because I utterly adore the relationship Nat and Clint had.
enjoy.
p.s. since I apparently can't stay focused on just the one story, I'll likely be posting a new one soon. it'll be in the same style, but covering everything before Endgame. check it out if you're so inclined.
"Dad?"
"What's up, Nate?" Clint answers without looking up from his current task of digging through the desk's drawer in search of the external hard drive that holds their family photos. He'd already found and plugged in the air gapped laptop, so the hard drive was all he needed to start his jaunt down memory lane.
"Whatcha doin'?" Nate asks. Clint glances up and sees his youngest son shifting his weight from one foot to another as though he can't stand still. He smiles because despite the patience he learned years later as a sniper, he'd been fidgety and restless as a kid too.
"I'm looking for the hard drive that has the family pictures on it."
Nate's brow creases gently with a frown. "But the pictures are over there," he says while pointing behind him to the den. Clint smiles because he's not wrong - there were a select few photos from over the years that had been printed out, framed, and displayed in various rooms.
"Some of them, yeah. But we have a lot more on here," he explains, pulling out the hard drive he's managed to finally find and wiggling it in his fingers.
"How many more?" Nate asks, tilting his head as his gaze lingers on the small, black hard drive. Clint is grateful that despite having grown up in a time when technology permeates nearly everything, Nate is still unaware of all the kinds of technology in the world.
"Oh, I dunno," Clint says as he plugs in the drive and waits for it to initialize, "lots."
"Are there any of me?"
Clint nods as he grins, trying to stifle his laughter at his son's innocent question. "Yeah, I think there's a few of you on there. Lots more of the rest of us though."
"No fair," Nate pouts, though Clint can see it's an act.
"Sorry, buddy. We've been around longer than you, and that means more pictures."
"Does that mean you and mom have more than Lila and Cooper?"
Clint can't help the laugh from bubbling out. "You callin' me old, kid?"
Nate grins mischievously. "Yeah, 'cause you are."
Clint frowns dramatically. "You know, you were in line to be in my top three favourite kids, but now…" Nate's jaw drops in shock and Clint shrugs. "You forced my hand, bud. You called me old."
He can see his son calculating the distance between them and trying to work out if he can attack fast enough to avoid being grabbed, and knows it's only a matter of time before he decides to go for it. He grins and then arches an eyebrow in a silent challenge, which Nate doesn't hesitate to try and rise to immediately, launching himself at Clint with a loud yell.
Clint laughs heartily as he grabs his son and flips him upside down before starting to tickle him mercilessly. The giggles fill the room and Clint finds a smile spreading widely across his face. God, how he'd missed this. While the memories of the last five years still linger in his mind, the balm of having them back and hearing their laughter and voices fill the house was doing wonders to make those memories fade away.
"Uncle! Uncle! Uncle!" Nate cries between his giggles.
"You sure?" Clint goads, his hand pausing dramatically with fingers splayed widely and wiggling, ready to dole out more tickles.
"Yes!"
"Alright. I accept your surrender. On one condition."
"What?"
"You have to admit I'm not old."
Nate frowns before he huffs out, "Fine. You're not that old."
Clint's gaze narrows at his son's side-step. But before he can say anything in response, Laura breezes past the office and calls out "I'd take what you can get, babe."
His expression falls and he sighs heavily before realizing his wife's right. This was his kid after all. He'd clearly inherited his cheekiness, meaning that was probably as close to an admission as he was going to get. "Fine," he relents as he puts Nate down.
"Dinner's in 15!" Laura calls out from the kitchen.
"Sounds good!" Clint calls back before looking back at Nate. "You wanna see some pictures of Lila and Coop when they were your age?"
Nate's eyes widen, and Clint knows he's having a hard time imagining his older siblings as that small once. Hell, sometimes he had a hard time remembering they'd once been that small.
Clint chuckles. "I'll take that as a yes. C'mon, hop up," he says, patting his lap. Nate obliges immediately, clearly excited by the prospect.
Once he's situated comfortably, Clint begins to tap through the pictures. They're organized chronologically, so the photos begin with some from the early days of Laura and Clint's relationship that had been scanned from hard copies. Clint laughs heartily as his son struggles to wrap his head around the fact that his parents once looked so much different than how he was used to seeing them.
