A/N: Yes, this is my second one-shot with Natasha and Clint. I am not sorry. I think they're dynamic and you can read this as slash or just a really close partnership.
Disclaimer: I do not own Marvel.
Inspired by the song Gone Gone Gone by Phillip Phillips.
If Ever She Leaves
What held him there was not love, and he closed his eyes as she closed hers. Together they braved the dark. Their silhouettes would have made one perfect shape if there had been light. It was only them and the dust.
A thousand words flitted through her mind, making up for his silence. His hand curved around her uninjured shoulder, resting there as if to say he wouldn't leave.
He did not want to leave.
"Clint. The roof is unstable." A strand of sweat and blood soaked hair stuck to her lip, and he felt it move against his other hand, the one on her cheek. Thumb pushing it aside, Clint spoke softly into Natasha's ear: "More reason for me to stay, I think."
"No one's coming for us." Her voice was equally as soft, unsure. Anymore noise would collapse the remaining rubble blocking out the sunlight.
Clint held in a sigh. That was the problem with undercover missions in other countries, ones where not even SHIELD knew all the info. Going in blind meant the possibility of not coming back out.
The damaged architecture of the medieval cathedral on the oceanic cliff they'd been sent to meet with their contacts had been rotted. One misplaced bomb and the two agents found themselves under sheets of broken stained glass and old marble statues, carved indifferent faces cracked down the middles.
The spiraled, elegant beams of the inner dome toppled down on them, in Clint's attempt to push Natasha away from a falling pillar he miscalculated in a rush of adrenaline and panic. Instead of her entire body, only her legs were pinned by an angelic statue, the wings having broken off to form around her, protecting her from pieces of slivered beams and glass. Clint had crawled over to her under the arc of the angel's wings to see its body holding down hers. His efforts had been in vain, instead of a quick death, she was bleeding out slowly.
She was right. No one was coming for them. As if the building wouldn't allow Clint to try and find help it gave a groaning creak and he heard more fall behind them.
"There's no extraction." Saying it made it easier, laid out what wasn't an option.
Taking mental stock of her injuries, she swore in Russian. "My femur is broken. If you move me and take pressure off my femoral artery I'll bleed out Clint."
"Not moving you." Proving it, he leant back and sat cross legged, removing bow and quiver strapped to his back.
The two assholes that set off the bomb had killed themselves in the process- amateurs. Not only was his partner in serious trouble, but they'd lost valuable information with the contacts' deaths.
The wind was howling through, whistling between the cracks in the walls. Sun filtered in through half panes of glass still in intact behind them, red and gold scriptures and words made the inside of the cathedral resemble a snow globe.
Clint carefully removed a medium sized piece of wall still nailed to a beam, tossing it out into the dust to let some light in. The gold made Natasha's hair shine, the cut on her lip sticking out as the only sign she was hurt. Other than smudges of dirt on her neck and suit collar, she looked as poised as the angel pinning her down, as feathery as the marble wings on either side meeting overtop in a perfect point.
Clint stared at her; she stared at the cracked mosaic floor tiles. His lips were moving before he had even conjured the idea to speak his mind. "You're the other half of this thing. Can't really leave you here."
He was graced with a rare smile. "'This thing'?"
"Yeah, our thing. Assassin duo, ninja twin thing…"
"You're hanging around Stark too much."
"His rafters are nice." Wasn't a viable defence, but it kept the smile on her face. A smile easy to vanish when she focused on the pain of having both legs crushed.
"Clint," That was it, he knew. His worst nightmares were always about this moment. "We both knew going into this that… this is what happens." They'd known, so as not to build up hope for the future, keeping everything in the present. This is what happens to SHIELD agents.
Clint preferred not remembering Nat half-crushed like paper, sweating and trying to hold her weight up on her two arms, pelvis being crushed into the floor, blood on her cheek.
Moving forward slowly, making his movements known to her by keeping eye contact- even if it was Black Widow, the adrenaline rush would make anyone jumpy- Clint positioned himself sitting as close to her as possible and took her upper arms in his grip.
