[A/N] Long time no see, lovelies! I'm sorry for the absence-things have been quite busy in life.
This one was another prompt request from a wonderful Tumblr follower. Usually, I don't like AUs and I'm incredibly picky about writing them, but I absolutely fell in love with this prompt. I'd love to eventually reveal more of it, but only if people are interested. :)
For clarity, Natasha and Clint are third grade teachers (Laura is the principal). Bruce dropped out of graduate school after his wife (Betty) died. He's been supporting Amira (their daughter) ever since.
The chaperone gig was more intense than he remembered. Then again, it had a trend of sneaking up on him. In recollection, it was so pleasant—rosy even. He was reluctant to identify the commonality that threaded through his memories. As if staring at that weaving string—the recurring person—was any better, but that's what he did. Stress festered and built as kids played, squealed, and screamed. Whenever he approached a snapping point, he looked to Natasha. Despite his reluctance to bother her, she possessed some sort of teacher sixth sense, and it seemed to alert her when the supervisional duties flooded over his head.
Over the course of Field Day's first hour, she'd been over to chat—to check on him—twice. That was two hours ago now, a few visits past and, somehow, these kids had energy to spare and so did many of the teachers. All of the teachers, actually. And the other chaperones. He was the odd one out here, floating around a grass field full of adults and elementary schoolers. Great.
At least he had a place in his daughter's eyes. After every game, during every break, Amira would rush over to rehash her triumphs, to verify what he had seen and fill in any gaps. She was euphoria incarnate, as vivid as each petal on a sunflower reaching for the sky. Until she wasn't.
Everything came crashing down during the bear race.
During the gauntlet of races between various grades and classes, his daughter fell victim to the tormenting of nine-year-old boys and the cruelty of uneven ground. Worse, he wasn't aware until it was too late, until her cries pierced the sky and grass stained her copper cheeks. It wasn't until Mr. Barton—another third grade teacher—ran over to Bruce's daughter that he registered the incident. For the first time since Amira was a toddler, a parental fear manifested—the wailing was from his own flesh and blood. When that clicked, he took off running.
Mr. Barton had already helped Amira to her feet. Cheeks sodden, feet shuffling through the grass, Bruce's little girl met him halfway.
Clods of grass and dirt crumbled off her reddened knees as she plodded up to him. In their wake, dark, earthly streaks mingled with flushed skin. It was hard to fixate anywhere else at first. Then his daughter beckoned him, quiet yet piercing to his flesh and bone, "Daddy…"
"Hey sweetheart. What happened?" Out of reach for a hug but close enough for him to reach, she stopped, chin jutted and bottom lip stuck out toward the treacherous ground. Up toward Clint Barton, he asked, "What happened?"
He supplied a succinct version, "She tripped during the race."
"I was running like a bear," she amended.
"Thank you." They exchanged grateful nods before Clint left him to it. Bruce settled onto his knees and placed both hands on Amira's shoulders. As he plucked a few stray green blades off her, he asked her, "You were running like a bear?"
"Everyone was doing it wrong," she complained. "I told them they were doing it wrong and they wouldn't listen to me."
In his opinion, seldom were there downsides to having a bright child hungry for the world's bottomless wealth of information. As far as he was concerned, digesting information from documentaries, research papers, and scientific articles and regurgitating them in simpler, bite-sized chunks helped him learn and retain as much as it taught her. Unfortunately, this resulted in the curbing of Amira's suspended disbelief in certain situations, such as a jocund bear race among nine and ten year olds.
Gentle with her bruised body and ego, he reminded her, "Not everyone knows as much as you." Other parents might've angered if they overheard them, but it wouldn't change what he said. It was a blatant truth, and his daughter needed to hear it. He continued, "You know how bears run. That's what counts."
"But they were doing it wrong," she fussed. "I was telling them and they wouldn't listen."
Rehashing the incident worked her up again, which was concerning, certainly, but not as much as the state of her head. He turned from words of comfort to brushing dirt crumbs and sweaty curls away from her face, scouring as though sight alone could reveal a concussion, a contusion, or—god forbid—an aneurysm. Futile as it was, he tried. His residual resolve after Betty died was all invested in their daughter. If he lost Amira—
"Daddy no," his daughter whined, shaking her head, pushing away his cautious hands. "Tell them how bears run."
