So, my giftee in the franzi-and-gecko's-friends-write-things-for-each-other over on AO3 was none other than the redoubtable Franzi (aka CloudAtlas) herself. I sifted through her "dear writer" letter in search of what she might like and, after a few panic-inducing, not-my-idea-of-a-good-writing-time options, there it was, at the very end – the one thing I've been meaning to do, but hadn't gotten around to yet: "A lets-ignore-AoU post-CW examination of Clint/&Natasha's relationship." I hope this is okay?
The title is based on a line from the Rolling Stones' Ruby Tuesday. Thanks to JRBarton for the emergency beta!
If It's Gone
By Alpha Flyer
I
The Raft's light cycle is set for 'night', meaning the row of blue-white LEDs lining the corridor is dimmed and the cells themselves are full of shadows.
Despite the darkness, Steve makes an immediate beeline for a steel-curtained door that he must assume to be Sam's; Natasha has no idea how he knows it doesn't conceal a mutant serial killer. A quick application of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Universal Lock-Be-Gone clicker and – hello! - Sam is out, patting Steve's back and pointing the way to another cage.
Natasha remains standing in the open area, her eyes flitting from one door to another. They all look the same, she tells herself. And given the Raft's reputation…
"Natasha!" Steve hisses from where he is working on Lang's cell door. "Not a good time to freeze. Or are you going to tell me you have a different mission again? Go find Barton and Wanda. Now."
One of the fallen guards stirs and lets out a long moan. One of Ross' minions... Natasha takes two steps and delivers a kick to his helmet with perhaps a bit more momentum than strictly necessary; the man's chin hits the steel floor with an audible clatter, and he lies still.
"Tasha?"
The voice almost doesn't sound like Clint's. It's hoarse and tentative, as if it hasn't been used in days, or as if his lips are swollen and he hasn't had any water in days. It's a throwback to that time he'd allowed himself to be kidnapped in Mali and been traded for ransom collection not to Ansar Dine, as expected, but to AQIM; it had taken S.H.I.E.L.D. an extra week to track his captors through the Sahel. Fun times.
Natasha hesitates for a second before heading over to where the sound had come from. A figure is stirring in the darkness behind the bars, coming into the light. The neon catches on blue, prison issue fabric, hanging loosely around a frame that could be Clint's if you subtract ten pounds. Another step by him, three by her, and yes it's Clint - pale like a ghost, his cheeks covered in stubble. Parts of his face are still discoloured by bruising.
It's only been two weeks, after all, although it seems longer.
"You gonna open that door, or stand there wondering who whacked me in the face?" he rasps.
She says nothing, focusing down on her hands as she cracks the lock. The door opens inward – against fire regulations anywhere else, but then speed of exit isn't exactly a consideration here. (Nor, for that matter, is fire.)
She doesn't quite get to finish that particularly irrelevant train of thought. Clint – smelling slightly unwashed – brushes past her, grabbing the clicker out of her hand as he goes.
"Need to get Wanda."
"Hey," she manages, but he's already gone, striding down the corridor and around the corner, a man with a purpose.
Natasha follows him, past Steve and Sam who are trying to shake some life into a groggy sometime-Antman. Clint's walk is fast, like that of someone who's been keen to stretch his legs for days, but his steps lack the military precision she's used to seeing. He comes to a stop by a cell that is lit as brightly as the corridors.
" They wouldn't even let her sleep in peace," he growls. "Fucking bastards."
His hands are shaking as he tries to trigger the door mechanism, whether from fatigue or anger is hard to tell. Natasha puts both her hands over his and triggers the lock. Clint drops the clicker as if it were on fire and retracts his hand, pushing past her into the cell.
"You okay, Wand?" he asks, his voice suddenly soft, like sandpaper on velvet. "We're out of here. C'mon, get up, kiddo. Let me get this crap off you."
Natasha needs only a single glance to take in the cause for his concern: Wanda Maximoff, looking impossibly young, impossibly tired, and impossibly defeated. She seems to be hugging herself tightly - but not because she wants to.
Natasha has her knife out even before Clint, weaponless, can turn angrily pleading eyes towards her. The straps that keep Wanda's hands pressed against her own arms are made of seatbelt webbing; Natasha slices through them with a curse, and watches as Wanda's arms fall limply by her side.
