A/N: So i wrote this in a day, haven't sent it to a single editor, and all in all just had a little break-out fun. One day i might go over it again and iron some things out but for now it's just a little fun.

and, correction, Hawkeye's farm? Who knew? I was obviously a late passenger on that boat!

Summery: So, did you see that leaked Avengers footage where Steve and Tony are chopping wood? Well I did, and then this happened: After their first defeat by Ultron's forces, the Avengers are forced into hiding at Clint's old farmhouse. Tired, beaten, and at each other's throats, they find themselves too distracted to see that one of their own is silently suffering. Clint has taken a bad blow right to the chest. With limited supplies and options, he works with what he must to keep his body intact. Even if it means getting in touch with his feminine side.

Have a Happy Period

He leaned his forehead against the chipped mirror over the wash basin. He felt sick to his stomach, but not in the kind of way that could be productive enough to require the toilet. This was a pitting nausea that only hit him after a hard battle. Typically he had an injury to go along with that feeling, and this time was no different.

A knock interrupted his focus. He glanced at the wood grains of the bathroom door. They'd gone grey with age and neglect. Clint hadn't been to the old house in almost eight years and even the dust had dust. If they wanted to hide out from Ultron's constant video surveillance across the planet, the backwoods of Iowa was a formidable plan.

"Clint?" Banner was behind the door and he knocked again.

"Yeah, give me a sec." Clint replied, coming out of his fog. He hit the lever on the toilet and ran the water in the tub. That would keep Bruce's ear occupied for a few minutes at least. Clint looked down into the sink at his relatively few options. He found an ACE bandage in the bottom of his quiver. He usually had one or two hanging around. With it he had two spare socks, clear tape from a drawer in the den, a pen, five cotton balls and half a pack of feminine hygiene pads. The latter he found in Natasha's duty pack though he would never openly admit rummaging in there. At this point, he couldn't be picky.

He grabbed a cotton ball and wet it down in the tub faucet. He looked down at his side where the char of Ultron's repulsor blasted a red-rimmed hole right into him. The burn was deep enough to fray his nerve endings in the center, where it cut through all his skin layers. The outside rim became more and more shallow, and therefore more painful. He started in the center of the wound and slowly chipped the hard, black burn away. The skin beneath oozed in pink fluid. The more he worked to get a better idea about how bad he was, the deeper the injury went. It didn't take him long before he had to stop. The only thing keeping his insides in was the thick layer of crisp skin and muscles. He didn't expect to find that.

Another knock at the door.

"Tinkle a bush!" Clint called out. He dropped the cotton into the sink and soaked a second one. He started working around the outside of the wound. He bit his lip and let a curse whisper out.

"Clint, are you all right in there?"

"Fine. Remind me to never eat gas station burritos again." Clint replied. He pulled two of the pads out of their individual wraps and grabbed the ACE bandage. He wished he could have found some alcohol or peroxide, even a tube of triple antibiotic, but he had no luck on any of those fronts. In the future, Clint had to remember to stock his abandoned safe houses with proper medical products. It took him some finagling to keep the compress in place but in the end he had something he could work with temporarily.

He looked up into the mirror again. Running didn't suit him. Especially given what they had run from . . .

He stuffed the trash in his pants pocket, swept the other, potentially future essentials, into his bag, and hit the handle on the toilet again. After turning off the bathtub faucet he tugged his shirt back into place and unlocked the slider on the bathroom door. Apparently he lied well enough to get Bruce away from the hall. Clint spent a lifetime perfecting his lies. Natasha liked to point out her superiority in the area, which he never refuted.

"It's free." He called up the hallway and limped toward the back of the house. Hill was sitting out on the porch beside Natasha. Cold began to settle in. They were lucky his old shack still had running water and the occasional electricity when the fuses didn't blow. Asking for heat was another matter entirely. Stark and the captain decided to go toe-to-toe at who could build the better firewood pile. Apparently a little grandstanding was included in the mix.

"Still at each other's throats?" Clint asked as he walked out.

Hill lifted an eyebrow at him. "What do you think?"

He leaned forward over the railing to watch. Tony had an ax. He chopped a piece of wood, set it to the side. Steve repeated. Tony said something Steve didn't seem to like. They argued, and suddenly Steve decided to free-hand tearing a block of wood in half. If he'd been Banner, he might have Hulked out and slammed Stark into the dirt already.

