Listen can you imagine nat and clint have all this chemistry, this push and pull, this what if while on missions, and maybe they’ll try it once or twice, try to make it work, but it interferes with their missions, they put people in danger for it, villains use their relationship against one another, and clint is the first to decide they can’t do this. as much as they want to. and nat agrees, with her voice and not her heart, and they go their own separate ways at first, distance to let the feelings cool.
and clint moves on but nat doesn’t. clint meets someone new, finds a family, and all nat can think about is how clint was her everything, is her everything. and as much as she tries no one can compare to the man sent to kill her that made a different call. and instead of moving on she lies awake at night, trying to bury all this deeper inside her.
the thing with Bruce is something forced and they both know it. Nat is thinking of clint and Bruce is thinking of someone else too, she can tell by the distance in his eyes and the colder touch of his hand, as if the warmth has left him and got stuck in someone else’s skin. she knows that feeling. it happened to her too. she’s cold too. but they’re cold together, lonely together, and it’s better than being lonely alone.
when clint tells her his wedding is set for a nat can’t feel anything. she knew this would come but still can’t stop the resolve crumbling inside her. but she’s trained for this. trained for her emotions under lock and key. she smiles something sweet and rubber, and he does too, something more genuine, relief in his eyes when she sees the last of romantic entanglement leave both their minds. being friends is enough for her. it has to be.
she calls clint after the dusting. she prays to god he picks up. and when he does he says nothing. it’s a line of crackling and static, thunderous quietness. nat knows what happened before he says it.
“I lost them. Laura. The kids.”
nat wonders what it’s like to have something the way he had them. her voice breaks as she says, “I’m so sorry clint,” but before she can finish the sentence he breaks in with, “Tell me what the plan is.”
More quietness. “The plan?”
“To get them back, Nat, how are we getting them back?”
She doesn’t say anything. She’s trying to think of what to say, think of what to say, repeating the mantras that taught her to keep her love at bay, but she’s startled and sad and confused. She’s all of those things and none of those things because she can’t allow herself to be.
“We can’t,” Nat chokes out. she takes the phone from her face, puts it on speaker and on mute. she clears her voice and breathes deeply, clears her mind, clears her emotion. “We can’t get them back,” she says flatly. “Thanos destroyed the infinity stones. He’s dead. There’s no way to reverse this.”
There’s more silence, something violent. Brutish and raw.
“Clint?” she says, and the line clicks off.
The news comes later, the mass killings, and nat knows immediately it’s him. she feels so hollow, knowing she wasn’t enough to satiate him, to placate him, to comfort him. she feels responsible for him being this beast. rhodey is tasked with finding him, but some small part of her hopes he never does.
She goes to sleep that night thinking of Budapest, when his face softer and his heart was younger. when they fell asleep together and woke up in each other’s arms. those three weeks when they kissed and made love, the break, the two months to try again, the break, the two days. she remembers him passionate, she remembers him strong. she remembers him as he was hers.
and so on vormeer does it really come as so much of a shock? he has her hand, and her body is the heaviest it has ever been. secretly she knows. she knows the sacrifice will only work for her anyway. clint has someone. a family. she has nothing, no one but him. she’s only ever had him.
sometimes she thinks about Budapest, she thinks about Moscow and St Petersburg. she thinks about all the little ways she could have been his Laura, but she knows it would never work. this would always be how it ends.
“Clint,” she whispers. her wrist is slipping from his grip. By the fear in his eyes she can almost let herself believe that he loves her too. “Let me go. It’s okay.”
and for the first time since she can remember, she feels something other than the loneliness. she feels peace.
andulkaphoto
kianamaiart
discoholicmusic
theartofmadeline
