AN UGH THIS IS SO LATE APOLOGIES APOLOGIES. This chapter was kind of a nightmare to write, because everything was really slow to come every time I began writing, and the time I finally hit my stride, I would have to stop soon after :P Plus the last scene was just weird and awkward and that had to be rehashed a few times before I was ready to put it up.

Also, I'm really glad someone mentioned this in a review, but they said that first chapter Clint didn't feel like the same as third chapter Clint. That is true, and I'm really irked with myself that I haven't said this in an earlier chapter, but I'm trying to write each chapter using the lense of the different stages of the grief cycle. It might be overkill, as this is the first time I've ever tried writing a story like this, but I've been trying very hard to make it all flow believably. If the changes were too distracting, I apologize, but thank you for choosing to stick with me :)

depression (après mois)

The phone call came late, sometime around three. Clint gasped awake, scanning the room, grabbing his gun and springing out of bed in about two seconds. It took him a moment to realize that the sound wasn't someone trying to kill him, but his phone.

He picked it up, heart still screaming as he mumbled out a "Hello?"

There had been no caller's ID, but that didn't really bother him. This was his private line, no one but SHIELD agents had it.

"Hello, is this Clint Barton?"

"…Yes," he said, a lump starting to form in his throat. The voice was clinical, soft and tired. Not an agent's voice, but also not an attacker's. If anything, he would have hazarded a guess towards…

"Yes, this is Amelia Claussen, calling from the Intensive Care Unit in Lamp Rock Hospital…"

Clint closed his eyes, feeling sick. The woman, Amelia, paused. She sounded unsure, like she was used to people reacting poorly when she called them late at night, but not when they were just silent.

"Uhm, sir, are you there?"

"Yes," he repeated, voice sounding so, so ragged. Things had been good. Days had passed, over a week, in which time he had been seeing Natasha continually. But the day before, they had gone for another walk, and she had requested that they finish it early. Clint hadn't thought much of it then, but now it was so telling that he wanted to puke.

He sat down on the bed, swallowing and struggling to get his voice back.

"What-what happened? Natasha, is she—?"

"She's fine, or, well, she is doing better."

"What happened?"

"We received a call from her about two hours ago, informing us that she had vomited blood, and then collapsed. We went right over, took her to the hospital. She's all sorted out now, but you were the only person listed as her contact."

"Really?" he asked, surprised. They, people like him and Natasha, didn't really keep records like other people. The chance that Natasha had filled out all of the paperwork they had given her the first time she'd been in the hospital was slim to none.

"Well, no. She told us your number and name when we asked if there was anyone we needed to alert."

"I see," he said, running a hand over his face and through his hair. On the phone Amelia was giving what he guessed was her typical spiel. He listened for a few seconds, or rather, let her talk until he got his voice back.

"When can I see her?" he asked, voice just as soft and emotionless as hers had been. Inside, though, he could feel himself tipping back, back, back, testing the powers of balance he had learned when he was just a kid running around in the circus. Eventually gravity would win, and he would give way and fall. There would be no net to catch him, to prevent him from falling into a chasm he might never be able to climb out of.

The thought made him think of that first day in the hospital, when he'd first learned that Natasha was sick. He had gone in, unsure of everything, and yet she had thrown her arms around him like he was her anchor, he was her saving grace, like he could stand firm as everything else went to shit. It had seemed laughable then, but now it was just cruel and sickening.

"Family members and partners are welcome twenty-four hours a day, Mister Barton," Amelia continued, oblivious to the fact that on the other side of the phone, Clint was breaking down. That was probably why they explained all of this over the phone, he thought. The hospital's grunt workers didn't have to deal with the messy aspect of people that way.

"As long as the patient agrees, of course. You can come in any time, so long as Miss Romanoff doesn't say otherwise."

"Al-alright, thank you."

There was a pause, and then the professional tone fell out of the woman's voice.

"Don't worry, sir, I'm sure we'll work something out. We make sure to investigate all possibilities for recovery or medical aid at Lamp Rock, to ensure as much time for our patients to have with their loved ones as possible."

