So, final edits are still in progress, but i just couldn't wait to post this (since I managed to get an afternoon off!)
CourtneyAdorkable: Holy cow, what a ride you are in for! I hope you enjoy every story as you go along:) And here is a new chapter for you!
Guest: I agree, it's hard to be Clint without memories. It's who he is. As for being trapped in Alfheimr...we shall see!
quiet-raindrop: Tony is the BEST. I just can't even handle how awesome he and Clint are.
5mairer: Nope, this story will go on forever. :) Actually, there are 59 chapters and an epilogue, so not much time left!
shila1378: HI shila! Unfortunately the only part of your review I got was: "it's very seldom i post any reviews, but few that i did wabecause if the" and that's all :( I hope you have enjoyed it though!
Batghost: Love shall conquer all!
amy. .9: True, Asgardian healing may help, as we've seen in the past with the Flaming Falls, however, we have also seen those waters not work. They neither cured Clint's cancer, or his brain tumor, and did nothing for his eyes. So we know the healing can occasionally be selective. Will they try it anyway? Who is to know!
khaitosfren: my head likes to do it's own insane thing and sometimes I feel like I'm only along for the ride. How it's created all these connections and kept them all straight, I cannot say!
discordchick: "Tasha" gosh that just gets me every time. Like he remembers, but he can't. It just kills me!
Chapter 57
"I can get up. Give me a chance."
"Fine. You fall over, then I'm just going to sit here and laugh at you."
"Some friend you are."
"I'm not your friend."
Clint scooted to the edge of his bed and set his feet on the floor. He sent a dark glare toward Tony who leaned with his arms crossed on the wall. "Oh yeah, brother. I forgot that."
"Now you're getting it." Tony swept a hand around them. "Are you going to get up already or am I going to kick you out of bed?"
"Hey, wounded guy here. I'm the one who got my arm ripped off." Clint replied. He grabbed the table with is good arm, braced on the bed with his bad one and with a little heave-ho he was on his feet. Tony's hands came apart and he reached forward when Clint seemed like he might fall. Clint kept standing without Tony's help.
"Nice. Now we get to work on walking," Tony said.
"One thing at a time!" Clint complained, considering taking a step forward.
"It's not that hard. One foot in front of the other."
"Don't pressure me! Isn't that what everyone keeps saying?"
"Oh, stop being a baby." Tony walked over and pulled Clint's arm over his shoulder. He did his best not to touch the man's waist, where the hole remained open. "One foot. Pick one."
Clint picked the right one. He wobbled, Tony supported him, and they accomplished their first step together. "Am I allowed to pick the right one again?" Clint asked.
Tony snickered. "Sure. Why, does that one feel better?"
"The left one hurts," Clint admitted. He took another step forward, leaned on Tony, and brought his left up to his right. When his feet came together, he pushed the right forward again and repeated the process. They made a full circle around the room and Clint reached the bed again. He untangled himself from Tony and sank down in the comforter. "That wasn't half bad!" Clint exclaimed.
"You would win a race with Ben." Tony agreed.
"Who's Ben?" Clint asked.
"A baby."
"You're so mean to me."
"You've given me a lot of grief, Clint, you sort of deserve it," Tony replied with a smile. "I'm hungry. You need something?"
Clint settled back into the pillows and tried to think. The small walk took everything out of him. He was hungry. "Yeah, something. Whatever you find."
"One fish liver stew with side of bat guano coming up." Tony replied. He leveled a finger in Thor's direction who sat by the rock wall reading. "Keep an eye on this guy. I think he's becoming a flight risk."
"Oh, get out!" Clint laughed, threatening to throw a spoon at him. Tony scampered off and shut the door. The archer looked over at Thor. "Are you always this quiet?"
The Asgardian shrugged. "Usually I find the opposite to be truth. However, I have a talent with a friend's heir which has left me for once in a state of my own exhaustion. I think he waits until all have slept to decide to fuss on principle."
"Maybe he's afraid of the dark," Clint suggested.
"Who is to know?" Thor replied.
Clint glanced at the table by the Asgardian's hand. A clear pitcher of glass sat on it beside a tall, slender cup. He reached for it and without bothering to raise his eyes from his book, Thor met him half way. Clint considered the contents.
