A Gift From: findthesea
Type Of Gift: Fic
Title: your words in my memory (are like music to me)
A Gift For: theladymore
Rating: T
Warnings: Minor graphic depictions of violence
Summary/Prompt Used: “We’re not in the business of deserving second chances,” she says and for once, Clint thinks that she might be right. They’ve definitely overdrawn their fuck-around time, and for longer than he thinks they probably deserved.
For the prompt: Director Coulson re-recruits Clintasha back into SHIELD. You have free reign to explore what their first mission back in SHIELD is like.
Author's Note: The idea to explore what going back to SHIELD would mean for Clint and Natasha was something that I fell in love with from the first time I looked at my prompts, and I wanted to write something that showed them straddling the line between vulnerability and competence. In other words: a story that was true to who they’ve become at this point in the MCU. All the thanks in the world to my betas (to be revealed), whose comments and suggestions made this infinitely better. Seriously. All the good stuff is from them. And to my cheerleaders who helped motivate me and push me through many a writer’s block. And to Buffy, because I think I unintentionally ripped off a plotline by accident...
As an FYI, information on the Norn Stones can be found here. Asgardian lore is not exactly my forte, so forgive me for any glaring inaccuracies.
Title from Snow Patrol’s “Set The Fire To The Third Bar.”


banner by frea_o

Clint’s standing in the middle of Starbucks – in the middle of fucking Starbucks – when he gets Natasha’s call.

“I thought there was no more SHIELD.,” he says, cradling the phone between his ear and his shoulder as he slides a cardboard sleeve onto his cup. The sound of Natasha’s frustrated sigh tells him more than her next words do.

“There isn’t. But –”

“But. There’s always a ‘but,’” Clint mutters as he pushes his way out the door, turning down one of Manhattan’s busy side streets.

“But Coulson wants us to meet with him,” Natasha finishes. “Said he’ll come to us; we don’t have to go to some secret base or…or wherever he’s holing his team up now.” Her voice sounds tight and a little hesitant, and Clint immediately feels his stomach clench with a feeling he can’t quite describe.

“Well, great,” he says, pushing through his anxiety, throwing a glance towards the oncoming cars slowing to a stop in front of the crosswalk on 42nd Street. “Because these coffees are hot, and I was really looking forward to enjoying them in private.”

-

The only good thing about living in the Tower are its ten million and one hidden entrances, plus the ones that Clint’s managed to come across that no one else would probably notice. It means that getting back into the building while bypassing any unwanted confrontation is laughably easy, and when he gets upstairs he finds Natasha where he left her, in the guest bedroom that they’ve since adopted as their own. She’s stretched out on the king-sized bed with her hair up in a messy ponytail, her eyes downcast on a healthy-sized paperback whose spine Clint recognizes from one of Pepper’s bookshelves.

“I thought you got lost,” she says conversationally, turning a page – Cold Mountain, Clint notes with a scrunch of one eye as he hands over her coffee.

“And I thought you hated that movie.”

“I hated the movie. I didn’t say I hated the book,” she intones, glancing up. “Seriously, what took you so long?”

Cling shrugs. “Took a detour,” he responds, sliding out of his coat. It falls to the floor in a lazy heap and Natasha raises an eyebrow, putting down her book and taking a sip from her cup.

“After all these years, you’d think I would be the one on the brink of paranoia.” She smiles gently, tossing a nod in his direction. “You’re giving me a run for my money.”

“Yeah, well.” Clint threads a hand through his hair. “You were in this thing headfirst, remember? I wasn’t.” The rest of the words aren’t exactly there, the underlying continuation of I’m still trying to adjust to all of this and I have no idea when it’s going to blow up in my face, but he knows Natasha hears them because her smile drops slightly.

“Coulson’s downstairs.”

“I figured.” Clint moves next to her and plays with the lid on his cup, fingernails skirting under the edges of hard white plastic. “You were waiting for me?”

“Of course,” she responds automatically and her voice takes on an edge, as if she’s shocked he would even consider the alternative. “Also, you had my coffee.” She softens her tone as she says the words, and he gives the barest of smiles in return.

“And he didn’t say what he wanted?”

“All he said was that he wanted us to meet with him,” Natasha repeats, lacing the fingers of her free hand through his own. “I thought we owed him the courtesy of listening…at least that much.”

Clint nods, chewing on the words in his mind before getting up, knowing there’s more prominent reason for her suggestion, one that seems so innocent on the surface. It had been her on the receiving end of a meeting that she didn’t want once upon a time, it had been her who he had pleaded with when asking for a moment, a second, an allowance of time to talk about why he wanted her to stay after saving her life.

“Yeah,” he says quietly, pushing back the sudden memory, tugging her off the bed. “Fine. So let’s get this over with.”

-

Despite the fact that Clint knows Tony’s three-piece couch is rather comfortable, Coulson’s not sitting. Instead, he’s standing by the room’s large floor-to-ceiling window, idly flipping through a smartphone while shifting his weight back and forth. Clint concentrates on finishing the rest of his coffee and hangs back, letting Natasha take the lead as they enter, unsure how to admit to himself – to anyone, really – that it’s still unnerving to have his former handler alive and present. Even though Clint hadn’t actually been there for Coulson’s death, hadn’t even known what had happened until well after the battle, he harbors enough visions of what went down on the Helicarrier to haunt him well into the next ten years.

“Agent Romanoff.” Coulson extends a hand, inclining his head and sliding his phone back into his suit pocket. “Agent Barton.”

“Sir,” Natasha says as Clint raises an eyebrow, speaking at the same time.

“Isn’t ‘agent’ a little overblown considering we don’t have jobs right now?”

Coulson cracks a thin smile, crossing his arms. “Missed you too. Have a seat.”

Clint eyes him, moving slowly to the couch and perching on the edge of the armrest. “I think you know that I see better from a distance.”

“I do,” Coulson agrees and Clint laughs bitterly under his breath, because he had meant the comment as a joke that seems to have fallen flat in the wake of current events, and also because the response brings up too-strong visions of New Mexico, of glowing blue cubes and overworked scientists and a wispy, haunted voice.

