NOTE: Some of you may note that my story Don't Read the Last Page is missing. I had been unaware that among some of its odd rules about what is allowed on-site, 'you' framework stories are among them. A 'helpful' user who takes it upon themselves to search the site for violations sent me a pretty condescending review (thanks so much for complimenting my use of grammar, you unbearably smug jerk, but at least I CREATE things, rather than waste my time pretending to be an admin on a site that could not care less, lol) letting me know, so I deleted the story. If you want to read it, head over to AO3. My username there is Darsynia, a username I have here on FFN but leave empty as I started with this username first.
If this person ends up with some kind of odd vendetta about searching my stories for violations, I worry that they'll come across the song lyrics I wrote in Trust Fall and report that story. Not sure I'd be able to prove that they're not copyrighted (since it's not a real song, lol), but if that happens, I'll probably just quit using the site. So if you see me drop off of the map, look me up as Darsynia on AO3.
Chapter Two: Coping
It's not long after Natasha's shower that they get an indication that something big is happening. The facility is teeming with people, even three weeks after the 'blip,' as civilians are calling it; people like Pepper Potts don't want to go home and miss information that might take a while to reach her if she went home to the tower. Nat's hair is still wet when she goes outside with the group of onlookers to see Steve and Pepper running to the ship that has just been brought down to land by a strange glowing figure. Two people are slowly making their way down the ramp, one supporting the other.
It's Tony. He's… emaciated. Wrecked. Barely alive.
Natasha's grateful to see him, enough to have to brace her arms on her knees and suck in deep breaths of relief.
Neither Parker nor Strange has come back with him, though.
She mentally prepares for a run-down of what Tony knows, but he's not in good enough shape for that, and Natasha can tell that Pepper Potts will fight anyone who argues that it's in their best interest to hear it all now rather than when he's gotten some more strength.
It takes a good thirty hours before Tony's in any condition to leave the bed, and even then, he does it in a wheelchair, with an IV. Natasha does her best to detail their side of the information with efficiency and respect, but there's no hiding how bleak it is. They need as much information as Tony can give them, but even though Steve's voice is regretful and as gentle as she's ever heard him speak to Tony, it doesn't help. Tony's reaction is vicious and headstrong, full of a universe's worth of bitterness and regret.
The most poignant part about it is the fact that Steve knows that Tony's built him a suit of his own. He doesn't need Tony's. That almost makes the symbolism worse, really. Natasha knows there's probably something symbolic in the way she's more haunted by the look on Steve's face than Tony's, even as the latter collapses into insensibility, but she can't bear to examine that too closely in a time like this.
Then, they find out where Thanos is, and everything falls apart.
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Natasha's been standing in the middle of the gym area for at least a half hour, head down, fingers digging into her upper arm as if the pressure and sting is the only that can keep her grounded. In her mind, it's not the shock of Thanos's death or his revelation of the destruction of the stones that plays like a skipped rock in her head. Every leap hops to the beginning of an exchange in her mind, the one where Steve tells her he doesn't know what he'll do if they can't fix this. And they can't.
Her optimism had been embarrassing, the first few times. Now she wishes she could go back to it.
"There you are."
It's Steve.
"Where else?" She looks up at him, lips twisting wryly.
"Hurt your arm?" he asks, nodding over at her.
"No, just had to hold onto something," Natasha says. She clenches her teeth against her reaction to the sympathy in his eyes. There's no breaking down in her itinerary, not until she can find Clint.
Steve looks down at his shoes, then back at her, his head not lifting the full way. "There was nothing we could have done differently. Nothing." He shakes his head a tiny bit, glances to the side as if unable to meet her eyes as he speaks again. "It was hopeless."
"Steve!" she breathes, actually shocked, dropping the hand that had been clenched to her other arm. It's stiff, almost a claw, thanks to how long she'd held it in that unnatural position. Natasha wonders what condition her heart must be in, if that's how her body handles being denied relief.
