Fic - Chained - 1/?

[evandar]

Title: Chained
Author: Evandar (yamievandar / hikarievandar)
Fandom: Avengers
Rating: R
Genre: Angst/Drama/Romance
Pairing: Clint/Coulson
Warnings: Swearing, pseudo-bestiality, torture
Disclaimer: I do not own The Avengers and I am making no profit from this story.
Summary: S.H.I.E.L.D is in uproar: Fury and Coulson are AWOL, one of Thor's friends is missing. Odin has discovered the human lives of Loki's monstrous children and returned them to their original prisons. The Avengers aren't happy; neither is Loki, and Hawkeye might just be gunning for Odin's remaining eye.
AN: This is a fill for Round 9 on norsekink.



Canada. The tracker signal from Phil’s implant had led them to Canada. All S.H.I.E.L.D agents had one – and most of them had bitched about getting it – but Clint swore never to complain about his again. Never. Not after this.

He’d only just got Phil back. Natasha had told him, when he’d come round from Loki’s tesseract infused mind-fuck, that he’d died. That Loki had stabbed him and he’d died, slumped against a wall and drowning in his own blood – okay, so she hadn’t quite put it like that, but he’d been able to imagine it – that he’d got a hit in, at least, but died in the line of duty.

But then he’d been alive and healed and it had been nothing short of incredible for all of three days…

And then he was gone. Fury vanished too, and some chick that was friends with Thor’s girlfriend. Thor had practically exploded with rage over his friend, but had refrained from heading off to look for her. The reason was simple: S.H.I.E.L.D had fallen to pieces. Phil was their official herder-of-cats – he was ruthlessly competent and completely unflappable and they needed him like air. Fury was, well, Fury. So they’d used Hill’s clearance to get into the mainframe and trace their tracking chips and while they hadn’t found Fury’s, Phil’s had led them to Canada.

Northern Canada.

Rural, out in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, Canada.

Clint huddled deeper into his parka and tried not to think what Phil could be doing in this god-forsaken wasteland.

…

The tracer had gone crazy in the middle of nowhere. There was no body, no nothing, and it didn’t take long for anyone to figure out that – whatever he was doing – Phil was underground. That hadn’t eased Clint’s mind at all. All he could think was buriedburiedburiedohgodPhilwhy and he could barely breathe through the sudden tightness in his chest.

Natasha’s hand on his arm was the only thing keeping him upright.

There was hope when their local guide said that they were over a cave system. Hope that faded when they heard that it was mostly unexplored and that no one knew what was down there. Flooded caverns, rock-falls, Gollum…

But it was Phil and Clint would rather stab one of his own arrows through his throat than turn back now.

…

Spelunking was very much not-fun. He hated small enclosed spaces. He hated being underground. His comfortable, high perches were miles away and he was stuck in a dark, narrow tunnel with the rest of the Avengers and he couldn’t help but wonder if this was some sort of divine punishment. His clothes were damp with moisture from the air and the light from his head-torch showed him a grand total of rock, more rock, and the soles of Cap’s boots as he inched his way ahead.

Stark wouldn’t shut up. He was talking about buying Canada just so he could get past those pesky government regulations that said they weren’t allowed to dig down to Phil. In any other situation, Clint would have found it kind of funny; now he just wanted to break Stark’s face. Preferably with some of the limestone they were oh-so-wonderfully crawling through.

But Natasha and Thor were between them and even if they weren’t he couldn’t have turned around if he’d tried.

They crawled for what felt like miles. They abseiled down cliffs and zip-lined over raging underground rivers that sounded like thunder. Occasionally, one of the others gasped or exclaimed over the things that they were passing, but Clint didn’t notice anything other than the steady beeping of the tracking device and the way that the beeps were getting closer and closer together.

But then he began to hear other things. Breathing so heavy that it made the stone shake beneath him and high-pitched keening noises that echoed through the tunnels and twisted around Clint’s heart. It sounded like some kind of animal – a crying one; a dog that had been kicked, maybe. He thought for a moment that he was losing his mind, but then Stark said something that actually made him feel better.

“What the fuck is that?”

