Happy Tuesday! Happy Spider Man Release Day! And, more importantly, happy advancement of team USA to the Women's World Cup finals!
Quick housekeeping item: I will be changing the title to "Seven Times…" with the next chapter installment, so keep your eyes peeled around this time next week. This is because I ultimately wasn't able to cut a chapter. Whoops.
DISCLAIMER: If you recognize it, I don't own it
SPOILERS: There will be spoilers through The Winter Soldier. As always, there will be no flash-forwards involving important spoilers from the MCU. There is a tiny flash-forward referencing a deleted scene from Civil War at the end, but again nothing major.
Enjoy!
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Spring 2014—Part II
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The following morning started out chilly and overcast with the threat of rain looming. Both kids were fed, dressed, and ushered off to school without incident. Clint had taken them to school with the intention to stop by the hardware store on the way back for lumber and other supplies to start the platform on the treehouse he'd gone on about building for the kids. After they'd finished their coffee and cleaned up from the morning's chaos, Laura suggested that Natasha help her to prep the vegetable garden for the new season and plant some of her seedlings. Natasha was glad to be useful and pulled on a pair of Laura's old sneakers for the task.
They tilled the soil and formed it into neat mounded rows with the help of garden equipment while classic rock tunes played over Laura's bluetooth speaker. When they settled between the rows with a tray of seedlings and a trowel apiece to do the planting, it became clear that Laura had been bursting all morning to check in on her.
"How are you feeling, Nat?"
"My shoulder's fine," she said truthfully. Since Laura had been insisting she take regular doses of ibuprofen, she'd hardly even noticed the injury.
"Not what I meant and you know it." Natasha paused briefly.
"I'm okay."
"Really?" Laura looked very skeptical, an expression which Natasha thought was justified.
"Really," she said. "Being able to talk through things helped."
The three of them had sat talking late into the evening after the kids had gone to sleep, debriefing about SHIELD and her conversation with Cooper. Laura had been surprised to hear about Cooper's unwitting exposure to the grim details of Natasha's profession and some of her past misdeeds. She seemed satisfied and Clint's recap of the conversation. Natasha noted the he left out any mention of her "low point," and she was unspeakably grateful to him for that.
"I'm glad," Laura told her with an understanding smile. "So how long are you staying here with us?"
"Not too long, I don't want to draw attention. Do you want the peppers over there again this year?" Natasha asked, gesturing to a section of the large garden. Laura nodded and Natasha moved her tray of seedlings to the designated row.
"Any thoughts on where you go from here?"
"I think I'll go back to Russia," she said, placing a seedling carefully into the neatly dug hole and patting soil down around it. "Try to find my parents."
Laura sat back onto her heels and looked at her friend thoughtfully. She had considered Nat a part of their family for so long that she didn't often consider that she had once had one of her own. She knew Nat had lived with family before the Red Room program, and that somehow she was separated from them and sent to live in an orphanage, but she never brought them up and they seemed such a peripheral consideration that Laura never gave them much thought. Of course she wanted to track down any remaining family she had, it was only natural.
Laura couldn't blame her for that, but she also recognized an irrational nagging at the back of her mind. It was selfish, she knew, but the thought of Natasha cutting the time she spent with them in favor of her "real" family was irrationally disheartening. She had grown to see Nat as the sister she'd never had as a child and she cherished their relationship. Laura retrieved another seedling from the tray next to her.
"Of course," she said in a voice that she hoped sounded encouraging. "Sounds like a trip worth taking."
"I hope so. I don't know what's left of them, but I'd like to find out what I can," Natasha said earnestly.
"Is it safe for you there?"
"As safe as anywhere else."
"Safer than here?" Laura said sardonically, raising an eyebrow at her. In response, Natasha's lips pursed and shoulders fell back as she eyed Laura sideways.
"You know what I mean."
"I know, I know." Laura stood and stretched briefly. "I just like having you home, where it's safe. Not being worried about if you're eating, where you're sleeping, whether anyone is hunting you—" she shook the unpleasant thought out of her mind.
"I like knowing that all of you are safe," Natasha said. "And my staying here too long right now could compromise that."
