Clint I: Four to Six

Clint loosed an arrow at one of the three targets strung up around the yard, tucked and rolled, then sprang to his feet and launched another at a different target. Both bullseyes. At every opportunity since he learned, he'd been practicing, even working on action shots like this when he had the energy. He would spend hours at a time in the backyard, working until his fingers bled from the bowstring and his muscles ached from the strain. That experience, that feeling of alive thrumming through his veins, made him hate cancer all the more. Because cancer took that away from him. It was only a matter of time before he started treatment again and cancer took this away, but for now he tried to simply enjoy the experience. And the company.

"Not bad," Kate remarked coolly. Clint lowered his bow, panting. Today was a good day; it had been weeks since his last chemo and he had as much energy as he ever remembered having, so he and his parents decided to have the Bishops over.

"Think you can do better?" he asked. Just as she said she would, Kate had taken up archery after finishing cancer treatment. Now, years later, she remained in remission and had grown quite adept at the sport. Clint glanced over at his dad, currently deep in conversation with Kate's mom. He would make a good judge, but Clint decided not to bother him.

Kate took up her position as Clint moved out of the way. She shot once, pivoted a step further away from the target, and shot again with the opposite hand. The arrows landed so close together they were practically indistinguishable from one another.

Clint whistled. "Impressive."

Kate flipped her hair back over her shoulder and said, "Thank you."

He rolled his eyes. To this day, the primary element of their friendship remained competition. Every time their families got together, they found some way to challenge each other, usually involving throwing or otherwise launching objects at other objects. Still, they were yet to declare a superior in any event. It seemed they were destined to be evenly matched in everything except the ability to get rid of cancer cells.

At this point, Clint didn't think there was a single part of his body that hadn't had a tumor at some point or another in the last six years. Every time treatment eliminated one, at least one more popped up somewhere new. Despite this, he was well past being consumed by jealousy for people like Kate who'd beaten it and moved on. Now, those feelings were mostly replaced by just being happy for her, although they did pop up to embitter him occasionally.

Kate tapped him on the shoulder and reminded him it was now his turn. He stood facing one target and nailed a bullseye and then, without even looking, fired another at a different target. "How'd I do?" he asked, not daring to glance.

"Cool in theory, but your execution was…less than perfection."

He'd buried the arrow in the bark of the tree just above the target. Shit. "Just thought I'd give it a go." Clint doubted he'd hit the center when he tried, but he'd been hoping to at least land on the target. Oh well. Then Kate tried the exact same stunt and landed in the third ring out from the center. She didn't gloat, but Clint could see how pleased she was with herself. He stuck his tongue out at her, and she retorted with the same gesture.

They took a few more turns, each attempting to outdo the other, until Kate's parents announced it was time for her to go home. "Good luck with your scans tomorrow." Kate offered him a hug goodbye, which he accepted. Clint had been trying to forget about said scans, since they would dictate his next course of treatment, but he was happy to hear Kate was thinking about him. She understood as well as anybody what they meant.

"See you later. And I will win next time."

"Sure you will."

~0~

CT contrast never tasted any better than the first time. He'd hoped his taste buds would deaden to it over time, but no. Clint suffered through all three cups and the battery of scans that followed. When he was little, the machines terrified him and he couldn't stay still nearly as long as they needed him to, but nowadays he was relaxed enough to spend them dozing. He pushed all thoughts of the results from his mind and let it drift to more pleasant topics, like archery or Natasha.

After waiting for scans to finish, they got to wait for Dr. Potts to call them back to discuss the results. That was the most annoying and nerve-wracking part because Clint could no longer stop the thoughts of results from leeching into his brain. What if they made him do another stem cell rescue? Or more radiation? He didn't think he could survive another round of either of those treatments, mentally. Frankly, he didn't think he could survive any treatment. Seven years was too long for any body to fight cancer, especially such a young one.

When the wait grew too boring to bear, he got Mom's permission to wander over to the pediatric residential ward to check out the gauntlet. Man, it had so many names on it despite being merely a year and a half old. That was a lot of sick kids, but on the bright side many of them had taken most, if not all, of their Xs back. However, Clint did have one grievance with the gauntlet, one he'd kept secret from the moment he laid eyes on it. Scott wasn't there. He lived and died long before Carol came along to create this. And Kate wasn't on it either. Though it would mess with the chronology of patients, Clint decided to add them. It made him happy to see them recognized for their fights valiantly fought.

He made it back to his Mom just in time for them to get called back to Dr. Potts' office. The instant he walked into the room he knew what was about to happen. There was a tangible energy surrounding Dr. Potts and filling the space from wall to wall. He could tell Mom sensed it too, and she silently took his hand to brace for this news.