"That's you and mom?"
"Yep."
"But you don't look so old there."
"Hey, what'd we agree to on the age thing, huh?" Nate smiles guiltily. "But, yeah we looked a little different back then. That's before we were even married."
Clint continues to click through the images, taking both he and Nate through the years digitally. Nate is full of questions about life before he was born, and so with each new photo Clint is asked to explain who's in it, how old they are, and how long ago it was. By the time they reach Cooper's birth, the questions have started to ramp up. They run the gamut from "why is he so tiny" and "was I that tiny?" to "why are you crying there?" and a little bit of everything in between.
Truthfully, it's a bit of a refresher for Clint too. It had been many years since he'd taken the time to look through these photos. The hard drive had remained untouched since even before his family had drifted away on the wind as dust. He hadn't been able to bring himself to stay in the house, much less look at their family photos from over the years. The grief had just been too much.
I suppose I'm lucky no one looted the house in those five years. We could've lost everything…
"Who's that?"
Clint is startled out of his musing by his son's abrupt question. He looks at the screen and feels his heart clench. He fights to keep his breathing even as he looks at the photo of Natasha cradling a newborn Cooper, feeling the weight of her loss crush him again.
He coughs lightly to clear his throat of the emotion lodged there. "That's uh, that's your Aunt Nat."
Nate frowns in thought. "Like who I'm named after?" he asks, turning to face Clint.
Clint nods, finding the innocence and wonder in his son's eyes to be an anchor for him as his grief threatens to pull him away once more. "Yeah," he answers, tone a little wobbly and breathy as he tries to hold it together.
It hasn't been so long since she'd been dangling in his hold on that alien planet. The grief over losing her is still fresh, and sometimes when he closes his eyes he can still see her looking up at him in her last moments alive. Can still see the myriad of emotions swimming in her eyes and the creases in her forehead as she frowns gently. Can still hear her soft plea for him to let her go and the reassurance that it was okay.
"She's pretty," Nate says, oblivious to his father's emotions.
"Yeah," Clint agrees with a watery smile.
"But her name is Nat...not Nate. How come my name's different if I'm named after her?"
"Hey, Nat? You got a sec?"
Nat looks up from her book and tilts her head slightly. "Yeah. What's up?"
Clint squeezes Laura's hand. "Well, I hope you know by now how important you are to us and to this family."
Nat's brow creases as she no doubt tries to work out what his little speech is about. "Okay…" She pauses for a beat. "You're not dying or something are you?"
"What? No. God, stop trying to figure it out and just let me say it."
She gestures for him to go ahead, though the small frown creasing her brow remains.
"Well, Laura and I were talking, and we'd like to name this little one after you," he says, rubbing his hand across Laura's stomach gently.
He watches as Nat's expression softens. "I… I don't know what to say to that," she says, head shaking slowly in disbelief.
"Then just say yes."
"I-"
"Nat," Laura interjects, "if you don't want it, that's okay. But we'd really like to."
Nat eyes them both for a moment, the silence in the room feeling thunderous in Clint's ears. "Okay," she says finally, her head bobbing once in confirmation.
In and amongst the shock and disbelief in her features Clint doesn't miss the pride and wonder, and a part of him feels so damn happy to be able to give her that.
He shakes his head to bring himself out of the memory and he realizes he hasn't yet answered Nate's question. "Well at first we thought you were gonna be a girl, so we were gonna name you Natasha. Then we found out you were a boy, but we still wanted to name you after her so we changed it a bit."
Nate seems to accept the answer and looks back at the screen for a second before his gaze swings back to Clint. "What was she like?"
Clint feels his heart clench again because hearing the question pains him. His son was supposed to grow up knowing his namesake. He was supposed to learn all about his Aunt Natasha and the amazing woman she was. He was supposed to carry her name proudly and bring out that little smile of pride and wonder from her that she let out so rarely. He was supposed to know and learn from her. And instead all he's left with are a handful of pictures and other people's memories.
"Well," Clint starts, struggling with what to say. "For one thing, she was the bravest person I've ever met."
"Braver than you?"
"Yeah, buddy." he answers solemnly as he meets his son's gaze. "Way braver than me."
"Wow."
"And she was an amazing friend to me, and to mom. And she was a pretty amazing aunt to Lila and Cooper."
