Colombia

For the next two days Clint had moments of clarity, followed by more hallucinations, the line between reality and fantasy blurred as he floated in and out of consciousness. Phil never knew what to expect when the archer came to, sometimes he woke, eyes clear and he would look at Phil like he was a lifeline. Other times he woke screaming, pleading for it all to stop, those times were the hardest to deal with.

After his latest bout of hallucinations Phil was wiped out, physically and emotionally exhausted, how long were these horrible hallucinations going to last? He hadn’t left the archer’s room except to use the restroom and the small shower, as he wasn’t comfortable leaving Clint for any length of time in case the kid would wake up in the grips of another hallucination.

A soft knock at the door caused him to bolt upright in his seat and try to bring his emotions into check. Over the past week he had come to envy both Clint and Natasha for their ability to bring down an impassive mask no matter the circumstances. The door cracked open and Graley’s shaggy blond head poked into the room.

“Oh good, you’re awake. How’s the kid doing?” The doctor stepped into the room, shutting the door behind him, before he walked over to Clint’s bedside to check his vitals. His latest rounds of blood toxin screenings showed that the last bits of the drug Campos had given him were nearly gone from the archer’s system. Hopefully if Clint remained hallucination free for at least twenty-four hours he would be cleared to return to the SHIELD base in DC.

And it couldn’t have come at a better time, as he took in the appearance of his friend. Coulson was in rumpled clothing, the dark shadows under his eyes a testament to his weariness, making Graley want to sedate the handler before he worried himself to collapse. Phil merely grunted in response as he tried to smooth the rumpled material of his SHIELD issued tee shirt.

“Today I’m going to take him off the sedatives, I’m hopeful that the drug has worked its way out of his system enough that he shouldn’t be experiencing any more hallucinations.” He placed a hand on his friend’s shoulder trying to reassure the anxious handler. Coulson released a pent up sigh and paced at the end of the archer’s bed, he had been too worried about Clint’s health to try and dig up any information on who had sent down the order on the archer’s assignment from hell.

“Listen, Phil, I need you to take a break here for a bit, I don’t think you’ve left this room for more than a couple minutes at a time since you got here. I’ll stay and watch the kid, get yourself a long hot shower and some food. I don’t wanna see your face around here for at least two hours. Now go on!” Graley shooed the handler out of the room, ignoring Phil’s small noise of protest. Phil grumbled as he left the room, knowing in his frazzled state he was no match for Graley.

“Fine, but if he comes to will you let me know? I need to be there for him.” Graley nodded an affirmative and Phil turned and headed down the hall towards the showers, already starting to dial a number on his phone. After three short rings a small click indicated the line had been picked up.

“It’s Coulson. I need you in Miami as soon as you can get here. We’re dealing with a situation and I want to bring you in on it.” There was a brief moment of silence before a husky voice answered.

“Consider it done. I’ll be there in less than two hours.” Another small click indicated that the line had been disconnected and Phil pocketed the phone, the knot in his gut easing slightly.
...............................

Exactly one hour and thirty-eight minutes later a petite, red-haired agent stepped off the small Quinjet she had bullied the DC base operators into letting her have. Her full lips quirked up, sometimes having a reputation as deadly as her namesake came in handy. A brief glance at her phone revealed the wing and room number in which she would find Coulson.

She thought back to the very short conversation she had with her handler earlier, something had the usually unflappable agent spooked, and she was going to make it her personal mission to figure out what it was and eliminate the threat. In the two years since she had been brought into SHIELD, she could feel her guard starting to relax and she would be damned if she let something step on the small amount of happiness she had been able to find for herself.

A few minutes of winding through the long, brightly lit hospital hallways had put the red-haired agent on edge, dark memories of bright lights and pain swirled in the back of her mind, causing her to pick up her pace. By the time she reached the door at the end of a hallway and managed to breeze past the two guards stationed at the entrance to the hall, her mood was bleak and her skin crawling.