How vastly misaligned their priorities were.
He reached for her again."I need to check you first."
She moaned her protest, swaying away from his grip. She grabbed the hem of her oversized pine green shirt and marched in place instead of attending to the mixture of mucus and tears leaking from her nose.
"Yes, Amira. We need to see if you need a doctor—"
"You're my doctor," she insisted, teetering on the cusp of a tantrum.
He hid the additional sting that comment caused him. There was no way she could've known that was a tender button to push. He swallowed his guilt and dregs of his pride to tell her, "No—you might need a real doctor."
"No!" A pout sprouted, which she veiled by yanking the collar of her shirt over her face. Only her mussed afro remained out in the light.
Quite honestly, he was ready to tug her into his arms and stalk off the field. He was seriously considering it when Natasha swooped in.
"I don't think bears hide their heads like that, Amira."
For a contemplative moment, his daughter pressed the fabric to her cheeks, dampened it with her salt and snot. When she reached her conclusion, she popped back out into the world, probing him with curious eyes. "Do they, Daddy?"
"Um…" He wrung his hands, wrung out the impulse to scrutinize every scrape and potential bruise. "No. They don't."
Satisfied with that, Amira turned to her teacher. "Do you know about bears, Miss Romanoff?"
She admitted, "Enough to know how they run."
Those words were magic. "I know how bears run too!" Amira exclaimed. Her eyes quickly dried but remained nonetheless glittering and bright.
"I saw. You had a great bear run."
He let her do what he could not. In the meantime, he scanned his child's form with a hard gaze, wishing he had X-ray vision or a built-in MRI.
That time, when Amira pouted, it was reduced to a sour tint on her face, "Why didn't I win then?"
"Who said you didn't win?"
"Nobody said I came in first."
"Does that mean you didn't win?"
Amira tilted her head, processing this conundrum. Bruce resisted the urge to pull his daughter into his chest.
"Just because no one gave you a medal doesn't mean you didn't win," Natasha said. "There are many different ways to win something."
"So…" Amira mused, working through the mental math, "I did win?"
Like a modern Socrates, Natasha turned the inquiry back to her, "Do you think so?"
Independent as she was for her age, Amira was still a kid with an occasional need for the validation of her father. She looked to him for counsel, and he mustered a nod along with half a smile. He could do that much at least.
That affirmation led to revelation. She practically burst out of her skin and sorrow shell and exclaimed, "Yes! I won!" She pumped both fists, then inquired to her teacher, "Do I get an award?"
Once again, Natasha interrogated the logic with a care signature to her. "If you know you won, why do you need an award?"
This stumped Amira for a moment. "So other people know I won."
"Why does that matter?" Natasha glanced at him, flicking over a grin with the look. "Your dad knows you won."
The semi-smile on his lips softened into something smaller and authentic. In her excitement, Amira missed the subtle event; she was fixated on her teacher, on winning this bear race, and the point Natasha was trying to make.
His daughter insisted with glee instead of distress, "And you know!"
Natasha confirmed, "And I know."
The remedy took full effect. Amira jumped in celebration of her glory, proclaiming, "I won!" She planted her feet, stood up tall, and surveyed the bustling field behind her. When she found what she was looking for, she ran after it, away from Bruce and Natasha, yelling, "Dumb boys!"
He managed to chuckle at that. He directed the laugh to his knees instead of Natasha, giving her the opportunity to go off to something more worth her time.
She remained, squatting beside him.
As bathetic and insufficient as it felt, all he could think to offer her was his gratitude, "Thank you."
She stood and still didn't leave his side. Quite the opposite, as she extended a hand to help him up. Trying to conceal his hesitation to touch her, he pushed himself to latch on as quickly as possible. When he came up less inches from her face, he realized the haste might be interpreted as overzealous.
Tentative as he was to take her hand, he was even more apprehensive about removing his eyes from hers. That, however, he forced himself to do as well, using his daughter as an excuse to look away. With his gaze chasing after Amira's bouncing coils, he endeavored to joke, "You know she's gonna go tell the boys that."
"I'd bet on it."
