC has an ongoing, low-level monitoring program of old Hydra numbers, emails, and frequencies.    

Clint leans over - ignoring the way his body protests - to get at the bindings of his left hand with his mouth. He stops for a moment when he hears the Soldier’s heavy tread in the upstairs hall, but then continues when the boots start to climb the stairs to the attic. Clint tears at the material, ripping viciously with his teeth. He’s only got one goal at the moment: to get to the phone and destroy it.

He manages to tear through the makeshift rope incredibly quickly; fear and adrenaline are amazing like that. As soon as his wrist slips free, he twists again, extending his arm out toward the phone where it’s perched on the table, ignoring how his head pounds and his shoulder grinds and his leg lights up. But the phone is still a foot beyond his reach. He curses viciously under his breath.

He turns forward and bends low again, this time picking at the binding on his right wrist with his teeth, while his left hand attacks the rope securing his left ankle. The position hurts like hell and every exhale carries a pained whimper that he tries to suppress, but can’t quite. He’s making progress on both knots when he hears the Winter Soldier stalk across the upstairs hall and pause at the top of the steps. Clint freezes, his mouth on the rope, and holds his breath. There’s a moment of complete silence in the house. Clint’s eyes dart between the work he’s doing on the restraints and the stairs, waiting. He hears a creek on the floor above and he knows it’s that spot just at the top of the steps, on the left side. Clint slowly, very slowly, exhales, his breath shaking but silent, and waits some more. A few seconds later, there’s a hesitant foot on the top step.

Clint know what he has to do, even if he really, really wishes he didn’t. He sits up straight, grips the arms of the chair in his fists, then levers himself up quickly, propelling himself and the chair up and around a few inches. His vision starts greying out just as he hears the sound of the Soldier bounding down the steps. Clint immediately makes another attempt and the chair jumps and bangs on the wooden floor, moving several inches, and then he puts everything he has into scraping it the last few inches that he needs.

He can’t even see where he’s reaching because his vision is tunneling rapidly, but he feels his fingers wrap around the phone just as the Solder runs into the room. A second later, his wrist is held in a vice-grip. Neither of them move as they both pant through their adrenaline and when Clint’s vision clears, he’s staring into the very angry eyes of the Winter Soldier.    

“Jamie. Jamie, listen to me,” Clint gasps. The Soldier ignores him and pries the device from his hand. “No, no, listen! You have to turn it off! You have to turn off the—”

The Soldier backhands him, viciously hitting the side of his face that’s already a mess and cutting off the rest of Clint’s plea. An iron tang bursts in his mouth and he nearly loses consciousness again. When his head clears, he sees the Soldier slip the phone into the back pocket of his pants. He’s wearing jeans and his boots, but no shirt and Clint can see his own blood smeared on the Soldier’s arm and chest, and on the knuckles he’d beaten Clint with.

“Jamie—" Clint tries again, but stops when the Solder’s eyes narrow threateningly and the grip on his wrist tightens. “Okay, okay,” he says, and stills, waiting to see what happens next. He gives himself pretty low odds that he survives the next five minutes.  

A moment later, the grip on his arm releases and Clint relaxes fractionally. Until the Soldier pulls the SIG Sauer M 17 from behind him and points it at his head.

Clint reflexively puts his one free hand up. “Okay, wait. You don’t need to do that. Please don’t do that,” he begs. He’s not pleading for himself – Clint made his peace with the idea of death many years ago. His plea is for Jamie, and the guilt he’ll have to live with if he pulls the trigger. Clint feels a sense of desperation at the idea of putting that on him. “I promise. I won’t try that again. I swear,” he says, meaning every word if it keeps him alive and off Jamie’s conscience. “Just… please, listen to me for a second. Please?”

“Quiet!” the Soldier barks. “If you move, I’ll kill you.”

Clint nods obediently and slowly moves his hand back down to resettle it on the arm of the chair. “Not moving,” Clint assures him.

The Soldier backs away from him, gun still pointed at Clint’s head, before he disappears from sight. Clint can hear him move around in the library for a few seconds before he reappears, holding an electrical cord that he must have yanked from a lamp. Standing well out of Clint’s reach, he tucks the gun away and pulls out a knife – one of the switchblades Clint carries in his go-bag – and cuts the long cord in two. After he closes the knife, he moves closer and wraps one piece of the cord quickly around his freed arm, securing it tightly to the chair. Too tightly; Clint can feel it fucking with his circulation almost immediately, but he’s not about to test the Soldier’s mood by complaining about it. He uses the second piece to add to the bindings on Clint’s other arm.

When he steps back he reaches into his pocket and pulls out the phone, examining it closely.

Clint reaches into his memory to pull out the word he’s looking for. “Soldat,” he says softly, and the Soldier’s eyes snap back to him. “Soldat, listen. The phone,” he says, nodding toward the Soldier’s hand. “I wasn’t trying to call anyone, I was only trying to turn it off. You need to turn the phone off or it can be traced.” The Soldier doesn’t react to his words at all. “Do you understand what I’m saying. If you called someone, people could trace us to this location. They still can while the phone is on. You need to turn it off.”

The Soldier stares at him impassively for a moment, then looks at the phone in his hand before slipping it back into his pocket.

Clint closes his eyes and tries to rein in his growing fear and frustration. “No,” he says, when he opens them again and shakes his head. “No, you have to—” The gun is pointed at his head again and Clint stops.

“You are in no position to tell me what I have to do,” the Solder tells him menacingly, pressing it to Clint’s forehead.

Clint stares into the Soldier’s dead eyes, searching for Jamie, but he can’t see any sign of him there at all.

What feels like an eternity later, the Soldier tucks the gun away again and stares down at Clint for a second, raking his eyes over Clint’s body in a way that isn’t suggestive at all but rather frighteningly calculating. A cold shiver courses through Clint. For the first time, he realizes how fucking cold he is. He’s virtually naked and it’s December. The heat was turned down low while they slept the night before because Jamie runs like a friggin’ furnace and his presence in Clint’s bed of late has proved to be more than enough heat for Clint. They’d never made it out of bed this morning for Clint to turn up the heat before this shit-show began.

Just remembering he’s cold makes him shiver even harder, setting off a renewed chorus of pain throughout his body. He fades a little, then jerks his head up to see the Soldier is still looming over him, staring. He seems to be considering something which is frankly terrifying since Clint assumes he’s trying to decide if keeping Clint alive is worthwhile.

The Soldier squints at him a little, then says, “Keep still,” and moves closer.

“What? Why?” Clint asks, reflexively pushing himself away, recoiling in the chair as though he could disappear into it.

The Soldier ignores him, then says, “This will hurt.”

“It already fucking hurts,” Clint says quickly, his mind racing frantically as he tries to figure out what the Soldier is planning, and a small measure of panic sets in. “What? What are you doing?”

The Soldier reaches out toward his leg and Clint’s panic turns full-blown. He shifts in the chair, unable to stop himself from squirming, trying to find an escape he knows doesn’t exist. “No, don’t!” he yells. He needs a doctor – a surgeon – to take that thing out of his leg, not an amped up super soldier with no empathy.

The Soldier ignores him and grasps the remnant of the arrow that’s protruding from his leg; the jarring sends shock waves through him. Without pause, the Soldier yanks his arm upward and an instant later the agony hits, radiating from Clint’s leg until it consumes his whole body. He hears himself scream and then, mercifully, everything goes black.

***

He watches the man struggle against his bindings and then lose consciousness when he pulls the arrow free from his leg. He knows he made a mistake earlier, leaving him alone tied with something he could chew through. He won’t make the same mistake. He needs to continue surveying his location though, and that requires him to leave again, so he seeks out more electrical cords and secures him even more. As he’s winding a new cord around his elbow, his glance falls to the man’s wrist and he stops. The hand is swelling and the fingertips are beginning to turn blue.

Mission objective unknown.

He hesitates for a few seconds and then unties the cord and reties it so it’s still very secure, but slightly looser. He doesn’t know why he does that, but the hand lightens to pink quickly. He does the same with the other arm. The leg is bleeding sluggishly and he bends in close to inspect it, resting one hand there while he moves the thigh back and forth. He sits up and looks at his hand, then both hands. They’re covered in blood. It bothers him. He walks to the kitchen and washes his hands and arms, then splashes water on his chest where he sees more blood. He wants it off. He doesn’t bother to dry himself off before he loops back through the dining room, casting a quick glance at the man, before descending the stairs to do reconnaissance in the basement.

***

When Clint wakes up again he’s not quite as surprised, because if the Winter Solder was set on killing him, he would have done it in the bedroom, or in the dining room. Which he is no longer in.

He’s in the weapons bunker now, still tied to one of the dining room chairs, though much more securely now with several loops of baling wire from the barn. Clint sighs. There’s no way he can chew through that. Clint idlily wonders if the Soldier had just picked him up, chair and all, and carried him down here, or if he’d untied him first and carried them separately. He tries not to struggle against his restraints because, intellectually, he knows it won’t do him any good. But on a cellular level, Clint is unable to not fight to get free. Still, he watches the wire bite into his wrists and narrow lines of crimson begin to well on his skin. He knows he’s being an idiot but that doesn’t stop him.

He’s freezing – still in just his underwear – and his whole body is one big throbbing mass of pain. His right eye is so swollen now that he can’t open it at all. Fuck. Monovision sucks and makes escape more difficult. Not that he really thinks he’s likely to be able to go anywhere. Even if he somehow managed to get out of the damn chair, his leg isn’t likely to support his weight for more than a few steps.

His leg. Clint’s eyes dart down to look at his leg. It’s wrapped in a bandage but blood has seeped through a little. He can’t decide if he should be surprised about that. The Soldier had been brutal in his removal of the arrow, but he removed it and then bandaged it. Clint’s not 100% sure what that means, but he feels a little more confident that, for whatever reason, the Soldier isn’t intent on killing him. At least not yet.

He’s still considering his limited options when he hears footsteps and a few seconds later the Winter Soldier steps from the tunnel into the bunker. He stops when he sees Clint is awake and Clint’s adrenaline spikes. But the Solder just grunts and tosses one half-full duffle bag onto the floor and drops a couple empty ones onto the work surface before beginning to open the ammunition drawers and load their contents into one of them.

“Hey,” Clint rasps.

The Soldier casts him a fleeting glance and continues what he’s doing.

“Can I have some water?” His throat is burning and it hurts like fuck to swallow. He’s not under the delusion that water will really help, but it might bring a brief second of relief. At this point, Clint’s willing to settle for that. And getting dehydrated will only fuck him up worse.

The Soldier stops and stares at him blank-faced for a couple of seconds, then returns to his task.

“Hey, man, you obviously kept me alive for a reason but if you don’t give me some water, I’m not going to stay that way for very long.”

The Soldier stops again and considers him for another long moment before walking to the cupboard across the room and grabbing a bottle of water from the supplies stored there. He cracks it open and tips it so Clint can drink. It’s awkward because half of his mouth is swollen and clumsy, and water dribbles down his chin onto his chest as he drinks. But he was right; it feels good for a second, until the sharp sparks of pain catch up and he whimpers. He drinks as much as he can but the burning in his throat grows with each swallow and eventually he has to turn his head from the bottle. More water splashes on his chest and it’s pink from his blood by the time it courses its way down to soak into the cotton of his boxer briefs.

The Soldier grunts and pushes the bottle toward his mouth again, but Clint shakes his head once. “No,” he whispers.

The bottle is tossed into the corner and the Soldier goes back to loading the bag.

“Hey,” Clint says again, and this time the Soldier looks his way immediately. “I’m freezing. Do you think you could get me some clothes?”

The Soldiers eyes dart to the duffle on the floor and back to Clint as he works.

“Hey, you got some clothes in there? Come on, I’m freezing. Please,” he adds, not really believing that it will actually help.

The Soldier stops what he’s doing and watches him for a moment, seems to consider, then turns back to his task.

Well, fuck.

When he’s filled one of the duffle bags as full as it’s going to get, the Soldier grabs an AR-15 off of its mount on the wall and starts disassembling it. His hands work efficiently, his face is serene. When he finishes, he reassembles it and then grabs another, starting the process over again. The Soldier’s been trained well – never assuming an unfamiliar weapon is clean and ready to fire, checking to make sure it is himself.

Clint watches and drifts a little, hypnotized by the steady and well-practiced movement. Some time later, he’s startled out of his haze when the Soldier abruptly stops what he’s doing and leaves the bunker. He listens to the footsteps recede down the tunnel, gives it a few minutes, then cranes his neck to the side to watch the feed on the video monitors. He grimaces at the sharp pull in his clavicle but holds his position. A minute later, he sees the Soldier enter the kitchen and stand in the middle of the room as though confused. Eventually, he walks to the refrigerator and opens it. After staring for a moment, he reaches in and pulls out a container. Clint recognizes it as the leftover pasta from the night before. It was something quick and simple that Clint had thrown together because he and Jamie had spent a long day putting up insulation and drywall in the attic, and by the time they came downstairs, it was late and well past dark.

The Soldier opens the container and sniffs it, then throws it in the microwave, stares at the buttons for a few seconds before pressing some. Clint can see the light in the microwave flick on and he turns back around, the discomfort of the position too much to hold. Besides, there’s not much to see. Watching the Soldier stare at the microwave is no more interesting than staring at the microwave yourself.

When the Soldier returns several minutes later he has two pasta bowls in his hands. He sets them on the worksurface and pulls out a wire cutter, then efficiently cuts Clint’s left hand free. He sets the bowl on Clint’s lap and says, “Eat.”

Clint flexes his wrist and sees the recently formed crust break and small beads of fresh blood rise to the surface. He looks at the food in the dish: Fusilli with chicken, mushrooms, onions, tomatoes, and artichoke hearts. His stomach turns. He’s got no appetite, no strength to eat, even though he knows he should. “No thanks,” he mumbles.

The Soldier frowns at him. “You’re hungry,” he says after a second. “Eat.” Then his brows draw together as though in momentary confusion. Clint has a fleeting sense of déjà vu and gets the impression that the Soldier just did, too.

He glances at the bowl and shakes his head once. “Don’t want it.”

The Soldier looks down at the bowl in Clint’s lap. He stares for a moment and blinks, then reaches out and snatches it back, and Clint watches as he uses his fork to pick out the tomatoes and scrape them into his own bowl. When he’s gotten them all, he shoves the bowl into Clint’s hand. “Eat,” he grunts, then picks up his own bowl and starts shoveling food into his mouth.

Clint gapes for a second then closes his eyes as relief washes over him. Jamie’s in there somewhere. He doesn’t know how deep down, or if there’s any way to reach him, but at least he knows for sure now that he is in there. The tiniest spark of hope worms its way into Clint’s consciousness as he picks up his fork and takes a bite.

He eats what he can, which isn’t much, and then the Soldier rebinds his wrist with more baling wire. Clint watches as he seems to carefully wrap the wire so it doesn’t cut into the existing lines of broken skin and blood.   Emboldened by the knowledge that some part of Jamie is still there under layers of the Soldier, he catches the other man’s eye.

“Hey, where’re you going with all that fire power?” The raspy words barely make it out. He’s weak and exhausted and he’s fucking freezing.

The Soldier cuts his eyes to the cache of weapons and ammunition that he’s stockpiled in the bags, then back to Clint, but doesn’t say anything. A moment later he leaves the bunker, heading out through the tunnel toward the house.