She opened the door and bit back the small gasp of surprise when she saw the battered body of her one time sparring partner, lying in the bed, multiple tubes running from his arms to the machines crowded around him. She tore her gaze from the agent and met the clear blue eyes of her handler, who looked nearly as haggard as the kid in the bed.

"Natasha. I'm glad you made it." She gave a short nod in response.

“You’re lucky, I just got in from Rome.” Her eyes flickered to the agent lying in the hospital bed again, amazed at how thin the usually toned and muscular agent was. But despite the bruises that covered most of the skin she could see, she still felt a pull towards the agent, that same magnetism that nearly had her compromising her mission in Israel just to see if he tasted like the minty gum he had been chewing.

“…..been compromised. Natasha, are you listening to me?” Her handler’s voice broke through the thoughts of needing to soothe the injured Hawkeye and she pulled her gaze back to Coulson’s.

“I’m sorry, it was a long assignment, I must be jet-lagged.” The lie rolled easily off her tongue as she tried to cover her unabashed interest in the injured agent. Phil merely raised an eyebrow, taking her obvious lie in stride, the Black Widow never suffered from jet-lag, but he continued where he thought she had last been listening.

“This entire assignment was a set-up. I just don’t know who organized it, or how far up the corruption goes.” Natasha opened her mouth but Phil continued on before she could get a word out, “And no, I don’t think Director Fury is involved. I think he was duped just like we were.”

“They had a team on the ground, waiting for us to land. And once they had Barton I never heard or saw anyone again. This whole assignment was for Campos to get his hands on Barton.” The handler began pacing at the end of the bed, reliving each panic inducing second after Clint had disappeared.

“Why Barton?” Natasha found herself asking. “He was still in training, it’s not like he would know SHIELD secrets.” Phil paused in his circuit of the room and ran a hand down his face.

“I believe it was Barton who killed Campos’ son three years ago. But Barton hasn’t been lucid enough to question.” The red haired agent mulled that piece of information over quietly, everyone in the mercenary circles had heard about the ruthless takedown of the Colombian drug lord’s son, in his own living room nonetheless. Those same mercenaries whispered amongst themselves about Hawkeye, a ghost, and one of the most renowned killers at that time.

“So it was all about revenge.” A concept she was intimately acquainted with as she had spent her every waking second intent on destroying the Red Room, even if she destroyed herself in the process. Until Phil had flushed her out of hiding in Moscow and brought her in, beginning to heal the ragged wounds inside her.

“Yes. But there has to be someone pulling the strings, both in getting Barton the assignment and in feeding information to Campos and his men.” Phil took a deep breath, trying to calm the emotions raging inside him. “We lost Barton, several times actually, and he would have died if I hadn’t had dumb luck on my side. I’m going to need you to keep an eye on Barton once we return to DC.” His clear blue eyes locked on to her deep green ones.

“I have some business to attend to once we make it back to DC, and I don’t know if whoever engineered this is going to keep going after Barton. I need someone I trust to watch his six when I can’t be there.” Natasha felt a warm feeling buzz through her, Coulson trusted her, and trust was a rare commodity in her line of work. The elation was short lived when she realized she had been relegated to babysitting duty. She kept the sigh of annoyance to herself and answered her handler.

“I assure you he will be fine.” A slight rustling sound followed by a low groan caused her gaze to whip to the agent, now her duty, in the bed. She caught the stormy grey-blue hue of his eyes and knew she was going to be playing with fire when it came to the archer who had a past nearly as dark as her own.
...........................

The low tones of muttering floated through Clint’s head as the shadows slowly cleared from his mind. He cracked open his eyes and grunted at the bright light that filtered through. The low grunt was enough to attract the attention of the two people in the room who had been arguing in low voices and they turned to look at the bed.

As Clint’s eyes focused he was able to make out the familiar features of his handler, but it was the piercing emerald green eyes next to Coulson that drew his attention. The beautiful, yet deadly, Natasha Romanoff stood at the foot of his bed, looking far from happy.