You have heart.

He’s shaken from his memories rather abruptly by Natasha’s entrance into the conversation.

“I appreciate the visit, Phil,” and he notices her tone is straddling itself somewhere between kind and cautious at the same time. “But why are you here?” She moves to stand next to Clint, close enough that she could touch him if she wanted to, and he can feel the static heat of her body tugging at his skin.

“I’d like to recruit you back into SHIELD.”

“Excuse me?” Natasha asks sharply while Clint slides off the armrest of the couch with, “you can’t be serious.”

“I am serious.” Coulson says matter-of-factly, as if he’s oblivious to the emotion behind both of their responses. “I don’t know if you’ve heard, but I have a team now. A real team. A team that I trust. I’ve been in touch with Fury and have been tasked with rebuilding SHIELD, from the ground up.”

Clint can’t help the guffaw that escapes from his mouth. “You?” he manages and Coulson turns his gaze.

“Most other people in the position of power are out of commission, so yes,” he responds curtly and Clint knows that the banter is meant to be playful, loose, the way Coulson had always been with them before everything changed. But he can’t help the anger that he feels prickling at the edge of his brain, the overwhelming spite that drives the words out of his mouth before he can stop himself.

“So why the hell do you need us?” He’s only half aware of Natasha’s hand on the small of his back and he consciously allows himself to relax by taking shallow breaths in the space of the room.

“Because you’re two of the best individuals that SHIELD has ever had the pleasure of calling agents,” Coulson replies, his shoulders dropping slightly, seemingly ignorant of Clint’s tone. “And because after talking with Agent May, I think we could use your skills.”

“Agent May.” Natasha furrows her brow. “Agent May sent you?”

“I sent myself. I spent enough years with you to know what you’re capable of.”

“But you said you had a team,” Natasha presses. “And you still haven’t told us why you want us to come back.”

Coulson takes a tablet from the inside of his jacket, making some hard swipes against the screen.

“Hydra stole this from us three days ago,” he says, holding it out for a better view and Clint takes it hesitantly, his eyes falling on a small, unimpressive looking rock. “It’s an artifact that we believe is Asgardian in origin.”

“Great,” Clint says darkly, shoving the tablet away. “I always wanted another round at protecting alien artifacts. Maybe I can blow up the Empire State Building this time instead of a Helicarrier, cause I heard Cap already did that.”

“Clint,” Natasha says tersely, her voice cutting into his own, but he feels her fingers reaching for his and he knows that although she’d never admit it, her own fear from two years ago is strong enough that it hasn’t completely subsided, in the same way that his own nightmares lie dormant until the nights they decide to make themselves known.

“I’m not stupid,” Coulson continues. “I know what this is and what it means to you. But this is my team.” He swipes at the screen again and Clint leans over as six small boxes appear, each one showing a name, a photo, and a few lines of credentials. “Our best agent is no longer someone that we can trust, and Agent May is the only person I’d feel comfortable sending into an ops assignment with this much potential danger. It’s too much for one person, and I need her at my back for anything that my team can’t handle.” Coulson withdraws his hand. “Which is why I need you.”

Clint stays silent, shifting so that he can see the change in Natasha’s face, and he studies the creases of lines around her mouth carefully before speaking again.

“Do we have to call you Director now?”

Coulson smirks. “Agent’s still fine,” he replies as Clint shrugs, striding past them both towards the door. He pushes his now empty cup into Coulson’s hands as he exits the room.

“We’ll think about it.”

-

He doesn’t know where to go when he leaves, the only thought in his mind being that he wants space that doesn’t include being within earshot of Coulson or for that matter, anyone in the Tower who might be nosy enough to ask about the visit in the first place. After a few minutes of aimless wandering between different floors, he ends up in a recently renovated common room that’s sparsely furnished, save for a pool table and a dart board tacked to the wall.

“Sorry,” he says when he hears footsteps behind him, not bothering to turn around. He launches a dart forward with a flick of his thumb, watching as it smacks into the red bullseye.

“I didn’t ask you to apologize,” Natasha says conversationally, and Clint grunts.

“Good, because I wasn’t going to.” He can practically feel her eyes burning a hole through the back of his head before she moves to sit next to him, her fingers tightening around the skin of his calf.

“What I said before was true,” she continues quietly. “We owed him a talk, and nothing more. If you don’t want to do this, Clint…we don’t have to do this.”

He sighs loudly, and the dart he’s previously propelled from his hand bounces off the board with vicious force. “Yeah, we do,” he says, finally turning around. “You heard him. He came to us because we’re the only people he can ask. If we don’t do it, we’re responsible for putting other people in danger.”

“That was before we knew what he was asking,” Natasha says. “And before we knew what it involved.”

“So you think I can’t handle it?”

“I didn’t say that,” Natasha responds sharply, pinning him with a look that makes him recoil on instinct. “Pull yourself together, Clint. It’s me you’re talking to. Have I ever given you the impression that I thought you couldn’t handle it?”

He doesn’t answer, instead kicking his legs out in front of him, sliding onto his back and putting one hand over his face. After a long moment that seems to stretch into forever, he feels movement beside him, and the unmistakable weight of Natasha’s head on his shoulder, their usual position when they lie together.

“It’s more than just a mission,” he says carefully, and she nods against his collarbone.

“I know. But if it helps, I’ll be there with you.”

“Change of plans, then,” he mutters, and it’s Natasha’s turn to let out what sounds like a frustrated breath.

“We both know I had no control over my partnership with Rogers. And for what it’s worth, I’m glad you weren’t with me when SHIELD fell. Maybe I didn’t know where you were, but at least I knew you could take care of yourself.”

“Barely,” Clint spits out, rotating the cuff of his left shoulder as if trying to make a point. “One ambush and sixteen visits to physical therapy later, I think I might finally be functional enough to feel good about my skills again.”

“Thank goodness you were taught ambidexterity,” Natasha shoots back and Clint feels himself start to smile. She rolls over, sitting up, and rocks forward on her knees.

“I’ll go talk to Coulson. Save a dart for me.”