Clint drops his head back and closes his eyes, hoping for sleep but doubting it will come while he’s practically naked, wired to a chair, and his body is one massive throbbing mess. Apparently he’s in bad enough shape that it doesn’t matter, or he’s been unconscious for a while because when he opens his eyes next, the Soldier is back. He’s sitting on the floor across the room from Clint and he’s holding the phone in his hand. Clint’s panic at the sight hasn’t lessened.

“Jamie…” he starts then stops when the Soldier glares at him. “Soldat, who did you call?”

The Soldier hesitates and glances down at the phone before looking back up at Clint. “No one answered.”

Clint closes his eyes for a second, then opens them again. “I know. But who did you try to call?”

The Soldier glares at him and Clint knows he’s not going to get an answer.

“Okay, you don’t want to tell me that, that’s fine. But when? How long has it been?” As he asks, he’s turning in the chair, craning his neck again to see what time the surveillance monitors read. It’s been several hours since they woke up this morning and Clint accidently triggered Jamie. Plenty of time for someone to trace the phone and get to their location if the call was made soon after Clint lost consciousness the first time. Closing in on the window Clint would expect company to arrive if the Soldier made a call right away.

The Soldier doesn’t respond. “Okay, but Jamie… Soldat, you need to turn off the phone, alright?”

The Soldier looks at the phone emotionlessly.

Clint’s adrenaline is spiking again and he jerks in his bindings, sending an excruciating tremor through his body and starting his wrists bleeding again. “Hey, listen to me. You need to turn off the phone!”

The Soldier narrows his eyes at Clint.

“Listen, listen,” Clint says, half-frantic again and squirming in the chair. “Hydra is gone. Your old handlers are gone. They’re not going to come for you. Other people are going to come for you. For both of us. People who would just as soon see both of us dead – or worse. You get that? You need to turn off the phone because the longer it’s on the more likely they’ll be able to trace us here.”

The Soldier stares at Clint for a few seconds before he drops his eyes to the phone in his hand. He looks like he’s about to turn it off when they hear an explosion close by. The Soldier bolts to his feet and Clint cranes his neck to look at the security monitors. Dread hits hard as he sees a phalanx of soldiers rushing into the main house. They don’t have much time, maybe five minutes if they’re lucky; a lot less if the Soldier left the door to the tunnel open in the house’s basement.

Clint jerks in his seat, twisting his arms and legs frantically, pulling against the bindings with a renewed sense of urgency.  “Jamie… Soldat, untie me.”

The Soldier ignores him and grabs more weapons from the wall and jams them into the duffle bag.

“Hey, come on. Please. Untie me.” Clint can hear the desperation in his voice.

The Soldier doesn’t even acknowledge that Clint said anything.

Clint forces himself to stop fighting the restraints and calm himself a little. “Okay, look, I get it – you’re outta here. That’s good. Get out and run. Get away from them because whatever they want it’s not gonna be good for you. But please, just give me a chance to fight,” he pleads. “If I’m tied up here like this when they come in, they’re gonna send me back to the Raft, and I’d rather die than go back there. So please, just let me fight so at least I have a chance or can die trying.”

The Soldier glances at the monitors and then back at Clint, looking oddly conflicted.

Clint cranes his neck and looks again. There’s a cluster of people in tac gear amassed at the locked door at the other end of the tunnel. It’s too late. They’re out of time. He stops fighting his restraints and closes his eyes, resigned. “Go,” Clint says quietly, all the fight gone from his body and voice. “They’re almost here. You need to get out while you can.”

The Soldier gives him one last conflicted look and then gathers up the three duffle bags and is gone, out through the other tunnel that leads to the woods. Clint breathes a sigh of relief that at least Jamie will have a chance, and waits for the inevitable.

A few seconds later, there’s another explosion and Clint doesn’t have to turn to look at the monitor to know that they’ve blown the door to the tunnel in the basement because a cloud of dust puffs out of the tunnel into the room. Dread settles over him. Clint’s never been good at confinement. The first time around on the Raft had been bad, and he knows that after escaping once, it will be worse. Probably solitary confinement, without Lang and Wilson to keep him just this side of sane. Panic starts to build inside Clint again and the wire tears into his wrists some more as he fights the chair. He can’t go back there. He can’t.  

He can hear them now, loud footsteps echoing through the tunnel as they charge toward him. He chokes back a strangled sob and digs deep to force his face into neutral; he won’t give these assholes the satisfaction.

A moment later he hears yelling and then a flash-bang goes off, stunning Clint. The room fills with smoke and Clint’s completely disoriented. He can’t see and there’s more shouting but it’s all indistinct and muffled because his ears are ringing so loudly it drowns out the rest. Suddenly, he can move his hands and legs and then he’s falling, falling, falling, and he can’t tell up from down and the pain is all encompassing. Then all he hears is a whooshing sound and he understands with absolute clarity that in just a few seconds he’s going to be unconscious again. His last thought is that if it means going back to the Raft, he hopes he never wakes up.

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

When Clint wakes up – really wakes up - he doesn’t recognize where he is. It’s deeply disconcerting to know that you’ve been handled and moved with no awareness whatsoever. He’s also just getting really fucking tired of finding himself in a different place every time he opens his eyes.

A single bare lightbulb hangs from the ceiling and illuminates the room, which seems to be some sort of office. The space is small, maybe fifteen feet square; the walls are cement and there are no windows. He’s lying on a narrow bed, or maybe a cot, and there’s a blanket covering him. He can tell immediately that he’s no longer bound so he pushes the blanket down to get a better look at his condition.

Huh. His right arm is immobilized across his chest with a makeshift sling and his broken fingers are hidden by bandages but seem to be splinted. He uses his left arm to push himself up into a sitting position, shifting to lean against the wall. Small, pained noises slip out as he does. The effort causes the entire right side of his body to throb in rhythm with his heartbeat. The sharper, fiery pain in his leg doesn’t seem to be as bad as he remembers it being, though it’s far from completely gone. The sweatpants have been neatly cut away above his leg wound and his thigh is bandaged with clean dressings. There’s no blood visible. Clint blinks in surprise at the Soldier’s apparent attentiveness, then realizes that both eyes are blinking, so his left eye is no longer swollen shut.

He reaches up and touches his face. The last thing he remembers he was strapped in that evil fucking chair, maybe two or three days after he had last shaved. The many-days-worth of facial growth he finds now tells him he was insensate for a while. He tries to remember anything from the last several days but only brief flashes come to him, hazy, and nothing he can put together as an entirely coherent memory.

He blinks, and then thinks he’s lost a few moments. He eyes the door across the room and considers making an attempt to get over to it, even though he’s pretty damned sure it’s locked. But he’s weak as a kitten and already flagging, so he tips his head back against the wall and closes his eyes. He’s asleep again seconds later.

When he wakes next, he’s still sitting up and his eyes sweep of the room, taking a more thorough inventory and looking for anything he could use as a weapon. There’s not much: the metal cot he’s sitting on (thin mattress, one blanket, no pillow), a wooden desk (no chair, and the drawers have been removed), a wooden filing cabinet (drawers still intact). There’s also a small sink. That’s it. There’s nothing on the walls or any surfaces, nothing else at all that Clint can see. He doesn’t know for sure if it was like this when they arrived or if the Soldier removed everything extraneous from the room, but the displaced dust on the desk and its missing drawers make Clint think it’s the latter.

With a better sense of where he is, he turns to what he’d avoided the first time he woke up. He considers whether to look at his leg or hand first and decides on the hand since he generally likes to get the worst things over with first. Everything else is just background noise because he can work around other injuries in the long run, but if he loses the ability to use his hand effectively… Clint doesn’t want to think about how that would require a sea-change in his self-perception, even if he is retired. He closes his eyes for a few seconds and centers himself, then turns his attention to his arm.

The Soldier did a respectable job of immobilizing things. The makeshift sling looks like it was torn from a blanket just like the one on his bed, and his hand is wrapped securely. Clint gingerly eases the sling off before gathering his courage and slowly unwinding the bandages. When the last of the white gauze falls away he has to force himself to take in measured, controlled breaths. His fingers are definitely… not right. Clint easily looks past the swelling and purple-black bruising that’s beginning to turn green around the edges as it’s to be expected, but the rest… It looks like the Soldier made some effort to set Clint’s fingers, and while they’re straighter than they were the last time Clint saw them, he’s pretty positive that they haven’t been set correctly. Shit.

He considers trying to reset them himself, but when even the smallest effort to move them causes blinding pain that leaves him sucking in ragged breaths, he decides against it. Besides, he knows he could easily just make them worse. He’ll just have to wait until they get out of here and find a doc to fix them. Given how much time has passed already, it’s probably going to mean surgery and rebreaking them and a long recovery. Clint sighs and carefully rewraps his fingers, then slides his arm back into the sling. Once that’s done, he gently palpates his right collarbone, easily finding the fracture. It seems straight enough and there’s a lump in the middle where the bone has started to knit itself back together. As expected, it’s still tender, but it’s more of a dull ache and easily tolerable; it’s not the worst he’s ever had, and not nearly as bad as his fingers.      

Clint’s assessment moves on to his leg. Apparently the Soldier also did an adequate job of debriding the gangrenous wound, because Clint’s still alive. He runs his hand lightly over his thigh; it’s tender. He rubs a little harder and hisses in a breath as the injury makes its status known as ‘definitely not healed yet’. He’s already exhausted and his hand shakes a little as he unwraps the gauze, all the while trying to push away the sense memory of the sizable depression he felt under his fingers.

Clint grimaces as he tugs away the last of the bandages, then freezes. As he stares, his breathing starts to speed up. He’s seen some nasty wounds in his life, but he’s never seen one quite like this. Where the initial wound had been relatively small, it’s now about the size of his fist, tapering into a deeper well in the center. The gauze had adhered to the wound in a few spots and he’d had to tear it away, causing fresh blood to ooze to the surface and then pool in the bottom. Given how little adherence there had been, though, Clint’s pretty sure the Soldier must have changed the dressing at least a few times, and probably had done so recently.

But, Jesus Christ, he can see his quadricep muscle, and more disturbingly, he can see where some of it should be but isn’t. It looks like someone took a big bite out of his leg. It’s going to leave a hell of a scar (not that he cares about that), and it’ll probably take weeks, if not months to heal. He’s not conversant enough in this kind of thing to know if his leg will ever rebuild the muscle, or if he’ll be limping around for the rest of his life.

As he rewraps the dressing, he tries to think of the upside. The bleeding is a good sign and the flesh he can see appears pink and healthy. And there’s no smell of decay anymore. He’s still alive, he reminds himself, and that’s the most important thing, for Jamie’s sake. Once he’s gotten the bandage restored, he glances at the door, debating whether he has the energy to hobble over and see if it’s locked. He doesn’t. Instead, he tips back over onto his side and closes his eyes.

 *

 As soon as he wakes again, Clint maneuvers into a sitting position and looks around, deciding on a course of action. The sink is closest so he’ll go there first. He eases very slowly to the edge of the cot and shifts forward, testing out how his leg will react to weight. His thigh pulses fire, but if he doesn’t put his full weight on it, he finds he can hobble across to the sink, even if it hurts like hell. Once there, he tries the taps. It takes some doing, but eventually he gets them turned and a godawful screech and then a stuttering, thumping noise precede the flow of dirty, rusty water. He twists both taps wide open and braces himself on the sink until the water runs clear. It takes a few long minutes, but once it does, he takes a handful and sniffs, then tips it cautiously to his mouth. It tastes surprisingly okay.   He takes several more handfuls before leaning heavily against it for another minute. A pipe would be a serviceable weapon, so he carefully bends over and runs his hand over the metal below the bowl and tugs; they don’t budge at all. Not a big surprise considering how long they’ve likely been sitting unused. He’ll keep working on them.

The next stop on his circuit around the room is the desk, though there’s not much point, since there are no movable parts left. And oddly, it’s bolted to the floor. A quick glance at the filing cabinet and bed reveals the same. Clint has no idea why Hydra would feel it necessary to bolt down all the furniture in the place. Why the hell would anyone steal a desk? With no answer to that question, he skims his fingers over all the edges and then drops down (slowly, so slowly) to kneel on his good leg and peer into the voids lefts by the missing drawers and then under it. Nothing.

It takes a lot of effort to work himself back up to standing again and by the time he does, he’s sweating and breathing heavy. He leans back, half-sitting, against the desk to rest. Shit, he’s in bad shape. Once his pulse has slowed a bit he takes one limping step to the filing cabinet where he pulls on all four drawers. Locked – no surprise. There’s a single lock on the top drawer, but it apparently controls all of them. If he were in better shape and had two working arms and legs, he could probably break into it pretty easily, but he isn’t and he doesn’t, so he doesn’t hold out much hope for opening it any time soon. Apparently the Soldier wasn’t worried about it either, or he would have probably busted the lock and pulled those drawers out, too.

He completes his circuit with a stop at the door, which is locked. No surprise. There’s nothing special about it; it’s a solid-metal facility door. He’s seen thousands just like it and has easily picked the lock on dozens, maybe hundreds – he could do it blindfolded - but he hasn’t got anything here to use to do that. He looks up at the lightbulb. There’s an outside chance that he could break the socket apart and repurpose some part of it for a lockpick, but if he’s not successful that would leave him in the dark and definitely piss off the Winter Soldier, and who knows how he’d retaliate. Plus, he can’t reach it unless he jumps (definitely out for now) or stands on something, and moving the bed, desk, or filing cabinet isn’t currently an option. He tucks it away as something to reconsider if things get desperate. For now, he satisfies himself with pounding on the door.

“Jamie,” he yells, banging his fist once on the metal door. The impact and resulting vibrations that wrack through his body cause him to groan and then whimper, leaning the side of his face against the wall while he waits for the crescendo of pain to subside. The only thing he hears on the other side of the door is an echo.

“Jamie!” he tries to yell again, but it comes out more like a hoarse rasp. He doesn’t bang on the door this time because he’s still reeling from the previous effort. He calls out a few more times before he’s completely spent and he has to stop. He glances at the bed across the small space through eyes that will barely stay open and knows that he’s not going to make it back there. Instead, he tries – mostly successfully – for a controlled slide down the wall and sits, sweating and dizzy and panting. He closes his eyes and floats away.

 *

He wakes some indeterminate time later with the realization that someone is easing him back into the bed.

“Jamie,” he whispers, a smile ghosting his lips as gentle hands pull the blanket up and over his shivering body. Another blanket appears as though out of nowhere and is tucked around him. “Jamie,” he says again, but then turns his face away when the blue eyes looking back at him are as blank as ever.

“Take these,” a flat voice directs as fingers push pills past his lips, followed by a bottle of water tipping into his mouth. Clint drinks and when the Soldier starts to pull the bottle away, he grabs the metal wrist. The Soldier flinches and hesitates, then slowly returns the bottle to Clint’s mouth and holds it there while Clint gulps desperately.

When the bottle is empty, the Soldier turns to go, pausing at the door. “Stay in the bed,” he directs over his shoulder, and if Clint trusted his perception of things at the moment, he might believe that he heard exasperation in the words. The Soldier leaves, locking the door behind him.

***

The man is finally getting better. He is not so hot and he was able to get out of the bed and walk around. The soldier doesn’t understand why he is relieved at this. He doesn’t understand who this man is or why he needs to keep him safe. It must be part of the mission directive that he does not remember. It doesn’t matter. When Hydra comes, they can take him and do what they will. The man makes him uneasy. The soldier wants to be rid of him. But for now, until he is told what to do, he will keep him alive because he knows that that’s important.