"The truth's the truth, Natasha. It's our last line of defense."
She swears he can't help it, sometimes. "Okay, but I didn't expect to hear that particular truth from you of all people. You're like- hope's last line of defense."
"I'm not saying we're finished fighting this, just that our options were exhausted. The real work is finding new options." His slight smile is crooked, but he doesn't look as chastened as she worried he would.
Natasha rewards him with a smile of her own, a teasing, half-inviting one. "Better." The moment stretches, and finally, she says, "So were you checking up on me, or was there something you needed?"
"It's been two days," he says quietly.
"Oh!" She'd managed to forget their pact, somehow. "Okay." Natasha puts her hands on her hips and regards him with a critical eye. He's wearing sweatpants and one of his ridiculously tight long-sleeved shirts, and running shoes. "You went for a run?"
He nods. "Took a shower after. I didn't figure you meant your challenge about learning how to fight dirty literally." Steve's blue eyes are still sad, but there's a teasing lightness to them that Natasha wishes she could plant in a pot somewhere and nourish for the tough days they have yet to come.
"You're right, I didn't, but that's a good reference point. What does that phrase mean to you, Steve? And before you start getting bashful, you're not going to hurt me with your answer," she says, coming to stand in front of him so she can look up into his eyes and he can see the truth in hers. "No matter who I was when I learned to fight, I'm the person I am now because of who I trust, and I trust you." The last thing she wants is for him to couch his answer because it has to do with her past.
It's also not beyond the realm of possibility that the day's events might be the death of the team, in more ways than one. She wants to lash her boat to his, if they're all going to be drifting.
To her surprise, Steve huffs out a surprised kind of laugh. He shakes his head once at her confusion, and says, "Sorry. I just had this thought, 'After today, does everything hit hard? Will I wake up tomorrow morning and face a moral crisis of what to eat for breakfast?' But you're right. Clarity is important. I'm honored you trust me, Natasha. I trust you too, otherwise I would have just walked out, the other night. Lemme think for a minute."
As he stands there, eyes fixed on a point somewhere across the room past her, Natasha has a thought, and immediately knows it's perfect. She can picture the way Steve's face will blanch with surprise, when he sees what she's about to do.
"I know exactly what to do. Stay here," Natasha says, walking toward the door. She angles her path to intersect with Steve's, and not just because she always calculates that vector.
"You've got a look in your eye," Steve says with teasing trepidation.
"You like it," Natasha teases back, squeezing his arm as she passes him. She's buoyed by the shocked bark of laughter he releases, lets the wave of it take her to her room where she plugs in a curling iron on high. Natasha searches for her evening gown with the ripped hem, grabbing one of the pairs of heels that she uses when she's on a job. The dress is floor-length, black, backless, and has a slit to her thigh on the left side. A little boob tape, a quick once-over with dramatic makeup (complete with a bright red lip, because she knows Steve likes that, she's seen his appreciative side-eye), and some strategically placed clips in her hair mean that she can curl fewer segments for maximum impact.
Seven minutes later she's walking out of her quarters in the heels. Natasha strolls into the gym ten minutes after she left Steve to find him working at the punching bag, his overshirt stripped off to reveal a tank top. He's well on his way to being soaked with sweat, his arms flexed and gleaming.
Natasha doesn't have to fake her reaction, but she bets he'll think she's faking it.
"I can't believe you started without me, soldier," she purrs, reaching up to trace her fingers across the uneven blonde curls that now adorn her short hair.
Steve freezes mid-swing. He turns to face her and reaches out to steady himself on the wall, but there's no wall, just the swinging bag he'd been working out with. Steve catches himself with it, but it's painfully obvious that he's knocked sideways by her unexpected glamour. The heat of that knowledge sits rather comfortably in her gut, despite its lack of deeper meaning. Natasha takes what she can get.
"I'm missing some context here, I think," Steve manages to say. His cheeks are flushed, whether from embarrassment or from his workout combined with his exertion to keep from actually falling over at the sight of her.
