TITLE: Things We Lost in the Fire (1/?)
AUTHOR: enigma731
PAIRING: Clint Barton/Natasha Romanoff
RATING: Adult
WARNINGS: Winter Soldier spoilers, graphic depictions of violence
SUMMARY: Natasha doesn't have any orders now, so she gives herself a mission: act normal. Stay calm. Defy the chaos that's threatening to overwhelm her. Paranoia is futile-the world knows all of her secrets and that she can't really hide, so she ought to just move on with living. And that's the point, really-that's the only way to win. A post-Winter Soldier multichapter.
When the hearing is over and she's said goodbye to Steve, Natasha goes home.
Not to the mostly-empty rowhouse she keeps on Capitol Hill, not to any of her bolt-holes scattered around the world. Instead, she drives back to the familiar glow of the New York skyline, to the loft with its smooth wood floors, with her overcrowded bookshelves and the eastward-facing windows that compromise security but let her feel the sunrise on her face. She's been keeping a piece of her heart here lately, dangerous as she knows it is.
She doesn't hesitate as she opens the door, just unlocks it and walks inside before doing a quick sweep of the place. After that, she shrugs out of her jacket and sits back on the couch, trying to relax the muscles in her shoulder that have grown stiff with bracing the still-sore wound just below her collarbone. Somewhere in the back of her mind, instinct tells her to take more time, to search more thoroughly for bugs. She quashes it, though, reminding herself that paranoia is futile now, that the world knows all of her secrets and that she can't really hide, so she ought to just move on with living. And that's the point, really-that's the only way to win now.
It takes a moment for the television to come on when she snatches up the remote and hits the button, almost as if it knows somehow that she's been gone, that she's been neglecting it. For a while she watches news-the ubiquitous footage of the Helicarriers going down, the panels of purported experts trying to make sense of the S.H.I.E.L.D. information dump, her own face, jarringly cropped, looking like a mug shot. The show has another expert on, this one claiming to be a psychiatrist, drawing a profile from her leaked personnel file. Natasha listens long enough to pick out phrases like "manipulative," "domineering," and "narcissistic" before she grows tired of the man's incompetence and starts flipping channels.
It's been two days since the aborted launch of Insight, since S.H.I.E.L.D. went to hell, and yet most channels have still suspended their regular coverage in favor of more repetitive pseudo-analysis, as if they will ever actually know how close they've come to total disaster. There's some sort of a game show on, though, where contestants are required to perform tasks like walking barefoot through a pit of scorpions. There's also a reality TV show where plastic-faced women hurl vitriol at one another, and a soap opera where a young blond man appears to have a very glamorous case of amnesia. Natasha watches that for a few minutes, mentally chastising the show's creators, before switching off the television and sitting in the silence.
It takes nine days after the Battle of New York before Clint finally breaks, his back pressed to the tiled wall of an unfamiliar hotel bathroom, the cold spray of the shower beating down and his shoulders shaking as she holds on. This is when she finally decides to let him in, to give him the key to the last layer of armor around her heart, to tell him that she loves him beyond all reason, in spite of every instinct that has kept her alive this long.
Eleven days after New York, Natasha watches him at the range, shooting arrow after arrow, not quite as steady as usual but better than he's been. She takes him home to her bed afterward and sees him through his nightmares. This is when she begins to think that things might be all right, that she might actually be capable of healing rather than causing pain.
Fourteen days after New York, she wakes to find Clint sitting on her window sill framed by a perfect sunny morning. This is when he tells her that he is leaving.
Natasha isn't consciously aware of falling asleep, and later won't even remember lying down.
She's in a long, twisting hallway, the darkness around her nearly complete, though she can still find the walls on either side with her arms outstretched. It makes her feel exposed, vulnerable, moving forward like this, but she doesn't have a choice so she presses onward.
The end of the path comes so abruptly that she actually stumbles, finding herself confronted by the cool glass of a mirror, looming up out of the dark with an unnatural glimmer of yellow light. It's only enough to see her silhouette, her body a distorted entity of shadows and illusions. She isn't sure how long she stands there, trying to make sense of it all, before she realizes that the light is getting stronger, recognizes the familiar crackle and whoosh of a missile approaching.
Natasha sees the fireball in the reflection, the explosion growing blindingly bright in the glass as it draws closer, filling the corridor behind her with no escape. Only then does she manage to make out her own face, her lips sticky-wet with blood and her eyes filled with terror.
