Thank you all for the many follows and handful of reviews! I am writing this largely because it's been rattling around in my brain for a couple of weeks and it's nice to get it down in writing, but the affirmations are nice :)
DISCLAIMER: I don't own the rights to anything that you recognize.
This chapter does NOT contain Endgame spoilers
Spring 2009 - Part II
Natasha had never been a particularly good sleeper. Perhaps she had been as a young child, but she could not remember that part of her life. Growing up in the Red Room, being a light sleeper had been a tremendous asset and had helped her save her own skin more than once. Living as a spy had reinforced the value of waking easily at the sound of a pin dropping out of place. For a brief time after joining SHIELD, she had harbored the naive hope that she would be able to rest more easily. Breaking through the brainwashing instilled by the Red Room program proved only to unleash a torrent of new terrors and her nightmares began to gush with blood.
The memories of her previous misdeeds had always resided within her subconscious, but re-living each surfacing memory without the filter and lens of her Red Room training brought fresh horror when she woke. It was waking from each nightmare to the realization that the events had been real and that the monster from her nightmares was the same one staring back at her in the mirror. As each new atrocity surfaced in her dreams, she coped in her own way, beating back her demons mentally by throwing herself into her missions at SHIELD or physically though punishing workouts and training sessions. The initial flood of nightmarish memories after the brainwashing was lifted had hit her so hard that she felt suffocated and desperate for escape, wishing that the day Clint Barton had approached her for the first time had ended very differently. With every passing week, month, and year the battles had raged a little less, new memories began to surface less frequently, and coming to terms with her past meant that making peace with herself became just a little easier.
The head injury had shaken her already manipulated subconscious into a new maelstrom of impossibly entangled nightmares and memories that tormented her sleeping hours. Before, she had largely been able to discern memory from fiction. Now, Natasha could not always be sure that each new heinous recollection was a true memory or an invented creation of her trauma-stricken brain.
That uncertainty twisted restlessly in her gut like a living, poisonous snake.
The first night she spent at the Barton's home, she had drifted into sleep more quickly and easily than she could ever remember, the fatigue from the previous weeks combining with the inexplicable feeling of comfort and security acting as a powerful soporific. After only a couple of hours, her sleep had become fitful, between the injury itself and the tumult of memories and nightmares fighting to the surface of her consciousness caused her to wake frequently, head pounding, gasping for air, echoes of her dreams still hanging like fog in front of her eyes.
Natasha sat bolt upright so quickly that it sent the room swooping in front of, bile burning the back of her throat. She willed herself not to vomit, instead taking deep and steadying breaths until the room righted itself. The blinking digital clock at the bedside read 3:30 AM. Still in her bare feet, she slipped silently down the hall and out onto the cool night air, settling herself on the porch swing. The gentle rocking motion soothed her and she drifted into either deep relaxation or very light sleep, she wasn't sure which. A soft breeze blew, teasing the loose strands of hair at her temples. A soft chorus of crickets and chirping birds brought reassurance that the night was nearly over.
As the sky on the horizon was fading from black to a vibrant navy, the porch door creaked open and she turned to see Clint, tousle-haired and wearing a t-shirt and sweats, standing at the door with two steaming mugs. "Morning," he said as he handed her one of the mugs. "How did you sleep?"
She shrugged, accepting the mug from him gratefully and shifting over to allow Clint room on the swing beside her. She sipped the strong black coffee.
"What time is it?"
"About 6:30." For several minutes they sipped their coffee, looking out over the fields and trees as the first rays of pure sunlight started to dry the dewy grass. "How are you feeling?"
"Head doesn't hurt right now. The magic of Aleve," she told him, meeting his eyes with a tiny smile.
"Not what I meant and you know it." She turned away from him, fixing her eyes on the horizon and the lightening sky. It wasn't just that her true memories and her nightmares were scrambled. Most of her usual outlets for dealing with her demons were physical—running, sparring, ballet drills. Sparring, of course, was out of the question, but she had been frustrated when even short jogs and the focus required for ballet drills both set off her head injury.