Now that the man is coherent he will be able to eat food. The soldier goes to the storage room and looks at the vast shelves of nonperishables, looking for something to give a sick person. He finds something that looks familiar and grabs it from the shelf. His own head feels like it’s going to explode and he squeezes his eyes shut, tries to shake it away. Is he sick himself? Frustrated, he yells and punches the wall with his metal fist, making a sizeable dent. No! His pain is irrelevant; this he knows. He ignores the way the pounding in his brain surges, and goes to prepare the food for the man.

***

The Soldier sets a bowl in Clint’s lap then backs over to the door and watches. It looks like some sort of cooked grain cereal – not quite oatmeal, but something similar. Clint takes a tentative bite. It’s unappetizing in that it’s bland and chalky and barely lukewarm, but he knows he needs the calories so he eats it anyway. It’s the first thing he can remember eating since the pasta in the bunker. He’d taken a look under the hoodie earlier and been startled at how frighteningly thin he is and how his ribs now push prominently through his bruised and sagging skin. He only manages a few bites before his stomach starts to revolt and he has to stop and let things settle for a minute. He’s also not sure he has the energy to lift the spoon again.

The Soldier has taken up residence on the floor next to the door and is watching him closely, probably hanging around so he can take the bowl and spoon as soon as Clint is done.

“Thank you. For taking care of my leg,” he says, lifting the spoon to his mouth again.

The Soldier flicks his eyes to Clint’s leg then back up. Clint thinks maybe he hears the slightest noise from the back of the Soldier’s throat, but doesn’t know how to interpret it.

“And my fingers,” Clint adds.

The Soldier doesn’t comment, but his eyes lock with Clint’s for a second before he blinks and looks away with disinterest.

Clint sits resting with his eyes closed for a minute before taking another bite. After he swallows, he says. “So, nobody’s come, right?”

The Soldier looks back at him and frowns.

“I wasn’t lying to you when I told you Hydra’s gone. It’s been almost three years.”

The Soldier’s demeanor shifts and a hard expression is leveled Clint’s way. “Someone will come.”

“Really? How long have we been here?” The Soldier doesn’t answer, so Clint continues. “It has to have been long enough that if there was anyone to come, they’d be here by now.”

“There are mission objectives,” the Soldier asserts stubbornly.

“Yeah? What are they?”

The Soldier’s eyes dart away and then back.

“You don’t have any, do you? That’s because you were triggered by accident. You were Jamie and somehow I accidently triggered you into the soldat with something I said. You don’t have any mission objectives because you don’t have a mission. Listen to me. Jamie—”

The Soldier stands abruptly and stalks over to him. Clint flinches and braces for a blow but the other man only jerks the dish and spoon from his hand before leaving, slamming the door loudly behind him.

Clint’s stomach rumbles and he sighs. Note to self: wait until you’ve eaten all the food before pissing off the Soldier.

***

“How long have we been here?” Clint asks the next time the Soldier comes back. He must not be holding a grudge because he brings a mug of broth with him. It’s warm, and Clint’s mouth starts watering the second he gets a whiff of it. When he takes the first sip, Clint groans at the delicious saltiness of it.

The Soldier hesitates before saying, “Eleven days.”

Clint sighs. “Missed Christmas then.” It was December 18^th when he triggered Jamie. Clint had chopped down a small tree from the woods and erected it in the library. He wasn’t overly skilled in the Christmas tradition department, but he’d hoped that having a tree might spur some memories for Jamie. It had. Jamie had remembered getting a bicycle one year, and his mom cooking a goose for Christmas dinner. Clint had planned to make one for the holiday. “If you get a goose, I’ll still cook it for you,” he tells the Soldier now.

“We don’t have that here,” the Soldier answers blankly.

“Right, but you could get one. We talked about making one for Christmas dinner, remember?”

“No,” the Soldier says flatly.

Clint sighs and takes a deep drink from the mug. He’d been looking forward to Christmas for the first time since Phil died. It wouldn’t be like Christmases with Phil and Nat, where Phil showered them both with gifts, trying to make up for all the crappy gift-less years they’d both accumulated, and he and Nat conspired to find the perfect gifts for Phil in return. Jamie had no way of buying any gifts for Clint so Clint didn’t plan to give Jamie any either, save the slim volume of Robinson Crusoe.

Instead, he’d been looking forward to waking up and putting his mouth on every inch of Jamie before fucking him long and slow, feeling him shiver as Clint sucked on his neck just under his jaw, then hearing Jamie groan as he came apart beneath him. He’d had a vague plan for the rest of the day that involved crossword puzzles, cooking that goose, and maybe sharing some stories about what Christmases had been like for Clint, as a kid in the orphanage and the circus, and maybe, possibly, with Phil. And then they’d fuck again in the library by the lights of the tree, this time maybe with Clint riding him hard and fast. It had been a good plan. Clint’s really disappointed he didn’t get to put it into play. He will though, when they get out of here.

“This was good, thank you,” he tells the Soldier when he hands the empty mug over.         

The Soldier pauses. “You’re welcome,” he responds haltingly. He seems to want to say something more, but instead, he turns and leaves.

With the broth settled warm and comfortable in his belly, Clint eases himself over onto his side and closes his eyes.

***

Each time he wakes, he’s alert a little longer. For a long time, he just rests, allowing his body the time it needs to knit its broken bones and heal its wounds. And it’s not like he has the energy to do anything else anyway. He needs a lot more nutrition before he can start to work on getting back in shape. Meanwhile, he keeps himself from going crazy from the boredom and isolation by playing mental games that Phil had taught him, but mostly working over the problem of how to get out of here and fix Jamie. He hasn’t found a solution yet, but he’s confident he’ll come up with one eventually.

He figures they’re into 2017 now, though it’s impossible for him to accurately track the passage of time. There are no windows in the room, let alone clocks, and the light stays on all the time. He knows he sleeps a lot, but when he wakes up, he has no way of knowing if he’s slept two hours or ten. Besides the slow progress of injury recovery – which Clint has some experience with - the only measure he has is his facial growth and that’s a sketchy measure at best. Clint hasn’t worn facial hair in more than a decade, and even when he did, he kept it neat and trimmed; he’s never in his life had a beard this long so he has no basis for quantifying the passage of time by the length of it now. A sudden image of Tony and his unique style pops into his head and he’s struck with a wave of melancholy. He shakes it away, knowing there isn’t a damn thing he can do about the larger mess that is the Avengers at the moment. Later, when they get out of this mess, they can figure out how to fix that one.  

The Soldier continues to bring him food, but erratically. Often enough that Clint knows he’s getting back the nutrients he needs, but sometimes it seems like he comes every few hours and sometimes he seems to wait much longer in between. Because he sleeps so much, he never really knows for sure. He can’t discern any kind of pattern that might distinguish day from night either. He knows that Jamie slept much less than Clint did and imagines it’s the same for the Soldier, so it’s not like there’s a distinct, night/sleeping time.   His internal clock is completely fucked up.

Whenever the Soldier comes, Clint tries to engage him, tries to get him to remember who he really is. He talks about food a lot, since that was one of the things that particularly seemed to generate Jamie’s memories when they were in Czechia. He talks about Jamie’s mom’s roasted chicken and the Sauerbraten that Clint made that Jamie loved so much. When that seems ineffective, he asks the Soldier to try to get these foods, hoping that tasting them might be the key to remembering them. Unfortunately, thus far, the Soldier’s had no interest in seeking out food that Clint might like.

The Soldier is careful, taking all the precautions that Clint would in his place. It’s human nature to relax your vigilance, though, and Clint is confident the Soldier will eventually. Clint can wait; he can play the long game. SHIELD taught him patience and how to bide time, waiting for the right moment, and when it materializes Clint will be ready. In the meantime, he feigns a slower recovery than he’s actually having. Not that he’s speeding toward optimally functional, but when the Soldier enters the room, Clint pretends to be asleep more often than not, he moves more slowly than he really needs, and groans when he doesn’t strictly feel the urge to. He just has to wait for his opening.

Since waking up lucid, Clint’s been trying to build his strength and stamina, so after every time the Soldier brings him food, while he’s got a little more energy, he walks around the room. Well, limps, really, staying close enough to the wall that he can reach out for balance or support if he needs to. He’s been making clockwise loops so he can reach his left arm out and catch the wall if necessary. It’s necessary more than he’s comfortable with, this long past the initial injuries. Still, he’s making progress. At first, he hadn’t even been able to make it around one circuit before he was lightheaded and had to sit.

What he estimates is somewhere around seven or eight days after he first woke up lucid, he can make a few laps around the small space before he has to take a break, and since he can do it without reaching for the wall every couple of feet, he starts moving counterclockwise for a change of pace. He’s limping through his third circuit around the room when he sees something he hasn’t noticed before. It’s there, tucked under the back leg of the desk. He carefully shifts and sits on his ass. There’s no way he’s going to try to wedge himself under the desk, but his arms are pretty long so he reaches blindly, his fingertips finding their target unerringly. He can feel whatever it is is wedged slightly so he picks at it with one finger. When it finally springs loose he pulls his arm in and looks at his prize. A paperclip. It’s old; black with age and triangular shaped rather than the typical oblong of the modern clip. But still, it’s potentially very useful. He looks reflexively at the door across the room but he knows the small tool in his hand will be useless on the sturdy lock. Clint sighs. He’s worn out. He limps back over to the bed, then straightens the paperclip and works it into the seam of the mattress on the side that abuts the wall. That done, he tips onto his back again and stares at the ceiling, feeling his injuries pulse with his heartbeat.    

When they’d been at the house in Czechia, it felt a little like they’d fallen off the face of the earth – alone in their insular refuge – it had been idyllic in too many ways that Clint hadn’t wanted to think about at the time. Now, though, now it feels like they’ve fallen off the face of the earth and disappeared – vanished into a void where no one will ever find them. If there was any trail at all – any breadcrumbs to follow – Natasha would have shown up by now. Then again, she may not even be looking. Steve probably is. After a few days of getting no response to his texts he would have begun to worry. But Steve had no idea where Clint and Jamie had been, so he wouldn’t know where to begin looking now.  

As his pulse slows, his mind turns to the others, as it frequently does. He wonders if Scott is home with his daughter yet. He hopes so. He worries about Wanda, and if she’s still in Wakanda, or if Steve’s ‘progress’ netted results and she’s back at the Avengers compound with Tony and Vision. Tony. Thoughts of him still tear Clint in two: he still angry about his easy acquiescence to the WSC because of his inability to see past his own guilt; but he also misses his friend. He’s worrying about Rhodey and hoping the man is making a strong recovery when sleep overtakes him again.

***

The next time he wakes, the Soldier is bringing him cheese and stale bread. It’s the same thing the Soldier’s brought him the last three times. Apparently the idea of breakfast, lunch, and dinner wasn’t something they programmed into him because there’re no distinct meals. It’s just food. The only good thing about most of it is that it’s ample; in the beginning, Clint could rarely finish it.

For the first several days, everything seemed to be canned, with something that Clint assumes is goulash being the most common offering. Clint really hadn’t wanted to think about how long those cans have been sitting past their expiration date. But now, every now and then, something fresher shows up and seems to be random. Clint can only speculate that the Soldier is making forays into a town near them, opportunistically stealing whatever he can get his hands on. Potatoes show up for several meals in a row. Then some figs and carrots. Once, there are beans and something that looks strange but when he tastes it, he’s pretty sure is cooked pumpkin.

One notable time, along with the potatoes, was cooked meat of some sort. It was a very small amount, and Clint had to work hard to ignore the nagging feeling that it was probably rat, or some other kind of rodent. He’s eaten worse, and beggars can’t be choosers. He needs to build his strength and he can’t do that if he starts rejecting perfectly viable food because its source isn’t particularly appetizing.  

One day, he’d asked for yogurt, explaining that the antibiotics the Soldier gave him - while necessary – had knocked out the good bacteria in his gut. He’s shocked when the Soldier actually brings it.

Clint blinks. “Thank you,” he says, unable to keep the surprise from his voice. He digs in to the round carton, a small happy noise slipping out when the creamy richness slides across his tongue. Clint’s known hunger and deprivation in his life and he never takes food for granted. But still, “Hey, you know what be great with this?” Clint says as the Soldier is walking back to his station by the door.   “A fresh croissant. You know, one of those flaky, buttery ones that I used to bring you from the bakery on Vaclavske Namesti in Prague?”

The shift in the Soldier’s expression is microscopically small, but Clint sees it.

“Hey, yeah, you remember those, right? They were your favorite. You told me about the first time you tasted one, in France, during the war. Remember? The locals were so happy when the Howling Commandos liberated the town that they pooled everything they had and made you a feast. Steve was there with you then, remember?” Something that looks like recognition flickers over the Soldiers face. Finally. “You remember Steve?” Clint asks quickly. “Was skinny when you were kids, but has muscles like an ox now. You know, blond, stubborn streak a mile wide?”

The Soldier stalks toward him. Clint quickly shovels the last of the yogurt into his mouth before the Soldier snatches the carton and spoon from his hands and leaves.

When he’s sure the Soldier isn’t coming back, Clint digs the paperclip out of the mattress and makes his way across the room. The small tool may be useless on the heavy tumblers of the door lock, but it should easily spring the lock on the filing cabinet. He’s not got his hopes up that there’s anything in the drawers that he might be able to fashion into a weapon, but at this point, he’s so bored that, hell yes, he’ll read fifty-year-old Hydra files for entertainment.  

Not many people are aware that Clint knows Russian. He’s learned to hold his cards close because he’s found that what someone doesn’t know about you can save your life. But he and Nat had had a long-term surveillance op in Russia a couple of years after he’d brought her in to SHIELD. Beforehand, he’d gotten a crash course in the Cyrillic alphabet and the basics of the language, so he had a rudimentary grasp of it when they’d arrived at their station. But Natasha had been merciless in only speaking Russian to him, forcing him to immerse into the language. He’d thought it was a game to her and Clint had been uncooperative for several days, sulking and stubbornly speaking only English in response. Until late one evening when Clint had stopped responding to her questions altogether, too tired to try to make sense of the words and translate them in his head. But then a book had sailed toward his head at high velocity and Clint had barely managed to duck in time. He looked up and startled at the real anger he’d seen on Nat’s face. Clint gaped at her.

“Stop being such a child!” she yelled in English – the first words he’d heard in his native tongue in over ten days. “This could save your life someday! Or mine, or someone else you care about!”

Oh. Oh. “Why didn’t you just fucking say that?” he’d gritted out at her.

“Because I shouldn’t have to,” she snapped in return.

After that, Clint subjugated himself to Natasha’s Russian lessons, and by the time they’d returned home six months later, he was strongly conversant. Two years later, he was fluent.

It only takes a few seconds to successfully pop the simple lock mechanism on the filing cabinet. Before stopping to look too closely at the contents, he quickly opens all four drawers to make an initial assessment. They’re difficult to open, metal wheels and glides alternately sticky and squeaky with age, and pulling on them makes his injuries flare a little. He was right; there’s nothing but papers inside and he may be creative and damned resourceful, but even he can’t see a way to fashion a weapon out of them that could possibly stop the Winter Soldier. All the drawers are difficult to pull, and he can see that the paper inside is yellow and brittle looking; it has to have been many years - decades even - since these saw the light of day. Each drawer is packed full though, so at the very least, he’s got many hours’ worth of distraction here. As long as he can keep the Soldier from realizing he’s managed to unlock it.

