Doubt

"All I'm sayin'—little weird," Tony told him as he strutted across the room.

Clint leaped to his feet from the tan suede couch and chased after him. The man was only a few feet away, but as soon as he crossed the glass threshold to the balcony, the archer could progress no further. He pounded his fist on the glass and demanded, "What do you mean? What's weird?!"

Tony turned to face him, a pitying smirk splayed across his carefree features. "What's the matter, Legolas? Can't see what's right in front of you?" he teased before the faceplate of his armor crashed down and obscured his expression from view.

"What?! What's right in front of me?!" Clint screamed through the glass, but it was no use. Tony leaped off the building and disappeared.

Clint released a frustrated shout and smashed his fist into the glass with all his strength. The blow didn't so much as make a crack. He pushed himself away and turned around again, but the familiar room had disappeared. Nothing but darkness loomed ahead, save for a black and white checked floor that stretched as far as his eye could see. The tiles were massive, and it was only when he stepped onto a gargantuan white square that he realized he was not alone. Tall black and white figures stood over him, intricately carved living statues that bent and twisted and moved of their own accord. Each one seemed the size of Stark Tower, but he could see the ugly snarls contorting their disfigured faces in sharp relief, even from the floor.

Clint tried to back away, to get off the board of the huge, terrifying chess game, but the solid darkness at his back pushed him forward each time he attempted to recoil. He glanced around frantically in every direction, searching for a safe path to take, but everywhere there towered one of those horrible, grimacing pieces.

A soft, warm light began to pulse faintly in the distance, in the center of the field of breathing stone warriors. Clint's eyes were drawn to it, and he found that he was desperate to know what it was, to see if perhaps it had come to rescue him from these things that would surely kill him if he went anywhere near them. After the space of a heartbeat that lasted nearly an hour, one of the hideous, massive pawns slid away from its square and offered him a glimpse of his savior.

It was Natasha. She wore a dress that looked as though it were made of liquid gold, flowing easily with her movements. She twirled and bent, each movement willowy, graceful, although whatever music she danced to, Clint could not hear it. He watched her for only a moment, and then she spun on tiptoe and began to dance away from him. The warm light moved with her, further into the darkness, and suddenly he was possessed with a powerful urge to run.

He took off after her, as quickly as his legs could carry him across the massive battlefield. Always she remained ahead of him, lighting the way safely through the dark, but she was never fully out of reach. They seemed to fly over the board, the black and white tiles blurring into a steady sea of grey beneath their feet, but it felt like an eternity before she finally spun to face him again.

Clint wasn't prepared for the sudden stop and smacked right into her. They fell over the edge of the board and into the darkness, and his heart leaped up into his throat. He was sure they would fall forever, but barely a moment later they landed on something soft and...bouncy. Their bed.

Natasha giggled beneath him, the tinkling, musical sound echoing all around the borderless room. Her copper curls were thrown all about her, shining and shimmering in the golden glow of her dress. A playful light danced in her eyes, and one of her hands lifted to glide through Clint's hair. The move pulled at the corners of his lips, and without thinking he bowed his head to claim hers in a long kiss.

No sooner had his eyes closed, had their lips met than he found himself strapped down into what felt like an electric chair, the rough wood scratching his skin. His wrists, ankles and head were all restrained, leather straps biting into his flesh each time he struggled. Nothing held his eyes open, but he could not blink no matter how hard he tried.

Suddenly a harsh echo sounded through the black space and a single spotlight exploded, dazzling him briefly before his eyes were able to focus on the scene. Natasha lay sprawled across their bed, much the same as she had been only a moment ago, her glowing dress flowing like molten gold over the edges of the mattress. Clint's heart began to race and he started to wonder whether maybe she was dead before movement at the edge of the light caught his eye. A dark figure crawled onto the bed, and if it looked any less human, the archer may have thought it an animal for the predatory way it moved toward his girlfriend's inert body.

He watched on, opening his mouth to call out to Natasha, to warn her, but his throat would produce no sound. The figure continued to move up the bed until it reached the apparently unconscious woman, and then a white hand, pale as a corpse, slipped out from beneath the fold of the cloak it wore. It slithered along Natasha's leg, over her hip and then wrapped around the back of her waist before it lifted her from the bed. Her head and arms dangled limply from her upraised torso, her bare neck and chest exposed above the low sweetheart line of the dress.

