Fiji-about that same time
The feeling hit him like a sledgehammer.
Clint Barton's entire body went rigid and his eyes went wide. His fingers grasped for the dive knife he knew was on the table next to him, and the hard handle felt reassuring in his hand. His entire body was on alert. Battle ready. Tense. Looking for the threat.
A threat he didn't see. But he knew it was there.
He waited a moment. Focus, he commanded himself. Remember where you are.
The beach and the blue water of the Pacific Ocean came into focus as his heart pounded in time with the waves crashing on the beach. A warm breeze wafted over his arms, making him shiver despite the eighty degree heat. He registered the feeling of the bamboo chair he was sitting in, currently gripping one armrest like his life depended on it.
You have heart...
Right now, that heart was pounding. God damn it, there was something out there, but he couldn't see it.
You're fine. It's nothing. You're in Fiji. There's nothing out there. Threat neutralized. Come on, Clint. Focus.
A figure out in the water came up for air about the same time as Clint's panic attack. She walked slowly out of the water like James Bond's greatest fantasy, in a black bikini, her red hair sexy as hell even though it was plastered to her head because of the saltwater. Natasha Romanoff walked calmly up the beach, wringing out her hair as she approached her partner. She got about halfway up the beach and paused. Natasha could tell even from that distance that something was off. Clint rarely relaxed the way it was, but this posture...he was in combat ready mode. Another nightmare? She took a few more steps forward. "Clint?" she asked carefully. She knew he was armed and he wasn't called Hawkeye for no reason. "Everything okay?" She watched him intently. His eyes were unfocused, staring at but not seeing something a foot in front of him. He had a white knuckled grip on the dive knife and the arm of the chair on the little porch of the small thatched bure. "Clint!" she said more sharply now. "Snap out of it."
He blinked, saw her, and his body slumped. "Jesus, Tasha," he said apologetically. "Sorry."
"Another one?" Natasha asked him. She grabbed a towel and wrung her hair out, then wrapped it around her waist.
Clint nodded, releasing the chair and rubbing his forehead. He looked at her, and she saw the shame in his eyes. She'd seen that same look before, on the helicarrier. She hated that look. "Didn't mean to freak you out."
"You don't scare me," Natasha replied. To prove her point, she stood right in front of him and looked him straight in the eye. It was a position that very few would take with him lately. "What was it this time?"
Clint took a couple of deep breaths. "This one was different," he told her. "I haven't felt one like that since…" He frowned, and stood up so abruptly that even the lithe Black Widow had to take a step back. Her partner brushed by her and disappeared into the bedroom. She leaned in the door, looking at him curiously. Clint was rummaging through their shared bag. His fingers closed around something and he pulled it out. Natasha recognized the object as his satellite phone. He flipped it open and dialed a number, pacing the room as he did.
She came into the room and sat down on the edge of the bed, drawing her feet up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. A completely vulnerable position. One she'd never let herself be in with anyone else. Except him. He'd saved her life. She only wish she could help him now.
Natasha was worried for him. Loki had attacked in May. It was now December, and Clint hadn't recovered completely from the incident. He'd gone to the mandatory sessions with the SHIELD psychologists, mostly because he was hoping Fury would leave him alone. More than once she'd caught him late at night in the shooting range, unleashing arrow after arrow after arrow dead center into a target. It was a coping mechanism. But she'd also seen the nightmares, the ones he hid so well from everyone else, from Cap, from Stark, from Banner.
He'd never been able to hide anything from her.
He still blamed himself for Coulson's death. Natasha reminded him every chance she got that their handler's death hadn't been his fault. And she knew that his brother had reminded him when she wasn't around to do it. But Clint still beat himself up for it, retreating into a funk for days until he came back out of it, only to retreat into it again at any mention of the Battle of Manhattan or Loki. Seven months later and it was still all anyone talked about, so it came up a lot. And then one day it had just become too much.
Natasha knew, in a twisted sort of way, what he was going through. The Red Room had screwed with her mind royally, just as Loki had with Clint's. You know what it's like to be unmade, Clint had told her that day on the helicarrier. You know that I do, had been her answer and she wasn't humoring him.
Will Brandt had called her that summer. He'd only seen his brother a handful of times since New York and each time his brother was the same-distant, aloof, shrugging it off like it was no big deal when they both knew otherwise.
"I'm scared for him, Tasha," Will had confided in her. "He's sinking into a hole, and I don't know if we'll be able to pull him out again."
"All we can do is hold onto the rope," Natasha had said. "So he has a way to climb out when he needs to."
"And what if he decides to stay?"
Natasha had frowned. "Then we pull him out whether he likes it or not."
Now she watched as he grew more agitated as he paced the floor. "Will it's Clint, pick up the phone and call me back." He hung up, and redialed.
"Clint, what's wrong?" she asked him.
"I don't know," Clint replied, frustrated. "Maybe nothing. Maybe something. I don't know. All I know is I don't feel right and my brother isn't picking up his phone."
He hadn't talked to Will in a few months. Last time it hadn't gone so well. They'd argued. That had been right before he and Tasha had gone to Fiji. He hadn't wanted to leave like that. But he was mad. Mad at Fury. Mad at his crewmates. Mad at his brother. Pissed at Loki. But worse, pissed at himself.
Clint saw things better from a distance. A vantage point high on a roof where he could be in control and call the shots. Take the kill shot when he was ready. Everything was on his terms. So it was harder than hell to have been right there. Right in the center of the action, and unable to do anything. A passenger in his mind as Loki blew the helicarrier to hell. Unable to stop himself as his fists beat the hell out of his partner. Out of his little brother.
When Steve had stuck him on that roof, he'd felt a little better. It was where he needed to be. And blowing the hell out of the Chitauri took his mind off the events of hours before. Being there with his brother was reassuring. His little brother, who always had his back. Even as Clint lay sure he'd been paralyzed from the waist down, in his head knowing that if he was, he deserved it, his brother was telling him it wasn't his fault, and swearing that he was going to be there for him.
So Clint had made a promise when he became an Avenger. In with his new team til the day he died. Every arrow a promise that it even if it took the rest of his life, he was going to make it up to his team, to his employer, and to his little brother.
That had worked for a while...right up until the nightmares had started. Until Fury had forced him to go to the SHIELD shrink, and until he started walking around the helicarrier and hearing his former friends call him a traitor. He'd put up with it for six months, until one day...one well-placed punch and Fury had sent him on a mandatory vacation.
"Maybe he's on a mission and can't," Natasha offered, snapping him back to the moment.
Clint shook his head. "No. No, something's not right. I can feel it."
"Clint, are you sure-"
He glared at her. "Goddamnit Natasha, this doesn't have anything to do with Loki." Those feelings are completely different. "Last time I felt like this my brother almost died." He ran a hand through his hair and hissed in frustration. He stopped and looked her in the eye. "I need to go home. Right now."
She didn't question him. "Okay," she said. Without another word, she began throwing their things into their bag, tossing him a pair of sweatpants and pulling out a pair of jeans for her. In one motion she had them on and buttoned over her bikini bottom. Clint had one hand gripping the phone, the other was yanking on his pants over his board shorts and reaching for his shoes. She'd been his partner long enough to trust him.
"Will? It's Clint. Pick up the phone damn it, and call me when you get this."
He hung up and threw it on the bed. It bounced once and landed in the bag Natasha was packing.