"Come on, Nat, you've been here plenty of times without problems. Besides, who's going to come to East Podunk Padookaville to look for you?" Laura tried to argue, but her point was undermined by Natasha's actual snort of laughter. Laura put her hands on her hips and looked at her friend with annoyance.
"East what?" Natasha asked, unable to keep the laughter out of her voice. Laura 'tutted' under her breath.
"It's an expression that means 'the middle of nowhere.' The point is that nobody's tracked you here in the past, why would they now?"
"I'm more worried about your neighbors. My face has been on TV with nasty chyrons scrolling underneath the my picture," Natasha pointed out. "I'm surprised your mom hasn't come to chase me away with a pitchfork."
Since their first meeting almost 3 years previously, they'd only run into each other two more times. At Cooper's 6th birthday party two years ago, Bonnie had been cold and kept her distance. That was fine with Natasha, who only ever put effort into what Laura called "people-pleasing" while she was on a job. They had coexisted just fine mixed in with the small party crowd, though Bonnie made it clear that she did not believe Natasha was really Clint's cousin at the time. She'd side-eyed Natasha suspiciously for a large chunk of the day.
The most recent time was less pleasant. Natasha had stopped at the farm following a mission in Pakistan and planned to pick up Clint so the two of them could be briefed on their next mission, set to start later in the week. Since she had a quinjet and was flying east anyway, Laura suggested that she park the plane behind a copse of trees and join them for their Labor Day barbecue, stay the night, and fly out the following day. Natasha had agreed readily, eager for the reprieve between missions.
The picnic turned out to be the family, Bonnie, and Natasha. In such a small group of people, even little Lila had picked up on the icy chill that Bonnie was emitting. Natasha did not go out of her way to set Laura's mother at ease with pleasantries, and this might have contributed to the problem. Almost immediately after the kids had gone to bed, Bonnie had gone off on Natasha and made some distasteful insinuations about how she might be trying to destabilize the family, at which point she had tried to clarify things, failed to convince Bonnie of her intentions, and had resigned herself to camping out in the quinjet that night in the name of restoring some peace in the house.
By the time Natasha had finished her intentionally long morning run, Bonnie had left to return to Iowa and the two of them had not seen each other since.
There had been a heavy feeling hanging in the house that morning and she could tell Laura felt it too. The two of them had sat with their coffee on the back porch for a long time before either of them spoke, not being able to come up with the right words to address the situation. Eventually, Laura had laughed to herself and turned to Natasha.
"You know what? I think my mom would actually do better with this situation if we told her that we all converted to Mormonism and Clint took you as his second wife."
"I'm sorry?" Natasha had asked. The idea was so ludicrous that she was positive she'd misheard her friend.
"You know, polygamy," Laura explained matter-of-factly. "That way, having another woman around here wouldn't automatically mean the family was breaking apart."
"You can't be serious."
"I am. It's a perfect solution. We wouldn't actually do anything, we would just lie to my mother." Laura had a glint of mischief in her eye when she took her next sip of coffee.
"Bozhe moy," Natasha groaned, resting her forehead in her hands. "Please don't."
"Nat, why don't you don't want to be my sister-wife?" Laura whined playfully, struggling to keep the laughter out of her voice. "I'm a little offended."
"Absurdity aside, wouldn't that give us equal status in the family? Bonnie would still hate that."
"Oh, of course not, everyone knows the first wife is always the favorite," Laura said, still sipping her coffee confidently. Natasha slid a little lower in her seat, shaking her head in disbelief.
The mortified look on Clint's face when he had walked into the conversation just moments before was priceless.
It was several seconds after Natasha came out of her reverie before she recognized the prolonged silence that had followed her comment. She looked at her friend, seedling frozen in her hand midair. Laura was biting her bottom lip, head cocked to one side.
"Well, actually," she said, plopping another seedling into the ground, "you missed her by about a day. She drove down the day after the news broke. The kids were in school, thank God, because some of the things she said and insinuated were pretty foul. Clint walked in partway through her tirade, so that didn't help, but he was pretty angry."
"I had no idea," Natasha said, hating that her relationship with the Bartons was having this impact. "What happened?"
"We ended up sort of caving. Said we hadn't known all of the stuff they were saying on the news and would discuss it. She seemed sort of appeased when she left, but it's probably best that you don't see much of each other."