"Everything has felt jumbled ever since Baku," she said, carefully not looking at her partner. "Sometimes it's hard to tell which nightmares are real." Clint nodded, seeming to understand. He had spent enough time with her both on and off missions to know that she was a restless sleeper at the best of times. They had slept in close proximity enough times that he could tell when she woke from a nightmare still dazed and guarded. He had enough darkness in his own past to recognize what it looked like to wake still fighting off demons from sleep.
"The usual ways of clearing my head are off-limits right now." She continued, lightly tapped her temple as explanation.
"We'll have to find you some new ones, then. Don't worry, there's plenty to do around here. We'll put your ass to work. Light work," he clarified quickly.
The two continued to drink their coffee in companionable silence, side by side on the porch swing, as the sun rose over the countryside. This was idyllic, she thought, and she didn't belong here. She was a deadly assassin with a twisted, traumatic past and bloody nightmares sitting in this tranquil and bucolic setting. The contrast was unnerving and made her intensely uncomfortable..
"Clint, why did you bring me here?" She asked suddenly. He could tell the question had been pressing into her thoughts for a while, and he knew from the tone of her voice and the earnest expression in her green eyes that she was genuinely curious and uncertain. He looked at her steadily.
"Because being stuffed in that cubicle that you call an apartment back at the Triskelion would not have helped your recovery. You'd be too isolated, too bored, and too—" Clint broke off at the sound of a baby cooing. He took a baby monitor out of his pocket and smiled. "C'mon, let's go get the munchkins. I told Laura she could sleep in this morning."
Lila's nursery was pale yellow and bright, and Natasha smiled without thinking when she looked around Clint to see the little girl smiling, standing up and bouncing in the crib, her tiny fists curled around the bars. Clint lifted his daughter out of the crib, quickly changed her diaper and onesie, and handed the baby to Natasha before she could refuse. Lila looked at her curiously, her dark eyes bright, alert, and curious. She'd never thought of herself as being good with kids, or one of those women who cooed over babies, but the warm weight of this baby was strangely comforting settled against her. Then, without warning, the baby reached out, grabbed a chunk of Natasha's hair, and yanked.
"Ow!" She gently extracted her hair from Lila's fist and the baby giggled. Natasha swept her hair back and over the opposite shoulder, away from the infant.
"Watch out, she's in a hair-pulling phase," Clint laughed softly, emerging from the bedroom across the hall with Cooper sitting on his shoulders, hands snug around the child's ankles. Cooper held onto a stuffed raccoon, sleepy-eyed but smiling in his shark pajamas.
"Thanks a heap," Natasha deadpanned, shifting Lila on her hip as the baby unknowingly landed a squirmy knee directly on one of her broken ribs.
"Nasha!" Cooper said happily, holding the toy out to her.
"Oh, is this Ricky?"
"Uh-huh," Cooper nodded. The evening before, when Natasha had first met Cooper, he had pointed at her face and exclaimed "Just like Ricky!" Laura had sheepishly told her that Ricky was the name of Cooper's favorite stuffed toy, a raccoon, and Natasha had smiled genuinely. Small children never hesitated to speak the honest truth.
"You are very observant, for a little person," she said as she followed Clint and Cooper down the stairs with Lila. Laughing and keeping his legs over his father's shoulders, Cooper flopped backward, arms dangling down toward the floor, still holding the stuffed raccoon by the tail. He looked at Natasha with a goofy grin on his face and went into a fit of giggles. It was so unexpected and amusing that Natasha let out a short burst of laughter without thinking, which was quickly met by shooting pain from her broken ribs and a dull throb at her temples.
It was the first time she had laughed in weeks.
The idea of being around small children had unsettled her at first, but after that first day Natasha was taken aback by how much these tiny humans put her at ease. When she played with Cooper and Lila, they demanded her full attention, which offered a way for her to take her mind off of that night in Baku and everything that followed. She learned to properly change and bathe the baby, who squealed with delight whenever Natasha helped her to walk around the room by herself, each of her strong fists curled around one of Natasha's fingers in support. She learned Cooper's daily routine and accepted her assigned role in whatever imaginary world he had conjured for them to inhabit during playtime. He still called her "Nasha," which she thought endearing despite Clint's teasing about how close it sounded to "Nausea."