She leaves the room and Clint closes his eyes, welcoming the safety of the darkness in a way he hasn’t in a long time. He lies alone until he hears the door open again, feels Natasha’s head on his body again, a silent acknowledgement to the things that are needed and wanted without having to ask.

-

Coulson promises to bring them up to speed via reports that will be sent to the Tower (or so Natasha relays) but he leaves them with an extra tablet, a picture of the object in question downloaded into the system as well as a detailed dossier of the individuals he’s called his team.

“Christ, these kids look like babies,” Clint says as Natasha walks out of the bathroom with a face half covered in white cream and a towel covering her hair.

“Well, he said a few were fresh out of the Academy, didn’t he?” she asks, lowering herself to the bed. “The others can’t be more than a few years older. You were young, weren’t you?”

Clint shrugs, staring down at the photos. “I guess. 25 doesn’t seem so old when I look back, but I came in feeling like I was 40. Guess I never put it all in perspective.” He blinks a few times, swiping at a portrait of a woman with long brown hair, before knitting his brows together. “Jemma Simmons. She sound familiar?”

“Hmmm.” Natasha pulls the towel from her head, squeezing water out of dark red tendrils. “Might’ve heard her name tossed around by Tony at some point. She’s in?”

“Apparently.” Clint moves his eyes over the screen. “Smart, too. Seems he gathered himself a pretty well rounded group. Couple of geeky scientists, a hacker, your old mentor…” He jiggles the tablet once and throws it onto the covers, watching it go dark. “Not bad for a man who used to spend most of his time taking care of my hangovers.”

He expects Natasha to respond or at least deliver a well-placed physical jab and glances sideways in confusion when she doesn’t, finds her staring blankly at the wall in front of her, as if she hasn’t heard a word he’s said. Clint edges closer while wrapping an arm around her waist, lowering his chin to her shoulder, the side of her neck still damp and warm from the heat of her shower.

“What’s wrong?”

Natasha shakes her head, rubbing a hand under one eye the way he thinks a child might do when they’re tired or frustrated, smearing the bits of face wash that have dried on her skin. “Nothing. Really. It’s just…”

Clint firms his grip, keeping his hold gentle enough for her to move in his grasp. “Just what?”

“We’re not in the business of deserving second chances,” she says and for once, Clint thinks that she might be right. They’ve definitely overdrawn their fuck-around time, and for longer than he thinks they probably deserved. They weren’t kids anymore, much less kids who didn’t know any better, who were still learning how to live, who were still learning how to survive. They were spies, and they were soldiers, and they had enough red in both of their ledgers to last them a lifetime.

And Clint knows enough about the world to understand that Natasha’s got a point, because what universe would grant them any kind of redemption, much less multiple opportunities to remake themselves, especially when they’ve been unmade so many times that they can’t even remember what it feels like to be whole?

-

True to Coulson’s word, their assignment arrives in a confidentially-sealed envelope, the contents of which Natasha somehow manages to keep out of everyone else’s reach, even though it sits in the kitchen for about an hour before they realize it’s arrived. They read the files together at the table over coffee, Natasha curling her toes around one mismatched sock’s foot while she rubs the bottom of her heel against his skin.

“Cuba.” Clint drops the papers and picks up his cup. “He wants us to go to Cuba?”

“Havana, actually. And I don’t think it’s a question of want as much as it is need.” Natasha squints at the writing. “You heard Coulson. They stole something, and that’s where they’ve taken it.”

“You know, I’m getting a little sick of Hydra bases popping up in every goddamn available area,” Clint says moodily. “And I’m starting to wonder if there’s anywhere they don’t have a stronghold.”

Natasha rolls her eyes. “Think, Clint. Hydra never does anything out of the blue. There has to be a reason behind why they chose this place.”

“Yeah, to make this an annoying trip,” Clint retorts, sitting back in his chair. “You know we don’t have access to government transportation anymore? Which means we’re gonna have to sit on a plane for hours, and I’ll probably be stuck in the middle seat in coach.”

“Civilian travel, what horrors,” Tony breaks in sarcastically from somewhere behind them and Clint jumps in his seat, splashing hot liquid over the side of his mug, watching as a dark brown tinge starts to stain the corner of the manila folder.

“Jesus, Stark.”

“Sorry,” Tony says, not sounding sorry at all. “But it is my kitchen. If you guys wanted to discuss your top secret plans without anyone knowing, you should’ve found one of your vents.”

Natasha says nothing, continuing to read, but Clint sees the top half of her mouth lift slightly. “They’re not top secret,” she says finally, closing the file, though he notices she clutches it a little tighter between her fingers. “But, you know, Clint does hate conventional travel.”

“No shit,” Tony mutters as Clint shoots him a glare, and Natasha angles her head.

“Think you can help us with that?”

Tony pauses at the coffee machine. “What, like you’ve ever doubted me? To be honest, I thought that’s why you kept me around.” He sticks his back against the counter, pressing his hands onto the marble.

“What’s your time frame?”

Natasha glances over at Clint, who looks down and shuffles the papers again before meeting her eyes.

“24 hours,” he says finally. “We’ll need gear and extra comms, and someone who is navigationally savvy enough to drop us in the area without being seen.”

Tony nods, picking up his mug and downing the rest of his coffee in three large gulps. “I’ll have Potts put in a call to Stark Industries this morning.”

-

Nearly eight hours after eggs and bacon, Clint finds himself standing on the roof of Stark Tower, the part that doubles as a landing pad, the thick leather of his suit causing him to shift uncomfortably under the hot sun. He flexes the finger of one hand, watching the black strips of the arm guard move in their familiar patterns, and grabs a regular-tipped arrow from his quiver without much thought.

“Save your arrows for the field,” Natasha’s voice calls as he strings it, watching it careen into the side of a nearby building under construction. Clint turns to see her emerging from behind and while there’s nothing unfamiliar about her black suit, the small red hourglass resting at her middle, widows bites covering the whole of her wrist, he somehow feels like everything is strangely out of place, like it’s years ago all over again, like he’s watching her walk out onto the runway of headquarters looking alone and scared but exerting a confidence that’s every bit as real as he had remembered from their first meeting.

