A Gift From: jacedesbff
Type Of Gift: Fic
Title: #RememberYourPromise
A Gift For: hufflepuffsneak
Rating: PG
Warnings: less than canon-level violence
Summary/Prompt Used: I combined two - “Bodyguard AU” and “Winter Olympics”
Author's Note: This turned out more Clint-centric than I expected, which I hope is okay. Thank you so very much for the Olympics prompt – sort of my own personal heaven. :-) I hope you enjoy!


banner by ohmydarlingdear

oOo

“Clint, this is Natasha. She’s going to be your girlfriend.”

“Come again?”

Coulson smiled at Clint’s confused expression. It was the small pleasures that made being a coach worthwhile.

Natasha took up the explanation.

“I’m on the team Mr. Stark has hired to ensure your safety.”

Clint looked appraisingly at Natasha. She was somewhat surprised to note that unlike most, he didn’t immediately discount her based solely on her small stature and her gender.

“Where’s the rest of your team?” he asked.

“Scouting the area. They’ll be in to meet you after they get a perimeter established.”

“They’ll be on patrol while you’re with me?”

“That’s the initial plan we’ve put in place,” Natasha confirmed.

“Leaving you with the most dangerous duty.” Clint’s statement wasn’t a question.

“What makes you say that?”

Clint raised an eyebrow as an amused Coulson watched the back and forth exchange.

Clint answered Natasha’s question.

“The FBI profiled the threats as coming from someone who takes national sports very personally and they want me out of the competition. If they can’t reach me, it stands to reason that they would go after the people I love most. If we stick you at my side, you might become an even more desirable target than me. If they understand the importance of demoralization and the likelihood of me being better protected than a girlfriend, we can expect you to become a target – probably quickly.”

The side of Natasha’s lip quirked up in what might almost be classified as a smile.

“But you knew that,” Clint continued. “So now that I’ve proven my military background is real, why don’t you tell me why I should be willing to let you put yourself in harm’s way for me.”

“It’s simple, Mr. Barton –“

Clint cut her off.

“Major Barton.”

It was Natasha’s turn to raise an eyebrow.

“If you’re going to assess my tactical skills, it’s probably best if we use my rank, don’t you think?”

This time Natasha did smile – a small one, but still.

“Major Barton,” she corrected, and her face grew grave, “I will be putting myself in harm’s way for you because that is my job and I am good at it. Your job is to earn a medal for the United States. You can’t do that if all you can think about it staying alive. It therefore becomes my job to keep you alive, and along with my team, if I do my job well, neither of us will die.”

“But you will die for me if necessary.”

“You were a soldier, Major Barton. That’s what we do.”

“Yes, it is.”

They paused and contemplated each other. Coulson spoke into the silence.

“Our cover is that Natasha was your massage therapist. You began a relationship last summer during the off-season. Due to the threats against your life, she’s taking a leave of absence to come support you.”

“Are you going to let me do my job, Major?”

Clint contemplated Natasha for a moment before nodding his head once.

“I’ll let Tony know,” Coulson said, referring to Team Barton’s head sponsor, the head of Stark Industries.

“I’m going to check in with my team leader,” noted Natasha, speaking softly to Coulson as they both left the room.

Clint watched them go, shaking his head in irritation. He was supposed to have left this sort of thing behind in Afghanistan.

oOo

Biathlon is the only Winter Olympics event in which the United States of America has never won a medal. Of any color. Ever. Tim Burke won silver at the 2013 Biathlon World Championships, but failed to medal in the Olympics themselves. There were two other times that Team USA won medals at the International Biathlon Union (IBU) World Cup (in the entire history of the sport), but they weren’t gold nor were they (obviously) at the Olympics. The United States Olympic Committee (USOC) was desperately hoping that Clint Barton was going to change that – frankly, they didn’t care what color his medal was, they just wanted to land on the podium.

Clint had learned that there are three summer Olympics events in which the U.S. had the same dubious honor of no medals ever: badminton, table tennis and handball. As it so happens, none of those podiums are ever likely to support an American. Ever. Unlike those sports, it was actually in the realm of possibility that Clint could round out U.S. representation among Winter Olympics sports.