Wanda looks like she hasn't slept since Leipzig; her eyes are open, but see nothing. Clint scoops her up in his arms as soon as Natasha pulls back the knife. She makes no effort to cling to him, doesn't even seem aware of the fact that she is being manhandled and her head tilts back precariously. He sets her back down, adjusts his stance, grabs her again and slings her over his shoulder in the classic fireman's carry, standing up on the exhale. His legs, unused to weight or strain by weeks spent in a tiny cell, wobble slightly, but he stays upright.
"Whereto now?" he asks grimly.
It occurs to Natasha, as they climb onboard the Quinjet amid howling winds and lashing spray from a midnight sea, that he hasn't said anything to acknowledge her presence, apart from her name.
II
The ride back in the Quinjet lasts far longer than Clint would have thought, or than could possibly be good for Wanda. She is badly dehydrated, based on the indentation his finger left in the flesh of her near-skeletal arm. She needs water and glucose, fast; he doesn't even want to begin to think what may be necessary to reboot her brain. A mind-meld with that rock in Vision's forehead? Maybe that fucking thing could find a way to make up for what it had done to him when it was still in Loki's sceptre.
Assuming Vision still speaks to anyone that's on this plane, that is. Last time Clint looked, he was playing for Team Stark, and pretty dedicated he was, too. Fuck.
Speaking of Team Stark … Natasha hasn't said anything since they'd taken off and left the Raft behind to be battered by the waves like a latter-day Azkaban. He casts a quick look in her direction, but her eyes are fixed on something in the jet's ceiling. Maybe just as well.
Clint unclips his seatbelt and heads over to the forward storage compartment. Quinjets are all pretty much the same, and this one must be from old S.H.I.E.L.D. stock based on the decals no one's bothered to scrape off some of the equipment. Someday he may find out how the hell it ended up in Leipzig, but good thing it did, or that Zemo guy would still be around to cause global havoc.
He casts a quick look into the cockpit, where Barnes seems to have things well enough in hand. Decent pilot that guy, even with only one hand; has agreed to take the first shift until Clint's brain unscrambles enough to be up to the job. Steve is busy fending off Lang's fan boy gratitude with his usual aw-shucks grace, while Sam is doing the soldier thing - grabbing some shuteye while he can.
Clint grabs a can of Gatorade and a bottle of water from storage, and stirs some of the orange powder into the bottle until most of the crystals are dissolved.
"Here," a voice says over his shoulder. Natasha, holding a pipette. "You won't get it into her otherwise."
She can talk … Well, well.
He doesn't say anything in response; why bother, if she's right? He takes the pipette and the bottle and goes back to where Wanda sits strapped into her seat with a five-point belt. Not much better than the Raft straitjacket, but at least this one will come off with the push of a button. One she can operate herself.
"You listen to me, baby girl. I'm gonna stick something in your mouth now," he says, his voice raw with disgust at what they've done to her.
What he has done to her, dragging her into this fucking mess to begin with. He should have let her stay with Vision… Then maybe Rhodey would be okay, too. And …
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
He lifts his hand to Wanda's lips.
"This'll taste of orange, sorta. Although, honestly? It'll taste like shit, but it's good for you. Electrolytes, sugar and potassium. Yum."
The first squeeze of the pipette just has some of the liquid running out of Wanda's mouth as she reflexively closes her lips on him. The second stays in, though. Number three, and she seems to be swallowing. Progress is incremental. He keeps going, Wanda keeps swallowing.
Natasha is hovering somewhere behind him, watching the live-action results of General – sorry, Secretary - Ross' idea of 'control over the Avengers'. She doesn't look happy.
And why should she? Here she is, having knowingly been fucked over by one authoritarian regime, only to voluntarily sign on to another, and finding they're pretty much the same. Who'da thunk it, seriously.
"Why'd you do it?" he can't help himself asking, nor can he help the anger in his voice coming out. Nice, right now, is reserved for the kid with the saucer eyes, looking at him like Gatorade is the best thing since Pez. "Why'd you sign? Didn't you learn anything in the Red Room about what'll happen when people in power get jealous, or scared?"
Natasha's eyes shift, and for the briefest of moments she looks uncertain.
"I thought…" she stumbles at first, but then her eyes flash with defiance.
