sixthiterationlogs | Fever 'Cause I'm Breaking, Fever Got Me Aching

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Fever 'Cause I'm Breaking, Fever Got Me Aching

WHO: Clint Barton
WHERE: House 20 and the Inn
WHEN: November 30 to December 2, December 3
OPEN TO: Any
WARNINGS: Illness? Might change, but nothing off the bat

( November 30-December 2, Illness at House 20 Because Someone Is Stupid )

Apparently running around outside before, during, and after an ice storm without the proper clothing to be bundled up in, not sleeping nearly enough, and not eating properly can make a person deliriously sick. Who knew. Clint had been so frantic about Wanda's disappearance that he'd spent a week and a half combing the village and the surrounding area inch by inch, not taking proper care of himself at all, and by the time she'd been found it had been too late. Not that he realized it at the time, but only a handful of days later and the truth had been all too apparent.

He'd literally collapsed in the middle of the kitchen the morning of the 27th as he'd been preparing to go hunting. At least it was his own house, and easy enough to get him back into bed after that unintentionally dramatic episode, but he was burning with fever and it was kind of a miracle he'd even made it out of bed and down a flight of stairs. The next two and a half days were spent in a fever delirium, alternately burning and freezing, images flashing through his mind that were warped by the fever almost beyond recognizing and undoubtedly a fair number of bewildering things coming from his mouth when he was halfway conscious. But late night on the 29th, it finally breaks, and as he regains coherency he's allowed to start having visitors. He's restricted to the house for a bit more to let him recuperate and his strength is returning, though it's definitely slower than it would be at home. But that doesn't make him any less bored, and therefore antsy. He'll welcome pretty much any visitor as a distraction.

( December 3, Cabin Fever Leads to the Inn and Cards )

Clint's not been to the inn in over a week, and when he does show up, his appearance is a bit more... ragged than it had been. Everyone's a bit of a mess here, without the comforts of home, but he's paler than he had been, with shadows of rings under his eyes, and though it's hard to see under all the clothing he's a little thinner. It's very obvious he doesn't have as much energy as he did this same time last month. But he'd hit the point his wife had always despaired over, where he just had to get out of the house, and the inn has the most traffic and therefore the most people to see if he takes a sudden header onto the hearth.

He doesn't go empty-handed, though, because that won't solve his restlessness, although truthfully his solution isn't that energetic - since Wanda would give him that Look if he pushed too hard. But Sam left behind a deck of cards when he disappeared, Clint and Wanda had kept them, and now he's shuffling them at one of the tables and looking for anyone willing to play a round of anything with him. Whatever else he's lost, that dexterity in his hands and fingers is still top notch.

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The rush of her memories returning was met with the heavy weight of guilt. Clint might have done this to himself but Wanda had been the cause. She couldn't escape the blame that she placed on herself for his current condition.

Wanda took over for Beverly at every possible moment, unwilling to leave Clint's side. He had given her so much, this was the least that she could do in return. She made him stay in bed, got him water and food, cleaned up and walked Arado so he wouldn't need to worry and made sure that the house was heated with the firewood she had collected that summer.

She pushed open Clint's door while holding a plate of dried meats and a small pitcher of water. This wasn't the first time that their captors have played with their minds but that didn't make it any easier to face him. "How are you feeling?" She asked, her infection and tone back to normal.

Clint liked being sick even less than most of the general population, because being sick made him helpless, made him dependent on others, left him unable to control himself to a greater or lesser degree and impeded all of his senses. For someone who was so focused on physicality as he was, being sick basically negated everything he was in a lot of ways. He was a lot better about being a good patient than he had been in his younger days, but that didn't mean he didn't hate it anymore, and especially in this village it was even worse. Doctors they had, but no real medicines, no modern conveniences for getting rid of it all, so illnesses tended to linger longer than expected.

But at least Wanda was back. He'd gone down when she was still out, but upon coming back to the land of coherency he could tell that Wanda was herself again, with all of her memories and feelings. While it was sad that she was once again aware of the death of her brother, everything else about that development was a good thing, and he could only give a quiet sigh of relief at that - and then start coughing as his body protested again. "Fever broken" didn't mean "healed," after all.

