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Clint feels like he’s been asleep for all of two minutes before the bed starts to vibrate.
“Mrrrngggh? Whuh?” he mumbles.
He pries his eyes open. The whole front wall of his bedroom is awash in green, with yellow text.
NOTIFICATION
With a disgruntled huff Clint pulls his aids off the side table and fits them into his ears.
“Jarvis?”
“Yes, sir. I have a notification for you. Sergeant Barnes is accessing the armory. He has also obtained keys to a vehicle.”
Clint rubs a hand over his face. “Why do I care?” He’s got 99 problems, but the goddamn Winter Soldier ain’t, to his knowledge, one of them.
“You are the ranking Avenger on site, sir.”
Clint considers this horrifying prospect. Although…
“Jarvis, am I the only Avenger on site?”
“Yes, sir.”
Well. Some things never change.
Clint says goodbye to the prospect of sweet sweet sleep, shoves himself into a pair of jeans, and pulls his emergency bow and quiver from under the bed.
“What’re you, craving nachos or somethin’?”
Barnes pauses for only a moment, and then resumes strapping on the Kevlar tac vest. He already has at least six knives secreted about his person that Clint can suss out, his Glock 17 strapped to his thigh, and his M4A1 across his back.
Clint watches as he fills his various pockets and pouches with ammo and a few grenades for good measure.
Clint hadn’t been sure what he would find down here. He’s seen footage from D.C. — the empty-eyed Winter Soldier, the relentless killing machine. And he’s seen Bucky Barnes, the man who has skulked around the Tower as Steve’s shadow for the last six weeks since he finally came in from the cold, hiding away in oversized hoodies and avoiding eye contact with everyone. This is someone new — Barnes’ movements are purposeful, deliberate, but there’s full awareness in his eyes.
“You can pretend you never woke up,” Barnes suggests, and Clint is surprised to hear a trace of a Brooklyn drawl in his voice. Those old ‘40’s film reels never had sound. “Go back to sleep an' act as surprised as anyone that I’m not here when they come back from mission.”
“Could do.” Clint spins his bow at his side. Under normal circumstances he would have faith in his ability to draw and fire in time to get the drop on anyone, even from this position. But the Winter Soldier is a fucking exception, and if he wanted Clint dead then Clint would already be a corpse.
So Clint tries to look as nonconfrontational as possible, while still wondering what the fuck he’s supposed to do. He’ll have to decide quick, too. If Barnes tries to fit another grenade in his side pouch this whole place is gonna blow.
“What the hell,” he says. He puts down his bow. He thinks he sees relief in Barnes’ eyes for just a moment, and then Clint is pushing past him, pulling his own gear from his locker. “I always did love a good road trip.”
They're past Philadelphia by the time Barnes finally asks.
“Why’re you comin’ with me?”
Clint stuffs a cold french fry in his mouth and washes it down with even colder coffee. Yuck. “Y’know, like I said. I’ve always loved a good road trip.”
Barnes makes a face like Grumpy Cat. “Why don’t you tell me the truth?”
Clint shoots him a sidelong glance. “I’ve known you six weeks, and I haven’t said more to you than ‘Pass the coffee.’ Ask me again when I know you better, and maybe you’ll have earned the truth.”
Barnes turns his head to stare out the window. There’s nothing but empty fields, and a sky lightening to dawn out there, but he seems to find it mesmerizing. “Fair enough,” he finally says, so quiet that Clint’s aids almost miss it over the rumble of the engine.
Barnes seems to have been navigating on instinct up until now, but somewhere in Eastern Kentucky he pulls up some coordinates on a burner phone he produced from god knows where. They approach slowly, stopping a few miles out, driving the car a good hundred yards down an abandoned mining road and covering it with brush for good measure.
They creep back towards the main road, hiding in the bushes when a supply truck rumbles by.
“You stay here,” Barnes says authoritatively.
“As if.” So sue him, Clint has been hanging around with Katie-Kate a bit too much.
