Infinite.
(Avengers Fiction.)
Black Widow/Hawkeye
Author Note: I do not own what is not mine.
Summary: There are infinite universes. They have been apart and together, rivals and strangers. They have died on the same day.
…
…
She finds an arrow. It's stuck into the floor of the safe house, tilted with the angle of it's trajectory.
There is no reason to stay in the room. She lingers, ten minutes she doesn't have, not when somebody has fired a warning shot through the window pane. Effectively scattering shards of glass across the carpet and rendering the shoddy apartment in the rundown brick walk up useless.
She's got her bag strapped to her back as she kneels in the glass and stares out. She wonders which of the rooftops held an archer. Using her shirt sleeve, she pulls the arrow from the carpet and lays it flat on the floor.
She pulls the gun from her left holster and slides out the magazine. She removes a round and places it neatly beside the arrow.
…
The world stays saved.
Perhaps Stark really has privatized world peace.
When the time comes they find themselves tucked up in Natasha's room. Clint can see her face in the reflection of the window. He is aware that she has done this on purpose.
She's just been released from medical. He can smell the antiseptic and bleach on her. Clint has memorized every scar she bares on herself. He has never doubted her ability. Even as he selfishly tallies the reminders of bullet holes and blade marks, the broken bones and the pints of blood transfused into her body simply so that she may live.
He tells her that they do not have to do this anymore. She doesn't need to die to balance her ledger. He doesn't tell her that he doesn't want her to die. Sentiment and debt are things she understands in their most abstract.
The reflection of her face is conflicted, caught between gratitude and denial.
She turns to argue, which he understands. He cuts her short, walking to the window and standing beside her, placing a palm to the glass. He whispers a few words in Latin.
He wakes up the next morning, makes his way out of his lofted bedroom and finds Natasha sitting with her back to him. He's leafing through the papers that she has left scattered across his workbench when she turns away from the window.
They give Steve the number to a burner phone. Natasha packs some boxes and tucks them into the back of her closet. The fill out paperwork for Shield, in triplicate. Banner doesn't ask questions. They pack like professionals, each with a duffel bag slung over a shoulder. Clad in clothing that permits freedom of movement. Shoes that can take a beating.
Stark's driver deposits them at a rental car lot. They drive and fly and use some of the cover identities that Natasha has been saving for years. They spend a week somewhere in France, because Clint's accent is flawless and they both appreciate good food.
They keep moving until Clint buys a decade old Jeep and drives off the asphalt onto a poorly kept gravel road. Natasha gives directions, her duffel bag coated in a fine layer of dust at her feet.
It is old. A farmhouse with a few out buildings and what looks like a horse stable. It doesn't have a mail box. Clint smiles a little when he puts the car in park and kills the engine.
It takes a week for them to get all of the furniture stored in one of the outbuildings into the house. Natasha had been sending things here for a long time. Leather wingback chairs, oak bookshelves, crates of old leather bound books with yellowed pages, sheets, blankets, pillows, new mattresses, barstools for the kitchen island, a rocking chair for the porch, rope ladders, welding equipment, sheet metal, foot lockers, a dune buggy.
The outbuildings were full of useful things.
It takes a month and a half for them to add the proper security to the exterior and re-enforce the windows and walls.
They burn chopped up pieces of the old furniture in the fireplace. Clint laughs when she tells him she had kept it in place as a cover. He can picture her walking the halls of the house, carefully running a gloved fingertip over the mantelpiece.
They cook and it takes a while for them to get beyond the basics. Clint scrubs the grit out of the deep kitchen sink one evening. Natasha reorganizes the books in the small library. A drafting table appears amid the bookshelves. It is gradually filled with onionskin blueprints and scrawling notations on weapon modifications.
Together they build an armory in the basement.
Clint tacks targets up on the side of the stable. He climbs the taller trees on the property and goes for walks when Natasha goes for groceries. Sometimes he goes for groceries, or to the equipment store one hundred and thirty kilometers away. Natasha naps on the couch in the living room when Clint cooks food that is too heavy.
They leave the dirty dishes in the sink some days. Between the French, German and Russian they switch in and out of over breakfasts Clint still spots the edge in Natasha's voice. They don't get decent cell reception, but she scrawls a note in Greek upon a notepad, a reminder to call home.
Steve likes talking to them. Even on the days where they pass the phone back and forth a few times. Natasha asks after Banner and Stark regularly. Clint mentions the drafting table and the formal dining room that they never use. When Steve laughs a bit too sadly and reminds them that Stark has a tower to house the team Natasha grins into the receiver. The farmhouse has five bedrooms and the air is much cleaner than Manhattan.
They are not surprised when Steve shows up, standing next to Clint's jeep with a bulky duffel bag at his feet.
He stays for a few weeks, spending Christmas with them and marveling at the snow. He draws dozens of sketches of Natasha. He pens an equal number of Clint, but even more of the two of them. When it is time for him to leave Steve clips half of the drawings to the drafting table. The other half travel back with him.