The farm itself was very peaceful. It wasn't a fully functioning farm, although there were a dozen chickens and a large vegetable garden. All told, it was 26 acres of mostly untouched land, a combination of large fields flanked by dense trees. A large barn held a tractor and riding lawnmower among other equipment, and Clint had built up a small clearing deep in the wooded area to use for target practice to keep his skills up when he was home.
Natasha soon found that her recovery was going better than expected. After those first couple of days, when the newness had worn off, the Bartons started to settle into a family rhythm with her rather than treating Natasha like a guest. Simply being up and about in the fresh air seemed to be speeding things along, whether it was helping Laura tend to the garden or feed the chickens, chasing Cooper around, or spotting Clint while he cleaned the gutters. As Clint had expected, Natasha needed to be doing things in order to avoid going stir-crazy, so he and Laura would incorporate her into the rotation of household chores, child care, and meal prep, always keeping a close eye and replacing the tasks with less demanding ones when her pain or fatigue became noticeable.
As a nurse, Laura kept a particularly close eye on her recovery. A few days of knowing Natasha and Laura could already intuit when she needed pain medication or rest, and Laura was not shy about speaking up. She insisted on a daily afternoon nap, limited Natasha's screen time to no more than one movie at a time, enforced a daily symptom check-in, and made sure she completed her physical therapy exercises each day. When Natasha developed a worsening cough 3 days after arriving on the farm, Laura correctly guessed that Natasha had left her incentive spirometer—a device that encouraged deep breathing—back in DC. Not long after, she produced two small plastic bottles of children's bubbles and ushered Natasha and Cooper outside, suggesting a bubble-blowing contest.
"I see what you're doing," Natasha had said as Cooper delightedly grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the porch.
"Mmhmm," Laura smirked. "You two have fun now."
Laura was one of those truly kind souls who, under other circumstances, would have made Natasha suspicious of the motivations for her kindness. She seemed to intuit what others needed before they knew themselves and she had a knack for knowing when to press for a response and when to let things be. Natasha thought that Laura was a person that she wanted to be friends with, independently of their connection through Clint. Laura seemed to be warming to her as well, rather than being kind and hospitable only because it was the right thing to do, which Natasha suspected had been the case during those first couple of days.
"Laura has officially taken a liking to you," Clint told her one evening while they were sitting side-by-side in front of a crackling bonfire, one week into her stay. He took a swig from his beer bottle and nudged Natasha with his elbow. "I think you've actually managed to make a friend outside of SHIELD." He had meant it to be teasing, but the honest expression that crossed her face told him that his comment had hit a little close to home.
He was right. He often was, when it came to her. Natasha had made very few close friends in her lifetime, and the list of people she trusted was essentially a Post-it with two names on it, Clint Barton and Melinda May. Maybe she would add Fury in the near future. May was her supervising officer and first trainer when she had joined up with SHIELD. She had been a close confidant until about 5 months before, when an op in Bahrain had gone horribly wrong and the extraction May had to stage was traumatic enough for her to request a transfer to a desk job. Natasha still spoke with her on occasion, but they weren't as close.
"I like her, too. She is a really great person, Clint."
"Yeah, she's far too good for me." He poked the base of the fire with a long iron rod before adding more brush to the fire. They watched as the flames brightened and burned higher for several seconds before calming again.
"How'd you get her to marry you?" She asked, smirking and nudging her shoulder into his. He let out a laugh.
"Beats the hell out of me. All I know is that I'm one lucky bastard."
"That you are," Laura appeared behind them, smiling. She handed one of the two travel mugs in her hands to Natasha, who thanked her.
"We were just trying to figure out why you married him," Natasha said, a small grin on her face. Laura shrugged and took a seat on the other side of her husband.
"The heart wants what it wants, I guess," she shrugged. Clint leaned in to kiss her.
"Kids go down okay?"
