Clint Barton has the gift of silence. His wordless expressions are so complex that they have become a language unto themselves. A precise combination of lifted eyebrows and quirked lips can somehow equate to "You ok?," "If you cover the rear entrance, I'll take the front," "I'm here, you're safe," or "Are you going to eat that?"
Clint's penchant for silence is the thing that Natasha likes most about him. (It is followed closely by lightning-quick smile and his ability to shoot accurately with his eyes closed.) She relishes his watchful calm, especially as they spend progressively more time with the other Avengers. Natasha has long ago concluded that she is teamed up with some of the noisiest people on earth. Tony is constantly running his mouth, the Captain has never been one to withhold an opinion, and Thor is physically incapable of whispering. Get them all together, and you have a recipe for a tension headache.
Dr. Banner is manageable, but his silences can be attributed to his brilliant mind being a million miles away, dwelling on his past or working out the secrets of the universe.
With Clint, his quiet is completely different. SHIELD christened him Hawkeye for a reason—the man is constantly observing, and nothing escapes his watchful gaze. Not openings in the enemy's lines, not incoming threats, not the way Natasha's lips thin imperceptibly when she's rattled.
The man is a gifted people-watcher, and he can read her like she was one of those Calvin and Hobbs comics that Thor loves so much. It should unnerve her, being nakedly transparent to another person when her whole profession depends on subterfuge, but it doesn't. He knows her better than anyone, and she knows him just as well. To have that level of emotional intimacy… the risk makes her giddy.
For a man of action, Clint is surprisingly still. He sits in silence, sometimes for hours, the only movement being the steady intake and release of air from his lungs. It is common knowledge that he was a common soldier once, before Fury picked him out of the front lines like a diamond from a coal mine. Sometimes, in the darkest part of the morning when she can't sleep, Natasha tries to picture her friend as he must have been: military fatigues, the same haircut, no fine lines around his eyes yet, deeply tanned from the blistering Middle Eastern sun. She wonders if he was happier then, if he made bawdy jokes with his fellow soldiers and blustered around, young and full of invincible swagger. She knows she is biased, but somehow she doubts that he did.
Clint is a good man. He has an intrinsically strong sense of duty that is in constant conflict with a strong moral compass. She remembers meeting him for the first time, being beaten, being so sure she was going to die. Instead, he cocked his head and asked her if she had ever thought of applying for a job with insurance and a great retirement plan.
"Considering my line of work, I do not bother planning for old age," she remembers replying in Russian, knowing he would understand.
He gave a dry little chuckle. "Fair enough. Fine, how about a job with awesome uniforms?" He offered. She tilted her head and her eyes became calculating.
"Perhaps. And I assume you require some sort of… finder's fee?" she purred. The situation could be used to her benefit after all, she remembered thinking. She would play along until he got careless and then dump his body in the river. The thought made her smile.
His eyes widened ever-so-slightly and jerked back, almost releasing his grip on her. "You're an agent, Ms. Romanov, not a whore," he muttered placidly, and proceeded to truss her up so that even she, with her variety of skills, could not escape. That was what made up Natasha's mind to work for SHIELD—not the threat of death, not the admittedly sleek uniforms, but Clint's physical reaction to her proposal, his naïve, unconscious repulsion to sex as a form of payment.
He's as innocent as a person that kills for a living can be. She remembers watching the video feed from Loki's initial appearance, and the god's words echo in her head. "You have heart," he had said. Loki was right—Clint is strong, Clint is brave, and Clint is tough. And he does have heart, much to his detriment.
She watches him just as he watches her. She sees the way his eyes have become haunted. She hears him pace at night, and knows that he is not the same as he was before being unmade. Natasha knows, and she understands… and she is not going anywhere.
A/N: I know this is not necessarily comic cannon-compliant: it is another long-lost relic from my WIP folder. I had a brief Avengers obsession last summer where I wrote about twelve thousand angsty character studies. (Heaven help us all.) This is one of the only chapters that was fit for the light of day, so… ta-da?