"Magic water?"
"Something similar, yes."
"Trying to make me big and strong?"
"My attempt is to make you well in the best way I believe I can." He turned to the next page in his book. It was mostly a distraction. He liked having a chance to be near Barton without the archer feeling the need to fill their time with small talk. It was simply a mark of his discomfort with the Avengers and he didn't necessarily hold it against Clint.
There was a crash in the room beside them. Thor sat up with a start and Clint followed suit, his glass smashing along the floor. He meant to pull himself up again, but Thor stood instead and extended a hand to him.
"Has something happened?" Clint asked, his voice worried. Without thinking, his Asgardian bow appeared in his hand. Thor watched Clint's fingers tighten along its able bodied frame. Thor would never admit how much it hurt him to see the gift of his father go completely unrecognized for the prize it was. What had once been Clint's calling card across the realms, now Barton himself held no recollection of.
Thor smiled, trying to place him at ease. "I am sure it is of no concern. I will look into it." He disappeared into the next room. What he found was no cause for surprise. Tony had simply burst into a random food fight with Pepper and what might once have been their lunch had dwindled instead into ammunition. Thor couldn't completely avoid the fruit that went sailing toward his skull as he hid back toward Clint's room.
He opened the door a little wider and was swept aside instantly by the thundering paws of a massive canine. Laice, Rinon's dire wolf, had apparently arrived from Lakeheed and had stopped at nothing to troll around the caves for her favorite individuals. As the sister to Clint's own deceased dire wolf, Arrow, she often went out of her way to enjoy his attention.
Clint backed away on the bed spread, keeping himself at as great a distance as he could manage without tumbling straight to the floor. Not understanding his disquiet, Laice merely hopped her front paws onto his mattress and forced her large, black nose into his palm for a pet. Her tail swished like a helicopter rotor. Short yipping barks grumbled in her throat.
"Thor!" Clint exclaimed, unsure of whether he should accept the attention or fight it off. Half a second later, Fehreh burst into the room.
"Oh, Laice! Get off the man! What manners has my Rinon taught you?! Off!" Fehreh took the wolf about the scruff and used all her strength to pull her away. Thinking herself part of a game of chase, Laice burst off again, thundering passed Thor, and into the other halls beneath the mountains. An exhausted groan pulled from Fehreh's lips. She trudged out after the wolf.
"It seems that has not been the only disturbance," Thor said, laughing. "Our friend wolf has disrupted fair Pepper's meal which has landed upon Stark. He repays her with a trade of fruit pastry against her face. I believe a small war has broken out!" Thor propped the door open with his foot and leaned into the hall, describing the events. "It is nothing of the wars we have fought, nor the feast we have enjoyed at Odin's table." Thor paused, taking the brunt of some foreign object which slammed into his chest and deflected off again like a ping-pong ball.
"I say, Captain, I shall not take that Frost Giant attack lying down!" Thor exclaimed. A second peculiar, striped fruit went sailing through the corridor, smashing over Thor's chest, and the Asgardian glided out to attack. The sounds of laughter and a fresh, eighth-grade style food fight filtered through to Clint's private room.
Clint confessed, he heard none of it.
They were coming for him again. He could feel it like a cold chill starting beneath the pinpricks on his fingers and crawling straight up his nerves. Tiny shocks of pain triggering flashes of a life he couldn't remember and, dare say, tried everything to keep away from. He'd found the peculiar pin-point scars beneath his finger nails but had no notion of where they came from. The ring, fixed over his left finger, too had that peculiar air of familiarity. A name written beside his in the band. Natasha.
With a jolt of anxiety, adrenaline, and a seizure of pain the waking nightmares filtered through the confining boxes in his mind. Something had happened. Clint wasn't precisely sure himself what had changed, or why, or even how. In one moment he was simply avoiding the potential snap of a canine's jaws and the next he was gone, trapped in a world he could not explain and witnessing things that seemed much more like deja vu than the nightmares he was convinced they were.
In his mind, he was in a tunnel. A dark, dank place and he could hear the distant paddings along the floor, the sniffing, howling, growling of a pack coming closer. His heart rate sped. He struggled under the weight of that peculiar vision and whispered for rescue.