"Good thing his soldier serum didn't turn him into a blond rage monster." Clint said, turning away. He'd made his appearance. It was time to move.

"He's got some points." Hill replied.

"Whatever. Not interested."

"And since when have you been "Farmer Hawkeye"?" she suppressed a smile at that.

"Can of worms, Hill, don't open it. I'm going to take a look around." He said, heading in the opposite direction.

"Already did." Natasha said. It shouldn't have surprised him. He might stay three steps ahead of the world, but she was always one step ahead of him. "Four cabins north, abandoned for now. One southwest. We can raid the cabinets if we need extra food. Fresh tracks in the driveway, two days old at most. Town's ten miles west of here. Traffic cameras at all the stop lights so I think we should keep clear of that for now."

Sensing his eyes on the back of her head, Natasha turned a little to look at him. With her piqued attitude that only popped out when she felt trapped she said, "Oh, but if you wanna take a look around by all means. I think I forgot to look under the rocks out back for an Ultron cave."

"You know what, Nat?"

Her entire upper body spun around to face him. Hill tensed, waiting for the confrontation she might be required to get in the middle of.

But Clint, sensing his own potential demise, restrained himself for once. The finger he held up as if to make a point curled back into his fist. His shoulders untensed and he headed down the porch anyway. If he had any hopes of medical supplies, then the partly occupied cabin seemed like his best option. Natasha had been gone for six hours canvassing the area. He hoped it would only take him two to get back and forth from the cabin. Any longer than that and they may just send out a search party.

Tony mounted the steps. He nodded toward Clint's retreating form. "Where's he going?"

"I think he said something about writing his will or tending his chickens." Natasha replied.

Tony gave her a strained look and she shrugged. The Black Widow was not in a mood for mercy.

:(:):(:):

When he decided to head for the southern cabin, he had every intention of walking back under his own power. So great was his conviction, he even gave himself a precise 2-hour deadline for getting there and back before suspicion rose over his disappearance. In times like this, the Avengers couldn't be too careful. Phones weren't to be trusted, even cell devices. Cameras, computer eye-cams, surveillance equipment . . . if even a ghost of them appeared in current technology, their secret hide away would be front page news for Ultron's forces. So when Clint decided to pass out in the woods a mile from his bolt hole, he knew the others would be thinking the worst.

"Conscious." Clint whispered as if it may help. "Stay . . . gonna stay conscious, and I'm going to walk back there . . . and I'm going to take care of this."

He hoped using longer words, shorter sentences, might inspire his body to actually feel up to the task at hand. Currently, though, it did not. The pain didn't get him. In fact, besides feeling like a motorcycle-crash road rash, it wasn't too bad. What had him so out of it? Fluids? Did he not drink enough? Electrolytes? Burn victims tended to lose that quicker than they replaced it. He had to make up an IV line when he got back. Since he was sitting anyway, he chanced a look down at his veins. They were sunken into his flesh. Dehydration for sure. At least he had a needle.

The cabin didn't turn out to be a total bust. After shimmying through the open window, he headed to all the typical places where med supplies were kept. No bandages. No clothes either. He stole a pillowcase from the master bedroom. It would suffice in a pinch for more dressings. In the bathroom he found a few surprises. The owner must have been diabetic. He had some syringes, still sealed in their packs, which fell behind a drawer. He put those in his bag with the pillowcase. There was half a tube of triple antibiotic ointment, hydrocortisone cream, and the remnants of a bottle of aloe. All useful. He added them to the rest of the supplies. A forth drawer produced yet more Always feminine products. The smiling woman on the side of the box professed that at this very moment Clint should "Have a Happy Period". Clint lifted an eyebrow, glanced down at the two pads currently tuck to his side, and considered them. Why not? They'd worked so far.

That's when the dizziness hit him the first time. It knocked him sideways into the door. He grabbed the knob with one hand and his head with the other. The spell wasn't enough to bash him down, but it came closer than he liked. Time ran short. He had to think about making his way back.