“You’re late.” He relaxes his grip on his bow as Natasha hands him a small comm unit, placing her own inside her ear.

“Coulson sent over everything,” she says, adjusting the device as she steps into his space. “Tests, reports…the works. There’s no evidence that this artifact has any kind of history with mind control.”

“Nothing?” Clint feels the anxiety in his chest recede as she gently takes the forgotten comm unit from his hand and reaches up to secure it for him.

“Nothing,” Natasha repeats and he lets out a soft moan, suddenly realizing that his palpable relief most likely sounds ridiculous.

“Thanks,” he replies and Natasha squeezes the side of his arm before pulling away. He lifts his gaze and lets his eyes wander along the endless canvas of sky, cloudless and blue except for a few wisps of white dotting its sphere.

“So what do we know about this thing, then?”

Natasha folds her arms. “It’s called a Norn Stone,” she says and Clint thinks she suddenly sounds overtired, like she could use a week-long nap. “It’s alien-based, though not entirely Chitauri, which is what you’d expect. But it was used by Loki once upon a time, and we can assume that Hydra wants it because it possesses some kind of power that allows it to be weaponized.”

“Greenwich?” Clint asks as he looks away from the sky, his mind turning on London and Thor, and Natasha shakes her head.

“Probably before Asgard was even on our radar,” she answers. “Even Coulson’s team didn’t recognize anything like that when they were researching. Seemed like it was being studied by a few scientists who were also trying to figure out its properties before it was stolen.”

Clint makes a face. “So essentially, we’re going off of nothing,” he ascertains, not bothering to keep the bite out of his words and Natasha grabs for his hand.

“Hey.” Her voice roughens, and the sharpness of her tone forces him to meet her eyes. “Look at me. This is a routine mission, okay? It’s nothing different than what we used to do on a daily basis.”

Clint holds her gaze and nods, because technically, she’s right – few assignments they’ve ever taken on together have had everything laid out for them; more often than not that was the exact reason they were chosen to go in the first place, because everyone knew they could handle themselves in potentially compromising situations. Still, he can’t help thinking about how out of practice they are, both in skill and in espionage, and he also knows that neither of them have been doing much of anything like this since SHIELD’s demise.

“What else?”

“What?” Natasha looks confused, and Clint schools his face into something resembling impassiveness.

“Spit it out, Nat, I can see it. What else do we have to know about this thing that you’re not telling me?”

Natasha moves her mouth back and forth, and he watches the way her jaw contracts, and he thinks in any other case he would feel bad about calling her out like this, if she didn’t seem so hesitant to drop details.

“These stones…they do have an influence over people. But it’s not like Loki,” she continues quickly, and he knows he can’t hide the look that she’s seeing, the expression of unbridled fear. “It’s not like someone can use them the way he used that scepter to control you. They can bend reality, but their effect varies from person to person.”

Clint feels an ache pulsating at the side of his temple. “Meaning what?”

“I don’t know,” Natasha says, almost impatiently. “But if someone dangerous does come into contact with this thing, their reaction could be something that we’re not used to.”

This is monsters and magic and nothing we were ever trained for. Clint closes his eyes for a handful of seconds as the pain in his head turns into a dull throb, before he forces himself to focus again.

“Okay,” he says and Natasha looks entirely apologetic, as if sharing the information is something that she feels guilty about, as if it’s something she wishes she didn’t have to tell him at all.

“Wheels up in five,” Tony announces through their ears and Clint looks up as a blast of air pulls at the top of his head, his eyes widening at the sight of the hovercraft lowering itself to the landing pad.

“Jesus, Tony.” Clint ascends the ramp as it lowers, his previous conversation, for the moment, forgotten. “Where the hell did you get a working quinjet?”

He can almost see Tony smirk over the connection as Natasha follows him inside, dropping their bags.

“You should know by now that with my help, nothing’s impossible. Enjoy your vacation, Barton.”

-

Against his better judgment, Clint ends up falling asleep somewhere between South Carolina and the Bahamas and wakes up to Natasha shaking him gently, her head bent near his mouth.

“Time to go?” he asks a little groggily, feeling the shudder of the jet and she nods, rubbing life back into the hand that’s fallen victim to an unfortunate position underneath his head. Clint grits his teeth as the awkward tingling sensation works its way back into his joints; he hasn’t asked or even referenced his discomfort but he knows that she’s always known the small, subtle things that no one else would remember or think to watch out for.

“Your shoes,” she says quietly as he starts to stand, nudging his boots with her foot. Clint looks down at the mess of laces, forgetting that he’s untied them for maximum comfort during the long flight.

“Right,” he says with a short laugh. He leans down, trying to ignore the fact that his fingers are fumbling uncharacteristically with the strings until Natasha kneels in front of him, two strong hands finishing the work of securing the cords together in tight knots.

“We’re good,” she says as she straightens up and it’s a statement, not a question, and he nods in agreement as he shoulders his bow.

“I can do this, you know. I’m not –”

“I know,” Natasha interrupts. “I know, Clint. You don’t have to explain it to me, okay?”

He nods, biting down on his lip and she runs her hands over the fabric of the vest, stopping with her hand right below where he knows the SHIELD logo should be. It’s a space that’s now vacant and empty, like an organ that’s been removed from his body and maybe he doesn’t really need it anymore to function, but even so, it feels odd as hell to know it’s not there.

“You know, one of my first memories was this suit,” she continues softly, speaking to herself more than him, and she shifts slightly to accommodate the way the quinjet is attempting to descend. “When your team drugged me, and you carried me. I remember trying to fight whatever I had been given and I kept focusing on that symbol. Right there.” She taps her fingers gently against the blank space, her voice dropping to a barely audible sound. “I could hear your heartbeat.”

Clint swallows, feeling the phantom weight of her prone body against his chest; she had been more bones and flesh than flesh and bones at that point, vulnerable and hurting but all defiance and anger in ways that he couldn’t, at that moment, fully understand.

“I was terrified you were going to wake up and try to hurt me,” he trades. “Not so much you, but what they had made of you.”

Natasha nods, spreading the length of her hand along his chest, and he doesn’t miss the way his pulse erratically speeds up, charging against her palm.