"Thor?" He called quietly, overcome in those thoughts, that trauma . . . the memories.
Clint experienced the images like a man watching a movie reel. In his mind his voice called again, screaming Thor's name as he tried to rouse the Asgardian from his sleep.
Thor never moved. He lay along the floor, silent as the dead until another light burst into the darkness. Clint watched a woman drift into his vision. She was beautiful, like an angel stooping over him.
The vision changed again.
The tension of the bow stretched in his hand when he placed the arrow along the string and let the shaft fly! Down, the massive jaws of the canine snapped. The head dipped, turned just enough for Clint to see the figure standing just behind the hairy monster's back.
A voice whispered in his ear.
"You have heart."
Gasping, fighting against it all, Clint reached for the nightstand and dragged whatever he found there to the floor. He called the Asgardian's name again but his voice was low, weak, and over the excitement next door he was sure they must not hear him.
The image changed.
No longer in the dark caves, he stood on the precipice of an ocean with Thor flanking him on one side and the Avengers on the other. Clint's face was obscured by the dark red cape and hood draped down over him. His bow caught the cascade of heaven's stars spread out above them while the bowstring pulled back. The arrow he fired arched high into the air, trailing a comet of fire along its tail until it landed in a small boat floating in the sea. At once he had the impression that the angelic woman, Frigga, was dead.
A wolf bounded by him, Clint felt the thump of paws beneath his feet. His face turned and caught sight of the familiar old face. A muzzle coated in silver and black, wide dark eyes leading up to rounded tipped ears which telescoped about.
I'm here, the wolf seemed to say without any words at all. I will never leave.
But the wolf did leave. Stooped in the snow of a lonely mountain side, Clint's heart split in half watching his beloved friend bleed to death. His hand's pressed into the seeping wounds, keeping him alive seconds longer and screaming in desperation for help to find him. Screaming to get away. Screaming . . .
"Thor!" Clint called again in his present mind, fighting those memories off. He didn't want them, he never wanted that pain, that sadness welling up in him again. Thor had not returned, though Clint was not alone.
Suddenly he perceived a man looming over the end of his bed. Clint had never seen him before. He had a smooth face, short, curled brown hair and a brilliant red cloak. Clint stared at that fabric for a while, remembering himself wearing it once when he ushered Frigga across the sea to her rest.
"Stop it," Clint whispered, forcing those memories back. "Stop them. I didn't want them. How could anyone want them?!"
The Sarhorn watched him very closely before deciding to speak. "You are fixated on the suddenness that has encumbered your life. The trauma you suffered forcing the goodness away as if it never once existed. You serve our role. Why do you now reject my help?"
"It hurts," Clint admitted, squeezing his eyes closed.
All the love he felt for that beautiful wolf, Arrow, suddenly collapsed. He watched the gunshot strike through the wolf's chest. Held his body while he died. But there was still more. A smile, leading up to beautiful, round eyes. A face followed the name. Marie. Reaching out to hold his child. He would give her the world. Then tears. Lying in bed unable to move, wracked in fever while Tony stood over him, unable to touch him, comfort him. Dead, the Avenger whispered. Both of them dead. To be incinerated. Virus. Spreading. No way to see them. Never again. Stolen and buried in unmarked graves with the millions of others.
"I don't want to know them. I don't want to remember them. Why would anyone want to have that pain back? I'm not him. I don't remember him. I don't want to be Clint anymore."
The Sarhorn took a few steps around the end of the bed, approaching with his hands clasped tightly behind his back. He leaned down a little toward Clint. "You were asked once to usher Frigga's life into its end. To release her to us and never once did you claim the strain too much to bear. As Arrow met his end, you saw that great expanse open to you and watched him climb the stars to his ancestors. We have given you this challenge, Clint Barton, because we knew you would not falter. You have done everything as you have been asked. You may take your paradise. It waits for you. Reach out for it."
Forward the memories sailed. Clint watched himself sitting on the floor of his archery range. His brain splitting headache bursting behind his eyes while the liqueur glass filled again. Cancer. He had cancer, he was blind, and he was going to die. Worse than any of those was Tony sitting on the floor beside him feeling so utterly useless. He would watch his friend die in his arms.