Even though he had only been competing officially for three years, Clint Barton was a superb endurance athlete and he was considered to be one of the best marksmen in the world. Obviously this was an outstanding combination for anyone wishing to compete in an event that combined cross-country skiing with rifle shooting. Unfortunately for Clint, not everyone on the international circuit was happy about his success.

First of all, Clint was a bit of an interloper. He came out of nowhere, placing 15th in his first major event and never out of the top ten thereafter. At his first world championships, he placed 10th. In the following years, he placed 7th before landing on the podium in 4th place, just out of medal contention, at last year’s recent world competition. Unlike most of his competitors, he didn’t grow up on the circuit, he wasn’t following in a family tradition and he wasn’t defending his country’s history in the sport. The only point in his favor, actually, was that in the storied tradition of biathlon athletes, Clint Barton was former military. His background as a Special Forces sniper meant that the other military men made sure he felt welcome at least on that level. Most of his peers on the field considered Clint’s service record to be his only redeeming quality.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, the rest of the world wanted the U.S. to stay off of the Olympic biathlon podium. European countries in particular regarded biathlon as “their” event. They quite liked the fact that the arrogant Americans were perpetually shut out of the sport. Clint Barton was a threat to their Yankee shut-out; this did not endear him to his fellows.

The refusal of anyone but former soldiers to interact with Clint might make for a fairly lonely competitive season, but social isolation hardly merited a protective detail. Attempted murder did that.

While tragic on a number of levels, it really isn’t all that surprising in today’s world that someone felt strongly enough about a sport to try to purposefully kill someone over it. Googling international football riots will put such a possibility in perspective pretty damn quick, actually. Doing it at the finish line of a major competition? That takes a singular level of fanaticism.

The IBU Cup events leading up to the Olympics take on a new level of intensity, and at the end of November, Clint broke through the glass ceiling and landed on the podium in third at a major event. At the next Cup race, he crossed the finish line in second only to be met by the sound of gunfire. He went down, hit on the right side of his chest, and the United States suddenly got interested in biathlon and retired Delta Force sniper Clinton Francis Barton.

The first thing that everyone learned is that former Major Barton never went out in public without Kevlar on. In the many interviews he sat for after taking a hit from a sniper, Clint found every politically correct way he could to say, “I killed people in a war zone for over a decade. People want to return the favor.” He didn’t care what people thought of him, but he did care about his brothers in Delta Force and the U.S. Army, and he didn’t want to reflect badly on them. So he was tactful as he nursed his bruised ribs.

Most Americans didn’t know biathlon from the theoretical weaponizing of African bees, but when one of their own took a bullet, they got interested. The news media, both visual and print, shared Clint’s background and the sport’s background, they explored the security and protection capabilities available to athletes, reporters did exposes on the evil side of international sports fandom, and as the last few events of the season passed with by without another shot, interest faded and attention shifted back to marquee sports like figure skating and snowboarding. Clint, of course, was fine with that.

Threatening letters poured in with renewed vigor, though, and despite the absence of bullets, the USOC determined that Clint’s life was still in danger. They offered him extra security, but he and his coach/manager, Phil Coulson, assured the organization that they had his security taken care of. Which they did.

When he was in the Army, Clint was the leader of the team that found Tony Stark after he was kidnapped in Afghanistan. The rescue wasn’t the end of the adventure, though, as Clint, Tony and three other Delta Force members spent another six days tramping through the desert after an insurgent attack left them with no functional communications or way to call for an extraction. After ten weeks in captivity, Tony was at the end of his tether, and the billionaire credited Clint with pulling him through the experience.

When Tony learned that the man he now viewed as a brother was in danger, the genius with unlimited resources hired Shield, one of the best private protection firms in the world, to keep Clint safe. Stark then demanded of Nick Fury, Shield’s owner and operator, that he contract Shield’s premier team, code-named the Avengers, to keep Clint safe.

