sparrow // mcu

Flight Risk

Warm arms wrapped around her. Lifting. Carrying. Drowning? No, that was just the rain. Footsteps, crunching and splashing.

The arms left, letting cold embrace her. She slumped sideways, they caught her again. Words blurred together, her aching wrist turning cold and heavy. Something slammed. Pain split her head open.

---

The quiet mutter of machinery waking up lulled her back to sleep.

---

Sunlight reached for her, burning at her eyes, turning all her dreams red and asking her to wake. She chanced a look, but the world was too bright, so she turned away and buried her head into the cushion behind her, falling again.

Silence.

No, not silence. There was the wind, pushing against the window in wild gusts, twisting the trees across the way. There was the sound of traffic rumbling on past, somewhere behind her. There was her breathing, just barely a whisper as she pulled each breath in and out.

There was her heart, trying to climb its way out of her chest as it realised she was waking.

She had a crick in her neck, an ache that nagged at her until finally she shifted and relieved it. Her head ached, centered on the right side. No shifting would relieve it. In fact, as she moved it flared, like knives poking at her brain, and then settled into a dull ache again. She stopped moving.

Her eyes drifted open, slowly, slowly. There was no sun to burn at them this time, if that really had happened; the world was overcast and filled with the long shadows of a late afternoon. She was in a car, parked outside of a...convenience store? She turned her head as far as she dared, looking down the street each way. There was nothing familiar about this place at all. How had she gotten here? How had she forgotten?

Imogen frowned in confusion, trying to remember. A café. She'd been there with Clint, in the rain, and then...Will had shown up? Her head pounded. The rest was a blur. Had she been fighting? She'd probably been fighting. Headaches were usually a result of fighting.

But now she was here, and it wasn't raining. She'd never seen a fight end like this. Even if she'd been knocked out, she'd always wake in the same place she'd fallen, or (god forbid) a hospital bed. Not in a strange car, in a strange place, for no immediately apparent reason.

She shifted in her seat, trying to find a more comfortable position. Something tugged at her wrist, sending white-hot pain shooting up her arm, and she froze. Well, she could remember that part all too clearly now. Chancing a look down, she winced at the swelling, and the handcuff pressing against it. The other end of the cuffs was fastened securely to the door handle – to stop her escaping, she supposed.

Now she really wanted to know what was going on.

Whoever had been driving this car would be back soon, her mind registered, throwing years of training at her like it would help. Out, it told her. She had to get out, get away. Assess the situation. Her eyes went to the glove box in front of her – with her good, free arm, she opened it, searching for something she could use to pick the lock on the cuffs or as a weapon against this other person, but there was nothing in there but the car manual and a few miscellaneous bits of paper. The console compartment was the same. She shoved them both closed and leaned back with a huff, resigning herself to her fate. This person was smart enough to keep anything dangerous out of reach, obviously.

The doors to the convenience store (or whatever kind of shop it was; she didn't care for the specifics) opened, catching her eye. She recognised the man as soon as he walked out. Clint. Of course. She found herself relaxing at the sight of him, like he was no big threat at all (he could kill her in a split second if he wanted to, but apparently she hadn't quite digested that piece of information). She should have guessed it really, would have guessed it if her head didn't feel like it was tearing itself apart from the inside out. Half-baked kidnappings weren't really HYDRA's style – if it were them, she'd wake up in a cell, or not at all. They were Clint Barton's style though, without doubt.