Chapter X:
Once again her day started like every other one had, yet despite still living through the same Vormir nightmare Natasha awoke feeling relatively well-rested, for the first time in what seemed like forever. However, her awakening very quickly turned rude, when she realized that Banner was gone from the room.
At first she was beyond livid, as she needed the burly scientist in order to leave the hospital in a legal manner. Without him, she would have to sneak out through the hallways or the adjacent window, as there was zero chance she was staying here any longer.
The wounds on her forearms were barely noticeable, if even, when looking at them from any angle up close and afar.
Banner's untimely absence was soon explained when Jennie entered the room, who promptly told Natasha that Banner would only be gone for about an hour, as he had "things to do."
"Nice one, Bruce." Natasha wished she could say to him as she sat bored on one side of her bed, swinging her legs back and forth restlessly while scrolling mindlessly through her phone. "I got things to do as well."
The nerve of that man seriously made her wonder how she had managed to put up with him for all these years. Granted, she guessed that she had not been the easiest person to work with either, but still, she felt like the majority of her actions had been more than justified.
There was nothing of interest playing on the TV, just more coverage about the volcanic explosion in Japan, so she shut it off, and thereon started to pace restlessly around the room, making bent and oblong circles around the bed frame.
Off topic, she hated perfect circles; it was their degree of perfection that she had come to detest, for no particular reason other than their mere existence.
Knock. Knock.
"Come in." Natasha answered, turning around and expecting to see the nurse's head poke through the door, and hopefully Banner right behind her. "Please tell me he's back."
Jennie, who did in fact appear, had a mixed look on her kindly face.
"Ms. Romanoff?" She greeted with noticeable hesitation.
"Yes?" Natasha responded, mirroring the nurse's hesitation with some of her own. "Is everything alright?"
"You have some more visitors here to see you." Jennie answered, still not revealing anything below her neck area. "May they come in?"
Natasha pursed her lips together and nodded her head.
It was probably just some more kids staying in the hospital that wanted to say hello. She may have quit being an Avenger, but it seemed as if the moniker, and the notoriety that came with it, would never leave her, until death do them part.
"Okay, I'll be right back." Hurriedly said the nurse, as she disappeared back down the hall.
Wanting to at least look somewhat presentable, Natasha quickly straightened her hair and made sure her clothes were not sagging, but avoided the mirror and the reflection it would show as she did so. She probably didn't look great, but when did she ever these days?
Knock. Knock.
"Come in." Natasha repeated, casually positioning herself standing behind the bed as the door cracked back open.
Instead of Jennie entering however, the brunette locks of another familiar woman appeared, causing Natasha's heart to jump, seize, and stop in place.
"Natasha, hi." Laura Barton spoke first in her soft contralto.
A somber smile crossed the mother's face as she unexpectedly appeared in full through the doorway, her arms wrapped around the growing shoulders of her three children; Cooper, Lila, and baby Nathaniel, the baby that her and Clint had chosen to be named after Natasha, who was not so much a baby anymore, walking comfortably under his own small feet.
Natasha could not believe it.
"Laura..." Was all she could muster at first.
When she saw them after Clint's death, she could barely look them in the face, and now, as she gazed upon their forlorn faces once again, she was left feeling more of the same.
"How did—How did you know I was here?" She finished.
Laura directed Natasha's gaze by looking behind from where she was standing, and there in the hallway stood yet another person Natasha had not seen in a long time. Nick Fury, black trench coat, eyepatch and all, the look on his weathered face telling her that they would share a conversation of their own, after this was over.
She watched in more shocked silence, not knowing what else to feel besides sorrow and guilt, as Laura ushered her family into the room and out of the congested hospital hallway, closing the door behind them, leaving the S.H.I.E.L.D. director outside to wait with the nurse.
Clint had kept his family from Natasha for years, which was fair, considering he had kept them away from everyone besides Fury. Nobody else had any idea that his weekends in the woods were really trips back home to be with his family.
Plus, Natasha was still an assassin. A trained spy. A girl with questionable ethics. It was one thing to trust that she had the capability of making the right choice, another to trust that she had his back in the field and would not betray him, but it was an entirely different thing altogether to trust her with his family. Yet Clint had trusted her, of the unspoken words that had passed between them at the very end, as he hung from her hand over the bottomless pit, was a promise that she would look after his family.
And what had she done to honor the promise during this time of change and upset?
She had forgotten to visit them.