Which apparently included having Natasha Romanoff as a girlfriend. Well, there were worse hits to take.

oOo

The same day Clint met Natasha, he met the rest of the Avengers. Steve Rogers, former Army Ranger, was the team leader and tactician. Bruce Banner was the communications and operations expert, handling all electronics behind the scenes. Thor Odinson, former Netherlands Special Ops, was – despite being a huge physical presence – a brilliant covert surveillance practitioner and detection expert. The last member that Clint met was Sam Wilson, who as far as the former sniper could tell was Shield’s MacGyver, doing everything that anyone else didn’t cover. The guy could do just about anything and had an uncanny knack for knowing where he was needed. Natasha, Clint didn’t need to be told, was the Avenger’s stealth weapon.

After dinner, at which Phil, Clint, Natasha, Steve, Tony and Tony’s girlfriend Pepper were at the table while the other Avengers were on duty, Tony pulled Clint aside.

“Hey, you feeling good about things?”

Clint nodded, understanding the subtext behind everything that Tony couldn’t say.

“Yeah, man, I’m good. Just pushing a couple of sticks across the snow.”

Tony chuckled. “Anything that’s not sand, right?”

“Hell, yeah,” Clint agreed. It wasn’t even a lie. Biathlon was as far as he could get from the desert. The required weather of his post-military pursuits was not a coincidence.

Natasha walked over and pulled Clint’s hand into hers.

“Tony, do you mind if I steal my boyfriend for the night? I haven’t seen him since he came over for the season. I’m ready to get him alone.”

Clint smiled and squeezed Natasha’s hand lightly. A few of his threatening letters, the ones determined most likely to have come from the shooter, contained surveillance photos of Clint. He was being watched and they all knew it. It didn’t hurt that there was an obvious spark when they touched.

Not that either of them noticed. Or, well, at least that they admitted.

Up in his room, Natasha pulled a spare blanket out of the closet and started making up the couch.

“Seriously?” commented Clint as he came out of the bathroom.

“What?” asked Natasha.

“Sam’s on guard tonight, right?”

“Most nights,” she affirmed.

“So you don’t need to be on the couch to maintain surveillance.”

Natasha’s lips almost quirked up.

“It wouldn’t hurt, but no.”

“Most of what you know about me comes from a dossier and outsider perspectives, so I want to assure you that whether it’s in there or not, I will never take advantage of you or do anything you’re not comfortable with.”

“There isn’t much I’m not comfortable with.”

And…the sexual tension in the room ratcheted up to eleven.

“I won’t do anything you don’t ask me to do, Natasha.”

She raised an eyebrow and there was a pause as the two of them looked at each other.

“Good to know,” she said, her eyes not leaving his.

“So you gonna put that blanket back in the closet?”

Natasha’s face was unreadable and Clint wondered what he was getting himself into. He had a terrible track record with women. Right then, though, he couldn’t bring himself to care. He meant what he said – he could sleep in a bed with a woman and keep his hands to himself. He wasn’t worried about that part of it. The rest? Yeah, he’d be fine.

Really.

oOo

IBU World Cup events were on hiatus for the two weeks leading up to the Olympics, and Clint began even more intense training than usual. When he retired from the Army and became a full-time athlete, his first order of business was finding a coach. It wasn’t exactly a hard decision. Phil Coulson introduced him to the sport and was a Delta Force veteran himself, which is how the two of them had met. Clint moved to Minnesota to train with Coulson and the two of them had an outstanding partnership that had landed Clint in the elite ranks incredibly quickly.

So it was that Clint was in a position to train for the Olympics, and as Clint skied for hours across the snowy plains of Europe, the Avengers worked to keep him safe. They lived up to their reputation, monitoring international chatter, monitoring the perimeter as their asset practiced and assessing all threats against his person. Natasha rode a snowmobile next to him as Clint skied using the excuse that she loved him and wanted to be with him to make sure he was safe. If their cover was true, that would have been one of the stupidest plans on the face of the earth. In reality, she was there to draw focus away from Clint onto herself. It was the job.

While Clint wore a comm that kept him in communication with the Avengers, at his request they kept him out of the majority of their chatter, letting him hear only what he fundamentally needed to in order to be safe.

The scenery was fairly monotonous white snow and pine trees. The sounds of nature were in the background as Clint listened to his audiobook as he crossed the frozen terrain, his standard MO. He sometimes felt like he was in between a rock and a hard place. He wanted to be alone yet he didn’t want to be alone in his head. Hence he had devised the compromise of listening to audiobooks while competing in the epitome of solo sports.

