Seconds ticked by, each one marked by the swing of Laura's slippered foot.

The chill of the night crept into the kitchen, making the steaming hot chocolate all the more inviting. But he kept himself from cradling the mug. From feeling the warmth creep into his hands.

Clint didn't want to be comfortable, not while he was saying what needed to be said. Because that was an uncomfortable thing.

He just needed to start talking. That's what Laura had said, right? The night before. You just start.

So why couldn't he? Why couldn't he open his mouth and confess to her? Just tell her exactly what he'd done.

"Clint, honey," she finally broke the silence, no emotion in her voice, knowing any sort would probably have him running, "chatting usually works when people say something."

He wanted to laugh. Desperately wanted to show her the attempt to break the ice was appreciated. But he couldn't. Because he wanted to hurl. Instead he swallowed the feeling down.

"I know, sweetheart, I just -"

Clint cut himself off, the tingling sensation underneath his tongue coming back. He knew exactly how he wanted to tell her. He liked it when people told him bad news straight out. Bluntness was a good thing because it meant the facts came sooner and emotion was kept at bay. It was how he always tried to deliver bad news.

Though, the older he got the worse he became at it.

Or maybe it was the worse the news got the worse he became.

He didn't even bother to tell Laura and the kids he was bailing on their holiday to go help Steve hash it out with Tony.

Definitely didn't tell Laura Nat was on the other side. That one took her a few months to find out, even then it came from the redhead. Well, by that point the former redhead.

Then, he never stuck around to make sure Nat knew about the rest of the Bartons turning to dust. He knew she'd make her way to the farm and he just couldn't stomach the thought of admitting his family was gone. So he left her to find out by herself.

Wasn't that a shitty thing to do?

That was the start of a five year stint of bad decisions.

The last time he had bad news to give? Well that was the worst news of his life. News he felt sure he would never have to give because, one, he was thirteen years older, two, he was very good at collecting severe injuries, and three, she was very good at avoiding severe injury.

News he couldn't say. Just collapsed to his knees and let his eyes do the talking. Watched as her other best fried finally understood. Saw the storm in his blue eyes as he fell apart inside, behind that leader role he was so good at playing.

News he was forced into confirming when he finally had his family in his arms again, because Lila just couldn't understand why auntie Nat hadn't been right beside him when he came back.

But he couldn't just up and leave Laura to it. Because she was right when she said it mattered who they heard it from. So, he decided not to go for blunt.

"It might sound a little off topic but bear with me, I gotta talk myself into it."

Laura slipped her crossed leg level with her other, so both feet were firm against the floor as she leaned forward and grabbed Clint's hand. She was somehow warm as she squeezed, telling him to do what he needed to do and take whatever time he needed. She pulled her hand away, knowing he needed the physical space to work through things to help imagine the mental space.

He relented and grabbed his mug, taking a sip of the scorching liquid. It clashed against his teeth, the temperature change causing a bit of a twinge. His whole mouth burned from the heat but it was good. It focused him. The taste brought him back to all those times he sat with Nat the night before a mission.

This was exactly like that.

Except his marriage might be about to end.

She might take the kids away and he'd never see them again.

And he couldn't even argue with the logic of that because he'd killed so many people. They probably shouldn't grow up under the same roof as a murderer.

"You remember all those vigilantes that popped up in New York?" He asked once the burning had died down.

"You mean like Daredevil and Jessica Jones?"

"Yeah, except I was more thinking along the lines of the guy who went on trial for it. Frank Castle."

"The Punisher? I remember him."

Clint nodded, almost going for the hot chocolate again but changing his mind last minute so his hand did a weird sort of jerk thing. He caught the faint smile flicker onto Laura's face. She thought his little signs of nervousness were adorable. He doubted she would think that for very much longer.

"Do you remember what he was doing?"

"He was killing bad guys, wiping out street gangs. Clint, what does he have to do with what you're not saying - oh."

Clint flinched as it finally started dawning on her. This wasn't exactly how he wanted her to find out, he wanted to say the words because she deserved that much. Now he was just watching as all the pieces fit together in her mind, so he did the first thing he could think of, before she said anything else. He gave her the blunt answer.

"I killed people, Laura. I killed so many people."

It came out as a whisper, but given the silence that had fallen over the room since she'd handed him his hot chocolate, it really wasn't hard for her to pick up the words. To her credit she didn't shy away or look at him any differently. Mind you, nothing much really had changed about her, she just continued to look at him. Like she wanted him to carry on.