A quick glimpse tells him that the top drawer holds the most recent files and the bottom the oldest. He closes the top three drawers and then pulls out the first file in the bottom drawer. It’s thick, an inch at least. He figures that will keep him busy for a while, so he shuts the drawer and presses the lock before making his way back to his cot where he slips the paperclip back into its hiding place. Once he’s lying back down, he closes his eyes to rest for a moment and takes a few deep breaths, waiting for his pulse to slow from the effort of moving around and wrestling with the drawers.  Shit, he’s still in terrible shape. Instead of opening the file, he slides it under the thin mattress and closes his eyes.  

***

“Hey, can you bring me a bar of soap?” Clint asks after the Soldier deposits his food on the end of the bed. Canned beans and what looks like a little bit of bacon. Not bad.

The Soldier tips his head and looks at him with suspicion.

“Come on, man, it’s been, I don’t know, weeks since I was able to clean myself properly.” Clint’s done the best he can with just straight water from the tap, but he knows he’s pretty ripe and could use something stronger.

And soap can be useful in other ways.

The Soldier just grunts and takes his seat on the floor by the door, pulling a gun out from behind him and resting it on his leg, finger loose on the trigger. The message is very clear. Since he’s been healing and getting stronger, the Soldier’s been more cautious around him. It’s disappointing - and Clint’s had to adjust for it in the strategies he’s developing - but it’s not surprising; it’s what Clint would do.

Clint decides to take the Soldier’s nonresponse as acquiescence. “Thanks. And could I maybe get a razor so I can shave? I fucking hate this facial hair.” Clint actually has no ulterior motive here. He just really does hate it. It’s itchy and given the aforementioned lack of soap, it feels disgustingly dirty. Plus, the Soldier clearly has a razor since he’s been keeping his own face shaved. When the Soldier doesn’t answer, Clint tries another tack. “Look, if you want you could put me back in the chair and do it yourself.”

The Soldier visibly tenses. Clint goes with it. “So, what the hell is that chair anyway?”

The Soldier stares at him for a long moment, then says, simply, “It’s the Winter Soldier Chair.”

That’s pretty much what Clint had figured, but still, hearing the Soldier say the words kind of makes Clint want to throw up. He takes a breath. “How’s it work?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugs. Then, “I don’t remember,” he adds, seemingly as an afterthought.

“What do you remember?”

The Soldier looks away from him.

When Clint glances down at the bowl as he scoops up some food, his eyes skate over his clothes. “Do you remember Cyprus?” Clint asks. “After Steve asked me to take you somewhere safe, we stopped in Cyprus. Do you remember that?” He takes a few hasty bites of the food, knowing he’s crossing into dangerous territory here.

“No,” the Soldier answers after a beat.

“Sure you do. It’s in there somewhere. I bought this awful jacket and made you wear it.” Clint plucks at the hoodie and the Soldier’s eyes follow the movement. “You were so pissed, but then we—” Clint has to stop and swallow because a lump the size of Greenland has formed in his throat at the memory. He clears his throat and continues. “Once we got the Czechia, to our house, we sort of shared it.”

The Soldier only stares at him, but his expression doesn’t look quite as blank as it did before, so Clint takes a couple more bites, then keeps going.

“We shared it because… because I think it sort of became this thing. Kind of representative of us. Together.” Clint pauses and takes a breath. “We’re together, Jamie. You know? Like partners… or boyfriends.”

The Soldier’s eyes sharpen ominously at that.

Clint holds up his good hand to pacify him. “Just listen for a second, okay? Don’t… don’t storm outta here.” The Soldier’s expression hardens, but he doesn’t leave. “Back where we were before. Before we came here. The house. Do you remember that?”

The Soldier nods slowly.

Clint scoops the last of the beans into his mouth, chewing and swallowing quickly. “That was my house. And it became our house. You don’t remember anything before that day you woke up there, right? That’s because you were Jamie before that.” Clint stops for a minute when the Soldier starts to look agitated, then switches gears. “So this jacket,” Clint tugs on it again and Jamie’s eyes flick there and then back to Clint’s face. “This jacket was on the coat hook in the kitchen the day we left. But the thing is, it was buried under a few other warmer coats, because it’s been cold out, so we weren’t using it anymore.”

This gets no response.

“But when you were packing things up into the duffle bags, you went and got some clothes, and then you went to the kitchen and you ignored the warmer coats and dug under them to get this hoodie. Do you remember doing that?”

“Yes,” the Soldier concedes, though he looks unhappy about it.

“Why did you do that?”

The Soldier hesitates before answering. “I don’t know.”

“See, I’m pretty sure I do.” Clint’s heart is beginning to race. “I think you went and got this jacket because you’re Jamie inside there somewhere and you didn’t want to leave the jacket behind because… because it means something to you.”

The Soldier blinks at him a few times, then stands and walks over to the cot. “No. It doesn’t,” he says easily, then reaches out and rips the jacket from Clint’s body, viciously rending the fabric and wrenching Clint’s arms to get it off. It feels like his bones are being broken all over again, any healing he’s managed, undone with a few brutal jerks. Clint yells and then gasps at the unexpected violence.

Clint tips over on the cot and curls into a ball, breathing hard as the pain ignites in a way it hasn’t for several days. He lies there, pressing the side of his face into the mattress and trying to control his breathing while he waits for the agony to bank into something more manageable. He doesn’t even hear the Soldier leave.

***

The soldier paces in the laboratory. He’s agitated and angry and confused and he doesn’t know why. The man won’t stop talking to him. Won’t stop telling him he is someone he is not. The man’s words make him uneasy. He knows he hurt him just now, and he feels regret but he shouldn’t. The only thing that matters is the mission. It doesn’t matter if he hurts people as long as the mission is completed.

He huffs out a frustrated breath and stalks over to where the duffle bags are sitting on the lab table, rooting around until his hand finds what he’s looking for. He pulls out the two things he is looking for. He sits on the floor leaning against the counter and sets the book aside, stares instead at the photograph. The man is with two other people, they are all smiling. A hand on a thigh. Something flutters in the soldier’s chest but he doesn’t know what it is. He rubs his thumb over the man’s face, as though hoping it might reveal something underneath. It doesn’t. It never does.

A searing lightning bolt of agony slices through the soldier's skull.  He drops the photo and wraps his arms around his head, breathing harshly.  When the pain finally abates, a rage erupts in him and he snarls as he throws the frame across the room; the glass shatters and sprays in every direction. He stands and paces again for several more minutes trying to remember, trying to understand what he's supposed to do.  The book on the floor catches his eye.  He bends to pick it up, then opens it and flips through the pages.  It’s familiar, but not.  The words on the page calm him. The soldier sits on the floor and begins to read.

Chapter Text

The words are familiar but he doesn’t know why. He doesn’t remember ever reading a book, yet in his mind’s eye he can see his hands pressing them open, turning their pages, bending a corner inward. He can see these pages, the words on this page right now.

Throughout the hours of the night, though there had been few to hear it, the whole sky had been loud with the singing of these constellations.

He can see his hands, holding the book, reading the words then looking out a window at the stars in the night sky. Then looking… at the man. It doesn’t make sense. He doesn’t know the man. He has no memories of him. Except… except…

The soldier shakes it away. There are mission objectives. They will come and they will tell him what to do.

He stands and puts the book back in the duffle bag, then crosses the room and picks up the photo in the frame. With his metal hand, he brushes away the small pieces of glass that remain. He puts the picture back in the bag as well. His eye catches sight of the jacket the man was wearing. For no reason he understands, he picks it up and folds the shredded garment the best he can, then adds it to the bag.  

It’s cold. He has seen the man shivering and wrapping himself in the blankets. An unknown emotion grips him. It’s… unpleasant.

His head hurts.

***

Clint doesn’t know what to make of it when the Soldier returns sooner than he expected, especially when he notices that he’s carrying a new set of clothes for Clint (a pair of sweats pants and a blue Henley he recognizes as Jamie’s from back at the house), another blanket, a bar of soap, and a disposable plastic razor which he sets on the bed near Clint's feet. The latter two, he sets on the small sink and then steps back to take up his guard post near the door, gun in hand. The clothes make sense. The blanket… Clint has no idea why the Soldier brought that.

Clint gazes at the supplies for a long moment.  His shoulder, hand, and chest are on fire and he doesn’t want to do anything but lie on the bed and sleep, hoping that when he wakes, some of the pain will have ebbed. But the Soldier grunts his disapproval and makes it clear that he's waiting for Clint to use the toiletries so he can no doubt take them away when he leaves.  Clint slowly struggles to his feet and makes his way over to the sink.

He turns on the water and wets his left hand, then runs his fingers through his hair to push it away from his face. He glances at the man across the room. They’ve been here long enough that Jamie’s hair – which he’d kept fairly short in Czechia - is now getting shaggy and his bangs are often falling in his face. He’s looking more like the Winter Soldier every day. Clint frowns and turns back to the sink.

It’s difficult to lather the soap with one hand, especially with his body now protesting even the smallest movement again, but somehow Clint manages to work up enough foam to ease the razor on its glide across his face. Shaving without a mirror has never been difficult for Clint, but with this heavy of a beard and single handed, it proves more of a challenge then usual and he ends up with several nicks and cuts on his face. Still, it feels pretty fantastic to be clean shaven again.

“Thanks,” Clint says, and tosses the razor across the room, returning it to his captor.

“The soap,” the Soldier says, looking at him expectantly.

“Come on, man, lemme keep the soap, huh?” Clint pleads. He sways a little where he stands and then steadies himself on the sink. It’s an act (only just barely), but effective; the Soldier’s eyes sharpen as they watch him and he hesitates. “Please,” Clint adds quietly, and adds another small sway for effect.

The Soldier grunts and leaves the room, and Clint breathes a sigh of relief. He turns back to the sink immediately and opens the tap. There’s never been any hot water; either the Winter Soldier can’t turn on the decades-old water heater or he hasn’t bothered to try, so Clint’ll have to make do with a frigid hand-bath. Since they’ve been here, once he’d felt up to it, he’s done his best to wash himself in the sink, but lacking soap, he’s never felt really clean. The bar in his hand feels like a luxury and he feels a flush of gratitude toward the Soldier then huffs to himself. This is some kind of fucked up Stockholm Syndrome he’s got going on here, with his feelings for Jamie and conviction that he’s in there somewhere thrown into the mix.    

Before he removes the sling, he skims his fingers across his clavicle, easily finding the lump. It’s tender, and it’s definitely been stressed, but Clint can’t tell if he’s back to square one with it or not. It feels like maybe not. It doesn’t matter. Either way, all he can do is continue to immobilize his arm and allow it time to heal. For the moment, though, the sling needs to come off. He carefully removes it, but keeps his arm tucked protectively to his chest. He doesn’t even consider unwrapping his hand – not after the additional jarring it got with the Soldier’s indelicate removal of the hoodie – but once he lathers up, he does tug at the end of the bandages and gently clean the thin lines that are clearly visible around his wrist. Some of the cuts from the baling wire had gone frighteningly deep and Clint’s lucky he hadn’t done any damage to his tendons or ligaments given the way he’d idiotically fought against the restraints. A few of them really should have been sutured and the skin is red and unevenly gnarled in spots where it did its best without the assistance. He’s probably very lucky that the Soldier gave him antibiotics, as they no doubt did double duty, keeping infection out of his wrists.

Once he’s finished cleaning his arms and torso, he slips out of the sweat pants and underwear and washes the lower part of his body. He avoids his bandaged leg; the Soldier has periodically brought new dressings and he’s somehow managed to protect the wound enough that he’s had no recurrence of infection so he doesn’t want to mess with that. It’s healing, but it’s still startling to look at.

With the rest of his body taken care of, he decides to tackle his hair. He reaches for the tap and then has to grab it and hold on for a moment to steady himself. When he’s pretty sure he’s not going to collapse, Clint opens the tap and bends, dunking his head the best he can. He hisses when his cheekbone bumps against the basin, reminding him that the Soldier had smashed him in the face weeks ago. He pauses and palpates the area. The zygomatic bone has a significant new bump on it and is still very tender; the tissue over it is rough and bumpy since it was never properly stitched closed. It’s frustrating not to be able to see it, but he’s sure it’s probably a messy scar. Add it to the list.  

By the time he finishes cleaning his hair the best he can, he’s shivering uncontrollably, and only partly from the cold. But it feels fucking awesome to finally be something resembling clean. He starts to dress in the clothes the Soldier left for him and finds himself choking back a sob when he realizes that they still smell faintly of Jamie.  

Get your shit together, Barton, he chides himself. He’s succeeded in holding it together for this long and falling apart now isn’t going to do a damned thing to help him get out of here and get Jamie back. He closes his eyes for a second and takes a breath, then calmly finishes dressing.

He wants, with every fiber of his being, to return to the cot, collapse onto it, and revisit that plan of sleeping until the pain subsides. But he can’t count on the Soldier not changing his mind and taking the soap back, so before he lets himself rest, he gets the paperclip and takes the soap over to the filing cabinet. Knowing the Soldier has enhanced hearing, and never knowing when he might show up, Clint has been worried that he might hear the ancient, squeaky mechanism and figure out that Clint had gotten access to the files. He’s got a pretty strong feeling that the Soldier wouldn’t respond positively to that.

It’s as difficult to open the top drawer as it was the first time, but that’s what the soap’s for. Clint runs it along the metal glides on each side of the drawer, pushes it in and out, reapplies the soap, opens and shuts it a few more times. After one more application of soap, he moves down to the next drawer. By the time he finishes with all four, each is moving considerably easier – and considerably quieter - than they had been.

Satisfied, Clint takes the soap back to the sink and lathers it up, working it for a while to remove the sharp lines created by the metal edges. By the time he works them away, the bar is noticeably smaller than when he started, but there’s nothing he can do about that. He hopes it’s a plausible enough excuse that Clint had used a lot of soap, given how long it’d been since he’d had any to use. He drops the bar on the side of the sink and barely has the energy to stumble back to the cot.

When he wakes, he’s itching to finally start reading the file that’s hidden under his head, but he has no idea how long he’s been asleep and no idea when the Soldier will bring food again, so Clint pushes down his impatience and waits, his exhaustion quickly pulling him down into dreamless sleep.  

***

When he finally feels it’s as safe as it’s going to get to open the first file, he’s relieved to find that he’s able to understand it fairly well. Even if his Russian was a little rusty before, all those months in Czechia, talking to people in town and reading the local papers, had refamiliarized him with the Slavic languages. There are inevitably words that are lost on him – too technical to be something he would have learned as a matter of course. Still, he can get the gist of many through context, and others through their roots, so he can usually decipher what the files are saying.  

For their part, the files are a distraction and interesting, in an evil scientist kind of way. The first files are filled with detailed descriptions of horrifying experiments that Hydra conducted on animals in the 1930s. They turn Clint’s stomach but he keeps reading, recognizing in them the kernels of the Hydra Winter Soldier program.

The details of the first experiments on humans he finds in the second drawer from the bottom. They date from the late 1930s and early 1940s, and while, to Clint’s mind, they’re pure evil, the files seem to indicate that all these early attempts to create mindless killing machines were conducted on volunteers who were eager to help the cause. Unfortunately for those volunteers, the early program was a colossal failure, universally resulting in the test-subjects’ deaths.

