Chapter Seven

The world shifted unsteadily under Clint's feet. Never one to be effected by sea sickness, Hawkeye still felt bile rising in the back of his throat. Swallowing thickly, Clint rocketed back to the world. That didn't help as the pain burning through his leg added to the nausea. All Clint had time to do was turn his head before he was vomiting helplessly.

"Great," Tasha grumbled from her position near the fire. "Now I'm the maid service." Quickly unwinding her long body, the master assassin strode over to her partner's heaving body. The smell seemed especially awful in the cool dampness of the world behind the waterfall. Ignoring it, she moved Clint onto his left side in the 'rescue position' while he continued to wretch.

"You can stop that any time," Tasha grated. The mess was bad enough. Seeing her partner so helpless was enough to turn her own stomach. Suddenly feeling the need to do more, Tasha pulled the sleeping bag up and around Clint's back. The blonde archer's body was still heaving although nothing was coming out, but now he also began to tremble, hard.

Silently, Tasha crouched two feet away and watched Clint by the flickering fire light and the light filtering through the water. He looked very young and very old at the same time. The fight boiled within Tasha's mind. The old Tasha wanted to pull Clint into her arms and protect him until he was able to do it himself. The new Tasha wanted to strip the man naked and use him to her own purposes. The urge burned through her like an all consuming fire.

Growling deep in the back of her throat, Tasha squashed the urge. Tears sprang into the corners of her eyes as she fought desperately against everything Gordon Cave had shoved into her mind. While Black Widow continued to watch her partner, Clint's face randomly contorted as pain washed over him. The heaving had settled down some but she could still see his stomach muscles spasming even through the sleeping bag. Clint's mouth was hanging open and his eyes were tightly screwed shut. She couldn't tell for sure if he was unconscious, asleep or awake. She hoped for his sake that he was unconscious.

"Nat." The single word was spoken so quietly Tasha wasn't sure she actually heard it over the other sounds in the cave. But she'd seen Clint's tightly drawn lips move ever so slightly. Tears were pricking the corners of his eyes while he rode the sensations flowing over his body. The pain was the most overpowering of the sensations, followed closely behind that was a deep cold that seemed to be coming up from the core of his being. Far behind that were thirst and hunger. In a weak nanosecond the name had slipped out.

The agony, fear and despair contained in that one word was enough. Abruptly, the other Tasha, the one who liked to hurt Clint, to degrade the archer was gone. In her place sat a shaky, ashamed Natasha Romanoff, agent of SHIELD and Clint Barton's partner. Shaking like a leaf with both relief and shame, Natasha covered the distance between her and her partner in a heartbeat.

Tentatively, tenderly, Tasha reached out to her trembling partner. Clint had finally stopped dry heaving but he was still stiff with pain. Carefully, Natasha pulled Clint closer to the fire by using the sleeping bag to slide him over the smooth rock. Once he was close enough, Tasha pulled the sleeping bag over as much of his body as she could and then settled down behind him. Feeling like a traitor, she wrapped her arms around his trunk, trying to give him her body heat. There was something entirely alien and deeply familiar about holding the archer's leanly muscled body.

At first, Clint's body stiffened in response to Natasha's closeness. Her partner's response lowered her spirits even further. Of course Tasha didn't blame Clint. The memories of what she'd done to the blonde man were burned forever in her mind, as she was sure they were burned in his. As time passed, though, Clint's rigid body slowly loosened as the heat from her body, the fire and the sleeping bag chased the cold away and sleep began to overtake him.

Lying behind Clint, Tasha considered her options. Clint needed help, fast. The fastest way would be to radio Cave's men and tell them their location. The only problem was that this option handed Clint over to the man who wanted desperately to torture and break the archer. That was no option at all. Pulling out her radio, Tasha stared at it for a few moments while she built up her nerve. A quiet moan from Clint as the pain reasserted itself forced her into action.

It was a long shot but one she was willing to take. Adjusting the band on the radio, Natasha keyed it. Speaking quickly, she gave the codes that were valid for when she was last herself and waited.