Nate looks back at the screen and Clint sees his head droop down a little. "But not to me…"
Clint feels another bunch of emotions hit him like a sledgehammer. "She loved you so much, Nate."
"I didn't even know her."
"But she knew you. And she loved you. I promise you, she loved you, Nate. Everything she did to save me was to make sure I could come back to you guys."
Before Nate can say anything, they both hear Laura call out that it was time for dinner. He scrambles off Clint's lap and out of the office quickly, his thoughts already onto the next thing, as is the way with kids. It breaks Clint's heart to see him run out of the room and away from the conversation about his aunt because he wants so badly for his son to know about her. He was named after for a reason, and he deserved to know why.
Clint looks back at the screen and lets his mind wander to the memory of that day when they'd introduced Nat to Cooper.
"Hey, Nat," Clint says tiredly after opening the door. "You look like shit," he adds, finding an all too familiar look of tiredness verging on exhaustion in her eyes. It's not altogether surprising though. He supposes she's had a bit more on her plate since he'd taken leave, though he knows she'd never confirm it.
"Remind me again, with sweet talk like that, how is it you convinced Laura to marry you?" she answers wryly. Clint flips up his middle finger in response and she just tilts her head appraisingly. "You look like shit too, by the way. I guess they aren't joking when they say kids suck the life out of you."
Clint gapes at her, mind tiredly whirring to process her sarcasm. "Shut up," he finally settles on lamely, "and get in here already."
She grins and follows him into the house, dropping her bag by the stairs and shrugging off her coat to hang it up on a hook by the door.
"Hey, Nat," Laura says tiredly from the couch as Clint takes a seat in the chair across from her.
"Hey," Nat answers with a small smile as she breezes past them into the kitchen. "Sorry, just going to wash my hands - I feel gross from all the travel."
Clint thinks he should probably throw out a quip of some kind for that easy tee-up, but he's too tired to formulate anything so he lets it go.
Nat returns shortly after and drops onto the couch beside Laura. "So how's life as parents?"
Just as Laura opens her mouth to respond, there's a loud cry from the bassinet in the other room. She sighs heavily and hands the mug of tea she'd been holding to Nat. "That pretty much sums it up," she says with a tired smile as she gets up and heads to the other room.
Clint sighs lightly as he tips his head back and rubs his eyes with his free hand. He's over the moon to be a dad, but he's also been less exhausted after back-to-back-to-back missions.
"That bad, huh?"
Clint's head tips forward and his eyes open slowly. "You have no idea what the word exhausted really means until you have a kid cryin' at all hours."
Nat lets out a little huff of amusement. "And you went into that willingly."
"Just you wait 'til you see him. His good looks are enough to make you forget that he screams like a banshee."
"So he takes after Laura then?"
"Oh, shut up," he chastises. His eyes focus back onto her, finding that exhaustion in her features again. "Fury working you hard with me gone?"
She waves off his worry immediately. "Been a bit of a pick-up with intel," she explains. "He sends his regards, by the way. Said he didn't know what possessed you to procreate, but that he knows plenty of worse people to be fathers."
"Wow, sentimental guy."
She shrugs but grins briefly. "Coulson has demanded I bring back pictures. So you better give me something to give him, otherwise he won't leave me alone."
Clint laughs tiredly. "I'll make sure to send him a few."
"Even better."
"Someone's awake," Laura says as she enters the room.
"Aw, he woke up just for you, Nat."
"Guess I'm losing my touch at stealthy entries," she quips dryly.
Laura settles down next to Nat on the couch and adjusts the bundle of blankets in her arms. "Nat, this is Cooper," she says softly. "Cooper, this is your Aunt Nat."
Clint watches as Nat leans over to look down at his son. She had spent so much of her life being taught to care for no one and that love wasn't anything worth knowing about, and yet as she looks down at her de facto nephew, all Clint can see is wonder and love in her expression. Yes, there's a touch of anxiety and fear there too, but largely it's love. And not for the first time, he feels relief and pride at his decision to spare her life all those years ago. He could never have imagined how important defying those orders would be.
"Pretty cute kid, Barton," Nat says, snapping herself out of her reverie.
"I told you, he's a handsome little devil."