"I'm sorry you fought."
"It was going to happen sooner or later," Laura told her sadly. "She is wary of new people to the point of hostility even if she likes them, and she really doesn't like you." She shot Natasha a small smile and went back to planting.
Maybe, Natasha thought, it wasn't a bad idea to reconsider that sister-wives cover story in order to restore some harmony in the family.
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When Cooper arrived home on the school bus early that afternoon, he clamored into the kitchen to find Clint and Natasha sitting at the kitchen table. Lila had a ballet lesson after school and Laura was driving her, so it was just the three of them for the time being. Natasha had been browsing through flight options on her tablet and Clint sat reviewing plans for the tree house platform that he had been working on. Cooper and Lila had contributed their own, often conflicting, opinions about the design, but the one thing both shared was excitement at having one in the first place. Cooper looked excitedly at the sketches on the table in front of his father and pointed toward the front door.
"There's a ton of giant pieces of wood in your truck," he said.
"Yup," Clint replied. Natasha looked between them and set her tablet down.
"I hear you need giant pieces of wood to build a treehouse," she said with a straight face.
"No way!" Cooper exclaimed. "We're actually doing it?"
"Absolutely. Let's go take a ride," Clint had a twinkle in his eye when he smiled at Cooper, who was grinning ear-to-ear with enthusiasm.
They piled into the pickup and hauled the lumber and other supplies to the edge of the woods and about 100 yards. The trees grew so thick that Natasha and Clint carried the larger support beams between them the remaining 30 or so yards to the site Clint and Cooper had chosen. They stopped in front of a small clearing, at the center of which grew a sturdy oak tree. It was tall and unmarred, with a wide fork low in the trunk which left an ideal gap between the branches. She could easily see why they had chosen this tree.
She and Clint unloaded the rest of the beams and Cooper carried boxes of tools and hardware into the clearing. Unable to contain his enthusiasm, the boy took off at a sprint around the perimeter of the tree.
"We're gonna have a tree house, we're gonna have a tree house!" he half-screamed, half-shouted. Natasha and Clint smirked at each other, amused.
"Slow down, buddy, we're just doing the platform today," Clint chuckled. Cooper's enthusiasm was not dampened and he insisted on "helping" his dad carry the ladder, their final piece of equipment, from the truck to their workspace. Clint extended the ladder to its full length and set it up so the top of the 12-foot ladder leaned against one of the forks in the trunk.
"You want me to go up?" Natasha asked him, eyeing the ladder. He shook his head.
"Nah, I'll be good," Clint said. He secured the tool belt around his waist and began to climb. "Just spot me." Natasha stabilized the ladder with a foot and both hands while Cooper stood beside her. He clutched the plans for the treehouse in his hands and watched his father scale the ladder.
"Auntie Nat? Can I ask you something?" he said curiously when he thought Clint was out of earshot.
"Of course."
"If you worked for a spy group, does that mean you're a spy?"
"Yes, I was."
"So you're not one anymore?"
"Well, you can't be a secret agent if you give away the secret."
"Oh," Cooper said. He looked thoughtful. "But you're a famous secret agent spy now?"
"Sort of." Cooper frowned
"But if you're famous, you're not secret anymore?"
"That's right."
"Auntie Nat, I think you're doing it wrong," Cooper said, shaking his head in exasperation. Natasha had to laugh.
"In Nat's defense, she blew her cover on purpose because it was the only way to bring the bad guys down," Clint called from several feet overhead. He was starting to climb down and she held the ladder steady.
"So you're a bad spy because you're a good spy? Or you're a good spy because you're a bad spy? I don't get it."
"Don't think about it too hard, buddy," Clint laughed, stepping off of the ladder and clapping Cooper on the back.
"But you still know spy stuff?" Cooper asked Natasha, his hazel eyes wide.
"Lots of spy stuff," she confirmed.
"Nauchi menya!" He said excitedly, before adding "pozhaluysta" to the request.
