Dedication: For Alex, because even though this is not the story you saw me working on, I wanted to finish something for you.
I don't own. Don't sue.
Damn time. Time was the spinning gear at the center of everything, controlling the crossing and uncrossing of the stars, the loving and unloving of people, the beginning and ending of sagas.
It is dark in the room as the sheets shuffle, waking Natasha. Clint rolls over, attempting to sit up, but Natasha snakes her arms around his waist, pulls him back, murmuring, don't leave. Her breath ghosts his shoulder, and travels into him, quietly echoing.
He sighs, you know I have to, Nat.
No, you don't. She mumbles.
The plane leaves in two hours, he whispers, and she echoes, Two hours.
He settles back, and they both know that he'll be staying for a while more. She dials her watch back for ten minutes—ten minutes is all that they have the privilege to steal, and cling on to the warmth—for now.
Tick, Thump, Tick, Thump, their hearts beat, first with the ticking hands of the watch, then with each other, counting off the evanescent seconds leading to eternal damnation.
In, Out, In, Out, they breathe, first to inhale and submerge in each other, then to stabilize their own suffocating lungs, taking in the fumes that elongate life.
Enjoy every moment will each other, hell. It's not enough, Natasha thinks, lying on the king sized bed alone, Clint's heat fading and disappearing as the hands on her watch tick.
She rips it off and hurls it at the wall.
Her first memory of Clint was a dark figure slinking on the rooftops. Her second? His blue, blue eyes. How could someone as experienced as Natasha Romanoff get caught in a standoff with an S.H.I.E.L.D agent?
In her defense, Hawkeye was damn good at what he did. And maybe, just maybe, Natasha Romanoff was getting a little tired of this storm, the roaring tempest outside the hotel room surrounding the two… Agents. Super-humans. Orphans.
(What they are, one might argue, might not really be the most important thing. What was important was that on that day in the Parisian hotel room, they both found someone who could understand ledgers and the overwhelming amount of red in it.)
A million things can happen during a standoff, Natasha knew. One little mistake caused by one little distraction was all that it takes for the tables to turn. She liked to think that she had the upper hand till then. Clint's bows and arrows were discarded, she tossed them away during their hand-to-hand. (What? Why do you even need bows and arrows if you aren't going to assassinate someone from a rooftop but instead choose to pay them a personal visit?) Natasha dodged most of his blows, landed quite a few, and the beginnings of a bruise was starting to bloom on the right side of his cheek. She had a knife in her left hand, and gun, trained on his chest, in her right.
But what she didn't like about the standoffs were the eyes. Combat was a blur, a violent dance of limbs and legs; while assassination—whether with poison or with a weapon it was a long-range kill. But standoffs—you can get lost in your opponents' eyes.
And that was where Natasha made her mistake.
Those blue eyes were a locked door practically begging to be knocked down. She suddenly found herself wanting to be allowed in those doors. She suddenly found herself wanting to understand those eyes.
Was that a light of recognition in them? Was he identifying her with someone he knew? Someone he knows? Himself?
She wanted to map her story and map his story and see everything there was to see about it. What was it about this man? What was it about her?
It wasn't love, she decided as his fingertips brushed her hand as he slipped her gun out of her grasp, and after that, her knife.
(Because love is for children.)
Once upon a time, there was a girl and there was a boy.
The girl was lost. She was lost in the rain, her lips were getting colder, and her heart was pumping slower and slower every minute.
The boy was safe. He was with other people—other people trying to end this storm, but he was different from them, and they knew it. His companions sometimes looked at him with awe, but sometimes it was fear, as if he was not a human being and they can't recognize him.
One day, the boy found the girl. He took her in. She found her safety from the rain and her body slowly warmed up and he found a person who was as different as he was. And they stayed different together, till the end of their time.
The taxi slows to a stop in front of Clint's "hotel". It is drizzling outside, and Vienna is still quite cold for it to really be June. He counts out some bills and hands it to the driver, muttering a Danke as he steps outside into the cold summer.
Looking up at the tall hotel, Clint decides that it could be nice to live in it. But with a sigh, he turns away from it and starts walking south, towards a similar sized apartment building. He is on a mission, and more often than not, important S.H.I.E.L.D. agents use safe houses.
As he enters the building and punches in his code on the fake keypad of the lobby telephone, he thinks about Natasha. She would have gotten up right after he left, even though her own flight didn't leave until hours later.
She is so different from the woman he chose not to kill in Paris all those years ago. She, like him, started trying to gradually wipe out their ledgers. Name by name. Face by face. For every name and face they save, one name and face disappears from their ledgers.
Clint likes to think that Natasha was softer, that she had shed away some of the hard exterior that she needed in order to protect herself. He likes to think that Natasha was safer, brighter, better.
The day he decided not to kill her is like a milestone for Natasha. It is like the line between Before and After. Lost and Found. Caged and Free. He should know her the best, and he does, but every curve of her still has the curve of a question.
And maybe I love her for it, his mind whispers as he sinks into the way too soft king-sized mattress.
Clint watched from his nest. He always watched, but people rarely noticed him.
The sparring underneath was proving to be quite the fight. Devon Kyleson, he thought, was good, but not good enough for Natasha Romanoff.
