Disclaimer: I do not own any of this. Anything recognizable belongs to the respective companies. I wish I owned the characters. Seriously.
This is the final oneshot (as far as I can tell) before the big story for this universe! This universe is getting bigger every time I step into it. Like the additional things from The Unusuals. Great show, that one. There are no spoilers for that, save for the names of the main characters and a single quote from the pilot episode.
After Hong Kong is like Alaska all over again. He is losing his grip on reality again, but for different reasons entirely. He can see her sharp green eyes in his mind's eye as he and Marta speed down the road on their way to nowhere.
She does not need him. She does not need what he has become.
Aaron Cross is not Clint Barton. He never will be – and Natasha needs Clint. She needs Clint, not the persona Aaron once slipped on. She needs the man he once was (the man he became for her), not the man he is now. For all the blood on his hands, Clint Barton was a better man. Aaron is just the sin eater. (That is all he is, he keeps telling himself. He believes it.) His hands are blackened and his heart is worse.
Clint was always good at what he did. That much Aaron remembers. Whether it was the parties he and Natasha had attended or taking down his target, he was good at something - something that meant something. Something that was not lying. Clint was sure of what he was doing. Clint had something – someone – to fight for. Clint had Natasha. They were partners, friends – they were Strike Team Delta. There had been an intimate level of trust between them, and there was a moment when Clint Barton knew that he loved Natasha Romanoff. Then Jason Bourne surfaced and everything fell apart.
The story plays on repeat in his mind, as if he could rewind it and stop it from happening all over again. He wishes he could. He wishes he could change the past. Clint seems like a long-distant memory to him. He does not know who he is anymore.
He can see Clint's fall in his mind's eye. It starts with Jason Bourne. It ends with Loki. He remembers the world turning blue and the captivation in his veins. It unravels him, just as it did before.
He can almost say it was like having different identities in his head, but it isn't. Being Clint Barton is nothing more than a distant memory. It is a memory that he wants to reach for so badly he cannot even begin to describe how much he wants it. He cannot reach for it.
There are times when Aaron feels like he is a broken record – more often than not, even. He never says a word about it to Marta. The less she knows, the safer she is. Natasha knows about her, but Marta does not really know about Natasha. Natasha (he desperately wants to say his Natasha, but that was a lifetime ago) will not confront Marta. Marta is an innocent party in all of this, unlike him.
They stop in Volgograd. Natasha told him about the place once. He never had the opportunity to go there before. It is strange for him to think that this is where she came from – this is where her road began. He does not know what drew him here. Maybe he thought he could fit in. His Russian is nearly perfect (thanks to her). Maybe he just wants to feel close to her in the only way he can.
There is nothing he wants more than to pick up a phone and call the nearest S.H.I.E.L.D. base and request – no, demand – to see Agent Romanoff. But that will mean going back and Aaron can never go back. Not after what he has done. Not after he lied to all of them from the instant he said he was Clint Barton.
He finds that he is lonely in Volgograd. It is not because of Marta – she is dear to him, but she does not know him. (He thinks that he is kidding himself when he tells himself that Natasha knew him. She never knew Aaron. She never knew the things he had done.)
He walks the city almost as much as he spends time in the apartment with Marta. They have not reached the bottom of the many untraceable accounts William Brandt or Clint Barton or Jason Walsh left behind.
Those are the moments when he thinks of all of the people he left behind. Those are the moments when he thinks of Casey, of Ethan, Jane, and Benji, of Jim. Those are the moments when he cannot get them out of his head. They are his ghosts and there is a part of him that thinks he deserves the haunting. He saw Casey at Walsh's funeral, safe at a distance like always. Oh, the tears she had shed for his lies. They had all shed tears, he remembers. Beaumont, Delahoy, Banks, Cole – even Alvarez. The thought of that makes his chest constrict.
If only they could see him now. They would not recognize the man who had once been their friend and partner.
You think people shouldn't keep secrets. I think that we are our secrets.
He walks for hours. By the time he turns back toward the apartment, he is freezing and hungry and the guilt that aches in his chest feels like a knife. Thinking of Casey hurts almost as much thinking about Natasha. The hurt is different – Casey was one of his closest friends. She was one of the few people he had ever trusted.
He never really trusted anyone at IMF. He knows that he spent far less time at IMF before William Brandt died than Brandt's file says he did. (He never really paid attention to the files he left behind. They were always just reminders of the lives he left behind.) But Casey…he misses Casey. It has been so long since the last time he thought about her that the knife in his chest seems to twist a little. Casey and Natasha. He regrets leaving them. He wishes he could go back, that he could see them again.
Aaron sighs as he enters the apartment building, grateful for the warmth the air inside provides. He winces as he climbs the stairs, the muscles in his legs protesting with each movement.
He stops in front of the door when he reaches it, pausing to check the number to make sure he is on the right floor. The door is ajar. He knows that Marta would never leave it open and his stomach drops. His breath catches in his throat as he pushes it open, one hand going for the gun concealed at his hip.
The apartment is silent as he enters. It remains silent as he checks the rooms. There is no one there – no Marta, no bodies, nothing. There are things strewn about – there is a lamp shattered on the floor, a knife and pieces of carrots scattered on the kitchen floor and brown lumps of potato sitting half-chopped on the cutting board.
Aaron's throat closes as he surveys the scene. It does not take him long to figure out who is behind it. He has been sloppy. He knows that. He knows that Eric Byer will do anything to finish what he started. Marta is a piece in Byer's game now. Aaron has tried his very best to protect her and he has failed.
He puts the gun away then gathers his things. He locks the apartment, running his thumb over the scratch marks on the metal around the lock.
The guilt slips away as he walks back down the stairs. He has favors to call in. He has wrongs to right.
For the first time since the Tesseract's power burned through his veins, Aaron feels like Clint again. He feels like himself again.