"Spar with me," she says, grinning.
He gives her a cross look laced with disbelief. "Come on."
"No, I'm serious. What's stopping you?"
"I'd have a clear advantage, for one thing. What's to learn from that?" Steve crosses his arms, and she can see he's uncomfortable by the way his whole body is as rigid as a surfboard.
"Oh, Steve, say it ain't so!" Natasha laughs, allowing her tone to trend toward joyfully sensual. "You don't really think that, do you? I mean sure, it's more restrictive, but-" she lunges, revealing the high slit. Steve's eyebrows shoot up. "Anyway, you always have an advantage, Super Soldier. Never stopped you before."
"I can't take that off, Natasha." Steve realizes the second implication of what he's said a second too late to stop himself from having said it in the first place. He clears his throat. "You know what I mean."
"I do. I also think that not wanting to fight this?" she gestures to her dress. "-is a liability. A pretty big one. I'm surprised it's taken this long to find it." His skepticism is obvious, and Natasha walks over to stand about a foot away from him like she'd done earlier. This time, she's emphasizing their lesser height difference in the spiky heels she's wearing, among other things. "Picture this: we reverse what Thanos did. Everyone involved is invited to a celebratory banquet with dignitaries from around the world in attendance. Halfway through, some people who liked things better the way it is now set an attack in motion, and some of the terrorists are dressed up. What are you going to do, Steve? Leave them for the lady fighters to mop up?"
"Of course not," Steve says immediately, but his expression shows how troubled he is.
"Don't feel guilty, Steve, just fix it. Fight me." Natasha leans over to support her weight with a hand as she kicks up with her foot right into his chest, pointing her toes to avoid striking him with the heel. He isn't taken completely off-guard, but he does skid backwards with the force of her hit, more than he probably ever would have, if she were dressed differently. "Come on, Steve. You're better than this."
She wonders what kind of view he had of her bare legs, under the dress.
Steve opens his mouth to object, and she flips back into a standing position, choosing a move that's ostentatious. Natasha feels safe enough that he won't attack while she's moving, yes, but he also needs to understand that the dress isn't going to hamper her much.
"All right. But please, take off the heels? This is… it's a process," he asks, smiling with no small amount of added charm as he crouches. She bows her head to him and takes them off, tossing them to the side without looking to see where they land.
It doesn't take long for Natasha to pin Steve onto his stomach on the floor. She's got one of his arms twisted in her skirt, as she sits on his ass, noticing that he slowly balls that hand into a fist when every place within reach is her bare skin. Because she's making a point as well as a memory, Natasha leans over, all the way over, pressing her breasts against his back and her stomach onto that fist of his, so she can whisper in his ear.
"So, what have we learned?"
"Fabric technology has come a long way since the Forties?" he says, starting to laugh. It shakes his body, which means hers rocks against him. Suddenly, Steve launches up, dislodging her, despite his arm still being cocooned. Both of her legs are essentially bare, the black cloth pulled taut around her ass as it stretches between them. "Would it rip, if I threw you around?" he asks, still uncomfortable.
Natasha can't help but wonder if feeling her pressed up against him was what had really changed his mind about fighting back. "Do you worry about ripping my leather outfit?" she asks, throwing herself back as Steve works to pull the fabric free. He stumbles, then spins, knocking her off balance as well. She rolls, letting it extend further than she needs to, so he has to deal with her weight still bound to his arm.
"No, I don't," he replies, bracing himself on one knee, fighting with her skirt.
"Then why now?"
"Looks expensive."