Natasha smiled at him. While both of the Barton kids were quick to pick up the bits of Russian that she taught them, Cooper was far more enthusiastic about making a directed effort to learn. Every time she taught him and Lila something new, he would write it down in a composition notebook he had devoted to the task. He also frequented the Russian learning channels on YouTube for new words and expressions to try out when Natasha visited. After one particularly inappropriate find online, she had instituted a "no using new Russian words until Auntie Nat approves first" rule, but otherwise there had been no issues. He was by no means fluent, neither child was, but Cooper now had a surprisingly large catalog of words and phrases at his disposal and would teach them to Lila if she asked.
"I don't remember what that means," Clint protested. "I don't like it when I can't understand what you're saying."
"That's the point," Cooper replied. He looked back at Natasha with an eyebrow raised in question. Clint gathered another round of tools before heading back up the ladder, Natasha still stabilizing the legs with her body. Once he was out of earshot, she turned back to Cooper.
"Da, ya nauchu tebya," she said slowly in a low voice, allowing him to process the words. "Only a little, and nothing violent without your parents' permission, okay?"
"Spasibo," he whispered a little louder than he should have in his excitement. "Will you teach me how to fight off a bully, like in The Karate Kid?"
"No fighting without your mom or dad's permission," she repeated, adding, "I've never heard of that, is it a movie?"
"Yep. How about picking locks?"
"Hmm, not yet," she said, wondering if she'd opened a Pandora's Box with this promise of spy lessons. "That's more advanced. We need to start with the basics."
"Like what?" Cooper asked excitedly, forgetting to keep his voice down. The conversation was punctuated by Clint's drill boring another hole into the solid trunk of the tree.
"Well, the first thing all spies learn is how to sneak around without anyone knowing they are there," Natasha told him. "Quick and quiet as a shadow."
"So no footsteps or creaky floors?"
"Exactly right."
"How do I learn?" Natasha looked into his eager face, eyes twinkling with enthusiasm, and had to smile. It was amazing to her how much joy and wonder kids could find in the world, and she was reminded of that each time she visited Cooper and Lila. That sense of childlike amazement was one of the many things she learned about kids from spending time at the farm, not having had a true childhood herself.
"Well, lots and lots of practice. While I am here, I'll give you some lessons, okay?"
"Da!" Cooper said.
"Hey Nat," Clint said from the top of the ladder, "When you're done teaching my son how to subvert his parents, I could use your help." Natasha rolled her eyes at him. "Cooper, will you hand me that bunch of rope we brought?" He nodded
"What does 'subvert' mean?" Cooper asked when he returned with the rope.
"It means breaking your parents' rules. My turn?" she called up to Clint, who nodded and started back down the ladder.
"Yep, it's all you, Widow," he smirked and made a sweeping gesture toward the ladder.
She slung the coil of rope over her head so it looped across her body and began to climb, reaching the top of the ladder and shimmying over one of the forks in the trunk easily. Before long she had rigged a rudimentary pulley system over both forks of the tree and Clint secured one of the long support beams to either end before climbing the ladder again. Together, they hoisted and bolted each beam into place.
By the time Lila and Laura found the in the woods two hours later, they had completely framed out, anchored, and braced the 8' x 10' platform that formed the foundation of the treehouse. Natasha's shoulder was starting to throb from the exertion and she was grateful to have the reprieve. Lila jumped up and down excitedly, still wearing her leotard and tights from ballet class.
"Wow, impressive progress," Laura noted. "You guys ready for dinner?"
"Absolutely, Mama," Clint said, starting down the ladder. When safely on the ground, he watched Natasha step across the platform frame with ease, her feet as secure between the 2-inch-wide beam surfaces as she was on solid ground, before climbing back down the ladder. They packed all of the supplies except the pulleys, which they'd left in place, into the pickup and all of them packed inside for the short drive back to the house.
Natasha had intended to help Laura get dinner on the table, but Lila had other plans. The 5-year-old grasped her hand and pulled her into the living room, excited to demonstrate all of the things she had learned in her ballet classes over the last two months. She looked apologetically at Laura, who shrugged and waved her on. She resolved to help with cleanup instead.
"Auntie Nat, pay attention," Lila told her as she got into position in front of her.
"Hey now, bossy pants," Laura called to her daughter gently from the kitchen.
"Pay attention, please," Lila corrected. She steered Natasha to the couch and motioned for her to sit before she took several steps backward onto an empty area of the floor. "First we learned the arm movements, the poor duh—" her voice trailed off and she frowned, trying to remember. For the first time, she saw that Lila had the same little crease between the eyebrows as Clint did when he was worried or frustrated.
