Clint and Natasha are drifters on the railroads.

Show a Little Faith
(There’s Magic in the Night)


He can feel the train coming. Even with the hills obscuring the telltale smoke, the vibrations in the tracks sing the truth, right through what remains of the soles of his boots and his near-frozen feet.

Clint lets out a long, slow breath and wiggles his stiff finger tips, to loosen them up before they have to grip and hold. Two minutes, at best, and that train will come round the bend, slowing just enough to even the odds that he’ll end up under its wheels. He’s seen it happen, more than once, and it’s an ugly sight (the sounds are worse).

The last had been Charlie Magee, just this morning. He’d been something like friend, for a few hours anyway. Charlie had shared his fire and a tin of stew in exchange for Clint’s story, a smoke and a demonstration of Clint’s skills with the bow. Too old, too slow, too weak to really hang on, that’d been Charlie in the end. Maybe he’d gone all too willingly?

The memory of the old man’s scream cut short and the sound of his bones being crushed settles in Clint’s gut like another chill. But it doesn’t stop him, doesn’t paralyze him – no, quite the opposite. What it does instead, is to make everything around him sharper, more defined, like a frosty morning on the plains; it slows time for him, too.

It’s a familiar feeling, almost like a buzz. Danger, he’s found, does that to him (for him), like a drug or a magic potion. He lets it wash over him and tingle through his veins, adjusts the tattered pack and the bow and quiver on his back so they’re clear of his arms, and gets ready to jump.

Read more on my LJ (http://alphaflyer.livejournal.com/35555.html)

Or on AO3 (http://archiveofourown.org/works/1177731)



Edited 2014-02-10 01:08 pm (UTC)