Disclaimer: I do not own the Avengers or any of the characters affiliated with them. If I did, there would totally be a Hawkeye/Black Widow movie in the works.

Author's Note: While I embrace constructive criticism remember this old saying if you choose to leave a review "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all"

Now I know a lot of you are waiting patiently (or impatiently which is okay too lol) for The Untold Stories. It is finally in the revision process and then it's off to be beta'd by my good friends Kylen and JRBarton. So you've still got some waiting to do but the hard/long part is over.

Which brings us to where we are now. Over on my tumblr (username aggie2011whoop if you're interested) I've had many, many prompts/wishes/hopes for the VPU submitted over the last few months on what I call #wewantwednesday. Well, I decided to take those, one at a time, and do a 1000 word (+/-) ficlet based on them. This is the first! Some of these can be considered VPU canon, but some of them can't. Best just to view them as individual ficlets within the umbrella of the VPU. Enjoy!

Btw: this is unbeta'd so any mistakes are mine!

Prompt: Clint is poisoned and the more active he is the faster it spreads, therefore he cannot be involved in tracking down the antidote.

Submitted by: arlothia

Tony looked up from his computer screen to track Clint's progress across the lab. 10 steps, stop, absently fidget with a piece of Tony's equipment, turn, 10 steps, pivot, 10 steps in a different direction, stop, disassemble and then reassemble a test-firing gun, toss it down in frustration, turn, 10 more steps…and the cycle continued.

Tony tried to focus back on the screen, on the simulations he was running as he tried to synthesize an antidote, but then a piece of equipment tumbled over on one of his tables and he sighed.

He looked up in time to catch Clint's sheepish glance in his direction as he righted the piece of equipment and slowly withdrew his hands, as if worried it might fall again.

"You're supposed to be taking it easy," Tony pointed out as Clint made tracks back across the lab and to the test-firing guns. "I'm serious, Clint. Bruce said that the more active y-"

"I know what Bruce said," Clint snapped sharply. He watched as Clint quickly and easily disassembled a gun. "Believe me, this is me taking it easy."

Tony watched him start to efficiently start to reassemble the gun with habitual ease. He slammed the clip home a little more forcefully than Tony thought was necessary.

"I should be out there," Clint muttered darkly. "This is my fight." Then started taking the weapon back apart.

Tony sighed, checked the progress of the simulation on his screen, then stood.

"It's all our fight – part of that whole 'team' thing," he corrected as he slowly made his way towards his friend. "Natasha, Steve, and Bruce, they'll find the guy. They'll get the antidote and you'll be fine."

Clint scoffed, barely paused after disassembling the gun before he started putting it back together.

"If you're so goddamned confident, why have you been running those damn antidote simulations for the past three hours?"

"Because it's what I can do…and it's our only back up plan."

"What you can do?" Clint laughed sarcastically. "Tony, your goddamned Iron Man. You should be out there with them not babysitting me. I can take care of myself," he practically growled.

Tony opened his mouth to respond but the words halted in his throat when Clint's hands suddenly fumbled and the slide of the gun went tumbling to the floor.

For a moment they both stood frozen in shock. Tony had seen Clint break down and reassemble guns of all shapes and sizes hundreds of times. Never once, never once, had his hands been anything but sure and steady.

But now, even as Tony stared, Clint's hands trembled.

"Clint?" Tony called, snapping into motion and covering the remaining distance between them in three long strides.

"I'm fine," came Clint's predictable reply. But his voice wasn't as firm as it had been moments ago and he was staring down at his hands with a mixture of surprise and annoyance.

"You're not fine," Tony snapped, his temper flaring. He was tired of Clint always shrugging of injuries like they were nothing, like they didn't matter. It was high time he made it clear that it mattered. "You've been poisoned, you asshole." He hooked his foot around the nearest rolling chair and jerked it over. "Now sit the hell down and don't get up again until I'm jamming the antidote into your arm, got it?"

Clint didn't move and Tony briefly considered manhandling him into the chair himself, but quickly shoved away that idea. Even dosed with a poison, Clint would not take kindly to that.

"Clint, come on, you really want to collapse right here in the middle of the lab? Romanoff would kill me if I let that happen. Just sit down, all right? I'll even let you keep playing with the guns."

Clint slowly, as if he were moving through water, reached for the chair and sat. Tony thought that was it. Clint seemed to be complying and would no longer wear a hole in the lab floor with his restless pacing. So he turned to head back to his work station, but Clint's voice stopped him.

"Why are you here, Tony? You and I both know that you'd be more use out there, hunting this bastard down. Why are you here?"

He sounded off – so far from the normally strong and unshakeable archer Tony had come to know. Tony swallowed and leaned against the table next to Clint's chair, eyeing the paleness of his friend's pallor. Had he been that pale an hour ago? Tony didn't think so. Had his eyes been that bloodshot? His posture that weary?

It was worse than Clint was letting on, the poison had progressed farther than Clint had admitted.

That realization had Tony's gut tightening and put a slight shake in his voice when he responded.

"Somebody needed to stay with you, to make sure you didn't go start running laps or something and accelerate the poison." He tried to keep it light, even tossed in a teasing smirk.

But Clint didn't even crack a grin – a further testament that something was very wrong with him.

"Bruce could have stayed," the archer pointed out. "Hell, between the two of you, he's the doctor."

Clint wasn't looking at him, was staring at the guns on the table. But he hadn't moved to work with them again. He was keeping his hands clenched on his thighs, but even so Tony could see the shaking.

Tony considered his reply for a long moment. Bruce was the doctor. He'd be able to more effectively monitor Clint's health as time went by. But Tony was pretty sure the last thing Clint wanted was someone taking his blood pressure every 30 minutes. What the archer really needed, though he'd never admit it, was to just know he wasn't alone. Bruce could have provided that assurance, sure, but Tony wasn't willing to pass that buck, not when it came to Clint.

"Because it couldn't be her," Tony finally confessed. "She had to be out there, hunting this guy. She couldn't just stay her and do nothing, not when she was our best bet to find him. So if it couldn't be her, here with you, it had to be me."

It had to be. Because Clint was his best friend. And as much as Tony wanted his pound of flesh from the guy who had done this, he wanted – needed – to be here more.

Clint looked at him then, the corner of his mouth quirking up in a slight, but warm, grin.

Then without warning, his eyes rolled back and he slid listlessly out of the chair, hitting the floor in a bone jarring heap.

if you guys are anything like my tumblr crowd, you'll be brandishing pitchforks and torches after leaving it there. But that's where this ficlet ends - it was just over 1000 words and that's that. :D

Hope you enjoyed! Drop me a line to let me know what you thought! If you want to see these as they are created, they go up on my tumblr first so follow me there.

thanks for reading!