Enjoy an episode of self-loathing: Natasha's edition!
"It would be so easy," Natasha says softly, drumming her fingers against the countertop.
She's just gotten back to the Tower after spending a night sitting on a rooftop in Hell's Kitchen with Daredevil. She's gotten no sleep, and she feels exhausted and slightly out of it.
"What would be so easy?" Clint asks, sounding really worried. But Natasha can't begrudge him for that since he'd waited up for her.
She cradles the steaming mug of coffee that he had prepared and tries to soak in the warmth through her hands, but it doesn't work.
"It would be so easy," she repeats.
"Nat, you're scaring me a bit," Clint says honestly, and this isn't fair to him at all, is it?
She finally meets his eyes. "Finding out his identity. I know he's from Hell's Kitchen. I know his first name, and his build and stature, and—and I know what the bottom half of his face looks like!"
Clint snorts at the last part. Natasha elbows him in the ribs, just because she can.
"Shut up," she says, even though she can feel the corner of her lips curving up.
"It may not be as easy as you think," Clint says, rubbing at his side, "but with a bit of work, you really could get to the right conclusion. So why don't you?"
Natasha sighs, because this is the part that has been holding her up. "I don't want to…offend him? Scare him away?" Those are not the right words to describe this. She throws her hands up in the air in frustration. "I don't know! I just— It wouldn't be fair to him. I know I like to reveal personal secrets on my own terms, but what about him?"
"You guys are more similar than you think," Clint says, unusually mysterious.
Yeah, Natasha's not touching that with a ten-foot pole. That's the whole reason she'd spent the night on a dusty rooftop. Instead, she glares at Clint. "I hate that you know more than me."
"I know," Clint says with a grin. "But think about it. Would you give anyone else this same courtesy?"
After a few seconds, she says, "No. I'd take advantage of any intel I can get."
"So, this isn't a mission, it's personal. What you've got is info, not intel."
"What are you trying to say?"
If possible, Clint's grin gets even wider. "You like him."
Natasha closes her eyes and mentally throws curses at Clint. "I respect and trust him; there's a difference."
"You like him!"
"I hate you."
They move on. At least, everyone seems to move on except for Natasha.
It hadn't even been a reemergence of her past, so she shouldn't feel that affected, but she is. She shivers in her bed, feeling cold and small and empty.
She curls her hands, knowing that there will be imprints of her fingernails in her palms and resisting the urge to reach for the handcuffs hanging from the bedpost.
She doesn't need to cuff her wrist to the bed frame all the time, but the urge is like an itch sometimes, one she can't ignore.
She'd dreamt of Yelena, she knows, before she'd woken abruptly and started fighting with her own self. She'd dreamt of her blonde hair framing the healthy flush of her cheeks before terror had taken it away. She'd dreamt of her laughter, of her trust.
Natasha knows that all of that is gone now. Even if she were alive—Natasha doesn't think that's the case—why would she even want to be near Natasha? She had let her go. Her sole responsibility for years, taken from right under her wing.
She had let her go.
So she deserves this feeling of loneliness in the middle of the night when it feels like she is the only person in the world.
She sighs, wraps a blanket around her shoulders, and rolls onto her side, curling up on the cold mattress and studiously ignoring the handcuffs and the urge to be held.
She wakes later to the shrill of her alarm. It is an unusually slow awakening.
She belatedly presses the snooze button and lays in bed, staring at the ceiling. She frowns, trying to sort out her thoughts.
This time, she'd been dreaming of a different person and of happier, softer times. She presses a hand against her chest and tries to ease the tightness of it, not due to hurt or panic, but due to something like…longing.
There's no room for that in the life she lives, but she wants it anyways.
And she hates herself for it.
Clint takes one look at her and asks if she wants to talk to Lila.
Which…okay, Natasha supposes she's resigned to Clint reading her so well.
Still, she stubbornly mutters, "You're a professional prier."
"Only in your life," Clint says with a bright grin, and then he hands her his phone so that she can talk to this adorable and smart and inquisitive girl in both of their lives.
It doesn't quite fill the void, but Natasha doesn't fault Lila for that, of course. She's a little agent in training and she tries her very best.
After the call, Natasha lets Clint make her waffles, because he is unfortunately more experienced in cooking breakfast than she is (she doesn't always eat it). She pours a normal amount of maple syrup on her plate, and then hands the bottle to Clint so that he can pour an insane amount.
They eat for a little bit before Clint asks, almost casually, like he's talking about the weather, "Bad dreams?"
Natasha shrugs. Clint nudges her shoulder in response.
"Hey," he says gently. Natasha doesn't deserve him. "Talk to me."
"Bad dreams," she mutters, "and then…not so bad dreams."
"The good can't make up for the bad, of course."
Natasha is about to nod in agreement, but she hesitates (and she hates herself for that, too). "Maybe it can," she whispers.
Clint stills, fork halfway to his open mouth. She snorts half-heartedly, tapping his chin lightly so he looks less like the idiot he already is. Her lovable idiot, of course.
