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(3.1k / warnings for injuries and hospital scenes / a/n - last day until I put together the bonus fic which will come at some point, to everyone going through it atm, I see you, we can do hard things.)
Smoke and Shadow dance as one (under the moon or under the sun)
Clint thinks he should have known,
Perhaps it’s easier in hindsight, it’s the only way to truly know a thing, as it’s already happened.
Stress gives voice to things you wouldn’t normally say, and sometimes, that’s the difference between a good outcome and shit one.
She was so damn impulsive, especially when it came to kids.
He knows this.
She’d convinced the whole team to join them on the god forsaken mission.
He’d gone along with it on less intel than they both usually had and the whole damn thing was just haphazard and wrong.
He sighs heavily.
Hindsight.
Clint stands, shaking his hands and throwing the coffee in the bin, the taste of it too bitter.
Tony sees him and gives half a wave, his face grim as he walks to meet him.
“You look serious,” he tells him.
Clint tries to wave it off.
“I just keep thinking…”
“How it turned into such a shit show?” Tony finishes.
Clint nods.
“We all agreed to help.”
Clint waves him off.
“I know, I know.”
Tony’s face becomes more serious.
“You don’t blame her do you?”
Clint is silent.
“No?”
The question in the answer is telling and Tony leads him to sit down.
“It’s not her fault.”
“Do you see her here? It’s because she feels guilty! She should be here checking that he’s okay!”
Tony frowns.
“Do you really think that’s true?”
Clint shrugs.
“You know her better than anyone. Do you really think she meant for this to happen?”
Clint hates that it’s Tony that is the voice of reason, the one that dampens his anger and makes him feel sorry for Natasha.
He’s right.
Of course he is, Natasha would never intentionally put anyone in harms way.
It begs the question of where she is.
She’d gone to the bathroom.
He’d assumed to lick her wounds after the argument they’d had where’d he’d blamed her for the fuck up.
That had been half an hour ago.
“He’s still in surgery isn’t he?”
Tony nods.
“He’ll be out soon, his healing factors generally make themselves known pretty quickly. A day at most and he’ll be back to his cheerful self.”
Clint sighs and rubs his face.
Sticking his hands in his pocket, he sits and Tony plonks himself down in the seat next to him.
Their conversation replays and Clint feels the pang of guilt at his words.
“I didn’t mean to,” she’d started.
“Intent doesn’t matter, only consequences,” he’d replied.
The look of hurt that had flashed across her face and the immediate withdrawal down the hall had flared anger in him.
He perhaps should have gone after her.
“Go find her,” Tony tells him, rolling his eyes.
“She won’t listen to me.”
“She rarely listens to any of us, but on the rare occasion she does, it’s you who she’ll listen to.”
Clint closes his eyes and stands, nodding, the guilt now swirling in his veins, becoming insistent and overwhelming.
“It’s not her fault,” Tony reminds him, grabbing his wrist, and staring at him intently.
“Shit happens.”
.
He finds her on the stairs.
Head in hands and curled into herself.
“Nat?”
She doesn’t move, and he tries not to take offense.
He can see her chest move up and down and her head bobs.
Concern moves him forward.
“Nat?”
“Leave me alone,” she whispers.
He stays where he is, and frowns.
“Steve’s going to be okay,” he starts.
“He’s in surgery and the healing factors, well they’re doing a lot of the work for the doctors. Tony says he’ll probably be okay…”
There’s blood on the floor.
A small pool underneath her.
“Nat, turn around…”
She doesn’t move.
He moves with purpose now, two steps and he’s by her side.
“Shit.”
She’d been covered in Steve’s blood.
“Tell me this is just Steve’s,” he asks, her sweating face pale as he lifts her chin to look at him.
Anger passes and then pain as her eyes glaze.
Her hand holds steadily to her side, the towel she’d swiped from the nurses station now soaked pink.
Forty five minutes she’d been bleeding, and probably another twenty to the hospital.
“Let me see,” he asks as gently as he can, trying to eliminate the worry and overall shittiness from his voice.
She doesn’t move but he doesn’t know if it’s because she won’t or can’t.
Slowly he lifts her top.
The bullet hole is visible.
It must have hit her vest then lodged in her skin. He can see the line and the burn marks around it.
“I didn’t realise,” she whispers, “and then, I thought…”
There’s a sharp intake of breath as Clint pushes the cloth back and motions for her to stand.
She’s lost so much blood, she can’t make it upright without his help.
“Fuck, Nat. What the fuck.”
He’s sure she was going to say that she thought she deserved it.
And he’d made her felt like she had.
“You’re okay,” he whispers as she leans heavily on him.
And all of a sudden she’s not.
She’s a dead weight in his arms.
.
Tony hears Clint’s shout before he sees him.
He’s standing and moving before his mind catches up to what he’s seeing.
“Get a doctor,” Clint shouts at him.
She’s in his arms.
Tony moves fast, trying to find someone around.
The nurse that appears takes one look and calls a code.
A gurney appears and all of a sudden they’re cutting Natasha’s clothes off her.
Clint looks on, trying to tell them what he knows but he’s at a loss when they find another bullet in her leg.
She has a pulse, but still they intubate her and ask Clint and Tony to step back.
They take her quickly from there and all of a sudden it’s quiet again.
Clint is covered in her blood.
“I said it was her fault,” he whispers as Tony turns to face him.
“I said that she was the reason Steve got shot, when really she was keeping him alive.”
Tony lays a hand on his shoulder, wordless for once, knowing they’d all fucked up.