"Better," he responded, his voice rough and not at full volume, but at least consistent. He'd propped himself up in his bed against the headboard just for a change of position, since he still couldn't move around as well as he wanted. Ignoring the meat but taking the water to carefully sip it before asking, "You okay?"

Wanda knew that he hated being sick but she was glad to see that he had humored her and hadn't tried to slip from the house the way that Beverly had when she was sick. At that time they hadn't all lived together but Wanda had spent a good portion of the day looking for her ill friend. With the weather as it was, she didn't want Clint to carelessly slip away and make himself sicker.

She offered him a weak smile. "I'm fine." She took a seat at his side as she set up everything on the table next to him. Wanda had moved this chair here a few days before and since then it'd been where she spent a good majority of her time. "Everything is fully back now. All of my memories." The return of her memories had been slow, a lot happened through the middle of the night but smaller details were starting to return with alarming clarity.

"I'm sorry Clint." This was all her fault.

Wanda leaned forward, gently placing the back of her fingers against Clint's forehead as he sipped the water. His fever had broken the day before but he was still very warm to the touch.

He wouldn't deny the thought had crossed his mind, but Clint was self-aware enough - and smarter than he'd been in his twenties - to know that trying to escape would only serve cross-purposes. He'd be out in the open, getting some sun and working his muscles, sure - but the air was cold enough to hurt recently-healed lungs, his muscles were weak and wouldn't carry him far, it'd only make Wanda and Bev freak out, and it would probably just get him sick again. For as much of a grump patient as he was, he wouldn't disobey doctor's orders (any more) because he'd finally accepted that they gave those orders for a reason. He just massively disliked them and didn't bother to hide that.

But for the moment, Wanda was there, whole and completely herself and that was the best news he'd heard in months. He had very few lifelines in this place, and she was one of the biggest. Setting the glass on the nightstand, he reached up to take her fingers in his, gripping them tight to reassure her that he was okay, or at least that he'd be okay. "You don't have to apologize - it's this place, whatever the hell they're doing. You didn't do it. I've gotta apologize to you."

"I do have to apologize."

Wanda met his gaze with a sad smile, squeezing his fingers softly in return. "I know Clint." That wasn't the only thing on her mind. "What if they do it again with you or anyone else's memories? There is no way to stop it and no way to know when its happened."

She paused, sorting through the turbulent thoughts in her head. "We weren't always on the same side." Her lips curled inward while her tongue wet her lips. "There is no way to know what we'll remember Clint. What if you have to fight me or if I have to fight you or Natasha or anyone else." She exhaled, feeling the rush of worries as they spilled from her lips. "I don't want to hurt anyone."

Wanda closed her eyes and exhaled.

Her worries about having to fight someone were, in his opinion, fairly groundless; Wanda just didn't have the skill yet to do damage to anyone who wasn't as much of a novice in close-quarters combat as she was, and there's seemed to be a lot of people in the village with the training to counter what she knew - starting with him and Nat. But on a greater scope, he understood her fear and reluctance, the idea that she even had the possibility of hurting anyone. He'd felt the same thing after Loki had lost his grip on him, and he'd felt the weight of all the lives lost in that time settle across his shoulders.

They were still there.

"Come on, sit down." Tugging on her hand, Clint shifted in his bed to give her room to sit next to him; when she was settled, he looped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her in to lean on him. Clint wasn't very touchy-feely outside of family, but Wanda had long since crossed that barrier and had definitely earned anything she needed from him. It was the very least he could do since it was because of him she no longer had her brother. "I know you don't. And you're not gonna - if anyone's gotta hurt anyone, it's gonna be me. I've got a lot more practice at it than you."

He let the quiet come back for a moment, before continuing. "And it's my fault, too - I got lost in my own head for awhile there. Just... all this shit, being here, not being there - I wasn't paying attention to anything. To you. I didn't realize you were losing anything until it was too late. I failed you, and I can't make up for that."

Wanda stepped forward, taking a seat at his side as his arm looped around her shoulders. She felt smaller like this. Almost like a child being held in her fathers arms. Her eyes closed and she inhaled as she rested her head on his shoulder. He was the who was sick and it'd been her fault. He shouldn't be the one apologizing.