“Ah, Barton, how are you feeling?” Coulson’s soft voice broke through the silence, and Clint couldn’t help but feel like he somehow interrupted the pair during an important conversation. At Coulson’s question he did a quick inventory of himself, finding everything in working order, despite the aches and pains, which he knew meant he was healing.

“I’m alright.” His voice, hoarse from his bouts of screaming during his hallucinations, cracked and he dissolved into a fit of coughing. Phil rushed to grab the glass of water by the archer’s bedside and waited for the coughing to pass. Clint’s hand clutched at his ribs, jarred by the movement and let out a low groan of pain as he sipped at the water Coulson offered.

“I’ll refrain from asking you any in depth questions right now.” Phil let a rare grin cross his face at the kid’s look of annoyance. “Dr. Graley said you were cleared to return to DC, that is if you feel up to it.” Clint was extremely aware of the green gaze glued to him as he nodded to his handler, hating how weak he knew he appeared at that moment.

“Good, we’ll leave in an hour, I’m just going to go finish checking the preparations for the quinjet.” His handler crossed the room a muttered a few words to the Widow that he couldn’t catch before disappearing out the door, leaving Clint alone with a very on edge Black Widow.

The green eyed agent pulled a chair up to her and settled herself into it gracefully, her emerald gaze never leaving his. Clint shifted slightly in the bed, never having had the chance to actually speak to the other agent since he had been brought in from Israel, and an awkward silence fell over the room. Neither agent knowing what to say as small talk didn’t really cut it in their field of work.

Clint had a million questions racing through his mind, but knew the quiet agent sitting in front of him probably wouldn’t have the answers he needed, what Clint needed was his handler. He could feel his eyelids starting to droop as his body tried to force him to fall back asleep again so it could heal. Just as he started to fall into the darkness he could just barely make out the husky timbre of Natasha’s voice.

“It’s okay, I’ve got first watch.”
.................................

Phil finally allowed himself a small breath of relief as he stood at the end of the archer’s bed in the medical wing of the SHIELD base in DC. It had been a mercifully uneventful flight that the battered agent had slept through, while he briefed Natasha on his plans to determine who wanted Clint dead.

Having reassured himself that Clint was on his way to healing, he excused himself from the room, leaving behind Natasha, who had taken her word of watching over the archer seriously and hadn’t left his side yet. Phil headed out of the medical wing and through the winding hallways, intent on finding Director Fury. What he didn’t notice was the form of Zane Lynch who tailed behind him before ducking into the handlers’ quarters.
...................................

He closed himself in his room and going to his bed pulled out a small duffel bag from underneath the bed. A few seconds of rummaging produced a small black phone, which he powered up and keyed in an access code before dialing a number, listening as it rang two times before a voice came across the line.

“I trust you’re checking in to tell me that the Hawkeye is no longer a problem?” The voice was deep and smooth as velvet.

“Actually Sir, I have a little bit of bad news. Hawkeye was just brought to base this morning, alive.” He knew his boss was going to be angry, but wasn’t prepared for the roar that echoed across the secure line.

“God damn it!!” The man on the other end of the line brought his fist down on the expensive mahogany desk he was seated at. “I knew that Campos was too incompetent for the job! I practically give him the Hawk gift-wrapped and he still fucked it up.”

Lynch gripped the phone tight in his hand, it was never a good sign when his boss was angry, people tended to ‘disappear’ and that was the last thing he wanted to deal with tonight. There were a few moments of silence before the voice came across the line again, sounding completely composed.

“Keep an eye on the archer and continue with regular reports, I will have to come up with another solution to our little problem.” With that said the man disconnected from the secure line and leaned back in his chair, his fingers steepled, deep in thought. Hawkeye was proving himself to be more of a nuisance than he had planned for, it was a good thing he was always up for a challenge.

Notes