Natasha laughs, rushes him, pulls a knife free from his belt. "It's not." She cuts the skirt free, the knife blade barely hitting any resistance. The cut is high and ragged, which might be a new level of distraction for Steve, she thinks, tossing the knife safely out of reach. He's still tangled, but Natasha's not giving up her advantage. "Your mind is too full of rules, Rogers. Toss 'em," she says, securing her grip on the cloth before he can tuck it into his arm and forget about it. Steve responds by hauling back with that arm with all his strength, which sends her flying into his chest like a lover. Because he's a gentleman and she's still mostly dressed like a lady, Steve catches her as if she merely tripped, instead of taking advantage of her surprise to physically overpower her. His hands on her waist are warm and large, his chest underneath her hands moving with the breaths he's taking in and out.
"Those rules are a part of me," he says, backing away, his hands up.
"So you stopped… why? Because it's me? Because I'm half naked now? Because I'm wearing a dress? None of those should make you stop, Steve. It's psychological. The leather is actually a hell of a lot more revealing than this, isn't it?" She can still feel the shape of his grip, as if instead of merely touching her, the contact had drawn an outline that will require a thorough scrubbing to make fade.
"I can't touch your skin through the leather, Natasha," he protests in a hushed voice.
Intellectually, she knows this is about respect, about his upbringing, but it feels like he's implying something tawdry, and it makes her lash out. "Don't tempt me, Steve, or I'll make you spar me naked. It's just a dress! You don't seem bothered by my usual outfit, you gotta get over this-"
"I was. At first." The words sound like they're ripped from his throat unwillingly. He's looking at the door as if he wishes it would open to admit someone, anyone, to interrupt them.
"You-"
"Not, not in a prudish way," Steve interrupts, digging the heel of his hand against one eye, then the other. "In a 'don't stare at your teammate's body' kind of way. I wasn't shocked, I was-" he stops, and Natasha has to stop herself from reacting to the way his words are triggering tiny brushfires inside her. He's admitting to finding her attractive, to struggling with that. "I got over it," he says.
It figures, Natasha thinks. At this point, she knows she'll never be able to say she got over it. It's been years. "Do you ever regret your honesty?" she asks, amused but gentle. His head lifts to look at her, surprised at the unexpected statement. "What fixed it? Exposure, right? Welcome to sparring with me in evening gowns for the foreseeable future."
"Nat," he groans, but nods. "You're right, it's a liability. But what if-" he breaks off, shakes his head.
"What?" she asks, reaching up and pulling one of her hair clips out before it falls out on its own.
Steve lifts his chin, squares his shoulders, and twitches his lips to the side as if even physically girding himself for whatever he doesn't want to say isn't enough to make it palatable. Finally, he sighs. "What if it's not dresses themselves, but you in a dress?"
It's been a while since Natasha's had to let a positive comment wash over her without a reaction. She's spent all her energy over the past few weeks doing that for misery, not joy, to the point where she's apparently rusty, because she can feel the corners of her lips lift despite commanding them not to.
She decides the best deflection is to be obtuse.
Natasha says, "I can see if Carol wants to stick around, if it's about being teammates?" Steve chuckles a bit at this, tucking in the end of fabric around the part of her skirt that's still tangled on his arm. "Does it help to know that it's not just you?" she adds, feeling like she wants to give back some of that confidence booster, even if he won't take it the same way she did. "Some women really dig a man in uniform. For me, it's not all uniforms, but yours is… aesthetically pleasing. Without the helmet, of course," Natasha adds, hearing the invitation in her own voice and knowing Steve won't hear much more than amusement.
He actually does look gratified to hear that. "'Aesthetically pleasing?'"
"I got used to it," she shrugs with feigned indifference. Would Steve notice she says 'used to it' instead of 'over it?'
"With repeated exposure," he prompts.
"Of course."
She pours her innate sensuality into the sideways bend of her lips and watches Steve's eyes catch on their redness.
"You'd tell me if this was some kind of… I don't know, social experiment, right? Push Steve Rogers' boundaries till he cracks?"
Natasha can't help it, she takes the bait.
"What a great idea! But, tell me: what counts as 'cracking?'"
He throws both hands up in a clear sign of surrender. "Okay, I yield. I'm not up for this emotional and physical onslaught, today of all days. You win."
