Dinner wasn't exactly a comfortable affair.

Fury was an awkward guest. He'd spent so long in shadows small talk was almost a foreign concept to him. Hill wasn't great either, but she was definitely better at humaning than her boss.

It didn't help that the boxes hung in the air between them. Lila wanted to forgo dinner and start reading and almost threw an honest to god tantrum when her parents told her to set the table. She only cut herself off when Fury stood and carried all three boxes into the living room, effectively ending the conversation. Thank god for friends in high places.

Despite popular belief, Clint wasn't stupid. He knew every single person around the table wanted to see what was written on those pages. He knew the after dinner entertainment would be him reading out some of the entries. Everyone just wanted to hear something from her, wanted to believe that she wasn't gone and they had some way of bringing her back, and if the best they could do was words from the past, well, then they would make the most of it.

Could he, though?

Every day they stayed strong for the kids and every night, once they were in bed, Laura broke down while loading the dishwasher, or preparing lunch, or ironing, or in the shower. So Clint comforted her. He reassured her. Said everything would be okay. He shed no tears and did his best to spare no thought. So could he really face five years worth of her private moments and inner demons?

During dessert the chatter was a little more light-hearted, Laura doing her best to keep everyone entertained. And yet, Clint still felt the glances landing on him, he scowled at nothing as he fell deeper and deeper into thought. He wouldn't be alone in feeling the pain. Fury wasn't the only one with a soft spot, Hill had liked her too. Not many people bothered to see beyond her past, but that's exactly what Hill did from the beginning. And Clint knew their missing friend was grateful. He wondered if she knew they were friends.

"Clint, honey," Laura once again pulled him out of his thoughts, "just open them." She grabbed his arm. Cooper and Lila averted their gaze, sensing who was about to be mentioned and still unable to control their emotions when she was the topic of discussion.

He sighed.

"I don't know, Laura. You know her. She-she," he ran a hand over his face and leaned into the back of his chair. What? She was private? She didn't like people touching her stuff? Hell, she didn't even want people to know what stuff she had. He was pretty sure the Bartons were the only ones who knew she - shit!

"Where's Liho?" He sat up abruptly, looking at Hill.

"Where's what now?" Fury answered.

"Liho. Nat's cat."

He winced.

"Auntie Nat!" Nate yelled, excited to hear the name of one of his favourite people. "Auntie Nat's coming?"

The sheer joy that lit up the young boy's face left all of the older Bartons stricken. Their masks fell and the grief was as clear as anything. If he didn't know any better, Clint would have said he saw the same look mirrored in their guests' eyes.

"Oh sweetheart, we've been over this," Laura's voice caught at the look on her youngest son's face as he sort of recalled something they'd said in the past, "she can't come."

"But you said that ages ago," he eked out the 'ages' to really push home his point, "she has to be on her way now. She promised, she was gonna teach me 'shun."

"Teach you what?" Fury asked.

"Russian," Clint said.

"Well I can teach you that," Fury offered, "I speak it nearly as well."

Nate gave the older man a sympathetic look. "But you're not auntie Nat," he said before cramming the last spoonful of pudding into his mouth. Well, about a third of it, the rest landed on his t-shirt by way of his chin. He was completely oblivious to the emotional tsunami he'd just set off, Lila was looking up at the ceiling, arms folded, blinking rapidly. Laura clutched the edge of the table so hard her knuckles were white. And Cooper had stood up, under the pretence of gathering everyone's dishes, and was methodically stacking them in the sink while trying to pull himself together. Clint just stared at his youngest with sorrow. Was he even going to remember her in a few years?

"We didn't see a cat," Hill said, "we can look again if you want?"

Clint thought about it. Nat always acted like her four-legged companion didn't mean anything, that she wasn't attached. She tried to convince herself they only passed through each other's lives on the way to food and rest. Yet, at the first sign of sickness his partner had taken the cat to the vet in the carrier she just happened to have stowed away in a closet. She undermined her own security and kept a window cracked open so Liho could nose her way in if Nat wasn't around. And more than once, Clint had caught a flash of a cat-centric photo on her phone. Yes, his best friend had a connection with that furry personification of aloofness.

He nodded.

Not much later, they were all sitting in the living room. Awkwardly ignoring the elephant somehow crammed into those three boxes. Clint didn't allow his eyes to even settle on them. So it was with an exasperated sigh that Lila stood up, grabbed the top one and dropped it by her dad's side. She glared at him with a fierceness in her eyes and dared him to look away.

"Lila!"

"Sorry, mum. But I'm sick of this, this silence. This empty space in our conversations, at our table, in our home, where she should be. She didn't give her life so that we could forget about her."

All the while she continued to stare at her father, who dropped his gaze as the guilt washed over him.

"Open it," Lila demanded.

"Sweetheart - "

"She deserves better than this, dad. Open it."

His mouth hung open as he bore the brunt of each word, feeling the burn of the shame that coursed through his veins. Her words were truth, a truth that ran so much deeper than she realised. One he'd always known but never understood how to honour.

She did deserve better.

So, Clint squared his shoulders and ran another hand over his face and he looked at the offending box sitting innocently on the sofa. Here was a man who'd faced down aliens, survived godly mind-control, escaped the Raft and weathered the storm of Laura's wifely wrath when he came back a fugitive. Yet, opening that box for the second time in two hours and pulling out the first volume of his best friend's inner thoughts was harder than all of that.

The pages separated as he rested the spine in his palm, assaulting him with the smell of book. Swallowing became difficult as a lump clogged up his throat. In his mind he saw Nat nestled into the same sofa he was sat on, a blanket across her legs, and a book on her lap. As she opened it to her page she brought it to her nose and inhaled the scent, a small smile playing on her lips as she relished the smallest of luxuries. It was a habit he noticed back during her first days after defecting. He watched her over the monitors and every time she read, she started with that same ritual. Each time the smile appeared and he just knew he'd made the right call. No one else in her position would have found anything to smile about. She did, in the simplest of places.

He flicked to the first page as more memories tried to burst through, but he refused to let down his wall. The silence surrounding everyone in the room grew thicker and thicker, the anticipation practically smothering every second that ticked by. It was as if they had uncovered a precious artefact. To him they had.

Yet, that didn't stop him from almost dropping the book as he looked properly at the page for the first time. Didn't stop him from almost jerking away as the achingly familiar handwriting, neatly and precisely, slapped him across the face and punched him in the gut. The lump in his throat ached so much and the threatening tears burned his eyes until he had to close them. His breathing came out ragged, sitting on the verge of sobs. He rested the book on his knees as he massaged his temples.

C'mon, Clint, Get it together, she wouldn't want this. Hell, I don't want this.

So he tried again, opened the book once more and forced himself to look at her writing. He hesitated, eyes seeking out Laura's and realising she was looking at him with something other than confused pity.

That was nice.

A deep breath.

"Look, I don't know why I'm writing in this stupid thing," he might have been saying the words but he could hear her voice so clearly, "If Barton ever finds out he'll have a field day."

He grinned. If the circumstances were different he'd most definitely be taking the piss out of her. When you're the only person who can get away with teasing one of the deadliest people in the world, why not make the most of it?

"But I'm doing it anyway, writing things down, because I've run out of ideas. I don't know what else to do."

A/N: Okay, so no diary entry here but I promise you we'll start hearing from Natasha in the next chapter.

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