Thank you very much to everyone who has taken the time to comment on this random little story… I always enjoy writing Clint and Tony banter and bonding. :D Please take the time if you can to review at the end; I can't even express how much it makes my day.

Don't Turn Away

By: Syntyche

Day One: On My Own

Slowly walk away

To breathe again

On my own

OoOoOoOoOo

Barton is coughing again and even though Tony is down to the last tattered shreds of his now disgusting t-shirt (he could probably sell it as a genuine Zeppelin concert tee, actually looks pretty authentic now), he still tears off a hunk and passes it to the archer, batting it against Clint's arm gently until scrabbling, shaking fingers slowly release the deathfist-clench they're locked in to relieve him of the material in a wobbly grasp. Clint's eyes are so goddamn bright in the dying light that Tony knows his teammate is only holding on to consciousness by his fingertips and force of will, and the inventor is damn proud of his friend in this moment, proud that the Avenger most people see as expendable and weak and - worst of all, only human, like it's an insult - is really one of the strongest of them, taking all his human and unenhanced and normal weaknesses and shoving them deep down and getting the job done.

(Maybe he should live and you should die, instead)

Maybe, Tony sneers back at the voice that maybe sounds like him, like dear old dad, like always calm and making too much sense Captain fucking America - or maybe we're just both getting out of this shithole fucking today, he thinks defiantly, because it has to be today. Has to. Tony's cared so much up to this point about being sure it's been weeks or months, but right now all he cares about is today. Today, today, today they are leaving, both of them, and that will even be the end of wondering how long he's been down here because he'll just check the new cellphone he's buying the second he's out of here, or he might even look at a stupid calendar if those still exist and he'll know exactly how long it's been and the only thing that's going to be remembered about today is that today they're going home.

That's it.

That's it, Tony vows firmly. Nothing else will need to be remembered about today because they're both walking out of here. Nobody is going to be buying flowers a year from now to leave against cold stone to remember someone who was a teammate, a friend, a sort-of brother; nobody is going to be standing in the cold November rain trying to remember what it's like not having to try and remember someone's voice because you're going to hear it again at dinner tonight, at practice tomorrow, laughing at a stupid joke more because they're your friend than because the joke was actually funny.

Nobody is doing those things in a year because they're not happening. Not on his watch.

Tony grits his teeth, clenches his fists, nods his head authoritatively. He can handle things, no problem.

"That was a really inspiring speech. Thank you." Curved spine to the wall, hunched over knees pulled in, Clint swipes at his mouth with the back of a hand already streaked red and inadvertently deepens the smear. "I hadn't planned on dying today, but now I'll make doubly sure I don't."

Tony thinks about smiling for Clint's sake (because friends do that,) but he can't bring himself to, doesn't have the energy, doesn't even have the brainspace to vet the skittering jittery thoughts that have been his constant companion lately. Minus the angst, it's kind of peaceful in StarkWorld right now, except for the throbbing pain in his back that he knows is going to blossom into quite a nice bruise and a few random comments from nameless whisperers that escape the white noise rattling his skull to ring in his ears.

"Yeah, that'd be helpful, Feathers, thanks," he says sharply, keeping it large and in charge because, although Barton has been running the this looks bad, but I've got this show, literally everyone who's everyone knows Tony is the brains of the outfit and there's no way he's getting shown up by the brawn, even if he is a little teary-eyed proud of the brawn right now.

The brawn has been giving him a lot of weird looks lately, and another longsuffering glower is sent Tony's way. The inventor smiles a little, pulls it in like a ratty quilt he'd drape over his shoulders if 1) it was actually tangible, and 2) so long as no one was watching.

"Please don't involve me in whatever … this … is," Clint says and he sounds tiredly amused, or maybe like he wants to be amused but is just too tired. "This is a totally weird and admittedly unwanted foray into the mind of Tony Stark I really don't want to be privy to."

"Gettin' a little hoity-toity there, Barton," Tony mutters snappishly, his good humor evaporating under Clint's disbelief: the brawn is a bit uppity, it seems. "You should be thrilled to get a touch of my genius."

Clint makes a laugh that sounds like a snort overlapped by a whimper, and he shifts to brace an arm more firmly across his battered ribcage. "What?" he asks with an amused, smirking grin Tony hears more than sees in the semi-darkness.

"What?" Tony parrots back irritably, annoyed that Billy fucking Joel over there couldn't leave a tender moment alone and just accept Tony's rarely gifted almost paternal pride with the humble grace it richly and appropriately deserved.

"I think you should just keep your genius from touching me," Clint chuckles hoarsely, and it's a rough, sandpapery sound that reminds Tony keenly of his own dehydration and sets his mouth aching for water. His stinging rebuttal to his teammate's sense of humor is lost in a harsh clench of snapped-together teeth as the door staggers open and his body reminds him painfully of bruises endured and sharply felt with every movement. He instinctively backs against the wall, panic sensors he'd been heroically pushing down bubbling over a little, threatening to erupt with any further provocation. He hates this, hates the panic, hates the way it takes over, freezing him and choking him and suffocating every breath he has to give.