Clint’s been working his way through the dense files for over a week when he gets to the second drawer from the top. The very first file is dated April 2, 1943 and is labelled Soldat Vesny. Soldier of Spring. Clint’s interest is piqued immediately. The new program had stopped relying on volunteers – apparently people higher up the food chain were getting concerned at the loss of lives and didn’t think it was a good idea to experiment on their own any more. Instead, they began to use German prisoners of war. Honestly, Clint’s only surprised it took them so long to make that switch. Not surprisingly, the use of POWs also coincided with an increase in cruelty toward the subjects and an utter disregard for fatalities. There was a seemingly endless supply, after all.

Clint has to force himself to keep reading as he finds files detailing the physical and psychological effects of the Soldier of Spring experiments. There are also schematics of what appear to be different iterations of chairs that look similar to the one he’d seen in the lab when they’d first arrived here. The science is beyond him, but the piece on the top that the Soldier had aggressively destroyed was apparently intended to make the subjects’ minds more malleable to allow for implanting new directives and turning the men into compliant drones.

But the program had many failures – and continued to racked up many dead bodies. They made adjustments and worked through program iterations Soldat Leta and Soldat Oseni (Soldiers of the Summer and Autumn). Clint reads about how they continuously tweaked the chair, addressing both theoretical and mechanical issues. In the Spring, Summer, and Autumn variations of the program, things progressed but still had problems; the chair had a tendency to overheat test subjects’ brains to the point of death before they could reach the necessary level of suggestiveness. If the chair only damaged, but didn’t kill them, failures were simply dragged out to the woods behind the Hydra compound and shot in the head, their bodies left as carrion for animals. Eventually though, the animals became a nuisance and they’d dug an enormous pit to deposit the bodies in. Anger burns in the pit of Clint’s stomach; he really, really hates these guys.  When he looks at the dates closely and realizes that they sometimes tested the chair on as many as six prisoners a day, all of them ending up in the woods, he almost stops reading for good. Only the slim possibility that they might shed some light on how to help Jamie keeps him at it.

They begin the new Soldat Zimy program – Soldier of Winter - in January of 1946. It’s early in this series when one of the scientists suggests that they need to wipe the memories first, the theory being that starting with a blank slate would make everything cleaner and easier to manipulate. He suggests a modification to the chair design for how to put his theory into practice.

There’s significant internal debate about the whether the chair can accomplish this. But the sinister bastard who came up with the idea was so confident that he declares his intent to prove his theory by calling for the most recalcitrant prisoner they can find – one of the Americans they’d gotten from the German scientist, Zola. Clint gets the idea there was some sort of cooperative arrangement there, but he doesn’t know the full story and the files aren’t revealing. Regardless, Clint’s sense of foreboding skyrockets but he’s still only half prepared when he turns the page and finds a photo of Sergeant James “Bucky” Barnes staring back at him.

A surge of adrenaline hits him; his chest tightens and his heart pounds. In the photo, Bucky’s (because this is Bucky, not Jamie) head is shaved and his face is pale and bruised; nonetheless, he wears an expression of such pure defiance that Clint can’t help grinning a little. He’d already been enhanced by the super serum by then so he was considered a particularly appealing subject; if nothing else, perhaps they wouldn’t melt his brain and they could run him through more than one test. There’s very little Clint wants to do less than read the detailed laboratory notes about how they turned a smiling, brash kid from Brooklyn into a mindless killer, but he makes himself keep going, to read about how the man now codenamed Zimniy Soldat – the Winter Soldier - became the first successful program result. The prototype.

Clint stops and does about five minutes of controlled breathing when he gets to the file that describes how some motherfucking asshole comes up with a side experiment on artificial limbs to try out on Bucky; the pride they'd felt that his arm would wear the motherfucking Russian star.  He nearly pukes when he reads that they’d kept him awake during the surgery because they wanted to be able to ask him questions as they grafted the nerves.  When Clint’s calmed some and his nausea has abated slightly, he rapidly flips through the pages to make sure there’s nothing potentially useful in it, then closes the file and returns it to the drawer. It’s irrelevant anyway, now that Jamie has a new arm from the Wakandans.

The next file’s got Clint swallowing hard when he finds the schematics for the chair that ultimately worked. It looks identical to the one that’s in the laboratory, as far as he can tell – except that the one here is now missing the top piece. The following document details how the words for the trigger sequence were chosen randomly by opening the dictionary ten times and pointing at words. Clint’s heartrate picks up as he reads the last page in the file - the list of words that were used to create and program the Winter Soldier. Playful; leaf; canine; hospitable; salt; ceremony; infinite; red; cluster; dehydrate.

He thinks back to the morning that Jamie transformed into his more evil alter-ego, to the conversation they were having about the circus and their traveling caravan, and he can’t remember saying even one of these words. He shakes his head in frustration and goes to return the file. Before he does, though, he sets aside the pages with Bucky’s picture, the chair schematic, and the trigger words. These he folds and takes over to the desk where he sits on the floor and wedges them in a crack in the top of the space that once held the bottom drawer.

As much as he wants to keep reading, he knows he needs to stop and close the cabinet because he’s been at it for a while this time and the Soldier could come back at any moment. Before he closes the drawer, he scans the rest of the files to see that they appear to be reports summarizing the Winter Soldier’s missions and providing program analysis. The quick rifle through the folders tell him that they span nearly two decades, then end abruptly in 1965. Clint closes the drawer with the thought that given the mid-century appearance of what he’s seen of this facility, his best guess is that Hydra moved on to a new base of operations at that point, but left everything behind as some sort of backup facility.

*

Happily, the next meal the Soldier brings is something different: pasta. Unfortunately, that’s all it is; a bowl of cooked fettuccini with nothing on it. Jamie had been working on his cooking chops and getting pretty good; apparently, none of that translates to the Soldier. And yet… the pasta is completely different from all the food the Soldier’s brought thus far. Clint studies the Soldier; he seems distracted, more brooding than usual. He eats in silence, watching, and attempts to spool the sticky threads around his fork but instead just ends up with an enormous glob that he has to take bites off of. Whatever – it tastes the same either way.

When he’s finished, the Soldier walks over to retrieve the bowl and fork, but Clint grips tightly, not releasing it. “Hey, do you remember when we were at the house and you brought us both some pasta?” he asks. The Soldier doesn’t reply but Clint knows he would remember. “You took all the tomatoes out of the bowl you gave me and put them in your bowl. Do you know why you did that?”

It’s a long moment before the Soldier shakes his head a bit.

“Because Jamie knows I don’t like tomatoes. Somewhere deep in there, Jamie was remembering that.”

The Soldier yanks the bowl free from Clint’s grip and leaves without a word.

***

The next meal the Soldier brings consists entirely of two tomatoes.

Clint sighs and chokes them down.

***

Clint had intended to start reading the mission files after the pasta meal, but instead, he stalls and sleeps for a while. It’s not as though the files are likely so terribly different from those that SHIELD kept on Clint himself; it’s that every time he thinks about the things they made Bucky do, a blue haze clouds his vision. In the end, it’s four sleep/food cycles (they’re back to canned mush again) before Clint punches out an annoyed breath and tells himself it’s time to get over his shit and quit acting like a fucking child. He rocks his neck back and forth, cracking it several times, then resolutely crosses over to the cabinet to grab a file.

The first two files detail minor operations where the Soldier was sent to conduct surveillance. They were minor tests, nothing too complicated or challenging. And nothing entirely anathema to the man Clint knew Bucky to have been. The third mission, he’s sent as a sniper to make a long-range kill in Warsaw and Clint’s jaw clenches rhythmically at the transcript of Soldier’s detached description of the operation. When he starts to read about the fourth mission though, Clint shifts forward sharply, aggravating his injuries, causing him to pause and puff out hitching breaths until they even out.

The Soldier was sent to Zurich to eliminate a target quietly in his home. His instructions were to complete the kill in the night, not to concern himself with others in the house – if they needed to be eliminated as collateral damage, Hydra didn’t care – and return immediately. But the target’s wife had been sleeping beside him, so he’d waited until the man had gotten up in the morning and gone into his kitchen. The Winter Soldier had sprung on him and wrapped his human arm around the man’s throat, but before he could incapacitate and kill him, the man had reached a knife on the counter and sliced into the Soldier’s arm. The Winter Soldier had easily taken the knife away and cut the man’s throat, but then the wife had walked in and screamed and the Soldier had had to kill her as well. It was messy.

Clint flashes on Jamie’s grip on his wrist as he’d reached for a knife in the kitchen and swallows hard. When he can bring himself to continue reading, he learns that, not surprisingly, Hydra was not pleased. Their irritation apparently laid not with the fact that the woman had been killed as well, but rather in the fact that the conditioning hadn’t been strong enough that the Winter Soldier had simply killed the target in his bed as he’d been instructed.

The file describes in detail how the Soldier was punished for that. How the sadistic bastards had shoved him back into the chair to reverse the trigger sequence, so that when they took him out again and physically punished him, it would be Sergeant Barnes who suffered for it. How the next time he was given a mission - and each subsequent time - his brain was subjected to longer and more thorough wiping than previously.

Wait.

The programming was reversed? Clint goes back and rereads: The Winter Soldier was returned to the chair and the trigger sequence inverted to reverse the programming so that when punishment was exacted, Sergeant Barnes would know the consequences of his failure to comply.

Clint sucks in a sharp breath and stares at the words, reading them over and over again to make sure he’s seeing and interpreting them correctly. When he finally believes that he is, adrenaline courses through his veins and his hand shakes visibly as he removes the page from the file and very, very carefully sets it aside.

The next page fits another piece into the puzzle. After they had punished (read: beaten and tortured) Bucky Barnes, they put him back in the chair and reprogrammed him with new trigger words to reset the Winter Soldier. Clint scans the list: longing; rusted; furnace; daybreak; seventeen; benign; nine; homecoming; one; freight car.

Clint’s breath stutters in his chest and he rereads the ten words, then closes his eyes and thinks back to their conversation in bed all those days ago.

“… I’m telling you, these guys would trick them out like you wouldn’t believe. There was this one freight car, it was unbelievable—”

‘There was this one freight car.’ Jesus. Jamie had awoken from a dream with the unfinished trigger at the front of his mind and Clint had finished him off by stumbling into an unfortunate choice of innocuous words from a story about his childhood. Fuck.

It’s all the motivation Clint needs to start thinking seriously about taking action and getting the hell out of here. He runs a quick analysis and determines which of the ideas he’s been turning around in his head has the best chance of success, then starts to form it into something more concrete. But he can’t rush. There’s still half a file drawer to go through and given what he’s learned from reading what he has, Clint’s damn sure not going to skip possibly important information. He learned patience at SHIELD and he can wait until he reads the rest of the files before he acts. Right now, he needs more rest. Clint takes the page that describes the deprogramming and the one with the trigger words over to the desk and stashes them with the others, then returns the file to the drawer and goes back to his bed. He’s thinking about how much he owes Nat and her forced Russian lessons (and hoping he gets the chance to thank her) when he finally drops off to sleep.

***

The soldier’s head hurts. It hurts too much to venture out anymore, so their food is only what he finds in the bunker. It pounds incessantly so he turns off the lights in the laboratory and sits in the dark, waiting for instructions to come.

Why don’t they come?  

***

Something's going on with the Soldier; he's been tense lately, on edge.  And for some reason he’s apparently stopped making forays into town because it’s been back to canned food for several meals now. Clint even misses the cold pasta as he grimaces and chokes down the last bite of the disgusting, cold goulash, and scrutinizes the Soldier. In addition to being brooding and angry recently, he’s pale and wears telltale purple/black smudges under his eyes. If he didn’t know better, Clint would think that the Soldier is sick, but he’s pretty sure that with the super serum that’s not possible. There is something definitely something going on with him, though, and if there’s something wrong with the Soldier, there’s something wrong with Jamie.

“How long are we gonna wait here for people who aren’t coming?” Clint hopes the words approximate calm and vague disinterest, because inside, Clint’s jittery as hell. His mind is racing with the information from the files and he’s desperate to put his plan in motion. When the Soldier had come in, Clint had almost – almost – slid a glance to the empty drawer space on the desk where the papers were stashed. Even distracted as he seems to be, the Soldier would probably have noticed.

“They’ll come.”

“Are you taking odds on that?” Honestly, Clint doesn’t care at all what the Soldier says. He’s mostly just trying to antagonize him enough so that he’ll go. He knows it’s a fine line to walk – to irritate him enough to leave but not so much that Clint ends up sporting more bruises, or worse. But if that’s what it takes, so be it. He’s read the rest of the files and while they succeeded at turning his stomach some more, they didn’t reveal any more useful information. His patience has finally run out; Clint just wants to get on with getting Jamie back and getting them both out of here.

To his happy surprise, the Soldier only glares at him for a moment before retrieving the dish and spoon and leaving. Clint immediately lies back and tries to sleep, knowing he’ll need to be rested and have all the strength he can muster the next time the Soldier comes into the room. Clint’s made a plan. It’s probably a really fucking bad one, but given his circumstances, it’s the best he can come up with and he’s worked with less. He figures it has a 50/50 chance of success if he’s lucky, but since the odds aren’t ever likely to get any better than that, it’s time to act.

***

He surprises himself by actually falling asleep. As soon as he wakes, he grabs the blanket and makes a notch along one edge with his teeth, then he repositions it in his mouth a little and uses his good hand to rip off a long strip of fabric, a couple of inches wide. He limps over to the sink with it and jams it down the drain, pushing the fabric as far into the pipe as he can make it go, then cranks open the tap and fills the bowl before turning it off again. He has no idea if this water theory of Steve’s is legit or necessary, but it can’t hurt and he’ll try anything that might increase the odds of success. That done, he sits next to the door and presses his ear to it, listening.

It’s at least two hour later by Clint’s estimation that he hears the faintest noise down the hall. He stands quickly, gritting his teeth at the sharp stabbing in his leg, and hobbles to the sink where he opens both taps as wide as they’ll go. Water quickly begins to pour onto the floor.

Clint’s standing next to the filing cabinet when the Soldier opens the door. His heart is pounding and the adrenaline is singing through his veins, muting the pain of his hurried movements.

When the Soldier registers the water gushing over the top of the sink, he drops the dish and spoon he is holding and pulls out the gun. “What are you doing?” he snarls.

Clint doesn’t answer. He’s got his left hand tucked behind his back and he can see the Soldier zero in on that. He shifts his arm a little.

“Move back to the bed,” the Soldier orders him, gesturing with the gun.

When Clint doesn’t move, the Soldier’s face firms into a hard mask and he cocks the pistol.

“Really? You expect me to believe that you came back and saved me in Czechia, you treated my gangrene and doctored me back to health, you’ve fed me for what, a month or more, but now you’re going to shoot me because I’m standing over here?” Clint raises a provocative eyebrow. “I don’t think so.”

The Soldier’s eyes shift to Clint’s left arm again. “What do you have?” he demands, and stalks toward Clint.

As soon as the Soldier gets within striking distance, Clint pulls his arm out from behind himself and swings at the Soldier’s head. But he’s still far from the top of his game, so, as he anticipated, the Soldier blocks it easily with his human hand. As soon as he does, Clint lets gravity take him and he drops; it’s the oldest trick in the book but it’s still often surprisingly effective. As he falls, he strikes out as hard as he can with his elbow at the side of the Soldier’s knee. When the Soldier falls - landing hard and off balance – Clint’s fingers find purchase on the top file drawer and he yanks open it with everything he has, an animal yell tearing out of him.