Barnes turns to him, and Clint feels the full force of those slate-blue eyes for the first time.
“This isn't your fight.”
Clint considers it. For about a millisecond.
“That Hydra in there?”
Barnes nods.
“Then it’s my fight.”
They’ve done a sweep of the perimeter, and it certainly checks all the boxes for a super sketchy neo-Nazi base, but Clint can’t help the little sliver of doubt that’s taken root in his mind.
“Wait,” he says as Barnes starts to approach.
“No,” Barnes says flatly, shaking him off.
“Gimme ten minutes,” Clint says urgently. “Please.”
He can already tell that Barnes isn’t going to go for it.
“Ten minutes to make sure we’re not about to kill a bunch of innocent people,” Clint says, and Barnes’ eyes widen for the barest moment. Then he’s back to looking impassive, but he nods, sharp and curt.
Clint pulls out his own phone, dialing from memory a number so secure it can never be entered into speed dial. “Patch me through to Hill immediately, priority Hawkeye.”
He can see suspicion gathering in Barnes’ eyes, but — dammit, this is too important to just go in half-cocked, no matter what Barnes thinks he knows or remembers.
“Maria? I’m sending you coordinates. I need satellite confirmation that this is a Hydra facility in the next 8 minutes.” He rolls his eyes. “No, I’m not drunk.”
He transmits the coordinates. They sit around staring suspiciously at the phone for what feels like an hour, but knowing Maria is probably 7 minutes, 59 seconds.
“Confirmed,” Hill says. “We had suspicions of a cell in that area but had been unable to locate it. Stand by. SHIELD team will be on site in 50 minutes.”
“Yeah....so, about that —”
“Clint,” Maria says threateningly.
“C’mon, Maria. You owe me, right? You gotta give us this one.” Clint doesn’t actually think she does, but hopefully she doesn’t keep good track.
And of course Maria picks up on the one thing he was hoping she wouldn’t.
“Who is us?”
Clint lets the silence speak for itself.
“Motherfucker,” Maria breathes. “Okay, you’ve got until my team gets there to do what you’re gonna do, but if you get yourself killed on some cowboy mission, I’m gonna resurrect you just so I can kill you again myself. And then I’m gonna resurrect you one more time so Natasha can do it. Slower.”
“Sounds fair.” Clint wouldn’t put it past her in the least.
For some reason, he and the Soldier move like they’ve been fighting together for years. Barnes takes the left, Clint covering his six and right flank.
They hit the perimeter guards before they even see them coming, quick and silent, and then make their way to the facility. They’ve cleared three of the six sections before the alarm even goes off, and four before the dumbasses seem to figure out what their walkies are for.
The Hydra guards have numbers, but their skillset is frankly embarrassing. One gets in a lucky shot along Clint’s forearm, and Clint sees Barnes grunt from a few impacts to his Kevlar, but luckily none of these morons seem to know enough to aim for the head, or at least have the skill to hit it if that’s what they were aiming for.
They have the run of the place by the time they hit the last section, and Clint somehow knows without Barnes saying a word that this is where they’ve been headed all along. Barnes’ jaw is set, his eyes like ice.
He kicks open a door that looks just like any of the million other doors they’ve passed. He grabs the gibbering labcoat inside by his hair, slams his face up against the retinal scanner, and holds him there until it beeps. Then he casually knocks him unconscious against the wall and throws him aside.
A second door, reinforced with steel plating and more high-tech than any of the others they’ve come across so far, opens up. The staircase behind is steep and dark, with a rough stone ceiling so low they have to duck their heads. Part of the original mining tunnels, maybe. Clint swallows down his claustrophobia and follows Barnes’ wide shoulders.
It gets colder and damper as they go, until Clint is sure that they are deep underground — he can feel the increased air pressure against his scarred eardrums. After what seems like hours they come to another door at the bottom. Barnes pushes it open without hesitation, revealing a small chamber carved from the stone.
Clint pulls in a sharp breath. Everything makes sense all at once, like one of those optical illusions that you can’t quite figure until you look at it just right.