OOOOO

"Sir," a radio operator called to Nick Fury. The Director of SHIELD was sitting on the command deck, glumly watching his people work.

"What?" Fury snapped in uncharacteristic temper. Stark had informed him about his following Clint's tracker. The erratic nature of the movements alone wasn't enough to justify sending the helicarrier after him. The fact that Clint had spent the night in one location and then spent a good part of the next few hours running still wasn't enough to concern the director. It was when Stark showed him of the abrupt, slow progress followed by slightly faster progress that included back tracking that he became concerned. Now that Clint's tracker had virtually dropped off the face of the earth except for random, weak pulses, all in the same location, Fury himself was heading out to retrieve the agent.

"I just received a message from an ID number that traces back to Agent Natasha Romanoff," the operator said. The waver in his voice told Fury that he was unsure about telling him about this. Apparently, Fury had been living up to his name of late. Deliberately, the one eyed man tried to remove the danger from his countenance. The man's statement, however, brought the black man up short.

"Are you sure about that?" It was a stupid question. Of course his people were thorough enough to have checked before bringing it to his attention but the question had been automatic.

"Yes, sir, the ID is old but it still comes back as the Black Widow's," the operator assured him. Keying the intercom, Fury filled Captain Rogers in quickly, trusting the blonde man to fill in the rest of his team. "Where is the signal coming from?" Fury asked once he was done.

It took a moment for the operator to run it down. What he found shocked him. Turning in his seat to face his boss, the man looked almost apologetic. "It's coming from the same location as Agent Barton's tracker."

"Can we go faster?" Fury asked even though he all ready knew the answer.

"No, sir, any faster and we will break every window between here and our destination," the helmsman responded.

Cursing under his breath, Fury turned as he heard the arrival of the other members of the Avengers. Banner looked rumpled as usual. Fury knew the doctor hadn't left his lab since coming aboard. Stark, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt looked rather unassuming but Fury knew he too had spent the whole trip thus far in the lab. He had no doubt the genius billionaire was coming up with something that will help them locate their archer. Captain Rogers looked all spit and polish, just as Fury had expected. Thor was notably absent as he was currently on Asgard, trying to deal with an issue with Loki.

"What do we know?" Rogers asked as he came up to face Fury. There was an eagerness, intentness in the man's blue eyes that was somewhat off-putting but Fury ignored it. He knew the captain was worried about the archer, just as much as the rest of them were.

"Is she still on the radio?" Fury asked, temporarily ignoring the question.

"Yes, sir," the radio operator responded.

"Put her on speaker," Fury ordered. With a warning glance at the Avengers, he waited for the operator to nod. "Agent Romanoff."

"Director Fury," Tasha's voice responded, sounding slightly tinny over the helicarrier's speakers.

"To what do we owe this pleasure?" Fury asked. He had no idea what was going on. The woman could be contacting them simply to gloat but for some reason, he didn't think so.

"I know you have no reason to trust me. I've done terrible things. But, Agent Barton is here with me and he needs help," Tasha's voice rang out to them.

"What do you mean, Agent Romanoff," Fury asked. Behind him, he could feel Stark and Banner virtually vibrating, anxiously waiting for their turn to ask questions.

"He's been shot. The wound would not stop bleeding. I was forced to cauterize it. Gordon Cave's men are on the other side of the river, searching for Clint at this moment. You need to come get him as soon as possible," Tasha said. Underneath the carefully controlled voice, Fury heard the fear and concern the woman was trying to hide. There was something there, an edge, a tone, that told him she was telling the truth.

"We are on our way now. Where exactly are you?" Fury asked. He knew the latitude and longitude that corresponded to Clint's tracker but it didn't really tell them what he needed to know. The damned thing kept blinking in and out, thwarting their attempts to get an exact location.

