Even with her at his side it's painful, she can tell by the shadows in his eyes when he thinks she isn't looking. Somehow when he suggested this trip down memory lane he must have managed to convince himself it would be easier with her there, it wasn't.
He has walked her through the places that he existed but never truly lived, through the memories that he holds closest or refuses to visit himself, and she has absorbed them, taking in the fragments that he gives her and putting them together to complete the picture in her mind and in her heart that is Clint Barton. With every step, with every place that they visit, she takes a part of him into herself, somehow linking the boy he was with the man he is now. Had she not been there she was sure he would have done what he always did, abandoning this journey half way, locking away the echoes of pain and loneliness that can still hurt him after all these years.
He has seen this journey through only because he promised to show her and that is why she knows what she means to him. She doesn't push when he falls silent, doesn't ask questions that she knows he won't be able to answer. Knowing how much this journey is taking out of him, Natasha grips his hand in hers, allowing him to share what he feels comfortable with, and trying to tell him in word and gesture that she doesn't need to know the rest. Whatever he wants to give her is what she will take, the rest can wait.
Now they look down at the place where his journey began, the one earth-shattering moment that set him on the path to being her partner. The marble stone is simple, elegant, inscribed with only the names and dates that matter, the only difference he tells her is that it seems somehow smaller. Looking down at the burial plot in which his parents have rested since he was a child, she leans closer into him, sharing the warmth of her body with him as the first snow of winter continues to fall. The cold weather and the snow remind her of home, of Russia, and she realises somewhat painfully that she has no good memories of her homeland, no family to mourn or to remember fondly.
"They only ever wanted for us to be happy, Barney and me. Mom in particular only ever wanted us to love wherever our lives took us," he says quietly, eyes still fixed on the stone before them. His expression is so innocent and for a second she is sure that she is seeing a flash of the boy he was in the man who stands beside her, but then his eyes cloud over, politely shutting her out.
She knows where his thoughts have taken him. Barney, another scar on Clint's heart, the brother who took a different path. The Barton brothers don't maintain contact and Natasha understands why, they've been at odds since they emerged from adolescence with very different views on the world. The fact that Clint finds it so painful to talk about his only sibling, is the reason they never mention him, however not talking about something is not the same as not thinking about it.
"She sounds like a wise woman," Natasha smiles, drawing him back. "Everyone should want happiness for their children."
Clint nods, pulling himself back into the present and smiling at her, a slight quirk of his lips. "I think they would have liked you."
Natasha stares at him, wondering what Harold and Edith Barton would really make of her. As a woman they might approve of her, as their son's lover they might accept her but she doubted they would think her career an ideal choice for that of anyone they might consider a potential daughter-in-law. "I'm not so sure about that," she chuckles.
Silently, she thinks of the things he has shown her, of the orphanage where he and his brother spent nearly six years before running away, of the circus in which he found his calling as an archer, and she wonders whether Clint has known the happiness his mother wished for him since he came to SHIELD. She wants to believe that he has found a place that he can call home after so many years without anything meaningful. It would be easy to cry for the boy he was, but she knows first hand that the trauma of losing his parents made him the man he is.
He turns his face fully toward hers, taking her by surprise. Their eyes meet, his free hand rising to cup her chin, fingertips sliding over her cheek and staving off the chill of the air. With his lips only an inch or two from her own, he speaks. "She would have been able to see that loving you is the only thing that has ever made me happy Nat."
His beautiful grey eyes hold hers, so much emotion in them that they steal her breath away. As he watches her, she realises that words are overrated in moments like this. Stepping into the contours of his body, she wraps an arm around the small of his back and tilts her face up to his, feeling a soft smile take form on her own lips. "About time Barton," she whispers, and closes the distance between them.