A/N: To all of the Clintasha fam who've supported this ship since the start, this one's for you! On a side note, I'm glad we finally have more Clintasha content from the Avengers: Endgame trailer. This headcanon starts right after the scene shown in the trailer. Enjoy!

"I need a new direction,
'Cause I have lost my way."
- End of All Days, 30 Seconds to Mars

"Clint."

With a dim shadow of the man's back towards her, the name had formed on her tongue as a question no more than two seconds ago, but had ultimately left her lips like an answer. A call, even, as if to arms.

Just moments ago, he had sharpened his blade against the armor on his forearm, after having felt a lone presence behind him. Maybe it was to scare her off, or maybe it was a means to prepare himself for one last kill. Either way, while it did leave her with a cold discomfort in the pit of her stomach, it did nothing to incite any fear in her.

Natasha had seen the masked man skewer his mark mercilessly — a long & polished blade pulled, first, across the flexor tendons in the man's attacking arm, and then a swift cut into his bicep, leaving the arm limp. Within a split second, the mark was down on his knees with his legs immobilized, pleading for his life for as long as he could — which wasn't long — until the blade had severed his throat as well.

Such precision, ease in slicing one's way through to his mark, and a kind of ruthlessness that could only be matched with hers in her much earlier days, didn't need questioning. She knew exactly who it was beneath the mask. Beneath all that rain-drenched, bloodstained armor.

She knew who he was, and she didn't need to fear her best friend... right?

For a long, unbearable moment, she watched his back tense under his gear. She observed his grip tighten and shift around the katana's handle. The breath that he's taken in sharply at the sound of her voice, he didn't exhale. Even from behind, she could see how the gears in his head were turning and churning in an attempt at a reaction.

Having taken this long, she began to worry herself with the thought that while she recognized Clint beneath all that armor, maybe he didn't recognize her at all.

She didn't know what to expect. It seemed that this, the not knowing, had been happening way too often as of late. And never would she have ever thought that she would ever have to feel this way with him, with Clint. Her Clint.

Throughout this internal ordeal, the man beneath his feet laid slipping in and out of consciousness, a thick and constant gurgle lodged in his throat as he choked to his demise. Blood from the man's wounds and from the stained blade itself, diluted into rainwater on tar, streaming past his boots and meeting at hers.

As the man gurgled through his last breath, Clint worked through his. Then, he sheathed the katana into its matching scabbard, pushed back the hood and pulled off the mask over his head.

The blonde-haired assassin breathed to herself a slight sigh of relief, at the knowledge that she wouldn't have to fight for her life with him — she had been worried and, as much as she hated to admit it, prepared to do so. Luckily it hadn't come to this. However, her relief was short-lived.

He turned to her, just ever-so-slightly to look over his shoulder, and the stone-cold discomfort in her stomach overwhelmed her in an instant as soon as their eyes met. She was mostly at a loss for words, but if there had to be one to describe the cold discomfort that she felt, it would be of gut-wrenching shock.

It was a chilling, dark void in his eyes, in the places where she could count on to find affection and acceptance whenever she needed to be reminded of her own humanity. The eyes that kept careful watch on her as she reformed herself from a killer, to something less than that. To the eyes that lit up with pride when she did her first good thing.

Many people wore their hearts on a sleeve, but Clint always wore it behind that pair of iridescent, prismacolor orbs. Warmth, when she felt stranded. Comfort, when she was always in over her head, over the voices in her head. Love, be it between friends or something more, when they were together.

Now, she couldn't recognize the dullness behind his eyes, and never would she have thought in over a decade that she would ever have to see this day before it happened to her first.

He was always the stronger one, the one with more heart, but now he was less than human, with the heavy shadows beneath his weary eyes to pull it all together. Clint was wasting away right in front of her, from an illness that she knew had no one good remedy.

Time and time again, she had been there, brushed with this intense despair that was now devouring him alive too. But she never ever got this far, not once to this extent. He never let her. He was always there to make sure it never came to that.

