Infinity War spoilers and speculation, just a heads up.
I don't own anything Marvel related aside from a few T-shirts. No characters or rights, sadly.
It had been a normal morning in the Barton household. On second thought, maybe normal wasn't quite the right word. It was the weekend, meaning the kids were home from school, so they were having pancakes for breakfast, and it was more special than most mornings for that very reason. That, and the fact that the day before, New York had been attacked once again. This time, it had been a giant floating ring that had caused some destruction before it flew off. Clint hadn't missed the reports of Iron Man and Spiderman being confirmed at the scene. What had happened to them, he didn't know.
But he had taken one look at his wife, who was watching the same news report as him, and thought of his kids in the other room, all playing together, and knew he couldn't go. The first reason was that taking some actual family time away from the insanity of his other life had actually been good for all of them. The second reason was his strict house arrest (which of course he could get out of at any time and Ross would never be any the wiser) and the third reason was that he didn't have a direct way to get to New York in any amount of time that would be able to do any good.
He had amended that he wouldn't go, and had told Laura as much, but he still sat up at night, multiple phones set out on the table in front of him, the news on the television but turned down low so the rest of the house could sleep. He never got a call on any of the phones, so his former teammates were probably busy, they had to be, because he refused to think of anything worse.
The news kept replaying the same footage over and over, since officially, nothing else had happened since. Clint knew that was probably because there was more coming, but for the moment, things were suspended in an air of grim anticipation. Speculation was running rampant, people were connecting it to the incident six years ago, and panic was starting to spread.
The farm was quiet and dark outside, with frogs croaking echoing out across the fields. Every so often, a gust of wind would rustle the trees, but other than that, the air around them and the house was still. It was peaceful, more peaceful than anything Clint had ever known. Which is why he should have known that it would never last. He did know it, somewhere deep down, but accepting it was another matter. Unfortunately, for him, accepting it came that following morning.
Laura was in the kitchen with Lila making pancakes, Nathaniel was in his play pen area the next room over, and Cooper was up with Clint in his room, doing some last minute math work before they went down for breakfast.
It was normal, peaceful, and perfect. Was ended up being the important word in that sentence.
The peace ended when all of a sudden, Cooper dropped his pencil. Clint looked up from where he had been doing the work on his own piece of paper. His son's name died on his lips as Cooper stared at his hand, utterly terrified, as it began to fall apart and float away, as if it were made out of ash.
"Dad?" he asked, voice choked with fear. In the second it took him to turn his head and lock his wide and scared eyes with his father, the rest of him began to fall away until soon, there was nothing left but a pile where his son had once been.
Clint sat next to it, completely still, trying to force himself to wake up from what had to be a nightmare. It had to be. It absolutely had to be. The waking up came from a scream and a shatter downstairs. "Daddy!"
Lila's voice carried throughout the whole house and roused Clint to his feet, still in shock as he stepped around the pile before sprinting down the stairs to the kitchen.
"Lila!" he yelled back, skidding into the room, and finding his daughter, still whole, tear marks staining her cheeks, staring at the stove. "Are you okay? Honey, what happened?" Clint knelt down, checking his daughter over for any signs of injuries or clues as to if she was about to fall away next. His eyes stayed on her for a few seconds until he was sure that she wasn't smoking or falling apart. But she was still there, and she was pointing to the kitchen, whispering "mommy" under her breath. It was a sight Clint had never wanted to see. Her eyes, wide with fear as Cooper's had been only a minute ago, were fixed on whatever she had seen.
He slowly got up and peeked around the cabinets, swallowing hard when he saw a smashed plate on the ground next to a few pancakes and a small pile of ash, not unlike the one upstairs. It didn't take a genius to realize that it was what remained of Laura. He had promised her he'd be down in fifteen minutes, tops, and to get things started while he and Cooper worked. Clint almost slid down to his knees right then and there, but the fact that his daughter was still watching, scared out of her mind, kept him upright. If he crumbled and let her see, she'd never recover.
"Daddy, what's going on? Where's mommy?" she asked through choked tears, standing absolutely still where she was, as if moving would make her disappear too.
Clint took a few steps into the next room and looked at where Nathaniel should have been. He didn't look for another pile of ash when he couldn't see his son in the pen, he couldn't bear it. A few flecks spread out over the blue blankets and stuffed animals were all the answer he needed.
"I don't know, sweetheart, but we're going to figure it out. Everything's going to be alright," he said, coming back to his daughter and scooping her up into a hug. He'd been putting on masks all his life, a few months out of the field hadn't taken away that ability. And now, he had to wear one of calm reassurance, even when on the inside his mind was going a thousand miles a minute trying to figure out what was going on and how he could get his family back. "But hey, look at me," he pulled back ever so slightly and smiled at her before he wiped a few of her tears away, though it did no good as they kept coming. "Everything will be fine, Lila. How about we go get shoes on and we'll call Auntie Nat from the road, okay?"
It took Lila a second before she nodded. She moved to head up to her room, which was up the stairs, past Cooper's room where he no longer existed. Clint very gently caught her arm. "I'll grab them, you stay right here," he instructed. Lila nodded again, seeming to understand in some capacity that Cooper was in the same state as her mother and brother. While her sobs had quieted, new tears welled in her eyes.
