Word count: 1964 words.
Pairing: Clintasha.
Rating: Teen? I don't know, I'm not used to rating my stuff.
Unbetaed.
dedicated to stormxpadme on tumblr :)
It wasn't fair. It just wasn't fair ! He'd tried to tell anybody and everybody who'd have wanted to listen to him, but they wouldn't tell him why they had confined him to this space. Even though he understood perfectly why they had : after all, it had been him that had helped Loki get away with the Tesseract, it had been him that had helped Loki escape Fury and Hill with the Tesseract, it had been him who'd stolen the missing rocks from that museum in Germany, it had been him who'd almost made the Helicarrier drop out of the sky, it had been him who'd told Loki about Natasha's weaknesses, and it had been him who'd, in the end, gotten Coulson and whole lot of other people killed.
Every single day after the battle of New York, he'd been thinking about those few seconds before Loki took control of him. He should've known. Right after Selvig had identified Loki, brother of Thor, he should have fucking known that something was going to go wrong. After all the mess in New Mexico, with the destroyer and the rest of the disaster down there... Loki was the trickster in the Norse mythologies, he was the one who tricked the other gods into mockery and failure. He was the smug one. And, all he had been able to do, right there, when Loki had appeared, was to shoot at him, and let him take control of him.
You have heart.
Fucking bullshit. He should've fought back. And, sure, he knew and remembered fighting back the influence of Loki in his mind – he could remember every single fiber of his body wanting to hit Nick Fury in the head, as well as Maria Hill, as he helped Loki escape, but he'd managed to miss on purpose, to let them know. Send them a message. He'd felt so helpless, unable to tell them. And, in the end, he'd done exactly what Loki had wanted him to do. All of it. But, with as little deaths as possible. Even though he could still see their faces as he shot them, and even though he could still hear every single word Loki had whispered into his ears.
But the worst part of it all ? The worst part was that even when he pulled out his hearing aids, and he blocked out the sound of his beating heart, the sound of his breathing, the sounds of his surroundings... he could still hear Loki's whispers within his mind, the depth of his deepest thoughts. He could listen to the murmurs, deep inside his mind, and felt peace only when he was in the shooting range, or when he was listening to Natasha's breathing.
The simple thing ? He couldn't listen to Natasha's steady breathing. Because SHIELD had sent her away on a mission to help Rogers out with an old enemy. He'd watched as the Avengers stayed quiet with the entire Mandarin situation, letting Tony Stark handle it on his own. He'd watched London get torn to pieces by some sort of alien craft, brought on from Thor's worlds. And now, there was a ghost from Steve's past, and they still wouldn't let them out of his room. Or the SHIELD headquarters, for that matter.
Phil was dead, Natasha was gone, Tony Stark had had a heart surgery to remove the shrapnel in his heart, Thor had found a way to move through worlds, Bruce had gone back into hiding. He felt as lonely as ever, but they said that he needed the rest. Needed the psychiatric help to get over the mind control. He didn't want it. He wanted to go out there, change his mind. And it had been going so well, until they'd told him Natasha had gone away to work with Steve about this Winter Soldier thing from the Red Room. He could help. He should have been there to help her out : it was her past, the past he'd ripped her from when he'd asked her to join SHIELD. He needed to help her. Or at least be there with her. It was his responsibility. She was his protégée. There was no way in hell that he wanted her out there on her own.
And the worst part ? From that room they had him sleep in, he could only watch national television. The same news crap he'd always hated watching. And, the same talk shows, and gossip shows, and...
What made him lose it for real, was when one of those so-called gossip shows took up the subject of the Captain and the Black Widow. They'd been seen sharing a kiss in a subway station, and they plastered the paparazzi picture all over the news, the talk shows. They showed tweets on the screen, photomanipulations of them, theories. Gossip, more gossip, and even more gossip.
Clint ended up taking his hearing aids out, to block out the noise, and turned off the television. He could feel the migraine come onto him, and he needed to block out sound and light. He could feel the sickness of his mind grasping back at his brain, from the depth of Loki's mind control. He instinctively went for a shower. Was this jealousy he was feeling ? Natasha had seduced plenty of rich guys, and other less friendly persons. He'd seduced some girls of his own, and they had never had an argument. But this time, he thought, as he showered, there was no way for him to protect, argue or defend himself. And, maybe, Steve was a better choice for Natasha than him. After all, Steve hadn't been the one to get mind controlled by an alien from another world, was he ?