Natasha had rushed the mission.
Steve had got shot in the bravado of always being first in.
Clint had raged and said things he didn’t mean.
And Tony? He’s sure there’s some blame in there somewhere, not being able to keep his friends safe.
Clint shudders, and Tony thinks he’s crying. Now would be the time and Tony thinks he’d join in if he didn’t feel so numb.
He feels the man beside him take a heaving breath in, trying to get himself under control, and then rub his face down.
“It’ll be okay,” Tony placates.
“Yeah,” Clint mutters.
“I know.”
.
The nurse finds both Clint and Tony pacing in front of the doors, and she glances at the time.
They haven’t left, even when she had encouraged them to.
Clint was still covered in blood but at least his hands were washed.
They stare at her and she realises that she’s been staring and not talking.
“Sorry,” she apologises, “they’re both okay, you can come in now. You can stay until around 8 but then you’ll have to leave.”
They both start forward, and she leads them through the corridors, a left turn and then a right, past other families praying or grieving and visiting loved ones.
She likes the ICU.
It’s the border of life really, so quickly things change here and often it’s the line between life and death.
She stops in front of Captain America’s room, he’s already smiling and eating the meal that was presented. She thinks that if he wasn’t who he was, he’d be dead, the bullet penetrating his stomach and then his shoulder and the last piercing his gallbladder.
The doctor had been fascinated.
They’re just making sure his healing factors continue to work, it’s like nothing she’s ever seen.
Tony stops and waves Clint on.
“I’ll come find you,” he nods, so serious despite his smiling friend.
She smiles back as she hears him call Steve ‘spry for a corpse’, and tucks away the knowledge that Iron Man has watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
“She’s going to be okay, just remember that the tubes and wires are helping her for now, okay?”
She chanced a glance back but Clint’s face is neutral.
“She didn’t say…”
They enter what seems to be where more dependent patients are and he falls silent.
“Oh,” he sighs.
“It looks worse than what it is,” she starts.
“Natasha, Clint is here to visit, can you open your eyes for me?”
Natasha’s eyes seem to flutter open, and then close and the Nurse smiles.
“Good Natasha, that’s good.”
She gestures to the chair and sanitises her hands before she starts to check Natasha’s vitals and ventilator.
“Steve will be probably either be in the step down ward tomorrow, or maybe discharged. We’ll see when the doctors come. They’ll want to check him over.”
Clint isn’t sure if the nurse is talking to him or Natasha but she continues on, making small notes.
“Natasha, you might be in here a little longer.”
Clint looks for a response but apart from the flutter of her eyes when they first came in, there’s not much.
“She’s on some heavier sedation drugs, but we’ll probably wean her off them tonight or tomorrow morning.”
To Natasha, she checks her face, and the oxygen tubing on her face.
“You gave us all a scare, hey?”
Clint stares and takes the hand that doesn’t have any cannulas in it.
“Talk to her, she might not remember but she’ll hear you.”
“Sing out if you need anything,” she tells him, and leaves the area, even though they’re in full view of the nurses station.
He’s lost for words.
He takes her in and knows that she’d hate this.
So many invasions of privacy.
“It’s your own fault,” he whispers.
He lets some tears fall, before wiping them away, knowing that it’s not.
“Why didn’t you say anything? You must have known, you must have…”
His voice hitches and he can see her heart rate rising.
“It’s not your fault,” he finishes.
“It’s not.
He thinks it’s more to himself than it is to her.
.
She feels the drag of the breathing tube pull up from her throat and she gags not wholly aware of anything as she fights consciousness.
Someone is talking.
Someone is saying her name.
A hand pushes on her chest and she thinks she’s crying.
She feels ice in her veins and someone is yelling.
Not yelling.
Talking.
Her body heaves.
Tight.
She pulls on the edge of consciousness and attempts to wake.
Eyes open, and pain hits her like a truck.
She winces, closing them again.
Counting, she tries to think through the pain, just like they taught her.
Ice through her veins and she’s numb.
Conscious but she feels the cotton wool of drugs.
“Natasha?”
She turns to her name.
Opens her eyes again.
A woman.
“Hi,” she starts, “you’re in the hospital. You were shot remember? We need to move you, you’re doing great.”
She does remember.
Remembers Steve’s words about being the first one in, but she hadn’t done her due diligence and cleared the building. She hadn’t… Clint said it was her fault. Clint said, Steve had been shot because of her…
She turns to her right and he’s not there. He’s always with her in the hospital and he’s not there.
Fatigue pulls her and she feels the slow drown of sleep.
She’d failed her team, her family, her friends.
Tears leak out of her eyes, she feels them on her temples, rolling to her ears.
“Sleep,” comes a familiar voice.
“You’re okay.”
.
The quiet morning of the hospital seems to suit Clint. He’s never been one for mornings but this one he feels better about.
He’d been kicked out at 8 and told to come back in the morning.
They didn’t say what time though, so here he was at 7am.
He walks in with the morning nursing staff and makes his way back to Natasha.
Steve was already being prepared for discharge, having proven his ability to do everything that was asked for him including touching his toes.
“There won’t even be a scar by tomorrow,” he’d boasted to Clint and Tony as they’d left him.
Clint couldn’t think.
He’d just kept seeing Natasha hooked up to all the tubes and wires.
He’s let in and guided by nurse they’d met yesterday who’d explained everything to Clint, and was apparently still on shift, looking tired but still mulling around.
She nods to him and points him in the right direction.