The figure's other hand appeared from within the darkness and reached over Natasha. Its long fingers slid up her forehead and disappeared into her red curls. The hand moved through her hair and then slid along her neck, over her collarbone, and then, almost painfully slowly, came to a stop in the center of her chest.

As soon as it reached its destination, the dark cloak it wore dissolved into a black mist, spiraling up and away into the shadows. Clint tried to struggle, his limbs shaking violently against his bonds, but he couldn't break them or shift the chair an inch. Loki turned his head toward him, that horrible, awful, grin, so full of malice and chaos, stretched across his mouth. "I see why you love her so, Agent Barton," he said, his low voice a deadly whisper through the darkness. "She has heart."

The word slipped into the shadows and Natasha rose up of her own accord, her upper body lifting as though it were pulled by invisible strings. One of her hands fell on Loki's shoulder and the other moved to slide over the side of his face, brushing his black hair gently backward. She leaned forward, closer to him, infinitely closer until Clint felt sure she would kiss him, and then she tilted her head to look back at him.

He tried to scream again, tried to break free of his restraints as Natasha's beautiful, tinkling giggles echoed around the room. He tried to call out to her, to curse Loki, to look in any other direction in the world. He begged for the light to disappear, for the darkness to overwhelm him once again, but it was no use. Her unblinking crystal blue eyes gleamed mercilessly through the black expanse that separated them, bright and dead beneath the lone spotlight.

Clint's eyes snapped open and his body gave a powerful shudder. Faded impressions of tangled white limbs writhed across the surface of his glassy orbs. Cold sweat clung to his forehead, temples and neck, and the open window sent a chill across his washed out skin. He panted for several long moments, darkness spilling into and out of his lungs until the comforting blanket of reality dropped over him once more.

Just a dream, Barton.

He thought he'd shaken that miserable excuse for a god from his sleep for good months ago.

Giving a heavy, tired grunt, Clint rolled his head on his pillow and reached for Natasha next to him. His fingertips moved to brush her shoulder, just to reassure him of her presence, but they swept through solid, empty shadows.

"N'tasha?" the archer muttered. He propped himself up on his elbow and felt across the mattress beside him. It was vacant save for his girlfriend's pillow laid vertically beneath the comforter.

Clint's heart began kicking in his chest. It was probably nothing; Natasha had had trouble sleeping ever since he'd known her, and it wasn't uncommon for him to wake up in the middle of the night and find her out in the living room. Usually it was the nightmares, but occasionally she suffered from insomnia as well. These things he knew, but he hauled himself out of bed to check just the same.

Memory guided him around the bed and to the door, his hand striking the frame and feeling down for the knob before he gave it a deft turn. The portal swung outward, creaking gently on its hinges. Ghosts of the streetlights outside lingered over the living room furniture. Everything was tinted blue, and the shadows threw the room into cutting relief. Clint's burning senses devoured the scene: the faded color; the muffled, incomplete silence; the faint scent of vanilla, cinnamon, and some lighter aroma he couldn't place.

The unbreakable stillness of a place utterly devoid of life.

"Natasha?" he called tentatively as he turned to look across the apartment. The secondhand light wasn't strong enough to reach the other room. His eyes were drawn instead to the faint, green illumination of the oven clock.

3:26 a.m.

His call was met with more oppressive silence. His brows furrowed in concern and he rounded the corner to check the bathroom as well but the door was already open.

He was alone.

Clint's thoughts deserted his mind as he turned and walked swiftly back into the bedroom. The light from the living room revealed the path to the bedside table, and as soon as he reached it his hands shot out for his phone. He unplugged it and called Natasha, holding his breath as the phone rang once, twice, six times before it rolled to voicemail. His features contorted briefly before he hung up and tossed the thing on the bed, thought better of it, and then reached out for it once more.

Storm clouds gathered in his silver eyes as he concentrated on the phone. His thumb traced the edge of the screen as he stared at the flat, black surface, willing it to light up, vibrate, somehow communicate to Natasha that she needed to call him back. Something was wrong, he could feel it. He knew she was grounded. Until she was taken off that stupid, pointless Loki assignment, Fury wouldn't send her anywhere else, give her anything else to do. She couldn't be on a mission, and it wasn't like her to just leave in the middle of the night without saying anything. Something was wrong. He could feel it in his bones, a light hum grinding his nerves raw and shaking his heart in his chest.