Thor broke into Clint’s book with a yell.

“GET DOWN!”

Clint hit the deck as a shot rang out, missing him and hitting a tree 20 yards behind him. Natasha yelled his name and threw herself at him, for all the world looking like a terrified girlfriend, but in actuality providing him with another layer of protection.

Clint and Natasha moved to crouch behind the snowmobile as the team handled the situation. The two of them followed the comm chatter, coordinating their protected position based on the calls from the team. Natasha was again surprised that Clint allowed her to take point. He really was going to let her do her job. Her opinion of him increased dramatically.

Ultimately the shooter got away but not before Steve winged him with his rifle. Thor collected a blood sample to provide to Bruce in the hopes that they could track something through the shooter’s genetic profile.

Clint got up, brushed himself off and finished his practice, the team following along on even higher alert. Upon getting back to the house that Tony had rented and outfitted for Clint’s specific needs, he went through the rest of his training regimen before having dinner with Natasha, Steve and Sam, after which he headed up to bed. There were no leads on the shooter and he needed to get some sleep.

Once he and Natasha were alone, the two of them subtly shifted into a more open emotional space. It wasn’t something either of them was used to, but with each other, it just seemed – natural. In the past week of essentially living together, their mutual comfort level had relaxed and grown. They were both careful not to look to carefully at it, just sort of letting it do what it would.

As they got into bed, Natasha asked him, “Why did you choose this? I’ve read what you said in interviews. I’m asking why you really do this.”

Clint took a deep breath and sat back against the headboard.

What the hell. It might be time to tell someone besides Tony and Coulson the truth, he thought. Not that he ever came out and said such things to his friends. They were guys, after all.

“A few months before I got out, my team had an op,” he paused, and Natasha let him take his time. “It went bad. We lost some men.” He took a deep breath. “Then the next op – I had to take out a kid.”

Natasha sat there, listening intently.

Clint continued. “I just – I was done. I couldn’t do it anymore. I had offers from several private contracting firms, but I just couldn’t – I can’t do that yet. I mean, it’s what my skill set is best suited for long term. But it’s…” he sighed, “It’s just too close to what I left, you know?”

He finally looked at Natasha, who nodded.

“I wanted to get as far away from the desert as I could, and what I’ve said about Phil introducing me to biathlon is true. I like the solitude of it. I had enough savings that I was able to give myself a year to get good enough to get some sponsorships, or you know, get good enough to justify letting Tony do it.” Natasha was aware that Tony had to convince Clint that he was successful enough to warrant the financial support, friendship or no, even though Stark Industries had an entire department dedicated to athletic sponsorships. “So I get to work by myself and listen to my book tapes, I push myself physically and that more than anything keeps me focused. So, yeah. I keep running from everything chasing me.”

Natasha looked him in the eye before looking away for a moment.

She turned her eyes back to him.

“I’m Russian.”

Clint nodded. She mentioned that at her first dinner and she and Tony exchanged Russian insults, at least according to the two of them. The rest of the table had to take it on faith.

“Even after the Cold War ended, Russia took covert ops very seriously. I started in the Red Room when I was nine.” Natasha paused. These weren’t things she talked about. Ever. But – it seemed right. Here and now, so…she kept talking.

“They didn’t like it when I left,” she said bluntly.

Clint huffed, and she knew without a doubt that the Army hadn’t wanted him to go either.

“I worked freelance for a few years, but it eats at you. We say it doesn’t, but – well, you know.” He nodded because he did. “I didn’t want to work for one of the big private outfits, making the same kind of calls I had to freelance, but then I found Shield and the Avengers. Or they found me. Steve’s such a Boy Scout – I trust his moral compass enough that I can trust what I’m doing is at least trying to be right.”

Clint’s face told her he knew there a story behind her coming to trust Steve and Shield.

Natasha leaned forward and kissed Clint, and he forgot everything else in his life. It might well have been the most perfect first kiss he had ever had.

Without removing her lips from his, Natasha moved forward onto Clint’s lap, putting her knees on each side of him. His hands went up to tangle in her hair and she pressed her hands against each side of his face.