The stroke. Clint knew something was wrong, could feel a new, peculiar pain he couldn't quite understand. He had to get back to the mansion, finish setting his life in order before the cancer took him away for good. He contemplated suicide then. It would have been nothing to throw himself from the rooftop and end his life forever. Occasionally he wondered why anyone ever stopped him. Why Bruce Banner stopped him, if it meant living through what Clint had just survived.
"You were not saved from that disease, Clint Barton, to die. You were saved to live," the Sarhorn went on. He slid into the bed beside Clint's arm and looked gently down on the man.
"Why was this so hard?" Clint whispered, shaking his head. Somehow he knew the peculiar man across from him. He knew who he was, a Sarhorn, a Mal-Ahk, whatever the galaxy named the creatures. The ancient beings sending messages throughout the galaxy. Existing before the Celestials, before Galactus, before the Dark Elves and the Light Elves split Alfheimr in two. Seven ruling members still traveling the universe, and this was one of them, this one called himself Gabriel, more for flamboyance and because that was what Peter Quill once needed to hear. Clint used to say he'd never met a Sarhorn, but that wasn't exactly true. He'd met this one, once, on the eve of Frigga, Thor's mother's, funeral many years before.
To be accepted to an Asgardian funeral was something of a spectacle in itself. Murdered by the Dark Elf, Malakith, Frigga's funeral had been swift, rushed, and the realm required an archer to fire the flaming arrow into the ship sailing her body across the sea. Clint was the obvious choice, being so close to her in life. He had been in Hogun's room, preparing for the ceremony. Clint needed formal clothes, something he always borrowed from Hogun when he joined others in Asgard. As he stood contemplating the limited options in that warrior's closet, the Sarhorn came to him. Seeing the being in the reflection of a looking glass, Clint turned.
"If you are with Volstagg, then I don't care what he says. Revels are not happening tonight. Not in his care. If you come on Thor's behalf, I am almost done."
"I come on your behalf."
That was a strange answer, Clint considered at the time. He analyzed the man a little more. Determining him to be no one of Asgard, though that meant little. The funeral brought many people from all the Nine Realms. He didn't recognize any particular race in this one.
"Do we know each other?" Clint asked.
"Soon, you shall," the Sarhorn replied. He hooked a thumb into the clasp of his red cloak and carefully pulled it free. He held the fabric in his hands, and stretched it toward Barton.
"Very few may hold the distinction of which you now attempt. To release her soul to the stars, to its rest, is accomplished only by those with a blessing in our race. I have come to accept the task myself should the archer not be worthy and somehow I sense that you are. However, I do have a message for you."
Clint looked around the room, wondering if the man was serious or not. Finding no hidden Tony Stark or snickering Fandral, he decided to play this man's game. "All right, I'll buy. I have to wear the Superman cape. Now what?"
"Now you must accept."
Clint reached out to take the cloak, but the being retracted his hand, lifting his index finger in warning. "Do not take his charge lightly. You accept this, and you accept a great hardship. Your life has been fraught with misery, Clint Barton, but to take on that which I do, to become a defender of the very universal balance of which our eyes see, is a great task."
Clint smirked. "I just like the fancy duds, as Steve would say. I think Tony would approve of hot-rod red. It's kind of his color. He might even get jealous."
The Sarhorn gave him a critical look. Suddenly Clint had the impression they were not just talking about Frigga's funeral. He looked at the cloak again. It seemed this being, who knew him very well, was attempting to recruit him for something greater than the Avengers.
"What exactly are you asking me to do?" he said cautiously.
"Nothing. Only continue to be the Archer, the Champion of Midgard, Brother of Asgard, and all those other things you accomplish without ever giving it a second thought. One day, it will end, and you will know when that day comes. You may not see me again, but you will receive a message from us. For now, continue to fight." The corner of the being's mouth turned upward. "To join us means impossible tasks asked of you. Ones you can accomplish though you may think them beyond you." He held the cape out a final time and allowed Clint to take it. "You will never be asked to do more than we know you can take. Do not abandoned that reliance on your friends. It is the very breath of you."