"We're behind a waterfall. Other than that I can't really tell you," Tasha admitted. While the automaton that Cave had turned her into had been in charge Tasha only had a vague recollection of the ground they'd covered. Against her stomach and chest, Tasha felt Clint shift. A small moan escaped from his mouth. Then his body abruptly stiffened as he came back around and the pain pounced mercilessly on him.

Through the speakers, Fury and the Avengers heard the moan. Instantly the tension in the room increased tenfold.

"What the hell did you do to him?" Tony demanded. Banner and Rogers had also taken a step towards the speaker as if they could reach through the electronic device and beat the woman senseless.

"He was shot when we found him," Tasha responded, unconscious of the fact that she'd referred to herself in the plural. It had seemed completely natural. "We've been trying to keep him alive ever since."

"Who is 'we'?" Fury asked.

The line went silent while Tasha fought through the options. There was such shame and anger associated with the whole episode. Desperately she wished she could get Gordon Cave within arm's length. She'd kill the bastard with her hands. " 'I'," Tasha said finally. "I found him and have been trying to keep Clint safe since."

"I know how you 'take care' of Clint," Stark growled angrily. "Why should we believe you?"

"You shouldn't," Tasha admitted without pause. "But please, hurry up. Clint needs medical attention."

"We are ten minutes out," Fury stated, putting an end to the discussion.

OOOOO

Ten minutes had never seemed like an eternity before. Tasha resorted to pulling Clint into her lap as his condition continued to deteriorate. No matter what she did, she couldn't seem to get the man warm. Even sitting as close as she could to the fire, with Clint wrapped in his sleeping bag and braced against her body, the man continued to shiver and shake. While she held him, Clint seemed to remain oblivious to her presence. She could feel through the sleeping bag waves of heat rolling off of him. As hard as she'd tried, she hadn't gotten his leg clean enough fast enough, an infection was setting in.

It was with great relief and trepidation that Tasha heard someone approaching on the ledge of the waterfall. Whether it was Cave's people or Fury's didn't really matter to her at the moment, just so long as Clint was going to be helped. Still, she pulled out the blade in one hand and her gun in the other, just in case Cave's people needed convincing to not injure Clint further.

The first one through the curtain of water was Rogers. The captain looked ready to take on an army as he stepped through, his shield in one hand and gun in the other. Right behind him was Stark in his Iron Man suit. Relief flowed through Tasha as tears gathered in the corners of her eyes. Within her grasp she felt Clint shift, and then his body stiffened again as he reacted to the resulting pain.

"Step away from him," Stark ordered as he held up both his hands, ready to hit the woman with jets of air.

"Stark," Rogers warned as he carefully stepped forward. There was something in Natasha's eyes that told him that Clint was no longer in danger. But, given Natasha's earlier ability to fool them, Captain Steve Rogers wasn't willing to take a chance. In the fire light, the archer looked horrible. Moving a little faster, Steve knelt down beside Clint's semi-prone position. "Where was he shot?"

Without a word, Tasha pulled the sleeping bag off of Clint's leg, revealing the raw, angry and swollen bullet wound. "I...she...the other me did that to him. The wound wouldn't stop bleeding. It seemed like the only option," Tasha said, her cheeks burning brightly.

Behind Steve, Stark let out a string of curses upon seeing the wound. Brushing Steve aside, carefully extracting Clint's now limp body off of Tasha's lap, Stark picked the archer up. Not bothering to wait for the others, he turned and stalked out of the cave.

OOOOO

Landing on the deck of the helicarrier, Tony refused to hand Clint over to the medics that were waiting for him. Holding the archer a little closer to his chest, Iron Man strode towards the medical center. From the commotion behind him he knew that Natasha and Rogers had been brought up from the waterfall. He didn't even bother to turn around. The only thing that mattered to him at the moment was getting Clint to Banner. It terrified him how weakly Clint struggled against him, how low moans seemed to be coming out with each breath. He couldn't get to Banner fast enough.

"Put him there," Dr. Bruce Banner instructed, indicating the nearest bed.

