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Awareness came back to Clint Barton in waves. For a long time, he was just floating in the void, and then he was able to feel the ventilator tube that was stuck down his throat. Then it was the scratchy blanks over him. Those two pieces of sensation told him that he was in a hospital somewhere. He allowed himself to float back into unawareness when he could feel the very familiar hands of his handler knowing that he was safe.
An undetermined time later he felt the ventilator tube being removed and felt like maybe he could wake up. He opened his eyes and then thought that he hadn't opened them at all. It was just darkness. Where were the bright lights of the medical ward? He could still feel his handler’s hand in his and that coupled with the feeling of the sunlight on his skin he knew that there should be lights out. So he screwed up his eyes and tried to open them again. This time he could feel as his eyes opened. There was still darkness. No sound reached his ears, but that just meant he didn’t have his hearing aids in.
Clint tried to raise his hand to his eyes but was stopped by a slender hand catching his arm. At that point, panic started to set in and he tried to get away from the two hands. Pulling and fighting against them so that he could get to whatever was covering his eyes and keeping him from being able to see. More hands followed and he felt the panic rise. He tried to kick out but there was something heavy over his legs that kept him from being able to move them. He felt a prick in his elbow and tried to get away from it but was unsuccessful as the drugs started to take effect and calm him down.
Suddenly the fact that someone was tapping something on the back of his hand registered. It took him a long time to realize that it was Morse Code. ‘-R-T-O-N. C-L-I-N-T Y-O-U S-A-F-E S-T-O-P. Y-O-U S-H-I-E-L-D M-E-D-I-C-A-L. . .’ was all that he managed to figure out before he passed out.
The next time that he woke he couldn’t feel the sun on his skin anymore, but the hand was still in his. He opened his eyes and blackness was still all he could see. He gripped the hand in his instead of trying to mess with his eyes. The hand gripped back before he could feel a hand on his stomach. That one started to tap in morse code. ‘You safe Hawkeye. You have brain swelling and likely can’t see. DR hoping that when swelling goes down sight come back. Want hearing aids?’
Clint nods, not trusting his voice when he couldn’t hear it, and the hand leaves his stomach and then comes back not long after with his hearing aid case. ‘Want help putting in?’ is tapped onto his side next to the case. Again Clint nods.
‘Can you sit up on your own?’ Clint tries to get his body to sit up, but his arms wouldn’t support him. The person slides their arm under him and helps him sit up, he takes a deep sniff of the person. They smell like gunpowder and ink, it was Coulson for sure because he could smell his unique smell underneath. Clint feels the bed moving under him. He was glad that whoever it was that had activated the bed had been kind enough to wait until he was sitting upright to move the bed. He haunted having the beds move while he was laying on them.
‘Going to start with left.’ Coulson tapped. Clint nodded. Then Clint could feel a set of hands carefully placing his hearing aid in. It was his BTE set that was only used when not on missions because they fell out easier than the others. ‘Going to do your right.’ Clint nodded and he noticed that Coulson hadn’t turned on his hearing aid. He felt Coulson’s hands on the right side and fitting the hearing aid into his ear.
‘You turn them on when ready.’ Coulson tapped. Clint reaches up, fumbles with the location for a second, and turns the aids on after only a few seconds. The first thing he hears is his hands hitting the blanket when he drops them down to the side.
“Can you hear me, Clint?” Coulson’s voice was full of fear.
“Yeah, I can hear you just fine, Phil.”
“Good. The swelling didn’t damage that part of your brain.”
Clint nodded and now that he was sitting up it sent shooting pain through his head. “Do we know what happened?”
“When you fell you knocked your head pretty hard. Your head might get better or it might not, at this point it’s hard to tell.”
“Makes sense. Phil, how long have I been out?”
“Two weeks, but they took you off sedation a week ago.” With just those two words Clint could feel the worry radiating from Coulson. He’d been out for a whole week after they’d taken him off sedation. He’d never been out that long after coming out of sedation, no wonder Coulson had been worried.
Clint moved his hands to his lap and clasped his fingers together. His face screwed up in confusion as his fingers ran across each other. “Phil, where’s my wedding ring?”
“Your fingers started to swell on your left hand. You dislocated several when you landed. I took it off before it got to the point that they would have had to cut it off. Do you want me to put it back on you?”
“Yes please.”
Clint heard Coulson step closer along with a clicking sound. Clint assumed that the clinking sound was his ring on the ball chain that Coulson kept his old dog tags on. He felt the bed dip as Coulson sat next to him. Coulson’s calloused hands touched his own and manipulated his left hand so that he could put the skin-warmed ring on his hand. Once the ring was settled on his finger, Coulson intertwined their fingers and he could feel Coulson’s matching ring against his skin.