They found out when the tunnel opened out. They must have been crawling downward a hell of a lot, because the roof of the cavern was completely lost in blackness. It was huge, as was the shape in front of them.

Their torches picked up brown-grey fur and what looked like it was probably some kind of claw. A claw that was taller than Clint and that had left deep gouges in the stone.

“This… no, ‘tis not possible,” Thor murmured.

“Yeah, tell me about it,” Tony replied. “Nothing gets that big. Jesus.”

“This is not your mortal god, Son of Stark,” Thor said. “This is my nephew. Fenris.”

A growl rumbled from somewhere above them. The earth trembled and the claw next to them flexed, ripping through stone and sending up sparks. Clint looked up, and up, and up into a blue eye that looked horribly familiar.

Oh God. Oh Phil.

It wasn’t possible, but it was. The tracking device was going crazy and even if it hadn’t been, Clint would have known those eyes anywhere. And did this mean that their relationship was technically bestiality or what?

And, now that he thought about it, did he really care? It was Phil. Sweet, unassuming Phil, who liked his coffee with two sugars and always wore black or grey because he couldn’t see colour worth a damn and who could kill someone with a paperclip and herded cats like a boss and was a complete fanboy for Captain America.

“Phil,” he whispered. The growling stopped, replaced by a whine loud enough to almost drown out Tony’s comment of “how in the hell did Loki squeeze that out?”

Clint stepped forward and reached out a hand to brush against the fur of Phil’s giant paw. It was soft and surprisingly fine. He moved closer. Light from his torch glinted off metal. Was that a chain?

“Tasha, you got the flares?”

“Step back, Son of Bart. You know not what Fenris is capable of.”

He had an almost overwhelming urge to tell Thor to go to hell. Almost. It took biting the inside of his cheek and the sudden hiss of a flare behind him and the glow of red light to get him to swallow it down. And even then, just barely, because the light showed way, way more than he could handle.

Chains were everywhere, digging into fur and pinning Phil down in what looked like a seriously uncomfortable position. And someone – it took Clint a moment to register it past the white-hot rage that bloomed in his chest and someone was going to die for this.

Someone had stapled Phil’s muzzle to the floor with a giant fucking sword.

That someone, if Clint ever found them, was going to know a world of pain. He would make them beg for death. Beg.

He’d asked about the scars when he’d seen them. Thin knife wounds on Phil’s tongue and the underside of his jaw and over the bridge of his nose. He’d asked if he’d been tortured; “something like that,” Phil had told him, and now he knew how.

“Who. Did. This.” He barely managed to choke the words out. His jaw ached from gritting his teeth so hard.

“My father,” Thor said. Clint rounded on him and something must have shown on his face because Thor actually took a step back, raising his hands defensively. “All of Loki’s children are thus. They are monsters, all of them, capable of destroying worlds. I knew not that Fenris was kept in these caves, else I would have dissuaded you.”

He sighed. “I would rather you not have seen this. I know not why this device of yours led us here, but surely it must be faulty.”

“Like hell it is,” Clint snapped. “This is Phil.”

They looked at him like he’d lost it. He could kind of see why – he’d lost his lover and found him and then lost him again and been dragged through a cave system in goddamn Canada – but he was too damn angry to care.

“That tracker is not faulty,” he said. “It was tested before we came out here and there’s no way it could have randomly locked onto Fenris if there wasn’t a chip in him. Right Stark?”

“Uh, well, yeah. I upgraded that baby, you know. Of course it’s perfect.”

That was all he needed. “And Phil has scars. Scars that match what that – that –“ he couldn’t actually say it so he waved a hand in the direction of Phil’s muzzle and the giant fucking sword through it instead “- would have done to him.”

Behind him, Phil made a noise that sounded like agreement. If agreement could literally make the earth shake and almost knock Clint over from the proximity of it, and he had a sneaking suspicion that Phil was trying to be as quiet as possible.

He turned his back on Thor and the others and moved closer to Phil’s mouth. The fur around his lips was matted with blood and his breath reeked of carnage but he was Phil and there was no way on earth Clint was going to leave him like this. He buried his fingers in sticky, rancid fur, and leaned against him heavily.

“We’re going to free him,” he said, loud enough for the others to here.

There was no argument.