The Bonds of Love
by Alobear
Category: F/M (Canon relationship)
Pairing: Clint and Laura Barton (also references to Bruce/Natasha from the film)
Notes:
So, my Avengers obsession is still going strong. Nothing really original in this, I'm afraid, but I felt the need to write it, so there you go.
XXXXX
Clint examined his surroundings without opening his eyes. Hard mattress, rough blanket, smell of disinfectant, incessant beeping. He was in a hospital. Yay.
The last thing he remembered was collapsing onto a row of seats on the helicarrier's lifeboat after... His mind shied away from thinking about what had happened in the city. He shifted slightly, awakening a sharp pain in his right side. Again? What was it with enemy fire and that part of his body. Laura was going to be pissed.
"Idiot."
Whilst he didn't disagree, he was pretty sure his internal voice wasn't that breathy. He cracked one eye open, and a fuzzy dark shape with a blur of red on top quickly resolved itself into Natasha. She was glaring at him.
"What did I do this time?" Clint asked wearily.
"You told a SHIELD medic you were 'fine'," she informed him, her voice tight. "By the time the lifeboat docked, all the civilians were taken care of, and someone finally realised you weren't just taking a nap, you'd lost so much blood, they nearly couldn't..."
She broke off and looked away from him, her arms crossed tightly over her chest.
Her words sparked a memory in Clint's clouded mind. He had been shot, hadn't he? Not all of the bullets had been stopped by the Maximoff boy, but he hadn't realised at the time that it was that bad. And no, he still didn't want to think about Maximoff.
Natasha's lack of control over her emotions finally registered. She was sitting stiffly in her plastic chair, carefully looking anywhere but at him, her entire posture screaming distress. There was no way something so routine as him almost dying could have reduced her to this.
Clint pushed himself up on his pillows, ignoring the protest from his side.
"Nat?" It came out a bit more sharply than he'd intended, because now he was really worried. "What's happened?" His mind supplied a litany of possibilities. "The others - are they all okay?"
Her jaw clenched. "Nobody else died, if that's what you mean."
He reached out to her, but she was sitting too far away.
"So, what is it?" he persisted. "Come on, talk to me."
Clint knew not to push further than that. He had to let her come to him. Repeated mistakes with demanding things from her early on in their partnership had taught him the hard way how not to handle her. While their friendship and mutual trust was rock solid now, it was still difficult for Natasha to open up emotionally, and he had to give her the time to reach a place where she was ready.
After a pause that was so long, Clint was beginning to think it might never end, she finally turned her head to meet his gaze.
"I fucked it up with Bruce," she said at last, her voice barely above a whisper.
Clint almost laughed. He had been imagining torture, maimings, deaths of loved ones, and Nat was having relationship problems? But then he really looked at her again, and the pain in her eyes was so raw, it took his breath away.
"What happened?" he asked again.
"I told him I'd run away with him," she said, taking him completely by surprise. "And then, when it came down to it, and he told me I'd done enough and he asked me to leave all the fighting behind and go with him..." She broke off again, and swallowed hard. "I pushed him off a ledge to make him go green."
She hugged herself even tighter, looking at the floor.
"Oh, Nat," Clint said, sympathetically, but still not really understanding the problem. "You just did what you had to do. I'm sure he'll understand that."
She lifted her head and met his gaze again: this time her eyes were hard.
"No, he won't," she said simply. "He took the quinjet - still as the Hulk - and he left. He wouldn't let me talk him down. And we can't track him. He's gone."
Clint shifted sideways in the narrow bed and opened his arms. "Come here," he said.
Natasha only hesitated a moment. Then she rose smoothly from her chair, took the two steps to his bedside and folded herself into his embrace. He felt her trembling and he held her close.
"How could I have been so stupid?" she asked. "Look at what I am - what he is. How could I have let myself believe that we could have something - anything? I've guarded myself so carefully against ever being compromised again - and then I went and did it to myself."
Clint kissed her hair. "It happens to the best of us," he murmured, wishing he had words that didn't sound so hollow. "You're only human, after all." A more practical solution presented itself. "When I get out of here, come home with me for a bit. It'll do us both good, and Laura and the kids would love it."
Natasha pushed herself up on one elbow and looked down at him, her usual mask of calm almost back in place.
"No," she said, softly. "I think you and Laura need some time alone, after the invasion last week. And besides, not all of us have the luxury of a vacation. I've got work to do." She managed a small smile. "I'll be okay."
Clint searched her gaze, looking for the cracks, and assessing their threat level. "Promise?" he asked.
She snuggled back down against him. "Promise," she said.
It wasn't much but, for now, it was enough.
XXXXX
Clint's homecoming this time was less dramatic than the previous one. The house seemed strangely empty without all the Avengers filling it with their physical size and their egos. Laura, he knew, was relieved that he'd come alone, but the kids were naturally a bit disappointed.
Laura traced her fingers over his latest scar, gave him one of her torn looks that let him know she cared but would never question his duty - and life settled down into what passed for normal when he was home.
But Clint was restless and on edge. He caught sight of his son out of the corner of his eye and instead saw the boy from the city. He looked out over his land and pictured it torn up by machine gun fire. And, every time he closed his eyes, he saw a silver blur brought to a premature halt by a hail of bullets meant for him.