Walking the three mile trip took more time than his typical 5K. Not that Clint was a runner by trade, or will, but he could clock a decent time when the situation called for it. Knowing that only one layer of charred off flesh was all that kept his liver from waving at the world gave him considerable restraint. Natasha was lucky to escape with her life the way Ultron grabbed her throat and tossed her through the street. Hill suffered little more than a possibly broken wrist and the black eye. Tony had his scrapes, but most of his wounds were emotional. Thor, Steve, and Bruce didn't count. They might look as human as everyone else but that didn't mean they bled the same. The Hulk protected Bruce. Steve healed within a few hours. Thor was an alien. Clint was just a guy normal in every way except his ability to wield a weapon from biblical times. He had no suit to protect his skin, no super serum to keep him young and vibrant, and the only one who possibly compared to his mortality was Agent Hill, who stayed out of the limelight for that exact reason. Clint knew he wasn't sane. Crazy people agreed to do the things he did. If the team realized the kind of toll it took for a normal man to keep playing in the big leagues, he knew what the result would be for his future.

"Time to move. Gotta move." Clint whispered again. This time, he forced himself to his knees, then to stand. He wasn't going to get rehydrated sitting in the middle of nowhere with a back pack full of feminine products. No Avenger needed to be found that way, even Tony Stark.

He swung the bag onto his shoulder again and started moving when his vision came back. One more mile. Then he would find some tubing, hope his well water wasn't too contaminated for his veins, hook up one of the impossible small insulin needles, and just let the faucet run into him for however many hours that would end up taking. Hopefully the kitchen had salt for the saline solution he wanted to make up.

:(:):(:):

"You've been gone a while. Feeling any better?" Bruce asked as Clint made his way through the front door.

"Nope." Clint replied. "Thor?"

"Not back yet." Steve said. He extracted something from a grate they'd built over the fire. After handling it carefully, he set it between Hill and himself on the floor with a few other bowls.

"We found three cans of beans and two ravioli." Hill announced. She picked up a bowl and held it out. "Sorry, no can of worms."

Clint had only a few objects in mind when he walked through the front door. Eating wasn't included. He waved his hand dismissively and rooted through the cabinets. If they were eating, that meant they had most likely laid out all their options. Salt included. After a quick peak around, he found a single white shaker on the counter beside the empty fridge. He palmed the item, slipped it into his pocket, and headed back up the hall.

"No thanks, I lost my appetite." He said.

"Find anything while you were out?" Hill called after him.

"Nope." Clint pulled open the bathroom door, slipped inside, and shut it again.

Steve lifted an eyebrow, but sat back against the hearth with his food. "So much for Mr. Social. He's been gone for half the day."

"Usually beans and ravioli are his thing, too." Hill joked, staring into her bowl with disappointment.

Bruce leaned over, picked up a mug full of ravioli and sat down on one of the only chairs. He swirled the contents of the cup with his chopsticks. "Maybe being back here got to him. That and I think I'd swear off food too if I ate bad gas station burritos."

Steve looked up from the food he had been enjoying and gave Bruce a disgruntled look. "Oh, come on. Thanks for that mental image I could have done better without."

Natasha had taken the only other chair. She sat by the window, leaning back on the two hind legs as she watched the dark come rolling in. Obviously the prospects of reheated old beans hadn't been enough to tempt her either. The conversation, though, drew her in. "Bad burritos?"

Bruce nodded. He looked around on the floor for something, and then got up to check the kitchen. As he searched, he answered her, "Yeah. I guess that place we stopped on the way up here. He'd been in the bathroom a while before he took off."

"STARK!" Hill suddenly shouted upward. "Get down here and suffer with the rest of us, or starve!"

"Geez, you scared the crap out of me." Steve complained. He put a hand on his chest to slow his heart down.

Natasha, though, stopped leaning. She turned slightly to look at Bruce. After a time, and pulling open nearly every single drawer and cabinet in the place, the doctor finally looked over at the others.

"All right, I know I had a thing of salt here. Who took it?"

Natasha stood. She glanced up the hall to where Clint disappeared and started to consider his actions the past few hours. He left early. He didn't talk to anyone more than a few times. He'd been quiet, reserved, since the moment they escape Ultron intact. He stayed in the car at the gas station. She even made a big deal about forcing him to get up for his own bag of funions, which she even refused to buy. Banner could have a point. being back in this place, the house he grew up and avoided his entire adult life, might have shaken him. But now she wasn't so sure.