It’s intended to land a perfect blow to the Soldier’s head and cognitively recalibrate him, but the Soldier’s reflexes are fast and he ducks down so that the drawer only skims through the mop of hair on his head.  

Fuck.

There’s a frozen second where they stare at each other, both surprised at what just happened for different reasons, before an explosion of movement.

Clint’s at a deep disadvantage with only one working arm. The Soldier strikes out with his human hand and connects with Clint’s cheekbone. His head cracks backward – hard – into the wall as blood erupts from his cheek and gushes into his eye. Still, Clint with one eye is better than most people with two, so he sees the split-second flicker of the Soldier’s eyes toward Clint’s chest and the quick retraction of the metal arm that he’s been anticipating. He hurls himself sideways with everything he’s got, evading the punch, and the Soldier’s fist impacts with the wall instead of Clint’s sternum, sending up a fine spray of concrete particles. Clint wants to curl up and whimper because he threw himself onto his right side and his fingers are screaming and he felt his weakened collarbone give on impact, but he can’t because he still has a chance. He capitalizes on the fact that the Soldier is slightly off balance from Clint’s unexpected dodge and rolls into the other man, taking the Soldier’s legs out from under him and knocking him onto his side. Clint doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t even think, just instinctively pulls his leg back and strikes his bare foot forward with everything he has. He catches the Soldier under the chin, sending his head snapping backward where it connects with the sharp edge of the filing cabinet with a loud crack.

Everything is suddenly still and the only thing audible in the room is the water pouring out of the sink and Clint’s ragged panting. Slowly, he rolls onto his good side, groaning the entire way. There’s an iron tang in his mouth and blood in his eyes and more dripping onto the floor, diluting into a thin pink in the water that’s pooling beneath them both. His head feels like it’s going to explode and he moves a sluggish hand to the back where it impacted the wall; it comes away coated crimson red. He tries to sit up further, but instead lurches clumsily and slips in the frigid water.  He ends up on his back again, staring dazedly at the ceiling.  He’s dizzy as shit and when his eyes find the lightbulb, he sees three. A moment later they merge back into one.

When he registers movement out of the corner of his eye, Clint wants to react. He does. But his body feels leaden and the most he can do is roll his head so he can see the other man. But Clint freezes when the movement causes a wave of intense nausea and starts the room spinning again.

The Soldier is moving, shifting on the floor while lifting a hand to his own bleeding head. “What…?” His voice sounds wrecked and confused. Then, “Clint?”

Clint blinks several times to clear the blood from his eyes and when he finally gets a good look, he sees clear, blue, expressive eyes looking back at him. “Oh, fuck. Oh, thank Christ. Jamie…” Clint breathes, and closes his eyes.

A few seconds later, he hears splashing and then feels a warm hand pressed to his face. Clint’s eyes flutter but he can’t put action to the desire to open them completely. It’s Jamie, he thinks, but he’s rapidly losing the ability to focus his thoughts.

“Clint.” Jamie sounds terrified and somehow Clint works his eyes open.

“Jamie…” he slurs, his voice hoarse and barely there. He tries to make his lips approximate a smile, but he doesn’t think he does. Vaguely, he thinks it’s not so good that he can’t tell one way or the other.

“Clint, what… what’s going on?”

There’s so much fear and horror on his face that Clint reaches up to try to smooth it away, but only succeeds at smearing blood on Jamie’s face. He drops his hand lower to Jamie’s chest and fists his shirt desperately as shadows begin to creep into his vision. “…papers… th’ desk…” is all he manages before darkness consumes him. His hand slips away, falling to the side and splashing into the cold water.

Chapter Text

Steve’s eyes go wide when he sees the caller ID and he’s scrambling to connect the call before the first ring can even finish. “Clint! Where are you? We’ve been trying to reach you for weeks!” Steve asks urgently as Tony’s eyes snap up and meet his.

There’s a pause before, “No, Steve, it’s me.”

“Bucky?” He thinks it’s his friend, but the voice on the other end sounds so wrecked that he isn’t sure. Across the room, Tony’s murmuring quietly, directing Friday to try to find the source of the call.

There’s another hesitation. “Yeah.”

Steve’s eyes close in relief. “Thank God. Where are you, Buck? Is Clint with you? Are you two alright?”

“No, I… Steve,” Bucky’s words sound choked and desperate. “Clint needs help.”

***

If Steve had thought leaving Bucky behind with Tony in a Hydra lab to be deprogrammed was the hardest thing he’d had to do lately, he was wrong.

Harder, is watching Hawkeye thrash violently in a hospital bed, fighting the breathing tube down his throat, wild-eyed with desperation, but largely incoherent and resistant to any calming words Steve can come up with as he restrains his friend to keep him from ripping out the tube himself.

As soon as Clint had started moving on the bed, Steve yelled for help and grabbed Clint’s wrists. It's only made him fight harder. The eight seconds that it takes before medical personnel push into the room seems interminable and by the time they get to the bedside, Steve has shifted to full-on pleading while he watches Clint writhe. The breathing-machine alarm is going off – loud and disconcerting - the noise and frenzy of activity around him have Steve’s adrenaline spiking through the roof, and it’s almost impossible to keep Clint still while the doctor tries to get the tape off of his lips so he can take the damned tube out.

It’s all bad enough without the background knowledge that Hawkeye has… issues with being restrained, and the fact that it’s his own hands holding his friend down while he fights like a demon-possessed is making Steve sick to his stomach.

Still, part of him is hugely relieved that Clint is actually conscious for the first time in 11 days because the waiting had left Steve drained, his insides tied up in knots. The relief doesn’t last, though, because after the doctor and nurses finally get him extubated, Clint mumbles a few disjointed words and then he’s out again, as abruptly as he’d woken.  

The last several days had been a horror show of medicine as the doctors at Landstuhl Medical Center had had to put Clint into a medically-induced coma – complete with ventilator-assisted breathing – and drill a hole in his head in order to insert a 4-inch bolt into Clint’s brain to monitor swelling. His brain had apparently bounced around in his skull when Bucky had punched him in the face, cracking his head against the bunker wall. Steve didn’t fully understand everything the doctors had said, but they were crystal-clear about the fact that Clint might not wake up at all, and if he did, he might not really be ‘Clint’ anymore. It had made Steve queasy every time he’d thought about it – which was really, really often – over the last week and half.

Before he leaves, the doctor takes a moment to reassure Steve that none of what just happened is unexpected or unusual and that they’ll probably know more about Clint’s mental status the next time he wakes up. One of the nurses floats around the machines by Clint’s bed for another moment, pressing buttons and checking connections, before she disappears as well, leaving Steve standing alone in the suddenly quiet room, buzzing from the intense burst of adrenaline that the last several minutes had produced.

He sits down heavily in the chair by the bed, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and dropping his head into his hands, then lets out a long, unsteady breath. He wishes like hell that he could erase those minutes from his memory, forget the panic in Clint’s uncomprehending eyes and the feel of him straining desperately against Steve’s grip. It’s not something he ever wants to experience again.

Steve runs a shaky hand down his face and sits up to look at Hawkeye, his mind quickly turning to the one topic that hasn’t left him alone in the last several days: the fact that this is all his fault. This he knows without a shadow of a doubt. If he hadn’t ignored the fact that the trigger sequence had been started before he’d sent Bucky with Clint all those months ago; if he had just left with Bucky himself and not asked Hawkeye to take the risk; if he hadn’t waited so long to reach out to Tony… if, if, if… There are too many and all of them point the blame for this whole mess squarely back at him.

Steve stands again, intensely restless, and paces the room. He watches Clint the whole time and when he’s solidly convinced that he really is sleeping peacefully and breathing on his own for the first time in nearly two weeks, he tugs his phone out of his pocket. After a moment of procrastination where his thumb hovers over the contact button, he makes the call.

It doesn’t connect until the eighth ring and Bucky’s, “Steve?” sounds a little breathless. There’s a mix of fear and hope in Bucky’s voice that clenches at Steve’s chest. He can hear someone yelling reprovingly to Bucky in the background.

“Yeah, it’s me. Everything okay?” Steve wishes like hell that he could be with Bucky in New York, but someone needs to stay with Clint, and since this mess is of his making, he figures that makes it his job.

“Fine,” Bucky answers impatiently. “Is he okay?” The words are rushed and laced with dread.

He’d told Bucky - who’s now in New York with Tony and the rest of the Avengers - and the others that the doctors were letting up on the sedation and Clint might be waking up soon. He’s been fielding calls and texts from them daily and knows they’re all anxious for news about Clint.

Steve forces his voice into a steady cadence. “Woke up fighting, just like you’d expect from Hawkeye.”

“And?” Steve can tell Bucky’s trying to be calm; he knows that tone of Bucky’s, even if Bucky doesn’t know it himself.

“And, he was pretty disoriented; he went right back to sleep.”

There’s a pause on the other end of the line.

Steve lifts his eyes to stare at Clint on the bed. The swelling is mostly gone from his face but the entire left side is still violently purple and black, a narrow line of tight sutures skirting along the bottom of his eye socket.  “I wish I had more to tell you. I’ll keep you posted, I promise. This is good news, Buck... er, Jamie,” he corrects awkwardly.

There’s a tired sigh on the other end of the line. “You can call me Bucky, Steve.”

A wave of guilt had consumed Steve when Bucky had hesitantly told him that Clint had been calling him Jamie – and why. It had made his heart hurt, especially when it hit him how much it made sense. He’d been trying to remember and use the new name, but he still slips sometimes. “We’ll sort it out when we get back to the States.”

“When will that be?”

Steve’s grateful to move on but no part of this conversation is easy. “Don’t know yet. Next time he wakes up we should know more.”

“Right,” Jamie answers, frustration palpable.

“I’ll call you again when I have more answers.”

“Yeah,” he answers, then a few seconds later he says, “Thanks, Stevie,” resigned, quiet.

Hearing his friend call him that makes something warm bloom inside of him. “You’re welcome, Pal.” He hopes Bucky can hear his smile over the line.

He disconnects and goes back to staring at Clint, watching for signs that he might be waking up. The doctors had told him it would probably be a few hours at least, but Steve’s not got anywhere else to go or anything else to do. Predictably, with nothing else to distract him, his thoughts return to Bucky.

And Bucky and Clint.

After reconstructing the chair in the lab and – hopefully – deprogramming Bucky, Tony had brought him to Germany. They’d stayed just overnight before Tony dragged an unwilling Bucky back to New York so they could put him through a battery of tests and make sure the Winter Soldier was gone for good. While they were there, though, Tony had discreetly left the two of them to murmur quietly in a corner of Clint’s room, and Bucky had haltingly filled him in on everything that had happened since they’d fled Wakanda, rarely taking his eyes from Clint as he talked.

Steve first learned about Clint and Agent Coulson shortly after the Battle of New York. He’d watched his teammate grieve, and had settled into his new reality that was a 21^st century where men can be together openly. Hell, even marry each other. But Steve had been, well, stunned when Bucky told him about him and Clint. Reading Steve’s surprise, Bucky had told him that he had memories of other men, from before, from during the war. As far as Steve had ever seen, Bucky had always had a pretty girl on his arm and Steve was still trying to wrap his head around it all. 

There'd been a simmering turmoil inside of him for days before he’d finally let himself acknowledge it. Once he had, he’d realized that he was jealous. Not jealous because he ever wanted Bucky in that way. But jealous because he’d had exactly 62 hours with his best friend after grieving for 2 years and then searching for 2 more when he’d discovered Bucky was alive. Sixty-two hours, most of which were spent running, fighting, or in the company of Sam. Sixty-two hours before Bucky decided that the best thing for everyone was for him to go back into a cryochamber. Self-sacrificing bastard.

All he got was 62 hours, but Clint got more than six months, and in that time, his friend had transformed into someone named Jamie. Steve had kind of hated Barton for it, and then hated himself when he’d remembered the look on Bucky’s face as he’d watched Clint. He’d hardly wanted to think about the range of emotions he’d seen there: fear, guilt, hope… love. He’d been processing it all for several days and now he knows that if Clint wakes up coherent and ‘Clint’, they’re going to have to talk about that particular elephant in the room while it’s still just the two of them, before they head back to the U.S. and what will no doubt be a very distracting Avengers’ Compound.

Steve stares at Clint on the bed, still and peaceful and completely incongruous with the episode a short while ago. Bucky and Clint. Jesus.

He sighs. The 21^st century is a complicated fucking mess and sometimes Steve almost wishes they’d never pulled him out of the ice.

***

Clint doesn’t even have to open his eyes to know he’s in a hospital; he’s woken up in them too many times not to recognize the familiar pressure of the pulse oximeter on his finger, the tug of tubes penetrating his body at various points, and the small whirring and clicking of medical machinery. He tries to swallow but his throat burns and feels like it’s coated with desert sand. He blinks his eyes several times, trying to lubricate them and work out all the dryness. He’s a little surprised to see the telltale signs of an intensive care unit, rather than a standard hospital room. That’s never good.

Nothing about the room gives Clint any clues as to where he is, and all he can see through the window is a cloudy, grey sky and rain drops sliding down the glass. The only thing that stands out is Steve Rogers, leaning in the corner, thumbs hooked in his front pockets, staring out the window. He’s wearing a beard, which is… weird, and very un-Captain America-like. He looks more tired than Clint thinks he’s ever seen him.

But any thoughts of Steve are quickly shoved aside as things start to come back to him and panic ignites, causing his heart to jackrabbit in his chest. “Where is he?” Clint manages, but it’s more of a croaking whisper than anything.

Steve startles and whips his head to look at him. “Clint?” he says, and immediately crosses to the bed, pressing the remote call-button. “Thank god,” he mutters, more to himself than to Clint, then, “The doctor will want to see you.”  

It’s not exactly the response he expected. He gets a sinking feeling that whatever it was that landed him here, it was pretty bad. He’s about to repeat the question when a doctor and a nurse hurry into the room. Yeah, Clint’s pretty positive now that it’s bad.

“Hello, Mr. Barton. It’s nice to see you awake,” the doctor says, serious as he checks the bedside monitors. “I’m Dr. Layton.”

Talking the last time was decidedly difficult so Clint just gives a small hum of acknowledgement.

The doctor pulls out his pen-light and flicks it over each of Clint’s eyes, then turns it off and slips it into his pocket. “I’m going to ask you to do a few things. Please do them to the best of your ability, okay?”

“Okay,” Clint rasps.  

“Good. Can you open your eyes wide for me?” Clint does. “Good. Now squeeze them shut tightly.” Again, Clint accomplishes this. “Alright, now puff out your cheeks if you would. Very good. Big smile?”

He grins and feels like an idiot.

“And last one, can you stick out your tongue for me?”

Clint flicks his eyes at Steve as he does. Steve is watching with an intensity that does nothing to reduce Clint’s growing concern about what the hell happened to him.

“Excellent. Your cranial nerves seem to be fine. That’s very good.”

“You wanna tell me what’s going on?” he manages, ignoring the discomfort in favor of getting answers.

“You sustained a fairly severe blow to the head, Mr. Barton.”

“I did?”

“Yes. Can you tell me the last thing you remember?”

“Uh,” he flicks a quick glance at Steve again. The last thing he remembers is eating cold goulash while a tense Winter Soldier watched him warily with a gun in his hand. He’s not sure it’s a good idea to tell that to anyone at this point, since he has no idea where the Soldier is or how he landed here – wherever here is. “I’m not sure,” he hedges. “Where are we?”