Clint wanted nothing more than to make them go away, to make everything about this go away, but he couldn't, not right now. He was going to fix this, and then he was going to kill whatever sick bastard had made his family go through this. Instead, he headed up the stairs and grabbed Lila's small emergency duffel bag, her favorite small stuffed bunny, and her shoes. He then made his way into the main bedroom where he grabbed his own duffel, weapons and all, and expertly dismantled the 'house arrest tracking device'.
The only time he stopped during all of this was to grab a picture of the family from the bedside table and stuff it into the duffel bag before he marched back downstairs. It was just in case. Clint didn't like to deal in what-if scenarios, but where his family's memory was concerned, he figured he needed to cover all his bases.
Lila hadn't moved an inch from her spot, staring at the floor, which was marked with water droplets. As soon as Clint bent down next to her, duffel bags over his shoulder, Lila locked her arms around his neck and he effortlessly lifted her up. One hand held the bunny in a vice like grip, and the other was clenched to his shoulder to keep her daddy from disappearing too. In the back of Clint's mind, he was silently glad that he still had someone left, no matter how awful the thought was, and he was glad that none of the kids had been left by themselves while the rest of the family vanished.
He carried her out to the car, buckled her into her seat, and put the duffels in the trunk. When he closed it, his hands were shaking against the metal, and he took a breath to calm himself before he pulled out his phone. Natasha couldn't be gone too, she just couldn't. If she didn't pick up, he'd call everyone in the contacts list until he got a straight answer from someone.
Clint dialed the number and put the phone up to his ear. Each additional ring meant another few seconds of uncertainty, and a few more doubts that got put into his head. This couldn't be happening. When the automatic voice announced that the number he was trying to reach wasn't available, Clint nearly broke the phone in his grip.
"Don't do this, Nat, you can't do this," he muttered quietly so Lila wouldn't hear. He swapped out phones and tried her other number, waiting and praying. "You had better pick up, damn it," he threatened to the buzzing noise on the other end of the line. When it too announced that the call was dropped, Clint tried again. She had to be there. The signal either went to her phone or to her comm, whichever she had nearest to her, and if she were in the field and still there, she should have had her comm on her.
It rang three more times before finally, a voice picked up on the other end.
"Clint?" It was choppy and full of static, but it was Natasha. Clint sagged against the back end of the car out of sheer relief. "Clint, is that you?"
"Yeah, yeah, it's me. It's good to hear your voice, Nat," he said quietly, a sad smile spreading across his face. She was there, she hadn't disintegrated.
"You too, Clint." There was a pause, but no true sigh of relief, and Clint knew what was coming. "Please tell me you're not calling about what I think you're calling about."
Clint opened his mouth to answer, but closed it immediately. His silence was the only answer she needed. "Who's left?"
"Just Lila," he got out. "Lila and I…Nat, what the hell happened? They disintegrated," Clint said and clenched his teeth, the image of Cooper turning to him before falling away into ash replaying over in his head.
"Thanos, we…we couldn't stop him. By the looks of things, half of everyone is gone." Each word was weighed down with exhaustion and failure, and maybe even a bit of desperation if Clint could still read it correctly.
"Everyone?" Clint asked, the word stuck in his throat.
"The world population," she replied eventually. He could imagine her, probably pacing just a bit, face a mask of her own as she tried to deal with it all.
Half the world…Clint ran a hand through his hair and cursed quietly. How was the even possible? He took a few months off and all of a sudden, half the world was gone.
"What can we do? What can I do?"
"We're still…we don't know, not yet. You and Lila, you should stay where you are-"
"We can't, no way in hell," Clint cut her off. They couldn't stay in the safe-house, piles of ash marking the family members that were once there.
There was a few moment's pause before she replied, having probably gone through a few different scenarios in her head. "Can you get to the stowed jet and make your way to the tower?" It would be less populated than the base they had been using, and given the fact that Stark was probably on the front lines too, he wouldn't have been there. Clint ran through a map in his head before he nodded even though she couldn't see him. It would take a few hours of driving to get there, but they could feasibly do it.
"Yeah, yeah, we can get there. What about you?"
"We've got some things to figure out. I'll call when I can." Clint didn't ask who the 'we' entailed, mainly because he didn't want to know, not now, who else was part of half the vanished population. Clint didn't add a reply to that because he didn't need to. "Stay safe, Clint."
He said goodbye in a similar fashion and when the line clicked off, he was only left with silence. The phone was put back into his pocket and he took a few breaths, looking out over what was supposed to have been a safe space. When the whole world was a battleground, which apparently it had become, then nowhere was safe. But he supposed safety in numbers was the closest they were going to get.
So Clint did what he did best. He pushed down the memory of Cooper and Laura and Nathaniel, because if he thought about it too much it would choke him, and set about making things right for Lila. She still depended on him, and he couldn't let her down. When he finally got back in the car and told her that she'd finally be allowed to ride in a jet, something she had asked about for years, she said a quiet 'okay' and nothing else. Her little hands were clenched around the stuffed bunny in her lap.
Lila's tear-filled eyes didn't leave the house as Clint drove them away, and even he was looking at it in the rearview mirror until it faded away, hoping beyond anything else that they'd be able to return once they had fixed everything. They had to.
I can't have been the only one missing Clint during all of this, right? And since the mass disintegrating spread to the whole world, it got me thinking, no way Clint's whole family would make it out alright.
I've got some ideas to continue this if anyone would be interested, but please let me know so I can tell if people would want to read a bit more from Natasha's perspective and what happens to little Lila and Clint. Thanks for reading!