A/N: This is the first time I've ever done basic Clintasha fic go me
Clint had been tracking the wildling for over a fortnight now.
If he did not find her soon, he would die.
He was alone, sent from his party to scout and to bring back any information he could, and afoot, his mount having died last week. It had been a garron, shaggy and surefooted, but the Skirling pass was coated in ice, and the horse slipped. Clint butchered it for what meat he could carry, then left the carcass for the beasts.
His wildling woman was afoot too, and just as alone. He knew she was a woman from tracking her—her footprints, when she left them, were small on the clean snow, and she had to squat when she pissed. He could not even being to guess where she was going; only that she didn't want him to follow.
She'd led him past a shadowcat's lair, when they were still in the mountains, then straight down a sheer cliff, one frosted over with ice. Either would have put most rangers off her trail, but Clint had the sharpest eyes in the Watch. He'd seen the spoor on the rocks and climbed over the den, and he'd seen the broken chunks of ice where she'd made handholds.
It was for his eyes that he'd been sent out to range in the first place. Clint was not the First Ranger—that honor went to Lord Coulson, who'd been sent to them from King's Landing years before Clint joined the Watch—but he was one of the best at stealing through a forest unseen, and by far the best shot. His bow was made of pine and ash and strung with fine cord, strong enough to shoot an arrow into a headwind and light enough that he could still carry it, even in his exhaustion.
It was slung over his back now, along with a quiver of arrows. The quiver was still nearly full, despite that he'd been ranging for weeks. You never wasted an arrow, not when you were alone beyond the Wall.
Clint flexed his fingers and scanned the ground before him. The wildling's tracks were still clear, despite the rising wind. Clint didn't mind wind, but he didn't know what he would do if a new snow erased the wildling's tracks.
Clint forced himself into a swift dogtrot, still flexing his fingers. He could bear losing a few toes, or even a nose, and he'd lost an ear years ago. But if the cold took any part of his hands, he might lose his skill with a bow, and that would doom him, both out here and within the Watch.
The dusk was deepening, but the moon was wide tonight. It made the snow glitter beneath Clint's boots. The woman wouldn't stop, not on a night as clear as this. Clint cursed her for it, even as part of him admired her. Would that his brothers had such dedication.
He walked as the moon rose, and the stars emerged. The trees in the Haunted Forest were too thick to see them clear, but he felt the merry twinkle at his back. Clint always felt better about the cold when he knew that the stars were watching his back.
Clint's feet slowed as the night deepened. The energy the sight of the stars had given him was fading, and he was beginning to realize he wouldn't catch her tonight. The thought of another day traveling like this was enough to make his shoulders sag, and when he next passed a tall pine, he climbed it.
The sticky sap on his fingers made him grimace, but it was worth it to sit on a bough and rest a moment without fear that a beast would come up behind him. He rested his arms on his knees and panted. His breath made fine crystals in the air before him, and for a second Clint was a child again, playing at dragons with the other orphans.
But he was no child, and a puff of false dragon's breath wouldn't warm him. Clint pushed himself to his feet and crept along the branch, taking his bow in his hands. The boughs protected him from the wind, and he wondered if it wouldn't be better to sleep the night here. The clear sky made the snow he feared unlikely, and he wasn't like to find a warmer bed, not unless he lit a fire.
Clint had no plans to make that mistake. The wildling woman might see the smoke and double back, and slay him in his sleep. It had happened to one of his brothers once.
Still, Clint hesitated. He had only a few strips of raw horsemeat left, and the forest was strangely bare. He hadn't seen a single predator since they'd left the mountains, not bear or boar or direwolf. Nor had he heard birdsong, or spied out so much game as a squirrel. The sooner he captured his human prey, the less likely he was to starve.
He looked through the trees, knowing that he couldn't stop and sleep, no matter how his legs ached or his eyes burned. There was a sliver of movement to the East, one that moved against the course of the wind. Clint laid an arrow on his bowstring and looked across the forest.