"No. You didn't fail me." He hadn't stopped trying to find her and he didn't stop convincing her to come back. Wanda remembered everything through that time and Clint had showed that he really cared.

"We're stronger together. I just... this place wants to pull us apart."

Wanda didn't know about the future of the Avengers but it wasn't hard to guess based off of how both Clint and Steve had reacted to her. Everything was falling apart, it didn't matter where they went, there would always be pieces scattered in their path. "If something is bothering you, you should tell me." Wanda paused before continuing. "And I'll tell you too. No more secrets."

Peggy is starting to feel the uneasy sensation of being a trapped bird in a cage, which she blames a great deal on another winter settling in. It's the second in this place and she's no closer to understanding how to escape, feeling as though every time there's progress, she's punished in a personal method. Whether it's taking Steve from her or rendering her intangible, something always seems to happen.

Finding Clint playing with a deck of cards at the inn, her first reaction isn't to ask to play, but one of shock. "Good lord!" she remarks, gaping at him. "What on earth happened to you?" she demands, hands on her hips as she looks at the gauntness in his chees and the bags under his eyes.

This place is a confusing mess of everything or nothing - hard as his life has been at some points, Clint's got a whole new appreciation for the hardscrabble way people had to fight for survival in the past, without any hope of rescue. The boxes that are occasionally sent to villagers don't really help all that much in the grand scheme, and can even feel like taunts considering they mostly just want to go back to the places those items come from. And aside from work, there's just not a lot to do in the village, very little media to consume, so it's work or be bored. There's not a lot of in-between.

Still, better bored than sick. And being bored and sick really doesn't do anyone any favors, especially when the one bored and sick is Clint freakin' Barton, who basically doesn't know how to stay still longer than a day. If that. "Came down with a fever." There's a look in his eyes that's practically daring Peggy to say that he needs to be in bed, because weak and recovering or not, he is not staying in that bed for yet another day. He continues to shuffle the cards as he answers her, at least part of himself keeping busy, even if it's just in a small way. "I had to go out in that ice storm, and it slammed into me about a week ago. Bev just let me out of the house."

Translation: he walked out the minute he was certain Bev wouldn't be chasing after him to pull him back and tie him down.

"Yes, well, unfortunately I don't think your old colouring came with you," is her sharp remark as she gives him a pointed look, not disappointed that he's come down sick, but rather, more disappointed that he's not taking more care of himself by giving himself a rest. "Do you want something hot to steam your face in?"

She phrases it like a question, but the true trick of this is that it's secretly not. He's getting this whether he agrees to it or not and Peggy is already moving around the room in order to start work on boiling some water, both for tea and then to steam Clint.

"It's winter, everyone's losing their tans." Truth, but Clint doesn't tan, Clint weathers. Even in the winter he's got that "outdoor" look and it never really goes away - except for the rare times he's been sick, such as now. Peggy absolutely has the right idea that he's still somewhat down, since under that weathering he looks pretty drawn and washed-out but, well, good luck getting him to admit it. "Bev already had me do a lot of that - we don't really have medicine here for her to dose me, or she'd've done that, too."

In a way, it was actually kind of funny. Being from the future meant that even Cho's machines that he's familiar with are old-fashioned or obsolete to his house's resident doctor, and once he was coherent he'd gotten to see her be frustrated at the level of medical treatment in this village, so far behind what he was used to, much less her. It was, at least, something to be amused about, when he didn't have much of a choice to focus on anything else.

"I've never had a tan in my life and you know it," is her faintly amused reply even as she works on boiling the water, given that Peggy has avoided tanning both through careful avoidance of the sun and the mere fact that her skin would pinken and burn if she wasn't careful. She keeps on with her work and gives Clint an annoyed look, a hand on her hip.

"Well, you're going to do it again," she tells him, as if questioning whether anything she'd said sounded as though he'd be getting an option. "How soon after the storm did this come on?" Mainly, she wants to know if it's a natural phenomenon or whether she ought to be cautiously watching out for more symptoms.