"Yep, once Cooper stopped asking for 'Nasha' to come read him a story. For a hardcore spy, you've been fantastic with Cooper and Lila." Natasha shrugged and took a sip from the mug Chamomile tea, as expected. Laura kept making it for her in the evenings, hoping it would help her to sleep. She hadn't told her that the kind gesture was more soothing than the tea itself.
"It's easy, they are good kids," she said. She was starting to see that children might be easier to befriend than adults. All she had done to impress Cooper was show kindness, no deception or layers of manipulation, and the boy had taken her hand and invited her into friendship without question or motive.
Clint put his arm around Laura, who had scooted her chair closer to her husband. The two shared a smile.
"Ever think about having your own someday?" Laura seemed to blurt out the question without thinking. She'd asked conversationally, as if this was a normal topic for light conversation among childless young women when talk of the weather or the local sports team had run dry. Natasha thought perhaps it was, among Laura's friends, in this part of the country.
Her body seemed to seize up on the inside at the question. She could feel their gazes on her as she kept her eyes trained on the flickering fire in front of her, keeping her face carefully blank. She missed the subtle motion of Clint's hand gently squeezing his wife's shoulder a little too late, and she missed the look of regret and embarrassment on Laura's face declaring she knew she had overstepped and asked something a little too personal, a little too casually.
Natasha paused a little longer than intended before she said, softly but definitively, "No."
The truth was that she had thought about kids, as all women do, perhaps more so after spending time with Cooper and Lila. Those thoughts did not change the past or the fact that she could not bear children of her own. The Red Room graduation ceremony had robbed her of that possibility. Natasha could never see herself with children, and even now could not imaging raising kids of her own, but there was a strangely profound sadness in having that door closed altogether.
She had been 16 years old at the time of the graduation ceremony, long before she could fully comprehend the gravity of what it all meant and she never could have guessed at the emotional scars the procedure would leave. It had been efficient and resulted in both her sterility and a stop to her monthly periods without messing with her hormones, requiring surgery, or leaving any external scarring. Natasha had not known at the time what was happening outside of an overwhelming sense of invasion accompanied by incredible pain, bleeding, and cramping for several days afterward. Then her periods had stopped and she had mentally sequestered the trauma of the experience to a remote corner of her memory. An ultrasound during her medical intake when she joined SHIELD had confirmed what she had suspected, that the deep and profound scarring of her uterus and fallopian tubes had rendered her infertile.
She had never told a soul outside of the SHIELD physicians.
She was not going to start now.
That night, the graduation ceremony featured prominently in her dreams.
She had no difficulty discerning what was real.
Natasha woke before dawn again the following morning but was unable to return to sleep. She clicked the bedside lamp on and its light cast a soft yellow glow around the room. She was careful to avoid the four specific points on the floor that would make the floorboards creak as she made the bed and dressed in her running leggings and a t-shirt. She crept across the hall to splash cool water on her face before pulling a hooded sweatshirt, borrowed from Laura and bearing the Iowa State hawk, over her head. She examined her reflection. The deep circles around her eyes had faded and she now resembled a very exhausted individual rather than the punching bag in a bar fight. She silently pulled on her sneakers and slipped out of the house.
Natasha stretched and started with some light calisthenics in the dark until the sky started to lighten just enough to illuminate the country roads. She turned to start on a light jog but whipped around abruptly at the tiny creak in the door hinge. Clint stood there in a hoodie and athletic shorts, grinning at her.
"Great minds think alike," he said, meeting her at the bottom of the porch stairs. "Want some company?"
"Sure, if you don't mind that I'm not back in full form yet."
"No problem. You just let me know if you need a slower pace or a break."
They set off at a comfortable pace down the road as the sky brightened around them. A couple of miles down the road Natasha could see the glimmering waters of Viking Lake reflected through the trees, a fine mist hanging over the water. Without speaking, she turned to jog down a branch of the road heading toward the water. Clint remained at her side.
They alternated running with jogging as the sun peeked over the horizon. Natasha focused on controlling her breathing and remained tuned into her body's cues. Not even a hint of a headache. Good. As long as there was no headaches or neurological symptoms, she was fine powering through the throb of pain from her ribs that pulsed with each breath. This was okay, the pain was manageable and she felt invigorated by the activity. They kept running and turned onto a path that ran along the lake shore, which was well-kept and clearly part of a public park. Natasha was breaking a sweat despite the cool morning air and her lungs were starting to burn. It felt good to be back to doing something that was an important part of her usual routine.
