Avengers Fic: 39 Steps
Clint counts. He sits on the steps and counts from where he is sitting down to the bottom step, and back up. There are thirty-nine. He has to stop twice and shake his head a little, run his hand down his sweating, bloody face, but he does count. He thinks for a moment he should count from the beginning, but the beginning was so long ago and he probably would have had to start over too many times for it to matter anyway.
He takes a deep breath, feeling the glass in the skin of his face pull and dig deeper, tiny rivulets of blood from their pocket wounds skimming down his cheekbone.
The others are waiting for him. He should move from the thirty-ninth step to the thirty-eighth step at least. Make some progress. Forward motion. There’s a team waiting for him, after all. A team where Coulson’s hero shouts orders that make sense, where Tony Stark is actually trying to play along, and where Natasha is following as if she’s been listening to Rogers for years. He tries to stand.
Something presses against his chest, though, an invisible weight, a phantom hand pushing him back down onto these steps.
So he sits. He closes his eyes and takes another deep breath. He feels it through his chest and a memory storms his mind. A demi-god with rock-hard green eyes presses the tip of a strange-looking spear against Clint’s chest, and suddenly the concrete of the step he’s sitting on feels too hard, too cold, just like the spear, just like Clint’s mind after the spear is pulled away. The familiar cold and the angle of the step cutting into his legs jar him, and he hears Loki’s voice echoing through the stairwell. It’s not the word that he said when he collected Clint for his work, though, it’s not ‘heart.’ It’s ‘kill’ that echoes through the stairwell. This chamber of the thirty-nine steps falls silent, after a moment, and Clint is left sitting, trembling, gathering his strength.
He tries to move again, this time managing to scoot himself over the edge of the thirty-ninth step so that he can slam himself down to the thirty eighth. He feels a sense of accomplishment when he arrives, and tries to keep going, to keep pushing past the words swirling in his head, to focus on the blood trickling down his face. It proves that he is still alive, still capable of moving.
His comm crackles back to life on the thirty-fourth step, but there are no more orders for him, just panicked voices and chaos swirling around a nuclear weapon. Weapons mean little to Clint at this moment, though, and he draws another ragged breath and hears it rattle in the empty staircase. Loki’s weapon, with its blue glow that Clint hopes to god stops sitting behind his eyelids sometime soon, was calm, was solid, and was strong. It filled him with strength, too, so much that he didn’t sleep, didn’t feel the need for it. It was as if Loki’s voice and orders and calm eyes were all the sustenance he needed. Sitting here, in the empty stairwell on the concrete thirtieth step, he didn’t feel that sustenance any more. He feels his body begin to betray him, like he betrayed SHIELD.
His chest hurts, like he can’t draw enough air in, and his vision swims from exhaustion and the collision with the pane of glass, the glass that left its pieces in Clint’s face and naked arms. He pauses in his effort to breathe and picks a piece of glass out of his arm, stares at it, flicks it away and listens as it clatters on the concrete steps.
He moves again, this time making it to the twenty-fifth step before he has to stop. He listens again to the silence of the chamber, listens again to make sure Loki’s whisper isn’t here, listens to make sure the defensive shouts of colleagues and friends under fire from his gun are quiet, leaving him to pull another shard of glass from his hand. He is distracted, now, by the glass. He pulls shard after shard out of his hands, watches blood surge to the surface. He relishes the sting of each red pool.
He hears the others shouting for Stark as he moves from the twenty-fifth step to the nineteenth. Nineteen is good. It’s far away from the thirty-ninth step. And maybe it’s farther away from the cold chill of Loki’s empty voice echoing in his head, filling his head like a chorus, promising rewards and security and ‘I will let you worship me,’ which sounded like heaven at the time; now he’s not sure if he’ll ever find capacity for worship in his bones again.
‘Who would I worship?’ He thinks as he drags himself from the nineteenth step to the twelfth step. He hears his colleagues’ joy as Stark makes it through the portal again, falling, tumbling until the something stops his descent. He first hears the relief in Steve’s voice and then the panic as it becomes apparent that Stark isn’t breathing. Clint doesn’t remember breathing, either, as he ran through the halls of the helicarrier killing colleagues, friends, rivals. His body was not truly his at those moments, no, it was a weapon used by Loki, but wearing his own stony, red-eyed face. Stark’s face isn’t his own, either, the suit of iron shielding him, protecting him - Clint hears the joy in Steve’s voice as he acknowledges Stark’s safety, apparently he’s breathing again.
So Clint breathes again, too, as he shifts from the twelfth step to the eighth step, focuses on pulling air into his lungs. He tries to clear his head of the rushing screams and explosions that blend the chaos on the street outside with the chaos of memory. The others are waiting for him. They want to go get Loki . . . but the eighth step proves a stumbling block and he can’t move again. What will he do when he sees Loki? His fear of that calm voice washes over him and drowns his breaths and he has to stop, pressing his fisted hand against his chest to persuade it to work right and finally it does, leaving him sweaty and shaking.
He tumbles from the eighth step to the second, stopping his complete descent with an outstretched arm slamming into the wall next to him, holding him in place, keeping him from crashing to the ground. His arm, his shooting arm, his lifeline to everything, stops his fall. They might let him stay in SHIELD if he can keep using that arm without shooting any other colleagues, but how will they know that he won’t? How will he know, either? He leaves his arm against the wall, steadying himself, feeling the concrete under his palm, cool and strong and not yielding to his touch.
He moves from the second step to standing, pulls himself up by the railing and waits as his legs wobble and then straighten, hold him up somehow. He wipes his face with his arm again, breathes, blinks several times to focus on the room around him and the door in front of him, the door that opens only one way, out into the street where Natasha is waiting. Where his new team is waiting if he can prove he’s worthy of them, where Loki is waiting to be dealt vengeance, and where Clint will breathe freely again, will control his own arms again, will learn how to descend a staircase without worrying about tumbling down, down into a cold, blue abyss.