"You want to hold him?" Laura offers tentatively. Clint eyes his partner carefully, unsure of how she'll react to that idea. He sees her gaze flick up to Laura's before she leans back slightly, reflexibly, he thinks. He understands the reaction because he too had worried about his hands, the ones that dealt out death and pain, holding something as innocent and pure as a baby.
Nat's gaze flicks over to him and he smiles reassuringly, tilting his head ever so slightly and softening his gaze in a silent expression of support. He sees her turn back to Laura and then swallow as she nods. "Okay," she replies softly. So softly that Clint almost misses it.
Laura hands the bundle over to Nat's arms slowly and he watches as his partner, the woman who'd saved his life countless times, holds his son. He'd thought that Nat might hold the baby like he had at first - the same way one handles explosives, carefully and at a distance - but she's cradling Cooper in her arms easily, as though she's done it a thousand times before. Her gaze is soft as she looks down at him, and she smiles when he reaches up to clumsily grab at her hair which is hanging down just out of his reach. His heart fills at the sight, knowing that this moment of tenderness is one that no one else in the world gets to see. They know the Black Widow and Agent Romanoff. They know the skilled and infamous agent. But he and Laura know Natasha. And now Cooper will know Aunt Nat.
There's a soft click and it's only then that Clint notices Laura had gotten up to snap a photo of the moment. Nat remains oblivious though, her gaze still locked with Cooper's as she adjusts her hold slightly and leans forward a bit more to let him swat at her hair a bit. She laughs softly as he manages to somehow grab a hold of it and tugs. She murmurs something to him that Clint can't quite catch, but he's pretty sure it's Russian.
"Hey, you coming? Food's getting cold."
Clint blinks as Laura's voice brings him out of his memories. "Yeah," he answers as he looks up to meet his wife's gaze. "Yeah, just need a minute."
She lingers in the doorway for just another moment, with a frown creasing her brow as she eyes him knowingly, before she crosses the room and stops behind his chair. She leans forward slightly, wraps her arms around him from behind and rests her chin on his shoulder. "I love that picture," she says softly after a moment.
"Yeah, me too," Clint answers roughly. He lets out a harsh breath that's filled to the brim with guilt and grief and a thousand other emotions he can't put a name to.
Silence lingers in the room for a moment before she pulls back and then spins his chair to face her. "C'mon, let's eat dinner."
Later, long after dinner had finished and the kids had disappeared into their rooms, Clint is relaxing on the couch with Laura curled up beside him. The laptop is balanced on his thighs and they've resumed Clint's earlier jaunt down memory lane.
"I remember that," Laura says fondly, pointing to the screen where there's an image of Nat lying on the ground, holding Cooper above her head and smiling widely. "That was the same day she found out that he knew who she was."
A grin spreads across Clint's face as the memory rises to the surface of his mind.
"Hey, Nat," Clint says, opening the door before wrapping her up in a tight hug that has her letting out a small oomph. He knows if it were anyone other than him or Laura giving her a hug like this, they'd likely be flat on the floor with a knife pressed to their throat. As it was, they didn't tend to share hugs often, but when he'd heard about her last mission he's so grateful to see her alive and in one piece. "Heard you had a hell of a mission."
She scowls. "Coulson's such a snitch."
"Hey, c'mon now. He's just worried."
"He's like a grandmother," she scoffs. "Hovering and fretting. I'm fine."
"Yeah, that massive bandage under your shirt really says fine."
Her scowl deepens. "Yeah, it does, because I'm here and not lying dead in a ditch halfway across the world," she snips defensively.
Clint's gaze narrows because while he's used to her being snippy with him, it's uncharacteristic of her to be that way when she's here at the farm. Here she relaxes and unwinds, at least as much as she's able to. Here it was friendly and amusing banter, not pointed barbs.
She seems to notice his scrutiny and relents. "Sorry," she breathes out. "Been a tough few weeks"
He nods understandingly. "Anything you need to share?"
She seems to consider his offer for a moment before shaking her head. "Maybe later. With vodka."
Clint blinks in surprise but recovers quickly and gestures for her to enter. "You got it. I'll put some in the freezer."
If she was willing to talk about it, that meant that Coulson had seriously downplayed just how fucked up the mission had been. He had been sparse on details, but had warned Clint that she'd been through the wringer and to expect some fallout.