More than a minute passed before a quiet, helpless growl left the archer's throat. His hand contracted around the phone and gave it a futile squeeze before he snatched a t-shirt from the floor and threw it over his head. He moved back into the living room, switched on the lamp on the end table, and lowered himself onto the edge of the couch.

The ghosts vanished in the low light, leaving the archer and his thoughts alone save for the neglected, wine-soaked copy of Crime and Punishment left out on the coffee table. A siren sounded a few blocks away, echoed by several more just seconds later. The air conditioner went quiet.

Clint turned the phone over in his hands and waited.

The tumbler turned over in the lock, the sound pealing like thunder through the archer's ears. He'd been waiting for nearly an hour, contemplating what he would say when Natasha finally returned, but now that she had he found he was unable to make himself stand to look at her. For so long worry had sealed his thoughts away, but by the time the front door swung inward and footsteps whispered across the threshold, doubt had let them all loose again.

"All I'm sayin'—little weird."

"Clint? What are you doing up?"

Natasha's low, surprised voice curled around him, rosy thorns twisting and pricking his insides. He listened as she closed the door behind her, threw her keys into the bowl on the small table in the entryway. Her shoes came off one by one, little thuds sounding as she kicked them into the wall. A black patch permanently darkened the drywall above the molding because of that habit, but she never stopped doing it.

"Hey, what's going on?" Natasha asked when he failed to respond. He heard her cross the hardwood and come to stand behind the couch.

It was only then, when he could feel her warmth behind him but not the touch of a hand on his shoulder, fingertips in his short, blonde hair, that Clint hauled himself to his feet. He revolved slowly on the spot, phone still in one hand, jaw set and brows knit together. His eyes alighted on hers briefly before they swept over her, her gently curled hair gathered over one shoulder, the edge of a familiar red lace bra peeking over the hem of her black tank top, the outline of a cell phone in the front pocket of her tight jeans.

"I called you. You didn't pick up," he told her, shaking the phone in his hand.

Natasha's fingertips automatically pressed hers through the fabric of her pocket. "Must have left it on silent," she said, confusion flickering across her soft features.

Clint didn't respond. She never left her phone on silent...unless she was working.

"Clint—you're being weird. What's going on with you?" Natasha pushed, her delicate brows twitching, suspicion swirling in her pale eyes.

"Where were you, Nat?" he asked, the words tumbling out of his lips before he could stop them. His doubts were chomping at the bit, straining against the reins barely remaining in his grip.

Natasha didn't hesitate before she answered, "Up on the roof. I couldn't sleep, didn't wanna wake you."

Clint ground his teeth. "Are you sure that's where you were?"

"Yeah, I generally know where I am most of the time," she said. She sounded defensive, and sure enough there went her arms, crossing over her chest. It was her way of fortifying herself. That he knew after years of watching her do it under so many different circumstances.

"Why'd you go up on the roof? You never do that," Clint pushed. He expected her to get angry with him any minute. He knew she didn't like to be questioned like this, but he needed her to convince him that she was telling the truth.

Something in his voice must have given him away because Natasha' expression softened almost immediately. She relaxed and the suspicion flew from her eyes. His own followed her as she walked around the couch, as her arms uncrossed and she reached out to him. Her palms connected with his chest and moved up, resting between his neck and shoulders. "Clint," she said quietly, a careful undercurrent of concern in her tone, "what's the matter with you? You know I wouldn't lie to you."

"No, I know you do lie. That's why I'm asking." Clint kept his tone as hard as he could, but he couldn't control the cracks that marbled through the veiled anger. It was all he could do to keep his hands at his sides, to refrain from touching Natasha, from letting her too close. If he did that, he knew he would let her convince him of anything she wanted to.

Unfortunately, she knew that, too. "Okay, yes, I lie to you," she admitted gently. "There are a lot of things I don't want you, or anybody, to know about me, so when you ask, I make something up. Something that's...easier to swallow, for both of us. That's why I let you believe that ballerina story. I always wanted to believe it, too." She inched closer, her round, jade eyes piercing his. "I went up to the roof tonight because I had...I had a dream about Alexi. I didn't want to talk about it, I just—I just needed some space," she explained. She swallowed. Her lips trembled, almost imperceptibly.

