CLINT TELLS IT AS IT IS
An early draft of I Figured Out Where I Belong; literally just three thousand words of Natasha and Clint talking.
Clint finally runs out of home improvement plans a week before his traitor son is born. Laura kicks him out and sends him Natasha's way when he starts eyeing the nursery, insisting that seven days is plenty of time to update the room.
They're touring the training wing of the facility, and Natasha can almost pretend it's before. If she tries hard enough, she can even fool herself into thinking they're in an old SHIELD facility. It's not that hard; if you've seen one shooting range, you've seen them all.
Still, she turns to Clint. "Well? Does this live up to your demanding standards, Master Archer?"
"I don't know," Clint shrugs. "I was promised a private balcony; planned to hide in there and hurl insults at the newbies."
"Only cowards hide while insulting inept archers, Barton," Natasha sighs, rolling her eyes like an exasperated mother who's imparted the same lesson one too many times upon deaf ears.
"Yeah, whatever." He takes one last look around the shooting range. "Fine, go ahead and slap my name on this baby. At least Stark won't be the only one with his name on shit anymore."
"He's not," She reminds him as they exit the empty room. "We're all on the lease." Something that Tony himself had, quite unexpectedly, insisted upon. The facility belongs to the Avengers, he'd said, and promptly included all five of their names in the lease. Of course, his name was still the first. Natasha would swear the font is slightly bigger, too. They're not sure if Thor is actually allowed to own Earth property, but he'd scrawled his name on the damn thing anyway while Tony pestered Pepper to check with Legal.
Bruce's name is there too, even if he doesn't know it.
It almost doesn't hurt anymore, to think his name in her mind. Natasha steadfastly ignores the fact that it never hurt all that much to begin with, not as much as it should have hurt to be left behind by someone she would have given everything up for. (But she had the chance to do that - to leave. She didn't. He did. It feels like the answer to a question Natasha never realized she'd been asking herself.)
"Oh, yeah," Clint recalls. "Whatever. This is different. What're you getting?"
"Living quarters," She says flatly, refusing to play along. "I don't need the armory named after me. I'll leave the marking to you dogs."
"I promise not to bring pee into this territorial shit," The archer intones solemnly as they leave the training wing entirely, heading for the helipad. He's been here for three days now, and Laura has a history of giving birth a few days before the due date. Natasha merely rolls her eyes and leads him to the main building. The facility is almost done and finally looks more like a new building than slabs of concrete thrown together but to Natasha, the winding corridors and endless rows of doors are nothing new. It feels more like home than Stark's tower ever did.
"Hey," Clint bumps her shoulder when they step into the elevator. "You know what makes you so damn good at your job?"
It's random, but if Natasha had to describe her best friend in one word, random would probably be one of her picks. Dork is on the list too, along with painintheass which definitely counts as one word, unless you'd like to take that matter up with her gun. The point is, she's used to Clint's randomness. "The fact that I've literally been trained for this since childhood." Natasha deadpans.
"Well, yeah," He shrugs as Natasha jabs at a button. "But do you remember what you used to tell me? When we'd pull you out of deep cover and you could hardly remember who you were. Are," Clint amends after a moment's thought. "Whatever."
Natasha thinks she's starting to see where this will lead, but she dutifully recites the phrase anyway. "A lie is only undetectable if even the liar is unaware of her deception." The words lose something in the English translation. The original Russian phrase has a nicer ring to it, or maybe that's just nostalgia speaking. After all, the words had been barked at her time and time again throughout her childhood, as often as any other child would have been treated to a favorite bedtime story.
"Yeah, that," Clint nods. He inhales and maybe even squares his shoulders just the slightest bit. "Look, here's what I'm trying to say: this isn't deep cover, Tasha. This is your life." He glares when she groans and bangs her head against the metal box carrying them down.
"I have no idea what you're saying," Natasha huffs, a token protest. Still, she crosses her arms and grudgingly turns her eyes back to Clint, and he takes it as a sign to go on. If Natasha really doesn't want to hear it, he reasons, she'd probably have knocked him out by now.
"You and Banner, that's what I'm talking about," Clint says as they step off the elevator, but somehow the accusation he'd meant to hurl at her falls flat. So he's still pretty pissed that he'd missed that. Of course he had, he's never really paid attention to this kind of thing. He just trusts Natasha to come to him with this sort of information. So he's pretty annoyed, but somehow he ends up sounding like a tired, disapproving older brother instead as they come to a stop in an empty hallway, Natasha's arms still crossed defensively as she faces him.
