Disclaimer: I don't own the Avengers, or any of the characters used in this fic. They all belong to Marvel and their respective creators. I only own any original characters that I choose to include, as well as any original plot ideas.

Chapter 7: What Might Have Been

A/N: The recommended tune for this chapter is "Alibis" by The Birthday Massacre.

The room was dark, just as it ought to have been. One side of the bed was tousled, the sheets curling in on themselves and the pillows flattened. The other was untouched, the blanket smoothed out and with no sign of anyone having settled themselves beneath or on top of it. And it would remain that way, she had decided.

The television screen was blank, dark, staring at her from the wall as Natasha leaned forward to rest her chin upon her knees. She always had dreams about him, about them. Not just her and him, but him, too.

The most recent had scared the assassin well out of her mind, causing her to wake in a fit of heavy breaths and cold sweat. She had been with him again, their hands together, fingers intertwined as they walked the streets as they had used to. Streets that were filled with people, with crime in the dead of night, rather than with impostors in false human skin. Clint had stared at her, that stupid smile on his face as he opened his mouth to speak, only to fall forward against her shoulder. As she reached out to catch him, he vanished, falling into a heap of ash that was whisked away by a rushing wind. Natasha turned, trying to grab the outline of what must have been his hand, only to have her own seized by that bastard as he began to mock her with that damned laughter.

"Poor little remnant."

She hated him. Oh, how she hated him. He had done this to her, to them, to Clint. He had taken the world out from under them like a rug, leaving them to fall and flounder about as they searched for a way to take humanity back from the hands of madness.

How had he died again? Natasha couldn't remember. But perhaps that was a good thing. Perhaps it was for the best that she couldn't see him writhing in a bloody heap or struggling for breath with those monsters clawing at him.

Monsters, she thought. The Chitauri. Loki.

He had fallen from the top of the old SHIELD building, she suddenly recalled, feeling again as though she were pinned to the concrete rooftop, fingernails scraping against his hands as he tried to strangle her, hissing in her ear that she was going to die. Clint had come charging in, she remembered, arrows blazing, one of them striking the would-be king in the shoulder. He'd faltered, her hand coming up to deliver a blow to his jaw. She'd taken great satisfaction in knowing that she could make a god bleed.

Then, a moment too late for her to react, Clint had gone over.

He'd teetered backwards, unable to maintain his balance he stepped back one too many times, his heel slipping over the edge, causing him to drop. Her eyes had gone wide, the monsters appearing out of nowhere, screaming as she'd watched him fall. It had scared her, more than being restrained by invaders, more than watching him go down, knowing, seeing, that Loki had been the one to grab him instead of her.

The two of them had glowered at one another as she struggled, kept on screaming, managed to get close enough to the edge to see Clint's face as he scowled. She'd heard a sound, the subtle beginnings of restrained laughter, and looked to the bastard god, her heart sinking as he cast her a sideways glance, as though it were all an accident, and let the archer fall.

The last she'd seen of Clint was the widening of his eyes as he looked to her, his mouth open as if he were screaming her name, his hand reaching for her as, in seconds, he disappeared from sight, certain to break like china on the ground below.

"Promise me," she whispered. "Promise you won't leave..."

Natasha curled in on herself, lungs burning with every breath, her face flushed and eyes red. She swallowed, heard him whispering in her ear the way he had so many times before.

He could have been here with her, should have been, if not for that bastard. It made her angry to know that, because of Loki, everything they loved was slowly dying. One piece at a time, and always brutal as hell. He liked to see them squirm; make them suffer.

It was Thor's fault, too, she thought, and threw her shoe against the wall. If he hadn't screwed up, hadn't come here, hadn't allowed himself to be sucked into Fury's damn Avengers Initiative, Loki wouldn't have followed him, wouldn't have set out to destroy the God of Thunder and take the rest of them down with him. There would have been no Destroyer in New Mexico, no invasion, no war, no dying city set on a steadily crumbling world. And, most importantly, their team wouldn't have been reduced to a quivering bunch of misfits living underground.

Rising up against this was suicide. Impossible.

"But you are all about the impossible, are you not?"

Natasha frowned. "Shut the hell up..."

"We may have lost the battle, but that does not mean we have lost the war!"

"We have," she sighed, flopping back on the bed. She shoved the ends of the pillow over her ears so as to drown out his voice. "We can't fight this, you idiot. There's nothing to do now but wait. Sit in the dark, and wait to die."

" We can. We can end this. Together."

"Together?" Natasha rolled her eyes. "That's cute, Thor. He used to say that, too, you know. He used to say that nothing could separate us. But look at where we are now. I'm here, and he's in a pine box six feet under..."

He'd promised, over and over, that he'd never leave, that he'd never go anywhere. From the day they'd been assigned as partners within SHIELD, sent overseas to fulfill impossible recon missions and assassinations. Each and every time they donned their disguises, set foot on the plane or ship that would take them to their destination, Clint had always said the same damned thing.

"What if we get separated?" she said aloud, staring up at the ceiling. "Will you come find me like a big boy, or am I gonna have to babysit your ass?"

The archer would always smile, the warmth in his eyes peering out from behind those favored sunglasses he always wore.

"I'll come find you. I'll always find you."

"And if we're trapped? So impossibly screwed that only one of us can escape? What will you do then? Will you leave me?"

"We'll both get out, or we'll die trying."

Natasha allowed a smile to grace her lips, her fingers grazing the plush of his pillow. "Then promise me. Promise to look for me. Promise you won't leave me for dead. Promise you won't run off alone."

"I swear on my life. There's no way in hell I'm going anywhere without you, Nat."

God, how she missed that voice of his.