“It takes a lot for you to be scared now,” she says in the same calm tone. “After everything we’ve done. But this isn’t fear.”
“No,” Clint acknowledges, because as strange as it feels to admit it, he knows it’s the truth. “It’s not.” He scuffs his foot against the floor, suddenly uneasy that he can’t parse the feelings that are making him uncomfortable, despite the fact that everything else about the situation is something he’s experienced a thousand times over.

“I don’t know what it is, though,” he says after a long pause. “Does that matter?”

“No,” Natasha repeats without hesitation, smoothing down the creases of his vest. “You’re still my Delta, right?”
You’ve still got my back, right? Clint nods. “Always.”

“Good. Then let’s go show Coulson why we’re the best at what we do.” She turns away as the ramp starts to lower itself to the ground and Clint tightens his hands around his bow, following her off the jet.

-

The air is rancid, filled with a heavy, suffocating stench that makes Clint immediately remember why he never liked coming to Cuba in the first place, not the first, fifth or tenth time he was dispatched overseas for whatever reason. The jet has dropped them in the middle of what Clint supposes are leftover ruins from a recent explosion, and Natasha stays close to his side as they move through the rubble, her leg brushing against the stem of his bow. Each step sends a tremor down his spine that feels like an electric jolt and he thinks that he would take more notice of the way she can still affect him like this, even after all these years, if he wasn’t so worried.

“Coulson said to check in here first,” Natasha says as she approaches a boarded up building masquerading as an out-of-business restaurant. She lowers her gun, sticking it in her holster while Clint raises his bow a little higher. He can tell by the way she’s walking that her senses are on alert, knows that it would take her less than two seconds to reach for her gun and make a clean shot, even as she bends over and fishes a bent safety pin out of her belt.

“Think Hydra’s planning a surprise party?” Clint asks sarcastically as he watches Natasha pick the lock of the seemingly shut up establishment, the corner of one eye trained to the left for any sudden movement.

“Well, they’d be terrible hosts,” she replies, her voice thickly obscured thanks to the way her tongue has embedded itself in inside her cheek. She gives one hard push as the door swings open on its hinges, throwing the safety pin to the ground.

“After you, Hawkeye.”

Clint smiles faintly as he moves ahead of her into the space, which has clearly been all but abandoned, a thin layer of dust coating the windowsills like a glaze of light snow. There’s little to no furniture except for some overturned tables and chairs in the far corner and nothing but silence at every turn, which unnerves him more than he wants to let on, and he curses himself for the fact that silence of all things has now put him on edge.

Fucking Hydra.

“Where do you hide a secret door in a place that’s already secret?” Natasha asks under her breath as she comes up behind him, shining a small flashlight onto the wall. Clint narrows his eyes, noticing for the first time a skinny collection of lines etched into the cement.

“How the hell does that intuition work?” he asks, only mildly frustrated that her vision has managed to pick up something that he knows his should have just as quickly. Natasha walks forward, putting her hand up.

“When Rogers and I went to New Jersey, we found something like this in the bunker.” She turns, a ghost of a smile falling over her lips. “Lucky guess.”

“Yeah. Looks like you don’t need a secret passcode, at least,” Clint says, watching the door move. It groans loudly in the silence, and he only has a moment to worry about being heard as they slip easily through the entrance.

“Good thing, too. You always sucked with figuring out passcodes,” Natasha teases as they walk carefully down the hall. They make it about three feet without incident, until a soft rustling somewhere ahead causes them both to tense and turn on their heels in tandem, their respective weapons raised in defense. Without thinking, Clint releases an arrow into the dark, his eyes trained into the distance.

He hears a sharp thwack but there’s no further sound and Clint advances slowly, until he can see his offending mark better: a plump-looking rodent, who he realizes has been an unfortunate casualty of “wrong place, wrong time.”

“Rats,” Natasha mutters next to him and he’s honestly not sure whether she means the situation or the animal.

“Guess I’m not going to get SHIELD’s Humanitarian Of The Year Award,” Clint says, looking down, and Natasha snorts.
“I killed a random family’s dog when I was seven, and the turtle my therapist gave me as a Christmas present. I think I have you beat in that department.”

It feels comfortable. It feels like it’s always felt, not like they have this space between them where they’re afraid to say or do things that should be so easy, but regular and normal and comfortable, like the way it was for so many years. Clint’s so busy being fixated on this fact that he nearly misses the man that darts out from the open space where he’s seen the rat emerge, beelining towards him and delivering an uppercut to the side of his face.

Clint manages to turn his head with enough time to avoid the brunt of the blow but falls stunned to the ground, his hand still tightly gripping his bow. He vaguely registers the static zap of Natasha’s bites, the subsequent screams that he knows are a result of a finished job and then there’s a hand by his eyes and he grabs for it blindly, letting her pull him up.

“You okay?” she asks brusquely, her hand skirting over his skin and he moves his jaw painfully, feeling the start of what he knows will end up being a nasty looking bruise.

“Yeah,” he mumbles, squinting into the alleyway. “Guess Coulson’s instinct was right.” Clint takes another arrow from his quiver, his eyes zipping over the tip as he strings it in one quick motion – slightly bent head, too thin, putty. He aims at what looks like a particularly large mass of bodies at the end of the hall, half-smiling as a sticky substance explodes from the end of the arrow, trapping three armed guards to the wall. Behind him, he can hear Natasha in the middle of her own fight, and he turns to find her engaged in hand-to-hand combat with another man. Clint makes two quick strides until he’s close enough that he can deck her attacker hard from behind.

“Thanks,” she breathes, immediately taking off in the direction of what Clint realizes is a lighted room at the end of the hall. He curses to himself as he follows, because Natasha would run into fire if it meant she could protect him from something, if it meant she could get a job done or save him from possibly hurting himself further. Natasha would throw herself at danger without thinking about its consequences if there was any chance she could spare him pain on both an emotional or physical level, and it’s a sacrifice that Clint routinely tries to forget about, because they don’t discuss things like this, things like exit strategies or wills or trust funds, because they don’t talk about things like what happens if one of them suddenly leaves the other in the dust.

