"Patience is bitter but its fruit is sweet" - Jean-Jacques Rousseau. I appreciate your patience very much.
I apologise in advance for the cliffhanger but this seemed like the best place to cut off for today - my head hurts from trying to channel Natasha in this one. Hope you like.
Okay, here we go...
Natasha woke up screaming, body flailing within the covers. Moonlight shone through the uncovered windows, bathing the bedroom in enough light for her brain to convince her body that she was not back in that basement room. Her hand flew to her side, finding nothing but the fresh red scar that William Brady had gifted her with when last they met. She was not bleeding out in the deserts of New Mexico, she was at the cabin in Iowa with Clint. Her eyes found him in the semi-darkness of the room. He was out of bed, gun aimed at the doorway, ready and able to blow a hole in anything that might come at them, ready to protect her at all costs. Scanning the shadows it took him a long moment to lower the weapon and relax enough to turn back to her.
"Everything okay?" he asked, voice still rough from sleep despite the fact that he was now very obviously awake. There had been more than one instance when she had woken them both with her screams as the memories of what had happened the night she almost died began to surface. At first all she got were flashes and lingering feelings of unease after she woke but lately the images were coming in terrifying detail, leaving her disconnected and unable to separate the nightmares from reality.
Was she okay? At that particular moment the truth was that she wasn't even remotely okay. She was shaken, terrified that she was losing her mind, her heart was racing and her side was aching, but she wasn't about to tell him that. "I'm okay," she replied, still breathing heavily. Rubbing her face, she tried to absorb the reality of where she was and who was in the room with her, as well as who wasn't. "Just another nightmare."
He came back to the bed, the warmth of his body blanketing hers as he settled beside her. She went to him with an ease she had never known with anyone else, letting him wrap her up in the warmth and security of his arms. Clint felt good beneath her, solid, his heat chasing away the cold that settled over her and easing the shivers, he went deeper than that though, he always had, right to the marrow of her bones and the centre of her chest.
"What was it about?" he asked softly, keeping her close. She had no desire to dredge up the past but bottling up her fears and her emotions had done more harm than good the last time she'd tried it. He knew that but Clint was a patient man, he would wait until she was ready to talk.
"It was about New Mexico," she admitted, stroking her hand absently over his arms as she spoke. "A flashback I guess, it makes no sense to me, not really. I just get bits, blood and pain and the feeling that I'm never going to make it out of that room..."
He nodded but didn't press her for details. More than anyone he knew that she didn't want to relive it. Instead she felt his arms tighten around her. "But you did make it out," he told her, "they didn't."
Long after he had drifted off to sleep, arms circling her, she slid out of his embrace and crept out to the kitchen where she brewed a mug of tea and sat at the table. Six weeks without word from Hill was long enough to drive them both to frustration. Neither she nor Clint had been the type to ask for permission or wait for someone to tell them that everything was going to be okay, at least not until they joined SHIELD and became partners. She was sure that the nightmares they had both experienced were the result of the unusual period of calm that they were experiencing. In recent weeks she'd had more time to look at the bigger picture than she'd ever had and more than few quiet moments to examine where she thought they were headed.
Since they'd returned to the cabin, they had fallen into a quiet domesticity that Natasha had never thought she would be able to enjoy. She loved the quiet tranquillity of her surroundings and the ability to heal without the scrutiny of others, but quiet had never been her friend. and it wasn't about to start being so now. The feelings that she had earlier been able to convince herself were somehow connected to leaning on her partner during her recovery were something that she was no longer able to ignore. When she told him from her hospital bed, weeks ago and hundreds of miles away, that she loved him, she hadn't been entirely sure what that meant. Yes she loved him as a friend, he was the only real friend she'd ever had, but somehow it felt like more than that now. She didn't know how or when it had happened but he was under her skin and much to her surprise she liked him there.
Quiet contemplation and a great deal of soul searching had led her on a journey of self discovery that she would have been better off without.
Though they passed their days in relative comfort, spending hours out in the woods hiking, hunting, cooking simple suppers and sharing snippets of information with one another that they rarely shared with anyone, Clint had made no attempt to act upon the opening she had given him that day in medical. At first she had wondered whether he was just giving her time to throw off the damage done by Brady's knife and her near death experience, but now she was slowly coming to realise that perhaps her partner didn't share her feelings.
