It was fantastic hearing about everyone's pennames! Little changes are in progress with this chapter as my beloved JRbarton points out my little mistakes. Lol. Always happens when I decide to change things after ICanHear sends my edited pieces back!

Thank you To::

Pinkypop22, brandibuckeye, Liliththestormgoddess, Wonderwomanbatmanfan, 8839, penguincrazy, PenguinApocalypse, .ROX, amy. .9, KatHarvey, Aini NuFire, 5mairer, WestonFollower, TortoisetheStoryteller, Batghost, trouble5

SarahJaneDoctor: I love doctor who!

BookLuv: Whoo! Dyslexia friends

tlyxor1: how amazing it is that you, being blind, are up and fanfic-ing it up! That's fantastic! and much the same as you, Clint fascinates me for that same reason.

ELOSHAZZY: i bet you are one great ma!

Shannon K: I LOVE that you are a special ed teacher! my sister had a tutor most of her young life and though reading, especially technical reading where words literally look like they've been made up by watching letters float around in alphabet soup, is still a struggle for her. Unfortunately, Tony doesn't know that:) but i don't mind your soap box at all! Get on it and shout:)!

Niom Lamboise: I wasn't quite sure where this was all going to end up, but now that I just finished it, i think you will like it.

discordchick: i think that is awesome for a penname! had no idea! i was a little xena too when i was younger. LOL.

IWriteSinsOrTragedies bahahahahaha! I LOVEd that!

JRBarton :returns kiss. feel better!

Khaito: Love the name! I am so sorry to hear you lost a pet to the food outbreak. I did as well. Her name was Suki, an adorable, blind, tortoise shell who belonged to my mother. she was only a couple months old. such a terrible thing to happen.

Avenge Me

Chapter 13

Once out of Tony's eyesight, Clint Barton had a little less guilt about pressing a hand against his back and limping toward his bedroom door. The layers of new flesh felt odd, like plastic, against the rest of him. He wasn't sure what his internal organs felt about the patch job. If he suddenly sprung a leak, spilling bowel contents beneath the soft shell layers of fresh muscle and skin, there wasn't much he could do about it. Dr. Cho appeared hopeful, so that was something.

The room door popped open in front of him and he dragged himself inside. Every step closer to his bathroom became a battle of will power. The minute his eyes caught sight of the bed, he almost diverted all plans and tumbled right into its covers. The light in the bathroom brought him to a pause. He wondered for a moment whether Tony had sneaked in, setting the place up for him in some strange show of camaraderie. He'd done it before, though not very often.

A head covered in loose, dark hair appeared around the corner of the doorway. He blinked against the backlight behind the face to find that his wife was standing there, staring at him. She breathed a sigh of relief.

"Oh Clint, it's just you!" She exclaimed, stepping into the light a little more. She had a towel tucked up beneath her armpits and it bulged open over her belly. The cotton fabric rectangle was short, made for a man more than a woman. It ended a little below her hips.

Clint indicated the bathroom with a small gesture. "Can I guess? Stark suggested you put your feet up?"

She smiled. "Soak my feet, actually, I think is what he said. Did he say you needed one too?"

"I think we've been set up." Clint eyed the bed again in consideration. He continued into the room, headed to the foot of his bed and sat down. The two old, weathered boots were tied on with double knots which deserved a great deal of attention in order to get off. On a mission back when his SHIELD career first started, the left one had gotten lost. Since that time he determined to let it never happen again. He looked down at the laces and wondered whether or not he had enough strength to pull them off.

"You coming in?" Laura invited from the doorway. He didn't hear the water running. She must have filled the tub for herself. An invitation to "preserve water" as his wife called it was no opportunity to let slide by. They didn't often have these moments afforded to them. The ones where they could settle down into a bath together like they had years ago before the kids came along.

"I'm beat," he admitted. It wasn't a refusal, but more of a warning of what he was, and was not capable of.

"Clint, you're my husband and if I wanted to do that, after I just spent a week in a dungeon, and eight months pregnant too, then you got another thing coming," she didn't raise her voice, or tease him. She sounded much the same as he did. Tired, emotionless, checked out.