"I'll bet you did when you were seven, but point taken. The people that had tans are losing them, which is pretty much everyone but you." He has noticed that Peggy takes care to not get too dark, but it never seemed to mean much beyond a preference, and so he doesn't care about it. He keeps on with his cards, setting up the table in front of him for solitaire. It's at least something to do.

"I don't need any more steam right now. And I thought we were out of tea." Clint'd definitely not heard of anyone in the village getting more lately, but he hadn't been paying as close attention to gift arrivals as he had early on, when everything that had appeared had seemed like a possible out. He still wants to get out and go home, but he's grown weary of jumping at shadows. "I was out after the storm, too, so... couple weeks from the storm first hitting, about a week after I started dressing right for the weather again?" Why, yes, he did just confess he was an idiot, obliquely.

"Still pale as a ghost," she promises, even though she doesn't even remember what her skin had been like at seven and it perfectly well could have tanned, for all she knows. Still, that resembles giving up and she refuses to do that. When the water is nice and piping, she brings it back in bowl form, but also in tea form, using some of her own personal stash in order to help him.

"We are out of tea, generally. I like you enough that you're sharing in mine," she says. "I have a plant at my home," she says. "It takes a bit of work, but it does end up in the right form." She settles beside him and presses her hand to the back of his forehead without permission, humming a little in disapproval, arching a brow.

"You waited a week after to start dressing appropriately? Clint," she says, quite disappointed.

"Liar," he comments, but it's said without any asperity. He's long since recognized that tone in his voice and that tilt to her head and he knows he doesn't have the energy to fight whatever it is she's choosing to do. "I hate tea. How can anyone drink that shit? It's weak and tasteless and it's not coffee." All right, now he's complaining just to complain - though no, he doesn't like tea. He can drink it, but he'll always be a coffee guy. Laura's the tea drinker in the family.

Shrugging his shoulders and ducking his head, Clint manages to get out from under Peggy's well-meaning temperature taking, but he's not excessively warm, especially not for the amount of bundling up he's got going on. His fever spike had been violent and longer than it would have been at home because of the lack of any sort of treatments, but it had passed a few days before. If anything, his forehead feels a little cool - but that pales in comparison to the look in his eyes, which is dark, almost haunted or angry. And what he says next explains everything.

"Wanda disappeared."

"Perhaps," is her calm reply, though she doesn't allow any annoyance to filter her words, amused by the notion of going back to think about just how tan she might look. "Tea, when done properly, is a delicious drink. Unfortunately, half the time I've had it in the States, it has been awful," she can confirm.

"Right now, I want it to stimulate your immune system and steep the sick out of you," she tells him, which is a firm remark as to the fact that she will not be allowing him to get away without drinking the tea. She gives a hum at his skin, thinking that at least she doesn't have to worry too much.

At least, until he says what he does next. "She what?" she asks, alarmed. "When?"

"Damnit Peg, I'm not sick anymore, I don't need to steep." His protests are going to fall on deaf ears, but he still has to make them, if only for form's sake. Peggy's a force of nature, similar to Laura in the way that she just won't let something go - but while Laura accomplishes her goals with tact, amused chiding, and that look she's so good at, Peggy just crashes through, at least when she's dealing with him. Clint knows he's being a pain in the ass, but after almost a week of feeling like shitty roadkill run over by a semi he's kind of liking being a pain in the ass.

"Right before the ice storm. She's back, she's okay, but she ran out of the house." He's also not saying that she fled the one time he wouldn't have been able to chase after her - the day after the feast, when he'd been sleeping off a terrible hangover he'd given himself after mixing vodka, rye whiskey, bourbon, and whatever foul concoction Baze had had in his own jug. It'd been a coincidence she'd chosen to run then, but it was the worst possible time it could have happened. "She woke up that morning and didn't remember anything - I was looking for her for over a week, and I just kept missing her."

She raises her brows, but decides not to comment as to how much Clint had sounded like Howard in that brief moment of frustration, faintly amused at it, in fact. She keeps mum on it, regarding him with little care as to how much he might be yelling at her, because she has nothing to do but fuss, at the moment, and fuss is what she'll do.