She wakes awash in panic, a scream evaporating before it ever leaves her throat, years of nightmares and survival training extinguishing that instinct. Instead she pulls a pillow into her lap, fists her hands white-knuckled in the fabric, and listens to the harsh sound of her own breathing in the night.
"I can't do this," says Clint the moment she meets his eyes. It's a vague statement but she knows immediately what he means by the way his tone steals the air from her lungs, makes her head swim like a punch to the gut.
"You said that before," she says stiffly, sitting up in bed and trying to focus on taking his argument apart, taking the poison out of his fears like she has so many times before. This is something she knows how to do, she tells herself. "You were wrong."
"No," he insists, his voice catching in his throat in a way that sounds like it must be painful. "I wasn't. I wanted to believe you. Wanted to think I could go back to the way things were, but I can't. Everything is a reminder. Everything, Natasha. I wake up with you here, and he's in my head, telling me to kill you. I pick up my bow, and he's right there. Every second I let go of my thoughts just a little, it's like-I'm right back there, trapped. I have to leave. I have to go somewhere there's nobody to hurt."
"That's normal," she insists, aching for him through the panic and anger. "I told you, you have to give it time."
He shakes his head frantically, like he's trying to get the memories out. "I can't."
"Then trust me," she says, more forcefully. "Trust me to get you through it."
"You have no idea what I need!" he explodes, his feet hitting the floor heavily as he shifts his weight and stands. The terror at his own reaction is immediate and painfully visible; she watches as he fights to get control of himself again. "This is why I have to get away."
"If you honestly think this is still just about you," she growls, then shakes her head when the rest of the words refuse to come. If he thinks that, what can she do? She has already given him every honest part of herself and isn't willing to compromise that, to lie if her truths are not enough to keep him here.
"You're right," says Clint, the fight going out of his eyes just as quickly as it's come. "It isn't." But there's a dark edge to his voice, and she doesn't feel any relief at his concession.
The idea is to maintain some sort of routine, Natasha decides, when she's passed a day and a night in fitful attempts at rest. She doesn't have any orders now-won't for the foreseeable future-so she gives herself a mission: act normal. Stay calm. Defy the chaos that's threatening to overwhelm her.
When morning comes for the second time since leaving DC, she gets up, takes a shower, and dresses in the sweats and t-shirt she would have worn to the gym at S.H.I.E.L.D., once. The only food in her apartment at this point comes out of either a wrapper or a can, so she pulls her wet hair back under a baseball cap and walks to the grocery store. It's surreal, seeing her face all over the tabloid stand for the second time in two years, her face that she's tried to keep anonymous, tried to hide behind an endless parade of covers. The Black Widow Unmasked proclaims the title closest to her. Natasha bites back a bitter laugh, because masks have never been her thing.
She turns away from the rack of venomous gossip and tries to focus on her task, filling a basket with fruits and vegetables. Healthy things. The kind of food people eat when they still have a future to be invested in. Normal, she reminds herself, adding a bag of powdered sugar to the load anyway.
Nobody bothers her as she makes her way through the checkout. Nobody stops her, or catches her eye, or even pauses to look a little closer underneath the brim of her hat.
Maybe the world hasn't changed so much, she thinks. Maybe she has never occupied as much space in it as she believed.
"I'm sorry," Clint whispers, much later, his mouth soft and his tears hot against the bare skin of her abdomen. He breathes the words over and over again like a chant, like a benediction. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I love you. I'm so sorry."
"Stop," says Natasha, when she doesn't think she can bear it any longer. She sits up, tugs him toward her to kiss the apologies from his lips. "Stop. Just be with me."
He nods into her neck, making a quiet sound of need as he buries his cock inside of her. Natasha holds him as he moves, her fingers pressing little bruises onto his back and shoulders, like she might be able to brand him as her own, might be able to reclaim him from the monsters inside of his mind. He cries out when he comes, shuddering against her until there's nothing left but exhaustion.
She falls asleep to the failing light outside, and his arms slack and heavy around her waist.
When she gets home again, Natasha bakes scones to go with her tea. It's been a long while since she's taken the time to make anything from scratch, to make anything indulgent just for herself. But the discipline of measuring ingredients, the repetitive motions of mixing things are oddly calming. She uses a little more force than necessary as she cuts butter into flour, watching the little clumps forming and reforming.