Clint nodded a little. He leaned down and worked his boot laces, leaving them in a trip-worthy pile at the end of the bed. A disgruntled look usually waited him from Laura's face when he did that, but today she let it go. Crossing the room to her, he shed the remainder of his clothes. The socks, thick in sweat, melted snow, and somehow blood found themselves inside out beside a chair. His pants came free, and balled up along the wall. The left pant leg inverted while the right just crinkled up like a slinky. Laura moved away from the door. She dropped the towel onto the toilet tank and placed her hand into the water, scattered the bubbles she'd formed with copious donations from his shampoo bottle.

"Need a hand?" Clint asked.

"Nope," she replied, using his soap rack as a handhold to swing her leg up and over the side of the tub. Her stomach extending over her feet made placement a precarious business but practice, and experience, had her settled against one of the jets. There were three concavities pressed into the porcelain, which was more like a spa then an ordinary tub. Her back slide down the silk-like stone, lettering her naked body sink beneath the bubbles until nothing remained to see but her head and neck.

"I should have asked if you needed help," she said, looking over at him.

Clint had made it to the wash basin and hesitated in front of his mirror. He was wearing the University of Iowa boxers she'd bought him as a joke last Christmas. The little yellow outlines of the mascot decorated the fabric with the word "Hawkeyes" hovering between them. His fingers pulled beneath his eyes, dislodging something he found there. He yawned, letting his forehead press against the slowly condensing mirror.

"Clint?"

He almost forgot he wasn't alone. Clint hooked his fingers into the waistband of his boxers and shed them beside the wash basin, kicking them out of the walkway with his foot. He didn't say much, just slipped into the water with her. The three concavities in the porcelain made it so they faced each other, rather than allowed them to sit side by side. He rested his head on the rim of it, let the eyelids fall, and released a sigh.

"What happened to your knee?" Laura asked. Beneath the water, her hand found him, gentle caressing the joint.

"Thor," Clint answered, imagining the word to be understanding enough. He winced and she stopped.

"Silly thing for him to do," she said.

"He apologized."

"Your back doesn't look so good."

"Trust me, it feels worse."

The water shifted around him, sending ripples against his neck, high enough to touch the stubble along his chin. He remembered he had to shave. The girls in his life objected to kisses laced in prickles. He opened his eyes and watched Laura pick up the bottle of his shampoo. He wasn't sure what was written on the bottle. It didn't really matter. A shopping trip with Banner one day found him purchasing a few essentials and he simply picked up whatever the doctor had.

Laura upended the bottle, dropping a dollop into her hand. The water rippled as she shifted closer to him, spinning awkwardly in the strangely shaped tub. Clint watched, too exhausted to do much else, as she came at him.

"Dunk down," she said.

He obeyed, disappearing beneath the water for a moment to let the water soak into his hair. It felt good to stay under, letting the fluid just swirl all over him, washing away the horrible week he'd endured. When he decided to reemerge, she stood ready with the soap and went after the grime in his hair as if he was just one other child she'd raised from birth. Her fingers felt good across his skull, scrubbing the days away. He knew that while being on the receiving end was perfectly glorious, he'd eventually have to find the energy to repeat the favor.

Before he'd ever considered being a married man, if someone told him he'd think it was normal to wash his wife's hair, he would have called the person a liar. Even saying it, admitting to it out loud, sounded strange and almost wrong. But Clint didn't care. Her hair was always more complicated than his. She liked certain shampoos, added a conditioner afterward and she'd stack the locks up at the top of her head for almost five minutes to let the conditioner set. Sometimes she'd do it twice, but usually that was after one of their babies had decorated her in something particularly gruesome. Lila in particular was a colicky baby. Clint couldn't remember how many times he'd changed his shirt in a day from his little girl emptying a belly full of curdled milk all over him. There was something to be said about the smell of baby vomit, it was unlike any other scent in the world.

He dunked down again, letting the soap in his hair add to the opacity in the water. They'd need to shower off after, unless they wanted to stay slightly soapy forever.

"There's dirt under your chin."

"Blood probably," Clint said, pulling up some water in a cup of his hand and rubbing the spot. He tried to sit up a little and made a grab for the shampoo bottle.