"Port du bras," Natasha gently finished for her. She nodded to the little girl with encouragement. Lila squared her shoulders and hips and lifted her arms out in front of her torso, rounding them slightly.
"This one is en avant, that means 'forward,'" Lila said, her face reflecting intense concentration. She gracefully moved her arms above her head, keeping her shoulders flat. "This one is en haut which means 'high up.'"
"You have good form on this one," Natasha said approvingly. "Your shoulders are perfect, nice and flat." Lila beamed before regaining her concentration.
"And this is en bas, down low," she said, lowering her arms so they rested at her sides, still slightly rounded, palms facing up slightly toward her hips. Lila demonstrated first through fifth positions for Natasha and then, going back to first position, said, "today we learned demi plies."
Lila squared her heels and held her arms curved over her head. She pursed her lips in concentration, bent her knees, kept her back straight, sank down a few inches, and rose again. On her second plie, she started to sink down but her arms went too far behind her head and she lost her balance, stepping out of position and flailing her arms to regain her footing.
"Oops," she said.
"It's okay," Natasha coaxed, "go on and try again."
Lila went back into first position and she stood, walking around behind the little girl. When Lila sank into plie, she wobbled. Natasha saw that her back wasn't quite straight and her arms were a little too far behind her head. No wonder she'd lost her balance.
"Can I help?" she asked.
"Uh-huh," Lila nodded. Natasha crouched down beside her and gently pushed two fingers into Lila's lower back, resulting in her reflexively straightening her posture and sending her shoulders back.
"Spine nice and tall, all the way up through the top of your head," she said, touching the crown of Lila's head. She then brought Lila's arms slightly forward. "And when your arms are en haut like that, make sure you can just see your fingers wiggling." She wiggled her own fingers in front of Lila's eyes and the girl giggled. "That's how you know your arms aren't too far back."
"Ok. Can I try again?" Lila said, and she was bending her knees again before Natasha had the chance to speak. This time, she was able to do two, then three, then four plies in a row.
"That's so good, Lila!" Lila's face split into a grin at the praise.
"This is so much easier! I could do this all day!" She said happily, continuing to plie away.
"You can do that until dinnertime," Clint said, he and Cooper coming into the room after washing up for dinner. Clint set the table and Laura set a pot of chili down on a trivet on the table.
"Nah, let her do that and I'll eat her dessert," Cooper teased. That caused Lila to stop practicing, stick her tongue out at Cooper, and scamper over to her usual chair at the table.
"Nat, would you grab the cornbread out of the oven?" Laura asked, beginning to ladle chili into the bowls. Natasha pulled the corn muffins from the oven, tipped them into the cloth-lined bread basket, and brought them over to the table along with the butter bell and a knife. Clint set sour cream and cheese on the table and grinned when Laura set a bowl of steaming chili in front of him.
"Chow time," he grinned.
Natasha smiled back at him. She ate so many of her meals in solitude that she didn't think she'd ever take these family dinners for granted. There was so much comfort in the ease of the family routine, and these were the times when she most felt like a part of the family.
"Auntie Nat helped me with my plies," Lila said proudly.
"Did she?" Clint asked, raising an eyebrow at Natasha. He looked sideways at Laura, who gave him a subtle shrug of confirmation.
Clint knew better than anyone about the role her ballet training had played in her youth, and about how much she relied on dancing to get her through sleepless nights and other times of stress. Natasha rarely considered it dancing, though. She generally thought of what she did as "practice," "training," or "drills." Ballet wasn't something Natasha had ever alluded to in front of the kids, so Clint and Laura had followed her lead in not mentioning it. Lila's request earlier in the year for ballet lessons had simply been coincidental, her parents attributing it to the normal girlhood dream of becoming a ballerina.
"Yep," Lila told them before turning to face Natasha and asking, "How do you know how to do plies?" Clint and Laura stilled, a change that went unnoticed by the children but Natasha knew them too well to overlook it.
"I had lots of ballet lessons when I was younger," she said simply, eating a bite of the hot stew. Lila looked delighted by her answer.
"Can you show me?"