Clint had read Barnes’ files — everyone had to sign off on the debrief before he took up residence in the Tower. He had seen pictures, but they hadn’t even come close.
The chair is grotesque, like something out of a horror movie set. It’s bulky and sharp-edged, all metal restraints and partially-exposed wiring.
Barnes stands in front of it as if frozen for a full moment. Then he’s moving forward.
He starts with the head restraint. He pulls it right off, and casts it aside. It makes a horrible screech as it ricochets off the walls, metal against rough stone. And then, like a dam suddenly broke inside him, Barnes is tearing at the chair — ripping it to pieces with his metal and flesh hand alike, careless of the injury he’s doing himself.
“Jesus fuck,” Clint breathes. The control panel is off to the side and Clint runs to it, finding the power inputs, yanking them before Barnes can fry himself. Clint’s not sure he would even notice.
The chair is down to the metal frame now and Barnes is slamming his vibranium arm against it, a relentless reverberation that makes Clint’s teeth rattle.
Clint casts around for something, anything. There’s a fire panel on the wall. Clint opens it up. It’s not perfect, but anything is better than this.
“Barnes,” he yells. And when that has no effect, “Bucky!”
Barnes wheels around, hair wild around his face, eyes murderous, and for a moment Clint thinks he’s gonna be the next target of his berserker rage.
“Here,” he manages to say. He holds up the fire axe he found.
Barnes manages a nod. He takes the axe to the chair, sparks flying. Clint backs away. He’s got one eye on the clock now. It’s gonna be good for absolutely nobody if they’re still here when the SHIELD team arrives.
Finally, they’re out of time. “Bucky,” Clint says. “Bucky!” It takes a moment but Barnes finally grinds to a halt, chest heaving, arm dropping heavily to his side.
“Gotta go,” Clint says curtly.
Bucky nods numbly. He suddenly seems empty, exhausted. The fire axe clangs to the ground.
Clint takes point on the exfiltration. Bucky has his gun drawn but he seems dull, sluggish.
“C’mon, Bucky,” Clint snaps. “Stay with me.”
Bucky manages to lift his head, and immediately takes out a guy who had come up on Clint’s right while he was distracted.
“Jesus,” Clint breathes. That was a little too close for comfort.
He still feels like he’s dragging Bucky, deadweight in his wake, but they make it to their vehicle and are at least five miles away before they see the lights of the quinjet swooping down like Kentucky’s next top alien sighting.
Clint pulls into the motel parking lot. He pulls a plaid flannel shirt from his pack, stripping off his tac suit vest and pulling it on over the plain black undershirt.
“Stay in the car,” he warns, but he’s not sure it’s even necessary. Bucky looks borderline catatonic, face pale and eyes closed, head leaned back against the headrest like it’s the only thing holding him up.
Clint is so good at playing the Local Yokel he should get a damn Oscar for it. He makes small talk with the front desk clerk about the disappointing soybean harvest this year and how fucking often John Deere forces software updates through on the new combines, and gets himself a room with twin beds at the back. He pulls the car around and chivvies Bucky inside, sitting him down on the bed.
He’s wiping Bucky’s face with a wet washcloth by the time Bucky seems to blink back to awareness.
“There you are,” Clint says matter-of-factly. “Take that vest off, looks like they got you.”
It was a lucky shot, getting Bucky in the side just below the tac vest, but it’s a through-and-through. He stares stoically into space while Clint disinfects it with his kit, but it’s already healing. He disinfects and wraps Bucky’s right hand too. Where his palm was shredded from the metal of the chair new lines of pink skin are already starting to form.
“I’m gonna hit the shower,” Clint says, but Bucky catches him by his right arm.
“You now,” he says, his voice sounding rusty, and Clint realizes he’s still bleeding sluggishly from that gash across his left forearm.
He is able to disinfect it himself, but when he tries to apply the bandages Bucky makes an impatient noise low in his throat and takes over, carefully using butterfly bandages to close the wound and then covering the whole thing with a waterproof adhesive dressing.