Stepping back into the shadows from which he came, the Sarhorn disappeared, leaving Clint, and his new role, behind.
"You were never asked to do this knowing you would not surpass it. You must trust that guidance you have always been given. This was a test for your friends, your family, as much as for you. There was never a moment in this life we considered you might fail. But it is time to rest in that victory, Clint Barton. Stop fighting, stop disbelieving, and reliving only the trials. You can never be the man you once were, you cannot heal your entire life with the wave of a hand. Consequences occur with which we must live through. You must remember the good to become a new man again."
Clint tried to listen to that little voice in the back of his mind. The one that told him to stop running, stop trying to escape from everything, and face that final dive into oblivion. The consequences forgotten.
So he faced it. He let the memories come. He didn't fight them off, beat them back, or squeeze them into the little box he'd filled in his mind. They loosed on him all at once, leaving him desperate and breathless. The good mixed with the nightmares and suddenly he experienced the moment that never occurred when he dropped into the abyss on Nova Luna. His entire life flashed before his eyes.
Growing up in Iowa. Fishing with his brother. His father's drunken rage. The kindly woman at the boys' home. Running to the Circus. Trick Shot. Prison. Meeting Coulson. Joining SHIELD. Tortured by Natasha Romanov. Marrying Bobbi Morse, and getting his divorce papers on Valentines' Day. Loki. The Avengers. Mexico. Plane crash. Brother.s Coulson lives. Going deaf. Meeting Arrow and losing Arrow. The Frost Giant war. The Enchantress. Rescuing Phil. Frigga's funeral. The commission from the Sarhorn. Risking his life on Alfheimr. Watching his brother take a bullet for him. Rescuing Kate Bishop. Marrying his second wife, and losing her. Cancer. Blind. Stroke. . .
Watching Natasha's face as he fell. Staring up into her eyes one last time knowing that what he did would give her enough time to get away.
He was saving her.
He was saving all of them.
Clint pushed himself up. His body was heaving, lungs threatening to burst under the strain. He tugged at the mattress. The Sarhorn was gone, receding into nothing as if he materialized in the room from the very dust and particles in the air. The fog of the last months lifted. Everything fell away. He awakened to himself as if only minutes had passed since the leap into the abyss. And Clint remembered. He remembered everything.
"Thor?!" Barton exclaimed. When that did nothing, he nearly yanked himself right out of bed. He yelled louder, holding a hand across his chest where the wounds threatened to tear open under his onslaught.
"Thor!" he screamed.
The Asgardian returned, his face bright in mirth from the events a door away. "Easy, my friend! I confess, there is nothing of importance you have missed. I seem to have suffered the fate of a puj fruit and maybe some lyolu sauce." He scrubbed his palm across the smear on his cheek and inspected it. "Forgive me, I have no idea at all what I was hit with."
"What are you doing here?!" Clint asked, his voice pitched.
Curious now, Thor looked at him. The archer's expression was wild and disoriented. He wanted to get up, but cried out when his wounds protested. Clint took the blankets and pulled them off of himself, he gripped his bow, searched for an arrow, and would have jumped right out of bed if Thor didn't close in on him.
"Wait!" Thor cried. "You will hurt yourself! Rest easy, please, we are under no attack. There is no reason to be dismayed."
"How did I get here?!" Clint demanded, fighting against him. "I'm supposed to be on Luna! Where is Tony? Why did you bring me here? Did Galactus get the Gauntlet? Thor, let me go!"
"You are in hysterics. Release your weapon and speak plainly with me, my friend." In shock, Thor staggered back. The Clint he spoke with only moments before knew nothing at all about Galactus or the Infinity Gauntlet. If Thor didn't know any better, he would think that the old Clint had miraculously re-emerged.
"I am not hysterical!" Clint shot back. He did let his bow go and the weapon disappeared. "I just need to know what happened. I'm in the Untamed Caves. Why? The last thing I remember was—" He stopped very suddenly and the color utterly drained out of him. "I jumped."
It couldn't be! Thor knelt in front of him, searching Clint face for that recognition which had left him for so long. "Clint of Barton, please, tell me you know my face, that you know the adventures we have had together! If you know who I am, then answer me this: what was the name of my mother?"