If she'd been struggling, he would always lend her a helping hand. If she'd been lost, he would be there to point her in the right direction. If she'd relapsed, he would support her in her many re-recoveries. If she had went off the deep end, he would reach right in and pull her to the surface, over and over and over, until she didn't need him anymore to stay afloat.

And now, after everything that he had done to get her to where she was, Natasha felt like she had let him down. She felt herself tense at this realization, her right-hand grip around the handle of the umbrella growing stiffer by a fraction.

Her partner's eyes drifted down to her hand, and then back up to barely meet her eyes again, taking a tight and labored breath as he did. His jaw clenched itself, and then unclenched. Then he turned his gaze to the floor, pivoted on his booted heel, and began to leave her behind.

"Clint, wait," she managed to call out again, after working through her thoughts and all her nerves.

He didn't stop.

When she observed the distance that was slowly growing between them, she realized that her legs hadn't started moving, though she thought they had. Putting her mind to it, she began to trail along behind him, walking in his exact footsteps.

"Please, can we talk?" She asked once more.

"Just leave, Natasha," he demanded, neither stopping nor turning back when he addressed her.

This was the first she had heard of his voice in over three years, and it sounded rusty, as if he hadn't used it for a prolonged period of time. The despair that she could hear in his tone, even from those three simple words, was astounding. It matched the dullness she'd seen in his eyes, as well as in his overall manner.

Natasha continued ahead. "I think you know that if you don't stop to talk to me, I'm just going to keep on following you, right? And if you run, I'll just find you again, like I already have."

And finally, with a deep and dreadful exhale on his part, Clint stopped in his tracks and turned around.

"What do you want from me?" He asked.

A hard look was sewn into his features, as if she were the enemy. She tried not to take offense to that, and very easily didn't.

The blonde sighed. "I just want to talk."

"Fine," he agreed coldly. "Talk."

"Are you okay?" It was the first question that came to mind, not at all one she should've asked.

"I'm fine."

She couldn't tell from his voice if he was lying, but her gut screamed a loud, shrill yes. Natasha let it slide, for she wasn't here to engage him in an argument over his overall denial of feelings.

So instead, she nodded, took a step forward towards him. "Why didn't you call?"

"I didn't feel like talking."

"And you didn't come by, either." She took another step, and subsequent ones after to gradually close the distance between them.

"I didn't feel like meeting anyone," he said.

Natasha scoffed to herself lightly, swallowing against the lump rising in her throat. Now just nearly an arm-length apart, and her appreciating little victories like the fact he didn't back away from her like she had assumed he would have, she felt her heart go heavy. "I thought you were dead," she admitted softly.

"Should've stayed that way."

The blonde was afflicted with a pang in her chest. She came into this thinking it wasn't going to hurt, but this conversation — or confrontation — hurt like hell. She could even feel the resulting ache in her bones.

She let out a deep sigh. "I went by your house, after it happened. When I didn't see you, or anyone, I..."

Her words trailed off, giving into her loss for words, just the way that she'd felt three years ago and when she had been greeted with an empty house. She could easily recall the heaviness that settled in her chest since that very day, as she sat at the half-made dinner table and wept to herself.

Natasha fought off a reprisal of the same tears as she continued. "If you'd been alive all this while, why'd you leave?"

"I couldn't..." Clint's voice faltered, much like his stone-cold gaze that had since fallen to the floor, at the space between them. "I tried, but I..."

His breath caught. Even the rigidity in his manner had left his body, in his struggle to find the words. He pursed his lips, tongue grazing on all the raindrops that had managed to roll to the crevice of his pressed lips. With stray raindrops rolling down his cheeks, she could've easily mistaken them for tears.

"I just... didn't know how to, anymore," Clint confessed softly, the permanent frown across his forehead softening slightly.