She kept her eyes trained on the shoreline to her left, which was sandy at the shore and the water had red-and-white buoys bobbing gently in the water at a short distance, meant to keep swimmers from venturing out too far. There was a long, empty dock off in the distance. A boat was visible about a hundred yards out, probably someone fishing. Clint had talked about liking to fish as well and was in the process of waxing the boat in the barn for just that purpose.
The path ended after half a mile, and Natasha continued to jog onto the shore, slowing her pace to compensate for the added difficulty of running on the sand. She glanced over at Clint. He said nothing and continued to let her set the pace. The burning in Natasha's chest with each breath was worsening. She would have to turn around soon.
And then her eyes fell on a child's toy on the beach. It was a red-and-yellow plastic boat, its little stern partly buried in the sand.
A memory surfaced, unbidden, from the depths of her mind. An olive-skinned little boy clutching a similar toy to his chest as if it was his only comfort in the world, tears streaking down his face from fear as a mobster stood nearby with an assault-style rifle trained on her. Tears sprung to her eyes as the faces of other children appeared behind the boy, every face carrying an expression of terror and pleading.
She was so focused on the gun and the kids that she hadn't noticed the dead-man's switching time. She should have been faster. She tried to mentally block out the faces and the events from that night but they appeared at the forefront her mind's eye regardless of her attempts. The harder she tried to push it down, the brighter the explosive flames burned. The memories seemed almost as raw as they had on that night and now they came crashing over her with a force that knocked the breath from her lungs.
Tears blurred the corners of Natasha's vision. Maybe it was the physical exertion or her injuries or the several preceding sleepless nights, but she was unable to stop hot tears from falling. She hoped weakly that they would be lost in her now-sweaty face, but Clint knew her better than that, so she did the only other thing she could think of: she ran faster. She sprinted with abandon across the beach, kicking up sand in her wake, Clint's shouts of alarm ringing out behind her.
Blood started to pound in her ears and mixed with the screams from her memories and without being conscious of it. She sprinted on, trying to outrun the grief that threatened to suffocate her. Before she knew it, Natasha's legs had carried her to the end of the empty dock. With nowhere else to go, she collapsed to her knees. Her face streamed with silent tears and she gulped air that burned acrid in her lungs. Bile started to rise in the back of her throat, but she held it down. Her sweatshirt suddenly felt suffocating and she yanked it roughly over her head.
Heavy footfalls and the dull metallic thunk as each footstep hit the aluminum dock announced that Clint had caught up, panting.
"Out of shape, my ass," he muttered, panting. "Natasha, what the hell?" He didn't ask if she was okay. He already knew the answer to that question. She refused to look at him even as he sat down next to her.
The screams were still in her ears and their faces were seared into her vision. The force of the explosion, the smell as everything—and everyone—burned. The bile rose in her throat again.
She turned, coughing and retching over the side of the dock. Clint was alarmed at the uncharacteristic show of emotion. He reached out and gripped her shoulder, half afraid she would plunge into the water herself. She startled at the sudden contact and aimed a blow at him without thinking, but pulled back almost immediately. A look of horror crossed her face and she relaxed her arms, seeming to realize where she was and what she had been about to do.
Natasha sat back, panting, wiping the intermingled tears and sweat from her face.
"Sorry," she muttered. "Flashback." Clint nodded and sat beside her. Several seconds passed in silence.
"Want to talk about it?"
"No."
They sat looking out at the lake as the sun rose and the mist started to fade.
"You know, in all the chaos of the last couple weeks, I never got a chance to apologize," Clint said in a low voice. This caught Natasha off-guard, and she looked over to see a grief-stricken expression on her partner's face.
"For what?"
"I should have been up at my rendezvous point sooner, should have realized sooner that the comms were out. Maybe from a different perspective, I could have seen the bomb or the trigger. I should have shot the son of a bitch before he ever had a chance to detonate."