Maybe forgotten was not the right term, avoidance a more worthy label to describe her disgraceful motivation. More than anything, Natasha desperately wanted, but was not sure how to acknowledge the awkwardness in the situation. But before she could so much as take a step forward, or try to mutter another feeble lexeme, Laura had her wrapped tightly in between her strong farmer's arms, squeezing whatever little breath was left inside of her lungs out, as Natasha then buried her quickly watering eyes into the latter's shoulders.
"I'm sorry." They both said in unison to each other, their reasoning coming from entirely different paths, but crossing together right here, in this small, random hospital room off all places.
When finally peeling her reddening eyes off Laura's now soaked linen shirt, Natasha saw the three kids still standing awkwardly near the door, unsure of what they were doing.
"Come here, guys." She shakingly cooed as she opened her arms, begging for forgiveness, and allowed the little Bartons to fall inside her grasp.
The older boy, Cooper, now a teen, looked laughably uncomfortable with the sentiment, whilst his younger siblings hugged Natasha back without any further hesitation, making her struggle to breathe once again.
"I'm sorry I didn't visit you guys sooner." She apologized, knowing that nothing she said or did now, could make up for all the time that had been lost.
She then admittingly professed, unsure on how else to explain herself, "I've been… I had some things wrong with me."
Sure, she could have tried to spew out the grim empathy she had manifested, but that would not have done anything except sully the mood.
Little Nathaniel slowly looked up at Natasha oddly, eyes so much like his father's, which elicited a heartwarming chuckle out of his mother.
"Nathaniel, don't you have something to give Auntie Nat?" Laura asked her youngest, motioning to the backpack that Natasha had not noticed his older brother was wearing.
While the two boys were busy tangling with the zipper, Natasha turned her eyes back towards Laura, questioning the usage of the 'Auntie Nat' nickname.
After all this time spent apart and blaming herself for their father's death, she believed she no longer deserved to be called that, and a silent argument broke out between the two women using only their eyes, where Laura speedily emerged as the victor.
"Here you go." Nathaniel muttered as he extended a white envelope up towards Natasha, reeling her attention back to him.
Instead of taking the envelope, Natasha picked the toddler up by his waist, sitting them both down on top of the hospital bed, while at the same time inviting the rest of them to join her.
"You guys didn't have to do this for me." She said embarrassingly, as she carefully tore open the paper to reveal a get-well-soon card, complete with neat cursive handwriting that could have only belonged to Lila, and a piece of candy taped inside.
"Don't say that, Natasha." Corrected Laura. "This was the least we could do."
"Dark chocolate, my favorite." Natasha approved as she embraced them all in a hug again. "Thank you."
Sitting here, right now all together, Natasha could not help but chastise herself over why she had been avoiding them, scared to even think about them.
How stupid of her, was it to assume to that they would not want to see her, when all this time they had just been one simple phone call away.
"Why are you guys here?" She found herself asking for the sake of asking.
"All I needed to hear from Fury was that you were in the hospital." Laura explained heartfully. "Got ready to leave as fast as we could."
Natasha shook her head in disbelief over how so much fuss had arisen from just a couple cuts to her arms.
"You're not missing school for this, are you?" She asked the kids, to which Cooper nonchalantly responded with,
"No, we're still on summer break."
"Mama," Nathaniel then asked, reaching over to tug on his mother's sleeve from across Natasha's lap. "I need to use the potty."
Laura looked at her eldest expectedly.
"Cooper, you're old enough, go help your brother."
Cooper sighed as got up, yet amusingly looked relieved to have been given an excuse to leave.
"Come on Nate." He muttered.
The two boys, who were truly miniature versions of their dad in terms of physical appearance, made their way towards the door side by side, making Natasha smile wistfully as she heard Cooper ask Nathaniel,
"Is it number one, or two?"
"Two!" Nathaniel responded with urgency, evoking a massive teenage groan from his older brother, and laughs from everyone else in the room.
The door closed with a soft click after the boys, leaving the remaining three of them in a relatively peaceful silence.
"Mom?" Lila spoke with palpable jitters in her tone, once her brothers had disappeared down the hall, making Natasha realize that the girl had remained dead silent up until now. "Is it okay if I talk to Auntie Nat?"
"Yeah of course," Laura approved with avid confusion, "she's right here."
"Can I talk to her alone?" Lila seemed to have forgotten to add, as she nervously began picking at her fingernails, spurring up a level of concern in both her mother and Natasha. "Please?"