As he watched, the figure resolved itself. It was a wildling, and by size, and by the smooth gait, it was the woman he hunted. She was doubling back, Clint realized. She was too far away to aim an arrow at, and moving quick, her pace almost a run.
Clint wondered what trap would have snared him if he'd not spotted her. He spun the arrow between his fingers, then jumped down from the tree. He'd seen the direction she was running, and he was an old hand at trajectory.
He ran through the forest like a shadow, his black cloak over his face and his arms, his bow sheltered beneath it. He was making for a small river, where the water still ran between rocks and fallen branches, and had too quick a current to freeze. She would have to ford it again to retreat, and Clint would be waiting on the other side.
The river was narrow where he found it, and still singing in the dawn light. Clint went over it by jumping from rock to rock, not daring to let his boots get wet. It would harden into ice the second he left the current, and he could ill afford slippery feet. Once on the other side, he ran parallel to the water, letting it guide him. His eyes slipped from ground to air, waiting for a sign that she was close.
In fact, she'd crossed it before him. Clint cursed under his breath when he saw her print in the mud. She must have ran like the winter wind. He paused to stare at the bank, at the perfectly defined outline of a boot.
Then he followed an instinct, and forded the river again. This time he walked across a dead treetrunk. It was made slimy and rotted by the spray of water beneath it, but Clint's balance was steady, and when he jumped to the other side, he saw that there was a broken twig and disturbed snow.
He smiled grimly.
Whatever tricks she had, she could not know how close Clint was on her true trail. He shook the snow off his cloak and reached into his pack to pull out a bit of meat and gnaw on it as he walked. When it was frozen, you could barely taste that it was raw.
With the horsemeat sitting in his belly, he followed her trail, his fingers clenching and unclenching. Finally, he glimpsed her through the trees. She was wearing a cloak made of shadowcat fur, dappled black and white and grey. It blended into the shadows better than his own blacks.
But it did not blend well enough. Clint tossed his cloak back to free his hands, pulled his bow taunt, and shot at her. The arrow flew true, straight into the back of her right knee. It wasn't a shot that would kill her, at least not at first. This hunt was for knowledge, not blood.
She took off at a dead run. Clint cursed, as loudly as he pleased, and ran after her. She wove through the trees, hobbling on her hurt leg and leaving a trail of bright red blood. Clint ran after her, furiously aware that he couldn't make a clear shot through the brush.
I should have just shot her in the back. He thought. That shot would have sent her down just as fast, and she'd have taken long enough in the dying for him to drag whatever she knew past her lips.
Clint chased her like a hound after a deer. She could not keep up this pace for long, not with an arrow sticking out of her leg, and if he followed the blood trail at his leisure, there was no telling what she might do. Find a strong place and fortify herself, perhaps. Or slit her own throat rather than be captured. She had to know she was dead no matter what, with that leg wound.
The thought somehow made Clint uncomfortable, and so he ran as cold air rasped his throat, and as the muscles in his thighs sobbed, and his black wool cloak whipped and snapped behind him. Finally, she fell.
It was in a clearing beneath a weirwood tree. She fell at the very base of the tree, her hands catching her fall, her hood bent down as if in prayer. Clint slid to a halt, his bow taunt under his hands as he pointed an arrow at her. Sobbing red eyes stared down on them both.
"I'll not harm you." He said, as if he hadn't killed her already. "I want to speak with you, not slit your throat."
She mumbled something then. Clint stepped closer to hear her, relaxing the bow. "What?"
"I said, I wish I could say the same." She leapt at him, fiercer than the shadowcat whose skin she wore. Clint cursed his own exhausted stupidity and darted back. He was clothed in boiled leather and thick wool, only his throat exposed. So she went for his throat, a dirk glittering in her hand.
Clint grappled with her, ducked his chin and twisted his head away. He had a knife at his belt as well, and his was sharper steel. He drew it and slashed at her, but she was too close to him for him to make any cut but one that killed, so he reversed it in his hand and aimed the pommel at her head instead. It was crafted of bronze, with crudely worked feathers in the design. He aimed for anywhere, and ended up smashing it into her cheek.