Natasha leaned a little closer. Her scent, warm cinnamon and some lighter, strangely familiar aroma he couldn't place, filled Clint's lungs.

He took the bait. "You said that name once the other day, in your sleep. Who is it?" Clint asked carefully.

Natasha cleared her throat. "He was my husband. He died...a long time ago."

Clint's breath left him in a rush and he broke her hypnotic, melancholy gaze. Something flickered in his chest, something tiny and desperate to take form. After a long moment he looked back at her, silver seas raging behind his tired eyes. "I'm sorry, Nat," he managed.

"Don't be. Like I said, it was a long time ago," she replied softly. The corners of her lips curved upward, just barely.

Before he could stop them, Clint's hands lifted and rested over her hips. Natasha closed the short distance between them. She leaned into him, and the feel of her fitting against him so perfectly almost made his doubts seem silly, insignificant compared with what he knew he felt for her. He wanted to speak, to question her further, to shake the lingering shadows from his mind, but as her arms wrapped around his neck, he simply couldn't force the words out.

The beautiful, deadly creature in his grasp stood on tiptoe to plant a gentle kiss on his chin. "I'm sorry I worried you," she said, her smile widening.

He shook his head, the corner of his own lips twitching briefly. "It's fine, I just thought—I just wondered where you went," he told her a bit lamely. He tried to play off the slip of the tongue as best he could, shrugging casually and wrapping his arms all the way around her, but Natasha's subtlety had always far outstripped his own. He could maintain a cover with some time to prepare, but in his off hours, with the woman he loved, lying didn't come naturally to him.

"What did you think?" Natasha was quick to ask anyway. One of her eyebrows quirked and her pale eyes were suddenly full of questions.

Clint's jaw slackened when she caught him, but not a moment went by before he shrugged again and gave a somewhat awkward half-smile. "I dunno, I thought—I thought maybe you went to see Loki again," he chuckled. The laugh sounded forced, even to him. It was strange; just a few minutes ago this was the only thing he wanted to talk about, but now bringing it up seemed like a huge mistake.

Natasha looked damn put off by the mention of the god, but she didn't pull away from him as she told him, "Definitely not. We've already established a rapport so there's no reason for me to keep making late night visits as long as he keeps talking."

That tiny flicker of hope in Clint's chest strengthened at her words. It returned warmth to his heart once again and pushed a light, relieved sigh from his lungs. That was exactly what he'd needed to hear. "Good. Let's keep it that way," he said with a small, genuine smile. She rolled her eyes a little, probably reflecting on the arguments they'd had about this very subject, but she grinned along with him anyway.

"C'mon, let's go back to bed," she murmured. One of her hands wrapped around the back of his neck and pulled him down for a brief kiss. She leaned away quickly and turned her face to stifle a yawn in his shoulder before she added, "I'm tired."

"Alright, go on," he laughed, dropping his arms from around her. Natasha made for the bedroom while he bent to shut off the light before he followed after her. He stood in the threshold while she changed into her pajamas, unable to stop his eyes from caressing her creamy skin as her clothes fell away. They'd been together for four years already, and still she was just as beautiful to him as the day she first wandered into his crosshairs.

When Natasha was set for bed, Clint switched off the light and made his way over to his side. He climbed in beside her, a grin stretching over his mouth when she sidled up to him and laid her head on his chest. It had been a while since she'd been this affectionate; romance was never really her style. He chose not to look a gift horse in the mouth at that moment and instead slipped an arm around her, his hand gliding gently back and forth over the curve of her waist. "'Night, Nat," he said quietly before he planted a kiss on her forehead.

"'Night, Clint," she answered, giving his chest a couple gentle pats.

The archer's eyes slipped closed, his mind finally at ease once again. Just paranoid, he thought to himself as he felt his muscles begin to relax. He listened to Natasha's light breathing, felt her heart beating against his side. All memory of the dream that had jarred him awake not so long ago fled into the darkness. After a few minutes, he felt sleep's outstretched fingers begin to brush past him.

Natasha's phone chirped from her bedside table.