This is an Endgame/Clintasha fix it fic because thanks Joss Whedon. It's canon compliant .

I do not own the rights to anything Marvel. If I did, Clint and Natasha would have their own movie and Hawkeye would still be deaf.

I only own my storyline

Constructive criticism is more than welcome and reviews are my crack.

Enjoy.

Clint woke up violently. None of that fluttering eyelids bullshit.

He shot upright, covered in sweat and breathing hard. The room was too dark to be any help when it came to fighting off the encroaching panic.

But then a hand curled around his upper arm, pale enough that it almost glowed in the dark.

His dark blond hair was matted to his forehead and his breathing was getting out of control.

Natasha sat up, leaned over the edge of the bed to turn the lamp on and grabbed his hearing aid off the bedside table. Clint was squinting in the light now, trying to focus on her but the ringing in his ears was distracting and the lack of oxygen was getting to him.

"Moy sokol," her accent rolled across the silence and she swung her leg over his lap until she was straddling him. He wasn't even making eye contact so she couldn't even sign to him, he just twisted his hands into the sheets underneath him and struggled to pull oxygen into his lungs. Her empty hand pressed against his cheek and Clint was still stiff, even as she worked to fit his hearing aid into his ear. He flinched as the sound poured in all at once when she succeeded.

"Hey, hey, look at me." She slid her other hand down until his face was cupped in her palms. There was no recognition. "Barton," she snapped. "Breathe." One of her hands fell and her fingers wrapped tightly around his wrist as she brought his hand up to flatten against her chest above her heartbeat. "Focus on this. Right here. Vdok, vydykhat." She exaggerated her breathing and squeezed his hand, threading her fingers tightly into his hair, flooding him with as much stimuli as she could to pull him back. For a few more minutes, things carried on like that until he collapsed forward, breathing almost back to normal again except for a few hitches every couple of breaths.

Clint's forehead pressed against her shoulder and his hands slid around her back to grasp tightly at the fabric of his tee shirt she was wearing. Natasha's arms wound around his broad shoulders and she held him.

"You're ok, Barton. You're safe." He shook his head along her collar bone.

"But they're not," his miserable voice was hoarse and Natasha paused for a minute before sighing into his hair and tightening her hold on him.

Laura. Cooper. Lila. Nathaniel.

His entire family had vanished around him.

"I know." That was all there was to say. He dreamt of them more nights than he didn't. Some nights, it was still his ledger that haunted him. But more often, he dreamt of the snap, of Lila vanishing in front of him, and the hour he spent scouring his property for his family. He dreamt of the gut-wrenching terror he felt as he dialed Natasha's number wondering if she was gone too and this was his own personal hell.

The guilt killed him.

They were just gone. He couldn't get them back. And so he'd what? Moved on?

That's exactly what he'd done. Picked right back up where he'd left off with Nat before Laura. And he hated himself for it.

Natasha was angry with herself too.

Her niece and nephews had trusted her. Laura was her friend.

They'd been gone two years and Natasha had just taken her friend's place.

Clint and Natasha had only ever pretended to be good people when the sad reality of the fact was that they were and always would be assassins who did what they needed to do in order to survive.

And this was no different.

They did what they had to do.

His skin was burning where it was touching hers. It felt like a physical reminder of all of his transgressions, of how he'd moved on.

After a few minutes of the deafening silence, Natasha disentangled herself from his arms and climbed off his lap.

"Come on," she stretched her hand out. He looked at her with questioning eyes as he reached for her hand and let her pull him off the bed.

He didn't ask. He didn't need to, really. He trusted her more than anyone. He trusted her more than Laura even.

Natasha pulled a pair of yoga pants on under his SHIELD shirt then turned to face him with a faded Black Sabbath tee shirt in her hands. He stood still as she gently eased it over his head then left him to put it the rest of the way on.

They ended up in the gym a few minutes later. Clint still hadn't said a thing, even as she backed away from him before ducking under the ropes of the makeshift sparring ring. He followed her in and squared up, rolling his shoulders to loosen them. She arched a thin red eyebrow in way of asking if he was ready. He nodded sharply, exhaled deeply and then lunged forward, throwing the first punch. She blocked and his left jab was not far behind the right. His blows were propelled by sheer anger. There was hatred in his eyes that she could see wasn't directed at her but it was still there; hot fire burning behind cold walls.

Natasha blocked another one of Clint's fists, knocking his arm out of the way, and using it as leverage to flip herself around his body, landing lithely behind him. She kicked the back of his legs, sending him stumbling forward and effectively messing up his near perfect balance.

"She would want you to be happy."