Natasha and Laura exchanged looks from across the bed, with Laura seemingly hesitant at first, but she gave the protective mother an encouraging smile.
"It'll only be a minute, right Lila?" Natasha assured, playing along with the girl's proposal out of her own growing curiosity.
Lila nodded her head and stared pleadingly at her mother, who still looked very much uncomfortable at the unusual tone of her daughter's voice, but eventually caved in.
"I'll be out in the hall if you need me." Said Laura pensively, more worried than confused at this point as she stood up to leave.
The door swung open again and closed with another click.
Natasha turned her body to face Lila, who was seated at the opposite end of the bed.
Focusing on her solely, she could see that the girl was on the precipice of no longer being a girl. Already, Lila was beginning to mature, coming into her own in strikingly beautiful fashion, evidently having acquired only the best traits from her parents.
"Is everything alright?" Natasha asked, scooting over to close the distance between them.
"I don't blame you for what happened to Dad," Lila let slip.
Every living cell in Natasha ceased to exist at the moment, as the magnitude of her failures came to a head.
In consequence the beat of her heart slowed to a dull, painful ache, as Lila then leaned her head against her shoulder, holding their arms together tightly.
"Wha—?" She tried to say, but stopped, deciding to let Lila do the talking as she did not trust herself to speak.
She was unsure if her heart could take it if she tried.
"He always talked about you, did you know that?" Lila murmured faintly. "We all thought it was funny, because it made Mom a little jealous. For my bedtime stories, he told me about the crazy things you did, like how you jumped off that skyscraper without a parachute in Gibraltar, or how you were able to escape from that German prison without any help."
The fact that Natasha could clearly picture Clint doing just that fractured whatever little resolve that she had left.
"It should have been me, not him." She broke, as a stream of tears made themselves known across her cheeks, and Lila tightened her hold.
There was a gripping silence after she finished speaking, in which the only sounds that could be heard were from her, as she desperately tried to stem the tears that were still coming down in droves.
"Did he talk about us before he died?"
Lila's words were gentle, but her face betrayed her, the pain and longing that she felt visible just behind her perceptive blue and grey eyes.
Images from Clint's last moments flashed across Natasha's mind, resurrecting even more pain that she shoved to the side, knowing that Lila deserved to know.
Throughout it all, she had never considered what the surviving Bartons were going through; undoubtedly pain that made her nightmares look insignificant in comparison, and the startling realization filled her cognizance with utter shame.
"He made me promise to take care of you guys." Natasha managed to piece together in one sentence.
She had no idea how she was still managing to sit up straight. It was hard to discern who was supporting who, as both of them were still interlocked in their hard embrace.
A cold shiver rattled down her spine, as she felt Lila's hand grace gently across her bare forearms, tracing around the area where she had been spliced by the glass.
"We don't blame you, Auntie Nat." The younger girl declared with conviction.
Stiffly turning to look to her immediate right, Natasha saw the countenance of peace that had come across Lila's face, not to be deterred by her tears that were sparkling in the sunlight that streamed through the partially open window blinds.
"You're so strong, you know that Lila?" Natasha affirmed as she wrapped her arms around the younger one again, caressing Lila's lengthy hair as softly as her shaking hands could manage. "Stronger than me, just like your dad."
No, she was not talking about physical characteristics. The boys, her siblings, may look and walk like their father had, but it was clear as day to Natasha that Lila had inherited Clint's virtuous temperament and mind.
"I want to be like you one day." Declared Lila, nestling comfortably inside the crook of Natasha's arm.
"You're so cool and… badass." Lila said the last word as if she was scared that her mother was still in the room.
Natasha broke their cuddle briefly to poke the girl in the ribs, giving them a much needed excuse to laugh.
"I knew there was a reason why you were my favorite."
"Not Nathaniel?" Lila questioned through her fit of laughter, a sound which was music to Natasha's ears. "He's named after you."
"Don't tell him I said that." Natasha countered playfully, a warm smile dividing her full lips.
For a few moments she forgot that she was a grown woman. She felt like a kid again, and temporarily allowed herself to bask in the joy of children, before bringing herself back to reality.
"Why'd you ask your mother to leave?"
"I wanted some time alone with just you," Lila paused for a second, before explaining further, "I missed you Auntie Nat, please visit us more often."
Hearing those words, Natasha felt a small piece of the burden that had been weighing her shoulders down fall off, bringing along with it some of the crippling guilt and remorse that had once shackled her legs.