She fell back then, with a cry. For a mad second Clint thought he had made a mistake and slit her throat for true, but it was only her hair spilling around her, red as new flame. She stared up at him, panting for breath, eyes dazed.
"I said I don't want to hurt you." Clint crouched down. She was too sluggish to stop him when he reached out and snatched the dirk from her limp fingers, or to fight as he hit her over the head once more.
"Don't light a fire."
Clint looked up. "If I freeze to death, so will you. Those ropes won't come undone except with steel."
He'd tied her to the weirwood tree. The ropes were stiff and swollen, frozen so the knots would be impossible to untie. Clint had poured water over them for just that purpose.
"Valar morghulis." She tossed her head.
"Valar dohaeris." Clint repeated back to her. "Where does a wildling learn that?"
"Where does a man of the Night's Watch?"
"Fine." Clint put down his flint and settled back. He kept an arrow in one hand. "Before I joined the watch, I was part of a mummer's troupe. We went to Braavos once, and I learned a few things. Enough to send me running back to the Seven Kingdoms on the fastest ship that would take me." And once he'd come back, and been thrown off the ship for lying about the rich relations he had in King's Landing, he'd been picked up by the Night's Watch. His crime had been starving. "And you?"
"None of your concern, crow." She said. She leaned back against the weirwood tree.
"My name is Clint." He said. "Not crow."
"Hawkeye." She said. Clint nodded. "I should have known the second the arrow hit my leg."
"I bound that up for you." Clint said.
"Why?" Her eyes searched him. She was beautiful. Clint had noticed that when he was searching her for weapons, shaking broken shards of rock from her sleeves and undoing the necklace of teeth around her throat. He had noticed too that she was deadly thin. The chase had worn on her as well.
He had not noticed her eyes, though. They were grey-green, like treacherous ice covering a frozen river. There were currents underneath that ice, swift and more than strong enough to drown a man.
"I don't want to kill you." Clint said.
She laughed.
"I truly don't." Clint spun the arrow between his fingers. "If it hadn't been that you're the only wildling I've seen since leaving the Wall, I'd have let you go in the mountains."
"Too bad. You killed us both when you tied me here."
"I'll still let you go, if you answer my questions." Clint said. "I'll go back to the Wall, you can return to your people."
"To sell them that I've sung secrets for Hawkeye?" She snorted. "I'd sooner die here."
"You might." Clint met her gaze. "I don't want to kill you. But if I have to I'll cut off your fingers one by one, and make your face as hideous as that weirwood behind you. And then I'll slit your throat."
"Just kill me now." She said. "I'd rather die with a steel kiss than…"
"I don't want to die alone either." Clint said quietly. He couldn't say why the words escaped him.
"Isn't that the fate that waits for all you crows?" She asked. "You have no wives, no children, no family. Your cloaks are shrouds and your purpose is to die."
We are the shield that guards the realms of man. Clint thought. The fire in the darkness. Valar dohaeris. "You're not alone if you die in a battle, surrounded by foes and friends. And every man in the Watch is brother to me."
"Is that what you think?" Her voice had a mocking edge. "The Night's Watch is a shadow in the North, a brethren of boys and fools who pace a Wall that they scarcely understand."
"If the Watch falls, all fires go out." Clint said, echoing words he'd once heard Fury say. "Even one as fierce as yours."
"Save your Southron preaching for your boys." She said.
"The watch holds to no gods, old or new." Clint nodded to the weirwood. "And I doubt that the gods of the North mind. I've slept in weirwood trees before, they've never dropped me."
"The old gods give no protection." She said. Her eyes swept the edges of the clearing. "They watch and they judge, and they piss on Southron gods."
"If you think the tree will judge you for telling me how many men Mance Rayder has on foot, I fear you give it too much credit." Clint said dryly. "It didn't drop so much as a leaf on my head when I tied you there."