Clint scowled and ducked out of her lethal hold, dropping down and kicking her feet out from under her in one smooth motion and sending her on her back.

"You don't know that." Before he could pin her, she vaulted backwards into a handstand, scissoring her thighs around his chest, bringing her partner crashing to the mat.

"She loved you. Why would she want anything else?"

He wrapped his hand around her ankle, pulling Natasha off of his chest and down beside him.

"She's my wife." He said darkly, as they laid on the mat beside each other, panting.

"She's gone, Barton. You can't hold onto her forever. You can't punish yourself. You can't hate yourself every morning that you wake up next to me." She paused and he could almost hear her heart hammering. "You can't hate me or this won't..." He glanced at her sharply and then flipped and pinned her arms to the mat, tilting his head down so he was inches from her lips and could feel her staccato breaths fanning across his face.

"Listen and listen carefully Natasha." She met his eyes and held them unwaveringly. "I have never and could never hate you. Don't ever think that. This… this is all me. You want to know why I can barely even live with myself right now?" he didn't wait for her answer. "You've always been it for me. Since the second I dropped my bow and you lowered your gun. You've been… it. You didn't want me." She flinched and opened her mouth to protest.

"Listen." He reminded. "Then Fury sent me on that fuck off mission and I met Laura." His voice cracked. "And… she wanted me. All the affection I'd been chasing with you… she returned it. Then we had Cooper and I am not my father, Natasha. I couldn't be like him. I wasn't going to leave her. So I didn't. I married her. I never… never loved her like I loved you. She knew that. She was okay with that. She loved you too. We had Cooper. Then Lila. Then Nate."

Tears welled in his eyes and he dropped his head to her shoulder, breathing shakily. She held still, heart racing and mind working to not let her feelings manifest on her face.

"And our kids loved you. I loved her. She loved me. We were happy. But we weren't in love Tasha. That was always reserved for somebody else. I felt like a piece of shit." He scoffed. "She's- was a great woman. A great wife. A great mother. She deserved someone's whole heart. But she didn't want it. She wanted our family to be whole."

Natasha was losing her personal battle. She had no idea. How had she never known any of this? Suddenly his weight on her was getting too heavy and breathing was getting harder by the second.

"And now she's gone, Natasha. And I-" he couldn't finish the sentence and she slipped one of her arms out of her grip, bringing it up to card through his hair.

"Me too,"

He turned his head so that his face was buried in her neck instead and he just breathed her in and felt her heart beating for another moment before he rolled off her and to his feet.

Natasha took the hand he offered and allowed him to pull her to her feet. Clint smoothed a sweat soaked piece of half blonde, half red hair off her forehead, tucking it behind her ear.

"Coffee?" she offered.

"Coffee."

By the time they were both showered and seated at the rickety piece of wood they used as a dining table, the sun was finally coming up. Their apartment building was waking up. Kids getting ready for school were running in the hallways. Dogs were barking, asking to be taken out for their morning walk.

Both SHIELD agents were watching the sun come up through the tattered drapes covering the tiny ass window in their tiny ass living room.

The silence between the two of them was broken by Natasha's phone ringing. Clint was busy stirring an ungodly amount of sugar into his coffee to care much about the side of the conversation he could hear until he heard her sign off.

"We'll be right there."

He arched a questioning eyebrow in her direction.

"Rogers needs a hand. He'll brief us when we get there." Clint nodded once and downed the remainder of his coffee in one swallow.

The goal was simple. Rhodes needed a hand with a weapons dealer in Karachi. They were low on soldiers and contractors after the snap and he had a few perfectly good spies waiting back in New York. Rogers was essentially unavailable. He was unwilling to leave his support group behind, especially when he had others to help out his friend.

Clint agreed a little too quickly. He needed a distraction. Natasha was not far behind and they were wheels up within the afternoon.

Rhodes met them on the ground, War Machine suit and all with a briefing packet and a couple of Airmen.

Clint scoffed, some of his old mischief and arrogance returning to his face as he read through the intel.

"This is… a two day mission, tops. Nat and I can be in and out by Thursday night." Rhodes smirked.

"All yours, Barton."

Natasha grinned. It'd been a while since they got a mission like this. Old school, no monsters, no magic. It was everything they were ever trained for. This was what they were good at.

"Thanks for the call." Natasha said.

"Thanks for coming, Romanoff." Rhodes nodded. "Y'all got this? I'mma head out."

"We got this."

He said goodbye with a mock salute and left his airmen to show the assassin's to their temporary quarters.

Reviews are like water. They give me life.

Please review.

Updating again this week!