When they finally separated, they were both breathing heavily.

“So you won’t do anything I don’t want you to,” Natasha murmured, and he blinked, followed by a slow smile that made her stomach roll over. “Does that mean you will do what I do want you to do?”

Clint moved his hands to her hips and pulled Natasha closer.

“You’re not gonna pull a Kevin Costner tomorrow morning and say we can’t do this, are you?”

Natasha wrapped her legs around him.

“You would have to be Whitney Houston, and you proved on the snow today that you know how to handle yourself, how to follow orders. My question is, will you still let me do my job? Can you handle both seeing my vagina and seeing me as a professional?”

Clint chuffed. “Natasha, if I ever tried to go all caveman on you, you’d kick my ass to Korea and back and we both know it. You’re the most badass member of the team and you’ve always had a vagina. I’m good.”

“Then let’s put it to use.”

Which is exactly what they did, and it was a pretty freaking awesome night.

oOo

Over the next week, Clint trained, the Avengers protected, and Clint and Natasha got to know each other on all sorts of fun and interesting levels. The team foiled two more assassination attempts, one when Thor almost took down a sniper who disappeared into seeming thing air before he could be caught, and the other when Bucky Barnes, a new Shield employee and occasional Avengers collaborator brought in when things got more intense, shot at a fleeing target. Apparently the other side had some electronic gadgets, as well.

Then it was time for the Opening Ceremonies of the Olympics. To his great surprise, Clint was voted by the athletes to have the honor of carrying the United States flag in the Parade of Nations. He tried to demure, saying that surely there was a better candidate. One of the hockey players, a former Marine, pulled him aside and pointed out that Clint was a decorated Army veteran who was being shot at solely for being an American athlete. It would have been noteworthy if the other athletes hadn’t chosen him.

So it was that Clint marched at the front of the U.S. delegation in the Opening Ceremonies of the Winter Olympics. Oddly enough, this was the least concerned the Avengers had to be concerned about their asset at any time before or during their time with him. Security was so tight that the odds of anyone being able to take a shot at Clint in the Olympic stadium were incredibly low.

Even so, Steve pulled the aforementioned hockey player and another Army veteran aside and asked them to at least stay near the flag bearer so they could help him if something happened. He didn’t expect them to die for the guy, Steve explained, he just wanted experienced eyes on the ground. The two men in question were more than okay with the request, and Clint at no point found himself alone during the event.

After making it through the Opening Ceremonies, the Olympics were off and running. The rounds in Clint’s event, 20km singles, meant that he had two get through two early rounds before the finals, if he got that far. The preliminary round went off without a hitch. There was an increased level of American journalism coverage due to the assassination attempts, but beyond that it was fairly routine.

Clint actually found it privately amusing that the morons targeting him had called attention to the very sport they should have kept under the American radar. He hoped that there were dozens of American kids with a sudden desire to try out biathlon just to spite the “sports terrorists”, as the media was calling them. (He figured it was dozens because even with the increased exposure, he couldn’t imagine all that many people suddenly wanting to try a sport that required the ridiculously taxing and exhausting element of cross-country skiing. There was a reason the sport ran in families.)

Natasha got to know the other girlfriends and wives at the finish line, primarily women from European countries and Russia. The Russians, of course, gave her a hard time for dating an American. She razzed them back for having men that weren’t as good-looking as hers. She used this time to ask revealing questions, using her background as a not-American to determine who held the most resentment towards an upstart American usurping these ladies’ sport. She then worked with Steve and Bruce, factoring what she gathered in to their plans and evaluations.

The Avengers and Shield were honing in on the likely scenario that the man behind the attacks was Hans Alf Dahl, a failed biathlon athlete from Norway who never finished above 16th in international competition and who hated, loathed and despised Americans. His ever-so-stellar biathlon career was ended by a collision during an IBU Cup mass start race with an American athlete. Hans tried to sue everyone remotely involved with the accident but got nowhere with his claims because it had been just that – an accident, and most likely his fault at that.