"I'm not afraid of the gods." She glanced at him. "And neither are you, I wager."
"I've heard it said that the only real god is Death." Clint said. "And I have no interest in coming close enough to decide whether I should fear him."
She barked a laugh. "And yet you chased me over rock and river."
"You are far too comely to be death." Clint said.
She raised an eyebrow. "So quick to forsake your vows?"
"Not in deed." Clint said. "I just have good eyes. Death is ugly and treacherous and brutal."
"Are you saying I'm not?" She made an amused noise. "I thought your eyes were sharp."
"I'm saying you're more. The way you set that shadowcat to kill me? Far more elegant than Death." Clint said. "And far too clever for me to take any delight in killing you. How many men does the King have afoot?"
"Enough to take every castle you have manned." She said. "Enough to swarm over the Wall and fall on the North in a single wave."
"Liar." Clint said. She smiled. "The longer we play this game, the less like it is that you'll leave here alive."
"Neither of us is leaving here alive." She shifted, to make her seat more comfortable.
"I see why they sent you out to scout alone—you're grimmer than the Lord Commander." Clint said. She scowled. Clint pocketed the sore spot away as an arrow in his quiver. "If you're so sure we're going to die, you might as well answer my questions." He paused. "At least tell me your name."
"Widow." She said. "After all the widows I've made."
"Your parents must have had far seeing eyes, to know your nature as soon as you slid from the womb." Clint remarked. He reached into his pack. She tensed. Clint rolled his eyes and waved a strip of horsemeat at her. "You see these? I have enough to take me back to the Wall and still give my dog a treat. You talk to me, and I'll give you half."
Clint had enough horsemeat to last another two days. A week, if he stretched.
"Liar." She said. "Barter or threaten as you like. You won't wring so much as a scream out of me."
Clint twirled his arrow faster. Gods help him, but he believed her.
"Why are you doing this?" He asked. "Do you love your King?"
"Do you love yours?"
"I serve the realm, not King Stark. And as I live in the realm yes, I do love it." Clint said. "So do my brothers, and so does my Commander. We give our lives for our vows and for the protection of the innocents who would die if the Wall fell."
"What of the innocents on this side of the wall?" Widow asked softly.
"We leave them in peace." Clint said.
"Bah." Widow turned her head, so her cheek pressed the bark of the weirwood. Clint sat and gnawed his horsemeat. "Would you believe I was trying to save them?"
"I'd ask from what."
"You're a fool." She closed her eyes. "Wait in this forest, you'll see soon enough."
Clint shivered, for all he knew that she was lying. He hadn't seen another living beast since the Frostfangs, not game or bird or monstrous beast. Even in their clearing, the only tracks in the snow were his and hers.
Which was odd, come to think of it. There hadn't been fresh snowfall in many days.
"How many men does Mance have?" Clint asked, instead of contemplating their solitude. "How many mounted, and how many afoot?"
She opened her eyes, but only so she could roll them at him.
"How is he coming? To which castle?" Clint persisted. He tossed his arrow, catching it so the black point went up, and glittered sharp in the sunlight. "This is your last chance to ask and walk free."
Her eyes fixed on his arrow. "What is that?"
"…an arrow?" Clint frowned at her.
"It's not made of ordinary stone." She wriggled forward as much as she was able, leaning forward to stare at it.
"No." Clint said. "It's made of dragonglass. It's lucky."
"Where did you get it?" She asked urgently.
Clint's mouth curved in a smile. "How many men does Mance have?"
"A hundred thousand afoot." She did not even miss a beat. "And five hundred mounted."
Gods. Clint thought. That, against the shadow that was the Night's Watch…
"The arrow." She snapped.
"It was a gift from the First Ranger, when I went past the Wall for the first time." Gods, Clint had been young back then. Coulson had pressed it into his hand and told him that he wouldn't freeze to death so long as he had this with him, because it was fire turned to stone. Clint had, since then, come to realize that that had been a lie told to calm a child, but he called it his lucky arrow anyway.