She doesn't remember learning how to bake, though she thinks it was part of her original training, probably for a cover. She's played mistress enough times, played the grounded homemaker and the high society trophy wife. She could do it again, she thinks, could find some innocuous man to occupy her time. Or she could be a career woman instead, the kind who works in a non-secret office and wears endless variations of tailored suits. She could leave society altogether, could live in the mountains, could survive entirely on the resources of her own making.
She could be any of these people, if she wanted to. She could be a dozen more.
None of them seem worth it, though. The effort feels hollow without an objective.
Natasha wakes before dawn, the bed empty beside her. She knows by the shot of adrenaline in the pit of her stomach that Clint is gone, that he hasn't changed his mind after all, that in the end she is not enough to keep him here. For a moment she considers going after him, tracking him down and having this fight yet again. But it isn't worth it, she decides-if he wants to leave, if he wants to be alone so badly that he feels the need to sneak out in the middle of the night after using her trust against her-well, she isn't going to spare him the energy of a rescue. Sitting up slowly, she thinks that her movements feel strangely raw, her limbs heavy with a peculiar mixture of anger and grief. A large part of her wants to get up and find something to punch, but the rest of her feels paralyzed in this moment, in the sudden realization that she is alone. In the end she just pulls her knees up to her chest and holds onto them, staring at the windowpanes until the darkness outside begins to lift.
As the sun rises, her eye is caught by a tiny glint of metal on the bedside table. Leaning over, she sees for the first time the thin silver chain with the little arrow pendant. It's sitting on top of a piece of paper, the words 'I'm sorry' hastily scrawled in Clint's now-shaky hand. There's something else below that, too, scratched out. Narrowing her eyes, she thinks she can read 'love you' through the inky lines, a stab of hot rage running through her at the echo of the previous night.
She picks up the note and methodically shreds it into pieces too tiny to grasp before dropping them into the trashcan beside her bed. She leaves the necklace sitting there to greet the sun every morning for two weeks before she finally relents and puts it on. /em
When the walls of her apartment begin to feel oppressive, Natasha laces up her sneakers again and goes for a run under an afternoon sky filling with dark thunderclouds. The storm isn't here, though, not quite yet. She leaves her guns and knives and stingers at home, daring the world to come for her and make a move.
Nothing happens until she pauses in front of a large house with a playground set in the front yard, bending to stretch and re-tie her left shoe, which is growing loose. There's a bin of trash on the curb, mostly the usual empty containers and remnants of food. But a flash of color catches her eye just as she's about to take off running again.
Turning back, she sees the unmistakable tiny plastic replica of her own body, her own uniform, the head just barely sticking out of the trash. There's more, she realizes, leaning closer: two more variations of the action figures she only grudgingly authorized, and crumpled pages of a child's artwork. Tossed out, she imagines, by a girl who's lost faith and had her illusions shattered. Or perhaps by a mother, in protection of her daughter, parents talking in hushed tones of disapproval, glued to the endless news reports.
Probably for the best, Natasha thinks, though she can't quite deny the sick feeling of disappointment twisting in the pit of her stomach. She has never been role model material anyway. Now, finally, they know the truth.
Natasha turns back and heads home when the bloated storm clouds have sagged low enough on the horizon that she can hear a rumble of thunder in the distance and smell the acrid warning of ozone. She reaches her doorstep just as the first warm raindrops start to fall, darkening the pavement around her as she turns her key in the lock and makes her way up the stairs.
It feels as if the storm follows her, the air of her usual sanctuary just as charged as the outside. She feels the change under her skin, little prickles of tension crawling up the back of her neck.
Clint is sitting on the edge of her couch in the living room, his hands resting on his bow, which is cradled in his lap as if he might still be ready to bolt at any moment. She's expected him to look different somehow, to have a new set of scars, or a tattoo, or even a beard. He doesn't, though. Dressed in a pair of rumpled jeans and a faded black shirt with a rip in the left sleeve, he just looks steady, like always - a few years older, a few more hints of gray in his hair.
"Hi," he says quietly, looking up at her as though she's a beacon in the endless fog.
"It's been four days," Natasha says evenly, because even after two years of silence, a part of her has been expecting him to find her and has expected him to do it more quickly, with all of the news. "I was starting to think you might be dead."