This was Natasha's final assessment before she fully qualified as an S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. They performed hundreds of tests on her—physical tests, psychological tests, stimulations of field ops—all to make sure that they could trust her. Coulson had quirked an eyebrow when Clint informed him of the change of plans, but didn't say much, because he trusted his agent. Fury had a more explosive reaction, threatening to suspend him, but Clint just smirked, like S.H.I.E.L.D. would fire their best agent.
He wasn't technically supposed to be there. He was too emotionally involved with Natasha, having chosen to save her instead of kill her, to be useful to the assessment.
But he wasn't supposed to be in a lot of places, and to be honest, there was no place else he'd rather be at that moment.
Watching Natasha Romanoff flip through the air and glide around her opponent reminded him of a time buried in the back of his head. It was the same feeling of recognition that he had when they met in Paris.
She had an air of mystery, a strange past, and tired eyes but he felt like he knew her just as he knew himself. They were the same type of people: They were two orphans finding each other in the midst of a storm. They were regarded as more than human, able to do so many extraordinary things. They were practically super-humans, but no, they weren't.
The truth was that they've lost things, lost vital part of themselves years and years ago. They've seen, done, said, heard, and tasted. Overtime, those memories bind them. Separate them. Made them different.
Natasha delivered her final blow, ending the assessment she was treating like a game. Devon Kyleson sank to the ground, panting, and Natasha Romanoff brushed a strand of her fiery hair away from her face, and glided out of the gym. As the last clicks of her boots faded away from earshot, Clint Barton slowly retreated back into the shadows.
The clock ticks as Clint groggily opens his eyes, leaving the images of his redheaded witch. He rolls over and the glowing blue numbers on the wall say it's two in the morning.
Jetlag is going to be a pain in the butt today, Clint sighs as he stands and stretches.
Mentally converting time as he steps into the kitchen in search of the coffeemaker, he calculates the hours that have past. Natasha must have landed in New York by now, he discovers. Reminded of Natasha and reminded of the fuzzy thoughts that ran through his mind right before he fell asleep, his heart grows heavy. He can almost hear Natasha shaking her head, saying, Мой ястреб, love is for children.
Hawkeye lets out a frustrated growl as he grabs his bow and quiver. We are children, Nat, he thinks as he sets out towards the shooting range. We are children. Just children grownup too bloody fast.
When will this storm end? The girl asks the boy.
I don't know. He replies. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe never.
What if it does? She asks again, what will happen to us?
We will live on, he says.
We will live on… she repeats. We will live on and grow old and have all the time in the world and be children.
We are children, he insists.
No, she shakes her head, children don't have to know about the storm. Children don't hear the thunder, don't drown in the rain. Children have time. I've never had the chance to be a child.
But children do hear the storm. They just don't understand it. And we—we will never stop understanding. The boy says this, but his eyes are far away, trying to glance through the clouds and see the sunshine behind.
And maybe we won't outlast this. She says, and the boy nods.
Maybe we won't.
Natasha slips into Clint's room, her feet making no sound as she walks across the carpeted floor. Clint is awake, waiting for her to lower herself onto the mattress and join him under the covers. She does, and slips her arms around his waist. Losing herself in his warmth, she asks, How was Vienna?
Successful. Too bad Vienna wasn't blessed with your presence, he mumbles, breathing her in.
How long do we have? She wonders, talking into the crook of his neck.
I'm leaving in a week. Fury decided to give me a break but he also wants me guard this research facility. They think they found something important. You?
She sighs and mutters, I'm not so lucky. Fury decided that I've had a long enough break. I'm leaving the day after tomorrow. Going to be interrogating some bad boys.
Goddamn it. He exhales, We never have enough time, do we?
No, she agrees, we don't.
And then they fall into sleep, where the faces and the blood dance around them but never come close enough.
Once upon a time, there was a boy and a girl.
Their only regret was that they had too little time left to themself and themselves. They needed time. Time was the key. They sneaked in moments when they were alone. Moments consisted of glances, touches, kisses, or simply being there. You never knew when one day you'll stop being there. They were people who die young easily, and despite the loss of innocence and the eyes that had seen too much, too many, they were still young enough. But there was that withered part of their souls, too old to die.
Some days it felt as if their ledgers will never be wiped clean. When the faces came, soundless in the night, and they woke up shaking, they wondered how much time they had left. How much time before it became too much. A gunshot, an arrow, an accident, a murder—there were too many ways to bleed out in this world. The lives they led promised an early demise. They needed time to love, time to explore, and time to savor everything and anything.
And they lived happily ever after until the end of their time.
Fin.
Author's Note:
It has been ages since I put anything up here. And really, there isn't an explanation for this except that I didn't know what I wanted to write anymore.
I'm putting some stories together, though. Hopefully the next time I press "Publish" won't be so far away.
Please do leave constructive criticism or just drop a word in. If I'm doing something horrible, tell me, so it will stop. If I'm doing something wonderful, tell me too, so it will continue. I don't have a beta reader, either, and I revised it a couple of times by myself, but please tell me if you see something weird.
This story was inspired by Ellie Goulding's "Hearts Without Chains", which I personally think is just wonderful.
Date Completed: March 1st, 2014