Title: Still Walking
Author: pennydrdful
A Gift For: amanuensis1
Rating: PG-13 for language
Warnings: Character death
Pairings: Clintasha
Prompt Used: One dies. The team does what they can to comfort the other.
Authors Notes: Thank you to the very excellent shenshen77 for the great, very responsive beta!


Banner by frea_o



His hands shake as he washes the grit and gun oil off them. Hunched over the bathroom sink, he curses to himself. His hands never shake. He’d be a fucking useless shot if his hands shook, after all.

He has to get it together. Get it together before she knows something’s wrong.

“Clint?” Too late.

Natasha’s voice is muffled through the closed door. “Are you okay?” The doorknob rattles, and he’s glad he locked it.

“M’fine, just cleaning up.” He calls back, and thank god his voice is steadier than his hands right now. He looks up at his reflection, staring but not seeing. The sound of London traffic from the street below penetrates the window, but it can’t touch the din roaring in his ears. Blood rushes through his body like the tide with every slamming, way-too-fast beat of his heart, and he has to breathe. Just breathe. Focus on slowing the sudden gasps of air that threaten to overwhelm him.

It takes every ounce of his considerable training to force his body to relax, and even then he knows it’s only temporary.

“You’re not acting fine. I will break this door down.” She sounds pissed, but for the first time in the last six years, he ignores her.

He pushes up the sleeve of his leather jacket with a wet hand. Clint rotates his arm and looks at the inside of his forearm.

There it is. One irritated, slightly raised puncture mark where the needle bit into his skin.

For a moment, the world threatens to disappear right from under his feet. But the feeling is fleeting. He still has one last job to do.

----

The days immediately following Clint Barton’s death are a blur of disconnected moments. Natasha moves, and eats, and showers, and she attends the funeral and she fills out a lot of paperwork, and she watches Fury talk at her. And then she holes up in a classy New York hotel room for fourteen days.

On the fifteenth day is when her teammates show up to drag her out. She lets them.

On the twentieth day she goes on her first mission since Clint died. She has a whole new string of firsts now. Her first staggering drunk since Clint died. Her first time crying while getting off. Her first time sleeping in their bed at Stark Tower alone. Her first time packing up the belongings of a dead lover (there’s been other dead lovers, but they never had stuff together).

And here’s a new first, or rather not so much a first, as the first time in a very long while, that she’s asked a man that’s not Clint Barton to do her stitches. She prefers to spend as little time being poked and measured by the med techs as possible. She’d do them herself if it wasn’t such an awkward spot.

Natasha pauses in front of the door and peers through the glass window. Bruce is alone, hunched and poring over test analyses. Satisfied that Tony isn’t around, she slips in. He glances up as soon as she enters the lab.

“Natasha,” he says, mild surprise in his voice. He straightens up, and looks at her. “How are you tonight?” She can tell that he’s assessing her. She’s made this careful man wary. Anger flares through her, but is banked just as quickly. Bruce has reason to be so careful, and despite the mission she just came off, there’s a part of her just aching to find someone to push. For a second she almost wishes Tony was here.

“Think you can stitch me up, Doc?”

“Of course.” He grabs the first aid kit and a pair of gloves. She likes this about him. That even though he’s a genius, he’ll still stop and help her with something so mundane.

She shrugs one arm out of her jacket, and he eyes the cut. “Not a blade,” he remarks casually, as he prepares the sterile needle and thread.

“Broken ceramics, actually.”

“Ah.” He bathes the gash in disinfectant and peers through his glasses, inspecting it for foreign materials. “That kind of fight, huh?”

She hears what he doesn’t say. That he’s never had a close quarters fight like that. Never really thought about how every piece of furniture and vase and lamp and chair become a part of your fight. A way to throw your opponent out of their loop, put a glitch in the flow of their reactions and press the advantage. He’s probably never had a fight that ended in the same room it started in.

She looks away from him as he ties the first knot. She closes her eyes so that she doesn’t see the lab. “How long will it be before they can try again?”

“It’s going to take a while. Viral manufacturing of that scale, coupled with the need to be able to fit it in a controllable delivery package is a long term project.” He doesn’t pretend not to know what she’s talking about, and she appreciates it.

“Enough time for us to locate their labs?”

He stops his work and looks at her. “Yes, Natasha. We’ll find their facilities.”

“Good.”

He waits, and when she says nothing more, he goes back to stitching her wound.

----

She looks at the whiskey in her glass, the amber liquid gleaming at her. She knows how warm it’ll be when it goes down, and all she’s looking for right now is a little warmth. Head propped up on her hand, elbow propped on the bar, it has her complete attention. “How many drinks would it take to forget him?”

Tony watches her out of the corner of his eyes. “You could drink the whole bar, but it won’t be enough.” He says it like he knows. Like he’s tried it before. But what does he know? Pepper’s still walking.

Eyes burning, she picks up the glass and tosses it back anyway. It seems like the thing to do.