Tony jogged down the stairs and entered the living room. Apparently he was just hungry enough to put Steve and his fight on the backburner, if temporarily. His entrance, however, gave Natasha the distraction she needed to slip away. Let the others fight over dinner. She knew something darker was brewing that they might not catch . . . not yet. Without bothering to knock, she tried the bathroom door knob.

"Busy." Clint called from inside.

We'll see about that, Natasha thought. She slipped a hand into her pocket to see what might be of use to jimmy the lock. Stark's stolen credit card? Perfect. The old farm house didn't exactly have JARVIS level security doors. Sticking the credit card between the lock and the jamb, she easily slid the door opened and slipped inside. Clint was sitting on the toilet with his eyes fixed downward. The washbasin blocked her view of the rest of him. His shirt was pulled up and tucked beneath his chin. Hearing the door, he looked over, wide-eyed.

"Seriously, Nat?!" He almost shouted at her. "Get out!"

"I just opened your locked door. If I planned to leave right away, I wouldn't have bothered." She replied smoothly. With one hand she eased the door closed again and walked over.

"I'm naked!" He exclaimed.

"Your pants aren't even around your ankles, stop lying." She bypassed the sink and stood across from him in the small space the bathroom allotted. Clint couldn't pull down his shirt fast enough to keep her from seeing the full extent of his injured side, so he gave up before he even attempted it. Seeing it, Natasha whispered a familiar Russian curse beneath her breath. She crouched down and leaned forward, trying to peel away some of the cotton panty-liners to see how bad he was injured beneath it all.

"Ok, can we both agree this isn't the weirdest thing you caught me doing?" Clint asked.

She cursed again, grabbed the roll of toilet paper and headed to the sink with it. After turning the knobs, she forgot it didn't work and went back to the tub instead.

"It's stuck there." Clint explained, though she didn't need him to. "I didn't have anything to go between them. I had to wrap it. Found some . . ." he picked up the triple antibiotic ointment.

Natasha soaked the handful of toilet paper and crouched in front of him again. She slowly added the moisture between his blackened skin and the cotton. He cringed, but didn't try to stop her. She had to soak and re-soak the area a few times to finally get him free of the first few layers of wraps. The burn was at least the size of her hand, fingers included. She looked up at him.

"Ultron?"

"It wasn't Tony."

"Clint this is deep. I could probably start counting the loops in your bowels if I poked a little harder. It doesn't hurt?"

"No. Just the red parts on the outside. But if you do start playing with my bowels, I think I might notice that." He adjusted himself a little on the toilet, resting his back against the tank and his head on the wall.

She grabbed his back pack and looked in at the items he'd procured along the way. Some of them held promise, but it was obvious they had slim pickings. She needed a better stocked pharmacy. Holding up the insulin syringe, she asked, "Plan with this?"

Clint handed her the rubber lining of an electrical cord. He'd stripped the copper wires out of it. "IV. I'm seeing double."

"Using this as an IV would take forever. I think there's a basketball pump in the shed. Could use the tip . . ." Her voice trailed off as she considered the other things she could fabricate. "Right now? You're seeing double right now?"

Unabashedly he nodded.

She stood and grabbed the cup he'd brought to the bathroom earlier. Using the table salt and a sugar packet he handed over from his pocket, she whipped up a water slurry and passed it to him. "Start drinking that. Did you lose consciousness at all?"

"Once. On the way back here."

"And you just planned to keep this to yourself till you just kicked over? Was that the plan?" She didn't exactly sound mad. She'd known Clint long enough to understand his motives. This wasn't the first time she'd caught him in this selfsame shape, either.

"Plan was a pharmacy in town." Clint said. He opened his eyes after forcing the water down. He handed her the glass and she refilled it again. It might not taste as good as Gatorade, but it was all they had.

"You wanted to rob it?" she posed.

"Something like that. Antibiotics. Bandages. Cash. Things that wouldn't turn up a radar too much. Cut the lights, kill the camera. Hit the grocery store too, to throw off suspicion." He handed her the glass and she filled it a third time. "But he knows us. Our plans. He might even know I had a place up here. Too risky to go to the local pharmacies. Had to steal a car. Drive a few miles out. Hit a place and back track to hit the second. On my way back I realized I didn't have the energy for it. Not tonight at least."