"I lost my mind. When I turned round and none of you were there, and then Lila was gone too. I just lost my mind and something broke. I had no idea what was going on, I thought it was just us and then the radio was weird. Some of the stations were silent, others were full of panic. I turned the TV on and the news was playing clips of helicopters crashing, cars crashing, people disintegrating. The news anchors wondering if it had anything to do with the ships that were over New York and Scotland, anything to do with the disappearance of Tony or the Secret Avengers returning to America.

"And I realised I didn't know about any of it. We'd spent the whole day outside with each other. Family time, no phones, no gadgets. Just us. Until it was just me. So, then I grabbed my phone and Nat had called and texted about a thousand times. It wasn't even the secure one so I knew whatever had happened it was bad. None of it made any sense, stuff about stones and Wakanda and Bruce and Tony. I mean, of course it all makes sense now, but then. Then it was just gibberish and the only thing I knew for sure was that whatever had taken you away from me was linked to her. And it just made me so angry when her last text, before all the tonnes of calls, was to keep you all close.

"It made me angry because it meant she knew there was something putting all of you in danger. And she failed to stop it."

He breathed in deeply, feeling the tide of emotions threaten to drown him. He could still feel that confusion and anger, it was one of the worst moments of his life. Every time he thought back to it he felt everything afresh. Except now he had the benefit of hindsight and the shitload of regret that came with it.

Regret had a very particular taste to it. Like bile.

So he took another sip of the cooling hot chocolate. Hoping to wash it away. Not quite sure if he succeeded.

"We'll get to Nat later," she said, no sign that she was wheeling from the revelation, "just tell me about this. How? Why?"

When Clint next opened his mouth he did his best to explain everything. He told her he was drunk most of the time at the start and any reasoning he came up with was usually heavily fuelled by alcohol. That in some twisted part of his mind he genuinely thought it was his calling, doing the world a favour, clean things up. As he said it aloud it wasn't lost on him much it sounded almost like Thanos.

He watched the news a lot, in those early days. Saw what organised crime was doing to make the most out of a shit situation. Which included drugs, human trafficking, absorbing the leftovers of other gangs - those whittled too low by the snap to be able to recover. All of that, of course, resulted in gang violence. More severe because territories that would otherwise never be up for grabs were suddenly on the market.

More hurt, more blood, more death.

The whole thing infuriated him. All these people who were vanished without a trace and here were these sorry excuses for human beings causing yet more misery, while the latest wound was still so fresh.

It infected him and intoxicated him as much as the alcohol, until one night he found himself walking the streets. The bow and arrows were too conspicuous so he left them at whatever hovel he was staying in. Plus, he just wanted to beat the crap out of a few of them. Maybe get them to think twice before terrorising others. It didn't take long for him to find them. They tried to shoo him away but in the end they fell easily into attacking mode. And then they just fell easily.

He really did just mean to hurt them, nothing more serious than that. But when the older of the two rushed at him with a knife clasped in his bloody hand, habit kicked in. Because while you can retire the killer you can't retire the killer instinct. In two swift movements he'd disarmed his attacker, in one more the knife slid cleanly between ribs.

A quick death.

An equally quick death when he threw the knife at the other one and it buried itself in his eye. All very Hollywood action movie.

At least he had the good sense to wear gloves.

"I left the knife there," he told her, the heel of his hands pressed against his own eyes. Helping him to envision everything as clearly as possible, "I figured they'd chalk it up to more territorial warfare. As soon as I got back I poured myself a drink, then another and another. My insides were boiling over, knowing there was more of them out there and I just wanted to douse the feeling. It never went away.

"By the time I'd finished the bottle I'd decided I needed a better weapon."

"You mean you decided the way to stop all the extra hurt and blood and death was to cause more of it?"

Clint just shrugged. It didn't make sense, he never pretended it made sense. There were two conscious decisions he'd made in his life where he'd had such clarity he'd never felt anything like it. So certain that the path laying itself before him in his mind was the right one. One of those was choosing not to kill Natasha and convincing her to defect. Except, in the end that blew up in his face because she'd died anyway, with the same look in her eyes she'd had way back then.

The other was deciding to ask Laura out. He'd met her a couple of times before and they got on alright as friends of friends. But then his heart told him he wanted more than that and his brain was inclined to agree. They told him that if he asked her out he wouldn't regret it.

And he hadn't.

Not for one minute.

But it looked like that one was about to go wrong as well.