"Where did he get it?"
"Some corner of the armory." Clint said. He shrugged. "Dragonglass is brittle, and not much prized. Most of our weapons are steel."
She fell back against the tree, no longer bothering to struggle towards the arrow. "And that is all you have of it with you."
"I only need one lucky arrow." Clint said. "Two would make the luck turn bad."
"You're always luckier on your own." She agreed. She shook her head after that, frowning.
"Hunger's getting to you." Clint said. He held up a strip of horsemeat. "You don't have to die on an empty stomach."
"Death is death, no matter how it gets you."
"I thought you said you'd rather die of a steel kiss." Clint looked at her eyes, trying to decipher the currents there. He thought he saw something sad, and knew he saw hunger.
"It's getting colder." She said. She huddled into her shadowskin.
"It's getting to be night." Clint said. "Time for a fire."
"Do what you like." She said. "Since neither of us is afraid of death."
"That doesn't mean I want to die." Clint said, instead of making a spark. "Is Mance coming down the Milkwater?" She was silent. Clint cursed. "He is, isn't he? Then it's Castle Black he'll attack."
Mance Rayder, with a hundred thousand wildlings, all descending on Castle Black…gods, but he needed to go back, to warn them, to tell Fury to seal the gate with rubble and ice because Clint knew his brothers, and even cared for one or two, and they would all die.
Clint jumped to his feet. She stared at him. "What are you doing?"
"I have to warn the castle, what do you think?" Clint said. "To ready them, to throw back every wildling Mance can throw at us." He looked down at her. "The Wall will stand, Widow. Against a hundred or a thousand or a million of your warriors, it makes no difference."
"Whatever happened to valar morghulis?" She mused.
"Valar dohaeris." Clint countered. "And anyway, fuck valar morghulis. These are my brothers."
"They're not all warriors." The words seemed to tumble from her lips. "The old and the weak, and children, they travel with Mance as well. This is not just an invasion, this is a migration. You can't stop it. If you want your Watch to survive, you won't try."
"Why?" Clint asked. He crouched down again, staring at her. "Your people have lived North of the Wall since the days the Wall was laid down, why move South now?"
She laughed. Clint noticed that frost hung off the tips of her red curls. "You couldn't understand, you're not a wildling."
"We're all men." Clint said. "Valar morghulis fits us all."
"You're not the ones who will die. You have the Wall, we do not." Her eyes went to the edges of the clearing. Clint spun his arrow between his hands. He saw that there was ice on the shaft, though none had formed on the head. "This is a matter of survival. We migrate or we die, and either way you'll fight a war you cannot win."
"What threatens you?" Clint asked. His words came quick. "Widow, what—"
"Natasha." She said. "My name is Natasha."
"Natasha." Clint repeated.
"I wanted to hear it one last time." She said softly.
Clint reached out to her.
"Run." She looked up at him. "Run, now. Go back to your Wall. Tell your Commander that the cold is coming, tell him that valar morghulis means nothing because the dead will walk, and ask if he would rather fight an army of men or an army of shades. Go!"
She shouted the last word. Clint found himself stumbling back, the ear he'd lost to frostbite screaming, ready to turn and leave her alone in the cold. No, he thought, and turned to his pack, where his dagger lay.
An Other stood behind him. It was taller than he, with wispy white hair and a cadaverous face. Its skin was white like old bones, and its eyes glowed a brilliant blue. Clint stared up at it, frozen, as it raised a great sword, of some cold grey metal, veined with black.
"Run!" Natasha screamed behind him. Clint dodged, and the cruel blade came down on nothing but snow. Clint twisted around the Other, feeling like a child again, a little boy weaker than the big men around him, armed with a knife that slit purses better than throats and helpless but for his speed. "Hey!"
He made it to the edge of the clearing, and looked back. The demon was advancing on the wildling woman, not following him. Why would it not? She had fire in her blood, more than he did, and the creature had all the time in the world to hunt him down. It would not need to sleep, or eat, it was relentless as winter, nothing would stop it…nothing but the Wall, and the Watch.