"She doesn't want it," he said absently. He didn't even know why he'd said it, but then, why not? It was three in the morning, Natasha was in the ICU, and he was on the phone with someone he'd never met and probably never would. The debate between him and Natasha being 'normal people' came back to him, causing a horribly wry smile to spread his lips. Perhaps he had been right, they weren't normal, because the situation he was in was the most normal thing fathomable and he was hardly able to keep breathing.

"Pardon me?"

"She doesn't want it," he said a bit louder, leaning back where he sat. "She doesn't want to go through chemo or look at the different possibilities to get her a little bit longer. She just wants it to end where it ends."

"…Well, you two can talk about that with one of our doctors, so you know all of the options, so just…keep that in mind."

"Alright," he said, wanting to give a dark little laugh at the worry and slight panic in her voice. No matter what new and inventive methods there were, Natasha would still refuse. She saw no point in living on borrowed time when she couldn't 'do any good' with it.

"Okay. If you have any more questions, feel free to call back and ask at any time."

"Yeah, I'll…I'll be sure to do that. Thanks," he grunted, then turned off the phone.

He put his head in his hands, wishing that he was somewhere else, anywhere else, anyone else. At the moment, Clint would trade all of the incredibly dangerous and stressful trips into the Middle East to derail covert extremist groups, just to pull him out of this situation, just to save Natasha.

She was in the ICU. She had puked blood.

The words echoed around in his head vaguely, to the point where they didn't even make sense anymore. After what felt like an eternity, Clint hauled himself up off the bed and stumbled around to find some clothes. Exhaustion was crashing back over him as he tugged on a pair of jeans, a shirt, and a jacket, and he felt that strange disconnect when everything was going wrong in a mission and he only had a few minutes to get the hell out of Dodge.

He vaguely thought about eating, but the thought repelled him and he decided to just stick with putting on his shoes.

In a few moments, he was out on the road, yellow lights looking just as tired as he was as they showed the dingy street he lived on. Clint stumbled to the subway, wishing he could stop thinking as he took a seat. He closed his eyes and listened to the dull roar, the soulless murmuring of the recorded woman warning them to stay back from the doors as they opened and closed.

The train let him out a few blocks from the hospital, but he supposed that was alright. It at least gave him a bit more time to get his head straight.

A terrifying numbness was settling over him, entirely different in stock when compared to the numb he had felt when he first found out about Natasha. This was empty, this was dead, this was him drowning in everything he couldn't control. Borderline apathy mixed with sorrow, the worst of combinations.

The woman at the front desk wore the typical uniform of exhaustion, but she had a bit more life to her as she doodled elaborately on a piece of notebook paper. She looked up as he walked over, giving a vague smile.

"Hello?"

"Uh, yeah, hi. I'm here to see Natasha Romanoff. She was admitted to the Intensive Care Unit earlier today?" He spoke with his eyes closed, because he couldn't stand to see her look of pity or worry, or worse yet, dismissal. People that worked in the medical field and assassins weren't too different, he found himself thinking, perhaps for the dozenth time since this whole thing started. There always came a point when seeing someone bleeding, hearing about someone dying, it just didn't bother them anymore. It was becoming a number, one that was easily lost track of.

"Romanoff…yeah, yeah, okay. Uhm, actually, only family members are allowed to see ICU patients."

"The woman that called, she said I could come to see her whenever." Clint rubbed his forehead, just wanting to get this over with.

"Only if you're her immediate family or partner."

"Yeah, that's it, I'm her partner," he mumbled, thinking that sounded exactly like he was some nut that walked in off the street with a half assed plan and a gun in his pocket. Hopefully the fact that he was dead on his feet and it wasn't even three in the morning would excuse it.

"Clint Barton, Natasha told them I was her contact."

The woman frowned, thumbing through a series of papers. Finally she found a bright pink sticky note with something scrawled on it, scanning it quickly.

"That does sound familiar…Clint Barton, you said?" she asked, and he nodded.

"Alright, then. You can go see her."

Clint headed off after she gave him a quick set of directions, his feet moving more because he knew that was what was supposed to happen, rather than him directing them to do so. He passed a couple of doctors on the way, but mostly the halls were white, too brightly lit and completely sterile of both germs and people.

