Title:  Highway of Diamonds
Author: alphaflyer
Pairing:  Clint/Natasha (partners)
Word length:  ~5,000
Rating:  Teen and up
Warnings:  Themes of sexual exploitation; nothing graphic

Summary: The road from belief to betrayal is lit by shining stars. Clint and Natasha
are sent to investigate a secretive cult, and discover things about each other
in the process. Mission fic; pre-movie.

A/N:  This story is based on a prompt in the Valentine’s Day Promptathon.  anuna_81 provided this evocative line:  "That is the problem with people today.  They've lost faith, and in that loss they don't know who they should fear any more." But I couldn’t get the Valentine’s angle, like, at all, and almost abandoned the thing (even after some encouraging comments on excerpts from an earlier version, from you wonderful folks of the comm on "unfinished fic Wednesday").  Except … that line kept niggling at my brain.

Now of course Valentine’s is long past and irrelevant, and I was listening to Dylan when suddenly the creative process kicked in again.  Isn’t it amazing what a change in title can do?  (Of course using Dylan for inspiration isn’t new -- see Framling’s stunning Hard Rain Tesserae; workerbee73 & bob5fic’s The Equilibrists; or even my own ST: Voyager story, The Andorian Incident.  The man should have his own tag, honestly.)

Trigger warning: Themes of sexual exploitation -- nothing graphic though, I can’t read about that sort of thing myself, let alone write it. 

Disclaimers:  This story is not intended as a comment on the inherent nature or merit of religious belief of any kind.  Finally, I own nothing relating to the Avengers, although my comics collection has now grown to five, which is starting to worry me a little.


http://archiveofourown.org/works/759841

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/9198667/1/


I'd be happy to hear what you think!