Ever since he entered his fourth year of treatment with no sign of remission, Clint had a sneaking suspicion it would end this way. Over the last several months he'd only grown more confident in that conclusion, because he spent it doing clinical trials and receiving obscure drugs he'd never even heard of. He never mentioned it to anybody, not his parents, not his doctors, and certainly not his friends, because he knew it would upset them to hear, but he knew. It was bound to happen at some point. His cancer hadn't responded at all to the last phase of treatment and was only growing steadily. Dr. Potts was out of options. The neuroblastoma experts she consulted for his case were out of options. Clint had reached the lifetime maximum dosage of so many medications and treatments that there was nothing left to do. Any further efforts to treat his cancer would only destroy the healthy tissue left in his body and possibly kill him before the cancer even could. Clint knew it was coming, but that didn't make it any easier to hear.

"How long?" Mom asked, voice surprisingly steady given the devastating news she'd just received.

"My best guess would be four to six months," Dr. Potts said calmly.

Clint asked the most pressing and frankly only question on his mind at the moment: "Is it gonna hurt?"

Dr. Potts shook her head. "We will give you medicine to keep your pain under control."

"Oh good." The idea of feeling the cancer eat him up from the inside was more frightening to him than the notion of dying. Clint rather thought he'd endured enough pain for one lifetime, especially a lifetime that he now knew would last only eleven years.

There were logistics to go over, medications to prescribe, but Clint could tell his Mom was barely paying attention. She probably had the same phrase stuck on repeat in her head as Clint: four to six months. For how many of those months would he feel good? Or at least passable? How many of them would be spent nearly bedridden in a haze of painkillers? Dr. Potts only had vague answers to those questions. The gist Clint understood was that the first few weeks would be okay, maybe actually some of his best because of the lack of toxic treatments, but things would get progressively worse.

"Can you tell Dad?" Clint asked on their way home. The ride passed in near silence, both mother and son too lost in their own thoughts and fears to speak.

"Yes, I will tell Dad. And any of your friends that you want to know, I'll talk to their parents."

"Okay." Clint was glad Mom wasn't delegating the responsibility to him. He didn't want to have to repeat the news to that many people, but he also didn't want to just dump it in the group chat like Carol had. Clint thought his friends deserved to hear that news from a real person and not just read it on their phones. He trusted his Mom to relay it to everyone except one person. "But Nat needs to hear it from me."

"If that's what you want."

It wasn't. Clint didn't want to tell her. He didn't want to see Nat's face when he told her this awful news, but he had to tell her. If he let someone else do it, he put her in the awkward position of deciding when and how to reach out to him. And that was about the worst thing he could do as a friend. But that didn't make it any easier to pick up the phone and call her. When he got back home, Clint went right to his room to get this over with. It was a bit late to be calling Nat, but he hoped she'd still be awake. Bedtimes didn't really exist in Russia, he'd learned.

"Hi Clint," she greeted with an innocent smile. Clint was about to rip that expression right off her face, and he hated that he had to. What if he just didn't tell her? Then she wouldn't know until it was over, and once again that was a dick move. He needed to say it, and he needed to say it now before he chickened out.

"Hey Nat," he sighed.

She frowned. "What's wrong?"

Of course she was observant enough to know something was on his mind just by looking. "I had an appointment with Dr. Potts today."

"What did she say? What treatment do you have to do next?"

"None," Clint squeaked.

"None?" It took a few moments, but when that news sank in it was unmistakable. Natasha never cried, and she didn't now, but it was as close as Clint had ever seen.

"Yeah. There's…nothing more they can do without killing me faster."

"Are you sure? Maybe they will find something new soon." She clearly didn't believe what she was saying, floundering for any possibility that their friendship wouldn't end like this.

"Don't," Clint said with a shake of his head.

"Don't what?"

"Don't give me hope."

She looked like she was about to throw up—a look Clint knew all too well from months of side-by-side chemo treatments. Nearly choking on the words, she said, "Oh Clint, I'm so sorry."

"It's okay." Clint would rather know ahead of time than have his life suddenly ripped away, like Pietra's. This way, his friends and family had time to come to terms with it instead of having the rug viciously ripped from under their feet. He knew the fear would come later, as these four to six months wound down to their conclusion, but for the moment Clint wasn't scared to die. Seven years of fighting cancer had drained him, and he was ready to see Scott and Carol again.

"How long?"

"Four to six months."

Natasha bit her lip. Clint had had a few days to let that number simmer, but hearing it for the first time was like having a bowstring snap and hit you in the face. He wished he could give her a hug, but an entire ocean separated them. When that longing set in, he realized he didn't want to die without hugging his best friend one more time. Clint wanted to make that happen more than he'd ever wanted anything in his life.

"I know it's not long," Clint said slowly. "But it's enough."

"It is?"

"It has to be. So it will be."

For those of you who've been eagerly awaiting a Clint chapter...I'm sorry the first one of his had to break this news. However, I have something very exciting to report: this chapter officially brings me to ONE MILLION WORDS of fanfiction published. I never imagined I'd reach that milestone. It's insane to think I've actually written that much, and I have no intention of stopping anytime soon.