In that very second, that very moment where she felt her heart plain shatter into pieces at his admission, all that Natasha wanted to do was comfort him. To hold his hand, to hold him, to let him know that he didn't have to carry this heavy, wrenching baggage alone. That he never should have had to in the first place.

But for some reason, one that was unbeknownst to her as well, she didn't dare to. Her hand was out, and her fingers were reaching for him, and she wanted to touch him, she really did. He didn't even move away as she approached. But somehow, somewhere along the line, it dawned on her that she didn't dare to touch him.

It wasn't out of fear. She didn't fear him, not one bit. There were massacres way worse than the one she had just witnessed, that had been dealt by her very own hand. Nor was it out of disgust, or anger, or anything unpleasant.

Maybe, just maybe, it was the anticipation of trying to comfort him and probably realizing that she wasn't enough, because he had lost so much. She wished she was, but she wasn't prepared for that.

She wasn't prepared for how it would make her feel, to see someone she whole-heartedly adored and loved grieving and hurting. To try and hold someone that was so far beyond reprieve and not be able to do anything to relieve it.

And so she drew back her reaching hand, and settled for something else.

"I'm really sorry, Clint," she apologized. "I am."

As if she had said or done something colossally wrong, her partner's defences seemed to snap right back into place in an instant.

"I'm sorry, I can't do this," he declared, trying to pull himself together.

First, he backed away, putting ample distance between them. Then, he turned on his heel and began walking away again. This time, she didn't follow right behind him.

She simply stood by, and in a last-ditch effort to get him to stay, blurted the next words out.

"We have a plan," she said. "A plan to fix this."

"Not interested."

"We can bring them home. All of them. Everyone."

He glanced at her without stopping. "If this is another one of Stark's stupid plans again, he can take that plan up his ass and go fuck himself," Clint snapped sharply, with a hint of sarcasm.

"Tony's gone," she shared. It was starting to get a little hard to breathe.

The man stopped in his tracks, slowly and then all at once. He took a moment, then turned to look back at her once more. He didn't even need to say it; she knew the exact question he had wanted to ask.

"Three years ago. He was stranded in space, after fighting the, uh... the war on another front. He said it was on Titan," Natasha explained. Her breaths were shaky just thinking about this, having lost their best defender. "Ran out of food, water, and eventually, air."

She observed as Clint worked through an array of emotions, in the way he tensed and the hard look in his features softened yet again. He held his breath for what seemed like the longest time.

Clint didn't exactly like the guy, but that was what their pseudo family was all about. Nobody had to like anybody that much, especially with that many large personalities in a small room, but they still cared deeply for one another.

"When his messages to Pepper finally got transmitted, it was a year too late. That was all it was, an old clip," she continued. "Thor found the body, brought him home."

She recalled sitting in the living room at the facility, a year after the decimation, and suddenly having Tony's figure thrown up on the screen in a full stream of new messages. Each clip revealed more and more on how he'd been wasting away, until there wasn't one anymore. By the last clip, she came to realize that they were old clips, and that he was probably dead by then.

Thor had used the Bifrost to get him home, and then they had used a casket to put him six feet underground where he was laid to rest. There were still public visits to his grave to this day.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly. "Must've been hard." And it was.

Natasha shook her head lightly, brushing the matter off to get to the matter at hand. "The plan is-"

"Look," the man stopped her promptly. "Whatever plan you guys came up with, I don't need to hear it. I don't want to. If it all works out, good on you. But I'm not going to get involved, if that's what you sought me out to get me to do."

"Clint..."

She looked at him, and he looked right back. He took a breath and sighed heavily to himself, pinching the bridge of his nose as if to expel a throbbing headache.

"All I want to do is get on with the life I have now, the life I have here, and do what I can until I... can't," he said, his voice taking a strained, lacklustre tone. "It was nice seeing you, Tash, but you really shouldn't have come."

So she shouldn't have come?

Now, the air was cold in the rain, but she felt warmer than ever. The anger and frustration burning in the pit of her stomach was churning out heat that left her uncomfortably unsettled.