"Because I thought it was the right thing to do, Clint. We – you, I, Tony, Steve – we talk a great shtick about right and wrong, justice and the rule of law, but then we take everything into our own hands and just go smash, without any assessment of the potential impact or consequences. There has to be a better way. Some better … direction."
"Well, newsflash," Clint says, nodding in Wanda's direction. "This ain't it. And here's your impact and consequences. Should have fucking assessed a bit more before signing, I suppose."
Maybe it's not right, lashing out at Natasha like that. She had come around, eventually, and she had come with Steve to get them all out of that hellhole. But …
She fixes him with a stare that would paralyze lesser men than Clint Barton.
"I tried to talk to you. Tried to discuss this, to ask some questions. Maybe get some answers, or at least your opinion. But when I called you, all I got was 'I'm retired'. So, don't give me that shit, Clint. If you'd wanted to be part of my assessment, you had your chance."
Natasha is not entirely wrong. He'd kind of dodged about taking a position on those Accords, and really only gotten involved when Steve called and explained things in terms that made sense to someone whose own code of right and wrong was shades of grey. Plus, with Wanda at the dead centre of Hurricane Ross' trajectory – Wanda, whose role in the Avengers Clint had shaped more than anyone – what choice did he have? The conclusion that Cap was probably on the better side of things in other respects had come sometime after he'd picked up Lang, but how he'd arrived at it is still a bit murky.
And ever since Stark had shown up at the Raft, still full of 'sides' and 'law' bullshit despite everything that had happened, Clint's basic setting has been 'pissed off'; it's hard to move off that, especially in the face of Wanda's suffering. Natasha, at least, had done something when she'd realized black and white (or red and blue) weren't the only options, and not wasted time on resentment.
He feels himself deflate a little, and gives Natasha a look that isn't quite an apology.
Just at that moment Steve emerges from the cockpit, which is probably just as well.
"How's Wanda?" he asks, sounding concerned.
Wanda's head has dropped a little and she seems to have fallen asleep. Clint leans forward and arranges her body in a more comfortable position. She weighs next to nothing, her arms so thin he can almost encircle them with his thumb and index finger.
"I think with those things Ross put on her, her brain was like a cell phone looking for a signal from inside a metal box. Her batteries are completely drained," he says. "We'll know better when she's had a chance to recharge."
Steve nods, his jaw clenching slightly.
"Let's make her as comfortable as possible for now," he says. "She'll be able to get more help where we're going."
It's funny, but right until now Clint hasn't given their destination any thought. Away had been plenty good enough.
"And where would that be?" he asks.
Natasha, who has gone to the Quinjet's storage locker, comes back with a blanket; she drapes it over Wanda who sighs and relaxes into the sudden warmth. Maybe they'll have a ways to go before they can stop being angry at each other, but at least they care about the same things.
Steve has already turned back towards the cockpit, and so it's Natasha who answers his question.
"Wakanda."
III
"You know what I can't forgive?"
Clint twirls the little paper umbrella that someone had stuck in his drink, presumably as a humorous accent or just to make a point. (At home, Clint is more of a beer man.)
The umbrella is made in China, ironically the first evidence Natasha has seen of foreign imports into Wakanda. Odd they'd let something like that across their impenetrable borders, but then again, a nation as deadly serious as that which spawned King T'Challa probably does need to bring anything frilly or frivolous in from abroad.
"I assume that's a pretty long list?" she says, allowing a small smile to play around her lips. It feels good, to sit here beside him.
He turns his head slowly, purses his lips, and breaks into a rueful grin.
"Not as long as it should be," he says, "all things considered. And probably a hell of a lot shorter than it could be, especially when it comes to Stark."
Natasha waits patiently. He'll get to the point eventually and right now, she's just enjoying watching a flock of impossibly colourful birds flit through the lush green canopy, and not having to worry that one of them might be a drone.
"It's the lab," he finally says. "The one in Lagos."
Natasha takes a sip of her drink, trying to dredge what might be Clint's regret from her memories; after all, he hadn't even been there.
"The lab was the least of our problems there," she says. "That bit worked out just fine. It was the rest of the op that was a meltdown."
Clint snorts; Natasha can't tell whether it's with laughter or a touch of contempt. Possibly both.
"Seriously?" he says. "To quote Edna Mode, 'Luck favours the prepared'. I mean, here you had a Level Four bio lab in the heart of the largest city in Africa, two years after an Ebola outbreak. And you guys actually thought Rumlow's target was a local police station? Can we say intelligence failure? Fucking unbelievable."