(Later, when she's in her own bed and gives herself ten minutes to think about him, Natasha spends nearly all of her time on the next few moments.)
"We all win if you're not stuck in the Forties when it comes to the threats we face," she says, meaning it as a tease, but Natasha sees right away that Steve takes the exact wrong meaning from the words. He walks over, and she doesn't back away, but it's a near thing. There's boneheaded sincerity in Steve Rogers' eyes, and he's not the only one not up for an emotional and physical onslaught.
"You're right that I need to lose the instant 'hands off, that's a lady' reaction that I've got ingrained in me, but respect isn't old fashioned. Yes, I resisted sparring with you when you walked in here, but I feel like you've got some kind of idea in your head that isn't quite right," Steve says, stopping inches away from her and looking down at her with a shy, determined smile. "I turned around and saw my friend. My teammate. Looking gorgeous," he says, dipping his head in a kind of salute that is full of so much of his aforementioned respect that Natasha feels simultaneously unworthy and so worthy it's painful. Steve's good opinion always does that to her. "I didn't want to sully that. So there's two parts of this, and one of them isn't going to go anywhere. You try to train me out of not wanting to think highly of you and you'll find out just what stubborn means."
She feels a sense of responsibility to break the tension she can feel resonating between them. "You saying you'd rather I find a bunch of strange women to dress up so you can fight them? 'Cause that just got about fifty percent harder to do."
"No," Steve says, his voice low and friendly. Natasha will never get over how this man is able to make wholesome sexy as hell to her. It should be an oxymoron, but nope. "Just asking for a little leeway. At least some of my reticence is always going to stem from enjoying the view."
With that, he turns on his heel and walks away from her toward the shelf along the far wall where he'd folded the long-sleeve shirt he'd been wearing. Natasha sends commands to her muscles to move, and they only obey after she pictures the sorts of things Steve might think are running through her mind if he turns around and sees her still frozen there.
She gets to the door, pushes through it, and realizes that the heat of his regard has made her completely forget that she's missing half of her dress. Given that Tony's surveillance probably has captured her in technicolor at this point, Natasha just walks back to her room without hurrying.
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Some of the Avengers start the process of uncoupling from the group, others move on to missions like hers, searching for survivors, searching for the missing, searching for a way to turn the missing into survivors. In the midst of others' leave-taking, Pepper Potts catches her at a weak moment, and Natasha makes a joke about conditioning Captain America into hitting a fancy-dressed girl.
A week later, Pepper and Tony move from their temporary lodgings in the Facility into temporary lodgings in the tower. Their plan is to move somewhere remote, or so Pepper tells her as she hands over at least twenty evening gowns that she claims she's donating toward Natasha's current coping mechanism.
"I can't imagine ever wanting to attend another dinner party in my life," she says, prompting Natasha to hold back the huge unasked question. Pepper's always been quick, though, and she picks up on it. "I know you wouldn't ask, but you're thinking about the wedding, right? After twenty years, what's another six months? I'll be in touch."
Even bent and bowed, they're still a team, still caring, still dedicated, so Steve and Rhodey take over everything for her except for the search for Clint. Steve fills her in on what she's missed during their sparring sessions. It gives him a chance to focus on something other than her appearance, and it gives her something to focus on other than him periodically focusing on her appearance anyway.
Pepper's dresses don't require much alteration to fit her, but Natasha does have to set a few of them aside. They look too much like dresses she'd worn on missions with Clint. Something inside her wants to just fucking live in them, to go grocery shopping wearing them, to accept any and all interview requests, to get footage of Natasha Romanoff wearing clothing that he'll remember onto any and all screens Clint Barton has access to. But that's time consuming and imprecise, and the longer it's been since she's seen her best friend, the more shriveled her sense of hope becomes in comparison with her sense of dread. They've done a radical trade of duties, since Thanos landed in Wakanda.
