A/N: This was inspired by a quote from the book Slaughterhouse-five. I wrote it very quickly before I forgot where I wanted to go with it, so excuse me for any mistakes. Please review and let me know what you think.
"The most important thing I learned was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. They can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.
When a they see a corpse, all they think is that the dead person is in a bad condition in that particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what they say about dead people, which is "so it goes" " -Kurt Vonnegot
X
Natasha doesn't cry when they tell her.
A couple of rookie agents knock at her apartment door on a rainy october afternoon, soaked to the bone, a dripping letter in the hands of the young woman. Natasha knows what it says before she reads, knows what they're going to tell her before they open their mouths.
She nods at the words she doesn't pay attention to and accepts the letter, closes the door before she can see the genuine sympathy in the agent's eyes. She knew something was wrong. Had been, for the past few days, waiting for the inevitable. Clint had been gone for 3 weeks to Colombia, in a mission that should have lasted 1, tops. She had contacted nobody, decided, like a genuine spider, to hole herself up in her apartment until SHIELD sent someone bearing the news. He's dead. Natasha thinks.
"He's dead." she repeats aloud, ignoring the roughness of her voice from days without use. But she doesn't feel it, not yet. She opens the letter and reads it, one, two, three times. Only one thing stands out. "...notify to Agent Natasha Romanoff, that her partner Agent Clinton Barton has been declared MIA..."
So they havent found his body. It's a shame. She would've burned him like he wanted to and scattered his ashes of some cliff.
She remembers that particularly grim conversation.
"If I go before you do Nat...just let me fly, sweetheart." he'd said, and smiled his boyish smile.
It dawns on her that she will never see that smile again. Or hear his voice. Nobody will ever call her Nat again.
And that's when the dam breaks.
She drops the letter and drops to her knees and doesn't recognize the sobs that rack trough her body. It feels as if the air is being punched out of her chest. It comes out in painful gasps and unintelligible moans. It feels like oxygen burns her on its way in. It's like being tortured, but she knows this is worst and much more permanent.
Her mind repeats a chorus of he's gone, he's gone, he's gone.
She could have been there an hour or ten, her forehead pressed against the cold hardwood floor, tears running from her eyes and wails of pain breaking their way out from her lips.
But at some point, when her lips and hands and bare feet are almost blue from the cold, and she doesn't have any more tears to shed, she gets up. Slowly, because her once fearsome strength and force of will have been raked out of her body by pain she's never experienced before. She's weak.
She doesn't allow herself a fool's hope. He's just missing, it doesn't mean his dead. Natasha knows that's exactly what it means. She crawls more than walks into her bedroom, and completely avoids the bed. Her mind telling her its cold and she could use a warm bath, a part she has taken to ignoring tells her it's because she's shared it with him.
She runs hot water and sits in the tub, doesn't even bother in taking her clothes off. It burns, but she relishes on it. It's almost grounding. Natasha reminds herself that this is the real kind of pain.
She jumps out of the tub out of pure self-preservation and remembers she's been tortured, raped, beaten, broken and unmade. They hurt. They were real pain. Real suffering. Not this hurt, this disconcerting sensation of loss that drags her down and appears to seep through her marrow. She doesn't want to accept this unbearable pain as real, because then it will mean something else she wasnt willing to accept before, much less now. This ghost pain, this reaching out for a part that's missing. A part of her that will never again be there. She can't be compromised but he's gone.
She rips her clothes from her body and pulls some new ones one. Unknowingly or maybe so, grabbing his gray shirt. His favorite one. She briefly considers that it still smells like him and the sinks her nails into her palms, punishing herself for the stupidity.
It doen'st matter. She can be alone, she can work alone, she had always been on her own. She's better off. She doesn't need him, never did. But Damn him! The bastard. For bringing her into SHIELD. For saving her and giving her a life and a partner and then taking it all away with him. Damn it, Barton.
She was lost, is lost now. He was north.
She remembers, can only do that. The nightmares, the sleepless nights, the missions and muscular arms tightened around her. The more mundane things, waking up to a smile and breakfast, someone to talk to, a match for her witt. (and the stupid picture of her he carried around because it gave him "good luck")
"You are my home" he would whisper, afraid of what other words would do to her. Had taken it to saying that a year from now, secretly hoped (she knew) the day she would say it back. But you can't make homes out of people, it'll destroy you when they're gone. She should've listened to herself.
He loved her. He never said but she knew. And he's gone now, so what was it worth?
Love is for children. But doesn't she wish she was a child now? Except she doesn't know how. She never had a childhood, and Clint's the only one who's ever rocked her to sleep.
She's beyond saving, she knows. But he was honest and caring and good. In that thought she seeks comfort. Everything happened and it'll always be there. And she wasnt the only one. Clint affected the people he knew and he won't be forgotten. He won't be pushed aside. He was the best man she ever knew and an agent and an avenger and she hopes that a child somewhere will have an action figure of a tiny man with little bow and arrows.
And somewhere in time, they're side by side right now, bullets and arrows flying at their enemies, sweat on their foreheads and adrenaline on their veins and together. She always told him a good fight was better than sex, he made an effort to prove her wrong.
Somewhere in Colombia, a battered body washes up on the shore, meanwhile a man with a boyish smile calls out "Tasha, I'm home! And since its our 8 year anniversary, darlin', I bought ...". The words are swallowed by time and a grieving to great to listen.
She crawls into bed, into his side. When did it happen, she wonders. That he took to sleeping on the left side, his back to the wall, her back to his. And by force of habit they slept like that all the time. But there was more to it than that. It was the comfort. Now gone. Natasha drags herself backwards until her back hits the wall. She'll have to sleep like this from now on. Clint won't be here to be her support any longer.
She trusted him. And when did that one start? Maybe the same day he spared her and she knew mercy for the first time. A helping hand. Maybe Budapest, the bullets and the blood and someone watching your back, the knowledge that he was there.
A bow and arrow rest forgotten by the door.
Tears start rolling down her face and onto her pillow as a new thought enters her mind. Is more painful than the fact that her partner of almost 10 years (this november,Tasha) won't be at her side any more. she accepts it more than realizes it, because it's been there all along.
She loved Clint. She loved him so much.
Outside, it has ceased raining; inside, it will never stop.