"Don't bother," Laura said. She turned her body around, letting her back face him. She managed to squeeze around the outward curve of the tub until they were sitting together, back to chest. Clint brought his arm up, at first to just give her space, but then he draped it around her waist and let his hand press over her belly. He imagined feeling a foot extending beneath his palm, shoving him away, but there was nothing. Nathaniel had been an easy goer, unlike Cooper who acted like every day was another chance to practice his future MMA skills.

"I'm not good enough to wash you're hair?" Clint asked.

"I think, later, I'll borrow some shampoo from Miss Potts. Yours smells like feet."

His chest rumbled a little with his laugh, closing his eyes again and letting his head fall back.

"Is this hurting you?" she asked.

"I wouldn't care if it did," he admitted.

"We shouldn't stay away too long. Thor looked a little spent. We should let them have something special tonight. Maybe we'll—" Laura paused when she felt his breathing change. Hand resting on her belly, his head drifting slightly to the left, Clint had fallen fast asleep. She thought about that for a while and consider if she wanted to wake him up again. He would have preferred that, she knew.

These last few days had been so painful for them both. Being apart never drove a wedge between them. Clint had his world, she supported that wholeheartedly and in return she had her career, and he loved that about her. Juggling the kids was difficult for them at first. Clint's job could steal him away on a moment's notice and, though it became easier when she began to work at home, she couldn't stay cooped up forever. Her parents stepped in and gave them some assistance here and there. They never approved of her choice in a husband, which occasionally caused tension between them. For Clint it was just as well. He had enough trouble trying to protect his immediate family to consider extending that to in laws.

Something on the edge of his sink caught her eye. Angling her body in a sort of pretzel, Laura managed to twist just enough, and extend her fingers to just the right angle, and snatch the object. It was Clint's razor, and all things being equal, it was hers now too.

There existed a particular freedom to shaving ones legs after the hair had grown long enough to matt down. Like removing a second skin, emerging from a winter hibernation, or simply helping one to feel pretty and feminine again. Laura at one time invested in routine wax appointments to manage her particular overstimulated growth. Over time, and after their fifth year married, she became decidedly less fastidious. Clint's razor occasionally found its way into her hand when her own decided to go AWOL. He'd stopped complaining about it after he moved into the Tower on a semi-permanent basis and supplied a back-up for himself there.

She attempted to find his soap, despite that thus far her search proved unsuccessful. Men were far less predictable in certain bathroom habits than their female counterparts and he couldn't be considered an exception to that rule. Finding none, she returned to his shampoo bottle. It really did smell terrible and in some ways she planned to expel as much of the stuff as possible, if only to aid her excuse in buying him a new brand.

Desperate times, desperate measures, Laura said to herself, cocking one leg up on the ledge across from her. Just how much she could accomplish with the four and a half-pound bowling ball rolling inside of her, she couldn't say. But half a leg was better than nothing at all. At the very least, her underarm weeds were getting wacked.

As she worked to unearth her femininity, a smile danced along her lips at the memory of the last encounter between Clint and her parents. Thanksgiving didn't go that well for many families, and their own was no exclusion. Clint provided the turkey. Lila had named it Admiral Bart for the past year they'd owned him. They picked out an entire nest of them in anticipation of the holiday, and still owned the other three, though they'd ceased to be cooped up and lived off the land now. Lila was too attached to them to contemplate their eventual demise. Admiral Bart, though, had chased the little girl on more occasions then anyone could count. She held little remorse for his loss.

The fact that they had raised, slaughtered, plucked, stuffed, and attempted to serve her parents the family meal was akin to introducing Clint Barton as Hannibal Lecter himself. Her parents were appalled. Cooper thought it was rather funny to watch the peculiar color they turned. The turkey tasted good, whether they decided to eat any of it or not. Around dinner time, the plates were set, the bird adorning the center of the family table and they had just begun to add the side dishes when Natasha Romanov arrived. Clint's long time partner brought along desert, a store bought pecan pie as the one she attempted to create from scratch ended up as a bowl of pecan pie soup instead. At the introduction of a second famous assassin, a female no less, one who, in fact, knew Barton a great deal longer than Laura herself had, her parents were very near the point of leaving entirely. They stayed for the sake of not upsetting the grandkids. And, after all, Laura thought they shouldn't have been surprised. Clint didn't have a best man at his wedding. He had Natasha, and that was just fine.