Even so, after Dahl retired and became a biathlon coach, he nursed a seething resentment of American biathlon athletes. It was shortly after his two trainees didn’t make Norway’s Olympic team that the first attempt was made on Clint’s life. From the limited information they could gather on the man, Hans Dahl had fallen off the radar after his country’s extremely competitive national trials and had turned his efforts towards eliminating the American competition.

As far as Natasha could tell, no one that she talked to knew Hans or particularly cared about him. Some of the athletes who had been around for a while knew him, but they all hated him. Of course, almost all of the other competitors were horrified by the attempts of Clint’s life. In another unintended consequence, instead of rallying behind a cry of “death to the Americans!”, Clint’s peers were finally accepting him. They were well aware that they had been jerks to the guy and that he had shown great class and restraint in not throwing them under the bus at any point during his interviews. They also appreciated that no publicity was really bad publicity, and more people were showing interest in their sport than ever had before.

Clint easily qualified in his first round and won his second round, ensuring his appearance in the finals. As he removed his skies and carried them to the spectator barrier to hug Natasha after his first place finish in the semifinals, a shot rang out and the crowd froze, followed by instant pandemonium. Despite being utterly exhausted after the 20 km event he had just won, Clint sprinted towards Natasha because he could tell what no one else could. Unlike everyone else, he had been looking at Natasha when it happened.

Just as had been feared, Natasha was the target this time.

“NATASHA!!!”

Natasha’s right arm was crimson and Clint ripped off her parka to reveal a through-and-through shot to the fleshy part of her bicep. He recognized it for what it was – a non-lethal warning shot.

Natasha was silent during this procedure, having fallen to the ground but not passed out. She was in an interesting position here – as herself, she would have glanced down at her wound and rolled her eyes. As Clint Barton’s masseuse girlfriend, she might reasonably become hysterical. As it was, she instantly settled on ‘pained dignity’.

She raised her other hand to Clint’s face as he put pressure on her wound and paramedics raced to their side.

“I’m okay, Clint. I’m okay. Just remember your promise.”

It was this image that went viral, of course – the shot of the decorated military veteran athlete applying emergency first aid to his fallen girlfriend as she bravely held his face in her bloody hand.

First responders raced in and took over and Natasha was rushed to the hospital, Clint riding shotgun in the ambulance. The major nerve cluster in her shoulder was completely spared and while the wound was painful and unsightly, she was released the following morning with painkillers and a sling. His pretend girlfriend/bodyguard also insisted that Clint go on the NBC Today Show and speak with Bob Costas about what had happened. He didn’t want to leave her (it was getting harder and harder to tell himself that he didn’t have real feelings for her), but she put her foot down, and he went.

Two of the other contestants wives had heard Natasha’s words to Clint and after ascertaining that Natasha was safe and resting, Costas immediately zeroed in on what his girlfriend said as she lay in his arms.

Clint held himself tightly and explained.

“Before we left, she made me swear that no matter what happened, I would keep going. Even if she was hurt or killed, I couldn’t quit. I couldn’t let them win that way.”

“So you will be competing in the finals on Thursday, then,” Costas observed.

“No question,” said Clint. “I promised.”

“What if she had been killed?” Costas asked as gently as he could.

“I would still compete. I wouldn’t like it, but I would do it. For her.”

Costas nodded solemnly.

“If the times from either of the first two events were used to determine medals, you know you would already have earned a silver medal, ending the 70-year biathlon medal drought for the U.S.” Costas stopped and waited for Clint to nod. The sports broadcaster then clarified for viewers, “Norwegian Ole Einar Bjørndalen, the man known as King of Biathlon and most decorated winter Olympian of all time, would achieve the gold. Now, Clint, is it your goal to defeat Bjørndalen and win a gold medal?”

Personally, Clint was just impressed that Costas could pronounce the Norwegian’s name right. Most people outside of the sport couldn’t.

“Honestly, Bob, I’m not worried about medals. All I care about is competing in this race in honor of Natasha and my country and showing the world that the United States does not bow down to terrorists. We do not run from a fight, and I do not run from a fight. This person – whoever they are – can’t prove themselves to be the best on the field of competition, so they are trying to defeat others behind the cowardly scope of a rifle. At this point, I don’t have to medal at all. All I have to do to win is show up and compete.”