When Clint reached her door, he took a breath before walking in. Natasha seemed to be dozing, but opened her eyes as he stepped in. When she saw him open his mouth to speak, he saw she pulled out a pair of earbuds.

"Hey there," he said, voice low and ragged.

"Hi," she said, smile tired and scared. "Guess you heard."

"That you vomited blood and collapsed? Yeah, that was…that was awful."

"I'm sorry," she said, but he could only think about how that was the most bizarre thing she could have said. Why was she apologizing because her entire body was withering away into nothing? Why did she feel guilty for simply trying to survive?

"How're you…how're you now?" Clint asked, voice about to break. She shrugged, looking out the window.

"Better."

Just hearing her voice made him sad. Natasha was so resigned, so defeated. Before it had been fine, but now, after having reality slammed into her face, it was breaking her down.

"You just gonna stand there?" she asked, half a tired laugh in her voice, because there they were again, stumbling through the steps from before, from this nightmare's beginning when he didn't know just how much it hurt to watch someone slowly, slowly die. She had cried then, had fallen to pieces in his hands when there was a disconnect and he could safely look into her eyes without wanting to fall to his knees and start screaming.

I'm not meant for this, he found himself thinking, a continuous stream as the seconds ticked by, I'm not meant to deal with this kind of problem. I shoot bows, I kill or don't kill people. I don't stand by as some other force, something I have no control over shoves its way through.

Like before, he didn't have an answer to her question. Well, he did, and that was he sure as hell didn't want to go wading through the sea of sorrow that stood between her and him. But he had to, that was his job. To soak himself in all of the undesirable tasks the world had to give him until his very hair was dripping with it.

The thought alone was exhausting, and he wanted to crawl all the way back to his apartment because he couldn't face something so futile.

It was only a few steps between him and Natasha's hospital bed, he had crossed high wires ten times as long back in the circus, back on missions where entire countries were on the line. This little gap was so small, but oh, was itdifficult.

"What're you—what're you listening to?" he asked, and suddenly, every minute he had lost from that night's sleep caught up to him and made his voice rougher than sandpaper.

"Nothing," she said, hand settling gently over her smart phone, which the ear buds were plugged into. Clint managed a cheeky grin as he stepped over to her and picked it up, examining the screen.

It was some song with a vague yet incredibly odd name, but the interesting thing was that it was by Regina Spektor.

Natasha had made it clear that she had renounced practically all ties to her Russian heritage, with the one exception of a particular brand of vodka, because Natasha was serious about getting shit faced, fast. That, and Regina Spektor. The singer was one of Natasha's guilty pleasures, something that Clint was pretty sure he only knew about. Every time he caught her listening to the Russian artist, she would look incredibly embarrassed, but a little defiant as well, like she was challenging him on this one thing she was taking for herself, daring him to try and stop her.

Personally, Clint had a feeling that the preference for the woman's music came more out of sentimental bonds than anything. Both had grown up and then been forced to leave Russia for America due to political reasons. That combined with the surreal and often tragic content of the song meant Natasha was instantly drawn to it.

Now she looked up at him as if to say 'What? Don't I deserve to openly enjoy something now, when I'm dying?', and he just shrugged, handing the player back to her.

"Is it good?" he asked, and she shrugged back.

"It sounds like home," Natasha admitted, making his throat stop up. She would be needing a lot of reminders now, he thought, when everything was falling to hell.

Clint glanced around, then sat in the chair beside her bed.

"Glad to hear it," he sighed, resting his cheek on his fist.

They were silent in the relative darkness for a while, until finally her voice drifted to his ear.

"Are you going to stay?"

"Of course," he grunted, too tired to wonder why she would even have to ask.

"I just…if things get worse, I don't—I don't want to be alone. Not again."

Clint lifted his face from his hand, watching her. The light from her window showed that she was looking down at her phone, which was now dark. The edge of Natasha's face was still visible, though, and it looked scared. He swallowed, feeling a little bit worse at seeing even more of her walls fall down, seeing more of her soul laid out for all to see.

Wordlessly he stood up and gestured for her to move over. Natasha looked at him but edged closer to the window. He sat beside her once there was enough room, settled, then pulled out her closest ear bud and put it in his own ear. Clint closed his eyes as the light vocals washed over him, and felt Natasha rest her head on her shoulder.