“Landstuhl Medical Center, in Germany,” the doctor answers. “It’s not unusual to lose the memories of what happened immediately prior to a head injury. They may or may not come back to you. It’s nothing to worry about if they don’t.” Clint’s had enough head injuries to know that already.

The doctor raises Clint’s left arm about nine inches off the bed. “Don’t let me push your arm down,” he directs, then applies light pressure on Clint’s arm. Clint holds it steady. “Good,” he says, then moves around to the other side of the bed. He slides the sling off of Clint’s arm. “I know you’ll have some discomfort with this side, but if you could, please, try to resist the pressure.”

Clint grunts as he holds his arm against the doctor’s pressure. His collarbone hurts a lot more than he remembers and he reflexively looks down at it.

“Very good.” The doctor seems genuinely pleased, which reassures Clint a good bit. He steps down to the end of the bed and flips the coverings off of Clint’s right leg. “Now your legs. Do the same please,” he says as he lifts Clint’s right leg. The doctor pushes and Clint pushes back; the doctor nods. “Now, again, I know this one might cause some discomfort, but if you could press as hard as you are able,” he says, lifting Clint’s bad leg.

There’s a sharp pain from the wound on his thigh but it’s not unmanageable and Clint does as he’s been told.      

“Excellent,” the doctor declares as he covers Clint’s legs again. “You’re a very lucky man, Mr. Barton.”

“If you say so,” Clint responds, eyes already drooping heavily.

“After you’ve rested some more we’ve got some things to discuss but it can wait for now. We’ll talk again later.”

As ominous as that sounds, Clint just nods vaguely, but as soon as the doctor and nurse have left he forces his eyes open and turns toward Steve.

“Is he alive?” He braces himself for the worst. His body can’t really seem to move, but his heart is racing.

Steve takes two quick steps up to the side of the bed. “Yeah. He’s alive, Clint. And the Winter Soldier is gone. Bucky’s back.”

The words wash over Clint like he’s been baptized in them. “Oh, thank god,” he pushes out in a relieved breath, closing his eyes. He has so many questions, not least of which is how they got Bucky back. But he’s fading fast and about to be pulled under again. “Where is he?” he asks again.

But if Steve answers, he’s already too far gone to hear it.

*

Clint is awoken a couple of hours later by the same doctor who apologizes, but runs him through the same tests. While Clint’s momentarily alert, the doctor explains Clint’s situation. When he gets to the part about having to place a 4-inch bolt in his brain, his eyes dart uncomfortably to Rogers, who’s looking like he wants to crush his hands against his ears.

When he finishes, all Clint can think of to say is, “Okay,” after taking a few moments to absorb it all.

“Do you have any questions?” Doctor Layton asks him.

Clint creases his brow. “Um… Prognosis?”

“Well, you’re likely going to be very tired for a good long time, but I’m optimistic that you’ll make a full recovery from your head trauma.”

“But?” Clint prompts him, because that answer was a hedge if he ever heard one.

“But… there are still some issues and decisions to be made about your fingers and clavicle, and your leg is going to take a while to heal completely. You’re looking at a good bit of physical therapy in your future.”

The second the doctor said ‘fingers’, Clint’s eyes had shifted there and stayed, the small jolt of anxiety waking him up again. They look better than they did the last time he’d looked at them, but that’s only because they’re now professionally splinted and the wrapping is clean. He looks back up at the doctor. “What’s the situation, Doc?” His voice is still rough and uneven.

“The orthopedic surgeon has taken a look at the x-rays, and you’ll want to talk to him, but it looks like they’ll require surgery if you hope to regain full use of them.”

“I do,” Clint answers without hesitation. “How soon can you do that?”

The doctor smiles. “All in good time, Mr. Barton. I’ll let Dr. Singh know you’re awake and ask him to come talk to you about it. Meanwhile, rest is the best thing for you.”

Doctor Layton leaves and Clint closes his eyes, trying to process the info dump he’s just been given.

He hears Steve step closer to the bed. “You okay?” he asks gently.

Clint sighs. “I had a bolt in my head.”

“You did,” Steve agrees gravely.

He still has more questions, but instead of asking, he opens his eyes and turns to Steve. “I’m sorry, Cap.”

Steve knits his brows together. “For what?”

Clint shifts his gaze up toward the ceiling because he’s not a coward, but Captain America’s ‘disappointed face’ is a whole other thing. “I was supposed to keep him safe.”

Steve makes a noise of disagreement. “You did.”

Clint starts to shake his head but then thinks better of it since apparently there’s a hole in his skull and his brain bouncing around was what landed him here in the first place. He does finally meet Steve’s eyes again, though. “I turned him into the fucking Winter Soldier,” he grits out through his teeth.

“And then you knocked the Soldier out of him,” Steve counters, proceeding to relay what Bucky told him about their fight. Despite the successful outcome, Clint finds himself a little disappointed, hearing that his tactic for the filing cabinet drawer didn’t work; he hates it when a plan doesn’t turn out the way he intended.

Clint ignores Steve’s assurances that he’d done nothing wrong because he’s not ready to see this in any other light. He shifts gears. “Where is he? Can I see him?”

“Soon,” Steve answers noncommittally. “Why don’t you sleep for a while and I’ll fill you in later.”

Clint’s heart starts to race again and he narrows his eyes. “What aren’t you telling me?”

Steve hesitates but then he must be able to tell that Clint’s about five seconds away from full-blown panic, because he puts one hand up in a soothing gesture.    

“Tony found the papers you pulled out of the files in the bunker. He was able to reconstruct the chair and he’s pretty sure they were able to get rid of the Winter Soldier for good. We’re just… making sure. Tony’s taken him back to the Avengers Compound and they’re running him through some tests. Give yourself a couple more days to rest and we’ll head there ourselves.”

“Ja—Bucky’s with Stark?” Clint asks, and even though he desperately wants to stay awake and find out what’s going on with Jamie, his eyelids feel leaden.

“Yeah, Bucky and Stark. Look, it’s a long story and you look like you’re not going to be awake much longer. Get some sleep. Bucky’s fine. I’ll fill the rest in when you wake up.”  

But Steve’s not there the next time he wakes up and a nurse tells Clint that he’s just gone to get cleaned up and grab some food from the mess. In the meantime, she tells him, he’s stable and they’re moving him out of the intensive care unit into a regular room. That proves to be about as much as Clint can handle for one day so he’s asleep again about thirty seconds after they get him settled into his new room and he sleeps through the night.

The next morning, he wakes to find Steve back in his familiar spot next to Clint’s bed, sketch pad on his lap, hand working carefully across the page; the drawing holds a pretty good likeness of Dr. Layton.

“You gonna tell me what’s going on now?” he asks, and Steve looks up and smiles.

Steve fills him in on how Tony was able to repair and reconstruct the chair based on the plans Clint found and run the programming reversal on Bucky. Then tells him how, afterward, they had loaded up all the files into the quinjet to take them back to New York in case there might be other important information in them, but destroyed the chair before blowing the bunker since Tony was certain he could reconstruct it if necessary. And how Stark brought Bucky back to New York so that Tony’s hand-picked doctors could do whatever tests they could dream up to make sure any susceptibility to brainwashing was completely gone. So far, as near as they can tell, it is.    

“Oh,” he says as he finishes up, “I almost forgot.” He reaches into the messenger bag sitting next to him on the floor. When he sits up, he hands something to Clint and sets another item on the bedside table.

Clint sucks in a startled breath to see the photo of himself and Phil and Natasha in his hand – a little creased and the glass missing from the frame, but otherwise just fine – and what looks like his copy of The Bridge of San Luis Rey sitting on the table.

“Where did you get these?” he asks, certain that he sounds as astonished as he feels.

Steve’s eyes are watching him with interest. “Bucky had them with him in the bunker. He thought you’d want to have them.”

"He had them?” Clint asks breathlessly gaping at the photo. When they’d fled Czechia, he figured he’d never see it again, and since Sitwell had taken it there was no possibility of ever getting another copy. But he’s surprised to find that while he’s glad to have it back, what it represents – the fact that Jamie had been in there - is much more important to him now.

Steve hums in acknowledgment and then must misinterpret the faint smile that’s curled on Clint’s lips. “It’s a nice picture,” he says warmly.

“Yeah,” Clint answers distractedly, still focused on the photo.

A moment later, Clint places the photo with care the table next to the book. His fingers skim over the binding and he’s staring at it when Steve clears his throat a little. Clint looks up.

“So, uh, Bucky and Tony were here for a day or so before they headed back to the States. Neither Tony or I thought it was the best idea, but Bucky refused to go unless he saw you first.” It seems like Steve is choosing his words very carefully, and Clint tenses.

“We, uh, spent six months together. We… got close.”

Steve nods, his expression thoughtful. “While we sat here and watched that machine breathe for you, Bucky and I, well, we had a long talk.” Steve pauses and looks conflicted before he finally says, “He told me about the two of you.”

Which, okay, that answers one of the questions Clint’s been wondering about but didn’t quite know how to bring up. But, shit. Clint closes his eyes for a moment as a familiar wave of guilt crests over him. After a few seconds he mans-up and blinks his eyes open. He opens his mouth to apologize, but Steve puts up a hand and stops him.

“Before you say anything, I’ve got something to say to you.”

Clint blanks his face and waits for it. In the back of his mind, he’d known all along that what he and Jamie were doing would eventually come crashing down around him. This is about how he expected it to go. “Okay,” Clint says stoically and lifts his chin to take the metaphorical blow.

“I’ve known Bucky most of my life. He was my best friend and as close to me as a brother. For a long time, I thought he was dead and that I was to blame. Then, when I found out what Hydra had done to him, the things they’d made him do—” Steve stops and Clint looks back at him, but Steve is staring at his hands in his lap, shaking his head a little. He sighs and turns and looks out the window with such undisguised heartache that Clint feels like a voyeur. A moment later, he turns his head back toward Clint, but closes his eyes. “When I finally found him last year he still wasn’t out of danger, and it didn’t matter how hard I tried, I still wasn’t able to help him,” he says with resignation, then pauses. After a moment, he seems to gather himself, then opens his eyes and fixes his gaze to Clint’s. “There’s nothing in the world I want more than for Bucky to be safe and happy. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t give that to him. But you did.”

Clint blinks. That… was not what he was expecting. “Cap,” he starts, but honestly has no idea what he’s going to say. It doesn’t matter though because Steve continues as though Clint didn’t say anything.

“Save your apologies, Clint, because you don’t owe me one.”

He searches Steve’s eyes for a moment before giving in and answering, “Okay,” the word coming out hoarse through a tight throat. Rogers is sincere, he can see that, but it’s not really that easy. Clint’s never been good at letting go of self-recrimination, especially in the last few years, but he’s got no energy to argue the point with Steve at the moment.

They sit in quiet contemplation for a minute before Clint gathers his courage to ask about what’s been worrying him most but he’s been afraid to ask. “How is he? I mean, with—" Clint lifts his good arm and sweeps it vaguely down his body, gesturing toward his multiple injuries, “—all of this. Does he remember…?" He’s feeling fatigued again and every time he blinks, it’s a struggle to lift his eyelids again.

“Yeah,” Steve nods. “He seems to remember everything from the last six months, before and after-- well, before and after. And he’s about how you’d expect.”

Clint nods and closes his eyes. In the back of his mind, he’d hoped that if he was successful in recalibrating Jamie, or deprogramming him, he would forget everything that happened once he’d become the Winter Soldier. Clint would gladly have him not remember anything at all from the last six months if it meant he wouldn’t have to carry the burden of guilt for hurting Clint.

He has more questions, but try as he might, his eyes are not going to open again. He makes a small, frustrated noise, and then sleeps again for hours.

***

Two days later, Dr. Layton clears him to travel back to the U.S. In between Clint’s frequent naps, piece by piece, Steve has told him everything that had happened with the Avengers while he and Jamie had been holed up in Czechia, and then Slovakia. Fences are apparently mended and Tony’s now footing the bill for a whole medical team to fly with them on one of his private jets to make sure Clint makes it back to New York safely. He’s discussed the situation with his fingers with Dr. Singh, but when they get back to New York, Tony’s arranged for a consult with the top orthopedic surgeon on the eastern seaboard.

“Why’s Tony doing all this?” Clint asks suspiciously as Steve buckles into a seat facing his. Stark doesn’t scrimp on luxury, that’s for sure. The seats are wide and electric so they glide smoothly into any position, with legs that swing up so he can lie back fully reclined and sleep if he wants. Which he knows he will. Soon. “Guilt?”

Steve pauses and thinks for a moment. “We’ve had a lot of conversations. All of us. I think everyone acknowledges that when it comes to the Accords, there’s blame enough to go around, and we all could have done better. We’re all working on forgiveness and acceptance and I don’t think Tony feels any more guilty than the rest of us. This is just what Tony does.” A fond smile turns his mouth upward. “This is Tony concerned for a friend and doing what he can to help.”

Yeah, that sounds about right. Clint presses the buttons on his seat and maneuvers into a more comfortable position. He’d stayed awake the entire time he was being transported from the hospital; he’s exhausted. He’s back asleep before the plane even takes off.

*

Small bumps of turbulence wake him and when he opens his eyes, he’s surprised to see Natasha sitting across from him instead of Steve. He’s annoyed at himself for not anticipating it; of course Natasha would be piloting the plane. But Clint could not physically stop the smile that blooms on his face if he wanted do.

“Are we still friends?” she asks, but she’s smirking because she already knows the answer.

Clint reaches down with his good hand to the chair’s control buttons and starts maneuvering it back into more of a sitting position. “Depends on how mad you are that I didn’t tell you about the house in Czechia.” He shifts and winces at the many small hurts all over his body.

She ignores the comment, which says more than any words could, and he sees her eyes sweep across his body before shifting back up to his face. “You look terrible.”

“Love you, too, Nat,” he says wryly, still trying to arrange himself more comfortably. “So, what’re you doing here? Steve said you were on your way out on something for Fury.”

She shrugs. “It can keep for a day.” Clint understands her need to put eyes on him first; if the circumstances were reversed, he’d feel the same.  Her raised eyebrow silently asks, ‘how are you, really?’

“I’m fine.”

Natasha gives him a dubious look and waggles her hand in the universal gesture of ‘maybe/maybe not’.

Clint huffs. “Okay, well maybe I’m not great at this moment. But I will be.”

“I know.”

There’s something unfamiliar in the air between them and it takes a minute for his still-sluggish brain to figure it out. “I wasn’t… I wasn’t trying to hide it from you, Nat.” Something flickers on her face – there and gone in an instant – but he knows he hit the right mark.   “I bought it after…” the next words die in his mouth. He gives her a one-shoulder shrug, “After I retired, it just felt safer if no one knew about it.”

She stares at him for a long moment, then tips her head the slightest bit in acknowledgement and understanding, the tension between them dissipating. Clint takes a drink of water, then closes his eyes. It’s frustrating how quickly he gets tired.

“So,” she says a minute later, and Clint sighs quietly, opening his eyes.

He’s actively interested in not having this conversation. “So,” he replies in a non-answer.

She narrows her eyes at him and considers. They don’t usually evade each other when it comes to important shit. Not surprisingly, she doesn’t let Clint get away with his attempt at dodging the subject. “You and Barnes.”