Normally, he would talk those kinds of things through with Nat before he went home, and he suspected she often called Laura to brief her on what to expect when it was particularly bad. But, this time, his support system had been interrupted by Nat's need for him to be there for her for a change. He wasn't used to going straight from a mission to the farm without that buffer in between, and he found he was having difficulty letting go of what had happened. He knew Laura would listen and help as much as she could, but he figured she had enough to deal with, considering how close the baby was to coming, so he tried to tough it out on his own.
The second time he awoke from a nightmare and slipped out of bed in the middle of the night, however, Laura followed him downstairs and out onto the porch. She tucked herself into his side and hooked one arm around his waist.
"I'm sorry," he said, still trying to shake off images of dead children with silver hair. "I didn't mean to disturb you."
"Well, you are," she said, baldly. "Disturbing me, I mean. You need to talk to someone, Clint. And, if for some reason you don't want it to be me, it'll have to be someone else. But you can't go on like this."
"I know," he replied softly. He reached around and laid one hand against her belly, feeling the baby kick. "I just thought you have enough on your plate right now."
Laura looked up at him. "But you jumping out of your skin at every unexpected sound, and thrashing around in your sleep isn't a solution - for either of us. What happened?" She placed her hand over his and squeezed his fingers. "I didn't think there was anything too bad this time - Nat didn't call."
So, that confirmed that theory.
"Nat's got her own problems this time," Clint told her. "She had a - fight - with Banner and he's gone off to sulk somewhere. She didn't take it well." He felt like he was betraying Nat a little by couching it in such flippant terms, but Laura read the reality behind his presentation.
"Oh, poor Nat," she said, and her sympathy was heartfelt. "Why couldn't it just have worked out for them? It seemed like they both deserved some happiness."
"You got that right," Clint sighed. "So, we did a bit of role reversal. I picked up her pieces for a change, rather than the other way around."
"You're a good man, Clint Barton," Laura said with affection. "But you seem to have short-changed yourself a bit in the process. Can you tell me about it? Do you think it would help?"
Clint took a long moment to consider. He knew he had to do something, and talking things through had always helped in the past. He just wasn't sure if he was ready to open up in that way to Laura. It wasn't that he didn't trust her - far from it - it was just that he didn't want to make it any harder for her to let him go back to work when it inevitably came time for him to do so. Also, this time had been different somehow, in a way he hadn't yet managed to fully identify, and he felt a reluctance to explore that with Laura for some reason.
Eventually, though, he took a deep breath and decided to give it a try.
"You know the work I do is dangerous," he began.
She gave a soft laugh and he echoed it.
"Yeah, well," he said, a bit self-consciously. "I'm working this through as I go, so you'll have to bear with me a bit."
She tightened her arm around his waist. "Okay, I'm sorry. Go on."
"Right, well, I'm used to being in the middle of a fight. I have my bow and my quiver, and I assess the threats and eliminate them. There's a kind of zone, where everything reduces to finding the next target, drawing an arrow, letting it fly. It's like a dance, and I just lose myself to it until it's over. Now, sometimes, I destroy the threat, and sometimes, the threat gets the chance to try to destroy me. But I don't think about that when I'm in the middle of it - the 'him or me' aspect of it is just another part of the dance that needs to be woven into the pattern."
He broke off, trying to order his thoughts.
"Who knew you could be so poetic?" Laura asked lightly.
Clint stroked her hair, and went on.
"When we were in the city, and all the buildings were collapsing, and we were trying to get the people to safety, there was a moment when I thought the battle was over, and we'd done what we had to do, and I could breathe again." He saw the shattered city in his mind's eye, zeroing in on the little boy still trapped in the market, and felt his breath start to speed up. "But there was a boy who'd been left behind. So, I went back out into the madness to get him." He screwed his eyes shut, but the images wouldn't stop. "And we were on our way back to the lifeboat, and the jet came out of nowhere, and the bullets were heading straight for us. There was nowhere to take cover and there was no way I could fight back, so I made a conscious decision, which I've never had the time to do before." He looked down to see his hands clutching the porch railing. "I thought about you and the kids, but I did it anyway..." He trailed off, not wanting to put it into words.
But Laura was relentless. "Did what?" she asked. "What did you do?"
Clint took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I covered the boy with as much of my body as I could, I turned my back on the machine guns, and I waited to die."
Laura gasped. "Oh, Clint," she breathed.
But he wasn't finished. "And then the Maximoff boy came out of nowhere and protected me the way I was trying to protect the boy - and he died, and I was glad." Guilt rose up from his chest and threatened to choke him. "I mean, he'd been the bad guy up until the day before, for fuck's sake. What did he matter? And his sister had caused us all so much pain with her spooky mind games. Why should I care about how she felt? Nat wouldn't have to tell you I wasn't coming home, our kids would still have a father. I deserved to live way more than he did, right?" Clint clenched his jaw, squeezing the wood of the porch rail until his knuckles whitened.
Laura took hold of his arms and gently pulled them free, turning him to face her.
"He didn't deserve to die," she said. "But neither did you. You were both trying to do the right thing, and I will always be grateful to him for letting you come home to me. Just like I'll always be glad you're the kind of man who would give your life to save a child, even if it means one day you won't come home." She reached up and cupped his cheek with one hand. "You can honour his sacrifice without killing yourself with guilt about it."
Clint pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, then looked back down at her earnest, loving face.
"You're much better at this than Nat," he said, going for jokey but missing by several degrees. "She usually just slaps me upside the head and tells me to get over it."
In answer, Laura reached up and cuffed the back of his head lightly. "Get over it," she said.
He smiled. "Yes, ma'am."
THE END