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Okay, so Clint'd had his fair share of crappy days since joining the Avengers, and even before that. He'd also had a lot of good days, to be fair. Days when he felt happy. Time spent with family, friends, or the people who did the splits across that border like a surprised grandfather slipping while bowling. Days at home with the family outside, or inside while the kids rolled their eyes at him and Laura bickering over board games, days with Thor, Tony and the others while they saved the goddamn city - somehow. Days with Natasha while... well, any day with Natasha, really.
(He really, really missed Nat.)
Today was lining up to be one of the crappier days in his far too long existence. Actually, was it today only? Had he been in here for more than 24 hours? They'd taken his hearing aids from him, which wasn't great but wasn't exactly the end of the world. He could manage without.
Except he couldn't see, either. Or feel. If he'd been able to taste or smell, it would've been only the plastic of the respirator that'd been taped over his mouth and nose, but they'd given him something in a syringe that'd dulled even that.
***
He needed to move. This was driving him up the wall, or would if he had any idea of where the fucking wall might be. The Astfarians had the weirdest goddamn ideas of how to treat a war prize to see if they were strong enough to fight on your side. Laura was gonna kill him. Kate was... probably gonna look like a whole bunch of constipated spiders if the hallucinations started before he got the hell out of here.
***
Maybe he was moving. Maybe the body temperature gunk was swirling around him but he just couldn't tell. Maybe he was running in the stupid tank and the Astfarians were laughing at him. Maybe he was doing the Macarena.
***
Clint could almost feel fingers on his. Was someone there? Or was he just imagining the last time he'd seen Kate, when she'd made a grab for him when he'd shoved her?
He'd had to shove her. Her first full mission with the Avengers. He couldn't let her get captured by the stupid Astfarian teleport beam. Not that he'd known for sure that the green swirly bullshit was a beam, but he'd spent enough time around Stark and SHIELD and other fancy tech places to recognize some kind of dimensional incursion when it was moving swiftly across a clearing, eating orange trees and Ploxian soldiers.
***
Didn't need to piss, didn't need to eat or drink. The tubes they'd attached to him - and the way they'd just stripped him and maneuvered him around like a mess of onions on a grill wasn't gonna mess him up for years at all - seemed to take care of all that. Would he come out of this fifty pounds lighter? Fifty pounds heavier?
***
Would he come out of this at all?
***
It was funny. He'd trained for torture. Distract yourself, accept that you'll break eventually, accept the pain, accept that there might be permanent changes to your body, run numbers through your head, dissociate as much as possible. All that was helpful, but it meant fucking nothing when there was zero sensory input instead.
When they'd captured him, he'd assumed all this war prize bullshit would mean he'd be paraded around and maybe had to fight in an arena or something (look, he'd enjoyed Russell Crowe just as much as the next highly trained agent) and he'd probably get mistreated and injured. Maybe just torture! Not that he'd have to go through all this to actually break him down.
***
(Was he breaking down?)
***
Light -
He cried out as hands lifted him, scrunching his eyes shut and trying to turn his head away. Fluid sloshed off him and he was laid down onto something. It was soft, but it was too much, too much information, too much happening! There were other hands on him, removing the respirator, removing the tubes and things that'd been... applied to him in various places.
A face in front of his, mouthing something.
"Clint?"
"Clint!"
He stared at the face, then felt a shudder ripple through his entire body. Something lurched under him and a blanket was placed over him. He batted at it, trying to rip it off, then grabbed at the person's hand.
"Thought you'd want no one touching you," the person said, making exaggerated mouth movements. She looked about nine, and suddenly Clint had a name.
"Kate."
She opened her hand. It was - it was one of his hearing aids, so he put it into his ear on the third go, and looked at her with wide eyes. Everything was too bright, too loud, too soft, too silent, and he lurched forward into her arms, grabbing her convulsively. She squeaked, hugging him back. She was solid against him, and her heart beat fast against his chest. Yes. Hearts beat. That's right, they thud, and they move, and they're living, and Kate is whole.
"You're safe. We've got you, Clint, it's okay."
"Where?"
It was more of a mumble than a word, but he trusted her to understand what he meant. It wasn't like they were talking about actual good music or anything. She could be trusted.
"Ship, back to Earth. Sam negotiated some kind of treaty between the two races, and Yelena and I got you out. She did the negotiating, I did the shooting. Why did you shove me out of the way?"
"To save your ass," Clint found his hand in her hair. He was stroking the softness of it, down her back, then up to the nape of her neck and down her back again, over and over. Like she was the one who needed comfort.
Kate shook her head just a little. "Your reflexes are better than that. You could've gotten out of the way."
"It wasn't because I trusted you to get me out of whatever they wanted to do to me," Clint said indistinctly into Kate's shoulder. "You oughtta know that. Nothing like that at all. Just because you're a woman and they're a bunch of sexists."
"Ha ha," Kate said. "You trusted me and I'm gonna tell everyone."
"Shut up," Clint said, and there was almost a little humor in it. Maybe everything would be okay. Maybe.
When she kissed him, he even managed to stop shaking.