Natasha spends two months ripping her heart open in multiple ways over two different men before she ends up with a lead. Because she's heartsore and desperate to bring Clint back where she can keep him from self-destructing further, she takes the Quinjet and flies straight to Sokovia.
The so-called 'blip' has stripped the last remaining vestiges of hope from the country, or so it has been reported. Because so much of its infrastructure was already in tatters, particularly the documentation of land registry, the removal of half of the country's remaining population has made it ripe for corruption and outright theft. Sokovia's neighbors had already been sending 'aid' that was more like infiltration, seeking to buy space to ostensibly create safe havens for the people whose properties had been stolen or seized by unscrupulous opportunists. International aid groups have already warned that this behavior pattern is often followed by a short period of actual help for the destitute before the land is repurposed into something else, and the refugees driven away.
But there have been unsubstantiated reports that the well-connected leaders of these false aid organizations are disappearing. What caught Natasha's attention was the most recent incident. The CEO of SokovAid, a company whose origins are deeply entangled with the country's nearest and most hostile neighbor, has been found dead in the heavily fortified building his company has been working out of. His 'suicide note' is full of words and phrases Natasha knows well.
She's sure that Clint is involved.
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Natasha lands quietly in the pre-dawn light, expertly hiding the Quinjet. She is already in stealth mode as soon as she leaves the jet; her landing location is two kilometers from the only major compound not affected by the strange disappearance phenomenon. As she makes her way toward it, Natasha is plagued by an awful certainty: Clint doesn't want her to find him. The two of them together would probably be far more effective at destabilizing these new orgs, and while she hasn't gone on an actual assassination for many years, it's not like she hasn't done it before.
What about her involvement is so detrimental to Clint Barton's current mission that he's willing to go it alone (or, horribly, with a different partner, someone she doesn't know, someone she almost certainly doesn't trust)? She'd hated his time in the Raft. She'd tried to respect his decision to pull back and spend more time with his family, and though he'd known she was unhappy about it, the time she'd spent at the homestead with the five of them had been harmonious. Hell, they'd even talked about what would happen if something big came up, something he'd have wanted to be involved in. Clint had been unequivocal. I'm out. Switch flipped, till I flip it back myself. Trying the 'homebody' thing for a while, we'll see if it sticks.
So, she hadn't called him in.
For the past three weeks, Natasha had gone back through all of their interactions looking for the sign she'd missed, the signal that she was supposed to defy him and call him in anyway. She doesn't remember seeing it, but it was clearly there, because Clint is at his most miserable, and he doesn't want her help.
Natasha's been caught up in her thoughts, her self-flagellation, and the whip strikes are starting to build up, prompting slight increases in speed until she's out of breath and almost running. There's no getting away from these conclusions, the only way out is through.
From a distance, a single siren sounds, and she swears under her breath. It might already be too late. She starts running as if her self doubt will catch up and strangle the life out of her if she slows at all. When the wall outside the compound comes into sight, it's half-crumbled, and she pauses briefly to prepare herself for parkour.
"Don't!"
For a glorious few seconds, Natasha's in zero-G, all burdens lifted at the sight of Clint's familiar silhouette at the top of the wall she had just been contemplating scaling. Then she sees that his arms are shaking, and he's in an unnaturally crouched position. The sun's starting to rise behind her, and she can see that his head is down, teeth clenched from exertion.
Her training kicks in, bringing with it the ability to put her terror and elation on hold. For now.
"How can I help?" she asks, looking around for anything in the forest that she might be able to use to vault up.
"Ehh. There are worse ways to go," Clint grits out. His face is still holding its pained rictus of effort, but that had been a verbal smile, a concession to their connection. It was also every bit as much the goodbye hers had been, all those years ago, in this very same country.
"Status?" she asks, briskly, pushing back the panic.
"Mission complete. Siren means nothing, hacked it days ago, it goes off at regular intervals and they ignore it now. Wall has a booby trap I missed. Trying to pick which is worse, impalement or explosion. You look like shit, should be getting more sleep."