The water began to cool around them. The peaks of soap towers deflated, leaving only the cloudy water behind. She wasn't sure just how much time had passed.

"Mm," Clint groaned, shifting beneath her. She leaned away from him and spun around to let him find his own way awake again.

His confused eyes blinked open at her. "Laura?" he asked.

"For a minute I thought you'd be asleep the rest of the night," she replied.

He straightened. One hand cruised upward out of the water and rubbed his face.

"I fell asleep?"

"For a little while. The water's getting cold. Do you want me to warm it up again? Or should we shower off?"

He groaned a second time. Decisions were too much to ask when he felt this exhausted. Then again, they weren't the only ones in the Tower. Surely the others could only tolerate so much free babysitting before a picket line started.

"Kid's gotta eat," he said, almost dejectedly.

"Us too. I don't know about you, Mr. Hawkeye, but this lady with a baby is hungry."

Clint noticed his razor. "That your way of telling me I can't keep the beard?"

"Nope, that is my way of shedding my cavewoman roots for you. I couldn't reach the backs, though."

He snorted, a short jerking noise. She was something else all right.

Laura looked around her for a good hand hold and decided it was high time to get moving again. This little break Tony Stark gave them was wholly enjoyed. She'd never felt as refreshed after an ordeal as trying as the one she'd endured. Simply laying against his chest became the most welcome thing she could have imagined for herself. Clint made her feel safe. It was another thing she loved about him, if she had the inclination to keep a list.

"Hang on, I'll help you." Clint pushed himself up with his hands, and stood, letting the soapy water drip off of him. He pulled up the plug on the drain to let the water rush out. Helping a pregnant woman stand in a tub could be a precarious effort, but Clint had the good fortune of experience with much smaller bathroom spaces. This held little real skill in the scheme of things.

He adjusted the water from the shower head to something reasonably warm and pulled the shower curtain closed around them. A bar of fresh ivory soap stuck out on a ledge above his head and Clint fished it down for them. He still owed her for the free shampoo, so naturally he let her wash up first.

"I knew you had a bar hiding someplace, I was just too short to see it. I want you to put some ice on your back when we get out. And let me know if you start urinating blood. You were right about that gunshot being close to your kidney. If you start to feel numb anywhere, pins and needles, anything like that you have to tell me," Laura went on in her authoritative way. The speech held a similar tone that she might have used for her children.

"Yes, ma'am." Clint told her dutifully, helping the soap bubbles to travel down her back. He didn't intend to call her ma'am, it simply slipped out without him thinking about it. A few women he knew, Pepper and Hill included, hated the term with an overwhelming feminist passion. He'd nearly found himself banished from the living room for daring to refer to Pepper by the term. Laura had laughed when he told her. She even admitted that at one time it bothered her too. Long ago, his wife gave up on stopping him, though. She knew the background he had in life. A horrible home at first, a mother and father killed one dark night when his father drove drunk. The boys' home followed, then a series of fosters that never stuck. Circus, delinquency, army, and then SHIELD. Clint had dealt with an overwhelming authority all his life. If the biggest fault he left that life with was calling women "ma'am" then Laura could handle it without flustering her feathers.

"What do you want to eat?"

He shrugged, massaging her shoulders clean. "Be honest, I'm not hungry. Not sure when I was last hungry. Must have been a few days."

She nodded, unconcerned. Stress did that too him. She turned to chocolate and BBQ potato chips when times got hard. Clint ate nothing.

"I think pizza will be on the menu. Hand tossed, hot, delivered right to my couch, with peperoni and olives. I might even go crazy and add onions to that."

He snickered, letting his head fall into the nape of her neck. "You get whatever you want. But if I kiss Nathaniel for the first time and taste anchovies, you're to blame."