“She’s made good progress, we have even taken out the breathing tube.”
He nods, hating that she’s in hospital.
He wonders if she’s awake.
Clint sighs heavily, the night of no sleep catching up to him, but the separation from what had happened and the consequences had given him space to really think about the mission.
Fury, had of course wanted a mission debrief, and Clint had started writing everything down that he knew had happened.
How quickly it had all gone to shit.
Natasha’s lack of intel but the insistence of moving forward, had stuck in his mind, but really, now in hindsight he realises it’s wasn’t on her.
His ire now directs to Steve.
The captain who should have known better.
He finds her asleep, and sits down in the chair placed nearby, taking her hand and kissing it.
She’d hate him showing outright affection.
The nurse was right, she did look better.
Tired eyes look over. They blink open, and closed.
He sits forward.
“Hey,” he says quietly.
“Hey.”
It’s breathed out. It’s raspy and doesn’t sound like her.
“Scared me,” he starts.
“Don’t do that again?”
Her eyes roll, and she shakes her head.
“No. Promises.” She states, the words punctuated.
“Sorry,” she adds, eyes closing again.
He squeezes her hand, and kisses it again.
He watches her vitals even out, the nurse checking her again.
“The meds have kicked in, she’ll probably be asleep for a little bit now. Tomorrow we’ll send her downstairs into the general medical ward, she doesn’t need 1:1 like she gets here.”
It’s supposed to be reassuring, but Clint senses the dread. She won’t stay in a ward. She won’t stay in hospital; he knows. They’ve kept her here because she hasn’t been strong enough to leave.
But he knows her.
Clint takes a deep breath, looks her over and leaves to find Tony.
.
Steve stands at the door, his arms crossed and looming shadow. Natasha knows what Clint means when he says that Steve looks like a puppy whose been kicked when he’s sad.
It’s how he looks now.
They’d moved her to the tower. Even before she knew what was happening.
A week since the mission, and only now he was visiting.
“It’s my fault,” he opens.
She stares for a minute, legs swinging over the side of the bed, winces and stands.
“Show me where it hit you?” she asks, curious if there’s any scarring.
He lifts his shirt, and it’s just abs.
“Nothing to see.”
She nods and lifts her own.
The angry scar rips across the side of her stomach.
“I think it was my fault,” she counters.
He shakes his head.
“I didn’t do the research, and you went in first,” she retorts.
“The mission was on all of us, just because it didn’t work out in our favour doesn’t make it your fault.”
Natasha sighs, it feels heavy, the weight of failure.
“If I had planned it better…”
Steve takes a step forward, “and I had not insisted on going in guns blazing, and if Clint hadn’t antagonized Tony or if we’d talked more about contingencies. Nat, we fucked it, and now we have to do better. The mission stays the same, and when you’re able to move, we’ll try again.”
She swallows at that, wondering what the repercussions were for the traffic girls. If they were sold off already or they were still being held.
“Yeah, that’s what I had to ask you about.”
She makes room for him to sit and winces at the pain as the bed depresses.
“Will you check the warehouse? I don’t think anyone will be there anymore, it’s been almost two weeks and I don’t think they would have kept them, but on the off chance…”
Steve breathes through his nose and nods slowly.
“Tony’s set up surveillance.”
Natasha eyes him sharply.
“We’ll head in tomorrow night, if there’s any shipment of girls there, we’ll find them.”
She lays back, willing the tears to rescind from where they came.
“Thanks,” she whispers, “tell Tony thanks too.”
Steve nods.
“Sorry I didn’t come earlier. I thought you’d be mad.”
She laughs at that, “Clint still angry?”
He nods, “yeah.”
She rolls her eyes.
“Yeah at me too. But mostly it’s just a front for being angry at himself. Talk to him, it’s nothing but guilt.”
Her eyes meet his as he tries to smile a tight smile.
“I know. I feel it too.”
Moving to leave, Steve pauses.
“I’ll be back later, do you need anything?”
Natasha gestures at the space around her, everything in arms reach and a small Dum-e robot on her left.
“I think Tony has everything covered.”
“He always does.”
.
The warehouse is dark, Tony’s infrared cameras light up the people inside, and he smirks.
The girls seems to be hidden in the crates below, at least that’s what he thinks.
They’d hidden in the same warehouse district, an idiotic move if ever he saw one, but perhaps they thought that no one would try to raid them twice when the first one was a bust.
Clint is first in. Tentatively he holds Steve back, but Tony runs in anyway.
Clint growls in anger.
“We didn’t learn fucking anything,” he grouses.
“I’m made of metal, what are they gonna do? Shoot…”
Shots ring and ping off Tony.
He laughs; firing back, eliminating them easily.
Clint runs, tackling another and punching him square in the face.
He attacks ruthlessly. One and then another, Steve moving forward with him.
“Hello boys,” Natasha’s voice crackles through the comms, a drone following all of them.
“It works?” Tony asks.
“It works,” Natasha replies.
She buzzes around his head, and moves forward with her team, the drone moving with purpose.
“So are you in Tony’s workshop?”
Clint can almost hear the grin in Natasha voice as she answers.
“Of course, I’m eating his gummy bears.”
“You better not.”
“What are you going to do?”
Tony shoots two shots and snorts in derision.
“We’re here,” Steve says out loud, clearing the area once more, as Clint moves forward to open the crates.
He moves slowly, motioning for Tony to stand back.