Clint reads the magazines they have sent to their letter box two towns away. Natasha reads the newspapers.
The world stays saved.
…
He sees her file.
It's neatly organized. No doubt the product of one of Fury's demands to "tidy up all the goddamn data, because nobody can access jack around this flying hellhole."
Clint would have preferred a paper file, he's tactile like that. He likes the notations in the margins and the way different sections age. Sometimes there are coffee rings on the pages.
It's impressive. The pixilated collection of everything known about her.
An intense proficiency with firearms. A habit for carrying knives and throwing stars. Training in close quarters combat, hand-to-hand combat and hostage negotiation. Fluency in seven different languages. A working knowledge possibly five more. A knack for computer programming and code writing. Skilled in data extraction and interrogation.
He reads more.
The list of weapons she has reportedly used. It is lengthy, a mind numbing catalogue of pistols, rifles, assault weapons and standard civilian fare that makes Clint's mouth slant downward. He scans over her confirmed kills. Wonders if she is as broken as he is.
They never meet. She is existing King's Cross station on an outbound train when he buys a bagel in London with the stipend he's been given for food. He counts out the currency with ease as she settles into a book. She keeps an eye on the rest of the passengers in the car by watching their reflections in the window.
They are seven Kilometers apart. This is the closest they come.
…
Clint is in a suit.
It's Washington D.C.
An assignment to protect a minor senator, Clint's making good on a favor Fury owes somebody.
She wears something well-fitted and black, pretending to be the assistant of someone who probably already has an assistant.
They pass on the street, near a restaurant located too close to the White House for comfort. Each of them is aware of the people on the rooftops above them. It is a product of their occupation.
He has the sense to not visibly fidget, the suit feels all wrong. The goddamned dress shoes feel all wrong too.
She wears a pair of expensive yellow heels that are absolutely killing her and she is confident that she will put a bullet between someone's eyes if she has to wear them tomorrow. She adds shoe shopping to her short list of personal errands.
They make eye contact. She smirks, because Clint looks good in a suit. He smiles, because that quirk… smirking when it's more acceptable to smile… is enough of a break in the monotony to make his day.
…
She outlives him by thirty seven minutes and forty eight seconds.
They are both in Manhattan when Loki opens up the sky.
Clint had woken from a dead sleep, rolled out of a hotel room bed and landed on the floor with a practiced motion. He reaches for his quiver and then his gun. There are three other agents in the hotel. He doesn't think as he gears up and goes to the window.
She has a studio apartment and a persistent case of insomnia. She doesn't need to turn on the television to understand that something has gone very wrong. The city has changed it's sound and ice is crawling up her spine.
He makes it to the roof of an office building. It's tall enough to afford him nearly perfect sight lines. He still feels exposed though, because the bastards are flying and Clint just doesn't have the ability to watch his own back in the middle of all of it.
She is a sniper at heart, the cold calculated distance of a kill shot from three hundred meters is her lullaby. The duffel on her back clangs mutely with two heavy rifle set ups and enough ammo to take down a train full of civilians. Security has fallen all over downtown Manhattan. She sneaks onto the tenth floor of an office tower and then takes the elevator up. The roof access door lock isn't anything special.
At no time do they register the presence of the other.
Her shoulder begins to ache after forty minutes, the kickback of the rifle is a hammer blow against an already forming bruise. He feels the pull of his bow after fifty minutes. They stay accurate. Each round finding it's mark without error.
It is then that they prove themselves the best in the world.
There are a fleet of mangled alien bodies strewn on the ground, an arrow in the eye socket of each.
Manhattan doesn't begin to fall until her gun jams. She curses in Russian, then in prays a whisper of Latin. Her hands work the bolt action open and closed. The gun is too hot to take apart and rebuild, she can feel the heat off the barrel. She flicks a glance to the clouds and the gaping empty maw that has opened up the world.
She backs into a corner on the roof, crouching low and holding a serrated hunting knife in one hand. He keeps a hunting knife on him as well, the same model. He reaches for it after he fires his last arrow. He slides the quiver off of his shoulder, pushing it into a narrow space between an air conditioner unit and the roof. He waits, placing a wall at his back and letting his eyes search the air.
He goes down hard, because he has no intention of being an easy target. A blow to the side of his head brings his world into darkness. The deep gash across the joint of his shoulder bleeds out heavy and fast. There is a crushing weight that cracks three ribs and makes his unconscious body unable to breathe.
The battle turns.
Loki's magic is complex and sensitive. It alerts him of her. Causes him to issue the command to sedate her and bring her to him.
The sedative is weak. She is pushing off it's hold on her system by the time Loki presses two fingers to her jaw and nudges her to look him in the eye. He smirks, because he knows pride and strength when he sees it, and her eyes shine. She has ice-honed steel and bitterness humming in her veins.
