A/N: Wow, it's been a while since I have posted anything. I feel like I've dropped off the face of the Earth. Well, I have no idea where this story is going to go, so without further ado let's get on with the show.
PS: I sadly do not own The Avengers because if I did I would be able to have a money swimming pool and thanks to MichaelaTheUchiha for editing this for me.
Natasha POV
Two months had gone by since the formation of the Avengers. It had been two months since everything happened, both good and bad. In the weeks that followed Loki's destruction, we had been debriefed at least three times, Thor and his adopted brother had been sent on their merry way, and we had split and gone our separate ways. At least, that's what the council had thought happened to us after we saw Loki and Thor vanish in a flash of electric blue light. The only person who knows where we actually ended up is Fury, and I highly doubt he would give up out precise location.
Ever since SHIELD had let us off the Helicarrier, we had taken up residence in Stark Tower. I thought we'd only be here for a few days before we each went on our way, but what was originally supposed to be a few days quickly turned into a few weeks. Within those few weeks, we had become more then a team, we had become one of America's most dysfunctional families.
When we went from being a strictly a team of freaks who were called together to stop an alien invasion to a family was unknown to all of us, but we all seemed to know that we weren't simply "Earth's Mightiest Heroes" anymore. Well, almost all of us understood that. Clint hadn't associated with any of the team members since we got here. He barely even spoke to me. He spent the majority of his time sitting on the roof just watching the world go by.
He was starting to worry me. The first few days, he'd come down from the roof to get food and, if any of the other heroes spoke to him, he'd engage in a brief conversation with them before going back up to his nest, but, these days, we didn't even see him come down to raid the fridge. Clint is a loner by nature, but whatever happened when Loki took over his mind had changed him for the worse.
We had become accustomed to eating dinner as a group at least once a week; Steve had suggested that it might be a good way to get to know each other better. So far, Steve had been right, I feel like I know the members of this team better than I did when I trusted them to have my back during the invasion. The first few times we all ate together, I was able to make up excuses of why Clint wasn't eating with the rest of us. As time progressed, it became increasingly harder to explain to the rest of the team where the archer was during these meals.
"So," Tony said through a forkful of spaghetti, "where has Legolas run off to now?"
"You know exactly where Barton is, Stark," I grit out.
"Oh, I know where he is, I just don't get why he spends all his time crouched on that roof for hours staring at nothing."
"I don't get it either," Bruce added, "I know he was most effected by Loki, but he's had months to deal with that and I know from personal experience that it will do him more harm than good to keep everything that he's feeling bottled up inside. It seems, to me, that he doesn't want to be here."
The other two heroes nodded in agreement, and if I wasn't the one that theses remarks directed at I would have agreed with them too because Clint was making no effort to integrate himself with the rest of the team. Normally, by this point, he was at least making an attempt at relating to whoever he was trying to deal with; that's what had happened when I first met him. He let me be for a couple months then, he slowly started to linger around me more often and before I knew it, we had become partners.
That's the approach I thought Clint was using. He was going to watch the team from a distance for a couple months, and then he would slowly make his presence known to the rest of the Avengers. He would become the Clint Barton that I know and love with the rest of the team, but that hasn't happened yet and it was causing me to worry. The rest of the meal was spent in a tense silence, mainly due to the fact I was glaring daggers at the rest of the team.
Normally, after these meals I would help clean up, before taking a plate of the food up to Clint. This time, I just made up a plate of spaghetti and made my way up to the roof. Clint was sitting in exactly the same position he had been when I brought him up a sandwich earlier that day. He was crouched on the ledge, bow grasped tightly in his right hand, quiver sitting on the ground beside him, and he was just watching the world go by.
"You know," I said, making my presence known, "you could just sit down there with us and not say a word. I think that would at least make them stop pestering me, for a few days."
"Doing one thing would lead to another," he replied without looking away from the skyline.
I calmly walked over to him and handed him the plate of food. He changed his position so that his legs were hanging over the edge now. I jumped up on the ledge next to him. We both sat in silence, Clint busy with analyzing the horizon while I inspected him. He had taken a few bites of the pasta when he first received the plate, but now he was just pushing it around with his fork. I knew he was either having trouble sleeping or wasn't sleeping at all: one look at the dark smudges under his eyes told me that.
"What?" he asked when he noticed me studying him.
"Just admiring the view," I said, trying to get a rise out of him.
Clint looked at me for a split second before going back to shoving the sauce covered noodles around on his plate. He spent another five minutes playing with his food before he hopped down from the ledge and began striding towards the elevator.
"We're watching Lord of the Rings tonight if you want to join," I said hopefully.
Clint waved a hand at me in acknowledgement before disappearing inside the building.
He had left the half eaten plate of spaghetti sitting perilously on the edge of the building. I sighed heavily and picked up the plate. That's when I noticed that Clint had turned his food into a work of art. Some of the noodles were placed in such a way that they looked like arrows while others appeared to be in the shape of people. He had spread the marinara sauce around the people-like-shapes in such a way that it resembled blood. Clint was more of a mess then I originally thought he was.
A/N: Well that's all for this chapter. I hope to have the next one up soon. Although I have no idea where I'm going to go with this, so if you have any requests PM them to me. I'd love to hear your feed back to click the button at the bottom of the page please.
