Just a short filler chapter because it has been a crazy day and I am out of juice! Thanks for everyone who has read, shared, or reviewed so far! As always, thanks for reading!
Natasha stifled a yawn as she sunk into a seat next to Clint and slipped her phone back into her pocket, glad to finally be through using it. She had made several calls in the last two hours, cashing in several favors that were owed to her. She'd found them a private plane back to the states, as well as safe transport to get said plane. She had also secured some medical supplies so that she could treat Clint and she had dressed his wounds before they boarded the plane and began the long flight back. She had just finished speaking to Coulson and had brought him up to speed on everything that had happened in Paris. Thankfully it seemed that their cover had remained in tact for the time being. He had wished them God speed on their flight home and promised to have a medical team on standby for Clint as soon as they touched down.
"Well? What's the damage?" Clint asked as she sat down.
"So far it seems that we are under the radar still. They do not know who we are or what we were doing here, so we have that going for us at least."
"Good deal." Clint yawned and ran a hand over his face. "Thanks, Nat. You saved my ass…again."
"Don't get used to it." She smiled ever so slightly. "We have several hours before we land. You should get some sleep."
"No, you should. I was passed out most of the night and you've been running around like a crazy lady trying to get us out of Paris. I won't let the plane crash if you catch some sleep."
"I dunno about that."
"Go on, take a nap. I can see it in your eyes- you're tired."
"If it will make you shut up, then fine." Natasha rolled her eyes and leaned her chair back. She closed her eyes and they were silent for several minutes before Natasha spoke suddenly. "Hey, Clint?"
"Hmm?" He asked, looking up from the notepad in his lap.
"Can I ask you something?"
"Sure."
"Your brother…what happened to him?"
"Ah." Clint scratched the back of his neck. "I figured that's what you wanted to know."
"Sorry, you don't have to answer."
"No, it is fine." Clint sighed. "After our parents deaths we got bounced around from foster home to foster home. Barney started getting into trouble all the time. We eventually got separated into two different homes when he turned fifteen. I ran away not too long after that and ended up traveling with the Carneys. He got mixed up with some really bad people and started taking drugs…he was really messed up. I got mixed up with the same guys trying to get him out of the situation. Long story short, I ended up at S.H.I.E.L.D and he is in a mental health institute." Clint sighed. "He isn't all the way there. Sometimes he is lucid, other times he doesn't even know who I am."
"Oh." Natasha frowned. "I'd say I am sorry, but I know that you've heard it a thousand times."
"You're not wrong about that." He ran a hand through his hair.
"Does he look like you?" Natasha wasn't sure why she was prying. She herself was a private person and had shut Clint out any time he had gotten too close to her past or personal matters, but yet she found that she was more curious about him than anyone else she had met before.
"No." Clint laughed suddenly. "Not at all." He pulled his wallet out and fished a picture out. The edges were crinkled with age and the picture was slightly faded. He offered it to Natasha and she took it gingerly. Two boys were standing in front of a large oak tree. The older of the two had his arm slung around the younger and was smiling, although it didn't quite reach his eyes. His hair was dark, almost black, and fell over his forehead in waves. He had brown eyes and was shorter, stockier than the other boy. His brother was taller and leaner than he was, although he was obviously younger. His sandy brown hair was trimmed short and was gelled up in the front. His blue eyes sparkled and he wore an all too familiar shit eating grin.
"You were a cute kid." Natasha said as she passed the picture back to him. "You don't look anything alike."
"Nah, Barney looks like our dad. I always looked like mom." Clint shrugged. "What about you? Who do you look like?" He expected her to clam up and not answer like she always did anytime he asked anything personal.
"My mom." Natasha said quietly. "I look nothing like…" She shook her head, not willing to finish that sense.