The attention is making Clint feel a little uncomfortable, but Bucky seems more with it than he’s been since they left the facility, and if having something to do helps him pull himself together a little then Clint guesses he can oblige.
The shower feels amazing, even if Clint is a little edgy without his aids in, taking it on faith that Bucky isn’t going to take the car and ditch him. When he gets out, dressed in sweats and toweling his hair dry, Bucky’s still sitting right where he left him.
“Go ahead,” Clint says, nodding toward the shower. “Water’s still hot, and we gotta wait at least six hours to make sure we don’t get caught in a roadblock.”
Bucky stares in the direction of the bathroom and blinks a few times. “I didn’t bring clothes,” he says.
Clint has the uncomfortable realization that Bucky might never have even needed a change of clothes post-mission. Maybe they just put him back in cryo covered in blood and hosed him down later.
“You can wear some ‘a mine. Sweats should fit,” Clint says. He finds himself digging through his bag for the softest sweats and hoodie.
Bucky comes out of the steamy bathroom looking strangely adorable swallowed up by Clint’s clothes. He’s still pulling on the hoodie and Clint can see he’s actually kind of lean. He looked and walked like a tank in that D.C. footage, so he’s either lost a lot of muscle mass since then or he was heavily armored up at the time. Maybe both.
Clint realizes he’s staring, and glances away.
“I’m gonna catch some sleep. You can too, if you want. I’ve got Jarvis scanning all the police frequencies. He’ll alert us if someone’s headed this way.”
Bucky nods. He sits on the other bed, facing Clint. He doesn’t lie down or get under the covers, though. Just sits there, and finally Clint shrugs. He gets in bed, setting his phone alerts to vibrate and putting it under the pillow. Then he turns toward the wall and tries to go to sleep, feeling Bucky’s eyes staring a hole in his back.
Clint’s not sure what wakes him up. He pulls the phone out and squints at it, but it’s clear of alerts. He puts one aid in, turning toward the other bed.
He can just make out Bucky’s silhouette. He’s still just sitting there — back straight, feet on the floor, facing Clint. Fuck, does he actually sleep like that, like a deactivated robot? Does he even sleep at all?
“Bucky?” Clint says cautiously.
Bucky seems to tip backwards a little, and then suddenly he’s jolting upright, gasping for air as if he’s been drowning and just finally managed to break the surface.
Clint turns the light on. Bucky’s shivering, his hair wet with sweat, his eyes wide, and — fuck. How a 100-year-old Soviet murderbot can manage to look like a pathetic drowned kitten is nothing short of amazing, and Clint can’t stop himself.
“Hey,” he says. “It’s okay. You’re okay.” He moves cautiously until he’s sitting next to Bucky. He tentatively puts a hand on Bucky’s arm, and then when Bucky leans into it he wraps it around his shoulders.
“Clint?” Bucky says, all confused-sounding, and Clint has the bizarre realization that this is the first time he’s ever heard Bucky say his name.
“Yeah, it’s me. I’m here.”
Bucky makes a low, wet noise, and then suddenly he’s huddled into Clint’s side, clinging for dear life.
“I thought I was in the chair again,” he whispers hoarsely. “I thought they got me.”
“Hey. No.” And Clint knows this feeling — God, he knows this feeling all too well. It feels like Bucky is digging up with ragged fingernails everything Clint has buried in his chest and hoped never to remember. “That’s never gonna happen.”
“It could.” Bucky pulls in a shuddering breath. “There’s more of ‘em. I don’t know where, but I know that there are.”
“Hey.” Clint cups Barnes’ jaw, forcing his head up to meet his eyes. “Then we’ll take out every single one of ‘em, just like we did today.” He sees that it’s not enough.
It feels like cutting his own chest open, but he forces himself to say it. “They tell you what happened to me?”
Bucky looks confused for a moment, but then realization lights his eyes. Maybe he hadn’t remembered until now, but someone must have briefed him.