"Clint," he says instead, and if it sounds a little weak, a little scared, he knows it's all in his mind and not out in the open where anyone else can hear, which is good since he's just five minutes ago resolved to be the resourceful, intelligent, brave one.

Clint heaves himself to his feet to stand a few feet from Tony. They make an unfortunate-looking pair: Clint, bloody and scraped, damaged left hand curled against his ribs to both protect his broken, mangled fingers and his heavily bruised flank, and Tony, equally disheveled, bruises blossoming beneath his shredded t-shirt (like paint ripples on a perfect canvas, he points out to himself,) hunched and hurting.

Two guards enter to face them. Two? Tony snorts. That's child's play even on a bad day, which is good, because this fucking nightmare feels like it's gone on forever.

"I hope you brought dinner," Tony says pointedly, eyebrow raised to let them know how in the wrong it would be to answer in the negative here, how completely unwelcome any other response would be. Feeding their hapless prisoner doesn't even seem to occur to these jackholes though, and Tony's stomach does a lurch-flip that flubs the landing as he catches the metal gleam of a barrel swinging upward and he realizes all of the sudden that Clint's time is up -

"Son of a bitch!"

He doesn't know if the exclamation comes from him, Barton, or an unholy chorus of the two of them being taken by surprise. Tony prepares to launch himself in front of Barton, already calculating at what angle he would need to bodily shield the archer without actually killing himself in the process: deflect the shiny metal hurtling at them with the edge of his arc reactor or something genius-y like that: Save the archer, save the world, he thinks, and wonders for a second while already in motion why the quality of Heroes had to go down like it did.

His springing leap goes off without a hitch, but is arrested mid-movement when a line of fire sears across his bicep, and a shocked yelp and tumble end what was almost a clichéd but reliable superhero save. Barton swears (again or for the first time) and Tony's startled brain (they were shooting at you! Holyfuckingshit!) registers a flurry of movement before he crashes into the wall, conveniently using his head as a battering ram that unfortunately does not break them into the questionable safety of next room, but instead ceases Tony's forward momentum with a sudden stop against unforgiving stone. Tony's vision blurs and swims and he shakes his head sharply to clear it, but he thinks the move might make him vomit so he settles for pressing the flat of a sweaty hand against his temple and turning quick, jumping breaths into slow, measured counts as quickly as he can: he's got to get back in the fight ASAP because shit is going down.

A jumble of arms and legs cartwheel past him in an impressive display of bendable yet crunchy human to impact off the same surface Tony just did, but at greater velocity and therefore with a more sudden, bendier, crunchier stop that makes Tony's own teeth hurt when a couple of front teeth and an incisor tumble wetly to the floor. He can't bring himself to check if the sticky mess beside him is his teammate so Tony resolutely snaps his focus ahead instead, blinking through a red veil that tents his eyelashes and strings tackily to his fingers as he roughly reaches up to swipe at stinging eyes.

Barton is not the gummy, dripping pile of human crumpled on the floor. Barton is standing, glaring, so so cold-eyed as he grips the second guard, the one who shot Tony. The archer has his hands positioned, even the splinted, broken ones, curled into yielding flesh and Tony knows he's going to kill the man, that people are going to die today and he wonders - just for a moment - if a year from now someone will mourn at this man's grave, if he'll even have one.

And that thought, in that moment, is too overwhelming for Tony's shaken brain to process.

"Clint," Tony croaks, "don't," and Clint barely spares a glance but his eyes and his voice are frighteningly calm and Tony almost envies him only because the knock to the head has set off all his panic alarms and suddenly he needs to get outoutout and he can't watch what's about to happen and he can't look away - "Please."

"Don't look, Tony," Barton orders sharply, and even though Tony wants to be resolute he does as Clint asks, turning his head and squeezing his eyes closed. He feels all of five years old as he does it, but he jams his hands against his ears so he doesn't hear the whimpering, the pleading, the last stuttered gasp. The thought that this is what Barton does suddenly makes Tony insanely nauseous; it's one thing to know your teammate has fancy labels like "assassin" and "marksman;" it's another to watch him brutally end a life and know that it's his nine-to-five bread on the table.

A muffled thud through Tony's mostly ineffectual fingermuffs and a body hits the ground, eyes open and neck jutting at an obscene angle and Tony does vomit then, curled into a little ball as his mind helpfully suggests concussion and his body equally helpfully says get the fuck moving. He tries to unwind his lanky frame but he's shaking - must be some crazy vibrations from his arc reactor to make his whole body shake like it is, he's definitely gonna have to look at that when they get home in a few hours -

"Hey! Hey!"

It's Barton, kneeling in front of him. White as a sheet where's he not painted red, left hand completely useless now - even more so than before, because apparently Clint could still use it to snap a man's neck but that certainly isn't the case now - "We got to move, Tony. C'mon, up and at 'em."