With three glasses into him, Natasha stopped the assembly line temporarily to re-wrap his chest. He developed a good plan. There was no way to be sure Ultron's countless algorithms couldn't account for human ingenuity, but they had to do something. She could make the run that he wanted even if he didn't ask her to. It was a risk. Every step they took away from the cottage came with a risk now. If one camera got a glimpse of her, then that could be it for them. Clint, though, was a bigger hazard going it alone. In the state he was in, he was more apt to make a mistake they might not be able to correct.

"This was actually a good idea." She told him, lining the Always pads in the antibiotic ointment.

"I thought it was clever till they got stuck to me." He admitted. He took the first one and pressed it sideways along his last rib. One hand held it in place as the other stacked three beneath it. Natasha re-wrapped the ACE bandage. He leaned forward and kept the compress in place while she tied him in the elastic brown fabric.

"This won't be long enough." She said, tucking the free end down.

"Pillow case in my bag."

She groped around for it. "Knife?"

"In my boot. Left side."

Flipping the blade opened, the pillowcase quickly became one heap of long, white strands. She tied the ends of the ACE and pillowcase together and finished her circular bandage. Stepping back, Clint resembled a mummy. Carefully he pulled his shirt down over the damage. With the white beneath, the damage to his shirt became obvious.

"He really did a number on you." She said, fingering the holes gently. She wondered why he had one-shouldered his backpack everywhere. It hid the damage from view. Before that, his quiver did the job. As annoying as he could be, Clint was still resourceful.

"Still dizzy?" she asked.

"Yeah."

"We should lay you down. Get more fluids into you. I'll try and see if that pump is in the shed. Can you get up by yourself?"

Clint nodded. He placed a hand on the side of the tub, and another on the wash basin. He lifted and stood in front of her. "I'm good."

"Find a bunk. I'll be back in a few minutes." She restacked the spare items in his back pack and headed out first. He'd wait another minute or two before following.

Natasha slipped the backpack beside the door of the nearest open bed. Most likely he planned to go there. She would have. Changing direction, she went back to the front door. Hopefully it wouldn't be too hard to find the metal pump tip in the near total black out. She could always grab a candle on her way out. Maybe—

Her plans stopped the minute she heard the THUMP in the bathroom. She went back instantly and shoved the door open again. Clint dropped like a dead man. His head began to bleed from a new cut along his eyebrow. The wash basin had a chip from where he bounced off of it on his way down. She couldn't lift him on her own. Natasha tiptoed around his upper half and forced his head sideways should he start to vomit. This wasn't exactly part of the plan.

"Bruce!" She called out on a whim. So much for the big secret. Clint could kill her for it when he woke up.

When no one came to her initial call for help, she straddled Clint's body again and dragged the bathroom door inward. It was hard to open the jamb with his arms in the way.

"BRUCE!" She waited, listened, and sure enough chairs started moving, bowls hit the ground, a fork scattered across the floor, and Bruce appeared running toward her. No doubt, everyone else came with him.

"He's unconscious. I can't move him alone." Natasha explained. She leaned down and dragged Clint away from the door by his belt so Bruce could get inside.

"Unconscious?" Bruce questioned. He slid in and forced the door open the rest of the way. He crouched in the doorway and carefully moved Clint's head. The cut over his eye was making a flood on the floor beneath him.

"What happened to him?!" Steve exclaimed. If he could fit inside with the rest of them, he would have.

"Just help me get him to a bed and I'll explain. Watch his side. Ultron shot him." Natasha grabbed Clint's right arm and, without giving the doctor a choice on whether they should move him or not, began to lift. To prevent Clint taking another spill, Bruce lunged beneath the archer's left side and together they got him up.

"Ultron shot him? Why didn't he say something?" Steve continued to demand.

Natasha struggled to keep up with the taller Banner and under the weight of Clint's heavy shoulder muscles. Hill moved ahead of them and threw opened the closest bedroom door. The entire team followed her inside. There was a sheet on the bed, but little else. They laid Clint's upper half down first and Tony helped swing his legs up next. Together, the six stood around and stared at him.

"You know," Steve said, pointing to Clint in the bed, but locking his eyes with Tony. "This is why we need to have a team meeting about the importance of information sharing. Don't you think?!"

Tony pointed at the archer too. "This is not my fault. I don't go around telling him to just go drop dead in bathrooms!"