"Good thing about working for SHIELD," he carried on, "is you know where all the best weapons are made. I got a sword, drank Hawkeye away and became Ronin."

"The tattoos, your hair?"

"All decisions I made at the bottom of a bottle."

They shared a small smile with each other and Clint's heart leapt at seeing hers. It was too much to hope she wouldn't leave, but he still found himself hoping.

"I started with gangs in America. Taking out what was left of Fisk's crew and a few others. then moved down to Mexico and took on the cartels. From there I just hopped to different countries. Did what I needed to do. What I thought I needed to do. The longer I did it the more I wondered why we were left behind. What marked us as the ones to survive? I was still here, so was Nat. A couple of assassins. Killers. But you, someone who has never harmed a single person, weren't.

"It lasted until Tokyo, where Nat found me thinning the Yakuza herd."

"Jesus Christ, Clint," Laura whispered, "the Yakuza?"

He nodded.

"Do they know it's you?"

He shook his head. The thought had occurred to him a few times since the Time Heist. He was too scared to ask about it, knowing everyone had their own shit to deal with and none of it brought on by themselves. But eventually he had to ask, driven to distraction by the possibility of gang members turning up on his doorstep. Worried every day if Coop and Lila would make it home okay, scared if he lost sight of Nate for one second.

So he'd asked Rhodey, knowing the guy had followed him at Nat's request.

"They don't. Not the gangs. Not the governments."

"How is that possible?" Laura was leaning her elbows on the table now, fingertips massaging her temples. "How?"

"Same way none of the parents at school found out your super top secret chicken casserole recipe."

"Nat?"

"Nat."

When he'd asked, Rhodey didn't scoff at him or tut or even roll his eyes. He just took a deep breath and offered what he could. Yes, the military man had a problem with Clint's hobby, but he also knew Nat wouldn't waste so much time on a lost cause. He told Clint that one of the constant projects Nat had running was not only tracking the archer down but staying ahead of the authorities and criminals, making sure all evidence was wiped away; physically and digitally.

Even after everything he did, the pain he caused her, she watched his back. Always.

"That woman has been a blessing to our family since you first brought her here," Laura said, finally taking her first sip of hot chocolate and almost downing the whole mug. There were tears in her eyes. "Do you really think we're safe?"

"Nothing's ever guaranteed, but you know what she was like. We're as safe as possible."

"Oh Clint, how do we ever get used to not having her here with us?"

There was no answer. A lot of things didn't have answers anymore. The only way to get them was to live through it, and that meant a lot of pain. A lot of figuring things out and getting things wrong. And all of that was nothing any of them wanted to go through.

All Clint knew for sure was that hindsight was a bitch. It felt like vengeance was the most important thing. But what was actually important is that those five years were the last of Natasha's life.

And he hadn't been there.

Laura looked up at him, the anger gone - though he knew it wasn't disappeared for good. She just knew when to dial it back. And, somehow, she knew where his head was at.

"What happened with you two?" She asked.

"Just me being an idiot," he scraped his chair back and went to stand by the sink so he could look out the window. Not that he can see anything in the dark. "It's just like I said earlier, in my head she was part of the team that lost. She didn't warn me and I just needed something to blame. Something more tangible than magical stones. And I settled on her."

He shouldn't have, they all knew it. He knew it at the time, but he did and he wasted all those years.

"I saw her a few times, you know. It wasn't just before the time travel that we saw each other. But it's not like it was great. We fought, we were silent. We barely spoke, we shared a few things. It wasn't enough. None of it will ever be enough."

Clint had to stop. The tears starting up again and for the first time since she squeezed his hand to encourage him to start talking, Laura reached out to him. Pulled him into a hug and kissed his forehead.

"Don't think for one moment this gets you out of trouble," she whispered and he laughed, "I want to hit you, punch you. Shout and ask you what the hell you were thinking. I want to do all of that but what would be the point? You're harder on yourself than anyone could ever be. Why do you think Lila's acting out, honey? She can tell you're different and she doesn't like it. You're punishing yourself for all of this. Thank you for finally telling me, even if I didn't really give you much of a choice. Don't get me wrong, I'm fuming with you and I can't pretend I understand completely. But I know you. So, we'll sleep on it. Okay? We'll sleep on it and we'll talk some more in the morning."

"Just don't leave me," he tightened his hold on her, just slightly.

"Never, Clint. Never."

A/N: For this chapter I appreciate Laura may be taking the news a bit too calmly but it's a lot of information to take in. So it's definitely going to come up again.