For the next days, he stayed in his nest. Not leaving to go to the shooting range, barely eating, refusing to put his hearing aids in. He'd excluded himself from the life around him, and he knew that people would start talking. That he was finally letting the depression sink in, that he was finally showing the weakness everybody had wanted him to show from the beginning. But, by taking Natasha from him – Natasha, who had been the one to knock him out of Loki's control – they had taken the only thing he trusted right now.
And seeing her, kissing Steve with passion...
Clint burried his face in the pillow again, refusing to leave the bed. He couldn't hear anything, even Loki's ever present whispers had gone quiet. It was dead silence, and dark as dark could get. He could feel his own pulse in his neck, in his fingers. He could feel every single fiber of his being fighting the decision to stay in bed, and he could feel he was missing food. But he didn't want to eat.
However, when someone opened the blinds, by ordering the computer to do so, and pulled the covers off him, he knew that she'd come home. She would be the only one to dare walk into his nest and disturb him like this, without risking being attacked fiercely by an angry bird. But he didn't move.
"You look like shit, Barton," she stated, right as she noticed that his hearing bugs were on the side table. He closed his eyes, the light dilating his pupils, before moaning.
"Get out, Natasha, I don't want to talk to you right now," he mumbled, as he hid his eyes with his arms. But, the spy stayed still. She didn't even blink. He knew that she stayed there, because when he uncovered one eye, blinking to try and focus on her, he sighed. "Please, leave ?" he asked, pushing himself upright. He didn't take the effort to put his hearing aids in again, so he forced to obey his rules : she had to sign instead of speak to him. He didn't want to make an effort for her, and he didn't care how bruised she looked or how tired she seemed to be.
I'm sorry. Steve couldn't handle this by himself, she signed, and he rolled his eyes. "Yeah, sure," he replied, mockingly, as he pushed himself off the bed, turning his back at her on purpose. He rubbed his eyes. With his back turned, he couldn't see her sign, so he couldn't hear her. "Super soldier couldn't handle a blast from his past, but he sure as hell looked like he could handle kissing you," he growled, as he waved his hands, walking out of the room and locking himself in the bathroom.
He sat down on the edge of the bathtub, watching the door. He could see Natasha's shadow beneath the door, and when she started to stomp slightly, changing the light, he knew she was trying to talk to him in morse code. He sighed loudly enough for her to hear, and threw a shampoo bottle at the door. "Go away !" he yelled at her, and he saw the shadows disappear. He knew he had no right to treat her that way, and he had no right to let it get to him, but right now, he didn't want to talk to her.
He didn't have the time, nor the energy to listen to her explanation of things. He knew there was one. But he didn't give a fucking damn about it.
It was only a couple of days later, when he'd finally allowed himself to slip into the life of sound, that he knew she was going to talk to him, and she wasn't going to leave before they got the talk over and done with. He heard the scratching on the door before he heard her footsteps. But, when she brought him along, there was no way that he couldn't open the door. So, he did. And, as soon as the door was open enough, Lucky jumped up on him, nearly throwing him off his balance, and stumbking across the furniture in the hall.
The dog licked his face several times, before jumping down again and beginning to ruffle around in some old pizza boxes, trying to find a slice for himself. Natasha was just standing in the doorway, leaning against the doorframe. Clint cleared his face with his arm, and watched her. She had a black eye, which had turned yellow'ish now. She didn't say anything, but he knew that she wanted to talk about it.
"Can I come in ?" she asked, voice calm and steady. He wasn't going to close the door, was he ? She'd managed to get Lucky from the custody of the SHIELD agents who were taking care of him while he was in his solitary confinment, so he couldn't just push her out. So he showed her in, and as he closed the door, he knew that there had been no need to shut her out. Because, she handed him the file and the debrief of her mission. If she showed him this, it meant that the reason why her and Steve had shared that kiss was written down there, black on white. But it didn't matter.
She was back. And he didn't need to know why she did it.
He walked up to her, taking her hands, gently, and let their foreheads meet, gently, as he inhaled her scent. "You smell of sweat and dog breath," she smiled, and he couldn't help himself but imitate her gesture. Lucky was gumming away on last night's pizza, tail flapping happily, watching them innocently as he did so.
Clint stayed silent. He slowed down his breath, concentrating on Natasha's breathing. Her slow, steady breathing, and the special scent she had. She was there. Right there. And nothing else in the world mattered anymore.