Bruce shot over his shoulder. "Guys, come on! Fight later. I've got to—" he dug a little deeper beneath the bandages and looked up at Natasha. "Are these hygiene pads?"

She shrugged. "They worked."

Tony and Steve both quit their fight long enough to appear disgusted. Hill, however, grinned.

"Not a bad idea. Have some more in my purse if you need them, Bruce." She said.

The dueling leadership turned their looks on her.

"Stop looking like I just killed your puppies. They're designed for blood loss. I've even used them for toilet paper in a pinch. I'll grab them. Maybe we can get that cut on his head to stop bleeding."

:(:):(:):

"I want a picture of this. I wish I had a picture of this. Honestly, Clint, it's so magical I don't know what to do with myself. I just . . . it figures that the one day in your entire life I can take a picture of you with THAT THING stuck to your forehead, we can't risk it. It's not fair, I say."

Clint woke from his stupor to Maria Hill's voice drifting over to him. Someone else chuckled, maybe Tony, and the weight on his bed changed. A hand grabbed the side of his face and slowly straightened his neck. He opened his eyes.

"Bruce?" he asked.

"Oh, look, he's not dead." Bruce commented, not removing his hand.

"Steve, you owe me five dollars." Tony said.

"I never took that bet." Steve corrected.

Natasha appeared on Clint's opposite side and leaned over him. "Sorry. I told everyone. But I did rob a hospital while you were dying and came back with stuff. So I don't think you're dying now."

He reached a hand up to touch his eye. His head hurt and he couldn't remember why. Bruce explained that when Clint lost consciousness after standing in the bathroom, he slammed his face off of the sink and then the floor. He managed to avoid a concussion but did not miss out on getting a hygiene pad taped to his face. It was Hill's idea. She's enjoyed the sight every moment since. Natasha and Steve both drove a few cities out, but the captain waited in the getaway car while Natasha robbed the Urgent Care center. On the way home the crime spree included a Starbucks and Walgreens. Natasha suggested a bank, but Steve wasn't convinced. They dumped their first car, stole a second, and left that car four miles away in a lake. They hiked the rest back to the cottage.

"Since you're apparently going to live, want a drink?" Bruce shifted, picked up the still-steaming cup of Starbucks coffee and dangled it over the archer. Clint reached out to take it, but Bruce pulled his hand away.

"Actually, before I give you this wonderfully stolen gift, how about we have a chat. And in this chat you can tell all of us why you thought it was such a great idea to hide that fact that at any moment you might up and drop dead. Because that's a story I want to hear."

Clint opened his mouth to defend himself, but Steve stood up and cut him off.

"Actually, why don't we just skip the part where you tell us you wanted to avoid the looks, and you thought you were just fine, and all those other things you'd really like to say but aren't going to change our minds."

Natasha grinned. "Admit that you were an idiot, basically."

"And I get why you'd not say something. I mean…" Tony scooted closer on his chair. His hands were stacked across the back. "This was my fault. Getting us in this situation, us being stuck here. I know I did it. You didn't have to try and protect me from this."

"And looking at you in that bed with an Always pad strapped to your face pays me back for a whole lot of heartache over the years, Barton." Hill put in.

Clint pushed himself up on his elbows. "Ok, seriously, anything I might have decided to say you already hit. So what do I have to do to get this thing off my face and drink a coffee?"

Bruce arched an eyebrow.

"Please." Clint added.

Both Bruce and Natasha helped sit the archer up and handed over the stolen coffee. Clint took it with one hand while the other ripped the pad of his face. From beneath, a second article dropped into his lap. He wasn't really surprised to see it, if he was honest with himself. Maria sputtered, then folded over and burst out laughing so hard her sides began to hurt. Clint picked up the tampon she'd unfolded against his bleeding eyebrow, beneath the pad, and flung it at her. She deflected it with one hand into Tony, who fell of his chair trying to avoid it.

Clint shot the woman a glance. "You know, you aren't right."

Maria tipped her coffee at him. "Just think, from now on, every time I see a tampon, I'm going to think of you."

so there it is! literally nothing groundbreaking, just a delightful little romp which may be necessary with ALL THAT DRAMA happening over in "Where the Worlds Burn". Please excuse the errors, and I do hope you enjoyed. After all, the funny side of Hill must come out!

-Please review!