Apparently they'd both turned to look at his daughter, which became evident when they turned back toward each other in accidental tandem. In a second act of spontaneous unison, their gazes diverted as quickly as they'd come together, like atoms colliding in a liminal space. She didn't move from him, and he didn't know where to go from her.
The quiet between them was transient. Through a simple question, she gave him reason to stay, "How are you doing?"
And, yet, how utterly unprepared he was with his response, "I'm, uh," a mess, a bag full of cats, a colossal wreck and you deserve better. He forewent what was running through his head in favor of a softer truth, "glad she's okay."
She agreed, "She's hardy."
He hitched on the silence, waiting for her to fill it. There was something, he thought, or perhaps imagined. Back in September, he would've been certain the inkling was the sole product of his overactive mind but, after all these months, he wasn't so sure anymore.
When nothing else came, he added on a lame, "Yeah." It took all of two seconds more of silence to compel him to tack on an unplanned apology, "I'm sorry for being a walking disaster."
Something frivolous and equivocal flashed across her expression. "Did you sabotage the bear race?"
On impulse, he suppressed a laugh. "What? No."
"You're doing fine. You're calm," only within himself, he responded, I don't know about that. Unaware of this—or perhaps perfectly aware—she continued, "you're attentive, you're sober—"
"Sober?" This time, he did laugh.
"You'd be surprised at what I've seen from some parents." She joined him with a softly spread smile. "You've been great."
Always unable to let himself off the hook, no matter the situation, he tentatively countered, "I feel like that's...stretching it."
Her eyes didn't harden then; it was though a shell came over with a polish that was, admittedly, alluring but made her unreadable. Her tone shifted to match the gentle enigma of her gaze, "I think Amira would disagree."
What could he say to that except nothing?
Maybe she knew this too—maybe he was and had been completely transparent to her all along. Were that the case, he'd be caught in an assured maelstrom of embarrassed perplexity, fending off the feelings he didn't mean to feel and what he couldn't help but feel. Were that the reality, then at least Amira only had three more months of third grade, three more months in Natasha Romanoff's classroom before their standard parent/teacher arrangement came to its natural close—a fact that provided exactly zero reprieve to the constant knot in his stomach.
He wasn't aware of the tension built up in his jaw until Natasha reiterated, "She's okay."
It took him a second to realize she meant Amira. His daughter, who had just taken a fall, could—probably didn't—have brain damage, who had been crying in front of him until her teacher showed up. What kind of father did that make him?
Reluctant to drag Natasha into the fray with his inner demons, he responded, "Yeah."
As though asking to be let in, she prompted him, "Are you?"
Yet again, he fumbled. "Uh—yeah. I'm fine." The uncertainty of it was glaring even to him, and her persistent gaze on him highlighted it. Her eyes kept asking so, with a little pause at the start, he added, "I didn't mean to worry you."
"It's nothing I can't handle."
"I appreciate that. It's…" he sighed, "you shouldn't have to."
"I don't mind."
The feeling that settled over them was one neither wanted to formally acknowledge nor retreat from, so they resorted to a stiff silence. It'd been quite some time since he experienced a sensation like it—encapsulation in a sphere of isolation while the world carried on outside. Parents milled about, children chased rubber balls and each other, yelling and squealing all the while. Grass rustled underfoot, battered down by legions of excited feet. It all carried on while he avoided eye contact with his daughter's teacher and the unnamed thing between them.
What impeded was Don Odinson, the man slated as Amira's first choice for a fourth grade teacher. He came up, waving an apologetic hand, saying, "Hey—sorry. Natasha, we're going to start the next event."
She nodded and told him, "I'll meet you over there."
Mr. Odinson offered a courteous, eye-crinkled grin and took his leave.
She didn't his permission, but out of courtesy Bruce said, "I'll let you go."
Something flickered behind the uplift of her lips, there and gone too fast for him to analyze. Besides, to confuse him further, she left him with an unanticipated sentiment, "If you'd ever like someone to talk to," her slight pause embedded additional weight to the words he didn't know what to do with, "I'm here to listen. If you'd like." With that, she departed from their strange, solitary isle, embarking back into the scene where children ran, adults watched, and his daughter played. Amira was okay and, somehow, so was he.