Clint closes his mouth with an audible snap of his teeth, and frowns at her, looking utterly confused and not hiding it. This is probably because this whole situation is abnormal for her, and he's trying to figure out what's changed.
"Maybe it can," he says eventually, "but it doesn't erase the bad." Maybe he was also trying to figure out the right thing to say.
"Doesn't it?" Natasha asks, looking down and picking at her plate.
Clint turns towards her. "Nat," he says, unusually solemn. She raises her head and meets his eyes. "You can't beat yourself up over something good actually happening to you. You deserve it, whatever's happened."
Natasha has a feeling that Clint knows what's happened, but she isn't going to mention it.
The problem is that her guilt over Yelena is still eating her alive, even after all these years.
She doesn't say this either, but Clint sees it in her eyes, because he wraps an arm around her shoulders and pulls her close, and for now, it's enough to pull all of her broken pieces together.
Daredevil reaches out to spar again, and Natasha stubbornly refuses to refuse, because to refuse without any real reason would be abnormal, and she's trying to be normal here—her definition of normal.
All this to say that she accepted the offer.
Clint smirks at her as she passes him to get to the elevator, and she mouths fuck you at him in response. "She got a hot date or something?" Tony asks as the elevator doors close. Natasha rolls her eyes for her own sole benefit.
"I want to know how you seem to account for every single detail in your surroundings when you fight," Natasha declares later. "It's part of why you fight so well."
Matthew stiffens. He's wearing his non-armored black suit today, but with the red Daredevil mask, and the combination looks incredibly funny. "Thank you?" he says.
He's simultaneously cautious and flattered, morphing into embarrassment. Cute, Natasha thinks without her own permission.
"Don't worry, that wasn't a question," she says. "I'm trying to figure it out myself."
He grins. "Good luck with that," he says brightly, swinging back to cockiness, and Natasha shouldn't find his mercurial mood as fascinating as she does.
"What do you think about fighting with a blindfold?"
She hands him a piece of cloth, and he ties it around his eyes. Again, it looks incredibly funny with the mask.
Matthew shakes with barely restrained laughter as he finishes, and Natasha thinks, not for the first time, that she's missing something vital.
He's one of the only people who makes her feel this way, and she maybe loves him for that, because she always enjoys a challenge.
"I'm not sure how much you're going to gain from this experiment of yours," he says.
Natasha can hear the grin in his voice and dares to wrap her arms around his shoulders and lean in close. His breath hitches a little, and he's warm, and she doesn't care that she has to go on her tiptoes in order to do this. "Humor me?" she murmurs into his ear.
"Of course," he whispers back.
After the fight, Natasha lays on the cool ground, catching her breath and questioning her existence. Matthew flops onto the ground beside her, and if the ceiling weren't there, they could be watching the stars together.
Weird thought, so random.
"I don't think you fought any different," she says, not even trying to disguise her confusion. She's definitely missing something key right now.
He lets out a full-blown laugh, and she finds that she wants to hear it again and again. She presses against a bruise on her bicep, and the pain gives her a sense of satisfaction.
"Guess I'll be a mystery to you for slightly longer, then," Matthew says, bright and smug. She turns her head towards him and can't help but notice that his lips are very, very red.
"There are worse mysteries to be had," she says with a reluctantly fond smile.
He doesn't turn towards her, as if he doesn't need to see her at all. It's so unfair, because she feels like she needs to drink in the sight of him constantly. "Like what?" he asks curiously.
Natasha blinks. "What?" Well fuck, now she's checking out of conversations. Why is she doing this to herself? (Why is he doing this to her?)
"What's a worse mystery?"
"Hmm…figuring out Tony Stark's sleep schedule, probably."
He laughs, which had 100% been her intention. "Is it as terrible as I think it is?"
"Worse."
And he laughs again, like it's easy. (She wants it to be easy.) She watches him for a few seconds, watches as he licks his lips and thinks up what to say. "Until next time?" he asks hesitantly.
As if she could let him go after baring so much of herself to him.
"Until next time," she reassures him, even if she hates herself for it, because his answering smile is worth it.
"Daredevil tells me you guys've been sparring," Clint whispers conspiratorially.
Natasha sighs and presses her palm to his forehead to halfheartedly push him away.
Clint laughs, unrepentant. "It's cute. I approve."
She rolls her eyes. "Who asked for your approval?"
He shrugs innocently. She raises her eyes to the ceiling in exasperation.
Natasha rolls over in bed, and then, after a moment of thinking, decides to get out of the bed completely.
She's still shivering a little as she comes to a stop at the edge of Hell's Kitchen. The short jog should have warmed her up, but she gives in to the urge to wrap her arms around her body, skin hidden by a light jacket.
She'd brought herself here, but she doesn't know why. It's like she'd been working on autopilot, tugged by an unseen force.
Despite the darkness, she finds him easily enough. She just had to follow the screams of pain from unsuspecting gang members.
Daredevil notices her right away. Probably before she got there, actually.
He throws his elbow back into a guy's face, and they both hear the crunch of a broken nose. Daredevil glances at her and then nonchalantly gestures all around them. "Have at it," he says.