Clint grabbed Thor's cape in his good hand and tugged the Asgardian a little closer. "Thor, son of Odin and Frigga, heir of Asgard and the owner of the most horrendous step brother in the Nine Realms, you better tell me how the hell I ended up here before I tell Pepper to never bake you chocolate chip macadamia nut cookies ever again! Even on Christmas!"
There was nothing Thor could do to restrain himself from his joy. He grabbed Barton in an embrace, wounds forgotten and kissed Clint's cheek in utter, unbridled excitement. Clint fought to get him off but against the Asgardian's strength he was hardly a match. Thor tore away from him, kicked open the room door and sent it splintering off its hinges.
"BARTON HAS RETURNED!" The Asgardian boomed for all of the mountains and caves to hear.
Uh, oh, Clint thought. The Sarhorn forgotten, the conversation buried deep where he would likely not remember, he attempted to catch up on what he had missed in the perceived hours since he'd fallen into the crevice on Nova Luna. Apparently wherever he'd been was a dark and lonely place to have Thor so shocked at his appearance again.
Tony threw himself into the room. He was covered in jam of no less than three varieties and something else smashed across the top of his hair. Clint wanted to laugh about how utterly ridiculous he looked, but he had the feeling Tony wasn't in a gaming mood. Much the same way Thor approached him, Tony repeated.
"Clint?" he asked, his voice steeped in trepidation.
"Genius-billionaire-playboy-philanthropist?" Clint replied.
"I hate you," Tony said. He meant the opposite. He couldn't help the words spilling out of his mouth in time with the waterworks someone turned on in his eyes. Like an avalanche, the rest of the team appeared in the doorway. Steve, Bruce, Pepper, lastly Natasha and then behind them came more: Reylano, Fehreh, Faraday, Heho, Rinon, and Yeyil. The room was packed with more souls than the first day of Clint's admittance to the elves' care. There were tears, congratulations, someone appeared with glass and drinks which were passed around like a true celebration. Clint caught fragments of the reality of his story from the frantic voices crowding in on all sides. He struggled to keep up.
He'd jumped. He actually jumped, destroyed the gauntlet, and somehow he had survived. The series of events was infinitesimally intricate. He could have never assumed anyone would survive what he had, and yet there he was in the company of friends. He begged to know the names of those lost, but that was for another time. They had only just gotten him back, wholly back. They deserved this chance to see his happiness and not sorrow.
"And what is that?" Clint asked, pointing out the bundle in Pepper's arms. She made no move to try and hide it from him. He looked over at Tony and slapped the Avenger with the back of his good hand. "I die and you knock up my sister? How is that fair?"
"Sister-in-law," Pepper corrected, squeezing by Thor to lay the baby in Clint's grasp.
Clint's lips pursed together. He couldn't believe the sight. Tony Stark, the man who hit on more women than Hugh Hefner on Spring Break, was not only a married man, he had a baby! A literal, living, breathing child that was part of his own DNA. The baby was asleep, despite the noise in the room, and Clint didn't want to risk waking him up. He knew the wrath of a mother whose baby had been disturbed.
"Oh my God, Pepper," he whispered, taking in the sight.
"Benjamin Francis Stark," Tony said proudly. If any man needed a cigar in his mouth and an American flag flying behind his back it was him.
"Ben. That's a good name. Very Bruce Banner of you."
Eyes turned to Bruce.
"Clint knew your middle name and none of us did?!" Tony exclaimed.
Bruce shrugged. "He asked me once. It's not like I keep it a secret."
Clint searched beneath the blanket folds for the perfect ten fingers and ten toes. Ben stretched out of the warmth, yawned a big, toothless grin and scrunched up his face. Clint's heart absolutely melted. "Does this mean I'm an uncle?" Clint whispered.
"Uncle, godfather, second father," Pepper ticked off the titles on her fingers. "You might as well have had him yourself."
Feeling now might be the right time, Natasha lighted away for a brief moment to take little Alice from the elven nurse who helped care for her. Certain elves were remarkable with children. They loved each and every opportunity to hold the new life themselves in hopes that they may too be blessed with progeny. Others, such as Rinon, had no talent whatsoever.