"None of this was your fault."
"Maybe not, but what's the point of working as a team if I can't be there to watch your six?"
"You were watching," she said. "I might not have made it out of the rubble otherwise." She shifted so that her shoulder touched his bicep. "Between the AK-47 and all those kids—" Natasha felt her tears start afresh. She kept her voice level. "I didn't expect the bomb."
"No, neither did I."
The sun was fully visible over the horizon, its reflection fully visible in the calm water of the lake. The mist was gone now and the small boat she had seen on the lake earlier seemed to be growing larger as it motored back towards the dock. She wiped the last of her tears, wanting to splash water on her face before remembering that she had recently vomited into the lake. Natasha took several deep, steadying breaths to clear her head and dried her face on the bottom half of her tank top.
The small motorboat docked 20 feet from where they sat at the end of the dock. Clint nodded to the young man who stepped out of the boat and tied it down before hauling out a cooler.
"Hey, Clint! I heard you were back in town for a bit," the man called enthusiastically. Natasha gathered Laura's hoodie and stood with Clint, who approached the slim, sandy-haired man. He couldn't have been older than 25.
"Good catch this morning?" Clint asked easily.
"Not bad. Who's your friend?"
"My cousin, Natalie. She's staying with us for a couple weeks. Nat, this is Jason Tanner. His dad runs the hardware store in town." She nodded to him in greeting but said nothing, watching instead as his eyes roamed uninvited down the length of her body, lingering where the fitted tank top and leggings revealed her silhouette. Clint noticed. He snapped his fingers in front of Jason's face. "Hey, buddy, she's up here." Jason grinned.
"Well, hot cousin, I live on Sycamore if you ever—" His words were effectively cut off by Clint pushing him off the dock and into the water with a loud splash and a string of expletives.
"You know, I can handle myself," Natasha said with a small smirk.
"Yeah, well, he's had that coming for a while now. It felt good." They started back down the dock and ignored Jason's angry protesting once he'd resurfaced. "And put that hoodie back on." She laughed at him.
"Yes, dad," she said. Natasha hip-checked him in jest but Clint, caught off-guard, stumbled over the edge of the dock and splashed into the lake. Her had flew to her mouth and she moved toward the edge, kneeling and offering her hand to him. "I am so sorry, Clint! I didn't think you'd actually fall in."
"It's okay," he laughed. He held out a hand and braced the other on the dock, sopping hair plastered across his forehead. She clasped his wrist, but instead of pulling himself up, he used his bracing hand as leverage to pull her off of her feet and into the lake beside him.
"Hey! What was that for?" She splashed water into his face. Clint continued to laugh.
"You started it!" he splashed her back. Both climbed back onto the dock and the cool morning air seemed to slice into Natasha's skin. She pulled the dry sweatshirt over her head.
They started the walk back to the house in relative silence, clothes drying gradually and water squishing in their shoes. Clint suggested a different route back, one which would take them past a diner in town for a cup of coffee. Her adrenaline had worn off and Natasha was feeling the effects of her physical exertion. Her chest burned with each breath and a headache was building at the base of her skull. She thought longingly of the bottle of Aleve sitting in the drawer of her room and rubbed at the back of her neck, but ultimately decided that breaking up the walk back with breakfast would be welcome. A bell over the door jingled when Clint pushed it open and the hostess sat them in a booth near the back. Natasha excused herself to the restroom as Clint pulled out his phone to call Laura.
There was a single bathroom at the back of the diner. Natasha closed and locked the door, switching on the light to illuminate the outdated but clean restroom. She gripped the sides of the porcelain sink and stared at her reflection in the mirror for a moment before splashing water on her face. Her ponytail had become disheveled after falling into the lake, so she shook it out and finger-combed it into a braid that hung over one shoulder. Feeling a little better, she washed and dried her hands and left to rejoin Clint at the table. There was already a steaming mug of coffee at her place at the table.
"Thanks," she said, taking a sip.
"Laura is wrangling the kids to join us," he said. "Thought she could use a morning off from cooking, you could use the distraction and the ride back. She's also bringing some of your pain pills."