"I didn't come here just to rope you into this," she argued, insulted. "I came here to find you because I had to know if you were really alive. Because I needed to know that you were okay. And now you're telling me that I shouldn't have come? Wow," she snapped sharply back at him.

Natasha was on a roll now. All the feelings that she'd felt for the past three years, every unending headache and each extra second of feeling weights pressing down onto her chest, from anger or frustration or grief or just plain pressure from trying to hold what was left of the team together, it was compounded onto her now and Clint's words had exacerbated it by a full tenfold.

"Did you know I spent the better part of three years thinking you were dead? The two people I could ever love most in my life, just gone. I cried for you. I grieved for you. I was in pain,the worst pain I'd ever felt in years, because you decided to just upend your life and disappear, like everyone else," spat the blonde.

She started towards him, closing the distance until they were face to face, bare inches apart. He didn't budge. "And I get that you're in pain too, Clint, but you don't get to say that to me. Ever," she warned.

"And if Barnes was still here, I bet you wouldn't even have come," he said, in the most calm and composed, almost serene manner.

And it felt like a slap right back in her face.

She gasped, and she could feel her features crumpling into one of hurt and disgust. She struggled to find the words, and though she knew that he wouldn't mean what he'd said a quick moment later, it still left her stunned. Natasha could feel the breathlessness kick in, and came to realize that she had forgotten to breathe.

The raindrops pelted against the fabric of her umbrella, the only audible sound that filled the tense silence between them both.

And then, finally, "of course I would have. How could you even say that?"

"I'm sorry I..." He blinked his gaze at her away to the floor. His voice was flimsy, beginning to thin. "I shouldn't have said that."

"It's fine," she huffed. "I said some things that I shouldn't have said too. I'm sorry I did."

"No, no. You... you get to say those things. I deserve it. Um," Clint was stumbling over his words now, frowning to himself. There was something off about his manner that she couldn't quite figure out. "I-I'm sorry. I think you should go. I'm not in a..."

His words trailed off as he began to pale. Even in the darkness of the alleyway that they had ended up in, she could see the color leave his face in seconds. His breaths grew labored again, as if he couldn't catch air. As she moved her observation downwards, she could see his hands balled into tight fists, one tightened around the handle of his weapon, and the other shut in on itself.

Clint must have been aware that he had begun to breathe choppily, and shut his eyes to catch one proper breath.

"I'm not in a really good place, right now," he took his time to repeat, and when he did, he did it defeatedly. "I'm sorry, Tash. I'm sorry I can't do what you want me to do. You shouldn't be here. You shouldn't have to see... this."

"Clint..."

Again, she had the urge to reach out for him. She could physically feel the intensity of his internal turmoil radiating out from beneath his skin, in the choice of his words. She came to Japan to make sure that he was alive and okay, and it was so obvious that he wasn't.

But then the same fear hit her in her bones again, and she just couldn't move.

"Is someone picking you up?" Clint continued.

She swallowed, steadying her voice. "Not till tomorrow morning. I told them to give me a day."

"You got somewhere to stay?"

"Not yet. But it shouldn't be too hard to find something for tonight," she said. His eyes were still to the floor, though his fists had since relaxed. "I don't want to leave you alone like this."

"You just talkin' about tonight, or more than that?"

"I think a little bit of both," Natasha admitted.

Her partner let out a brief, half-hearted chuckle to that. "You got a world to worry about, Natasha. You don't have to worry about me. It's nothing. It doesn't even matter."

"It does, to me."

Clint's eyes rose back to meet hers, and he glanced at her for what seemed like the longest second ever. He was pondering, deep in thought, and then he finally relented, probably not wanting to put up with any further protest or argument.

"My place is this way," he pointed in the direction of the alley. "It's gonna be a long walk."

"Okay," she agreed.

He nodded quietly. "Okay."

Stay tuned, more to come!