A/N: Inspired by the song "Firewood" by Regina Spektor. The story was intended to be a one-shot, but it stuck with me. So I wrote how Clint dealed with everything that happened afterwards. The words in italics are Clint's thoughts/words to Natasha (and who knows, maybe she's listening).

Don't look so shocked
Don't judge so harsh
You don't know you're only spying
Everyone knows it's going to hurt
But at least we'll get hurt trying

The piano is not firewood yet
But a heart can't be helped
And it gathers regret
Someday you'll wake up and feel a great pain
And you'll miss every toy you've ever owned

You'll want to go back
You'll wish you were small
Nothing will console your crying
You'll take the clock off of your wall
And you'll wish it was lying

X

Natasha

I can let myself think of her now, half drunk. It hurts less.

She was an angel, she was. And she smoked when she was nervous (That happened once or twice the whole time I knew her). And I knew her for almost 10 years. Half that time was spent gaining her trust and becoming her friend, and the other half…man, I miss her.

I remember I made her pancakes and spaghetti and soup, because she couldn't cook to save her life (except for that one Russian dessert that always came out perfect).

She put up a fight when I tried to hold her at night. (I'm not your teddy bear) I always won though, and when I woke up she was still nestled in my arms, her head on my chest.

She would wake up in that quiet way of hers, notice I was staring and say something along the lines of "Stop creeping, Barton." But she didn't try to move.

I loved her.

I still do and the past tense breaks my heart. I'll never get used to it. She is, she'll always be. Here, mine. Moe serdtse.

She was beautiful, so beautiful. Her green eyes shined when she saw me after a solo mission even when she insisted it was jus a trick of the light. She did everything beautifully, too. The way she danced with me, the way we made love and how she talked. Her voice when she sang old Russian lullabies… (I never quite understood them, even knowing the language).

Her laugh, so melodious and rare, that resonated in my apartment the few times I managed to elicit it out of her.

I still think I hear her laughing, at night. Maybe she is with me still, somehow. Or maybe I'm just going crazy.

The bed's cold and empty now, her warm body next to mine for so long that sometimes I'll still wake up and call out "Tasha", thinking she just had another nightmare and went to make tea.

We shared our nightmares. She told me about the Red Room, about being forced to kill when she was 7, about the officer that slipped into her bedroom when she was 11 (she killed him the next night, her thighs breaking his neck) and I told her about my parents and my brother, the swordsman in the circus and Loki, I told her everything. She was everything.

There it is, that fucking past tense, reminding me I'm alone now.

Phil's gone, and now Nat's two. And the Avengers may call every other week to ask me how I'm doing but it's not the same thing. I'm alone. She was my only family.

Tasha would be ashamed of me right now, sitting on the floor in my boxers, with a bottle of vodka in my hands. Her vodka. The real, hard stuff she imported from Russia (because Russian is always better, Clint, don't argue)

I take another swing of the bottle and relish its burn down my chest. The last days hell the last weeks, had been a nightmare. Either feeling too much or feeling nothing at all. The first was overwhelming pain, because Natasha, fuck, this is a mess…the second was a numbness that still hurt but at least let me breath without feeling the scent of her hair.

I always loved her hair. Natural redhead she was (got angry when people thought she dyed it) but it was such a rich, deep red that one couldn't help but wonder. It was the color of blood. (Like the one that trickled from her mouth as she died, with me holding her)

I often wonder if I could've done more. (The bullet was lodged in her lung, Clint, there was nothing you could've done) But, fuck, that doesn't make me feel better. Nothing will, not anymore.

X

Tasha, where are you?

Can you see me acting like an asshole? Crying for you in the kitchen floor of my old apartment.

There's still a drawer of your clothes here, Nat. I can't throw them away.

X

Natasha said keeping clothes here would practical, but I saw her eyes when she noticed I emptied a drawer for her.

I remember when I told her to just move in, you already live here anyway.

I told her I loved her that night when we made love, and she didn't say it back. But also didn't leave, in fact her arms tightened around my chest. And I knew.

X

I was your family too, wasn't I, Natasha?

Yeah…we were family, sweetheart.

You were my everything.

X

The bottle is empty now, and I throw it against the kitchen table, watching it break in pieces. One lodges itself in my leg and blood trickles down. But I can't feel the pain, not that one anyway. All I can notice it's the blood being the color of her hair. All I can feel is the pain that started somewhere in my heart 2 months ago, and now has spread to the rest of my body. Crippling me with grieve.

I need to stop thinking she will walk through the door again one day, her hair tousled and a scratch on her cheek but never more beautiful. She looks like a goddess after missions, I mean, she looked.

There has to be another bottle of vodka around here, but I probably won't find, Tasha was crafty with her alcohol.

At least I know she left like she always wanted to, in the thick of the fight. She always told me dying in a hospital would be a shame. She wanted to go down fighting, and she did, at the end. Life without her may be meaning less and lonely but I'm still breathing (barely), I'm still an agent. And I'm supposed to move on and do my job (how do you move on when someone took a piece of you with them?)

Tomorrow I have to leave for a high-risk mission (damn I shouldn't be drinking). It's a hard job; it would've been so easy if she was here, though. And Fury was hesitant of sending me in, but I convinced him I was fine (I learned to lie from the best).

So who knows? Maybe I'll catch up to her.

Natasha always ran faster than me.

X

Everyone knows you're going to love
Though there's still no cure for crying