3. Chapter 3

Clint woke up in pain, which was not particularly unusual, just particularly disappointing. He felt the groggy pull of confusion that marked his sleep as drug induced, but he remembered that the last place he had been awake was the conference room at the tower so he was not panicked. He tried to open his eyes to figure out if he was in the medical wing, or if they had transferred him to a hospital, but the effort drew all of his vague unease into a sharp, gritty pain.

His eyes hurt.

He was blindfolded.

And his hands were strapped down.

“Fuck!” Clint hissed, pushing the pain back. He squirmed at the bindings, reconfiguring his original assessment. If someone had grabbed him from the tower, while he was surrounded by fellow Avengers, then he was well and truly screwed. He bit down on his tongue to shut himself up, the drugs making him sloppy.

“Agent Barton, stop. Stop. You’re at the tower, the medical wing, 50th floor,” Coulson said, his calm voice almost literally pushing Clint back into the mattress. “You’ve been out for a little over two hours, it is now 16:47. I’m standing next to your bed, and I’m going to touch you.” Coulson placed his hand neutrally on Clint’s lower right arm, resting it there without holding him down. His skin was cool against Clint’s, but the feeling of Coulson’s hand on him was enough to calm him down. He took a few deep breaths. Coulson’s fingers flexed three times, something Clint would not have noticed if his entire world had not been dialed down to that one point of contact. He focused on it until he could talk through the pain.

“What the fuck?” Clint rattled the restraints. The pain of his eyes sparked, making him groan and retreat to stillness.

“The doctor was, reasonably, worried that you would try to touch your eyes when you woke up. Right now they are bandaged. You need to stay still and not panic.”

“I don’t panic, Sir.”

“Of course not.” Coulson's voice sounded amused, his hand flexing on Clint’s arm a little. Clint would have sold his soul to open his eyes and see Coulson next to him, but he knew his soul wasn’t worth that much, so he stayed still.

“What happened?”

“I’ll let the doctor give you the full report, but the short form is that you are suffering from arc eye.”

“What the hell is that?”

“You looked into the sun and burned your corneas. They are blistering, and that is why your eyes hurt.”

“My eyes.” The air left Clint’s body completely.

“Barton, listen to me. This is temporary. Industrial welders get this a lot, and they recover. It’s a burn, it will heal.”

“It will scar.” Clint snapped, his equilibrium faltering like sliding on ice off a bridge. Nothing but air.

“Slightly, maybe. I’ll let the doctor explain that.” Coulson's hand had not moved, so he must have felt Clint flinch. “Rate the pain, Agent.”

“Six,” Clint answered without thinking. Agents were trained early and often never to lie about their condition, and the macho hold-outs who tried found themselves benched pretty quickly. Clint never lied; he worked through the pain and ignored orders to break off (unless those orders were from Coulson) but he never lied.

Before Coulson answered, Clint heard the door opening with a thump-and-swoosh, and at least two people walked in.

“Dr. Sveda. Captain.” Coulson pulled his hand back as he announced who had entered the room under the guise of greeting them, and Clint’s heart wrenched a little. Coulson was already covering for him, making up for Clint’s shortcomings, the same way he always did in the field.

“Good afternoon, Phil. Clint, hi.” Steve’s voice moved to closer to where Clint thought Coulson was still standing.

“Hey, Cap. Welcome to the party.” Clint tried to smirk, but moving his face at all hurt like hell, spiking the pain through his eyes. He tried to clamp down on his wince.

“Agent Barton, I’m Dr. Sveda, ophthalmologist on staff.” Her voice was calm and precise, with almost no accent that Clint could place. “I’m here to go over your condition with you. Whether you allow Agent Coulson and Captain Rogers to stay is your decision, but you have the right to ask them to leave.”

“Nah, I’m good.” Clint grimaced. The pain was getting worse.

“Agent, report,” Coulson broke in, seeing something in Clint’s reaction.

“Pain increasing, Sir. Up to seven.”

“He reported a pain level of six just before you came in, on a ranking of one to ten,” Coulson said to the doctor. She hmmm’ed, then called for a nurse and ordered something complicated with multiple syllables. Clint focused on his breathing, willing the pain down. He had been through worse.

“The nurse just came in, and is administering a pain killer via your IV,” Coulson explained after a few moments, letting Clint know what the shuffling sounds from his left were.

“Thank you, sir,” Clint whispered, genuinely afraid of moving his face at all. It was weird how his jaw muscles hurt his eyes.

“Are you able to focus on what I say, Agent Barton? We can pick this up tomorrow, if you need,” Dr. Sveda asked politely.

“Just tell me. I need to know.”

“Right. You’ve been diagnosed with a very severe case of photokeraltitis, also known as arc eye or snow blindness. Captain Rogers said you mentioned welders on your last op; were you exposed to any welding arcs?”

“Yeah, a whole hell of a lot. Like, five at once, pointed right at me. Too far away to burn me, but the light blinded me for a second. Less than a second; I barely had time to blink and then the power was cut. I felt fine after that, walked out on my own power.” Clint talked while trying to keep his jaw still, the pain grinding into his eyes despite his best efforts.

“It takes a while for the blisters to develop. The severity of your burn caused them to form pretty quickly, honestly. And that’s where the problems start.” She released him from the wrist restraints as she went on to describe the damage in detail, and the recovery process, but Clint noticed she did not give any time frame and refused to clarify how much vision loss he could expect once his eyes were healed. His freak genetic gift was 20/4 vision in both eyes, it was the source of everything he had accomplished in life for himself, and if there was anything worth putting on his tombstone Clint figured that would be it. Without his superior vision, he was just another dumb soldier with a sketchy past.

Without it, he was nothing.

The Avengers wouldn’t need him, SHEILD would trade him to the CIA, and Clint would never see Coulson again. Probably never see Nat again, except by chance. That was a best case scenario; he had no idea how far up shit creek he would be if he were permanently blind. He did not think he was handling it all too well so far, and that was with Coulson standing right next to the bed.

He kept breathing slowly as the painkillers seeped into this bloodstream.

“Hey, Clint, things’ll be fine, buddy.” Steve’s kind voice sliced through Clint’s nascent panic attack in the dark. “The doc’s taking care of you, and you’ll be back on the range before you know it.”

Clint nodded once then deliberately turned his bandaged face to where he approximated the doctor was standing, despite the scream of pain it caused. “Are there cases where the effects are permanent?”

There was a long, cold silence in the room before she finally answered. “Yes. In severe cases, the blindness does not reverse itself.”