Natasha frowns. Why is it he can always cut right to the basics, sees things no one else notices? Most annoying – that even days after Lagos, or during Ross' show-and-tell video, neither she nor Steve had seen that particular wrinkle. How had they missed that?
"Maybe if you hadn't up and left the team, we would have caught that little bit of info. Could have saved us all a lot of grief."
She's not usually that spiteful and they've kind of been here already. But then again, it's been a long few weeks. To her surprise, Clint doesn't appear offended. Instead, he takes a long draught of his flamboyant drink.
"God forbid, that stuff actually tastes good. Bet T'Challa's little helpers put some extra guava pulp in, to get my Vitamin C back up."
He twirls and tosses the umbrella high in the air and watches it float to the ground like a parachute before turning back to her. He points at the bruise that remains a shadow on his face.
"Yes, I left. You wanna know why? Bow and arrow against AIs made out of Vibranium. What use is a washed up carnie against that kind of shit? Everybody else on the team can fly, walks through walls, or throws trucks. Me, I'm made of people. And not getting any younger."
"You threw trucks," Natasha reminds him. "I saw you. Maybe not by hand, but with your arrows. Made quite a dent in Stark's suit. You can do some amazing things with what you've got. Plus, you're younger than Stark and Rhodey."
He snorts bitterly.
"Sure. But when I deploy, I don't get armour. And more often than not my mind gets sucked out, or I get someone killed or put in a straightjacket. Go, me. Hawkeye for the win!"
A lithe young woman appears, looking at them with a question in her eyes. Like anyone else in Wakanda she is impossibly beautiful, with skin that both absorbs and reflects the light, and muscles that move like those of a large cat when she walks. She could be just a waitress, but Natasha suspects she could take out a football team with her pinky.
Natasha nods in Clint's direction.
"I'll have what he's having," she says. "Easy on the booze and umbrellas, please."
The woman takes in Clint's nod towards his glass and turns around with a movement so smooth and precise, her feet seem to float above the grass. When she has gone out of sight Natasha fixates Clint with a glare.
"Moron," she says decisively. "I don't have any of those powers either. You should have seen my upper body after that free-for-all at the airport. And Sam and Rhodey? They have kit that looks snazzy, but isn't any more effective than those arrows of yours. Yes, they can fly, but neither have your line of sight. You're as valuable a member of team as anyone. So here's a tip from a friend: Stop wallowing."
He looks over at her and she can feel his eyes boring into hers.
"So," he says. "Are we? Still friends, I mean?"
Her mind flashes back to the conversation – if that's what you can call a series of grunts between blows and leg holds – that they'd had on the tarmac at Leipzig.
"How hard did I hit you?" she asks.
He frowns for a second, but then remembers.
"Pretty damn hard," he says, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of conviction in it.
She presses her advantage.
"Not as hard as on the helicarrier, though."
He has the grace to look sheepish.
"No. Guess not."
"Well, good. No new cognitive recalibration, then. Still friends. See how that works?"
He actually laughs then, and it's the best sound she's heard in a while.
The warrior-waitress returns with a tray that contains new drinks, as well as a bowl of fresh fruit and a plate full of exotic snacks. There are two umbrellas in each drink.
"His Majesty wishes you to know that Miss Maximoff is awake and eating," she says. Her voice is dispassionate, but has a warm, dark lilt. "You should eat, too. Especially you, Mr. Barton. King T'Challa says you're too skinny. I agree."
She stalks off and Clint reaches for something that looks like a piece of meat rolled in a fleshy leaf.
"You heard the man, Nat. The King must be obeyed. Especially now that he remembers my name."
Natasha reaches for a spear of pineapple, reconsiders and picks up her gaudy drink instead. The good thing about a partnership built on the ebb and flow of uncontrollable events is that it floats.
"To tomorrow, and moving on," she says.
Clint nods, finishes chewing and takes his own glass. He takes a sip and smiles at her; there's a sudden, familiar warmth in his eyes that gives her an unexpected shiver. Clint raises his glass again.
"And to today."
"Definitely not to yesterday," Natasha finds herself adding, regretting it almost instantly.
But Clint just nods.
"Like the Rolling Stones said: 'Yesterday don't matter, if it's gone'."