Natasha's mind drifted to the two sets of ballet shoes in her duffel bag. She was a light traveler overall, but when she had taken off from New York she'd found she couldn't leave her weapons, tactical gear, or the ballet slippers behind. She'd had little room left for clothes and toiletries, but she could pick those up anywhere.
But the issue ran far deeper than simply whether or not she had shoes. She hadn't performed any of her ballet moves in front of another living soul since Madame B in the Red Room. Not even Clint had seen her dance, and she was certain that since defecting from the KGB, only Laura — and Lila, though she was young enough she likely didn't remember — had ever even seen her wearing her ballet shoes
She wasn't ready for other people to see her practice, even people she considered family.
Clint and Laura picked up on Natasha's hesitation and Laura jumped in almost immediately.
"Oh, no, honey," she said. "Nat got hurt on her mission, remember?" Natasha gave Laura a look of gratitude.
"Aww, okay," Lila said, sounding disappointed. "Maybe next time?"
"Maybe," Natasha agreed. Lila, seeming satisfied with her answer, went back to crumbling a cornbread muffin into her chili.
After dinner, Natasha and Clint cleaned up and the others scattered, Lila continued to practice ballet drills and Laura headed to the porch to read. The clinking of dishes was the only sound that accompanied them for several minutes before Clint turned to look at his partner.
"Where'd Cooper go?" he asked, handing Natasha a handful of silverware to dry and beginning to scrub out the soup pot.
"Probably chasing the barn cats," she said with a smirk, putting the spoons away. Clint raised an eyebrow at her.
"Chasing cats? Why in the—"
"Spy lessons," she told him by way of explanation.
"Spy lessons?"
"Don't worry, nothing dangerous. Lesson one is stealth. I told him the best way to practice that is trying to sneak up on the cats."
Clint actually laughed out loud at this, imagining his 8-year-old son trying to run around the barn perimeter after the cats.
"Should keep him busy for a while," she said, and Clint shook his head in amusement.
"Amen to that." He handed her the clean soup pot and she began to dry it. "Laura tells me you're thinking of going back to Russia soon." Natasha continued to dry the soup pot, not speaking, but Clint knew her well enough to read the affirmation in her silence.
"Yes."
"You sure that's a good idea?"
"It's my next step," she told him. She put the clean pot back into the cupboard where it belonged and leaned back against the counter, peering at him. "I have to figure out who I am without SHIELD, without the KGB or any of my covers—"
"You're my partner," he said firmly, drying his hands and facing her with his arms crossed over his chest.
"Am I, still?" she asked quietly, avoiding his gaze. "Without SHIELD?" He paused.
"We're still friends, and you're Laura's friend, and you're an aunt to the kids—"
"That's who I am to all of you," she pointed out, shifting her weight to cross her ankles and giving herself a moment to not look at Clint. "I need to figure out who I am. Going to my home country is the best place to start."
Clint blew a long, low breath through pursed lips and uncrossed his arms, recognizing the glint of resolve in Natasha's bright green eyes. He knew there was no way to convince her not to go. She was simply stubborn that way.
"When would you go?"
"Tomorrow, maybe the day after."
"Kids are gonna be disappointed," Clint told her with a shrug, playing his last good card. Natasha recognized his ploy for what it was and eyed him sideways.
"Low blow, Barton, but it's not gonna work this time."
"It was worth a shot," he said, shrugging. "C'mon, let's go see what everyone else is up to."
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Natasha was surprised when Cooper asked her to tuck him into bed that night. This struck her as strange; she remembered Laura telling her that Cooper declared himself 'far too old to be tucked in' after finishing the first grade last year. She suspected that Cooper wanted to talk to her alone and her hunch turned out to be right.
She knocked softly and opened the door to find him sitting up in bed with an open book in his lap. She approached and sat on the edge of his bed and when he closed the book she saw that the cover read Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
"Re-reading the series?" she asked, taking the book from him and looking at it for a moment before setting it on the bedside table.
"Yep," he said with a grin. "Remember when you used to read them to me?"
"I do," she said, smiling fondly at the memory. He had loved the world of Harry Potter so much and talked about the books so frequently that she'd actually downloaded the audiobooks in order to keep up. The seven-part series had entertained her through months worth of morning runs. "Before you got too old for anyone to read to you."
