"Nat, come on."

No answer.

"Tasha?"

Nothing.

"Natasha, please, say something."

Silence.

Clint sighed, running his hand through his hair and gripped a handful of the strands that rested at the top of his neck. It had been getting longer recently, and she hated it longer, he knew. She didn't like it because it wasn't well kept, wasn't practical to have it nearly brushing over his eyebrows. He teased her and told her that she didn't like it because it was a distraction to her, but they both knew that she was right, she always was.

"Nat, come on, this is getting ridiculous."

Still, no reply. He sighed again. It was getting increasingly frustrating.

"Come on, there's something I have to tell you."

But still, no answer. He wasn't sure what he'd done to incur this silence, but it was chilling now. She'd been cold to him in the past, but this was a freeze that he wasn't prepared for. The lack of words. People always considered her quiet and stealthy, but he knew better. He knew that one of her guilty pleasures was staying awake until the small hours of the morning talking about nothing at all. He missed that when she was quiet like this. No one else noticed the silence when she wasn't speaking to him. But he did.

"It's important," he tempted.

Nothing. Perhaps he could earn her forgiveness somehow? Just to hear her voice. Even if she just told him that she was mad at him still, it was better than hearing nothing. But how? She'd kill him if he bought her flowers, she hated that kind of conventionality. She would throw chocolates back in his face, but later sneak out and eat them all even though she was still mad at him.

"You know that you want to know," he added with a teasing tone.

That she'd be real tempted by. The I-know-something-you-don't-know. She fell for it every time.

But not this time.

He sighed, looking up and facing her as much as he could given the fact that she wasn't actually looking back at him. "Nat…please?"

Again, nothing.

"Fine, you know what? You're not going to talk to me, but I'm going to talk to you."

This time, the silence didn't shock him. She'd let him talk, let him say his piece. She always did. That part was more familiar to him than the fact that she wasn't speaking to him in the first place.

"Michael took his first steps this morning."

The silence that followed this time was heartbreaking, but he continued.

"It was actually kinda funny." It was at the time, but not now. "He went four steps first time, from me to Thor. But he fell when he got to Thor, tried to grab for something to hold himself to and ended up grabbing his hair. Thor screamed, and honestly I don't know which one of them was more scared."

Silence was the sound that he hated most in the world. Where was the excited Natasha that he knew?

He lowered his voice again, shaking his head. "I'm sorry you had to miss it. Tony filmed it, but…" He knew that he wasn't going to get an answer, even now, and he stood from the ground.

There were flowers in his hand, even though he knew that she'd hate them, especially since there were pink roses in there. The worst colour. "Here, I got you uh…" he trailed off, shaking his head. "I know they're not your favourite. But today isn't my usual day to come here, so…it was kind of a rush stop." She didn't reach for them, naturally, and he put them down before her, with no surface nearby to rest them on, carefully placing them where they wouldn't be damaged.

He stood before her, looking down with a heavy sigh and a choking sensation in his throat that still floored him every time he came here, trying to get through to her, every time he left with no reply. "We miss you, Tasha. Mikey, he misses his mom. So…any time you feel like you're ready to come home, we'll be waiting for you."

He nodded to himself one final time, still leaning in for the kiss that wouldn't be returned and pulling away, swearing under his breath, and left to go back to the car, leaving behind him the words that were right before him the entire time, words that didn't need to be spoken because they were etched in stone for the world to read, words that had been carefully chosen, agonised over and one day would be words that their son would read too.

Natasha Romanoff-Barton
Wife, mother, partner & friend
Born in fire, taken by flames.
Sleep well, love.