TW's for blood, violence, death.

/

Natasha stood, casting her gaze around the grassy hills littered with bodies.

She slowly wiped a hand over her face, feeling the wetness of blood smearing over her cheek.

She took a deep breath, eyes watering a little as she took a shaky step.

Her foot hit something solid and she swallowed, carefully stepping around the body face down on the grass.

She checked her watch, taking another step until she found a patch of grass unmarred with blood, and sat down.

...

The Avengers got there four minutes later, the quinjet settling down on the grass.

They stepped out to find the mission already over before it had really began.

They spotted Natasha after a minute, her red hair blending with the blood staining the ground.

Clint touched the comms in his ear, telling Shield to send a clean up team as soon as possible.

He then carefully wound his way through the carnage, stepping around bodies, his shoes sliding a little in the blood.

The others watched from the ramp of the quinjet, exchanging glances as they watched Clint reach their friend.

He knelt, not touching her just yet.

"Natasha?" He asked softly, crouching into her line of sight.

The woman slowly lifted her head, blinking as she focused on her partner.

"Clint?" She frowned, lifting a hand to push stray red strands of hair from her forehead.

She only succeeded in wiping more blood over her pale skin.

"You with me, Nat?" Clint brushed back the strand of hair she'd been trying to get.

"I...not really?" Her brows were furrowed and her eyes glassy.

Clint unfolded his legs and reached for her hand, uncaring that blood now covered his own.

He quickly looked her over, determining if she needed medical or would be okay until he could ground her.

Through the layer of blood and grime, it was hard to see if she was bleeding at all.

"Are you hurt, love?" He squeezed her hand.

Natasha looked down at herself, blinking rapidly. "Not...really. 'S not my blood."

Clint nodded and scooted closer to her, one hand touching her jaw and making her look at him.

"Okay, you know the drill. Tell me who you are." He said softly, thumb brushing over her cheek.

"I'm...Natasha. Romanoff. Black Widow." Her voice shook and rose at the end, like her answers were questions.

"Yes, you are. Who are you not?"

Her gaze drifted and he tapped her cheek. "Eyes on me, Nat. Who are you not?"

"I'm not...Natalia. I'm not a puppet or a monster."

"Yes. You're Natasha Romanoff, you are not The Red Room's. You are your own." He hummed.

She nodded once, uncertain.

"Who am I?" His voice never wavered.

"C...Clint."

A nod.

"Yes, what else, Nat?"

"My husband." She swallowed, eyes a little clearer.

"Yes, sweetheart. Who am I not?"

"You're not...Dimitri. Not part of the Red Room." She said quietly, squeezing his hand back for the first time since they'd started talking.

"I'm not. Okay, nearly done. Where are we?"

"Russia." Her accent came through just a little. "The mission is over." A soft exhale. "Home?"

"Are you with me?" Clint asked.

The redhead nodded shakily. "I am."

"Then let's go home." He slid his arm around her waist and hefted them both up.

They slowly headed to the quinjet, and as they walked up the ramp, Bucky, Steve, Tony and Bruce followed.

Clint got Natasha seated and tried his best using wet wipes and water from their bottles to rinse off the first layer of blood.

It turned out that some of the blood had been hers, but not a whole lot of it.

Clint wiped around the wounds as best as he could and then moved to the med kit.

Bruce could have handled it, but Natasha didn't seem to want Clint out of her sight and they'd patched each other up hundreds of times.

Four sets of stitches later, Clint pressed an ice pack to the back of Natasha's head and helped her lift her feet up onto another seat.

Bruce shook an ice pack and settled that one over her swollen left ankle, gently testing the foot and finding that it seemed sprained.

Of course, Natasha was notorious for not realising how bad her injures were so scans would be needed when they touched down.

But for now, Natasha closed her eyes, face against Clint's shoulder, her thoughts on their daughter as she drifted.

...

She awoke to a soft thrum of voices but made no move to sit up or even open her eyes; she was warm, everything ached and she could tell they were still in the air.

Her teammates spoke softly about what they'd seen and what they hadn't been able to see.

Natasha was surprised to hear the easy way they spoke about the bodies and death she had wrought.

They didn't seem shocked that she had taken out so many men in so little time.

She'd gotten there only thirty minutes before the rest of the team, and had taken down more than forty enemies.

Natasha was curious now though. Why weren't they shocked? Any normal person would not have been able to do that and come out relatively unscathed.

She forced her tired eyes open and the chatter stopped.

Clearing her throat but not moving from her warm spot against Clint, Natasha looked around at her friends.

"You're not surprised." She said quietly. "Why?"

Bucky was the first to answer. "Because...we know you. I've known you for...well, a very long time. I helped...train you." He winced, swallowing. "Anybody who makes it out of the Red Room alive is deadly."

Natasha shrugged. They had both made it out alive. So she knew he wasn't saying what he was to remind her of their terror, he was just reminding her that he too was deadly.

"We've seen you fight, Tash. You're...a force to be reckoned with." Bruce said softly. "But the thing is...we all are. Or we wouldn't be doing what we do. We kill like it's our job and...it kinda is." He shrugged.

Steve tried to smile at her but it didn't quite reach his eyes. "I was in the war." He said quietly, and really, that was all he needed to say.

"I made machines that killed hundreds of people." Tony looked up from his gaze on the floor.

"You already know what I've done." Clint murmured against her ear, brushing hair off her cheek. "Like Bruce said, it's what we do."

"Isn't that fucked up though?" Natasha sighed, rubbing at her forehead as pain flared behind her eyes.

"Isn't it fucked up that you found me literally sitting in the middle of a graveyard, covered head to toe in blood, and nothing about it shocked any of you?"

Bucky sat back in his seat. "Yeah, it's sure as hell fucked up, Nat." He hummed.

"But you know, we've all seen and dealt a lot of death in our lives. Yeah, it would be shocking for anyone else to understand the damage and the chaos and the death but...it's us. We know because we've been there and because...because we will be there again." The man sighed.

"Are we really that fucked up that death doesn't shock us anymore?" Natasha asked, shaking her head.

Clint tutted. "Nat, you know that's not true." He murmured. "Just because none of us are surprised at our ability to kill anymore, doesn't mean we're fucked up. Or that it doesn't affect us." He trailed his fingers down her arm.

"Death matters to all of us." Tony said quietly. "Sometimes it makes us not sleep at night, sometimes we get numb because of it, sometimes our minds take us back there. It bothers us all, Nat, 'cause we're human. But it is what we do. So we do it and then we find a way to live with it."

Natasha was growing more tired by the minute as Clint continued the soothing trailing of fingers down her skin.

"Well either we're all used to death now or you guys just finally can't be shocked by anything I do anymore." She chuckled and like a snap of fingers, the tension dropped.

Steve laughed. "Maybe you're right, Romanoff. Maybe we just know you too well now."

Bruce grinned. "Not such a secret secret spy anymore, are you Nat?"

"Shut up." Natasha said fondly, feeling her eyes close against her will.

"They'll always be something to shock you guys with, it's just too easy." She laughed, warmth settling in her chest. They did know her.

"Is that a challenge?" Clint murmured softly against her hair.

Natasha hummed.

"You bet it is."

/

So that concludes this fic! I hope you enjoyed and I hope the last chapter didn't disappoint. It took me a while to think of something that wouldn't shock them and I settled on this. I'm quite pleased with it so hope it wasn't anticlimactic. Please leave a comment and a kudos if you enjoyed and subscribe to my channel for lots more future fics! Thanks for reading guys, lots of loveā¤