"You're going to steep because I am here, and that's what I intend to do to you," she tells him, point-blank. She is very glad to hear that Wanda is back, though now that she puts the events together, she can perhaps see how Clint might have grown sick before he even says as much out loud. "Don't you dare think about putting some kind of tracking on her," Peggy warns. "It's not that large a place that we'll need it."

After a good hour of bringing wood over and chopping it for her fireplace, Claire decided to break and head over to the inn to grab a hot drink and get warm in front of the fire that was no doubt blazing in the dining room. The mere thought had her walking quicker until she opened the door and hustled herself through.

She spots Clint almost immediately and stops to look at him, expression one of surprise as she notices he looks like absolute hell, though slightly better than he looked several days earlier when she stopped by his house to ask for his help again with more firewood. That was when Claire heard about him being sick.

What was it with men and the total indifference they took with their health?

"You know, as a nurse I feel the need to point out that you should probably stay in bed until you feel better." she spoke offhandedly. "Or, at least looked better. Just saying."

Claire likely wouldn't believe it, but - for the most part - Clint was very good at taking care of himself and his health. Almost every time he'd seen a doctor in the last several years had been for routine physicals or because he'd been injured on a mission, not because he'd been sick. And he'd only picked up one of the stomach bugs his kids had brought home from school in the past. But when there was an emergency happening, thoughts of himself went out the window, and the past few weeks had been an emergency for their small household after Wanda's disappearance.

"If I stayed in bed until I looked better, I'd be in there until spring. Keeping a hawk indoors is a bad idea." He didn't often refer to his nickname or associated animal, but it was an apt comparison right now and got his point across easily. "We need hunters more than we need me laid up in bed."

She would believe it. Looking at him in the outward sense Claire could see that he took care of himself. But there was that distinct red flag that most men had: their pride. That was the tell-all right there that basically said that sure, Clint was good at making sure he stayed in top form for his job and for anyone else that relied on him. But when it came to him for him..

If only someone paid her a dollar for each man she'd met that was like Clint Barton.

Shaking her head, it was clear in her expression that while she wasn't going to tell him what to do, Claire the Friend was going to point out the obvious in a nonchalant kind of way.

Taking a moment she looked towards the kitchen before deciding to hold off. Instead she moved over to sit across from him. "That's saying a lot. Hawks also don't push themselves if they can't resume normal flying." she said, using the bird fact as an analogy.

He's a problem child, he really is. By now there's no possible way to get it out of him, either.

As Claire sat down, Clint turned his shuffle into a deal, flicking ten cards out with quick fingers, five for her and five for him, before placing the rest of the stack off to the side between them. Picking them up, he looked at them without really seeing them as he raised his eyes over the top of his cards at her.

"Hawks that don't fly wind up dead, you know. They can't fly, they can't hunt, they can't escape another predator. A downed hawk is a dead hawk."

Which was why being a nurse was both rewarding and a curse, in Claire's opinion. She'd sooner toss her hands up in the air and admit defeat to keep her sanity this round. But not yet. It was an inner challenge that she wouldn't let on to having for a number of people.

And that list was growing since she'd arrived in the village.

She watched his hand deal before sliding her cards off the edge of the table and lifted her dark eyes to match his gaze. "I do know. I have a friend who's a lot like you. He's blind, but you wouldn't know it."

Plucking two cards out of the spread she was holding, she set them face down.

"And I'm deaf, but you wouldn't know it," he said, also setting down two cards before reaching for the stack and dealing them each two more, face down. He continued before she could ask the question he knew was in her mind now. "Implants. When S.H.I.E.L.D. picked me up, they gave me a surgery and kept updating the tech every time something better came along. If anything goes wrong with them here, I'll be in trouble." It was something he honestly tried not to think about, but it was sitting in the back of his mind nonetheless. Fortunately S.H.I.E.L.D. built its stuff to last, so he wasn't worried about them breaking down for a long, long, long time, but if there was ever, say, electrocution going around... that could be problematic.

"A lot of people underestimate what those of us who've gone through shit like that are capable of. Your friend getting that far, that doesn't surprise me. He's probably gotta work twice as hard to do things most people can do, just trying to keep up."

