Well, it's been awhile since I've written clintnat fic — years, actually — but between Black Widow (2021) and Hawkeye (2021) aka things that quite frankly feel like a fever dream after so many years, I'm back, I guess?

Anyway, I had the 95% of this written before the finale even aired and was shocked that it actually fit what Clint knew canonically, not that it *needs* to since I myself am anti-canon, anti-farm fam, and anti-Laura's-existence-especially-if-she's-Bobbi-because-Bobbi-deserves-better but all the same, it was surprising. That being said, whether you want the story to be canon compliant or not is up to personal interpretation.

Beta'd by my girl, Sam (swancharmings).

—

"My brother and I used to sneak out of the house whenever it rained like this. Throw each other around in the mud, run down to the ruts in the old dirt road and collect tadpoles. You know, kid stuff," Clint says from his spot on the bed. He lays outstretched across it, tossing the yellow tennis ball that he'd managed to find up into the air and catching it effortlessly. Natasha thinks that this must have been what he looked like as a little boy — lighter blonde hair, less scars (though, the now faded ones were new then), all skinny arms and small hands as he focused on whatever his little mind sought out as a target. "We'd sneak out," he continues, "Because my mom didn't like the mess and if my dad found out…"

Clint doesn't elaborate, but he doesn't need to. Natasha knows. She always knows.

They've been holed up in a small shack of a safe house for hours, waiting out what seemed to be the never ending storm of the century. The mission had been completed nearly a day ago and as they'd trudged through the city using back alleys, fire escapes, and the like, rain had started to fall around them — light at first, until suddenly it was soaking their skin, rinsing the both of them of the blood and dirt from their latest firefight.

Clint had joked that maybe this was some sort of baptism. Natasha had reminded him that neither of them believed in any sort of god.

"I had a sister once," she admits from the opposite end of the bed, telling him in a way that's somehow simultaneously nonchalant and heavy, deep with memory of something that he can only assume she wants to forget or change or fix.

"Really?" Clint quirks an eyebrow in surprise. He's known Natasha on so many different levels for so long now, and he knows her well enough to understand the ins and outs of the Red Room in a way that few people who weren't actually there do; the things that they did to her, or at least the things that she remembers them doing. And he knows that her mother abandoned her as an infant because that, they had found out together. But in the few years that he's known her — the few years that they've been inseparable, each other's most trusted entity — he's never known that she had a sister.

Nodding, Natasha tears her gaze from away from him and looks straight ahead out the window, her thoughts distant. "Yelena. She was… five years younger than me."

"I thought you didn't have any family." Clint tries not to pressure her at the same time that he tries to hide the concern in his voice. He's seen Natasha uncover memories just as he has seen her after they've been rewritten, but she hasn't been compromised in ages — at least not that he's aware of — so Clint isn't quite certain what to make of this… sister. Yelena.

"I don't. Not biologically, at least." His comment comes as a bit of a surprise to Natasha herself. She doesn't have a family, not in the nuclear sense and to be honest, she doesn't consider the people at SHIELD much more than allies or the occasional friend, but he… Clint Barton… is her family. And she knows that he feels the same. "But when I was about eight, I think, the Red Room sent Russian spies to infiltrate SHIELD—"

"They sent you? How'd they manage that? I won't buy the one about three little Russian girls in a trench coat aga—"

"No, not me, you idiot. Not exactly. My parents. Or, my undercover parents, I should say. They created family units throughout the United States in order to depict the so-called 'American Dream', and I happened to fit the part."

She goes on to explain the build of the mission — the structure of the family unit. Her "parents", Alexei and Melina, were undercover as SHIELD scientists, though Melina worked part time in order to keep up with the girls, and the youngest of the two, Yelena, had gone from toddler to child right before her eyes. She spoke fondly of her little sister yet with disdain of the adults who had acted as her parents as she described fake holidays and birthdays, American public school, and the mud that caked her shoes as she rode a two wheeled bike through the rainy, suburban streets of Ohio, her pseudo sister in tow.

It breaks Clint ever so slightly to learn this — to know that Natasha had had a normal childhood for such a short, fleeting moment — a taste of what children that hadn't been used and abused spent years with. She should have had it all. She should have had a whole life, and it was something that Clint knew she understood that he could relate to — the mental images, flashing through every blink like the snap of a camera that framed a story in which should have been a reality. He knows that she knows he understands because that reality was fleeting for him, too.

She tells him about the night it all fell apart. Dinner left untouched. A six year old without shoes. American Pie on a cassette playing from the car stereo. The plane that she was sure would never take off, let alone land. She tells him about her cover mother's blood staining her own fading blue hair, about her cover father's last words to her before everything went black, about the intensity that settled in her chest as she fought, trying to stop them from forcing the innocent little girl she'd grown to love as her baby sister from suffering the fate she had at the hands of the Red Room.