“Hi,” he says softly, the first woman looking back at him.
sleep disorders/conditions affecting sleep are no fucking joke man. they're more than just "takes an hour to fall asleep." like yeah that sucks but.
sleep issues can make people sleep all day and be awake all night no matter what they do. they can make people sleep for over half the day every day. they can make people stay up for over 24 hours frequently - and it just goes up from there. being up for days at a time just unable to sleep.
they can make people have a completely unpredictable sleep schedule too. not everyone is capable of going to bed and waking up at generally the same time, or maintaining it.
all this could be more temporary, or it could just be indefinite. like. having to live your life not knowing if you will or will not be conscious at any given time. you can't plan for fucking anything. you can miss almost every plan or event or obligation.
and everyone just hates you for it pretty much, thinking you're irresponsible and lazy.
be nicer to people with sleep problems. they make you physically and mentally feel like shit. they're not a choice.
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Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
They were right, by the way. You have to dig yourself out of the grave over and over again.
.
Life feels heavy.
She still gets up, puts on her uniform, goes out and saves people; mostly from themselves. Follows the same routine, goes out with the others. Smiles. Laughs.
But.
It feels hollow.
In the moment, she copes.
In the moment, she enjoys herself.
But outside of that? Natasha reminds herself to breathe, to take a deep breath and get off the couch, move through the motions of living.
She’s well practiced at it.
It leaves her breathless and despondent but only when she’s alone.
“Somethings wrong,” she whispers to herself before bed.
Survival often feels like forcing herself to take a breath.
.
Unsurprisingly it’s Clint to pull her up on it.
“Are you okay?” he asks in the morning, handing her a coffee.
She nods, non-committal, and tries for a smile.
Fake enough for him to drop it.
She gets on with the day, paperwork, a meeting. Lunch with Maria.
All relatively easy things.
She manages the gym, stretches and listens to the same music.
Goes home, watches the same shows.
The comfort of it lulling her into relaxing.
The day is not a bad one.
The week is good.
She’s lived through so much worse.
She doesn’t know why she feels so heavy.
Natasha sleeps, as she always does.
No nightmares push past the veil.
She wakes and can’t stop thinking. It’s worse than having a nightmare wake her.
Thoughts go a mile a minute, continual, pressing, on things she’s done and has yet to do.
Showering helps, and routines. Exercise.
She’s fighting a losing battle.
Still Clint asks.
A cock to his head and frown.
“Are you okay?”
She nods.
Smiles.
He doesn’t return either.
Hands her a coffee and sighs.
“It’s okay you know, to not be okay. You don’t have to say you’re fine when you’re not.”
She snorts.
“Are you okay?” she replies.
“Some days,” he smiles.
Natasha likes that.
“Some days,” she repeats.
He walks with her to the gym, and points to the weights.
They move in ease of tandem.
“On the days you don’t?” he presses.
“On the days I don’t…” Natasha starts, laying down on the bench and testing the bars weight in her hand.
She considers lying.
Considers the question too.
“On the days that I don’t, I remember to breathe. I force myself to go through the motions of living.”
She pushes the weight off her body and pulls it closer again.
He stands behind her watching to make sure she can mange it.
“What else?”
“It’s not enough?”
“Maybe?”
She continues to push it up and down.
“I eat sweet things.”
He smiles.
“Yeah. Me too.”
She laughs.
“Who do you think taught me?”
Natasha finishes her set and they swap, reloading the bar with heavier weights.
“Something fizzy, sometimes.”
“Hard moments, doesn’t mean I get to write off the day.”
“No,” Clint agrees. “It doesn’t.”
He grunts in effort.
“It’ll pass,” she tells him.
“I think in moments like this, where there’s no crisis, no world ending crisis to deal with, it feels like I’m lost. And it spirals.”
She’s shocked at her own truths.
“Sometimes I worry I’m going to hurt someone. Hurt myself.”
It’s her greatest fear.
She doesn’t know why she’s saying it out loud.
“You won’t.”
Clint’s confidence makes her look down.
“How do you know?”
He grunts and does one more bench press, before sitting up and looking at her.
“Because I know you. You won’t because you know yourself better too. You wouldn’t be here, you wouldn’t have strategies to ground yourself.”
Natasha shrugs.
She doesn’t quite believe that.
“I get scared, Clint.”
He voice shakes and she pulls weights off the bar to change it over.
He’s quiet.
She shakes it off, feeling slightly better at voicing the things that scare her the most.
The movement helps.
Maybe she can add that in too.
Movement.
“We all do, Nat. Maybe not of the same thing. But the fear is there.”
She shrugs and shakes it off.
“I’m okay Clint. They’re just moments and I need to remember that overall.”
She lays down and starts.
They don’t talk as they both finish their reps. They break away for cardio and reconnect to stretch and cool down.
“Maybe you should talk Barnett again,” he suggests.
She pauses mid stretch.
“Yeah, I will. I’m in Croatia for the next three weeks but I’ve booked in after that.”
Clint winces as he bends to touch his toes.
“Good.”
Sighing, Natasha stands.
“I’m okay Clint,” she confirms, for both him and herself. “Just not all the time.”
He laughs at that.
“None of us are, Nat. But if the sinking feeling is weighing us down, then sometimes we need some outside help.”
Spontaneously, she hugs him.
“I’ll see you in three weeks.”
He stands back and pulls her in for another hug.
“We’ve been through some pretty bad stuff, but we always land back on our feet,” he whispers.
She squeezes a little tighter, and lets him go.
“I’ll see you in three weeks,” she repeats.
.
It helps.
Work helps.
The sweetness of food.
The difference in location.