"Well, I will never be too old for Harry Potter," he declared.
"Speaking of which, I thought you were too old to be tucked in at night," she said, tilting her head and raising an eyebrow a fraction of an inch.
"I am, I just wanted to talk to you," he confessed. "I mean, without mom and dad." Natasha nodded in understanding and shifted her position, folding one leg under her and keeping the other foot on the floor as she turned to face him better.
"I see, what about?"
Cooper suddenly dropped his head and started down at his hands. He looked sheepish.
"Sorry I was scared of you yesterday," he said, still examining his hands, resting folded in his lap. Her face softened instantly.
"There's nothing to be sorry for, Cooper," she told him.
"I was not very nice to you."
"Oh bratik, you don't have to be nice all the time," she kept her voice level but held back the urge to chuckle. This child was so Midwestern. Natasha reached and rested her hand on his shoulder. "It can be scary to find out bad things about people you trust."
"Has that happened to you?" he asked, raising his head to look at her with curiosity.
"Lots of times," she told him honestly. Natasha thought back to the previous week and the betrayal that came with learning many trusted SHIELD colleagues were Hydra all along, or when she'd learned her most trusted KGB handler had been the one to abduct her from her parents as a child. She could still clearly recall the fear she had as an adolescent after finding out Madame B's did not simply send the Red Room students back home when they failed out of the program.
"Really?"
"Really."
"What did you do?"
"Well," she began, "I had to decide whether the bad stuff outweighed the good stuff. When the bad parts were stronger, I tried not to be around the person anymore. When the good things were stronger, we stayed friends."
Cooper sat with this for several seconds, considering her. He pushed some of his sandy hair out of his face.
"Can I ask you something?"
"Of course."
"All that bad stuff, is that why you have nightmares?"
Natasha was genuinely taken aback by this. She had always been meticulously careful not to mention her nightmares within earshot of the kids, ever. The few flashbacks she'd had in their presence had been shorter and much less severe in the past couple of years; she'd been able to manage them by simply retreating to her room or going for a long run, sometimes with Clint or Laura around to help cover for her.
Natasha opened her mouth to speak, intending to deny her nightmares and flashbacks, but she looked into the little boy's face and knew that he would see through that lie. He had proven to her in the past couple of days that he had, indeed, grown up more than she'd given him credit for.
"Yes," she nodded.
"I thought so," he said grimly. "Dad gets them too."
She blinked at him and kept her face carefully level. Of course. Clint had been through his fair share of horrors, too. Sometimes when she was here, it was very easy to forget that she wasn't the only person in the house with a traumatic past. They had spent enough time in close quarters and on long missions together to learn each others' triggers, troubled habits, and the vices each turned to when they failed to outrun their own demons.
"He does," she affirmed. It wasn't a question. Cooper gave her a knowing look.
"Sometimes, when something reminds him of a bad thing he's seen, the nightmares happen while he's awake. That happens to you too, right? When you go all stiff and staring?"
"Yes," she said, swallowing hard. "You are far too smart for your own good, you know that?"
"Well, I am eight now," he said matter-of-factly, sitting up taller in bed. "I am old enough to know things." That made Natasha smile.
"You know what I know?" she asked. He shook his head, shaggy hair swishing back and forth in front of his face. "I know it's past time for eight-year-olds to be in bed."
"Aww, come on," he said, eyes wide and pleading. "You're no fun."
"Never said I was. Go on," she said. Instead of lying down, Cooper shifted his blankets, sat up on his knees, and hugged her.
"Spokoynoy nochi, Auntie Nat," he said. She hugged him tightly, rubbing slow circles over his back. "Ya lublyu vas."
Natasha didn't think she'd ever fully get used to hearing that in any language. Tears began to well in her eyes and, unbidden, Madame B's voice whispered 'Love is for children' in the back of her mind. She brushed the thought aside. She pulled back enough to smooth his hair back and drop a gentle kiss onto his forehead.
"I love you, too, sweetheart," she whispered.
He slid back under the covers and Natasha switched off the lamp. She was almost to the door when she heard Cooper's voice, muffled as a result of speaking from under the blanket.