"You hid it from me, didn't you?" Never let it be said that Natasha shies away from looking someone right in the damn eye when confronted with her deception. She's actually glaring at him, in fact. Clint remains undeterred; he knows how Natasha gets when she's really pissed, and she doesn't show it with mere glares. "You hid it from me on purpose, because you knew I'd figure out what you were up to."
"Even Stark figured it out," Natasha rolls her eyes. "I'm pretty sure there was no hiding on my part. You're just shit at these things."
"Bullshit," Clint spits. "I called you and Cap ages before you guys started dancing around each other."
Natasha stills, and Clint wonders if he's gone too far. Going still is one of the things Natasha does do when she's pissed. But she's far too occupied with her own thoughts to notice the slight concern in her friend's eyes.
Of course Natasha had known that their conversation was headed here but now that they've arrived, she realizes she doesn't want to talk about this; can't talk about this, even. Not with the memories of him and her and them still in the back of her head, slowly creeping to the front of her mind with each day that she spends with him as her only companion. Everyone else is gone – Fury and Maria are busy recruiting; Stark seems to be taking the farm-for-Pepper idea seriously, only he's gone and replaced farm with island; Thor is probably being crowned King; Clint spends most of his time bitching about his salary and balancing three kids while saving up for college and even more home improvements. And Bruce… Natasha's somewhat relieved to feel a little stab of pain at the thought. It's not much, less than it was before, less than it was yesterday even, but it makes it easier to hold onto her… her lie. It's the first time she's thought of it as such, has realized that it is a lie. Damn Clint and his perception and that thing he does, knowing her so well and reading her like an open book and caring enough to call her out. Damn Clint and all of that.
Still, there's something there. It's not a prick, not a thorn or a needle, barely the dull pain of pressing the tip of a sharp pencil into a fingertip, but it still hurts. And if his absence hurts and worries her as a friend more than it does as a lover… well, no one has to know.
Clint has never been particularly good at minding his own business, though.
"I still don't know what happened, Tasha, with you and…" He drags a weary hand down his face, unwilling to bring up what is obviously still a sore subject nearly a year later. "And you're not going to tell me, fine, I get it. But I do know what's happening with you and Banner. Or what's not happening." Natasha nearly flinches, and her tense shoulders don't escape Clint's sharp eyes. "Hell, Nat, I don't want to say this but I don't know how else to put it: how could you have been so selfish?"
She does flinch, then, and drops her arms to her sides. Crossing them seems too protective, and Natasha sees now that she has no right to defend herself.
Clint eases up, knowing that he's gotten through to her. "I know what you're after, Natasha," He tells her softly, coming to lean against the wall next to her. "You've been getting… soft," She slugs him in the arm for that, but Clint goes on. "You have," He insists. "Ever since you demanded that I name this kid after you."
Natasha has nothing to say to that. It was supposed to be a joke, at first. But just as she does with her lies, Natasha infuses even her humor with a tiny bit of the truth. And some part of her had liked the idea of a little girl to bear her name, her wisdom, her teachings. A little girl to carry on the good parts of her legacy, everything she would have passed on to her own little girl. She rests her head against Clint's shoulder, suddenly tired from fighting against so many truths she'd blinded herself to. There are so many things she wants and cannot have that Natasha has convinced herself she can't have anything she wants. And so she's spent the last year chasing after something else, something wrong.
Chasing, she wonders, or running?
"I don't blame you, Tasha," Clint sighs, resting his chin on her head as he gives voice to all the thoughts she's only now claiming as her own, pulling them out from the dark waters she'd thought to bury all of her dead in. Dead bodies, dead dreams, so many dead things in her heart and yet… some not quite dead yet, some still stubbornly struggling to stay afloat. "I want that for you, Nat," The archer mumbles into her hair and Natasha thinks, for the first time, I want that too. "I want you to be happy, even if it doesn't look like my version of happy, or your vision of happy. I want you to find some sort of happiness. But," And here it comes, a nightmarish writhing creature pushing its way to the surface. "You'll never be happy with Banner."
Clint doesn't quite know what to say after that, and Natasha thinks that's because it's her cue. She can't shrink away from this now, back down and let Clint pull all of her faults into the light. It's her responsibility, her demon to face. So she swallows and says, in the tiniest voice and with all the courage she can muster, "I know."
It's not quite enough though, and Clint steps in to help her with the worst of it, as he always does. "But Bruce doesn't."
