melt, v.
definition: change or merge imperceptibly into another form or state.
rating: T
A/N: I SAW CIVIL WAR YESTERDAY. I'm not gonna give any spoilers, but it was friggin incredible. Clint had more character development in that movie than he's had in the rest of the MCU put together, somehow. AND NAT HAD SO MANY FIGHT SCENES. It made my heart proud :,) anyways, if you enjoy dying and being dead, then this fic is for you ;) enjoy! Xx
She had hated him once. It seems so stupid now, but at that time, she didn't know any better. She had hated how he trusted her, saw her as an equal, shortened her first name. She would give anything, anything at all, to hear that now. But Karma has a funny way of coming back to bite you in the ass like that. Regardless of how she feels about him now, she had hated him, once.
"You can trust me, Nat," he told her often. "You know that, right? I'm never going to hurt you."
Her response was always predictable.
"Don't call me that, Barton. It's not my name. Oh, and pardon me if I trust myself a hell of a lot more than I trust you. You were assigned to kill me, if I remember correctly."
"But I didn't kill you. And you're not my mission anymore; you're my partner and my friend," he would tell her. And then he would call her Nat again just to piss her off.
Then came Hong Kong. They had tracked a terrorist through a mountain and cornered him. He'd decided it would be better to die than be taken in to S.H.I.E.L.D. for questioning, and threw himself from the mountain, grabbing her ankle on the way down. Dropping through the air with her stomach coming up her throat, she had managed to grab onto a rock ledge, and dangled hundreds of feet above the ground before she allowed her partner to pull her to safety.
"Trust me," he demanded, his arms stretched toward her. Finally, her hate melted away for good, replaced by trust, and she grabbed his wrists and held on for dear life. And never let go.
Along with trust came something she hadn't bargained on: friendship. They became best friends, with stories and inside jokes and secret languages and late-night conversations, everything she'd never had.
"Joined at the hip," everyone said, and he would waggle his eyebrows at her and make innuendos until her face grew red as her hair and she threatened to sew his lips shut.
She misses that now; she's ashamed of the lengths she would go to hear just one joke, even if it's only a badly placed "that's what she said." She would go to the moon if it made him smile.
But they had been "just friends", nothing more, for far too long. Then one wild, drunken night, he had kissed someone else. And something snapped inside her. If he was going to kiss anyone, it should be her. Friendship melted into passionate love in that instant, and she'd grabbed him and kissed him like she was breathing and if she stopped, she would keel over and die.
After that, they couldn't keep their hands to themselves. There were "private meetings" in empty conferences, tiny offices, bathrooms… the list went on. Everyone thought it was temporary, a fling, but they were wrong. The love she shared with her best friend was wild and young, but somehow, she knew it was real. He made her realize that life wasn't about survival, it was the survival of someone else. Sometimes it scared her, what she would do to keep him safe.
And it was though a fire had been lit inside each of them, one that could never die. It still burns bright in her, even though she does everything she can to put it out.
Gradually, the passion melted into calm. She felt a sense of security around him; he was her safe place. The hot summer of their love faded like leaves into a peaceful autumn. They became content to just be in one another's company. Content to fall asleep with only their hands entwined, each comforted by the sound of the other breathing. Back then, she thought that just the fact that he existed was more than enough. But now she knows better. Because the two of them were living a perfect fairytale, and even though they always live happily ever after, fairy stories have to end sometime.
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She pauses outside the door, gripping the glossy photographs in her hand so tightly that they wrinkle. She takes a slow breath, telling herself to stay strong.
But memories haunt her mind. Guatemala. A sudden explosion. Bleeding, screaming, dying.
Her hand trembles and she curls it into a tight fist.
I can go through this again, just like I did yesterday and the day before that and all two hundred and seventy three days before that, she lies to herself. And she opens the door.
He's sitting in the same chair by the same bed in the same room of the rehabilitation center as always, the same vacant look erasing any trace of emotion from his face.
"Hey, you," she greets him softly, crossing the room. His eyes meet hers but there is nothing in them. No sign of recognition or even confusion. She swallows and holds out a photograph for him to see.
"Look, Clint. It's us. Remember this day?"
