Author's Notes
I don't know how to words anymore, but I had to try. Because Clint and Natasha.
Our Secrets Sleep in Winter Clothes
With a grunt, Clint dropped his bow and quiver onto the stained sofa in his lousy motel room and kicked the door shut a little too hard behind him. Three days on surveillance detail in Tiraspol had left him with a whole lot of nothing to show for it other than incredibly stiff shoulders.
As much as he wanted to head straight into the shower and stand under the hot water until it ran cold, he was due to was report to Sitwell…about five minutes ago. He compromised by slouching over to the mini-fridge to dig up some leftover takeout, grabbing the remote and flicking on the small, outdated television set in the middle of the room as he went. A fizzle of Romanian leaked from the speakers and made the space seem a little less empty.
After a few swallows of beer, he glanced at the clock. He couldn't help the crooked smirk that pulled at his lips. It was only eight minutes past his scheduled check-in, but Sitwell was probably foaming at the mouth by now. Taking pity on him, Clint sighed and palmed his burn phone.
Just as he was about to dial in, his eyes snagged on an unread message notification at the bottom of the screen. His forehead wrinkled. He was supposed to be deep-cover on this op; no contact with anyone except the prearranged times with his handler. The break in protocol was too much for him to ignore and another thirty seconds wouldn't kill Sitwell, so he opened it.
Fugitive Alert: ROGERS, STEVEN G. (alias CAPTAIN AMERICA) wanted for withholding information from S.H.I.E.L.D. and obstructing the investigation of the assassination of Director Fury. All personnel based in U.S. East Coast placed on high alert. Hostile and any accomplices are to be terminated on sight.
Clint blinked and read through the directive a second time. Then a third. The words shined blunt and inflexible, but the letters seemed to drift apart and clot together in meaningless strands. It was like trying to lip-read someone who constantly turned away midsentence. He read it again, and this time, a vague terror prickled at the base of his neck.
The sound of the forgotten TV snatched at the scattered splinters of his attention. All at once, he was vaulting over the sofa with none of his usual grace, sending a lamp crashing to the carpet as he lunged to turn up the volume.
S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarriers were burning over D.C.
The reporter's voice was nothing but a hazy staccato in his ears as the footage on screen lurched from shot to grainy shot. The Capitol building. Glass and concrete rubble that he recognized was once the Triskelion. Black smoke billowing from wreckage half-drowned in the Potomac. A photo of Rogers.
He'd been off grid for less than seventy-two hours. How had the whole world managed to go to hell in that time?
Oh God. A tremor started in his calloused fingertips and radiated along every nerve, every bone until his entire body was shaking. The last time he spoke with Natasha was the night he before he shipped out here, and she mentioned that Fury would be putting her on assignment soon.
With Steve.
(Steve, who'd finally begun to retaliate against Natasha's teasing and terrible "Steve is old" jokes two months ago. Steve, who went every other Sunday without fail to visit the woman he could've made a life with in a different time, his time, only to watch her remember and forget him over and over.
Steve, whose face was plastered on international breaking news coverage while D.C. looked like a warzone.)
Clint scrabbled for his phone, lungs spasming. For once in his life, his hands weren't cooperating and it took him three tries just to get the number right.
"C'mon, Natasha," he muttered before the line could even connect to ring, "pick up, pick up—"
"We're sorry, the number you have dialed is not in service at this time."
The phone slipped from his numb fingers and something deep inside him crumpled.
Not Natasha, echoed inside his head, louder, louder, until he was on his knees, hands knotted tightly in his hair. Not Natasha. He couldn't lose her. It had been him and Natasha and Coulson for so long, and when Coulson died, he didn't think he could survive it. He'd never prepared himself for it, and why would he have? Clint was supposed to die first, leaping off of buildings and in front of bullets, and Coulson would live forever, disguising lethal force with tidily combed hair and pressed suits.
And now it was down to the two of them.
Though Natasha put herself into the line of fire as routinely as he did, she'd somehow always seemed untouchable to him, too good at what she did to ever be brought down. But the one time Natasha might actually need him, he was stranded halfway across the world, and if he lost her too...
An awful, strangled noise caught somewhere between a whimper and a shout ripped from his throat, and he felt more unhinged than he had in months.
When the initial panic began to ebb, he forced his mind clear of everything besides plans for what he needed to do: get stateside. Calling S.H.I.E.L.D. for extraction was not an option. There were too many unknown variables. He was on his own.
Deadly quiet, he changed out of his field suit, packed his gear, and wiped the room of all evidence that he was ever there.
By the time the TV returned to regularly scheduled programming, he was long gone.
}===➤
Securing a ride on a small cargo plane bound for New York and keeping it off the books was laughably easy. Once the pilot saw he was willing to pay in cash with half upfront, any lingering spark of curiosity about a foreigner hidden behind a hat and sunglasses was smothered.
He was left to wait in the hangar with assurances that they'd be wheels up in twenty. Leaning heavily against a crate, Clint scrubbed at his face and exhaled unsteadily. He hadn't allowed himself to focus on anything outside of hotwiring a car on the outskirts of the city and tracking down the only operational, noncommercial airstrip for fifty-miles in any direction. But with nothing to do now but wait, sick, cloying anxiety started to creep back in.