Breathing in, and out.
Forcing stillness when she can’t stop thinking.
Grounding herself to the here and now.
She finds that the way she treats herself matters.
Eating, drinking, sleeping.
It helps.
Barnett stares at her, her glasses on the tip of her nose as Natasha explains like she did to Clint, almost a month ago.
Things feel better now than they did then.
Not the best, but better.
“Why?” Asks the psychologist.
She shrugs.
“No, think about it. Why?”
Natasha frowns at the challenge.
“I don’t know.”
Barnett shakes her own head in response.
“I think you do, take ownership of it; Natasha.”
She’s right.
Natasha does know, but feels it’s the wrong answer.
“I did what I could.”
Barnett doesn’t answer.
Waits.
Natasha doesn’t like the silence. The expectation that comes from it.
“I used the strategies I have?”
It’s closer.
Barnett writes something and hands it over.
Natasha nods at the words written.
She folds it carefully.
“Natasha, we’ve known each other for a while now. I hope you know that strength isn’t only in our muscles. It’s in our minds too. Sometimes we can’t think it way out of things. Sometimes we have to ride through the moment. They don’t last. It might feel like they do, and often it’s easier for me to sit and preach that regulation is a series of tasks. It’s not. It’s working through the moments, finding what works. Sometimes we are good at it, sometimes not so much.”
Barnett waits, and Natasha meets her eyes.
“Keep going,” she assures.
She proceeds to run through checks, and Natasha answers honestly.
When the session ends she feels lighter, almost impossibly so.
Clint meets her at her apartment and like after every therapy session they head to the local burger place.
“Are you okay?” he asks, tentatively after ordering.
honestly one of my favorite things about fanfic is when you can see the canon influences come out in really subtle ways. like a canon line thats mentioned once as a throwaway is suddenly the entire premise for a fic or it influences the characterization or something. its just so cool to see how people weave their ideas around a source material, especially if its not a detail i'd thought about before
(3k / warnings for a brief interrogation scene like the one in the avengers / a/n this fic didn’t come out the way I wanted but no use flogging a dead horse so you get what you get lol, 5+1 fic)
If you don’t change direction, you may end up where you were heading.
(5+1)
1/ In which Clint needs his hearing checked.
“Shit, shit, shit,” Natasha grumbles.
“Shit.”
Her phone reads 20% battery and she bolts around the corner.
“Fucking run Clint,” she growls as he stops to look back.
“How much battery does your phone have?”
He looks back and yells.
“None! It got smashed and it’s bricked.”
“Shit,”she says again.
“How much further!?”
“It’s just around the corner,” he yells back.
“Sure,” she mutters, breathing heavily.
“Are they still behind us?”
“I don’t fucking know!”
“Look!” He advises, as she looks back, her eyes rolling as two guards yell in Croatian and demand that they stop.
“Yep, still there, move faster Clint,” she shouts.
“Down here.”
He turns sharply down a small lane, almost making her lose her footing as he bounds forward, his left leg lifts and he jumps to grab onto the emergency ladder pulling it down.
She nods in agreement, helping him pull it down.
He climbs first, then pulls her up, she swings the bag over her shoulder, securing it tightly.
He tries to talk but it gets caught in his throat as he gulps down a breath.
“Nothing… like… a quick escape.”
She scoffs and nods.
“We have to move.”
“This should be the exit to the bakery,” he tells her, moving forward, opening the wire door tentatively.
“This escape, seems to have saved me twice,” he tells her patting the door.
The bakery is small, the entrance appearing almost as they walk through the exit.
Natasha wipes the sweat, and sighs.
“That was too close.”
“No shit,” he replies.
“I said the alarm would go off,” she tells him, hitting his arm annoyed.
“No, you said the alarm was off,” Clint replies.
She frowns.
“You know how we talked about getting your hearing assessed? Yeah, we should totally do that.”
Clint rolls his eyes.
“It’s not my fault that last month in Algeria that the bomb went off almost in my face.”
“No, but the resulting hearing loss was yours to follow up.”
He frowns in annoyance.
“Yeah, yeah.”
He stops and buys a croissant and looks to Natasha who shakes her head, he shrugs and holds up two fingers.
The lady packages them and hands them over.
Clint sighs and pays and motions for Natasha to leave.
“What now?”
She watches as he pulls out one of the croissants and munches.
“Now we get this, to the safe hub,” she replies pointing to her bag.
.
2/ Irish Goodbye
“Do you know what an Irish goodbye is?”
Clint looks at him, pulling down at his tie as he tries to make room for his neck.
“Do you know penguin suits suck?”
Tony cocks his head.
“Oh,” Clint rolls his eyes, “I thought we were just asking rhetorical questions.
They both smile.
“I was just going to tell you that Natasha has left, again.”
Clint looks around and finds he’s likely right. She’s nowhere immediately found and if he’s honest with himself, he probably knows where she’s gone.
“She is one for an Irish goodbye,” Clint muses, leaning back on the large column, spotting Steve talking to Maria, Bruce sitting on the couch, and Pepper talking to man that Clint thinks looks important.
“Why?”
Tony takes a step forward.
“Why wouldn’t she want to hang out with us here?”
Clint shrugs.
“It’s hard, maybe.”
“What’s hard about being at a party?”
Clint doesn’t think he could put it into words the difficulty Natasha might face being at a party with friends versus all the parties that required her to be someone else, do things that she was trained for, and how disconcerting it might be for her. Triggering even.
“Maybe a party is just a party to you, but for her it’s different.”