She tells him that she was younger than Yelena had been when it had happened to her.

That, he knows too.

He hates that he does — he hates that it happened to her at all.

And Natasha knows as she tells him about the sister she couldn't protect that Clint understands this more than anyone else in her life, maybe even more than anyone she's ever met. He was once the younger sibling who needed protecting; a little boy who watched his big brother do the same for him. But the truth is that they were all children, and for as much as a part of him resents Barney for the person that he became later, he could never resent Barney for this. Clint hopes to God that Yelena, whoever and wherever she may be, would never resent Natasha for it either.

"Do you know where she is now? Yelena?" Clint asks after a moment, breaking through the silence that followed Natasha's story.

Shaking her head, Natasha turns from the window, green eyes meeting blue with a vulnerability that she allows only him to see — it's trust just as much as it is admission, "No. I… you know, Widows weren't allowed to keep tabs on each other within the organization. It's too risky, and it promotes attachments. Then once I got out, once you got me out, I couldn't do it. With or without the Red Room stopping me, I just… I couldn't do it."

Like her, he doesn't have to ask why to understand why.

Natasha never went searching for the girl that she had once considered a sister — maybe even still considers a sister — because she believes that she failed her. She believes that by not protecting her the day that their cover was ripped away, that by not fighting hard enough to keep her out of Dreykov's clutches, she let the world that had been so cruel to her take Yelena as well. But that couldn't be further from the truth because like Barney, Natasha had been a child. And children aren't supposed to protect children.

"It's not your fault, Tasha," he says softly, holding her gaze as he returns every piece of vulnerability that she had just given him. "It's not."

"Clint."

"It's not."

She doesn't say anything, but she does look down for a moment — contemplating, digesting. Clint wants to reach for her, to take it from her, to make it better but he can't. So he does the only thing that he can do, the only thing that he's allowed to.

"I never blamed Barney."

Natasha glances back up at him with a confused expression written on her face — a face that he's seen both empty and broken, and playful with a smile; a smile that he knows can reach her eyes, eyes that grow determined in a firefight and stubborn whenever they fight.

"I never blamed Barney," Clint repeats, "Not for not being able to protect me. He was my big brother, but it was never his job to save me. He was a kid, too. And Natasha… it was never your responsibility to save Yelena either."

There is an ease to Clint's perspective that Natasha has always taken comfort in. He saw through her the moment they met — saw the pain in her face, the need to be out, and he had spared her life because of it. He did the same on the streets of Budapest when they had taken out her previous agency, a child named collateral damage in the crossfire. Every single moment spent side-by-side had been a reminder, a promise, that neither of them were just weapons nor a means to an end. They were human, in the most tangible, breakable way and Natasha had never felt more safe or more understood with anyone else.

"Still," she mumbles with a light shake of her head, her auburn curls swaying with the movement as the reflection of the rain outside dissolves sorrowfully in the green of her eyes, "I should have looked for her."

—

It's years later that Clint admits to Natasha that he tried to track Yelena down after that mission. He tells her that he would do anything for her, anything at all, and as she swallows the lump in her throat — an action only made visible by the subtle movement of the small, silver arrow laid against it — she tells him that she found her sister… or, that Yelena found her, at least. She tells him, once again, of the Red Room that they hadn't destroyed and of her reunion with the sibling that she was certain she had lost. Lying low in some dirty little safehouse somewhere in the world while on the run from their own government in wake of The Accords — completely devoid of other personal attachments as they exchange their own familiar vulnerabilities, Natasha realizes that she has never felt more whole than she does now. Knowing that he, Clint, whatever he was to her, and her sister were safe.

So, quietly, she thanks him and he doesn't ask why because even after all these years, he knows why. They both do. It's for smothering the fire and the fear, and for suffocating the blame. It's for having her back, for being her partner. It's for connection and trust and love. It's for making a call so many years ago that saved her life — a call that changed her, his, their trajectory, and for holing up in nooks and crannies across the globe, telling secrets and stories to keep the other alive.

And if she said the words, he would tell her that she's wrong. He would tell her that she got here on her own and to a point, that's true. Natasha fought and won and lost so many battles, she made her way, but Clint gave her a piece of herself that no one else could have and she thinks that maybe… possibly… definitely, a part of her would be lost without him.

A part of him would be lost without her, too.

...Will be.

—

Happy New Year, Clintnat Nation! Stay safe, get vaxxed, mask up, and hopefully have a great 2022.

Reviews and comments are appreciated, as always :)