She takes out a dagger, makes sure her Widow Bites are on, and gets to work.
Afterwards, she follows him down quite a few side streets, getting away together before the police arrive. Natasha is so high on adrenaline she can almost hear the sound of her heart pumping blood throughout her body.
She's feeling better, that's for sure.
Nothing like beating up bad guys to chase away the loneliness. (This definitely has nothing to do with the company.)
Daredevil suddenly stops. He grabs one of her hands and pulls her close to him. Natasha looks at his frown as he examines her in return. Finally, he taps lightly against her hairline, next to a cut slightly weeping blood. "You'll need to get stitches," he says softly, his voice no longer gruff.
"I know," she tells him simply.
He brushes a gloved thumb against her bruised knuckles for a few moments. She looks at their joined hands and doesn't break the silence.
She realizes that she no longer feels quite as cold.
After taking down a HYDRA base in Greenland, they come back to New York to find that, barring any emergencies, they have a few weeks of downtime? That's not normal.
Natasha is tempted to point that out, but she doesn't want to jinx it.
"I'm running a marathon this weekend," Steve says conversationally as he sketches.
"I am not fit enough to do the same," Clint tells him, scrolling on his phone.
"You don't have the motivation to do the same," Natasha corrects him, and he sticks his tongue out at her in response. "Steve's immortalizing your immaturity in his drawing."
"Unfortunately," Steve says, a little distant as he tries to get some detail correct.
Tony walks up to them and leans over Steve's shoulder to look at his half-finished sketch. "That's embarrassing, Barton," he says.
"You want to run a marathon with me?"
"Hell no," Tony says, backing away from Steve and towards the coffee maker in the kitchen.
"Aw."
"I will come with you," Thor declares.
Natasha raises her eyebrows. "I hope the two of you aren't competing."
"Just doing it for fun," Steve says with a smile.
"Gross."
"Tony!"
Tony waves a lazy hand towards Steve, holding his coffee with his other hand. "You have a healthier work-life balance than the rest of us, that's for sure. I feel like we need to get out of the Tower more outside of missions."
"Starting with you, right?" Steve says intently.
"Well…"
"Tony!"
"That depends on if I can drag Bruce out of the lab," he says, shrugging as if it isn't usually the other way around.
Clint glances at Natasha with a mischievous twinkle in his eye. He winks at her, and she internally groans. "Sometime next week, Nat and I are gonna eat lunch at a place in Hell's Kitchen someone recommended to me," he declares.
"I did not agree to this," Natasha feels the need to say.
"It's forecasted to be sunny all week! It'll be a very light, relaxing outing," Clint reassures her.
"I don't need reassurance."
"You need motivation."
Natasha narrows her eyes at him. "Touché." Why are you being more insufferable than usual?
Tony walks back towards them and rests his hip against the back of Steve's seat. "If you're going to Hell's Kitchen, I'm not sure 'bout light or relaxing. You might get…distracted," he says, with some very suggestive eyebrow wiggling.
"By what?" Thor asks. Bless him.
"Oh god," Steve says, burying his face in his hands.
"What?" Tony says defensively. "We all know Nat's fucking Da—"
Steve slaps a hand dramatically over his mouth. He gives Natasha an uneasy smile and says to Tony, "If you finish that sentence, I think your life expectancy is going to dramatically dip."
Tony's response is slightly muffled. "Noted."
Natasha ignores Tony and turns to push Clint off the couch. He dramatically falls to the ground, extremely unrepentant.
"Why do I put up with you?" she asks.
"Because I'm amazing?" Clint says.
Tony snorts, shoving Steve's hand away from his face. "You're a nuisance, that's what you are."
"Thank you, Tony," Natasha says with a dangerous smile.
"Still, Clint has the right—"
"Have a great outing, guys!" Steve says loudly, dragging Tony out of the room.
Natasha thinks he's forgotten that this theoretical outing is happening the following week and not immediately.
"I have missed out on a lot," Thor says.
"I mean, they're idiots," Clint says, still on the ground, "so not much has happened, really."
Natasha glares at him. "I resent that."
"I'm not even planning on meeting him," Clint tells her later. "Just thought it'd be nice for you to get out."
Natasha raises an eyebrow at him. "But Hell's Kitchen?"
"It's about the ambiance."
Natasha snorts. "And me not avoiding you."
"Nat, I'm doing you a favor," Clint whines out, shoulders slumping.
"You're making me more conflicted," Natasha mutters.
"Don't fight fate."
"We don't believe in fate."
"Don't fight true love."
Natasha snorts. "What is that?" She glances at Clint, and he suddenly adopts a more serious air, sitting up straighter. She glances away to avoid his knowing gaze.
"Don't fight your own happiness, Nat." And he sounds so sincere. For once, she has nothing to say back, so she stays silent until Clint turns on the TV and she can idly focus on examining onscreen strangers, which she's good at.
Not whatever this is, whatever Clint's implying. How could anyone ever think she'd be good at that?
(At happiness.)
(At love.)