Natasha wonders if that makes her more of a monster than anything else, more than the sins she had confessed to Bruce. She doesn't want to face that, can't face that. It's been a long day, a long month, a long year, and she's so tired, and damn it, she's had to pretend to not care every fucking time Steve acts like they're okay… Natasha punches Clint in the arm right before she hides her face against his chest. "I just want someone," She whispers, the darkest of her secrets, perhaps even the last. She's been outrunning them since the day she invited the world to dive head-first into every last detail about her life, and finally, her secrets have caught up with her. It's a relief, somehow, because Natasha is so tired of running.
"For God's sake," She forces a dry laugh to hide the sob in her throat, throws out a joke so that she doesn't have to drown in the silence that follows her confession. "Even Stark's found someone."
"Yeah, I marvel at that every day," Clint plays along for her sake, stroking her hair the way he would his daughter's to soothe her after a hard blow… or before. "But Banner isn't your Pepper, Tasha. And I don't know, maybe Cap isn't either," Natasha tenses in Clint's arms before she can think to hide her reaction because fuck, that hurts. It hurts more than Bruce leaving, hurts more than it should. But somehow, what Clint says next helps. "But he's got a better shot at it than Bruce."
It's a fact, pure and simple, and it suits Natasha better than anything she's deluded herself into this past year. Thinking she could leave, thinking she could run and be happy that way, knowing she's turned her back on everything she is, abandoned the few people who actually trust her… and for what? To hide out in an island with a man she's (unfairly, selfishly, wretchedly) using as a crutch?
Maybe she'll never find someone, but at least she'll still have Clint, still have the Avengers and SHIELD and her shot at redemption, still have herself. It's a better plan than anything she's come up with in the past year, and already she can see herself going down this path more clearly than any hazy, imagined future as one half of a runaway couple, reaching for a non-existent happily-ever-after.
And all of this, this lonely yet satisfying, empty yet filled to the brim with all of the things that matter (Clint and his family, knowing that she's finally cleaning out her ledger for real, being true to who she really is) existence, all of this is hinged on the possibility that a better shot doesn't work out.
"Let's get you home before Laura has to find someone else to torture during labor," Natasha says, pulling away from Clint. They share a smile and he squeezes her hand, and that is that. Clint feigns nonchalance as they resume their walk down the hallway.
"On second thought, I should probably check out all the other shooting ranges, see if you're holding out on me."
"Oh, no, you don't," Natasha smirks as the helipad comes into view. "You got her into this mess, you're gonna sit through every bone-crushing contraction she passes along to you."
"But she broke two of my fingers last time!" Clint whines as they approach the Quinjet.
"Should've thought of that before you knocked the poor lady up again," She shrugs. "Man up, Barton. Go home."
"You're the worst best friend ever," He huffs. "And it's so obvious that you're taking her side."
Natasha rolls her eyes just as Clint takes her by surprise and pulls her into a quick hug. "I'll send pictures when the kid gets here," He promises.
"I want nothing to do with the traitor," Natasha protests. "Just let me know when the next one comes along. And that one better be a little Natasha."
"You say that now, but just wait until you see Barton Jr. Or is it Barton Jr. the third at this point?" Clint wonders. "Whatever. You're gonna love him. I'm passing along all of the irresistible genes."
"As if one dumbass man-child wasn't enough for Laura to handle."
"Ouch, my feelings," Clint deadpans.
"Go cry about it in your jet," Natasha says, waving him off.
"Fine, fine, I know when I've worn out my welcome," He turns towards the stairs, only to turn back around. "One last thing,"
"Are you ever going to leave?" Natasha asks, but the earnest look in Clint's eyes convinces her to keep further comments to herself.
"You're so afraid to fall, Natasha," Clint tells her. "That you've turned your back on the one person who would have caught you."
He pecks her on the cheek and runs up the stairs then, and the jet's engine is roaring before Natasha can process his words.
"You think you're so smart," She huffs as Clint cheerfully waves at her one last time before he takes off, but as she turns around to head back into the building, a smile tugs at her lips.
She's not going to do anything with his advice (Clint is notoriously bad when it comes to matters of the heart so he's probably wrong anyway) but it's nice to know that someone cares.
And that's about as far as I got before I decided to write a different kind of fix-it. If you haven't read I Figured Out Where I Belong, that's what this fic eventually turned into. So think of this as a deleted scene of sorts. I hope you enjoyed it.
E Salvatore,
July 2015.