Title: A Quiet Fragile Turning Point
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Discussion of past abuse, homelessness, death of minor (unnamed) character.
Pairing: Clint/Natasha
Word Count: 763
Disclaimer: If I owned either of them, I wouldn't be here.
Summary: After a successful mission, Clint can't shake the memory of a homeless young man standing at the edge of the town square and the feelings the encounter is bringing up inside him.
Author's Notes: You know the stories that land in your brain fully formed and won't let up until you write them down? Yeah...


Clint sank into a crouch across the alley from the slumped, ragged form; his back braced lightly against a rough brick wall. He’d known deep down what he was going to find when he made the choice to leave the safe house and track the kid – hours earlier the stink of death had already been on him strong enough to reach Clint on his rooftop perch.

“Who is he?” Natasha gripped his shoulder, letting him know she was there before crouching beside him.

The archer shrugged, not trusting himself to look at her. There was something very small and fragile inside him that was demanding to be heard after more than a decade of silence, and even though it hadn’t occurred to Clint to wake her at the time he was suddenly grateful his partner had followed him. “I saw him earlier, when I was waiting for you to move into position.”

Nat made a small noise. “Across the street and to the east. Nursing a beer and watching everybody too closely. Animal eyes, animal posture – he’d been hurt recently, but there was something about him…”

“He wanted help.” Clint interjected, still unable to take his eyes off the body. “He needed help, but he didn’t know who he could trust.” Leaning his back more solidly into the wall, he finally turned and met Natasha’s gaze. “Beer’s usually cheap, easy to get. It fills you up better than other kinds of alcohol, and you can pretend for a while that you’re not slowly freezing to death.”

Understanding filled her eyes then, but as was her way Nat didn’t press him with questions or urge him to open up more completely. “After things…went south…with Duqesne, I was on my own for a few months.” Most everybody knew about the beating he’d taken, but the rest of it was something he’d never talked about before tonight. “I didn’t have any place to stay, and I was still recovering from what…he’d done to me.”

He ducked his head, chuckling bitterly at how after all this time he still couldn’t bring himself to put words to everything his former mentor had done to him. Finally trusting himself, he blew out a sharp breath and faced her again. “I did odd jobs when I could find the work, but it was mostly days of begging, scrounging or stealing what I needed to survive.”

Nat’s eyes ticked briefly over to the crumpled form opposite them, and Clint knew without asking that she was putting the pieces together in the proper order. “You started drinking.”

Muscles tightened briefly along his jawline, but Clint forced himself to nod, to own what he’d done. “I don’t think I was ever an alcoholic; the beer just made it all easier to deal with. If I stayed buzzed – even slightly – I could pretend to myself I was getting by.”

“You did get by,” Nat protested, reaching out to cover his gloved hands with her own. “You made it back – you put your life back together.

Clint swallowed hard against a sudden lump in his throat. “Only because I still had people out there who gave a damn whether I was alive or dead.” His attention shifted back to the body lying across from them. There but for the grace of God…

Silence stretched between them for a long moment as Clint tried to process what he was feeling. Natasha was right – thanks to his brother and Buck Chisolm, he’d recovered his life and gone on to make something of himself – but he couldn’t shake the connection he felt with the dead stranger, and the rising guilt that he hadn’t acted soon enough to give him the same chance. “He can’t have been dead long.”

“Don’t.” The sudden sharpness in her tone brought his head up, and their eyes met again. “Grieve if you must, but wallowing in self-pity serves neither him nor you.”

Anger flashed through him and Clint thought for half a second about arguing with her, but ultimately he knew she was right. “Do you want to report it?” she asked, before he could say anything.

His first impulse was to say no. “They won’t care,” he said thoughtfully. But the more he allowed the question to fester in his brain, the more he realized that wasn’t the point. He’d done nothing to stop this from happening, but maybe if he could restore at least a little bit of the stranger’s humanity in death they might both find some peace.

“Yes,” he said finally. “It’s the right thing to do.”