He frowns.
“Maybe she doesn’t want to hang out with us?”
“Maybe she has better things to do?”
Tony smiles at that.
“Probably.”
Clint shrugs.
“You can ask her tomorrow, we have that mission debrief, remember?”
Tony pulls at his own tie, sighing lightly his face grim, he also looks around, checking on everyone before his gaze rests on Pepper.
“Yeah about that…”
“Nah, you don’t get to bail,” Clint tells him, a hint of a growl in his voice.
Tony gives him a sideways grin.
“Maybe I’ll take a page out of Natasha’s book and come and then leave and not tell anyone.”
Clint scoffs a laugh at that.
“Sure, Tony,” he smiles.
3/ bored, now.
Arms tied behind her back, she can feel the pressure on her shoulders.
Annoyingly, she feels her hair on her face, sticking to the sweat and blood that lay there.
If she can just get her thumb out, she knows that she can free herself.
The way they’ve tied her up it’s not the most escapable but she does feel that they have put effort into it.
“Black widow,” they’d taunted, and she’d laughed in their faces.
Two.
There were two of them.
She rolls her eyes.
This was literally child’s play.
With no change to her facial expression, she uses one hand to dislocate her thumb on the other hand and pushes it through the knot.
“What was your plan?” she taunts,
“Drug me? Tie me up? And then we all wait?”
They look at her from where they are sitting, and she continues, making an effort to not seem like she’s doing anything and they keep their eyes on her face. Or her cleavage.
She didn’t care.
“We’re just sitting here? Why?”
One man scoff and the other leans forward.
“We wait,” he confirms.
“Ah, American,” she confirms.
He looks chagrined.
“CIA? Or something different?”
He looks away at her guess.
She’s almost out of her restraints, but now she’s interested.
“CIA?”
The other man looks pissed.
“Well Mr. CIA, what is it that you want?”
She holds up her hands to show them she’s free, resetting her thumb in front of them.
One of them looks away, and she laughs at his squeamishness.
“If you wanted to talk, you could have just asked.”
He shakes his head and looks to his friend.
“Not us, whore.”
She rolls her eyes and crosses one leg over the other.
“Then who?”
She enunciates the words slowly, in mocking.
One stands coming to far into her personal space.
Annoyed, she punches him in the nuts, he keeps over and she follows it with a chop to the throat, and swift punch to his carotid artery.
He’s out before he hits the ground.
“I’m bored of this,” she announces to the man, who now stands staring at his friend.
“They want to talk to you about what you learned in Venezuela.”
His voice has the edge of hysteria.
Clearly, these men are not at the hop of any sort of hierarchy.
Whoever they were waiting for she doesn’t particularly want to stick around for.
“I’m bored of this,” she repeats.
“Move.”
He shakes his head, looking to the door.
“He’ll be here soon,” the man starts, his voice calmer.
Natasha is standing now.
“Talk to Director Fury,” she taunts.
“He can tell you what…”
The door opens and a man in a suit walks through it.
“Your reputation precedes you,” he says to her.
His voice is low, an edge to it she doesn’t like.
There is a window behind her, they’re only on the first floor. He’s now blocking the door, and for some reason, she thinks he’d be harder to take down than two of the others in front of her.
“Yours doesn’t,” she replies.
He looks down at the man lying prostate between them.
“He called me a whore,” she states, kicking him again.
It’s met with a groan, and she takes a step back.
He’s six foot five at least.
He steps forward.
“Your supposed to tied up, but I suppose we can talk like this.”
She shrugs.
“You can call me Mr. Black. I represent a subsection of the CIA. We need your information of which I know you have from your recent mission in Venezuela,” he starts.
“It’s been cleared with your director.”
She scoffs.
“Really?”
He smiles.
It’s not kind.
“Really,” he lies.
Another step back.
“What’s the mission name?”
“Blackfriar.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
Natasha feels the stir of wrongness and the cage closing in. He’s correct, and only four people know that information.
“Why do you want to know?”
“We have our reasons.”
There’s a mole in shield, feeding information to the CIA. She’s not sticking around anyway, to find out if tying her up and calling her names is all they’ll do for information.
If she gives them the intel, she could be easily framed. And who would they believe? Someone in shield or her, a defective KGB operative?
“Okay,” she smirks.
“Okay,” he replies.
Natasha raises her hands in surrender and runs and jumps out the glass window.
4/ with friends like these, who needs enemies?
“Pepper!!”
Natasha sees her friend standing in the middle of the hall, the look on her face one of shock.
“Pepper!! Run!”
Finally, her voice seems to break through the haze and she crumples to the floor, the secondary explosion hitting the café as Natasha sprints toward her friend.
“Get up!” she shouts, reaching her and pulling her arm.
“Come on!”
She drags her forward, the heat and debris around them, and the shouting of others breaking through.
“Pepper, are you hurt?!”
There’s blood on Natasha’s hand but she can’t tell if it’s her own or Peppers.
Angrily, she pulls them forward, finding a cover that seems to be safer.
Her comms are shot, but she doesn’t want to take them out of her ear just in case To y can get them up and running again.
The electromagnetic pulse had hit first, then the first bomb, she can’t believe they thought it would be safe for Pepper to come.
“I’m okay,” she hears, but it comes a second after she’s already started to vigorously pat down the shorter woman, checking for injuries.
“I’m okay, Nat, promise,” she tries to give a smile, but it comes out watery.
“We need to go,” Natasha replies, trying to give her a smile back, “the others will be waiting.”