He takes off at a sprint, reaching the end of the hall just in time to watch Natasha deliver a roundhouse kick to a man with his knife raised. She’s tackled a few guards on a raised ledge close to where a window opening is, and for a moment he’s caught in state of astonishment, forgetting how long it’s been since he’s really seen her in action. She moves like the ocean, all fluid with slightly rippling edges, like a disturbance of calm that you barely notice because every motion is so seamless. Clint’s shaken out of his reverie by her shout and he forces his mind to retaliate in the same way his muscles are already reacting, strong arms reaching for another arrow.

“Drop it,” comes a sharp voice from somewhere behind and Clint tenses as the unmistakable cold metal of a gun presses itself into his skull. He freezes without question, slowly lowering his hands as he drops his bow to the ground, trying to ignore the fight still going on above him and the way Natasha has her attacker backed into a corner with her own gun pressed between his eyes.

“Now tell your girlfriend to let him go,” the voice says again, and Clint swallows down his fear.

“Natasha,” and his voice feels airy, tight and not at all his. “Put down your weapon.” He waits for her to hear him over the din of the fight, waits for their eyes to lock, hoping his face can convey what his words can’t, that she sees the way they’ve both been compromised. She meets his stare and nods once, a movement barely visible, but he feels a slight relaxation at the knowledge that at least they’re on the same page.

“Now hand over the stone,” says the man behind him and Clint jerks his head up in surprise, watching as Natasha moves slowly, her gun still trained on her prisoner’s head. In her right hand is the small brown rock that Clint recognizes as the Norn Stone, which he’s somehow missed her acquiring.

“Natasha,” Clint says again, this time more urgently as the man repeats his own words, and Natasha suddenly snaps her fist closed, her eyes flashing with defiance.

“No.”

Something’s wrong. Something’s wrong, and Clint notices before she even speaks, before she even moves, identifying the way that her face hardens with a look that he knows she would never use in his presence. He watches almost helplessly as she steps away from her attacker, letting her weapon fall to the ground, clutching the stone tightly.

“Give that to me,” the man growls, and Clint feels the pressure of the gun lessening against his head.

“I’d rather keep it,” Natasha says icily, and Clint shifts just enough to see if he can move without being noticed. It’s a strangely tense standoff, one rooted in inevitable danger, and Clint debates the feeling in the back of his mind before he moves again.

“Natasha,” he yells loudly, wrenching away as the man turns his attention away and raises his gun again. Clint uses the slight advantage of a head start to sprint towards one of the pillars in the corner, throwing himself behind the cement with his hands over his head. He waits for a shot that doesn’t come, instead picking up on a loud yell, and opens his eyes to a world of white.

He peeks out from behind the thick column, jumping back as another bright spark explodes near his face, and when he looks up again he feels his stomach drop. Natasha hasn’t moved from her position but she hasn’t let go of the stone, either, and is using it to toss what Clint supposes are electric bolts at any individual that comes across her path.

“Fuck,” he mutters as he makes his way across the room while dodging another jolt of electricity. It shoots past his face at such a close range that he can feel the heat of its power, hitting another guard somewhere behind him, and Clint ignores the scream as he continues to move. Up close, he can see how her pupils have grown dark, a black depth spreading across the whites of her eyes and bleeding down from the roots of her hair like a slow moving river, like a foul evil too long contained that has at last found its escape. It’s a look that terrifies him, because it’s not Natasha.

It’s not Natasha, it’s not a blue tinge like he knows he experienced with Loki, and he has no idea what it is.

She turns at his approach, holding the stone in his direction, and he sees her more clearly -- a body shaking, quivering with something that looks and feels like untamed power, the gauntlets at her wrist sparking wildly with the same intensity of the bolts she’s been throwing, white heat bursting from the ends of her fingers.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he says as loudly as he dares over the crackling and shouts that deafen his senses. “I promise.”

“I don’t care about your promises,” she all but snarls and he feels a stab of hurt at her words even though there’s a part of his brain that’s acutely aware the response isn’t Natasha in any capacity.

“Don’t do this,” Clint protests as Natasha raises the stone again before lowering it slowly and for the briefest of moments, he thinks he’s been afforded a sort of reprieve.

And then she moves.

To his surprise, she bypasses him completely, lunging towards one of the Hydra agents in her path. The man screams as she digs her nails into his arms, ripping skin and drawing blood as if she’s an animal clawing apart fresh meat after having been starved for days on end. Clint watches with a mix of horror and disgust as she attacks the next offender who tries to run, sinking what have become long, dagger-like nails into his jugular, a deep crimson staining her hands. It’s no longer like watching the ballet-like movement of a well-choreographed fight; it’s like watching a caged creature on the brink of madness, one that exerts a force and anger that’s both beautiful and terrifyingly brutal at the same time.

The air is rank, stuffy with the scent of pain and death, the tangy metal smell of flesh being fried in the bites around her wrists hanging densely in the air, a horrible suffocating stench worse than anything Clint has ever associated with his surroundings. She’s going to destroy everything, he realizes suddenly, watching her go after another three men in the same violent rage. It takes exactly one second for him to make his decision and another to move as he dives towards her, tackling her to the ground, catching her off guard.

Is this how you felt when you looked at me? Clint finds himself wondering as he grabs for her hands, holding her down forcefully. When I wanted to kill you? When you were forced to do everything in your power to try to not kill me? He manages to get one knee across her thighs, balancing himself against her writhing body.

“Put…it…down,” Clint grunts as he strengthens his grip on the hand holding the stone, forcing her palm open as her other hand comes up and pulls at the back of his hair. There’s a moment where it suddenly feels like two years ago all over again, when they held knives to each other’s throats and when she branded his skin with bite marks and hard punches, when they were caught between love and hate and fear and everything that defined what they meant to each other. Clint yanks away from her grip painfully, letting out a cry, and the momentum causes her grip to lessen. He uses the opportunity to slam the back of her hand into the ground and she unleashes her own scream as her fist opens, the stone clattering to the floor near her leg.