Within 12 hours, the top trending hashtags (not just Olympic hashtags, but ALL hashtags) on social media were #teambarton, #rememberyourpromise, and #showuptowin.

oOo

Phil Coulson knew that Clint was both badly shaken by Natasha’s shooting and more driven than ever to perform well. He also knew that Clint was in love with Natasha and simply refusing to admit it. He knew this because Phil had been training Clint for three years and he knew him as well as anybody could. What he didn’t know was if – or at least how strongly – Natasha felt in return.

Worried about the man he looked at as a surrogate son, Coulson decided to talk to Steve about it. He knew how much Clint’s fake-not-fake-girlfriend respected her team leader and Phil was guessing that if anyone knew how Natasha felt (which was not a given) it would be Steve.

Steve didn’t know. He did have a few thoughts on the matter, though. While he wouldn’t share them with just anyone, Steve understood the need to be open with their asset’s coach.

“Natasha is an expert at getting close to targets, getting what we need and extracting herself without becoming too involved,” explained her team leader. “This time, though – it’s different. We haven’t talked about it or anything, but even I can see that Clint isn’t just an asset to her anymore. There’s something there. I figure Clint must be a pretty good guy; otherwise Natasha wouldn’t get so emotionally involved.”

“That he is,” observed Coulson, relieved that the attraction wasn’t one-sided. “Now if we can keep them both alive, we’ll be in good shape.”

“We’re getting closer to catching the guy. Olympic security is following up on our information, as are we. It’s just a matter of time.”

Phil turned to leave and Steve called out to stop him.

“Phil, you probably know this, anyway, but Natasha would never let herself feel anything that would get in the way of her doing what needs to be done. If she let herself fall for Clint, I can assure you she’s done it in a way that will make her an even better bodyguard for him.”

Phil smiled and nodded before turning back around. Yeah, he knew that.

oOo

The day of the biathlon singles medal round finally arrived. Natasha stood proudly and visibly on the sidelines wearing her sling and answering questions with her usual grace and poise. Having kept to their home base since the shooting, her presence prompted the biggest media firestorm yet, although one wouldn’t know it from looking at her.

Clint made sure to kiss his girlfriend for luck in front of the cameras before being driven to the start of the race. For just a moment, in the middle of the craziness that was this place and time, the two of them looked at each other and it was like the rest of the world melted away. Clint was skiing for her and she was standing tall for him. They also both knew that this wasn’t the end for them.

Clint went to begin his race.

There was a lot of time for reflection during a cross-country race. Clint had his audiobook on headphones as usual, but he spent a lot of time just thinking about where he wanted to go after this race, what he wanted to do. He had been stuck in a rut since he left the Army, since the events of his last few ops threw him for such a loop. But now…it’s like Natasha enabled him to pull out of that place he was in and see new possibilities.

Clint wondered if the Avengers might take him on as a member of their team. He had the right skill set and his marksmanship would be welcome, he was sure. He wasn’t sure if Natasha would be on board with it, though, which was the whole point. Would she be okay with moving their relationship to a more permanent place? Because that’s what his joining the Avengers would do – they would be a team, always around each other. It would be the real deal.

He also was aware that he would then have to watch her work her magic on other assets and targets. He didn’t think it would be an insurmountable obstacle. He had seen the shift in Natasha over the past month – he knew what she looked like when she was in business mode and he knew that she no longer was like that with him. As long as any marks she targeted got what they thought was the real her, but which was actually her work face, he was okay. She had work to do and she was good at it.

He was no longer just work, and they both knew it.

As Clint covered the 20 kilometers of snowy topography, he saw both his team and Olympic security on watch on the sidelines. There were spectators at each of the target stations, but those weren’t the only points at which security stood guard. The entire route was covered. He focused on his race and kept himself aware only as much as he needed to. He had complete control over himself and no control over the actions of those around him. He knew how to take care of his business.

As Clint reached the end of the course, there began to be more people on the sidelines. Tickets were usually relatively easy to come by for biathlon events. Not this time. Spectators were lined up for a full kilometer before the finish line. He saw signs advocating for him and heard fans shouting encouragement.