“Tony?” Pepper asks, her voice to hopeful.
“I’m sure,” Natasha nods.
In her heart she’s not though, she’s worried, about Tony; Steve and Clint.
Her heart clenches.
Rendezvous point was the back of the building, so it’s where she leads Pepper. They don’t talk.
Both lost in their thoughts.
Her heart beats fast as she sees Clint first; then Tony.
Pepper runs fast and he runs toward her.
“Pep!”
“I’m okay,” she preempts.
Clint is more guarded, staring at Natasha, taking her all in, knowing she won’t ever say how she really is in front of people.
All he has is clues.
She does the same.
“I’m okay,” he mouthes.
She nods, lips pursed.
“Steve?”
Both Tony and Clint shake their heads.
“We don’t know, we lost him after the second explosion. We think he tried to save as many civilians as he could, but…”
She doesn’t respond.
She saw the casualties.
“Hydra?”
Tony nods.
“We think so.”
“What now?”
Clint steps forward, and motions to the exits.
“We wait? Or leave?”
“We need to finish this,” Tony starts, “but you can’t stay.”
Pepper doesn’t even protest.
“I can help,” she tells them, “but I need a computer.”
“You can find Steve?”
She shakes her head.
“No, but I can run interference and get onto my contacts in Berlin.”
Clint shrugs, “I can get you into a building.”
Tony motions to Natasha’s ears.
“Give me your comms.”
She does without asking.
“Give me twenty minutes,” he asks.
She looks from Tony to Clint to Pepper.
“I’ll be back,” she nods to all of them.
Clint looks at her appalled.
“No.”
“Twenty minutes,” she nods to Tony. “If I’m not back, I’m either dead, or captured.”
Clint rolls his eyes.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“If Steve is out there, injured or needs some help, I’ll find him, bring him back, or come back and get you all.”
Tony grunts.
“Fine. Twenty minutes but you come back.”
He takes his analogue watch off and sets a timer.
“Twenty minutes,” Clint reiterates.
“You have your own mission,” she grins.
He looks at her seriously.
“Be careful.”
She nods once and takes off back into the fray.
5/ +1
Clint watches her closely. The way she talks to Steve and then to Pepper, the smile she wears and the gentle tuck of hair behind her ear.
He can see the slight bruise on her cheek, even though he knows she’s covered it in make up, and he’s not sure if it’s just because he knows it’s there that he can see it.
She glances at him.
Smiles.
It’s all fake.
There’s something she’s not telling him. Something on her mind, and despite his gentle prodding, she’s not giving him anything.
He heads to the kitchen and finds Tony staring into the fridge.
“Hungry?” he asks.
Tony nods, not looking his way.
“I just don’t want any more Doritos. Maybe something fresh would be better.”
Clint laughs at that.
“What’s in there?”
Tony closes the door.
“Nothing.”
Clint follows him to the table. In the corner of his eye he sees Natasha heading for the door; and he starts upright again.
“Umm, I’ll be back in a minute.”
He rounds on her; finding her standing at the lift, moving from foot to foot, uncharacteristically fidgeting.
“Nat?”
She stops.
Turns to face him and waits.
“You’re leaving?”
It takes a moment for her to reply, but he’s better at waiting than her.
The sniper in him watches all her tells.
The way she looks to him, and to their friends behind him.
The lift pulls up and dings, but neither of them move.
“You don’t… want to stay?”
She bites her lip.
“I… I’m attached to them. I… they’re my… friends and I think, Clint…”
She sighs. The flight closes and she presses the button to open it again.
“I’ll let them down. I’m not good. They’re better off, better if I have a distance and they’re just friends and I’m just me, over here.”
He stares.
“What?”
It’s said with disbelief but it comes out as harsh. The growl that follows he can’t stop, because it’s so stupid.
“You’re wrong.”
She flinches.
“I’m not made for people. You know that. I need to leave.”
He steps forward, the frown still on his face as he contemplates how to convince her she’s an idiot.
“TONY.”
He yells loud and it draws the attention of everyone.
Natasha stares.
“What are you doing?” She hisses.
“TONY!” He yells again.
Everyone comes.
She stares wide eyes and realises what he’s doing.
Steve arrives first, then Tony and Pepper.
“Tell them,” he challenges.
“Tell them what you told me.”
Natasha’s face flashes with fury and if Clint didn’t know her, he’d be worried.
“Tell us what, Nat?” Steve asks gently.
She shakes her head, and the lift dings.
Clint moves behind her.
“No,” he whispers for her to hear.
“You’d never believe me, so tell them, and let them know what you’re thinking.”
“Tell us, Nat,” Pepper tries, “maybe we can help? Maria can come if you need back up too?”
Natasha softens, always softens when Pepper is around.
Tony cocks his head.
“No more Irish goodbyes, Nat,” he surmises.
Clint nods imperceptibly at him.
“They're your friends, ask them if they think they’d be better off with you giving them distance, of being on the outer circle and not being their friend.”
Steve looks shocked.
“You believe that?”
Natasha doesn’t break eye contact with Clint.
He knows she won’t forgive this easily.
But maybe it’s worth it.
“You can’t believe that, Nat,” Pepper starts.
“You’re the only person… you’re the only one that actually gets what I mean when I rant about stark industries, or what about when we go walking on Friday mornings? Does it mean you don’t want to?”
She looks like she’s going to cry and Natasha immediately steps forward to help.
“No? I want to I just…”
“You don’t want to build the suits with me anymore?”
Tony fakes a sad face but the question is real.