"Hey, Nat," Laura says in greeting from the floor where she's lying on her stomach in front of Cooper who is playing with some toys.
"Hey, Laura. How you doing?"
"I'm good. How're you?"
"Better now that I'm here and not on-call for a couple weeks."
"Turning your phone off?"
Nat scoffs. "I wish. But I'm ignoring any non-emergencies."
"As good as it gets for you these days, huh?"
Nat shrugs. "I take what I can get."
"Bed's made up upstairs. Go ahead and drop your stuff if you like."
"Ah-nee Naaa!"
Laura chuckles as Cooper toddles over to Nat and reaches his hands up. Nat's eyes are wide and the confusion is plain on her face.
"Ah-nee Naaa! Up!" Cooper repeats, wiggling his fingers and hands as he looks up at her hopefully.
"She's here all of twenty seconds and already I'm old news," Clint says with a laugh.
"I don't- What is he doing?" Nat stutters in a completely uncharacteristic display of confusion and being overwhelmed.
Laura chuckles. "I think it's pretty obvious."
Nat glances down at him and then back up to Laura and Clint. "Does he-" she starts, but stops abruptly, as though she's not quite willing to finish the question.
"Know who you are?" Clint offers, watching her expression carefully. "Yeah, he does. We told him his Auntie Nat was coming to visit and he's been babbling on about it pretty much since."
She just keeps frowning, even as Cooper leans on her legs with whines at her. "I don't understand."
"You know, for someone who works in intelligence-" Laura whacks him hard to cut off his quip. "Ow. Alright, alright," he says, rubbing his arm where she'd hit him.
"He knows who I am?" Nat repeats dumbly, as though she doesn't understand the concept. Clint's heart squeezes at the realization that she probably doesn't understand why Cooper knows her. Family is, by all accounts, a new concept to her, after all.
"Yeah," Laura says, "he knows his Auntie Nat. Of course he does."
"Ah-nee Naaa!" Cooper whines, banging his fists lightly against her legs. "Up!"
She drops her bag off her shoulder and leans forward tentatively, holding out her arms to scoop him up into her arms. He snuggles into her hold easily, arms wrapping around her tightly. Nat's expression is still bewildered, but Clint can see traces of that love and wonder that he'd seen when she first held him too. He wonders, not for the first time, what kind of person she would've been if the Red Room hadn't stolen her away from her own family. It was clear she had a big heart, even if it was hidden beneath a carefully constructed wall.
"Looks like someone's tired," Laura says, noticing Cooper's eyes beginning to droop closed. "D'you mind carrying him up, Nat? It's time for his nap."
"I, uh, yeah, sure," she replies, eyes blinking quickly as she tries to process the situation.
Clint smiles reassuringly at her. "Don't worry, we won't make you change his diaper," he quips.
Nat doesn't respond to the joke and just follows Laura up the stairs, her steps seeming to be just a little more careful and measured than usual. He smiles, knowing that while she'd been trained in everything and anything that might have been related to a mission, here she was totally out of her comfort zone.
"God, she was completely thrown off by that," Laura says.
"Yeah. Like she couldn't believe he knew her and wanted her."
Laura smiles sadly. "You didn't see her upstairs. I don't think I've ever seen someone put a kid down to sleep so gently."
"She slid into being an aunt pretty easily," he comments as he leans back against the couch, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. Far more smoothly that I ever figured she would, he thinks to himself.
Laura nods as she leans back as well, resting her head on his shoulder. "That's because under all that shit they trained into her, she had a beautiful soul. She was always more gentle, tender, and kind-hearted than people gave her credit for."
"She really was," he agrees.
He sees Laura hesitate with whatever it is she wants to say, and he offers a small smile of encouragement. She swallows and then smiles back at him before she speaks. "This is good. Talking about her, I mean. I know it hurts, but...she deserves to be remembered, and not just for saving everyone. She was a part of this family too," Laura finishes, a little teary-eyed and voice shaking just a bit with emotion.
"Yeah," Clint says, pulling her into his arms and holding her tightly, pressing a kiss to her head. "She was."
this one got us back on the angst/emotional train after a lighter few chapters. oops.
hope y'all are staying safe in these weird times.
as always - please do let me know your thoughts, feelings, and any suggestions for future chapters. the comments, even if just a few words, always make my day.