The guilt and remorse that had kept her up at night, the stress, rage, and anger she held over herself, was now beginning to crack.
Right there and then, she solemnly swore to herself and Lila, that she would become more involved in their lives.
If she could never become a mother, the very least she could do was make sure she was a damn good aunt, the world's greatest.
"Do you want to call your mom and brothers back in?"
Lila shook her head vehemently. "Can we stay here a little longer?"
"Sure we can," Natasha allowed, feeling a burgeoning sensation of freedom as she leaned their backs down onto the mattress, letting Lila's head come to rest on her chest. "Sure we can."
-Ω-
"How did you know?" Was what Natasha greeted Fury with, once the director had stepped foot inside the hospital room.
The Barton's had gone out to grab a quick snack, with the promise of having dinner with her later that night; Italian had been the overwhelming choice.
Fury raised an amused brow as he settled down on the couch, whose cushions had yet to recover from Banner's bulky indentations.
"What, about you getting hurt? Well, I heard you got yourself into an… accident."
Natasha stared at him for a second, before responding, "No, not that. How did you know that this was about Clint?"
The director shifted a little bit in his seat.
"We all have inner demons that we fight, Romanov." He simply answered.
She could not help but roll her eyes at Fury's trademark grandma-wisdom, skirting-around-the-edge answer.
"That doesn't answer my question. How did you find out?" She pressed on.
"I didn't, actually." He retorted, before providing her with another unsatisfying answer, "I just had a feeling, and based on your responses so far, I'd say that I was correct."
Natasha fought the urge to give her ex-employer a not-so-friendly slap across the face. Besides perfect circles, she also hated being left in the dark, especially when it came to matters involving her very personal thoughts. Fury was far more intelligent than he typically put on, but she refused to believe that he had just gotten lucky. In their world, there was no such thing as luck.
"Didn't think you'd want to see me again after that phone call." Natasha said, changing the topic as it was evident that Fury was not going to back down.
"To be honest, neither did I." Fury admitted.
The phone call they were referring to had been the last one they had shared, where she had informed him of her intention to leave the Avengers program for good. While it was not argumentative, it certainly had not been amiable either, given the headspace that she had been operating with during that time. But before their conversation could progress any further, a large thud rattled against the frame of the door, making them both jump in spite of themselves.
Without further ado it opened up to reveal Banner, who she had completely forgotten about up until now.
"Dr. Banner, Bruce, it's nice to see you." Fury said as he stood up from the dent in the couch. "I didn't know you were here as well."
Natasha raised her eyebrows at the director's comments, as she had assumed that it had been Banner who had informed Fury about her being here.
Banner, who was also equal parts confused and surprised, scratched his forehead.
"Uh yeah, me neither. Nice to see you too, director."
"I guess I'll be on my way then." Fury nodded his head astutely, one eye trailing back in forth between her and the Hulk.
"Hey, before I leave you though." He then added as he paused halfway to the doorway. "Have you been hanging out with anybody recently, Natasha?"
She found her eyes trailing back towards the clock on the wall again, if only for a second, and then to Banner, before she replied,
"Uh no? Just keep to myself for the most part, you know me." She tilted her head. "Why do you ask?"
"Just a thought."
And with that Fury left, patting a confused looking Bruce on the shoulder before pushing his way out, closing the door with a solid thump.
Natasha, while trying to understand what Fury had meant by his last question, looked at Banner expectedly, and discovered that he was holding an obscene amount of groceries in his arms.
"I swear to God I didn't tell Fury to visit." Banner vowed as he raised his arms up in the air, almost causing his groceries to tip out of the plastic bags.
She could tell that Banner was telling the truth, whenever he lied his left ear always twitched.
"Is that why you looked surprised to see him?"
"Yes… what happened? What did he say?"
Natasha shook her head, saving the discussion for another time. At this point, she could not be bothered to bog herself down with some more overthinking.
"Nothing, can we leave now?"
"Uh yeah, sure Nat." Banner fumbled, and then grumbled, "why is it that I'm always late to the party?"
Author's Note:
Hey guys, happy Thanksgiving week to all those who celebrate it! Super grateful for all of you that have stuck along with me this far into the story. I can't lie, I haven't written anything in over two months, but I'm going to get back on the grind soon. Please leave me some feedback if you enjoyed or disliked, would be greatly appreciated.
Love,
Con