She thinks I can escape. Clint realized. I've eaten, I'm the stronger of us, I have a chance of going and warning the Watch, of saving us all.
Except that his feet were frozen to the ground, and he was a fool. It advanced on her, blade rising to slice her free. Her eyes gazed past it. What ice was there had broken, the currents wild as they looked at Clint, telling him to go. She shed no tears.
Clint pulled the bow from his back and placed his lucky arrow on the string. He aimed, drew, released, and the arrow flew true. It was an easy shot, not twenty feet, and the arrow struck the Other straight between the shoulder blades.
He had time to think that he was the greatest idiot in the Night's Watch and that Natasha was right when she'd said they would both die.
Then the Other fell. The melt began at the center of the back, where his arrow had pierced, and spread from there. The cold armor steamed and sluiced off the tall figure. It wept like the wall as it turned around to look at him, features twisted in rage. Then its flesh sloughed off its face like rotting meat, and it dissolved utterly.
Clint's feet splashed in the corpse as he ran to Natasha. He snatched up his arrow, lying innocent in the puddle, as he passed it. He grabbed his dagger and slit the ropes holding her. He took her hand.
"Come with me." He said. Her hand was small and cold in his. Clint turned to run.
Her arm snaked around his throat. He gasped, dropping his arrow as he tried to dislodge her. She had steel in her muscles, and he sank into darkness as if he was drowning.
Clint woke up surprised, and warm. He was in a crouch in a second, with his bow in his hands and an arrow notched.
He was alone. The forest was silent but for the crackling of the tiny fire before him.
Clint looked at the arrow he held. It was his lucky arrow. And he was draped in a shadowskin cloak, in addition to his blacks. He'd been sleeping in a hollow that must once have been a predator's den, though the merry little fire would doubtless keep the beast from returning.
He laughed. There was nothing he could do but laugh. His pack was beside him, and half the horsemeat was still there. Enough for perhaps a day, maybe two.
"You might have just said no." Clint said, into the silence. There was no answer. He wondered how she'd gotten the strength to drag him out of the clearing and into this den, then decided it was probably from eating his horsemeat. He supposed that was his fault for saying she could have it.
He got to his feet, and put his pack back on his shoulders. By the grimness around him, there was still no game in the haunted forest. And he had no doubt that there were more Others coming. Given the choice, he wouldn't have stopped for rest until he was safe behind the Wall, and Fury was readying the defenses.
A trek like that might have killed him, though, and he felt more refreshed now that he had in weeks. Sure, he might well starve before he got out of this godsforsaken forest, but he'd do it with a clear head.
Clint set off at a steady dogtrot. He could see the stars shining down at him, cold and clear, mapping out the way South. He kept his bow in his hands, and an arrow nocked, but he thought it would take time for the next Other to find him.
Or at least, Natasha had thought it would take time, else she wouldn't have forced this nap on him. Clint thought he would trust her. She was starving too, and she could have taken every scrap of food he had.
Something moved in the corner of his eye. Clint twisted, quick as a whip, and shot.
A rabbit. Gods be praised, a rabbit. It had brown fur and eyes that were bright black, even in death. It was good, warm, meat, gods be praised, perhaps the only game in the forest. Clint picked it up, feeling the warmth of the body through his gloves.
He hesitated. Then he ripped off the back legs and thrust them in the snow to freeze them. The rest of the body, he left, fixed to a tree by his lucky arrow.
I'm heading to safety. He thought as he left, snatching his portion up as he went. You are not, and you'll need it more than I. Gods go with you, Natasha.
A/N: btw this is a universe where King Tony Stark sits the Iron Throne, aided by his Hand James Rhodes. Ser Steven Rogers is Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, and Ser Sam Wilson is Commander of the City Watch. Also present on the Small Council is Grand Maester Banner.
Also any reviews would be super appreciated!