There they sat, in their regular pub. The two of them and their team. In a small bar in Manhattan, far away from all the glory and expensive clubs, in a pub called O'Malley's, where you could get drunk on cheap whisky, play pool and drown your sorrow in a few pitchers. Like they did today, as usual after a debriefing, that marked the end of a long mission with a way too heavy task for mortals. Suicidal missions: that was where the [block]Strike Team Delta[/block] came in.
Natasha never had something like a regular pub. Natasha never even had something regular at all. And Clint never had something like a family. Not after the circus. Not after he had been betrayed and left back behind. Alone. Left for dead in a lone alley.
Things had changed. Now Natasha had a regular thing. A habit. And Clint had won a family when he had joined S.H.I.E.L.D..
This so called family sat on their regular round table in one of the small booths. As always they already lost track of how many pitchers they have had so far, were bawling and roaring with laughter as one of them started with the same filthy joke they always did start when they got themselves really shitfaced. Given the fact that Tom fell about laughing from his chair it had probably been Leo.
Yeah. Things were exactly how they had to be. Except for one thing.
Himself.
Now he sat at the bar, kept staring into his amber-colored whisky, which was not really his taste, but the best shit they got at that friggin pub. Barton was not picky. Only when it came down to women, whisky and weapens – his three big [i]W[/i], at least Tasha kept teasing him with that – and other things - since he had let his guard down around the dangerous spider once. She had managed to get him drunk. On vodka. Which was his new number one reason to dislike vodka. Like tequila it had always made him way to talkative.
Loud guffaw reached his sensitive ears, coming from their table, as a song from [i]Kings of Leons[/i] started, when someone joined him at the counter.
He did not need to look up.
Clint knew who his new companion was. The person next to him raised his hackles and sent a chill down his spine. He reacted to her. Literally. He always had done, right from the start. It was like he could feel her eyes on him. Her look was a heavy weight on his body. And her presence made something in him tingle. He knew very well what that was. His heart. His soul. Everything he was. Damn emotions.
"Rough day?" Instantly he felt the urgent need to drown in her husky voice, to turn towards her, meet her emerald gaze and ask her to end his torment. Instead he stayed put und raised his tumbler slowly.
"Rough week", he answered in a low voice, mumbled the words into his glass and took a sip. The whisky crawled his down gullet like acid.
Still things were different. Ever since Budapest. Everything had changed in Budapest. And afterwards. Afterwards things had changed again. And not for the better. The one he had thought dead was alive, but where was the point in it, when he had lost everything he ever longed for? When he had lost her?
He saw from the corner of his eye that she raised a hand and pointed at his glass as she got the attention of the bartender. It was their regular bar. The bartender knew what she wanted. Whisky. Double. In fact she never really came to like whisky, this was one of the many things he knew about her … one of those things that were still true about her.
"Rough day?", he repeated her words, due to the kind of drink she had chosen.
There was a moment of silence between them, which was not really quiet, since the music and the heavy summer heat thickened the air; apart from the acoustic disturbance the silence between them was tense.
It was her. How she stood there, how she had looked on her tumbler, before she had raised her gaze, maltreating a point between the bottles which were lined up at the back of the bar with her intense glare. No matter how many things had changed, he still could read her.
"Though outcome." He still loved her voice, the way she spoke, the small pauses before she spoke. No matter who she was sleeping with, as soon as he felt her presence, heard her sensuous voice or their eyes locked and he instantly was captured by those emerald oceans, he fell for her again. Yeah … some things would truly never change. Not even Budapest would manage that. At least not on his side.
Finally he looked at her, did turn his head just far enough to see her profile, after he buried every yearning for her deep inside himself, after he managed to extract every emotion that could have given his feelings for his partner away from his eyes.
As she moved her head and her short red curls teetered with the slight movement, he tore away and looked at a dirty glass on the counter behind the bar. She raised her own glass to her lips and took a sip of an American blend whisky which tasted like oil and left a burning sensation in ones throat as like one had tried to drink fire.
Clint wanted to ask her, wanted to know desperately what was going on, but it was none of his business. Not anymore. This was a decision he had made for himself, to protect him, his feelings. His heart. She, the deadly and yet so beautiful assassin had still not figured out why he had abandoned their closeness. And due to the fact of how much she had forgotten when she came back from her personal purgatory, she would never find out the true reason. But it was good the way it was, he kept telling himself. Natasha had gotten her old strength back.
After she had come back, bruised and battered, tortured, more dead than alive, it had taken him months in which he had been sitting next to her bed, had been holding her, drying her tears, silencing her agonizing screams. It had taken a long time for her to start healing.
And bringing up any purgatory-related issues would probably send her right back into hell. And as self-destructive it was to remain silent, he was no monster. He may have cut the strings between him and his spider, avoided being alone with her, being her partner but not her friend, but he would never insist to discuss Budapest. Never. Even though every fiber of his body was aching to tell her, to beg her to remember what they had, he would never send her back. Never.
Clint was not stupid. He figured that they had tried to brainwash her. He was a spy too, so he knew about the procedure. First you take away their dignity. Even though they never talked about what happened to her, he knew. He knew, because he had seen her injuries, could still recall the picture of her tortured body, and could still make a perfect list of every scratch her body had had.
And when she finally had found a way out of her own hell, it was not him she came back to, it was someone else. Someone more equal. And Clint had to let her go.
It was the hardest decision he had ever made in his life, but he had to close his heart, to pull away, to get distance. At least as much as one could get when you work on the same friggin team with the person you try to get out of your system.
There was no hatred, nor regret. There was just … pain. An all-embracing utterly, outright, agonizing pain.
He had to abandon her from his heart, in order to protect himself.
And there they sat in tense silence, his heart aching and soul bleeding, until she finally spoke.
The fact that she still referred to him as [i]her hawk[/i] to him was a cruel joke. It only had been a random memory from their second last mission; Tasha still did mumble when she had a high fever due to an serious injury.
"I know something is off. Ever since I came back." Her voice was soft and tender. Like her skin. He knew exactly how her skin tasted. "Its me." Natasha paused. "I quit."
His under jaw moved forward, while he kept his gaze locked on the dirty glass behind the counter. Clint snorted. Of course she did. He gave her every reason to leave him. "The team? Really?" His own voice sounded hoarse.
"No, Clint." Tasha wrapped the slender fingers of her left hand around the tumbler and lifted it from the bar. As he heard his name his facial expression hardened and his heart grew heavy in his chest. But her next words left his mind blank.
"I resigned."
The Russian emptied the glass, did put the tumbler back on the counter and placed her right hand next to it.
Clint froze, his body did not want to move. He wanted to scream until his lungs would burn and yet no sound left his lips as he stared at her via the soiled mirror at the back of the bar, before his gaze dropped and he looked at the back of her hand. Next to the empty glass, there, where her right hand had been seconds before, there was a ring. A small golden ring. A wedding ring. Made for slender female fingers. He knew it. He saw it before. A long time ago. Years ago. On Natashas hands.
Shock paralysed him. All he could do was sit there and keep staring at the piece of jewellery that meant nothing to him and did now destroy everything he was. Clint could not take his eyes off of the ring she was wearing in their first year together, when they had to play a couple on a honeymoon in order to spy on a weapon trader. But it did not matter if he saw her leave the bar or not. He knew she was gone. And the moment she left his side, his team, his live, she took everything he was with her.