“What about sparring with me?”
Clint knows they’re just as good as him at emotional blackmail.
And for that he’s thankful.
“It’s not what I mean,” she tries.
“I just.. I’m not who you think.”
He rolls his eyes.
“The black widow? You think you’re gonna kills us? We trust you. You’re not the scary Russian you think you are.”
She looks at him.
He waits to see her next move and it’s Pepper that takes her hand.
“Come on,” she offers.
“Stay.”
He hates that staying for her is the difficult thing. She doesn’t believe that this is her family, and they would go to the ends of the earth for her. He knows it’s a battle, and that he’ll have this conversation again and again, and sometimes she might believe him, and sometimes she won’t.
Maybe now it’s enough that she didn’t get on the lift, that Tony knows he’s stopping her from going. That Steve might talk to her when they sparring and that Maria will hear of this and try to dissuade her from running from social situations.
He’ll see.
He’ll watch as he always does.
He’ll convince her one day that she’s home and it’s okay to stay.
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(900words, warnings for talk of childhood neglect. Clint centric - but Clintasha. A/N - this was supposed to be a two parter with a story of both Clint and Natasha’s childhood with a kind adult, but alas, I ran out of time. So we only get Clint’s side. Maybe one day I’ll write Nats)
-
It’s a hard knock life.
“There was a woman,” Clint starts.
Natasha looks up from her phone, and notices his eyes dark.
“In my old neighborhood. I got home from school at 3 and she was always watering her plants.”
She feels it’s not the time to say anything but stares at him with rapt attention.
“It’s just occurred to me, that she was watching me come home everyday.”
He pauses on the thought.
“I’d be alone. I’d get home alone, and she’d… always be there, watering her plants, watching me get off the bus, wave and then, she’d go inside when I was.”
He stares at nothing and thinks.
“She was watching for me.”
Natasha turns to face him.
The television breaks the quiet but he’s thoughtful still.
She’s not sure what to say.
“Her name was Vera,” he offers.
She waits.
He turns to face her after a moment.
A sad smile is returned and she grabs his hand to give it a squeeze.
“Sometimes it’s the little things that people do for us that we don’t even recognise them at the time,” she thinks out loud.
He turns his attention back to the television, the show flashing brightly, casting light on their faces.
“Yeah, I think you’re right,” he replies.
She lets his hand go, and picks her phone up again.
“Would you ever go looking for her?”
Clint doesn’t answer.
She takes it as a no.
Moments pass and the tv drolls on.
He can’t stop thinking of her.
Always watering her plants, and then going back inside when he got home. Never interfering but always a kind face. A hello in the morning and when he arrived, sometimes a worried face.
He wonders if she ever did anything for his mum.
He never saw them together, but perhaps there was danger in that, given his father.
Would he look for her?
He grabs his phone, opens a game, trying to put it out of his mind.
He doesn’t need this.
It only takes a second before he has a browser open, searching her name. Her first name anyway, last known location.
It takes him down a rabbit hole.
He opens a database.
Then another.
It takes him five minutes.
“She’s dead,” he announces to Natasha.
He hears her sigh.
“I’m sorry,” she replies.
“Yeah.”
Fatigue hits him and he puts his phone on charge, kisses Natasha and rolls over, ready for sleep.
“Are you okay?” she asks quietly, to his turned back.
He’s not sure.
“Yeah,” he answers.
“Night, Nat,”
He feels her hand on the small of his back.
Reassuring, consistent.
“Night Clint.”
.
“She had a daughter,” Clint tells her the next night.
He was going to hold onto the information, thought about burying it, and leaving it alone.
It had only been a thought; a small part of his childhood.
He’s not sure why he was perseverating on it so much.
She made she he got home, nothing more.
But it meant something, even if he only realised it twenty years later.
He wanted to repay the favour, the kindness, whatever it was.
Natasha looks over, waiting for him to continue.
It takes a moment.
But for him she could wait all night.
“They live in Alaska now.”
She smiles.
“So not the most inaccessible place.”
“No,” he muses.
“What do you want to do?”
He shrugs.
“I don’t know.”
She leaves him in his silence. This time, it’s her that rests her head on his chest.
“We can visit, or send something like money? We can do nothing, or visit her grave?”
She closes her eyes.
“Think about it,” she yawns.
He sighs heavily.
“Yeah.”
“Night Clint,” she whispers.
“Night Nat,” he replies.
.
“I’ve sent them money,” he announces at dinner.
She pauses on her fried rice and nods.
“Under what guise?”
He shrugs.
“I just sent cash, and said that it was from a friend. Actually I sent a note to say that her mother was a good woman.”
Natasha continues to eat, and nods at the gesture.
“It sounds like she was.”
“It took me so long to figure that out,” he tells her quietly.
She snorts at him.
“How much of your childhood do you actually remember?”
Clint looks up, and gets her point straight away.
“Yeah, okay, hardly any of the small things. Other kids had good memories and fun and I had…”
He shrugs, letting the memories peter out.
“Sometimes, probably it will just be like this. Something happens and something will come back to you, and we cope with it then, good or bad. Just like we do with mine.”
He looks at her then.
The worry and reassurance.
“Yeah. Yes. It’s what we do.”
She eats and motions for him to do the same.
“It’s what we do.”
He sighs heavily, remembering her watering can.
Thanks Vera, he thinks and looks down at his own dinner.
“Thanks Nat,” he offers.
She waves it off.
“Hopefully you’ll get some sleep tonight,” she smiles.
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