"I see." Clint nodded. "She must have been a very pretty lady." Natasha didn't say anything, but she reached into her backpack and pulled out a folded up piece of paper. She passed it to Clint who unfolded it to find that it was actually a photograph. A tall woman was leaning against the railing of a porch, a smile on her face. Her long red hair was braided and fell over her shoulder. Green eyes glistened in the sun and she had her a girl no older than two propped on her hip. The little girl was the spitting image of the woman and she was grinning broadly at the camera man, her arms wrapped around her mothers neck. Clint smiled as he studied the picture and passed it back to Natasha.
"Look at you." He grinned. "You should really smile more."
"I do smile." She frowned.
"No, you might smirk, or give me one of those fake smiles, but you don't smile very often."
"Whatever." Natasha rolled her eyes and tucked the picture back into her bag. "I'm glad I was able to get our stuff." She said suddenly. "I thought I'd finally lost it after all these years. It is the only part of my past I've hung on to." She sighed.
"Who'd ever thought a little picture could be so important." Clint sighed. "Life was a lot easier back then."
"No joke."
"In a way, I wish I'd been younger when my parents were killed. Might've made it easier to forget. Instead I try to keep those memories pushed away, but they lurk in the back of my mind. Every now and then I'll have nightmares and wake up in a cold sweat."
"It doesn't help." Natasha's jaw hardened and she looked out the plane window.
"What doesn't?"
"Being younger." Something in her voice made Clint's brow furrow and realization dawned on him.
"How old were you?"
"Maybe five?" Natasha shrugged. "Doesn't matter. No matter what they did to me, the tortures, the beatings, the hypnotic sessions- none of it could make that memory go away. I carry it with me to this day." Clint didn't say anything for a long time as he stared at her, surprised she had shared something personal with him.
"Were you an old child?" He finally asked.
"Yes. And a mistake. My father and mother never saw eye to eye- they just existed around one another. When I was born things got even tenser, but my mother stayed with him. Perhaps out of fear? Maybe to save face? I don't know actually." She sighed. "And then one day they got into a fight. I remember sitting at the kitchen table- I was drawing a ballerina slipper. I heard my mother scream like she had done so many times before, but this one sounded different. I crept upstairs and to make a long story short, my father killed her." She turned to face Clint. She didn't know why she was sharing that with him, why she was telling him things she had told no one before. She wanted to blame her fatigue, to say it was a lapse in judgement, but she knew the truth: she trusted him. Her demons had been riding on her back for years and for the first time she was shoving them in front of her, exposing them for the world to see.
"I can't even imagine." Clint said softly. "Thanks for sharing that with me. I know it isn't easy. Coulson is the only other person that knows about Barney."
"Yeah, well, that's what friends do, right? Spill their dark secrets to one another and make each other feel all warm and tingling inside?" She said sarcastically. Clint laughed and shook his head.
"And here I've been thinking it revolved around punching me, telling people to shut up, and saving someone else's ass."
"I guess there is that too." Natasha smiled slightly. "I guess it is unreasonable to fight the inevitable. Calling yourself my friend…it is dangerous."
"Trying to scare me off?" Clint raised a brow.
"No, you have tendency to run head first in to danger. That'd just be tempting you. I am just warning you."
"I'll jot that down in my diary then: note to self, Natasha bites. May or may not have rabies. Ow!" He protested as she punched him in his good shoulder.
"Shut up."
"See what I mean?" He laughed again. "Aren't you supposed to be taking a nap?"
"You'd prefer I not talk to you? Can I get that in writing please? And make sure you sign it."
"Ha ha, aren't you just hilarious?" He rolled his eyes. "Go on and take a nap. You know everyone and their damn dog is going to want to talk to us once we land. And then Coulson will want to debrief us. And then-"
"I get the point." Natasha cut him off. "If anything comes up, wake me up."
"Aye aye captain." Clint saluted her and she rolled her eyes. She curled up on the seat, pulling her legs to her chest, and leaned her back against the window. Clint pulled his notepad back out and began sketching again, working on a drawing of a large tree. Natasha watched him for a long time and then her head dipped and she fell asleep, the picture of Clint and his brother still in her head.