He holds the staff in one hand and waves the other. Her wrists are unbound and she shudders internally as Loki glides a step backwards. She growls, a low hostile sound in the back of her throat.
"Rule with me."
His voice is a haunting sound that lingers in her head for three heartbeats.
She understands what he is offering. Understands without hesitation or regret that she will refuse him. She is graceful, a delicate balance of soft lines and the hardest edges. Her humanity is clawing at the back of her throat when the growl silences itself.
"I will not."
They are beautiful and defiant words.
…
He brings her in.
She is taken to a holding cell. It's nice, there is a foam mattress and a chair bolted to the floor.
She doesn't pace it. She looks it over quickly, presses a fingertip to the seams where the walls meet, pushes a palm into the mattress and settles into a graceful lotus position on the floor. Clint watches this.
Three weeks pass, him looking into one-way-glass and her studiously ignoring it's presence. There is a lot of paperwork. Clint goes on missions within the country's boarders. She waits.
He is allowed in three times. The first is to assure her that she will not be executed. The second is to personally deliver her a music player and headphones. He steals bites off of her ignored trays of food both times.
The third time he slides a folder of papers onto her mattress. The papers give her permission to wander freely about base, outline her present security clearance and instruct her to request an escort should she feel compelled to leave the base. Clint is effectively assigned the task of showing a hostile Russian assassin where everything is. It's babysitting and Clint knows it must be Fury's doing somehow.
She practices kickboxing and yoga, sights in weapons and spends hours cleaning guns. She is assigned small quarters. Given a cash stipend for civilian clothing and set up with a bank account where her Shield paychecks go.
Eventually somebody decides to challenge her to a sparring match. It's brutal. She is brutal. Clint tells her that she needs to know how to tone it down or turn it off. She spins on the ball of one foot and glares at him. Telling him with a voice as cold as late winter that she doesn't know how.
He becomes her sparring partner. She doesn't go easy on him. She dislocates his shoulder the first time they collide. She offers to put it back into place for him. Sometimes he lands a hit on her. Clint has stopped pulling his punches and using half strength for blows. If she fights with everything, he will bring everything as well.
It gets to the point where neither can spar with anyone else. Then it slowly inches past that.
They take meals together, often enough and comfortably enough to turn it to habit. Fury schedules their leave for the same days. It's nothing they have a problem with. One weekend Clint insists on going into the mountains. Months later she asks him if he would go with her into the city.
They are placed on field operations together. They push and pull, the fit isn't neat until she accepts that he is quite possibly the best shot in the world. He almost blows her cover and gives away his position twice before he comes to understand that she can handle herself. In the interim, Coulson nearly tranquilizes them both and considers sending them to New Zealand via shipping container.
…
They swear on each other's lives and mean it.
Clint goes missing (absolutely vanishes from the places Shield can reach) and she appears in Fury's office and appeals for permission to find him. Seven times in the course of their careers Clint falls off the grid. Without fail, it is she who brings him back.
She disappears three times. Clint doesn't bother getting permission, he simply gives chase. When they return, he escorts her to medical and lingers at her side. She tells him off every time, because she gets anxious watching his composure slip and fracture.
They send Coulson chocolates when they are on extended away missions. The man isn't too particular about his chocolates, but they spend hours looking through street markets and specialty shops anyway. They don't have people to buy gifts for. Eventually Coulson looks forward to the packages of chocolates.
Sometimes she buys them, writing the address with gentle script. Placing too many stamps on the box before wrapping the whole thing up in twine and handing it to Clint, who mails it off without fanfare. Occasionally, Clint shops for the chocolate alone. He will pick them up in a grocery store with a series of other odd things, like soap or some hydrogen peroxide. Clint sends the receipt in the post on occasion, mailing it by itself in a thin envelope.
It's summer in Ontario Canada when Clint asks her what she wanted to be when she grew up.
They are on a stakeout Fury had assigned them three weeks after Clint broke a rib. The mission is basically completed, the images and reports have been sent off. They have vacated their post and are holed up in a hotel under a different set of alias'.
She tells him the truth, that she knows nothing else but this.
They share trust issues. She whispers her full name to him when he asks her who she really is. He tells her about the circus and things he let go of in order to become the person he is now. They share tea in France once, her accent is perfect. He orders her meal for her when they are in Australia, and again at a small bistro in San Francisco. They share a bed many times, but it is only used for sleep.
Their nightmares they keep to themselves until they can't anymore. They watch each other's blinds spots and get into the habit of handing each other their lives, their trust, so often that adding any more responsibility would break them both. Human intimacy is not the pastime of killers, so they avoid that sort of contact.
Coulson receives the box three weeks after they are reported missing. Six Swiss chocolate bars and Natasha's thin penmanship on the back of a standard post card. She writes that the world is a very big place, that time is a very fragile thing and that they will return. Clint has included a post card of his own, made out of a photograph of the two of them standing on a beach. On the back of the photograph he has scrawled a single word.
Godspeed.
…