"You're an idiot, trying to do all of this alone," Natasha tells him in kind. She'd ignored a nearby log as too heavy to be of any use, but if the options are that dire, she'll give it a shot. Clint's arms are shaking more now, and they're still steadily moving closer. Pretty soon whatever he's trying to hold back is going to have nowhere to go but in.
Pulling on her gloves, Natasha hauls the log over by dragging one end, using a trick Clint taught her to lever it up with a rope and a nearby tree. She doesn't let herself look at Clint until she's ready to cut the rope to release the log, where if all goes well, it'll end up angled up against the wall beneath him. He nods, she cuts, and the sound of the log striking echoes through the forest.
Inside the compound, the siren sounds again.
"Okay, that one is too early."
"Clint, I swear to God, if you'd have gotten my help from the beginning-"
He lets out a hiss of pain, and now that the sun's just a bit higher in the sky, she can see that his hands are bleeding. Natasha launches herself up the log and throws a net of EMP grenades at the black metal she can see him grasping. It has a delay of three seconds, just long enough for her to use her body weight to throw him from the ten foot wall. Because he's Clint, he's ready for this, even though she hadn't known she would do it more than two seconds before she was already moving.
As soon as she plants her feet to use them for leverage, Clint plants his own, pushing off and slamming one hand on his chest. A shield similar to Tony's starts forming, nanoparticles with force fields in between. As Clint sails past her, he reaches out and grabs her with his other hand, right as what feels like an explosive blast fires nearby.
They land and slide, and Natasha can tell that her shoulder is dislocated. She looks back to see what they'd miraculously avoided, and is surprised to see that there isn't any sign of explosion.
Clint groans. "Thanks, Tony," he says. Then she sees what she'd missed: Clint's wearing the ARC reactor nanotech that Stark made for him. The 'explosion' had been a repulsor, thrusting them away.
"You had that the whole time?"
"You're welcome," Clint laughs. They get up, and he nods at her shoulder. "May I?"
"Since when do you ask?" He doesn't answer, but his actions to help her shoulder relocate are as gentle as ever. Natasha is confused; the terror and elation are returning, but one feels more appropriate than the other, and it's not the good one. "You're not coming back with me, are you?"
"Where's 'back?' There's no back, Natasha. There's nothing." He doesn't even sound angry or sad. He sounds emotionless. It's horrifying.
"I'm gonna try not to take that personally," she says. It's only because of years of training that it comes out as smoothly as if they were teasing each other in the common room of Avengers Tower.
It has the desired effect, because Clint smiles. "I missed you." Then the smile fades. "I'll miss you again. Take this back to Stark, will you? Too much responsibility."
"Too much like a partner, you mean," she whispers, taking the ARC reactor from him, too numb to even look at it. "How long?"
Clint sighs. "Six months?"
"Clint." Their years of association colors the doubt in her tone.
He stomps up to her, face inches from hers, suddenly furious, fanatical, feverish. "What do you want me to say? I've lost almost everything. I can't afford to lose you too. Just-" all animation leaves him, and Clint lets out a breath, his shoulders slumping, arms falling to his sides. "Give me this. Come find me in six months. Maybe I'll be ready for you to scrape me up and put me back together, maybe not."
"You expect me to walk away from you right now?" Natasha asks in a voice so small it might as well belong to the child she used to be in the Red Room.
"If you love me, Nat, walk away. Find me again, okay? It's a concession to our friendship that I'm even saying that." Clint walks over, puts his hands on her upper arms, and tips his forehead against hers.
"If I do this, you have to promise that you'll come back at some point, okay? Even if I find you and you give me another six months," she says, letting him hear the way her throat is closing up with emotion, how it's fucking with her vocal cords.
"I can't," he says. Clint kisses her forehead and walks off. Natasha has to use all of her self-control to simply stand there and watch.