He laid her across his lap so that she no longer had to support herself. He would do it. It was his only chance of helping her.
This was the Natasha he'd remember, her head turned to look at him awkward as it was but he could see her eyes reflected in muted light. Smell the coppery blood now seeping from under the statue.
She'd lose consciousness before anything else.
"Thank you." She'd sighed as soon as the pressure was lifted from her sore arms.
His wry laugh filled the bleak silence around them, when had the wind stopped howling? "Back at you." For giving me my mind back after Loki, for putting up with my shit. For everything.
Natasha always knew what Clint said between the lines. "I don't have a choice when it comes to you," She said it as if it was a personal offence, being human with emotions and everything else that came with living- it came with him. He had a way of getting her to see there was more than just her job, her past. Some nights Natasha hated that about him, that core bit of his personality that brought out her best while obscuring his worst.
His laugh lightened, reduced to just a man having a conversation with his best friend. "No one can make the Black Widow do anything against her will."
"I'm more than the Black Widow, Clint."
Sometimes I wish you weren't.
He wanted her to always be the strong one, it's how he saw her when they first met in that back alley, his bow still string with an arrow, her eyes wide with anticipatory fear and a little adrenaline as she made the connection of he's here to kill me.
So Natasha threw a knife at him, one she'd produced from her coat sleeve. It had glinted silver in the winter moonlight and he saw it coming. He asked if they could just talk, she swore at him and tried running into the slushy streets.
She'd melted a bit since then, had more room for error and emotion, being exposed to his.
"What will you put in the report?" Some qualities he couldn't take from Natasha- her want to take sentiment out of a situation to make it more bearable.
There was only one other time Clint had been with an agent when they'd died on a mission. It was faster, more gruesome, a few bullets to her clavicle that had broken splinters of bone and severed her carotid. Her eyes were the only reaction he saw, she couldn't scream or writhe or do much except whisper over the gunshots still concussing the air. Don't let SHIELD tell my mom.
Clint agreed but it was too late, she was gone and he was running without looking back.
He told her family before filing a proper mission report.
Natasha Romanoff didn't have family outside of the Avengers. And it went unspoken Clint would tell them before even Fury why he was walking into the Tower without her.
He could just imagine coming home to them huddled around the television watching the news, or a movie and Steve would be the first to ask how things went.
"I'll say…" Something they expect. You did your best. While trying to diffuse the bomb it went off. You died quickly. "I'll say the usual. Agent Romanoff died in the field with honours."
Her voice was fading, and Clint kept his eyes on the beams of light coming in through the opening in the rubble, or the pock-marked marble of the angel statue. "Nice touch…" She closed her eyes against the too bright light, the sun having moved to slant it directly in her face. "…Not everyone sticks to the rules."
"Except us, right?"
He expected anything except her shallow breath hardly moving in hot wisps against the forearm he had draped across the back of her shoulder. She had rooted him by speaking, her words and the movement of lips against skin.
"Nat?" If he allowed anything above a mutter into his voice he'd lose it.
She had fainted from blood loss, the small rivers of blood in the cracks of the tile now hitting his boot, spilling out of the small rivets between tiles to completely cover them.
Without preamble or a warning gasp, Natasha stopped breathing. It was over in less than a second.
Oppressing blunt silence hung off the scrape of his boots against the tile, smearing the blood he didn't even notice the hem of his pants bathed in.
Gently, he took the edge of the angel wings overtop half her body and flipped the statue, throwing it to the side. Once the dust settled and cleared, he tried not looking at her mangled legs.
He kept her smooth, peaceful face in his mind's eye and carried her out of the church.
We never made any promises we couldn't keep. What held him there hadn't been love. She never promised not to go first. It was not guilt. I never promised I wouldn't regret that.
What had held Clint there was duty and loyalty that persisted even when she was gone.
A/N: I tried not making this sappy, and I apologize if they're OOC.
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