Clint pulls in a deep, shuddering breath and says the one thing he took comfort in himself, after Loki.
“Worse comes to worst I’ll put an exploding arrow through your eye socket before I let them use you like that again. I promise.”
Barnes shivers again, and some of the tension seems to melt from his body.
“Yeah?”
Clint nods.
“Okay,” Barnes says.
He seems to be embarrassed now as the panic fades, pulling away from Clint’s side. “Okay,” he says again, voice like gravel. He nods, as if trying to convince himself, and drags his body upright.
“You wanna try to get some more rest?” Clint asks.
Bucky shakes his head.
Clint checks the time and shrugs. “Roadblocks should be lifted by now, and we got a long drive. Let’s get some coffee.”
Bucky is staring out the window again. Clint has tried setting the radio to the most atrocious radio stations he can find, but he’s getting no reaction at all. It’s not that weird blankness that Bucky had when he got out of the facility, though. He just looks pensive.
“Do you know me well enough to ask again?” Bucky finally says.
Clint turns down the radio station — is that a fucking mariachi band? — and shoots Bucky a sidelong glance. “Ask what?”
“Why you came with me?”
“Oh.” Clint drums his fingers on the steering wheel. “Well, I’ve been calling you Bucky in my head instead of Barnes since we got out of that place, and I did promise to kill you. I don’t know if that makes us BFFs, but it’s probably enough.”
Bucky snorts, but his eyes are searching as he waits.
Clint wonders how much he’s gonna piss him off. But, he did ask for the truth.
“I watch people. Like, nothin’ personal, it’s just a thing. Since I was a kid, maybe. So I been watchin’ you since you got to the tower. You come to breakfast, you eat whatever’s on the table. You sit in the lounge, you watch whatever’s already on t.v. Hell, you drink hot chocolate with Sam, coffee with me, and that horrible apple tea that no one else could ever possibly like with Wanda.”
Bucky’s eyebrows have been drawing down as Clint’s been talking, like he knows where this is going.
“So?” he asks anyway.
“So....in six weeks, I’ve never seen you make a single choice. Never seen you ask for anything for yourself. Figured whatever had you choosing now must be pretty important. ‘Specially if you couldn’t even wait for Cap.”
Bucky swallows thickly, and looks out the window again for a while. “It was,” he finally says.
“Yeah.”
They’re quiet for a long while.
“Not like I’m gonna get many choices where I’m goin’, anyway,” Bucky says eventually. His voice is just...resigned.
“Whaddaya mean?”
Bucky shrugs. “The Raft. Back in cryo. Wherever they’re gonna put me for leavin’ the Tower like that.”
“What?” Clint takes his eyes off the road to check, but Bucky’s serious.
Clint shakes his head. “I thought you were supposed to be smart,” he says. “Don’t tell me I read the conditions of your release better than you did.”
“What?”
“It’s not that you’re not allowed out of the Tower. You’re just not allowed out of the Tower unless accompanied by an Avenger. Guess Steve put that in there, was probably planning some field trips once you had settled in. And as luck would have it, you happen to have had a certified Avenger, right here in the car with you the whole time.”
The look on Bucky’s face is priceless.
“Really?”
“Am I really an Avenger? Surprising, I know, but yes I am. Nobody ever remembers the tallest Avenger.”
“Cut it out,” Bucky growls. “Does it really say that?”
“Sure does.” Clint can’t help his grin. “So there you are, a world of choices, stretching out in front of you. And on that note, I’m gonna hit up a McDonalds. Have you ever had those apple-pie-in-a-cardboard-tube things they have there? Those things are amazing.”
Bucky’s face does something weird and complicated. Clint waits it out.
“I’d rather have a milkshake,” he finally says, and...aw. Clint tries to ignore the little warm feeling that causes in his chest.
“An’ I’m pickin’ the radio station,” Bucky says, reaching across the console.
Clint blocks him, and ends up just tangling their fingers together. He gives Bucky’s hand a little squeeze, and Bucky squeezes back.
“Don’t push your luck.”