"Do your thing, Doc," Stark said as he gently laid Clint out on the examination bed and took a step back. Banner swooped in, expertly cutting Clint's pants further up before examining the devastation below Clint's knee.

"How bad is it?" Tony asked. His dark eyes were troubled now that the face mask of his helmet was open.

"Give me a minute," Banner responded as he continued his examination. Everything he found made his blood run a little colder. In the back of his mind, 'the other guy' was rumbling angrily. Banner stifled the thoughts.

Under his fingers, Clint's muscles flinched involuntarily with the contact of his latex gloved fingers. Banner used his professional detachment to continue. The bones in Clint's lower leg were obviously broken. He couldn't tell for sure in how many places without x-rays. The radiological surveys were going to have to wait, though, for now Bruce needed to deal with the nasty looking wound burned into Clint's skin.

"Is it as bad as it looks?" Tony pressed. Rogers and Fury had arrived and were hanging in the background, unwilling to get in Banner's way. Tony had no such hesitations. He had a much scarier person to answer to. Pepper was waiting impatiently to hear too. His girlfriend's concern for the archer was somewhat disconcerting to the billionaire.

It took Banner a minute or two to respond. "He's going to have a hell of a scar thanks to the cauterization but so long as we can get the infection under control he should be fine."

"Thank you, Dr. Banner," Nick Fury stated, relief flowing through him. The director was also relieved to know that Natasha Romanoff was currently being held in the detention center. While the woman appeared to be back to herself, he wasn't about to take any chances. The doctors were going to go over her with a fine tooth comb before she was going to be allowed anywhere near Hawkeye.

"I want to send him for x-rays before we try to debride his wounds," Banner continued as he started an IV and quickly injected a broad spectrum antibiotic and pain killer into Clint's arm. As the pain killer began to take effect, Clint's body slowly relaxed.

"Whatever you need," Fury said as he took in Clint's pain drawn, pale, sweaty face. The archer really had looked better. Still, if Banner said he was going to be okay, Fury was inclined to believe him. "How long do you think he'll be out of commission?"

"The leg alone will take six weeks to heal properly. Beyond that, it's up to him," Banner said. Absently, he rested a hand on Clint's feverish forehead now that the initial exam was over. "I'll know more once the x-rays are in."

"Keep me informed," Fury stated before he turned and left the room.

OOOOO

Several minutes later, Clint was cleaned up and in, his x-rays taken and now he was settled into a more permanent bed in the medical center. Banner had just finished doing what he could do for the cauterized wounds and was now working on properly splinting the broken bones. They were going to have to be happy with a brace until the wounds healed properly.

For his part, Clint was aware that his surrounds had changes and that for the most part the pain had lowered to a tolerable level but he couldn't quite bring himself to wake up. He couldn't quite care enough to find out what was going on. Instead, he enjoyed the relative lack of pain and the warmth. Settling a little deeper into unconsciousness, Clint felt the last vestiges of anxiety disappear.

Rogers and Stark were on either side of Clint's bed, prepared to wait forever for the archer to come around. Both had taken the time to change into civilian clothes but not much else.

"I knew this was a bad idea," Tony grumbled as he watched the archer sleep.

"It doesn't matter now," Steve retorted. "At least thanks to this we have Agent Romanoff back."

"Yeah, great, just was we need, another reason to watch over Hawkeye like, well, a hawk," Tony hissed.

"Maybe not, if Natasha is cured," Steve said. He watched as Clint's muscles slowly began to relax as the drugs kicked in. The lines around his eyes and mouth slowly began to relax as well as the pain receded.

"That's a pretty big 'if'," Tony said. He'd always felt that Black Widow was a little too shady. It could be because he'd trusted her before he found out she was an agent. The woman was a chameleon. That made it that much more difficult to trust her. After seeing what the woman had done to Clint, Stark wasn't sure he was ever going to be able to trust the woman, ever.

"It beats the alternative," Steve said.