Her laugh matched his. Before switching positions, Clint decided to finish the barbering job on the back of her legs that Laura had started herself. If the woman sacrificed her body to carry his baby, the least he could do was help along her personal habits. That meant rubbing her feet when they swelled up at night, driving to the QT convenience store for FishFood ice cream at three in the morning, and cleaning the toilet for her when her morning sickness hit its peak. There wasn't any particular sexual connotation to his act, despite the fact that pregnant or not, he loved the sight of her bare body beside his. Tony might be dissapointed.

After a time, the two switched positions. Laura got a good look at his bruises. They were harsh and red in the center, depressed where the skin had torn. A purple bull's eye surrounded them both.

"Actually, when we get out, I'm going to put some wraps on these," she said.

"Whatever you want."

"Then maybe we'll get crazy and do some skydiving with Lila."

Clint was leaning on the side of the shower, lazily letting the water cascaded from the crown of his head and down the length of him. "Yuh-huh," he agreed.

Laura thought about laughing at him, but her husband probably wouldn't understand the joke. He needed some sleep. He wouldn't let himself have any, either, until they were with the kids again.

"Finish up," she said to his back, finding the seam for the shower curtain so she might pull it open. "I'm going to find you some clothes."

"I'll be right there," he said, trying to be more vigorous in getting the soap off. "I brought you some things from home. They're in the duffle bag, by my dresser."

Laura managed to step out, picked up her towel again, and padded toward his bedroom, leaving small, watery footprints along the way. The bag sat on the floor where he said and she picked it up to set it on the bed. Overturning the contents, she sorted through what he'd chosen for her. There were two shirts, one from her pre-pregnancy days that most certainly wouldn't do and the other while not a favorite, would suffice. She was happy he'd chosen a pair of her old scrub pants. She'd kept half a dozen of them, for those few times she did go in and work hands on at the local clinic in town. She often wore the pants around the house out of convenience and comfort. Clint called them her socially acceptable pajamas. He had found two pairs of her underwear. One she'd bought, and almost never wore. The style had somehow shifted between that one and the stack of other's she'd owned into something akin to a thong. She wasn't quite sure how it happened. They'd all been purchased the same day, were the same brand and size, but that was the reality of women's underclothes. They occasionally had a mind of their own. She searched the empty bag again, lifted it up and rooted around on the bed, but discovered rather quickly one item in particular had not been brought for her.

Clint stood in the doorway with the last remaining towel tied around his waist. The dark bags that started under his eyes two days before were nearly the color of Cooper's injury now.

Laura looked up at him. "Thank you for taking the time to pick these up for me."

The right side of his mouth turned up a little. "After we found Lila I realized I had to grab some things for her to come her in. After that I just walked around and threw a bunch of things into a bag. The house is in shambles."

She nodded, attempting to soften the blow she had waiting for him. "I know. I watched them do it. Nick tried to convince them the thing, the toolbox, wasn't there, but they didn't believe him. I think we lost all our good china too. But, Hawkeye dear, you did happen to miss one little thing."

He perked up a little.

Laura indicated her chest with both hands. "These, especially pregnant mommy ones, don't exactly hold themselves up."

Clint looked a little mortified. His face became slightly grey and he cast a wide gaze over the bed covers. "I didn't get any bras? Aw, hon, I wasn't—"

She dismissed him with a hand, "It's really not a big deal. I have the one I was wearing before. I'm just not putting that thing back on until it gets bleached or something." She strode over to him, clutching her remaining clothes to her chest. Her kiss landed on the bottom of his smooth chin. "You did good. And you even lost the scraggly beard."

Still kicking himself, Clint sighed. "Yeah, better now than tomorrow. I'm sleeping in."

"Your things are on the bed. I'll be out in a sec. Decide what movie you're willing to watch with the kids. I'll talk to Mr. Stark about getting some food here. Then it is you, me, and one nice, long, good night sleep."

"Have I ever told you I love your sweet nothings?" Clint asked, retrieving the items she'd placed out for him. Her laugh followed her back into the bathroom.

so, i know this chapter was a little bit slower, but really i think it is my favorite one. i just love this realism between them.

Next time: Pizza, movie, and Hawkeye's future with, or without, the team

ANNOUNCEMENT! for those of you following me on facebook, it is true. i've written the epilogue for this book at last! so technically, its done. and i will try to post as I have time. :)