Clint continues to hold her still struggling body but he can feel the fight in her start to subside and he recognizes the feeling as something less otherworldly and more normal, the Natasha whose strength he knows like the back of his hand, the Natasha whose fighting style is like a part of his own genetic make-up, fused into the core of his body. He adjusts himself gently, allowing her to move of her own accord while still keeping a firm grip on her limbs as she starts to come back to herself.

“Clint.”

“Hey,” he says softly as he watches the black tint around her eyes fade, the familiar green creeping back in as her hair brightens to its normal color. Monsters and magic, he finds himself thinking tiredly, noticing the way the animal-like nails are receding slowly, finding their way back to their regular state. He reaches out, letting his palm burn against her skin. “You’re okay. I got you.”

She doesn’t answer, leaning into his hand in lieu of words, thin tears staining the skin resting on her own, dirty with a shared red tinge.

“We gotta get out of here. Can you walk?”

She nods slowly and he shifts, putting one arm around her waist, helping her up and letting her lean his weight against him. Clint starts to move, trying not to pay attention to the blood splattering the walls, or the way the floor has become slippery and wet from desecrated bodies.

“Agent Barton. Agent Romanoff.”

Clint turns in surprise at the voice behind him, squinting against the dim light as Melinda May’s face comes into view. She looks as war-torn as he feels, angry scrapes dotting the side of her face and parts of her tac suit torn around her legs.

“Sorry for the delay,” she says curtly, shining a flashlight in their direction and pushing back a loose strand of dark hair. “I would’ve been here sooner, but I had to take care of a few things upstairs.” She flicks the beam onto Natasha.

“You okay, Nat?”

Natasha breathes out heavily. “Yeah,” she says quietly and May cracks a smile.

“Yeah, it’ll take more than an alien weapon to incapacitate you. That, I know.” She clicks off the light, walking closer, and Clint watches as she snaps on a pair of leather gloves before stooping to rescue the fallen stone.

“How did you find us?” Clint asks as May deposits the offending object in a small box.

“Coulson put a hit on your location a few hours ago,” she responds as she straightens up, turning to lead them out of the tunnel. “Dispatched me for extraction once he got word that the place had been compromised. I got here as fast as I could, but it seems like you two had everything covered already.”

“Almost,” Clint says, helping Natasha through the doorway in the wall, and as they emergeinto the light Clint can see at least three prone bodies littering the floor, with two more slumped over a chair.

“Should I ask what happened in there?”

Clint sighs, hoisting Natasha up a little more as they exit the building. “Not exactly sure,” he says, though the response is somewhat of a lie. He knows exactly what had happened, more or less, and the thought hurts, igniting a pain in his heart that he didn’t know he could feel. “Take the stone back to Coulson. Have your scientists figure out why it does the things it does.”

“Already done,” May says, placing the box under her arm. “Trust me. This thing isn’t going to see anything but the inside of a lab for awhile.”

“Good,” Clint says grimly, and May surveys both of them with a careful look as they approach the waiting quinjet.

“You should know that it’s at least a two hour trip to our location. You’ll be okay if we fly, right? Not going to pass out on me or anything?”

Clint glances down at Natasha, who shakes her head. “No,” she promises, and May smiles again.

“Good. Then let’s get you both home.”

-
Home isn’t Stark Tower, or even The Bus, the apparent headquarters where Clint learns Coulson’s team is primarily based. Instead, “home” is a safe house a few miles south of the border, a small wooded cabin with a fireplace and a hidden loft and, from what Clint can see, solitude for miles.

“I’ll be back in three days,” May says, helping them off the jet, and Clint watches as Natasha twists from his grip to walk inside. She had broken her promise and fallen asleep during the ride though it had been a deep sleep more than anything else; one Clint recognized all too well from his own experiences and so he hadn’t been overly worried when he had felt her start to slump against him.

“Thanks,” he says, swallowing down the lump in his throat. May puts her hands on her hips.

“There’s enough food and water here to last at least a month, and some clothes. If anyone asks, we’ll tell them you guys went off the grid on Coulson’s orders and will be back by the end of the week.” She gives him one more look before making her retreat back towards the quinjet and Clint waits until she’s fully boarded before easing himself inside the small cabin, the roar of the aircraft loud in his ears as it takes flight again.

He sees the tiny circular staircase almost as soon as he enters and immediately makes his way up to where the loft is, climbing it steadily to find that May hasn’t lied. There’s a pile of clothes on the bed that looks as if it’s already been pilfered through, and Clint sheds his suit without further hesitation, discarding his gear in the corner, grabbing for a pair of jeans and a long sleeved flannel shirt.

“Natasha?”

He hasn’t raised his voice, but the echo of his low baritone carries itself throughout the cabin like a foghorn trying to find purchase in the dark. She’s not in the bedroom or the bathroom, and when he returns back downstairs he notices that the kitchen is also quiet, one small overhead lamp casting a glow over the floor. Clint frowns.

“Nat?”

“What are the worst words anyone’s ever said to you?”

She’s sitting by the fireplace with her legs drawn up to her chest, her chin resting on the top of her knees, loose strands of hair covering the sides of her face that are still marred with the scars of their battle. Clint walks further into the room, picking up one of the small logs from the cart near her feet and throwing it into the hearth.

“Ever?” He finds a small stash of matches in the woodpile and strikes a couple at the same time, watching as bright orange flames start to dance in front of his face. Natasha remains silent as he sits down and he finds himself thinking, actually thinking and not just searching for a response he knows will suffice, because the shitty thing is, he’s had a lot of things said to him that he could probably put into that category, and he’s pretty sure that she knows it.

“We don’t know the whereabouts of Agent Romanoff,” he says finally, and it’s the first time in a long time he’s allowed himself to remember the period of his life right after Hydra, when communication channels were cut and when he was constantly told to stand down, it would be fine, just stand down and we’re sure she’s okay.

“Yours?”

Natasha plays with the hem of her recently acquired hoodie, silent for a long time before she speaks.

“Barton’s been compromised.”

Clint sucks in a sharp breath, his hands moving to her body almost instantly, drawing her closer.

“Your face,” she says in response, reaching up to cup his chin, and he winces as her fingers dance gently over the bruise he knows has to be fully prominent.