"I suppose," Tony agreed. Tired of the conversation, he settled back into the chair and prepared to wait. They were headed home. He knew that once they reached Avengers' Tower that Pepper would be there to watch over the archer. Until then, though, his girlfriend had tasked him with that job. He fully intended to do it. It was either that or face the wrath of Pepper, never a good alternative.

OOOOO

Drifting lazily in the currents of his mind, Clint heard dimly several voices speaking. It sounded like they were miles away so he couldn't quite hear what they were saying. He wasn't sure if he really cared what they were talking about. It was just nice to lie there and not feel pain or fear or cold. Still, the voices were vaguely familiar and he supposed he should find out what they were talking about. It could be a mission. Clint had never missed a mission and didn't want to start now.

The light above his head was bright. Clint had to blink his eyes a few times to adjust them. Even still, he could only open his eye lids a slit against the brilliance above him. Somewhere above him, Clint heard a low moan. The talking around him, no longer a million miles away, abruptly stopped. Swallowing thickly, Clint tried to lick his dry lips only to find that his tongue was just as dry. "Water?" he whispered.

The brilliance was momentarily blocked by a dark shape and then a straw was gently pressed against his lower lip. Sucking greedily at the cool, clean water, Clint would have had more but the straw was removed. Blinking again the try to clear his eyes, the archer found Pepper bending over him, a cup with a straw sticking out of it in one hand. Her other hand was now running through his close cropped hair.

"Hello, you," Pepper said, her voice quiet. Clint's eyes were still slitted against the light hanging over his head. Sensing the reason, Pepper absently pushed the shade so that the light was now pointed over Clint's left shoulder. The relief was immediate.

"Hi," Clint managed as his now focusing, blue eyes took in his surroundings. Just behind Pepper, trying to be unobtrusive, stood Tony Stark, Steve Rogers and Bruce Banner. The trio had various expressions of concern on their faces. For a split second Clint wondered if he'd died.

"You're going to be okay," Pepper assured the archer when the momentary fear played through his eyes. "Now that we have you back in the Tower, a plastic surgeon is going to repair the damage to your leg then you'll have to wear a boot for a while until the bones heal."

Suddenly feeling exhausted, Clint didn't have the strength to speak but he glanced over at Banner for confirmation. A slow grin spreading across his face, Bruce nodded.

"Tasha?" Clint breathed. He wasn't entirely sure what happened back in the cave but he knew that he wouldn't have made it without Natasha's help. He hoped desperately that the woman hadn't been returned to Cave. As much as the woman was not his partner anymore, he didn't want her to suffer at the maniac's hand.

"She's the reason we found you," Pepper said. Satisfied that the water was staying down, she brought the cup back and let Clint drink some more. "Fury has her down in detention. Somehow she seems to be back. Fury just wants to make absolutely sure before he lets her out."

"Cognitive recalibration?" Clint asked with a slight smile gracing his not quite so dry lips.

The look of confusion that spread across the blonde woman's face was almost worth it. Still smiling slightly, Clint felt his eye lids flicker a few times before they finally slammed shut. Tasha was here. He was going to be okay. Nothing else seemed to matter. Content for the first time in months, Clint allowed his mind to shut off as sleep overtook him.

"Sleep well," Pepper said as she settled back down into the chair beside the bed. She pretended to not notice the three men who continued to hover in the background. As much as they tried to pretend otherwise, the men were just as concerned for the archer as she had been. Now, though, she sensed that Clint was finally on the mend. Once it was confirmed that Natasha was okay too, the world would be all right again, until the next time the world fell apart. Still running her hand through Clint's hair, she prepared to wait, for as long as it took.

THE END

Hello! I'll be amazed if anyone is still reading this story. Sorry for the long delays. I'll hopefully do better on my next story, whatever that's going to be about. I hope you enjoyed this. I feel like I rushed the ending but I think my endings suck at the best of times anyway. I just don't want to keep dragging things out. I think I tortured poor Clint enough, right?

Thanks for sticking with me. Any reviews or possible ideas of other stories would be greatly appreciated!

Susanne