When he was within sight of the finish line, he heard a shot ring out and what sounded like a huge throwdown. There was lots of yelling, another gunshot and screams from those watching. Clint ignored all of this and increased his speed towards the finish line. The sooner he got there, the sooner he could make sure Natasha was safe.

As he crossed the line, his eyes searched only for Natasha. The relief he felt when he saw her standing safely on the sidelines almost dropped him to his knees. He ripped off his skies and ran over to her, collapsing on her in a huge hug.

“Did you see?! Did you see?!” she cried as she embraced him.

He was too tired to do much more than focus on his relief. He didn’t want to pull away from her, but he did enough to see her face.

“You finished with the silver, Clint! You did it! You did it!”

He pulled her back and held on tight.

They had done it.

oOo

Come to find out that Hans Alf Dahl had smuggled in a ceramic rifle in pieces to avoid the metal detectors. He put it together out of sight of the security – or what he thought was out of sight. When he took aim right as Clint approached the finish line, Thor tackled the would-be-assassin and Dahl’s shot went wide into the air, injuring no one.

Even as Thor held the fanatic down, the man fought to keep his weapon even as Steve fought to take it away. Dahl managed to pull the trigger one last time, the bullet ripping through Steve’s thigh. An Olympic security officer shot Dahl in his trigger shoulder, ensuring that the man wouldn’t be able to hold the rifle, much less fire it again.

Dahl was taken into custody and his arm was looked at in the hospital. Ultimately he would lose most function in his right arm whereas Steve walked away with a through-and-through to the fleshy part of his thigh.

The Norwegian admitted to investigators that he targeted Clint because he blamed Americans for the decline of his career and because he wanted to make sure that no American ever stood on the biathlon podium. Dahl was arrested and sent to prison where he lived a life of ignominy, fading into obscurity.

Clint, on the hand, became a national hero. Because of his actions, the United States finally had a flag raised for the United States in biathlon. As the Norwegian national anthem was played for Ole Einar Bjørndalen, who true to expectations took the gold, Clint stood tall, proud of the fact that this medal wasn’t just for him. Like the soldier he was, this accomplishment belonged to his team. He just ended up wearing the hardware.

A team member. That was who he was. That was who he wanted to be. It was time to belong to a team again.

The rest of the Olympics were a blur of interviews and specials, he and Natasha holding hands through all of it. At their request, Clint said nothing about the Avengers and their role in his security detail, crediting solely the Olympic forces with the capture of the sports terrorist.

He couldn’t carry the flag in the Closing Ceremonies as he had already carried it at the beginning of the Olympics, but the team did insist on something for Clint that had never been done before. In what truly was a first, Natasha was invited to march with the team in the Closing Ceremonies. She tried to refuse, but the Americans likewise refused to take no for an answer.

And so it was that Natasha and Clint marched in the Closing Ceremonies hand in hand, him waving to the crowd and her smiling beautifically. Athletes from around the world came and signed her sling, and his fellow biathlon athletes congratulated Clint and welcomed him into the fold.

That night as they climbed into bed, exhausted and emotionally full, Clint pulled Natasha into his arms and asked what he had been working up to for days.

“So would you be comfortable with me asking Steve for a job?”

Natasha laughed against his chest. “I would hurt you if you didn’t.”

oOo

Clint retired from biathlon. He had accomplished what he set out to do – working through the things he had to deal with. The Olympic medal was a nice bit of icing on the cake. Phil continued coaching, attracting considerable talent now that his star athlete had accomplished such great things. Tony built Clint an unbreachable display case for his Olympic and World Championship medals, insisting that he wanted Clint’s “bling” to be safe from all of those biathlon fanatics.

At Steve’s recommendation, Fury hired Clint and assigned him to the Avengers. The marksman slid right in to the team like he had always been there. He surprised them all by sharing that he actually preferred a bow to a gun, and they were amazed to see just how effective the silent weapon could be.

Clint and Natasha never got rings or a piece of paper saying they were committed to each other. But they had legal documents drawn up naming each other their beneficiaries and medical proxies. Most importantly, they knew what they were, as did their friends.

For the first time in years, Clint felt even. He knew who he was, where his life was going, and who he was going with. What more could he ask for?


Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning. – Winston Churchill

/The End