Catching the bartender’s eye, she motions for another. Keep them coming. She’s freezing inside.

----

“You look so beautiful tonight.” His warm breath flutters over her neck as he whispers in her ear. Men before him have said it, but he’s the only one that ever made her tremble. “I wanted to kiss you until the end, you know.”

Natasha dances with a ghost. His calloused hands grip her hip and hand with just a hint of possession; the solid strength of his body whenever he pulls her flush against him; that knowing glint in his eyes that makes her ache inside.

She smiles at him, puzzled. Knowledge is beating at her mind like a bird against the glass, but she can’t quite see it. “Until the end of what?”

“What?” The strange voice jars her. Her feet stop dead, and she jerks her hands free of his, scalded. She blinks, and it’s not him. It’s just some stranger. Just another man, in a long line of men that she’s danced with.

The stranger looks at her, bewildered. “Um… are you okay?”

Her stomach rolls and she pivots, moving away as quickly as her tight skirt allows. She needs air before she throws up all over someone’s shoes and disturbs Tony’s party.

Natasha bursts out onto the rooftop. The brutally cold winter wind sears her lungs and steals her breath. New York spreads out before her, surrounding her, its persistent lights driving the stars away. Her heart pounds and she struggles to breathe. She stares out at the city and Clint’s ghost threatens to overwhelm her. The memory of his warm, strong hands. That soft way he’d look at her. A sob tears itself from her throat.

God, how she remembers. He was so soft with her. Even when he was hurting, even when he was pissed off and tired of the world, he was soft with her.

Messy, hot tears roll down her cheeks and she falls to her knees, cement ripping her stockings and biting into her flesh. How could she do this? How was she going to do this without him? The winter pierces her thin red dress like so much tissue paper. It goes straight to her bones, and she dimly wonders if it’ll be cold forever now.

He had changed everything. He had been her way out. She’d been a wild, desperate thing, dancing on the edge of the very chasm she’d clawed her way out of. Clint was her map, and her open door. He was her partner, the only one she could trust with everything she had.

And he was gone.

Using both hands, she pushes her tears away. Clasping her hands behind her neck, she bows her head to her knees, eyes shut tight. She remembers him in motion. So fast, yet steady and calm. So sure with his aim. She loved watching him in a fight, watching him find the pattern in every eventuality and driving his arrows into the heart of it.

“Natasha?” Pepper’s soft arms are suddenly there, encircling her, shielding her from the worst of the wind. A frisson of fear runs through her. Fear that she’s at the point where a civilian like Pepper can get so close to her before she even notices. “Jesus, you’re freezing. Oh, I knew we should’ve cancelled this whole thing.”

“Go back inside. I only need a moment.” Natasha keeps the tears from her voice, and she’s proud of it.

Pepper looks up at the night sky, feeling desperate, and then back down at the bowed head of red curls. She knows that if she follows the request, if she goes back inside to the guests, Natasha would stroll in a few minutes later, looking fine. She’d have a smile fixed firmly in place and there wouldn’t be the slightest sign of tears. Just like she knows Natasha would keep pushing down the pain. Pushing it and squeezing it, cramming it into whatever closet she’s locked all her hundreds of secrets in. Because the only person Natasha shares her secrets with is gone.

But she can’t let her do that. It doesn’t take a psychiatrist to know that it’s a coping method with an expiration date.

So Pepper takes a chance. One that she knows would normally never be allowed. She hugs her tight, pulling Natasha to her chest. “You don’t have to do this. You don’t have to pretend you’re fine all the time.” She pauses, mind tumbling over finding the right words. “It doesn’t make you weak to grieve, Natasha.” She can feel her start to stir, her hands uncurling, moving and resting against her, ready to push her away in an instant. “You – you don’t have to be alone now. That’s not what it means. Clint’s gone, and it’s hard, it’s hard on all of us, but it doesn’t mean you’re alone.” Natasha’s body tenses in her arms, and she desperately tries to find the words to make her stay, pressing her cheek against her red curls. “Don’t push us away, Natasha. Please don’t push us away and try to do this on your own.”

Slowly, the tension drains away and Natasha sags in her arms. Pepper can feel the dampness of her tears through her dress. Natasha’s voice comes out choked. “I don’t know what to do without him in the world.”

Silent, Pepper pulls her in tighter.

----

The thunderous sound of the Black Widow’s boot slamming into the bathroom door propels Clint into motion. Bracing the shuddering door with his body, he calls to her before she can hit it again. “Natasha?” Silence is her only reply, but at least she’s not still kicking down the door. The wood won’t last long. He knows the strength in those legs. “I love you.”

He’s said those words to her before, and every time they’ve meant something new. But they’ve never been harder to say than now. He can already feel the tremor running through his gut and through his muscles; the clammy sweat breaking out all over his body. They both read the reports on the victims. This wasn’t going to be pretty, and he couldn’t let her see it. One last solo mission. He would do this for her.