He'd tried calling Natasha twice more only to hear the same message that her line was out of commission. He was nothing if not hardheaded, not to mention a little bit in denial. It made for a dangerous combination.
Still, he was hardly expecting for his phone to start blowing up.
He went tearing through his pockets, and stupid and childish as it was, hope surged so hard and fast in his chest that it was painful. When he saw the name on his screen, his face twisted before it went smooth and detached again.
Tony Stark: If I didn't know any better, I'd think one of your agent interns royally fucked up and confused the intranet with the internet.
Tony Stark: Also, I never would've pinned you for a carnie, but it makes so much sense.
Tony Stark: Should I be concerned that you haven't answered me yet? Text "yes" for "no" and "no" for "Hail Hydra!"
He barely finished skimming the texts before his screen was overtaken by an incoming call.
"Stark, how did you get this number?"
"Are you joking? That should be the least of your worries. I'm pretty sure your shoe size and preferred brand of cereal are currently being dissected on public message boards. In the spirit of fairness, I'm a Froot Loops guy, myself."
He wasn't in any frame of mind to humor Tony. "Look, do you have any idea—?" He broke off halfway through the question; there was something far more pressing to ask. "Have you heard anything from Natasha?"
"No."
He closed his eyes and clenched a string of obscenities behind his teeth.
"But considering Comrade Bristow just made her television debut about half an hour ago, I'd say she's doing okay."
His eyes snapped open. "What the hell are you talking about?"
There was a tense stretch of silence on the line before Stark spoke. "How much, uh, do you know?"
"I know they say Fury's dead and that they're gunning for Steve. Natasha was on a mission with him," he shook his head, "but other than that, nothing. I went dark for a few days." He couldn't seem to find his footing. Every time he thought he'd come upon solid ground, the earth would shift beneath him. He hated it. "What do you mean she was on TV? That'll blow every cover she has."
"It doesn't—" but Tony changed tacks, instead saying, "I'm sure she thought about that. This wasn't some random Daily Bugle pap shot. She intentionally exposed herself."
"What?" The sharp explosion of sound went ricocheting through the hangar. A few crewmembers looked warily in his direction and he dropped his voice to a harsh whisper. "How do you know that? How could S.H.I.E.L.D. have sanctioned that?"
"Clint..." he said, slowly.
The uncharacteristically gentle tone was bad enough, but in the split second before everything came crashing down around his ears, Clint thought that the glaring absence of a ridiculous nickname was just as responsible for the way he went cold with dread.
"There is no S.H.I.E.L.D."
}===➤
It hadn't taken Clint all that long to figure out that Tony liked to pretend he was a hell of a lot more careless and selfish than he actually was. So when he arrived in New York and discovered a car already waiting for him, he knew exactly who was responsible. Within ten minutes of touching down on the tarmac, he was headed south on the interstate.
This was far from the first time he and Natasha were apart during a mission gone south. Experience had led them to develop a simple system—go to the closest possible safe house and wait for the other to come. S.H.I.E.L.D. had dozens along the Eastern seaboard alone, but even if the whole agency wasn't compromised six ways to Sunday and back, she wouldn't be at any of those.
The two of them had safe houses of their own all over the world, and not a single one was documented with S.H.I.E.L.D. It had been her idea, and what once seemed like paranoia was now only foresight.
Everything Tony had told him…it didn't seem possible. He didn't want it to be. The years of loyalty, the blood on his hands in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s name, what did any of it mean now? Every kill he'd made was questionable, every mission shrouded in doubt. He was no stranger to betrayal, but this…
Clint's knuckles were white against the steering wheel.
What would he do if Natasha wasn't at the safe house? What if all this had been too much and she fled to some far-flung corner of the earth?
Without him.
"No," he said out loud, as if the sound would chase away the white-hot ache invading him. She wouldn't. She would never leave him like that.
And why not? jeered a deceptively soft voice in his head that sounded alarmingly like Thor's bastard of a brother. No doubt she blames you for miring her in a situation no better than where she started. Did you truly believe you had led her into a life of good? That together you were helping the world? How perfectly naïve.
"Shut the fuck up," he growled. Pressing a little harder on the gas, he merged onto the turnpike towards Maryland.
}===➤
The rancher was tucked away in the woods, accessible only by a steep dirt road of twenty miles with a turnoff that was easy to miss unless you knew it was there.
It was the middle of the night by the time he reached the house. He killed the engine. The place looked abandoned; no lights, no smoke curling from the chimney, but he'd come this far and he refused to believe he was wrong. Before he could overthink it, he was climbing the porch and overriding the security system.
He shuffled a few cautious steps inside, deliberately making noise, and then she was right there in front of him, her glock trained on him.
He was so goddamn relieved to see her that it made him a little lightheaded and he threw out a hand to lean against the wall. For the first time in nineteen hours, he began to feel sane again.