Clint looked up when Natasha returned. "No!" he exclaimed. Pepper whisked her baby away so his arms could be free to take the next one. Natasha moved around Tony, who had decided to lay head-to-feet beside Clint in bed, and settled the second baby in Barton's arms.
"This is Alice," Natasha said.
"Alice? Like my grandmother, Alice?" Clint said, holding her.
Bruce and Thor exchanged happy glances and bumped fists.
Clint kicked Tony's shoulder with the better of his two legs. "You devil! Saddling Pepper with two kids. What kind of cruel slave driver are you?" he joked. This baby was wide awake. She looked up into his face and reached at him with those searching little hands. Unable to resist, he dropped his nose right into their grip.
"Don't look at me, I only made one," Tony said, lifting his hands.
Confused, Clint looked at Pepper who confirmed it. He instead tried to find any other possible donor to the child's DNA pool. "Thor?"
A booming laugh. "Not yet, my friend. Though with Jane's insistence I doubt it may be long."
Clint's eyebrow arched. "Bruce?"
A sidelong face. Definitely not Bruce Banner.
"Steve?" Clint's next logical choice.
"Nope," the Captain replied, enjoying this game.
He inspected the baby's ears, discovering they were not at all elven in shape. That only left the Midgardians in the room, which made positively no sense at all. He began to wonder if Tony was actually pranking him about not having twins.
Stark sat up on one elbow and tapped Barton's leg. In a perfect rendition of any daytime-television reality show he said: "Clint Barton, you are the father."
"But that's not even . . ." Clint looked at the baby again, flashbacks to his first departed child filled him in recognition and at the same time fear. "I can't . . ." He looked at Natasha, then the baby, and then Natasha. "You can't . . ."
"Evidently I can. Because I did. Her middle name is Rellya," she said calmly.
Clint's face crumbled as he came to terms with what she meant. A daughter. They had a daughter. Little Alice Rellya, named after him and his grandmother. She was his. Nothing could replace the baby he'd lost or the wife who died, but this brought such a completeness in his life he could hardly believe it. As little Alice grabbed the end of his nose and attempted to maul his chin with her gum-filled mouth she pulled her hands away to inspect the peculiar wetness leaking from her father's face.
In a feeble voice he spoke to the small child in his arms. "Hi, Alice. My name . . ." he swallowed, trying to speak despite the lump in his throat. "My name is Clint. I'm your daddy."
Even if the nearly emotionless Logan was in the room, he would find himself bawling just as badly as every other being who stood by.
"I'm so sorry," Clint said, unable to hold back the sentiment. He looked up at his wife. "You went through this alone? Tasha, I would never have wanted that for you. Not alone. Never like that. I'm so sorry I wasn't there. I should have been there. This wasn't fair for you."
Natasha dropped onto the mattress beside him, sitting on Tony's legs and not caring an ounce about his protests. "Alone? You think I did this alone? I couldn't even if I tried! Bruce slept in bed with me, even though I told him I'd stab him in the leg. Steve followed me around everywhere I went because you told him to, just in case you died. Tony handed me twenty billion dollars, and the fifteen stash houses you had just along the east coast. Pepper and I were pregnant and hormonal, and our legs swelled up all at the same time. Thor massaged our feet and snuck into my hospital room when I wanted to have the baby by myself and told me stories about you. I tried to be alone. I tried very hard to never be a mother, or get attached. I tried to give our baby to Tony and Pepper because I knew they could raise her better than I did. But you know what I found out? That no matter where I went or what I did, you always had a plan waiting for me. A way to keep me from running. The minute I saw our girl, after she nearly killed me coming out, I saw you and I never wanted to let her go. Not ever."
Clint took her chin in his hand and pulled her against his lips with their baby nestled between them. He had everything he ever wanted. All he needed now was to get better. Survive. Push on and live his life with his family.
Their tender embrace over, Clint threw a look at Bruce. "You slept with my wife!?"
AHHHHHH! So MUCH HAPPENED!
Clint is a Defender of the Universe? Totally fitting. He has his memorries back? HOOT! He has to heal on his own? Well Crap. And the family is back together! YAY!
What can happen now? Only 2 more chapters and an epilogue left!
please review!