“It’ll heal,” he says, shrugging off the pain. “Good story, at least. And a hell of a lot better than a concussion.”

Natasha lets her hand drop back to his lap, and he doesn’t quite know how to continue, so he takes advantage of the quiet and rocks back and forth gently while letting her stay wrapped in his hold.

“Whatever the user believes in and desires.”

“What?”

“Whatever the user believes in and desires,” Natasha repeats, clipping her words. “That’s how the stone works.”

“You said you didn’t know how the stone worked,” Clint accuses a little tightly, and as the words leave his mouth he feels her stiffen against him. Pulling away just enough, he finds her eyes. “Why the hell did you lie?”

“I didn’t want you to worry,” she says softly and he sees it in her face, the way she’s starting to crack in front of him, like a building whose foundation is on the verge of collapsing into a void. “I know how you feel about our relationship, Clint.”

Of course she does. And while he’s not surprised to know that she does, even if they’ve never had the conversation out loud, it doesn’t make him feel any better about the situation.

“So?” he challenges. Natasha shakes her head.

“If it was either one of us…and it was…” She doesn’t continue but he understands, and he lowers his head to her own. “I didn’t want you to worry about what could happen.”

Clint stares into the fire. “You remember what you said, then. What you did?”

“Yes,” she acknowledges with little emotion, and he tries to ignore the way he can feel her heart start to pound furiously under his arm.

“So you wanted revenge for yourself. For the things you did?”

“No,” she says harshly, almost as if she’s frustrated, as if she can’t make her response any clearer. “For you, Clint. For what they did to you, for what Loki did to you. Why do you think you were the one person I never attacked?” She’s all but molded herself into him by now, so much so that he can feel her shaking even though her body remains unfailingly still. “I wanted to kill everyone who was responsible for taking you away from me, no matter who they were. I was so angry and…and I almost lost you.”

“And I almost lost you,” Clint reminds her as Natasha makes a noise, reaching up to touch the injury on his face again.
“You couldn’t best me in a fight. I’m smaller.”

He can’t help but laugh, knowing that it’s not so much the nights event’s that she’s referring to but the one that took place over two years ago, when he was determined to kill her, when he was certain they were both going to die by each other’s hand.

“You always were,” he responds and in the silence that follows he can sense her trying to gather her words.

“That thing…it made me feel like I wasn’t in control. Like the past.” She pauses, her voice dropping. “I could’ve hurt you.”
“But you didn’t,” Clint soothes, the conversation so harshly reminiscent of his own horrors that he has to look away before he allows himself to think too much. In averting his eyes, he notices for the first time the half-empty bottle of Maker’s Mark by her feet.

“Where’d you find the good stuff?” he asks curiously in what he knows is a crude attempt to tug a sense of normalcy back into the conversation. Natasha reaches out with one foot to touch the label.

“In the cabinet.” She moves her face to his chest, and through the thin flannel he can feel the pulse of her breath, a lifeline that acts as a tether to his own. “Do you remember the last time we had this?”

Clint smiles. “Nope. But I do remember I had a condom with me.”

“Brat,” Natasha replies tiredly, but there’s a tremor to her voice that sounds out of place with her retort, like the beginning of a fracture. He hears it spread across her tone, to the parts of her soul that she normally doesn’t allow to become unstable, even in his presence.

“I wish I didn’t remember,” she says after a moment. “How I acted when I held that stone. All the things it triggered inside of me.”

“It’s…” Clint trails off, looking for his own voice, for something he can say that he knows won’t sound trite and knowing beyond that, the conversation is one they need to address in order to spur the closure of their feelings. “Sometimes it’s better to remember,” he says slowly. “I think that’s what you used to tell me. Makes it real. At least then you can’t pretend it didn’t happen.”

“Yeah,” Natasha says and he hears the way her voice falters, the fracture splitting into a clean break. “I guess this makes us even now.”

Clint presses the heel of his palm into one eye. “Hell of a thing to be even on.”

“I told you,” Natasha emphasizes with a sigh, sitting up. “We don’t get do-overs, Clint. At some point…at some point, our debts run out.”

“Not on my watch,” he argues, smoothing down her hair and letting his fingers trail along her cheek. “You and your second chances are stuck with me, Nat. At least for as long as it takes the world to realize we’ve had one too many.”

“And then what?” she asks softly, leaning back into him, and he knows that she’s asking about now, about what happens next, but he also knows she’s asking the bigger question, the one they both haven’t bothered to think about. He answers before he can stop himself, the only response he knows he can give that still holds any kind of weight between them.
“And then we take it one day at a time. We can do that, right?”

Natasha nods. “Yes,” she says and through the mismatched beats of her breathing he becomes acutely aware of the way she’s still holding herself against him, overly tense in a position where he knows she would normally be the most comfortable.

“Hey, you wanna sing me that song?”

Natasha’s voice is cloaked in confusion. “That song?”

“Yeah,” Clint says, leaning back a little further, allowing her space. “That one you sang when we were in my apartment after New York. When I couldn’t sleep.”

If Natasha was being Natasha, and if everything was normal, Clint knows she would have asked something like which night? Instead, she looks away.

“I can’t sing.”

If Clint was being Clint, and everything was normal, Clint knows she wouldn’t have said that, because he knows she can’t sing. Instead, he nudges her knee gently.

“Who cares?”

“The Russian sounds terrible,” she deflects and he shrugs, playing with their hands.

“So sing it in English. You know I wouldn’t understand the damn words anyway.”

It takes another moment before she starts to hum softly, the tune melting into a low, lilting collection of phrases that wind their way throughout the small cabin, finding space in his ear, stringing themselves together in half-put together sentences. There’s a steadiness, a smoothing of the fissures in her otherwise shattered speech, and there’s strength, a melding of two ruined souls, and there’s hope, he thinks, he hears, and he kisses her gently as she lets the last words of the song drop off her tongue.

And he knows that they don’t get to learn things like how to not be broken, but he also knows there’s a safety to being damaged, to heal only to break again, the only way they’ve ever truly been able to live when they’ve had to fight against the rest of the world.