"Thank you," she told him gratefully. She fiddled with a corner of the menu while the waitress filled their water glasses. She watched Clint's face as he pored over a menu. Natasha could hardly begin to comprehend what she had done to deserve a friend like him. She didn't feel as though she deserved any friends at all, and yet he had seen the worst of her and chose to grant her a second chance anyway. Their friendship, their partnership as Strike Team Delta, those were unexpected bonuses. Now he had seen her through a life-threatening trauma, invited her back to his home and shared his most guarded secret—his family—with her. She knew that he had shades of gray in his past, too, and yet she did not think she knew a better human being.
Without thinking about it, she reached across the table and took his free hand with hers, tips of her fingers across his palm, and gave a gentle squeeze. He lowered the menu and looked at her with surprise at the gesture, but it only took him a second to read the pain, relief, and gratitude in her eyes. Clint turned his hand in hers and squeezed back. It was enough to break a second dam inside of Natasha's chest and tears began to well in her eyes no matter how furiously she blinked them back, frustrated with her inability to hold the emotion inside. Clint rose and slid into the booth beside Natasha, putting his arm around her shoulder and hugging her tightly. She hadn't realized how much she craved the contact.
"I just," her voice trailed off. "Thank you so much. For everything, all of this. I can't tell you how much it means. I owe you."
"Nah, you don't owe me anything. This is just what friends do. I know you'll have my back on my next stretch of bad days." Natasha took a breath and steadied herself. Clint squeezed her shoulders one more time and then moved back to his side of the table. He handed her a paper napkin from the dispenser on the table. "Here. Laura will kick my ass if she thinks I made you cry twice before breakfast."
Before she knew it, two weeks had passed and it was time for Natasha to head back to SHIELD headquarters for a follow-up medical exam and to ease back into physical training. The bruises around her eyes had disappeared and her ribs only pained her with heavier activities. Her head injury was another matter; her headaches were still more frequent than she would have liked and she still had dizziness when she sat up too quickly exercised too strenuously, and she hoped the doctors could help her work through it. Natasha wanted to be back on the job more than anything.
She stripped her bed and pulled the beautiful quilt back over it. She wiped down the bathroom and neatly folded her sheets and towels before removing a small envelope from her bag and placing it on the pillow. Gathering the linens under one arm and slinging her bag over her opposite shoulder, she left the room and pulled the door closed behind her.
Lila giggled and cooed as Natasha held her, while Cooper wrapped his little arms around her legs in a viselike grip and cried that he didn't want her to go. Laura rescued her not a moment too soon.
"Coop, let go please. You'll see Nat again the next time she comes for a visit," she said, gently prying her son loose. She smiled meaningfully at Natasha, who was struck speechless by the implication that she would be back again. She, Clint, and Laura had transitioned Cooper from "Nasha" to "Nat" for two reasons. First, Clint was a child and refused to stop calling her "Nausea" in mockery. Second, it was easier to justify calling her "Nat" if she was using her alias Natalie Rushman while she was in town. Laura shooed Cooper back to his toys before hugging Natasha in earnest.
"You come back whenever you'd like, okay? This house is always open to you," Laura said, her face close to Natasha's ear. They pulled away and Natasha gave Laura a genuine smile.
"Thank you so much for everything, Laura," she said genuinely. "I can't even begin to repay you." Laura shook her head.
"Don't even think about it. That's what friends are for. Besides, you have been an incredible help this whole time. You have no debt here." Natasha nodded.
"Thanks again."
Clint appeared at the front door, his pickup ready to take her to the airport. SHIELD was having her fly commercially again, but Natasha didn't mind. She stuffed her bag in the cab at her feet and the truck's engine sputtered to life.
"You have a good visit?" Clint asked, putting the truck in gear and starting to pull down the long driveway.
"It was wonderful," she said truthfully. "Thank you." She took a long look at the white farmhouse as Clint turned onto the main road.
At that moment, Natasha did not feel as though she was going home.
She felt like she was leaving it.
Hope you enjoyed this installment, the next will be up within the next week.
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