Pushing her hands through her hair, she stared through the glass and out to the forest behind the cabin, deliberately trying to avoid the disappointment she felt. Belatedly she realised that this was the reason relationships between agents were a bad idea, because when one person loved another and the feeling wasn't returned it was a kind of bitter sweet pain that made it difficult to breathe when they looked at you. He was always there, he always would be, he would have followed her to the ends of the earth if she'd asked him to, without her even needing to ask, but he had become her weakness. Clint Barton, the man she loved, the man who slept beside her when she didn't want to be alone, who fought with her on all fronts without reservation, her voice of reason, had compromised her in a way that nothing else ever had.
She was still in the kitchen, head pillowed on her arms as she dozed, when she heard his voice, distressed mutterings that preceded the yells. There was no thought involved, she simply moved and moved quickly. Clint's nightmares came less frequently than her own but that didn't make them any less powerful. Vaulting up onto the mattress she was there to meet his panicked gaze when his eyes flew open, searching the room for an anchor that would pull him into the present. His eyes landed on her and she heard him breathe out, steadying himself. Natasha wasn't good with comfort, never had been, even if she wanted to say something she would always struggle to find the words. Assuming she could find the right words to say, she didn't know the first thing about voicing them out loud but words weren't necessary here. Both Natasha and Clint were broken, both of them bleeding from wounds that were invisible to others, they understood one another in the way that survivors did and eye contact or touch conveyed so much more than words.
Whatever he had dreamt of, it was bad, she could tell by the way he leaned into her, holding her to him with a ferocity that took her by surprise. Pushing aside all thoughts but ones of comforting him, she wrapped her arms around his waist and waited until his heartbeat slowed, his breath returned to normal. "What was it?" she asked, pulling away from him so that she could see his eyes. His hand found hers, palm calloused and familiar as it squeezed her fingers, grip almost bruising."Clint, what was it?"
Shaking his head slightly, he buried his face in her shoulder. His reluctance to answer told her all that she needed to know. Letting him pull her back against him, she hoped that proximity would be enough to reassure him that she was there and that they were both okay. It was the same as last time and the time before that, memory that had become a nightmare. He had watched her die on the operating table and his unconscious mind liked to replay the image of her bleeding out before his eyes now and again. She wound up in his lap, thighs straddling him, petting him, arms wrapped around his neck while he buried his face in her shoulder, his body trembling with the force of emotions that he could not put into words.
When he finally lifted his head and looked at her, she saw the strength that she loved in him mingled with an exhaustion that tugged at her, making something inside her chest ache. She had known the man in front of her forever or so it seemed, the warmth of his touch against her skin, the subtle shift of colours in his eyes as his mood changed. She trusted him, had done so instinctively since that first moment all those years ago that he had looked into her eyes and asked her if she wanted to live. He had come through for her then and he had never stopped coming through for her. She let her arms slip from his shoulders but kept her fingers linked at the back of his neck, absorbed the feeling of his arms still locked around her waist. The air between them pulsed with an intensity that she couldn't name as they stared at one another, his eyes filled with something that she had not dared to hope for.
"Tasha," his voice was a caress, gentle, barely above a whisper in the still air of the room. She didn't wait for him to continue. She silenced him by pressing a finger to his lips, let her hand slide away to caress his cheek, thumb moving slowly back and forth across the soft skin of his lips. One moment and no other. She watched the colours roiling in his eyes, the usual grey darkening like clouds before a storm and knew that in this moment between them she would have to be the strong one.
Taking a deep breath, she leaned forward, closing the distance between them and pressed a lingering kiss to her partner's lips, something heartfelt and soft, something forbidden, a moment that belonged to them and no other, not to a mission and not to a job that had put them both within the reaches of death a dozen times. She felt his surprise, a stiffening of his muscles that betrayed him, but it passed quickly. He remained motionless beneath her, heart jack-hammering against her fingers where they rested over the arteries in his neck, and then, just as she was about to pull away and admit that she had been right and he didn't want her, he kissed her back.