"You know, you're like Snape," he said in the darkness. "He made lots of bad choices and was friends with mean people when he was young, but turned out to be one of the bravest, best good guys in the end. And he was a spy, too."
"Well, there are certainly worse people to be like," she said quietly, thinking privately that she did not love that comparison.
"You would have definitely been in Gryffindor though."
"Goodnight, Cooper," she said quietly, stepping out of his bedroom and pulling the door closed behind her.
When Natasha arrived back in the kitchen, Clint and Laura were sitting at the kitchen table with their heads bent toward each other, talking in low voices.
"Hey, Nat," Clint said, spotting her first. "Cooper okay?"
"He seemed fine."
"Did he… did he want something in particular?" Laura's speech faltered. Natasha understood the unspoken question belying her words. Clint pulled out the chair beside him at the table and she sat, arms crossed on the table, facing them.
"He apologized for being rude," she told them, a small frown on her face. "And we talked. He says I'm like Snape." Clint laughed out loud at this, but Laura remained quietly pensive.
"Leave it to Cooper to compare everything in his life to something from Harry Potter," Clint grinned.
"He drew the comparison so he could make sense of a complicated situation," Laura said softly, smiling. She was proud of her eldest child and the person he was becoming. "Smart kid."
"He got that from you," Clint told his wife.
"Without a doubt," Natasha agreed. Clint made a face at her and she raised both eyebrows at him in an expression of feigned innocence.
A minute passed in silence, but when Natasha made to stand and get her tablet from the other room, Laura cleared her throat.
"Wait a second, Nat," she said. "Have you decided when you're leaving?" Natasha nodded, hands folded in her lap.
"Day after tomorrow." She saw her friends exchange a glance and, sensing there was something more on their minds, she added, "why?"
Laura gave a short, almost inaudible sigh and looked to her husband. He sat forward to face Natasha.
"We talked about it —" As Clint spoke, Laura reached for his hand across the table as a gesture of support. "— and I want to go with you. To Russia, I mean. If you want," Clint offered, looking sincerely as though he would like to go with her.
"It would make us both feel better to know you wouldn't be alone," Laura added.
Both of them looked so genuinely earnest and concerned that for a moment, Natasha really considered it. Having Clint there to help with research, to watch her back, to help with her cover, to draw less attention than she would as a woman traveling alone, all of those things would be a tremendous help. Logically, it made sense.
Looking at them, these two people that she loved like siblings, a part of her wanted to say yes.
"No," she said without pretense. "I need to do this alone."
"You sure?"
"Yes," she said resolutely. "I'll be okay, Clint."
Natasha could see the worry in his eyes and knew why it ran so deep. Both knew that she likely wouldn't find her parents alive at the end fo this journey. She rested his hand on top of his calloused one and squeezed reassuringly.
"It's okay," she said, first to Clint and then Laura. "I need to go myself." She removed her hand from Clint's.
"Well, at least promise you'll call," Laura insisted, but Clint was shaking his head even after the words left her mouth.
"She won't."
He knew Natasha too well to expect anything else.
Even Natasha would be surprised when, two weeks later, she'd pull the burner phone out of her pocket after a very long and exhausting day. That day, she would arrive at a town cemetery near Volgograd to find two little gravestones by a chain-link fence, shrouded with weeds and so weathered one of the names was unreadable. She would confirm the date of interment with the tiny cemetery's manager, pull some weeds, leave some flowers, and leave feeling just as hollow as when she arrived.
She would call the Barton's home number after getting back to her motel that evening because yes, she wanted to share what she'd found, but even more than that she wanted to hear their voices and know they were still there, safe and sound on the little farm on the other side of the world.
She knew that she only had what she had while she had it.
Natasha did not want to take her family for granted.
.
.
Fin.
I'm enjoying writing this story, and I certainly hope those of you who have read the story have enjoyed it, too. Thanks to the few of you who have reviewed, I truly appreciate all of your feedback. The number of follows/favorites definitely outweighs the reviews and I see all of you silent folks, so thank you.
It's never too late to review!
Again, please look for the next update (probably late next week) under the title "Seven times Natasha visited the Barton farm, and one time she didn't." It will be delayed because of the holiday.
Have an excellent week and happy Independence Day to you Americans!