"You sure that's allowed?" she asked, voice soft.

"By this point, who cares?" he mumbled, leaning his head back in preparation for drifting off to sleep.

Things were starting to blur for Clint. Sometimes he would spend the night with Natasha, and sometimes he would head home for a shitty night's sleep, tossing and turning and eventually staying up to watch shows that had originally aired in the mid 90s before getting about two hour's worth of sleep, getting a shower, getting dressed, then heading over to the hospital.

It was the weirdest thing for him, because every time he looked into the mirror, he got a bit worse, while Natasha looked the same. It was like he was the one dying, having everything inside of him slowly sucked away, not her.

He passed the time wandering the hospital, talking to her, watching her while she dozed, talking to the nurses. They all seemed to be touched by the fact that he was spending most of his time with her, probably figuring that he was using up all of his vacation time to sit in the tight quarters of a hospital that was more or less a tactical nightmare. While there were plenty of weapons lying about, there were also oodles and oodles of potential witnesses and victims, plus far too many cameras than he liked. But then, Clint reminded himself, Natasha wasn't here because she had been maimed in some mission, where plenty of enemies might want to swoop in and kill her on her gurney. She was there because she was sick, and would never get better.

That was certainly not one of the better thoughts he had during that time.

Few people came to see her, which wasn't really surprising. No one else in SHIELD other than Phil would have really cared about her enough to grab a card and a few awkward minutes worth of small talk to let her know he was thinking about her, which only left the Avengers. Thor wasn't about to jet down from Asgard as apparently his rainbow highway had been utterly destroyed (by him, no less. The irony of the whole thing hadn't managed to escape Clint), and Bruce was too anxious to really offer any comfort.

Clint wasn't sure if it was because of the ever present worry of being violently captured by the Hulkbusters or because Bruce knew he couldn't do anything, but it killed him inside. Either way, Natasha appreciated the visit, because Bruce was one of the few people that would hand over their lives gladly for another person. He felt absolutely terrible about the whole thing, that was clear in his melancholy dark eyes, but he was also upset that he couldn't do anything, despite his genius and vast understanding of how the body worked. He could turn himself into a giant superhuman green monster, frequently at will, even, but he couldn't figure out how to cure cancer, of any form, and that was probably worse than being a pariah for him, at least.

Steve had dropped by as well, gentle and awkward in his condolences, but Clint was pretty sure that his visit just depressed everyone, as they all kept thinking about how this was the first of his friends that he had actually been able to visit and talk with before they died in their hospital beds. Still, people was people and he even managed to get Natasha to smile a few times from the stories of his old war buddies, and once, she even laughed.

And then there was Tony.

As ever, he proved to be the anomaly of the situation. After sitting in on both Bruce and Steve's first two visit, Clint had made a point of not really being in the room with Natasha or her visitors whenever they came. He would stay long enough to not be considered rude (like that mattered anymore), then make an excuse and duck into the hall, go to the bathroom, anything, and then linger by the door to watch and listen, removing the guilt and worry and tedious and frustrating emotions that cluttered the air around them (because 'he saw better at a distance'. More like he couldn't think worth a damn when he kept feeling every five seconds.) When Tony had visited, however, Clint had walked right into him.

He had gone for a walk around the hospital, because he couldn't breathe with all of that terror and silence building up between him and Natasha. Clint was just coming back from a long walk that wound through three different levels, wishing he could bury himself alive when he looked up and realized he was three feet away from Tony, on his way out of Natasha's room.

"Katniss, good to see you," Tony said, not even batting an eye. Pepper poked her head around his side, confused for a second, then lighting up with recognition and then darkening with sadness.

"Clint, hey, how are you doing?" she asked, voice somehow simultaneously chipper and sympathetic.

"I—uhm, fine?" he said, blinking and trying to prepare himself for the verbal and mental onslaught that was conversation with Tony Stark. Tony raised an eyebrow and leaned in slightly, rocking back and forth like a six year old on his extremely expensive sneakers, while Pepper somehow managed to radiate concern and sympathy without so much as shifting her feet.