His eyes drift down to stare at it, a memory, frozen in an instant for eternity. A memory of them on a vacation in New Zealand, just for fun, the only one they ever had. A memory by a rocky beach, of him kissing her cheek, of her tossing back her windswept red hair and laughing.
He looks at it for a minute before his eyes unfocus and he's back to staring through walls.
Her heart sinks. It's only her memory now. Not his. Not theirs. She tosses the photograph, along with the rest, into a trashcan and collapses onto the bed, feeling useless.
She considers crying and begging, or possibly yelling at him to wake up and remember, but she's already been through it all, tried everything.
She's endured the paradisiac calm melting to fear and panic, the running on a couple hours of sleep every few nights, waiting and waiting and waiting for him to wake up, sitting by his hospital bed every second of every day for a month and a half to hold his hand and tell him stories and whisper her heart in his ear, hoping and crying and praying for a miracle.
She's endured the fear melting into anger when he wakes up and doesn't remember her, doesn't remember the inside jokes or the secret languages or the late-night conversations or her nickname, doesn't even remember that he loved her, that they'd been the truest of love stories.
She's endured the anger melting into painful loneliness, late nights when she's had enough, she's broken down and begged him to stop this game, it isn't funny anymore, please come back because I miss you so much it hurts, then laying on the bed next to him and pulling his arm around her and putting hers around his neck, burying her face in his familiar shoulder to pretend everything is perfect for a while, that they're safe and happy and best friends who are in love.
She's endured the pain melting into nostalgia when they move him to a rehab center and she decorates his room like their apartment, filling it with things that might help him remember, like pictures of his dog, a funny card he made her once when she was sick, his favorite bow and a quiver of trick arrows; she's endured visiting him every day, all but living in that tiny room, to sit on the bed or on the chair or lay on the floor and tell him about what they will do together when he gets better, how they will get a new apartment, and work with S.H.I.E.L.D. again as an inseparable, unbeatable team and travel the world; and she's endured telling him about their adventures together, everything they've been through, the bad times and the good times, and she's laughed until the tears of mirth morphed into tears of longing, while Clint sat in his chair and stared out the window, right next to her but so far away.
She's endured just about all she can take.
"You can trust me, Nat," he had told her. "You know that, right? I'm never going to hurt you."
She, of all people, should have seen right through that lie. And she comes to a decision, finally.
She stirs and pushes into a sitting position, her legs hanging off the edge of the bed.
"Clint?" she takes his hand in hers, and it's still wiry and muscular, still fits perfectly with hers. "Clint, I have something to tell you." She takes the side of his face and turns his head towards her, and his eyes find hers. She swallows hard, every inch of her missing him. "I'm leaving," she whispers, her voice hoarse. "I can't do this forever. There's a new S.H.I.E.L.D. base in Russia that's in need of agents with experience, so I'm moving back there. It'll be good for me, I think." She pauses to steady her voice, and Clint's brow shifts into a nearly imperceptible frown.
"You'll be perfectly fine without me, and I'll be alright too, if I give it enough time." She pauses again, words on the tip of her tongue, wanting to tell him that she loves him, that she gave him a piece of her heart she knows she'll never get back, that she has a piece of his that she'll never be able to let go of, that though she knows he'll never be the same again, she'll never give up hoping. And she longs to thank him for everything they had and for nothing at all, because even though he made her happier than anyone else could, he'd ended up hurting her more than anyone else could. Despite all of her training, she will never be able to perfect the skill of truly moving on. But maybe someday, her regret at leaving him will melt into something she can live with.
But she's on the verge of crying again, her hands are shaking, there's a lump in her throat that she can't swallow down, and she wants to get this over with. So instead, she gives his hand a quick squeeze.
"Goodbye, Clint," she whispers, and after a second of hesitation, she leans forward and brushes her lips past his one last time. Then she stands to leave, and before she has time to think about it and change her mind, she snatches the picture of New Zealand from the trash and stuffs it deep in her pockets before she leaves.
He was her everything. And when she lost him, she lost everything. And she hated him once, when they first met. Maybe it would have been wise of her to keep it that way, to never fall in love with him. But if she had to live it all over again, she wouldn't change a thing.