Clint’s eyes drift to gaze out the window.

In his peripheral vision he sees her shift minutely. “Clint.” She says it with a note of concern in her voice and Clint turns back to her.

“I know what you’re going to say, Nat, so you don’t need to bother. I fucked up. I know it, and I don’t need reminding.”

Natasha’s eyebrows dart inward for a second. “That’s not what I was going to say.”

“Well then say what you were going to say,” he snaps, suddenly irritable. Dr. Layton had told him he might find his emotions a little less easy to control and now he understands what he meant. He can’t think of a single time he’s snapped at Natasha this way.

She cocks her head to the side a bit and holds his gaze steadily. She wins this game of chicken when he breaks the connection and flicks his eyes up the aisle to check and see if the medical crew are listening; they don’t seem to be. “I was going to say, I’m glad to see that you’re finally moving on.”

They’ve had a running disagreement for more than four years about Clint’s culpability in Phil’s death and his ability – or lack thereof – to stop blaming himself and try to move forward. “Don’t, Nat,” Clint bites out, because he’s at a disadvantage in his exhausted state, and he has a feeling that if he engages her in this old argument, he might actually lose it for good.

She studies him for another minute. “Alright,” she concedes, though she doesn’t look one bit happy about it.

Clint huffs out a loud breath through his nose. “Look, I’m sorry. It’s just… I know it was stupid of me to get involved with Barnes. I knew the minute we started that there was no future in it. Just… chalk it up to being cooped up together for too long. It’s fine. I’m fine.”

“Is that really how you feel?”

“It doesn’t matter how I feel. Barnes is fixed. He’s got the whole world open to him now.”

She makes an impatient noise in the back of her throat. He recognizes it as her ‘you’re an idiot’ grunt.

“Look, I’m just saying that for the first time, the guy’s got options. I don’t have any expectations.”

“You never do,” she says, with a little too much sadness for Clint’s liking.

“Leave it, Nat,” he says wearily and starts to recline the chair again, signaling the end of the conversation. He closes his eyes and hears her sigh as she stands.

A second later he feels her warm hand on his shoulder and then the soft press of her lips against his forehead. His eyes open to meet hers. “I’m glad you’re safe,” she tells him before turning to head into the cockpit.

He grabs her hand as she leaves and she stops, looking over her shoulder at him. He’s having a hard time untangling the knot of emotions he’s feeling and his throat is tight, so he holds her gaze for a second and squeezes her hand once. She squeezes back and gives him a small, but genuine, smile before pulling away.

As soon as she passes the medical team, one of the nurses stands and walks back to where he’s sitting. She smiles but doesn’t otherwise engage him as she takes his blood pressure, and checks his pulse and temperature. He mostly stares out the window while she does.

The thing is, he doesn’t have any expectations. He and Jamie were living a fantasy life in Czechia, and the thing about fantasies is that they’re not grounded in reality. This is reality, he thinks, ruefully acknowledging the deep ache that throbs throughout his whole body. Clint’s a broken, ex, sort-of-Super-Hero-but-not-really, pushing middle age. Barnes is a perpetually twenty-something precision-trained soldier whom Steve will no doubt draft into the Avengers now that there’re no concerns about him being brainwashed again. Clint tells himself that he’s happy for him, really, that Barnes gets a chance to move on and he should. And then Clint surprises himself to realize that he is happy for Barnes, because if anyone deserves good things in their life after all the shit they’ve been through, it’s got to be Bucky.

He’s just going to really miss the way Jamie’s blue eyes would dance when he laughed, and the bright smile that, when directed at Clint, never stopped making his belly squirm.  

***

Steve Rogers has a rule. It’s hard and fast. He formed it when he was 13 and he’s held tight to it ever since. The rule is this: Don’t get involved in other people’s relationships. He formed it after Bucky had some girl trouble once and Steve had opened his mouth and pointed out all of her flaws, going on at length about how Buck was better off without her. Bucky agreed with that assessment for five minutes, until the girl sashayed back, kissing Bucky stupid (literally, in Steve’s opinion) and putting a wedge between the two best friends. Bucky and the girl lasted for another few weeks, until the girl found a boy from a family with more money; the tension between Bucky and Steve lasted longer. Eventually, Bucky got over it and he never let another girl come between them. Steve got over it and vowed to never make that mistake again.

It hasn’t always been easy, especially during the war. He’d often cringed and wanted to take a battle-buddy aside to gently point out that the girl on his arm was only after one thing, but he never did that. Because his rule is iron-clad. It’s been much easier to follow in the 21^st century, since he’s still a little mind-boggled by the nature of modern relationships and all they seem to entail, so he’s not really felt in a position to give people any of that kind of advice anyway; a lot has changed in the past 90 years. No matter what happened between Tony and Pepper when they were still together, or Thor and Jane, or, jeez, that weird Nat and Bruce thing that lasted five minutes, Steve has kept his mouth shut and stayed out of it.

What Steve had told Clint in the hospital a couple of weeks ago was the truth: there’s nothing he wants more than for Bucky to be safe and happy. It looks like they’ve got the first one dialed in; it’s the second one that’s proving to be problematic.

Steve’s been gone almost since they set foot back in the States. Meetings in Washington and New York City keeping him from the Avengers’ Compound once he and Clint had returned. Sometime in there, Bucky has cut his hair, shedding himself of the grungy, Winter Soldier guise. He looks good. Heathy and fit. Just not… happy. By all accounts, he’s been largely isolating himself, from the Avengers and, more surprisingly, from Clint. According to Bruce, Clint had gone looking for Bucky as soon as he was up and around, but Bucky always managed to be where Clint wasn’t. After a couple of days, Clint stopped looking.

As he stands at the window watching Bucky, Steve grimaces to himself realizing he’s going to have to break his damned rule.  

Bucky’s sitting at a table under the shade structure when Steve ambles outside. He sees the second Bucky starts to track him, eyes watching his approach with wary interest. When Steve’s ten feet away, Bucky asks, “How is he?”

Steve takes the seat across from his friend. “The same as he was yesterday, and the day before that, and every day before that for the last week. You’d know that if you went to see him yourself.”

Bucky huffs bitterly and turns away, staring into the tree line. He’s got what looks like iced tea in front of him on the table, metal hand wrapped loosely around the glass, but it doesn’t look like he’s touched it and the ice is mostly melted. Steve lets him sit and consider for a few minutes, scrutinizing his friend.

“Buck, it wasn’t your fault. You had no control—"

“I know that,” he answers tiredly.

Steve pauses, surprised at Bucky’s answer. “Then why haven’t you seen him?”

“Because I get that it wasn’t me, but he blames himself for Phil’s death, so do you really think he’s just going to let it go that I practically killed him? That I maybe messed up his hand permanently? I’d rather never see him again than to see him look at me like—” He shakes his head and turns away.

Steve considers for a moment. He knows Clint’s never been able to let go of the guilt he felt for what he did while under Loki’s control – despite everyone’s efforts to convince him otherwise. Still, from the snippets he’s gotten from Bucky and Clint – brief snapshots of the six months they spent together in Czechia – Steve’s hard pressed to believe that either of them would want to throw that away.

“Give him a chance, Buck. Give yourself a chance.”

Bucky gazes at him for a few seconds but doesn’t respond.

Steve sighs. It’s pretty clear that he needs to pull out the big guns. He doesn’t have a clue if this Bucky/Jamie will react to being challenged the way the old one did, but it’s worth a try. He takes a breath. “I’ve never known you to be yellow-bellied,” Steve goads him and catches the minute flicker in Bucky’s face. Good. He forges on. “He’s asking to see you, Buck. Given everything that’s happened, don’t you think he deserves at least that?” He injects just the tiniest amount of judgment into the edge of his words.

Bucky’s eyes snap toward Steve’s and he holds them for a long moment before punching out a breath that’s half-laugh, half-sob. “You’re kind of a prick, you know that? Not at all how I remember you.”

“Give it time,” Steve tells him with a smirk, “it’ll come back.”

***

Two days later, Jamie finally gathers his courage and silently slips into the gym where he’s been told Clint is doing some PT. He stands just inside the door, to the side and a little behind Clint, where he can watch him on the treadmill. His face is a grim mask of determination as he limps a fast pace on the machine, his hair and shirt are dark with sweat. Jamie’s stomach flips at the first sight of him, but it drops at the sight of him. He’s walking with a pronounced limp, and his splinted hand is in a sling to support the healing clavicle that required a surgically-placed plate to correct the displaced fracture that the Winter Solder had caused. The side of his face still carries the faint echo of bruising, yellow and traces of purple settled low along his jaw; a shiny, pink scar traces the line of his zygomatic bone, just under his eye.

He never once turns or looks Jamie’s way, but five minutes later, he says, conversationally, “It’s kinda creepy to have you standing over there staring at me.”

Jamie straightens, feeling sheepish, then realizes that he should have known Clint would know he was there. “I didn’t want to interrupt.”

“I can actually walk and talk at the same time,” Clint says, stopping the treadmill. He wipes his face with a towel before dropping it on the floor, then gulps down a bottle of water in one go. When he finishes, he half-turns and throws the bottle forty feet across the room into the blue recycling bin sitting next to Jamie by the door. The plastic bangs and bounces in the otherwise empty bin. Clint smirks as he limps a couple of steps to the right and settles into a reclining leg-press machine.

Jamie starts a slow walk across the room. When he steps up next to the machine, he can see that gravity has pulled the loose leg of Clint’s shorts further up and Jamie’s eyes reluctantly drag to the wound that is clearly visible – a fist-sized, fragile-looking, red depression in the thigh muscle. He swallows thickly and looks away to the weights themselves; Clint’s got them set near maximum. “Are you supposed to be pushing your leg that hard?” He tries for easy banter and familiarity, but he can hear the strain in his own voice.

Clint ignores him and then seems to make a point of pushing harder past a standard rep of fifteen, to twenty, before he finally stops, breathing heavily and sweat pouring off his face. He’s trying hard to hide it but Jamie still notices the fine tremor in his left leg. He snatches the towel off the floor and tosses it at Clint.

“Thanks,” he mumbles, and mops his face.

Jamie swallows hard as he catches sight of the thin, red lines that are visible encircling half of Clint’s wrist – fainter than the last time he saw them, but still enough to turn his stomach.  “You’re welcome,” he manages.

Clint’s not met his eyes once and Jamie can see that all the walls that he’d worked so hard for so many months to dismantle, are back up and firmly in place. He has no idea where to start dismantling them again, no idea if he’ll even be able to this time.

As Clint starts another set of reps, he darts a glance at Jamie, but it doesn’t go any higher than his chest. “Are you okay?” he asks, as the weights drop back to neutral.

He should be surprised that Clint’s asking him that, but somehow he’s not. He glowers at Clint. “Seriously, Barton? You’re asking me?”

Clint firms his lips and presses his legs forward again. “Yeah, I’m asking,” he says through heavy breaths.

Jamie shakes his head in exasperation. “I’m fine. The Winter Soldier is gone. For now, and we think for good, both thanks to you.”

Jamie sees Clint’s eyes close for a brief second and hears the murmured, “Thank god,” barely audibly, and mostly to himself.

Clint finishes a second set – stopping at fifteen this time - and sits upright. He drops his legs to straddle the bench he’s on and Jamie would have to be blind to miss the way his leg is quivering from over-abuse. Clint leans forward and puts his hands on his knees, trying hard for subtlety but Jamie knows he’s pressing down to stop the shake.  

Jamie grabs a fresh bottle of water from one of the stocked, glass-fronted mini-fridges scattered around the room, cracks it open and hands it to Clint, who stands up and takes it without comment. He clears his throat. “So, Steve said you wanted to see me?”

Clint takes a long pull from the bottle before wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Yeah. Uh.” Clint’s eyes finally flick up to his and away for a second and then back as he seems to firm his stance and straighten taller. “I just wanted to apologize.”

Jamie’s can’t stop the full-body flinch that jumps through him. “What the hell for?” he practically yells, too surprised to keep the disbelief from his voice.

Clint stiffens in front of him. “For triggering you,” he bites out.

Jamie gapes at him. And, no. Just… No. Clint does not get to blame himself for any of this shit. “Are you fucking kidding me?” Jamie snaps, frustration and anger and regret and fear, all roiling together inside of him. “I’m here to apologize to you, Clint! Jesus, I almost beat you to death.” He nearly chokes on the last word.

Clint just shakes his head. “You didn’t, though. And you took care of the injuries.”

Jamie shoots a dark glance toward Clint’s hand, newly bandaged after Tony’s hand-picked orthopedic surgeon had corrected the way the Soldier had improperly set them in the bunker. “Yeah, I did a bang-up job of that,” he hisses.

Clint shakes his head. “I’m fine.”

Jamie snorts derisively. “You’re fucking crazy. It took six hours of surgery, and will take how many months of physical therapy? Not to mention they had to drill a hole into your head. Jesus—” Jamie stops and turns away as he tries to rein in his emotions.

“Bucky, this isn’t your fault. You didn’t do this.”

Jamie jerks his head up at that, confused why Clint just called him Bucky, but passing that over for the toehold he’s been given. “Do you honestly believe that?”

“Yes,” Clint answers vehemently.

Clint’s watching him intensely, holding eye contact to make sure Jamie knows he meant it. Jamie squints back at him. “Then when are you going to stop blaming yourself for Phil?” he asks matter-of-factly.

Clint startles at the question then he hesitates for couple of seconds before he shakes his head again. “That’s not the sa—”

“No, it’s not the same,” Jamie interrupts him. “Every one of those injuries--” he gestures at Clint, “--every broken bone, every bruise, every scar - I gave them to you with my own hands. You never even touched Phil. So, if I get a pass for all the things I did while I was the Winter Soldier, then you get one for the things Loki forced you to do. You can’t have it both ways, Clint. You can’t forgive me and not yourself.”  

Clint opens his mouth to say something, seems to think better of it, then shuts it again.  

Jamie sighs impatiently. “It’s time to move on. It’s time for both of us to move on.” Clint’s face shutters at that and Jamie blinks, mind racing to figure out why.

“So, you’re moving on?” Clint asks, the words slow and precise like he’s holding himself in careful check.

Jamie doesn’t even have to think about his answer. The Winter Soldier is gone and he’s got a whole life in front of himself that he never thought he’d have. He closes his eyes and takes a cleansing breath, and when he opens them, Clint’s still watching him closely. “Yeah, I have.”

Clint holds the connection for a brief moment and then blinks and looks down, “So, what’s next for Bucky Barnes, then?” he asks, the easy tone belied by the fact that he’s pretending to adjust his sling as a way to avoid looking at Jamie.

Bucky Barnes…? What…?

The light finally dawns for Jamie. The idiot in front of him thinks that now that the Winter Soldier is gone, Jamie’s leaving. That what they had in Czechia meant nothing, was something to toss aside and move on from. That he’s somehow Bucky Barnes again, and not Jamie.

Jamie rolls his eyes but Clint’s still looking anywhere but at him, so Jamie steps close, almost crowding Clint, causing him to startle and finally look at him. He’s watching Jamie questioningly when Jamie takes another half-step closer, placing his hands lightly on Clint’s hips. He hears Clint’s small but sharp intake of breath, sees the flicker of his eyes to Jamie’s hands and back up. Sees his pupils dilate.  

“Well,” Jamie says with slow deliberateness, a small smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, “I heard you’ve got a farm that needs some work.”

~Fin~