"You…uhm, enjoy talking to Tasha?" he asked after a moment, clearing his throat. The words were out of place and uncomfortable, dropping in the air and just staying, because that wasn't the thing you asked the visitor of a cancer patient.

"It was nice. She seemed…more open, in a way. Like she wasn't straining to keep up the perfect façade," Pepper said. Clint nodded, eyes on the space between their shoes, wanting to say something, but finding the words clogging up in his lungs. As Pepper continued, Clint had the intense feeling that they had also come to see him, to see how he was holding up, if he would manage to leave this hospital with even a fragment of his old self left intact.

"Yeah, I guess crappy hospital food and not having real clothes kind of takes it out of a person," he said, shifting because he didn't really want to be there when Tony stopped analyzing and sprang into action.

"She seemed to perk up when we walked in, though."

"Because I always put a smile on her face," Tony said, rolling his eyes.

"Well, I guess anyone at all's a plus at this point," Clint said, wondering if he could pointedly start edging away from the couple with their perfect suits and combed hair and eyes that said they had at least a bit of control over their lives, so unlike him. He, who had bags under his eyes that seemed to be carved out of purple alabaster, somehow both dark and unhealthy and emanating a sickly pallor, and clothes that he was pretty sure he had already worn at least once this week, and the bandage around his fingers from where he had lashed out at his apartment and of course managed to jam a finger. They were just visitors to this nightmare that he could hardly keep his head above.

Tony nodded, and Clint could just see the words mounting and shoving at each other, trying to break loose and let a witty and sarcastic and painful display of his genius loose, but he was keeping it all in, just for Clint, because anything more and Clint might just pass out right there. Or maybe because in hand to hand combat Tony knew that Clint could stomp his ass and wasn't ready to revisit what being maimed felt like. But hey, Clint liked to keep things positive.

"How have you been holding up?" Pepper finally asked, cutting through what Clint realized had been a more than awkward silence. He still found himself pausing, though, thinking that this was the first damn time that anyone had asked, and he really had no idea how to respond.

Clint shrugged, glancing around, feeling like he had been shoved under a spot light. There was no one else in the hall with them, no nurses, no doctors, no janitors to tame Pepper and Tony's words, keep them from saying something that may just make him break apart. He took a breath, telling himself to grow a pair and answer the damn question.

"Uhm, okay, I guess. At first it didn't really click, and then I was pissed and wasted a good long time dicking around with my emotions, and now…I dunno," he sighed, running a hand through his hair.

"The grieving cycle. You're mourning her before she's even dead," Tony said, and Clint shot him a look.

"Thanks, Tin Man, I hadn't figured that one out yet."

Tony clenched his teeth, and Clint was suddenly aware of Pepper moving closer, as if to get between the two incase they were going to come to blows.

"What I meant," Tony began, "was that you shouldn't be…upset before you have to. Try enjoying…what time you have left. Because you're going to end up missing her no matter what, and it's better to be left with something kind of likeable instead of shit."

Clint stared at Tony, forced himself to blink, to pull away from what he was feeling, to close all of that mess off and simply accept what he was being told.

"I…thank you," he said, trying to make himself mean it. "I, uh, just need to get to the point where I don't feel like I'm deteriorating before I try doing the tough stuff."

"Well…you don't have to do it by yourself," Pepper said, putting a hand on his arm. Clint nodded and pressed his hand against his brow as if shielding his eyes from the sun. He bit back the words demanding who else did he have other than Natasha?, because despite all that one big family bullshit that was tossed around, the Avengers were a pack of dogs that were riled up by Fury and sent in a desired direction, and most of them were dumb enough to think that it was their own decision to do so. They weren't soldiers, they weren't assassins, they were the all out over kill, sent in when heavy damage was unavoidable and a big stick policy was the best move.

But he couldn't say that. Tony had already done him the favor of not snapping out the cutting words that were all primed in his head because Clint was miserable enough already, at the least he could do the same.

"Thanks," he squeezed out, the word sad and flat. "Thanks, Pepper, I'll…I'll try to remember that."

"Okay, well, take care of yourself," she said, voice so soft and understanding as she walked away.

"Yeah. We don't need you dropping dead of stress and depression. One funeral is enough," Tony said, putting his hand on Clint's shoulder as he followed after Pepper.