He takes a deep breath, feeling the glass in the skin of his face pull and dig deeper, tiny rivulets of blood from their pocket wounds skimming down his cheekbone.
The others are waiting for him. He should move from the thirty-ninth step to the thirty-eighth step at least. Make some progress. Forward motion. There’s a team waiting for him, after all. A team where Coulson’s hero shouts orders that make sense, where Tony Stark is actually trying to play along, and where Natasha is following as if she’s been listening to Rogers for years. He tries to stand.
Something presses against his chest, though, an invisible weight, a phantom hand pushing him back down onto these steps.
So he sits. He closes his eyes and takes another deep breath. He feels it through his chest and a memory storms his mind. A demi-god with rock-hard green eyes presses the tip of a strange-looking spear against Clint’s chest, and suddenly the concrete of the step he’s sitting on feels too hard, too cold, just like the spear, just like Clint’s mind after the spear is pulled away. The familiar cold and the angle of the step cutting into his legs jar him, and he hears Loki’s voice echoing through the stairwell. It’s not the word that he said when he collected Clint for his work, though, it’s not ‘heart.’ It’s ‘kill’ that echoes through the stairwell. This chamber of the thirty-nine steps falls silent, after a moment, and Clint is left sitting, trembling, gathering his strength.
He tries to move again, this time managing to scoot himself over the edge of the thirty-ninth step so that he can slam himself down to the thirty eighth. He feels a sense of accomplishment when he arrives, and tries to keep going, to keep pushing past the words swirling in his head, to focus on the blood trickling down his face. It proves that he is still alive, still capable of moving.
His comm crackles back to life on the thirty-fourth step, but there are no more orders for him, just panicked voices and chaos swirling around a nuclear weapon. Weapons mean little to Clint at this moment, though, and he draws another ragged breath and hears it rattle in the empty staircase. Loki’s weapon, with its blue glow that Clint hopes to god stops sitting behind his eyelids sometime soon, was calm, was solid, and was strong. It filled him with strength, too, so much that he didn’t sleep, didn’t feel the need for it. It was as if Loki’s voice and orders and calm eyes were all the sustenance he needed. Sitting here, in the empty stairwell on the concrete thirtieth step, he didn’t feel that sustenance any more. He feels his body begin to betray him, like he betrayed SHIELD.
His chest hurts, like he can’t draw enough air in, and his vision swims from exhaustion and the collision with the pane of glass, the glass that left its pieces in Clint’s face and naked arms. He pauses in his effort to breathe and picks a piece of glass out of his arm, stares at it, flicks it away and listens as it clatters on the concrete steps.
He moves again, this time making it to the twenty-fifth step before he has to stop. He listens again to the silence of the chamber, listens again to make sure Loki’s whisper isn’t here, listens to make sure the defensive shouts of colleagues and friends under fire from his gun are quiet, leaving him to pull another shard of glass from his hand. He is distracted, now, by the glass. He pulls shard after shard out of his hands, watches blood surge to the surface. He relishes the sting of each red pool.
He hears the others shouting for Stark as he moves from the twenty-fifth step to the nineteenth. Nineteen is good. It’s far away from the thirty-ninth step. And maybe it’s farther away from the cold chill of Loki’s empty voice echoing in his head, filling his head like a chorus, promising rewards and security and ‘I will let you worship me,’ which sounded like heaven at the time; now he’s not sure if he’ll ever find capacity for worship in his bones again.
‘Who would I worship?’ He thinks as he drags himself from the nineteenth step to the twelfth step. He hears his colleagues’ joy as Stark makes it through the portal again, falling, tumbling until the something stops his descent. He first hears the relief in Steve’s voice and then the panic as it becomes apparent that Stark isn’t breathing. Clint doesn’t remember breathing, either, as he ran through the halls of the helicarrier killing colleagues, friends, rivals. His body was not truly his at those moments, no, it was a weapon used by Loki, but wearing his own stony, red-eyed face. Stark’s face isn’t his own, either, the suit of iron shielding him, protecting him - Clint hears the joy in Steve’s voice as he acknowledges Stark’s safety, apparently he’s breathing again.
So Clint breathes again, too, as he shifts from the twelfth step to the eighth step, focuses on pulling air into his lungs. He tries to clear his head of the rushing screams and explosions that blend the chaos on the street outside with the chaos of memory. The others are waiting for him. They want to go get Loki . . . but the eighth step proves a stumbling block and he can’t move again. What will he do when he sees Loki? His fear of that calm voice washes over him and drowns his breaths and he has to stop, pressing his fisted hand against his chest to persuade it to work right and finally it does, leaving him sweaty and shaking.
He tumbles from the eighth step to the second, stopping his complete descent with an outstretched arm slamming into the wall next to him, holding him in place, keeping him from crashing to the ground. His arm, his shooting arm, his lifeline to everything, stops his fall. They might let him stay in SHIELD if he can keep using that arm without shooting any other colleagues, but how will they know that he won’t? How will he know, either? He leaves his arm against the wall, steadying himself, feeling the concrete under his palm, cool and strong and not yielding to his touch.
He moves from the second step to standing, pulls himself up by the railing and waits as his legs wobble and then straighten, hold him up somehow. He wipes his face with his arm again, breathes, blinks several times to focus on the room around him and the door in front of him, the door that opens only one way, out into the street where Natasha is waiting. Where his new team is waiting if he can prove he’s worthy of them, where Loki is waiting to be dealt vengeance, and where Clint will breathe freely again, will control his own arms again, will learn how to descend a staircase without worrying about tumbling down, down into a cold, blue abyss.