His eyes traced over her impatiently, taking in her bright, tousled hair, the fierce set to her mouth, the oversized t-shirt with the hem that hit mid-thigh, her pale, bare toes curled against the chilly hardwood floor, until his breathing began even out and his pulse slowed with the understanding that she was here and safe. He moved towards her, desperate to hold her, to reassure himself with another sense that she was okay, but he froze when she shrank back.
Then he noticed that she hadn't lowered her gun.
"Tasha," he said, his voice sounding rough to his own ears. "It's me."
She had slipped further into the shadows, beyond the reach of the moonlight spilling in from the windows, but he could still see that her expression was carefully blank as she replied, "I know."
There was a wild gleam in her eyes that warned him from coming any closer. He'd watched her struggle to come down from ops gone sideways before, and God knows he had too, but this was something entirely different. He wasn't sure what to do. He licked his chapped lips, waiting for her to make the first move.
"Swear," she said eventually, so quietly that he almost didn't hear.
A muscle in his jaw twitched.
Her chest rose and fell with ragged, shallow breaths. "Swear you didn't know. Swear you aren't—" An angry sob choked her.
"I swear."
A minute passed in the throbbing spaces between their heartbeats, but finally, Natasha brought the gun down to her side.
"Okay," she said, squeezing her burning, overbright eyes shut for a moment. "Now you ask me."
He shook his head. "I don't have to—"
"Ask me." The note of anguish raw in those words tore at him.
"Tasha," he murmured softly, closing the distance between them. "No."
He wrapped himself around her, burying his face in her hair while hers pressed into his neck. She trembled violently in his arms, fingers tangling in his shirt as if to anchor herself to him as her body rode out the storm, and he clutched her tighter.
Her shaking subsided little by little and had almost stopped completely when something warm and wet began to seep through his shirt. Clint brought his hand to her cheek to brush away her tears, but the smooth skin was dry. He tilted back just far enough to look down between them and caught sight of the red stain spreading along the left side of her shirt.
"You're bleeding," he told her in consternation.
She glanced down and scowled, looking more exasperated than anything. "Must've pulled my stitches again."
His hand went to the small of her back, urging her to follow him. "C'mon."
In the harsh bathroom light, he could see what a mess she really was, bruises and scrapes littering her face, her arms, her legs. He helped her up to sit on the counter and rummaged in the cabinet under the sink until he found the med kit.
Gently, he tugged the loose neck of her t-shirt to stretch down over her shoulder and peeled away the ruined dressing so he could inspect the damage. Where the swell of her breast began, a hole about the size of a penny was sluggishly dribbling blood.
"Jesus," he hissed.
She gave a one-armed shrug. "At least it was through and through."
In that second, he couldn't stand how casual she was being. He knew this was far from the worst injury she'd ever sustained, but shit if that made him feel any better. Black edged into his vision as he realized just how close the bullet had come to her heart; half an inch lower and she wouldn't have been waiting for him here or anywhere else. A shudder rolled through him.
The touch of her thin, cold fingers at his wrist steadied him.
With the dexterity of someone who had done this far too many times before, he gingerly cleaned away the blood and checked the back of her shoulder to be sure the stitches there had held. Satisfied, he turned his attention back to the front of her—the exit wound if he had to guess based on the look of it. Except for his low sorry when she winced at the first prick of the needle, they were both quiet while he patched her up. He smoothed a clean gauze bandage over her new stitches, his callouses catching on the cotton fibers, and pressed a light kiss on top of it. The corner of her mouth quirked into a smile.
Natasha combed her fingers through his hair, sliding her hand to the back of his neck so she could pull him into a searing, tender kiss. When they broke apart, she rested her forehead against his, cupping his jaw while her thumb stroked his bottom lip.
"God, Tasha," he said thickly. "I thought—"
"I know," she soothed.
There were a thousand questions he wanted to ask her, a thousand things they needed to talk about, but she was swaying slightly with exhaustion, and suddenly, he could hardly keep his eyes open.
They could talk in the morning.
After helping her into a fresh shirt, this one a frayed flannel button-down that she'd stolen from him ages ago, Clint stripped down to his boxers and curled against her back beneath the sheets, one hand splayed at her stomach.
He was just drifting off when he heard her whisper into the dark, "I'm sorry." Before he could ask what for, she continued haltingly. "There are so many lies. I… I can't tell what's real anymore."
"Hey, it's okay." His lips grazed her throat, trailing up until he could nuzzle behind her ear. "We'll figure it out."
She began to toy with the hand he had slung across her. "Fury's alive."
He snorted, but there was no denying that the weight which had settled on his shoulders in Tiraspol became a fraction lighter. "Of course he is. That bastard has nine lives like a damn cat."
"I really thought he was dead," she confessed in a small voice. "He didn't trust me."
And he knew that right there hurt her more than any gunshot wound ever could.
"I trust you."
She lifted his hand to her mouth and kissed his knuckles before bringing it back down. He could feel her sleepily tracing Cyrillic letters across the skin of his arm.
I trust you. I need you. I love you.
Before sleep took him, he murmured into her hair, "Love you too, Tasha."
End Author's Notes
Writing about superheroes since 2007, crying over them since 1998.