And Tony wants to move, he does, but his brain has put his body on lockdown and it's not fun by a long shot. He's never seen Clint this intentionally ruthless and it scares him a little, adding to the desperately unwanted panic already filling his limbs and veins with ice. The archer hooks his good hand through Tony's tightly wrapped arms and hauls him to his feet where Tony stands clumsily, wobbling like a newborn colt as he breathes loudly, counting it out, pulling air into frozen lungs.

"Let's go, buddy," Clint murmurs, sliding toward the door, already comfortably adapted to the stolen handgun clutched in his clenched fist. He's tucked the second guard's Glock into the back of his waistband, and Tony would be insulted the archer didn't trust him with a weapon except that he doesn't trust him with a weapon right now, either.

His feet drag a little as Clint pulls him along, ducking into shadows and doorways and generally avoiding people who are probably looking for them but are also likely far more distracted by the angry, bellowing rage clearly audible from a floor above. Clint cocks an ear at the cacophony and grins the biggest shit-eating grin Tony's ever seen.

"That Natasha, huh?" Clint says proudly. "That's my girl." Just for a second, admiration softens the ferocity of his on-the-job glare as he looks expectantly to Tony. "Told you she would come."

OoOoOoOoOo

Natasha does come for Tony, as promised.

In between, there are flashes of lights and sound and activity that Tony's jostled together thoughts try to make sense of. For a long while in slowed-down-action-y-time the thing Tony is aware of the most is the solid warmth of Clint's hand on his arm, propelling him on. He follows obediently, willing his brain to function properly, needing to help before something terrible happens -

( … fast machine … )

( … motor clean … )

Shards were falling in his mind, bouncing off the floor of his brain and rocketing around on an uncontrollable ricochet, pinging off of walls and crashing into each other, filling his brain with half-thoughts and abandoned memories.

( … knocking me out … )

His vision clears long enough to see Clint snap another neck and it's suddenly too much, too grisly, another fucking funeral and Tony's stomach lurches upward. He hastily swallows back bile scorching his throat - (… the walls were shaking … ) and shoves himself into the nearest corner because he just needs a minute to think, a minute to get his breathing under control. Barton, of course, does not take kindly to the sudden halt of forward progress. Fingers still wrapped around Tony's forearm, Clint's voice filters through the brain noise of AC/DC and Tony's own rapid breathing.

"Hey! Hey! Are you with me? Come on, Stark, pull it together!" Tony can hear him muttering to himself, "… fucking think Barton, you've traumatized your backup… okay… " and he thinks reassuring Clint might be a good idea, since Clint really is trying his best to keep Tony moving along. Tony opens his mouth to offer a genius-filled platitude that will make everything better, but what spills out is, "the earth was quaking," in a shaky, wobbly voice that is emphatically not his. Clint sucks in a sharp breath and Tony feels rough fingers fan across his face and tilt his head up.

"Tony, listen, listen," Barton instructs, but he can't, his mind is too hazy, and all he can think and all he can say is you - you shook me all night long - and then Clint chuckles around a grumbled, "are you fucking kidding me? come on, buddy, we're almost there."

( … yeah, you - )

A splatter of red is the next thing Tony remembers, and then they're going down, down to a knee and then to the floor. Clint pants harshly as he folds next to Tony, struggling to let their weight down gently and he ends up on his side facing Tony while the inventor is somehow stretched out on his back on the hallway tile.

For what feels like a long time, Clint's hand is on Tony's arm, and Tony can feel the warmth of his teammate crumbled next to him and though he knows it's not time to rest, not time yet to stop, he's actually comfortably warm at the moment and Clint's breath isn't that painful rasping of the last few days so maybe he's resting too. Tony pushes at Barton with shaking hands to stir him on, but there's something odd about Barton's eyes, about the way he's looking down the hall without actually seeing, even though when Tony curiously but laboriously turns his head to follow Clint's line of sight he sees Natasha running toward them, screaming soundlessly, her own expression twisted and scared and disbelieving, Cap and Rhodes on her heels.

stay awake overlaps with the walls were shaking overlaps with a teammate's anguish so desperate it makes his own chest clench as she slams to her knees beside them. Everything hurts on the outside, and now he's being shredded on the inside because it wasn't supposed to be today, it wasn't. And now somebody is gonna have to fucking buy flowers next year and he's pretty sure he emphatically stated that wasn't going to be the case.

An unwanted but unchecked tear rolls out of the corner of his eye. Rogers is leaning over him, saying words that somehow congeal into flesh wounds, you're gonna be okay and Tony wonders how many times he'd actually got shot after realizing that apparently he'd been shot, but hooray, apparently he's going to be okay anyway.

Clint's chest hitches once under Natasha's somehow frantically calm ministrations, a gurgling gasp of air that sounds like death but means he's alive. They both are. More raspy breaths follow and Romanoff begins barking orders like there's no tomorrow - which, Tony supposes, there almost wasn't for Team Stark, but Natasha's mouth is set and firm now, and somehow Tony knows Clint is going to eventually be fine as well, thank God.

Tony smiles grimly, eyes falling closed in exhaustion. He's ready to go home.

It's been months, after all.