The door opened with a slam that caused Clint to jump several inches. He doubled over in pain as the pounding in his head got worse with the movement. Coulson helped him settle against the bed before turning to the newcomer. “Dr. Stevens.”
“Coulson, I thought that I told you to come get me the moment that Agent Barton woke up?”
Coulson’s fingers tightened around Clint’s. “I didn’t want to leave him alone.” Coulson shot back.
Dr. Stevens sighed and shook her head. “Agent Barton, I just looked back over your scans that we took yesterday. I’m sorry to say that it is unlikely that you will ever regain your sight. It was a miracle that you woke up in the first place.”
Clint shook his head before trying to stand up. Coulson shoved him gently against the bed and Clint fought back against his hold. “Clint, stop it. Tell us what’s wrong.”
Clint stopped fighting and Coulson eased up on holding Clint down. “Why am I not allowed up?”
“We need to take another scan before we can allow you to get up. I’d also like to test the mobility in your libs beforehand. While the original injuries didn’t seem to affect that part of the brain, it might have.”
Clint once again nodded and sent his head spinning. He brought his hand up to his head to hold onto it. After a few minutes, it stopped hurting quite as bad and he removed his hand.
“Does moving your head make it hurt?”
“Just a little. It doesn't feel too bad.”
Coulson let out a heaving sigh before speaking. “Clint, we can’t help you if we don’t know what’s wrong. You need to tell us everything about your body so we can help you.”
Clint takes a second to take stock of how his body felt for the first time since he woke. “Alright, well my head pounds every time I move it. I feel nauseous then too. My feet are tingling something fierce. My fingers feel kinda weird as well. I can feel my ring and the bedsheets, but they feel odd.”
“Alright, we’ll get to work on that.”
And they did. Clint felt as they moved his body around, thankfully warning him each time they were going to touch him. In the end, it was decided that it was probably a side effect of the brain damage and that if it got worse to tell them. Otherwise, they would take him for scans in a few hours and rest till then.
“Can you lay the bed back down, Phil, I’d like to sleep.”
"Alright." Coulson helps Clint lay down and then moves and sits in the chair next to the bed. He goes to grab Clint's hand, but as soon as his hand touches Clint, Clint pulls away. Clint listens as Phil sits back. He rolls over and curls up. Eventually, he falls asleep in the blackness that would probably become his life.
Over the next week, Clint tries to get used to being in almost complete blackness, because over that time he started to see visual hallucinations. It was mostly flashes of colors, but it caused some disorientation. Coulson spent most of his time helping Clint get used to being sightless. In the time since he’d woken up, Clint had only taken his hearing aids out long enough to have Coulson switch out the batteries.
The biggest thing was that Clint hadn't realized how much he relied on his sight. He knew that yeah he was the World's Greatest Marksman and that meant he had great eyesight, but he hadn’t realized just how much he relied on it for lip reading. He’d been doing so for decades and hadn't thought too deeply about it. Now he had to strain to hear everything and it was causing constant migraines from the effort.
It was during one of them that Fury walked into the room that Clint was in. He dropped into the seat beside Clint and dropped a stack of papers onto the table next to Clint’s bed. “What do you want, Director?”
“I have your extended medical leave papers here with me, Barton. You will be put on medical leave for two years and if at the end of that time you still cannot see and we have yet to find a suitable replacement job for you will sign retirement papers uncontested. Understood?”
Clint nods. It no longer hurt his head to nod thankfully, but sadly that was the only thing to get better. Clint grimaces when he thinks about the fact that he will have to sign his name on that paperwork. “How am I to sign the paperwork when I can’t see it?”
“Phil will place your hand where you need to start your signature. If you go off the paper you go off the paper. You write over the text the same applies.” Fury taps his left hand with a pen and he takes it. He fiddles with it for a minute, mostly so he can grip it correctly. Once he has it where he wants it he nods for Coulson to take his hand.
Coulson does and gently places his hand over a sheet of paper on his tray table. “That’s where you should start with your signature.” Clint nods and signs his name with the same confidence that he always had. He picks up his hand at the end and listens as the paper rustles as it is taken away.
“How bad was it?” He holds out the pen for someone to take and feels it as it is pulled from his hand and lets it go.
“Quite well actually. You wouldn’t be able to tell. Fury, thank you for coming here.”
“Agent Barton, I thank you for your service to SHIELD.” Fury grunted before walking off. It was then that Clint knew that he no longer had a purpose. He’d been a mercenary whose eyesight had kept him alive since he was a teen.
Not long after that Clint fell into a depressive state that almost took his life. Coulson being the only thing he had to live for. His sight was gone and his hearing was dependent on devices shoved into his ears. He really only had his senses of touch and taste left to guide him through the world. That and a hope that his sight might come back.