Beverly might respect Clint. She might think he's a good person and trust that he has everyone's best interests at heart. Mostly. But considering him a friend does not save him from her firm doctor-mothering when he comes down sick. Or gets hurt in any way, shape, or form.

At least he's got a good doctor/nurse type at the house to help him feel better, but he's a terrible patient and he'll be wearing on her patience soon enough. Part of the glare she levels at him more than once is because he's being stubborn. The rest of it is actual fear. She's concerned that he might not recover well or at all and she doesn't have the proper medical equipment or medicine here to save him if he takes a turn for the worse.

She hasn't done much other than tend to him and try to sleep, though the latter she hasn't been good on simply because she's been so worried. When he looks like he could use a little food, she manages soup for him, something small and warm to give him sustenance while not being too terribly heavy on his stomach. Anything to help him recover. So it's with a bowl of soup and a cup of what could loosely be defined as tea in her hands that she enters the room today.

"You look better," she comments, watching him critically. "Are you hungry?"

Being trapped in bed is a horrible problem for a person as active as him. Clint's gotten a lot better about being good and following doctors' orders since his big, big injury in his twenties, but being laid up for a couple months recuperating from basically taking a grenade to the face, going deaf, and extensive skin grafts gave him a loathing of hospitals and inactivity and all of those good things. So it's not Bev's fault at all - this is just a thing that he does, and sadly for the people around him, Laura's not there to mitigate his restlessness and chide him into behaving like she normally does.

Still, his first day free of fever is actually pretty calm - even he can't recuperate all that fast from an illness like that, and he's just too weak to want to do anything other than lay in bed and rest. The real problems will kick into gear the next day and only get worse.

"Yeah," he croaks out, voice a little ragged and weak and not all that Clint-like. He's far from the loudest person he knows, but he's still confident in his speech and delivery, and all of that is gone right now. "Stomach's kind of tossing, but I'm starving."

He's going to be as bad as Jean-Luc or Worf, she figures. Maybe a combination of both, though hopefully not as strong as her Klingon friend. She doesn't blame him for being so restless, but she also knows what will help him get better faster. Or at least, what she has at her fingertips that will help. If she had decent medicine and a hypospray, she'd have him out the door in five minutes. However difficult his recovery will be, she'll be ready at any moment to fight to keep him down and resting as long as possible.

For now, she settles the bowl on a small table nearby so she can help prop Clint upright with pillows. The less chance he has of spilling the soup, the better. She'd rather not have to worry about treating him for burns as well. Once he's at least propped up enough to manage soup, she settles down on the edge of the bed, holding the soup out to him. She's willing to play the part of a table if he feels capable of lifting the spoon. He should be recovered enough to manage that at least, for all that he could use a few more days' rest.

"Any other symptoms today?"

Not having a tricorder on days like this really makes her feel like she's playing a guessing game. She'll try her best, as always; it's the only thing she can do. Having her normal equipment would mean less talking for him and more resting, something she would advocate 100%.

Jean-Luc is no stranger to boredom. Much less the specific sort of boredom that comes of not being well enough to be allowed off of bed rest. Nor, for that matter, the desire to not be cooped up even if it is for the sake of recovery. Which isn't to say that he hadn't been worried all the same, both when it had become apparent that Clint had decided to spend more time outside than not in the search for their errant housemate, but also after he'd quite literally collapsed. And yes, he has faith in Beverly's skills as a Doctor even in somewhere as technologically backward as this, but that doesn't mean that he hadn't been worried all the same.

Nor is it going to make things any easier, from a recovery standpoint - he knows all too well just how stubborn Beverly can be when she has a mind to. But company... that much he can definitely do.

He knocks on the door before he comes in - while he suspects that Clint is more than glad to have someone to talk to, he figures a little warning beforehand never hurts. Especially when there's the possibility that he might be trying to sleep. Still, it's not too long before he is stepping into the room. And while there's no doubt going to be an actual conversation at some point, he leads off with the more pressing question in his mind.

"Is there anything I can get you?"

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Fever 'Cause I'm Breaking, Fever Got Me Aching

December 1st

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december 3

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Inn

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at the house

You like that phrase too much XD

LIES :P

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